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Ask HN: Developers: How do you explain to people what it is you do? - dclowd9901 I try to explain what I do to people in a way they can understand. Rather than go into rote jargon about writing code and making objects extensible, I tell them that I have puzzles and tell a computer how to solve them as efficiently as possible. I think that sometimes gets through, but I feel like it still misses the mark.<p>So how do you guys do it? ====== chill1 I usually try to keep it short and simple at first: "I build education software." If they show further interest by asking a follow up question, I get a little more technical. I don't know why, but it continues to surprise me just how few people know anything about how the internet (or computers) work. ------ codegeek if nothing, tell them "I build stuff that will change your life. So buy it now!!" Jokes apart, first explain a problem that they understand. If they get the problem, _then_ tell them that you help solve that problem by [add whatever here]. Simple. ------ brk "I work with venture-backed startups to develop new technologies". Then, there are usually questions about some or all portions of that, "What's a startup?", "What do you mean by venture-backed", etc. ------ EnderMB "I build websites". I'm actually a developer for a full-service digital agency but when you get into developer territory it's rare that the conversation will go any further than "oh, that's cool". ------ AtTheLast I tell people I do user experience and user design for the web. Then follow that up with a Facebook or Google related example of it. ------ jamesjguthrie Keep it simple, I build software for phones. ------ shrughes I like the way my father explained my job to a golfer we were playing with: "He's a typist at a computer company." ------ orenmazor depends on who I'm talking to. for technical people I can tell the exact web product I'm working on. for grandparents and others, I "solve technical problems using a variety of tools. kind of like an engineer would by first drawing schematics, and then following them to construct a bridge" ------ bazookaBen i tell them "I make mobile games", in which case 99% of the time, they'll bring up Angry Birds. ------ piyushco "I make Apps for android, iPhone" ------ davidjnelson "I write software".

Google Adds Song Lyrics to Top of Search Results Points Searchers to Google Play - jamesgagan http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/22/google-adds-song-lyrics-to-top-of-search-results-points-searchers-to-google-play/ ====== zarriak It seems like this is a great example of the problem that Google faces. They have built up a good product line based off of the revenue from search and those products support search in turn by providing content and/or more opportunities for interactions(read advertising money). This in turn takes away from the sites that they are listing, making them the lifeline and the competition at the same time. The problem is making a search engine has evolved from listing the best websites for the user's request, it is about providing information as easy and quickly as possible. This optimization in turn takes away from sites dedicated to relaying that information. It makes Google seem as they are practicing monopolistic business, but they are really just trying to improve their product. It appears as if resolution can only come from splitting up the search part of the company with the rest (assuming it is split into only two entities). I think Google can resolve this by splitting up the knowledge graph results from the rest of search by making the feeling lucky button analogous to showing only what knowledge graph and information cards. They still would have a very dominant share of search, mobile, etc. but it would alleviate the connection of Google the search engine provider and Google the 21st century thesaurus. ~~~ blfr This is from the perspective of a site owner. From user's perspective, Google's best guess at the top, and a list of websites below is the optimal outcome (ie. what I want when searching). Splitting Google would result in a worse user experience. ~~~ kuschku Or it could result in a better outcome for the user, if the Search would include Knowledge Graph results from multiple sources. YouTube (another Google product) for example shows for videos that contain songs links to iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and Google Play. Google Search could do the same — list different places to get the content, etc. ------ jamesgagan As a consumer, I like this - saves me some clicks and spares me from ads. Can't be good for lyrics sites though. ~~~ Steko Spares you ads? The whole thing has been turned into a Google Play ad. Nobody wants to go to Google Play for lyrics, this is Google giving priority placement to an inferior search result. ~~~ ori_b I don't want to go to lyrics sites for lyrics. I have yet to find one that isn't awful, spammy, slow, popup and interstitial ridden. Maybe if there were some that weren't utter shit, I'd agree. But the thing is that before this, the only results I was getting were inferior search results. ~~~ andrewchambers Genius is pretty awesome. ~~~ Shog9 Ironically, Genius tried to game search results and now almost never shows up in them (for me at least). An (anonymous) search for "shake hands with beef lyrics" turns up azlyrics.com, lyricsfreak.com as #1 and #2, followed by Wikipedia (which doesn't have lyrics) and then metrolyrics.com - probably the best of a bad bunch. Tack "genius" onto the search and it'll show up, but right now it's hardly competing for first-page search results. ~~~ arfliw Genius ranks very highly for many, many searches. Even without adding 'lyrics' to the search. ------ btown Something about this seems familiar... Is there a legal distinction between a company forcing its operating system users to have its web browser preinstalled, and a company forcing its search engine users to have its lyrics search results "preinstalled"? ~~~ zaidf "forcing"? I think if you objectively reviewed Search's integration of other google services, almost every single time you will find it is to the benefit of the user(meaning they are not doing it just to get marketshare; it is actually a better user experience). ~~~ TrainedMonkey I think there is qualitative difference between comparing OS, which in case of Microsoft is ubiquitous[0], and a web site. Effort to use different from Google search is minimal, most people don't because Google is actually very good at providing relevant search results. In the end it is a feature, that will stop abuse of some lyrics websites[1] and make you be able to find lyrics you care about faster. Now a problem with this is that it gives Google more control over information we are presented with as they prioritize resources in their steadily expanding domain. In the long run I do not know whether this will be better for the users, but meanwhile immediate quality[2] of search results will definitely improve. [0] Especially 10 years ago when "user friendly" and "Linux" had no business appearing in the same sentence. There was much work done in that area since then, and now there are distros with much more focus on layman usability. [1] Shady SEO is very easy due to how repetitive lyrics is, it makes for perfect keywords. So you either need manual intervention to moderate the search results[1.1], or extensive tweaks to the search engine algorithm just for this niche, which is a hack. I rather think this feature is an elegant solution to that problem. Not quite same as prioritizing youtube helped reduce number of people going to shady sites to download songs, but in the same solution space. [1.1] Which is widely done for some of the other terms such as "credit" and "loan". [2] In the future Google could potentially censor some of the results which will lead to the decreased quality of search. ------ jack-r-abbit It is not like they are showing only their lyrics block and not a list of links right below it. With or without their lyrics block, they still show 10 results, so their lyrics block isn't bumping other sites off the first page. If you still have endless love for AZLyrics, fine... click their link. You still have that choice. I'll choose to take advantage of the much cleaner UI at Google Play. ------ realcul Not sure if it is pure innovative thinking or not having to worry about regulatory troubles but Bing has been innovating on ideas like this much earlier than Google. Irrespective of which company you like, it is always good to have competition in any market...keeps the companies on their toes. ------ extc Won't rights owners try to sue Google the same way they whine about lyrics sites? ~~~ salemh The Rap Genius licensing issue that took until 2014 [1] will be interesting with Google going after this space. Since Rap Genius seemed to get off the hook [2] with Google "easier" then others. I imagine Google can offer better terms and/or soft-velvet glove (traffic) then Rap Genius. I only bring up Rap Genius, because they seem to have taken over (admirable) as the foremost lyrics site. [1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/business/media/rap- genius-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/business/media/rap-genius- website-agrees-to-license-with-music-publishers.html) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957463) ------ at-fates-hands I must either listen to really shitty music, or incredibly obscure music because I don't ever get lyrics when I search for lyrics of songs I like. some examples: birthday massacre rain lyrics katatonia forsaker lyrics five finger death punch wrong side of heaven lyrics draconian she dies lyrics Patrick Reza Take Me Away lyrics ~~~ dfxm12 Search for "shake it off lyrics". As of right now, that leads to a bunch of non-google related results too. ------ sauere Rest in Peace AZLyrics, you will be missed. ~~~ johnmaguire2013 Really? The only lyrics sites I can stand are SongMeanings & RapGenius because they aren't coated in ads and people can explain stuff. AZLyrics is one of my least faves, with MetroLyrics coming in as a fave after the other two. ~~~ psykovsky The only lyrics sites you can stand are the ones who are burning through investors millions, you mean. ~~~ jessaustin If someone is going to spend a lot of money in order to provide a more palatable free service, it just seems sensible to take advantage of that? ------ curiously party in the usa lyrics still yields azlyrics.com but that might change soon. I welcome this, it saves a lot of clicking and viewing ads (not that I do since adblock is installed) but on mobile phones and such. ------ amk_ Edit: Fine, too rambly. Short version. Google Now or Siri are killing the page as a medium for certain types of content, and I would not be surprised if the info providers transition to an API-first model where the primary target is layout-agnostic and possibly supported by micropayments. ~~~ nl This is inaccurate. Google's primary source for their knowledge graph is semi-structured data on web pages, not APIs. Notably, that claim 1200M "facts" (of which 8% have "high confidence") extracted by understanding web page DOM structure. That compares to 140M "facts" from human annotations on web pages, with 0.2% high confidence (ie, "semantic web"). Given that the premise of your point is wrong it seems your conclusions are likely to be too. ~~~ amk_ My point is that the semi structured content that makes up theses web pages is being parsed out and displayed directly alongside search results. The parsed DOM is used as a defacto API, killing the need to provide any layout information whatsoever and killing page views, too. If this continues, many content providers (like lyrics sites) could transition to an information- serving model (API focused) and just forget about layout altogether. ~~~ nl You realize there is a close correspondence between the DOM and the layout in most cases, right? Google read the CSS as well, and uses the visual features as signal what humans will see as important on the screen. That's impossible with APIs. There are specialised cases where Google does use APIs: public transport and airline times. They are very special cases though, and for broad web search it seems unlikely Google will follow that model.

Ask HN: Widescreen or fullscreen monitors for programming? - codedivine Which do you prefer for programming? Widescreens or fullscreens? I prefer a 5:4 monitor to wider resolutions like 16:10 or 19:10. I have found the excess width to be distracting.<p>What is your typical tool of choice? I typically use Vim which does not usually have the sidebars common in IDEs such as Eclipse. Does the UI of the tool may affect your choice of monitors? ====== yan I prefer widescreen with multiple windows tiled horizontally. edit: Usually terminal+MacVim windows. Or sometimes, xcode windows, with left- most one being the project window. ------ mechanical_fish The nice thing about the widescreen is that it fits multiple emacs windows side-by-side, so that you can view substantial portions of more than one buffer at once (or two substantial portions of the same buffer). That said, the first rule of screen space is to have more of it. Whether or not it's optimally distributed is secondary. In web development there is always a use for more windows. (Docs, server logs, logins under multiple identities, multiple browsers pointing to the same thing for design debugging, IRC...) ------ Xichekolas I have Dual Dell 2408WFP's... lets me see four apps at once with plenty of real estate. Screen 1: Browser (showing whatever I'm working on) and gVim (with my code). Screen 2: Browser (with whatever references/interweb material I'm looking up), multiple terminals (tail logs or for messing with git/whatever). I use AwesomeWM (tiling window manager), so I don't have to bother arranging all this myself. Other tags (workspaces if you are from the gnome/kde world) have things like Pidgin and last.fm open. ------ johngunderman I prefer one widescreen next to one widescreen turned vertical. this way I can view plenty of code on the vertical monitor, and yet enjoy the benefits that the widescreen monitor brings. ------ TallGuyShort For virtually any activity I would do while sitting down at a computer/workstation, I think wide screens have a much more natural fit to a person's eyesight. I think they're just more comfortable to look at. On the other hand, I can definitely see a reason for vertically oriented screens in eBook readers and some hand-helds. I can't think of a time when I would rather have a more square screen. ------ bgnm2000 I prefer widescreen, with windows tiled horizontally as well on my mac. I use terminal with visor (google blacktree) which is sweet, and then a bunch of different spaces - coding w/ textmate for ROR dev. ------ rscott Why isn't this a poll question? Widescreen 22" + Macbook screen. Textmate for some things, but Xcode and its (many) requisite windows for iPhone stuffs. ------ socratees I use a Dell S2209W 22" wide panel monitor. Its way comfortable than using smaller monitors and i don't think i can go back to using smaller ones. ------ noblethrasher Widescreen, but I spend almost as much time in Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash as I do in Visual Studio and Notepad++.

Instacart Customers and Workers Are Revolting Against the App - alistairSH https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmj938/instacart-customers-and-workers-are-revolting-against-the-app ====== masonic The obvious solution here is for shoppers and their best customers to hook up off-platform and cut out the middleman altogether.

"Maybe" is one option too many - dk http://www.zeldman.com/2007/06/20/remove-maybe-from-invitation-systems/ ====== iloveyouocean For a really excellent, far more comprehensive and much better articulated series of articles pertaining to ratings/rankings, check out www.lifewithalacrity.com Some of the articles include: Using 5 Star Rating Systems, Experimenting with Ratings, Systems for Collective Choice, Rating Systems, Competitive Ranking Systems The ratings users choose are certainly influenced by the presentation of the rating opportunity. The result of forcing "Come on guys rate everything!" down users' throats is that if people really dont have an opinion or feel strongly, most likely they will indicate neutrality. If users have more of a choice about contributing a rating then only the users who have a strong opinion will take the time/effort to complete a rating and so you will end up with a bimodal distribution. The good/bad or star ratings are always useless to other users without the accompanying explanation of the review. ------ mynameishere _Let users choose from five stars, and they nearly always pick three_ Amazon has the problem of bimodal distributions for their ratings...nearly every user either votes one star (and bitches, "If I could choose zero, I would") or five. They've actually started sending emails to people requesting reviews to fix this problem (to get the silent majority to vote.) ~~~ aston I think the "liked it"/"hated it" options are basically enough all the time, at least in aggregate. RottenTomatoes.com seems to end up with good ratings despite reducing the answer space to green or red tomatoes.

Why Python is Slow: Looking Under the Hood (2014) - s16h http://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/05/09/why-python-is-slow/ ====== wruza >[boxed values...] The dynamic typing means that there are a lot more steps involved with any operation. This is a primary reason that Python is slow compared to C for operations on numerical data. Not exactly. Setting typecodes and vals doesn’t slow things down by many orders of magnitude. The main reason python is relatively slow is that there is no practical way to reason about what parts of program may be optimized out or leveled down to native datatypes and then restructured in a very efficient way. This is what optimizing/jit compilers do to achieve much performance; this one is the source of x100, not unboxing on its own. Technically, tracing jit that doesn’t care if you’re writing in static or dynamic, strict or duck typing can be done for any language, but (afaik) python is not very jit- friendly in general. ~~~ ryanplant-au Does JavaScript make it easier to reason about those potentially-optimizable areas? Which language features make it easier to optimize to the level that V8 is? (V8 being 7-10x faster than CPython 3 on most of the Benchmarks Game.) ~~~ chubot As far as I understand, one important difference is that JavaScript doesn't have __getattr__ or __setattr__ (or at least earlier versions didn't). You might not use those hooks a lot in your application code, but it seems that web frameworks and the like do a lot of reflection, which makes the code difficult/impossible to optimize (even at runtime with a JIT). Python also has __add__ (operator overloading) and JavaScript doesn't. This is a good talk about how subtle or crufty the semantics of something like "a+b" is in Python: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeSu_odkI5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeSu_odkI5I) The PyPy developers had to copy a lot of the implementation details of CPython, which doesn't always result in the fastest code. ~~~ mschaef You should take a look at the Chambers and Ungar papers on the implementation of Self. In Self, _everything_ is theoretically done through message send/dispatch. This includes field access, numerical operations, flow control... the works. (In a language with prototypical inheritance too.) What's interesting is that by the time they're done with their optimizations, they manage to get relatively close (x2, iirc) to native speed by essentially inlining everything they can and keeping enough metadata around that they can retain the dynamic properties of the languauge. Impressive stuff. (Which is probably why Sun hired them early in the Java/JIT days.) ------ dnautics Julia is all three, yet it's fast (allowing for jit, which in Julia is a one time cost). It's worth noting that those properties themselves are not what's critical, so much as designing around it and allowing for fast paths through critical code (locking down the dynamic types, first class array datatypes with packed forms)... ~~~ azag0 It's rather the degree to which Python is dynamic that makes it slow. PyPy could be considered an implicit JIT compiler for Python, yet it is still far slower than Julia. The level of magic you can apply to Python objects that the interpreter/compiler must support is just a different league than Julia. I'd be interested if someone could compare to JS. ~~~ pjmlp Lisp, Smalltalk, Dylan and SELF allow for the same kind of magic. The JIT developed for SELF is the genesis of Hotspot. JRuby guys have a quite good implementation making use of Graal, and Ruby is not less magical than Python. In the end it boils down to how much the community prefers to keep on using C, or improve PyPy. EDIT: Fixed auto-correction induced typo. ~~~ shellac s/Gradle/Graal/? In the case of python it's clear that the heavy reliance on c extensions is a blessing and a curse: it's kept python relevant in communities like science even though it isn't very fast. However one of the lessons of Graal seems to be that such extensions can seriously prohibit improving performance, since they are opaque to JITs. There's a few talks by Chris Seaton (e.g. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLtjkP9bD_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLtjkP9bD_U)) on the topic. ~~~ pjmlp Yeah, typo due to auto-correction. ------ hasenj Python is optimized for small programs being easy and quick (and pleasant) to write. Every other use case it fails in some way. For being slow. For lacking static typing. For lacking compilation. For having a GIL. etc. ~~~ baldfat DEPLOYMENT My ONE HUGE Gripe with Python. This and that Pandas (I understand why BUT it drove me away) Zero based for statistical work. Your math is 1 based and the language is 0 based. ~~~ billfruit Precisely the opposite reason R drove me away. R uses 1 based indexing.Seriously we should all be using Zero based indexing for all purposes. ~~~ peatmoss One can make an appeal to aesthetics, but that’s no differentiator. Or one could appeal to adherence to existing standards. Fortran is the oldest (portable) programming language and was 1-based. Or one could appeal to consistency with the problem domain. Again, math [EDIT: indices are] 1-based. Zero-based is consistent with C, but that’s about the best argument I can make for zero-based. ~~~ DonbunEf7 Maths is zero-based. I'm not sure why you think that numbers start with one; every formulation of the integers in modern maths starts with zero. ~~~ peatmoss Matrices, common in statistics because of applications of linear algebra, have long maintained the convention of i,j indexes starting with one. ------ lorenzfx I believe this article [0] (previous discussion [1]) from one of pyston's authors gives a _much_ better overview of why python is slow. [0] [http://blog.kevmod.com/2016/07/why-is-python- slow/](http://blog.kevmod.com/2016/07/why-is-python-slow/) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025309) ------ mikebenfield Although I use and enjoy Python for some purposes, I can't help by see all the effort gone into improving Python performance (including Pypy, Cython, rewriting code in C, etc) as fixing a self-inflicted wound. Why are we using a language whose semantics make it very difficult to execute quickly? ~~~ wyldfire Because virtually nothing is bound to anything until we get to this line of code, Python is the ultimate dynamic language. I find that the vast majority of Python code that I write is not processor- bound or memory-bound. It's disk or network bound (and still would be if I wrote it in C). It's also much simpler to teach programming in than alternatives. ------ chmaynard From the article: "Dynamic typing makes Python easier to use than C." The author gives no justification for this claim. Do any language experts care to comment? ~~~ winter_blue I'm a big fan of strong static type systems. I believe type-safety increases code quality significantly. I used to think several years ago, that the main benefit of strong static typing was code safety / eliminating a whole class of bugs. But I've changed my opinion. I now think the biggest benefit is that it makes the code _a lot easier_ for other people to read and understand. I mean I have multiple personal projects where I've used Python (which is a dynamically typed language), but these are _small one-off_ projects. But I think when working in a team, especially a large team, having types becomes a huge thing. Having types for objects is especially useful. Having types forces you to think more clearly about the structure of your data. It's really sad when I see `foo(bar)`, and I have no idea what the type of `bar` is, and if it's an object, I have no idea what fields `bar` has. I have to simply guess the structure of the various implicit types by looking at the code (sigh). It makes the code difficult to read, and rather unpleasant to work on. Not to mention, all the multitude of bugs that come from duck/dynamic typing. I don't think good statically typed languages are hard to use at all. Type inference has spread everywhere that the old argument of having to repeat your types doesn't hold anymore. TypeScript, Flow (JavaScrpt), Haskell, languages from the ML family are really good at type inference. Even the `auto` type inference in C++17 was better than I'd expected. ~~~ u801e > It's really sad when I see `foo(bar)`, and I have no idea what the type of > `bar` is, and if it's an object, I have no idea what fields `bar` has With a statically typed language, you still have to look through the code to find the definition of an object. I believe that can be avoided by having easy to access to documentation which would also apply to dynamically typed languages like Python. ~~~ winter_blue _> you still have to look through the code to find the definition of an object_ I haven't done this in the last 10 years. I typically use IDEs, and every IDE I've used has had a _" Go To Definition/Declaration"_ feature, and let you set a key binding for it. On JetBrains' IDEs, I've gotten quite used to pressing Ctrl+B to jump to a type definition's, and then pressing Alt+← to jump back to where I was originally in the code. ~~~ flavio81 > _I typically use IDEs, and every IDE I 've used has had a "Go To > Definition/Declaration" feature_ This is also available in some dynamically typed languages, working just fine. ~~~ dahauns "working just fine". No, not even close to the same level. ------ adenadel I thought this was pretty neat # WARNNG: never do this! id113 = id(113) iptr = IntStruct.from_address(id113) iptr.ob_digit = 4 # now Python's 113 contains a 4! 113 == 4 And now since the proper value 113 doesn't exist you have to resort to the binary representation on your system to revert back to normal behavior ctypes.cast(id113, ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_char))[3 * 8] = b'\x71' ~~~ whyever After trying this, 113 == 4 is still False for me. ~~~ quadratoc There was a slight typo in the article, the line of code should be ctypes.cast(id(113), ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_char))[3 * 8] = b'\x71' ------ nayuki I agree with this article. In practice, when writing number-crunching code in Python versus Java, I found that Python is usually 10 to 30× slower than Java, sometimes even 100× slower. See: [https://www.nayuki.io/page/project-euler- solutions#benchmark...](https://www.nayuki.io/page/project-euler- solutions#benchmark-timings) ------ ryanpcmcquen Counter? [https://hackernoon.com/yes-python-is-slow-and-i-dont- care-13...](https://hackernoon.com/yes-python-is-slow-and-i-dont- care-13763980b5a1) ------ tjpnz And yet there are entire industries built on the back of it. Everytime you see a a movie there'll be some Python code somehow responsible for the pixels you're seeing on the big screen. ~~~ criley2 This is perhaps a great example of why "speed" is a poorly descriptive term for software. In automobiles, we wouldn't call a large truck "fast" even though it has a much larger (and more "performant") engine than a small car. That small car is likely "much faster" than the truck, and yet cannot do most of the things the truck does. Sure, python is popular and important, but I don't think that popularity and "speed" are necessarily all that connected at all, except in use-cases where speed is the most important factor (say, financial transactions). When overnight rendering 3d graphics, speed is important but final product and ease of use are probably more important, since you can compensate for speed with a larger render farm. But more bank server aren't necessarily going to reduce transaction latency (in fact could increase it) so the gains there must often be at a much lower level. ------ jokoon How compatible are existing python libraries with pypy, and is the official python taking clues from pypy? Is there more work to do to make pypy even faster? ~~~ dr_zoidberg Some complex libraries needed special porting (eg. NumPyPy), and there was work under way to get rid of that and provide a CPython compatible interface. The CPython team does take clues from PyPy (eg: see the CPy3.6 dict implementation), but they are also a lot more careful (some might say "slower") to adopt changes. Both teams also seem to have some ideological differences on how to face the long term development of the language (usualy, GvR goes for "simpler" instead of "more performant"). ------ baybal2 A thing much bigger than GIL for Python is that in python bytecode, objects are used as primitives. ------ anon1253 Except it isn't really. Yes, Python is incredibly slow for day to day stuff, but the sheer amount of easy to use numerical libraries (numpy, scipy, scikit- learn, tensorflow, keras, opencv, just to name a few) make it one of the fastest out there for numerical computation. I tried doing some numerical heavy stuff on the JVM (with Java and Clojure) and it fights you every step of the way ... and that has static typing and all the things the article mentions. Of course, Python derives that functionality from C and Fortran … but just having that interop at your fingertips is magical in terms of productivity. I still get nightmares from working with the JNI. ~~~ pjmlp The point is not having to write C and Fortran in first place. ~~~ dr_zoidberg As a heavy user of numpy, I _use_ a lot of C and Fortran code, _without having to write it_. ------ lispm > Python being a dynamically typed, interpreted language 'CPython' is the defining implementation of the dynamically typed language 'Python' using a byte-code VM (and no jit compiler). bash-3.2$ time /tmp/bench.py 5000000050000000 real 0m19.763s user 0m15.015s sys 0m4.309s 'SBCL' is an implementation of the dynamically typed language 'Common Lisp' using a native code compiler. bash-3.2$ time /tmp/bench.lisp 5000000050000000 real 0m0.319s user 0m0.294s sys 0m0.017s The unoptimized code is roughly 65 times faster in SBCL compared to CPython - including startup time. ~~~ exikyut This is an unreproducible benchmark. Can we have the programs you used? ~~~ lispm See the comments in the original article for the python examples... The Lisp program is basically this: (format t "~a~%" (loop for i from 1 upto 100000000 sum i)) The Python code can be made a lot faster by using xrange and also reduce. But then the SBCL compiler can optimize a type declared version down to 0.07 seconds runtime for the script. (locally (declare (optimize (speed 3) (debug 0) (safety 0))) (format t "~a~%" (loop for i fixnum from 1 upto 100000000 sum i of-type fixnum))) ~~~ acdha > The Python code can be made a lot faster by using xrange and also reduce. This is a key distinction since it reveals that most of the difference is due to these programs doing different things. Changing this to compare the same thing shows why this matters: cadams@jupiter:~ $ sbcl --version SBCL 1.4.0 cadams@jupiter:~ $ python2.7 --version Python 2.7.14 cadams@jupiter:~ $ pypy --version Python 2.7.13 (84a2f3e6a7f88f2fe698e473998755b3bd1a12e2, Oct 05 2017, 16:34:13) [PyPy 5.9.0 with GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 9.0.0 (clang-900.0.37)] cadams@jupiter:~ $ time ./test.lisp 5000000050000000 real 0m0.209s user 0m0.194s sys 0m0.011s cadams@jupiter:~ $ time python2.7 test.py 5000000050000000 real 0m0.758s user 0m0.744s sys 0m0.008s cadams@jupiter:~ $ time pypy test.py 5000000050000000 real 0m0.123s user 0m0.101s sys 0m0.019s So at the end of that we've discovered two things we already knew: an interpreter is slower than a JIT given enough work to balance the startup time, and that allocating a list with millions of items and then immediately discarding it is more expensive than summing an iterator. Since Python 3 made range() lazy by default, the core developers clearly agree that this is better than allocating lists unless explicitly requested.

Compiler Warnings - ingve https://fastcompression.blogspot.com/2019/01/compiler-warnings.html ====== deogeo > If a warning message is considered not fixable, or not desirable to fix, > it’s preferable to remove the associated flag from the build chain. I like to use diagnostic pragmas ([https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Diagnostic- Pragmas.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Diagnostic-Pragmas.html)) in the vanishingly rare cases where I can't fix the cause of a warning. ~~~ berti This unfortunately gets messy when you're targeting multiple compilers, and in some cases multiple versions of the same compiler. ~~~ deogeo At least clang has it covered: [https://clang.llvm.org/docs/UsersManual.html#pragma-gcc- diag...](https://clang.llvm.org/docs/UsersManual.html#pragma-gcc-diagnostic) Don't know what the situation is on MS's and Intel's compilers. ~~~ raptorfactor The same functionality is available: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/cpp/preprocessor/warning?vi...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/cpp/preprocessor/warning?view=vs-2017) ~~~ MaulingMonkey And you can use _Pragma / __pragma to hide them inside (conditional) macros without #ifdefing up every call site. There are still edge cases where you can't sanely scope them relating to when templates are evaluated, being unable to use the pragmas at arbitrary points of an expression, warnings that don't respect the warning flags properly, etc. - but it works most of the time. That said, for warnings with high false positives and low value true positives, I'll just globally suppress the warning. ------ loeg Some context: the author is Yann Collet, the principal author of zstd, lz4, and xxHash. In my experience he is an extremely talented and friendly engineer. ------ kazinator > _-Wdeclaration-after-statement : this flag is useful for C90 compatibility._ This option is rather for developers who want to avoid declarations after statements in C dialects that support them. If you want to enforce actual C90 compatibility use -ansi or -std=c90. Otherwise you just have partial compatibility which is actually incompatibility. ------ olliej All of this seems fine, except for the floating point but. Floating point is completely deterministic, and has a very clearly defined set of behaviours. ~~~ wyattpeak I don't know much about the C standard, but the article states that implementation details are platform-specific. If that's the case, it's a very sensible suggestion. Sure, if the same system runs the same operation twice, the two values will be equal. But what if you're comparing to a stored value generated on a different system? ~~~ gizmo686 It doesn't even need to be a different system. Different compilations of the same program on the same system can result in different floating point results (either because of internal high-precision floating point registers being utilized differently, or the compiler making algebraically valid re- arrangements that change the floating point result). Additionally, many usages of == assume basic algebraic properties of numbers to hold. It is possible to use equality with floats, but require far more care than is typically worth it. ~~~ olliej If the optimization level changes the behaviour the compiler is broken. “Optimizing” by assuming commutivity or associativity of floating point is no less incorrect than optimizing by assuming string addition was commutativeand associative. ~~~ gizmo686 There is no requirement that optimization does not change behaviour. The only requirement is that the optimized behavior remains consistent with the standards. The point of the point on floating point equality is that the standards give enough room for variance that you should not use literal equality unless you know exactly what you are doing and have a good reason for doing it. As an aside, if your concern is that the standards impose too much restrictions, another popular option is the ffast-math option. We see this come up with strings fairly often in higher level languages where, sometimes, logical equal strings will happen to be equal because the runtime's interning system made them point to the same location, but there is no guarantee this would happen and the implementation is free to change it at any point. I believe I have also seen this behaviour come up with interning on some Integer wrapper types. ~~~ loeg > I believe I have also seen this behaviour come up with interning on some > Integer wrapper types. Python, for example: >>> 8 is 8 True >>> 8**1000 is 8**1000 False ~~~ olliej Because python is broken in this respect -- JS engines do exactly the same object optimisations and get comparisons correct. ~~~ loeg Meh. They're different languages with different expectations. "is" is distinct from "==" in both, and Python gets "==" right (obviously). Javascript doesn't really have any high ground here[0]. (In contrast, Python:) >>> [] == False False >>> object() == False False >>> "" == False False >>> {} == False False They're just different. [0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et8xNAc2ic8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et8xNAc2ic8)

Forget The Facebook Phone, Here’s Mozilla Seabird — An Open Web Concept Phone - stevederico http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/23/mozilla-phone/ ====== pavs Dude, there is post right now on the FP about this. Even assuming you didn't see it why would you submit a regurgitation of the original news source? Please don't make this site a TC RSS feed. Flagged.

C replaced Java at first place in Tiobe index - hamilyon2 https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ ====== legerdemain Can anything really be gleaned from the fluctuation of a language on TIOBE? Two years ago, Apache Groovy wasn't even in the top 50. Last December, it ascended to #11. Now it's at #31. Whatever the story was, it's too opaque to interpret. ~~~ JohnL4 The tiobe headline itself is about rust. Java will decline because (1) so many hate on it, (2) there's always the new shiny, (3) Microsoft will never give up. No single language will replace it, though. At least not for a long time.

Resource Compiler for Go (single executable deployment) - tebeka https://bitbucket.org/tebeka/nrsc ====== kingfishr This is a cool idea, and I love the convenience of deploying a single-binary app when using Go for servers. When deploying web servers, though, I'd prefer to leave the images and other static resources out of my binary, because this means I can use an rsync-based deployment with --copy-dest and --link-dest. --copy-dest means that deployments are blazingly fast (I only have to copy changed files) and --link- dest means that deployments are cheap on space (unchanged files are hardlinked to the copies). Granted, bandwidth and storage are cheap and getting cheaper, but it still adds up, particularly for large server clusters.

Transcriptic for YC biotech startups - pouwerkerk http://blog.ycombinator.com/transcriptic ====== jkimmel This is really remarkable. I've used Transcriptic in a research setting for a while now. From a user's perspective, it's like looking into the future, and it's awesome. From the business side, this makes YC a more attractive option for biotech startups. The life sciences are still very capital intensive. While the New YC Deal helps in this department, many businesses still need to look toward an STTR/SBIR grant from the NIH to get to the stage where they have a product to show investors. Moves like this probably won't change that for a ton of companies, but there are a few on the margin who may be able to pursue an idea through YC with the benefit of the extra $20K in fuel. ~~~ pw How does Transcriptic stack up in terms of price? Is it prohibitively expensive for lots of stuff or is it a viable option? ~~~ jkimmel We find it to be pretty competitive for our needs (PCR, genotyping, long-term storage). PCR is something like ~$1.50/rxn with our standard genotyping protocol, which works out to ~$0.30-0.40 more than the same reaction run in house. If I recall correctly, the cost per rxn goes down if you run more in parallel, because they share the same instrument time. Setting up that reaction might take me ~0.5 hours base, and 0.05 hours for each subsequent reaction prepared in parallel. Grad students are cheap, but even valuing my skilled labor at minimum wage, it's cheaper to use Transcriptic. ------ frisco Hey, I'm the founder of Transcriptic. We're pretty excited about this. Happy to answer any questions! ~~~ dnautics The biggest pain point I see in this market is that experimental parallelization is an intervention-heavy process. Ignoring the equipment costs, it's also capital-intensive (unlike say deploying to AWS). And finally, obtaining usable data still requires experiential knowledge. There's something about _knowing and feeling the data_ (yeah, that's awfully fuzzy) that is still an important part about obtaining good results [0]. So for any biologic process that is parallelizing the operators are going to want to own the machines anyways. In order to capture a real market, you're going to have to figure out a way to offer parallelization services - be given a non-parallel experiment with certain parameters and scale it up on behalf of the users. So, the user has an experimental plan and just 'hands it over' to transcriptic. I still worry about the experiential knowledge part, putting the experimenter one step away from the experiment is potentially counterproductive. [0][http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pro.2339/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pro.2339/full) In this paper, the grad student (and lead author) who had spent four years of her graduate work on a previous paper had a nagging feeling that the data were strange. By actually looking at the wells, she figured out post-publication (with nothing to gain) that the protein was sticking to sides of the 96-well plate and causing the observational data to be artefactual. Then there was the question of how to do more experiments to _prove_ that was going on. And then the political problem of convincing her grad advisor to publish a retraction (well at least it was a retraction worth a 10 page paper and a new citation. The story has a happy ending; she got a position at a pharma company largely on the back of her due diligence). ~~~ frisco I think the opposite is actually true: you get better data when you don't feel the samples. This is a highly unpopular view right now but I have to wonder what's going on when things like Amgen getting 11% reproducibility of foundational papers ([http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html)) are happening. There are things that are hard to automate because of their mechanical nature, but I think that for the reproducibility of science somewhat distancing the human from the process is a good thing. Of course, this adds short-term costs (which may sometimes be unacceptable) and requires a lot of behavior change for how people are used to working. I will say that we put a lot of thought into giving you the fidelity of interaction such that you can still make "breakthroughs from your errors" on Transcriptic, and improving those reporting capabilities are an ever-ongoing process. I'll also say that this challenge is bigger than just one company. Some things may make more sense to do via Science Exchange, for example if the method requires some very customized hardware or there are only a few experts in the world who are sufficiently familiar with an unusual method's sensitivities. I'm also excited to see what Riffyn comes out with to help labs understand where reproducibility comes from. We're just getting started, but I can't see a path forward that puts more humans at benches rather than less. The humans should be free to do real science. ~~~ dnautics I have exactly the opposite opinion. Even scientists are captiviated by scientism - the idea that there is something poisonous about human subjectivity and imprecision and that removing subjectivity (and gathering more data) is necessarily a good. Sydney Brenner, for example has a 'money quote' about the path that biologists take: "low input, high throughput, no output science". Note that this quote doesn't make sense in an environment that doesn't faddishly flock to high througput 'big data' solutions. Your example is greatly flawed. The biggest consumers of highly parallelizeable workflows is the pharmaceutical industry. Highly parallel medchem was a big fad and the number of drugs that it produced for its efforts is disappointing. The fact that 11% of Amgen's results are irreproducible is if anything a condemnation of parallel scaleup, at least in the context of an operator with a strong motive for selective interpretation. Another big problem is that when you bring your numbers up, you 'get what you are looking for'. Precision optimization can optimize for an artefact. I joke I like to make is that sloppy science is good, because if you keep seeing the same result under a noisy platform, what you're seeing is probably real and, more encouragingly, robust. ------ pinot Any interest in working with expression re fermentation down the line? CROs working specifically with .25-2L tanks are very tricky to find, price and deal with, and are not local to many biotech firms in the bay. About 25% of my time is spent just managing our CRO/CMO, and they only have 4x2L tanks. I used to work for a place with multiple parallel tanks (30+) that made DoEs expedient and was a great resource - but sadly not something I can tap into at my small biotech firm. Combining what you're building with something with a ambr250 or even just a bunch of Applikon micros or wellplate fermenters could see a lot of action (though something like the ambr250 would fit your business model better, robotics > people). I'll be contacting you for information about FACS, protein quantitation and cell viability work. Stuff I definitely want to farm out. ------ arca_vorago So someone would ship samples to you guys, then your LIMS/robotic automation handles data-flow and actual physical work? Where are you guys storing all the data? I have two hesitations to point out: 1) I worked in DNA, and the small little issues that cropped up on every major platform (MiSeq/HiSeq/iontorrent,454,etc) seems like it would make automation of fixes difficult. I guess if you are keeping a stricter list of reagents, parameters, etc, then you could help prevent this, but then people aren't pushing the edge science quite as much. 2) So much data! My systems used to generate over 200gb per day. Good luck downloading that via any api if you have anything but fiber. Do you intend to allow computation to be run on data as a cloud service? If so, I can see this going big places... as long as you allow full control of the VM for all the bio-hats and their custom wizjangles. I'm out of the industry and have one year left on my non-compete, but I wish you the best of luck! Especially on the LIMS integration: a good LIMS is freaking expensive! ------ steejk This is the first I've heard of Transcriptic, but it sounds amazing. Initially I was sceptical of YC working with startups which would have more conventionally come out of universities etc., but this is the sort of technology that has the ability to completely revolutionise scientific research. ------ corwinbad Great move Max! This is Omri (founder of Genomecompiler.com). I'm always amazed about how many biologists think their work is pipetting small amounts of liquids and performing massively low productivity experiments rather then their real work of increasing our understanding of nature and finding solution to real world problems (like disease, hunger, aging, running out of civilization critical commodities, etc) using the best available tools. Robots aren't taking our jobs - they help us be more productive so a biologist Ph.D. might in the future get paid like a CS undergrad! ------ thearn4 Very cool concept! I guess it's also another point to show that the number of jobs (in this case, lab assistants) that can't be automated away is getting smaller and smaller. Just an observation though, I'm not a luddite about this. ------ rjayatilleka Just to let people know, Transcriptic isn't the first startup in this market. Emerald Cloud Lab is another, and I'm sure there are others.

An API wrapper to Clarifai's image recognition demo - hackerews https://api.blockspring.com/users/orliesaurus/blocks/d54a2e2c28aebab4fe079ff547cea495 ====== adamatclarifai Adam from Clarifai here. As tommoor pointed out, this is just a thin wrapper around our demo at [http://www.clarifai.com/](http://www.clarifai.com/) (we're very flattered...) A real API will be out soon. It won't be throttled as heavily as the demo, and will be more developer friendly. you can sign up for early beta access at clarifai.com. ~~~ troels Wow. The classifier is really impressive. Will it be possible to train your own classifier on your service? I have a lot of clothing items that it would be useful to classify. I tried building my own with opencv, but I haven't had too much luck so far. I signed up for the api access - would be very interested in playing a bit more with this. ~~~ adamatclarifai Thanks! Training custom classifiers isn't in the roadmap for v1, but there will be a mechanism for providing feedback (suggesting new tags and marking errors), and we'll continue to improve our models based on that. If you have a very large (100k+ images) well-labeled repository to train from, send us a note at info@clarifai.com, we'll tawk. ------ thomasfromcdnjs I put in the link to my profile picture on twitter -> [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/488579015507050497/QvG1...](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/488579015507050497/QvG1ArTx_400x400.jpeg) ["black", "american", "woman", "man", "pitt", "brad", "senior", "worker", "group", "cuba"] Brad Pitt! Great work guys! ------ tommoor I don't know why this link doesn't go directly to the source: [http://www.clarifai.com/index.html](http://www.clarifai.com/index.html) ------ columbo Wow! This is really neat, I tried to find images that I didn't think it could process, the results are interesting. [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Blown_up_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Blown_up_electrolytic_capacitor.jpg) ["piranha", "fish", "food", "water", "gold", "dish", "crab", "kitchen", "glass", "silver"] [https://www.flippers.com/images/See-SHFA1_Caps&Mods- PCB.JPG](https://www.flippers.com/images/See-SHFA1_Caps&Mods-PCB.JPG) ["panel", "retro", "wine", "background", "design", "old", "tool", "letter", "art", "robot"] [http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11_lpi_trvrsmap.gif](http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11_lpi_trvrsmap.gif) ["background", "metal", "water", "man", "wall", "old", "abstract", "paper", "hand", "paint"] ------ dhammack Very impressive! Some cool ones it recognized: milk jug [http://cdn- jpg.allyou.com/sites/default/files/image/2014/01/...](http://cdn- jpg.allyou.com/sites/default/files/image/2014/01/400xvariable/i/2009/08/craft- a-birdfeeder-out-l.jpg) ["milk", "gallon", "jug", "product", "detergent", "plastic", "water", "soap", "canteen", "white"] mushroom cloud: [http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/Images/WE12.jpg](http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/Images/WE12.jpg) ["fire", "bomb", "mushroom", "flame", "letter", "font", "hell", "volcano", "smoke", "burn"] ------ sjtrny Very optimistic. Got a picture of a Hyundai. Reckons it's a BMW or Audi. [http://www.airnorth.com.au/sites/default/files/Car%20hire%20...](http://www.airnorth.com.au/sites/default/files/Car%20hire%20-%20Budget%20Hyundai%20i30%20-%20LR.jpg) ["car", "bmw", "auto", "sport", "3d", "vector", "white", "blue", "front", "audi"] ------ Navarr Tried a Pokémon card and got "semi relevant" results [http://sixprizes.com/wp-content/uploads/pikachu-next- destini...](http://sixprizes.com/wp-content/uploads/pikachu-next-destinies- nde-39.jpg) ["background", "card", "kid", "vector", "design", "school", "book", "frame", "cartoon", "dog"] ------ abbottry Facebook Logo: [https://www.facebook.com/images/fb_icon_325x325.png](https://www.facebook.com/images/fb_icon_325x325.png) ["cross", "sign", "plus", "pound", "medic", "first", "icon", "jesus", "christian", "aid"] ------ nivals Nice! Got some interesting results from a photos of iPhones and iPads. Curious to know how this compares head-to-head with the CamFind API at [https://www.mashape.com/imagesearcher/camfind](https://www.mashape.com/imagesearcher/camfind) which I've been thinking of using for a project. ------ orliesaurus Well this went better than I expected :) EDIT: context- I'm the one that made the wrapper for clarifai's API, loved the service since I heard of it, great to see people appreciate (from the number of API calls you guys have made so far) both the service and the small wrapper to the API! ------ NKCSS Only car was recognised here: [http://www.highsnobiety.com/files/2014/05/lamborghini- aventa...](http://www.highsnobiety.com/files/2014/05/lamborghini-aventador- galaxy-custom-dxsc-0.jpg) ------ btbuildem I tried a few images, for all of them "woman" was the first result (only one image had a woman in it). ------ Falling3 Combine this with a Markov Chain and you get a nice story teller. ------ stuaxo Try typing in A python stacktrace about JSON ------ antonwinter what the hell, i tried a few images from unplash and it worked flawlessly. how does this magic work? ~~~ antonwinter i've tried maybe 30 images now. All of them it nailed. i did find one that made me laugh. it doesnt know what a goat is. [http://picjumbo.com/wp- content/uploads/IMG_9454-1300x866.jpg](http://picjumbo.com/wp- content/uploads/IMG_9454-1300x866.jpg) ["dog", "australia", "deer", "bear", "cow", "mouflon", "lemur", "wild", "safari", "zoo"] ~~~ acomjean or a horse apparently. Did figure the jockey though... [http://plocp.com/user/Aram%20Comjean//The%20Belmont%202007/i...](http://plocp.com/user/Aram%20Comjean//The%20Belmont%202007/images/20070609-_MG_8284.jpg) ["race", "beach", "camel", "rodeo", "jockey", "polo", "toreador", "torero", "donkey", "dog"] ------ azianmike wow this is really cool! how is this done?! what kind of sorcery is this?! ------ robzz pretty impressive!

Making Music with Supercollider - subnaught http://subnaught.org/supercollider ====== subnaught OP here. Starting a blog to help me learn supercollider. Each post contains a finished track with the associated code, along with some musings on what I learned making it.

