diff --git "a/cache_100_200_1000_512/test/the_pile_hackernews.jsonl" "b/cache_100_200_1000_512/test/the_pile_hackernews.jsonl" deleted file mode 100644--- "a/cache_100_200_1000_512/test/the_pile_hackernews.jsonl" +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1000 +0,0 @@ -"\n\nOnline Courses Aren\u2019t Actually Democratizing Education - footpath\nhttp://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/11/online-courses-arent-actually-democratizing-education\n\n======\notoburb\n>>[...] 80 percent of MOOC students come from the wealthiest and most well\neducated 6 percent of the population,\u201d the authors of the paper write.\n\nWhat about the 20% that didn't have undergraduate degrees? No doubt there's a\nlot of skew here, but the focus should be on this 20% that (now) have the\nopportunity to take a variety of free online courses. Perhaps this 20%\nwouldn't have had a chance otherwise.\n\nOtherwise, the article is right that MOOCs could expand their reach further,\nbut I think this is a great start and optimistic news. If people thought that\nearly-adopter MOOC audiences would be primarily comprised of non-degree\nholders then now would be a great time to re-examine assumptions.\n\n~~~\nctdonath\nQuite. Big-ticket schools have a lot of incentive & budget & momentum to\npromote big-ticket degrees. MOOCs just don't have the visibility, so those who\ntend to participate are already plugged in enough for awareness of such\nobscure options. 20% being \"new students\" is pretty good.\n\nMOOCs also don't yet provide confidence for all-in degree-scale participation,\nso they appeal more to those looking to fill educational gaps instead" -"\nWhy did everything take so long? - jseliger\nhttps://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2017/12/28/why-did-everything-take-so-long/\n======\neesmith\nConcerning the wheel, it might be useful to look at ancient Mesoamerica. They\nhad children's pull toys with wheels, and other things which were wheel-like,\nbut no wheels used in transport.\n\nThe common explanation, for example at [http://www.zoesaadia.com/real-smart-\nfolks-but-no-wheel/](http://www.zoesaadia.com/real-smart-folks-but-no-wheel/)\n, is that wheels aren't very useful without draft animals, and without land\nwhich is conducive to road-building (vs, say, water transport).\n\n~~~\nbryanlarsen\nThe counter example is the Chinese wheelbarrow, which is useful without draft\nanimals and without roads, but that also makes your point. It's sophisticated\nenough that it's not hard to understand why it took so long to be invented\nwithout anything simpler and useful to evolve from.\n\n~~~\neesmith\nThanks for pointing that out. I didn't know about that history.\n[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-\nwheelbarr...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-\nwheelbarrow.html/) gives more details, like:\n\n> The one-wheeled vehicle appeared around the time the extensive Ancient\n> Chinese road infrastructure began to disintegrate. Instead of holding on to\n> carts, wagons and wide paved roads, the Chinese turned their focus to a much\n> more easily maintainable network of narrow paths designed for wheelbarrows.\n> The Europeans, faced with similar problems at the time," -"\nHow a car works (2012) - gshrikant\nhttp://www.howacarworks.com/\n======\nAlexMuir\nThis is my site!\n\nThis was a pleasant surprise to find my own site on HN this morning! I\nwondered why it was getting a few more FB likes than usual today.\n\nI'm happy to answer any questions.\n\nI finished this redesign last week so any feedback is welcome.\n\nThe main task was to recreate labels and annotations on the illustrations in\nSVG format, and to reformat the articles in a way that flows nicely and is\nresponsive, but without needing complex markup in the articles. I'll write\nabout the process if there's interest.\n\nI've previously written a little about this project:\n\n[http://www.howacarworks.com/about/making](http://www.howacarworks.com/about/making)\n\n[http://www.howacarworks.com/a-year-on](http://www.howacarworks.com/a-year-on)\n\nCurrent traffic is 200k uniques a month and it's taken about two years of\nsteady growth to reach that point.\n\n~~~\notis_inf\nGreat work! two points of criticism:\n\n1) The site still talks about carburetors and has no mention about fuel\ninjection systems, while in Europe all cars sold must have a fuel injection\nsystem for quite some time now, so this looks quite outdated\n\n2) Diesel engines of course don't have spark plugs, but you don't mention\ndiesel engines.\n\n~~~\nAlexMuir\nGood points. We do" -"\nUsernames reveal the age and psychology of game players - limbicsystem\nhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215301655\n======\nAnkhMorporkian\nAs someone who runs a fairly large multiplayer game with a good mix of\nchildren, teenagers, and adults, I've always been convinced of this[1] but\nhaven't had any data to back it up, and I certainly didn't have the time or\ndrive to conclusively demonstrate it like these fine folks did.\n\nI would love to see someone tackle some solutions to this problem with some\nA/B testing. Sadly I don't think my userbase is large enough or antisocial\nenough for me to effectively test it.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3op7e2/wha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3op7e2/whats_up_with_these_riot_surveys/cvze54n?context=1)\n\n------\nNatsu\nFrom reading the results, they found out that you could guess someone's name\nwhen they put a year in the username and that antisocial words meant the\nperson was more likely to be a jerk.\n\nAm I missing something here? The idea that SatansDick2007 is probably an 8\nyear old troll won't come as a shock to much of anyone.\n\n~~~\nferal\nThat's an appealing and intuitive idea to me too, yeah; but they have\nvalidated that it's actually the case on a large population of users. Their\npaper seems very methodologically careful/thorough. It's also interesting to" -"\n\nThe \"Soft Maximum\" function - epe\nhttp://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/01/13/soft-maximum/\n\n======\nmcantor\nThis is my problem with mathematics. The concept of a \"soft maximum,\" the\nprinciples behind calculating it, and its startling similarity to a hard\nmaximum, are all fascinating and exciting to me. Look at that! Two completely\nseparate functions, and such magical results. According to this post, it's\nuseful for \"convex optimization.\" I clicked through to the \"related post,\"\nwhich was merely a comment about someone else's opinions on \"convex\noptimization,\" so I looked it up on Wikipedia:\n\n\n\nAh! A technique used to \"minimize convex functions.\" Maybe some of this\nnotation will make sense to me if I understand the underlying concept of\nwhatever a \"convex function\" is.\n\n\n\nGreat. An entire article that is completely and utterly meaningless to me. I\nmean, absolutely nothing in that article--oh! \"Convex sets?\" That looks\npromising.\n\n\n\nJackpot! The pretty pictures make the idea of a convex set clear to me.\nUnfortunately, by now I'm 4 clicks away, and my actual understanding of the\nsubject is clearly just scratching the surface. Connecting my newfound--and\nobviously still naive--understanding of convexity* to \"soft maximums,\" which\ninitially inspired this search, feels dumbfoundingly impossible.\n\nAm I approaching" -"\nCommencement address by Bill and Melinda Gates - ashbrahma\nhttp://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/june/gates-commencement-remarks-061514.html\n======\nsz4kerto\n\"Bill and I talk about this with our kids at the dinner table. Bill worked\nincredibly hard and took risks and made sacrifices for success. But there is\nanother essential ingredient of success, and that ingredient is luck \u2013\nabsolute and total luck.\n\nWhen were you born? Who were your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us\nearned these things. They were given to us.\"\n\nTotally true, and very important to remember, especially for the HN crowd.\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nMelinda's comments are truly amazing:\n\n> Melinda: Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your\n> optimism. On a trip to South Asia, I met a desperately poor mother who\n> brought me her two small children and implored me: \"Please take them home\n> with you.\" When I begged her forgiveness and said I could not, she said:\n> \"Then please take one.\" . . . When I talk with the mothers I meet during my\n> travels, I see that there is no difference at all in what we want for our\n> children. The only difference is our ability to" -"\nUnexplored Areas in Data Compression - ingve\nhttps://medium.com/@duhroach/unexplored-areas-in-data-compression-c256f70ba0c7\n======\nAidanChurch818\n`Entropy is a broken measurement. The fact that [0,1,2,3] and [0,3,1,2] have\nthe same entropy value is annoying...' This is incorrect. There is no concept\nof entropy for a specific finite sequence; entropy is a property of random\nvariables. Assuming a finite string is generated (i.i.d.) from a random\nsource, then one way to estimate its entropy is using the histogram but this\nis not always optimal. Also several other parts of the article are over-\nsimplified or incorrect.\n\n~~~\nnabla9\n1\\. Entropy is a broken measurement\n\n2\\. This is incorrect\n\n3\\. There is no concept of entropy for a specific finite sequence\n\nDo you see what you did there? Entropy is limited concept if you want to\nadvance compression beyond certain limit.\n\nGeneral note: There is tendency of commentators to nit-pick blog posts as if\nbeing in debate where the goal is to win. It would be more valuable if we\nwould read the article and try to interpret the intended meaning behind them\nfavorably. Of course there are parts that are over-simplified or incorrect.\nThis is just writing in the blog, not fully thought out edited and peer" -"\nIn Nomine Jobs, et Woz, et Spiritus Schiller - Hagelin\nhttp://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/177715198/confessional\n======\nblasdel\nI adore Merlin, but you'd have to be pretty epically stupid to upgrade _all 5\nof your computers_ on day zero of the release before realizing that your\nshit's broken. While you're supposed to be writing a productivity book. When\nyou knew that the release has no new features that affect you.\n\nI guess someone has to lead the troll brigade (deserved or not) for every\nmajor release of every major platform.\n\n~~~\nmerlinmann\n\"Epically stupid\" and \"leading the troll brigade?\"\n\nThank God you adore me, blasdel.\n\n~~~\nblasdel\nIt's better that you're the principal complainer at the moment than any of the\nusual suspects -- like the greybeards at macintouch (still pining for OS9) or\nthe denizens of any of the Mac rumor forums (oh no my themes and Haxies!) or\nany of the surviving BBEdit users. You're doing a pretty good job of playing\nthe goat on Twitter too.\n\nGiven your usual quality of effort and the normal tone of your writing, it\ntook me several readings to realize that you weren't taking the piss!\n\nDid you _really_ upgrade _every_ Mac you come in contact" -"\nGet Billions of Correct Digits of Pi from a Wrong Formula (1999) [pdf] - drusepth\nhttps://academics.rowan.edu/csm/departments/math/facultystaff/faculty/osler/Billions_pi_digits.pdf\n======\nman-and-laptop\nSketch of an alternative proof, more DSP:\n\nUse the fact that the approximation in the paper is equal to the inner product\nof e^{-x^2} with a Dirac comb [1]. The amazing thing about the Gaussian\nfunction and the Dirac comb is that they're _both_ preserved by the Fourier\ntransform. So apply the Fourier transform to both of them, observe that the\nFourier transform is unitary (essentially a rotation), and therefore doesn't\naffect the inner product; then expand the inner product of the Fourier\ntransforms.\n\nEssentially, it's the same proof, but not in the language of Theta functions.\nIn fact, I'd argue it's a better proof, because it generalises.\n\nGeneralisation: This technique applies to all Riemann sums, as long as you can\ncompute the Fourier transform of the function. The thinner the tails of the\nfunction's Fourier transform, the faster its Riemann sums will converge.\n\n[1] -\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_comb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_comb)\n\n~~~\nabenedic\nMyself, I would say this is 80% correct. The bigger deal is the spectral\nconvergence of the trapezoidal sum for periodic entire functions.\n\n~~~\nman-and-laptop\nI gave my generalisation in terms of frequency," -"\nMagic and Software Design (1993) - cstejerean\nhttp://www.asktog.com/papers/magic.html\n======\ngoolulusaurs\nReminds me of the opening paragraphs from SICP\n([https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-\ntext/...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-\ntext/book/book-Z-H-9.html#%_chap_1))\n\n\"We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational\nprocesses are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve,\nprocesses manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a\nprocess is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create\nprograms to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the\ncomputer with our spells.\n\nA computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It\ncannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is\nvery real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can\naffect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm\nin a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's\nspells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and\nesoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes\nto perform.\n\nA computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes programs\nprecisely and accurately. Thus, like the sorcerer's apprentice, novice\nprogrammers must" -"\nLua: Good, bad, and ugly parts - adamansky\nhttp://notebook.kulchenko.com/programming/lua-good-different-bad-and-ugly-parts\n======\ngraue\nLua's great. I recently used it to rewrite a small audio effect framework[1]\nbased on an older project of mine in C[2]. To my astonishment, without any\noptimization efforts on my part, the LuaJIT version of one effect ran _faster_\nthan the C version, while another more complicated effect (a filter) only took\n2.01x as much time as C. And this was with simple, clean, mostly declarative\ncode (read it on GitHub and see what you think).\n\nOne of the goals of this project was to compile effects code to JavaScript\nwith Lua.js[3] and produce a demo that ran in the browser. There,\nunfortunately, I ran into a showstopper with a Lua.js bug[4] that breaks my\napproach to creating modules. Unlike LuaJIT and regular Lua, Lua.js is an\nexperimental project and far less mature - though totally awesome. I might\nmake another attempt to fix the problem myself at some point. With a more\nmature Lua.js, you could write fast Lua code and port it to nearly every\nenvironment.\n\n[1] \n\n[2] \n\n[3] \n\n[4]\n[https://github.com/mherkender/lua.js/issues/13#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/mherkender/lua.js/issues/13#issuecomment-9220080)\n\n~~~\nazakai\nI'm curious to do some performance comparisons, can you perhaps" -"\n\nAsk HN: For help: Gmail is filtering our URLs - e79\n\nThe gmail.com client normally renders the hyperlinks in our outgoing email just fine. Yesterday morning, this suddenly stopped happening and users were sent links that could not be clicked in their transactional emails from us. I was able to reproduce it by simply including our domain name in an e-mail, which leads me to believe e-mails are being filtered for our domain name specifically. I've reproduced this across multiple Gmail accounts of ours, and all hyperlinking is always fine right until I include our domain name anywhere in an e-mail. Viewing page source shows that gmail.com is employing some HTML to break our URL up so it doesn't turn into a valid hyperlink.

I suspect this is some sort of anti-spam measure. Has anybody else experienced this? I am asking Hacker News for help because there doesn't appear to be any way to get in contact with Google regarding gmail problems. We've already employed everything in their FAQs about avoiding their spam filters. We use DKIM and have a healthy standing with all email blacklists. I'm really not sure what other options we have left.\n======\ntherealmarv\nI've found out" -"\n\nHow to Kill Mysql Performance - arjunlall\nhttp://www.slideshare.net/techdude/how-to-kill-mysql-performance\n\n======\njaypipes\nHi folks, this is Jay Pipes, the author of the slide decks in\nquestion...someone notified me via email that these slides were up online.\n\nI had no idea those slides were even up online! People tend to take the slides\nfrom my website () and post them on various websites\nwithout my knowledge, which is perfectly fine. :)\n\nThose slides are also quite old (2+ years now). I've done many presentations\nsince then and have a number of alternate slide decks which you may find\nuseful. Here are the links to download PDFs from my website.\n\n\n\n[http://jpipes.com/presentations/target-practice/target-\npract...](http://jpipes.com/presentations/target-practice/target-practice.pdf)\n\n[http://jpipes.com/presentations/target-practice/target-\npract...](http://jpipes.com/presentations/target-practice/target-practice-\nworkbook.pdf)\n\n\n\n\n\n[http://jpipes.com/presentations/dqm/legend_drunken_query_mas...](http://jpipes.com/presentations/dqm/legend_drunken_query_master.pdf)\n\nYou can also download a chapter of my book (Pro MySQL) on SQL Scenarios:\n\n\n\nCheers!\n\njay\n\n------\nams6110\nHow to ensure that [some] people won't read your post: require Flash.\n\n~~~\narjunlall\nYou would probably be better off complaining to slideshare.net or the original\nauthor of the slideshow for posting it there." -"\nThe FBI\u2019s Massive Facial Recognition Database Raises Concern - ghosh\nhttp://singularityhub.com/2014/04/27/the-fbi-has-a-massive-facial-recognition-database-but-is-it-ready-for-primetime/\n======\nlifeisstillgood\nI feel this is the least worrying database around, because of a the simple\ncheck on its accuracy and the biometric used.\n\nFacial recognition is what we humans are all about - we have surprisingly\nstrong taboos about covering up this very useful and universal biometric\nalready and any flaws in the algorithm or software are much much easier to\nchallenge than DNA tests (I can stand up to a jury all day and say it was not\nme, and they will most likely believe a DNA expert. show them a picture of\nsomeone who just looked like me and they will all use millions of years of\nevolution to set me free)\n\nYes it is worrying that any mass databases are being compiled, and yes we must\ndebate as a civilisation how we are going to mitigate the downsides and\npromote the upsides, but this is not a disaster. not like PRISM.\n\n~~~\npessimizer\nIf the only thing you're worried about concerning mass surveillance is that it\ncould be inaccurate, I can see why you aren't worried.\n\n~~~\nlifeisstillgood\nThat's a little disingenuous no?\n\nThere are" -"\n\nThis Is Your Brain on Gluten - jalter789\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/this-is-your-brain-on-gluten/282550/\n\n======\nun_publishable\nDr. David Perlmutter should be ashamed for contributing to the trend of\nlumping ADHD in with huge lists of symptoms such as (quote): \"dementia,\ndecreased libido, depression, chronic headaches, anxiety, epilepsy, and ADHD\"\n\nADD and ADHD may not be as crippling as some mental conditions, but there is\nreal peer-reviewed medical research out there concerning diagnosis and\ntreatment. Hint: counseling and doctor-prescribed medication is more effective\nthan homeopathy and trivial diet changes. People just want an easy solution\nand someone to blame.\n\n------\njoeblau\nWhat is the TLDR please?\n\n~~~\nanigbrowl\nCarbs rot your brain, so you should avoid grains and eat like a caveman. Or\nmaybe not? One thing is for sure, people like reading about diets more than\nthey like sticking to them. Meantime, you can subscribe for only $$ a year.\n\n------\njoeclark77\nWhere would you find a control group for this kind of study? People who never\ntasted anything made from wheat?\n\n~~~\nanigbrowl\nSmall indigenous groups like the Inuit maybe? but then you've got a bunch of\nother factors to screen out. I presume Perlmutter's hostility to grains\nincludes rice and other high-carb grains," -"\n\nColour Science for Python - kelsolaar\nhttp://colour-science.org/\n\n======\nkelsolaar\nWe have an introductory tutorial ([http://colour-\nscience.org/tutorial.php](http://colour-science.org/tutorial.php)) showcasing\nsome features of the API and we have started some IPython Notebooks\n([http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/colour-science/colour-\nipy...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/colour-science/colour-\nipython/blob/master/notebooks/colour.ipynb)) to cover it deeply along with the\ntheoretical aspect.\n\n~~~\nfoolrush\nWonderful work.\n\nAny chance of a C or C++ implementation?\n\n~~~\njacobolus\nThere are already C/C++ implementations of most of this, and Matlab\nimplementations, if you go hunting around.\n\nIf there\u2019s something specific you need, some of the algorithms have some\nfiddly parts, but there\u2019s not too much that\u2019s fundamentally difficult to\nimplement in any of them. Any particular part should only take a day or two to\nbuild for some one-off use case.\n\n------\ngtaylor\nShameless plug for python-colormath, which has been cooking since about 2008:\n[http://python-colormath.readthedocs.org/](http://python-\ncolormath.readthedocs.org/)\n\nHas a lot of the same conversions/comparisons/color spaces, excellent test\ncoverage, and in my own biased opinion, pretty good documentation.\n\n------\nidunning\nSee also the fantastic Color.jl, a Julia package with similar functionality.\nMakes very pretty IJulia notebooks! More info at\n[https://github.com/JuliaLang/Color.jl](https://github.com/JuliaLang/Color.jl)\nor just run Pkg.add(\"Color\") at your Julia REPL.\n\n~~~\nStefanKarpinski\nI'd be curious about a comparison of the capabilities and approaches of these\ntwo libraries. Color.jl" -"\nTop Product Management Books? - skotzko\nRecommendations for top product management books? Either \"how to\" books or just ones that will make me better.

Current favorite is \"Inspired\" by Marty Cagan.\n======\nbdickason\nI've been 'product managing' for 4 years now in NYC and haven't found very\nmany books useful. Here are a few:\n\n-Getting Real / Rework (37 signals) - Build a lean product\n\n-Don't Make Me Think - Usability 101\n\n-Web Analytics 2.0 - Metrics are your best friend\n\n-Viral Loop - Great companies and how they did it\n\n-Delivering Happiness - Last 50 pages are phenomenal for building your company's \"culture\"\n\n~~~\nskotzko\nAwesome, thanks! Really appreciate the suggestions here and below.\n\n------\nShimrit\nCheck out Blackblot's new book on Product Management \"The Product Manager\u2019s\nToolkit\". In adition You'll find some good reading in this field on the\nfollowing resource page \n\n------\njamesshamenski\n\"the art of project management\", Scott Berkun. From O'reilly media.\n\nThis book is gold. but when berkun said that the job is essentially just\ncreating/updating lists for people, i liked my job less and the book more." -"\n\n Contracting out an API - comments on the spec, or even a bid? - andrewljohnson\nhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1-OQrDRvoHk-fX0Yc9NJ_Os9y9wbxK_W2-jMXAKbFCRg/edit?hl=en_US\n\n======\nErikHuisman\nSo basically only one user can login per UUID? There are no means of\nunregistering the device? A user can log in on multiple devices but can't\nlogout. Also store the APNS key @ device_register you might wan't to sent\npushes in the future. Put password in basic auth and use ssl (at minumum)..\n\n~~~\nandrewljohnson\nYes, one user per UDID for now. If you want to unregister a device, you can\nemail me, and if we get multiple requests, we'll code a solution.\n\nStoring APNS sounds like a good idea.\n\nAs for security, I am ok that this would be susceptible to a wifi sniffer. We\nwill note that it is insecure for users, but they won't care. If we get a bid\nthat implements security, we'll consider it, but I'd rather have it work than\nbe secure.\n\n~~~\nAretNCarlsen\n> We will note that it is insecure for users, but they won't care. ... I'd\n> rather have it work than be secure.\n\nI would have an easier yet more profitable life if I could manage to adopt\nthat attitude" -"\nSymbolic expressions can be automatically differentiated too - objections\nhttp://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/symbolic-expressions-can-be-automatically-differentiated/\n======\njohnbender\nOne can also calculate the derivative of a context free grammar with respect\nto a given terminal.\n\n[http://matt.might.net/articles/parsing-with-\nderivatives/](http://matt.might.net/articles/parsing-with-derivatives/)\n\n~~~\nApanatshka\nThat's also a really cool article. Thanks for sharing it!\n\n------\ndelluminatus\nGreat post, as an AD tutorial and as a (an?) Haskell exercise. Having known\nnothing about AD before, I feel like I have a good understanding of what it is\n-- as he says, it's so simple -- but I don't understand _why_ the algorithm is\nso much faster. Just looking at the differentiator function and the AD\nfunction, it actually appears that the AD should take longer because it does\nmore computation per step (both the function and the derivative). But it seems\nlike every article or paper is talking about how to implement AD, not why the\nalgorithm is so efficient. Does anyone happen to know of a good article or\npaper about that? Ideally, one just as nice and comprehensible as this!\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nThe first alternative builds a large tree structure, and then evaluates the\nwhole tree structure afterwards.\n\nSo first it blows up the size of the expression to process" -"\nAsk HN: Data on job market for entry-level Rails devs? - BrainScraps\nHi HN,

I'm about to pivot my life from using my marketing degree to devoting myself to becoming a Rails developer. My wonderful and analytical wife wants to see some hard data on the number of open junior Rails dev positions vs the number of applicants, or anything of that sort. She's too careful to believe my \"everyone says we're in the middle of a Great Dev Drought\" protestations.

Please help me find the right data. And if you have some anecdotal evidence, we'll consider that too!

Thanks a ton!

@brainscraps

EDIT: Since there is a consensus that having an active GitHub profile is a good thing, no matter how messy, here's a link: https://github.com/BrainScraps\n======\nnateberkopec\nAs someone trying to hire Rails devs right now, I have two things to say - one\ngood, one bad.\n\n* The Good News: I started coding 18 months ago, and now I'm a lead developer at a funded startup and a two-time contributor to Rails (along with other contributions to open source).\n\n* The Bad News: While there is a hiring drought, there is NOT a drought for hiring guys who just learned Rails three-to-six-months" -"\n\nHow to make your first game for less than $1,000 - gcheong\nhttp://deadpanic.com/make_a_game_1k\n\n======\nwindsurfer\nKeep in mind he's valuing his time at 0$ for the title, in which case you can\nmake your first game for $0 very easily.\n\n~~~\nelectromagnetic\nI'd love to make a video game, but I value my time at $9.25 an hour, which is\ncurrently Canadian minimum wage. I'm not going to work for less unless it\nfulfils some other need, and I doubt video games will ever be need fulfilling\nfor me.\n\n~~~\njacquesm\nThey're one hell of a way to learn, especially arcade style games are more\nlike mini operating systems inside.\n\n------\nConceptDog\nThe bad news is that the iPhone gold rush is basically over.\n\n------\nerikb85\nwhat can I learn from this article? That is, what I can read there: You have\nto create images and sounds and if you can't you have to buy them. And no\nmatter what you do, in the end you still have to pay your rent (what will be\nmore as $1,000).\n\n~~~\npotatolicious\n> _\"You have to create images and sounds and if you can't you have to buy\n> them.\"_\n\nAs a" -"\n11:57 \u2013 A short virtual reality horror film made for Oculus Rift - pmcpinto\nhttp://1157.pm/\n======\neliasdelatorre\nI downloaded it for Windows. It has a mp4 file inside the zip. I was able to\nwatch it using VLC on Ubuntu. Despite being a 360\u00b0 image all cramped on a\nsquare screen it was still pretty scary =P\n\n~~~\nohwhen\nCool, thanks for the feedback :)\n\n------\naleyan\nRan the Mac OS version on Yosemite with 0.4.2 version of the Oculus SDK on a\nDK2.\n\nLoved it. Awesome job. Feels like a haunted house that moves around you\ninstead of you moving through it. Very immersive. Will show this off to other\npeople.\n\nIPD was kind of weird though. I felt like a giant in the dungeon. What kind of\ncamera setup did you use to film this, and how far apart were the cameras?\n\nAlso, I did not feel the 3D sound, though the issue may have been with my ears\nor me not paying attention to it. I will retry again later tonight and report\non the results.\n\n~~~\nohwhen\nSo the camera setup was a fairly standard 6 GoPro rig (Freedom Rig).\nUnfortunately we didn't have the budget" -"\nAsk HN: What do you expect from a meaningful technical interview? - pthreads\nRecently there was a post regarding technical interviews (how performance is arbitrary) and it got a lot of responses from HN'ers. So I wanted to ask the community how would they design a great technical interview? Disclosure: The reason I am asking is I am thinking of starting a service that provides resources for companies that want to hire technical talent but are not able to suitably test candidates for technical competency. These interviews would be tailored to specific needs. But I am not sure if there is a need for it in the industry.\n======\nrosspackard\nI am in the process of building a service like that too. Mainly because I want\nit for vetting the candidates that I am trying to hire (I am a principle\nengineer who also manages).\n\nMy focus has been on these things:\n\n-easily distributing and receiving challenges privately (not through github or email)\n\n-tool to help easily and quickly manually review code\n\n-a library of challenges that aren't algorithms based (think like a challenge to fix a bug in a moderately sized system, building a feature onto an existing codebase..." -"\nWe Need Young People To Take Risks And Build Inspiring Things - henryaj\nhttp://www.fastcoexist.com/3026586/skip-the-hedge-fund-we-need-young-people-to-take-risks-and-build-inspiring-things\n======\nFD3SA\nThough the author has good intentions, I fear he has very little understanding\nof the reality for today's young graduates.\n\nLet's look at a smart young grad's options:\n\n1) Academia - Potentially interesting work. However, grad students are\nunderpaid, overworked indentured servants in a vicious dictatorial status\nhierarchy (do what the PI says or you're out). Very poor career prospects,\nguaranteed negative return on time invested. The road to PI is sure to destroy\nyour love of research.\n\n2) Industry - Decent pay but work is extremely mundane. Very few \"unicorn\"\npositions which allow freedom for creative roles. No control of hours.\nPromotion becomes a very serious game of office politics, which can get very\nnasty.\n\n3) Professions (Law, Med) - Enter at your own risk. Savagely competitive and\ndraconian entrance requirements, incredibly expensive education, inhuman\nhours, constant stress at every milestone, and a never-ending barrage of\nstandardized tests. However, if you endure, you can start your own practice\nand potentially have a comfortable life.\n\n4) Entrepreneur - By far the riskiest option. Due to the get rich quick mantra\nof current investors, social/web/photo" -"\nGrabaGoodDomain.com - Get a Great Domain - dawie\nhttp://www.grabagooddomain.com/\n======\ntimg\nI'd pay 100$ for a really good one that describes one of my sites in a non-\nlimiting way, and has ALL of the good qualities that a domain name should. I\nam just nearly certain that all of these that consist of any keywords that\ndescribe my sites are taken.\n\nSo, last night I registered for a similar service for 50$. But feeling guilty\nfor spending money that I don't really have without exhausting every other\noption, I wrote a program to use letter/letter combination frequencies from a\nnumber of various data sets to find the best available names consisting of\npseudo-words that are left.\n\nIt's man against computer, and this time I'm betting on the computer.\n\n~~~\ndawie\ntimg, We will prove to you that we are the best. Send me the infortion found\non and I will give you suggestions. If\nyou use my suggestion you can pay us $100. Just this one time, you don't even\nneed to make a deposit. This is to show you how certain we are that\nGrabaGoodDomain.com is better than computer programs or anyone else...\n\n------\nimer111\nOur service" -"\n\nExperiment: Unit testing isn't enough; You need static types, too - fpgeek\nhttp://evanfarrer.blogspot.ca/2012/06/unit-testing-isnt-enough-you-need.html\n\n======\ndavesims\nThe sample size of this study is statistically too insignificant to draw the\nconclusions given. The counterfactuals to the claims of dynamic type advocates\nwere already true and provable, so even if the sample size of the codebases\nstudied were statistically significant (not to mention vetted for _quality_ of\nunit test as well as _coverage_ ) the conclusions are nevertheless trivial.\n\nIn addition, the hidden assumption is that all static and dynamic typing are\ncreated equal, i.e., since Haskell is statically typed and Haskell appears to\nhave caught Python bugs that unit tests did not, therefore Java will catch\nbugs in a Ruby codebase, C++ will catch bugs in a JavaScript codebase, etc. Of\ncourse this assumption is gratuitous. Haskell in particular has a specific\nsort of type checking that is far different from Java's or C++'s, for\ninstance.\n\nFurther, not all _dynamic_ systems are created equal. Ruby, for instance, I\nthink can be shown to require fewer lines of code to achieve similar\nfunctionality to, for instance, Java. Fewer lines of code, should in principle\nmean fewer opportunities for defects. Dynamic languages with metaprogramming" -"\n\nWindows 7 Network Awareness: How Windows knows it has an Internet connection - ivoflipse\nhttp://blog.superuser.com/2011/05/16/windows-7-network-awareness/\n\n======\nmlinsey\n\" If the response is never received, or if there is a redirect, then a DNS\nrequest for dns.msftncsi.com is made. If DNS resolves properly but the page is\ninaccessible, then it is assumed that there is a working internet connection,\nbut an in-browser authentication page is blocking access to the file. This\nresults in the pop-up balloon above. If DNS resolution fails or returns the\nwrong address, then it is assumed that the internet connection is completely\nunsuccessful, and the \u201cno internet access\u201d error is shown.\"\n\nWould this mean that DNS poisoning msftncsi.com would prevent Win7 machines\nfrom accessing the internet? Or would this merely cause the 'no internet\naccess' error to be displayed despite your connection working anyway?\n\n~~~\nyakyak\nThis service can be disabled, so obviously it doesn't prevent you from\naccessing the internet even if it thinks it doesn't have access. It would SAY\n\"no internet connection\", but internet resources would still work just fine.\n\n~~~\nalvarosm\nWell, you tell my granny to disable some service...\n\n------\nsnprbob86\nThe iPhone uses a very similar technique. If you connect to" -"\nShow HN: Julia Observer \u2013 Package Browser for the Julia Language - djsegal\nhttp://juliaobserver.com\n======\nericjang\nIs anyone else concerned that despite being an open-source project with\npermissive licensing, the formation of the Julia Computing group has made\nJulia's development a bit of a walled garden? I don't mean this in the sense\nthat Apple or Matlab are \"walled gardens\", but the for-profit company, of\nwhich many core developers are founders/employees, develops a number of tools\nand services that are not open-source AFAIK.\n\nI believe the group also implicitly controls what packages are\nallowed/disallowed from the packages list. At the same time, I also recognize\nthe need to support the core developers and the business model makes a lot of\nsense. Thoughts?\n\n~~~\nn00b101\nI really wish they had implemented Julia in C++11, instead of C. The source\ncode seems to be very difficult to comprehend for anyone who is not one of the\noriginal developers. [1]\n\n[1]\n[https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/src/julia.h](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/src/julia.h)\n\n~~~\nchappi42\nJulia is mostly (> 65 %) written in Julia. There's some C (20 %, bootstrap\netc.), some C++ (8 % llvm interface), some scheme (4 %, parser). I think it's\none of the main points, that Julia should be" -"\nAsk HN: Are there any successors to Anonymouth on the horizon? - x1798DE\nI'm often worried that I'm extremely identifiable by stylometric analysis. A few years back, I remember hearing about Anonymouth (https://psal.cs.drexel.edu/index.php/JStylo-Anonymouth) for defeating stylometry, but last I looked, it wasn't super easy to use and it doesn't seem to be maintained (https://github.com/psal/anonymouth last commit in October 2013). Anyone know of anything that's looking to take up the torch? A browser extension would be amazing.\n======\nschoen\nIt would probably be good to ask Rachel Greenstadt, the head of the lab that\nproduced this project and does lots of stylometry research. She'll know about\neverything going on in the field; you can find her e-mail address on the page\nyou linked to!\n\n------\nBuuQu9hu\nI think it would be a good idea for you to start using it and send pull\nrequests for any issues you find.\n\n~~~\nx1798DE\nI don't really know anything about stylometry or about writing chrome\nextensions, nor am I super comfortable in Java (plus I have many other things\nto do on my plate before this). If I were to do anything, I'd probably have to\nfully re-implement it, so I was hoping that" -"\nWelcome to DNS, or Saving the DNS Camel [pdf] - okket\nhttps://indico.dns-oarc.net/event/29/contributions/658/attachments/641/1039/Welcome_to_DNS-final.pdf\n======\npeterwwillis\nI would argue we do need a real DNS replacement. The stupid 512 byte limit has\nbeen a scapegoat to prevent new important features from being implemented\nforever, and the stateless nature has been abused by bad actors. We want and\nneed something like QUIC, and a more sane way to adopt changes to features.\n\nThe obsession with backwards compatibility is crazy. Imagine if we took real\nphysical infrastructure in the world and insisted we continue to build it only\nin a way compatible with technology from the 1800's. We live in a modern\nworld, where firmware upgrade doesn't require a UV light source, and where we\ncan probably get two or three companies to push for the rapid adoption of new\nindustry standard formats - just looked what happened to enable tech like\nEthernet to become a defacto standard.\n\n~~~\nbluejekyll\nYou might be interested in DNS-over-QUIC:\n[https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-huitema-quic-\ndnsoquic...](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-huitema-quic-dnsoquic/)\n\nAlso, the 512 byte limits hasn\u2019t been an issue for many years, as EDNS allows\nfor much larger packet sizes, generally up to 4K. (Edit: although, some DNS\nrecursive resolvers have started limiting UDP connections to" -"\n\nDynamic languages have jumped the shark - levosmetalo\nhttp://swizec.com/blog/dynamic-languages-have-jumped-the-shark/swizec/6204\n\n======\nshizzy0\nThe criticism of ENV only allowing strings has no bearing on his argument. ENV\ncomes from the OS environment. Code in any other language--strong or weakly\ntyped--would have the exact same issue. And not being able to coerce arbitrary\nstrings to booleans is fine because there is no principled way to do that\nexcept through convention. And everybody makes up there own convention: true,\nyes, YES, OK, TRUE, ok, ON, ENABLED, which just goes to show that there's no\nprincipled way to do it.\n\n~~~\nkyllo\nThis.\n\nNote that Java main methods start with public static void main(String[]\nargs){}\n\nThe main method takes an array of String objects from the command line as an\nargument. You can't pass a boolean or anything other than a String in args any\nmore easily in Java than you can in Ruby.\n\nBut Ruby and other dynamic languages give you _eval_ which, although\ndangerous, can have the effect of coercing your string into a boolean.\n\nirb(main):001:0> a = \"true\"\n\n=> \"true\"\n\nirb(main):002:0> b = eval a\n\n=> true\n\nirb(main):003:0> b\n\n=> true\n\nirb(main):004:0> !b\n\n=> false\n\n------\ngvickers\nYou have weak and dynamic" -"\nShow HN: Write rust in off-side syntax (indent instead of braces like in Python) - chankyin\nhttps://github.com/chankyin/off-side.rs\n======\nkarmakaze\nToo bad about the trailing commas and semicolons. It would be cleaner if they\ncould be implied and there be punctuation for when a comma or semicolon is not\nmeant.\n\nThe commas aren't visually as bad as the semicolons. Would it work to say in\nan off-side block any non-blank line implicitly ends with semi-colon unless it\nexplicitly ends with comma or colon?\n\n~~~\nchankyin\nAlso, semicolons in Rust have special semantics. In Rust, semicolons are\ndelimiters rather than terminators, and function similar to how comma\noperators work in C++ (see\n[https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/operator_other](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/operator_other)).\nWhile some may not like the implicit return behaviour in Rust, I think it has\na genuine idiomatic meaning in Rust that cannot be easily replaced. Ending a\nfunction with a semicolon differentiates returning the last value from\nreturning void (i.e. the empty tuple), so it does not seem like a good idea.\n(This is a proof of concept anyway it's not like I'm introducing a new\nlanguage)\n\n------\nsmt88\nWhy do you prefer semantic whitespace?\n\n~~~\nchankyin\nYou can find loads of reasons for and against semantic whitespace" -"\nFeatures are faults redux - gbrown_\nhttp://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/features-are-faults-redux\n======\nakkartik\nI've been imagining for some time an ideal system with just two languages: one\ncompiled low-level one, one interpreted high-level one -- and absolutely zero\nruntime configuration beyond that. Anytime you want to change how a program\nbehaves you would have to edit its sources. A whole system with the dwm[1]\naesthetic, basically. Always keep sources close to programs, allow the entire\nsystem to recompile with a single command. Encourage people to micromanage\nprecisely which image formats they want to turn on. The only thing that is\ninterpreted at runtime is code in the high level language.\n\n[1] \"dwm is customized through editing its source code..\"\n[http://dwm.suckless.org](http://dwm.suckless.org)\n\n------\nelchief\n> What\u2019s the first thing anybody does when they get a second computer? That\u2019s\n> right, set up a kerberos domain\n\ntedu is a funny guy\n\n~~~\nsmhenderson\nNo doubt, especially like this line at the beginning...\n\n _If you\u2019ve never heard of OpenBSD, it\u2019s a free unix like system. So kind of\nlike Linux, but better in every way. Totally unbiased opinion._\n\nBut the article is also really good, a cautionary tail of what can happen\ntrying to please everyone. The links" -"\nAll major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters - alan_cx\nhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/06/big_4_isps_will_all_embrace_network_level_filtering_to_protect_children/\n======\nphilbarr\nForgive me for being glib, but at least one good thing out of this is that a\nlot more teenagers will be inspired to become hackers.\n\n\"So when did you first get into hacking Mr. Famous Hacker X?\"\n\n\"Well, I remember that, like a lot of the lads in my generation at the time, I\nwas trying to get round my ISPs porn-filters.\"\n\n~~~\nrobotmay\nThis is actually pretty accurate for when I was in school; I learnt a lot\nabout proxies and networking whilst bypassing the school's content filters :D\n\n------\nandyking\nSo, in order to get around this DNS-based filtering, all a teenager has to do\nis change the DNS servers on their computer or device to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4?\nThis seems like a move designed to placate rather than provide any real\nprotection - like all such schemes.\n\nThere's no alternative to supervising young people's internet use. Teenagers\n_will_ look up porn - it's best to be adult and intelligent about it, and\nprotect them from its worst _effects_ , rather than trying to filter the\ncontent itself.\n\n~~~\nretube\nYes it" -"\nAngara-5 to become Russia's biggest rocket - Gravityloss\nhttp://www.russianspaceweb.com/angara5_flight1.html\n======\nmarktangotango\nDoes any one know what the toxic propellants are (the Briz-m upper stage)?\n\nEdit: \"burning storable propellant combination of nitrogen tetroxide as\noxidizer and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine as fuel. The engine had a\nspecific impulse of 328.1 seconds and was designed for eight firings during a\nmission. \"[1]\n\n[1]\n[http://www.russianspaceweb.com/briz.html](http://www.russianspaceweb.com/briz.html)\n\n~~~\nCapitalistCartr\nWe use hydrazine in US rocketry, too. As nasty as the stuff is, if I were\nstill in the missile business, I'd use it. It's a strong, well-proven\ntechnology.\n\n~~~\nandrewl-hn\nYes, Russia used it in their long- and medium-ranged ballistic missiles. After\na series of agreements between the US and Russia were reached both countries\nagreed to reduce their arsenal (\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/START_I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/START_I)\n). As a result Russia has an excessive amount of Hydrazine in storage. It's\nexpensive to store it because it's a very toxic and corrosive substance. At\nthe same time it's pretty difficult to get rid of it.\n\nAt least in case of Angara they burn it at a high altitude.\n\n~~~\ntrhway\n>Yes, Russia used it in their long- and medium-ranged ballistic missiles.\n\noh, yea, donning these suits (during summer sunny day) before" -"\nEx-NSA Hacker Finds a Way to Hack Mac Users via Microsoft Office - SQL2219\nhttps://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxamy/hacker-finds-a-way-to-hack-mac-users-via-microsoft-office\n======\nkryogen1c\napple, microsoft, hacking, and the nsa all in the same headline. this editor\ndeserves a raise.\n\n------\nmikece\nI don't know about everyone else but it's the _first_ part of that title that\ncatches my interest. \"Executed a hack via MS Office -- yeah, great but tell me\nmore about the role of 'NSA Hacker'...\" Notwithstanding the \"What? No way...\"\nrevelations in Edward Snowden's book about the United States' SIGINT-via-\ninternet abilities I suspect Snowden didn't even know the half of it.\n\n~~~\nsave_ferris\n> I suspect Snowden didn't even know the half of it.\n\nObviously, we\u2019ll never know exactly how much he knew relative to the entire\nscope of the intelligence community, but he pointed out multiple times that he\nhad pretty broad access to a range of tools and KBs based on his work\nintegrating various tools for the government.\n\nHe\u2019s said himself that he doesn\u2019t know everything, but given his ascent in the\ngovernment contracting world due to his technical skill prior to his\ndeparture, I think it\u2019s fair to take him at his word when he said that there" -"\nCourt: Violating a site\u2019s terms of service isn\u2019t criminal hacking - LinuxBender\nhttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/\n======\nphkahler\n\"Criminalizing terms-of-service violations risks turning each website into its\nown criminal jurisdiction and each webmaster into his own legislature,\" Bates\nwrote.\n\nIMO that is the most important part of the ruling. You cant have criminal\npenalties and then delegate the definition of the crime to each website.\n\nLying or breaking TOS is different than hacking. You are granted access by the\nsite, and it's no different than the access they grant every other user.\n\n~~~\nalasdair_\n>You cant have criminal penalties and then delegate the definition of the\ncrime to each website.\n\nHow does this differ from criminal trespass, where each landowner can define\npermitted use versus trespassing however they wish?\n\n~~~\nDylan16807\nThe only criminal act in trespassing is coming back _after_ being banned.\nWhatever you did to _get_ banned is not a criminal issue.\n\nAnd as far as I know trespassing bans have to be a manual blacklist or\nwhitelist. You can't define some arbitrarily complex behavior that makes you\ninto a trespasser. Maybe I'm wrong on that?\n\n~~~\nthrowaway17_17\nThat would depend on the jurisdiction. Typically in the US, most states define" -"\n\nAsk HN: What's your consulting rate? - equity\n\nI am looking to get a pulse on the going consulting rate for software engineers in the bay area. Please post your rate and include languages of competency, years experience, etc.\n======\nlarrykubin\nI currently charge 95/hr. Been doing a mix of Python/PHP/JavaScript and know\nmy way around their associated frameworks and CMSes\n(Cake/Django/Flask/Drupal/CodeIgniter). I've done only freelance for 5 years\nand have worked in Austin and Portland. Rates are probably higher in SF.\n\n------\ngamechangr\nFriend (moved to palo alto,part of silicon valley, in Feb of 2011) makes $140\nhr for five yrs experience in Ruby/PHP and 2 yr in Python/Ruby on Rails\n\nHe claims most engineers make $120-$150 with a couple years experience.\n\n------\nsamstave\nAvg rates I see for everything/everyone is between 100 and 150/hr." -"\nFree Public Universities - naveen99\nIf the democrats succeed in making public universities free, what will happen to the private university tuitions ? I wonder if the private universities will start lobbying against the democrats to prevent it...

It\u2019s kind of similar to public free healthcare. Fee for service entities / insurance companies will suffer a downward pressure on business... but somehow the private universities seem politically separated from private insurance companies...\n======\nwajdiben\nFree Public Universities means more people with academic degrees. More people\nwith degrees means tougher job descriptions' requirements and lower pay. I\ncan't afford uni but I hope they won't make the mistakes other countries, like\nFrance, had done.\n\n------\ngshdg\nCheck out how it works in other countries that have both publicly funded and\nprivate education.\n\nThe losers here would not be the elite private institutions, which will always\nhave high demand and did even 50 years ago when public higher education was\nsufficiently subsidized that almost anyone could afford it with a summer job.\n\n(Many of those institutions are already offering free tuition to lower and\nmiddle income students anyway. And they\u2019re all incorporated as nonprofit\nentities.)\n\nThe losers would be the low quality for-profit" -"\n5 Financial Rules for Startups - jasonlbaptiste\nhttp://www.businessinsider.com//5-financial-rules-startups\n======\nthaumaturgy\nLess than two years ago, I bootstrapped a consulting startup, by myself, and\nmade $300 in my first month. I had one client.\n\nMy goal this year was to hit $3,000 a month by the end of the year; I hit it\nin June. I'm now regularly picking up new clients -- still entirely by word-\nof-mouth -- I have two people working for/with me, and so far the growth isn't\nshowing any signs of slowing down.\n\nWhile these aren't very impressive numbers, they're not too bad for one guy\nwith no resources starting out. It's been a good exercise in non-stop business\njudo.\n\nSo, according to me:\n\n1: Don't waste your time reading crap like this. You won't learn as much from\nit as you will if you just go out and work your ass off.\n\n2: Oh yeah, working your ass off: do that, a lot. It's been hard off and on,\nbut I also keep getting better at it, and now any potential competitors that\ncome along are going to find themselves facing off against a human dynamo.\n\n3: I haven't figured out what #3 is yet." -"\nThoughts on Lance\u00a0Armstrong [video] - kennyma\nhttp://danariely.com/2013/01/18/thoughts-on-lance-armstrong/\n======\nchubot\nI like Dan Ariely, and most of what he says in this video is true. However he\ndoesn't address the whole Lance Armstrong story, and there is one correction\nto be made.\n\nHe says that it's possible that Lance Armstrong took EPO as a cancer patient,\nand that made it easier for him to keep taking it as a performance enhancing\ndrug.\n\nLance tried a similar tactic in his interview last night -- he explained that\nhis cancer changed him. It made him more of a bully, and more of a fighter,\nand he kind of justified taking testosterone since he had testicular cancer.\nHowever, Oprah had to point out that he was taking performance-enhancing drugs\nBEFORE he had cancer. So the cancer is a scapegoat.\n\nSecond -- people don't really fault Lance Armstrong for doping. I'm sure it's\ntrue that everybody was doping. And Ariely correctly points out that that\nmakes it much easier for someone to justify to themselves.\n\nWhat distinguished Armstrong is going over the top to destroy people who were\ntelling the truth. He was vicious about attacking and suing people who told\nthe truth, and" -"\nCython 0.23 released - Yakulu\nhttps://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/cython-users/lfq9CtqGdzY\n======\ngrinalope\nCython is amazingly productive for me. I am so happy to write typed pythonic\ncode.\n\nIf there's one thing missing it's more people showing off their Cython style\nand tricks, like how they do macros (since it's not supported in the\nlanguage), when to turn off safeties, and balancing pure python with typed.\n\nFor instance, I like C macros in header files, but I've played around with\nusing a jinja2 pipeline in my setup.py to write cleaner looking pythonic code,\nand have done generics this way.\n\nmore posts like the one using cymem would be welcome.\n\n~~~\nsyllogism\nUsing Jinja2 for macros is an interesting idea. You could try cog instead?\n[https://www.python.org/about/success/cog/](https://www.python.org/about/success/cog/)\n\nCurrently I don't do any macros at all, although the temptation is definitely\nstrong. I have some code that could otherwise be more generic than it is.\n\nI guess a quick tip/pattern would be to use structs as data containers, with a\ncdef class defined as a \"shell\", to provide access, but not actually hold the\ndata.\n\nAdvantages of this over standard cdef class: Data is contiguous in memory;\nData can be stack allocated; Data can be stored in C" -"\nIs graphene a miracle material? - fun2have\nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9491789.stm\n======\nCoffeeDregs\nGraphene and, more generally, carbon nanotubes are exciting because they have\nsomething-for-everyone. Silicon, plastics, water are examples of molecules or\nstructures that have also been spun into important applications for just about\nevery vertical. I suspect we'll seem carbon nanotube products explode over the\nnext 20 years just as plastics did over the last 40.\n\nThe article focuses a bit on whether graphene can replace silicon, which I\nthink kind of misses the point. The material will enable exciting _new_\napplications rather than merely transforming existing ones.\n\nI'm also kinda bummed that this kind of research doesn't have a higher profile\nin the US. This is high-ass-tech and is probably an area in which our oil\ncompanies could play a very large role with their competencies at running\nlarge, highly complex, raw material production systems.\n\n~~~\nSwellJoe\nReading this article brought to mind this scene in _The Graduate_ :\n\nMr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.\n\nBenjamin: Yes, sir.\n\nMr. McGuire: Are you listening?\n\nBenjamin: Yes, I am.\n\nMr. McGuire: Plastics.\n\nBenjamin: Exactly how do you mean?\n\nSo, I'm wondering how and where" -"\nKanban \u2013 The Secret Engineer Killer - bdehaaff\nhttp://blog.aha.io/index.php/kanban-the-secret-engineer-killer/\n======\nraisinbread\nIf you just read the subtitles, I'd almost think your article was a piece in\n_favor_ of Kanban.\n\nEngineers aren't assembly workers: so why do other methodologies seem to be so\nprescriptive on what can be accomplished in a given time frame? New problems\narise, priorities shift, and unexpected news arrives. I appreciate the\nflexibility of a pull-type system because it lets me transparently show what\nI'm working on.\n\nI've really hated telling people no or watching a manager struggle to change\nup something we really need just because it doesn't fit in the right shape\ntime box or might affect the current sprint's plans.\n\nYou can't trust yourself: I always ended up hating sprint planning meetings\nwhere \"points\" are a constant source of conflict between stakeholders and\nestimates are fantastical. These sort of meetings just allow the quality knob\nto turn down while scope and schedule remain fixed. Having an entire team\nminimizes estimates problems, but for the effort involved I'm not sure the\ngains are worth it.\n\nAlso, I think you may have inadvertently taken Anderson's quote out of context\nas well\u2014Kanban isn't a way to run" -"\nPandoc Markdown and ReST Compared (2013) - hidden-markov\nhttp://www.unexpected-vortices.com/doc-notes/markdown-and-rest-compared.html\n======\negh\nThe really nice thing about ReST is that it has provided generic syntax for\nextensions, one for inline text: :foo:`hello world` and for blocks:\n\n.. extension:: hello world\n\nIn markdown, on the other hand, you have multiple, incompatible versions which\nhave entirely different syntax because there is no generic extension\nmechanism.\n\nReST feels more well thought-out, generally.\n\nThat said, I've pretty much given up advocating it, because markdown seems to\nhave won and has so much more tool support.\n\n~~~\nBruceM\nI like ReST as well. With Sphinx, it is great for producing documentation. A\nproject that I work with has converted hundreds of pages of books of technical\ndocumentation over to Sphinx and a custom Sphinx extension.\n\n~~~\nfprintf\nI like ReST as well.\n\nIt's more powerful and looks much cleaner\n\n// e.g. how do you write footnotes in markdown? And how do you do this in\nmarkdown?\n\n \n \n +------------+------------+-----------+\n | Header 1 | Header 2 | Header 3 |\n +============+============+===========+\n | body row 1 | column 2 | column 3 |\n +------------+------------+-----------+\n | body row 2 | Cells may span columns.|\n +------------+------------+-----------+\n | body row 3 | Cells" -"\n\nAsk HN: Why doesn't HN open submitted links in a new tab? - anilm823\n\nA bit trivial, I know, but I've always found it slightly annoying to have to press the back button to return to HN or explicitly right click and open the link in a new tab myself. Why doesn't HN automatically open external links in a new tab?\n======\ndangrossman\nHold control when you click to open a link in a new tab. You can also middle-\nclick if you have a mouse. Hold shift and click to open in a new window. Where\na link opens is in your control, as it should be.\n\n~~~\nanilm823\nI'm aware of the ways to force open a new tab, I was just curious as to why\nthis wasn't the default. IMO, it provides for a friendlier user experience.\n\n~~~\ndangrossman\nIf a website forces a new tab when you don't want to open a new tab (as I\ndon't), that's not friendly at all. There's no easy way to override that\nbehavior, while it's easy to get the behavior you want.\n\n------\nwmf\nBecause that's how it was done in Web 1.0. Also, I always thought sites\ncreated" -"\n\nExclusive Interview: Hacking The iPhone Through SMS - edw519\nhttp://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hacking-iphone-security,2384.html\n\n======\ntptacek\n_Charlie: The iPhone bug has to do with telling the phone there is a certain\namount of data, and then not sending it as much as you said you would. The\nfunction that reads the data starts returning -1 to indicate an error, but the\nother parts of the program don't check for this error and actually think the\n-1 is data from the message. This shows how complex it can be to write secure\ncode, as separately, each part of the program looks correct, but the way they\ninteract is dangerous!_\n\nOUCH.\n\nIf there's an industry contest I'd like to referee now, it's fuzzers vs.\nstatic analysis. Industry spends a cubic shit-ton on static analysis (for\ninstance, find an F-500 that doesn't have a couple copies of Fortify gathering\ndust). But fuzzers appear to be kicking ass in terms of actual findings, and\nvendors don't invest nearly as much into them.\n\n(Static analyzers parse and symbolically analyze source code or binaries\nagainst rules, like taint propagation and API blacklists; fuzzers mimic actual\ninputs to real running systems and vary those inputs maliciously over minutes,\nhours, or days)." -"\n\nTell HN: App idea that should become reality - stasy\n\nI would pay for an app that allowed me to take a picture of a reading/pages of a book and get a summary for it. This would be incredibly useful for schoolwork.\nBasically like summly, but the summarized text isn't from some news site, but from the place you want it from (preferably a picture).\nIf you make this and have it as an iPhone app, please tell me about it, and I will definitely buy it: aeip@live.com\n======\nnklas\nI would like an OCR app that, when launched, just OCR's the latest photo i've\ntaken and put the resulting text in the clipboard.\n\nExample use case: You're in a hotel and want to connect to the WiFi so instead\nof looking at their sign and typing in the password by hand, you just take a\nphoto and launch the app and then paste the password where needed.\n\nWould also be good for power users with apps like Launch Center and\npythonista.\n\n------\nbuss\nOr go one level down - I'd pay for a good OCR library and a good summarization\nlibrary. The current OCR offerings are too difficult to" -"\n\nHow to make breaking changes and not break all the things - mceachen\nhttp://matthew.mceachen.us/blog/how-to-make-breaking-changes-and-not-break-all-the-things-1315.html?hn\n\n======\nlsh123\nOne important point is missing from the article: make sure to have\nunit/functional tests to run to make sure your changes are indeed are not\nbreaking anything.\n\n~~~\nmceachen\nAbsolutely. Thanks. I've added Step 0 to reference this, and added an\nattribution at the end of the post.\n\nOne thing that surprised me when I started at Twitter was the requirement for\n_every line of code_ to be reviewed by another engineer\u2014and if you change or\nadd implementation, you can't ship if there isn't corresponding test changes\nor additions. More tests isn't a panacea, of course, though. There's\ndefinitely a spectrum of good, explanatory tests and tests-that-just-cement-\nthe-implementation-details.\n\n~~~\nlsh123\nThe automated tests are not panacea of course. Yet, you need to have enough\ntests to give you confidence that the change indeed is breaking nothing. It is\none story to perform a deep refactoring on a C++ or Java code with 95% tests\ncode coverage where either compiler or tests will pickup things for you. And\nit is a completely another story to do a refactoring on a PHP frontend code\nw/o any" -"\n\n300 million year old fossilized forest discovered under coal mine in China - yogrish\nhttp://www.zmescience.com/research/studies/300-million-year-old-fossil-forest-china-906854/\n\n======\nnhebb\nIt's too bad they just show a reconstructed image of what the forest looked\nlike. I would really like to see what the fossilized remains of an _\"almost\nperfectly preserved 298 million year-old forest\"_ looks like rather than an\nartist's rendering.\n\n~~~\njws\nThe journal article supporting information has pictures.\n\n[http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2012/02/15/1115076109.DCSu...](http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2012/02/15/1115076109.DCSupplemental/pnas.201115076SI.pdf)\n\n\u2026 don't despair at the little line chart, scroll down.\n\n~~~\nlibraryatnight\nWhen they described it as being like Pompeii my imagination might have gotten\nthe best of me and expected too much :) Very cool photos nonetheless\n\n------\nMithrandir\nHere's the direct link to the original article in case you're interested:\n\n\n------\nitsmequinn\nI guess researchers dubbed it, \"the whole of the article from line 10, word 7\nthrough the end?\n\n~~~\nShanewho\nHa, I know.. I couldn't tell if it is \"Pompeii\" or \"Pompeii of the Permian\nperiod\". I hate that professional articles have so many typos in them these\ndays.\n\n------\nshingen\n300 million years...\n\nnow that's an impressive timeline" -"\nAsk HN: Taking over a in life product \u2013 no documentation. What do I need? - rayray07\nI am taking over an existing product but there is no documentation/very poor institutional memory so I am effectively starting from scratch. What are the key things I need to learn and document to make a success of managing it in life?

