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The Accident That Changed My Priorities: One Entrepreneurs Story - johnjlocke
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229735
======
jacalata
Didn't read, too many popovers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple, ARM, and Intel - jonbaer
https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-arm-and-intel/?href=
======
throwawaygh
The most important paragraph in this piece is last one, which plugs a $22.8
billion bill to support domestic semiconductor manufacturing in the USA and
suggests the need for new entrants.
Semiconductor manufacturing is truly one of the few remaining manufacturing
industries in which the USA has a competitive advantage (albeit quite eroded
by TSMC over the past few years).
Especially with US aviation circling the drain, this is an industry we can't
afford to lose. Removing semiconductors from US manufacturing statistics makes
US manufacturing statistics go from "stagnating" to "extraordinary decline".
And it's not just the manufacturing sector. Semiconductors power some of
America's most valuable companies (including but not limited to the FAANGs).
US economic and actual security absolutely depends on a robust supply of
world-class semi-conductors manufactured on-shore.
Congress should take the advice in this piece and avoid making the same
mistake with Intel that it made with Boeing (piling the bulk of all federal
and state support for an entire sector into a single clearly dysfunctional
company)
~~~
greedo
US manufacturing has been growing steadily for decades. The US concentrates
this in sectors that are high tech, expensive, and profitable. Low margin, low
profit manufacturing has been offshored, but manufacturing hasn't been
stagnant at all.
As a percentage of GDP, manufacturing has been on a downward trend, but that's
because of the growth of service industry.
[https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
states/manu...](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
states/manufacturing-output)
~~~
api
Genuinely curious then: where do we actually excel?
The only examples I can think of right now where we are genuinely number one
is high priced low volume boutique aerospace (SpaceX and other new space
companies, satellites, experimental military aircraft, electric planes, etc.)
and of course weapons.
We can manufacture decent cars, but at least half of this is under the
direction and management of overseas companies like Toyota and Nissan. US car
companies have been on the ropes for decades.
We seem to be losing the bulk of aerospace, generation turbines, electronics,
chips, medical devices, power equipment, materials, ... ?
Seeing graphs like this makes me wonder if I am living in the late days of the
USSR when I'm sure many optimistic graphs were published by Pravda.
~~~
mardifoufs
What? Turbines? Materials? Only the US and Europe can actually build
functional jet engines and most of the bleeding edge materials. Even semi
functional jet engines are still a distant dream for China. Same thing goes
for chips, where only Taiwan and the US can manufacture current gen nodes. If
anything, the US offloaded commodity manufacturing that is easily
reproductible to build a very very high moat around key technologies instead
of fighting to the bottom for scraps of old industries.
As for medical devices and tech, the US probably creates more new drugs and
treatments than the rest of the world combined. when's the last time china,
india or russia made a break through in medecine? When's the last time the US
did? Last year?
~~~
pinkfoot
> when [was] the last time china, india or russia made a break through in
> [medicine]?
2015.
[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2015/tu/facts/](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2015/tu/facts/)
(PS. This took less than 30 seconds to find and confirm).
~~~
samatman
The prize was awarded for work done in the 1970s, fwiw.
(PS. This took me most of a minute of reading the link you provided).
~~~
pinkfoot
Sure, any to answer the more general question in the OP:
Russia invented and built and then sold to the USA the RD-180 rocket engines
that are used for the first stage of the American Atlas V launch vehicle.
Which the USA will no doubt "reverse engineer" soon :)
The OP needs to get out more often.
~~~
samatman
I feel weird playing the jingoism game, because it doesn't even vaguely
reflect my feelings on the subject, but here we go:
SpaceX, a privately-held American company, is the only source of innovation in
rocketry at the present time. Their reusable launch platform plays in its own
league; everything else is steam power, Falcon is internal combustion.
That's just a fact. Unlike insisting that China, Russia, India are incapable
of innovation more generally, which is risible.
My vague impression, in fact, is that jet turbines are quite a bit more
difficult to manufacture than rocket engines, even if the latter are thought
of as 'higher tech'.
I'm fairly certain we'll discover, in the next ten years, that China is quite
capable of making cutting-edge computer chips, and just hadn't gotten around
to it yet.
I've never shared my countrymen's obsession with insisting on being 'the
greatest'. This country is great in its own right, along many dimensions; it
is, in fact, right at the cutting edge for medicine and CPUs; denigrating the
work of other nations only detracts from this.
~~~
tatersolid
> My vague impression, in fact, is that jet turbines are quite a bit more
> difficult to manufacture than rocket engines, even if the latter are thought
> of as 'higher tech'.
My impression is that “real” rocket engines _include a jet engine just to pump
fuel_. They have many other pieces as well.
Not that a modern high-bypass turbofan is simple, but don’t discount the
complexity of rocket science.
------
eric_khun
On a related note, TSMC is based in Taiwan. Ben Thompson (who wrote this
article) chose to live there. It's cheap/friendly/modern/safe/connected to all
asia/awesome healthcare system/amazing food/surrounded by nature.
Taiwan now puts effort trying to attract new talents. The "gold card visa"[1]
is quite easy to get, just earn more than usd5.5k/month at your last/current
job, or work in a "trendy" field (AI/big data/energy/biotech...) and you get
an "open visa" for 3 years without restrictions for ~300USD. If you're looking
for change, I highly recommend her Taiwan! Happy to reply to any questions
[1] [https://taiwangoldcard.com](https://taiwangoldcard.com)
~~~
joaogui1
How hard is it to live in Taiwan speaking only English? Is their official
language Mandarin or is it some different Chinese dialect? How safe are Taiwan
streets?
~~~
hellofunk
The main problem, when I was there, as with many places throughout Asia, is
the poor air quality. You’ll definitely notice it, my eyes were burning to get
through the adjustment period.
~~~
komali2
Really? I found air quality even within Taipei to be comparable to San
Francisco or even better, at least according to my nose, sinuses, and tear
ducts.
~~~
hellofunk
Perhaps you were there during a weather pattern that minimized the effects.
Unless you are saying you had a long-term low pollution experience there,
which I think is impossible.
~~~
komali2
> Unless you are saying you had a long-term low pollution experience there,
> which I think is impossible.
Over a year of anecdotal data using my own senses, which I consider extremely
sensitive to allergens.
Maybe some pollution data will indicate otherwise? It's certainly no rural
Kansas, and I bet industrial hot spots in Taiwan suffer (like near TPE), but
yea I felt great in Taipei. Far better than most Asian cities, perhaps
comparable to Tokyo.
~~~
hellofunk
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_Taiwan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_Taiwan)
> based on reports by the World Health Organization, that the air quality in
> Taiwan is generally the worst of all of the Four Asian Tigers, in
> particularly drawing attention to the annual mean PM10 level of Taiwan (54
> micrograms per cubic meter). The annual mean PM10 level of the country's
> capital Taipei (47.1 micrograms per cubic meter) made the city rank only
> 1,089 among 1,600 included cities around the world. Based on 2004 data by
> Taiwan's Department of Environmental Protection, the annual mean PM10 level
> for Taiwan had, for the last decade, been worse than the European Union
> limit value (40 micrograms per cubic meter) every year.
------
Wowfunhappy
> Notably, one thing Apple does not need to give up is Windows support:
> Windows has run on ARM for the last decade, and I expect Boot Camp to
> continue.
I brought up the possibility of Bootcamp supporting ARM Windows on HN
yesterday, and others responded with some rightful criticisms.
From mrkstu:
> _The problem is that Apple has moved to a home-grown stack for it graphics
> and deprecated OpenGL and moved wholly to Metal. [...] There is no way Apple
> would create a Windows driver for that custom silicon—it has always relied
> on AMD or Nvidia for those drivers in the past, it has no in house code base
> or expertise to write the requisite code in Windows and none of the silicon
> has been optimized for it._
And from pavlov:
> _I don 't think there is a standard BIOS for ARM like there is for x86, so
> multi-boot would probably require Microsoft to support Macs explicitly in
> Windows on ARM._
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528066)
~~~
deergomoo
The other issue is that Windows for ARM is not a product you can just buy off
the shelf right now.
~~~
rrss
i thought the surface pro x runs windows on arm? or do you mean you can't get
a copy of the OS without the product?
~~~
Kipters
Yep, WoA is only sold preinstalled in devices, you can't buy a copy (but you
can install it yourself: [https://github.com/WOA-
Project](https://github.com/WOA-Project))
------
DC-3
The unseating of x86 as the de facto standard for laptops, workstations, and
servers would be a net benefit for both performance and security.
Unfortunately, though Apple will likely find very great success with their ARM
Macs, it does not necessarily follow that the architecture will gain
significant ground outside the Apple-sphere. I would love for my next laptop
to be ARM-based, but I can't see Apple happily flogging chips to Dell or
Lenovo, and I'm not sure if anyone else's ARM processors are up to the
necessary standard.
~~~
dijit
I mean, ARM is 'there' in most cases, the issue tends to be perceived latency
of RISC vs CISC CPU's on desktop, not overall performance.
There are decent quality laptops shipping with ARM already, like the Thinkpad
Yoga: [https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/6/21050758/lenovo-
yoga-5g-sn...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/6/21050758/lenovo-
yoga-5g-snapdragon-qualcomm-8cx-x55-arm-windows-laptop-ces-2020)
There's also the obvious: Pinebook pro.
~~~
simias
What do you mean by latency here exactly?
~~~
dijit
I'm not exactly sure what I mean and that's part of the issue, when using an
ARM CPU with desktop software which has not been optimised to hide UI "lag"
there's something that feels like it just.. lags.
You can feel it on a rpi if you use it for a day, it's not that it's
underpowered, you can grab a 15yo celeron that is much slower and single core
and it will have less perceptable latency. The Celeron will "feel" as if it's
working, the ARM chip will "feel" as if it's laggy.
I can't quantify this behaviour, but it's consistent across all ARM CPU's I've
ever used with traditional desktop software.
Notably these issues don't seem to exist on Android or iOS, someone once told
me this is due to the UI elements having a higher priority than anything else
on the system.
~~~
DCKing
If your experience with "desktop UI on ARM" is based on the RPi and other ARM
SBCs, the overwhelmingly likely explanation for this perceived lag is lacking
I/O performance. Running a Raspberry Pi (or any system) from any cheap flash
storage setup like SD cards or cheap eMMCs degrades desktop responsivity a
lot. The ARM desktop hardware most of us have experience with has significant
I/O problems, but that's due to them being cheap hardware, and not due to ARM.
I/O is actually the real prevalent bottleneck for desktop interactivity on all
modern hardware. Even older x86 systems with spinning platter hard drives are
set up for a more responsive desktop experience due to the I/O performance
being suited for the desktop. Modern Android phones and iPhones also have much
better I/O setups for interactive use (UFS for high end Android, Apple
actually uses NVME because responsiveness is so crucial) .
Certainly CISC vs RISC has nothing to do with it as that discussion really has
no bearing on the situation anymore on discussions about modern ARM and Intel
(see my other post).
~~~
zozbot234
> Running a Raspberry Pi (or any system) from any cheap flash storage setup
> like SD cards or cheap eMMCs degrades desktop responsivity a lot.
Not really, if the system has enough free RAM to use as disk cache. For many
scenarios, that suffices to run quite acceptably.
~~~
DCKing
RAM as disk cache is only useful for things you have already loaded. It
doesn't help your boot times, new program launches, or loading new content in
your program.
I'm not saying SBCs are "unusable" for desktop use cases, I'm saying I/O is
the likely explanation for desktop responsiveness issues they encounter on
SBCs.
~~~
dijit
Nobody here is talking about boot times, I was talking about responsiveness..
it's easy to test your theory, you can boot USB on the new RPI, and USB3.0 has
quite a high bandwidth, definitely comparable to SATA2, nearly SATA3
~~~
DCKing
There's a good reason that they're making it more possible to boot a Raspberry
Pi from USB. It's more reliable storage and has better performance for many
use cases :)
------
ogre_codes
> It is not out of the question that Apple, within a year or two, has by far
> the best performing laptops and desktop computers on the market, just as
> they do in mobile.
This quote from the article is the big takeaway. Apple isn't going to make a
lateral move here. A processor transition that nets Apple merely _comparable_
performance would destroy the Mac brand. Apple needs a CPU that runs native
code significantly faster than Intel on every device and it needs to be able
to emulate Intel chips at reasonable speeds.
I suspect Apple knows this and that their chips are going to hit the mark. But
we'll see.
~~~
aneutron
My money is not only on the performance, but also an adjustable thermal
envelope, which means perhaps even 5 times the battery life of normal windows
laptops.
~~~
dr_zoidberg
With some Ryzen Renoir machines hitting 9-10hs of battery (when paired with a
decent 80+ watt-hour battery, that is), would you expect a mac hitting 50hs of
battery life?
I mean I could see that happening when pairing a current A13 with a much
bigger battery like a notebook has, but as others have said, the performance
will have to be superb, so maybe we'll be seeing half the power efficiency?
Were you thinkg 50+ hours or more in the lines of 20+ hours?
~~~
bradlys
Considering a laptop can be at most 100Wh for US air travel - I doubt you'll
see 50 hours anytime soon. That would mean the display is drawing less than 2
watts of energy while the rest of the system is near 0. Typical displays
apparently use 2 watts - [https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-low-
power-disp...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-low-power-
display-technology/) If Intel released a 1-watt display then we might see the
50-hour level reached but that's going to only be on really light workloads.
(Light text editing? Playing back a special low-power-codec video?)
~~~
dr_zoidberg
Right on point with your considerations, both on maximum battery capacity and
the display being a large factor un notebook battery life. Battery capacity
can't be expanded, since it's regulation and we're tied to it. Don't really
know what drives display power consumption and how it could be improved to get
better battery life.
------
pier25
It all makes sense on paper but I'm still skeptical.
For the last couple of years every time Apple has tried to do some acrobatics
on the Mac platform it has failed miserably.
\- Yosemite
\- Butterfly keyboard
\- Touchbar
\- Catalina
I'm not much of a CPU guru but a switch to ARM seems like the most ambitious
and risky of all these, by far.
~~~
radicaldreamer
You’re forgetting the most underrated piece of hardware to come from Apple in
the last couple of years, the 12” MacBook. The weight to capability ratio of
that machine is off the charts and it’s the perfect encapsulation of what a
portable Mac should be.
~~~
Wowfunhappy
I'm glad you like that machine, but I would not put it in the success camp. It
was the start of the butterfly keyboard, and Apple ended up discontinuing it
after just a few years.
~~~
machello13
It's not really correct to say they discontinued it. They basically just
started selling it under the MacBook Air brand.
~~~
Wowfunhappy
The new Macbook Air is a very different computer. Much larger and thicker,
even compared to the 11" Air that was discontinued.
------
onli
I don't really understand the positive opinion around this. Isn't the break
from the Windows and Linux default architecture and thus software too high
here? Like in gaming - are Apple users really okay with not having access to a
single Steam game?
Okay, the ones using this only for ~~work~~ office work, the browser and
Netflix won't mind, but for the rest this presents a huge separation from what
is available elsewhere. I must miss something.
~~~
_bxg1
Very few people use Macs for gaming, and many of those that do probably just
play Apple Arcade games (which I'm sure will have a smooth upgrade path). And
most of the games people play that _are_ on Steam are (these days) built with
either Unity or Unreal, which will no doubt have 1-click-rebuilds for the new
architecture. In Unity your game logic doesn't even need to compile to native
code.
Even beyond games, the thing is that nearly every development platform these
days is an abstraction above the hardware - be it the JVM, the web browser,
etc - and the rest (of the new ones coming out) are built to be cross-platform
from the get go. Just look at how smoothly Rust/Cargo can target different
architectures. I'm sure the same is true for Go.
~~~
simion314
Just giving you some data points, there are many people that play older games
on their laptops, one such community is the Sims3 players, they got screwed
when 32 bits support was dropped, some still hope EA will make a 64 bit soon
(IMO it makes no sense for the devs to do the work for free for this old
game).
So the people the play games on Mac are not the same group that play latest
AAA shooters or arcade games, they are people that play some casual games or
retro games on their laptops so no "hardcore gamers"
~~~
_bxg1
The story is admittedly different when we're talking about legacy games that
are no longer supported. Even if pushing the button is easy, if there's nobody
there to do it, that doesn't help.
But the good news it that game life cycles have gotten much longer; where in
the past a game was seen as a fire-and-forget project, these days a game may
get active updates for five or more years after launch. And not just AAA, but
indies too.
~~~
simion314
Sometimes we do not need updates, we need existing old games to continue to
work. Ubuntu tried also to drop 32bit support but the community responded
strongly with use cases like games and some other old apps, then
Canonical/Ubuntu listen and 32 bit support was partially dropped, 32 libraries
needed for games and different apps are still supported.
Meanwhile I see Mac players upset their 32 bit games no longer work (like the
Sims3 players and I also see some Mac users in r/winegaming ). Again Apple can
do whatever they make them more money but for example gamers voice was heard
in Ubuntu/Linux and Canonical did the work (for free) to continue supporting
gamers.
------
hellofunk
> Overall, in terms of performance, the A13 and the Lightning cores are
> extremely fast. In the mobile space, there’s really no competition as the
> A13 posts almost double the performance of the next best non-Apple SoC. This
> year, the A13 has essentially matched best that AMD and Intel have to offer.
Wow.
~~~
dannyw
You can thank Intel for that. Single thread performance has stagnated since
2016. Some say 2014.
~~~
fomine3
Skylake was released in 2015.
------
mschuster91
Hmm. Random question here... what prevents Apple from building in an x86-to-
uops decoder stage into their desktop ARM CPUs?
That way they could run old code simultaneously with new code - x86 apps get
their memory flagged (by the MMU perhaps?) that all code from this memory
region gets executed with the x86 decoder stage, and code in normal memory
gets executed with the ARM decoder stage.
And to be honest this is entirely what I'm expecting of Apple - yes they are
not concerned with backwards compatibility but no one is going to buy a multi-
ten-thousands-dollars Mac Pro or even a multi-thousands MacBook Pro if it
can't run Photoshop or their favorite sound editing/DJ suite.
~~~
danaris
Photoshop is already running on ARM—specifically, on Apple's A-series
chips.[0]
Unless you're doing something at least moderately esoteric, if you have an
actively-developed macOS application today, you'll be able to produce an ARM
version of it tomorrow (or, y'know, whenever Apple actually activates this
capability) by ticking the right box in Xcode.
There might very well be a compatibility layer available for a transition
period (there was for 68k->PPC, Classic->OS X, and PPC->Intel), but that's not
at all the same thing as saying Apple will build in hardware-level x86 support
in perpetuity.
[0]
[https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/ipad.html](https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/ipad.html)
~~~
mschuster91
> if you have an actively-developed macOS application today, you'll be able to
> produce an ARM version of it tomorrow (or, y'know, whenever Apple actually
> activates this capability) by ticking the right box in Xcode.
Will this also take care of existing _low level_ optimizations? I can easily
imagine Adobe and everyone in the sound/3D area to run custom specific x86
Assembler code in hot paths.
~~~
danaris
I think I covered that with my "doing something esoteric"...
------
tiffanyh
What are the chances TSMC announced the plans to build a fab in Arizona
because Apple wants to say their chips are produced in the USA?
[https://www.tsmc.com/tsmcdotcom/PRListingNewsAction.do?actio...](https://www.tsmc.com/tsmcdotcom/PRListingNewsAction.do?action=detail&language=E&newsid=THGOANPGTH)
~~~
chrisjc
I was wondering the same. Also wondering if a new fab was required in order to
scale up for the potential new demand from Apple.
------
fabianmg
Ha!!, man, the end of that sentence made me laugh so hard...
"Intel, by integrating design and manufacturing, earned very large profit
margins on its chips; Apple could leverage TSMC for manufacturing and keep
that margin for itself _and its customers._ "
~~~
sutterbomb
Have you seen the iPhone pricing strategy? Yes they’ve moved up asp for the
high end but are also now selling a $400 phone with chips that outperform
anything else in the Android market. It’s very likely some of this margin will
be shifted to consumers
~~~
dannyw
Apple’s pricing in the services world: extraordinarily competitive low end to
lure you in. Excessively-margined high end halo products. High margin, but
attractive in comparison middle tier.
------
Jonnax
"the i3-1000NG4 Intel processor that is the cheapest option for the MacBook
Air is not yet for public sale; it probably costs around $150, with far worse
performance than the A13"
In so curious so see this. Unless I missed it we haven't seen consumer high
end ARM chips that are readily available running a general purpose OS.
Like the Raspberry Pi is cool, but it's still trash in comparison to an
average x86 laptop.
Let's see if those really high geekbench scores translate to an excellent
computing experience.
~~~
jagger27
I mean, is the iPad Pro not evidence enough? The A13 is much, much better than
the chips in RPis.
~~~
jcelerier
I'd really like to see an iPad Pro crunch through as many VSTs as my old 2600k
did in its 2 millisecond budget
~~~
em500
As highlighted in the article, Apple's A13 is on par with Intel's i9-9900K in
SPECint2006 and only 15% behind in SPECfp2006.
~~~
jcelerier
those are benchmarks, but to restate my comment I'd really like to see that
hold up in actual real-world use cases
------
sradman
The irony in the narrative surrounding the ascendence of ARM is that the key
innovation occurred in the Apple Newton. [1] History rhymes, they say. If I
remember correctly, it was Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) silicon team
that transformed ARM into a performance-per-watt powerhouse (no pun intended)
to meet the requirements of the Newton.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#ARM_Ltd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#ARM_Ltd).
~~~
the-dude
ARM has always been a performance-per-watt powerhouse. The story goes the
first processor was tested without a proper power connection and ran on the
IO-pins.
~~~
monocasa
> The story goes the first processor was tested without a proper power
> connection and ran on the IO-pins.
That's real common actually. The current from the diodes on the I/O pins has
to go somewhere.
~~~
the-dude
Then it is odd I have ever only read the story about ARM. Do Intel's/AMD's
proto's run on their I/O pins?
~~~
monocasa
It's not really a fair comparison, because it's not the same TDP niche.
I imagine Intel Quarks will though. Probably any of the SoC versions as well.
I've actually had to design around this in a board once. Had a chip where the
reset line didn't hook up to all the logic inside it. Originally just put FETs
on the power lines, but that wasn't enough and I had to gate off all the I/O
lines too.
~~~
the-dude
The first ARM was designed as a CPU for a desktop computer ( the Archimedes )
~~~
monocasa
Sure, and I bet a 486 (so a comparable processor for the time) can run off of
it's I/O pins. A quark is a 486 core.
------
andrewla
A while back Linus said something to the effect that x86 was the default for
servers because that's what people used on their desktops. I personally find
this news very exciting because the x86 architecture is just so messy and
filled with cruft from ages ago.
If ARM becomes the standard on the desktop for a significant portion of
machines, then I think that we'll probably start to see more ARM processors
making inroads in the server and workstation market, which I think will be a
huge win.
~~~
jeffbee
It seems a bit silly to discuss servers based on Apple's architecture before
they reveal something with several cores. Mainstream x86 processors have 64
cores per socket. These are the top contenders in SPEC performance-per-watt
benchmarks. Notably, nobody has ever even bothered submitting a SPEC result
for an ARM server, in particular not Ampere, whose product "provides industry
leading power efficiency/core" even though there is no evidence to back this
claim.
~~~
sergeykish
It is a lucrative market, they have money and followers. I would not believe
they could design smartphone processor but here we are. Lets check in five
years.
------
gspr
Stuff like this is one area where Debian and other GNU/Linux distros are so
valuable. The architecture doesn't matter much, and the flexible distros are
poised to adapt well to this heterogeneous world.
------
saagarjha
> Windows, particularly given the ability to run a full-on Linux environment
> without virtualization
An effort that Windows seems to be in the direction of abandoning. (Plus,
writing these kinds of compatibility layers is complicated but not _super_
complicated. What you really want is performance, and that’s hard.)
~~~
Wowfunhappy
Are you referring to the fact that WSL2 is technically a VM?
You're not wrong, but the point seems a bit pedantic—Microsoft is clearly
investing a lot into making WSL2 _feel_ native, and it runs acceptably fast.
~~~
saagarjha
Yes, the VM approach won’t work if your underlying architecture changes. And
it’s hard to make it fast if you’re emulating, as I know firsthand from
working on this for iOS ;)
~~~
Wowfunhappy
> Yes, the VM approach won’t work if your underlying architecture changes.
Well, but that's Ben Thompson's point, I think. If it's true that developers
prefer to deploy to the same architecture they develop on, then one of two
things are possible:
1\. Developers largely abandon the Mac.
2\. ARM becomes more common on servers.
Apple is presumably betting on #1 (or is just willing to lose the developer
audience), but it's a gamble.
Lots of developers don't need to deploy code to servers, of course, but it's
easy to see a situation where the momentum is felt by all. macOS's UNIX
support has made it, well, I don't quite want to call it the "de-facto"
development platform, but something approaching that status.
------
annoyingnoob
Apples extends its ARM, gives Intel the finger.
~~~
kiplkipl
Hoping for a job with El Reg?
------
GiorgioG
And with Apple moving to ARM, any hope of serious gaming on a Mac will be
gone.
~~~
yborg
That ship sailed decades ago. Rightfully so, because everyone that has the
money for a Mac can easily buy a console, and much gaming has shifted to
mobile platforms. Unless you think rainbow colored keyboard backlighting is a
key innovation area for a computer company, the gaming market is a complete
waste of time except for driving graphics hardware, which Apple has always
lagged at even for their Pro products.
~~~
GiorgioG
Some of us can afford Macs and consoles, but still prefer a computer for
playing games (graphics, kb/mouse controller, load times, etc.)
------
wilsonfiifi
I’m not sure Apple’s goal is to replace their x86 line of products; that will
alienate too many users and would involve a huge number of software to be
ported to ARM. I think they’re probably going to release an iPadOS device in a
laptop form factor. Either foldable like the Lenovo Yoga or with a detachable
keyboard similar to what Brydge Pro has done [0]. They’re already heading down
that path with the new iPad Pro keyboard [1].
[0] https://youtu.be/Kkn9CLppLkI
[1] https://youtu.be/JLQAh6IHPc4
~~~
ogre_codes
Apple doesn't tend to do things by half measures. If they see Apple on ARM
significantly out-performing Intel across their product line, then they will
move. There will be frustrations and pain, but it will happen. As Ben hints,
this may cause a bigger industry shift as well. With Apple on ARM, it makes
Windows and Linux ARM more palatable, in particular this could give ARM
servers a significant boost.
------
jimbokun
Will LLVM IR allow developers to deliver binaries that will run on both Intel
and ARM?
I see the Swift compiler can output LLVM IR, can you do the same thing with
Objective C code bases?
~~~
zozbot234
Not really. LLVM is not a single interoperable IR, it's more like a family of
IR's with many arch-specific details. WASM+WASI could work though.
------
kaiby
I'm not a business guy, but if Apple's going all-in on ARM processors, and
then they expand into the server market (which the article speculates on),
could we potentially see Apple opening a new product branch devoted to
competing in the Cloud space with AWS, Azure, and GCP?
Imagine developing apps on an ARM-powered macbook, deploying onto ARM-powered
servers owned by Apple, specifically for applications to be used on MacOS &
iOS devices.
------
samwillis
Would it be possible for Apple to have an optional dual processor system, an
ARM main processor and an optional Intel coprocessor? That way for people who
need support for “legacy” x86 apps or for development they could get it.
Could you have an external Intel coprocessor like we have external GPUs?
(I know nothing about how this would work, obviously the traditional way would
be to just have an remote x86 server for running those tasks)
~~~
pornel
I expect Apple to do something smarter, e.g. extend the ARM instruction set
with operations that speed up x86 emulation.
For example, emulation of x86 on ARM is expensive due to subtle differences in
memory model. Why not make an ARM chip that can operate with x86's memory
model?
------
ksec
I am beginning to think if it make sense to segment the Mac into two Category.
The Pro model will use x86. And retain the compatibility of all macOS apps,
some of them may likely never made the move to ARM. They just keep patching it
to run on latest macOS. Along with Windows Bootcamp option. That will be Mac
Pro, iMac Pro and MacBook Pro.
The Non-Pro model will use ARM. You will end up with a 12" Macbook that is
priced at $799. With a possible 14" Macbook at $899 ( The BOM cost of an iPad
Pro 11" would be the same as 12" Macbook, you are essentially swapping the
cost of back camera modules to additional 128GB NAND, the Touch Screen And
Glass Panel to Track Pad and Keyboard. ) It will be like the Macbook 2015,
except it doesn't cost that ridiculous $1299. And $799 might have been the
cheapest portable Mac in recent history as far as I could remember. Even the
11" MacBook Air was priced at $899.
It would greatly expand the macOS market shares. Which has very much stagnated
for the past few years. Out of 1.4B PC market, Apple has 100M macOS users, 7%
marketshare. Compare this to 4.5B Smartphone Apple has 1B iOS users, 22%
marketshare. And the most important thing to me would be that Apple also
accept / admit Tablet computing will never take over the Desktop / Notebook,
or keyboard / trackpad paradigm. It is good enough for large enough of a
market to worth continuing the investment into Mac other than trying to get
iPad / Tablet to kill it.
The only problem with this hypothesises is that the software would be very
messy. Would Xcode force all Apps by default to compile with Fat binary? Is
Apple going to tell its user the different ? ( Not that I think it would
matter to Non-Pro user )
Anyway, this will be an interesting WWDC. ( Or may be everyone got it wrong
Apple isn't doing anyway to the Mac )
------
jagger27
I wonder what an alternate timeline would look like where Apple went for AMD
semi-custom x86 chips instead of Arm. The Mac Pro would have 64 cores,
MacBooks would have great APUs, and Apple would be able to segment their
products at their own discretion–not Intel's.
I also wonder if any chiplet designs will find their way into Apple's Arm-
based lineup.
~~~
larkost
At the time Intel was pushing on performance-per-watt, AMD was not. So AOM was
significantly further away from getting the iPhone contract than Intel was.
And Apple is already extensively using multiple small chips put together to
form their A13 APUs, so they are not far from the full "chiplet" already (they
just are not using silicon wafers as the interface yet).
Right now I think that the main barrier to the Mac Pro already being on AMD
CPUs is the lack of Thunderbolt. Already there is 1 Thunderbolt AMD
motherboard, and with Thunderbolt becoming part of USB 4, that barrier will
fall next year. So it will be an interesting race: is Apple pushing for AMD
Mac Pros, or ARM ones?
------
komali2
> and a company from a territory claimed by China was.
A company from a _sovereign country_ claimed by China.
------
staycoolboy
I'm both excited and troubled, mostly because I fear the loss of LTS on
x86-64: how long will Xcode, macports, and even brew support both
architectures. Apple isn't one for backwards compatibility so this might be
rough few years.
I shudder to think about how long it will take to debug all of the Python3
wheels and Node packages macOS devs are accustomed to. I already have issues
with versions of both language's packages failing to install with other
versions, and that's on the same platform, OS and CPU architecture.
Still, I'm excited. Intel is way overpriced compared to Arm at similar
performance and power.
~~~
saagarjha
I should note that Xcode supports ARM perfectly well and MacPorts does the
same for PowerPC. I'm sure they'll be fine.
~~~
Wowfunhappy
Note that Brew doesn't even support macOS Sierra[1]. It doesn't outright
refuse to run, but there's a big warning message that stuff will break and
maintainers won't care—and lots of stuff does indeed break.
Macports's support for legacy versions of OS X is unique, and dare-I-say
incredible.
1: [https://docs.brew.sh/Installation#macos-
requirements](https://docs.brew.sh/Installation#macos-requirements)
------
gumby
He big reason to move production offshore was labor cost (straight comparative
advantage); now it’s path dependency as the whole supply chain has migrated.
This was the US’s big advantage 1890s-1980s but that time has passed.
Advanced robotics will offer a chance of a fundamental restructuring as labor
costs continue to contribute a declining proportion of COGS. The factories and
supply chains could be completely distributed and resilient. But the example
of the Internet is discouraging: the ultimate end-to-end system ended up
highly centralized too.
------
Rafuino
Oof, fun times at Intel right now. There are pockets of Intel not forgetting
what made it successful, but they're usually the most difficult places to grow
a career as they get snuffed out pretty quick
------
phlo
Duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538826)
(which was posted a few minutes earlier).
~~~
Wowfunhappy
Rightfully or not, I think this is the version of record at this point, given
that it's sitting at the top of HN right now. They will probably get merged
later.
------
bgorman
Intel has lost its manufacturing lead, but these changes are not permanent.
There is a good chance TSMC stumbles as transistors shrink. Intel has a chance
to catch up, but it seems like Intel has structural problems that prevent it
from winning deals to manufacture third party designs. Relying on complete
vertical integration doesn't seem like a winning business model anymore.
Perhaps Intel should buy GlobalFoundries or license Samsung technology to
develop competency in building designs for other customers.
------
coreai
The problem, as explained here, is also what Linus and recently GKH have
mentioned is that the lack of any consumer ARM hardware like laptops and
desktops mean that kernel developers or app developers are basically not able
to develop and test their code easily to be able to deploy it in the cloud ...
if Apple was able to sell their macs with ARM and not only that but also
provide instances of the same platform then they might be essentially at the
core of architecture revolution
~~~
saagarjha
I doubt many kernel developers would like to develop on the Mac, considering
that as of late it’s been a bit problematic to get Linux to work on.
------
dep_b
Apple having a really fast ARM chip is both an advantage and a disadvantage.
If no Windows or Linux box will run on ARM for the same typical workloads a
lot of stuff never gets ported. It would help Apple if there would be powerful
ARM Windows or Linux PC's.
People say Qualcomm is catching up but I'm not sure what kind of performance
we'll get from the first ARM PC processor from Apple. It will probably run
circles around the 8cx.
------
magwa101
It is a misstatement to say that developers develop on Macs. They don't, they
use Mac as a convenient environment from which to do Linux/cloud development.
If it's MS/cloud development, they're running MS. The 3rd party app world on
Mac is dying. Apple will be happy with their end to end commercially
controlled device. That they put up with 3rd party apps at all was just a
convenient anomaly.
------
Amicius
The article mentions that while the Apple ARM chips are faster per core, the
Intel chips are faster at multi-core operations. How is that possible?
~~~
ascagnel_
I think a big chunk of that is power thermals -- Apple's ARM chips are only
used currently in passively-cooled, handheld, power-restricted chassis (phones
& tablets). Intel's chips are generally actively cooled and run on mains
power, so they can run hotter and draw more power, so they can make up the
difference by stuffing more hot cores onto the chip compared to what Apple has
been doing.
------
api
> Third, the PC market is in the midst of its long decline. Is it really worth
> all of the effort and upheaval to move to a new architecture for a product
> that is fading in importance? Intel may be expensive and may be slow, but it
> is surely good enough for a product that represents the past, not the
> future.
This is one of the key things they got wrong.
Mobile and tablet devices are not real computers. I can't run any software I
want on them. They're locked down, managed, console type devices. There are
other weaknesses at the OS and hardware level too, but the lack of flexibility
and control is the most fundamental and hardest to change.
If you opened up the OS to versatility and user control you could easily scale
up an iPad with a bigger battery, more cores, and cooling, and you'd have a
fantastic laptop. The UI would need some work too to make it suitable for more
complex tasks, but that's an area where Apple excels when they want to.
The locked down nerfed nature of mobile OSes is hard to change though because
it exists for good reason. It addresses a primary need in their market niche.
These devices are marketed to non-technical users, and in today's constant war
zone environment a non-technical user without those controls will be inundated
by malware and spyware.
Still, this keeps them from being viable replacements for desktop/laptop
systems in the professional market. For that reason desktop is not going away.
We have two markets here that really do seem to demand two solutions.
The desktop market decline wasn't the death of desktop. It was the loss of the
low-end of the market, with non-technical and casual users migrating to phones
and tablets. That transition is nearly complete, and the desktop/laptop market
that remains is likely to remain until and unless something appears that truly
does address that market niche.
It's not a growing market but it is probably a stable one. Having a strong
presence in that market is important for Apple because it's the market where
developers live, and without developers who is going to make software and
ecosystems for the rest of their devices? Who will ensure that these devices
reach their full potential and thus are maximally appealing to consumers?
No, doing everything in cloud is not that thing. I want to actually own my
data, and broadband is still far too slow to make that workable for a wide
range of tasks anyway.
~~~
whywhywhywhy
> Third, the PC market is in the midst of its long decline. Is it really worth
> all of the effort and upheaval to move to a new architecture for a product
> that is fading in importance?
Yeah this is just an Apple journalist bubble belief that doesn't really
reflect the real world in any way and is starting to get tiring.
We keep hearing from them how iPad Pro is a computer and how it's so much more
powerful than a real laptop yet we still never see it do anything more than
tweeting, writing articles, extremely basic video editing and a painting app.
Yet I look around every workplace and its still just a sea of laptops doing
incredibly varied work across multiple applications and systems most of which
still just isn't possible on iPads.
------
GiorgioG
I would be more open to this if the new machines had Intel and ARM chips in
them.
If Apple pulls any walled-garden nonsense around what apps I can and cannot
install on my Mac today, at the extreme I can install Windows/Linux and run
the majority of software that's available for those platforms.
If they move to ARM-only, I lose that choice.
------
Arcuru
Matching the Spec2k6 scores of a high end desktop does not mean that the A13
has similar real world single-core performance. I've done ARM vs Intel perf
comparisons in the past and we mostly ignored Spec2k6 because it looked
nothing like real world code.
I'm curious if there are any better benchmarks that will run on iOS.
------
abvdasker
I shudder to think of the huge number of applications this will break. This
has all happened before with PowerPC (ironically an RISC architecture Apple
abandoned ~15 years ago). It's probably necessary but nonetheless frustrating.
------
Shivetya
two ifs for me
If they pass on the savings to consumers, looking at the price escalation with
iPads I don't see why we should expect it to happen.
if they don't build that garden wall higher which can include no bootcamp
support
while TSMC is doing great they are sill in Taiwan, a country which China has
been making a lot of dangerous noise about and considering what is happening
in Hong Kong how long before Taiwan suffers a similar or worse fate. That is a
lot of manufacturing tied up in one area
~~~
akmarinov
It's very unlikely that they pass on savings to people by coming up with a
cheap ARM laptop, after all their whole thing is gouging people with
unrealistic prices for the hardware and huge margins on everything.
That said, if a laptop rolls around that doubles the 10 hour battery life on
existing configurations - they'll scoop up a ton of users regardless whether
it can run Windows or not.
I don't know how doable that would be, but the iPad Pro has a 28 watt hour
battery, the MBP 13 has a 59 watt hour battery, a theoretical Macbook without
a discrete GPU and a smaller motherboard footprint of an A13 chip, leaving
space for a bigger battery and providing about the same performance could
possibly hit 20 hours of battery in about the same space.
~~~
f6v
How are their prices on hardware unrealistic? Let's look at laptops: any other
manufacturer(razer, dell) charges comparable prices for unibody ultrabooks.
~~~
akmarinov
Their RAM upgrade and SSD pricing is off the charts though. 8 to 16 GB is $200
- which other manufacturer does that?
------
MangoCoffee
its sad to see a king (Intel) slowly dying. Microsoft got its groove back with
Satya Nadella and turn Microsoft into player two in the cloud computing and
unlock .Net.
AMD ryzen to EPYC with Lisa Su and TSMC became king of pure-play foundry under
Morris Chang.
i think there is a pattern here. a good engineer CEO have a vision of what a
company can be while a CFO turn CEO only see the bottom line.
i don't know how long Intel can keep squeezing 14+++++++++++++++ nm.
------
woodylondon
Is the issue here not the software who cares what he hardware is ? MacOS will
be ARM based, but if all the software out there needs to be rewritten for ARM
then we will lose a lot of great software. A lot of indie Mac software refuses
to use the AppStore for commercial reasons, and maybe now will be locked out
forever? I understand there will be an emulator but won't we end up with what
we had before when we moved from PowerPC > Intel where the old software was
slow and buggy and no one wanted to update as was not worth commercially worth
it
------
billpg
Will I be able to have an executable file with all of 68k, PPC, x86 and ARM
versions included?
~~~
larkost
Apple's .app system already has that ability, brought over from the NeXT
purchase. Those regularly had PPC and x86 binaries in the same package.
------
stevievee
(Speculation) Jim Keller to Apple soon?
------
robdachshund
This article has some issues. The author states that apple's best ARM chip is
comparable to one in a "top of the line" imac. This is utterly false.
They also state that the A13 trounces every other ARM chip by 2x yet uses a
chart that doesn't include the Qualcomm 865 which is in current flagship
android phones.
It doesn't really hurt the main point of the article but the logical appeal
falls flat when you don't seem to really understand what you are discussing at
a technical level.
~~~
messe
Here: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/15207/the-
snapdragon-865-perf...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/15207/the-
snapdragon-865-performance-preview-setting-the-stage-for-flagship-
android-2020/2)
A13 still comes out a fair bit ahead in performance, but not in energy usage.
------
acqq
> To that end, while I am encouraged by and fully support this bill by
> Congress to appropriate $22.8 billion in aid to semiconductor manufacturers
I fully don't agree. It appears as the exact opposite of what the rational use
of market forces should be.
~~~
tosers4
It's also about national defense, not just economy.
Republic of China is a big target of People's Republic of China. Sure, there
shouldn't be a war, but in the worst case scenario, USA is kinda screwed by
having all their chip manufacturing there. Notice that the new TSMC factory is
with big emphasis on military contracts.
~~~
acqq
> but in the worst case scenario, USA is kinda screwed by having all their
> chip manufacturing there.
Nobody should have any illusion: "in the worst case scenario" this "where" any
chips are manufactured will be simply totally irrelevant. It's obviously a
wrong model to plan for anything. The realistic model is the scenario which is
not the "worst case." And then, the question is just is the "aid" reasonable
or is it better compared to other existing or possible market forces.
Why giving away money "to spur the construction of chip factories in America"
when
1) the U.S. is anyway an immensely big customer and simply deciding on how it
buys what it needs can already influence the markets
2) the existing companies already have "chip factories" in America.
~~~
3JPLW
It's not just about blowing up factories with missiles. There's a much greater
persistent security threat.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do you keep a work journal/diary? How? - gt384u
I've observed over the years that people who I respected as "good at what they do" disproportionately often use a journal to keep track of their work.<p>I'm starting a job soon and want to try doing this for myself as I'd like to be able to reflect on what it is that I do. One obvious solution to this is a bound paper notebook and pen, which have nice properties of taking both text and images easily with pen or pencil, but suffer from not being searchable and are yet another thing to carry. Also, as a software engineer I find I can type much faster than I can write.<p>Another option I'm investigating is using emacs and org-mode, but I haven't found a way to nicely embed images into emacs besides ASCII art with artist-mode, which I find to be relatively crude for the sort of sketching I typically do.<p>How do you guys go about journaling for work? If you include images along with your text, how do you do it? Bonus points for lightweight or portable solutions.
======
paulsutter
My email from 1982 was a pretty good journal of my high school life and work
(I was a programmer).
Today my text messages are a good journal of my personal life, email a good
journal of my work, and my Facebook timeline a good journal of my interests (I
post news I find really interesting).
Those are all "implicit" journals but they work pretty well. I can "relive"
the financial crisis by reading my facebook timeline.
If you want a pure, deliberate journal, today that would take the form of a
blog. I wonder how many people still keep a private, deliberate journal along
the lines of an old school diary. Interesting survey maybe.
------
dtromero
I use a dedicated gmail address. Here's why: (1) It's portable. I can send
myself an email from my phone, laptop, ipad, etc. (2) It's searchable. I can
go back and search for specific keywords or topics I wrote about. (3) It's
easy to organize. I can label my posts as personal/work/etc and setup filters
to apply these labels based on the subject line. (4) Short learning curve. I
use my personal gmail account everyday. & (5) It's relatively secure.
Edit: (6) It's free.
~~~
U_U
You should check out <http://evernote.com/>.
------
rasengan0
i currently use deft + org-mode 6.33 in cygwin emacs -nw trying to ween off 7
years of tiddlywiki (tw). currently i'm finding friction with search having
been spoiled on the excellent YourSearch UI <http://tiddlywiki.abego-
software.de/> tw will support imgs inline but with org-mode i just use links
and view from the host OS. After years of trying everything the only bit of
wisdom that has worked consistently is ISO date stamp everything in any system
(client or cloud) so you can extract a log later for archiving and analysis.
no xml, json just one log record prefixed with iso date for sorting
([0-9]{4}(\\.|\\-)?[0-9]{2}(\\.|\\-)?[0-9]{2}(\s|T)?[0-9]{2}\:.+) KISS
actually is slick
------
fourmii
I've been using Evernote. And recently, I started using Trello as a PM tool to
help me organize my tasks. They're both free and have decent iphone apps,
which I often use when I'm at events and meetups and don't want to use my
laptop. Another huge plus: both are free.
------
j45
I've recently (and finally) turned to Evernote. They've got it figured out
quite well.
------
jordhy
I use Day One as a professional journal and Path for personal stuff.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
12 Things I Wish I'd Known Before Building a Web App - luccastera
http://www.slideshare.net/carsonified/12-things-i-wish-id-known-before-building-a-web-app/
======
danw
This would be more useful with the audio from the talk:
<http://cdn2.libsyn.com/carsonsystems/Ryan_Carson.mp3>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Illusion with a Future [pdf] (2004) - dredmorbius
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027925?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
======
dredmorbius
SciHub or LibGen deliver, for those interested.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why use Docker and what are the business cases for using it? - dmarg
I recently did a very basic tutorial on Docker. Afterward, when talking to the tech lead of the project I am working on, he asked me "What are the business cases for using Docker, how could it save us money, how could it make us more efficient?" I told him I would do some research to find the best answers and figured I would turn to you all here at HackerNews for some advice.<p>Thanks in advance!<p>Just so you know, I currently work on a project at my company that uses AWS, Codeship and BitBucket for development and production. AWS and Elasticbeanstalk host our application, Codeship runs tests on changes to branches in BitBucket and then pushes the code that passes on certain branches to different AWS environments for Development or Production.
======
lastofus
Does Docker provide anything useful to someone who develops on OS X and
deploys to Linux VMs (Digital Ocean, Linode, AWS)?
Current setup is something like:
\- Develop locally (OS X) \- Test deploy to local Vagrant Linux VM
(provisioned by Ansible) \- Deploy to staging/live Linux VM w/ Ansible (or
Fabric if I'm being lazy)
I've been following the Docker hype for some time now, but ever time I look
into it, I couldn't find any info on how Docker could make my life simpler or
easier. If anything, it would just add another complex abstraction layer to
have to deal with.
What am I missing?
~~~
justizin
You can build a docker image in a vagrant VM on OSX and deploy that exact
docker image to production.
If your vagrant image resembles production, it's probably fine, but there's a
level of confidence to be reached from deploying the exact entire self-
contained binary, shipping it through QA and staging, and eventually promoting
it to production.
~~~
pekk
This is also a use case for not developing on OS X, which doesn't have
anything to do with production anyway.
~~~
mdaniel
Can you clarify? Do you mean that one should only develop upon the platform
that will be used in production?
~~~
justizin
Yes, the previous commenter is a purist with no battery life on their laptop.
Further, if you're in the middle of upgrading your production OS, does this
mean that you need two developer machines?
C'mon!
------
osipov
There are many ways of using Docker and obviously different companies could
come up with their own business cases for adopting the technology. So let me
focus on one scenario and we can talk about whether it makes sense for your
environment.
Software engineering is often difficult because programmers have to deal with
inconsistent environments for development and for production execution of
their products. Due to mismatches between these environments, developers often
found bugs that surface in one environment but not in another.
Hardware based virtualization (VMWare, HyperV, etc) helped with the
inconsistency issue because it enabled developers to create dev/test
environments that could later be replicated into production. However this
category of virtualization requires more computational resources (esp.
storage) than operating system virtualization like LXC used by Docker.
In addition to requiring less resources than hardware virtualization, Docker
defined a convenient container specification format (Dockerfile) and a way to
share these specifications (DockerHub). When used together, these Docker
technologies accelerate the process of defining a consistent environment for
both development and production in your application. Dockerfiles are easy to
maintain and help reduce the need for a dedicated operations team for your
application. In buzzword speak, your team can become more "DevOps".
Docker, by the virtue of relying on a thinner virtualization layer than
hardware hypervisors like VMWare, also has higher performance for I/O
intensive operations. When used on bare metal hardware, you going to be able
to get better performance for many databases in Docker containers compared to
databases running in a virtual machine guest.
So to recap, Docker can help you
\- maintain consistent dev/test/prod environments
\- use less resources than hardware virtualization
\- free up the time your team spends on dev to ops handoffs
\- improve your app I/O performance compared to running in a hardware
virtualization based virtual machine guest
However if you are using AWS, note that Docker Container Service available
from Amazon actually doesn't give you Docker on bare metal. That's because
Docker Containers run in AWS virtual machine guests virtualized by Xen
hypervisor. So with AWS you are paying a penalty in resources and performance
when using Docker.
~~~
takeda
Great, but what are the benefits of running Docker in AWS? You are still
running VMs and you are being charged for running them. With Docker you are
simply putting yet another layer of complexity, because now you have to run
more beefier VMs, you now have problem with network communication between
containers running on different hosts. So you will most likely need to use
overlay network. You also decrease resiliency, because now when AWS terminated
a single VM, all apps running on that node suddenly disappear.
I also don't get the argument about running the same container in
dev/test/prod. For example my company is working on going Docker and one of
the problem with these environments is that app running there has different
configuration. So the idea to solve it is to create three different versions
of the same container. Genius! But now are you really running the same thing
in dev/test/prod? How is it different to what we did in the past? Especially
that before Docker through our continuous delivery we actually were using
exact same artifact on machines set up with chef that were configured the same
way as in prod, while with Docker now we plan to use three different
containers.
~~~
osipov
>what are the benefits of running Docker in AWS?
I don't see benefits to running Docker in AWS. In my opinion, AWS implemented
its Docker-based Container Service very poorly. I advise my customers against
using AWS when want to use Docker. There are many bare metal as a service
providers out in the marketplace.
>the argument about running the same container in dev/test/prod
Is this issue really caused by Docker because you said that you had consistent
environments when built by chef?
~~~
notwedtm
Can you name a few bare metal as a service providers?
~~~
nickstinemates
Rackspace, SoftLayer/Bluemix
------
Rezo
I'd be interested to know if and how people are integrating Docker into their
edit-compile-test development cycle?
For me personally, the time it takes from performing an edit to seeing your
change "live" on a developer's machine is extremely important. To this end
we've spent some effort in making our own services and dependencies run
natively on both OS X and Linux to minimize the turnaround time (currently at
around 4 seconds).
Docker fixes the "works on my machine" problem, which is worth tackling but
not something you run into too often, but (in my admittedly limited
experience) introduces pain into the developer's workflow. Right now, I'm
leaning towards enforcing identical environments in CI testing and production
via Docker images, but not necessarily extending that to the developer's
machines. Developers can still download images of dependencies, just not for
the thing they're actually developing. I'd love to hear alternative takes.
~~~
viktorbenei
We do a really simple trick. We have one Dockerfile, which we use for dev and
for production, every configuration difference is handled through environment
variables (which is easy to manage with docker-compose, Ansible, etc.), so you
can run the same image everywhere and change the environment configuration to
switch between dev/test/prod.
So to solve the live reload problem we do only one thing in development which
we don't do anywhere else: the Dockerfile copies all the current source files
into the image, but we run the container with a mounted volume of the source
code - which in dev mappes exactly the same way the Dockerfile defines the src
copy.
This way when you create the image and start the dev container it won't change
anything, but as the src is mounted on top of the included src in the image
the regular (Rails) auto reload works perfectly.
For test and prod we just simply don't do any volume mounting at all, and use
the baked in src directly.
Easy and fast everywhere, all you have to control is how and when the images
are created (ex: we do a full clean checkout in a new directory before
building a test image, to ensure it only contains committed code. EDIT: by
test I mean for local testing, while you're working on revisions, a CI server
does the automatic testing).
------
collyw
To tell all the cool kids you are using it.
(Ok, I know there are real use cases for Docker, but I see a lot of hype as
well. People telling my mathematician friend that she needs to use docker at
the start of her project - it is likely to be a one off graph she needs to
produce for a research paper).
~~~
osipov
There is a big push for reproducibility in science. If you friend can package
the process for building that graph in a Dockerfile, it is more likely that
readers of her paper will be able to reproduce her results.
~~~
mugsie
or, you know, publish the formula, so readers can reproduce in whatever
language / system they want.
Reproducibility is a big push.... but not like you are suggesting. Shipping a
dockerfile is the equivalent of saying "This works, _if_ you use this flask,
this pipette, this GCMS and this piece of litmus paper"
Docker is not the only solution to problems. It solves some, but you can't
tack it on to everything.
~~~
log_n
Why not both? I am not in academia but I was under the impression that some
academics might be publishing 'questionable' results that cannot be reproduced
at all in order get their paper count up for tenure review. Not to mention
puff-pieces from industry that basically serve as PR in peer reviewed journals
without furthering their discipline.
So shipping working code (even if it comes with a required pipette) might be a
nice requirement for a peer reviewed publication to take on in order to keep
their journal relevant. Shipping in Docker or similar guarantees
reproducibility.
~~~
collyw
If the code is crap, and only works on one particular data set, then putting
it in a docker container ain't going to help.
------
istvan__
One business use case is to stop threads between the Ops and the Dev team
about missing JAR files on a production system.
If Docker was fixing this only, I would still use it. There is nothing better
than a single binary deployment that is byte to byte the same as it was
running on a dev laptop and a QA env.