Adobe Launches "Adobe Edge" - HTML5 Animation Tool - dglassan http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/?v=2 ====== michaelpinto It's important to keep in mind that when push comes to shove that Adobe isn't afraid to eat their own — as someone who had a shop focused on Director and Lingo I watched then adopt Flash and really shift gears overnight even though they invested a great deal in Shockwave. I'll grant you that was a long tome ago, but they still may have the will to adopt in their DNA... ~~~ SimHacker That would have been Macromedia eating its own children, not Adobe. Speaking of eating its own children, can anyone explain why Adobe still sells Premier AND AfterEffects? Why hasn't one eaten the other? Who needs two different video editing programs? The only explanations I've heard from Adobe apologists and marketers is that one is a blah blah blah tool, and the other is a blee blee blee tool. But users need to both blah blah blah and blee blee blee blee, and there's no reason to switch between two different programs, or that one program can't both blah blah blah and blee blee blee. I think the real reason is that Adobe makes more money with selling two different products instead of one. Adobe should eat more of their children. ~~~ talmand I'm sorry, one product IS a blah blah blah tool and the other IS a blee blee blee tool. Some users do in fact need blah blah blah blah and blee blee blee blee at the same time but not everyone needs both, hence two separate products. Yes, Adobe does make more money on two separate products but that's not necessarily the reason for doing so. I guess Adobe makes more money by not implementing Photoshop features into Dreamweaver as well. ~~~ michaelpinto Actually shockwave and flash did the same thing, except at the time shockwave (Director) was actually more full featured with a programming language called Lingo (this was well before actionscript). ------ Stuk After seeing the demo I thought this was being done in canvas, but no, it's actually using css transforms applied to DOM elements. SVG is far more suited to this task. Also despite it's vector look, all of the lines are in fact pngs [http://wwwimages.adobe.com/labs.adobe.com/cdn/technologies/e...](http://wwwimages.adobe.com/labs.adobe.com/cdn/technologies/edge/resources/ferriswheel/images/Ferris- Wheel2.png) . Disappointing. ~~~ pavlov Shameless plug -- I'm making a HTML5 animation tool called Radi that outputs to canvas for realtime rendering. It also supports the <video> tag, so you can seamlessly mix vector graphics and pre-rendered video. It's available as a free beta (currently Mac-only): <http://radiapp.com> ~~~ Stuk Looks very interesting, it would be great if you could put a video of the app in action on that page. I don't have a Mac so I can't try it out myself. ------ chrischen Here's a company doing something similar: <http://www.tumultco.com/hype/> Seeing as how Adobe has interests in the prolongation of Flash, I'm not sure I'd trust their HTML5 app... ~~~ cookiecaper Adobe makes money from its Flash editing tools, so they probably do not care if Flash is replaced with HTML5 as long as their editing tools for HTML5 become the standard. In fact, Adobe may even be relieved that it looks like they may be able to drop Flash as a primary platform soon, because they obviously have difficult maintaining the plugin. There's still an opening for Adobe to make themselves the standard HTML5 IDE (as they are the standard photography "IDE") and still reap as much money as they were making from Flash, but without the overhead of maintaining the runtime. ~~~ sjs It'll be interesting to see how this compares to Sencha. What else is there? ~~~ jawher Genuine question: What does Sencha (a JS UI lib) have to do with Edge (an IDE) ? ~~~ simonw Sencha have a product called Sencha Animator: <http://www.sencha.com/products/animator/> ~~~ jawher Thanks ! ------ maxogden demo: [http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/ferriswhee...](http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/ferriswheel/Wheel.html) ~~~ vnchr Thank you. That was all I wanted to see on Adobe's site, but it just provided more bullet points. Why not advertise what your advertising with your advertisement? ------ wallflower Anyone remember Macromedia Fireworks v1.0? For a preview version, this is a good start. Try to extrapolate to when this might be in Adobe CS and include support for Actions macro recording and seamless roundtrip Illustrator asset embedding. I believe the power of Adobe is in the Creative Suite integration and ecosystem. This is just a standalone technology preview... ------ icode "Download and install the Edge Preview" This is so pre internet. ~~~ shrikant No, this is: [on clicking the "Download" link] _Please log in with your Adobe ID or create a new account to download the Adobe® Edge Preview._ WTF? ~~~ wenbert I immediately closed the window. I spent a few seconds looking for a "skip" link though. ------ mortenjorck Here's one area where Adobe can really innovate in standards-compliant animation tools: Automate preloading. Every "look at this doodad made in HTML 5!" demo I've seen betrays its technology in the loading. Bits appear here and there, images load one by one; no matter how solid the execution may be, it _feels_ brittle watching it load in, unlike a Flash app that loads first, then executes. There's no reason Adobe can't build in a simple loading spinner that hides the DOM construction as a piece of dynamic markup loads. It would go a long way toward making the content that Edge generates feel robust. ------ DanOWar Mac download: [http://trials.adobe.com/pub/esd/labs/edge/edge_p1_install_ma...](http://trials.adobe.com/pub/esd/labs/edge/edge_p1_install_mac_080111.dmg) ------ poundy The demo works well on the iPhone4 <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/> ------ catshirt cool thing is that it looks like the animation is pretty much generated from a json object (likely generated from the program). not that there's many other ways to do it, but still a nice simple implementation. [http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/ferriswhee...](http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/ferriswheel/Wheel_edge.js) ~~~ manish Was it only in my browser the train was going faster on the inclines than on declines? ~~~ georgemcbay I think this is because (as samwillis pointed out) the rollercoaster is actually going backwards, so the inclines are really the declines and vice versa. Why they are running the animation backwards is another question, though. ------ splatcollision Good work Adobe, it's important to prepare for the future. Sucks they couldn't make it a web app, then it could run on my iPad. ------ tambourine_man CSS3 is hardware accelerated on iDevices. AFAIK, it's the only way to get smooth animations on paltry hardware like this 3G iPhone. And those demos sure look smooth here. ------ hunter4 Tim Langdell will not be pleased. ~~~ sambeau Thankfully he has crawled back under his stone since the MobiGames debacle. Or has he resurfaced and I've missed it? ~~~ teamonkey This is getting somewhat off-topic but he's back. [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-28-langdell- judge-...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-28-langdell-judge-made- almost-100-errors) ------ leon_ That's pretty cool. I'm a programmer and have 0 clue about animation and design - but the UI makes it pretty straight format for me to create some primitive animations. (Which I can then include into my Mac app via a Webkit view). ------ tomelders Oh dear lord no. This is a bad move. ~~~ andybak Explain? And if your only answer is 'ads and crappy splash screens' then think a bit more deeply before you respond. People round here'd like a little bit more insight than a simple kneejerk reaction. ~~~ Maci I'll bite. I think the "fear" is that once a non-web weary designer get's going with this there will be absolutely no regard for performance impact since it will render fine on what ever pimped up work station is in use. Meanwhile on platforms with lesser hardware where the browser does not have a full hardware render pipeline the performance will likely be even worse then flash. In fact, with the ferris wheel demo Safari eats 10% CPU time, Chrome 30%, Firefox 50% on a single core. System: OS X 10.6.8, GF 9400M. Next thing to happen: "Disable javascript / css to save battery life on your device". :)

Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud: Alien Skin Software - spencerfry http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2536-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-alien-skin-software ====== patio11 _Don’t undercharge. Once you are confident that your product is great, don’t be shy with your price. The smart people will pay for it. The whiners will leave. We had a product for a while that was much cheaper than our other products. Those customers required far more tech support than the professionals who use our other products. It was a relief when we discontinued it._ I cannot repeat this lesson enough, and this is the thirtieth time I have heard another company chime in with it. Charging a premium means your worst customers go afflict a competitor instead. ------ maukdaddy Beat me to it :p One thing that really sticks out to me here is the emphasis on _NOT_ growing too large. I think this is a management view that is going to grow increasingly common in the future. Despite years of pounding in our heads that growth is the only avenue to success, people are finally realizing that great culture, lifestyle, and profitability are enough. Sure, some people will never have _enough_ and will continue to grow for the sake of growing. But the idea that you can lead a 20 person company for many years and enjoy the profits is very tantalizing to a lot of us Gen Y-ers that watched parents work themselves to death. ~~~ muhfuhkuh It really looks like that's a preferable future than the one we currently suffer with: large, immovable conglomerates that lobby for an upper hand in the market, have an open disdain for employee culture (i.e., the "take all the fun out of making video games" quote from Activision CEO, who probably wouldn't be anything without absorbing the then small-company Blizzard for World of Warcraft), and will outsource core competencies for the quarterly concall to sound 10% better over same quarter last year. I think the larger advantage is that, because of smaller nimbler companies, there is keener, more increased competition, leading to better products and more reasonable prices. Because of the lowered overhead inherent in smaller companies, more of them can be spread out. If you look at the wasteland that is the midwest right now, they could really use smaller companies dotting the landscape that work on all the sexy (hell, even unsexy or staid or sterile) industries that were heretofore dominated by gigantic conglomerates like Micrsoft, GE, Medtronic, EA and others. The days of "get big fast" is over. It caused web 1.0 to crash and burn; but from that there is a more mature 2.0, which companies like Facebook, 37 Signals, github, twitter, Valve represent and who are starting to inspire others. If small business truly represents the largest employer in the US, we have almost a national moral imperative to eschew building (and supporting!) large corporations and multinationals in favor of small ones, don't we?

Praise as good as cash to brain - edw519 http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN2343219520080423?sp=true ====== redorb I always told my old boss, its great to know Im doing a good job, but I can't pay rent with "Good jobs" ... ------ Tichy Are they also able to measure the degree of happiness people experience? That could be interesting, like economists could finally get a measurement of the utility curves of their subjects. ------ maurycy What's so good about cash? It is just a tool to accomplish your own goals. It is pretty sad if cash alone gives people, even temporary, hapiness. Actually, a lot of stuff would be more sexier if not paid. I feel that reward turns off my creativeness. To say nothing about that personally I hate praising. I perceive it to be empty. ~~~ JayNeely Good comment! ------ tomjen People have a need to belong - well yes, but why is that news let alone research worthy? ------ vchakrav Well, you can pay people to praise you but the reverse doesnt hold. ~~~ jrmurad The reverse holds for whomever "you" pay.

Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent - allerhellsten http://qz.com/167887/germany-has-one-of-the-worlds-lowest-homeownership-rates/ ====== cm2187 So in Germany, the interest on a mortgage is non tax deductible. The article doesn't mention it but I understand that property owners are also liable for capital gain tax if they hold the property less than 10 years. I think that makes sense. There is no reason to favor individuals investing into an unproductive investment (property) over productive investments (stocks and bonds, which enable companies to raise money to start new projects, create jobs, etc). Over-borrowing to bid the maximum amount one can to buy a nineteenth century house doesn't create any job for anyone, it just transfers wealth to the hands of the seller. ~~~ riprowan > There is no reason to favor individuals investing into an unproductive > investment (property) over productive investments (stocks and bonds). I beg to differ. I think that real estate, like farming, has critical societal benefits that are worthwhile to develop and maintain. Namely, it is very difficult to raise a family of four in a mutual fund. Investing in a home may is absolutely "productive." See, there are significant societal benefits to home ownership that you are not considering. For example: 1\. A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness for an entire family and many of their social circles. Even if all of them are unemployed, all of them have a roof over their heads. 2\. A paid-off home frees up cash flow. It allows the owner to divert his earnings into other activities or investments or reduce the amount he has to earn monthly. 3\. Real estate can be borrowed against. Try that with stocks. If you are an entrepreneur, your home is likely the asset you will use to acquire bank financing for your business. 4\. With unskilled / low-skilled jobs vanishing left and right, homebuilding is one of the few markets which still relies entirely on a giant low-skilled workforce. It's one of the few sectors that can keep a lot of people productively employed. I think there are valid arguments against stimulating homebuilding to reduce unemployment among low-skill workers, but there is nevertheless a societal logic here. 5\. In a time when wealth is centralizing as never before, investments in real estate distributes wealth locally. I think there are valid arguments against public policy to distribute wealth, but there is a societal logic here. 6\. Finally: taxing a home is very counterproductive to the well-being of the middle class and the poor. I'm sure in Germany the interest on a mortgage isn't tax deductible as you say, but I'd also guess that steps are taken to refund the property taxes for the lower classes. Otherwise you simply tax the poor out of their homes - a form of confiscation. I think there's a lot of sense in _NOT_ taxing one's first home, at least not if it's below a certain reasonably high value. All things considered, home ownership is empowering. A second home or income-generating rental property is a different story, but one's domicile should be unconfiscatable by the state. ~~~ cm2187 > _Namely, it is very difficult to raise a family of four in a mutual fund._ It is difficult to ski without skis. But most people don't buy skis, they rent them. Renting skis do not mean that no skis will be manufactured. There is a need for house, houses will be constructed, irrespective of whether people will over-bid on them or not. > _A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness_ Stocks and savings are equally a safety net against loss of primary income. > _Real estate can be borrowed against_ Borrowing against your home to finance your business is no different than selling some stocks to invest into your business. In both cases you are using previous savings. > _I think there 's a lot of sense in NOT taxing one's first home_ Why? Again you are assuming that the alternative to owning a home is renting one and having no savings. The cost of housing (renting) would be much lower in a country without massive over-bidding on property. There is no reason to give a tax benefit to this particular type of investment (property) over any other types of investment. ~~~ dasmoth > > A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness > Stocks and > savings are equally a safety net against loss of primary income. Landlords and letting agencies can be kind-of funny beasts, they're not necessarily happy to have an unemployed guy as a tenant even if he owns a pile of shares. ~~~ Scarblac So? It's not as if they can kick you out of the house you live in. Not in Germany, anyway. ------ DocTomoe Being German I want to pPoint out that the article leaves out one cruicial detail: Building your own home puts you into debt for quite literally the rest of your life. We do not like debt. ~~~ buro9 Yup. Germany has one of the lowest adoption rates of credit products such as the humble credit card out of nearly all Western nations. Debt is not liked. Edit: From the same site, the linked article at the bottom has the answer: [http://qz.com/262595/why-germans-pay-cash-for-almost- everyth...](http://qz.com/262595/why-germans-pay-cash-for-almost-everything/) A better link: [http://www.businessinsider.com/you-have-to-understand- german...](http://www.businessinsider.com/you-have-to-understand-germanys- long-standing-fear-of-debt-2012-7?IR=T) ~~~ premium-concern Yep. "Don't buy things if you can't pay for then." sounds reasonable, but some other countries seem to disagree. Not surprised that those countries suffer from government shutdowns over how much the debt ceiling is raised. ~~~ thesimon >suffer from government shutdowns over how much the debt ceiling is raised On the other hand: The government shutdown because of the debt ceiling seems just like "Stop hitting yourself" on the playground. And Germany's budget is far from balanced. ~~~ kriro Nominally Germany has a balanced budget. I agree it isn't really balanced and the big zero is just achieved via some shifting around of things. However the fact that the government jumps through all sorts of hoops to be able to say the budget is balanced is at least an interesting indicator that it does seem to matter to enough people. ~~~ premium-concern Even government budgets have to adhere to some standardized schemes of reporting. See also rating firms. Otherwise even the US would have a balanced budget and no debts. (Ignoring the fact that the US is the main force behind trying to change the account rules to make them look less bad.) ------ LeanderK I am a German CS-Student and currently renting in a shared flat with 4 other students. We call it WG (living-community) and its really popular not only with students, but i know a lot of young professionals and even middle aged ones that share an apartment (it gained popularity in the 60s, so i think its more of an culture thing that older do not share a flat). If you are in a partnership, you can move out and share a smaller one with your partner, but if your not in a partnership (or not that close yet) i wouldn't want to miss living in a shared apartment. You come home, talk about your day, cook together and on the weekend you can go out together. There is always something going on. I can't imagine living in my own apartment all by myself. Working long and then coming home into an empty, dead, dark apartment with no one to talk to. Serious question: Why is it not very popular in other countries? ~~~ rmc > _Serious question: Why is it not very popular in other countries?_ Because some countries have much, much worse tenants rights. I moved from Ireland to Germany and in Ireland: * There is basically no protection for rent increases, some people are being told their rent is increasing by 50% * Can't change your apartment. Not allowed to paint the walls, nearly all come with furniture, better make sure you don't damage any of it. * Oh the landlord/landlord's relative wants to live in the apartment. Eviction time for you. * You give your landlord your deposit. Let's hope they can find it again if you move out. * By default, no pets allowed. And many landlords will say no. * Did I mention about the rent increases? ~~~ premium-concern In Germany: \- Rent increase limits \- Larger changes need landlord's approval (changing walls and stuff). A lot of smaller stuff can be done on your own and doesn't require asking the landlords. (Many landlords are happy if you want to paint the walls etc., though.) \- Only smaller apartments (often intended for students) come usually with furniture \- The deposit has to be put on a special, locked bank account. The money can only been withdrawn if both sides tell the bank in writing that the rent contract is over \- Depends on the size of the pet ~~~ pluma Actually IIRC the law was changed so tenants only have to make sure the walls have a neutral appearance (i.e. usually white woodchip wallpaper) when moving out, so they're pretty much free to decorate the place as they want as long as they don't outright demolish or damage the walls. There used to be a requirement for tenants to renovate the apartment (i.e. thorough cleaning, new wallpaper and white paint) before moving out but that requirement has been reduced to "besenrein" (literally "broom clean", i.e. no rubbish or dirt). Damage to windows and existing fittings etc is deducted from the deposit but tenants have the right to a formal inspection with a signed report to avoid dubious claims. The "Kautionskonto" (the special bank account) is widespread but not universal. However there are also co-operatives that invest your deposit and actually pass on the interest to you when you move out (these apartments are rare though). Some specifics on pets: fish and caged pets (e.g. rodents) are generally allowed within normal quantities. Cats require approval but disapproval is practically impossible unless there are very good reasons. Dogs always require approval and disapproval is more likely. Many contracts explicitly allow specific pets (including dogs). If another tenant was given permission for a dog, it's hard or impossible to make a case for forbidding a similar dog. "Kampfhunde" (attack dogs) may be more problematic. ~~~ premium-concern > However there are also co-operatives that invest your deposit and actually > pass on the interest to you when you move out (these apartments are rare > though). This is not optional. It is required by law. Interest from deposits belong to the renter. ~~~ pluma Sure, but the difference is that they actually invest it. Normally the money pretty much just sits there. ~~~ premium-concern Given the size of the deposits, and the ROIs of available low-risk investments, does the difference really matter? Skip a single CappuFrappeGingerPumpkinLatte (or what people buy in cafes in SF) and you just got more money than any investment on the deposit can ever make. ~~~ pluma Depends on the size I guess, but generally that feeling of "oh, look, my money did some work for me" leaves tenants with some happy thoughts on moving out. ------ whack The Germans seem to be far ahead of the curve here. From a financial planning perspective, buying a home results in: 1) The vast majority of your assets becoming concentrated in a single plot of land, in a single neighborhood, in a single city 2) Your future mobility to pursue jobs in other cities, becoming significantly constrained If you want to invest your savings, then invest them in the stock/bond markets. If you really love real estate investments for some reason, invest in a REIT fund where your assets will be diversified across thousands of properties, and fully managed by others on your behalf. Pursuing a national policy of home-ownership makes little sense. ~~~ coldtea > _Your future mobility to pursue jobs in other cities, becoming significantly > constrained_ Perhaps the idea of people who haven't adopted this is that, unless they like doing so, humans should not have to live like nomads moving here and there to pursue this or that financial opportunity, but instead should be allowed to grow roots in some place, help shape it and improve it, connect with their neighbors, etc. ~~~ Kalium People are allowed to grow roots, shape and improve a place, and connect with their neighbors all they like. This is the state of places like the USA today. People aren't allowed to demand that the economy provide them with all the means they might wish for to do these things in any arbitrarily selected location. ~~~ marcosdumay > People are allowed to grow roots, shape and improve a place, and connect > with their neighbors all they like. Well, their landlord may disagree. That is, if they are renting... what is what this discussion is about. ~~~ Kalium That's covered under the second point. ------ gumby The idea that owning a home is a great investment is an article of faith, not evidence. Imagine if large public companies owned most of the housing stock and rather than buying a house you invested in these companies. Instead of bearing all the location and liquidity risk of owning a house, you would spread that risk over large numbers of markets. In fact being stuck owning a house in an unfavorable market can keep someone from moving, which reduces labor mobility. ~~~ cmdrfred It really depends on where you live. I live outside of Philadelphia. My mortgage, taxes and insurance is less than $1200 dollars for a 3 bedroom house. I'd pay at least $1200 to rent a crappy 2 bedroom apartment and rent just keeps going up around here. Consider, even If my homes value stays completely static (according to Zillow it went up a 5 percent this year), in ten years time I will be paying considerably less mortgage than what that apartment will rent for. ~~~ jessedhillon Yes, but there's a reason why the crappy 2br costs as much as your house. That reason might not appeal to you, but it exists and has a specific monetary value. ~~~ techthroway443 Could you explain the reason? ~~~ shostack I'd guess it was referring to the fact that there are geographical, cultural preferences etc., not to mention employment opportunities that cause the Bay Area, NY, and other extremely expensive cities to be much more popular compared to Philly. Not to knock your choice, but many people including myself would never consider living there. ~~~ cmdrfred I don't think that explains why the apartment building 5 minutes away in a worse town (higher crime, access to lower rated schools) rents a 2 bedroom for more than the cost of my mortgage, taxes and insurance. My belief is that the people in that building don't have the access to capital to buy a home, and thus the landlord is able to arbitrage his access to capital via a bank in order to charge rents that are rather high in comparison. ~~~ gumby It's the opposite: the cost of mortgage is fake-subsidized via tax exemption and since everyone thinks ownership is the "goal" the supply of rental properties asymptotes to the equivalent price. Plus because of the bias to home ownership there is less rental stock. The reason I say it is "fake-subsidized" is straightforward: say you make $100K per year. A reasonable expense on housing is 25% of your income -- 25K per year or about 2K/month. Luckily for you, you can use the full 25K because you won't be paying income tax on the money when you buy the house. So you can buy more house...except all other buyers making 100K can do the same. If you had to pay after-tax dollars you could only pay, say, $1500/month -- but so would everyone else you're competing with. In essence the tax subsidy only helps real estate agents and those who want to live off the appreciation of their house...which is a risk (yes the long term trend is upwards, but not necessarily where you live, and not necessarily when you plan to retire). And let's not forget that almost all the mortgages are held by the US government. It's a highly distorted market, and while I believe it developed with good intentions, it's not at all clear it's good for the majority of citizens. ------ WA On the other hand, many Germans believe: renting is paying someone else, buying is paying yourself (which is nonsense). Especially in more rural areas, buying/building a house is considered a big achievement in life. People are even willing to move from a smaller city to little towns just to be home- owners. Buying a house can be a net loss over the years, if you're not located in a major city. Especially in East Germany, house prices are declining. See this graphic [1]. Everything yellow basically doesn't yield any returns. Housing prices in orange and red areas decline over the years. But even in green areas, there are so many knobs you can turn to make buying or renting more feasible than the other. It boils down to lifestyle decision: Do you want to live in your own house or not? If you prefer to rent: Are you willing to save money by other means? Because buying a house works for many people simply because they're forced to "save" a certain percentage of their income every month. I prefer renting, because of the flexibility. I put quite a bit of money in stocks instead. [1]: [http://cdn3.spiegel.de/images/image-726182-galleryV9-uttw-72...](http://cdn3.spiegel.de/images/image-726182-galleryV9-uttw-726182.jpg) ~~~ sickbeard Frankly the only people who say this are investors. If you look at it from a purely investing perspective it makes sense to buy a house and then rent it out, rather than buy a house and live in it as an investment. But most people are not investors, they want a home to raise their kids and be a place they belong. That's the disconnect ~~~ jpetso In Canada, there's a capital gains tax exemption for your (owned) primary residence. If I wanted to live in a given place, it would be stupid to buy the place, rent it out, and rent another place myself with the rent money minus the income tax I paid from it. When selling the place, I owe capital gains taxes on it. Taken together, that ends up being a worse deal for me than merely buying what I need and using it for myself, tax-free. Of course, what renting gives you is the flexibility to live in a smaller place and avoid overpaying for extra space that you _might_ want to use at a later time. Still, the savings from renting a smaller place have to be greater than the tax expenses that I get charged for renting out. ------ mrottenkolber Germany is a two-class society divided into landlords and renters. A landlord will usually not own only one but ~3-20 houses that total to ~15-100 flats. The landlords often are renters themselves. When compared with big housing companies, private landlords require bigger profit margins, leading to low quality maintenance of existing houses and ex- orbital rents. Especially in crowded cities, rent regulation is non existent and its a sellers market, inflated by wealthy students that rent expensive micro-flats during university. You or your parents don’t own houses, and are self sufficient on a regular job? Well, you are shit out of luck then. As much as 70% of your income will go towards your rent, effectively financing the better-off and the further expansion of their inefficient renting businesses. ~~~ fwn Spending 70% of your income on rent is far from inevitable in Germany. ~~~ LeChuck Not only far from inevitable but impossible in a lot of cases. When I was looking for an apartment in Germany most (all? I can't remember) landlords wanted to verify that my income was at least three times the rent. ~~~ mrottenkolber Well, that can’t work out in all cases, obviously. Remember that a significant chunk of the people don’t make 3x of a low rent in many towns. ------ Normal_gaussian The only liberty that renting provides is the protection from the whims of the housing market. Aside from that it takes liberties right left and centre. I cannot structure my house and life as I want from painting and shelving through pets and kitchen appliances. I cannot fix something without causing a hassle and days off work. I cannot register a business here. I am at the whim of my landlord. Renting in the UK is a pain in the arse. I do to see renting as particularly positive for the individual. ~~~ imtringued On the other hand it eliminates the NIBMY problem. Since the tenants do not own their home they don't have the pressure to protect their investment. The landlord receives returns on his investment through rent on a monthly basis which lessens the risk of a sudden development reducing the value of the home. Home owners that live in their own home on the other hand face the full risk since they can only recoup their costs when they sell the property. ~~~ Normal_gaussian Which introduces the problem of "Whatever, it isn't my mine I will just move away when the area gets shit" leading to lower quality stock. On my current street, opposite the flats further up, there is regular fly tipping and various illegal activities. The fly tipping can take weeks to be dealt with as nobody rings the council (I've started emailing the council when I notice it, but I don't walk that way often). Renters just don't have enough skin in the game to maintain the communities. ------ standel It's an interesting article. I'm from Belgium, one of the highest house owners countries. Even though it's true it's a life-long debt and it might be risky (in case of crisis), housing is still considered as a Long Term Investment so that you can pass that investment to your children (after heavy tax deduction :)). I find interesting the article does not mention who actually owns all these houses and who benefits in the long term. After all, renting has a guaranteed zero ROI. Also, recently, I've been looking at housing market in Munich and it's very very expensive. Renting is ~20% more expensive than in Brussels and acquisition is +100% more expensive. So, although I admit I do not know rest of Germany housing market, I have some troubles thinking why Munich would be more expensive than Brussels. And I certainly miss, from that perspective, why German system would be more interesting. ~~~ coldtea > _After all, renting has a guaranteed zero ROI._ A guaranteed zero ROI is better than a negative ROI which you can get with buying a house (e.g. the house you can resell it drops due to the market and you can't afford the mortgage for some reason...) ~~~ standel negative ROI on investment is the risk component of your investment. This is true of any investment. Stock being certainly higher risks than housing and still people invest a lot in stocks. But I should have said renting is a sunk cost. There is no investment component at all in renting. ~~~ kdamken _Stock being certainly higher risks than housing and still people invest a lot in stocks._ I would say low cost index funds are a much lower risk investment than a mortgage. They also have the advantage of being very liquid in the case of actually needing your money. Rent is not a sunk cost, this is a common misconception. There are many good reasons to buy a home, but do not think of it as an "investment". Compared to other investment options, it's a pretty terrible one. I highly recommend reading this article to learn more - [http://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a- terrib...](http://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a-terrible- investment/) ------ vslira According to the article, mainly: 1 - Government doesn't subsidize homeowners; 2 - Renting rules are reasonable for renters, increasing supply which makes renting affordable. There, saved you a click. ~~~ easytiger The government doesn't subsidies home owners in the UK and it is considered very very expensive, apparently, by many. ~~~ MagnumOpus The government does subsidise home owners through nearly a dozen different schemes[1], landlords through a dozen more[2], and the mortgage banks through another score[3], which is the reason why prices are very expensive indeed. [1] freedom from capital gains tax, RTB, HTB equity loan, HTB mortgage guarantee, HTB ISA, Forces HTB, NewBuy, AFHOS, Shared Ownership Scheme, Key Worker Scheme, Home Ownership Scheme for Cripples, and that is just off the top of my head [2] rent floors through LHA, tax deductability, ability to flip residence between first and second homes for zero cap gains tax, freedom from inheritance tax beyond the usual limit... [3] state bailouts for all major banks, gurantees, QE, QE2, QE3, liquidity schemes, credit purchase schemes etc etc ------ adrianratnapala I agree it is a good thing for Germany to have so much renting. Indeed I think home-ownership will be the #1 driver of inequality in other contries over the next generation or two. Those countries will have policies that lcaim help poor people buy houses, but the effect is to just inflate prices and increase financial risk -- as the world has already seen. The one thing that would really help -- increased supply is blocked by a powerful home-owners lobby damanding zoning rules and other restrictions. In Germany the bloc is powerful, and probably gets more goodies than it should. But at least here they are constant building new housing. ------ beguiledfoil Having lived in jurisdictions that limit annual rent increases via a rental index and jurisdictions that do not, I prefer the former. In America such action is dismissed as a price control, unfortunately for me. ------ josefresco How does Germany handle retirement? In the US, your home is seen as an investment, one that can partially fun retirement or depending on the market, pre-retirement income. ~~~ nommm-nommm >In the US, your home is seen as an investment Historically a very poor one. [http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/05/...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/05/10/why- your-home-is-not-a-good-investment/8900911/) >"Capital gains have not even been positive. From 1890 to 1990, real inflation-corrected home prices were virtually unchanged." >From 1890 -- just three decades after the Civil War -- through 2012, home prices adjusted for inflation literally went nowhere. Not a single dime of real growth. For comparison, the S&P 500 increased more than 2,000-fold during that period, adjusted for inflation. And from 1890 to through 1980, real home prices actually declined by about 10%. Not to say that a house is a bad thing. A house can be great! It provides shelter, stability, and can provide a vast amount of joy and pride. Its a very poor investment vehicle. Its a very bad idea to have 100% of your wealth tied up in your primary residence. Diversification is a key to financial stability everywhere. ~~~ bzbarsky > home prices adjusted for inflation literally went nowhere Yes, but what does that mean for money invested in houses? The reason this is not the same question is that money invested in houses is leveraged, at least in the short term. Simple example of how this can work: You buy a house at 20% down and an interest-only mortgage with a fixed interest rate of 4%. Inflation averages 3% and your house's price grows at exactly inflation. You live there for 40 years and then sell. To make our numbers simple, let's say the initial price was $100k. So you put $20k down and take out a $80k loan. Each year you pay $3.2k in mortgage interest. The price of your house after 40 years is, in then dollars, $326k. You sell, pay off the $80k loan, and have $246k left. Let's consider the alternate situation: you rented for those 40 years. How much did you pay for rent? Chances are, it's no less than the interest on your loan (if only because a landlord would have that interest _and_ other expenses). In practice it probably went up over time, unlike your payments, but let's pretend it didn't. You invested your $20k downpayment in the stock market. What nominal return do you need to get to end up with $246k at the end of 40 years? The answer is about 6.5%. If inflation really averaged 3%, then that's a pretty decent stock market return, and that's all assuming that the capital gains treatment of the house and the stocks is the same (it's _not_ in the US; houses are exempt from capital gains tax to a large extent). Obviously if you actually pay off your house all this goes out the window. ;) Likewise, if the house goes _down_ in price the leverage acts against you. Realistically, houses are an awesome investment if you buy at a time of low- ish interest rates, and then before you've really paid off a large fraction of the house inflation spikes. If house prices simply keep up with inflation in that situation, you can really win out. People who bought in the US in the 60s and sold in the 80s or 90s did quite well, on average. ------ VLM Article misses the hyperinflation of the 20s and the capital markets in the 50s. By the time the cold war made it apparent that 20s style economy destroying reparations would not be paid, renting was already baked into the cake. Residential real estate is non-productive and post WW2 Germany had not use for a capital drain if anything they needed capital along the lines of the Marshall Plan so its not like anyone was interested in wasting capital in a modern USA style housing bubble. ------ sleepyhead And how is that working out in Berlin now? Rents in Prenzlauer Berg and Neukölln increasing significantly every year. There wasn't a need to buy before because rent was dirt cheap. That's changing fast. It's obviously going to push out those who are poor but perhaps this will lead to more people realising the benefits of owning property. ------ adrianlmm The culture is so much different in México, the first thing you do when you start working is to buy a house even if rents are cheap. ~~~ yolesaber What's the average house price tho ~~~ chilicuil It highly depends on the zone, in Mexico City surroundings you could get or build a house for probably USD 100k+, in downtown it could easily be 500k for a full house or 200k for a department flat. It could sound cheap but the average salary is low too, so you can easily be in dept for the next 25-30 years. Many people buy or build outside of the border city and spend 3-4 hours everyday commuting. In general, I think people try really hard (sometimes during its whole life) to buy/build its own but I don't see that happening much longer, specially for young people who start working at an older age and has additional aspirations. ------ bogomipz I would be curious to know or hear if anyone thinks this trend has been altered since 2008. For close to a decade now we have had extremely low or in some case negative(in Europe) interest rates. Thats a lot of cheap financing. As the article points out the data is from 2004. ~~~ MandieD I would be shocked if it hasn't. Here in the greater Nuremberg area, prices have been going up steadily for the past 3 years or so. It took us a year to make the winning offer on a reasonably-priced house. We got a 15 yr mortgage at 1.6% from the local Sparkasse (think Savings and Loan), though we did put down a traditional (high) down payment. So why did we buy? My (German) husband's fear of inflation finally surpassed his fear of debt to accommodate my Anglo-American need for my own pied a terre :) Rents are going up around here, and even though there's the 15% over 3 year limit, that's still a lot over the long term. It was nice not to feel like we _had_ to buy a house, though. That gave us time to save up, to know what we really wanted in a house and to be really certain that we wanted to stay in this region. ------ androidfox I think in small cities people still buy houses. When they cannot afford the price they rent. Or is there really some strong reports that this happens in Germany only ~~~ chrisper Yes, I agree with you. Reading the comments here seems weird to me, because where I grew up owning a house is pretty much normal. I grew up in Southern Germany where there are a billion small towns. So most people are owning for sure and not renting. This may not be true in large cities, like Munich or Berlin. ------ tiatia Sure. Housing prices in metropolitan areas are sky high, thanks to the asset price inflation of the ECB. Hey, even a house in a tiny village easily sets you 300k Euro back. The secret of the German export"wunder" is extremely low wages. "Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent." Yes. Because they can't fucking afford a house. Riddle solved. Move on. ------ merb > more than 93% of German respondents tell pollsters they’re satisfied You only trust the statistic you created yourself. That is not a true statement. ------ bogomipz I realize that Berlin is nothing like the rest of Germany but I noticed that the rental housing stock there seems to be pretty tight. There's a fair amount of construction going on but it looked like a premium housing stock that was going up. I assumed these were probably for sale but maybe they are high end rentals? ------ adrianratnapala Can somone explain what the article means by: > Germany also loosened regulation of rental caps sooner than many other > countries, Does that mean the amount of rent control was deregulated? I thought the rent control here in Germany was pretty strict -- at least in the sense that the landlord can't increase the rent during an existing tenancy. ~~~ fuzzy2 Rent can be increased, of course, but only within limits. Limits that the tenant must enforce “manually” by going to court. ~~~ k__ I know people who live in a flat for about 20 years now and they don't pay that much more than 20 years ago. So it seems to work fine ------ varjag So who then owns the property to rent out for most of the Germans? ------ pyb Who owns most of the homes then ? Institutional investors ? ~~~ adrianratnapala The home ownership percentage is still 43%, so not that low. Landlords seem to be the usual mix of older, upper-middle proffessionals that you see in other countries. It's just a bit more concentrated. Also there are many houses which have two or three appartments. The owner will live in one appartment, and either have a different generation of their family in the other ones, or else rent it for money. ~~~ ygra In my home city (Rostock) a large portion of flats are owned by a single, large-ish company. A stark difference to now (Tübingen) where most flats are owned by individuals. Personally it's much easier to handle contractual stuff (which renting always entails) with a company instead of a person. At least landlords here tend to have trouble distinguishing contractual interactions (reducing rent resulting from unfixed issues, complaints about things to be fixed, etc.) and dealing with them as a person. With the landlord living just two streets away they're sometimes inclined to take things personal and show up on your doorstep. ~~~ pluma I live in two places in Germany: a city of one million people and a small town of 16,000. In the city the apartment I live in as well as most buildings nearby are owned by a stock company that owns 42,000 apartments and is mostly (88%) owned by the city. In the town the apartment is part of a building owned by an elderly couple living a few blocks away. Compared with the company, dealing with the private landlord is a hassle. He's not very mobile, so every interaction basically takes place in his living room. He's also of course not doing this full-time, so he's not always up to date on all legal aspects or all of the necessary paperwork. It's nice to see private individuals owning land and houses in principle, but from a pragmatic point of view the company is far easier to deal with. Their scale allows them to have offices with actual business hours and problems can be handled as routine whereas with an individual every little thing is of course special. Because the company is mostly owned by the city, they also invest in long-term projects and community building -- which a private individual naturally can't do as easily. So far I haven't had any problems with either of the two, but I'm fairly certain that having an actual conflict with the private couple would be a far greater issue than taking the company to court -- not in the least because in a small town everybody would hear about it and because they're private individuals it would be seen as personal. ------ wineisfine It seems to me a huge problem when they retire? ~~~ pluma If you run out of money, the state pays for your housing. If you saved money like a good citizen, you're paying out of your own pocket.

Crash-Only Thinking - zdw http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/10/29/crash-only-thinking/ ====== oretoz I have been reading Ribbonfarm for sometime now and I really like how Venkat analyses things. But to me, the problem starts after I finish reading those articles as I really don't know what to do with that knowledge. So I have started to summarise what he says which incidentally is the exact opposite of how he likes to write i.e. write long pieces with almost every conceivable point covered. And to me, the TLDR version of most things he says on his blog is this: \- Life is messy so don't look for smooth contours. Instead, indulge yourself into the messiness. This is quite similar to what I felt when I (partially) read Antifragility by Taleb. I am sure there are many nuances but there was one TLDR version of that book that kept popping up in my head and it was this: \- "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." So the best strategy is not to avoid death but to make sure you get yourself into situations where death is a real possibility. ------ EdwardCoffin This idea of applying crash-only principles to life and business reminds me a lot of how Hubertus Bigend [1], a character in William Gibson's [2] late period trilogy [3]. This was especially apparent in the third book, Zero History [4]. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubertus_Bigend](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubertus_Bigend) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson) [3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Late_period_nove...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Late_period_novels) [4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History) Edit: formatting ------ kukla Here is a summary of the crash-only software paper at muratbuffalo blog. It is a really neat concept. [http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2011/01/crash-only- software...](http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2011/01/crash-only-software- hotos03.html) ------ fideloper What? Did Venkatesh write this by crashing into the keyboard? It feels like the author is breathlessly moving on from point to point like a stream of cociousness. ~~~ jeffdavis +1 The point went between software, business, life, and biological systems with no segue at all. And it doesn't ring true for me. If you just collapse on the ground, you can recover and pull yourself up, and heal your wounds. But it's much more advisable to lie down gently on a soft surface.

Ask HN: What's one change you'd make to up conversions on our startup's website? - jimmygatz Hi,<p>I know this is my first post, so apologies if it seems I’m exploiting the HN community. I’ve been lurking for a while and it’s quickly become my favourite forum. I really enjoy the discussions here and I’ve learned a lot from them (I have 7 pages of notes taken from HN threads on everything from cold calling to resources for learning Python). I haven’t contributed because I don’t feel like I have the knowledge to add anything of value to the discussions. In any case If this thread is inappropriate please delete it and I apologize in advance for the inconvenience.<p>Now, for my question. I&#x27;m a University student in the UK, and with two friends I started a business called KitchPack selling packs of kitchenware and bedding to University students – delivering directly to their accommodation before they arrive. The idea is to save the hassle of having to lug everything from the other side of the country&#x2F;world or the time and expense of buying it all upon arrival.<p>We launched last year at our University and sold out in 2 days. Since then, we’ve partnered with 32 Universities&#x2F;Landlords across the UK. Each of our partners has their own affiliate website (e.g. www.kitchpack.co.uk&#x2F;standrews) which they market to their students through contractually agreed upon channels (i.e. social media, welcome packs etc.) in exchange for a commission on each sale. In addition we also have a global website for people who aren’t with any of our partners to order.<p>As broke, non-technical students we’ve had to bootstrap the website on a £200 budget teaching ourselves HTML&#x2F;CSS&#x2F;PHP&#x2F;JS to make it happen (we’re hooked on programming and have started learning Python). We’re proud of the result but we’re aware that it could be much better, and we’d really appreciate some brutal feedback from the knowledgeable folks on HN on what you’d change to make our website convert better.<p>Here’s a link to the global website:<p>www.kitchpack.co.uk<p>Thanks in advance for your time,<p>Jose ====== Gustomaximus Firstly, this website is 90% there. My 10-odd year experience says you can tweak a bit more conversion but it's going to be minimal and I would spend time on distribution & marketing. Otherwise from my look-over; First thing I noticed is no Google Analytics. Are you running some web analytics? If not this should be your first (and easy) update so you can monitor what is happening on-site. Second I'd look to simplifying messaging. For example - you say 'Cosy bedding packs for students'. Why have 'for students'? There are lots of copy points like this that can be stripped and focused. Have a read through and see what you can remove. Store/FAQ/Contact US - you can probably get rid of the headers saying what the page is. It just pushes content down with little benefit. I tried the order process (York St John University) and it got stuck at 'order with paypal'. Should this be working? I tested from Australia so that may have an effect. And take anything I said here with a grain of salt. A/B test changes. Opinion is never fact. ------ joncalhoun I doubt there is a single thing that will drastically increase conversions, but here are a couple things I would try: 1\. Retargetting with Perfect Audience[0]. The idea is that not everyone will buy from you when they first visit your site, but by showing them some ads after they do you increase the chances that they come back and buy something. These people are especially useful to target because they have shown interest in your product. 2\. A/B Testing with Optimizely[1] or a PHP equivalent such as [2]. If you want to update your site to increase conversions, A/B testing is probably the best way to do it. Basically you just want to propose new changes, then test them alongside your current site to see which ones perform better, then go with that one. This one is tricky though, because without enough traffic to your site a/b testing is a lot less reliable. [0] [http://www.perfectaudience.com/](http://www.perfectaudience.com/) [1] [https://www.optimizely.com/](https://www.optimizely.com/) [2] [http://phpabtest.com/](http://phpabtest.com/) \- I haven't ever used this so you may want to do some research yourself. ~~~ jimmygatz Thanks a lot for the response, I really appreciate it. PerfectAudience looks great, I've installed it and am reading about it now. As for AB testing are there any good resources you can recommend to learn about it? We have no idea where to start with regards to what to test initially. I'm assuming "conversion funnel analysis" tools like Mixpanel should also guide our decision. Can you recommend any good resources to read about that also? Sorry for all the questions and thanks again for your quick response. ------ soneca I think you should focus on changes that will provide bigger gains. From joncalhoun comment I heavily endorse the retargeting sugestion, but I don't think you should worry so much about AB test for now. AB test depends on some heavy and constant traffic and a more predictable knowledge of your audience behavior. I think you are too early on it to gain a lot from AB testing. Another sugestion is assortment and marketing. I think you already have very good channels and niche, but you might exepriment a little more. Please, read all this presentation: [http://www.heavybit.com/library/video/2013-07-16-michael- dea...](http://www.heavybit.com/library/video/2013-07-16-michael-dearing) For example, i would suggest you try the market for your product for imternational students. Exchange might need the exact same product, but you will have to validate it and validate the channels for it. This is an example of assortment, but you should really see the video above and develop your own ideas about to find new markets and scale a little more. And from what I could see you are doing great. Very well done validation, distribution and website. I predict a lot of success for you. ~~~ jimmygatz Cheers for your comment, I'll take a look at the presentation now and get back to you - looks interesting. Thanks for the kind words too, we really appreciate it. ------ griffinheart Fix the mobile version its incredibly broken. It seems when you scroll to the testimonials some js kicks in and reloads the web page. On a side note, great to see more Portuguese entrepreneurs :) if you wanna expand to Japan give me a shout. While not being a student this is something i would've used after i rented my empty apartment here. ~~~ jimmygatz Cheers for the heads-up, we'll fix that today. Are you Portuguese yourself? We're definitely looking to expand internationally next year. Would be cool to get in touch. ~~~ griffinheart Yes i am, check my email on my user profile. ------ timhargis Best article I've read on this that's free. [http://conversionxl.com/13Ways- ConversionXL.pdf](http://conversionxl.com/13Ways-ConversionXL.pdf)

Will it happen one day: you open HN in the morning then... - victormustar https://www.evernote.com/shard/s299/sh/a979e6e0-c79d-4123-af7e-09878a4728f4/a976d5f5204b42865784b0f607ef75c4 ====== victormustar I'm sure I'm not the only one waiting for it :) ~~~ julien_c +1 PS: Hey victor :)

Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Aung San Suu Kyi at Barcamp Yangon 2012 - jfxberns https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150599276797567.406584.189050577566&type=1 Some photos of Aung San Suu Kyi giving the opening speech at Barcamp Yangon 2012. That's all. ====== jfxberns Two years ago in January 2010, Yangon had their first Barcamp. People were afraid to talk politics. Most of the Internet was firewalled. Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest. Two years later, Myanmar is awakening and filled with hope for the future.