I have 30 days with the existing product manager before they leave the company.\n======\nzer00eyz\nPM's are gold or garbage, there is almost no in-between.\n\nYou want on boarding, monetization, metrics, goals attempted, successes and\nmost importantly \"what failed\".\n\nLet me say \"metrics\" again, what are they measuring, how, and what is and\nisn't working in NUMBERS. (If you don't have these god help you)\n\nWhile your looking at things from a customer perspective, you should be\nlooking at things from a storage perspective.\n\nWhere ever your data is stored, it is likely you can auto generate a schema\nfrom some sort of tool. Make these, print them out, hang them on the wall. Why\ndead trees? Because your going to wanna write notes on it, if you can't it's\nuseless.\n\nWhy does storage matter? Because knowing what is there, and" -"\nI've never felt less in control of my own hardware - mildbyte\nhttps://kimonote.com/@mildbyte/ive-never-felt-less-in-control-of-my-own-hardware-14804/\n======\njimmies\n>In 2016, when I got a new phone, the default setting changed and I would just\nwake up to my device stating, \"Tinder has been updated. Deal with it\".\n\nI turned off auto-updates on my phone.\n\nSo this happened. Last year or so I traveled to SF and tried to call an Uber\nhome after a long day of walking around. My phone had 5% battery left. I\nopened the app and there it was... The maps and everything showed up, but then\nit blocked the UI with the message: \"You haven't updated the app in a month.\nUber won't work if you don't update it right now.\" It really rustled my\njimmies. In the next 15 minutes, 3 of us (2 are foreigners with no cell\nconnection) had to stand in the freezing rain when the damn thing was updating\nwith my 2.5G connection. When the Uber arrived, I had 1% left and not long\nafter I got in the car, my phone shut down. I was so worried the phone would\ndie before the car arrived.\n\nThe other day I talked about how" -"\n\nAsk HN: How to Give College Students a Taste of Real World Development? - xerophyte12932\n\nHi! I am arranging a sort of workshop for college students and I want to expose them to professional development. A tentative list of things I want them to learn:

- How to write code with long-term considerations

- How to make our code flexible to future changes

- Importance of User Experience

- Developer-Friendly Code

- How Business considerations affect Technical decisions

- The right way to work in a dev team

Does anybody have any suggestion on what to add to the list or general tips on how to go about teaching them all this?\n======\ndalke\nI once taught a short course in usability. I used an exercise I learned from\nsomeone else: design the controls for a microwave oven. Given them a set of\nrequirements and have them do a paper prototype. Partway through, change the\ndesign slightly. (In mine, started with the assumption that the time could be\nset automatically from the mobile phone network, then I added the requirement\nthat it needed to be set manually.) Then have them do user testing for\nscenarios which test those requirements.\n\nI used someone who wasn't in the class" -"\nInstant 8-bit alpha PNG converter - ck2\nhttp://www.8bitalpha.com/\n======\npornel\nI've got improved pngquant that gives significantly better results than\noriginal version, gd2 library and often rivals pngnq:\n\n\n\nIt is a bit slow (converts image several times feeding back result's quality\nback to the algorithm), but difference in quality is significant:\n\n \\- converted via website\n\n \\- converted with pngquant 1.3\n\n~~~\naw3c2\nAny chance to build this with libpng14? I think compiling fails for me because\nI do have that modern version installed and not libpng12.\n\n~~~\npornel\nIt definitely works with 1.4.1, but the bundled Makefile sucks.\n\nJust compile *.c and link it against libpng in whatever way your system\nrequires.\n\n~~~\naw3c2\nThanks!\n\nI am clueless when it comes to compiling though so for me that stop right at\n\"linking\". I only know that that has something to do with those .o files. :-)\n\nI did find and just installed that.\n\n------\nthingsinjars\nWow, I go on holiday away from a decent internet connection and next thing you\nknow, HN front page. Urk.\n\nHope it all works well for everyone. As mentioned, the source is all on github\n() so if there are any" -"\nPartial password usability sucks - gaevoy\nhttps://gaevoy.com/2019/03/06/partial-password-sucks.html\n======\ninetknght\n> _The idea is good it gives you an extra layer of protection against password\n> theft (link 1, link 2, link 3)._\n\nThat sounds obnoxiously insecure on the back-end. Notoriously, the most broken\nauthentication mechanisms used plaintext (or reversibly encrypted) storage.\nThe answers to the three security questions that the article links to also\npoint this out.\n\nSounds like ING Poland needs to be called out by some security researchers.\n\n[0]\n[https://security.stackexchange.com/a/194818/47800](https://security.stackexchange.com/a/194818/47800)\n\n[1]\n[https://security.stackexchange.com/a/7479/47800](https://security.stackexchange.com/a/7479/47800)\n\n[2]\n[https://security.stackexchange.com/a/196430/47800](https://security.stackexchange.com/a/196430/47800)\n\n~~~\najuc\nWhat's more likely - that the bank gets hacked, or that you install a\nkeylogger?\n\nAlso there are ways to implement this without keeping the whole password in\nplaintext/reversibly encrypted. One example I just thought of:\n\nAsk for 75% of the password each time, remember random 1/3rd of that (25% of\nfull password) till the next login together with the hash, and on the next\nlogin ask for all the letters you haven't remembered (and fill the ones you\nremembered, then hash everything and compare).\n\nYou can adjust the percentages as needed if having 25% of the password in\nclear text is too insecure.\n\n~~~\ninetknght\n> _What 's more likely -" -"\n\nAsk HN: Do you listen to country music? - 0xdeadbeefbabe\n\nDoes it help?\n======\nrelaunched\nI love country music. More so than other genres I've listened to, country\nmusic has such a range. It can be upbeat and cheery, pump you up, change your\nmood, sooth your soul, provide empathy, be simple & complex...It speaks to me,\nno matter what mood I'm in or what's going on in my life. I'm sure others feel\nthe same way about whatever music they listen to, but for me, it's country.\n\nIf you listen to it long enough, someone has sung about whatever exact, or\nalmost exact, experience you have gone through. I like that.\n\n------\nmod\nI like some country music, but don't listen to a lot of it.\n\nI listen to stuff that might be mistaken for it, though! The Avett Brothers,\nNickel Creek, Trampled by Turtles.\n\nFolk music, but people who think badly of country music usually don't like\nbanjos, either, and can't make the distinction in genre.\n\n------\nbenologist\nHelp what?\n\n------\npartisan\nNo and Yes!\n\n------\nRed_\nYes and No!\n\n------\nbrickcap\nYes I do and it helps me to relax :)\n\n------\njonnynezbo\nSturgill Simpson and Chris" -"\nGo version 1 is released - enneff\nhttp://blog.golang.org/2012/03/go-version-1-is-released.html\n======\nSpoonMeiser\n\"We're announcing Go version 1, or Go 1 for short\"\n\nI foresee the next version being considered harmful.\n\n~~~\nmasterponomo\nAhem. Beat you by a mile (or 173 days):\n\n\n\n~~~\nespeed\nIn case anyone is wondering: \n\n------\nbgentry\nCongrats to the Go team! I've been looking forward to this release for a\nwhile. Go makes it easy to do some very complex things, and much of this can\nbe attributed to the wonderfully built standard library.\n\nFor those interested, you can run Go apps on Heroku using this buildpack:\n\n\n_Note: you may need to use the #rc branch until its changes are merged in\nmaster_\n\n------\nexch\nI've been using Go for 2 years now. It's been a lot of fun. It certainly\nbrought fun back into programming for me. Very happy to see the 1.0 release\nhitting the public. Congratulations to the Go team and contributors for a job\nvery well done!\n\n~~~\nfmstephe\nMy god. Go is _so_ much fun to program. Apart from it's technical pedigree\nthis is its most remarkable feature.\n\n~~~\nolliesaunders\nEssential question: what makes it fun?\n\n~~~\nfmstephe\nFor me" -"\nInternet Archive responds to publishers\u2019 lawsuit - ghastmaster\nhttps://blog.archive.org/2020/07/29/internet-archive-responds-to-publishers-lawsuit/\n======\nilamont\n> These publishers call for the destruction of the 1.5 million digital books\n> that Internet Archive makes available to our patrons. This form of digital\n> book burning is unprecedented and unfairly disadvantages people with print\n> disabilities.\n\nIt's a stretch to call this a book burning. It is not a politically motivated\ncampaign to destroy books, or a witch hunt to root out deviant social or\nreligious teachings. It's a dispute over copyright law.\n\nIn addition, I thought the justification for expanding controlled digital\nlending was around COVID-19, not rights for people who have low vision. Was\nthis issue a central part of the the IA's reasoning before the lawsuit?\n\n------\nghastmaster\n[https://archive.org/details/internet-archive-\nanswer](https://archive.org/details/internet-archive-answer) \\- Defense Filing\n\nI'm seeing more and more \"503 Service unavailable\" on the waybackmachine." -"\nTrump issues executive orders with effective bans of TikTok, WeChat - lvturner\nhttps://www.cnet.com/news/trump-issues-executive-orders-with-effective-bans-of-tiktok-wechat/\n======\nTraster\nI would imagine this is going to be struck down by a court not because he\ndoesn't have the power to do this, but because he'll have failed to adhere to\na fair process in coming up with this - the same reason that his DACA decision\nwas over-turned by the supreme court.\n\n------\ntellarin\nThis also potentially has many ramifications in different industries. Tencent\n(owner of WeChat) is a big investor in media and entertainment companies. One\nside effect, for example, is blocking financial payments to Riot Games, Epic\nGames, Fortnite, and half the gaming industry.\n\n~~~\njimmygrapes\nThe current wording seems to apply only to transactions involving WeChat,\nleaving Tencent's other holdings alone... for now.\n\n------\nnicbou\n> The concern stems from the data that TikTok and WeChat collects on their US\n> users, as well as the perceived inability of Chinese companies like\n> ByteDance and TenCent to reject requests from China's ruling Communist Party\n> (CCP) access that data\n\nIsn't this exactly what US companies have been doing to their users? Isn't it\nalso what the US government has been trying" -"\n\nBegginer in C. Critique my code and give ideas? - zeved\nhttps://github.com/zeved/znote\n\n======\nzeved\nHello HN. I'm trying to learn / relearn C (for real this time). Wrote this\nlittle tool for linux and I would like some feedback. Also, if you could give\nme some ideas for future small projects that would give me more experience in\nC... thanks!\n\n~~~\nplikan13\n\n int get_number(char buffer[])\n {\n long int i = 0;\n char *p;\n if(fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin) != NULL)\n {\n \n\nsizeof(buffer) will always be 4 (or 8 if you compile 64 bit) because\nsizeof(pointer to char) is 4 (or 8). It will NOT be the size of the buffer\nthat you pass as an argument. To fix this problem you need to change the\nfunction to\n\n \n \n int get_number(char buffer[], int buffer_size)\n \n\nAlso the buffers that you pass to this function seem to be too small.\n\n~~~\nzeved\nthank you very much. i appreciate it!" -"\n\nShow HN: my weekend project, whatsnerdy.com - hanzenlim\nhttp://whatsnerdy.com/\n\n======\nmgurlitz\nVery cool site. Looks like you might have a Unicode problem: \"Show HN: My\nGithub r\u00c3\u00a9sum\u00c3\u00a9\"\n\n------\nbrianfryer\nIs there something that you can do about the floating social bar?\n\nOn iOS, it hovers over some of the content :-(\n\n\n\nOther than that, though... YAY!\n\n~~~\nhanzenlim\nthnx for letting me know, ill fix it asap :)\n\n~~~\nautophil\nThe floating social bar is still there on my iOS, and it's disruptive. Please\nfix. Great site otherwise.\n\n~~~\nhanzenlim\nfixed it, should work now. sorry it took me a while :O\n\n------\neatitraw\nAdded to bookmarks! It may become my favourite website for procrastination. :)\n\nWhat I don't like is two-column layout: it makes title boxes have uneven\nheight. Even both columns have different weights. It would be nice to see\nnumbered list for sites with numbered postings - like HN(of course, if it's\nnot by design, for example, if your project uses custom ranking and selection\nsystems for publications).\n\n------\nmforsberg\nI really like the sources and amount of content you picked out. Good choice of\na domain as well.\n\nBut like sangupta and amirf I think" -"\nWelcome to OpenBSD [pdf] - fcambus\nhttp://devio.us/~bcallah/rcos2015.pdf\n======\nMartinMond\n> Random PIDs > Eliminates race conditions > Say you have a root daemon that\n> forks then the child drops privileges. If you can beat the child you can\n> inherit root privileges\n\nCan someone explain this? I don't see what this has to do with the randomness\nof pids.\n\n~~~\ngrkvlt\nSomething like after the parent forks, the child opens a file called\n\"/tmp/log.$$\" with its PID in the name as root. If you can guess the PID of\nthe child, you could create a link with that name, pointing at a file of your\nchoice that is owned by root, such as \"/etc/passwd\". Then, you need to make\nthe child do something predictable to that file, such as ensuring that the\nuser supplied data being logged contains text like \"\\npwn::0:0::/:/bin/sh\\n\"\ngiving you a valid password file entry for \"pwn\" with no password and root\nprivileges.\n\n~~~\nxorcist\nPredictable file names in tmp is considered a security issue pretty much\neverywhere (hence mkstemp), so I would guess that's not what they mean.\n\n------\nwalterbell\nTheo's opinion notwithstanding, what's the best virtualization platform to run\nOpenBSD?\n\nThere's a project to" -"\nJohn Carmack's BAFTA Introduction, Speech and Interview [video] - nailer\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyjJrF2gJ34\n======\ndb1\nReally inspiring. I really loved his comment about how there are always new\nopportunities and new waves for people to ride. This is something I've always\npersonally struggled with, the feeling that everything has already been done\nand that I've missed the boat.\n\nI guess a lot of these things are only obvious in hindsight. People are\nexploring all sorts of ideas right now, but it won't be obvious which ones are\nthe winners and the losers until 10 years from now.\n\n~~~\njacobolus\nDepending how far down the ladder you go, some ideas take longer than that.\n\nFor example, geometric algebra, invented by Hermann Grassmann more than 150\nyears ago, is the biggest \u201cnew\u201d idea in mathematical modeling of geometry, and\nit\u2019ll probably take another 50 years more to percolate down throughout math\neducation and physics and engineering practice.\n\n~~~\n9erdelta\nDo you have any interesting reads about geometric algebra being the \"new\"\nthing?\n\n~~~\ntheoh\nNot the parent poster, but I have some experience of geometric algebra being\npromoted as a superior language for geometric computing. This started for me\nin the first year of" -"\nMySpace replaces all server hard disks with flash drives - Flemlord\nhttp://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139280/MySpace_replaces_all_server_hard_disks_with_flash_drives\n======\nseiji\nThe article is a blatant advertisement. Let me counter-advertise with my\nexperiences here.\n\nWe did evaluations of a Fusion-io ioDrive card and a Texas Memory Systems\nRamSan card [1] recently. The ioDrive had strange performance characteristics\n(but nicely designed packaging). We ended up going with a few RamSan cards\n(though, they have much uglier packaging).\n\nWe have a few high throughput MySQL instances that needed to perform better.\nThe database in question is only a few hundred gigabytes in size, so it's a\nperfect fit for the current generation of server flash cards.\n\nOur path for improving improving performance went:\n\n \n \n - Started off with 32GB RAM and RAID-10 on SAS disks.\n - iowait sat between 10% and 15% constantly.\n - Moved up to 64GB RAM.\n - iowait cut in half.\n - Installed RamSan card and moved mysql with all databases to it.\n - iowait became negligible.\n \n\nNow the server sits there with a few hundred gigabytes of flash, 64GB RAM, and\nit looks completely idle on usage graphs, but it's serving data faster than\never.\n\nThey are nice devices if you can afford them (and tolerate" -"\nMy view on the current situation of Bitcoin and the Blockchain - chejazi\nhttp://joi.ito.com/weblog/2016/02/22/my-view-on-the-.html\n======\npash\nBrian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, wrote a blog post [0] today that gives a\nvery different take on things. He criticized Bitcoin Core's development team\nfor their poor communication with the community, for their inhospitality to\nnew contributors, and for their repeated rejection of practical and simple\nsolutions to Bitcoin's immediate scaling problem. He advocated adopting\nBitcoin Classic's short-term fix for full transaction blocks and wrote that it\nis vital in the long term to foster an environment in which multiple\ndevelopment teams can compete to introduce new features and improvements to\nthe protocol.\n\nThere are many people in the Bitcoin ecosystem who, like Brian, feel strongly\nthat if Bitcoin is to survive and thrive, then not only must the blocksize-\nlimit be increased, but the exclusive power to decide the future of Bitcoin\nmust be taken out of the hands of the Bitcoin Core team.\n\n0\\. [https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-\nsatoshi-...](https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-\nroundtable-6c11a10d8cdf#.xw7emyjhh)\n\n~~~\nfsiefken\nYes, but there are also people - like Bram Cohen - who view Coinbase, Bitcoin\nClassic and others as a hostile agents attempting to take over control. Also\nsee: [https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-community-on-\nbrink-o...](https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-community-on-brink-of-" -"\nHosting for Node.js apps done right - kertof\nhttp://www.evennode.com/\n======\npkorzeniewski\nOne question - does it support TCP sockets? I've evaluated a dozen or so\nNode.js hosting solutions and none (0, null, nil) supported TCP sockets.\nHTTP/S and WebSockets only. It's ridiculous - a TCP server is a major use case\nfor Node.js and yet if you want to host it, you must configure and\nadministrate your own server (on EC2 or whatever).\n\n~~~\nDuhck\nWe had the same problem. We actually wanted to use Heroku just for pre-\nproduction as it was the easiest to deploy / manage, but their TCP socket\nimplementation is such a joke.\n\nWe would up just using AWS, and sunk a few days into dev / sys ops.\n\nI would happily pay for a solution to this problem\n\n~~~\nyannski\nCould you elaborate a bit on \"their TCP socket implementation is such a joke\"\n? Are you talking about the Ruppell's Sockets addon ? What's your problem with\nit ? What could be an improvement to it ?\n\n~~~\npkorzeniewski\nI've also evaluated Heroku and the Ruppell's Sockets, so I can answer this\nfrom my point of view. The problem is that it's a" -"\n\nComparing Standard ML and OCaml - rohshall\nhttp://adam.chlipala.net/mlcomp/\n\n======\nWilya\nRegarding build systems, ocamlbuild is included with the standard ocaml\ndistribution and gives a high-level interface that is much simpler to use than\nocamldep and friends. Especially when combined with findlib.\n\n~~~\nnrlucas\nYeah, this is really old. I remember seeing it six years ago when I started\nusing OCaml.\n\n------\nbeering\nNothing said about multithreading and parallel processing? Seems like a big\nomission if you're comparing languages.\n\n~~~\nrwmj\nThe user group explicitly rejected multithreading at the OCaml Users\nconference a couple of years back. (There was a working implementation called\noc4mc).\n\nThe reasons were that it will slow down single-threaded performance, and\nthreads as a programming model is not robust (compared to, eg. forking,\nmessage passing, MPI etc). Also actual graphs of 4- and 8-way SMP performance\nshowed pretty poor scaling for real problems, so the benefits aren't that\ngreat compared to going for full MPI, which you have to do for NUMA anyhow.\n\n~~~\nEvbn\nGHC has a compiler flag to enable multi threaded runtime. Why can't OCaml have\nthat? It is a bit rigid to have to build two versions of a binary, but for\nfolks" -"\n\nAsk HN: is devving on OSX legit *nix experience? - delinquentme\n\nSo I'm going back and forth about the OS for my new dev machine. Will I be getting good experience with *nix using the \"just works\" OSX.

That being said I'm guessing the inital answer is \"No its not\"\n======\ntom9729\nI developed on Linux for 5-6 years before switching over to OS X on my main\nmachine.\n\nInstalling xcode (3 is free, 4 costs a small fee) gives you GCC4 on the\ncommand line, plus some other tools/libs. Note: I've never actually used the\nxcode IDE, I use Emacs.\n\nYou can also install a rootless X11 server and run X applications in it. Wine\non mac actually uses this, and I've been using it to play Homeworld 2.\n\nMost of the cross-platforms IDEs that you would probably be using (if you're\nthat kind of guy) in Linux are available on mac. Take a look at QtCreator,\nEclipse, Netbeans.\n\nMac comes with Java and Python installed. If you do C/C++ development the only\nreal differences are that some libraries are installed as \"frameworks\" instead\nof in the usual /usr/lib (eg. you link with -framework OpenGL). Also the\ndynamic libraries are" -"\n\nAsk HN: Good forum for hobbyish ARM(industrial) design discussions and advice? - trotsky\n\nHave some embedded, board level integration experience, nothing really - getting simple boards masked for low density shit. Broadly interested in learning about the next level in ARM board level design (call it cubbie board esque). But I've zero luck finding such a place - it's either raspi/arduino folks (not a diss), folks mostly repurposing android mobile or net tops for software, or the people who are really on the supply side - either they are talking about building the newest open mobile designs with the cheapest bom in chinese i can only half follow, or they are the real deal talking about modular soc components and electronic interface issues with off soc component count vs oem ability to implement. And high cost IP.

I am hoping to for something in english (ha! I'll survive) or just anything that might be suitable. An HN sorta thing where people often have a clue would rock, but the big missing piece is picking soc->minimal reference board revisions->build or source some custom stuff to give the arm some supervoisor like qualities on the x86.

To balance a zero content post, I provide" -"\nBitcoin\u2019s Technical Flaw - nanzhong\nhttps://medium.com/@nanzhong1/bitcoins-technical-flaw-3569fc0f7c2d\n======\nA2017U1\nThis reads like an ad for a closed source messenger only available in a few\ncountries. Have no idea how its related to bitcoin. Clicks perhaps?\n\nI have plenty of criticisms for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general but\nsome of the claims here are amazingly absurd.\n\nNote to author: I have used a bitcoin wallet with no troubles in China, it has\nbetter uptime in the last decade than Amazon where you worked with\n\"distributed computing systems\", can your messenger app do the same?\n\n> just imagine that the Great Firewall blocks Bitcoin packets for a week,\n> creating a Chinese fork and non-Chinese fork. Then it unblocks. All of a\n> sudden, the non-Chinese fork would disappear. The Bitcoins that went into\n> your wallet six days ago would vanish\n\nThe fact that the author doesn't understand how wrong this is despite\napparently studying Bitcoin as an AWS employee back in 2010 is scary.\n\n~~~\nnanzhong\nI am the author. I'd love to understand your point. Can you give specifics?\nThanks.\n\n~~~\nA2017U1\nYou essentially point to a very large reorganisation and say all the tx's on\nthe global chain will" -"\nObama's Trauma Team: Inside the Nightmare Launch of HealthCare.Gov - Realskeptic\nhttp://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2166770,00.html\n======\nbrandonb\nI've been working on healthcare.gov for the last few months alongside a bunch\nof other Google, Facebook, and Y Combinator alums.\n\nI'll always remember what Mikey told us in December, after the site was back\nup, could handle a non-trivial amount of traffic, and people who wanted health\ninsurance could finally get it:\n\n\"1 in 1000 uninsured people die each year. It's not an exaggeration to say\nthat due to the work we're doing here, 5,000-10,000 people will live to see\nthe end of 2014. You should be proud of what you've done, but we should also\nall be grateful to have this opportunity.\"\n\nWe're all grateful to be here, but there's a hell of a lot more work to be\ndone.\n\nIf any of you out there are an amazing software engineer or SRE, and want to\nhelp make our government work better, please shoot me an email:\nbrandon@hcgov.us!\n\n~~~\nwooter\n\"1 in 1000 uninsured people die each year. It's not an exaggeration to say\nthat due to the work we're doing here, 5,000-10,000 people will live to see\nthe end of 2014. You should" -"\nChops \u2013 Make beats with your voice - gregsadetsky\nhttps://www.getchops.app/\n======\ngregsadetsky\nHey HN! We're Tristan & Greg from Chops\n[https://www.getchops.app/](https://www.getchops.app/) . Chops is an iOS music\nmaking app that lets you make beats with your voice. We're currently running a\nclosed TestFlight beta, and are planning to launch soon.\n\nTristan and I are both musically inclined without being professional\nmusicians. Our Voice Memos apps are filled with bits of song ideas that we\nrecorded as inspiration struck. An issue we've seen with recording these\nsnippets is that 1) you can't layer your voice easily without using a\nspecialized looper app and 2) it always sounds... like your voice. We're not\npro beatboxers, so our \"voice drums\" don't sound that great. Enter Chops.\n\nWe've designed a way to create drum tracks using your voice -- you \"sing\" the\ndrums and then pick a drum sound (kick, snare, hi-hats, etc.). Check out the\nvideo on our page to get an idea of how it works.\n\nWe're super excited to push this idea much further, and to make music making\nmore accessible, intuitive and fun. We feel that there should be a larger\noverlap between music \"fans\" \\-- this includes people that" -"\nTeaching my 10-year-old daughter to program - RobbieStats\nhttps://unsupervisedmethods.com/teaching-my-10-year-old-daughter-to-program-9e2d7963938\n======\nbridge_ro\nThis is really cool. I tried introducing my 7 year old daughter to programming\nover the weekend and, while she was interested in being able to make things, I\nhad a hard time keeping her attention (which is probably a reflection more on\nmy lack of teaching ability). Maybe I'll give her a few more years and try\nagain.\n\n------\nrem1313\nI have an old Thinkpad x61 lying around. What would be the best way to\nintroduce a 7-year-old to programming? I plan to be heavily involved of\ncourse. Can anybody recommend Linux distro that is responsive and programming\nenviroment? From the looks of it, Scratch requires Flash...\n\n~~~\nMuges\n> From the looks of it, Scratch requires Flash...\n\nSnap may be a good flash-free alternative:\n[http://snap.berkeley.edu](http://snap.berkeley.edu)\n\n~~~\nrem1313\nThanks!" -"\n\nSold my startup for nothing just before it took off. Now i'm broke. Need advice. - ahugefool\n\nHow do you recover from a success (first success after a multitude of failures) that you let slip through your fingers - by selling just before it took off?

It is eating me alive. I'm almost back to square one (broke, no ideas) and can hardly hold myself together.<p>I try to pump myself up to try something new but the thought that had i held on just a little longer i wouldn't even be in this position saps my productivity.

Faced with the prospect of having to reenter the job market (after having actually built something that works) is a nightmare that i never thought would be realised. But here i am.

Every day - completely paralysed by the outcome of my decision.

Really would appreciate anyone's advice here.Thank you.\n======\nDocG\nCongratulations!\n\nYou managed more than most of the start-ups! Your idea was worth it and it\nwill go and change part of the world. It was your doing.\n\nBy now, you have experience in starting, you have confirmation on your ideas.\nThis is bigger win in long term.\n\nBummer that you didn't get paid in" -"\n\nShame on you Microsoft, for buying a Promoted Tweet for \"Firefox\". - rbanffy\nhttp://twitpic.com/4c6nth\n\n======\nrch\nActually, that's kinda awesome. Talk about effective use of marketing.\n\n------\nsamgro\nWhy is that shameful? Buying AdWords for competitor searches on Google is\nstandard practice, why should Twitter be any different?\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nCompeting aggressively against a non-profit? Classy!\n\n~~~\nsamgro\nHow does Firefox's tax status have anything to do with Microsoft's business\nobjectives? I hate IE as much as the next guy, but I don't see how Microsoft\nmarketing their business is morally questionable just because their competitor\ngets tax breaks and doesn't pay dividends to shareholders.\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nWhat would you think of a paid-but-cheap clinic with shady methods and far-\nfrom-best care practices (let's say they kill or mutilate 2% of their\npatients) that targets search-advertisements towards people in need of free\nhealthcare?\n\nOh, and according to Tom Warren, of Winrumors, \"The company was quick to trash\nthe marketing stunt after complaints started rolling-in on the social\nnetworking site.\" so, they probably realize it didn't get down well with the\npublic.\n\n~~~\nsamgro\nI agree that IE is a bad product, and that this marketing campaign may even\nhave been" -"\n\nIntel Disables TSX Instructions - wglb\nhttp://www.anandtech.com/show/8376/intel-disables-tsx-instructions-erratum-found-in-haswell-haswelleep-broadwelly\n\n======\ncomex\nIncidentally, it's obnoxious that the enthusiast K series CPUs always had them\ndisabled, as well as VT-d (IOMMU) and vPro. While the current implementation\nof TSX may be immature, and mainly useful 'just' for hardware lock elision,\ni.e. some percentage boost (although isn't maximizing performance the whole\npoint of K series?)... in principle it could eventually allow new models of\nprogramming to be practical, without the huge overhead of STM, so it should be\nas widely available as possible. And VT-d, while useful for server-level\nvirtualization (as the name suggests), is also required for security against\nDMA attacks.\n\n~~~\ncclements\nI agree, that's really annoying. Thankfully it looks like they may be slowly\nintroducing some of these features to the K line. The 4790k for example is the\nfirst k chip that advertises support for VT-d. Still no vPro though.\n\n[http://ark.intel.com/compare/80806,80807](http://ark.intel.com/compare/80806,80807)\n\n------\nJoshTriplett\nEverybody still seems to be referencing the original news story, which in turn\nreferenced a tweet. Nobody seems to have a clue what the actual errata is;\nlooking forward to seeing the explanation of the bug and the conditions under\nwhich it can occur.\n\n------\nkazinator\nMuch discussion" -"\n\nGetting all your data out of Google Reader - kellegous\nhttp://blog.persistent.info/2013/06/getting-all-your-data-out-of-google.html\n\n======\nsp332\nArchiveTeam is extracting _all_ the data from Google Reader and uploading it\nto the Internet Archive. Help out by submitting your OPML file:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5958119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5958119)\n\n------\nnod\nThanks mihaip!\n\nWorked successfully in Windows CMD for me, without using the \\bin shell\nscript:\n\n \n \n cd C:\\mihaip-readerisdead\n set PYTHON_HOME=C:\\mihaip-readerisdead\n C:\\path-to-py27 reader_archive\\reader_archive.py --output-directory C:\\mystuff\n \n\nLocked up at 251K out of 253K items for me, though. Restarting... success!\nLooks like it might have locked up trying to start the \"Fetching comments\"\nsection on my first try.\n\n~~~\nkcvv\nI'm trying this on windows and seem to be missing base.api module. I can't\nseem to find this module as well - anyone have a clue where i can get this\nmodule?\n\n~~~\nijk\nIt's in the \\base folder. Set the main folder to be the Python root, as in the\ngrandfather post, and it should be able to find it.\n\n~~~\nkcvv\nThanks! For what ever reason, setting the python root did not help, but i just\ncopied the 'base' folder to python lib folder and that seems to have done the\ntrick.\n\n~~~\ndaniel_reetz\nI also had success (on W7) using this method." -"\n\nValleywag: Why your snark is going to get us all killed - nikunjk\nhttps://medium.com/one-world/b2d719a52f3c\n\n======\ncalbear81\nNo one is denying that what Justin proposes is noble and good, it's that he\nframed his appeal in such an overwhelmingly positive happy-go-lucky manner\nthat it was almost farcical.\n\nI know he means well but I think it would have generated less snark if he had\nbalanced his talk with some discussion of the alternative. Yes, people in tech\nhave a lot of power but would be remiss not to think of the responsibility.\nBuild great things but understand the concerns people have around privacy,\nmorals, and ethics in this brave new world. That would have generated more\ncritical discussion and reception.\n\n------\nMaysonL\nI am reminded of Doris Lessing's saying: \"It is not a sin to be second-rate.\nIt is only a sin not to try to be first-rate.\"" -"\n\nAsk HN: What are some of the best open-source projects for beginners? - jacorreia\n\nI know for myself it was a huge decision, what to contribute to at first. I'm sure there are tons of beginners out there who would appreciate a step in the right direction!\n======\naustincheney\nAs a web developer I enjoy contributing to projects that help me to identify\nstupid things, because there is an abundance of stupid in web technologies. I\nenjoy contributing to things like JSLint and Pretty Diff.\n\nSometimes contributions can be as simple as bug reports or feature\nsuggestions. This kind of information is golden for complex projects\nmaintained by very few individuals.\n\n------\nsmurfpandey\nIf you are a javascript developer than you can start with libraries available\non Github. I started with a small plugin called jPulse, few days back i sent a\npull request to an yeoman plugin. Easiest way is by looking into the projects\nthat you use yourself, that way you will have an understanding of how\neverything works, and you will be in a better position to contribute\n\n------\nmmaunder\nI'm not sure what languages you know, but WordPress is a great one if you can\nprogram" -"\nEU stipulates immediate Open Access in 2020 - Vinnl\nhttps://www.scienceguide.nl/2018/09/nwo-wil-weg-van-de-impact-factor/\n======\nVinnl\nThis is fantastic news for science! Google Translate is pretty accurate [1],\nbut a summary:\n\nThe EU, European Research Council, and funders from eleven European countries,\nhave agreed that from 2020, European researchers can, in the general case, no\nlonger publish their research in journals that\n\n\\- place that work behind a paywall for a certain amount of time (embargoes)\n\n\\- require a transfer of copyright to that journal\n\n\\- charge excessive publishing fees (\"Article Processing Charges\")\n\nFurthermore, from 2021 (due to existing licensing agreements), European\nresearchers are generally no longer allowed to publish in journals that are\nnot fully open access (\"hybrid journals\"). That includes e.g. Science and\nNature, unless they change their business models.\n\nSome exceptions apply, e.g. when doing industry collaborations, or for\nmonographs. Overall, though, this appears to be a great step forward.\n\nMore details in the official announcement [2].\n\n[1]\n[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scienceguide.nl%2F2018%2F09%2Fnwo-\nwil-weg-van-de-impact-factor%2F&edit-text=&act=url)\n\n[2]\n[https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/](https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/)" -"\nFalcon 9 attempts ocean platform landing - butwhy\nhttp://www.spacex.com/news/2014/12/16/x-marks-spot-falcon-9-attempts-ocean-platform-landing\n======\nannapurna\n\"During previous attempts, we could only expect a landing accuracy of within\n10km. For this attempt, we\u2019re targeting a landing accuracy of within 10\nmeters.\"\n\nI thought previous landing accuracy was more than 10km. Regardless, it's\nhighly impressive that they are working to improve the accuracy by 1000x. I'm\ncurious if this accuracy improvement is a combination of the grid fins and the\nautonomous spaceport drone ship (with the ship constantly communicating with\nthe Falcon to be an \"easier\" target).\n\n~~~\nsmackfu\nIt could also be a matter of \"expected\" vs \"actual.\"\n\n------\nalexggordon\nThis is an absolutely huge test. Musk's entire vision for SpaceX[0] involves\ncheap, reusable spaceflight, simply because there\u2019s no other way to colonize a\ndifferent planet without it. According to Musk, abandoning \u201cdisposable\u201d rocket\ntechnology would result in a 100 fold reduction of the cost of rocket\nlaunches[1]. While it might not be that significant, I fully believe than NASA\ncould utilize the minute budget it has much better without throwing away\nmillions of dollars of technology every launch.\n\nBased on that, landing this rocket perfectly is the proof Musk needs to show\nthe world" -"\nShow HN: Imprint \u2013 Rethinking Medium - rolandtshen\nHello! This is Roland from Imprint (https://imprint.to).

We've been frustrated with Medium because of their paywall, content ownership issues, intrusive interface, and low post engagement. So we built Imprint to do things different. We want to take the control and ownership you get with Wordpress/Ghost, and provide distribution/discovery.

To us, a blog is...

1. Openly sharing your thoughts (freedom of expression)

2. Accessible, unobtrusive content (no paywalls)

3. Ownership/control of your work (our policies, custom domains, customization)

4. Building an audience that engages with articles (followers, newsletters, distribution)

5. Simple to run, so you focus on what matters \u2014 CONTENT

Our manifesto (business model, philosophy, guidelines): https://read.imprint.to/post/the-imprint-rundown

Happy to answer any questions and concerns. Thanks!

P.S: yes, our title was inspired by the Ghost launch years ago\n======\nthrowaway888abc\nClickable [https://imprint.to](https://imprint.to)\n\n------\npinkpigpie\nThis seems amazing!" -"\nI've never seen a language's style guide recommend avoiding comments before - vs2\nhttp://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Commenting\n======\nblowski\nAvoiding comments that do what your code should be doing is common practice,\nand I think that's what this style guide is recommending.\n\nComments are useful to describe __why__ you're doing something, often when you\nare not able to change the unexpected behaviour. Whenever I build an API\nlibrary, my code is littered with comments like \"Acme Corp API requires this\nhappens before that\" with a link to that bit of the API documentation.\n\nHere's a C++ example about \"documenting surpises\" (taken from Steve\nMcConnell's Code Complete:\n\n \n \n for ( element = 0; element < elementCount; element++ ) {\n // Use right shift to divide by two. Substituting the\n // right-shift operation cuts the loop time by 75%.\n elementList[ element ] = elementList[ element ] >> 1;\n }\n \n\nAnd a Java example:\n\n \n \n /* The following code is necessary to work around an error in\n WriteData() that appears only when the third parameter\n equals 500. '500' has been replaced with a named constant\n for clarity. */\n \n if ( blockSize == WRITEDATA_BROKEN_SIZE ) {\n blockSize = WRITEDATA_WORKAROUND_SIZE;\n }\n WriteData ( file, data, blockSize );\n \n\nHe also gives" -"\n\nIs the new Jeet.gs the most flexible grid system ever? - sheddybird\nhttp://blog.mojotech.com/jeet-a-grid-system-for-humans/\n\n======\nSEMW\nSpecifying the width proportion with fractions looks pretty nice. But the\nparagraph explaining how jeet's better than bootstrap/foundation/etc. because\nit lets you use sass mixins (instead of inline classes) to separate content\nfrom presentation seems a little misleading - it's not like you can't do the\nsame with foundation (jeet: @include column(1/3); foundation: @include grid-\ncolumn(4);). (I don't use bootstrap, but presumably it has equivalent LESS\nmixins).\n\n(True, it's not the most popular way to use foundation, but that's cos a lot\nof people don't care about semantic layout and/or don't want to use a\npreprocessor).\n\n~~~\nCorySimmons\nThe difference between Jeet and Foundation's grid are two things.\n\n1\\. Jeet uses actual columns whereas with Foundation you need to nest elements\nwithin elements: [http://imgur.com/a/OWyOQ](http://imgur.com/a/OWyOQ)\n\n2\\. @include grid-column(4) isn't as \"on-the-fly flexible\" as Jeet since you\nhave to define the base number of columns in Foundation whereas in Jeet you\ncould just say @include column(4/12) or column (1/3) or column(33.333333/100),\netc. - being able to say in natural language what you want your container to\ndo is pretty powerful stuff." -"\nApple told some Apple TV+ show developers not to anger China - jmsflknr\nhttps://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/apple-china-tv-protesters-hong-kong-tim-cook\n======\nmokash\nApple are beholden to China. Sure, China is a huge market for them but I think\nthe bigger issue is manufacturing: if they piss China off they won\u2019t have\nanything to sell, anywhere! I\u2019m sure Apple execs know this and I hope they\u2019re\nquickly planning to reduce, if not remove this dependency.\n\n~~~\nchrischen\nChinese people are also beholden to China (the government). It may be a\npolitical game to you, but trying to destabilize the government would have\nserious consequences to the livelihoods of the people there, just because some\npolicies (that don\u2019t affect you) don\u2019t agree with your world view.\n\nEven though there are kinks in their regime, for the most part they\u2019ve lifted\nhundreds or millions out of poverty. Imagine if the U.S. had a massive foreign\npower prodding it during the early years of slavery, manifest destiny (the\njustification for eradicating the Native Americans), racism, drug war,\nVietnam, and mass incarceration.\n\nYes, they have a big brother-style regime, but they are also capable of\nsorting out their own political issues. And if not, they\u2019ll reap the\nconsequences without you having" -"\nSet Theory and Foundations of Mathematics - bschne\nhttp://settheory.net/\n======\nbubble-07\nWhat is the first diagram on this page supposed to depict? Seems like a bunch\nof unrelated topics with random arrows drawn between them.\n\nAlso, the author seems more than a bit arrogant and deluded:\n[http://settheory.net/life](http://settheory.net/life) \\-- I would _not_ touch\nany of this stuff with a 40 foot pole.\n\n~~~\nDyslexicAtheist\nthe whole thing you linked reads like he is going through some existential\ncrisis triggered by spending too much time in his own head, or he is\nstruggling to find himself. he calls others stupid but that might just be due\nto feeling misunderstood and a symptom of his alienation.\n\none thing I learned is that knowing more doesn't make us happy. knowledge can\nbe the key that opens a door to insanity.\n\nwhether he is a lunatic or genius is hard to say without evaluating the\nquality of his work.\n\n~~~\nonemoresoop\n> But there are still many well-placed people who will never listen, cannot\n> grasp this and that keep denying the right for young geniuses to decide for\n> their own life.\n\nThis obsession with I am a genius is bordering on pathological narcissism," -"\nElm in Production: 25K Lines Later - Albert_Camus\nhttps://charukiewi.cz/posts/elm/\n======\nToJans\nFirst:\n\n> Elm has an incredibly powerful type system\n\nNear the end of the article:\n\n>Want to decode some JSON? Hard, especially if the JSON is heavily nested and\nit must be decoded to custom types defined in your application.\n\nIMHO the lack of typeclasses/traits is really hurting Elm. Take haskell f.e.\n\n \n \n {-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric #-}\n \n import GHC.Generics\n \n data Person = Person {\n name :: Text\n , age :: Int\n } deriving (Generic, Show)\n \n instance ToJSON Person\n instance FromJSON Person\n \n\nWhile I understand Evan's aversion against complexity, it makes me a bit wary\nabout using ElmLang in production. I am currently using TypeScript, but if I\nwould need a more powerful type system, I would probably switch to\nHaskell/PureScript or OCaml/BuckleScript instead.\n\n~~~\nfbonetti\nI really wish people would stop spreading the meme that decoding JSON in Elm\nis \"hard\". Yes, Haskell allows you to automatically decode/encode datatypes,\nbut this only works in the simplest of cases. For example, if your backend\nreturns a JSON object with snake-cased fields, but your model has camel-cased\nfields, `instance ToJSON Person` won't work; you'll have to write a custom\ndecoder. The automatic" -"Ask HN: What do you think about Alibaba Cloud? How does it compare to the big 3? - mike_aarons\n======\ndizzydiz\nI\u2019d be surprised if it ever has meaningful impact in the Western world because\nof company policies/ban lists. You can bet with 100% certainty that the CCP\ncalls the shots.\n\nBut on the flip side, for the most part the big 3 can\u2019t sell into China so it\ncan have a commanding lead.\n\nIts growing at over 60% per year in a far less competitive environment than\nthe big 3. Tencent (mostly focused on gaming) is also competing there.\n\nFull disclosure: I invested in BABA today because of the above.\n\n~~~\nmike_aarons\nVery interesting, thanks!" -"\n\nJavaScripts in the JavaScripts [pdf] - sctb\nhttps://wingolog.org/pub/ffconf-2014-slides.pdf\n\n======\nLerc\nIt's quite hard to follow without the associated talk.\n\nI do recall past threads where JavaScript natives were rewritten in JavaScript\nand shown to be faster, then they were shown to be non-standard because of a\nheap of weird edge cases that have to be supported correctly. It hadn't yet\nbeen shown that a fully standards compliant implementation would be faster.\n\nI think a huge amount rests on slide 8 \"No JS/C++ transition cost\". It should\nprobably be the subject of significant analysis on it's own.\n\nThe calulation is min(Ctime + TransitionCost, JStime). Knowing all of these\nvalues individually would give a better picture. Is it better to Minimize the\ntransition cost or eliminate it? It depends on how much less Ctime is compared\nto JStime.\n\n------\nrichdougherty\nHere's a link to the author's blog post:\n[http://wingolog.org/archives/2014/11/09/ffconf-2014](http://wingolog.org/archives/2014/11/09/ffconf-2014)\n\nI really got into this stuff a while ago, even fixing a few bugs in Continuum,\nan awesome (but fairly buggy) JS-in-JS implementation by Brandon Benvie:\n[http://benvie.github.io/continuum/](http://benvie.github.io/continuum/).\n\nFor those who like this kind of thing, I compiled a little list of JavaScript\nlibraries for working with JavaScript:\n[http://notes.richdougherty.com/2014/03/javascript-\nlanguage-l...](http://notes.richdougherty.com/2014/03/javascript-language-\nlibs-in-javascript.html). Let me know" -"\nUpdate on Multi-Process Firefox - AndrewDucker\nhttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/12/21/update-on-multi-process-firefox/\n======\nsaberworks\nIt would be really nice if the addons/extensions page showed which addons were\nlisted as compatible and which weren't. I might thus make a decision to\ndisable/delete an addon or two that were blocking me from using multiprocess\nfirefox. As it is, I have no idea if my firefox is using multiprocess at all.\nAll I know is that I use a lot of addons and I'm probably not, then, using\nmultiprocess.\n\n~~~\npipeep\nYou can figure out what add-ons are compatible by cross-referencing\n[http://www.arewee10syet.com/](http://www.arewee10syet.com/)\n\n~~~\nFreeFull\nSeems the only addon I use that isn't compatible is \"Disable Ctrl-Q Shortcut\".\nIt's an addon I really don't want to get rid of, there have been many cases in\nthe past where I've accidentally pressed ctrl+q instead of ctrl+w, and had\nFirefox quit on me..\n\nEdit: The page for the addon has a comment saying it does work with\nmultiprocess, so I just forced it on. I'm on Linux, and I don't know of an\nabout:config key to disable ctrl+q\n\n~~~\ndjsumdog\nI think you can set that in `about:config` without a plugin\n\n~~~\n0942v8653\nIf you set browser.showQuitWarning to true (also make" -"\n\nRails vs. Django - kyro\n\nJust curious, and I want to see which framework I should pursue more aggressively.

So, how about pros/cons of each.\n======\nSwellJoe\nDeployment of Rails sucks.\n\nDjango is far better thought out, and can be deployed in a very sane manner. A\nfleet of Mongrels is just an embarrassingly bad way to handle concurrency. \"I\nknow, let's write a crappy barely functional web server, spawn a metric ass\nton of them, and then balance between them with a proxy. It'll be most leet\nand super fast! We'll call it a Best Practice. It'll be awesome.\" In fact,\nit's fragile, doesn't scale very well, and is complicated to configure. It's\nalso a huge distraction from solving the problem in a sane way--people seem to\nthink \"deploying Rails\" is solved by this and Capistrano, when really, it's\njust a new stack of problems.\n\nOtherwise Rails kicks ass, and I like Ruby better than Python (but I'm a perl\nmonger, so I might be brain-damaged into not seeing the beauty of Python). But\nI do tend to feel like Django is being written by grownups who've got years of\ndevelopment experience, while the Rails folks are making it up" -"Ask HN: What is the difference between cold emails and spam? - WolfOliver\n======\nSomeone\nA cold email is something that takes a human at least an hour to write.\n\nSpam is something that takes a factory less than a second to spit out.\n\nSomewhere in-between, there\u2019s a gray area. \u2018Spam\u2019 is in the eye of the\nbeholder (nobody claims to produce spam) so where that is is a matter of\ntaste.\n\nFor me, a cold email _must_ have a human writer. That _hour_ isn\u2019t a strong\nboundary, but once you\u2019re cold emailing ten different people an hour, I think\nyou\u2019re reaching spam country.\n\nI also think there\u2019s computer-produced emails that aren\u2019t spam, but I can\u2019t\nthink of any I would call \u201ccold email\u201d.\n\n------\nandreicon\nSpam is unsolicited correspondence. Cold emails are unsolicited, therefore are\nspam." -"\nDepression, anxiety rising among U.S. college students - HNLurker2\nhttps://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-mental-undergrads/depression-anxiety-rising-among-u-s-college-students-idUKKCN1VJ25Z\n======\ntempsy\nI think a huge part of it is that getting a \u201cgood\u201d job out of college has\nnever been more competitive and more important. The idea that one works their\nway up from a secretarial position to executive could not be more unrealistic\ntoday. On the other hand, if you beat the competition (your peers) to get a\nreputable corporate gig at a big co, well known startup, or prestigious\nconsulting or banking you\u2019re setting yourself up for life. Not getting one of\nthose jobs out of college makes it near impossible to be hired at those\ncompanies even a year or two down the road simply because many of those\ncompanies source all their entry level people from colleges and past interns.\n\nYour trajectory is just so different depending on your first job and I think\neveryone is acutely aware but no one wants to talk about it.\n\n~~~\nhourislate\nI don't know if you read the article but I think the authors clearly state\nwhat they think is the issue and it isn't finding your first job.\n\nFrom the article:\n\n>\u201cIt suggests that something is seriously" -"\nAsk HN: Corp-2-Corp vs W2 Work in San Francisco / Bay Area - lowhangingnuts\nI have over 20 years experience in over 10+ languages, tools frameworks. Active on github and open source also.

Trying to make a lot of $$ in next 5 years and quit the rat race.

Everywhere I apply for contract jobs, the recruiter / person with job says they can only do W2 and not independent 1099 or corp 2 corp contract.

I don't need benefits (have it from my partner) and W2 rates are much less than Independent 1099.

So what's the deal ? Why do recruiters and firms insist on W2 in Bay Area?

Also how do I set my W2 rate vs my C2C expectation.

Ex: If my 1099 / Independent rate is 100 $ / hour, what would the equivalent W2 rate be, so I don't lose money?\n======\nnunez\nI don't know why W2 is so common over there, but you should be hitting up\nLinkedIn and reaching out to recruiters that way. There are plenty of 1099\nopportunities to be found. Ensure that you get contracts with fixed time\nperiods so that you can plan your cash flow a little easier. (It's not a hard\nand" -"\nBuilding a Home Lab Beginners Guide - ashitlerferad\nhttps://haydenjames.io/home-lab-beginners-guide-hardware/\n======\nm0xte\nI had a fairly large home lab once. I had a fully topped out SPARCserver 1000E\nand a disk enclosure in my bedroom. I also once lived with an E450 on the\nkitchen table for a month. But they\u2019re noisy as hell, inconvenient, expensive\nto keep running and expensive to feed with power and take up a lot of room and\nthus are not compatible with family and general sanity over time. They become\nneedy balls and chains.\n\nSo roll on to now I\u2019m using a silent build Ryzen windows desktop with 64Gb of\nRAM and a couple of mundane SSDs that I fire up VMs in virtualbox as required.\nAt night it gets turned off. I\u2019ve got a $5 digitalocean box that runs all my\npersistent linux stuff. If I want to play with networks it\u2019s done with GNS3.\nOffice 365 runs my email and all my stuff is sync\u2019ed with onedrive and a\ncouple of offline SSDs occasionally when I get nervous. My network is the\nfritzbox my ISP gave me plugged into the back of the desktop via Ethernet.\nThat\u2019s it!\n\nMy life is better for" -"\nWhy CloudFlare can never satisfy Tor die-hards, and shouldn't try - jgrahamc\nhttp://www.zdnet.com/article/cloudflare-can-never-satisfy-tor-core-and-shouldnt-try/\n======\njgrahamc\nI posted this just so I could comment that the analysis there is wrong headed\nand I disagree with this article.\n\n~~~\nmtmail\nCan you elaborate your disagreement?\n\n~~~\njgrahamc\nThe article implies that we should just not bother trying to handle traffic\ncoming from Tor. I believe this is a mistake because we become stronger by\ndealing with difficult situations.\n\nFor example, we've build a tremendous chunk of technology for handling massive\nDDoS attacks because we invested in dealing with them.\n\nTor is difficult because the users want anonymity and are aggregated across a\nsmall number (~1,500) IP addresses. But CloudFlare will be much stronger if we\nare able to reliably detect malicious use of Tor and allow through normal use.\nIt's worth solving these problems precisely because Tor is so challenging. We\nhave a whole bunch of technology for detecting and blocking attacks, making\nthem work really, really well for Tor is something I'm investing in." -"\nThe other kind of \u201cflash\u201d that we used to worry about - tbodt\nhttp://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/12/26/flash/\n======\nDunedan\nI was reading an article the other day and it took me a moment to realize that\nit was talking about flash as in software and not about flash as in flash\nstorage. Based on the headline I thought Rachel would write about the same, so\nI was quite surprised and amused to read that she was talking about an even\nolder meaning of flash.\n\n------\nsevensor\n> I should mention that there have been many variants on this theme. You could\n> jam those same fun escape sequences into a mail\n\nThis happened to me once as an undergraduate. I was in a lab full of dying\nSuns (they were replaced the following semester). It was late at night, late\nin the term and the hushed lab was packed with students wrapping up their\nprojects. I used Pine to open an e-mail from one of my friends at another\nuniversity, which turned out to be an animated Christmas tree, complete with\nblinking lights and beeping out \"We Wish You a Merry Christmas\" on the\ninternal speaker. I killed the terminal window as fast" -"\n\nYahoo Announces Non-Exclusive Search Agreement With Google - ideas101\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/12/yahoo-announces-non-exclusive-search-agreement-with-google/\n\n======\ndmix\nAs much as monopolies hurt business and innovation I set two benefits to this:\n\n1) As a publisher using Adsense I have much more relevant ads with more\nadvertisers flocking to one supplier.\n\n2) As an advertiser I have access to a nearly unlimited amount of channels in\nalmost every market.\n\nI'm sure one day we might look back at this as a negative thing but for now I\nstill hold respect for Google.\n\n------\npopat\nyahoo made a smart move - problem creators now have to calm down for a while -\nit will give some time to breath and move their strategy as a success ... kind\nof wait and watch.\n\n~~~\nideas101\nas pg once said that if enough time and freedom is give to jerry yang to run\nthe company the way he wants then he can prove his worth - i think the time\nhas come that he proves himself and get back the reputation and business as\nearlier ... good luck to him." -"\nStrengthening HTTP: A Personal View - tkorotkikh\nhttps://www.mnot.net/blog/2014/01/04/strengthening_http_a_personal_view\n======\nrx4g\nIt's disappointing to hear that the idea of requiring TLS with HTTP/2 has lost\ntraction. For me, TLS-everywhere _was_ the carrot on the stick.\n\nI recognize that getting consensus is hard work, but I don't think creating\nanother encryption-optional protocol and letting vendors duke it over security\nis going to end well for the users.\n\n \n \n HTTP is a deployed protocol with lots of existing \n stakeholders, like proxy vendors, network operators, \n corporate firewalls and so on. Requiring encryption \n with HTTP/2 means that these stakeholders get\n disenfranchised.\n \n\nI'd like to hear the arguments of the potentially-disenfranchised stakeholders\nfirst hand. Is it mainly because it makes it harder to sell or use products\nthat allow traffic snooping?\n\n~~~\nmatthewmacleod\nOne obvious change here is that it would make CA-signed certificates mandatory\nfor all HTTP2 web servers - is that really a situation we want?\n\n~~~\nquicksilfer\nThat doesn't have to be the case. You could still allow self-signage, with all\nof the security caveats that presents.\n\nWho knows. Maybe that arrangement could even spur a sorely needed push for a\nfree certificate trust network and get rid of CA's entirely.\n\n~~~\nrx4g\nSelf-signed" -"\nThe Texas Instruments 99/4: World\u2019s First 16-Bit Computer - rbanffy\nhttp://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-texas-instruments-994-worlds-first-16bit-computer\n======\nlispm\nIt was't the world's first 16bit computer. See:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16-bit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16-bit)\n\nMaybe it was the first 16bit HOME computer... as mentioned in the text.\n\n~~~\nIrishJourno\nHi -- I'm one of the editor's at IEEE Spectrum. You're absolutely correct: as\nthe article does make clear, it was the first 16-bit HOME computer. We should\nhave been more specific in the headline, our bad.\n\n------\nschlupa\nThe Basic was slow for several reasons. 1\\. Double interpretation: As other\nalready pointed out, the interpreter was written in an interpreted language, a\nkind of byte code if you prefer. 2\\. GROM routines: What added to the pain was\nthat a lot of the routines necessary for the program were not in ROM but in TI\nspecific GROM. All the \"CALL something\" (CALL CHAR, CALL HCHAR, CALL VCHAR,\nCALL SOUND, etc.) commands were GROM routines. GROM were a kind of serial ROMS\nthat only TI manufactured (one of the reasons third parties had such a\nstruggle with that machine). 3\\. VRAM: the worst offender why TI-BASIC (and\nTI-EXTENDED-BASIC) were so slow was that the basic console only had a wopping\n256 bytes of" -"\nNo Exits. Liquidity Dries Up Even More For VC-Backed Startups In Third Quarter - jasonlbaptiste\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/02/no-exits-liquidity-dries-up-even-more-for-vc-backed-startups-in-third-quarter/\n======\nspolsky\nWhine whine. I have an idea. Why not make a product to sell to consumers,\ninstead of making shares to sell to the public?\n\n~~~\nalecco\nWell said.\n\nHow about downscaling the size. Sites like Twitter could be done by one person\nand a bit for subcontracting. Sites like Facebook by a team of 10 to 15.\n\nToo much money and too much megabuck sponsored hype. Simple micro startups are\nstill left out even though they are more than viable.\n\n~~~\ncolinplamondon\nThere seems to be an almost pathological bias against profitability with a lot\nof startups.\n\n~~~\nsown\nSo I heard that some think that is because for a long while the R/D effort was\noutsourced to other companies, away from larger ones. I dunno if that is the\ncase but in the company I worked for got acquired and did some pretty serious\nR/D. It could have been profitable but acquisition was obviously the easier\nway out so the investors took it.\n\nI'm sure something like Twitter is useful but only to a large company,\nperhaps? I dunno.\n\n------\njamongkad" -"\n37signals' Chalk: a fun little browser-based app for iPad - eng\nhttp://37signals.com/svn/posts/2637-introducing-chalk-a-fun-little-browser-based-app-for-ipad-inspired-by-our-new-office\n======\njbail\nSeems like a remake of their Draft app with a chalky UI.\n\nTo really make a mobile web app be cool, it's still gotta work on the web.\nOtherwise, it's not cool. I'm making that a rule right now. Visiting a URL\nthat says I have to be on an iPad is not cool. It's like saying I need to\ninstall a plugin that costs $500.\n\n~~~\nderekdahmer\nIts still a work in progress, but check out my project \nIts a collaborative whiteboard that works in any browser that supports canvas,\nincluding mobile safari on the iPhone and iPad. Runs on node.js + socket.io\n\nExample: \n\n~~~\njbail\nI made a little canvas demo app myself about a month ago. Works on web or\nmobile (least on Dolphin Browser in Android). I haven't tested a ton though.\n\n\n\nIt's more of a concept app to draw on Chipotle or Starbucks napkins than a\nserious endeavor. Some fellow engineers and I were joking about it at lunch\none day and I promised to make a kick ass web 2.0 app that did indeed enable\nyou to" -"\nShow HN: DOM99 Simple HTML manipulation for the modern web - GroSacASacs\nhttps://github.com/GrosSacASac/DOM99\n======\nplugnburn\nSome questions:\n\n\\- Why ES6/ES2015?\n\n\\- What are the advantages over Knockout?\n\n\\- Why does it weigh so much if its only ability is two-way data binding?\n\nAnd probably the most interesting question:\n\n\\- Why the heck do I need to use Browserify for something that will NEVER EVER\nrun on a server side?!\n\nP.S. Nice monologue though. :)\n\n~~~\nGroSacASacs\n-Why ES6/ES2015? Because I got used to it before. You can use Babel to transpile to ES5.\n\n\\- What are the advantages over Knockout? I didn't use Knockout since a long\ntime, it was a source of inspiration, so I can't fully answer this question.\nDOM99 doesn't tell you to use the Model-View-View Model pattern, but lets you\norganize your application as you want. This can also be a disadvantage if you\nare doing it wrong for example.\n\n\\- Why does it weigh so much if its only ability is two-way data binding?\nBecause you looked at source files that are not minified.\n\n\\- Why the heck do I need to use Browserify for something that will NEVER EVER\nrun on a server side?!" -"\nKrzysztof Penderecki has died - stared\nhttps://culture.pl/en/artist/krzysztof-penderecki\n======\nH8crilA\nWhat an absolute legend, his music was like nothing else that came before.\nRest in peace.\n\nIn case you're not familiar with his work - one of the best known pieces is\nthe \"Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima\". Here you can see it overlaid on\ntop of the notation he had invented to write this composition down:\n[https://youtu.be/HilGthRhwP8](https://youtu.be/HilGthRhwP8)\n\nWikipedia page on the piece:\n[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threnody_to_the_Victims_of_H...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threnody_to_the_Victims_of_Hiroshima)\n\n~~~\nthr0w3345\nI don\u2019t get this at all.\n\nIt\u2019s unlistenable. Dreadful. Who considers this music and why? What\u2019s the\npoint of it?\n\nWhat am I missing?\n\n~~~\nsoftwarejosh\nit wasnt exactly written for easy listening, it represents the instantaneous\nannihilation of life on the largest scale the world has ever seen.\n\n~~~\nMediterraneo10\n> it wasnt exactly written for easy listening, it represents the instantaneous\n> annihilation of life on the largest scale the world has ever seen.\n\nAs is well known (or should be), Penderecki wrote the piece initially as\npurely abstract music, a study in sound. The title referencing Hiroshima was\nonly applied to the piece later.\n\n------\nmicrotherion\nThe first piece of his I heard is still my favorite: \"Stabat Mater\"\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f403XsOAFXE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f403XsOAFXE)\n\nIt" -"\n\nShow HN: \u201cEscape from Montegrande\u201d, Procedural Ski Game for iOS and Android - phaser\nhttp://mego.cl/montegrande\n\n======\nzimpenfish\nOne of the achievements says \"Slide trough N ice surfaces\" \\- is that supposed\nto be \"Slide through\"? Apart from that, good work, it's like a proper modern\nHorace Goes Skiing.\n\n~~~\nchulini\nWe'll fix that on the next update. Thanks! : _\n\n------\nthrowaway1979\nNice. What framework are you using?\n\n~~~\nphaser\nWe created the game using Unity3d. In order to generate levels we used a\ncombination of random \"chunks\" and perlin noise (very good for generating the\n'paths' across the trees)\n\n------\nchrisbennet\nGreat imagination! Good work!\n\n------\njstnn\nnostalgia" -"\n\nIs the Internet Making Us Stupid? - edw519\nhttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91543814&ft=1&f=1013\n\n======\nsah\nThis is a summary of this longer article from the Atlantic Monthly:\n\n\nThe author is complaining that the internet is teaching us to skim more, and\nI'm not sure that's a bad thing. I don't do less involved reading than I did\nbefore the internet, but I do spend a lot more time skimming to find things\nthat are worth reading.\n\nHe also claims that \"Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is\nindistinguishable from deep thinking.\" I don't find that to be true at all! If\nI'm reading something thought-provoking, I often have to stop reading to\nthink.\n\n------\nmaurycy\nReminds me:\n\n[http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-\nhuman/mg18624973.4...](http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-\nhuman/mg18624973.400-infooverload-harms-concentration-more-than-\nmarijuana.html)" -"\n\nShow HN: Techendo - A Tech Show - lowglow\n\nHi Everyone,

I've started a tech show called Techendo. It's just some startup guys from YC/Elsewhere that will be talking about things going on in the industry. It will be shot every other week and try to be as entertaining as possible while talking about tech and startup life.

I'd love to spotlight startups/projects, have guests on the show, and shoot some skits. It's still a work in progress, so if you want to help out or just give feedback, it would be great to have any help I can get.

Also, if you have topics you want us to talk about let me know.

Thanks for your help HN.