~~~
mcguire
Do you mean like a war file?
(Yes, I'm being hyperbolic, unless you want to have your entire application
running from a servlet container with nothing in front of it. And I agree, a
single deployment object is just about the only way to keep your sanity. But
still, this isn't the first thing that's proclaimed that advantage.)
~~~
istvan__
No, I do not mean like a war file. I am talking about an average Java
developer who does not understand how classpath works, how environment works
and what are the assumption that is built in to the code and blames everything
on other people . For a long time they could get away with this, post-Docker
world they cannot.
~~~
boomzilla
Not sure why you still have this problem. In Java world, Maven build system
solved this long, long time ago. There is even a plug-in that builds a uber
jar that can be invoked with JVM as the only dependency.
~~~
xahrepap
Still have problems with Java versions, Java security policies (encryption
strength, etc, that you manually have to add files to your JDK/JRE to work),
external dependencies, etc.
We use Java, Maven, JBoss + Ear/War deployments. And "Works on my Box" is one
of the most frustrating problems we have. This is one of the reasons we're
pushing toward Docker.
------
b00gizm
I absolutely love it (Docker + docker-compose) for creating homogenous local
development environments. And if your app needs a MongoDB, Elasticsearch or
anything else, it's as easy as adding one line to your overall docker-compose
config file to link those services to your app. No need to pollute your
development machine, you can just have anything running in Docker containers
and share them across your team.
I've created several repos on Github for that matter. Here's for example some
boilerplate for running Node.js, Express, Nginx, Redis and Grunt/Gulp inside
Docker containers:
[https://github.com/b00giZm/docker-compose-nodejs-
examples](https://github.com/b00giZm/docker-compose-nodejs-examples)
~~~
towelguy
I love docker-compose, it is to services what npm is to packages.
That said, I'm only using it in development. For production there's so many
options I don't even know where to begin:
[http://stackoverflow.com/a/18287169/3557327](http://stackoverflow.com/a/18287169/3557327)
------
MalcolmDiggs
In my experience, if you start hearing: "I don't know what's wrong, it works
fine on my localhost!" a lot, then it may be time to think about Docker.
In more general terms: more the complex the environment, the more moving
pieces, the more developers on the team, the more servers in production, the
more likely there's going be a discrepancy between what Developer-A has
running on his machine, and what Developer-B has running on theirs. Docker
helps keep everybody on the same page.
For me personally: I'm a dev on a number of projects, and Docker helps me keep
my dependencies straight. I no longer have to change things around locally
just to work on Project-A, I just get their latest Docker image, and I'm good
to go.
~~~
msravi
How is this different from sharing a plain old VM image and doing the same
thing? Is there any particular advantage that a Docker image brings?
~~~
Matt3o12_
Docker images use the union file system. That means when a new version of that
image is available, you often only pull a few megabytes from the hub because
it already has the OS.
A docker container is also way more lightweight. Instead of running a full OS,
you I only run one process. So your docker image starts within seconds
~~~
ccozan
Is this more like a Solaris zone or a Linux chroot-ed env?
~~~
nickstinemates
A lot like Linux chroot, with some additional features, restrictions, and a
mechanism to share them easily.
------
thebigspacefuck
Makes system administration somewhat easier since the host OS can stay the
same and docker containers change, while giving developers more control. I
have total control of which version of packages is installed, which OS I'm
using. I don't have to create a ticket, argue over the ask, and get approval
just to change an web server timeout. It sort of usurps the sys admin role,
though, which might be a negative. I can move my container anywhere that's
running Docker and all packages are there inside of the container. If you
spend a lot of time setting up new boxes, that's a plus. Before, I had to dump
all packages, figure out which ones were missing, then install all of them,
and the host OS had to be exactly the same. Now I know it's exactly the same,
all the time, anywhere.
My only warning is that using anything but Ubuntu for your build host is going
to take way too long and you're going to be waiting hours for it to complete
if you don't have any layers cached.
------
colordrops
It's very useful in situations where you need a reproduceable deployment and
also need high performance and direct access to hardware. We run simulations
that require a lot of setup, and we tried with VMs at first, but they were too
slow and the GL driver inside of the VM didn't implement all the extensions we
needed. Docker worked perfectly in this case, though we have to run it in
privileged mode.
------
mrbig4545
I never figured it out, we could do everything we need in production with LXC,
puppet, carton and perlbrew. Combined with a vagrant box for dev, we have no
issues.
Although I do use docker to run deluge in a container with openvpn on my home
pc, but only because someone else had gone to the trouble of writing the
dockerfile and getting it to work.
It seems to break a lot though, when I have time I'm going to get rid of it
and replace it with a systemd-nspawn container, because there's less
handwaving involved and I can get it to work correctly.
~~~
ecliptik
Could you post a link to the Dockerfile for the deluge/openvpn container?
I have a VM setup with transmission/openvpn since I was having issues getting
the VPN to work with Docker's networking and it was just easier to use a
standard VM instead.
~~~
mrbig4545
Sure, this is the one I used, with private internet access.com ,
[https://github.com/jbogatay/docker-
piavpn](https://github.com/jbogatay/docker-piavpn)
I'm sure you could easily change it to work with other VPN providers
------
d0m
Something noting is that more and more PaaS (Platform as a service) are using
docker.. so sometimes you're not making the decision as a developer to use a
docker, you're just forced to use it.
I'm saying this because I know docker solves a lot of pain on the devops side,
but on the "software" side it's been painful all the time I've touched it.
I.e. practically speaking, it makes releasing much slower, sometimes I'm
forced to do a hard reset on the container rather than just reload nginx, etc.
My suggestion is to go with what's simpler for your stack. If you're
struggling with having to manage and deploy new configured/secure ec2
instances every day, then it might be worth looking into docker.
~~~
jacques_chester
> _Something noting is that more and more PaaS (Platform as a service) are
> using docker_
To expand on this:
* Heroku have introduced Docker-based tools to run their buildpacks outside of their staging servers,
* Cloud Foundry has, in public beta, the Diego scheduler, which can accept and manage Docker images,
* OpenShift 3 uses Docker and Kubernetes as its core components.
Disclaimer: I work for Pivotal, who founded Cloud Foundry.
------
oxygen0211
I can give you two first hand examples which also revolve about the apsects
osipov mentioned:
#1 is in my dayjob:
We use docker in combination with vagrant for spinning up a test environment
consisting of several containers with different components (both ur own
products and 3rd party) to run integration tests against them.
The main reasons for this approach are: \- We can supply containers with the
installed producs which saves time on automated runs since you don't have to
run a setup every time
\- We can provide certain customizations which are only needed for testing and
which we don't want to ship to customers without doing all the steps needed
for that over and over again
\- We have exact control and version how the environment looks like.
\- Resources are better distributed than in hardware virtualization
environments
#2 Is a pet project of mine, a backend for a mobile App. There are still big
parts missing, but in the moment it consists of a backend application which
exposes a REST API running on equinox plus a database (in an own container).
The reasons I see for using docker here:
\- I have control and versioning of the environment
\- I can test on my laptop in the same components as prod, but scaled down (by
just spinning up the database and one backend container)
\- Since more and more cloud providers are supporting Docker (I am currently
having an eye on AWS and DigitalOcean, haven't decided yet), switching the
provider in the future will be easier compared to having, say a proprietary
image or whatever.
\- If I ever scale up the poject and onboard new teammembers, the entry
barriers for (at least) helping in Ops will be lower than if they have to
learn the single technologies until they get at least basic knowledge of the
project.
------
rcconf
My apologies if I'm hijacking the original poster.
Does Docker handle multi-environment configuration management? For example:
qa, stage and live have the same config files, but different values.
Currently we're using Ansible and we set variables for a specific environment,
then we feed those variables into config files based on where we're deploying
to (config files are not duplicated, only variables that feed into config
files.)
All of our configuration is in git and we can quickly see and change it.
How does Docker handle this?
~~~
geerlingguy
One way I've seen many people tackle this problem is to have the
Dockerfile/image built in a more generic way, then the end of the Dockerfile
kicks off an Ansible playbook (or some other lite CM tool) that will configure
everything for the proper environment (e.g. change configuration and kick off
a service, something along those lines).
Some will even go as far as using a CM tool to do the entire internal
Dockerfile build, and the Dockerfile is just a wrapper around the CM tool.
This does require more bloat inside the Docker image, as you need to have your
CM tool or whatever other supporting files/scripts installed in the image, but
it does make more complex scenarios much simpler.
~~~
yebyen
> you need to have your CM tool or whatever other supporting files/scripts
> installed in the image
This pattern is maybe even more helpful than harmful, for making your dev
environment more closely match production, when your final deploy target is
not a docker container.
(You are obviously going to want to see those build scripts running in test,
if not earlier; certainly once, before they should kick off in a production
environment.) You could do more individual steps in the docker file, just like
you could store your token credentials and database handles in the git
repository. Neither way is "completely wrong" but there is a trade-off.
------
vruiz
Side question. I'm well aware of the benefits of docker but, has anybody
measured performance degradation due to lack of machine specialization? Back
in the web 1.0 days it was common knowledge that you start in 1 server, then
you split into 1 app server and 1 database server and you can get 4x the
capacity. Did we lose all that with the docker way? Is it not so relevant
anymore with modern multicore CPUs?
~~~
distracteddev90
Docker doesn't force you to put your app and your db on the same image. That
is up to you. Most have "App" images and "DB" images separate.
If we want to get really specific, Its also common to see the "DB" image split
up between the image of the disk where the data is actually persisted, and the
image of the actual DB process. This makes it easy to play around with your
data under different versions of your DB.
------
ZitchDog
If you're familiar with Java, think of a docker container like a WAR or EAR,
except it can contain ANY dependency, not just Java code. Database, binaries,
cache server, you name it. The implementation is vastly different, but the
effect is a deployment artifact that can be configured at build time, and
easily deployed to multiple servers.
------
atroyn
Codeship have a great series on Docker for Continuous delivery on their blog:
[http://blog.codeship.com/](http://blog.codeship.com/)
That said I've paged the founders to this thread, they can make the case much
more effectively than I can. (disclosure: I don't work for Codeship).
------
jgrowl
Besides just actually running software, I also find it really neat when
projects use docker to build their entire application. It provides an
effective means of documenting all of your dependencies and making
reproducible builds.
Take the docker-compose for example. You can just check the code out, run a
single script that builds the project for your environment and everything is
pretty much self contained in the dockerfile
([https://github.com/docker/compose/blob/master/Dockerfile](https://github.com/docker/compose/blob/master/Dockerfile)).
You don't have to clog up your host computer with deps and you get an
executable plopped into an output bin folder.
Additionally, the steps in the dockerfile get cached so subsequent builds are
really fast.
~~~
davexunit
>making reproducible builds.
Docker builds actually aren't reproducible. There are many sources of non-
determinism that Docker cannot address. Do you use the base images from
DockerHub as-is or do you run 'apt-get upgrade' or whatever for security
patches? If you do, the result you get from building that image (as opposed to
using what's in a cache) is different depending on the time it was built. The
same goes for any Dockerfiles that compile from source. Hell, just extracting
a source tarball results in a different hash of the source tree because of the
timestamps on the files. You and I have little hope of building the same image
and getting the same exact result.
Build reproducibility is a very interesting topic with some unsolved issues,
but Docker isn't helping with it. See
[https://reproducible.debian.net](https://reproducible.debian.net) for a good
resource about build reproducibility.
~~~
vezzy-fnord
Don't know why you were downvoted. Docker doesn't give you reproducible builds
because you're still running in a raw host OS environment with all its state,
but simply the subsystems partitioned into their own namespaces. Docker is
more akin to a snapshot than reproducible.
------
rlpb
Docker, or containers in general? I'd really like to hear about Docker
specifically, but most of the answers so far seem to relate to containers in
general, rather than Docker specifically.
What are the business cases for using Docker over some other container-based
solution?
------
fu86
We have a shitload of servers running CentOS for historical reasons. We can't
change the distribution because all the services running on this servers are
tight to the quirks and special cases of this distribution. So we need to live
with CentOS.
Some of our newer services need a up to date version of glibc and a lot of
other dependencies CentOS can't provide. So we use docker to boot up Ubuntu
14.04 containers and run the services with special needs in them.
Another great thing is isolating scripts we don't trust. We allow our
customers to run scripts of all kind on our servers --> inside Docker
containers. So the customers can't mess with the hostsystem.
~~~
liviu-
>running CentOS for historical reasons
Is CentOS not the state-of-the-art Linux distro to run for servers (besides
RHEL for support)?
~~~
njharman
Maybe safe-of-the-art. It is stable (and old) which is the way many people
like their servers. But, it certainly isn't the latest and greatest.
~~~
cheald
The entire point of RHEL/CentOS is that it isn't bleeding edge; it will
certainly be modern though. I think it's rather unfair to call it "old"
though; the latest release was in March.
~~~
njharman
Fair enough. But the mentality that picks stable over up-to-date tends to
never upgrade. I'm stuck supporting rhel5.5, our "new" systems are 6.5
------
allan_s
our use case for docker is the following:
we're a webshop, and recently we've standardized our stack on
symfony2/nginx/postgresql, so all our websites use that. but beside of that we
have some that we maintain that need to run on old version of php/centos.
As we have only 1 server internally for pre-staging environments, docker does
help us to save a lot of memory/cpu compare to what we had before (virtualbox,
yes...), without needing a lot of machine to setup (like openstack).
Also we don't really have a guy dedicated to sysadmin, so the less time we
need to spent on server administration, the better we feel. So we have a set
of 3 containers (for symfony+php_fpm / postgresql / nginx ) that already tuned
to meet our needs, with a ansible playbook [https://github.com/allan-
simon/ansible-docker-symfony2-vagra...](https://github.com/allan-
simon/ansible-docker-symfony2-vagrant/) , that we reuse for every new project
we have. So that the developers can have a working stack, without needing to
reinvent the wheel, they even don't need any knowledge of system adminstration
"run this ansible command, done" ! without any risk to break other services.
Also the reproductability and the stateless properties of docker containers
has helped to nearly eliminate the class of bugs "the guy that does not work
in our company anymore made a tweak one day on the server to solve this
business critical bug, but nobody know what it is but we need to redeploy and
the bug has reappeared"
------
muralimadhu
We have been using docker for about a year at Demandforce, Intuit. We have had
a mostly positive experience with it.
Plusses:
\- Dont see any environment related issues because the docker image is the
same in every environment
\- Easy onboarding to teams that use docker because you dont need to setup
anything new. This is especially useful if your company encourages developers
to work across teams
\- Ops can build around infrastructure around this and be sure that every team
builds and runs code in the same way
\- If your application is complex, using docker-compose, its extremely simple
to setup your dev environment
\- The community is moving towards docker, and it doesnt hurt your resume if
you have production docker experience
Minuses:
\- For an extremely simple application (that you think will remain simple over
its lifetime), it might be more overhead to use docker than not use it
\- Even though we’ve been using boot2docker and vagrant to setup docker on
MacOSX, it hasnt worked seamlessly. When you get on and off a vpn for example,
boot2docker has constantly messed things up. If you can get your dev setup
right, docker works well. If not, it can be a pain sometimes on OSX
\- Although its easy to build docker images for most of the open source
software out there (if docker images dont already exist), it can be a pain to
do that for enterprise software. Try using docker with oracle db. You might
get it to work. You wont have fun with it !!
------
deftek
I would keep an eye on this project:
[http://www.opencontainers.org/](http://www.opencontainers.org/)
~~~
dmarg
Heard about this and seems like everyone and their mother are signing on. This
is one of the reasons why I asked the main question is because I want to fully
understand what the business case is for using Docker.
------
zalmoxes
I'm a sysadmin for a private K-8 school. I use docker because of the ease of
deploying and upgrading a large number of tools on a limited number of
servers.
I've used puppet for several years to manage our infrastructure, and puppet is
still managing all our staff and student laptops, but for servers, I've
switched everything to CoreOS + Docker.
------
collyw
Can people elaborate on when it would be better to use a virtual machine and
when it would be beneficial to use a container?
~~~
takeda
If you have own hardware (e.g. Data Center) that is running your own code that
you trust. By going with containers you can pack more applications into the
same hardware (less overhead), therefore your costs ate lower.
If you running in AWS, you use VMs anyway so the overhead is there no matter
what (and also is not your concern, because you pay for the VMs). By adding
Docker there you basically adding one extra layer on top of it, so from the
infrastructure point of view you making things even more complex.
------
zwischenzug
I talk about this a bit here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVUPmmUU3yY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVUPmmUU3yY)
this was a year ago, so a little out of date. I now work for another company
that is into Docker.
I also have various bits on my blog:
[http://zwischenzugs.tk](http://zwischenzugs.tk)
check out the jenkins ones, for example:
[http://zwischenzugs.tk/index.php/2014/11/08/taming-slaves-
wi...](http://zwischenzugs.tk/index.php/2014/11/08/taming-slaves-with-docker-
and-shutit/)
[http://zwischenzugs.tk/index.php/2015/03/19/scale-your-
jenki...](http://zwischenzugs.tk/index.php/2015/03/19/scale-your-jenkins-
compute-with-your-dev-team-use-docker-and-jenkins-swarm/)
~~~
i_have_to_speak
In your Jenkins example, why use docker? Why not ask the devs to directly
install Jenkins on their box?
~~~
zwischenzug
Because the builds would not be contained. There were many dependencies that
needed to be installed on each box.
Using Docker meant that the slaves could be built from scratch as well.
See here: [http://zwischenzugs.tk/index.php/2014/11/08/taming-slaves-
wi...](http://zwischenzugs.tk/index.php/2014/11/08/taming-slaves-with-docker-
and-shutit/)
------
irvani
We at PeachDish use Docker and Bitbucket to scale our BeanStalk environment.
Docker has helped us deploy test site much easier as one can be assured that
everything needed to run the app is in the dock. It helps us build consistent
environments for testing.
------
vsaen
simplest case is that it can serve as a multiple staging environment, when you
have loads of APP in a single code base (often startups going about prod-
market fit). With docker tech shipping speed= production speed. Without docker
you are slowed down by 2x or more.Without docker, either you set up a lot of
staging environments, which is not great and costly. Or you use one single
testing environment and let each of you tech person wait for hours, wasting
time, while QA tries to test one branch and you have another idiot deploying
another brand on staging. While there are more complex/useful cases, this is
one simple biz value i get out of it for my team.
------
trustfundbaby
Mostly answered already, but another use case is getting engineers up to speed
on environments that they're not familiar with. For example, I work a lot with
Rails apps, and sometimes we'll need a dev to come in and work some css/html
magic or something like that. Well getting them setup with rvm, ruby, rails,
bundler, mysql, elasticsearch and working through compilation errors on OSX
can be a real nightmare, especially if you set up your env 2 years ago and
have just been updating it incrementally since.
When we dockerize the app, they can be setup with the docker image and ready
to go in under an hour, without having to screw with their system ... much.
------
phunkystuff
Here's a really simple example of a project that I had set up using docker.
For my website I have it set up with continuous integration to run my tests
when I merge into master and build a docker image which it then pushes to the
docker registry. I then have it ssh into my host server, pull that image, then
run the new container and remove the old one.
Boom, i've just deployed my website by simply merging a PR into my master!
This is just a simple use case, and I probably wouldn't suggest deploying a
production ready site like this, but it's really cool! It's really simple to
just pass around images and have things up and running on local dev's too
~~~
mrbig4545
This is not something that is unique to docker though. I could just as easily
set up a hook to deploy our site without docker, but it's not something I
need.
I prefer to manually deploy, it's only one command, and I can make sure it's
all worked correctly.
That said, I will be moving that command to a chat command, as I like that.
But even then, it'll be a manually triggered command.
I have auto deploy setup for CI testing, as in that case I do want to know
that those branches are ready for deployment to prod, when I want to.
~~~
phunkystuff
Ahh that's true, I guess what I was getting at was that it makes the deploys
much quicker and easier (at least in my experience).
I was also playing around with a chat command to spin up PR's/branches that
haven't been merged into master yet, onto a temp container for viewing! Dunno,
maybe i'm just not as familiar with other tools that can do similar things as
easily
------
mercanator
In our organization we have seen tremendous value using docker for our CI
server (bamboo) and for infrastructure deployment. On the CI server side of
things.... Our CI server a.k.a the "host machine" in docker speak has a MySQL
database that we did not want used by all of our builds and wanted to isolate
the creation of our application from the ground up within using its own MySQL
instance. Additionally there is a lot of other peripheral software that we did
not want to install on our host machine but it was critical for our unit tests
to run. This is where docker is valuable to us from a build perspective. It
allows us to isolate the application for unit testing and not get caught up
with the possibility of other running software on the same machine affecting
the builds, therefore freeing us up from debugging, and therefore saving the
company money because developers are not wasting time debugging CI server
issues. It's easy to isolate CI server related issues from the docker
container running the unit tests because a developer can just run the same
tests using the container on their local machine, so it creates a consistent
environment.
On the infrastructure deployment side of things.... Previous to our
"dockerized" infrastructure we were managing about 7 different AMI's for all
our servers and it was becoming a pain in the butt to manage the installation
of new software if our application called for it, create a new AMI, then re-
deploy said AMI. If you have experience with AWS and you have done this enough
times, I'm sure you have faced at one point or another long wait times for
your AMI to be created before you can re-deploy with that newly created AMI.
This is time wasted on the application deployment side of things, but also on
the personnel side of things while you wait for that damn thing to be created
so you can re-deploy. Time is money and money waiting for resources to be
available or for AMI's to be created is money taken away from the business.
Additionally though in its infancy stage, we are using docker-compose
([https://docs.docker.com/compose/](https://docs.docker.com/compose/)) which
offers some really nice ways of defining your container infrastructure within
a single machine, I highly recommend looking into this for further efficiency.
------
McElroy
To get some additional viewpoints on containerization, you could also take a
look at what has been said about similar, preceeding technologies:
* Solaris Zones, see also SmartOS Zones based on that
* FreeBSD jails
------
stevelandiss
I consider it as a replacement for deploying applications as a virtual
machine. That is, if I want to host compute and let anyone run any random
program in a reproducible manner on my server, I could let them run it in
docker and be done with it. So as am IT admin, I find this a useful
alternative to letting people run arbitrary programs and add restrictions
around it. I think this is more of an IT-OPS tool than something a developer
would want to spend time with
------
e40
Say you're running on CentOS 6.6 (or the equivalent RHEL) and you want to run
some software that won't work because you need a newer library than is
installed (this recently happened to me recently trying to install
Transmission).
You have two choices:
1\. Upgrade to CentOS 7.x.
2\. Use Docker and install the software into a container using a newer OS
(CentOS 7.x or a newer Debian).
#1 is very expensive and sometimes impossible (if you need to be on CentOS 6.x
for compatibility reasons).
#2 is very cheap.
There's one of your business cases right there.
~~~
ecliptik
This is our current business case. Multiple CentOS/RHEL 6 systems in a global
environment and we want to run an application that requires Ubuntu and newer
libraries.
Instead of spinning up new VMs in each environment for one new application, we
can instead run a Ubuntu container with the application within the existing
environment. This brings with it all the other benefits such as continuous
delivery and orchestration that we didn't have before.
Once the platform is established there is no limit what we can run within a
repeatable and consistent environment.
------
purans
For my project, I wanted to have an automated and easy code to deployment
setup, so here's what I have it working Bitbucket -> Private Docker Repository
-> Tutum ([https://www.tutum.co/](https://www.tutum.co/)) - Live app
It's working pretty well. Once you check in your code, docker repository
hooked to bitbucket will build the docker image and then you can start
deployment from Tutum with one click.
------
cheald
The only truly compelling case I've seen for Docker is Amazon's ECS, which
takes a cluster of EC2 machines and will automatically distribute containers
among them where ever there is capacity, according to declared resource needs
of a given container. The ability to waste less of your EC2 resources is a
very clear business win.
Everything else is still nice, but it's basically "dev environments suck
less".
~~~
whalesalad
FYI this is very similar to Mesos + Marathon. However, both feel way too
verbose and painful to use. I'm very interested in seeing how Docker Swarm
plays out.
This ecosystem is still so raw.
~~~
jacques_chester
> _However, both feel way too verbose and painful to use_
Try Lattice: [http://lattice.cf/](http://lattice.cf/)
Disclaimer, I work for Pivotal, which developed Lattice based on Cloud Foundry
components.
------
michaelbarton
I've been using Docker to build a catalogue of similar types of software.
Using Docker allows all the software to have the same interface which makes it
easier to compare like-for-like. Here's the site -
[http://nucleotid.es/](http://nucleotid.es/)
------
rehevkor5
Have you ever used provisioning software like Chef to prepare a server to run
your software? Have you ever used that in conjunction with Vagrant in order to
test out your provisioning and software deployment locally? Docker replaces
(or can replace) all of that.
~~~
rubiquity
Docker does NOT replace configuration management tools like Chef, Puppet and
Ansible. Those are still necessary for preparing the host machine which Docker
containers will run on. Where Docker does alleviate/reallocate some things is
in the configuration of the containers that run on those hosts. Instead of
configuring the host for Ruby/Python/etc. you would move that configuration to
your Dockerfile. But I think CM tools also have support for generating
Dockerfiles, so there's that too.
~~~
yebyen
> Chef, Puppet and Ansible. Those are still necessary for preparing the host
> machine
In many cases now, they are not. Docker containers can run on CoreOS, which
machines are designed to be configured entirely from a cloud-config file,
organized in clusters.
With Deis for example, you can build and orchestrate your scalable web service
in Docker containers without even writing a Dockerfile, or necessarily knowing
anything about how the Docker container is built. The builder creates slugs
with the necessary binaries to host your service, and you tell the container
how to run itself with a (often one-line) Procfile.
I would still want chef scripts for my database server, but for things that
can live in a container on a Fleet cluster, I most certainly do not use Chef,
but I absolutely do get reproducible hands-off builds for my runtime
environment, and without spending time individually preparing the host
machines.
------
kasia66
Hi, You can have a look at Cloud 66 ([http://www.cloud66.com/how-it-
works](http://www.cloud66.com/how-it-works)) a full stack container management
as a service in production. Cloud 66 uses Docker technology and integrates 11
open sources tools to cover end to end stack deployment on any cloud provider
or on your own server, within one click.
You can compare different Docker solutions
([http://www.cloud66.com/compare](http://www.cloud66.com/compare)) and read
how Cloud 66 used Docker.([http://blog.cloud66.com/docker-in-production-from-
a-to-z/](http://blog.cloud66.com/docker-in-production-from-a-to-z/)).
(disclaimer: I do work at Cloud 66 )
------
yread
This application uses it to spin up replicable instances of genome processing
pipelines [https://arvados.org](https://arvados.org)
------
clayh
Do people use Docker in conjunction with Vagrant now? Or is Docker used as a
replacement for Vagrant for a homogenous development environment?
~~~
Tomdarkness
We use vagrant on our dev machines to spin up a CoreOS cluster. Could use
something like boot2docker but we prefer the dev environment to mirror
production as close as possible.
------
bampolampy
(disclosure: I do work for Codeship :P )
There are a lot of really great reasons to use Docker, or any container
technology for CI.
First off containers give you a standard interface to a reproducable build.
This means you can run something in a container and expect it to behave the
same way as something a co-worker runs on their workstation, or something run
in the staging or production environments. For CI this is an absolute
necessity. Rather than running tests locally, and expecting a CI server
closely tracking the production/staging environments to catch issues with
different version of the OS or libraries you can expect any build that passes
locally to also pass on CI. This cuts down on a lot of potential back and
forth. The only shared dependency between CI/local/prod/staging is docker
itself.
Another benefit is (almost) complete isolation. This means rather than having
different vm images tracking different projects, you can have a single vm
image with docker, and have each container running on the vm for any version
of any build across your system. From a CI perspective you can abstract most
of the complex configuration for your applications into "docker build -t
myapp_test ./Dockerfile.test && docker run myapp_test".
Containers use a differential filesystem, so N running containers for an
application will take up 1 X the size of the container image + N x the average
space of changes made in the running containers on top of that base image.
This makes larger images highly space efficient without having to worry about
different instances treading on the same folders.
The line between dev and ops blurs a little (devops), but clear
responsibilities. Ops becomes responsible for maintaining the docker
infrastructure, and dev is responsible for everything inside the container
boundary, the container image, installed packages, code compilation, and how
the containers interact. A container mantra is "no more 'well it worked on MY
machine'". If it works for the dev, it really will work in prod.
Besides this, there a number of benefits around speed, accessibility,
debugging, standardization, the list goes on. There are also a ton of great
and varied Docker CI solutions out there, from specific Docker based CI like
us (codeship), Shippable, Drone, Circleci, as well as standard solutions like
jenkins via plugins. Many hosting solutions are supporting docker redeploy
hooks for CI purposes. The standardized nature of containers make it trivial
for vendors to provide integrations. Even if you don't use docker yourselves,
this is certainly a great space to watch.
Technically you can use docker for CI/CD without using it for deploying your
app. When you do this you lose some of the benefits listed, but not all. You
lose the cohesion between CI/local and prod, but you still gain a whole lot in
terms of speed and complexity within your CI infrastructure.
Thomas Shaw did a great talk at Dockercon on introducing Docker to Demonware
for CI across a variety of projects. I don't think the video is up yet, but
it's well worth a watch if you're thinking of bringing it into your company.
In the meantime we wrote a blog post on his talk:
[http://blog.codeship.com/dockercon-2015-using-docker-to-
driv...](http://blog.codeship.com/dockercon-2015-using-docker-to-drive-
cultural-change-in-gaming/).
~~~
bampolampy
We are just starting a beta for our new CI flow which follows the container
paradigm very closely. It allows you to build docker compose stacks for your
various application images, and run your CI/CD pipeline locally, exactly as it
would get run on our hosted platform.
If anyone is interested in joining our beta, just drop me an email: brendan at
codeship.com.
------
yebyen
I honestly don't know how much those things cost (I have heard some people say
AWS is not cheap, but compared to buying your own hardware maybe all of this
stuff is very cheap). The point of asking is, my company has not found a clear
place to use Docker directly, but we do use it indirectly through the Deis
project, and CoreOS.
My experience with Deis has been wonderful. If you ever looked at Heroku but
got to the pricing page and didn't look any further, Deis has the same
workflow (and much of the same stack, Cedar) as Heroku. The whole thing is
built on docker containers, and designed with failover in mind.
I see that Codeship costs a fair amount of money on the higher end of usage;
for the cost of a few months on their enterprise subscription, you could
probably build your own CI cluster on Deis. CoreOS also targets AWS, and I
don't have any idea what your AWS environment looks like, but you could likely
build a Deis cluster on AWS just as easily as you could on your own hardware,
if not easier.
I try not to think of Docker as an end so much as a means. For me, it doesn't
even matter that it's using Docker under the hood, but if you have
containerized your application, Deis can work on already built images just as
easily as Heroku works on git repositories.
I can't use Heroku for serious things because it costs too much, and we're
small potatoes. But I've got plenty of hardware lying around, and some
slightly bigger iron that if I'm being honest is probably underutilized, this
is based on knowing that it hosts multiple kernels using virtualization, and
the only reason those different tasks run on different machines is to keep
them nominally isolated for increased maintainability.
Containerization is "virtualization lite." If I can take those services and
jobs that all run on their own virtual machines and make them all run on Deis
instead (or even just the ones that don't maintain any internal state of their
own), I will gain a resource boost by not having to virtualize all of that
separate virtual hardware and individual Linux kernels anymore. The marginal
cost of another container is lower than a full virtual machine. If it fits
into CI, the maintenance cost is lower too, because that's one less individual
system that needs to get apt-get upgrade. If we were better at adopting things
like chef, this might not be an argument, but for us it still is.
I inherited a lot of legacy stuff. Your situation might not be anything like
mine. If you are already drinking the CI kool-aid, you might not honestly have
much to gain from Docker that would compel you to invest time and effort into
using it to host your apps.
If Deis looks a little complicated, you might check out dokku. Your laptop
probably doesn't have enough power to spin up a whole Deis cluster, but you
can still get "almost like the Heroku experience" using Dokku, with Docker
under the hood providing support. I'm not going to promise you that it will
cut your AWS bills in half, but if you did drink the kool-aid, it might be
worth checking out just how much of your currently required development
infrastructure and outsourced hosting needs can just go away when you add
containerization to your developer toolbelt.
------
curiously
well not exactly a business case but it's obviously a win for developers.
I shed a single tear when I realized I could just fire up flask + nginx +
uwsgi within seconds after installing docker.
For a business perspective, it's a little tricky. I guess it can help if you
need to offer an onsite version of your SaaS app and the enterprise client had
strict rules about being on site.
What would really make docker kickass is if they had a way to encrypt all the
source code somehow and protect it.
------
scraymer
Maybe you have looked already and it wasn't useful to you but on the Docker
website it has some pretty good marketing to explain its usefulness:
[https://www.docker.com/whatisdocker](https://www.docker.com/whatisdocker)
Why Use Docker: "How does this help you build better software? When your app
is in Docker containers, you don’t have to worry about setting up and
maintaining different environments or different tooling for each language.
Focus on creating new features, fixing issues and shipping software."
Business Case: "...With Docker, you can easily take copies of your live
environment and run on any new endpoint running Docker..."
~~~
dmarg
Yeah, I looked at the Docker website. I feel that Docker is super good at
marketing and wanted to get some other opinions.
~~~
deftek
Here is CoreOS opinion on docker:
[https://coreos.com/blog/rocket/](https://coreos.com/blog/rocket/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Serial communication using the WebAudio API - ecubed
https://github.com/cteubank/AudioSerial
======
ecubed
I'd appreciate any feedback, especially from more experienced devs. I built
this JS class to send serial commands over the headphone port of an iPhone
using Javascript and the HTML5 WebAudio API. This enabled me to use an iPhone
application to control my embedded systems design senior project.
~~~
revdinosaur
This is a great hack, very clever. You mention on the GitHub page that you use
a comparator to convert the signal for the ATMega168. I know that the
ATmega328 has an embedded comparator so I'm wondering how easy you think it
would be to create a library for Arduino projects?
I currently have a few projects which are bound to servers so I can control
them with web apps and this seems like a great way to liberate them from the
network. Low-level analog signal processing is about where my knowledge comes
to a screeching halt (hence using Arduinos in the first place) but I'd love to
play around with any AVR code to try and implement this for high-level
language hardware people.
------
revelation
I don't know about the JavaScript code, but I did look at the uC code (EE459
repo I guess?).
Since you are already taking the flash hit with sprintf, you might be
interested to know that you can redirect stdout to print all data through your
serial line, i.e. just using printf. Saves going through an intermediate
buffer. Looks something like this:
[http://pastie.org/8073251](http://pastie.org/8073251)
~~~
ecubed
Thanks for the tip! I'll try and implement this once I get the parts in for my
new board.
------
RyanZAG
Great hack and worth doing just because it is a great hack, but since it was a
senior project, wouldn't it have been easier to just grab an old Android phone
off Ebay and use standard 2-way communication directly?
~~~
ecubed
Possibly. It was an embedded systems class, and I have a background dealing
more with webdev and audio systems, so I figured I could combine all three
into something novel. It actually worked out really well for the purpose,
which was supposed to be a power-saving application. This way required only
the addition of a comparator chip between the ATMega168 and the headphone
line, which made it a super low power (and computationally light) way to
communicate.
------
zaroth
Here's something similar doing FSK with Javascript and HTML5 audio:
[https://github.com/NeoCat/FSK-Serial-Generator-in-
JavaScript...](https://github.com/NeoCat/FSK-Serial-Generator-in-JavaScript/)
------
samsquire
You could have applications that talk with your smartphone without a network
and just a browser providing you can access your microphone in Android and
iOS. reply
~~~
ecubed
Correct. The next step on this project will be to try and get two way
communication working. I ran out of time before the class ended to get that
established. If I remember correctly I ran into some issues with the mobile
safari and the microphone input via javascript. I believe PhoneGap provides an
API for this though.
------
masswerk
Very neat! Maybe you could even implement read using navigator.userGetMedia to
provide two way communications ...
------
mmastrac
Neat project, but would be great to see a demo page.
Also, s/buad/baud/
~~~
ecubed
I'm in the process of building a more general purpose dev board using the same
processor I used for the class, so once I've got that up and running I'll try
and post more "How to" related stuff on the github.
~~~
orangethirty
Do you think there might be a way to receive data? Maybe measure the voltage
drop from a normally high circuit?
Edit: Awesome project. (:
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
URL query parameters and how laxness creates de facto requirements on the web - todsacerdoti
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/DeFactoQueryParameters
======
drewcsillag
Accepting random stuff like this is in the spirit of the protocols of the
internet.
Postel’s Law: > Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept
from others (often reworded as "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal
in what you accept").
Also known as the robustness principle
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle)
------
Tagbert
The article doesn’t seem to identify a problem caused by these unexpected
parameters. I would think any system that accepts input like this would need
to validate the input and reject or ignore invalid input. Where is the
problem?
I have been known to add a parameter like &x=1 to a page that fails to load
properly the first time. It can invalidate an incorrect cache and let the page
reload.
------
jbverschoor
It’s not laziness. It’s the stupid flexibility of certain protocols, APIs,
languages
Make things as strict as possible
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How trolls are born: Research on why people turn bad when they go online - ohjeez
https://mosaicscience.com/story/why-good-people-turn-bad-online-science-trolls-abuse/
======
russdpale
The definition of an internet troll has been tainted badly. Everyone thinks it
means going on twitter or facebook or reddit and being an ass hole. That is
what used to be called "flaming" in old internet jargon, but now a days it
should be ushered under the umbrella term of "shitposting". Instead, it has
been related to trolling, I feel like because primarily many people don't
understand what a true internet troll is.
A troll is simply someone who infiltrates a social group by ingratiating
themselves into the group by some manner, and then works to decisively split
the group in two with inner political turmoil before "disappearing". This
entire scheme is much easier to perform online with relative anonymity where
none of the other cues that humans might use to sniff out a troll in their
group are present, such as reading body language or by hearing antagonistic
speech patterns. A clever and witty actor with a strong grasp of the target
language can manipulate peer groups and break a social group apart rather
effectively. This is more difficult in real life although there is precedent
for real human social trolls: the Khans of Mongolia used them to great affect
in towns and villages they planned to raid. Sometimes the Mongols didn't even
need to fight when they got to the town.
Anyways, I don't really have any objection to the article per say, but its a
pet peeve of mine. Know your internet jargon m8s!
~~~
romanovcode
I think your interpretation of "internet troll" is way too narrow and
therefore not correct.
IMO troll is someone on the internet who just want's to trigger some emotional
response from other peers (usually negative). That's it.
~~~
owlninja
Agreed, that is a very tight definition that I've never heard of. I just
remember it always being used for someone saying things they didn't really
believe just to get a group of people riled up.
------
commandlinefan
The article assumes that everybody who "trolls" online is being deliberately
vicious - and maybe the author was focused on discussing the people who really
are trying to cause hurt online. On the flip side, though, I've learned to be
very, very careful how I phrase things online because it's (apparently) really
easy for somebody to misconstrue something that you said and assume that you
meant offense.
~~~
flounders
That's definitely one aspect to it. When I played CS:GO briefly, some of the
players are just down right toxic. I don't know if it is because they
deliberately want to hurt people or they just think it's perfectly fine
kidding around like that, but I just stopped playing. Other games have that
element to them too, but CS:GO just seemed to have a lot more of it.
~~~
krageon
I think you'll find almost every community of a competitive game eventually
turns into a mostly toxic one. I don't really understand why (it seems a
little reductionist to say that most people are toxic and therefore as a
community grows most of it will tend towards being toxic), but I keep seeing
it no matter what kind of game it is (RTS, MOBA, RPG, etc)
~~~
nuclx
They're dissatisfied with their performance measured by the time they put in.
In turn team mates are blamed for hindering their progress in the ranking
system.
~~~
wolfgke
I would even tend to generalize: The strong competitiveness of the game (or
other places that are very competitive) is literally an incubator to make
people very toxic towards each other.
------
jabgrabdthrow
Anonymity lets you induce cognitive dissonance in people you disagree with
without real life social consequences. The troll derives pleasure not just
from anger or frustration, but knowing they’ve left a logical knot which will
require untangling a whole region of knowledge.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What can be some really unconventional use cases of Apple Watch - neel8986
We are entering a new era of computing. But sometimes it is difficult to think of a use case which can not be solved by conventional smart phone or tablet app. Health seems to be popular area. What else?
======
opless
Why not admit point blank that you're looking for ideas for the next 'big
thing' and you're out of ideas yourself?
Frankly it's going to be a big dollar item for tech geeks that must have
everything new, and that it's a fad that's not going to last long.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It's Not Orwell, It's Brave New World - fmihaila
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley
======
tronreg
"the average weekly screen time for an American adult – brace yourself; this
is not a typo – is 74 hours"
------
jamesmcintyre
Throughout this entire election and transition I've been wondering if Neil
Postman's son is going to remind people of his father's warning in "Amusing
Ourselves to Death". It's truly surreal that this detailed prediction I read
years ago, written two years before I was born, has been playing out in such a
spectacularly... real way. There's this feeling you get when you understand
what we're in the grips of yet you also observe and experience just how
overwhelmingly impossible it is for everyone to confront the same realizations
in order for us to course-correct and avoid what increasingly feels like an
inevitable disaster.
Neil Postman was both somewhat deterministic in his beliefs about our future
and then reluctantly optimistic when pushed. In an interview he jokingly
qualified his optimistic statement with "but remember I'm an American which
means I'm eternally optimistic". I think he was also very struck with this
feeling, that it is all so clear what is happening yet the dance continues and
to warn people, to educate, to improve things in a systemic way that'd be
sufficient enough in capacity to combat these omnipresent machinations is so
overwhelmingly difficult and complex that one feels a bit hopeless.
In that same interview he said "..to the extent that there would be a serious
conversation among Americans about these issues I think we could pull
through." (Link to end of interview:
[https://youtu.be/FRabb6_Gr2Y?t=27m](https://youtu.be/FRabb6_Gr2Y?t=27m))
Because this problem is so complex and deeply-entrenched in so many facets of
our existence whatever course-correction can be made will have to be the
result of a phenomenon which I'd describe as very much "emergent". And that
phenomenon will be an amalgamation of shifts in thought and behavior spanning
all facets of culture and society. You could say "organic movement" but I am
not even so hopeful as to think one or a few "organic" movements would
suffice. I believe the shift would have to be systemic but also cultural, only
a shift in our beliefs- in what our culture deems valuable would provide
enough motivation to re-center ourselves around a new definition of civic
duty.
Ever since I wanted to be a web developer my dream was to start a successful
startup that would allow me to then fund the development of a web technology,
likely a platform of some sort, that would help solve some of these
bewilderingly complex problems primarily rooted in education. I am always
trying to think of how a web technology could fit into the puzzle.
However, if a the American people do not start a discussion about this problem
(not one facet of the problem like "fake news" but an acknowledgement of it's
deeply-entrenched, multi-faceted nature) than we cannot give it a name and
fight it. We cannot begin to plan solutions if we do not first have most
people on board which the fact that the problem exists in the first place.
If you've read this far maybe you too are interested in this problem and maybe
a couple web developers slowly ideating and iterating over time could be a
valuable contribution? Feel free to hit me up: james.checks.his.email at gmail
dot com.
*edited to add link to interview.
------
HoppedUpMenace
Isn't this article purely an opinion piece? I don't mind, but if it is, it
should be labeled as such and not passed off as investigative journalism. That
being said, you could argue that its both or any number of things, for
example:
news supression/distortion -> Orwell
class system of superiors/inferiors -> Brave New World
Could even possibly throw Citizen Kane into the mix but that may be a stretch.
~~~
norea-armozel
So Brazil minus the ducts?
------
gozur88
>At Forbes, one contributor wrote that the book “may help explain the
otherwise inexplicable”.
It's only inexplicable if you live in a coastal bubble where everyone thinks
the same way you do. It can't be that your values were rejected by people you
deride in "flyover country" (and still not by a majority of the country). No,
it must be that they've been brainwashed by television!
But somehow the purveyors of this theory have remained untouched by the
corrupting influence of mass media.
~~~
pasbesoin
Other than flat panel TV's and cell phones, a lot of people in "middle
America" have gotten absolutely shit out of the last 20 - 30 years. Work's
more for less and no advancement. The future is ever more uncertain.
Healthcare's gone from expensive to unachievable. Illegal immigration has
produced considerable downward pressure on lower-end jobs as well as non-wage
benefits (illegals have no leverage with respect to benefits, and this places
additional pressure on everyone else to give up on them).
My cousin's little old farm town in the middle of Nebraska has become
significantly "hispanified." And while many of them are nice enough, a
significant fraction are not. Regardless, it has produced a very significant,
dramatic local social and cultural shift. Which many remaining voters find
quite disruptive.
Republican as well as Democratic "internationalists" turned their backs on
these potential voters and with varying forms of rhetoric about "the greater
good."
Well, there's only so much personal sacrifice people are going to put up with.
Trump... well, whatever you think about truth and falsehood with respect to
him and the people immediately around him (campaign, advisors, talking heads,
opportunists, hangers-on... oh, and his family), he gave this demographic a
message to vote for.
In the U.S., social cohesion has always been limited and reinforced
significantly through force and intimidation rather than cooperation. But, in
a politically significant while not / no longer economically and popularly
dominant demographic, it wore thin enough to engender this disruption.
The "internationalists" forgot the first rule of politics and of social
stability: To take care of your own. Well, they came to mis-identify "their
own" in terms of their personal economic benefit as opposed to the polities
they formally represented.
Having watched my own little economic sector, tech., get run over by
outsourcing and ageism, I have very little sympathy for them nor for the
economic friends they thought they were representing.
P.S. I'm no Trump supporter. I'm simply saying, neither am I surprised by
what's happened. Except, perhaps, than he actually achieved the Presidency.
The Clinton camp and the DNC can hang that one squarely around their necks.
P.P.S. I'm not particularly defending the Trump voter, either. A lot of
nastiness and short-sightedness and myopic self-interest in that camp, too.
Nonetheless, they are voters -- members of society -- and trying to quietly
flush them down the drain was not a particularly astute political strategy.
P.P.P.S. There is also another -- and perhaps the dominant -- side to Trump
support: People who believe simply that you get what you deserve. Regardless
of circumstances. They are doing ok -- well, even. And that they entirely
deserve credit for that. Anyone else? Not their problem. And if the other
person's circumstances leave them down and out: Well, they deserve that.
Some of these people: They will take and take. I experienced this personally,
this past year, trying to help one of them out of difficult straights. As
their circumstances improved -- not insignificantly through considerable dint
of effort on my part -- they became less grateful rather than more, and a
criticism of others that I thought they were initially beginning to see past,
returned in full force.
Direct kindness ultimately had no influence on their perspective _and
behavior_ \-- no matter what words and attitudes they used to initially
solicit and gain support.
And THIS really scares me, more than a bit. Or divests me somewhat more of my
own apparently mistaken ideals.
Some of these people, are simply intractable. There is no compromise with
them, no coming to a mutual understanding.
Were the "internationalists" right, simply to try to leave them behind? No --
even if they are intractable, simply ignoring them is short-sighted, in its
own fashion.
Anyway, I've glued enough P.S.'s onto this comment that reflects my continuing
struggle to find my own way through these set of personalities written
wholesale onto our current politics.
~~~
angersock
Thank you for your writeup; it was thoughtful and well-phrased.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft, stop sending user identifiers in clear text - ramen-hero
https://annoyedmicrosoftuser.blogspot.com/2015/10/microsoft-stop-sending-user-identifiers.html
======
eponeponepon
Intriguing that this renders Tor essentially transparent in some contexts -
that could almost seem by design.
I guess (unless Tor is completely broken) that there would still be more
legwork involved in associating traffic from the endpoint with its
corresponding traffic into Tor, but even "user logs into that service through
Tor" is still a pretty fertile datapoint. Obviously Microsoft would be able to
see that pretty easily anyway, but why would they make it easy for others to
see it too?
~~~
_nedR
>Intriguing that this renders Tor essentially transparent in some contexts -
that could almost seem by design.
I would have commented on your tinfoil hat, except for what Microsoft did to
Skype post-acquisition:- Completely rewriting its protocol architecture from
one which was P2P with end-to-end encryption and practically impossible to
wiretap or monitor, to a centralized architecture (ostensibly for scalability
reasons) which made it much more easier to wiretap or obtain metadata.
[http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-
supe...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supernodes-
for-scalability-not-surveillance/)
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-
nsa-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-
collaboration-user-data)
Here's a choice quote from the above article.
"In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted
that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being
collected through Prism;"
~~~
throwawaykf05
When I heard about the "re-centralization" of Skype, I ran an experiment. I
set up calls with a couple of people in various locations and monitored my
network connections (on OSX I used nettop). Voice and video traffic is still
direct P2P. It was the same when I tried it again last year. Not that I did
not investigate messaging connections, nor group video chats, not mobile
usage, all scenarios where a centralized service may be more useful.
However this gels with their explanation that they have only centralized the
call setup servers for reliability and voice/video traffic for mobile devices
where P2P is not very feasible. On laptops and PCs, where P2P remains
feasible, traffic is still routed directly been peers.
Now I haven't run the same experiment in the past year, but I hope somebody
will, and that too at larger scale. Given this forum is "hacker" news, there
is a distinct lack of technical investigation to verify technical claims, and
a disturbing propensity to take tech media for its word, especially when
biases are being confirmed.
~~~
pdkl95
Are you suggesting that the ability to log _metadata_ ("call setup") isn't
important?
Few people care about the _contents_ of VOIP calls. The relationship maps you
can generate from the metadata is far more useful.
Also, "reliability" doesn't make sense as a reason to centralize skype. Being
very generous, it is a workaround for the problem of NAT removing the average
user's ability to self-publish on the internet.
~~~
throwawaykf05
Sure metadata could be important, but I'd argue it's only useful in
identifying who some agency might want to wiretap _next_. Without the actual
content of the calls you don't know if somebody is talking to a collaborator
or ordering in.
_> Also, "reliability" doesn't make sense as a reason to centralize skype._
I've written a P2P app or two. The NAT issues that you handwave are a huge
problem. It's not just the connectivity of nodes, it's the symmetry in which
nodes are reachable. NAT and general internet weirdness make this a much
harder problem than it needs to be. I had to do a significant re-architecting
when I ran into these issues during internal testing, and I had less than two
dozen users!
The next problem is latency. By the time you wait to discover a suitable
supernode and for your "hello" message to reach your target peer, you will
have already connected and started communicating with your peer if you use a
centralized "registry" server.
This is compounded by churn. Even if there's a single intermediate hop in your
routing, your chances of a successful message delivery drop drastically when a
peer can leave anytime. Think about how you use your laptop and how long you
keep it running and how abruptly you close it. The move towards laptops away
from desktops means average node uptime is reducing sharply, without even
considering the move to mobile.
This is further compounded by the need for presence for the case of Skype. You
don't want to find a peer is unreachable _after_ you start a call. This
implies the need for a global state. But without central server, this can only
be achieved with DHT, where the first two problems are even worse. Note the
existing DHTs are all used for long running "sessions" where the session is
the availability of a torrent. User presence is a lot more ephemeral.
And there's the original problem for P2P apps, of course: bootstrapping. Peers
don't come online knowing all their other peers on the Internet. There has to
be a way for them to discover each other, which, without Internet-wide
multicast, means a central server. If you're going to have to solve this
problem, you might as well solve the others.
There is actually a thread on p2p-hackers mailing list about this exact issue.
Many experienced P2P devs agreed that whenever you can get away with a
centralized solution, you should go for it. In this context, partially
centralizing Skype as they did makes complete sense.
------
vbezhenar
Another concern: modern HTTPS use SNI standard and those who sniff your
traffic, can extract the hostname from this traffic, because it's not
encrypted yet. So DNS sniffing is not necessary, if I understand everything
correctly.
I would consider that as misuse of DNS. User id must be in request parameter
or path, not in hostname.
------
_nedR
While you're at it Microsoft, please also give a way for users to remotely log
out all active sessions on other computers and devices.
~~~
mglinski
It's a terrible hack, but changing your Skype password via their website does
log you out of all active sessions within a 2-5 minute timeframe. A friends
Skype got "hacked" via a third party botting a message to all of his contacts,
and as soon as I changed the password the spam stopped and soon after his
local client logged out.
~~~
r00fus
It's not a hack... this is exactly what is guaranteed for OAuth2 servers that
follow spec to deauthorize all tokens.
------
Kiro
How should Microsoft resolve this? Not using CIDs at all?
~~~
po1nter
Not include them in the (sub)domain name?
~~~
Kiro
So it's fine to use them in the query string?
~~~
_nedR
So long as the query is passed over HTTPS, it is encrypted. But the
domain/subdomain info is not concealed by HTTPS.
------
jo909
Isn't the real point that one should not be able to obtain that much
information simply by knowing some user id or user name?
I would guess plenty of services include the username in some URLs.
Edit: of course the autor also stated that, but more as a side note. Leaking
the CID would not be a problem if there wasn't any futher information to be
gained.
~~~
pdkl95
It is well known that unique identifiers are used to identify general internet
traffic as the host moves to different IPs. This works even when the
_intended_ meaning of that identifier isn't known.
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/nsa-turns-cookies-
and-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/nsa-turns-cookies-and-more-
surveillance-beacons)
~~~
jo909
Fair argument that every unique id or name makes you trackable, but that is a
much bigger (and IMHO long lost) battle on so many fronts, and it does not
seem very fair to single out Microsoft here. And I don't think that is the
motivation of the author either.
