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SSH-lockbox: Personal centralised SSH key deployment to multiple boxes (and Git - todsacerdoti https://github.com/half-cambodian-hacker-man/ssh-lockbox ====== brian_herman Seems like a SSH cert authority would be better. [https://jameshfisher.com/2018/03/16/how-to-create-an-ssh- cer...](https://jameshfisher.com/2018/03/16/how-to-create-an-ssh-certificate- authority/) [https://github.com/cloudtools/ssh-cert- authority](https://github.com/cloudtools/ssh-cert-authority)

Agile Memes, Part 1 - DanielBMarkham http://tiny-giant-books.com/blog/agile-memes-part-1/ ====== DanielBMarkham While this isn't normal HN fare, it's tech-related, it's a pet project, and it's a holiday weekend, so hopefully it'll be okay.

Alibaba Has a Computing Cloud, and It’s Growing, Too - mcenedella http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/alibaba-has-a-computing-cloud-and-its-growing-too/ ====== nostrademons I wonder how the economics of the cloud industry will eventually play out. Right now, it's enormously profitable, because Amazon is the clear market leader and there're some fairly significant switching costs. However, building out the cloud infrastructure is a side-effect of being any Internet business that achieves reasonable scale. And once you do that, it's both relatively inexpensive and quite profitable to enter the IaaS market and resell some of that additional computing capacity to other smaller firms. Cloud computing is almost totally undifferentiated; you're selling basic computing resources (CPU, RAM, disk) for money. My hunch is that cloud is going to become like the airline industry. An oligopoly with periodic price wars. It has the same "high fixed cost, low marginal cost" economics as airlines, the same need for _some_ baseline technical knowledge but not enough that you can differentiate on product quality, and the same price-sensitivity. It's possible that the switching costs of migrating your data between cloud providers might put a barrier on competition and preserve some profit margins, but I suspect that any well-used service will be able to migrate their data out for a small fraction of their monthly bandwidth costs. The airline industry is wonderfully beneficial to consumers, but it's been a dud for investors and operators over its 100-year history. ~~~ jyu Or it could end up being more like cereal. _Yet, in other fields—like cereals, for example—almost all the big boys make out. If you 're some kind of a medium grade cereal maker, you might make 15% on your capital. And if you're really good, you might make 40%. But why are cereals so profitable—despite the fact that it looks to me like they're competing like crazy with promotions, coupons and everything else? I don't fully understand it._ [http://old.ycombinator.com/munger.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/munger.html)

Ask HN: What should I name my newsletter? - aml183 I'm starting a newsletter to give career advice to developers. Any ideas for what I should call it? ====== ChristianGeek Developing Your Future (or FutureDev if you want something shorter). ~~~ aml183 I like it. What you think of Developer to CTO ~~~ ChristianGeek That's good too.

IRC Or Chat Room For YC Winter 2011 Applicants - 619Cloud Is there an IRC or 37Signals campfire for applicants of the YCombinator Winter 2011? Would be cool to chat with other applicants. ====== 619Cloud Even better, I just spun up a VPS instance, and got the simple, yet functional node.js chat room going on it. I'm in there now. :) Come one, come all. <http://173.203.103.72:8001/> I'll keep it up. ~~~ geuis This seems to be where the action is! Come jump in the pool. ~~~ 619Cloud You guys can now access the YC Winter 2011 chat at: <http://www.nodejscloud.com:8001/> as well. See you there. ------ zbruhnke I'd be interested in the same thing ... for anyone else interested feel free to shoot me an email (my email address is listed in my profile) I would love to discuss with other applicants whats going on with their projects, or if they are looking for co-founders etc. I was actually looking for one for my project, however after talking to a YC'er I decided it would be better to submit as a single founder and look for a like minded co-founder along the way if/when I was accepted ~~~ serverdude same here - single founder but intend to find another co founder - hopefully soon:) your email is invisible, btw.. ------ 619Cloud Doing a chat session tonight at 8:30pm [Pacific]. Join us. <http://www.nodejscloud.com:8001/> ------ dzlobin <http://www.frid.ge/php/group.php?g=7636> There is now! Edit: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1810174> ------ dools i just typed /join #yc2011 on freenode. I'm lonely :)

Type D-A-N-C-E on Wistia's Team Page - smalter http://wistia.com/about/yearbook/ ====== zgryw But not in Chrome. ~~~ smalter huh, it's working for me in chrome

Electoral Programming by Russ Cox - bandris http://research.swtch.com/2008/06/electoral-programming.html ====== bandris "Dynamic programming is an odd name for what is essentially cached recursion, minus the recursion." "It's easy to see the SSA advocates saying that CPS is just SSA with a bunch of extra lambdas floating around for no good reason!" But the interesting part is the code of course.

Inherited Server from Bankrupt Startup - seanwessmith So the short story goes is our startup went under. The CEO then decided to split up the assets and I received a server stack. What are some interesting&#x2F; useful learning scenarios I could perform. I have minimal experience using linux. ====== ChuckMcM Probably not worth a whole lot to sell. Sometimes the disks and memory will be worth something, _occasionally_ the processors. There are a bunch of folks who part these things out. For the most part the best return can be selling directly to end users on ebay or craigslist. In terms of learning things, if by a "stack" you have 10 or more, then you run a hadoop cluster or any of a number of other clustered type systems. If you were more devops oriented you could play around with deployment scripts and containers and what not. Setting up bitcoin miners or unikernel systems. Can be an excellent way to transcode video if you've got lots of VHS tapes you wish were MP4's :-) ------ jpgvm If you are interested in cloud platforms and you have more than one server (stack usually means more than one) then you could take a jab at learning how to install OpenStack, or go the Windows route and install Server 2012 + System Center. Really depends on what you want to learn, bare metal does have it's advantages when it comes to learning how stuff goes together. Especially if you also got an ethernet switch out of it. ------ pjungwir I have a buddy with a rack in his garage he uses to run proxmox and asterisk. I suppose you could also run your own SMTP server for private email. Those are some things that seem like they'd be compromised by renting a VPS. I'm assuming your motives are more about fun than economics. ------ saluki +1 for selling as well . . . you can do/learn almost anything on AWS, Digital Ocean, etc . . . Plus depending on the number of racks you have running it will cost more in electricity each month than the cost of a few VPS accounts. ------ doobiaus Take it as an opportunity to learn about linux and use it as a test bed to upskill yourself, if you're into that sort of thing. Install a hyper-visor and start playing with VMs, containers etc. ------ atoz hi, how old are these systems? servers are only usefull/have significant monetary value for other companies if age is << 5 años. if they are not too old: sell them and play with an older standard pc - 64 bit / virtualization possible, enough ram. cheers az ------ balls2you sell it to another startup that is starting up and take 1% Equity ------ jtchang What kind of server? ------ krylon Well, it depends on what you are looking to with it. Do you want to learn about system administration, software development, networking, ...? It also depends on where the server is, physically - is it in your home or in some data center? If it's system administration, one example that is reasonably useful is setting up an owncloud server. Or a private mail server. If it is in your home, setting up a DHCP server and a DNS server can be a fun excercise. In any case, there are _many_ tutorials and HOWTOs available online. The search engine of your choice will tell you where. Most major linux distros also come with pretty good documentation or at least have some online. (Depending on the circumstances, you might consider reinstalling the system first - without physical access to the machine, it is not easy, though.) If you want to learn about software development, there are more things you can do with a linux server than I can think of. When I try to think of a fun programming project, I often make the mistake of thinking of the technology (programming language, libraries/frameworks) first and then choosing a problem that goes with it. For _learning_ , though, it can be a good idea - so I want to learn about, say, building web apps with Ruby on Rails or Django or whatever; what better way to learn about that than building a small toy application? Okay, now all I need is a nice toy problem, difficult enough to actually teach me something, but not difficult enough to be frustrating. Again, there far too many tutorials out there for me to mention anything specific. (Just as an example, I taught myself Django by writing an application that is basically a glorified RSS reader with a builtin Bayes network - I could rate news as boring or interesting, and after a while the app could classify news items a "probably boring" or "probably interesting" well enough so I could make it filter out news that were "probably boring". It did not work _that_ well, was really slow, and I basically suck at UI design, so it was really ugly, too, but it was still useful and fun to build.) I hope this helps at least a little. I am staying fairly vague because your question is kind of vague. If you supplied more details about your interest or your skills/background, I might be able to give a more helpful answer. Generally speaking, try to think of something that would be actually useful to you - that way, motivation will be less of a problem, and it will probably be more fun, as well. (To be honest, learning about Linux / Unix can be very frustrating initially - within the first six months of using Linux on my desktop, I was _very_ close to physically throwing my computer out of the window no less than three times. The learning curve can be steep at the beginning, but to me, in retrospect, it was time well spent. It also tends to be a great deal of fun after a while.)

Cspcert WG (M3) Recommendations for the Implementation of the CSP Certification - based2 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J2NJt-mk2iF_ewhPNnhTywpo0zOVcY8J/view ====== based2 ref: [https://www.enisa.europa.eu/news/enisa-news/cybersecurity- ce...](https://www.enisa.europa.eu/news/enisa-news/cybersecurity- certification-lifting-the-eu-into-the-cloud)

Some Startup Opportunities Are Losers Today - borisfowler http://www.caycon.com/blog/2011/06/some-startup-opportunities-are-losers-today/ ====== gamble In at least two of these categories, (search and social networking) today's market leaders started up during low points when nobody thought their was room - or even demand - for another entrant. Seriously, when Google was founded building yet another search engine was considered slightly less cool and even less lucrative than developing a new word processor for Windows. Focusing on unoccupied niches or new markets is usually a bad strategy. Businesses are like life; they find a way to occupy every habitable space. There's usually a reason unoccupied niches are unoccupied. Being the first into a new market is almost as bad. The business that establishes the market is usually just providing a free lesson to potential competitors on what to avoid. They tend to grow hidebound just as the market really takes off. ~~~ dpark When Google launched, no one was even trying to do search anymore. For some reason everyone thought that portals were going to be the big thing. Google launched with something truly innovative that was a _massive_ improvement over the incumbents. When Facebook launched, the social network sites all bit, and everyone knew it. MySpace was the big thing, but everyone over the age of 14 knew it was unpleasant to use. Facebook came along and launched a different kind of site. First, it was exclusive. Second, it wasn't about putting together a page that looked like it belonged on Angelfire. It was about spending time connecting to people you knew. If you're going to try to launch in a space with long-established players, you better have something damned impressive. e.g. There is no meaningful space for small players in search. You either take a huge chunk of the market and put yourself on the Forbes list, or you fold. If all you've got is another search engine that's "as good" as Google, then don't bother. "As good" doesn't win customers.

Ask HN: Is unconventional computing popular? - Agent101 Are people excited and interested about the possibilities of things like autonomic computing/amorphous computing and other non- Von Neumann style systems?<p>There seems to be a lack of coverage in geek news, despite a healthy academic community/journal etc and I was wondering why.<p>I've got my own reasons for not being enthused about the current field, but I am curious what other people think. ====== adbge I, for one, am ridiculously excited by the idea of an entirely new computing paradigm. I know some at HN abhor anything that isn't practical this very second, but I think they just lack imagination. I'd be interested in any articles submitted in the vein of non-traditional computing. ~~~ billswift It would be more exciting if there hadn't been so many in the recent past, like quantum computing that's been going to have a practical application Real Soon Now for the past decade. ~~~ jacquesm One problem with any new technology is that the 'get rich quick' crowd and their marketeers will jump on it to avoid missing the next possibility to easy riches. They'll over-hype the product, create unrealistic expectations and move on to the next hot thing when they've given it a bad name. Modern day locusts is what they are. ------ jbarham Microcontrollers (e.g., the Atmel AVR chip line which is the basis of the Arduino open source hardware platform) are often modified Harvard architectures, where the instructions are read from flash and SRAM is used for volatile stack/heap memory. There is a lot of activity in this area which has been dubbed "physical computing". See e.g. O'Reilly's Make quarterly and Sparkfun, which apparently does > $10 million in sales annually from selling electronics components and kits to hobbyists. I'm eagerly awaiting my first Arduino starter kit from them! ;) ------ mkramlich Build a widget with it I can buy, or ship a piece of software written in/with it, and I think there will be much more interest it. ------ kragen Oh, of course I'm excited and interested (although not enough to follow it so closely as to be able to guess what you're de-enthused about) but I think it's still a recondite enough area that most HN readers won't know to upvote it. ~~~ Agent101 Have a browse through the table of contents of the International Journal and you might get the same impression as me. <http://www.oldcitypublishing.com/IJUC/IJUC.html> Basically it is too unconventional (chemical), faddy and not focussed on producing something usable by the average geek. That sort of stuff is still interesting (for computing in odd situations) but is not what I am looking for. I suppose I wondering why there isn't the computer equivalent of a space elevator. That is something most people know about that can't be done with current tech but is physically plausible (but might still might be too hard to do). Something that might spark the equivalent of the spaceward foundation, but for computers. The fleet architecture represents a different face of unconventional computing. One that geeks can get behind. However it concentrates on speed of processing. Looking at the costs of computing, increasing computational power per watt or flops is useful but does not address the dominant cost of owning and running a computer. The dominant costs, I think, are the costs of learning the system, administering them and programming them. This is not addressed by either of the above threads of research. I have my own odd-ball ideas. Which I'm excited about. I just wanted to gauge opinion of HN type people. ~~~ kragen It seems like what you're interested in is more like UI or UX research than hardware innovation? The universality of the machine, strengthened by the ubiquity of compilers and software written in high-level languages, almost totally disconnects the user experience from the computing hardware, except for efficiency differences; instead it's tied to the I/O devices and the user interaction techniques, and increasingly, to the data the user is interacting with. But I do see a fair bit of discussion of researchy and novel UIs here, don't you? On the front page right now I see Heroku (reducing the cost of administering systems), Hummingbird (real-time web site analytics visualization), Android vs. iPhone (which is largely about ubiquity and UI), Chatroulette, the death of files in the iPhone/iPad UI (which sounds like goes right to the core of the "dominant costs" you're talking about), Nielsen's report on iPad usability, and UI design in Basecamp. And that's just above the fold! ~~~ Agent101 There are three ways to tackle the human costs of computing. 1) Make the things humans have to do easier. UI/UX 2) Reduce the number of things humans have to do. While all modern hardware can calculate the same things (are universal) they have different security models which can affect how much maintenance the user has to do. Take capability based security, an old idea implemented in hardware in the IBM AS 400. Languages (E, Joe-E) based on it are currently being touted as a way to reduce the risk of malware infection, even if malware does get on the system it can't do much because the language VMs operate under a principle of least privilege. If we are changing the Arch for performance (e.g. fleet) and can't make use of the performance with standard software we may want to change it in this way as well, to take advantage of the system. To give a concrete example of how computer architectures can be changed for the better. If windows had capability based security at the low level it could pass bits of memory to the user land process by sharing a capability that gave it write access. Then the user land process could populate it, once it had finished and the kernel wanted to read it, they could revoke the the writeable permission. This would prevent this sort of attack <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1331025> See this for an intro to the philosophy <http://www.erights.org/talks/virus-safe/index.html> 3) Make the computer do the work for the human. Yes this is mainly an AI problem, but it also an architecture problem. If you want the system to manage things like your graphics card drivers for you, you have to make some decisions about the hardware. Which programs are allowed to try and manage the graphics card drivers, how can the user communicate what she wants in terms of graphics card drivers in a way that the computer will find unambiguous. So yep, UI and UX, is important but it is only one possibly angle of attack, and not the one I'm interested in. Because people are doing fine work on it, while the others languish a bit. ~~~ kragen > it could pass bits of memory to the user land process > by sharing a capability that gave it write access. > Then the userland process could populate it, > once it had finished and the kernel wanted to read it, > they could revoke the the writeable permission. > This would prevent this sort of attack [apparently, > confusing auditors with TOCTOU attacks on system call arguments] Virtual memory mapping hardware is already roughly a capability system. The CPU doesn't maintain a list of ownerships and permissions for every page of physical memory; it puts capabilities to those pages into page tables. That's how KeyKOS was able to run efficiently on stock hardware. Capability systems are indeed better for security in several ways, but this isn't one of them. The problem here is that the memory page is shareable between different user threads. You can solve this problem in a variety of ways, including the one you suggest. However, unmapping the page that a system-call argument lives in before invoking an auditor does not constitute implementing a capability system. To a great extent, it seems like the move toward web apps is exactly a move toward a different security model in order to reduce the maintenance the user has to do, a model in which most apps are fairly limited in their authority. The same-origin policy still falls far short of full POLA, but it's a step. The project in this area I'm most excited about is Caja, which is what MarkM's working on these days. ~~~ Agent101 I thought about mapping. Wouldn't you get into trouble if the section of memory still had to be readable during the time it is used by the kernel if you unmapped it? Or can you modify a read-write map to a read-only map? I'm just getting into windows internals. Heh, I didn't know there were fellow people interested in keykos type stuff here. I'm fairly new to that and more interested in the 3rd thing you can do to reduce cost of ownership, having an adaptive computer background. If you submit a link to caja here let me know and I'll upvote it. The cap-like stuff that the Marks were working on for delegating authority to web apps was also interesting. It does reduce the amount of maintenance the user has to do, they still have to pay for the web apps though, so depending upon the income of the user and cost of the service it might not reduce the total cost by much. ------ kbob How about disappointed? I've seen intriguing non-Von architectures for decades, and they always lose out to Moore's Law and the fact that 1,000X more engineering resources are invested in Von Neumann architectures.

Android Is As Open As The Clenched Fist I’d Like To Punch The Carriers With - credo http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/09/android-open/ ====== jrockway In the end, it's our fault for electing people that refuse to regulate the cell phone carriers properly. Or, it's our fault for doing business with them. There are some countries where carriers are not allowed to include un- uninstallable apps. But not the US. Why? Because consumers in the US don't care about anything but a low, low price. Right now, Android is the only popular mobile OS that you can clone from git, build, and install on some piece of hardware. All hardware? Nope. But some? Yes. This means it's basically open. Just because someone sells you a box you're not allowed to open doesn't mean that all boxes are un-openable, after all. I had no trouble hacking my EVO 4G, deleting the stock OS with HTC and Sprint crapware, and installing a build with 100% open code. While it's not possible to do this with _every_ Android phone ever made, it's not possible to do it with _any_ iOS or Symbian or WebOS device. This makes Android the most open; and after the industry has been closed tight for 20+ years, it is quite refreshing. We haven't achieved perfection yet, but Android is the only software stack bringing us closer. (Remember commercial UNIXes? Neither do I. Linux and Free/Open/NetBSD relegated them to a very tiny niche market. Android is the beginning of this for mobile; you don't just wake up one day, free of the oppression of closed hardware and proprietary software. It takes time and effort, and Google is leading the way right now. Someone else will build on this in the future, and things will become even more open.) ~~~ gamble Another possibility is that this is as open as Android is ever going to be. The original Droid was a high-water mark for openness and standardization on Android. Subsequent phones have been progressively more customized and locked down. Examples: AT&T banning sideloading, Motorola phones taking a more aggressive approach toward hacking, Verizon signing exclusive deals like Skype and moving toward a proprietary app store, Google deferring to carriers on tethering, Verizon's forcing Bing on users, etc. "I can always hack it" isn't a solution, unless you'd accept that hacking is also a solution to Apple's App Store censorship. Android's fans are so focused on how evil Apple is that they're ignoring the way Android itself is becoming less open. I'm not entirely happy with Apple, but I'll take their curation over the carrier's vision of a new walled garden based on Android any day. ~~~ wmf _Another possibility is that this is as open as Android is ever going to be._ This is a great point. Many of us are imagining a hypothetical alternate world where Google forced all Android phones to be non-evil, but maybe that world can't exist. Maybe if Google was fascist about openness, the carriers would just ship Symbian and WinMo instead. _The original Droid was a high-water mark for openness and standardization on Android._ I would say the Nexus One is the high-water mark, although apparently many people never even knew that it existed due to the lack of marketing. ------ nanairo This is very close to a previous article blaming Google for turning us back into the days of strong carrier control. (can't remember the link, but it was here on HN). And I agree, though I don't think Google did it on purpose. Their main aim---I think---was just to avoid Apple (or Blackberry) becoming too powerful. They wanted to commoditise the smartphone market. And they have succeeded. And to me it doesn't look like the hardware manufacturers got a great deal either. It's turning into a cut-throat market, where all phones are pretty much identical (and interchangeable), and your revenues come from economy of scale. Basically like the PC market. Normally (e.g PC market) this would mean that the customer can shop for the best deal, which is great. However the "customer" here are the carriers: they buy from the manufacturers and resell to the real customer. And indeed they got all the power: they can ask this or that company to lock or modify the phone under threat of taking their business elsewhere. The real customer, however, is only dealing with the carriers, and Google hasn't commoditise these. If anything we are getting even more market concentration. So yeah, it seems to me to be pretty much what economics theory would suggest. The only alternative would to get an unlocked phone but then the manufacturer would lose the massive subsidise and most users seem to prefer those to the hassle of getting a closed system from their carriers. ~~~ ssp _The real customer, however, is only dealing with the carriers, and Google hasn't commoditise these. If anything we are getting even more market concentration._ Not yet, anyway. But the carriers have to be the next target. The huge capital requirements to build a network is their main barrier to entry, but that's unlikely to stop Google. I wonder if they realize this (they probably do), and if so, what they are going to about it. ~~~ oiuygtfrtghyju Google don't want to be in the phone market - they want to be in the selling ads on search market. Their worry was a closed iPhone with an Apple only browser might go to an Apple/ATT only search page with Apple/ATT ads - or they might simply replace all the Google ads with their own before sending pages to the phone And once people accepted this on iPhone they might also accept it on all the other phones then on all the home cable connections - like BT/Phorn. ------ AndrewHampton I don't understand how he could interpret Verizon making and promoting their own app store as meaning the platform isn't open. Am I missing something or is the fact that anyone can make their own app store mean the platform is _more_ open? Also, one minor nit is the 2.2 stats he's referring to are from August 2. I'm sure they'll be much higher with the 2.2 rollouts that occurred for Droids and Incedibles (others?) in August. In the end, if manufacturers/carriers make a bad product, it will fail in the market, but with Android, they're free to do that if they want. ~~~ nanairo It's the usual open for whom argument. Say Verizon creates its app store, promotes it, and removes Google's Marketplace. They also make sure you can't install apps any other way, including the original Google's marketplace. Now, they have been able to do all of this because it's open, so yeah, it is more open. However what they will hand over to the customer is more closed, and possibly a worse experience. ~~~ AndrewHampton I would agree with you if he was talking about removing the Android Market, but that's not the argument he made in the article. He said "it would likely be more prominently displayed than Android’s own Market for apps" which would leave the Android Market intact. ~~~ wvenable The fact remains, for all this openness you have vanishingly small amount of control over your own device. If you don't want Verizon's market and if you certainly don't want it "prominently displayed" you may end up being out of luck. ~~~ DougWebb That's not what Verizon has done, though. I bought a Droid 2 from them recently, and when I first started up there was a question about V.Cast which I said no to (because I knew everything there would cost money that I didn't want to spend) and I wound up with the Android Marketplace icon on my home page and the V.Cast app buried in my app list. If I want to check it out it's there, if I don't I don't have to click on it. Same goes for the other apps that cam pre-installed, which mostly aren't even that bad. I did go and re- organize most of my home pages, including getting rid of things like the Fox News widget, but that's just customizing. At no point did I really feel constrained by running Verizon's rom. Of course, I _am_ paying $20/month for tethering on top of my unlimited data plan. The phone by itself is unlimited, but when other devices connect through it I'm limited to 2GB/month before ungodly data rates kick in. For now I'm saving it for emergencies, but so far the web browser and email connectivity are good enough that I don't think I'll even need tethering, so I'll probably cancel it. ------ pilif it's not just the carriers. It's the manufacturers too - I know of no phone (aside of the Google developer phones) that would allow you to freely install your own build of the OS or even just remove "value added" software that has been installed for "your" "convenience". Unless you exploit security holes in the vendors crappy security systems. The fact that they don't even invest enough resources into a quality security framework (which helps increasing their revenue) speaks volumes of the quality of the other "improvements" they make to stock android. ~~~ drivebyacct2 But that is because of the carriers. Why do you think Motorola implemented a signed multistage boot process? I'm sure they didn't say, "We want to limit our customers and waste engineering resources on a problem that voids the warranty anyway and doesn't matter to us". Nah, they reacted to VZW's threats. ~~~ kelnos Nitpick: regardless of what the scare-message says when you unlock your N1's bootloader, changing the software on a device cannot (by law, in the US) void the warranty on the hardware, unless it is demonstrable that the software modification actually damaged the hardware. ------ rm-rf The key here is the unavailability of non-carrier branded unrestricted Android phones in the US. If I get subsidized by the carrier when purchasing the phone, dealing with crapware and restriction is part of the cost of getting $400 or so off the price of the phone at purchase time. Ideally I could make a choice to buy an Andriod phone from a manufacturer with no branding and no restrictions, pay full price for it, and accept that the additional cost is what I'm willing to pay for an unrestricted, unbranded phone. The inability to purchase a phone like that is the real problem, not the restrictions placed on carrier subsidized phones. Two years ago I bought an unrestricted HTC Diamond with Winmo 6.1. I paid over $600 for the phone and the privilege of being able to do whatever I want with the phone. The $400 extra over a branded/restricted phone, spread out over 24 months, is $17/month for the privilege of being able to doink around with a phone. Having done that once, I'm leaning toward putting up with the crapware and restrictions and saving the $400. I figure that in two years, I probably only _really_ used a couple of third party apps. Most of the rest that I tried were annoying memory leaks and crashes waiting to happen - barely better than carrier provided crapware. ~~~ jedbrown If you own your phone, T-mobile smartphone plans are $20/month cheaper. That's $480 over a 24-month contract, it doesn't pay to get the subsidized phone. (Yeah, unless you get an N1, it's still a branded phone with some crapware, but they will unlock it immediately and you can change your plan at any time.) ~~~ enjo T-mobile, in my experience, is on the right side of almost everything in this argument. Of course they probably have to be given their relative size compared to the other big players. I gave up T-mobile a couple of years ago due to call quality issues here in Denver. I'm hoping they've fixed it. ------ davidk0101 Does Siegler ever make any points or does he always ramble on like this? Is he upset that people are buying android based phones or is it that the carriers are customizing the os too much and google won't force any strict guidelines? That was the appeal of android from the beginning. Basically anyone could take the os as a starting point and do some cool stuff with it. The fact that the carriers are using their monopoly to force certain conditions on their users is not really the fault of whoever produced the os which happens to be google in this case. ~~~ demallien Where does Seigler say that it was Google's fault? Let me quote: "Maybe if Google had their way, the system would be truly open. But they don’t. Sadly, they have to deal with a very big roadblock: the carriers." At the end of the day, Siegler understands that for end users, it _doesn't matter_ whose fault the whole mess is, all that matters is that users are once more being herded into operator-controlled ghettos, much as they were pre- iPhone. ~~~ greenlblue He is saying google is complicit in some kind of act he finds distasteful so google is partly to blame. Is that spelled out enough for you to see why I said he is blaming google? ------ ZeroGravitas The Android 2.2 Froyo marketshare number he quotes/links (5%) is five weeks out of date. That may not sound like much but the previous version 2.1 took 25% in just two weeks and climbed by nearly 8% every two weeks since. [http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform- ve...](http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform- versions.html) I've been checking that page recently because of the absolute storm of Android updates, new devices and sales increases announced recently and I expect a big shift in the stats. ~~~ sandipc this is especially significant because the original Motorola Droid received its 2.2 OTA update recently, and that phone accounts for a huge percentage of US Android handsets. ~~~ chaosmachine Sadly, the Canadian version of the Droid (Milestone) isn't scheduled to get 2.2 until "Q1 2011"... It's the same hardware, I don't know why we have to wait 6 months. ~~~ Pengwin I believe it is because the Milestone is on more than one carrier. Verizon and Motorola Worked together on the Droid's software and they streamlined the process because the Droid is only through Verizon, but the milestone is, for the most part, carrier independent. Even though it isn't to one single carrier I believe Motorola still works with carriers to make sure the phone updates don't brake anything. Also, Motorola have done their part with the Milestone by selling it, and they probably dont make any money with ongoing support, unlike verizon, who want to keep their contracted users happy. Thats my opinion of it anyway. and i own a UK Milestone. ------ rakkhi Seems like we are a bit more lucky in the UK. You can buy virtualy any model android that is not carrier locked on pay as you go or just signup to a pay monthly plan with any of the 5 major carriers: <http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/smartphones/android> In the US I can understand your points.... how is such a large market so controlled by the carriers? How is there not someone like carphone warehouse that sells all phones unlocked and carrier free? I mean here I bought even my iPhone from the Apple UK store unlocked and chose my own carrier, would do the same with an Android - no crapware any time. ~~~ pierrefar > _any model android that is not carrier locked on pay as you go_ That's wrong. All PAYG phones are carrier locked - they have to be for the sake of the business. You can buy SIM-free phones easily (say from expansys). The only way to get an unlocked phone from a carrier is to get a pay monthly plan, and that's only on some carriers (IIRC, only O2 gives you an unlocked phone, and on T-Mobile you have to request an unlock code and they give it to you 28 days later). The reseller Carphone Warehouse told me that all their pay-monthly deals, regardless of carrier, come with unlocked phones. ~~~ rakkhi I would respectfully disagree. You can buy a phone outright and go on a pay monthly plan without a contract. That is what I am currently doing with my iPhone - I paid ¬£440 for the phone outright and pay £20/month on O2 for 300 minutes, unlimited text and unlimited data. No reason why you can't do that on n an Android ~~~ pierrefar That's a SIM unlocked phone rather than a "true" PAYG, and yes you can do that with Android. Actually I'm about to :) ------ grammaton I think the author is a little unclear of the definition of "open." Specifically, what "open source," which is the "open" in question, really means. The carriers can pull these shenanigans precisely because they have access to the source for the OS. If they didn't they'd have to go through Google or pick another option. ~~~ wvenable I think he's very clear. The ironic point he is trying to make is that people are citing "openness" as their reason for purchasing Android phones when it has no benefit for them at all. ~~~ grammaton How is it not a benefit? If a carrier's actions really disgust me, I can just switch to a different carrier and still have access to a platform that is substantially the same. I'm not necessarily locked in to a carrier, unlike, say, someone who just has to have their iPhone. ~~~ wvenable You get that same benefit with Windows Mobile or Blackberry, yet nobody would claim they are open. ------ ugh Why not buy a unlocked phone? Won’t HTC or Samsung sell them to you? ~~~ Tichy Where, how? ~~~ uggedal Here in Norway, and probably in most other parts of Europe, you can buy unlocked version of all phones, be it HTC, Samsung, iPhone (sold unlocked directly from <http://apple.no>). ------ lutorm All of this only applies if you buy a subsidized phone from the carriers. Until the carriers can legally forbid non-branded phones from being on the network, they only have the power that their customers, who apparently like giving up their freedom of choice for a low upfront phone price, voluntarily give them. ------ brudgers What Siegler does is pretend that when people say "Android is open" they mean "Android isn't repackaged by companies for their own purposes." Of course people don't, but it's a handy strawman. "Android is open" is used to express the idea that there is competition between Android products (consumer view). "Android is open" is also used to express the idea that a companies are free to enter or exit the marketplace without permission (developer view). "Android is open" is also used to express the idea that it isn't "Apple's Gated Community" (brand differentiation). This is probably the most important, and it's right out of Apple's playbook. ------ lenni I was just about to write a blog post complaining about this very same problem. My 2.1 update was 6 month late and I can't root my phone, which was exactly why I wanted an Android. I will buy an iPhone next time. If I have the choice of bending over in front of Apple or T-Mobile, I'd rather have Apple. ------ scotty79 If I can put debian on my phone then I guess I could also put crapware free android if I wished. Also probably there is some method of uninstalling crapware without reinstalling whole system and eventually people will find out what it is. ------ slamo Techcrunch is a troll site. Do not feed the trolls. Do not post their links. ~~~ andybak Would you care to engage with the actual points made in this article? ~~~ ergo98 What points? That Android itself being open doesn't guarantee that every piece of software, every piece of hardware, and every carrier is going to be totally open? That's an asinine, utterly idiotic argument. It's a juvenile strawman ("Gosh, and I thought Android was open...but look I can't install Skype on my Sprint phone"). MG Siegler has seldom said anything that had any merit or added to the argument in any meaningful way. Which isn't a suprise, as TechCrunch _is_ a trollbait emporium: They know that posting such asinine nonsense gets them hits, so they'll keep doing it. It is, absolutely, feeding the trolls. ------ muyyatin The default (or potential) to be open shouldn't simply be equal to closed. ~~~ nanairo -1 The article answers this line of thought (see below)... and instead you offer no arguments. "And before all of you pros storm the comments with how great it is to root your Android phones, consider the average consumers here. They are the ones being screwed by this exploitation of “open.” Anyone with the desire to do so can fairly easily hack an iPhone too." ------ ergo98 MG Siegler is a troll of the worst kind. I have to particularly laugh at the Skype comment he added (a drum that Gruber has banged on in his dismissively sarcastic manner): That has __NOTHING __to do with Android. Skype, the company, decided to get in bed with Verizon and limit their app to certain handsets under certain conditions. What does that have to do with anything beyond perhaps "Skype and Verizon have a business relationship"? Android, the platform, is open, although that of course doesn't mean that every piece of hardware, software, or carrier will be open. Nonetheless, it's open enough that if you don't want Verizon crapware you can get a phone elsewhere. The advantage of Android being everywhere, unlike say the iPhone in the US, is that you can get a phone from another vendor or another handset maker if someone gets abusive, as Verizon is becoming. ~~~ dannyr I decided to stop reading MG Siegler's Android-related posts. His articles about Android are just absurd. The last straw for me was when he wrote that Android is only surging because Apple is letting them too. He's the ultimate fanboy that just cannot accept that the IPhone will not be the dominant smartphone in the near future. I don't think Apple loses sleep that they will be outsold by Android since they will still be taking massive profits. It's really unfortunate that a writer like him gets a voice in an influential blog like Techcrunch. I hope he just post things like these on his personal blog. ------ shareme Note, several things wrong.. Google/OHA is making progress on opening different parts of the development process/tree..the android sdk tools including the Adt plugin are now developed out in the open..ie no closed master tree of code.. Author IS CONFUSING US Telecom Mobile Operator situation with openness of he Android platform ------ confuzatron MG Siegler - I just got trolled again. ------ drivebyacct2 Even in the worst case scenario, it's more open than it's competitors and every single problem in the article can clearly be attributed to the carrier. Send a message by buying phones that aren't locked down. Thus far, HTC has left their stock Android phones fairly "hackable". Granted, the Nexus One was the last stock Android device we've seen. I'm hopeful that their slider qwerty super phone coming to VZW will run stock Gingerbread, and thus will be open to running a CM release. In lieu of that, I hope Google gets back into the phone market (I know, I know, they said they won't) with a Nexus Two before all of the CM resources jump ship to Meego or whatever up and coming platform presents itself as more "truly" open (at least until the carriers monetize and lock it down as well). ------ forensic This is pretty much business as usual in the computer industry. If you want a low price you have to put up with retarded bullshit. If you want a good experience you have to pay the Apple premium.

Ask HN: What are you doing to look after your posture? - shahocean ====== tinymollusk Yoga practice, 3-5 times per week has done wonders for my posture and how I physically feel over the course of a day. Doesn't have to be hot or boot camp; I prefer restorative classes.

Ask HN: Is the Hacker News site is a little less responsive? - unwantedLetters Over the last few weeks, the HN website has been a little slow for me. Loading the homepage takes a good amount of time. I was wondering if this was the case for most people or if I was simply imagining it.<p>I love Hacker News, and would love to help in any way that I can if indeed there is a problem. I also wanted to thank Paul for putting up this website and building such a fantastic community around it. ====== zeedotme yup, definitely a little slow for me.

Technology Cannot Disrupt Education From The Top Down - crazybear http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/18/education-technology-disrupt/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ====== keithpeter UK thinking... Any of these systems aimed at mothers? OK Fathers as well, but getting to Mum is the most direct channel for children under 12/13. [https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/Childrena...](https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/Childrenandfamilies/Page11/DCSF-00924-2008) Then the next thing is to approach teachers directly over the heads of the management. See <http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resources> for a large publisher's approach, <http://www.skillsworkshop.org/> for a teacher's own initiative (and one that won a UK award). Finally, where is the mobile content? If you want to reach teenagers directly, you need to be planning for a 320 by 240 display and its got to be free.

5 Reasons The Windy City is a Great Place for Startups - MRonney http://tech.li/2012/02/5-reasons-the-windy-city-is-a-great-place-for-startups/ ====== mohene1 The first 3 points about industry groups, incubators, and public support are valid. I would like to see how effective the programs have been. 4\. The Quality of Life is extremely subjective. I lived in Chicago and experienced the opposite. People are mostly concerned with getting drunk only. The city is ultra segregated. Big 12 frat house to the North, Suburban "hipsters" in the North center, etc. It's _very_ suburban. 5.The only time people spoke to me on the street was to insult me. Most people you will meet in Chicago are not from Chicago.