Check out our first episode here: \nTechendo Episode 1 - Secret of the Droin \nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_JPD96XOPI\n======\nargonaut\nHonestly... you guys lost me in the first few minutes. It's great you guys\nwere having a good time and laughing and stumbling around (and that's probably\nwhy you did this video - to have a good time), but it didn't translate into\nsomething particularly watchable. The editing was also kind of jarring.\n\n~~~\nlowglow\nYou're right, we did this to have a good time and talk about some" -"\nAnd so I'm giving up the Mozilla project - Jamie Zawinski (1999) - Andrew-Dufresne\nhttp://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html\n======\nasadotzler\nLots of things on the Internet can move quickly but browsers are not Internet\nsoftware the way that Google or Facebook are. Browsers are still desktop\nsoftware and things don't move as quickly there thanks to slow PC upgrade\ncycles and the absolute dominance that software like Windows, Office, and\nInternet Explorer had a decade ago. Turning that massive ship took longer than\nmany imagined but it is happening.\n\nJamie gave the open source Mozilla project about a year and a half, including\nthe months of pre-source release preparation (and I think that's being\ngenerous.) Brendan Eich and Mitchell Baker didn't give up so easily and\nthirteen-plus years later they're still giving all they've got to make sure\nthat Mozilla continues to be successful in promoting choice, opportunity, and\nparticipation on the Web.\n\nSome things are worth fighting for and I believe that the Web is one of those\nthings. I'm proud to work with some of the founding members of mozilla.org and\nthink it's a phenomenal thing that such talented people are willing to commit\ntheir professional lives to the Mozilla mission" -"\n\nTraditional C \"Hello World\" working in NaCl - ginsweater\nhttps://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/native-client-discuss/lT5bsW1ZlKQ/WsXJ5y_2s54J\n\n======\ncalpaterson\nAs a side note, why is it that I have to sign in to Google in order to be able\nto see this? Is registration /really/ necessary for Google Groups?\n\n~~~\nrnadna\nYou are right. It's very annoying. It's even worse than having links that are\nbehind a paywall, because at least a paywall usually indicates that funds are\nflowing to the person (reporter, etc.) who created the content. The google\ngroups situation is quite different, and quite annoying. I _never_ login to\ngoogle groups to see something listed on HN. I wonder whether HN could provide\nan option to let readers avoid such items, by removing them from the listing\nor flagging them?\n\n~~~\ndangrossman\nYou are only being asked for a password because you're (partially) logged in\nto a Google Account already. Either log out, or open Google Groups links with\n\"open in incognito window\" if you use Chrome.\n\n------\nraverbashing\nCan someone please explain to me why running native code coming from a web\nsite is a good idea?\n\nBecause I see this as \"Google's ActiveX\"\n\n~~~\ncantankerous\nRead the paper. It's a subset of" -"\nSlavery in Early Austin: The Stringer\u2019s Hotel and Urban Slavery - samclemens\nhttps://notevenpast.org/slavery-in-early-austin-the-stringers-hotel-and-urban-slavery/\n======\nbrudgers\n_it is not impossible to imagine enslaved people taking on leading roles in\nrunning the Stringer\u2019s Hotel and other establishments in Austin._\n\nThere\u2019s much comforting in imagined logical possibility. Reading Fredrick\nDouglas\u2019s autobiographies or Blight\u2019s recent Pulitzer winner dissipates such\nillusion. If the knowledge of children for sale provided in the article\nsomehow wasn\u2019t enough to demonstrate how unincharge slaves were.\n\n~~~\ne40\nWhat do you think the purpose of the quoted sentence was? To shift some of the\nblame to the victims? Something else? (I really don't know)\n\n~~~\nbrudgers\nIt is structural to American journalism. (edit) a trope, maybe?\n\n------\nanonsivalley652\nConsider:\n\n\\- Lincoln was not an Abolitionist hero as popularly lionized, but a status\nquo \"moderate,' reluctant to rock the boat. Even though he knew it to be\nwrong, he did nothing in the affirmative until Secession. That's not moral\ncourage, that's political expedience.\n\n\\- 13th Amendment, Section 1 giant slavery loophole:\n\n _Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime\nwhereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the\nUnited States, or any place subject to" -"\nLand of Lisp (2010) - tosh\nhttp://landoflisp.com/\n======\nDangeranger\nThis book is well worn, dog eared, and on my home office book shelf. While\nmany people criticize it, for legitimate reasons, it is still a fun and\nwonderful journey through Common Lisp. I wish more books were written in this\nirreverent and whimsical style.\n\nIf however you want a more traditional and \"from zero\" introduction to Lisp,\nthen \"Common LISP - A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation\"[0] may be\nbetter. If you already know a little bit of Lisp and want to step up your\nabilities then \"Practical Common Lisp\"[1] is probably what you are after.\n\n[0]\n[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/)\n\n[1] [http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/](http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/)\n\n~~~\njhbadger\nIf you like this sort of thing, here are some others in a similar humorous\nstyle for other languages.\n\n1\\. Kaufman, Roger. A FORTRAN Coloring Book (probably the first funny\nprogramming book -- from 1978).\n\n2\\. Lipova\u010da, Miran. Learn You A Haskell for Great Good.\n\n3\\. Hebert, Fred. Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good (inspired by the\nHaskell book).\n\n4\\. Felleisen, Matthias. Realm of Racket (basically Land of Lisp for Racket.\nOddly, nobody's done a \"Commonwealth of Clojure\" or \"Society of Scheme\" yet.)\n\n~~~\nbsg75\n> nobody's" -"\nShow HN: ChatPage.io \u2013 Private chat for sales and client communication - going_to_800\nhttp://chatpage.io\n======\niqonik\nLooks good, the only thing I hate is the 'Free during BETA'. It makes me\nwonder how you're going to keep going, I'm worried you'll become a key part of\nmy sales process but then one day, disappear.\n\nTake my money straight away, seriously, I don't care that it's BETA, take my\nmoney! Don't be scared, you're creating value for me.\n\n~~~\ngoing_to_800\nAwesome feedback. Thanks a lot. You are right, the free beta looks un-pro. I\nconsider charging but let the beta badge somewhere.\n\n------\njjoe\nSomething about chatting with clients or prospects on someone else's\npage/domain bothers me. I think your pro plan should have an option to brand\nthe chat page with your client's own sub/domain.\n\n~~~\ngoing_to_800\nThanks for checking it out. Yes, it has the option to use your own url.\nCurrently we're using full page iframe. We'll also add subdomain support soon." -"\n\nIBM to build brain-like computers - timtrueman\nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7740484.stm\n\n======\npg\nA headline from the 1950s.\n\n~~~\nivankirigin\nWe know much more about the brain today.\n\nA similar headline can be found for using \"brainlike techniques\" for object\ndetection. \n\nBut the algorithms in this case are from numenta, jeff hawkin's company. The\nmethodology is:\n\n \n \n 1. Study the brain\n 2. Come up with theories on how memory and processing in the brain work\n 3. Write algorithms with the same structure.\n \n\nI'd call that brain-like.\n\n~~~\njey\nYeah, except that Step 2 is super sketchy and arguably unscientific at this\npoint.\n\n~~~\nivankirigin\nI wouldn't call the thousands of researchers in the field unscientific at all.\nAnd this process is iterative. If you have an algorithm that works, the\nproximity to how the brain actually works is largely irrelevant.\n\n------\ntimtrueman\nHaven't these guys heard of software? I thought the only good reason to do\nsomething in hardware was speed, but maybe I'm just crazy.\n\n~~~\nbchandle\nThe BBC article left out a critical constraint from DARPA. The final\ndeliverable (with the \"complexity of a cat's brain\") isn't just a model or a\nsimulation. It has to be a physical artifact which" -"\n\nLearn Java in Minutes - Ashuu\nhttp://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/java/\n\n======\npetercooper\nI'm learning Java in my spare time just because in the same sense it pays to\nknow C if you dig Unix, I suspect it pays to know Java if you dig the JVM.\n\nThe _language_ has not proved to be too disturbing, happily, but I'm finding\nthe _tooling and ecosystem_ to be rather arcane and difficult to get a grip on\nat first. Build tools, a choice of JVMs and JDKs, \"enterprise\" this or that..\nit seems all the stuff _around_ the language is the real minefield than the\nrelatively simplistic language itself.\n\n~~~\nadnam\nExactly. The hard part of Java is not the language _per se_ , but the myriad\nof IDEs and XML configuration files.\n\n~~~\nkryten\nTo be honest, as a Java veteran, there is very little XML any more apart from\na bit of Tomcat config usually. It's all gone in favor of annotations which\nare much better.\n\nIt ain't J2EE 1.4 days any more (thank fuck).\n\nThe only thing I've done involving XML recently was setting tomcat 7 to serve\na war file from the root site and that took about 2 minutes to work" -"\n\nPharen: A lispy language that compiles to PHP - Scriptor\nhttp://github.com/scriptor/pharen\n\n======\nScriptor\nThis was very much a learning experience and I'm sure there will be lots in\nthe code that isn't done properly. If you find something wrong, please let me\nknow!\n\nPharen was also started to eventually abstract out things I don't like about\nPHP's syntax, and maybe add some new ones. It's not meant as a competitor to\nother lisps!\n\nSome special features are micros (closer to C macros than true Lisp macros)\nand partials (partial evaluation). Documentation for those can be found near\nthe end of the linked page.\n\nIt is by no means close to completion. Although lisp should be entirely\nexpression-based, parts of Pharen can't really be used as expressions yet\n(namely conditionals). Closely related is that returning something other than\nthe last expression in a function has to be done manually.\n\nAny questions, glaring (or subtle) problems, or suggestions you have are\ndefinitely welcome.\n\n------\npetercooper\nNicely executed this one! Is it me, though, or has writing cross-language\ncompilers become a sort of open source fad in the last 12 months? There seem\nto be a ton popping up lately. It'd be cool" -"\nIf a tweet declares war, is it treason to take it down? - awinter-py\nhttps://abe-winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html\n======\ntptacek\nNo, for assistance to an enemy to be treasonable, war must actually have been\ndeclared, and only Congress can declare war. Actually _waging war_ on the US\nis treasonable without a Congressional declaration, but the definition depends\non a state of \"open war\" in which you're part of a recognized assembled group\nof people engaged in open armed hostilities.\n\nThe short answer to almost all these kinds of questions is \"it's never\ntreason\".\n\n~~~\ndiego\n1) You're assuming this ONLY discusses the possibility of the US declaring war\nvia tweet. The article clearly talks about ANY country that could declare war\nvia tweet.\n\n2) It specifically addresses the question of the US and Congress.\n[https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html#can-a-t...](https://abe-\nwinter.github.io/2019/10/18/tweason.html#can-a-tweet-declare-war)\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nYes, its analysis of the US and Congress is, I believe, simply wrong. The\nPresident can effectively levy war in the 21st century without Congress, but\nsuch \"wars\" do not create the conditions required for treason. Treason is\nincumbent on war being properly declared.\n\nEven John Walker Lindh couldn't be charged with treason, and he had the weight\nof an actual AUMF against him.\n\n~~~" -"\nHow I Turned an Idea into $7K by Teaching Online - leerob\nhttps://leerob.io/blog/teach-online\n======\ngenofon\nIt's a great project, I would only make a small correction... What the author*\ncalls profit still includes all the time and effort you put in: building an\naudience, creating the course, building a reputation, marketing, etc.. Just to\nmake people understand that it's a lot of hard work and taking that not\nconsideration the ROI is much lower.\n\n*small correction: you->the author\n\n~~~\nleerob\nThat's a good point to call out. Building an audience and establishing\ncredibility takes time and effort. You pay an upfront cost, but having an\naudience will pay dividends in the future.\n\n------\nBossingAround\nTo me, it's counter-intuitive that people would pay $100 for a course on such\na niche topic such as NextJS. My experience with these courses is that they\nprovide all that's available for free (typically docs), but nicely packaged\nand with videos. And, especially if it is on a custom platform like this one,\nI'd be worried about them being kept up to date.\n\n~~~\nleerob\nHere's how I look at it. You're absolutely right you can learn everything on\nyour own\u2013\u2013but how long would it" -"\n\nPerils Of Credentialism - MIT Example - helwr\nhttp://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2007/04/26/perils-of-credentialism-mit-example/\n\n======\npgbovine\nFrom the end of TFA: _Bill Gates could never have been the Dean of Admissions\nat Stanford, but the Computer Science building at Stanford carries his name._\n\nsigh, i wish people would stop using Gates, Zuckerberg, and other drop-outs\nfrom elite colleges to rally up salt-of-the-earth populist propaganda like \"oh\nyou can come from humble down-to-earth roots and be a college drop-out and\nstill be a billionaire!\" many of these guys came from highly-educated, upper-\nmiddle-class families and went to elite private high schools and colleges. the\ntrue populist heroes are lurking here amongst the HN readership ... people who\nhave successful autonomous small businesses that are making a good living.\n\n~~~\ndabent\nI think that's a really good point.\n\n\\- Gates, Allen: Harvard\n\n\\- Bezos: Princeton\n\n\\- Page, Brin, Yang, Filo: Stanford\n\n\\- Zuckerberg: Harvard\n\nAll these had the brains, drive and position to at least get accepted by a\ntop-notch school. But that got me thinking, what exceptions are there? I\nthought of Jobs/Wozniack, but what other big hitters out there went somewhere\nbesides and A-list school? I know they are out there, especially the multi-\nmillion" -"\nGetting started with shaders: signed distance functions - pcr910303\nhttps://jvns.ca/blog/2020/03/15/writing-shaders-with-signed-distance-functions/\n======\nGuB-42\nHere is the article that started everything\n\n[https://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymar...](https://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarchingdf.htm)\n\niq didn't invent the technique, but he popularized it. His website has a lot\nof tutorials on making demoscene effects, especially for 4k intros. He is also\none of the makers of shadertoy.\n\n~~~\njmiskovic\nI was surprised to learn he was behind the Oculus Quill (VR art and animation\nsoftware). He started posting very well produced video lessons on SDFs. I\nenjoyed this recent one:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMltMdi1Wzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMltMdi1Wzg)\n\n~~~\nArelius\nYou might also be surprised to find out that he was a co-author of shader toy,\nand he was previously at Pixar where he did much of the procedural work behind\nThe Good Dinosaur.\n\n------\nfenwick67\nThere's a disclaimer missing from this article (and many others like it),\nwriting a frag shader to generate 3d geometry is generally not the ideal way\nto actually render stuff unless you're doing demos (with some exceptions).\n\nThe other thing that gets me is these articles say \"here's how you write a\nshader\" but shaders are much more than a fragment shader over the whole screen\n(like what shadertoy provides).\n\n~~~\ngmiller123456\nHe's using ray" -"\n\nSizeof(void) == 1 in gcc - mrb\nhttps://twitter.com/#!/bcantrill/status/61503550966087681\n\n======\napaprocki\nGCC just happens to not even print a warning about this (even with -Wall).\nThat is pretty bad. The warning can be enabled by specifying -Wpointer-arith\nor by using -pedantic, though. (Warning: \"invalid application of 'sizeof' to a\nvoid type\")\n\nIBM's xlc compiler produces a warning and compiles the code and it also\nreturns 1. (Warning: \"1506-043 (W) The operand of the sizeof operator is not\nvalid.\")\n\nOracle Studio compiler has the best approach and fails to compile. (Error:\n\"cannot take sizeof void\")\n\n------\nmooism2\nWhat does the standard say?" -"\nA $35 keyboard for children transformed me into a novelist - danso\nhttps://onezero.medium.com/this-35-keyboard-for-children-transformed-me-into-a-novelist-436a55370ee5\n======\nbenjohnson\nThe Japanese have modern devices like this - this one is about $250 and had a\nE-ink display and a folding keyboard. You can put the keyboard in English mode\n- a few keys are in odd places but bearable. It's increased my output by\nseveral orders of magnitude.\n\n[https://www.kingjim.co.jp/pomera/dm30/](https://www.kingjim.co.jp/pomera/dm30/)\n\n~~~\ninyorgroove\nThere is also the Freewrite, its a little expensive but is targeted to English\nspeakers: [https://getfreewrite.com/](https://getfreewrite.com/)\n\n~~~\nDigory\nBeautiful, but $400 is steep for a monotasker. I'd gladly let students use\nthese in a class, though, as an alternative to notepads.\n\nWhich probably says something about the rise of keyboards and the fall of\nhandwriting; I get that ASCII is more useful than paper, but $400 buys a lot\nof luxurious pens and paper.\n\n~~~\nBolexNOLA\nProduces a lot of lost pens and paper in waste bins though!\n\n~~~\nsplintercell\nCheck out the fountain pen thread from last week.\n\n~~~\ncarterschonwald\nLink please ? :)\n\nGranted I\u2019m a huge user of fountain pens and note books already :)\n\n~~~\nsplintercell\nThere you go:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497259)\n\n------\nJoblessWonder\nI have a very special place in" -"\nTiSpark sits Spark SQL on top of a storage engine to answer complex OLAP queries - jinqueeny\nhttps://github.com/pingcap/tispark\n======\nelvinyung\nYes! I've been thinking of something like this for a while.\n\nFor the sake of simple data integration, I think this sort of architecture is\noptimal. As it stands, Spark is basically already a distributed database\nwithout its own storage engine; tighter integration with a transactional\nstorage engine means that you could get the full power of OLTP and OLAP (HTAP)\nunder the same interface.\n\nImagine that you could process transactions in Spark (pushing them down to the\ndistributed storage engine), and then Spark could automatically use the\nchanges to update a materialized view, and you could serve the updated\nmaterialized view directly from Spark for real-time decision support, using\nSQL plus richer analytics like machine learning, graph processing, etc. It's\nnot _quite_ a one-size-fits-all [1] database, but it's close.\n\nPut a PostgreSQL or MySQL wire protocol server in front of it, and application\ndevelopers won't even have to know that they're using Spark.\n\n(I'm glossing over the fact that Spark currently isn't very good at\ntransaction processing in the sense that it literally doesn't have much of a\nwrite" -"\n\nBloom Filter (Python recipe) - jcsalterego\nhttp://code.activestate.com/recipes/577684-bloom-filter/\n\n======\nhaberman\nOne thing that takes a minute to sink with Bloom Filters is that the size\nrequirements are independent of the size of the individual elements! Storing N\nelements with a given false positive probability has a fixed cost, whether\nyou're storing integers or 100MB strings.\n\nIf you are concerned with speed, a bloom filter is exactly the kind of thing\nI'd never implement in Python. Twiddling bits is orders of magnitude more\nexpensive than in C.\n\n~~~\nraymondh\nPython is written in C and the time consuming parts of this algorithm are\ndelegated to C modules (random, sha256, long int bitshifts, etc). Also, the\nspace efficiency (which directly related to effective use of high-speed cache)\nis language independent.\n\nIf you care about the cost of the Python glue code, the PyPy project nicely\noptimizes that away. Unless you're writing for a Google production server, the\nprogrammer time writing this in C will likely never be paid back in saved CPU\ncycles.\n\n~~~\nhaberman\nWhat you have said is theory. Here is practice.\n\nI wrote a simple bloom filter in C. It took about an hour, including\ndebugging. Here is my bloom" -"\n\nHow do I find the memory usage of an application on Android? - badhairday\nhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/2298208/how-to-discover-memory-usage-of-my-application-in-android\n\n======\nZigurd\nThis is a relatively old question on Stackoverflow, and Dianne Hackborn's\nanswer is authoritative as usual.\n\nTo sum it up: Don't worry about global free memory. Your app can use up only a\nrelatively small part. More accurately, each component (Activity, Service,\netc.) of your app with the attribute can only use up to 48MB.\nUsually, all your components are in one process.\n\nWithin your process, Android will \"destroy\" (null all references) to\ncomponents in your process and recreate them to optimize memory use. At times,\nAndroid will destroy every component in a process and delete ane re-create\nwhole processes from the saved state of each component. This explains why PIDs\nare not reliable for tracking android app resource use. Your tasks (the\ncomponents on the back stack starting with the task root, which is the\ncomponent that was launched by the Launcher) are not tied to one process, nor\none PID, throughout their lifespan." -"\n\nPosterous (YC S08) launches group blogs that are also email lists - rantfoil\nhttp://mashable.com/2009/05/05/posterous-email-lists/\n\n======\njonas_b\nI'm not sure, but this, or some evolution of this feature, could turn out to\nbe a real revolution when it comes to group collaboration and sharing.\n\nOr it might just be another feature, or that I'm trying to see something that\nisn't there.\n\nI've been searching for a merge between this, Chatterous and possibly etherpad\nfor small-group collab. Alas, it eludes me still.\n\n~~~\nrantfoil\nWe're definitely excited about the potential for this feature to grow into its\nown product!\n\nYou can expect improvements to this coming fast and furious.\n\n------\nzaidf\nThis is ridiculously awesome and the exact feature we needed few months ago.\n\nWe started a blog for our larger extended family(50+ people) so there is a\nsimple place for all our family communication. Yet a lot of the people in our\nfamily know only rudimentary use of the computer--and that means email. So the\nblog idea didn't quite work out and we're back to emailing--which is\ndisorganized but works.\n\nWith this we can get the best of both worlds! Communicate via email, archive\non a blog!\n\n~~~\nrantfoil\nWould love" -"\nMy students forged the notes. I turned them into a lesson plan. - robg\nhttp://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/excuses-excuses-an-excerpt-from-teacher-man/article156072.html\n======\nExJournalist\n\"I was having an epiphany. Isn\u2019t it remarkable, I thought, how the students\nwhined and said it was hard putting 200 words together on any subject? But\nwhen they forged excuse notes, they were brilliant...\"\n\nTo me this is a great example of one of the fundamental problems with so much\neducation: it is full of unchallenging, unrelated-to-life, contrived tasks.\nWhen any process (creative writing, math, coding) is harnessed to a\nfascinating, meaningful-to-students goal... well, of course they're motivated.\nAnd creative.\n\nThat has always been true of me - when in grammar school, and decades into\nemployment.\n\n~~~\ncschneid\nQuestion for you then. In high school, should a kid only interested in reading\n& writing (english class, journalism) be required to take math and sciences?\n\nHow about a kid who's interested only in physics, should we make him read and\nwrite poetry?\n\nEven if each class is taught the best it possibly could be, individual\ninterests will outweigh, and the kids will be bored in the alternate classes.\n\nSo the options are either 1) uninterested kids, or 2) uneducated kids.\n\nBasically, since interests" -"\n\nThe Internship: Not the Movie - nsedlet\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/the-internship-not-the-movie.html?_r=0\n\n======\nLocke1689\nFriedman is a hack[1]. Aside from the fact that his primary source for this\narticle seems to be a New Yorker _cartoon_ , he seems unaware of federal law\non unpaid internships, which is quite stringent.\n\n[1] [http://nypress.com/flathead/](http://nypress.com/flathead/);\n\n~~~\nmichaelhoffman\nQuite stringent and largely unenforced.\n\n~~~\nLowKarmaAccount\nThis article was written in 2005. I've read Friedman's columns since, and they\nhaven't gotten any better.\n\nLook at this [1] piece in the _Columbia Journalism Review_ about Friedman's\nramblings two years ago about a \"radical centrist president\".\n\nFriedman lost a lot of credibility when he advocated for the Iraq War.\n\n[1]:\n[http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/tom_friedman_still_wrong.ph...](http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/tom_friedman_still_wrong.php)\n\n------\ntimdiggerm\nIt remains unclear to me how I was able to get an entry-level Software\nEngineering position in the DC/Baltimore area with nothing but a BS in CS from\nUMBC and no internships or relevant experience.\n\nAlso, Tom Friedman was a really boring commencement speaker.\n\n~~~\nwalshemj\nBecause SE is not a sexy a job as being a \"journalist\" or working in the\n\"medja\"\n\n------\nonewong\nNice follow up\n\n------\nesharef\nLol Dwight. Read article. Watch Vince Vaughn.\n\n------\ndw5ight\nw00t hireart 4tw. although wth is friedman writing about?" -"\nAsk HN: Is WSL2 stable enough for devs to switch from MacOS to Windows? - asenna\nFor developers who've switched back to Windows, how is the experience like? Is WSL2 as smooth as actually working on Linux? or does it still crap out on random Node libraries at times (like on WSL1)?

I'm in the market for a new work laptop and a lot of people I know are in the same boat - holding onto older Macbook Pros (2015 and earlier) looking for alternatives, but scared to jump from MacOS. Obviously Apple is busy making the next pro devices thinner which is just.. wonderful for them.

Yes, switching to Linux is an option for many. But I also have to use Adobe CC tools which needs Windows (Wine is not a good option). Hence it's either dual-booting Linux/Windows or Windows full time as the two options for me.\n======\nWorldMaker\nWSL2 is not technically stable yet at all. It's still only in 20H1 Insider\n[\"public beta\"] builds for the version of Windows 10 to be released in the\nfirst half of 2020.\n\n(WSL1 on the other hand has been stable and available for production versions\nof Windows 10 for months now." -"\nGoogle says ad blockers will save online ads - peter123\nhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/16/google_on_adblockers/\n======\npavs\nWow, the first half was all good and informative, than the second half the\nauthors started to dump all his opinion as known, absolute facts.\n\nThe fact is that Google, a multi billion dollar company which make ~90% of its\nrevenue through ads, not only allows ad blocking extensions to be installed in\nits browser (which is rapidly gaining market share) but also not-so-evil\nenough not to tinker with the Top 10 extension list and allow an ad blocking\nextension to be listed as the second most downloaded extension. (2 of the top\n10 extensions are ad blockers:\n).\n\nTo top it off, they are forthcoming about the ad blockers and how they view it\nand discussed it openly with everyone, by justifying it as a good thing. They\nagree with something most of us already know is that the single biggest reason\nwe use ad blocking extensions is because of the intrusive and extremely\nannoying ads. If ads were non-intrusive and fast and targeted most people\nwouldn't bother with ad blockers. Google, the biggest online ad company gets\nit. This is good news.\n\nAnd this is" -"\nJapan PM Abe: See no need to raise sales tax beyond 10% for decade - hhs\nhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-abe/japan-pm-abe-see-no-need-to-raise-sales-tax-beyond-10-for-decade-idUSKCN1TY0M3\n======\nlclarkmichalek\nSales taxes are regressive - people who don't have a lot of money have to\nspend more of it to stay alive, and therefore pay more sales tax :/ I'd rather\nhave a higher income tax and no sales tax. Income taxes are much more visible,\nbut don't suffer from penalizing people who can't save.\n\n~~~\nandrenth\nWhat's your opinion on a sales tax but simultaneously making food and medicine\ntax-free?\n\n------\nskrebbel\nI don't understand why this is on HN. It looks to be a generic \"politician\nmakes non-promise\" story.\n\n~~~\nMacroAffairs\nIt is not a \"politician makes non-promise\" story. It is actually a very\ncredible claim because the Japanese government doesn't even need more tax\nincome as they can lend freely.\n\nThe government can lend as much Yen as they want. The tax hike is something\nthat can help them get inflation, which has been too low for very long.\n\n~~~\nLIV2\nEven if it is not an empty promise I still don't understand how this is on\ntopic for HN\n\n------\nbaybal2\nJapanese economy is a mystery to" -"\n\nShow HN: Hashdog \u2013 MD5 breaker in Io.js/ES6 - logotype\nhttps://github.com/logotype/hashdog\n\n======\nbeernutz\nInteresting project.\n\nI see in some classes you set the object \"self\" to \"this\" and use it later in\nanonymous functions. That seems to be a common pattern in a lot of peoples\ncode.\n\nIt seems like naming the \"self\" object something more descriptive and specific\nwould make sense in general, but I can't help wondering if there is a more\nfundamental reason for using \"self\".\n\nIs this common in OO parlance for a reason?\n\n~~~\nmdaniel\nThat is a common JS idiom because the binding of \"this\" changes inside\nfunction calls, so one must capture the outer binding of \"this\" which when\nused in an object scenario does behave like the same keyword used in\ntraditional OO. The naming of \"self\" could just be a synonym or a nod to\nPython (I'd have to do research to know definitively)\n\n~~~\nbeernutz\nThat makes sense. I wonder though if there is a better convention than \"self\".\nThat by itself (to me at least) does not say much about which \"self\" we are\ndescribing. Maybe it is just a matter of personal preference, but I like to be" -"\nShow HN: Cap'n Proto, by the ex-maintainer of Protocol Buffers - kentonv\nhttp://kentonv.github.com/capnproto/\n======\nhaberman\nI have a lot of respect for Kenton and I'm sure this is high quality work.\n\nThe idea of a fixed-length encoding of a protobuf-like structure is a good\nidea, and something I have seen explored elsewhere. To me, though, it's\nunfortunate to create an entirely new schema language for it, instead of just\nmaking it an alternate encoding of the existing protobuf data model, which it\nclosely resembles. To have two schema languages that are nearly, but not\nquite, isomorphic means that you get no interoperability benefits with any\nexisting protobuf-based code or data.\n\nThe way I see it, the most important feature of protobufs is _not_ the on-the-\nwire encoding, but rather the schema. If you start from a schema (and its\nassociated data model), then you can create as many different encodings as you\nwant, and convert between them losslessly at any time, while taking advantage\nof their different performance characteristics.\n\nFor example, Dremel (as described in this paper:\n) is an extremely fast SQL-\nbased query engine at Google, which powers the Google cloud product BigQuery\n(which I work on). Because" -"\nWhy BlackBerry Storm Is An iPhone (and G-1) Killer - raju\nhttp://gigaom.com/2008/10/29/blackberry-storm-should-be-blackberry-stealth/\n======\niigs\nFor a long time I was an unflappable Blackberry fanboy. The reality of the\nsituation currently is this:\n\n1) Enterprise ready isn't the unique feature it was 18 months ago. ActiveSync\non WM no longer sucks to the point it lowers the barametric pressure in the\narea (although that's about all the compliments I have for it), the iPhone has\ncompelling Exchange integration, and I have heard good things about Nokia's\nExchange support (will know more when my wife's E71 arrives this weekend).\n\nHaving to pay an extra $15/mo/device for BES service, plus BES server hardware\n+ BES license fees, just to maintain parity with the other products is a\n_huge_ disadvantage. The best thing they could do is walk away from BES, but\nthe carriers won't do it because it's margin for them.\n\n2) They release phones _so slowly_. I appreciate that the build and radio\nquality of the phones are top notch, but slipping announced release dates\n(AT&T BB Bold, at least Sept-Nov, and maybe Jul/Aug-Nov) is not cool. I don't\nknow if that's AT&T's fault or RIM's fault, but the whole process is" -"\nAsk HN: Machine learning risk and control framework - ryeguy_24\nI'm working on building a risk framework for machine learning models to mitigate the risks of machine learning going wrong.

What are the risks of machine learning and what are the corresponding controls that can be used to mitigate those risks?\n======\nryeguy_24\nPoster comment here. I spent time in the banking/finance world where \"Model\nRisk Management\" is a huge thing. I think some of that can be used to think\nabout the risks/controls. It focuses on all the things that can go wrong - a)\nmodel doesn't produce an expected result and b) model is used inappropriately.\n\nSo, they do things like, performing a model validation which includes rigorous\nqualitative and quantitative tests, setting limitations on use, testing the\nsensitivity to inputs and boundary conditions, among many others.\n\nIn the traditional sense, a machine learning model is a new beast. In most\ncases, these models don't have an agreed upon \"methodology\" (i.e. neural\nnetworks) and therefore don't have an \"expected\" result that can be tested\n(especially for unsupervised learning models). So, curious to know what others\nare thinking?\n\n------\nmindcrime\n_Superintelligence_ by Bostrom is a decent treatment of some ideas" -"\nRussian startup released unlimited storage device which can never be hacked - onelly\nhttp://innmind.com/articles/250?utm_source=HN&utm_medium=repost&utm_campaign=flashsafe\n======\nPiskvorrr\nOnly it's not a device, it's a cloud storage service (\"forever\" and\n\"unlimited\" \\- until further notice).\n\nThe device provides local encryption - and is unsinkab...uhm, I mean,\n\"unhackable\". No parallel with the RMS Titanic, noooosir. And I've seen a fair\nshare of supposedly unhackable cruft: Schneier alert - \"it's easy to make a\nsystem that its' creator is unable to crack,\" to paraphrase.\n\n~~~\nonelly\nIn their official description it is said:\n\nWe take stored data security to a whole new level! Nobody will ever know what\ndata you are keeping, because your files are not linked to your personal\ninformation on our servers. That means total anonymity. All data is encrypted\nusing a 2048-bit key a technology similar to the one used for bank\ntransactions but even better. It all happens on your computer, and even if\nsomeone lays hand on your data, they won\u2019t be able to decipher it without a\nSmartFlash itself. You can use an additional pin-code that is impossible to\ntrack if you use a mouse to enter it. Losing your Flashsafe is like losing\nyour bank card:" -"\nBSD Unix: Power to the people, from the code (2000) - vezzy-fnord\nhttp://www.salon.com/2000/05/16/chapter_2_part_one/\n======\nnickpsecurity\nGreat read. I think the biggest takeaway is how they organize and run their\noperation. There's a tiny amount of high talent and dedication people that\nreally control the process. They're open for contributions by whoever wants to\ntry. They internally filter the wheat from the chaff to find those who\ncontributions are truly useful. They give them extra power in both what ends\nup in the distro and helping the filtering/discovery process. The rest are\nstill allowed to attempt whatever contributions they can. The model seems to\nhit an optimal point to bring in more good than bad.\n\nMight be worth copying in other projects. Supporting this is the other,\nhighly-successful organizations that use a similar model. Far as Linux,\nthere's always exceptions to the rule and lets not forget it depends on GNU\nwork done differently. That hybrid, immensely popular development doesn't\ncompare apples to apples with about anything. I treat it like its own\ncategory.\n\n------\njustincormack\nKirk McKusick is still an important person in BSD.\n\nThis story omits the role of NetBSD in opening up development in the BSDs\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBSD#History)\n\n~~~" -"\nWhat Wittgenstein Learned from Teaching Elementary School - Hooke\nhttp://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/03/05/wittgenstein-schoolteacher\n======\na_bonobo\n>It\u2019s hard now to know how consistent his use of corporal punishment was with\nstandard practice at the time.\n\nThe quoted Wittgenstein biography of Monk (highly recommended!) actually has a\ncomment on that:\n\n>Another girl who was weak at mathematics remembers that one day Wittgenstein\npulled her hair so hard that when she later combed it a lot of it fell out.\n[...] It was not that the villagers disapproved of corporal punishment, nor\nthat such methods of discipline were at all unusual, despite Gl\u00f6ckel\u2019s\nrecommendations. However, though it was accepted that an unruly boy should\nhave his ears boxed if he misbehaved, it was not expected that a girl who\ncould not grasp algebra should receive the same treatment.\n\nLocation 419.4/1469 in my ebook copy\n\nSo, at least according to Monk, Wittgenstein's methods of corporal punishment\nwere according to the times when it came to male students, but not according\nto the times when it came to female students, especially when it's about\nmathematics.\n\n~~~\na_humean\nMonk's biography on Wittgenstein is great. I recommend his newest one on\nOppenheimer if you haven't read it.\n\nI think Monk's" -"\nBe Happier: Things to Stop Doing Right Now - wallflower\nhttp://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-to-be-happier-work-10-things-stop-doing.html\n======\nSwizec\nJust wanted to say it's fascinating how articles are targeted to demographics.\nNever seen a \"Be happy at work\" post before that said things like\n\n\"People make mistakes. Employees don't meet your expectations. Vendors don't\ndeliver on time.\" - don't blame employees\n\n\"Yeah, you're the boss. Yeah, you're the titan of industry. Yeah, you're the\nsmall tail that wags a huge dog.\"\n\n\"Yeah, you're more educated. Yeah, you're more experienced. Yeah, you've been\naround more blocks and climbed more mountains and slayed more dragons.\"\n\n\"The higher you rise and the more you accomplish, the more likely you are to\nthink you know everything--and to tell people everything you think you know.\"\n\nThis is not your usual \"How to be happy\" article. Fascinating. I wonder what\nwould happen if I forwarded this to, say, my mum who works as a government\nclerk, or any of my college student friends bussing tables on weekends.\n\n~~~\nExpiredLink\nDale Carnegie?\n\n------\nalexholehouse\n_Impressing\n\nNo one likes you for your clothes, your car, your possessions, your title, or\nyour accomplishments. Those are all \"things.\" People may like your things--but\nthat doesn't mean" -"\nAsk HN: How do you plan for your vacation? - tixocloud\nHi guys,

We're looking to understand more about how people plan for their vacations (i.e. well thought out? last minute? etc.) and thought HN-ers might have great insight.\n======\nReefAftershock\nMy general sequence for an overseas trip is to use a slew of tools:\n\n1\\. Choose the dates based on compatibility with my work schedule or\nparticular events I want to visit (e.g. festivals)\n\n2\\. Use Google Flights and matrix.itasoftware.com to get a idea of prices\n\n3\\. i. Use a shared Google Sheet to list out options and my schedule (e.g.\nplotting out a row for each day of the trip, to allocate out days to each\ndestination)\n\n3\\. ii. Check Google / Wikipedia / TripAdvisor to see the top attractions -\nadd these to the Sheet for reference while I'm on the trip, and also use this\nto make sure I've allocated the right amount of time to each place.\n\n4\\. Use booking.com or Expedia to find the best deals for accommodation\n(usually I use hotels)\n\n5\\. Book directly on the airline's website, since that often has the best\nprice.\n\n~~~\ntixocloud\nThanks. For any of these destinations, do" -"\nBoeing 737 Max Aircraft: Preliminary Investigative Findings [pdf] - ddulaney\nhttps://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/TI%20Preliminary%20Investigative%20Findings%20Boeing%20737%20MAX%20March%202020.pdf\n======\nV_Terranova_Jr\nHaving worked with Boeing on other aerospace programs (not commercial though)\nand having been on the Gov side, the basic findings ring true. Boeing's\nculture really is as flawed as the report reads. The idea that Dennis\nMuilenburg, however, originated or did more than prior company management to\nfoster this culture, is nonsense. They remain, even today, operating with this\nculture. The real problem that stands in the way of \"fundamental structural\nreform\" is that regardless of specific aerospace market, few alternatives to\nBoeing exist. And don't think the corporate cultures at other traditional US\naerospace primes is consistently better.\n\nThe points about Government acquiescence to Boeing pressure in performing\nregulation also resonate. Beware the tendency to make this a single-axis \"more\nvs. less\" regulation issue. The solution isn't \"more regulation\". The central\nconcern should about regulatory culture. Ultimately, responsibility lines must\nbe drawn, standards established, adjudication performed, and unique or\nspecific situations accommodated. Inevitably, the \"less regulation\" crowd\ncorrodes the kind of regulatory culture that serves the best interests of the\npopulace in these processes. Good regulation depends on having highly-\ncompetent, wise, empowered, and apolitical" -"\n\nShedding some light on \"dark social\" - vikrum\nhttp://5f5.org/ruminations/dark-social-dubious.html\n\n======\nvikrum\nThis is a pretty cursory look into some other possiblities of refererless\ntraffic. Given an ordinary browsing session or interaction from an end user,\nwhat else could be leading to HTTP requests without the referer header?\n\n~~~\nasparagui\n1) proxies\n\n2) clever antivirus/firewall software\n\n3) htaccess tricks will often drop headers\n\n4) javascript\n\n5) things like amazon silk\n\n6) people spoofing things to make their browser work\n\n7) anonymizer services\n\n8) proxies\n\n~~~\nnostromo\n9) links followed from https -> http\n\n10) bookmarks\n\n~~~\npapsosouid\nThe article in question claims that links followed from https facebook do have\na referrer header:\n\n>In testing links from Facebook and Twitter over HTTPS the referer is present\nin most cases.\n\n~~~\nnostromo\nThat's definitely not to spec if the browser is doing it.\n\n\n\"Clients SHOULD NOT include a Referer header field in a (non-secure) HTTP\nrequest if the referring page was transferred with a secure protocol.\"\n\nHowever, it's possible that Facebook is passing users through an HTTP gateway.\n\n~~~\nvikrum\nIt looks like the intermediate 301's referer is being passed thru (For\nexample, all links on Twitter get wrapped as a" -"\n\nShow HN: Couldn't find good tool to analyze MySQL Slow Query Logs so I made one - DangerousPie\nhttp://nk.gl/slow_queries/\n\n======\nzimpenfish\nWhat's the unique selling point of yours over pt-query-digest?\n\n[http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-toolkit/2.1/pt-query-\ndige...](http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-toolkit/2.1/pt-query-digest.html)\n\n~~~\nDangerousPie\nWell the one big difference is that mine is simply a website where you upload\nyour log file, while pt-query-digest is part of a (apparently linux-only)\ntoolkit that you have to download and install. This may not be a big issue if\nyou have your own linux-based server and deal with these logs on a regular\nbasis, but if you are on Windows and just want to do a one-off analysis I\nthink my site is a much better solution.\n\nIn addition, since I am displaying the summary in a web browser I can add all\nsorts of nice enhancements you couldn't have in a simple console, for example:\n\n \n \n - Searching and sorting queries on the fly\n - Syntax highlighting\n - Visualization (like the queries/hour histogram)" -"\nFreedom, the US Government, and why Apple are still bad - zdw\nhttp://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/39999.html\n======\nIBM\nHuh. The fact that Apple are the only ones that can sign software that runs on\nan iPhone may just allow them to defeat the DoJ in court.\n\n[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/apple-\nfbi-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/apple-fbi-fight-\nasks-is-code-protected-as-free-speech)\n\nApple has indicated that they're going to continue to keep increasing the\nsecurity of their products in the future, which may make it impossible to\nupdate firmware to the Secure Enclave (or at least require the user's\npermission first), but that's actually a weak measure.\n\nI'm not sure why tech people think that technical means to accomplish zero\nknowledge is the holy grail, that will never trump having the law on your\nside. Congress could pass legislation (like CALEA for tech companies) that\nwould require everyone to design their products to make them accessible to law\nenforcement any time they want.\n\n~~~\nspiralpolitik\nAt this point you might as well kiss goodbye to the US tech industry as nobody\noverseas will by anything that has a US government mandated backdoored.\n\n~~~\nIBM\nI'm pretty sure if Congress passes legislation mandating it they can influence\nplenty of non-American businesses by withholding their ability to do" -"\nHello darkness my old friend - mariorz\nhttp://diveintomark.org/archives/2008/08/12/year-of-what-now\n======\ndmpayton\nI completely sympathize with Mark. I was an Apple hater for years, and was\necstatic when I discovered Linux (Ubuntu 7.04) and could move away from\nWindows as well.\n\nThen a good friend of mine convinced me to get an iPhone. I was hesitant at\nfirst, but after trying one I decided to go for it.\n\nThen I got a job where my choices were a MacBook Pro or a Dell with Vista.\nThree guesses which one I took (the first two don't count).\n\nI must admit OS X is really nice, and full Unix compatibility is a huge plus.\nStill... _sigh_\n\n[Edit: missing period]\n\n~~~\nelai\nFull unix compatibility without easy, comprehensive & working BINARY package\nmanagement (like debian, or archlinux) is still a big pain in the ass. Setting\nup something like the mysqldb library, mod_python, apache, and django can be a\n1 hour production vs. the 5 minute production that it is on linux.\n\n~~~\ndmpayton\nAgreed, package managers are a godsend. That's why there's\n and \n\n------\ntptacek\nI can't modify the firmware image in my Bosch engine ECU, even though doing so\ncould significantly" -"\n\nHadoop Platform as a Service in the Cloud - amitry\nhttp://techblog.netflix.com/2013/01/hadoop-platform-as-service-in-cloud.html\n\n======\nnwenzel\nOther than the architecture of their multi-cluster management system, which us\ncertainly fascinating, I found two interesting points.\n\n1) Use of S3 as the data storage platform allows for Production, ad hoc,\nanalytic, and \"personal\" clusters to all work with not only a full-size data\nset but the same data set. Brilliant.\n\n2) The investigation of Amazon Redshift as a Teradata replacement. First, it\nvalidates Amazon as a new competitor to on-premise relational data warehouse\nimplementations. Second, it would seemingly move substantially all their data\nto the cloud. Third, what does that mean for their other apps such as\n\"traditional\" BI? No sense having Cognos on a local server if all the data is\nin the cloud." -"\nBlue Apron Tumbles After Losing Customers in Second Quarter - robertgk\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-10/blue-apron-beats-revenue-estimates-as-marketing-costs-decline\n======\nIgorPartola\nI dropped them for two reasons after using them for nearly a year. First,\nthese meals actually take longer to prepare and way longer to clean up after\nthan what I normally make. The food is very good, but the instructions are\nwritten by someone who (a) seems to have a gourmet kitchen at their disposal\nand (b) doesn't do dishes after. No, I am not going to chop all six veggie\ningredients into six separate bowls, just to combine them in the next step.\nAlso, I'm not going to chop everything up front just to realize that the\ngarlic goes in at the last step for 30 seconds before the dish is ready.\n\nThe second was an issue I had repeatedly with the meat and fish ingredients: I\nhad several weeks where meat/fish packaging was open when I got the shipment\nand the contents went bad. I emailed them every time, but at some point I got\ntired of having to immediately go to the grocery store to find the right\nquantity of pork or cod or whatever to complete the meal.\n\nRealistically, their 35" -"\n\nThaler: Recipes for Ruin, in the Gulf or on Wall St. - tptacek\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13view.html?hpw\n\n======\ntptacek\nRichard Thaler is a behavioral economist at UChicago, and a prolific author.\nHe wrote _Nudge_ with Cass Sunstein at Harvard Law, which is an interesting\nbut dry book on incentives.\n\nI caught this on Marginal Revolution (which is to blogs what The Economist is\nto magazines, namely, something I subscribe to because I feel I must) and\nthought it was interesting.\n\nNutshell: we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. We can ask companies\nto insure themselves (either through actual insurance or through heavy\ntaxation) for the harm they might cause. But we don't know how to calculate\nthe costs of future events, which companies will always argue are very\nunlikely anyways. Meanwhile, there's little evidence that being forced to\ncarry insurance would cause companies to evince better judgement.\n\nOn the flip side, we could expose companies to uncapped liability for the\ndamages they cause. But then you run into the inability of companies to pay,\nor worse, the restructuring of industries to ensure that the companies who\nprofit the most from, say, drilling are never the ones actually doing the\ndrilling." -"\nApplication data caching using SSDs - sgmansfield\nhttp://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-data-caching-using-ssds.html\n======\ngeodel\n> The decision to use Go was deliberate, because we needed something that had\n> lower latency than Java (where garbage collection pauses are an issue) and\n> is more productive for developers than C, while also handling tens of\n> thousands of client connections. Go fits this space well.\n\nThis is interesting. There haven't been many instances yet where Go's\nmemory/GC performance is compared directly and favorably to Java's\nperformance.\n\n~~~\nfaizshah\nIn this case I don't think it's the raw performance they are looking for but\nrather freedom from the unpredictable GC pauses. Although I think they should\nhave explained why they didn't use Azul Zing for this, I realize it's\nexpensive but this seems like the exact use case for it.\n\nFound some interesting discussion here about this:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149961)\n\n~~~\nsgmansfield\nAuthor here (of both Rend and the post).\n\nWe really _are_ looking for raw performance, but not at any cost. I spent a\nbunch of time, and continue to do so, to eliminate extra work, indirection,\nand garbage.\n\nEfficiency of runtime and development is a careful balance that Go fits well.\nRust is immature. C is" -"\nAsk HN: Where to find online mathematics community? - mcrwfrd\nAfter browsing HN for a couple of years, I've seen that a fair few members of this community have studied math at the post-secondary level. It's not uncommon to see Ask HN posts about how to weave a mathematics background into a coding job or how to continue studying mathematics on one's own.

I find myself in a similar position and have resolved that, at a bare minimum, I need to involve math in my life at least in a recreational way, if not in a professional way. Although this could be fun completely solo, I'd like to have like-minded people to talk to about this. Since my location is somewhat rural and because of COVID, I'd like to commune with other math people online.

For clarity, when I think about involving math in my life, I'm thinking about picking up where I left off with abstract algebra, real and complex analysis, and maybe some theoretic physics.

So HN, the question is, where are the other math lovers hanging out online?\n======\nakully\nI imagine you could roam around the subreddits and check out what's up.\n\nI also imagine that (at least this" -"\nA Little Better Advice - sant0sk1\nhttp://mattmaroon.com/?p=617\n======\naneesh\nMatt, that's one of the first \"advice\" pieces I've read that acknowledges that\nall people don't (and shouldn't) make the same decision in the same\ncircumstances.\n\nHelping people weigh the tradeoffs is MUCH better advice than \"yes\"/\"no\". I\nwish more bloggers would take 5 seconds to think about that before posting.\n\n~~~\nhelveticaman\nSo true. I was doing a financial analysis of American professional sports a\nfew months ago. I assumed height was a known variable (which is true; a doctor\ncan predict a child's adult height within an inch), but talent was dependent\non hours spent practicing (the whole 10,000 hours thing). That's all that\nreally matters. What I came up with was that you have to be something like\n6'7\" or taller to have a reasonable shot at success. If you're going to be\nthis tall or taller, it becomes a wise investment to work at becoming good at\nfootball, basketball, or baseball. By this I mean you have a reasonable\nexpectation (like 1 in 5) of getting drafted to a major league.\n\n------\nrokhayakebe\nSo should I do a startup or not?\n\n~~~\nmattmaroon\nNo :)\n\n~~~\nmedianama" -"\nShow HN: Sublime Text Book - wesbos\nhttps://sublimetextbook.com\n======\njawns\nLet's talk about the price of the e-book, $36.\n\nFor a standard nonfiction e-book, that price is fairly high, but when it comes\nto software/programming books, you expect it to be a bit higher than average.\n\nI took a look at some O'Reilly titles around the same price point, and\nspecifically at books that are similar to this, where you're really learning\nabout how to make use of a particular software program's features, rather than\nhow to write in a particular programming language or understand a particular\nabstract concept or niche in software development.\n\n\"Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac\" is 200 pages, $30 for a print edition.\n\n\"Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought\" is 346 pages, $30 for a\nprint edition.\n\n\"Learning GNU Emacs: A Guide to Unix Text Processing\" is 536 pages, $36 for an\ne-book.\n\nIt seems to be generally the case, and these examples bear it out, that\ne-books are priced lower than physical copies, and shorter books are priced\nlower than longer books. I would add that niche books (where the information\nis hard to find elsewhere) also command a premium.\n\nBased" -"\nNew York deploys National Guard to New Rochelle, establishes containment center - smacktoward\nhttps://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/new-york-gov-cuomo-to-deploy-national-guard-to-new-rochelle-establishes-containment-center-to-stem-coronavirus.html\n======\nStanislavPetrov\nHere on nearby Long Island cases are popping up all over the place with no\nknown links to other diagnosed cases, including 2 school bus drivers. Despite\nthis, barely anyone is being tested, even those who are symptomatic. This\ncrisis is being terribly mishandled.\n\n[https://www.fox5ny.com/news/two-long-island-bus-drivers-\ndiag...](https://www.fox5ny.com/news/two-long-island-bus-drivers-diagnosed-\nwith-coronavirus)\n\n~~~\ntaborj\nI've not been keeping up; what's the obstacle to getting tested? Insurance\ncompanies not covering? Hospitals not willing? Patients not going in?\n\n~~~\nsmacktoward\nThe CDC completely dropped the ball on providing test kits, so all the\nindividual states and localities have had to source them themselves. Which,\nentirely predictably, they are not doing a great job at.\n\nIt didn't help matters either that those test kits the CDC _did_ provide early\non turned out to have flaws that caused inaccurate readings (see\n[https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/after-missteps-\ncd...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/after-missteps-cdc-says-its-\ncoronavirus-test-kit-ready-primetime-n1145206)).\n\n~~~\nSkyPuncher\nFrom my understanding, state and local labs HAVE been able to source them. The\nCDC has been refusing to authorize them for testing.\n\nUniv. of Washington seems to be an outlier as they were able to get approval\nunder an existing research study they have.\n\n~~~\nalfiedotwtf" -"\nGuy Who Copied Digg Slams Digg For Copying Twitter - jordanmessina\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2010/05/29/guy-who-copied-digg-slams-digg-for-copying-twitter/\n======\npg\nActually Reddit didn't copy Digg. It copied del.icio.us/popular. This will be\nclear if you look at screenshots of the two sites in summer 2005. Reddit was\ndel.icio.us/popular with votes instead of bookmarks, in the same way that Digg\nwas Slashdot with votes instead of human editors.\n\nThe differences between Reddit's and Digg's origins are visible even today.\nWhen a story gets enough votes on Digg it becomes the new top story, as on\nSlashdot. Whereas on Reddit stories bubble up from the bottom then sink back\ndown again. This is a significant difference because it makes Reddit harder to\ngame.\n\nOriginally the Reddits thought they'd have to motivate people to upvote\nstories by using the votes to train a filter. But it turned out users were\nwilling to vote out of a form of altruism, so the idea of training a filter\ndied out after a couple months.\n\nAs for the names, what they originally wanted to call Reddit was Snoo, as in\n\"what's new?\" But the name was owned by a squatter who wouldn't sell, so as a\ntemporary expedient Alexis chose Reddit, which Steve" -"\n\nAsk HN: What is the most influential not-technology book(s) you have ever read? - rayalez\n\nHi, guys!! I am looking for great books to read, I'm sure people in this community can recommend something very interesting.\n======\nmorganf\nIt would be interesting if we answered the question, along with another: _why\n/how?_ (Is that two other questions?). Knowing why and how, say, Roger\nL'Estrange's 1715 Aesop's Fables influenced you so would be much more\ninteresting than just knowing that, it did influence you.\n\nMe? Jane Jacobs' _Death and Life of Great American Cities_. I read it when I\nwas 21 (1998) and it changed how I walk down the street, every single day of\nmy life since. Why this street is full of life, and that street is empty, for\nexample. But not only that: she basically argues that central planning is\ndisastrous for cities, and that cities should think on the street and human\nlevels, from the ground up, and then iterate from there (rather than top-\ndown). These ideas applied to other areas of life -- like software\ndevelopment, for example -- have been very powerful for me. I'd argue that\nJacobs' thought is a precursor to the" -"\n\nTech Community Group Hacker Hideout names costume party \"Hackers & Hookers\" - phwd\nhttps://www.eventbrite.com/event/8938393977/\n\n======\nlbarrow\nValleyWag pretty much nailed it:\n\n\"Beer. Dance floor. Shot bar. Food truck. Girls.\" Nerds. Obliviousness. Poor\njudgment. Skewed cultural views. Social regression. Bros. MySQL. Crushing it.\nA party atmosphere combined with everything that makes the rest of the world\nhate you, Silicon Valley: this party is not smart.\"\n\n[http://valleywag.gawker.com/hackers-and-hookers-startup-\npart...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/hackers-and-hookers-startup-party-is-\ntechs-new-worst-1450909234/@sambiddle)\n\n------\njordo37\nMan, what the hell. This is despicable but also just dumb - someone already\ngot in trouble for this exact same stuff last year and there was media\ncoverage.\n\nAt least when lame-o's come up with new forms of misogyny it advances the\nconversation forward, this is just a rehash.\n\n------\ngenevievemp\nCan I debut my 'uber for sex' startup there? #whoresmakeitwork\n\n------\nogghead\nBuncha pathetic bros. I think they believe this pitch will actually entice\nfemale humanoids to attend.\n\nIf this mysogynist debacle comes to pass, I would love to see pictures. Bro-\ndudes are always funny.\n\n------\ncalibraxis\nAt least they're honest about misogyny. Some people see no significant\ndifference between renting machines and females, to carry out commands.\n\n------\ngeetee\nso what.\n\nedit: seriously. that's the response this" -"\nIntroducing The New IFTTT - johns\nhttp://blog.ifttt.com/post/25506427600/thenewifttt\n======\namolsarva\nNote to hardware hackers: IFTTT almost certainly started with some musings\nabout \"wouldn't it be cool if I could make my household X trigger web API Y\"\nand for many entrepreneurs would have led to a startup about smart gadgets.\nThere have been many over the years.\n\nThe very clever thing about IFTTT is they sat and cheaply began the process of\nbuilding the web layer.\n\nI like it!\n\nWeMo is likely the first of many many gadgets and interfaces where they can\naccept links.\n\nNow they wait and see how quickly the China Ecosystem and the gadget makers\nlike Belkin deliver lots of nice cheap easy trigger devices.\n\nBugLabs...Nest...Dropcam...LG Smart Refrigerators...Toyota Prius...\n\n~~~\nasmithmd1\nIt would be more exciting if they had an API.\n\nI don't see any way to add channels - either a hardware one or a software one.\nYou could use RSS but that is it. And I don't see any way to add an action.\nThey could very easily add a \"web hook\" URL for a custom action.\n\nI get really annoyed when I see sites like this that anoint winners. They\nalready have an API" -"\n\nAsk HN: Government shutdown - what does it mean? - guynamedloren\n\nI am piecing together bits of information from twitter, news sources, and wikipedia, but I'm still not entirely sure what this 'government shutdown' means. How will US citizens be affected, if at all? Is there any reason to be concerned? What are the ramifications?

As always, I appreciate the knowledge, wisdom and experience of the HN community.\n======\nrabidonrails\nREAD THIS FIRST:\n[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/30/a...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/30/absolutely-\neverything-you-need-to-know-about-how-the-government-shutdown-will-\nwork/?tid=pm_pop)\n\n~~~\nguynamedloren\nThis is great, thank you.\n\n------\nnreece\nA summary on Reddit:\n[http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1nhlv9/us_governm...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1nhlv9/us_government_has_shut_down/ccinzst)\n\n------\nzachlatta\nThe Wikipedia article explains it well:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown)\n\n------\nthejteam\nThe sun will still shine. The grass will still grow. Eventually squabbles\namong men will be resolved. Life will move on." -"\nShow HN: A startup idea in your inbox, every day - jonnygoodwin\nhttps://www.startupsfromthebottom.com/\n======\njonnygoodwin\nThanks for checking out Startups From The Bottom, a free newsletter where\nyou'll receive a startup idea every day. This is a side project that a friend\nand I started.\n\nJust a little disclaimer about this service: Creating a startup is not just a\nmatter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. An initial idea is just a\nstarting point. That's it. It should not be an assertion of the final product.\nAfter testing and iterating, most startups don't end up anything like the\ninitial idea. The point of this newsletter is to get you thinking. To\nencourage you to start. Don't get hung up on the idea. Pick one and start.\n\n------\njessiebbs\nI couldn't find a privacy policy. What do I agree to if I submit my email?" -"\nHackers went undetected in Citrix\u2019s internal network for six months - marcc\nhttps://techcrunch.com/2019/04/30/citrix-internal-network-breach/\n======\nbenmarks\n> Citrix said in a later update on April 4 that the attack was likely a result\n> of password spraying, which attackers use to breach accounts by brute-\n> forcing from a list of commonly used passwords that aren\u2019t protected with\n> two-factor authentication.\n\nHow did Citrix not have 2FA in place?\n\n~~~\nSCHiM\nHaven't read the article, don't know anything about their network. Assuming\nthey use a Windows domain for their corp infrastructure.\n\nLower level Windows authentication mechanisms can't be configured for 2FA. If\nyour active directory domain is functional at all then at the very least your\nsystems need to be able to talk via SMB and ldap to a domain controller. With\nsufficient privileges you're able to execute code on other machines via either\nprotocol.\n\nYou only need an infected machine, not even user credentials, to be able to\nperform password spraying or kerberoasting attacks.\n\n~~~\nsbr464\nNot sure what you meant by lower level mechanisms, but you can protect console\nlogins and RDP with 2FA: [https://duo.com/docs/rdp](https://duo.com/docs/rdp)\n\n[https://help.duo.com/s/article/1084?language=en_US](https://help.duo.com/s/article/1084?language=en_US)\n\n~~~\nw8rbt\nnet commands, kerberos tickets, etc. You can really only 2FA web" -"\nWeizenbaum examines computers and society (1985) - jakub-\nhttp://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html\n======\ndavidtotoole\nSee also his book \"Computer Power and Human Reason.\"\n\nQuote:\n\n \n \n \"The computer has thus begun to be an instrument for the\n destruction of history. For when society legitimates only\n those 'data' that ... 'can easily be told to the machine', \n then history, memory itself, is annihiliated... Soon a \n supersystem will be built, based on the New York Times' data \n bank.. from which 'historians' will make inferences about \n what 'really' happened, about who is connected to\n whom, and about the 'real' logic of events.\"\n \n\nThat was in 1976.\n\n------\ndavidtotoole\nWeizenbaum is discussing the received doctrine of most computer scientists.\nProbably most of you think we are making \"just tools\" and that their end use\nis not our concern. As you read this article, particularly the later portions,\nthink about all the codenames we've heard since PRISM and how much the problem\nhas grown since 1985." -"\nHarvard, Princeton Targeted in Asian Discrimination Probe - leelin\nhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-02/harvard-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe.html\n======\nkandalf\nSAT scores are not a sufficient indicator for bias in college admissions.\nThere are two factors at work here:\n\n1\\. For elite colleges, specific SAT scores are irrelevant. Essentially, once\na certain cut-off is reached, say 2250, it doesn't matter how high you go. In\nfact, I'm sure admissions officers get a kick out of rejecting the 2400 - I'd\nrather have a 2380 than a 2400 any day. The variance in SAT scores over a\ncertain cutoff is simply not a good enough indicator for what the colleges are\nlooking for.\n\n2\\. In my experience, Asian families tend to place a disproportionate emphasis\non test scores and grades. This leads to higher than average SAT scores for\nAsian students, sometimes at the cost of other parts of the application\npackage.\n\nTaken together, I believe these two ideas contribute to a reasonable\nexplanation for the phenomenon discussed in the article.\n\nThis is not to say that admissions are not racially biased - I would not be at\nall surprised if they are.\n\n~~~\ngxs\nThis is exactly right. I completely detest knee-jerk reactions and blanket\nstatements that crop" -"\nFBI overstated forensic hair matches in nearly all trials before 2000 - protomyth\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html\n======\nMCRed\nA few years ago I remember reading reports of the FBI forensic labs doing much\nworse-- taking evidence from the crime scene and contaminating evidence taken\nfrom the accused with it so that it would produce a \"match\" and the like. It\nwas a big scandal.\n\nIn fact over the past 20 years I've heard this story at least a dozen times--\nwhere crime \"labs\" at different levels of government and in different states\n(eg: state labs, federal lagbs, etc) were caught doing this.\n\nAnd when it happens, that isn't enough to get people to be able to appeal\nunless they have evidence the lab did it in their specific case.\n\nOne of the problems of our system is that the criminal system is lacks checks\nand balances. The judges, prosecutors, police all work for the government.\nThey all have the same interests-- they all report to people who want to look\n\"tough on crime\".\n\nSince the police immediately take over crime scenes and collect the evidence\nand then get the evidence analyzed, they have a lot of power to be corrupt in\nthe" -"\nWhy ancient Roman graffiti is so important to archaeologists - akakievich\nhttp://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113411831/why-ancient-roman-graffiti-is-so-important-to-archaeologists-010516/\n======\nexistencebox\nAt the risk of nitpicking: \"Meanwhile, every female Roman voice has been lost\nto time.\"\n\nI bring this up less to bang on some diversity card, and more that it seems\nvery far from true? (Yes, they were a vast minority, but 'lost to time' seems\nquite overwrought) In terms of poetry we have Sulpicia (both of them) and then\nlots of miscellaneous daily writings e.g. the diary of Vibia Perpetua; and of\ncourse Lucretia and Fulvia if we're talking public figures...\n\nAnd the additional quote of female homosexuality being universally abhorred\nalso seems to be misaligned with what I was taught, but my memories of this\nare both fuzzier and from my days in university, so I'd be more than willing\nto be proven wrong. (The obvious argument in my favor is the amount the of\nattention garnered by the supposed lesbian (both in location and sexual\npractice) Sappho) My take on it was that there was as much of a distribution\nin terms of outlook on sexual practices as there is today, albeit very\ndifferently weighted.\n\nThat all being said, roman graffiti is _amazing_" -"\n\nHow We Got Our First 5,000 Users - smalter\nhttp://blog.idonethis.com/post/4779807862/how-we-got-our-first-5-000-users\n\n======\npetercooper\nShame it got a better title over at Reddit: \"Getting to 5,000 Users after\nLaunching on HN and Reddit.\"\n\n~~~\nsmalter\nI'm an idiot. I had this conversation after realizing that I posted the\narticle with a bad subject.\n\nme: i sux, i shoulda tailored the HN submission to HN. in fact, that\u2019s what\nthe article is about!\n\nBrian: lulz. meta-fail\n\n~~~\npetercooper\nIt happens. It's just become particularly important nowadays due to the crazy\namount of stories that come by here now. This is both a good and bad thing.." -"\n\nWhat to expect when dealing with potential investors - Ztrain\nhttp://www.antiventurecapital.com/valuations.html\nBrace yourselves.\n======\nshogunmike\nThe article emphasises the importance of equity (for a founder) but I'd be\nhappy with 10% of $100 million as opposed to 90% of $10,000.\n\nSurely a more important (but perhaps slightly more subtle) point is that VCs\nwill perhaps impose additional constraints on the company. A good example is\nbringing in a new \"business savvy\" CEO (and/or board of directors) to\npotentially replace you.\n\nAre there any legal tools that allow a founder to maintain control of the\ncompany (in a voting sense) even if the VC firm wants 50% or more equity?\n\nIf Sequoia invested in your startup and asked for 50% would YOU complain?" -"\nUX design: Tools, methods and frameworks for generalists - ndewilde\nhttps://nickdewilde.substack.com/p/the-keyring-zac-halbert-on-ux-design\n======\ndenster\nGreat post!\n\nTo op, for tools like Figma, what do you think the future holds? In what\ndimension will they evolve? How can they help you be more effective? Will they\nhelp you express your ideas in ever higher fidelity over time? [1]\n\n[1] Biased questions, but genuinely curious about the op's answers given his\ndeep expertise in the field (as the founder of\n[https://mintdata.com](https://mintdata.com))\n\n~~~\nzachalbert\nGreat question. Figma is leaps and bounds closer to giving designers tools\nthat work like code, but it still has a long way to go. My wish list design\ntool is something that has the creative flexibility of design canvas, but the\npower of clean, performant code. Truthfully I think it'll require evolution\nboth in the design tools space, but also the HTML and CSS specs.\n\nFor instance, in Figma we've only had a reliable way of adding something\nsimple like button padding (where you can create a reusable button that will\nexpand as you type a longer label) for a year. There have been plugins that\ndid it before that, but they weren't reliable. This is crazy when you" -"\n\nShow HN: OpinionatedC \u2013 Because ObjC should have inherited more from Smalltalk - Rockslide\nhttps://github.com/leoschweizer/OpinionatedC\n\n======\nRockslide\nOp here.\n\nFirst of all, let me say that I'm totally aware that with Swift lurking around\nthe corner, Objective-C is far from being the cool kid on the block. However,\nthe latter is not going away anytime soon, and as long as Objective-C code has\nto be written and maintained, there is a need to produce readable and succinct\ncode.\n\nDuring the past year, I've basically worked full time with Objective-C. Since\nI use the excellent ComponentKit (Objective-C++) to build app UIs, it wasn't\nreally practical to switch to Swift. So I was sitting there, stuck with\nObjective-C, and coming from a Smalltalk background, I couldn't help but\nnotice the influences it took on Objective-C. But I also couldn't stop\nnoticing where brilliant design decisions didn't find their way from Smalltalk\nto the Apple world.\n\nThat's why I created OpinionatedC.\n\nThe thing I was missing the most was the super-immersive and highly-consistent\nSmalltalk collection API. In Smalltalk, most of the time it doesn't really\nmake a difference if you work with an Array, an OrderedCollection, a Set or\neven a String. In" -"\nA Recommendation for Google's Webspam Team - duck\nhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-recommendation-for-googles-webspam-team\n======\nWillyF\nI like Rand's proposed solution, and I'm confident that the folks at Google\ncan come up with something even better and more effective.\n\nI'm finding that natural link building is getting harder and harder. Much of\nthis is because social media sites (that often use nofollow) are now how\npeople talk about stuff they like. And when they do have a Tumblr or\nWordpress.com blog, the links aren't very valuable.\n\nMost of the valuable links that I've been able to build lately have come from\nmy asking people to link to my sites. In a way, we're seeing more and more\nPageRank inequality. The people who control the sites with the most link\nequity know what they have, and they're not willing to share.\n\nI'm lucky that my niche isn't completely commercial, so there are still plenty\nof easy, valuable links to build, but I can't imagine how tough it would be to\nSEO a site in a competitive, commercial niche.\n\n------\njefflinwood\nRand's blog post demonstrates that there's now a pretty big disconnect between\nanchor text keywords and actual link quality - he makes an excellent point\nthat" -"\n\nAsk HN: Cool Demo Project Ideas - greyhat\n\nThe standard (and probably true) wisdom around here is that a good way to get noticed and get the kind of job that most of us would like is to \"build something\".