A polite rant on mobile UX - toportyan http://blog.hipwerk.com/a-polite-rant-on-mobile-ux/ ====== dr4g0n > The so-called “ow zone” is a zone that is hard to reach with your thumb, > like corners of the screen. The image that goes along with this point demonstrates the areas that are hard to reach for right-handed users, ignoring that ~10% of people are left-handed and have trouble reaching the opposite corners. Your design shouldn't assume that two particular corners are bad and the other two are fine, _all_ four corners should be used for uncommon options only. ~~~ ovulator I’m right handed, but I use my phone with my left hand. Most of the time because I need my dominant hand to do something more complex. I don’t know if “handiness” really determines the hand in which you hold your phone. ------ emehrkay "Android is Android" I don't like the fact that Google's apps, all of them, feel foreign on iOS and OSX. Chrome has its own PDF renderer, settings pane, maximize behavior (before Yosemite), other little things. The iOS apps feel like the Android ones. Google seems to be creating its own little OS inside of every other OS and the baseline is Chrome (OS). Wasn't there an effort, or talk about, to have Chrome do its own thing in Windows 8? This is why Material Design is important to Google. It targets the lowest common dominator, web browsers, and seems like it runs the same on a powerful computer or low-spec'd phone. While Material looks good, I feel that they may have held back a little because of browser limitations (you cannot do overlay blurring like iOS, for example). Anyway, a lot of people love the common feel of apps across platforms. People seem to really like that about SublimeText and Chrome. I personally don't. I thought it was in poor taste when Apple made Safari and iTunes behave as if it were on OS X when running on Windows and I think Apple even had its on OS X-style update windows for the windows apps. It's a fine line. As a developer Id rather code once and ship than to figure out all of the little idiosyncrasies for every platform. As a certain type of user I want apps to act like the other apps on my platform of choice, most users probably don't care or notice though. ~~~ netcan I don't care much about native feel. When the things I like in a platform aren't preserved (cmd-comma for preferences), I get annoyed. When the things I dislike (OSX maximize) aren't preserved, I like it. Overall, I think a little convention breaking is good. First, code once is a genuine advantage. It means faster releases across more platforms and more benefit to users. Second, it generates a little internal competition. If more apps break OSX maximize and users like it, maybe Apple will change it. In the best cases, the freedom to invent the wheel yields gradually improving wheels. ~~~ DanBC > In the best cases, the freedom to invent the wheel yields gradually > improving wheels. Except on mobile we have a bunch of reinvented wheels of varying non-round shapes and they all suck, leaving the user to guess what weird combinations of touching, tapping, swiping, double fingered tapping, etc will perform the desired action for this particular app. ------ lucaspiller > Network data access costs a lot of money in some countries Very much this. I live in a country which has country wide LTE coverage in populated areas. While the network is fast, data is very expensive. Here 1GB of data in a bundle is around 35 USD, where as back home I can get 25GB for the same. I have mobile data turned off for most apps because of this. Everytime I open one (even if it works perfect offline) iOS pops up "Mobile data is turned off for XXX". ~~~ toportyan Thanks. In the past I downloaded some large files and I had to pay heavy money for them, so, as a developer, I will keep this in mind for a long time :) ------ podgib I couldn't agree more with point one on the 'ow zone.' I really can't understand why since ICS, google insists on putting so many important UI elements at the top of the screen, even as screens are getting bigger and bigger. ~~~ toportyan That's right. I have a few more thoughts on reasonable screen sizes, maybe I'll write another blog post on that topic as well. ------ Ambadassor > Depending on your target audience, strive for accessibility, create layouts > that can be used while e.g. driving, try to make your application adapt to > the environment (for example mind the time of the day) Spotify (at least the iOS version) does this both wrong and right. When you browse for music, the app offers playlists based on the time of day. This is great, as the time of day has a lot of influence on the mood you'll want your music to convey. On the other hand, player view got one thing wrong. In this view, you can swipe down anywhere to exit the player view - as the player is "minimized" when you're browsing for music. However, swiping down anywhere really means _anywhere_ \- even when you're trying to skip the current song, and your finger happens to move down a little (maybe because you're driving), it minimizes the player rather than skipping the song. The minimized player is a smaller touch target than the playback icons, which makes returning to the player view and ultimately skipping the song extra-hard. ~~~ toportyan Thanks for the example. One of the motivations behind this article was to draw attention to the handedness of the mobile user and to the fact that the mobile user's attention is usually divided, the mobile user is usually 'multitasking' while using a smartphone. Under such circumstances, the user could easily miss a button that is not placed in the best location. ------ CheckHook Spotify has a massive UX flaw. To access the options for a track there is a button on the right hand side, this is also where the scroll menu appears. I often find myself half way up the playlist when I wanted to queue a song. ~~~ untog On Android? That's where I experience this same infuriating problem. ------ onion2k At what screen size will the "ow zone" problem become moot because it's impossible to use a phone with one hand? Are we already there with phones like the Galaxy Note 2 and iPhone 6+? ~~~ sp332 If you double-tap the iPhone 6 home button, it moves the content of the screen down so you can reach it with your thumb. ~~~ DanBC That doesn't sound particularly discoverable. That sounds like a power-user keyboard shortcut for what should be simple functionality. ~~~ sp332 Most of the touchscreen functions are not discoverable. Pinch-to-zoom, long- press, swiping with multiple fingers, etc. It's very easy to do though, not what I would call a power-user thing. Remember there is only one physical button on the front of the device, and this is one of the things that it does. ~~~ DanBC Yes, I misuse "power user" to mean "someone who reads the fine manual" or "someone who does a websearch to learn about nice features". ~~~ sp332 At least for some features like pinch-to-zoom they included very clear examples in the massive ad campaigns. I don't remember seeing this feature in an ad but it wouldn't surprise me. At least it's on this page [https://www.apple.com/iphone-6/design/](https://www.apple.com/iphone-6/design/) ------ RyanMcGreal Sidenote: at the top is a "tl;dr" link to a summary of key points at the bottom. The link is a named anchor #toolongdidntread. When you click it, the page scrolls down to the bottom but the location doesn't change to the anchor. That means you can't hit "back" to get back to the top of the page. It's just a small thing, but I find the cumulative weight of little touches that break basic browser functionality for marginal aesthetic reasons really start to grate on me. ~~~ toportyan Thanks for the observation. I'll fix this UX issue :) ~~~ RyanMcGreal True to your word. Nicely done. Thank you! ------ Someone1234 I haven't held a phone with one hand since 2011. I do mean that literally has I've owned a 5.1-5.2" phone since then. Therefore don't use my thumb to interact with it at all. The whole "The 'ow' zone" section assumes small phones, small hands, and right handed users. ~~~ cauterized Just because you don't doesn't mean that nobody does. Ever tried to use a phone two-handed while holding onto a subway pole? Or walking home with groceries? Or holding your kid's hand? ~~~ Someone1234 > Just because you don't doesn't mean that nobody does. The article claims though that everyone does which is what I take issue with. ~~~ cauterized > The reason behind this term is that in many cases Mobile Users hold their > device with one hand, and perform actions using their thumbs. Many, not all. It's enough of a problem for enough people that developers should pay attention to it. ------ wffurr The standard android and iOS navigation controls are directly within the "ow zone". Application "up" in the top left, system "back" in the bottom left. App switcher in the bottom right. The "go/search" button on the keyboard, bottom right. ------ detaro Article is fine, but: One of the worst examples for the "above the fold" image: a) it is pixelated like crazy and to big to comfortably read its contents, b) the headline is really hard to read and find, because it is white text on a background of white text on black... ~~~ toportyan Thanks for pointing that out. I will change it to something that fits better. ------ Ambadassor The part about Android actually applies to all mobile operating systems - they would all rather you'd use their native UX language than invent your own. ~~~ toportyan That is correct, the user is used to a platform's behavior, and, in my opinion respecting the native UX language will keep that specific platform's user happy.

A good problem to have - escapegoat I have a web app hosted on google appengine. I built it for folks who suffer from chronic disease (including myself). Anyway the app has grown to about 1100 users who visit every day and now appengine wants a couple of bucks every few days to keep the lights on. Right now the app has no advertisements and is free. I would like to keep the app free with ads or charge a nominal subscription -- say a buck a year. I think that certain companies who cater to my disease might want to advertise on it.... I am not sure how to proceed in the best way.( I got in to engineering not marketing/business after college ) Any suggestions on a good way to monetize this thing? ====== thiagofm Put on some(only some) google adsense. They pay really high for any disease keyword.

Pigeon Maps – Maps in React with no external dependencies - mariusandra https://mariusandra.github.io/pigeon-maps/ ====== ramshanker That was like Running maps locally. My first guess was it must be serving from some super local cdn cache. So tried looking for the data serving domain. It feels even more awesome after looking at latency number. This is loading all data from maps.wikimedia.org. Tracing route to maps.wikimedia.org [103.102.166.240] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 <1 ms 3 ms 2 ms 192.168.1.1 2 7 ms 6 ms 6 ms abts-north-static-076.220.160.122.airtelbroadband.in [122.160.220.76] 3 8 ms 5 ms 9 ms 125.17.2.173 4 7 ms 10 ms 6 ms 182.79.181.72 5 51 ms 51 ms 65 ms 182.79.149.237 6 47 ms 50 ms 47 ms 182.79.198.2 7 73 ms 73 ms 72 ms 182.79.224.181 8 73 ms 73 ms 72 ms 14907.sgw.equinix.com [27.111.228.186] 9 79 ms 79 ms 93 ms upload-lb.eqsin.wikimedia.org [103.102.166.240] Now Google Maps seems to be serving all data from root domain www.google.co.in. So here we go. Tracing route to www.google.co.in [172.217.167.35] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 <1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1 2 8 ms 5 ms 6 ms abts-north-static-076.220.160.122.airtelbroadband.in [122.160.220.76] 3 6 ms 6 ms 5 ms 125.18.20.57 4 10 ms 7 ms 6 ms 72.14.205.93 5 42 ms 44 ms 42 ms 108.170.251.113 6 8 ms 7 ms 14 ms 72.14.234.117 7 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms del03s16-in-f3.1e100.net [172.217.167.35] So even after getting additional latency penalty of ~60ms, it still feels snappier! Imaging it could be even more faster with local CDN nodes. 60ms = ~3 Frames on 60Hz Monitor refresh rate. ~~~ jakecopp Especially with a local image cache! ------ neurotrace I just want to express how snappy this feels. It really does feel so much faster than other solutions. Good work! ~~~ petepete It's actually faster than running OpenMapTiles locally on my old development machine was! Excellent work. ~~~ SahAssar This is using prerendered and cdn-cached PNG files. openmaptiles usually uses pbf vector tiles, which needs to be rendered in js. It is to be expected that this is quicker on any halfway decent internet connection. ------ arayh Personally, I've been really annoyed with the slow, unresponsive Google Maps on my phone when my reception gets a little bad. I'd definitely like to try comparing this against Google Maps with the same poor connection (packet loss). The 25kb compared to 200kb for Google Maps makes a huge difference! Actual rendering speed seems a lot faster as well, which is another huge plus on my dated smartphone. ~~~ freehunter I'm not a web purist who looks for the most minimal libraries and works overtime to minimize my JS and HTML and CSS, but there is certainly something to be said about the old mobile web vs the new mobile web. I remember in 2006/2007 streaming YouTube videos on an EVDO mobile connection. Meanwhile these days unless my phone says LTE, Facebook won't even load my news feed. Google Maps seems to be the worst, even on my recent Macbook Pro and 60mbps Internet, scrolling feels like I'm pushing heavy furniture across an unfinished concrete floor. I can almost feel it scratching and scraping and resisting every attempt to pan left or right. In the era of "mobile first" and PWAs and all that, how is it that we require a rock solid Internet connection and a super fast processor with gobs of RAM just to get a shitty experience on the web? And if either one of those drops in the slightest, you're locked out solid. ~~~ burtmacklin amen. the real world is being pretty stubborn about flakey and slow internet, despite what those living in the SV microcosm experience... ------ russx2 What are the cost implications for using this (in terms of the backend maps providers)? I looked at MapBox's pricing, for example. Does that still apply when using this? Presumably so but I find the distinctions a bit confusing in the JS maps world. ------ throwaway2016a This looks like really great work. Completely unrelated and irrelevant observation though... I found the use of buttons to mimic checkboxes feels a bit odd to me. Also, Github repo link for those who want to see the source or star it, since there is no link on the demo right now: [https://github.com/mariusandra/pigeon- maps](https://github.com/mariusandra/pigeon-maps) ~~~ mariusandra Thanks! I added a link to the github page on the demo. And for the checkbox buttons... oh well :D ~~~ lytedev I thought that was a rather clever lightweight toggle button for a proof-of- concept! ------ ben-schaaf A lot of people seem to be saying this is incredibly fast, but for me it loads only about as fast as android Google maps and the pinch-zoom/pan are incredibly choppy with massive input lag. ~~~ acdha Yeah, on iOS it’s noticeably slower than {Google,Apple,OSM} and significantly choppier than LeafletJS even without the buggy gesture support. ~~~ mariusandra Unfortunately I have no access to an iDevice for the remainder of the week as I'm traveling for work. If anyone can help debug this and perhaps even submit PRs, it would be greatly appreciated! ~~~ ben-schaaf For me this was happening on a mid-range android phone using Firefox. It's fine in chrome. ~~~ rapnie Same here. Android/FF. But still a bit snappier than Google Maps. ------ ex3ndr How is it even possible to be that fast? What's the secret sauce? ------ bobwaycott Isn’t React an external dependency with a host of dependencies of its own needed to build? Or does this mean it only depends on React and nothing else? ------ dsego Kudos, like leaflet for react! Does it support vector tiles? ~~~ mariusandra Unfortunately not. Currently vector tiles are outside my personal scope for the project, but I of course welcome PRs. ~~~ steve19 Does it support drawing poly lines? ------ pmlamotte How did I miss this a week ago? Looks great! I recently whipped up a quick hobby project where I'm displaying a map on an old kindle by running wkhtmltoimage on a server and displaying the png. It's got a giant delay in responding with a lot of it due to Mapbox initialization time. ------ polskibus Does anyone know if it is ok to deploy tiles used by this library inside intranet, in sites without internet access? If so, what is the recommended way of doing it? ~~~ gorbypark Tiles are generally just static PNG images. I serve a bunch using nginx and also on CloudFlare CDN. It's as easy as making the folder containing the tiles available on a webserver. I use QGIS/gdal to generate the tiles. ------ dawnerd It was super smooth at first but really slowed down after moving the map, to the point where I had to force close the tab. ------ detaro Very quick, but the demo isn't showing attribution for at least some of the map tiles correctly. ~~~ mariusandra Hi, I added attribution to the Mapbox maps. Please reply if any of the others are wrong as well. ~~~ detaro Stamen requires attribution and license information mentioned, I believe Wikimedia requires attribution with a link to details. ~~~ mariusandra Demo updated, thanks! ------ pspeter3 Is there a description about how you built this? ~~~ mariusandra Well, there's the github commit history, that sort of answers the question, no? :D Otherwise no, there is no write up of the process. I might do one some day, thanks for the idea. ~~~ djsumdog You should totally do a blog post! You could also volunteer to present on it at your local JS or React meetup (or the closest city that has one). Maybe post a video of your talk? ------ gammateam nice, this is one of those things you clone immediately speaking of which, why do people debate about whether forks on github are persistent even when the author removes their copy, when you can always clone either way, since that keeps a copy on your system and you still have the code ------ iamleppert There’s not much point to use react for something like this. If you know the map canvas size and tile size of your tiles, you simply need to initialize that many images in your container. That only ever changes when the map canvas size changes or the tile size changes. Pans and zooms of the map only change the src of the images at that point. ~~~ jonknee React is already used for tons of apps, some of those apps need to display maps and it makes perfect sense to use something in your existing framework. ~~~ mariusandra Exactly! This project is for apps that already use React and need to add maps. Alternatively, you can try preact [1] or inferno [2] and for a few KB more you have something that is still smaller than Google Maps or Leaflet. Of course if you need more advanced features and geometric calculations the size can go up considerably. Leaflet and Google Maps provide that out of the box. Pigeon-maps doesn't. [1] [https://preactjs.com/](https://preactjs.com/) [2] [https://infernojs.org/](https://infernojs.org/) ~~~ iamleppert Leaflet out of the box implements vector tiles, different map projections, has a full layer API, full support for mobile, etc. so it's not a direct 1:1 comparison with your project which is implementing a basic mercator raster tile layer. You can also strip Leaflet down to just the raster tile layer stuff and as it doesn't need react or preact or inferno it will be lighter weight than your solution, and still uses the fundamental underlying display mechanism of image tags. ~~~ mariusandra If you need support for all that leaflet provides, go for leaflet. If the feature set of pigeon-maps is enough for your needs and you already use react, feel free to go for it instead. I have never claimed it to match the features of Leaflet _while_ being lighter. It's lighter exactly because it doesn't. Offloading a lot of DOM work to React makes it even lighter. Edit: to correct one point, pigeon-maps does support mobile. ~~~ iamleppert >> Offloading a lot of DOM work to React makes it even lighter. What exactly does this mean? The only thing that ever changes, as I mentioned, is the src of the image tags in these kinds of tiled maps. How do you get better performance for updating the src attributes in a grid of images of constant size (256x256 tiles or whatever) other than img.src = ''? That's literally the only DOM manipulation being done, there is no "magic". Also you can reduce a lot of your mouse event handling stuff down to a single "reactive" (haha) callback by doing something like this: [https://github.com/mikolalysenko/mouse- event](https://github.com/mikolalysenko/mouse-event). Instead of binding a bunch of different handlers, the browser's mouse events API is still bizarre after all these years. Should just be a single event that gets sent the state of control input. ~~~ jonknee > What exactly does this mean? The only thing that ever changes, as I > mentioned, is the src of the image tags in these kinds of tiled maps. What about markers? ------ krona I noticed this also supports Inferno. To the author: what's your preference? ~~~ mariusandra I only use React. The Inferno support was added 2 years ago when an issue requested it, as I was evaluating Inferno support myself at the time. Since then I haven't done anything with it. ------ mezod first impression was epic but there's something wobbly with the interaction or is it just me? sometimes scrolling goes to hell and same for panning ~~~ mariusandra Could you describe what you experienced in more details? Scrolling with a mouse? Trackpad? Touch? Could you quantify "goes to hell"? The more details the better of course. Thanks! :) ------ jgalentine007 Seems really lightweight and fast! ------ bushiko Wow, this is fast!

Keynote on memristors by R. Stanley Williams of HP Labs - modeless http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGhvKyjgLY ====== modeless This 45-minute keynote presentation has pretty much everything you could possibliy want to know about memristors. If you want the 6-minute condensed version instead, try <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvA5r4LtVnc> It seems as if memristors have the potential to be very important to the future of computing, but the one question I haven't seen answered yet is endurance. The operation of memristors involves atoms physically migrating back and forth. If memristors wear out like flash memory after a few thousand switchings then the talk of them replacing DRAM is just hot air, and building artificial synapses seems unlikely to work either. ~~~ ehsanul If I'm not misunderstanding, in the full 45-minute keynote, he mentions endurance a bunch of times. Apparently, on the newer memristor devices they came up with, the lifetimes of the devices are on a "geological" timescale, and could "theoretically" last forever. Of course, theory != practice. But there was quite a bit of time spent talking about this issue. Edit: Also, I would highly recommend those with the time to watch the 45-minute keynote, and not just the condensed explanation. It really is worth it. ~~~ Tuna-Fish When he was talking about geological timescales, what he meant was how long a memristor retains it's state after being switched, while I'm more interested in how many times can he safely switch the device. ~~~ Aron He indicates at 0:33.30 that the endurance is slightly better than flash. ~~~ modeless Yes, and what I'm wondering is if that's a fundamental limitation or if it's something that can be easily improved. The endurance of DRAM is essentially infinite and I have a feeling that's going to be tough to reach with memristors. ~~~ Aron Williams discusses briefly here (at 50 min) his hope that endurance would be significantly improved by moving from the lab equipment they use for fabrication to a more commercial quality system. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHJvp5MybkM&feature=chann...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHJvp5MybkM&feature=channel) Sounds a bit wishful in thinking, but I have no experience in the matter. The center panelist then seems to indicate that Intel is more interested in the phase change version because they want 'a rock that can switch 10^6 times..'. So I think you might be right that this is a significant issue (particularly into DRAM or computation). ------ ehsanul This is astounding! To think that circuit component as fundamental as resistors/capacitors/inductors has been hidden from us till now.. And the applications are equally mind-boggling. If he's right about what is potentially possible using memristors then we're in for an amazing ride this decade. I for one hope we can soon say our farewells to HDD's, DRAM and SSD's. ~~~ ableal Er ... Josephson junctions, bubble memory, etc. ? Sometimes things do not pan out. Either because there's no significant advantage to the new tech, or because of manufacturing costs/problems, or ... Having hope is good, but keep in mind that the guys coming up with the new stuff point the upsides, of course. Then the hard-nosed spoilsports figure out the problems. Personally, I've been keeping an eye on this one for over a year - we'll probably figure out if it's a 'yea' or a 'nay' in another year. But I'm not seeing as much third-party excitement as expectable. ~~~ skorgu I'm wary as well. Think of how many revolutionary ram technologies have been just around the corner for ages. Mram, Feram, the "Upcoming" section of Wikipedia's memory pages lists more. Some of them were discovered in the 70s and are now 3-5 years from mass market! Just like they were three years ago!

Hash_salt= - newsignup https://github.com/search?p=2&q=%22hash_salt%3D%22&ref=searchresults&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93 ====== emocin another "hey i just learned that github has a search feature" post. what is going on today? ~~~ newsignup I don't know what the trigger was but I was thinking of posting something on this line couple of hours back before this whole thing started. Weird coincidence but I can show you history of my github searches for 1-2 hours back.

DNS hosting suggestion: Amazon Route53 vs Zerigo - ellie42 I would like to know pros and cons of each. That said I have used Zerigo (not free, DNS Essentials 1 plan) for a year and it acted pretty well.<p>PS: I'm not interested in other DNS hosting solutions except Route53, Zerigo and Rackspace DNS. ====== ellie42 bump

Ask HN - I need a greybeard mentor - factorialboy I've done plenty of web and enterprise app development. Occasional stints with mobile and desktop apps as well.<p>I am getting bored.<p>I need a greybeard to help me keeping my programming career rewarding. ====== seiji As a start, read and understand [http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Linux- Kernel-Third-Editi...](http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Linux-Kernel-Third- Edition/dp/0596005652) (that's a very technical and in-depth book) and [http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Kernel-Development-3rd- Edition/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Kernel-Development-3rd- Edition/dp/0672329468/) (that's a more gentle overview book) then dive in with [http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Filesystems-Evolution-Design- Impl...](http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Filesystems-Evolution-Design- Implementation/dp/0471164836) and write a very simple file system. Learn C as necessary. The FreeBSD kernel book is worth a look too: [http://www.amazon.com/Design- Implementation-FreeBSD-Operatin...](http://www.amazon.com/Design- Implementation-FreeBSD-Operating-System/dp/0201702452) ------ zephjc Were you looking for something more in terms of systems programming? ~~~ factorialboy Perhaps. I'm not sure, I'm open to it.

Russian Video Game Industry is booming and you should know why - xsolla http://blog.xsolla.com/2014/02/13/russian-video-game-industry-2013-overview/ ====== xsolla Find out all about the Russian Video Game Industry in our feature post.

Myspace lets you hijack any account just by knowing the person’s birthday - happy-go-lucky https://leigh-annegalloway.com/myspace/ ====== apostacy Myspace was an XSS playground. You could embed javascript into anyone's profile, by leaving a flash applet (or for that matter a java applet) in a comment, and having it do an openurl to a javascript: url, which would execute in the context of the user viewing it. I had fun replacing people's profile pictures after the page loaded, or stopping all of that annoying background music. It was also possible to capture someone's document.cookie, as late as 2008. Good times... ~~~ maaaats A Norwegian social site back in the days called Nettby ("net-city") also allowed some html, but did it by just removing unallowed tags. I realised I could write <scr<script>ipt>, and after it did the removal of the first script tag I still had one. This trick still works on surprisingly many sites. Allowing custom html is _hard_ , so think long before rolling your own. ~~~ gboudrias Honestly if it's comments, just use Markdown or something. No reason for your users to have access to HTML. ~~~ joepie91_ And then this happens: [https://github.com/ChALkeR/notes/blob/master/Improper- markup...](https://github.com/ChALkeR/notes/blob/master/Improper-markup- sanitization.md) ~~~ maxvu I think it's funny that JIRA knows how to prioritize the best of all the list. ~~~ joepie91_ I'm hoping that was sarcasm...? ------ cm2187 I took the habit of feeding fake random information to all websites asking too noisey questions and keeping track of them in case I need them for recovery. A website doesn't need my exact date of birth, at most it may need my approximate age. It doesn't need my real name either, even if it wants to deliver something to me, the address should be all it takes. It doesn't need my real email address, all it needs is some email alias that I can delete. Good practice for privacy, spam management and security since it is harder to guess this information and to reuse it when leaked. ~~~ x32 So much this. I've never saw the need to do give information out like that. As far as every website is concerned my DOB is 01/01/1990. ~~~ Siemer I always use 1/1/1911 to shave off a few more of those precious microseconds ~~~ sverhagen If so, did you then just compromise yourself? ------ Eiriksmal Who owns MySpace now and why does the author's screenshots have varying typos? The "email found" prompt changes from "...Please remeber [sic] update your email address after you log in" to "Please remember to update your email address after you log in." Also, the real MySpace.com's account recovery for "I don't have access to my email" is now taking you to a myspace.desk.com ticketing frontend and a screen that looks nothing like the author's post. Suspicious. ~~~ mrmondo It’s another Murdoch ‘asset’ I believe. ~~~ rmason Rupert Murdoch bought it for $580 million in 2005 and then sold it to Justin Timberlake and Specific Media Group a few years later for $35 million. According to their Wikipedia page Timberlake & Co sold it in 2016 to Time Inc. [http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/time-inc-myspace- viant-...](http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/time-inc-myspace- viant-1201703860/) ~~~ viraptor The last trade is a shame. I saw the demo of MySpace around 2014 and found it almost exciting. It was at the time when they were trying to make it all about media consumption with transparent handover between devices and TVs / computers. The tech looked quite fun. Looks like they couldn't get enough interest to pull it off :-( For some reason they were trying to get geeks at local meetups excited about it. I got a can of MySpace-branded energy drink which was one of the weirdest gifts... ------ thinkfurther I remember a time where you could embed js and css in the forums. I never want farther than seeing if I could steal my own login cookie (being new to js I was sure I just _had_ to have overlooked something) and change posts of a user without that user seeing that change haha (test user also being myself, in some god forsaken part of the forum nobody used), then backed off that stuff for fear of being banned and made little "utilities" like expanding text boxes, and pretty stylesheets of course. There was just nooooobody paying attention, I can absolutely vouch for that. ~~~ chrischen I remember being able to get higher rates as a web developer/designer in high school by being able to make special myspace pages that covered up the UI for businesses. ~~~ dawnerd Some of my first gigs/job were setting up new myspace layouts for indie bands. Company I worked for had a custom player built and everything. I remember finding some awesome hacks to make stuff work when myspace rolled out their own player and tried to force it on everyone. ------ franciscop In [https://help.myspace.com/hc/en- us/articles/201989404-Forgot-...](https://help.myspace.com/hc/en- us/articles/201989404-Forgot-Email-) they even spell "myspace.com" wrong... ~~~ sushid Where? If you're referring to the capitalization, I think it's always been "Myspace." ~~~ franciscop It might have been removed/changed, but there was a wrong link. ------ rosariotech Does MySpace still exists? ~~~ JoshGlazebrook Don't expect there to be anything there from back when you actually used it. They deleted all of your wall and private messages years ago. ~~~ 13of40 I have mine in a zip file somewhere... They had an option to download it for a while. ~~~ djsumdog Yea I think I have mine somewhere as well. I really hate they removed all that historical data though. They could have probably banked on a trickle of logins simply from people looking for the nostalgia. ------ indigochill I attempted recovering my ancient Myspace account just now claiming I'd lost the email. I was directed to a Zendesk form that looked different from the one shown in the screenshots. So looks like they might have changed the process now? ------ sundvor That's brilliant. :) Apologies if snarky, but perhaps $15 on this would be well advised: (Humble Bundle deal also on FP today) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14791255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14791255) Just bought the bundle; looking forward to learning more about security myself. I would like to think I know the obvious things, but will probably find big gaps if I get through all of it.. ------ wodenokoto Are birthdays part of the 360 million user account breach? ------ antihero Also the amount of poor/broken English on that form and the dialogs makes me suspect outsourcing. ------ wwwhatcrack Oh no, I hope my Digg and Hotmail accounts are still safe. ------ shimon_e No less secure than most people's bank accounts. ------ collyw Myspace still exists? ------ WhiteOwlLion What's MySpace?

Guide to Photo Metadata Fields - rolph https://www.photometadata.org/META-Resources-Field-Guide-to-Metadata ====== rolph OK facebook is ?injecting? metadata into images uploaded by users, so reuse reshare or original can be distinguished, and the chain of transmission can be logged, as always to serve you better, but how vulnerable is this? It is possible to forge IPTC for whatever end. either blank it or alter its chain of origin. [https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/ccndcq/facebook_is...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/ccndcq/facebook_is_embedding_tracking_data_inside_the/) [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31120222/iptc- metadata-a...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31120222/iptc-metadata- automatically-added-to-uploaded-images-on-facebook) This is a good read about the finer points of the subject. [https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/726-Fa...](https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/726-Facebook- Tracking.html)

Amazon Employees Pledge to Walk Out as Part of Global Climate Strike - jbegley https://docs.google.com/document/d/1joUIg5O5pRS_R2OqXoJzbuCXcQ0trL9ki8XO2aO0prg/ ====== michannne Is this a Silicon Valley thing? People becoming far too attached with what their company is doing. Even if I had been working there for 5 years, I would never bat an eye at anything my company did in it's own name -- I'm my own person and have my own beliefs, why should I expect a multinational enterprise to buckle to my feelings? If at any point I felt like my company was doing something that went morally against what I believe is right, then I would straight up leave. The thought that I'd get up and go to my manager to complain at how the executives could do something as atrocious as go against my moral compass sounds impossibly childish. Then, on top of that, virtually skipping work so I can complain even further, I'm surprised no one gets fired on the spot. I'm not concerned with whether or not this was sanctioned or expected, or if these people will lose their jobs or not, I just can't connect with this idea of assimilating my personal views into a corporation's identity. ~~~ TheSpiceIsLife What, then, is your comprehensive alternative? We probably, at this stage, need to approach this issue with a certainly level of moderated-panic, and attempt to address it on al lines across all levels. It stands to reason that if the general population can influence corporate decision making that might have a knock-on effect to cause companies to influence government decision making. I'd hazard a guess that Jeff Bezos ability to influence government policy far exceeds mine by orders of magnitude. ~~~ michannne >We probably, at this stage, need to approach this issue with a certainly level of moderated-panic, and attempt to address it on al lines across all levels. What does this mean? I have been hearing the terms "global warming" and "crisis" for almost 20 years now, yet it is almost always followed up with talk -- talk about how others could change their lifestyle choices, talk about how organizations can change how they function, talk about how we can talk even more to the right people. Very rarely have I ever seen a plan -- a formulated, step-by-step guide on what people or organizations must sacrifice in order to bring about a better future, and even less so people who actually act on that plan instead of simply reiterating it to anyone within earshot. I would absolutely not be surprised if this event, which some consider to be "necessary" on any level, does nothing to impact Amazon to change anything to improve the climate situation -- as far as they can see from my perspective, they see 900+ employees, some of whom are probably part-time and not getting paid anyways, with no actual plan of how global warming should be solved with respect to Amazon, but want to feel good for a time, feel as though they are making some level of actionable change on the world, until their time is over and they go back to work while they patiently wait for >one of the most innovative companies[0] to come up with a plan themselves. I've seen it time and time again, it solves nothing, achieves nothing. And I'd bet it all on black that this earns them nothing but contempt from their supervisors/managers. [0]: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1joUIg5O5pRS_R2OqXoJzbuCX...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1joUIg5O5pRS_R2OqXoJzbuCXcQ0trL9ki8XO2aO0prg/edit) ~~~ TheSpiceIsLife I believe you have neglected to response to the _most important_ part of my comment: _What, then, is your comprehensive alternative?_ ~~~ michannne You ask for an alternative as if there is a solution already being proposed, and yet, I see none. ~~~ TheSpiceIsLife I can definitely understand that perspective. Perhaps my earlier comments were too harsh, given I definitely feel defeated with regards to climate change. My current approach is to simply _not care_ , as the added stress of caring didn't help and didn't do any favours to my general well being. It's all looking like a lot of _too little too late_. But, fortunately, at my age, I'll probably miss the worse of it. We probably need to simultaneously drastically limit carbon emissions and draw down atmospheric carbon / remove CO2 from the oceans. And I can't see how that's going to happen prior to things getting a lot worse. Having said that, we did act collectively to implement the Montreal Protocol[1], so there's a bit of a precedent for acting at this scale... but there were fairly straightforward alternatives to ozone depleting gas. 1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol) ~~~ michannne No offense taken, I've been downvoted a lot and I can understand people have very passionate beliefs on issues of this scale, I'm also passionate in my belief that talk, protests and walkouts, while they have an impact on awareness and of course the right people being aware of the issue may get us somewhere, does not get us anywhere in today's age. Everyone knows of global warming, I don't want to see more talks, more protests and more blame, I want to see plans being enacted, laws being enforced, the world actually improving, but that's not what I see in this Amazon spectacle. ~~~ TheSpiceIsLife Yeah, I reckon that's probably what everyone wants to see by this stage: actual changes. So I see these walk-outs and protests[1] as a sort of _throw ya hands in the air cos won 't somebody fckn do something already_ sort of action. (For what it's worth, I didn't down vote any of your comments. I typically up vote anything I engage in, and usually only down vote comments that are shallow or abusive). 1\. [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-15/students-walk-out- of-...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-15/students-walk-out-of-class-to- protest-climate-change/10901978) ------ RcouF1uZ4gsC >The employees are also asking for zero contracts with fossil fuel companies that use Amazon’s AI technology to help them accelerate oil and gas extraction, This type of stuff will be the bane of large companies migrating to cloud. A lot of large companies are involved in defense initiatives, law enforcement, fossil fuel extraction, mineral extraction etc. If they have to worry about what latest moral crusade will try to get you kicked off the cloud platform, they will be a lot more reticent about migrating to cloud. In addition, if you were a fossil fuel or car company that makes gas burning vehicles, how confident are you that one of those people that is walking out to try to get you kicked off the platform, won't try to be a "hero" and use their insider access to try to sabotage your operations or leak confidential data? I mean if the cause is worthy enough, all sorts of activities that would be illegal are considered justified. I mean if a person thinks they are literally saving the planet from destruction, sabotaging an oil company's cloud infrastructure seems like something that they would at least seriously consider doing. I think Amazon and the other cloud companies need to come down hard and state unequivocally that cloud services are not fodder for political crusades, and they will allow all companies that are conducting legal business activities, to be able to use their cloud. ~~~ n_time > If they have to worry about what latest moral crusade will try to get you > kicked off the cloud platform, they will be a lot more reticent about > migrating to cloud. Equating climate change activism with all other forms of social justice is a common trend I see. They seem so different to me–the difference between empirical reality and ideology. While the outcomes of climate change will be ideological–save climate refugees or preserve competitive advantage and wealth–the immediate concern of attempting to mitigate the impacts of climate change are relatively rational. > if you were a fossil fuel or car company that makes gas burning vehicles Have you tried putting on your role-playing hats and empathising with some of the points being made on the environmentalist side? ~~~ kd5bjo The problem with most climate change activism is that it’s hyper-targeted against the offender du jour and all of the others are largely ignored. It’s a global-scale problem that demands global-scale solutions; the vigilantism isn’t doing anything other than providing a straw man for the opposition to knock down. ~~~ aaronbrethorst Then by all means you should show Sierra, 350, Sunrise, ER, and all of the other folks out there how to do it better. I mean this sincerely: I’ve been deeply involved in political and civic activism for the past couple years, and have learned a ton, especially from other people—but I also find it deeply frustrating when seemingly well intentioned folks offer unspecific feedback on how the significant investments of time, money, and energy I and others around me could be spent activisting better. ~~~ kd5bjo The goal is policy change, and that requires convincing people to vote for things. The path that makes that happen is education, policy advocacy, and ultimately gaining political office. Direct action, however, tends to put more emphasis on the activists themselves as the problem instead of whatever their platform is. This is only useful when it demonstrates a sufficient commitment by a large number of people, which can demonstrate wide popular support— rallies, peaceful protests, etc. that involve enough people to potentially change the outcome of an election. My problem is really with the publicity stunts done by a small number of people. From outside, it looks like an egotistical act and, if not dismissed entirely, hurts the reputation of everyone doing useful work in the same field. Antagonizing people is a poor way to convince them of anything. As for why I don’t go into politics myself, it isn’t my calling and I don’t have the temperament to be successful at it. I believe I’ll do more concrete good in the world by being kind and helpful to those I meet in this journey we call life than by trying to force my concerns to the forefront of attention. ------ GhostVII > The employees are also asking for zero contracts with fossil fuel companies > that use Amazon’s AI technology to help them accelerate oil and gas > extraction To me, it seems like activists spend too much time focusing on the producers of things like fossil fuels, and not enough time on the consumers. I have nothing against companies which are producing fossil fuels, in general, since they are usually producing a product that has at least some genuine value in many cases. If everyone stopped drilling for oil immediately, it would certainly have incredibly negative consequences. I do have a problem with people who are excessively using these types of products, since they are creating waste that damages the environment - if everyone stopped driving their car everywhere and instead biked when they were able to, it would certainly have a very positive effect. ------ privateSFacct Be interesting to see if Amazon supports the employee strikes as much as google - I think with google a lot of the strikes and walkouts were supported by management and/or no consequence. So it was a "strike" but everyone got paid still. Is Amazon this progressive as well? Ie, will it pay everyone if an employee was needed but unavailable? ~~~ kevin_b_er Amazon seems far far more cutthroat than Google. They'll get PIP'd and thrown into the pressure cooker as punishment until they quit. ~~~ cheeze Antecdotally - the folks who have organized internal things like this at Amazon generally continue to work there. The folks who did the same at google seem to have gotten fired. ------ hirundo If I were their manager I'd want to handle it like any other absence. If an employee has a history of unscheduled ghosting, whether for protesting, watching soap operas or whatever, treat them the same. If it _is_ scheduled or otherwise arranged with a supervisor, no problem. Politics need not enter into it. ~~~ seanmcdirmid That sort of misses the point of protest via a walk out. You can’t have civil disobedience without the disobedience. ------ tracker1 Do these people really think there is no environmental impact to creating these "zero emission" vehicles? That the materials aren't destructively being mined for the minerals used in the batteries and solar cells? That the engines and vehicles aren't themselves shipped multiple times huge distances by cargo ships using carbon burning engines? That the sunk environmental impact of existing vehicles is worth throwing away? That natural gas shouldn't even be considered? I mean, a lot of these "green new deal" types of initiatives are short sighted at best, and harmful at worst. Wind, solar and nuclear power should all be on the table. Why aren't we talking about desalinization and water pipelines for hydrogen fuel? ~~~ michannne >Why aren't we talking about desalinization and water pipelines for hydrogen fuel? Because for these types of people, the goal isn't to enact any measurable change on their own. It's to make others feel guilty for not coming up with a solution. ------ atonse Good for them. So much focus on "what we can do" with the climate crisis puts the onus on individuals, instead of industry. I like that they go further than just "use EVs to deliver packages" – but instead also calling on AWS to not enable or help accelerate Oil and Gas company extraction. Although I'm sure this one will fall flat, because there's too much money involved. ~~~ mc32 >”...to not enable or help accelerate Oil and Gas company extraction.” I don’t think that makes any more sense than say “not selling goods and services to individuals who own ICE propulsion cars”. Or won’t sell items manufactured in Chine due to dirty energy and lax enviro controls in manufacturing. ------ tempsy I’m not sure what the research says but is buying something online (+ one day shipping) more or less environmentally friendly than going to a store? ~~~ pimmen It depends, where is this hypothetical person living? I live in the middle of a city, the store close to me serves the thousands of people living in my square kilometer. Because of scale, the truck that transports new goods to the store has a low carbon emission per customer. I have friends who live way out of town. If they have a store it serves maybe twenty people. Instead of dividing the truck’s emissions by thousands of people you just divide it by twenty. ~~~ robryan If someone has to get in their car at all to go to the shops I would say it is likely to be more carbon intensive than a delivery service with high utilisation. A shopping center in general would be generating a lot more emissions per product than a warehouse. On the other side often things bought online come with a lot more packaging. I think Amazon is trying to cut down on this by having suppliers where possible use a box for a product that is durable enough for shipping without having to put it in another box. ------ body12 I would love to know the organizers' opinion on whether these various uses of AWS "accelerate oil and gas extraction," i.e. whether they would be allowed on AWS: -The engineering of drill bits or other equipment that could be used for oil wells, but also for water or geothermal wells -A business consulting firm running payroll, marketing, or accounting for an oil company -Personal internet services for offshore oil workers -Telemetry for drilling or pipeline monitoring equipment -Geology research by a university that is likely to be used by oil companies ------ lovemenot It's remarkable to me that in the original article and in all these comments so far, there's no mention of energy use by AWS. AWS is market leader in public cloud, which is probably the fastest growing class of energy consumer. Already overtaking traditional industrial energy consumers such as steel. Assuming this market trend will continue, what can AWS realistically do to mitigate their impact? ~~~ embedded AWS, like google and like Azure and every other cloud provider already does everything they can to minimize energy consumption because it is in their economic interest to do so. In fact I would think the best thing industry can do to reduce energy consumption is to move their data to a cloud provider. It takes far less energy to cool one large room with servers from a dozen companies than it does to cool a dozen server rooms with private on-prem servers. ~~~ lovemenot This all seems correct, but insufficiently proactive, at least not enough to satisfy activists. For instance, though it may not currently be economic, how about pre-cooling using renewable energy. Locating data centers next to hydro / geothermal sources? Larger UPS? Load balancing across DCs with available renewables? Other mitigations to get ahead of the issue? ------ perfunctory They should also join the Extinction Rebellion on October 7 [https://rebellion.global/events/2019/07/30/rebel-without- bor...](https://rebellion.global/events/2019/07/30/rebel-without-borders/) ------ smpetrey However unlikely it is, it would be awesome to see the Amazon warehouse workers join in solidarity. ------ efitz In other news, Amazon announces over 900 new job openings. ------ pinewurst 941/647,500 (the 2018 Amazon employee total) ~~~ mc32 Probably because if they reversed the numbers in the article, it wouldn’t sell. “646,000 out of 647,500 Amazon employees will not pledge to join protest!” ------ lacampbell Walk out into the car park to drive home? ------ axiom92 This (unfortunately paywalled) article from the Economist raises a lot of points discussed in this thread: [https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/22/what- companies-...](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/22/what-companies- are-for) ------ Pfhreak There's something really interesting going on with the flagging in this post. There are several on topic, polite discussions that have been flagged to death. (Along with some replies which, rightly, have been flagged to death.) Maybe it's just folks expressing political views with the flag button, but it's interesting to see it used so dramatically here. Edit: Either someone did something or a bunch of vouching happened, because a lot of comments have come back. ~~~ mattsfrey That's unfortunately what HN comments has become, a popularity contest where instead of replying to views you disagree with using counter arguments, you just downvote them and if their statement particularly offends your sensibilities, flag them. ~~~ badsectoracula Honestly, downvoting - especially as implemented here in HN where it fades out things - was a mistake. I do not understand why people still insist on it and ask people to not use it as a "disagree" button (and flagging as a "super disagree" button) when many years of evidence show that despite any effort, it will be used as such. I can understand (even if disagree) with Reddit-the-company wanting it to stay there because it increases "engagement" with the platform (regardless of the engagement's quality) and thus gets more ad revenue, but why anyone else (and any site that doesn't monetize such "engagement") would insist on downvoting is beyond me (and i especially do not understand people acting as if the topic itself is some sort of taboo to not even be discussed and treat its existence as unquestionable dogma). ~~~ mises The better option would be to get rid of political BS entirely. I am incredibly sick of hearing each side scream into the wind while the other screams back. This was originally mostly a tech forum; it's grown to a size where it needs to be _only_ a tech forum. People can go to reddit if they want to scream about politics. ~~~ Pfhreak That's a position that's ok if and only if you are ok with the status quo. It is, in itself, a political stance. Now, screaming into the wind is also far from ideal, but I think the answer shouldn't be "Ignore politics because I'm fine." There are a ton of places where tech intersects with politics, whether that's in climate science, gender, mental health, medicine, art/culture, public transit (and other public shared resources), copyright, privacy, safety, etc. Strictly restricting the discussion to tech doesn't erase those intersections between tech and political domains. ~~~ mises Except all the issues you just raised are primarily things about which one side cares. The cares of the other are ignored or, in the rare case they are visible, flagged down. ~~~ Pfhreak What? These aren't boolean propositions. Each of them has a pretty complex set of connections with tech, across a variety of subdomains and interests.... ~~~ mises Maybe a better way to describe it is as a venn diagram. If there are circles with "lefty" things and "righty" things, you took (as HN tends to do) the whole lefty circle. That includes things in the center, but not those on the right. ~~~ Pfhreak Ah yes, the "lefty" concerns of privacy, safety, medicine, public land use, and intellectual property and how they intersect with tech. I somehow always manage to forget that the "righty" folk are disinterested in discussion on how those topics might intersect with tech. Again, these issues aren't binary, they aren't left v. right, there's much more to understand than just two fixed points. I didn't even dive into any specific issues. Public resources could mean parks or it could mean the Bureau of Land Management, eminent domain or subsidized bus fare. Safety and privacy could be a discussion of the TSA, or gun rights, or immigration, or facial recognition. Those are obviously concerns that impact a wide group of people, across many different political ideologies. You are seeing something that isn't there. ~~~ mises You cherry-picked stuff from the center of the diagram. Stuff like climate "science" and "gender" gets posted a good bit; these are things of which the left has made issues. My point is that the whole left circle - issues important to the left and important to both left and right - are posted and discussed. Issues important only to the right are flagged down. Right-wing perspectives on political posts are flagged down. To take an example, very occasionally, I see a mention of guns that includes a right-wing perspective. Even if it's politely stated, flagged down. Example, something like: "The arguments about taking guns lowering mass shooting-rates does mot affect the right because priorities are different. The right is willing to tolerate some death as tragic but a fact of life to maintain rights, and mass shooting death rates are vastly below other public health issues any way." Such a comment would be flagged down. A comment taking the opposing point-of- view, even much less politely, would be supported. Comments with vulgarity and rudeness are also tolerated only from certain perspectives. This disparity is particularly galling because low-ranked comments become greyed to the point of un-readability, and flagged ones don't appear at all by default. I couldn't care less about the internet points, but HN ought to leave un-popular opinions visible. ------ Postosuchus I assume, the whole narrative is above such insignificant details as direct and indirect costs of producing "green energy?" ~~~ bcheung Not sure what you mean but Amazon is doing a lot of research into things like drone deliveries and robotic vehicles which can be powered from renewable energy. Fuel costs money. Ultimately delivery efficiency is better for business and for the environment. They also are encouraging all deliveries to happen on a given day of the week so they can be batched up and logistically planned better. Seems like things are moving in the right direction. ------ oh_sigh Amazon's entire retail business model is built upon oil(specifically drivers moving individual packages to consumer's homes). ------ rwoodley Great! The more people strike, the more we'll get the kind of change we need. ------ panic It's worth emphasizing that these Amazon employees aren't acting on their own -- they're taking part in a global climate strike: [https://globalclimatestrike.net](https://globalclimatestrike.net). Even if each person or company acting individually can't change anything, a large enough movement like this may make change possible.