The Apache Cassandra battle highlights major problem with open source projects - CrankyBear http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-battle-for-apache-cassandra-highlights-major-problem-with-open-source-projects/ ====== marktangotango This is a curiously vague article. Apparently there were issues with Cassandra's project leadership not addressing trademark issues, causing the Apache Software Foundation to remove Datastax from their leadership position. Um, ok? The author here seems to be sowing FUD about the future of the project, and by relation, all ASF projects. Anyone with knowledge of this situation care to chime in? ~~~ _benedict This is not quite what happened. Datastax employees were the controlling influence on the PMC, and the PMC failed to police copyright issues (including with Datastax marketing materials), mostly because they did not know this was their duty (and partially, in at least the case of some individuals, because they did not have any desire to participate in this duty on a volunteer basis). They were also seen to have poorly nurtured other involvement from the wider community. To some greater or lesser extent these charges were valid, and the community (not just the board, at least on the non-trademark issues) felt improvements would be welcome. But certain members of the board behaved in what _appeared_ to be a very hostile and childish manner, by threatening Datastax with removal of every employee from the project. (I've been in heated arguments with these individuals for their behaviour, and I'll note they disavow any intended hostility, though do not disavow their actions) The ASF did _not_ remove Datastax from anything, although they were I think involved in Jonathan Ellis (Datastax CTO) being replaced as chair. Datastax recently posted that they were planning to put much of their new feature development into their commercial version. They claim this all had nothing to do with stepping back from the project, but in all likelihood this is a "rising above it" PR position. That said, it probably is a good business decision, and may have happened sooner or later anyway. ~~~ SOLAR_FIELDS Reading this apparently biased article in favor of DataStax, it seems like no one is coming out of this situation looking good. I personally believe that DataStax may have overplayed their hand here since several of the high-powered Silicon Valley companies use Cassandra. If DS' commercial offerings aren't up to snuff, one of them will undoubtedly step in to help steer development of the source in a direction that benefits them. Cassandra is one of the better big datastore offerings out there, and the doom and gloom narrative played by the article seems a bit disingenuous to say the least. ~~~ _benedict I honestly don't see how companies, that aren't monetising Cassandra, providing resources to the project is a major risk to Datastax. This only improves Cassandra's mindshare in (and share of) the market, while leaving them to corner the large corporate client base as well as target their engineering efforts on things that can directly yield revenue. Although I think you overestimate the inclination and ability of these corporations to invest - at least to date, only Apple has demonstrated any capacity or willingness to do so, and they are fairly slow about it. Their lawyers and antiquated deployments lead to very few (but quite big) improvements, and so far all of them have needed help from Datastax to be incorporated. This is despite a largeish team of people with direct experience of participating in the project; no other SV company has any such employee at present, and bootstrapping such a team would be non-trivial. Instaclustr claims they intend to do this, but it remains to be seen how successful they will be. ~~~ jjirsa I've committed a few Instaclustr patches in the past month - they weren't huge, but they exist (and I appreciate that). Also some patches coming out of FB/Instagram (with a new committer as well). ------ micah_chatt I'm curious what impact this will have on other ASF projects, specifically Mesos. A number of the features required for a smaller or medium sized organization to actually use Mesos in production are only available in Mesosphere's DC/OS. And whenever those shortcomings are brought up, the answer is "oh well if you really need authentication beyond htpasswd, you can pay for DCOS." Like the article hinted at, I hope the ASF tries to do more to work with vendors to help OSS side of projects flourish rather than just be lip service. ~~~ vorg > I'm curious what impact this will have on other ASF projects It might cause those committing the code, building the tests, and writing the doco for other ASF projects to question whether their project is being justly managed. I only watch one ASF project, Apache Groovy, and it has a similar imbalance between fluff managers and grunt workers. Although all 9 members of its PMC are committers, only 4 of them have ever committed code since Groovy joined the ASF via its incubator 18 months ago. The other 5 (i.e. chairperson Guillaume Laforge, Jim Jagielski, Roman Shaposhnik, Konstantin Boudnik, and Andrew Bayer) are all committers but have _never_ committed any code in that time. I can't find any other technical contributions from them either. All 5 are also ASF members, whereas only 2 of the other 4 PMC members who do grunt work are ASF members. There's 10 other committers in Groovy, most of whom are more active contributors than those 5 I named, and in my view have far more merit to be on the PMC than them. OCI, the company doing Grails consulting, a few weeks ago enlisted an active PMC member (Paul King) as an OCI consultant "to coordinate contributions to Groovy". If Groovy's governance at ASF doesn't radically change fast to give PMC voices to the people doing the actual work instead of those ASF politicians, OCI might tap into the discontent and "take over" in similar style to DataStax, or even fork it like LibreOffice. ~~~ jjirsa Sometimes members of the PMC are on the PMC to help committers do things in the Apache way - Jim (in particular) is a member of the ASF board and likely mentored the project early on (I'd go check to be certain but I'm mobile at the moment). ~~~ vorg Because it's 18 months since Groovy joined the incubator and 12 months since it became a top-level project, it could be time Jim Jagielski and all ASF members not actually contributing to Groovy leave its PMC so that the proportion of those actually committing code and similar goes up from its present 44%. OCI is ready to pounce if they don't. ~~~ jjirsa The PMC can (should) invite active members of the community - there's no fixed size, the PMC can add members at any time. There's no need to worry about ratios of people committing code - the PMC is about guidance, not about writing code. ~~~ vorg I believe Apache Groovy implementations should be led by their technical people, so its PMC should only have people in it who can and do code, test, and write docs. Groovy's past problems have been due to managerial sorts running things. ------ grizzles I have a feeling Apache leadership probably did the right thing here. It is after all, their brand. Recently there have been some strange things happening with the Cassandra project. Hopefully not another rethinkdb. For example, a longstanding Cassandra bug makes it hard to build the database from source if you have a modern version of maven installed. Though Cassandra builds itself using ant (why?), simply having modern maven installed is a big enough incompatibility to break the build. That's weird. Another recent weirdness is that Cassandra was shipping a non working command interpreter (cqlsh) for at least 3+ months as recently as a few months ago. That's now fixed in v3.9. I have to admit, the first thing I thought upon seeing that brokenness shipping in the binary distribution was - Is this because Datastax needs more sales? ~~~ jjirsa Can you link the jira for the mvn/ant bug? Or, if it doesn't exist, can you create it? ------ johan_larson Sharing is hard. Nobody making money can work. Many people making money can work. Just one party making money, that's a mofo. Full disclosure: I work for Couchbase, and our management tends to describe DataStax as a key competitor. ------ helper I've been a Cassandra user for 5+ years and have been watching the drama unfold on the mailing lists the past few months. I have no business relationship with Datastax and have never paid them money for any of their services (except for attending the Datastax sponsored Cassandra Summit a number of times). I'm not a committer but I have been an active member of the community opening bugs, participating in the user mailing list, Stack Overflow, maintaining a client library, etc. From my perspective it seemed like the ASF board members had already prejudged the situation before engaging in any public discussions on the Cassandra mailing lists. The first interaction was about why Cassandra doesn't ship with its own client drivers[1]. The board member believed this to be a sign of Datastax "controlling" Cassandra because they have their own high quality open source client libraries. As a user and a former maintainer of a client library, this theory came off as completely ridiculous. The project has never shipped a production ready client driver in tree. It is simply impractical to be able to do that for all the languages for which there are drivers. I've got code in three different languages in production right now and none of them use Datastax drivers. If you read that mailing list thread, that is basically what everyone says on it (including the new Casssandra PMC chair), and yet the conclusion that the ASF board member takes away is that Datastax is controlling the project by having out of tree open source client libraries. That ASF board member also got upset when a question on the mailing list was answered with a link to Datastax hosted documentation[2]. Again this seemed like an overreaction from the board member over a fixable problem as justification for a Cassandra shakeup. Then recently there was a new wave of threads about Apache and Datastax[3][4]. Both sides come off looking pretty bad in these threads. Its clear that at this point a lot of people in the Cassandra community have negative feelings toward certain members of the ASF board. It also seems like those board members have become very defensive about what has transpired. Fortunately people have started to calm down and there has been a few reasonable emails from both sides. From my perspective the ASF came off looking like they care more about the Apache trademarks than they do about the health of the community. I do believe there were some actual issues that were identified as places for improvement for the Cassandra community, but I don't think it was necessary to come in wielding a sledge hammer. It seems that the Cassandra board was not given an opportunity to fix the issues (mostly by increasing the number of project committers) before the board forced the changes. This has resulted in a lot of hurt feelings and a general sense of distrust between the Cassandra community and the ASF. All that being said, I'm not particularly worried about Cassandra's future. I was sad to see Jonathan Ellis leave as the chair person, but hearing that Nate McCall was stepping into that position put a lot of my concerns at ease. I hope that the Datastax folks know that the community appreciates all that they have contributed to the open source Cassandra project, even if the ASF doesn't. [1]: [https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/72a884fa8f35cbed23135c8...](https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/72a884fa8f35cbed23135c8c771da06076d87a5a20ff5a7cd5d24001@%3Cdev.cassandra.apache.org%3E) [2]: [http://www.mail- archive.com/dev@cassandra.apache.org/msg0914...](http://www.mail- archive.com/dev@cassandra.apache.org/msg09143.html) [3]: [http://www.mail- archive.com/dev@cassandra.apache.org/msg1003...](http://www.mail- archive.com/dev@cassandra.apache.org/msg10037.html) [4]: [http://www.mail- archive.com/dev@cassandra.apache.org/msg1002...](http://www.mail- archive.com/dev@cassandra.apache.org/msg10020.html) ~~~ jjirsa I feel like I've sent more than enough emails on this subject already, so rather than nit pick tiny things in your comment with which I disagree, I'm just going to say that I agree with your closing sentence. ~~~ helper Thank you for your general civility on the lists. I'm glad that you are on the PMC. ------ qwertyuiop924 This isn't a "major problem with open source projects," it's a problem with the governence model of one specific project, and a conflict between the ASF and the company holding a controlling majority on the board. Other than "governance is hard and politics sucks," I'm not sure what the "major problem" actually _is_ ~~~ jack9 > a problem with the governence model of one specific project, I think multiple (not many, nor all) OS projects have a leading vendor supporting the codebase in various ways. For poorly adopted or niche OS projects, hardware, computer languages, etc, this can be a deathstroke to the project. ~~~ qwertyuiop924 Yeah, but they were saying it was a major flaw with all of OS. It isn't. In fact, if your project isn't incredibly popular, this likely won't effect you. ------ winteriscoming I haven't followed this specific Datastax vs ASF discussion, but have seen similar battles played out in recent years between some popular projects and ASF and even ESF (Eclipse foundation vs Vert.x project for example) Does anyone here know what value do these foundations bring to projects, in this day of cloud hosting/computing that make these foundations worth for the projects? ------ jcoffland Yes Open-Source projects can have political issues too. I don't see how this is any different than the politics of closed source software. Why the author wants to disparage Open-Source is beyond me.

Which Facebook billionaire will buy NYT? - davewiner http://threads.scripting.com/31112ByDw/whichFacebookBillionaireWillBuyNyt/ ====== MattLaroche The body of the post doesn't follow the headline. (Apparently, I've ragged on the author, Dave Winer, for similar things before <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2808050>. I came here to comment on it and it just happens to be the same contributor/blog/etc.) Headline: Which Facebook billionaire will buy the New York Times? (Implying a rich employee might buy the NYT) Body: an argument that Twitter, Facebook, Google, or another large tech company should buy a large, reputable, news corporation. (Not a rich employee, not Facebook specific) I also find the argument tenuous. What is the actual cash value to Twitter buying the New York Times? Sure, there'd be more Twitter users, but Twitter hasn't figured out how to highly monetize their users. The blog post is speculation without articulated rationale. ------ jacques_chester _Billions are flowing to tech companies, founders of tech companies, and the tech companies themselves. The companies will all need exclusive digital content. News stories. The kind of stuff produced by news organizations. Like the NYT._ I seem to recall this logic reaching its nadir when AOL got its peanut butter mixed up with Times-Warner's chocolate. I also seem to recall that it destroyed billions of dollars of shareholder value because it was a dumb idea at the time, was a dumb idea before the time and remained a dumb idea for the times that followed. This kind of vertical strategy would work if somehow Twitter (to use the example given) could supply news at a lower price than its competitors. But people already pay literally nothing (well, no marginal price) for the news they already receive. Or it could be a lockin value-add play. Except that this too is daft. Is Twitter seriously going to pay "strategy tax" and lock out non-NYT sources? Please, be serious, it's Monday and I'm at work. Twitter and Google and Facebook _don't need an NYT_. They don't produce content, they mediate it. Any one source they buy can quickly be replaced by another. And if they try to lock you into their source, they may find _themselves_ being disintermediated. Disclaimer: I am of the opinion that my own modest little startup will render internet-economic questions such as these moot, so I may be a teensy bit biased.

Ask HN: Please review our site | version 1 - goodlab Hello HN: The site I am asking for you to review is:<p>www.votetocracy.com<p>Votetocracy is a site where citizens vote on bills in congress and send votes to their reps. Citizen's votes are tallied against the votes of Congress and displayed as agreements or disagreements.<p>We are looking for feedback on usability: Can you find bills that you would be interested in?<p>Feedback on: The concept. Are you interested in politics enough to vote on these bills? If your not interested in politics - but are interested in decisions congress makes that effect your life - would you vote on bills?<p>The business model will not be revealed until version 2 so we are not really looking for feedback on that aspect.<p>Looking forward to hearing from you. ====== togasystems Great idea. Couple of notes (I am running Chrome on Mac) \- You have a drop shadow on the main content. However, it does not show up on the bottom, only the top and side. -on <http://www.votetocracy.com/outcomes.html>, the checkmark icons are overlapping the font \- You button text is being cut off \- Is there a reason why you need my entire personal information (address, zip code) Other than some css fixes, looks good. ~~~ goodlab Thanks - I'll look into the css stuff. Yes - we need the personal info to look up your representatives. I guess we could make that more clear. Actually - we used to ask more info. Things like profession, ethnicity etc. It helps us when reporting aggregate data. No one really complained - we just took it out for the moment until we redo some other things. ------ goodlab I wonder why this did not show up on the ask part of the site? It was submitted without a url.

Toward a NoSQL taxonomy - rgeorge28 http://www.dbms2.com/2010/03/14/nosql-taxonomy/ ====== akkartik His taxonomy agrees nicely with the visual survey at <http://blog.nahurst.com/visual-guide-to-nosql-systems> (submitted yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190772>)

Idris - pure functional programming language with dependent types - alrex021 http://idris-lang.org/ ====== radarsat1 Very nice, haven't heard of this before. I think an ideal target for a dependently typed language is scientific array programming, so that you can ensure the sizes of your matrix and array operations check out before performing long-running tasks. If a good array library can be built (e.g. port Haskell's Repa) then it might provide a great foundation for this. ~~~ dons With type level naturals recently added to GHC, statically checked arrays are already implementable in Haskell. * <http://hackage.haskell.org/package/vector-static> * <http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hmatrix-static> A nice next step would be to optimize out additional runtime bounds checks. ~~~ radarsat1 Very nice! I really look forward to using something like that. ------ skrebbel I love the concept, but the tutorial somewhat puts me off (admission: I only read the first third). I mean, using an "element from a finite set" to index a vector? Back home, we use natural numbers for that. Idris _also_ has natural numbers, but somehow we still have to, essentially, use the "finite set of values we don't care about, but that we can order if we want to since, after all, the set has a finite number of elements" concept for what's essentially an array lookup. Why can't there be a type of "natural numbers under N"? Or am I all misunderstanding things, and _is_ the "finite set" exactly that type, just explained in a very not straight forward way? Also, impressively, the author claims it has C-style speed. Does that mean that looking up a value in a vector by means of an element in a finite set is actually translated to a single *(vect+index)? (in C-terms) ~~~ edwinb That is indeed exactly what Fin is. The first n natural numbers is a finite set of n elements after all. I'll elaborate a bit in the tutorial. I guess the trouble with writing a tutorial when you're completely familiar with a language is that it's hard to know what will and won't make sense! There'd also be nothing wrong to use a natural number, along with a proof that it's bounded by the length, to index the vector. I don't think I've claimed it has C-style speed anywhere. At least, not in general - we have observed it in some cases though, and it is a goal to make it as efficient as possible. Dependent types plus partial evaluation gives you some nice opportunities for optimisation. Early days yet... ~~~ skrebbel _That is indeed exactly what Fin is. The first n natural numbers is a finite set of n elements after all._ Ah, right! I must admit that it feels like an odd definition to me indeed. I see how "the first n natural numbers" is a finite set of n elements, but I don't see how the reverse is true. I mean, look here, a finite set of n elements: {1, 1, 1, 1}. 4 elements, and they're all valued 1. They're also not ordered. So your concept of taking an element from a finite set (in this case, let's say, 1, or maybe 1 instead) to uniquely identify an element in a vector sounds a bit odd to me :-) Clearly, I'm the noob here, and maybe in this stage Idris just isn't meant for people not on Lambda the Ultimate, but if not, it's good that you intend do something about it :-) Cause once again, I love the concept, and I'd love to program with this. ~~~ fhars The set {1, 1, 1, 1} has only one element, 1. ~~~ skrebbel Oh fuck. Bags and sets. I'm an idiot! And that only 3 years out of university :-( ------ phaer Down for me, google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dtmf_mG...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dtmf_mGqwA4J:idris- lang.org) ~~~ edwinb Sorry about that, it's back now... ------ mindcrime Is this, by any chance, specifically tailored to programming control systems for time machines[1]? [1]: <http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Idris> ------ amatus Am I correct in my understanding of these types? Vect a n = vector of a with known length n (n ** Vect a n) = vector of a with unknown length n When I think of it this way it's obvious why filter takes a Vect and returns a pair. Though it seems ugly to have to write each vector function to take both "static" and "dynamic" vectors. ~~~ edwinb That's right. You don't normally need to write each vector function both ways. If you can statically know the length (which you normally do in practice, at least in my experience) then you can write down a more precise type. filter serves as an example of what you might do when you need to compute an index dynamically. ------ DanWaterworth This looks really cool. I haven't looked into dependently typed languages in depth, but this is the first one I've seen that looks like a programming language to write programs in.

Perhaps Jeff Atwood Should Stick to the Code - supervacuo http://supervacuo.com/blog/2013/jan/22/jeff-atwood-stick-to-the-code/ Better late than never, right? ====== ajross I don't think this kind of dialog really helps. Jeff's post was, I thought, sincere and understandable. It's not really the same way I saw things, but I can see what he meant. It clearly wasn't intended to be disrespectful, and reading that in and then flaming about it publicly isn't helping anyone. If Jeff was angry at Aaron for "taking the easy way out" (again: not my personal reaction, but one I think I can understand), he has the right to express that without being told he should "stick to the code". Dealing with "inconvenient" emotions is part of grief, and that process deserves respect too. Basically: lighten up. This is _really_ not an appropriate subject to pick a fight over. ~~~ raganwald _If Jeff was angry at Aaron for "taking the easy way out" (again: not my personal reaction, but one I think I can understand), he has the right to express that without being told he should "stick to the code". Dealing with "inconvenient" emotions is part of grief, and that process deserves respect too._ It is extremely common for people to feel anger at the death of a loved one, especially a death so complicated to process as a suicide. People take years to unravel the knot and come to accept what has happened. I took it as Jeff being human. ------ Zimahl I get what both are saying but from a pragamtic, unemotional side I think Atwood is right. Atwood's simple premise is that if you are going to be an activist, you better realize that those in power are going to throw everything at you so you better be ready to accept the consequences. In even simpler terms, 'don't do the crime if you can't do the time'. I know this is a bad example, but I watch 'Whale Wars'. Those folks know exactly what they are doing and walking a very, very fine line where they could be guilty of many offenses in multiple countries. But they don't care and a few have served time for what they have done. They don't seem to whine about it because they feel it's worth it. What Atwood says appears cold and insensitive. But I think he's getting a little tired (like a lot of us) of the constant 'Swartz did nothing wrong'/'prosecution for no reason'/'visionary bullied into suicide' meme (nothing else to call it). He absolutely broke the law in a couple ways. Was the prosecution overzealous? Maybe. We don't know what the outcome would've been so we can't say whether it would've been fair. ~~~ supervacuo "The law" isn't some monolith, though -- it's defined by every institution (every person?) enforcing it, and every decision made in carrying out "justice". It's a crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to port-scan Google. Are you really saying that you'd be getting tired of people talking about it if someone who'd done just that was facing years in jail (a perfectly _legal_ consequence). ~~~ Zimahl _"The law" isn't some monolith, though -- it's defined by every institution (every person?) enforcing it, and every decision made in carrying out "justice"._ There are laws which may or may not be levied against us in certain situations. You are implying that Swartz shouldn't have been prosecuted just because you feel what he did wasn't wrong. Your feelings are completely irrelevant. Someone felt wronged and brought it to the attention of those who could prosecute the crime. _Are you really saying that you'd be getting tired of people talking about it if someone who'd done just that was facing years in jail (a perfectly _legal_ consequence)._ If it were receiving as much biased anti-law exposure as this case is receiving then absolutely. Swartz was facing years in jail, yes, but he might have (most likely) received a much more minor sentence. What ardent Swartz supports need to realize is: 1) He made the decision to break the law - which it appears he clearly knew what he was doing was illegal. 2) He knew there were consequences - although probably not of the severity he thought. 2) No one forced him to do it. 3) There were other options for changing the system. 4) It was his choice to kill himself. If you feel that the maximum punishment didn't fit the crime you should do something about that to possibly save others in the future. But please don't expect us all to have outrage over Swartz being punished. It's a shame he killed himself but that's tertiary to the issue of the entire case. Just because he killed himself doesn't mean he's less guilty or more innocent. ~~~ supervacuo I think your first sentence perfectly illustrates my point: > There are laws which may or may not be levied against us in certain > situations. Evidence (including Swartz's case) strongly suggests that this discretion leads to an unjust result. It's obvious that not every legal action is socially desirable (or "moral", for the sake of brevity) and not every illegal action is immoral (whistleblowers, protestors, etc.). So, like I said before, the criminal justice system is composed of laws _and_ the people who make the call as to whether to prosecute, which in this case includes a powerful company (JSTOR), an academic institution (MIT), cops, the FBI and finally Ortiz and her office. A few more characters than you might immediately list when you think of "the law", right? When you say "Someone felt wronged and brought it to the attention of those who could prosecute the crime", you make it sound like it's an automatic process from one to the other. As someone who has both suffered and carried out actions which are illegal according to the letter of the law, I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. Read my article: HSBC broke a whole bunch of laws (to the tune of a trillion dollars a year), and got a sweet plea deal and no individual prosecutions. Good luck getting similar treatment if you shoplift an iPod, particularly if you're anything other than white. ~~~ Zimahl You can pick and choose any number of 'wrongful' or 'unjust' litigation. There's a ton. HSBC is irrelevant to Swartz. _It's obvious that not every legal action is socially desirable (or "moral", for the sake of brevity) and not every illegal action is immoral (whistleblowers, protestors, etc.)._ Irrelevant. Social desire and morality has nothing to do with it. BTW, those are very subjective. I do feel that Swartz should've gone a different, more legal route if he wanted to cause change. I have no issue with him being prosecuted. So who is right, you or me? JSTOR is not the law. MIT is not the law. They are involved in the criminal matter but do not determine whether something gets prosecuted. Is it arbitrary and sometimes political? Sure, but we shouldn't be outraged over Swartz being prosecuted. Very few gave a shit about the case until he killed himself. Where was all the outrage over the prosecution up until then? _When you say "Someone felt wronged and brought it to the attention of those who could prosecute the crime", you make it sound like it's an automatic process from one to the other._ Absolutely not. If JSTOR and MIT didn't think it was an issue it wouldn't have gone anywhere. If a crime is not reported it can't be followed up on by law enforcement. Obviously JSTOR and/or MIT brought this illegal activity through the proper channels and law enforcement took over. Maybe the FBI/Justice Dept was using Swartz as an example but he still broke a law. _As someone who has both suffered and carried out actions which are illegal according to the letter of the law, I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth._ You can feel free to rape, murder, and pillage all you want. If there's no one to report the crime, no one willing to report the crime, or no authority to report to, then, sure, you won't be prosecuted. But don't be outraged if you get prosecuted when you break the law. ~~~ supervacuo > Sure, but we shouldn't be outraged over Swartz being prosecuted. WTH not? It was pretty outrageous. I'd be interested to hear your argument that he deserved even 6 months in prison for copyright violation. > If a crime is not reported it can't be followed up on by law enforcement. ... which is not to say that if a crime _is_ reported, it _will_ be followed up by law enforcement. Many reported crimes are not acted upon at all; some of them get a huge overreaction (like Swartz's) and some get an under-reaction (like HSBC). That's the link: that justice is only just if the rules are the same for everyone, and they clearly are not. ~~~ Zimahl _WTH not? It was pretty outrageous. I'd be interested to hear your argument that he deserved even 6 months in prison for copyright violation._ Outrageous to whom? You? I feel the punishment doesn't fit the crime, however, that's the punishment. I wouldn't want that punishment so I do not steal copyrighted material. That's Atwood's point in it's entirety: Swartz knew there were strict penalties and wasn't willing to accept the consequences if caught. _... which is not to say that if a crime is reported, it will be followed up by law enforcement._ This depends on a lot of factors and you know that. But there isn't some Illuminati deciding whether every case is important enough to prosecute. _That's the link: that justice is only just if the rules are the same for everyone, and they clearly are not._ Prosecutors prosecute what they think they can win. Swartz was a win for obvious reasons, HSBC wasn't for reasons unbeknownst to me. Our system is what it is. If you can't accept losing, don't play ball. ------ rosenjon There is a real danger that other people see what Aaron did, and the resulting response, and conclude that the most effective activism is martyrdom/suicide. I think Jeff was trying to push back against this idea with his post, while also taking responsibility for not doing more to help Aaron while he was alive. He also points out that activism frequently coincides with jail time, and that the most effective activists (ie MLK), frequently end up there. The point of your article seems to be that Jeff Atwood should stick to coding, because he isn't an activist and can't comprehend how bad being on the wrong end of our flawed criminal justice system can be. "Jeff Atwood is apparently saying that Aaron Swartz was taking an underhand route to escape the consequences of his activism, and that he was being a bad activist in so doing." Let's be frank. Jeff Atwood is saying you shouldn't commit suicide. At no point does he characterize this as an "underhand route"... that is your language. But furthermore, I agree with Jeff Atwood. You shouldn't commit suicide. Even if the corrupt and incompetent federal government charges you with 50 years in prison for downloading journal articles. Don't commit suicide. So I don't really understand why you're piling on Jeff Atwood. In the past Jeff Atwood has deserved some piling on for his writings... this is not one of those times. ~~~ supervacuo > I think Jeff was trying to push back against this idea with his post If you want to make the point that suicide is bad, find a way to do it without insulting a recently-deceased campaigner, especially if a) you have very little personal experience of equivalent situations and b) you have done comparatively little to help others (a fair guess, given that Swartz was so much more active than most people). > But furthermore, I agree with Jeff Atwood. You shouldn't commit suicide. > Even if the corrupt and incompetent federal government charges you with 50 > years in prison for downloading journal articles. Don't commit suicide. If Jeff's article had read like your comment, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I have no problem with you saying that suicide is either morally wrong, or an ineffective campaign strategy — although I happen to disagree with you on both points (citing euthanasia as a sometimes-moral suicide and Thích Quảng Đức & Mohamed Bouazizi as suicides which changed the world for the better). ------ TylerE You don't get off to persuasive start when you call everyone who disagrees with you (before even making it clear what you're disagreeing ABOUT) a moron. ~~~ mcherm You are misreading the first line of the article. The article's author is lumping himself AND Jeff Atwood (not to mention nearly the entire population of Hacker News) into the same bucket here: ALL of them saddened by the passing of Aaron Swartz. He then disagrees with Jeff Atwood about a further point: whether Aaron should have "accepted the penalty" for his activism. Personally, when I first read Jeff Atwood's original essay I felt that I understood what he was getting at ("I'm disappointed that Aaron 'quit' on us, and I hope no one else does."), but I felt (as does this author) that his suggestion that civil disobedience requires one to accept the penalties for breaking the law. I am neither sure that Aaron Swartz intended to engage in civil disobedience, nor am I sure that meekly accepting the state-imposed punishment is a necessary component of civil disobedience. ~~~ supervacuo > I am neither sure that Aaron Swartz intended to engage in civil disobedience This is an interesting point: I would develop it to talk about _levels_ of disobedience. Like Andrew Auernheimer, I think Swartz knew he would get "in trouble", but didn't appreciate the scale -- which is understandable, as I say in my article, because the details of "trouble" are deliberately obscured. ~~~ dfxm12 From a NYT article on the matter: _A respected Harvard researcher who also is an Internet folk hero has been arrested in Boston on charges related to computer hacking, which are based on allegations that he downloaded articles that he was entitled to get free._ (<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/us/20compute.html?_r=0>) It is also reasonable for one to think they wouldn't get in trouble for this. Either way, at the root of civil disobedience and activism is the desire to change. I think Dr. King's quote is being taken out of context in these discussions. Dr. King doesn't mean to simply "grin and bear it", Dr. King means that fighting for our freedom is hard, and thus activists must, in order to have any chance of producing change, be prepared for the worst, in some form of self sacrifice. Atwood is saying (I feel erroneously) that Swartz came so close to creating a change, but gave it all away when he "ragequit". The point is, what happened happened, and I hope we never have to have a "next time", but I'll bet that if there is a next time, it will play out _very_ differently, and for the better, _thanks to Swartz_. ------ tzs > 22 January 2013 ? Why wasn't this submitted last month, when Atwood's post was being discussed? It seems odd to submit it nearly a month after discussion of that has pretty much ended. ------ VikingCoder "I say this not as a person who wishes to judge Aaron Swartz. I say it as a fellow gamer who has also considered playing the same move quite recently. To the point that I – like Aaron himself, I am sure – was actively researching it." Atwood is saying that he's considered suicide - recently, and that he doesn't want to judge Aaron. Most importantly, he's grieving, and different people grieve in different ways. I think you're being overly harsh in your post. Especially since you have two messages for Jeff: stick to code; alter your message. Which would you prefer? Either way, you're judging his grieving process, which I think is unfair. I think you should express your own grief (and outrage) in your own way. Pointing fingers at others who are grieving isn't nearly as constructive, I think. ~~~ supervacuo Sure. But "respecting Atwood's grief" was outweighed by "challenging his dangerous ideology", especially since (as he says in his post) he'd never met Swartz. Don't think his suicidal thoughts are relevant to his chosen topic of noble activism. If anything, Atwood mentioning it came across a little " _I_ beat suicide... but this guy couldn't". ~~~ VikingCoder Someone's dealing with suicidal thoughts, and your message is "shut up." I think your post is the dangerous one. ~~~ supervacuo "Dealing with suicidal thoughts" and "scaring off potential activists by being nasty" are two separate activities. ~~~ VikingCoder So respectfully empathize with him, and point out your differences about activism. Telling him to "stick to coding" makes you an insensitive clod, and sends a dangerous message to others with suicidal thoughts that their feelings are not welcome. ~~~ supervacuo > So respectfully empathize with him, and point out your differences about > activism. There's no moral problem with being slightly irreverent to someone in such a strong position: Atwood is apparently financially successful and has a large readership. He is also — unlike the target of his own criticism — alive. So maybe your concern is strategic. I happen to think "respectful empathy" would have been a worse way of making my point. Finally, I think my article is pretty clear. The category of person I want to "stick to coding" is "Jeff Atwood", or, more specifically, "Jeff Atwood talking about something he knows nothing about in a socially-damaging way". I don't think anyone would come away with the impression that I don't want to hear from people who've thought about suicide (hence why I didn't mention that aspect of Atwood's post at all). ~~~ VikingCoder > being slightly irreverent to someone in such a strong position You're also telling everyone who happens to agree with Atwood to shut up. And they don't all have the same strong position. You're not WRITING AN EMAIL TO ATWOOD, you're broadcasting to the world that everyone who agrees with him is wrong. And you're doing it disrespectfully. > (hence why I didn't mention that aspect of Atwood's post at all). Don't you think, given the topic, that you should have specifically mentioned that category of people, and shown empathy? Perhaps starting with Atwood, and generalizing from there? Fuck it - you don't care what I think, and you're casual about telling people to shut up, so my efforts are completely pointless. ------ lgcooper In a way, I agree with Jeff, and I wonder what would happened if some other famous activists have taken the path Aaron took.

Show HN: Our weekend project – PaperSync, notebook scanning as a service - bdm http://www.papersync.co ====== micheljansen Cool idea, but your sample ([https://www.papersync.co/static/PaperSync_sample.pdf](https://www.papersync.co/static/PaperSync_sample.pdf)) isn't really selling it. The resolution is a lot lower than I would expect and there are JPEG artefacts all over the place. If the sample really is representative, I suggest looking into improving the output quality. I doubt you built a "fast, hi-res, scanning setup that uses DSLR’s and some other neat hardware & software" just so you could deliver low-res over-compressed PDFs. ~~~ ssong (I'm working with OP on this) Thanks for the feedback! We are using a setup similar to [http://www.diybookscanner.org/](http://www.diybookscanner.org/) for this and the scan quality is very high. The sample PDF was scaled down and compressed to reduce file size. I'll put up a high-res version in a bit. For the actual service, you can download each individual high-res page scans. ------ y-apply Neat idea and bravo on quick execution. But did you ever see these guys? [http://modnotebooks.com/](http://modnotebooks.com/) ~~~ tg3 I think the difference is that with Mod you have to use their notebooks, whereas with these guys you can send them any notebook. That makes a huge difference for me personally. ~~~ bdm Yup, you got it. ~~~ josephjrobison I've purchased a Mod Notebook and am waiting for it to be delivered. They launched first, so I get to compare you to them naturally. Mod Notebook Pros: -Notebook and scanning included ($25) -Only less $10 than Moleskine and includes digitization, syncing -Prepaid shipping envelope -Native Mod App to read notes -Syncs with Dropbox, OneNote, Evernote Mod Notebook Cons: -Shipping delays in the current order, still waiting after a month from unexpected high demand on their part -$5 more expensive than you guys Papersync Pros: -Cheaper ($20) -Can use any notebook Papersync Cons: -Mailing cost not included -$5 less but no notebook -No dedicated app -No apparent syncing On first impression I would splurge the extra $5 for Mod Notebooks every time. I would definitely consider you guys for old notebooks I have already used up - but I would expect the cost to be closer to $15 for future notebooks to save against Mod. Good luck! ------ bdm OP here: I spent a few days working with ssong last week to create papersync.co -- a service where we scan paper notebooks and turn them into .pdf’s. __ We both carry notebooks around to jot down ideas in pen & ink. After doing this for some odd years, the downside is that they take up physical space, and we have no digital backup. We were frustrated that the best solution out there was to spend a few hours scanning them ourselves - we couldn’t find any service that would save time & do this for us. In typical HN style, we built a fast, hi-res, scanning setup that uses DSLR’s and some other neat hardware & software. We built a simple website in 3 days to offer this as a service to all the beautiful people of the world. __ We’d love to hear your thoughts on this service and how well we are presenting it on our site. What could we be doing better? ~~~ WebSearchingPro The site itself looks alright, its obvious what you are trying to sell. Ironically the first selling point is also a reason why someone would not want to use your service "[...] A million-dollar idea? Maybe the first sentence of the next NYTimes bestseller.[...]" What is your guarantee on keeping these secrets a secret? Why should we ship off our ideas and thoughts off to some company to scan them when we could do it ourselves on our own scanner? ~~~ timthorn On the "About" page: We make our best effort to maintain the security and confidentiality of your content, and we will never share, publish, or otherwise distribute your content to anyone besides you. In the event of an inadvertent leak or loss of content, we assume no liability, so please use your best judgment when deciding what to send. ------ sciguy77 Didn't Need/Want start a Kickstarter project and then a company around this? ------ niels_olson Hi, this is awesome! I would like to see a sample in 0.3 mm B pencil lead. I have pretty much given up on evernote because I don't have time to do this in bulk (a solution you provide) but if I do it ad hoc with my phone camera the quality is terrible (you probably provide the required quality, but I would like to confirm...) I use 9x5 moleskine, grid ruled, same as your existing sample. But could you please just post a couple pages with different writing utensils? Colored inks (orange, light green, etc) and common leads (0.5 mm HB lead of course, and 0.3 mm B and HB leads). If you need a sample page, I can make one up. ------ ds9 I have a pile of notebooks that need to get into my computer somehow - but images won't help. I would pay for OCR, but AFAIK the technology today is not yet good enough for accurate image-to-text from handwriting. ~~~ nathanb I concur. As the pile of notebooks full of barely-legible handwritten scrawl grows and grows, so does the amount of money I'd be willing to pay a company for notebook transcription. Honestly, I don't care if it takes a bloody age -- reCAPTCHA that stuff if you have to -- since I never plan on transcribing them. Scan them to PDF right away, send me the notebooks back (or just give me the PDFs, if they're too low-res to use for reliable transcription), and then at some point send me a text file (or RTF, or whatever non-proprietary format) with the contents. I would pay two dollars a page for this. Negotiable. ------ jessmartin Awesome! I have been waiting for a service like this! I especially wanted a non-destructive scan. It's important to me to get my notebook back. I've priced other services. $20/notebook is not bad. Can you let me know the DPI on the scan? I will ship you 10 notebooks tomorrow if the DPI is good enough. ~~~ bdm tl;dr 250-300 DPI Hey! Good question. DPI which stands for Dots Per Inch only matters when you actually print the image. You can take the scan and print it small at high DPI or large at low DPI. Let's assume you have an 8x10" notebook. The images we take of your notebook will be approximately 2400x3000. So if we scan an 8x10 notebook, and you wanted to take our scan and print it out at its original size, the resolution would be 2400/8 = 3000/10 = 300 DPI. Allowing for some fudge factor, we say the range is 250-300. Make sense? ------ itazula This reminded me of something called "Shot Note" which is used to digitally store and organize handwritten notes: [http://www.kingjim.co.jp/sp/shotnote/english/](http://www.kingjim.co.jp/sp/shotnote/english/) ------ hobonumber1 I like the hand-drawn animations on your landing page! Did you guys make those yourselves? ~~~ bdm Glad you like the illustrations! They are a combination of stock images and ones we did ourselves. One of our goals here was to launch something beautiful, as quickly as possible. So it was a no brainer to pay < $100 for beautiful line drawings that are prettier (and several hours' less effort) than what we could have done ourselves. Once we had the basic visual style established with stock drawings, I riffed to make some custom illustrations in the same style, including the logo and the instructions on the order page. ------ evolve2k My immediate reaction was 'backup sure, but what if they loose my valuable notebook in the mail? I think to address this you should state clearly that all notebooks are to be sent and returned by registered (tracked) post. ------ nubela $20 per notebook is a bit on the expensive side, imo. ~~~ y-apply Agreed, but doesn't the $20 include the service and shipping costs? ~~~ devty seems like $20 includes service and the return shipping cost. Shipping cost to send the notebook is on us ~~~ bdm Correct. We borrow this model from what camera manufacturers like Canon do. When you send something to Canon for repair/exchange, you're in charge of paying for shipping and packing it safely. Then when the work is done, they ship it back professionally, for free, as part of the service.