~~~
pdkl95
I'm absolutely not singling out Microsoft, and I'm not sure why you would
think I was.
Anybody that is regularly putting a unique identifier in plaintext network
traffic is harming their users, and that goes for Microsoft embedding CIDs in
dommain names, Verizon with their X-UIDH vandalism, Google's 3rd-party
tracking cookies, and the like similar.
Also, you will never win a war if you give up the fight. This battle is
absolutely _not_ "long lost". The only way that could be true is if you give
up, thereby self-fulfilling the prediction.
------
nv-vn
Let's not forget the whole Skype thing where knowing a user's ID is enough to
edit any of their messages.
------
bargl
If you can look up skype Id by CID then this also opens your IP up to
discovery. Which is a really big deal for people who stream (like my little
brother).
But I have no confirmation that is possible or not. Just speculation.
~~~
mdpopescu
As far as I know, this used to be a big problem in the Starcraft 2 pro gamer
community, before everyone switched to naming their account "||||||||" or some
such. (They would get DDOSed a lot.)
------
philliphaydon
Everyone seems to talk about what MS should do, and why it's bad. But I wonder
why the people working on these systems do not think or feel the same, and
want to fight internally to fix it etc.
------
aembleton
I noticed that my bank (Halifax) sends a long numerical code to webtrends for
every page that I visit. The code that it sends seems to be unique for each
session.
This is blocked by uBlock but it is concerning.
~~~
spydum
Different problem. That session identifier is probably unique to each session.
The complaint here is that the CID is always the same for you, and can be used
to look up more information (your profile)
~~~
bboreham
And it's sent as part of the host, hence plaintext.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why is the Dallas startup community turning on itself? - HillRat
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/headlines/20160722-why-is-the-dallas-startup-community-turning-on-itself.ece
======
maxharris
What percentage of those potential investors in Dallas have lived and worked
in the Bay Area for a significant length of time?
What do the best of the founders expect? Do they have businesses that will
still take off even without the investors throwing more gas on the fire? Or
are they just looking for a pile of cash to gamble with on unvalidated hopes?
Finally, where do all these people live? Are they concentrated footsteps away
from each other downtown, or are they all isolated apart from one another in
the suburbs?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SEO for expiring pages - bee
Hello, I have a q regarding SEO<p>I have a free classifieds websites, with categories/ads.
Each ad is active for 30 days and then is marked as expired.
How should I handle this better from SEO point of view?<p>1. Display the ad and put a message that this ad is expired?
2. Make a 301 redirect to category the ad belongs to
3. Make a 301 redirect to index page?
4. Other ideas?
======
patio11
What volume of pages are we talking about?
At below-mass-scales, I would encourage you to keep the page content roughly
similar to what it is, mark expired pages as expired, and maybe put a modal
window with "This ad is expired. See related ads or post your own ad." or
something on top of the old content, with an option for people to close that
and see the archived content.
At mass scales (more than "thousands" of pages), I'd suggest either a) doing
the above but also no-indexing those pages or b) 301 them to the category
page. The rationale for this is that you don't want to get hit by Panda for
having lots and lots of not-so-much-value pages.
~~~
bee
Yeah I have thousands of pages. And I would want to remove them permanently as
I don't want to give users non-value pages.
------
bee
And any idea how to handle best duplicate content (since is a free classifieds
website, these ads are across all internet)?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: review my app idea: easily get comments on wires/designs - petervandijck
My idea is this: an app that lets you get comments on your documents (I'm thinking wireframes/designs). Works like this:<p>1. Email a PDF to us.<p>2. We email you back a url and a password.<p>3. Go to the url, enter password and your name (no signup). Then you get a page where you see all the pages in the pdf as large images (1 image per page), and you can leave comments on the images (ajaxy, like leaving notes on a Flickr image).<p>4. Email the url+password to your team, and get their comments too.<p>Thaz it. The purpose of this is to make it easier to get comments on a set of wireframes or designs. Right now, we tend to email the pdf to the team, then get emails back with comments. But there's no easy way to point to one piece of the image and say something about that (we fix that with the ajaxy commenting on the image). It's also hard to get all comments in one place, they tend to be dispersed in email threads (we fix that with having it online).<p>Thoughts? Should I build this? Would you use it? Is this minimum and viable enough, or should I add/remove stuff?
======
petervandijck
Basic version would be free, if people like it I could easily make a more
company-friendly version for pay, later.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Instagram star with 2M followers couldn't sell 36 T-shirts - paulpauper
https://www.businessinsider.com/instagrammer-arii-2-million-followers-cannot-sell-36-t-shirts-2019-5
======
emsy
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20063667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20063667)
------
derefr
Just because you have followers doesn't mean you have fans.
I follow people that post e.g. cat pictures, but I wouldn't buy their merch. I
don't even know who these people are, really; their posts are a commodity to
me. They're "oh, more cat pictures", not "a new post from [X]!" I found them
through the app's recommendations, hit follow, and then never looked into them
further. Why would I want to buy anything from them?
The edges connecting vertices on social networks have _weights_ , despite the
social networks themselves not modelling this. Some people, despite being very
"connected" in theory, have a very low aggregate weight of connection; all
their connections are barely there.
It's like having a million acquaintances and no friends.
(And, of course, some percentage of the vertices you're connected to might be
deactivated/purchased/bots/etc. But even when that's _not_ true, you still
won't make sales on your "personal brand" to mere acquaintances.)
~~~
askafriend
This is missing the point entirely.
The reason she couldn't sell T-Shirts is because she didn't build a real
audience around her. She likely used bots to boost her followers and raise the
status of her profile without actually building engagement.
People who have built real audiences around themselves using social media are
superstars. Casey Neistat and MKBHD can sell tens of thousands of T-Shirts if
they wanted to.
The only point this makes is that Social Media is a tool. It can be used well
or it can be used poorly.
~~~
derefr
I saw the point you made in your top-level sibling subthread and acknowledged
it in a parenthetical to my post. I was trying to talk about a different
situation, which doesn't necessarily apply _to this specific case_ , but
rather is interesting to consider _in general_ as a response to the question
"why couldn't someone with a million followers on Instagram monetize those
followers?"
Let me reiterate: there are people with a million social-media subscribers of
"real audience", who _still_ could not sell a single T-shirt.
[https://chubbycattumbling.tumblr.com/](https://chubbycattumbling.tumblr.com/)
and whatever the equivalents of such blogs are on Instagram likely have a
million+ subscribers—real people—but also have built _no_ "personal brand",
and therefore would generate no interest in products marketed under said
personal brand.
Casey Neistat and MKBHD aren't superstars because they have millions of
followers. They're superstars because they've been marketing their personal
brands from the beginning, and so every (real) follower they've gained is
_also_ a fan. But this does not apply in every situation.
(It _especially_ doesn't apply to corporate social-media outreach, something
of interest to the HN crowd: just posting cool stuff your startup made might
attract a "real audience" of people who _want that stuff_... but unless you're
branding that stuff as _yours_ when you do that, you won't be able to later
convert that audience _at all_. That should be obvious to someone who's job is
"social-media brand manager"—but it's _not_ obvious to someone who wants to
get rich selling merch to Insta followers.)
~~~
askafriend
Ah, got it. I think we're actually on the same page then!
------
superasn
I think the problem with this is the same problem with email marketing. It
doesn't mean that marketing on Instagram doesn't work.
I know people who have thousands of subscribers and can't sell $1000 of stuff
and then there are people with 1000 subscribers that can sell $50k worth with
a single email.
It all comes down to the relationship with your list (I guess in this case
your followers). If your list trusts you and trust is easy to gain by giving a
lot of value + authority, they will buy from you. Think if your best friend
tell you to get "X" and he is an expert too then chances are you will try "X"
even if doesn't make sense at the moment. On the other hand if a random
stranger tells you to do it, you will need a lot of convincing and still
you'll be looking for ulterior motives before making that purchase.
~~~
giancarlostoro
This makes sense. Back in 2010 I had a strong following on Tumblr and I
realized years later I could have easily sold products and made decent cash so
many of my followers had a personal connection with me due to chatting on
different platforms and getting to know me. But I didnt want to "sell out" so
I never shoved ads on my blog or spammed products. That seems to be a thing I
see moreso on YouTube and IG anyway.
Sure some artists would advertise swag they were selling on Tumblr from time
to time but they make awesome art why shouldnt they be allowed to sell swag?
Artists got to eat too.
~~~
superasn
Yes also selling word has aquired a really bad connotation mainly because of
these influencers pushing unnecessary stuff on to their list.
But selling can also be giving your list what they signed up for at a price
that they will not get anywhere else. Which is also very important to keep
niches and not to try and sell dog training videos to a person who signed up
for piano lessons (yes poeple can do that)
------
bufferoverflow
Fake followers?
Looking at her account, I don't get why she'd have so many followers. She
isn't good looking, not interesting, her videography and photography is very
average.
~~~
wildrhythms
Or the audience is simply not invested.
Twitch streamers sell merch to a much smaller audience, and probably to the
same group of audience who is also subscribed at $5/month. The audience is
already invested and want to support the content; do Instagram followers feel
like they're supporting the content in the same way? Is a follower count even
a good metric to judge audience captivation?
Maybe this is a wake up call to marketing agencies that influencers aren't
nearly as captive as their follower count suggests.
~~~
orev
But that’s the concept of “influencers” — not to sell things directly, but to
influence an audience for when they actually do buy something. That is what
most advertising aims to do — not to make people get up and go buy the thing
immediately.
------
jpmattia
When everyone is an influencer, nobody is.
------
rdiddly
A lot of ink spilled over this. I expected schadenfreude but really this is
just a high schooler making her first tentative baby steps into selling stuff
and unsurprisingly failing. My story would've been the same back in the day. A
Telemarketing Powerhouse Who Called 2,000 Homes Couldn't Sell 4 Magazine
Subscriptions. Difference was, I just quietly went back to college, while she
has professional marketers analyzing her every move in Business Insider. I
think maybe fuck the internet? Just not for the same reason I thought.
------
cosmodisk
I looked at her account on Instagram.First of all I'm surprised she's got so
many followers,as there's nothing even remotely interesting in her posts.
There's no story I'd follow-in fact there's nothing at all. So no surprise
T-Shirt business was a flop.
------
arkitaip
Even at a terrible 0.01% conversion rate she would have sold 200 t-shirts.
0.0018% is a rounding error, the quantity you purchase for QA or for handing
out at a pr event. Small Twitch streamers with a tenth of her audience sell
more t-shirts.
~~~
Mirioron
I think it has to do with the fact that twitch streamers tend to be very
engaged with their fans. Especially small twitch streamers. They're kind of
like "rent-a-friend" except they live based on donations.
~~~
arkitaip
Very true. Twitch streamers have really discovered a profound truth about what
it means to be in entertainment.
------
floatingatoll
I’d love to see someone run a perfectly great influencer Instagram where if
you can’t verify a purchase within 28 days you are permanently banned from
following them.
Not because I think this is healthy, but because I think people will complain
loudly and campaign to have them boycotted for demanding proof of their
“influencer” status resulting in money spend.
I think such a thing would shred the influencer concept to bits, and so all
the other influencers would react out of fear for losing access to the
“exposure economy” they leveraged their status to create.
~~~
cududa
They already do this for access to a “private” account.
------
octosphere
Looks like the store is temporarily down:
[https://www.erashop.us/](https://www.erashop.us/)
My guess is that not enough build-up, or buzz was created, and the initial
attempt to sell was forced and random. It's an old tactic you see various
startups doing: creating a countdown landing page where the 'mystery' of the
product gets people talking.
------
alkibiades
this has been happening a long time in hip hop. there’s people with millions
of real followers on instagram because of their antics. but when their album
comes out they don’t even get 10k sales.
------
takanori
What do you think an acceptable conversion rate should be?
~~~
groestl
2000000 × 0.1 (post viewed) × 0.1 (post engaged) × 0.1 (clicked link to shop)
× 0.1 (put shirt in shopping cart) × 0.1 (finished payment process) = 20
shirts sold
math checks out
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An open source re-implementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 - j_s
https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2
======
bbx
For all RCT2 fans here: check out RCT Classic on iOS [1] and Android [2]. It's
_fantastic_.
I thought the size of the device would be an issue, but I've been playing on
an iPhone SE with surprisingly great ease! The tap zones are small but very
well defined, so you almost never mis-tap. And the game is I believe bug-free
because it has never crashed!
The only real tricky part is designing underground paths and building rides
with an excitement rating above 6.0! But that's always been tricky…
[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/rollercoaster-tycoon-
classic...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/rollercoaster-tycoon-
classic/id1113736426?mt=8)
[2]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atari.mobi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atari.mobile.rctc&hl=en_GB)
~~~
beefsack
Whenever I see IAP on paid apps I'm almost instantly turned off.
Do you know what sort of nature they are? Is the game complete without them?
Do they nag about the IAP in game?
~~~
mikepurvis
Looks like expansion packs. From the Google Play page: "PLEASE NOTE:
Additional content for RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic is available via In-App
Purchase, specifically the three expansion packs: Wacky Worlds, Time Twister
and Toolkit. The expansion packs are the ONLY content that require an In-App
Purchase and In-App Purchases are not used anywhere else in the game."
~~~
jwdunne
Actually, the toolkit as an IAP really pissed me off. That's the best way to
design coasters.
------
swang
Haha. I like this bug fix fixing an issue with people always vomiting.
[https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/6434/files](https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/6434/files)
~~~
wontoncc
I have encountered this bug the other day. Literally unplayable but fun
watching the guests vomiting all over the park.
~~~
stefco_
This might be excessively prurient, but I would love to see some gameplay
video or screenshots of what an unplayably vomit-filled park looks like.
~~~
sleepychu
> This might be excessively prurient
Wait what? What do you want those screenshots for?![0]
[0] -
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prurient&atb=v71-6__&ia=definition](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prurient&atb=v71-6__&ia=definition)
~~~
stefco_
Ha! Conflated "prurient" with "vulgar", though I'm guessing that mistake was
(hopefully?) obvious from context.
Thanks for the correction, made me chuckle :)
------
mathnode
For more open source game engines or re-implimentations check out:
[http://osgameclones.com](http://osgameclones.com)
~~~
corobo
If you're just there to browse working games do a ctrl+f for
<space>Playable
<space>Playable<space>Active
if you're after active playable repos
~~~
tete
There is a filter at the top and you can click on the tag.
However it seems that the tags are not all there. For example Freeciv is in
there ant not tagged as playable. So don't rely on it.
~~~
corobo
Hah that's my bad, I didn't even look for a search/filter function once I
noticed everything was on one page
------
maddyboo
I'm always amazed when I'm reminded that RCT2 was originally written in
assembly.
How would that much assembly code be organized? I've never seen a large
assembly project, but I would imagine something as complex as RCT2 would
easily clock in over 100k lines of assembly. That just sounds light a
nightmare to me!
~~~
ameliaquining
How much of the game was actually in assembly? I always heard that it was
mostly stuff like the guest AI that was in assembly (which is why you could
have hundreds of them running at once), and the graphical stuff was in a
higher-level language.
~~~
TylerE
ALL of it. Even the DirectX stuff was hand-written assembly. It's the same
core engine going back to the Transport Tycoon days.
~~~
duncanspumpkin
There is actually no DirectX at all in RCT2 source code. The game has its own
software renderer that outputs direct to the screen buffer.
------
Animats
_OpenRCT2 requires original files of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 to play._
It's the engine without the assets. Kind of like Open Rails, which is an open
source engine for Microsoft Train Simulator content. That's been out for a
while, and now others are writing content for it.
~~~
KGIII
I believe there is a Doom variant with the same requirements. It requires the
image and sound files.
I am not a gamer so I can't opine on the quality.
~~~
claudiulodro
GZDoom! It's amazing. By far my favorite game. You just need the original Doom
.wad files.
[https://zdoom.org/downloads](https://zdoom.org/downloads)
------
jonbaer
0AD still remains one of the best open source games, Blender files and all ...
[https://play0ad.com](https://play0ad.com)
------
glorkk
I recently stumbled upon
[https://github.com/citybound/citybound](https://github.com/citybound/citybound)
which draws inspiration from SimCity and RTC among others. The project is
still in very early stages, but I thought it was very interesting.
~~~
ChickeNES
If only it wasn't under a restrictive license....
~~~
Liru
How is the AGPL restrictive in this case?
~~~
vortico
Seconded. I can't think of any practical reason AGPL would be more restrictive
than GPL to the player of a video games.
------
loufe
Man what a great project, I've been only lightly following it for the last
year or so, but it gets me excited. I think I could see myself choosing this
as a first open source project to commit to.
Thinking now, I would love to see Dolphin style progress reports every now and
then from the project. I'm sure they'd catch a lot of buzz.
~~~
WhitneyLand
what are Dolphin status reports, and what about them is effective?
~~~
j_s
You can verify for yourself if you have time; the reports themselves are an
excellent resource both for their content itself and as an example to learn
from:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dolphin-
emu%20comments>0&sort=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dolphin-
emu%20comments>0&sort=byDate)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15381844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15381844)
>kanwisher: _Always interesting to read the release notes on this product.
They go into such technical detail, its a joy to read_
>overcast: _This comment is becoming the HN equivalent of "First!" on Dolphin
Progress Reports._
[https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/10/02/dolphin-progress-
rep...](https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/10/02/dolphin-progress-report-
september-2017/)
------
satuim
An amazing project, My only criticism is the scaling, playing in 1080p makes
the UI really small, it does have scaling in the options but 1.5 uses
antialiasing and kinda ruins the pixel graphics.
Otherwise the best way to play this. I'm pretty sure you can also import
certain elements from RCT1 if you have it.
------
Sintendo
I continue to wonder whether this can be legal at all. It's pretty clear
they've been looking at the disassembled code, so it's not clean-room reverse-
engineered.
------
cmpb
Anyone interested in this may also be interested to know that there is a
pretty thriving subreddit for RollerCoaster Tycoon:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rct/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rct/)
------
PLenz
As a lover of the original I wish this project has the same success OpenTTD
has had.
------
squeaky-clean
I've never played this but have been aware of it for a while. Judging from the
Readme it sounds fairly complete? Like I could play out a full scenario in
this without missing features or crashing?
~~~
lucb1e
I also head of it for a while before I gave it a spin. I finally got around to
it about 6 months ago.
The game works really well. I don't remember noticing that anything was still
missing in singleplayer. Multiplayer... there was something, but I don't
remember what. Desyncs for sure, but I think those were always solveable by
just reconnecting. I'm not sure what, but there was a reason why my girlfriend
and I didn't play it. We played RCT2 a bunch, with one person watching and the
other playing, and OpenRCT2 with multiplayer seemed epic, but there was
something annoying in multiplayer, I just don't remember what.
By now, it might have improved again. I remember the development going really
fast before. And in singleplayer, I don't think there were any bugs that
prevented me from playing.
Give it a spin if you were (or still are) into the original Rollercoaster
Tycoon!
~~~
squeaky-clean
Thanks for the info, I definitely will. RCT and RCT2 are among my favorite
games ever made. I still load them up at least once every 6 months. Leafy Lake
/ Lucky Lake will always have a place in my heart.
~~~
lucb1e
That's one of my favorite levels too! Whenever I'm unsure which one to load
up, that's almost inevitably going to be it :)
------
antimatter
I wish someone did something similar for Populous: The Beginning.
------
hippich
I wonder if there is some universal way to increase DPI for SDL-based apps. I
am on linux and I can't read anything =(
~~~
sclangdon
SDL2 has SDL_WINDOW_ALLOW_HIGHDPI, which creates the window in high-DPI mode.
~~~
janisozaur
I have added poor man's scaling in
[https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/2280](https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/2280)
you can also look into the investigation lead in
[https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/2328](https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/pull/2328)
~~~
VMG
Isn't there a way to preprocess the sprites and create 2x and 4x scaled
versions?
~~~
janisozaur
No, not yet, because of the way data is stored. When we move on to our own
save format it will be possible, I'm sure.
------
LusoTycoon
there's also a pretty nice Knights and Merchants remake
[http://www.kamremake.com/](http://www.kamremake.com/)
[https://github.com/Kromster80/kam_remake](https://github.com/Kromster80/kam_remake)
~~~
toomanybeersies
I remember playing multiplayer KAM a few years back. I don't know how they
wrote the netcode, but the game ended up terribly out of sync pretty fast.
It's a shame the remake has decided to go 3d and lose the original art style.
The original really has timeless graphics.
------
kartD
Nice, does this get rid of the shitty AI for the janitor? I can't tell you how
annoying it is to watch them do everything except clean the damn puke and
trash of the path.
~~~
jandrese
You can turn off mowing the lawn which will keep them on barf duty unless you
have a giant flower garden in their work zone. It's pretty much necessary if
you have a coaster with a moderate or higher puke value in the park.
Also don't forget that you can put bathrooms near the exit of an upchuck
inducing ride to keep the paths a little cleaner.
------
sitepodmatt
chris sawyer a hero on carmack's level. (sawyer is behind transport tycoon and
rollercoaster tycoon)
------
cr0sh
What I'd like to see is an open-source version of Disney's Coaster
game/simulation.
Or for that matter, any kind of roller coaster simulator. There's an excellent
Windows roller coaster simulator out there ("No Limits"), but nothing like it
exists on other platforms.
------
Avshalom
Well time to go dig out my CD case.
~~~
tylerjd
If you can't find it or it is too scratched, they also sell the full edition
of RCT2 on GoG for cheap
[https://www.gog.com/game/rollercoaster_tycoon_2](https://www.gog.com/game/rollercoaster_tycoon_2)
------
rusbus
"RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 was originally written by Chris Sawyer in x86 assembly
and is the sequel to RollerCoaster Tycoon."
Back when things used to be more hardcore.
------
jtl999
/me wishes there was an equivalent open source project for Chris Sawyer's game
Locomotion.
Spent so many hours playing it when I was younger. RCT too :)
------
joering2
Anyone know what Chris Sawyer is up to these days?
~~~
jle17
He gave a pretty interesting interview early 2016, apparently he was focused
on the rerelease of RCT on mobile and enjoying life :
[http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-03-a-big-
interview...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-03-a-big-interview-
with-chris-sawyer-the-creator-of-rollercoaster-tycoon).
Seems like a humble person with a good life ethos. I like his philosophy with
the RCT license of letting others have a go at it since he already made what
he wanted.
I wish he would come back to make another game. RCT is so consistently fun so
well put together it always impresses me so many years later. That guy is a
hero of game design.
------
nebabyte
Anyone know what engine civ 6 uses? guessing it's some in-house one but am
curious if it has an internal name or something.
------
j7ake
I only have OS X does this mean I can buy the rtc2 (which is windows ) and
still be able to play it on OS X?
~~~
satuim
If you buy it from GOG you should be able to get the Windows exe, you can then
try and install it with WINE. That should give you the game files to import
into OpenRCT2.
~~~
janisozaur
There's innoextract for gog executables
------
kevinburke
I gave a talk about this project recently:
ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUBYTcVjp7I
~~~
gnyman
Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed it. Especially the later parts. Looking at your
GH it looks like it lost some steam? Did you continue on it and if so did it
produce anything "surprising"? As in, this should not really be a good coaster
but it has great score :-)
------
milkers
Which part is open source if I still need to buy the original game first?
~~~
sclangdon
I haven't look at this game in particular, but usually you need to buy the
original game to get the assests (art, models, audio, etc).
Even official open-source releases like the Quake series still require you to
buy the original game in order to run them.
------
Jdam
Please add a donate button, I would so do it! Loved the original game.
------
unixhero
Ooooh that's such a fun game.
------
kyberias
C compiled with a C++ compiler.
~~~
janisozaur
Hi, OpenRCT2 dev here.
We're gradually moving towards C++, compiling our current C sources as C++ is
the first step. Quite surprisingly too, we discovered how shitty a C compiler
MSVC is, because just changing the C code of ride drawing to C++ made a huge
performance impact there.
Reportedly, GCC also benefited from the switch, but the effect was less
pronounced there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Goggles released for iPhone - wiks
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/10/05/google-goggles-for-iphone/
======
wiks
Here is the direct link for it. goo.gl/aLzQ
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Generating and Visualizing Alpha with Vectorspace AI Datasets and Canvas - angrysponge
https://www.elastic.co/blog/generating-and-visualizing-alpha-with-vectorspace-ai-datasets-and-canvas
======
Radeo
Love the hidden relation between news data and stocks. Can't wait what's the
next step. Could you find correlation between Libra and the related news eg.
testimony given by David Marcus and the response by Senate?
------
bigdawg12
This project is a first of its kind. It has a patented AI algo so it can't be
duplicated. One in a million project that is run by a top notch CEO, Kasian
Franks.
------
BlockchainBaron
What a fantastic write-up by Elastic, Vectorspace has some disruptive tech in
their hands.
------
Westen_Flor
Really interesting read.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wayward Satellites Test Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity - pseudolus
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wayward-satellites-test-einsteins-theory-of-general-relativity/
======
greeneggs
Science stories that don't cite their sources are shabby.
Here are some links. The Phys. Rev. Lett. articles are paywalled, so I've also
linked to the arXiv.
"Test of the Gravitational Redshift with Galileo Satellites in an Eccentric
Orbit", by Sven Herrmann et al.,
[https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.231102](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.231102)
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.09161](https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.09161)
"Gravitational Redshift Test Using Eccentric Galileo Satellites", by P. Delva
et al.,
[https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.231101](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.231101)
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.03711](https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.03711)
------
Isinlor
Veritasium video on it:
[https://youtu.be/aKwJayXTZUs](https://youtu.be/aKwJayXTZUs)
------
afro88
I've been reading "The Dancing Wu Li Masters", starting the book with the full
knowledge that it's form the early 70s and likely out of date. But it turns
out it's not as out of date as I thought. As a total outsider to the
scientific community, I would expect that what happened to Newton's laws would
have happened to these earlier discoveries in the realm of quantum mechanics.
But a lot of them still ring "true" today. Similarly with Einstein's general
theory of relativity, as the article states, it it still holds strong.
Fascinating stuff.
------
gyaniv
It's great to know that even failed technological attempts, can still result
in scientific discovery (even if in this case, the discovery was that Einstein
is still correct).
------
mentos
If I made a ticking clock out of wood but at the heart of it one gear was made
out of metal and put it across the room from a large magnetic source which I
could slowly increase the magnetism on.. would that be an apt metaphor for
time dilation..?
Is the slowing down of time just simply the fact that all matter has some sort
of core weight that has more/less friction when under the pressure of gravity?
------
celias
In June, 2003 Italian astrophysicists used radio signals from the Cassini
satellite to test general relativity when the sun was between Earth and
Cassini -
(paywall, but nice summary in the non-paywalled abstract)
[https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01997](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01997)
[https://www-n.oca.eu/Mignard/Grex/Presentations_pdf/Grex04_B...](https://www-n.oca.eu/Mignard/Grex/Presentations_pdf/Grex04_B_Bertotti.pdf)
[https://physicsworld.com/a/general-relativity-passes-
cassini...](https://physicsworld.com/a/general-relativity-passes-cassini-
test/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Button UI behaviour - FiatLuxDave
I have observed a certain behaviour with on-screen buttons in a number of different environments (Android, PC, Browser) which perplexes me, and I'm hoping someone on here can explain it to me. I'm not a UI developer, but I did try googling before asking with no luck.<p>The behaviour is that when clicking on a button quickly, the button visually registers the click (by depressing or changing shading) but the action intended to be initiated by the button does not occur. This occurs intermittently - most of the time the button works normally. I suspect that it is occurring because of a debouncing algorithm which checks that the button is depressed for longer than a certain amount of time before counting it as "pressed". However, if that is the case, then why does the button appear to be depressed when it has not been clicked long enough to activate?<p>I'm sure I can't be the only person who has seen this phenomenon. Can any of the UI experts on here shed any light?
======
Nadya
Check the css for `:active` as the button is being styled for `:active` which
doesn't care if the Javascript functionality takes place or not. If you
debounce the Javascript to prevent the action from firing multiple times that
doesn't stop you from clicking the button and setting it to the `:active`
state causing the styles to occur.
Codepen example:
[https://codepen.io/anon/pen/bvGrKY](https://codepen.io/anon/pen/bvGrKY)
Click the button as much as you like - after 200 milliseconds you'll get a
single alert but the `:active` style always applies on click.
------
daffodil-11
I was puzzled by this recently and found it was due to slight mouse movement
between the click and release. I can't remember the exact context but it was
related to items that were drag-and-drop enabled. The press-to-select, move to
drag, release-to-drop interaction was taking precedence over the press-release
to click the button, even when the movement/drag was tiny, only a couple
pixels.
I can't think of an instance where I would dragging-and-dropping a button,
maybe it was an anchor element or something else clickable, but perhaps it's
an avenue to investigate.
------
pedalpete
Can you post a link or a video, some images? I'm not sure I'm understanding
the behavior you are describing
~~~
FiatLuxDave
It is very intermittent, and I don't usually record all my clicks, but I will
try to catch it somehow.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
At what point do you quit your startup to find a day job? - menloparkbum
======
juwo
Actually, this question is 100% relevant.
<http://juwo-works.blogspot.com/2007/02/has-juwo-failed-or-how-can-it-
turn.html>
------
inklesspen
(Ignore; I incorrectly stated this was a dupe.)
~~~
danielha
Reversed question.
~~~
inklesspen
Whups. That's what I get for scanning for keywords.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pandora signs up with rights admin company as it plots on-demand service - 6stringmerc
http://www.completemusicupdate.com/article/pandora-signs-up-with-rights-admin-company-as-it-plots-on-demand-service/
======
6stringmerc
> _Music Reports, the rights administration company that was bragging at SXSW
> earlier this year that its platform could overcome the streaming sector’s
> mechanical rights problem._
This is very interesting, and I'm surprised to have not heard of them before.
Spotify being sued by David Lowery (Cracker) as a class-action is related to
publishing issues. Wonder how this might fit in the grand scheme of things.
Seems there are several tech players in this field...cool.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Practical quantum key distribution protocol - christianbryant
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7501/full/nature13303.html
======
christianbryant
I was very fascinated with this article and apologize that it isn't fully
readable by non-subscribers. I'm looking to see if there is another place the
authors have posted findings.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time? - certainstartup
I'm a noob founder raising Angel/VC for my startup, what are the common pitfalls and other things that I need to be aware of?
======
coffeemug
Speak softly and carry a big stick.
VCs constantly talk about supporting entrepreneurs through tough times,
enabling creativity, building amazing companies, etc. They're not lying --
they really believe it, and it's an important thing for them to believe.
But while they say all this stuff, they're also human. And humans follow their
incentives. They do that before they do anything else. So your job is to make
it easy for them to act ethically.
That means talk the talk -- you want to build a great product, scale it to an
amazing company, hire a great team, etc. That's the only thing you care about.
Building a great company that builds amazing products and makes everyone lots
of money. But _act_ game theory. Have lots of great alternatives to negotiated
agreements with any given VC. Put yourself in a powerful position where you
can get favorable terms. Don't give up power/equity on the assumption that "it
doesn't matter", or that they'll act magnanimously, or anything like that.
It's way, way easier to have a lovely relationship with people when you're in
a position of power. Put yourself into that position.
(There are some investors you can unequivocally trust to act their talk --
notably YC, winfunding, and a few others, but don't rely on that as a general
rule)
~~~
greenspot
This. So true and extremely well framed.
The only thing I can add: At the beginning of a relationship, everybody is
kind. Background checks not just help, they are essential, do them.
Getting into conflicts and power plays with VCs, or just any person at some
point, should be expected but there are still huge differences in how people
deal in messy situations in terms of morale and ethics. You will find
everything between feeling uneasy and facing a nuclear war.
~~~
wiz21c
>>> there are still huge differences in how people deal in messy situations in
terms of morale and ethics.
so true. Problem is that in my small business experience, those in power are
there because they have very flexible views on morale and ethics (i.e. they
think they have morale/ethics, but they actually forget it when their company
is at stakes). Being the ethical guy I'm of course totally biased. But the
parent post is so right : having ethics/morale can be extremely damaging for
you because you'll have to work with people who absolutely don't get how you
think and that'll be super exhausting. Know yourself before going into that
game.
------
rsweeney21
I've started a few modestly successful companies over the past decade. Most of
them were bootstrapped, but for one of them I went the VC route. I raised $16M
over 4 years, starting with Angel, then VC, then "top-tier" VC.
_Taking VC funding made the experience of owning and operating a business
worse in almost every way._
There are many reasons why I wouldn't recommend raising VC money, but I'll
focus on just two right now. First, once you take VC funding, it's no longer
your company. Think about that - this business that you created from nothing,
sacrificed so much for, know inside and out, and poured years of your life
into - now you share control with someone who you've spent maybe 8 hours with.
And you're going to have to do that again and again over the years.
The second reason is the disparity in the invested interest between the VCs
and you. You have EVERYTHING riding on this startup. The VC has almost nothing
riding on your company. It's not their money, they get a great salary either
way, and they are expected to have most of their investments fail.
There seemed to be more worldly prestige running a VC backed company, but
that's probably because we bought press coverage. :-) In terms of my own
personal happiness, I've never been happier than when I was running my own
bootstrapped company...and I also made a ton of money.
~~~
nobody271
How do you know what type of company to start and how much of your own money
did you invest when bootstrapping a company.
I heard about startups that do something like make medical insurance billing
easier. That raises a lot of questions, actually.
* How does one even learn that is an issue?
* It seems like something where getting started is driven entirely by having contacts in the industry.
* There has to be a ton of prohibitively expensive red tape to cut through. Would you just pay a lawyer to figure all that out? Lawyers are expensive!
* It doesn't seem like something that really makes the world better although I'm sure you could tell yourself that it does if it was your business. Is having your business do something you consider positive important?
* Where do you get the knowledge you need to get started in an industry. Say you're really only good at programming and want to start a ...fashion business. How do you even start? It can be hard to use Google when valuable information is buried under an ocean of click bait articles.
~~~
beat
Become a technical co-founder for someone with a deep knowledge of some
valuable business, who has a great idea for a startup but lacks the technical
skill to make it work. There are lots of them.
~~~
alexhutcheson
Be careful: signal/noise ratio is extremely low here. There are lots of
people, particularly in SV, with vague ideas and a general desire to be a
"non-technical cofounder", but far less that have the deep, valuable domain
knowledge being discussed here.
~~~
beat
Well, yeah. Vet your partners. They need to have a realistic and achievable
idea that makes sense to you. "Business plan" becomes their responsibility,
and it needs to be better than "collect underpants, ???, profit!", or
"Facebook for cats" or whatever.
------
ajcodez
Keep everything incredibly simple. Follow the standard 10 slide deck pattern.
Focus on the value your service provides in concrete terms. It’s not the time
for subtlety. Spell things out explicitly in big font.
Set the price of shares at $0.10 or a round number. Raise a normal amount of
money like $150k or $250k at a normal valuation like $1M (depends on industry
etc). Get someone close to you to put in any nominal amount like $10k and tell
investors you already have committed funds. If possible use a SAFE contract to
accept funds faster.
Hire a freelance designer to clean up the deck and website home page if that
is an issue. Ask friends to review both deck and home page. If possible make a
product video walkthrough.
In meetings keep things friendly. Stick to the plan. Pitch and then ask if
they are interested. Answer questions truthfully but in line with
expectations. Never complain or give excuses for anything. Follow up
frequently because investors are often busy and literally might forget they
agreed to invest in your co.
Source - closed $250k seed round this month. Woohoo. Back to work.
------
modi15
1\. First figure out plan B - what happens if you are not able to raise
funding in the next 6 months.
2\. Assume a position of power - you will make this company big even without
funding because plan B is in place.
3\. Talk to investors from this position. You are smarter than them. You know
more about this business. You don't need this particular investor to invest
because others have already signed up.
4\. Treat investors like shit. Dont look too eager to setup meetings. Schedule
meetings a week out atleast. When you drop into a meeting do NOT spend more
than half an hour to 45 minutes. Do NOT answer all questions for investors -
be selective about information you disclose - push answers to next meeting -
make yourself scarce.
5\. Do bullshit padding around your entire story. If something doesnt sound
too good dont disclose that information. Make up stuff to make things look
good.
There are people who will find the points above ethically questionable. These
people most likely dont know what it takes to raise money.
~~~
skrebbel
I agree with most of what you wrote but:
> Make up stuff to make things look good.
That's gonna backfire.
~~~
godzillabrennus
Theranos is a good example of why that doesn’t work.
~~~
icedchai
I'd say the opposite. It actually worked for about 15 years... that's a pretty
good run and shows you just how susceptible to bullshit some of these guys
are...
------
ydau
\- Do you actually need to raise? If so, is now the right time? If you don’t
have a product with any users, it may be more valuable to prioritize this.
Raising money is a huge distraction. Approach with caution.
\- A clear, succinct, well-designed deck _does_ make a difference.
\- Talk to your users. How do they use your product? How often? Include this
in your deck.
\- Venture Deals and Mastering the VC Game are helpful books
\- Read early slide decks of now successful companies. Many are available
online (e.g. Airbnb).
\- Warm intros help. If you know someone who knows a VC and can intro you,
ask!
\- Different VCs have different investment strategies. Your TAM might not move
the needle on a 1B fund, but it could on a 20M one.
\- The best story is a growth curve that’s up and to the right.
\- For later stage: not to sound demeaning, but VCs often act like lemmings.
An offer on the table makes rallying others easier — reach out to those who
gave you a “VC pass” (ie nevder responded to your email, or didn’t follow up
after a meeting) and see if they’re interested now.
\- If possible, get feedback on your deck from someone who has successfully
raised.
\- Don’t tell VCs which other VCs you’re talking to. You’ll be tempted, but
don’t.
\- Take notes after each meeting. What were the objections? Stumbling points?
Use this feedback to improve your deck.
\- Giving a range for your valuation or amount you want to raise makes you
appear indecisive and lacking in confidence. Give specific figures.
\- Be capable of justifying why you want to raise X. How’d you come to this
figure?
\- Stories help. How’d you come to this idea? If you have direct exposure to
the problem you’re trying to solve - especially if it’s a business problem -
incorporate this into your pitch.
\- Make sure you’re talking to people who can make a decision within the firm.
\- Don’t copy and paste cold emails. Personalize them.
\- This can be a discouraging process. But it’s a numbers game. You only need
one yes to get the ball rolling.
\- Multiple offers help with negotiation :)
\- Good luck!!
------
meritt
Ask yourself if you actually need the capital.
Between the ubiquity of pay-per-minute cloud computing for every imaginable
service, tools to enable extremely productive remote employees, and thousands
of software companies ready to handle the complexity of payments, email,
ecommerce, hosting, etc, starting a tech company is easier and cheaper than
ever.
~~~
jeletonskelly
This is great advice. The further you can get on your own dime will save you
equity and get you better terms when you really do need capital investments.
Early on, the biggest expense will be your time.
------
thethimble
Hi certainstartup. Please reach out to me if you want to have a deeper
discussion. Notes:
1\. Be certain that you want to raise capital. By raising you're irrecoverably
giving up leverage to investors. You will always be beholden to investor
expectations going forward. If you're a mission-motivated founder, you will
inevitably reach a point where investor motivations will be at odds with your
motivations. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's important for you to
go into this eyes wide open.
2\. If this is your first round, this will likely be the point where CEO,
board, shareholder rights get defined (e.g. what needs to happen to approve an
acquisition? fire the CEO? issue more shares?). Make sure you have a good
legal team that can help walk you through all of the minor consequences of the
structure.
3\. Make sure you're educated regarding share classes and different treatment
for classes. Make sure you understand "preference" and "participation". Make
sure you're getting favorable terms on these points. Having a good legal team
helps a ton here.
4\. The best way to create leverage is to increase demand. Optimize your
process so that it culminates in an auction dynamic - where multiple
interested parties are bidding to win. This requires intentionally shepherding
parties through a gated process, pulling back people who are trying to move
too fast and pulling forward laggards.
Having been through this several times, I've been bitten by all of the above.
I'm happy to have a deeper discussion if you would like. Please reach out to
me at advait at goguardian dot com.
------
ei8htyfi5e
Find a way to get to profitability before raising, even if you're only making
$1.
------
JHM168
Yoo
Ok.. first thing you'll hear from blogs, interviews on Youtube, and everyone
else in the echo chamber is about growth. Growth growth growth growth.
Just for a moment, forget growth.
Think about engagement. What VCs and investors realllly care about is
stickiness ie how often are people using your product. This is true across B2B
+ B2C. (yes there are examples of low touch point high revenue businesses, but
let's forget about those for a second).
What you want to prove in the early days is how good your product is for a
small subset of people, not how good your product is to everyone. (this is
where the (in)famous saying "do things that don't scale" comes from.. partly
anyway)
Instead of saying to an investor that you acquired 100k users.. tell them:
\- 30% of our users acquired in the first 7 days return back to the platform
every day for 10 days \- 20% of users acquired within 3 days of a company key
event sign up and make a 'revenue' transaction \- 20% of users refer their
friends with a 80% conversation rate \- time on site is X minutes and users
typically return 4 times per day \- social media / community engagement on
your main channels \- site traffic is split 30/70 new vs returning users
There's that thing that Paul Graham from YC said to Brian Cheksy from Airbnb.
"Go out and find 10 people that absolutely love your product, and go from
there"*
Also.... one of the biggest pieces of advice with VCs I can give you:
Make sure you set the agenda and set deadlines to work to.
Don't let investors lead this.
This is your business, don't suffer fools or people that are 'too busy'.
*Might not be an exact quote :).
------
kumartanmay
This is one of the least asked questions that I learned today. If you are
raising a seed round from VC, please check the size of fund. If you can make a
case of return 20% of their fund during the exit after series A, go for it.
e.g. you have raised $1m from $10m fund for 10% equity and your company gets
an acquisition offer for $20m. The VC would favour your acquisition because
you would contribute 20% to his fund. However if you raise $1m from a $100m
fund, the $20m exit wouldn’t excite your VC and instead he would ask you to
raise a bridge round and push you to aim for $100m exit in the future. A 20m
in hand is better than $100m in bush.
P.S: I am not suggesting you to become short sighted at series A but it was a
context to help you understand my point. Just wanted to remain grounded and
help you understand with achievable targets.
------
adventured
Prepare for the process to be draining, frustrating, and to take a lot longer
than you expect. As the owner/operator of your start-up, it's like adding
another job to your list of responsibilities. Also prepare yourself for a
hundred no responses to get to a yes. Eating rejection is more often than not
a hefty part of the process. Try to not get upset at the rejections, waste
minimum amounts of time on that aspect; spending unnecessary amounts time
dwelling there is dangerous to your start-up, it'll eat your valuable time and
mental health (which is already being heavily taxed by the start-up itself).
~~~
torgian
So it’s like going to job interviews! :)
------
brryant
Some basic things I've learned along the way:
1\. be authentic. 2\. don't sell. 3\. explain your vision of the future in
simple terms
------
osi1647
Make sure you actually need capital. When I worked on my startup I noticed I
was more busy finding investors than building the software. One day I was done
with spending so much time on funding, and started to spend my time
programming on the actual project, which was a great relief.
------
graycat
For my startup, I went to hundreds of VC Web sites, saw their stated interests
in leading edge, disruptive, etc. technology. I sent hundreds of pitch decks,
polished to close to perfection, following lots of rules, e.g., only 10 foils,
large fonts, total of only about 300 words and other alternatives, etc.
My foil decks promised everything short of Pluto in the solar system. From the
VCs I heard back next to nothing. Net, I wasted huge amounts of time.
So, I had to ask, what was missing from my pitch? It became clear: The VCs
want most of all traction, significant and growing rapidly. They want more,
but traction is the biggie. So, they want at least real users, hopefully real
revenue, hopefully real after tax earnings. Basically the VCs want to buy part
of an airplane already at 5000 feet up and at Mach 0.5 and gaining altitude
quickly. They wouldn't buy into a Boeing 787 still on the ground.
But for information technology startups, the world has changed a LOT since the
start of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Cisco, Apple, etc. Now, for lots of
startup opportunities, by the time you have the traction the VCs want, you can
very well no longer need the VCs check and certainly not want the VCs term
sheet, BoD seats, or much of anything else.
VCs are not for all startups. My joke is that the VCs are looking for traction
significantly high and growing rapidly where there are five co-founders, each
with credit cards maxed out, and each with a pregnant wife.
True, some startups will need a big shot of equity capital, but that's nearly
impossible since such a startup will have a tough time getting the traction
for an equity check for even 10 cents.
IMHO, at this point, information technology VC is a goofy thing that has to
find some really strange situations. Instead of strange situations, now often
or usually, a startup with the required traction won't need or want a VC
equity check.
One way to handle VCs at low effort is to follow the Hollywood advice, "Don't
call us. We'll call you.". Really, if your startup has the traction the VCs
want to see, then they might notice you and call you. So, get on with your
work. If some VC calls, maybe listen. Otherwise waste no time contacting VCs.
------
mindgam3
Oh man, where to begin. Here are a few things I learned the hard way from my
first time fundraising in 2011 (3 months full time, a few all nighters working
on the deck, closed $1M+).
It’s a power game. Every single aspect of it. The typical situation is they
have power over you because you need money and they have money. Your job is to
convince them that they need you more, because money is easy to find but
future billion dollar startups are actually quite rare. In order to do this,
you need to create a reality in which they are losing out on a limited time
opportunity by not meeting you and then handing you a big check.
Borrowing a term from poker, the best way to walk out of the meeting with a
firm commitment or big check is to walk in with “position” on the investor.
Ways of having position include: \- warm intro from another investor who
already put money in \- any chart showing a core metric (revenue, users,
deals) going up and to the right \- any press
Basically anything that conveys a sense of momentum. Momentum is a huge part
of the game as well. It’s critical to create a sense of urgency. Investors are
pack animals. Getting the first close or “lead” is at least half the battle.
After one person commits, it becomes much easier for others to fall in line
due to social proof. Do whatever it takes to generate momentum and communicate
that to investors. The train needs to be leaving the station by a certain
date, are you in, yes or no.
Try to find a good candidate for a lead investor. You _could_ do a “party
round” of $1M with a ton of people all writing smaller checks from $25-200k.
But in my experience this is a bad idea, because none of the investors have
enough skin in the game to really dig deep and help you out if the shit hits
the fan. And if this your first funded startup, the chance of shit hitting fan
approaches 100%. You want at least one investor who is deeply, deeply
committed to your vision and most importantly to you. This will help you
navigate pitfalls and avoid a situation where, say, you raise a convertible
note (debt) and after 1-2 years when you’re still trying to find product
market fit, some disgruntled investors try to ask for their money back.
Don’t use a convertible note with a due date. Use a SAFE if you can get away
with it. If the investor doesn’t want to use a safe, get a very specific and
detailed explanation why.
Do treat all the investors with respect. But don’t let them get away with
power tripping. This is one thing infuriatingly common especially among big
names. If you take their shit, they won’t respect you. But you also can’t blow
your cool. Call them on it, explain that you’re serious and don’t want to play
games, and be prepared to walk out of the meeting if necessary. Don’t walk out
unnecessarily or be a dick yourself. But be prepared to show you mean
business, and if they don’t, then you have better things to do.
Do listen to investor feedback, especially if they are ex founders or have
domain expertise. But don’t lose sight of your vision or try to shift your
entire strategy bass on one person’s feedback.
Make sure you take time for self care and have strong support networks during
fundraising. It is very emotionally intense to pitch your heart out, the
stakes are high, and not everyone is nice. Take time and space to recover and
recharge emotionally. Remember that you’re selling investors first and
foremost on you and your team. And mostly you. If you seem tired or stressed,
or anything other than happy, alert, comfortable, and crushing it, that is a
bad signal.
Don’t be afraid. Remember why you’re doing what you do. Realize that even if
you get destroyed in the next pitch meeting, nobody is going to die. You’ll
sleep it off. Tomorrow is another day and another chance to try again. Every
pitch is an opportunity to practice and to improve your craft. Celebrate every
success, even if it’s just learning one tidbit from a VC who decided to pass.
And embrace the failures, because you will have them. It hurts to get rejected
when you have so much on the line. But if it was easy to close seed rounds
then everybody would be doing it.
Don’t worry too too much about valuation, at least compared with investor
quality. Better to have a committed lead investor who backs you 100% at a $3M
valuation than some rando coming in $5M.
Finally, after you close the big bucks, shred your pitch deck and don’t use it
to inform your next product plan. The exciting part of the pitch deck is
typically big picture vision stuff. Don’t lose sight of that, but focus on the
next step of product. Go back to being scrappy even with $1M in the bank.
Good luck!
------
3pt14159
There is a book out there that is short and underrated:
[https://www.amazon.ca/Funded-Entrepreneurs-Guide-Raising-
Fir...](https://www.amazon.ca/Funded-Entrepreneurs-Guide-Raising-
First/dp/1491940263)
------
synaesthesisx
Be wary of raising too much too fast/having too many investors to deal with
early on.
------
Frodo478
Make a good pitch [https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-pitch-your-
company/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-pitch-your-company/)
------
jboggan
You're better off spending the time improving your product.
------
ChuckMcM
First, read "Pitch Anything" by Oren Klaff[1]. No seriously, read that book
cover to cover, you can do it in a weekend.
Next do everything @coffeemug said :-)
[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-
Presenting-...](https://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-
Persuading/dp/0071752854)
------
lbriner
* Know your audience so you can use appropriate language
* Think about it from their point of view. How clear is your message?
* Take advice on how much to ask for so you don't sound too green
* They will care about ROI but also the quality of the team. Theory is great but only a good team can deliver the theoretical ROI.
* Try and back up claims with facts e.g. We have a market of X billion - according to whom?
------
startupdiscuss
Focus on sales growth to the exclusion of (almost) everything else. If you
focus on the product, change the features to increase sales. If you hire a new
tech person, you do it because you need a feature that was asked for by a
customer. As you set prices, aim for the highest revenue growth.
------
tylerfoster
Anything other than a yes, is a no.
~~~
ryanSrich
Anything other than a signed a term sheet with wired funds is a no.
------
arikr
Read everything in the fundraising section here:
[https://www.startupschool.org/library](https://www.startupschool.org/library)
------
anthony_barker
If you are in EU consider the new ICO rules... Up to 8 million within eu
countries.
Have MVP if you want to limit dilution.
Draw a small salary... Don't work for free.
~~~
a_imho
_If you are in EU consider the new ICO rules... Up to 8 million within eu
countries._
What rules? Could you elaborate?
------
luca_m
I suggest you reading Venture Deals.
------
koolhead17
Ask yourself:
1\. Do you really need an investment.
2\. GOTO step 1.
------
m3nu
Startup School had a video about it last week. By Geoff Ralston.
[https://www.startupschool.org/videos/48](https://www.startupschool.org/videos/48)
My tl;dr:
\- be honest, don't exaggerate facts
\- find a shared vision, find the right investor
\- get it done and get back to work
------
lonelyw0lf
Don't
------
mirianbert
Apply to YC.
------
kenneth
I run a $30M early stage venture fund. Here's what I wish first-time founders
knew:
• Don't bother cold emailing me, you'll end up straight in the trash. Don't
even think about reaching out on LinkedIn, I open it once a month to mark
everything as spam. Instead, find someone we know in common and ask for a warm
intro. I receive way too much inbound, and a referral from someone I trust is
one of the best ways to skip the line.
• Have a good deck, and make sure I see it before I talk to you. For the
majority of new startups, a deck is the best way to share your story, and I
will make my decision of whether to spend time talking to you in person while
reviewing a deck.
• Understand what I'm looking for: (1) solving a real problem that matches my
investment thesis (look it up on our website), (2) a team that's worked
together before and is uniquely qualified to solve this problem, (3) a market
that has the potential to build a billion-dollar monopoly, and (4) a real
business model and a realistic path from zero to a billion.
~~~
CPLX
This almost reads like a parody of the entitled God-complex VC mentality.
I wonder how long it will be before people feel some shame advocating for
overtly classist and exclusionary network-only policies in public at least.
~~~
kenneth
Getting into YC is a great way to jump-start your network. Ultimately, having
a strong network is key to building a successful venture business. Expecting
otherwise is unrealistic.
VCs aren't charities. Seed investing is a business with very high quantity and
low quality at the top of the funnel. Any investor who tells you they aren't
giving more weight to a lead that comes recommended vs. one that doesn't is
lying to you. It could be as simple as 5min to review the initial pitch vs.
1min.
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Western Academia Helps Build China’s Automated Racism - sexy_seedbox
https://codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/western-academia-china-automated-racism/
======
ETHisso2017
I hate to be _that guy /girl_, but aren't all facial recognition algorithms by
definition racist? In the case of China, it seems like the real issue is that
the racism seems to be an open feature of the product rather than something
carefully cloaked in bland PR-speak.
~~~
threezero
Yes, race is a feature of facial recognition. Is that racist? This algorithm
seems to be specifically built to detect non-ethnic Chinese faces to further
discrimination.
------
aznpwnzor
China's problem has always been how to maintain control through the ebb and
flows of history. When centralized governments fail in China, they fail HARD.
(This in no way is a moral defense of what they do.)
With mounting economic pressure from internal growth slowing down and n-times-
burned global trading partners, the current regime is up against the wall. The
one BIG difference this time is that AI has such effective policing
effectiveness. Previously marshaling paramilitaries and corralling local
warlords were the (hard to scale) tools available. They were not the best
tools, because when the central govt fails, the empowered local forces have
enough strength to wreak havoc.
AI is so powerful in China because AI is mostly bound by dataset size (at our
current stage of research). And if there's one thing that's cheap for the CCP
to get, it's training data.
If there's a time for dynasty building, it is now. The CCP may be the most
resilient thanks to AI.