Banker confessed to running a Ponzi scheme, but was he hiding a bigger crime? - zeveb https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-18/he-stole-100-million-from-his-clients-now-he-s-living-in-luxury-on-the-c-te-d-azur ====== itsmemattchung I must admit that, before reading this article, I made an quick (and wrong) assumption about the clients who collectively lost $100M. I assumed they were naive folks who blindly handed over the money. But what really boggles my mind is the amount of money they were dealing with: \- Canadian engineers who had recently sold a water-treatment company to General Electric Co. for $656 million. \- A few months later, Reissfelder, a laid-back German coder living near San Francisco, sold his travel startup to Expedia for $85 million I doubt I could ever really trust anyone enough for me to hand over that amount of money and I doubt I could express the level of anger when all that money vanishes into thin air. ~~~ PantaloonFlames According to the text of the article, the Benedeks lost $20MM and Reissfelder lost $12MM. The sums you quote ($656MM and $85MM) are what they sold their companies for, respectively; maybe those numbers are from public records. But, the primary sellers didn't necessarily retain all that money. There were other stakeholders, legal people to pay, and so on. Also it says the Benedeks bought another German company after they sold their own company. So I guess that cost them a few million, too. Your point is still valid - these people handed over substantial sums, between $10MM and $20MM each to a custom investment house. What amazes me is...where they thought the money was coming from, for the helicopters and private jets. If a single client justifies a private jet... well, for a going business, the money for the jet (whether chartered or owned) is coming out of that single client. $40k is 0.4% of $10MM. That's a pretty high cost for one meeting. If the company treats all of its clients this way - each client has to pay that 0.4%. If the company treats only one its clients this way, or only a few of its clients this way, then it's a shady company. Either way, it smells, and it seems obvious from a distance. It's true that the article is the source of the $40k number for the jet, but fees for private jets (chartered or not) are not hard to estimate. Just read the economist, you can see the $$ in the ads. I don't have $10MM to invest, but the unsustainable overhead seems obvious to me. It would be reckless to ignore it. If the investment is $1B... a private jet seems required. $40k against that is tiny. I would EXPECT a private jet if I were investing a billion dollars. But for $10MM? ~~~ athenot The generalization of that is when you see high customer acquisition costs relative to what you think a vendor might earn from you, ask yourself why. ------ crescentfresh Additional details, victims: [http://swiss-east-affairs.ch/blog/a-strange- bank-robbery](http://swiss-east-affairs.ch/blog/a-strange-bank-robbery) > Gaglio’s former partner, Jean-François de Clermont-Tonnerre, is back in > business as an asset manager, together with his wife. They have put together > a network of firms extending from Malta via Luxembourg to Geneva. ------ keithpeter Dr Galli seems like an interesting character. One wonders how you get started in that line of work. That database of his strikes me as being of interest to quite a few people. Dr Galli has a Web presence.. [http://www.cii2.org/index.php?option=com_community&view=prof...](http://www.cii2.org/index.php?option=com_community&view=profile&userid=20429845) [http://swiss-east-affairs.ch/](http://swiss-east-affairs.ch/) ~~~ emmelaich And he has more articles on Gaglio's victims, e.g. [http://swiss-east- affairs.ch/blog/a-strange-bank-robbery](http://swiss-east- affairs.ch/blog/a-strange-bank-robbery) ------ ringaroundthetx The interesting thing about this is that legitimate money managers act like this too. These are completely binary propositions: either they make you money or they don't. No slew of licenses and regulatory ID number checks will help this. > He arranged for tours of properties in Geneva and Monaco and once insisted > Diana travel on what he said was his company’s private jet. (Hottinger had > no plane; it was chartered especially for the occasion, for about $40,000.) > “He got us by being relentlessly helpful,” Diana, 59, says. “We’re > Francophiles,” adds Andrew, 74. “We both speak French, we love French > food—so maybe we were vulnerable. We were impressed.” His "exploitation" of cross border regulators to evade a harsher conviction and restitution isn't really that notable, in my opinion (albeit clever if he was avoiding money laundering charges as the article suggests). Many legitimate funds have to operate with the same flexibility and exemptions for other reasons, and ultimately you either create value for your investors or you don't. The real deterrent is that people are more concerned about their kneecaps and families, especially from any gangsters or politicians they have in the fund. If that deterrent is gone then you'll see more of this. ~~~ walshemj don't you get banned for life from the finance industry for this sort of scam ~~~ ringaroundthetx First, the regulatory/court sanction will be in one country, or whichever ones bother. In the US for example, these bans are a couple years long. Second, thats just investment banks and licences in that country and possibly forming your own fund, in that country or with that countrys citizens. Third, the man was managing other peoples money independently, without working for an investment bank, so it doesnt matter what the broad industry thinks. Fourth, and if you need a license then maybe it matters, but again not in every country. Fifth, if you are perceived as making good returns and your potential investors arent making good returns, then they want to invest with you. The end. ------ nebgawker For the love of money is the root of all evil. ~~~ mml From NIV anyway: "For the love of money is a root of all _kinds_ of evil." Timothy 6:10. Pet peeve when that word is dropped. Money isn't necessarily behind _everything_. ~~~ PantaloonFlames But that's the problem in reading an English translation of a 2000-yr old text. Too many handlers have intervened, one must assume the purity of the original has been compromised. ~~~ nitrogen _...one must assume the purity of the original has been compromised._ One must also assume the original had any purity to be compromised. ------ dreamdu5t “If there are no consequences, then the world is seriously broken.“ The world is broken when people make 100’s of millions of dollars and spend it on villas, expensive art, dining, etc while others work their asses off just to scrape by on a meager existence. Boo fucking hoo they lost millions to a scammer when that doesn’t even near bankrupt them. Imagine losing millions and just going on living the same lifestyle... ------ JohnStrange People loose millions every year without consequences. It's only considered a crime under certain circumstances and if you don't fulfill the general expectations in terms of behavior, dress codes, legal structures, etc. Maybe this guy just made the mistake of using a way of loosing the money that made him personally liable. He used the wrong form of investment and legal structure. If he had taken a better lawyer and fund manager, this wouldn't have happened. ~~~ valuearb If you tell someone you will invest their money, but your investments lose money for them, that's not a crime. If you tell someone you will invest their money, but you spend it on yourself, that's a crime. Can you see the difference? ~~~ Radim The difference is exactly as OP says: better legal structure, lawyers and accountants. Achieving the same effect by more convoluted (safer) means. Or what’s your point? ~~~ valuearb Right, so you think investing is the same as theft. That would make Warren Buffett is the biggest thief of all and has apparently stolen $487B from investors. Of course he hasn't spent their money, it's actually invested in hundreds of companies and investors can get their money back any time they want just by calling their broker. But in your mind, it's the same as if he had stolen it. Because of "lawyers, accountants, and stuff". ~~~ zafka A much simpler case is the investment house my mother used shortly after my Father died. While they did not out right steal, they charged very high fees and tried to convince her to move her investments around. Now that she understands what she got into, it will still cost her more than it should to withdraw her money. She trusted them as the salesmen was from her church, and the company had "lutheran" in it's name. ~~~ valuearb Charging excessive fees and poorly serving client needs isn't theft. Saying the Ponzi scheme guy is no different than a sleazy stock broker is massively trivializing his crimes. Sure, what happened to your parents is wrong, but it's far from what he did to his victims.

Oii Instant Messenger - Adywheels http://www.oii-messenger.com ====== Adywheels try recording embarrassing messages so there shouted from your friends phones

Letter to Carmen Ortiz about Aaron Swartz - payne92 http://blog.payne.org/2013/01/30/letter-to-carmen-ortiz-about-aaron-swartz/ ====== betterunix Hm... "It is clear Swartz did something wrong and should have been punished" "He didn’t access something he wasn’t supposed to" "Swartz did not destroy or damage data or infrastructure" See, maybe I am just confused about the meanings of words here, but if Aaron did not access anything he was not supposed to access and did not destroy or damage anything, what exactly is it that he did wrong? Who gets to define the upper bound on how many articles a person is supposed to access, or what counts as an "appropriate" or "acceptable" method of utilizing a JSTOR subscription? Aaron was the victim here; his suicide was shocking and brought that fact to our attention, but if he were alive today he would still be the victim. I called this a senseless prosecution when I learned about it months before his death. Aaron did nothing wrong, and he deserved no punishment. ~~~ rayiner > See, maybe I am just confused about the meanings of words here, but if Aaron > did not access anything he was not supposed to access and did not destroy or > damage anything, what exactly is it that he did wrong? Continuing to access MIT's network after MIT tried to get him to stop. > Who gets to define the upper bound on how many articles a person is supposed > to access, or what counts as an "appropriate" or "acceptable" method of > utilizing a JSTOR subscription? Something called behaving like a reasonable person. The scope of a license is implied by the nature of the license. If JSTOR gives you permission to access journal articles for academic purposes, it's outside the scope of the permission to download them wholesale with intent to distribute them. Nobody needs it spelled out to them that this is the case--it's obvious from the nature of the transaction. Disclaimer: I'm not justifying the prosecutor's actions. But it's possible to support what Aaron did and think the prosecutor overreached without degrading the argument to a hyper-technical and willfully blind defense of how he didn't actually do anything wrong. ~~~ betterunix "Continuing to access MIT's network after MIT tried to get him to stop." I am not really seeing the _moral_ argument there. MIT's network is designed to be open; a ban on a MAC address is, on such a network, little more than a polite request to not continue your access. Being rude by ignoring polite requests is not morally wrong. As for the law, all I can say is that there are an awful lot of criminals in this world if accessing a network that tries to block your computer is a crime. If the law criminalizes a common behavior, then the law itself is what is wrong. "behaving like a reasonable person" How conservative of you. I hear there are some lovely caves that people used to live in, until some unreasonable person had a "better" idea (I wonder if you would have made an argument for punishing him -- after all, not living in caves might disrupt the social order). "If I let you come apple picking in my orchard, you can't bring in a fruit truck and some day laborers and strip the trees bare." You are comparing apples to universal Turing machines. Your comparison is actually that bad -- you might as well be talking about the superbowl than Aaron Swartz. Aaron did not strip anyone or anything. He prevented nobody else from using JSTOR, nor did he stop anyone from reading the articles he downloaded, nor from using the network, nor from using the closet where he hid his laptop. _He caused no measurable damage to anyone or anyone's property_ at any point in the JSTOR incident. "If JSTOR gives you permission to access journal articles for academic purposes..." ...then I should be free to use those articles for any purpose, because JSTOR has no claim to them or to the knowledge they contain. What gives JSTOR the _moral right_ to tell anyone what they are allowed to do with the articles JSTOR provides to them? Sure, we have this thing called copyright that emerged from British attempts to censor books in the age of printing presses (I wonder if the Chinese firewall will lead to the creation of a similar law), but copyrights are in no way related to modern senses of morality or justice -- copyrights are just a way for the government to promote a particular class of business, and that is all they have ever been about in the United States. "Right" and "wrong" are no more relevant to copyright than they are to parking in a loading zone. "nobody needs it spelled out to them that this is the case." That is because prior to the attack on Aaron Swartz, nobody thought that automatically downloading scientific articles on a university network would ever warrant the attention of federal prosecutors. Now we know: don't you dare download articles using any software other than your web browser, and don't you dare do so if you ever suggested that those articles should be shared freely on the Internet, or else you'll face a long and expensive prosecution by the US government. ~~~ rayiner > I am not really seeing the moral argument there. MIT's network is designed > to be open; a ban on a MAC address is, on such a network, little more than a > polite request to not continue your access. MIT's network is a private network and they have complete authority over who gets to access it, in a legal sense and a moral sense. It's their prerogative to extend access to anyone except specifically chosen people. In our society, we do not treat "get off our lawn" and the equivalent as a "polite request." We treat it as an enforceable demand. > How conservative of you. Yes. We live in a society of rules and borders and boundaries. We like those things, so much that we often enforce them with guns (and cheer on those who do). It is not your prerogative to flout them as you please, but your burden to convince us which of those boundaries are unnecessary so we legislate accordingly. > What gives JSTOR the moral right to tell anyone what they are allowed to do > with the articles JSTOR provides to them? JSTOR at the very least has a moral right to control how he used their private service to download the articles. > copyrights are in no way related to modern senses of morality or justice I disagree. I think most people believe that creators are entitled to control the distribution of their work. I think the prevailing mindset is that a digital creation should not be treated differently, for ownership purposes, than a physical creation. Do people download anyway? Sure. But people also sneak into movie theaters. That doesn't mean they feel that theater owners don't have a moral right to exclude non-paying viewers. To the extent that I think the law is out of step with the modern sense of justice is proportionality. People think (and I'd argue rightfully so), that downloading a movie should warrant the kind of slap on the wrist (if anything) that sneaking into the theater to watch that movie would warrant. Not huge dollar fines and possible jail time. Swartz's case really boils down to that: the trespassing charge was dropped, while the charge for accessing the network was not. He was trespassing, and he was accessing the network illegally, but if one was minor enough to be dropped the other should have been treated similarly. ~~~ betterunix "MIT's network is a private network and they have complete authority over who gets to access it, in a legal sense and a moral sense" Then as I said, there are an awful lot of criminals in our society, because people routinely access private networks without permission or in violation of requests to discontinue their access. "In our society, we do not treat "get off our lawn" and the equivalent as a "polite request." We treat it as an enforceable demand." Maybe so, but it is also technically trespassing to cross railroad tracks outside of designated grade-level crossings. In my town, there was a brief period where the police attempted to enforce that, and it was found to be absurd and counter-productive to do so: people from every level of society walk across the tracks without hesitation, without thinking about the misdemeanor offense they are committing, and often in plain view of the police. In almost all cases, they are causing no damage to anyone, and so the police do not care -- it benefits nobody to mindlessly arrest everyone who technically violates some law. "JSTOR at the very least has a moral right to control how he used their private service to download the articles." Sure, because they own their computers; they are free to restrict access, disconnect from the Internet, or encrypt everything without releasing the keys, and that is fine. They chose not to do so, so why should we care if they do not like the particular program Aaron used, or his particular plans for the documents he downloaded? "I think most people believe that creators are entitled to control the distribution of their work." I doubt that; outside of one person who works for the music industry yet to meet anyone who shows even one millisecond of hesitation when it comes to sharing copies of photos, music, movies, written documents, or any other creative work. Most people are perfectly willing to sing "Happy Birthday to You" in public, without spending any mental effort on the idea that it is copyrighted or that the copyright holder forbids public performances. The only moral issues people have with copyright infringement are when (a) artists are "ripped off" by it (but that is usually something the copyright holders are doing, and is irrelevant to Aaron's case anyway) or (b) when someone claims credit for work they did not do (equally irrelevant here). Copyright as a system has nothing to do with either of these: artists and creative people are routinely "ripped off" without any copyright violation occurring, and copyright does not require attribution (and creative people are often not credited for their work under the copyright system). It has nothing to do with morals, it is a legal framework for promoting businesses that were important to society _in the 18th century_. It is as morally relevant to most people as a bill meant to promote the laying of fiber optic lines to built Internet infrastructure. "People think (and I'd argue rightfully so), that downloading a movie should warrant the kind of slap on the wrist" No they don't; most people think downloading a movie is fine because they want to watch it, and that it is just the fat cats in Hollywood who would care about stopping them. Hollywood has desperately pushed for a moral basis for copyright, but has largely failed: it's too complex and most people cannot be bothered. ------ ChuckMcM Thank you Andy, that was a well reasoned and clear statement of how I and others feel about this case. You clearly put a lot of effort into composing that letter and it reflects it. I can only hope that it finds its way into the thought processes of the policy makers over at the Justice department. ------ kdude63 Everyone regards Carmen Ortiz as this heartless evil witch, and this post is more or less defending her. I was expecting more of a response from the community over the course of almost an hour. ~~~ mpyne See, that's why I don't like these lynch mobs that form. He wasn't "defending her" as much as empathizing with her role and duties and using grown-up language to debate grown-up topics like a bunch of goddamn grown-ups. If treating her like an adult instead of calling for her immediate resignation is defending her then I'm not sure what to say... how can you have sane debates with ideologues? FWIW I have quibbles with the letter (e.g. it's entirely within the purview of USSS to investigate "computer crimes" due to historical circumstances) but those are just quibbles, minor areas of disagreements where sane people simply might not agree. I agree that I expect approximately zero to come of his letter, as least as far as concrete action is concerned. _But_ , his letter is exactly the kind of thing that is needed to appeal to those who really can make a big difference in how computer crimes are treated (as opposed to pitchforks and shrieking). ~~~ wmil > But, his letter is exactly the kind of thing that is needed to appeal to > those who really can make a big difference in how computer crimes are > treated (as opposed to pitchforks and shrieking). I actually disagree completely. Ortiz is a US Attorney. Her office is entirely aware of the legal issues. Trying to calmly inform them is a ridiculous waste of time. For some reason she decided to launch a hyper agressive prosecution against Swartz. I'm guessing she wanted a big public win to help her political career, and she figured an introverted nerd was an easy target. Under those circumstances pitchforks and shrieking are the only thing that can stop this from happening in the future. ~~~ doomicon Is Andrew Payne naive enough to think he is providing a U.S. Attorney information that she didn't already have? Providing the Chief of the "Cyber Crimes" unit information he didn't already have? That is why this letter is bunk. Federal Attorney's and Prosecutors are NOT naive to cyber crime, law, punishment, etc. They've been to law school, studied case law, prosecuted cases, worked with law enforcement. Andrew, stick to investing brother :-) ~~~ ScottBurson As taxpayers, we all have the right to express our opinions about how our tax money is being spent. That's what this letter is about -- and very well done, too, I think -- not providing information that Ortiz might have somehow overlooked. Yes, it does summarize the facts of the case as Payne sees them, but that's just for context. ------ Osiris It's refreshing to see someone engage at this level of dicussion, using factual backing of clearly thought-out arguments and concluding with sensible requests. Just as the author stated, however, I doubt it will have any impact, though I would certainly hope that it does. ~~~ rhizome In arguing that the overbroadness of the CFAA was something to be treated gingerly, I fear that it is more like trying to make a point to a law enforcement officer that gun triggers are too easy to pull. "Yeah, and...?" ------ huherto In case you don't know who Andy Payne is. (like me) <http://www.payne.org/index.php/Payne.org_Wiki:About> ------ arbuge "I believe that you and Mr. Heymann were doing “what any good prosecutor would do" Disagreed. This is not what good prosectors should do. Maybe substituting "the average US prosecutor" for "any good" would be more accurate. But good prosecturs don't play the system by extracting plea bargains and guilty pleas under the threat of horrific penalties at trial. ------ gesman Carmen Ortiz & Co will appreciate these letters only if they'll be printed on a soft, white, quality paper. ------ mtp0101 Disclaimer: I am a dumb college freshman Does this guy actually expect his letter to be read by Ortiz? It seems ridiculous to me that this guy thinks his opinion regarding the case matters at all. But now I know who he is and the URL of his website, so perhaps his more subtle goal was achieved. ~~~ youngerdryas So you think this guy sent this letter boost his own image? As you will no doubt soon find out, the world is not black and white, but excruciatingly mottled grey. Ortiz, while a lovely pincushion, is the symptom not the problem. This was standard procedure. Now I will be at every protest if she runs for higher office, not because I think she is Satan, but because it will offer an opportunity to bring attention to Aaron's cause which stands on its own merit. ------ frere Your post assumes this person is anything other than a political agent in a broken system. Quaint. ~~~ frere Wow, Carmen must have 500+ HN pts. I, apparently, was wrong in my assumption that she is in fact yet another political climber in a position that is famous for being a jumping off point for higher office. Obviously a democrat (appointed by Obama), her example of Aaron will surely win her points with the Hollywood/DMCA crowd. Please, downvote me again for a view that, obviously, must be sooooo far off the truth.

Show HN: Five Things Today – a super simple to-do list - iamben https://fivethings.today ====== iamben Hey HN. Before you go ‘not another to-do list’; I wrote this for myself much earlier in the year, after using the “only set yourself 5 things to do every day” hack on paper for a few weeks, and it works quite well. I put it on its own domain shortly after so I could access it when out and about. I had some vague plan to ‘market’ it at some point, but other stuff took priority. Early this week I was talking to a friend about this article: [https://taylorpearson.me/fast/](https://taylorpearson.me/fast/) \- basically, at 70% you should just launch something. It coincided with a great book I’ve been reading (‘How to Be an Imperfectionist’). This project seemed to be a (/another) prime example of something I start, that gets to 70% and remains un-launched. So he said “Why don’t you just launch it?” The ‘perfectionist’ in me hates the idea of sending something out now - I’m actually kind of nervous doing it. But I know if I don’t, I probably never will. I’m sure you’ll be able to find some bugs and issues, but I’ve been able to use it personally relatively successfully. The homepage / landing page hasn’t been designed to encourage signup (which would have been on the roadmap), and the whole site was a result of ‘build and see’, rather than any kind of logical planning. The design needs a bunch of ‘prettying’, but… well, 70%. And if you find it useful, then great :-) The mailing list comment in the join box refers to the fact that I may, at some-point, send a ‘checkout my site I actually got to 100% on’, but I’m not adding anyone to anything now. Feel free to test, use, whatever. There’s a delete option on the settings page - it’ll (permanently) delete everything in the database relating to your account (including any email address before I’ve added it to any kind of list). So here you go. Go easy. Feedback welcome!

IBM blamed for Australian online census debacle - thedays http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/census-debacle-laid-bare-malcolm-turnbull-to-decide-which-heads-will-roll-20161025-gsacqc.html ====== rpeden There have been some high profile instances over the past few years of consultants (IBM, Accenture, etc.) delivering awful, broken solutions after being paid big dollars by governments. Can anyone who has worked at one of these consultancies (or on the procurement side in government) shed light on _why_ this keeps happening? ~~~ guitarbill Especially when IBM Australia has been accused of "ethical transgressions" [0] in a report by the State of Queensland. Although in that case, part of the issue was the government not going after them for damages competently/aggressively enough. I'm thinking big consultancies either have the "right" connections or are simply better at talking to bureaucrats who ultimately decide what gets funded? [0] [http://www.healthpayrollinquiry.qld.gov.au/home?a=207203](http://www.healthpayrollinquiry.qld.gov.au/home?a=207203) ~~~ rpeden Maybe the big consultants are the only ones with the resources (and patience) to shepherd a proposal through a government RFP process.

.htaccess for Word Press - data6057 Do you have any good resources to understand how to best configure .htaccess files for WordPress? Knowing that the .htaccess is highly configurable AND I come from a Microsoft background. ====== terrellm Why not leave the defaults until you are directed otherwise? Wordpress and some plugins will either require write access to .htaccess so they can make changes or give you the text to copy-paste yourself. Things like your URL structure can be changed inside of Wordpress Admin. Many seem to recommend avoiding using dates in the URL if you are concerned about good content appearing stale after a few weeks.

Show HN: A Vue webapp to build Vue webapps with API data - F117-DK https://jig.gy ====== F117-DK Questions are more than welcome! :)

Google to ban 'stalkerware' apps that secretly transmit people's location, info - onetimemanytime https://www.businessinsider.com/google-to-ban-stalkerware-apps-that-secretly-snoop-on-people-2020-9 ====== mjangle1985 So they're going to delete their location transmitting and tracking app Maps? ~~~ onetimemanytime Killing the competition in the name of privacy :)

Deep dive: Cancellation rate in SaaS business models - dmitri1981 http://blog.asmartbear.com/cancellation-rate-in-saas-business-models.html ====== dpcan If anybody wants years of insight into the SaaS business model, look at reseller web hosting. People have been reselling web hosting for more than 10 years now and it is, at its core, an SaaS model in a highly competitive space. You have monthly recurring income from customers who subscribe. You have to maintain and improve your service constantly, and support is a big part of the business. There is overhead, there is a lot of work involved, and it's very stressful. Check out WebHostingTalk.com and just read about the ups, downs, pit-falls, successes, and problems people have been having for a long time and you'll learn a thing or two about what it's like to capture and keep subscribers. When it comes to SaaS, the thing is, people leave, they cancel, and you have to let them go. They know what's best for their business, so you can't dwell on cancellations. The only way you survive in this recurring revenue world is if you are acquiring faster than you are losing customers. It's pretty basic math. I used to try SO HARD to keep those customers who were walking away. I felt bad about it. Things change. Today, if someone is leaving, I help them get where they are going if I can. I am not an obstacle. I'm that friendly face you are always welcome to return to if you don't find greener pastures. You know what? I get A LOT of people back as years go by. ------ mvkel I'd be interested to see the comparison between _enterprise_ SaaS and normal $39.95/month SaaS. The churn on enterprise SaaS would presumably be incredibly low, because once a company invests in integration, workflows, training, etc. for a particular system, it's going to be very hard to switch. ~~~ sapphirecat Don't forget the long-term contracts, where an enterprise signs onto the software for five years in exchange for a discount. That's probably the most common justification for "Why can't we have better service?" that I've seen IRL. ~~~ mvkel Great point... our typical deal is a three-year contract. ------ jebleeb My churn history, for what it's worth: <http://i52.tinypic.com/2v3llr7.png> Bootstrapped b2b saas startup with one part time support guy, 2 technical founders and no one else, avg sub $80/month, 75% of revenue in 2011. Most customers are small business. Most people seem to churn because they only want to use it for the 1 month free trial period. ~~~ aaronblohowiak What kind of customer research do you do with people that leave after the trial? Also, many companies that I know don't count trials as part of "customers" so they don't impact churn (higher churn among people who have paid you in the past is a more urgent cause for alarm than increased amount of canceled trials) ------ paraschopra One issue with the equation [Cancellation rate] = [product utility] + [service quality] + [acceptable price] is that it assumes the product continues to be relevant or useful to customer forever. This may not be true for all products. Point in case is A/B testing software. Many small customers decide one day that they need to optimize their landing page. They purchase a subscription and do a couple of A/B tests. They are happy with the product but they anyway have to cancel because the tool served its job and they no longer need it. Product utility was there, service was good and price was also okay. It is just that the product need wasn't continuous. ~~~ dhimes In cases like that you may still be figuring out the business model. Unless you are selling to companies that maintain lots of websites, that may not really be a subscription service but rather more like a "rental."

DreamIt Ventures SeatGeek founder on Mixergy - shedd http://mixergy.com/russ-dsouza-seatgeek-interview/ ====== aditya Wow, the mixergy sponsorship message was so long, I killed it at 1:08 ~~~ famfam I'm happy to listen to it. Andrew's work is incredible. ~~~ AndrewWarner Thanks for the support famfam. I'll try weaving the promos into the program and see how it goes. I haven't done it before because when someone tells me, "Then I almost lost my business," I didn't want to respond, "Hang on to that thought. I see by the clock that it's time to do a commercial." But I'm game for trying.

U.S., in Shift, Sees Marriage Act as Violation of Gay Rights - akitchell http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/us/24marriage.html?_r=1&hp ====== burgerbrain I've never really gotten why _any_ marriage needs to be recognized by the government. Yes, I understand it's for tax purposes, and yes, I think taxing 'married' people any differently than 'single' people is stupid. ~~~ ktsmith It's a lot more than just tax issues involved. Marriages are contracts that two people enter into and a number of benefits and responsibilities are determined by that contract. ~~~ burgerbrain People enter into contracts every day that the government has nothing to do with. I'm still not getting why government approval should be involved at all. ~~~ ktsmith I didn't suggest that the government should be involved I just wanted to point out that it's a lot more than taxes. The problem is that the government is already involved and so at the very least we should allow all couples the ability to enter into this particular contract without discrimination based on sexual preference. ------ TomOfTTB I'm for Gay Marriage but I think he loses some serious integrity points for this because he openly said he was against Gay Marriage during the campaign. Beyond that the Justice Department's job is (by their own definition) "enforcement of the law and administration of justice". Not enforcement of the laws the current administration happens to agree with. The Bush administration did vaguely the same thing with Microsoft's anti-trust case but at least they bothered to make it look like they were still enforcing the law with a wildly insufficient plea deal. Again my issue isn't with Gay Marriage. I'm just not crazy about sending the message that it's ok for the President to subvert the law and lie to the public to do what he thinks is right. Even if I agree with him. (For those of a liberal bent who can't see past the Gay Marriage issue imagine a Conservative President deciding not to allow the DOJ to pursue states that outlaw abortion because he doesn't feel like enforcing federal law) ~~~ metageek The difference is that he's not failing to enforce federal law; he's failing to contest the judiciary's finding that DOMA is unconstitutional. If the court is right, then it's not a law, and he has no obligation to enforce it. ------ mildweed Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, Obama just called BS, now its up to the courts to decide. Yay separation of powers. ~~~ metageek No, a court already called BS, and Obama gave up on arguing the point. ------ jdp23 With 13 votes in less than an hour, I'm surprised that this isn't on the front page. Presumably some penalty is being applied, and I'd like to better understand this. For hackers and many other people at startups, marriage is an important way of getting insurance coverage and other benefits. Until now, the US government has taken the stance that many people shouldn't be eligible for it. Now, it's changing the position. Why isn't this relevant? ~~~ jokermatt999 Political articles tend to get flagged, pushing them off the front page. ~~~ zdw Correct. All of the Giffords shooting in Tucson articles from last month got flagged off.

Ask HN: Should we have a “Who is hiring?” for non-profit volunteer positions? - secfirstmd We are a non-profit (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.secfirst.org) currently looking for a volunteer copywriter to help us with some content and PR stuff for the launch of our app, Umbrella - which helps journalists&#x2F;aid workers&#x2F;activists manage their security.<p>It only requires a few hours of volunteer time so doesn&#x27;t really fit into the current &quot;Who is hiring?&quot; - which is full, part-time or internships. Thus does it make sense to have a &quot;Who is looking for volunteers?&quot; ====== cdvonstinkpot And maybe internships... ~~~ secfirstmd I think the current "Who is hiring?" also includes internships? (But I can see a valid reason to switch it to a volunteer thread also)

JavaScript Frameworks[survey] - akarambir https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDlKclJYX0V4MW9fVFRfUklaUTczTHc6MQ ====== karambir some of these frameworks are very good specially Sproutcore but i still prefer writing my own code.

Ask HN: Free trip to Angola. Why is nobody interested in this offer? - seven Hi.<p>First, sorry for the link bait. I'm posting this for the third time and I really expected more feedback.<p>I am trying to find a developer who is interested in the following:<p>Job description:<p>Python developer with a verve for adventure sought for an already developed OLPC-project in cooperation with Dom Bosco Angola. We estimate between 2 and 3 months for the project, starting in August 2013. Due to the charitable cause, we can only provide costs for flights, basic accommodation and a fairly allowance. Your job will be to help the schools faculty members establish extensive training activities for their XO computers as well as teaching the administration staff how to amend the activities' contents.<p>Requirements :<p>* Python (Minimum 2 years)<p>* You need to be able to cope with one-of-a-kind Luanda. If you love challenges and are looking for a fantastic addition to your resume, you might just have found exactly what you're looking for!<p>* Basic Knowledge in Portuguese or at least Spanish (You still got some months, so get cracking!)<p>* Of course experience and knowledge of the OLPC-concept would be great, but motivation and good apprehension would convince us even more.<p>About the project The Angolan OLPC-project was established by the African Innovation Foundation (AIF) in cooperation with schools operated by Dom Bosco Angola, based in poor areas where children do not have easy access to computers. Today, 700 students use their laptops as a regular teaching tool, and 400 more XO laptops are on their way. Now we need your help to add more content to those computers.<p>Email: sven@internet.ao<p>Web: http://www.africaninnovation.org/our-projects/culture-education/one-laptop-per-child-in-angola-olpc/ ====== heldrida This is the first time I see this. I'm not interested myself, I know lot's about Angola and personally it's not a place I'd like to go. I'll share! It's a good cause, I just see how horrible it is having to do charity, when the country as so much money kept in the pocket of the president and his daughter: billionaire! ------ dirktheman If I was a decent enough Python dev and not married, I'd go in a heartbeat! I always have had a soft spot for Angola: one of the poorest countries in the world yet with unbelievable high prices, an interesting history, and heaps of adventure without too much risk of getting hurt. Good luck! ------ Robby2012 It would be really awesome, if I had any experience with Python I would try. Además hablo español asi que no tengo problema con eso... ------ masukomi Personally, I'm opposed to working at a company that thinks a bait and switch type approach to attracting employees is an appropriate tactic. There are many ways the headline could have been worded that would have enticed with paid travel in exchange for work instead of promoting a "free trip". ~~~ seven Which company are you referring to? There were some companies involved in putting together the financing for this charitable cause. This school is not searching for employees. If you want details, please ask for them. ------ dragonwriter Missing a word here: > [...] basic accommodation and a fairly allowance. A fairly _what?_ allowance? ~~~ seven I did not see that while proof reading. Neither the author nor me are native speakers. Google translates the single words into something that is understandable and would make sense. For Germans at least. :) I guess the right words would be: pocket money @all: Thanks for giving this topic a bit attention. In case you have more questions about the offer, let me know. I will find out. Also happy to answer questions about working in Luanda. Perhaps you would like to stay after the 3 month. :) ------ seven "Escola Dom Bosco, Luanda, Angola" will show you the location of the school in google maps. ------ elaineo I'm interested. I sent an email.

Traffic flow measured on various junctions - ckvamme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yITr127KZtQ ====== ckvamme Originally saw this on reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/dvqt8a/traffic_flow...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/dvqt8a/traffic_flow_measured_on_various_different_4way/)

HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet - aundumla http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2009/02/html5-canvas-cheat-sheet.html ====== webXL The cheat sheet has been around for a while, but the interactive Super Mario background is pretty sweet! ~~~ orofino I recommend finishing the level. Funny ending ------ tim_church For anyone interested in cheat sheets, I maintain a cheat sheet directory. There are currently 25 HTML5 cheat sheets listed (including this one) - <http://devcheatsheet.com/tag/html5/>

Bill Cosby sentenced to 3 to 10 years prison - craigferg501 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/25/bill-cosby-81-is-sentenced-to-three-to-10-years-in-state-prison-for-2004-sexual-assault.html ====== andriesm Defense lawyers tried to keep the 81-year-old out of prison while he appeals his conviction, saying he's frail and legally blind. Judge Steven O'Neill refused their plea for Cosby to remain on house arrest, ruling Tuesday that Cosby will be locked up immediately. O'Neill says Cosby could "quite possibly be a danger to the community." \--- Anyone knows on what basis he is considered a danger to the community at 81?

Five new Real-Time detections of fast radio bursts with UTMOST - howard941 https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/488/3/2989/5528327?redirectedFrom=fulltext ====== mavdi Forgive my ignorance, can someone please explain what this potentially means? ~~~ ianthiel The three bursts 1ms apart don't appear to be natural (or at least, we don't currently understand how they may occur naturally). The signal may be extraterrestrial. ~~~ ganzuul If it is from a three-stage nuke it might be terrestrial. IIRC nukes have a characteristic double-pulse 1ms apart. ------ carbocation > "Optical, radio, and X-ray follow-up has been made for most of the reported > bursts, with no associated transients found." What is a "transient" in this context? ~~~ imglorp I think they're looking for changes in the sky from those locations. Supernovae for example leave visible traces--clouds, rings, shock fronts, etc and emit all kinds of radio and x-rays. But FRB's not so much, it would seem, so far anyway. ------ kolbusa I hope whoever is working on this read the Three Body Problem trilogy. ~~~ mclightning Can you elaborate why? ~~~ llllllla Spoilers for books 1 and 2, at least: [https://bigthink.com/scotty- hendricks/the-dark-forest-theory...](https://bigthink.com/scotty- hendricks/the-dark-forest-theory-a-terrifying-explanation-of-why-we-havent- heard-from-aliens-yet)