Hosting recommendations for startup - optimal Hello,<p>Can anyone recommend good hosting services for a new startup?<p>An older post here mentioned Rackspace and Serverbeach. Are they still recommended?<p>I've actually had good experience with GoDaddy as an economical service in the past, but am interested in current opinions on hosts suitable for a startup.<p>Thanks! ====== cperciva The canonical place to find hosting recommendations is <http://www.webhostingtalk.com> . If you're looking for information about where YC-funded startups are hosted, here's the latest numbers from wikipedia's list of non-acquired, non-defunct YC companies: 4 SoftLayer Technologies Inc. 3 Layered Technologies, Inc. 3 ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc. 2 NoZone, Inc. 2 Rackspace.com, Ltd. 1 Amazon.com, Inc. 1 BitPusher, LLC 1 Carnegie Mellon University 1 Columbus Network Access Point, Inc. 1 Global Netoptex, Inc 1 ServePath, LLC 1 Simpli Hosting, Inc ------ nickb What kind of a stack are you running? What are your memory/CPU requirements? How much bandwidth will you need? Are you serving video or just text/images? Anyway... it all depends on what your req's are... ~~~ optimal Hi nickb, Thanks for your response. I was going to get into details, but figured my requirements are so typical it wouldn't be worth the extra description. This is for a standard LAMP-based app with a minimum of graphics. I expect traffic volume to be low for the near future and have no heavy-duty requirements for video and such. Basically I'd like to find an economical service that can scale with my user base. ~~~ brlewis <http://linode.com/> ~~~ juanpablo Excellent. I was looking for something like that. Thank you! ~~~ upper <http://vr.org/> ------ donna Heard about this at a meet-up in SF; <http://www.sun.com/emrkt/startupessentials/hosting.jsp> ------ foodawg I don't know if your referring to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=64795> as the older post, but it is only a month old. The web hosting industry is pretty cyclical, but within a month, the data should still be relevant. ~~~ optimal foodawg, Thanks--that looks better than the thread from 148 days ago I had bookmarked (whatever date that happens to be): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29011> Is there a search function here I'm missing? I did search for search to parse prior posts but withdrew without the words of the most. ------ herdrick Rackspace's offerings start at $400 a month. And they have no prices on their site, so you have to talk to a 'sales associate'... God I hate it when you can't get a price off a website. Can't believe I wasted two minutes on that. Learn from my error.

I've Seen a Future Without Cars, and It's Amazing - johnkpaul https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/opinion/ban-cars-manhattan-cities.html ====== watersb Just last night, I was considering how we should tax land area devoted to cars the way costal beach property has been taxed in Florida. In that state, their Proposition 13 moment occurred about 20 years ago. Owners had their beachfront property assessed at value least as much as a benchmark rate, set by resort and luxury condominium revenue. Tax a parking lot at the market rate of commercial office space of the same area. ------ umeshunni I've seen the future without paywalls and annoying javascript that hijacks your scroll behavior and it's amazing too. ~~~ Shared404 I agree, but that's not the authors fault. NoScript actually makes NYT enjoyable to read, although this article you do have to scroll for a while.

SysAdmins who track inventory: Try using a visual map - i_miss_qbasic https://www.cyberstockroom.com/ ====== devicetray0 Why do you keep submitting essentially the same exact thing?

Why Timber Towers Are on the Rise in France - jseliger https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/10/why-timber-towers-are-on-the-rise-in-france/544098/ ====== tschwimmer Something I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned yet are the acoustics of a wooden building. Wood is less dense when compared to concrete and (at least in older buildings) there are significant air gaps between ceiling and floorboards of the floor above it. As anyone who's lived in an SF Victorian will tell you even regular walking can be perceived as loud by the person below. Before I'd consider living in a wooden building, I'd have to be convinced that the noise isolation would be sufficient. I wonder if it's been accounted for properly in these new buildings. ~~~ cstuder As someone living in a modern wood building I can tell you that this is really not a problem anymore. Our floors are filled with anhydrite, they are solid. Only when the kids upstairs are _really_ wild you can hear their steps. ~~~ boobsbr As someone living in a wooden house, I can say it's still problem. Even walking barefooted upstairs can be heard from downstairs. Floorboards creak and make noise. Only places that don't make this noise are the bathroom and kitchen, which have tiled concrete floors. ~~~ zip1234 Creaking floorboards can be solved by attaching the floors more securely. Just screw them down. Usually it is caused by wood moving against nails. ~~~ rsync Correct. Most squeaky wood floors and stairways, etc., were just assembled poorly and you can actually fix them _in situ_ with finish screws. I recommend the #8 GRK finish screws @ 2.5 inch length. Either find your biggest (heaviest) friend to stand on the spot before you insert the screw OR find a way to jam the floor down from the ceiling. You lock the floorboard in place, fully compressed, and then seal it in place with the screw(s). For new wooden floors, I highly recommend a layer of cork between the floorboards and subfloor for a variety of reasons ... insulation, noise, squeak avoidance, etc. I would not build a wooden floor without that layer. ------ thisisit "The production of cement, one of the main ingredients in concrete, generates an estimated 5 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. Trees, in contrast, capture CO2, helping offset emissions produced by a typical building process." If I am reading this correctly it's the trees and not timber, laminated or otherwise, which capture CO2. So what kind of advantage does timber offer in form of CO2 emission? Specially considering the tree is now gone and this article doesn't cover if there is re-plantation - something like sow a 5 plants of each tree used for timber. ~~~ nostoc Timber is carbon that a tree has pulled from the atmosphere. As long as it stays in a building, it's not going back in the atmosphere. Planting trees and turning them into timber is a form of carbon sequestration. As long as it doesn't burn or decay... ~~~ Neil44 It’s interesting, you could say that trees grow out of the air, not the ground. ~~~ kijin Indeed, most of the mass of a tree comes from the air. Even the water was in the air not so long ago. ------ teekert Perhaps it's difficult to convey but I redid a lot of the interior of my current (brick and mortar) home from the 1930's myself and it really made me appreciate wood as a building material. Strong, very easily made into the required shape, easy to attach to each other, easy to attach other things to... I always felt wood was "how we used to do it"... not anymore. Guess this place is a good as any to express my found love for the material. ~~~ rsync "Guess this place is a good as any to express my found love for the material." I agree with you but I would point out that the buildings and their "wood" materials that the article discusses are really not anything like what you worked with. The article speaks about wood and trees and "timbers" but these building materials are engineered panels and timbers that, while in many cases _actually stronger_ than their "real wood" counterparts, do not have the aesthetics you remember. I would go so far as to suggest that they are moving not from concrete to wood construction, but from concrete to _glue_ construction. ~~~ teekert Ah, good clarification, indeed I mostly used pinewood for inside and Azobe and Meranti for outside (though some composite for the parts we walk on). But The pleasure was mostly from being able to drills holes and put screws in with a light cordless drill and saw it in the right shape either by hand or a light jig saw. It's carry-able and still very strong. I guess this also applies to the used composite materials your describe? ------ oaijdsfoaijsf Wood is a very cool material! But I would be nervous living in a tall building made out of it, because of its flammability. Maybe if all the wood buildings also have sprinkler systems, that would offset the risks. Our building is a concrete building about fourteen stories tall. The information we received as part of the lease tells us that it's known as a non-flammable building, and supposedly the safest thing to do if there is a fire on another floor is to shelter in place. I doubt the same would be true in any wood building. Oh, and apparently the article also speaks to this: > It’s also this heft that helps make CLT fire-resistant: the outside layers > char slowly, protecting the wood inside from burning. (More on that: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUGNoTP0Nlc1O-EWf3d1m3QQ&...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUGNoTP0Nlc1O-EWf3d1m3QQ&time_continue=36&v=hRIPQ_q2iyY)) ~~~ SCAQTony After that terrible fire in England I would recommend getting a 150-meter climbing rope, a harness and an aluminum "figure-eight" and learn how to repel as a means of escape in case the smoke became far too overwhelming. But that's just me. I live in a house. ~~~ EGreg I had an invention that could help many people escape from a building: Magnetic strips on the side of the building, and backpacks with metal. You put on the backpack and shimmy down. Just in case, you also strap yourself onto the slide by its sides, so as not to disconnect from it and fall off. This is better than a rope because it can hold many people simultaneously. Do the magnets wear out over time though? ~~~ vlehto Magnets are probably way too expensive. Especially as you could get same functionality with regular fire ladder. ~~~ EGreg How would you shimmy down the ladder? But yes I suppose technically you can have rollers in vertical struts and have them roll down inside the rails, carrying the person. ------ bastijn So how much of earth do we need to cover with forest to have a sustainable production for our buildings at a level that it actually matters? One building works, sure enough. But is it scalable to a level that it actually helps? I have my doubts. Bringing awareness is still a good thing of course. Which is how I tend to see most of these projects. ~~~ jtolmar If I did all my math/googling right, one acre of managed forest can produce about thirty square meters of the 20-inch-thick panels mentioned in the article per year. (A typical wood weighing 0.4 tons per square meter and a managed forest producing about 6 tons per acre per year.) I'll guess it takes around four of those acre-year units to build one person's worth of an apartment building. (Thirty square meters is on the small side for an apartment, and apartments need walls, but they're also not going to be entirely constructed of the thickest panels.) My home city of Seattle is growing at about 20k people per year, which (if we try to fit them all in wooden highrises) works out to 80k acres, which is roughly the size of the city itself. I feel like that'd be entirely reasonable. It's also worth noting that this sequesters a rather appreciable amount of carbon (trees are half carbon, so about 240 kilotons per year). ~~~ mseebach Also, if we're considering ecological foot print, structural use of wood is near-permanent sequestering (ie. carbon-negative) which is better than most other uses of wood such as burning for fuel which is "only" carbon-neutral. ------ bcn Here are a few renderings of the "Arboretum" project that was mentioned in the article- [http://www.laisneroussel.com/fr/projects/55](http://www.laisneroussel.com/fr/projects/55) ------ frik "Timber Towers" work for up to about 10-story building (depending on architecture, building technique). It's similar to brick and mortar buildings, only with the introduction of cement and steel we got the first high rise skyscrapers (1890s-1930s). Also fire-safety (30+ min fire resistance) is a problem with wood based buildings, the photos shows that at least the elevator and staircase shaft is made out of steel reinforced concrete. That said wood based buildings have a warmer in-house climate and other positive aspects. ------ robbrown451 There is something bothersome to me about using all that wood only to cover it up. Concrete is ugly and wood is beautiful, in my opinion. I hope they leave a lot of the wood visible. ~~~ virmundi As a person replacing a 130 year old sill plate, cover up structural wood. Termites and water can destroy it. ~~~ wahern If it's covered, how can you tell when there's damage? We recently had seismic plywood shear walls installed in our soft story garage, holding up our 2 stories of living space. A previous owner actually had shear walls installed in 1992, after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. But the '92 retrofit used the wrong grade of plywood, and used screws instead of nails. Screws have poor shear strength. The panels were basically useless for seismic safety and had to be replaced. The 90-year-old redwood studs looked surprisingly pristine. But one of the studs had some kind of termite or fungal damage. The entire stud, top to bottom, basically disintegrated in your hands; but everything else was in perfect shape, including the sills. There were no outward signs of this at all --neither on the stud itself, on adjacent studs, nor the top or bottom sill plates. It was bizarre. And it would have gone totally unnoticed and maybe even spread, completely undetected, had the old panels not been removed. The shear walls weren't the only things improperly installed. The 1992 foundation bolts didn't use adequately sized washers, so with enough movement the bolt heads would have ripped through the sill plate. Again, this was hidden behind the wall panels. I grew up in Florida trailer parks. To me anything covered is hiding something --cockroaches, termites, substandard construction. Were there no need for the shear walls, I'd much prefer to have exposed studs and a completely exposed sill plate, at least in the garage. ------ MrFantastic Concrete buildings can last for centuries. There are few wood buildings that last that long. I would think something like aerocrete would also provide superior insulation. ------ jasonmaydie How is cutting down trees better for climate change? Don't we need more trees? ~~~ johngalt Think of trees as co2 batteries. They take in co2 to create wood then release it back when they burn or decay. If you plant a tree farm and use the wood to create buildings you are effectively doing carbon sequestration. ------ EGreg What about the risk of fire, as they had in Chicago and London etc. ~~~ rsynnott Assuming you're talking about Grenfell, that was an old concrete building. The fire was so deadly due to improperly specced and/or installed exterior cladding which had recently been added; nothing to do with wood. ------ eksemplar Is the clue and fire resistance safe to breathe though? ------ anovikov It's rather stupid to worry about global warming here, as concrete use in France is less than 1% of what it is in China anyway. ------ Animats This trend towards large multi-story timber apartment buildings is worrying. That used to be prohibited in many US jurisdictions. Now I see San Jose and Redwood City putting up lots of these things. "Luxury apartments" made of chipboard. The fire protection people aren't happy about this.[1] There's a fad for "podium buildings". The first two floors are steel and concrete, and then there are a few floors of wood. These appear in areas where you're not allowed wood construction for commercial buildings. The bottom floors are commercial; the upper floors are residential. [1] [https://community.nfpa.org/community/nfpa- today/blog/2017/03...](https://community.nfpa.org/community/nfpa- today/blog/2017/03/21/recent-fires-in-apartment-buildings-under-construction- highlight-the-importance-of-developing-a-fire-safety-program-and-designating- a-fire-prevention-manager-during-construction) ~~~ jkaljundi Modern wood is much more fire resistant than concrete or steel [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-3oEb8KUiQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-3oEb8KUiQ) \- it's an imaginary myth, that wood is dangerous. ~~~ scythe Wood constructed buildings are fire resistant. The article he linked discusses fires in buildings under construction recently. All wood is flammable, but insulation goes a long way.

Ask HN: Share the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system - ramoq It&#x27;s YC application time and this one of the best questions on the app. I love reading people&#x27;s life hacks. Please share :) ====== stevekemp I live in a city with a very comprehensive bus service, cheap, reliable, all that good stuff. Over time it became obvious that people who worked for the bus-company would just jump on the buses, chat briefly to the driver, and not pay. They'd get off after 1-15 stops and have ridden for free. I figured there were sufficiently many bus-drivers and buses that they can't all have been personally familiar to each other, and reasoned that the "uniform" must have been what swayed it. I created a replica-bus-driver-uniform and had a weekend where I rode around for free, unchallenged. Not terribly useful, and perhaps not possible these days now that the staff also wear ID-cards a lot of the time, but I was a little pleased with myself regardless. ~~~ turdpress_dev Wow. That is shockingly dishonest. Are you a RoR 'developer' ...? Always trying to get something for nothing.. pathetic ~~~ stevekemp The effort involved to get the right coloured trousers, shirt, tie, and jacket far outweighed the fares I should have paid.. ~~~ yen223 So not only was it morally ambiguous, you didn't even benefit financially? All in good fun I suppose... ------ jtfairbank I learned how to sail without a rudder. The trick is to use the force differentials between the fore sail (jib) and main sail to steer. I did this on a 20 foot boat with a crew of 4 people, and could tack, jibe, and safely pick up a man overboard. ------ ramoq Here's a good one from FamilyLeaf's YC app: "We used a comedy twitter account to get meetings with tech superstars who wouldn't have returned our emails. In the week before our YC interview, we started @YC_Y_U_NO as a joke with the tech communityand ended up featured on TechCrunch -- and more importantly (coupled with serendipitously meeting FredWilson at the airport, who tweeted out Readstream) used cold DM's to build relationships with brilliant startuppeople, angel investors, and VCs (along with more than a few YC alums/Garry and Harj)."

Ask HN: Does your web app work with javascript off? - sparkygoblue I've spent a lot of time adding UI features to my new (mostly CRUD) webapp that I know I'm going to either tweak or totally override via javascript/ajax. I feel an obligation to get the app working with no javascript/jquery, even though I know that the group of people using the site with javascript turned off are going to very small.<p>Is this the "right" way to be doing this? Should I just be using javascript based UI elements and ajax from the start? Is there a standard practice with regards to this issue? ====== Lazare It's a hard choice. I was recently involved in a project that was heavily focused on progressive enhancement - we started with a "standard" HTML app with forms and submit buttons. Every interaction required a full page load. Then we started using Javascript to enhance the UX in such a way that it still worked without Javascript. It was a long and tricky process, because progressive enhancement is inherently quite fragile. You are basically taking an app, and then monkey patching it at runtime to be a different app. This is hard. :) Any change anywhere ripples through the whole app, and the entire thing is an offence against DRY; you are duplicating logic over and over and over. Still, after a lot of time and effort... ...we gave up. We just couldn't get a slick, user friendly experience with JS, without the site breaking without JS. And frankly, the UX without JS was terrible anyhow. We rewrote the thing as a SPA (single page app). The codebase is much simpler, and the UX is great. :) For us, the biggest pain point is our initial design had a server the emitted HTML; and accepted forms POSTed back to it. To enable AJAX, we then needed to duplicate a bunch of functionality so it would accept and emit JSON as well; this led to major headaches trying to keep all the logic in sync. If you DO want to maintain progressive enhancement...you need to figure out your site design from the start; it can't be an afterthought! If it's a complex project, you will live and die by your ability to keep your code DRY and enforce Seperation of Concerns. ~~~ kls You would have saved a lot of time and frustration by building the single page app first and putting analytics on it to see how many non-JavaScript clients you where getting (most are surprised at how few the number is) and then if the number justify it, build out an older style UI separate from the modern web app that just proxies data to the same REST services, then use a sniffer to decide where each client goes. This is a simpler solution than trying to layer on dynamic functionality while trying to support the least common denominator. 9 time out of 10 though, when faced with the decision, the effort to chase older browsers is better spent chasing a larger market like Mobile. ~~~ Lazare I know! :( It was definitely a learning experience. And in regards to your comment on mobile: Agreed! Not only is getting a slick mobile client a much more important use of resources that stuffing around with progressive enhancement, but a good JSON/REST API is really really helpful when it comes time to get a mobile app working. Thinking of webapps as client-server applications communicating via a JSON API is really helpful at the moment, I think. ~~~ kls Yes many people make that leap after a first iteration, but once you do the pattern becomes very clear and very powerful. Looking at your back-end as a platform for all future clients really helps as well. ------ kls _Is this the "right" way to be doing this?_ This is a subjective question and there is a lot of dogma surrounding the question. I tend to answer my questions with dollars as in are the dollars there to chase that market and would the money to chase that market be better spent chasing a larger market? My second question to myself if which is less costly to develop and maintain? Finally a little more hard to quantify but which can I make better conversions with? The first one is pretty easy, for a good deal of sites the percentage of browsers that do not support or have JavaScript turned off is usually less than 1% I have seen numbers as high as 2% either way, it is below niche at best. It is pretty easy to make the statement that the money would be better spent chasing mobile or even in advertising for the 99% than it would be to chase the 1%. The second one is a little more subjective but I have found for me and my team that writing UI's 100% in JavaScript/HTML/CSS simplifies the architecture and increases our time to market. I personally feel the worst solution is to sprinkle JavaScript into a server side solution such as PHP, ASP, or JSP it creates a more complex stack and complicates the solution requiring more layers and more specializations. With the UI being in all client side technologies, it becomes very easy to stub JSON messages and use those as the contract between front end and back end teams. I actually prefer the modern way of developing web application over the old server side model. Finally I feel that the flexibility of JavaScript solutions and there rapid development model give them the edge on building UI's for conversion, simple tweaks can be made to the UI and delivered without the need for a full deployment of back end services. As well their are UI metaphors that just cannot be done in page-post. While I will be the first to note that this is subjective it works well for myself and my team and we have delivered some very large, adaptable, yet maintainable applications in JavaScript. ------ drostie Do whatever is easiest first. JS can be pretty, but hard -- at least, the DOM is much harder than HTML. Get an HTML serialization of your data working first, before you try to use client-side JS to write this data dynamically into a form -- not because it helps us, but because JS mappings are harder than PHP echos. It will also give you a better appreciation of the places where Web 2.0 can really streamline a system. Just to give an example, Gmail is a massive JS app which uses a frankly unbelievable number of divs to reimplement an iframe window where you can view your email and/or lists of email subjects. It's quite possible that the communications reduction is so big that this is important to Gmail, but you're not that size yet, so just use an iframe rather than reimplementing that functionality in a special way. There are other situations where JS is a bad technology. I should be able to navigate your site without JS, and if you demand JS for navigation you're probably doing it wrong. I should potentially even be able to log in, if you're not using OpenID or BrowserID or client-side crypto. AJAX can be useful for creating chat applications, or for situations where you want to be able to see, query, and throw away lots of little pieces of information. Javascript is also useful when you want a control which should never hit the server, like folding a tree of comments -- which I recently implemented as a user script for HN. That's another plus of using HTML, by the way: it makes it easier for scripters to hack on your site to add their own personal features. I tried to do user scripting on Gmail at one point, it was damn near impossible. Their divs belong to memorably named classes like "vI8oZc cN" and "nH w-asV" and "mq nH oy8Mbf". Such are the perils of trying to build your iframes dynamically out of divs. Anyway, once you start to get into user interactions, JS becomes much more fun and important. If I am coming to your site to play an HTML5 game, then I already know I need to turn off NoScript, you don't have to tell me. If you've got an interaction which simply screams "drag and drop", then do that instead. Some of the nice uses of JS I've seen recently amount to visualizing graph networks and allow you to drag nodes around to optimize the display; that's a good candidate for a JS implementation. JS is not merely for facilitation, and can have real uses on a CRUD-type site. Just be sure that you're not reinventing something which already exists without JS, like iframes, URLs, and so forth. ------ ayers JavaScript is a requirement for my work applications. We have a lot of core components that get used in almost all of our projects and they rely heavily of JavaScript and jQuery. I know for certain there is no interest in providing a non JavaScript UI flow for our users as it would require far too much time and money to rework existing frameworks and components. For my personal projects I had thought about allowing for non JavaScript users. I started making sure that things worked under both scenarios but in the end I figured that if you don't have JavaScript enabled you really aren’t going to get use of the main features of the project. So now I don't bother and can use that time for adding more features rather than a user path for a very small minority. ------ eugenijusr First of all it depends on the app. If it's a public service I personally find that having this constraint of making your app work with JavaScript off leads to a better web architecture. It doesn't break the web and pays off in the long run for whoever might integrate with your app or whatever products might consume it now or in the near future. Graceful degradation is not all about the end-users. So my advice would be if you're building a JavaScript only app you have to really know what you're doing, because it's very easy to get carried away with it. Keep in mind that you risk making it "incompatible" with the web. When a need arises to be "compatible" you might end up finding yourself building second version of the same app. ------ CyberFonic I had to re-check the date of the post and it isn't 2006 but 2012 !!! Three observations: 1) If your users aren't using a HTML5 compliant browser then they should update. Supporting a multitude of outdated browsers is just way too big a workload. 2) Using JavaScript/AJAX intelligently reduces the load on your server. Why generate all that HTML on demand at the server when you have a dual core CPU with a couple of Gigs of RAM twiddling its thumbs at the client end? 3) With mobile apps, your users will thank you for minimising the amount of traffic your app generates. Why push down full pages when only the data needs to be sent? ------ kellros I'd say a couple of years ago - gradeful degradation was a must. Nowadays - unless you're running some kind of viral service (facebook, twitter etc.) that benefits from masses instead of customers, it's not a requirement. Still a nice to have, but if people can't update their software, they should 'suffer the consequences'. ~~~ CyberFonic "Can't update" ??? Why would that be ? * Corporate policy - Fred Flintstone Enterprises? Still running IE 4 ! * Underpowered computer - buy a new one! * Don't know how - pay someone to do it for you! Google Chrome runs on Windows, Mac & Linux and it auto-updates. What's there not to like? ------ Kartificial Unobtrusive use of Javascript is a very neat one in my opinion. You seperate the content and structure from the presentation layer. In practice though, many sites main functions depend on JS. I can imagine that for large projects the costs of optimizing the view of your site without JS can become too large. ------ andrewjshults For work, no. We're heavily based around mapping tools which don't degrade well (if at all) so optimizing for the non JavaScript users makes little sense for us. Most of my personal projects also require JavaScript because they're things that I build to play around with new technology. ------ true_religion Nope. If you head to my site, and try to use it without Javascript it'll work for simple browsing but not for content creation. It's a decision I made early on not to support a vanishing minority of users who have javascript off by choice or by force. ------ mappu For my big business app at work: No. Javascript is a hard requirement. The UI flows it enables are just too valuable. For my personal stuff: Yes... i have a pretty weak browser on my personal phone, sticking to simple HTML is in my own best interests. ------ joshontheweb there is a difference between a web site and a web app. a web site can and likely should work with js off. Once you dive into the realm of building web apps, then you basically give up on that idea. As you said, it is a small demographic anyway.

World's first plastic-free aisle opens in Netherlands supermarket - lnguyen https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/28/worlds-first-plastic-free-aisle-opens-in-netherlands-supermarket ====== pepal So much plastic!! I see lot of plastic on the rack!!

Increase Coding Speed / Typing Skills - ianceicys I realize that I am not coding very fast. (49 wpm only). I am using only two fingers (index for characters and thumb for coding). I wish to increase my typing speed. Has anyone made an app that helps people practice over text, give statistical information? I took a look at https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.keyhero.com and its nice but wondering about alternatives. ====== jxy Just start typing with 10 fingers, following THE correct way. At the beginning, you will feel pain, and it will be SLOW, but there is no other way. Just do it. If you are looking for some fun, try this [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10712327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10712327) For more, search HN. ~~~ ianceicys Very fun! ------ mqde Hope it will help u [http://www.speedtypingonline.com/games/type-the- alphabet.php](http://www.speedtypingonline.com/games/type-the-alphabet.php) ------ mage4 I found this to be really good web site to help you to start [https://www.typingclub.com/](https://www.typingclub.com/) ~~~ ianceicys Thanks so much this is very helpful!

Humaaans: Mix-and-match illustrations of people with a design library - plurby https://www.humaaans.com ====== shanehoban Favourited. Really nice work and impressive landing page. Would love to have an online tool for this also, as others have said. The style of work really reminds me of undraw [1] [1] [https://undraw.co](https://undraw.co) ~~~ KaoruAoiShiho Oh my god, the real gold is in the comments. Can you share some other cool stuff from your bookmarks? ~~~ shanehoban Undraw is like the only thing I have to mind that I've noticed isn't as widely known. Perhaps these: \- [https://cruip.com](https://cruip.com) \- [https://unsplash.com](https://unsplash.com) \- [https://feathericons.com](https://feathericons.com) \- Why didn't I get any money from my startup? - A guide to Liquidation Preferences and Cap Tables [1] [1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/a8f6xz/why_didnt_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/a8f6xz/why_didnt_i_get_any_money_from_my_startup_a_guide/) ------ Waterluvian Something's fascinating to me. Clearly there's a lot of diversity. But there also isn't. I don't associate with any of it. Not because I'm a green space monster. But where's the potbellied, grizzled 55 year old welder? Or the "I hate kale, more bacon please" mother of three? Everyone looks so... Chic and young and modern and... Silicon Valley. Is it the art style? Is that the point? Is that what the robotic "HUMAAAAN" is teasing? That these aren't anything like real humans? ~~~ whatshisface > _I don 't associate with any of it. Not because I'm a green space monster._ When I checked I didn't see any white people, so assuming that you are white the explanation for your reaction is probably just that your race isn't represented. People identify more with other people that look like them. If you had a kid from China draw a picture of some people they would all look Chinese, so my guess is that the author of the page is from a country that's mostly black and Hispanic. They might not even have noticed that they left white people out. In that light the "real humans" comment comes across as a little weird, though, so maybe this doesn't explain your reaction. Although if it helps clear the air, I'm fine with pointing out that I would prefer to use an icon pack that included white people, after all that's me. ~~~ stronglikedan > In that light the "real humans" comment comes across as a little weird But that's the light painted by _you_ , not OP. OP gave _very_ specific and valid examples of types of people that are missing. OP said, nor implied, anything about race. That's your straw man, and yours alone. The only thing that's weird is that an illustration library called "humaaans" is no where near diverse enough to represent humans. ~~~ whatshisface > _But that 's the light painted by you, not OP._ Right, I'm saying that's the most accurate light. I'm not trying to accuse the OP of anything. ~~~ stronglikedan It's actually the least accurate light, and a straw man argument fabricated by you alone. The criticisms about the lack of diversity have nothing to do with race, neither explicitly nor implied. ~~~ whatshisface It's not a fabricated straw man, it's my actual opinion. (Typically a straw man would be a caricature of your _opponent 's_ opinion). I used to roll my eyes when people added new skin colors to emoji options, but now that someone left off people that look like _me_ , I understand that it's a nice gesture to be included. ------ theon144 Nice! This came at just the right time for me too. I find the general attitude in this comment section curious, though; lots of people are arguing about the skin tone choice which is notably brown. Yet I feel that if it were lighter in shade, there would be much less grumbling and criticism about not including every single possible body shape? ~~~ whatshisface The author left out white people, and since he's white himself and from California the "he just doesn't live around white people" explanation that I was originally going for can't be right. If he had left out a people group that he didn't see very often (if he lived in Nigeria that could be white people, if he lived in Norway that could be Native Americans) then nobody would be upset. But all signs point to this being some kind of misguided political expression. I can see why everyone is riled up; it's (apparently intentionally) tapping in to one of the lava pools of "this is unfair" sloshing around America these days. ~~~ danielvf Nah, there's a simple explanation. Humaaans uses an artistic style of solid patches of color against a white background. Very light skin tones work terribly in this style because they disappear into the background. ~~~ whatshisface If true that would be hilarious, but I don't see how we could ever know for sure. If the real reason were unsavory, there would be an overwhelming social bias not to reveal it; and as a result even a true, positive answer wouldn't help. ~~~ danielvf I made a white humaaan for you. It has some readability problems. :) [https://danielvf- downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/2019/whumaaan.pn...](https://danielvf- downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/2019/whumaaan.png) ------ cmpb OT: The word "Humaaans" makes me think of the Ferengi from Star Trek. E.g. [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/63716/why-do- the-f...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/63716/why-do-the-ferengi- pronounce-human-the-way-they-do) ~~~ glitcher Bjork's "Human Behavior" immediately popped into my head. "If you ever get close to a humaaaan..." ------ innerspirit Interesting how I did not notice any issues with the library until I came to the comments and there were several mentions of implicit racism. There is some projection going on here. Upon reviewing the site again, there are some lighter skin tones that I would identify with as a pale white man, if I really cared. ~~~ whatshisface > _Upon reviewing the site again, there are some lighter skin tones that I > would identify with as a pale white man,_ I looked through it and I have to disagree, the skin tones are all dark. There is no reason to call that racist though, maybe the author just doesn't see a lot of white people in whatever country they live in. Edit: ouch, I guess my optimism was misplaced. Given that he's from California, it really does look like the author was making a political statement. ~~~ nmstoker It appears he lives in California [https://mobile.twitter.com/pablostanley](https://mobile.twitter.com/pablostanley) ------ gus_massa Is it possible to add beard to the drawings? Is there an online version that is posible to use without installing the library in my machine? ~~~ detaro [https://ozgrozer.github.io/hdt/](https://ozgrozer.github.io/hdt/) ~~~ gus_massa Thanks! I don't understand something: Is this a full demo, or an example with only a few features / images? This demo doesn't have autosnap (I'm not sure about the official name). Also, I can't change the color of the hair, but it is not clear if it is possible in the original version. ------ elfakyn This looks like the generic "people" artwork you see in so many places. ~~~ augustk Indeed. Clipart is low culture. ~~~ Hoasi Low culture is necessary and perfectly fine. Still, a lot of work went into releasing these free generic illustrations. Also, the more free clip art is available and used everywhere the quicker it will go out of style. ~~~ DoctorOetker I think the ambiguity is what makes clip-art attractive, you can recognize people you know in them, while with the other extreme, actual photos, it would look like a stranger ------ nmstoker What would be an interesting side-project would be to apply some machine learning, so a user could describe the kind of person / activity in a sentence and it would be generated using this. ------ Etheryte This is a quick and easy way to add a humane touch to a landing page and other similar content with the added benefit of being free (CC Attribution 4.0). ------ jmknoll This is awesome. Going to add it to a project that I was working on a new landing page for today. For a bit of constructive criticism, the name makes the project really difficult to discover. I remembered having seen this on HN a couple of days ago, but when I went to look it up, I remembered it as "Humans with a few extra A's or U's," and I had to Google five or six variations before I found it. One too few or one too many A's will not bring up your project. I'm not sure if this is a lack of SEO, or a function of how Google treats misspelled words. Other than that, looks like a beautifully designed library, and looking forward to putting it to work. ------ b_b Nice little Daft Punk easter egg in the panel with the "Nothing Found" example page ([https://genius.com/Daft-punk-digital-love- lyrics](https://genius.com/Daft-punk-digital-love-lyrics)), and the ending statement "We are humaaan after all." ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_After_All](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_After_All)) ~~~ yellowapple I managed to get Daft Punk and Level 42 simultaneously stuck in my head. ------ codeape On a Windows PC, what (free, open source) drawing program would I use to create illustrations using these pieces? ~~~ projektfu Inkscape ------ hnacc0 ( out of topic ) similar to material design, metro design, what is this website using? ------ hmak I'm using this on my landing page. The illustrations are beautiful and the way Pablo Stanley organizes all the assets in Sketch is amazing. Also note, Humaaans is under CC 4.0 ------ aboutruby This is really neat! Reminds me of the style Airbnb, Stripe and Dropbox uses. ~~~ rchaud Now that this art style is freely available, prepare to see it slathered over every new startup promising an API for your SaaS that integrates with their PaaS and builds a future-proof IaaS. ~~~ louisswiss Hope you're using AI and machine learning to do that on the blockchain. ~~~ rchaud Of course! Our cloud-native, Agile-first team of DevOps rockstars are working on that as we speak. ------ dharma1 Great execution and right on the money with style ------ agp2572 Looks like the artwork used on Google Fi website. ------ JUSTed This is the new version of stock photos for lazy and conformist people. But instead of having some young attractive models smiling at the camera with a flipchart in their hands, now you get a fast-food-style illustration, devoid of soul and personality, identical to the other designs used by some other startup, that's going to age like milk and will require a rebranding in two years. tl;dr — it's a fad. ~~~ rchaud That's tech industry marketing in a nutshell though. How many startup homepages promise "seamless integration with your stack" or "first-class customer experience" and fail to deliver? Nokia's tagline back in the day used to be "Connecting People", and yet today it is FB that brazenly repeats this ad nauseam in its press statements each time another breach of user privacy is revealed. ------ bullen I can't find the SVG files? ~~~ coldtea There are several prominent "get the library" links on the page that lead to Dropbox where you can download the whole package. SVGs are in the "flat assets -> Humaaans" folder. ------ Rainymood What is the font? ~~~ cowflik [https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/latinotype/recoleta/](https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/latinotype/recoleta/) ------ fredley This is great, and I really, really love the inclusive-by-default approach. ~~~ coldtea Where inclusive == everybody is brown skinned? ~~~ fredley I noticed the use of wheelchair users, and the different skin tones used on the landing page. I hadn't looked into the actual resources so hadn't seen that they are not in fact offered in a range of tones. Oh well! ------ KineticLensman > We are humaaan after all I'm not ~~~ TheGrumpyBrit Are you dancer? ------ crisstringfello where are the white humans? and the yellow humans? and the jet black humans? I feel like the 1 skin tone is meant to be provocative, possibly be a deliberate troll, maybe start a discussion. does the author wish to weigh in? as a white human I feel excluded. maybe I'm attaching too much importance to skin tone as a part of identity. I think partly that's in our brains, partly it's emphasised by the media to divide us and create outrage, for power and engagement. ~~~ AYBABTME The average color of all human skin mixed together would probably be brown. Picking an average of everything should be highly uncontroversial. ~~~ coreyp_1 Nobody is average. OK, that's too short to really mean anything, so I'll elaborate. If you take the average characteristics of everyone in the world (wealth, skin tone, intelligence, BMI, height, gender, etc.), and turned that into a single person, then you would have a new, unique person. In other words, it would not "represent" anyone, and so should definitely be seen as controversial. There are a myriad of engineering stories about this discovery (one size doesn't fit all). If anything, I would have loved to see more diversity, or at the very least a prominent message on how to achieve it. Color might be the easiest change to make, but I didn't see any old or fat people on there, or how to make those variations. I like the overall idea of the project, though.

