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Valve Talk at Harvard CS50 Course – Portal Problems - doppp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivyseNMVt-4 ====== nangtrongvuon I find it really fascinating that one of the prevailing themes throughout this talk was "in game development, good enough goes a long way." I wonder if it applies to other fields of development as well. ~~~ animal531 There are a lot of areas on this topic that interests me. Just look at graphics, specifically say beach waves. We now have super advanced looking deep water, but I've never seen any game even try to replicate beach waves, apart from some basic texture effects where the water goes in and out. On the other side, I don't think I've ever heard a single comment about it from reviewers or players. Of course as soon as someone does do it, then you're going to be hearing about everyone else lacking it in every review. ------ Matheus28 Thanks for posting the video, OP. It was really interesting. Shame it didn't get very many comments.

Show HN: Sendfiles2.me - Getting files from others should be easier - makyol http://sendfiles2.me Hi everybody,<p>I'm delighted to share my latest little idea to make getting files from others easier.<p>It will be like having a public folder and letting people to upload you something.<p>Please check it out and let me know your feedback, you're always awesome - http://sendfiles2.me ====== makyol Hi everybody, I'm delighted to share my latest little idea to make getting files from others easier. It will be like having a public folder and letting people to upload you something. Please check it out and let me know your feedback, you're always awesome - <http://sendfiles2.me>

Economics is not a natural science - yarapavan http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/rushkoff09/rushkoff09_index.html ====== Tichy "In fact, thanks to their blind acceptance of a particular theory of the market, most of these concepts end up failing to accurately predict the future. " Failing to predict the future does not prove something is not scientific. For example there are simple cellular automatons whose evolution can not be predicted, even though all the rules they follow are known. Also, what is "the market" supposed to mean? "Now the interesting thing about this money is that it lost value over time. " Oh dear, please tell me that it is not the "Freigeld" craze finally reaching HN :-( ~~~ juvenn "Failing to predict the future does not prove something is not scientific." Good point, thanks. ~~~ jwhite But if the technique in question was promoted as a scientific means of doing just that, then you have to question it, and its proponents. LTCM is the example that springs to mind. ~~~ juvenn Yeh, you make the point. So there are economists who claims that future is unpredictable, like Xiaokai Yang[1]. [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaokai_Yang> ------ andreyf What is "Natural Science"? A study of a "natural system"? What's a "natural system"? I think what the author means to say, and should have said in one paragraph, is that economics has not yet developed an appropriate language for their models. Economists are still trying to use calculus, which was thought of by physicists do describe physical phenomena, which, when used in economics, is leading to wildly inaccurate models. ~~~ christofd Well put! The basic models of Econ were built on physics envy. They built models on a fairly artificial set of assumptions that use calculus. Poppycock. ~~~ rwolf Every last one of the economics courses I've taken was smothered in caveats about the underlying assumptions--you could make a drinking game out of it. Fields like behavioral economics address specific criticisms with new theory, making BE even more likely to clearly and consistently note problems with the foundation. I'm okay with econ being a social science (it sure wasn't taught in the Natural Science building at my school!), and I'm okay with being critical of the way its framework extends into my life. I don't understand how anyone can get through the gauntlet of econ warnings with hubris intact. ------ jrockway Why is every word in the title all-caps except for "Not"? ------ CulturalNgineer From Edge: Comment from George Dyson on “Economics Is Not a Natural Science” By Douglas Rushkoff “How to best transcend the current economic mess? Put Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, Elon Musk, Tim O’Reilly, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Nathan Myhrvold, and Danny Hillis in a room somewhere and don’t let them out until they have framed a new, massively-distributed financial system, founded on sound, open, peer-to-peer principles, from the start. And don’t call it a bank. Launch a new financial medium that is as open, scale-free, universally accessible, self-improving, and non-proprietary as the Internet, and leave the 13th century behind. In essence, I agree with the piece and the comment. I also believe that the Chagora model is very close to what they are talking about… (it can function with standard and/or newly created currencies whether localized or not. Especially when combined with methods of geographical localization and scaled anonymity. The practical microtransaction in all areas is essential for proper scaling of civilization and its the political microtransaction (networked citizen lobbying) that is the trigger. P.S. PayPal is a bad model for civilization development. (Chagora is essentially scalable speech and association) If I’m an idiot I’d like to find out soon since things are very tight. I’d like at least a chance to present my case and don’t know where else to go. <http://www.Chagora.com> See blog for more... [http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2009/05/foundations- of-...](http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2009/05/foundations-of- authoritarianism.html) ------ yummyfajitas From the article: _The system in which most information transmission takes place today is not a pre-existing condition of the universe. It's not nature. It's a machine, with very particular rules, set in motion by real people with real purposes. That's why it's so amazing to me that scientists, and people calling themselves scientists, would propose to study the internet as if it were some natural system - like the weather, or a coral reef._ You can use science to study all sorts of systems, ranging from the oceans to the internet to economics. They don't have to be natural. All that matters is whether you apply the scientific method to the phenomenon you are studying. Many economists do this, so (at least part of) the field of economics is scientific. You might be able to imagine another world in which the laws of economics don't work. Ok, so what? You can imagine worlds in which the laws of physics don't work, it doesn't make physics unscientific. ------ reader5000 His point is not what the definition of 'science' is. His thesis is that in the late middle ages society operated on a 'mutual credit system' (wikipedia it) of exchange where the merchant classes were independently creating and exchanging value. This mutual credit system was usurped for a centralized currency system where value creation is tightly controlled by the state (i.e. in the form of loans of a monopolized currency; what we have today). Centralized currency discourages cooperation and forces unnatural selfish competition between individuals, to the benefit of the corporate ownership. This unnatural state is reinforced as natural through corporate sponsorship of intellectuals like Dawkins and Pinker (even though if you read them both of these authors works are agnostic on this point). Then he makes an unclear point about how the internet changes all that. ------ arihelgason That's why it's called 'the dismal science' - the first thing we were taught in economics 101 at university. ------ thomaspaine dupe <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=763124> ------ dvvarf you know, it's funny. most people would put the start of economic thought ~1776 when Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations. That means it's been around less than 250 years. Sure it may not describe physical processes, but economics does try to model the real world. SCIENCE wasn't too far along 250 years after inception. I mean, we still believed that the world was flat not too long ago. give it time, the data will come. mistakes will be made. ~~~ berntb >give it time, the data will come. I'm very much not an expert, but that seemed optimistic. Economy's problem is that it describes a system which contain (more or less) intelligent beings who read up on economic theory -- and the beings then modifies their behavior from those studies... So to get data and build models, it seems there must be some fix point to that function, somewhere...? :-) (To add maiming to injury, those beings change culture and probably basic motivations every generation, these days.) I have respect for economy and economists, they seem to do a reasonable good job from a bad position. But I'm happy I went with other interests. ------ juvenn I do agree that Economics is not yet an reliable scientific subject, i.e. you can not predict future in accurate by doing scientific computations, and I do not think it will. But why _natural_? The economy involves, most importantly, rational (or not) human being who behaviors accordingly. And these behaviors must connected with the others _socially_. So, how could we learn the economy without studying these social things? ------ moron4hire To be fair, I don't recall anyone of import advocating that economics _is_ a natural science. Look at any university course catalogue and it is wedged pretty firmly in the social science department where it should be, along with the other fake sciences like psychology and sociology (though I would have to call it a continuum of fake, with clinical psychology on the "closer to real" end and sociology on the "just making junk up" end). ~~~ fburnaby Very true. That's a problem that in principle can be fixed, though. Your "fake" sciences can _in principle_ all be approached using the scientific method. They are actually _real_ sciences. It's just a portion of the practitioners that hurt their credibility. My guess is that it's the inherently complex subject matter that allows politically-charged crackpots and other non-scientists to squeeze their way in and call themselves scientists. ~~~ moron4hire Unfortunately, I suspect that there is too much incentive to "make observation fit one's expectations" in these fields. Conversely, what purpose does non- scientific quantum physics serve? Beyond weaseling more research money, pretty much nothing. But making economics and sociology say things that aren't held up by observation can, and most often does, lead to vast political and social change. ------ onreact-com Yeah, most people treat capitalism more like religion than an economic system of choice, especially the disastrous one we have now. A return to the less devastating Keynesian sort of capitalism won't undo the whole mess though. Alternative digital economies of sharing have shown how there are plenty of other viable models of economic organization. It's time to reevaluate the failed system that brought us here. ~~~ davidw These sorts of comments are exactly why we flag economics articles here. There are plenty of people here that take exactly the opposite view (or views, depending on the degree to which they take those views) - that markets should be even more open/free/etc... On the other end, there's even some guy who says he's a "venture communist". Economics is something that we can all agree to disagree on in order to talk about what we have in common: hacking and startups. ~~~ christofd No, Economics is very much part of the picture. Economics is not philosophy or religion but optimization under conditions of scarcity. As long as we remain metrics driven there's nothing wrong with talking optimization. My two cents. ~~~ davidw The problem is that very tightly linked to that is "optimized for _what_?", and people and societies have different goals. If people were ok simply talking about economics as a mechanism for optimization... that would be one thing, but these discussions pretty much always degrade on the internet. ~~~ christofd Agreed, most of these discussions lack rigor.

A bug I wish I hadn't caught - fagnerbrack https://roganmurley.com/2019/06/08/the-bug.html ====== striking See also: A bug so cool that the development team was reluctant to fix it ([https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20190603-00/?p=10...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20190603-00/?p=102534)) ~~~ Unknoob Reminds me of the old Dota2 Fountain hook glitch. A Valve employee commented that they deemed it "Too hilarious to fix"[1] They eventually patched it after a pro player abused it to turn a game around at the International 3[2] It's a shame because 6 years later it's still one of the best moments I ever witnessed in the game. [1]: [https://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=2989&p=11512&viewfull...](https://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=2989&p=11512&viewfull=1#post11512) [2][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB0tUrfDz6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB0tUrfDz6A) ~~~ hokumguru I was really quite disappointed about fountain hooks being removed - they were an extremely high skill, high risk high reward maneuver. It was also ridiculously fun to watch NaVi pull it off game after game in TI3 - part of what made that my favorite year for the spectator aspect of the tournament. ------ nbulka I am a DM. For this campaign, your character choices are limited to: [CPU, Guest, Anonymous, Player 1, Player 2, User, Random, "", undefined] ~~~ TremendousJudge Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1963/](https://xkcd.com/1963/) ~~~ aeorgnoieang Whatever could he mean by the mouseover text ... ~~~ lucb1e Maybe "xkcd"? Not sure. ~~~ mod Parent was making a joke about their own name. ------ LeonM So... the backend of this game queries the database even if the user name is NULL? And the CPU user uses a magic name 'cpu', which is not a reserved name? And apparently the backend is totally okay with a user name that doesn't exist in the database? Either this story is just an ad, or this game has been really badly build and some h4x0r is going to have a field day with this. ~~~ jiberwarrior >And apparently the backend is totally okay with a user name that doesn't exist in the database? What do you think happens when a previously unregistered user creates an account ------ jayventura This is literally that NULL license plate problem! I wonder how many other systems this bug may exist in. ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20676904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20676904)) ------ eridius Please don't use the username as your primary key for a user! Usernames change. If your username can't change, you designed your system wrong. Systems that are heavily persisted-comment-based at least have the excuse where changing a username would invalidate old comments referencing that user, but even GitHub still lets you change your username (if you link @-references to users, please store the user's ID in the backend text and only convert it back to a username when displaying; GitHub doesn't take this step but it should). P.S. Hacker News, I'm looking at you. ~~~ logicallee Come on, user names don't change. Whether it's Hacker News (as you mention), a reddit username, a skype ID, or your gmail address, nobody expects the "username" to change, it is unique and can't be used if already taken, and everybody uses it as a unique ID on millions of websites without any issue. In fact, I can't name a single service I've ever used (ever!) that lets me change my username. ~~~ scrollaway > _In fact, I can 't name a single service I've ever used (ever!) that lets me > change my username._ Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Any of the phone-number-based social apps (which have a poorer UX because of it, but still all allow changing usernames seeing as phone numbers change)? Also I believe Skype does allow changing usernames. ~~~ zaphirplane Hotmail Gmail Seriously why can’t people change their email and keep the mailbox. It’s not uncommon to pick a cute or funny email when you are a teen and want To change when you’ve all grown up ~~~ im3w1l With an imap client you should be able to download emails from the old accounts and upload them on the new one. ------ crimsonalucard This bug is a design smell. They have a "Player" module that can likely be controlled by a human or by an "AI" module. This is good design. The problem here is likely that IO is tightly integrated with Player and every other module as a dependency. This is what can cause the bug to occur. Proper design is for the "Player" module to never depend on IO as a dependency... 1\. the player module should be able to output the next gamestate of a game given the action and previous gamestate. 2\. The AI should calculate the action when given a gamestate. 3\. IO should be a function that when given gamestate, it displays it on the screen, or saves it to the DB. 4\. All modules should be unaware of the other modules. No dependencies. Likely the fix that the poster is doing doesn't involve separating the "Player" module from all knowledge of IO, but the fix he is doing is making AI a special case in the "Player" module. This speaks to all kinds of wrong. Following these design patterns over a long period of time leads to code that is "tech debt" heavy and messy. It's an inevitable consequence for programmers who don't know how to design things. Also note that this is normal. I would say 99% of programmers don't know this and are likely doing some garbage like using dependency injection to make every module in the system depend on IO. ------ debaserab2 Apparently there's still a few more bugs left to catch - the game's sign up screen briefly flashes a form then simply goes blank for me. ~~~ nathanvanfleet That's the bug he wished he had caught. All those people from hacker news clicking through to the site but no new signups! ------ sucrose Calling this a "bug" is a stretch. Similar to saying `1 == 2` is a bug. Could've been prevented by using distinct ID's in your tables and query criteria. When assigning experience, authenticating, selecting user data, etc., use the user ID. Usernames are just localized, vanity UUID's for client-side pleasure. ------ franze [http://lalo.li/lsd/](http://lalo.li/lsd/) is full of bugs. i made a version without glitches. it was only half as fun. ------ lucb1e But... if you really regret taking this out, why not leave it? I don't see how it can do harm. I can imagine players linking the account's profiles to friends going "hah, look at this" and creating more publicity, and people being for either Guest or CPU and talking about it... fun for the players, and good for publicity. Why take this out? And then the post ends there and suggests I should go play the game. But a lot of people already commented that it sounds like an ad. ------ Insanity There have been bugs I wish I hadn't caught for entirely different reasons. Mostly if you find them on Friday before a Monday release and have to crunch to fix it lol ------ aloknnikhil I find it odd there's no user ID instead of the username. But what I find even more concerning is it's not sanitizing the username to protect against SQL injection. ~~~ debaserab2 How can you know that there's no sanitization just from this blog post? ~~~ MichaelApproved I think OP is getting the wrong idea from the screen shot in the article. There's a pic of an SQL query being run from a terminal. They might be thinking that it's a screen shot from the actual code. ~~~ aloknnikhil It's open source. [https://github.com/RoganMurley/Ring-of- Worlds/blob/master/se...](https://github.com/RoganMurley/Ring-of- Worlds/blob/master/server/src/User.hs) ~~~ anyfoo This looks perfectly fine? Are you referring to the fact that they don't escape special characters like ' in the string? With the proper interfaces, like using prepared statements (which this likely uses in the backend, if this is an actual SQL db), instead of putting queries together just by concatenating strings, escaping strings is not only unnecessary but actively harmful. ------ tshanmu this is just an ad? ~~~ geoah It was a nice anekdote, all development will be linked to a project anyway, linking to it just makes sense. Doesn't seem this was targeting a wider audience than devs, and I don't think the main market of the game is devs anyway. ~~~ deckar01 The post is lacking any interesting technical information. It is a bland fantasy about how a poorly implemented scoreboard could be exploited. Based on the dramatic title I expected a deep dive into a large corporation's code that resulted in dark secrets of the highest order. Instead I got an API that doesn't have validation... ~~~ ralphstodomingo Cut the guy some slack. You can get your fill of conspiracy theories elsewhere. I for one enjoy random bouts of small, shallow experiences like these. ------ hyperpallium ugh, vapourbug ------ vvpan The point of the story being...?

Ask HN: Is it okay to have a short gap of unemployment on your resume? - jressey Here&#x27;s my specific scenario: I&#x27;m moving to a new city with my spouse who just got a university position. I&#x27;m a Rails and Java developer with about 5 years experience. I have a job now at a large corporation and 1. they won&#x27;t let me work remotely, and 2. I want out anyways. I&#x27;m pretty sure I have a job lined up in the new city, but haven&#x27;t been able to apply to and interview as many companies as I&#x27;d like to have, and the move date is approaching. Is it ok to have a gap of a few months on your resume? I&#x27;d like to move and be able to take my time choosing a new position. Thanks! ====== enrmarc Serious question: what's the problem with résumé gaps? Is it a big deal in USA? I'd say that in Europe it's not such a big deal. Nobody is going to ask you why you have, for instance, a 4 month gap in your résumé if you have been working 3 or 4 years in a row. Almost everyone would guess that you took that time off, and that's not a bad thing precisely. Perhaps you took that time to learn new skills, to read a ton of books, to travel around the world, to be with your kids,... a lot of activities that do more good than harm. Most of us are going to work until we are 60 or so, so what's the big deal with having a few months every 5 years or so in our résumé? They give you a medal if you finish your career without gaps? Imagine this scenario: developer A has been working in a time span of 10 years without résumé gaps. Developer B has been working for 9 years and has been taking gaps of 4 months every 3 years. Do you really think there is going to be a big difference between the two developers in terms of skills set? 10, 9, 8 years, it doesn't make a difference at all in terms of accumulated knowledge. But developer B has been doing "something else" during a whole year (3 gaps of 4months each). Maybe he travelled the world and learned a little bit of a couple of languages, and I'd say that's a valuable non-technical skill to have. As I've said, I see more good than harm in taking a few month off from time to time. Going back to your question: if it's just for a few months I see no problem at all, and if recruiters ask then just explain what you have post. ~~~ J-dawg I did this in the UK and it felt like a huge deal. I wasn't yet a developer at the time, but I think my experience is still relevant. It seemed to really have an impact on interviews. The interviewer would end up asking a lot of questions about why I left the previous job (it was for quite innocent reasons), rather than the stuff I really wanted to be talking about, which puts the whole thing on a downer from the start. It affected me a lot, which meant I started to become very nervous before interviews, so performed badly, got even more nervous, etc. I pretty much have a phobia of interviews to this day (almost 10 years later) because of it. I think the answer to the original question depends enormously on what type of person you are. If you're extremely confident in yourself, and in your skills, and you're naturally positive and optimistic then you should be fine. If you have the sort of personality that tends towards introspection and self- doubt, then think very carefully before doing this. Think about how you'll feel after your 10th rejection, or when your savings are starting to run low. Will you still bounce back? Finally, I've heard that some recruiters use your current employment status as a filtering criterion. So your CV might not even get looked at. This is insane, but I've heard it enough times to think it might be true. ~~~ switch007 This is my experience too in the UK. 6 months is border-line unemployable – expect at the very least a salary low-ball offer. I don't know many people in our industry in the UK who would take 3 months off and not worry about their career. Most you can hope for is delaying the start date in a new position. But, again, they likely will ask your notice period and your end date, and be a bit suspicious of a a delayed start date. ~~~ pyb I have the opposite experience in the UK. I have god knows how many gaps in my resume... for all sorts of reason. Probably part of the reason why I became a contractor ; as it's kinda part of the job. Anyway, interviewers have never raised it. Perhaps it's just that we don't apply to the same type of tech companies. ------ hijinks Few months is no big deal.. If they ask just say you moved because your spouse for a new job and you helped manage the move and the new place so you took a bit of time off. I've hired a lot of people and I wouldn't even question a few month gap.. Life happens. I would question more then a 6-8 month gap. ------ davismwfl Yep, absolutely fine. If anyone asks, just tell them the truth, you moved, left one company and are learning the new market and who's there. My only comment, if you let a few months turn into 5-6+ months, you may want to explain up front versus them seeing a 6 month gap as you may not get in the door for a competitive position. You can do this in your intro email/cover letter, mention that you recently moved to the city, took some time to vacation and get to know the city a little and recently saw their position advertised and felt it might be a good match. Or something along those lines. ------ JSeymourATL An asterisk on your CV time line will suffice: * Transferred to New City with my spouse. Took some personal garden leave during the transition. Should anyone probe further, tell them ... I'm not a job-hopper, I've been very selective on my search looking for a good company match. Things that are important to me are the quality of the people, interesting work problems to solve, and obviously a good compensation package. ------ probinso I have two (5+ month) gaps in my resume; one was so that I could party, the other was so that I could work on a personal project (that would definitely not make money). When people ask what I did during those breaks I tell them 'personal time' and that I wanted to explore a personal project in more detail (respectively). I do not seem to be any less employable. (USA - North West) ------ audleman I had a friend who was looking for Administrative Assistant roles with a 2 year gap on her resume and it was a problem. The companies could always find a younger person to sit in the chair and do the menial tasks, and somebody with no gaps is more likely to stay put. They also marked her down in interviews for not knowing the latest Excel version (even though she knew Excel and had been using it for years, like anything significant had changed in a year). So jobs like that are kind of shitty to applicants. But you as a programmer? I cannot imagine it being a problem. You are a high- skill worker who earns enough that you can easily afford to take the time off. Just say you were exploring personal projects in your spare time. That sounds awesome. ~~~ NameNickHN > They also marked her down in interviews for not knowing the latest Excel > version [...] I've come to the point where I'm glad that interviewers show their cards this way. If a company does stupid things like this, I really don't want work for them anyway. I know there are times when you can't be picky and have to be glad to get a job but I don't believe for a moment that the work environment will turn out to be great after they pull stuff like that in the interview. ------ dhruvkar It GREATLY depends on the narrative. Yes, some companies will have filters for things like "hasn't worked in X months => automatic dismiss pile", but by and large, I've found that it depends how that gap fits in with the rest of your life/work story. They'll wonder about the following Was that gap after 3 months working somewhere? Was it after 5 years? What caused it? Boredom? Familial reasons? Illness? With a tight narrative (e.g. reasonable explanations and a human story), you'll be fine. The person(s) on the other end are also human beings, and most recognize that life happens. It's okay. ------ Zelmor Just insert 'sabbatical' or 'self-employed' for the duration. Whichever you can explain as the reason for a break. I tend to go with 'sabbatical' and explain during interviews that I managed work-life balance poorly and that needed sorting out. I might also mention how my relationship is for the better after my break, and that I am now more able to stay consistent, without swings in mood and existential crisis. I might also mention a hobby project I picked up that keeps me busy in my free time, like going back to reading fiction, woodworking, gardening, etc. This usually creates the air of a real person during interviews. They find me interesting and interested, and as such I stand a better chance of being accepted into their community at the workplace. ------ saluki I wouldn't worry about it too much. Any chance you can obtain a contract position or freelance work during that time so you can just list it as contract position/work. But I really wouldn't worry about a small gap especially when moving to a new city. Once you know you're leaving and getting ready to turn in your notice you could ask HR if you could take unpaid leave so your last official day is a few months out, not sure this is possible but if you're worried about your last official day of employment or a gap it might be worth asking. I think I've only had one company contact my previous companies HR to verify my dates of employment. And one of my former companies HR staff called to let me know about it and see if it was ok to give them information and say they weren't even sure they can legally call up and ask for employee information like that. Anyway good luck landing a new gig. ------ Artlav A related question - is there an official job registry in the USA? That is would the gap be known about from public record, or is it up to you whether to specify it in your CV or not? Also, how would you put the "tried a startup, failed" unemployment period into the CV? ------ siquick I had a 13 month gap between my last job and my current job, because I went travelling and then migrated to a new country. It was absolutely no problem and I actually think it helped me because I spent a decent amount of that travelling time developing skills I didn't have previously (both technical and soft skills). ------ RockIslandLine As someone with gaps in my resume for various reasons, I have found a range of responses by potential employers. I have worked in two different career fields. When I made that switch, getting the professional certifications took me about 3 months, during which time I was not working. Almost nobody asks about the gap, though almost everyone asks about the career switch. I have a several year period in which I was working only contract employment. There are gaps of up to 5 months between contracts. Most employers ask something about that time, and most are satisfied with the simple explanation that finding a new contract took that much time. Some employers care more than others. IBM required me to write a letter of explanation for every gap of 3 months or more. Some employers don't even ask. ------ dudul Yes it's fine. You could take advantage of these few months to do something, like volunteering, OOS contributions, mentorship, etc to make it even "more okay". But your scenario is valid explanation enough. ~~~ partisan Agreed. In the worst case scenario, you could be consulting to a small startup, yourself. Just be sure to improve yourself during that downtime so that you don't come back into the search rusty. ------ c0110 This is anecdotal -- but it seems like companies are more or less pretty understanding if your reason is justifiable. I had a string of jobs (fulltime, then laid off, then consulting for 3 separate clients). I interviewed with over 20 companies this year and no one had a problem with the gaps in my resume. They were more interested (concerned?) about why I had worked with so many companies. ------ mspaulding06 Having gaps on your resume isn't a big deal. If you're good at what you do you shouldn't have any problems. I have two 6 month gaps on my resume and it wasn't any problem getting my current job as a DevOps engineer. It can be a smart move taking your time to find the right thing. The last thing you want is to end up working somewhere just so you can have a paycheck. ------ pyb Yes it's fine. In this day and age, it's almost suspicious not to have any gaps in one's tech resume. There are just so many sources of discontinuity in a career nowadays.

Game Theory and Kickstarter? - heat_miser http://www.therussiansusedapencil.com/post/4293798937/pay-what-you-wish ====== masterzora The headline here is very unfortunately chosen. The actual article is a very interesting look at a project of which I hadn't previously been aware, but the game theory discussed within is both very little and not the most interesting bit of the content.

Lenovo stole a fan's video to promote the foldable Motorola RAZR - luu https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/17/lenovo-motorola-razr-promo-video-stolen-waqar-khan/ ====== bredren What’s odd about this is how easily it could have been a fan engagement story. Sloppy beyond belief or an intentional faux scandal. ~~~ colordrops Feels like the latter. When was the last time you saw a high production value rendering of a yet to be released phone for a second tier company? ~~~ gibolt Pretty sure Lenovo isn't a second tier company... ~~~ joezydeco Google gutted Motorola Mobility for its intellectual property and then sold the carcass to Lenovo. The smarter employees left for greener pastures even before the sale was complete. What's left isn't even third tier. ------ sonnyblarney Odds are it was some random person at an agency or in marketing, or contracted to do some little thing ... and either didn't think about the issue or didn't care to. Frankly I'm surprised this kind of stuff doesn't happen more often. Edit: And I'm speaking from experience. Large companies are not as specifically coordinated as people sometimes ascribe them to be. And nobody in marketing or any other dept. wants to deal with legal review of anything if they can avoid it. ~~~ usrusr Probably subcontracted so many layers deep that the person who eventually sold some random internet video as their own did not even reach a particularly high hourly rate using the shortcut. ------ jonny_eh Wait, they're promoting a product that doesn't exist? ~~~ skrebbel Yes, and nobody understands why. Beautiful, isn't it :-) ~~~ benj111 Post capitalism? You don't need to _make_ anything, just announce products people want to buy, regardless of whether they're actually buildable. Next step, raise billions of $ on the back of the 'product', then presumably sell[1] empty boxes for all those unboxing videos. [1] It probably won't be selling, it'll probably licencing, or renting, or renting of other peoples boxes, or some combination thereof. ~~~ skrebbel This is not a Kickstarter, it's Lenovo. They have a billion dollars in cash just lying around. ------ GuiA Send them an invoice for the amount of work it took you. $10k per second of footage they used is a good start, with a contract saying you won’t sue for copyright infringement if they pay, and you’ll provide them with non watermarked footage. If they don’t pay, sue for copyright infringement. Seems like it’d be a clear cut case? ~~~ fenwick67 Sounds nice but suing a massive company like this is going to cost way more than $10k ~~~ irjustin He said 10k/second. At 3:47 for the original full-length video[1] that's pretty good money. And that's without suing! [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxfI6-ZltWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxfI6-ZltWk) ------ ma2rten That's very odd. Using some random YouTuber's video is very unprofessional, but taking that aside what is Lenovo's intention here? Were they trying to test the market? If so, were they are actually planning on building the phone if the response is good? ~~~ r3bl A description of the video is in Chinese, translating to something like: > Lenovo today unveiled its own folding screen mobile phone video in an > interview with Sina Technology and other media. The folding mobile phone > design looks similar to Motorola's classic Razer. Do you like this > lightweight folding phone? I believe that the video wasn't meant for the English market, so they thought they could get away with it. ------ yeleti Yeah, and the Youtuber used Motorola's logo for his render -- without permission. ~~~ RandomBacon Fair-use allows it in the US. ------ paulcole When the company takes the fan’s content it’s stealing. When the fan takes the company’s content it’s fine because there’s no way to obtain the content conveniently or another excuse or any convoluted way to avoid saying it’s stealing. ~~~ Causality1 Are you trying to make a point about piracy? ~~~ paulcole No, commented on the wrong thread by accident.

Fireball – Chinese malware that has infected over 250M computers worldwide - suresh70 http://blog.checkpoint.com/2017/06/01/fireball-chinese-malware-250-million-infection/ ====== campuscodi If the 250 million stat looks impressive, it's not. There is no malware named Fireball, so don't go checking for IOCs and reports. This is just the name Check Point has taken upon itself to giving to a collective of adware families created by the Chinese company named in the report. You'll find that Fireball consists of adware variants like Youdoo, Trotux, Startpageing123, Luckysearch123, Hohosearch, Yessearches, and others. ------ based2 ref [https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Check-Point- Bericht-...](https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Check-Point-Bericht- Gefaehrliche-Backdoor-in-jedem-zehnten-deutschen- Unternehmensnetz-3732893.html) ------ DamonHD Lost me at "Try to imagine a pesticide armed with a nuclear bomb." Try to imagine avoiding hyperbole and scaremongering... All round a fairly sloppy piece, sadly. ------ mcraiha _" The fake search engines include tracking pixels used to collect the users’ private information"_ AFAIK tracking pixels can only collect info from HTTP headers. So is that line FUD or am I missing something? ~~~ jacquesm That depends on what's served. If the first part that is served is a chunk of javascript you can lift anything you want out the js environment and send that back when you fetch part II.

Show HN: Built a job board for people who lost jobs due to COVID19 crisis - akshaynathr https://www.openjobs.live ====== akshaynathr Hi All, Couple of my friends lost their internships because of covid19 crisis. I saw many others in my friend circle losing their jobs. I built this free job board site so that people with jobs can help others know if their teams are hiring now. I built this using python and django.I am still learning the framework. PS: If your team is hiring please let others know.

Show HN: Refer Me Please – Market network for job referrals - kjbosc https://refer-me-please.com ====== kjbosc Hi Guys! My team and I just completely redesigned our website and changed the UI/UX. We would love some feedback on it, and see how we could make it better. The idea behind Refer Me Please is to give the opportunity for job seekers to get a foot in the door in their dream companies through a referral and give the opportunity for referrer to find new talent they wouldn't have had access to before. Thanks a lot for your help guys!

Reserve Bank of India Cautions Users of Virtual Currencies Against Risks [pdf] - wsxcde http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/PressRelease/PDFs/IEPR1261VC1213.pdf ====== ShirsenduK Its a feature, don't try to file it as a bug. "Payments by VCs, such as Bitcoins, take place on a peer-to-peer basis without an authorised central agency which regulates such payments. As such, there is no established framework for recourse to customer problems / disputes / charge backs etc." And stopping payments is not the right way to address customer problems. ~~~ INTPenis Yes and further I think every single bullet point can be said about regular money. Banks are not invulnerable to hacking. If you get hustled for your pocket money in the street then the police will have to find the perpetrator with any means at hand. Just because it's an electronic currency does not mean anything is different here. Are they trying to say that every single Indian citizen could withdraw their money as gold or some equally valuable substance that they can equate to cash money in society? Wealth truly knows no god and no master, nor any border. Beware of the propaganda, fear what you don't understand. ~~~ techtivist This! Exactly the point I made above! Same issues plague "traditional" banks and RBI has imposed very limited liabilities on Bank or even safeguards like this one [https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/](https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/). So if the Target fiasco had happened in India, Target would have minimum if any liabilities. Why do you think "cash on Delivery" is such a big thing in India. Consumers are paranoid, not just because it's their habit, they just feel vulnerable with no recourse even with traditional banking. ------ tankenmate The main reason that India is concerned about this is it's ability to tax foreign income of resident Indians. If bitcoin or other VCs allow people to earn money overseas and then get paid in a complete "cash only" fashion it could sidestep income tax. ~~~ bushido It may be a reason, but it is not the main reason, not by a long shot. India has a chronic problem of tax evasion, in the grand schemes of things only a handful of their citizens can claim a defense/offense of "it's ability to tax foreign income of resident Indians", since only a handful do not have the ability to evade taxes or have never deliberately evaded taxes. A quick search for "tax evasion in India" can educate on this topic, including an article[0] that states "tax evasion is India's national sport." My Indian friends tell me, that they don't feel bad evading taxes a little since the politicians, bureaucrats etc would squander it through bribes and scandals. To which I say, perhaps the main reason for rampant scams and bribery is that taxes are evaded and these public employees are paid poorly. [0] [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/in-india-tax-evasion- is...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/in-india-tax-evasion-is-a- national-sport-07282011.html) edit: On re-reading my comment I realized that I was unclear why in it's current scope RBI's main concern is not the scope of tax evasion. Currently India looses over $300B to tax evasion each year, even if all of bitcoin's market cap was taxable by India this would be a very small fraction of their tax losses. I believe the real reason lies in addressing customer grievances. India is plagued by numerous scandals and scams in the private sector and the only resort for most people is going to the consumer courts if they can afford it. Their already few options would be obliterated if they choose to deal with bitcoin. While this may be a concern in the developed countries, its not nearly as bad as the situation in India and similar economies. ~~~ sandGorgon Actually there is a singular reason for the tax evasion and it has nothing to do with people "wanting" something. Real estate. Some of India's real estate is priced as high as Manhattan, but the sale process is murkier. The reported sale figure (for tax purposes) is much lower than the actual sale figure. This is very interesting for people used to Zillow - why would someone agree to a transaction like this? How does the actual exchange take place without any backing paperwork? In fact, there are people who claim that there is a physical bundle of a few billion dollars that keep changing hands as people sell and buy real estate - pretty much a closed system. There have been many attempts by startups to pull a Zillow in India, but most of them failed (including one I was associated with). Now here's the interesting point about bitcoin - I mentioned above that the current real estate market is a closed system. The Indian govt has taken a series of rightfully justified steps to eliminate physical cash from the financial system - in India, you need to pay a charge to withdraw cash from a bank and also fill in extra paperwork. This ensures no new cash enters the real estate system. Bitcoin could potentially upset the system. ~~~ sumedh > but most of them failed (including one I was associated with). What was the name of your startup. Housing.com is doing a pretty job imho. ~~~ sandGorgon most of them are doing well - but NOT in the Zillow segment. It is when you start wading in the murky waters of Indian secondary real estate sales, that you hit all these issues. My work history is in my profile. ------ rikacomet Well in the past,RBI has shown no remorse towards online currency, for example Paypal. They had a free run, until RBI got into the scene. Now their business is as good as nothing. It allowed many Indian paychannels to emerge though, Paytm is a good example. Indian financial policy makers tend to have a "safe and proven first" attitude towards such things. No wonder, we fairly did better than many european countries, during the 2007-08 subprime losses fallout. Not a single bank defaulted, ICICI which had the highest exposure(if my memory serves me right), was still in black even after the write-off. ~~~ svenkatesh Could you provide more info on what RBI did with regards to PayPal? ~~~ techtivist Here's what they did [http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/28/reserve-bank-of-india- restr...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/28/reserve-bank-of-india-restricts- paypal-payments-to-merchants-to-under-500/) but later relaxed a bit [http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/paypal-now-allows- indi...](http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/paypal-now-allows-indian- merchants-to-receive-up-to-10000-in-one-transaction-398520) ------ sriramk I came here expecting something stupid but this doc isn't completely unreasonable. From the perspective of warning newbies or my mother (say) about investing in bitcoin, it does a fair job. Or rather, it could have been far, far worse. ------ acd I think the Reserve Bank of India is afraid of the Indian Rupies inflationary past and that Bitcoin might offer a better alternative. Inflation is but a hidden tax of the populations wealth. Historic inflation data for India [http://www.inflation.eu/inflation- rates/india/historic-infla...](http://www.inflation.eu/inflation- rates/india/historic-inflation/cpi-inflation-india.aspx) ------ kszx Worth noting that RBI's current governor is Raghuram Rajan (since September), Chicago Booth's "star professor" and one of the world's most famous economists. Also known for saying that "innovation had made finance more dangerous." (in 2005). [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21583275...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21583275-star-economist-put-charge-indias-central-bank-out-frying- pan) ------ theboywho >> The Reserve Bank has mentioned that it has been looking at the developments relating to certain electronic records claimed to be “Decentralised Digital Currency” or “Virtual Currency” (VCs), such as, Bitcoins, litecoins, bbqcoins, dogecoins etc., their usage or trading in the country and the various media reports in this regard. Dogecoins? Seriously? They are thinking the dogecoin parody is real? I am wondering if the people behind this study knew what they were doing or if they just "googled" it. ~~~ im_a_bug Dogecoin is as "real" as Bitcoin, or USD for that matter. ~~~ theboywho I called it "parody" and not "fake" ~~~ chc You asked if they thought it was real. It is real, so if they think that, they are correct. ~~~ theboywho Are you saying Dogecoin is not a pardoy? ------ Kilo-byte timely caution Millions of Dogecoin stolen in Christmas hack [http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/26/5244604/millions-of- dogec...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/26/5244604/millions-of-dogecoin- stolen-in-christmas-hack)

Truth Table Generator WebApp Written in Common Lisp - lerax https://logic.lerax.me ====== laszlokorte I like the way you have equivalences and inferences defined as functions expr -> expr. But it seems those are not exposed via the user interface, or am I missing something? Related: A few years ago I wrote a propositional logic parser in Dart [1] using a custom shunting yard parser and later as part of my bachelors thesis [2] another one [2] in javascript using PegJS. [1] [https://static.laszlokorte.de/logik/](https://static.laszlokorte.de/logik/) (source: [https://github.com/laszlokorte/dart- logic](https://github.com/laszlokorte/dart-logic)) [2] [https://thesis.laszlokorte.de](https://thesis.laszlokorte.de) [3] [https://thesis.laszlokorte.de/demo/logic- editor.html](https://thesis.laszlokorte.de/demo/logic-editor.html) ~~~ lerax Yes, it's not exposed because this is a WIP project. My final mission would be have a function called prove that will try N inference and equivalence rules to prove a conclusion given a set of premisses. [https://github.com/ryukinix/lisp- inference/issues/2](https://github.com/ryukinix/lisp-inference/issues/2) BTW, Cool project written in Dart!!! I'll take as reference. Thanks for the feedback. The UX of [3] it's awesome too! ------ kazinator [https://stackoverflow.com/a/34377302/1250772](https://stackoverflow.com/a/34377302/1250772) ~~~ lerax Cool :) but for me is more fun to write than to use.