What I'm hoping for is ideas for demo projects. I don't need anything designed to make money or steal anyone's startup idea, just things that are fun to build and show development skills.

Demos you've seen already and liked or that have gotten people job offers are also appreciated.\n======\njamesbrewer\nUnfortunately topics like this never get much attention. The only thing I can\nrecommend is to find a topic that interests you and then just go find\nsomething that sounds neat. It doesn't have to be the next Google and it\ndoesn't even have to make money, just do something.\n\nFor example, I've recently become fascinated with data mining. To explore this\narea and get a basic idea of how it works, I'm playing with the Twitter API\nand trying to look for neat things that can be done with the data available.\nOne idea I've come up with is an app that recommends people to follow based on\nthe hashtags" -"\n\nI Use GitHub.app and You Should Too - bbaumgar\nhttp://bbaumgar.svbtle.com/githubapp\n\n======\nbradleyland\nI too find Git to be the kind of tool that works well through a GUI. However,\nI went one step further and bought Tower [1]. In addition to the many things\nthat GitHub.app does, Tower takes things one step further. If you tried using\nGitHub.app, but ran up against a Git activity that isn't exposed through the\napp, then you should take a serious look at Tower.\n\nOne specific example is partial commits within a single file. Tower shows a\ndiff view of edited files that breaks edits from different regions of a single\nfile in to chunks. You can stage/un-stage these chunks right through the GUI.\nThis is very similar to `git add -p filename.ext`, but with a very nice GUI.\n\n1: [http://www.git-tower.com](http://www.git-tower.com)\n\n------\ntiquorsj\nIt still has major issues. But, for many things it is absolutely better to\nhave a GUI.\n\n------\nmcmillion\nI use SourceTree for most of these same reasons." -"\nAttention loss feared as high-tech rewires brain - fogus\nhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/15/BUNI1AB1G2.DTL&feed=rss.technology\n======\njswinghammer\nI think people have longer attention spans now. Watch \"The Wire\" which is by\nany definition complicated and requiring a huge attention span. Now compare it\nto \"Dallas\" which at the time was considered to be too complicated for many\npeople to follow. \"The Wire\" is certainly far more complicated and hard to\nfollow. I recall watching a whole season and not knowing the names of some\nmajor characters because I just didn't have the space to store that\ninformation.\n\nThese sort of articles get written all the time too. It just seems like it's\ntrying to appeal to an older audience who doesn't understand new technology.\nI'd imagine more and more newspaper readers are falling into this category.\n\n~~~\ngojomo\nI think you're confusing two different (albeit related) axes.\n\nTV is more complex _because_ attention spans are shorter: they need to pack\nmore twists (and more, shorter scenes) into the same amount of time to keep\nthe attention-addled from switching channels.\n\n~~~\njswinghammer\nI don't see more twists these days in the shows I'm talking about. I see shows\ndumping tons of information on you and making" -"\nGlossary of Stand Up Comedy Terms - rfreytag\nhttps://stand-upcomedy.com/glossary-of-stand-up-comedy-terms/\n======\nDyslexicAtheist\nI'm a big fan of stand-up. I love the old stuff a lot (Richard Pryor, Billy\nConnolly, Bill Bailey) and I'm happy to see so much emerging talent that has\nhit the scene in the past decade with smart+critical content. (Sarah\nSilverman, Bo Burnham)\n\nMy fav one right now is Stewart Lee. He is often called the _\" comedian's\ncomedian\"_ and I think people here appreciate smart content so you might enjoy\nhim. (\"Content Provider\" is his latest show\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw)\nStewart Lee is incredibly smart without being overly offensive - something\nthat gets old after some time (e.g. Jimmy Carr or Franky Boyle I both like but\nit's a bit shallow imo and lacks an overreaching arc in their story).\n\nLee is more demanding than shows that are made for mass-audiences (Michael\nMacintyre, etc) and will probably always remain on the fringe. He also has\nsome great tips about writing vs not writing.\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ)\nincredibly intelligent guy which seems to defy all the traditional rules of\nthe trade. He also helped Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett become popular with\n\"The Mighty Boosh\" material at the Edinburgh fringe. (TMB is" -"\nThe Boolean Satisfiability Problem and SAT Solvers - amirouche\nhttp://0a.io/boolean-satisfiability-problem-or-sat-in-5-minutes/\n======\nsjg007\nI've alway been interested in this problem. I feel like information theory,\nBayesian analysis including Markov chain monte carlo could give you some\ninsight into the distribution of truth values for a satisfiable configuration\nespecially around the phase transition. You can covert 3-SAT into a Bayesian\nnetwork but exact inference is still NP complete. There should be some higher\norder information in a graph of the k-SAT problem... But many of the\nalgorithms here are still NPC (e.g. finding a clique).. So then you discover\ntree width (tree decomposition) as an approximation (also in Bayesian\nnetworks) and find out that it is quite useful but still doesn't quite help.\nIt makes faster SAT solvers but we haven't found anything invariant yet.\n\nAnyway I still enjoy thinking about the problem, my random ideas have taken on\nmore structure based on diving into the different subjects and trying to use\nthem on this problem. I find it fascinating that you can take something simple\nlike these linear circuits and it turns out that they are not simple at all\nand that they scale through the different disciplines.\n\n------\nPhilWright\nI'm" -"\n\nAsk HN: Why can't I buy bitcoins with a credit card? - ritonlajoie\n\n As far as I understand, paying with Paypal or credit card is nearly impossible over the bitcoins exchange currently. Why is it so ?\nFor Paypal, I read somewhere that it is because of the chargebacks that paypal allows to the clients. This would make possible for anyone to buy bitcoins, and ask for a chargeback to get their money back, while they still received the bitcoins. Why do Paypal don\u2019t check the blockchain in any way to check that a bitcoin transaction between a merchant and the client has taken place ?

Do Paypal plan to make such a service soon in the future ? Maybe by recording the merchant wallet address as well as the client\u2019s address? This way, Paypal would be able to check for the bitcoins transactions (using said blockchain, as in http://www.blockchain.info ) and then allow or disallow the chargeback to happen.

Do you know why the credit card payments such as Visa, Mastercard, are not used by merchant to sell bitcoins ? Is that because this chargeback issue is in the way, same as Paypal ? Also, do you know if any bank," -"\n\nHustle 101: How to Make Any Startup Want to Hire You - seanjohnson\nhttp://www.onedayonejob.com/blog/hustle-101-how-to-make-any-startup-hire-you/\n\n======\npekk\nApparently (per the article) startups only employ people for customer\ndevelopment, copywriting, analytics and growth hacking. I wonder what happens\nwhen they decide to build a product or a piece of software. Or is it too old-\nschool to actually build something now?\n\n~~~\npavel_lishin\nI think the point was that these are positions that are easier to \"hustle\"\nyour way into with a minimal investment. (\"Read the books above for 30 minutes\na day, and you'll be an expert in 90 days!\") Compare this to becoming an\nexpert in C - 30 minutes a day for 90 days is not going to give you enough\nexperience to waltz into a startup and demand a job.\n\n(Also, in my mind, the word \"hustle\" occupies the same bucket as \"scam\", and\n\"30 minutes a day for 90 days\" sounds like a late-night informercial for\nweight loss.)\n\n------\nmobweb\nDoes anybody have another reading suggestion about growth hacking?\n\n------\nmalachismith\nPartial Cliff Notes for the works of Eric Ries." -"\nNetflix Instant is coming to the entire Linux Community - taylorbuley\nhttp://benjaminkerensa.com/netflix-instant-is-coming-to-the-entire-linux\n======\njerf\nI will believe it when I see it downloadable, I have downloaded it, and used\nit to watch something, and no sooner. You can't put effectively DRM on Linux;\nyou can binary blob whatever you like, but I own the kernel, graphics drivers,\naudio drivers, X Server, and everything else on the system except your lil'\nbinary blob, and it doesn't stand a chance.\n\n~~~\nniels_olson\ner, I don't think they're worried about _you_. They might offer _you_ a job.\n\n~~~\nZachPruckowski\nYou only really need one guy to hack the DRM and it's game over, since (a) he\ncan share how he did it, and (b) he can freely share the decrypted files. Not\nthat it really matters on Netflix since just about everything is already on\nDVD (and thus on torrents since CSS is cracked) anyhow.\n\n~~~\nniels_olson\nExactly. I'm certain the adults in charge know that some level of hacking is\ninherent to the game at this point. My guess is they're treating the set of\nall consumers as another corporation: an entity to do battle with in the\nongoing pursuit of the" -"\n\nInteractive film built with Three.js and WebGL - mhax\nhttp://thecarpandtheseagull.com\n\n======\nevanbbb\nHi, the director / coder here. Crazy to see on hacker news. We had to have it\non just Chrome because of the twin pains of time (never enough) and money\n(added code, more testing, etc). For most of the project there were only\nmyself and one other coder doing the work.\n\nIf it isn't working for you or have questions, feel free to let me know...\n\n~~~\nbsenftner\nWhat aspects of this are not compatible with other browsers?\n\n~~~\nevanbbb\nWebGL isn't supported by IE. Firefox and Safari have patchy WebGL service.\n\nFirefox works but grinds to such a slow pace, so we disabled it.\n\n------\ngkanai\n2002 \"This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer\"\n\n2012 \"The film is optimised for viewing on Chrome.\"\n\nNot interested in a browser-specific web experience.\n\n~~~\nunconed\nMicrosoft hasn't bothered to touch WebGL, clearly more interested in their own\nproprietary Direct3D and Xbox ecosystem.\n\nApple has had partial WebGL support for years now (started with iAds), but has\nnever switched it on by default, not on OS X or iOS.\n\nWhat exactly do you expect web developers to do? Keep" -"\nPetition to Eliminate Gerrymandering by Using an Open Source Algorithm - Floegipoky\nhttps://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/eliminate-gerrymandering-using-fair-open-source-and-reproducible-algorithm-draw-congressional-districts\n======\ngrizzles\nInsert loud horn noise here. Didn't use the catch phrase \"Drain the Swamp\" to\nget traction. NEXT.\n\n------\nLorenPechtel\nStill showing only one signature. I suspect Trump fried the system.\n\n~~~\nFloegipoky\nAuthor here. Though I obviously can't be certain, I suspect the reason it's\nstill showing 1 signature is that the petition hasn't crossed the threshold\nwhere it becomes publicly searchable.\n\nI'm not sure what's going to come of this petition; I'm not a political\norganizer, I don't have mailing lists of people to forward this to. I'm just a\nyoung engineer who thought it was a real shame that nobody has been talking\nabout practical, long-term solutions to the real problems that are facing our\ncountry. I think this is exactly the type of problem we should be applying\ntechnology to solve. If you agree, please sign the petition. Your signature\nwill help this reach beyond my personal network and be seen by people who\ndon't already know about the research that's been done in this area. Even if\nit just encourages a few more people to read up on what gerrymandering is" -"\n\nShow HN: Do you love shopping at Costco? With TallyUp save money and shop smarter - tallyup\nhttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tallyup-for-costco/id932235451\n\n======\ncheriot\nI can't tell why I would want to track my spending at costco. What does this\ndo for me? How much work is it to enter data?\n\n~~~\ntallyup\nMany Costco shoppers, myself included (member for 17 years) routinely get\ncarried away in Costco. It's part of what Costco purposefully cultivates - the\ntreasure hunt. (It's why they never label the aisles.) Showing up at the cash\nregister and seeing a $400 or $500 bill, or much more, is not uncommon.\nTracking your spending is easy. Click add to cart. Enter the 6 digit Costco\ncode. If it is in the database already, you're done. (We have thousands of\nproducts in the db already) If it isn't, you enter the name and price so that\nthe next shopper doesn't have to. All the data is community driven. For those\nwho aren't concerned with how much they spend, there's also many other\nfeatures besides the shopping cart.\n\n~~~\ncaminante\nI still don't understand the alignment of the shopping cart feature with\nCostco shopper needs.\n\nAre Costco shoppers concerned about how much" -"\nAsk HN: Semi-technical co-founder? - ParameterOne\nWhat would you call a guy that knows hows things work and can ask for specific things to get done but can't write a lick of code? Non-tech or semi-tech?\n======\notoburb\nThree off-the-cuff options based on your vague description:\n\n1) Designer\n\n2) Marketer\n\n3) Management Consultant\n\nTaking a step back, it feels like this question is being asked without a clear\nunderstanding of the underlying \"why\". Could you elaborate further?\n\n~~~\nParameterOne\nJust trying to find out where the tipping point might be between technical and\nnon-profit technical....And if there is a middle ground between the two.\n\n------\nhsikka\nCould you give an example of asking for specific things to get done? I think\nthat the level of specificity and clarification of dependencies there makes\nthe difference.\n\n~~~\nParameterOne\nProbably more like \"On the title, we'll probably have to prevent clicks on it\nto improve UX\"\n\nAnd not \"Use css pseudo elements :after to provide the correct bookmarklet\ntitle.\"" -"\n\nGovernment debt as a % of GDP for selected G20 countries, actual and est - cwan\nhttp://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/01/sovereign_debt_1.html\n\n======\npo\nI suppose the actual amount of government debt is an interesting concept and\nyou can't directly compare different G20 country debt amounts fairly so using\nthe debt to GDP ratio seems like a pretty good idea.\n\nThe thing is that I have no intuitive sense that this being large is better or\nworse. I would think the most important piece is: who owns the debt? If I sell\na lot of debt contracts out to my kids, did my family get poorer? What about\nif I sold them all to the neighbors?\n\n~~~\nhga\nI think it depends on whether you're serious about paying it back _if it's for\nnormal expenditures_ (debt to fight a war is another thing altogether, but we\nhaven't seen that since WWII for any major country).\n\nIf not, you just pile it on until the carrying costs become unsustainable and\nthen you default explicitly (perhaps through a revolution or invasion) or\nimplicitly through inflation.\n\nExcept for that fight a war special case, it's just a tax on future\ngenerations with an all but guaranteed ugly ending." -"\nWhy passenger jets could soon be flying in formation - Kaibeezy\nhttps://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/airbus-formation-flight/index.html\n======\nKaibeezy\n_\" They will be 1 1/2 to 2 nautical miles away from the leading aircraft, and\nslightly offset, which means they are on the side of the vortex. It's no\nlonger the vortex, it's the smooth current of rotating air which is next to\nthe vortex, and we use the updraft of this air.\" Taking advantage of the free\nlift in this updraft of air is called \"wake-energy retrieval.\" ... on long-\nhaul flights, fuel savings of between 5% and 10% may be achieved, \"which is an\nenormous number.\"_\n\n------\nstevage\nWow, so interesting. I'm really curious whether planes from rival airlines\nwould cooperate to fly together like this. And if not, are there really so\nmany situations where two planes from the same airline travel a long segment\ntogether at the same time?" -"\n\nAsk HN: KDE vs. GNOME, which is better? - Scott_MacGregor\n\nWhich of these two do think is better, and what makes it better?\n======\njamesbritt\nBetter for what?\n\nI like kde3 over gnome for assorted config options (like different backgrounds\non each desktop) but maybe that makes no difference to others. On the other\nhand kde4 copies the most annoying ui features of Vista so I avoid using it.\n\nThese are also not the only windows and desktop managers, so why is the choice\nbetween those two?\n\n~~~\nmakecheck\nYes...for instance, I've always used Window Maker on Linux.\n\n------\nr11t\nGnome-Do which in-spite of its name works with both Gnome and KDE is basically\na Quicksilver inspired launcher : is the perfect\npower tool for Linux Desktop users.\n\n------\njcapote\nWindowMaker" -"\n\nAsk YC: How to start becoming an entrepreneur while still being an employee - wallflower\n\nThis short piece from the NYTimes (below) piqued my interest. It offers some advice on how to act like an entrepreneur as an employee.

If you are not a burn-your-boat-on-the-shore type of person, how do you go about making the transition to full-time entrepreneur. Is it abrupt or gradual. I'm guessing gradual. As I make the transition, I'm working on building some web applications that I would find of use (language learning, memorization)

How many of you look at creating your own startup as a hobby, rather than a business, or as both?

What steps (most notably - to expand your comfort zone) do you recommend.? I've heard some crazy advice like lie down in a Starbucks for 10 seconds to desensitize yourself to what you think other people think. I'm thinking seriously of taking a break from my career to learn Spanish in a Latin American country.

[http://tinyurl.com/2k2jdf]\n\"First, act more like an entrepreneur at your current job. Be a maverick. Put in longer hours, give yourself a crash course on your company\u2019s operations and strategic goals and, most important, locate a problem outside your realm of expertise" -"\n\nShow HN: The new Longform app, a reader for smart content - lammer\nhttp://longform.org/app/\n\n======\nlammer\nHey - I know Longform.org pops up from time to time in HN threads and I wanted\nto let people know that we have a new iOS app.\n\nThe app features the curated daily article recommendations you find on\nLongform.org plus features that let you customize your own information diet.\nWe filter out the short linkbait crap so you're left only with engaging, deep\narticles.\n\nYou can follow writers and get notified any time they publish any article\nanywhere. Or follow friends and see what they're loving.\n\nOur popular tab is a leaderboard for in-depth articles from across the\ninternet.\n\nAnyway, feedback is greatly appreciated (and yes, we do want to do Android):\naaron@longform.org" -"\n\nWeb developers, what SaaS tools would you like to see created? - krogers\n\nThere are a lot of SaaS tools popping up nowadays. In the midst of all of these tools. What are some that don't yet exist that you would like to see created to make your life easier?\n======\nMrDHat\nThere's one tool I've always wanted - An analysis tool for my database\nqueries. Something which directly injects into my framework (Django/RoR etc)\nand gives me detailed analysis of the time and memory used by the queries.\n\nAFAIK, New Relic provides one such tool but I think there's still a long way\nto go.\n\n------\nOceanPowers\nserious, modern, WYSIWYG HTML / CSS / JS editor.\n\n~~~\nmc_hammer\nmacaw looks good\n\n------\nConcours\nBaremetrics for PayPal would be great.\n\n~~~\niqonik\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8783103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8783103)\n\nAny good?\n\n~~~\nConcours\nYep, looks interesting. Will give it a try (added myself for the beta test),\nare you affiliate with them ? Thanks for the head up.\n\n~~~\niqonik\nNot affiliated, just remembered the \"Shown HN\" post when I saw your comment :)\n\n------\nmc_hammer\ndraw with my voice - to make vector graphics." -"\nBoeing Fought Lion Air on Proposed Max Simulator Training Requirement - berkut\nhttps://aviationweek.com/air-transport/boeing-fought-lion-air-proposed-max-simulator-training-requirement\n======\nmcv\nBoeing was already plenty culpable for these disasters, but this underscores\njust how much they pressured they pressured their customers to avoid training\nthat could have mitigated the problems and prevented the crash, just to keep\nup the illusion that they wanted to present to the world: that it was\neffectively identical to the NG when it really wasn't.\n\n~~~\nrob74\nOn the other hand, Boeing was also under pressure from other customers\n([https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-\nsouthwest...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-\nsouthwest/u-s-lawmakers-question-boeings-1-mln-rebate-clause-for-\nsouthwest-737-max-orders-idUSKBN1X92D4)) who wanted to avoid simulator\ntraining for their pilots. Which doesn't excuse them of course, but I think\nit's important to see the whole picture...\n\n~~~\nCaptainZapp\nSorry, but: So what?\n\nIf you're not able to keep promises you shouldn't make them in the first\nplace. The buck stops with you, period.\n\nNo pilot training was often used as an argument. But I think the problem was\nactually much more severe.\n\nIf Boeing would have designed a completely new plane (which they should have)\nthey would have lost a decade to Airbus' offerings in their most important\nmarket.\n\nThat, in my opinion, was the real reason for that" -"\n\nAny startups with \"splash pages\" announcing a future launch date? - streo\n\nI wanted to know if anybody is willing to share strategies for their \"coming soon...\" pages for their startups. I have read Tony Wright's awesome blog entry regarding this subject here

http://blog.rescuetime.com/2007/07/05/web-biz-how-to-have-4000-users-waiting-when-you-launch/

I wanted to know if anybody else here has other strategies that they are willing to share.

Btw, I will also add that this place is awesome. Thank you all in advance!\n======\nnextmoveone\nThis company doesn't have a product yet: smoothstart.com\n\nYou can check out their strategy, which is very similar to tony's for getting\nusers before having a product.\n\nWelcome to News.yc, I think you'll gain alot of valuable insight here.\n\n~~~\nstreo\nI have gained more within the last 2 days than I could have imagined!! Thanks\nfor the insight." -"\n2000 shell companies at one address in Wyoming - hendler\nhttp://news.yahoo.com/special-report-little-house-secrets-great-plains-113759191.html\n======\nsivers\nI used Wyoming Corporate Services (the company at this address) to set up an\nLLC a couple years ago, and they were the most wonderful people to work with.\n\n(I would only contact them a few times a year, but when I did, the lady on the\nphone would remember me, \"Oh hi Derek! How are things in the music biz?\")\n\nTheir service is 100% legit, they're prompt and friendly, and I recommend them\nhighly.\n\n\n\nAs most of us know here, there are many valid reasons to set up your\ncorporation in a neutral place that is not your current residence.\n\nMaybe you're online-only and traveling the world.\n\nMaybe you're starting your business in one place for now, but you feel kinda\n\"one foot out the door\", and feel you're going to move it somewhere else some\nday.\n\nOr maybe just because you want to, it's legal, and you need no other reason\nthan that.\n\n~~~\nchopsueyar\nAs I was reading the article I thought about how trying to increase regulation\nof this type of activity would kill entrepreneurship in this country.\n\nThe article had a" -"\nReading iOS app binary files - msbenighted\nhttps://blog.smartdec.net/reading-ios-app-binary-files-2c9e63a381ad\n======\nfavorited\nObjective-C was the first language I used where I looked under the covers and\ntried to understand the machinery of the language, and its extremely dynamic\nnature makes it a great place to start to understand language runtimes.\n\nIt's so conceptually simple, and (aside from objc_msgSend) you can implement\nthe whole thing in C. libobjc2 has (if I'm counting correctly) 23 .c files,\nand it includes things you can totally ignore as you're learning, like an ObjC\ngarbage collection implementation that no one uses anymore.\n\nThe only tricky part is the message-sending routines, since they have to be\nwritten in assembly. But as long as you understand _what_ they're doing\n(rather than _how_ they're doing it), you don't even need to look at those if\nyou don't want to.\n\n~~~\nhypervis0r\n> The only tricky part is the message-sending routines, since they have to be\n> written in assembly\n\nWhy? (context: never touched Objective-C)\n\n~~~\n_red\nDisclaimer: I may be completely wrong, but I don't think OP is saying that\nwhile writing normal ObjC that you need to write the message passing in\nassembly. Instead, that you could recreate ObjC" -"\nHow Seattle blew its chance at a subway system (2016) - wallflower\nhttp://features.crosscut.com/seattle-forward-thrust-sound-transit\n======\ngandreani\nThe best time to build a rail system is kind of like the best time to plant a\ntree. 20 years ago.\n\nIt's sad but it seems to me contemporary Americans don't want to pay for\nsomething that they will only reap the benefits of in later decades\n\nThere's so much in that style of thinking. The irony of depending on roads\nbuilt decades ago. The debt system conditioning people to expect to \"get it\nnow, pay it later\". The hypocrisy in \"investing\" 10k-100k in an education but\nnot a few measly percent in taxes\n\n~~~\nrayiner\nThe problem is not that the benefits will come in decades, but that they won\u2019t\ncome at all to most taxpayers. Here in DC we built a subway 40 years ago. It\u2019s\na huge boondoggle that is usable for a single digit percent of the taxpayers\nwho pay for it. Folks in Richmond who might ride Metro a few times in their\nlifetime or lower income folks who work in the suburbs subsidize the commutes\nof lawyers and federal government workers who work downtown.\n\n~~~\npcwalton\nThe D.C." -"\n\nLisp Plus Plus - parenthesis\nhttp://www.interhack.net/projects/lpp/\n\n======\nqwph\nThere's a fine line between madness and genius, and as far as I can tell, this\nseems to be exactly on the line. I think I might have to download the\nsource...\n\n~~~\nicky\nMadness and genius actually form an intersecting Venn diagram. This falls\nsquarely in the middle.\n\n------\nBrandonM\nI actually worked for two summers at Interhack, so I found it interesting to\nsee a link to their site here. The founder (Matt Curtin) is a really cool guy\nwho teaches a Lisp course for one quarter a year at OSU (that's how I got the\njob). Matt had a hand in cracking the DES and wrote a book about it called\n_Brute Force: Cracking the Data Encryption Standard_.\n\nUnfortunately, Interhack does a lot of computer forensic stuff that has human-\nintensive requirements. Because of his work, Matt is considered an expert for\nthe purposes of court testimony, and he spends much of his time working on and\ntestifying in computer forensic evidence cases, rather than hacking in Lisp as\nI'm sure he would prefer to be doing.\n\nDon't get me wrong... his company is doing great. They just got" -"\n\nAuto Smiley Generator - huhtenberg\nhttp://fffff.at/auto-smiley\n\n======\ncallahad\nReminds me of Andi Albrecht's mercurial hook [0] which posts a photo from your\nwebcam to Twitter whenever a merge fails.\n\n[0]: [http://andialbrecht.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/when-merging-\nfa...](http://andialbrecht.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/when-merging-fails/)\n\n------\ntoisanji\n:) just tried it, its pretty cool, but has a lot of false negatives. Opening\nmy mouth was enough to trigger a smile and I can't even make a real smile. It\nwas cool that it have a false trigger when I frowned.\n\n~~~\neam\nSo :D => :) ?\n\n~~~\nalagu\nI don't think it is able to differentiate type of smileys. Only :). No :o, :p\nor :D\n\nBut damn cool app :)\n\n------\nhkuo\nHilarious. Doesn't seem that useful as evidenced by him not being able to not\nsmile. He should make an LOL version of this though!\n\n~~~\nnym\nThere are all sorts of uses! For example, you could make a site called\nsmilelinks that is automatically generated based off the webpages that make\nyou smile. My guess is cuteoverload would dominate the list.\n\n------\nkhelloworld\nNice demo to learn openFrameworks from. Cool app too.\n\n------\nnym\n:)\n\n------\napsurd\nUpvoted for happiness inducing factor! yay =)\n\n~~~\ncalcnerd256\nIs that akin" -"\nAsk HN: How do you find a mentor? - aryamaan\nI think, the role of a mentor in our life is understated and another issue is finding a suitable mentor.

One can learn things on their own (after job/school) but a mentor can help you narrow down the things you want to learn and supervise your journey.

Please note I am not talking about spoon feeding but someone who helps accelerate your learning.\n======\ndozzie\nWhenever I hear about searching for a mentor, I imagine some guy that simply\nwaits for illumination to happen, by osmosis, I suppose. I see searching\nspecifically for a mentor as a kind of fashion or supersitition of these days.\n(Mind you, this is merely an association, a first impression that I have when\nI see such questions.)\n\nDo you have a plan how to use this \"mentoring\" thing? A concrete idea what you\nwant from a mentor and how your work would look like? Do you have anything to\nshow him/her, so the mentor has any foothold for comments?\n\nThis is a good piece of article about exactly that:\n[http://pindancing.blogspot.com/2010/12/answer-to-will-you-\nme...](http://pindancing.blogspot.com/2010/12/answer-to-will-you-mentor-me-\nis.html)\n\n------\nonion2k\nFind someone who you think you'd like to be mentored by and" -"\nApple Shortcuts User Guide - sunraa\nhttps://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/welcome/ios\n======\nthanatos_dem\nGiven other people's response, I'm clearly the odd one out here, but I found\nit buggy and infuriating to use. I wanted what I can't imagine is a unique\nshortcut, \"Good Morning\", which should:\n\n\\- Set the volume to 50% on my home pod\n\n\\- Start playing an ambient radio station in Apple Music\n\n\\- Start a slow fade in on my bedroom lights\n\nIt's been a nightmare, and I finally gave up altogether. I got my shortcut\nconfigured and set up with Siri. It's pretty simple, being only 3 steps, so I\ndon't see where there's that much room to go off the rails, but oh boy does\nit.\n\nThe HomePod responds, and says \"okay, running your shortcut\". It then sets the\nvolume on my _phone_ to 50% and starts playing music there instead. It then\ntries and probably 80% of the time fails to set the home scene to turn on the\nlights. When it fails, it says \"Please continue on your iPhone\", where Siri's\noutput states that it doesn't understand, as if I misspoke something to it...\nbut it's running a set list of commands, there's no room" -"\n\nMinecraft Environmental Lighting Experiment - rutherfj\nhttp://blog.taptonics.com/post/44803397320/minecraft-environmental-lighting-experiment\nA demonstration of an iPad app that interfaces with the Phillips Hue LED lightbulbs to provide environmental lighting synced with the Minecraft day/night cycle.\n======\nqdot76367\nThis kind of idea is something philips has been working on for years, with Hue\nbeing the newest in a line of lighting control systems.\n\nYears ago, they were peddling the amBX line, which was a set of lights, desk\nvibrators, and fans (yes, as in like, desk fans that blow in your face) that\nwould create an immersive environment for games. Of course, very few games\npicked it up (we worked on it a bit for Second Life, and I did some silly\nthings with it, super mario bros, and alcohol:\n). amBX ended up being mostly a\nfailure, despite having fuck off HUGE booths on the gdc expo floor for at\nleast 3 years running (Who else remembers the huge black blob? Great as a\n\"meet me near [large obvious thing]\" place. :) ).\n\nPhilips ended up either spinning or selling off amBX. It's still around as a\nset of crappy LED lights that burn out quickly (?!) and have crap for contrast\nand color" -"\n\nOAuth of Fealty: Resignation beyond sorrow on the Facebook Platform and beyond - jlees\nhttp://m.bogost.com/blog/oauth_of_fealty.shtml\n\n======\nedwinnathaniel\nFacebook Platform isn't the only offender.\n\nOccasionally I found basic features on Facebook website just don't work. For\nexample: 2-3 days ago, I can't put description on my newly uploaded photo. I\nhave to complete the photo upload workflow, and then click the newly uploaded\nphoto on my album and edit the description.\n\nRegression on basic feature.\n\nI suppose Facebook is just like any other companies with sharp growth: you\ndon't want to know what's inside it (or how the sausage is made). That boils\ndown to ship features and ignore everything else (documentation, good design,\ngood habit, better architecture, better quality, etc).\n\nI'm not saying that's a very bad idea for them because I've seen this practice\na lot in our industry.\n\nHaving said that, this is one of the many reasons why young startups want to\nhire the brightest and smartest engineers out of college: they need warm\nbodies smart enough to move forward, to deal with legacy codebases and\nfiguring a clever (but may be dirty) hack to workaround the legacy design\ndecision, less on solving complex new problems. The" -"\nCreate and delete branches - nicolasd\nhttps://github.com/blog/1377-create-and-delete-branches\n======\nartursapek\nSuddenly I can clearly see what must be one of Github's long-term goals: to\nmake git usable end-to-end in the browser, and in a way where that is\npreferable for certain situations.\n\nWe're going to continue spending more and more of our computer time in the\nbrowser. It's the universal platform.\n\n~~~\nSwizec\nGit in the browser is _exactly_ what we need to bring git outside programming\ncircles.\n\nWhat I've wanted for a while is a site where I could fork somebody's muffin\nrecipe, fix stuff and so on ... I've even considered building a site like\nthat, but how many people who cook are also handy enough with a console to\nmake that viable? My guess is not many.\n\n~~~\nartursapek\nHahah, recipes are actually a very interesting application. A program is much\nlike a recipe, after all. I could see a collaborative site where you build up\na personal cookbook by forking and trying out other peoples' stuff and\ncontributing your own modifications, etc.\n\n~~~\nMartinCron\nIf you think recipes are like code, you should look at knitting patterns\nsometime. It looks like assembly code to me.\n\n~~~\nderleth" -"\n\nRed Hat, Amazon deliver Linux on demand - shayan\nhttp://www.infoworld.com/article/07/11/07/Red-Hat-and-Amazon-deliver-Linux-on-demand_1.html\n\n======\ne1ven\nI think this is an interesting product, which will help bring EC2 into more\nbusinesses, but it seems to be added cost for little value for most startups.\n\nPerhaps I'm missing the value-add that Red Hat is bringing to the equation-\nThey're increasing the price over the standard EC2 image.. They're adding a\n$19/server flatfee, and then increasing the hourly cost by 10c - 16c/hr..\n\nGranted, they're bringing their name and reputation to the party, and you can\nuse official RHEL packages, rather than CentOS, but it doesn't seem worth it\nfor almost any startups.\n\nFrom: \n\n` For Technical questions: Red Hat provides support for end-customer questions\nabout the services. Technical issues be addressed by Red Hat associates\nworking in concert with Amazon support and engineering in the event of issues\nwith the EC2 infrastructure.\n\nFor Customer Service issues: All customer service issues (Billing, EC2 Account\nActivation, etc.) should be forwarded directly to Amazon via application-\npayments@amazon.com. `\n\nIt looks like it's basically RHEL branded EC2, and the extra cost is to\nsupport the RH devs and tech support. That Laudable, but probably not enough\nof a" -"\n\nAsk HN: Please review my startup crowdmind.com - richesh\nhttp://alpha.crowdmind.com\n\n======\nanigbrowl\nAt first I thought it was just another of those 'ask the intarwebs!' sites\nwhere people just twitter or post to each other, but on further inspection I\nwas very taken with the scoring system and the ability to rate the poster's\ngood and bad reasons.\n\nIt looks like quite a bit more work to create the question than is usually the\ncase, which might be a disincentive for some - although it will also help them\nto focus on the issue at hand. The layout is a little confusing at first and\ngod only knows why you made the search box background color to dark grey\nagainst a black background - I found myself wondering why there was a search\nbutton with no search box until I looked more closely. I think you could use a\none line explanation like 'Our members help you rate and discover your\noptions' on the landing page, because it took me a couple of minutes to\nrealize that the stars and ratings were functional rather than mere window-\ndressing. your 'about' page does this very well, why not use the top" -"\nShow HN: One link between you and the internet - attendos\nhttps://enter.bio\n======\nColinWright\nI don't understand what this is, or does, or could be. I can guess, but\nthere's no indication of what pain I'm currently experiencing that is taken\naway by this.\n\nIt would be really nice to have a proper blog post that talks about what this\naccomplishes for me, why I would want it. Don't focus on the marvellous things\nyou've done[0], describe for me how this will make my life better[1].\n\nIn the past when I've said that people haven't understood the differences\nbetween [0] and [1]. When you do - if you do - it will help you see how to\nconnect better with people like me.\n\nBut it might be that I'm not your target audience." -"\nBats use private and social information as they hunt - dnetesn\nhttps://phys.org/news/2019-09-private-social.html\n======\ngerbilly\nWhile this is almost lost knowledge these days, humans and other animals have\nalways paid attention to each other to find out what is going in on around\nthem.\n\nThe nature (or absence of) bird or animal calls or activity can tell you that\nthere is a large predator in the area.\u00b9\n\nSome animal calls are even specific to the type of threat as well.\n\nIt has even been proposed by some linguists that prairie dog calls satisfy\nenough of the requirements to be considered language.\u00b2\n\n1: [https://birdlanguage.com/products/what-the-robin-\nknows/](https://birdlanguage.com/products/what-the-robin-knows/)\n\n2: [https://medium.com/health-and-biological-research-\nnews/prair...](https://medium.com/health-and-biological-research-news/prairie-\ndog-chatter-the-science-behind-a-new-language-9144ace4114f)\n\n------\nLinuxBender\nSomewhat off topic, semi-related, I have a bat that thinks I control the\nweather. If it gets too hot or cold, it will go just outside my window and\nsqueak at me. There are patterns to it's communication, though I have no idea\nwhat exactly it is saying. I can talk to it and it talks back. Obviously we\ndon't understand each other. I can tell it \"get back to work\" (taking out\nmosquito's) and it will leave. I think it understands tone of human voice.\n\n------\ngrawprog\nWhen we were" -"\nIs Clojure the \"New Lisp\"? - raju\nhttp://www.lunaticprogrammer.com/2009/02/is-clojure-lisp.html\n======\njwilliams\nShrug - call me a critic, but this is another \"Why I think Clojure will be\ngood\" article, rather than one with some (new) substance.\n\nI'd like to see some more articles on Clojure in actual practice.\n\n(p.s. It's because it's built on the JVM).\n\n~~~\nmaryrosecook\nClojure in practice: \n\n------\nkrschultz\nI sure hope so More acceptance of functional programming is always a good\nthing. I love coding for in Lisp but I haven't really made the leap to\nproduction code since I have to support 4 platforms with all code I write for\nwork (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux on x86, Linux on ARM), and deploying Lisp code\nacross all those platforms auto-magically reliably SUCKS. We write all our\nstuff on the JVM so this would be easy to bolt on and expose to new people." -"\nGovernment Shuts Down as Congress Misses Deadline - ISL\nhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304373104579107051184641222.html\n======\nrodgerd\nFrom the perspective of someone who live in a Westminster-style democracy this\nis made especially bizarre by virtue of the fact that failing to be able to\npass a budget bill results in new elections[1]. If you're going to block the\nbudget, you'd better be damned confident that voters agree with you.\n\n[1] I suppose technically it results in the head of state inviting other\npolitical partites to form a government, and then calling elections when they\ncan't.\n\n------\ndaegloe\nWe had two similar \"partial shutdowns\" of the US Gov't in the 1990's.\nDemocratic President refusing to cut healthcare-related spending vs.\nRepublican-controlled Congress holding the debt ceiling hostage. Sound\nfamiliar? Same game, different players.\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_governmen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_government_shutdown_of_1995_and_1996)\n\n~~~\nkhuey\nIn the 90s Congress failed to pass a budget. Holding the debt ceiling hostage\nwas never seen or tried as a legitimate political tactic before the last few\nyears.\n\n~~~\ndaegloe\nNope. In the former speaker's own words...\n\n[http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/19/opinion/gingrich-obama-\ncongres...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/19/opinion/gingrich-obama-\ncongress/index.html)\n\n------\nck2\nI imagine a Koch brother handing the other a single $1 over a bet they could\nshutdown the government like in Trading Places.\n\n~~~\nD9u\nMaybe the loser" -"\nAsk HN: do you trust your \"secure email\" now? - aw4y\nAfter Lavabit and SilentCircle shutdown (the first said "better shutdown than give 'em access")...do you trust the other "secure email" providers?\n======\njacquesm\nI consider everything I type into a computer with an active network port to be\npublished.\n\nAnything less would be folly, there are so many hops where people could be\nlistening in on your data (starting with the cable that runs from your\nkeyboard to your computer) that even an email sent to your 'drafts' box on\nyour own IMAP server is probably not secure. Unless you own the co-location\nfacility and all the infrastructure between where you sit and where you store\nthe mail.\n\nThe whole security thing to me is a matter of economics. I assume that any\ndata that is not worth reading is collected and that anything that is worth\nmore than it would cost to collect and read is read.\n\nMaybe that's a paranoid view of the state of affairs but at least I won't be\nsurprised or disappointed. My main bulwark against wholesale exposure of the\ncontents of my inbox is a 'Rob'. Rob is a veteran sysadmin who configured" -"\n\nAsk HN: What do you do when your DNS fails? - hayksaakian\n\nZerigo is having an outage right now on all name servers. This means all heroku apps using zerigo (the only DNS addon) probably don't resolve at their usual domain.

What do you smart people who have a plan B do when SHTF with your DNS?\n======\nmike-cardwell\nI use three separate and unrelated providers. The first being myself (a single\nLinode VM), and the other two:\n\n[http://rollernet.us/](http://rollernet.us/)\n[https://puck.nether.net/dns](https://puck.nether.net/dns)\n\nThey both offer free backup DNS.\n\n------\nstaunch\nYou use a major provider. Providers that have the resources to defend against\nalmost any attack. I trust Route53, Dyn, and Cloudflare. You can also use your\nregistrar (but that often has limitations).\n\n------\ndanypell\nI just use CloudFlare. They just can't really afford going down, and if they\ndo, they're big enough to fix it quickly enough I guess." -"\nA study on human behavior has identified four basic personality types - T-A\nhttp://www.uc3m.es/ss/Satellite/UC3MInstitucional/en/Detalle/Comunicacion_C/1371223155576/1371215537949/A_study_on_human_behavior_has_identified_four_basic_personality_types\n======\nbrhsiao\nA friend of mine who's quite into philosophy once told me that a good number\nof philosophers did little but try to categorize things. Rather than draw\nmeaningful insights, say, or squeeze every drop out of some experience, they'd\nsimply say, here's nature, here's a grid I've drawn, let's see what falls into\nwhat square. Ok, good job; but what have you actually accomplished? (So my\nfriend said.)\n\nI don't know if this is true of the history of philosophy (or if it's a\nmeaningful indictment of these philosophers), but I can't help but be reminded\nof it when I see strenuous efforts being made to bucket various phenomena, and\nhuman ones at that. What are we going to do with these categories? Not to put\ntoo fine a point on it, these things are complex. Any differentiating scheme\nsimple enough will be insufficient to be the basis of any important decision,\nand any sophisticated enough won't be neat enough for us to be talking about\nit like this.\n\nI say this as someone who spent more years than I'd care to admit obsessed" -"\nDon\u2019t buy the MacBook Pros even on sale, in my opinion - tomduncalf\nhttps://theoutline.com/post/4277/dont-buy-the-new-macbook-pros-even-on-sale-in-my-opinion\n======\ntomduncalf\nPosting this from my six month old Macbook Pro 15\" on which the spacebar has\njust started doing double spaces. Going to try and clean it with compressed\nair, but even if that works, it's unacceptable in my opinion that such a key\npiece of hardware on such an expensive machine should be so fragile.\n\nThe fact that at some point I'll have to take it back to Apple and probably be\nwithout it for several days due to the complexity of the repair makes this 10x\nworse - I am freelance so need this machine for work, so being without it\n(especially for such a seemingly trivial reason) is unacceptable and\nabsolutely not what I expect when I buy Apple (previous Macbooks have worked\nfor years without a single issue).\n\nIf they release a redesign, I'd swap it in a flash (I do actually quite like\nthe keyboard to type on otherwise, but seems like the quest for thinness has\ngone too far this time!), but if this problem is as widespread as it seems who\nknows what it will do to resale" -"\n\nZenify meditation and mindfulness app is on Product Hunt - onvel\nhttp://www.producthunt.com/tech/zenify\n\n======\nonvel\nZenify mobile app has been launched on Product Hunt. Zenify is aimed to take\nmeditation and mindfulness globally to everyone with a smartphone. It's\navailable in 10 languages and trains mindfulness through very simple\nmeditation assignments delivered to the phone. It takes only several minutes\nto complete those assignments which can be done anywhere anytime. No need to\nremember about the meditation practice - Zenify will remind you several times\nper day to take a few minutes for yourself and become aware of the present\nmoment. There are numerous benefits of meditation but in general it changes\nthe lives and the world to the better. So why not make this happen together?\nTune in to your senses, and help us spread the word :) Check out web-site and\nfind us on top of Product Hunt today. Much love, Zenify." -"\n\nSquare Closes $200M Series D - misiti3780\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2012/09/17/square-closes-200m-series-d-from-starbucks-citi-rizvi-at-3-25b-valuation/\n\n======\nbane\nSo to the stock-optioned employee what does this mean? Somebody who started\nearly with the company vs somebody who starts after this round? Keeping track\nof the value of options after several rounds seems to be quite complicated.\n\n~~~\nbduerst\nDepends on a few factors.\n\n\\- What is strike price of the option?\n\n\\- What is the expected market value of the company?\n\nIf a company is valued at $1billion dollars and has 10 million shares, then\neach share is expected to be worth $100. This is a rough estimate, and assumes\nthat the valuation accounts for future revenue, violatility, etc.\n\nIf you have options that gives you the right to put (sell) the shares at $150,\nthen you are making $50 on each option, since you can buy your $100 share in\nthe company and sell at $150, guaranteed. 1,000 options would be $50,000\nprofit at that share market price and stock option strike price.\n\nThis means you can expect the option to be worth $50, except that options\ntypically have a date at which the options expire. The price of the option\nchanges relative to this date, and" -"\nPyjamas: build AJAX apps in Python (like Google did for Java) - soundsop\nhttp://pyjs.org/\n======\ned\nI'd also suggest checking out pyjamas-desktop (), which\nallows you to deploy pyjamas apps to the desktop\n\n~~~\nmichaelneale\nyeah it looks great. I think its a great idea to use more of the web for the\ndesktop - there is so much work going on in browsers/javascript it makes sense\nto use it for offline work as well.\n\n~~~\nlkcl\nwell, the point of pyjamas-desktop is that you can, if you choose, run an\n\"online\" app that happens to be a stand-alone dedicated app that runs on the\nuser's desktop.\n\nlet me rephrase that :)\n\npyjamas-desktop can be used for \"online\" apps just as much as it can for\n\"offline\" ones. in fact, you _still_ need a web server, even if it's running\non localhost, because applications that conform to the pyjamas API will\n_still_ have to use XMLHttpRequest to interact with the rest of the world.\n\nthat interaction is done behind a neat abstraction module, HTTPRequest.py, but\nit's still necessary.\n\nso - offline / online, there's no difference.\n\nwhat you _do_ get with pyjamas-desktop is a speed-increase in your\napplication, thanks to" -"\nJohn Gruber: Windows Phone 7 \"Really Nice\" And Better Than Android - Flemlord\nhttp://www.businessinsider.com/john-gruber-windows-phone-7-2010-10\n======\nmycroftiv\nSince Android is much more of a threat to Apple than Windows Phone 7 appears\nto be, it makes sense that Gruber would praise it at the expense of Android.\nThis evaluation is based on 5 minutes of use at a cocktail party. I think if\nsomeone had put a live eel in his hand and asked him to compare it to Android,\nhe would have praised the eel's smooth skin in comparison to Android devices.\n\n~~~\norangecat\nRight. Microsoft, Apple, and the carriers would all be pleased if Android were\nto be replaced by WP7 in the market. No more pesky suggestions of user\nfreedom, so everybody gets to keep their comfortable oligopolies and maintain\nveto power over potentially disruptive innovations. Expect to see many more\nMac fans praising WP7, especially once it or the iPhone is on Verizon.\n\n------\nsteverb\nI got about 5 minutes hands on with WP7 hardware last week, and I have to\nagree with Gruber. WP7 is really nice.\n\n* The UI is very responsive on pre-release hardware. I've been told that the released version will be faster." -"\nDotfiles.github.com - A guide to dotfiles on GitHub - netherland\nhttp://dotfiles.github.com\n======\nComputerGuru\n(Obvious) disclaimer: this is a user-hosted subdomain on GitHub. It is not an\nofficial GitHub page (even if the logo is two octocats snuggling together).\n\n~~~\nudp\nWhich means, of course, it's also a repository if anyone is interested:\n\n\n\n------\nah-\nI've meant to finally put my dotfiles into a repository but the one thing\nkeeping me from it is that I haven't yet stumbled upon a script to symlink\neverything into it's place that I'm totally satisfied with.\n\nI don't use ruby and don't want to install rake on each machine for something\nthat should be possible with a simple shell script, and didn't like the\nscripts I saw so far. Everything had a medium or large aspect that kept me\nfrom using it.\n\nMaybe I just need to write my own thing.\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\nI highly recommend not symlinking things at all; just have the repository\nitself as your home directory.\n\nWhenever I set up a new machine, I always do this:\n\n \n \n git clone git://joshtriplett.org/git/home\n mv home/.git .\n rm -rf home\n git checkout -f\n \n\n(There probably exists a simpler way to do that, but" -"\n\nWorking on a few things in your bedroom doesn't make you an expert - zachinglis\nhttp://zachinglis.com/2012/working-on-a-few-things-in-your-bedroom-doesnt-make-you-an-expert/\n\n======\nlutusp\nI scanned the linked article until I got to: \"I am seeing an increased group\nof what I\u2019d call newbies and inexperienced designers having started speaking.\"\nThe remainder of the article lives up to the impression this sentence creates.\n\nAt that point I realized the author isn't in a position to criticize the\n\"novice\" writing and speaking of others. And a Web page with a red background\ndoesn't demonstrate the experience and maturity the author evidently thinks he\npossesses.\n\n~~~\nzachinglis\nYou scanned an article and made a judgement?\n\nI've worked on a variety of projects, small and huge. Lead the redesign of a\nmajor website among other things.\n\nI never criticised people's grammar, purely where they come from.\n\n~~~\nlutusp\n> You scanned an article and made a _judgement_? [emphasis added]\n\nNo, I scanned the article and made a _judgment_. If you don't want to be\njudged on your use of English, improve it. What works for computer languages\nshould work for English too.\n\nHowever unfair you believe it to be, people are going to judge you based on\nyour use" -"\nBoeing's 737 NG was manufactured using unsafe structural components (2010) - the_fonz\nhttps://www.flyertalk.com/forum/practical-travel-safety-security-issues/1201276-aljazeera-claims-737ng-structurally-unsafe.html\n======\nmjevans\nI think there are two things that would actually satisfy me at this point.\n\nAudited by an independent (E.G. EU's) agency, with open records...\n\nEITHER: A review of the actual paper trails and sources of the news story and\nbuild logs.\n\nOR: A randomized sample of like 5-10% of the planes from the suspect time\nrange looking at the suspect parts in question.\n\n~~~\nspectramax\nAre you suggesting that you\u2019d rather trust EU agency than FAA?\n\nI think FAA had a fantastic record until this whole MAX PR nightmare - they\u2019ve\ncertainly damaged their reputation. But I feel like domain experts at Boeing\nor Airbus definitely are going to have an edge vs a lowly paid government\nauditor. EU\u2019s agency or whatever are still going to have to rely on Boeing\nengineers input.\n\nHaving worked in the aviation industry (I was designing C-130 fuselage\nsection) as a Mechanical Engineer, I can tell you that the whole enterprise\nsometimes feels like it\u2019s supported on stilts, it\u2019s a house of cards.\n\n~~~\nmjevans\nI'm saying that, BECAUSE of the loss of trust, yes. I currently would prefer" -"\nStudents being forced to buy online textbooks to do homework - bjd2385\nI was forced to buy an online textbook for my CS course this past semester to do homework. Now I've been notified that my `subscription' to this information is ending at the start of January (specifically by ZyBooks).

I really liked working on the projects and reading through the descriptions, I thought it was worth the $70 or so that I paid for it. However, it was hardly ``fresh,'' I could look up the same information by Googling or surfing SO.

I've been forced to buy these now extinct access codes to websites that have ``online textbooks'' before for courses (I still have the $60-100 cards, about 4 or 5 of them now). I honestly don't feel they're worth, most of the time, what I've paid for them. And at the end of the day, I end up empty handed, robbed of that information (unlike an actual textbook, albeit still way overpriced, but at least it's _mine_ and no one can take it away from me).

Has anyone else gone through the same thing? Thoughts? Opinions?\n======\nbrudgers\nCollege textbooks have been a way to extract money from students for many" -"\n\nGoogle cannibalizing their assets? Isn\u2019t it a bit early for that? - joop\nhttp://thenextweb.com/2008/12/02/google-cannibalizing-their-assets-isnt-it-a-bit-early-for-that/\n\n======\njerf\nThey know that only a fraction of the user base will ever use it (because they\ncertainly won't ship with it, anymore than Firefox does). They know people\nshutting off ads aren't clicking anyhow. They know that the people savvy\nenough to use the ad blocker are also the leading edge people who recommend\nbrowsers to other people.\n\nFinally... how would they block ad blockers, even if they wanted to? Ad-\nblocking proxies are just as feasible as ever. And Chrome is supposed to be\nopen source.\n\nConclusion: Instead of fighting what you can't fight, roll with it, get the\nleading edge people on your side, then cash in on the marketshare of the\nmasses who don't block ads.\n\nIt's not really that mysterious... unless you're trapped in first-order\nthinking.\n\n------\njrockway\n_a few months ago we visited an Internet start-up where the CEO told us a\nfunny story of how one of his developers used an Ad Blocker. He took the\ndeveloper aside and explained to him that their whole business, his company\nand his salary depended on income on ads. He explained" -"\nTim Cook Appears Alongside Trump in Re-Election Campaign Ad Shot - mrzool\nhttps://daringfireball.net/2019/11/cook_trump_campaign_ad\n======\nablomen\n\"A low moment in Apple\u2019s proud history\"\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#Criticism_and_contr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#Criticism_and_controversies)\n\nI think Apple has done a lot worse in its \"proud history\" and is still doing\nit.\n\n~~~\nme_me_me\nIt's as if corporations were guided by only one principle make money, a lot of\nmoney.\n\n------\nnabla9\nThere has not been any change in how big tech companies deal with hard\ndecisions. It's just people who ate PR, brand management and empty corporate\nspeak about values getting getting deserved reality check.\n\nWithout a doubt Tim Cook is very strongly socially liberal and anti Trump as\nlong as it's does not hurt business opportunities or the future of Apple.\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\n> _Without a doubt Tim Cook is very strongly socially liberal and anti Trump\n> as long as it 's does not hurt business opportunities or the future of\n> Apple._\n\nSo in every way except those that don't suit him!\n\n------\nmicrotherion\nDisappointing. Even beyond the question of malfeasance, there should be at\nleast three _policy_ areas I can think of off the top of my head that Cook\nshould be opposed to:\n\n* Constant disruption" -"\nRuby - Handling 1 Million Concurrent Connections - slivuz\nhttps://github.com/slivu/1mc2\n======\nqompiler\nI have done this before using Java 7 async nio. The performance would drop\nlike a brick when data received actually needed some sort of processing. How\ndoes this implementation hold up when you need to perform a O(n) operation on\nreceived data? Experiment with different sizes of n to see how the performance\nholds up.\n\n~~~\ntrailfox\nExactly. Establishing 1 million connections is pretty easy in any language\nthat supports async io, even scripting languages. The article is super-vague\nabout the direction of the traffic, the nature and size of the messages and\nhow much of the application is actually written in Ruby (vs. just being a\nglorified wrapper around redis and other systems written in c/c++) and the\namount of work actually being done by the app. 179 requests per second is\nhardly something to brag about while you've completely saturated 8 cpu cores.\n\n~~~\nhawleyal\nRuby _is_ a wrapper around c.\n\n------\nafhof\nI have to ask, is there even a practical purpose for this? Is there even some\nremote screwball application for having to have one machine handle 1,000,000\nrequests? One of the things" -"\nGender, Race, and Age Inclusive Makeup Recommendations Through Facial Detection - ajmurill\nhttps://www.facebook.com/BelloFacialDetection/\n======\najmurill\nFor Bello to be inclusive for all genders, ethnicities, and ages where anyone\ncan use our technology to pamper themselves and show self-love. We strive to\ndeliver consistently accurate and detailed results to our customers and to\ntake into account their needs, dreams, and wants.\n\nSteps to get beautified:\n\nStep 1: Like our page and click the blue \"Send Message\" button located in the\ntop right of this screen. Step 2: We will send you a quiz where you answer\nquestions like, \u201cWhat is your favorite/least favorite feature on your face\u201d\nand \u201cDo you prefer drugstore or high-end products\u201d? Step 3: You send us a\npicture and from there we run our facial detection software on your picture.\nWe gather information like your skin tone, age, eye color, blemishes, etc.\nStep 4: We send you personalized feedback, products, and advice based off your\npicture and the quiz. This can include eyeshadow colors that will make your\neyes pop or tips to deal with under-eye baggage" -"\n\nThe Good Fight - ryaninmtv\nhttp://kevinprentiss.com/?p=156\n\n======\nedw519\nAs I read about OP's awakening as he talked to some of the Techstars mentors,\nI kept thinking, \"Haven't I heard this somewhere before?\"\n\nThen I realized that I got many of the same feelings from reading the book _Do\nMore Faster_ by Techstars founders David Cohen and Brad Feld. This is a\ncollection of essays by Techstars mentors and founders sharing their\nexperiences. I imagine that OP could have gotten a lot of perspective if he\nhad read this book first. Many others would, too. The book is excellent.\n\nI already shared some of my favorite quotes from that book here:\n\n\n\nI'd love to see a similar book by YCombinator mentors and founders. What a\ntreat that would be." -"\n\nPattern-matching is as real in tech media as it is in Silicon Valley - met3\nhttp://betabeat.com/2013/02/race-tech-media-silicon-valley-pattern-matching-jamelle-bouie-jason-calacanis/\n\n======\nrjknight\n\"Twitter attempted to have a conversation about race and the tech industry\nyesterday. The loudest voices? White men on either side of the argument\nshouting each other down.\"\n\nThe end of this para links to Buzzfeed, which adds nothing except a lot of\ncrap advertising to this Storify: \n\nActually I'm not convinced that Jason Calcanis is as wrong as he looks in the\nlinked story. He's kinda right that if you want to be a top tech writer, you\ncan probably get there by starting your own blog, building a following, and\nthen being rewarded with a column on . And this\nprocess will probably work just as well for a person of any given ethnicity.\n\nThe real problem isn't that awesome ethnic minority tech writers can't\nsucceed, it's that there's an awful lot of mediocre white male tech writers,\nand relatively few mediocre black/female ones. This is presumably because a\nlot of tech writers aren't really judged on their merits; their editors need\nto employ some people to write about technology, and they're making 'safe'" -"\nAsk HN: Early in career \u2013 is it a bad idea to change jobs after six months? - mountainApe22\nFor some context: I am in my mid-twenties, have a computer science degree from a top ten American university and moderate experience developing software applications. After graduation I did a bit of research and worked as a bartender/waiter while going through the whole post-grad thing.

I eventually decided on taking a white collar job in technology. I was hired into a subsidiary of a well known CPG company as an Information Systems Specialist. When I was brought on board, I was told that I would be assisting the head of the IS department in documenting ERP customizations, developing/optimizing SQL, and working closely with other departments in order to build customizations and automations. It sounded great.However, my boss wasn't located in the same office as me and only spent 6 days on location "training" me. My "training" was consistently interrupted as my boss had to go put out fires multiple times per day.

Four weeks later I was brought in to HR and told that my boss resigned without notice and that I was to fly to the HQs the next week to do" -"\n\nCommunicate Acquires Y Combinator Startup Auctomatic, Unveils New Business Strategy - paulsb\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/26/communicate-acquires-y-combinator-startup-auctomatic-unveils-new-business-strategy/\n\n======\ngruseom\nI am surprised by the disdain for profitable business in the techcrunch\narticle:\n\n _I\u2019m not even sure I\u2019ll remember to check in on them. The domain business is\na cash cow but isn\u2019t exactly exciting stuff._\n\nI would have put it the other way around: the business isn't exactly exciting\nbut it's a cash cow. Except I wouldn't say that at all. A profitable online\nbusiness sounds more exciting to me than 90% of what I've seen on techcrunch.\n\n~~~\naxod\nI think domains like these were important in web1.0 era. But who has ever gone\nto business.com. Who cares about it? It sounds old and boring. I'd be\nsurprised if the number of people going to domains like perfume.com is\nincreasing... If you look at alexa rank over 5 years it seems to have hit it's\npeak a while ago. Same with business.com.\n\nI think techcrunch was simply meaning the domain business is likely a\nshrinking market, and not a new and exciting growing market.\n\nHaving said that, there's plenty of money to be made. Congrats on the sale :)\n\n~~~\npchristensen\nGoodness no!" -"\nThis Week in Servo 43 (submitted via Servo itself) - Manishearth\nhttp://blog.servo.org/2015/11/30/twis-43/\n======\nlarsberg\nThe killer feature in this week's newsletter is an image of using Servo itself\nto post this link to HN :-)\n\n~~~\nbttf\nI can appreciate the honesty of that video.\n\n~~~\nperlgeek\nThis bug (input field doesn't scroll automatically, but spills its text into\nthe surrounding elements) is a good demonstration of just how many, many small\ndetails you have take care of when implementing a browser engine.\n\nA really monumental task. The servo devs have my respect!\n\n~~~\noneeyedpigeon\nMaybe I'm missing something hugely obvious, but shouldn't the input field be\nrendered using a native control which would preemptively eliminate that bug\nand reduce the need for rewriting code that's been written countless times\nbefore?\n\n~~~\npcwalton\n> shouldn't the input field be rendered using a native control which would\n> preemptively eliminate that bug and reduce the need for rewriting code\n> that's been written countless times before?\n\nBroadly speaking, native controls don't like being composited into OpenGL\nscenes (which are necessary for things like 3D transforms).\n\n------\npcwalton\n(Copying my comment here from Reddit /r/rust:)\n\nJust to repeat, because this was somewhat" -"\n\nZed Shaw on Python - inklesspen\nhttp://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2008-03-02.html\n\n======\ninklesspen\nI like the following quote:\n\n\"I also still haven\u2019t figured out why the fuck I was backing Ruby when the\nPython guys clearly did a way better job at building their community and\ninfrastructure. I kind of feel like I backed the wrong horse completely.\"\n\nAs a Python fan, this makes me happy.\n\n~~~\nanewaccountname\nThat's like being happy about an endorsement from Louis Farrakhan. I denounce\nand reject Zed's endorsement.\n\n------\njackdied\nThe Python community has the advantage of being older. The fanboys (if there\nwere any) have moved on or calmed down. The libraries and documentation have\nhad more time to be beefed up. A few years can make a lot of difference.\n\n------\ntx\nAfter a year of Ruby programming I am in the middle of learning Python. The\nlanguage part seems very easy (the \"mechanics\" of programming process) but\n\"thinking in Python\" part suggests that Ruby is a significantly higher level\nlanguage. Once I will have spent some more time with Python I may realize I\nwas wrong.\n\nWhy switch, you ask? Well, I am not switching, it's just another project where\nquality of language implementation matters," -"\nWpcom \u2013 A curated directory of resources and tools for WordPress - atknoz\nhttps://www.wpcom.org\n======\nAyesh\nThis is a shameless self-plug. I have written a few WP plugins because it is\nnot as secure I wanted it to be:\n\n\\- WordPress does not come with proper password hashing, and uses the phpass\nlibrary. [https://wordpress.org/plugins/password-\nhash/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/password-hash/) will change this to use\nbcrypt/Argon2ID\n\n\\- Comment forms do not have CSRF tokens, and hackerone/tickets for them have\nbeen neglected as trivial. [https://wordpress.org/plugins/comment-form-csrf-\nprotection/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/comment-form-csrf-protection/) This\nplugin adds a CSRF token to comment forms.\n\n------\ntyingq\nProceed with caution. A fair amount of wordpress's reputation for bad security\ncomes from 3rd party plugins. There aren't many (any?) restrictions on what\nthey can do.\n\n~~~\nmattigames\nWell, is exactly the same for any npm package or any python package as do many\nother languages, a lot -if not all- bad security comes from 3rd party plugins.\n\n~~~\ntyingq\nTechnically the same perhaps. But the actual history is pretty different.\nWordPress plugins are notorious for RCE type vulnerabilities.\n\n~~~\njermaustin1\nI wrote one during my early years, in fact [1]!\n\n1: [https://jeremyaboyd.micro.blog/2016/11/20/that-\ntime-i.html](https://jeremyaboyd.micro.blog/2016/11/20/that-time-i.html)\n\n------\nsocial_quotient\nKinda surprised not to see WPengine on the list.\n\n~~~\natknoz\nThere" -"\nMore details on MAINWAY and MARINA - brown9-2\nhttp://theweek.com/article/index/245694/minimize-this\n======\njdp23\n_Individually analyzing each incoming email is impossible. So the NSA\nautomates the minimization procedures as much as it can. Based on dynamic link\nanalyses done by computers, scores are assigned to emails and associated\nprofiles inside the system. Every bit of data associated with an email address\nthat might belong to a U.S. person \"updates\" the score. Analysts can query the\nsystem for individual names, and email addresses, and even subject lines. They\ncan add, if they want, the place and time that the email was collected, too.\nIf the \"score\" associated with the email indicates that there is a 51 percent\nchance or higher that it belongs to a person overseas, the analyst can start\nmonitoring content right away and not do anything further. If that score is\nless than 51 percent, the analyst can, if directed by a superior, start to\naccess the content, if it's available, but the large team of lawyers the NSA\nhas will be instantly notified, and a FISA order will be sought._\n\nAs I interpret this:\n\n1) analysts are able to access email metadata without a specific court order\nor warrant\n\n2)" -"\nAsk HN: How to be more confident and people person? - codesternews\nIn the pressurized situation, I lose my confidence. I am not good people person but I think it is affecting me so much.