------
whoevercares
Exactly, Chinese leads CVPR or any other CV conference. Not so long from now
China will also leads AI
------
jacquesm
That mortgage has to be paid.
------
codedokode
There are almost no ethical uses for facial recognition. It is a technology
for criminals.
~~~
crimsonalucard
What about unlocking my front door with a facial recognition lock. Are you
telling me that's not ethical?
~~~
logfromblammo
Exactly so. A face is an identifier, not an authenticator.
No biometric should ever unlock any lock by itself. It should only determine
which thing-you-know or thing-you-have is usable for unlocking that lock.
So if your front door recognizes your face, it decides that the RFID fob you
typically keep in your pocket is good enough to unlock whenever that gets
close enough to read, or that hearing the vocal sounds for "rezrov" or "open
up" is an acceptable key.
Otherwise, a housebreaker could take some photos with a telescopic lens and
print your face onto a mannequin head with hydro-dip printing or silicone-pad
transfer printing, and unlock your house with it. Forever. Or at least until
you get a new face.
~~~
crimsonalucard
The technology doesn't exist yet but I'm talking about a facial recognition
technology that is on par if not better than the human eye.
Such a technology is on par with a lock. Because it is basically impossible
for any human to imitate another human to a degree where they can murder
someone and pretend to live his life. It's easier to copy a key than it is to
reproduce a fully identical face.
Twins being the exception to all of this, but with facial recognition devices
that beat humans this still remains a possibility as no two faces are alike.
| {
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Posix Abstractions in Modern Operating Systems: Old, New, and Missing [pdf] - bshanks
https://roxanageambasu.github.io/publications/eurosys2016posix.pdf
======
bshanks
By way of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791636)
| {
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The Programmers Guild, a professional society - omouse
http://www.programmersguild.org/
======
scott_s
This organization has a pronounced anti-foreign worker stance. Since almost
all of my colleagues are not American and are here on visas, I cannot support
this organization.
~~~
geebee
Not a problem, you are completely entitled to your own opinion on this.
That said, it's a real charge to say that they have a pronounced anti-foreign
worker stance. This organization is clearly opposed to the H1B visa, but that
doesn't necessarily translate into being anti-foreign worker.
Is there a specific press release or position that you disagree with? If so,
would you be willing to articulate your objections to it?
~~~
scott_s
My colleagues - researchers - that are not here on student visas are here on
H1-B visas. Those that are on student visas will eventually need H1-B visas
after they graduate. I take their objections to be anti-foreign worker.
~~~
geebee
I'm having a little trouble understanding your position. Do you feel that any
individual or group that advocates a limit, even a high limit, on the number
of immigrants or guest workers who can come to the united states each year is
"anti-foreign worker?"
Keep in mind that even without the H1B visa, the USA already takes in about
1.2 million immigrants legally each year. I also believe the principle
objection to the H1B is that it specifically targets a few professions,
causing a greater disruption to engineers/scientists (and potentially
discouraging young Americans from entering these fields). Many people who are
opposed to the H1B visa are not opposed to more general immigration.
Anyway, thanks for responding. As you can probably tell, I take a dim view of
the H1B visa. I do think it's important to have a healthy (but limited)
infusion of talent from other countries, but I think that we need to ensure
that it is not overly concentrated in a single field, and I do believe that it
is reasonable to enforce absolute limits to the number of people who can come
to the US each year. I believe that this position is more pro than anti-
foreign worker.
| {
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EPA chief signs proposal limiting science used in decisions - clumsysmurf
https://apnews.com/f25e1975b1ea4417a5995cc2b8d87a8e/EPA-chief-signs-proposal-limiting-science-used-in-decisions
======
kolpa
The hypocrisy would mind-boggling if it weren't such an established pattern of
twisting good words to cover evil deeds, a la the infamous "PATRIOT Act". No
demands to open up data generated by government-funded science, no efforts to
build privacy-respectful reliable data sets, just suppressing inconvenient
truths.
------
tropo
A rather slanted headline!
The article later states:
"increase transparency in the agency’s decision-making by requiring all
underlying data used in scientific studies to be made publicly available"
That sure sounds like a good thing. It would of course limit the use of data
that is unreproducible due to being kept secret, but that isn't bad at all.
~~~
wmeredith
It’s in the second paragraph. This article is spun so hard it’s headed out to
sea. I’m as down for a ride on the current administration hate train as the
next guy, but how is this a bad thing?
~~~
ChoGGi
"the change, long sought by chemical manufacturers and fossil fuel companies"
"designed to restrict the agency from citing peer-reviewed public-health
studies that use patient medical records that must be kept confidential under
patient privacy laws."
and the next paragraph:
"Such studies include the Harvard School of Public Health’s landmark Six
Cities study of 1993, which established links between death rates and dirty
air in major U.S. cities. That study was used by EPA to justify tighter air-
quality rules opposed by industrial polluters."
| {
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The quickest path to $50m in revenue? Build fun. - babyshake
http://nabeelhyatt.com/post/172687318/the-quickest-path-to-50m-in-revenue-build-fun
======
jdrock
Doesn't include data on % of companies in each category that fails.
~~~
nod
Should it? Isn't that irrelevant to how fast the "best of the best" can get to
50 Mil?
~~~
jpwagner
True, but if you want to calculate your own EV over x years, you need that
kind of data.
------
callmeed
3 things I noticed (not sure if it affects the conclusions):
1\. Interesting that neither article (this or the WSJ post) seems to include
data on mobile carriers or handset providers. Not sure why that is.
2\. Entertainment seems to be the only category that's primarly B2C companies.
Almost seems like it doesn't fit. If you're going to include video game
makers, why can't you also include Netflix and other such companies.
3\. I wonder how much acquisitions have affected these numbers.
~~~
nabeel
Yeah, the data was just software companies. So no Apple, Nokia. They also
didn't have Google or Yahoo, which was unfortunate. Still, in terms of top 100
software companies, it's a valuable sample.
------
Tichy
Seems very unlikely to me that parallels can be drawn from the past to the
present in that way. Markets go through different phases.
~~~
mishmax
Yep, and did he just draw a general rule from just one example (Activision)?
~~~
ryanwaggoner
No:
_At least three social gaming companies I know of will be, or already have,
hit $50m in revenue in their first three years of business._
~~~
nabeel
Hi. Nabeel here. To be clear this should not be thought of as conclusive
academic analysis. These were just interesting indicators that I found.
I was using the data that was available from the article linked, which means
it's the largest 100 public software companies, then segmented by type. Which
meant, any individual category had roughly 5-8 companies with which to sample.
In the entertainment category it was Activision (4 years to $50m), Electronic
Arts (6), Take-Two (6), International Game Technology (10) and a few others.
~~~
Tichy
Maybe gaming is timeless, it just seems to me that some fields have a time
when they boom, and other times when they don't boom so much. So looking at a
company founded during the boom could be misleading.
------
mkull
No ecommerce on the list?
------
rokhayakebe
Zynga, Facebook, Myspace.
| {
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Hyper-Realistic CGI Is Killing Photographers, Thrilling Product Designers - replicatorblog
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/03/luxion-keyshot/
======
jstanley
This reads a lot like a marketing page for KeyShot.
~~~
hexagonc
Especially since it doesn't provide any actual stats or data or back up the
claim that photographers are being put out of work. There are no testimonials
from either those who would hire photographers nor photographers themselves
that this is happening.
| {
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Betaworks Launches iPhone App Promotion Ring - moses1400
http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/02/betaworks-launches-iphone-app.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d65bcc54a243fb3%2C0
======
gyardley
This looks a bit like AdBrite's now-defunct Spottt, but brought to iPhone
applications.
I'm a little skeptical, because over the past couple of years tons of
advertising networks have tried to make in-app ads for other applications
work, and they've all failed. Conversion rates have always been abysmally
poor, to the point where it's not worth crapping up the user experience with
an advertising banner. There's been tons of blog posts on this from a variety
of sources.
Because conversion rates for most applications ads are so poor, companies like
Flurry and Tapjoy focus on incentivized installs, where the user gets a bit of
virtual currency in exchange for downloading the advertised app. (Disclaimer:
I own a chunk of Flurry.) Those actually work really well, but that's because
the user's been bribed.
Betaworks is full of sharp people, so I'm wondering what I'm missing - it's
not like them to release a product that flies in the face of a couple years of
market data.
Perhaps they'll move towards very small, hand-curated sets of thematically-
linked applications, and distinctive ad units that don't look like anything
else on the market - something like The Deck (<http://decknetwork.net/>).
That's the only online model I can currently think of that hasn't been tried
in the mobile app space.
| {
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Show HN: A Voice-Controlled Party Game for Kids Using Speech Recognition - danielhitome
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id998827609?mt=8
======
tomtai
I have to say I quite like this. It looks nice and plays through well.
One thing I noticed though is that when one player loses both of their lives
the whole game is over. With the limited number of animals I suppose it isn't
likely the game can go on for that long, but it seems odd to end the game with
a loser instead of a winner.
Another issue with this is the turn selector seems to be set on random rather
than cycling through the players in an order. That seems great on the surface
as a sort of 'party mode' but when I played a four player game more often than
not a player (Bob) would have had two turns before another (John) had even had
one. If Bob turns out to be a particularly dense child he could kill the game
off for everyone before John even gets a turn to guess.
~~~
danielhitome
Thanks for the feedback! I definitely notice that the cycling is an issue,
gonna work on it!
------
Urgo
android link?
~~~
danielhitome
Only built it for iOS at the moment unfortunately...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Exceptional: Exception-Handling in C99 Using (Black?) Preprocessor Magic - qqwy
https://github.com/Qqwy/c_exceptional
======
hasahmed
Black magic to indeed
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amulet's New Type Checker - hydraz
https://hydraz.semi.works/posts/2018-02-18.html
======
skybrian
I wonder if this approach results in good error messages?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN : Write a Payment Gateway - mvantmur
Hello:
Having very less funds to give to payment gateway, I am planning to write my own payment gateway for a web application. Could you please help me to list some important steps involved in that? Thanks.
======
Travis
You're not going to be able to write your own payment gateway. That's the
short version.
The long version is that it'll be much more expensive to write your own, than
it is to use an existing one. I would guess it'd cost at least tens of
millions (if not HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS) to build that. What would you need? \-
the actual software (not an easy undertaking) \- fraud protection on said
software (takes years to develop, ask Paypal, or read their story in "Founders
at Work")
On top of that, you have to get the banking industry to allow you to tap into
their existing infrastructure. Unless you're a pretty well proven company,
this will be a non-starter.
Throw on top of that the cost of compliance (not basic PCI, either -- you'll
need top fo the line stuff going on).
Yeah, I'd say it'd cost you > $100 million AND take > 3-5 years to accomplish.
Use an existing payment gateway.
~~~
mvantmur
Thanks for the quick info. I will RTFM more on "Founders at Work".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: [Help] How do I become under performer to a decent developer? - aryamaan
In my last job- which lasted for 2 years (it was also my first job)- I was given "needs improvement" rating. After that, I changed my job.<p>In my current job (it has been 1 year), my first 6 months have been fairly productive, though I have been alluded to pace up. Last few months have been rather slower productivity wise.<p>I find it hard to concentrate (though I am technically capable of completing the given task, or to reach the answers/solutions when I don't know them at first) and miss my deadlines. I don't feel much motivated to work (though, I always intend to perform better and be a better developer).<p>As much I would like to blame my depression for it, I know that isn't the cause. I also feel inferior because of missing my deadlines and lagging behind.<p>Has this happened to you? Is there a way out- did you become from "bad hire" to "valuable asset" to the company?
======
usernamebias
One word. Relentless. That is how you make and stay in this business. I am
relentless so that I can look at yesterday's code and giggle at what a fool I
was.
I've hit several plateaus in my history -- mostly around the time I feel
comfortable with something. Thats my sign that I need to learn something new.
You're going to be called a lot of things when you start out, Its all about
how you take it. To this day, After ~7 tech jobs, countless "needs
improvement", 2 companies founded, and about 1.4M in VC funding --- I still
feel like a damn rookie.
~~~
aryamaan
I know there is relentlessness in me. I am always trying (or actually thinking
about) to be a better developer but my action fails to show my intentions. And
I end up wherever I am in a worse situation
------
Kinnard
Do you run? I'd run every day if I were you. You may think this is tangential.
Try it and you'll be back here to thank me.
Also, if you suspect you might be depressed you should talk to a
therapist/professional/clinician. There's no shame in taking care of yourself.
~~~
aryamaan
Yes, I do run. I started it 4 weeks back.
I felt depressive a couple of weeks back for 2-3 weeks. Now, I feel better but
I will still consult a doctor.
Thanks for your input.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How To Hire Great Business Development People - eladgil
http://blog.eladgil.com/2013/02/hiring-great-business-people-is-hard.html
======
pkaler
I interview Business Development people just like I interview developers. I
want to see them "code".
I have them open up their CRM tool of choice. Then I have them explain their
funnel. They should be able to step me through how they've setup their stages:
Qualifications, Needs Analysis, Decision Makers, Value Proposition, Quote,
Negotiation, etc.
Then I have them deep dive on a particular deal and have them explain each of
these stages for this particular deal.
~~~
rscale
I'd be extremely reluctant to hire somebody who was willing to give me a
guided tour of another company's CRM.
Even ignoring the ethics of the request, if somebody is willing to act against
their current employer's wishes, they're almost certainly going to act against
my wishes as well.
There are plenty of ways to check an applicant's abilities without requesting
access to confidential information. This is as true for biz dev as it is for
coders.
~~~
DenisM
Where did you yet the idea that GP asks for _confidential_ CRM deployment? I
think you are jumping to unwarranted conclusions.
~~~
rscale
I got the idea from his post. The vast majority of BD candidates _can't_ open
a CRM and provide detailed information about it's structure and the deals it
contains without revealing confidential information.
As such, I think it's a poor idea to make that a standard part of the
interview process.
You mounted an unwarranted defense. There are edge conditions where somebody
could do so without a problem, but they're the exception that proves the rule.
------
notahacker
I was slightly disappointed a list that was long enough to have two references
to understanding legalese(1) omitted stuff as basic as "incredibly aware of
your market" and "customer-need oriented"
On the other hand I love the fact that you've underlined _Raw charisma is
drastically over rated by technical founders._ Very true, and very important,
especially if you're selling complex b2b products to the sort of audience that
usually will do deals with the socially-awkward stereotypical geek that
understands their needs and won't do it with the beautiful, bubbly person that
wants to take them out for a delightful long lunch to distract from the
detail.
(1)useful, but you hire _lawyers_ to ferret that stuff out and bizdev guys to
come up with propositions compelling enough to discourage the other party from
weasel-wording their contract clauses
~~~
eladgil
Thanks for the feedback. I agree with your point about "incredibly aware of
your market".
"Customer-need oriented" I think is great for a sales person. For a great BD
person maybe a similar axiom should be phrased as "understand the other sides
objectives clearly" and really dig into what the other party wants (versus
what it claims it wants).
------
DenisM
This seems like a good advice to me if you're hiring a bd guy. Any extra
advice if you (a hacker) are _partnering_ with a bd guy?
The only thing I can contribute is to look if the would-be partner has any
friends from previous engagements joining the new venture. If so, it
establishes that your prospect is not a pathological liar (no one would stick
around with that sort of person). It's important because a compelling bd story
could be a great business opportunity, or complete bullshit, and a hacker type
is normally unable to tell them apart.
It's not much, admittedly, but maybe this will get the conversation rolling?
~~~
orangethirty
You need to see their track record. Have they published anything? Do they talk
about their failures? How much actual business experience do they have?
As someone who does both sides (software and business) I've come to realize
that the best way to approach is as you would approach hiring a developer. You
want someone who has shipped code and can ship code. Sometimes people
exaggerate things, that's normal due to the competition. It is a red flag, but
not a complete deal buster. Keep an eye for it. If it sounds fishy and does
not have real data to back up then just send them out politely.
By the way, I get way more red flags from hiring developers than from hiring
business people. Dunno why.
~~~
hkon
Care to elaborate on the red flags?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Game of Thrones cinematographer: it’s not me, it’s your TV settings - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/4/30/18524679/game-of-thrones-battle-of-winterfell-too-dark-fabian-wagner-response-cinematographer
======
morkfromork
Same kind of artistes think light gray text on a white background is easier to
read. Make things unusable for "artistic" reasons.
------
kstenerud
In other words, "You're holding it wrong."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TSV Utilities: Command line tools for large, tabular data files - bryanrasmussen
https://github.com/eBay/tsv-utils
======
JimmyRuska
I've been noticing more swiss army-knife-like cli tools in the last few years.
It would be cool if there were some that could support avro/parquet/orc
formats. This one is notable because it's written in D lang by a mega corp.
Some useful cli data wrangling tools --
[https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv](https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv)
[https://github.com/dinedal/textql](https://github.com/dinedal/textql)
[https://github.com/n3mo/data-science](https://github.com/n3mo/data-science)
[https://stedolan.github.io/jq/](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/)
[https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/parallel](https://gitlab.redox-
os.org/redox-os/parallel)
[https://github.com/willghatch/racket-
rash](https://github.com/willghatch/racket-rash)
Would you have any others you recommend?
~~~
sstephenson
jwalk parses JSON into a stream of TSV records:
[https://github.com/shellbound/jwalk/](https://github.com/shellbound/jwalk/)
~~~
DonHopkins
>parses large documents slowly, but steadily, in memory space proportional to
the key depth of the document
If parsing JSON with shell scripts and awk is your idea of the most ideal way
to "slowly, but steadily" get the job done.
[https://github.com/shellbound/jwalk/blob/master/lib/jwalk/co...](https://github.com/shellbound/jwalk/blob/master/lib/jwalk/commands/parse.awk#L137)
I know that everything looks like a nail if your only tool is a hammer, and
it's fun to nail together square wheels out of plywood, but there are actually
other tools out there with built-in, compiled, optimized, documented, tested,
well maintained, fully compliant JSON parsers.
------
gibba999
Seems like a waste to do CSV->TSV without going all the way:
[http://www.tsvx.org/](http://www.tsvx.org/)
The problem with TSVs and CSVs is that you might get an odd datatype 1TB into
a file. For example, what you expect to be an integer value is somehow a
string.
TSVx extends TSV to add standard formats for things like headers which allows
for strict typing. You can do things like export a database table and import
losslessly. You can even export from MySQL and import into PostgreSQL most of
the times without pain.
The strict typing also avoids a lot of potential security issues. And in an
environment where you control both ends (so you don't need to worry about
security of where the file came from), it leads to much nicer APIs: you can
refer to things by names rather than column numbers. It's more readable, and
if the order or number of columns changes, nothing breaks.
~~~
enriquto
It wouldn't seem that tsvx is "going all the way", it's a completely different
thing that dirties your numbers with silly metadata.
~~~
woofie11
TSVs aren't just numbers. A TSV might be numbers for the first terabyte, and
then include a string, just for the heck of it.
I'd call that "dirtying numbers," rather than an removable header which allows
you to programmatically validate that your numbers have not, in fact, been
dirtied.
------
jondegenhardt
Hi all, Primary tsv-utils author here. Thanks for checking out the tools! I
hope some of you find them beneficial.
~~~
Tharkun
Thanks for these. I've rolled my own implementation of many of these over the
last 20 odd year, most of them living in ugly shell scripts embedded as
aliases in my env. This will make my life easier!
------
cbsmith
It makes me cry how much time has been invested in formats like CSV's, TSV's,
etc. ASCII (and UTF-8) has characters reserved for column, row, and even group
separation. Just use them and save a lot of pain.
~~~
dev_dull
We’ve discussed this at length and I’m squarely in the DO NOT camp. The
drawbacks of using non-readable meta characters exceeds the benefits:
1\. TSV can be read and imported by almost everything.
2\. People can add and adjust TSV files from any editor.
3\. What’s the way to insert meta characters again In VIM? And now nano? Argh
I’ll just try and copy and paste it. Ugh that doesn’t work.
Just use CSV/TSV folks. Anything more complicated and reach for a better
serialization format (json, yaml) and _not_ a better delimiter.
~~~
Annatar
Both JSON and YAML are very difficult to construct parsers for.
To make matters worse, both formats are full of pitfalls:
[http://seriot.ch/parsing_json.php](http://seriot.ch/parsing_json.php)
[https://arp242.net/yaml-config.html](https://arp242.net/yaml-config.html)
using either of these, in my opinion, is extremely misguided.
~~~
dev_dull
The flip side to that is that json and yaml parsers exist in every language,
and would be more than capable of replacing any logic you’d find in a CSV.
~~~
Annatar
CSV's are a data structure. They do not contain any logic.
------
dima55
There're lots of tools in this space that are similar in a very general way,
but have widely different design choices. My tookit is
[https://github.com/dkogan/vnlog](https://github.com/dkogan/vnlog)
It's tsv-utils-like, but is strictly a wrapper around existing tools. So
filtering and transformations are interpreted literally as awk (or perl)
expressions. And the various cmdline options match the standard tool options
because they ARE the standard tools. So you get a very friendly learning
curve, but something like tsv-utils is probably faster and probably more
powerful. And it looks like tsv-utils references fields by number instead of
by name. Many of the others (mine included) use the field names, which makes a
MAJOR usability improvement.
Other tools in no particular order:
[https://csvkit.readthedocs.io/](https://csvkit.readthedocs.io/)
[https://github.com/johnkerl/miller](https://github.com/johnkerl/miller)
[https://github.com/eBay/tsv-utils-dlang](https://github.com/eBay/tsv-utils-
dlang)
[http://harelba.github.io/q/](http://harelba.github.io/q/)
[https://github.com/BatchLabs/charlatan](https://github.com/BatchLabs/charlatan)
[https://github.com/dinedal/textql](https://github.com/dinedal/textql)
[https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv](https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv)
[https://github.com/dbohdan/sqawk](https://github.com/dbohdan/sqawk)
[https://stedolan.github.io/jq/](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/)
[https://github.com/benbernard/RecordStream](https://github.com/benbernard/RecordStream)
~~~
cube2222
Adding another one which I'm one of the authors of:
[https://github.com/cube2222/octosql/](https://github.com/cube2222/octosql/)
It tries to provide ergonomic data munching of various formats, but using a
sql interface, which most will probably feel immediately at home with.
~~~
bradknowles
With respect, who actually feels at home with SQL?
It's about the most alien and obtuse language I've ever had the misfortune of
encountering, and in that category I rate it worse than COBOL, FORTRAN,
Assembly, C, Prolog, Sendmail re-write rules, BASH, and every other language
I've ever encountered and had to use, but which I cannot recall at the moment.
~~~
he_the_great
SQL gets rather mistifying when you move towards some complex joins and data
mapping. PSQL can also feel Sadly out of place.
But their is real nice clarit in what you want at its foundation.
------
yfiapo
Cool that there are some specialty tools in this space and will use if I hit
that performance challenge.
Minor nit, I found the performance table ([https://github.com/eBay/tsv-
utils/blob/master/docs/Performan...](https://github.com/eBay/tsv-
utils/blob/master/docs/Performance.md)) confusing at first and second glance.
Alternating colors indicate.. different OSes? That doesn't seem to be the
important message to convey as you are trying to show the speed of your tool
and not the OS. Recommend to use the coloration to provide differentiation
between tools instead of OS.
~~~
jondegenhardt
Thanks for the feedback. I agree, the performance table would benefit from
better formatting.
------
zX41ZdbW
Worth to note clickhouse-local: full featured ClickHouse SQL engine for files
in CSV/TSV/JSONLines, whatever...
[https://www.altinity.com/blog/2019/6/11/clickhouse-local-
the...](https://www.altinity.com/blog/2019/6/11/clickhouse-local-the-power-of-
clickhouse-sql-in-a-single-command)
~~~
paulryanrogers
Nice! Or even just Sqlite
------
Annatar
With AWKA, in my tests I was able to get an instant 100% speed boost without
modifying any of my AWK code. So using AWKA would likely beat the tools
presented here, without needing to invest the time to learn a new tool, which
for me at least is of paramount importance.
[https://github.com/noyesno/awka](https://github.com/noyesno/awka)
------
oehtXRwMkIs
I remember there was a TUI app that could handle CSV, HDF, etc. I can't find
if for the life of me though. I remember the author even made their own TUI
library for it. I've been looking for it for a while now, if anyone knows
please let me know.
~~~
flas9sd
must be visidata
~~~
oehtXRwMkIs
I think that's the one, thanks so much.
------
visarga
I've had something like this for 10 years, self made. I use cut, grep, sort,
uniq from the system, but added a tool to compute counts per field, do value
processing like awk (using a one line Perl script because I didn't want to
learn awk), randomise order, split files by percentage, join multiple files by
column and pretty format the data.
Sometimes I make a chain of them 3-4 lines long, at which point I switch to a
script.
------
zmmmmm
I always get excited by these types of tools and then end up going back to
awk. How do you beat something that's already pre-installed on every Unix
system for the last 40 years?
Having said that ... these do look like they have some useful extras, in
particular, around the annoying part of retaining / manipulating header rows
...
~~~
thewhitetulip
I totally agree. awk, sed, grep are amazing and it astonishes me how many
people aren't fluently able to write scripts in it. I used to be in that camp
few months earlier and I used to write everything in Python, but one day, I
determined to learn shell scripting and I loved it.
awk::Python what Java::Python. What we can do in 10 lines of Python can be
done in one line of awk and it doesn't have to be unreadable!
Main pain in the neck is finding a good tutorial. As usual, I started
documenting what I learnt in an end to end guide here,
[https://github.com/thewhitetulip/awk-anti-
textbook](https://github.com/thewhitetulip/awk-anti-textbook)
~~~
cf
The original awk book from the creators is in my opinion really good.
[https://archive.org/download/pdfy-
MgN0H1joIoDVoIC7/The_AWK_P...](https://archive.org/download/pdfy-
MgN0H1joIoDVoIC7/The_AWK_Programming_Language.pdf)
~~~
thewhitetulip
I found it to be a good introduction, but the issue is, it does not go in dept
and teach by example.
------
Mauricio_
Dear author: thank you for making multiple small programs instead of a single
command with 400 flags.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Agreed!
My pet peeve: open source packages that have no separation of the actual IP
from the embodiment in an app or environment. Is it so hard to create a
library? And put the real feature in there, instead of wrapped up in some run-
on main module?
Kudos to this writer for doing it well.
~~~
jondegenhardt
Thank you both! I too like the Unix philosophy of small tools that do a
specific job. In a package like this, people may find they only care about one
or two tools. They can ignore the rest and mix and match with other tools as
they see fit.
------
londons_explore
I feel like this might explain atrocious unicode handling and special
character escaping in most eBay properties... Looking at you gumtree!
------
maxekman
Check out Nushell if you missed it a few days ago on HN:
[https://github.com/nushell/nushell](https://github.com/nushell/nushell)
Related HN thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783006)
------
jmsmistral
Looks cool! The presentation of the benchmark data could be improved by
charting the values, however.
------
j88439h84
Mario is a tool for manipulating data in your shell with Python functions. It
supports csv, json, toml, yaml, xml.
[https://github.com/python-mario/mario](https://github.com/python-mario/mario)
------
mlueft
[http://www.lueftenegger.at/produkte/csvsplitter-gratis-
progr...](http://www.lueftenegger.at/produkte/csvsplitter-gratis-programm-zum-
splitten-von-csv-dateien/)
------
cben
`keep-header` is a superb gem of do-one-thing composability.
------
QuadrupleA
Wouldn't a relational database be better and faster-querying and more space
efficient in most cases, e.g. sqlite? Wonder what use cases would favor large
collections of text / TSV files?
~~~
pletnes
If you’re getting TSV files from an external source and are interested in just
some aggregate results, you’ll get better performance by computing the smaller
results and storing these than if you first import, then process, then delete
the data in a SQL db. Also you don’t have to store the data twice.
------
ragerino
You might want to check out Apache Drill. It allows you to access structured
files as database tables through JDBC/ODBC.
~~~
riboflavin
Dremio replaces Drill for a lot of that too, some of the original team has
worked on it. Here's a tutorial from some folks who have used it:
[http://www.helicalinsight.com/technical-guide/connecting-
csv...](http://www.helicalinsight.com/technical-guide/connecting-csvexcel-via-
dremio/)
------
pfarnsworth
eBay has an api project that appears to have been half-completed and then
abandoned. Trying to understand exactly how to use their APIs is extremely
confusing because they don't have anything definitive and basically a
frankenstein-like API so I've given up. I frankly wouldn't trust anything
coming from eBay at this point, they appear to have extremely poor developer
support and no investment in making their APIs better to use.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
David Simon: Newspapers could emulate HBO and charge for content - rms
http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/04/david-simon-newspapers-could-emulate-hbo-in-charging-for-content/
======
boundlessdreamz
Isn't this the exact business model of magazines like NewYorker and Economist?
~~~
_pius
Yes.
------
knightinblue
_part of the HBO model is you can’t sell crap. If it’s not the best out there,
no one’s gonna put up money for it._
This is exactly why the subscription model will fail. It's practically
impossible for the newspapers, even the big ones, to constantly churn out
material thats worth paying for.
If subscriptions really do happen, a few people will just get subscriptions
and put up their own versions of <http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/>
for the rest of the people by rewording, massaging and summarising news
without any attribution whatsoever. It's a fallacy to think anyone can really
control content delivery online.
P.S. To be fair, the analogy is a slight bit off - not everything on HBO is
worth paying for either. But the difference is that noone can rip off HBO
shows while anyone can rip off the NYTimes. If there's a need for it.
------
gabrielroth
David Simon: Very good at making television, not so great at coming up with
business plans for newspapers.
Seriously, if this idea were being proposed by anyone who didn't make 'The
Wire,' I find it hard to imagine that Hacker News would find it worth our
attention.
~~~
_pius
_Seriously, if this idea were being proposed by anyone who didn't make 'The
Wire,' I find it hard to imagine that Hacker News would find it worth our
attention._
Yeah, but it _was_ proposed by the creator of "The Wire," so here we are. :)
David Simon was waaaaay out in front of this issue. Way back in 2006 he chose
the demise of the newspaper industry as the theme of the final season of The
Wire and covered it critically before the whole "Newspapers Are About to Die"
meme was getting any traction outside journalism trade circles.
That's not to say he's got all the answers, but the guy's certainly been
thinking about the problem for quite some time and it's interesting to hear
his perspective.
~~~
gyeh
The "Newspapers Are About to Die" message has been repeated over and over
again since the mid 90's. Because of the recent high-profile closings/cost-
cuttings of newspaper organizations, the last 15 years of gloomy
prognostications have essentially become reality (mainly precipitated by the
current economy).
Similar to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and global warming, these are
train-wrecks that can be seen miles and miles way. Unfortunately for
newspapers, it seems they are in the middle of one.
~~~
eli
Yes, newspaper readership has been declining for some time, but ad revenues
didn't really start to tank until the past few years
([http://www.npr.org/blogs/globalpoolofmoney/images/2009/04/pa...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/globalpoolofmoney/images/2009/04/papers_big.png))
------
eli
It's getting to the point where proposing a new solution to the newspaper
industry's problems is like posting a clever "new" solution to end spam. Odds
are it's neither clever nor new.
Someone needs to come up with a Final Ultimate Solution to the Newspaper
Problem Response form based on <http://www.claws-and-paws.com/fussp.html>
------
brandnewlow
Beware of reporters proposing business ideas.
~~~
eli
They're as bad as the developers!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016) - DiabloD3
http://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-balance
======
manarth
Deja-vu.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13303544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13303544)
~~~
manarth
And in 2015 (although that source article has since disappeared):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9987816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9987816)
------
csomar
In my opinion this is missing an important thing: Does the Swiss model scale?
For example, the Singapore model can't scale. It's based on rich people and
corporations arbitraging the international fiscal system. You can't have
another Singapore without having another East Asia and West with it.
Swiss is definitively a privileged place that is benefiting from the overall
wealth of Europe and many other countries. We can't have the niceties they are
having unless we have huge leaps in overall productivity around the world.
Edit: To explain my point further. Let's say you have a Swiss watch factory
that is relaying on export for 90% of its production. With this money it can
afford hiring top researchers and paying very high wages even for low-skill
positions. This wouldn't be possible if there wasn't a huge market to product
this luxury good for (Europe, US and Asia).
~~~
sleavey
There's no reason why it can't scale, but one problem in implementing this
kind of system is convincing the population to accept higher taxes (and Swiss
taxes are, overall, still significantly higher than the US despite what the
article seems to make out). It is, ultimately a case of the government taking
more of your personal wealth to provide services to society as a whole, which
flies in stark contrast to the traditional US approach.
~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _There 's no reason why it can't scale_
I grew up in Switzerland. Nobody checked if we bought metro tickets. Everyone
bought them. The only people I remember being little shits about it were
tourists. Cultural norms do not informally enforce themselves at scale--you
need institutions, and those institutions cost money and freedom.
~~~
mkaziz
Disagree. As an immigrant to the US, I see many cultural norms that the US has
(at scale, despite heterogeneous population) that were bizarrely foreign to
me, but that I (and other immigrants like me) quickly picked up on and
developed.
Examples: (good) giving pedestrians right of way when driving, stopping at
stop signs, holding the door open for people (bad) empty small talk
conversations used to fill silences with casual acquaintances.
------
johanbrook
The U.S. is very behind many European countries in the work-life balance
department. It's kinda surprising that America – with its liberal policies for
private companies – is so backwards when it comes to caring about their
employees.
The points in the article could apply to policies/norms in Sweden as well.
Here, we get _at least_ 4 weeks of paid vacation per year, as well as some
insurances and a very generous parental leave (1 year for each parent).
~~~
robert_foss
> The points in the article could apply to policies/norms in Sweden as well.
> Here, we get at least 4 weeks of paid vacation per year
No, mandatory EU minimums enforce at least 5 weeks of vacation.
~~~
bosie
do you happen to know how 'vacation' is defined? would it include national
holidays?
~~~
hedwall
It does not.
~~~
bosie
Fair. Seems like it isn't 5 but 4 weeks that is mandatory in the EU.
~~~
robert_foss
It's 5 + national holidays.
~~~
bosie
I am not doubting you though when i tried to look it up I found the EU
requirement to be 20 days + national holidays (e.g. ireland, italy, Czech
Republic,...). How would this be allowed if the EU requires 25 days?
------
deedubaya
I used to work for the US HQ for a Swiss owned company. I worked in both
offices on occasion with close interaction with both Swiss and American
employees (I'm American).
This article is very spot on. What it doesn't mention much of, however, is the
difference in what happens during working time. In a typical US office
setting, water cooler talk, filing meaningless reports, etc is common. You'll
probably have a guy who you're not really sure what he does. You simply don't
see much of that in Swiss offices (at in my limited experiences, I'm sure
there are exceptions). When it was time to work it was time to Fucking Work.
If you're not adding value it is looked down upon. In the US, you kinda just
shrug and go back to filing your TPS report.
~~~
dennisnedry
This is true for large corporations, but smaller startups that is not the
case. Smaller companies have everybody wearing multiple hats. Nobody sits
around, and if they do, it's time to ask them to leave.
~~~
st3v3r
Not really. Startups can have people coasting along as well.
------
quotemstr
I don't want a work-life balance.
Sure, the Swiss model is very attractive for a person in a certain phase of
life with a certain attitude toward work --- one for whom work is something
_distinct_ from life.
Me? I want the freedom to pour myself into something I love. I'd rather spend
60 hours per week using all of my faculties to produce something worthwhile
than to spend 35 or 40 hours just trading my time for money, doing something I
have to force myself to do, even if I can go swim with the swans on my break.
I've seen people use the concept of "work-life balance" as an excuse to
propose caps on the impact a single developer can have. These people want to
live in a Harrison Bergeron world where _my_ work beyond 40 hours wouldn't
count so that _they_ don't feel pressed to work more than 40 hours a week. I
couldn't be more opposed.
When I'm doing something I love, I always think about ways I can do it better.
When I'm doing something I hate, no amount of work-life balance will
compensate.
~~~
_nalply
Nothing prevents you to pour yourself into something in Switzerland.
~~~
liveoneggs
I think having bones prevents this.
------
cven714
Slightly off topic, but the beauty of Switzerland was such a stark contrast to
where I grew up in New Jersey that it almost made me angry. All these people,
going about their daily lives in Switzerland seemingly oblivious to the fairy-
tale landscape around them!
~~~
chrisper
Remember that people get used to the environment. People who live in the Bay
Area don't care about the Golden Gate Bridge for example.
~~~
throwaway91111
For someone out of the area, what's the big deal? I much prefer the mackinac
bridge for the sights AND the bridge itself.
------
petercooper
_But in Switzerland, my husband 's company gave employees six weeks of
vacation a year._
And yet, I find people get used to it and consider it normal rather than a
great thing. I give my employees 36 days of paid vacation per year (7.2 weeks)
and, yep, got complaints the other day when I suggested making December 22nd a
mandatory holiday day(!) :-)
~~~
nwomack
I think the complaint here (if I understand you correctly) is that you are
giving a vacation day and then making a certain day mandatory to use it. This
practice is common among companies and extremely infuriating and in my opinion
should be illegal. Better to have 35 days paid and make december 22nd a
company holiday.
~~~
mrweasel
It's not that uncommon to include "company holidays" in "paid days off".
Denmark has that as well, I get 5 weeks of vacation, and 5 days of
vacation/days-off. My employer is free to "spend" the 5 days for me.
~~~
myhrvold
Seems like in this case, how the company originally presents what you're
getting matters. So, as you point out here, qualifying the # of days off w/
days that are set [that count as part of that allotment] would set
expectations accordingly. Otherwise, still a good deal, but employees would
feel misled if they want to use it other parts of the year.
------
germinalphrase
While this sounds lovely, can anyone with experience speak to the difficulty
of finding sponsored work in Switzerland?
For instance, my wife is a social worker in the U.S. and speaks conversational
German - but this is not likely to be considered a "high need" type of job for
which a company would hire a foreign worker.
~~~
louisswiss
As a non-EU/Swiss citizen you can only be employed in Switzerland if the
company can demonstrate that no suitable EU/Swiss candidates could be found
for the job role.
Exactly how this works I am not too sure, but anecdotally it is very difficult
unless you are in top-management or a highly specialised field.
~~~
marktucker
That's just to get the work visa. If you are married to a Swiss, for example,
and get a visa via family reunion, companies can employ you without having to
make this argument.
------
hueving
"Being rich ruined me for being poor and its lousy perks."
~~~
st3v3r
You say that as if the US is a poor country. It's not. There's no reason
whatsoever that we couldn't have what Switzerland has, other than some
assholes at the top see it as an impediment to their having all of the money.
~~~
hueving
>There's no reason whatsoever that we couldn't have what Switzerland has,
other than some assholes at the top see it as an impediment to their having
all of the money.
There are lots of reasons the countries are nothing alike.
For one, Swiss immigration is very picky so they just choose highly skilled
immigrants to avoid having to deal with unskilled poor people.
Second, the population density is about 5 times that of the US so it's very
easy to focus on public transportation because so many more people get value
out of each dollar spent.
Third, Switzerland gets the benefit of paying very little for the military by
taking a very nationalistic stance and avoiding involvement in conflicts
regardless of the atrocities . Criticizing the US for its imperialism is
definitely fair game, but you can't pretend it doesn't cost money when it
comes time to compare what a country can offer its citizens.
------
jeffdavis
Comparisons between the US and European countries are often useless. Either
they pick a rich European country that has restricted immigration for a long
time, or they say "Western Europe" while ignoring many of the countries in
Western Europe that have some real challenges (like unemployment).
Germany or the UK might be reasonable comparison points. Not perfect, of
course (still huge differences), but it's much more likely that there is a
real lesson somewhere.
~~~
hedwall
Swedens is quite similar and has (until recently) had a very liberal
immigraiton policy.
~~~
jeffdavis
Sweden population 9.5M, less than 3% the size of US polulation.
I'm glad they are so happy with their country, but not sure if it scales 30X.
And regardless of policy, I suspect the actual immigration numbers (and
affluence of immigrants) is much different than the US.
------
bsn54
Very nice article.I wish every country followed the swiss way of work life
balance!
~~~
geodel
I would especially exhort India and Bangladesh to work on this with highest
priority.
------
musha68k
Somewhat expected in the more conservative midwest (the author is comparing
her Zürich experience with living in Chicago) but apparently "unlimited
vacation" seems to become increasingly common in the Bay Area at least.
~~~
PaulRobinson
I have a former colleague that on looking for a new role was offered
"unlimited vacation".
He asked what the limit was. "Unlimited", they replied. "Honestly?", he
ventured. "Yes, unlimited".
"OK, then", he said, "I'd like to book the entire year off".
"Oh no, you can't do that!", they replied.
"I thought so. So what's the limit?", he asked again. "There is no limit",
they replied. "But you just said I couldn't have a year off", he pointed out.
"It has to be reasonable", they said.
This went back and forth. In the end "unlimited holiday" in the UK for this
firm was 28 days. That is the statutory legal minimum in the UK. If he went
over this, it would likely be accepted at the time, but "noticed" in
performance/salary reviews, etc.
So, in short, unlimited vacation is a con, and you should try the above
yourself. It'll lead to an interesting conversation, although it may harm your
chances of getting an offer if you time it wrong.
~~~
geodel
I agree. I think of it more of flexible working arrangement. I work for 60-80
hrs/week for urgent releases and then disappeared for a month, maybe repeat
this multiple time in an year. In traditional company it would be 40 hr / week
and no month long vacations. In worse companies 60 hr/ week still no month
long vacations.
------
camperman
There's another factor here that hasn't been mentioned: Switzerland is only a
couple of hundred kilometres across. That makes a difference when it comes to
public transport and other infrastructure like broadband. I laugh when I see
case studies about high-speed broadband in Europe. Europe is small. If you put
my country on top of Europe, the south-westernmost city would be in Portugal
and the northernmost in Estonia. And the US is even bigger.
------
Arizhel
Any time I meet or hear about someone like this, who comes back to the US
after living in western Europe, I really have to wonder about them. Especially
this one: she's just complaining a lot about life in America not being as
great as in Switzerland. Well, that's no surprise. What did she expect? Even
worse, she's just in time for Trumpism. She couldn't have picked a worse time
to come back.
~~~
Symbiote
When she wrote the article, presumably some time before 1 February when it was
published, Trump seemed a lot less likely.
~~~
manarth
The article's date says 1 February 2016, but the slug is even earlier, dated
July 2015.
It popped up on HN back then, too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mysterious Go Master Blitzes Competition (Master said he's AlphaGo's Aja Huang) - jrwan
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/mysterious-go-master-blitzes-competition-rattles-game-community
======
jrwan
The identity of Master could be Aja Huang of AlphaGo.
[https://twitter.com/oth_mirai05/status/816641830234112000](https://twitter.com/oth_mirai05/status/816641830234112000)
[Translation: (Master [9D]: I'm Dr. Huang of AlphaGo)]
------
dekhn
Looks like it's AlphaGo:
[https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/816660463282954240](https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/816660463282954240)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Domino's Pizza unveils U.S. infrastructure project filling potholes - dsr12
https://www.pavingforpizza.com/
======
jotto
Reminds me of how Stephenson describes Los Angeles in Snow Crash
"Los Angeles is no longer part of the United States, as the federal government
of the United States has ceded most of its power and territory to private
organizations and entrepreneurs"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash)
~~~
RubenSandwich
I know it's polular to predict a dystopia future that resembles 1984; but I'm
much more inclined to believe we are more heading into a Cyberpunk future
where corporations hold the real power and nation states are more puppets for
their will.
~~~
craftyguy
> we are more heading into a Cyberpunk future where corporations hold the real
> power
I believe we're more heading into an Idiocracy future where corporations also
hold the real power (e.g. "Carl's Jr machine: Your kids are starving. Carl's
Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother.")
~~~
setquk
I agree. They already sell Smartwater. Because it has got electrolytes.
~~~
kipchak
Unrelated aside: 1L Smartwater bottles are rather light and durable for reuse
in backpacking.
~~~
craftyguy
Yea totally, Sawyer filters fit them nicely too. They're VERY durable, as in
I've got one bottle I've carried probably hundreds of miles by now over
several trips and it's been dropped and squeezed thousands of times. Looks
like a bear chewed it up, but it still does not leak.
Pro tip: you can replace the O-ring that comes with the filter for a durable
rubber one used for garden hoses for a real nice fit on the smartwater
bottles, and have some extras because the _worst_ is if you lose that seal (or
it is damaged) and you are out in the wilderness.
------
padobson
I like the leadership of Domino's here. As logistics focus more on the home as
the final destination, companies like Amazon, FedEx, Uber, or even Postmates
are going to have to look at infrastructure conditions as a threat to their
business.
Rather than lobbying to increase gas taxes and funnel more cash into various
government bureaucracies, Domino's is trying to address the problem directly,
by getting the money directly to the local agencies that actually fix the
roads.
I hope others follow suit.
~~~
gascan
Direct funding is good- but ultimately the road is a (very expensive) public
good, and Domino's can't fund full maintenance all by itself nor does it reap
all the benefit.
Public funding has always made sense for road repair because (generally)
everyone benefits, and roads are expensive, so everyone pays.
To be clear- direct action is laudable, and it's a neat project, but big
picture, we need many orders of magnitude more money on the problem than
Domino's can ever provide.
~~~
nanis
Roads are not public goods. They are certainly excludable, and, beyond a
certain level of traffic, definitely rival.
Update: "Public good" is a technical term, see, inter alia,
[https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/ap-
micr...](https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/ap-
microeconomics/ap-consumer-producer-surplus/ap-externalities-topic/a/public-
goods-cnx)
~~~
gascan
Your own link describes roads as generally nonexcludable:
_Once a road is built, it is difficult to exclude people, although toll roads
can exclude nonpayers._
Taking the definition to the extreme makes it no longer useful. Yes,
technically you could make a road exclusionary and rivalrous. But their nature
tends nonexclusionary and nonrivalrous. "Public good" is really an observation
about whether something is more suited to private or public ownership, rather
than some kind of strict legal term.
~~~
nanis
> Your own link describes roads as generally nonexcludable:
Well, I did not notice that because one has to click to reveal that self-
contradictory statement. In any case, that is a point against Khan Academy.
"Public good" is not the same as "these days mostly financed by politicians
shoveling money to labor unions and a few firms".
Everywhere you look there are excludable roads. Everywhere you see traffic
congestion, you see rivalry.
Roads are not public goods, even if you feel like governments ought to own
them.
------
bobthepanda
Horrifying that the state of public works in America has come to this.
~~~
fein
Your comment is proof that Domino's marketing team is pretty good.
Hell, even the existence of this post on HN is basically some confirmation
that hail corporate bullshit slips past this crowd.
Don't buy the PR wank folks, this is just an ad masquerading as some noble
effort.
~~~
pavel_lishin
What are you on about? The person you're responding to isn't running out to
get a Domino's tattoo; they're pointing out that there are places in America
that are cash-strapped enough that they're willing to accept corporate
sponsorship to provide basic government services.
~~~
ribs
The roads were shitty when I was a kid and they’re shitty now. No big apparent
change to me.
~~~
untog
Anecdotes are not data
------
beenBoutIT
As much as I like what Domino's is doing here, it irks me that they didn't
flush the idea all-the-way out. Domino's could have easily made an app that
would allow users to manually fill-in potholes in exchange for piping-hot
Domino's Pizza and sides. Imagine chronically unemployed individuals from all
walks of life diligently scouring the streets looking for potholes.
Documenting, geotagging and filling them in with non-Newtonian fluid repair
packs. [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/04/silly-putty-
potholes](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/04/silly-putty-potholes)
------
xkcd-sucks
As a reminder, repairing potholes yourself can be very low effort; modern
materials obviate the use of hot asphalt.
Buy some kind of "Pothole Cold Patch" compound at your local home improvement
store and dump it in the hole. In this way you can fix the holes on your local
street/commute route without waiting for the city.
~~~
err4nt
Wow TIL. I even looked it up and $13 buys you enough cold-patch to fill in a
few holes it looks like. Thanks for sharing, if I'm ever bothered by a pothole
I'll just fill it myself now that I know!
~~~
acct1771
This attitude is how we shift to more self-sustainability and voluntary
governance. Thank you.
------
basementcat
While Domino's shareholders are free to run their company the way they wish, I
would prefer that they invest their capital toward developing yummy pizza that
is less unhealthy instead of filling potholes and lobbying against proposed
rules to post calorie counts, etc.
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-03-03/junk-
food...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-03-03/junk-food-s-last-
stand-the-pizza-lobby-is-not-backing-down)
~~~
jessaustin
I would have suggested "filling potholes" as a better use for their pizza than
"eating"...
------
rmason
They'd have much better success finding a way to improve the ride of their
delivery vehicles.
They could spend their entire 'paving' budget here in Michigan where they're
headquartered and it would be barely noticeable.
~~~
wil421
Isn’t the pothole problem in Michigan due to climate? In Atlanta, the city
proper has terrible potholes due to mismanagement more than anything. Outside
the city proper it’s much better. Even in my city that’s within 5 miles of the
city proper. I’m in Dekalb county which notoriously mismanaged and corrupt but
out potholes are better than Atlanta.
~~~
moltar
The weather excuse is a common one, but only plays a small role. There are
plenty of example municipalities with good quality roads and winter
conditions.
The main issue, at least in Montreal, appears to be low grade asphalt. The
reduced quality is due to addition of used engine oil to the mix, instead of
fresh bitumen. Which makes asphalt slightly cheaper and needs to be replaced
more often. I’d say it’s a win for the asphalt (monopoly) company.
------
walterbell
While we’re here, Strong Towns is doing good work and needs your help,
[https://www.strongtowns.org/mission/](https://www.strongtowns.org/mission/)
_> The mission of Strong Towns is to support a model of development that
allows America's cities, towns and neighborhoods to become financially strong
and resilient. For the United States to be a prosperous country, it must have
strong cities, towns and neighborhoods. Enduring prosperity for our
communities cannot be artificially created from the outside but must be built
from within, incrementally over time._
------
clay_to_n
I do like this, but wouldn't gyroscopic stabilizers to hold the pizza be
cheaper?
Apparently they've tried them in the past:
[https://www.adweek.com/creativity/dominos-wants-roll-out-
gyr...](https://www.adweek.com/creativity/dominos-wants-roll-out-gyroscopic-
pizza-delivery-system-worldwide-158098/)
~~~
reustle
They have (had) scooters in Japan with stabilizers on the back do your noodles
didn't spill during delivery.
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8c/f9/25/8cf9256a7ae56d1186cc...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8c/f9/25/8cf9256a7ae56d1186cc0086f4b44749.jpg)
------
himom
First world problem but south/east-bound El Camino Real from Page Mill until
San Antonio Rd has some rough edges.
\- Pothole so deep, it would swallow a bicycle, skateboard, motorcycle or
Ferrari near Military Way, Palo Alto, CA 94306
[https://goo.gl/maps/rJjpmYL9Nnk](https://goo.gl/maps/rJjpmYL9Nnk)
Another: Unnamed Road, Palo Alto, CA 94306
[https://goo.gl/maps/MQ5sCZ5p6Vz](https://goo.gl/maps/MQ5sCZ5p6Vz)
Worse, there are several left-turn prox sensors permanently false positive
such that if you miss the timing, you’ll be stuck waiting for the Godot
ghostrider. And in CA, it’s illegal to run a malfunctioning red traffic
signal, because cities need fund$ from “guilty, next” traffic kangaroo court.
------
brianbreslin
I was hoping this was some new tech they had added to their delivery cars to
fill potholes as they drove by. Using them to at least log and identify
potholes would be a smart move.
------
Simulacra
I live in the richest county in America. We don't need help filling potholes,
but a whollleee lot of underprivileged, cash strapped rural and low income
communities DO. I say forget nominations. Go forth and fill the holes in the
most needy communities ASAP!
~~~
OnMyPhone
I wish more people thought like this.
I worked for one of those poorer counties, and money was 100% the issue every
department had every single year.
The highway dept's budget shrank before it would even get approved by the
board. One of the first things the Finance Dept would ask is what roads
absolutely cannot wait until next year.
If they spent a lot of money to make one road good for 10+ years, then they
wouldn't be able to do anything to the roads that were actually a hazard for
drivers.
So they would only get enough money to band-aide some roads. Now the situation
is that it's better to band-aid a road for a year or maybe two than it is to
not have any money to do anything to the road.
(We have a lot of bad roads, have cold winters usually and deal with farmers /
truck drivers that can't read the weight limits on the roads)
------
ocdtrekkie
While mostly just a PR play, this almost sounds like an experiment in what
libertarians I've seen suggest road maintenance should be: That businesses
that benefit from roads should be left to improve said roads if its useful to
their business.
------
keeganjw
Only in America should be playing in the background of this article.
------
psergeant
Cute PR move but what an indictment of American local governance
------
cjmcqueen
Slow clap... Great marketing effort to collect email accounts. I hope some
more towns get help too with pothole filling. Very creative.
------
User23
In other words local government is no longer fit for purpose.
------
moltar
They’d go bankrupt in Montreal.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Underscores are stupid? Get a Japanese keyboard - recurser
http://recursive-design.com/blog/2012/05/16/underscores-are-stupid-get-a-japanese-keyboard/
======
vorg
If youre going to use a Japanese keyboard, why not go all the way and use
Kanji in your code also? Instead of (courtesy of Wikipedia)...
def create_set_and_get(initial_value=0) # Note the default value of 0
closure_value = initial_value
return Proc.new {|x| closure_value = x}, Proc.new { closure_value }
end
...we could write (excuse my Chinese)...