Ask HN: What kinds of help are open source projects looking for? - windsurfer What kind of person are you looking for? What tasks are needing to be accomplished within your open source project? Is there anything simple you would like people to help with?<p>(inspired by this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2294072) ====== mindcrime _What kind of person are you looking for?_ Curious, motivated, and has initiative. Not scared to take on things that are "too big." Smart, confident, but not too arrogant. _What tasks are needing to be accomplished within your open source project?_ There's all sorts of stuff my project(s) could use help with. Simple stuff like going through GSP (Groovy Server Pages) pages and replacing instances of hard-coded URL strings with the appropriate tags that generate that stuff, and more involved stuff like UI improvements; to hard-core backend stuff involving experimental / research-oriented machine-learning stuff. _Is there anything simple you would like people to help with?_ Sure,there's always low hanging fruit that is good for people just getting involved in a project. If you want to take a look at my project, see: <http://code.google.com/p/neddick> and/or <http://code.google.com/p/quoddy> Or if you'd rather skip straight to the source code, see: <https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick> and/or <https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy>

The Antagonism of Human and Nature in Factorio - erlend_sh https://molily.de/antagonism-human-nature/ ====== sbergot I think the developers are really smart about those design choices. Pollution and alien relations are not something you can control in the game. They are just an effect of playing the game. You are focused of producing more stuff in order to unlock tools to allow you to produce even more stuff. If you could somehow manage the pollution levels, the ecological message would be weaker. It would mean that you can still increase your production as much as you like and still keep the planet peaceful and green. In factorio the only way to keep a peaceful environment is not to play. If you want to launch a rocket, you will need to destroy forest and alien nests. The game commentary about pollution & colonialism is stronger because those elements are inevitable. Want to expand to get this new iron mine? First equip a flamethrower and burn down the area. ~~~ aequitas > Pollution and alien relations are not something you can control in the game. You can (besides using the map creation settings). I've build a big factory without suffering attacks. You can control pollution by using solar (exclusively), efficiency modules and strategic building (build near forest, don't destoy them, they absorb pollution). I did give myself a headstart with a big starting area and lots of forest. And since the requirement to farm aliens for resources has been removed a while ago, there is no reason to attack and agitate them, reducing their agressiveness and expansion. It does make the game harder and more fun in a way. ~~~ me_me_me solar is late game tech, last time I played you couldn't possibly have been 100% eco play-through (feasibly) ~~~ aequitas Solar is pretty early/mid game. Only red/green science is needed and for construction coper, iron and steel. Of course before you get to solar you need steam first. But with a bigger start area and enough trees, pollution can be managed until you can go solar. ------ kccqzy This is reading way too much into the game. The game is not a didactic device that aims to teach a lesson about ecology, conservation, and the peaceful coexistence with nature, just like plenty of works of fiction do not address anything in the real world—they are simply figments of the author's imagination. > Also, a game is not a lecture in economy or ecology. Okay good, because this sentence invalidates pretty much all of the author's criticisms. I feel that the whole article is just like the people who say shooting games are harmful because they promote violence in real life (they don't). Why not write about them? "Shooting games actively ignore the basics of human-human interaction, and ultimately the basics of life." Also, I don't think the author played this game where pollution is turned off: > As a game device, the aliens force the player to build a machinery of war. > If one would take out the products, the buildings, the technology research > etc. directly or indirectly connected to military, there is only a fraction > left. So for a great deal, this game is a war game, with little strategic > value I might add. When you turn off pollution, you turn off the militaristic aspects of the game, and I can assure you there are plenty of interesting things to explore without the military. From basics like fully utilizing the two-sided nature of conveyor belts (you can totally have each half delivering completely different products and prevent them from mixing up, therefore saving space), to intermediate stuff like fluid mechanics (how many pumps and where), train station design (how to load and unload efficiently) and railroad planning (train signals are surprisingly rich), to advanced things like circuit networks and combinators. ~~~ tsimionescu Regardless of the intentions of the author, any piece of art can be read by some as a reflection on the real world (perhaps one of the best examples that is not post-modern is the often touted interpretation of The Lord of the Rings as an allegory for WWII, which is very explicitly against Tolkien's wishes and intents). Especially in a pseudo-naturalistic game, it is interesting to observe which aspects the game chose to model and which aspects it chose not to model, and discuss the implications to the comparison between the game world and the real world. This is as valid for Factorio as it is for Conquistador or Monopoly or Civilization VI. If the reader believes that "important" (to them) aspects were left out, they may legitimately criticize this reading of the game and point out why viewing some aspect as realistic would be wrong, regardless. Of course, it would absolutely NOT be legitimate to automatically extend this criticism to the game itself, or even more so to the author, it is just a criticism of a certain reading of the game. There are cases when this type of reading can be seen as an explicit intention of the game design, and in those cases it starts to become more acceptable to criticize the author(s) themselves. For example, while pollution was a major problem in early Civ games, it was removed from the newer ones (until the latest expansion for Civ 6). Given the known importance of pollution in recent human history and discourse, and its presence in the other games, this omission can naturally be seen as intentional and can be criticized or praised based on the message it sends. This would not be correct for Factorio. ~~~ LoSboccacc but often enough the blue curtain is just a blue curtain ~~~ monadgonad That doesn't matter! Art is about what we, the readers, make of it. ~~~ LoSboccacc no, that's the interpretation of an art piece, art in itself exist as an expression of a singular intent (well, potentially from a collective of authors) further reflections are independent thoughts which exist because of the interaction with the art piece, but not within the art piece itself. as such, these are observations of one's self, and not of the art. ------ marcus_holmes I was all set up to hate on this. The remark about "If one would take out the products, the buildings, the technology research etc. directly or indirectly connected to military, there is only a fraction left." particularly struck me as untrue - yes there are some technologies that are military, but the vast majority are not. I have played several games with no pollution and no aliens, and if you remove those then there is a significant game left. This game is not "about" killing bugs. But, I also get the comment about interacting with the bugs. They do feel like cardboard-cutout characters left over from the first implementation and not touched since. They don't seem to interact with the world, and they do feel like a missed opportunity. It _would_ be cool to be able to trade with the bugs instead of destroying their nests to get materials. Having to manage pollution because it affected trade, etc. I do feel bad when my filth-belching factory causes the bugs to attack me, and my only response is to destroy them. Hence playing games with this turned off. It would be great if there was an option to include them without inevitably getting into conflict with them. ~~~ p_l Some mods worked to make it worth to manage pollution by cranking the military to 11 so that the conflict couldn't be easily solved by just more military. Nauvis Day + Rampant, while unfortunately broken code, was a very interesting setup (I think we also did Angel+Bobs with it), which led me to start building complex reprocessing plants so that instead of deep underground release the captured pollution could be used to recreate raw materials - we had a lot of pollution mitigation because otherwise we probably couldn't defend despite seemingly impregnable defenses. ~~~ marcus_holmes yeah, interesting. I haven't looked at the mods much (still haven't got the perfect factory setup on vanilla yet!). ------ js8 I am deeply concerned about human impact on our planet, but I actually liked that aspect of the game. We have games to provide escape, so it's not morally wrong to play a villain in a game (I guess in Westworld it gets blurry, but we don't have that technology yet), as long as you recognize that the game is not the real world. That being said, I would love to see a (kind of educational) game somewhat similar to Factorio, or Civilization, that would realistically show the proper impact and scale of industry and agriculture to our planet and ecosystems (and also properly account for laws of conservation of mass and energy). It would probably be on a bigger scale than Factorio, with map squares larger than 1 km^2. I was fascinated by the montage in Michael Moore's Planet of the Humans, which showed how many different resources and industries are required to create solar panels (or anything really). (I suspect in some sense, it would have to be a "hyperproject" \- like Wikipedia or OpenStreetmaps, something that cannot be expected to be completed by a single organization.) ------ sc__ As another comment pointed out, the game Eco has a very similar premise to Factorio (accelerating technology to achieve an important goal) but includes a complex environmental simulation that encourages players to work together. Worth checking out for those who got hooked on Factorio. Here's a link: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/) ------ aequitas > The fact that the aliens look like insects and live in huge groups suggests > they have a eusocial structure, like ants, bees and humans. The aliens have a pathfinding algorith [0] and a function to calculate aggression and evolution as product of polution over time. They are just as much a social society as mold on the ingredients of a cooking simulation game or algea in your Sims swimming pool. That said, the creators are aware of the narative the game portraits [1]. I just think they want to focus more on the complexity of factories to provide the player with a challenge requiring a spreadsheet just start the lategame [2] and the aliens are just a vehicle for statistics in that case. But it's generally understood that trees are the real enemy [3]. [0] [https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-317](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-317) [1] [https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-69](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-69) [2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/curn9m/if_a_game_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/curn9m/if_a_game_doesnt_need_a_spreadsheet_to_solve_it/) [3] [https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/8ee3d9/trees_are_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/8ee3d9/trees_are_the_real_enemy/) ------ creato > As a game device, the aliens force the player to build a machinery of war. > If one would take out the products, the buildings, the technology research > etc. directly or indirectly connected to military, there is only a fraction > left. So for a great deal, this game is a war game, with little strategic > value I might add. I think this author is simply oblivious to what makes factorio interesting. I'm pretty sure I've played hundreds of hours of factorio, the proportion of that time spent dealing with the aliens was negligible. Saying there is little strategic value to factorio without the aliens is preposterous. Toward the end of my factorio playing I simply turned them off all together because it was just a mild annoyance to have to deal with the aliens. I think the real purpose of the aliens in the game is much simpler: the early- mid game in factorio can be kind of boring, because your factory won't be consuming all of your time. The developers needed something to make this part of the game more entertaining, and so the aliens provide something to do during this phase of the game. In the late game, there's no need for a distraction, your factory will be providing plenty to do by itself. _Coincidentally_ , around that point the game gives you ridiculous firepower and automated weapons so you don't need to deal with the aliens. ~~~ SiempreViernes > I think this author is simply oblivious to what makes factorio interesting To me this is a text by someone that treats the game as if the game authors have created factorio by a series of deliberate choices, that is they treat it like a serious creative work. > Saying there is little strategic value to factorio without the aliens is > preposterous What they actually say is that the wargame against the aliens is very shallow: "this game is a war game, with little strategic value I might add". I don't know from where you get the idea that they talk about the factory building part. Whether the aliens are for the just parts of the game or not, it is fact that the authors state in the gameplay trailer that the aliens are there to force you into making weapons: [https://youtu.be/KVvXv1Z6EY8?t=88](https://youtu.be/KVvXv1Z6EY8?t=88) and this is the trailer on their homepage mind you ~~~ creato > To me this is a text by someone that treats the game as if the game authors > have created factorio by a series of deliberate choices, that is they treat > it like a serious creative work. I think factorio is utterly genius. As a creative work, it is more sophisticated and interesting than I think any game I've played. I personally appreciate it as a harnessing of emergent behavior, which tends to be my favorite kind of gameplay. It's just that the aliens are a really small part of that. The aliens have basically no impact on the game after a point not too far into it. Resources consumed by weapon production become negligible compared to other objectives. > Whether the aliens are for the just parts of the game or not, it is fact > that the authors state in the gameplay trailer that the aliens are there to > force you into making weapons: > [https://youtu.be/KVvXv1Z6EY8?t=88](https://youtu.be/KVvXv1Z6EY8?t=88) and > this is the trailer on their homepage mind you Both things can be true at the same time. Yes, the aliens force you to make weapons. But of course they aren't going to just tell you "at first, the game can be a bit slow, so here are some aliens to keep you busy until your factory is more interesting"... ------ de_watcher The gameplay is building a factory. An example of a more sophisticated interaction with the in-game "nature" is Minecraft: there the living things just become a part of your factory. The simulation in Factorio isn't "harmful", it's just incomplete (in a way the author of the post doesn't like) because the implementation has started from the factory, not from the world (like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress did). ~~~ nmeofthestate The author believes the game is harmful because it doesn't teach players to think the right things - the things that the author thinks. Imagine someone wrote a blog about how Space Invaders encouraged militarism and xenophobia. It sounds like a parody, but then so does this blog post. ~~~ neel_k See Ken Ishii's music video "Space Invaders 2003": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-- dHQIeagE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p--dHQIeagE) It's super cute, and also hits like a truck. Detroit techno is a really inspired musical choice for this kind of thing. ------ w_t_payne I read it as a very cynical message about the inevitable destructiveness and cruelty of human nature. ------ joshstrange I'm not going to dismiss the author's comments on the game but I do feel it's reading a lot into what is just a game. A game that I've sunk almost 2000 hours into and have only played with enemies/pollution on for <30hrs. They weren't fun mechanics since, as the author points out, there are no options but to fight and pollute. I've even tried to play with mods that let you clean the air but they don't work well even once I've gone full-solar. I'm willing to have my beliefs challenged but I'm not grasping how this game is inherently bad or promoting bad/harmful ideas. I don't find the pollution or alien aspects of the game well thought out but thankfully I can turn them off and just play a factory-builder game. As for the opening quote. I've seen the YT video of these comments being made and I'm struggling to understand the line being drawn between a person with a disability and AI/ML models trying to move. I'm not saying it's wrong but I just don't understand. If someone can summarize it better I would really like to better grasp what Hayao Miyazaki means by this. ------ raxxorrax I would also like the aliens to be depicted as more peaceful. Would be nice if they just started with protesting in front of your factories with a little act of sabotage here and there. It should only escalate to fighting after you mowed down protesters with your tank and zapped saboteurs with laser towers. Wouldn't mind a diplomatic expansion where you can trade democracy for oil and help aliens get rid of terrorist cells and their backward religious believes. ------ est31 I agree with the observations that you are pitted against nature in factorio, have to kill the bugs and claim territory from them. I've made those observations myself. I disagree on the conclusion though (seems to be a half sentence at the end that they indicate it's harmful). This concept makes the game more truthful about what's actually happening here on earth. Because this is what we currently do. We are an extinction event for a large number of species (except for the subset of hemerophiles), and have been for large parts of our existence (why did the megafauna suddenly disappear? because we LOVED to hunt them). I think the game is very helpful in teaching people this relationship, and every individual can draw their own conclusions from that. Also, the main story of the game is actually good for nature in the long term. The TLDR is that you are stranded on the planet and want to build a rocket so that you can leave it and get home. If you believe that humans are a threat to nature, there is no better solution for it than us leaving earth and turning it into a national park, like Bezos suggests. If we build our rockets one day, we can leave earth behind and let nature recover. ------ kohtatsu The opening quote is in reference to this; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc) ------ pornel Factorio is incredibly addictive and I've had a lot of fun optimizing my conveyor belts. Whether it's intentional or not, the game really does show how convenient it is to depend on fossil fuels, pave over forests, and just kill all life standing in the way of unustainable expansion. The ultimate end of the game is factory engulfing the whole planet, using up all natural resources, and making the planet a graveyard of steel and concrete. ------ 2038AD The beautiful contradiction of this article is that it's a Marxist critique of a game which represents a reality which is congruent with Marxist critiques of our own. The issue is not that the game doesn't provide an opportunity for paradise but instead that the player inhabits the role of evil without an opportunity for reflection. Games can do this. Brenda Romero's Train is a well-known example where the player is unknowingly complicit in evil until the reveal. While I'm not a fan of the increasing politicisation of games, it seems to me that gamer's insistence of total amorality in gameplay is a barrier to games becoming a serious art-form. ------ LoSboccacc it's an interesting take of the state of aliens as they exist in game today, but there's also a very down to earth reason as to why alien feel an afterthought: 2012-2013 had a huge surge in tower defense genre popularity, while logistic optimization games were relatively niche. ------ jojobas Another example of mild outrage culture. I wonder if the author would blame Robinson Crusoe for thoughtless capturing of goats and interfering with the locals. ------ someuser375 Well, that was a waste of time reading... I have spent nearly 1000 hours in Factorio and to me this game was about planning, optimising, getting perfect ratios, then you hit hardware limitations and start experimenting on how to get things more optimised. So yeah, you take from the game what you want to take, if you will try hard enought you can make Tetris look like an evil game about destroying bricks... ~~~ lloeki I recall a Mario vs Sonic article where Sonic is described as peaceful and freedomish (Sonic only hits machines to free animals) whereas you could twist Mario's story around from Bowser's POV where he defends against a relentless invader that stomps, fires at, and overall kills everyone in his path. ~~~ wccrawford By that same token, Sonic is destroying Robotnik's personal property wantonly, where Mario is trying to rescued his kidnapped friend. Sure, if you eliminate parts of the plot, you can twist is around. But if you include the kidnapped princess and trapped animals, it's pretty clear what side each of those characters is on. ------ m12k The author might be interested in trying out Eco. It plays like a mix of Minecraft and Factorio, but with ecology and economy added in - you need food and other resources from nature, which you can preserve or cultivate, and pollution causes natural resources to dwindle. There's less automation than Factorio - instead the game is intended to be played by a community of players working together (in a more or less capitalist way depending on what you're into). ------ fallingfrog The game is, just as the author says, basically a model of our own capitalist system. Or maybe a model of the conquest and exploitation of the new world. It features conquest, growth, exponential expansion, -and resource depletion. I’m not sure that makes it bad though, from the sounds of it the game creators were quite conscious of what they were doing- in fact they may have been subtly making the same sorts of points as the author of the article. After all the game of universal paperclips is not supposed to leave you with the impression that converting the whole universe into paperclips was a _good idea_. Exponential expansion is fun and feels like winning, even though from the point of view of the people on the receiving end of historical examples of such projects, it was no doubt no fun at all. ------ nmeofthestate It was only a matter of time before Factorio got cancelled.

Aaron Swartz's father thinks he'd be alive today if he were never arrested - jseliger http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/27/technology/aaron-swartz-father/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 ====== jseliger No one is innocent: [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/06/no-...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/06/no- one-is-innocent.html) .

Simple Way to Lower Your Energy Bill Using "Granola" - cbarnsdale http://www.unfinishedman.com/lower-your-computers-energy-bill-with-granola-personal/ ====== SEMW TLDR: someone's trying to sell their version of cpufreq_ondemand to people who don't realise it's built in to the OS. If anyone's wondering how they got their 30% power saved figure: their method for measuring power consumption without Granola starts "Set the operating system power settings to the High profile in the Power Options"[1] - in windows, which I'm guessing is going to disable the built-in frequency governor. Not exactly a fair comparison. They don't benchmark granola against ondemand on linux. Can't imagine why. [1] <http://grano.la/software/benchmark.php> ~~~ cbarnsdale They are selling a corporate version, it's true. For home users it's free, though.

The Rarest Pig - another https://ultraphyte.com/2016/04/10/the-rarest-pig/ ====== nefitty The breeding strategies of this species might be having an effect on its gender ratio, as well as its conservation status. Males in other species of the pig family have been observed to be solitary at maturity. This solitary life may find aggressive males confronted with human populations, leading to their individual deaths, and thus contributing to the gender skew and increasing species endangerment. ~~~ seanlinmt Or maybe because there's research that shows that women tend to have girls when food is scarce. [1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6551-boy-babies- less-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6551-boy-babies-less-likely- for-single-mothers/)

Linux clusters in cars using Power CPUs - CyberFonic http://linuxgizmos.com/automotive-grade-linux-update-clusters-up-and-ibms-openpower-opens-up/ ====== CyberFonic It will be interesting to see whether the open sourcing of the Power ISA will impact upon the RISC-V efforts. Having the choice of too many open-source ISAs could end up with a situation where support remains sketchy for all of them.

Ask YC: Are merit-based ads a good idea? Appearance probability proportional to karma/score/etc. - amichail I've added this feature to Numbrosia:<p>http://numbrosia.com/?cmd=puzzle_p ====== dkokelley This is a very interesting idea. In fact, a concept like this may very well go beyond the game itself. Please keep us informed on how your score based ads work out. ------ misterbwong Definitely sounds like a good idea. Add to that a decent message/spam filtering mechanism (like karma) and you're in business. ------ alex_c That is very interesting. I would be grateful if you let us know in a couple of days (or enough time to get a decent data set?) how many people are using the feature (and if it has any noticeable effect on user behaviour), and what kind of clickthrough rates the ads have... ~~~ pchristensen I'd also like to hear some results from this. ------ davidw Interesting idea. It's something fairly cheap to give people with whatever kind of points, and probably also makes sense in terms of habitual users being the ones most likely to have points and ignore ads. ~~~ NSX2 My point exactly. This is one of the more interesting ideas I've come across on Y ... and as you say it's cheap and I bet people can come up with the nuts and bolts relatively easily. Who's talking about it here? Now compare the top posts at the same time as this and perhaps you can understand what I'm talking about? And yet, "Do you watch TV" got like, 100+ responses in mere hours ... I hope this post becomes popular because this is an idea worth at least discussing, if not pursuing. Bet not too many people will pay attention to it though ... ------ pchristensen I like this. This could be a big change in how ads are served online, and since ad-supported is one of the most important business models for internet sites, that's saying something. ~~~ tim2 Not a total departure from how some people have used many other sites. Eg, the more friends you have on myspace, the better you can advertise your band; the more popular your youtube video, the better you can use it to promote something; same goes for blogs. Of course, the way it's being used here works off of a skill that nearly all of his users are known to have, unlike the youtube example. ------ tim2 That is an interesting idea. I will probably try this with my site and make it based on points earned today or this week.

Show HN: Føcal Releases OpenCV Benchmark Tool - jrf0cal https://app.f0cal.com/benchmarks ====== rhardih Wow, I literally wrote down an idea for a tool like this, just a couple of days ago. I'm running OpenCV on Android for an app project, and gauging pipeline costs at different steps is a pain. Right now I'm resorting to a "timing" build, with basic printouts of elapsed times at each step. Archaic. Do you guys plan to add e.g. Snapdragon etc. as a measure at some point? Also are the benchmarks based off of real device numbers, or are they fuzzed estimates somehow? You seem to target businesses, understandably, but I signed up for a beta in any case. ~~~ jrf0cal Thanks for signing up. I'll reach out via email. ~~~ rhardih Cool, looking forward to it. ------ Q6T46nT668w6i3m Neat! It would be nice if contrib functions were added. ~~~ Q6T46nT668w6i3m I just noticed you’re in Cambridge. I work down the street in the Broad’s Imaging Platform. We should have coffee or something. ~~~ jrf0cal We're running through the contribs now and should have them posted soon. Would love to meet up for a coffee or beer in town. Ping me at jr@f0cal.com ------ brian_herman__ What is F0cal? ~~~ jrf0cal Hey Brian. F0cal provides a suite of tools to help design, test, optimize, and deploy computer vision systems. We're currently developing automated pipeline profiling and hardware simulation features. Let me know if you're interested in hearing more.

Type A and Type B personality theory - vinchuco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_and_Type_B_personality_theory ====== malanj Interestingly the entry doesn't mention that the original finding was linked to an observation about the worn out chairs in the doctor's reception. The cardio patients (type A's) wore out the front edges of the chairs because they were sitting on the edge all the time. ------ Thriptic Also of interest is Type D personality which has been correlated with cardiovascular issues and poor medication adherence: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_D_personality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_D_personality) ------ Apane Type A here...

Nintendo to ‘Hobbyist’ Developers: No Thanks - ootachi http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/03/21/nintendo-games ====== gergles Hobbyist developers to Nintendo: "We don't care, we're going to develop for your platforms whether you want us to or not." "Also, in doing so, you're going to force us to completely reverse-engineer your protections and enable trivial piracy." (Granted, this would almost certainly happen whether hobbyists were welcomed or not -- but by shunning them, they give the actual people with skills reasons to look for weaknesses. Nintendo consoles are all trivially piratable, even the latest and greatest games, and were almost instantly after each console's release. The only one that has stayed intact is the DSi (probably because there's no worthwhile DSi-exclusive software)) ~~~ jbermudes Yup. The homebrew scene is often the one that does all the hard work and the pirates reap the rewards of the broken security systems (Notice how the security system of the PS3 wasn't broken until well after the Other OS feature was removed and the community wanted it back). ------ endergen It's crazy as a strategy. A good metaphor is that Nintendo use to target Games more towards kids even though aging gamers who were loyal for decades were pissed about that direction. But it seemed like a smart strategy because are the next batch of hardcore games. Nintendo is effectively saying fuck you to 'kids' Indie devs, and only dealing with 'hardcores' Mature gaming shops. It's dumb because all the up and comers are going to cut their teeth on Android/iOS and not switch because of their invested time in developing their skills. Le sigh, Nintendo, le sigh. ------ mcantelon Now that the iPad 2 is being heralded as the successor to consoles, Gruber's going after them in addition to his regular Android sniping? ;) ------ sdoowpilihp I read somewhere about how this is an attempt by Nintendo to control "quality". I would almost believe that claim if there wasn't so much shovelware for the DS. ~~~ primigenus Satoru Iwata gave a keynote at GDC in which he explained Nintendo's current philosophy and strategy around "garage developers". It basically comes down to this: Nintendo wants to protect the traditional videogame market because it views it as a market of craftsmanship. By that they mean that when you invest in the development of a game, you price it accordingly, and that has led to the current market, which to some extent is healthy (certainly on Nintendo platforms). Compare that to the App Store market where prices are low and, on other mobile platforms like Android, sometimes free, developers have less incentive to invest much as the expected return on investment is less stable. Sure, there are huge hits, but the long tail of the market is full of low-cost, low- investment stuff. Or as you called it, "shovelware". I for one see Iwata's point of view and although it differs substantially from Apple's, I think both companies serve different markets, with different goals and ideals, and both can exist. That's why Reggie says they're not currently interested in serving that market. It's a different market. ~~~ Tiktaalik I think keeping shovelware out is a fair concept, but they should give interested parties more freedom to play around with their platform and make demos. As it stands many of the rules for being a Nintendo developer are arbitrary and it keeps out talented folks. For example you must have an office and you can't work out of your home. That alone could be enough to drive a startup into working on the iOS instead of the 3DS. I'd like to see Nintendo have some sort of arrangement for hobbyists to poke at the platform and make neat stuff, and for Nintendo to partner with them to publish a quality title if something of quality is present. This is similar to how Argonaut and Nintendo started working together and how Nintendo came to produce Star Fox. ~~~ 9999 I don't think keeping shovelware out is a valid explanation for this blanket rule. Apple's ToS have quite a few provisions that could be used to exclude a large amount of shovelware from the app store, but they tend to be rather lax on enforcement unless it competes directly with their business interests. Thus you get 50 fart apps and only a couple of web browsers. Nintendo could easily adapt similar ToS, strictly enforce them and keep out the shovelware. Their decision to exclude this possibility entirely indicates something else is at work in their thinking. If you look at the controversy surrounding Bob's Game (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob%27s_Game>), it seems pretty obvious that their issues with the "garage developer" have little to do with keeping out mediocre titles. I would suggest that the blanket rule has more to do with their long term business interests--keeping prices up and preventing competition with their own first party games. ------ zdw Re: Consoles Microsoft already allows indie programmers on the Xbox 360 for $99/year: <http://create.msdn.com/en-US/> (warning, Silverlight on that page) They can charge up to $5 for their games, and they get stuck in a ghetto that's kind of hard to find on XBL, but it's out there. The PS3 is much more locked down - the linux alternative was removed. There are also a whole lot of "Homebrew" scene's out there - some have turned out impressive stuff. If the console can either load homebrew with no other work (as the Dreamcast was) or can have modified bootloaders that allow 3rd party code to run (as the original Xbox and PSP were), then you have a good chance at getting decent stuff ported. ~~~ Tiktaalik In the past Sony released a special PS1 that you could develop games on called Yaroze. It started the careers of a few hobbyists and a game for it, Devil Dice, ended up getting a retail release (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_Dice>). The Japan only Bandai Wonderswan had a homebrew system as well, named Wonder Witch. "Judgement Silversword" was published at retail for the Wonderswan but produced originally via this homebrew system and it is considered to be one of the best games for the platform. ------ gs8 For a console maker it's a good policy. Not only will it keep "fart apps" away it also is a good incentive for game publishers to invest in a game rather than turn it out asap at the lowest cost possible. ~~~ ootachi But game publishers don't do this, and haven't for years. What they do is _precisely_ to "turn it out asap at the lowest cost possible". ~~~ gs8 I should have phrased it better. They do that but still spend resources on actually developing proper product. They don't look for a "rockstar developer" and turnout a awesome app/game with a budget of $1,000. ------ 9999 In other words: "Nintendo continues long, slow death march to irrelevance." ~~~ dermatthias Irrelevance? They really did something new with the Wii controls, landed a huge hit and Sony/Microsoft are only recently getting back with similar controls (Kinect, Move). I think they deserve a point here. The Wii is still the best selling console and the DS the best selling handheld(by far!). Perhaps it's irrelevant from a HN pov, but certainly not from a familiy/kids/recreational gaming pov. And the major games from Nintendo itself (Mario Galaxy, Zelda....) are rock solid, high quality games. ~~~ 9999 I can't really disagree with your points there, because they are not irrelevant yet, certainly not to consumers. If you are a producer of third party software, they are rapidly becoming irrelevant despite the huge install base. Perhaps they can continue to succeed once they've lost all third party support (other than the shovelware), but that's not a bet I would make as an investor. If it weren't for their success in the handheld market, they probably would have folded in the early 00s, and now they have very fierce competition in the handheld market. ~~~ rgbrgb There's nothing to indicate that 3rd party developers aren't happy and profitable. With as large an audience as Nintendo's it seems unlikely that studios with the capital to enter that market would walk away. While I totally relate to the indie dev perspective (being an indie dev who'd love to make something for the DS), their Hollywood high barriers to entry do protect consoles from some of the ridiculousness that goes on in the mobile app stores. That said, consoles are definitely missing out on many small and wonderful things that are handcrafted by small teams. ~~~ 9999 [http://www.destructoid.com/nintendo-admits-third-party- wii-s...](http://www.destructoid.com/nintendo-admits-third-party-wii-sales- are-poor-185270.phtml) Unfortunately the source for that article is buried behind a registration wall. If you are pushing out shovelware, I'm sure that's profitable, anything else, not so much. Sega in particular has had some really bad luck on the platform.

Academic Kakistocracy - yarapavan http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/academic-kakistocracy/ ====== yardie This doesn't just apply to academia. You can always see it in the workforce. And, more visibly, in the primary, secondary schools. Good hackers rarely make good managers, and good managers get promoted not because they are good at hacking code. My mother told me a story about giving a glowing review to her colleague, not because she was a good worker, but because she wanted her out of her hair. She wasn't fireable, so the only option was to send her somewhere else. And most people will first encounter this in school. Where the best teachers don't always have the best titles. And the worst are always promoted. Teachers have strong unions so if you can't fire them then you can promote them. Some of the worst human beings I've ever met were vice-principals. People who clearly have no business in education at all. But through fortune and incompetence are given titles and offices away from students. ~~~ yarapavan This reminds me of the 'Peter Principle" which states that * In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence ------ philk It's an interesting idea, but I can think of three other possible explanations for the individuals who rise to the top being the least adept at research: 1) The individuals who rise to the top may be the most socially/politically able - developing these social/political skills might be time consuming, thus reducing the amount of time a particular individual has to perform research. 2) Rising to the top might saddle individuals with so many new responsibilities that they do not have the time to perform quality research. 3) People may resent others in their field who are doing better research and align against them, not because they have more opportunities elsewhere but because they resent their ability. ~~~ yummyfajitas My personal theory (based on working a few years in academia) is this: 4) Good researchers usually don't want to rise to the top. Think of it this way. What would you rather do? Hacking, or preventing the university president from interfering with other people hacking while handling administrative work related to hackers performing their teaching duties? There are of course exceptions to this rule (I work for one), but they are few and far between. ------ bd See also previous discussion here on HN about this topic: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=793205> ------ bhseo On a sidenote,"kakistos" means "the worst". hence kakistocracy. ------ bhseo Reminded me of this saying: "Someone that pretends he is an idiot, is not actually an idiot."

Why Everyone Is Fighting About CSS/UX and JavaScript - spking https://dev.to/ulitroyo/why-everyone-is-fighting-about-cssux-and-js-4cpp ====== httpsterio Great article, I don't know how I've managed to miss Chris' essay on the issue, but overall a good read. Mirrors a lot of my sentiments as someone who has been doing html since I was 9 but not really any js even in this day and age.

Want to know what mice in labs are saying? Try DeepSqueak - petethomas https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/deepsqueak-reveals-what-mice-are-saying- ====== masonic "Alexa, reorder cheese and peanut butter."

Show HN: Metachat – encrypted, feature-rich group chat - kenforthewin https://metachat.app/ ====== Zekio I don't see any benefits over services such as discord where you can do the same more or less using a prefix and a word like that, and then just search for the prefix and word Edit: Aside from the end to end encryption

New FAA drone rule is a giant middle finger to aviation hobbyists - dylan604 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/new-faa-drone-rule-is-a-giant-middle-finger-to-aviation-hobbyists/ ====== golem14 I still don’t understand how this is supposed to work in areas without internet coverage. If the drone loses connectivity, is the pilot supposed to file reports to the NTSB? ------ anonsivalley652 Why didn't this get more interest? This is a huge deal and a terrible rule.

Promo video for setNight.com - Plan your night - setnight We are a group of 8 (and growing) hungry, foolish, dedicated and hard-working individuals that are curious for market trends, intrigued by simplicity, eager to make a difference, creative and ambitious. We take criticism positively, so we'd love to hear some feedback about this video :) remember, sharing is caring! ====== fybren Well that was.. unexpected. Made me laugh, though! Even signed up (although it's not available in my city just yet). So I guess your video did its job. Nice work. On a side note - Is setNight going to be similar to MyScene App (<http://itunes.apple.com/br/app/myscene-app/id454355648?mt=8>)? MyScene App was launched by a pop star here in NZ but doesn't look like its gained any traction. ------ johnny22 please add a link to the video in the text :)

Ask HN: What service do you wish existed - raooll What service do you wish existed for which you&#x27;ll be ready to pay atleast $5 per month. ====== marpstar Someone to come and sift through all the crap I have laying around my house and ask me what can be thrown out / donated while I'm doing other work and handle the subsequent disposal.

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007) - S4M http://marktarver.com/bipolar.html ====== bshimmin This has been submitted many, many times, most recently about three weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801608](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801608) I think this submission of it has the most comments, though some of them are about the relative merit of pointing out how many times it had previously been submitted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2275657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2275657) ~~~ gaalze [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Wars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Wars) ------ dschiptsov Lisp programming is in some sense like Eastern Philosophy. Very few understand how a few great insights fit together to form something "better" than just a sum of its parts. There is a small industry which makes living on ignorant what we could call Tibetology with a hundreds of books of poorly translated vague commentaries, mostly by fools, and millions of ordinary people engaging in speculations about what these esoteric teaching are all about, where their "knowledge" usually came from popular websites, and communities of "enlightened people" somewhere around Goa or Varanasi. It is a second-hand knowledge. The beauty of Lisp is in these few "great insights" of John McCarthy who'd put together a few "good ideas", so, again, the result has been more than just a sum of the parts. Then a few more evolutionary steps happened, which gave us macros. When we say Lisp, we don't mean Common Lisp or Scheme or Ark or Clojure. We think about this set of ideas where ideas complemented and augmented each other. As long as this set of ideas remain unbroken it doesn't really matter is it Arc or Scheme or Common Lisp. It is about principles, not implementation details. When we think of these set of idea - everything is a first-class value, symbols which are "natural" pointers to values, lexical scooping, generic procedures on typed (by tagging) values instead of variables, which together with prefix notation, which gives an elegant and uniform code-generation, and "evaluating" read procedure gives us macros, we wonder why, why so few people "gets" it. One who is asking what is it that makes Lisp special will find the usual torrent of nonsense, while those who would try to find it out yourself suddenly would get this aha-moment of realization of the beauty of how a few simple and clever ideas fit together. It is the source of Lisp elegance and power. Brian Harvey's CS61A course form 2008 is still the best place to learn the big ideas. Then comes On Lisp and arc.arc. Lisp it is not just a set of features - it is a "complete" set of features, which could be ruined, reduced to an ordinary clumsy language, when a one single feature, such as List structure (conses) as the representation of Lisp's code would be removed, or if another data-structure would be introduced, to break uniformity. That is why Clojure doesn't have "that feel" which Arc or Scheme or a subset of CL has.) ~~~ mwfogleman Clojure was my first programming language. I've been playing around with a language with pointers recently, and I wonder if you could explain to me what you mean about "symbols which are natural pointers." More generally, I don't think I understand yet why someone would use pointers instead of a variable. Thanks for your comment about Lisp. ~~~ drcomputer In lisp, think of symbols as things that represent other things. Instead of having to evaluate each expression in the complexity that the programmer builds, everything can be substituted until the computer is left with a simple but expansive form. The machine is very good at evaluating this simple form, because it only needs to look up a few things to process the entire calculation, which is really just a collection of an ordered organization of the same calculations over and over again. A pointer is not the actual data. It's just a trail of connections that eventually lead to the data you want, instead of having to manage a bunch of data you don't need to, or want to manage. It's computationally efficient and it is elegant. It represents exactly what you tell it to represent. ------ copsarebastards Screw this guy for being right about me. ------ jokoon seems good will hunting is everyone's mind. I wish people would try to see more nuances. ------ lispm Not again... ~~~ robinhoode Reposting is one thing. It's another when it's been reposted dozens of times and it somehow gets voted to the top.

Show HN: Running Commentary – A Chrome extension to listen the text commentary - udayrddy https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/running-commentary/hlkolgejaenicoeckonajgnajfmafodp ====== udayrddy Hello All, Developer here, I'm a cricket sport fan, used watch most of the competitive matches live, unless I'm in office, which restricts streaming sites also the fear of being easily caught because of bandwidth consumption from the system. So, I follow text commentary sites like cricbuzz, cricinfo in the office hours, but the browser tab switch is inevitable when you want to follow a live feed or a sports text commentary. This browser extension will read the latest update (feed) for you so that you continue the work.