Microsoft's “Love” of Linux - pedrocr http://pedrocr.pt/text/microsofts-love-of-linux/ ====== juliangoldsmith Microsoft loves Linux because it makes them money. I'm not sure why anyone would expect differently. They won't release products like Office for Linux (though a web interface is possible), and they won't move away from Windows-only APIs. Neither of those actions would have any tangible benefit for the primary users of those produts (Windows users and Windows developers, respectively). Active Directory is so deeply integrated into the Windows stack that it will never come out. You can authenticate Linux clients against AD, but I doubt they'll be writing a Linux AD server any time soon. I'd imagine most corporate mail servers also support SMTP/IMAP, and Office365 has a web client. As far as ActiveSync goes, that hasn't been a thing since 2007. ~~~ smacktoward _> They won't release products like Office for Linux_ Because the market for desktop Linux applications is too small to be worth considering. The whole reason they "love Linux" now is because Linux on the server gained too much market share for them to realistically oppose. They had to find a way to make money in that market that didn't involve somehow boiling an ocean of Linux machines. So they did. Windows is still overwhelmingly strong in the desktop market, though, so they have no such incentive to accommodate it there. Nobody retreats from a battlefield they've already won. ~~~ dredmorbius Microsoft have an established track record of offering, then withdrawing, MS Office for alternate platforms (or refusing to offer it at all). I seem to recall that there was an Office version for Sun Microsystem's Solaris, which is 99.99...% of the way to a Linux variant. That was killed. (This may have been MSIE or an Exchange-compatible email client, I'm researching this still.) OSX is better supported, though for a long time Microsoft's email client was not Outlook but Entourage, a now-discontinued project. It had a typical-for- Microsoft opaque binary data storage format, though it's proved possible to extract useful information from this using Linux utilities. Microsoft discontinued MSIE support on Mac in 2005, an issue given that many enterprise Web / intranet tools relied exclusively on nonstandard MSIE web extensions. Office was never offered for BeOS, which I believe was a deliberate strategy decision, though I'm not finding evidence of this (JLG should be able to comment, if anyone has current contact). The lack _was_ seen as a kiss-of- death for the OS and hardware. Alternatively, what made RIM's Blackberry as popular among business executives as it was was its integration with MS Exchange email servers. Strategic control over what ports were and were not supported by Microsoft, regardless of technical difficulty or merits, was a major element of that company's monopoly abuses. ~~~ philwelch You’re citing things that happened almost 20 years ago if you’re talking about Solaris and BeOS. ~~~ dredmorbius Precisely my point. The tiger rarely changes its stripes. ~~~ cwyers Microsoft isn't a tiger, it's a group of people. There is some continuity, but the people making those decisions are not the same people making those decisions now. ~~~ dredmorbius [https://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_meaning_of_the_phrase_...](https://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_meaning_of_the_phrase_%27miss_the_boat%27) ------ tw04 I'm not sure I follow what the author is getting at other than "We should hate MS and do our best to not work with them on anything!". First it was "MS breaks compatibility on purpose, screw those guys!". Now it's "sure, they're playing nice but they don't have a product in every market segment we want so they must have some nefarious master plan we haven't figure out yet!" Everytime I hear someone say "just look, they don't support office on Linux!" I ask: and what exactly do you think the market share is of guys who love Linux so much they use it on the desktop, but also would _PAY_ Microsoft for Office vs. just using LibreOffice or Google's office suite? If you think MS hasn't done the math and figured out that solution would never break even much less turn a profit, I guess I'd ask anyone making that claim to show their work. I can tell you unequivocally the thing holding back the average enterprise from moving their entire business to Linux on the Desktop is _NOT_ Microsoft Office, if it were they'd just tell everyone to use Office Online and move on with life. PS: I assume all these Linux on the Desktop guys complaining about not having Office on Linux already are subscribed to o365 and use Office Online exclusively, proving to MS there's demand. Right? ~~~ KingMachiavelli If Office was available for Linux, some organizations could consider deploying Linux workstations with Office since that's what most users/employees need is basically a browser (100%/users) and the Office suite (50-90%/users). Office Online is severely gimped as noted in the article and is solely to counteract adoption of Google Office. ~~~ darkcha0s What kind of an assumption is this. Most people need an operating system they are comfortable doing their daily work, not just a browser and a notepad. Jesus christ, not all non-devs work only in office. ~~~ KingMachiavelli > Most people need an operating system they are comfortable doing their daily > work. True, and Windows is very entrenched partly due to Office and legacy software depending on it. Chromebooks and Mac OS seem to be adopted without to much hindrance from a UI perspective. i.e How much more populate would Chromebooks be if they ran the full desktop Office suite? > not all non-devs work only in office. Certainly not all but a lot of jobs, particularly in management consist mostly of emails, meetings, spreadsheets, word documents + a few web apps. Also, lets not forget about all the jobs where the computer isn't really part of the job at all; it's just a tool to communicate (email) and for document production/consumption. These machines are basically kiosks that Microsoft has milking licenses out of for Windows + Office + 365 Storage. Some businesses can switch to Google but many rely on existing Excel spreadsheets elsewhere in their organization so there is a lot of momentum to switch away from non-desktop spreadsheet and document applications. ~~~ ClumsyPilot I disagree with this 'legacy software's moniker, all the most productive software falls into this category. Look at the Autodesk Suite, Adobe Suite, Enterprise Architect, blender3D, Unity game engine, a traditional IDE like Jetbrains or VisualStudio. They have waay more power than the their web-based or, worse yet, electron competitors. ~~~ KingMachiavelli I was only referring to software that's still tied to Windows out of legacy/inertia. I'm not saying all desktop applications are legacy. But It's appropriate because if those application were going to be rewritten today, there is no way they would tie them exclusively to the Win32 API. Blender, Jetbrains IDE's, and even VSCode (pretty sure Unity is multiplatform too) are all working just fine with multiplatform and aren't dependent on any particular OS. If you've ever had to deal with Autodesk like software, it's a mess of old code and poor practices. It's a nightmare getting that kind of software working for Enterprise/Educational environments. Just looking at the Enterprise Architect site brings me back to the days when software used to come on actual disks in large, book-like boxes. Yes, the software is useful and has yet to be replaced by something more modern, whether web based or at least multi-platform. But that's why it's entrenched in many businesses and Microsoft is riding on the back of that by making sure it's tied to their platform. ~~~ ClumsyPilot I agree in principle, i really want most software to be multi-platform. However I cannot ignore the reality that multi-platform software is fraught with peril, either for the developer (QT and the like) or for the user (electron). Each platform moves, introduces updates, removes support and features (looking at you, OsX!). For some people the choice is: single platform, or no software at all. ------ derefr I’m honestly surprised that Microsoft aren’t working with Linux vendors in an attempt to solve Linux problems _by_ more deeply integrating Windows-styled solutions into Linux, such that the Linux _client_ ecosystem becomes more dependent on the Windows _infrastructure_ ecosystem. That’d be the natural Azure-focused equivalent to “embrace, extend, extinguish.” For example, Linux DNS resolution is an arcane mess of upstream components bodged together over decades, about the place where sysvinit was before systemd came along. I could totally see Microsoft releasing some FOSS Linux über-network-client-daemon that combines DNS, NMBD, and Bonjour resolution together (sort of like Apple’s mDNSResolver) in an attempt to “clean up” that mess—where, just by coincidence, parts of the SMB stack begin to seep directly into the operation of the system. Then a subsumption for Kerberos+libpam+GSSAPI that also supports NTLM; etc. until eventually Linux ends up needing to talk to a real Active Directory Domain Controller to boot. Might be Microsoft’s one, might be a Linux FOSS one—either way, it gives Microsoft an advantage. ...but, so far as I can tell, they’re _not_ doing this. I wonder why not? ~~~ zymhan > ...but, so far as I can tell, they’re not doing this. I wonder why not? Because maybe, just maybe, they're a tad bit less evil? ~~~ TheCoelacanth Nonsense, a publicly traded corporation is inherently an immoral psychopath. They are required to single-mindedly pursue shareholder profit. ~~~ delusional The people who make up the corporation are people. They need to be motivated, and they no not mobilize immediately. ~~~ oneplane Depends on shareholders, doesn't it? Those are the people that 'make up' the corp. The rest are pawns that either fall in line or end up recognizing that the only way to win the game is to not play (and thus quit). ~~~ skissane If employees think their employer is doing something unethical, that harms morale. If morale is harmed, good people are more likely to leave. If an employer has a poor reputation, it becomes harder to hire employees with in-demand skills. Poor retention and difficulty in recruiting employees can end up harming the business. ~~~ oneplane Sadly there are far more workers with a broken moral compass than you'd think. Luckily, there are also enough with ethics and key positions to somewhat cancel that out, but I wouldn't say that unethical employers have a much harder time than ethical ones. It's probably simply a different spread on money/package/freedom within one such company. Plenty of people will believe what they are doing is justified and ignore any signs of cognitive dissonance if the pay check is right and internal communication is 'managed' enough by HR. ------ raesene9 From what I see in general MS like Linux on the server, not so much the desktop. The reason for that is pretty obvious. They want as many organizations as possible to use their cloud platform, for that to work, they need first class Linux server support. On the desktop, they'd prefer people to be using Windows, but they want to ensure that developers who deploy to Linux have a great experience, thus WSL, VS Code et al. With that said, I think there are some groups inside MS who would like to see more desktop Linux support, thus announcements like the Linux Teams client. It's probably a mistake to view MS (or any other v.large corp) as a unified entity. There will be groups inside that corp. with differing goals. You only have to look at MS presence at Kubecon where you'll often see MS staff with Macs or Ubuntu laptops on their stand. ~~~ vrthrowaway They don't _like_ it, that's the author's whole point. They would obviously prefer that everyone pay for windows server, but they've lost that battle. "Like" is pure marketing. >You only have to look at MS presence at Kubecon where you'll often see MS staff with Macs or Ubuntu laptops on their stand. marketing in a market. I think we (or you and the author, I'm just re-iterating his points) are talking past each other and you probably agree, but his whole point again is that the "Love" is just public facing market strategy. ~~~ darkcha0s Just a question-- what would be a path you deem the best? Should Microsoft just work in its silo, while Linux develops in its silo? Should Microsoft not embrace linux? I feel like the 2 strategies mentioned by the author simply let you point to the other one when the first one doesn't grip. I'm always at a loss when these HN posts come about, because I feel like 99% of the hate/sentiment stems from the time Microsoft was actually a shitty company (I'm sure it is still shit in great lengths today, but not comparable to the Ballmer years). ------ tracker1 It feels like this article is a lot of FUD spreading. MS is a business that likes to make money. At this point, there are developer minded people at the helm, and it makes more sense selling their software and cloud services than chasing negative returns on Windows. I can see that side of it through and through. MS has open sourced huge amounts of resource and platform building code in .Net Core the past several years, and ASP.Net earlier than that. They did buy, and have expanded on the tools from Xamarin not shutter it. I'm not saying they're altruistic in nature, no company is. I will say that their behavior in the community, especially since Nadella took over has been better than any other company of it's size or larger that I can think of. I'm not saying forget or forgive the past, but accept the present. Corporations, despite legalities, are not people. They are made up of people, and a significant portion of management has rolled over in the past decade and the outward facing culture shows that. ~~~ blub You couldn't be more wrong. Since Nadella is at the helm, Microsoft have started to aggressively gather customer data from their desktop OS and many other products, including office. They used to be very decent at this before Windows 10, but they went completely nuts with telemetry. At the beginning they were completely opaque, to the point that a German gov agency had to reverse engineer the communications to see just wtf was being transmitted. More recently the Dutch gov told them to fuck off if they don't cut off the crap and MS was forced to negotiate new privacy terms with them. Anything they have already and will open source pales in comparison to the harms to our privacy, just like for Google. Although Google at least open sources some useful things now and then... .NET is Microsoft's dev platform that no one cares about except Windows devs. It started as a JVM/Java clone and grew into its own product, but for anyone not already all-in on MS tools it makes zero sense to use it when there's so much choice. ~~~ tracker1 Windows isn't great... It's a single product of many from a very large company, and one that other than the assigned computer at work, I don't typically use. Beyond that, I don't mind the telemetry so much, though their decision to emphasis telemetry over test labs and staff is irritating. Also, been a few hours since I read TFA, but isn't even a focus of TFA. They aren't locking their services and much new software into windows, and aren't using windows to leverage other things in ways that don't make any sense. ------ pksdjfikkkkdsff I can't really follow the article. Too much paranoia, or negativity, I guess. All I care about is having a usable Linux shell and Linux tool on my Windows machine. What else can you expect from Microsoft? Yeah, they are doing it so that people don't switch over to Linux completely. What more can you expect? Is it even Microsoft's job to establish a standard for 3d Graphics and what not? Or is the ball in the park of graphics card vendors and game developers? Why do I have Windows on my machine? I don't fully trust Linux to achieve the same level of power management. I can play games. I have a dual graphics card, which would be a hassle to use on Linux. It would be notebook vendor's job to release Linux notebooks with good power management. Chip vendors to release specs that enable Linux developers to create such drivers. And so on. ~~~ gowld Why wouldn't an Operating System developer be responsible for providing an interface between hardware developers and applicaton developers? ~~~ pksdjfikkkkdsff OpenGL seems to have coexisted with DirectX for a while. I don't know enough about OS development to be able to judge if Microsoft prevented OpenGL from achieving the same performance as DirectX. Given the abysmal security history of Windows, my guess would be that it was possible to get close to the metal as a driver developer, at least in the old days. Also MS couldn't be expected to take care of an interface that works on iOS and Linux. They are responsible for Windows. ------ headmelted The author misses the bigger picture completely. Microsoft used to see Linux as competition, and while that might still be true in some ways, it’s largely moot for a couple of reasons. In 2019, Windows isn’t competing with Linux for desktop market share not because Linux poses no threat there, but because _the desktop doesn’t matter anymore_. Windows, and the desktop operating system as a concept, is competing with the web browser in the enterprise and mobile devices in the retail market (and even then, it’s not really a competition - most casual users gave up computers for smartphones years ago). Viewed in that lens Microsoft _genuinely_ embracing Linux makes a lot of sense - most of their revenue now comes from service contracts, and the one bedrock they’ve always had is their second-to-none developer support. If developers want them some Linux, then by gosh Redmond is going to give them more Linux than anyone else. Maximum Linux for your organisations’ Linuxy needs! Microsoft still has great support for gamers on Windows as an incentive not to check out Wine/Proton and things happening there, but really, when was the last time you paid for a Windows license for home use? One way or another they’ve been literally giving the software away as quickly as they can for years. The future is about services, and that means market share (if users leave because they can get a free OS elsewhere then the license has to go). Likewise, if it gets more developers to stay in the ecosystem, then Linux support it is. ~~~ baybal2 Since when? That's nonsense. Browser and a whole operating system are two different things ~~~ AnIdiotOnTheNet You're talking to SV web devs who's careers depend on and are entirely focused on web tech. ~~~ headmelted Exactly. I sometimes wonder if people are so in the bubble that they don’t realize we’re rarely the audience. ------ designium I think the article misses a bigger fight which is between Microsoft's Azure vs. AWS. All what Microsoft is doing is catering to devs who want better tools to deal with servers in the cloud. Imagine this potential tactic: 1\. Create great tools such as Visual Studio Code to serve as first point contact with devs of all types and stacks 2\. Start creating plugin or easy to integrate dev workflow in those types of tools with Azure 3\. Make it so easy and reasonably cost effective that people may start switching away from AWS to Azure I don't think Microsoft is trying to kill or encroach Linux but instead cooping those devs into moving to Azure platform where the market growth is; while still protecting the existing cash cows. ------ gwd > I think all of these would be strategic blunders from the point of view of > Microsoft shareholders. But they’re the kind of things you do for love. > Otherwise this is just “love” if your standard is abusive one-sided > relationships. This is awesome. ------ oblio The author is partly right. You shouldn't trust Microsoft. But the landscape has changed. Focusing too much on Microsoft as the sole, main rival of OSS and Linux keeps you tunnel visioning like it's the 90's. And back then Microsoft was huge and overbearing. Now there's many, many other threats to OSS and Linux, several of them bigger than Microsoft. Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook. They're keen OSS contributors, where it doesn't matter for them and keen closed source proponents, where it _does matter_. ------ guardian5x This article makes it sound like Embracing is a bad thing, because necessarily Extend, and Extinguish will follow. But it doesn't really work that way with Open Source. ~~~ dleslie Google proved the model for embracing, extending and controlling open source by way of Android and the shift to Google Play Services. Start open and let the walled garden grow within. ~~~ gowld How does a not-open-source product control open-source? Anyone can try to build an open source alternative to GPS on whatever hardware they can obtain, using Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Without Google open source, they've have to replicate it's functionality from scratch. If AOSP never existed, Android would still be Android (GPL allows proprietary Android) and would still be as popular as it is. iOS was never open source, and did fine. ~~~ WorldMaker When was the last time a Google-free AOSP fork had a successful handset on the market? We've seen almost nothing but failures: Amazon Phone, Cyanogen, … The market seems to have spoken that Android isn't Android without "Google Play Services" secret sauce, and that's entirely proprietary walled garden. ------ tra3 I'm having a tough time drawing a conclusion from this article. In my experience with commercial/open source projects the only reason they are open source is because of some sort of market advantage. Is the author suggesting that Microsoft doing all this OSS work out of the goodness of their collective heart? Corporations are about making money, while that goal and OSS happen to align we'll get open source from Microsoft. The second it stops being strategically relevant: bye-bye. ~~~ ppseafield I think the article takes issue with "Microsoft loves Linux" as a blanket term, where it's more like "Microsoft loves† Linux‡" († supports in only a very specific way because of losing to Linux on the server side.) (‡ Linux as used only for servers. Linux as a desktop OS can still get bent, and we're trying to get devs to abandon it when working on code that deploys to Linux servers.) ------ SimianLogic2 I used cygwin to do web development circa 2007/2008\. It was a huge pain in the ass and one of the main reasons I switched to Macs. I've been back on Windows for a couple of years now using WSL and it's been pretty great. I'm excited for that integration to get even tighter with WSL2. The broad categories I use professionally are office crap, web dev, and creative tools. Macs used to suck at the first and rule the last two, but they've really fallen behind in the last few years. The new macbook pro looks like a good machine, but I switched to a gaming laptop to get a better GPU and 64gb of RAM. This (2-year-old) machine does everything I need it to do and I'm now at a point where Macs are going to have to do something pretty spectacular to get me to switch back (or have Windows screw up in a comparable way to what Apple has done the last few years). What's the point of all this? I think this article misses the boat pretty badly on who Micrsoft's talking to when it says it loves linux. It's talking to web devs like me who work and deploy to linux, not software philosophers who want to debate the meaning of free. From my point of view, they're doing great right now. ~~~ thom Could you describe your workflow with WSL? ------ JeremyNT Data point: MS teams disables all of Teams' A/V features for Linux users based on browser user agent. If you use chromium and spoof your UA as if you were using Edge/Windows, said features work. [1] Microsoft is what it is - a very large company with various business units with differing priorities. I do feel like they are much improved from the bad old days, where they seemed to enact a company-wide strategy aimed at actively sabotaging Linux. In the face of that, I suppose indifference is an improvement, and their "we love linux" marketing is at least an admission that Linux support is a consideration for some elements of their business. [1] [https://github.com/meetfranz/franz/issues/1095](https://github.com/meetfranz/franz/issues/1095) ~~~ my123 A proper Microsoft Teams port for Linux is coming by the end of this year. [https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/su...](https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/16911565-linux- client) ~~~ JeremyNT I wonder if they will stop disabling features for the chrome UA if/when they release their electron app on Linux? One could hope... ------ yarg With regards to Linux, Google seems like a far bigger danger. Have a look at the "locking-in manufacturers" section of [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip- on...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android- controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/). In a more general sense, cloud computing is the biggest danger to Linux, since it allows companies to allow access to forked versions without needing to distribute source - this is why the AGPL exists. There's also potential for bad faith actors to utilise closed source build tools to distribute releases that are technically opensource - but that cannot be built by anyone but the distributor. ------ squarefoot Even if Microsoft does really love Linux, I'd rather want to know _which_ Linux they love: a generic one such as any popular distro out there, or rather _their_ own version of Linux, which could be a frankenpenguin where some obscure proprietary technolgy, no matter how small, would magically make their software run "better". I am 100% speculating, of course, but if I was in Microsoft pants and wanted to kill Linux because it makes essentially impossible to achieve domination in some context (server, embedded, mobile, etc), once realized I can't destroy it for failing many moons ago to understand its potential at step 1 of "first they ignore you..." , the best alternative would be to embrace it, pollute it discreetly injecting closed technology in key areas (all it needs is a key driver or library), port some great software to it with seemingly innocuous strings attached to the proprietary parts that will make it _run better or run at all_ , have its users love my software and get used to it, make its use appealing to business users as well (offering discounted pro support as an example), acquire game companies and port their titles as above, etc. Once I have say the 20 most used apps depend on that closed blob or technology, I'd be ready to roll out my own distro which of course by being the favorite one among "normal" users will be the one dictating other Linux distros future. To make it short, Microsoft will indeed love Linux, although not before making Linux one of their products. As I wrote, that's pure speculation, but think of it when the first "best run on WSL" Linux software comes out. ~~~ SmellyGeekBoy To be fair, this sounds just like Google's strategy with Android. ------ throwaway8291 I'm in the camp of moving my stuff out of GitHub (thankfully so many nice options, like GitLab, gitea/gogs, and of course sourcehut) because the only reason I do not hate Microsoft is that I was able to avoid any of their tech successfully for the past 15 years. In it for the money, and gone if there's nothing more to capture. Simple story. That's exactly how something like a community does not work. ------ ClumsyPilot I am getting the impression the author is fighting yesterday’s war and on top of that has not been following what's going on in windows/.Net development lately. There has been a large-scale effort to open-source and port chunks of Windows and .Net Framework WinForms 'the win95-style UI' [https://github.com/dotnet/winforms](https://github.com/dotnet/winforms) WPF 'the Vista-style UI' [https://github.com/dotnet/wpf](https://github.com/dotnet/wpf) WinUI3 'the Modern-style UI' [https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui- xaml](https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml) Windows Communications Foundation [https://github.com/dotnet/wcf](https://github.com/dotnet/wcf) And more stuff I am not aware of. Judge as you wish, but if you are going to discuss the topic, they are important. ~~~ int_19h None of the UI frameworks have been ported. ~~~ ClumsyPilot Efforts like Avalonia and Uno platform enjoy a level of support from MS, and Microsoft produces Xamarin Forms to enable Xaml-based cross platform development. Microsoft themselves have stated that it's a requested development, but they have not yet figured out a sensible way forward.A lot of effort was invested and I feel accusing them of ill will is unfair. Meanwhile Linux UI/Graphics situation is a mess and Avalonia developers struggle with it. The same flexibility that makes Linux a good as embedded/server, makes it a horrible target for client application development. ------ lasermike026 Hmmmm, Linux has proven itself on its own. The GPL has done its work. POSIX is a working standard. Linux isn't completely POSIX compliant. I don't think there is much Microsoft can do about it. ------ tyingq _" I think all of these would be strategic blunders from the point of view of Microsoft shareholders"_ It seems to be working well for MS thus far, so I'm curious why the author thinks this. ~~~ winkeltripel it's referring to the author's suggestions to show authentic love. ~~~ tyingq I'm not clear on why that would help shareholders as compared to current course. ------ zwieback TBH, Linux as a desktop productivity environment is a small enough market that I wouldn't expect MS to make a big investment there. It's either iOS, Android, Mac or Windows for the average user so MS is trying to stay relevant in those areas by focusing on the server side and Windows client side. ------ sova Tremendous. Well written and well played. If there are two facets to divide and conquer (in this case, play along until you can conquer and conquer right away) Microsoft is certainly doing their best to fulfill the Caesarian commandment. Thanks for revealing this very snide practice, clearly if their intent was an embrace of OSS there would be much revamped in the base layers of their offerings. Yet, here we are. The number of life-seconds lost to Microsoft greediness is likely measurable and might even out-exceed the wealth of shrewd and pernicious altruists like Billy G. Not to be nefarious with this comment, but to assume that propaganda is honest is to wonder why the propaganda has to exist in the first place. ------ JackRabbitSlim An anti-MS article full of FUD, Delicious. If anyone is embracing, extending and extinguishing its Redhat's giant lovecraftian eldrich horror starting at Pid 1 as it's tentacles spread across the (user)land to incite madness and crush the life out of system administrators. ------ skohan I don't think it's a particularly good thing for Microsoft to cozy up with Linux, let alone any of the larger tech firms. In particular, I don't think it's great that Microsoft is such a heavy contributor to the Linux foundation. If the people who work on Linux become financially dependent on large tech firms, this creates potential conflict-of-interest. For instance, is it impossible to imagine that as Proton becomes more capable of making the Windows gaming experience portable, there couldn't be pressure to kneecap it in some way at the kernel level? If Ubuntu had dropped 32 bit app support as planned, it would have done just that. ~~~ jrs95 Linux development is _already_ dependent on large tech firms and has been for a long time. ~~~ skohan I understand that. I’m saying I don’t think it’s a good thing. ------ oaiey Microsoft loves Linux ... On the Azure Cloud. And nothing else. This strategy was only discussed in this context and nowhere else I assume. So do not interpret more in it than what is said. Microsoft earns money. What does not earn Money is not supported. ------ will4274 This blog appears to argue that by bringing some but not all of it's products to Linux, Microsoft is engaging in Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (EEE). That's a tough sell. If you apply the same standard, virtually ever large company that has ever contributed to Linux is EEE-ing Linux because they released some product that doesn't run on vanilla Linux. The bad action in EEE is extending APIs in incompatible ways and then dead ending them - it's hard for me to see how not shipping Office to Linux qualifies. ~~~ simion314 I think the author refers at the fact you release just a bit of functionality for Linux but if you want the full stack you have to use Windows. Like you make .Net for Linux but only some parts, release other tools but not the admin part etc. I would be convinced when MS and Wine project has an agreement so the Wine devs can access the Windows source code. ~~~ will4274 > I would be convinced when MS and Wine project has an agreement so the Wine > devs can access the Windows source code. This is exactly what I'm saying is absurd. Microsoft isn't EEE-ing by not giving Wine devs access to Windows source. There is a difference between not helping and actively sabotaging. Conflating the two is an unfair attack. ~~~ simion314 The part about Wine is not related, it was about what would convince me that Microsoft "loves" Linux or at least is not intimidated by it. The WSL seems to me as the first part of the EEE and the competition would be fair if Linux could have it's own project Wine supported by Microsoft, as it is now it feels as an exploit, MS can do WSL but Linux and Mac have to struggle with Wine and the FUD around it. ~~~ zamalek > Linux and Mac have to struggle with Wine and the FUD around it. What FUD? I don't think I've ever seen someone spread FUD about Wine. Are you referring to the website that lists how well games/apps work with it? ~~~ simion314 The accusation that Wine devs were looking at the Windows code and it is "illegal" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341022) ~~~ will4274 This post is about ReactOS, not Wine. ------ shmerl While things improved in some aspects (like recent freeing up of exFAT), as a Linux gamer, I still see MS if not outright hostile, then surely by far not friendly when it comes to Linux. Thanks to Phil Spencer, they didn't join the Vulkan working group, and continue pushing their DX lock-in. For Linux it means dxvk and vkd3d are important tools to break it. When MS will start using Vulkan proper, I might change my mind about them being hostile towards Linux. Same applies to other lock-in cases the article mentions. ------ juped There was more of a case in the 90s, but the fact is that today's Microsoft has a strong open source development presence, and incompatibly embracing and extending was always, even in the 90s, an odious GNU practice that they happily perpetrated against non-copyleft Unix. "FUD" is a mindkilling term, so I won't call this apparently sincere post "spreading FUD", but I will suggest that you try PowerShell Core (MIT licensed) on the platform of your choice. ------ de_watcher Can add Visual Studio to the Office/DirectX/Outlook/ActiveDirectory section. ~~~ pjc50 They're sort of heading in this direction with VSCode. I can imagine that VS itself is a non-portable COM-infested disaster area. ~~~ garganzol COM is good and it is anything except disaster. It its raw form, COM is just a small and natural abstraction over plain C interface. Just like a C interface is a small and nice abstraction over plain registers/stack call models of the past. The advent of calling conventions like C was a huge step forward in 1970s. Before that, there was a mad zoo of passing parameters via random CPU registers and praying that you made no mistake and it would work without a crash. COM is no different. IUnknown is just 3 methods (QueryInterface, AddRef, RemoveRef) over a plain C. It immediately brings an ability to use service model design in APIs. ------ gmaster1440 Personally strikes me very much as an article making valid points but generally in bad faith. Microsoft can both begin to change and embrace Linux gradually as they've been doing recently and at the same time have an unsavory past with the ecosystem. If anything, they're willingness to change, however small, should be interpreted generally as a positive shift. ------ JohnL4 Oof. All these Linux-on-desktop replies. (1) The web is (slowly) destroying MS on the client-side. Sure, there's a ton of existing WinForms/WPF stuff now, but I think new development is on the web. (2) Linux is destroying MS on the server-side. It is simply impossible to beat the price (both AMZN and MS offer Linux images at half the price of Windows images). So, where does that leave MS? Competing with AMZN in cloud infrastructure. They have the technical chops and maybe other-than-1st mover advantage gives them a chance to present a cleaner experience, although it ain't easy being sandwiched between AMZN and Digital Ocean/Netlify. I think even Blazor is a stretch, dependent on the maturity of WASM, but... requiring devs to switch from React/Angular? And competing with whatever else moves to WASM. Of course MS loves Linux. It'd be stupid not to. (For now.) ------ neilobremski Within the company you have to remember that there are greedy executives (as anywhere) built on top of a fatty layer of incurious middle management and mixed in with enthusiastic tech heads. Whether or not the happy chaps working on the Linux support have their work mutilated by the fat cats has yet to be seen ... it's always like this in the beginning of an embrace. And in the meantime I think there's a lot of good being done even if it's just serving as a model for FOSS projects. So as the support fades and the dream dims, there will be things to pop up to continue the legacy. In the meantime, I'm quite happy to see Microsoft participating feverishly. I much prefer that to the alternative of intentionally making my life hell when not using their software / systems. ------ elldoubleyew I would love to see MS release a version of Windows that is built on Linux but with a custom GUI to look and behave like Windows. They could even add support for Windows apps through WINE to make it _feel_ like a native experience. Especially if they are willing to dedicate additional resources to better hardware optimization for WINE* I have always hated Windows because I grew up on UNIX-like systems, whenever I want to do something non-trivial involving the OS I tend to get lost and give up pretty quickly. But I don't mind Windows GUI from a UX perspective, and I would be interested in running a "Linux-Windows" *I am not sure what MS official stance on WINE is, however I would imagine that supporting it is likely in their long-term best interests. ------ jasoneckert I'm not too sure what to think of this article. There are some valid points to me made for sure, but intent today isn't as clear cut as it was 20 years ago. For example, almost 20 years ago, I stood in front of a group of _mostly_ sales people in a board room at Microsoft Canada to answer emotionally-charged questions about this "Linux threat" that was looming. Just under a year ago, I sat on a couch at Microsoft with some talented Microsoft developers drinking a custom Americano listening to them talk about how Microsoft recognizes their personal open source and ethical values in a way that makes them love their job. As a Linux developer and geek, it's difficult to hate Microsoft today. ------ zzo38computer It seems possible to me that they may make Office usable from web browsers on non-Windows systems (probably with a few features missing, some of that just due to the limitation imposed by the web browser anyways), but probably not a native Linux program. I do not expect them to drop Win32 and DirectX; however, maybe later they might make a few contributions to ReactOS (although probably not enough). What they say about Active Directory I suppose may be done in the way mentioned in that article, seems not very unlikely to me. I do not really think Microsoft "love" Linux all the way, although it seem to me they do "love" Linux more than they used to, at least. ------ zoechi When I had to deal with Windows 10 recently I got the impression MS has given up on Windows completely. The last notable improvements were introduced in Win XP. Most stuff that came later was just changing the look&view of a few settings windows with the only effect that all consistency was lost and Win looks more like a mess than a Linux desktop where some apps were built for X, Kde, Gnome, ... It was also funny that SQL Management Studio crashed at the same use cases as it did 10-15 years ago. It would be interesting if there were any developers working on anything but cloud at MS the past 10 years. ~~~ Crinus The last time there was a real UI and UX consistency was with Windows 2000 (or ME, if you want to stay on the consumer side). With Windows XP Microsoft introduced themeable controls but instead of making them available to all applications, they used an opt-in mechanism (based on special EXE resources or manifest files) so even nowadays unless you use that mechanism you get the Win2K era of controls. Even then, with Windows 7 _most_ things were consistent and if you really cared about consistency even with non-themed apps you could always switch to Windows Classic theme (which i always did, not so much because of consistency but also because i just like that theme :-P). Since Windows 8 with the introduction of Metro/UWP/WinUI/WinWhateverNext consistency was thrown out of the Window, without even trying to pretend otherwise (it isn't a coincidence that the UI guidelines for desktop applications in Microsoft's site still use the Win7 theme). ------ stevbov Why would any Linux shop use SQL Server anyways? Why would they use .NET Core? The only people I know pushing .NET Core are .NET people, not Linux people. My general rule is to never use a technology where your primary platform is a second class citizen. It just makes things a pain: not only could support be dropped in the future because there's no profit in it, its also harder to find answers to problems on the internet. ~~~ lghh I'm a Linux person who likes .NET Core. I like C# quite a bit, and I don't think Linux is a 2nd class citizen for .NET Core. ~~~ ripley12 It is still a 2nd class citizen, IMO – but I think that's improving rapidly. Some examples: -IDE support from MS is markedly better on Windows (real Visual Studio) and Mac (VS for Mac). VS Code+Omnisharp is still pretty rough around the edges for C#. -Many of the older .NET class libraries were just not designed with *nix in mind. System.IO still doesn't support symlinks [https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/26310](https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/26310) ~~~ zamalek > Many of the older .NET class libraries were just not designed with *nix in > mind. System.IO still doesn't support symlinks Windows supports symlinks, so that problem is not unique to netcore on nix. Many of the newer APIs are designed with explicit support for nix. ~~~ ripley12 Yup, but I think the problem stems from symlinks being relatively uncommon in NTFS compared to nix filesystems - it just wasn't a priority for the original .NET designers who were mostly targeting Windows. [https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlin...](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlinks- windows-10/) ------ ausjke Microsoft "loves" linux because it failed to beat Linux with FUD etc. Microsoft to me is the cancer to the OSS, why not just admit that you had never, and will never love Linux, you are simply doing all these for financial purposes solely, which is totally fine --- just don't ruin the "love" word, it's so awkward. Life is too short to be cheated multiple times, I will never trust Microsoft since I switched to linux fully 15 years ago. ------ rcarmo I’m going to add a data point here: I work at Microsoft and my primary e-mail client is... Firefox. The Outlook web UI is so good these days that the UX for mail, viewing attachments and booking meetings is much, much better than the native app (which I only use for ensuring I have an offline database when traveling). And yeah, I use WSL extensively, and work from a Mac at home. There is a lot more to the story than the article covers. ------ 29athrowaway Use SoftMaker FreeOffice, or SoftMaker Office. It is a pretty nice and performant replacement for MS Office. ~~~ hamsapelea Google docs works like a charm ------ xenorplxx Hm. MS started to support React, especially React Native project lately with their react-native-windows and AppCenter, but I honestly have no idea why would they do that instead of going with something like Electron, since they started to invest in Chromium and V8 anyway. ~~~ tracker1 They've done a lot with Electron as well... Github now being a subsidiary of MS. VS Code is really nice, and Teams is decent. I'd be surprised if we don't see new cross platform Office releases based on the Web versions wrapped in Electron in the next couple years. ~~~ WorldMaker Office has been heading towards React Native and React Native for Web, according to BUILD talks. ------ fortran77 The quote at the end of this piece is misattributed. [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake- honesty/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake-honesty/) ------ ogre_codes How on earth can you have any kind of meaningful conversation about Microsoft's Linux strategy and not even mention Azure? Microsoft's Cloud service is one of their fastest growth businesses and Linux is a huge piece of that. ------ wooptoo The whole reason for doing WSL2 was running Docker on Windows, which is currently one of the development "killer apps". AFAIK in the previous implementation they could not get Overlayfs to work properly. ------ campfireveteran 0\. Embrace 1\. Extend 2\. Extinguish (or at least Exhaust Energy on Extraneous complexity through Engineering design-by-committee feature creep) (But never Excellent Enginerding, unless trying to gain status at a conference.) ------ dabbernaught420 "I fucking love open source!" \- Microsoft If this doesn't make you want to use the term 'free software' I don't know what will. ------ magashna "Embrace, extend, extinguish" *nix is too big to really extinguish, but MS can certainly bear hug some cash out of them. ------ jeffdavis The technology landscape has changed so much in 20 years. Is this analytical framework still relevant? ------ Havoc nah. MS was dangerous in windows era. And had another go at that with their docx shenanigans. ...but in cloud era their teeth are just as long/short as google/AWS in my opinion. No more win32 .exe home turf advantage. That said I consider all 3 clouds dangerous in a sense. ------ simonblack The only 'Loves' that Microsoft has are 'Love of Control' and 'Love of Money'. If you ever trust Microsoft, you have only yourself to blame when you get hurt. That's been true for at least 25 years, and I don't see it ending any time soon. ------ Quarrelsome Was this article really written this decade? ------ fearface I love Linux, but I hate Linux Desktop. ------ bydl0coder First, desktop Linux sucks, so there's no point of porting anything to it. Second, office suites including MS Office are now cloud-based. ------ lawlessone They'll turn linux in a microsoft app. ~~~ jabedude I know this is hyperbole, but funny enough you can download "Ubuntu" for WSL from the Windows app store: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/p/ubuntu/9nblggh4msv6](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/p/ubuntu/9nblggh4msv6). ------ 50ckpuppet Embrace Extend Extinguish ------ gowld Every dollar and every minute of attention you give to proprietary software, hurts open source. ------ 1996 Dear new corporate overlord, if you want to disprove this, please invest in wine! It is an alternative option that would yield great dividends for both linux and windows user. win32 binaries are just more multiplatform that .net/uwp/the next shiny new thing you will try and fail to spin. ~~~ TomMarius I think they want to go the HyperV route for this purpose, wine is not really the solution a company like Microsoft would choose (based on their business needs). HyperV based hybrid desktop seems to be much easier to develop, maintain, sell etc. ~~~ 1996 Easier, maybe, but it will not succeed. hyperv will be the next big shiny thing to fail. Meanwhile, wine keep my old binaries useful - and will keep them long after uwp or whatever shades into obscurity. ~~~ TomMarius I kind of agree with you, but that does not change anything about it being the strategy of choice for Microsoft

Walking Dream – single-player adventure game for the Oculus Quest - simonpure http://walkingdre.am/ ====== gfaure The most interesting thing here for me is the use of redirected walking ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirected_walking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirected_walking)). I saw the video accompanying the paper but this would be the first game I've seen try to use it. ~~~ gwillen I will be very curious what the minimum area requirement for the game is. I can't imagine redirected walking being very convincing in the Quest's minimum 6.5 x 6.5 ft square. ~~~ trsohmers I've played around in Tea For God ([https://sidequestvr.com/app/65/tea-for- god-under-development](https://sidequestvr.com/app/65/tea-for-god-under- development)) which does this on the quest, and it works really well, and I didn't even use the full 6.5'x6.5' (in my case ~6'x4') possible. Within a minute I lost all sense of where I was in the real world. ~~~ jmiskovic Tea For God does not use redirected walking. It procedurally adopts game space to available room space, and uses clever mechanisms like non-euclidian geometry and various elevators to allow for huge worlds. Still, movement is 1:1 mapped between room and game. Redirected walking means distorting the mapping when moving or rotating, to fit any game world into limited playing space. In research it's always applied in larger spaces, x5 times bigger than living rooms. If you distort moving or turning too much, users lose balance or become nauseous. Here's a decent intro paper. 15 Years of Research on Redirected Walking in Immersive Virtual Environments [https://illusioneering.cs.umn.edu/papers/nilsson- cga2018.pdf](https://illusioneering.cs.umn.edu/papers/nilsson-cga2018.pdf) ------ sxp > Conrad was ... the author of several technical books, including the classic > "Land of Lisp". That book has very interesting art. I hope he brings that style to the game. I hope he does something strange like implement the game in Lisp and use some sort of self-modifying game engine. > Walking Dream, on the other hand, is built on a brand new combat engine with > a rich weapons crafting system. This system is shared by both the player as > well as the many enemies, and turns each battle into a completely novel > experience, requiring completely novel strategies at every encounter! ~~~ tazjin I immediately recognised the Land of Lisp art style - looking forward to trying this. On a side note, this is one of the few things where I would _like_ to be able to sign up for a newsletter. ~~~ andybak > On a side note, this is one of the few things where I would like to be able > to sign up for a newsletter. How does one solve the "tell me about this in a few weeks/months when you launch" without email notification? There's no reliable way to notify someone via Twitter or Facebook. Timelines are too noisy and there's no mass private messaging APIs. I love my email but I've noticed that projects and products are beginning to appear that shun email communication totally. I nagged a few projects into starting a simple list via Google Forms because I knew I wouldn't notice when they launched any other way. But "Me nagging" doesn't seem very scalable. ------ mrfusion The developer posted more information on Reddit and goes into details in redirected walking. [https://pay.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/hlyp0o/walking...](https://pay.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/hlyp0o/walking_dream_an_rpg_for_the_oculus_quest_with/) ------ mark_l_watson I can’t wait. Conrad is into so many interesting things. A few years ago he gave a video talk to my local blockchain meetup. The Quest is my favorite toy/leisure activity device. Can’t wait! ------ stephen_cagle Not directly related, but I just finished "Half Life: Alyx" yesterday. It is exceptional. I can't believe it is running on the same Rift hardware I bought years ago. They have just figured out how to do so many things correctly in that game. Sorry about the tangent, just can't recommend it enough. ------ kierenj Would love to see a newsletter signup form. Sounds great but I'm not sure I'll remember it. And I can't trust The Great Algorithms to plop this at the top of any feed.. ------ mrfusion Redirected walking is what I’m most excited about. You get another whole level of realism when you can just walk endlessly through VR. I tried tea for god on the quest and I was sold on it. It’s the future of VR IMO. ------ matty22 I don't see anywhere where it says _where_ it will be released. I assume SideQuest?

How do you recall and apply insights from non-fiction books? - dwightgunning I really enjoy books about human behaviour and how the mind works. For instance, I&#x27;m currently reading Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.<p>As is often the case with these types of books, I get the feeling I&#x27;m not absorbing the content as well as I could or should be. I struggle to see when or how I can apply many of the insights in my day to day life. This seems like a missed opportunity.<p>I&#x27;m curious if anybody has any advice to get more out of these types of books?<p>Maybe I need to should be taking notes, writing summaries, creating flash cards &#x2F; cheetsheets, or something along those lines. What has worked well for you? ====== tjr I usually make pencil marks (a star, underlining, boxes, etc.) in a book as I read it, to notate things I found especially interesting. Generally I will then also write a summary of the book, rewriting what I learned in a mixture of my own words and quotes from the book. ~~~ dwightgunning I read on a kindle so the physical underlining is tricky. I guess I could try using the digital highlighter. I think I will definitely try writing a summary of Thinking Fast and Slow, and see how that goes. ------ ddingus My goto in this is to read the book, and when something relevant comes up, stop. Think on whatever it is and run through related experiences and model possible, alternative outcomes, given whatever insight is at hand. The way to remember in an enduring way is to make connections. For that to happen, you must invoke what you know. Simulation and extrapolation are two great ways to do this. Affirmation, as in "that's why it happened as it did" is good too, but is also easily forgotten. Extrapolation and simulation make much deeper, enduring connections, and those are what you seek. With this effort will come a genuine change in, or expansion on your perspective. There will also come decisions too. Perspective changes are not always a net positive. You need to give the insight enough consideration to judge this. Extrapolation can be near future events too. Model them, get your expected outcomes and what drives them clear, then refactor with that insight. Compare to your past or others experiences where possible. Does it make sense outside the context in which it was presented? Does it contradict that which you hold dear? Why? Is it self consistent? All of these and more will play out for you during this investment of time and thought. It can be very helpful to do this with others too. Group model, simulate, extrapolate then reassess what makes sense. Most of the things in those books come down to a handful of words, phrases, ideas. The book is there for context and comprehension, as well as drama to get you through to exposure. Your own context is where the value is, and the work to realize that can often be done on a live chat with friends, standing in line, at the bar, etc... Realization does take some human time. That is where the really good stuff is. My best improvements have come from these activities and some new ideas to process and understand what they mean in my context, not just the context in which they were presented. Don't pick up the book again, until you have processed these things. A very good indicator is a sense of new motivation or urgency related to something you normally would take as it comes. When you feel that, continue, and it should become more resonant, and when it does, consider action then. Doing this is also a great bullshit or flash in the pan filter. Shiny things can cost us. Should they remain shiny after handling them for a while, chance of real value is improved. So handle it. Try to rub the shine off, pick at the seams, find the edges, poke, prod and work to see what it is you have really got. You won't forget that so easily. You may also find connected thoughts and ideas too. These can have more value than the insight. I will carry one of these ideas around for some time. Quick is not always good. A genuine insight can take some time, days, maybe weeks even, to play out. Of course, this does then bring up how to understand what is a waste of time and what is not. No answer for you there. There is genuine risk in all things. You can abandon a book that does not yield net improvements, but only after internalizing enough to understand. ~~~ dwightgunning > Realization does take some human time. That is where the really good stuff > is. > My best improvements have come from these activities and some new ideas to > process and understand what they mean in my context, not just the context in > which they were presented. I guess that's really the nut of it. Thank you.

The limit of The Semantic Web - jmorin007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_limit_of_The_Semantic_Web ====== karzeem There's a grain of an argument somewhere in there, but the writing is astoundingly unclear and confusing. It needs a serious overhaul. ~~~ bsaunder Yeah, it felt like I was reading a SCIgen paper (<http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/>).

One man feeds Western Media on Syria - jdmitch http://bigstory.ap.org/article/england-one-man-feeds-western-media-syria ====== Jugurtha One man feeds western media on Syria .. That's one hell of a fast-food: The Media doesn't even bother digesting it, but they don't forget to wipe with news-papers they produce and throw them to readers. It's apparently a sport practised at the highest levels of Office. Kerry apparently will be featured on CSI with his "Sarin" hair samples he pulled out of I don't know where...

Ask HN: I versus We - maguay When writing a post, newsletter, or really anything for your site, startup, or freelance job where you're the only author/worker/employee, is it best to use I or We? I struggle with whether to use <i>I</i> or <i>we</i> in blog posts when I'm the only writer on the site. On other sites I write for, I use we always, but on my own where there's no other person for the <i>we</i>, it seems odd.<p>Thoughts, Opinions? What do you usually do? ====== highlander If it seems odd, don't do it. If you're the only person, I think it's fine just to use 'I'. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_plural> ;) 'In a frequently-repeated story, United States Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover told a subordinate who used the royal we: "Three groups are permitted that usage: pregnant women, royalty, and schizophrenics. Which one are you?"' ~~~ maguay Thanks ... that looks like the link I needed :) And the quote that (possibly) comes from Mark Twain is great, too: "Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'" Perhaps it's the _editors_ part where bloggers get the idea to use _we_ on everything... ------ RiderOfGiraffes In addition to the comments already made about sounding personal, pregnant women, royalty, and the schizophrenic, sometimes I use "we" to mean "us both - you, the reader, and me, the author." With that in mind, some places where "we" would otherwise sound wrong suddenly become normal/sensible/reasonable. ~~~ maguay Ah, very good point. _We've_ all experienced situations where this would be true ;) ------ freerobby Use "I" when you want to convey something personal; use "we" when you want to convey unity, mutual empathy or some other connection with your team and audience. If it's a close call, a good rule of thumb is to think hard and be honest -- are you referring to yourself or to your team? Examples: 1) I'd say "I deeply apologize" rather than "we deeply apologize" when I want to be clear about owning responsibility for a corporate failure without hiding behind our corporate outfit. 2) I'd say "We're excited to launch..." to convey a team's hard work, dedication and excitement. 3) I'd say "We all hate having to do foo. That's why we created bar!" to show mutual empathy with our audience and convey that we are trying to solve a problem that "we" all have. These tips mostly come from a public speaking class that I took, but they've served me very well for writing copy. ------ jonschwartz Another school of thought on this is if you're trying to look bigger than you are, which alot of startups do, "we" might be more appropriate. ~~~ maguay Right, and that's exactly why I've had some tell me to use _we_ in articles and other copywriting. But it just doesn't really feel appropriate always ... if you're just one guy writing a blog, seems like you should make it sound that way. I do see the value in projecting the bigger image, but sometimes it seems like down-to-earthness can go a long ways too... ~~~ Semiapies "Bigger images" go both ways - you can find yourself held to standards and prey to expectations that you don't want. I've seen this a lot in hobby industries - guys working out of a tiny rented space in a office park find themselves wondering why their customers think they're a big company with a lot of money. This is inevitably due to their trying to look "professional", which tends to be a mingling of actual professionalism and aping the promotional styles of larger companies. ------ zalew If you use 'we', better have a good answer when someone asks who else works with you or you'll seem douchy. I don't see anything wrong in using 'we' if you have coworkers, even if they're remote or work occasionally on demand. If you're completely on your own, use 'I'. However, I've heard anectodes about one-man/woman businesses where a person fakes there's more people in the office. Seems dumb but sometimes it's needed and they had success with it, I don't think it suits your case though :) ------ gintas I try to use "I" whenever possible. It makes the message more personal and invites comments and replies. "We" is best when talking about collective decisions. ------ alexophile It depends a lot on the perception you're trying to create. I can't find it now, but there was an article a while back that spoke to the benefits of having a dedicated identity for your billing department. In short, it helps to separate the you that negotiates contracts and produces from the you that asks for the money. Of course, if you were doing something like this, you would want to make sure you used the plural. ------ xiongchiamiov I was reading a post from SmartBear the other day that touches upon this: [http://blog.asmartbear.com/how-to-get-customers-who-love- you...](http://blog.asmartbear.com/how-to-get-customers-who-love-you-even- when-you-screw-up.html) ------ Xurinos I use "we" when I refer to my target audience and me or when I am speaking for my group. "We" is always plural. I sense a dishonesty when it is used to create groups of people that do not exist, to imply numbers when there is only one. ------ eftpotrm This may well be a habit inherited from my start in a very small organisation where I was in charge of anything electronic, regardless of how much it looked like a computer, but.... I find when I'm describing a project I've done to anyone outside the organisation (and quite often inside, too), I almost always use We automatically. I may have done it but I did it on behalf (and frequently under the direction) of the organisation - it is an achievement and an asset for the organisation and should be credited as such. ------ efsavage I think it depends on the attribution. If I see I, but no personal name, it seems weird. If there's a name, and we is used, it should be clear who the other people are. ------ rlpb It's all about emphasis. Every sentence in my copy has a reason to be there, and the I/We thing isn't it. As it's important to not detract from the real message, I try and use what I think the reader might expect. This stops the reader from putting too much importance into my word selection on a point that I didn't intend to emphasize. So I use both, depending on the context (although I'm sloppy unless I'm writing copy). ------ T_S_ One often thinks of the word "I" when one stumbles upon Martha Stewart on television. The rate at which she uses the word is remarkable. One can't help but believe its uses is intentional or at least consistent with her marketing strategy. Has anyone else noticed this? Or, are we being overly sensitive as we quickly change the channel, resolving to use the word less often than Martha? ------ landhar This article makes an attempt at illustrating that more often thant not, using the first-person-singular can also be an indicator of respect and boundary- maintenance to others: <http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2533> ------ widgetycrank Keep in mind that if you decide to hire people later on, you may have to go through your site/app and change every instance of "I" to "we". :) ------ zoomzoom My writing teachers never let us use "I" in high school, because it is considered poor form by most grammar purists. ~~~ alextgordon What an odd thing for them to say. "I" is one of the most common words in the English language. I very much doubt even _grammar purists_ would recommend against it. What's next? "'The' is considered harmful"? ~~~ alexophile I think the gp was in reference to writing academically, in which case it is often inappropriate to use 'I' as you should be writing in more absolute terms. I never did like that, though, as it makes your writing sound structurally dismissive of alternative viewpoints. ~~~ andrewce It also leads to passive voice, which is sometimes appropriate ("Then three cubic centimeters of goat bile were added to the solution"; ideally, anyone should be able to perform this experiment, and the experimenter is out of the picture entirely), but in general, I agree with you. The mental trick is to append "I think" to the beginning of every sentence and hope that that works. Also: using the "I" opens up the argumentum ad hominem, which can focus criticism into uncomfortable territory ("Goat bile shouldn't have been added until after the solution was brought to a boil!", versus "You shouldn't have added goat bile until...." One of those is a bit more likely to be taken personally (albeit by someone with thin skin, perhaps as a result of too much exposure to goat bile)). ------ edw519 Neither. Find a way to restructure the sentence to use "you". It's about your audience, not yourself. ~~~ protomyth My brother when he was in college had a writing instructor that said if a student used "you" in a paper then they better buy her flowers. ~~~ kls Well that is because collage papers are supposed to be written in third person to remove biasing the user by framing them in the situation. You are also not supposed to use, I, we, or us. You should never refer to the reader, author or researcher as an entity in of personal reference. In academic papers you are providing information not framing a story to build character development. It can seem kind of steril but it is done for a reason. That said, in the real world, you generally want to bias the hell out of the reader. Patio11 made a suggestion on a article once in which he suggested flipping all the we's of the article to you. I went back and reworked some marketing material I had to reflect that suggestion and was amazed at how compelling the once boring text became. The reason was simple it framed the reader in the conversation. ------ pbhjpbhj >What do you usually do? One struggles to decide.

House Opens Inquiry into Proposed U.S. Nuclear Venture in Saudi Arabia - noobermin https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/politics/trump-saudi-arabia-nuclear-power.html ====== gwbas1c Article without paywall: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-47296641](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47296641) ------ mcintyre1994 I'm not going to pretend to understand all the moving pieces here, but this is fascinating because it sounds like the root conspiracy being alleged by the "Mueller, she wrote" podcast from the few episodes I've heard so far. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of this and if they've actually somehow pieced it together. ------ tome Is controversial international politics _really_ what we want to read about on HN? ~~~ toomuchtodo "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." ~~~ buzzerbetrayed That was some very selective pasting. "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic." ~~~ toomuchtodo One person's algorithm research paper is another person's global public policy. How the macro geopolitical world works interests me. Hit "hide" instead of "comments" or "discuss" and move on please (intended as politely as possible if tone was ambiguous).

Federal Judge Says Embedding a Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement - ad_hominem https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/federal-judge-says-embedding-tweet-can-be-copyright-infringement ====== sfifs The ruling actually seems very reasonable. Someone took a photo and posted it on his social media account. The platform license on those accounts presumably allows others to share as fair use Some for profit media companies then used the photo in their content without licensing hiding behind a technicality of it being served from a third party server and got stomped by the court. Presumably if the story was an artistic criticism of the photo or described the photo, they would have been safe under fair use. ~~~ Deregibus The photographer didn’t post the image on Twitter, someone else who presumably didn’t have a license to do so did. The sites then embedded that other person’s tweet. If it had be the photographer that posted the tweet then the media companies would have been in the clear AFAIK since part of Twitter’s TOS allows for embeds. This ruling doesn’t make a ton of sense assuming the media companies were acting in good faith. If they knew that the image was copyrighted and the Twitter user didn’t have the rights to post the image but embedded it anyway in an attempt To get around the copyright on a technicality then this seems more reasonable. ~~~ DannyBee IAAL In general, outside of any safe harbors, you are responsible for infringement when you republish something, even if it was by accident. IE if i reprint a newspaper article that fucked up and didn't clear an image, i am also a copyright infringer[1] The main thing that makes this not true on the web is the DMCA safe harbor for hosting third party content (which is inapplicable in this context). This ruling, IMHO, is completely and totally consistent with every copyright ruling i've ever seen about republication. [1] The circumstances in which you would have an innocent infringement defense would be something like: you having licensed, from the newspaper, the right the republish, and mistakenly, but reasonably, believed that they had the right to license you the image. ~~~ nprecup But in this case the media companies are not the ones publishing the photo, Twitter is. The embedded data was never produced or even passed through their servers. It is loaded directly from Twitter. ~~~ DannyBee So, this is basically a technical argument based on a technical implementation detail. These mostly are considered irrelevant and frequently fail (see, e.g., napster et al) It's true, fwiw, the ninth circuit did reject visual incorporation tests in favor of a physical transmission test. This is, IMHO, silly, and only some courts have chosen to follow it. ~~~ mcbits It seems like more than an implementation detail to me. If Twitter receives a DMCA notice and deletes the image, it will immediately be deleted from all of the sites embedding it. When the publishing, distribution, and unpublishing are entirely under someone else's control, it's really hard to justify treating a link as infringement. BTW I know you're talking about the way judges actually tend to interpret these things. I'm talking about the way they would interpret things if they had any sense. With your ebook example, if the ebook "auto-loaded and displayed that content for the user" then you're describing something completely different from what happens when a site links to a tweet. It's more like if the ebook reader parses "Encyclopedia Britannica volume B, page 38" whenever it appears in any ebook and embeds the contents itself. If Encyclopedia Britannica is violating someone's copyright on that page, it's just crazy to hold the ebook publisher liable. ~~~ Deregibus The sites aren’t linking to a tweet, they’re embedding them. There’s a difference of intent between a plain old <a> link to a tweet’s URL, and the full set of tags, scripts, and configuration used to embed a tweet inline with your page. It would be unreasonable to hold you accountable for a simple link if I had a browser plugin that automatically converted them into embeds, but if you used the twitter markup such that they would be rendered as embeds on any standards compliant browser that’s a different story. ~~~ mcbits Embedding, a.k.a. hotlinking, a.k.a. transclusion is just another type of linking. Any of those terms would work just as well in my comment because they all share the property that the content is being published by someone else. But there isn't much of a difference between hotlinks and anchor links in this discussion anyway, since sites (e.g. Google, Pirate Bay) also face legal liability for simple anchor links to copyrighted works. Just Google "[any popular book] pdf" and read the DMCA blurb at the bottom of the results. ~~~ rayiner But technically they’re not the same. Like, if you were to describe the DOM nodes generated in response to a hyperlink versus an embed tag, they’d be quite different, right? ------ bo1024 (Armchair copyrighting ahead.) This case, which is apparently about "embedding", raises some questions about the line between linking to infringing content and hosting it. I feel it is clear (apparently unlike the judges) that linking cannot possibly violate copyright while hosting content without permission does. I'm not clear technically what this article means by "embedding". I think the interesting blurry lines are when page A contains code from page B (say as a frame), and the code loads infringing content. I wonder if this situation should be subject to DMCA "safe harbor" provisions, which are what protect Twitter, YouTube, etc. from liability for user-uploaded infringements as long as they take them down upon request. But in general, I tend to think the responsibility should fall on page A for content that it serves to users, even if indirectly by loading third-party code.... ------ ISL As I read the article, it sounds like a more-accurate headline would be "Federal Judge Says Embedding an Infringing Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement". ~~~ djsumdog But if you were commenting on or critiquing the photo or the narrative around it ... wouldn't that be fair use? ------ k_sh Yikes - this is bad. Criminalizing embeds (and hyperlinks, it sounds like?) is a swing at the jugular for the Internet. ~~~ zipwitch Worse, it is teaching a generation (or more) that our justice system is stupid and broken. That in turn erodes ideas like rule of law that a essential to modern civilization. ~~~ craftyguy > Worse, it is teaching a generation (or more) that our justice system is > stupid and broken Well, you wouldn't be wrong for coming to this conclusion (source: this ruling, and more!) > That in turn erodes ideas like rule of law that a essential to modern > civilization. Not necessarily. Our implementation of this is essentially flawed, but that doesn't mean all possible implementations of rule of law are flawed as badly. I would hope that this would inspire change, but people are inherently against change so at the end of the day you are probably correct. ~~~ helthanatos The only direction people really want to change in is socially. They focus all their attention on social issues and poverty and taxes. The _actual_ laws don't want to be touched by anyone. We have very poor and contradictory laws and decisions with regards to new technology. The people in charge don't seem to understand the internet and internet-related rights. ~~~ craftyguy Yep, which is why our implementation is flawed. It allows folks who have no knowledge of certain topics to make and enforce laws that pertain to those topics. ~~~ ravenstine I know the solution: Just remove government officials who use the word "cyber". ------ iakh Somebody help me out. Neither the article nor the quoted decision provides any rational as to how they jumped to linking would also be considered infringement. From my reading, the argument is that the sites made a conscience effort to display a copywritten image, tweet or not. Help me understand why displaying the tweet that included the image should not be infringement when displaying the image directly is. ~~~ bobwaycott > _... the sites made a conscience effort ..._ I believe you mean the sites made a _conscious_ effort here. ~~~ iakh Thank you. Autocorrected ------ rayiner The EFF write-up is quite misleading. The district court does a perfectly reasonable job of explaining the difference between a hyperlink and an embed tag, namely that the latter results in the content integrated into the webpage instead of taking you to a separate site. Contrary to the EFF write up, focusing on the “coder” is not misleading. The choice to embed a tweet versus linking to a tweet is in fact what someone writing HTML code would make. ~~~ mar77i > The choice to embed a tweet versus linking to a tweet is in fact what > someone writing HTML code would make. Duh, HTML is code now? Tell twitter to remove the feature, then. [http://socialmarketingwriting.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/09...](http://socialmarketingwriting.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/Embed-Tweet-Code-With-Preview.jpg) ------ aresant Youtube, soundcloud, and other huge sharing platforms have all dealt with copyright & infringement through a combination of: 1) Easy takedown process DMCA 2) Algorithmic content identification & blocking Is there a start-up that provides similar content moderation / blocking as a SAAS? ------ rebuilder What's the difference between a news org embedding a tweet containing a photo vs. embedding just a photo hosted by a third party? ~~~ Buge From a practical (not legal standpoint), the second one is has the possibility of going down due to too much traffic, or being replaced by obscene images. [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/28/cartoonist- the...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/28/cartoonist-the-oatmeal- trolls-huffpo-over-images-published-sans-permission) ------ Pica_soO Definitely good for the lawyer business to turn more of society into a warzone. ------ alsadi I was told that one can't copyright less than 3 lines. ------ dbuder How is tweeting not considered putting it into the public domain, it's open broadcast. ~~~ ruytlm Because being on the receiving end of a public broadcast does not give you the right to re-use the content. The content owner, for better or worse, typically retains the exclusive right to use or broadcast the content, regardless of how many times it is broadcast. Consider older mediums; does broadcasting a TV show put it into the public domain? Or playing a song on the radio? ~~~ mcbits > Consider older mediums; does broadcasting a TV show put it into the public > domain? Or playing a song on the radio? In a sense, it does, yeah. It's just that copyright injects a century or so of lag time before members of the public domain are allowed to exercise their rights.