I am good in technology but could not explainand present ideas.

How to improve myself? Any books and suggestions are welcome.\n======\nkodz4\nPractice. Practice. Practice. My prof set up a small reading group when I was\nin college. 5-6 students would get together every week and discuss a\npreassigned paper. I was like you, lacking in confidence, hesitant to\ndisagree, handling confrontation badly etc. But the group created an\nenvironment where I could learn how to deal with these things. I could see\nothers fumbling about and realized it was not just me struggling. When I got\nthings right others encouraged me. All this slowly translated into increased\nconfidence.\n\nSo try and set something up like that with friends/people who want to see you\nimprove. Every week meet up and practice.\n\nAlso recommend Marshall Rosenburg's Non-violent communication. It really\nhelped me see certain things I was doing wrong and showed me ways to avoid\nthem.\n\n------\nsteve_g\nI think this book could be helpful. I've only" -"\nWhat career should I choose? - arikr\nhttps://www.quora.com/What-career-should-I-choose-4/answer/Auren-Hoffman?share=1\n======\nspicyusername\nMany of the best careers are ones that have a fairly high degree of\nspecialization and an official and well recognized track for certification.\n\nGrind hard to meet all of the official certification requirements and do your\nbest to immerse yourself in the body of knowledge. Usually this results in a\nlong career full of flexibility and good pay.\n\nExamples: Actuaries. Consultants. Lawyers. Professional Engineers (Civil,\nMechanical, etc). Auto Mechanics. Paramedic.\n\nThere are tons of them off the beaten path if you look for recognized\ncertifications.\n\nAlso look for quality of life not prestige. There are plenty of great \"blue\ncollar\" positions with good pay and work life balance.\n\n------\npurplezooey\n_Your career should be dependent on the timescale that you operate best in._\n\nWhat about the hiring market that pays you best in" -"\n\nAsk HN: Do you read papers / pdfs on your Kindle? - sigil\n\nI'm thinking of getting a Kindle 2 for reading academic papers and books in pdf form. Most of the things I want to read are equation and/or diagram heavy, so I'm curious how well the Kindle works for this type of thing.

Is the 6\" version good enough, or do you really need the 9\" DX?

How about page refresh speed, navigation, and search?

How easy is it to get pdfs onto the Kindle?\n======\nquestioner2400\nI have a Kindle 3, and it's possible to read papers, but it's still pretty\nsmall. I'm looking at picking up something a bit bigger, probably in tablet\nform (or preferably with a PixelQi screen) in the next 6-8 months that would\nwork a bit better. I haven't used the 9\" DX, but I assume it would do the job\nbetter than the Kindle 3, just on basis of size.\n\nPDFs are easy to get onto the Kindle (3, anyway): just move them onto the\nonboard memory, and they show up like a .azw or .mobi file would.\n\n------\ncopernicus\nI have the 9\" DX and I use it regularly to read technical papers." -"\n\n48 Hours Left: Crowdfunding Amphetamines Research & Metrics to Date - bmahmood\nhttp://www.perlsteinlab.com/round-table/anatomy-of-a-crowdfund-the-homestretch\n\n======\nbmahmood\nEthan Perlstein, as Princeton research fellow is crowdfunding his research on\namphetamines. So far, he's raised raised $18,246 from 258 donors, and needs\n$6,754 to complete the fundraising.\n\nThis is one of the first hard science crowdfunding campaigns I've seen, and I\nbelieve if successful, can be a testament to the power of crowdfunding to\nsupport scientific research in the future.\n\nThe researcher has promised to provide regular updates on his research in an\nopen-notebook fashion, and the preliminary metrics of the crowdfunding\ncampaign may represent the diligence with which he is already assessing his\nefforts.\n\nWe can help support the cause here:\n[http://www.rockethub.com/projects/11106-crowdsourcing-\ndiscov...](http://www.rockethub.com/projects/11106-crowdsourcing-discovery)" -"\nObama pick for NSA review panel wanted paid, pro-government shills in chat rooms - Libertatea\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/23/obama-pick-for-nsa-review-panel-wanted-paid-pro-government-shills-in-chat-rooms/?tid=rssfeed\n======\nthrowaway_yy2Di\nThis guy is staggeringly authoritarian. He doesn't stop at \"correcting\" the\nviews of radicalized nutjobs. He wants the bulk of US political speech\nactively managed, regulated:\n\n _He outlines six specific reform possibilities to improve exposure to diverse\npoints of view on the Internet: 1) creation of \"deliberative domains\" where\ndiverse exchange of views can occur online; 2) disclosure of relevant conduct\nby Web producers; 3) voluntary self-regulation by Web producers; 4) publicly\nsubsidized programming and Web sites; 5) government-imposed rules that would\nrequire the most popular Web sites to provide links to sites with diverse\nviews; and 6) government-imposed rules that would require highly partisan Web\nsites to provide links to sites with opposing views._\n\n[http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/sunstein2.html](http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/sunstein2.html)\n\n~~~\nmd224\nIt seems like he wants to force people to be exposed to diverse/opposing\nviews... isn't that kind of the opposite of authoritarian?\n\n~~~\nferdo\n> It seems like he wants to force people to be exposed to diverse/opposing\n> views... isn't that kind of the opposite of authoritarian?\n\nForce = authoritarian.\n\n~~~\nmd224\n> Force = authoritarian\n\nAre you opposed to all forms of" -"\n\nThe Crazy World of Code - hobonumber1\nhttp://tilomitra.com/the-crazy-world-of-code/\n\n======\nSu-Shee\nWell, this kind of insanity made me step back 10 steps and invest some time\n(almost a year by now) into the \"classics\" so to speak.\n\nInspired by Crockford's talks in which he mentioned a couple of times the lack\nof history and historical knowledge among developers, I suddenly remembered\nthat I got an education in humanities before I even went into programming and\nreally did start with the classics - Greeks and Romans and Philosophy - and I\nasked myself why on earth I never really considered doing something similar in\ncomputing. (Someone called it in some article I've sadly forgotten the Oxford\nway - you learn Latin and Math and from there you can learn anything anyways\n;)\n\nSo I decided to ignore all fashions, new things, upcoming frameworks and such\nfor some time until I got what I would consider (totally subjectively) a solid\nfoundation (not there yet, will probably take another year at least) of\nknowledge.\n\nI personally decided to define \"classics\" along the lines of \"knowing Unix and\nits history and concepts well\" (re-learning shell and commandline wizardry on\ntop), \"understand decent C and Assembler\"," -"\nThe Linux Graphics Stack - Adrock\nhttp://blog.mecheye.net/2012/06/the-linux-graphics-stack/\n======\nloudmax\nI can understand that Wayland does not want to pay for the complexity of\nnetwork transparency, but I'd be sorry to see it go entirely. I'm one of the\nfew people who do make use if X11's network transparency on a regular basis.\nBeing able to open a web browser on a machine that is several ssh hops away is\nawfully convenient. I hope that Wayland has some provisions for reproducing or\nemulating X11 even if it isn't built into the core.\n\n~~~\nasdfs\nThis may be incorrect; I have only vague familiarity with the subject. I don't\nknow if there are any non VNC-like solutions being worked on.\n\nWayland doesn't have network transparency as a first-class citizen, but it's\neasy to fit it into the mix. A bit of background:\n\nIn X11, the client sends the actual drawing commands (draw a line here, a\nsmooth gradient here, a pixmap here, a curved line here, etc.) over a network\npipe. The X server on the other end takes those commands and builds the\nresulting image.\n\nIn Wayland, your program just transfers (well, using shared memory) complete\nimages of the entire window" -"\nAre users trying to make developers angry? - joeyespo\nhttps://www.exceptionnotfound.net/are-users-trying-to-make-developers-angry/\n======\ncrasm\n\n But their stupidity persisted. They did things that\n were so wacky they boggled my mind (like putting a\n credit card number in with spaces between each\n number)...\n \n\nNot allowing spaces in a credit card field is a pet peeve of mine. It's a\ntrivial problem to solve in code, and almost nobody does it. Whether it's a\nspace every 4 numbers (the most logical to me) or a space between each number,\nit really shouldn't matter.\n\nThere are spaces in the number on the card itself. Entering the number with\nspaces makes it easy to check if you've made a mistake in only a few glances,\ninstead of painstakingly going number-by-number and losing your position a few\ntimes.\n\nIt shouldn't be the user's fault.\n\n~~~\nourmandave\nI just enter the 16 digits without much trouble.\n\nThen I get to the expiration date and the first column is a drop list of Jan,\nFeb, Mar... wat?\n\nNow my brain has to convert 07 to Jul instead of just picking 07. Why?!\n\n _Are developers trying to make users angry?_\n\n~~~\namelius\nThen I get to the CVC code. I have" -"\nAsk HN: Please be more thoughtful when downvoting - guynamedloren\nLately I've noticed far too many constructive comments that have been downvoted (usually without any explanation). Please stop this. It's okay to have comments that are not in support with the original post or your own thoughts. We don't have to shoot them down.

Downvoting is meant as a management tool to filter out comments that negatively impact the community, or ones that provide no substance or insight. Please do not downvote legitimate comments.

Thank you.\n======\nepenn\nI fully agree. I've seen far too many comments that are meaningful or\ninsightful - even ones I don't agree with - get unnecessarily downvoted\nwithout proper cause. On a discussion forum where one of its main objectives\nis to be a safe haven for intelligent discourse this is unacceptable. With\nthat said, this is my officially unofficial guide to downvoting:\n\nNEVER downvote:\n\n1) Just because you disagree with a post.\n\n2) Because you dislike the poster.\n\n3) Because others have downvoted a comment into oblivion and you want to jump\non the bandwagon. i.e. No need to kick a comment when it's already down.\n\n4) When you have not explicitly reasoned out why" -"\nAll Apple stores could close for 30 days in Italy over warranty case - imaginator\nhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/02/apple_italy_closure_warranty/\n======\nraquo\nApple's disregard for local laws is not specific to Italy. A warranty repair\nfrom Apple in Russia would have taken \"a few months\", way more than the\nallowed maximum of 21 days. I had to send my laptop to US with a friend for\nrepairs.\n\n------\nrmc\n_Italian law states that consumer electronics devices must be sold with a two-\nyear free warranty_\n\nFor the record, this isn't just Italian law, but it EU law. All half a billion\n(or so) people in the EU can benefit from this sort of protection.\n\n~~~\nmkaltenecker\nNope, they can\u2019t. Local implementations differ wildly.\n\nIn Germany, the burden of proof reverses after six months (i.e. after six\nmonths the buyer has to proof that a defect was present when they bought the\nproduct \u2013 I have not idea how you can do that short of hiring some sort of\nexpert), making the two year warranty basically useless. No company will do\nanything for you after six months.\n\nAlso, I can very much understand why Apple found itself in the situation it is\nin Italy. In" -"\nTaskRabbit Confirms Layoffs As It Realigns To Focus On Mobile And Enterprise - JimWillTri\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2013/07/08/taskrabbit-confirms-layoffs-as-it-realigns-to-focus-on-mobile-and-enterprise/\n======\ntemphn\nTaskrabbit is a great idea and very useful. Here are a few things they could\nimprove:\n\n1) Take a page from Exec and do flat-rate pricing in different verticals (e.g.\n$25/hour for Exec Errands). Doing a price auction every time is too time\nconsuming, but that's the UI default at the moment.\n\n2) The refocus on mobile/realtime (like Exec) is also good.\n\n3) Figure out a way to incentivize people to do more transactions through the\nsite. Once you meet a good service provider, right now there's an incentive to\ndo all future interactions outside the site.\n\n4) Re: enterprise refocus: do some sales calls with all the admin assistants\nof VC funds and funded startups in the Valley. Set up a bulk enterprise\naccount for $Xk per month and have them go crazy assembling Ikea furniture.\n\nTaskrabbit is a great concept and really should succeed with some tweaking.\n\n------\njareau\nI think collaborative consumption companies changing their business to focus\non a specific niche or vertical is quite common. Getable (fka Rentcycle) did\nit. Zaarly did it.\n\nI'm head of sales at" -"\nRacket v6.11 - nickmain\nhttp://blog.racket-lang.org/2017/10/racket-v6-11.html\n======\nButtons840\n> Typed Racket supports refinement types and dependent function types.\n> Previously an experimental feature, refinement types allow types to describe\n> more interesting properties of values, especially integers. For example,\n> this type shows that the max function always produces a number at least as\n> big as its inputs: (-> [x : Integer] [y : Integer] (Refine [z : Integer]\n> (and (>= z x) (>= z y))))\n\nDid Racket become a better Haskell while I wasn't looking? What's the catch?\nThose look like some powerful type system features.\n\n~~~\nswlkr\nI was thinking the same thing, that's a really cool feature.\n\n------\nspdegabrielle\nWhat are refinement types and dependent function types?\n\n~~~\nchriswarbo\nDependent function types allow the _return type_ of a function refer to the\n_argument value_ of the function. The classic example is \"vectors\", which are\nlike lists but have a statically-checked length. Here's an example function\ninvolving vectors:\n\n \n \n duplicate : (t : Type) -> t -> (n : Nat) -> (Vector n t)\n \n\nThis type signature says that `duplicate` is a function of 3 arguments: `a ->\nb` means a function from argument type `a` to return" -"\nShow HN: NewTabNotes \u2013 A synchronized markdown notepad for Chrome - kkamperschroer\nhttps://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-notes-alpha/dnghgncclglnalfilefbdpoflgajhdpo\n======\ndhruvsachde\nIs there any way I could increase the font-size? It is difficult to read on\nbig screens.\n\n~~~\nkkamperschroer\nCurrently no, but that is certainly something I could add as options to\ncustomize. Thanks for the suggestion!\n\n------\nkkamperschroer\nLooking for some honest feedback on this idea I had for a new tab page\nreplacement where I can keep some notes.\n\nCurrently alpha as I have not cleaned up all of my original hacks from a\nprototype and there is currently no version control.\n\nSource can be found here:\n[https://github.com/kkamperschroer/NewTabNotes](https://github.com/kkamperschroer/NewTabNotes)" -"\n\nSubmit shameful recruiter actions to - thegorgon\nhttp://shame.heroku.com/\n\n======\ntypicalrunt\nThis is an interesting app, but I fail to see the use of it after I forward my\nspam onto the service. I can't click on the submissions to see what other\ntypes of spam there are or what other people consider 'recruiter spam'.\n\nThere's also a privacy issue with displaying other people's full names\n(probably pulled from the email headers).\n\nWithout any feedback about the submission, it would be easy to game the system\nand skew the results by forwarding emails to the email address listed.\n\nLastly, IMHO there's a bit of spamminess to the whole service because now the\nservice now has now verified email addresses. Who's to say that the service\nwasn't setup by another recruiting agency looking to increase their cold-call\ndatabase?" -"\n\nCandy Crush Monetization and Virality - TraustiThor\nhttp://papers.traustikristjansson.info/?p=223\n\n======\npstack\nI don't understand the popularity of Candy Crush. It's just a less complex\nvariant of Bejeweled style games. Mobile gaming is littered with them. I\nplayed for the better part of an hour before hitting the eject button, but\nplenty of people in the gaming press are enamoured with and addicted to it.\n\nHell, I even understood the popularity of Rovio's Artillary-like far more than\nthis.\n\nIt just goes to show that you don't need a good idea to be successful. Just\nthrow enough dumb ideas to the wind and, eventually, something will sail.\n\n~~~\nTraustiThor\nI agree that the game itself is not really better than bejeweled or other\nsimilar games. It's the manipulative social strategies that they use to get\npeople hooked and get people to spread the game to their friends that\ndifferentiates it from previous games. You can't argue with their success!\n\n------\nAlexeyBrin\nIf you show the webpage source you'll see hidden divs that contains Viagra\nlinks and other things ...\n\nThere are two possibilities:\n\n1\\. OP website was hacked and he has no idea.\n\n2\\. This page was purposely build with these SEO \"enhancements\"" -"\nThat Sentimental Feeling: using sentiment analysis as a proxy for plot movement - benbreen\nhttp://www.matthewjockers.net/2015/12/20/that-sentimental-feeling/\n======\nHoushalter\nFirst it's really awesome that human judgement and the sentiment analysis\ntools agree with each other so well. Maybe this was common knowledge, but I\nwas always skeptical of it when I saw it used.\n\nSecond the amount of human hours put into generating all this data must have\nbeen insane. That could have a lot of value to researchers if he'd be willing\nto share it.\n\nThird it's really awesome that the average sentiment changes so much\nthroughout books, making these nice visualizations of the plot. Sentiment is\njust a fairly crude measure. Emotion and tone has many dimensions. I wonder if\nit would be possible to use similar tools to discover them, and get even more\ndetailed statistics on the emotion and tone changes between and within works.\n\n------\nnl\nIt would be interesting if the author had speculated why the correlation for\n_The Lovely Bones_ seems quite a lot worse than the other.\n\nInterestingly, all three methods seems to correlation much worse on that book\nthan the others.\n\nI haven't read it so I can't speculate myself.\n\nEdit, there is" -"\nFacebook Home destroys any notion of privacy - shawndumas\nhttp://gigaom.com/2013/04/04/why-facebook-home-bothers-me-it-destroys-any-notion-of-privacy/\n======\nmattmaroon\nThis is idiotic. For one, it's no secret which apps are popular. Facebook\ndoesn't need a trojan horse to figure that out, they just need to look at App\nAnnie.\n\nFor another, any app with location services permissions can do exactly what\nhe's describing.\n\nAlso what does \"Android allows Facebook to do whatever it wants on the\nplatform, and that means accessing the hardware as well,\" mean? Unless you're\nrolling your own version of Android (is that what's on the HTC First?) that's\nsimply not true. You have access to a few things you don't on iOS but it's not\n\"whatever you want\" if you're putting it in the Play app store.\n\nAs far as I can tell this is just another third party launcher with the same\nprivacy implications as any app that has GPS permissions.\n\n~~~\ndanilocampos\n> As far as I can tell this is just another third party launcher with the same\n> privacy implications as any app that has GPS permissions.\n\nExcept for the part where no other app collects or maintains anywhere near as\nmuch data about your personal history, your friends," -"\n\nAsk HN: How do you deal with competition - Void_\n\nI have an idea. I know that millions do.

I'm willing to execute. That makes me a little different from the millions. I already started working on it, already spent some time and already see some results. That makes me quite different from the rest with the ideas.

But my problem is the competition.

There is competition, which is selling pretty much the same idea. I knew about it, but I always thought it's not good enough. It's not good enough for me and that's why I think I can make something better.

My question is if I this is enough. There's nothing that makes the idea unique. No extra feature, no additional value. Not in the idea. So should I refine the idea? Or maybe pick a different one? Or should focus on executing better?\n======\nsebg\nFrom your comment \"it's not good enough for me\" tells me that there most be\nsome way of refining the idea so that it does become good enough for you.\n\nAs a first step, talk to people who use your competitor's product and see if\nit is \"not good enough\" for them as well. Then ask" -"\n\nAsk HN: Advice in collecting dues from a membership organization/club? - middlegeek\n\nI help out with a 500 member organization, an alumni-type of group. Everyone in this organization is a volunteer. We don't have a lot of funds at the moment, we are just now moving from a loose unorganized collection of people with a similar background to an actual orgnization.

* Can you please recommend a service to automate the collection of dues from members of an organization? We'd like to offer them the option of having a $5 - $20 per month taken out of their checking account. Obviously participation is voluntary and opt in.

I have seen what PayPal and BlackBaud have to offer. Other options? Can we get a better rate than having the provider take 4.9% and $.30 per transaction?

I'd love to hear your recommendations and experience if you have had it in this area.

Thanks!\n======\njohnny22\njust depends on if you want to build it, or let somebody else run it. Off the\ntop of my head.\n\n1\\. \"web 2.0\" SaaS like recur.ly\n\n2\\. wepay.com\n\n3\\. whatever your merchant account offers \\- they are all starting to offer\nrecurring subscription as part of their API. (perhaps" -"\n\nAsk HN: Great links for arduino hackers? - ritonlajoie\n\nWhat are your favorite ressources for arduino related news ? Is there a HN-like website for arduino ?\n======\nritonlajoie\nHere is my small list:\n\n\\- : general and also arduino based hardware hacking\n\n\\- : great books & resources\n\n\\- : projects (some based on arduino)\n\n\\- : the arduino official forum\n\n~~~\nSwisher\nI second www.instructables.com. Don't forget www.adafruit.com but where I have\nreally found what I need is simply google. If you know what you are looking\nfor just use proper search terms and typically there is someone who has\nalready done at least a portion of what I am working on.\n\n------\nleh\nI haven't found one yet. hackaday.com isn't Arduino only, but they cover a lot\nof interesting projects with Arduinos.\n\n~~~\nritonlajoie\nI really like hackaday, although it's not arduino based only.\n\n------\ntrafficlight\n\n\n------\nnottwo\nI maintain an Planet aggregator for tracking Arduino-related blogs that pique\nmy interest: \n\nKinda plain, but works well in my feed reader.\n\n------\nkatherinehague\n\n\n------\ndramaticus3\n/dev/null\n\nget off the internet and build things" -"\n\nIron Man Movie Review - Did it Suck? - xeroteam\nhttp://www.jaguarmarketingrevealed.com/2008/05/01/iron-man-movie-review/\nGet a non-spoiler review of Iron Man. Pre-screening was in theaters on Thursday evening before the official May 2, release.\n======\nxirium\nThe Iron Man film is astounding; better than expected. It is bursting with\ncomedy. The visual style of the film is similar to The Dark Knight. The\ngadgetry is amazing. For example, you'll love Tony Stark's multi-monitor\ndesktop. And I've never seen Gwyneth Paltrow looking better. I'm expecting a\nsequel.\n\n------\nTichy\nHard to believe. I don't know anything about this movie except for the poster\nads, and every time I see one of them I feel amazed at how ridiculous the\nmovie industry has become.\n\nOK, a recommendation on Hacker News, that is quite something. But nah - I\nthink I'll still pass for the time being. Maybe if I had a 12 year old son, it\nwould be a different matter...\n\n------\niamelgringo\nI heard, \"That was sick!\" 3 times on the way out of the theater tonight.\n\nIt really was... sick.\n\n------\nwumi\nwas surprised at the quality of the film. very entertaining.\n\n------\nxeroteam\nYes I agree, much laughs. I've never been a" -"\nHow to See a Supernova This Weekend From Your Backyard - wicknicks\nhttp://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/how-to-spot-a-supernova/\n======\njapaget\nThis supernova has been hyped lately but is not something a casual observer\nwill find to be particularly exciting. It is best seen with a telescope and\nwill appear as a faint dot of light. The brightness will be magnitude 10 or\n11, or about 100 times fainter than what the unaided eye can see in dark skies\nfar from city lights. For more information, see\n\n[http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/observingbl...](http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/observingblog/128430288.html)\n\nor\n\n[http://washedoutastronomy.com/content/another-urban-\nsupernov...](http://washedoutastronomy.com/content/another-urban-\nsupernova?page=1)\n\nor\n\n[http://www.dailycalifornian.org/how-to-spot-new-supernova-\nin...](http://www.dailycalifornian.org/how-to-spot-new-supernova-in-nearby-\ngalaxy-space-com/)\n\n------\nmturmon\nPeople might be interested to know that this story is indicative of a sea\nchange in astronomy. It has become apparent that there is a lot of variability\nin the nighttime sky, and we now have the technical means to discover lots of\nnew things.\n\nOne major factor in this change has been the advent of wide-angle surveys,\nthat repeat often enough to find variable sources like SN's, blazars,\nasteroids, lensing events, etc., while they're still interesting. The Palomar\nTransient Factory () is the one mentioned\nin the article, but there are many others. They _automatically_ detect and\npost events in a standard XML format for anyone (including" -"\nKevin Mitnick Now Selling Zero-Day Exploits - privong\nhttp://www.wired.com/2014/09/kevin-mitnick-selling-zero-day-exploits/\n======\nkauffj\nPeople will decry this, but I'd argue a free and open market for\nvulnerabilities would be a great thing. Here's why:\n\n1) It would result in more vulnerabilities found\n\nThis is fairly axiomatic. An open market increases the price of\nvulnerabilities which in turn increases the number of vulnerabilities found\n(unless you want to argue the ability to find vulnerabilities is inelastic for\nsome reason).\n\n2) It would result in more vulnerabilities being disclosed to the proper\nauthorities rather than malicious parties\n\nThis is more debatable, but since there should always be significantly more\nincentive on good actors to prevent the exploit (i.e. the software creators\nand/or community) than bad actors, the good actors should always win the bid.\nIndeed, one could argue that it is only the _prevention_ of free negotiation\nin the sale of vulnerabilities is the reason an exploit is ever sold to bad\nactors (e.g. if I found a Windows vulnerability and told Microsoft $10m or\nelse, I'm a criminal).\n\n3) It would ultimately increase the quality of software\n\nGiven more vulnerabilities are found and more vulnerabilities would be\ndisclosed to good actors, the quality" -"\nMitt Romney Calls Tesla a 'Loser' - rsingel\nhttp://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/romney-tesla-loser/\n======\nkgermino\nFor Context, from [http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/presidential-debate-\ntran...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/presidential-debate-transcript-\ndenver-colo-oct/story?id=17390260&singlePage=true#.UG0JJ03oR3A) :\n\n(CROSSTALK)\n\nROMNEY: ... to oil, to tax breaks, then companies going overseas. So let's go\nthrough them one by one.\n\nFirst of all, the Department of Energy has said the tax break for oil\ncompanies is $2.8 billion a year. And it's actually an accounting treatment,\nas you know, that's been in place for a hundred years. Now...\n\nOBAMA: It's time to end it.\n\nROMNEY: And in one year, you provided $90 billion in breaks to the green\nenergy world.\n\nNow, I like green energy as well, but that's about 50 years' worth of what oil\nand gas receives. And you say Exxon and Mobil. Actually, this $2.8 billion\ngoes largely to small companies, to drilling operators and so forth.\n\nROMNEY: But, you know, if we get that tax rate from 35 percent down to 25\npercent, why that $2.8 billion is on the table. Of course it's on the table.\nThat's probably not going to survive you get that rate down to 25 percent.\n\nBut don't forget, you put $90 billion, like 50 years' worth of breaks, into --\ninto solar" -"\n\nAn Ambitious Plan for Putting Kickstarter Out of Business - KenjiCrosland\nhttp://www.mrteacup.org/post/an-ambitious-plan-for-putting-kickstarter-out-of-business.html\n\n======\nthegrossman\nKickstarter is nothing more than a web hosting company? Pardon?\n\nI recently raised more than $38k from Kickstarter. There is absolutely no\ndoubt in my mind that I wouldn't have been able to raise nearly that amount by\nthrowing up a website and going it alone.\n\nHere are some stats (for this project:\n[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jackadam/dark-sky-\nhyperl...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jackadam/dark-sky-hyperlocal-\nweather-prediction-and-visuali))\n\n1) 32.26% of our funds came from visitors who found our page through the\nKickstarter newsletter.\n\n2) In total, 56% of funds came from visitors finding us via other Kickstarter\npages (their home page, category sections, etc).\n\n3) 44% were referred to from external sources.\n\nBut here's the thing: the external links were primarily due to the publicity\nwe got from Kickstarter's promotional efforts. We got mentioned on Wired, Fast\nCompany, the New York Times, and CNN.com -- not because we reached out to\nthem, but because of the large number of people talking about us after finding\nus on the Kickstarter site itself.\n\nIn the end, Kickstarter enabled us to raise tens of thousands of dollars and\nin return took a measly 5%.\n\n------\nbrador\nIt's called a marketplace." -"\nWhat would a python pip replacement look like? - dfee\nHaving branched out from the world of Python in recent years, I've seen some interesting package managers for other languages and of course operating systems. I've got some hang ups with pip and setuptools that I imagine could be resolved with an extensible approach. For example, I imagine scoped package support (see NPM), transparent versioning (aka deterministic installs, or a better pip-tools), automatic project dependency management (again, NPM), parallel installation (yarn)...

So what would a re-think of pip look like?\n======\nvforgione\nTwine[0] is the tool I've been using for PyPI archive management and Pipenv[1]\nis looking promising as the next iteration of pip.\n\nTwine makes the packaging process _slightly_ easier, although setuptools is\nstill a bit of a pain.\n\nPipenv handles a lot of project cruft for you: setting up a virtualenv,\ndistinguishing dev and prod packages, locking them down and deterministic\nbuilding.\n\n[0]: [https://github.com/pypa/twine](https://github.com/pypa/twine)\n\n[1]:\n[https://github.com/kennethreitz/pipenv](https://github.com/kennethreitz/pipenv)\n\n~~~\ndfee\nOh man, how have I not known about pipenv? This addresses a huge amount of my\ncomplaints with pip. Thanks for sharing!\n\n~~~\nvforgione\nThe downside to pipenv is that there aren't any good docker images to work\nwith it. I've" -"\nTech Industry-Funded Think Tanks Work to Overturn California Privacy Law - aburd\nhttps://theintercept.com/2019/04/16/consumer-privacy-laws-california/\n======\nignoramous\nThe fact that a 100% of the think-tanks taking corporate funding (from the\nlikes of Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Airbnb, Uber, Verizon,\neBay) are trying to undermine excellent privacy laws passed by California [0]\nand Illinois state assemblies should come as a surprise to no one.\n\nThe problem is these think-tanks or variants thereof might end up representing\nthe tech industry in most places where it matters anyway, just like how most\nof the standard bodies have been taken over by them and now slowly approve of\nfeatures that further their business motives (I am looking at you ITU).\n\nTwo ways (there must be more?) I can think of to fix the behaviour of these\nbehemoths:\n\n1\\. External: Internet Activism. This has been well underway for a long time\nnow but the corporates are patient beasts. The problem always remains\ngathering enough support [1] and generally the short attention span of the\nlarger populace.\n\n2\\. Internal: The employees. Be critical, put yourselves in akward situations,\nstart demanding answers [2]. The problem might be risking job security? That\ncould be offset by forming a large" -"\nAsk HN: Why is there no software for generating cross-platform native UI code? - dreamer7\nHTML + CSS, iOS and Android all are complete design systems. Any UI that we design can be developed for these platforms.

Forgive my possibly naive understanding of mobile UI. Why is there no software/ service that allows us to develop on one platform and automatically transpiles into the other platforms?

Is it because it is extremely complex or because developing the UI is not the most time-consuming element of cross-platform development or both?

A form field for web -\n<input ..../>

is \n<EditText ..../> for Android

and \n<UITextInput ..../> for iOS\n======\npraveen9920\nKony is proprietary platform which does generate native app code (\n[https://www.kony.com/](https://www.kony.com/) )\n\nMajor problem for implementing such thing is that there is no exact 1-1\nmapping between all UI elements. There are certainly few elements which has\nthe mapping but all the features cannot be done with those.\n\nAlso, I remember that apple has problem with generated code.\n\nNote: I worked for Kony few years back" -"\nNorwegian Air to cancel 85% of flights and temporarily lay off 90% of staff - spking\nhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-norwegianair/norwegian-air-to-cancel-85-of-flights-and-lay-off-90-of-staff-idUSKBN2132F7\n======\njohnnymonster\nIt's a temporary layoff and it's exactly what they should be doing. When they\nlay off the employees, they are able to collect unemployment benefits from the\ngovernment. It's a perfect strategy so that the employees will be ok instead\nof not receiving wages. once things rebound, they can hire them back again and\nall is good.\n\n~~~\nmarvin\nWhile I agree with your point in general, Norwegian is done. They've got a\nheavy debt burden that's due soon. They will either go bankrupt and be\nrestructured, or have to do a wipeout-level stock offering (unlikely in the\ncurrent risk climate).\n\n~~~\naxlee\nCan't Norway bail them out? It's not like they lack the capital, and they're\nthe country largest airline.\n\n~~~\nucarion\nThis is not to contradict what you're saying, but it should be clarified that\nNorway's flag carrier is Scandinavian Airlines, not Norwegian Air:\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines)\n\nAgain: I'm aware that you haven't said anything to the contrary. But it's\nuseful context.\n\n~~~\nmichaeljohansen\nWell. We Norwegians joke that SAS stands for \"svensk alt sammen\" (Swedish all\ntogether). Some of us" -"\nWhat is the best way to test mobile app across several networks and phones? - rokhayakebe\n\n======\nsimul\nIn the past I have used a combination of tools: \\- Smartphne emulator\ndeveloper edition (comercial) from yospace\n(\n\n\\- Two firefox extenstions: user agent switcher, wmlbrowser.\n\n\\- You can find some more info. at . Their\nmailing list is pretty good too.\n\n~~~\nrokhayakebe\nYospace is really cool. thank you\n\n------\njsjenkins168\nWhat language are you writing your app in? If using J2ME, I would suggest\nchecking out J2ME Polish to organize your builds across multiple platforms.\nThere is a built in device database that lists most phones along with their\nsupported APIs.\n\nWhile it wont replace eventual real-world testing, it at least allows you to\nfocus in on devices that support the specific APIs, form factors, etc that you\nneed and ignore the ones which you do not.\n\nThe J2ME Polish GUI libraries are also excellent and work well across\ndifferent devices.\n\n~~~\nrokhayakebe\nthank you. That would be nice but it doesn't test the functionality from one\noperator to the other.\n\n------\nmerlot-qa\nGot a budget? Check with centercode.com; they have a pool of volunteer\ntesters, and can" -"\n\nQuadriplegic Stuart Turner speaks at WIRED2014 via drones and robots - escapologybb\nhttp://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-10/16/stuart-turner-robots-and-cake\nFull disclosure: I'm Stuart Turner!\n======\nescapologybb\nFull disclosure: I'm Stuart! I thought you guys might enjoy this. :-)\n\n~~~\nhanskuder\nHi Stuart! I'm an engineer at Suitable Technologies (makers of the Beam).\nSorry to see the Beam didn't make it into the video, but it was really\ninspiring to see this talk. Thanks!\n\n~~~\nescapologybb\nThe beam was actually in the talk, but would you believe about five minutes\nbefore the talk there was a local problem with the Wi-Fi. Totally not on\nSuitable Technologies by the way.\n\n~~~\ntlb\nTo properly support people videoing in, conferences will need to provided\ndedicated WiFi on a separate channel. Current conference WiFi is reliable\nenough for checking email during a boring talk, but not for remote attendees.\n\nIt's hard to get conference venues to care. It might require an interpretation\nof the Americans with Disabilities Act (in the US) to insist that reliable\nWiFi to support remote video attendees is as important as reliable elevators.\n\n~~~\nescapologybb\nI agree with what you're saying in general. In this specific case, the venue\nWiFi was not the issue. It was" -"\n\nDrupal Solr Next Gen - the refactoring - caludio\nhttp://groups.drupal.org/node/92799\n\n======\nauxbuss\nLike most folk, I've heard of Drupal. But I'd not heard of Solr. I read it as\n\"soir\" and, not surprisingly, searching wasn't finding anything.\n\nAnyway, for those, like me, who haven't heard of Solr, here's a brief\ndescription and a couple of related links:\n\nSolr is the popular, blazing fast open source enterprise search platform from\nthe Apache Lucene project. Its major features include powerful full-text\nsearch, hit highlighting, faceted search, dynamic clustering, database\nintegration, and rich document (e.g., Word, PDF) handling. Solr is highly\nscalable, providing distributed search and index replication, and it powers\nthe search and navigation features of many of the world's largest internet\nsites.\n\n " -"\nPelorus Jack - asimjalis\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelorus_Jack\n======\nvore\nUnfortunately, as often is with these things, the truth might be less exciting\nthat the legend: [http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/10/pelorus-\njack...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/10/pelorus-jack-hero-\ndolphin-guided-ships-dangerous-water-early-20th-century/) :(\n\nHowever, if you'd like to savor the magic, the truth and the legend can be one\nand the same: who knows what really happened in 1909, after all :)\n\n~~~\njszymborski\nIs it less wonderful that, in moments of great danger and fear, this dolphin\nwas a symbol of joy and good fortune for the sailors on the ship?\n\nIt's pretty magical to me to think that a dolphin, just doing dolphin things\nand playing in the wake of a giant wooden sea vessel, was enough to see those\nsailors through life-and-death situations.\n\nLittle reminders of good in the world, regardless of whether the reminders\nthemselves are aware of it, can really change things for the better for a\nwhole lot of people.\n\n------\nd_t_w\nPelorus Bridge is the most beautiful swimming spot if you're ever in that part\nof the world. The bridge runs over the river which runs into the sound that\nPelorus Jack was named after.\n\n[https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-\ngo/ma...](https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-\ngo/marlborough/places/pelorus-bridge-scenic-reserve/)\n\n~~~\nIntermernet\nNote to the unwary: If you ever find yourself" -"\nOSX For Hackers - zackattack\nhttps://gist.github.com/2260182\n======\njamessb\nThis seems to be a copy of Mathias Bynen's Dotfiles\n(, 'sensible\nhacker defaults for OS X'), with a few minor changes. Specifically, comments\nexplainung each line have been changed to echo statements, and the following\nlines have been inserted:\n\n \n \n echo \"Use current directory as default search scope in Finder\"\n defaults write com.apple.finder FXDefaultSearchScope -string \"SCcf\"\n \n echo \"Show Path bar in Finder\"\n defaults write com.apple.finder ShowPathbar -bool true\n \n echo \"Show Status bar in Finder\"\n defaults write com.apple.finder ShowStatusBar -bool true\n \n echo \"Set a shorter Delay until key repeat\"\n defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 12\n \n \n\nAlso, some commands have been commented out:\n\n \n \n # Automatically hide and show the Dock\n # defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool true\n \n # Show remaining battery time; hide percentage\n # defaults write com.apple.menuextra.battery ShowPercent -string \"NO\"\n # defaults write com.apple.menuextra.battery ShowTime -string \"YES\"\n \n # echo \"Always show scrollbars\"\n # defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowScrollBars -string \"Auto\"\n \n # Disable window animations and Get Info animations in Finder\n # defaults write com.apple.finder DisableAllAnimations -bool true\n \n # Don\u2019t animate opening applications from the Dock\n # defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool false\n \n # Disable opening and closing window animations\n # defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled" -"\nHow do you really \"Meet people at networking events\"? - japanesejay\nHi HN!

For the last few years, I've been venturing into the consulting business, I mainly do UX focused web development and have built some mobile apps for my clients. It started as part-time freelance work and has slowly built up where I have a business partner and a few good people working with me on a part-time basis. I really want this to grow so I can stop moonlighting and treat this as a full-time gig (hard to do with the high cost of living in the bay area).

I've been trying to \"network\" and \"meet people\" but even at the last event (Vmworld), but everybody seemed chummy chummy with each other, the bloggers had their circle, the sales folks had their own circle and as an introverted \"tech\" guy, I couldn't create an opportunity for myself to jump into a conversation. I ended up talking to a few people but it all ended in small talk.

So HNers, I look to you guys for some advice. How do you approach people to initiate the conversations? I know having a hook helps, any other tactics worth noting?\n======\nlimedaring\nFirst, smaller" -"\nLooking for a keybase.io invite code - tvvocold\nIf anyone has a spare Keybase.io invite code, could you please PM me? I'd like to share mine if i got in there. Thanks in advance!! :)

Update:

Thx to constantin i got in.Now i got O Invitations Available,but you can still leave your email address here, someone (maybe me) may send the code if available.\n======\nchrisvogt\nWould you share one with mail@chrisvogt.me please? \u0f3c \u3064 \u25d5_\u25d5 \u0f3d\u3064\n\n------\ntvvocold\nUpdate:\n\nOk, Got 5 Invitations, Who want it?\n\n~~~\ngonchs\nDo you still have them? I'm interested.\n\n~~~\ntvvocold\nSure, just leave you email here.Try it, it's cool!" -"\nSoftware Companies Tech Competency Matrix - ojhaujjwal\nhttps://geshan.com.np/blog/2017/06/software-companies-tech-competency-matrix/\n======\nrgbrenner\nSome of this is just completely wrong. Like the entire row titled code\nperformance.\n\nLevel 4 isn't going around your codebase shaving milliseconds from execution\ntime.. Level 4 is knowing that not everything needs to be optimized.. In fact,\nmost code doesn't need to be optimized at all. The only parts that actually\nneed optimization are those that have been deemed to be too slow (because of\nsome external reason--ie: effect on users, for ex) or that are on a hot code\npath.\n\nI'll go one step further... all new code should be written for clarity only.\nOptimized only if necessary.\n\nNo one cares if your function thats called once a month takes an extra few\nseconds to run.\n\n~~~\nsbov\n> I'll go one step further... all new code should be written for clarity only.\n> Optimized only if necessary.\n\nI'm not saying you do, but many people I run across who have this point of\nview do a poor job at measuring the \"if necessary\" part. You aren't really\nprepared to detect it without some form of production performance monitoring,\nmeaning on the chart, a level of around" -"\nMicrosoft to Open Retail Stores Next to Apple\u2019s - nreece\nhttp://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/microsoft-to-open-retail-stores-next-to-apples/\n======\nicey\nIf they get into the PC support business (as suggested in the article); I\nforesee doom for the Geek Squad / any other consumer tech support shop.\n\nThey don't even have to be any good at support; they will get plenty of\ncustomers just by having the Microsoft name.\n\n~~~\ndrhowarddrfine\nThe Geek Squad services more than just Microsoft stuff.\n\n~~~\nicey\nThe question is whether they will be left with enough business to stay alive.\nI'm positive their bread and butter is windows issues. Why would anyone go see\nthe Geek Squad with a Windows issue when they can go see \"the Microsoft guy\"?" -"\n\nNew Zealand admits illegally spying on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom - 8ig8\nhttp://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/27/14120478-new-zealand-admits-illegally-spying-on-megaupload-founder-kim-dotcom?lite\n\n======\nbeedogs\nThis is my surprised face.\n\nOther western countries do what is asked of them when the US comes calling.\n\n~~~\ndmm\nThe US government is the last true sovereign.\n\n~~~\ntomjen3\nRIAA is the last true sovereign.\n\n------\nrolux\nIn other news, New Zealand's prime minister seems to have issued a public\napology to Kim Dotcom:\n\n[https://torrentfreak.com/new-zealand-prime-minister-\napologiz...](https://torrentfreak.com/new-zealand-prime-minister-apologizes-\nto-kim-dotcom-120927/)\n\n------\nOhArgh\nAh but New Zealand still doesn't let the US nuclear powered ships in their\nwaters! \n\nWhy should they fold to the US government who is basically being controlled by\nthe media industry?\n\nThere is a process to get someone extradited it should be followed\n\n------\nnvmc\nOur government has been at the beck and call of the White House ever since\nthey came to power. Key is financier, a snake.\n\n------\nmikerice\nRule #1 of spying: Never admit to it.\n\n------\nbriandear\nThe real question: is Dotcom innocent of his alleged crimes? The real story is\nthat if Dotcom was facilitating piracy. The technicality of if he was wire\ntapped illegally or not is important in theory, but it comes down to this:" -"\nBitcoin mining power reaches 1000 petahashes per second - no_gravity\nhttps://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?timespan=all\n======\nraducu\nI really don't get why people are so hung up on these two issues -- \"wasted\"\nelectricity and wasted computer power without actual numbers to put things\ninto perspective.\n\nAnybody has any real numbers on electricity used for bitcoin opperations vs.\nelectricity used by banks?\n\nFrom what I know about hashing algorithms and hardware, I'm pretty sure that\nthe dedicated bitcoin hardware is not so capable for general computation\nstuff.\n\nI'm more concearned about the pissed brain cycles that go to waste inside the\nbig corporate oligarchies that we call banks.\n\n------\nJoeAltmaier\nAll that electricity pissed away because people can't (won't) trust a banking\nauthority.\n\n~~~\nRealityVoid\nIf you think about it, there is a lot of energy and time pissed away because\nof trust issues. Reports, \"cover your ass\" emails and tasks, workflow\nlimitations because of lack of trust, locks on doors, security systems, LOADS\nof bullshit jobs. Lack of trust shows in most aspects of our life. And,\nironically, I think(without any concrete data to back up, it's just my own\nmusing on the subject) that verification and \"check systems\" contribute\ngreatly at the" -"\nUS Supreme Court rules DACA rescission was unlawful [pdf] - andrewla\nhttps://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-587_5ifl.pdf\n======\nrrss\nSetting aside for a moment whether DACA is 'good' or not, this seems like a\nbit of a strange decision to me. If rescinding DACA via memorandum was\nunlawful as a violation of the APA, why was implementing it by memorandum\nlawful?\n\nI haven't yet read the entire majority opinion, and maybe it will change my\nmind, but right now I tend to agree with Thomas:\n\n> Perhaps even more unfortunately, the majority\u2019s holding creates perverse\n> incentives, particularly for outgoing administrations. Under the auspices of\n> today\u2019s decision, administrations can bind their successors by unlawfully\n> adopting significant legal changes through Executive Branch agency\n> memoranda. Even if the agency lacked authority to effectuate the changes,\n> the changes cannot be undone by the same agency in a successor\n> administration unless the successor provides sufficient policy\n> justifications to the satisfaction of this Court. In other words, the\n> majority erroneously holds that the agency is not only permitted, but\n> required, to continue administering unlawful programs that it inherited from\n> a previous administration. I respect-fully dissent in part.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\n> why" -"\n\nAsk HN: Review my first MVP - fhub\n\nSite: finishstart.com

Premise: Write funny stories with random strangers... one sentence at a time.

My Design Goals:

1. Be a true MVP - test the idea without wasting any time

2. Go from idea conception to deployment in 1 day (I nearly achieved that)

3. Try to develop something with some viral marketing potential

4. All content to be user generated

5. Moderation sessions should be fun

6. Try out heroku.com to see if it would be a good fit for another product

7. Do something silly and fun (I come from the enterprise software world)

You can follow my thinking through the process at http://twitter.com/finishstart

All feedback more than welcome. Especially in the areas of:

1. Conversion - I consider a conversion to be someone who adds some\nwell thought out content and who submits their email address to get a\ncopy of the story sent to them on completion

2. Viral Marketing approaches

Cheers\n======\ndamoncali\nA few thoughts:\n\n1\\. You need a reason to keep people coming back - some sort of hook to keep\npeople interested. Off the top of my head:\n\n-private stories (restricted to a group)\n\n-solo stories (one sentence a day for one user)\n\n-stories limited to people with" -"\nStep-By-Step Fundraising Tactics from an NYC Founder Who Raised $750M - imartin2k\nhttp://firstround.com/review/step-by-step-fundraising-tactics-from-the-nyc-legend-who-raised-750m/\n======\nnawgszy\nNot really a criticism, but this read a bit like a slimy dating guide.\n\"Remember, like everyone else they want to feel wanted for more than their\nmoney\". \"Keep them all interested until you've made up your mind\". \"Subtly let\nthem know that you're wanted by others\".\n\nOn an unrelated note: I don't know why I can never contribute constructively\non this site, but here I am.\n\n~~~\nCalChris\nGiven that this was published by a VC and that the writer has been on both\nsides of the table, I think you're misreading it.\n\n~~~\nnawgszy\nI wasn't really trying to imply it's bad advice or isn't ethical or anything.\nI get that the parallel I decided to draw does indeed somewhat imply that, but\nmy intentions weren't as such. Just struck me as funny.\n\n------\nbsder\n> \u201cWhen I plan to be raising in six months, I\u2019m already out there, proactively\n> connecting with VCs, having coffees, making as many of them aware of my\n> company as possible,\u201d says Ryan. \u201cThe conversation is safer when I\u2019m not\n> raising money.\u201d\n\nYeah, because so" -"Ask HN: Have you transitioned from software to finance? - zabana\n======\nmattbgates\nLoaded question. Kidding. But one of my side projects invovles a financial\npiece. It's not technically a service or anything, but rather an informative\nguide on saving enough for retirement though I haven't finished it yet.\n\nI've always been naturally good with money and I have a friend who is a\nfinancial advisor, so having never spoken to a financial advisor before, he\ndid me a favor as a friend to show me that I was on track to retire a\nmillionaire if I kept doing what I was doing. He said I basically had to\nadjust nothing because I was doing everything right. Never took a finance or\nbusiness class. I just learned at an early age the difference between wants,\nneeds, and a lavish yearly vacation or getting to travel around the world,\nwhich is far greater than any material you'll ever get.\n\nThe project is a guide to help people understand the differences of wants and\nneeds, teaching about the stock market and investments, 401ks, working\ndifferent jobs to make money, saving when you are youngest, when to invest,\netc., all to prepare people" -"\n\nGoogle Bans Developer for Life - anonymous1983\nhttps://medium.com/medium-long/banned-for-life-c62f2404f66\n\n======\ntreerex\nYou get an app banned and it doesn't occur to you that maybe you should pull\nthe other apps that couple violate the same nebulous terms? The \"I grew up in\nthe 70s/80s and it was cool to defy authority if you didn't agree\" argument is\na canard. If you claim to be a professional developer then act like one.\nGetting in a pissing contest with Google will not end well.\n\nExpecting Google to act like a sane company for one developer in a garage is\nnaive.\n\n------\nzachlipton\nGuy makes a bunch of spammy apps that clearly rip off third party trademarks,\ngets banned from Google Play. While I think this could have been handled\nbetter from Google's side (such as a way to let him post a new app in the\nfuture, with appropriate review, if he agreed to knock it off), I'm not sure\nwhat else you'd expect. He even acknowledges ripping off the app icons.\n\n~~~\nanonymous1983\nI agree that he did violate one of their terms of service, and, like you, I\nbelieve it is unfair and too extreme to ban him from ever submitting" -"\n\nShow HN: jhackers.net - Conversations with Japan's Hackers - hkmurakami\nhttp://jhackers.net/\n\n======\nhkmurakami\nOP here :)\n\nWould really love to hear the kind of things HN'ers would like to hear in\nthese interviews, as I'll be reaching out to the hackers named as \"next up\" by\nthe first three guys I initially interviewed.\n\nI never would have created this site without HN and my small contributions to\nFOSS, so any feedback to make it better for you guys would be awesome!\n\n~~~\nKenzo99\nAll three are described as \"hackers\" on the site, yet none of them seem to be\nhackers. Engineers, developers, computer scientists - I could see those terms\nbeing used to describe them, but not \"hackers.\"\n\n~~~\nhkmurakami\nThanks for the feedback :)\n\nPerhaps I didn't do them justice through my efforts, but all three of them are\nopen source hackers to the bone. Could you expand on what you see as \"hackers\"\nand what sorts of people you'd be interested in reading about and expected to\nfind?" -"\n\niOS vs. Android - A comparison for first-time developers - diasks2\nhttp://www.diasks2.com/post/20172033158/ios-vs-android-a-comparison-for-first-time\n\n======\nambirex\n_The bottom line is, if you are selling a paid app, iOS is the way to go._\n\nThis conclusion from a single app is very weak at best.\n\nOtherwise, thank you for the write-up from your experience.\n\n------\nSpikeX\nI would have liked to have seen how the Windows Phone marketplace stacked up\nagainst the other two, and how much better (or worse) it is in those\ncategories.\n\n------\nmdonahoe\n\"all sales are final\"\n\nYou can ask apple for a refund. Not sure if they make the developer eat the\nwhole price or just the 70% cut" -"\n\nAmazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles - sahaj\nhttp://theselfpublishingrevolution.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazon-in-book-banning-business.html\n\n======\nghshephard\nTo be clear, they are currently targeting \"Incest\" erotica. The irony, of\ncourse, is that Amazon's Television Commercial features a women on the beach\nreading her kindle, and the story on her kindle, is about a boy who has sex\nwith his stepmother. Admittedly, not erotica, but still ironic.\n\nAmazon should feel free to yank whatever it wants off its bookshelves (and, in\nfact, should probably be a bit more discerning given some of the recent crap\nthey've been selling) - but, I don't know if they should be sending their\ncustomers _already purchased_ books into the memory hole.\n\n~~~\nflipbrad\nYou didn't purchase a book. You licensed an ebook. Big difference, in Amazon's\nmind.\n\n~~~\nAgentConundrum\nAnd that, in a nutshell, is why I don't really want to buy an eReader. They\njust seem too restrictive.\n\nMy girlfriend and I occasionally share books (usually she borrows mine), but\nmy understanding is that the books you \"buy\" are licensed only to a single\ndevice, and you can only share a book _one time_ , and even then only if the\npublisher allows it.\n\nI could be misunderstanding things," -"\n\nParallaxing Illustrations with jQuery - tombell\nhttps://github.com/cameronmcefee/plax\n\n======\nolalonde\nFor an awesome parallax demo:\n\n\n------\ncylo\nAnother pretty neat example is this webcomic: \n\n------\nCorrado\nVery cool, and it seem simple enough for non-graphics guys (like me) to\nactually make work. Thanx!\n\n------\nHipchan\nWhat's the difference between this and jquery.parallax?\n\n------\nsudont\nDoes anyone know the license on this?\n\n~~~\nwccrawford\nUnfortunately, the lack of posted license means nobody is permitted to use it\nwithout getting explicit permission. I really doubt that was the intent of the\nauthor, though.\n\n~~~\nsudont\nI'll email him and see if he'll add a license.\n\nEDIT: Waiting on a response.\n\n~~~\ncameronmcefee\nLicense added. Have at it, guys." -"\nGigapixel AI Accidentally Added Ryan Gosling\u2019s Face to This Photo - Hard_Space\nhttps://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-added-ryan-goslings-face-to-this-photo/\n======\nmurbard2\nBefore casting stones, have they checked with Ryan Gosling to make sure that\nwasn't him behind a giant magnifier at that window?\n\n~~~\nTheSpiceIsLife\nI started posting IFOTD - Inanimate Face Of The Day on social media a few\nweeks back.\n\nWhen you start looking you see faces _everywhere_.\n\nThe Gigapixel AI is a fair bit more detailed in this example though.\n\n~~~\nJudgmentality\n[http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com/](http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com/)\n\nHasn't been updated in forever but I used to love this.\n\n~~~\nTheSpiceIsLife\nThat's great!\n\nI'm here if you want to have a look:\n\n[https://www.facebook.com/amosrust](https://www.facebook.com/amosrust)\n\n------\nwongarsu\nIf Gigapixel AI works like other state of the art upscaling networks it\nupscales patches at the time, not the whole image at once. If the only context\nyou have is small enough, scaling it up as Ryan Gosling's face seems\ncompletely reasonable. After all I see a face there too. When looking at the\nlarger context(some kind of building) it becomes clear that there isn't\nsupposed to a face, but the AI likely didn't have that much context.\n\n~~~\nWillPostForFood\nIt's like the AI is replicating the same mistake a human brain" -"\n\nAsk HN: Should one avoid using niche technologies for a startup? - zaph0d\n\nI am doing a startup with a small tech. team. We would like to use cutting-edge technologies like Clojure, Erlang, node.js, etc. which are not really mainstream but help in rapid application development and iteration.\nThe problem here is that in case of a potential acquisition by another company, the deal might get canceled because the technology we used is non-mainstream, and the acquiring company might face a lot of problems in maintaining the code-base.\nSo the question here is how do you deal with such issues? Should one compromise speed of development now in favour of an easy acquisition path tomorrow? How do you convince the `elders' in your startup about this?\n======\ndavidw\nThis site would not exist and none of us would be here had pg not been\nsuccessful with Viaweb, which utilized Lisp. I think that PG and company were\nprobably bright enough that things would have worked out with other\ntechnologies too, but Lisp made them happy and more productive, I guess.\n\n~~~\npaulgb\n\"Did it alarm some potential acquirers that we used Lisp? Some, slightly, but\nif we hadn't used Lisp," -"Ask HN: Installing Linux on a Mac. Fedora or Ubuntu? - webmasterraj\n======\nLarryMade2\nIve found ubuntu to be the most painless route, usually a resolution to a\ndriver issue is a google search away.\n\nThe best path is to pro-actively google your model Macintosh with Ubuntu\n(version number) and another with Fedora (version number) and see what pops up\nin compatibility issues and resolutions. Really, its pretty much that easy to\nfigure out.\n\n------\nbsg75\nAlso interested in this, mainly to know which ships with drivers that don't\nrequire too many driver shenanigans.\n\nXubuntu \"looks nicer\", but Fedora is more familiar to us CentOS users on the\nserver side." -"\nWelders set off Beirut blast while securing explosives - tafda\nhttps://www.maritime-executive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-explosives\n======\nGerardd\nWe were 600 meters away from the blast walking peacefully in the popular\nBeirut street Mar Mikhael. The scale of the explosion was surreal [1]. I\nhugged my sister and thought it\u2019s our last moment. We miraculously survived\nwith only a few scratches. Ten days have passed and there\u2019s not a single\nminute I don\u2019t think of what happened and emulate different scenarios where I\ncould\u2019ve died. I also work at the most affected hospital that became instantly\nnon-operational and had to be evacuated with over 17 patients, staff, and\nvisitors dead [2].\n\nPlease consider donating [3].\n\n[1] [https://youtu.be/SkIYjNGiaoA](https://youtu.be/SkIYjNGiaoA)\n\n[2] [https://youtu.be/JIxuwE_WPXw](https://youtu.be/JIxuwE_WPXw)\n\n[3] [https://www.stgeorgehospital.org/stgeorge-\ndonation](https://www.stgeorgehospital.org/stgeorge-donation)\n\n~~~\nTeknoman117\nI had a similar personal reaction after getting into a high speed car crash\n(mechanical failure of my car, while traveling at 70 mph on the highway.\nEntered a spin, slid off the road, did at least one complete roll). 8 years\nlater, I still sometimes think of all the ways the crash could have gone\ndifferently that would have resulted in my death.\n\nIf I was going a little faster, my car could have ended up in the irrigation\nditch" -"\nMy Job Interview at Google (2008) - trymas\nhttps://catonmat.net/my-job-interview-at-google\n======\n120bits\n> The questions were technical but not very challenging or difficult.\n\nI might be really bad, because few of the questions were challenging and\ndifficult. I was expecting a rant how bad the google interview process is,\nwhich is usually what I come across. I do agree the questions are fun and are\nhelpful to someone who is preparing for an interview. The interview and\nprogramming questions covered lot of topics.\n\n------\nquirkafleeg3\n> The questions were technical but not very challenging or difficult. So THATS\n> why Google products are so consistantly shite..." -"\n\nTour of a real toy Haskell program - ihodes\nhttp://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2010/10/tour-of-real-toy-haskell-program-part-1.html\n\n======\nkwantam\nMy transition to \"real\" Haskell programming happened with some parallel signal\nprocessing stuff, but my best example toy is my two-player tetris clone,\ntriHs: \n\nNote the \"bastard\" key, where you can swap your opponent's next piece. >:)\n\n------\ndjhworld\nInteresting article, some of it went a little over my head but I'm pleased to\nsee articles like this as I've always wondered how people make that transition\nin Haskell from writing fibonacci sequence generators and one-line FizzBuzz\nfunctions.\n\nWould be interested to see if this thread becomes popular and has the\nincentive for people to post their Haskell projects and how they did them\n\n------\nzaphar\nThis is great. One of the barriers to entry for me into haskell hacking was\nfinding a useful app to look at. Yi the editor was what finally got me over\nthe hump. It's great that more people are recognizing this need and meeting\nit.\n\n~~~\nhappy4crazy\nIs Yi still being developed? I've also encountered the fibonacci gap with\nHaskell, so looking at Yi would be pretty fun, but I was unable to install it\nvia cabal the last time I" -"\nOld usenet maps - bryanrasmussen\nhttp://olduse.net/blog/current_usenet_map/\n======\nNelsonMinar\nThese maps were largely a work by Steve McGeady, who later went on to be an\nexecutive at Intel. His testimony in the Microsoft antitrust trial in 1998 had\na big impact.\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_McGeady](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_McGeady)\n\n------\nrocky1138\nSeems like this would be better laid out using a fixed-width font. HTML\nsupports it, why not use it?\n\n~~~\nastrodust\nLooks fine here. It's using \"GlassTTYVT220\", which is a custom font, so that\nmight not have loaded properly for you.\n\n~~~\nrocky1138\nThat's exactly what it was. After I wrote that I went into the stylesheet and\ndisabled the custom font. It worked a treat.\n\n~~~\ncat199\nMan I am telling you, get this font.\n\nIt is a 100% clone of the actual vt220 font, and therefore is the ultimate in\ngreen-screen retro awesomeness.\n\nBasically, by getting this font and using it (esp on a BSD) you have the\noriginal 'theme' for the Unix CLI, since pretty much everyone (yes being\nhyperbolic) used real UNIX (or 'BSD UNIX' as it was called before the suit) on\nVAX with DEC terminals around this time when most of the core CLI tools that\nmake up the core of" -"\nXkcd - A Bunch of Rocks - nickb\nhttp://www.xkcd.com/505/\n======\nsammyo\nThis crowd should be familar with rule 34: \n\n~~~\nMaysonL\n\n\n------\njeroen\nThat guy should pay more attention when I'm coding!\n\n------\nOompa\nI hope this isn't the start of a new trend\u2026\n\n------\npchristensen\nWolfram's rule 34?\n\n~~~\njcl\nWolfram's Rules are, as I understand it, a sequential enumeration of cellular\nautomata. Rule 110 was found to be universal -- i.e. it could be used to\nimplement a Turing-equivalent machine as the narrator of the comic does. \"Rule\n34\" is a 4chan meme.\n\n\n\n\n\n~~~\ntocomment\nHow do I program rule 110 in Python? It shouldn't be too hard, right?\n\n~~~\nzitterbewegung\nSee " -"\n\nAre symbols, myths and metaphors sort of like file compression for culture? - eli_oat\nhttp://elioat.tumblr.com/post/86402521425/are-symbols-myths-and-metaphors-sort-of-like-file\n\n======\ncoldtea\nWell, symbols, myth etc are a summary of complex events and notions.\n\nIn that sense, they are sort of file compression.\n\nBut in other senses the metaphor breaks, because it cannot convey the\nsimilarities.\n\nOne can enjoy a myth or symbol in itself -- but a compressed file is useless\nunless it can be opened.\n\nSecond, the uncompressed file can be comprehended at once (e.g a movie can be\nviewed, a compressed doc can be read, etc). The cultural notions that are\n\"compressed\" into myths, though, cannot be understood by anyone in their\nentirety -- so the \"compression\" of the myth is somehow necessary.\n\nThird, a compressed file is usually the work of a single person. Whereas\nculture (and myths, symbols etc) are a shared work of a people.\n\n~~~\neli_oat\nNoting that a myth can be enjoyed in and of itself, while a compressed file is\nreally rather boring until it is uncompressed, I think you've hit on something\nI didn't think of at all. Thank you.\n\nI'm wondering now if a more apt word would have been \"encoding,\" rather than\ncompression?" -"\n\nAbstractQueryFactoryFactories and alias_method_chain: The Ruby Way - wycats\nhttp://yehudakatz.com/2010/02/15/abstractqueryfactoryfactories-and-alias_method_chain-the-ruby-way/\n\n======\nduairc\nI've always thought that alias_method was a pretty silly way to solve the\nproblem of defining a new method in terms of an existing method with the same\nname. alias_method is definitely \"simpler\", but I think the way it actually\ndestructively creates a method in a class is a bit ugly. I don't know what\n\"AbstractQueryFactoryFactories\" are, but the name makes me want to stay pretty\nfar away from them.\n\nThese monkey patches constitute my solution to the problem:\n\n \n \n class UnboundMethod\n def origin\n owner.instance_method(name)\n end\n end\n \n class Proc\n def to_method(object, method)\n me = self\n object.class.class_eval do\n current = instance_method(method).origin rescue nil\n mine = current.owner == self rescue false\n define_method(method, &me)\n result = instance_method(method)\n mine ? define_method(method, current) : remove_method(method)\n result\n end.bind(object)\n end\n end\n \n class Module\n def redefine(method, &code)\n original = instance_method(method).origin\n define_method(method) do |*args, &block|\n code.to_method(self, method).(original.bind(self), *args, &block)\n end\n end\n end\n \n\nYou use this as follows:\n\n \n \n Fixnum.redefine(:+) do |old_plus, other|\n if self == 2 and other == 2\n 5\n else\n old_plus.(other)\n end\n end\n \n >> 2 + 2\n => 5\n >> 2 + 3\n => 5\n >> 2 + 1\n => 3\n \n\nI'll admit that its implementation is pretty" -"\n\nShow HN: Paid, an API for invoicing - ryanwjackson\nhttps://www.paidapi.com\n\n======\nAnimats\nIt's just an invoicing program. There are lots of those. Intuit's is widely\nused. Oracle is also in that business. There's \"Anytime Collect\", \"Zencash\",\n\"Esker\", \"Celtrino\". and many others.\n\nThe more advanced players support electronic data interchange (EDI), where\nyour accounts receivable system connects to the buyer's accounts payable\nsystem. Many large companies require EDI for suppliers who generate a lot of\ninvoices, so they aren't re-entering invoice data into their own systems.[1]\nAny new system should have EDI interchange with at least all Fortune 1000\ncompanies.\n\nThere are \"gateway\" companies which handle talking to large numbers of other\ncompanies.[2] Once you get this all working, your invoice goes out to the\ngateway, the gateway formats it and sends it to the paying company, the paying\ncompany's systems validate the bill, and they do a funds transfer to your bank\naccount, which is matched to another EDI transaction indicating payment. For\nmost routine transactions, there's no human intervention.\n\nMake that all work for small/medium businesses, and you have a unique product.\n\nThe API is \"dead simple\" because it doesn't handle any of the hard cases. Like\n\"We ordered" -"\nShow HN: 25 days of procedural music experiments - fenomas\nhttp://aphall.com/2017/12/advent-of-procedural-music/\n======\nmundo\nNeat stuff! The gypsy jazz Zelda theme is really pretty on point. And the\n\"Take 5 drum solo\" really does sound like it could be just a chiptuned version\nof the Take 5 drum solo.\n\nI don't see a source link, but it'd be interesting to read about how it works,\ne.g. how the different tunes are different from each other (completely\ndifferent procedural code, or just different starting parameters?) and what\npackages you used and so forth.\n\n~~~\nfenomas\nThanks! The short version on the tech side is, it's all hand-written and very\nad-hoc. There is some mid-level code for managing patterns and notes that's\nreused across the demos, but the settings for how each instrument sounds, what\nkind of chord progressions to use, etc. is different for each demo.\n\nI didn't use any outside libraries, but I did package up the part of my code\nthat actually plays sounds as 'npm/soundgen' (but it's not documented at all\nyet..).\n\n------\ngus_massa\nI would add at least one of the sounds generator to the page you submitted. I\nhave no incentive to click any of the links." -"\nShow HN: Quick apply to any online job application - thekyle\nhttps://jobs.hoxly.com/\n======\nthekyle\nHi HN, A few months ago I was applying to internships and noticed that most\nonline job applications are rather tedious and repetitive. They often involve\ncreating an account, uploading your resume, and then copy and pasting\ndifferent parts of your resume into a form (education, work history, skills,\ncertifications, etc.). I assume this is done so that the hiring manager never\nactually needs to look at the uploaded resumes and to making automatic\nscreening of candidates easier.\n\nSome job search sites offer \u201cQuick apply\u201d where you fill out all of your\ninformation once and then apply to participating jobs with one click. However,\nthe number of supported job applications is quite limited and there\u2019s a good\nchance jobs you\u2019re interested in won\u2019t support the feature.\n\nSo that\u2019s why I created Hoxly Jobs which offers universal quick apply to any\njob application available online.\n\n------\nCoreFailure\nReally cool idea! Good revenue model too, I can easily see $1/job being an\neasy value proposition.\n\nOne thing that gives me pause as a prospective user is that I don't know what\nwill happen if there's any \"essay response\"" -"\nSocialteria - voidale\nhttps://socialteria.com\n======\nvoidale\nHello everyone,\n\nLooking to get some exposure about my app\n[https://socialteria.com](https://socialteria.com) it's a social media\nmanagement app you can queue up bunch of posts and have them shared in the\nfuture to your social media accounts. One cool feature is the content\nsuggestion you can find popular content from popular facebook pages we list\nthe best content on top you can one click share it.\n\nRight now it's just me one solo developer, but my goal is to make it one of\nthe best web apps for social media. I have some great features on the road\nmap.\n\nI would love to get your feedback let me know what you think or if you find\nsomething that is broken (probably it's still beta!)\n\nThanks! -Mark" -"\n\nA Well-Funded Startup Emerges From the Unemployment Lines - jyu\nhttp://www.wired.com/business/2012/08/learnup/\n\n======\nbriggsbio\nThis is one of those \"wow, so perfectly obvious no one has never done it.\"\nThis could (and probably should) the hiring process at many retail and service\njobs. In my teens I would have been all about proving myself by taking\nwhatever quiz or prescreening training available to get the job. This could\nhave micro impacts on allowing the most tenacious to get the job rather than\nthe most experience, which for the level of jobs they're focusing on initially\ncould be a positive force. Just imagine if Wal-Mart was filled with the most\nproactive, not just the one with 6 months more of register experience.\nCertainly many caveats to these statements, but with some evolution and\nexecution this could have really important impacts on the way low-level wage\nemployment is conducted. The interesting aspects would be to see it move up\nthe org chart. Also love the customer development of them walking the\nunemployment lines to understand the market.\n\n------\nsimantel\nThis sounds like a great way for big employers to require what would otherwise\nhave been on-the-job training be completed in advance of even" -"\nAsk HN: Are we overcomplicating software development? - ian0\nI have recently been involved in the overhaul of an established business with poor output into a functioning early/mid stage startup (long story). We are back on track but, honestly, my lessons learned fly in the face of a lot of currently accepted wisdom:

1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for the job

2) Avoid microservices where possible, the operational cost considering devops is just immense

3) Advanced reliability / redundancy even in critical systems ironically seems to causes more downtime than it prevents due to the introduction of complexity to dev & devops.

4) Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex devops introduced by microservices.

5) Agile "methodology" when used as anything but a tool to solve specific, discrete, communications issues is really problematic

I think overall we seem to be over-complicating software development. We look to architecture and process for flexibility when in reality its acting as a crutch for lack of communication and proper analysis of how we should be architecting the actual software.

Is it just me?\n======\nSatvikBeri\nMany of these practices are popularized by Google/Facebook/Amazon but don't\nmake sense for a" -"\nOpera, Brave, Vivaldi to ignore Chrome's anti-ad-blocker changes - snaky\nhttps://www.zdnet.com/article/opera-brave-vivaldi-to-ignore-chromes-anti-ad-blocker-changes-despite-shared-codebase/\n======\nrndgermandude\nThe problem at this point isn't whether chrome will disable it... It can be\nadded back, probably fairly easily as google intents to keep it around for\n\"enterprise\" anyway, so it's probably just gonna end up changing/removing one\nif-statement. If not, then the code already exists and has to be merged back\nin.\n\nThe problem is distribution of the actual extensions, as Vivaldi kinda pointed\nout, as the other browsers mostly rely on the Chrome Extension store. If\nGoogle really decides to pull the plug here they could start rejecting\nextensions using the old, removed-from-Chrome APIs. And then what? Each\nbrowser such as Vivaldi, Brave, Opera has to implement their own app store\njust to host the old-API ad-blockers. And implementing such a store is a major\nfeat. And the walled garden strikes again.\n\nVivaldi already indicated they might create a \"limited\" store, meaning not a\nreal store open to the public, but one where they list hand-picked old-API\nextensions such as ublock origin. Of course, innovation is still stiffed as\nyou in such a \"chrome-store + limited vendor store\" scenario cannot just\ndevelop new extensions using" -"\nSisyphus Kinetic Lego Sculpture - chaosmachine\nhttp://jkbrickworks.com/sisyphus-kinetic-sculpture/\n======\nmattnewport\nThe working combination safe is very cool too:\n[http://jkbrickworks.com/working-combination-\nsafe/](http://jkbrickworks.com/working-combination-safe/)\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nI really like his version of the useless machine as well, really playful :)\n\n------\nDiabloD3\nNow that, my friends, is art.\n\n~~~\ntajen\nAwesome! Omg there's also a particle accelerator. It seems like Lego is\nencompassing the trend of crowdsourcing with ideas.lego.com, but I'm\ndisappointed it's not a decentralized model where the everyone could sell\ntheir own construction and get a margin from it.\n\n~~~\nsteve19\nIt looks dead. Projects which hit the required 10k supporters 18 months ago\nare still \"being reviewed\" but Lego.\n\nYou are right, they should allow anything to be sold if a certain number of\npre-orders can be met and copyrights cleared.\n\n~~~\njerrysievert\nfar from dead, lego releases a couple of projects about every 6 months. the\nlatest is a doctor who set, that is just about to be released.\n\nit takes a couple of months to review, and usually they (lego) are active in\nthe comments section." -"\nQuantum radar will expose stealth aircraft - jonbaer\nhttps://phys.org/news/2018-04-quantum-radar-expose-stealth-aircraft.html\n======\nburfog\nAlways remember that stealth is not a boolean.\n\nThe enemy is constrained by size, cost, power, and heat dissipation. What can\nbe done on the ground is not the same as what can be done in a fighter plane,\nand that isn't the same as what can be done in a small-diameter missile, and\nthat isn't the same as what can be done in an anti-aircraft shell.\n\nThe enemy might be able to briefly detect at close range, reliably track at\nlong range, or anything in between.\n\nBecause of this, stealth is not simply defeated, and it does not suddenly\nbecome 100% useless.\n\n~~~\ndingaling\n> and that isn't the same as what can be done in a small-diameter missile\n\nWhich was the genius idea behind Track-via-Missile in the Patriot SAM\n\nInstead of having the missile work-out the best interception based on what it\ncan detect, it relays its view of the World back to the ground station which\nreturns its recommended geometry. Constantly and at high frequency.\n\nAnd since the ground station is more powerful and can be upgraded more easily\nthan the missile's electronics, Patriot has made" -"\nWays in which the WannaCry ransomware could have been much worse - Mojah\nhttps://ma.ttias.be/ways-wannacry-ransomware-much-worse/\n======\njobigoud\nWow the second point, encrypting the files but providing transparent access\nfor a while thereby corrupting even the backups is really scary.\n\nAlthough maybe this would be detected when your incremental backups start\nsaying that all the files have just changed. Some softwares will require\nmanual action if more than x percent of the corpus needs to be resynched.\n\n------\nRichardHeart\nOne option I don't see in the list, is just basic, file wiping, instead of\nencrypting. People are lucky there's even an option to unencrypt.\n\n~~~\ntheoh\nBut why would you pay if there's no \"hostage\"?\n\n~~~\nRichardHeart\nI'm saying that a virus that wants only to destroy, instead of get paid, is\nmore dangerous than a virus that wants paid. It's the difference between a\nkidnapping and a murder.\n\n~~~\nbigbugbag\nWhat's the incentive for such a virus ?\n\n~~~\nsushid\nDo you not remember viruses in the 90s like the ILOVEYOU virus? Plenty of\nhackers wrote viruses that maliciously destroyed data just because they could." -"\nEmail Storm - polm23\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm\n======\nchatmasta\nWe had a few of these in college. My favorite was when someone replied \"you\nknow, you can just press M in gmail to mute the conversation.\" What followed\nwere hundreds of messages saying just, \"M\". College kids really are the\ngreatest trolls.\n\n------\nilkkao\nSaw these storms couple times at Nokia years ago. By far the funniest replies\nwere those that explained correctly what's going on and then concluded that\ntheir message should be the end of the thread.\n\nWhat they didn't realize was that the email server was overloaded and that\ntheir message would be delivered several hours later together with dozen\nsimilar messages from the other people.\n\nThe next round of people then complained why these people are not stopping.\n\n------\n_nalply\nI saw an email storm on a mailing list for lawyers. Due to a misconfiguration\nout of office notices weren't suppressed and forwarded to the mailing list.\nSoon several lawyers who were taking off were contributing to the storm. I\nimmediately saw the self-reinforcing avalanche and told the operator to shut\ndown the mailing list server.\n\n------\nstygiansonic\nI think almost everyone at a big company has experienced" -"\nKeep your source code SIMPLE - kevingoslar\nhttps://medium.com/@kevingoslar/keep-your-source-code-simple-d5873cb854dc\n======\ntaberiand\nMy feeling is these paradigms, SOLID and SIMPLE, boil down to basically: small\nobjects, connected minimally, though interfaces.\n\nSIMPLE appears to be leaning even more towards the functional programming side\nof things; I think we should probably just get it over with and accept that\ncomposition of functions operating on immutable data structures is just the\nright way to go.\n\n~~~\ntobr\nIs there a language that leans heavily towards immutable data, but steers\nclear of the, shall we say, _dorkier_ side of functional programming?\n\n~~~\nISO-morphism\nThis is Clojure. It's functional, but more as a side effect of focusing\nintently on simple, immutable, persistent data structures and their\ncompositions. I'd strongly recommend looking into it, along with many of the\npresentations by its initial author Rich Hickey.\n\n~~~\nBoorishBears\nImo no Lisp variant can claim to not be in the \"dorkier\" side of things\n(\"dorkier\" being read as \"hard to approach\" in my eyes).\n\nI'd say Kotlin over Clojure.\n\n~~~\nadamkl\nI\u2019d suggest you watch Rich\u2019s talk \u201cSimple made easy\u201d. [1]\n\nIt\u2019s one of his main points that something like a language being \u201chard to\napproach\u201d can be overcome" -"\nNokia 3310 hands-on - asymmetric\nhttps://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/02/nokia-3310-hands-on-its-hard-not-to-like-this-modern-take-on-the-feature-phone/\n======\nthrowaway000002\nThis would be my \"primary driver\" had they implemented LTE, GPS, and no-\nnonsense USB tethering.\n\nI don't need, nor want, anything else.\n\nAlso, get off my lawn.\n\n------\nKoshkin\n3310 (the original) was my first mobile phone. It was OK. Flip phones were\nmuch nicer though, even the ones with the antenna sticking out - which, in\nfact, made them even cooler looking. I loved my Motorola-made one (not the\nRAZR; VA76R, was it?). It was perfect.\n\n------\nctack\nThis is really attractive, SD card, bluetooth, long battery life. But there is\nno GPS, so no maps. That's a lot to compromise.\n\nSeems they really went all out in not making it a smart phone replacement.\n\n------\nhprotagonist\nburner for border crossings.\n\nFinally, a phone for older relatives that doesn't suck.\n\n------\nLostWanderer\nWhat are the possibilities of application development in feature phones? Are\nwe seeing the return of feature phones with possible voice functions in the\nvery near future.\n\n------\nufmace\nPretty cool! Be interesting to see how many of the internet \"grumpy old men\"\ncomplaining about modern smartphones buy them in first-world countries.\n\n~~~\nnom\nI really want to" -"\nHow to watch the Olympics, live, from the United States - bradgessler\nhttp://bearsfightingbears.com/how-to-watch-the-olympics-live-from-the-united-states\n======\navolcano\nKinda seems more like \"how to watch the Olympics for $20\" (or more - I don't\nknow quite how many games are available, and at what quality, from the BBC,\nbut I feel like you could potentially use over 200 gigs of transfer in\nwatching them).\n\nMany actual VPNs are somewhat cheaper, and just as simple to set up.\n\nOf course, paying money to a third-party to watch BBC feels as insane and dumb\nas ever. You'd think that they'd start looking into overseas subscriptions at\nthis point. Nevermind the IOC - why can't they offer anything on Pay-Per-View?\nBoth are great alternative sources of income they're passing up, instead\nessentially encouraging piracy and sending money to third parties instead!\n\n~~~\nkristofferR\nJust use these two DNS servers, they're free and takes no effort to get\nworking:\n\nPrimary DNS: 64.250.122.104\n\nSecondary DNS: 199.167.30.144\n\n~~~\nsch1zo\nyou probably should mention the guys providing the service. These DNS Servers\nare from and you shouldn't use these Server permanantly\nbecause they do DNS Traffic shaping\n\n------\ncoderrr\nOr you could sign up at for our VPN" -"\n\nBorn in the USA? Some Chinese plan it that way - drewse\nhttp://www.npr.org/2010/11/22/131513165/born-in-the-u-s-a-some-chinese-plan-it-that-way\n\n======\nalanh\nAmazing someone who immigrated here at 10 years old could never be President,\nbut someone who was in the US _only_ for their birth \u2014 until much later in\nlife \u2014 _could_ become President.\n\nEver since reading a first-hand account of a grade school student quietly\nthinking about how their teacher\u2019s pronouncement that \u201cany of you could become\nPresident!\u201d was incorrect for that student, an immigrant, I have seen this\nclause as a bit excessive.\n\n~~~\ndoyoulikeworms\nAgreed. I may come across as xenophobic, or uber-patriotic, or whatever, but I\nthink the laws regarding eligibility for presidency should be changed, not\nrelaxed.\n\nFor example: Required to be a citizen and resident of the USA for the majority\nof his/her life (>50%). Required to renounce all other citizenship. Required\nto have spent the last 10 years of his/her life in the US.\n\nSomething like that seems fair(er) to me.\n\nEDIT: Clarification.\n\n~~~\nmahmud\nThose are already the requirements for a basic security clearance.\n\n------\njordan0day\nTo be honest, I'm not especially bothered by this. You could (and many cable\nnews and talk radio hosts have) make" -"\nReplacing \u2018that = this\u2019 assignments in JavaScript with Arrow Functions - kiyanwang\nhttps://dbwriteups.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/replacing-that-this-assignments-in-javascript-with-arrow-functions/\n======\nandrewstuart2\nI have never subscribed to this particular pattern (antipattern IMO), though I\ndo agree with a lot of the concepts Crockford proposes in \"The Good Parts.\"\nThe concept of 'this' is complicated enough in ES5, with a few new\npossibilities for its value in ES6+.\n\nSince this is nearly always the pattern that's followed in the class pattern,\nI nearly always alias `this`, if needed, to the lowercase instance name or\nsome short identifier that semantically maps to \"an instance of the class\". It\ngets you instantly out of both the problem of \"I already used `that` as an\nidentifier, now what?\" as well as providing some nice context to what you're\nworking on if you happen to be scrolled beyond the function/constructor name.\n\n \n \n function SomeClass(arg1, secretArg) {\n var someClass = this; // or `var sc = this`, more often these days\n \n // Hopefully do something more interesting than this...\n someClass.arg1 = arg1;\n \n someClass.method = function(foo) {\n someClass.bar = foo;\n // Do something with the \"private\" param via closure.\n secretArg.count++;\n };\n }\n \n\nEven if lambda expressions do fix the issue of \"which that is that\"" -"\nHTTP throughput regression from Go 1.7.5 to 1.8 - 01walid\nhttps://github.com/golang/go/issues/18964\n======\njerf\nAs I've mentioned before [1], as the number starts getting too large,\n\"requests per second\" isn't a useful way of measuring the performance of a\nwebserver, you're really more interested in \"seconds per request overhead\".\nThe former makes this sound horrible and leads to headlines that make it sound\nlike the entire web stack has lost 20% of its performance, which is terrible.\nThe latter shows that the \"request overhead\" has gone from ~100us per request\nto ~120us or so, which is a lot more informative and tends to lead to better\nunderstanding what the situation is.\n\nThis is not meant as an attack or a defense of Go. The facts are what the\nfacts are. The point here is to suggest that people use terminology that is\nmore informative and easier to understand. There are people for whom 20us per\nrequest extra is a sufficiently nasty issue that they will not upgrade. There\nare also a lot of people who are literally multiple orders of magnitude away\nfrom that even remotely mattering because their requests tend to take 120ms\nanyhow. Using \"seconds per request overhead\" both" -"\n\nKickStarting a Revolution - dajbelshaw\nhttp://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/08/16/kickstarting-a-revolution/\n\n======\ncomputer\nI know that it's superficial, but I have an extremely hard time taking a blog\npost interspersed with large meme pictures seriously. I think you should only\nuse them if your target audience is teens, and when you're near their age as\nwell, trying to write something \"popular\". Definitely not when attempting to\nwrite a serious post.\n\nNote that this is the same blog that recently started a post[0] with:\n\n \n \n TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten \n with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description \n of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. \u201cnom nom\u201d. \n This blog post is not for you.\n \n\nwhich makes this seem quite ironic.\n\n[0]: [http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-\nco...](http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/)\n\n~~~\npearjuice\nThese are not \"meme pictures\" but rather image macros[0].\n\n[0]:\n[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_macro](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_macro)\n\n~~~\nglomph\nThey are both.\n\n------\nthisiswrong\nGreat article, just one major inaccuracy concerning the Pirate Party:\n\n> they have a silly name and their focus seems to be solely on \u2018sharing\n> culture\u2019 at the expense of everything else.\n\nThen you go on to say:\n\n> What we need in this country is a protest" -"\n\nAOL buys Huffington Post for $315mm in cash - akharris\nhttp://kara.allthingsd.com/20110206/youve-got-arianna-aol-buys-huffington-post-for-315-million-in-cash/?mod=tweet\n\n======\njarin\nI think the key news bit here is that Ariana Huffington will be in charge of\nall of AOL's blog/news properties.\n\n~~~\nbvi\nThat would make her Arrington's boss, among others, wouldn't it?\n\n~~~\nzacharycohn\nCorrect. Paul Carr's words:\n\n\"I have no idea how any of this will affect TechCrunch. So far AOL has kept\ntrue to its promise not to interfere with our editorial and there\u2019s no reason\nto suppose that will change under Huffington. That said, it would be idiotic\nto think that our parents\u2019 content strategy \u2013 particularly the SEO stuff \u2013\nwon\u2019t have annoying trickle-down consequences for all of us in the long term.\"\n\n[edit- Corrected source of the quote.]\n\n~~~\nSamuel_Michon\nFor those who haven't read it yet, AOL's \"Master Plan\" for its blogs and news\nsites:\n\n\n\n \n \n AOL tells its editors to decide what topics to cover based on four considerations:\n traffic potential, revenue potential, edit quality and turn-around time.\n \n AOL asks its editors to decide whether to produce content based on\n \"the profitability consideration.\"\n \n The documents reveal that AOL is, when the story calls for it, willing to boost\n traffic" -"\n\nNode.js Web Server Guide - asp_net\nhttps://github.com/aspnetde/nodejs-webserver-guide\n\n======\nasp_net\nAfter working in the Microsoft universe for a decade I decided to broaden my\nhorizon, so I digged into Node.js. I am quite impressed with what I found and\nwhat I could accomplish in a few weeks with that tooling, but one thing was\nleft - I had no idea how and where to host my stuff. As I did not find a\ntypical all-in-one-solution, I just made the decision to also dig into Linux.\nThat's the (preliminary) result of my journey, which may be helpful to others\ntoo.\n\n(And if I got something horrible wrong, just tell me and I will fix it ...)." -"\n\nThe Linux Kernel - Structure Analysis - ernstsson\nhttp://ernstsson.net/post/25837804958/the-linux-kernel-challenge\n\n======\nwillvarfar\nI remember the early runs of Coverity on the Symbian kernel and user-space.\n\nBecause Symbian's C++ is not very conventional, and is very careful in its own\nconventions, Coverity found basically nothing except false alarms.\n\n~~~\nernstsson\nTrue, Coverity needs to be configured correctly for the target system to get\nit working for you (I assume that especially Symbian C++ can be tricky).\nSimilar here, the tolerance values for complexity might be set wrong giving us\na lower score than we should have. The image itself is valid though.\n\n~~~\nwillvarfar\nIsn't the very low quality score setting off alarm bells and making you\nquestion if you're measuring the right things?\n\n~~~\nernstsson\nYes, definitely. I think (or hope?) the main reason for the score is that the\ndirectory structure and the actual architecture of Linux isn't fully in sync.\nMost of the score comes from the top directory tangles and complexity. When I\ncompare it to the commonly used kernel map\n() I really don't see\nit matching as well as Arqua requires for a good score. Note also that the\nscore doesn't say that the software doesn't" -"\n\nAsk HN: Keeping track of support requests/emails/tickets - jason_tko\n\nThe last discussion on applications to keep track of support requests seems to be around 2 years ago. I wonder if there have been any new companies or applications that have sprung up since then.

I'm looking for a clean application to keep track of issues and support requests with good reporting capabilities.

What are you using for this?\n======\nmegaduck\nMy startup is currently developing a new ticket tracking system named Tracker,\nand it might be exactly what you're looking for. Tracker's focus is helping\nyou do email support for external customers, but it also works well for\ninternal company support.\n\nTracker is lightweight, fast, and has exceptional search and email\nintegration. The web interface is quite quick and has some nice features, but\nyou can also perform most functions (replying to customers, creating tickets,\ncommenting) straight from your mail client.\n\nWe're currently in private beta, but if you're interested you can email me at\ndave AT madwombat DOT com, and I'll set you up with an account.\n\n------\njason_tko\nI've had recommended to me - anyone with experience\nwith this app?\n\n~~~\nshadow\nWe are on tender.app hooked up with" -"\n\nTell HN: Hacker News Watch - Maro\n\nhttp://hnwatch.scalien.com

Demo account: demo/demo

Hacker News Watch monitors submissions so you don't miss out on topics, comments and commenters relevant to you.

You add keywords (like a Google search) which are saved as permanent searches. Hacker News submissions and linked pages are monitored for your keywords. Results are delivered to your browser in real-time via a Google Reader type interface.

It's a release-early-release-often type release, so it's still rough around the edges (eg. broken on IEx.x). We'll work on features/bugs based on your feedback.

About the project: When we released Keyspace, our replicated key-value store, we would gladly have payed $10/mo. for a service to monitor the real-time web for comments about us, so we can quickly react and make connections. The existing sites (\"social media monitoring\") are not very good, so we started building our own. HNWatch is a HN-only toy version of this more general product, which is also our primary use-case for Keyspace development.

Hacker News Watch has been OK'd by pg.\n======\nold-gregg\nI'm on this page: \n\nFirst, it won't let me use \"old-gregg\", then I use \"oldgregg\", I click\n\"Register and Login\" and nothing happens.\n\nEdit: hitting enter on that form works. I" -"\nGloucestershire radio ham manages to contact International Space Station - colinprince\nhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/gloucestershire-radio-ham-manages-to-contact-international-space-station-10441887.html\n======\njdietrich\nISS crew members make regular amateur radio contacts as part of the ARISS\nscheme. A proportion of these contacts are pre-arranged for school and youth\ngroups, but many amateurs have made spontaneous contact.\n\nContacting the ISS doesn't require anything more sophisticated than a 2m/70cm\ntransceiver and a handheld Yagi-Uda - the difficulty comes from the very short\nwindows of opportunity and the substantial doppler shift.\n\n[http://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html](http://www.ariss.org/contact-the-\niss.html)\n\nSimilarly, many amateurs have made earth-moon-earth contacts, using the moon\nas a reflector. UHF and VHF are most common, but some highly skilled amateurs\nhave made EME contacts using millimetre-wave bands.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%E2%80%93Moon%E2%80%93Ear...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%E2%80%93Moon%E2%80%93Earth_communication)\n\n------\nflashman\n200 miles isn't all that far for a ham radio signal. I'm not trying to\ndiminish the achievement at all, however.\n\nPeople interested in RTL-SDR (software defined radio on a USB TV dongle,\nbasically) might like to know that ISS transmissions can be heard on\n148.500MHz. Requires a little bit more effort, and a licence, to chat back." -"\n\nContributeto.it - draw a freaking picture - ndroo\nhttp://www.contributeto.it/\nWhat this does:\n1. We look at a bigger image\n2. Break it down to individual pixels\n3. Give you a pixel (blown up bigger) to draw on\n4. Reconstruct the original picture using the pixels people draw..the pixels people contribute-to-it

get it?\n======\nblahedo\nNo login other than through Facebook? I'll pass, thanks.\n\n~~~\npavel_lishin\nSame. The fact that I have to do _anything_ before I can start drawing is\nalready a huge turn-off.\n\n~~~\nndroo\nwhoops...replied to the top of the thread.\n\n\"yer fair call guys...ive changed it so you dont need to login :-) thanks for\nthe feedback\"\n\n------\ncaptaincrunch\nThis things is sweet, do you plan to change the image once this one is\ncompleted?\n\n~~~\nndroo\nsure do!\n\n------\nndroo\nyer fair call guys...ive changed it so you dont need to login :-) thanks for\nthe feedback" -"\nROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where - Osiris30\nhttp://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21646220-it-depends-what-you-study-not-where?%3Ffsrc%3Dscn%2F=tw%2Fdc\n======\njerf\nIn addition to the obvious 0 line, it's worth taking the article's observation\nthat S&P has returned 7.8% and mentally drawing a line there too.\n\nAlso, for anyone in the position of deciding which to do, I'd add the\nobservation that it is _way_ easier to go to college and get a formal\neducation in science, math, or engineering, and pursue an ongoing adhoc self-\ndirected education in the arts and humanities in your remaining decades of\nlife, than the other way around. Locally to HN's interests, this calculation\nis a bit distorted by the way that programming can actually be learned via\nadhoc self-directed education, but as science, math, and engineering goes, I'd\nsuggest it's on the short list of exceptions, not the rule.\n\n~~~\nemodendroket\nI studied Japanese in school and I think it would have been extremely\ndifficult to learn on my own. So... I'd say it depends.\n\n~~~\nBartweiss\nLanguage seems like a complicating factor here. It's difficult (especially in\nnon-Latinate cases) to learn self-directed, and people who are fluent and\nwilling to work in the field can actually do" -"\n\nBob \u2013 A Tarsnap GUI client for OS X - CStorm\nhttps://github.com/casperstorm/Bob\n\n======\ngburt\nWarning that this doesn't detect errors properly. Reporting that it\nsuccessfully backed up when it definitely did not.\n\n> command.run(job) File \"/Library/Python/2.7/site-\n> packages/tarsnapper-0.2.1-py2.7.egg/tarsnapper/script.py\", line 347, in run\n> > OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory\n\n~~~\npetergam\nThank you for reporting this.\n\nBob is still a very early project (development started 3 days ago). We just\nreleased version 0.1.2 which improves the error handling.\n\nFeel free to open issues on the Github page if more things come up.\n\n~~~\ngrinich\nYou should probably put that disclaimer on the GitHub README. Lots of folks\nwill have no idea.\n\nIt's a testament to your good design that it looks finished though. Kudos! :)\n\n------\nchrissnell\nHas anybody ever used Tarsnap to back up Time Machine sparseimages? I've\nwanted to try it out but I'm not sure if Tarsnap will handle the de-dup on all\nof the Time Machine snapshots properly. Will I end up with just the original\nplus deltas or hundreds of copies of the original?\n\n~~~\nwatersb\nShort answer: Tarsnap can back up a sparse image without messing up any de-dup\nproperties of" -"\nGotify \u2013 a self-hosted push-notifications service - adraenwan\nhttps://github.com/gotify\n======\ndmitrygr\nIt is worth noting that this will use a noticeable amount of power more than\nGoogle cloud messaging. The basic idea of how is works is about the same, but\nthe devil is in the details. If you look at an idle connection over LTE, you\nwill notice that after a while your carrier will close it. You need\nkeepalives. If you look at the connection for Google cloud messaging, you\nmight notice that it needs much fewer keep alives than YOU need to keep your\nconnection alive. This means fewer wakes from sleep mode and lower power.\n\n~~~\nnbevans\nIs that because carriers have put GCM/FCM on some sort of white-list?\n\n~~~\npas\nProbably because GCM/FCM has been very well optimized.\n\n~~~\nfyfy18\nTCP connection can be open and idle for hours without keep alives. This can\neasily be configured with kernel parameters:\n\n[https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/TCP-Keepalive-\nHOWTO/usingkeepaliv...](https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/TCP-Keepalive-\nHOWTO/usingkeepalive.html)\n\nI suspect the hard bit for normal apps is keeping the app active on the device\nwhile it is in the background. Google has their FCM receiver running as a low\nlevel service so can make sure it is always running.\n\n~~~" -"\nPoop Is Raining from the Sky in Canada, and the Government Says It's Not Planes - pseudolus\nhttps://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjbm3w/poo-raining-from-the-sky-in-canada-government-says-not-planes\n======\nNerdfest\nI'm assuming it's the spinning up of \"Space Force\".\n\n------\ngregoriol\nIn 2018, none of the people impacted took pictures?..\n\n------\nh_r\nNobody managed to get a sample? This has to be easy to prove it's bird waste\nor not, right? Or that it has plane system chemicals in it.\n\n------\ntqkxzugoaupvwqr\nIf it\u2019s not coming from a plane then maybe someone has fun freezing poop and\nlunching it into the air.\n\n------\nENTP\nSounds like a shitstorm\n\n------\nmchahn\nBig blue birds?" -"\n\nEsperanto is not dead: Can the universal language make a comeback? - hyperlingo\nhttp://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/06/13/413968033/esperanto-is-not-dead-can-the-universal-language-make-a-comeback?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150613\n\n======\nJohnyLy\nI personally think the language will become bigger and bigger in schools as it\nhelps to understand latin languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Romania and\nPortuguese). I believe in the future it will be more taught in classes than\nnow but I don't think it will ever become one of the main languages.\n\n------\nTomte\nPersonally I'd be more interested in a renaissance of the Latin language. I\nthink it's the \"logical\" trans-national language for Europe (and that's mostly\nenough for me).\n\n------\ndang\nRecently about Esperanto:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9625048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9625048)." -"\nWhy You Need a Co-Founder - maxcameron\nhttp://bigbangtechnology.com/post/why_you_need_a_co-founder\n======\nSwizec\nAs a guy who very recently split-up with his cofounder, I can say that having\na cofounder is awesome and much better than going it alone, but if they aren't\nalso a partner and willing to pick up your slack when real life crap is going\non next to the startup crap ... it isn't going to work out.\n\nAlso a word of advice: When crap starts going on, on either end, the proper\nsolution isn't to stop talking to each other for a few weeks.\n\n~~~\nmaxcameron\nTotally appreciate your take on the subject. Yeah, two weeks would constitute\na major breakdown of communication. Do you think it's possible to have\ncontingency plans in place for actual situations like that?\n\n~~~\n9oliYQjP\nThe best contingency plan is to have at least 3 co-founders. This can be an\nasymmetrical relationship at times. But I think you'll find a lot of\nsuccessful companies usually quickly added a 3rd person to the mix early on.\nIt's a matter of semantics whether you want to call them co-founders or not.\nThe point is that they're in there early on before the major successes" -"\nMaybe the Low-End iPhone Is Really a Mid-End iPhone - antr\nhttp://allthingsd.com/20130503/maybe-the-low-end-iphone-is-really-a-mid-end-iphone/\n======\nttdan\nI think this would especially make sense considering the Lifetime value of\nthese iOS customers. Forcing (the majority) of users to pay for upfront for\nthe iPhone seems to drive a much better success rate on the iOS app store then\nwe see with Android where users are just getting the best free phone their\ncell phone provide is giving them and may not have interest in apps. IMO,\nforcing potential users to recognize the value of the device before purchasing\n(charging more upfront), leads to better lifetime value as well as increased\nmargin upfront." -"\nAsk HN: How much copying another person's software idea is frowned upon? - MiaDavis\nI have recently discovered a really beautiful and brilliantly designed SaaS app that I am now using every day. I wanted to learn from it, and, as an exercise, to practice my frontend dev skills, I have essentially copied this app.

My design is a bit different, and I've improved a couple of things, but it's still essentially the same app(it's really hard to significantly improve upon, the original author has really done it right).

Now I realize, that if I will launch my version to the public, I could make a lot of money and achieve my dream of running a profitable SaaS. I'm highly confident that it will work, and there's plenty of space in the market for both of us. I'm also pretty sure that I won't run into copyright issues - my app is using a different tech stack and doesn't share any of the code with the original.

But I'm feeling a bit guilty for doing this, it feels like stealing. The original app is built by two very smart and good people, and is beloved by many users. Even though I will probably" -"\nTrucking 'bloodbath': 4,500 truck drivers lost jobs in August - elorant\nhttps://www.businessinsider.com/trucking-bloodbath-4500-truck-drivers-lost-jobs-in-august-2019-9\n======\nJauntTrooper\n4,500 / 3,500,000 = 0.1% decline in truck drivers.\n\nThe industry probably has outsized exposure to the escalating trade wars and\nincreasing tariffs.\n\n~~~\npaulddraper\nAFAIK there is a greater percentage of trucking businesses going down than\ntruck drivers. Consolidation. Amazon, etc.\n\nArticle even says \"It was the first time since March that truckers saw job\nlosses.\"\n\n~~~\nrandogogogo\nThis point wasn't clear to me reading the article. I got the impression that\nmany of those bankruptcies were independent owner/operators but that the\nreporter was trying to downplay that and rather let us believe these were\nlarge operators on the brink of collapse.\n\n------\nMerrill\nOrders for new Class 8 trucks are down about 80% year over year.\n[https://ftrintel.com/news/latest-\norders/index.php](https://ftrintel.com/news/latest-orders/index.php)\n\n~~~\nzachsnow\nIt seems however that 2018 was a \u201crecord year\u201d so maybe it\u2019s just back to\n\u201cnormal\u201d?\n\n~~~\nThePadawan\nApparently they are \"[the] lowest since 2010\":\n[https://www.truckinginfo.com/337568/july-class-8-orders-\nlowe...](https://www.truckinginfo.com/337568/july-class-8-orders-lowest-\nsince-2010)\n\n~~~\nFjolsvith\nProbably waiting to see how the electric trucks pan out before purchasing.\n\n~~~\nahartmetz\nProbably not. Demand for investment goods just varies very strongly with\neconomic cycles.\n\n------\njiveturkey\n4500? That's almost noise level." -"\nSalesforce.com Announces Two $1 Million Winning Teams for Hackathon - jhchen\nhttp://finance.yahoo.com/news/salesforce-com-announces-two-1-210000741.html\n======\ndraz\nHa. Still sticking to their guns: \"...while the Upshot mobile app used pre-\nexisting code, this did not violate the hackathon rules. Use of pre-existing\ncode was allowable as long as the code did not comprise the majority of the\napp and did not violate any third party's rights.\" I think it does more damage\nthan good\n\n~~~\npuredemo\n\"The internal audit team's review determined that Upshot's mobile app was\ncreated during the hackathon and met these criteria.\"\n\nThey just took an existing application made during a nine year tenure at\nSalesforce, threw it into a generic responsive / mobile app framework during\nthe \"hackathon\" and made a cool mil..\n\nIt helps if Salesforce is already an investor in your product, of course.\n\nAnd this doesn't address why most apps that were submitted weren't even ran.\nIt's not like 149 apps are all that hard to at least take a look at.\n\n------\njere\nFirst place:\n\n>Upshot was created by Thom Kim, who left Salesforce after nine years in\nJanauary, and Joseph Turian, with whom Kim had been friends since they\nattended Harvard University together.\n\nOh" -"\nRetailers Are Losing the Software Talent Wars - jongraehl\nhttp://www.businessweek.com/magazine/retailers-are-losing-the-software-talent-wars-12012011.html\n======\njtchang\nI can't believe some of you are saying they should put together a bunch of\nawesome programmers and rewrite their platform from scratch.\n\nCertainly that is an option. But rarely is it ever the correct one. Your new\nplatform could be as riddled with bugs as the old one.\n\nThe truth is that finding good engineers is about knowing the right\nincentives. Retailers are losing the talent wars because they don't know how\nto compete. And while salary is one lever Target can fiddle with, it certainly\nisn't the only one.\n\nTarget needs to look at the right incentives for the people they want to hire.\nIs telecommuting an option? How about direct authority to approve changes? Or\nthe chance to build your own team? These are the incentives that matter to\nengineers.\n\nThe problem is cutting through all the rhetoric in hiring. Target can say \"we\nwant to revolutionize the ecommerce industry\" but do any engineers actually\nbelieve them? That's tough.\n\n~~~\nkls\n_And while salary is one lever Target can fiddle with, it certainly isn't the\nonly one._\n\nI would argue set high enough it is" -"\n\nChasing Returns - DanielH\nhttp://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/chasing-returns.html\n\n======\nalexwestholm\nI think part of what's so scary about institutional investors failing to\nunderstand the means by which their investments produce returns is that their\nvery job is to act as a proxy for those that don't understand the investments.\nThat is to say, part of their job is to mediate between investors who lack the\nability to understand that they're chasing pipe dreams and the investment\nopportunities they're after in order to ensure that the investment doesn't\nimplode. Sounds like the guy with 40 years on Wall St. gets this. Sounds like\nmany of the banks didn't.\n\n------\nmkramlich\nI think part of the reason there's a current boom in demand for startup\ninvestments is that returns elsewhere, like interest on simple savings\naccounts, are essentially zero, at least in the US. Add to this the fact that\nfor software-centric startups so many of the costs have dropped (including\ndevelopers, if you go with offshore devs.) Plus add to this all the good free\ninfo being shared on the web about startups and investment. It all adds up. I\nthink most of those factors won't go away, except the near zero interest rates" -"\nThe MOS 6502 and the Best Layout Guy in the World - skymt\nhttp://research.swtch.com/2011/01/mos-6502-and-best-layout-guy-in-world.html\n======\ncommandar\n>The most amazing part about the whole process is that they got the 6502 right\nin one try. Quoting On the Edge: Bil Herd summarizes the situation. \u201cNo chip\nworked the first time,\u201d he states emphatically. \u201cNo chip. It took seven or\nnine revs [revisions], or if someone was real good they would get it in five\nor six.\u201d\n\nIn some ways (and I'm speaking in a general sense) situations like that\nactually make me more nervous than when I know there's a problem. I get this\nuneasy \"there's no way it _really_ went that smoothly\" feeling that can be\nhard to shake.\n\nThen again, my personality is to approach most things in life iteratively, so\nthat probably plays a part as well. Great read either way.\n\n~~~\nrbanffy\nThat's the sensation of working with someone who's _incredibly_ good.\n\nAnd, BTW, the 6502 was a work of art. Simple, elegant and fast (even at 1\nMHz), it ran rings around the Z-80's you found in more expensive computers of\nthe time. Plus, it was delightful to program.\n\n~~~\namichail\n_Plus, it was delightful to" -"\n\nFexl Version a3 now released - fexl\nhttp://fexl.com/code\n\n======\nfexl\nThe code page now includes some simple instructions for doing a quick download\nand test.\n\nI also made a very nice but simple enhancement to the grammar. Now when you\nwant to do a recursive definition, you must use \"==\" instead of the normal\n\"=\". That might sound like a pain, but bear with me, it's really great. In\nshort, the \"==\" syntax announces to the parser that you _intend_ to apply the\nfixpoint operator (Y combinator) to the definition, explicitly making it\nrecursive.\n\nFor example, here is the function which sums the numbers in a list:\n\n \n \n \\sum == (\\list list 0.0 \\head\\tail double_add head; sum tail)\n \n\nOf course, if you don't like saying double_add everywhere, you can easily\nabbreviate as follows:\n\n \n \n \\add=double_add\n \\sum == (\\list list 0.0 \\head\\tail add head; sum tail)\n \n\nNow here's the great thing about requiring \"==\" for recursive definitions. It\nenables us to do ordinary \"procedural\" looking code, like in this snippet from\ntest_procedural in test/try.fxl:\n\n \n \n \\show=(\\name\\value print name; print \" = \"; print value; nl;)\n \n \\x=3.0\n \\y=4.0\n \n \\x=(add x x)\n \\y=(mul y x)\n \n show \"x\" x; show \"y\" y;\n \n \\x=(div x; mul y 4.0)" -"\nWu-Tang Clan will sell only one copy of new album - robrenaud\nhttp://pitchfork.com/news/54518-wu-tang-clan-announce-another-new-album-once-upon-a-time-in-shaolin/\n======\nFatalLogic\n>visitors will be charged a price to listen to the 128-minute, 31 song album\non headphones provided by the venue. (Rigorous security checks will discourage\nthe possibility of any illegal recording.)\n\nCould a powered recording device be made small enough to fit in the ear canal?\nSearching for \"In-Ear Binaural microphones\" finds some fairly small devices\n(they require external power and storage, though)\n\n~~~\ntoomuchtodo\nWhat about a remote TEMPEST attack?\n\n~~~\nbloaf\nWhat about a night-shift guard with a male-male audio cable and any device\nwith a microphone jack.\n\n------\nshittyanalogy\n\n 1) They are artists.\n 2) Artists do weird things.\n 3) This will be released.\n a) There's no way they can resist.\n b) They need the ego boost.\n 4) There's nothing illegal about recording it.\n 5) It's only illegal to distribute it.\n 6) It's an experiment.\n 7) They will gain much press.\n\n------\nsebular\nPaying some exorbitant ticket price to sit for over 2 hours in an isolated,\nmonitored environment for a single play-through of a rap album? I can't\nimagine a less enjoyable listening experience.\n\nArtificially inducing scarcity in order to increase value" -"\n\nShow HN: \u201cActive Code\u201d in Markdown - chriswarbo\nhttp://chriswarbo.net/activecode/\n\n======\nonaclov2000\nI really like this, I imagine it would be really helpful if you were writing a\nbook/blog post, you could \"print\" the code you were using as an example, then\n\"run\" it and output all of that into your generated HTML, this would ensure\nyou have a \"working\" example at all times.\n\n~~~\nNullabillity\nA while ago I wrote something similar (though only for Scala) for a school\nproject. It would basically fake a REPL session, which had the con of being\npretty tightly coupled to the language, but it would give you nice automatic\noutput that would match what the user would get.\n\nExample:\n[http://www.kodknackning.se/gettingstarted/types](http://www.kodknackning.se/gettingstarted/types)\n\nSource: [https://github.com/teozkr/scala-repl-\nsampler](https://github.com/teozkr/scala-repl-sampler)\n\n------\napenguin\nI love the idea of Literate Programming, and moreover pandoc is one of my\nabsolute favorite tools. As such, I find this very interesting.\n\nHowever, I take issue with your complaint about Emacs being so huge -- pandoc\nis right up there, too (134 vs 89MiB on my system). Not to mention its\nseemingly endless stream of dependencies (50 packages according to my\nmanager), as well as GHC which is over 700MB on its own. If you work" -"\nThe Future of Layout with CSS: Grid Layouts - zastrowm\nhttps://medium.com/@patrickbrosset/css-grid-layout-6c9cba6e8a5a\n======\nexodust\nI avoid grids, actually hate them. But if they were part of the spec then I\nmight take a look when the browser support ramps up.\n\nThe problem I have with grids is they don't play nice with fluid resizing. I\naim for liquid smooth responses from desktop down to tablet, then just one\nbreakpoint for anything smaller than a tablet. Works for me. Any more break\npoints is a ticket to pain.\n\nWhat I wish was easily possible with CSS alone, is a method for specific\nposition of an object within a list item, or properties of the list item\nitself _depending_ on where and how many list items are currently present.\nThat way, if we have 3 list items each containing a thumbnail, the list item\ncould be set to 33% width. If two list items, 50% and so on. Things like a\nlist of thumbs could remain nice and neatly aligned at any point in the\nresponsive page resize. I'm not interested in hacking this with pre-\nprocessors, we need CSS to have these tricks up its sleeve. But instead, we\nget grids?\n\n~~~" -"\nHarvesting rare-earth metals from the moon will happen this century, NASA chief - pseudolus\nhttps://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/18/nasa-chief-bridenstine-on-harvesting-rare-earth-metals-from-the-moon.html\n======\nPhilWright\nEarth: Dig a hole in Australia/China and process it to get rare-earth metals.\n\nMoon: Use multiple rocket launches to boost equipment and people to the Moon.\nDig a hole and process it to get rare-earth metals. Send people and metals\nback to earth.\n\nHard to see how the Moon version could ever be price competitive. Even if you\ncould pick up rocks of pure rare-earths I do not think it would be cheaper.\nStill, makes for an easy headline for a NASA chief I suppose." -"\nWho Are The Top Tech Bloggers? - hwork\nhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/20/who-are-the-top-tech-bloggers/\n======\nshafqat\nAs I mentioned in the TC comments, in the context of that list, \u2018top\u2019 means\nmost frequently quoted on TechMeme. At NewsCred (my startup), we\u2019re collecting\nmetrics so that we can determine lists of the top news sources as well as top\njournalists (both mainstream/bloggers), but using credibility as our\ncriterion. We want to highlight writers and sources based on quality, rather\nthan popularity or frequency of posts.\n\nWe just launched our Alpha, so the dataset is very limited, but in terms of\nsources, the Economist and Techcrunch (go figure!) came out on top this week.\n\nAlso, the lists will be syndicated each week of course!\n\n------\nchrisbroadfoot\nInteresting, I guess, but not really surprising or useful" -"\n\nWeb performance: Cache efficiency exercise - graceofs\nhttps://code.facebook.com/posts/964122680272229/web-performance-cache-efficiency-exercise/\n\n======\nmanigandham\nSide note: It's ridiculous that webpages are often several MBs in size these\ndays, while offering nothing more in value for all that extra weight.\n\n~~~\ntracker1\nIt's hard, in that most sites/webapps aren't hand-crafted components... I'm\nwaist deep in a web application now, that's very difficult to prune... It has\njQueryUI __AND __Bootstrap controls, not to mention a dozen plugins for each.\nIt 's a significant mess to say the least. The main .JS min/merged weighs in\nat over 1mb (down about a mb since I min/merged them) that doesn't include\nsite js, just the libraries (not including jquery's base).\n\nOf course, it's easy to clear that size with some big full-screen splash\nimages, which are more and more common... it is kind of depressing. I really\nappreciate the work the Polymer team has done in creating paper components,\nand would love to see something closer to that for React as a base, most of\nthe Paper/Component bases I've seen are still relatively heavy, with React-\nBootstrap being one of the better ones.\n\nIt's not easy coming into something that's already in place, and harder to\nreign in the" -"\nMicrosoft Announces ARM-Powered Surface Pro X - aminecodes\nhttps://www.theverge.com/2019/10/2/20885572/microsoft-surface-pro-x-2-in-1-sq1-processor-specs-price-release-date\n======\ncorv\nThis would make for a beautiful Linux device\n\n------\nwhywhywhywhy\nSo no one going to talk about the removable hard drive?\n\n------\ncolejohnson66\nDidn\u2019t Windows RT fail? I\u2019m genuinely curious: what\u2019s different here?\n\n~~~\nwilsonnb3\nWindows 10 now supports x86 emulation on ARM processors, so most programs will\nrun on this device without a problem.\n\nUnlike Windows RT, which could only run things from the windows app store.\n\n[https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/19/17027026/microsoft-\nwindow...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/19/17027026/microsoft-\nwindows-10-on-arm-apps-games-limitations-support)\n\n~~~\nMarsymars\nWindows RT was especially hamstrung because without jailbreaking it couldn't\nrun Win32 desktop software even if it was compiled for ARM." -"\n\nJapan's fertility rate is rising - MaxQuentero\nhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/07/japans-birth-rate-problem-is-way-worse-than-anyone-imagined/\n\n======\nmikeyouse\nNoah Smith (Econ professor at SUNY Stony Brook with a background in Japanese)\ntook umbrage with this article;\n\n[http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/japans-\nfertility-...](http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/japans-fertility-\nrate-is-rising-and-you.html)\n\n \n \n Except that is not what the graph shows at all. Yes, \n government forecasts are way off (forecasting is hard).\n But for over a decade, the Japanese government has\n been too pessimistic about the fertility rate.\n \n Just Look. At. The. Graph! Since 2005, the black line\n - the actual fertility rate - has been going up! It is now\n higher than the blue line representing the forecast\n from 2002. It is even higher than the blue like\n representing the forecast for 2008. The graph only\n looks like it goes through 2010, but a quick Google\n shows that the fertility rate is still over 1.4, i.e. higher\n than the 2002, 2006, or 2012 forecasts.\n \n In other words, Japanese fertility has been surprising on\n the upside for ten years and counting!\n\n~~~\ndang\nAlright, since the title of the WaPo piece is both misleading and linkbait, we\nchanged it to Smith's title.\n\nShould we change the URL as well? The rebuttal seems pretty convincing.\n\n~~~\nCanSpice\nThe rebuttal seems pretty convincing if" -"\nSick whale found to have 30 plastic bags blocking its stomach - happy-go-lucky\nhttp://news.sky.com/story/sick-whale-found-to-have-30-plastic-bags-blocking-its-stomach-10754077\n======\nevolve2k\nMy home state introduced a plastic bag ban a couple of years back. It was\nacccompanied by a simple campaign that encouraged families to bring re-usable\nbags to the checkout counter when shopping for groceries. If you forget to\nbring bags, you can buy these re-usable canvas bags from the supermarket for\naround $1. Initially we all bought a bunch while our habits switched over, but\nthis worked as the bags are useful anyway and most of us now keep some in the\ncar and some in the pantry.\n\nThin supermarket bags were the focus of the ban. Surprisingly after the ban a\nnumber of venues that sort of need plastic bags, eg for vegetables or takeout\nstarted sourcing 100% compostable bags that are allowed. I didn't even know\nthis solution existed before the ban.\n\nThere is a culture locally now to have reusable bags in the boot of your car\nand for a few items to just load up your arms.\n\nIt's been pretty successful and no-where near as interrupting as you'd\nimagine.\n\nRef: [http://www.zerowaste.sa.gov.au/plastic-\nbags](http://www.zerowaste.sa.gov.au/plastic-bags)\n\n~~~\nabawany\nIn Austin, TX (USA), one" -"\nLinux 5.2 released: list of changes - diegocg\nhttps://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_5.2\n======\nyjftsjthsd-h\n> Ext4 has gained support for case-insensitive name lookups\n\nWell that's neat. I wonder how it'll be exposed to userspace; mount option,\nmaybe?\n\n~~~\nbluewres\nThis seems to explain how it works:\n[https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-\nguide/ext4.html...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-\nguide/ext4.html#case-insensitive-file-name-lookups)\n\n~~~\nyjftsjthsd-h\nThanks!\n\n> The case-insensitive file name lookup feature is supported on a per-\n> directory basis, allowing the user to mix case-insensitive and case-\n> sensitive directories in the same filesystem. It is enabled by flipping the\n> +F inode attribute of an empty directory.\n\nThat's nicer than how Darwin handles it in that it doesn't force you to use it\nfor the entire file system, although I'd be willing to bet this exposes some\ninteresting bugs in applications, and I wonder if mixing case sensitivity\ninside a filesystem doesn't make them even more interesting to deal with.\n\n------\nJahak\nHooray" -"\n\nTesting HTTP caching in Go - santiaago\nhttp://www.sanarias.com/blog/215TestingHTTPcachinginGo\n\n======\nalimoeeny\nThe article is very good, I read it all the way to the end and learned quite a\nfew things. But the title is just a bit misleading, it is more like \"test\ncoverage in go, with an example using http cache\". Thanks for writing and\nsharing.\n\n~~~\nartifaxx\nThat is very true, but at least the article has links to the previous\ntutorials that fill out the background of the topic.\n\n------\njzelinskie\nSerious question: is properly handling the \"Not Modified \" status code really\nconsidered caching or is there a better name? Maybe client-side caching? HTTP\ncaching in my mind is associated with something like varnish.\n\n~~~\ngarfij\nYes, that along with dealing with Last-Modified, If-Not-Modified, ETag, and\nother similar HTTP Headers is what is meant by HTTP Caching.\n\nFrom what I can tell Varnish uses these same concepts to do what they do\n(caching HTTP reverse proxy).\n\nSee\n\n* [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-1)\n\n* [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec13.html](http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec13.html)\n\n* [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Caching_FA...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Caching_FAQ)" -"\n\nProposed new schedule for JDK 8 - austinbv\nhttp://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk8-dev/2013-April/002336.html\n\n======\npswenson\nMy proposed security fix: kill the Java Browser Plugin.\n\n~~~\nmoondowner\nI agree. All the bad rep Java gets is from the Applet 0-day hacks.\n\nJava 8 to deprecate the Browser Plugin, Applets and all related stuff to it,\nand for those who need this technology can use Java 7 and other previous\nreleases.\n\n~~~\nmdmarra\nThen you're going to have all kind of apps stuck on older Java versions\nforever. While I'd love to see it happen, it would be Oracle shooting\nthemselves in the foot with their enterprise customers, which - let's face it\n- is who they actually care about.\n\n~~~\nbradleyjg\nAlthough I don't have numbers, I'm not aware of very many enterprises with\nextensive fleets of java applets. Java in the enterprise tends to be either\nstand alone programs (i.e. Swing), or EJB driven middleware with JSP on the\nfront end.\n\n~~~\nsmackay\nBig chunks of dealing with the government (taxes, etc.) in Portugal are in the\nform of Java applets. I think this is repeated across Europe.\n\nMost of the apps are little more than forms - there's a lot of logic in" -"\nWill Everything Stay in New Orleans If Cameras Capture It All? - adventured\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/30/us/new-orleans-security-cameras.html\n======\nathenot\nTwo points that always put a dent on \"surveillance in the name of safety\"\n\n1\\. Make all the camera feeds accessible to the public. Afterall, shouldn't\nmore eyes help a place be safe?\n\n2\\. Install cameras around Police HQs. Don't they want to be safe too?\n\nOf course those who advocate surveillance in the same of safety are also the\nfirst ones to ensure they are never on camera themselves...\n\n~~~\ntechsupporter\n> 2\\. Install cameras around Police HQs. Don't they want to be safe too?\n\nThis is one of the things that makes me laugh with annoyance at the signs at,\nsay, Customs and Immigration when entering the U.S., or at the entrances to\ncourthouses, or (formerly) around airport screening areas. \"No pictures or\nvideo are permitted. Cell phone use prohibited.\"\n\nWhat, precisely, is going on that shouldn't be photographed? If one camera in\nthe ceiling is good, aren't 931 cameras all that much better?\n\nAs always, the safety of the enterprise is paramount.\n\n~~~\ntj-teej\nEveryone who works in XX-Sec will tell you that every system has weaknesses,\nin this case I" -"\nNASA Spacecraft Dives Between Saturn and Its Rings - danparsonson\nhttps://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-spacecraft-dives-between-saturn-and-its-rings\n======\nahmeni\nAs someone working on what amounts to fairly trivial applications in the\nenterprise, it's amazing to see engineering efforts like this take place over\nnearly 20 years of in-flight time.\n\n------\nhackuser\nIt's amazing to me how normalized these accomplishments has become. Humanity\ndidn't master rocketry until the mid-20th century, and now we regularly have\nrobotic vehicles flying around other planets (and sending photos to us).\n\nPerhaps it's an example of how humans naturally notice only change. This is\njust more of the same, I suppose.\n\nAnd we also hear how incompetent and inefficient NASA and the whole U.S.\ngovernment are. They certainly could improve but they also just flew a craft\naround Saturn, for 12 years. What was it that you were working on again?\n\n~~~\nKattywumpus\nYou also have to compare NASA's incredible success rate to others in their\nfield. In 2013, China's Yutu moon rover broke down in less than a month. In\n2014, the ESA's Philae lander failed to launch its harpoons and fire the\nthruster necessary to attach the probe to the comet's surface, and ultimately\nbounced into a dark crater. In" -"\n\nShow HN: GreatDJ \u2013 Create and save playlists that sync across devices - ruiramos\nhttp://great.dj\n\n======\nruiramos\nHi everyone, Wanted to show you a small side project I've been working on -\nGreatDJ, where you can create and save Youtube playlists and optionally have\nthem sync across clients/devices. They main use case was to allow everyone at\na party to push songs into a common playlist (say, a computer that's connected\nto the main speakers).\n\nLately I've been working on making that easier: if you have a computer on\n'party mode' and use a phone on the same network to access the site, you'll be\nautomagically redirected to the same playlist so you can start pushing songs\nstraight away!\n\nThe whole thing is also open source:\n[https://github.com/ruiramos/greatdj](https://github.com/ruiramos/greatdj)\n\nHave fun, feedback would be amazing, thanks!\n\n~~~\nal_james\nCongrats on shipping! I was at a party the other day and we needed a way to\nall contribute to the same youtub playlist. Now we have a solution!" -"\nA Scrabble Luck Calculator - dnetesn\nhttp://nautil.us/issue/73/play/presenting-the-scrabble-luck-calculator\n======\ndmurray\n> the computer who goes first won more than 56 percent of games, suggesting\n> that there is a notable advantage to playing the first hand [...] There\u2019s no\n> way to know for sure what specifically causes this advantage, but perhaps\n> giving one player initial control of the board has some beneficial effect.\n\n\"What specifically causes this advantage\" is, to put it briefly, playing\nfirst. The first player will have about 0.5 more opportunities to score. In\nfact, since it's legal to pass, it's a trivial game theory result that any\nadvantage in Scrabble belongs to the first player.\n\n~~~\ngubbrora\nConsider what happens if neither player wants to go first. P1 passes. P2\npasses. Now p1 has to play or the game is drawn. If the game is played with\nwin3 draw1 lose0 rules, then p1 should play even if at a slight disadvantage.\nA 49 % chance of payoff 3 is better than a 100% chance of payoff 1.\n\n------\nAmorymeltzer\nThe context is good, but fwiw here's the direct link to the calculator:\n[http://www.kevinrmcelwee.ml/scrabble_luck/](http://www.kevinrmcelwee.ml/scrabble_luck/)\n\n------\ndbieber\nI used to have a scrabble bot playing itself three" -"\nMost startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs - shafyy\nhttps://shafyy.com/post/startup-theory-ex-post/\n======\nzby\nThe primary social function of giving advice is a domination game\n([http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/03/advice-shows-\nstatus.ht...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/03/advice-shows-status.html),\n[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/01/advice-isnt-about-\ninfo...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/01/advice-isnt-about-info.html)) -\nthat's why there is a lot of shitty advice. That does not mean there are no\ngood business theories that cover startups. Some of them are scientific\ntheories with all the required rigour - but not all theories need to be\nproperly scientific to be useful, in our daily life we live with lots of ex-\npost theories, they are not perfect but are still useful. By the way I am the\nauthor of one non-scientific startup theory myself\n[https://medium.com/hackernoon/aggregators-\nbffd36063a72](https://medium.com/hackernoon/aggregators-bffd36063a72) and I\nhope it can be useful:) There are also useful advice. It is good to read them,\nevaluate, adjust them you your circumstances, etc. In the end you need to\ndecide for yourself, but they show you the possibilities.\n\n~~~\nbigred100\nI hate this interpretation of everything as status games. It seems like a\ngreat way to drive yourself insane and develop mental illness as you overreact\nto mundane situations or fail to take advice from proper authorities. I\nconsider somebody unqualified throwing out nonsensical advice as simply kind\nof" -"\nA man who is ageing too fast - imartin2k\nhttps://mosaicscience.com/man-who-aging-fast-werner-syndrome-japan-epigenome-epigenetics\n======\nRichardHeart\nSummary of pro death arguments, one of which I've seen in this thread\n(immortal tyrants.)\n\n \n \n Fairness\n Only rich people will get it. (No tech has ever done this.)\n Better to give money to the poor than science. (family, city, state, nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.)\n Bad for society\n Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.)\n Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistent)\n Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.)\n Stop having kids\n Worse wars (nukes are more dangerous than having your first 220 year old person in 2136)\n Dictators never die (they die all the time and rarely of age)\n Old people are expensive (50% of your lifetime medical cost occur in your final year. Delay is profitable.) \n Old people suck. (death is an inferior cure to robustness.)\n Bad for individual\n You'll get bored. (your memory isn't that good, or your boredom isn't age related)\n You'll have to watch your loved ones die. (so you prefer they watch you?)\n You'll live forever in a terrible state. (longevity requires robustness.)\n Against gods will (not" -"\nBitcode Demystified - happy-go-lucky\nhttps://lowlevelbits.org/bitcode-demystified/\n======\nHHad3\nWhen the author pointed out that bitcode may impact security, I expected to\nread about how compiler optimizations that happen during compilation of LLVM\nIR to machine language may introduce security issues.\n\nHowever, the article only mentioned that decompilation is easier with LLVM IR,\nbecause it is a more high-level language. It certainly is a valid point, but\naddresses the topic of binary obfuscation instead for algorithmic security.\n\nI'm thus wondering if anyone can shed some light on the real security aspects.\nFor example, let's say that I compile C that is supposed to run in constant\ntime to LLVM IR and submit it to Apple. Does Apple guarantee that their\nblackbox optimizations do not introduce branches or other factors that may\nresult in variable timing into a constant time algorithm? Can I do anything to\nensure that my code will always run in constant time despite unknown\noptimizations being applied to it in the future?\n\n~~~\nesrauch\nIt seems trivially obvious to me that there is no way to guarantee and code\nyou write won't be transformed into any runtime under arbitrary \"optimization\"\n(transformation).\n\nAs in, you can have just a single" -"\nEinstein's travel diaries reveal attitudes towards people he met in Asia - Sjenk\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/12/einsteins-travel-diaries-reveal-shocking-xenophobia\n======\nliveoneggs\nAfter your death all of your life's browser history, every\nfacebook/youtube/reddit/HN/myspace/etc comment and submission you ever wrote,\nevery photo you ever took, every off-hand remark you ever made in the presence\nof a smartphone with facebook installed .. will be published for all of the\nworld to read and judge.\n\nBetter get that road rage under wraps!\n\n~~~\ncoldtea\n> _Better get that road rage under wraps!_\n\nAfter my death I could not care less...\n\n~~~\nloblollyboy\nAfter my death nobody else will care either\n\n------\nposter123\nWhy is it so \"shocking\"? Discussing racial differences was more common in his\ntime, and being a great scientist does not necessarily coincide with general\nwisdom.\n\nI hope this story will help people realize that we should not ban the work of\npeople who have said problematic things.\n\n~~~\nSZJX\nThis is also addressed in the original article:\n\n> Rosenkranz told the Guardian that although views like Einstein\u2019s were\n> prevalent at the time, they were not universal. \u201cThat\u2019s usually the reaction\n> I get \u2013 \u2018we have to understand, he was of the zeitgeist, part of" -"\n\nFunny Math Fact Check: de Blasio vs. Uber - simonebrunozzi\nhttp://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/125760518214/funny-math-fact-check-de-blasio-vs-uber\n\n======\ngreenyoda\n_\" That would be a 6 month time period, where the number of cars went from\n58,295 to 64,500. A total change of 6,205 new cars over 6 months amounts to\nroughly 1,000 new for-hire vehicles a month - about one half of the rate that\nde Blasio had said in his OpEd.\"_\n\nThis argument assumes (with no justification) that the cars have been added at\na constant rate. But if they were being added at an increasing rate, there\nmight have indeed been 2000 cars a month added over the last two or three\nmonths (with less than a thousand added in previous months), and the mayor may\nhave been citing the most recent statistics rather than a yearly average.\nWithout more reliable data, there's no way to know which is true.\n\n~~~\niquantny\nif it was for three months, it would mean 50 a day for all previous months.\n\n------\nColinWright\nCould still be true if 2000 _new_ for-hire vehicles are being added every\nmonth, and 1000 _old_ for-hire vehicles are removed.\n\nNet change, an increase of 1000 per month.\n\nNot saying this is what's" -"\n\nAsk HN: Accelerate or slow down? - glow\n\nI have been tossing around a few ideas for a start-up, a couple of different angles on small-scale game development for download services, and getting good feedback from people around me.