California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 - dsr12 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-29/california-moves-toward-requiring-100-clean-power-by-2045 ====== jwr I think another great move would be to start dealing with excessive energy consumption. Compared to what I'm used to in Europe, California is wasting crazy amounts of energy. Poorly insulated homes, old and inefficient AC/heating units, vertical-drum washing machines (!!!), poorly designed gas stoves, oversized cars, monstrous gas-guzzling trucks, energy waste is all over the place. People behave just as if energy were free. ~~~ ancarda On the topic of large cars, what is the solution here? I can imagine forcing people to replace A/C units won’t be so objectionable, especially if it’s free to do so, but there may be some real opposition to requiring people to drive different cars. Nobody gets attached to an A/C. I don’t drive right now - I take public transport everywhere - but I’d love a large car (a Dodge RAM). If I try to buy something small to be conscious of my carbon footprint and energy usage, I think I will end up buying the large car a few years later. Is there anything at-all I can do to drive a large car while not being part of the problem? I’m looking into carbon offsetting, but that’s all I am aware of for the time being. I wish Dodge would make an electric RAM 1500, that could make this much easier. ~~~ ams6110 The way Europe deals with cars is they tax the bejezus out of them, and gasoline also. In some countries, half the price of a new car is tax. That is why people drive little toy cars there. Everyone would like a nice big comfortable car but they are unaffordable for most. ~~~ ancarda Oh yeah! It’s crazy expensive :( What I’m trying to grapple with is this desire of mine while trying to be aware of my environmental impact. If there’s no way to have my cake and eat it too, I won’t get one. ~~~ justinator Where is this desire rooted in? ~~~ ancarda All I can really say is I want one because from the moment I saw one on the road, I just knew I had to drive it. I really love the appearance. I've never been interested in cars, but I can't help myself looking at pickups on the road driving by -- especially RAMs. Maybe I'm just a big kid, I've always liked big stuff. Still... I know they aren't good for the environment, which means I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I just drove one without greatly reducing or eliminating it's impact. ~~~ lostcolony Rent one every few months, drive it for the weekend. Cheaper on every front, scratches that itch, and minimal effect on the environment. I do that with my wife for convertibles. She loves them, so any time we're on vacation and need a car I try to get one. It's just a couple hundred more for a week's vacation, at the time we'd get the most enjoyment out of it. ~~~ ancarda I never thought of doing that, thank you! ~~~ kaybe You can also check whether your area has carsharing. I have access to lots of standard cars of different sizes (some hybrids too), a convertible, an upper- standard BMW and a couple of vans all within walking distance. ------ BrandonMarc Politicians giving themselves a ~ 30-year runway is a farce. Promise you'll reduce it by 10% in 3 years, and I'll take you seriously. This is garbage. Just like the return to the Moon promised by Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump ... always "15 to 20 years from now" ... and NEVER happens. By the way - 10% in 3 years would be a perfect milestone to 100% in 30 years. ~~~ jorblumesea I agree with the sentiment but this is probably a more realistic goal. Germany, which is far more organized than the US in many respects, is failing to hit its climate goals for 2020. It's just harder than people think. Same with public projects going over budget. The budget was never realistic in the first place. ~~~ truculent I think "realistic" kind of depends on your goal. If you want to make it under 2C, I don't believe this is particularly realistic (i.e. not soon enough). If you want to avoid controversial actions and major changes to people's loves, sure it maybe too soon. ------ jzoch I understand this is amazing and totally love my state for doing it, but man seeing 2045 is always a little dismaying as I wish we could be even more aggressive. 2035 for example. I realize I am being too ambitious, but we went to space in a decade why not 100% clean energy in 1.5? ~~~ nostromo Politicians generally tend to choose deadlines that are beyond their terms. They get the approval of their voting base today without actually having to do much of anything to reach the goal itself. I'm reminded of Bush calling for the US to return to the moon by 2020 -- a proposal Obama quietly nixed. I'd much rather we say, "We're going to increase renewables by X% every year, starting now, to reach the goal of 100% renewables by 2045." ~~~ close04 Even 2035 is still beyond most current politicians' terms. 100% clean energy will take a lot of work and more importantly determination. The closer you get to the goal, the more it takes to cover another percent. And you never know who comes next and decides to kick all the plans to the curb and subsidize coal (hypothetically speaking o_O). You need to add some buffers. Another problem is that nobody else (at this scale at least) got there so it's hard to anticipate all the challenges. Germany, normally at 36% renewable energy, managed to reach that magic 100% figure on a winter early-morning this year. But nothing close to sustained generation. And they plan to get to 100% in 2060+. So California, currently at ~44% renewable energy, could be the first to hit the sustained 100%. Another problem is that everyone defines "100% clean energy" in different ways, by leaving some sectors out of the count. Will this target cover electrical power or also aims at replacing _all_ non-renewable sources of power for _all_ applications? ~~~ MattHeard TLDR: "This bill would state that it is the policy of the state that eligible renewable energy resources and zero-carbon resources supply 100% of retail sales of electricity to California end-use customers and 100% of electricity procured to serve all state agencies by December 31, 2045." Source: [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB100) ~~~ BrandonMarc Note how it's end-user consumers (and government offices). So it won't hurt CA's business users, cause them to relocate to other states. As always, devil's in the details. In the meantime, the headline looks impressive, which is frankly all these critters care about. ~~~ close04 I read _end-users_ as simply customers that intend to consume the electricity in CA as opposed to those who buy it to potentially resell it across state borders. This will probably be cleared up later. ------ eikenberry Is nuclear part of the bill? It is clean but I don't see any mention of it either way in the article other than in the graph of current sources. ~~~ RobLach Whenever I ride around Berkeley, CA I see a sea of "nuclear-free zone" signs on roads filled with Prius traffic. It's not so easy to understand the real agendas here. ~~~ jaredhansen > It's not so easy to understand the real agendas here. The real agenda has a lot more to do with impressing your neighbors with how eco-conscious you are (ideally via cheap signals like signs and bumper stickers) than it does with costly and difficult initiatives like figuring out how to meet the world's energy requirements in a sustainable way. ~~~ WalterGR _The real agenda has a lot more to do with impressing your neighbors with how eco-conscious you are (ideally via cheap signals like signs and bumper stickers)_ This tired bullshit again? Yes, we understand that everyone could be doing _more_ to help some cause, and that some people care more about appearances than improving the world, and some people do legitimately good deeds for ‘selfish’ reasons like increased self-esteem. The “virtue-signaling” “every decent action in the world is done just to impress one’s tribe” meme is getting old. ~~~ x220 If you say you support something, but don't want to take actions that demonstrably promote what you are supporting, you are virtue signalling. It's quite simple, and it's maddening. ~~~ WalterGR "Maddening" implies discomfort. If people didn't virtue signal, it would eliminate that discomfort. You don't like the discomfort, otherwise you would have written that you find virtue-signaling being maddening an enjoyable experience. If it was neutral, you wouldn't use an emotional word to describe it. Since you don't find the feeling enjoyable or neutral, and because of the meaning of "maddening," that means you don't like it. Therefore, to prevent your discomfort, you support people not virtue-signaling. What action are you taking to demonstrably promote the reduction of virtue- signaling? It seems like much of the calling out of alleged virtue-signaling is virtue- signaling itself. ~~~ Dylan16807 Virtue signalling in this context is giving the _impression_ of doing something. Saying "We should treat the environment better" while being _honest_ about your own [lack of] contribution is perfectly fine. By the same token, I can complain about a group, and as long as I don't claim that my complaints magically fixed the problem, that's fine. ~~~ WalterGR _By the same token, I can complain about a group, and as long as I don 't claim that my complaints magically fixed the problem, that's fine._ That's not at all how people use it colloquially. Nobody is claiming that bumper stickers, Priuses, statements of "thoughts and prayers," or changing one's Facebook profile picture magically fix _any_ problem. And yet those are the exact things that get labeled virtue- signalling. In this thread alone, jaredhansen mentions "ideally via cheap signals like signs and bumper stickers" \- though admittedly doesn't say _virtue_ signals. x220's definition is also at odds with yours. [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=virtue- signalling](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=virtue-signalling) is rife with examples. The incessant cries of virtue-signalling on the web absolutely do not require someone claiming that they've "magically fixed" any problem, and are almost entirely gate-keeping, goalpost-moving, _ad hominem_ attacks, simple partisanship, and general lazy argumentation. ~~~ Dylan16807 Okay, I've thought about it a bit more, and I think I figured out how to word things precisely. A bumper sticker signals "I care". A prius, in theory, signals "I am actively helping, a lot". They're both kinds of "virtue signalling", but they're very different in scope. The 'maddening' thing is not when people signal they care a little bit. It's when people signal they care a lot, but their actions contradict that. ------ ThomPete I am still baffled by the focus on private housholds and private consumption when it comes to the discussion of clean energy and emissions. The reality is that private households have very little to do with our problems and even less to do about them. Stop eating cow sound great but it's not going to do anything of any impact. Most emissions (70%) come from very few companies (around a 100 or some). Instead of making life more expensive and difficult for normal citizens why not focus on those companies instead. That you can actually do something about. [http://fortune.com/2017/07/10/climate-change-green-house- gas...](http://fortune.com/2017/07/10/climate-change-green-house-gases/) ~~~ abtinf How will normal people be affected if you severely restrict the activities of those 100 companies? ~~~ ThomPete That depends on how you do it. How were normal people affected by putting in carburetors in cars so they didn't spit out lead into the air? Edit: My bad I meant catalytic converter not carborators (katalysatorer in Danish) ~~~ skookumchuck Carburetors have nothing to do with lead emissions. Lead emissions come from lead being added to gas to raise its octane, and hasn't been added for years. ~~~ ThomPete I might be wrong but as far as i know they were added while there were still lead in the gazoline. Anyway it didn't hurt the normal person it helped them because techonology. ~~~ skookumchuck The first gasoline engines used carburetors, they weren't added after lead was added. ~~~ ThomPete Sorry i meant catalytic converter (katalysatorer in Danish) ~~~ skookumchuck Catalytic converters are ruined by leaded gasoline, hence the switch to unleaded gas. ~~~ ThomPete Yes and the question I was answering was what I think the focus on industry changes rather than asking normal people to change did for those people. The point is that the car industry moved on just fine. ------ walrus01 Writing as a person that's recently built some PV: The problem of building enough photovoltaics to meet demand is _solved_. High quality 60 and 72-cell PV modules at sub $0.50/watt and massive scale cheap ground mount and roof mount systems are not rocket science. With sufficient zoning and regulatory incentives it's possible for roof mount PV in California to entirely meet the state's energy needs in megawatt-hours per day. There are a LOT of empty roofs out there. There is also a lot of nearly useless, non arable desert land that is relatively low cost ($/acre) that can be covered in fixed ground mount photovoltaics. Go drive around out in the area around Twentynine Palms... The problem is energy storage. Batteries need to get better and have much longer cycle lifetimes. Economies of scale driven by things like the Tesla gigafactory will help. But we will need other, new things like pumped storage hydroelectric and possibly vanadium flow batteries as well. The $/Wh stored ratio is still very high, and the cubic density for energy stored is very low (Wh per cubic meter). ~~~ dublin Or you could realize that natural gas is a far superior energy storage mechanism, and the cleanest fuel available. Fracking, and the consequent reduction in natural gas prices, is directly responsible for the US dropping its CO2 production faster than any other major country... ~~~ walrus01 Natural gas is a possible short-term temporary solution. If PV continues to drop in price as it has historically, [1] at a point in the near future it will become economical to crack hydrogen from seawater. If your $/kWh cost is astronomically low it doesn't matter how electricity intensive it is. [1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=photovoltaic+price+chart&num...](https://www.google.com/search?q=photovoltaic+price+chart&num=100&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjbh57nupXdAhVCCDQIHbFUBjsQ_AUICigB&biw=1824&bih=1017&dpr=1.58) ------ ghouse For those who think data is beautiful, here is real-time information regarding the majority of California's grid: [http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx](http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx) ~~~ knowaveragejoe Very cool, though I'm curious about the classification of large hydro(and maybe even nuclear) outside of renewables? ------ Tuxer Once again, making me proud to pay CA taxes. If they do not take large hydro into account when calculating this 100%, I wonder what we'll do with the dams. Destroy them to let the rivers free-flow again? Dams would have been a great store of energy for this project by pumping the water up during the day using solar/wind. Tesla Energy must be salivating at all those batteries that will need to be constructed. ~~~ pastor_elm Meanwhile, NYC's plan is a measly 80% reduction in carbon emissions in _city run_ operations alone by 2050. We'll be going backwards once Indian Point is decommissioned. ~~~ blang Though to be fair the state of new york has lower per capita carbon emission than California, though I think that mostly has to do with the density of new york city. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_carbon_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions) ~~~ oftenwrong To be really fair, policy choices influence population density, and vice versa. California is fairly sprawling and favours sprawl over dense settlement. ------ vondur I believe ever since we had the rolling blackouts in the early 2000's we've been purchasing more and more energy from power plants in Utah, as regulation in the state makes it difficult to build new ones. ~~~ dmode I don't believe it is true. I believe CA generates more electricity than is needed and actually pays other states to take it off the grid ~~~ vondur Looks like we buy a lot of power from Intermountain Power, who are in Utah: [https://www.ipautah.com](https://www.ipautah.com) ~~~ ghouse Intermountain will be converted from coal to gas: [http://www.ladwpnews.com/information-regarding-proposal- to-r...](http://www.ladwpnews.com/information-regarding-proposal-to-reduce- fossil-fuel-generation-at-intermountain-power-project/) ~~~ vondur That is true, but I believe there are more than one coal powered plant in the Intermountain system. My main point is that California will just switch to purchasing power from other areas and claim that they are using all clean energy. I 'm assuming they don't consider natural gas as clean energy. ------ tedunangst Hypothetically, if I build a big coal power plant across the border to power a giant light array shining on solar cells on the CA side, does that count? ~~~ rcMgD2BwE72F Nope >The bill would require the PUC and the Energy Commission, in consultation with the state board, to take steps to ensure that a transition to a zero- carbon electric system for the State of California does not cause or contribute to greenhouse gas emissions increases elsewhere in the western grid. [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB100) ~~~ dublin No but due to the horrendous grid instability this policy must induce, CAISO will have to bring in a lot of power from other regions at pretty premium prices if they don't want all CA customers to find out the hard way that the only thing worse than rolling blackouts is non-rolling blackouts.... ------ corradio That's very interesting. Right now California seems to run about 40-60% renewable according to [https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...](https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=US- CA) ~~~ toomuchtodo California is at a bit of a tipping point. It has so much renewable energy, it has to pay other states to export their excessive energy because they don't have enough storage [1]. So you have to decide if you're going to subsidize utility scale energy storage to help drive it below the cost of fossil and peaker generators (which, it appears, California is prepared to do). It also helps that renewables are quickly approaching 1-2 cents/kwh at utility scale, as more of your cost can be storage (as your generation is almost free). China is ending subsidies of their solar manufacturing industry [2], which is going to push down the cost of panels, increasing the rate of uptake. You will see California meet their 100% renewable mandate much sooner than they're targeting. A side effect is this is going to cause extensive losses to investor owned fossil generators. C'est la vie. [1] [https://www.zmescience.com/science/california-renewable- ener...](https://www.zmescience.com/science/california-renewable- energy-18082018/) [2] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-solar/chinas-solar- su...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-solar/chinas-solar-subsidy-cuts- erode-the-impact-of-trump-tariffs-idUSKCN1LF18K) ~~~ village-idiot I won't shed many tears for the death of fossil fuel power plants. ~~~ dublin Your face may be dry, but it will be in the dark. There is quite simply NO KNOWN TECHNOLOGY that can cost effectively meet peak demands other than fossil fuel plants. The people that build the natural gas peaker plants that California will MUST have for grid stability will make a fortune, and be painted as the "bad brown energy guys" even though they'll actually be saving the entire grid from collapse. ~~~ village-idiot I'll never understand people that worship fossil fuels. ~~~ toomuchtodo In America, there is a perception that our self-worth is dependent on our jobs. To you, fossil fuels are filthy and environmentally dangerous (they are). To those who work in the industry, it's a way of supporting themselves, their families, and it's a craft (and associated skills) they might be proud of (roughnecks on an oil field, product pipe installers/maintainers, coal/steam/natural gas installers/maintenance techs/operators). So, like all issues, it's not black and white, but many shades of gray. Our jobs are not who we are, and we need systems in place to help transition those who are in industries that are harmful and in their sunset period to industries that have a future, while ensuring these new jobs provide enough compensation that people can live. ~~~ village-idiot See, as a software engineer I just can't quite identify with this. On one hand, I understand taking pride in your work. I view what I do as a craft, and I take pride in being good at what I do. On the other hand, there's nothing better than taking a weak and hobbled system out back and finishing it off. If my opinions applied to power production, I'd be proud to help decom a coal plant and install a brand spanking new nuclear or solar plant. ~~~ toomuchtodo > If my opinions applied to power production, I'd be proud to help decom a > coal plant and install a brand spanking new nuclear or solar plant Would you feel the same way if you went from making $100k /year to $50k/year doing this? That's part of the problem. You have to be okay taking a substantial paycut, or losing your job entirely, when you decomm the previous system. Not that same as doing so when you're a software engineer. Single income in your family and having to start out from scratch? Of course people are going to cling to their chance at a middle class life by their fingernails in a fossil industry job. ~~~ village-idiot That's fair. ------ true_tuna We are going to need some more big batteries. Don’t we pay our neighbors to take our excess during peak times? ~~~ dublin Get a clue and do the math. (Seriously, this is a one-to-two hour google for info and apply third-grade arithmetic back-of-an-envelope project.) Batteries are NOT the answer - the quantity of batteries required is astronomically beyond the world's battery production capacity, even in Musk's most fevered dreams. Seriously - the mining impact of REALLY trying to build enough batteries to stabilize an area the size of CA would increase mining pollution worldwide by an order of magnitude or more... ~~~ sctb Could you please stop being so thorny? It doesn't make your point any clearer, it just makes the discussion worse. ------ tathougies Currently, I buy all my electricity from renewables. The price I pay per kwh is lower than conventional generation. However, the state of California has given PG&E a monopoly on electricity distribution, and PG&E charges me the difference between the generation charge from renewables and its own generation charge as a 'distribution fee'. This fee is waived, if i used PG&E generation. Until California kicks out PG&E's monopoly and lets me pay the actual fair market price for my renewable electricity, I find it hard to take these initiatives as anything more than virtue signalling. A better method for my county would be for the state to get rid of PG&E's ability to selectively charge the distribution fee. Then, private market forces would basically make everyone switch to renewables. Of course, the legislature wouldn't get the chance to appear virtuous. In fact, they'd look like villains for allowing this ridiculous pricing structure to begin with (and they really do knowingly allow it -- after talking with my state senator and representative, they told me they know this is the case, but 'the PG&E lobby is strong'.. give me a break). ~~~ amluto I don’t really see how California could practically kick out PG&E’s monopoly. There won’t magically be a bunch of competitors that string is their own power lines. CA could potentially take over entirely and run its own system, which might not be totally crazy. Some cities (e.g. Palo Alto and Los Angeles) already do this. ~~~ tathougies The legislature directly controls PG&E's pricing. They can legislate it out of the market, or at least legislate out this particular pricing snafu. ~~~ tedsanders The legislature does not control PG&E's pricing. Periodically, PG&E submits rate cases to the CPUC. The outcomes of these rate case submissions dictate what PG&E is allowed to charge customers. The CPUC is a quasi-executive agency established by the state constitution: [https://ballotpedia.org/California_Public_Utilities_Commissi...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Public_Utilities_Commission) ------ jtchang I actually had no idea how much of CA's energy came from renewable sources. That is actually astounding. In many ways CA is ahead of the nation. ------ johng [https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/05/07/texas- pr...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/05/07/texas-produces- five-times-the-wind-power-as-california-at-almost-half-the-price-blame- regulation/#6a315025438c) ------ skookumchuck "California would need to install more than 200 times as much energy-storage capacity than it has now to make up for the loss of gas plants," They wouldn't need near as much if they abandoned the silly fixed 24/7 consumer electric rates in favor of rates that vary based on the supply. ------ ousta They should find how to create electricity from poo as it is their first renewable material ------ alexnewman I’d bet 10x harder than 99% and 100x harder than 95% and 1000x harder than 66% ------ jorblumesea It's unfortunate the US response to climate change is completely localized and basically dependent on blue states. Not saying this is a bad thing but climate change is a huge global issue and requires at least a coordinated national response. ~~~ tathougies Many US states are comparable in size to typical nations, so its not clear to me why this localized response is worse ~~~ jorblumesea Climate change is a national/global issue and requires a national/global response. California going green while Virginia stays with coal while Florida floods is objectively bad for the nation. The carbon footprint of the nation isn't going to be balanced by only a few states taking serious measures. We are a union under the federalist system and we're all in this together, despite what people seem to think. ------ internet_user Does aneutronic p-b11 fission count as clean in California? ~~~ phkahler p-b11 fusion. I'd count that anywhere someone can make it work for large scale energy production. ------ truculent Not soon enough though, is it? ------ westurner 1\. Hawaii 2\. California 3. ------ justaaron excellent ------ ebikelaw Why not 2025? ~~~ rhacker I would assume it would be better to use 30%-40% effecient panels that will come out in 10 years than forcing everyone on the current 23% tech. ~~~ tedsanders It is _extremely_ unlikely that commercial cells will be high-efficiency multijunction in 10 years. Silicon has been dominant for decades, and its lead in cost-effectiveness has only grown.

Official KISSmetrics Response to Data Collection Practices - joshuacc http://blog.kissmetrics.com/official-kissmetrics-response-to-data-collection-practices/ ====== bbatsell Their explanation of the universal cookie ID issue is rather silly. If you're a client of Kissmetrics, your visitors have a cookie scoped to your domain with the visitor's universal Kissmetrics ID. All of the database segregation in the world won't prevent any two or more Kissmetrics clients from collating visitor data on that universal ID, sent in every header on every pageview. Whether any clients are actually doing that, I have no clue. But claiming that permuting that universal ID into client-specific ones rendered when the clients view data actually protects visitors from said collation is just wrong. See Wired's screenshot here: [http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/07/Screen-S...](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/07/Screen- Shot-2011-07-29-at-11.52.29-AM.png) ~~~ rubeng I don't see what's silly about the explanation considering it's about efficiency and performance. As a KISSmetrics customer I can tell you the focus is on funnels and key data; not on an internal cookie ID so that we can collude with other companies. ~~~ rhizome So you'd decline to collude with another company who approached you? What if they offered to pay? ~~~ rubeng Of course not. Customer data isn't something I would ever share. Companies that choose to do so will do it regardless of whether they're directly paid for it. It's not a tech problem and it's not something they need a 3rd party vendor for. ------ jedberg I know Hiten personally, and I know that Kissmetrics operates in a most ethical fashion. I would trust them over most any analytics company any day. It's a shame that this meritless lawsuit even exists. ~~~ mtogo Trying to prevent the deletion of cookies used to uniquely identify and track their customers' users is ethical? ~~~ qeorge Yeah as far as I'm concerned, the cross-site tracking thing is a straw man. They used evercookie-ish methods to track people who don't want to be tracked. That's unethical, full stop. ------ jforman If the report "significantly distorts our technology and business practices," why are they making such significant changes to their technology and business practices as a result? ~~~ jedberg To assuage folks who don't understand technology and will assume they are guilty until they "make big changes". ~~~ jforman I understand technology, and I'm pretty skeezed out by their use of Etags... Also, if they truly think they're innocent, why wouldn't they just educate their userbase? Seems odd to make such drastic architectural changes just because of a perceptual problem. ~~~ jedberg Ah, but it is all about perception. The same thing happened at reddit a few times. The mob decided someone was guilty, we investigated, found absolutely no wrongdoing. Told the community, they didn't care. They would only be happy with swift, visible action. ~~~ jforman Comparing the relatively thoughtful discussion on this topic among the web development community to the reddit mob is not particularly fair or accurate. ~~~ jedberg I would have to say you're naive for thinking the two are much different. Any group, no matter how civil and educated, can dislove pretty quickly into mob mentality. ~~~ jforman Your cynicism is not well borne out on this message board. ~~~ ericd This board is a very rare exception on the internet, and even it descends into its own form of lynch mobbery (with a more elevated tone than most lynch mobs). ------ jeremymims Hiten is a standup guy, a friend to startups everywhere, and a class act all around. I look forward to him kicking their asses in court. ------ slowpoke Mr. Soltani also claims that it is somehow improper to use any technology other than browser cookies to track website activity. In fact, countless online companies, including other major analytics providers, use a variety of different technologies to provide these services, including the persistent technologies Mr. Soltani targets in his paper. That's not a justification for doing it too. It's merely a lame excuse for unethical behavior. Also, I don't care if the guys at KISSmetrics are nice, kitten-loving jolly good fellows - that has absolutely zero relevance to the case at hand. ------ rhizome They don't deny recreating cookies. ~~~ dangrossman Is that illegal now? ~~~ nostromo No, but unethical for most applications, don't you think? ------ richcollins _These articles are based entirely on a paper by Ashkan Soltani, who works closely with the lawyers who filed these cases, and who published his paper on the same day that the first lawsuit was filed._ ~~~ plinio_silva So what? Does that automatically make everything he exposed false? ~~~ ericd It makes his objectivity suspect. ~~~ rhizome How does Hiten's working for KM affect _his_ objectivity? ~~~ ericd He's not posing as an objective third party. ~~~ rhizome That's a strange way to establish someone's credibility!

Finding the most depressing Radiohead song with R - kevlar1818 http://rcharlie.com/2017-02-16-fitteR-happieR/ ====== 3chelon So presumably the purpose of this experiment was to quantify just how bad algorithms can be at inferring meaning? Trying to measure the sadness of lyrics with an algo is tantamount to the early scene in "Dead Poets' Society" where the students are supposed to measure the greatness of poetry by plotting it on a chart. It's demonstrated in the data: one of the most depressing songs of their entire oeuvre is "Fitter, Happier" but because it's completely metaphorical (or sarcastic), the algo rates it as one of the happiest. This will always be a big problem in AI. Measuring the literal meaning of words is easy. Measuring the semantics and context of words is a completely different matter. ~~~ jmmcd > This will always be a big problem in AI I agreed with everything you wrote except for "always". ~~~ Grue3 Considering even actual humans often have disagreements about meanings of songs, I'm not sure how an AI is supposed to deduce the "correct" one. ~~~ andrepd Neither am I. But 10 years ago I would have said I had no idea how an AI was supposed to recognise objects in a picture, and now they do it better than humans. Tech moves fast. ~~~ jmmcd Recognising objects in pictures is something that, in principle, a machine could do better than humans, because there is ground truth. I think it's not possible in principle for a machine to do better than humans at recognising human emotions, because a human can't exactly be wrong at this. (Other than edge cases such as not knowing the right name for an emotion, perhaps.) But suppose a sample of 1000 humans answered a survey on emotional content of a song and a machine was able to predict the distribution within some tolerance. In a sense, this would be superhuman performance, but even if we don't like that interpretation, it would still be _very good_ performance. And it is possible in principle. So the argument that humans sometimes disagree doesn't prevent a machine doing well on the task. ~~~ anewhnaccount Another possible output for this type of task is an opinion or interpretation and a justification of it. A machine might feasibly be considered "good" if it output an unpopular interpretation with a good justification. ~~~ jmmcd Great point! The same type of argument is going in the AI subfield of computational creativity. A computational system might produce a piece (of art or music, say) which nobody initially likes, but could provide a justification/interpretation which might be convincing. In some ways this would be a big improvement over a pure Turing test-style judgement of the output itself. I think Margaret Boden has written this idea into her definition of computational creativity. EDIT: "The ultimate vindication of AI-creativity would be a program that generated novel ideas which initially perplexed or even repelled us, but which was able to persuade us that they were indeed valuable.", from Boden, Creativity and Artificial Intelligence, 1998. I believe, based on her other writings, that she thinks of it as a sufficient, but not a necessary condition, for AI creativity. ------ runeks I think you will find wildly varying perspectives on whether a given song is depressive or not. To my surprise, when I read the YouTube comments on Radiohead's track _Nude_ , I found many of the commenters found the song depressing, because of the lyrics: "Don't get any big ideas, they're not gonna happen." But, as far as I can see, this is only depressing if, first, you expect all your big ideas to happen and, secondly, you associate a big idea happening with happiness. I mean, why would a big idea not happening be depressing, unless you believe this big idea will make you happy? I quite like the reminder that big ideas usually don't happen, unless you put in an earnest effort. And that the expectation of happiness from a big idea is the only thing that can cause depression if it doesn't work out, which it often doesn't. In my experience, big ideas come out of happiness, not the other way around. ~~~ treerock I think it's the "don't get any big ideas" bit that is depressing. ------ decasteve Thom Yorke once said that after touring for OK Computer he was at a local pub and some guy stopped him and said, "No Surprises" is the most miserable song he'd ever heard and why had he written it? At the time Thom said he had to concur with that assessment of the song. I can't remember what interview this was from but I used to have the recording of it where he introduces the song this way. ~~~ cjbprime I once walked into my baby's daycare to pick him up after work and the babies were listening to a happy glockenspiel version of No Surprises. It felt very strange. ~~~ rcar The makers of those albums are quite prolific: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockabye_Baby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockabye_Baby)! ~~~ cjbprime Oh thanks! I'd tried and failed to find it myself. ------ genericpseudo Cute! But, well, this is obviously bullshit: > the cheeriest, 15 Step The title line: " _fifteen steps and then a sheer drop_ ". A song which makes explicit references to, well, execution by hanging is... (And "you used to be alright; what happened?" is a repeated motif.) ~~~ draugadrotten > The title line: "fifteen steps and then a sheer drop" This song is obviously about Thom Yorke's frustration with the Mario Party minigame "Shy Guy Says". Think about it, 'first you reel me out then you cut the string', 'won't take my eyes off the ball again' (ball, in this case, meaning shy guy's flags). It makes perfect sense. \-- lankeyjb202 ------ wiremine They're missing In Rainbow's Disk 2, which includes the song "4 minute warning" which I'd consider the "most" depressing Radiohead song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtotpiSL700](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtotpiSL700) ~~~ banku_brougham thank you for pointing this out. i only recently discovered IR2, and i found that "4 minute warning" fot my mood very well. ------ chjohasbrouck I think this is an example of something machines can't quite do better than humans yet, though it's an interesting problem to solve (trying to analyze how people in general will feel about something). Personally I'd give it to either How to Disappear Completely, or Exit Music (For a Film). ~~~ marchenko Exit Music might be their most bitter song, but I'd say Street Spirit or How to Disappear are the saddest. I wonder how many people would have an immediate answer at the ready, and how many would have to ponder and classify ( assuming similar familiarity with the Radiohead catalogue) ~~~ yownie [http://antiquiet.com/music/2012/06/flashback-thom-yorke- expl...](http://antiquiet.com/music/2012/06/flashback-thom-yorke-explains- street-spirit-breaks-our-hearts/) “‘Street Spirit’ is our purest song, but I didn’t write it…. It wrote itself. We were just its messengers… Its biological catylysts. It’s core is a complete mystery to me… and (pause) you know, I wouldn’t ever try to write something that hopeless… All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve… ‘Street Spirit’ has no resolve… It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. It represents all tragic emotion that is so hurtful that the sound of that melody is its only definition. We all have a way of dealing with that song… It’s called detachment… Especially me.. I detach my emotional radar from that song, or I couldn’t play it… I’d crack. I’d break down on stage.. that’s why its lyrics are just a bunch of mini- stories or visual images as opposed to a cohesive explanation of its meaning… I used images set to the music that I thought would convey the emotional entirety of the lyric and music working together… That’s what’s meant by ‘all these things are one to swallow whole’.. I meant the emotional entirety, because I didn’t have it in me to articulate the emotion… (pause) I’d crack…. Our fans are braver than I to let that song penetrate them, or maybe they don’t realize what they’re listening to.. They don’t realize that ‘Street Spirit’ is about staring the fucking devil right in the eyes… and knowing, no matter what the hell you do, he’ll get the last laugh…and it’s real…and true. The devil really will get the last laugh in all cases without exception, and if I let myself think about that to long, I’d crack. I can’t believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song… That’s why I’m convinced that they don’t know what it’s about. It’s why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell everytime I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of it’s meaning, like when you’re going to have your dog put down and it’s wagging it’s tail on the way there. That’s what they all look like, and it breaks my heart.” ------ zackkatz I vote for the happiest song being Anyone Can Play Guitar from Pablo Honey. It is hopeful and encouraging. It speaks of life goals achieved. This article demonstrates how far AI has to go. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GIWwfWaWuaE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GIWwfWaWuaE) ~~~ JauntTrooper Good choice! I've also always thought 'Lift' felt happy. ------ TheRealDunkirk If the winning song wasn't written in D-minor, the algorithm will need further tuning. ------ rodionos > and then used the tidytext package to break the lyrics into words, > eliminate common "stop words" like 'the' and 'a', > and count the number with negative sentiment Is 'not' a "stop word"? How did it count negations after "stop words" removed, i.e. "I am not forgotten". Positive, negative? ~~~ ellisv "not" is a stop word. I don't see an attempt to negate the word sentiments. ------ mpettitt Would be interesting to see how it handled REM or Dubstar, both of whom have some really upbeat tunes, with really dark lyrics - "The One I Love", for example, with "a simple prop to occupy mind ", or "Not So Manic Now", a happy bouncy pop song about assault... ------ beeswax 'Depressing' has a variety of facets made up of sadness, textual content/lyrics, and (at least for me) the placement of the title within its respective album context. Anecdote: When I previewed Kid A via AudioGalaxy back then (it would not be released for another two weeks in my region) I thought the stylistic choices of 'Everything in its right place' were some kind of encoding error (quite frequent back then) so I trashed the whole album after spending hours on the download. Imagine my surprise when I listened to the album from the physical album I bought a fortnight later :) ~~~ loudmax I got my first cassette tape player in 1982 and Prince's "1999" album to go with it. The lead track starts with distorted vocals, and I thought my player was malfunctioning. The intro is only about ten or fifteen seconds, so unlike you, I didn't trash the tape. Closer to topic, listening to the song "1999" as a kid, I thought it was a cheerful party song. After Prince's death, I listened to the song as an adult and realized it's about nuclear annihilation. ------ mwexler While great to see, this also highlights just how far we are from where data science needs to be. The amount of code necessary to just pull down and reformat data before any real analytic work is done is always staggering; I see it in my work but it's even painful in a fun example like this. I know, 80% of time in prep, 20% in analysis, yadda yadda, but I hope we can turn some of this magical AI into making data transforms easier in the future so we can actually get to the analysis portion faster, along with more accessible "tidy" data to get to the analysis portion faster. And no, tools like Paxata or Tamr (or [http://www.predictiveanalyticstoday.com/data-preparation- too...](http://www.predictiveanalyticstoday.com/data-preparation-tools-and- platforms/) etc.) are indeed a good start, but are not really the solution yet. We'll always have to code our way out of some wacko data situations, but I look forward to (and dream of!) better and better libraries and approaches to getting prep prepped faster. ~~~ minimaxir R in general is _inefficient_ with nontabular data manipulation with text data and web scraping, which is why I fall back to Python for those tasks. But even in the context of the article, the code the author posted is extremely confusing and is an odd mix of base and dplyr code. ------ Hydraulix989 "Honey Pablo"? ------ cdelsolar Definitely Exit Music for a film. ------ peeters If I can nitpick a bit about your presentation here: [http://rcharlie.com/htmlwidgets/fitterhappier/album_chart.ht...](http://rcharlie.com/htmlwidgets/fitterhappier/album_chart.html) If you're going put each album on its own point in the X-axis, could you not just label those axis instead of using colour-coding and requiring us to look up the corresponding colour in a legend (that's not ordered in the same way). ------ aethant They need to do this with morrissey. ~~~ xellisx As my dad said back in the day(80's), Morrissey is the music you listen to while cleaning your guns. ------ cjbprime Is there a way to have Spotify users create the mapping, e.g. by using song selection to detect their mood and finding the cluster of Radiohead songs that are only ever listened to in a depressive mood? ------ dmichulke Note how listening to all suggestions mentioned in the HN comments but only to few or none of those recommended in the blog post is a good indicator of what you think about the power of ML/AI. ------ elchief Guessing "How To Disappear Completely" before I read it ~~~ elchief and...not on the list. Exit Music and Let Down are pretty glum though Ingo Mierswa (of RapidMiner) wrote some papers on analyzing audio data, like [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10994-005-5824-7](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10994-005-5824-7) [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1150523](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1150523) ------ VeejayRampay I'm waiting for someone to find out the most stolen songs from Radiohead's repertoire using R now :) ------ sampl _True Love Waits_ Edit: according to the article :) ~~~ zzalpha How on earth is Street Spirit not even on the list? Yorke himself had called it "our purest, saddest song.", and went on to say: _I can’t believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That’s why I’m convinced that they don’t know what it’s about. It’s why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you’re going to have your dog put down and it’s wagging its tail on the way there. That’s what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I wish that song hadn’t picked us as its catalysts, and so I don’t claim it. It asks too much. I didn’t write that song._ True Love Waits is a sweet, quiet, sad little song about yearning and the fear of loss. Street Spirit is pure dark tragedy. ~~~ genericpseudo Apparently the second happiest song on OK Computer is "Fitter Happier". (A pig / in a cage / on antibiotics.) So much of Radiohead's bleakness is in their use of irony. ~~~ marchenko Irony and taunting really confounds sentiment analysis. I mean, street spirit ends in "immerse your soul in love" repeated 2X but is still incredibly bleak. ------ snyp I can't believe the author got the name Of their first album wrong! ------ dcdevito How to Disappear Completely is their most depressing song, ever. ------ mhd I wonder how Gloomy Sunday would score with that heuristic. ------ foxhedgehog you could have just asked and I would have told you it's "let down" ------ jheriko is the answer ALL OF THEM (j/k) ------ SloopJon This is a repost (syndication?) of a blog post at: [http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/02/finding- radiohea...](http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/02/finding-radioheads- most-depressing-song-with-r.html) which is a summary of a blog post at: [http://rcharlie.com/2017-02-16-fitteR- happieR/](http://rcharlie.com/2017-02-16-fitteR-happieR/) I didn't know that Spotify has an API. I see mention of a rate limit in the docs, but I can't find the actual limit. If I want to sort the tracks from albums released in a given year (say, ten to fifty out of a thousand-album collection) by Spotify popularity, will the limit get in the way? ~~~ carlob Yeah can we please change this to the original blog post at rcharlie.com? ~~~ bbrady1992 Agreed. I'm not sure why the original link is necessary at all. It doesn't add anything and seems to have been written for no reason other than to write a blog post. The author refers to Radiohead's first album as 'Honey Pablo', so it doesn't look like he actually paid attention to the original article. ------ sjclemmy TLDR: It's High and Dry. I could have guessed that. But where is Black Star in the list? That is my go to song if I'm really lamenting the state of the world. ;) ~~~ executesorder66 No it's not. It's actually True Love Waits. High and Dry is 8th. TLDR; RTFA ~~~ sjclemmy You're right. I skimmed it and only saw the first list of Saddest Lyrics. I'm going to go away now, and listen to Radiohead, whilst I consider my lack of focus, past failures and impending mortality. ;)

Google Ends Support for Glass Explorer Edition - enonevets https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/06/google-ends-support-for-glass-explorer-edition/ ====== rvz The Google Glass is (almost) dead. RIP in advance. Long Live the Apple/FB/Snap Inc/North AR Glasses!

Show HN: Poto – leave Facebook, keep in touch with your friends and family - agd https://poto.app/ ====== agd Hi everyone, Poto lets you easily share contact details with friends and family. It's difficult to leave Facebook as it's often the only way to reliably contact people. I created Poto to change that, to act as a universal address book, without people needing to be on Facebook. Because users control and update their own details on Poto, you don't have to manually add all the details of your friends and family. And you automatically have the latest contact details when they're updated so you can stay in touch. Enjoy! And I'd love to hear any thoughts and feedback. Best, James ~~~ patatino I don't see what it does or how it does it, why would I signup? ~~~ agd Aha. Thanks for the feedback. Do you mind saying what’s unclear to you or what part of the homepage is unclear? Would a screenshot on the homepage help? I think I may have overlooked this because it’s such a simple product. You add your contact details, and you can make them visible to other users on Poto who you want to share contact details with.

Ask HN: What tools/apps do you use in your team to manage feedback? - sidcool The cycle of continuous Feedback is oft broken in the chaos of a high speed tech organisation. What are your goto effective tools for actionable and trackable feedback within team members?<p>What tools provide one to one and team level feedback isolation? What tips and tricks help you? ====== gilbert77 We use a tool called BigTeam([https://bigteam.co/](https://bigteam.co/)), it's a newly built tool to address the broken feedback processes within any organization. What's great about it is whether you're a researcher, brand manager, creative, almost anyone in your team can use it, it's quite robust and holistic. It solves the problems of Who exactly to ask but also a survey builder helps aid the type of questions to ask for actionable feedback too. ------ dkasper Obviously only for positive feedback, but we have a command /praise in Slack at Reddit. This let's you acknowledge someone quickly for a good job, and the results are collected into a channel and into Small Improvements, which is the heavier performance review system we use. It actually gets used quite a bit! ~~~ sdrothrock I can see that having a small command would make it easier to give positive feedback (which is important, since negative feedback has a much heavier emotional weight), but have you noticed any devaluing of positive feedback due to how easy or common it is to give it? ------ jasonmotylinski We use OfficeVibe ([http://www.officevibe.com](http://www.officevibe.com)) which allows employees to provide anonymous feedback (good and bad) and helps us track our ongoing progress. It's quite helpful. ------ colinbartlett I have used 7Geese[1] in the past. A little overwhelming as a tool but there are some nuggets of usefulness there. 15Five[2] (what's with these names?) is another one I have used and is a little more approachable. 1\. [https://7geese.com/](https://7geese.com/) 2\. [https://www.15five.com/](https://www.15five.com/) ~~~ telecuda 15Five is excellent. 15 minutes each week for a team member to submit feedback / 5 minutes for a manager to review. I find people bring up concerns in their 15fives that I can address quickly before they become larger problems. ------ michaelsobota We use TinyPulse to keep team / upward feedback regular (weekly basis). I've also found that co-locating as much as possible is very effective to build a culture of natural flowing 1-1 feedback... strong relationships have always been better than any app I've used. ------ tbfrench I work at [https://www.cultureamp.com](https://www.cultureamp.com) so I'm biased. Of course, we use the product ourselves. I think it's great. ------ abarrettwilsdon We use CareerLark[1] in our office. It's nice and lightweight (plus easy to onboard people on to). 1\. [http://www.careerlark.com/](http://www.careerlark.com/) ~~~ Mandatum The emoji-scale 1-5, how exactly do you define that scale? Do you give feedback on a per-person basis or company wide? Say I have a team of 3 engineers, all with "Senior" title however I expect one to naturally outperform the other two. This quarter s/he's slacked a bit, maybe s/he's not as driven or it's something personal - but s/he's still performing just as well as the other two engineers who've both performed exceptionally well and I'm giving them both a 5. Do I give the engineer I expected to do better a 5? Or a 4? I mean I expected them to do better but I'm still really happy with their work. ------ patothon I use www.oneone.io. Both to manage my one on ones and to gather feedback from the team.