做 创_去_和_来(先_值=0)
闭_值 = 先_值
回 程.新 {|x| 闭_值 = x}, 程.新 { 闭_值 }
终
Oh look: all the "words" are a single character each! Why not get rid of all
those silly grammar symbols in between them (just like in Chinese and Japanese
writing)...
做创去和来(先值=0)
闭值=先值
回程新{|x|闭值=x},程新{闭值}
终
Now there's tons of whitespace on the righthand side, so why not make it all a
single line, with spaces instead of newlines...
做创去和来(先值=0) 闭值=先值 回程新{|x|闭值=x},程新{闭值} 终
A lot terser! Makes all the talk about semicolons and underscores sound a
little silly to some people, doesn't it?
~~~
m_for_monkey
Already exists: <http://www.chinesepython.org/>. (Scroll down for a short
translated code snippet.)
English info: <http://www.chinesepython.org/english/english.html>.
~~~
vorg
Chinese Python is a Chinese version of Python, but doesnt utilize the inherent
tersity of CJK characters. For example it translates "import sys" as "載入 系統".
The example I gave would eliminate spaces, semicolons, underscores between
words by using one and only one CJK character per English word, so in the
example "import sys" would become, say, "入統".
------
ars
Or just reprogram your keyboard (xmodmap) to make any button do anything you
want.
~~~
recurser
I'm curious - do you physically take the keys off and swap them when you do
major mapping changes like this to make using it easier? Or just use touch
typing/muscle memory and ignore what's written on the keys?
~~~
mistercow
I use Colemak and occasionally one-handed Dvorak (when I'm having RSI issues
in one hand or the other), but my keys are laid out QWERTY. Move the keys, and
touch typing becomes much more difficult because you lose your "homing bumps"
at the f and j positions. Also, learning a new layout is easiest with a
diagram floating on the screen, not by trying to look through your fingers at
the keyboard.
~~~
reeses
I am another Colemak user. I use a Truly Ergonomic keyboard on my desktop, and
having to look at the keyboard because of the odd placement of enter, tab,
quotes, etc. absolutely kills my throughput compared to my laptop.
~~~
mistercow
Interesting. I had not seen that kind of keyboard before. Seems like having
"b" on the left hand would also be distracting, but maybe that's how other
people type.
------
brokentone
I don't like his statistics so much:
Ruby - Saving 34% (6,613 keystrokes) PHP - Saving 52% (105,250 keystrokes)
Those percentages are not the most helpful. They represent a relationship
between the positive delta and the negative delta, rather than a savings for
the project (which I feel is the first implication in a percentage saved).
~~~
recurser
Yeah I don't really like them either, and I wrote them. I thought twice about
including the percentages, and I did try to highlight that fact:
Note that the percentages below are only relative to
these 2 sets of 3 characters, and don’t represent the
total percentage of keystrokes saved.
The percentages are only really there to provide an easier way to compare the
(relatively small) Ruby sample, and the (relatively large) PHP sample. Simply
saying that one project saved 6000 strokes vs. the other with 100,000 strokes
seemed a bit meaningless given the relative sizes of the projects, and doing a
full-on frequency analysis of modifier key usage seemed like more trouble that
it was worth... perhaps in hindsight I should have done it anyway.
zokier provided an interesting link to a previous discussion below
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2973776>, specifically
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2977303>) which does a much more thorough
analysis of Finnish/Swedish vs. US layouts - I'd like to run his code using
the Japanese layout when I get a chance.
------
zokier
see this previous discussion for keyboard/programming stats:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2973776>
Especially the methodology I used then to compare Finnish/Swedish and US
layouts seems similar to his.
------
yuchi
Actually Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, designer of Ruby is Japanese. It's pretty
ironic, isn't it?
~~~
bradleyland
It's not ironic at all. One would expect that authors using a particular
keyboard layout would tend to favor characters that are easy to type. In that
way, it's the opposite of irony. The outcome is exactly what we'd expect.
~~~
blahedo
See also the keyboard used to develop the original vi:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg>
~~~
yuchi
That explains also the tilde=home :)
A recent article I've read somewhere explains it very well!
------
quarterto
I have the number keys mapped to their symbols (i.e. pressing 1 gives !,
pressing Shift+1 gives 1 etc.) using a custom XKB map. Feels so much more
efficient, although I don't have any hard stats.
~~~
lloeki
Sounds almost like a FR layout.
~~~
draven
FR layout is great for this (and writing lisp is easier when the parenthesis
are easily typed) but the []{} characters are horrible to type!
------
ksec
Interesting, according to the stats, if you have = sign done with out the
shift it would have saved another 20% of the keystrokes.
------
rshm
This is my current .Xmodmap file
keycode 48 = quotedbl apostrophe quotedbl apostrophe
keycode 66 = Tab Caps_Lock NoSymbol Caps_Lock
keycode 20 = underscore minus underscore minus
------
jhuni
Use dashes for separators like in Lisp.
~~~
LeonidasXIV
Just it doesn't work in most languages, as the - sign is usually the minus
operator. In Java and Python 3 for example you can use Unicode in identifiers,
maybe you can use mdash there (unless they forbid punctuation characters).
~~~
NateEag
For Emacs users, there is the wonderful package Smart Dash Mode:
<http://malsyned.net/smart-dash.html>
It takes a pretty good stab at whether you want a dash or an underscore, based
on context.
It's a whole lot easier on the wrists.
(The only problem is you start to wish you had it everywhere, not just in
Emacs.)
~~~
LeonidasXIV
Wow, as an Vim user, I think this is seriously cool. Now it'd need to support
camelCode as well, so when I write camel-code in JavaScript, I get the right
thing. That'd be awesome.
------
nknight
> _The Control key is in a far more comfortable position below the Tab key,
> where caps lock would be on a traditional keyboard_
Well, there's tradition and there's tradition... Traditional Unix systems
usually had ctrl there, and the old Symbolics/"MIT space cadet" keyboard
actually had what I believe is the equivalent of backspace ("rub out") in that
location. The modern location of caps lock seems to be a PCism.
Edit: Forgot to mention, notably even the Apple II and III had ctrl there, I
don't think Apple switched to the "modern" layout until the Mac:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/suburbia_org_uk/4820757193/>
[http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/photos/Apple_III_Keyboar...](http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/photos/Apple_III_Keyboard_s1.jpg)
------
cheatercheater
Don't get a Japanese keyboard... just get a better layout!
<http://bitbucket.org/cheater/us_split/overview>
It's just like qwerty, but better, because it inflicts less pain.
I didn't even know, but Apple started using it with iPads!
[http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/02/03/ipads-split-
keyboard...](http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/02/03/ipads-split-keyboard-has-
hidden-buttons/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Find the lowest airfare (and have fun doing it) [Tripeedo - YC 08] - adudley
http://blogs.computerworld.com/find_the_lowest_airfare_and_have_fun_doing_it
======
jgrahamc
Hmm.
I don't think the natural language input is a very good idea. It's very error
prone and only works correctly if you actually know what language it supports.
I tried it and it got confused. Also it didn't correctly recognize a three
letter airport code that I used.
To be frank I've found that Kayak has the best interface for doing this and
there's no need to select which sites to search, etc. The interface here does
not seem like an improvement.
And maybe it's just me but when I hear 'peedo' I think paedophile and so this
company sounds like its name is 'try paedo' to me.
~~~
diN0bot
On the one hand I agree: I'd rather it popped up while I typed "Frankfurt,
Germany" to let me disambiguate HHN and FRA, rather than open 20 tabs that all
said "do not service that airport". I didn't realize HHN was the wrong code
until nothing was found, whereas other sites (eg Kayak) let me disambiguate
immediate.
On the other hand: not using a date picker is _awesome_. I've been using nl
date parsing on my own sites lately and it's The Best.
~~~
jsrn
ha! I just tried to find a flight from Frankfurt to Moscow and also wasn't
successful because of your software insisting on 'Frankfurt/Hahn(HHN)'. Please
fix this fast! I also tried 'From Frankfurt/Main' and 'From FRA' but wasn't
understood:-( Apart from that, I like the 'command line approach to finding
flights a lot. Suggestion: Why not open the third party travel sites (Orbitz
etc.) in a Javascript-Window (instead of a new browser window).
Then I tried to report the airport issue to you by clicking on the feedback
button on the right. After entering my feedback, upon clicking on 'Submit',
the feedback window showed me something like 'there was a problem sending your
message...' I tried again, to no avail - sadly, the feedback form didn't tell
me what went wrong or what to do next, it only offered me to add a 'sad'
emotion to my message. Which wasn't of much use, because the 'problem sending
the message' prevented me from showing you my sadness (Ironically, the third
party company that makes your feedback system has named itself
'getsatisfaction'). Well, I closed the feedback window and found another way
to post my feedback:
[http://getsatisfaction.com/wundrbar/topics/i_didnt_want_to_p...](http://getsatisfaction.com/wundrbar/topics/i_didnt_want_to_post_this_here_but_your_feedback_thing_on_the_right_continued_to_give_me_errors_there)
I only had to create an account, submit a fake email address, enter a new
password (twice) make up a new username and enter a captcha. After that, I had
to enter the password again (twice), because it has to be at least 6
characters long. And, of course, enter the captcha again. After that, I was
allowed to post my comment!
:-)
~~~
ngrandy
frankfurt/main is now the top match for 'frankfurt'. :)
the way to specify an airport if the top match is not right is just to keep
typing. eg: london => london all airports (lon); london gatw => london,
gatwick (lgw); lon hea => london, heathrow (lhr)
similarly: sa fr => san francisco; sa di => san diego
typing frankfurt/main didn't work because the slash was confusing the
interpreter. i'm fixing that right now.
------
electromagnetic
I don't like the pop ups, I want comparable data not 20 different pages, all
of which I have to dig through before I get my information.
~~~
adudley
agreed-- but until airlines open up their fare data via APIs, users can only
truly get all data by actually searching individual sites. even meta-search
sites like Kayak don't have access to all fares, which is why results often
vary between the various sites. tripeedo is a step toward making that process
more simple.
~~~
Jasber
What about Open Travel (<http://www.opentravel.org/>)? Its a format being
supported by some of the major players in the travel industry:
<http://www.opentravel.org/Join/Members.aspx>
I am working in a startup that aggregates rental car rates, similar to
Tripeedo using OpenTravel. Its all XML based, and can be a PITA--but the
result are a better product and a better user experience.
~~~
potatolicious
I doubt this sort of scheme will gain real traction - much of the airline
industry's scheme involves building consumer loyalty (e.g. "I always fly with
XYZ Air, they have decent prices and I don't have to hunt around hard to use
websites"). An open API destroys this, and makes airfare even more of a
commodity than it already is. I've heard anecdotal stories about Kayak being
constantly blocked by the sites they scrape.
~~~
Jasber
Sites like Tripeedo are not geared towards loyal customers-they're geared
towards bargain shoppers.
OTA is gaining real traction. By my count about 1/3rd of the companies listed
on Tripeedo are _members_ of OTA, while many more unofficially support some
derivative of it. Most of these companies don't have open API's--they are very
private and require NDA's and partnership agreements.
There are systems in place to handle use-cases like this. API's are in place
for travel agents to search available rates and creating bookings. This is
essentially the same concept.
Kayak is justifiably being blocked because they're scraping sites. If they had
partnership agreements in place this wouldn't happen.
------
utnick
I for one welcome our new meta meta meta travel search engine overlords. :)
It worked really well for me. I loved the natural language search, one of the
things that beats me down with travel search engines is having to select my
date on their little calenders and then figuring out the airport codes of the
airports I want to go into.
The 2 dozen browser tabs were pretty neat, on a low memory machine that might
get annoying, but for my pc it was smooth.
One recommendation I have on the natural language sort is to have it recognize
times of day i want to leave like morning, afternoon, etc
~~~
adudley
glad you like it, and thanks for the suggestion. time of day is a parameter
we'll definitely be adding soon. (it's actually one of the trickier ones to
implement).
------
sammyo
Also opening a couple dozen new browser windows is a good way to ensure your
site is only used once.
~~~
kirubakaran
Normally I'd agree, but in this case it is exactly what I wanted!
------
jbrun
That is a great site, beats all others hands down. Pop-ups suck, but still
beats the other sites. I love entering the date in words.
------
anthonyrubin
If you are going to create a new site in this space it has to be at least as
good as Kayak. Tripeedo fails horribly. As others have mentioned, a site that
simply opens numerous windows with the results from each site is not adequate.
~~~
briansmith
Tripeedo has two obvious advantages over Kayak:
(1) It can help you search discount airlines like JetBlue and Southwest.
(2) It will show you fairs that are exclusive to the airlines' websites. (I
don't think I've ever run into a situation where the airline's website had a
price significantly lower than what was on Kayak but I've heard rumblings that
it happens.)
~~~
jpwagner
I agree with both of these thoughts, but where is tripeedo when kayak partners
with all of these?
i recently went to hong kong and searched all of these engines and got
discouraging prices. I did one search on Cathay Pacific's website and saved
close to 40%. I'm almost positive you won't see this with domestic flights
(for now.)
~~~
potatolicious
They won't partner I don't think. Airlines dislike fare competition, it drives
profits down and worsens their already-bad financial situation. From the
couple guys I know who work in that industry, there is real push-back against
aggregation sites.
You also provided the evidence of this yourself - I too have had a lot of
trouble with Kayak recently, and it seems their ability to scrape accurate
fares is severely compromised, and I suspect that airlines have some hand in
this.
------
anuraggoel
FF3 and IE7's pop up blockers prevent access to search results. This is
default browser behavior. How many people know or care about disabling pop up
blocking for individual sites (or changing any defaults, for that matter)?
------
yef
I had a frustrating experience with the site. Took me longer to get what I
wanted than if I had gone to Kayak (the market leader) or Jetblue (that
normally runs my best fare).
What, if I may ask, was the vision and rationale behind this approach?
------
prakash
once I selected all "travel sites" & all "airlines", i got a warning "you are
about to open 20 tabs" and I promptly closed the tab. I don't like the idea of
opening that many tabs or the fact that I need to select individual airlines
or sites. I rather get all the data in 1 page first and then filter by
removing airlines/ sites.
I really like the cleartrip guys when it comes to travel/ticket booking. It's
mostly India only but check out the UI & usability -- really nice.
<http://cleartrip.com>
------
kin
Site works fine for me in Chrome.
A lot of travel agencies have systems that actually can check all airlines for
their flight information. I would suggest you look into that and run off of a
hybrid between server and queries instead of waiting for an API and in the
meantime tell people something is easy when in fact it really isn't. Most of
my queries return errors on the pop-ups.
------
mcargian
Most meta travel sites like this get their commissions one of two ways, either
a commission for booking a flight, or a click through commission to the travel
site. It is in tripeedo's best interest to open as many popups as possible.
They are adding little to no value on the flight pricing. Thumbs down.
------
jsdalton
What I was really _hoping_ to find here was a travel search site that let me
find cheap fares without necessarily having firm dates in mind. To me,
Tripeedo just puts the functionality of kayak in a slightly different UI, as
opposed to offering a new way to interact with the data itself.
~~~
ngrandy
increasingly, travel sites are letting people do those kind of flexible dates
search, which is a promising trend. you're right, for the time being tripeedo
is primarily a different UI (though one we feel is more user-friendly), along
with the benefit of only entering trip details once.
------
khangtoh
Disappointing .. Doesn't really work with all the airline sites that it has on
main page.
~~~
ngrandy
yeah, we need to fix or warn about that better. the reason that the airline
searches don't work reliably is that most airlines only serve a few airports,
and if you search for airports they don't serve, the result is not always
handled gracefully. some airlines prompt for a known airport - some just give
up and display an error. to counter this, we would need to maintain a list of
all airports served by each airline, and only let users launch valid searches
to the airline sites. i think that is good from a usability perspective, and
it's definitely doable, but maintaining it is time-consuming. that's why we
haven't done it yet. but, we may well get to it soon.
------
utefan001
Seriously, I love the pop ups. I believe you have to respect the boundaries of
different companies (jetblue, southwest, etc). The amount of time that this
saves on my flight purchasing is huge. Well done!
------
markessien
Yikes, that was an awful experience. I didn't know it would open tabs, so I
selected all items. And of all the tabs it opened, almost none gave me any
useful information.
~~~
ngrandy
sorry about that - we try to make it clear that new windows open, by saying so
in the instructions on the left, and also displaying a message when more than
5 airfare providers are selected. how could we make it more clear in a user-
friendly way?
~~~
markessien
Most critical to me was that most of the airlines displayed there were not
relevant to me. I usually use about 5 airlines (and I think most people do so
also), and I KNOW the airlines that I use. They are Air France, KLM,
Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines and EasyJet. Your site would be VERY useful if it
would send queries to those particular airlines and open tabs after running a
correct search on all those airlines.
But your site is useless with the America-Centric airlines you have there.
My suggestion would be to also add a natual language processor where I can
type in the airlines I fly with, and this this info is immediately saved in a
cookie for the next time I use the site. Also, when I start the search, an
account should immediately be created for me.
------
aneesh
First we had aggregators like Kayak, Expedia and Farecast. That's clearly too
much work, so now with Tripeedo we have aggregators for the aggregators!
------
pogos
I'd never thought someone would compete with Orbitz.
~~~
smanek
Orbitz, et. al don't actually do their own search. They outsource all the real
work to ITA Software in Cambridge, MA - who actually run all the searches on a
large cluster of servers running Common Lisp.
------
jncraton
This site doesn't load in Chrome for me (aw snap error). Is anyone else
getting that?
I'm running Chrome 2 on Windows 7.
------
diN0bot
i need tehcnical support: on firefox 3 it first blocked pop-ups, so i enabled
and got a spew of opened tabs with no search results found (see my other
comment). when i tried to search again ff keeps blocking the pop-ups, even
though i keep enabling them. !!! nuts, i really want to buy cheap plane
tickets :P i'll keep trying.
~~~
ngrandy
this sounds like a firefox issue. if you choose to enable popups for
tripeedo.com, then firefox should remember that choice. let me know if you
find otherwise...
------
gamble
Wow, that was annoying. Opening two dozen browser windows without warning,
half of which contain errors? Not cool.
~~~
ngrandy
we try to warn (in 2 ways on the homepage) that popups will be opened. how
could we make it more clear in a user-friendly way?
------
jbrun
Is the parsing algorithm for the location and date proprietary or is it based
on something existing? If so, what?
~~~
ngrandy
it's custom built. the site is rails hosted on heroku. ruby already had some
decent time/date parsing, and there is a great natural language time/date
library called chronic that helps out too. but otherwise it's custom-built.
------
kirubakaran
Awesome UI. I'm blown away.
------
kevTheDev
i don't seem to get the popups :(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dropbox Can Now Automatically Sync Your Android Photos - newman314
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/23/dropbox-introduces-automatic-image-upload-on-android-and-it-has-more-up-its-sleeve/
======
tdtran
Sync is a misleading term here. What the new Android Dropbox app added is an
Automatic photo/video uploader, to a pre-defined folder on the server side.
One way.
If you want true two-way sync for Android, try Dropsync
(<https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ttxapps.dropsync>). Another app
called FolderSync also seems quite good.
Full disclosure: I am the author of Dropsync
~~~
tdtran
I should add that Dropsync is also capable of Instant uploading, and not only
photos/videos. Any new/modified files in your designated local folders in your
phone/tablet.
------
ddw
It's funny because Ubuntu One was doing this already. For 5GB free. Works w/
Windows and Android/iOS too.
~~~
joelhaasnoot
Dropbox really had to play catchup on this one: lots of competitors offered
this (Sugarsync, Box, etc), and lots of addon tools for Android were popping
up with this functionality.
~~~
Florin_Andrei
It's just one of those ideas that make total sense.
------
Ygor
Are there any good and relevant articles on dropbox architecture or
implementation? Are they open about it, or is it more or less a secret?
~~~
andyjohnson0
[http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/3/14/6-lessons-from-
dro...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/3/14/6-lessons-from-dropbox-one-
million-files-saved-every-15-minu.html)
Kind of short on architectural detail. Links to a presentation video that I
didn't watch but which might have more detail.
------
vibragiel
Dropbox is also boosting the free space with each photo or video upload, up to
a maximum of +5GB, which is very nice. I already got them.
------
newman314
I wonder how Dropbox is going to handle the tradeoff of syncing lots of data
(to/from a space limited device) and cellular data limits. I sure hope there
is an option to only transfer over Wifi.
In testing DropBox's new client out:
1) There is no way to start the import wizard via menu dropdown.
2) There is no way to specify an alternate folder(s).
~~~
martythemaniak
There should definitely be a an option "Sync Photos over Wifi Only" and it
should probably be the default.
Google+ let's you choose, so I love snapping shots and then having them show
up there whenever I get home. Even with my unlimited data, I'd still prefer
wifi.
~~~
jpulgarin
The "Wifi Only" option exists.
------
jonasvp
Whoops, bad news for Syncly (<http://www.syncly.de/>) - does exactly that.
~~~
jahtari
It's nice to have a choice. Syncly is also useful for Strato Hidrive users as
it is now possible to use it as a storage backend.
------
nuttendorfer
I'd prefer it if they created a WP7 app.
------
rkwz
Skydrive does this natively in WP7.
~~~
zacharycohn
And WP7 isn't available on Android or iPhone.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Monodraw – Powerful ASCII art editor designed for the Mac - robin_reala
https://monodraw.helftone.com/
======
tedmiston
The support for ER diagrams etc looks pretty cool.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Five Biggest Threats To Human Existence - ghosh
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/five-biggest-threats-human-existence?src=SOC&dom=tw
======
lutusp
Let me guess -- they'll list five issues, each to a greater or lesser degree
derived from the world overpopulation problem, but won't mention
overpopulation as a problem in and of itself.
(pause to read the article) ....
Yep. As expected. "We have met the enemy and he is us." \-- Pogo.
~~~
ionised
I didn't draw that conclusion from the article.
~~~
lutusp
You mean, that population is the real problem? I didn't either, which is why I
mentioned it. There's a tendency to treat the population problem as an
elephant in a room that no one can see, on the ground that it makes so many
people uncomfortable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Cartoon Intro to Redux - elithrar
https://code-cartoons.com/a-cartoon-intro-to-redux-3afb775501a6
======
sotojuan
Very nice! Redux is really great and simple but visual aids like these can
help understand the data flow to someone not used to it the idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Quest for the Perfect Dark Mode (Gatsby/React) - joshwcomeau
https://joshwcomeau.com/gatsby/dark-mode/
======
joshwcomeau
Hey thread, author here.
I don't have the energy to debunk some of these replies, but let me quickly
say:
1\. The reason that this is a hard problem has nothing to do with React, or
Gatsby. It has to do with the strategy of precompiling HTML and not having a
runtime server, an approach with many many benefits (described here:
[https://joshwcomeau.com/gatsby/a-static-
future/](https://joshwcomeau.com/gatsby/a-static-future/)). If you're
wondering why anyone would put up with all this tomfoolery for a dark mode,
please read that so you can understand the benefits to this approach.
2\. "React is overkill for static sites" is a debate I am not trying to have,
but I can say that for my blog (the site that this post is about), React has
allowed me to do lots of cool things that would have been much harder
otherwise. And using Gatsby means that I have first-meaningful-paint
performance that beats a PHP template with no JS, since my site doesn't have
to do any database lookups or real-time HTML generation. I am not saying that
this is the right approach for every website, but it was 100% the right choice
for this one.
4\. Many of these replies are making suggestions that are discussed in the
article itself. CSS variables are not an alternative to this solution, they
_are_ the solution (my solution wouldn't work without them!). Please read the
post before forming an opinion about it.
I hope that helps clarify some things! Hope you're all doing alright and
staying home.
~~~
edhelas
> When you run gatsby build (or whatever your command is to build your site
> for production), the build system will make all the API calls needed to
> fetch the data necessary to generate every possible HTML page. It'll use
> React server-rendering APIs to turn a tree of React components into a big
> HTML document.
That's what we're calling "cache" in good ol' backend-code applications. It's
used for at least 15 years in e-commerce, blogs and many other "outdated
because now we have react-angular-vue.npm.io" CMS.
With "cache" you can store precompiled HTML pages server side, even only parts
of it (if you have 50.000 articles like you're explaining in your article).
You can even do that in front of your PHP/Ruby/Python app using HTTP caching
proxies such as Squid. Here it's even beyond "blistering fast", it's "ultra
blistering fast".
Do a static website, add a little bit of vanilla JS, want to refresh parts of
the pages ? It's called Ajax.
The moment I saw ReactJS redering moving server side to "pre-render" stuff I
saw that we we just looping again and again.
And again once your HTML is delivered, no one is stopping you to do a few line
of JS to add a simple class on top of your page to toggle the Night Mode. Want
to do it before the JS is executed (and don't have this ugly delay) ? Use a
cookie and set it on render time. If the user is forbidding cookies, well then
it's because he don't want to be tracked and don't want all those fancy
features. You can fallback to prefers-color-scheme.
Things were done simple, no need to reinvent everything each time :)
~~~
pcr910303
> Do a static website, add a little bit of vanilla JS, want to refresh parts
> of the pages ? It's called Ajax.
Before you become sarcastic, try to check out what Gatsby is. Gatsby _is_ a
static website generator that makes bunch of static HTML leaves a bit of
vanilla JS, and progressively enhances the site.
> Things were done simple, no need to reinvent everything each time :)
Things are there for a reason, why not just go to the 70s/80s where there was
no networking, servers, or bloated JS?
~~~
edhelas
> Gatsby is a static website generator that makes bunch of static HTML leaves
> a bit of vanilla JS, and progressively enhances the site.
That was exactly my point. We are currently seeing the whole thing looping :)
> Things are there for a reason, why not just go to the 70s/80s where there
> was no networking, servers, or bloated JS?
React/Angular/Vue can be used for very specific use cases indeed and can be
really powerful tools. But lets face it, for most of the websites, you don't
need those tools. It's even worst most of the time regarding browser
performances, accessibility , SEO, navigation.
Developers are always looking for shinning things. And in the end you end up
with really complex architecture.
I'm just saying that in 95% of the cases. You don't need those tools. But only
simple "old techs" that are battle tested and works flawlessly.
~~~
pcr910303
> That was exactly my point. We are currently seeing the whole thing looping.
If Gatsby is exactly the format you like, what's the problem? The fact that it
uses React as a dependency? Because... it uses 'npm', the worst package
manager of all history?
> But let's face it, for most of the websites, you don't need those tools.
I'm pretty sure asking this is against the guidelines, but I just can't resist
- have you ever worked with jQuery/vanilla JS and React?
If you ever, ever worked with them, one can easily see that the component
model React provides gives a great productivity boost.
For example, consider this[0] code from the old version of this blog: it
defines a 'Code' component that allows live previews of JS code. It would be
super tedious to do that every time you embed a JS example in your post.
> It's even worst most of the time regarding browser performances,
> accessibility , SEO, navigation.
No, it isn't. Gatsby is a 'static site generator', with most of the advantages
and disadvantages that they provide. Navigation is faster, not slower if
you've turned on JS (due to progressive enhancement) and accessibility has
nothing to do with React - it's the matter of proper markup (which React can
do pretty well).
[0]
[https://github.com/joshwcomeau/blog/blob/master/src/componen...](https://github.com/joshwcomeau/blog/blob/master/src/components/Code/Code.js#L29)
------
sneak
Reading this site reminded me of this:
[https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)
It's also worth mentioning that TFA's webpage _is broken_.
Despite all his dozens of lines of javascript for his "dark background"
feature, it _totally fails to render_ (resulting in a blindingly white blank
page, ha!) if you have cookies off (it's a static Gatsby site, which does not
need and cannot use cookies).
For all his hard work, his site is a blank page.
(Here's why, if you care: [https://sneak.berlin/20200211/your-
website/](https://sneak.berlin/20200211/your-website/))
------
edhelas
Damn React is complicated. I added Dark mode in my app in a few lines of CSS
([https://github.com/movim/movim/blob/master/public/theme/css/...](https://github.com/movim/movim/blob/master/public/theme/css/color.css#L13))
and used the variables across the whole code. I just have to toggle a class on
the body and boom, it works.
Guys, you don't need all that JS, seriously. It's slow, it's useless most of
the time. And in the end you have to spend hours for something so simple.
Theming the colors of your website is the role of one tech: CSS. That's it,
you don't needs layers and layers of Javascript to change that.
Let's go back to server side rendering, a bit of HTML + CSS and JS and we're
done.
~~~
saagarjha
The author had a specific desire for a toggle on a static site, which requires
a bit of persistent state that CSS can't really capture. (FWIW, I don't care
for a toggle and match the system theme on my website as well. But dismissing
the author's work with your "few lines of CSS" fails to account for the fact
that this dark mode does something different than yours.)
~~~
memco
This doesn't capture all the state correctly even. When you first load the
page, if it is dark mode the XKCD loads a black on white (aka light) image. If
you toggle to light mode and back to dark the XKCD comic becomes a black on
white image. The state of image filters isn't consistent in the current
implementation.
~~~
saagarjha
Oh, I'm not claiming it does it correctly. (In fact, I have another comment
that points out another issue:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924571)).
But the claim that I was responding to made incorrect assumptions, and the
bugs in the implementation don't change that.
------
pcr910303
Seriously! Should every Gatsby blog post on HN have this useless 'React is
overkill for static sites' talk?
__ __ _Gatsby is a static site generator!_ __ __
Running Gatsby does NOT make the whole website run on React. It makes a bunch
of HTML pages that are statically served - and some JS progressively enhances
it.
The complexity in this blog post has nothing to do with React, it's due to the
author's complex requirements that are very beneficial to the user.
Yes, the web is full of bloated pages. No, that's not the topic here. It's so
frustrating for people to complain about React on this great post - comment
about the post, people!
------
WiseWeasel
Perfect dark mode doesn’t have a toggle; it uses the prefers-color-scheme CSS
media query to key off your OS theme preference. At that point, there's no
problem with Gatsby or Next.
~~~
barrowclift
Not necessarily true, I'd argue the "perfect" dark mode uses the system's
theme by default like you said, but still allows visitors to manually set
light or dark should they wish to view the site a particular way (perhaps they
prefer the light mode, etc.)
~~~
asiachick
Agreed. S.O. recently added dark mode and for some reason my eyes couldn't
focus on it. No idea why. I run my editors and my terminal in dark themes.
Maybe they didn't have enough contrast. Maybe the fonts are too small or too
thin. I have my browser set to "prefer dark mode" but I'm really happy S.O.
let me opt out.
------
welcometomiami
Did anyone else happen to read this and think of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark)?
~~~
sneilan1
Yes, I played that game thoroughly and I could not separate the project from
the game.
------
memco
The theme toggle button plays a sound when you click it. So not only does this
require state for the theme, but also the sound. Also curious is that clicking
the button to mute sound plays a sound.
I believe every OS defaults to silent actions for every button. Games, on the
other hand, often have sounds for hover/focus and click. I'm not sure what's
the better option, but if we're going to default to the OS for theme choice
shouldn't we also default to the OS for UI sound choice? I don't know if
there's any way to check that via CSS or JS. But I hope that if sites are
going to start implementing this more often that browsers at least expose an
API with a user preference if not the OS.
~~~
danappelxx
see: [https://www.joshwcomeau.com/react/announcing-use-sound-
react...](https://www.joshwcomeau.com/react/announcing-use-sound-react-hook/)
~~~
memco
Thanks! I did see this before. Didn't realize it was the same dev. They don't
address that Desktop OSes don't do sound for most things and also, I'm not
really sure I see sound used a lot in mobile apps, but maybe that's just the
apps I use? I think I would personally want more research and discussion on
this before I ventured down this path, but it is an interesting idea.
------
chrismorgan
I like my dark theme implementation which supports the same operations, but a
tad lighter, more flexible and not-Reacty: a toggle, falling back to the
prefers-color-scheme value if it hasn’t been toggled _or if JavaScript is
disabled_ (and I don’t think Josh’s does that), and avoiding a flash of
unstyled content. I wrote about it at [https://chrismorgan.info/blog/dark-
theme-implementation/](https://chrismorgan.info/blog/dark-theme-
implementation/).
The problem as a whole is definitely a tad fiddly, but I still think that
trying to do things in React is a substantial part of what’s making it
complicated here. I instead used regular stylesheets and the media attribute
to control the toggling, and I think that’s the best solution, because it’s
what makes it work perfectly with and without JavaScript. (I used external
stylesheets, but you could inline them if you wanted; the media attribute
works on <style> as well as <link>.)
Josh, I’d be interested in your opinion on it. It took me several iterations
to end up where I did (definitely didn’t occur to me to alter the media
attribute at first!), and I think it’d apply cleanly to such sites as yours,
and be better for the toggling.
------
darepublic
Dark mode shouldn't be harder with SSR apps, you would just send back the dark
mode CSS in the initial GET response. Complexity around this might be related
to trying to work with out of the box framework settings, but comparing this
problem to some advanced image recognition, while admittedly a joke.. is just
over-representing the problem imo. I'm sorry gatsby didn't give you an easy
way to do this, but if you understand the principles of web applications this
should not be an epic quest.
~~~
saagarjha
The problem is that the question of whether dark mode CSS should be applied is
only known once JavaScript can be executed on the page.
~~~
darepublic
That's the thing with SSR... (i.e. with Next) or with pre-rendering apps
before hand. In the initial GET request to the page, you also send a cookie
with user preference. Depending on their dark mode preference you can style
the page to be in dark mode as part of the server or pre-rendered markup -- no
JS required :o. Now.. how difficult that is to do with Gatsby I don't know.
But the fact that someone shot themselves in the foot with Gatsby, then
learned to hobble along on one foot isn't a cause for celebration imo.
~~~
saagarjha
I don't see how you could do that with a static site.
------
swlkr
Wow this website is really creative.
Not sure about the dark mode implementation, since it rendered a white screen
for me with no content on iOS, but on desktop it worked.
Also the general feel of the website is really nice, a lot of nice little
touches from the sounds to the "nonstop confetti party" when you sign up for
the newsletter.
~~~
noisem4ker
I'd rather stick with static web pages, thanks.
------
artursapek
We have had color schemes on Cryptowatch
([https://cryptowat.ch](https://cryptowat.ch)) for years, and since a year ago
we even let users create custom color schemes within the web app [1]
We use CSS variables for this. The stylesheet doesn't have any hard-coded
colors, it only references a set of several variables and many blends of these
variables. This way, you can let a user adjust a variable using a color picker
and the entire website adjusts dynamically as they do it. It also lets you
render any color scheme properly in your SSR (unlike the approach in this
article).
[1] [https://guides.cryptowat.ch/real-time-charting-
interface/cus...](https://guides.cryptowat.ch/real-time-charting-
interface/custom-theming)
~~~
bobbydreamer
Nice design
------
dgellow
How does the “shining stars effect” for the sentence “the perfect dark mode”
works? That’s really neat.
(I’m on mobile so cannot reverse)
~~~
mirthflat83
Looks like the author is generating span elements with random absolute
positioning
~~~
dgellow
Thanks!
------
mirthflat83
Wow. What a beautiful website!
------
animalgonzales
this is way too complicated and convoluted. just use global css selectors.
~~~
saagarjha
CSS selectors don't actually solve the problem the author had.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Qooxdoo: a javascript UI framework for rich Internet applications - yummyfajitas
http://qooxdoo.org
======
digamber_kamat
hush! There is this another one now.
How many more js frameworks do we need?
~~~
mahmud
qooxdoo has been around for ages. tried and true technology.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Study shows men just as likely to be depressed as women - antimora
http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-depression-men-20130829,0,2605342.story
======
elnate
"In addition to familiar depression symptoms such as sadness, difficulty
sleeping, feelings of guilt or worthlessness and loss of interest in
pleasurable activities, the researchers expanded the list to include anger
attacks, aggression or irritability, substance abuse, risk-taking behavior and
hyperactivity."
That seems like it would border on the uselessly broad. Depression by that
standard would mean not being happy and calm all the time.
~~~
marvin
There are fixed diagnostic criteria for depression. The diagnostic process is
not just some doctor asking you if you are occasionally feeling sad. You fill
out a form and get a score which tells to which degree you are depressed, if
any.
This ranges from normal and functioning, with occasional negative feelings
within the normal (i.e. not depressed), to delibitating symptoms: Staying in
bed for days straight, finding no joy in any activity, never sleeping
properly, unable to relate to the people around you. Depression is usually
diagnosed if you have been feeling like this for more than two weeks straight.
Psychiatry is not natural science, but the psychiatrists do have their
methodology in order.
------
kunil
People assumes women are more likely to get depressed? I always thought it was
the otherwise
~~~
boomlinde
If by "assume" you mean "agree with statistical data based on current
classification of depression" then yes.
~~~
kunil
I can see how that works. Ask a depressed woman and man if they are depressed,
I am thinking a women would be more likely to admit it.
I was quite depressed for a while, job problems, social problems etc. I didn't
go cry or something. My closest friends noticed it but that is all. I think
men (including me) are probably less likely to admit/show his depression. I am
no doctor though, so I might be wrong
~~~
boomlinde
I agree. Having been depressed, I can relate to both the typical symptoms of
depression and the "new" ones, but as in your case I didn't let people know in
general. There was a certain pride in emotional independence I felt that I
think men have to a greater extent than women. Being more open about it is
obviously healthier (it's like emotional load balancing), but society has made
independence a virtue, especially for men.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: GitHub Inbox, a Chrome extension that shows your unread GitHub messages - pedromenezes
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lliahakgdhnopceclokooacmcgimcdoo
======
Pewpewarrows
I'd enjoy this much more if it also integrated GitHub Notifications, not just
private messages, or at least had an option to do either/both.
Otherwise, this is quite handy.
~~~
pedromenezes
Now it looks notifications too. Thanks for the suggestion. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What I don't like about JSON Web Tokens - timmclean
https://www.timmclean.net/2015/02/25/jwt-alg-none.html
======
zaroth
If there are libraries that silently accept an unsigned JWT with alg:none,
even when they are provided a secret key to verify, that's a serious CVE right
there...
If a secret or public key is passed to the verify function, the function MUST
fail if no signature is actually present in the token. E.g. on node-jwt; [1]
if (parts[2].trim() === '' && secretOrPublicKey){
return done(new JsonWebTokenError('jwt signature is required'));
}
As another example, in the C# library, as long as 'RequireSignedTokens' is
true, it will ensure the signature can't be stripped. [2] I'd say that's poor
design to allow specifying a key and then ignoring it silently if
'RequireSignedTokens' is false, even if it is true by default, because the
combination of 'RequireSignedTokens' = false, and a non-null key, is invalid.
[1] - [https://github.com/auth0/node-
jsonwebtoken/blob/master/index...](https://github.com/auth0/node-
jsonwebtoken/blob/master/index.js#L85)
[2] - [https://github.com/AzureAD/azure-activedirectory-
identitymod...](https://github.com/AzureAD/azure-activedirectory-
identitymodel-extensions-for-
dotnet/blob/master/src/System.IdentityModel.Tokens.Jwt/JwtSecurityTokenHandler.cs#L910)
~~~
timmclean
Agreed. Unfortunately, some implementations missed that:
[https://github.com/namshi/jose/commit/127b4415e66d89b1fcfb5a...](https://github.com/namshi/jose/commit/127b4415e66d89b1fcfb5a07933db0b5ff5cd636)
[https://github.com/davedoesdev/python-
jwt/commit/5ddb71b2ed5...](https://github.com/davedoesdev/python-
jwt/commit/5ddb71b2ed5785c329b761e45a246996a1dd9cab)
~~~
davedoesdev
Thanks for spotting this Tim, I appreciate it. I've patched python-jwt and
linked to your article. Please let me know if you file a CVE so I can link to
it too.
The docs did say:
returns: ``(header, claims)`` if the token was verified successfully. The token must pass the following tests:
- Its signature must verify using the public key or its algorithm must be ``none``.
but passing the responsibility for checking header['alg'] to the caller was
the wrong way round so thanks again!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Engineer compensation and job security after a startup is acquired - up_and_up
When a startup is acquired some people (founders, investors etc) might get rich, but what happens to the engineering team? Obviously there are tons of factors at play. What has been your experience/or do you have any stories to tell? I am interested mainly from the perspective of a non-founder Sr Software Engineer, but would love to hear from anyone with experience with this.<p>What can an Engineer expect in compensation and job security after a startup is acquired?<p>Some of the scenarios I have heard of directly:<p>Engineers were laid off with 3 months severance.<p>Engineers received 1.5 times salary for 1 year and had no triggered options. These engineers then had the opportunity to relocate when the site closed down.
======
dmckeon
Location? (At least country & state.) Contract(s)? NDAs? Non-compete clause?
(Not enforceable in California). Employment-at-will locale? (California is).
More optimistically, what does the acquiring entity want? Could they use you
and some/all of your team? For what and for how long?
What are your/your team's assets for negotiating with the acquiring entity or
some other employer (as individuals, or as a team)?
Also, you may want to edit to taste with: s/<p>/\n\n/g
~~~
up_and_up
For conversational purposes say California. No NDA, non-compete, contracts
etc.
------
up_and_up
Sorry about the <p> above :( I have never had that issue before...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple releases Web-based RSS reader prior to Google Reader shutdown - fountainla
http://irss7.com
======
rb2e
If this is an apple product, why is it built by web design firm called
fountain? And why is there nothing on it that says Apple etc though the OP
says apple has released it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sample Google Chrome Extensions (Chromium Developer Documentation) - jmonegro
http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions/samples
======
johnnybgoode
I'll ask the question on everyone's minds. Can an ad-blocking extension be
made?
~~~
brkumar
Adsweep (almost similar functionality as Adblock) is a greasemonkey script
that works well for chrome. They have also released a extension for chrome.
<http://www.adsweep.org>
~~~
johnnybgoode
Thanks. I took a look and the Chrome extension is basically the same as the
greasemonkey script. Does anyone know if this is less efficient than the way
Adblock Plus does it? If so, is it possible to do it more efficiently with a
Chrome extension?
~~~
ntoshev
Yes, AdBlock is more efficient because it doesn't load the ads at all while
Chrome/greasemonkey load and hide them. No, I don't think it can be more
efficient because chrome extensions like greasemonkey scripts cannot modify
the page before it is loaded.
I may be wrong, I had only a cursory look at the technology.
~~~
mcav
What about "@run-at document-start"?
<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=4478#c5>
~~~
ntoshev
You're right, I don't know if this is enough (do you get hooks upon loading
each resource, etc) but they are definitely working to implement this
properly.
------
cyberian
Who else thinks they should get the Mac version out before spending time on
this stuff...
~~~
boundlessdreamz
They are working heavily on the Mac version and it is quite usable now. I have
written about the mac version of chrome here
[http://www.manu-j.com/blog/download-updated-native-google-
ch...](http://www.manu-j.com/blog/download-updated-native-google-chrome-for-
mac-os-x/230/)
The post will give you an idea of what is working in the mac version as well
as pre alpha builds to play with.
------
nazgulnarsil
chrome needs better integration with google bookmarks last time I checked.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
3D visualization of binary data - playeren
https://codisec.com/veles/
======
playeren
Some sample views:
[https://twitter.com/doegox/status/811934445330714624](https://twitter.com/doegox/status/811934445330714624)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
D.C. Court: Accessing Public Information Is Not a Computer Crime - sohkamyung
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/dc-court-accessing-public-information-not-computer-crime
======
m-watson
It is nice to see this ruling, it makes scrapings legitimacy more concrete.
There was the court's rejection back in 2017 for LinkedIn's case[1] that made
an implicit statement but an actual ruling is helpful.
[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-
li...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-linkedin-
claim-that-unauthorized-scraping-is-hacking/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft Recommends You Use a Third-Party Antivirus - sheldor
http://www.howtogeek.com/173291/goodbye-microsoft-security-essentials-microsoft-now-recommends-you-use-a-third-party-antivirus/
======
smacktoward
In their defense, Microsoft has a tough line to walk here.
On the one hand, they have a responsibility to protect their users from risks
that inhere from using their operating system. And we know from long
experience that most users won't go looking for external products for needs
like this, and most of those that will can easily end up with sub-par products
because they're not sophisticated enough to judge what makes one antivirus
program superior to another. So the only true way to meet that responsibility
is to provide a strong antivirus solution with Windows out of the box, or as
close to "out of the box" as it can get (say, via Windows Update or the
Microsoft app store).
On the other hand, there is a large community of third parties who have built
thriving businesses on providing antivirus support for Windows users. If
Microsoft's antivirus is _too_ good, it would put all these third parties out
of business -- why would anyone buy external antivirus products if Windows is
already bulletproof?
And while Microsoft would protest that it's only trying to look out for users,
its words would be undermined by its own past actions. Microsoft has a long
history of killing companies in the Windows ecosystem and seizing their
profits for themselves by bundling a competing product with Windows itself.
This play was used to kill Netscape and Stac Electronics (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_laws...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit)),
among many others. So third parties could be forgiven for worrying that such a
move by Microsoft would just mean Redmond was coming for them.
Moreover, those bundling tactics were a key part of why Microsoft came under
antitrust scrutiny in the 1990s. That scrutiny did major damage to Microsoft's
brand reputation and contributed to the 2000s becoming their "lost decade" as
they struggled to retool their way of doing business rather than pushing
forward advances in their products. If they really did put their third-party
security ecosystem out of business, it would risk renewing that scrutiny and
starting that whole difficult cycle all over again.
So while it's certainly not ideal from the perspective of Windows users, from
Microsoft's perspective, the position outlined in the article -- that MS's
antivirus product will only ever be a minimal sort of protection that doesn't
overshadow the third-party options -- is probably the only position they think
they can reasonably take.
Which sucks, but what can you do? Years of gluttony lead inevitably to years
of pain.
------
lewispollard
Couldn't this just be safeguarding against more EU court cases re:
monopoly/competition/etc when bundling software that has third party
competitors?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If you aren’t doing these 3 things you’ll never make it as a freelancer - brentgalloway
http://brentgalloway.me/if-you-arent-doing-these-3-things-then-youll-never-make-it-as-a-freelance-graphic-designer
======
schrodingersCat
Short and to the point. These are things that could be applied to freelance
anything, not just graphic design. "Make your own luck" really just means take
the initiative... Kinda true for success in general
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can i learn to code? - alexilio79
I am 34 and i have a business administration background. Is is difficult to pick up coding at that age ? I am taking CS50 online classes at Harvard in order to pick up some coding. But i have a full time job which i cant quit for the next 1-2 years, thus i can only devote up to 1 hour/day for coding. Is it doable ?
======
lsiebert
Anyone can pick up coding at any age. Don't let anyone tell you different.
There are several elements of being a programmer that aren't necessarily well
captured when people talk about learning to code.
Of course you need the syntax of your chosen programming language. But you
need to learn how to think in some very specific ways. You have to break down
problems into small steps, reuse previously written code, understand logic,
understand how to look for a problem when your code breaks, etc.
An example is... Given a list of numbers, determine which is smallest. It's
easiest to figure this question out once you understand variables, loops, and
conditionals, and if you start with 1 number, then add a second, and a third,
etc.
Good luck. Try to use free time, (commute perhaps) to think about programming
if you can, in addition to the hour a day.
------
momatt
Sure, it's doable. This class on learning to program starts in a couple weeks.
<https://www.coursera.org/course/interactivepython>. They estimated
7-9hrs/week but as it is free there is no risk.
------
Irregardless
It's doable, and CS50 is a great place to start. You'll know whether or not
you're cut out for it once you get to the more difficult homework assignments.
Don't give up just because you can't solve them immediately though, it will
probably take some Googling since on-campus students have access to TAs and
classmates for help when they get stuck.
Learning by doing is usually the best way to get the material to stick though.
If you can work on your own side projects or apply what you've learned at
work, that might help you progress a lot faster.
------
jayrobin
I took and just completed the edx CS50x course. I have a bit of a CS
background but am quite rusty, and I was able to stay well ahead of the
suggested schedule with only 2 hours a week. 1 hour a day/5-10 hours a week
should give you more than enough time to watch all the lectures, sections,
shorts and walkthroughs, and do the psets and background reading within 2-3
months I'd guess.
This should give you a fairly good foundation in the basic concepts of
programming, while creating some pretty cool stuff in the psets and for the
final project.
------
shire
5hours/week is better than 1hour/week. Depends on the language you're
learning. Python or javascript should make things easy for your life.
~~~
cafard
I took up programming at age 33. I spent a lot more than an hour a week on it
to begin with--I couldn't have survived the classes if I hadn't. I agree with
shire on both points. Start with an interpreted language; I'd say start with
Python, since it has a REPL.
------
Skoofoo
Anything is difficult to pick up when you're just starting out. The important
thing is to not give up. Too many people just stick what they're already good
at as they grow older.
I recommend <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/>.
------
alexilio79
Guys thank you very much for your comments, it is very encouraging that all of
you have the same positive opinion on code-learning. I will definitely keep up
with CS50 classes. Thank you for your feedback/ support.Alex
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zomato finds advertising on porn sites is cheaper and has higher ROI - elssar
http://blog.zomato.com/post/135236716946/this-post-is-probably-safe-for-work
======
alttab
I was going to say this sounds a lot like Eat24, and they did a way better
blog post about it... but then he footnoted it. Sucks, because if zomato
really did stumble on this on their own, they still won't look clever here.
Maybe the lesson here is "advertising delivery food on porn websites works for
obvious reasons."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Children Change the Way We See - dsr12
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-children-change-the-way-we-see
======
tenkabuto
This touched on it, but I'd love to read more about parents' indoctrination of
their children. It strikes me as both creepy and sad, but mostly sad, for how
much delight could be had by learning that our little ones like what we do but
by no effort of our own or that they may disagree with us in a way that may
shock us but ultimately enrich our lives?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Internet Trolls Have Won. Sorry, There’s Not Much You Can Do - dredmorbius
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/technology/personaltech/internet-trolls-comments.html
======
Anita_kiss
Everybody is going to hate this comment.
People are going to be assholes, Always. They will yell at you for standing in
their way They will insult you and your entire family if they don't like the
way you drive your car. They will try to undermine your competence at the
workplace and spread rumors.
All of this has happened to me in real life before social was that big. I'm
not even going to start saying what happened to me on the Internet. Let me
just say that after what I have experienced I only upload pictures that are
guaranteed free of metadata double and tripple checked for content
(reflections, business fronts, street names,etc)
Is it okay? No! should we just take it? No! Should we just ban everybody and
everything? Also No!
Either you can handle that or you don't
I totally agree that some things are going too far and should have
consequences. Telling somebody that they completely suck at coding is not nice
but is an expression of free speech. Telling somebody that they are a useless
piece of shit and should be shot is completely over the line.
~~~
dredmorbius
This in part addresses your remarks:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17722767](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17722767)
------
DarkWiiPlayer
I have never really understood the extend to which people take troll comments
seriously. It just seems no more than a bit annoying to me, to start reading a
comment and find out halfway through it's just a bunch of insults with no real
content. I won't let a few wasted seconds make my day worse than it would
otherwise have been. Why do people get so invested in what others say online?
Don't they realize it's nothing more than a cheap attempt to get some
attention?
EDIT: Note that I am not talking about anything that actually incites
violence. There's a big difference between "I hope X gets shot" and "Here's Xs
address, let's all meet up at their house and actually shoot them". The latter
is (rightfully) illegal in most places anyway.
------
f_allwein
> our faith in the internet may erode until we distrust it as much as we do TV
> news
strange comparison from a European perspective, as TV news are seen as
balanced and trustworthy (at least in UK and Germany, where I lived).
~~~
VladTheImplier
How did you come to this conclusion? In Germany survey after survey shows some
deep mistrust. Between 40%-60% depending on where and how the survey took
place describe mainstream media as "not trustworthy", whilst a certain survey
asked for malicious intent specifically and 20% agrees with the notion main
stream media is manipulating the public with false information on certain
topics.
Source: [https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Das-Vertrauen-in-Medien-
ist...](https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Das-Vertrauen-in-Medien-ist-nicht-
nur-in-Deutschland-gering-3176801.html)
~~~
f_allwein
Interesting - wasn't aware of that...
------
axilmar
About the comments, here is a solution that might work: a persistent
upvote/downvote score along with a default view filter based on voting.
Say you are someone who consistently spews out racist comments? as you are
being downvoted, the initial vote number for new comments goes down. Any new
comment you make will start with a negative number, and hence people will not
see it if the number goes beyond what is the current view filter limit.
This number will go up as you are upvoted or not downvoted.
~~~
flukus
Aside from the whole echo chamber problem this wouldn't be granular enough.
Imagine the perfect HN user, always giving well thought it, well reasoned and
informative posts and they usually only post about topic X which is their
expertise. When they then post something not so well thought out about topic Y
in which they are not well versed should their comment by at the top?
~~~
dredmorbius
I'll freely admit that despite my considered screed above, it's often far
simpler to merely downvote.
HN mods _are_ responsive to emailed notices of questionable (or flagrant)
misbehaviour. Not always in agreement, though often so.
------
blablablerg
Does the writer realise that a clickbait title followed without any statistics
to back up the claim is also just a form of trolling?
~~~
DarkWiiPlayer
It's not though. The title already makes it quite clear that what follows is
just an opinion. That being said, the article seemed kind of lacking in
substance beyond what was already said in the title.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Saying Goodbye to Louisville - seanclayton
https://fiber.googleblog.com/2019/02/louisville_7.html
======
maxxxxx
"For that, and many other reasons, we are deeply grateful to Mayor Greg
Fischer, the City of Louisville and its residents for their partnership and
spirit of innovation over the past two years."
That's why we can't trust Google with anything critical. They view the world
as an experiment they can quit anytime. Definitely don't buy a Google self
driving car or anything else you expect to work in a few years.