So I'm faced with a dilemma: I have a family with small children. Not really the optimal situation for an time-consuming adventure like this. Is this the time to do this, or should I step down and postpone things, possibly losing the opportunities I see?

Try to put yourself in this situation and tell me how you'd reason. I won't really base my decision on answers here, but I'm hoping for a good discussion at least as I've been turning my head inside out thinking about this for a couple of months.\n======\nvaksel\nstart now.\n\nBetter to do a startup for 3 years @ 20 hours a week, than 2 years @ 80 hours\na week\n\nGrowth isn't instant, it'll take time to get new users. And if you are taking\nthe long view, you'll actually be more mentally prepared for when your startup\nisn't an instant success\n\n------\nbprater\nIf you mean \"step down\" as in leaving your current employ, the" -"\nTikTok Agreed to Buy More Than $800M in Cloud Services from Google - jmsflknr\nhttps://www.theinformation.com/articles/tiktok-agreed-to-buy-more-than-800-million-in-cloud-services-from-google\n======\narvinaminpour\nTikTok seemed to run off of Alibaba Cloud (from what I read which may be\nwrong) so it's an interesting move to buy Cloud Services from Google. I\nprobably read this as a way of strengthening the case that they're an\n\"American\" software company since they run on the same infrastructure as any\nSV startup.\n\n~~~\ned25519FUUU\nAccording to Chinese law, the government can quietly demand any information\nthey want on anyone. A warrant in China? Hah.\n\nAll they have to do is say \"Give us the data stored on GCP host\" and TikTok is\nlegally obligated to comply.\n\nTo be fair, it's not much different than in the United States unless the data\nbelongs to a US citizen, which is why many companies are attempting to\ndomicile cloud data in their own country.\n\n~~~\nrussli1993\nTiktok' parent is bytedance is incorporated in Cayman islands. It has a US and\na Chinese subsidiary. Chinese subsidiary runs douyin is subjected to the\nintelligence law. The US subsidiary runs tiktok and is managed by US employees\nand is not subject to the same law. The" -"\n\nBenford's Law tests on Wikileaks data - agconway\nhttp://www.drewconway.com/zia/?p=2234\n\n======\nmbateman\n> Also, as suggested in the comments, I used a chi-square goodness-of-fit test\n> to see if the deviation is statistically significant, but it was not; with a\n> p-value of 0.2303. Meaning we would fail to reject the null hypothesis: the\n> observed data were a good fit for a Benford process. That said, the p-value\n> is not so large as to suggest total adherence.\n\nWelcome to stats 101. If you get p > 0.05, it means your test failed to tell\nyou anything. Which means your test failed to tell you about the likelihood of\ntampering.\n\n~~~\nwhyenot\nYou are on the right track, but no, it is more subtle than that. The test\ncould still be meaningful depending on what probability of false positives you\nare willing to accept.\n\n[1] \n\n[2] \n\n------\ncountersignaler\nthis is a statistical blog post written by someone who has no idea how to do\nstatistics. and even when told how to do it properly by a commenter, fails to\naccept the simple and overwhelming conclusion. why is this on the front page?\n\n~~~\nConfusion\nPerhaps because the data" -"\nThe new branding of Ubuntu - mapleoin\nhttps://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand\n======\naw3c2\nThe GTK themes seem terrible to me. Not only did they move the top buttons to\nthe left (good luck explaining to mom why she won't find the X where she's\nused to) but also it looks very inconsistent. Also the colours... It looks\nlike one of those old themes why your friends still make fun of your Linux.\n\nThe web theme looks like a generic hosting company' website. Or like a\nhardware manufacturer.\n\nI love the mission though, \"Light\" is a very good selling point for Linux. You\nmight not agree about that for Ubuntu but more Ubuntu = more Linux = yay.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nNobody seems to be able to explain the window controls, so hopefully we can be\nloud enough to get them to switch them back. Everyone should write/harass\nimportant people at Canonical regarding this.\n\nI really seriously doubt they have anything approaching sufficient data for\nthe change. It breaks every convention a user would be familiar with (though\nthe controls are on the left like in OS X, the functionality of the buttons is\nreversed; in OS X, leftmost closes, here, rightmost closes), including\nexisting" -"\nNon-Robust Arithmetic as Art - mourner\nhttps://observablehq.com/@mourner/non-robust-arithmetic-as-art\n======\ndromen\nSome syntax errors re.: \"chosenOrient\" and \"orientRobust\"? I'm on Firefox 60.8\nand uBO but not blocking stringently, just Google Analytics from the logs.\n\nI got overloaded by the page being fully editable/interactive AND with errors\nAND with foreign mathematical constructs. Somehow the possibility to edit it\nmakes me walk on eggshells, even if it's just a local edit.\n\nIt otherwise looks good, I'd probably enjoy reading it if I was more fit. I'm\ngoing to take a walk outside now, thanks for the unintended inspiration.\n\n~~~\nmourner\nInteresting, can you share the exact log of the errors you're seeing? There\nare none for me on both Firefox & Chrome with uBO." -"\nDitching processed foods won\u2019t be easy \u2013 The barriers to cooking from scratch - tshannon\nhttps://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/24/725470305/opinion-why-ditching-processed-foods-wont-be-easy-the-barriers-to-cooking-from-s\n======\nvorpalhex\n> First, it takes money. Healthier diets... generally cost more... They note\n> that the unprocessed diet they fed participants cost 40% more than the\n> ultra-processed diet.\n\nAnd yet, a paragraph later:\n\n> Lots of families in our study cooked almost every night, in part because it\n> was the cheapest option\n\nSo wait, hold on, is cooking more expensive or not? What are they eating\nthat's supposedly healthier but significantly more expensive?\n\n> the labor of shopping (often at multiple stores)\n\nWhat major grocery chain doesn't carry everything needed to make dinner?\n\n> This means making healthy food more affordable, but it also means addressing\n> the other challenges families face: for example, by guaranteeing workers a\n> living wage and fair working conditions and by investing in families through\n> universal free school lunch and subsidized child care, so that parents don't\n> feel like they're doing it all on their own.\n\nWait, hold on, what? I thought we were talking about food cooking barriers? I\ncan understand the connection to free school lunch (make sure kids get one" -"\nDeepPCB: Pure AI-Powered, Cloud-Native Printed Circuit Board Routing - chakerb\nhttps://deeppcb.ai/\n======\ngorbachev\nI exhausted the 3 project limit trying to see how it would route open source\nmechanical keyboard PCBs.\n\nEvery single one failed with an error.\n\nThe first one failed with an error that didn't specify the reason, the second\none because it had more than 200 wires, though I wonder how that's possible on\na 3x3 macropad PCB, and the final one failed with \"Sorry, we do not support\nnon 45\u00b0 rotation for this beta version\".\n\nThe errored projects count towards the limit of 3 projects you can create.\n\nDoesn't seem to be working all too well.\n\n~~~\nBubRoss\nYeah, but that failure was the result of advanced pure AI cloud native deep\nlearning neural networks. The future is now. In a few more years you won't\neven be able to tell if a person gave up and quit a trivial task or if it was\njust a sophisticated machine.\n\n~~~\npanpanna\n> In a few more years you won't even be able to tell if a person gave up and\n> quit a trivial task or if it was just a sophisticated machine.\n\nWe have that" -"\nWhy I use Object Pascal - samuell\nhttps://dubst3pp4.github.io/post/2017-10-03-why-i-use-object-pascal/\n======\nStillBored\nAs I get older, I'm strongly swinging into the camp that thinks languages\nshould have strongly restrictive syntax. Object pascal is one of those\nlanguages which is both low level enough to cleanly map to efficient code, as\nwell as high level enough not to feel really restrictive. Its a language that\nis completely misunderstood because far to many people read a couple critical\nessays, and believed everything they read, even though the strongest argument\nfrequently was that its harder to type \"begin/end\" than \"{/}\". Which is a\npretty lame thing, given code completion in editors as old as emacs.\n\nPut another way, the thought patterns programmers fall into when using it seem\nto result in code which is easier to understand than most other languages\nwhich seem to encourage \"perlism\" (creating a single unreadable line),\n\"forthism\" (creating a billion two line words that combine to solve all the\nproblems in one word), or a few other things which become completely\nunmaintainable when the project grows beyond what can be written by a over-\nenergetic student in a semester at school.\n\n~~~\nchubot\nI don't think anyone really disagrees with" -"\n\nInstantCab (YC W12): A Hybrid Alternative To Ride-Sharing and Taxi Apps - ajju\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/instantcab/\n\n======\njoshwa\nA big problem I've seen with the proliferation of these apps is that I've seen\ndrivers with three or four devices, (which makes sense from the driver's\nperspective--maximizing opportunity), but even though I'm in the car paying a\nfare, they show up on the other apps as available! The result is that when you\nput out a call for a ride, even though it shows tons of vehicles available,\nmost of them are actually currently occupied. As TFA points out, this leads to\ndistrust since as a rider you can't actually be sure you'll be able to get a\nride.\n\nI think the app makers need to encourage riders to report to them when they\nsee drivers using other apps and misleadingly showing themselves as available.\nI know I'm going to start doing it.\n\n~~~\najju\nThat's a good point Josh. We ask drivers to set themselves as unavailable if\nthey are on another ride, and we are measuring a lot of things that help us\nfigure out which drivers are more reliable so we can reward them accordingly\nvs which drivers are unreliable" -"\nObesity rising in American women - tatobug\nhttp://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2526639\n======\ncloudjacker\nSpeaking for all American men: we know.\n\n~~~\nravenstine\nBasically, yeah.\n\n------\nMollyR\nMaybe the title should be changed to match the actual paper title \"Trends in\nObesity Among Adults in the United States 2005 to 2014\" ?\n\nEDIT: as some people mentioned below that the title does match a sentence in\nthe conclusion. The study is still for women and men, and has interesting\ncross-sectional data for both.\n\n~~~\nravenstine\n\"For women, the prevalence of overall obesity and of class 3 obesity showed\nsignificant linear trends for increase between 2005 and 2014; there were no\nsignificant trends for men.\"" -"\nReclaiming Software Engineering (2010) - akkartik\nhttp://www.zerobanana.com/essays/reclaiming-software-engineering\n======\ntwic\n> Yet so long as we are developing software within a social context, where the\n> finished artefact has users other than its designers, we can scarcely escape\n> the conclusion that what we are doing is engineering.\n\nThis conclusion is far from inexorable.\n\nThere are kinds of making other than engineering. Carpentry is not\nengineering. Cooking is not engineering. Gardening is not engineering. Sewing\nis not engineering.\n\nAll of these things involve making artefacts for users other than their\ndesigners, within a social context no less. All of them require specialist\nknowledge and tools, involve the application of judgment learned from years of\nexperience, and give rise to communities of practice which codify their agreed\nknowledge in books. They even have formal certifications.\n\nBefore you can declare that making software is (or can be) engineering, you\nhave to be able to explain why those things aren't.\n\nMy tentative theory is that engineering has rigorous ways to check whether a\ndesign will work before it is manufactured, and even before it is drawn in\ndetail. A civil engineer can use known formulae to check if a bridge span of\ngiven dimensions" -"\nReliance Jio is world\u2019s largest startup with USD22.65B investment - govind201\nhttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/reliance-jio-is-worlds-largest-startup-with-rs-150000-crore-investment-mukesh-ambani/articleshow/51613248.cms\n======\nnamratapatil\nWouldn't we rather discuss real startups that are not funded by conglomerates.\n\nI came across this startup called Agatsa and here's their story.\n\nIt started off as a search for an easy to use ECG device, that required no\nhelp from a medical technician, led these two engineers to develop one\nthemselves.\n\nThis led to the launch of a pocket-able heart monitoring device that is able\nto compute and provide an in depth analysis of ECG reports when a person\nplaces his/her thumbs on the device. All it takes is 15 seconds! This device\nis validated by more than 500 doctors and is known to be 98% accurate.\n\nPretty fascinating right? Watch the video to learn more!\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIXFQaKL_F0?=hn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIXFQaKL_F0?=hn)\n\nIn case you would like to they have a fund raising link as well.\n\n------\nvr3690\nMukesh Ambani really needs to go look at a dictionary and figure out the\ndefinition of a startup. You really cannot call one side project of a huge\ncorporation like Reliance a startup.\n\n------\n0x006A\nReliance Industries, one of the largest holding companies in India, starts a\nnew venture to launch a" -"\nGeocities Forever \u2013 neural network generated geocities pages - laacz\nhttp://www.geocitiesforever.com/\n======\nversteegen\nThe generated English (and a number of other languages) doesn't make a lick of\nsense (certainly not comparable to decent NN language models), and there's\nHTML and JS visible all over the place. But they certainly _look_ a lot like\ntypical geocities pages. How do you generate HTML and JS with NNs? I wish\nthere were an explanation somewhere. Maybe that's the reason that there's so\nmuch invalid HTML.\n\n~~~\njnpatel\nAgreed about wishing there were an explanation.\n\nIt's not clear to me that NN are the best way to get interesting Franken-\npages. Maybe a Markov chain instead?\n\n~~~\nyolesaber\nThe best way is to have the NN generate the HTML / CSS / JS code and then use\na markov chain to create content to populate the page with.\n\nIt also has to do with quality of input. The texts on geocities pages aren't\nexactly pinnacles of clear and legible language. Same with the HTML.\n\n------\nsupernintendo\nGeoCities was the spark that ignited my interest in programming. I can\nremember hacking together awful HTML, CSS and JavaScript for a Sonic the\nHedgehog fan page as" -"\n\nTwitter employees threatened by ISIS-affiliated group - cgtyoder\nhttp://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2014/09/08/twitter-employees-threatened-by-isis-affiliated-group/\n\n======\nBrandonMarc\nWhen we expect, and depend on, the truth coming out, entities involved in\nspreading information take on responsibilities they may not have expected.\nYes, that means Twitter, and even Comedy Central.\n\nAnyone remember the South Park episode with Mohammed, but in a bear suit so it\nwould be \"okay\"? Comedy Central showed where they stood on free speech by\nletting that episode air.\n\nThen, when Comedy Central employees were threatened, they also showed where\nthey stood on free speech by aggressively censoring the following episode.\n\nChilling effects ...\n\nSo now there's Twitter. I pray for the best for their employees, and I hope\nthey're secured in ways they can truly trust ... because I'd hate to see\nTwitter bend to such threats. Actions set precedents.\n\nIt's amazing what chilling effects can do. Hell, just today, the Dutch Safety\nBoard said the Boeing 777 passenger plane shot down near Ukraine was \"downed\nby high energy object outside of plane\" [1]. The whole planet knows it was a\nmissile, but the Dutch are afraid of pissing of Putin, so they tone down their\nlanguage to the point of saying as little" -"\nWe're going to send out invitations to YC interviews close to midnight - pg\nThe person in charge of sending out the invitations to interviews is in a different time zone, so we're going to be sending out invitations close to midnight Pacific time. So please don't worry if nothing seems to be happening.

The good news is, we got so many good applications that we decided to add another day of interviews, so we'll be inviting 20% more groups than we planned to.

(No, that doesn't decrease the probability that a group we interview will get funded. We don't and in fact couldn't aim to fund a target number of startups.)\n======\npg\nWhile you're waiting, will you guys please remind yourselves that it's not the\nend of the world if you don't get invited to interviews? Drew Houston didn't\nget invited the first time he applied. And a good thing too, because the idea\nhe applied with was not Dropbox, and if he'd used YC to launch it, he would\nprobably never have started working on Dropbox.\n\n~~~\nsaihan-tal\nNew York is pretty chilling tonight. I just asked my cofounder \"would you find\nthe project hard to stick to if" -"\nTime to fork the FSF - pjhyett\nhttp://larrythefreesoftwareguy.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/time-to-fork-the-fsf/\n======\nsgentle\nI don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I\nthink that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say \"you know\nwhat? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and\npublicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a\ntraitor to the future of humanity\"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the\nusefulness of the last 30 years of proprietary tech to make a point has to be\na bit barmy. But who else will make that point? All progress depends on\nunreasonable men.\n\nAnd I agree that it would be helpful to have a moderate voice in Free\nSoftware. I use a Mac - sorry, it's really nice to use and I code a lot. I\nlike my Kindle - sorry, it's better than the others and I read a lot. I live\nand work with proprietary software, but I believe in Free Software too. WebKit\nis popular because of Apple and Google. OS X is the most popular BSD, and the\nmost popular consumer Unix. Non-free and free can and" -"\nAsk HN: Can a liberal arts BA who can write code break into the tech industry? - avnit\nI have very limited experience in the industry, but I'm confident in the skills I have and my ability to learn. I've been programming since I was 12 or so, and have always planned to try to make a career out of it. I have been working as the "webmaster" (i.e. updating static content and sometimes coding new pages) for the health services provider at my university for over a year, so I do have some applicable work experience.

I want to break into the tech industry, but I'm not sure exactly how to go about it without the requisite degree or industry experience. I have a github and a website (http://avivnitsan.com), but what else can I do to make myself employable? More broadly, my question is: can a liberal arts degree combined with some technical skills and ambition lead to gainful employment in the tech industry?\n======\nSpoom\nI don't have a bachelor's degree at all (I have an associate's) and I am\nworking as a professional software developer for a startup, so yes.\n\nI recommend you do some freelancing as it's" -"\nBeijing struggles to defuse anger over China's P2P lending crisis - lnguyen\nhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-lenders-p2p-insight/beijing-struggles-to-defuse-anger-over-chinas-p2p-lending-crisis-idUSKBN1KX077\n======\n21\nIn the last 5 years retail Chinese investors had massive losses in bitcoin,\ngold, the local stock market, bitcoin again, now P2P.\n\nIs it fair to say that they rush from one investment fad to the next,\ntypically buying the top? This is how it looks from far away, can someone with\nlocal knowledge comment?\n\n[http://static.atimes.com/uploads/2015/07/retail-\ninvestors.jp...](http://static.atimes.com/uploads/2015/07/retail-\ninvestors.jpg)\n\n~~~\nSuoDuanDao\nI remember a significant anecdote about Chinese assumptions when a Chinese-\nCanadian I was dating explained she always goes to busy restaurants on the\nassumption that a lot of customers means they have good food. The western bias\nis towards being the first to discover an unknown restaurant with great food\nthat just hasn't had time to build a reputation, but that's not how a typical\nChinese person would approach the restaurant problem.\n\nAbstracting that decision-making style to retail investing in a country with a\nbias towards savings, and the nature of Chinese equity markets makes a lot of\nsense.\n\n~~~\nsremani\n>> always goes to busy restaurants on the assumption that a lot of customers\nmeans they have good food.\n\nIt is actually good" -"\n\nSoftware Patents are Self-Defeating - ktr\nhttp://blog.datamules.com/blog/2012/02/13/software-patents-are-self-defeating/\n\n======\nnitinthewiz\nInteresting read. I also believe that software patents reduce your own\nflexibility in work. If you spend the time and money to patent your software,\nyou won't be changing it any time soon, even if you eventually discover that\nthere is a better way to design your product.\n\n~~~\nanamax\n> If you spend the time and money to patent your software, you won't be\n> changing it any time soon, even if you eventually discover that there is a\n> better way to design your product.\n\nHow does that follow?\n\nIt certainly isn't true with physical device patents, like automatic\ntransmission mechanisms, so why would software be any different?\n\n------\nmonochromatic\nI stopped reading here:\n\n> I doubt whether our software could be patented anyway, but if you can patent\n> a [linked list](), perhaps it could\n> be after all\n\nIf this guy knows so little about patents that he thinks the title of that\npatent defines what it protects, and apparently has not even looked at the\nclaims, then why should I listen to his opinion about them?\n\n~~~\nmancaus\nThe claims are very closely aligned with the" -"\n\nAsk HN: Do you use oDesk/ elance / Fiverr? - gregmuender\n\nWe are trying to solve some pain points that exist with using these marketplaces. What can be fixed?

Contractor selection...are there too many choices?\nContractor accountability...do you worry about getting poor work?\nDoes it take too long to receive back finished work?\nIs it too hard to post on multiple marketplaces?\n======\ncanterburry\nI have used Elance extensively over the last 5+ years for everything from Logo\ndesign to web programming.\n\n1\\. Biggest challenge is finding contractors who are actually as good as their\nportfolios. I am not sure if this is a case of portfolio fraud or simply not a\ngood enough interview process on my part, however, after working with some\nproviders, I just can't believe all those 5 star ratings are real.\n\n2\\. Too many contracts bid without actually reading or understanding the\nrequirements. The best people I have found actually addressed each requirement\npoint by point.\n\n3\\. Too many contractors provide too little value. I expect them to manage\neverything they need to do on their side, and not just be the hands on the\nkeyboard. Too many times have I had to put THEIR test" -"\nLearning Ada - weinzierl\nhttps://words.steveklabnik.com/learning-ada\n======\njcadam\nI learned Ada because I took a new job back in 2008 (at Boeing, doing\nspacecraft modeling and simulation) and discovered on my first day that I\nwould be using Ada. Naturally, I was expected to just pick it up on my own\n(Not complaining, that's pretty much how it goes these days).\n\nMy mother (who found it amusing I was going to be coding Ada in 2008) gave me\nher old Ada books from the 80s (her employer at the time sent her to an actual\ncourse to learn the new DoD mandated language, back in the days when employers\ninvested in their people), which I still have. I ended up programming in Ada\nup until 2012, when I managed to get a job using Java.\n\nThe language itself I rather liked (better than Java, for sure). It's the only\nlanguage I've ever used that tended to produce programs that worked correctly\non their first run (getting them to compile was the difficult part). The\naerospace industry OTOH, I don't miss.\n\n~~~\nbibyte\n> It's the only language I've ever used that tended to produce programs that\n> worked correctly on their" -"\nThe best linear algebra books - begriffs\nhttps://begriffs.com/posts/2016-07-24-best-linear-algebra-books.html\n======\ndoppioandante\nThere's a introductory book that I would add to the \"generalist\" list, that is\n'Linear Algebra Done Wrong' by Sergei Treil. It can be found freely here:\n[https://www.math.brown.edu/~treil/papers/LADW/LADW.html](https://www.math.brown.edu/~treil/papers/LADW/LADW.html)\n\nI've used it to prepare my linear algebra exam in an italian university (which\nusually emphasize theory over practice, even in engineering courses), and I've\nloved it. There are few exercises but they're to the point. Complex inner\nproduct, self-adjoint operators etc. are treated. I find the notation used in\nthere particularly easy to understand, and proofs are elegant but very easy to\nfollow.\n\n~~~\nznpy\nI have skimmed some books about Linear Algebra, both in Italian and in\nEnglish, and my favourite so far is \"Geometria e Algebra Lineare\" by Enrico\nSchlesinger.\n\nThe book is very well written but sadly it won't be enough to pass a typical\nitalian Linear Algebra exam. This is because, in my opinion, examples are too\nvague or too \"abstract\": when you're first learning such subject, it would be\nbetter to have layman terms, that is simple examples with simple numbers. More\ncomplex examples might be okay too, but simple examples should come first.\n\nReference: [http://www.zanichelli.it/ricerca/prodotti/algebra-" -"\n\nGoogle instant previews - rbarr\nhttp://www.google.com/landing/instantpreviews/\n\n======\nterryjsmith\nI'm beginning to miss Marissa Mayer's axe on things on the main search page. I\nthink Google's primary advantage for a while now has been cleanliness of\nresults (as the difference in relevance between search engines has slimmed);\nthey're opening themselves up to a competitor with a better design/flow by\ncontinuing to cram these \"useful\" items in.\n\n------\nrgrieselhuber\nSo far, it's been one of the goddamndest annoying things I've ever seen on the\nserp.\n\n------\nzachster\nThis has been Snap.com 's competitive advantage for years. I suppose Google\ngave them enough of a head start for them to make something of it if they were\ngoing to. Theirs is certainly more mature though. And they have a JS include\nyou can place on your site to enable this sort of image preview on all\nexternal links.\n\nTheirs customizes the preview type depending on the content. For example,\nlinks to stock information shows a little quote and graph preview.\n\n~~~\nharrybr\nTo call it a \"competitive advantage\" is stretching it a bit. It's a feature,\nthat much is unarguable.\n\nI'd say that the snap.com UI probably falls into the \"Hover and cover\"" -"\n\nAmEx's answer to PayPal/Square/etc. - taylorbuley\nhttp://www.serve.com/\n\n======\napress\nThey are indeed charging the Paypal standard 2.9% plus 30 cents. See section\n10 \"fees\" here \n\nI don't quite get what they have over PayPal, let alone any less expensive\nservices.\n\n------\naidenn0\nI assume this is what they did with their acquisition of revolutionCard?\n\n------\nviggity\nI couldn't find their fees anywhere on their website, so I can only assume\nthey're going to charge the traditional 2+% + $.30 for each transaction.\n\nI'd much rather use Dwolla (). They charge $.25 flat.\nThat's it. And they have iPhone and Android clients. They don't have a limit\non how much you can transfer, either (serve limits to $1000/day and\n$2500/month)." -"\nSearX: Privacy-respecting metasearch engine - tvvocold\nhttps://github.com/asciimoo/searx\n======\nhalflings\nEven with a pool of proxies, I would expect an instance of this \"metasearch\nengine\" to quickly get banned by the other search engines. The same IP running\nthousands of queries and scraping its content (which is against their ToS)\nshould be easily detectable.\n\n~~~\nsnowpanda\nBuilding on that issue, I'd like to add that it would be nice to have a\nfeature that alerts a user that certain a search engine is denying requests.\nIt's visible in the logs or settings somewhere, but usually I find myself\nwondering for a while why my search queries aren't accurate before heading off\nto figure out why.\n\nStill a great project though, I use it every day.\n\n~~~\njbg_\nAt least for me, next to each result is a list of the engines that returned\nthat result. I run searx through Tor, so I occasionally find that Google stops\nreturning results for a few minutes.\n\nIt doesn't happen often, but it's easy to tell when it does because none of\nthe first page results have \"google\" next to them, while of course normally\nmost of them would.\n\n------\nsnowpanda\nOn a related note," -"\n\nMaking Science a Presidential Priority - muriithi\nhttp://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db2008028_503873.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives\n\n======\nyummyfajitas\nSounds great, in principle. Here is what would happen if it actually occurred:\n\nVarious big projects of dubious value (particle accelerators, LIGO) will go\nbegging for money. Any candidate who doesn't want to support them will be\nportrayed as anti-science. The majority of the effort will be placed here\n(scientists care more about grants than politics).\n\nStandard science issues where the science doesn't fit the party line will be\nhighlighted: evolution, climate change and sex ed. For the most part, science\nwill be used as a club to beat republicans with. They certainly deserve it\n(1), but not only them.\n\nNon-standard science issues that cut against democrats will be mostly ignored\n(race/sex differences in intelligence, lawyers suing doctors without\nscientific evidence, the possible link between abortion/miscarriage and breast\ncancer) . No one will ask the candidates what they think about Larry Summers\nor James Watson.\n\nIt sounds like a great idea. But I know my colleagues well enough to know that\nif it happens, it will simply turn into a \"give us money, we hate republicans\"\nevent.\n\n(1) At various points, I noticed birth control (non-condom) includes the\nwarning \"Does" -"\n\nAsk HN: My ISP notified me my router was hacked, what do I do? - nogridbag\n\nHN, my ISP notified me that my router was hacked and was used to attack other computers.

I was told to simply disable UPnP and block port 1900. That's simple enough and I suppose I should reset and upgrade the firmware first. I don't know much about UPnP vulnerabilities. Is it possible that the computers connected to my wifi were compromised?\n======\nloumf\nYes.\n\nAlso all traffic you sent through (meaning a lot of passwords) could have been\nsent somewhere.\n\n~~~\nkylekampy\nThis is an important point. Change your passwords on all your accounts (after\npatching up that hole first, of course).\n\nGood luck!" -"\nMacintosh.js: Mac OS 8 as an electron app - PStamatiou\nhttps://github.com/felixrieseberg/macintosh.js\n======\ndmitrybrant\nI really struggle to not be an Electron hater, but... why, oh why??? Basilisk\nII is already a thoroughly cross-platform piece of software that runs\nbeautifully as a native Windows/Mac/Linux app. What can possibly be the appeal\nto re-compile Basilisk into Javascript, so that it runs at less than half the\nspeed, packaged in a full Chromium/Node installation?\n\nThe total download size of the native Basilisk II is about 8 MB (not counting\nyour disk image). The size of this Electron monstrosity is about 180 MB! I\nfeel like I should be wearing a straitjacket. Does no one else see things\ngoing terribly wrong?" -"\nAsk HN: What do you do on the weekends? - mburney\nHey HNers,

I realized that I've been working too hard on my startup, so I decided to force myself to take weekends off.

I've found it to be a lot harder than I expected. Since I've lost touch with most of my friends and I am single, sometimes I'm at a loss what to do when I'm not working.

I'm 28, and not too excited these days about drinking or partying throughout the weekend. I have a side-hobby (jiu jitsu) but I usually do it on the weekdays just before I get started on my work.

I find myself wanting to read a book on compilers, or think about marketing or something startup-related, but I force myself not to do those things, since it seems too work/tech related.

So I'm wondering, what do you guys do on your time off? How do you achieve that work-life balance?\n======\nSukotto\nI have 2 kids and an infant. My wife works most weekends (fri noon through sun\nnight) so I spend my weekends as \"single dad\".\n\nLots of playing on the floor, going to the park, cooking, and that sort of\nthing.\n\nIt's a reasonably good" -"\n Flash Exploit Shows the Dark Side of Web 2.0 - nickb\nhttp://gigaom.com/2008/05/28/flash-exploit-shows-the-dark-side-of-web-20/\n======\npmjordan\nThe real beef here is:\n\n\n\nand the update\n\n\n\nThe submitted article is just a \"we're doomed\" post.\n\nWhat I find bizarre about some of these exploits is the amount of effort these\npeople go to in order to _steal World of Warcraft passwords_. I mean,\nseriously. Wouldn't you think they'd go after something a little more\nvaluable? \"I risked being hunted down by Interpol, but the level 70 paladin\nwas totally worth it\".\n\nEDIT: I'm aware that they're probably hijacking accounts so they can run\nbots/goldfarmers on those accounts without paying for them. (or having their\ncredit cards blacklisted) That doesn't really make it any less bizarre or\namazing to me." -"\nA BNF Parser in Forth (1992) - akkartik\nhttps://www.bradrodriguez.com/papers/bnfparse.htm\n======\nDonHopkins\nHere's a FORTH program to simulate a 7 bit paper tape puncher. Type PTAPE \nand then start typing. It will terminate and cut the tape when you type a\n.\n\n \n \n \\ FORTH PAPER TAPE PUNCHER:\n \n : PT# ( L --- L/2 )\n DUP 1 AND IF \n ASCII @ \n ELSE BL THEN\n HOLD\n 2/\n ;\n \n : PT. ( N --- )\n <# PT# PT# PT# \n ASCII . HOLD\n PT# PT# PT# PT#\n #> TYPE\n ;\n \n : CUT\n .\" -----------\" CR\n ;\n \n : PTAPE\n CUT\n BEGIN\n KEY ?DUP WHILE\n DUP .\" |\" PT. .\" |\" SPACE EMIT CR\n REPEAT\n CUT\n ;\n \n\nPS: I rewrote PTAPE in PostScript for NeWS, so it makes a window with actual\nholes punched into it in the shape of a piece of paper tape with the text you\npass in as a parameter:\n\n[https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/news-\ntape/fun/ptape/...](https://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/news-\ntape/fun/ptape/ptape)\n\nCan anybody write that for X11 using the SHAPES extension to punch the holes\nin fewer lines of code? ;)\n\n(The comments about an elliptical canvas and round shape must have been copied\nfrom some other old code, because the shape of the window (and icon) it makes\nis" -"\nDo Not, I Repeat, Do Not Download Onavo, Facebook\u2019s Vampiric VPN Service - ourmandave\nhttps://gizmodo.com/do-not-i-repeat-do-not-download-onavo-facebook-s-vam-1822937825\n======\ndfee\nWhat\u2019s most alarming are the AppStore reviews [0] - a majority of the authors\nappear to have downloaded the app after clicking a banner ad which claimed\ntheir iPhone had viruses.\n\nFor example: \u201cI just downloaded it today because of four viruses so I hope it\nhelps get rid of them\u201d - burnt tacos\n\n[0] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onavo-protect-vpn-\nsecurity/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onavo-protect-vpn-\nsecurity/id577491499?mt=8)\n\n------\ndegenerate\nHow can any self-respecting programmer at FB work on a project like this? At\nleast most of the IE6 toolbar spyware had some useful purpose for the end-\nuser... smileys, pagerank, search bar etc...\n\nThis on the other hand is straight up deception in my mind. Hot air. Prove me\nwrong? What benefit does anyone get from installing this?\n\n~~~\nbeckler\nUnfortunately, ethics is not a course taught in most college majors, and is\nvirtually non-existent in public schools.\n\n~~~\nsli\nIs it not? Every major at my STEM uni was required to take an ethics course.\nSometimes multiple, depending on the field.\n\n~~~\ndouko\nI graduated relatively recently, and only had to take one- it turned out to be\na semester long" -"\nCan Repelling Magnets Replace the Spring in a Pogo Stick? - mhb\nhttps://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=pogo-stick-spring\n======\numvi\nSeems like electromagnets could help compensate for distance by drawing more\ncurrent when far apart, and less when close together. A microcontroller could\nessentially make the force linear like a spring. Of course, then you need\nwires hooked up to your pogo, and that might be scary if the microcontroller\nhas a bug (or somehow fails) since you are now essentially hopping onto a\nrailgun.\n\n~~~\nazhenley\nAbout as scary as my Tesla on autopilot going around a curve at 75mph. Every\ntime I ask myself, what if there is a bug or if it turns off...\n\n~~~\ngumby\nConsider not going on a modern airliner. Every commercial passenger jet since\nthe A340 has been fly-by-wire.\n\n(military jets have been so longer).\n\n~~~\njolmg\nBut you have more time to react on a plane and switch to manual override. It's\nnot like people fly with just a few meters distance to other airplanes.\nThere's also a good distance to the only other thing you can crash into, the\nground, as opposed to driving between walls or with a cliff to one side.\n\n~~~\nhexane360\nOP" -"\n\nAsk HN: What is the popularity of Rails outside of Silicon Valley? - thisisdallas\n\nRails has a very high level of popularity on HN as well as in Silicon Valley. I haven't looked at job openings in every major city but it seems like a large majority of Rails jobs are found in Silicon Valley. Clearly, there are Rails jobs all over the US but is the assumption that the majority are found in Silicon Valley correct?

How do other languages compare in the rest of the US? For example, I can almost certainly guarantee that I will never live in San Francisco or even California so would taking the time to learn Rails over another language be beneficial if my end goal is to just have a developer job? I am currently a front end dev but I would love to gain a solid understanding of a backend language as well. I am located in Texas and looking at job openings in Dallas, Houston etc. etc. it seems like they are geared more towards .Net or PHP. Even looking at other cities with a population under or just above 1mil it looks like they have more job openings for languages" -"\n\nF-Secure will provide Dropbox-like storage [summary in comments] - sampo\nhttp://www.digitoday.fi/data/2013/09/12/f-secure-haastaa-googlen-ja-dropboxin--jakaa-ilmaiseksi-salattua-tallennustilaa/201312767/66\n\n======\nsampo\nSummary (as the link is in Finnish):\n\n\\- F-Secure, a Finnish company, will provide cloud storage like Dropbox and\nGoogle Drive\n\n\\- located in Finland, 256bit AES encrypted\n\n\\- first 5 Gb are for free\n\n\\- virus scanning for stored files\n\n\\- will open at the end of October\n\n------\nhannibal5\nThe content is encrypted with 256-bit AES algorithm and the content is divided\ninto three different parts stored in different locations. One stores the\nfiles, second stores the metadata and the third stores the user information.\n\nThe data centers are located in two Finnish cities F-Secure does not reveal." -"\n\nGood interview question - huhtenberg\n\nGiven that yesterday was a Pi day (03/14), here's a good interview question:

  Write Pi in a hex base\n
\nA written test version asks for 3 digits after the dot; in person interview version - for 2.

The question is really good because very few people have experience dealing with fractions in non-decimal base, so it forces them to really work on the answer. It also a very quick way to separate \"hackers\" from hackers :)\n======\nejs\nI never understand these types of questions, is that really important to job\nfunction? Maybe ask them to do it in octal too? Or just use a random number as\nthe base, how about base 47? Will that weed out the slackers?\n\n~~~\nbkrausz\nI find that interviewers are more interested in the method than the\nanswer...if you just sit there and say \"I was never taught this\" you probably\nwon't get the job. On the other hand, if you stand up, go to the whiteboard,\nand start writing things down, while talking them through your train of though\n(\"Well I'm not positive how to do fractions in other bases, but this way makes\nsense to me\"" -"\n\nFacebook Patent Would Allow Lenders to Determine Credit - beauzero\nhttp://consumerist.com/2015/08/05/facebook-patent-would-allow-lenders-to-determine-creditworthiness-by-looking-at-your-friends/\n\n======\nAmorymeltzer\nLenders and credit score companies already have enormous influence and access,\ndo we really need to open the door to our friends and family? I suppose this\nis in line with previous reports of users getting different quotes based on\nwhat browser they use \u2014 admittedly your friends are probably a better measure\nof your credit \u2014 but it's yet another dive into your personal life by\ncreditors.\n\nI think Facebook's going to find that if your social network can directly\nimpact your money, people are going to behave differently. I can think of at\nleast 50 friends I'd cut today under such a scheme. How does that help\nFacebook if suddenly its users have fewer connections?" -"\n\nAre coming soon pages, like this, actually effective? Discuss: - applebiz89\nhttp://www.spunlondon.co.uk\nI see this link earlier on today on Hacker News - wondered what peoples thoughts are on successful coming soon pages.

The reason for them is acquiring validation, but are there other methods which can be adopted to acquire this insight other than market research?\n======\nbt3\nLanding pages are inherently vague so as to not limit their potential\naudience. It's a trade off, but being too specific can limit the amount of\nusers who ultimately convert (enter their email). With the goal of a \"coming\nsoon\" page being to build interest, this is usually well accomplished by\nrequesting a simple email.\n\nObjectively, yes, coming soon/ landing pages are effective." -"\n\nDOJ advises that Net Neutrality could hamper development of the Internet - youngnh\nhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070906/ap_on_hi_te/internet_fees_justice_department;_ylt=AlDVAzEP6zj3FCeqjPcXCsWs0NUE\nBad news and the flawed analogies still persist. This time instead of tubes, the internet is likened to the Post Office charging more for express mail.\n======\nbrlewis\nTalk about spin.\n\nThey use the example of the post office, saying you can pay different amounts\nfor different speeds. That's not what net neutrality prevents. Net neutrality\nwould prevent the situation where you send off two order forms at the same\npostal rate, but one company gets their order form faster because they're a\nsubsidiary of the post office, or have paid a big fee." -"\nShow HN: Joconut - Smart PJAX jQuery plugin in 1kb - vdemedes\nhttps://github.com/vdemedes/joconut\n======\ngojomo\nI get the benefit of PJAX when you're replacing part of a page. If you're\nreplacing the whole page, how does this beat a real browser load of the exact\nsame data in the same number of hits?\n\n(Is it simply that it saves you the effort of setting your caching headers for\ninline resources properly?)\n\n~~~\nvdemedes\nPartially agree here with you.\n\n------\nsplitrocket\nSeems to break if you have a link without an href.\n\nIt also seems to blow away any previous listeners places on elements. Any\nplans to have callbacks for events so that listeners can be re-bound?\n\nAside from that, looks totally sweet. I'm going to use this in a bunch of\nplaces.\n\n~~~\nvdemedes\nAwful mistake, sorry, completely forgot about that issue. Will be fixed ASAP.\nHowever, there is \"new\" event, which gets fired on every new page. You can\nlisten to it using $.joconut.on, see Readme in GitHub repository at\n.\n\nThanks, glad you like it!\n\n------\naseemk\nGreat idea. I'm having trouble getting it to work (\n ), but I'm looking forward to\ntrying it out!\n\nOne" -"\nEmployees who quit Shopify over its Breitbart ties can find new jobs - nomadicactivist\nhttps://news.fastcompany.com/employees-who-quit-shopify-over-its-breitbart-ties-can-find-new-jobs-through-this-service-4030797\n======\nclickbait\nI don't particularly like how it has become a normal occurrence for people to\ntry and ruin the lives of others simply because they have a different opinion.\n\n~~~\nflukus\nI wonder how easy it will be to abuse this new system to bootstrap a company.\nFirst clone an already successful company, then find someone politically\nundesirably using the competitor. Finally release a virtue signalling\nstatement that gets people to use your company instead.\n\n~~~\ngydfi\nIt's happening already, but with pretty limited success. Voat is reddit for\npeople driven off reddit. Gab is twitter for people driven off twitter.\nNeither of these is a roaring success just yet, but they're better positioned\nthan the average clone.\n\nIn general I don't think the splitters are ever likely to gain half the market\nshare of the original because 99% of people do not care for this kind of thing\nat all." -"\n\nFCC releases the full National Broadband Plan - anigbrowl\nhttp://www.broadband.gov/download-plan/\n\n======\nanigbrowl\nI know a lot of the details have already trickled out in recent weeks, and\nit's a lot of reading, but I really think that a 10-year, ~$7 billion\ninvestment (which has already been allocated and does not need further\ncongressional approval) in digital infrastructure is of major significance to\nHN readers.\n\nThe goals (from the executive summary):\n\nGoal No. 1: At least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to\nactual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload\nspeeds of at least 50 megabits per second.\n\nGoal No. 2: The United States should lead the world in mobile innovation, with\nthe fastest and most extensive wireless networks of any nation.\n\nGoal No. 3: Every American should have affordable access to robust broadband\nservice, and the means and skills to subscribe if they so choose.\n\nGoal No. 4: Every American community should have affordable access to at least\n1 gigabit per second broadband service to anchor institutions such as schools,\nhospitals and government buildings.\n\nGoal No. 5: To ensure the safety of the American people, every first responder\nshould have access to" -"\nImage Background Removal - Peroni\nhttp://developers.lyst.com/data/images/2014/02/13/background-removal/\n======\nsusi22\nFrankly, I'm not very impressed. This problem is a very very well known\nproblem in Image Processing. Usually people call it background subtraction or\nthe more general form is image segmentation.\n\nThere is many really well working algorithms in this field. A google search\nwith the major research conferences (ICCV, ICIP, SIGGRAPH etc) will give you\nthe latest and the greates of these algorithms. You'll also find good (image\nsegmentation) work if you limit the search for csail.mit.edu.\n\nIf you want your uploader to help you, you can also go for one of the\nsupervised image segmentation algorithms. Otherwise you'll need an\nunsupervised algorithm.\n\nGiven that the authors also want to detect what is in the image, this might be\nhelpful for them:\n\n[http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/papers/ObjectDiscovery-\ncvpr...](http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/papers/ObjectDiscovery-cvpr13.pdf)\n\nThis guy is also doing some great work in that field:\n\n[http://www.engr.uconn.edu/~cmli/](http://www.engr.uconn.edu/~cmli/)\n\n~~~\nmistercow\nMy thinking exactly.\n\nThe really crazy thing is that they seem to be reinventing the wheel so that\nthey can lean on the optimized code a graphics library provides. I think\nthat's flawed thinking to begin with. In my experience with graphics\nprogramming, a reasonably optimized direct implementation tends to beat the\nhell" -"\nFormer eBay CEO confirmed to be involved in cyberstalking campaign - abhi3\nhttps://twitter.com/wired/status/1273310537720434688\n======\nNicksil\nThis post links to a Twitter.com page which then links to the page with the\nstory.\n\nLink to the story: [https://www.wired.com/story/ebay-employees-charged-\ncyberstal...](https://www.wired.com/story/ebay-employees-charged-\ncyberstalking-harassment-campaign/)\n\n------\nsct202\nI've wasted entirely too much time today reading the FBI's charging documents\non this case. The details are just so ridiculous. The CEO seems to have gotten\noffended that the bloggers wrote about how he built replica of a NYC bar in\nthe ebay HQ. I'm not surprised he has bad judgement considering it sounds like\nhe ordered this krazy campaign. Ars is hosting a copy here:\n[https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2020/06/ebay-...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2020/06/ebay-Charging-Docs.pdf)\n\n~~~\nvaluearb\nI have a friend that worked with him at EBay. He finds none of this a\nsurprise.\n\n------\nDomenic_S\nI worked for eBay/Paypal.\n\nHonestly I'm so disappointed in how far eBay's fallen. I opened my eBay\naccount in 1999 - finding great deals, good sellers, sending money orders in\nthe mail... those were the good times. And it was like a dream come true when\nI got a job there.\n\nBut eBay's lost its heart. Like all enormous and old businesses it got taken\nover by the suits," -"\nThe Expression Problem and Tables - qubitcoder\nhttp://joelburget.com/the-expression-problem-and-tables/\n======\najuc\nClojure has the best solution to expression problem I've seen in a real\nprogramming language\n\n[http://clojure.org/multimethods](http://clojure.org/multimethods)\n\n \n \n (defmulti sound class)\n (defmulti eat class)\n (defmulti attack class)\n \n (defmethod sound ::cow [c] \"Moo!\")\n (defmethod sound ::dog [c] \"Roof!\")\n (defmethod sound ::cat [c] \"Miau!\")\n \n (defmethod attack ::dog [c] (bite c))\n (defmethod attack ::cat [c] (scratch c))\n \n (defmethod eat ::cow [c] ...)\n (defmethod eat ::dog [c] ...)\n (defmethod eat ::cat [c] ...)\n \n ...\n \n (derive ::mad-cow ::cow)\n (defmethod sound ::mad-cow [c] \"MooOOOooooOOOOoooo!\")\n (defmethod attack ::mad-cow [c] (stampede c))\n \n\nThe layout problem remains, and I would like to be able to do sql- or prolog-\nlike queries on code, but IMHO it's IDE and tooling problem more than missing\nlanguage feature.\n\nAlso in clojure you can add arbitrary\n[http://clojure.org/metadata](http://clojure.org/metadata) to each value, so\nmarking your function as deprecated/in-progress/whatever is easy (but it seems\nyou can't easily add metadata to separate implementations of multimethod right\nnow).\n\n \n \n ...\n (defmulti \"Attacks.\"\n {:deprecated \"Use eat instead.\",\n :author \"me\"}\n attack class)\n ...\n \n \n\nAlso - to confirm that people want to specify rules in tables - I've been\nworking at 2 different companies where we had code generators with .xlsx files\nas input" -"\n\nThe Secret Sharer - abhinav\nhttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all\n\n======\nalexqgb\nJudging from the article, it sounds like the NSA has a complete searchable\ncopy of every email sent by every American in the last decade, along with a\n(completely illegal) surveillance file on every single one of us. If true, it\nmakes Drake's assessment (\u201cThis is too serious not to talk about\u201d) the mother\nof all understatements.\n\nSo hats off to the New Yorker in general, and Jane Mayer in particular. Given\nthe monstrous scale of the lawlessness she's alleging, and the catastrophic\nfailure of governance needed to sustain it, firing a shot this public and\nwell-timed was exceptionally brave. Unlike Drake - who seems to have seriously\nunderestimated the response he'd trigger - the authors of this piece must\nrecognize that they're making themselves the targets of a seriously scary\nbunch of people.\n\nAnd yes, this (alleged) embrace of domestic spying does make the Nixon\nAdministration \"look like pikers.\u201d It also adds plenty of weight to Evgeny\nMorozov's contemptuous dismissal of \"utopians\" who consider the internet an\nunalloyed force for democracy and freedom." -"\n\nThe San Francisco Rent Explosion: Part II - ryan_j_naughton\nhttp://priceonomics.com/the-san-francisco-rent-explosion-part-ii/\n\n======\ntwic\nThere is a special hell for people who present tabular data as images.\n\n~~~\ncalbear81\nI sometimes do this in emails because for some reason Gmail hates CUT AND\nPASTE from an Excel table into an email and none of the work I did to format\npadding, widths, etc. in cells are preserved.\n\n------\ndjb_hackernews\nI live in Boston and have visited SF a few times, definitely not connected to\nthe SF rental market like I am to Boston. What I am curious about is how new\nand how large these 1 bedroom apartments are in SF. My hunch is your dollar\nprobably goes further in SF than it does in Boston.\n\nA 1 bedroom/1 bathroom in the Back Bay (nicer, while not nicest part of the\ncity) will run about $2500/mo. But it'll be 100 years old, 400 sq ft,\noutdated, no laundry etc.\n\nI wonder how that compares to apartments in SOMA, which appear to be newer\nbuildings at least.\n\n~~~\nicedog\nI have a friend paying $2200 for a 230 sqft micro-apartment in SOMA. It's like\nhaving your bed in a tiny kitchen.\n\n~~~\nbaddox" -"\nGoogle Open-Sourced Kubernetes to Boost Its Cloud - kalgen\nhttp://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-kubernetes-says-future-cloud-computing/\n======\njustinsb\nI've been working with Kubernetes a fair bit (I'm contributing to porting it\nto AWS). It's an exciting time: I believe that we'll be running everything in\ncontainers within the next few years, and Kuberentes solves some of the big\nmissing pieces with actually running Docker in production across a cluster.\nThere are other competing systems trying to do the same thing (including\nDocker Inc itself), but I think Kubernetes has a huge advantage by having\nyears of experience of what did and didn't work well in Borg.\n\nMost importantly of all though, I have found it a great project to use, and a\nreally great project to contribute to. I think that contributions are the\nlifeblood of open-source projects, and I give Kubernetes 10/10 for their\ncommunity and processes, which I think bodes very well for the future.\n\n------\nmark_l_watson\nI am a little surprised that Google is join this route. Making Google Cloud\ninto a huge business must be a high priority. I used Borg for a while in 2013,\nand it was amazingly, specially the logging for tracking down runtime\nproblems.\n\n~~~\nfweespeech\nWhy? Google" -"\n\nAsk HN: Best way to find front-end/UI developers? - capkutay\n\nMy company has spent some time trying to recruit front-end and UI developers in the Bay Area. We want to spend at least another month searching before we go through a recruiter.

Does anybody have any advice as to which job sites work best specifically for finding front-end/UI devs? dice.com? stackoverflow.com? Thanks! Ping me if you have any other ideas.

john@webaction.com\n======\nzinssmeister\nA good front-end/UI engineer is in general hard to find, because these\nindividuals ideally need to live at the intersection of development and\ndesign. You should also consider searching for\nengineers with design/UI interest. Another good destination would be to post a\njob at and make sure you have the right job\ndescription. Good front-end guys/girls are usually looking for specific\nrequirements in a job post, to make sure their potential employer is aware of\ntheir unique position within the technology stack. Feel free to reach out to\nme if you wanna know more...\n\n------\nmnicole\nI'm going to piggyback onto this and hopefully get a good collective together.\nAs someone that mostly fits this description I've been trying to find similar\nfolks on Dribbble to add" -"\nAsk HN: Is there an algorithm to generate coherent color palettes? - shivekkhurana\nDesigners come up with a collection of colors that are aesthetically pleasing.

Colors on electronic screens are just numbers. So by first principles, designers are in fact picking some numbers from an infinite set.

This selection process is certainly not random. It's common knowledge that blue works well with red on flags.

My question is: can a computer come up with a color palette (ie hex codes) that will work well together?

Is there any literature around this topic?

PS: I'm working on a side project that needs to generate color palettes and I have no clue about it.

Thanks\n======\nmuzani\nThere's the standard color theory.\n\nYou look at a color wheel. Colors on the opposite side of the wheel look good.\nIt's just opposite (complementary), but also tertiary, and so on.\n\nYou can also cut out a block from a color wheel. There's some nice examples\nhere:\n[https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25396.0](https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25396.0)\n\nHex code might seem tough, better to look at it from HSL (Hue, Saturation,\nLightness) and focus on only Hue.\n\n------\nthedevindevops\nI'm a fan of [https://paletton.com/](https://paletton.com/) but someone has\ntried to apply AI to the problem: [http://colormind.io/](http://colormind.io/)\nthough beauty as ever remains" -"\n\nThe Third Reich\u2019s Electric Submarine Fail - smacktoward\nhttps://medium.com/war-is-boring/aba074f47363\n\n======\nstcredzero\n_\u201cirrational faith in technology to prevail in operationally or strategically\ncomplex and desperate situations.\u201d_\n\nTechnology does win wars, but it isn't magic. If Hitler had followed Karl\nDoernitz' recommendations and had 300 submarines on hand before going to war,\nBritain would have fallen to commerce losses to submarines. It was a series of\ntop level decisions to defer the development of revolutionary weapons on the\npart of the Germans combined with a concerted pursuit of advanced technology\nby the allies, like RADAR aboard anti submarine airplanes, that decided the\nwar.\n\nIf it weren't for such decisions, the V2 and Type 21 would have appeared\nsooner.\n\n~~~\ncstross\nYup. Like the decision to send the engineers and technicians working on jet\nengines to join the infantry in late 1940, because they'd be needed for the\nwar against the Soviet Union and jet engines wouldn't be required in the short\nterm anyway(!) -- a costly mistake which set them until the surviving skilled\ntechnicians could be hastily recalled. Or Hitler's demand for a jet bomber\nwhich forced Messerschmitt to hang bomb racks on the Me-262, delaying their\nfirst operational jet fighter" -"\n\nReview HN: BillMeBob.com - Generate free invoices with no signup - SingAlong\nhttp://billmebob.com\n\n======\nsgrove\nVery cool! Invoicing is a terrible (and least interesting) part of freelancing\nand consulting. This looks like a great MVP. I especially like that when I\nprint it out, that there's no big \"billmebob\" logo at the top there.\n\nI think it would be fair to put a self-promotional link/tagline at the very\nbottom of the page though.\n\nAlso, allowing me to email directly from the page would probably be nice. At\nthe very least, just do a mailto: link with the subject and body filled in for\nme to just hit \"send\" :)\n\nAwesome MVP, definitely keep us up to date on the iterations!\n\n~~~\nleftnode\nYeah, this is awesome. Everything I need and nothing I don't. If you allowed\nme to upload my company's logo for each invoice, that'd be even better.\n\nI do freelance from time to time, but not enough to justify spending any money\non an online invoicing service. This does exactly what I want without having\nto have an account.\n\nBookmarked, great job!\n\n------\ncj\nI would have a preview of what the invoice would look like before making" -"\nArmies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software - kalvin\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html\n======\nfleitz\nI've written software to replace this type of thing, in my case it was\nclassifying communications as to whether they were attorney-client privileged\nor not. It has to be cheaper, it was about a month of my time. And about a\nweek working with a high priced lawyer to write the ruleset and confirm it\ncaught everything and was excluding all the right stuff. With that software\nthey've essentially got their best lawyer going through every piece of\ncommunication.\n\nIt has to be cheaper, I can't imaging paying someone with a law degree to go\nthrough all of that. And now their lawyers are freed up to do something more\nuseful.\n\n~~~\nsandGorgon\nis it possible for you to mention, how you went about doing this ? technology\nstack, algorithmic approach, etc.\n\n~~~\nfleitz\nTries for text search, that's really the only thing I learned is that if your\nsearching through a body of text for 40,000 odd keyword you need to turn the\ndocument in to a trie. But that's something you'd learn as soon as you read\nany of the research on the topic.\n\nIt's" -"\nAsk HN: Are these possible ways to slow down a blockchain? - marmalade92\nI am very skeptical for the blockchain technology and although I use it as a gambling addiction (or it uses me) I still use zero crypto based technologies.

Within my skepticism, I started wondering what can make the chain vulnerable?

My first idea was flooding with almost non worthy transactions therefore wasting the miners. This was quickly debunked as I found out the miners would ignore 'empty' transactions.

Another idea is, what if I as user A say want to transfer to user B, but I mention an amount of coins that actually I do not own and spam it. Would the miners have to traverse all the way to the back or are there 'checkpoints' that can assure short travels?

The last one is a bit more difficult. However can a big enough network of nodes, insert itself and start crunching the chain errors-fully on purpose to 'break' the chain?

Excuse my ignorance.\n======\njakecraige\nIt's not so much that miners would ignore empty transactions, it's that the\nspammer would need to pay the miner fee to get each transaction in the block\nwhich would end up being very expensive and" -"\nResearchers can slip an undetectable trojan into Intel\u2019s Ivy Bridge CPUS - gabemart\nhttp://arstechnica.com/security/2013/09/researchers-can-slip-an-undetectable-trojan-into-intels-ivy-bridge-cpus/\n======\ntptacek\nNo, researchers _could theoretically_ slip a difficult-to-detect trojan into\nIvy Bridge _if they controlled the manufacturing process for the chip_. The\npaper is extremely interesting and important, but this headline does it a\ngrave disservice. There is actually nothing specific to Ivy Bridge about the\ntechnique; Ivy Bridge is simply a case study in the paper for how the\ntechnique might be valuable to an attacker.\n\n~~~\npetermonsson\nThe choice of BIST over scan/ATPG makes this attack theoretically possible on\nIvy Bridge. If Intel had used scan/ATPG then this attack could not have worked\neven in theory. Unfortunately, I don't have the insight to understand why\nscan/ATPG could introduce a backdoor.\n\nDisclaimer: I don't think that this attack is even theoretically feasible\ngiven just a few real world constraints. I am just nitpicking\n\n~~~\narcher174\nScan chains by design, give you the ability to load each flop with whatever\nvalue you want. Then you can toggle the clock and see the result. If you were\nvery resilient about this you may be able to gather information about the\nstructure. Without a GDS or netlist" -"\n\nAsk HN: Learning a foreign language - xaybey\n\nFor the past 6 months I've been learning Russian and am still struggling to break through. While I'm making progress, it's very slow going and I'm looking for a better way short of moving there (maybe in a few years).

Every piece of advice I've received has fallen into 1 of 2 categories - the traditional (grammar heavy lectures, canned dialogues, workbook exercises, flashcard drills...) or the pragmatic (talking with native speakers, local language groups, learning only the vocabulary for common situations, watching subtitled movies). I've tried different cocktails of all these. I do learn from the traditional methods, but only if I repeat them 10 times. And while the practical methods are more authentic, I end up drowning in the uncharted waters of the language instead of absorbing it.