"Living in a Trailer” by James Jones – July 1952 - Mz http://holidaymag.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/living-in-a-trailer-by-james-jones-july-1952/ ====== Mz It seems nomads have been around forever. Being a digital nomad just has benefits in terms of portability. Excerpt: _One of the things about writing that lends itself to trailer living is this fact of being your own boss and able to work as well one place as another, and in addition, requiring very little equipment to carry with you. I knew one man in Florida who had the front half of his trailer fitted up as a machine shop with lathes and drill presses and carried his business with him. He had a big trailer, but it still didn’t make for very comfort­able living. But he was an exception; mostly they are retired._

Tetris coming to Julia language for long-awaited v1.0 release next week - djsegal https://julialang.org/blog/2018/04/tetris-and-you ====== djsegal You can play online at: \+ [http://juliatetris.com](http://juliatetris.com)

Why I wrote my own UIKit and the end of the platform wars - newhouseb https://medium.com/p/f466467d9a25 ====== macrael Impressive how much faster open gl is. ~~~ newhouseb Yeah, when I dug into instruments, the biggest impediment is that if you have a bunch of OpenGL surfaces you establish needless sync points each time you present a buffer when you have to wait for the OpenGL command list to clear out. When you have one giant surface to present you only have to do this once and save a lot of synchronization. ------ msie Did you write your own UIDatePicker?

Error messages in Haiku? - boredgamer2 https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/error-haiku.en.html ====== prakashk Normal error message in Perl: $ perl -Mstrict -e 'say $x' Global symbol "$x" requires explicit package name (did you forget to declare "my $x"?) at -e line 1. Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors. With the addition of `Coy` module [1]: $ perl -Mstrict -MCoy -e 'say $x' ----- Gautama dies near a monastry. Two woodpeckers fly over the lake. ----- Or Wunt's commentary... Global symbol "$x" requires explicit package name (did you forget to declare "my $x"?) (Analects of -e: line 1. Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.) [1]: [https://metacpan.org/pod/Coy](https://metacpan.org/pod/Coy) ------ lozf A few times a month/year I'll get some email because the sender made a typo of the domain they wanted. Postmaster notifies them with: your mistake not mine email sent to wrong address retry with more care ------ greendave The old Net+ errors[1] are still golden. My favorite: A file that big? It might be very useful But now it is gone. [1] [https://8325.org/haiku/](https://8325.org/haiku/) ------ rexarex Juniper networking equipment has a hidden CLI command that spits out a nerdy or sleep deprived haiku: E.G Juniper> show version and haiku; IS-IS Screams, BGP peer flapping; I want my mommy! TTL down one the end nearer with each hop little packet, poof. Amazing photons Carry our data worldwide Never seem to stop My session is dead: Forgot to commit confirm. Where are my car keys? For some reason, it’s hard to find all of them compiled in one place. I think it changes over time depending on the version of JUNOS and the hardware platform. It was always a little uplifting when you had an incident occurring and you needed a little something—anything—to keep you going (: ------ hanoz What is it with Haiku? The whole 5-7-5 structure just doesn't ring true with me at all. I mean, I get that it is enigmatic, but it just seems like it's enigmatic purely by virtue of not having any other redeeming quality. ~~~ Palomides a "correct" haiku is supposed to have a conceptual juxtaposition and a traditional seasonal reference in addition to the syllable count after reading a lot of them, I don't think either the poems or the form translates well to english ~~~ anonymfus This reminds me how some Russian poets in the year 2000 decided that as a replacement to the elements of Haiku lost during an adaptation they need to create a new dimension to it, and so Huiku (Хуйку, from the Russian swear word хуй (dick)) was made which additionally requires first letters of every line to combine into a Russian cursing. Here is the manifest: [https://lleo.me/huiku/manifest.htm](https://lleo.me/huiku/manifest.htm) It contains an example: Сижу один под кустом, Рот открыл в изумленье. Удивительно лес красив. Which literally translates into "I am sitting alone under a bush, My mouth is open in awe. The forest is amazingly beautiful." and first letters of each line combine into "сру" which means "I am shitting". May be similar idea can be used for English. Sadly English has way less three letter swear words than Russian. ------ divbzero What I’d love to see is this for HTTP — status code haikus ~~~ gorloth Error 404: The item you are seeking Cannot be found here ~~~ Pamar This is particularly good. Apart from the already mentioned seasonal references, a common element is that the thirst two lines should seem completely unrelated and the third one provides synthesis/closure. ------ ecpottinger Clearly someone has not used Beos. ~~~ cosmotic For reference: [https://gist.github.com/benjaminoakes/e58a9ddb0ead8eefbbae40...](https://gist.github.com/benjaminoakes/e58a9ddb0ead8eefbbae40476d87cdf0) Coincidentally, the open source remake of BeOS is called Haiku ~~~ Crestwave That isn't just a coincidence: [https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq/#where- does-the-name-haik...](https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq/#where-does-the- name-haiku-come-from) ------ asdfasgasdgasdg _Yesterday it worked / Today it is not working / Windows is like that_ Reflecting an understanding of the state of computing usability last updated in the early 90s. ~~~ ttctciyf > ‘I just installed KB4512941 and now Windows Search is broke and Cortana > process in taskmanager takes 90% CPU,’ a Windows user wrote on Reddit. > On Twitter, one gamer shared his pain after the update stopped his favourite > game from working properly. > ‘Very cool that Skyrim is broken,’ he wrote. > ‘Yet another thing Windows updates has ruined for me. They’ve taken > everything from me.’ \- [https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/09/microsoft-admits- windows-10-b...](https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/09/microsoft-admits- windows-10-bug-causing-problems-around-world-10710714/) (Or find your own counterexamples: [https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+update+destroyed](https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+update+destroyed) ) ~~~ Doxin Windows update is the #1 reason I even ever moved to linux in the first place. \- you can run updates whenever you like. no nag screens, no automatic reboots \- even when you _do_ run updates you don't usually need to reboot and if you do need to reboot you can choose when to do so yourself. \- updates don't install ads or other unwanted crap \- (on debian at least) updates don't tend to break anything. \- no stalling boot \- no stalling shutdown -- I can't count the amount of times I've stayed up late because windows update was preventing shutdown. \- still automatic updates _if you want_ with all of these advantages. ~~~ jimnotgym Old news ~~~ Doxin Yes. so? Just because you and I know that windows update is awful in comparison to package managers on linux doesn't mean everyone does. ------ bryanrasmussen The greatest error message in Haiku ever was: I am so sorry. Something struck me in the rear. I just ... wound up ... here. [https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Transcript:The_Tales_of_Ba_Si...](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Transcript:The_Tales_of_Ba_Sing_Se) ------ emptybits These are lovely and lighthearted with a 5-7-5 structure, but for anyone interested in how English might actually express the spirit and content and structure of haiku, here's a nice article.[1] Or, of course, WP as a jumping off point.[2] But long live creativity in constrained form, whatever the label! [1] [http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/2011/02/english-haiku-a- co...](http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/2011/02/english-haiku-a-composite- view/) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_in_English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_in_English) ------ gpvos I ate your Web page. Forgive me, it was juicy and tart on my tongue. (MIT 404 error from the early web) ------ tgdnt It's a shame that the word haiku is now used for any arbitrary collection of 3 lines with none of what would actually make them a haiku. ~~~ traes And what would that be? They follow the 5-7-5 structure, are you just disappointed by the lack of juxtaposition of something? (Disclaimer: not a poetry buff, just reading other comments) ~~~ tgdnt Well, I'm not a poetry buff either, but my superficial understanding is that a haiku is characterized by humour and ambiguity, so that it would leave you contemplating multiple possible senses, perhaps each one funnier or more intriguing than the next. And perhaps there would be some tension in understanding which meaning would be most intended, as it were. "...expressing much and suggesting more in the fewest possible words." (Britannica) I think a lot of contemporary haiku express little and suggest nothing. Nothing wrong with the page or the writing there, I'm only saying that as the word is increasingly used in a more superficial way as I think is the case here, the historical form of poetry known as haiku has no name of its own any more, which becomes a problem especially in the age of search engines where present usage is all that matters. My being grouchy plays a big part here too. ------ wackro Reminds me of The Tao of Programming. [https://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html](https://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html) Huge pearls of wisdom. ------ dragonshed An oldie but goodie > Server is willing > Alas, the file is crafty > It cannot be found ------ Taniwha EINTR please excuse me what you were doing stops now time for my stuff

Mad Max violence stalks Venezuela's lawless roads - smacktoward https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy-trucks-widerimage/mad-max-violence-stalks-venezuelas-lawless-roads-idUSKBN1FT1G9 ====== indescions_2018 Regime change is currently on the table. In the event of further economic collapse. What Would a U.S. Intervention in Venezuela Look Like? [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2017-11-08...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2017-11-08/what- would-us-intervention-venezuela-look) ~~~ armenarmen US intervention seems like an option. Especially given the fact that Venezuela is looking to sell oil for Yuan[[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2017/09/15/venezuela...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2017/09/15/venezuelas- latest-currency-decision-shows-desperation/#5f8fd5a53094)] a move that has been the strongest predictor of US intervention in the past 2 decades. ~~~ rtpg What are the other cases of US intervention in this style? I can understand the consternation at some level, but has something happened in the past 2 decades that I just missed? ~~~ armenarmen Hussein began selling oil for Euros shortly before the US invaded in 2003, Gadaffi was looking to sell oil for gold shortly before the US decided 'more freedom' was in order. Might just be a happy coincidence, but the petrodollar is a huge part of the US Dollar's value. ~~~ nathanaldensr I'm not sure why you're being downvoted for stating facts. This is a well- known theory for when the US government chooses to intervene in other countries' affairs. ~~~ Viliam1234 I bought a bottle of olive oil recently in a supermarket, and paid with Euros. I expect the American imperialists to bomb the shop soon. (just kidding) ------ tim333 It's quite impressively mucked up. I wonder if there's some way of returning to sane government of if they have to wait 35 years for Maduro to die of old age. ~~~ aclsid I really hope so. This is a beautiful country that deserves better. Oil has made us rich and now screwed us up in a massive way. ~~~ dmix Oil is not what _caused_ the food shortages, it's what allowed the government to convince everyone their policies were working during the good times, while they depleted their cash reserves to cover the massive unsustainable hole their radical social policies were burning in their pocket. Food shortages were a result of government enacted price controls, expropriation of farmland, and centralization of financial markets. Which subsequently disrupted local food production, scared away foreign imports, and reduced access to critically needed foreign currency. No country can produce ALL of their own food. Imports are a necessity, even for socialist countries. Artificially reducing prices, fucking over all of your domestic business talent, and severely limiting foreign currency is a (predictable) recipe for a massive food crisis. Venezuela suffered persistent food shortages well before the oil "crisis" (as early as 2002-2003) [1] ...meanwhile every other non-socialist petrol-state has bounced back from the crisis, EXCEPT Venezuela. When Chavez came to power he announced "capitalism was dead" to the cheers of farmers. Those farmers are now starving and flooding over the border to Colombia whose "capitalist" food markets offer both greater variety and far greater supply. The oil crisis merely exposed the complete failure of their "modern" economic system. Yet the Venezuelan government continue to blame the west for all of their failures. And local "hoarders" and "speculators" for food shortages [2]. It's obvious that looking in the mirror and admitting personal responsibility would be political suicide for the pseudo-dictators and all of their corrupt friends. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Venezuela](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Venezuela) [2] [https://www.economist.com/news/americas/21571445-cost- postpo...](https://www.economist.com/news/americas/21571445-cost-postponing- inevitable-devaluation-out-stock) ------ cobbzilla yeah that's not a sensationalist headline at all. ~~~ drb91 Sure it’s not flaming guitars, but for once the movie reference seems more exaggeration than fiction. ~~~ megaman22 The first Mad Max was not particularly post-apocalyptic - the world was falling down, but the vestiges of society were still rather strong, and the lunatic fringe like Toecutter were just motorcycle gangs cranked up to 11. Things have gotten weirder and weirder in every installment since. ~~~ meesterdude > Things have gotten weirder and weirder in every installment since Reality is following suit

Western surge in obesity may have been caused by a virus - vl http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/western-surge-in-obesity-may-have-been-caused-by-a-virus-2084737.html ====== VBprogrammer I'm disinclined to believe this study purely on the basis that I've yet to meet an heavily overweight person who did not have a terrible diet to exercise ratio. I wonder how good the science behind it is! ~~~ brudgers _I wonder how good the science behind it is!_ Better than anecdote according to the article. ~~~ crpatino Correlation != Causation The article revolves around how much more likely it is for obese children to be infected by the virus, how much more likely it is for children infected to be obese, and how much heavier are the infected children than the rest (even than obese but not infected children). This is hardly surprising for a virus that specifically targets fat cells! ~~~ brudgers I agree that correlation does not _necessarily_ imply causation. However seeing as correlation _always_ accompanies causation, it's not the worst place to start an investigation. And viruses have been known to cause epidemics.

An easy to follow design course for programmers - thecosas http://hackdesign.org/ ====== fasouto I tried to watch the first video but I cannot use netflix in my country. No problem, let's watch the youtube playlist"The uploader has not made this video available in your country." Ok, I will rent it on youtube: "This movie is not available in your country." And then they ask why the people use the pirate bay... ~~~ ashray Exactly, why is this content available to US users for free (via Youtube) but I have to pay because I'm outside of the US ? I guess it's to do with youtube ad revenues for US impressions but as a customer it makes me feel a bit shafted considering that you will, in no way, make $3.99 from a single US user watching this on youtube. However, I appreciate that you're doing this course for 'free' and I do think it's a great idea. Just wish I didn't have to pay for the very first video that I want to watch. Why not provide a TPB magnet link ? ~~~ wells-riley It really sucks. In fact, I wholly believe that many people will turn away from Hack Design because there's essentially a paywall right out of the gate. I don't regret my choice to start with this film, though. Objectified had a profound impact on me as a designer. I first watched it in a slump of disenchantment that my "web design" skills would never amount to anything valuable or earth-shattering. This film gave me perspective. It showed me that, in extreme cases, design can make the world a better place. There are moments in this film that give me the shakes. It resonates so deeply with what I believe, and what I want to achieve during my career. I can't think of any better way to help put hackers into the mindset that I believe is most conducive to learning the basics of design. I hope you figure out a way around paying an exorbitant amount of money to watch the film, and hopefully see you next week for Lesson 1. ~~~ titlex I'm glad that Objectified seems to have had such a large impact on you, but this really isn't a good way of starting this course, or any course for that matter. Reading Dieter Rams' ten principles of "good design"[1] would be much more practical. Also, if the site is going to be focused on helping people with design, you should make sure the design of the actual site is good. Few issues that I saw: -404 page should at least have the logo to know you're still on the same site -/courses & /lessons/0 should have the full logo with the page title elsewhere -Log in page animation does nothing for design and can confuse people into thinking they can type after the text -Has already been mentioned, but the contrast in some areas could use work. Tasks for example should be the main focus point, yet the text is light grey. -Using social media icons everywhere takes away from design IMO [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Rams#Rams.27_ten_princip...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Rams#Rams.27_ten_principles_of_.22good_design.22) ------ Cyranix I hate to be "that guy" but I'm genuinely having a hard time reading this page. * thin white text on light grey buttons * thin light grey text on almost matching light grey background (anti-spam message below email input) * small thin light grey text on white background * on highlight, dark grey text on... burnt orange?! I'm in the target market for this program -- a developer whose design skills are pretty weak -- but the landing page is a big turn-off. Even I can recognize when fonts are needlessly small and low-contrast. EDIT: Pull up your favorite color contrast analyzer and run this site through it. Using AccessColor, the results are ~4% failure and ~75% warning for WCAG 1.0 standards. ~~~ eranation There is a site dedicated to the topic actually: <http://contrastrebellion.com/> I think there is a difference between "looks good aesthetically" and "readable" and sometimes making it more readable doesn't overlap with pure artistic choices, so sometimes it's the best designers that fall into this trap. Edit: see previous discussion on this here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2807047> ~~~ Cyranix I might cut them a bit more slack if the image to the CTA wasn't for "Typography Crash Course"! Thanks for the reminder on Constrast Rebellion. ------ happywolf In case anybody is not aware, TreeHouse has a lot of design courses available for free. <http://teamtreehouse.com/library> I am in Singapore and as like other people here, has hit a pay-wall. The issue is at the landing page, it says: "Receive a design course in your inbox each week" which gives me an impression these courses are free. I understand good things usually aren't free, but not saying it up front until I gave my email address is something that I don't like. Therefore, I am not going back ------ rvkennedy I'd feel happier going along with this is the commercial relationship between hackdesign.org and the makers of the Objectified documentary was upfront and clear before sign-up for a putatively free course. There's nothing wrong with making money this way (if they are, I can't tell). But tell us, before asking for email addresses: what it actually costs, and whether (in your country) you can even get the required content. ------ wasd "Application Offline for Maintenance" at 3:40 PM PST. Edit 1: And at 3:41 PM its up. Spoke too soon. Edit 2: And its back to a screeching halt at 3:42 PM. Edit 3: Ups and downs. Works for 1-2 minutes and then breaks. 4:15 pm. I still haven't managed to read a whole lesson. Its a slow day so I'll check again in half an hour. ~~~ alexkiwi Back online now. ------ kurtfunai Site took a long time to load, but when it did, I gladly signed up. Got my first email already. Really looking forward to this, thanks. * Edit, It appears that the video "Objectified" (Or at least the preview) is not available to rent from YouTube in Canada. "The uploader has not made this video available in your country." :( I don't have time to try renting it right now, but I'll test it this weekend. Perhaps only the trailer is unavailable. Can anyone test/confirm? ~~~ mathewsanders How about Vimeo? <http://vimeo.com/12793996> ~~~ kurtfunai This works, thank you! ------ wells-riley If you're outside the US, try here for Objectified: <http://www.objectifiedfilm.com/stream/> ------ nnq Tip: make your lesson 1 a "free demo" or something if you want to get more people interested! (the only reason I didn't say "fuck this" and moved on after amazon said it won't stream the video to me because I'm not in the US was because I happened to remember the Helvetica documentary and thought maybe it's worth the pain...) ------ felipesabino For the 1st lesson I don't have Netflix and the youtube playlist is not available in my country (Brazil) :( ------ greggman I was all excited and then ... Seriously? Objectified is your first lesson? [http://www.amazon.com/Objectified/product- reviews/B002SOUVKU...](http://www.amazon.com/Objectified/product- reviews/B002SOUVKU/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_2?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addTwoStar&showViewpoints=0) ------ sergiotapia I'm not sure if this is free or not. Someone in the comments below mentioned this was a bait and switch scam where they make it look free, then push some payments on you. Any confirmation on the 'free' status of this course? ------ AskHugo I can't seem to be able to change my password. Is that not implemented yet or am I not looking in the right place? Great idea by the way. Looking forwards to the lessons. ~~~ wells-riley Not implemented yet. You'll have that functionality once we launch. ------ juiceandjuice Objectified is okay. The Eames documentary is much more interesting in terms of the design process, as is the Milton Glaser one. ------ kaichanvong Super slow to load the page and just got an application error. Looks nice, hopefully I'll get on and learn a thing or two :) ------ 542458 Looks like their servers aren't quite up to the task - I'm only getting half- formed content. ~~~ gketuma I can't even get the first lesson. This is a lesson to all developers. Don't underestimate the power of HN. ~~~ wells-riley On it, fellas. We weren't expecting so many beta signups... didn't think we needed more dynos until launch ;) Check back in a few minutes, we're already working on it. ~~~ PommeDeTerre How much traffic are you actually getting? HN doesn't drive all that much traffic to a site, even for sites at the top of the first page. It's virtually nothing compared to what Slashdot could drive to a site in its heyday, or what reddit's front page can drive today. I don't mean to offend you, but something is seriously wrong with your web app, your database(s) or your other infrastructure if it can't withstand a relatively minor amount of traffic. It's hard to tell for sure given all of the application errors, but it seems like your web app's functionality is pretty basic. ~~~ meric How many requests per second do you think a website needs to be capable of serving to handle the traffic from HN? (Performance newbie here) ~~~ PommeDeTerre Well, it depends on the site in question, of course. But we can make some estimates, if you want. In the past, I've talked to some colleagues who've had content hit the front page here, and they reported numbers ranging from around 1,000 unique visitors to about 30,000 visitors over a one-day period. So it can vary quite a bit, apparently. Let's assume that things are more intense than that, and go with 50,000 or so unique visitors in a single hour, distributed rather evenly over that time period, making 2 page views each. Let's also assume that our web server serves up 20 style sheets, JavaScript files, images, and other assets each page view. We'll also assume that this is an interactive web app, so there'll be some database activity, too. No CDN is being used. So we're talking around 2 million requests over that hour. Since we're assuming they're evenly distributed, for the most part, we'll assume we're dealing with about 550 to 600 requests per second. That may seem like a lot, but it really isn't. Many of the requests will be for static content (JS scripts, style sheets, images, and so on), so they should be trivial to serve up. Apache or nginx running on a modern, bottom- tier VPS should have no trouble keeping up with this. Likewise, assuming queries that aren't overly intensive, MySQL or PostgreSQL running on the same server should easily handle a few hundred queries per second. Only a fraction of the requests will actually involve any significant work from the web app itself. It should not be considered unreasonable for the web app to handle a few hundred requests per second. We won't even consider using a reverse proxy like Varnish, for instance, to reduce some of the load on the web server, web app and database. Keep in mind that this is a relatively intense scenario, too, at least compared to the activity than can be generated by an appearance on the HN front page, as has been described to me in the past. In reality, we're likely looking at much, much less traffic than in our estimate above, even during the period of peak activity. Hopefully that helps explain why I think something is very wrong here if a relatively basic web app can't keep up with a relatively moderate amount of traffic. ~~~ justincormack I doubt that requests are that evenly distributed on a second by second basis so peak response rates might be a few times that for some seconds. ------ mdznr You should also be giving those avatars height attributes. When some of them load in slower (Also, I see you're loading them @2x, essentially), it shifts the formatting of the page a bit. ------ binarydreams Any special reason why "Objectified: A documentary for design" is on Netflix (as it's not available in my country) and NOT Youtube ? Also, getting heroku application error several times. ------ ctruman Site loads fine for me. Cool first lesson, love the idea. ------ rcavezza My girlfriend is interested in design, but she's not a hacker. Could anyone recommend any courses for her? I haven't been able to find any. ------ oboizt I can't get the page to load, but judging by the title, this is something I desperately need as a programmer with zero aesthetic talent. ------ infinityetc I am a designer, but I am really looking forward to this. New resources, insights, and challenges can only help. ------ TommyDANGerous I wish they didn't make you do stuff, but I guess its a course. I want to just see tips and tricks. ------ TinyBig Lovely idea! You may want to mention in Week 0 that Objectified is also available on Amazon Prime. ------ luney I am the target market for this. Unless I have to pay. ------ stavrianos The unsubscribe link is missing an href. ------ holgersindbaek Site is down. Scale the servers! ------ davidjnelson Internal server error

305 Russian GRU operatives unmasked because they registered their cars to GRU HQ - rreichman https://www.snip.today/main/post/personal-info-of-305-russian-intelligence-operatives-leaked-because-they-registered-their-cars-to-gru-hq/ ====== aurizon This makes me wonder if they are stalking horses, and the real agents are not so bad at tradecraft ~~~ rreichman Occam's Razor says they acted dumbly. But perhaps.

Job loss due to AI – How bad is it going to be? - andreyk https://www.skynettoday.com/editorials/ai-automation-job-loss ====== pbtpu40 Honestly i don't think it's going to be that bad. I work in a group where we do end to end IoT to AI. AI and statistical significance is a BFD. I'm not seeing anything indicating that AI is going to become a human brain equivalent in the near term. Really that's when we should be afraid. Ultimately jobs will change in style and you may be do something different than you were originally because we're solving the problem differently. AI and ML have become buzzwords mostly thrown about for VC and by people who don't really understand it.

Show HN: Tech Education. Done Right. For Free - dhandalanawaz https://hackerbayuniversity.com/ ====== jbucaran I am almost sure "in fact" is always two words.

SJWJS - li4ick https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2018/12/14/SJWJS.html ====== heyjudy Equality of outcome collective punishment/self-confidence destroying identity politic advancement and self-righteous, vindictive chip-shouldering fall under the category of: "play stupid games, win stupid prizes." I still ponder the logic, intentionality or unintended consequences for why, when I was a kid, I was forced bused 90 minutes (3 hours a day both ways) to a gang-infested, "magnet" school in the height of the CIA-affiliate-backed crack epidemic and gang war when there was a perfectly good school one block away from where I lived. Maybe it was a consequence of vacillating public policy fashionablism that arbitrarily and capriciously rewrote and reworked systems that were both sabotaged and ignorantly reorganized. I previously attended a private school that explicitly didn't go along with the public school's abandonment of practices and techniques that were proven to work. Public schools implemented sweeping changes with little or no scientific evidence for their effectiveness nor risk management. ------ towaway1138 It's not just that it's insipid. More importantly, this sort of thing makes it just that much harder for the women who have been killing it to be taken seriously.

Storing hundreds of millions of simple key-value pairs in Redis - mikeyk http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/12202313862/storing-hundreds-of-millions-of-key-value-pairs-in ====== moxiemk1 The the code the article links to for zipmap.c (<https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/unstable/src/zipmap.c>) is _rather_ literate. I haven't dug extremely deeply into the sources for many F/OSS projects; the code I'm interested in reading has been inevitably opaque (at least to my inexperience). This particular source file (and maybe the rest of Redis?) is really good. I think I'll be taking many more looks at Redis (code- and usage- wise) in the future. ~~~ mikeyk Back when we were getting started with Redis, the readability / concise nature of the project was one of the things that most excited me about it (here's what it looked like around then: [https://github.com/antirez/redis/tree/0b420168b485d0a9c4b66d...](https://github.com/antirez/redis/tree/0b420168b485d0a9c4b66d0a6c341597fb155947)) ~~~ cperciva I'm curious, what in particular makes you say that code is "readable"? Coding style varies dramatically from person to person, and I don't mean this as a criticism of antirez, but any code which doesn't have at minimum a one- line comment before each function explaining its purpose immediately fails the "readability" test for me. Obviously this isn't a problem for you, so I'm curious to hear what your tastes are. ~~~ antirez Hi cperciva, I actually think that comments are not a so important part of code quality. I tend to add comments where my code risks to be not clear by itself, and the zipmap.c code is indeed more commented than my average code since it is all about encoding stuff in a binary blob string, playing with pointers, and so forth. So actually too much comments may even be a sign that something is bad about the code. IMHO good code should be readable since the purpose of different files, functions, statements, data structures, should be obvious (at different levels of course), and every time it is not obvious there should be a comment helping the reader to understand what is going on. My idea is that programmers with time develop a feeling about when a comment is needed. For instance a comment is needed all the times you are writing something that avoids a specific problem but you'll likely not remember why it was needed in a few weeks. Other times comments are useful since the flow of the function is complex and there is no easy way to refactor it into many pieces, so comments help to organize the function in smaller conceptual parts, and so forth. There is no absolute rule, but the reality is that IMHO the test is simple to do for external people: good code is easy to understand and modify without being an expert of that code base. This topic is a good idea for a blog post, since I thought a lot about this issues lately. For instance if you want a place in Redis where code should be improved is in the handling of blocking operations: there are a few things in that code that are absolutely non obvious even adding comments, and you either are a lot "into it" or you'll not have an easy time understanding it. I'm planning a refactoring of that piece of code. ~~~ cperciva _I tend to add comments where my code risks to be not clear by itself_ I used to take that position, but I've started adding more comments in order to avoid "mental stack overflows". Suppose I'm reading function A and trying to understand it, then I find a call to function B which doesn't have any comment explaining what it does; I then go look at function B, and find it has a call to function C which is equally lacking in commentary; and by the time I've read the code in function C to understand what it does and gone back to function B to understand what it's doing I've completely lost track of what I was looking at in function A. Of course, if you already know what most of the code is doing you don't run into such stack overflows because whatever code you're looking at is probably only calling functions you already understand. But for people who are new to the code -- or people who haven't looked at it for a couple years and have forgotten most of the details -- I think asking people to read the code to figure out what a function does is too much of a bar to understanding. ~~~ simplify In my opinion, if you can't figure out what a function does by its name and its parameter names, it is a poorly named and thus poorly documented function. I think function and variable naming is the one of the most important aspects of programming. Without good naming, you can easy double the amount of time it takes to edit and extend functionality. ~~~ mbreese A function may have the perfect name at the time you wrote it. It may make perfect sense within the context that you initially conceived of it. However, after some time away from it, when you're trying to mentally rebuild that context, it may make as much sense as def foo(). Good naming is important, but you also have to know the context, which is more difficult to remember. ~~~ ryanpetrich If it only makes sense within the context it was conceived under, that's not a perfect name. A function name should make sense for someone with understanding of the domain, but no understanding of the code. When that's not possible, comments definitely help. ------ gorset 1 million pair using 16 MB is about 16 bytes per pair, which is perfectly fine but nothing impressive. The dataset is static, so a simple naive solution would be to create a big array sorted by key. Assuming both photo and user IDs use 4 bytes each, this would result in about 2GB of data. Then use binary search to lookup values. However, if we really want to reduce the size, we could build a finite state machine from the dataset (maybe reverse the values to increase the level of shared suffixes) which should reduce the size by an order of magnitude. ~~~ cperciva _The dataset is static_ If I read the article correctly, existing entries won't change but new entries will be inserted. ~~~ mikeyk Yep, ~30 inserts per second go in, so it's not static. ------ petercooper First, I love Redis :-) Second, this functionality seems to be a stop gap to support old users who may be using old clients. So they need an array of 300 million elements each containing an integer of 12 million or less. Assuming 32 bit values (24 would work but.. efficiency), that's a 1,144MB array which, in theory, could be stored as a file and cached through the filesystem cache. I wonder how the performance of that would stack up against Redis. The convenience of Redis being a network daemon out of the box is potentially the big win here, though the memory usage even in the optimized case seems to be around 4x given that it's doing more than the task necessarily requires (from my interpretation of it - I could be wrong!) ------ cperciva _Best of all, lookups in hashes are still O(1), making them very quick._ How quick is "very quick"? I was hoping to see some performance benchmarks, not just memory usage benchmarks. ~~~ minimax _Best of all, lookups in hashes are still O(1), making them very quick._ Based on the zipmap code (linked below), a zipmap is implemented as an array of adjacent (key, value) pairs. Lookup in a zipmap is actually linear search. There is no hashing. The lookup will run in time proportional to the number of entries in the map. _We found this setting was best around 1000; any higher and the HSET commands would cause noticeable CPU activity_ This shouldn't be surprising either, as the redis documentation states that "If a specially encoded value will overflow the configured max size, Redis will automatically convert it into normal encoding." Their higher level hashing strategy of dividing the media id by 1000 guarantees that 1000 is the maximum number of entries in any zipmap. Setting hash-max-zipmap-entries to anything lower than 1000 means some of their zipmaps will be converted to normal redis key/value encodings. <https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/unstable/src/zipmap.c> ~~~ firefoxman1 Wow I didn't realize that redis zipmap lookups aren't actually O(1). I found a document that describes zipmaps as "very memory efficient data structure to represent string to string maps, at the cost of being O(N) instead of O(1) for most operations. Since the constant times of this data structure are very small, and the zipmaps are converted into real hash tables once they are big enough, the amortized time of Redis hashes is still O(1), and in the practice small zipmaps are not slower than small hash tables because they are designed for good cache locality and fast access." <http://redis-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/Hashes.html> ------ mythz I love companies like Instagram who take the time to share their scaling issues and experiences. ------ thezilch You can find similar examples -- ruby code for the "exact" implementation as described by Instagram -- of this and other redis, memory optimization(s) at the Redis site: <http://redis.io/topics/memory-optimization> ------ catwell Lookups are not really O(1), they're O(number of keys per hash) as long as the hashes are zipmaps. When they become full blown hashes the memory usage increases. Still, this is a very good way to store a lot of key/value pairs in Redis. ~~~ pjscott Big-O notation refers to _asymptotic_ behavior. The zipmap encoding of hashes only matters for small values bounded by a constant, so hash lookups are still expected O(1) time in Redis. </extreme-pedantry> ~~~ catwell Your point would be valid if the memory gain observed was not directly dependent on the fact that hashes are zipmap-encoded. So the trade-off here is between the constant factor of time complexity and the constant factor of memory complexity. ------ pedigree Why use clear text numbers? Most of the time, you're going to be using large numbers, so binary pack them as save more space. i had the same issue, normal storage was 1.1gb of space, HSET down to 200mb and binary packing every integer down dbl() bought it right down to 163mb of memory (32bit instance). For that 163mb, I was slicing a md5 of the field for the hset prefix, packing that and then using the remainer as the hset suffix. (due to the data format of the input field) ~~~ eurleif Internally, redis stores integers as 64-bit binary values, not strings: <http://redis.io/commands/incr>. ~~~ LeafStorm I don't think it does that for keys and values in hashes though. The only int- related optimization it does in the collections is integer sets. ------ zellyn Why use the whole Media ID as the key within the bucket, rather than just the last three digits? ~~~ ctoestreich I think they were trying to keep the hash sizes to ~1000 elements each key. At a 3 digit key you would be increasing the hashes to 300k elements each. You should augment the scripts and see if that has an impact on the performance, would be curious to see. ------ examancer The hash data type is probably the most awesome and underused feature of redis. Here is a small gem I wrote to expose it a little better in ruby: <https://github.com/lyconic/redis-native_hash>

Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists - kkleiner http://singularityhub.com/2011/05/17/eight-out-of-chinas-top-nine-government-officials-are-scientists/ ====== lionhearted But, but, but... they're not democratic! If only they'd put more power in the hands of the common man, they too could enjoy such luminous choices for statesmen as McCain vs. Obama, Bush II vs. Kerry, Bush II vs Gore, Dole vs. Clinton, Bush I vs. Clinton... ...we gotta keep saber rattling that our way is better than theirs. Boo China, boo. Edit: To the downvoter - okay, I'm joking around. But which of these premises do you disagree with? 1\. The United States has more electoral politics in choosing its leaders than China. 2\. The last 20 years of leadership in China show a much more nuanced understanding of policy and statesmanship than American leadership, where charisma and mass appeal tends to be more important than "hard credentials." 3\. There might be a cause-and-effect relationship between point 1 and point 2. Disagree with any of those? Yeah I'm joking around, but it's worth thinking about, no? Or maybe it's upsetting to think about... that I sympathize with... ~~~ Duff Communist governments have usually attracted intellectuals to higher levels of power -- the results so far haven't been uplifting. I don't think that a comparison of the US system vs. China is going to produce a clear "winner", only a list of pros/cons whose weighting will be shaped by your perceptions and bias. The explosive growth of China hides most of the warts of the system. When you have economic growth so fast that new, uninhabited cities get built, there's obviously some excess and policy issues at play. The US is an imperial power, and the conduct of policy and statesmanship changes in that role. While the President is the front-man and sets the agenda, the work is done and policy is made by anonymous officials in the sprawling bureaucracy. And I betcha if you analyzed a Chinese and American bureaucrat, you would find that they look, act and think alike. ~~~ lionhearted Nuanced comment here, good analysis. I agree with a lot, but two nitpicks about the first point - 1\. I'd say Communist _movements_ attract intellectuals. Communist governments usually do not employ those intellectuals for very long after taking power. 2\. Despite the name and symbols, I don't think China is actually Communist any more. I don't know what to call them. If they remain a world power and continue to thrive, I'd bet quite a lot that a new word will be coined for their precise political/economic/geographical/military mix - there's quite literally no comps in history for what they're doing right now. ~~~ dtegart For number 2. you could argue that they are mercantilist. Most of the enterprises are state backed, much like the Dutch or British East India companies. So the state takes a pretty big role in determining which companies will succeed. ~~~ electromagnetic You could argue that the Chinese state as a whole is in fact a large corporation. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need(s)." A leaders best ability is to lead. Hence, you would end up with intellectuals, scientists, economists and others who have a strong grasp of complex theories and systems. Opposed to having actors and political pretty boys leading. Marx's saying goes even further with the corporate metaphor. The lower the 'worker' in the 'corporation' the less they get 'paid'/'need'. How is there any real difference with how Walmart views its minimum wage workers to how China views its farmers or sweatshop workers? From the top they're all just pawns to make a profit. ------ run4yourlives While this is no doubt going to be unpopular here on HackerNews, I'm going to posit the following: This is almost as bad as have 8 of 9 people being Creationists. Better than 90% of a council making decisions for the whole country being of the same persuasion is prone to severe group think. Scientists (or rather, engineers, if you RTFA) aren't immune to this any more than any of us are. If you look at the best run businesses, they are often composed of people with variable backgrounds - people that approach problems from different perspectives. This has two major benefits: First, it allows you to gain from solutions that come from as many types of thought processes as possible and more importantly, it prevents you from blindly following dogma - if you can't convince somebody that doesn't follow your thought patterns of the viability or necessity of a particular idea, it probably shouldn't be perused. One child policies that have resulted in a generation of males without females is pretty much exactly the type of policy I'd expect from a group of engineers. ~~~ maxklein The one child policy was not created by this cadre of leadership. The male/female imbalance also happens in India, which does not have such a policy. ~~~ run4yourlives While India does in fact have a similar imbalance, I invite you to look at the problem in the context of this image: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sex_ratio_below_15_per_cou...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sex_ratio_below_15_per_country_smooth.png) Also: (order the chart descending by either at birth or <15) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio> The numbers are actually much stronger than I thought they would be. ~~~ maxklein Why are you picking out the data that best supports your thesis? 15–64 shows India and China at exactly the same ratio, even though India has no 1 child policy at all. The gender imbalance problem does not come from the 1 child policy. Don't pick and choose data to fit what you think, look at all of it. ~~~ run4yourlives The one child policy was only enacted in 1978. It stands to reason then that the 15-64 bracket isn't fully representing the effects of the policy. The only brackets that properly account for impact of the policy are the more recent ones. ~~~ maxklein Just look at it backwards. Even before the 1 child policy, both china and india have had a gender imbalance favouring males. After the 1 child policy in china alone, both india and china had a strong growth in gender imbalance, with china being only somewhat stronger. Your "control" without the 1 child policy also exhibited the same strong growth. A scientist would reasonably conclude that the 1 child policy seems to have little relevance to the issue, considering that another comparable country behaved in exactly the same manner without have such a policy in place. ~~~ run4yourlives Both China and India share pretty much exactly the same imbalance until the last two age-cohorts as you suggest, but while both increase, China's does so substantially more. This can't be ignored as being "exactly the same manner". To do so is being scientifically irresponsible. My take is that both cultures have very prominent views on the preference for male children. You can see this even in the large Chinese and Indian communities here in North America. What has most likely happened is that the one child policy has simply enabled those cultural preferences in China much more than the exist in India. It's also interesting that India itself has at several times flirted with restrictive population polices, including forced sterilization at right around the same time as China introduced their family planning program. While that doesn't suggest that the one child policies are the _only_ cause, I think there is enough evidence there to suggest they are a factor. Nonetheless, all of this wasn't actually a real focus of my original point at all. ------ geebee This is a good article, but it does miss one incredibly important piece of the puzzle - the possibility that US citizens have an economically rational aversion to PhDs in science and engineering. A recent RAND study supports this point of view: <http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html> I think it's critical to make science and engineering a desirable career path for young americans, but simply "making it cool" isn't the way to go - and could (as the article points out) actually be destructive in that it would cause harm to students who responded to the pr campaign only to find long training times and poor career prospects relative to their friends who did law, dentistry, medicine, mba, etc. ~~~ baguasquirrel That's funny... Americans don't have an economically rational aversion to becoming movie stars in much the same way. ~~~ geebee yeah, that is an amusing observation. of course, President Obama and various talking heads don't fret about the shortage of Americans in film school. The serious question is whether we should launch a PR campaign to encourage young people to make decisions that may lead (at least according to RAND) to long training times with poor pay and career prospects _relative_ to other paths typically available to the "best and brightest". ~~~ xiaoma If the issue is public policy, then the goal should be public good, not individual good. It's very possible that the best and brightest could live in greater comfort as criminals than scientists, but even if that were the case, any rational government would encourage them to be scientists since that would be better for the country. Edit: Seriously? Care to explain your reasoning, downmodders? Why would a government encourage decisions that are destructive to society? ~~~ geebee That's not at all a bad point. There are some activities that economists view aS rent collecting (or even wealth destroying) that are lucrative for the individual. Scientists and engineers are generally seen as the opposite of this (unless it's financial engineering). Almost every government actively tries to poach engineers from abroad... Still, I recommend you read the rand study. They discuss ways to make sci/eng more appealing rather than launching a pr campaign to merely make it appear more appealing. The second could end up creating an even greater aversion to this career path. ------ igorlev If you were educated in a communist country at any time from 50s to 80s you would pretty much by default be either a scientist, an engineer, an architect or a doctor. Most likely an engineer. It's like trying to predict the behavior of a Model-T buyer based on their color preference. ------ cjoh I'll point out its a rookie mistake to compare what is basically the executive branch of China's government to America's representative branch. It's apples to oranges. Looking at the executive branch, the United States has: State, Hillary Clinton, Lawyer Treasury, Timothy Geithner, International Economics Defense, Robert Gates, PhD History Justice, Eric Holder, Lawyer Interior, Ken Salazar, Lawyer Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, Lawyer Commerce, Gary Locke, Lawyer Labor, Hilda Solis, MPA Health Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, MPA Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, MPA, Masters in Architecture Transportation, Ray Lahood, B.S. Education and Sociology. Department of Energy, Stephen Chu, Ph.D. Physics Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, Masters in English Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, Lawyer Vice President, Joe Biden, Lawyer Chief of Staff, William Daley, Lawyer Director OMB, Jacob Lew, Lawyer Administrator EPA, Lisa Jackson, Chemical Engineering Trade Rep, Ron Kirk, Lawyer UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, Doctorate in Philosophy Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Austan Goolsbee, Ph. D Economics Better to draw your comparisons with this, than with congress. ------ bendmorris Not to nitpick, but they're engineers. The previous President, Jiang Zemin, was also an electrical engineer - before that generation, most leaders were educated by their experiences (i.e. the Long March) and not formally schooled. It is interesting that not only are there cultural differences in the ways Chinese and western leaders approach problems, but also there's the "engineering" approach vs. the "legal" or "social sciences" approach more often seen in western nations. ~~~ moomin The distinction between a scientist and an engineer is important here. In the dark days of modern China, mathematicians and scientists were regarded with as much suspicion as poets and philosophers. Engineering was one of the most intellectual professions you could have without being regarded as the enemy. (As for lawyers: there's not a lot of point in being a legal expert anywhere rule by fiat is common.) The problem with the "engineering" approach is that it treats stability as an axiomatic good. It's quite hard to incorporate the rights of weird religious groups, troublesome journalists and out-and-out revolutionaries into such a world-view. ~~~ Unseelie A lot of that stability approach can be traced back through much of the history of the Han, to the point that I'd argue the engineering background isn't the source of the stabilizing pressure, but rather a facet of the Han culture. ------ Eliezer Eight Out Of Nine American Bloggers Cannot Distinguish Between The Concept of A "Scientist" (As In Someone Who Devises Reproducible Experiments To Test Ideas To Determine Whether They Are Right Or Wrong, And Rejects The Wrong Ones) And Anyone In A Technical Profession. ~~~ mahrain ...and did you know that 78% of all statistics are made up on the spot? ------ DanielN Chinese government is dominated by engineers for the same reason that US government is dominated by lawyers, Japanese government is dominated by businessmen and French government is dominated by doctors and teachers. These are the most easily accessible prestige positions in the given country. ------ Apocryphon A relevant article from 2009 contrasting prevalence of American lawyer politicians vs. Chinese engineer politicians vs. French civil servants and so on. <http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638> ------ przemelek One thing ;-) Author of this text wrote: "You have to be pretty popular to get elected, so should we conclude that Chinese people in general look up to and admire their scientists?" But those in China's government wasn't elected in popular vote and for sure not in election like those in US or other western countries. So it isn't in this way that Chines people in general look up to and admire scientists, but Communists Party of China look up to and admire scientists. But in general I agree, it looks that China and Korea are much more in science than in humanities. ~~~ huherto interesting observation. It seems to me that the previous generation of leaders had an aspiration that the new leaders were better prepared than them. I imagine the old leaders had an admiration for science and engineering even though they were not really knowledgeable about it; they probably selected and groomed the new leaders with this in mind. ------ westiseast There's an emphasis on science, but it's not an Enlightenment style love of the scientific method that drives this phenomenon. Why not come at it from a different angle - what good would it be to be a philosopher in China? How far would you get? Or what about lawyers, in a country that has a pretty unhealthy disregard for legal process? No, the reason scientists and engineers form that majority is because it's how you get ahead in Chinese society. China doesn't want (or tolerate) artistic and liberal sensitivities - it wants economic development and industry. ------ gaius Also Yulia Tymoshenko, rightful heir to the throne of Ukraine, is a cyberneticist. It seems to be a regular trend in former Communist countries, that political leaders have a technical background. ~~~ llcoolv Not really. For one, China is still a totalitarian (communist is really wrongly used here) country. And also my impression is that Tymoshenko is more of an isolated case - my guess would be that most of the current post- totalitarian leaders are either former officers (Putin, Borissov, Basescu), humanitarian/law majors (Komorowski, Parvanov, Orban, Gasparovic) or economists (Havel). Unfortunately most of them come from the first category :/ ~~~ Wuzzy I don't know much about the other ones, but Havel most assuredly is not an economist. He has a cultural background and is an author of a number of theater pieces. His successor at the post of Czech president (Klaus) is an economist, so maybe that's where the confusion comes from. Just as a matter of interest - the current Czech prime minister, who, at least in theory, has more power than the president, has graduated in physics, and has actually worked in research for some time. Angela Merkel (coming from Eastern Germany) has also a scientific background (in physics and chemistry). But otherwise, it seems you are right about the fact that there is no such rule about post-totalitarian leaders being educated in engineering or sciences in general. ~~~ llcoolv I stand corrected - just read that Havel has studied economcs for only two years before dropping out and that's probably the reason I have remembered him (wrongly) as an economist - I must have read it somewhere and it has probably stuck in my mind. Btw, the rest of the Eastern European countries can learn a lot of things from the Czechs. ------ shmulkey18 Perhaps this should cause some reflection on the following question: why do scientists seem to be disproportionately inclined to serve authoritarian regimes? My guess is that scientists believe that people like themselves -- people whose ability in one field they imagine transfers to many others -- should control the world, and those that they consider their intellectual inferiors should shut up and surrender control to cognitive ubermenschen. Unfortunately, that idea hasn't worked out too well in the past. ------ stcredzero _Oh, we forgot about our head of the class: China. Astonishingly, since 1980 China has not won a single scientific Nobel Prize. Keep in mind, this is a country of 1.3 billion people._ If China is ruled by engineers, then it is ruled by groups that understand the economic implications of the rocket equation and how this can be overcome using existing technology. Moving off-world is going to be the next huge watershed in human history and economic growth, much as the age of exploration and colonization of North America by Europeans was the last one. Making the leap past Type I on the Kardashev scale won't necessarily involve Nobel Prize winning breakthroughs in science. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale> Instead, it will involve massive brute engineering and the political will to devote the resources to bootstrap it. The Chinese "Civilization State", ruled by engineers, is in a unique position to marshall those resources and be in the vanguard of what will be an economic and historic explosion of development. [http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/u-s-needs-to-deepen-its- unde...](http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/u-s-needs-to-deepen-its- understanding-149449.aspx) I've seen this coming for almost a decade. If trends continue, China will not only be the next dominant power, but Chinese Civilization in the inner solar system will be to the last half of the 21st century what North America was to the 20th. ------ adamc Having trained as a hydraulic engineer doesn't make Hu Jintao a scientist, it makes him an engineer. There's a difference. ------ varjag They are not scientists, they are administrators with science and engineering degrees. ------ giardini The linked article is titled "Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are _Scientists_" but... The article it references states "...eight of the top nine political posts are held by _engineers_." but unfortunately does not name them. ------ tokenadult About a decade ago, when I was studying the history of mathematics, I noticed that in 1776, the world's greatest mathematician (Leonhard Euler) was in St. Petersburg, Russia, just when many of the world's greatest political scientists were either in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the signers of the Declaration of Independence) or in various parts of Britain (e.g, Edmund Burke and Adam Smith). To this day, the Russian-speaking world exceeds the English- speaking world in the quality of its primary and secondary mathematics instruction, and it is perhaps no accident that the first of the Clay Millennium Prize problems <http://www.claymath.org/millennium/> was solved by a mathematician who was educated in Russia. But also to this day, the United States and Britain enjoy an astonishing degree of political and economic freedom and rule of law <http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=594> and gain many of their best mathematicians and mathematics educators as immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. It is too early to say whether a lot of engineering-trained persons in government is mostly a feature or mostly a bug. I wish China well in going the direction of Taiwan (another place long ruled by technocrats) in developing the rule of law and an open political system with many guarantees of personal liberty. But it is by no means an invariant characteristic of human societies that those with the best math and science minds thrive best over the long term. P.S. You did see below the fold on the submitted article, didn't you, what the blog author thinks China can count on just from the fact of the educational background of its leaders? Not much, just from that fact. P.P.S. to respond to first reply: It's my understanding that the government of the Federal Republic of Germany consciously DE-emphasized technical education after World War II in favor of more emphasis on humanities and social science in the primary and secondary school curriculum. I thought it would trigger a mention of Godwin's Law <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law> if I brought this up at first, but I've read that many observers of prewar Germany under the Third Reich looked at the quality of the scientists there (very high indeed) and thought that Germany would be hard to beat in the war. It is well known to people who read interesting histories of World War II, such as mathematician T.W. Körner's book The Pleasures of Counting, [http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Counting-T- W-K%C3%B6rner/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Counting-T- W-K%C3%B6rner/dp/0521568234) that there was a battle of scientists versus scientists in the war to find smart methods for fighting the other side. Ultimately, despite the great advantage that German's prewar primary and secondary schools and universities and civil service system gave Germany in building up a supply of smart technocrats, the Nazis' disregard of personal liberty drove away many of Germany's best scientists (notably, many Jewish scientists) and added talent to the Allied side. ~~~ Maro Interesting. Where do you put Germans in all this? ~~~ sedachv It's not often mentioned today, but in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries the Germanic states were a massive source of high-skilled emigrants. In the 18th and somewhat the 19th centuries as professors and colonists to Russia and the USA, after WWI a large number of German engineers were employed in the USSR (most of them were expelled in 1937), and many more emigrated to the USA. The next large wave took place after WWII. ~~~ stcredzero Just as Werner Von Braun's character in "The Right Stuff" said: "NO, our Germans are Better!" ------ est there is a difference between a scientist and someone with an engineering degree ------ Apocryphon And for some reason, many high-profile, that is, thwarted or captured, terrorists are engineers: [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB- IdeaLab-t.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB- IdeaLab-t.html?scp=1&amp;sq=Berreby&amp;st=cse) ------ rdixit The author first points out that science and engineering Ph.D.'s are disproportionately Asian, and that many return to their mother nations after education. That's true. He then points out that national success is built on the back of technology and science. Also true. But by ending with a back- patting, reassuring comparison with Japan and the claim that Americans have that truly essential quality, "entrepreneurial spirit" and innovation, and Asian nations don't, he makes a claim that reeks of hubris and will likely be quickly proved untrue. Science is the gas pedal, innovation is the fuel-- but without the pedal your full tank of gas isn't going to take your car anywhere. Confidence without substance is empty. My 2 cents ------ dreamdu5t So politicians in China aren't bozos, but the politicians in the US are? Oh please. The top 9 government officials are no more intellectual than many of those in Obama's cabinet. Economic growth is not the only measure of success. In fact, it is one of many. ------ calpaterson Bear in mind that a strong part of this is the fact that these guys are trying to use economic planning. In between all these Americans complaining (fairly) about their country's legal power culture, this is an important distinction. Most Western governments aren't economic planners, so technocracy is less interesting/appealing. ------ speleding The article dances around the main reason the PISA scores don't say much about innovation, but doesn't say it: For innovation it's the top 5-10% that counts not the average. I wouldn't be surprised if a study that compared the best 5% of students worldwide showed the US in a very different place, much higher in the rankings. ------ sudhirc They may be because when they were growing up studying science was their ticket to wealth,respect, and power. Arguments, disagreements, and self correction are pillars of scientific minds. Autocratic society in which a small disagreement can result is you vanishing, cannot possible nurture scientific minds. ------ patfla My reading of the Chinese classics - or rather their authors - is that, historically, the single greatest ambition of China's intellectuals was to advise rulers on better governance. Which didn't seem to me a particularly productive or healthy relationship between the intellectual and political classes. ~~~ forensic everybody just wants power, nerds and jocks alike ------ dimmuborgir Countries should be led by economists, not scientists/engineers. The Chinese economy is one giant mess. Too many imbalances, over-investments and bubbles. The spectacular 10% GDP growth rate was possible mainly because of bullying i.e., artificial depreciation of yuan giving unfair advantage to Chinese exporters. ------ braindead_in Are they scientists or engineers? As far as I know scientists do research, write papers, file for patents etc. etc. and Engineers build stuff. How many papers have the published? Also, being a scientist does not mean that you will be a good administrator or politician. Politics is better left to politicians. ------ orenmazor well that's just great. how many layers do you have to unpeel from our government before you find anybody that isn't a lawyer. ~~~ Apocryphon Different national political cultures, apparently. <http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638> ~~~ stcredzero _WHEN Barack Obama met Hu Jintao, his Chinese counterpart, at the G20 summit in London, it was an encounter not just between two presidents, but also between two professions and mindsets. A lawyer, trained to argue from first principles and haggle over words, was speaking to an engineer, who knew how to build physical structures and keep them intact._ The Chinese should build a Space Pier, in the form of a massive ramp with a huge accelerator on it. ------ teyc This is a direct result of elections. People chose those who are more like themselves. In China, the political elite also choose those who are similar in outlook. If the original ones were engineers, so to will the new rising stars be engineers. ------ trustfundbaby I wonder how many people actually read the article before commenting ------ comex "Remember him from Black Mesa? Your old administrator?" ------ adamc Having ------ omouse Scientists in the mold of capitalists and totalitarians? Disgusting.

Molecule-sized motors that drill through the surface of cancer cells - chmod775 https://phys.org/news/2019-05-chemists-cancer-killing-drill.html ====== LifeLiverTransp What happens in the lab, stays in the lab

Streaming video contributes to climate change - microdrum https://www.dw.com/en/is-netflix-bad-for-the-environment-how-streaming-video-contributes-to-climate-change/a-49556716 ====== plink It isn’t absurd in the sense that it’s untrue. It is factual that using electricity generated by carbon emitting processes affects climate change, but to factor every keystroke I’m making right this instant is a thought exercise warranting ridicule. We can cite the other extreme and condemn Bitcoin blockchain maintenance as an energy travesty. ------ microdrum To be clear, this is absurd. I'm posting so that the community can enjoy. ~~~ aphextim Thank you for this. Was so absurd it was laughable. One of my favorite videos on how they like to use climate change to be the 'explain everything' theory. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huKY5DzrcLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huKY5DzrcLI)

Alaska’s universal basic income problem - Ygg2 https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/5/20849020/alaska-permanent-fund-universal-basic-income ====== mojomark "[Author] Robyn Sundlee is a research fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. She was the campaign manager for Alaska State Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D) in 2018." Interesting article, but I recommend reading knowing with this information up front. ~~~ kwhitefoot I read it without knowing that. Now that I do know it my opinion of the piece has not changed. Do you mean that I should discount the parts that seem to be statements of verifiable fact (call her a liar) or that I should simply not put exessive trust in her opinions (which pretty much goes without saying when you read something on the net written by someone one has never heard of before)? Those of us not steeped in the minutiae of Alaskan politics in particular and US politics in general would need a lot more than that tiny fact to form any strong opinions either way. Most of it seemed unexceptional to me except for the suggestion that the PFD is universal basic income. It's universal by definition but as far as I can tell most proponents of basic income are proposing an amount of money that is enough to live on (not live well but not starve or be homeless). The Alaskan PFD is a long way from that so while it gives strong hints about how UBI might work or not work the sheer scale of UBI is likely to throw up other challenges. ~~~ mojomark I was just highlighting the fact that the author led the campaign for the candidate who lost just last year to the candidate proposing the PFD hike. That's certainly reason to suspect an unfair bias towards the implication that the PFD system is broken. I'm not saying it's not, but I would not hang my hat on this piece alone without more information and possibly giving more than a year to see how everything actually shakes out. If I were the author, I would have inserted a disclosure statement at the beginning. It all sounds logical, I'm simply stating that the author is far from an impartial reporter.

Ask HN: What is minimum viable product? - pyeu Share your thoughts on finding and executing viable ideas. ====== x0hm It's the minimum set of requirements to have a fully functional, usable product. The MVP has to be customer-ready, so it has to be as minimally feature- complete as possible. ------ BjoernKW It's the minimal setup that allows you to test a hypothesis about a proposed product or an existing product's next iteration. ------ duiker101 Whatever works that demonstrates an idea of something that can be achieved. ~~~ ocdtrekkie I would argue the MVP is what you can sell to customers. And if your business is going to succeed, your MVP arguably needs to be something that is not just good enough to sell to customers, but which customers will come back for more when you're ready to launch the next thing. ------ perfect_loop It's usually the product with the smallest set of features that can show whether there is going to be traction with the offering.

German university issues 38k passwords by hand after malware infection - kkm https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-than-38000-people-will-stand-in-line-this-week-to-get-a-new-password/ ====== myself248 Honestly, I think this is pretty smart. If someone has compromised your electronic systems, they can probably solve whatever electronic recovery means you've implemented, and they can probably do so on a large scale, re-compromising all the new accounts. Adding an in-person step makes things harder for the attackers in two ways: 1: It relies on existing ID cards, which presumably the attackers can't telekinetically change while they sit in people's pockets or something. 2: It's hard to attack at scale. Conceivably someone could make a fake ID and pose as a staff member or something, but the same person wouldn't get away with that more than a few times before someone in the office noticed that they looked familiar. And it's slow -- humans work at a finite speed, so brute- forcing 38,000 visits to an office isn't as practical as spawning a bunch of threads to attack login sessions or something. I think despite the inconvenience, this is a sane way to respond to a compromise, if your users are local and can visit an office to pull it off. At a major automaker who I won't name, they have an interesting way of handling password resets: They generate a new random password for you, and send half of it by SMS to the mobile phone in your employee record. Then they email the other half to your manager. Managers have instructions that when an employee calls to retrieve this (or if the manager has a moment to call the employee first), they should spend a moment in conversation first, really make sure they recognize the employee's voice and stuff, and if there's any doubt, ask them to meet at the personnel building badging office, where the administrative folk can check IDs and stuff. It works pretty well -- it would be _very_ hard to attack this system, especially at scale. ~~~ cesarb > It's hard to attack at scale. Conceivably someone could make a fake ID The "make a fake ID" step by itself is already hard. The identity card is not just a piece of paper. Take a look at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_identity_card#Security_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_identity_card#Security_features) to see how many anti-counterfeiting features it has. ~~~ iancarroll Nearly every feature in that list, save for maybe security strands, is commoditized and mass-produced in the USA's fake ID market. It would be kind of silly to exploit here, though. ~~~ wongarsu I guess Germany's liberal drinking laws make for a much smaller fake ID market. You could still pull it off, especially since most people aren't really trained for spotting fake IDs. But a German fake ID is not exactly something you buy for $10 each at the drug dealer on the corner. ~~~ namibj Especially considering it has cryptographically secured biometrics (iirc facial features and a subset of fingerprints) that can be accessed with credentials printed on the back. If they were to make use of that, any forgery would be be beyond the regular fake id market. The German Personalausweis is basically a stateless ID-1 passport. ~~~ neuronic > The German Personalausweis is basically a stateless ID-1 passport. And as property it belongs to the state, not the citizen. You are required and expected to have it on you at all times. You are also required to report it missing. When I moved to the US, I was baffled that IDs are basically just driving licenses and you only have them if you... well have a driving license. I guess it's about where you draw the line in the end. I understand that many US Americans feel threatened by the federal government as it is perceived autocratic to be forced to carry a government issued identification card at all times. For me, it just guarantees that it is harder for someone else to walk around and impersonate me with some shitty fake ID. ~~~ TomMarius > You are required and expected to have it on you at all times. I'd be very surprised about that. That's a law most of formerly communist Europe has cancelled immediately after the revolutions ~~~ dekrg Prepare to be surprised then as optional IDs are pretty much only a thing western countries. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card_policies_by_country) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identity_cards_in_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identity_cards_in_the_European_Economic_Area#Overview_of_national_identity_cards) ~~~ Tomte Bad reference. Again Germany: it's colored red, but the table clearly states that you don't need to carry it. Which is the statement you tried to counter with your link. ------ pro_zac "As an added precaution, the university computing center decided to issue new passwords for all 38,000 JLU email accounts. However, the university was unable to do this online because of a quirk of German law, whereby the German National Research and Education Network (DFN) requires, in this case, JLU students and staff to obtain their new passwords in person from the university's IT staff, using as ID card to prove their identity." ~~~ SamuelAdams I'm curious to know what law this is and why other organizations in Germany do not have to resort to a similar tactic to reset passwords. ~~~ wongarsu I think this might be a misquote. DNF is a registered association/charity which is providing network services for universities and research facilities (originally German, but spreading across Europe and beyond). They are the ISP of most German Universities, and more relevant to the topic they operate Eduroam, a wifi where any student or staff member can access their internet using their login credentials (username/password login via WPA 2 Enterprise). It's really handy because even if you are at another university you can still access the wifi, and any misuse (==people getting sued for torrenting) is easy to track. As such it stands to reason that they set rules for how credentials used to authenticate to their wifi are handled. And basically always those are the credentials for your university account. tl;dr: almost certainly not a law, but rules most Universities have to abide to if they want to keep their ISP and wifi. ~~~ usrusr So basically the equivalent of requiring ID for getting a phone SIM, thanks for the clarification. Did not make much sense otherwise for just email or even for active user accounts (as in unix logins), because if you have tens of thousands of them your security model surely cannot rely on the assumption that none of them are bad actors. "Just like a phone SIM" is also where it definitely enters the realm of legal requirements. Certainly debatable, but there can't be much precedent and then it's the usual struggle between a perhaps careless group appealing to common sense and a maximum correctness camp that wants to go by the book, in its most pessimistic interpretation. When under a malware attack like that, even the slightest trace of neglect on the technical side can punish you hard. It's no surprise that the required mindset of extreme prudence carries over to the legal side. I still don't believe that the ID check would be the only correct way to handle this (e.g. snail mail still goes a long way in terms of checking legal boxes), but they surely are not in the mood for taking risks right now. ------ iforgotpassword So they're just running some av software from a live system on all systems and call it a day.... Dec 8th has been a while and there's no information around which malware this actually was. If it's really a targeted attack with some previously unknown malware, I wouldn't really feel like that's sufficient. Most companies have policies that require a full reinstall of infected systems or even just go ahead and replace the physical machine. ~~~ ozim Most companies you know... For IT systems it is quite easy if you have money required. For OT-operational technology, I just got to know they keep infected machines running, they wall those off. Because you cannot just replace physical machine that is running some complicated chemical process just like that. Some factories also do not have money to replace some Win XP or they cannot replace Win XP because all the drivers for specific hardware are not working on new stuff. Life time of systems in OT is 20 years not like IT 5 years. ------ franek I'm a student at that university, though I don't have any contacts to the IT department or other sources of inside information. I went to collect my new password already. The process was pretty smooth with only a little confusion where the queue split up alphabetically (not quite enough room, although it took place in a large gym; I guess they rightly prioritized giving the people behind the desks enough room to work). It's interesting to see which systems of the university are more or less robust to the network blackout. Email is down, which has the nice side effect that people who would otherwise only communicate in written form now make calls or physical visits (as they cannot look up phone numbers on the web) to each others' offices. The library catalogue is not working, though apparently they successfully switched to a paper-based system for lending books after a few days (haven't tried it yet). The electronic payment system of the canteens appears completely unaffected. (I read on a sign recently that it is considered "obsolete" and subject to renewal – good thing they hadn't done that yet, I guess). The web platform with reading material for seminars is down. In some cases seminar presentations have to be given without slideshow projection because the designated presentation laptop got a red sticker. I don't now how labs with data on the central servers are doing (I'm in the humanities). ------ darkhorn I thought that this is always the case. At METU when you register to the university they give you password by hand (printed inside of a letter). In case your account is compromised they block your account and you have to go to the computer center so that they give you a new password. There is no "I forgot my password" button. It is like this for at least from early 2000s. Probably from 1990s. ~~~ thalassos Somehow with my german bank account I undergo through the same process. If I happen to fail the online banking password 3 times, I must go in person to the bank to unlock my account. ------ ptah typically, better security practices tend to lead to more discomfort for users ~~~ ChrisSD That's not entirely true. Adding too much discomfort to users reduces security by encouraging people to workaround or otherwise undermine the system. Many of the best security practices ideally make doing the secure thing easy. When this is not possible you have to try to at least limit the discomfort caused and make it resistant to subversion by even trusted individuals. ------ StavrosK Does anyone know whether password+key is a supported WebAuthn use case? I don't mean whether the standard supports it (it does), but whether it's planned. I would love to use my Yubikey + PIN to log in to sites passwordlessly, but it seems that so far the only thing that anyone uses WebAuthn for is as a second factor. ~~~ tialaramex [https://www.passwordless.dev/usernameless](https://www.passwordless.dev/usernameless) lets you try this flow out but I'd be surprised to see any significant adoption for the Web generally unless FIDO itself takes off first, because FIDO2 capable devices are more expensive. I can't justify telling people to pay extra when the core feature is not yet widely used. ~~~ StavrosK Thanks, that's very useful! I've been trying for ages to get my Yubikey to ask me for my PIN that I've set on it when authenticating, to no avail. It doesn't seem reasonable to have a site authenticate me with no PIN, since someone could just steal my yubikey and log in as me everywhere. Would anyone happen to know how I can force asking for a PIN? ~~~ tialaramex The flow you're asking for (PIN required to do ordinary FIDO not just for FIDO2 passwordless auth) seems like a weird choice and I doubt it's possible. This hypothetical person has to get your password from somewhere. The mode most (essentially all non-test sites I've seen) used has FIDO only as second factor, so the bad guy needs your first factor (invariably a password) as well as the stolen Yubikey. You're asking for a three factor system, with two factors you know, plus a final factor you have. The improvement in threat resistance is small and the added inconvenience is large. ~~~ StavrosK Oh no, sorry. I'm asking for FIDO2 passwordless. Right now I can do that (e.g. at [https://www.passwordless.dev/passwordless](https://www.passwordless.dev/passwordless)), but the Yubikey doesn't ask for a PIN, which is insecure, since anyone stealing it can auth as me. I simply want passwordless auth to ask for my PIN. EDIT: It turns out Chrome does ask for the PIN (Firefox doesn't), but only when registering (not when logging in). This raises the question, why can the browser log me in without a PIN? Then the thief can simply use one of those browsers. ~~~ tialaramex The site you're looking at offers a variety of different WebAuthn flows. I linked the one that behaves how you described, requiring a PIN (and yes it requires the PIN to log in) but now you've found and linked a different flow that doesn't require PINs and sure enough it doesn't require PINs. I guess you could say the site is badly labelled. The true FIDO2 flow that I linked you to above is labelled usernameless rather than passwordless. The flow they've called passwordless works with an ordinary FIDO key it doesn't need FIDO2. Because it simply doesn't have a password. Passwordless. Simple. ~~~ StavrosK Trying it on Chrome, it works as you say. On Firefox it just failed to auth, I assumed it was because my Yubikey lacked onboard storage for storing the user details but it looks like it's because of the lack of PIN support. Thanks. ------ acd Been in a similar password reset situation at a university and it’s pain! I hope they implement 2fa two factor authentication since that will stop between 70-99% of password attacks. ~~~ m-p-3 If the malware managed to compromise the authentication server, including the shared secret (ex: Google Authenticator) tied to each account that will not help much. ~~~ Tepix That's why you should use a HSM for that. ------ PeterStuer Thing is as far as I can Google they have not identified how the network got compromised in the first place? So they are issuing bootable USB sticks for scanning computers and manually providing new email (I guess University account) passwords, but how would that prevent the same thing happening again in the same unpatched way next week? ------ duxup Is there any more detail on this "quirk of German law" really is? ~~~ fh973 I think it is just policy of the German Research Network (DFN) for accounts. These accounts are valid Europe-wide for WLAN access in educational institutions for example. ~~~ duxup That's kinda how it reads. I didn't think of that as "law" and that is what sort of piqued my interest, that there would be a law about this specifically. ------ slynn12 You can't hack pen and paper :) - I don't hate it. ------ plumeria Why no simply reset the passwords and enforce 2FA? ~~~ theandrewbailey It would violate a (stupid) law. ~~~ ashildr no, it has nothing to do with a “stupid” law, it seems to me the article is misleading. It has to do with being a trusted source of identity information and fscking up very thoroughly: The university of Giessen is providing it’s members identity services for the DFN Network (German Research Network) with a high degree of reliance called _advanced_. This degree requires that „for identification, users must present themselves in person with an official ID. The enrolment and recruitment procedures established by the universities are considered as equivalent.“ ( see [https://doku.tid.dfn.de/en:degrees_of_reliance](https://doku.tid.dfn.de/en:degrees_of_reliance) ) It seems to me that this university’s services are a very interesting target. ~~~ 0b0001 The university website mentions student ID cards with chip. Is that not sufficient to provide strong authentication towards a self-service portal for password reset? ~~~ datenwolf > The university website mentions student ID cards with chip. Is that not > sufficient to provide strong authentication towards a self-service portal > for password reset? In theory it should be sufficient. In practice there is very little awareness of the capabilities of these smartcards and that they could, in theory, be used as a 2FA token. These cards are mostly used for physical access control, library pass and cafeteria payment. There's left a lot to be desired in most (german) university networks. Yes, there is usually some sort of Radius and 801.1X infrastructure in place, but it's only used for WiFi login and eduroam, not for machines plugged into wall sockets. Yes, there usually is some sort of Active Directory and/or Kerberos infrastructure in place (yes, I am aware that AD is essentially LDAP + Kerberos), but it's often used only for the student computer pools, but not office workstations. There seems to be zero awareness, that if you have AD and/or Kerberos authentication working in place (one can only dream of it being coupled to the student / staff smartcards), you can use it GSSAPI for web single sign-on which would instantly neuter any attempts of phishing. Also you will still often find the preconception of there being such a thing as a "secure network" and an "insecure, hostile" internet. The notion of lateral movement and treating _every_ network segment as insecure, no matter where or how it's managed in your org, is more or less nonexisting. ~~~ funcDropShadow > There's left a lot to be desired in most (german) university networks. Yes, > there is usually some sort of Radius and 801.1X infrastructure in place, but > it's only used for WiFi login and eduroam, not for machines plugged into > wall sockets. When I was a student and later staff member at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Eduroam authentication infrastructure (801.1X) was also used to authenticate at ethernet ports in the walls of public rooms.

Ask HN: Getting accepted into a top level CS program. - ncarlson Hi everyone,<p>I'm about to receive my BA in Mathematics from a lowly state university. Eventually, I'd like to continue on and work towards a masters and PhD at a top school like Stanford or MIT. However, I'm not interested in applying to one of these school at the moment. I'd like to wait at least 5 years.<p>Here are my questions:<p>1. How long should I wait? And does the length of time I wait to apply matter?<p>2. During this time that I'm in the workforce, what should be my focus? Publications, open source contributions, industry experience? I'm obviously going to continue the work that I enjoy doing. However, if there is a benefit to adding focus to a particular outlet, I'll do so.<p>3. Code monkey jobs are plentiful. I can get a high paying job in the finance industry maintaining a Java/C++ code base. But I doubt I'll be happy in this type of position. Should I take the time to find a research based position at a company like IBM or HP?<p>4. Does status in the software community affect acceptance into a CS program?<p>Thank you for taking the time to answer.<p>Nick ====== jayp To be frank about it: with a 5+ year break and coming from a "lowly" state university, it is going to be tough to get into the type of CS PhD programs you have listed. Most schools do run a low pass filter on your GRE scores (if required) and GPA. The GPA is weighted according the repuation of your school. However, once you get beyond the filtering, these things don't matter. The most important thing at a top PhD school is letters of recommendations from faculty, with the greatest weight given to letters from a professor they might know. ("They" being any of the members of the admissions committee who happen to read your file, or are present during the discussion. There is a fair amount of luck involved). This maybe hard for you to get if the professors at your current university do not publish (i.e., attend conferences, etc.). However, no matter what, do keep in touch with them. You'll need at least 2-3 letters from them. Letters from work will be fine, but do not carry heavy weight -- especially beyond one letter. The other relevant things include: the school you attended, research experience (publications are your greatest asset), and lastly, your statement of purpose. I don't think anything else really matters too much -- at least to a top CS program. But if you really want to go to grad school, there is always a way. Some tips: (1) Apply to a lot of schools, as the admissions process can be fairly random. However, do not apply to safe schools for the sake of applying. (2) Also, an alternative is to apply for a Masters program. Get in. Impress a professor or two. Upgrade to PhD program. Obviously, it is hard to find financial support for Masters student at some schools. If you are local to a great university, you can also take graduate courses a non-degree student (very easy to get in, as schools love money), impress one or two professors, and apply. PS: I served as a student representative on an admissions committee at UIUC in the past. I also came from a "lowly" state university. However, I jumped to PhD program directly after my BS. ~~~ siong1987 It is good to see someone from UIUC in Hacker News. Another UIUC student here. I feel like want to keep you in contact but I could not find any of your contact in your profile. Feel free to shoot me an email. My email is in my profile. ------ bdr These departments are not interested in your coding skill. All they care about is your research ability in the area you're applying for. Software you've written or worked on _might_ be relevant, but only if you're doing something hard and/or novel. It's easier to imagine this for some areas (graphics) than others (complexity theory). Overall, I imagine that very few programming jobs would be valuable on your application. Also, note that the top-tier programs generally don't have academic Master's programs. Stanford offers one but it's career-oriented. ------ raffi I don't know anything about applying to PhD programs. I would like to add something to point three though: You could grab a research position with the government. Lincoln Labs at Hanscom AFB is associated with MIT for example. If you work a few years as a program manager or bench scientist in the government civil service, you will network with prominent folks and have a chance to gain their respect. After all--where do you think that research money that professors love so much comes from? I had a positive experience. I was able to network with people who wrote papers I really liked. One particularly touching experience--months after I left, someone contacted me to let me know that a Professor whose work influenced me quite a bit would be in town. I was (as an outsider) given a slice of his schedule to meet with him and have lunch. Its like a family, once you're in... you're in. ------ kcy I think you have about 1 year in industry before your academic cred is used up. _Generally speaking_ , a research position in a company like Google, IBM, HP, etc. is definitely more in-line with what the admission committee will understand and respect than a code-monkey job at a web 2.0 startup or in finance. I think these latter sorts of jobs hurt your chances of getting into a highly respected academic program, though they may make you a better entrepreneur. I think status in the software community (e.g. at HN or in the open source world) matters little unless someone on your admission committee knows what that status means. My experience has been that many university professors at Stanford and MIT have no clue about this sort of stuff (though of course some are very well-informed). You should probably ask your current professors for letters of recommendation now and have them sent to your registrar so they can be forwarded on later when you decide to apply. Unless you have a natural way to continue your connection with your professors it will likely be very difficult to go back to them even a year later and ask for the letter and have them remember you (unless you were a super-star of course). Just get your letters done now. You can always have them update the letter in x years if you feel there's something relevant they can add. More likely than not you'll just be thankful that you already have the letters since you never really maintained contact. On the other hand, remember that the longer you wait, the more unusual it's going to be for the admission committee to see a letter from so many years back. If you're really serious about wanting to get into one of those programs you could actually move to Stanford/MIT and try to get a research position working with some of the people in those departments. Or perhaps going to them and asking if there's any companies they would recommend working at prior to a graduate program. ------ jderick I have to agree letters of reference are the most important factor. Of course you need good GRE scores as well. Unless you do some academic research and publish a paper or two before you apply (senior thesis at least), there is little chance you will get into MIT or Stanford. A friend of mine prolonged his undergrad for a year or two in order to work on some undergrad research for a while and got into MIT that way. Of course, if you are willing to settle for something other than a #1 school then you could get by without any publications as long as you have an interesting class project or two that you can talk about and you do well on your GREs (remember to study your vocabulary). Programming experience will not help you get in. If you can find some kind of research position, that would help, but it could be hard to find a position like that at IBM or HP with your experience. A better bet would be to look for a prof somewhere that does something you are interested in and go work for him for a while (paid or not). Starting with a Masters is another route that can work. Also, I have to put a disclaimer here that getting a PhD will probably not be worth it from a financial standpoint, and most likely you will not find a tenure track position afterwards. ------ brent (disclaimer: I attend a non - "top school") 0\. If you want answers as to what schools look for in students start by looking at CV's of students in the department. More specifically, look at students in the research areas you may be interested in. This is probably the single best resource available to you. I knew my weaknesses (non top 10 undergraduate school, several years in industry, no undergraduate research experience, relatively unknown letter writers, and a non-CS undergraduate degree) and adjusted my expectations accordingly (ie I knew I wasn't going to get in a top 10 school despite high grades, good industry job, and perfect quant gre). 1\. 0 years. There are a number of reasons from familiarity with your letter writers to the lack of commitment if you work in a non-research position. 2\. If you are working in a research position and could publish that is ideal. However, I doubt this type of position will be available to you (usually it requires a phd). In terms of acceptance I believe industry experience is nearly meaningless. There are plenty of reasons to do it for personal reasons, but look at the CV's of current students at the schools you are targeting and look at how many of them worked between undergrad and grad. 3\. Again, a research position is probably the only type of position that will help you in the admissions process. It may give you access to significant letter writers, a chance to be an author, etc.. 4\. I presume that status implies a significant contribution. This could help, but unless the contribution is related to computer science it probably isn't worth much. Good luck. edit :: a couple small updates. ------ yummyfajitas Having gotten through this process for a Ph.D., albeit in a different field (Math), I'll answer this as best I can. My answers relate to getting a Ph.D. 1\. Don't wait. Opportunity costs are low right now (bad economy) and waiting hurts your chances. If you wait at least 5 years, you are > 27 when you start grad school. You graduate at age 32. That's over the hill. Many grad schools will flatly reject you for this reason. 2\. Publications might help, if they are solid technical works in peer reviewed journals. Industry experience could also help IF it's hardcore R&D work. Academics care relatively little about open source, unless you did something truly awesome (e.g., FFTW). 3\. Yes. R&D type jobs are the only jobs that won't hurt you when applying to grad school. 4\. GvR could probably get into a good grad school. Below that will probably not help very much. However, many places will give you a masters if you pay tuition. Don't expect to jump from the masters to Ph.D. track, however. ~~~ plinkplonk "You graduate at age 32. That's over the hill. Many grad schools will flatly reject you for this reason" I hope this isn't universal. I am planning to apply in 2010 and I'll be 38 when I do. Oh well one more wall to jump over, so what's new? :-) ~~~ whacked_new I recently met a first year PhD who would be very well "over the hill." Top- tier school. There's motivation for ya. Of course, it could be an exception, but I'm sure admission was granted without respect to age. As far as I know though, luck was a big determining factor, and as such, I would look at a lot of these things (particularly if you aren't a monstrously strong candidate) very lightly. ~~~ plinkplonk "I recently met a first year PhD who would be very well o"ver the hill." Top- tier school. There's motivation for ya." Hey Thanks! "particularly if you aren't a monstrously strong candidate" Good Point. A "monstrously strong" candidate is what I am trying to be. Hey if we ask startup founders to be monstrously strong developers why not hold ourselves to the same standards as grad students. The journey is very interesting, forcing me to evaluate my deficiencies as a candidate and get better constantly. A scientist I am working with on some research software said recently, "You'd make a great PhD student at Carnegie Mellon" (where he got his PhD) and has promised to write a reccomendation, so there's some progress. We'll see how it goes. ------ foo23 When reading your app, professors are trying to tell one thing: Will this person be a good academic researcher? To figure this out, they will look at: 1\. Can you already do research? If you've published at academic research conferences, they'll read your paper and judge you by it. If you have good recommendations from people they trust, or are known in their field, they will read those and rely on them heavily. Otherwise they view your application as a crapshoot (why would they want to take on a student they're not sure will succeed?) 2\. grades, programming abilities, and other things are all secondary. If they pass the bar, that's good, but they're not going to get you in. My advice: get a programming job working in a research lab, then apply to places the people you're working with have worked with before. Look at MSR (Microsoft lABS), Intel Research, and Google. Otherwise go to a startup. ------ timf " _does the length of time I wait to apply matter?_ " If you are doing things that are not academia oriented, the longer you do those things, the less chance you will have at acceptance. " _I'm obviously going to continue the work that I enjoy doing._ " Careful, academia may not be right for you :-) " _Publications, open source contributions, industry experience?_ " Publications will by far trump anything else for most departments. And letters of recommendation (preferably from people the department has heard of...). " _Should I take the time to find a research based position at a company like IBM or HP?_ " This is probably the only thing that would realistically help you. You would need to stay at one place long enough to contribute directly to refereed papers, this will really help your application. There are a lot of research positions at places that are not big companies, too, and those tend to submit more papers. Often they are looking for staff programmers and you can "get in on" some papers over time as you work hard and make good observations etc. Or you could be the assistant who is writing the performance harness, etc. The hard part would be getting in the door probably, in my experience anything CS related will usually accept CS graduate students into internships etc. but finding a full time job there with a BS and no previous CS research experience will be tougher. \--- Academic departments typically only care that you can code well enough to pass their classes. You need to be able to program, for sure. The better you are, the easier it will be to get through school -- you will need all the time you can get in order to concentrate on algorithms, linear algebra, etc. But it probably won't you help you too much at application time (unless maybe you have won programming competitions). " _Does status in the software community affect acceptance into a CS program?_ " Probably not too much, unless the program is linked to a software product (like where I work, the University of Chicago CS department and the Globus grid computing community are intimately tied). ------ tjr I received my bachelor's degree in 2002. I've been pondering graduate school on and off, and have done a bit of graduate study online. While I can't speak from the position of someone who is currently there, I can offer this with regard to your first point... It's been nearly seven years for me now. I've stayed only slightly in touch with one of my undergraduate professors. I feel that getting academic recommendation letters may be difficult at this point. If you're going to wait, I would suggest maintaining conversation with the professors most able to write letters for you. ------ fadmmatt I got my Ph.D. in CS from Georgia Tech (I think it's #9 according to the joke that is US News), and I'm a prof at the University of Utah. Here are my three points of advice: 1\. PUBLISH! 2\. PUBLISH!! 3\. PUBLISH!!! When I'm reviewing applicants for admission, I look at three things: (1) prior research, (2) letters of recommendation and (3) personal statement. I look at them in that order. I don't care whether you came from MIT or Bumblefark State U. I don't care whether your GPA was a 2.0 or a 4.0. I don't care whether your Math GRE is an 800 or a 600. I won't look at your transcript either. I care _only_ about your _potential_ to do research with _me_. (Keep this in mind when you're choosing which areas and which professors you'd like to work with on the application; it _will_ determine who sees your application.) My last piece of advice would be to consider a broad range of schools. The rankings put out by US News are completely off base. Many "lowly ranked" schools have deep strengths in particular areas. Northeastern University, for instance, has an _outstanding_ programming languages faculty, but they get no credit for it in the rankings. I'll also plug the University of Utah as a great place to come for programming languages/compilers, formal methods, graphics and scientific computing. ------ gaius _I can get a high paying job in the finance industry maintaining a Java/C++ code base._ Ho ho ho. _After_ the ex-Bear and Lehman experienced coders find jobs, then maybe the finance industry will start hiring entry-level coders again. Maybe. Ask yourself tho' what you want from a PhD. It's not a "higher qualification" in the sense that a MSc is, learning specialist knowledge to do a niche job. It's an apprenticeship to become an academic. Where do you see yourself post- PhD? What is the outcome you are looking to achieve here? Altho' grad students may write an awful lot of code, no-one really cares about it - its only purpose is to demonstrate theoretical ideas. Coding experience gained in industry won't count for much. Not even Open Source coding. Computer Science is as related to software development as Astronomy is to telescope manufacturing. Working in a Carl Zeiss factory on the shop floor wouldn't count for much applying for an Astronomy PhD would it? ------ blackguardx Some people here are advocating jumping to a PhD with zero work experience. I think this is a bad idea. Getting a PhD involves very focused research. You want to make sure that you will truly love the field before you go into it. I strongly recommend that you take an R&D job at a well-known company if you can. These large companies often sponsor research with top-notch universities. You might be able to use these relationships to get in. My company's sponsored research with Stanford allows me to work with a professor and grad student there. That can't hurt during the application process. Also, many of these large, research oriented companies will pay for graduate education, although that will probably drop off as the economy tanks. The only downside to getting a job at a large, research oriented company is that these places are often cube farms that epitomize office space and dilbert comic strips. I guess thats why you leave after a few years and go to grad school ------ time_management 1\. 0 years is the optimal gap. Time off counts against you. If you want to do this and don't see a strong reason for delaying, go in right now. 2\. You probably won't be publishing when you're working, and open-source projects are good but not enough to put you over the cusp. 3\. If you can get a research position, that'll be better for your grad school prospects than finance. 4\. I don't know the answer to this one. Caveat: I was in a math PhD program for a year, and CS may be different.