There is a good chance that businesses moved to Louisville because of Google
Fiber and they are being shown the finger "Thanks for indulging us, we got
what we wanted and you can go f... yourself".
~~~
porpoisely
You make a good point, but I think it's a corporate problem, not a google
problem. Expecting loyalty from businesses is pointless. Look at NFL
franchises. They'll move from cleveland to baltimore or Oakland to Las Vegas
or from LA to St.Louis and back to LA without a second thought. Look at the
rust belt where companies just left for "greener pastures". Or pharma
companies merging and moving their headquarters to europe to exploit tax
loopholes. Businesses are in it for themselves despite all the ads and PR
talking about how they care about the community.
~~~
mikeash
I have high confidence that Verizon will continue to offer fiber at my house
for years to come. “Will Verizon decide to stop serving this place?” was not a
question I had to ask when looking for a place to live. Expecting some
stability isn’t about loyalty, it’s just good business. Google is going to
start scaring people away from stuff they actually want to sell if they have a
history of abandoning things.
~~~
gowld
Does Verizon offer fiber in Louisville?
Google Fiber was more about scaring ISPs into investing in fiber, than serving
its own fiber. Once bribery and lawsuits failed to stop Google Fiber, ISPs
started to compete.
[https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/07/21/how-google-fiber-
wo...](https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/07/21/how-google-fiber-won-by-
failing/)
~~~
Corrado
Verizon doesn't really offer fiber in Louisville, it does have a presence but
its not large at all (~3 neighborhoods). AT&T ramped up their fiber roll-out
here over the last two years and have made great progress; I am currently on
their 1GB fiber plan and am enjoying the speed and prices. However, with this
latest Google announcement I'm fearful that the AT&T expansion will end and
the prices will rise. Hell, Louisville is in the list of cities announced for
AT&T 5G service, but you can't actually purchase it today and now I'm not sure
if it will ever arrive. I'm really not loving Google today.
------
robben1234
I can't trust Google. Every time they build something good (Reader, Inbox)
eventually they will kill it even despite users clearly opposing the decision.
And those are just web pages, here they're denying of ISP whole town which was
serviced before.
So for example how can I use their e-sim provider Fi if I know for sure in one
of my travels I will get a notification 'we are closing Fi next week. Find new
provider.'.
I use their Photos service extensively. But in a couple of years I know it
will get closed too, once they fully used it's capacities for training
internal ML models.
~~~
hk__2
> Every time they build something good (Reader, Inbox) eventually they will
> kill it even despite users clearly opposing the decision.
To be fair, users aren’t customers. People don’t have any right regarding your
product if you give them for free.
~~~
andrewla
Those are by analogy, but in the case of Fiber, which we're talking about
here, the users are customers. So what rights do they have now?
------
owenmarshall
To try and hijack the top post with some of the comments I've scattered across
this thread:
Google did _a remarkably poor job_ in Louisville, and it's absolutely no
surprise to me that they're giving up.
Google's strategy was to build a FTTH network with microtrenching. In
practice, this meant cutting a 2" deep groove in city streets, placing a fiber
optic cable in it, and using an expanding rubber gasket material to cover the
groove.
This failed in _spectacular fashion_. One of the best pictures was this:
[https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-
con...](https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-concerned-
over-sloppy-installation-of-high-
speed/article_4bc2a61e-8640-57f0-aba9-3dd4cb3d39e5.html)
... a fiber optic cable, barely buried under the surface of the road, exposed
after a few freeze/thaw cycles.
If you click on no other link about Google Fiber in Louisville, click on this
one. This scene is repeated _all over the city_.
There won't be much in the way of "dark fiber left behind" because most of the
Google Fiber rollout was FTTH done ridiculously poorly.
And for the customers? The only company competing for residential gigabit
service is AT&T, which (wisely?) rolled out their service to high density
apartment areas and wealthy condos; for most residents, Spectrum or Uverse DSL
are the only real competitors.
Some cites:
[https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/photos-how-google-
fibe...](https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/photos-how-google-fiber-is-
using-shallow-trenching-to-outbuild-its-gigabit-rivals/18/) \-- Microtrenching
will save Google!!
[https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-
fix...](https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-
fiber-lines-in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html) \-- uh oh,
things aren't so good...
[https://9to5google.com/2019/02/07/google-fiber-closing-in-
lo...](https://9to5google.com/2019/02/07/google-fiber-closing-in-louisville/)
\-- we give up, 2" of trench won't do it.
~~~
Jhndb
For my GDPR friends:
>[https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-
con...](https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-concerned-
over-sloppy-installation-of-high-
speed/article_4bc2a61e-8640-57f0-aba9-3dd4cb3d39e5.html)
[https://outline.com/etFHuX](https://outline.com/etFHuX)
>[https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-
fix...](https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-
fiber-lines-in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html)
[https://outline.com/nxZPBa](https://outline.com/nxZPBa)
~~~
oh_sigh
Is outline.com GDPR compliant or do they just not care?
~~~
robk
No one really knows what's compliant
------
Talyen42
"That’s because we were trialing a lot of things in Louisville, including a
different type of construction method — namely, placing fiber in much
shallower trenches than we’ve done elsewhere."
Read as: We messed around with your street infrastructure using untested
construction methods, and it didn't work very well so WE OUT PEACE. You know
what they say, fail fast byeee!
~~~
selectodude
Move fast and break stuff, up to and including your sidewalks and roads.
------
ocdtrekkie
I can't even picture a scenario where another ISP just says "Hey, we're
packing up shop, you've got two months to find a new Internet provider". I
guess I suppose it's happened somewhere, sometime, but it certainly feels one
of a kind.
It's not a scenario I would have ever planned for, to say the least, but
anyone who has service with Google is probably used to it.
~~~
marcell
Is it that big of a deal? Most places have Comcast or similar. It takes maybe
a week or two to set it up.
~~~
jetti
It can be. A cursory search showed that the other fiber competitor in the area
is AT&T. Google Fiber was $70/mo and AT&T is $80/mo and that was for the
highest speed offered. With Google exiting the market, the fiber competition
is gone and it allows AT&T to raise prices, if they want as there aren't any
other options. It puts AT&T back into the fiber monopoly
~~~
criddell
$70 wasn't a sustainable price. The competition can use Google's withdrawal as
a fairly reasonable justification to raise rates to a sustainable level.
~~~
metildaa
Centurylink is offering gigabit for $65 flat (no taxes or fees) across its
footprint, and 100Mbps for $55, 40Mbps for $45. At $70 a month Google was
significantly above the average price people paid for internet, but they were
offering a premium product (gigabit). Had they offered slower, more affordable
tiers to residences that didn't initially jump, they likely could have broken
even.
The problem with overbuilding is uptake rates, its not good to only capture
28% of the market or similar, you really need 40+% to break even. The City of
Tacoma ran into this with their cable network, and so has Google. Webpass is
Google's fix for that, only targetting larger buildings where a 10% uptake
rate gets them in the green.
~~~
owenmarshall
> Centurylink is offering gigabit for $65 flat (no taxes or fees) across its
> footprint
Oh word! They are in Louisville? Where do I sign up?
Hint: "average prices" for high speed internet mean very little in the USA as
those prices vary wildly. I pay $30 less for 300Mbps service than a remote
coworker does for 75Mbps - from the same company.
~~~
metildaa
Centurylink isn't in Louisville, was just trying to highlight how Google Fiber
has encouraged average speed per dollar spent to rise, and how other large
providers are getting financially solvent wen running fiber.
Most of Centurylink's territory has only halfhearted competition from the
local cable company (Comcast, Charter, Wave), and they just recently lost a
lawsuit where the state AGs from Oregon, Washington, Minnesota and a few other
states ganged up and prosecuted them for hidden fees and malicious billing
practices, thus why they are on the straight and narrow now, with the price
you see being exactly what you will pay.
------
coryfklein
Am I the only one going to say it?
Kudos to Google Fiber for actually trying to innovate in a stagnant industry.
I'm no insider here, but I suspect the micro-trenching did go through internal
testing which looked promising before they approved it for real city use.
If the micro trenching had been successful we'd be cheering for Google for
finding an innovative way to bring fiber to more people. Turns out it didn't
work in their one trial city and since they discovered this at a time when
Google Fiber is no longer expanding it is no surprise that they don't "re-
open" Louisville and retrench the entire city.
For a community that celebrates failure as a natural consequence of
innovation, I'm surprised at all the negativity here. Not a mention of the 2
months of free gigabit internet they're giving to customers. Yea, Google Fiber
is just a bunch of soulless profiteering corporate jackasses /eyeroll/.
~~~
haylcron
I have family in Louisville and visit on a regular basis and have seen the
issues firsthand. The microtrenching has caused and will continue to cause
damage to the streets. The rubber sealant is commonly free from the trench and
potholes form quickly. These are fixed by tax dollars and there is not a quick
fix short of repaving every street.
The community here isn’t digging on Google trying to innovate. The anger comes
from a highly successful company taking a risk, seeing it fail, and just
peacing out leaving others to clean up the mess.
~~~
coryfklein
Did Google Fiber agree to do the road maintenance going forward? Sounds like
the city council was probably the group that decided to shoulder the risk of
damaged roads.
If Google Fiber misrepresented their microtrenching then that would certainly
be fraud and they would be liable for damages.
------
crushcrashcrush
Can post-2010 Google execute on anything "all the way" through?
Is there some sort of institutional ADD?
~~~
rifung
> Is there some sort of institutional ADD?
I work at Google, opinions are my own.
Obviously this is my personal take, but I don't think that's what it is.
To me the issue is the performance/rewards system. Imagine you're someone high
up and in charge of 10 projects, all asking for headcount/resources, while you
have a limited amount to give. Presumably you're going to give more
headcount/resources to the projects that are growing faster. If the
differences in growth are substantial, maybe you'll decide to actually just
let some projects die so their teams can be absorbed into the other projects
with better prospects.
Google's performance system is an attempt at being really objective, and it's
hard to put a precise value on goodwill lost by discontinuing a product. Not
only that, but the effects of discontinuing a product are felt company-wide as
opposed to by an individual. Nobody is going to look up who decided to
discontinue a product after all.
~~~
ocdtrekkie
I guess my question is: Is management there not realizing this is a huge
crisis point for them? Clearly, you can make a mistake in performance rewards,
but the question is, why hasn't it been fixed? Surely people at the C-level
have to have noticed Google is getting a reputation literally defined by
sudden product termination, and that the whole company is harmed every time
any given product is shut down.
I would think this would be a top TGIF question almost every week at this
point (because it seems that's how often Google product shutdowns are in the
news).
~~~
rifung
> I would think this would be a top TGIF question almost every week at this
> point (because it seems that's how often Google product shutdowns are in the
> news).
Actually this week (!) was the first time my question was upvoted enough to be
asked and it was exactly about this.
My impression is that they are aware but willing to trade our reputation for
the ability to experiment or be more aggressive in funding more successful
products
------
yohannparis
And this is why public sector or PPP are better than private sector for
necessities. You expect access to Internet to be stable like water or
electricity, but clearly that wasn't the case with Google.
~~~
haasted
It's quite a leap from having an ISP (unusually) shut down its service in an
area to concluding that internet connectivity should be a public utility.
Surely there must be some middle ground.
~~~
qeternity
It's funny because the best arguments for internet being a utility have
nothing to do with government reliability (or lack there of) but rather
economic arguments like natural monopolies. It seems like OP just has an anti-
market agenda.
~~~
TeMPOraL
Both perspectives support each other. Natural monopolies are one thing, but if
you want people to have stable and reliable Internet - as most tech companies
do - then it's best when Internet access is not something companies are
allowed to differentiate on.
------
andrewla
It sounds like what they're saying is that they botched the installation and
would have to redo it. It seems like the responsible thing to do here is to
just go ahead and redo the installation. It can't be worse than the cost to
expand to a new city; all they have to do is abandon their current
infrastructure and replace it with the new (I know that "all" underestimates,
but still).
This is a case where to maintain customer trust, they should suck up the cost
themselves rather than trying to recover it through the one-time customer fees
that they used at rollout time.
~~~
bluntfang
>It can't be worse than the cost to expand to a new city; all they have to do
is...
hey guys, i found the project manager!
------
axaxs
I'm from Louisville. From my perspective, I never expected to see Google
Fiber, and I guess this confirms it. After reading about how all of KC moved
so slowly after its initial deployment, it was telling when Fiber rolled out
here that it only covered a tiny portion of our downtown-ish areas. This is
not a high income area, nor is it all that dense population wise(then again,
neither is the city). After the combination of the county/city, Louisville
became a physically rather large city. I don't think it would have been worth
the investment trying to cover it, and covering only a portion is only bound
to irritate people.
That said, I appreciate them in that they really lit a fire under
TWC/Charter/Spectrum. If I remember right, we were 10down/3 up when fiber was
announced (possibly 30 down, depending on when). Our base is now 200 down.
------
ProAm
> This decision has no impact on our operations in any of our other Fiber
> cities,
...yet.
Just more evidence you cannot rely on Google for long term product outside of
search.
~~~
vsh
> product outside of search
...yet
------
takeda
This is sad news for me even though I'm not from Louisville. Backing out of
existing market shows that it's even less likely now for them to enter new
ones.
The main issue is that current companies have extreme control over market
thanks to regional monopoly. They can squeeze as much of money from users,
because there is no real competition. When a new company enters specific
region they can up their speeds, lower price (and even operate at a loss in
that specific region), so a competitor will have to leave.
The solution to this requires regulation, and basically a law should mandate
to allow leasing infrastructure (the fiber) to others, of course not for free,
but for a fee.
Currently if we would have great scenario when we would have 10 ISPs available
to choose from, we would need 10 fiber cables to every home. That means if
someone chooses one, 9 of them are not used, and all the effort to lay the
cable and getting permits was just waste of money. If this is expensive to
even company that has "unlimited" amounts of money, like Google it's
unrealistic to do for everyone else.
Leasing the physical infrastructure is the key to bring competition back in
that market.
------
tanilama
Seriously. Google messed up REALLY bad on this one. It would really difficult
for many customers to come up with a contingency plan under 2 months.
Google should NEVER be trusted with other infrastructure projects going
further. Infrastructure isn't some forprofit companies trial-and-error
playground, it is about stability and promise to the local residents, it is
not about money and certainly not an experiment.
~~~
lotsofpulp
At least they tried. Infrastructure such as fiber to the home should be the
realm of governments, as everyone can benefit from it.
~~~
tanilama
They tried and blew away my trust in any of such innovative, pseudo-altruist
initiative from silicon valley companies. The disruption their action might
bring is much more than cancelling their internet service products.
Can't really joke about their words that 'the last 2 months are on us', like
it is something worthy of cheering up..
------
macinjosh
This development implies that one should not rely on Google for anything. Even
you're paying them for the service. They are so large they don't have to care
about their users/customers.
------
tylfin
This is why I'll never use the Google Cloud. Sorry my business does not move
as quickly as your decisions.
~~~
sciurus
Although as always they have language giving themselves some wiggle room, most
services in GCP would get at least a year of advance notice.
From [https://cloud.google.com/terms/](https://cloud.google.com/terms/) :
7.2 Deprecation Policy. Google will announce if it intends to discontinue or
make backwards incompatible changes to the Services specified at the URL in
the next sentence. Google will use commercially reasonable efforts to continue
to operate those Services versions and features identified at
[https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation](https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation)
without these changes for at least one year after that announcement, unless
(as Google determines in its reasonable good faith judgment):
(i) required by law or third party relationship (including if there is a
change in applicable law or relationship), or
(ii) doing so could create a security risk or substantial economic or material
technical burden.
The above policy is the "Deprecation Policy."
~~~
ocdtrekkie
That is a wide enough loophole to drive a truck through. And it would apply to
Fiber here as well, fixing the roads and fiber runs in Louisville would be a
"substantial economic or material technical burden".
Aka, it costs a lot of money, and they don't want to spend it.
~~~
macintux
Heck, even the continuation scenario has a major caveat: “commercially
reasonable efforts”.
So they can easily decide not to stick with it for a year, _or_ they can
decide to continue to provide service without, say, any technical support.
------
joshstrange
I never wanted to move to Louisville (from Lexington, KY) but fiber was a nice
selling point. Now I'm just hoping our own Lexington MetroNet keeps chugging
along so I can leave Spectrum when I buy a house.
------
yingw787
I'm going to go out on a limb here and conjecture that this isn't a typical
Google pullback like with todo list apps. There are significant
financial/intellectual capital outlays required for nationwide-scale ISPs, in
addition to operations and maintenance expenditures over time. Pulling back is
a significant sign Google Fiber has already reached its high-water mark.
Sadly, I think Google's pulling back because it more or less got what it
wanted out of the telecoms in terms of network service, repealing net
neutrality and regulatory capture increases Google's competitive moats, and
because corporate lobbying may be cheaper, more flexible, and have greater
returns: [https://gizmodo.com/googles-parent-company-spent-more-on-
lob...](https://gizmodo.com/googles-parent-company-spent-more-on-lobbying-
than-at-t-1822394224)
On that note, here's a how-to on starting your own ISP:
[https://startyourownisp.com/](https://startyourownisp.com/)
------
officemonkey
"We would need to essentially rebuild our entire network in Louisville to
provide the great service that Google Fiber is known for, and that's just not
the right business decision for us."
In other words, "we fucked up and so we bailed." Google is like the bad first
husband you should have never married in the first place.
------
chappi42
Will Google repair the streets? Saw one picture with rubber gaskets coming out
and it looked very bad :-(
------
ACow_Adonis
That's a lot of words to not actually tell you why they're pulling out of
Louisville.
"not living up to the high standards we set ourselves" is about as helpful as
hearing over public transport intercom "there has been an incident".
~~~
owenmarshall
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
[https://imgur.com/a/7lHiWZR](https://imgur.com/a/7lHiWZR)
That's a picture of a road post-fiber install. The groove is where the fiber
was placed. That black snaking rubber was what they sealed it with.
Now imagine that, but across their entire service area.
~~~
WhatIsDukkha
Source?
If that's accurate, it's comedic anyone thought that would work.
~~~
owenmarshall
I live here - that's almost exactly what it looks like outside my kid sister's
apartment ;)
For a local news source: [https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-
residents-con...](https://www.wdrb.com/news/belknap-neighborhood-residents-
concerned-over-sloppy-installation-of-high-
speed/article_4bc2a61e-8640-57f0-aba9-3dd4cb3d39e5.html)
Here's an article proclaiming that this is how Google would "outbuild their
rivals": [https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/photos-how-google-
fibe...](https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/photos-how-google-fiber-is-
using-shallow-trenching-to-outbuild-its-gigabit-rivals/18/)
I cannot possibly oversell just how terrible the work was here. Yes, that is
indeed a fiber optic cable two inches under a city street, covered only by
expanding foam rubber. Yes, someone really did think "yeah, this'll be just
fine."
------
itronitron
Google Fiber has suffered from a lack of imagination, or just good ole' plain
market analysis, in figuring out how to roll out fiber to larger areas around
their 'fiber cities'. Google Fiber in Austin is limited to a very small area
which oddly enough is probably not where most of the residential demand is.
Somehow I doubt that they ever asked homeowners what they would be willing to
pay for a fiber connection.
------
janvdberg
What was the problem? When I click the "encountered challenges" link I get a
451: Unavailable due to legal reasons (I am from the EU).
~~~
ocdtrekkie
This link makes it sound like their installation work was faulty and they were
going to have to redo it all: [https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-
announces-plan-to-fix...](https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-
plan-to-fix-exposed-fiber-lines-
in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html)
Since that was only a few months ago, my guess is they decided to just pull
out instead.
------
bigfatfrock
What's going to happen with all of that now dark fiber sitting in Louisville,
I wonder?
~~~
owenmarshall
A two inch trench was cut on city streets, that fiber added, and then covered
by a flexible rubber seal.[1]
I can't imagine _anyone_ would want to touch that "dark fiber". It was in
terrible shape six weeks after they put it down, before winter hit the city.
The picture on this article looks like it was taken relatively soon after
installation [2] - I've seen streets where the rubber seal has expanded and
curled up over top of the groove that was cut.
[1]: [https://9to5google.com/2019/02/07/google-fiber-closing-in-
lo...](https://9to5google.com/2019/02/07/google-fiber-closing-in-louisville/)
[2]: [https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-
fix...](https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-
fiber-lines-in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html)
~~~
thinkaway
Does google fiber not work in cold weather? Seems all the cities are warmer
than Louisville.
~~~
jlgaddis
Not very well.
When it gets cold enough, the water in the ground freezes and expands and
basically "squeezes" the fiber. The "1"'s, which are long and skinny, can
still slide right through the fiber but the fatter and wider "0"'s sometimes
get stuck. This causes the fiber (Internet pipe) to get clogged and,
eventually, stopped up completely, similar to how car crashes on the
Interstate can quickly bring vehicular traffic to a standstill.
(Source: I was the Senior Network Engineer for a FTTH ISP, until just
recently.)
~~~
dhimes
OMG that's hilarious!
------
Thaxll
Another good example of "smart engineering can't solve every problems".
~~~
sudosteph
This is even worse in a way. They specifically caused these problems because
they believed their engineers were so smart that they could rely on their
novel microtrenching technique to deploy the fiber for a fraction of the cost
of the competitors.
I just don't understand why they didn't spend more time testing it on their
own resources before rolling out to actual customers in a major metro area.
We've all seen potholes, roots coming through streets and sidewalks. Just
crazy to think they thought this was ready to be deployed at scale...
------
taurath
"Its not up to our quality standards, so instead of fixing it we're going to
pull out". What a corporatespeak way to say you're giving up on your
customers.
~~~
itronitron
If I'm not getting an A, then I'm not taking your stupid class.
------
dogecoinbase
_This decision has no impact on our operations in any of our other Fiber
cities, where we continue to sign up and install new customers every day._
This is just irresponsible of Google at this point. This entire project has no
momentum and isn't going anywhere -- why are they still signing people up when
it's obvious that they'll just cut them off eventually as well? In the
meantime, they prevent any of these cities from taking control of their own
connectivity.
They should help the cities form nonprofits to run the fiber networks, then
gently remove themselves from the situation.
~~~
VectorLock
I'm curious how much physical infrastructure Google Fiber is leaving under
streets. In Louisville were they using someone else's fiber or will there be
actual dark strands under Louisville now?
~~~
bri3d
They're not leaving much fiber under the streets in Louisville, which is the
whole reason they're pulling out - they attempted a low cost "microtrenching"
strategy where they cut a small groove in the street pavement itself and tried
to run the fiber through that. It was pretty much an abject failure and I
doubt anyone will want the infrastructure as it's unlikely to function in even
a few months.
They're still "microtrenching" in other markets but at a much greater depth
(6in rather than <3in) and with a different cover strategy (asphalt
replacement over sealant rather than sealant only)
~~~
VectorLock
This microtrenching would be amazing if it could make its hands into people
wanting to make open municipal networks, if it could actually work.
------
apexalpha
So what happens to the infrastructure? There's fiber optics in the ground
right? Do they give it to a local ISP?
~~~
remir
Some of it could be re-used, but from what I understand, lots of fiber could
become worthless because of the failure of their micro-trenching "experiment".
------
imjustsaying
I wonder how many of the people saying 'See? Can't trust google with anything'
use Gmail accounts.
------
mberning
10 years ago I would have jumped at the chance to sign up for Google Fiber.
Today they could not pay me to use the service.
~~~
takeda
Oh c'mon with the exaggeration. I would still use them (even if I had to pay),
it doesn't take that much time to switch. The major issue though will affect
most people in Louisville, since it's almost guaranteed that AT&T will
increase its prices. Thanks to Google Fiber at least for limited time, people
there enjoyed fast and relatively cheap internet access.
------
CyanLite2
TLDR: Google isn't as good at paying off politicians as well as AT&T and other
ISPs are.
------
Zecar
I fully expect my ATT Fiber to go up in price or down in transfer allotment as
a result. What a shame.
------
genzoman
ATT offers fiber internet in Louisville. After Google found out they wouldn't
be the only provider offering the service, they bailed.
------
samfriedman
One thing missing from this post: why?
After "Advancing our Amazing Bet", it became clear that the level of
regulatory obstacles Google needed to overcome made it too cost-prohibitive to
continue their rollouts. But what factors are forcing them to pull out of an
already established market?
Is the ISP environment so hostile as to squeeze even the biggest players out
of town? Is Google slowly ramping down even existing Fiber operations? What's
going on behind the scenes here? If the microtrenching issue is driving this,
why can't Google of all companies put up the investment to re-do it right?
There's failing an experiment, and then there's realizing something is sub-par
and putting in the work and money to make it right for your customers. I feel
like Google has misconstrued the two here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Indian version of Y Combinator... - prabodh
http://iaccelerator.org/
======
plinkplonk
"Indian version of Y Combinator"
Yeah Right!
From the FAQ
"When the company is formed we set up a bank account. When the bank account is
set up we deposit a check for the full amount of our commitment ie. 5 Lakh
directly into it. A company secretary is brought in to distribute funds from
the company checking account as per the budget instructions. Adjustments to
the budget can be made at board meetings. Founders _do not_ have direct check
writing control of the bank account."
You need to buy an extra laptop, wait for the next board meeting and/or get
approval from the "Company Secretary".
"Founders _do not_ have direct check writing control of the bank account!"
Sounds like a great way to run a startup!
And they have the audacity to call it "The Indian version of YC".
I doubt PG and co sit around approving line items and writing checks every
other day! AFAIK they hand over the money at the beginning and that's that.
~~~
known
Perhaps to prevent rampant Collusion, Corruption and Casteism in India.
[http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-
among-...](http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-among-most-
corrupt-while-doing-business-abroad.htm)
~~~
plinkplonk
"Perhaps to prevent rampant Collusion, Corruption and Casteism in India."
(If you were being sarcastic, I couldn't detect it in your sentence, so I will
respond to it as written. Apologies if I didn't catch the tone right.)
yeah sure. When a seed funder decides to spend 10,000 $ on a company _after_
extensive interactions with the team, his first concern is to avoid "collusion
corruption and casteism" and so he has to have line item veto ;-)
I wonder if PG and co lose their 17,000 $ occasionally to people who just take
the money and blow it gambling in Las Vegas? After all they just hand over the
money, with no "guarantee" that the team will _actually_ start coding/running
a company.
------
sundae79
Sorry to be all negative about this. I am guessing this would be another
IIT/IIM circle jerk. Everyone else will be filtered out. I will change my
mindset when I see the proof. Till then, cynical.
~~~
hiteshiitk
What is so wrong about IIT circle?
No doubt, they are top brains of India. PERIOD
~~~
keeptrying
Actually most IIT-ians are amazingly persistent in a way that, I think,
overshadows their "genius". It takes a heckuva lot of studying to get through
that test. Years and years of studying. To be able to do that you have to be
amazingly persistent.
That kind of dogged persistence helps when doing a startup.
The IIT-ian you need to watch out for is the one that keeps reminding you that
he's from IIT. This kind of guy has usually not done anything else with his
life.
Sridhar Vembu of Zoho went to IIT-Madras. He aint doing too bad!
So IIT helps but you certainly dont have to be an IIT-ian to succeed. Some day
I hope to prove that :P ...
The only negative "opinion" that I have about IIT-ians (from the ones that I
have met) is that they are very good at solving clearly defined problems but
they have a hard time defining the problem itself. Ie they have a hard time
figuring what the problem is in the first place. If you can give them the
problem, clearly defined, they will solve it for you.
(Again this could just be my prejudice :) ...
~~~
ajju
You should look up Sridhar Vembu's posts on anti-credentialism. In fact he
prefers hiring kids out of highschool and teaching them programming rather
than hiring engineers (let alone engineers from the IIT).
I love the IITs. Of the 5 enlightened professors I met in India, 3 were at an
IIT. I had some of my best times at events at IITs. But using those as a
filter is stupid and as you point out, in the case of those who brag about
having gone to an IIT, its invariably counterproductive in my experience.
~~~
keeptrying
Thats only because he cant afford IIT-ians.
Seriously if theres one credential which you ever do respect its IIT
(pre-2000) graduated. At one point of time they were either very very bright
or very very hardworking. Of course this might have changed in the years after
graduating from IIT.
(Note: After 2000, they rebranded a lot of the state level colleges to "IIT"
status.)
~~~
heuristix
There's a huge difference between respecting credentials and filtering based
on them. The former is not binary. I am simply arguing that an IIT degree is
neither necessary nor sufficient to be a successful entrepreneur.
~~~
keeptrying
Absolutely.
------
coderdude
I tried <http://news.iaccelerator.org/> and was disappointed.
~~~
pibefision
If needed, I could help on bring up a site like news.ycombinator.com using
Reddit opensource code. (like <http://www.123emprender.com>). Let me know!
------
revorad
Is anyone here applying? What are living expenses like in Bangalore? 5 lakh
(500,000 Indian rupees or ~$10,000) is a lot of money, isn't it? It sounds
like they have literally copied YC, forgetting the difference in living costs!
~~~
kniwor
5L is not a lot of money in Bangalore but for 5 to 10% equity, good feedback
and support I would be very much interested. Sadly their application deadline
was September 12. :(
Approx burn per person in Bangalore: Initial: Relocating+ house deposit+
registration+ CA + desktop + table + chair + net connection setup + office
stationary: About 1L. Monthly: Rent + utilities + food + net + cheap vps:
12-15k, Phone + travel: 5k. Extra: 15k.
So, we are looking at about 60k monthly and 1.5-2L initial burn for 2 non-
Bangaloreans to go and do a start up there.
~~~
avinashv
I think that is painfully high. What is the "extra" 15K? What kind of phone do
you use that costs you 5K, travel included? My very expensive phone plan costs
me less than 1000/mo because 75% of my calls are made roaming. I spend over 5K
a month traveling, yes, but my commute is 55km each way. If I worked in the
city, say, 15km from where I lived (which is high), phone+travel would be
under 1500mo.
Disclaimer: I live in Mumbai.
~~~
kniwor
Err yes... I too am in Mumbai. My phone bill comes to 1000/mo and traveling to
about 2k but you got to budget for the occasional flight to meet potential
investors or for a family emergency back home. So I think a net 5k a month
average is reasonable. One could certainly get rid of the 15k a month but that
would probably amount to getting rid of insurance and the national savings
scheme and stuff like that. That's probably a personal call though...
------
chaosprophet
You want 10pc equity for 5 Lakhs and all you are going to do is setup a bank
account, which cannot be directly operated by the founders??? Top it all of
with a Wordpress blog for a website, and you're not really instilling much
confidence.
Comparisons to YCombinator is highly unfair to YC.
------
jnaut
Not comparable to YC.
Having said that, I think the initiative is good, though its not mature yet.
They are evolving over time, they have come from saying something like "we
will put in a big place and give you a bed, table, pc and Internet connection
so that you can work whenever you wake up" [treating as kids or just coders,
2008] to saying something like "we will give 5L and open an account for the
company" [treated as entrepreneurs, 2009]. Still, a long way to go.
The 2008 archives with some photos
<http://www.ciieindia.org/blog/category/iaccelerator/> . I do agree that they
have a bad choice of photos on the blog, it does effect PR.
Moreover they will need someone like PG to make it like YC, that ain't
happenin' that easy. :-)
Still, I wish them luck! We do need "worthy" YC clones in many countries.
------
ajju
Freeman Murray seems like a cool guy. iAccelerator doesn't seem to be
bureaucratic like the other incubator type things I have seen in India. The
best part is iAccelerator is also in my hometown of Ahmedabad. Go
iAccelerator, I am rooting for you.
~~~
freemanindia
Thanks for the plug. iAccelerator is moving to Bangalore for this year's
winter season.
~~~
subbu
Its a bit late now. The last date was Sep 12 :(
------
greml1n
Is the guy on the right wiping his nose on his shirt or sniffing his arm pit?
Not to be picky but that immediately shot out at me when the page came up.
In any event, the world needs more of these.
~~~
baguasquirrel
You should probably do them a favor and fire off an email if you think it's
bad PR.
~~~
mahmud
I liked it. Bunch of good ole desi boys hanging out. I am tired of the faux-
posh bollywood look.
------
arithmetic
It'll be very interesting to see the kidn of start-ups that come out of this
venture, even if its not useful to compare it against what Y Combinator has
produced.
------
ashishk
I would consider moving to India for a top-tier incubator program. It seems
like a nice long-term bet to place.
~~~
netsp
An interesting question is what sort of bets are better placed in India.
Presumably, business models that require labour more or less linear to scale
would be the right kind to base in India. That is the opposite of what startup
generally gets thought of as otherwise. I see no reason why a services
'startup' is a bad idea. There is plenty of improvement to be made there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anyone got YC invite for summer batch,2017? - jayanthsugavasi
======
GlennJoe
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=krishnanvs](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=krishnanvs)
got an invitation
------
GlennJoe
it is now 4:48 am 18 April in Silicon Valley
------
acurti
Not yet
------
ys1715
Not yet
------
bummed
Not yet
------
thepraveen0207
No
~~~
thepraveen0207
Yes
------
alqhtani001
not yet :/
------
dddobney
nope
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is the Ebola Crisis a Reason to Skip Randomized Controlled Trials? - tokenadult
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-the-ebola-crisis-a-reason-to-skip-rcts/
======
gus_massa
Just an idea. Let's supouse that "doing nothing" is not political aceptable.
If there are two proposed treatments A and B, is it possible to make a double
blind randomized controlled trial between A and B. At lest we will get some
useful information like "A is better than B" or "A is worse than B" or "they
are equivalent". This elude the "placebo group is receiving no treatment"
complain.
It still doesn't solve the problem of "is treatment A better than nothing".
The mortality rate is very different from place to place. In some places doing
nothing is really doing absolutely nothing but in other places "nothing"
includes intra venous rehydratation and perhaps some elementary care that is
seams obvious but is not availed in very poor places.
Sooner or later we will need a "treatment vs placebo" experiment, but perhaps
this "A vs B" experiment can be a temporary solution.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Needs advice on learning NLP - navyad
I'm just starting to learn NLP through book natural language processing with python.<p>I don't want to complete the book without knowing essential parts of the book.
It would be great if you guys can point out which one are important concepts to grasp on and thereby i can put extra effort to learn and experiment these concepts.<p>Looking for advice from folks who have learned the NLP concepts or have some kind of experience in NLP.<p>Bonus: point out sample projects to work on.
======
jventura
I would suggest to start simple and manually to get some feeling for the
problems in the field. No frameworks, no tools, just you and Python!
Do a simple experiment: get some texts, split words between spaces (e.g
line.split(" ")) and use a dict to count the frequency of the words. Sort the
words by frequency, look at them, and you will eventually reach the same
conclusion as in figure 1 of the paper by Luhn when working for IBM in 1958
([http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i256/f06/papers/luhn58.p...](http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i256/f06/papers/luhn58.pdf))
There are lots of corpora out there in the wild, but if you need to roll your
own from wikipedia texts you can use this tool I did:
[https://github.com/joaoventura/WikiCorpusExtractor](https://github.com/joaoventura/WikiCorpusExtractor)
From this experiment, and depending if you like statistics or not, you can
play a bit with the numbers. For instance, you can use Tf-Idf
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf))
to extract potential keywords from documents. Check the formula, it only uses
the frequency of occurrence of words in documents.
Only use tools such as Deep neural networks if you decide later that they are
essential for what you need. I did an entire PhD on this area just with Python
and playing with frequencies, no frameworks at all (an eg. of my work can be
found at
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050912...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050912001251)).
Good luck!
~~~
arvinsim
Thanks for posting this. Good to know that using just vanilla Python is as
viable for learning as using specialized frameworks.
~~~
syllogism
You might find these posts interesting:
[https://explosion.ai/blog/part-of-speech-pos-tagger-in-
pytho...](https://explosion.ai/blog/part-of-speech-pos-tagger-in-python)
[https://explosion.ai/blog/parsing-english-in-
python](https://explosion.ai/blog/parsing-english-in-python)
These days I would say these articles are better indications of solving NLP
problems with linear models -- tagging and parsing are less important than
they used to be. Here's how I think about doing NLP with current neural
network techniques: [https://explosion.ai/blog/deep-learning-formula-
nlp](https://explosion.ai/blog/deep-learning-formula-nlp)
------
hiddencost
NLP for what purpose?
\- Academic \-- want results? deep learning [0], data munging [1,2] \-- want
to understand "why" / context? Jurafsky and Martin [1]
\- Professional \-- the data is easy to get and clean? deep learning [0] \--
you need to do a lot of work to get the signal? [2]
\- Personal \-- [http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-
effectiveness/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/) \--
[http://colah.github.io/posts/2014-07-NLP-RNNs-
Representation...](http://colah.github.io/posts/2014-07-NLP-RNNs-
Representations/)
(Andrej Karpathy and Chris Olah are some of my favorite writers)
[0] [http://www.deeplearningbook.org/](http://www.deeplearningbook.org/) [1]
[https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/](https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/)
[2] [http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/](http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/)
------
deepGem
Start with Machine Learning by Andrew Ng, on Coursera Once you get a hang of
neural networks, which is chapter 4 in the course I think jump to Stanford's
CS224n. It's helpful to complete Andrew's course as well.
[http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs224n/](http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs224n/)
cs224n is not easy. Of course, you can learn NLP without deep learning, but
today it makes sense to pursue this path. During the course of CS224n you'll
get some project ideas as they discuss a ton of papers and the latest stuff.
~~~
rmchugh
I think deep learning is a pretty hefty starting point for learning NLP.
Cutting edge NLP seems to be more and more based on deep learning, but it's a
rather steep learning curve for a beginner. I would have thought starting with
the basics (like the NLTK book) was more useful. Once those concepts are
mastered, one can progress to see what deep learning brings to the field.
------
mericsson
Some good advice here: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-get-into-natural-
languag...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-get-into-natural-language-
processing/)
~~~
navyad
Didn't know of this, highly helpful, thanks.
------
haidrali
Keep reading and practice with this book
[http://www.nltk.org/book_1ed/](http://www.nltk.org/book_1ed/), when you will
complete this book you will have a good understanding of NLP. Sample product
to work on suggestion would include
Implementing a classifier, For detail of it you can look at 13 chapter of
[http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-
book/pdf/irbookonlinereading.pdf](http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-
book/pdf/irbookonlinereading.pdf)
Cover topics like Sentiment analysis, Document Summarisation etc
~~~
tu7001
The information retrieval book is great lecture, I'm going through this and
implement algorithms, learn a lot.
~~~
haidrali
I have implemented these two algorithms back in 2013 do check it out
[https://github.com/wonderer007/Naive-Bayes-
classifier](https://github.com/wonderer007/Naive-Bayes-classifier)
------
kyrre
no point wasting your time on nltk:
cs224d (videos, lecture notes, assignments)
a similar course: [https://github.com/oxford-cs-
deepnlp-2017/lectures](https://github.com/oxford-cs-deepnlp-2017/lectures)
good paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.0398](https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.0398)
"Natural Language Processing (almost) from Scratch"
------
gtani
I think you want to understand comp linguistics viewpoint: parsers, PoS
taggin, dependency analysis, syntax trees;
and the machine learning perspective: embeddings in, say, 100-200 dimensional
space (word2vec, glove) and topic modelling/LDA, and latent semantic analysis
from the 90's. Then you can read about inputting embedding datasets into LSTM,
GRU, content addressable memory/attention mechanisms etc that are being
furiously introduced (you can scan the ICLR submissions and
[http://aclweb.org/anthology/](http://aclweb.org/anthology/).
_____________________
The Jurafsky/Martin draft 3rd ed is a good starting point, they've got about
2/3 of chapters drafted:
[https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/](https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/)
as well as the Stanford, Oxford, etc courses on NLP and comp linguistics, and
Klein's
[https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~klein/cs288/fa14/](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~klein/cs288/fa14/)
, Collins:
[http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~cs4705/](http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~cs4705/) and
other courses at MIT, CMU, UIUC etc
Also, try out the various standard benchmark datasets and tasks:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.01923](https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.01923)
________________
Last time i checked, this SoA page wasn't up to date and not very well
summarized but will give you lots of project ideas:
[http://www.aclweb.org/aclwiki/index.php?title=State_of_the_a...](http://www.aclweb.org/aclwiki/index.php?title=State_of_the_art)
------
sainib
This is one of the best resources for learning NLP using Python -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLZvOKSCkxY&list=PLQVvvaa0Qu...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLZvOKSCkxY&list=PLQVvvaa0QuDf2JswnfiGkliBInZnIC4HL)
Step by Step, one concept at a time with just a few mins of small videos.
------
sprobertson
For the deep learning angle, I'm starting a project-based tutorial series on
using neural networks (specifically RNNs) for NLP, in PyTorch:
[https://github.com/spro/practical-pytorch](https://github.com/spro/practical-
pytorch)
So far it covers using RNNs for sequence classification and generation, and
combining those for seq2seq translation. Next up is using recursive neural
networks for structured intent parsing.
PS: To anyone who has searched for NLP tutorials, what tutorial have you
wanted that you couldn't find?
------
stared
See links in here: [http://p.migdal.pl/2017/01/06/king-man-woman-queen-
why.html](http://p.migdal.pl/2017/01/06/king-man-woman-queen-why.html).
Especially:
\- Python packages: Gensim, spaCy
\- book:
[https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/](https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/)
------
demonshalo
I think the best way to start is tackling a specific problem. Ex. Try building
a summarizer for any given piece of text.
Start by using traditional statistical methods first in order to understand
what works and what doesn't. From there, you can go on to work on an ML
solution to the same problem in order to see the actual difference between the
two approaches in terms of comparable output.
------
navyad
Also helpful to read some research papers
[https://research.google.com/pubs/NaturalLanguageProcessing.h...](https://research.google.com/pubs/NaturalLanguageProcessing.html)
------
amirouche
What is the book you are reading?
~~~
navyad
I am following [http://www.nltk.org/book_1ed/](http://www.nltk.org/book_1ed/)
~~~
xiphias
It looks very old, try something that uses deep learning, like this:
[https://github.com/rouseguy/DeepLearningNLP_Py](https://github.com/rouseguy/DeepLearningNLP_Py)
~~~
botexpert
It's not old. Has most needed background necessary. DL NLP is not necessary
for most common tasks.
------
zump
I also need help; can someone point me to the latest results with NLP?
I want to build an AI powered note-taker.
------
jm547ster
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introducing-Neuro-Linguistic-
Progra...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introducing-Neuro-Linguistic-Programming-
Joseph-OConnor/dp/1855383446)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Should I include my GPA and/or transcripts when applying for jobs? - CoryG89
I am set to graduate with my BS in Software Engineering from Auburn University in December. I am currently trying to get my resume in order and start sending out tons of applications for jobs in the next month or so. I have been programming and doing web development in some form since I got my first computer when I was seven or eight years old, I am having trouble trying to decide what all should go on my formal resume. Many people online state to only have one page, or one main page with everything important on it.<p>Many people at school are recommending to include complete transcripts with grades (mine are pretty good, I have an overall GPA of 3.4. I generally have A marks in hard major classes such as Algorithms, Networks, Assembly, and Operating Systems.<p>Do you guys think its a good idea to include full transcripts with applications if I have no paid professional experience to speak of? If I do include transcripts should I have my GPA listed on my resume? Many sample resumes I see do not include a GPA. Others include a full list of relevant courses taken, but still no GPA. I thought GPA was pretty common on a resume if its above 3.<p>I did my core (non-software) classes at a Community College and transferred to my Auburn University two and a half years ago. Should I include the community college on the resume, should not be as prominent/detailed as the University's listing. How can or should I show/express my own self-taught experience from years before University on my formal resume.<p>Any advice will be much appreciated! Thanks in advance for your time.
======
patio11
Nobody will read transcripts. Few hiring officers read _resumes_.
This issue is vastly, vastly, vastly less importance to your success with your
job search than meeting and making an impression on people with hiring
authority is. The default response to an unsolicited resume is for it to be
silently discarded. Rather than making that the focus of your efforts, start
identifying people you'd like to work for (or companies and, by extension, the
people within them with hiring authority) and pitching them directly. Your
conversations will be much, much more interesting than anything on your resume
or any response to it.
~~~
wglb
_Few hiring officers read resumes._
What is your opinion about cover letters?
~~~
rdouble
As an alternative data point to some of the answers, everywhere I've worked
looked at resumes and did not really consider cover letters. I believe this is
also the case at Google and most Wall Street tech jobs.
~~~
caw
Could you extrapolate this statement (Google and Wall Street) to giant
companies with an online HR application process? Cover letters make sense when
you're sending it to a person, or at least an email address.
What happens when you put your resume into Taleo or one of those other online
application systems? You could be applying to several positions with the same
cover letter and resume in that case. I wonder how many people actually read
them.
~~~
rdouble
You could do that, but I wasn't specifically talking about Taleo or similar
systems. When I was on the hiring end, we just got resumes via email and
didn't read the cover letter.
------
tdec
As I've worked for 15+ years in various consulting firms, I have a CV in 2
sections. A brief one with a simple outline of personal information, formal
education and a 1-line summary of positions held, then a much more verbose
section detailing the projects I've worked on. The first section is maybe 1.5
pages these days. The second section is easily 7 or 8 pages and is not always
sent, only when a customer asks for more detailed information.
In your case, I would suggest to emphasise your programming projects. See it
as some kind of portfolio. Nobody will be reading the transcripts so don't
include them. Include your GPA score if you think the rest of the CV is not
entirely convincing. These are the kind of indicators that people will look at
for people that are straight out of school and are not expected to have a lot
of practical experience.
When I'm on the other side of the table and reviewing a CV for (junior)
positions I'm basically looking for a few indicators: 1\. The person has the
ability to think at a certain level that is right for the job 2\. They have
some relevant experience or have shown an interest in the topic 3\. I'm not
starting from zero with this person. 4\. Can they pick up new skills
reasonably quickly and are they willing to do so
Good luck with the job hunt !
~~~
CoryG89
Thank you, I have a considerate amount of outside of school projects that I am
putting together. Most of it I feel are small demos and games and such that I
used to teach myself new technologies and such, nothing actually in use or all
that useful, but I hope it at least somewhat demonstrates my abilities.
------
mcx
I would leave your overall GPA from Auburn, 3.4 is pretty good. There is no
need to include the community college. No need to include transcript unless
requested. Projects/things you have shipped/winning hackathons will probably
help make you stand out the most.
~~~
CoryG89
That's what I figured, probably include the GPA and have transcripts ready.
The advisers at the University seem so adamant about sending out my
transcripts whenever I can. I am attempting to get all projects that I haven't
lost over the years together and online. I am hoping to have a very short
formal resume which points online for example projects and a less formal
description of my interests, studies, etc.
------
runawaybottle
You have to sell yourself however you can. There are many new developers that
don't have a degree, or don't have good grades, so those people will need to
demonstrate their abilities in other ways. For example, I had a lackluster
gpa, so I made sure to work on my own projects that I could emphasize. If you
think you can show that you excelled in relevant CS classes, then do so. If
you've got stuff you did before college that's interesting, figure out how you
can bring it up. You have to play up whatever potential positives you have.
------
teahat
GPA - absolutely. If it's not there, the assumption will be that the reason it
isn't there is because it's bad (especially as a new grad). Like when you look
at a 2nd hand car listing and they leave off mileage - you know it will be
huge. Transcripts, no - they just add unnecessary padding at this stage,
nobody wants to read those unless they absolutely have to, so they'd only be
asked for at the end of the process, if at all.
But more importantly than either of these - you should write your resume
differently depending on what you are applying for. Highlight what is most
valuable to the organization you are applying to. If this means you have to
reduce the number of applications you send out, that's fine, it's much better
to have fewer well targeted applications.
And try to state facts, not claims. By which I mean - don't claim to 'work
well in a team', or have 'excellent X'. Show what you've done and the impact
it had. If you wrote something cool at the age of 10, I can infer that you're
smart and self-directed from that.
Good luck.
------
caw
From my experience: Don't include your community college, unless that's where
your degree is from. Even then, if you got an AS at a community college and
then got a BS, just drop the AS.
Include your GPA if it's better than 3.0/4.0. That's the cutoff point for most
companies, and unfortunately some will be 3.5, so unless you know the hiring
manager you'll just get filtered out. Some people try to tweak this by
splitting out "Major GPA" versus "Overall GPA", but if your school was like
mine then your community college work just transferred as credit, and doesn't
impact your GPA outside of fewer classes in the calculation.
Don't include your transcripts; this isn't a scholarship.
My question is at what point do you drop your college GPA from your resume?
After your first professional job, after 5 years, more?
------
dylangs1030
I'm a bit late to this, but I'll give you my experience. It echoes what others
have said to some extent.
In every instance I've applied for a job, it began with my casually (but
assertively) stating interest. Here is the process I go through (you could
call it my job hunting "workflow"):
1\. I read about an interesting company or meet/talk to someone with
connections to an interesting company.
2\. I learn what I can about them, researching for a few hours, deciding if
I'd enjoy it (on a cursory level).
3\. I contact people with _decision making ability_ and politely but
assertively state my interest. Note - I don't send a resume (you can, I
don't).
4\. Most cases, I've gotten through an entire hiring process without being
asked for a resume. If they happen to ask, it generally suffices to show them
my portfolio of prior work. This is in fact as simple as linking the list of
projects I've authored on my blog with corresponding code.
5\. Technical interview(s). Negotiation. Wrap up. Bam, you're done.
I highly, _highly_ suggest you read patio11's "Don't Call Yourself a
Programmer"[1] and "Salary Negotiation"[2]. No, really, read both. Absorb
every kernel of knowledge.
The importance of a resume is _grossly_ overestimated, as is the importance of
a transcript. Don't show a piece of paper, show the knowledge that your
education provided you with. Connections are important, and will field you the
most significant leads in finding a job.
[1]: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-
pro...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)
[2]: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-
negotiation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/)
------
alain94040
For a new college grad, the main thing I look at is programming experience
outside mandatory college classes. You say you have been programming since the
age of 8. Surely you must have done something worth mentioning.
This is a competition with your fellow classmates. If all you show are good
grades, you are the same as everyone else.
As to the format: forget transcripts. PDF format please, one page or two max.
[a former hiring manager]
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Washington to sue over 3D printed gun plans - aaronbrethorst
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/washington-to-sue-over-3d-printed-gun-plans/281-578608817
======
polski-g
The problem is that there was no way to ban them without violating the first
amendment. So what precisely do you plan to sue for?
------
jstewartmobile
Too many "news" outlets and too many lawyers.
Last I checked, gunsmithing--actual gunsmithing, with steel and wood resulting
in an object of stopping-power and beauty that _does not_ blow up in your face
--was a fairly low-tech and wide-spread art.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hey HN, where do you go for good ideas? - jfasi
I'll admit this is sort of a vague question, but I think it will make for more interesting conversation. Where do you find interesting ideas for things to work on? Universities? Friends? Internet? The shower?<p>I'm finding myself in something of a creative slump, and I'm eager to find out what's happening on the frontiers of computer science and entrepreneurship.
======
delwin
Although I'm not much of an entrepreneur (yep, here more for the hacking than
the startup'ing), I spend a lot of my time working on "ideas" — I am a
musician, a programmer, a tinkerer, a writer, a designer, etc., and find
myself daily in need of ideas.
But recently I've been feeling an information overload. I spend too much time
reading online, consuming information, taking in everything I can get. I read
books all day long, I am constantly pushing myself to learn new things
(languages, computer & human, and ancient history has been a recent focus).
And I love it, I really do enjoy learning this way.
But some things, like good ideas, have to come slowly. Some of my best
programming-related ideas have come while immersed in nature, like on a
camping trip or while hiking a glacier, removed from the internet for days.
My advice is to leave town, disconnect. Go camping for a week. You'll learn a
lot more there than you ever could online.
Alternatively, dramatically change your daily routine. Become nocturnal. Live
with a friend in a different city for the weekend. These don't have to be
permanent changes, but they do have to be dramatic.
My theory — backed by zero empirical evidence — is that when we our brains are
forced to react to new situations, they have to improvise. This makes us
instantly more creative.
------
dlf
I find I have my best ideas when I'm not trying to come up with an idea at
all. That doesn't mean you shouldn't look for inspiration, but I think a large
part of forming an idea is to let your brain be disengaged. Here's something I
shared on HN the other day that touches on this concept, but with better
evidence:
[http://fairobserver.com/article/self-referential-thought-
neu...](http://fairobserver.com/article/self-referential-thought-neuro-
scientific-perspective)
~~~
dlf
A quote from the article might be helpful:
"Scientists suggest that the Default Network may be required for generating
spontaneous thoughts during mind-wandering, and that it may be an essential
component for creativity. More specifically, it becomes active when
individuals focus on internal tasks, such as daydreaming or envisioning the
future."
------
fooandbarify
My interesting ideas almost always come to me when I'm trying to sleep or when
I'm in class. However, the _subject_ of my idea is almost always unrelated to
sleep or to the subject of the class at hand.
I think the meat of an interesting idea comes from exposure to the widest
possible variety of environments, and the intersection between them. An
obvious pattern for programmers which fits this criteria is an app idea
arising from the intersection of knowledge about software and knowledge about
something entirely unrelated, eg. patio11's Bingo Card Creator. (Yes I know,
"interesting" is subjective.)
The ideal "idea generating formula" for me has therefore become seeking
exposure to interesting (no, actually just _different_ )
objects/places/people/ideas/pastimes/jobs/[insert noun here] and then waiting
for my brain to make connections out of it while it should be focused on a
lecture or sleeping.