Columbia MFA Students Demand Full Tuition Refund - contourtrails https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2018/04/30/with-decrepit-facilities-and-missing-faculty-mfa-visual-arts-students-demand-tuition-refund/ ====== magpi3 > "It’s almost criminal to endebt a student $100,000 to be a painter or a > performance artist" I agree and will never understand the students, parents, and faculty who choose to support such a system. ------ otterley The source reporting can be found here: [https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2018/04/30/with- decre...](https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2018/04/30/with-decrepit- facilities-and-missing-faculty-mfa-visual-arts-students-demand-tuition- refund/) Submitters: Please, always link to primary sources if possible. ~~~ tlb Changed from [https://hyperallergic.com/440469/columbia-university-mfa- stu...](https://hyperallergic.com/440469/columbia-university-mfa-students- demand-tuition-refunds/), thanks ------ almostApatriot1 Columbia MFA programs are notorious for being cash cows. Everyone who does a little research understands this.

Show HN: Painless CSS: Learn CSS from First Principles - Kortaggio https://www.painlesscss.com/ ====== uxcolumbo Congrats on launching. Looks exhaustive. Quick question, I've seen quite a few sites and emails where these meme gifs are being used. Do these work? I personally find them distracting. ------ buckyb I’m about to start learning css/web stuff and have been overwhelmed with the mass amount of tutorials out there. How is this one, as objectively speaking as possible? I’d only be interested in the book, so what makes this worth $20? (My background is in physics, and I’m currently programming mostly functional stuff with C++ and Python, if it matters.) ~~~ uxcolumbo You might also like these: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS) [https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome- devtools/begi...](https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome- devtools/beginners/css) [https://rachelandrew.co.uk/css/](https://rachelandrew.co.uk/css/) [https://cssgrid.io/](https://cssgrid.io/) ------ timrosenblatt Looks cool! I like the fresh approach.

Hi5 Confirms “Significant” Layoffs, Wraps Them In Mumbo Jumbo Speak - protomyth http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/19/hi5-layoffs-again/ ====== protomyth The interesting part isn't the layoffs (I am sorry for those people), it is the comment about there move to Windows. I am not sure I buy there stats.

Concorde Trip Report (2003) - diego http://www.samchuiphotos.com/Concorde/ConcordeTripReport2.html ====== diego I remember when this was posted on FlyerTalk. The author of the post read that British Airways would cease to operate the flights, and promptly booked one with miles just for the experience. I wished I'd done that. The last Concorde flight took place 11 years ago today.

Althea in Medellin - Element_ https://blog.althea.org/althea-in-medellin/ ====== tarikjn Never heard of Althea before, but I did some reading, and I must say this is the most promising last mile meshnet system I have seen implemented so far. ------ melling Interesting that they picked Colombia. Medellin is actually a booming city. They have free wifi in most of the parks. I was also in Bogota in 2007 and again 2 years ago. The country has many more tourists now. It could pass for a city in the US. Medellin is the city of eternal spring. I believe lots of Americans are retiring there. Central America is the place that really needs the help.

Super Bowl Delivers Thrills, but No Ratings Record - JumpCrisscross https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/business/media/super-bowl-ratings.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_dk_20170206&nl=dealbook&nl_art=6&nlid=65508833&ref=headline&te=1&_r=0 ====== XaspR8d Anecdotally, I feel football is gradually losing ground among younger generations. My sports-watching-est friends seem to be less and less devoted to football in particular and more interested in other, more niche sports. Even those strongly allegiant to football are less insistent on catching many individual games real-time as they are staying informed about the league overall and watching highlights or stream or DVR when they can. ~~~ k-mcgrady Interested to know the niche sports you're finding people showing interest in. ~~~ seppin soccer. no ads except for half time ~~~ felipemnoa I guess you consider it niche in the USA but soccer is the most popular game world wide[1]. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football) ~~~ gozur88 It's definitely niche in the US. ~~~ groby_b As long as you define "US" as "white, male, >25". It's popular with women. It's popular with kids (age 12-17, more popular than MLB). It's popular with the latino population. ~~~ gozur88 Not really. They can't get people to watch it on TV, which is why it doesn't make any money. ~~~ JBlue42 [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/sports/soccer/nbc- retains...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/sports/soccer/nbc-retains- rights-to-premier-league-in-six-year-deal.html) Two years of success broadcasting England’s Premier League proved a basic truth to NBC Sports: It would have to pay a lot more to keep carrying the league’s games. Now it will. Under a six-year agreement announced Monday that starts next season and is worth about $1 billion, NBC retained the rights to the Premier League through the 2021-22 season. ------ Steko I watched online and the stream was excellent although it lacked commercials which would normally would be a plus but not for the superbowl (anyway I got a roundup of them elsewhere). Just shows you how broken online advertising is when they don't even play the very best video commercials on offer to 2+ million people watching their stream. ~~~ ams6110 I think Super Bowl commercials have jumped the shark. They used to be a fun interlude during timeouts. Now they are just over the top "who can cram the most CGI into 30 seconds of the most impossibly contrived scenario" Maybe I'm just old. I didn't watch the commercials though. I did think the halftime show was good. I appreciated the lack of overt political statements. ~~~ TeMPOraL > _Now they are just over the top "who can cram the most CGI into 30 seconds > of the most impossibly contrived scenario"_ Isn't this a good thing though? They're like an art scene now. Fun for the viewers, (I'd guess) fun for the people making them. Just probably not good ROI for the advertisers, which I'd judge as a positive development. ------ k-mcgrady >> high enough to tie it for fourth place among the most-viewed programs in TV history So still huge ratings and only down 600k on last year, which isn't bad when there's over 110m viewers. Secondly although it was a pretty thrilling final quarter and OT at the half it looked like it was all over so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people turned off (as it was nearly 2am for me I nearly did). Finally, these are only ratings for Fox - I'd be interested to know how it did globally. ~~~ forgotmysn is the superbowl broadcast globally? I can't imagine it has a huge audience outside the US ~~~ k-mcgrady As at-fates-hands showed it is. In the UK it's on the BBC from about 10mins before the coin toss. We get US commentary but during your ad breaks it cuts to our presenter/pundit team which includes Osi Umenyiora. We also have a weekly NFL roundup show on the BBC and Sky (paid TV) shows live games during the season. There's also Game Pass where you pay something like £150 a year to stream all games live (although they blackout the ones shown on Sky) and on demand which also gives condensed and highlights version of the games. ~~~ st3v3r Wow, so you guys had to suffer through Joe Buck too? ------ xoqem There were numerous legal ways to stream the Super Bowl online and on mobile this year for free, it appears these numbers may not include those? I would be curious to see what percentage of viewers used an app or site to view the game this year, and if it makes up for the relatively small drop in TV viewers. ------ losteverything I bought my milennial-border kids a box each in the pool. I texted them the pic They said "we don't have cable" I totally forgot about that. They had NO PLANS to watch any way. They will watch a replay if Gaga on their commute. How times they are a changin' ------ mig39 How do the ratings compare to the Champions League final? ~~~ k-mcgrady 180m in 2015 [1] [1] [http://heavy.com/sports/2016/05/champions-league-final-tv- ra...](http://heavy.com/sports/2016/05/champions-league-final-tv-ratings- expected-viewers-audience-super-bowl/) ~~~ ashwinaj I have no data, but I find it hard to believe such measly numbers. The viewership in Asia itself would be upwards of 200 million (India, China, SE Asia, Middle East where football/soccer is popular). ~~~ k-mcgrady Those numbers are actually originally sourced from UEFA so I would expect them to be accurate. I know the World Cup Final has hugely larger ratings figures but Champions League being a European tournament maybe it isn't very popular outside Europe.

WordPress 3.5 “Elvin” Released - nosecreek http://wordpress.org/news/2012/12/elvin/ ====== NathanKP There is a more technical list, including the details on the improvements for developers here: <http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.5> The biggest thing I wish WordPress would add is a better built in system for real templates, using a something along the lines of Twig (<http://twig.sensiolabs.org/>). That mixed PHP code and HTML in your standard WordPress template disgusts me every time I see it. I know there are some custom solutions for creating real templates in Twig, but this should be part of the mainstream WordPress branch. ~~~ huskyr Yup, WordPress follows all bad practices of a typical PHP project: mixed PHP and HTML all over the place, lots of global functions instead of classes and direct calls to the MySQL functions instead of PDO so you can't use another database like Postgres. Pity it's so widely used, and there's little competition... ~~~ cooperadymas Saying there's little competition is a huge stretch. WordPress is the dominant force by a large margin. But from small static site generators, hosted platforms, other open source alternatives, to enterprise-ready solutions there are a lot of competitors hitting nearly every segment of the market. <http://trends.builtwith.com/cms> provides some good trends of the big players, but I wouldn't put too much stock in it. That said, as a developer who has fallen into the WordPress business out of necessity, there are a lot of great products out there that are built much better than WordPress and I wish one of them were the dominant player. Still, WP manages to get the job done most of the time. ~~~ intelliot > there are a lot of great products out there that are built much better than > WordPress and I wish one of them were the dominant player. Honest question: Can you name one? I'm seriously looking for a WordPress alternative, but I haven't found one that is truly BETTER. ~~~ cooperadymas What I mean by this is others have a better structured, more solid & easily extendable code base, better separation between presentation and logic, etc.. Obviously, this is somewhat of an opinion, and it only refers to the underlying structure. For the end user, WordPress is probably the best. A large part of this is due to its ecosystem of plugins and themes. You shouldn't need to build custom code on top of WordPress unless you are doing something very unique, building an application (as opposed to a "website"), or attempting to tie together several plugins. Sticking with PHP, both <http://modx.com/> and <http://www.silverstripe.org/> are fairly popular and well-built. I've also heard good things of <http://www.concrete5.org/> , <http://www.movabletype.com/> , <http://textpattern.com/> , and <http://ellislab.com/expressionengine> . <http://habariproject.org/en/> has also been built specifically to address many of the faults in WordPress and other popular systems. ~~~ eclipticplane Isn't MoveableType in Perl? ~~~ cooperadymas Possibly - I've never done anything with it. The PHP statement was really only for the first two, sorry for the confusion! ------ DigitalSea The media changes are a welcome addition, but I can't help but feel Wordpress is still lacking in the media department quite a lot. One feature I've been hoping for in terms of media management is folders to organise media instead of paginating pages of all images being displayed which usually involves duplicates being displayed. I love Wordpress, but it would be great to be able to upload specific images for example of dogs into a folder called, "Dogs" and then being able to browse and manage media in said folder. It's great to see Wordpress is taking steps in the right direction with every release. Another wishlist feature would be the integration of the Advanced Custom Fields plugin straight into the core which allows you to add custom meta boxes and fields to posts in a tasteful and aesthetically pleasing way. I'm excited about the future of Wordpress, it's my bread and butter and I don't see it being beat any time soon. ~~~ Otto42 Re: media, one step at a time. :) Re: custom fields: This makes little to no sense to be in core, because custom fields are just that, "custom". There's no point in giving the end user the ability to make their own meta boxes hooked to custom post meta if there is no plugin or theme actually using that meta data. Creating a meta box is something that the theme/plugin should do, because it's actually going to use the data gained from that meta box. In other words, the horse goes in front of the cart, not the other way 'round. ------ chrisblackwell WordPress could really change their bad reputation by dropping support for PHP 5.2 in the next release, and requiring 5.3. This would allow future WordPress developers to namespace their code, and out allow simple closures withint your code. As of PHP 5.5, there is no support for a straight mySQL connection. There is no real downside in WordPress adopting the PDO standard. ~~~ Otto42 Somehow I doubt that we'll decide to drop support for 65.5% of our users (roughly 26 million websites). <http://wordpress.org/about/stats/> ~~~ rmccue It's funny how many people say WP should drop 5.2 compatibility. It's certainly possible to push the hosts towards using 5.3, but the fact is that the user base simply isn't there yet. ------ BUGHUNTER Unfortunately there is still no reliable unattended upgrade process inluding rollback (aka migration) for wordpress. I looked into this a little bit, but there does not seem to be a reliable way to check if plugins have been executed successfully and with expected results or not, so you never know after an upgrade if your site is broken. There are still many other issues with the code, but having a clearly defined error-handling / -signaling for plugins would be the one single change that would help in many problem areas of wordpress development - making rules and knowledge about successful plugin execution and error handling obligatory for plugin devs could be the one single change that could also help to reduce that annoying flood of unbelievable bad code to be found in WP plugins repo. ------ kyriakos Twentytwelves mobile first approach for me is source of pain. They essentially dropped support for IE8 and below which means people in corporate environments like the company I work for who are stuck to windows xp due to other legacy software that requires it cannot view the desktop view of themes based on WordPress new default theme. ------ earwolf horrendous muffled voiceover on that video ~~~ Otto42 He's not muffled. He actually sounds like that. :) ------ dave1010uk Does anyone know if / when WordPress may start using a modern PHP framework (eg zf2 / symfony2)? ~~~ Cthulhu_ Wordpress is its own PHP framework; in fact, PHP itself is a framework, provides everything frameworks do from database querying to templating. ~~~ kalms Calling Wordpress a framework is like calling Symfony a programming language. ~~~ smacktoward Much like Drupal, WordPress can be bent into something vaguely resembling a framework, if you're the type of person who enjoys that sort of thing. But being the type of person who likes using WordPress as a general-purpose framework is sort of like being the type of person who enjoys being tied up and beaten with a rubber hose. It's a weird, weird kink. ~~~ kalms Of the 2 I very much prefer Drupal. It's a bad CMS, but a great CMF. Wordpress is in my opinion the exact opposite. That said, I haven't checked out the last 2 versions or so. ------ bdcravens I wish they'd put some serious resources into dealing with comment spam. I realize it'll always be an issue, but they could at least: 1) not make comments enabled out of box with no anti-spam measures (moderating isn't anti-spam in my opinion: technical solutions should come before man- power) 2) not make me rely on third-party plugins to combat it ~~~ DigitalSea Akismet does a great job dealing with comment spam. Activate it and input your API key and you're done. Even other applications like PHPbb and "insert PHP content management system here" have problems with spam, it's not as easy as you think to detect and deal with spam. ~~~ bdcravens I've used other pieces of software, even some paid-for PHP features, so I agree as to the spam problem. I was thinking more along the lines of disabling comments by default, and making it a bit of a chore to enable, to make point- and-click installs less of an attack vector.

Show HN: Gripsweat, rare vinyl auction and sales with sound clips - ian_d https://gripsweat.com ====== ian_d It's Record Store Day again and I thought I'd share the site that I've been running for a few years now. It collects vinyl auctions and sales daily (with sound clips), and is at >10M items and >500k sound clips. I've killed hours just clicking through sound clips to find 45s and LPs that probably otherwise would have slipped past me. This is especially nice for "deep" genres like: Afrobeat: [https://goo.gl/UG6kZm](https://goo.gl/UG6kZm) Reggae: [https://goo.gl/tHvJyA](https://goo.gl/tHvJyA) Garage: [https://goo.gl/51cJpQ](https://goo.gl/51cJpQ) Northern Soul: [https://goo.gl/Jj88Bd](https://goo.gl/Jj88Bd) etc,etc Or you can just watch RSD2018 get out of hand: [https://goo.gl/VXN8w8](https://goo.gl/VXN8w8)

Containerd: a daemon to control runC - alpb https://blog.docker.com/2015/12/containerd-daemon-to-control-runc/ ====== rwmj Why not use libvirtd, which does all that and a lot more, and is already present on just about every Linux distro? (more than likely already _running_ on every Linux machine, if you are using virt or containers) ~~~ binarycrusader This is just a guess, but I believe it's because of what you just said; " _running_ on every Linux machine". Docker runs on more than Linux, and you need a solution that can manage containers everywhere. ~~~ rwmj Fair enough, but libvirtd is written in C and reasonably portable and the project already ports all the client side stuff to Windows (so the project is not against portability patches, unlike, say, systemd-machined). Libvirtd has been around for 10 years so it's likely to be less buggy and better maintained than anything you can write from scratch.

Show HN: Automatically update your Slack status and snooze notifications - kalv https://holopod.com ====== kalv Hey all, As an engineer and manager of teams for years, it’s gotten continually harder to manage incoming distractions from Slack messages. I constantly get pinged in the middle of an important Zoom call, or when I’m deep in the flow working on some complex code refactor. Yeah, I could shut down Slack entirely - but it’s a negative signal to my team and I like popping into conversations when I’m taking a break. Slack Do Not Disturb should solve my problems, but I always forget to turn it on. So, I built a way to do it all automatically. Holopod ([https://holopod.com](https://holopod.com)) is a Mac desktop app that detects whitelisted Mac and Web applications and triggers a status change based on the current app you are using. To signal you’re ready to work and online you are marked as “At My Desk”. Other statuses are “On Call”, “In the Flow”, or “in a meeting”. These are all customizable. To pre-answer some questions you might have: \- We don’t track time on specific apps, only status changes are submitted up to Slack. \- We are free for now, as we’re still learning how best to deliver value. \- Yep, we are Mac only but are looking for early testers on Windows or Linux. Would love your thoughts! ------ collinvine I run a company with 20 remote team members. There's a weird perverse incentive to "show face" and be available when working remotely vs. making yourself unreachable so you can focus on things that matter. We joined the Holopod beta to see if we could reduce the anxiety people had of being "away" without it being correlated with not working. So far we like it. It helps people feel more comfortable being unreachable for a period of focused work. As a founder, I get a sense that it can help make people do the stuff that matters, vs. wasting time chatting on Slack. We'd still like to see more features around supporting different time zones (we're spread across 9 time zones, so it can be easy for people further east to just keep working when getting pinged by people further west).

Science declares this is the funniest joke in the world - prateekj http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57619881-71/science-declares-this-is-the-funniest-joke-in-the-world/ ====== a3voices That's not a very funny joke.

Saxon-JS: XSLT 3.0 in the Browser - intrasight http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol17/html/Lockett01/BalisageVol17-Lockett01.html ====== intrasight I'm curious of anyone has yet kicked the tires of this - especially from a performance perspective. My browser-side MVC pattern makes use of the browser's native XSLT, which performs quite well.

HP Chief Warns of 'Tough Times' - chailatte http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703421204576327712235186984.html?mod=googlenews_wsj ====== nwmt Clicking directly only gives you the first few paragraphs then says you need to subscribe. For the full article, Google it and click the article link: [http://www.google.com/search?q=H-P+Chief+Warns+of+Tough+Time...](http://www.google.com/search?q=H-P+Chief+Warns+of+Tough+Times)

Ask HN: Women in Silicon Valley - ayliyazem I read that the total number of woman living in silicon valley is extremely low compared to the total number of man living in silicon valley. And that woman account for less than 10 percent of the total number of board directors in the valley. What can we do about that?! (well, at least there is one advantage: as a startup you won’t have to waste your time on visiting hundreds of Weddings every month :-)) ====== ayliyazem Haha!! Well, me too! But I think more women need to be inspired to do the same! Would be a fun challenge! ------ rachelbythebay Break out and start your own company? That's what I'm working on.

My 86-Year-Old Mother Is an Inadvertent Market Timer - EvgeniyZh https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickferri/2019/04/07/my-86-year-old-mother-is-an-inadvertent-market-timer/#41983e892d1d ====== riverton Reminds me of this Warren Buffet quote "By periodically investing in an index fund, for example, the know-nothing investor can actually outperform most investment professionals. Paradoxically, when ‘dumb’ money acknowledges its limitations, it ceases to be dumb.”

New York City is flooding subway entrances to prepare for climate change - mistersquid https://qz.com/1753814/nyc-is-flooding-subway-entrances-to-prepare-for-climate-change/ ====== larnmar If climate change turns out to be a vast exaggeration, this period in history is going to look very silly. ~~~ travisporter I mean, that's how we felt about a coming nuclear apocalypse in the cold war era. What's your point? ~~~ cududa The common refrain I’ve heard from these type of folks is “well we were going to have a global ice age because the ozone was ‘being depleted’!” Explaining to them that a concerted international effort is the only thing that prevented that gets laughed off.

Hyper social URL shortening service - vyu.me - vyume http://vyu.me ====== captainsuperman Neat. I'll give it a try. Trending links are cool.

Show HN: Inbucket 2.0.0, disposable webmail server - jhillyerd http://demo.inbucket.org/ ====== jhillyerd Author/maintainer here. I see someone else posted Inbucket four years ago, but it's changed a lot since then. Website: [https://www.inbucket.org/](https://www.inbucket.org/) GitHub: [https://github.com/jhillyerd/inbucket](https://github.com/jhillyerd/inbucket) Inbucket was my first project in Go, and I have been slowly adding to it ever since.

Linux Trojan rears its ugly head - helwr http://www.sophos.com/blogs/chetw/g/2010/06/12/linux-malware-rears-ugly-head/ ====== alttab The title is inflamatory, sensational, and misleading - albeit effective. As others have pointed out, this isn't a "linux trojan" as much as it is a "software source code repository hack." Dropping a trojan into someones unguarded source repository can happen on any system. This isn't anywhere close to a "security breach" for linux because people still had to download and compile source. This raises an interesting question - do you trust the source you build? But that's a different issue. The closest thing to Linux security issues is the null pointer bug which allows arbitrary execution as root. And that's like one in 25 years as far as I know. ~~~ JoachimSchipper "One in 25 years" is far too optimistic (see e.g. <http://secunia.com/advisories/product/2719/?task=advisories> \- the NULL pointer bug was exploitable only from programs already running on the host, so most of these "count" by your criteria), but yes - the article is nonsensical. ------ rbanffy <sarcasm>I am so scared by this. You mean, a program I run can do things I don't expect it to do? Oh my... This is _huge_!</sarcasm> No, really. As far as we can know, every instance of Oracle RDBMS, PeopleSoft, AutoCAD, PhotoShop, Windows, Exchange, Office and SQL Server may harbor any number of backdoors. We will never know, since, as the article points out, we cannot examine the source code. And Sophos probably won't know either unless the maker is lame enough to include a fingerprintable backdoor. If you are a package maintainer, you should always get your source off the tagged releases in the version control system. That way you can always test your build off trunk/head/whatever-the-most-current-version-is and ensure that, when the next release becomes adopted, your package will be fine. If you are a Linux sysadmin and you are not using package management, you are insane. Or you will be, shortly. Even if you have to use the "yesterday" release, you should build your own package. ------ bediger This is a few weeks old right? Where did it go from there? Are we (linux users) all infected with lots of rootkits and file infectors and worms? No. The interesting question is not "Are linux machines infected with a cloud of malware like Windows machines?" but rather, "What factors contribute to Windows malware that don't exist for Linux?". That is, on a technical level, Linux is just as vulnerable as Windows. Fred Cohen did his initial experiments on a a 4.3BSD machine in the early 80s, so we've know about the vulnerability all along. Linux just doesn't accumulate the uncountable legions of malware that Windows does. It can't really be "market share", as even at 1% of all users, Linux desktops probably count higher than MS-DOS did in 1988, when the "Brain" virus swept through the population. So, this Sophos-employeed blogger should shy away from his name-calling, and start researching the really interesting "why" to see if it can't be applied back to Windows. ~~~ shin_lao One solid technical reason is that most Windows users run as Administrator (root) which eases the spread of malware. In addition, the lack of uniformity makes it more challenging to write an Unix virus. You'd need to have the worm recompile itself on the target machine, as did the Morris worm in 1988. That greatly increases complexity and cost. Many Windows worms target a specific client/OS pair. That means the worm will require you to run, say, Outlook Express _and_ Windows XP. That sounds pretty specific, but the potential target size is so huge that the virus author can allow itself to be that restrictive. Let's imagine a disease that could contaminate only one human being out of a hundred. How fast do you think the disease would spread compared to one that can infect ninety human beings out of a hundred? Why bother write a malware that has got - even if it's perfectly written - an order of magnitude less chances to spread? ~~~ Cliffer_ny "Why bother write a malware that has got ... an order of magnitude less chances to spread?" That's plain wrong. Read Rick Moen takes on the subject here: <http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/index.php?page=virus#virus4> ~~~ shin_lao I don't know this Mr. Moen, but the fallacy may not be where he believes it is. When writing an exploit you need to know the kernel, libc and apache version to make your buffer overflow work, because memory layout is important - if it's a buffer overflow. There are so many apache builds, that makes things difficult for a worm (but not for a targeted exploit). Not impossible, but more difficult. On Windows, the build is uniform. Additionally, servers are less interesting targets since they are more monitored and operated by administrators. If your plan is to have as many zombies as possible, not a good idea. Last but not least, a lot of virii and trojans use mail and the web as a channel. AFAIK you don't read mails and visit web pages on servers. If the underlying argument is that there are less virii on Linux because it's more secure than Windows, this is wrong. It's difficult to "measure" security and I really don't want to have a Linux vs Windows debate, but Windows cannot be considered as an insecure operating system anymore. User's behavior on the other hand, is still problematic. ------ gcr The authors are now GPG-signing their releases to allow their customers to determine the validity of an archive. I'm inclined to mistrust an article that calls users of an open-source IRC server "customers". ------ nailer It's an IRC daemon. Weren't half of these trojaned anyway? Most of these may as well have been written by the past equivalent of 4Chan. ------ dododo sophos anti-virus wasn't able to detect compromised binaries or source until nearly 2 years after compromise, just like the rest of us. sounds like software i don't need. (and that's assuming you get their on-demand scanning working (talpa) which only seems to work with out of date kernels.)

EU – Brazil: working together towards a gold standard in privacy protection - Aoyagi http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-14-454_en.htm ====== cryoshon This kind of initiative is really great. It's refreshing to see the governments of major powers unite in order to enshrine protections for their citizens. It really paints a stark contrast with the USA-Russia-China totalitarianesque power bloc, though. Our government in the US is currently weaseling out of net neutrality while strongly pushing for omni-surveillance in addition to the usual drumbeat of anti-liberty measures in the name of security. Here, the message is that you have no privacy from the state, and if you want privacy from the corporate branch of the state, you're probably a criminal. I really wish we could point to this and shame our politicians into following suit. ~~~ dfc Brazil is not a major power. ~~~ gtirloni In which area exactly? Since 2005 it's been featured in the top 10 biggest economies. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\)) [http://money.cnn.com/news/economy/world_economies_gdp/](http://money.cnn.com/news/economy/world_economies_gdp/) Do you mean it's not a major power in privacy-related matters? It might not be and all the actions from the current president could just be PR stunts but at least the talks are happening in a certain direction (opposite to the US vision). ~~~ dfc > In which area exactly? This question really gets to the heart of what it means to be a major power. If you have to narrow the examination to focus on somethings and exclude others you are not dealing with a major power. Major powers are major players in military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural spheres (it is important to note that these are big spheres too, like global sized spheres). I have never heard anyone say that Brazil is anything other than a regional power. If you are interested in learning more about power in international relations here are some wikipedia entries that might be a good start: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_%28international_relatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_%28international_relations%29) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_power) Addendum: It seems that you are from Brazil. Please do not take this personally or interpret it as a dismissal of Brazil. ~~~ gtirloni Got it, and it makes perfect sense. Your initial comment was a bit too dry so I wanted to clarify. Thanks for those links, they look very interesting. Brazil aspires to be a world power but its execution is always sub par. I really like the quote that says "Brazil is the country of the future, and will always be". It is so true. We're certainly no military (our presence in Haiti is a joke) or economic power (our GDP is increasing mainly due to population size and small improvements in quality of life for really poor people, but industry productivity and innovation are, again, a joke and not taken seriously here). We like to think that in diplomatic issues Brazil has played some kind of middleman role but that's questionable (people won't give you status/credit just because.. and we don't even use the economic weight correctly, often trying to be the good guys) and in cultural sphere.. well, soccer and carnival are not something I'm proud of. Thanks again for your explanation, it's certainly spot on. ~~~ dfc The aspirational bit is spot on and the G4 membership is a great example of the bigger aspirations. When I said I had never heard Brazil mentioned as anything other than a regional power I kind of lied. I have frequently heard that Brazil aspires to be a major power. I am glad that you did not take any offense to my comments. I actually have always been interested in Brazil, the flag was probably one of the first countries' flags I could recognize as a child after US, Canada and USSR (at the time). My mother went to Brazil with American Foreign Service in the 60s. So ever since I was a little kid I remember getting a Christmas card from her host family and I have always wanted to take them up on the open offer to come visit. ------ madaxe_again This is realpolitik jazz-hands with football thrown in to make light of a topic of grave importance. Also, of course, any framework set up today to control data tomorrow will tomorrow be turned on its head and used as a legislative basis for expanded intrusive activities. ~~~ gtirloni The funny thing is that soccer is usually used here to distract people from the real issues (corruption, privacy, healthcare, public transportation, education, etc). I wonder if this "Vice-President of the European Commission" has any idea that her message will be read as "blah blah blah world cup blah blah go team! blah blah blah". I really hope Brazil loses this tournament, that the abuses in building the stadiums are scrutinized further and a lot of government officials and companies are punished for this ridiculous private event paid with people's tax money. Yes, I'm a dreamer. ------ throwaway6637 So... aside from the hot air, the only concrete thing I got from that press release was that the EU politicians are so pissed that the EU court struck down their draconian data retention laws that they're going to pass a new one that resolves the technicalities on which the old one was struck down. And apparently, this is somehow going to bring the EU to "a gold standard in privacy protection". What? ~~~ higherpurpose > the only concrete thing I got from that press release was that the EU > politicians are so pissed that the EU court struck down their draconian data > retention laws that they're going to pass a new one that resolves the > technicalities on which the old one was struck down. Where did you read that? Are you confusing the "data protection" with "data retention" terms? They sound similar but are opposite laws/movements. ~~~ throwaway6637 In the article. "These are safeguards that were missing in the EU's Data Retention Directive. As a result, the Directive has been invalidated by the Court of Justice of the EU, Europe's highest court. The court said: the violation of individuals' rights was of "vast scope and particular gravity". One thing is certain: it will be have to be revised, with greater protection included for individuals." So, we really need to protect privacy better, but we're still going to preemptively wiretap everyone in case some of them turn out to be criminals. ------ TazeTSchnitzel >On data privacy, like in football, we are playing in the same direction; to score a goal and win the Championship for a gold standard in privacy protection! A combined EU-Brazil team can be a winner. Did that sound any better in French or German?! ~~~ jusben1369 I read it in Spanish but got stuck at "Goooooooaaaaa ------ zimbatm Has anything been done to locate and disable existing tapping devices installed by the NSA ? What has been put in place to harden existing infrastructures from intrusion by rogue actors ? ------ garou Well... this really is something good. The 'Marco Civil' came in response to law projects ('AI-5-digital' or 'Lei Azeredo') that harm the privacy of Brazilian citizen. But there are negative features in 'Marco Civil' take too long to be fixed. This all because was approved with haste. ------ higherpurpose I wouldn't mind seeing stronger trade relationship between EU and Brazil/South America, too. Hopefully this is the beginning of a great relationship, both united against abuses of countries like US, Russia or China.

Ask HN: Do you journal for therapeutic purposes? - krrishd If so, how effective has it been for you?<p>What could be better? ====== CyberFonic Very effective ... about 6 weeks ago I started a "Bitch Files" notebook. I made myself the promise that when I was finished with it I would ceremonially burn it. It was great to dump all the disappointments, frustrations, fears into it. I wrote most mornings and nights. After about a month I ran out of negative stuff. Started writing positive, optimistic stuff. So I started a nice clean new journal for those. I still keep the BF notebook around, but I haven't had anything to add for a couple of weeks now. One day soon, I'll go ahead and burn it and set all that negativity free. I have tried writing on computer in the past. That works as well, but writing by hand seems to provide greater relief. Besides, I wouldn't exactly want to burn my computer. Doesn't matter if your handwriting is lousy. It's not like anybody is going to read it. But I do find it fun to flick through the pages and scribble over them. It is tactile and thus more engaging.

Apple Might Finally Solve Photo Storage Hell - CoolSuor http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/22/apple-might-finally-solve-photo-storage-hell/ ====== therobotking Hasn't Google+ done this for quite some time now? I think at 2048 x 2048 you can store unlimited photos. Odd that it wasn't one of the comparisons in the article anyway. ~~~ utunga Lots of people saying Google or Microsoft has 'done this'.. Well yes and no in my personal opinion. The devil is definitely in the details and if you are like me you find the existing services frustrating in their own way. (I'm none too optimistic about Apples solution either given I'm only partly 'iDevice' compatible). I don't want to _sync_ my collection (have a backup in the cloud) I want to have the actual backup elsewhere and keep only a small cache of photos locally. My laptop SSD and phone are filled up with photos. At the same time I want to be 100% confident that I have the photos somewhere, forever. Google+ has its own special madness of it seemingly choosing which of my photos it deems worthy and not actually just syncing _all_ of them.. only the ones it likes get 'highlighted' but even clicking into 'more' it seems (I swear I'm not crazy) it only actually syncs are subset of the rest. God knows why. Does not give me confidence in the solution. Also I want to merge the photostream from multiple photo devices according to time. And I do _not_ want to have to 'share' a post with an album on Google+ just to make some photos public. Grr. In short none of the existing solutions actually offers that kind of experience, though the thing outlined in the OP is pretty much what I want. ~~~ Oletros > Google+ has its own special madness of it seemingly choosing which of my > photos it deems worthy and not actually just syncing all of them.. only the > ones it likes get 'highlighted' but even clicking into 'more' it seems (I > swear I'm not crazy) it only actually syncs are subset of the rest. God > knows why. Does not give me confidence in the solution. I don't understand this, are you saying that not all the pictures are synced to the cloud or that you can't see all the pictures synced? ------ mullingitover What photo storage hell? flickr offers 1TB of online storage. Free. The only downside is they are limited to .jpg uploads, but I doubt Apple would do RAW anyway. Seriously, $50 a year for 200GB is pretty sad. Almost as sad as being restricted to 5GB of iCloud backup space no matter how many iDevices you buy. ~~~ toddynho Is there some place to get it cheaper? Just for rule of thumb checking AWS (with their new pricing) it would cost ~$72/year for the 200GB storage alone, without factoring in any cost for transferring data, requests, etc. I'm curious if there is a way to get storage cheaper than their existing $50 for 200GB/year. And yes, I know Flickr is free, but I mean from some place where the pricing isn't in exchange for some "to be determined later" monetization angle. ~~~ mullingitover Dreamhost offers unlimited storage, and if you buy two years up front it's $3.95 a month (I think this might be a promo, I'm paying closer to 9 a month but it's worth it). I've been with them for about ten years and they're swell. ------ Mandatum There is literally no inclination to how or what Apple have done to solve this problem. This is paid advertising. ------ Touche ... As long as you only use Apple products. ~~~ Spooky23 Not necessarily a problem. I was in a hotel recently that doesn't secure their network. Easily 80% of the devices in there were Apple devices. The next most common device was Samsung. ~~~ vayan Your hotel isn't the world. ~~~ Spooky23 Never said it was. But hotels are good snapshots of particular demographics whom the hotel chains target. The people spending $250/night at the particular urban center hotel made the choice that I observed on that one occasion. If that's a trend vs. a datapoint, it could be very meaningful for somebody trying to sell products. Personally, the next time I find myself in a cheap roadside place, I'm going to make a similar comparison. ------ innonate This latest round of updates for Apple certainly is interesting, but when's the last time they got photos right? For me it was the first iPhoto version, and since then every "exciting" development has been a bust. Main reason we're super positive at Picturelife. ------ kyriakos its amazing how techcrunch is still respected when they keep posting badly researched articles like this one. if its a paid article believe they should clearly state it. ------ cowbell It's techcrunch. They live in an Apple bubble.

How integrated circuits were made - suraj http://dangerousprototypes.com/2011/02/17/retro-integrated-circuit-video/ ====== iwwr The companies mentioned and their history since 1967: Fairchild is still operational after a series of mergers and spin-offs. Burroughs Corporation merged with Unisys in 1986. Stromberg-Carlson, at the time owned by General Dynamics, was sold in parts in the following years. H. H. Scott was eventually bought out by Emerson Electronics, but vintage, pre-IC Scott amplifiers are still popular with the audiophile crowd.

A curated list of Chaos Engineering resources - dastergon https://github.com/dastergon/awesome-chaos-engineering ====== matt4077 Never having heard off 'Chaos Engineering', this seems like a bad case of 'Cargo Cult Engineering'. That starts with the term 'chaos', which has a well-defined meaning in Chaos Theory, where it is quite obviously borrowed from: small changes in input lead to large changes in output. Neither distributed systems in general, and especially not the sort of system this engineering strives to build, fit that definition. In fact, they are the exact opposite: every part of a typical web stack is already build to mitigate changing demands such as traffic peaks or attacks. The mumbo jumbo around "defining a steady state" and "disproving the null hypothesis" seems like a veneer of sciency on a rather well-known concept: testing. A supreme court justice once said: "Good writing is a $10 thought in a 5 cent sentence". This is the opposite. ~~~ drdrey Have you tried to see how that's a useful practice or are you just angry at the name? It is indeed a form of testing, specifically failure/latency injection testing in production systems. It allows you to test hypotheses and fallback scenarios, for instance: you might think that a particular dependency (remote call) is optional and should not affect the availability of your service, running a chaos experiment lets you verify that. ~~~ matt4077 I'm mostly annoyed by the "Manifesto" for overselling a pedestrian idea with rather meaningless literary flourishes. ~~~ creep You can cull every method down to a "pedestrian" idea. We build simple solutions for seemingly complicated problems. I don't know anything about chaos engineering, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but from the little I've read it sounds like a set of tools that expand the fuzzing idea for security and reliability in computing systems. Fuzzing in this case would be the simplest form of testing, but the given list elucidates tools that target a desired outcome more directly, and give one more control over the target. I don't know why you are annoyed by this post.