Note on Syntax - fogus http://olabini.com/blog/2012/02/notes-on-syntax/ ====== 75c84fb8 I'm not an expert on programming language design, so I was hoping someone can help me understand. When people talk about syntax, do they mean how bits of text are strung together to make programs; kind of from a down-and-dirty, implementation-level POV? As opposed to the more high-level thinking of the kinds of things you can get done in the language? So for example, assignment of a value to a variable is a high-level "thing you get done" in a language, which isn't syntax, whereas using := versus = for assignment is a matter of syntax? Do I have the right idea? ------ jayferd ++ Syntax is extremely important for scripting languages, especially those you expect to use with a REPL. Programmers tend to choose languages that (a) are good enough for the job, and (b) are pleasant to use.

Isaac Newton's Recipe for Magical 'Philosopher's Stone' Rediscovered - samclemens http://www.livescience.com/54162-newton-recipe-for-philosophers-stone-rediscovered.html ====== nonbel The titles of the papers back then are... notable: 'A smart Scourge for a silly, sawcy Fool, an answer to letter at the end of a pamphlet of Lionell Lockyer (1664). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Starkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Starkey) ------ miguelrochefort So, are we going to become immortal or not? ~~~ imglorp No, not if you're going to be messing around with mercury and lead. ~~~ mankyd But what if he dilutes it down with water, then dilutes it some more, etc until it merely leaves the imprint of mercury on the water. /s ~~~ andrewflnr Then he'll get mercury poisoning from drinking pure water, and we'll find out homeopathy is just as good at killing people as it is at healing them. ~~~ JoeAltmaier This: [https://xkcd.com/765/](https://xkcd.com/765/) or this: [http://xkcd.com/971/](http://xkcd.com/971/) and this: [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2267](http://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?id=2267) ~~~ julie1 You miscreant you lie. Everyday, I used to filter my water on tap (except for minerals) and I drunk it. Then I got totally stoned with the highly diluted cocain, heroin, cannabis, alcohol, ketamine, LSD there is in it. The lesser the dilution, the stronger the effect. Then I decided to get back with more normal way to get my life back from addiction. Drugs are bad. Every day now since then, my routine includes diluting a mix of drugs in my water to avoid the effects of it. I am feeling much better. I also noticed a problem with air. So I now constantly smoke weed, crack, heroin. It is costly, but me at least, I am not insane. How can you miss the pink elephant talking to the green martians that are infecting the lizard man in the government that are all around us? Take back your sanity. ------ basicplus2 time for a homeopathic joke... . ~~~ basicplus2 or better still.. homeopathic accident and emergency.. [http://youtu.be/HMGIbOGu8q0](http://youtu.be/HMGIbOGu8q0)

All XKCD cartoons, now in 3D - paol http://xkcd.com/880/ ====== RiderOfGiraffes Related previous submissions: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2395373> (1 comment (as of writing)) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2395501> (dead) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2396615> (dead) ------ th0ma5 his post on how you can help make the renderings better: <http://xkcd.com/xk3d/>

Britain has abandoned its claim to be the world's fifth largest economy - socalnate1 http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/22/news/economy/uk-france-biggest-economies-in-the-world/index.html ====== krona Since the IMF is measuring in Dollar terms, Britain became the 6th largest economy the day after Brexit, solely as a result of the devaluation of GBP. And apparently, this is news. ~~~ hirsin Does the currency they measure in impact anything? Every currency is correlated - they could measure in Swiss francs or yen and the result would still be the same I assume, otherwise there's arbitrage to be had. ~~~ hardlianotion Yes. GBP underwent a slippage across the board immediately following the referendum and has not recovered since. Todays news likely to be more about the timing at which these official comparisons are made. ~~~ SamReidHughes But we'd still get the same result if we measured in GBP. The ordering is a consequence of measuring with any currency, and choosing to measure GDP. ~~~ hardlianotion Yes, I was being careless and only read the question I was interested in. ------ CptFribble Wait, you mean building bigger barriers to international trade can cause your economy to slow down? Who could have predicted this?? ~~~ 88 Worth noting the EU doesn’t have free trade agreements with any of the three largest economies (US, China, Japan) and in theory, Britain would be free to enter into such agreements after leaving the EU. ~~~ celticninja Negotiating a fair free trade deal is harder for a smaller market who every one knows are in need of a trade deal. ~~~ nanomoose On the contrary, the opportunity to access the UK market has much enthusiasm. ~~~ IkmoIkmo > On the contrary, the opportunity to access the UK market has much > enthusiasm. You're implying that's some kind of great news. I'd say, real estate investors have lots of enthusiasm for sellers threatened with foreclosure. You can frame it as positively as you want but at the end of the day the UK's position at the negotiation table is simply weaker, and it's no surprise everyone suddenly wants to talk. ~~~ jopsen > I'd say, real estate investors have lots of enthusiasm for sellers > threatened with foreclosure. Nice, hehe :) While that's definitely nice... there is the possibility that making a disadvantages agreement with the US, China, Canada, etc. is better in the long term. It took years for the EU and Canada to reach an agreement. If one of them was in a less advantages position maybe it could be done faster... And maybe speed is more important than conditions of the agreement, who really knows? EDIT: okay, the brits perhaps ought to know what disadvantages trade agreements can do... given their past experience making them with their colonies :) I note that the brexit'ers probably didn't want disadvantages trade agreements :) ------ whack The real story is the one no one has been talking about. The US has been the world's largest economy for the past 100-150 years. In another ~10 years, that will no longer be the case. Every year that passes afterwards, the US is going to fall further and further behind China, until it eventually gets lapped some time in the mid-21st century. It's going to be "interesting" to see what happens then. [http://fortune.com/2017/02/09/study-china-will-overtake- the-...](http://fortune.com/2017/02/09/study-china-will-overtake-the-u-s-as- worlds-largest-economy-before-2030/) [https://www.quora.com/Economic-History-At-what-point-did- the...](https://www.quora.com/Economic-History-At-what-point-did-the-US- become-the-biggest-economy-in-the-world) ~~~ forapurpose The other real story, though a few years old now, is the reduction of the individual European powers from world leaders to second-tier powers. The rise of China has made the first tier out of reach to countries with only 60-80 million people (such as the UK, France, and Germany). If the European powers combined - somehow, who knows how - then they would have the weight to be global powers and have more influence to move global affairs in directions the Europeans desire. With only 60 million people, the UK is destined to be a bit player. One wonders why a neighboring second tier Eurasian power would want to disrupt European integration and the resulting arrival of a superpower on their doorstep. Stand together, or hang separately. ~~~ hardlianotion Who is the superpower in this scenario? What is the analogy to hanging, in this instance? Is not being part of a superpower a necessarily bad thing? If so, why? ~~~ jopsen GP is refering to Russia. Whether a superpower we can debate, but they still have massive influence. > Is not being part of a superpower a necessarily bad thing? So long as you > have NATO for defense and EU for free trade, then yeah, what is the > difference? ~~~ geezerjay Layers. NATO is a layer, one based on hard power. EU membership is another layer, one based on soft power. With regards to power, no one is best served by losing power. If you lose power you will be unable to defend your best interests. If that's a good thing or a bad thing? ------ trynumber9 What is going on with Europe's GDP in general? Comparing the IMF figures from 2008 to 2017 it seems France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have all had economic contraction while the U.S. grew 33%. ~~~ xbzbanna During the great recession, Europe decided to do austerity instead of Keynesian stimulus. Just like the textbooks say, this has led to weak growth and deflation. ~~~ monk_e_boy Austerity in the UK is extreme and it doesn't seem to have helped much. It seems to be a convenient way for the Tories to auction off more of the public services because 'they are too expensive'... ~~~ hardlianotion Auction off? I am unaware of this. Perhaps that is not what you meant. Can you clarify or show where this happened? ~~~ netsharc Somehow they privatize things saying the market can offer a better deal than a government funded institute, when this happens the government-employed people are fired and then only some of them get hired by the private company. Savings at a cost of worse service, because fuck the taxpayers. [https://www.opendemocracy.net/shinealight/kiri- kankhwende/uk...](https://www.opendemocracy.net/shinealight/kiri- kankhwende/uk-outsourcing-alan-white-serco-G4S) [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/29/serco- bigge...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/29/serco-biggest- company-never-heard-of) ------ aportnoy Had humans had 6 fingers on each hand, this news would not exist. ------ blibble the UK and France swap positions at regular intervals, which the article even states: > This year will be the first time since 2013 that France has topped the U.K. > in the ranking, according to the IMF. ~~~ gerdesj To be honest I thought the UK was still third in the EU economy top N (behind FR and DE). UKoGBnNI and FR have vied for the same position for quite a while now. Another interpretation is that we have equally successful economies based on one, rather archaic but generally agreed on, measure. ------ partycoder The UK was the first country to go through the Industrial revolution and for a while they had a huge advantage over other countries. But other countries eventually caught up to their industrialization. Eventually, the UK did no longer have an advantage in terms of productivity. So around WW2, Churchill transferred substantial knowledge to the US through the Tizard mission, so the US supplemented UK production. After that, came the Suez crisis, which is when the UK stopped being a superpower. The UK still has some of the best research universities in the world, but the role as London as trade hub is in decline. The UK might do well in the future, and will continue to be relevant, but the best days are gone. ~~~ hardlianotion London in decline as trade hb? Where is the evidence for that? ------ gpvos "Crashes out of"? They went from 5th to 6th place. When seeing a phrase like that, I would've expected a sudden drop to at least the 10th place or so. ~~~ sctb Thanks, we've just updated the headline to the subtitle. ------ celticninja This was initially titled "Britain crashes out of the top 5 world economies" It made me think of the end of The Italian Job where the bus was hanging over a cliff edge. Seems like a fitting analogy.

How do you save a million people from a cyclone? Ask a poor state in India - jjsb https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/world/asia/cyclone-fani-india-evacuations.html ====== eesmith Or, as the article mentions, Bangladesh. For that matter, ask Cuba about hurricane preparations, eg, [http://accuracy.org/release/cubas-hurricane-preparedness- a-m...](http://accuracy.org/release/cubas-hurricane-preparedness-a-model-for- florida-and-the-gulf-coast/) .

Adobe + Typekit to bring legendary typefaces to the web - niyazpk http://blog.typekit.com/2010/08/16/typekit-and-adobe/ ====== zokier <http://zokier.net/stuff/minion_pro.png> Firefox does really badly with Minion Pro at smaller sizes. Well, maybe someday..... ~~~ tptacek So don't set running type in "exotic" faces; use Minion for display type and subheds, and use a compatible standard face for the body. ~~~ jacobolus The main reason to use Minion is that it’s an awesome text face which ends up taking up a bit less space than other faces at a similar size without sacrificing readability (I used it for almost all my papers the last couple years of college, for example). As a display face, it’s not terribly exciting (especially since it doesn’t seem that the fonts designed for display size are included here; so these Minion fonts are intended for 10–12 pt. on paper). ------ asolove Thank goodness, the web font debate is now over. Now we can go back to revolutionizing typography through interaction and social text, without the annoying sneers about Georgia and Arial. ------ yellowbkpk Why would they use an image to show the fonts? Don't they offer a product that allows you to embed fonts? I tried interacting with the text (e.g. selecting it) and ended up dragging an image file around. ~~~ paulhammond Performance. Embedding 18 fonts via CSS would add a lot of weight and the browsers (particularly mobile safari) don't cope too well when you embed too many fonts at once. (I work at Typekit) ~~~ jawngee Have you guys sorted out the Safari issue? We were going to use TypeKit but it looked like crap in Safari 5. ~~~ tptacek Are you hoping to use it for running text? Our corp site is Typekit, and it works just fine with Safari 5 (we're an all-Mac shop). But we're not trying to set body text in Minion or anything; we use a neutral sans for the body, and FF DIN for heds and subheds. ------ eatsleepdev Ok, let me rephrase. I've been working with design agencies for years, and not once have I been asked to use a font that typekit offers. I've actually suggested typekit and it got shot down. While I think that typekit is a good alternative, it is not (YET) a good solution to the current web typography problem. ------ lovskogen What do you think of renting fonts? ------ ygd Where's Bleeding Cowboys?

Spotify Enlists Its Users to Add Music Metadata - nmalloc http://variety.com/2018/digital/news/spotify-line-in-music-metadata-1202723757/ ====== solarkraft For no compensation? Sure.

IBM Data Science Experience: Whole-Cluster Privilege Escalation Disclosure - wyc https://wycd.net/posts/2017-02-21-ibm-whole-cluster-privilege-escalation-disclosure.html ====== jamesblonde I am very familiar with the product, as we are developing a peer-to-peer alternative for sharing large datasets for machine learning. It seems there are now security reasons for preferring the p2p approach. If you're interested in our p2p approach, see: [https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/democratizing_deep_le...](https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/democratizing_deep_learning/) and www.hops.io ------ djb_hackernews Surprised the docker iptables doesn't block this already. I do see rules disallowing traffic to and from docker0 (172.17.0.1). ~~~ StreamBright I am not surprised at all. Security is mostly an afterthought in the docker universe. Sensible defaults are not really a thing and instead of giving access to resources when needed it is allowed to do anything by default. Also, unprivileged containers when? ~~~ yebyen This is not really true IMHO unless you're just starting and don't know what you're doing. Like for example, if you're doing a container and you set --privileged flag, you have almost certainly granted more access to the processes inside of the container than was needed. I get what you're saying about unprivileged containers, even if the processes in the container are not running as root, the container itself (and docker itself) is basically root. The person running the container gets root. Setting up a docker host as multi-tenant is something you may do at your own risk. If your users have access through the network to processes running inside of a container, that is how you may use containers to protect yourself and your users from each other. If, on the other hand, your users are allowed to execute code outside of the container (or launch containers) because that's how you have set up authorization and access control for users on your multi- tenant system, that's not the container's fault. ~~~ yebyen And just to tack on a specific anecdote about my own use of containers and how what you're saying just isn't true, I found once when trying to run Chrome in a container that it failed for some reason related to sandboxing. So I tried to disable sandboxing with --no-sandbox and saw that it worked, then went back and googled to find out the implications of what I had done. The first advice I found was from core docker maintainers saying clear as day "don't run chrome with --no-sandbox". The problem was a missing kernel flag for USERNS support. This feature provided by the kernel is the piece that allows to create a virtual root user that only has root access inside of his namespace (only inside of the container, then.) This is a service provided by the kernel. Just to rebut your position, in my experience there is no "throw up your hands" attitude towards security in the Docker dev team and containers ecosystem. Now certainly the thread parent shows this is not the case everywhere, but I can tell you in my opinion from limited experience that I am not AT ALL surprised this happened at IBM. I was exposed to their BlueMix platform at a hackathon in Buffalo, and putting it gently I was not impressed. More directly, important things like authentication and continuous deployment were obviously broken as soon as you scratched the surface. The judge from IBM did not respond well when we told him we found their platform was severely broken, and we had decided at 1am that we'd needed to switch our efforts to targeting Heroku deployment instead. (We did not win the prize, if you're still wondering.) ~~~ rspeer Hackathons seem to be where companies can dump an untested implementation of a platform without ruining the experience of actual customers. They can either find out what's wrong with their platform or be pleasantly surprised when someone manages to use it. A few years ago I ended up at a Hadoop-themed hackathon. It took most of the day for the organizers to provision us servers running Hadoop that could compute anything non-trivial. The only reason my team ended up with something instead of nothing is because I SSHed to my desktop computer to do the actual computation. ------ tmsldd WTF ! ~~~ sctb Please don't post unsubstantively like this here. ~~~ tmsldd Yeah, I might over react .. I will be more careful ;) "Scaring" would be a better word. anyway, given that the issue was so simple to exploit, shall we consider that private data could be already compromised?

UACME: Defeating Windows User Account Control - pykello https://github.com/hfiref0x/UACME ====== cmdrfred very nice.

Show HN: Qbox Releases QES Elasticsearch Connector for Magento - qboxio http://blog.qbox.io/qbox-releases-qes-elasticsearch-connector-for-magento ====== karansikh Interesting tech

White House Drone Crash Is Tied to Drunken Spy Agency Employee - aaronbrethorst http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/us/white-house-drone.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news ====== jccooper It's pretty easy to lose one of those things "up" if you are over-eager with the throttle--like if it's the first time you've flown it or your motor functions are impaired. Looks like this guy had both those factors at work. First time I flew a quadrotor, I had no idea it had such a climb rate, and the sucker went up fast, got caught in the wind, left radio range in no time, and ended up five houses down. Didn't land on a roof only by miracle, I think. No damage, but I was much more careful the next flight. But I was flying a $40 toy; I think I would have been a bit more careful with a $2000 Phantom.

Hacker News: Happy Holidays - mattbgates Ladies, gentleman, hackers, entrepreneurs, daily readers, occasional readers, and seldom readers alike:<p>Whatever you celebrate... enjoy yourself, enjoy your time with family, enjoy time off from work, enjoy the holidays. Relax, be merry, eat good food, and it is certainly okay to indulge with a little dessert and some wine.. or whatever you drink.<p>Whatever happened to you this year, I hope it was good. If not, I hope going into the New Year, you have learned from your mistakes and are now a better improved version of yourself.<p>Keep on contributing to the greatness that is Hacker News!<p>I hope you have a wonderful New Year filled with lots of success. Take care! ====== Teichopsia Nope. I'm going to have a lot of dessert. Thank you for the wishes. Have a merry Christmas for you and your loved ones (or happy holidays). ------ nekopa Happy holidays to you too! I am looking forward to neko 4.0 ------ malux85 Happy Holidays Hackers! Sending joy and love from London!

Sub-3-hour weekend project: How much wine do I need? - bendtheblock http://www.howmuchwinedoineed.com/ ====== kbob I read the headline as, "How much wine do I need to create a sub-3-hour weekend project?" ------ dasht That's cute but are you concerned about liabilities that might result if what you are doing can be construed as advising people to drink irresponsibly (by giving them helpful instructions for doing it)? ~~~ bendtheblock I think people can be trusted to make their own decisions about what they can handle. We've been looking for single serve site ideas for a while and this one came to us when trying to calculate how much wine we needed for our first company birthday party. It's a good point though, maybe it should have a _Please enjoy alcohol responsibly_ disclaimer. Consider it done. ------ robotron I could have used this yesterday! Ended up overbuying wine for an event. The result on your app is about how much we ended up actually using. ~~~ bendtheblock Thanks! We had a similarly successful experience with this calculation for a party of about 50 people, hence we knocked the app together.

Raspberry Pi Clones Match the Connectors, But Boost the Firepower - jonrx http://www.linux.com/news/embedded-mobile/mobile-linux/771048-raspberry-pi-clones-match-the-connectors-but-boost-the-firepower ====== Al__Dante It would have been interesting to see the power consumption compared. The Raspberry PI model A can be operated below 0.5A, in some cases 0.25A, which makes it attractive for mobile installations. How do the other two boards compare, do you know?

EnvKey (YC W18) is a smarter place to store API keys and credentials - danenania https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/27/envkey-wants-to-create-a-smarter-place-to-store-a-companys-api-keys-and-credentials/ ====== squiguy7 This article didn't dive too deep into what this service offers but every company I have been at has this problem. And each time there seems to be a different way of sharing credentials whether it's passwords, certificates, or keys. What could this service offer that something like a password manager or vault doesn't? Is it the ability to rotate items regularly or expire items? Can I set super granular access for sensitive credentials? These features would be helpful to avoid the headache of managing these kinds of secrets. ~~~ danenania Hi, founder of EnvKey here. Password managers can work for this, but they don't offer anything to help you manage multiple environments, conflict resolution, integration with code, etc. EnvKey tries to make all this seamless by zeroing in on this specific use case. In comparison to Vault (which I think is great software and has helped to inspire EnvKey's design), EnvKey is just a lot simpler. There's no server management, and configuration of any development or server environment is as simple as setting a single environment variable (ENVKEY=F4U4jGkZuo24zKxxgJsR-4f1g2w3VpHYpYC2x).

Project Jengo Celebrates One Year Anniversary by Releasing Prior Art - jgrahamc https://blog.cloudflare.com/project-jengo-celebrates-one-year-anniversary/ ====== codetrotter > After Blackbird filed a lawsuit against Cloudflare alleging infringement of > a vague and overly-broad patent (‘335 Patent), we launched Project Jengo, > which offered a reward to people who submitted prior art that could be used > to invalidate any of Blackbird’s patents. That is positively awesome. Thank you CF, wish more companies engaged in actively fighting back against the patent trolls.

The importance of having your own inhouse technical team - keiretsu ====== cwilbur The core of your business should be in-house. If the technology sits at the core of your business -- as it does for most web companies -- then outsourcing it is foolish. If your business is actually something else, like plumbing, and the tech just supports it, then you may as well outsource it; it's a decision for a cost-benefit analysis. ~~~ keiretsu erm. referring to web startups here. And yes. You heard me right. I've talked to a number of so called internet biz dev "pros" and they actually advocate outsourcing site development to offshore places and concentrate on marketing. I was like, WTF? Now i know why the successful web startups all originate from hackers. These internet biz dev "pros" just don't get it The most uncomfortable thing is that my non-techie co-founder actually agrees with this thought. Maybe it's time for me to find another cofounder. You can really tell the diff between an outsourced site and a non-outsourced site. An outsourced site will most likely be .aspx (India's fav), have a rigid design/structure. Eg. <http://scriptovia.com> An in-house version usually has its own unique design/identity Eg. scribd.com ~~~ staunch Most programmers don't know how to develop software very well. You shouldn't be surprised "biz guys" are totally ignorant. Most non-programmers think you can have marketing and design people come up with "specs" and then hand it off to have it "programmed". That almost never works and yet it's by far the most common method. People who think this is a good practice should be no where near the helm of a technology company. Some web companies are not technology companies though. I think the "biz guy" approach works for those -- occasionally. Digg was a cheap project on elance. The success for that site was more about a TechTV/Kevin Rose community. MySpace is similar. Facebook a non-technology company becoming one. ------ keiretsu i think most of the business fogeys don't understand the importance of having your own in house technical team. these fogeys actually think outsourcing development to offshore teams is the best way to go. Right. Technology is the lifeblood of most successful web startups. So when was it good to outsource your lifeblood to a bunch of unknowns miles away?

Apple's Market Cap now bigger than Citicorp's - raganwald http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYDmSu.TmOrU&refer=home ====== raganwald As FSJ put it, "Which would you rather own: a portfolio of sub-prime mortgages or a portfolio of iPhone patents?" ~~~ michaelneale I love the term "sub prime" - its such a humorous form of NewSpeak to mean lending money to greedy people who can't afford to pay it back (done by greedy people who can't ...) ------ Raphael I am happy that a company that makes something real is worth more than a company that just moves money around. ------ Raphael Citi _group_

The Nerdiest States In America - ejain http://blog.estately.com/2014/04/the-nerdiest-states-in-america/ ====== ejain Discussion of flawed statistical methods in 3... 2... 1...

Ask HN: What is the issuer of the icloud.com certificate by you? - acqq What do you see when you view the certificate of icloud.com? At this moment, I see this chain: &quot;DigiCert High Assurance EV Root CA&quot; &quot; DigiCert SHA2 Extended Validation Server CA&quot; &quot;www.icloud.com&quot; Valid from &quot;‎07 ‎February ‎2018 01:00:00&quot;, sha1 thumbprint: &quot;‎66 de 98 b6 3a 7c 4e eb 0a aa 03 a2 30 57 9e fa 18 e5 c7 fe&quot; I&#x27;m interested to see how many different certificates exist as valid and are being used at the same moment for some site so important like this one. ====== Rjevski SHA-1 fingerprint is "66 DE 98 B6 3A 7C 4E EB 0A AA 03 A2 30 57 9E FA 18 E5 C7 FE" on my side and the certificate appears trusted. ------ misterdata Crt.sh should give you what you need: [https://crt.sh/?q=icloud.com](https://crt.sh/?q=icloud.com) ~~~ acqq Aren't these only the ones that the issuers willingly made public themselves? ------ znpy Same sha-1 fpr: 66:DE:98:B6:3A:7C:4E:EB:0A:AA:03:A2:30:57:9E:FA:18:E5:C7:FE

Efficiently Generating Python Hash Collisions - ssully https://www.leeholmes.com/blog/2019/07/23/efficiently-generating-python-hash-collisions/ ====== svat Although this article is about collisions in the hash function applied to strings, for numeric values Python uses a hash() function that is not only easy to generate collisions for but actually to invert (and find all inverses). I learned about this when writing this answer: • [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56227419/why-does- python...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56227419/why-does-pythons-hash- of-infinity-have-the-digits-of-π/56227918#56227918) and details and code on how to invert are here: • [https://stackoverflow.com/a/56248241/4958](https://stackoverflow.com/a/56248241/4958) (Needless to say, this is quite straightforward and trivial compared to collisions on strings; nevertheless it may be of some interest to someone.) ------ ErikCorry Why is the running time of the attacked python process exponential? I would expect quadratic. ~~~ 6gvONxR4sf7o It's probably using the colloquial version of the word (which I hate). "Exponentially" = "hugely, but I want to sound technical." Or the still frustrating but more acceptable "exponentially" = "by orders of magnitude." ~~~ sansnomme Maybe OP should use P and NP instead. ------ jshowa3 Wow. This is an awesome article. Very well put together and explained step by step with pictures. Wish all articles were like this. ------ punnerud How is it fixed in Python 3.3+? ~~~ mcintyre1994 I think it's this: > Note: By default, the __hash__() values of str, bytes and datetime objects > are “salted” with an unpredictable random value. Although they remain > constant within an individual Python process, they are not predictable > between repeated invocations of Python. > This is intended to provide protection against a denial-of-service caused by > carefully-chosen inputs that exploit the worst case performance of a dict > insertion, O(n^2) complexity. See > [http://www.ocert.org/advisories/ocert-2011-003.html](http://www.ocert.org/advisories/ocert-2011-003.html) > for details. > Changing hash values affects the iteration order of sets. Python has never > made guarantees about this ordering (and it typically varies between 32-bit > and 64-bit builds). > See also PYTHONHASHSEED. \-- From [https://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#object.__...](https://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#object.__hash__) (linked from [https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.3.html](https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.3.html)) ~~~ H8crilA Yup, don't ever rely on any random hash function, even if widely used, to be repeatable between processes. I've seen a deployment of a small caching system that used the Python's built in hash function. The author of the code was wondering why does he get a ~zero hit rate (processes were short lived in that setup). Related: iterating over hash maps is a very common way to get nondeterministic output. I've removed a lot of inconsistency bugs by fixing the hash map iteration order. Usually by just using the sorted map, since the performance of a randomly chosen piece of code in a large system is almost irrelevant.

Hallucinogen in ‘magic mushrooms’ might have helped smokers quit - Libertatea http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/09/12/hallucinogen-in-magic-mushrooms-might-have-helped-smokers-quit/ ====== darkFunction Mushrooms can be extremely introspective, I would imagine this could easily lead people to re-evalute their life choices in a more permanent manner than normal. ~~~ allegory Or in a friend of mine, trigger latent schizophrenia, ruin his degree, lose his girlfriend, flatshare and end up living in the back of his car for 3 years. YMMV. I'd rather not flip the coin on drug use. That goes for a fair number of prescription drugs as well for reference. ~~~ DanielBMarkham Had a relative that was given intravenous penicillin by a GP and it almost killed her. Knew a guy once that almost died by bee stings. Had a friend in school who started smoking pot at age 12 and it destroyed his life. Life is about risk, and everything we ingest has the risk to do terrible things to us. You can die from too much water. So the question isn't whether things or good or bad, rather who gets to assess the risk and what tools do they use? Would I want my 16-year-old assessing the risk of magic mushrooms? Hell no. Would I want my drug addicted 35-year-old cousin? Yeah, probably. So the real question is who gets to decide. And why. I'm completely comfortable with some kind of psyilocybin addiction treatment coordinated (but not approved by) a GP or LCSW. I also would rather not flip the coin on drug use, including a fair number of prescription drugs. But as a voter I remain convinced of my right to change my mind and not have others make that choice for me. The problem we're seeing now, that is only just getting started to be addressed, is that vast numbers of chemicals have been off-limits for even scientific exploration of benefits. That means nobody can assess the risk -- of things that might have great benefit to mankind. That's whacked. ~~~ allegory The thing is that health expenditure and legalisation are proportionally tied. Thou who bites off the latter, increases the former in psychiatric and general healthcare. And that's not fair on everyone else. So perhaps you should forfeit your right to free healthcare when you make that choice? (I speak with respect to the NHS in the UK). For ref, I'm allergic to penicillin as well. Fortunately because we have research budgets, we have other antibiotics. Perhaps expenditure on drug related problems (crime, psych, healthcare) should be diverted into that? ~~~ drewblaisdell > Thou who bites off the latter, increases the former in psychiatric and > general healthcare. Do you have data on the overall cost of legalization/decriminalization? _Surely_ the decrease in the cost of incarcerating drug offenders is significant. ------ thefreeman Anyone find a link to the actual study? The author basically presents this as: \- take some smokers \- give them therapy for 5 weeks \- dose them up on psilocybin \- hope they stop smoking. I am guessing there was more to the study then that. Also the results of the study are never even listed, except for saying that it "worked in most cases". Honestly, I am all for studying the affects of these drugs but this article is pretty garbage. ~~~ chaosdesigner only abstract seems to be freely available online: [http://jop.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/06/026988111454...](http://jop.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/06/0269881114548296.abstract) ~~~ gwern Here you go: "Pilot study of the 5-HT2AR agonist psilocybin in the treatment of tobacco addiction", Johnson et al 2014 [https://pdf.yt/d/i123Xa2YOeU3os-6](https://pdf.yt/d/i123Xa2YOeU3os-6) / [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5317066/2014-johnson.pdf](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5317066/2014-johnson.pdf) / [http://libgen.org/scimag/get.php?doi=10.1177%2F0269881114548...](http://libgen.org/scimag/get.php?doi=10.1177%2F0269881114548296) ------ JetSpiegel I think it's hypocritical to defend keeping other drugs illegal while allowing alcohol and tobacco to thrive. Either we go full puritan and forbid all drug use, or this talk of defending people from themselves is just protectionism for the tobacco and alcohol industries. ------ weddpros I know it's easier to say "it's obviously bad, so we must ban it"... but I wanted to share some thoughts too. (I don't use drugs, I stopped smoking, I still drink alcohol) Cantaloupe can kill me (allergy), so I choose not to eat it. Darwin at work... For similar reasons, I'm not pro-drugs. But I don't think a ban on cantaloupe is needed, the same way I think drug prohibition is not an appropriate response to drug abuse. I know it seems far stretched, but please read on. We base our choice on perceived risk vs benefits. People who decide to use drugs that could kill them probably don't care about the law. If you accept a high risk of death, jail shouldn't look like a major risk for you. The fact that a majority of people have tried drugs prove that prohibition only allows punishment, but it doesn't prevent drug abuse. Reconsidering prohibition doesn't equal being lawless: if a drug addict kills/hurts/steals from you, he risks jail anyway for that (not so much for using drugs!). Prohibition doesn't protect us. Reconsidering prohibition might open the society for more evolution. Research could lead to real health benefits under medical supervision. Maybe a startup could find ways to explore the effects of some drug safely. Maybe the society would start teaching people about psychology and altered states of mind... Maybe drug traffics would plummet, leading to less violence. Maybe we could then treat all addictions, without a legal vs illegal barrier which is probably barring some from seeking help. And I believe I'm not creative/clever enough to imagine all those changes that would occur. Lastly, it's widely accepted on HN that we must measure the effects of the actions we take. Reconsidering prohibition will allow such measurement and we'll build our future more wisely. There will still be casualties, but think again about that cantaloupe... You can't ban cantaloupe to save me from myself. ~~~ tibbon I don't think that people using potentially dangerous drugs want the drug to kill them, or have a complete disrespect of the law. While alcohol isn't an _illegal_ drug let there be no mistake that it is absolutely a drug in every sense of the word and there is high risk of abuse, dependence, and harm. A huge number of people die each year from the abuse of alcohol. AA exists for a reason and you can buy beer almost anywhere. But let's not talk about drugs that pose a mortal risk for a moment. Instead, let's focus on the topic at hand which is psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, DMT, etc... These all carry different risk profiles individually but overall it is safe to say that risk of dependence or lethal overdose are several magnitudes less than that of alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, or opiates. Yes, there is always the chance of a bad trip and it is entirely possible that poor decisions are made on LSD or mushrooms (if you are making poor decisions while on DMT, it would only be in conversations you're having in your head as you aren't walking about on that drug). I also don't know anyone addicted to LSD. And while I've heard of few people having life-changing positive breakthroughs while trash drunk on alcohol or buzzing from nicotine, I have met scores of people who have had such experiences on comparatively safe psychedelics. As you say, prohibition has run its course especially for psychedelic drugs and must end. Are there 'bad' drugs out there? Absolutely! But there are many more positive ways to deal with them through education and resources. ~~~ weddpros I agree with you, on every point. As for risks, it's just a risk, a probability... Cantaloupe won't kill me instantly either. And I've tried hash/weed before (as well as another unidentified drug poured into my glass. my girlfriend bought the glass. Probably GHB. I actually liked it, I only regret not choosing it). And I must say I'd like to try LSD. Yet there's a risk. I've suffered a cerebral stroke 10 years ago, and that condition could raise that risk. I'm aware of it. Anyway, _I_ decide. Prohibition? yes, it's hugely inefficient. We grow as we learn to deal with our lives by ourself... Prohibition tries to prevent the society from coping with problems, without avoiding the problems themselves. How is it supposed to even work? ------ infinity0 "Heroin might have helped smokers quit". ~~~ infinity0 It's incredible how any anti-drug sentiment touches a nerve of the pro-drugs crowd here. Multiple people were offended enough to go and downvote every one of allegory's comments. This is fucking ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself. You claim that "we need a debate" but you react to expressions of anti-drug sentiment, by putting up a straw man interpretation and downvoting without explaining yourself. What the fuck? Your downvote deserves a downvote. My original comment is pointing out the title is stupid and uninformative. ~~~ EdwardDiego > Multiple people were offended enough to go and downvote every one of > allegory's comments. I can't downvote, so I'm not one of those who anger you so much, but allegory is most likely being downvoted for presenting anecdotes as conclusive evidence and dismissively referring to anyone who disagrees with him as having opinions lacking experience. If we're dressing up anecdote as evidence then I have plenty of my own, but I'm well aware of how useless they are at informing debate. ~~~ infinity0 He is not being downvoted for those fake-impassionate reasons. Some others have negated this bullshit and re-upvoted, but during the worst of it, all of his comments, even the ones that didn't exhibit what you say, were downvoted multiple times.