------
AznHisoka
Rather than looking for good ideas, look for problems that need to be solved,
or market opportunities. Find out what is selling like crazy, and see if
there's a subniche you can fill in that market. Read around in forums and see
what people are complaining about. Talk to them and delve into their problems.
Start with niches you're interested in.
------
euroclydon
My wife or mom. They both spend a lot of time traversing the internet, to
places I would NEVER visit, and they've been known to open their pocketbooks
while doing so, especially when they have a problem that needs a rapid
solution.
------
chunkyslink
Saw this interesting link on the Entrepreneur blog. Might help you with your
inspiration!
<http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/220790>
------
deutronium
For some completely crazy ideas have a look at <http://www.halfbakery.com>
~~~
kls
That is a great site, I really like this idea
[http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Advertisement_20casino#108429...](http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Advertisement_20casino#1084294800)
I think it could be a good company if it where done right, an iPhone app would
be great for just killing time.
------
SuperChihuahua
Try my idea generator at: <http://www.ideaoverload.com/>
------
revorad
I get most of my good ideas while writing about and actually coding up ideas I
already have.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Of Algebirds, Monoids, Monads, and Other Bestiary for Large-Scale Data (2013) - adamnemecek
http://www.michael-noll.com/blog/2013/12/02/twitter-algebird-monoid-monad-for-large-scala-data-analytics/
======
mikekchar
I find that monads are easier to explain in the context of programming that in
category theory.
First, start with a functor. In terms of programming, a functor is container
with an associated function (often called map or fmap -- I'll call it map
since fmap simply stands for "functor map"). map takes the contents out of the
container, applies a function (which you pass to map) and puts the results
back into the container again.
It's important to understand that the function may change the type, so while
you have the same kind of container, the type of data inside may change. For
example, imagine your functor (container) is an array of integers and your
function takes an integer and returns a char. The result of running map on
your functor is an array of chars. This may seem trivial, but it is important
later.
One other thing to realise is that anything that can "hold on" to a value and
for which you can implement map is a functor. So arrays, lists, tuples,
hashes/dictionaries/objects etc are all examples of functors. Even a function
that has a closure over a parameter can be a functor -- as long as you have a
way of implementing map (left as an exercise for the reader).
Monoids are usually not explicitly identified in most programming languages.
You can make functors that can contain anything (i.e. the set that represents
the values it can contain is allowed to be empty). So basically, you can
contain a functor that contains only nothing. A monoid is a functor in which
the set that represents the values it can contain can not be empty. In other
words, it must be able to contain a value. Also it must have an "identity"
value for a given operation. The identity value is one for which when you
perform the operation, you get the same value back. For addition and integers
the identity value is 0 (n + 0 = n). For multiplication and integers, the
identity value is 1 (n * 1 = n). For concatenation and strings, the identity
value is "" (s.concat("") = s). Most functors (remember, just a fancy word for
container in the context or programming) are monoids for a given operation.
An endofunctor is just a functor (container that you can implement map on) for
which the type you start with is exactly the same as the type you end up with.
For example, if you have an array of integers, apply a function to the
contents with map, and you end up with an array of integers again, then you
have an endofunctor ("endo" just means that it's the same on both ends). If
you ended up with an array of strings, then it's not an endofunctor because an
array of integers is different than an array of strings, even though they are
both arrays.
A monad is just a monoid (container that can hold at least 1 element and for
which there is an identity element for the function you will be applying) in
the category of endofunctors (you'll get exactly the same type after you apply
the function).
Usually instead of map (which automatically puts the transformed values into
the container) you use a function called bind with monads. bind works pretty
much the same as map, except that the function you pass to bind needs to put
the transformed value into the container. You would think that this is a PITA,
but it's very necessary in many situations (easiest way to see this that I
know of is to try to implement an "either monad" with only map -- you'll see
right away that it's not possible).
And that's it, really. I find it really interesting to understand how category
theory works, but it is not at all necessary for understanding how to use
functors and monads while programming.
Edit: I forgot the most important part! Why do a want a monad? Since it always
returns the same type from bind as what you started with, it means you can
chain functions. I've found that it's also really helpful in non-type checking
languages for reasoning about the type of things. If you are using bind on a
monad, you _know_ that chaining will work every time -- you never need to
check for null, etc.
~~~
mlevental
>For example, if you have an array of integers, apply a function to the
contents with map, and you end up with an array of integers again, then you
have an endofunctor
sorry i'm confused. been learning haskell in parallel with cat theory. isn't
the only category in haskell Hask? whose objects are types? in that sense
aren't all of the `Functor`s in haskell endofunctors?
~~~
dwohnitmok
There are many many categories in Haskell. All you need for a category is to
identify _something_ as the objects, _something_ as the arrows, and make sure
your identifications result in something that matches the category laws.
As a simple example, every monoid is a category with a single object (hence
the mono- prefix). Hence every monoid in Haskell is a category.
Now it is true that all `Functor`s in the sense of the Haskell typeclass are
endofunctors in category theory, because a higher-kinded type can be thought
of as a mapping between types in Haskell (e.g. `Maybe` maps `Int` to the new
type `Maybe Int`) and `fmap` can be thought of as a mapping of functions
between types to their remapped types (we take `a -> b` and replace it with
`Maybe a -> Maybe b`), which results in a functor from Hask to Hask.
However, it is not true that the only functors (in the category theory sense)
are instances of the `Functor` typeclass.
------
still_grokking
Very nice blog post.
When we're at it, have a look at "Functors, Applicatives, And Monads In
Pictures"[1]. No silly comparisons to burritos or something like that, only a
few pictures that everybody can easily remember.
[1]
[http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_...](http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_monads_in_pictures.html)
------
Stwerner
Shot in the dark here, but I vaguely remember a blog post that used birds in
an explanation for monads and I can't seem to find it again. It had hand-drawn
birds, and I think it started out with the identity monad, with the bird
representing it only able to speak their own name.
Does anyone remember that post? I'd love to find it again, I got really
excited when I saw the title, thinking that it had finally come around again.
~~~
pm-mk
Are you referring to the bird songs from Raymond Smullyan's "To Mock a
Mockingbird?"
I found this breakdown after a cursory search
[http://dkeenan.com/Lambda/](http://dkeenan.com/Lambda/)
~~~
Stwerner
Ah you know what, I think I am. I guess I was stuck thinking about Monads
rather than the lambda calculus. Thank you so much!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OAuth.io - OAuth that just works. - thyb
http://oauth.io
======
comex
With respect, this is yet another library that should be a small piece of open
source software rather than a hosted service which I'll probably eventually
have to pay for and which is likely to eventually go defunct, requiring me to
rewrite my code to use another library. It's useful, but not big and important
enough to be its own service. _Grump._
~~~
buro9
Occasionally I wonder whether the mantra to "solve your own problems" when
looking for startup ideas is making things harder for ourselves.
We stand on the shoulders of giants, the least we can do is help lift others
to that level.
If you were to build a business by implementing other people's cloud based
product, be it an OAuth provider, MapBox, Embedly, Mailgun, AWS, etc... the
barrier to profitability has been raised significantly. The raw costs remain
low, but the costs for even a low number of users is quite high.
Maybe this is just the natural order though. It's never really been possible
for the author of a lib to be able to charge, let alone charge on a recurring
basis, before.
------
gulopine
Interesting. It took me a minute to figure out what you're actually doing
here, but once I found the important bit on the page ("Setup your API Keys in
OAuth.io"), I can at least be confident this isn't a glaring security concern.
:) And yes, that was a legitimate concern when I first looked at it, given how
little information is currently available.
While building <https://foauth.org/>, I had wondered if it'd be possible to do
something like this, but it wasn't really my use case so I didn't really
pursue it. I was more interested in people just trying to get access to their
own data, so I built a solution for that side of things.
Still, I can speak from experience that wrangling 50+ OAuth providers into a
single system is hard enough, and trying to provide a unified API to all of
them is even harder. I'm not sure how many sites need to support that many
sites, but for people like us trying to simplify the API for others, it
becomes a pretty big necessity. As it is,
<https://github.com/gulopine/foauth.org/tree/master/services> is something of
a living tribute to the differences between the various service providers.
So yeah, I'll be very interested to see where OAuth.io goes, and for anybody
else here who just wants to get their own data (but not run your own service),
you might also want to checkout <https://foauth.org/>.
~~~
elviejo
OMG I needed something like foauth.org a couple of weeks ago. Oh well for next
time, now I know.
------
_frog
There's no shortage of simple OAuth consumer libraries out there, what I
really want to see is a simple way to set up my app as an OAuth _provider_. As
far as I know there's nothing out there to make that simple yet.
~~~
IanChiles
Or even if there was a simple, detailed guide on what your own OAuth needs to
do to be secure - and a basic overview of how to implement it (not language
specific, just concept-wise).
~~~
EGreg
The TLDR version is: use https and OAuth 2.0, and this guide:
[https://github.com/Mashape/mashape-
oauth/blob/master/FLOWS.m...](https://github.com/Mashape/mashape-
oauth/blob/master/FLOWS.md)
~~~
15charusername
Why Oauth2? I've read about it being less secure
[http://hueniverse.com/2012/07/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-
hell...](http://hueniverse.com/2012/07/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-hell/) but
would like to hear the case for it.
~~~
EGreg
Well if you implement OAuth 2 properly, you'll prevent session fixation and
hijacking attacks, and with https you will also prevent man-in-the-middle
attacks.
The hueniverse guy was one of the people drafting the standard and as far as I
can tell he laments that the providers can return a "bearer token" instead of
a "mac token". That means the token is sent on every request to the provider,
and without https it can be intercepted. But with https everything is fine!
OAuth 1.0 didn't rely on https to prevent MITM attacks an instead used the
"mac token" to sign each request to the provider, along with an increasing
timestamp/nonce to prevent replay attacks.
[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/should-all-web-
traf...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/should-all-web-traffic-be-
encrypted.html)
------
yuliyp
I wish there was more there than a mailing list signup and a teaser. What is
it you're actually showing HN? Some animations?
~~~
thyb
yes it's maybe more a kind of ASK HN if this API could interest people as we
are finalizing it
~~~
yuliyp
Ah, cool. I'm kind of interested in how you work on the security aspects of it
(will you give guidance on how to configure your client info for the various
APIs (what do I fill in for all of the different URIs in my Facebook app
config?), as well as more complicated scenarios (storing tokens in DB,
associating tokens to accounts, etc.)
------
spicyj
The most confusing thing to me about this page was the changing provider
names. I was looking at the page and could tell that something was changing
but it took me about 15 seconds to figure out what it was.
~~~
enjo
Hah.. I actually read this comment first and I was STILL just staring at my
screen completely dumfounded. I'd see the little animation on the right
update, and then something else would change. It was mystifying.
~~~
jsmeaton
Made it really hard for me to focus on the content. I know exactly what was
changing, and it wasn't that much, but it took a really long time (in
comparison) to read the examples.
~~~
thyb
Alright, listening to your feedback it seems the animation was too much of a
distraction, so we removed it. Thank you for your feedback!
------
ams6110
_1\. Setup your Facebook API Keys in OAuth.io_
lost me.
~~~
jlogsdon
That's 1 out of 50+ examples. Facebook is easily the most commonly
implemented, so why would they not make that the default example?
------
lobster_johnson
Shameless plug: We wrote a backend app, Checkpoint, that works similarly to
this. It's open source [1] and in use with a number of production apps.
Admittedly it does not have the JavaScript stuff, but that's easy enough to
add.
Basically, Checkpoint is a facade that abstracts authentication into a simple
API. You set up Checkpoint with your OAuth keys (for, say, Facebook), then
just redirect your app to /login/facebook. Checkpoint will do the OAuth
interaction and return to your app with a key that can be used to access the
login session.
Checkpoint abstracts the notion of logins into identities and accounts. An
identity corresponds to a user, and can have more than one account associated
with it. Identities are logically partitioned by "realm", so it's ready for
federated installations.
[1] <https://github.com/bengler/checkpoint>
------
nostromo
If you'd like something similar to this that's available today, check out our
startup: <https://www.dailycred.com/>
We also support email & password (using the same OAuth API) and Mozilla
Persona, as well as take care of headaches like password reset, email
validation, and account de-duplication (for example, if a user signs in using
Facebook on day one and then email on day two).
Best of luck to oauth.io however -- the simple js approach is interesting.
------
mihok
+1 for the animated image or gif or whatever, instantly caught my attention. I
would maybe speed it up however, I was curiously awaiting to see the full
animation.
------
spion
I wish this existed before. For node.js stacks that support connect/express
based middleware, we wrote oauth-flow instead
<https://github.com/doxout/node-oauth-flow>
The idea is to point the user to your oauth-flow route and they will complete
the oauth flow. your middleware will then be called with req.oauth containing
all received oauth credentials and the url containing all the original
parameters.
~~~
tlrobinson
There's also <http://everyauth.com/> and <http://passportjs.org/> for node.js
How does yours compare to those?
~~~
spion
In short - it doesn't assume that you want to use oauth for user
authentication and authorization.
Maybe you just want users to add their dropbox or box account to an existing
account. Maybe you need to make a one-time call to a service in their name.
Passport and everyauth simply assume too much: that you will need an
authentication strategy, that the strategy will have a getter function for the
user, that you actually have users...
oauth-flow just implements the authorization flow: redirects the user to the
oauth provider (facebook, twitter, etc), then when the user returns, they
return at the same URL and the next middleware is called with req.oauth
containing all oauth data such as tokens.
Then you can do whatever you want with those - make an API call, authorize the
user using their external ID, register a new user...
Its a smaller, more focused module, better aligned with the principle of doing
one thing only and doing it well. And it doesn't require adding any global
middleware inside the app.configure block such as in passport.
------
danielfone
I was getting so impatient waiting for the stubborn programmer animation to
finish. Inspect -> sources -> stubborn.js -> ohhhhhh... well done.
On the other hand, I first thought this was a Facebook thing since it started
with "Setup your Facebook API Keys in OAuth.io". Perhaps something like "Setup
API keys for the provider of your choice in OAuth.io"?
------
tusharc
Comments on the animated UI aside, as someone who recently pulled their hair
out trying to get StackOverflow oauth working, a simple solution would be
extremely welcome. My scalp shall thank you!
------
outworlder
I thought the comic programmer would be successful by step 100 or so, so I
kept watching.
I am now at step 125. Still watching...
~~~
starefossen
You can check out how they did the comic programmer here:
<http://oauth.io/js/stubborn.js>
------
davefp
Does this service require me to give up my private key for a given API? Seems
like a huge security risk to me.
~~~
misuba
It beats putting your private keys in client-side code (JS-only apps being
those which this solution seems to be built for).
------
maresca
This REALLY could have helped me a week ago. Two oauth consumers later, it's
not as easy as it seems.
~~~
salahxanadu
Yes, it really is not. OAuth on mobile is frustrating experience of matching
up responses and posts and figuring out which of the 5-10 variables and
secrets or keys or tokens to give.
------
eric_bullington
The little comic programmer guy is hilarious. And actually, as someone who's
fooling around with oauth right now, this looks very appealing.
But yeah, the changing provider names might not be a good idea. Or at least
decrease the interval.
~~~
thyb
I decreased the interval to 10s.
------
6thSigma
There is a little too much changing text going on in my opinion. It was
difficult to read the sample code because my eyes kept jumping to the changing
text all over the screen.
Edit: It looks like you changed the intervals. Much better now.
------
lhnz
It might be nicer to follow the convention in EventEmitter on Node.JS rather
than your own. Put (err, accessToken) instead of (accessToken, err).
------
lucidrains
the little programmer cartoon made me lol! good job!
------
tehwebguy
This is cool.
Is this for login alone or do you return API keys (and are the keys for the
provider service or for OAuth.io)?
------
Mailjet
Cool!!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pugmarks: A Smart Browser for Android - bharath_mohan
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.pugmarks
======
bharath_mohan
Browsing on a mobile or tablet can be painful. Its hard to type, and simple
things like copy-paste are hard. On the other hand, mobiles - with their touch
interfaces are extremely amenable to discovery and exploration.
Pugmarks aims to solve exactly this - reduce the pain of searching inside a
browser, by anticipating information needs - and bring them to them, all in
real time, inside of the comfort of the browser.
Pugmarks is like having Google Now inside the browser.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Space giants join forces to battle SpaceX: This is how cheap space travel begins - cryptoz
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184434-space-giants-join-forces-to-battle-spacex-this-is-how-cheap-space-travel-begins
======
Gravityloss
There's no link to the original release, that's not very good journalism.
[http://www.safran-group.com/site-safran-en/press-
media/press...](http://www.safran-group.com/site-safran-en/press-media/press-
releases/2014/article/airbus-group-and-safran-to-join)
Arianespace has it in french only. European companies and organizations have
always sucked in public relations.
[http://www.arianespace.com/news-press-
release/2014/6-16-2014...](http://www.arianespace.com/news-press-
release/2014/6-16-2014-Rapprochement-Airbus-Safran.asp)
I can't find where the rocket engine mentioned in the article is from. Ariane
6 will go to just more solids. In my opinion it is a massive step backwards,
as solids need massive infrastructure because they are moved around fully
fueled, they have low performance, they can not be throttled or shut down,
they shake a lot. So you can't land with one, and you can't just refuel and go
either.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter will exceed 500 million users on Wednesday - 4dd3r
http://wewillraakyou.com/2012/02/dynamic-chart-shows-twitters-exact-growth/
======
murdan
I wonder how many of those accounts haven't been accessed in several months or
a year. I thought previously twitter was primarily run by a small percentage
of power users.
~~~
4dd3r
That's true. They have managed boost it in the past two years, but the amount
of active users are still only in the region of 100 - 150 million.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Has my IP been banned from HackerNews? - sebkomianos
I can't access HackerNews since last night. Any page I try to access gives me the error (502) message below:<p>"Yeah, that didn't work. Try again, perhaps later?<p>Web server is returning an unknown error<p>There is an unknown connection issue between CloudFlare and the origin web server. As a result, the web page can not be displayed."<p>followed by a Ray ID, my IP address and the CloudFare Location.<p>The only unusual activity I had before that was that I changed my password and that I am trying to code a script to get some data from my submissions and comments here.
======
cloudflare
What's the Ray ID?
~~~
sebkomianos
It's a different one each time. Some examples:
d07066ee93c0749 d07068829a60749 d0720374a2700de
~~~
cloudflare
I'll poke around and have a look to see why. The Ray ID will be different each
time; it's a debugging feature that identifies the request when something goes
wrong.
If this persists please contact support AT cloudflare DOT com so we can track
it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LastPass warns users to exercise caution while it fixes 'major' vulnerability - rickboyce
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/30/lastpass-warns-users-to-exercise-caution-while-it-fixes-major-vulnerability
======
rickboyce
LastPass recommending [https://blog.lastpass.com/2017/03/security-update-for-
the-la...](https://blog.lastpass.com/2017/03/security-update-for-the-lastpass-
extension.html/)
Use the LastPass Vault as a launch pad – Launch sites directly from the
LastPass vault. This is the safest way to access your credentials and sites
until this vulnerability is resolved.
Two-Factor Authentication on any service that offers it – Whenever possible,
turn on two-factor authentication with your accounts; many websites now offer
this option for added security.
Beware of Phishing Attacks – Always be vigilant to avoid phishing attempts. Do
not click on links from people you don’t know, or that seem out of character
from your trusted contacts and companies. Take a look at our phishing primer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Dark Pool Iceberg - helper
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/opinion/sunday/lawsuit-against-barclays-shows-need-for-more-scrutiny.html
======
marcinw
Matt Levine sheds more light on this story[1], backed by evidence whereas the
NYTimes is just hearsay. Why would Barclay's screw over institutional
investors who account for a large majority of their $4 billion in revenue for
HFT who bring in only $3 million? Because without HFT (which is a bad, bad
word to the ATG's ears), nobody would be trading on it, and nobody wants to
admit that. It just doesn't make sense.
[1] [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-26/barclays-
no...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-26/barclays-not-smart)
~~~
Mandatum
I don't understand how a darkpool could exist without rogue HF traders bumping
up the revenue from stock trades. If the current stock market won't allow for
it, what makes them think a private market will? At the end of the day whoever
operates the pool has to foot the bill if they're trading outside of the
official exchange.. Unless they turn it into a Ponzi-type scenario or outright
lie to their investors.
~~~
kasey_junk
The basic theory of a dark pool is that by restricting who can access the
other participants in the market, you can provide for your dark pool's clients
better execution costs.
That is, by only allowing similar market participants (think other hedge
funds, pension funds, etc) and excluding "predatory" speculative market
participants (HFT, day traders, pit traders, etc.) you can match "natural"
trades to each other, without paying the middle man.
In reality, this never happens. Speculative "predatory" traders are a
necessary component of the market and without them there isn't sufficient
liquidity for the market to operate.
In this particular case, an ibank stands accused of lying about this
fundamental fact to their clients. It has nothing to do with the underlying
validity of the market structure.
~~~
Retric
HFT add liquidity on a second by second basis, but nothing on even a short
term basis. Market makers speed up transactions slightly, but the cost for
doing so is vary high.
~~~
tptacek
Citation needed.
------
jackgavigan
It's ironic that the "dark" in "dark pool" is now being interpreted in a
negative manner, synonomous with "opaque".
The reason such pools are dark is to reduce the market impact of large orders.
If an institutional investor (e.g. a pension fund) were to announce to the
world "We are going to sell a shitload of Apple shares tomorrow!", the Apple
share price would fall, as everyone front-ran the trade. That would result in
a lower price for the pension fund when it actually got around to selling its
shares. Regulators actually recognise the advantages in reducing market impact
and they specifically allow delays in reporting large, off-exchange trades
between clients and broker-dealers to the market for that reason.
Dark pools were conceived of as a mechanism to allow institutional investors
to trade off-exchange (in theory, with one another), so that they didn't have
to post bid orders publicly on the "lit" exchange. The reason they're called
"dark pools" is because you can't see the order book, so you don't get to see
big orders being added to the book (and take advantage of the knowledge that
someone's just placed a big order, to front-run them). In other words, you
don't know how deep the pool (i.e. the liquidity on the order book) is - just
like you can't see how deep a dark pool of water is.
As someone who works in financial markets, it's weirdly fascinating to watch
terms like "dark pools" and HFT end up being used as epithets, almost, by the
media.
It's a bit like how the word "hacker" came to be regarded by many as
describing a computer criminal.
------
kasey_junk
Another take on the story from someone who has worked both the buy side and
the sell side:
[http://kiddynamitesworld.com/hear-g-schneiderman-going-
barcl...](http://kiddynamitesworld.com/hear-g-schneiderman-going-barclays-
dark-pool/)
~~~
sireat
That author seems to think that this was okay behaviour by Barclays, because
the clients had choices and could think for themselves(ie caveat emptor)
I do not see how lying to your clients about the type of pool you have is ok.
If it is necessary to have some HFT operators in your pool then do not be a
chicken and come out and say so. Is honesty not the best policy anymore?
You can be getting the best deals(fills in this case) and still feel like
getting a bad deal. It is human psychology.
Let's say you find the best deal on a specific car for $10,000. Dealer claims
that you are not paying any dealer markup over retail. However, later you find
out that there was a special promotion from manufacturer, where dealer got the
cars for $1,000. Even though you realize this was not something you could get
yourself you would still feel miffed that you were not given a larger
discount.
I admit my example doesn't have very realistic numbers.
~~~
kasey_junk
I think he pretty clearly comes down against false advertising and giving up
your fiduciary duty to your clients. Those are the real issues in the court
case.
His main point, and one that seems to be missing in most articles about dark
pools, hft, etc. is that buy side investors are as sophisticated (or should be
if they are to get away with charging their crazy management fees) as sell
side participants. The whole reason they have high paying finance jobs is to
provide to their clients the service of making sure they are getting the best
execution they can.
------
mindcrime
Strangely enough, I had never heard of a "darkpool" until today. I bought
_Flash Boys_ at the airport bookstore earlier, and read it on the plane just
now. And tonight I find a reference to darkpools on the HN front-page. Hmmm.
Truth really is stranger than fiction sometimes.
Anyway, FWIW, if anybody here hasn't read _Flash Boys_ by Michael Lewis, it's
a pretty interesting read that covers some ground related to the content of
this article: HFT, dark-pools, etc. I understand that it's not without some
controversy, but I found it damn interesting all the same.
~~~
kasey_junk
As someone who has worked in the industry, Flash Boys is literally the worst
intro you could find into electronic trading. Dark Pools by Scott Patterson is
much, much better (and even it gets basic facts incorrect).
~~~
azmenthe
Agreed, as someone who worked in HFT and thus has a positive bias towards it,
I found Dark Pools to be an extremely informative and factual historical
account of the industry even if the author's opinions disagree with mine.
Flash Boys however I can't even get through because the author backs an
extremist negative position with completely incorrect facts. I fill with
seething rage every time I realize how much more public exposure Flash Boys
gets.
~~~
kasey_junk
I wouldn't say he backs an extremist negative position. In fact, if you read
carefully, he is quite adamant in his assertion that HFT is great. As long as
it is in the service of large buy side institutions he has no problem with it.
If on the other hand, HFT firms dare to upend the relationship with
traditional ibanks, then he gets upset.
------
solaarphunk
Surprise-surprise, HFTs can also be marketmarkers and bridge the imbalance of
arrival rates of buyers and sellers!
------
w_t_payne
You can't trust people. Even supposedly-trustworthy people working for
supposedly-trustworthy household-name financial institutions like Barclays.
What then can we trust? Technologies like BitCoin are predecated on the idea
that we can trust mathematics and peer-reviewed logic. Are these mechanisms
inherently more trustworthy than individual humans and human institutions? If
this is truly the case, then the argument for financial intermediation to be
founded on a similar technological basis is an exceptionally strong one.
Anybody else interested in following this rabbit hole to see where it leads?
------
wernerb
Micheal Lewis explains dark pools and HFT's quite well in his new book Flash
Boys [1].
[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-
Revolt/dp/03932...](http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-
Revolt/dp/0393244660)
~~~
kasey_junk
No he doesn't. Either through ignorance, incompetence, or malice he wrote a
pretty terrible book about dark pools and HFTs. Dark Pools by Patterson is
much better and even it misses on lots of details.
------
quattrofan
Here we go again, and still not a single executive is in prison for financial
misdeeds the last few years.
~~~
hueving
I'm not terribly familiar with the legal system, but I do believe you have to
be convicted of a crime to be sentenced to prison.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Federal workers earning $150,000 or more has risen tenfold in past five years - chailatte
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/11/13/2010-11-13_the_fat_of_the_land.html
======
ENOTTY
They should really compare industry to industry to see if the pay with
benefits are similar.
For example, with all these new regulations on the financial industry, how are
you going to attract financial professionals to government service to enforce
these regulations. If they're making 5 figures in government while their
classmates are making 6 or 7 figures in the private sector, would it be really
surprising if we can't find enough smart and savvy financial cops?
------
percept
Heavily slanted. Some points from the source article:
"workers earning $150,000 or more make up 3.9% of the workforce" (the original
headline was "More federal workers' pay" which paints a different mental
picture).
"The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the
government for 15 to 24 years"
"Physicians rewarded. Medical doctors at veterans hospitals, prisons and
elsewhere earn an average of $179,500"
IT in particular is poorly compensated when compared to the private sector. In
fact the government would be better off hiring large numbers at private
sector-level salaries instead of outsourcing to private contractors at huge
markups (Robert Gates made the same point with regard to defense contracting).
But the forces aligned against "stunning" federal pay aren't likely to oppose
continued outsourcing.
They're also carefully carving the pie to exclude federal defense workers:
"Freeze federal salaries for three years, with the exception of defense
paychecks."
------
makecheck
It sounds ridiculous on the surface, but at least consider cost of living. You
can't compare salaries without knowing where the people are. Assuming they are
mostly in DC, how expensive is that compared to other parts of the country?
~~~
percept
Ridiculously expensive.
------
kevinpet
I think we need to chop government worker pay severely, but I don't like the
misleading way this headline frames the problem. That is -- I think others may
correctly point out that this is a very odd metric to quote, and hence people
must need to fudge the numbers to argue the case. The more accurate is what
Rand Paul just said -- federal total compensation averages $120k vs. $60k for
private sector. The only subtlety there is total compensation including
benefits vs. salary.
The problem with those making more than X has increased by Y is that you can
always generate extreme numbers by choosing X appropriately. Imagine there was
a large subset of our all-knowing overlords making $145k five years ago. Maybe
this was the cap for some particular level in the hierarchy. Now assume they
got a 5% raise. Bam, huge increase in number of feds making over $150k. True,
but misleading.
If you want subtlety, there are studies out there comparing apples to apples
(since federal employees are skewed towards professionals) and still finds
massive pay differences.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Help me become a web developer, 10,000 ft. in the air - flys2much
I graduated with an electrical engineering degree and am familiar with programming (C/C++, VHDL, Assembly, etc). But now, I want to start developing web apps.<p>I am a Management Consultant and spend 15 to 20 hours a week on a plane. So as a personal challenge, if I spend 60 hours a month for 6 months learning and implementing, I should be able to have my ideas turn into funcitoning apps.<p>Since I don't have an internet connetion, online resources and communities to help me learn are impossible to leverage until I make it to a hotel. At this point, I don't know where to begin in terms of both language and resources.<p>I've come here to Hacker News to request your advice in helping me complete my personal challenge. I'd love to have a web app up and running this year.
======
revorad
The key thing that I've found drives me and makes me finish coding projects is
if I'm building something that I use a lot, preferably everyday.
Don't waste another minute on choosing the tools - just pick one of Ruby on
Rails or Python+Django based on whatever you've heard about them already. The
docs are downloadable so you can use them offline.
Could you build something that you would use for your work? You probably use
Excel a lot. Is there some manual copy-pasting you spend a lot of time doing
in Excel? You could probably automate that.
Edit: As soon as you start working on it, put it on here - <http://swym.me>. I
will make sure you get it done.
~~~
flys2much
Thanks for the suggestion! I'm not entirely sure about the learning curve of
either but I will definitely look into both sometime this week and pick a
language to stick with.
Great advice on picking a project. I had a few in mind but you reminded me of
some Excel macros I'd like to make.
"I will make sure you get it done" - And this is why I love this
community.I'll make a list and definitely check out swym.me when I've made a
decision on what I want to start with.
~~~
poulsbohemian
Doing is the best learning - why not join a project like mine that needs a web
developer? You learn and get to share in our project, and in 6 months if you
want to go off to do your own thing you will have gotten real world experience
out of the deal. I spend a lot of time on planes as well, and actually the
lack of distractions makes it a fantastic place to work. Ping me if you are
interested - jeff -at- notifika.com.
~~~
flys2much
Thank you for the offer. I completely agree that "doing is the best learning".
At this point I can't commit or take on responsibility on someone else's
project. If you have a web developer already and that has the patience to work
with me, I might just change my mind. But at this point, I'm looking for more
flexibility to work on my own ideas.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The creator of Monkey Island plays and narrates his game, 20 years later. - shadytrees
http://grumpygamer.com/8280380
======
daveungerer
Am I just looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses or have they
stopped making games like these?
Spent hours on games like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Space Quest etc.
as a kid. Any good modern ones, or should I just replay the old?
EDIT: And preferably with OS X support, as it seems the TellTale games only
run on windows! What a bummer, was actually at the point of buying a game for
the first time in years.
~~~
cubicle67
DOSBox works well on the Mac, is free and plays those game that ran on DOS
very well. I'm pretty sure at least some of these games only require DOS, not
Windows
[Edit: Monkey Island 1 and 2 run under DOS, but 3 requires Win95]
~~~
gommm
Instead of dos, to play lucas art games you're better off using scummvm
------
nwjsmith
Who else thinks this would make for a great iPhone port? I really hope
Lucasarts jump on that. It did great things to revive Myst.
~~~
psadauskas
If you've jailbroken your phone, you can:
<http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/IPhone>
~~~
ensignavenger
Thanks! I can't wait to load Day of the Tentacle onto my iPod Touch!
------
abl
I feel monkey island was the most captivating out of all those type of games
(except maybe leisure suit larry?)
~~~
froo
LSL definitely wasn't the best of the Sierra characters.
I broke out the Space Quest series again recently. Roger Wilco is hands down
my favourite character in those adventure games.
~~~
justinchen
Tis hard to beat Roger Wilco. Quest for Glory was pretty fun also.
------
pygy
In the same vein, I remember seeing online the storyboard of the game, where
each puzzles were detailed, but I can't find it anymore. It's very instructive
for would-be game designers.
~~~
andygeers
Are you sure that was Monkey Island and not Grim Fandango?
~~~
pygy
That's possible, my memories are somewhat foggy.
------
wallflower
I know it's not the same game but I have fond memories of whiling away hours
lost in Space Quest and Roger Wilco.. Thanks
~~~
e1ven
The Space Quest games were always wonderful for me- In particular, I loved the
multitudes of ways you could die in the most horrific possible way.. I'd often
try things I knew would kill Roger just to see what the writers dreamed up as
a Death.
Space Quest 1 in particular was special to me, since my father and I played
through it together- It was a great learning experience and a fun way to
interact with a story together.
In the early 2001-era, I actually started up a project to create a new Space
Quest game.. (Sq7.org). We got Josh Mandel, one of the original SQ authors to
write us a script, and dozens of animators around the net to donate time.
It went pretty well, but fell apart over a disagreement with Vivendi- They
offered to let us release it, but only if we turned over the Copyright.. We
had promised Josh and others we wouldn't ever do that, so we were a bit stuck.
That lead to disappointment all around, which was acerbated by the now dated
look of the project, due to the long dev time of a Fan game. I'd still love to
release a SQ game some day, though- It's such a wonderful premise- The not-so-
heroic everyman who bumbles and bungles his way to saving the world.
As an aside, we had also tried pitching Vivendi to do commercial remakes of
the Space Quest games, on the (Then band new) Nintendo DS. We had a nice
discussion with them about it, and worked our arses off on the proposals, but
ultimately, they didn't think it was worth it.
To my mind, TellTale games is really carrying forward the spirit of Sierra
adventure games. The new Wallace and Gromit is wonderful, not to mention Sam &
Max, etc.
I'm excited by their engines, their storytelling, and their sense of fun, and
can't WAIT to see what they do for the Monkey Island continuation.
~~~
gommm
I'm actually impressed with Lucas arts open mindedness compared to Vivendi. By
the way, I wonder why Vivendi allowed AGD Interactive
(<http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/games.html>) to release their King Quest
1 & 2 remake and didn't allow the development of Space Quest 7, seems a bit
incoherent...
Hope you can use the work you did on Space Quest 7 and release it one day,
I'll be happy to play it :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Judge: Fifth Amendment doesn't protect encrypted hard drives - Feanim
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/judge-fifth-amendment-doesnt-protect-encrypted-hard-drives.ars
======
ctdonath
It's a variant of what's called "rubber hose cryptology": sometimes it's
technologically a lot easier to just beat the password out of someone
(smacking the soles of one's feet with a rubber hose apparently being a rather
effective technique).
I draw the line using a "rag doll" model. They can compel fingerprints,
physical keys, DNA, etc. insofar as they can manipulate your limp unresitive
(albeit uncooperative) body to take fingerprints, extract keys from pockets,
snip a hair, extract a blood sample, etc. They cannot, however, compel you to
act on their behalf and against your own interests - to wit, they cannot
demand you speak (type, write, press buttons) words the whole point of which
can and will be used against you. A fair argument may be made for compelling
you to provide the key/combination to a safe, but only insofar as they CAN
tear the safe apart with blowtorches & diamond saws if you don't cooperate.
But when it comes to the state's evidence hinging entirely upon the
defendant's cooperation, no - that's why we have the 5th Amendment (gov't
cannot compel one to testify against self).
~~~
rmccue
Could you not then argue the same for data encryption? Bruteforcing it would
be the equivalent of a blowtorch in that case. Would that not then mean that
they can compel you to give the key/password?
~~~
cynest
A blowtorch can open such a safe in <1 day. Depending on the encryption,
cracking it in a year might be impressive. And that assumes they can prove
it's even there.
------
fab13n
To counter this, you need an encryption method with these properties:
\- you can be banned or self-banned, irrevocably, from accessing your data;
\- you can prove to the judge that you can't access your data;
\- even with full forensic copies of your disk, you can't be un-banned.
You can do that by having part(s) of the key on server(s) online. Give
yourself, a couple of trusted friends and optionally a script, the ability to
wipe those keys: it will irrevocably seal your disk's content. Obviously, pick
servers under foreign jurisdictions which dislike to collaborate.
Even better, there's no proof that you're the one who destroyed the keys: you
can't be charged with evidence tempering.
~~~
gte910h
>Even better, there's no proof that you're the one who destroyed the keys: you
can't be charged with evidence tempering.
The court doesn't really work this way. Just because you cross your fingers
when you do something doesn't mean you aren't going to be charged with
destruction of evidence.
~~~
roc
If an office had a policy of shredding old financial paperwork and that policy
was faithfully followed on the day after, say, the COO was whisked away for
embezzlement, would it count as evidence tampering?
Or to the point: if you use a remotely-stored encrypted volume with a dead
man's switch as a day-to-day security policy, would it still be trivial to
charge someone for evidence tampering?
~~~
rosser
AIUI (IANAL, mind), no — or at least it's less likely. It's when you go out of
you way to destroy the evidence (and can be demonstrated to have done so) that
you're almost certainly facing obstruction charges. If you're just doing the
same thing you do every day, it's much harder to establish the intent to
destroy inculpatory evidence, which is what would trigger the obstruction
charge in the first place.
Second opinion?
~~~
nknight
In civil cases, once you know or have reasonable cause to suspect a court case
is imminent, you're technically supposed to act to preserve evidence, and not
doing so can lead to sanctions, even if the evidence was destroyed as part of
routine policy.
I'm less clear on how evidence tampering is dealt with in criminal law.
~~~
dkokelley
In a criminal case (and likely in the worst of criminal cases), the suspect
has no idea when the FBI will come bursting through the door to arrest him/her
and seize hard drives. A dead-man's switch would be impossible to prevent in
this scenario (aside from never using one in the first place).
------
simonsarris
I have question to those who know more about these things: Instead of hidden
volumes, wouldn't it be better to have an "under duress" password?
The hard drive is encrypted and sensitive folders are identified by the user.
When a password is given all contents are decrypted.
When a "under duress" password is given the sensitive folders are permanently
wiped and all the (remaining, innoculous) contents are decrypted.
This stops them from finding hidden volumes or operating systems because there
are none. Wouldn't that be a better model, and much harder to figure out?
~~~
tedunangst
Then they restore the hard drive from the cloned image they made before
entering the password and ask you once more for the password. This time, with
feeling.
~~~
repsilat
There might be a market for keeping your keys on some service "out there".
Boot your computer, type in your password, your computer sends the password to
the key service. If the password is correct they send back the key, if the
password is the destruct codes they delete the key.
No amount of hard-drive cloning will stop this. Paired with some other
optional measures ("we delete the password unless you send an email every
week" etc) and it's almost foolproof. You might still have a hard time arguing
against destruction of evidence, though. I guess if your "don't delete the
keys" email was "Please delete my encryption keys" you could be completely
honest and they wouldn't believe you, resulting in your keys being deleted
despite your complete cooperation.
~~~
nickik
I smell a startup.
Great Idea by the way. Like Wikileaks you would have to replicate all your
server in the countries that are the "freeist" or you need a very good system
to hide where you are. Tor is a good exampel.
------
pavelkaroukin
What if lawyer-based service is created, which allows to automate
representation of client including when client need access to data on the his
hard drive. Essentially, develop algorithm allowing external OTP
authentication.
And this lawyer, representing user, will have in agreement something like this
"In case my client is under investigation or incriminated or ..." I will not
be allowed to release OTP password.
Of course, this service will be based in country which treat law as a law, not
inconvenience.
What I am missing? There are no such countries may be?
~~~
tedunangst
In my lay opinion, you are treading very close to making the lawyer complicit
in the crime, at which point there is no privilege shield.
~~~
pavelkaroukin
Only if lawyer is USA based this might make him commit a crime. But what if
lawyer based in the country where forcing to reveal password is unlawful?
~~~
EchoAbstract
In the USA it is not legal (in violation of the 5th amendment) for the court
to compel you to reveal a password (if your read the brief the Judge says as
much). However, if the court can prove by other means that you own the data on
a drive, they can compel you to provide them with the unencrypted contents of
the drive via a search warrant.
~~~
bluedanieru
If they can prove it, why do they need you to decrypt it for them?
~~~
savramescu
They know you stole the car because they've got surveillance video so now
they're serving you with a warrant to produce the car so they can also prove
physical presence in the vehicle. This is my view of the ruling.
The chick got recorded talking about the documents so they're asking for a
readable version.
------
MichaelApproved
Everyone is trying to figure out which encryption technique can bypass the law
when it's already too late. The best solution for this type of case is to
_keep your damn mouth shut_ and don't talk about the contents of the drive.
_"the police had recorded a phone call between Fricosu and her husband in
which she seemed to acknowledge ownership of the laptop and to reference
incriminating material on it."_
Without that recording, the prosecutions case would be a lot weaker. Sure,
encrypt your files, but keep your mouth shut about it!
------
showerst
Just out of curiosity, what's the case-law like if she had encoded these
documents and stored them on paper?
I certainly don't want to see mandatory decryption, but at the same time it
doesn't make sense to let an accused completely skip out on discovery by
simply truecrypt-ing the evidence either.
~~~
mikeash
To me, the most convincing argument is, what if you legitimately forget your
password?
If that alone gets you thrown in jail, then you're going to be jailing a _lot_
of innocent people. On the other hand, if that does _not_ get you thrown in
jail, then one can simply claim to have forgotten the password without
repercussion.
Personally, I'd rather let people hide evidence by encrypting it than jail
people for being forgetful, since those seem to be the only two choices.
~~~
alextgordon
And, what if I do this?
head -c 1048576 /dev/random >not_encrypted_I_promise
I can't _prove_ that file isn't actually encrypted data. Are we going to throw
people in jail for possessing random data without a justification?
~~~
tedunangst
No, we're only going to throw people in jail for possessing random data and
failing to produce encrypted documents we have evidence they possess.
~~~
gcb
that's the most dodged response ever.
i think for his question to even be made, it was assumed he was being accused
of possessing encrypted something.
Let's attach the old guy from france that got into the 3 strike law without
even having a computer at the time. Now let's say instead of getting the IP of
that old guy from france, the police got the IP of the comment above yours,
from let's say mr Buttle. Now they confuse him with Mr Tuttle and assume he
has encrypted criminal data. but all they could find on his computer is the
file "not_encrypted_i_promise".
he is then throw in jail because he failed to provide the password. His
infective defense was that he was "playing" with philosophical questions
regarding encryption.
~~~
tedunangst
Then explain that to the judge. The defendant in this case is not claiming to
be the victim of mistaken identity.
~~~
gcb
that was even less to the point. you are good
ignore the mistaken identity, was just a means to reach the false/wrong
accusation resulting in the experiment he just did convicting him.
~~~
tedunangst
I don't see the problem. People get convicted based on faulty evidence. The
sad fact is it happens. [Yes, that is a problem, but...] Why is cryptography
special?
~~~
gcb
read the comment that started this thread.
the guy has a file that is pure garbage. not encrypted.
the law officers THINK it's encrypted. the judge orders him to give the key.
...there's no key. it's honestly garbage data.
That's what make encryption special. It were a safe, the police could crack it
open somehow. with encryption, they can just claim it's too advanced to be
cracked and that will be treated like you are lying.
------
pavelkaroukin
BTW, hackers, if you did not see it yet, check out what EncFs offer you.
Essentially, it allows you to have multiple passwords on the same repository,
and only files decryptable with currently used password are shown (require
special option during mounting to ignore incorrect password warning).
Using that you can have any number of passwords and any number of "partitions"
inside your folder. This is not like hidden partition in TrueCrypt, where you
can not prove it exists at all.
------
Groxx
Makes sense.
Yes, dead-man switches and whatnot always come up with cases like this -
that's not really part of this ruling. This case includes: a) they have record
of the defendant stating the information exists on the machine, which she
stated she owns, and b) they have (a very good) reason to believe the drive
can be decrypted.
All of this strikes me more as a search warrant than anything, in the same way
that they can break locked doors if they have a warrant to search a location.
That it's a cryptographic lock really has no bearing on the matter - if the
documents were printed and put in a locked closet, they could be confiscated
and searched. Why is this different?
------
tedunangst
Yesterday's link, to the original source:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3502850>
------
thereallurch
Any technologies exist that let you have multiple encrypted OS's on multiple
keys? For example, 1 key could boot up one OS and another key could boot up a
different OS. Seems like it'd be difficult to prove that you booted one or the
other...
~~~
talmand
I can see the legal issues that would be forthcoming if you refused to share
the key to allow for access or agree to type it in yourself. Obstruction and
all that.
I'm wondering what the legal ramifications might be if you set a secondary key
that would wipe the drive in the most secure method possible and then provide
that key. Or even the alternate boot sequence as suggested.
~~~
mc32
>I'm wondering what the legal ramifications might be if you set a secondary
key that would wipe the drive
Destruction of evidence. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence>
~~~
talmand
Oh, I get that, I'm not saying it's a way to avoid the ramifications, I'm just
wondering what they are.
I have to say that I somewhat agree with the ruling because there are similar
situations with physical objects, not true one-to-one but they are there. I'm
just wondering how the courts would react to the destruction of digital
evidence that was not directly initiated by the defendant, but indirectly by
preparing for the possibility.
------
orbitingpluto
Classical jibberish passwords are mostly muscle memory. I know I wouldn't be
able to remember some of my mine of that sort after two weeks.
If you were incarcerated and you knew you might have to comply with an order
to decrypt a hard drive, it might be in your best interest to create and
shadow type many alternate passwords until you actually forget the important
one. Then (hopefully) you're just a polygraph away from a not guilty in an
obstruction charge.
~~~
SquareWheel
Of what I understand of the methodology used by polygraph, forgetting the
password wouldn't help you out here. You'd still be intentionally misleading
the police, and that would lead to the signs the polygraph attempts to detect.
------
lukev
An important clarification since some people seem to be confusing the issue:
the police seized her computer already, presumably legally and with a warrant.
So while this does present an interesting edge case in the fifth amendment
(does evidence count as evidence if it's encrypted?), it shouldn't set off
civil liberty alarm bells in your head nearly as badly as several other things
currently going on in this country.
~~~
mikeash
I disagree. If you can be jailed for refusing to decrypt data on a computer
seized under a legitimate warrant, then you can be jailed for not having the
password for encrypted-looking data on a computer seized under a legitimate
warrant. A warrant does not imply guilt, so this means innocent people may be
imprisoned.
~~~
lukev
I agree completely.
Just saying that a question of what a court can compel you to do as part of a
trial (before sentencing) is a quite different than a _fourth_ amendment issue
of illegal search and seizure which it seems some people are conflating this
with.
------
ROFISH
It looks like they're not trying to decrypt the laptop for the fun of it, but
judge has physical evidence that the laptop contains relevant information to
the case. From the article:
_But the police had recorded a phone call between Fricosu and her husband in
which she seemed to acknowledge ownership of the laptop and to reference
incriminating material on it._
~~~
tricolon
A recording of a phone call is now physical evidence of the existence of
information somewhere else?
------
AndyKelley
Did anybody see this?
_But the police had recorded a phone call between Fricosu and her husband in
which she seemed to acknowledge ownership of the laptop and to reference
incriminating material on it._
I'd like more details about this - without any clarification, this sounds
_extremely scary_.
~~~
lukev
Presumably the phone call surveillance was under warrant.
It's also worth noting that they would have needed a warrant to seize the
computer itself to begin with. The question is whether, having been seized,
they can require her to decrypt it for them.
------
rdl
I really hope this gets appealed.
------
plasma
It would be cool to have a "canary" system in encryption.
For example, without having entered the 'everything is OK' password every
week, the drive/encryption automatically destroys itself.
So if the drive is ever compromised, or you are separated from it, etc, the
fact that you do nothing should cause the protected data to be destroyed.
------
thisischris
I forget my password for things all of the time...This situation would be no
different.
~~~
cosmando
It could also create a scenario in which a bug in a decryption or hash
function could potentially land an end user jail time.
------
jimbishopp
Note to self: never acknowledge ownership of a laptop with incriminating
material on it (encrypted or not); especially while on the phone or in the
general vicinity of a recording device.
------
ck2
I used to think we didn't want these kinds of cases in front of the supreme
court right now - but I am starting to change my mind. They are showing signs
of intelligence.
------
jQueryIsAwesome
What happens if a friend of a suspect burns some papers that the jury suspects
that those were incriminatory evidence?
In this context: what would happen in the case the crypto software deletes all
the data after not logging in for 1 week? (It would be too short for the trial
to happen i guess)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Optimizing Content Quality Control at Netflix with Predictive Modeling - hepha1979
http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/12/optimizing-content-quality-control-at-netflix-predictive-modeling.html
======
binxbolling
So much (great) emphasis on viewing experience, so little emphasis on browsing
experience. I've been a customer for over a decade and am just perpetually
frustrated; e.g. on the Netflix PS3 app titles automatically start playing
when you view their info. So if you wanted to watch that title, it saves you
the agony of clicking "Play." If you were just browsing, you now have this
thing playing while you're trying to read the synopsis, director, actors, etc.
Then, it'll show up in Account Activity as "started" and also affects
recommendations ("Based on your interest in...").
~~~
JonLim
Have had the same issue on my PS4. It's mildly annoying when searching for
something new, and kinda nice when you're getting back into something you were
watching yesterday.
I wish it was selective about autoplay, for certain conditions. Chances are, I
don't want it to play when I've never watched a second of any episodes in my
life, but it's nice that it autoplays when I click it from "Continue Watching"
section.
~~~
endymi0n
Same thing for the Amazon Fire Stick... the Netflix app is extremely laggy and
playback stutters, it feels like even they have very capable engineers,
there's a lack of love at the very last mile.
Also, discovery of new films is awful, as they basically want to be helpful
and guessing your taste all the way, but it's severely lacking filtering
options for power users. Which I don't mind, because it's driving people to
our site in droves recently :)
(shameless self-plug: [https://www.justwatch.com](https://www.justwatch.com) )
The sheer amount of systems they are trying to cover with a performance and
security (DRM) sensitive video player component isn't that easy to support on
the other hand.
~~~
binxbolling
I don't even think basic filtering is only appealing to power users. Just some
way to find films apart from their recommended, too-cute "genres" would be
appreciated.
------
_dark_matter_
If this kind of control system interests you, check out Chimera [0]. It is a
similar approach that the output of the machine learning approach can go to a
human, but is interesting because the human can feedback to the machine
learner. That is, not only can the human see that the machine learner was
wrong and write rules to correct it next time, but the learners can utilize
that new training data to better classify in the future as well.
Of course its a tradeoff, because it seems like false negatives (movie had QoE
problems but ML system did not flag it) should be avoided at all costs in this
case.
[http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~anhai/papers/chimera-
vldb14.pdf](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~anhai/papers/chimera-vldb14.pdf)
------
tryitnow
My experience with Netflix's video quality has been pretty positive, so they
seem to have been doing something right. I hope this predictive model will
only improve things and won't deteriorate quality (consider they tuned for low
false negatives quality shouldn't decline).
This is a nice write-up of the business case for data science. It would have
been nice to have a follow up with the technical details - but maybe that's
deemed proprietary?
My problem with Netflix is that I rarely find streaming films I would be
interested in watching. It's so bad that I don't even bother looking there any
longer, I'd rather just pay the $2.99 and rent a film I'd like to watch from
Play or Amazon.
~~~
binxbolling
Just curious: what are you interested in that Netflix doesn't have? My queue
always hovers around 350 unwatched titles, so this always baffles me a little
bit.
~~~
adenadel
They have a lot of great television, but the film selection always seems
limited.
~~~
veb
I discovered this thing the other day,
[https://www.smartflix.io/](https://www.smartflix.io/) and lo behold, imagine
my surprise when nearly everything I searched for... was in fact, streaming in
my own country (New Zealand) and nowhere else. That was an eye opener.
With that said, I quite like the Smartflix UI -- it's great for discovering
things.
------
quadrature
It's interesting but they could have given more details into the features,
types of models they tried, how successful it is etc etc. right now it just
reads as "we used ML to fix a problem we have".
~~~
oakenshield
Likely they're holding their cards close to the chest as it's a competitive
market.
~~~
Zikes
Historically they've been very open about their tools, though, even open-
sourcing a lot of them.
Not to say this can't be the exception, just that it does seem a little out of
character.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento - juokaz
https://quillette.com/2019/07/19/the-problem-with-tourist-journalism/
======
vharuck
I like the author's take on warehouse work, probably because it squares with
mine. I went to high school with almost entirely white peers, was going to
college without having to take on any loans, and I got the warehouse job
because my dad worked in the offices. I met people who lived in completely
different environments and believed completely different things, and it was
awesome.
One thing I don't agree with:
>If Bloodworth believes Amazon is inhumane for looking askance at a worker who
asks for a sick day during his first three weeks on the job, then he and I
live by different work ethics.
If a person's sick, they're sick. If they're faking, they're faking. Days with
the company doesn't affect the ethics.
~~~
MuffinFlavored
Yes and no. I was once in a HR seminar where they welcomed you to the company.
When the woman said "we get 19 days PTO a year", you'd be surprised how many
people shot up and said "can we start taking them right now?"
Before they had even worked a day! PTO days are accurred by hours worked. For
me, it's ~6 hours per 15 calendar days. You think you're entitled to PTO
having worked 0 hours?...