Ask HN: Back end Engineers, where did you start? - cooldeep25 Based on the thread https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14677303<p>I wish to know how to start and develop Expertise as a Back End Engineer. ====== qubex I guess they begin at the bottom and work their way up, but towards the back end... that's a start anyway. /s

Debunking Trump's “secret server” - apress http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/11/debunking-trumps-secret-server.html#.WBie7-ErLyJ ====== hga And as usual, the ends justify the means: _Those researchers violated their principles The big story isn't the conspiracy theory about Trump, but that these malware researchers exploited their privileged access for some purpose other than malware research. Malware research consists of a lot of informal relationships. Researchers get DNS information from ISPs, from root servers, from services like Google's 8.8.8.8 public DNS. It's a huge privacy violation -- justified on the principle that it's for the general good. Sometimes the fact that DNS information is shared is explicit, like with Google's service. Sometimes people don't realize how their ISP shares information, or how many of the root DNS servers are monitored. People should be angrily calling their ISPs and ask them if they share DNS information with untrustworthy researchers. People should be angrily asking ICANN, which is no longer controlled by the US government (sic), whether it's their policy to share DNS lookup information with those who would attempt to change US elections._

Intra, Dead Simple DNS Over HTTPS on Unrooted Android - triodan https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.intra ====== triodan I found this app earlier today and it's been working pretty great. It appears to be developed by Google's Jigsaw[0] organization and is surprisingly unknown. Where I live quite a few sites are blocked by the government and while Drony[1] has been quite helpful it's incredibly outdated and, as per the latest update, become really ad-ridden. [0]: [https://jigsaw.google.com/](https://jigsaw.google.com/) [1]: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.sandroprox...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.sandroproxy.drony)

Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool? - type12 I&#x27;m working on a self-service product for SaaS that predicts which users will churn, are ready to buy or upgrade. This is something I desired to have at my previous company, and I just thought this would be the right time to build it.<p>You? ====== kwillets I've been looking at Apache Arrow ([https://arrow.apache.org/](https://arrow.apache.org/)) and trying to figure out how to integrate it into the browser. It's an in-memory data format, and the idea is to share the same data chunks amongst various clients, but shared memory in javascript got nuked by Spectre, unfortunately. I'd like for the same data to be accessible from, eg, multiple tabs or session-wide without copying, so it's like a shared cache that mmap's or shmat's its objects into each consumer on a read-only basis. If we get this to work we make data a lot easier to play with in the browser; the user can load the data once and then play with the presentation or slice and dice it in multiple ways without overhead. ------ decil Working on open source cache server [nuster]([https://github.com/jiangwenyuan/nuster](https://github.com/jiangwenyuan/nuster)), migrating to HAProxy v1.8 ------ NVRM Since many months, I am building back my very own base tools. Alternatives to: grep, cat, apt, tail, head, cut, awk, sed, inotify, macro recorder, gif recorder, etc... Yes, reinventing the wheel, my very own set of. It appear to be an incredibly good experience. Both of my tools performs over the originals, this wasn't my first goal! Using them in other projects is amazingly faster than i can imagine. Facing real cases, I modify them to perform better and better. I can't advise it much than anything else. This is exactly what an old mechanics do. His tools perfoms over anything you can gift him.. ;) ------ elliottinvent Thanks for the opportunity for some self promotion! I'm working on a new data serialisation language that focuses on character efficiency. It's around 30% more character efficient than JSON at a basic level but 60%+ more efficient for complex objects. Minimal Object Description Language [http://www.modl.uk](http://www.modl.uk) It's cool because MODL makes it possible to store objects in places that have extremely limited capacity like DNS TXT records, QR codes and RFC tags. ------ elderK I'm working on a bunch of lexer and parser related tools for personal use. The reason they're cool is that it automates a lot of the tedious, error-prone stuff that I've been doing by hand as I experiment with grammars and the like. Sure, there are a ton of tools out there to generate lexers and parse tables and such. But using them doesn't help me understand how they were built. And using them doesn't produce the same sense of accomplishment or, at least for me, /depth/ of understanding. I try to document the tools as best I can so that fellow students who are interested in such things can learn or make use of them. :) ------ atsushin I'm working on a piece to go into my portfolio. It's a guidebook for companies navigating crisis communication during and after security incidents occur, such as breaches. I'm only an undergrad so I don't have much experience, so a lot of it is compilation and synthesizing professional advice (properly attributed of course), but with my own recommendations and criticisms of specific cases. note: if anyone has particular advice to give me with this project, what you might want to see featured, i'm all ears. ------ ajeet_dhaliwal Tesults ([https://www.tesults.com](https://www.tesults.com)) - it’s cool because for teams of say 10 or more doing automated testing they can focus on writing tests and maintaining automation infrastructure and allow this to handle reporting. It also gets better and better every day. Just today, launched a feature where csv files attached as part of a test case (like for captured performace metrics data) are automatically visualised as scatter charts with x and y axis fields being selectable. ------ ojuara I'm working with my family managing our supermarket. It is not cool _at all_. I got a Bachelors degree in CS at UFPE. I have been studying for a while to get back to software developer career. ~~~ nicksalt You could so some pretty cool stuff. Have you been hyper optimizing it? Product shelve to sale ratios? 80/20 type optimizations on revenue by skus? Traffic flow maps? I'd love to hear some result or stories if you do end up doing some of this. ~~~ kaennar Doing some basic image processing and tracking customers flow through the store would be fascinating. You could categorize what people are shopping for, how long, and what buying one item tends to mean for the rest of their shopping cart. I'd read that paper! ~~~ ejanus Which paper ? ~~~ kaennar I was implying that it would make an interesting academic paper. ------ RikNieu I'm working on a brainstorming/idea generation site as a side-project. No idea if people would want this. Which lead me to down the path of wondering if there are any idea pitching sites. In the meanwhile, I just created a subreddit(/r/ideaspitch) which could serve that function for the time being, just so that I can relax and focus on my original idea again... So yes, brainstorming/idea generating tool. ------ SirLJ AI driven stock trading robots, it's cool, because you compete in the market with the smarts people on Earth every day and making good money in the process... ------ dronescanfly Electrical Vehicel Routing Highly theoretical stuff that let me transition well from university ~~~ ejanus Is it possible to allow me to be part of your adventure?

What do you think are the next startup trends for 2012? - augustin1989 I'm interested to get everyones input on whats big to come for 2012 or even for the future in terms of start ups. ====== kalerzee AI

Design Philosophies of Developer Tools - fogus http://stuartsierra.com/2011/08/30/design-philosophies-of-developer-tools ====== SwellJoe I feel like a lot of problems in software come from lack of understanding of things that were figured out by previous generations of developers. That's not to say there aren't improvements to be found in modern software projects; just that sometimes there's a lot of reinventing the wheel, badly, because folks don't understand the beautiful simplicity and power of the UNIX system. I suspect the fact that git exhibits a _deep_ comprehension of that history is one reason git pretty much took over the mindshare for DVCS in record time. Where it took years for Subversion to oust CVS, and numerous DVCS systems had been plodding along for years, git was the obvious leader seemingly overnight. So many projects have vastly over-engineered interfaces and component architecture and such, with a huge variety of interdependencies, often proudly, as though it is a benefit. ~~~ dasil003 The other thing about git, though, is that it's a manageable project. Linus thought through how he thinks source control should work, and then designed a robust and brilliant repository structure first, with the tools growing up around that solid conceptual base. Comparing that against the general madness of the Ruby ecosystem seems unfair. Why not compare the state of unix utilities as a whole, which also have their incompatibilities? Granted, Unix and POSIX in particular are far and away beyond the kind of standardization that exists in the Ruby world, and of course that leads to stable (yet powerful) interfaces that strongly benefit the ecosystem as a whole, but look at the time and resources it took to get to that point. Expecting that somehow the developers on a new programming language could wade through the lessons in Unix history and somehow spring forth a perfect Ruby dependency solution that was nothing but an improvement over the past is a bit unrealistic. ~~~ SwellJoe I wasn't really judging the Ruby ecosystem. I don't actually know enough about it to know, though our Ruby on Rails and RoR application installers in Virtualmin have been destroyed beyond repair on all but the very latest Linux distros, by the dependency chain and the very rapid change to new Ruby versions; mostly due to how crazy fast Ruby gems evolves and how eagerly it breaks backward compatibility. I was speaking more in general terms. Every major ecosystem I can think of, from languages like Ruby, Python, PHP, and Perl, to CMS like Joomla (which is horrific) and Drupal, to Linux desktops, spend a lot of time reinventing wheels, usually badly. ------ substack Reading the section on ruby reminds me of the things that I take for granted in node.js right now owing to the long history of package management and module systems that it builds upon. It's super nice having the dependencies specified by semvers in a package.json and installed locally in a project node_modules directory so that libraries can't step on each others toes. The "Don’t use Bundler version X with RVM version Y" can be specified directly in the package.json and concurrent versions of module dependencies even work without incident in the same project. ~~~ PLejeck NPM is by far the best package manager ever. We all owe Isaac so much booze for that. ------ drothlis The stability of most unix tools' interfaces is wonderful. With the rise of tools like bash-completion, even the output of a tool's '--help' option[1] or debug output[2] needs to be stable. [1] [http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=bash-completion/bash- com...](http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=bash-completion/bash- completion.git;a=blob;f=bash_completion;h=03d8942#l784) [2] <http://david.rothlis.net/tools/case_studies/#bash_completion> ------ PLejeck I would be curious to see an analysis of the Node Package Manager (npmjs.org) and the general Node package structure. NPM is basically encapsulated into one command (npm), and there are no ways for modules to modify the way Node itself works, without the permission of other modules, plus NPM automatically resolves dependencies and ensures that things Just Work. ------ andrewflnr I'm not clear on exactly what design philosophy the Ruby ecosystem is supposed to embody. I guess it's something to do with the way everything modifies and uses everything else, but it doesn't coalesce into a single idea in my mind. Maybe it's just a matter of my not having much experience with it. ~~~ PLejeck One word: "clusterfuck" ------ zachrose How does Rubygems modify the behavior of the Ruby interpreter? ~~~ substack Presumably by modifying `require_paths` and therefore changing how `require` behaves.

“Website Passwords Hacked” headlines can be less scary - privasectech https://privasectech.com/2013/11/website-passwords-hacked-headlines-can-less-scary/ ====== dxm The two most common methods, md5 and sha-1 are both susceptible to collisions, or birthday attacks. As of writing this, I would recommend using SHA-3-256 which has no known attacks. Don't do that. Hashing algorithms without salt and iteration counts is a bad idea. Thankfully, languages and frameworks are starting to take this responsibility away from the programmer (or at least they're making it easier) – consider using has_secure_password in Rails, password_hash in PHP 5.5, etc. Don't use standard hashing algorithms. ~~~ privasectech Thanks! I have updated the article to include a paragraph on salting. ------ mschuster91 You totally forget about hash salting - this way a hacker can't use rainbow tables or precomputed hashes for common passwords. ~~~ iLoch I've also seen a fair bit of misunderstanding about hashes - you do not want to apply a global salt to all your hashes. Salts should be generated on a per hash basis, and should be stored within the hash itself. Most hashing libraries will do this. It's usually much easier and safer to use a library than to roll your own. ~~~ mschuster91 Indeed, yes, and I do this for all my projects. But even a global salt is way better than no salt at all. That aside, doesn't Wordpress still use lots of global salts?!

Inside the Ambitious 'Sleeping Dogs' Sequel We'll Never Get to Play - eswat https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/inside-the-ambitious-sleeping-dogs-sequel-well-never-get-to-play ====== Neliquat Under rated my ass. That game, and its release were an unmitigated clusterfuck of epic proportions. Possibly less the original devs fault than the distribution, but lets not pretend the game was any good.

Ask HN: Weekend project got a lot of press, stupid not to put more work in? - atox I recently created a Facebook app that allows you to separate the comments from your family and friends. This was a typical sunday evening project for me and it is in a very rough form right now.<p>The app got immediately picked up by The Huffington Post, Yahoo and lots of other news sites.<p>Is it stupid that I don&#x27;t wan&#x27;t to allocate time (that I&#x27;m currently spending on my main project) for fine-tuning and marketing this, apparently very wanted, app?<p>List with articles about the app: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mindloop.be&#x2F;portfolio&#x2F;items&#x2F;facebook-familymatters-application&#x2F;<p>URL of the app: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.facebook.com&#x2F;familymattersprivacy&#x2F; ====== onion2k No, it's not stupid. Fame, popularity, money, building something that people want don't _have_ to be driving forces in your life, and if you want to do other things that's perfectly fine. Ultimately, you need to do the things that make you fulfilled. Only you know what that would be. Just don't be a dick about it if someone else builds it. You only own the execution, not the idea. Not suggesting that you would be, of course, but people have done in the past. ------ xauronx That seems like something that you could easily get someone else to finish as a portfolio project and split the profits(?) on. Hell, a few years ago I would have felt LUCKY if you asked me to help with it. It would seem silly to not pursue it a little further. ~~~ atox That's a great idea that I didn't think about. Thanks for your help. ------ Pr0ducer The answer depends on what your main project is. But getting free press from HuffPo, Yahoo, etc., is an opportunity few will ever have, so if the main project isn't something amazing or highly lucrative, I'd say it's time to pivot. ~~~ atox The main project doesn't have a finished MVP yet, so hard to tell if it'll be lucrative or not. It's a tool that helps affiliate marketeers better target their visitors, so I guess I'll have to start thinking about B2C vs B2B.

You're in a space of twisty little mazes, all alike - kamaal http://strangelyconsistent.org/blog/youre-in-a-space-of-twisty-little-mazes-all-alike ====== mrcactu5 this is known as a uniform spanning tree [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanning_tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanning_tree) these can be sampled using Wilson's algorithm for Loop-Erased Random Walks [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop- erased_random_walk#The_un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop- erased_random_walk#The_uniform_spanning_tree) Here is a nice visualization of Wilson's algorithm using d3.js by Michael Bostock (NY Times) [http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/11357811](http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/11357811) ~~~ 9ac345a5509a The number of such mazes is also on OEIS under A007341: [http://oeis.org/A007341](http://oeis.org/A007341) ------ jerf It seems like it would be way easier to think about it the opposite way... pick a space, start enumerating the possible connections it can have to its neighbors recursively, with a simple algorithm that won't pick already picked neighbors, and then read the bit string off the result. That's easily done by starting with all 1s, and then setting to 0 the bit corresponding to the choice you just made. Either direction is of course the same in theory, of course. More excitingly than that, you may be able to contribute to OEIS now, if you can work yourself out a few more terms: [https://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C1%2C28%2C12600&sort=&language=...](https://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C1%2C28%2C12600&sort=&language=english&go=Search) ------ jdjdps I like the epilogue. I too wish I could go back to my younger self and describe this understanding. I would try to explain to myself that each pattern can be seen as an object in and of itself. That an algorithm is a way to move between these objects in a specific way that marries with a particular human goal. I would try to explain that each step of an algorithmic process combined can be seen independently of time as a pattern in and of itself and as such is itself an object. A process is a noun, a thing just as much as a chair or a lightbulb. I would say that in order to find an algorithm to solve a goal, all one needs to do is imagine the shape formed by this goal and construct that shape from the shapes that are readily available to you. Be them finger movements on an abacus or bitwise operations in a computer memory. And then I would explain that the universe can be seen in this way. The entire thing as a single object out there in phase space. I would tell myself that I suspected that all possible shapes exist, that the shape of your life exists only as much as the shape of a thing that you imagine while dreaming. This was the understanding I have been searching for since my early teens. It is such a joy to have found it, I like to think my younger self would have cherished it as much. But I may have discarded them as the ramnlings of an old fool. ------ asdftemp [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchhoff%27s_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchhoff%27s_theorem) ? ~~~ kmill Implementation: [https://gist.github.com/kmill/f4f47913d036fce687bc](https://gist.github.com/kmill/f4f47913d036fce687bc) Though it counts reflections as distinct. ------ VieElm Now watch this question pop up on technical interviews everywhere for days because people read about it here. ~~~ drabiega That'd be great for those of us who read it and a going to interviews. ~~~ JoshTriplett Which is exactly what makes it a terrible interview question. ~~~ thaumasiotes [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=993](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=993) I don't see why that makes it a terrible interview question, though. Maybe you want to hire people who read about this kind of thing for fun. They may also have read about other things. Colleges pick their students based on basic vocabulary and 9th grade math questions. ~~~ joshuapants > Maybe you want to hire people who read about this kind of thing for fun. > They may also have read about other things. Maybe, though I'd be shocked if the typical hiring process were that nuanced. ~~~ thaumasiotes Effective practices can work even if you have no idea why you're doing it that way. In fact, I'd say that that state of affairs is more the norm than the exception. ------ comrh Interesting post, something people often ignore is talking about the failures that got them to the solution but this is usually the real interesting stuff! ------ nobrains The answer from the post: [http://strangelyconsistent.org/blog/images/all- the-4x4-mazes...](http://strangelyconsistent.org/blog/images/all- the-4x4-mazes.png)

AOC and Ted Cruz agree on bill banning Congressmen from becoming lobbyists‬ - doener https://www.newsweek.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-and-ted-cruz-agree-write-bill-banning-members-1440184 ====== Alex63 Wouldn't such a law (assuming it could pass in the first place) run afoul of the First Ammendment? Maybe you could ban payment for lobbying, but I would have thought that "lobbying" and "political advocacy" were essentially the same thing, and thus protected speech. I like Glenn Reynold's (Instapundit) idea: a high tax on any earnings from lobbying in the first X years after leaving government service. ~~~ snowwrestler > Maybe you could ban payment for lobbying, This is really what they mean. "Lobbying" as a term generally connotes getting paid to do it. When people do it for free, it's more frequently called activism or advocacy. I actually think a limit on pay might be better than an outright ban. Former members of Congress have skills, experience, and connections that could be beneficial for advancing a variety of social causes. It's the big payday, cashing-out part that stinks of corruption and undue influence. ------ dannykwells Not a point about the article, but I love how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come to be referred to primarily by her mono-acronym. Are there other individuals who have been primarily known by only their initials? (Excluding authors like J.K. Rowling, etc. where pen names are more common). ~~~ bwanab It used to be common to refer to politicians by their initials. JFK, LBJ, FDR for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt. It seemed to go out of style when we started knowing them by their diminutives. E.G. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton.

Stop shitting on Wall Street - bsiscovick http://bsiscovick.tumblr.com/post/849658406/stop-shitting-on-wall-street ====== T_S_ Wall Streeters are only human. If you want to fix Wall Street you have to design a _system_ that works better, taking human nature into account. One big difference between Wall Street and startups is the heavily regulated nature of the financial industry. The public already has the control, but our government doesn't use it effectively. I worked on Wall Street for many years before becoming an entrepreneur. My fingerprints were taken several times. No I wasn't being arrested, everybody's are taken--a holdover from the days of physical securities. I took 5 major exams over the years and many minor ones, in order to be permitted to do my job. Oh yes, the content of the exams had little to do the products I worked on, which were all invented only yesterday. Our company had offices set aside for regulators to use whenever they visited. The public never, ever heard or saw the results of those visits. Our P&L had internal and external auditors looking at it all the time. Only the internal guys were good, since it protected managers from rogue traders. Our capital was regulated, which capped our risk only in a very vague way. I could go on. What did all this regulation accomplish? Nothing in the end. Why? Regulation pits bureaucrats against highly paid professionals. Some bureaucrats are highly motivated and intelligent (I know, I used to work with a few of them when they worked on Wall Street). But their bench is not deep and the stars show up only when there are investigations to lead and headlines to grab. We need a _system_ that pits the smart against the smart every day. It starts with opening up bank operations to public scrutiny. The balance sheet you and I have is open to creditors to inspect. The reverse positions, held by banks, should be visible to the public. Only then will privately employed bank analysts have a prayer of calling bulls__t in a timely manner. If you think this is some kind of socialist plot, think again. Even Friedman and Hayek knew that markets can't clear without adequate information. Where do you think all this volatility is coming from? Will we get this kind of transparency from the new financial reform law? Afraid not. All we did was put the A-team of regulators in charge--but they will move on after a while. ~~~ jbooth We don't need a system that pits the smart against the smart, we need a system that pits the smart against nature. I'm sick of zero-sum competing to leech a bigger share of money out of the system rather than giving it to investors or investees. Smart people should be creating things. Discover/fund a new market and get rich? Great! First one to see a big trend and have the guts to bet against it, lining up market pricing? Good, I hope you get rich. But playing video games in order to nip the largest number of pennies off of actual investment is just a giant waste of time, talent and money. ~~~ T_S_ Ideally, the efficient allocation of capital _is_ the smart against nature. However the nature of the current system injects too much noise into the markets, since trades and positions are generally secret, except as occasionally viewed by regulators or post-mortem as in the Madoff case. ------ drunkpotato "Stop shitting on Wall Street" No. Wall Street has not been shat upon enough. Banking and finance have a proper place in a well-run market, and that place is much, much smaller than they currently are, with much less lobbying power. Until the financial sector is drastically reduced in size and power, we need to shit on them _much, much more_. ~~~ T_S_ I think vitriol plays into the hands of the industry. It appeals to anger, which will fade and is not focused. I think we should be analyzing _how_ to shrink the industry's size and influence, and design what should replace it. After all this site's readers are nothing if not problem solvers. ~~~ hga Well, the shrinking of the size of the financial sector is happening all on its own and I'm not sure we need to do anything to help that (and it's a fantastically dangerous and inherently politicized thing to do anyway, by definition "picking winners and losers"). What I'd prefer concentrating on is reducing firms that are "too big to fail" to "small enough to fail". Except that that wouldn't have prevented the 2008 financial crisis, it just would have changed its shape. People have this unfortunate pattern of group betting AKA manias that regularly produce financial bubbles and that's a system problem for which I don't see any solution. What have we learned since the Tulip Mania, the South Seas Bubble, etc. etc. etc. other than that we don't learn from history? As for shrinking their influence, how do you do it to the people who are handling your money? Buying your bonds (government (e.g. the Federal primary dealers) and corporate)? Etc. As for replacing it, with what? What type of institutions or economic system? ------ pxlpshr Okay. Meanwhile, 17 bailed-out banks overpaid executives with tax payer money. If my startup failed, man it sure would be nice to get a $MM exit. [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1287195...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128719536) Wall Street needs to return to partner-driven approach like law firms instead of taking risks with other people's money. ~~~ chasingsparks Subjectively, I think the executives are overpaid in general. However, bailed out bank executives are objectively overpaid for the reason you stated: you can't have capitalism without losses. In fact, I don't think they shouldn't have been bailed out at all. The banking system probably had to be rescued, but bailouts mangle capitalism. Banks that needed bailout should have been nationalized with the very explicit constraint that they be re-privatized after the storm had passed. (Note: I mostly just parroted Nassim Taleb's argument from two years ago.) ~~~ dasil003 _Did_ they have to be rescued? We already have FDIC to ensure the little guy doesn't lose his shirt. Sure, top financial experts claim that if some those big insolvent banks failed then the economy would die. Well, maybe or maybe not, but most of the top experts testifying to congress had an a tremendous conflict of interest with regard to their personal careers and holdings. We don't have any example of what would have happened... somehow I doubt people would just stop producing though. Also, even if we accept that a bailout was necessary, then the taxpayers should have owned those banks. The government should have seized them, purged the toxic assets, and then re-privatized when the books were clear. This is, as far as I know, the textbook way that the World Bank recommends bank insolvency be handled, recommended over and over again to third-world countries, but somehow never got seriously considered when it's big American banks. ~~~ hga Actually, plenty of them _didn't_ have to be rescued; note this from the report: " _Payments largely from firms that have reimbursed taxpayers: Eleven of the seventeen firms the Special Master has contacted regarding his proposal have fully reimbursed the taxpayers. Of the $1.7 billion in payments identified by the Special Master, more than 90% were made by firms that fully repaid, or were taken into consideration in the Special Master's determinations regarding "exceptional assistance recipients."_ " I don't know what the last of that means, but the rest suggests that most of these "overpaid executives" worked at firms that never needed a bailout, but were e.g. part of Paulson's "you are not exiting this room until you sign this agreement" 3rd World dictatorship riff, which was done so that the public at large wouldn't know which companies were actually in deep trouble (a strategy that was necessarily well publicized at the time). ~~~ sethg Yes, _in 2010_ , a lot of these companies have been able to pay back the government. But _in 2008_ the whole system of credit was seizing up because lenders and investors, not knowing when the next pile of shit would hit the fan, were panicking. We can’t send a time machine back to 2008 and announce, “we are from the future and we certify that you can lend to these guys at 5%”. ~~~ anamax > But in 2008 the whole system of credit was seizing up because lenders and > investors, not knowing when the next pile of shit would hit the fan, were > panicking. That's true, but it doesn't imply that Wells Fargo, to pick one example, needed a bailout in 2008. Note that much of the potential for panic came from a regulatory decision to exempt certain obligations from normal bankruptcy rules. That made an orderly shutdown of Lehmann impossible. ~~~ hga It's hard to imagine any "orderly shutdown" that would have resulted in their bonds being worth much, especially during the process (that's Leahman's commercial paper AKA ordinary borrowing, not anything exotic or toxic they were selling). The Reserve Primary Fund's inexplicable overexposure to Lehman bonds then caused them to "break the buck" which started the cascading failure of the world's financial system. ~~~ anamax Lehman's bonds went to 0 because all of its assets went out the door with its derivatives. If the derivatives had had the same status as other debts, including said bonds, those bonds would have been worth >0. ~~~ hga Are you really sure Lehman's bonds went to zero? _No_ one was willing to take a chance they'd be worth something when everything was sorted out? I doubt that and would like to see some evidence of it. The problem for the Reserve Primary Fund was that their value dropped precipitously; I suspect it wouldn't have mattered if they ended up at 0, 1, 5 or 10 cents on the dollar. As for the derivatives, when it came time to settle them, as widely predicted they mostly canceled out with only (from memory) 6 billion US$ changing hands. ~~~ anamax > Are you really sure Lehman's bonds went to zero? The official story is that market essentially froze, that no one would buy. I'd have bought everything I could get my hands on at fractions of a cent (and possibly more), but they didn't ask me. (After they let individuals back in, I thought that all of the bargains were gone, so I didn't go bottom fishing. Big mistake. The great deals were gone, but there were still some opportunities left even when I got around to looking.) The money that left with the derivatives may have kept the bonds at 70-80 cents. Unless Reserve Primary was 100% Lehman, that might have been enough. > As for the derivatives, when it came time to settle them, as widely > predicted they mostly canceled out with only (from memory) 6 billion US$ > changing hands. Yup, but no one knew that when the derivatives were being made whole while everyone else waited to see what was left. ------ arethuza I'm honestly amazed at how quickly everyone has stopped throwing sh_t at the various financial institutions that caused the chaos of the last couple of years. In the UK, where most public spending is being cut by 25% there are a _lot_ of unhappy people who blame this mostly on the £850B bank bailout (of course, it wasn't just the cost of the bailout, but it certainly didn't help). I think things could potentially get a lot uglier before they get better. ~~~ Jd Not "could potentially" but "will definitely." There is a one word description that suffices to describe the problem: corruption. ------ isleyaardvark The author tries to explain the benefits of Wall Street, but unfortunately the benefits he describes are individual in nature, "what did _I_ learn". It's all about the skills the author gained will working in that industry, but what good are those skills for? A critic of Wall Street might think that these skills are only "as value extractors rather than value creators". Edit: I'd rather see a more detailed explanation of how Wall Street creates value in a post defending them. ~~~ leelin I agree, the better title seems to be "Stop Shitting on Wall Street Employees". For the defense of Wall Street, a small start might be the capital marketplace argument: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=973663> ------ motters I'm not at all sympathetic to wall street. They relied on bad math and bogus assumptions, and ended up ruining a lot of people's lives in the most unprofessional manner imaginable, whilst absconding with a huge amount of tax payers money which future generations will be paying for. ------ ccamrobertson A number of comments have hinted at it, however, I think that the key issue with the article is that it does little to break down Wall St. as a _career_ as opposed to Wall St. as a mis-regulated _industry_. I would agree with Ben that many in the startup community focus far too much vitriol against the profession of a financier on the Street. There is significant value in facilitating financial allocation and increasing market efficiency. However, given the financial regulatory environment that has not allowed banks to fail, I think that it is legitimate to take issue with the fact that Wall St. as an industry is far too large and riddled with players that should have been washed out by both the S&L crisis as well as the most recent financial fracas. ------ MediaSquirrel I responded: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541442> Wall Street and Big Co. are the competition. We compete with them for talent and mindshare every day. And precisely because they are so appealing and have so much to offer, especially monetarily, we try to detract from their power and allure by spreading fear and talking shit. We try to make people afraid that joining Google or Goldman will lead to a forfeiture of their soul. Is it 100% rational or true? No, as he adroitly pointed out. But it is strategic and accretive to the startup ecosystem for us to talk such shit. It is marketing in its most pure and basic form. ------ ubernostrum Let's make a deal: I'll stop shitting on them when they stop shitting on me. ------ chasingsparks Thanks for writing this; it's been bothering me for sometime now. Commonly, the arguments are Wall Street "doesn't create value," "merely moves money from A to B," or "just exists to extract wealth." Wall Street produces pricing information. Wall Street produces this pricing information by moving money in markets from A to B, and extracting _some_ money as payment. All businesses exist to extract money from somewhere! Good pricing information is extremely valuable. Bad pricing information is devastating. We just had a crisis caused by bad pricing information that had multiple origins, including Wall Street. However, the majority of the information produced by Wall Street is still good. Wall Street gets the brunt of the animosity because Wall Streeters make a lot of money. Furthermore, there is a severe asymmetry between positive and negative perceptions. When markets are well-functioning, their success is easily obscured; When markets are poorly functioning, their failure is center- stage. Before someone accuses me of conflating Wall Street with markets in general, I would like to counter that Wall Streeters are the maintenance men of markets. Some of those out-sized returns on short-term trading operations help pay for the fundamental research that helps produce good pricing information. ~~~ dasil003 You're right that Wall Street serves a valuable function. The reason for all the animosity is because they did a _piss poor fucking job of it_ and then used their influence at the highest levels to convince the government that a bailout was necessary, enriching themselves instead of taking their lumps. In 1929 wall street men were jumping out windows. In 2008 they were jumping out planes with golden parachutes paid for by the taxpayers while vast swaths of America were losing their homes and jobs. Bottom line is, Wall Street fucked up and they should have taken their lumps for it. That doesn't mean everyone on Wall Street is to blame, but it means that generally yes, Wall Street does deserve our scorn (as well as congress). ~~~ hugh3 Wall Street has already taken their lumps. I'd like to see feel-good government policy take its lumps now. Specifically, the kind of policies that encouraged and/or forced banks to make loans to uncreditworthy individuals. Any time you hear a politician shitting on a bank, it's because they're trying to distract from the role the policies they advocated had in all this. ------ wheaties The funny thing is that there is a lot of innovation within large companies that will never see the light of day elsewhere. These inovations are viewed as a competitive advantage so will never emerge. Sometimes engineers have invented things within corporate confinement only to take those ideas and refine them within the freedom of a start-up. Then there are those who speak of things within companies like Google who swear what they have seen in open- software pale in comparison to what happens behind their closed doors. Speaking of Wall Street, people need to realize that there's just as much emphasis on learning, evolving, and discovering new science there as there is in many smaller companies. The problem domain is more geared towards the maths, data mining and currently low-latency systems. ------ hsmyers He is right--- bankers at the level he speaks of certainly don't deserve the crap handed out by the tech community. That said I'd still apply the 'Shakespeare' solution to the rest of the corporate pyramid just after handling the lawyers. ------ known Wall street adds value to Govt. Start up adds value to the society. ~~~ rmk Well said. Startups add value to society. But society quickly discards anything that is not of value. How come Wall Street still thrives? Surely there must be something that they offer? It's Government that doesn't add value. It failed miserably at its job of regulation (whatever was left after glass-steagall, that is), passed highly unpopular policies whose results have been questionable, and now passed another monstrosity that it hasn't even finished, but will leave it as an 'exercise for the readers'. I would say Wall Street is an ugly manifestation of the perverse incentives that Congress helped create. ------ marze Some say Wall St is a "Ponzi scheme". If that was accurate, certainly one could argue big changes are in order, but is it accurate? In a Ponzi scheme, you have an organization that takes peoples money, does some complicated things with it that are difficult to understand, pays internal people handsomely, pays back early "investors" handsomely, then suddenly collapses and all the investment the later investors thought they had is gone. This happened in 2007 before the governments of the world contributed in $3,000,000,000,000 keep the scheme going. The difference between the Wall St. Ponzi scheme and your average couple- million Ponzi scheme is three-fold: the organizers are still running it instead of being in prison, it is a million times bigger, and scheme insiders are running the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury. This is be made out to be a natural consequence of the complicated modern financial world, but was it unavoidable? The $3T bailout works out to about $10,000 for every person in the U.S. ~~~ thailandstartup Also the Fed can print money. Which is how the story inevitably ends. It seems to me that the problem is created by economists winging it. I'd rather see a financial system designed and run by engineers. ------ lsc eh, I think the real problem isn't wall street... the real problem is that we subsidize investing to sell over investing to hold through lower capital gains tax rates... If I sell my company, I pay less than half as much taxes than if I continue to hold the company and just pay out profits to myself. this encourages short-term thinking. If we still want to give preferential tax treatment to investing vs. working, you can do that without forcing people to sell by removing the double taxation on dividends... simply allow corporations to write off dividends as they would wages, and charge owners the existing capital gains taxes. this would allow owners to extract value at the lower capital gains rate. ------ dyc "I spent two years and a summer as a junior banker. I knew from the get-go that I never wanted to be a career Wall Streeter. I viewed my time in banking as a continuation of my education. And you know what, from that perspective it was incredible. The nearly undeniable reality is that the skills and knowledge acquired in banking are remarkably valuable and broadly applicable throughout ones career. Contrary to uninformed opinion, it is not all about spreadsheets and powerpoints - it’s about understanding flows of cash through companies, analyzing markets, thinking critically about strategy and competition, and importantly, identifying and valuing opportunities." This is so far from the truth. Most junior bankers come away learning little relevant or valuable towards actual business and the startup world. ~~~ leelin I can't speak for bankers, but I can confirm a similar situation from my hedge fund days. I interviewed lots of interns and junior full-time folks who worked in IT or infrastructure groups supporting trading desks. They all claimed it was a great experience learning how markets work, how their asset classes behaved, etc, and wanted to move to front-office. Sadly, the vast majority were completely clueless of how the asset class worked or even what instruments their code was pushing through databases, booking systems, and PNL calculators. Keep in mind I'm not faulting them for being ignorant of the actual trading strategy (which by design the front-office keeps a secret). Fresh college candidates fortunate enough to play around with an options- enabled eTrade account during undergrad have far more market knowledge and passion for finance than say, a 2nd year infrastructure or trading platform coder at a bulge-bracket bank. It stinks that the IT guys get pigeon-holed into the least glamorous part of finance, but after trying to keep an open mind for years, I can understand now why firms are so reluctant to let their back-office shift their way to front- office. For anyone trying to make the move, my advice is take the extra time to learn about the liquid you are plumbing through the system, get truly passionate about the underlying finance and math, and then change firms, because your current one likely won't let you make the leap. EDIT: Responding to comment below. Hard work and a high threshold for pain will get someone pretty far in finance, but I suspect not far enough if there is no underlying passion. Anyone who really wants big bucks and prestige must eventually earn the pilot seat, or at least be in the cockpit (as a co-pilot). Maybe the saddest part of finance is that far too many people want to be pilots and not enough are happy being flight attendants and mechanics. ~~~ Jd I'm not sure that "market knowledge and passion for finance than" translates into big bucks and prestige, which seems to be what most people going to Wall St. are seeking.

Pay with Loop: mobile payments for unmodified point-of-sale systems - neonkiwi http://www.kickstarter.com/projects//loop/pay-with-loop/ ====== neonkiwi Interesting take on mobile payments. There are a few questions that aren't answered on this project page though. 1\. Does a 'recorded' card count as a card-not-present sale? 2\. What about card skimming? I would think this sort of broadcast would be easier to pick up with a less-conspicuous skimmer device. Also, if this technique gains popularity we might see people using skimmed cards through this or similar hardware.