How We Use Make - ianstormtaylor https://segment.com/blog/how-we-use-make/ ====== seanwilson I avoid Make at all costs now if I can. Makefiles are far too difficult to read and write compared to alternatives in my opinion when you're automating anything beyond a few simple tasks. You'll inevitably have tasks that require several lines of code, complex logic, different settings for production, staging and development environments, common code that has to be shared between build steps etc. I find it difficult to make shell scripts robust and maintainable. I'd much rather use JavaScript's Gulp (especially if my project was using Node like in the post) or Python's Fabric if possible. ~~~ davexunit You know that you could keep the make tasks simple and have them invoke external scripts that are written in the language of your choosing, right? Building a mound of spaghetti shell code in a single file isn't the only way to construct a Makefile. ~~~ seanwilson Sure, but once you want to start sharing code between your external scripts and the Makefile, it makes a lot more sense to me to write it all in a single more maintainable language. ------ bartbes It's interesting how they list targets that have "practically become a convention", yet they're missing "all". I'm also intrigued by their claim they used @ in the recipes, yet they never did. ~~~ shazow > It's interesting how they list targets that have "practically become a > convention", yet they're missing "all". I think what he means is that their Makefiles effectively start having a common API across projects, by having similar target names. No need to use "all" if you put the default target first (see `default` subsection in the post). > I'm also intrigued by their claim they used @ in the recipes, yet they never > did. Yea seems that got stripped out. Still, this is a good practical example for using a Makefile. I'm a fan of this too. ~~~ bartbes I realise their standard probably doesn't include all, but it seems like the obvious choice. Maybe I've just been conditioned by autotools, but I think it's standard practice to have all be your default target. ~~~ shazow ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ As long as running `make` does the Right Thing, does it matter if it does it via an `all` target or by defaulting to a different first target? I do agree that generally `all` is a common convention, though. ~~~ bartbes It's really only relevant when specifying multiple targets, like 'make clean all', or the more common 'make all install'. It just seemed odd to me. ~~~ xyzzy_plugh Why would you have `make all install' behave differently than `make install'? I'm imagining specifically when you have the install target present. ~~~ Leszek Because `make all install` would first build, then install, while `make install` would just do the installation, regardless of build state. ~~~ wtallis Wouldn't any sane install target depend on the build products it seeks to install, and consequently build before installing? ------ gkya May be selective perception, but I have seen a rather uncommon increase of submissions regarding make here nowadays. Have I missed something? ~~~ exogen I think it's a reaction to there being a new build system announced fairly frequently. A while ago I actually started writing up a "Make for web development" tutorial file similar to Isaac's gist (linked in the article). At least for me, seeing new systems announced over and over again – especially the ones where you're writing JS functions to build stuff instead of shell commands – just makes me want to spread the "just use Make" word even more. ------ raverbashing Make manages dependencies Yes, 70's era Unix tools are not the most friendly, but there's still a lot of uses to Make (as opposed to Autotools) You can actually build a Make file to solve any DAG, written as dependencies, or use its tools to not rebuilt your whole project when only one file has changed ------ MichaelMoser123 i have a makefile/make system that uses gnu make macros; (here [http://mosermichael.github.io/cstuff/all/projects/2011/06/17...](http://mosermichael.github.io/cstuff/all/projects/2011/06/17/make- system.html) ) this saves you from repeating the same make constructs many times over, in the following example you do a static library and executable. 1: TOPDIR=../.. 2: 3: # - declare build targets. (built with make) 4: TARGETS:=shlib slibuser 5: 6: # - slib target is a static library - 7: shlib_TYPE=lib 8: shlib_SRC=slib.c 9: 10: 11: # - slibuser target is a executable using slib - 12: slibuser_TYPE=exe 13: slibuser_SRC=slibuser.c slibuser2.c slibuser3.c 14: slibuser_LIBS=shlib 15: 16: include $(TOPDIR)/rules.make ~~~ ccoggins This is similar to how it was done on a project I recently worked on. It worked well enough on a project that built about 300 libraries and 200 executable. It also made it really easy to add new things. ------ toolslive It's amazing how far apart evaluations can be. Even something like `Make` has people who love it, and people that eschew it. Moreover, both camps contain very rational, intelligent people. I wonder why. ------ jcoffland It seems like the kids these days would rather write a completely new tool than just learn the basics of Make. ~~~ Peaker I learned Make, but it is just a terrible tool: A) It is a 2-phase build system (read DAG, traverse DAG) whereas code generation requires an N-phase build system (build some files, detect more dependencies, build more files, ...) B) It has no way to express dependencies on the inexistence of files (#include "foo.h" will behave differently if the first search directory in the include path starts also featuring a "foo.h", but this cannot be specified), necessarily meaning that incremental build become incorrect in various circumstances C) It does mtime-newer check, rather than mtime-equal check. This has numerous problems with various file systems. D) It does not check the mtime did not change _during_ a build, effectively allowing the build tree to be poisoned with an incorrect build result. For example, edit foo.c _while_ foo.o is being compiled from it. foo.o can be correct w.r.t old foo.c, but its mtime suggests it is newer than the current foo.c. All incremental builds thus become incorrect. In short, make doesn't try hard enough to be a _correct_ build system, and it is also _inflexible_. This is why I wrote `buildsome`[1], where I resolve all these issues and more. buildsome is only tailored for our needs at the moment, so can only build on Linux, and not on OS X or Windows. [1] [https://github.com/Elastilotem/buildsome](https://github.com/Elastilotem/buildsome)

Germany Calls for European Firewall Against U.S. Sanctions - jtangelder https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-calls-for-european-firewall-against-u-s-sanctions-11577459502 ====== jplayer01 This is all about German politicians who've been bought out by Russian interests trying to protect their pet project(s). Speaking as a German, the fact that Germany would rather deal with and be reliant on a country like Russia is, frankly, insane and incredibly shameful. It's as if Ukraine didn't happen, nor Russian interference of elections across the Western world. For all the bad that the US does, at least they don't invade and annex European countries, and try to undermine European politics. ~~~ mschuster91 > For all the bad that the US does, at least they don't invade and annex > European countries, and try to undermine European politics. Another German here. I find Putin and Russia absolutely revolting, but that last part is utter propaganda. The US has meddled in European politics for decades - just take Trump's stupid whining against BMW or Bush/Obama's complaints about NATO budget or us Germans not joining the fun in Iraq. ~~~ syshum >>just take Trump's stupid whining against BMW I can not find anything current but if you are talking about his statements on the MX plant, he does that to every Manufacturer that sell items in the US but does not manufacturer them here (at least in part). Trump is a nationalist and loves protectionism, he believes that Products sold in the US should be made in the US. Thus BMW building a plant in Mexico to sell cars to the US goes against what he wants which is a US Factory employing US Workers. He has done the same to other Auto companies including both Ford and GM >> Bush/Obama's complaints about NATO budget Umm a large number of Presidents have complained about the other nations not paying their fair share into NATO as part of the agreements all nations signed, Germany does not spend enough of thier GDP on NATO, instead the US has to disproportionately fund world defense... Then we get to be lectured by the EU about why we do not have Universal Healthcare which in part because we need to spend soo much on world defense because the other nations refuse to ~~~ pgeorgi > he believes that Products sold in the US should be made in the US. Let's ensure that software and media sold in Europe are made in Europe. (not that Trump minds: both hit California for the most part and he doesn't care about CA) > Germany does not spend enough of their GDP on NATO, instead the US has to > disproportionately fund world defense And now that the EU is planning a defense fund (which will help on that particular front, and also improve EU's capabilities so that there's less real-or-perceived reliance on the US) the US complains again because they don't get to sell their crap overseas. Hypocrites. ------ H8crilA It is beyond me for the German state to call for "EU unity" because of a project that is essentially a huge "fuck you" to Eastern Europe. If anything the EU should back the US sanctions to protect unity, as weird as it sounds. ------ praptak This particular case is pretty bad for getting EU to unite. Nordstream is contentious within EU too - it's basically a way for Russia to threaten Poland with the gas cutoff without endangering their business with Germany. ------ jtangelder Full article at Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/egorb9/comment/fc82...](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/egorb9/comment/fc82ydj) ------ ConsiderCrying Openly calling for cooperation with Russia and China, of all places, should be political suicide. But it seems like the message of 'let's protect ourselves from /insert boogeyman/' still works well enough to muddy public opinion. The sanctions are there for a reason and saying that you need protection against them is like saying 'well, they did a bad thing and got a slap on the wrist, the obvious conclusion is to keep doing bad things but fend off the slaps'. ------ koksik202 Since US is starting to be a supplier of gas to Central European counties such as Poland via the gas carrying vessels and some countries trying to gain energy independence from Russia it becomes an interest of US not to lose the newly acquired buyers of their gas. Then it is problematic for countries like Germany that they can't boost the import because of US interference ------ richliss The disrespect that Germany is showing the US is mind boggling. The US being part of NATO is the greatest deal the other countries have ever signed/received. The US spends nearly $700 Billion per year compared to Germany’s nearly $56 Billion per year on its military. The US needs to start sending ultimatums - you are either part of NATO and therefore don’t enrich Russia by buying their resources and pay your fair share (2%) at the very least or we’re going to pull out of NATO and have a treaty with just Estonia, Greece, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Britain who all meet the treaty conditions of 2% and don’t whine. If NATO ended and Germany had to build up and army capable of defending itself against Russia it would cost way more than 2% per year. All Europeans need to understand the financial burden US tax payers meet to keep us safe. I think the Brits realise how important it is and the Poles and the Baltic’s do because they know what it’s like to live under Russian military fear. ~~~ Youden > The US spends nearly $700 Billion per year compared to Germany’s nearly $56 > Billion per year on its military. The US spends that much by choice, not necessity. > All Europeans need to understand the financial burden US tax payers meet to > keep us safe. Safe from what? The US military hasn't fought to protect anybody since WWII and there's frankly no realistic threat that Europe needs to be protected from. The EU already spends three times as much on its military as Russia and two (soon to be one) EU members are nuclear states. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel And the US's recent meddling in the Middle East arguably made things “worse” in Europe, if the large number of refugees is to be considered a problem. ------ etaioinshrdlu The politics on this issue seem quite confusing. It might point to a lot of internal infighting within the politics of both Europe and the US. ~~~ Tomte While Nord Stream 2 is obviously beneficial to Germany (cheaper gas than from the US), there are two totally different interests working against the project: * The Eastern European states (and especially Ukraine) want Germany to rely on pipelines going through their countries, so that Germany – as a big player – can be relied on to be working with those states when there is a conflict with Russia. (I find that interest well-founded and a debatable reason to refrain from building the pipeline) * The United States want Germany to buy more (liquefied) gas from them. Quite a few gas terminals have been built in recent years, and America is keen on selling its oil to Europe, because with all that fracking they aim to be a primary supplier of gas in the world. (I do not consider that a valid reason, and if it were the only one, Nord Stream 2 would be a no-brainer, in my opinion). It's all been complicated even further by Germany rushing this along without consulting (or at least not diplomatically working with) other EU member states, including France, which likes to put its foot down, since Germany is the big rival (and now that the UK is gone, the only real rival on the European stage). ------ chestermacwerth It turns out that Germany has been adversarial toward the US throughout its history. This"German call for European unity against the US" is almost identical to their opposition in the Spanish-American War. ------ secondo When tariffs are used as a mechanism to create unfair advantages for US entities over foreign states’ instead of even pretending it’s under the veil of US freedom policy not even your old pals will put up with it. ------ HershelBronev sorry, I'm new in this social ------ HershelBronev I wanna know more about ------ jokoon Sometimes I wonder if the US and the EU are really friendly to each other. ~~~ hackeraccount Probably path dependence as much as anything else. ------ syshum Germany's influence over the EU is one of the reasons Brexit Happened, and will likely lead to more nations leaving the EU ------ theredbox We need the US to step in for Eastern Europe. We need a reliable partner that is at least very direct and honest about its interests unlike Germany that is all about german interests while preaching european unity and values. Seriously Germany has been destroying my part of Europe for way too long! No more! I would rather deal with the american way of life than being forced to live the german way. ------ Giorgi Germany sounds like corrupted shithole digging deep into Russians ass

“There is no market” for VR that requires you to dedicate a room - evo_9 http://vrsource.com/gtas-strauss-zelnick-no-market-vr-1593/ ====== JoeAltmaier But lots of folks fixed up their family room/rumpus room for WII. I guess they may be in the minority. ~~~ kinsho The bulk of Wii games can be played from your couch.

Ask HN: What tech stack do YC startups use? - johan_larson What tech stack do the YC software startups tend to use these days?<p>I&#x27;m going to guess Ruby on Rails, AWS, Angular. ====== nwenzel Here's a broader look at tech stacks used by startups on Angel List: [http://codingvc.com/which-technologies-do-startups-use-an- ex...](http://codingvc.com/which-technologies-do-startups-use-an-exploration- of-angellist-data) ~~~ cageface Love this bit: _The likelihood that PHP is being used is strongly anti-correlated with company quality._ ~~~ troymc Unless you're Automattic (Wordpress.com). Or Acquia (Drupal). "Acquia… today announced that its co-founder Dries Buytaert was named CTO of the Year at the 2014 MassTLC Leadership Awards, hosted by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. Acquia led all companies with four finalists at this year’s awards…" [1] Those examples show that PHP _can_ be used, in a core way, by great technology companies. [1] [http://www.acquia.com/about-us/newsroom/press- releases/dries...](http://www.acquia.com/about-us/newsroom/press- releases/dries-buytaert-named-cto-year-massachusetts-technology-leadership) ~~~ jayzalowitz Mailchimp? Facebook? Saying php cant be used at a good startup is a bit like saying you can't start a good company over 35. ~~~ britknight Correlation in not a death sentence. No one is saying it _can 't_ be used, merely making a observation based on the gathered statistics. ------ pbiggar Rails. In w10, we were one of two non-rails users, though it seems that has changed to larger diversity. Most YC companies use CircleCI, so we get to see some of the diversity. While I haven't got concrete stats on this, I think it leans slightly more heavily rails than usual (and usual is about 50%). Bear in mind that that's skewed in some ways: if they were using C# for example they couldn't use us. ~~~ tel I thought you guys were using Clojure? ~~~ Kiro What makes you think they are not? ~~~ tel Via a complete and total misreading of his answer, actually! The initial "Rails." stuck in my mind even after he directly noted that they weren't using it. ------ hackerboos Previous discussions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8105286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8105286) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227071) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2223683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2223683) ------ jonahx I wouldn't assume there is a "YC tech stack". From individual blog posts I've read there is great diversity among YC companies' tech stacks. I also wouldn't assume that rails + angular is, or is even considered to be, the cutting edge of web stacks. ~~~ johan_larson Maybe. On the other hand, Paul Graham has strong views on what great hackers are like, which are likely to color his evaluations of candidate companies. It would be surprising to see a YC company running an Azure/Windows/C#/Visual Studio/TFS stack. And there are good reasons why someone might do so. [http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html) ~~~ arihant I believe Loopt was on C# stack and its founder is currently leading YC, so I'm sure Paul didn't take stack too seriously when evaluating companies. There are a lot of good reasons to use Microsoft stack, and I suspect more than a handful YC companies use it. Paul said it is advisable to not use enterprise technologies if you're willing to attract high quality engineers only. He never said it can't be done and it is never implied that high quality small number of workforce is important to every business. If you're in consulting, for example, you'd want a larger workforce you can get for cheap. But I think you already mentioned that point, just throwing it out there. ~~~ kogir I was Loopt's CTO and would use Microsoft's stack again, especially now. Not everything was perfect, but C#, F# and SQL Server are great, updates rarely broke anything, and security updates came regularly and promptly. ------ lpolovets You can use AngelList search to get some approximate relative counts of technologies at YC companies. For example, here are the counts for Java and Python: Java: [https://angel.co/companies?incubators[]=Y+Combinator&teches[...](https://angel.co/companies?incubators\[\]=Y+Combinator&teches\[\]=Java) (15 companies) Python: [https://angel.co/companies?incubators[]=Y+Combinator&teches[...](https://angel.co/companies?incubators\[\]=Y+Combinator&teches\[\]=Python) (31 companies) I basically used this same technique for the CodingVC blog post that was mentioned elsewhere in the thread. ------ tomblomfield From my experience - Ruby on Rails, some kind of Javascript framework (Ember, Backbone, Angular), Postgres & Redis as data stores, hosted on Heroku. As you scale to the point at which Heroku is expensive, move over to AWS. ~~~ johan_larson Any idea why Google's App Engine isn't more popular? Too many restrictions? Too expensive? It's used quite a bit by other AngelList companies: App Engine 295 Heroku 969 AWS 388 ~~~ atmosx Because Google's App Engine might not be around this time next year, while AWS will most probably be there 10 years from today. ------ sandGorgon Are there any startups using Java (not JVM) based web stacks (not backend or API endpoints). Any comments/experiences would be welcome ! ~~~ eduardordm Hi! I use Rails in my company, which is not a startup anymore, but we are using java in a new venture. Our stack in this new company is based on spring (spring-boot, spring-data- rest, etc) and angularJs. We are very happy with it. Spring security and spring-data-rest are amazing. I love Rails with all my heart since it's what we use since 2005, but I have to say I'm impressed by the advances in Java in the last year or two. That said, if you are doing SPAs Java can be more productive than Rails. ~~~ sandGorgon I'm a rails guy myself - how has your experience been in things like migrations, asset pipeline and integration of things like Coffeescript? ------ lgieron The ubiquitousness of the assumption that software startup == web startup saddens me. ------ nickthemagicman Is php ever used? ~~~ e1g As an anecdote - in my circles I observe that PHP is very popular among people who started working in web ~2000, while ruby is popular among those who started in ~2007. Nothing to do with seniority etc, I think it's simply the default choice of whatever was in vogue at the time when the person started hacking, and by now many PHP guys skew older and are out of the startup game (i.e. working in established companies on established products). As another example, I'm still astonishingly productive with PHP for backend APIs and rapid development projects. The symfony/Doctrine community has done a phenomenal job at bringing world-class tools to the language. ~~~ legohead As a young person, when I was examining possible choices for development, I chose what was fast and stable. At the time that was C & PHP, and maybe even perl. I don't see how the young people of today decide to go with Ruby, with it's terrible performance, and especially last year with it's slew of vulnerabilities. If you like the beauty of Ruby, use it on your own stuff or for learning. But using it with intention for a production environment? I just don't get it... ~~~ johan_larson It's not Ruby. It's Rails. Ruby on its own is just a slightly more flexible Python. Rails was embraced because it provided a clear way to write DB-driven web apps with minimal configuration, following a strict pattern. And a lot of people sort of like strict. ------ cpncrunch I'm not a YC startup, although my product was forked by a YC startup. I mostly pure javascript (no frameworks) on the front-end and C++/perl/php/mysql on the back-end. Incredibly reliable and stable. ------ jjbrow10 Here at Enplug we use a wide range of tech. Server: C#, Databases: MongoDB and SQL Server, Messaging: RabbitMQ, Clients: LibGDX and Java on Android, Web client: AngularJS ------ swah The tools that everyone else usess, skewed to the "new, modern side" would be my guess. ------ aswanson Interesting that bootstrap is negatively correlated with success. ~~~ tim333 Yeah, I guess maybe it's good for knocking things together quickly but a bit generic looking for your masterpiece. ~~~ notduncansmith If you don't change the default styles, sure. It looks decent enough that you can get an MVP into production without having to do much other than a light top coat for branding. Later on, you may want to invest in more heavily customizing some elements, but Bootstrap will pretty much stay out of your way. Source: Senior front-end dev that puts around one app per month into production using Bootstrap (some more heavily tweaked than others). ------ arthurquerou SailsJS,Heroku, Angular @ MotionLead ~~~ mackwic I like SailsJS a lot but didn't have the chance to experiment it on a real project. How well does it scale ?

Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform - alaaf http://www.developers.meethue.com/content/friends-hue-program-update ====== mdip A point brought up in the replies to their forum post warrants repeating: They claim that they were concerned about the quality of their brand being eroded by third-party bulbs that didn't reproduce the same quality experience that first-party/certified bulbs did. They had the solution available to them from day one. Since they can clearly identify third-party bulbs, they could have simply presented a warning along the lines of "We've detected you're using bulbs that are not certified by Philips. For best results, we recommend using only certified bulbs (link to purchase here) and cannot guarantee a quality experience with the bulbs you've purchased. Click "OK" to continue." ~~~ culturestate I don't think this would accomplish anything vis-a-vis brand protection, since consumers have been conditioned to just click "OK" at every dialog box that doesn't look like it will explode a mine. Six months down the line, nobody would remember the warning -- they'd still get mad at Philips when a third- party bulb breaks. ~~~ TeMPOraL > _they 'd still get mad at Philips when a third-party bulb breaks._ Would they? Wouldn't they blame their bulb first? It's like complaining to your PC manufacturer that a program you downloaded doesn't work. Most people would blame the program and look for another one. I'm sure there are some who have it backwards, and they probably will be calling support, but I can't imagine there's enough of them for a company to actually care about damage to the brand those people may be doing. ~~~ jads I've worked in tech support for many years, and the vast majority of people _would_ blame the PC manufacturer or the operating system for the problems. I spent many years on the Genius Bar (back in the PowerPC and early Intel days) and, in almost, every interaction, the device was to blame - as far as the customer was concerned. In some cases, they were right, in others it was due to outdated software, buggy third-party drivers or just something they bought that was not Mac compatible. But as far as the customer was concerned, it didn't work so therefore it was a problem with their computer. What has to be remembered is that the types of people who read Hacker News would understand, in more detail, what might be causing the issue and know troubleshooting is all part of the process. I bet printer companies get many calls a day from people who bought third-party cartridges (sometimes without realising) and complaining that their stupid printer isn't working and that it must be the printer's fault. The vast majority of consumers who would walk into an Apple Store or Best Buy to purchase something like this, they just think of it as one big ecosystem. If it doesn't work with a bulb they bought off the internet, they will simply assume the product, as a whole, is terrible. ~~~ gmac On the printer point, I once bought a 3rd-party cartridge for a Dell laser printer that not only didn't work but actually broke the printer (it stopped recognising all cartridges in that slot). The first question they asked on the phone was whether I'd used a 3rd-party cartridge. I said yes. The second question was where I'd like the free replacement printer delivered (now with added WiFi, and a full set of cartridges). Painful for Dell, but I'll buy from them again. ~~~ ars Your post makes we wonder if the printer broke on purpose with that 3rd party cartridge, and that's why they sent you a new one. ------ mdip I'm glad to see they've reversed the decision. It was the only reasonable choice they had with such an immature market that could have them dethroned as the leader very quickly. Their reasons for lock-in made no sense. For a product like this _compatibility is a feature_ and many people chose the Philips products because of the ecosystem of compatible products available, the ZigBee protocol and third-party light bulbs. I'm sure that third-party products were causing problems, however, wholesale blocking of them via software update is a terrible solution. They, literally, turned out the lights on their customers. Meanwhile, I'd be willing to bet support costs _immediately_ spiked -- people call support when things don't work and they just pushed out a solution that _increased_ rather than decreased that. Unfortunately, I think they've bruised their reputation quite a bit with this move. It's now delayed my purchase of such a product until I am convinced that they have a solid third-party certification program in place (with very low licensing fees) or (even better) a guarantee with the product that they won't try this again when the market is more mature and they have the option of ignoring complaining customers. Their competitors could see a rise in sales by taking advantage of this blunder and committing to open protocols. I haven't looked at the landscape in this category, yet, and had just assumed I'd be buying the Philips Hue eventually, but they've motivated me to do more research. ~~~ pkgapkg Their move concerned me, because now I don't know if this is "we won't close our ecosystem" or "we won't close our ecosystem YET". I don't feel like waking up and discovering that they've decided that they now have enough market share to be abusive and controlling. Most of my existing ZigBee stuff isn't as slick as the Hue stuff, but I know it won't get turned off. I get that people make mistakes, but their original move showed that Philips has essentially NO understanding of their market, and that they are willing to casually engage in extraordinary hostility towards their customers. This isn't a winning combination. ------ themartorana Wow. Most companies are deaf to user outrage. The original decision wasn't fantastic, but I understand the whole "Friends of..." certification route. At least in the future they'll be able to stick to "if it's not certified by us..." for customer support, which was likely the original impetus (along with a desire to cut off cheap alternatives to their devices). I'm not mad at this at all. ~~~ eveningcoffee _I 'm not mad at this at all. _ I am. Because it is a way to extort money out of other ZigBee participants. ~~~ rubidium It's not extorting. It's making sure your house doesn't burn down because you bought the el cheapo bulb from knockoff brand C. ~~~ raverbashing Pray tell how does a LED Lamp can burn your house down Oh wait it can't (if it can because your wiring is crap and the protection devices are not working you have much bigger problems) ~~~ TeMPOraL A LED bulb converts your 230V AC (or 110V in the US) power source into 12V DC (in case of Hue itself). This converter part can, if poorly made, create a fire hazard. And a bulb is usually mounted inside a lamp, many of which are flammable and have the shape that will accumulate heat inside instead of dissipating it. ~~~ raverbashing Yes, but that applies to china mobile chargers and a lot of other devices that nobody worries about (and also to CFDs and any led lamp that might be today in your house) And of course it's not a software issue ~~~ WorldMaker > And of course it's not a software issue Funny thing though, but that AC/DC converter is manipulated by firmware activated by a wifi protocol. If the fire only starts when the converter is activated into its highest conversion rate in a particular sequence by certain commands sent across that wifi protocol and those commands are being chosen by a user of an app on a mobile device two rooms away, is that a software issue? It's certainly a gray area. ~~~ raverbashing If your DC/DC converter has a duty-cycle of 100% most likely the controlling FET will burn out and stop working ------ HarryHirsch Compare this with Ethernet. You plug it in - and it just works. No 3com/Realtek/Intel certification required. As a user I may be shielded, but I believe there are no interoperability issues between Cisco/Juniper/Brocade switchgear either. With this as the background, it's surprising to see a large crowd defending the equivalent of Ford-branded gasoline. ~~~ fastball Apples and oranges. Pure hardware is a lot easier to make compatible consistently than hardware+software. ~~~ CydeWeys Huh? There's a _lot_ of software involved in wired networking. Way more than for lightbulbs, I'd suspect. And yet they all interoperate via open standards, and any vendor that tried to sell equipment that only worked with their own equipment would be laughed at of the market. ~~~ fastball An ethernet cable does not contain any software. A smart lightbulb does. ~~~ CydeWeys But now you've drawn an irrelevant comparison. The power line and socket that the smart lightbulb is connected to don't contain any software. _Those_ are the parts that are analogous to a simple Ethernet wire (which is really just eight separate leads instead of three). The smart lightbulb itself is analogous to a router. ------ DiabloD3 The thing is, to me, the fact that they ever decided to do this in the first place means I will never buy Philips smart home products ever. They have proven they can't be trusted with this sort of power, and that is a one way trip. You don't come back from that, you don't get back off my list. ~~~ rubidium Either A) You don't trust any large, publically traded company. B) You don't understand how large, publically traded companies work. This decision was made by someone in marketing. Phillips engineers (in this division) were ambivalent because it meant less verification and testing (yea!) but also means they have a less capable product. It got approved because someone (likely a director somewhere) put together a market strategy that showed they could make x dollars in the next 2 years doing this. Public backlash was bigger than expected. VP gets involved. Decision is changed. ~~~ rrrx3 The decision to only support Philips products came most likely from the engineering division themselves. Marketing probably had a shit-fit because losing a marketable feature is a giant regression to your general user. People in Marketing and Product tend to be way more in-tune with customers and don't make boneheaded decisions like this. Another easy tell: the company was shocked by the reaction of users. That meant the company wasn't aware of user impressions of the decision. That also meant Product/Marketing teams weren't involved in the decision. When the "what does it cost us to test this compatibility" calculus comes out as more expensive than "what is the cost of the backlash to our company," you realize that Engineering divisions without enough resources are driving this type of decision, 99 times out of 100. ~~~ CydeWeys > The decision to only support Philips products came most likely from the > engineering division themselves. I disagree. I don't see engineers coming up with or getting on-board with such a clearly anti-open-standards decision. Much more likely, what I think happened is that this decision was forced on engineering from above, morale hit all-time lows, there was much grumbling and consternation as they implemented this anti-feature that they clearly didn't believe in, then they rejoiced at the huge public outcry when the change was pushed, and are now celebrating that those assholes up in management had to reverse course with a heavy dose of "I told you so". Source: I am an engineer at a big company and have seen this scenario play out many times internally. ~~~ throwaway2048 Read the comments here, many engineering types are falling all over each other to excuse phillips. There is a massive anti-sentiment towards open platforms there days it seems, likely driven by apple's success and the startup "industry". ~~~ jhall1468 Because a practicing engineer and an anonymous person on the internet that seems like the "engineering type" is the same thing? There is zero reason for an engineer to have "anti-sentiment" to an open platform because it's moot. Most likely, an engineer would be completely indifferent to a decision like this. ------ anc84 They can still control it and reverse the reversal in the future. You are at their whim. It is not user-friendly unless it is free software (and hardware). Amazon can still remotely remove books and no one bats an eye. This is just an issue because at the moment these kinds of home automation are per-dominantly "nerd" territory while e-book readers are already mainstream. ~~~ fastball Where is this magical place where I can find free hardware? ~~~ stefs To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”. ~~~ umanwizard GP's point still stands. Open hardware is very rare. ------ sismoc I won't be so quick to "roll-back" my decision to boycott their products. ~~~ gnulnx Hey, give them some credit. They listened to their customers and responded very quickly. ~~~ sspiff Exactly this. Their management / decision makers aren't familiar with the hacker mindset, but they responded to public criticism quickly by acquiescing to the demands. I don't so anything bad about this. They mad a public about face, admitting that their decision was not the right one for their audience, and changed it. That's not easy to do for most people, let alone companies. ~~~ lightbritefight They didnt really admit the decision was bad for the audience. They said "well, we were just looking out for you, and highly recommend you doing what we want, but I guess you can do that too, but you shouldnt." The tone is very much "we did nothing wrong." I don't expect more, but I was hoping for it. ~~~ jhall1468 I disagree. The tone was more akin to "This really doesn't impact _a lot_ of our customers, but the customers it did impact caused a significant (unexpected) response." That's perfectly valid. They felt that it was a minority doing it (which is probably true) so this would be a non-issue. It wasn't, so they reversed it. ------ nichochar I really respect philips for having the humility to come back on a decision like this. As someone who already owns hue and has bought into the ecosystem, this makes me want to promote their brand further, and I will. Hat down to whoever made this happen over there! The world is better when things are open. ------ ohitsdom "We underestimated the impact this would have upon the small number of our customers" Do they really believe it is a small number of customers that use non-Philips light bulbs? I mean, good for them in reversing the decision, but the damage is already done (check out Amazon reviews for one) and it should have been easily foreseen. ~~~ joezydeco Translation: "we'll do this to shut up the pro users that are generating all this bad P/R, and it really doesn't matter since 99.9% of our customers won't care about this anyway." Can't say I disagree with the idea. Everyone wants a system like this to be open on principle, but in reality it won't really get used that much. This stuff is still too hard for the average consumer. ~~~ soylentcola I dunno. I bought a Hue starter kit (hub+3 bulbs) and three more bulbs when I moved into my new house. I wanted something cool and "gadgety" to set up in the new place. They've generally been OK but I haven't bought any more bulbs since that first setup two years ago. This is mainly because the Hue bulbs are quite pricey and I've had a couple of them semi-fail (some colors in the spectrum stop working due to the blue LEDs crapping out). I've been keeping an eye out for compatible bulbs that are a bit more affordable since Hue prices haven't dropped at all and I'm more likely to drop $20-30 on a fancy bulb than another $60 when they can still fail. Granted, I've already got the hub so they have my money. Their risk is that I only buy third party bulbs instead of Hue bulbs from now on. Still, the next time I go to buy more lamps to expand my setup, if there are less expensive options that are reasonably equivalent, I'll buy them instead anyway. If Hue lamps become more affordable, I'll stick to first-party by default. But if Hues are still $60 each and some other platform starts selling good RGB LED bulbs for $15-25 each (and Hue has locked out third party bulbs), I'll just drop Hue in general and cut my losses. ~~~ jon-wood I got a couple of the OSRAM RGB bulbs a while back, and while they're not quite as good as the Hue ones at half the price they were definitely the right choice. The only really issue I have is that their colours don't match the Hue ones, so it can be a bit hit and miss getting what you're looking for. ------ sneak The funny part is that they claim to have broken their customers' previously working functionality in good faith. Who writes these things, and why do their supervisors allow them to keep working there?!? ~~~ Gracana It could be worse: "Some customers were involved in a darkness-related incident." ~~~ Brian-Puccio I'm not sure if this is a specific reference to something like McSweeney's Interactive Guide to Ambiguous Grammar [0], to something else, or just a comment in general. (But I agree.) [0] [http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide- to-a...](http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-ambiguous- grammar) ------ tomlongson I wonder if this had anything to do with the flood of negative comments to their Amazon product pages? 3/5 stars: [http://www.amazon.com/Philips-455303-White-Starter- Generatio...](http://www.amazon.com/Philips-455303-White-Starter- Generation/dp/B014H2OZAC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1450292147&sr=8-2&keywords=philips+hue+hub) 4/5 stars (previously 4.5/5): [http://www.amazon.com/Philips-456210-Ambiance- Starter-Genera...](http://www.amazon.com/Philips-456210-Ambiance-Starter- Generation/dp/B014H2P4KW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1450292147&sr=8-3&keywords=philips+hue+hub) ------ revelation Not sure why people are screaming "boycott". Philips never advertised their system as being compatible with third-party lights. The fact that they use an open protocol to communicate with their own lights doesn't change this. It's like connecting to your office chat with an IRC client because you figured out that's what they are using under the hood. Why would you scream bloody murder when one day your IRC client stops being compatible with it? They never advertised this to begin with! You can't exactly demand functionality that you were never sold. ~~~ HelloNurse Not bothering to test and actively support devices from other vendors would be reasonable, but customers have the expectation that a product does a decent effort to respect the standard; whitelisting a subset of Philips lightbulbs and deliberately refusing to work with anything else means giving users a bad product for the sake of anticompetitive business practices. This kind of deliberate, obviously harmful abuse is worse than merely reckless behaviour like the Superfish scandal or the Windows 10 update that uninstalls user software. ~~~ revelation Except I don't think Philips advertised that they are using an open standard. It's just what they used for the implementation. They are free to mutilate that standard as they see fit for their own product, and since they didn't make it into a selling point, there is no reason for them to expect compatibility. ~~~ HelloNurse In the world of customers who prefer trustworthy vendors, there's a substantial difference between not wanting to spend money to respect a standard any more than advertised, and deliberately spending money (firmware updates aren't free) to worsen the product and screw customers. Likewise, "mutilating" a standard to leverage standard technology in a not- really-standard product isn't the same as deliberate artificial incompatibility for purely commercial reasons. ------ gedrap A lot of the people are talking about how important integration and interoperability is. I agree with it, however, a lot of work has to be done to achieve it. In order to do it properly, there should be standards that major providers agree upon making integration much easier and predictable. That takes plenty of time. Then you probably need some walled garden to control the experience. Approved apps, approved 3rd party providers, etc. If some crappy app is released, regular users won't blame the developer but the platform, as it was discussed in great details in other threads. We need to get out of the HN bubble. Seriously. We forget that a computer is a device to watch porn and browse facebook and that's about it for A LOT of people. Chances are, it will cause a wave of anger in communities such as this one (where there's a strong sentiment for open systems). This work has to be done be a number of large providers (read: long processes) and followed by startups popping up and disappearing now and then. This stuff always takes time. ------ donkeyd Second large company this week to rollback a change after public outcry, with Valve rolling back a change in CS:GO. I hope their marketing people take a lesson out of this. ~~~ thecatspaw if only valve would listen more often and faster. Im not demanding fixes the next day, but it would be nice to at least get some message saying "We know about this issue, we're looking into it" ------ vilts Sounds exactly like the FTDI FT232 "serial killer" saga all over again. They got many people very pissed off and probably never buying or building products with their chips again. ------ toppy How many developers does it take to change Philips lightbulb? ------ Nilef Any recommendations for third-party lights? ~~~ jerrysievert the GE Link bulbs are pretty nice. they have a great hue (pun actually not intended). ------ josscrowcroft "We fucked up, but we don't want to admit it."

How Baidu Won China - felipe http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_47/b4204060242597.htm ====== quanticle Didn't Baidu basically win China because they were the only search engine willing to play ball right from the beginning with regards to censorship? It seems that plus the fact that they were homegrown got the playing field tilted pretty heavily in their direction. ~~~ nl Did you read the article? It was more about how Baidu beat other _Chinese_ -companies than how it beat Google. The other Chinese companies were (a) playing ball on censorship and (b) homegrown, too. ------ cies in china big companies are usually in close yet undisclosed contact with the govt. it would supprise me if baidu was an exception. when i was in china i found that all google services where extremely flaky: dropped packets, super long roundtrips, meager throughput and often unreachable for a few minutes. in my opinion they where almost unusable for 'business'. at the same time websites like slashdot or our beloveth hn were just doing fine. while baidu.com, qq.com, taobao.com (all super popular sites in china) were all blazing fast. i know i am suggesting something without providing proper proof. but for me it is quite clear what drives the success behind baidu -- its the lousy access the chinese have to the world's leading alternative to it. just my 2 rupees. ~~~ vorg Most google services are unreachable, e.g. all spreadsheets... [http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/?r=CN&l...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/?r=CN&l=SPREADSHEETS&csd=1230796800000&ced=1289635200000) ~~~ cies wow! i didn't know this status overview was keeping history aswell! amazing to see how internet --the one network for us all-- can end up meaning something entirely different within the borders of some countries. ------ camz Knowing China intimately and having a family with multiple businesses in the countries has given me an unique understanding of the business world in the country (they own factories in southern china that produce clothing for American companies like armani exchange and RL and are constantly required to deal with the government in regards to labor, customs and etc). The main reason why every American company will fail in China is because of cultural differences. American companies lack the ability to understand the Chinese mindset and often that leads to misunderstandings that wont be easily forgiven. American companies that truly want to succeed in China need to readjust their business model. You cant bring an American company to China, you need to invest and develop organically a Chinese company that is substantially owned by an American company so that the citizenry and the state will allow and appreciate its existence. As for competition among the Chinese companies, it is often the case that developing a relationship with the government is vital. But, developing a relationship or "guanxi" is a very different concept in Asian culture compared to American culture. Giving a "red envelope" is considered a necessary sign of respect and acknowledgment of their status, but in the US its a straight out bribe. To curry favor with the people is simple, just give lots and lots of free data, products or whatever the people want. Whether that data is copyrighted, patented or otherwise. That's how baidu did it, thats how youku did it and thats how the next big thing is going to do it. China's next big wave is going to be to develop its own silicon valley of sorts because its very popular to copy American startups and put an Asian spin on the idea to create a NEW multi-billion dollar company. ~~~ PakG1 I think it can be simpler than that. It's just about how products are made for China. Honeywell has an amazing success story in China, and I got to hear their top Asia executive this year at the APCAC 2010 Conference in Beijing, organized by the China chapter of the American Chamber of Commerce. He noted that China proved that Honeywell couldn't just waltz in with their products, localize a bit, and succeed. When they tried that approach, they got decimated by numerous copycats because Honeywell products were too expensive and too feature-rich for what China needed. He said Honeywell's Chinese copycat competitors often said, "Honeywell created the market and the demand, but we had to provide the supply." So Honeywell changed tactics and set up R&D centres in China to deeply understand why Chinese companies were buying imitation products instead of Honeywell products, and then create products that were better suited for the Chinese market. They got a lot more intimate knowledge of the market and for the first time were making major global product design decisions outside of the USA. Then with their new R&D centres, they were able to make better products at an acceptable price point to the Chinese. They dominated. Today, only a few of those copycat competitors remain and are considered a real threat by Honeywell, whereas in the past, there were almost a hundred of them. The approach was so successful, it became Honeywell's blueprint for how they want to enter all emerging markets from now on. His main point is that you can't expect an emerging market to lap up western products just because they're western. You need a hardcore local presence doing hardcore local product development, because the market needs will often be unique. Fascinating story. He's writing a book about everything he learned, and I'm definitely buying it when it gets released. I'd put the guy's name down, but I can't remember his name off-hand; have it at home in an APCAC 2010 program somewhere. No doubt local presence helps with guanxi and all that, but I do bet you that as the Chinese economy and market gets more and more sophisticated, guanxi will matter less and less compared to product and service quality. ------ SriniK Irony in the whole setup. Baidu is chinese government controlled company - traded and financed in US markets. It is surprising to me that these companies which get traded with SEC requirements, yet they are allowed to do whatever it is considered illegal here and still get away with it. It pisses me off that there are no regulations/jurisdiction about such shortcuts companies take. There is gotta be a solution. ------ radioactive21 Many Asian countries do this and they back companies that are home grown. For example Samsung basically is run by the South Korean government. In China, it is no different, look at all the big companies that were built and raised in China, and they are backed by the government. ------ bigwally Baidu has won China simply because it is a more relevant search engine for China's needs. Go to <http://video.baidu.com/> and search for a TV show you want to watch, you will find the whole episode. With Google video you will get 3 minute clips. Baidu also has an excellent mp3 search. Looking for a movie to watch? Google has made plenty of mistakes in China. For starters most of Googles documentation is blocked in China thanks to the way China and Google have set the network.

Most common passwords list from 3 databases - Anon84 http://blog.jimmyr.com/Password_analysis_of_databases_that_were_hacked_28_2009.php ====== jrockway The passwords say a lot about each site's userbase. singles.org users commonly use passwords with religious meaning, like "jesus", "pastor", and so on. Apparently this is a site that appeals to the religious folks. phpBB has things like "phpbb" and "password". Their forums force people to create an account they don't want, so they pick a dumb password. (I had to ask a phpbb question once. I think I used 1234 as my password.) Finally, Myspace is Myspace, and has commonly-ocuring gems like "poop" and "nigger1". Ah, high school kids... ~~~ sketerpot I just use the same username and password for all sites I don't care about that much. That way if I ever come back again I can just log in easily, and the process of signing up is so familiar I could do it in my sleep. No, the real issue is password questions. "What is your mother's maiden name?" "In what city were you born?. Those always seem like a security hole, so I choose a random question and just remember that the answer to all my security questions is "the landed gentry". That's fairly secure, right? ~~~ jrockway Yeah, I especially like the sites that ask you to make your own security question. Mine is always, "what is your password?" ~~~ electromagnetic That's what my XP hint did, and my password contains an accented character (áéíóú/ÁÉÍÓÚ) as I noticed password breakers tend not to use these characters by default, but a lot of programs and services accept them. To say just hitting 'Alt Gr' can prevent any password breaker, I thought it was a pretty good safety measure. ------ mynameishere It's better to use 123456 at unimportant sites than re-using your e-trade password. Simple good sense. ------ GeneralMaximus I have recently started generating all my passwords using a Markov chain script I wrote in Python. They're much more secure and, since they sound very similar to English words, easier to remember than, say, &&364e7forty-two88()l. ~~~ quizbiz I started writing words backwards (among other things). Not as secure but I don't hit myself when cookies expire. ~~~ dkokelley I've been a fan of geometric shapes on the keyboard and number pad. ~~~ bd I knew a guy that didn't even know his password explicitly, all was just a pattern of finger movements stored in muscle memory. ------ tvchurch "Don't forget God. System operators love to use God. It's that whole male ego thing." ~~~ djahng Haha Hackers...and when you break into a computer system it goes all 3-D too right? ------ snprbob86 Why aren't these sites storing salted hashes? Plain text passwords are bad news... ~~~ dreish Where did you get that impression? Not from the linked-to article, from my reading of it. ~~~ hbien If a site is storing hashed passwords with salts, you generally don't know what the user's password is and you can't unhash them to find out. ~~~ dreish Right, and what does that have to do with this article about lists obtained by phishing and the like? ~~~ hbien My mistake, I thought these passwords came straight from the databases. ------ timdorr Good thing that...heh...my password is totally...um...not on that list..... ~~~ catz Yup, I'm also lucky that poiuyt is not on that list. ------ geuis Might be an interesting white-hat idea to have a service that gets into a social network and spiders out, collecting thousands of user names. Then attempt library login attempts. In the event they are successful, the service contacts the user and warns them that they have a weak password. Unfortunately this is so similar to standard phishing attacks that I'm afraid the good would be offset by the bad of reinforcing user behaviors that its ok to click through on 3rd party notices like this. ~~~ DenisM This is also likely illegal (as in: jail-time illegal). Talk to a lawyer before implementing anything like this. ------ dandelany Oh, those silly pious folks and their predictable passwords. Jesus may save, but he certainly doesn't protect very well. ~~~ jrockway Yeah, thanks to those bad passwords I can totally compromised 100s of accounts! Then I will... uh... oh wait, there is no value in doing that. The best protection is not a good password. It's having something that's not worth stealing. ------ streety Out of interest does anyone attempt to warn their users when they attempt to use a common/easily guessed password? At the moment all I do is insist on a minimum length but it doesn't seem as though it would be all that difficult to add checks for common passwords. ------ Tichy I like how some people go the extra length, using "12345678" instead of "123456". ------ schtono Having a closer look at the list shows that password rules like "alpha + numericals" don't add much of security in real world scenarios: In approx 95% people seem to add one or two digits at the end of a string. ~~~ dkokelley I don't like password requirements - It restricts the number of possibilities and for crackers who know the restrictions it makes life a lot easier for them. ------ eli what the heck is "rotimi" ? ~~~ willchang Rotimi is a Nigerian given name. Perhaps it reflects a large number of Nigerian scammers? ~~~ eli I dunno, seems weird. 163k hits on google? Doesn't even seem like a particularly common Nigerian name. And there aren't many other given names on the list. ------ quizbiz Until I read this, I always wondered why the keyboard was called QWERTY. As soon as I saw it on the list, I instantly realized the reason. I feel ignorant. ------ algebra 'volcom1'? (#39 on myspace) interesting. ------ mroman You gotta be kidding . . .