Why the U.S. Government Never Has to Pay Back All Its Debt - cawel http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/why-the-us-government-never-ever-has-to-pay-back-all-its-debt/272747/ ====== snowwrestler The first thing to understand is that the U.S. government does not have to ever run a surplus in order to pay back its debt. Debt service is included in the budget; running budgets that are merely balanced is enough. The second thing to understand is that the U.S. government is the financier of last resort, and thus, has nowhere to store surpluses other than itself. That is why the Social Security trust fund is invested in U.S. Treasury bonds...nothing is more trustworthy. Thus we find the perverse result that government surpluses actually create more government debt! So not only is a balanced budget sufficient, it is the optimum. So the U.S. government's only option to finance capital investments is debt. In the startup world you can find an angel or VC to infuse you with cash in return for equity; but the U.S. government's equity offering is already fully subscribed (it belongs to the citizens). So the government's only option for unplanned expenditures is to issue debt. From this we can see that it is expected that U.S. budgets will habitually miss low. Debt acculumates because it is the best way for the government to manage its finances. The amount of debt, and its rate of growth, matters only in the context of what the U.S. economy is doing. When a company experiences a sales slump, they can dip into capital to maintain operations until sales improve. When the U.S. economy hits a slump, we only have debt--so debt has gone up. This is an expected result, not a crisis. We just have to make sure the rate of debt growth falls under GDP growth as part of the recovery.

APNG-canvas – Display animated PNG files in the browser - X4 http://davidmz.github.io/apng-canvas/ In case you want native APNG support on Chrome, you can install this chrome addon from the same author: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;davidmz&#x2F;apng-chrome ====== TheZenPsycho I've been wondering about the point of APNG lately. 1\. The gif patents are expired. So that whole drama is done. 2\. If you want more colors, couldn't you just do a doublesize dithered gif, display at half size and let the browser pixel averaging algorithm take care of the rest? 3\. Would the above result in much larger files than APNG? i don't know, maybe that's the clincher. 4\. APNG does not provide any additional API advantage over GIF. I still can't control when it plays, how fast it plays, or easily provide the ability to replay it (without going round the long, glitchy looking way by forcing a reload of it) Incidentally, you know what does provide a pretty good and well supported javascript api? This is going to sound weird, but you can make just a plain PNG image strip, wrap an img tag in a marquee tag, and get full control over how it works, with universal browser support[1] : Play, pause, stop, rewind, speed, looping, etc. etc. [1]:Except for bloody webkit, in which recent versions have changed the behaviour of the marquee tag with relation to other browsers for some fucking reason. :( ~~~ Dylan16807 _2\. If you want more colors, couldn 't you just do a doublesize dithered gif, display at half size and let the browser pixel averaging algorithm take care of the rest?_ Browsers are often horrible at resizing files; it would not look good at all. _4\. APNG does not provide any additional API advantage over GIF. I still can 't control when it plays, how fast it plays, or easily provide the ability to replay it (without going round the long, glitchy looking way by forcing a reload of it)_ If you want to mess with speed, save it. If you want a way to trigger replay in your browser, file a bug report. APNG does everything GIF does but better, and it is a small attack surface compared to MNG or video formats. It's also efficient compared to handling video embeds. ~~~ TheZenPsycho "Browsers are often horrible at resizing files; it would not look good at all." What's with the weasel words? You can name names if you want. Which browsers? what do they do that makes them look horrible? The only browsers left I know of that use nearest neighbour resampling are ie7 and ie8. "If you want to mess with speed, save it." You're joking, right? "If you want a way to trigger replay in your browser, file a bug report." you definitely are joking. You think I'm the first person to ever want that? ~~~ Dylan16807 I'm not joking when I say right click should have a repeat option. Why does a suggestion to file a bug report sound dismissive to you? It's not like I told you to code it yourself. I'm not joking about changing speed; how often do you want to play a video in slow motion? It's not really the browser's job to do that. I used weasel words because I didn't want to go testing. In addition to me remembering additional issues on my phone, Opera and IE10 do bad resampling, and chrome does a weird thing where it shows bad resampling for a couple seconds before replacing it with good resampling. Specifically, when I say 'bad' here, it's not nearest neighbor but it's not using a proper method either. Small details, such as lines 3-4 pixels wide, disappear entirely in spots when I zoom out. They're using algorithms that only sample a couple of points, which breaks down terribly on sizes like 33%. Edit: I found a mozilla bug report claiming that high-quality resizing is turned off if an image is on a page multiple times. Ech. ~~~ TheZenPsycho The suggestion to file a bug report doesn't sound dismissive. It sounds naive. It assumes that I wouldn't go to the bugzilla and just see, already there, these: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=617875](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=617875) (2010) [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=284511](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=284511) (2005) [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=899861](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=899861) (2013) [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211145](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211145) (2003) [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96873](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96873) (2001) [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=523973](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=523973) (2009) [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=629819](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=629819) (2011) [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619957](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619957) (2010) [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=873881](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=873881) (2013) Need I go on? I laughed because the problem with gifs is so obvious and painful I couldn't imagine there wouldn't be a pile of really old bugs there already. Gifs on page don't really work right. They're not consistent, predictable, and none of the many inconsistent ways they do behave in is what anyone expects. But this is all well known by anyone but the browser developers, it seems. Filing a duplicate is a waste of everyone's time. "I'm not joking about changing speed; how often do you want to play a video in slow motion? It's not really the browser's job to do that." I mean changing speed for design effects. We're not talking about video here. Remember? We're talking about gifs/pngs. Totally different thing. Totally different use cases. Admittedly it's not often I'd need to do that. Really adding play/rewind/pause/seek, in that order, is more important. "Small details, such as lines 3-4 pixels wide, disappear entirely in spots when I zoom out. They're using algorithms that only sample a couple of points, which breaks down terribly on sizes like 33%." Fascinating. Maybe I should do some tests. Do you have example images where you'd expect problems to happen? ------ X4 In case you want native APNG support on Chrome, you can install this open- source Chrome Add-On from the same author: [https://github.com/davidmz/apng- chrome](https://github.com/davidmz/apng-chrome) One could say that this is a pendant to: "Animated gifs the easy way" to [http://www.sublimetext.com/~jps/animated_gifs_the_hard_way.h...](http://www.sublimetext.com/~jps/animated_gifs_the_hard_way.html) ------ devongovett See also: [http://devongovett.github.io/png.js/](http://devongovett.github.io/png.js/) code: [https://github.com/devongovett/png.js](https://github.com/devongovett/png.js) also works in Node (png-js on npm) if you want raw pixel values there. ~~~ X4 Thank you for posting that, it may be helpful, but it's ~twice larger than apng. I think that matters when served to clients.

Francis Crick Institute's £700m building 'too noisy to concentrate' - tomduncalf https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/21/francis-crick-institutes-700m-building-too-noisy-to-concentrate ====== elymar I found that some earplugs from Walmart really make a night and day difference in concentration for me in noisy areas. Also makes people think twice before starting a conversation with me when I'm focused on something.

Why We Terminated Our Partnership with Microsoft - gortok http://paulstovell.com/blog/re-next-decade-of-open-source ====== noen The whole article paints a picture of Microsoft eating OSS OSS projects, but the author begins by clearly stating that the project he is going to reference (Octopus Deploy) is not OSS. Instead, he is complaining that Microsoft is competing with his own proprietary, commercial offering. I'm not sure why he keeps pushing the narrative that this is bad for OSS, when the only two projects mentioned aren't. Full Disclosure - I worked in the Azure DevOps org for a long time, and several of his assertions about Microsoft's auto-defacto status for developer tools and services aren't true, or at least weren't true during the time this article was set in (2010-2015). ~~~ ljm > While Octopus isn't OSS (though much of it is) I lost interest in the author’s argument at that point. They’re upset because someone is going to give a better offer than half a mil a year for the same product. And they’re saying, “think of the OSS!” The same OSS they’re exploiting to charge half a mil. How much of that money does the OSS see? Do they get proper support and maintenance? Azure is a formidable competitor but a slow moving beast. They should be well geared towards innovation and not depending on their... yes... half a mil price tier. The fact that’s written on paper and not a dedicated sales/VP call is crazy. It sounds like they need to find something unique. Since every cloud provider is moving this direction. ~~~ sounds Err, free software does not mean "zero dollars." They're not exploiting the model to charge money for it. I know Octopus Deploy uses proprietary code. But if you're going to complain about the model, at least know what the model is. It's not about the amount of money you must pay to obtain a copy. ~~~ Dylan16807 > Err, free software does not mean "zero dollars." That's why they asked "How much of that money does the OSS see?" If it's getting a significant chunk, then things are great. If all the money is going to the proprietary part, then they have no high ground over Microsoft. Nobody is complaining about money charged for OSS support and development. ------ Dinux I don't agree with the article at all. The point the author is making has less to do with OSS and more with competition. Business is never 'fair'. The reason people flock to AWS/Azure is because of ease of use, integration with other systems etc.. The burden of maintaining two (or more) ecosystems just because one is 'a little better' isn't worth it. Sure there will always be an alternative that fits the product/team better. Besides, MS and alike have thousands of products and services. Are they supposed to point to every-other-alternative out there before they enter the market? ~~~ cc81 I don't think it is necessarily about being fair it is just that the philosophy of developers in the .NET world has always been if MS has something then that is the thing we use. I've felt that within Java there are usually more competing products and flavors. Often the product MS provides is good enough but I remember in the tail end of the web forms disaster there were some good open source MVC libraries inspired by the Java ecosystem but they never really got traction and people kept building things with shitty web forms. This is until MS came with ASP.NET MVC and people started to switch. I don't think Microsoft wants to kill alternatives. I think they really want a healthy ecosystem to get more developers using .NET but they also want to be able to create a complete developer experience and that sometimes clashes and kills other products due to the culture. ~~~ kevingadd There are definitely cases where the community wins out because it delivers better quality - Newtonsoft.JSON eventually was recommended by MSDN documentation instead of the built-in .NET JSON APIs and the new in- development API is being written by the author of Newtonsoft. ~~~ cc81 That is true and that was a pretty big shift and together with embracing open source more, going all in on Azure, supporting Linux etc. there has been changes and that has reflected somewhat in the community as well. I also think people being used to npm in the frontend will make them more likely to start looking around nuget for things that can support their use case better than what exists by Microsoft. ------ mikece "If you look at the announcements for Microsoft products that compete with their own ecosystem, one thing you'll very rarely see is any acknowledgement of the OSS projects they displace." I can see why you would be upset but what obligation does Microsoft have to do that? One reason CIOs will go with Microsoft solutions lock-stock-and-barrel is that it's there's one account rep, one consolidated bill, one "throat to choke" if there's a support need. The alternative would be to deepen your partnership to the point that something like Octopus becomes a de facto Microsoft product (complete with bundled support when you go with .NET/Azure/etc). Either that or go out of your way to show why DevOps managers never get fired for choosing Octopus. No, it's not "fair" but Microsoft isn't the only company doing this and it _would_ be unfair to suggest they are doing this out of malice. ~~~ wolco Malice is a loaded term. When Amazon tells you they want to buy you, never sign and come out with a competing product months later we feel malice. But in this case we don't becauce Microsoft copied an existing product and open source it we say no malice exists. Big companies are copying smaller successful products on mass. It is not illegal, it's not out of malice. But its getting tiresome. How many products can facebook buy or copy and crush before we change the rules. Avoiding this was one of the pillars of copyright long ago. Now we have copyright for and copying trade secret powered development for big players. ~~~ tomnipotent But it's ok when small companies or OSS projects copy big companies? Isn't that double standards? GitLab was a perfect example when its first release(s) blatantly ripped off the GitHub interface. Edit: Removing "amusing" ~~~ abdullahkhalids It is indeed okay. Phenomena that result in the market being more competitive are good, phenomena that result in the market being oligopolistic are bad. ~~~ tomnipotent I don't like this argument. Can I apply it to free speech then? It's either a level playing field, or it isn't. ~~~ ptx Which sports with a level playing field allow one team to have a thousand times as many players in play as the other team? ~~~ megablast Look at soccer leagues. Some teams have many millions to spend on players, others only have a few. And the ones who do have many millions are the one at the top of the league. In the Premier League, you have Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool at the top, all outspending every other team. ------ scarface74 _Prior to 2016, Octopus Deploy was the only popular option for .NET developers to automate their application deployments, and we 'd single-handedly helped thousands of dev teams to go beyond "right click, publish". In fact, at the time, Octopus Deploy was responsible for a large % of the largest Azure deployments that were happening._ I had never heard of Octopus Deploy until 2018. There were plenty of ways to automate deployments for .Net over a decade ago. In fact, Azure Devops is basically TFS online that has been around forever. This is like the company that said Apple “stole” their idea of using an iPad for a second screen for a Mac even though other options existed since 2010. ~~~ paranoidrobot > There were plenty of ways to automate deployments for .Net over a decade > ago. There's a difference between just pure "automate deployments" and what Octopus does. While sure there's been tools like NAnt around forever, back when Octopus came out* there wasn't a good easy to use workflow tool for deployment orchestration. Sure, you could use TeamCity/Bamboo/TFS to deploy your code, but it was really focussed on the CI side of things, and the process of building a pipeline was often quite a pain to manage, with them not really understanding 'environments'. You could, and in many cases often did - tell your CI system to deploy direct to a dev/staging environment - but it really wasn't intended for production environments. If you wanted to orchestrate deploying to more than one machine, it was a pain, and doing even tens of machines required that you built a ton of tooling to do this. Octopus comes along and gives us the ability to: \- Define environments (ci, dev, staging, preprod, production, etc) \- Define a common deployment workflow, with branching/conditionals based on the environment/machine \- Define a release workflow, for how a release needed to progress through environments (eg: a release MUST pass deployment on a preprod environment before it can be deployed to production) \- Define a release which comprises one or more artifacts (particularly useful if you have multiple parts to your applications - such as a website as well as a service) \- Give a good overview of what's deployed where. \- Easily roll back a release for an environment - just pick up the previous good release, and re-deploy it to that environment. While sure I could have achieved all of that, the reality was that few people would put all the effort in to building it themselves, AND making it reliable. * = I recall Stovell talking/writing that the whole reason he built Octopus in the first place was because he kept running into the same issues over and over when he was at a consulting firm. There just wasn't any tooling, free or commercial, that would do these things nicely. ~~~ scarface74 All of this can be done with TFS and agents running on the deployment machines. This is the earliest article I could find about using TFS for deployments from 2010. [http://geekswithblogs.net/TarunArora/archive/2013/02/23/cont...](http://geekswithblogs.net/TarunArora/archive/2013/02/23/continuous- integration-automated-deployments-and-release-management.aspx) Don’t get me wrong, while for the most part, I hate dealing with “pets” and I was hired partially to kill all the servers we could and go all in on AWS’s native hosted toolings, Octopus Deploy is a joy to use even just to deploy CloudFormation templates where the actually code is either in S3 (lambda) or ECR (Docker) not to mention deploying to our remaining pets. Just the ability to use Octopus Deploy’s library sets that are scoped to environments that can be referenced in Config files and templates is worth paying for. On the other hand, I am on a mission to kill Jenkins and replace it with AWS CodeBuild - Serverles builds using a Docker Containers. ------ zvrba From the linked (Aaron's) post: > .NET users need to culturally normalize the idea of adopting non-Microsoft > .NET solutions when those third party technologies are better on the merits. I'm a .NET developer and say: no. If Microsoft's solution satisfies my needs, I won't adopt a 3rd-party solution, especially if it has other nuget dependencies. Managing nuget packages can become hellish (looking at you Newtonsoft.Json) and MS at least takes some care with that. I'm icky about adding dependencies and by using MS's solutions I can be relatively sure that they won't depend on latest shiny OSS package that could become a liability in the future. ~~~ Nullabillity > Managing nuget packages can become hellish (looking at you Newtonsoft.Json) > and MS at least takes some care with that. So.. MS wrote a horrible package manager, and the workaround is to use more MS products? ~~~ zvrba So which package manager is NOT horrible when it comes to handling conflicting dependencies? Esp. when combined with developers specifying wrong constraints for dependencies, either out of cluelessness or carelesness? ------ kaizendad I read this as "evil Microsoft Product Managers _researched the market_ and _understand the competition_ and if they decide to compete with you watch out because they will be evil folks who _understand market needs deeply_ and _are intimately familiar with competitors_." I mean, I get that's hard to compete with for a smaller company or an less- formal org, like those who maintain many OSS projects, but that's just... being a good product manager. If you don't like that, hire a Product Manager and get those skills yourself. ------ thrwaway69 I wonder what can you do to stop a big company from devouring your share in the SaaS market. What strategies are there? GitHub devour-ed a lot of tools built for it. Google do it with their search cards, amp and many other micro things. Apple does it with incredibly popular apps and integration. Every big company in short do it and they all have big pockets to lose money on the software until competition is sucked out. Unlike hardware, where you will be pressed with anti-competitive charges [0] for above. It doesn't seem to happen with SaaS. 0] [https://tech.co/news/eu-fine-qualcomm-2019-07](https://tech.co/news/eu- fine-qualcomm-2019-07) ~~~ mikece It's not only a software thing; Amazon has been accused (or sued?) for anti- competitive behavior by creating "Amazon Essentials" version of lots of very popular items being sold through their site, even advertising the Amazon branded item right on the original product's detail page. ~~~ okusername Same happens in brick and mortar stores. Im germany a drug store chain had a decade lomg partnership with an organic products / plant milk producer who did a lot to buold the market, and when the market actually got more mainstream and profitbale, they kicked them out and replaced them their new house line of organic products. ~~~ thrwaway69 You are right but it's the scale that is worrying. Tech is accessible everywhere. What it does is set certain expectations for users in different countries. In india, most people won't pay for apps and they are not profitable to run many services which big companies do for free. Maybe it's good in the short term. For consumers, certainly but I wonder if tech will become stagnated like other industries with monopolistic control. ------ gwbas1c Large business with deep pockets has a product with a deficiency. Small entrepreneur sees a need and develops a bolt-on improvement that fixes the deficiency. Large business also sees the deficiency and fixes it. I just don't understand the article's mentality. The only way Microsoft "owes" the small entrepreneur anything is if that entrepreneur had patents or other IP that Microsoft violated; or if the two companies had some kind of non- compete agreement. It seems like, in this situation, the options are to pursue acquisition, have IP (like patents), or figure out how to carve out a niche and compete. IMO: The "bolt-on product to fix something wrong with someone else's product" business model appears short lived and requires a rather early exit strategy. ~~~ JMTQp8lwXL These types of businesses shouldn't be taken past the concept stage. If the premise of your business is existing wholly on one other entity, it's a constant risk that'll never go away. ~~~ gwbas1c I don't know if I'd be that blunt: Depending on the situation, a patent plus a buyout can be very profitable. That's one of the reasons why patents are useful, they encourage innovations on top of other peoples' products because you can use them to force the other party to pay you something when they try to copy your invention and undercut you. Makes me wonder why Autofac had no patents. Besides, there's nothing wrong with making a quick buck as long as you know it's a temporary situation. ------ lostmsu But for me theirs is 10 times better as I don't have to install it anywhere and then maintain it myself. ~~~ mikece There is that... but Microsoft screws up their advantage by constantly changing their product names (VSO? VSTS? Azure DevOps? Why don't we just use GitHub... and what is HockeyApp's new name?) to the point of confusing the very market they are trying to serve. ~~~ flyingswift Unfortunately, the org as a whole has completely collapsed as the result of the GitHub acquisition. I wouldn't be surprised to see ADO be deprecated in 2-3 years in favor of GH ~~~ delfinom It's sad because GitHub is honestly a children's toy compared to ADO and GitLab in terms of large scale management of repos. GH shows no interest in fixing and improving long standing deficiencies. ~~~ strbean Could you elaborate on these deficiencies? ------ devlife It looks like you wanted to do OSS but you soon realised that there is potentially good money to be made in commercial software. Your company also spent all the years building a good product but the money bug bit you and you started charging exorbitant prices. The greed kicked in. And now you are whinging because MS came and ate your cake. Please don't get me wrong on this, making money is the reason why we live in a world which has all these amazing things. But it is a jungle and survival matters here. ------ NicoJuicy > Prior to 2016, Octopus Deploy was the only popular option for .NET > developers to automate their application deployments, and we'd single- > handedly helped thousands of dev teams to go beyond "right click, publish". Mmm, after research. I just used Jenkins at the time and I thought TeamCity was the other option. ~~~ gortok Having used all three, I was rather impressed by Octopus Deploy’s ease of use and deployment. You can set up Jenkins to do whatever you want but it’s a pain. You can also set up TeamCity to deploy, but again it’s a pain. Octopus Deploy is not a CI server, it’s a CD product. That’s Important. It specializes in deployment/delivery, and because of that it does better than Jenkins and TeamCity out of the box for deployments. ------ blt I find it kind of confusing that anyone attempts to make money building developer tools for MS platforms. The behavior described here is MS's standard operating procedure. Their goal is to control everything. They want to provide a fully integrated MS software development platform that's slightly easier to use than open source, supports legacy code, and comes with legacy users. If there is ever an opportunity for building a tool that augments / integrates with the MS platform, that opportunity only exists because MS either 1) lacks the vision, or 2) has not chosen to place engineers on that idea. It is a transient condition. If the idea is worth a lot of money, MS _will_ eventually try to replace the third-party tool with their own. ------ tybit As soon as Azure became critical to Microsoft’s success they should of seen this coming, it would be unacceptable for any large cloud vendor to not offer a first party deployment service. Having said that when I last used Octopus a few years ago in a pets VM world it was an excellent experience. Does anyone know if they’ve managed to keep up this quality for containers/serverless/immutable VMs? ------ smortaz Related: this guy rode through iran on 90cc bike and talks about his experience: [https://youtu.be/_2LEgowbzSc](https://youtu.be/_2LEgowbzSc)

Ask HN: Twilio alternatives? - bkovacev Does anyone have any experience with other Twilio like services?<p>We&#x27;ve now started implementing the twilio app in one of our project and I&#x27;m slowly getting aggravated by the outdated docs, incomplete&#x2F;no concrete examples, awful dashboard and non-meaningful error messages in the debugger (following the code example on their docs page). ====== akhatri_aus Nexmo, Plivo & Messagebird are quite good. They can be cheaper and sometimes even offer per second billing. ------ bkovacev I have to say that Twilio’s customer service is spot on. Someone from Twilio reached out and helped us solve our issues. Great effort on their end to keep their customers happy. Thanks Andrew.

Flint OS – Chromium OS Based System for ARM - type0 https://flintos.io/ ====== RubyPinch having "[...] open source [...]" in your tag line, for a closed source project, is a bit disingenuous. "Project A has beneficial aspect X, we forked project A's work and removed X, but we just thought we should mention that it used to have aspect X, which is cool!" ick. ------ ant6n Reading through the website, I'm having trouble understanding the difference between Flint OS and Chrome OS. ~~~ fixmycode I'd say it seems to be a distribution of Chromium OS. The fact is you can't just download and install Chrome OS into anything you want, just a Chromebook. This project seems to fix that. ~~~ mtzaldo You can try [https://www.neverware.com/freedownload/](https://www.neverware.com/freedownload/). It is chromium for x86... ~~~ ddeck I'm not sure who Neverware are, but [https://arnoldthebat.co.uk/](https://arnoldthebat.co.uk/) has daily x86 builds for the open source Chromium* project * [https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os](https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os) ------ aq3cn > Runs on powerful x86 full-fledged laptops, on single-board-computers like > the Raspberry Pi and of course anything in between > Love Android apps? Great! We are building support into Flint OS. > Flint OS now works perfectly on most x86 and ARM based hardware platforms. > We are particularly interested in making Flint OS run on single-board- > computer (SBC) solutions based on ARM architecture, such as the Raspberry > Pi, SBCs with RK3288 and RK3399 chips. With this, we breathe new life into > the arena for the touch-enabled interactive terminals. Our clients include > dual-screen smart POS machines, interactive classroom whiteboards, connected > shopping mall wayfinders, smart vending machines and automated digital > signages just to name a few. We provide the best user experience with > minimal maintenance and development cost. > Flint OS loves the Raspberry Pi and STEM education. We have created a > comprehensive set of JavaScript APIs to interface with the Raspberry Pi > hardware and peripherals, providing young users to understand programming > and electronics by the most intuitive JavaScript language. Sounds good. I will try it when it will have support for Android apps in future. I highly doubt that Google will bring Android or ChromeOS for Raspberry Pi. ~~~ leke So it doesn't run on 64bit processors? ~~~ jokr004 You can run 32bit code on x86-64 processors, although that's not an ideal solution but you could definitely run it. ------ frik Is it open source? Or closed source like RemixOS/etc (the other ChromiumOS builds) Actually it would be great, if a community project provides binary builds (and source in case of modifications) of Chromium (browser) and ChromiumOS. Building the source takes 16+GB ram and several CPU hours. Sadly, Google doesn't provide the builds (binaries). ------ taohansen Can someone point out the differences between this and CloudReady? First flush this looks like duplication of effort or making a competitor because. ~~~ eat_veggies I don't think cloud ready has arm support but I'm not sure why they made a whole new thing instead of just contributing to cloud ready. ------ jefurii Is it related to GalliumOS? I run that on a Chromebook and works great. That said, the top nav element on the site takes up half the screen on my phone and won't go away. Super annoying. ~~~ navs Out of curiosity, what are the hardware specs of your Chromebook? I'm running GalliumOS on a Lenovo Chromebook 11e and I'm having a bad time. Admittedly, this machine is low spec. ~~~ reynhout Which 11e? GLIMMER or ULTIMA? What issues are you having? ------ aruggirello Looks much like RemixOS. Would it work in a VM? ------ kstenerud Accelerated scrolling so that you can't accurately scroll anymore. Locking part of the screen after scrolling partway so that only a tiny portion of it scrolls with scrunched up text. It's everything wrong with modern website design. PLEASE stop doing this! U/X is about ease of access to information; not flashy tricks. ~~~ squarefoot +1, that page is plainly unusable; I hope their OS doesn't follow the same philosophy.

We are posers. This is how hacking actually works. - skcin7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39CRw7zH_2A ====== ropman76 I am not worthy. That makes want to weep then die :)

Mental Models Box – A collection of models useful in everyday life - thugger https://www.mentalmodelsbox.com/ ====== paulgerhardt The nice thing about mental models is you have so many to choose from[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. [1] [https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly- use...](https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly- useful-936f1cc405d) [2] [http://www.defmacro.org/2016/12/22/models.html](http://www.defmacro.org/2016/12/22/models.html) [3] [https://fs.blog/mental-models/](https://fs.blog/mental-models/) [4] [https://nesslabs.com/mental-models](https://nesslabs.com/mental-models) [5] [https://amzn.to/2KiKQEg](https://amzn.to/2KiKQEg) (Don't recommend) [6] [https://amzn.to/2GOHoz4](https://amzn.to/2GOHoz4) (written by DuckDuckGo founder Gabe Weinberg) [7] [https://amzn.to/31lfK4Q](https://amzn.to/31lfK4Q) (A classic) [8] [https://amzn.to/31tX17l](https://amzn.to/31tX17l) (Haven't read but recommended by others) ~~~ blairbeckwith Interesting that you don’t recommend the Farnham Street book. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a while, and I’m a big fan of a lot of what they put out. What don’t you like about it? ~~~ paulgerhardt Have you ever had a subject matter that you are comfortably familiar with explained to you through a strained analogy in a patronizing manner that makes you question the speaker's own understanding of the material? This book is full of those. Here's a representative excerpt from early in book: “ __Imagine you are on a ship that has reached constant velocity (meaning without a change in speed or direction). You are below decks and there are no portholes. You drop a ball from your raised hand to the floor. To you, it looks as if the ball is dropping straight down, thereby confirming gravity is at work. You are able to perceive this vertical shift as the ball changed its location by about three feet. __ __Now imagine you are a fish (with special x-ray vision) and you are watching this ship go past. You see the scientist inside, dropping a ball. You register the vertical change in the position of the ball. But you are also able to see a horizontal change. As the ball was pulled down by gravity it also shifted its position east by about 20 feet. The ship moved through the water and therefore so did the ball. The scientist on board, with no external point of reference, was not able to perceive this horizontal shift. __” The other half of the book is Charlie Munger quotes. I would say skip the trouble and go straight to reading “Almanack”. ------ sushisource Really nicely presented site, but I can't be the only one who's tired of what feels like people constantly "name dropping" these models to make a point. Just because it has a name doesn't magically make your argument more impactful, you still have to convince me. ~~~ scrooched_moose Similar to the fallacy fallacy: The fallacy fallacy is a logical fallacy which occurs when someone assumes that if an argument contains a logical fallacy, then its conclusion must necessarily be wrong. [https://effectiviology.com/fallacy- fallacy/](https://effectiviology.com/fallacy-fallacy/) ~~~ atarian Thank you. I knew this was a thing but I never knew what to call it. ------ anthilemoon Thanks for sharing! I like the simple design. One piece of feedback I got when I wrote a blog post about mental models [1] was that mental models are easy to understand, but people struggle to figure out how to actually use them. In addition to the examples, it would be great to add concrete applications to each cards. [1] [https://nesslabs.com/mental-models](https://nesslabs.com/mental-models) ------ bliss Good material, nicely presented. This is similar to My Cognitive Bias - they have a browser plugin that opens a random cognitive bias when you open a new tab (chrome, firefox) - basically like flashcards for embedding the knowledge - I probably found that one here too. [https://mycognitivebias.com/?utm_source=MyCognitiveBias&utm_...](https://mycognitivebias.com/?utm_source=MyCognitiveBias&utm_medium=Chrome%20Extensions&utm_campaign=footer%20link) ------ jcutrell I’ve started to accumulate mental models on my personal site. I hate how buzzy the language has gotten, but I _do_ see the value in this accumulation. One thing that’s missing: how these models connect, and ways of picking the models you need for a given thought experiment. This is a service or app I would gladly pay for, particularly if it provided the ability to add my own models, relate them in a smart way, etc. ~~~ xpe Choosing the mix of applicable models is the art of wisdom. Connecting all models pairwise would have O(N^2) complexity. But I agree, writing down your thoughts on how models interact helps you understand their focal points and limitations. To extend this line of thinking —one might hope that the synthesis of multiple models would get more elegant — but this would likely come at the expense of interpretability to particular situations. This line of thought is discussed extensively in the philosophy of science and complexity theory. ~~~ myself248 But nobody needs the full pairwise everything, just a few related concepts, like "If this seems close but doesn't quite fit, have a look at P, Q, R, and S?" ------ alexpetralia As usual, I plug my list of mental models if anyone is interested! [https://alexpetralia.github.io/newsletters](https://alexpetralia.github.io/newsletters) ------ cuddlecake Is there any sort of fallacy that the saying "use the right tool for the job" in the context of programming languages / datastoring technologies etc. can be categorized with? I always have a feeling that this might be a fallacy, because tools are usually defined as "carrying out a specific function", but there is no specific function in regards to programming languages or datastoring technologies other than "make machine do" and "store data" respectively. The rest just seems to be sideeffects. Kind of like you can either insert a nail into wooden board or produce a gaping hole in a Human's skull, whereas the function of a hammer is just to apply force to a relatively small surface (more or less). There are many right tools for inserting nails into wooden boards or producing gaping holes on human skulls, which is why I'm starting to think that the phrase "Use the right tool for the job" is preemptive hindsight. You could always choose the right tool - so why didn't you do that? ------ acangiano A related, fun book I have been reading is The Art of Thinking Clearly. I recommend it if this topic interests you. ~~~ Matticus_Rex I just started this yesterday and a quarter of the way in the main thought I have is that I wish I'd read this in college. Picking up this stuff all at once would have been way more useful than doing it slowly (sometimes painfully) over a decade. ------ tunesmith People love lists of models, fallacies, and cognitive biases. I don't think any list of them can be authoritative though because they all slice the concepts up differently. But when well-presented I think lists like these are still valuable because they're entertaining to review, and can remind people of how to be better thinkers. My theory is that pretty much any bias or fallacy can be derived from simpler rules of causation - truth, and the logic of necessity and sufficiency. Appeal to Authority: Is it really true that if A says x is true, that x is really true? Is x really true? Confirmation bias: Is it really true that if I want x to be true, it is true? Is x really true? Survivorship bias: Is it really true that if x is true, that this set of x's causes were sufficient to yield x? Is this set of x's causes always sufficient to yield x? etc, etc. ------ Ente I like this, but the collection of models in there does not seem to be very rich. Do you know how often they plan to add a new model? ~~~ devinjflick They have a suggestions area, where you can submit your mental model. They probably expect to grow with the use of that ------ ultrasounder This is the kind of stuff that keeps me coming back to HN. Awesome stuff!! ~~~ james_s_tayler If you like this - Buy and read The Model Thinker. ~~~ ultrasounder Thanks for the suggestion. Will add it to my reading list. Nothing beats a book. ------ ivh The site does not seem to say who made it, but it sure reminds me of Shane Parrish (Farnam Street blog) who wrote a book about about mental models, among other tings. ------ jammygit Mental model posts get upvoted a lot on here. Do people on here actually use them regularly and benefit? ~~~ james_s_tayler All the time. I find they help you reason about the long term outcomes of things or directions things are headed in. They provide a nice framework for thinking about things. Rather than looking at every situation on a case by case basis you start to see aggregates of situations and once you see the abstraction then everything becomes "another one of those". The more abstractions you find, the more you see the patterns. ------ devinjflick Just a thought, maybe a weekly or monthly email subscription with updates of whats been added? ------ Congeec here[1] is a comprehensive list for those who want to know more about fallacies. [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) ------ palashkulsh really great design

Explaining Shell Commands in the Shell (2014) - jap https://www.mankier.com/blog/explaining-shell-commands-in-the-shell.html?hn=1 ====== tomkwok So it's like a command line version of [http://explainshell.com/](http://explainshell.com/) ... And it seems like your site / API backend is not open source. Do you plan to make an offline version? ~~~ jap I don't plan to make a version that gets its data from local man pages, but it would be great if such a tool existed. Parsing the data out of man pages is messy, and my process currently involves a lot of steps. I actually only started collecting the data for this as a side-effect of trying to make man pages render nicely in browsers. I would like to open source more of the backend, but I've started with a tool I wrote to extract man pages from project repos: [https://github.com/jacksonp/manlib](https://github.com/jacksonp/manlib) ~~~ ridiculous_fish The fish shell has a man page parser that you may be interested in: [https://github.com/fish-shell/fish- shell/blob/master/share/t...](https://github.com/fish-shell/fish- shell/blob/master/share/tools/create_manpage_completions.py) ~~~ jap Thanks, that does look interesting. Will give it a spin as soon as I get a chance and compare results. ------ heydonovan Awesome concept! I've never been a fan of looking up flags in another tab, and hunting down which ones are in use. Just seems like it should be an automatic process. The explainshell website is great, but it doesn't work offline. Fish's man page auto-completion is useful, but it lists all the flags, instead of the ones currently in use. If I could have this for every command out there, along with the binary's location/version at the top, I'd be a happy camper. ------ erikb Why does it say "in the shell" when the actual work is done by a web server? Sorry, I was just really curious how you grep/awk/sed through some man pages. ------ Vimlociraptor [https://www.mankier.com/?explain=%20sed%20-i#explain](https://www.mankier.com/?explain=%20sed%20-i#explain) doesn't parse sed right. [http://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=sed+-i](http://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=sed+-i) works much better ------ grymoire1 I'm not sure why it is defined as a function when a shell script would work as well, and prevents .bashrc clutter. Also it doesn't understand traditional tar options, i.e. explain 'tar xf filename' ------ amelius Does it work with the "find" command, and its overly complicated way of processing arguments? ~~~ jap I think it gives decent results for something like: find . -name test -delete You can try it out online btw: [https://www.mankier.com/?explain=%20find%20.%20-name%20test%...](https://www.mankier.com/?explain=%20find%20.%20-name%20test%20-delete#explain)

Send Me to Launch: Reason #1-Mix and Mingle with upcoming greats - redrory http://sendmetolaunch.com/reason-1-mix-and-mingle-with-upcoming-greats ====== sebg One interesting thing you could do is along the lines of <http://iwearyourshirt.com/> ... That is, you can have people sponsor you to wear their companies t-shirt for one event during the conference. Not only might startups be interested, so might your country as well as larger corporations. ~~~ redrory Hey, That's a great suggestion. I'm brainstorming with a friend to figure out how best to approach.

Flight Shaming Isn't Just a Problem for Airlines - fludlight https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-25/conference-shame-isnt-just-a-problem-for-davos-jets ====== el_dev_hell Outline: [https://outline.com/bTcVm3](https://outline.com/bTcVm3)

Show HN: What is your opinion on this online resume? – More info in comments - smartsystems https://smchughinfo.github.io ====== onion2k When I'm looking for a dev I want to be able to _quickly_ see if they have a specific set of skills. I literally can't read 50% of the skills on your resume without some effort. That stop me moving forwards. ~~~ smartsystems Obviously I have an actual resume. What did you think about the thing in general other than not being able to make out some of the words in the word cloud? ...also, based on your feedback I updated that image to make the smaller text bigger. I had noticed the same thing earlier but I didn't imagine it would bother my intended audience. Not saying that's you but at least I'm fixing the things people say they don't like. ~~~ bastijn I stopped reading after the second animation. It is too annoying as a resume for recruitment. As indication of skill it isn't much better either for me. I would expect any software dev to gobble this together given the number of available html presentation tools. If you want to show what you can do I'd rather see a bunch of github projects really. With readme properly documenting what it does and if possible a live example running somewhere. This little thing could be in there if you really like. I would expect the Readme to state why you made it and what problem it solved or what you learned from it. ~~~ smartsystems There are four slides. It takes 10 seconds to look through the entire thing. If you can't make it past the second slide before writing a three paragraph critique you are 100% not in my target audience. Not that there is no validity in your opinion somewhere but I'm not sure if you understand the point of the thing. ~~~ bastijn I looked at your project with my work hat on, I replied to this thread with a three paragraph reply with my HN community hat on. I clicked through once more for you to find your github in slide 4. My comment stays the same, there is nothing in there that helps me select you over people that present their content in an easier to consume format. On the content. In some countries pictures must be able to blacked out by law (I don't agree, yet it is truth). Your experience bullets do not say what you actually did. Would add where your worked and some 1-2 lines description per bullet on what you made/did there. If you were freelancing add your clients. It helps us understand what size of companies/codebases you worked. What complexity etc. Your word cloud is indeed hard to decipher. Slide 4 I saw github, which is good. The title says online resume. I assume the audience is recruitment. Recruiters take seconds to scan if they want to spend minutes. In addition most recruiters will not forward this to people like me to see if they like to invite. If that means we are not your audience your resume works. Be aware you are limiting your own options as you now no longer have the choice to say no yourself (we decided that for you). I stay with my earlier comment. Best to reverse the whole thing. Send your "actual" resume as you called it and add your github repo there. We will find this here. ------ smartsystems I used impress.js for the slides. It's intentionally lightweight. I don't have a lot of public projects that I can link to. Plus it seems like the kind of thing where you shouldn't try too hard. So I left it at kind of the level we're pretty much anybody can do it. The only types of jobs I'm looking for are part-time jobs and remote jobs. So that's my audience. By the way if you looked at HANK and want to talk about that send me a message! Anyways thank you for the critique. It'll be helpful to me. ------ sdan In today’s world, literally using bare html is probably better. Just list what you know and show some projects related to those. I like your animations, but I find it a bit weird... although I respect that you can still do that if you please ------ busymom0 I like the idea. I would change the colors a bit though to make the text pop a bit more. ------ gr97 looks pretty rough on firefox but i like the idea

Hot Chips – A California Startup Has Built an AI Chip as Big as a Notebook. Why? - Yuqing7 https://medium.com/syncedreview/hot-chips-a-california-startup-has-built-an-ai-chip-as-big-as-a-notebook-why-4d068429349 ====== coder4life I want to know how many petaflops the thing runs at, they're keeping mum on compute performance numbers at the moment.