How to send a personal email - astrec http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/how-to-send-a-p.html ====== alex_c I'm trying to figure out who the target audience is for this blog post. I get the feeling it's "people who email Seth Godin"... ~~~ jonknee Like almost all of his other posts, this is directed towards marketers. ------ ynd No smugness intended. This just has to be mentionned: My Seth Godin decline letter. Thoughts?, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=398293> ~~~ dpifke Funny, that's exactly the article I was thinking about as I read this. The impersonal auto-response link above pretty badly contradicts the advice given here. I wonder if Seth Godin wrote the current post as "lessons learned" or just didn't feel like following his own best practices. (Physician, heal thyself.) ------ daveyjohnson Did Seth just realize he wasn't the only one receiving all those personal emails directly from Barack Obama? ------ noahlt Not necessarily on topic, but: when sending personal emails (not even business-personal emails, but actual personal emails between friends&family) do you include a salutation? ~~~ kirubakaran Dear Noah, No. Thanks, Kirubakaran. PS: Hope you had a merry Christmas or a happy New Year or both. If not, hang in there buddy! ------ diN0bot > "5. Don't send HTML or pictures. Personal email doesn't, why are you?" uh. shouldn't you just do what you normally do? just like the "keep your salutation normal and un-merged" rules? i personally prefer text only emails, though attachments are fine. i appreciate a client that permits me to "click on" htp://... to automatically see the page rather than copy paste (pine, gmail). when i set up meetings with people i've never met in person before i often include a picture of myself. i sprinkle that same picture around the internet. maybe interacting with strangers isn't personal, but then the whole point of the picture is to make things more open, friendly and personable. ------ rokhayakebe Both business and personal emails are read by people, not machines, so write in the same style. Just keep LOL & C U L8r 4 SMS. ------ arnorhs i don't agree with him

Show HN: Real-time Reddit tracking and brand management - TheMask01 http://www.trackreddit.com/dashboard.php ====== vosper I like the idea of a brand management app for Reddit, but when I visit this link I simply have no idea what I'm looking at. Edit: The site logo doesn't take me to the home page (which it should) but having found that it's now more clear what this does. ~~~ overload119 I agree - I use Reddit and I was still confused for a little while. I ended up finding another site [0] that did a similar thing and they explained it well. "monitor all new comments, submission titles and self-texts posted to reddit for a word or phrase." [0] - [http://metareddit.com/monitor](http://metareddit.com/monitor) ~~~ splintercell I will warn you, Metareddit keeps loosing your tracking, unless you come back to it every now and then. Its absolutely terrible feature they have. ~~~ 2ndgreen same actually happens with this TrackReddit Whenever I get back I keep having to re-create the tracking for some reason ------ amarcus I really like it but, I would recommend you change your domain. Firstly, you are opening yourself up to trademark suite by using reddit in your domain name. Even if that isn't an issue, it also forces you to only work with reddit. Down the track, you might decide to make this turn-key and start integrating with twitter, instagram etc... but, your domain name will halt you there. ------ siralonso I like the concept a lot - I was on a thread about the Lyft perks of reddit gold, and a Lyft rep was doing an awesome job of answering questions, joking around, and customer support. I think if companies really understand the (unique) dynamics of reddit, it can be one of the most powerful (and human) places to connect with people. Some feedback - I almost didn't put in the work to parse your page. Visually, it's probably not the first thing you want to hit your users with. I would take people to a landing page where you can clearly explain what it is you do, with the ability to click through to this page and see a demo. Also, I wasn't able to add a tracking keyword as a demo user. That's important. ------ ProAm I wonder how they are getting around the Reddit API limit of 1 call every 2 seconds. I guess if they pull enough data back each 2 seconds they might be able to parse all of it...? ~~~ pipeep The API calls return lists of results, which tend to be long enough that it's trivial to read in all new comment and post data from Reddit. I think the maximum limit on the list size is 100 items, so that's up to 3000 comments/minute, which exceeds Reddit's actual post rate. ------ twodayslate Love it and was looking for something like this. Wish there was a cheaper plan though (more keywords, without the SMS etc). I'd require an email as users can easily make multiple accounts and never pay. This is a free service on metareddit[1] as well for one-keyword [1] [http://metareddit.com/monitor](http://metareddit.com/monitor) ------ adventured I really like what I've seen of the product so far. One suggestion: the home page is a bit violent (for lack of a better word), the way the content swings into place very non-subtly. I would dump all of that effect, it doesn't appear to actually serve any purpose - other than to be flashy - and makes it much harder to just read about TrackReddit. ------ papa_bear Pretty cool, just signed up. Like everyone else said, I'd probably change the link to direct to your normal landing page. Also, the animations are pretty jarring on the landing page, especially if I try to jump to a section before I've been there. This is one of those times that I think just removing all the animations would be a big help. ------ highace Great, but what happens if Reddit changes their API or SLA, or just plain shuts you out? Business = poof. ~~~ andreasklinger Isn't this true for pretty much any media analytics tool? ------ harryf Interesting but "Tracker must be at least 5 characters long" is a bit of a problem. How to track something like "Yo" for the Yo App or "Gaza" for the current unrest there? ------ fogleman No clue what I'm looking at. ios, appletv, ipod? ------ rats Tried to search for the mentions of "Coub", it tells me that search term should be at least 5 characters. Oh dear.

Ask HN: Why is there so little programming related content on HN? - MichaelMoser123 Is the profession getting stale or boring? ====== lucideer As someone who browses here most days, it seems packed full of programming related content. Perhaps this is a matter of perspective dependent on your individual programming background? Quick straw poll as of right now: 4 of the top 5 on the front page are programming related (the 5th is an Ars article about Donkey Kong). Out of the entire front page 30, there's: \- 13 programming related, \- 5 about the use of software, \- 1 about an arcade game (also software, I guess) \- 2 about Google/Facebook as companies, \- 2 about physics, \- 1 about office space/working environments, \- 1 about stock options (an unusually low number for a YC news site), \- 1 about sewerage, \- 3 about the history of spoken language, \- and then this post. ~~~ vog Small nitpick: I'd relate "about office space/working environments," also to programming, because this is an important aspect of professional software development. ~~~ skrebbel Yeah, and Trump's immigration policies impact the mood and even composition of your team, so that's also programming related. ------ blt IMO, there was big churn 1990-2015 in people's attitudes about the right way to develop software. This manifested in lots of discussion about languages, platforms, program architectures, hardware, etc. Since I started reading HN around 2010, I perceive that interest in these topics has decreased. There has been convergence/compromise: some static typing probably good, favor pure functions, C pointers too risky, pay attention to object layout in memory, comfort with phone apps, etc. I think we are entering a new era when people are going to focus more on advanced applications of technology. Using technology to communicate and store/retrieve data is no longer novel. IMO, HN still has a lot of content from the previous era that feels boring. It's programming content, but not cutting edge. Edit: not saying there is nothing interesting left to do in systems fields, but the next challenges will be things like formal verification, making massively parallel stuff easy, distributed systems as language primitives, etc. Edit2: HN also has lots of good content in the latter category, just wish it were a larger percentage of the mix :) ~~~ lukasLansky From my point of view, we are still firmly in the "software crisis" era. We can build software with limited functionality in a reasonable time, but we are not able to grow it without hitting various kinds of complexity ceilings fairly quickly. Plenty of today's software development is just a succession of painful choices on what to leave behind in just another rewrite. Formal verification is a way to go, but given how people struggle with application of the most elementary usages of types, I am not optimistic. ~~~ solatic Formal verification and other protections resulting from strong static typing are less popular probably because of their delayed gratification effects - they're seen as unnecessarily constricting in small projects and their benefits are only seen as projects are grown and maintained over long periods of time, so it's difficult to justify their use early in the project when the decision is initially made. I think that it's easier to justify rigor in traditional engineering projects (i.e. civil engineering) where project delivery dates are necessarily far off in the future - if you need to delay gratification anyway then you might as well adopt a more rigorous process. But in software engineering, where you can start delivering almost immediately, it's more difficult to get project owners and managers to see the value of rigor, especially if the project isn't yet known to have a long lifetime. ------ michaelt HN suffers the same problems that almost all voting-to-rank-submissions based social media websites suffer. Namely, because each user gets one vote, having 100 users want to give your post 1 point is more valuable than having 10 users want to give your post 10 points. As long as you've got enough technical depth that people will give you 1 point, it's appealing to a broad audience, not catering better to a core audience, that will get you to the front page. Hence, there's no room on the HN front page for an article that turns a 9/10 Whatever user into a 10/10 Whatever user - only for articles turning a non- user into a 2/10 user, with little to interest a 9/10 user. ~~~ chx Very often this is true for books as well. There is way more market for a book which starts you on an application or language. But if you are very deeply into a topic, getting to the next level won't be a book. It'll be blog posts, Stackoverflow, blood, sweat and tears. I haven't bought a book since the 3rd ed of Chris Date: SQL and Relational Theory (but that's a very useful book!). ~~~ walterbell Do conference presentations/papers help people who are deeply into a topic? F2F with mentors? Would you pay for expert/advanced content development, e.g. crowdfund in your niche? Alternately, would you contribute expert-level content to a crowdfunded book? ~~~ chx I would absolutely pay, through the nose, for a good treatise on more advanced SQL techniques like (recursive) CTEs. And also, I would contribute in depth Drupal topics, I already wrote two chapters of Bookzilla (aka. The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7) and also wrote countless articles in the nineties, I've been a columnist later an editor of the biggest computer monthly in Hungary. ------ onion2k _Why is there so little programming related content on HN?_ Most programming articles and blog posts have _extremely_ limited appeal. They generally need to be on a platform you use, with a language you know, and about an algorithm or tool you might find useful. Things that get up voted on HN also need to be new(ish) and broadly appealing to a group of people who are also interested in startups. ~~~ bonesss Further exacerbating that effect: for any particular silo or specific language any one programmer deals with there is already one or more dedicated language specific news hubs. Those articles aren't just competing for attention here in a broader sense, HN is also competing for that kind of attention against core community sites. ------ eesmith The submission guidelines recommend "Anything that good hackers would find interesting." That's more than just programming and programming-related topics. Has that really changed on HN? What was it like 5 or 10 years ago? Without that information, it's hard to tell if there is even a signal from which to draw an inference. ~~~ jpindar [http://www.waybackhn.com/?date=2007-02-19](http://www.waybackhn.com/?date=2007-02-19) ~~~ eesmith Next would be to gather statistics. Here's one statistics. Fully 10 of the first 20 links have succumbed to linkrot. ~~~ mar77i A random fact, yet one that I still find really sad. It's far too easy to believe that "research in history" would be so much easier in the internet age. ------ factsaresacred It's there, lots of it: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=programming&sort=byDate&prefix...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=programming&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) Seeing nothing but posts like 'Ten functional programming secrets' and 'Why this framework is the new React' would become boring fast (although these submissions are cyclical). It's called Hacker _News_ so what typically graces the front-page of this website is new content on topics that intersect with programming/technology. And I love it for that. ------ Jedi72 I completely agree, I got downvoted to hell in another thread for implying this but I think its true - HN has grown/jumped ths shark, it used to be startups people and devs and the content reflected it, now HN audience seems to be anyone in a slightly technical role or industry. There was a sweet spot for a while where we had a lot of stimulatingand diverse comversation about good topics but now I find too much noise in the feed. If Im right (the HN admins will know by checking the user counts), maybe HN should split up unto subboards, have dedicated web dev or ML sections etc. ~~~ krapp Complaints about HN's quality declining are practically as old as the site itself[0, 1], as is the mistaken belief that HN is _intended_ to be exclusively about programming and technical content (leading to the mistaken conclusion that the presence of non-technical content is a sign of HN "turning into Reddit", which is common enough that there used to be an explicit rule about it[2].) If you want to see better content, post better content, or put more effort into the quality of your comments. [0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5781854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5781854) [1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198041) [2][https://hn.algolia.com/?query=HN](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=HN) turning into reddit ~~~ psyc HN had a major Eternal September crisis in 2011, which was widely acknowledged by many users, and Paul Graham himself. It got to the point where he experimented with the gamification aspects of the site in a token attempt to slow the decline. Naturally, at the time, many folks also made comments similar to yours. That was 7 years ago. The good ol' HN is never coming back, at least not here, but that's no justification for denying it ever existed. ------ akerro What do you mean no programming? Almost everything here is about programming [https://i.imgur.com/8MqGba5.png](https://i.imgur.com/8MqGba5.png) ~~~ mosselman "Almost everything here" would be 9/21? ~~~ Brakenshire It's 11/21. ~~~ yesenadam I found it..interesting that this very story isn't tagged as being about programming in the pic. (disclosure: _Gödel, Escher, Bach_ was the first book I really loved.) ------ Piskvorrr More like "software is eating the world" \- everything seems to be SW-related, drowning out content that's directly relevant to programming. OTOH, I've read many programming articles linked from HN in the past few days alone, so from my POV, there's only more other content, not less programming content. ~~~ MichaelMoser123 would there be a way to filter out this content? I know HN doesn't want to be as fragment as reddit, but I guess many of us don't have the time to sift through huge piles of submissions each day. ~~~ Piskvorrr [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hn%20filter&sort=byPopularity&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hn%20filter&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) ------ ux4 I think this becomes true when any programming website becomes popular. Just look at reddit. Highly technical programming articles can be hard to digest and don't appeal to a wide audience so they get less upvotes, especially if it's about a specialized language. If you really wanted to read those articles, you could still find them in abundance on other programming/hacking/specialized forums. ~~~ cbHXBY1D There was a noticeable drop in quality on HN after we started allowing political content. I think it's brought in a new crowd of HN users. I remember how in 2006 to 2010 Reddit changed from a place mostly frequented by programmers to a place filled with memes, trolling, and politics. Edit: I generally hate the "the past was better" type of attitudes but I think in the case of HN and Reddit one just needs to look at the quality of 6 years ago to today. ------ enkiv2 Most of the content on HN appears to be about business, rather than about programming itself, or focuses on lucrative but technically-uninteresting corners of programming (like web design). This business focus makes sense, since HN is run by a VC firm and a lot of non-technical users who would like to run tech companies hang out here. There's a related category: technically-uninteresting posts about technically- uninteresting projects that are essentially advertising for some small business. This is probably, again, related to HN being run by a VC firm. (For context: I browse HN daily, but I never use the front page -- the values of the average HN user are far away from mine, so sorting by newest produces more interesting content. If you find the HN frontpage devoid of posts about programming, try sorting by newness rather than popularity, since technically- interesting stuff gets fewer upvotes here than wide-audience stuff about cryptocurrency or large corporations.) ------ rando444 I think you've somehow misunderstood the purpose of this website. The guidelines here describe desired content as: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Aside from the fact that most of the content here is programming related, if it's not enough for you, your best course of action is to seek out actual programming forums. ------ vemv Define 'boring'. Boring for me would be an homogeneous stream of code babble, possibly in mainstream languages that barely interest me. Also worth noting that languages/ecosystems grow kind of slowly, HN couldn't be possibly entirely filled every day with quality programming content. ------ pjc50 The act of programming itself is surprisingly hard to talk about in a way that isn't boring. There are some people that livestream it and I find this incomprehensible. Programming _languages_ are tremendously specific, have their own communities, and move slowly. ~~~ ehnto In the same way that architecture is more fun to talk about than bricklaying I imagine. One is open ended big picture stuff with interesting no real right answer, the other is the finer points of a specific implementation which depends on context. Actual programming shop talk I normally reserve for work because it's going to be different for everyone and I want to think about fun stuff when I am not coding. It could still be about coding or what we can achieve with software, but the nitty gritty details of coding is just too context specific for general chatter and really works best between people working on similar projects. ------ maaaats Could some of the perception be because of time of day when reading HN? I feel there is some different content when I'm awake (EU), compared to next morning when US has been awake and voted on stuff. ------ montrose Hackers aren't only interested in programming. ------ emmelaich Perhaps you're referring to programming in the small. In which case reddit or a number of other websites would be more appropriate. ------ kamaal Programming really is simulating the world, through code. If you don't understand the world well enough you can't be a good programmer. Which is why programming is largely meta-math. This also happens to make programmers some of the most awesome people. You have to use various mental models to view the world in a way that help you simulate it. So we have to talk and discuss about everything here. ------ AndrewDucker Looking at the top ten just now, five of them are programming-related. (The others are social networking, UI, computer games, physics, and the London fatberg) Of the next ten, another five are also programming-related. (The others are either business-related, about automation, or this post.) So it looks rather like 50% of HN is programming-related. (From a tiny sample- size, admittedly.) ------ avip It's easier to "engage" with non-prog stuff when you're sitting 9h/d coding. Balance and diversity. ------ DrRobinson Not really what you're asking but I like lobste.rs for more tech-focus and less politics/startup/other related content. Posts are also tagged so it's easier to find something interesting. ~~~ harel Never heard of lobsters before. Thanks. I'm in the IRC channel hunting for an invite :) ------ badrabbit Interesting,I have been asking myself something completely opposite to your question. Why is there so little of security news on HN. I mean,I have nothing against using the word "hacker" to mean "someone who finds new and creative programming/CS solutions". But I find the obvious meaning of "someone who works for or against computer security" hard to avoid. There is so much security news going around daily that I have to personally keep up with. I see little to none of that content on HN. But I do quite often find useful programming and crypto articles,questions and discussions on here. ------ baq might be that the average hacker simply isn't interesting only in programming. ------ ajr0 check 'show' tab for programming content ------ womitt If you are looking for more hardcore programming stuff take a look at lobste.rs ~~~ dualogy I read it a fair bit. Can you or anyone here invite me there? Been here for 10 years, largely reading/talking dev topics for the most part, but just never known anyone personally with an account there to get me in there. Thx =) ~~~ kawera Done. Check your email. ~~~ brogrammer2019 Oooooooo! If you have a spare invite can you please send one to web@petercv.com ? :) ------ marvel_boy Are you joking? ------ WillReplyfFood The profession was always stale and boring once you become aware of the meta cycles and boom-busts of concepts and buzzwords. Real new concepts are rare under the sun by now. New Problems, are usually old problems rediscovered by new Programmers.

Death match EBS versus SSD price, performance, and QoS - morganpyne http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2011/02/21/death-match-ebs-versus-ssd-price-performance-and-qos/ ====== spudlyo One thing I got from this article is that I really have to try Baron's diskstats tool. I wonder if his customer was using the cluster 4x instance, as it has a 10 gigabit network adapter.

Soon Google May Free You from Having to Think at All - smacktoward https://hmmdaily.com/2019/04/02/soon-google-may-free-you-from-having-to-think-at-all/ ====== netsharc I want to write a short story (I know, I know, I'll get to it... someday!) that begins with the protagonist saying "OK Google, get me a girlfriend" and follows as Google's suggestions "prods" him to go to bars and events where he ends up meeting a girl, etc, etc. Like this ad [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU) but with the people not realizing that Google's suggestions lead them to their life situation. When I'm at a client's site we to go to an Italian restaurant across the street regularly. My Google Maps started suggesting other Italian places "because you like Italian.". ~~~ derekp7 This sounds a lot like a Black Mirror episode, except in that episode the characters were actually simulated AIs I believe. ------ jeromebaek Cool gag. Predictably, the links are nonsensical. It further shows how no one algorithm will outpace all algorithms, i.e. no one thought to rule all thoughts. ~~~ Zarath So the point is that if you take stuff out of context, Google search won't be able to properly understand the nonexistent context? ~~~ jdsully The solution is rather obvious, we should just ban sarcasm. ------ olivermarks 'The Machine Stops' by E. M. Forster [https://youtu.be/aNRXeourusk](https://youtu.be/aNRXeourusk) ------ devoply The article amounts to little more than subversion in normal speech under surveillance, it's not as if Google can't read and make at least some limited sense of most of things you do or say during your interactions with it. You can point gaping holes in that behavior but the fact is that Google has you by the balls in terms of the data it's collecting on you and as time passes it will get better at making sense of lots of it, even if you can subvert it easily enough. Maybe it's hinting that going forward the cognoscenti should exercise this sort of subversive speech to confuse the AI. Machines thinking for humans was one of the hypotheses in Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus, he calls it dataism. To me it seems to be a recipe for how can corporations can wrestle control of thinking from human beings to render them into mere drones. This seems to be on the agenda of the Silicon Valley elites as they have seemingly adopted him as their pet historian/philosopher. May you live in interesting times. I have been thinking about this and it seems that it could work but I don't see how it could work considering that there is always a conflict of interest between what corporations want and what an individual or a business wants. So in a world where you have agents that belong to you and are required by law as through fiduciary duty to follow your interests it's possible for such agents to exist. But it will never work if Google or Facebook owns these agents or the data on which the agents make their decisions without transparency. Also see Autofac episode of Electric Dreams on Amazon Prime Video: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902176/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902176/) ~~~ andrekandre > This seems to be on the agenda of the Silicon Valley elites as they have > seemingly adopted him as their pet historian/philosopher. May you live in > interesting times. not sure it’s explicitly an “agenda”, but does seem like a likely outcome if current trends continue i suppose... as an aside, the whole “think for you” is quite different than the “original” ideal of what got the whole thing started, that is: the augmentation of human intellect [1], not the replacement of... [1] [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html) ------ OrgNet Soon, you won't even have to push the "I'm feeling lucky" button, they will just show you whatever they want (a bit like TV).

Ask HN: does your company respect your holy days/Sabbaths/anything similar? - cesarbs Just wondering what the industry is like in this regard. I don't work from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday (the Judeo-Christian Sabbath) and my company has no problem with that. Does anyone here have a similar experience? Anyone has ever had trouble with this? ====== hazov Some years ago I used to be a intern at the bank I work now, back them I was part of the frumkeit (I was a practicing Orthodox Jew) I got no problem not going work on on a Yom Tov (specific days within holidays in Judaism), I also left early on Fridays.

Evernote: The slow death of a unicorn - bootload http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-is-in-deep-trouble-2015-10 ====== bootload _" Despite reaching 150 million registered users this year, Evernote has been slow to develop the revenue side of its business and is grappling with departures and cost-cutting, according to interviews that Business Insider conducted with more than a half dozen current and former employees of the company."_ How did that happen? _" But another former employee notes that the seemingly scattershot approach was not as random as it appeared. “Everything was done with intent,”"_ The layoffs and appearance of releasing lots of products could also be explained by an upcoming IPO. VCs want the founders to diversify from a one shot pony and get lots of different revenue streams. I've seen this happen before. Doesn't mean Evernote is a failure, won't IPO and succeed. Does hint at bad business decisions being made in converting users from free to money paying.

Firefox Beta 15 supports the new Opus audio format - cheeaun https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/07/firefox-beta-15-supports-the-new-opus-audio-format/ ====== est This is really exciting technology. From <http://www.opus-codec.org/> > Opus codec is designed by the IETF Codec Working Group and incorporates > technology from Skype's SILK codec and Xiph.Org's CELT codec. ------ mtgx This sounds like it would be a great match for VP8 in WebM, by replacing Vorbis.

Now Open: AWS Region in Tokyo - jeffbarr http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/03/now-open-aws-region-in-tokyo.html ====== cperciva I've released a FreeBSD 8.2 AMI in the new region now. Maybe next time Amazon launches a new region they'll give me advance access so I can have FreeBSD AMI(s) available without any delay. ------ veidr My girlfriend came in a couple hours ago, and shook me awake as I tried to hit the snooze button again. "Hey," she said. "I think you'll want to look at the interweb tubes before work today." "I already know about the stupid naziPad 2," I groaned. "Why would I need cameras on something I only use in the bathroom?" "AWS Tokyo is live," she said, whereupon I pretty much vaulted over her as I leapt out of bed and turned on my phone and saw the announcement in my inbox. This is really big news for us here. Even though the costs are indeed the highest of any AWS region, that was to be expected--physical data center costs here are the highest I have ever heard of, too. We've so far been able to play around with APAC/Singapore, and see what might one day be possible, but the latency and variabilty of the international link were too much for the 'real' stuff. Can't wait to start hooking this up today. P.S. I for one am very happy with the pricing. It seems to be just as good a deal, relative to running your own infrastructure, as AWS is in other regions. ------ Smrchy This is great news indeed. Can anyone from Amazon say something about plans and/or an ETA for a South American region for all those people in Brazil, Argentina, Chile etc.? ~~~ jeffbarr I can't say anything other than that we listen to our customers and that we study usage patterns to drive decisions of this type. Feel free to PM or email me if you have any special needs. ------ ericb Anyone know a shortcut to get Amazon to respond an instance limit increase? We were assigned a "sales guy" but he has gone awol, and his voice mailbox is full. Filling out the form on their website does nothing. We have been trying for weeks. ~~~ ericb Well, commenting on the blog post got me a quick response from the moderator and a promise to forward it over, so that's something. ~~~ jeffbarr That was me! ~~~ ericb Thank-you again. Gotta love Hacker News--never know who you'll find on here! ------ prakash Here's a comparison of various EC2 regions & other providers in the US: [http://cedexis.com/data/charts.html?country=223&provider...](http://cedexis.com/data/charts.html?country=223&providerType=1&chartType=all) ------ listic I wonder if Japanese developers are happy with the prices. Looks like they are the highest of all regions so far. (I'm interested in Spot Instances specifically) ~~~ AdamGibbins Tokyo is a very overcrowded place, I suspect data center costs are high due to this. ~~~ delackner Hrm. They specifically declined to state the exact location of the data center. Amazon's Tokyo _physical products_ warehouse is way out in the middle of nowhere (near/in Funabashi) so assuming they built their own data center, real estate alone may not be the source of the cost delta. It could just be that they priced themselves to compete reasonably with their local "alternatives" (despite the apples/oranges quality of any such comparison).

Little electric car is the coolest thing at the NY Auto Show - Ultramanoid https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/04/this-little-electric-car-is-the-coolest-thing-at-the-ny-auto-show/ ====== externalreality Why was the 1996 EV-1 not given all this attention. It was basically shut down setting back EVs 30 years.

Singularity movie is in production, co-director is Raymond Kurzweil - bemmu http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049412/ ====== clavalle I wish this pseudo-technical, new-age, flim-flam of an idea would die already. Seriously, does anyone with a real technical background that is not directly making money off of seminars, books and articles selling this believe this stuff? ~~~ JeremyChase No doubt. It isn't the first singularity movie anyway; Terminator, Matrix, Eagle Eye, A Space Odyssey.. ~~~ zephjc I wouldn't call those singularity movies. Maybe movies with transhuman/posthuman themes, but the singularity implies things about the rate of technological progress - certainly there wasn't much rapid progress in Terminator after the machines nuked the earth (except, maybe, in the production of new terminator robots, but even that wasn't fast, really). ~~~ electromagnetic Eagle Eye was a singularity movie in potential, but in essence it was no different than _War Games_ in that it was about a rampant AI with no progression beyond. I, Robot had a far greater display of the advance of technology than virtually any Sci-Fi movie (except maybe the bicentennial man) and only displayed ~3 generations of robots (the replaced, the being replaced and the new) but is in no sense a singularity movie. I doubt we'll ever see a movie truly depict the singularity in any way other than a glimpse and will be akin to virtually any sci-fi movie in any setting. We might get there with a great TV series, but that's doubtful. IMO a singularity TV series would have to take the story progression of _Taken_ in the generation skipping, but instead of giant leaps, it would be a leap of decades, years and then months as technology advances up to the '2030' mark. For movies we'll be stuck with a BS intro that pails in comparison to the introduction of each Fallout game but will inevitably be describing similar events. ------ simon_ Isn't a lot of the singularity idea based on flawed math? I always hear about and see graphs of exponential curves about to "go vertical", but... exponential curves definitely don't do that. You can zoom in on any point of e^x and it will look like it's about to have a singularity... In more general terms... if ~technology has been getting better with some short doubling time for hundreds of years... why is it that the NEXT doubling is supposed to be the really significant one? ~~~ rms The last doubling was really significant. You know, instant free communication to humans anywhere on the world as well as instant access to the sum total of human knowledge. ~~~ simon_ Right, and the next doubling will be even better (twice as good!). But the sense that we're right on the threshold of the infinite future has probably been around at least since industrialization. For example, that bit about instant access to people and knowledge was probably said about the telegraph too. ~~~ rms Sure, I agree. My only point is that people seem to underestimate the regular, non-singularity exponential doubling. Already some aspects of science and civilization have become more far-fetched than the sci-fi of 50 years ago. Like <http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/mf_optigenetics/> ------ tfh I've read charles stross's accelrando yesterday. One of the best books about singularity. It's also free (Creative Commons License). Probably the best free ebook I've ever read. ~~~ heed Sort of related: this is one of the best short stories (actually it's a play) I've read on a singularity-esque vision of the future. <http://www.fullmoon.nu/Resurrection/PrimarySpecies.html> ~~~ Micand On a similar, somewhat-related tangent: The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect is a fantastic novella depicting rapid change caused by a technological singularity. <http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/> ------ martythemaniak Reading The Singularity kinda reminded of a Neal Stephenson novel. You start off with well-grounded reality, you progress smoothly, then you finish and you wonder...wait, wtf just happened? How did I get to this wacky place? I mean, we'll all me omniscient, immortal demi-gods in 39 years? Really? ~~~ tfh May be "humanity becoming immortal demi-gods" is like "having flying cars everywhere". It's always 39 in the future. [http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/song-chart- memes...](http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/song-chart-memes-the- future.jpg?w=506&h=442) ------ iterationx In the movie, an AI hires Tony Robbins to help her become more human. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Robbins> Emotional machines plot? ugh. ------ zephjc Eh, I don't know about this. It sounds like it has a plot and conflict, but will it be good storytelling? However, it's kind of cool to see so many big AI-community/singularitarian names in the cast credits! ------ geuis I did some work earlier this year making some machinima video in Second Life for this movie. From what I've seen so far, it's just a documentary-style movie. ------ drhowarddrfine Any movie that has co-directors means it's going to be bad. Particularly when one of them is not in the film business at all. Yes, I'm aware of the films made by "brothers" but those are exceptions to the rule.

All the Adventures - kelvintran https://bluerenga.wordpress.com/all-the-adventures/ ====== steaminghacker a bit of a challenge to play them all.

Ask HN: Should I move to San Francisco if I'm working on a Travel Startup? - keeptrying Hey guys,<p>I am working on a travel startup and I was wondering if San Francisco would be a better place to start such a thing and maybe find a co-founder.<p>What do you think? ====== keeptrying Better than new York where I currently reside? Sorry about that ... Been super busy. ------ drallison Better than where? As stated, your question makes little sense.

Rapper Divine Drops A Music Video Tribute To New Friend Ben Horowitz - danielbru http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/rapper-divine-on-his-music-video-tribute-to-new-friend-ben/ ====== davidgerard Oh dear, namespace clashes. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd2Gzkkwe9Q&feature=kp](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd2Gzkkwe9Q&feature=kp) ~~~ thomasfromcdnjs baha, I fell for the same thing ------ JoshIndig This is hype lol

The Mate Selection Trapdoor - jseliger http://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/the-mate-selection-trapdoor ====== bambax Great article. This part is esp. insightful IMHO > _When the chuck evolved, it was lucky enough to exploit a hidden preference, > but we now see it was not uniquely attractive. Many different kinds of > sounds might have worked just as well; the luck of the chuck was being > first._ Many secondary sexual attributes that we consider to be a major marker of a species likely evolved by accident. Females of a species may be attracted to something out of the ordinary (feathers on the head, an oddly shaped fin, etc.), and the first extraordinary trait wins. Also, accidents happen. Male Australian beetles find empty beer bottles incredibly attractive. Or they used to, until the shape of the bottle was changed to alleviate the problem. Cf. [https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/06/19/193493225/t...](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/06/19/193493225/the- love-that-dared-not-speak-its-name-of-a-beetle-for-a-beer-bottle) ------ stevebmark has anything good ever been published on nautilus? do they just game HN to make it to the front page repeatedly? ------ sandinmytea Looking forward to no more. ~~~ sandinmytea As in, the cessation of all consciousness. This topic moreso than any other! Can't wait for the end of this senseless and horrid concern. ~~~ sexyfart You okay? ------ Simon_says > It seems downright silly and certainly maladaptive for an animal to have sex > with a plant. You'd expect that, wouldn't you, but recent events say otherwise. ~~~ rectangletangle _Since female bees are hard to come by, then it is better for the male bee to be too eager to mate, and sometimes mate with flowers, rather than too discriminating, and sometimes pass up real female bees_ I guess they favor recall, over precision. ~~~ oh_sigh Isn't this just 'sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive'? ~~~ rectangletangle That's probably the ultimate cause of the behavior. However, most insects are heavily r selected (low parental investment, lots of offspring). So the cost of eggs/parental investment relative to sperm isn't nearly as polarized as in a K selected species, e.g., humans, whales, elephants. Though it would seem even with a slight difference in the metabolic cost of eggs vs sperm, and eons of time, the bee's "search algorithm" would be optimized/directionally selected toward favoring recall. A similar dynamic also works behind Gause's law, where two competing species can't sustain a constant population while occupying the same ecological niche, over a multi- generational timescale.