Notice of data breach at Teachable (formerly Fedora) - chaghalibaghali I just received this email (to an address I&#x27;d used to sign up to a course on https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bitfountain.teachable.com&#x2F;):<p>Dear &lt;chaghalibaghali&gt;,<p>We are writing to inform you of a suspected data breach involving accounts created between September 17, 2013 and November 21, 2015. We have reason to suspect that personal information related to accounts on Bitfountain (joined 2014-08-19) may have been compromised. This includes the email addresses and passwords associated with the school&#x27;s Teachable (formerly Fedora) account.<p>As a precaution we are enforcing password resets for potentially affected users.<p>You can reset your password here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sso.teachable.com&#x2F;secure&#x2F;teachable_accounts&#x2F;password&#x2F;new<p>If you happen to use this password with any other service, we highly recommend updating your password there as well.<p>We apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your understanding in helping us keep Teachable safe.<p>Team Teachable ====== curo I got this too. There's zero incentive for startups to protect data privacy of their users when the repercussions are just that they have to shoot out a broadcast email to their old users asking them to spend hours resetting passwords.

Facebook hands out White Hat debit cards to hackers - FluidDjango http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-57350464-245/facebook-hands-out-white-hat-debit-cards-to-hackers/ ====== danielmeade I for one think this is a brilliant concept. As mentioned previously it taps into the feeling of exclusivity and being part of the 'elite few' eligible for such a thing, going much farther than just a monetary reward. Surely that in itself is enough to keep hackers interested and producing results, which ultimately is what the program aims to do. ------ adamjernst This is a well-meaning gesture and I'm sure that Facebook can't track transactions just because they commissioned the card. Still, I can't imagine security researcher types are going to like the idea of making daily purchases with a card commissioned and owned by Facebook! ~~~ tptacek I'm sure if you're finding bugs and you ask nicely, Facebook will forgo the publicity stunt for you and just cut you a check. ~~~ daeken You have the option of getting a check, Western Union payment, or the card. The WU option may no longer be there since they put out this debit card -- not sure. ------ jballanc So what happens when one of the White Hats figures out how to access the interface used to add value to his/her card? ~~~ wmf He goes to prison? But seriously, I wouldn't even _look_ for holes in any payment system without prior indemnification. ~~~ daeken Hell, I work as a security consultant for a living and any time I touch live finance systems I tread _very_ lightly. Any significantly complex system with money directly involved is going to have too many variables to predict its behavior. I wouldn't touch something like this with a ten foot clown pole. ~~~ tptacek Presumably this is being run through a real bank with a real underwriting department. A VISA card that works at ATMs is not fun-and-games; it's not a Facebook feature. ~~~ daeken Yea, this is well into the realm of going to jail for a long time if you touch anything. Find it pretty doubtful that anyone will even try. ------ MichaelApproved The card reminds me of the American Express Black Card in its exclusivity. It's Like a certificate of achievement and a nice item to have even after you spend the money. ~~~ justincormack Er no you just need lots of money to get that.. Wikipedia says "The "Centurion" card is invitation-only after appropriate net worth, credit and spending criteria are met. American Express does not publicly disclose the requirements for getting a card" ~~~ corin_ Yes, in that example the "achievement" is meeting their net worth and spending criteria. ------ hudibras "Facebook whitehat card not as prestigious as the SVC card, but very cool." What's the SVC card? ~~~ nbpoole I assume it's a card issued by Secunia's program: <http://secunia.com/community/research/svcrp> ------ sliverstorm Shouldn't the card be ivory? ------ comex I think the card would look more distinctive if it were white. :) ~~~ cf0ed2aa-bdf5 When I heard about the white hat card I imagined it having a more facebooky look. Like facebook blue and "white hat" in the facebook font. The debit card is a really cool idea though. ------ ditoa Is that MZ in the reflection? ~~~ cf0ed2aa-bdf5 It certainly looks like him. The image was provided by facebook as well so I guess it would be pretty safe to assume it's MZ.

Google to ramp up AI efforts to ID extremism on YouTube - janober https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/19/google-to-ramp-up-ai-efforts-to-id-extremism-on-youtube ====== tyingq Earlier related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14583017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14583017) ------ frenchie4111 "expanding counter-radicalisation efforts by working with (other Alphabet division) Jigsaw to implement the “Redirect Method” more broadly across Europe. “This promising approach harnesses the power of targeted online advertising to reach potential Isis recruits, and redirects them towards anti- terrorist videos that can change their minds about joining. In previous deployments of this system, potential recruits have clicked through on the ads at an unusually high rate, and watched over half a million minutes of video content that debunks terrorist recruiting messages,” says Walker." Does them performing this kind of intentional manipulation, and having such success, scare the shit out of anyone else? ------ pawadu How about employing real people this time, google? Your previous efforts to police crafty humanss using AI has utterly failed. Just look at adsense and play store. ~~~ Klathmon There is something like a decade of video uploaded to YouTube every day. Even if you employed entire countries you still wouldn't stand a chance at reviewing it all. Automated systems are the only way it can function at all. ~~~ pawadu > Automated systems are the only way it can function at all. Not in its current form. Google with all its might hasn't even managed to remove those "work from home for $$$" youtube comments. Google doesn't have a good way to incorporate human intelligence (users) into its AI. Pure AI has no chance against an army of highly adaptable humans.

The whale internet: communication over hundreds of miles - chadmalik http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/11/SP781EBM1P.DTL&type=living "What's really incredible is how all these whales showed up overnight," Black noted in an e-mail. "We do know that blue whales have long-range communication. Their low-range frequency calls can travel hundreds of miles through the oceans. So it seems likely that the whales communicated to others about the food source here." ====== chadmalik Quote: "What's really incredible is how all these whales showed up overnight," Black noted in an e-mail. "We do know that blue whales have long-range communication. Their low-range frequency calls can travel hundreds of miles through the oceans. So it seems likely that the whales communicated to others about the food source here."

Show HN: Bucket Query – Automatically index and search your AWS S3 buckets - barefootsanders http://www.bucketquery.com ====== bdcravens Why does the marketing on the site not make a comparison with Athena? ~~~ barefootsanders Founder here. Great thought. We had toyed with the idea of a comparison chart/table aired on the side of simplicity. Based on your feedback it might make sense. We'll see how we can incorporate something like this on a future website update.

If you're not writing tests first you're missing out - mokagio http://www.mokacoding.com/blog/if-youre-not-writing-tests-first-youre-missing-out ====== jondubois I already tried writing unit tests first (TDD); it was a waste of time in my case. TDD doesn't help you at all in terms of designing the right architecture. It encourages you to write lots of small classes and it discourages you from changing them later as your understanding of requirements becomes deeper - This leads to suboptimal architecture. I much prefer integration tests to test my code during development. They don't have to be slow if you design them properly. ------ TH3R3LL1K Well it's not easy writing tests first when working on a legacy system. In my instance, we've created integration tests. And business tests to make sure our business rules work as it should be.

50 employees left Zappos before an important project was finished - MarlonPro http://www.businessinsider.com/50-zappos-employees-left-before-super-cloud-project-finished-2016-1 ====== smt88 Important detail buried at the end: "...those who took the Super Cloud extended buyout offer were mostly nontechnical managers who would probably have been laid off anyway if they hadn't taken the offer."

Maximator: European signals intelligence cooperation - tormeh https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1743538 ====== sgift Source article this is based on: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1743538) (Found it since I cannot read the full economist article) ~~~ livatlantis Thank you for this complete version. Random detail, but "Maximator" is a type of beer (a Starkbier/Doppelbock) brewed by the the very popular Augustiner brewery, not a brand in itself. In fact, it's a Bavarian tradition for the names of Doppelbocks to generally end in "-ator": Celebrator, Optimator, Animator... ~~~ cmroanirgo The article covers this fact well. I like the idea that a super secret cabal name is based on the drink they were having at the time. It humanizes the whole endeavour showing how they agree on more than secrecy. ~~~ sorokod Or the place they were having the drink in, like the Beer Hall Putsch [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch) ------ SiempreViernes From the source article: "Certain countries were deliberately not allowed to join because within the Maximator alliance they were considered as lacking relevant (signal-/crypto- analytical) expertise and/or experience. Allegedly, these countries include Norway, Spain and Italy." And "Belgium is a notable exception in north-western Europe; it had not been invited to join Maximator because of its lack of SIGINT (and COMSEC) capabilities." adding in a footnote that "Belgium’s cryptographic behaviour and discipline were problematic. For instance, at least once it compromised its own communications via a basic mistake in key management;" :D ~~~ koheripbal It is disappointing to continue to see such rampant fragmentation within Europe. I had hoped that the EU would break down regulatory barriers and force bureaucratic consolidation, but it seems progress has stalled in the last 10 years. The EU should have one single intelligence agency - not a dysfunctional collection of fighting to be part of the "in" group. ~~~ jhelphenstine One single intelligence agency? And what if the Germans are interested in gaining better understanding of Viktor Orban? Or if the Italians want to know just how far Germany will really go to help them financially? An intelligence agency is a means of acquiring answers to intelligence needs - I'm not sure Europe is of one mind with regard to what questions merit answering. ~~~ seppin Exactly. You'd need a single united economic and political union first. The EU is heading away from that, not towards it. ~~~ normalnorm How do you figure that? The EU is an economic and political union. It might not be complete or perfect, but integration has been happening decade by decade. We now have a single currency, a unified supreme court, a single charter of citizen rights, freedom of movement and a single market. A lot of younger people feel European, there is such a thing as an European identity. Each one of these things was considered impossible at a certain point. It is a slow and hard process but it is happening. I find that the English-speaking media is particularly keen on repeating the mantra that "the EU is collapsing". I've witnessed this all my life. It became more intense now with Brexit, but the UK was not ever a real member. It opted out and demanded exceptions for everything. Unfortunately, the EU had to be built _around_ the UK, not _with_ it. There was also a shift in attitude with the current administration in the US, which sees the EU as an adversary instead of as a friend. So I would take anything I read in English about the EU with a pinch of salt... ~~~ JetSetWilly > the UK was not ever a real member. It opted out and demanded exceptions for > everything. Unfortunately, the EU had to be built around the UK, not with > it. There's a tendency among hardcore europhiles to blame the nasty british for all questioning of the European ideal, as though if it weren't for perfidious albion Europe would be of one mind. This completely ignores both the deep euroscepticism felt by many people across the EU(which European countries tend to just ignore instead of being so hasty like Britain as to actually have a referendum - and if a referendum must be held, just have it again and again until you get the right answer...) and also ignores that other countries have differing opinions to France and Germany too. ~~~ normalnorm > There's a tendency among hardcore europhiles to blame the nasty british for > all questioning of the European ideal, as though if it weren't for > perfidious albion Europe would be of one mind. Perhaps, but that was not what I said at all. What I said is that the UK always chose to not participate in the project, and that the project went on without it. Now, with Brexit, the UK government is openly hostile towards the EU. This is just a fact. Another fact is that the EU was able to maintain a united political front when faced with Brexit (which posed -- and was meant to pose -- an existential threat to the EU). So the reports of EU's death may be premature, as the cliché goes... > This completely ignores both the deep euroscepticism felt by many people > across the EU Well, I haven't. On the contrary, I said that it is a very hard and incomplete project, and that it was considered impossible by a lot of people every step of the way. I also mentioned that it is among the younger generations that a European identity is growing. Not established, but growing. > and also ignores that other countries have differing opinions to France and > Germany too Well, I ignored none of that. You just assumed it. What I think is undeniable is that there are vested interests in the collapse of the EU. The EU is composed of many small countries, that could be much more easily pushed around if not acting as bloc. Naturally, those who would indeed like to push Europe around dislike the EU. With the stance of the current US administration and of the post-Brexit UK government, it just so happens that in the current year of 2020, a lot of people with such vested interests write in English. ------ PatrolX What's most interesting about this is what Professor Jacobs omitted, and the stuff he omitted happens to be related to his circle of friends. Set up a Google Alert for appropriate keywords, this could get really interesting in the coming months. That's all I can say, sorry. ~~~ secfirstmd Intriguing comment given what he has worked on and with who. ------ tormeh > Crypto AG, a Swiss firm that dominated the global market, turns out to have > been jointly owned by the CIA and its German counterpart, the BND. They > would sell rigged machines to friends and enemies alike, including several > NATO countries. ~~~ billfruit How is this getting a free pass, while allegations about other countries prompt much consternation. I think it is ethically problematic to assist/work for any espionage/intelligence related work during peace time. ~~~ blaser-waffle The Cold War was mostly a spy game and it kept the peace for decades. There was no gigantic WW3, no nuclear holocaust, and kept the regional conflicts limited to that specific region. Everyone plays the great game, even allies vs other allies (e.g. the French spying on US businesses, and the US NSA spying on Europeans during negotiations). ~~~ ntsplnkv2 Surely the threat of mass destruction had more to do with that so-called peace. And was it really peaceful? All that espionage essentially led to the proxy wars across the globe that cost countless number of lives. ~~~ deathgrips How many people died in WW2 vs all wars after WW2? ~~~ ntsplnkv2 Why? ~~~ deathgrips Proxy wars and spying kills less people than world wars. It's objectively better. ~~~ ntsplnkv2 It's only objectively better until another world war comes - we are not immune, and then, it will be easily objectively worse. This argument is rather pointless - externalizing warfare to poor nations and then saying the world is "peaceful" is quite immoral. ~~~ deathgrips Do you have a better, moral way to reduce war fatalities? ~~~ ntsplnkv2 Do you have an argument that isn't a straw-man? Espionage is not used by governments to maintain peace and reduce war fatalities - it's used by governments to gain an edge over their adversaries. Espionage existed in WW2 as it did in times of peace - to say peace is a consequence of it is absurd. MAD is the only thing that has prevented major world conflict. ------ disabled As both an American (culturally) and European (by citizenship, as in European Union citizen), this whole ordeal is going to be profoundly damaging to US-EU relations. But, you (Americans) should be angry because democracy has been in backslide hardcore in the US. Europe has dealt with populism before, unlike the US, and is more likely to recover from these bad times than the US—and it is really due to a multitude of reasons. My bet is that the US closed the operation once they knew they were certainly busted. Who knows, maybe even a European counter-operation of some sort occurred. The US probably has several other covert operations now based directly on intelligence from the devices with poor encryption. Sure, post World War 2, the US maybe had legitimate reasons to be spying on such activities in general in Europe. They also probably knew (practically guaranteed) over time from various patterns (from good data—whatever that data could possibly be) that a super coordinated secret intelligence operation was going on between European countries, while not knowing who exactly they were (as in not being able to put their finger on what was going on, but still being able to rely on intuition to just know and to justify the means). Swiss laws permitting ultra-confidentiality in banking do absolutely have a legitimate purpose, but they are problemsome too. Unless you have been living under a rock in recent years, everybody knows that there are plenty of oligarchs (Russian oligarchs in particular) funneling dirty money through the Swiss banking system. America also effectively has its own form of oligarchy too (by the way, guess who is listed top in the world for wealth inequality by Credit Suisse? Russia. Guess who is second? USA.), so it is not like this route seemed unnatural. Even if the Europeans knew for certain that somebody had some sort of substantial counterintelligence on them, it would still take a long time to figure out the source of failure. That is, unless the US messed up severely, which, I suspect, is probably what happened. ~~~ microcolonel > _But, you (Americans) should be angry because democracy has been in > backslide hardcore in the US. Europe has dealt with populism before..._ Populism is a creature of democracy, what you're talking about is a failure of the republic; which itself is debatable. ------ vslira "Maxinator", "Five Eyes" Imagine being in the brainstorming session to come up with name for intelligence agencies alliances. "It must sound dangerous, yes, but not evil. Like some kind of anti-villain" ~~~ dghughes Whenever I read about such organizations I always wonder who cleans the toilets. Whether they are real like the CIA, Five Eyes, or even Dr. Evil someone low down on the ladder has to get access. ~~~ _jal Keep in mind that there are all sorts of odd circumstances and that the rules surrounding this stuff are necessarily inflexible, so there are lots of different arrangements. That said, in the US, the janitor is probably a contractor. Typically ex- military, they have to pass a background check and are cleared to work in public spaces. When cleaning secure areas, they're escorted and watched. ~~~ ttul And the people escorting and watching them are also escorted and watched. And their families are interviewed. Etc... It's a huge undertaking. ------ Hokusai > to the considerable irritation of those who had kept it under wraps for > decades On one side, so much secrecy worries me. On the other side kudos for keeping the secret pact secret for so long. ------ l1ghthouse [http://archive.is/zmTgX](http://archive.is/zmTgX) ------ selimthegrim They let the Turkish Army into NATO and hold nukes and it reuses OTPs? ~~~ nabla9 They don't let Turkish Army hold nukes. They are just located in Turkey. Turkish Air force practises the delivery so that they can do it if necessary. ~~~ jacobush Yeah, however there was talk that getting the nukes _out_ of Turkey would not be easy, especially if Turkey would not cooperate. ------ wooptoo Sans paywall [https://outline.com/VKPeR4](https://outline.com/VKPeR4) ------ neonate [https://archive.md/FMsZM](https://archive.md/FMsZM) ------ Harvesterify Can somebody explain why The Register and The Economist suddenly pick up the subject, while the original article from Jacobs was published a few months ago, and several newspaper already covered the topic ? Anything new happened ? ------ Havoc I wonder what is behind the comment that french/german works better than french/UK ~~~ frabbit The origins of the EEC were a French(agriculture + coal) and German (manufacturing) alliance. The other countries were just added on as export markets. ~~~ DoingIsLearning Those were probably powerful lobbies for an enlargement of an economic union. However, technically the concept of an european economic union originated with the treaty for the Benelux Economic Union (1958) (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) ~~~ frabbit Generally treaties occur after interested parties have realized their interests and undertaken discussions for a great deal of time prior to the signing of anything. ------ kleiba Supposedly, they mean West-Germany when they say Germany? ~~~ wyldfire Yes. BND originated as West German intelligence agency. ------ adaisadais Nothing on SPECTRE

California companies with 5+ employees must now provide pensions? - jalanco http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-28/california-is-first-to-offer-private-pension-management.html ====== jalanco "The law is aimed at businesses with five or more employees that don’t offer pensions or 401(k) savings programs. The law requires companies to contribute 3 percent of a worker’s salary to a retirement account. Workers will be enrolled in the program unless they choose to opt out." ~~~ hga Depending on the details, a strong motive to hire no more than 4 direct employees. This could bring about some major structural changes. ~~~ 001sky _3 percent of a worker’s salary_ Thats 1/3 of sales tax rate. Its literally not material, economically. Logistically, this will need to be outsourced, which ironically mighthit fees at a cost ~3% of payroll (ie, like a ~= to a credit card fee). So this law is a boon for special interest = those companies. ~~~ hga Agreed with you on the outsourcing, but I think you underestimate the "death by a thousand paper cuts" problem. Sure, any one of these things is not necessarily material or at least very big, but there's no limiting principle to California's style of government, they just keep piling up and up. And it'll be material for companies that are right now at the margin, where this pulls them under the break even point, or the point at which the salary the eeeeevil business owner can pay himself is just not worth it. ~~~ 001sky I don't disagree on the PITA factor. But its not a death-knell. Provided that it is outsourced at payroll or via a bank relationship, etc. In that sense, this is just another legistated subsidy to these industries. But the only awkward case is n=4, where they need +1 to do the paperwork =]. But analytically, A 3 to 6% increase in labour cost only kills a very weak business plan. Consider the edge-case example: Even with 100% labour expense and a 6 month runway of cash, you are running out of cash 1/2x6%=3% sooner? Thats ~3 business days (240/2x3%). Again, its massive brain damage. Until it gets outsourced. But in theory it should be no more difficult than a pre-tax Medical savings account, or a pre- tax Transportation voucher system, etc (which almost everyone already has). But even BigCo's outsource this crap to PayChex or what not. ~~~ hga The point I'm failing to communicate is that all these little bites add up. Each particular one may not be very large, but when you add enough of them you preclude a number of business plans, especially if you move your focus from our sorts of businesses where the Bay area defines the very best place to do them (although all of California enjoys the unique benefit of non-competes being unenforceable, providing the country's most liquid market for human talent). If the California/Bay area competitive advantages aren't so overwhelming, you have to ask yourself how much sense it makes to try to create and build it in California vs. states that are sane. If the company type is inherently local (e.g. a dry cleaner with all those environmental issues), can I afford to try to continue running it in California, or should I move and do whatever elsewhere, or just retire? In the long run, its hard to see the Bay area etc. remain viable for high tech if too many other types of companies are forced out of the state.

Grok cassandra's data model - flazzarino http://flazz.me/grok-cassandras-datamodel ====== jdefarge This column-family/column/super-column lingo that Cassandra pulls out just makes it harder to understand its data model. In fact, it's quite simple: Keyspace: a hash table that holds your application data. Okay, the table is distributed among nodes (i.e.,a DHT), but it's still a hash table; Row: an entry in the above hash table where each value is composed by a collection of "column-families". Column Family: a key-value table (I avoid to call it a hash table because I don't remember if it's implemented as such). A better name for this thing would be 'Attribute Set'. Column: it's a key-value pair (with timestamp). Thinking about it as a column just blurs the concept. Better name: 'Attribute'. _Note: it's possible to have a different set of attributes on a per-row basis (for the same Column Family), so this concept of 'column' breaks quite easily._ Super-column: key-value pair where the value is yet another key-value table! Better(?) name: 'Super-Attribute'. Then Cassandra data model is in fact a nested set of key-value tables while dynamo's model is flat (just one level hash table). Oh! Last but not least, it's not a column-store. It's on-disk storage is row-oriented. ------ wccrawford I think he makes the mistake of thinking the RDB-specific definition of those words is the absolutely definition, and that nobody else can use them if they aren't using them in exactly the same way. You can't go into a new language and assume any words that appear to be the same are exactly the same. This applies to spoken language as well as computer languages. Only heartache lies down that road. ~~~ flazzarino mistake or not, i don't believe i assumed any words from the RDB (or any other) domain are the absolute definition. i do assume that people often learn and understand things based on existing conceptual prototypes. that was my problem trying to understand cassandra. ~~~ wccrawford They why did you say: "Not only is Cassandra’s terminology confusing it’s downright misleading. Row, Column & Key all have existing semantics in the land of databases. To make matters worse, Cassandra’s definitions are not even orthogonal to the existing ones — they exist in a difficult state of quasi-synonymity." You assumed that the RDB definition of those words was absolute, and didn't bother to question if a different kind of database would use them somewhat differently. ~~~ pohl _You assumed that the RDB definition of those words was absolute..._ I'm not the author, but I don't see how the portion you quoted requires an assumption that those definitions are absolute. The only thing one must accept is that those definitions are pervasive. That doesn't seem controversial, to me. When selecting the nomenclature, the makers of Cassandra could have made a practical decision not to create unnecessary confusion. ~~~ jdefarge The Facebook guys who wrote Cassandra have heavily drawn its design and terminology from Google's Bigtable. By the way, Column Family (CF) in BT makes a lot more sense because the compression of data,as well as disk storage locality, is made on a per-CF basis. They have even filled a patent about this (<http://bit.ly/ooop2s>). _Oddly enough, BigTable's terminology seems fits more naturally in the classic concepts than Cassandra's. Maybe it's the result of Dynamo's design choices (DHT, etc) that got into the mix or new concepts like SuperColumn._

Ask HN: Should a n00b learn front-end and work back, or vice versa? - webmaven Someone I know is very interested in switching to web design and&#x2F;or development as a career, but is uncertain about where to start, and I am uncertain what to recommend (my own experiences as a beginner are now 20 years in the past, and the environment is very different now).<p>This person has an interest in design and likes to make things look nice, but also enjoys data organization and has serious data manipulation skills using spreadsheets.<p>Do I suggest they start on the front-end with HTML+CSS, add JS for some interactivity, and then work toward the backend with a web framework, eventually adding various DB, numeric processing, and other backend skills as well...<p>Or do I suggest they start with data storage and manipulation with databases and tools like Python and Pandas, and then moving to the front-end via web frameworks and visualization libraries?<p>Either path would be rewarding for them, just in different ways, and it is unlikely they would be able to figure out what they find <i>most</i> enjoyable until they have tried a broad range of the &#x27;stack&#x27; for themselves, so the real question is which sequence is actually easier&#x2F;faster&#x2F;less frustrating to learn for someone new to the field.<p>Or perhaps there is some other direction or sequence I am overlooking? ====== nostrademons I generally recommend that new devs who don't yet know what they want to specialize in learn front-end dev first and then work their way backwards. The reason is that frontend skills are widely transferrable between companies, and qualify you for a large number of jobs. This means that you can get your foot in the door at a lot of different places, and if you don't like it, you can switch to another company or product really easily. Once you find a specialty, _then_ you can start learning backend technologies in depth, and probably switch roles within the company. Backend technologies are often surprisingly tightly tied to a particular problem domain. Yes, familiarity with SQL and an RDBMS will help you in a lot of places. However, many of the more interesting places to work need graph databases, high-performance timeseries stores, memory caches, bloom filters, flat file formats, and a large number of custom technologies. And when it comes to data _analysis_ , your effectiveness is largely dependent upon how familiar you are with the particular data set you are analyzing. I saw wizards work wonders with Google's corpus of news articles; they could really quickly machine-learn models from the corpus, even for totally new products, because they'd been working with the data set for the last 10 years. However, while there are some general techniques that most data extraction & prediction problems use, that wizardry wouldn't translate to, say, protein folding. Backend data processing is much less transferrable between different sets of data. The flip side is that domain-specific knowledge tends to last much longer than frontend technologies. Typically, you have to learn a new frontend technology every 5-10 years; I started my career in 2000 and have already had to jump from Java Swing to static webpages to single-page webapps to mobile technologies.

Ask HN: My GCP Account Has been Hacked What do I do? - dkroy I have had a number of GCP accounts over the past 5 years, but this last month I have appeared to have been hacked. As a result there are resources that I cannot remove that Google Support refuses to help with. What do I do? This hacker has run up a very large bill, and I do not have the resources to pay it. It would be crazy to me that I would be the first person to run into this issue so advice is welcome. ====== posguy Google has no support, and when you do not pay they will brick every Google account you have. Start a Google Takeout immediately if you have any personal data, and if you use Gmail then update all accounts to a non-Google email address. Google Takeout: [https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-google- takeout-4173795](https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-google-takeout-4173795) ------ GuardLlama I wouldn't worry. You just did exactly what you needed to do! Post to HN and hope the thread gets enough upvotes to reach the frontpage to find a human at Google. ~~~ swagonomixxx That's actually so sad. ------ gbrindisi Ouch. What resources can you not remove? What exactly are you running? In general, as first thing stop the bleeding: 1\. Stop your services from running 2\. Check your IAM policies for anything suspicious, new service accounts, new users. Clean up. 3\. Rotate all your Service Accounts and Service Account’s keys! If possible re-provision your machines (with a new SA) and redeploy your apps. 4\. Check your VPC’s firewall Then you absolutely need to figure out how you’ve been hacked. If the breach is on the application layer you must figure out where and patch it. Check your application logs. Then check your GCP activity logs, search for unexpected calls from service accounts - assume the attacker has compromised a service account and search for attempt to persist with calls to `setIam` or other sensitive api calls. Sorry, I’m on mobile but feel free to reach out If you need (email in profile) ------ rxsel I’m just here for the support. There is definitely someone here lurking that could definitely help :) Also, I’ve seen a trend of terrible google support. Is this the norm?

Only One of Six Air Force F-35s Could Actually Take Off During Testing - farseer http://fortune.com/2016/04/28/f-35-fails-testing-air-force/ ====== PopsiclePete I can _feel_ the kind of project this must have been. A giant cluster-fuck of dozens of managers and dozens of teams "collaborating" (a.k.a. spending 60% of their productive time in meetings), and more and more people being added as it started to get bad, thus making it worse. Working long hours, trying to patch up some fundamental flaws in the overall design, the fuck-tard MBA 'manager' telling them how much their hard work is "appreciated" and how it's just "a little big longer" as they steadily burn out... And the uber-fucktard above, who keeps pushing harder, piling more people and more meetings, until the whole thing starts to collapse onto itself. They never learn. Never. ------ sevenless Maybe they should open all the source code to the public and offer large rewards for finding bugs. Those planes cost, what, a third of a billion each? Even a million dollars per substantial bug might be a bargain. ~~~ vinay427 I think that could allow for bigger security flaws than the actual bugs themselves, if you literally mean "public."

Venezuela’s central bank holding Bitcoin is just crazy enough to work - euphemized https://decrypt.co/9697/venezuela-central-bank-holding-bitcoin-just-crazy-enough-work ====== hnghost Accurate title!

Ask YC: How did you name your startup? - rksprst I've been having trouble naming my startup (or renaming). I'm wondering how you guys came up with your name, what criteria you used, and how long it took?<p>My criteria is basically this: http://alexkaminski.blogspot.com/2008/03/naming-your-startup.html ====== tyohn I am working on that right now. Something that is easy to remember - easy to spell correctly - and creative... ~~~ rksprst Are you just thinking of names? Or do you do something like making a list of words related to your startup, and then combining them to see what works (and isn't taken)? ~~~ tyohn I start with names related to the concept but it always seems to morph into names that aren't related. I end up pulling words out of my brain and then break them apart and put them together in different forms. I also use a thesaurus to find other meanings for words... ------ ideas101 the following 2 links should help you - good luck [http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/223/The-Startup- Na...](http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/223/The-Startup-Name- Game.aspx) <http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/the_name_game.html>

Sony officially 50% of all GitHub's DMCA notices - ecaron https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/5476ab2ffe18a286a1476293276c3149c0c2d50d ====== benologist I don't really see how GitHub receiving a staggering 1 DMCA notice a month from Sony is newsworthy ... the interesting number isn't that 50% (aka "6") notices were sent this year by Sony, it's that GitHub's only gotten 12 all year. Other than not deliberately cultivate an environment for illegal file sharing, what has GitHub done to insulate themselves from the piracy & file sharing community so effectively? It seems like it'd be a great place to dump illegal music/videos/app/game/etc downloads, and accounts are easy to make. ~~~ henryw yeah, 12 is not that statistically significant. If they had >30, than maybe. ~~~ HoyaSaxa O how I love the central limit theorem ------ ecaron The larger question I'm curious about is how many of these are legitimate DMCA violations vs. the attack on fair-use that HNers have come to expect when this 4-letter word is invoked. ------ jevinskie Does anyone know what the tool was?[0] jimmikaelkael is a well known PS2 dev. I had checked out the DMCAed repo when he first put it up about a week ago but I can't recall it was. [0]: <https://github.com/jimmikaelkael/ps3mca-tool.git> ~~~ mcbarry It's a driver to provide filesystem access to PS2 memory cards, using the USB Memory Card Adaptor designed for the PS3. There's another tool using this to make bootable memory cards for bypassing region checks. ------ senthilnayagam The amount Sony spends on Lawyers it could have spent on real security(so many server/network issues in last 2 months) and some path breaking products. All my Sony money now goes to Apple. ------ tzury if you want to read it in more elegant format, there you go: [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2011-06-21-sony.m...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2011-06-21-sony.markdown) ------ keyle The title doesn't quite make sense? "Sony officially 50%..."? ~~~ spicyj "Sony [is now] officially 50% …" – The "is now" is implied. ------ omouse Sony are dicks, this is news? ~~~ swaits For attempting to protect their IP by following the processes established in current law? ~~~ Produce I suppose that you would have stood up for slave owners back when that was legal? IP is an oxymoron and the law is wrong. ~~~ swaits We aren't talking about enslaved humans. We are talking about a company defending its inventions, its business. I don't see where Sony are being "dicks". ~~~ burgerbrain No, we are talking about consumer rights, and the property rights of the legal owners of Sony manufactured devices. It may not be autonomy rights, but it is an issue of rights nevertheless.

Advanced soccer analytics: building and applying a pitch control model in Python - rjtavares https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X1cSehLg6s ====== rjtavares This is a really niche topic (Football/Soccer analytics), although its reach could be high, so let me contextualize a little bit (btw, I'm using the word Football from now on): Football statistics were traditionally based on specific event: passes and shots. From these you can compute certain statistics like % of Possession (contrary to what it may look, % Possession is calculated from passes, not actual possession time) and Shots on Target. Football is notoriously a low scoring sport, and shots differ in quality quite a bit, so a measure was created to address this: Expected Goals (xG). This was around 2010, and only this season hit the mainstream as the Premier League broadcasters started to present those values (based on Opta's model). More advanced stats, but similar in concept, were created since, like Expected Assists and xG Chain (in this case, a value is attributed to each player that participated in the possession chain). But even shots are kind of rare (usually around 10 shots on target per match), and these stats completely disregard the defensive side of the equation, so increasingly full positional data is used in Football Analytics. In 2018, William Spearman presented an influential paper at MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference called "Beyond Expected Goals" (this video is an open implementation of that paper)[1]. He was later hired by Liverpool FC as their lead Data Scientist. You can watch a video by Spearman himself about the Pitch Control Model and recent innovations here.[2] As you can see, this is pretty close to the state of the art in Football Analytics. It's a huge moment that very few people noticed, so I'm trying to get it out there. [1] [http://www.sloansportsconference.com/wp- content/uploads/2018...](http://www.sloansportsconference.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/02/2002.pdf) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9PrwPyolyU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9PrwPyolyU)

Ask HN: Gambling & smoking limited but not entrepreneurship and stock trading? - amichail There are dangers involved in gambling and smoking. Consequently, governments provide limits/warnings to mitigate those dangers.<p>But why do governments not do the same with entrepreneurship and stock trading?<p>For example, 3rd party developers could receive a warning that gives them the expected profit from a particular platform. Without such warnings and in cases with very low expected profit, companies would be essentially getting free labor to promote their products. ====== asimjalis I assume you are joking. Gambling is a closed system with fixed rules. The expected winnings form a Gaussian bell curve. Entrepreneurship is an open system. You can change the game. The idea of expected profits assumes that profits will follow a bell curve. But in fact they don't. There is really no upper bound. To use the terminology of Taleb's Black Swan, entrepreneurship profits are Mandelbrotian. The outliers can completely change the average, to a point where the concept of the average or expected becomes meaningless. ~~~ amichail You could give the median profit, which is not sensitive to outliers. ~~~ profquail Why should the government be required to help you out here. Contact the company and find out some more about their platform. If they won't give you some straight answers, then it's time to move on. It's a private company, and it's totally within their right to refuse your information request, but they will also be driving themselves out of business... ~~~ amichail Why would a company voluntarily give out information that would discourage third party developers? Does Facebook for example give out the median profit from a Facebook app? ~~~ profquail They wouldn't. And if they lied to you, that's fraud, and you can press charges against them. If they don't lie, but they don't tell you good things about their platform (you'll have to judge the amount of 'spin' on your own)...then move on. It's really that simple. From your example, you could contact Facebook and ask for some stats about their application platform (telling them that your company is thinking about building an app for that platform). If they refuse to give you stats, either ask to be transferred to a 'higher-up', or tell them you're sorry you couldn't work together and get off the phone. If they do give you stats, you need to judge for yourself if building your app will be profitable on that platform. There is absolutely no company (or person) in the world that is going to be able to quote you a hard number on the amount of profit your app is going to make before it exists. ------ SwellJoe Oh, yes, more government involvement in the tech industry is _exactly_ what we need at this juncture in American history. It's worked so well for automobiles, railroads, health care, and drugs, what could possibly go wrong? ------ profquail I think that if you develop something for a 3rd-party platform without knowing what you're getting into, any negative (i.e. non-profitable) outcome is 100% your fault. I'm certainly not going to ask for my tax dollars to go toward someone that was so excited by greed that they didn't even bother to google around a bit and find out some more about that platform. If you do some preliminary web searches on small business statistics or entrepreneurship, you'll find that plenty of them fail right off the bat. I think that a large part of the reason that people love 'corporate culture' is because it's very secure, unlike when you start your own business and have to actually take some risks with your future. ------ zandorg I see the difference between gambling and stock trading as this: Gambling has a negative long-term percentage, but stock trading is the opposite: a positive long-term percentage. If you gamble at roulette for long enough with any strategy, you'll lost 2.6%. If you play the stock market for that long, again randomly, you'll GAIN 2.6% (just a made up number - it could be 1% depending on the economy). Postscript: At stock trading, like in a casino, you have to make enough to cover the "house cut", which is the fees you pay to brokers to sell and buy stocks (in roulette, it's 2.6%). ~~~ amichail I suspect most people lose money in the stock market because they need the cash so they may end up selling low. ~~~ profquail It's called Risk Aversion: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion> ------ bkovitz There are dangers involved in eating at McDonald's, going to grad school, talking to strangers, thinking things through very carefully, dressing funny, starting religions, getting married, staying single, doing meaningless homework, getting a cubicle job, and heeding the advice of your high-school guidance counselor. The dangers are quite severe, including heart disease, getting beaten up, and living a wasted, unfulfilling life (a fate worse than death). ------ sarvesh Why not right? You may soon get more than just protecting 3rd party developers when the bill to regulate VC funds is passed. I think it will be big blunder. Nobody who is an entrepreneur has any delusions of safety, we know the risks we are taking. The whole reason that this model has worked so far is because people have the freedom to take these risks. Take that away and you will probably end up killing a lot of innovation. ~~~ amichail _Nobody who is an entrepreneur has any delusions of safety, we know the risks we are taking._ Not true! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=683810> ~~~ sarvesh Sorry, an article in businessweek doesn't disprove the fact that fact that Apple, Microsoft, Sun and a gazillion other startups were created by entrepreneurs and VCs who were willing take those risks.

How Text Messages Change from Dating to Marriage - adamnemecek http://adashofdata.com/2014/10/14/how-text-messages-change-from-dating-to-marriage ====== derefr > more recently I seem to have decided to no longer greet my husband This is the most interesting part. When you're dating someone, there are defined parts of the day where you start-and-then-stop interacting with them, so there are greetings exchanged, etc. When you're married (or in a very steady relationship), it's more like one continuous conversation; since it never ends, it never has to begin again. ~~~ ineedtosleep Just had to say that your last sentence was surprisingly touching (obviously IMO). I have my own qualms about the article in the OP as I've studied written/spoken language patterns a good amount in my time, but your point of relationships evolving into longer and longer 'continuous conversations' is a great way of putting it. ~~~ wodenokoto I just started computational linguistics at uni and I thought this was very interested (albeit very light hearted) Could you elaborate on your qualms? ------ christiangenco This is fascinating. Looking back on my ~4 year relationship with my soon-to- be-wife, I notice a lot of parallels. Looking back even at our last week of texts, it's all transactional and logistical things: pickup times and places, confirmations, and quick tasks. It's not necessarily that our communication has lost that "fresh love" spark, merely that it's developed and aged (like a good cheese) into deeper, more meaningful transactions that happen in person. We no longer _need_ to reaffirm anything over texts, because everything meaningful happens in person. ~~~ eitally This x100 (just speaking from probably a few years further out that where you are now)! On the other hand, though, richer messaging apps have certainly made a lot of things much easier (sending map locations, sending pics/vids, links, etc) than SMS/MMS. The same patterns hold true with email, btw. This isn't at all unique to texting. ------ JacobAldridge I'm reminded of the time Facebook prompted me to "reconnect" with my beautiful wife, because we hadn't communicated in some time. Ah, no, we just don't communicate with each other via Facebook. Sadly, most of my historic data (we've been together 11 years; married 6) is lost in ancient phones. One difference I believe we would observe compared with the OP is how prominent _xxx_ would appear (representing kisses, I might add). We made a tacit agreement early in our relationship to always add those and/or an expression of love at the end of messages and conversations. One of those little things that can get lost in transactional stuff, so I'm glad we made the effort (even if it's now mostly habit, it's still valuable). ~~~ neduma >> We made a tacit agreement early in our relationship to always add those and/or an expression of love at the end of messages and conversations. Right on. Thanks of sharing this tip. ------ herbps10 This is great to see as I've been working on a similar project to try to visualize relationships by looking at the number of texts sent over time. If anyone would like help generating similar analyses of their texting data, I'd be glad to help as I have some machinery set up to do so! Here's a prototype site I put together that takes iPhone SMS backups and generates a graph of how many texts you've sent over time: [http://herbsusmann.com/relationships/](http://herbsusmann.com/relationships/) ------ joshschreuder I would be interested in trying this out for myself. Any ideas or open source on extracting the data from phones (specifically the iPhone?). I think the iPhone may use a SQLite DB for messages? ~~~ artmageddon It does, and it's totally possible if you haven't encrypted the phone's backups and lost the password* like I did :( *I swear I didn't put a password on it but for some reason it got one... ------ cafard Interesting, and sweet. According to the history of SMS on Wikipedia, the notion was conceived before I met my wife, but the first SMS was sent almost five years after we married. ------ rotub I really enjoyed this thanks for sharing and I have bookmarked your site for future reference. It seems like a great idea if you keep it up which I hope you do. ------ itazula At first, looking at her picture, I thought her skirt was a data mosaic of the text messages. That would make a nice pattern actually. ------ hereonbusiness Case sensitive word clouds, it's like looking at trypophobia images :) But by the looks of it, wouldn't have made much difference anyway. ------ shahocean such a great analysis! Is there any space in this to disrupt? I mean to make things as before! ------ ljk always reminded by this xkcd comic whenever people share observations about their relationships [http://xkcd.com/523/](http://xkcd.com/523/) ~~~ neduma LOL. ------ neduma Very interesting article among all apple crap. ~~~ neduma it was my mistake to say bad about apple. Sorry apple fans. ~~~ mikeash Your first mistake was writing a comment that didn't really add anything (if all you want is to express approval, click the upvote button) and your second mistake was complaining about it. ------ fuddle I think this topic would be more interesting: "How Text Messages Change from Marriage to Divorce"

China’s Internet Controls Will Get Stricter, to Dismay of Foreign Business - danielmorozoff http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/business/international/china-cyber-security-regulations.html?ref=technology ====== RcouF1uZ4gsC The Chinese government actually has very little incentive to allow foreign internet companies inside China. By restricting outside companies they do the following 1\. Reduce the ability of outsiders to influence their people 2\. Avoid Arab Spring like events where because the companies are foreign, the coordinating network is opaque to the government 3\. Allow the domestic internet companies a chance to grow and develop without competition from established foreign companies 4\. Retain and develop talent and technology (ie big data, machine learning) domestically Because China has such a large population, they can easily develop and sustain their own internal internet industry without needing Western/American companies. I think the Snowden leaks showed that the Internet has been weaponized by the United States and having American companies controlling large services like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter gives the US government a massive trove of intelligence. It also enables them to influence citizens of other countries. I think a lot of countries in the near future will see the Internet as essential to their national security and thus try to limit foreign influence as much as they can with varying degrees of success ~~~ sho Your comment has been downvoted, probably because of the hyperbolic "the Internet has been weaponized", but you bring up a good point. I've long thought it absolutely insane that governments all over the world blithely allow Facebook, and by extension the USG[1], to collect a comprehensive social graph of their entire citizenry. Who's friends with who, who talks to who, how often and about what, who works where, who goes where and when. This level of information about another country's citizens sounds like the wildest dream of an intelligence agency. It literally sounds like the onion: [http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program- dramatic...](http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically- cut-agencys-cos-19753) Why did these other governments let FB & friends in? I think they just didn't see it coming, and by the time they realised the cat was out of the bag. Well, China saw it coming, and closed the door before it was too late. I'm not surprised China is doing that - I'm surprised other countries don't do it. [1] Does anyone seriously believe that at least parts of the USG do not have access to facebook's data? ~~~ wavefunction One of the first investors in facebook was In-Q-Tel. I think most people who care about things like that already knew a long time ago. ~~~ late2part This is false. Please provide supporting information for your assertion that In-Q-Tel invested in The Facebook. ~~~ CamperBob2 The OP may be confusing Facebook with Google. Apparently there's some evidence of Google's ties with the US intelligence community: [https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias- venture...](https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-venture- capital-firm-preview/) Two of the names that come up most often in connection with In-Q-Tel, however, need no introduction: Google and Facebook. The publicly available record on the Facebook/In-Q-Tel connection is tenuous. Facebook received $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel, whose manager, James Breyer, now sits on their board. He was formerly the chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, whose board included Gilman Louie, then the CEO of In-Q-Tel. The connection is indirect, but the suggestion of CIA involvement with Facebook, however tangential, is disturbing in the light of Facebook’s history of violating the privacy of its users. Google’s connection to In-Q-Tel is more straightforward, if officially denied. In 2006, ex-CIA officer Robert David Steele told Homeland Security Today that Google “has been taking money and direction for elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command.” Later that year, a blogger claimed that an official Google spokesman had denied the claims, but no official press statement was released. ------ bobjordan One does not simply launch a website on a server inside of China. First, I had to wait about four months on a waitlist with AWS-China to get setup with an AWS-China account for our China business. Now, I've had the AWS-China account for about 3 months and still awaiting the ICP license to be issued, so I can actually open port 80 on a VM. No less, the time it took to get fully functioning companies in place to even be able to have a business account. It is a crazy struggle over here, but I guess if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Edit: forgot to mention that the solution also depends on my Chinese wife having her name on the ICP linense documents. It wouldn't even get done without that. ~~~ rsync "still awaiting the ICP license to be issued, so I can actually open port 80 on a VM." It is my understanding that things are much, much easier if you are not "publishing". That is, if you don't have a website or open port 80 (for instance) you can quickly and easily co-locate devices inside China - without any kind of license. Although we have not yet deployed rsync.net in mainland china (we have a location in Hong Kong) all of our contacts and partners were happy to rent us rackspace for non-publishing infrastructure - no licenses needed. ------ Jerry2 I never understood why Western technology companies haven't taken China to a WTO tribunal for restricting their business practices. I mean, China exports trillions of dollars worth of goods to us yet when you try to export services to China, you're met with "The Golden Shield Project" aka "The Great Firewall of China". That doesn't seem like a fair deal at all. ~~~ jza00425 You mean American tech companies. Stop playing this West vs China, It is just US. ~~~ linkregister I think your tone is overly aggressive and accusatory. European countries have a large trade deficit with China (€170B)[1]. The U.S. had about double the amount of trade deficit ($336B), mostly due to its greater value of imports [2]. This doesn't prove that China restricts access to its markets by European companies, but it provides evidence that the situation may not be as simple as you suggest. 1\. [http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7553974/6-120...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7553974/6-12072016-BP- EN.pdf/67bbb626-d55f-4032-8c24-48e4c9f78c3a) 2\. [https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia- taiwan/peo...](https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia- taiwan/peoples-republic-china) ~~~ jza00425 Trade deficit does not suggest anything. Whenever China tries to buy some technology, the US is so protective and at the same time buy all the clothes and low profit stuff. That is how you get the trade deficit. So it is pretty much that EU and US just keep Chinese work like slave forever. By the way, it is really just American tech companies. not a single european company's name pop up in my mind. ~~~ linkregister This is a bizarre and false statement. U.S. companies have been selling technology to Chinese companies and consumers for decades. Routers (Cisco), farm equipment (Caterpillar), software (AutoCAD, Microsoft, Oracle, etc), medical devices (GE), factory equipment (GE), microchips (AMD, Intel, Qualcomm), high-precision measurement (Agilent/Keysight), etc. The list is absurdly long. Your agenda is preventing you from seeing a more balanced view of things. Try to read a bit about cooperation between the two countries, such as huge foreign investment in Shenzhen, exchange programs between Chinese and American universities, success of Chinese technology firms in the U.S. (Huawei, Nexus 6P; Almost all solar panel companies; etc) ------ nullnilvoid This reminds me of the Ming and Qing dynasty when the emperors decided to close the door and shut out foreigners. Gradually, China fell behind and the western powers bombed the door open during the opium war. It is unlikely that other countries will bomb open the door this time, as China is a great military power. Instead, it will be disbenefit to Chinese people and consumers as they cannot access the services from outside. ~~~ jjoonathan Maybe. It's certainly true that protectionist policies tend to destroy tons of economic value, but remember that "economic value" itself is a notion whose definition has been carefully cultivated to steer thought away from the weak bits of western economic theory (here: tragedies of the commons / damage to third parties outside each transaction). The sum total of consumer inconvenience caused by the Great Firewall could well be worth the economic self-sufficiency and industrial prowess it bought. There is value in laying a foundation today for tomorrow's competitive industries, but you won't see it until too late if you limit your thinking to the margin. Don't get me wrong, the GFW is also motivated by the corruption, censorship, and manipulation it enables, and I don't see a silver lining in any of those. I just wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the strategic value of protectionism. ~~~ nullnilvoid The GFW is not so much motivated by protectionism but by CPC's tight grip on power and greed, to my understanding. If the CPC are adopting protectionism to cultivate their own tech industry, it is about time for them to loosen the Internet control because Chinese tech industry are very strong and established at this moment. It is unlikely for western counterparts to out-compete them in China market even on level playground. Among the top 10 most valuable Internet companies, China has four of them. ------ coldcode Everyone want to be like China and control their internet, their people and their industry and avoid external competition. Most countries can't quite do it or are unwilling to because it does have downsides. ------ contingencies Utter crap. I have and continue to run companies inside of China, and have lived here on and off for 16 years. IMHO like most of the China-focused muck-slinging coming out of US media (increasingly frequently of late), this article lacks context and basically cries wolf over nothing concrete whatsoever. First it claims "required security checks on companies in industries like finance and communications, and mandatory in-country data storage". That's really no different to EU and US regulations. Anyway, if the journalist (who according to the dateline allegedly published from Hong Kong) had basic knowledge about mainland China, they would know that _foreigners are largely barred from finance and communications-related business anyway_ (despite China committing to open finance when it joined the WTO). Finally, in China it's _extremely_ common for new laws to be made (eg. "smoking inside is illegal") but absolutely zero enforcement to be done. (Edit in response to stupendous quantity of downvotes: Oh sorry for having an informed opinion instead of upvoting faux-journalism that agrees with ignorant anti-foreign sensibilities. The evil freedom-destroying communists are coming! Run for the hills!) ------ rdiddly Biased article. Apparently some people can't grasp the fact that being isolated from the world is the least of China's worries. ~~~ frozenport The problem is that American business is participating in unilateral trade and technology transfer to China. Further, many companies are, in the present, heavily invested. While it might be the least of China's worries, it certainly should not be the least of ours. ~~~ sangnoir > The problem is that American business is participating in unilateral trade > and technology transfer to China. As a CxO, if you are going to meet the ever-rising quarterly growth target and all you've reached saturation in all your markets, you'll have to pander to China at some point soon. You aren't paid to worry about the long-term, the future CEO will deal with that. All you need to do is beat the street and keep the shareholders happy for the next quarter/FY.