~~~
jkaplowitz
For vacation days, your point makes sense to me. For sick days, people don't
get to choose when they get sick. Someone can just as easily get sick on day 1
or 2 of a job as on day 401 or 402.
~~~
WalterBright
I once talked to a manager about how he handed out raises. He mentioned one
engineer who was sick exactly 10 days out of each year. Coincidentally, the
company offered 10 days of paid sick leave a year.
He laughed, and said she wasn't fooling anyone, and didn't give her a raise.
~~~
lkey
So he decided he'd figured out her scam without ever bringing it up in yearly
or monthly review. He also never asked for proof of the 10 days of sick leave
after the first year, which is reasonable to do if he had a suspicion she was
flouting a rule. If he wanted to factor sick days into his pay decision, he
had a _responsibility_ to make sure he was correct using the proper internal
channels.
An alternate and equally plausible view is that she had a condition that
rendered her borderline ill more than 10 days a year, but couldn't afford to
take unpaid leave. So she just 'toughed it out' instead for the remaining
days.
Laughing vindictively as you deny a raise to someone isn't something be lauded
or emulated under any circumstance.
~~~
WalterBright
Fair enough, I agree he was being passive aggressive, but on the other hand,
if someone is doing something that has the appearance of impropriety, it's a
good idea to proactively bring it up with the boss to head off the suspicions.
~~~
chrsstrm
What does "improper" mean and who gets to decide what actions are improper?
Paid days are paid days and just because they have a certain name doesn't
change a thing. Has anyone ever been accused of faking a vacation? Of course
not, because that would be ridiculous. But since sick days are called sick
days all of a sudden you need to prove you're bedridden or else face
consequences? That's absurd. Treat your employees like adults.
~~~
zdragnar
Sick days and vacation days typically have different notification
requirements- in most places that had them I've worked at, it was 2 weeks for
vacation and asap for sick leave. Vacation time could be denied if, say, the
job involved time sensitive equipment or safety related tasks (I.e. nursing)
and others had already requested the time off.
Abusing sick leave- depending on the job- has very real consequences for your
coworkers and company, if someone absolutely has to pick up your slack.
~~~
jschwartzi
Why is it abuse if I use my PTO? The whole point of PTO is that the company is
agreeing to give you 10 days worth of slack. So obviously it shouldn't be a
problem if you use that 10 days of slack. Are you telling me that the company
is lying about the benefits it provides, and that it doesn't actually provide
10 days of sick leave? What else are they lying about?
~~~
zdragnar
In reverse order:
> Are you telling me that the company is lying about the benefits it provides,
No, I'm telling you that there's a difference in requirements for taking sick
leave versus vacation. The only reason that sick leave doesn't have the same
requirement as vacation is _you don 't choose when you get sick_. If you take
a sick day as a vacation day, you're forcing others to scramble to make up for
you not being there.
> Why is it abuse if I use my PTO?
Perhaps you missed my intended emphasis on certain jobs that have time or
safety sensitive responsibilities, such as nursing. It may not hurt the
company for you to take those 10 days, but it does hurt whoever gets called in
to fill in for you when they otherwise would have had off.
Here's a simple, real-world example: A company that runs a group-care home for
disabled adults is currently understaffed due to a number of circumstances
(the difficulty of the job being the biggest). There are four employees to
cover 21 8-hour shifts each week (24 hours a day, 7 days a week total).
If someone calls in sick, the one of the others has to cover the shift. Under
no circumstances can the house ever be unstaffed. Aside from a bit of overtime
pay, the company isn't hurt, but everyone else is.
Not all jobs are like this. The consequences of taking a sick day as a
vacation day (or simply being sick) usually aren't that severe. Maybe it's a
manufacturing line and the manager has to step in to fill your role or
something. Maybe it has no effect at all on anyone around you. In those cases,
maybe it doesn't make sense for the company to distinguish between time off
for being sick, and time off for vacation.
> The whole point of PTO is that the company is agreeing to give you 10 days
> worth of slack.
No, that's only true if the company doesn't distinguish between sick time off
and vacation time off. Typically, where I've worked, all PTO was lumped into a
single bucket, and no-one really cared. However, that is really more true of
white collar work with long timelines and not so much in most other jobs (or
the parent post I was replying to).
~~~
pnutjam
Understaffed is a management issue, not an employee problem.
~~~
tripzilch
I suppose the disabled adults living there have the biggest problem ...
~~~
pnutjam
Are they hostages?
------
vore
The author seems to very much worry that negative press is going to be the
cause of him losing his job due to automation:
>Just about every job in my sortation center could probably be done by a
robot. In fact, it amazes me that Amazon hasn’t simply automated the entire
facility. [...] If I had to guess, I’d say that Amazon continues to employ
lots of human beings because, by putting money into the pockets of working-
class people, the company creates more customers.
>If Amazon is going to be castigated publicly every time one of its 650,000
employees has a bad day, it may well decide to automate as many positions as
possible and do away with most of its human workforce.
>But if John Oliver and his ilk keep harping away at how inhumanely Amazon
treats its workers, Bezos might decide to completely automate his operation
and people like me will be out of a job.
It's as plain as day that Amazon isn't keeping manual labor around out of the
goodness of their hearts. There is no bottom line calculation other than the
cost of manual labor vs the cost of automation, and no amount of deflection
about the working conditions of warehouse work (whether better than Home Depot
or not) is going to keep your job once the scale tips in the other direction.
~~~
AnthonyMouse
> It's as plain as day that Amazon isn't keeping manual labor around out of
> the goodness of their hearts. There is no bottom line calculation other than
> the cost of manual labor vs the cost of automation, and no amount of
> deflection about the working conditions of warehouse work (whether better
> than Home Depot or not) is going to keep your job once the scale tips in the
> other direction.
Be that as it may, agitating for rules that make it more expensive to employ
people can make the scale tip the other way _sooner_. It's not unreasonable to
prefer a $15 job to a "$25 job" that promptly gets automated away because the
automation threshold is currently e.g. $22 (and will be $19 in five years).
~~~
vore
That's a valid concern and I think there's no really great path forward, aside
from broad structural changes that will blunt the negative consequences of
automation: how do you balance good working conditions with the specter of
automation? If human labor forever has to undercut the cost of automation,
then we can't discount the human cost of doing so.
~~~
AnthonyMouse
The problem isn't actually automation. If a job gets automated, now the thing
being produced costs less. At scale it means you can have the same standard of
living with a lower salary -- a boon for the poor.
The real problem is when some of the things have artificial scarcity. If we
have zoning laws that prevent new housing from being built, the poor can't
afford housing. If we have restrictions on the number of new doctors and
regulations that create high compliance costs and barriers to competition in
medical services, the poor can't afford medicine.
You can't make a robot to build housing for people in a place where there is
effectively a law against building new housing. So that's where we get into
trouble -- people building moats around stuff that make it more expensive, to
prevent its cost from staying in line (i.e. declining) along with everything
else, until those things are unaffordable.
The real problem is the high cost of housing and medicine and education.
~~~
c0vfefe
> If a job gets automated, now the thing being produced costs less. At scale
> it means you can have the same standard of living with a lower salary -- a
> boon for the poor.
This is making the massively optimistic assumption that cost savings will be
passed onto the consumer rather than hoarded for executives & shareholders.
------
conorh
I had read a few of these negative articles about Amazon fulfillment centers
and then a guy we know working the counter at our local pizza place got a job
at one of them. That made me change my mind and doubt the reporting after
talking with him. The pay was much better better, the benefits if he
transitioned to full time were much better, and he was really excited about a
program Amazon has to cover tuition after (I think) a year for some
educational programs.
~~~
seraphsf
Reminds me of the classic Nicholas Kristof article, “Two Cheers for
Sweatshops”. ([http://archive.is/W6ABE](http://archive.is/W6ABE)) The gist of
which is, a job can be ‘not good’ from the perspective of the privileged but
still ‘much better than the alternatives’ from the perspective of the people
who take that job.
If the employer of a “sweatshop job” is not coercing or lying to its
employees, then I have a hard time faulting the employer directly. We may
still want systemic change to create more options and more equity for
employees, but the “sweatshop” (that pays more than alternatives and which
employees freely choose) is not the villain in this story.
~~~
hackermailman
I saw a documentary once on a slum in Kampala, where they interviewed a guy
living in the slum who's job it was to clean out the public toilets there. He
claimed it was one of the 'best jobs', because he was paid on time, given a
uniform/gloves to wear instead of having to buy one himself, set his own
hours, and the labor was not back breaking agricultural labor in the open sun
all day. He also remarked he was able to contribute to his community in a
positive way by keeping it clean, something all the other residents rewarded
him for with various tips as thanks for his service since they had to use
those toilets everyday. Wasn't the response I expected.
~~~
ishjoh
That's very interesting, I don't suppose you know the name of the documentary?
I wonder if the biggest reason he didn't hate his job was the gratitude from
other people. One of my first jobs was stocking shelves on the graveyard shift
at a grocery store, and the 1 hour or so before the store closed I would
occasionally help shoppers find things, help take heavy things to their car,
or help them reach items high on the shelf. A sincere thank you always made
the 7h of mind numbing stocking go a lot faster.
------
m0zg
I (and people I directly worked with) have been interviewed a couple of times
by what one would call "mainstream press". Once by a NY Times columnist and
another time by TechCrunch.
The resulting articles bore very little semblance to what we said, omitted
crucial facts, and contained the kinds of exaggerations that neither I nor any
of the people interviewed would ever make. I'm talking "breaking the laws of
physics" kind of exaggerations, and making it look like we said things that
not only aren't true now, but will never be true in the future, which is
something that would be immediately obvious to a technically competent person
in our field of work.
Nothing changes one's view of the press quite as readily as being a part of
the news. I'd wager the majority of what you see and read is handpicked BS
made to fit an agenda, and outright lies to drive traffic aren't as infrequent
as you think. If you think the tech press is any different, you're naive.
There's really no incentive structure currently in place for reporting to be
factual and balanced. You always get the behavior you reward.
I now always try to "read between the lines", like I would back in the Soviet
Union when reading Pravda.
~~~
reaperducer
I was going to ask if you contacted The Times about this. It used to take such
things very seriously.
Then after I did a search for the Times' ombudsman, I came across an article
stating that it eliminated its Public Editor position in 2017.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/public-editor/liz-
spayd-f...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/public-editor/liz-spayd-final-
public-editor-column.html)
While The Times is prolific in its corrections, all I can find now is this
sentence: "Messages on news coverage can be e-mailed to nytnews@nytimes.com or
left toll-free at 1-844-NYT-NEWS."
~~~
m0zg
What would be the point? We got our "free PR", and nobody reads retractions
anyway.
~~~
mattigames
Retractions are always a small corner while the original story got a full
page. They fear saying "we were wrong" too many times could affect their
credibility and therefore their (economic) bottom line.
------
awkward
I worked as a union picker for a warehouse in 2001 - I was just there until I
went to college, but if I had stayed for a year the 12.50 an hour I was making
would have been raised to 16.50, and subject to raises as I stayed longer.
Nearly 20 years later, and under a tighter labor market, amazon has raised the
minimum for pickers to $15 an hour. It's great that this guy likes his job,
but I have no doubt that amazon has been a suppressive force on waged labor.
~~~
tw2019072089237
Meanwhile, over 6 years ago, when the economy had barely even started bouncing
back, Walmart was paying me—and other newish employees with short tenure—over
$17/hr for this type of work. But look at mainstream attitudes towards the two
companies and try measuring opinion about willingness to say something like "I
bought it at Walmart" vs "I bought it from Amazon".
There's more, though. And I write all this as a pro-social, anti-libertarian
leftist:
The obsession with trying to "help" the workers in these jobs—and in
industries like Uber—mirrors a lot of the arguments you'll see in the pro-life
vs pro-choice debate. People are fond of pointing out that conservatives care
disproportionately about unborn fetuses when measured against how willing
conservatives are to let infants be thrown to the wolves after birth. I see
the public outcry that something has to be done about these companies (so as
to help their workers, but comparatively little care for what's in store for
those workers after the movement's immediate goals are met) as the left's own
paradox (to call it by a charitable term; "hypocrisy" if you're less worried
about hurting anyone's feelings).
Shouldn't be surprising. Most "opinion" is accounted for as a bunch of dumb
trends and fashion and idpol talking points more than it is arrived at by
thoughtful consideration.
~~~
dang
Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We
ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but do need some
identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames
and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)
------
bhl
Note that the publishing title of the article is “Tourist Journalism Versus
the Working Class”, which should be an indication of the author’s bias. The
story initially begins with comparing the personal, working experience of the
author with what he has seen depicted in the media. I thought it was
compelling, even if the author worked in a “sortation warehouse” instead of
the “fulfillment center” frequently covered, and only represents one
datapoint.
But then he interjects his argument with how working for Amazon has allowed
him to interact with diverse colleagues? The story felt like it went from an
appreciation of the working class to a defense of corporations and capitalism,
with a bit of nationalistic pride sprinkled in. I don’t know what to think.
~~~
floatboth
> a defense of corporations and capitalism, with a bit of nationalistic pride
> sprinkled in
About what you should expect from that awful publication.
------
noir_lord
When I was young I did agency employment for a few years between leaving
school and figuring out what I wanted to do.
A lot of that was in warehouses (I also worked in greenhouses harvesting
cucumbers 45C and 100% humidity, a paint factory moving 15l paint tins all day
- never eaten so much or been so fit, 15l tins of bitumen are heavy to
handball all day, steel plant that powder coated so hot tanks of acid and full
PPE and a cardboard box factory) and almost nothing I’ve read about amazon
surprises me much.
Warehouse work is often physically demanding and rote, same thing over and
over again, I never had a problem with that because I’d just go on autopilot
and the day would pass in a blur - never had an issue with hard work and got
multiple full time offers, I’ve always been a naturally hard worker, I always
figured I’m here for 8-12 hours day goes faster when you are busy.
It was an interesting experience and after moving into enterprise software
development served me really well when it came to producing things operatives
actually got a benefit from.
It also makes me think that TUI’s with shortcut keys are often massively more
efficient than a pretty GUI but I digress.
~~~
heymijo
> _never had an issue with hard work_
Very similar boat as you when I was younger. Lots of physical labor. No big
deal when you're young. Extrapolate that out to a decade, two decades, or an
entire career and I bet we would both be singing a different tune.
~~~
noir_lord
Oh I'm sure, some of those jobs would break you if you did them for a decade
or two, it's why I got into programming after training as an industrial
electrician, I looked at the guys I was working with who where 20-30 years
older than me (40-50) and they where messed up so I took a different path.
Again though I don't regret it, the training was useful and it taught me life
skills that are applicable to software engineering (though the stakes are a
little lower when not working with 11kV systems).
~~~
fzzzy
Serious question, you don't think programming is going to break you after a
decade or two?
~~~
noir_lord
I've been doing it full time since my mid-20's and I'm 39..so no?
------
frereubu
As David Runciman has pointed out in his book How Democracy Ends and on the
Talking Politics podcast -
[https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2017/71-how-
demo...](https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2017/71-how-democracy-
ends) \- if you could only ask one question of someone you'd never met before,
which would give you the best possibility of guessing whether they'd voted for
Brexit, it would be whether they went to university (Remain) or not (Leave).
He argues that, in the UK at least, there's a bubble of professional
politicians who all went to university and were completely blindsided by the
result of the Brexit referendum because they knew almost no-one who'd consider
(or admit to) voting Leave.
Also John Lanchester's compelling (to me) argument that the bailing out of the
banks after the crash (which was, on balance, right) followed quickly by
austerity (where everyone else unfairly picked up the cheque for the bailout)
lead directly to Brexit and Trump, because people were (to paraphrase the film
Network) "mad as hell, and not going to take this anymore!"
[https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n13/john-lanchester/after-the-
fall](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n13/john-lanchester/after-the-fall)
It really does feel that the university crowd (which I'm a part of) have
completely detached from the lives of large chunks of the rest of the country.
I get that this account of Amazon workplaces may be rose-tinted. Perhaps this
facility is run by a good manager, and others aren't. But as it says, for this
to be a specific kind of evil it needs to be compared to all other jobs in a
similar environment. There are things that can be made better, sure, as there
always are. But I find quite a bit of this middle-class hand-wringing tricky
because it always seems to be well-paid journalists going "undercover". They'd
probably find any manual labour degrading when compared to their comfortable
Aeron chairs and plate-glass offices.
~~~
brownbat
That University disconnect is powerful and cuts across issues.
I remember hearing a freshman lawmaker talk about transitioning from other
fields into politics. The first thing campaign advisers did was cut all
references to advanced degrees from her website, replacing them with stories
about how her grandfather was a farmer.
30 Rock's Duffy--a caricature of someone unrelatable--described his politics
as "Fiscal liberal, social conservative" in one throwaway joke.[0]
I thought it was pretty clever at the time, but the college-educated writers
of 30 Rock and I probably underestimated the relatability of Duffy's position.
I read a political attitudes survey a few years later that contrasted beliefs
of constituents with representatives. It found that Republican constituencies
are far more sympathetic to large government programs and redistribution than
their reps, and Democratic constituencies are far more supportive of morality-
based restrictions and social regulations than their reps would suggest.
Maybe most of the population is far more like Duffy, but education operates as
a filter, making you either passionate about fiscal responsibility from econ
classes, or passionate about social freedom and tolerance from liberal arts
classes, or some mix of both.
That is likely to cause some friction.
[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/30ROCK/comments/88ztl8/dennis_duffy...](https://www.reddit.com/r/30ROCK/comments/88ztl8/dennis_duffys_political_views/)
He naturally meant liberal in the American sense.
[1] I've done a quick review of political attitudes lit and sadly can't find
the study at the moment, will update if I find it and would welcome anyone
pointing me the right direction if this sounds familiar.
~~~
SmirkingRevenge
> I read a political attitudes survey a few years later that contrasted
> beliefs of constituents with representatives. It found that Republican
> constituencies are far more sympathetic to large government programs and
> redistribution than their reps, and Democratic constituencies are far more
> supportive of morality-based restrictions and social regulations than their
> reps would suggest.
> Maybe most of the population is far more like Duffy, but education operates
> as a filter, making you either passionate about fiscal responsibility from
> econ classes, or passionate about social freedom and tolerance from liberal
> arts classes, or some mix of both.
That reminds me of the research this group is doing/has done, which is
somewhat related to your points here. The basic upshot is that most people
really are moderate, and share more views in common than we tend to
appreciate.
[https://perceptiongap.us/](https://perceptiongap.us/)
Disclaimer: I've only skimmed that stuff, so I don't vouch for it, but its
interesting
------
ibudiallo
Last year, I was interviewed for a public radio show in Europe. There was
nothing more exciting for me to be in the spotlight. A week later they ran the
interview and it was eerie to hear myself say things I didn't remember saying.
I mean, I said it, but I didn't say it like that. At first I thought I was
crazy and didn't remember the interview correctly. Luckily, I had recorded the
whole session on my computer. I was not crazy.
The interviewers questions were rephrased, and my answers where edited to make
them more dramatic.
I had received many calls from journalists, and many didn't run the story at
all after I said I will only answer some parts Off the record.
Most often then not, the journalists already has a story when they come to
you. All they need is a quote of you saying what they already wrote.
~~~
jacquesm
That's so dishonest it isn't even funny. I was interviewed a few years back
because I built an - unreleased - search engine and the interviewer wanted me
to say some particular stuff about Google. I refused and the interview
atmosphere was definitely very much different after that. There are plenty of
good journalists but there are also a bunch of them that are complete jerks
that fabricate stuff rather than report on reality.
------
brownbat
I especially liked the points about how often we vary our criticism of
journalism based on the topic.
Reminded me a lot of Gell Mann amnesia, which I catch myself suffering from a
little too often:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)
~~~
ajross
The Gell-Mann thing is dangerous pseudo science, stay away. It's not even
invented by a scientist. It's the excuse people go to to disbelieve something
they see in coverage, or to win arguments about "the media" or "fake news". If
you want to dismiss something as a falsehood, you have to do it with evidence,
not quips. This article is an excellent example.
~~~
jdietrich
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect doesn't say "all news is bunkum", it says "the
news media consistently make obvious errors when they report on physics, they
probably make similar errors when they report on your field of expertise, so
take what they say about other things with a pinch of salt". There's a world
of difference between cynicism and scepticism.
------
seibelj
There is similarly a great EconTalk episode from 2009 about what working at
WalMart is like [http://www.econtalk.org/platt-on-working-at-wal-
mart/](http://www.econtalk.org/platt-on-working-at-wal-mart/)
One thing I took from that episode is how so many people yearn for the mom-
and-pops to come back, even though their prices were awful, selection poor,
service subpar, working for them had less protections, and on and on.
WalMart is actually a pretty good employer compared to many other low-wage
industries and the benefits in terms of price and selection for rural areas
should not be underestimated.
------
dcre
Lots of interesting and worthwhile detail, none of which undermines reporting
about what goes on in warehouses in which the author does not work, nor does
it undermine the argument that paying $30,000 a year for full time work in
California is only possible because America maintains a permanent underclass
willing to work for next to nothing.
~~~
rb808
In which other country can unskilled workers earn $30k?
OK maybe a handful. (AUD has gone down since 2013)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#/media/File:Hourl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#/media/File:Hourly_Minimum_Wages_in_Developed_Economies,_2013.png)
------
seraphsf
I love this article. It’s so hard to find moderate voices, especially when
algorithmic curation tends to surface outrage first.
As the author puts it:
“I don’t object to journalists writing about the trials and tribulations of
Amazon employees. I only wish they would do so fairly.
Just because a journalist has found an Amazon employee somewhere who got
sprayed with bear repellant, that doesn’t mean Amazon employees spend their
days in mortal fear of a chemical attack.
...we need fair-minded and accurate reporting about the companies we
patronize, not scaremongering polemics preaching a black-and-white gospel of
tyranny and exploitation. ”
~~~
burlesona
Why would we expect journalists to write fair articles? They’re in the
infotainment business and need to sell clicks.
Reporting that working at a warehouse is “hard work but mostly okay,” is not
going to advance that reporters career or help the publication make money. But
finding a shocking and at least mostly true story, and ignoring whether or not
it’s a 1% outlier, just might.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this. What we ought to do is ignore it.
I think the biggest problem is that most people _want_ to be genuinely well-
informed, won’t accept that this isn’t actually possible, and thus accept a
lot of commercial infotainment because it provokes strong feelings, makes for
good shared outrage dinner chats with “in the know” friends, and helps you
imagine that you are well informed.
~~~
jacquesm
> Why would we expect journalists to write fair articles? They’re in the
> infotainment business and need to sell clicks.
Because if journalists stop writing fair articles in the longer term our
societies will lose a lot more than just a bunch of $ in the coffers of the
press owners.
------
fzeroracer
The logic applied in the article cuts both ways, however. I've seen my fair
share of companies find one happy employee, and use that to try and sweep all
of the bad shit going on in the background under the rug. Look at John Manson
and how happy he is. All of the other stories are just workers looking for
revenge, lazy good-for-nothings, etc.
So while it's true that the writer of this story might not be abused or
experiencing disparate work conditions, there are many others that are.
------
ilaksh
Glad to hear a different side to this. There absolutely are not any robots
that can do all of the tasks the people in the sortation center do as quickly
as they do them. Not even close. I actually think that deep learning systems
can be trained for all or almost all the fixed tasks already, but there are no
robots that have anywhere near the combination of mobility, power-to-weight,
flexibility, speed and agility necessary to replace humans in those jobs.
I think that it's going to take a new type of more effective artificial muscle
to get there.
But then absolutely all of those jobs will be eliminated.
I think Marshall Brain's books are pretty good on the subject.
------
ma2rten
_Oliver’s researchers even uncovered an incident in which a worker had died on
the job and her co-workers were told to carry on working in the presence of
her corpse._
No, they didn't. This was about a different company.
------
dvfjsdhgfv
> Apart from employing a lot of staff, Amazon does a number of things
> progressives ought to like. For instance, it employs a very diverse group of
> people. On my shift, I work with African-Americans, Asian-Americans,
> Hispanic-Americans, white people, gay people, deaf people, ex-convicts, and
> people whose ethnicities and even genders are a mystery to me.
This is a warehouse job with a medium low salary. If the author worked as a
programmer and could still repeat the above, that would really be commendable.
~~~
DrScump
If the author worked as a programmer and could still repeat the above
As a programmer for a "stodgy" defense contractor, the programmers in my group
alone included our Chinese-born female project leader, a Hong Kong-born
female, a deaf male (and new parent), an African-American female, a Cuban-born
male, an Iranian-born male, a Kuwaiti-born female, an ethnic Chinese SF-born
female, and me.
And we were _awesome_.
~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
> And we were awesome.
That's excellent and I envy you, it must be a great team to work with and even
hang out after work. But how is this related to Amazon?
~~~
DrScump
It addressed the parent comment that implied that programming organizations
are inherently not diverse.
Too many are not, but it's not because programmers from other demographics
aren't _available_ ; it's because true diversity isn't wanted.
Look at the photos on the Careers page for your typical USA coastal tech
company. I see over and over again 22-35 year old Asian and white males
(mostly). Latino faces are rare; black faces are rarer still. And faces over
45 or so are non-existent.
------
gruez
>Warehouses, such as the one I work in, have huge cargo bays that are almost
always open to receive the back ends of incoming tractor trailer rigs. When
these bays are open it is virtually impossible to control the temperature
inside the warehouse artificially.
Why can't they section off the loading zones and put something like air doors
or strip doors to keep the cold/warm air from escaping?
~~~
sct202
The company I work for encloses the entire dock area with a giant overhang and
there's a giant door for the semis to drive thru into the warehouse. It's
totally a thing, but it costs extra. We do it because some of the products are
temperature sensitive.
------
JetezLeLogin
Everyone drinks some flavor of Kool-Aid. Confirmation bias: it's the human
condition. Do and think whatever whimsical thing you want to, then do the
cognitive contortions later to justify it.
------
Johnny555
_Warehouses, such as the one I work in, have huge cargo bays that are almost
always open to receive the back ends of incoming tractor trailer rigs. When
these bays are open it is virtually impossible to control the temperature
inside the warehouse artificially_
When I worked in a warehouse in a northern state, they kept the bay doors
closed when there was no truck there, and even when the doors were open, they
were covered by strip curtains to help keep the heat in.
Even when it was below freezing outside, it was warm enough inside the
warehouse to walk around in an insulated shirt and no jacket (~50 degrees
inside, ~20 (or less) outside).
Of course, they didn't do it for the employees, we dealt with a lot of food
products that couldn't be allowed to freeze. So climate control even in a
warehouse is _possible_ , but maybe not cheap in 95+ degree Sacramento summer
days.
------
iamtheworstdev
John Oliver did not say that Amazon had an employee die. John Oliver started
off talking about Amazon and then switched the discussion to the companies
trying to keep up with Amazon (in the order fulfillment business) which is
where said death occurred. These competitors apparently have far worse
employee treatment than Amazon but claim they have to in order to keep prices
down due to Amazon's efficiency.
~~~
hogu
I believe the specific incident is xpo logistics
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/21/business/preg...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/21/business/pregnancy-
discrimination-miscarriages.html)
For example, last October, a 58-year-old woman died of cardiac arrest on the
warehouse floor after complaining to colleagues that she felt sick, according
to a police report and current and former XPO employees. In Facebook posts at
the time and in recent interviews, employees said supervisors told them to
keep working as the woman lay dead.
~~~
Spooky23
A relative worked in a big bank in the 80s where a vendor CE died of a heart
attack while doing maintenance on a mainframe at 6AM.
Directed by operations management, security did a “these aren’t the droids
you’re looking for” move, rebuffed first responders, who shrugged and left.
Employees in the data center were directed to go about their business. They
rolled the guy around for most of the day until someone told a bigshot of
sufficient stature to override the lunacy of the production control people.
Given sufficient empowerment and toxic enough culture, people are capable of
anything.
------
throw2016
This comes across as click bait. This is not the opinion of an actual
warehouse worker but someone with an agenda who has taken the job specifically
for that purpose which only becomes clear once you click through to read the
article. What value can this have? How can this be taken seriously?
Let Amazon workers fight for their rights, why are outsiders who do not do
that work skeptical of their concerns? What is the basis?
We are always talking about free speech, democracy and protest and yet it
seems when people use these rights a whole group of prosperous and well off
individuals who don't have anything to do the conditions of the protestors
rush to trivialize and dismiss their concerns. There is something extremely
mean and smallminded about this.
------
kevintb
I was agreeing somewhat until this part:
> “Never take a sick day during your first year of employment with any
> company, no matter what.” My wife and I have literally gone years between
> sick days.
And it all went downhill from there. God forbid this guy be struck with cancer
or a chronic disease.
------
apexkid
I for one cannot buy the fact that this article is authentically written by a
worker in Amazon warehouse. Seems like a shadowed approach from a different
segment of media to just do cleanup or take a shot on Oliver's program.
~~~
wideasleep1
So, you think this article is some shill..to what end? Just a potshot at John
Oliver? Who is this 'shadow' you perceive?
------
rainyMammoth
The issue is that John Oliver whole business is to try to make humorist
exaggerated content look like real life facts.
Every other week there is a John Oliver monologue that gets hyped and it seems
that no one looks at it with a critical eye.
John Oliver is to the left what Fox News is to the right.
------
metalgearsolid
For a second I thought nobody was going to stick up for the bajillion dollar
mega corporation.
Every employer I've worked for has had: * Billions of dollars less money than
Amazon * Better working conditions
Amazon doesn't need your voice. The workers who fear an extended bathroom
break might get them fired do.
~~~
astrange
How happy were your customers?
------
simonebrunozzi
I generally like John Oliver, although I find most of his content geared
toward a shallow journalism that I don't enjoy.
If he were an amazing man, he would read this piece, decide this critique made
sense, and run a new episode in which he corrects and fixes everything that
was not super accurate in his previous take on Amazon.
John Oliver, I know you lurk on Hacker News every day, for several hours,
under a fake username. Please, do this!
------
jccalhoun
I saw that this was a link to the quillette and wondered how they would tackle
the topic. I thought, "I bet they are somehow going to say working there is
great."
I guess if nothing else you can say quillette is predictable.
------
jrochkind1
I wonder if different warehouses could have different working conditions.
------
dang
A related recent thread is
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20485859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20485859).
------
locallost
> or that workers somewhere in Iceland (360,000) have been required to work
> around a fallen co-worker. But neither of these things, if they happened,
> would be proof that working conditions in Luxembourg or Iceland are
> appalling.
They would however be proof that working conditions in a company in Iceland
are appalling.
~~~
the8472
Not really, since they are single events you don't know anything about the
frequency and how it compares to the frequency in other locations.
The law of large number causes unusual events to happen every day, which means
the more globally your news operates the more freak events you can accumulate.
Your town newspaper regularly reporting that someone had to work next to a
corpse would be concerning. BBC world news reporting that this happened
somewhere in the world might be statistical blips.
~~~
Guest42
"The weak law of large numbers states that the sample average converges in
probability towards the expected value"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers)
~~~
the8472
Ah, I was thinking of "The Law of Truly Large Numbers"
------
SamReidHughes
Related: _The Jungle_ purportedly was a similar piece of propaganda.
------
nameismypw
It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss a Quillette article without mentioning
that it's an alt-right publication. We must not normalize it, and I strongly
encourage people to flag the submission.
A preliminary search will turn up plenty of reprehensible authors and plenty
more reprehensible articles. Posts like these are low-key attempts for
Quillette to legitimatize itself.
~~~
dang
It's penalized on HN the same way we downweight all mostly-political or
ideological publications. But such sites do come up with the occasional
interesting article, and on HN we care about the article, not the site. Same
with Jacobin or something like that.
~~~
depr
"ideological" meaning not matching the HN ideology of course
~~~
dang
Leftists think HN is rightist, rightists think HN is leftist. We moderate on
both sides of the ideological abyss, in the hope of preserving HN for
intellectual curiosity rather than ideological battle. One can't have both.
That doesn't stop anyone from perceiving bias, indeed obvious bias ("of
course"). It's the instant reflex that every ideologically committed user
experiences, but it's in the eye of the beholder. People's own views determine
how they imagine HN's bias or mods' bias—not only which polarity they
perceive, but how intensely they perceive it. If you tell me what bias you
perceive in HN, I can tell you what your own politics are. This is perhaps the
most reliable phenomenon we see on HN.
------
oneepic
...Wow. This article changed my opinions dramatically. Really thankful to see
an article like this. It puts the emphasis on irresponsible (whether it's
intended or not) journalism as a huge problem here in the US, as opposed to
all the dystopian news stories that come out these days.
Of course there are real exceptions, like stories that turn out to be true
about really bad working conditions in some places. But it particularly struck
me to see this example, of John Oliver and his team grasping at straws to put
together a damning narrative about Amazon, only for one guy with firsthand
warehouse experience to come out and tell a much more positive and convincing
story about his job.
We definitely live in a time where social media and the news tend to make us
think the world is a hellscape of things like big tech and AI, corrupt
politics, and corporate greed, all coming together to destroy our world as we
know it. I don't think the world is perfect, there's still tons of problems
that really suck (homelessness, poverty, actual corruption and greed, ...) but
I feel like we're gonna be totally fine and this is pretty manageable overall.
We'll figure it all out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IBM builds 15nm model of Matterhorn - dreemteem
http://news.techworld.com/sme/3221422/ibm-builds-15nm-model-of-matterhorn/?cmpid=TD1N3&no1x1
======
AdrianMiller
If anyone's interested in more information on the science behind this story,
we've set one of the original research articles that it's based on free to
access for the next few weeks; you can find it here:
[http://www.materialsviews.com/details/news/687441/Nanocartog...](http://www.materialsviews.com/details/news/687441/Nanocartography__in_3D.html)
Adrian Miller Advanced Materials
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Need technical co-founder for interest-based social network - mylogic
http://angel.co/mylogic
======
mylogic
I have more than idea - first prototypes done, NLP technology there, detailed
understanding of the product and interest from Ron Conway and co-investment
commitment from one of VC in Silicon Valley. I'm very close to seed financing.
I don't need programmer, I already have team of 3 people. I need strong
ideological technical co-founder who can manage technical team and deliver
final products. I offer equity and my strong commitment. My backgrounds are
physics, cs, economics. Send me mail ikhmel at gmail.com
------
epicureanideal
So you have an idea and you want a programmer to make it happen. What terms
are you offering? Most programmers have their own ideas they could work on,
y'know.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Balanced: A Third-Generation Payments Provider - jordanmessina
http://whit537.org/2013/04/balanced-third-generation-payments.html
======
BitcoinStore
Dismissed Bitcoin far too quickly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Khan Academy Computer Science - wave
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=36E7A2B75028A3D6
======
jgrahamc
I've really enjoyed watching the MIT 6.00 course (Introduction to Computer
Science and Programming):
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6U-i4gXkLM&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6U-i4gXkLM&feature=related)
The Khan videos seem to be about programming instead of computer science.
~~~
spicyj
I'm pretty sure that Khan will add some pure comp-sci videos later; there's no
problem starting with plain programming and describing how programs run, is
there?
Edit: Already (on his second day of making videos) he is starting to branch
into algorithms: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCzQvQr8Utw>
------
Brewer
I'm glad Khan finally got around to adding some CS videos! I knew that Khan
was a programmer himself, so the lack of videos on the subject always escaped
me.
------
pjscott
CS was probably the first field where anybody with an internet connection and
a lot of time could get an education on par with a decent college degree. I
did exactly that around 2001-2005, thanks to high school being boring, and the
resources available now make the internet of that time look horribly
impoverished by comparison.
Someone who wants to learn CS can find no shortage of introductory material on
programming (along with communities of people to do it with), stuff on
algorithms and data structures and the relevant math, more advanced topics --
it's like being offered a free education at a really good college, for people
who are willing to do the work.
I would really like for other subjects to become similarly open to interested
people over the internet. CS has definitely been leading the way here.
Wouldn't it be amazing if people in (say) archaeology, or botany, had a
fraction of the free resources and helpful communities that hackers have had
online for years?
~~~
sayemm
Adding to that is MIT's OCW (<http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm>), an amazing step
in the right direction for learning.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Stereotype Is Killing Entrepreneurship - tryary
http://www.tryary.com/news/1236/how-the-silicon-valley-entrepren
======
mfishbein
Blocked by signup form
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New CocoaPod, JiffyLogger (developed at goTenna) enables BTLE device logging - jmyaunch
http://blog.gotenna.com/post/133417331180/meet-jiffylogger-real-time-ios-logging-for
======
daniper
> Anyone who’s worked with BTLE knows field-testing can reveal results quite
> different from what’s observed in the lab — and what’s supposed to happen,
> according to spec sheets! — for a seemingly infinite number of reasons.
So true... #ptsd
~~~
jmyaunch
Yes, totally. With this library's functionality, we found the ability to track
specific events and view them in-app during field tests to be invaluable!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Drones Used to Find Toy-Like “Butterfly” Land Mines - prostoalex
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/drones-used-to-find-toy-like-butterfly-land-mines/
======
darkpuma
> _" More than a million Russian-made PFM-1 land mines—the most common
> butterfly type, possibly inspired by similar U.S. weapons deployed during
> the Vietnam War"_
Possibly? Why is this article softballing? The Russian version of the mine is
a DIRECT ripoff of the American version. They look EXACTLY the same.
Here is a BLU-43, the American version: [http://www.big-
ordnance.com/subs/BLU43OD.jpg](http://www.big-ordnance.com/subs/BLU43OD.jpg)
Here is a PFM-1, the Russian version:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1#/media/File:Russische_Sc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1#/media/File:Russische_Schmetterlingsmine_PFM-1.jpg)
It's the same damn mine! There is no "possibly" about this. The author didn't
lie but he's damn sure being dishonest. The article never even mentions the
BLU-43 by name, which would allow more readers to look it up and decide for
themselves.
~~~
woodruffw
Lazy research, not dishonesty, is the far more likely explanation here. From
Wikipedia[1]:
> a land mine of Soviet production, very similar to the BLU-43 US Army
> landmine. Both devices are very similar in shape and principles, although
> they use different explosives.
The author probably reworded the above.
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1)
~~~
beatgammit
Hanlon's Razor:
> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Though I'd use ignorance here instead of stupidity.
------
Waterluvian
What is the design process like for landmines? Do they consider if they look
like toys? Do they put duds in a toy chest and see what a sample of children
will pick out?
This whole concept really upsets me to think about.
~~~
andrewflnr
My guess is that the question never comes up. If you're an adult thinking in
terms of an abstract blueprint of a weapon, the thought of a child stumbling
on the dirt-strewn concrete implementation of your device is very far from
your mind, almost impossible to think of. The only way you would think of it
is if someone pulls the possibility off a checklist built from cases like
this. Be honest: if you saw the picture in the article _without_ the
surrounding context to make you think about toys, how likely would you have
been to think of them that way? To think that someone else would think of them
as toys? I'm guessing it's low. My first visual impression was of dead bugs or
cigars wrapped in leaves (which I'll grant might be just as tempting to a
child).
Not that any of that makes it ok. I'm more convinced than ever that failure of
imagination is a form of morally judgable (what's the right word here?)
negligence. But it would have been hard to see that far into the future in
this case.
~~~
cam_l
>If you're an adult thinking in terms of an abstract blueprint of a weapon..
You are probably not making mines. I don't know. It makes perfect sense to me
the kind of mass murdering sociopath capable of working on such a device would
find it perfectly ok to target children.
Only one physicist quit the Manhattan project iirc. Maybe the indiscriminate
nature of mass murder is not such an irksome burden for a weapons designer or
distributor. Maybe the people that find themselves in that line of work fully
understand the risks but just don't care.
~~~
toufiqbarhamov
I wouldn’t design weapons for the US government today, but if we were facing
another Hitler and another WWII-era Germany, along with Japan? Remember that
we wouldn’t have the benefit of hindsight and know that Hitler would shoot
himself in the foot with the Russian front and wasting resources on his insane
genocide. The Manhattan project might be one of the most prominent exceptions
to the sweeping generalization you’re making. It’s also unhelpful and unwise
to frame people you don’t like or understand as sociopaths, or crazy.
~~~
cf498
Since the Hitler period came up, there are great parallels to the topic of
land mines for that time period. During Harris bombardment of the civilian
population they did not just use regular and incendiary bombs, but also delay-
action bombs which exploded hours or days after the impact with the goal to
hit rescue workers who dug out the dead or wounded.
Like with most aerial bombs at the time, there where quite a few who didnt
detonate. Its one thing to dispose of a regular bomb, but the time delayed
ones are mostly just stuck. They detonated since then once some unlucky bloke
moved or just touched them. Just in 2012 for example such a bomb killed 3 bomb
disposal experts.
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283273/WW2-bomb-
ki...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283273/WW2-bomb-kills-G-
ttingen-experts-attempt-defuse-it.html)
With them getting older and older, they get more likely to detonate without
even any interaction as the trigger guard rots through.
The situation of some south eastern Asian countries with unexploded ordnance
and actual land mines is a better example though. Using a weapon like this
will continue to indiscriminately kill people for well over a century.
edit:
To be a bit more positive, there is also people doing the opposite, like Aki
Ra.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aki_Ra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aki_Ra)
~~~
toufiqbarhamov
Yes, land mines are horrible, the incalculable environmental damage and
subsequent human (and other) suffering of any war can’t be overstated. War
however, at least wars of the “necessary” type are the kind of the thing that
don’t allow for those considerations. It is a _very_ strong argument, not for
trying to change how war is fought (minimally effective), but to accept that
war is truly an atrocity to be avoided at nearly all costs. Instead we spent
the years after WWII trying to make war on anything vaguely “red” and after
Vietnam, just sought to make a constant stream of wars and armed conflicts
more palatable to the public.
The problem is the sheer amount of war, constant war, completely unjustified
war. Vietnam is a great example (credit to darkpuma for knowing their stuff)
of just such a waste, which makes the lengthy fallout all the more
unforgivable. WWII by contrast, a subject I didn’t raise incidentally and so
had no Godwin moment (I responded to a post explicitly mentioning the
Manhattan project), was nothing chosen by anyone other than the Axis.
Developing and deploying nuclear weapons existed in the context of a fight for
survival, against powers that systematically murdered millions of non-
combatants. Japan, putting aside Pearl Harbor, was monstrous in China, Korea,
and the Philippines. They dropped plague fleas on Manchuria, slaughtered a
small tortured prisoners, and Germany... well, we all know about that.
There was no reason to believe that victory over them was certain, or even
likely until the war had rages for years. There was every reason to believe
that life under the Nazis would be hell, and fatal for swathes of humanity.
The Japanese were not particular better, and China and Korea still bear the
scars.
All of which is to say, I objected to mixing up people who designed mines for
Vietnam, with people fighting WWII on the front, or in the lab.
~~~
cf498
>a subject I didn’t raise incidentally and so had no Godwin moment (I
responded to a post explicitly mentioning the Manhattan project)
Overworked the the comment it was a bit off.
~~~
toufiqbarhamov
No harm, no foul.
------
d357r0y3r
I understand there are many tech workers that flatly refuse to work on drone
technology, especially if it may have military applications.
Is there any affordance given for the possibility that some of this military
technology will actually be used for good?
~~~
gmueckl
Military technology is a wide and pretty vague term. A lot of technology is
implicitly dual use. A nice example of an unexpected military use case for a
completely innocent looking technology was a work that explored potential weak
spots in a proposed tank design by using real time 3d graphics and order
independent transparency in particular to estimate armor strength against
attacks from different directions. Originally, OIT was developed for games and
3d data visualizations.
I think that technology that can be used to protect people, especially
civilians, should be developed. I know that I personally draw the line at
weapoms platforms and weapon systems. You may develop and build them with the
best intentions in mind ("we're at peace and this system is only a necessary
deterrent"), but recent history tells me that once these systems are built and
sold, they will be used by someone, somewhere to shoot at other people. Even
the oh so pacifist Germany sells a lot of weapons and I think every type of
weapon system sold to another country by Germany since the second world war
has seen some action.
~~~
NotAnEconomist
I think you've killed less people working on literal sniper rifles for the
military than working on the addictive feed dynamics of Facebook, given the
Rohingya massacre and other social ills they've supported.
I think a lot of people in tech work on really questionable projects that
create huge social ills, then talk about "Well, at least we don't build
weapons!" \-- ignoring that when measuring human suffering, their unrestrained
manipulation and exploitation causes much more than weapons of war do, in
practice.
So when unqualified, I tend to hear your argument as simply trying to hide the
messiness of what you do, rather than than it's inherently more ethical than
building weapons would be.
tl;dr: I don't believe the military is less ethical, I think they're just more
honest about what they do.
~~~
gmueckl
I never worked on social media; this does not interest me. I will agree that
it has caused a lot of change and may have contributed to outbreaks of
violence in the recent past. I could compare these conflicts to others in the
past that were massively more devastating, but I wom't.
I am not sure of this discussion of social media is framed correctly. At its
core, all this social tech tries to satisfy the very basic human need for
communication in novel ways. There is nothing bad about trying to achieve
that. But somewhere along the way something unintended and bad happened. We
need to find out what it is and how to fix it as a society. The underlying
tech and concepts will never go away again. It can be used for good. We
realized too late that we failed to use it properly.
~~~
NotAnEconomist
My point is the double-standard in the tech community making that argument on
behalf of one kind of technology, while ignoring that weapons extend from the
very basic human need for security and agency.
It's a standard human fallacy, which I've made numerous times: we look at the
intentions of ourselves (the tech community) while looking at the results of
others (eg, the military). But the question we really need to be asking is if
our impact on the world leads to better outcomes than theirs, regardless of
what either group intended -- and I'm not sure it's so clear cut, once you
account for second order effects of social media.
And it's certainly not as simple a moral calculus as "Well, they work on
weapons so they're worse people than me!"
------
basicplus2
Seems odd to me to waste so much time and money and risk to lives when one can
simply drive a mine flail through any given area to clear it of mines.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_flail](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_flail)
~~~
InclinedPlane
How expensive do you think it is to operate a mine flail? Especially factoring
in transport to remote areas?
~~~
basicplus2
what price do you put on a life?
~~~
InclinedPlane
How much money are _you_ spending on mine clearance globally?
Because not everyone who is affected by mines has infinite money available.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can a New Website End Tech Meetup Sexism in DC? - chippy
http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2016/11/09/can-a-new-website-end-tech-meetup-sexism-in-dc/
======
chippy
The moratorium on political submissions on HN has been lifted. see:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251)
So please don't flag this based on that reason.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pebble CEO: An Apple Smartwatch Won't Stop Us - 6thSigma
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100453508
======
6thSigma
> Migicovsky said he couldn't comment on whether or not Apple or other
> companies had approached him about a possible acquisition of Pebble.
Interesting.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: KubeDB – Kubernetes-ready production-grade databases - tamalsaha001
http://kubedb.com/docs/0.9.0
======
dkoston
Thanks for putting this together, it's great to have something that covers
backups and restore and operation all in one package.
I'd recommend updating the name to be more descriptive. Anything xDB sounds
like it in itself is a database. That's what I was expecting. KubeDBOperator
or similar would let us know: it's related to K8s, it has to do with
databases, it likely manages deployments with HA/failover/backups.
As other commenters noted as well, you have to click at least 3 times before
you understand what the software does based on the above link. Linking to the
home page rather than the welcome would be a better choice for those not
currently familiar with your project.
Either way, appreciate all the work that went into this project!
~~~
atombender
I agree about the confusing naming. They could reverse it: DBKube!
------
kitd
My first impression is that your Concepts > Overview section needs to go on
your front page. Because it's not obvious just _what_ the product is.
Other than that, looks cool.
~~~
weberc2
I thought the front page was quite helpful for figuring out what the product
was (once I realized the HN link pointed to the documentation page and not the
front page).
~~~
hosh
Ah! I didn't even notice I was not on the front page!
~~~
weberc2
Yeah, don’t feel bad. It took me a while as well.
------
noahdesu
This seems to serve a purpose similar to Rook [0] for deploying distributed
(or non-distributed) storage systems, including database. For example, Rook
can deploy CockroachDB and also Ceph, which would have a lot of the same
challenges as deploying some of the databases supported by KubeDB.
[0]: [https://rook.io](https://rook.io)
disclaimer: red hat employee working some on rook.
~~~
manigandham
Rook stretching to databases looks like a random tangent trying to do
everything at once. The project should focus on being a solid distributed
storage provider first and let users run databases themselves on those
volumes. It's especially strange since these databases already have their own
storage replication and would be duplicating work.
------
tie_
Kudos for the interesting approach! I do think that DB management on
Kubernetes belongs to operators, and maintaining a collection of them would be
great.
This being said, you should not be using TPR, but rather CRDs (see
[https://coreos.com/blog/custom-resource-
kubernetes-v17](https://coreos.com/blog/custom-resource-kubernetes-v17)). The
welcome video is not really convincing either - condensing it to an animated
gif would make it much more attractive imho.
------
tn890
Can someone explain to me why I'd run this over a StatefulSet of whatever
software I want to deploy?
I've been skimming the docs and can't find a good reason TBH.
~~~
striking
The Postgres clustering advertised here[0] seems like a great reason to me.
0:
[https://kubedb.com/docs/0.9.0/guides/postgres/](https://kubedb.com/docs/0.9.0/guides/postgres/)
~~~
newaccoutnas
How does that compare to something like CitusDB I wonder?
~~~
sciurus
It looks like a standard single r/w master + multiple r/o slave topology with
the addition of their own leader election. I'd want to understand how the
latter works and how it is tested very well before I'd trust it.
[https://kubedb.com/docs/0.9.0/guides/postgres/clustering/ha_...](https://kubedb.com/docs/0.9.0/guides/postgres/clustering/ha_cluster/)
[https://github.com/kubedb/postgres/blob/master/pkg/leader_el...](https://github.com/kubedb/postgres/blob/master/pkg/leader_election/leader_election.go)
------
wstrange
Really nice work!
Question: How are snapshots implemented? Are you using k8s native snapshots
(which I think are alpha?) or other?
EDIT: Looks like snapshots are per db feature:
[https://github.com/kubedb/project/issues/337](https://github.com/kubedb/project/issues/337)
Hopefully Kubedb can leverage K8S snapshots when they mature
~~~
tamalsaha001
Thank you! We are using DB specific tools for taking snapshot. Example,
mysqldump for MySQL etc. We are looking into k8s native snapshots for future
releases. Here is the tracking issue:
[https://github.com/kubedb/project/issues/337](https://github.com/kubedb/project/issues/337)
------
lbj
Is it just me or is the number of clicks required to get a feel for the
project ridiculously high? I gave up
------
merb
are there any docs what you can set for the crd values? I only see some
examples but I do not see any full crd api doc.
something like: [https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/generated/kubernetes-
ap...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/generated/kubernetes-
api/v1.13/#daemonset-v1-apps)
------
bogomipz
Does anyone know if there are plans for a Cassandra operator? Or is running
Cassandra on K8S just not recommended?
~~~
bbromhead
[https://github.com/instaclustr/cassandra-
operator](https://github.com/instaclustr/cassandra-operator) :)
~~~
bogomipz
Thanks for the link, do you have experience or feedback on using this?
------
gigatexal
Can TLS encryption be used here and does it support encrypting the storage?
~~~
tamalsaha001
Are you talking about TLS encryption for connection url? If so, it is
supported for Elasticseach. The others ones are not there yet. Though it might
be possible using the available configuration options.
We are also looking to modifying the snapshot option to store encrypted
snapshots in future releases.
~~~
gigatexal
That and also mTLS for data in flight.
------
alexnewman
Is this production worthy?
------
gigatexal
No MySQL clustering means no adoption from me for now.
~~~
tamalsaha001
I understand. This is one of primary feature we targeting to suppose in the
next quarter. Can you tell me what type of clustering support do you use?
Example: Percona, Galera cluster, Vitess ?
~~~
gigatexal
Hah if you can make vitess not a terrible experience that would be awesome.
But just Percona clustering would do.
------
xena
On by default analytics makes me not want to touch this, sorry.
~~~
snug
+1 I hope this is just pre-release. I imagine once 1.0 it'll be opt-in.
~~~
merlinsbrain
I’ve never understood why people are willing to give all their data to
Facebook or any other hosted product which collects data, but are unhappy when
open source projects collect anonymized metrics to improve the product.
In this case there’s a flag advertized to turn it off, hopefully someone will
be reading the docs before it’s deployed in production?
Do you think AWS and GCP don’t collect metrics?
Happy to hear the other side, my knee-jerk reaction is also usually “you don’t
need this data”, but when thinking as an owner, i would find this data
invaluable to improve the product, getting funding (please donate, there are X
millions of users) etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Trump’s War with Amazon (and the Washington Post) Is Personal - dsr12
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/trump-war-with-amazon-and-the-washington-post-is-personal/amp
======
padseeker
It's not be just because of the Washington Post, although that is certainly a
contributing factor.
There is also reason to believe that Trump wants to go after Amazon because
Amazon is hurting brick and mortar retail, which also hurts commercial real
estate, which also hurts him financially. Also Jeff Bezos is very wealthy, and
Trump might view him as a rival.
I am not a Trump supporter, however it may be true that Amazon is in fact
underpaying taxes. What's repugnant is that I don't believe Trump's motivation
is about making sure everyone pays their fair share into the system. It's more
just transparent resentment, as well as a tactic to go after rivals.
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Goatse.cx Is Reborn… As An Email Address Provider - acremades
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/28/goatse-cx-is-reborn-as-an-email-address-provider/
======
Tekker
I would never use that domain, except as a suitably appropriate throwaway
account.
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FreeKill
wow, who would ever use that for their email? I'd want a filter to send all of
them to the trash "just in case"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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