Long-Term Consequences of Spectre and Its Mitigations - sankha93 http://robert.ocallahan.org/2018/01/long-term-consequences-of-spectre-and.html ====== mwcampbell > I think it would be a grave mistake to simply give up on mixing code with > different trust labels in the same address space. Apart from having to > redesign lot of software, that would set a hard lower bound on the cost of > transitioning between trust zones. It would be much better if hardware > mitigations can be designed to be usable within a single address space. I wonder what software redesigns he has in mind. As far as I can tell, best practices are already trending toward only one trust zone per address space. Some might argue that that's the whole point of multiple address spaces. I suspect that Spectre will accelerate this trend. I do know how difficult this kind of change can be. The example I have in mind started before Spectre, and is unique to one platform. On Windows, developers of third-party screen readers for the blind are going through a painful transition where they can no longer inject code into application processes in order to make numerous accessibility API calls with low overhead. This change particularly impacts the way screen readers have been making web pages accessible since 1999. For the curious, here's a blog post on this subject: [https://www.marcozehe.de/2017/09/29/rethinking-web- accessibi...](https://www.marcozehe.de/2017/09/29/rethinking-web- accessibility-on-windows/) ~~~ candiodari According to a blind friend of mine, the web, despite the constant touting of it as being great for accessibility, has been a total disaster for accessibility. As you point out, windows applications have much better accessibility (and Microsoft still cares) than most webpages. ~~~ nils-m-holm I have slightly impaired vision, so I need a 30pt font to be able to read comfortably, and the web is already a disaster in terms of accessibility. There are lots of sites that I cannot use, because of overlapping content, unreadable text, hidden buttons, etc. ~~~ Fnoord Does Firefox "Reader View" feature help you in any kind of way? Or is it that reading isn't the issue, but browsing around is? ~~~ nils-m-holm Reader view often excludes figures that are important for understanding a text, so this unfortunately is not an option for me. I have set my font size to 32pt and do not allow web sites to use smaller fonts or typefaces other than my preferred one. Also, I have set text color to green on black, which is easiest to read for me. You would not believe how many web sites do change background color, but do not set text color, leaving me with bright-green on white text. :/ Then, a large font causes components to overlap, rendering text and buttons inaccessible. Disabling style sheets does not always help, either (and turns every modern web site into a complete mess). Semantic web? LOL. Javascript, as others mentioned, is a huge problem, because it somehow seems to be able to bypass my font and color settings. I have it turned off all the time now and just do not visit sites that require it. Well, more time for more interesting things! A silver lining in every cloud! :) ------ andreiw One thing curiously missing from this article is ARM’s laudable in-depth analysis - [https://developer.arm.com/support/security- update](https://developer.arm.com/support/security-update), and their efforts ([https://developer.arm.com/support/security- update/compiler-s...](https://developer.arm.com/support/security- update/compiler-support-for-mitigations)) to bring in architecture-neutral compiler intrinsics to address variant 1. ~~~ roca Perhaps I probably should have mentioned that, but I think the array index masking approaches are going to prevail. ~~~ andreiw That’s assuming the only thing you want to prevent is speculative bounds overrun. Even with masking, you can still leak the secret in the array from the path not taken? Do you see evidence of gcc or clang gravitating to the MS approach? In many ways, spectre is one more kind of attack on code that doesn’t properly separate validating untrusted input from acting on that input, except unlike overruns and TOCTOU races, this is microarchitectural. ------ Animats The article is by someone with no involvement in the CPU business. We need to hear from CPU architects and manufacturers. This is a fundamental CPU design defect and needs to be fixed in silicon. ~~~ fyi1183 I'm not a CPU architect, and I'd agree with you that Spectre variant 2 should be fixed by CPU designs, simply because software is helpless against it. Luckily, fixing it shouldn't be too expensive, it just requires tagging the BTB with the trust zone. But Spectre variant 1 is really a consequence of the CPU working correctly. For a large number of branches, perhaps most, we _want_ loads to proceed during speculative execution. This is because the code accesess the same or closely related data on both sides of the branch, so priming the caches during speculation is very valuable even when the branch is mispredicted. I remember reading a study of different binary search implementations which is probably the clearest example of this: when the data is laid out in a heap layout (with child nodes next to each other in an array) the branchy variant of the code performs better than the branchless variant due to this cache priming effect. What CPU designers could and should probably help with is providing instructions to cheaply mark the (comparatively few!) cases where this speculative execution behaviour leaks secret information. ~~~ cesarb > What CPU designers could and should probably help with is providing > instructions to cheaply mark the (comparatively few!) cases where this > speculative execution behaviour leaks secret information. How can we, as software developers, find these cases in our multi-megabyte code bases, and how can we be sure we haven't missed any? ~~~ fyi1183 You could ask the same question about any class of security bug, so unsurprisingly I'd answer more or less in the same way. For example, if you're paranoid, make your compiler be conservative, in the same way that you might address buffer overflows by using a language/compiler that inserts bounds checks everywhere. If you're less paranoid and/or more worried about performance, invest in static analysis tools or languages with augmented type systems. After all, you only have to worry about Spectre variant 1 when handling attacker-controlled data. Tracking type info like this is already done by existing static analysis tools. Finally, if you're not handling attacker-controlled data at all - which is the case for a lot of performance-sensitive code - you really don't want to (and don't have to) do anything about Spectre variant 1. By the way, this is really the big difference between the two Spectre variants, and why it's a shame that they fall under the same name. Variant 2 affects _all_ code with indirect jumps/calls, even code that doesn't ever touch attacker-controlled data. That's a _huge_ difference between the variants. Anyway, the bottom line is that you shouldn't punish the performance of all code over a class of security bugs that a lot of code isn't affected by. Buffer overflows haven't stopped us and shouldn't stop us from writing performance sensitive but security uncritical code in unsafe languages either. ~~~ Animats _You could ask the same question about any class of security bug, so unsurprisingly I 'd answer more or less in the same way._ No. the problem here is that the code isn't wrong. The CPU is wrong. Whether or not the CPU will leak data depends on the make and model of CPU. Most MIPS CPUs and many ARM CPUs don't have this problem. Some AMD x86-type CPUs may not. It has to be fixed on the CPU side. This could introduce Intel to a world auto manufacturers know well - recalls. Intel has been there before, with the floating point bug. ~~~ fyi1183 You don't actually have an argument though. Why is the CPU wrong? Because you say so? And btw, you're wrong about this not affecting ARM or AMD. It affects everyone with speculative execution (we're only talking about Spectre variant 1 here - if you're confused about that, please go back to my first comment in this thread). Look: When other side channel leaks were found, e.g. people recovering RSA or AES keys from plain cache timing without speculative execution, maybe there were people similarly arguing that it's the CPU's fault. They lost that fight, too. Today, the uncontested consensus is that cache timing leaks are the code's fault, for good reason. Because what are you going to do, stop building caches? Obviously not, they exist for very good reasons. The same is true for speculative execution. What do you expect CPU people to do? Rip that out entirely? Be real. (Please, seriously think about that: what is it that you actually want CPU people to do? Don't just handwave!) This kind of discussion is why Linus Torvalds regularly flames security people. ------ phkahler >> browsers are trying to keep the problem manageable by making it difficult for JS to extract information from the timing channel (by limiting timer resolution and disabling features like SharedArrayBuffer that can be used to implement high-resolution timers), but this unfortunately limits the power of Web applications compared to native applications. I don't see a problem with that. "Web applications" are inherently untrusted code. If it were not for untrusted code these attacks would not be an issue, so it doesn't seem unfair for a mitigation to negatively affect them. ~~~ tomp I consider any computer platform that cannot run an "untrusted" application in a manner that doesn't endanger its user (within certain limits - e.g. it's practically impossible to limit what _kind_ of internet traffic the application can do, or what kind of scams it can make the user click through), a failed computer platform. In particular, browsers could always run JS in a separate process that's appropriately virtualized (i.e. has limited access to host information and resources). ~~~ taeric This leaves a big hole. Many malicious packages will solicit trust from the user. That is, we seem to be plagued by misplaced trust moreso than untrusted applications. The analogy to civil engineering is we trust building makers. Few of us enter buildings we don't trust to stay up around us. ------ moyix It's interesting to pair this with Adrian Sampson's (an academic who works on hardware architecture) thoughts, particularly his musings about other vectors: > The second thing is that it’s not just about speculation. We now live in a > world with side channels in microarchitectures that leave no real trace in > the machine’s architectural state. There is already work on leaks through > prefetching, where someone learns about your activity by observing how it > affected a reverse-engineered prefetcher. You can imagine similar attacks on > TLB state, store buffer coalescing, coherence protocols, or even replacement > policies. Suddenly, the SMT side channel doesn’t look so bad. [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~asampson/blog/spectacular.html](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~asampson/blog/spectacular.html) ------ mehrdadn Could someone please explain to me why there is so much focus on Spectre vulnerabilities in Javascript and not really any on HTML/CSS, when it seems that a server could also be able to cause the client to perform speculative execution via pure HTML? Or is it not possible for some reason? The focus on Javascript as though it's somehow special is rather baffling to me, making me wonder whether I'm really understanding the fundamental issues. (?) ~~~ Sir_Substance >The focus on Javascript as though it's somehow special is rather baffling to me One of the most common ways major ad networks get compromised to the extent that they serve malware to hundreds of thousands of web users (this happens at least once a year) is that they hotlink to JS libraries, that hotlink to JS libraries, that hotlink to _more_ JS libraries. If you use a script blocker, it's not that uncommon to see that once you get down far enough, scripts are being loaded from bare IP addresses rather than domain names. Every now and again, someone compromises one of these deep- nested hotlinked JS files and maliciously modifies the javascript, and random sites all over the web dutifully serve the malware. It's not that I don't trust the first-party website owners, more like I don't trust their friends friends friend. ~~~ dhimes This is so annoyingly true. So when you start to allows scripts because you need the website to work, you reload and then see a bunch of new scripts were loaded that you didn't see before. It's a total shitshow. EDIT: I would love a list of minimum required scripts for certain sites. It's painful to fight through what I need- and I really resent it when I am a PAYING FUCKING CUSTOMER. ------ faragon In my opinion, the worst long-term consequence will be that even having newer CPUs with the issues fixed in hardware, we'll have a performance impact because of code compiled to work with both old and new CPUs. Just like the case of having a new CPU with fancy features unused because of code compiled to be backwards compatible. ~~~ josefx Intels C compiler could generate code that detects CPU features at runtime years ago, I think the current GCC can do the same. Binaries only have to become a bit more bloated to store both versions of the compiled code. ~~~ faragon Runtime checks cost CPU cycles as well. ~~~ em3rgent0rdr The runtime check only needs to be done one during program execution. ~~~ faragon So you mean having two executables in one? A la Apple "fat executables"? ~~~ jabl No, it's on a per-function basis. On program startup it does the necessary checks (CPUID etc.) and sets up the function pointers appropriately (see the IFUNC mechanism in the linker). See e.g. [https://lwn.net/Articles/691932/](https://lwn.net/Articles/691932/) ~~~ faragon That's OK for code e.g. you know it could benefit from SIMD usage. However you can not tag every function of user code for safe/unsafe mode. Also, optimizations would increase the mess (inlining, unrolling, etc.). Generated code would be a "Frankenstein". ------ brndnmtthws I doubt Intel will be lowering their prices, or refunding anyone a portion of the price of their previously purchased CPUs, that's for sure. Look what happened after the VW diesel scandal ('dieselgate'): VW had to pay for repairs, and pay buyers (my friend bought one of the cars and got about $6k IIRC). Some people even went to jail. Intel (or any other CPU maker) will probably not suffer similar fates. This situation is a bit different, because they may not have known about the problem. Still, everyone who bought a CPU is going to get a 10-30% performance haircut because they made a mistake. And Intel isn't going to have to pay for it. ~~~ acranox Volkswagen deliberately engineered their cars to falsify government emission tests. What intel did was negligent. Volkswagen was malicious. These are very different. I don’t see them in remotely the same boat. ~~~ AnimalMuppet "Negligent" is even too strong. Per dictionary.com, the legal definition of negligence is "the failure to exercise that degree of care that, in the circumstances, the law requires for the protection of other persons or those interests of other persons that may be injuriously affected by the want of such care. " What Intel did was not recognize that a specific attack possibility existed. Nobody else recognized it either, for a decade. That's not negligence. That's failure to be omniscient. ------ leoc Obligatory: [https://millcomputing.com/topic/meltdown-and- spectre/](https://millcomputing.com/topic/meltdown-and-spectre/) ------ fulafel Does anyone know how things are going in GPU land? Don't they support concurrent separate protection domains these days too? ~~~ deepnotderp No OoO speculation though.

The Silent Power of the NSA (1983) - shalmanese http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/27/magazine/the-silent-power-of-the-nsa.html?pagewanted=all ====== stevewillows The last paragraph tells the tale of why this article has emerged again. "No laws define the limits of the N.S.A.'s power. No Congressional committee subjects the agency's budget to a systematic, informed and skeptical review. With unknown billions of Federal dollars, the agency purchases the most sophisticated communications and computer equipment in the world. But truly to comprehend the growing reach of this formidable organization, it is necessary to recall once again how the computers that power the N.S.A. are also gradually changing lives of Americans - the way they bank, obtain benefits from the Government and communicate with family and friends. Every day, in almost every area of culture and commerce, systems and procedures are being adopted by private companies and organizations as well as by the nation's security leaders that make it easier for the N.S.A. to dominate American society should it ever decide such action is necessary."

Ask HN: What accomplishment are you most proud of? - empressplay This could be developing a piece of software, creating a website or webapp, writing a book, founding a company, obtaining a credential, or whatever else you&#x27;re most proud of.<p>Tell us about it! Inquiring minds want to know... =) ====== steven2012 My parents came from a third world country extremely poor. They struggled to ensure that my siblings and I received a good education along with good values. My own family is now in the top 1% of earners in the US, so our family tree went from poor to well-off in one generation. When my parents come to visit us, I know how proud they are and I'm proud that I didn't squander the opportunity that they worked so hard to give us. I'm not sure what my kids will do but I intend to instill the same values of education, working harder than anyone else, and having good values into them. ~~~ nicksellen Congratulations for your hard work and achievements :) I presume you know other people with your background that haven't managed to achieve this, do you have any insight into what the differences are? Innate abilities? specific values? good luck? - I can imagine the general differences, but the specifics are really interesting to me. ~~~ steven2012 Emphasis on education, but a lot of very hard work. Intelligence will get you some of the way, but hard work is everything. ------ attheodo I managed to tell my dad how good of a father he was to me and how much I appreciated everything he gave me and taught me... one day before he passed away. An honest deposit like this isn't as easy as it sounds. ~~~ daw___ I'm really happy you did. I hadn't had this chance with mine, suddenly died from a stroke on his way to work. I really, really hope that he had the time, in that very fraction of a second, to realize how great he was. And speaking of "things you're proud of", I really wish time stopped for one more fraction of a second that day to give him the chance to look back and feel proud of what he did, one last time. ------ SuperPaintMan I dropped out of this scene after burying myself in technology/networks/programming for over 10 years. I didn't realize it, but my one-pointedness on programming harmed almost every other aspect of my life. Sure I could tell you how to do amazing things with a computer, but could I successfully get your number? Not a chance in hell. Instead I picked up a paintbrush, got a night job at a hotel and now I oil paint for 5-6 hours out of my day. I'm exercising, talking to friends, being social. And just like my terrible paintings, my other skills are improving. I did have a close second though, a little project called Samsara that brought zero-click downloading to iTunes. Once set up, getting new music is as easy as plugging in your iDevice. It is written in Go, binds Last.FM, TPB and Transmission together and runs a daemon. The gist of the program is that it grabs your recommended music, scrapes TPB for it, Downloads it, Shovels it into your iTunes library, and auto-syncs it with your devices over wifi. It's been running for the past few months with no errors, and my music is fresh. Even has an option to constrain the downloads to releases in the past two years. InstaHipster. I never got around to packaging it up as it was the last real project I was working on. Just trying to find drive to work on it was a pain. If anyone wants the code, send an email to zeropointer@icloud.com , If someone wants to take the project off my hands and polish it up properly and release it. It's all yours. ~~~ brador You could link that to shazam somehow to get some real magic. Imagine, you hear a song, tap a button, it records, recognizes, finds, downloads and files it away into a new music playlist ready for listening at your leisure. ------ lambdaelite My Ph.D. dissertation. Although the sheepskin, title, and bound book are neat, the real prize is the dissertation. After years of struggling with the unknown, I teased out from nature a small secret that no one else in the world knew. Telling that story through the dissertation (and defending it!) was a life-changing experience. ------ nir Getting my first start up job. I couldn't afford to stay in college. Had zero professional experience in anything related to software. Bought an HTML book and got a photocopy of a JavaScript one, created a demo site on a floppy disk (1998) and showed it at my job interview. Was hired for the lowest rung position, worked my up to Web team lead. I will always be grateful for my boss for taking a chance on me, which is why all the bullshit, risk-averse "hiring process" discussions always get to me. I try to give people the same break I got, and it's surprising how often it works. ~~~ leesalminen I had a similar experience in 2009. I'll never forget that one guy who took a chance on me. ------ daeken Overall: Getting out of my hometown. Almost everyone is born there, lives there, and dies there. I wanted to get out from an early age, and I managed to do it at 17, after dropping out of school to take a job. Personal: Managing to keep my bipolar in check (more or less) and be happy. I have a girlfriend who means the world to me; few things can match up to that. Career: Discovering and disclosing the Onity hotel lock vulnerability. The remediation of that bug may have legitimately saved lives; it's certainly saved property. ~~~ tuna-piano Honest question. I just read a bit about the Onity lock vulnerability, and it states that the hack was released to the public before Onity had a chance to fix it. If true, wouldn't that put people and property at risk? ~~~ daeken Yes, it did put people and property at risk -- and also forced their hand. It cost them an enormous amount of money to fix the bug, and if I had not gone public with it and put substantial pressure on them, it's very likely that we would be in a courtroom right now, as they attempt to keep it secret. The bug existed for nearly 20 years, affecting over 4 million hotel rooms. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they knew about this vulnerability at least 10 years prior to my disclosure, having seen proof of that (in the form of a diagnostics device for dumping the memory of the locks, produced by TESA, the precursor to Onity). I've never seen proof that it was known before then, but given the nature of the bug, I'd be amazed if this wasn't known when the protocol was designed. In short, this was the only way that I knew to guarantee that people would be made aware of this bug. Three years later, I couldn't be more confident that I made the right decision. ------ visakanv Most proud of? I think the fact that I'm married to a person who loves me and is happy to be with me. Accomplishments I've enjoyed on hindsight– getting my band on a pretty established local stage, doing standup comedy and getting a great response, giving a lecture to a group of University students about ecommerce marketing (I've never been to University myself, so that felt awesome), having blogposts I've written get to the frontpage of HN and widely shared on Medium, etc. But mostly– earning the respect of people I respect. It's an ongoing process, of course, but probably the most fulfilling. ------ jbrooksuk This is tough for me. Career wise, I'm currently working on Cachet ([https://cachethq.io](https://cachethq.io)) and am blown away by being able to provide software that thousands of people actively use. Although it may seem silly, I stopped a small, young lad from being picked on by some bigger lads. They were hitting him and calling him names. It hit home because I remember being in the exact same situation and nobody helped me. I got out of my car, told them to leave him alone and took him home in the car, which I didn't think anything of until afterwards. ------ bane Leaving a negative, zero-opportunity home environment with about $200 in my pocket and putting myself and my wife through college, university and grad school while working full-time in career progressing employment that's gotten me involved in deeply impactful work. After years of skirting close to poverty and receiving no help from either of our families, and coming out more educated and wealthy than anybody in my family history, through nothing but determination, hard work and a few sprinkles of luck. I now own a great home, in a fantastic neighborhood, am _almost_ debt free (house and all). But being able to also enjoy life at the same time, to follow some of my passions, travel, enjoy food and art and wine. I've now found myself in a position where I've done the career, and I'm backing off a bit to relax, learn and enjoy pure simple work for a change. The life I live in now has exceeded any possible life I ever expected to live as a child. I'm incredibly proud of it. ------ walshemj Well back a few years ago I got 1500 people a better pension. In terms of my day job IT Fixing a 2 mill shortfall for BT and Finding a bug that was costing total jobs 1/2 a mill a week. ------ ChuckMcM I am most proud of my kids. They will be positively impacting the world's issues long after my passing. And as a result of being a parent I've come to appreciate that creating a good practice for solving a problem is much more durable than solving the problem, because problems are never "solved" they mutate like viruses and re-appear in a slightly different form which is resistant to the previous solution. ------ lisper I got over my fear of talking to homeless people by making a movie about them: [http://graceofgodmovie.com/](http://graceofgodmovie.com/) ~~~ hugocaracoll Great work! You should add some sort of social sharing widget. ~~~ lisper Thanks! Yes, I should do that :-) ------ phil3k I am proud of being married to my better half. Over the course of the last 2 years I learned that no job, money or any other success in career can make you happier than the person you love. ------ qw3rtman I'm a 15-year-old who wrote a fairly successful (800+ stars on GitHub!) wrapper for Git. ~~~ ParadoxOryx That's fantastic! ------ nish1500 I was working as an accounting intern, making $80 a month in a third-world country. I taught myself how to code, dropped out of college, and make a good 6-figure living. Before the age of 22, I earned my freedom, and discovered what I truly love in life. ------ andersthue That I after (too) many years of trying a lot of different theories, finally found a way to manage my employees without me having to sleep poorly and be unhappy. I have told several others about the way I run my business now and everyone reponded very positive (7 companies are running using the method) so of course I am turning it into a business at www.timeblock.com ~~~ jtfairbank Looks really interesting on the surface, but there are few actual details. Guess I have to wait for the mailing list content. A note: your email address signup form doesn't appear with AdBlock on. I had to open an incognito tab to sign up. ([http://timeblock.com/sign- up/](http://timeblock.com/sign-up/)) Finally, I'm digging the innovation coming out of the Nordic countries. Had the pleasure of studying abroad in Sweden last year and took quite a few trips to Copenhagen. ~~~ andersthue Thanks, I hope it will continue to be interesting when you dig deaper, let me know if you want to know more. It is strange about the adblock! If you are ever in Copenhagen, ping me and I'll offer you a cup of coffee! ------ cclements I've been fortunate enough to enjoy success in the tech field, but by far the accomplishment that I'm most proud of is that I was able to bring friends with me. This isn't something that I ever would have envisioned starting out that I would be this proud of. I grew up in a very small town in the US with not a lot of opportunity and lucked into getting hired by an information security firm in a bigger city back when many companies had never heard of firewalls. I had close tech savvy friends from back home that were struggling and was able to convince my employer to hire them. Since then, they've become very successful in their own right. Yes, they are very smart and have worked hard, but knowing what I do now about the power of networking and getting the right opportunity at the right time, I like to think that how I was able to help them made a huge difference in how their lives turned out. ~~~ darkmighty That is really cool, I know some really good people that I hope I can help some day too ------ cek Being married 24 years with two college age kids who appear to be turning out just fine. ------ freefouran I'm most proud of my compiler for my programming language, it's still in the works, but the fact that it does somewhat work and I made it from scratch makes me happy :) ------ rokhayakebe 1) Endurance and the understanding that "this too shall pass" in both good and bad situations. 2) Teaching myself programming (LAMP). Not because it was a major accomplishment, but simply because it taught me everything else can be learnt, from Economics to Philosophy to Arts to Biology to Quantum Mechanics. ------ bjelkeman-again Getting over a hundred thousand wells mapped in government and NGO programs in Africa, Asia and South America. And this is only the beginning. Soon to be released as open data sets. [http://akvo.org/blog/over-one-million-surveys- collected-with...](http://akvo.org/blog/over-one-million-surveys-collected- with-akvo-flow/) ------ emil0r For all time: That I still stretch myself, even when it's painful. Right now: How far we have gotten with Realty Africa, a property crowdfunding platform dedicated to Sub-Saharan Africa. The response we have gotten on the ground has taken us completely by surprise and the potential market is massive. (Shameless plug: we are raising the final money for our startup costs at [http://igg.me/at/PCA](http://igg.me/at/PCA)) Software: reverie/CMS. Currently at the end of a rewrite, but I'm fairly pleased with how far it's gotten. Writing a cache manager is a serious puzzle though! ([https://github.com/emil0r/reverie](https://github.com/emil0r/reverie)) Family: My wife. She's amazing :) ------ sonabinu Making sure my family (better half and three kids) got to do everything they normally did while I was doing my MS program. Big shift from Finance to Engineering and the learning on all fronts constantly, both family power and computing power has been amazing! ------ suttree I taught myself to code by post/mail. I didn't make the smartest choices when I was young(er), but I turned that around, found a career, ended up co-founding a company and making a cool game ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nethernet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nethernet)) then started a new company to help people figure out wtf they can do with their lives ([https://www.somewhere.com](https://www.somewhere.com)). Saying that though, the stupid robots I built, the side-projects and the articles in Hack Circus mean just as much. Of course, pride comes before a fall so, yeah, cheers.... ;) ------ krishna2 I got in to CMU for my Masters. Mustered up the guts to quit my job and do it full time. Because I wasn't a citizen (or PR) back then, I didn't get any aid and had no savings at all. I got myself five credit cards and paid my fees with that and then managed to do balance transfers between them and maintained a low interest rate (< 4%) and paid it all within 3 years. I mentioned this as my "hack" in one of my YC applications and the few who reviewed my app (prior to formal application) all said, "oh this is a known trick. it has been used before". Anyways, I am still happy and proud that took the plunge, did my masters and I am better for it. ------ manidoraisamy When I was 13 years old, my dad had a heart attack and was admitted in hospital for 2 months. My mom had to accompany him in the hospital and we did not have an earning member in the family during that period. We also didn’t have health insurance to cover the hospital expenses. We owned a shop where me and my younger brother used to help my mom during weekends. With that experience, we ran the shop and took care of the hospital and living expenses. That's one accomplishment I am proud of till this day. ~~~ hugocaracoll I think those are the real accomplishments. ------ wsc981 I see myself as a a producer and at the same time there's not anything I've produced that I'm very proud of. But at the same time I feel in my future is still my time to shine, so I keep working on improving myself. With the above in mind, I guess I'm currently most proud of my decision last year to become freelancer. I feel as a freelancer it will be easier for me to reach my goals in producing some great software in the future. ------ cpt1138 Lately the thing I would honestly say I'm "proud" of is my ability to keep a consistent A+ on the Qualsys SSL server test. I know that sounds weird, but the effort is far outside my normal skillset. For things that come relatively easy for me or things that I am motivated to do and work really hard at, I don't ascribe any "pride" to that. ------ galfarragem Most proud of? Having been truly happy during some moments of my life. Happiness is the ultimate goal. To achieve it, all areas of your life must be positively aligned. Even if luck might have an important role in some of these "positive alignments", is improbable that luck is taking care of all of them. So, it means that, at least, you must be doing some things really well. ~~~ hugocaracoll That's an accomplishment reserved only for the enlightened ones. Maybe you're onto something :) ------ ashokgelal Made LightPaper, Octohub, and SpyGlass apps [1]; all side projects. Some of these even made to the front page of HN. Also, first one from my family from a third world country to go to college and get a degree (in Computer Science). [1]: [http://www.ashokgelal.com](http://www.ashokgelal.com) ------ allard Swam upstream so a few kids had a connection from their Pacific island-nation. Two would be in this 100 — [http://www.articulab.justinecassell.com/projects/jrsummit/in...](http://www.articulab.justinecassell.com/projects/jrsummit/index.html). ------ porter When my grandfather's caretaker embezzled multiple 6 figures from his estate and his kids mismanaged it...I stepped in, took over, and fixed everything. Knowing how thankful and proud my grandfather was made the feeling of success and accomplishment so much more visceral than anything else I've done. ------ codecurve Either being 21 years old with a degree and a company or becoming a proficient musician as a self taught guitarist. ------ kenrick95 One of them is having created a game, submitted to HN, received positive feedback and stars at the repo :) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886897) ~~~ smtddr wow, is the CPU perfect? I cannot beat it. I keep ending up in a situation where the AI can beat me on its next turn in 2 different ways so I can't block both. ~~~ bencoder Try playing columns 4,2,3,4,6,2,3 - seems to play always the same up to here but then sometimes plays different, but it's trivial to win after this state - the AI seems to "give up" ~~~ kenrick95 It's not perfect. Yeah, I actually don't know why the AI seems to "give up" randomly. ------ mahouse [http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=7520](http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=7520) :-) ------ nodelessness Making a wordpress plugin that got 120k downloads. Someone deploying it as a software service offering. Felt good. ------ giis linux tool that i wrote without adequate knowledge of file-system and internet connection. Later Receiving FOSS awards and featuring in Linux magazine(Jun-2008 edition) [http://www.giis.co.in/LFY.png](http://www.giis.co.in/LFY.png) ------ xasos The fact that I have failed so many times, but thankfully live in the US, where opportunities are abundant. ------ rikkus Living with dignity.

Ask HN: How can I give my idea for free and sell myself as its developer? - pawnhearts I had an idea for a tool but I&#x27;m not interested in investing money on it, not because I think it&#x27;s not worth it, but because I have no knowledge about how I would run my own business, find investors, advertise the product, sell the product to customers and so on.<p>Do you think is it worth yielding an idea to someone who can succeed in making money out of it, provided that you will be working on the code and to be sure to have 6-8 months of guaranteed work?<p>Thanks<p>Edit: poor grammar ====== arisAlexis You have two options. Find someone to hire you as a programmer and pay you. Second is to find a partner that will do all of these things called non- technical co-founder and share potential profits. That means that you will need to work in parallel with some kind of other job that gives you money to survive and build this as a side project. If you think it is a good idea and can work and generate money I would go for the second option. ------ JSeymourATL You might find the James Dyson story instructive. Beyond simply inventing and building his products, he also had to teach himself the vital business functions (sales, marketing, business development, legal, raising capital, etc...) necessary to grow his company. Before you 'give away' your idea, it may be worth reading> [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds) ------ blaurenceclark I'd be happy to talk bclark8923@gmail.com I'm a developer who likes the business side of things haha ------ kiraken I'm a developer, leave an email and we'll talk aladin.bensassi@gmail.com

VHSdecel - Vancouver Hack Space Startup Decelerator - Tiktaalik http://vhsdecel.com/ ====== NovaS1X Ahh! It's nice to see VHS mentioned on HN. I've only been once when I was visiting Vancouver for the summer but I had a great time and everyone was very friendly. After numerous beers, spilling a beer on my laptop (thank you Thinkpad water-resistant keyboards!), and having some very good discussions on micro-controllers I ended up stay there until 4am helping setup the network in the new space. All in all I had a great time! I definitely suggest to anyone interested to check it out. The best thing you can bring with you is an open and curious mind! ------ bradleysmith I've always believed this 'move fast and break stuff' mentality was a load of crap; it's nice to see a hackerspace promoting an idea of slowing down and building things for the sake of building them. Hope to check it out in Vancouver some day. ------ jlas > A university exists to tell you you aren't good enough. You fail. Really? I am quite fond of the time I spent in school - it kicked my ass and made me quite employable. I for one definitely appreciate hacker culture, but this anti-university mindset is nonsense.

Detect Memory Leaks with LeakCanary - ingve https://realm.io/news/droidcon-ricau-memory-leaks-leakcanary/ ====== parth16 We adopted LeakCanary the day it was released but we don't find it useful at all. In fact, it makes the app almost unusable for us. Every 2-3 mins, it would just freeze the app to capture a heap dump. As our app is quite complicated with a big memory footprint, this just aggravates the problem. I just hope it was more usable. ~~~ herbig I've found LeakCanary incredibly useful at rooting out context related leaks you probably wouldn't otherwise think of. If you look under "no-op dependency" you'll find a solution to the issue you're describing. I've found it useful to have a leak canary specific build flavor or type, which only I ever see. For all other debug / production build leak canary is not initialized. ------ Mickydtron "That's terrible, and no one should do that." I find that I really enjoy talks that go through some of the antipatterns before showing the way they are showing off. It both helps build a pattern match of when I should be thinking about their solution, as well as being entertaining. ------ chambo622 I heard Pierre give a talk about LeakCanary at Square this summer. It's an impressive tool and I'm already seeing it become a standard recommendation from Google engineers and DevRel people. Props to Square for another awesome open-source offering.

Oracle Open Sources Java EE TCK - javinpaul https://github.com/eclipse-ee4j/jakartaee-tck ====== tyingq Had to look it up. TCK == Technology Compatibility Kit ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_Compatibility_Kit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_Compatibility_Kit)) Which leads me to believe CTS is compatibility test suite. ~~~ jsiepkes The TCK's have always been the center of much discussion / cause of friction in the Java community. Although most discussions were about the Java SE TCK, not the EE TCK. All this friction goes back to the Sun days. Apache Harmony was probably the pinnacle of TCK friction. This is the open letter the Apache foundation send to Sun: [https://www.apache.org/jcp/sunopenletter.html](https://www.apache.org/jcp/sunopenletter.html) I realise that Oracle only open sources the TCK because they no longer want to carry the burden of EE (can't say I blame them) but its still ironic that Sun never wanted to release most TCK's and now Oracle releases the EE TCK. ------ newscracker Honest question since I’m not knowledgeable about this. Is this even something anyone cares about, considering how Oracle has treated Java and its other inheritances from Sun? If yes, how? ~~~ asaph Certainly Java EE is far less interesting than Java SE. Even huge "enterprises" steer clear of the "enterprise edition". ------ asaph What is Oracle's motivation for doing this? Good will? ~~~ jsiepkes Oracle has been working on cutting EE loose for some time now. Its actually part of The Eclipse foundation now and its called Jakarta EE. There are a lot of legacy Java EE deployments so it will stick around for quite some time. Though in most new settings people just use Java SE.

Ask HN: Places to advertise for a UI/UX Designer? - dawson I have placed an advert on Dribbble and LinkedIn and wondered if there is anywhere else HN recommends to advertise for a fulltime UI/UX designer? (based in London). Thank you. ====== ayers I have come across a few that might be helpful to you: <http://roundabout.io/> <http://hackerjobs.co.uk/> \- Run by fellow hacker news members <http://workinstartups.com/> <https://elevatedirect.com> \- For contractors ------ why-el Well the whoishiring account runs a monthly thread[1] where you can post your ads. I think this month's thread is still active. In any case come August and you have not found your designer, consider posting there. It works. [1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4184755> ------ dsawler Authentic Jobs, 37signals, elegant.ly

Ask HN: How Many Applications Received from Who's Hiring Posts? - burger_moon I&#x27;m a job seeker, and I&#x27;m curious about how many job applicants you the employers are seeing from your posts on the monthly Who is Hiring threads.<p>The number of companies posting jobs has been increasing every month this year (I&#x27;m assuming as the site gets more popular) which would indicate there is also many more job seekers coming here every month applying.<p>I&#x27;ve been relying on just this site for finding jobs for a few months now and haven&#x27;t had a breakthrough yet, so I&#x27;m curious if I&#x27;m just a low quality applicant or is the competition really that fierce.<p>Post from throwaways or don&#x27;t include your company&#x27;s name if you don&#x27;t feel comfortable. I&#x27;m just interested in seeing some numbers.<p>Thanks. ====== loumf We probably need a little more information to help. In my experience, I got enough very close matches from past companies (1 or 2) that I didn't need to look at other promising candidates. The number of applicants is irrelevant -- what matters is the number of good applicants that are a match for what I am looking for and I only need 1. There is generally a shortage of engineers, but you still need to find a good match for what you can offer. 1\. Are you applying to jobs where your skills/level/location match what was being advertised? 2\. Is that clear from your application? Did you write a custom cover letter that specifically draws attention to the match? 3\. Generally what level are you? What is your strongest tech stack/language? Location? I recommend trying out other places. I got my current job on careers.stackoverflow.com -- if you need an invite, email me at loumfranco on gmail. There is also hired.com. ------ rskinner We have Greenhouse as an ATS and use custom links for sources. Here is what I've measured since beginning to use this channel. Overall, it competes evenly with AngelList on volume and funnel performance. 59 applications since 12/14 15.3% interview rate 1.7 % hire rate ------ IpV8 I've posted a couple adds and usually get 0-5 hits. I think that it has to do with what time you post, how exciting the post sounds, and what technologies are being used. ------ smeyer >I've been relying on just this site for finding jobs for a few months now Any particular reason you're not using anything other than this site? ------ cowpig It's hard to say, because not everyone lists that they came via HN in their applications, but probably ~100. ------ giaour I've always gotten between 0 and 2.

Is multicore hype or reality? - iamelgringo http://embedded.com/columns/technicalinsights/205918952?pgno=1 ====== spitfire The more interesting point made in that article wasn't about multicore. But was actually about the distance from the CPU that memory is from the modern CPU. Remember when programmers were hand counting instruction timings and code size on their 386? Well that's become even more important today. If you can get your code size into L2 (or even better L1), you can win a factor of 1000x speedup. One reason why I still use a compiled language. ~~~ Hexstream "One reason why I still use a compiled language." Nitpick: There's no such thing as a "compiled" or "interpreted" _language_. A specific language _implementation_ (a runtime) might be more interpreted than compiled or vice-versa, but even if some language traditionally only provides interpreting or compiling implementations, there's nothing preventing someone from writing one in the other style, though the nature of the language might make some approaches less appropriate. Isn't there this IronRuby that runs Ruby, a traditionally interpreted language, on the JVM in compiled fashion? Also, I'm sure Lisp was considered for a long time an interpreted _language_ but today there are fast compiling implementations available such as SBCL. I'm sure there are many more examples. A compiler is really just a partial evaluator (correct me if I'm wrong?). ~~~ oconnor0 IronRuby is for .NET. JRuby is for the JVM. ------ mishmash Here's the print link, let me know if this isn't cool here on HN. [http://embedded.com/columns/technicalinsights/205918952?prin...](http://embedded.com/columns/technicalinsights/205918952?printable=true) ~~~ ambition It's generally preferred to submit the print link in the first place when available. So, yes, it's cool here on HN. ------ nazgulnarsil beyond the aforementioned embarrassingly parallel problems I don't think we'll see much performance increase once we reach the point where each app/process is running on its own core. ~~~ JulianMorrison On my Linux machine, not even a server but just a desktop, there are 111 running processes. There's room for growth in multi-core yet. ~~~ wmf Don't you mean there are 111 sleeping processes? It's unlikely that a desktop would have so many runnable processes. ~~~ JulianMorrison Ah, my use of "running" was misleading. That's just a crude line count of the "ps ax" listing. (And I probably counted the header line - d'oh!) Yes, most are sleeping.

The End of China’s Economic Miracle? - tokenadult http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-end-of-chinas-economic-miracle-1416592910 ====== calebreed Interesting article, thanks for posting! While I agree that there has been over-extension with regards to infrastructure development especially in residential housing, one thing I think we should remember is the power the central government in China holds to change course when necessary, even when a crisis has not yet occurred (imagine living in a country that can ground all flights for a day with no explanation and people take that as par the course: [http://on.wsj.com/1wVToAd](http://on.wsj.com/1wVToAd)). A similar point on over-extension could have been made about US expansion in the 2000s being completely attributed to the debt-induced US housing bubble, but our government had no focus or institutional power to stop that until the crisis had already occurred. In this case at the governmental level, China, with its ability to set long term policy and pre-empt crises, might have a leg up. ~~~ seanmcdirmid Corruption is endemic in the ruling class who own much of China already. It will be really hard for the government to turn themselves and their families from winners into losers...so the effects of whatever reforms they take will probably fall on the have-nots, who might not take that very well. ~~~ tokenadult It's good to hear from an observer who has been in China in recent years on topics like this. ------ austinz This is an excellent example of what is wrong with China journalism today, drawing sweeping conclusions based on a handful of cherry-picked anecdotes. For an article with actual analysis, try [http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/11/chinas-i...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/11/chinas- interest-rates). ~~~ droope Yes, this article is terrible. "Shift the economy toward innovation? That is the mantra of every advanced economy, but China’s rivals have a big advantage: Their societies encourage free thought and idiosyncratic beliefs" Which can be translated to "this people are different from us, how could they ever be successful?"