Oculus Facebook deal could ignite equity crowdfunding - bernardlunn http://bernardlunn.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/oculus-facebook-deal-will-accelerate-equity-crowdfunding-and-change-the-world/ ====== aaronbrethorst The Oculus founders got $2.4m of free seed funding via Kickstarter. No they didn't. They took money for pre-orders. I believe that the Oculus Facebook deal will accelerate the equity Crowdfunding revolution. I don't doubt this for a second, but I bet you that the vast majority of people who are allowed to invest in startups through the JOBS equity crowdfunding provisions are going to lose their shirts. even if a lot of people who gave free funding to Oculus via Kickstarter in return for a beta product and a T Shirt feel a bit burned today. Why should any of them feel burned? They spent money in order to get a t-shirt or an Oculus DK1. FWIW, the terms were clear, the folks who ponied up cash were promised an early version of the product and got what “it said on the tin”. Yep, exactly. Personally I think how millions of people make a living [via crowd funding]...is more interesting than...the VR Oculus story. Citation needed on that "millions of people" figure, and what does this have to do with equity? Do you really think that the next musician who funds their first album through a Kickstarter is going to hand out equity to their backers? If Oculus had been in the Valley they would have easily got Angel funding – and given 25% to those Angels. Um, Oculus raised almost $100mm after their Kickstarter. I would be astonished if they didn't give up at least 25% of the company across those two rounds. Still, it's pretty cool that they were able to skip raising a seed round, and I don't doubt that the founders retained more equity than they would have otherwise. Nobody wants a bunch of T Shirts plus being the first kid on the block with a new toy for $500m of equity value. If Oculus had sold equity instead of product pre-orders I don't believe for a second that their Series A round would have worked out nearly as well. I'd much rather walk into a meeting with a VC with 7,400+ pre-orders for my expensive gadget tucked under my arm than a list of people who ponied up a thousand bucks for a sliver of equity in my company. However we are still in the really, really early days of crowdfunding, the days when we have not yet moved from the “first they laugh at you” phase. Right, because the Indian independence movement is _exactly_ like crowdfunding. ~~~ BrainInAJar > Right, because the Indian independence movement is exactly like > crowdfunding. Grandiose, self-important valley startup wank talk. Like "disrupting the market" by making another bullshit website or app. ~~~ dang This is a truly awful comment that should never be on Hacker News at all, let alone upvoted. This is not because of what it says about "the valley", but because of its form. It could be about anything else and be just as bad. Please don't post this sort of thing. (Edit: I completely rewrote my comment here, because I'm still getting the hang of this. Also, all these feedback comments I've been adding are an experiment in comment quality and transparency. We're going to keep experimenting until we find things that work. I doubt that this experiment is going to work, because I'm getting tired of writing these, and some of you are no doubt tired of reading them.) ~~~ tptacek I think these comments are awesome, but I can't imagine having to write them regularly. The "I'm burying the story" stuff is especially useful. ~~~ dang I'm going to keep writing them for a while while we brainstorm alternatives. It's good to do things manually for a long time before you figure out how to automate them. That's how I wrote my HN moderation software. ~~~ rdl I especially love how you generally stick to criticizing the action vs. the person -- sort of like "this comment isn't appropriate for HN; please do better" vs. "please die". (I was just going through all your comments after seeing one; this is really becoming the new 'pg: "Please stop"') ~~~ tptacek Someone needs to buy Paul Graham a baseball cap with those words embroidered onto it. ------ philmcc I -guess- each $300 backer could've received $150,000 of stock/cash... ...if this kickstarter happened 6 months from now, as an equity kickstarter. The 6 month number is sort of arbitrary, but the SEC is currently evaluating Regulation Crowdfunding. Title III of the JOBS act. (for more info, here [https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/2013/12/06/jobs- act-ti...](https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/2013/12/06/jobs-act-title- iii-crowdfunding-moves-closer-to-reality/)) Regulation Crowdfunding will allow "funding portals" (kickstarter/indiegogo/etc) to facilitate equity based crowdfunding, with a limit of up to $1,000,000. We'll pretend that Oculus at $1mm KS has the same destiny as Oculus as a $2.4mm KS. [I think in an equity world, people would be less inclined to invest after that wall is hit.] We'll ALSO pretend (here's the bigger stretch) that the subsequent rounds of financing at $16mm and $75mm somehow magically didn't affect the equity of the seed round. [Hahaha, hilarious.] If the KS had stated that the $1mm was to own 25% of the company (I bet he'd've done more, but we'll go low) that means that each $300 backing is equivalent to %0.0003 of $1mm. %0.0003 of 25% equity is %.000075 of Oculus. %.000075 of 2 billion dollars is $150,000. [I think. %50 chance I mucked this math up at some point.] ~~~ bernardlunn I was only suggesting that the people who pony up the early cash get some token equity. Lets say give up 5% to enthusiastic early adopters who share your passion rather than 25% to angels. If say the $300 netted you $3,000 bonus on exit, you can have a party and celebrate the founder's good fortune. Its a win/win (founders get lower cost of capital than angel route, early adopters make some cash. Methinks we will see more of this, but only time will tell. ------ ig1 The big problem that equity crowd-funding faces is that the seed rounds of most top-tier companies are already over-subscribed; that means the only startups who'll end up raising on equity crowd-funding sites are those who can't raise the money from good angels. Given angel investing follows the power law with the majority of returns coming from a small number of companies not having access to the top 10% of the deals vastly reduces your chance of having a decent return. ~~~ backprojection What if, rather than offering equity, crowdfunders got voting rights instead. I feel that most of the outrage from the Oculus deal is that people feel betrayed. They could almost not have picked a worse outfit to have been bought by (rightly or wrongly, the point here is sentiment). If there had been a shareholder-esque vote, I think it's unlikely the deal would have been approved. So maybe that could be the deal going forward - sure I'll put up $100 to fund your project, but that comes at the cost of you not selling out in the future. EDIT: Clearly the weight of your vote would be proportional to your investment. ~~~ mattzito This would be disastrous for startups - for $100 you get a say in what we do? How deep does that go? Change of control events? That would basically mean that a startup would have to disclose that they were in negotiations for acquisition/investment/whatever, with whom, and for how much. That would basically mean potential acquisitions would become public knowledge - it's hard enough keeping them quiet when it's just the startup, their investors, and the acquirer involved. ~~~ backprojection Well your vote would be proportional to your investment, $100 out of $2.4M, in this case. > That would basically mean potential acquisitions would become public > knowledge That would kind of be the point, it would be about fairness. People may not want to invest in a promising project that could change the world, just for it to be bought up by the next FB/Google. ------ samstave [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471344) So I am not the only one who thinks this; " __ _Personally, I think this illustrates a severe gap in how crowd-funding works. 10K drops by an individual are no different than an angel investor. There should be a chip-in-level for crowd-funding campaigns that require the OP to provide some % equity into the project._ __" ------ fragsworth Crowdfunding could be a powerful way to fight against monopolies. For instance, if a town's population cares enough, they can decide on their own to invest $500-1000 per person in a series of fiber cables (and get equity for it), making the initial costs more appealing to everyone involved. Then the crowdfunding participants would receive dividends on the lease payments for the lines. ~~~ ianbishop Isn't that what a traditional co-op is? ~~~ andygates Offering equity as well as gadgets is an interesting spin on the co-op model. It works well enough; generally it's chosen for something that doesn't want explosive growth but instead is serving a community -- and that might not gel with the "get rich" urges of some startup types. ------ mcphage Is the problem that people had with the Facebook deal really just that they didn't get a cut? ~~~ yaeger That would be stupid of them as nowhere did it say that was even a possibility. As the article says, everyone got what it said on the tin. After they received their shirts and the dev kit, the kickstarter campaign was done. Period. The only people who like to make a stink now are people like this Notch fellow who throw a tantrum cause they don't like the business model of the company that acquired Oculus. Completely ignoring the facts that as a tech company, facebook really does a lot of good things. Open Sourcing inhouse technology. Backer of the open hardware project to mention two examples. They all be better served to stay quite until it becomes evident that facebook backtracked from their original statements and starts to call the shot at Oculus. But that is of course not how angry, emotional people act. On the internet or in real life. I for one would have pre ordered the DK2 last week if I had the money and I would pre order it today. And I look forward to call a lot of people out on their hypocrisy once the final product launches and I notice people who swore they were boycotting this and who swore they were so done with Oculus suddenly raving about how great this thing is. ------ tormeh Crowd investment is already happening. Check out Seedrs. The companies are mostly uninspiring, but that will hopefully change at some point. ~~~ onehp There's wefunder too ([https://wefunder.com/](https://wefunder.com/)) who are getting set up to allow unaccredited (lower net worth) investors once the JOBS act goes through. ------ HelloMcFly The font on that article is all over the place. ~~~ dadrian Agreed, I couldn't concentrate enough to even read it because the font kept changing. ------ siglesias We already have "equity crowd funding." It's called an IPO. ------ hershel The main problem with crowdfunding is prevention of scams. The SEC which is responsible for implementing this bill,have an expensive list of demands(papers, lawyers) for companies wanting to go that route, making the whole process not worthy for companies. Until a solution for this problem will be found, it's hard to see crowd- funding becoming an option. ~~~ swalsh What prevents scams on kickstarter? ~~~ squidfood A scam where you don't get one product you ordered is a different order of magnitude than one where you lose a long-term stake in a company. (For Kickstarter, it's the same thing that prevents scams over any online exchange really - nothing except you might go after someone for fraud). ~~~ smsm42 Yes, the former is much worse - you're immediately don't get a useful product, instead of not getting a paper which may or may not bring you some money somewhere in the future if 1000 things align right. Note that most sales of product actually end up in product being sold, while most startups end up failing and wiping their investors clean. That is without any fraud - just plain statistics. ------ Jonovono Saskatchewan just started allowing something like this to exist. No one has taken advantage of it (from what I have heard). I am thinking of looking more into it: [http://www.fcaa.gov.sk.ca/SKEC](http://www.fcaa.gov.sk.ca/SKEC) ------ bashcoder It's possible that new investment instruments, such as YC's Safe [0] which removes the friction of convertible notes by offering warrants for future equity, could facilitate this sort of thing. [0] [http://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-safe-a- replacemen...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-safe-a-replacement- for-convertible-notes) ~~~ bashcoder My point being, the OP lists four methods by which he thinks crowdfunding can work (pre-order plus reward, equity, debt, and donation). Each method has its own set of concerns for regulatory issues, requirements for qualified investors, upside potential, tax implications, etc. My point is that there may be other possible options, and I point to Safe as a good example of how VC can innovate and remove friction from raising startup capital. ------ everyone What language is this article written in? ------ notastartup equity crowdfunding is a bad idea. it's an open invitation for government regulation for something that works really well right now. Next time you want to make a game on kickstarter and share the wealth with "investors", you are going to be facing the SEC and fending off people's lawsuits. Not to mention people getting scammed appearing on News would ruin the whole crowdfunding movement.

Ask HN: how to gauge my skill as a programmer - jwdunne I was just wondering how I would objectively gauge my skill as a programmer. Obviously there is the effect where by everyone rates themselves as more competent than they are. Not so with me.<p>Sometimes I receive a confidence boost, I will feel like I&#x27;m fairly decent.<p>Sometimes when I can&#x27;t grok something, I feel a drop and I don&#x27;t feel very good about my abilities.<p>Nowadays I often say its impossible for me to measure as it currently stands.<p>To be fairly honest, it doesn&#x27;t matter too much to me. I enjoy programming and learning new languages, techniques, paradigms, concepts, perspectives, etc. I spend a massive portion of my time doing so and I probably always will. I can tell without a doubt I&#x27;m a better programmer than I was 6 months ago. 6 months ago I was better than 6 months before.<p>I guess it&#x27;s more of a validation thing too. Perhaps a lot if imposter syndrome type of stuff (I am 100% self-taught - I am a high school dropout in US terms). I&#x27;m always in doubt. ====== bjourne [http://ask.metafilter.com/235568/How-do-you-know-if-you- are-...](http://ask.metafilter.com/235568/How-do-you-know-if-you-are-a-good- programmer) [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41473/how- can...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41473/how-can-i-know- whether-i-am-a-good-programmer) [http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency- matrix/](http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/) ------ orionblastar Learn how to do quality and security checks to become a better programmer. Learn some higher math and science to learn better algorithms and formulas. Check out Khan Academy for the math and science: [https://www.khanacademy.org/](https://www.khanacademy.org/) I hold two university degrees, one in computer science and one in business management. I have written mostly business apps. That is where the money really is at. You pick the best libraries to support your project, if you write libraries yourself you are a system developer. You want to be a business app developer because it doesn't require the advanced math and science a system developer needs. Business math isn't that hard to learn it is just basic math and statistics. All you need know is Algebra. If you want to do video games learn advanced math and physics. Don't drop your confidence, or you'll end up disabled like me. I am trying to get my confidence back. One thing will always be true, never stop learning. Learn from your mistakes and failures by first admitting to them and then figuring out how to fix them. Good luck, friend. ------ read To know how good you are at something requires the same skills as it does to be good at that thing. Which means if you are absolutely hopeless at something you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you are absolutely hopeless at it. And this is a profound discovery. That most people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing have no idea that they have no idea what they're doing. It explains a great deal of life. It explains particularly Hollywood. - John Cleese ------ EleventhSun I found this to be quite interesting - the Programmer Competency Matrix. It's hard to be honest with yourself with these things, but worth a look anyway: [http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency- matrix/](http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/) ------ CmonDev Have a long-term piece of code that belongs to you. Keep improving this over the time. Host the code online. Upgrade as technologies change. You will always be able to show it (off) to prove you are good. ------ clark-kent I think a good way to gauge your skills is to do job hunting, even if you don't need a job, go on a couple of interviews. Have them evaluate your work and very soon you will be able to gauge your skills, you will also discover things you need to improve on. You can try using recruiters as they can put you in a lot of job interviews very fast. ------ peachepe Interview. I was in SF for a month and interviewed in a few places. Now I know I know nothing : ) ------ wglb Google Code Jam: [https://code.google.com/codejam/](https://code.google.com/codejam/) Topcoder.

Two people fly jetpacks over Dubai [video] - gmays http://www.theverge.com/tldr/2015/5/11/8587941/jetpacks-yves-rossy-dubai-balloon-boy ====== zeeed That vid just makes you want to go afk and DO something. ------ ListeningPie Are they flying or falling with style? ~~~ rm445 More towards the latter, it appears. They're certainly air-launched and parachute-landed. Still I think there's a reasonable case that you should call it flight if they are capable of straight level powered flight while the fuel lasts, but I don't think they're quite there. The website cites a flight time of 6 to 13 minutes - I suspect that is the peak of the trade-off between launch weight, fuel duration and descent time. Rather than 6-13 minutes of powered flight followed by the equivalent of a parachute jump. (EDIT: I've just seen on the developer's wikipedia entry that he claims stable level flight has been achieved. Very impressive - though one might still conjecture that that might only be achievable at certain lower fuel levels). Depending on the amount of control the pilot has, I'd expect them to be capable of levelling out and making short ascents, basically trading speed for height. And above all it looks like great FUN!

Everyone Who Tried to Convince Me To Use Ember Was Wrong - platz http://www.wekeroad.com/2014/03/22/every-who-tried-to-convince-me-to-use-ember-was-wrong/ ====== greenyoda Nowhere does the article say what problem the author was actually try to solve by switching to Ember. It sounds like his only reason for this painful experience was that he didn't want to the last one in his group of friends who wasn't using this cool, new framework. And that's not a good basis for a business decision. ~~~ robconery The post is satire of sorts, although in the course of writing it I found such a common cause with Yehuda it was crazy. His pain learning Vim was my pain learning Ember. And the payoff is just as fun (to me at least). Read this post here: [http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to- convi...](http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me- to-use-vim-was-wrong/) And hopefully you'll see the genesis of the post. ------ macu > Can you tell me a way to switch that will not significantly reduce my > productivity for the first few weeks. The only way I can imagine doing this is to time-travel and give myself a crash-course in all the stuff I struggled to figure out in the beginning. Now I feel like I could give myself a complete tutorial in a day. The trouble is partly that everyone coming to Ember has a different way of thinking, and the documentation can't target all the sets of prior skills and assumptions. I always thought that for a great book, the reader should meet the writer half-way. In this case, however, the reader has a long way to go before they can move easily through the range of Ember's capabilities. ------ EvilTrout I'm glad that you finally found a way to get up to speed. I find it very challenging helping people over the initial jump of Ember learning so any feedback about what worked for you is great to have. I'll probably have lots of conversations about this next week at Emberconf! ------ lightblade I need an Ember expert to compare it to ExtJS. I've skimmed over Ember. It feels like it'll take the same amount of pain as ExtJS to get through it, but the overall feature set is inferior. ------ sphildreth Connery seems to make his mark by being a professional douchy complainer. Just saying take whatever he says with a dose of "if I didn't write it, it sucks" type attitude. ~~~ robconery Also - thank you for the new Twitter bio. You've motivated me to be a better person. I shall never forget you Mr. 5-day old HN account...

GitHaven, an open source clone of GitHub - icefox https://github.com/icefox/GitHaven/ ====== augustl I'd just like to add that since Git supports SSH, it's pretty easy to set up git repos on any server. `cd ~; mkdir myrepo.git; cd myrepo.git; git init --bare`. Then you can just `git push username@server.com:myrepo.git`. This of course doesn't give you a web UI for creating repositories. And everyone with access to `username` on the server can access all the repositories. ~~~ gks Since Bitbucket now supports Git I'd say that's a better option for anyone that just wants to keep their repos somewhere. Either way is great, but Bitbucket makes it easier for sharing if that's needed. ------ ByteMuse GitHaven.com is down for me. I would be a lot more interested if a demo was up; I have been looking for something like this project. ~~~ icefox <http://git.meyerhome.net:8080/> is my little arm box that is running it that you can at least check it out (warning: it is just a low end arm dev board, it probably will go down). I let GitHaven.com elapse when I realized I wouldn't be able to continue working on the project. Edit: fyi GitHaven supports private repos which are the majority of the repos on my home server which you can't see (sorry!). The others were more tests or repos that are too huge (above the 300MB limit) to put on GitHub.com ~~~ rgbrgb Thanks for posting that. I definitely like the look of Gitlab a lot better. ------ DanielRibeiro Interesting. Yesterday this other one (Gitlab) showed up on HN as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3114447> ------ Zolomon Seems like it's lacking in activity, nothing has happened for a year. ~~~ icefox My work legal department decided it was a conflict of interest (we use Git) and forbid me from working on it anymore.* So I open sourced it in the hopes that others besides just me (I run it at home) could find some value and maybe they would fork it and continue on with it. * Ironically GitHaven's original goal was a solution that could be installed inside corporate firewalls, but without the cost of GitHub:Fi. ~~~ scg > My work legal department decided it was a conflict of interest (we use Git) > and forbid me from working on it anymore. Can you expand on this? It sounds so incredibly stupid that I'm not sure I got it right. ~~~ icefox I started to get involved with the Git Servers at work (Not the primary admins or anything, just helping them not make the wrong choices <cough>gitorious</cough>). After that legal said if I do any GitHaven stuff on my own time from then on they would own it. ~~~ 32321215 scg is right, this is indeed incredibly stupid. How can they own something you make in your spare time. ~~~ chr15 This is common in almost every mid to large size corporation in the US with a legal department. If you're working on a side project, it might be best to clear it up with your employer and make sure it's not a conflict of interest. It's mainly an issue of copyright. The company wants to make sure it owns the IP to every line of code you write. For example, if you do some work on the weekend they want to make sure they own the copyright to that. Every company I've worked for had a clause in my hiring contracts. Some will enforce it more than others. Here's some in depth discussion: [http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im- working-...](http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-at-a- company-do-they-have-intellectual-property-rights-to-the-st) ~~~ 32321215 What is shocking to me is that if I were working in say the automobile industry and I make a highly customized bike, these kind of clause would mean that my employer owns all of that. Some may argue since I have paid for the components and not the company that would save me, but to be fair the programmer paid for his/her laptop/desktop, servers (if any), maybe even some programming tools. Does having most of the stuff to make a side project come for free make me eligible for giving up my IP to my employer? This is just insane. ------ iFire AGPL means I can't use this. ~~~ izak30 That's usually my first reaction to the AGPL -- Because most open source projects I try to file away as "This might be useful for XYZ client, or in a project that does UUU" I'm not sure that this fits in that criteria, I could imagine installing this on a server, unmodified, and just for internal use. You're not breaking the license from my understanding, and you got some use without selling or modifying it. This seems like the only time that I'm interested in something that's AGPL. I get most frustrated when things like libraries or widgets are marked as AGPL. ~~~ iFire If I write a git pre-commit script for my repo in githaven, is that forced to be agpl? I'm using githaven and yes. If I want Geckoboard to show a chart of how many githaven commit per day I did, do I need to agpl geckoboard.com? I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. This is my interpretation and I would like comments. <gnu.org> In AGPLv3, what counts as “interacting with [the software] remotely through a computer network?” <gnu.org> If the program is expressly designed to accept user requests and send responses over a network, then it meets these criteria. Common examples of programs that would fall into this category include web and mail servers, interactive web-based applications, and servers for games that are played online. ~~~ iFire AGPL only grants an exception to GPL code. Not the unlicensed and presumed to be owned by the person who wrote it code.

If this is the beginning of the end of Reddit, then Reddit deserves to die - jarcane http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/10/8762839/jerks ====== mechazawa Comparing 8chan to the KKK is pretty low

Rare book experts join forces to stop tome raiders - Thevet http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/17/rare-book-experts-join-forces-to-stop-tome-raiders ====== hammerandtongs A very ugly crime. To me this also suggests that if you own or control one of these texts that its literally your duty to the rest of humanity to make sure it's scanned and available for free and infinite copying SOMEWHERE. We might lose track of the digital version but without it it's inevitable that these volumes will decay and be lost forever. What is the the general ethical stance about this in the rare book community? ~~~ bkst The rare book community is the community that has facilitated these crimes. There are more black hats than white hats--no money at all for white hats in this business. Private book traders make all their money by selling unique items to rich people. The rich people doing the buying want to own something special that other people can't have. Bibliophiles are technophobes. They love the paper page, the book binding, the book stacks. They don't love the content of the books, and they don't want to share them. They have "aristocratic" ideas about who deserves to have access to these special items. Every last one of them is a hoarder that wants to have things that others can't have. They hate book scanners. They hate ebooks. They hate digitization. It just threatens their business, their status, their one-of-a-kinds. Rare books is all about prestige and exclusivity. Digitization is a threat to this. I'm a book scanner--someone who loves the contents of books more than the objects--and my kind are scorned like the gargoyles from Snow Crash. ~~~ majormajor What's the state of the art in damageless scanning? Do you still have to rip the pages out in order to get good, fast results? ~~~ db48x [https://archive.org/details/InternetArchive- Tour](https://archive.org/details/InternetArchive-Tour) This is a video of the Scribe machine that the Internet Archive built for book scanning. It uses two commodity digital cameras to image the pages. The computer driving the process is running Linux and gPhoto. They're also working on a tabletop version, which will be easier for smaller institutions to set up and use. ------ WalterBright Any book that is a "cultural heritage" item needs to be scanned, and it's the duty of the library/museum to do it. The scans don't even have to be that good - a photo with a hand-held iphone is good enough for a quick first pass. If budget is a problem, scan a couple, sell them, and use the proceeds to scan the rest. ~~~ userbinator I'd extend that to "anything which is now in the public domain". _a photo with a hand-held iphone is good enough for a quick first pass_ Not to mention far less damaging to the original since it doesn't have to be manipulated as much, and quicker too. Distortion is a problem but postprocessing can give good results. The last time I was at a library, which seems like ages ago, there were (paid) photocopiers for those who wanted to copy a page or two. With everyone carrying high-res cameras in their pockets, I wonder if they're still around. ~~~ WalterBright People who scan rare books seem to be obsessed with pixel perfect scans, and so what happens is it doesn't get done. A 90% scan is infinitely better than no scan when the library burns down or the books are stolen. Heck, the libraries in the article didn't even know what they had, so they don't know what was lost. ------ brianstorms If you want to learn more about this kind of crime, I highly recommend a little book by Miles Harvey called THE ISLAND OF LOST MAPS: A TRUE STORY OF CARTOGRAPHIC CRIME. Fascinating whodunit regarding thieves who would go into rare book collections and quietly use a razor blade to carefullytear out an ancient map inside some hundreds-of-years-old book, and often then sell it for huge sums. ------ contingencies Part of the impact of these thefts is difficulty of legitimate access by the public. Allow me to explain with an example literally from a few days ago. I turned up in Madrid for a few days, and visited the national library wanting to see what they held both in terms of materials regarding the area of China I am compiling a history on, and in terms of early Spanish records of island Southeast Asian (eg. Philippines) multihull vessels like the _vinta_. I am forced to go through airport-like security, have my face recorded on an Axis IP-based CCTV camera, sent to a room with three enormous desks each with an official library bureaucrat. I explain my case, and am rapidly informed that should I wish to view anything at all _before 1950_ then I must apply for a research card. Sure! What does that require? Photo ID - passport, check. Proof of address - what? Bank statement accepted, download one, OK, check. Proof you are from an inexplicit list of recognized national, educational or cultural institutions. I'm an admin for Wikipedia, writing articles specifically on traditional multihull vessels that have hundreds of thousands of pageviews and have been front page featured, but that didn't seem to count. They wouldn't let me in. The 'librarian' (who I feel deserves no such title) actually went so far as to attempt to 'explain' to me - "You see, it's like a _club_. The universities, the libraries, ...". That very same night, I had dinner after visiting a diplomat in their home. Some friends of theirs were also present, one of whom a reigning library science academic of repute within that field in Madrid and Spain. I explained the horrible experience I had attempting to dedicate some of my minimal time in the city to using their national library. In return, it was explained that the difficulty of using the place is a direct response to the theft of a number of extremely rare texts some years ago, over which people lost their jobs. The problem is frequent, and even international academics all face it. I was of course also offered a letter of reference, but did not have enough time left in the city to visit a second time... so the resources remain unconsulted. (The irony of the fact that we dined on Mahgreb cuisine was not lost on me: the former Muslim rulers of Cordoba/Andalusia were great sponsors of libraries, translation and learning in general.) Moral of the story, then, is perhaps that the real loser is the public: paying for increased security, losing access to the stolen items, but critically - being denied access at all for legitimate inquiry, thereby making a mockery of the purpose of the institutions in the first place. The best possible thing would be to digitize the originals... this removes the need to visit by making them more accessible, allows backups to secure against disaster, theft or loss by other means, and increases the value of the originals (because people know they exist, cite and use them). British Library want some godawful amount like 400GBP to photograph old images they hold. It's daylight bloody robbery, especially coming from these colonial countries that stole their damn holdings. The EU should force libraries to digitize this stuff. ~~~ pbhjpbhj I can't see a reason a Freedom of Information Act request wouldn't be proper against the contents of BL held photographs assuming the photos are out of copyright. [http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/foi/overview/](http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/foi/overview/) However, I'm sure the BL have lawyers standing by ready to stop you under one of the mentioned - but not disclosed - "exemptions" in the above link. ~~~ userbinator The "freedom" they refer to there is probably "free as in libre", not "free as in gratis" \- they are allowed to provide you with that information, and if it's public-domain you can do whatever you want with it afterwards, but they are allowed to charge you for the labour of doing it. ~~~ pbhjpbhj AIUI under FoI they can charge an admin fee, IIRC that's of the order of £10. That would be considerably cheaper than £400 mentioned. <a few seconds of research ensues ...> [https://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi- gui...](https://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi-guidance-for- practitioners/fees) mentions £25 per hour. Assuming that the images are already on BL computers somewhere then them providing a link or sending them by email would likely be a couple of minutes; with admin certainly within the hour. FoI is about free-libre but they can't put financial blocks in the way as that's undemocratic, it would make the FoI only accessible to the rich. ~~~ userbinator _Assuming that the images are already on BL computers somewhere then them providing a link or sending them by email would likely be a couple of minutes; with admin certainly within the hour._ I read his comment as meaning they haven't digitised them (yet), and BL wants £400 to do it. Not that I agree with charging that much as I think they should've done that already, but if he's asking for a bunch of large, old, and fragile images, it could be delicate and time-consuming work.

Yahoo's Flickr Takes on Google's YouTube - danw http://blogs.business2.com/beta/2007/05/yahoos_flickr_t.html ====== bootload Not surprised, heard this a couple of weeks ago listening to Caterina Fakes talk on ITConversation (The History of Flickr) where Fake didn't rule flickr out for hosting video ~ <http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1755.html> Wonder how this is going to be executed and it's effects on flickr?

Off Book | Generative Art - Computers, Data, and Humanity Arts - spot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0OK1GiI83s ====== jamesbritt _... that delegates essential decisions to computers, data sets, or even random variables._ No. What good generative art shows is that the essential decisions are made at a higher level than what one might expect. Indeed, pretty much most bad generative art (bad in the sense of being tedious, or unwatchable/unlistenable) comes about when essential decisions really are allowed to happen by pure chance or random input.

Event sourcing, CQRS, stream processing and Apache Kafka: What's the connection? - nehanarkhede http://www.confluent.io/blog/event-sourcing-cqrs-stream-processing-apache-kafka-whats-connection/ ====== srinikhil Such a neatly elucidated article Neha! We have been building an event sourced architecture for our app, using kafka streams, since a month. This article has validated everything we planned out for our app. Thanks!

Notepad5 – a simple offline notepad webapp, distraction-free writing zone. - udhb http://notepad5.me.pn/# ====== udhb blog - [http://uddhabh.blogspot.in/2014/01/notepad5.html](http://uddhabh.blogspot.in/2014/01/notepad5.html)

Meebo adds Facebook and MySpace chat for full chat goodness - moses1400 http://www.centernetworks.com/meebo-facebook-myspace-chat ====== trickjarrett Meebo is an impressive breakout from the past few years, they keep pushing the envelope and are really doing an amazing job at finding their revenue stream as well as finding new functionality which brings their users back over and over. What's next? Complete interoperability? ~~~ axod It's funny how little you hear about Meebo compared to say Twitter. Meebo do a good job in the main, although I'm not convinced Meebo rooms was a good idea. ~~~ mdasen It's true. Probably because Meebo tends against lock-in and everyone is obsessed with being the next company with lock-in and, therefore, Microsoft- like profits. Twitter has users with accounts, histories, people they follow. Same with Facebook, MySpace, etc. Meebo can be "easily" replaced by a competitor. Easily in this case means, you don't have to transfer all your data nor do you need to get your friends to move services. That's why we aren't as giddy about Meebo. They need to keep working really hard to stay one step ahead of the competition. As opposed to Twitter/Facebook/MySpace who have to work just hard enough that users won't take the effort to transfer data and bug their friends to switch to a competitor. ~~~ ntoshev I agree, Google can be replaced just as "easily". ------ fourlittlebees Am I the only person in the world who intentionally avoids both those apps like the plague? Facebook chat doesn't work in Camino. All hail Camino. ~~~ neilc No one I know uses Facebook Chat. ~~~ gustaf Facebook have shown that IM on websites is really just a commodity at this point. The technology is not the hard part but them owning the social graph is powerful here. I do believe that Facebook Chat will succeed and I think it already is. However, chat have never been easy to monetize so right now it's adding to the amount of time that users spend on facebook. Which is good ------ zack Haha, no way! This is great news. Now, I only wish I had access to my Facebook chat list within my Gmail client. I already have both AIM and GChat rolled into one, and that's great. Then, I just need an iPhone client, and some way to integrate it with both texting and email. Exchange for chat + email + texting, all specced out with an API for easy integration into browser-side clients... ~~~ ntoshev Meebo works well in the iPhone browser. ------ river_styx Great, now I can chat with all the annoying acquaintances and old highschool friends who randomly add me on Facebook. I think I'll pass.

Watch German Typhoons Intercept a Boeing 777 That Lost Contact with the Airport - mpweiher http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/watch-german-typhoons-intercept-a-boeing-777-that-lost-1792530997 ====== guruz Semi-related: There was a TV event/movie in Germany/Austria/Switzerland last year about a (fictitious) court decision about an airforce pilot that shot down such a plane. The plane was taken hostage by terrorists and took course to a football stadium. The (non-fictitious) audience in Germany could vote if the pilot is guilty for killing the people in the aircraft or not. 86,9% in Germany voted that the pilot is not guilty. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5680442/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5680442/) [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_%E2%80%93_Ihr_Urteil](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_%E2%80%93_Ihr_Urteil) ~~~ sgift To give a bit more background: The law strongly disagrees with the court of public opinion here. It is illegal to shoot down an aircraft in such a situation in Germany. The German government at one point tried to change this and our constitutional court told them that their new law violated the constitution and has to be scrapped. ~~~ ralfd There was a new judgement a few years ago: [http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-04/verfassungsge...](http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-04/verfassungsgericht- terrorismus-flugzeug) Shooting down an aircraft is legal, but only if the cabinett gives the order. Which is still unrealistic, as the Minister of Defence can't order it alone even in an emergency. The judges recognised that this is suboptimal, but a change would need a change in the constitution. Some former ministers of defence are though on record they would still order it and deal with the legal consequences fallout later. Then there is the question if the pilot alone (I guess that what the tv movie was about?) could make a decision? For example if the aircraft is flying towards a stadium or nuclear plant and the jet pilot has to make a decision in a split second. ~~~ greedo The nuclear plant worry is an unrealistic trope. Most Western nuclear plants have a very robust containment dome that can handle the impact from an airliner. [https://www.nei.org/News-Media/Media-Room/News- Releases/Anal...](https://www.nei.org/News-Media/Media-Room/News- Releases/Analysis-of-Nuclear-Power-Plants-Shows-Aircraft-Cr) ------ roryisok > In the meantime, we have some pretty mind-blowing video of what such an > incident actually looks like from the air. Mind-blowing is a bit of an exaggeration. it's just a video of three planes flying along side one another. ------ aedron Very cool video. I wonder what the fighter jets could actually achieve by pulling up alongside like that? I don't suppose they could do any kind of visual inspection or signaling at that distance - even though one did seem to inch closer at one point. The wording from the airline statement was a bit funny: _" the German Air Force deployed its aircraft to ensure the safety of the flight and its guests"_ \- considering that their main purpose was presumably to blow up the jet if it posed a threat. On a side note, I had never seen a video like this before and it really drives home what massive amounts of exhaust these machines put out. ~~~ eliaspro > and it really drives home what massive amounts of exhaust these machines put > out. It just looks this massove, but that's mistly due to condensation of water vapor. Sure, those engines have a massive throughput of air, but the visible "exhaust" is barely the result of burning kerosene. ~~~ sandworm101 And water vapor from the burnt fuel. Hydrocarbon + o2 = co2+h2o. Those contrails are burnt fuel, just like car exaust on a cold day. The water is a product of burning. ------ soebbing [Contact] was briefly lost while flying over German airspace. Communication was safely restored within a few minutes. That sounds like the whole incident didn't take more than 15 minutes. Does somebody know how fast the Typhoons were with the airliner? I know there are some guidelines for the Luftwaffe like "a fighter needs to be able to get to any point in german airspace within 15 minutes" or so, but that all sounds VERY fast. Edit: Formatting ~~~ JHof Interesting that they intercepted after only 15 minutes. Maybe the aircraft had crossed the border without making contact. In the US, airliners accidentally lose contact for close to this time period quite frequently. To reestablish, the controllers will sometimes have a fellow company ship relay a message with the correct frequency via ACARS, or the lost aircraft can listen on 121.5 until someone calls with the correct frequency. I suppose in Europe this would be considered a more critical issue due to the frequent border crossings. ~~~ dogma1138 It's dependant on the airspace you are flying through and when are you supposed to make contact. Try flying over NYC out of contact for 15min and lets see how it goes. ~~~ JHof An airliner at that altitude would be well outside of any city's airspace. ~~~ dogma1138 I know, there are still different communication requirements for different airspaces. When you file your travel plans you'll have to check in with different ATCs at different points, you are also likely to be contacted by ATCs depending on the flight plan, conditions and various other factors during the flight. If you do not check in on schedule e.g. when there is a handover of ATCs or you do not respond to ATCs that trying to make contact with you, there will be a flag and an alert will be likely sent. If this goes on for minutes then they'll assume something was wrong and follow their procedure to make contact and investigate which might involve scrambling jets to make visual contact. It's not like pilots can be too busy to respond to ATCs yes they might delay a response if they are in a middle of a sentence with a member of the air crew but that's a 5 seconds delay. Even a 1 minute delay would be flagged and you'll likely to be asked why you haven't responded or made contact on time. ------ ajeet_dhaliwal Quite the LOL at the chatter between the the British Airways pilots filming this saying _I expect they love the opportunity to do this. Any excuse_ and the other one _yeah_. ------ iSnow Could anyone comment on why both lower fighters keep to the left side of the airliner? For better visibility, I would have expected them to take it between them. Additionally, the sun seems to be on the left, so they would be hard to make out. ~~~ zuzun It's all standardized interception behaviour. The flight leader is trying establish contact with the plane on the left side, the other jet is just on standby. Edit: And they picked the left side because that's where the pilot in charge of the plane is supposed to sit. ~~~ Piskvorrr Plus, I would imagine, the interceptors are leaving the right side clear: should an additional _aviation_ emergency develop, the plane is still safe to maneuver in 5 directions (the sixth being blocked by the interceptors). ------ codeisawesome Everything is so beautiful, up there. ------ std_throwaway In the northern hemisphere these warplanes are called "Tornado". ~~~ roryisok Eurofighter Typhoon and Panavia Tornado are different aircraft. ~~~ manicdee It was an obvious joke relating to regional names for weather events. ~~~ std_throwaway Of course; it doesn't even make sense for Europe to have a "Typhoon" aircraft due to the geographical location. I guess Europe has some "Penguin" submarines, too. ~~~ TeMPOraL We'll consider renaming the plane when US changes the Apollo program to something that doesn't refer to European heritage. ------ Markoff > As a precaution, the German Air Force deployed its aircraft to ensure the > safety of the flight and its guests. sure, safety of the flight and guests, you mean humanely killed by rocket instead of hitting some target on ground? ~~~ dogma1138 Making visual contact and making sure that the passengers and the crew are not in distress. Could've been cabin preassure loss and all of them are passed out all dead just as much as hijacking. Shooting down can be just as achieved with surface to air missiles. We send jets to establish contact and use short range and if needed LOS communication to figure out what is going. ~~~ tomp > cabin preassure loss and all of them are passed out What could the fighter jets possibly do to "save" the passengers in such a situation? ~~~ iSnow Nothing: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522) ~~~ tunap Observe and report. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_cras...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_crash) ------ tomp > As a precaution, the German Air Force deployed its aircraft to ensure the > safety of the flight and its guests. Does anyone still believe this bullshit? Clearly there's nothing that the fighter jets could do to ensure the safety of the flight/passengers - the most they could do is to shoot the plane down in a safe area to avoid casualties _on the ground_ , if it were e.g. controlled by terrorists. And the media/institutions wonder why people don't trust them... ~~~ iSnow It would be illegal in Germany to shoot down a hijacked airliner and ordering the pilot to do so would be an illegitimate order the pilot would be forbidden from following. The most anyone could do would be the Minister of Defence of the Chancellor talking directly to the pilot and telling her that they would take the fall if her conscience allowed them to shoot down the plane. The pilot would still face a trial with uncertain results. So, please stop with the alternative facts and the conspiracy stuff. Not every country works like the US of A, unbelievably. ~~~ hubert123 > It would be illegal in Germany to shoot down a hijacked airliner and > ordering the pilot to do so would be an illegitimate order the pilot would > be forbidden from following Yeah we're going need a source on that. Don't even think of pulling up that vague Grundgesetz about human dignity, the legality of refusing an order would be established AFTER the fact. To call such an order illegal before any court judgement is the very thing that you are branding as an alternative fact. ~~~ iSnow Decision 1 BvR 357/05 ([https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheid...](https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/DE/2006/02/rs20060215_1bvr035705.html)): >The armed forces’ authorisation pursuant to § 14.3 of the Aviation Security Act (Luftsicherheitsgesetz – LuftSiG) to shoot down by the direct use of armed force an aircraft that is intended to be used against human lives __is incompatible with the right to life under Article 2.2 sentence 1 of the Basic Law in conjunction with the guarantee of human dignity under Article 1.1 of the Basic Law __to the extent that it affects persons on board the aircraft who are not participants in the crime. ~~~ hubert123 It sounds incredibly dumb and the fact that nobody has challenged and changed this is testament to the pace of public official life. If somebody were to get a nuclear bomb on a civilian plane, the german government would be constitutionally obligated to let them fly to wherever they want. I imagine that in real life the german government would ask France or Great Britain to quickly fly over and do the job for them. Afterwards it's nobody's fault and we can all keep pretending that the Grundgesetz is perfect.

Ask HN: Any SaaS idea to share? - Im_a_throw_away Recently we got 2 ask HN related to SaaS business [0] [1].<p>This time I&#x27;m curious if you have any SaaS business idea that you don&#x27;t plan to pursue? And if so, feel free to share it here.<p>[0]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11924009<p>[1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11937132 ====== adiian An idea is useless. What it matters, especially in SAAS is to identify a need of an heterogeneous group of people. A painful one for which they would pay a certain amount. So instead looking for an idea try looking for a community and try to understand it. Study it, see what they do, how they do and what they really need. Don't ask them what they need, or if they have an idea because they might not know. Once you understand them you can start crystallizing an idea. It might be bad, you start (in)validating assumptions, pivotating and iterating through those steps until you reach to the good "idea". An idea you get from somebody else is in the best case scenario one which identifies a need. You still have to validate it, which is the hard part. And you still have to understand your customers which is even harder. The successful one man side-projects are successful because they are started by passion by people who follow those steps sometimes without even knowing it. They are annoyed by something or they need something which does not exist. They create it first for them and for people like them. ------ going_to_800 I want an email service that sends each week 10 saas ideas and also see who started working on which. ~~~ skiltz [http://nugget.one](http://nugget.one) ------ wmcneil I am also interested in hearing ideas. It has been too long since I've last had a good side project and not just small one off things that go unfinished. ------ bbcbasic With YNAB moving to the cloud, a good old fashioned desktop budget app. Write it natively for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and Windows Phone so it performs well. ~~~ stephenr I think one of us is confused, you want a Software-as-a-Service desktop app? ~~~ bbcbasic Being SaaS doesn't dictate web delivery. Desktop apps can be rented and auto updated. Case in point: Office 365 ~~~ stephenr Being subscription based doesn't make it SaaS. Emphasis mine: \- Wikipedia: Software as a service is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis _and is centrally hosted._ \- Dictionary.com: Software as a Service: a software distribution method in which a service provider gives customers _access through the Internet to applications_ , usually ones developed and owned by the provider \- techterms.com: Stands for "Software as a Service." SaaS is software that is _deployed over the Internet rather than installed on a computer_. It is often used for enterprise applications that are distributed to multiple users. SaaS applications typically run within a Web browser, which means users only need a compatible browser in order to access the software. \- Salesforce.com: Software as a service (or SaaS) is a way of _delivering applications over the Internet—as a service. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply access it via the Internet_ , freeing yourself from complex software and hardware management. Sure, desktop apps _can_ be subscription based, but that isn't the same as SaaS. The second S in SaaS is "service" as in, you are providing something more than just the software. With your example of Office365, there is a web based component, and the accompanying storage to go with it. So given that the post I replied to, was suggesting a desktop app because a previous solution had "moved to the cloud", I maintain that there is confusion about what SaaS means. ~~~ bbcbasic Well you got be bang to rights there. ------ smilingtom I would like to get rich from working on an easy software project that will make me a lot of money for not a lot of effort. Does anyone have an idea like that? Thank you. ~~~ lj3 Fart apps. You're welcome.

Mobile is Still in a "Pre-PageRank" Phase - applecore https://medium.com/p/3f606bf985c6 ====== monsterix It is. And it is the web _side_of_story_ that is super exciting.