VIM and Python – A Match Made in Heaven - plessthanpt05 https://realpython.com/blog/python/vim-and-python-a-match-made-in-heaven/ ====== brianclements Most of these seem to just be general Vim suggestions that work in any language, but they aren't bad. The real lubricant for Python and Vim for me has been control over virtual environments. I've hacked on a popular plugin that allows Virtualenv inheritance from the terminal and relative Virtualenv directory support among other things.[1] The original author didn't incorporate all my changes, so I've sort of kept the fork lingering around. But try out the original as well.[2] [1][https://github.com/brianclements/vim- virtualenv](https://github.com/brianclements/vim-virtualenv) [2][https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim- virtualenv](https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim-virtualenv)

Ask HN: Stay or Leave? SoundCloud has deferred salary reviews - throwaway-sc SoundCloud has deferred salary reviews until the next funding round is complete.<p>Over the last few years, travel between offices has been restricted to business critical travel only. More expensive food items have started disappearing from our kitchen.<p>Employees used to get a small bottle of champagne on their birthdays &amp; employment anniversaries. This doesn&#x27;t happen anymore.<p>All of the above feels reasonable.<p>However, they recently announced that the July 1 salary review that everyone was promised will be deferred. There is no information about back pay or a date about when the next salary review will happen.<p>Salary increases are predicated on the next round of funding. They anticipate that the round will close over the next couple of months, if not weeks.<p>I&#x27;m sure that everyone here will have been in similar situations before.<p>What did you do? And, how did you decide whether to continue working or start looking for other opportunities.<p>Also, what other arrangements, we, as employees should consider putting forward.<p>Example: I&#x27;d be okay working 4 days weeks, until the salary review is complete.<p>What questions should we ask our founders that&#x27;ll help us build confidence that the company&#x27;s financials are in a reasonable shape? ====== bspn > _However, they recently announced that the July 1 salary review that > everyone was promised will be deferred._ The company is obviously facing a cash crunch, but to me this is the key bit and why I would start shopping my resume if I were in your shoes. Management will have known about the cash crunch or should at least have anticipated it was a possibility for a while now, and should not have set expectations that they were unlikely to meet. The rest of the actions look like prudent cost- cutting measures, but if you can't trust that management will honor their promises today what guarantees do you have that they will do so in the future? As a non-founder (i.e. very low equity upside), it's not for you to make compromises to keep their high-upside baby alive. Put your own interests first and find an employer that doesn't require you to subsidize their growth. Also, if I had a dollar for every time a founder has told me that funding is coming in "months, if not weeks" .... well, you can guess the rest. ~~~ confluence Key aspect of becoming a manager is making promises you may or may not keep. They cost you nothing, and when they come due it's the employees who suffer. ~~~ tedmiston A good manager manages expectations when reality changes. ~~~ confluence A great manager doesn't make promises he can't keep. ~~~ flyinglizard Sometimes, a great manager needs to speculate and do things at uncertainty and risk, while motivating their subordinates. They are clearly working to save the company in OPs case. ~~~ confluence Ah yes, with a late June notification. Maybe communicate earlier hmmm? That would be better management rather than hold my beer I'll probably close this round while I risk the livelihoods and futures of my rank and file. ~~~ tedmiston But alas, communicating earlier is when things have the most uncertainty. I have had great managers that set expectations around how much uncertainty and change is built-in to what they're communicating, but in general, the earlier they share something, the more likely it is to not be certain yet, still it's often useful information to have. (I'm only speaking in general, not specific to this situation.) ------ phamilton There's a quote: "If you owe the bank $100, you've got a problem. If you owe the bank $100M, the bank has a problem." Here's a tweaked version. If you can't get a raise, you have a problem. If a company can't pay its employees market rate, the company has a problem. I pretty firmly believe that if money is tight at a company, paying fewer people more money (and setting higher expectations around performance) is the way to go. Otherwise you end up with top talent leaving and those left feel entitled to not give 100% (because they aren't being paid 100%). ------ benjaminwootton Posting this with the company name is a little indiscreet. If it was my company and I was having a bump in the road with funding I would hope for it not to immediately hit the front page of HN for the sake of a few weeks. Soundcloud actually have a good reputation as an employer so maybe they deserve a small benefit of the doubt? I get the mercenary attitude but it's only potentially a few weeks or months for an incremental pay rise, not as if they are going under.... I suspect this won't be a popular point of view but I like to think company and employee owe each other at least a modicum of loyalty. ~~~ _e The OP is anonymous. Are there any other SoundCloud employees willing to stand up and confirm these accusations? ~~~ babo That would make it even worse. ------ viraptor You don't lose anything by starting to look at alternatives. You don't have to do that full time either. But if you're uncertain about the future, while still holding a paying job, this is the perfect time to refresh the CV, request old references, subscribe to some job ad feeds. You can easily send an application a week or two to places you find really interesting without the "need money for food" feeling. ~~~ confluence Strongly concur. Also make this a yearly habit, so you stay on the ball, know where the market is at, and become comfortable leaving at a moment's notice to avoid this life changing anxiety you might be feeling. Once you do it regularly, it's no big deal. Companies hire and fire dozens of people a year, it shouldn't be that different for you. ------ tcmb Maybe this makes me the devil's advocate here, but why would you suddenly only work 4 days a week? I assume you have a valid contract that says you work X hours for Y amount, what makes you think you're not bound to that just because you don't get to talk about a possible (!) raise? It's up to you if you interpret the company's behaviour as a red flag and leave, but reducing your working hours because you don't get your regular fix of more money seems like a sense of entitlement to me. As a side note, your post would have worked just as well without publicly shaming your employer. (I am not affiliated with SoundCloud, except for the coincidence that one of my previous companies used to share an office with them.) ~~~ gus_massa I think he is not considering working only 4 days a week unliterary. He is considering negotiating working only 4 days a week instead of a pay rise. He can try to negotiate whatever he wants, for example working only 4 hours per day, or 3 days a week, or ... but the employer is not forced to agree. ~~~ Someone I think they are thinking of getting the pay rise, then work a four day week (and getting paid 80% of his increased salary) until the company can afford to pay them five days a week at the increased salary again. ------ sunir Well, businesses come and go. Start ups come and go faster. Nothing tragic will happen if you accept that. I am sure you will find a job if you keep things in perspective. It is just business. However there is no reason to panic yet. It is likely they will raise again. Meanwhile you can use your energy to prepare yourself. Get your resume and LinkedIn put together. Make sure your personal finances are secure and can handle 3-6 months with no income (standard advice for everyone). Start inquiring about what other companies would be worth working for. If you have a plan to handle the downside risk, this will be less terrifying and more of a business like decision of the merits of staying or going. Once you can feel safe walking away then you can negotiate a better structure if you want the extra time. It is important to have the walk away plan as your BATNA when negotiating. ~~~ confluence This is the crux of negotiating. The person with more options has more power. There's really only one way to get a raise: pay me X or I walk. If yay, good, if nay, walk. ~~~ semi-extrinsic A subtle way to reinforce your words is drawing on the famous million-dollar Amdahl coffee cup: [http://dealwhisperers.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-million- dollar-...](http://dealwhisperers.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-million-dollar- coffee-cup.html) In this case, find a friend at Google/Apple/whatever and ask them if you can have some employee-only branded stuff. ------ dood You don't have to make a big decision right away, but those are certainly signals that the decision may be made for you in the next few months if you are unlucky. I'd certainly start the usual job-hunting process: updating my CV, mentioning to friends that I may be open to a new position, breaking out the ol' whiteboard for algorithm interview practice, going to meetups etc. Also, prepare yourself for being laid-off, financially and mentally. It sucks, but it's the reality of startup life. Don't worry about questioning the founders - it's their job to be upbeat and optimistic to get the best result for their startup, but it's your responsibility to look after your career. But that doesn't necessarily mean giving up the day job - hope for the best, prepare for the worst. ------ TheRealmccoy This happens in a lot of companies, there are moments like this. Also, nothing in your contract or offer letter would have said that the company would do a salary review every year. When such a decision is made, companies are aware that what could happen, the way salary review is important for an employee, in equal measure it is important for the company too. So if such a decision is made, they weighed in every thing, may be the fact also that, people might leave or they would look for another option. And the company also knows that people who would have options are the good people, and no one wants to let go the good people and being left with average or above average people later, when the finances are sorted. If you love what you do, stick with SoundCloud, it's just part of life and could happen anywhere. PS: I have been through this once. ------ antr I'm sorry to hear this. However... _> What questions should we ask our founders that'll help us build confidence that the company's financials are in a reasonable shape?_ ... there is no question you can ask anyone that will help SoundCloud from burning money. Building confidence is just an act of faith, but this won't solve the underlying issue that SoundCloud does not have a viable business model, at least, with it's current corporate structure and business model. Don't get fooled by cheerleading VCs and CEOs, it's the oldest trick in the book. Always at the expense of employees and other stakeholders. Many people join startup-land with the impression that these multi-(b)million, VC-funded companies are as safe as joining other old-school corporate companies which apparently are going to be disrupted by those very startups. Some other people joining startup-land are aware of this issue, and they will be the first to jump ship. All I can suggest is that you start looking for other opportunities, just in case. Do not get fixated on the back pay date, etc... just move on. ------ jhowell The company is not profitable. Compensation is based on raising money. The financials are not in "good shape".You say they haven't received their next raise so consequently you either. If that concerns you, you should seek employment elsewhere. ------ ryandrake I went though a similar situation as an employee of a struggling start-up in the late 90s (dot com bubble 1.0). The founders (who by the way were wonderful people trying to make the best of a bad situation) decided that rather than start firing people, we'd all be taking half pay until we got funded, with promises to square everyone up eventually. I was young and dumb at the time so I, along with most, accepted this. A few months later, it went down to 1/4 pay, and we lost a few people but many stayed. Then, no more health insurance, at which point I finally bailed, and ended up unemployed for close to 6 months. I'm not sure what additional sacrifices the remaining employees had to accept, but I know it was much better for you the earlier you got out. There's no way I'd make the same mistake today. No pay, no work. If I want to do work without being paid for it I'll get a hobby. While I might enjoy what I'm working on for you, YOUR dream is not my hobby. If I was a founder and the company went through tough times, I'd gladly work it for free because of the upside potential, but not as employee number 5 with 0.1% equity. No way, no how. ------ fecak Whether to stay or leave is obviously an important decision that can impact your career, and you may not want to base it on something as simple as the things you've mentioned here. Of the things you mention, there seem to be two primary concerns. One is that you definitely won't get a raise until a new round of funding comes in, and even if that funding does arrive I assume a raise is not a guarantee. We obviously aren't aware of your status or current and past performance. We also aren't aware of how much you are making now, and whether that amount is perhaps at the higher end or lower end of market rate already. Two is that the company seems to be having at least some financial concerns. You've also told us "they anticipate that the round will close over the next couple of months, if not weeks". That sounds optimistic. Being that the next salary review isn't for a couple weeks, it sounds as if this entire thing could be about nothing. If you like your job enough where not getting a raise is OK for at least a few months, you should stay. Beyond liking your job, are you still learning? Are you becoming better at what you do year after year by staying there? If the answer is "no" to either of those questions, you should probably leave regardless of salary raises and free champagne. You should always be prepared for the worst, of course, so if an event (layoff, closure) were to happen you should always want to be in a position to start looking for work quickly. I don't think suggesting a 4 day work week due to an incomplete salary review is a good option. That suggests that you may have anticipated a 20% raise, which isn't all that realistic. Making unrealistic demands of a cash-strapped company could be a quick way to a layoff. I'm not sure at this point it's even relevant to ask the founders any questions. They seem to be forthcoming about things - it's not like they told you there will be no salary reviews the day before they were scheduled to happen, and if they have been trustworthy in the past you should have no reason to doubt their honesty now about their expected timeline for the next round to close. When should one start looking for jobs? There are lots of reasons. If you are not fairly compensated for what you do and there are no other 'upsides' to your employment that make staying a good option. When you aren't learning or challenged by what you do. When you feel work is having a consistent negative impact on other parts of your life. When your company clearly makes decisions that do not consider the best interests of their employees. Good luck to you. ~~~ Adams472 This seems like the most thoughtful response. Salary cuts and freezes, while painful and unfortunate, do happen. If you're financially stable, enjoying your time and continuing to learn, stick around. It may be an informative experience for the future. Plus, you may have opportunities to take on new projects if other employees leave. In the background, it can't hurt to sharpen your resume and start talking to friends about their companies in the event that you do have to depart SoundCloud. ------ mrleiter >Management will have known about the cash crunch or should at least have anticipated it was a possibility for a while now, and should not have set expectations that they were unlikely to meet. As user bspn has said before, this is a bad sign. If the company has good financial management, they have seen this coming and chose to inform its employees very late (which is bad). If the company did not see it coming, they have bad financial management (which is also bad). So yes, from an objective point of view it surely cannot hurt to start looking somewhere else. ------ dunkelsten Soundcloud is out there for several years raising rounds with great expectations (meaning high valuations) and still hasn't found a business model yet. They've lost a lot of high class tech talent such as Peter Bourgon. Users stay stagnant, no exit in sight. If you have equity, count it as zero, as latest at the next round, liq prefs will be so high there won't be much left for employees. If I were you, I'd start looking in any case. ------ AngeloAnolin This may sound too self-serving, but at the end of the day, you need to ensure your bottomline and well-being as well. You have responsibilities and the necessity to feed yourself (and those who may depend upon you) which involves in some ways some financial means, which would be perfectly alright that you start looking for places that may well use your skills/talent and compensate you accordingly. ------ umanwizard > I'm sure that everyone here will have been in similar situations before. No, because I've only worked for businesses that make money. ~~~ confluence Not the time or place. ~~~ umanwizard What? Why not? The OP is explicitly asking for advice. My advice is to work for a business that makes money. ~~~ adventured That's not the advice you gave. In fact you gave no advice, you simply proclaimed your superiority when it comes to past decision making, in that you only worked for companies that make money. Your reply was intentionally snarky at best; obnoxiously insulting, demeaning and entirely non-useful at worst. ------ joeevans1000 I think this might be evidence of the trend that is already occurring of IT companies (including startups) becoming more like companies in other industries. Which is to say, no champagne on your birthdays. I've noticed less lavishness. It was only a matter of time for the excitement of a whole new industry to begin to wear off. Many components of what is necessary to create a startup are becoming commodified by so called cloud offerings. There is less need to exert the same level of effort to retain your developers and a failure to do so has less consequence. ------ Adam89 If you're in London there's a cool company called FutureLearn, they are not actively advertising for new employees but you should check them out. ------ richardknop I would probably send my resume over to recruiters and started looking at possible new opportunity while keeping your job. It won't hurt to get a sense about the current job market, what interesting companies are hiring and what are salaries for positions with your level of experience. You will find out whether you are underpaid or not (working for a startup you very likely are) and then decide based on that. ------ christopherslee tl;dr - if you believe in the company future and are willing to make that sacrifice, stay. if you don't, leave. all startups have risks. i think that's something people overlook and they tend to think about the non-corporate atmosphere. anyways, that being said, i think it boils down to if you believe in the future of the company. if you believe in the company's plan and you're willing to stick it out, great! imo, you should expect to hear an explanation of a company/product strategy _you_ believe has a chance. if you don't believe it has a chance, well, i imagine you are sticking around for other personal or professional reasons. that could be because the opportunity you are getting (with specific tech, roles, etc) that you believe will help get you to where you want to be. it doesn't have to be about money. if genuine promises were broken, that makes it tough to trust the folks that you are likely looking to for said strategy and plan. ------ cmcginty If you've been there a while it sounds like a good time to explore your options. You don't have to accept a new offer, but my experience is that it's probably going to get worse before it gets better. By the time they turn things around you could be making 20-30% more in a new role somewhere else. ------ LindaSonntag As a SoundCloud employee myself, I seriously wonder why you had to post the company name in your question. Also, I have not yet heard any official announcement of the regular salary review being deferred (which I would also consider a company habit more so than a made "promise"). ------ scarface74 _What questions should we ask our founders that 'll help us build confidence that the company's financials are in reasonable shape?_ They aren't profitable and trying to get another round of funding. Only in the world of tech would that even be a question. ------ dmh2000 One consideration is that is easier to get another job when you are still employed. So you have to weigh that against the other factors. ------ throwawaymanbot They are keeping the machine running with "funding". Not actual profit? so understand they have to be mindful/careful on frivolities. If you gave a 100 million to the company, would you be annoyed if you found out about people getting small champagne bottles on their birthday? Would you be worried about your investment? The days of these companies building floor to floor slides, and pampering adult children was never going to last. Whats there to worry about? Saying all this of course, if the Mgmt are still getting these perks (wasting money), while the employees are not, id leave. That ship will hit the rocks very soon, and hard. And of course, it wont be the first company to get done under with high budget pay/perks for low budget mgmt. ------ kull As a founder of a startup, reading posts like that make me sad. In the imaginary world I live in , tough times a company is going through are triggering employees to give up their benefits and work harder to help the company recover. Before my entrepreneurial journey I was working for a startup as a developer , I sticked there around for 5 years. For the last 3 years of the company existence I voluntarily gave up 20% of my salary and worked my ass off, simply because of being loyal and caring for the organization. I work hard to create a sense of commitment and loyalty in my current start up, and during the recruiting process we pay a super attention to don't hire people who are looking for just money and are easy to abandon a ship during a crisis. ~~~ confluence As an employee of a company, I'm paid salary for my time. I'll take a pay cut for more equity if I want it, not for nothing. If I take risk, I get rewarded with ownership, but if I'm paid cash, why do I honestly care what happens to a company. This isn't some fairytale, we're all here to get paid, and employees​ aren't your buffer for bad cash flow management, that's the responsibility of owners and management. ~~~ brianwawok Blaming management make it sound like you have never owned a company. When cash is getting low two choices. Paycuts or firings. Pros and cons to both. In the OP sounds like they arent that drastic yet. Just no raises. Seems not that dire all things considered. ~~~ confluence Not holding management responsible makes me think you might have owned a company. Let me spell out the compact that undergirds capitalism: employees don't take risks and are paid a constant stream of cash, owner's do take risk, and it is up to them to ensure there is enough capital buffer to meet their constant stream obligations. Employees do the work, management/owners ensure they get paid. ~~~ sokoloff From what I read, throwaway-sc is being paid 100% of salary. They're just not being paid 103.5% of salary after a raise that's been deferred. While there are certainly things to worry about, this is not a case of employees not being paid. ~~~ confluence Funny thing is that salary changes with a raise, so technically they'd be < 100% of their promised benefits after July, and past that, who knows?

Sweden’s highest court bans drones with cameras - mooseburger http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/camera-spy-drones-banned-sweden-highest-court/ ====== cordite This would surely kill low cost autonomous drones, right? Assuming other non identifying technologies were used, I suspect that having multiple drones with the same technology may fail by increasing the noise with various light, sound, and radio wave methods. ------ EJTH Rediculus. This paranoia has to end. I don't know wether people in general have a fear of being stalked by a racing FPV with a shoddy CMOS camera at the beach, or if they fear some lunatic strapping a handgrenade to one. FPV is pretty much what makes drones fun to use, I don't see why you would outright ban "drones" instead of just making regulations as to where you can fly with a camera. EU will practically ban drones too in the near dystopian future. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCyiO6shKGI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCyiO6shKGI) ------ gnicholas I wonder how would this ruling apply to: (1) drones with cameras that can be used for both navigation and for capturing video, but which the operator only uses for navigation (2) drones with cameras that can only be used for navigation and are viewable by the operator in real-time (3) drones with cameras that are used primarily for autonomous stabilization (Parrot Mini Cargo has one) but can also be used to capture photos ------ kwhitefoot So long as no one is allowed to have them that's fine. No one at all, not the police, not the kommune, not the secret service, not the army, absolutely no one. ------ wcummings If it doesn't have a camera, is it really even a drone? Should just say they've banned drones. Good fucking riddance imo.

Some Fundamental Theorems in Mathematics [pdf] - mathgenius https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.08416 ====== jonjacky Some Fundamental Theorems in Mathematics by Oliver Knill - Linked PDF is a survey of modern math in 133 pages, in the form of the "fundamental" theorem in each of 135 areas, all in the first 62 pages! Followed by rationale and explanation of "fundamental", by 13 two-page lecture summaries on key topics, by Twitter math: 42 140-character statements of theorems with proof summaries, and more. "Teaching a course called “Math from a historical perspective” at the Harvard extension school led me to write up the present document. This course Math E 320 ... I’m reporting on many of these theorems as a tourist and not as a local."

Chris Wanstrath's Startup Riot keynote text - azsromej http://gist.github.com/67060 ====== sqs Great speech. I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions on the consequences of his conclusion, the "do what you want" bit. I know he meant it in a broader sense, but I see a lot of people (especially high school students and younger) wrongly interpreting that as "don't go into CS; just go straight to a startup," especially with the specific mention of that plan of action. I know that's a popular piece of advice given around here (though HN has an interesting mix of "stuffy" academia and "Wild West" hacker culture), and I felt the same way when I was younger. I thought I knew all the CS I needed to know to develop the stuff I'd want to develop. But I want to say that I am so overwhelmingly happy I have done CS at the college level. I knew so little back then (and still). It scares me that I almost neglected the path of inquiry that is /the/ single most interesting intellectual topic in my life. So, young hackers out there, keep an open mind and a long-term view when you are following his advice to "do whatever you want." That's exactly what he meant by that, I think. ~~~ patio11 Personally, I find that about four classes provided enough value to excuse the rest of the CS degree (two of those were "technical writing" and "stats"), and that I would have never been able to do what I do today without a few years as a stuffy boring enterprise dev first. ~~~ msort Computer Science Core = Algorithms + Compilers + Operating Systems After all, N. Wirth wrote a book titled: Data Structures + Algorithms = Programs ------ dotpavan good one. gist of keynote- dont be afraid to fail, there is lots to learn from it, follow what you genuinely love and use, and do what works for you best there is something so enchanting reading about github, 37signals, etc.. they are filled with passion, do not talk about money (as an objective) and most of all inspire others to follow their heart and pursue their love ~~~ wallflower I saw the GitHub guys talk at RailsConf '08. It struck me that they were all uber confident - they seemed that they knew what they were going to do and, as needed, they adjusted their course. I was walking out of this talk and mentioned this as smalltalk to guy next to me and he said he had known one of the GitHub guys for years - and in the several years that he has known him - he has always been calm confident and relaxed. They were very inspiring. ------ azsromej I'm still in the process of upgrading my ambition, but I've so far been happy to just get to the point where I can release something. If it makes > $10/mo on its own, consistently, I smile (which brings me back to needing to upgrade ambitions) ------ anuraggoel When you compare this to a previous keynote here: <http://gist.github.com/6443> you can see how he's getting better at this. ------ sho This is probably going to go against the grain a little, but I have some problems with GitHub. Firstly and probably most obviously, their business is based almost in its entirity around a single third party open source tool, without which they would have nothing at all, and yet their site is not open source. I know they have every right, legally, to do this, but to me it seems .. exploitative. I wouldn't even care, really - that's what it's all about, after all - but they're just so arrogant about it. Wanstrath especially. Just go look at the very latest post on his blog. The last sentence - "Welcome to distributed version control." is just so smug and really rubs me up the wrong way. Maybe I'm an idiot for thinking that way, it's very probable, but something just feels wrong. Secondly, the whole point of distributed version control is that it is _distributed_. Github is the antithesis of this! And it has real-world consequences, too - it's slow as hell. It's not Facebook for programmers, it's Geocities for programmers, and I for one can't wait until all those Github users learn how to set up their own repositories. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Github. It's nice looking and works fairly well, apart from the speed. They certain picked the right wave to jump on and it was very right place, right time. And I love git. But Github can't last that long, IMO. Trying to force a distributed version control system into a "hub" is not sustainable. Many people, including myself, would never host the fruit of their labours on some free "social" site. And the web interface is better than gitweb but hardly light years ahead of everyone else. I think it's just a matter of time before we see a proper distributed git community - a "git mesh", if you will. Obviously there are some pieces missing before that can occur, but I think it's inevitable. These "hubs" never last. Just try to name one that has. ~~~ old-gregg Every web-based startup is like that: 99.999% of their code base is someone else's outsourced work yet they keep their own code closed. Why such high percentage of other people's code? Because nobody can afford to: * Implement their own SQL server * Implement their own programming language * Implement their own web framework * Implement their own 234 libraries for parsing, fetching, I/O, threading, etc etc etc. However, I feel exactly the same way you do. But not regarding Github. They're what YouTube is for flash, they're basically Rackspace - a hosting company. The company that pisses me off the most is Scribbd. Their entire product is an evil flashizator of OpenOffice's file converter. And an closed-source flashizator at that. Not only they're destroying the web with their laptop- burning binary browser crasher, but they're parasitizing on one of the most successful, most needed (and struggling) open source projects without contributing anything back. ~~~ blasdel Scribd doesn't even have the source to their own Flashizer! It's FlashPaper, which was Macromedia's somewhat lame attempt at competing with PDF pre-buyout. ~~~ natrius If I remember correctly, Scribd started out using FlashPaper, but they developed their own supposedly superior iPaper to replace it.

It should only take you a few hours... - The Hiltmon - hiltmon http://www.hiltmon.com/blog/2012/01/11/it-should-only-take-you-a-few-hours-dot-dot-dot/ ====== asolove Of course carpenters don't get this kind of nonsense, because you can buy cheap, mass-manufactured tables. If you go to a carpenter to get a table built, you must have a good reason and you know that a lot of time and money will be involved. Make no mistake, this distinction is coming to much of what we currently consider "programming" too. Spreadsheets probably save the world from 80% of what would otherwise have to be done by a programmer, and someone will eventually find a UI paradigm for a rough database and rules system (maybe something like Bento+Improv?) that can replace much of what line-of-business programmers do now. Now, you say: but programming is really about thinking and attention to detail, not just typing in code. To which I say: yeah, and so is making tables. But at some point, in the current Western economy, cheap wins over good. ~~~ hiltmon Excellent points. And I'd have to agree that both mass market tables (Ikea?) and spreadsheets do save us all a lot of these aches. But cheap only wins if you can sell many of the same manufactured good. Most of the people who go to carpenters and programmers think what they want is unique enough to require a crafter, but expect the crafter to be as quick and cheap as a mass-market product manufacturer.

Show HN: Digital Signatures on the Blockchain – With Smart Contracts - avadhoot http://dashboard.attores.com/?utm_source=hacker_news ====== avadhoot A. Digital Signing 2.0: Our uncluttered interface lets you easily sign documents and secure them with blockchain technology B. Smart Contract and Blockchain Secure: By using secure smart contracts, we enable real time auditability & cryptographic proof of transmission & acceptance. (Absolutely easy to verify the authenticity + keep the private record.) C. Digitize your Documents: Say goodbye to the days of printing, signing, scanning and emailing!

How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance - feross https://www.debugbear.com/blog/2020-chrome-extension-performance-report ====== gorhill An note regarding the memory usage in Chromium and uBO specifically. I have observed that even though the memory usage as reported by developer tools under "JavaScript VM instance" stay rather stable in uBO[1] even after a lot of memory churning operations[2], the figure reported in Chromium's Task Manager keeps climbing up after each of these memory churning operation, and forcing garbage collection does not bring the reported usage down in the Task Manager. There is something happening in Chromium's extension process (and outside the JavaScript VM in which the extension run) which may cause wildly various memory figures for even the same extension depending on how much memory- churning operations have occurred -- I wish Chromium devs would provide technical insights about this. * * * [1] Around 8 MB when using default settings/lists. [2] For instance, repeatedly purging all filter lists and forcing an update. ~~~ lifeisgood99 I just want to say thank you so much for uBO ------ crazygringo Utterly fascinating article. The main takeaways seem to be that 1) extensions in general wind up _massively_ increasing CPU time (by 5-20x) when loading "example.com", and 2) ad blockers wind up _massively_ reducing CPU time (by 4-20x) when loading a "WCPO news article". Which makes me happy that I use uBlock (edit: Origin, thanks below), and sad that I have to use LastPass. _HOWEVER_ \-- I feel like both these metrics are potentially highly misleading, because CPU time isn't something the user directly observes -- it might be the limiting factor, or it might not affect the user experience at all (because the CPU usage is happening while waiting for further network resources that are even slower, or the CPU usage is happening after the page has visually finished loading all relevant content). I'd be much more interested to see how extensions like Evernote or LastPass increase the time it takes for a real webpage (e.g. "nytimes.com") to _finish painting the viewport_ not including ads, and similarly whether adblocking actually decreases the same -- or if all the advertising stuff really only happens afterwards. (Because sites are architected differently, you'd need to compute an aggregate score across a range of common sites.) ~~~ sa46 > I have to use LastPass. I recently switched from LastPass to 1Password because of the added latency from Lastpass. Lastpass adds about 70ms to first contentful paint on example.com. 1Password, on the other hand, runs after the painting is done so it doesn't block rendering. I polished up a blog draft I had lying around about switching to 1Password: [https://joe.schafer.dev/passing- lastpass/](https://joe.schafer.dev/passing-lastpass/) > I'd be much more interested to see how extensions like Evernote or LastPass > increase the time it takes for a real webpage (e.g. "nytimes.com") to finish > painting the viewport not including ads. I reinstalled Lastpass to test on nytimes.com. It takes 58ms to evaluate onloadwff.js (the Lastpass entry point) before any content is rendered. ~~~ DaiPlusPlus I have LastPass, but I keep it in “only activate extension when I click on the toolbar button”. The only annoying thing is that LastPass requires the whole page to reload first - I don’t know why Chrome can’t load an extension into an already-loaded page. ------ a_imho _Most ad blockers work by blocking certain network requests that are initiated by the page. DDG Privacy Essentials reduces the number of network requests by 95% and the download weight by 80%._ _DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials reduces the CPU time of the article page from 31s to just 1.6s. All other tested extensions also bring CPU time down to at most 10s._ It seems the single most important thing regarding Real Word Performance is a good content blocking functionality (not to mention other boons). Why don't browsers come with one by default? ~~~ c17r Because the most popular browser is made by a company that makes the vast majority of their money from ads. ~~~ pjmlp And to large extent, the same developers that complain about ads are the ones to blame that Chrome has reached that market leadership. ------ pirsquare Great research! I'm a user of evernote web clipper and seeing that they're adding 3mb to every page that I'm using is extremely discouraging. My browse to clip ratio is around 1000:1 and I'm probably removing the extension after this. Just wondering, can browser extensions codesplit their bundles? If it's possible, then it is really disappointing to see these large companies loading huge bundles on initial load. ~~~ Lex-2008 Did you try to set the extension to "run on click"? Right-click extension icon, "This can read and change site data" -> "When you click the extension". I didn't try it myself (it might require reloading the page), but might be an option for 1000:1 browse to clip ratio. ~~~ pirsquare Awesome - Didn't know about this trick. I'm reconfiguring most of the my extensions to this. Gracias! ------ the_duke This is a worthy research topic. On mobile, with slower networks and much worse CPUs, uBlock often completely changes the experience. (thanks Mozilla!) I would note though that only example.com was examined (and apple.com in one test). I also did not see information if tests were repeated, as no variance/stddev is given. I'd expect it to be pretty high. ~~~ darkport How are you installing Firefox extensions in mobile? Is it Android only? ~~~ panpanna Firefox for Android is (at least for my usage) pretty much desktop Firefox with a touch-friendly UI. Firefox for iOS is not really Firefox. ~~~ WrtCdEvrydy All webbrowsers on iOS are basically safari reskinned. ------ esperent Not at all surprising that the worst two extensions by a long way are both from Avira. Yesterday I opened Chrome and received a warning that the Avira extension had been installed. I certainly did not install it willingly. I'm pretty sure I didn't install any other software that sneakily bundled it recently, either - I mean, I'm 99.9% sure that I haven't installed _any_ software in the past week. So how why did it suddenly show up? I reported it to Chrome from the web extensions store. Highly unlikely that they'll do anything about it though. ~~~ sp0rk > So how why did it suddenly show up? If Avira has a pay-per-install program, I would say it's pretty likely that you're part of a botnet. ~~~ esperent Interesting. I ran every kind of virus test I could find about a month ago since I was getting weird display/jank issues. Couldn't find anything, and in the end I tracked the issues down to a windows display scaling error. Any idea how I would go about testing for a botnet? ~~~ arprocter I've seen resetting Chrome fix all sorts of weirdness: [https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/3296214?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/3296214?hl=en) ~~~ eyegor Resetting chrome isn't much of a solution if the underlying problem is botnet affiliation (trojan, rootkit, etc). Should be reasonably easy to shut down all applications and services, and inspect the traffic going through the router for suspicious domains. If you only have a windows machine connected there should only be Microsoft traffic and maybe the router manufacturer. Anything else, and it's probably malicious. ~~~ lordlimecat Inspecting your PC's traffic from a sniffer on your PC to find a rootkit seems like a fool's errand. If something has driver / kernel level privileges it can trivially hide such traffic from any sniffer you have running. ~~~ eyegor Yes, that's why I said to inspect the router's traffic ------ glangdale It's entertaining that there is yet another area where "running large numbers of regular expressions, known in advance and not changing all that often" over lots of input is performance critical. This was a key driver behind writing Hyperscan ([https://github.com/intel/hyperscan](https://github.com/intel/hyperscan)) which I used to work on when it was primarily used for network security (thousands or tens of thousands of regular expression rules for firewalls), but doing this for ad blocking seems pretty sensible too. ~~~ pythux This is indeed a performance critical problem, but it is already pretty much solved at this point. If you look at the performance of the most popular content blockers, their decision time is already below fractions of milliseconds. So it does not seem like performance is really an issue anymore. ~~~ glangdale Yeah, I don't doubt that it's solvable by other means (notably hashing). It's just amusing that something we started building in 2006 - and open sourced in 2015 - largely solves a problem _directly_ (i.e. you don't specifically have to rewrite your regexes). ~~~ pythux To be fair, blocklists are not really lists of regexps. They contain some regexps indeed but the syntax is mostly custom and matching relies on both patterns found in URLs (This part could be partially expressed as RegExps) as well as a multitude of other things like constraints on domain of the frame, domain of the request, type of network request, etc. ------ londons_explore All the tests were done on an n2-standard-2 gcp instance... That doesn't have a GPU. Rendering a webpage without a GPU uses a lot of different codepaths and isn't awfully representative of performance with a GPU. ~~~ mostlystatic I ran most of the tests on example.com, which is easy to render without having a GPU available. Looking at on-page CPU time for Evernote, 91% is spent just processing JavaScript or HTML. So I expect any benefit of a GPU to be minimal. ~~~ londons_explore But there might also be a performance _hit_ with a GPU... There are various antipatterns like drawing on a canvas and then reading back the pixels repeatedly that perform atrociously with a GPU (due to the latency between the CPU and GPU). Some sites do a lot of that for things like custom font rendering, fingerprinting user hardware, custom data decompression algorithms that use canvas, etc. ~~~ hoten Lab analysis is always going to have compromises. What's important is the relative change (without and with the extensions), and that the extra work isn't especially slowed down because of lack of GPU. ------ erikrothoff Cool to see our extension tested (an RSS reader). What's great with this is that it gives us a metric to work towards improving. I've always been under the assumption that "cpu is cheap", but it does have real effects. ------ helltone If the author is here, can I suggest testing the Dark Reader extension too? ~~~ mostlystatic Here are the test results for Dark Reader: [https://www.debugbear.com/chrome- extension-performance-looku...](https://www.debugbear.com/chrome-extension- performance-lookup?search=dark%20reader) I also briefly mention it in the section on FCP, explaining why it makes sense for the extension to use render-blocking content scripts. [https://www.debugbear.com/blog/2020-chrome-extension- perform...](https://www.debugbear.com/blog/2020-chrome-extension-performance- report#page-rendering-delays) ------ thomasahle > The Avira Browser Safety extension contains a website allowlist with 30k+ > regular expressions. When the user navigates to a new page Avira checks if > the page URL is in that allowlist I wonder who thought that would be a good idea... Sounds like something that could be significantly improved by compiling all patterns into a single statemachine. ~~~ aasasd Yeah, back when I was doing similar matching on a big bunch of regexes, it was vastly faster to match on all of them lumped together in a group with the ‘or’ operator. And I learned of this more than fifteen years ago from a server-side lib that deduced the exact browser from the user-agent: it had a huge regex with various placeholders and a long list of ‘if/elseif’ checks to extract the values. ~~~ thomasahle Exactly. If your regex engine compiles to a DFA, you can have arbitrary many or clauses with no overhead. It's pretty neat. ------ traspler It seems like the included pw managers like LastPass & Dashlane also impact page loading drastically. Is there even an alternative with less impact? ~~~ edsimpson Anecdotally, I noticed a browsing speed up when I switched from LastPass to Bitwarden on older laptops. ------ lmkg It looks like a lot of the slowness from the slow extensions is from parsing and executing JavaScript. Are there opportunities from the browser side to make extensions faster? It seems like re-parsing the same JS on every pageload is an opportunity for gains from caching, but I'm also wondering about different delivery mechanisms like wasm. Are there security considerations here? ~~~ aasasd Alternatively, heavy code could be kept in the background script while page- injected scripts only do interaction. This would even employ the JIT properly. ------ SeanDav > _" DDG Privacy Essentials does a simple object property lookup based on the > request domain, an operation that is practically instantaneous"_ This sounds interesting. A bit of searching is not providing much enlightenment - anyone care to explain in a bit more detail? Also, if it is so fast, why aren't all the filter add-ons doing it? ~~~ gorhill Content blockers in the same class as uBlock Origin ("uBO")[1] have the added burden of having to enforce generic filters which are independent of the request domains, they have to find a specific pattern in the request URL, including with support for wildcards. Even though, and despite this added burden, I will point out that uBO is almost as performant as DDG Privacy Essentials as per this report. Furthermore, uBO contains WASM modules but they are not used in the Chromium version of the extension since this would require to add a `wasm-eval` directive to uBO's extension manifest, something I prefer to avoid for the time being, I fear this would cause more lengthy validation of the extension by the Chrome Web Store. * * * [1] Able to enforce EasyList, EasyPrivacy et al. ------ salmo I would be curious to see this for Firefox extensions as well. ------ k__ I like Grammarly, but the extension is really crappy. ~~~ bvm Grammarly causes a surprising amount of frontend issues. ------ ChikkaChiChi Has a browser team ever considered the possibility of creating allowlists for extensions only on certain websites? A native implementation of something like uMatrix that also worked on extensions could help end users at least remove slowdowns on sites they need to be performant. ------ iou Nice article. This seems like a relevant contrast to share here [https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker- performance/](https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/) ------ goalieca I typically run a number of extensions: duckduckgo privacy essentials, ublock origin, privacy badger, and whatever built-in firefox has. Perhaps this is overkill but they all cover slightly different things. ------ WhompingWindows Can someone give me an ELI5 on Privacy Badger? My current stack is just uBlock Origin, I'm considering layering PB over the top. ~~~ identity0 In my experience, PB pretty much does nothing. UBO already blocks trackers and social media buttons, and if it doesn’t, you can turn on those filters. PB doesn’t even block the trackers until it “learns” that they are trackers, it just avoids sending cookies (which doesn’t stop facebook from fingerprinting you.) The best method would probably turning off 3rd party scripts and iframes in UBO, but that does mean you have to un-break a lot of sites. An extension like cookie autodelete would also do much more than PB, since, if you have no cookies, they can’t be sent. Edit: I realized that I sound like I’m bashing PB too much. PB is definitely better than nothing, and doesn’t break any sites, but there are better things you can do which make PB obsolete. ------ PaywallBuster I've seen ublock causing CPU to be pegged at 100% making various js heavy applications completely unusable. [https://github.com/uBlock-LLC/uBlock/issues/1829](https://github.com/uBlock- LLC/uBlock/issues/1829) ~~~ smichel17 For anyone glancing by: Note that this is uBlock, not uBlock origin. ------ sizzle Am I creating a bottleneck by running Ghostery with uBlock Origin? ------ user2233 hello ------ baggy_trough Don't ever install extensions. There is no limit to the trouble and pain they can cause. ~~~ saagarjha Never browse the web. There is no limit to the trouble and pain it can cause. ------ visarga Cool, but it doesn't matter that no-extension is much faster because we can't browse without ad blocking. Even if it slows the page, it is still preferable. On the other hand ad blocking wastes less bandwidth and memory. ~~~ laurent123456 I don't think you read the graph right. Without ad-blocking extensions, the browser is of course much slower, about 15 times slower according to their tests. ~~~ londons_explore I am doubtful of some of the numbers here... I mean I know browsing the web without an ad blocker is bad, but it isn't 'takes 35 seconds to load an article on gigabit ethernet' bad.... ~~~ smichel17 That was a graph of cpu time, not network request time, and 20s of the 30s were spent parsing and running js.

Things to Know Before You Accept Another Privacy Policy - duzins http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/6-things-to-know-before-you-accept-another-privacy-policy.php#.T6BBOvTSC9E.hackernews ====== benologist Those are 6 things that would be nice to know in a perfect world, some of them aren't going to help you very much in this one though. Really there's just one thing to know ... does Ghostery's alert bar span half your screen? <http://i.imgur.com/mFqGy.png> That's a great sign that the site does not respect your privacy.