Groupon stock sinks to new low, investors sue - joejohnson http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120404/NEWS08/120409912/groupon-stock-sinks-to-new-low ====== guptaneil As a Silicon Valley native currently living in Chicago, I've always found it disappointing that Groupon is the poster child of innovation and entrepreneurship in Chicago. They seem to lack a solid business plan and have a history of deliberately misleading investors and businesses. Far more impressive companies, such as 37signals or GrubHub, are based here that deserve that kind of attention instead. I very much doubt the legitimacy of this story, but I was in a barbershop a few weeks ago, where the owner told me about one of the Groupon executives who was in the shop earlier. He was saying we shouldn't expect Groupon to be around in 10 years because the company's plan is to collect as much cash as possible, fire everybody, and shut down, keeping the money for the investors. While I doubt a Groupon executive would have actually said that in a barbershop, I can believe that actually was their long-term plan, but if things keep up at their current rate, I'm not sure if Groupon will even last that long. ~~~ pbreit > I was in a barbershop a few weeks ago, where the owner told me about one of > the Groupon executives who was in the shop earlier Great source! ~~~ tptacek I don't know why this was downmodded. It's trenchant. Nobody on HN seems to like Groupon, but that doesn't make this kind of ridiculous hearsay more valid. ~~~ furyofantares I'd guess it's due to the sarcastic tone. If he had your made your post instead I think it would be faring better. What really gets me is the barbershop post actually admits that it's very unlikely for the source to be telling the truth, then goes on to give it credit anyway because it agrees with his own speculation. ~~~ larrys "He was saying we shouldn't expect Groupon to be around in 10 years because the company's plan is to collect as much cash as possible, fire everybody, and shut down, keeping the money for the investors." Because the problem isn't the source (the barber). It's the idea that a groupon executive would have said something like this to his barber, physician, plumber etc. Maybe bragging to his call girl, maybe to a friend when drunk (and was overheard) but it's ridiculous to think someone would say something like this even in jest. ------ Quizzy They should have unloaded this fraud on Google when there was a $6 billion cash offer sitting on the table (assuming that was true). The fact that Google even offered that much leads me to believe that they have jumped the shark with that offer. Anybody who knows anything about retail would have studied the business model and realized that this was not sustainable. Obvious red flags: 1\. Heavy reliance on field sales (the largest expense), which is NOT scalable 2\. Exclusive reliance on repeat sales as the key driver of sustainability: this being the obvious case, did Google not do its due diligence and actually surveyed past Groupon customers? Such a siimple survey would have easily revealed the issues of this "local deals" model. 3\. Heavy reliance on "small business" owners as the driver of revenue. This is a sensitive and fickle market, where even slight movements in the general economy will cause huge moves in spending patterns. These 3 points were readily available to anybody with some insight into this segment; Google with all its money must be surrounded by "yes" men, nothing else could explain it's willingness to part with $6 billion so quickly. ~~~ nakor I'm not sure if they actually could have sold the company to google even if they wanted to. My understanding is that you must open your books to the prospective buyer after a certain stage and it is likely that once the google accountants had a look at Groupons books the deal would have fallen through. That could have created negative press and damaged their pump-and-dump strategy for the IPO. ~~~ Quizzy Excellent point. ------ tptacek My perception is that these kinds of shareholder suits are trivial to file, and that they occur regularly any time the stock of any public company drops significantly after some event about them hits the news. It would be interesting to see someone chart this. (No comment about Groupon's long-term viability is being implied here). ~~~ bhousel As someone who builds legal matter management software for large publicly traded companies, I can confirm that your perception is correct. Public companies are sued all the time for this kind of stuff. These lawsuits often allege misrepresentation in a company's SEC filings. ------ victork2 Who would have imagined that groupon had a future? It worked on the novelty effect and it was doomed to fail. On the other hand, Chicago business is full of bugs. Ghostery block 13 (!) calls to different websites such as: Quantcast, 24/7 real media, Outbrain etc... I won't visit this website again. I wish I was warned of that before hand not when I go to the website, I value my privacy more than going there. ~~~ zaidf _It worked on the novelty effect and it was doomed to fail._ A little premature to write an obituary of a company that finished 2011 with 1.6B in revenue. ~~~ ohashi 1.6B in revenue is pretty meaningless if you're not even making a profit. They are simply really good at losing a lot of money. ~~~ zaidf It's "scary" and "even" dangerous one may say, but _not_ meaningless. ~~~ ohashi You are correct, it's not meaningless, I should have said: Simply having revenue isn't a defense for a company if they are spending more money than they are bringing in. ------ snorkel Who would guess that there could be an integrity issue with a company that tried to invent new accounting rules where marketing costs don't appear on the balance sheet? You'd have a crystal ball or a brain to see this coming. ~~~ lubos Marketing costs are not supposed to appear on balance sheet. I don't really watch this company but if I remember correctly, their way of doing accounting was to show all received money from customers as income instead of liabilities since they were collecting half of it on behalf of vendors. They were simply inflating their revenue but it's not like it matters, because profit (loss) would be always the same regardless. ------ bfrog Please. As if anyone with half a brain couldn't see this ponzi scheme on the blowup train of doom. Who are these magical investors? ~~~ dantheman It's not a ponzi scheme. ~~~ jasonrr Simply stating it is not a ponzi scheme doesn't advance the conversation in a meaningful way in my opinion. It's really just semantics at this point. There is a lot of evidence here that suggests systematic misleading (if not out-right defrauding) of investors. So you while you are technically correct, I think what Groupon has done is in the spirit of Ponzi even if it is executed differently. What's happened here is more than just a bad business plan executed honestly producing poor results. Just because we don't have the exact word for it doesn't make it any more ethical. ~~~ Quizzy Jason, your gut instinct is correct. Groupon is a Ponzi scheme in every way: last customer in gets no money out. I feel sorry for that Mom & Pop pizza that paid $1,000 to run a Groupon deal, and expecting $300 back in 60 days, only to see Groupon go belly up and get nothing but a letter that says "Please send your creditor claim to the bankruptcy trustee listed below". ------ fasteddie31003 People I know who currently work for Groupon say that the culture there is falling apart. To get the numbers investors expect the sales people need to reach unrealistic sales numbers. Management is grasping at straws, trying every trick in the book to not let the whole thing fall apart. The Groupon model is simply not sustainable, it was a onetime gimmick. As someone who lives in Chicago, I am worried about its failure and with that the future of the tech scene in Chicago. ~~~ timjahn Groupon is a large part of the tech scene here in Chicago, contributing a lot to the scene. But they're not our sole pillar any more. I think we all know that pillar is going to come crashing down in the near future, and we're ready. Groupon helped propel us to where we are, and we're standing on our own now. In my opinion, the future of tech in Chicago will not solely depend on Groupon's activity. ~~~ tedkalaw I chatted with some engineers from BrainTree and I was impressed at their commitment to helping build the tech scene in Chicago. It's an exciting time. ------ diogenescynic They should be going after the SEC for allowing this company to IPO in the first place. Going public used to be a privilege, now it seems too easy. ~~~ wmil Since SOX successful tech companies have been avoiding going public for as long as possible (ie Google, Facebook). I wonder if there was some pressure from investment bankers who want to encourage more IPOs as well as government types who want the law to seen as a success. ------ edw519 _The first two shareholder lawsuits were filed Tuesday in federal court in Chicago after the markets closed, seeking class-action status for people who bought stock before the company restated fourth-quarter financial results on Friday._ Perhaps those people should have been reading Hacker News: [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=groupon&...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=groupon&sortby=points+desc) (The first post is rather long and fairly neutral, but check out some of the posts (and their dates) right after that.) ~~~ tucson Thanks for the link. What I find troubling is to read so many articles pointing to shady business practices from Groupon and bubble valuation, and still the SEC lets the IPO go through and investors lose their money - that part did not happen yet but it seems written on the wall. ~~~ radioact1ve Could the SEC really do that? Just outright stop an IPO? ------ api I remember hearing about how this company ran, and figuring it was nothing but a giant boiler room sales pit and a gimmick. I am not surprised. ~~~ Quizzy Anecdotally, the first generation of sales rep have nothing but depressing things to say about this entire market segment now. The first year sales numbers were gangbusters, until their clients called back complaining, swearing never to do another Groupon deal, ever again. It's not just Groupon, this entire business model is unsustainable: asking a retailer to discount his products for a fee in the hopes that he will attract new "local deal" customers willing to pay full retail next time, when the ONLY reason these customers came in the first place was because of the discount. ~~~ notJim Not only that, but I suspect that people who _are_ loyal to businesses and like interacting with local business owners are less likely to use sites like groupon, because they know that the businesses often get screwed, and because they don't want to be thought of as bargain-shoppers. ~~~ muraiki A friend sent me a Groupon for a local bakery. It was something ridiculous like $20 worth of food for $10. Since I had heard about the bad relationships between businesses and Groupon, and since I actually like this little store, I declined to get the Groupon. I'd rather pay full price to support a local business! ------ walru GRPN was a always a short sellers dream come true. Next up, ZNGA. ~~~ untog Why do you say Zynga? It was my understanding that their financials are a good bit more stable, even if they are Facebook-dependent. ~~~ Quizzy Zynga's business model is like any other gaming publisher (such as EA, Blizzard, etc.). To succeed in gaming you MUST have a pipeline of games that continue revenue growth. If you cannot create your own, then you must acquire indie developers (OMGPOP recently). In time Zynga stock will be no different than any other gaming publisher stock. Look at Blizzard: other than Diablo, Starcraft and WoW, it has created nothing in the last 4 years beyond sequels. Homegrown innovation is nearly impossible. Rovio was in the business for 5 years before Angry Birds, and I doubt they'll have another hit like Angry Birds ever again. Id fell apart when it couldn't come up with something better than the Doom franchise. OMGPOP was very smart to sell out to Zynga, because there is no way it would have come up with something even close to Draw Something in another 5 years. Unlike rock stars and pop singers, creating a string of gaming hits is so much harder because it requires the perfect storm of so many variables each and every time, whereas a single person like Adele, Amy Winehouse, etc. can rely on their genius alone to create a hit. ~~~ trimbo > Id fell apart when it couldn't come up with something better than the Doom > franchise. Except for, you know... Quake. On your other point. The difference between Zynga and EA is that Zynga's games have a huge turnover rate and a very low percentage of paying customers. EA's games -- at least most of their games -- have 100% paying customers and have a large _returning_ customer rate year after year (Madden 11, Madden 12, Madden 13, Fifa 11, Fifa 12...). So in other words, Zynga's business model is completely different than EA's. ------ crag And this is what happens when inventors invest in a company they know noting about. This is what happens when you listen to the hype, and the street and NOT do your own due diligence. There's a reason why the big banks backed the IPO but didn't take a percentage. When it all comes down in flames, (I think it's already begun - if you haven't gotten out, get out now) the only saving grace is that the CEO and board will be embattled in court for years. The investors might get a few pennies on the dollar. ~~~ ironchef "There's a reason why the big banks backed the IPO but didn't take a percentage." Morgan stanley has 19 mil shares. Goldman has 2 mil shares. They backed the IPO and took a percentage. Am i misunderstanding your statement? ~~~ antr they didn't invest cash, they just exercised their green-shoe. ~~~ crag Exactly. They never invested cash. It's all vapor. In other words, both banks lose nothing except the promise of future profits. Both banks already made their money (and then some) on the IPO and associated fees. Now of course, assuming the banks had no knowledge of Groupon's true financial health; they did nothing illegal. BUT ethically, brokers/traders have a responsibility to informed their clients when it's time to cash out. A lot of people made money off this deal. And lot didn't. But Groupon, if what I'm hearing is true, is committing fraud. I mean, my god, are they cooking the books? Sort of reminds me of Enron. But only time (and many lawsuits later) will tell. ------ unohoo The problem with Groupon and other local deal companies is that they have to manage fluctuations on both the consumer as well as the merchant side. Even if one side of the equation wobbles a little, Groupon will feel the impact. I think at this stage, Groupon is fighting a dual (losing) battle: 1) Merchants perception of the whole daily deal market is very negative. Repeat business is quite low and it mainly attracts the spendthrifts who are looking for a deal. Given the margins that most local businesses have, running a daily deal means taking a hit on those margins. 2) From a consumer perspective, the novelty of the daily deals market has really worn off. Consumer fatigue has set in and more and more people are tired of having their inboxes flooded with emails. Personalization is still a joke and ticks people off even further. It wont be long before the whole local deal market implodes (think of it -- the 2nd largest player - LivingSocial is not yet profitable). Groupon is well aware of this and so is trying to ramp up its technology platform via acquisitions to eventually evolve into something more. Its just a matter of time that the whole thing comes crashing down. ~~~ MatthewPhillips The local deals is analogous to department store clearance sales. Retailers have perfected the art of the sale and they know that clearance sales are a different animal. If someone comes into you store and heads straight to clearance they can't be upsold. Don't waste your time on them. This is different from your event sale, which _are_ an excellent way to gain repeated customers (and upsell them). There is a future for local deal sites but it needs a different hook with customers. ------ ssharp I think there are so many ways technology can help mom + pop type small businesses inexpensively stay competitive with the numerous forces working against them (including retail giants with substantially better technology), and the huge interest in daily deals justifies this assertion--at least in some small way. But the technology needs to help the small business actually improve. Groupon doesn't do this. For the most part, it plays smoke and mirrors with revenues and the costs or profits are not entirely known because the small business cannot measure them. ------ smoody A TV network is going to Pilot with a new fictional sitcom -- called "Friend Me" I believe. It's about a man who packs-up and moves so he can work at Groupon (not made-up). Perhaps making it a comedy isn't such a good idea. ;-) ------ mleatherb It seems like everyone and their mother are trying for IPO. If the rumor about an offer from google was true, they should have taken the money and ran ~~~ taphangum I'm starting to think that it was google who ran away from this deal. ------ nateberkopec So it's official - Groupon is this bubble's Pets.com. ------ silentscope When your boss is your shareholders, the seat of your pants accounting doesn't really cut it. ------ renatomoya I see why some already jumped off that boat. Started pretty good but, it could do better. ------ option_greek I wonder how long it will be before we see Yahoo style head lines for Groupon and RIM. ------ jacquesm Would they have sued if they stock had gone up? ~~~ chc I don't understand why you'd ask. How would that injure them? ------ run4yourlives Investors sue? Really? So basically, I want to drink the koolaid but god damn you if it makes me sick... You should not be allowed to sue as a method to correct your own stupidity. ~~~ zecho I think in this case it makes sense. Groupon restated a sharp drop in their reported revenues over three years. People don't necessarily invest in things they think are particularly good business models. They invest in things that are undervalued. If you looked at the revenue/price and thought it was undervalued and then Groupon changed 3 years worth of data on your after you made a stock purchase, you'd sue too. Just look at these reductions. They're more than just a minor correction from Groupon: \- For 2008, revenue was reduced to $5,000, from $94,000. \- For 2009, revenue was reduced to $14.54 million, from $30.47 million. \- For 2010, revenue was reduced to $312.9 million, from $713.4 million. ~~~ run4yourlives _People don't necessarily invest in things they think are particularly good business models._ If you can't figure out the business model generating the reported millions, it's your own fault for thinking those millions are undervalued. How many of these investors didn't actually care about the value of the stock, so long as there was somebody around tomorrow that would buy it for more? Sorry, but I have no sympathy when you willingly play the game and then get burned by the same things you intended to inflict on someone else. ~~~ prodigal_erik I'm not entitled to lie to investors just because they should be smart enough to disbelieve me. There's a point beyond which it's not feasible for third parties to know how realistic my financial statements are, so the SEC has mandated I'm on the hook when I write them.

Iran says it's building copy of captured US drone - thematt http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120422/D9U9U0A80.html ====== shin_lao There is a world of difference between reverse engineering some of the software to decipher some logs and understanding everything there is to understand to build a fac-similé. While Persians are clearly clever and educated, I submit they lack the industrial infrastructure to build a drone. Let's keep in mind they currently have trouble properly refining their oil... ~~~ lotux To give you an idea about us (Iran) have a look here, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iranian_Americans> , you can skip to Business/Technology section if you like, we survived a devastating war and more than 30 years of crippling sanctions that continues today. and I have to say we have pretty good infrastructure that you have no idea about it, which is good. ------ rollypolly There were many codes and characters. But we deciphered them by the grace of God Excuse me if I doubt any of the claims in this article. ~~~ _interrupt So apparently, God is on everybody's side and has the set of all encryption keys. ~~~ kmfrk The oldest MITM trick in the book. ------ smoyer During the cold war it was common to segment data so that the compromise of a single agent wouldn't cause too much damage. I doubt there's too much concern over the data the drone contains, but the hardware is state-of-the-art and perhaps it should also have an accident (maybe the centrifuges could teach it how to self destruct ... Or a North Korean rocket will accidentally fall on it). I guess I'm waiting to see how much of this information is verified by someone outside the Iranian government (hmmm ... And the U.S. Government). ------ sycren Would it have been better for Iran to have said nothing or is this only to provoke the US & alies? ------ ams6110 There's always the chance that the drone was "lost" deliberately, in order to give the Iranians something useless to waste a lot of time on, or to deliberately mislead them on the true capabilities of the device. ~~~ eternalban I believe it was and it was a clear signal from a certain influential clique in the US defense establishment -- where [did] Leon work before? -- to the Israelis that USA will not allow any nation to dictate its strategic posture or present it a fait accompli. ~~~ larsbot Could you explain your reasoning? How is the US purposefully losing a drone in Iran somehow a signal to the Israelis? Surely Israel already knew that we were capable of / already flying drone over Iran considering their use in two of Iran's neighbors (Iraq and Afghanistan). ~~~ eternalban 2 pairs of shoes: 1 Put yourself in the shoes of US commanders unhappy about the possibility of one day waking up and seeing little blips heading toward Iran. You would have 2 choices and they are both lousy. Business is good. Oil is flowing. Who wants it all to go up in smoke? Certainly not America. 2 Put yourself in an Israeli analyst's shoes/head and rewind date to day of release of footage. 3 possibilities, 1 obviously unlikely, and other 2 just "shocking". (And I leave that for you to divine). Now, I assert that US president and commanders are sleeping easier, and that Israelis are no longer so glib about sending aircraft over IRI and taking US involvement for granted. After all, if IRGC can bring down America's drone, Israeli F16s could also fall off the sky near the borders of Iran ... by the "grace of God" ... ------ lotux don't take it personally, you decrypt someone else code , we decrypt yours, so there will be one to decrypt ours again. is all about decryption ;) ------ googoobaby Perhaps they'll build it out of oil drums like their SAM systems? I don't think Iran is capable of putting together a decent steel drum band much less stealth drones. ~~~ johansch I was under the impression that Iran has a pretty decent higher education system. And that it includes female students as well - with a noticably high percentage of female students in fields that are male-dominated in the west, like computer science. No idea how they are doing in mechanical/aeronautical engineering though. ~~~ lolcraft Iran is under an international embargo on military supplies, thought. The GP might be overstating the case or trolling, but I suppose getting the materials to build a replica, communication gear and fuel will be difficult for the iranians. Specially when some western country with the biggest military- industrial complex of the world is angry at you because you broke one of their toys. ------ zotz Wow. Will it kill civilians and crash like the original? ------ rsanchez1 They better watch out before they insert their USB cable into the drone's port. The last time they inserted without protection, they caught Stuxnet.

Why Some Countries Are Poor and Others Rich - mouzogu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-4V3HR696k ====== sumedh When I was living in India, I used to see my dad praying 1 or 2 hours a day, I used to see my friends waiting in a queue for many hours just to visit their god in a temple. I used to wonder isn't this a complete waste of time from society's point of view. If all these people could use that time to do something productive, it would help the country. I remember my aunt telling me that only God can fix India's problems, when I disagreed she was pissed off. I wanted to be a hero and fix India's problems but then I took the easy way out and moved to a developed country. ~~~ vmorgulis > I wanted to be a hero and fix India's problems but then I took the easy way > out and moved to a developed country. Not so easy way :-) The video says that 20% of the wealth is cultural. I guess it's more. Western countries are probably so successful because they inherited the greek and roman culture. Some countries in Asia (like Japan) switched from feudalism to capitalism in few decades. The difficulties of Africa could be explained by the lack of the writing (unless it's a consequence). The society is more flat than vertical. ------ known [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility) != [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility)

The Colgan Air disaster was a milestone in aviation safety - jaredwiener https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-12/the-colgan-air-crash-helped-keep-90-million-flights-safe ====== danaliv One of the biggest changes that came out of the Colgan crash is the so-called "1500 hour rule." Before Colgan, only the captain needed to have an airline transport pilot (ATP) certificate, the highest level of pilot certification. First officers (copilots) could fly with a commercial pilot certificate, a lower grade of license. Now, both pilots are required to hold ATP certificates. ATP applicants need to have 1500 hours of flight experience—hence "1500 hour rule"—though there are exceptions if you've attended specific approved aeronautical schools or have military experience. Commercial applicants need only 250 hours. (Here too there are exceptions for certain training programs.) The standards on the flight tests are tighter for ATPs and the written exams are worlds apart. As an instructor I can tell you the difference between a 250-hour pilot and a 1500-hour pilot can be enormous. Not always—some pilots have 1500 hours, and others have the same hour, 1500 times in a row—but there can be a huge difference. This rule has been controversial though, not least of all because both pilots in the Colgan crash already had more than 1500 hours. And the FAA made so many changes after Colgan that it's been hard to tell which of those changes actually made the difference, and which, if any, were simply no-ops. Critics of the rule have especially focused on how many flight tests the Colgan captain failed, and how the response by the pilots to an aerodynamic stall was completely backwards. Aerodynamic stalls are something you learn in your first ten hours of training as a private pilot and drill constantly throughout your career, so to get that wrong at the air carrier level speaks to an incredible failure in training and evaluation. ~~~ Someone1234 It also isn't clear (aside from military) how people are meant to fund/attain ATP status. There's limited jobs with which a commercial licensed pilot can gain hours (e.g. crop dusting, sky jumpers, instructors, etc) but the number of people trying to attain ATP/jobs requiring ATPs well outstrip the number of jobs to support those people getting to 1500 hours. As you said, previously some airlines would take the pressure off by hiring commercial pilots and getting them hours as copilots. With the new rules they need 1500 before day one, so that has to come from somewhere and it isn't clear where. This is one reason airlines are struggling to find pilots. ~~~ markdown > This is one reason airlines are struggling to find pilots. There isn't really a pilot shortage. Merely a shortage of pilots willing to work for slave wages. There are US pilots flying all over the world because they don't get paid what they're worth in the US. ~~~ noahl Quick reminder: "slave wages" are exactly $0, and also you can't leave the job due to threat of violence. (And also there's a lot of violence anyway, and also bad housing and bad food and complete lack of personal time or space or privacy or any freedom of choice, etc.) It sounds like regional airline pilots may have surprisingly low wages given how highly-skilled their jobs are. "Low wages" is a good term for this. ~~~ Someone It isn’t slavery, indeed, but waged can get lower than low. Pilots can be pressurized in accepting very low wages for the right to fly an airplane. Reason? Pilots have to make flight hours in the plane they’re licensed for to keep their license. So, you are, say, $100,000 in debt to get a license to fly a 737, and you need a few hours in it this month to keep that license. Renting said plane for a few hours is very expensive. That makes an $0 an hour ‘job’ flying for a few hours look mightily attractive. ------ ChuckMcM This is an excellent example of how regulation should work as opposed to how it works in regulatory capture situations. In a prisoners dilemma like set up, if any airline unilaterally changed their rules for pilots and crews, they would "lose out" when they didn't have crews to fly, while other airlines would "win more" by overworking their flight crews. The only "win" was for all airlines to not implement these changes. But when the changes were forced on everyone, it removed the advantage of not following the guidelines (well it added a criminal or civil prosecution risk) and so all airlines have at least minimally rested crews. That message seems to get lost sometimes. ~~~ smacktoward I would say this is an excellent example of how regulation _shouldn 't_ work. Even before the Colgan Air crash, it was widely understood that regional airlines' overworking and undertraining of their pilots was risky. But the regulators either weren't able to do anything about it in the face of industry opposition, or didn't care enough to do so. It took a plane actually crashing, 50 people dying and Congress, which was lobbied hard by the families of the victims, passing new legislation ordering them to do something about the problem to get them to take action. It's great that we have regulations protecting passengers from these problems now. But it would have been _much better_ if it hadn't taken the deaths of those 50 people to create an environment where it was possible for such regulations to be enacted. Good regulators protect people _before_ there's blood on the floor, not after. ~~~ civilitty _> Good regulators protect people before there's blood on the floor, not after._ So to be good regulators, they have to be essentially omniscient? ~~~ smt88 No. Post-mortems of these types of disasters usually reveal that warning signs were visible if anyone cared to look or act. One example happening now: extreme, pervasive sleep deprivation in the US Navy. We've already had disasters that could've been prevented if someone talked to even a single sailor and realized how dangerous that is. Another example is self-driving cars. We just had a Tesla crash, and yet Tesla will not be regulated properly and will likely kill someone soon. Arguably, they already have. ------ edoo On youtube now you can find flight simulator reenactments of most every crash and air incident. They are quite fascinating and much much better than TV style dramatizations. Here is this incident: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzY- hzxlqig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzY-hzxlqig) ~~~ cf498 The air traffic control recordings alone are really great. When the guy stole a plane from Seattle airport to take it for a joyride, i got stuck and clicked myself through what felt like half the ATC recordings on youtube. Can only recommend it, the level of international communication is rather astonishing. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuedf_fJVrOppky5gl3U6QQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuedf_fJVrOppky5gl3U6QQ) ------ gingerbread-man The most significant regulatory change following the Colgan crash was the added requirement that all airline (Part 21) first officers possess an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate prior to hiring. Previously, only captains (as pilots-in-command) were required to hold that certificate, which requires a minimum 1500 hours of flight experience. [1] In practical terms, this wasn't a big change (insurance underwriters already required it), but 1500 hours is a significant hurdle at at time when the US is facing a shortage of pilots. [1] [https://www.flyingmag.com/news/faa-finalizes-atp-rule- first-...](https://www.flyingmag.com/news/faa-finalizes-atp-rule-first- officers) ~~~ sokoloff It's not required prior to _hiring_ ; it's prior to _flying your first revenue flight_. The distinction is somewhat important as it's not as easy to get an ATP (any more) with the introduction of the ATP-CTP requirement. Though I have no need for an ATP, I considered getting one under the old (quite easy) rules. ------ peterwwillis Compare this to cars. Every year in the US there are about 6 million car crashes, 3 million injured people, and about 33,000 dead people (so, imagine a city like Dover, Delaware being wiped off the face of the earth every year). The most typical causes are alcohol, speeding, and reckless driving. In addition, seat belts cut the risk of death by 45%. So, if we wanted to keep people safe the way we do for airlines, we would just attack these four problems. There are many solutions, but the simplest ones would involve 1) a mandatory breathalyzer, 2) speed limiters, 3) sensors that shut down the car when reckless driving is detected, and 4) shutting down the car if seatbelts are not used. These all exist today, and would save tens of thousands of lives a year, and prevent millions of casualties, lawsuits, traffic jams, etc. Why don't we do these things? My theory is the illusion of safety. In a car, you're wrapped inside 2 tons of steel and plastic, and you feel safe. Even if you know _other_ people are dying inside, you feel like it won't happen to you. So we don't worry, so we don't care about changing things to save lives, because it'd be an inconvenience. But in an airplane, you're not in control; some pilot is. And you're hurtling along at at 500 miles per hour, 40,000 feet above the sky. That's scary. We better make sure those planes are safe. ~~~ mherchel It's harder to implement on cars. 1) People would (and do) cheat at mandatory breathalyzers. 2) It's not speeding that injures people, it's the speed differences that cause issues. Limiting a car to 70mph won't help when it's icy, and they should be driving 40mph. 3) How exactly would a car detect reckless driving? How would it know that it wasn't warranted (ie swerving to avoid a kid)? ~~~ yoda222 > It's not speeding that injures people, it's the speed differences that cause > issues. When two car are at a speed of 70mph, the maximum speed difference between them is 140mph, when they are at 50mph, it's only 100mph. So the speed of a car has a direct impact on the speed difference between cars. ------ misiti3780 I flew into buffalo that night about an hour before the crash. I remember thinking when we were landing that these conditions were some of the worst, and I fly a lot into Buffalo. ------ huangc10 My brother is a commercial airline pilot who flies world wide and pilot fatigue is real and very common. Airlines have been making bank for the last few years and all they need to do to prevent pilot fatigue is reduce hours for pilots and increase the number of pilots/flight, especially for international flights. These simple measures (albeit costly), will overall help reduce commercial flight fatalities across the globe. ~~~ dopamean My father was an airline pilot for years (American, US Airways, and then Etihad) flying domestically and then internationally. I'd guess that if the airlines wanted to reduce pilot hours the pilot unions would have a lot to say about that. ~~~ SmellyGeekBoy Are they paid by the hour? I'd assume that pilots would earn an annual salary. ~~~ huangc10 Most pilots do earn an annual salary. I'm not sure what the previous comment meant. Pilots simply have to work minimum number of hours per month, but the issue is that most pilots are now working up to the maximum number of hours therefore there are actually pilot union striking because of overwork! ------ delinka Based entirely on the headline: doesn’t every crash prevent most future crashes that would have had the same cause? ~~~ misiti3780 Yep, I always loved this line from Antifragile: > “But recall that this chapter is about layering, units, hierarchies, fractal > structure, and the difference between the interest of a unit and those of > its subunits. So it is often the mistakes of others that benefit the rest of > us—and, sadly, not them. We saw that stressors are information, in the right > context. For the antifragile, harm from errors should be less than the > benefits. We are talking about some, not all, errors, of course; those that > do not destroy a system help prevent larger calamities. The engineer and > historian of engineering Henry Petroski presents a very elegant point. Had > the Titanic not had that famous accident, as fatal as it was, we would have > kept building larger and larger ocean liners and the next disaster would > have been even more tragic. So the people who perished were sacrificed for > the greater good; they unarguably saved more lives than were lost. The story > of the Titanic illustrates the difference between gains for the system and > harm to some of its individual parts. The same can be said of the debacle of > Fukushima: one can safely say that it made us aware of the problem with > nuclear reactors (and small probabilities) and prevented larger > catastrophes. (Note that the errors of naive stress testing and reliance on > risk models were quite obvious at the time; as with the economic crisis, > nobody wanted to listen.)” ~~~ CamperBob2 _The engineer and historian of engineering Henry Petroski presents a very elegant point. Had the Titanic not had that famous accident, as fatal as it was, we would have kept building larger and larger ocean liners and the next disaster would have been even more tragic. So the people who perished were sacrificed for the greater good; they unarguably saved more lives than were lost. The story of the Titanic illustrates the difference between gains for the system and harm to some of its individual parts. The same can be said of the debacle of Fukushima: one can safely say that it made us aware of the problem with nuclear reactors (and small probabilities) and prevented larger catastrophes._ Another interesting argument along the same lines is that if we hadn't bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there would have been no reason for Truman to stop MacArthur from using bombs a hundred times worse in the Korean conflict. It's a sobering thought regardless of one's opinion on the atomic bombings in Japan. The lesson was going to be learned one way or the other, and arguably humanity got off easy. ~~~ misiti3780 I have never heard that one -- but it makes sense. ------ nkanetka Meanwhile in Canada regulations are still appalling and some of the worst in the world: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/garneau-pilot-safety- airlin...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/garneau-pilot-safety-airline- regulations-1.4942385) ------ austincheney How catastrophic must a software disaster be to receive the benefits of such safety regulation? ~~~ bdamm There are software glitches responsible for the deaths of on the order of 100 people, which has resulted in industry-localized development and deployment standards. When we see tragedies where 1000 people die because of a software glitch, or more likely, a systems or security failure, then I think we'll see legislators start coming for the software industry in general. There are already critical systems development and systems requirements; likely legislators will expand and formalize those kinds of programs. All we need to do is have a public tragedy that can be pinned on "software". ------ bernardom This is real engineering. And this is what I'm most excited about with autonomous cars- black boxes allow the NTSB to get involved and work accidents out of the process. ------ Simulacra I think something we haven’t learned from the Colgan disaster is how regional airlines are configuring these smaller jet and turboprop planes to fit more passengers, in ways they were not designed. That is leading the way towards profit over safety. ------ cm2187 I wish one could write the same title about software...

Alive v1.0 – Live Programming for C# - Permit http://blog.comealive.io/Alive-Version-1.0 ====== muraiki It's really nice to see a tool like this come out for a statically typed language. When I started learning programming 2 years ago, tools like Light Table and the live editing capabilities of Seaside for Smalltalk were not only a huge help but are something I've come to miss in other languages. I think that live coding tools for the big 2 languages (C# and Java) could be a great boon to students learning programming in college, where at least in my area statically typed languages seem to be the norm. ~~~ pjmlp Xerox PARC already had it for Mesa/Cedar in the early 80's, which was the inspiration Niklaus Wirth had for his Oberon system. Which was a statically typed systems programming language with RC and local GC. [http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input- output/14/34...](http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input- output/14/347/1860) [https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xeroxparcteCedarProgra...](https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xeroxparcteCedarProgrammingEnvironmentAMidtermRepo_13518000) The progress we have lost with mainstream ignoring Xerox PARC research in programming environments. Those workstations already had something like IPython and Swift Playgrounds available. ~~~ iheartmemcache PARC/Cedar looks real, real cool. I've heard them in passing but the earliest machines I got to use were the mid 90s Sun/SGI era and AS/400s. Local GC as in, as soon as you go out of scope you free? Or is it doing something more complicated than that. I love all these old/research languages/environments, so many cool ideas. Thanks for the archive.org PDF. PS: If you're interested in PARC, you might be interested in Brian Beckman, et al's (of MSR) "TimeWarp" [http://www.cs.nyu.edu/srg/talks/timewarp.pdf](http://www.cs.nyu.edu/srg/talks/timewarp.pdf). It ran into resource scarcity issues at the time but that's no longer an issue. Old PoC's are really interesting to revisit now that our main issue isn't space but latency. (Fun fact: A CPU -> Northbridge RAM fetch is only ~5x (~60 ms[1]) as fast as a prosumer eMLC SATA3 fetch (~200ns) . Data segmentation matters guys, if you are going to have a cache miss. Sequential data matters and predictable prefetching matters, and isn't "pre-optimization" if you're dealing with low- latency stuff!") (1): [https://software.intel.com/sites/products/collateral/hpc/vtu...](https://software.intel.com/sites/products/collateral/hpc/vtune/performance_analysis_guide.pdf) ~~~ pjmlp The local GC was a cycle collector. So traditional RC with GC for the cycles, if any. Thanks for the link. ------ luisrudge I find the `for` example really bad. Mainly because 99% of the apps (I totally made up that number) are NOTHING like that. You usually are using DI, so you'll have an interface that you need to resolve and do stuff. How is alive going to deal with that? ~~~ mattmanser Do a lot of people use DI? I thought that was all a bit of a fad like factories. Lots of extra code for little benefit. Especially in a statically typed language like C# where it gets rid of so many of the benefits of using it as a language. ~~~ briHass How does it remove anything beneficial? I look at DI, or really the dependency inversion pattern, as a guard that encourages better/more maintainable code. Can you write good code without it, sure, and you can write bad code with it, but it's much more likely that code written with it is easier to trace and maintain. Not to mention much easier to test. The configuration based, hot-swapping of dependencies...that I've never seen much need for even in larger projects. ------ baconner Alive looks super cool, but the $99 price for individual devs feels pretty steep to me. It's basically just a different way to interact with the debugger during test right? So im not doing so much pause, edit, continue activity? Or am I am missing something? ~~~ jaytaylor If it saves you even an hour of time over the course of months or years then why wouldn't it be worth it? With that being said, if it's not yet "stable" then I agree, a hundred bucks is quite pricey for an unfinished dev tool. ~~~ slg You can't spread the cost out of "years" because the individual license is only good for a year. I won't complain about the price because that is a value judgement that everyone will have to make on their own. However, it is always disappointing to see tools like this that an individual can't simply _buy_. Instead you have enter into a yearly licensing deal in which you have no idea what this software will cost in 12 months or even whether the company behind it will continue to be in business. These type of yearly licensing deals are the norm in enterprise environments, but they are harder to justify as an individual developer. ~~~ nightski Agreed, Jetbrains is moving to this model and it is disgusting. ~~~ mgkimsal They backpedaled mostly and offer perpetual licenses. I just wish they'd simply added subscription options in the first place vs going through all the hullabaloo. Perhaps it was a smokescreen, but that just feels very conspiratorial. ~~~ HerpDerpLerp mostly but not completely. After your year you have to downgrade to the version as it was when you originally bought. Removing bug fixes and new features you have got used to over your year of use. Mental. ~~~ mgkimsal That's what my 'mostly' meant. You can simply pay a 12 month fee and buy it 'in advance' and just use what you get, vs thinking about it as "I'm losing bug fixes". I'm still using PHPStorm 7.1 from a couple years ago, and it still works. Same concept would apply going forward, but... I still think they handled this wrong. ------ itgoon That looks very cool. Is it going to crush my processor? I'll give it a shot after I'm done with my work. ~~~ amadeusw No, all the processing is asynchronous. Depending on size of your project and complexity of the code, we can update within <100ms to a few seconds after your keystroke. ~~~ DougWebb _Is it going to crush my processor?_ _No, all the processing is asynchronous._ That's not an answer to the question. If every keystroke kicks off a compile- execute-report cycle, then the processor (and drive) are definitely going to be taking on a lot of additional load. It doesn't matter that it's asynchronous; all that does is prevent latency between keystrokes so long as your machine can keep up with the additional load. I use ReSharper, with pretty much default options because it's too much of a pain to figure out the magic combination of hundreds of options that will improve performance without disabling the features I like to use. ReSharper does its work on a background thread, but that doesn't stop it from making VS crawl when I open up a large solution after doing a scripted (external) rebuild. Async != Free Work. ~~~ eterm Yup, I was gonna say this. We use ReSharper, but even on our modern dev machines visual studio can really crawl after building. ------ DanielBMarkham I like it! There's a ton of stuff you can do in this space: lint-type tips, RT TDD, code "explaining", path identification, etc. Keep up the good work! Would love to see more of this as it comes along. ------ Too This should be combined with Code Digger, it's a tool for C# that can detect all the possible ranges of input to a function by working in reverse from all the possible outcomes. If a function might throw an Exception somewhere it will show you the input that leads to that code path. ------ ragebol For just running tests, I found [http://www.ncrunch.net/](http://www.ncrunch.net/) to be very handy. It puts a green/red/black dot before each line of code to indicate how it does in your unittests. ------ guiomie Pretty cool. Would it play nice if my code uses Dapper or Linq2SQL? ~~~ Permit It should! Fair warning, if you're not using mocks in your tests, it will be making network calls on every valid compilation. If anything isn't working you can report it on our public issue tracker: [http://github.com/CodeConnect/AliveFeedback/](http://github.com/CodeConnect/AliveFeedback/) ------ HerpDerpLerp How is this different to [http://www.ncrunch.net/](http://www.ncrunch.net/) which runs tests as you type, so you know if tests are passing before you even save the file! Edit: Well that looks creepy :) I don't know ragebol and apart from being a happy user I don't have a relationship with the nCrunch dude! ~~~ iheartmemcache I'm not the developer of either product, but it seems like Alive has Roslyn based which offers direct access to every step of the compiler. Right now it doesn't look like much difference (in fact I bet NCrunch is more stable and has better integration with NUnit and the rest of the ecosystem), but I bet (purely speculating) that Alive intends on expanding their feature set into something more extensive. Performance wise, assuming the Alive developers use Roslyn efficiently (which admittedly is difficult), they could offer a lot more semantic/syntax analysis at a way faster rate (i.e., think about solutions with 10s of projects and hundreds/thousands of classes, while having a dynamic dependency graph available-- unit tests, invariants, and even property-based QuickCheck-esque testing could easily at type-time [as in after the keydown event] or a few hundred ms after). These are all capabilities inherent of being Roslyn based though, nothing too special about Alive, just a benefit it has over NCrunch should they choose to go down that road. ------ ps4fanboy This is great, I wish more people where into live programming, it is the future. ------ tabulatouch Woah! Make it work with Unity3D and in general with graphic libraries. ~~~ amadeusw Are there any libraries in particular that you're interested in?