Is learning a language just miles of crawling through the shit, or is there a way to make non-linear progress? I'm willing to try anything.\n======\nredsable\nI am a language teacher, so factor that into the advice that follows: 1\\. Find\na language teacher that excels at teaching beginners. Tell the teacher that\nyou only want to study 1 hour a week but" -"\nShow HN: Pantry \u2013 Free JSON Storage for Personal Projects - fiveSpeedManual\nhttps://getpantry.cloud/\n======\nstevage\nLooks useful. I really dislike the \"Download Postman and then you will have\ndocumentation\" approach. Documentation lives on the web, and there are better\nalternatives to Postman anyway.\n\n~~~\nNezteb\nI\u2019m curious: what are your top alternatives to Postman?\n\n~~~\nbovermyer\ncURL, with some bash aliases to help things along.\n\n~~~\nfiveSpeedManual\nI prefer this as well.\n\nRather not go down the road of having examples for every major platform.\n\n------\nfiveSpeedManual\nI'm so excited to finally be able to share this with you!\n\nPantry is a free cloud storage service that I've been building for the past\nfew weeks. You can use the API to store & retrieve data for you and your users\nonline for free.\n\nLooking forward to seeing what you all think of it, and please feel free to\npost suggestions or AMA.\n\nThanks!\n\n~~~\nwhalesalad\n\\- How would you sell me on Pantry vs. AWS S3? (You can use S3 in much the\nsame way ... throwing up JSON at a path and fetching it. The cost some would\nargue is neglible)\n\n\\- How do you deal with CORS?\n\n\\-" -"\n\nAsk HN: How Do You Come Up With Blog Post Ideas? - lemcoe9\n\nIt seems like every one in technology has something to say, and many of them have their own outlet for saying those things (that end up getting posted on HN!)

What is your source of inspiration for deciding what to put on digital paper and share with the world?\n======\nnamenotrequired\nI don't blog a lot so far, but I do have a list of possible topics somewhere.\nI tend to add to it when:\n\n\\- I feel like I've come to realise something new (for me) that others might\nfind insightful too. These don't turn into blogs often, but it's helpful to\nhave it written down somewhere nonetheless.\n\n\\- An opinion of mine keeps popping up in my mind and I feel it would be\nrelevant to others." -"\nGrowing By Shrinking - peteforde\nhttp://hackertourism.com/post/44454709336/growing-by-shrinking\n======\ncodewright\nI identify with, and am seeking for myself, a lot of things described here.\n\nThat said, the author is speaking from an intensely privileged point of view.\nReferring to selling one's time as a programmer as 'whoring' caused me to\ncringe.\n\nI have strong aversion to growth for growth's sake now that I've lived and\nworked in Silicon Valley and the startups that go with it (I was CTO at a\nnutrition startup).\n\nThings I've done recently:\n\n1\\. Quit my job and went back to being an independent consultant. Looking to\nstart a product company in the gap time between contracts.\n\n2\\. Exercising more, in my case, 6 times a week minimum as well.\n\nThe real question is whether or not I'll be able to make something that bears\nrevenue fruit or not. I've had small bits of success here and there before but\nnothing substantial or lasting. Current side project is just me scratching an\nitch, no real revenue potential.\n\nI've been reading a lot in an attempt to learn as much as I can and prepare\nmyself to be able to make something profitable. Mostly marketing and sales\nbooks, about" -"\nThe Article on Diversity in Tech That Forbes Took Down - ahmacleod\nhttps://www.brianshall.com/2015/10/07/the-article-on-diversity-in-tech-that-forbes-took-down/\n======\ngjmulhol\nHard work is important, but the implication here that pure meritocracy created\nhighly homogenous companies is asinine. I am one of the privileged few that\ngets to live in this magical place, be told great all of us are, and how we\nworked hard to get here. We all are great, and many of us did work hard. But\nthat does not mean that being great and working hard are enough. When I look\naround me, I see almost exclusively people that look like me. This should not\nbe the case.\n\n------\nvictorhugo31337\nThey took your article down because you are very short-sighted. You believe\neveryone has had the same privileges and opportunities you've had, thus you\nexpect the same \"success\" from others. Step into someone else's shoes for a\nchange \"Bro\"." -"\nAsk HN: Salary cut for position change Front-end \u2013 Back end? - knoblauch\nLong story; I want to know if a salary cut is justified in my situation.

18 months ago, I started my first job as an android developer in a fintech startup, after graduating with my Masters in a top 20 university. When I joined, I was the only android developer and built 2 relatively complex apps from scratch (designing architecture, app development, some security/crypto/api). \nMy CTO, to whom I report directly, knows since the day he hired me that I don't want to be doing front-end my whole life, and we agreed this summer that I'd be switching to the back-end.

At the time, I asked him if there would be any salary change with the switch, and he reassured me that there wouldn't be, because he allows his engineers to move horizontally without any salary change.

Since 2 months, I've been learning about the back-end language, Functional Programming, and other frameworks they use. All on my personal time in the evening and on week-ends.

Last week, the CFO asked to speak with me and told me that we'd have to sign a new contract, and that they're going to decrease" -"\nHow I got into YC S13 - aelaguiz\nhttp://aelag.com/how-i-got-into-yc\n======\nnwenzel\nPretty accurate assessment. I almost certainly would have not gotten in had I\nnot had a chance to talk to a few YC alums.\n\nSide Note: Jason was absolutely the reason I got in. YC should do whatever it\ntakes to get him to become at the very least a part-time partner. They and all\nfuture YC companies will be better off with him involved.\n\nFrom my own experience, the OP is absolutely right about the no BS part. Just\nexplain what you're doing. You don't need to sell it or exaggerate (doing so\nwill actually hurt your chances). I think the most important thing to explain\nis why people/companies want what you're making. The next most important thing\nyou can do is teach them something. If they are able to learn something new\nabout a market from you, you're chances of acceptance go up.\n\nThe in-person interview day is pretty exciting. It's sort of like the first\nday at the dorms (which for me was in 1995). It's perfectly acceptable to walk\nup to someone, say hi and and just start talking.\n\nIf you're thinking about applying, you" -"\nSay Cheese: a snapshot of the massive DDoS attacks coming from IoT cameras - jgrahamc\nhttps://blog.cloudflare.com/say-cheese-a-snapshot-of-the-massive-ddos-attacks-coming-from-iot-cameras/\n======\nriskable\nI've been warning about this kind of thing for _years_ and years. Both\nprofessionally and in my personal life. On forums and anywhere people will\nlisten...\n\n _IoT is a security disaster_\n\nI hate to suggest things like this but we may need _legal_ remedies to solve\nthe problem before it becomes an Internet Zombie Armageddon (IZA). It's _that_\nbad.\n\nThere's going to be _tens of billions_ of IoT devices installed at businesses\nand homes in just a few short years. If they're not receiving regular, timely\nsecurity updates the Internet as we know it may just plain collapse from the\nsheer weight of all the zombies.\n\nI propose a mandatory \"nutrition label\" of sorts for IoT device packaging.\nSomething like this:\n\n \n \n * Updates itself regularly\n * Conforms to NIST security standards\n * Public penetration test results: https://ptr.iot.nist.gov/A2L7P9D23345\n * Shares data with 3rd party: No\n * Administration by vendor: No\n * Requires Internet connection to administer: No\n * Requires 3rd party service to function: No\n * Notifies of intrusion: Yes\n * Logs all access: Yes\n * Encrypts all network traffic: Yes\n \n\nSomething like" -"\nLet \u201cQUIPU\u201d organise your research so you spend more time to explore content - biyanisuraj\nhttp://quipu.tilda.ws/\n======\nbiyanisuraj\nThe very best startup ideas tend to be something the founders themselves want,\nthat they can build, and that few others realise are worth doing\n\nRegister your interest for early Beta access at -\n[http://quipu.tilda.ws/](http://quipu.tilda.ws/)\n\nI want to make QUIPU so that knowledge seekers, like myself, can have all the\nexplored content organised, connected & displayed in real time.\n\nNo more time spent on indexing, trying to remember where that statistic came\nfrom, or keeping 50+ tabs open to avoid dropping a line of inquiry.\n\nClear representations of research information can be created from the\n\u201cdigitally exhaustive information\u201d we create when combined with powerful\nartificial intelligence to do the organising.\n\nPlease us know what you think about it." -"\nGood book for economics - signa11\nwhat would be a good book that would serve as a nice introduction to economics ? i currently am planning to go through \"economics, by samuelson and nordhaus\". is there something better ?\n======\ndfens\nI highly recommend _Basic Economics_ by Thomas Sowell. The title is not very\nimaginative but I found it a great place to start before looking at more\ncomplicated concepts.\n\n[http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-2nd-Ed-\nCitizens/dp/046...](http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-2nd-Ed-\nCitizens/dp/0465081452/ref=sip_rech_dp_10)\n\n~~~\nelidourado\nCurrent econ PhD student here. Sowell is great. There's a 3rd edition out now.\n\n[http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-3rd-Ed-\nEconomy/dp/0465...](http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-3rd-Ed-\nEconomy/dp/0465002609/)\n\n------\nctkrohn\nI wish I could help you. I majored in economics and math, and can't recommend\na single one of my economics texts. I kept a good number of my math books, but\nsold all my econ texts when I graduated.\n\nThat being said, you will probably get better results if you specify what you\nmean by \"economics.\" There are several disciplines within economics:\nmicroeconomics, macroeconomics, econometrics, financial economics/mathematical\nfinance, game theory, etc. The material in each of these disciplines will vary\nconsiderably depending on how theoretical the textbook is. For example, a\ngraduate-level theoretical macro text might talk about general equilibrium\nmodels, but a more practical" -"\n\nAsk HN: What do new MBA's do in tech? || Self-marketing via RE - schodge\n\nShort question: Various stats got tossed out that x% of Stanford's/Harvard's/Etc.'s graduating MBA class went into tech this/last year, instead of the 'normal' MBA fields (e.g., finance). What are the job titles these MBA's are winding up with?

Motivation, brief bio, see LinkedIn (profile) for longer: I did my Master's in electrical engineering, but turned to the dark side and went off to law school and spent a few years practicing as an IP/patent litigator. (Defending against trolls - the turn to the dark side was incomplete). I then got my MBA (Santa Clara, based in SV), and have been trying to find a suitable role in a tech company. I'm currently consulting as an electrical engineer in a biomedical company (mostly writing Matlab and Python for data analysis, plus designing measurement equipment), but would like to find something more permanent and, preferably, more interdisciplinary. I've yet to find an effective way of branding myself. I like hard problems, my programming skills are excellent for a business-type (mostly Python) but not what you'd want in a software engineer, and my best fit has traditionally been interfacing" -"\n\nHow to get hired as mature self-taught ex-freelancer? - iainduncan\n\nHi, I'm a self-taught, 39 year old Python web/database coder, now looking to get into a full time position after 8 years of freelancing. My problem (I think?) is that I'm not what is considered a catch to the stereotypical founder: no CS degree, been working on regular Python+SQL projects, not young. I know I'm competent, I've been inhaling CS and coding books for years and have taught myself some tricky stuff like microcontroller assembly and real-time audio/midi app development in C. But maybe I don't know how to properly present myself to people who might be interested in someone like me, or know who those people might be. Surely there are some companies who are actually impressed that someone has had to do all the running-a-business stuff in addition to coding, and has experience being completely responsible for the clients and the bottom line?

If anyone has thoughts on how to better position myself, or to whom I should be looking, or just wants to (constructively) trash my CV, that would be appreciated. Or if the correct answer is that I'm barking up the wrong tree, I'd like to hear" -"\nThe Control Group Is Out of Control - nbouscal\nhttp://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/\n======\ntokenadult\nThis is a very interesting review of some of the most challenging published\nliterature on the reliability of psychological science. The author's point is\ncorrect that parapsychology (ESP and the like) basically has no prior\nplausibility. Yet a researcher who has the chops to do reliable research,\nDaryl J. Bem, has conducted \"experiments\" that appear to show that some human\nexperimental subjects can see into the future. As the article says, \"Bem\ndefinitely picked up a signal. The only question is whether it\u2019s a signal of\npsi, or a signal of poor experimental technique.\" Please read this submission\nfrom beginning to end and follow the links to see more of the background.\n\nI had the opportunity to discuss the original Bem paper on psi in the journal\nclub I regularly participate in. The conclusion is plainly wrong, but the\nerror in procedure is subtle and it took a while for response papers to come\nout about his initial finding. (And everyone agrees that Bem is a smart man,\nso the subtle errors are all the more dismaying.) If Bem can't design\nexperiments carefully, who can?\n\nAFTER EDIT TO" -"\nA Tower of Molten Salt Will Deliver Solar Power After Sunset - robszumski\nhttp://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/a-tower-of-molten-salt-will-deliver-solar-power-after-sunset\n======\ndredmorbius\nIn a world of _very_ poor options for energy storage, molten salt seems to be,\nfrom very rough calculations, something which might scale to what Tom Murphy\n(\"Do the Math\") refers to as a \"nation-scale battery\" \\-- up to two weeks of\nstored generation capacity.\n\nMy own _very_ naive and rough back-of-the-napkin calculations suggest that a\ntotal thermal storage facility roughly comparable with existing US oil storage\ntanks in Oklahoma could provide that capacity.\n\nMore generally, the strength of molten salt is to even out supply to\nvariability in either demand or incident sunlight. Note also that concentrated\nsolar power requires _concentration_ -- you cannot focus _diffuse_ light\n(e.g., hazy or overcast conditions), though PV still delivers some power under\nsuch circumstances.\n\nBut PV is instantaneous, and other storage options -- batteries, pumped hydro,\ncompressed air energy storage (CAES), flywheels -- are either limited by\nmaterial and/or sites, or by costs or engineering challenges.\n\nSalts are plentiful, as are insulating options. Thermal energy systems are\nwell understood. The concept is inherently distributable (no need to put it\nall in one spot), and, modulo spills," -"\n\nUbuntu AppStore: Like Apple AppStore, but with less Suck - Swizec\nhttp://swizec.com/blog/ubuntu-better-for-app-management-than-apple/swizec/1672\n\n======\nkolektiv\nSigh... I wish Linux (and Ubuntu in this case) were better at UI/UX. But\nstill, it's so clearly designed by programmers (not always a bad thing, but\nsadly more often than not).\n\nSo what's called out here as being good? Well. Subcategories. Average users\ndon't respond well to taxonomy, generally. People are also not good at\nclassifying. So in that example shown, what's the difference between \"Arcade\"\nand \"Sports\"? I've played football games in Arcades. Where should users look?\n\nMore: \"Some items can be bought, others just downloaded\" Cool, where can I\nfilter so I only see free apps? Because it's nowhere in the screen shots, and\nI will bet money that it's the first thing a sizeable percentage of users want\nto do. Which would be known, had any user testing been done. I hope it was,\nbut I'm guessing not.\n\nI could be nit-picky - \"Get Software\" vs. \"Installed Software\" - they're not\neven the same tense. Imperative tense is commonly interpreted by users as\ncausing an action to happen, not a categorisation. I could go on too, merrily\nburning karma as I go," -"\n\nCrank up your Productivity with these 11 Mac apps - rickdronkers\nhttp://rickdronkers.com/post/40338237583/crank-up-your-productivity-with-these-11-mac-apps\n\n======\nricho\n> Internet marketing blahblah, (Web)technology blahblah, Lifehacking &\n> Productivity blahblah, Entrepreneurship & Business blahblah.\n\nI love how this literally is distilled down to blah blah blah.\n\nSeriously though, couple of decent suggestions.\n\n~~~\nrickdronkers\nYeah, you have to be honest right ;). I'm a internet marketeer that rolled\ninto the entrepreneur-role at a web-tech startup. In my spare time i like to\nread about lifehacking and productivity.\n\nCould put drinking beer and barbecuing on there as well, but I like to just\nexercise those activities, not blog about them." -"\nWhat Living with an Eye Patch in a Big City Taught Me - dnetesn\nhttp://cancer.nautil.us/article/203/what-living-with-an-eye-patch-in-a-big-city-taught-me\n======\njessaustin\nI'm surprised that the author didn't mention the several times a year random\nstrangers will yell \"Yarr!\" out of the window of a passing car, as they do at\nme. Even if that doesn't happen to her, this condition must be harder for a\nwoman than it has been for me, so she has my sympathy.\n\nI'm always willing to \"show\" children that there isn't an eye under the patch,\nif they want. The same goes for adults who seem childlike enough. (Don't\nlaugh, there are lots of these people around.) Those who are merely dull\nenough to require immediate satisfaction of their idle curiosities about the\ndeeply personal circumstances of others, never get the truth. We should all\npractice extemporaneous lying, and this may be the most valuable aspect of\nmonocularity to me. It's easy to say \"knife fight\", although it takes a bit\nmore effort to sell that. Instead, maybe someone might be more ready to hear\nabout an embarrassing incident involving office furniture repair?\n\n------\nmcenedella\nWhat a beautifully written, honest, and wonderfully human story. The author\nmakes an impossibly" -"\nShow HN: Libemf2svg, a library/utility to convert Enhanced Metafile (EMF) to svg - kakwa_\nhttps://github.com/kakwa/libemf2svg\n======\nbrudgers\nDoes it vectorize bitmaps from the Enhanced Metafile?\n\n~~~\nkakwa_\nNo, and it doesn't even handle bitmap blobs yet.\n\nThe other big missing parts are clipping and emf+ records as a whole.\n\nHowever, I am not sure it's a good idea to vectorize a bitmap.\n\n~~~\nbrudgers\nWhether it matters depends on the use case of course.\n\nIf the bitmap is not vectorized it can't be styled with CSS. It also means\nthat the resulting SVG contains arbitrary data from the source or edited as\ntext.\n\nAnyway, years ago when I was dealing with WMF in a vector context, not SVG,\nembedded bitmaps made the imported objects mostly worthless. Years before\nthat, I would use Corel Draw to vectorize bitmaps and it worked remarkably\nwell for ordinary cases.\n\n~~~\nkakwa_\nThe trick here is for \"ordinary cases\" ^^.\n\nVectorizing bitmap might not be trivial and results in crappy or huge (in\nsize) outputs.\n\nAs far as I can, I would like to keep this conversion library as simple as\npossible. Ideally it should be a simple translation between EMF records and\nSVG with" -"\nJudge in Apple Case Seen as Unfazed by Stress, Even a Plane Crash - pavornyoh\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/technology/judge-in-apple-case-seen-as-unfazed-by-stress-even-a-plane-crash.html?ref=technology&_r=0\n======\nbonniemuffin\n...yes, but does the judge understand technology? \"Unfazed by stress\" doesn't\nseem like a very relevant trait. \"Judge has aptitude for understanding the\nnuances of encryption\" would be a much more relevant story.\n\n~~~\naustinjp\nMy personal, anecdotal, highly limited experience of judges is that their\nparticular skill is to cut through technical complexity and fit it to the law.\nThey are briefed by technical experts if there are facets of a case that they\ncannot reasonably be expected to grok.\n\nThere are of course pros and cons to this.\n\nOne con of a technical expert being a \"judge\" is that they cannot see the wood\nfor the trees. Actual judges should, ideally, avoid this situation. Mileage\nvaries, obviously." -"\nWill This \u201cNeural Lace\u201d Brain Implant Help Us Compete with AI? - dnetesn\nhttp://nautil.us/blog/-will-this-neural-lace-brain-implant-help-us-compete-with-ai\n======\nerikpukinskis\nI love Elon, but this notion of a \u201cbandwidth problem\u201d in UI is what happens\nwhen someone with no training in UI whatsoever tries to extrapolate.\n\nImagine the neural lace already existed. Close your eyes, and picture what you\nwould experience. Would it be 3D? Probably. Our brains have spatial hardware.\nWould it be auditory? Probably, our brains have hardware for that too. Would\nthere be language? Ya, that\u2019s part of our hardware too.\n\nSo it\u2019s an experience of sights and sounds and language...\n\nBut think about an iPad... that already had sights and sounds and language.\nActually it\u2019s capable of beaming far more of all three to you than it does.\nAnd it\u2019s capable of taking in far more input than you generally use. It can do\n10 finger multitouch, plus sound recording. Newer devices will have full body\ntracking.\n\nAnd yet... we don\u2019t use all that available bandwidth. For the most part we\nstare at a few words, some boxes and lines... why?\n\nIf Elon is right that more bandwidth is the problem, why aren\u2019t there more\nhigh bandwidth user interfaces on" -"\nConfessions of an Ex-Opponent of Whois Privacy - ca98am79\nhttp://www.circleid.com/posts/20150703_confessions_of_an_ex_opponent_of_whois_privacy/\n======\noldmanjay\nEssentially, the opposition was based on optimizing the handling of\npathological cases - how to deal with abusers was considered more important\nthan how to provide customers with the tools they wanted. This shows up all\nover society, from terrorism to 'think of the children', and any positive\neffects are nearly always swamped by the deleterious ones brought about by the\nperverse incentives created.\n\nShame that people don't see this ahead of time.\n\n~~~\nJoshTriplett\nPeople do, but those people are ignored. The voice of reason is almost always\ndrowned out by the voice of panic and outrage.\n\nNot least of which because the panic and outrage describes consequences that\nsound applicable to the person hearing them (or their family), while the voice\nof reason explains problems that sound like they affect _other people_. (\"if\nyou have nothing to hide\" is one of many instances of this pattern; having\nsomething to hide sounds like something that only affects other people.)\n\n------\nvitd\nI'm glad someone wrote this up. I would love to be able to control who has\naccess to my WhoIS record and to know when it's" -"\nWhy I'm not laughing at C Plus Equality - xs_kid\nhttp://blog.mollywhite.net/why-im-not-laughing-at-c-plus-equality/\n======\nvezzy-fnord\nThe comments section got absolutely slaughtered by Reddit and 4chan after this\nmade its way on a popular subreddit.\n\nThat said, I personally thought her entry only ended up (unintentionally?)\nconforming to the very stereotypes the project served to satirize in the first\nplace.\n\n~~~\nskunkworks\nI agree with you that her entry unintentionally ends up skewering itself by\nrunning head-first into the joke. Really though, she skewered herself by\nranting about a really bad joke.\n\nThe C+= joke sucks. It's poorly executed. It's far too self-conscious and has\nway too many \"wink-wink\" moments to be effective satire. You either need to be\nclever and subtle, or absurd and outrageous. Instead, most of the jokes fell\nflaccidly in the middle: too obvious about its subject matter, but not even\nremotely clever. Making it a programming language doesn't make it clever joke,\nit just means you tried really hard to tell a joke.\n\nAnd she fell for it. Which ironically validates its existence, poor joke\nexecution be damned.\n\n------\n__pThrow\n\"Your document is a collection of sexist, trans*phobic jokes and negative\nstereotypes, and I'm not laughing.\"\n\nI think" -"\n\nIt's Remarkably Easy to Lock a Pilot Out of the Cockpit - jabo\nhttp://www.wired.com/2015/03/remarkably-easy-lock-pilot-cockpit/\n\n======\nanigbrowl\nAmid all the talk of how the door locking system should or should not be\nmodified (eg always rotating another person into the cockpit or whatever), I'm\nastonished that there's no discussion of having a backup radio system on the\nplane. One of the saddest things about this whole incident is the idea of the\nsenior pilot futilely banging on the door with no way to get in, and no way to\neven communicate his predicament to the ground.\n\nAllowing ground takeover of a plane in distress would bring numerous problems\nof its own and is probably not feasible to implement in the immediate future,\nbut adding an extra radio would be technologically trivial, the protocols\nwould be easy to implement, and it would allow witnesses to (apparent) crimes\nof this sort to pass information that might save lives or at least give\ninvestigators a head start instead of a 3 day delay.\n\n~~~\nsoneil\nI think it's not a priority simply because it makes no difference. I mean, if\nyou had some Disney-style ability to 'go back' and change one thing, it'd be" -"\nDon't Start With a Monolith - When your goal is microservices architecture - SaintCroix\nhttps://martinfowler.com/articles/dont-start-monolith.html\n======\nSaintCroix\nYesterday's discussion for further context;\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14778685)\n\n------\nGrumpyNl\nIts all about architecture and requirements. A well designed monolith is way\neasier to setup then microservices. Been there, done that several times.\n\n------\nSorreah\n\"If you are actually able to build a well-structured monolith, you probably\ndon\u2019t need microservices in the first place. Which is OK! I definitely agree\nwith Martin: You shouldn\u2019t introduce the complexity of additional distribution\ninto your system if you don\u2019t have a very good reason for doing so.\n\nSo what would be a good reason? There are many, but to me the most important\none is to allow for fast, independent delivery of individual parts within a\nlarger system. Microservices\u2019 main benefit, in my view, is enabling parallel\ndevelopment by establishing a hard-to-cross boundary between different parts\nof your system. By doing this, you make it hard \u2013 or at least harder \u2013 to do\nthe wrong thing: Namely, connecting parts that shouldn\u2019t be connected, and\ncoupling those that need to be connected too tightly. In theory, you don\u2019t\nneed microservices for this if you simply have the discipline" -"\nShutting Down a Service with 500M Requests per Month - danielamitay\nhttp://danielamitay.com/blog/2015/5/29/shutting-down-a-500mm-requestsmonth-api\n======\nstrommen\n> your app uses public APIs in a manner not prescribed by Apple\n\nWhat an enraging way to phrase this. I understand Apple's desire to shut this\ndown, but they make their contempt for app developers obvious at every\npossible turn.\n\n~~~\nkillface\nThat seems like an incredibly petty way to view it.\n\nApple's not out to get you. In fact, I'm glad they did this. That iHasApp\nlooks creepy as hell, and it pisses me off that other devs were using it to\nbasically spy on me. It reduces my trust in all apps.\n\n~~~\nstrommen\nTo be clear - I have no problem with this service getting shut down, as it's\nclearly intended to violate the user's privacy. But to say you must use APIs\nas \"prescribed\" by Apple is way too broad and subjective.\n\nI'm sure the iOS developer Terms of Service forbids this at some level. If\nnot, then update it. Then say you're shutting this down because it violates\nthe TOS.\n\n~~~\nceejayoz\nThat's a good way to get a million page TOS.\n\n[https://developer.apple.com/app-\nstore/review/guidelines/](https://developer.apple.com/app-\nstore/review/guidelines/)\n\n> We will reject Apps" -"\nShow HN: Semantic Versioning for Natural Language - computerlab\nhttps://github.com/ptsteadman/semver-for-natural-language\n======\nmbrock\nThis ties into a vague idea I have bouncing around my head about viewing\nnatural language works \"structurally\", especially in terms of premises,\narguments, conclusions, etc.\n\nAnalytic philosophers are pretty good at this already, as well as good science\nwriters and thesis authors.\n\nThey can present the high level \"type signature\" of their work: something\nlike, I assume the premises X, Y, and Z, (see books 1, 2, and 3 which argue\nfor these premises) and then deploy arguments of kind A and B in order to\nstrengthen the conclusion C.\n\nInterpreted with a programmer's vocational damage, that text would be a\nfunction from (X, Y, Z) to C, using A and B as implementation patterns or\nalgorithms, and recommending books 1, 2, 3 as concrete providers of the types\nX, Y, Z.\n\n(Some kind of hand-wavey metaphorical Curry-Howard equivalence extended to\nrhetoric?)\n\n~~~\ncomputerlab\nI like the phrase \"programmer's vocational damage\", I think there's often a\ntendency to attempt to over-extend programming concepts to other realms (for\nexample, natural language). The irony is that a lot of the concepts used in\nprogramming are abstractions of patterns from" -"\n\nWho Really Benefits From Interest Deductions - 001sky\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/realestate/mortgages-who-really-benefits-from-interest-deductions.html\n\n======\nmooism2\nIt's only talking about mortgage interest.\n\nThat's a pity. I'd like to read a well-written piece about how interest\ndeduction for business works out. It seems designed to make it easier for\nbusinesses to invest, but I wonder how the costs of leveraged buyouts etc\ncompare.\n\n~~~\n001sky\nThe analysis is the same. The tax-deduction is a subsidy to the \nholders, of whatever asset class. So, for homes, the subsidy accrues to the\nequity holder. For business, the same thing. Policywise, housing is\nconsumption (luxury, in particular) and business capital structure is\ninvestment. Subsidizing the latter has a far stronger policy rationale per-se\nbut the capture technique (components of cost or net profit) is arbitrary.\nAnalytically, see:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modigliani%E2%80%93Miller_theor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modigliani%E2%80%93Miller_theorem#With_taxes)." -"\n\nCan vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? - riffraff\nhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa\n\n======\nwesticle\nIf my startup was selling a product which was so successful I couldn't afford\nthat product myself, it would be a good problem to have.\n\nI don't understand this article. Either Bolivian farmers want to sell their\nproducts for the best price they can get (in which case more power to them) or\nthey want to subsidise their neighbours' quinoa-based diet. This is a simple\nquestion of utility. And I can't blame them for choosing to bring more net\nvalue into their country by exporting a prized foodstuff to richer countries.\n\nI'm sure the USA would be happy to trade them comparatively low-value corn or\nwheat to quinoa. Am I missing something?\n\n------\nbonesskier\nThe author, Joanna Blythman, has a grudge against vegans for some reason. I\ndon't think she actually cares about bolivians, she just wanted to blame\nvegans for something, no matter whether the accusation is correct or not. She\nis even blaming vegans for deforestation which is actually caused by meat\nconsumption. Go figure." -"\n\nAsk HN: How Edward Snowden Do His Computing? - sanosuke\n\n\tI recently read the "How I do my Computing" by RMS. And I wonder, is there any internet article which have information about which Software Mr. Edward Snowden uses? Operating System, EMail Service, Phone, Etc. I'm getting paranoic about all this privacy talk.\n======\nalansmitheebk\nI would imagine he uses Tails and TOR.\n\nHe used to use Lavabit for email. The founder of Lavabit chose to shut the\ncompany down rather than comply with subpoenas from the US government. There\nis probably pending litigation to this day. He's obviously not going to\ndisclose his current email provider as it would suffer the same fate.\n\nI'd be curious to know his choice of OS. It's probably a Linux distro, but it\ncould also be a BSD.\n\nIf he uses a cellphone at all, it's probably a blackphone:\n[https://blackphone.ch/phone/](https://blackphone.ch/phone/) I believe Glenn\nGreenwald has talked about the Blackphone and was a beta user.\n\nIt's unlikely that Snowden would reveal any details about his computing as\nthey could potentially be used compromise his comsec.\n\nHere are some resources for surveillance self-defense:\n[https://ssd.eff.org/](https://ssd.eff.org/).\n\n~~~\nTomte\nThe founder of Lavabit was perfectly willing to cooperate" -"\nEuropean Parliament approves overhaul of online copyright rules - btilly\nhttps://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-approves-copyright-reform-in-final-vote/\n======\nbtilly\nYes, I'm aware that this is going to attract strong political opinions.\n\nHowever anyone who, for instance, hosts reviews or discussion forums that\nEuropeans use need to be aware that under European law they will need to seek\ncopyright licenses and install European-specified filtering software to avoid\nbeing liable for what users choose to post. This will affect a lot of online\ncompanies.\n\nHopefully US courts will not enforce European court decisions about European\ncopyright claims for activity that falls under the DCMA safe harbor in the\nUSA. However if you're a European site or have European customers, the story\nmay be very different and you should be paying close attention to this." -"\nInequality and Democratic Responsiveness (2005) [pdf] - clarkevans\nhttps://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/inequality_and_democratic_responsiveness.pdf\n======\nEarthIsHome\nEvery few years the oppressed get to vote on who we want to oppress us.\n\nIt's a very powerful illusion to placate the masses by tricking us into\nthinking that our voices are being heard and we are participating in a\ndemocracy.\n\nAn excerpt from Howard Zinn's \"A People's History of the United States\":\n\n> We have here a forecast of the long history of America politics, the\n> mobilization of lower-class energy by upper-class politicians, for their own\n> purposes. This was not purely deciption; it involved, in part, a genuine\n> recognition of lower-class grievances, which helps to account for its\n> effectiveness as a tactic over the centuries.\n\n^^ This was in the lead-up to the American revolution where the upper-class\nneeded to gain support from the lower-classes. The wealthy colonists were able\nto redirect the lower-class's ire from wealthy colonists to the British. One\nway of gaining support was allowing some lower-classes to participate in\npolitics or give some of them land. However, the concessions given to the\nlower classes by the upper classes never materially change the power dynamics.\n\nA contemporary example of this" -"\nLet Kids Rule the School - robg\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/opinion/15engel.html?hp\n======\nRiderOfGiraffes\nI have said repeatedly:\n\nWhy should students do PhDs? For the _vast_ majority of people a PhD is of\nabsolutely zero value.\n\nWhy should students go to college/university? For the _vast_ majority of\npeople a degree is of absolutely zero value.\n\nWhy should students finish High School? For the _vast_ majority of people a\nHigh School diploma is of absolutely zero value.\n\nSchool is all about assessment, but life is about abilities and skills. Why\nare we teaching math that's targeted at the pinnacle of calculus, when\nabsolutely no one uses calculus outside of a very, _very_ small percentage of\npeople in highly technical, extremely uncommon professions or jobs?\n\nIt's the underlying abilities and skills that these kids, and then young\nadults, need. (Actually, there's much more needed if you want to go on to\nprogramming, engineering, physics, _etc,_ and I haven't forgotten that. But\nwhat percentage of people do those? What percentage _want_ to do those?)\n\nBut they don't get to develop or exercise those abilities and skills. And the\nreason is that these can't be assessed _en masse_ \\- which is required for\nschools.\n\nSo how can we" -"\nFewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown - breitling\nhttps://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/fewer-premature-preterm-babies-born-during-pandemic-calgary-around-the-world-1.5665089\n======\ntomerico\nLet's not ignore the possibility that the reduction in pre-term birth could be\ndue to women receiving less pre-natal screening, leading to conditions that\nwould warrant immediate induction going undetected. In fact, data collected\nfrom a hospital in the UK indicates a 4X increase in the incidence of\nstillbirth.\n\nFrom:\n[https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/934056](https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/934056)\nedit: Non-paywalled: [https://outline.com/MZUPk3](https://outline.com/MZUPk3)\n\n> The incidence of stillbirth was significantly higher during the pandemic\n> period (16 of 1,718 births; 9.31 per 1,000 births) than the prepandemic\n> period (four of 1,681 births; 2.38 per 1,000), a difference of 6.93\n> stillbirths per 1,000 births.\n\nA hypothesis put forth by the authors on why this is:\n\n> they say the uptick in stillbirths may be due to indirect effects such as a\n> reluctance to go to the hospital when needed (such as in the case of reduced\n> fetal movements), fear of contracting COVID-19, or not wanting to further\n> burden the National Health Service. Changes in obstetric services may also\n> have played a role.\n\n~~~\nirjustin\nInteresting, is the data there to show COVID infections of stillbirth? Can\nthat account for at least some" -"\nAsk HN: Can a bill be introduced to stop HFT? - mandeepj\nHFT is not trading. It is gambling. It has killed stock market.\n======\n1971genocide\nBernie Sanders has an interesting idea based on some research done by\neconomist.\n\nHe calls it the \"Robin Hood Tax\". Essentially you charge a small fee whenever\nany trade happens in the market.\n\nThe opponents of this idea state that it will prevent the market from being\nefficient as trading would slow down - undermining the Efficient Market\nHypothesis.\n\nHowever his argument is that a small enough charge will not prevent genuine\ninvestor from trading and just discourage the speculative traders.\n\n~~~\nmandeepj\nThere is already a trading fee which equates to 'Robin hood tax'. Each\nplatform has their own number for e.g. scottrade charges $7 for each buy and\nsell. I think HFT traders don't pay that fee for each trade.\n\nHFT is just evil. Direction less buy\\selling based on the trend that is\ncurrently prevalent in the market.\n\n------\nAnimalMuppet\nYes, such a bill can be introduced. I doubt it could pass, though, unless\nthere's _much_ more documented _and publicized_ evidence of damage caused by\nHFT.\n\n~~~\nmandeepj\nOne of the biggest" -"\n\nWhen to start publicizing a startup. - knandyal\n\nFriends,

We are a startup that deals with fashion. We are about 3-4 months away from the final product.

Questions are:

1) When is a correct time to start seeding the news about this site?

2) Who are the professionals that do this sort of \"spreading the news\"?

If anyone have any guidance regarding this I will be thankful.

Regds\nKarthik\n======\nbadmash69\nDefine your target audience, find a small representative sample whom you know\nand have them come in to your site and kick the proverbial tires. Don't go\nabout \"spreading the news\" until your representative sample is happy about\nyour product." -"\n\nRoy \u2014 small functional language that compiles to JavaScript - paulmillr\nhttp://roy.brianmckenna.org/\n\n======\nMiky\nIt makes me sad that having monad sugar is now just a given feature for a\nfunctional language.\n\nEspecially when that language has unrestricted side effects and the example\ncode using the monad syntax uses those side effects, completely obviating the\nneed for, and in fact rendering useless, monads as used in the example.\n\nThis is cargo cult programming at its worst. Including monad sugar because\nit's the thing to do, without even understanding what monads are or why\nthey're useful. This is quite clear from the \"tracing monad\" example code.\nThis \"tracing monad\" is like the Writer monad, stripped of all utility and\nsense.\n\nWhat drove you to unleash this horror on the programming masses, Moggi? Why\nhave you cursed us so?\n\n~~~\npufuwozu\nThe example sucks but is very simple.\n\nI didn't add monadic sugar just to be part of the \"cargo cult\". I added it\nbecause I'm eventually going to use it to implement an automatic continuation-\npassing transform. I've done a similar thing before with ClojureScript's\nmacros:\n\n\n\n~~~\nMiky\nMonadic sugar is probably not the way to go for implementing an" -"\nPopular People Live Longer - DiabloD3\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/sunday/popular-people-live-longer.html\n======\npasbesoin\nI've found human lives to consist in significant part of feedback loops.\nPositive feedback loops, and negative feedback loops.\n\nA person receiving positive feedback tends to feel better, be more socially\ncomfortable and engaging, and to receive resources that help them on their\njourney.\n\nThis response and that assistance actually helps them become better. Better\nnutrition, more attentive and patient instruction. Etc. It's not just that\nthings are done for them; it's that the feedback loops can improve their own\nperformance.\n\nA person receiving negative feedback tends to feel worse, to be socially\nuncomfortable and isolated, and the be denied helpful resources and\nassistance.\n\nThe negative feedback loop can result in that person withdrawing more and\nmore. I've been there: Most people _do not_ want to be where they are not\nwelcome. It is one of the worst feelings.\n\nNegative feedback loops tend to spill over into one's physical health, and\nthat unhealthiness furthers the rejection.\n\nIt is not just the \"big things.\" People with a popular appearance routinely\nget bigger servings, more engaged and attentive care. More respect.\n\nIt's pervasive. Pay attention. You'll see it all around you, every day," -"\n\nPLEAC-Haskell - brassybadger\nhttp://pleac.sourceforge.net/pleac_haskell/\n\n======\ndasil003\nAre there any plans by the maintainers to get off of SourceForge? I realize it\ndoesn't have the risk of distributing binaries, but still, any time I see\nSourceForge now it's a huge red flag.\n\n~~~\nerpellan\n[http://sourceforge.net/p/pleac/code/](http://sourceforge.net/p/pleac/code/)\n\nCVS?? Now there's a name I've not heard in a long time... a long time.\n\n------\nasimjalis\nPLEAC is a good resource as long as you watch out for the Blub paradox. \u201cBut\nwhen our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the\npower continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely\nweird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub,\nbut with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well.\u201d\n[[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlubParadox](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlubParadox)]\n\n~~~\nvezzy-fnord\nWasn't the Blub paradox particularly in relation to dynamic languages with\nadvanced metaprogramming capabilities?\n\n------\nkwhitefoot\nLooks like SF is falling apart, every link I try from the PLEAC home page\ngives me a guru meditation error. Pity, because it sounds like a worthwhile\nresource, a shame too because SF used to be so good. This is the sort of thing\nthat really should be on some kind of distributed file system" -"\nThe OTCA Metapixel in Conway's Game of Life (2015) - dEnigma\nhttp://www.instructables.com/id/OTCA-Metapixel-Conways-Game-of-Life/\n======\nconsto\nIf you want to see what this OTCA Metapixel can be used for, besides\nsimulating Conway's Game of Life inside Conway's Game of Life, I _highly_\nrecommending reading:\n\n[https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-\na-w...](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working-\ngame-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life)\n\nOver four years a number of users from StackOverflow built Tetris using the\nOTCA Metapixel. To summarise, they built layers of abstraction to move from\nthe Game of Life, to Metapixels, to wires, to logic gates, to a RISC computer.\nThere they developed their own assembly language to write tetris and finally\ncompiled and ran it. In total the world is 2,940,928 x 10,295,296 blocks in\nsize.\n\nHere's an interpreter for that language running Tetris:\n[http://play.starmaninnovations.com/qftasm/#jllHdnBGSP](http://play.starmaninnovations.com/qftasm/#jllHdnBGSP)\n\n~~~\nhammock\nWhat the fuck. It's comments like this that make me realize computers are\nsomething special.\n\nI would love to see a sophisticated comparison to biology and the layers of\nabstraction there.\n\n~~~\nmonk_e_boy\nOr from strings to particles to elements to people who build computer then\nprogram them :)\n\n------\nvog\nNice covering of a certain well-known GoL pattern.\n\nIf you like GoL, you should check out LifeWiki which is the largest and most\nup-to-date pattern collection" -"\n2020 Cloud Report: AWS vs. GCP vs. Azure - dilloc\nhttps://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/2020-cloud-report/#\n======\nunreal37\nThey calculated the costs based on 3 years running at the hourly rate.\n\nThat's kinda weird. How about including multi-year discounts? These are\navailable to everyone.\n\n[1] [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/pricing/reserved-vm-\ninstan...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/pricing/reserved-vm-instances/)\n\n[2] [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-\ninstances/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/)\n\n[3] [https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/signing-\nup-c...](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/signing-up-committed-\nuse-discounts)\n\n~~~\nderefr\nElastic rates _are_ really what you should be comparing when using cloud IaaS\nservices, though. That's where the price works out in favor of using cloud\nIaaS hosts in the first place, after all.\n\nIf you have a stable set of instances and a known lifetime for them, then,\nbefore trying to calculate whether AWS or GCP is cheaper, step back and plug\nthose same numbers into a regular non-cloud DC managed-hardware-leasing\npricing page.\n\n~~~\ndevy\n> a regular non-cloud DC managed-hardware-leasing pricing\n\nYou have to factor in the total cost of ownership (TCO) to make a fair\ncomparison, which in almost ALL the cases, you are more than likely to\noverspend on bare metal boxes on your own DC. Some of the TCO components are:\n\n\\- DC staff salaries\n\n\\- Electricity\n\n\\- Networking bandwidth\n\n\\- SLA guarantee (yes this a hidden cost, e.g. if your DC power is" -"\n\nCountUp.js - electic\nhttp://inorganik.github.io/countUp.js/\n\n======\nzackbloom\nYou might also want to look at Odometer:\n[http://github.hubspot.com/odometer/docs/welcome/](http://github.hubspot.com/odometer/docs/welcome/)\n\n~~~\nianstormtaylor\nWow, really nicely done on that landing page. Curious, why'd you make the API\ndepend on a class name instead of assuming something more common like:\n\n \n \n odometer(el, 42);\n\n~~~\nzackbloom\nWe've been having fun building things lately with transparent APIs. e.g. You\ndrop Pace[1] in a page, and it figures out how to create a progress bar from\nit.\n\nOdometer is nifty in this way because you can still just set the value with\ninnerHTML or .html, and it will animate it, so the overhead of adding it\nbecomes just adding the class to whatever elements you'd like.\n\nYou can actually also manually instantiate one pretty much exactly as you\ndescribed:\n\n \n \n new Odometer({el: el, value: 42});\n \n\n[1] -\n[http://github.hubspot.com/pace/docs/welcome/](http://github.hubspot.com/pace/docs/welcome/)\n\n~~~\nianstormtaylor\nWow, Pace just blew my mind. You guys are releasing some really awesome stuff\n:) random other thing is would be sweet if these were component[1] friendly.\n(Dunno if you've already checked out component, but it is insanely good for\nfront-end work.)\n\nOne pattern I picked up from reading TJ's code is the transparent\nconstructor...\n\n \n \n odometer(el).value(42);\n \n\n...which I like using to make" -"\nECMAScript 2018: final feature set - Garbage\nhttp://2ality.com/2017/02/ecmascript-2018.html\n======\nridiculous_fish\nI'm not sure about this named capture group proposal. The idea behind the\nproposal is that regexp engines parse using the old grammar, but if a\nGroupName is found, re-parse using a different grammar:\n\n _If the result of parsing contains a GroupName, reparse with the goal symbol\nPattern[~U, +N] and use this result instead._\n\nBut \"the result of parsing\" by definition cannot contain a GroupName because\nGroupName is not part of the initial grammar.\n\nFurthermore it appears that the named capture group backreference syntax\n`\\k` is in fact valid under the \"old\" (no-named-capture-group)\nsyntax. Thus the interpretation of `\\k` depends on the future parts\nof the expression, similarly to how `\\3` can be an octal escape or a\nbackreference depending on the rest of the expression.\n\nJS regexp parsing is already underspecified [1] and requires two passes to\ndisambiguate backreferences from octal escapes. Now it appears we potentially\nneed a third pass to disambiguate named capture groups.\n\n[1]: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/08/25/chakra-\nintero...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/08/25/chakra-\ninteroperability-means-more-than-just-standards/)\n\n------\nnamanyayg\nA quick summary of what's new:\n\n* Asnyc Iteration: Looping over async lists, e.g, reading lines from file or an async generator.\n\nAllows code like:\n\n \n \n for await" -"\nbangin \u2013 a primitive, portable shell script which enables DuckDuckGo-like bangs - samhh\nhttps://github.com/samhh/bangin\n======\nsamhh\nHello, author here.\n\nThe idea came to me yesterday as I wanted to use a bang for ProtonDB. I didn't\nfancy waiting around for it to be added to DDG following submission, and that\nled me to ponder the other harms of this really useful feature being locked\nbehind DDG's service.\n\nIn theory, with the script being so simple and working on the basis of mere\ninput and output, it should be easy to write other tooling around it, which\nI've briefly touched upon in the README.\n\nThe shell script is extremely simple, but anyone with experience in writing\nthem might be able to spot problems with it, please do let me know if you do.\n\nI'm unsure about how best to package banglists. One option would be to provide\na config file with a list of lists, a bit like you do with some adblocking\nsoftware, but that'd presumably require some sort of intransience.\n\nAnyway, feedback welcome!" -"\nWhy Snapchat Spectacles failed - alfozan\nhttps://techcrunch.com/2017/10/28/why-snapchat-spectacles-failed/\n======\ncocktailpeanuts\nIt's amazing how you can write a whole article on this, but the gist is they\nbuilt something with low utility value. period.\n\nIf you look at it from this point of view, everything else is just side\neffect.\n\n\\- It failed because it's not fashionable? => No. See bluetooth headset. Also\nsee Crocs. If it's useful, people will use it.\n\n\\- It failed because it waited 5 months to sell it? => No. See Apple.\n\n\\- It failed because the excitement died off by the time it shipped? => No.\nSee all kinds of films that succeeded WITHOUT any initial hype (such as the\nMatrix)\n\n\\- It failed because it couldn't get any influencers to endorse the product?\n=> No, see Snapchat. Yeah their original app itself.\n\n\\- It failed because the content couldn't be ported over to other platform\nwithout cropping? => No. In fact, if Spectacles would have succeeded,\nTechcrunch would probably be blabbering about how the key to success is how\nbrilliant its marketing strategy was, so that all the videos uploaded to\nyoutube and instagram had the \"signature snapchat crop\", which got everyone\nelse curious.\n\nThe" -"\nFreshplayerplugin \u2013 Powered by Chromium's Pepper Flash Player - forlorn\nhttps://github.com/i-rinat/freshplayerplugin\n======\nsandGorgon\nThis does NOT support DRM content (like Hbo Go,etc). However the version in\nChromeOS does. Google and Adobe have refused to include DRM support in general\nLinux.\n\n[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=245999#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=245999#c4)\n\n~~~\ni-rinat\n\"This\" does; browser part is supported. To make it work, you'll need to get\nlibpepflashplayer.so file from Chromebook, as only version from ChromeOS have\nDRM code compiled in.\n\n------\nsuprjami\nCan we please just let Flash die already?\n\n~~~\nJohnTHaller\nHaving flash die for video has mostly already happened and is a good thing.\n\nHaving flash die for websites (like small restaurant sites) has mostly already\nhappened and is a good thing.\n\nHaving flash die for games would be a bad thing. There are hundreds of\nthousands of games on the web that are written in Flash that are a lot of fun\nfor millions of folks to play. Just because you can't play them on your mobile\ndevice is no reason for the rest of us to lose access to them on our PCs. And,\nno, most of them will not be converted to HTML5 because they were written\nyears ago and the author has long" -"\n(Futurama) Bender Smartspeaker using completely offline software - crankylinuxuser\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/g3whxq/i_will_make_my_own_smart_speaker_with_blackjack/\n======\nourcat\nNice. Since there's no way I'm going to put a multi-billion-dollar company's\n'smart' speaker in my apartment, I've been wanting to build something offline\nlike this inside an old dial telephone (like a red Bat phone) which only\nlistens to your commands when you pick up the handset. ;)\n\n~~~\nNotSammyHagar\nI like the idea. I'm shocked that a ras pi has enough cpu power to make this\nwork.\n\n~~~\nfoxyv\nMy Dad used to use voice typing on his old Pentium II laptop in the late 90s.\nIt's doable, although a lot less reliable than the ones nowadays." -"\nGnuTLS certificate verification vulnerability announced (CVE-2014-0092) - mpyne\nThe GnuTLS team has their announcement at http://www.gnutls.org/security.html#GNUTLS-SA-2014-2 but the announcement with details seems to be Red Hat's at https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2014-0247.html

"It was discovered that GnuTLS did not correctly handle certain errors that could occur during the verification of an X.509 certificate, causing it to incorrectly report a successful verification. An attacker could use this flaw to create a specially crafted certificate that could be accepted by GnuTLS as valid for a site chosen by the attacker."\n======\ntptacek\nHere's the diff:\n\n[https://www.gitorious.org/gnutls/gnutls/commit/6aa26f78150cc...](https://www.gitorious.org/gnutls/gnutls/commit/6aa26f78150ccbdf0aec1878a41c17c41d358a3b?diffmode=sidebyside)\n\nUninitialized \"result\" variable? Any time the code hits one of those \"cleanup\"\ngotos, it's probably returning nonzero unexpectedly?\n\n _Later: @filcab on Twitter points out the much dumber issue, which is that if\nissuer_version is < 0, the function returns issuer_version and not zero. Ow._\n\n(Who uses GnuTLS?)\n\n~~~\nsanxiyn\ngit on Debian, for example. In general, GPL programs need special exception to\nlink to OpenSSL, and git is licensed under GPL without the exception.\n\n~~~\nnknighthb\nThere's a standing debate regarding whether that actually matters in the case\nof a distribution that included OpenSSL as a standard component, due to the\nGPL's system libraries exception. (And, of special relevance to Debian," -"\nCountries don't own their Internet domains, ICANN says - privong\nhttp://www.computerworld.com.au/article/551289/countries_don_t_own_their_internet_domains_icann_says/\n======\ntokenizerrr\nSo instead the US is the only country that \"owns\" domain names, since ICANN is\nan American company? If the domains aren't property then how can they be\nseized? Is a distinction made between domain names and ccTLDs?\n\nedit: Downvotes? Really? For asking a question that seems perfectly on-topic.\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\n> So instead the US is the only country that \"owns\" domain names, since ICANN\n> is an American company?\n\nIf you read the article instead of responding to the title, you would\nrecognize that ICANN is saying no one \"owns\" ccTLDs, because they aren't\nproperty at all.\n\n~~~\ntokenizerrr\nI have, and yes, they say that, but since they are an American company and\nthus can be compelled to do pretty much anything by the American goverment\n(through secret courts even, which we've been hearing more and more about) it\nseems reasonable to say that America owns them, and their bookkeeping.\n\n~~~\ndragonwriter\nTheir argument here is for why they _cannot_ be compelled to do certain things\nby American courts.\n\n------\ndragonwriter\nICANN documents on the case: [https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/icann-\nvarious-2014-07-...](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/icann-\nvarious-2014-07-30-en)\n\n------\nopendais\nSeriously, fuck the" -"\n[ASK] HowTo catch some Fraud Scenarios in ecommerce \u2013 INTERVIEW Q - hnfoobar\nHello Dear friends,

this is interview question and I will like to brainstrom with you guys. Lets say you are interviewing for ecommerce company, what are the things you will look to catch fraud scenarios.

Lets assume there are following things in this system:\n1) Buyer\n2) Seller\n3) Recommendations for Buyer and Seller (buyer rate Seller and Seller rates buyer)\n4) Order Processing\n5) Payment \n6) Purchase

Again this is just open ended question and skys the limit for the solution. So, wanted to see how many ways we can catch fraud scenarios. This may/may not involve any machine learning algorithms.

Cheers!\n======\nhnfoobar\nHere are some which I thought... I am wondering if there are other classes or\ncategories we should watch for Fraud/Risk\n\n1) Unusually large orders or high-priced orders 2) Expedited shipping on large\nquantities or high-priced orders 3) Expedited shipping when billing and\nshipping addresses differ 4) Make sure the billing address matches the IP\nlocation. 5) Limit the number of declined transactions. 6) Customers who make\nmultiple orders from different credit cards 7) Machine Learning - supervised\nclassification - the system is told in advance" -"\nHave Disneyland fans finally reached their limit? - spking\nhttps://www.mercurynews.com/2019/08/13/have-disneyland-fans-finally-reached-their-limit/\n======\nilamont\nThe article neglects to mention the huge drop in international visits to the\nU.S. in recent years. Quoting a USA Today article from last week:\n\n _U.S. visits as a portion of total global travel fell to 11.7% last year from\na high of 13.7% in 2015, according to the travel group and Oxford Economics.\nThat has resulted in losses to the U.S. economy of 14 million international\nvisitors, $59 billion in traveler spending and 120,000 U.S. jobs._\n\nSource: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/08/09/travel-\ninter...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/08/09/travel-\ninternational-visits-u-s-forecast-keep-falling/1942922001/)\n\nI know Disneyland and Disneyworld have traditionally been popular destinations\nfor foreign tourists; it's reasonable to assume that if overall international\ntravel is down the number of foreign visitors to the parks is also down, even\nbefore factoring in the high prices everyone has to pay to get into the parks.\n\n~~~\nstevenjohns\n> The article neglects to mention the huge drop in international visits to the\n> U.S. in recent years. Quoting a USA Today article from last week:\n\nPart of this might be the ever-stronger US dollar. Five years ago, AUD$1 would\nbuy about USD$0.94. Now it buys USD$0.68, making the trip to the US" -"\n\nWhy Fukushima Daiichi won't be another Chernobyl - michaelchisari\nhttp://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20257-why-fukushima-daiichi-wont-be-another-chernobyl.html?full=true\n\n======\nbioh42_2\nI'm getting pretty tired of this meme.\n\nChernobyl was horrific! It happened at a time and in place that did not care\nmuch about safety or human lives. The technology was primitive. Safety\nmechanisms had been turned off. The response to the accident was to send\npeople on a suicide mission while telling everyone else everything was hunky\ndory. It was a a horrific disaster.\n\nHow the hell could Fukushima be as bad?\n\nAnd what is the point of all of this anyway?\n\nLook, I think we should use a lot more nuclear power, yes despite the fact\nthat I grew up down wind of Chernobyl and with Fukushima still happening, I\nSTILL think we should all drive electric cars that get their electricity from\nnuclear power.\n\nBut I want those nuclear plants to as safe as technology can make them. And I\nwelcome higher per kilowatt prices to make this happen. What I don't want is\nnukes on the cheap, as this particular GE model of reactor appears to have\nbeen marketed.\n\nAnd I am really getting sick of the chorus of the last couple of days" -"\n\nUsing WhatsApp with XMPP client - isarat\n\nIs there anyway to use WhatsApp with any of the XMPP clients? If yes, how it's done<p>The Wikipedia article says, it supports XMPP.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp\n======\nmunimkazia\nIt's protocol is a customized version of XMPP, as per the wiki article. I\ndoubt if any third party XMPP client will work with it. Whatsapp doesn't have\nan open API, though some guys had managed to reverse engineer it last year.\nThey have since updated their API apparently.\n\nUnless whatsapp explicitly opens with API, I think we are stuck with their\nofficial apps on the phones.\n\n------\nPaulFreund\nAs far as I know there currently is no way to accomplish this, but I am\nworking on a solution for it. Unfortunately the project just started and will\ntake its time\n\n~~~\nisarat\nAre you working with WhatsApp for this? Or reverse engineer?" -"\n\nC++ patterns using plain C - guillaumec\nhttp://blog.noctua-software.com/cpp-patterns-using-plain-c.html\n\n======\nsparkie\nA complaint about all of the examples is the use of free() directly in main().\nI dislike this because it implies that the \"create\", or \"new\" used a single\ncall to (m/c)alloc to allocate the returned pointer. While this is the case\nfor the examples, it may not be the case where you are only given a prototype\nfor \"base_new\" in a header file, and you don't know of its implementation\ndetail.\n\nSuch example might be a jagged array where you allocate several chunks of\nmemory, and a final chunk containing the pointers to each one. Freeing the\npointer returned for the memory containing these pointers will not free the\nmemory pointed to by each pointer.\n\nThe person who wrote the _new function should write the maching _free, since\nhe's really the only one who knows exactly what and how the \"object\" was\nallocated and how it needs to be deallocated.\n\nIf you find yourself ever writing such _new function without the matching\n_free, you're _doing it wrong_.\n\nEven worse is the last list example, as it not clear where, or if memory is\neven freed at all from the" -"\nSourceTree for Windows beta - bencevans\nhttp://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2013/02/14/sourcetree-for-windows-beta-signup/\n======\nhomosaur\nThat's good news for Windows users, their development tools really seem to be\ngetting simpler and better lately. I'm a huge fan of SourceTree in general.\n\nI formerly thought, \"why would anyone want to use a GUI for Git? It's just a\ncrutch so you don't have to use the CLI.\"\n\nThen I started actually using SourceTree a bit. I've changed my tune\nconsiderably. I think there's great benefit to using a quality GUI for Git now\neven though you still need to use the CLI.\n\nFirst, I became stuck in this intermediate user hell where I could do all the\nbasic stuff but didn't know the commands or quite how to get it done.\nSourceTree allows a very good way to get that done right now with the\nunderstanding that you just executed a command under the surface. It allows to\nexplore the capabilities of Git a little more than the CLI would and lets you\npunch over your weight in the meantime.\n\nSecond, I think having a high quality graphical representation of your Git\ntree in front of you helps you understand the structure of your tree and\nenables" -"\nDemon Core: The Strange Death of Louis Slotin (2016) - BerislavLopac\nhttps://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/demon-core-the-strange-death-of-louis-slotin\n======\nmjb\nI've always found this story fascinating, because it's such a clear example of\nthe role of operator error in safety. Both Daghlian and Slotin were experts in\nthe work they were doing, and both were well aware of the danger of getting it\nwrong. Still, they made a mistake. As people do.\n\nOn one hand, the mistake was the effect of time and schedule pressure. Some of\nthat was real, but some also illusory (as shown by the fact that Los Alamos\ncould stop doing those experiments entirely as still deliver). They chose the\napproach they did because it was the easiest. But not only that - at least in\nSlotin's case he chose the approach he did because he didn't believe that he\nwould make a mistake. He'd done this a bunch of times. The danger had become\nroutine, an idea captured in Diane Vaughan's books as \"normalization of\ndeviance\", and in economic and sports research as \"the familiarity heuristic\n(\"I know this, so I'm safe\").\n\nOn the other hand, the experiment itself set them up to fail. Minor tweaks\nwith near-zero cost impact, like" -"\nAsk HN: Why has visual programming not caught on? - jshharlow\nIt seems like the concept of visual based programming (think visual basic, or drag/drop components that make code...) keeps on reappearing, do other hacker news visitors ever think it will truly succeed? It always seems to be limited imho, but the idea never seems to die, wondering what others think...\n======\nnostrademons\nIt already has succeeded in one very limited area: GUI component layout.\nPeople use XCode/Netbeans Matisse/DreamWeaver all the time to build their UIs.\n\nIt fails in other areas because code is remarkably info-dense, and if you\nsplit that out into individual components, it takes a huge amount of screen\nspace and visual manipulation for even simple subroutines. I encourage you to\ntake a simple function and draw out the parse tree for it. It's surprisingly\nlarge, with lots of different node types all strung together in unusual ways.\nThink about how much people complain about the parentheses in Lisp; now\nimagine that each set of parentheses is a box on screen.\n\n~~~\ndavid927\nGUI layout is not programming; it's GUI layout. (Or, more concretely: it's\nspecifying a dataset.)\n\nWhen software construction is finally \"solved\", visual representations and" -"\nInside the food industry - chestnut-tree\nhttp://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/21/a-feast-of-engineering-whats-really-in-your-food\n======\nxkcd-sucks\nSo, this article highlights important issues with convenience foods, with a\nminimum of fearmongering relative to the standard of this topic.\n\nThe article claims that rosemary extract is Bad because it substitutes for\nBHA/BHT, a preservative. At this point I stopped reading due to an\noverwhelming urge to bang my head into the table. Preservation is in fact a\nmajor reason for seasoning-- in a preserved meat, no less! (And BHA/BHT are\nantioxidants-- which makes them Good...)\n\nSimilarly, it's not surprising that yeast extract (nutritional yeast Good)\ncontains the Bad MSG. Glutamate is a fundamental building block of life. If\nyou've ever tasted yeast extract, you will immediately notice that it's very\nsalty. The only reason to eat it is as a flavor enhancer, because as a major\nconstituent it's too salty-- except for various Commonwealth countries that\nlike to put it on toast.\n\nEtc...\n\nShit, I bet the egg yolks in my cake batter are Bad because they substitute\nfor cholesterol, an emulsifier and flavor enhancer which is linked to diseases\n(it also tastes nasty on its own)\n\nCrappy food optimized for convenience, scale and profit is a huge problem." -"\nShopify and the Power of Platforms - jonbaer\nhttps://stratechery.com/2019/shopify-and-the-power-of-platforms/\n======\nTownley\n> Shopify is giving merchants an opportunity to differentiate themselves while\n> bearing no risk if they fail.\n\nIn addition to this being a great position for Shopify, this is an amazing\nthing for merchants compared to Amazon's offering; it's the critical\ndifference between \"We'll sell your stuff\" and \"We'll empower you to easily\nsell your stuff\" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual\ncompanies.\n\nSemi-related: For a really insightful conversation about Shopify, personal\ninteractions, and running a good company, I highly recommended The Knowledge\nProject's interview with the company's CEO, Tobi L\u00fctke: [https://fs.blog/tobi-\nlutke/](https://fs.blog/tobi-lutke/)\n\n~~~\nDenisM\nWhat about traffic though? Amazon gives you traffic, user reviews, used\nconfidence.\n\n~~~\nimjk\nSure, you have to work to target your own audience and build the trust with\nthem yourself, but it's a tradeoff that benefits you in the long run. Your not\nbeholden to the whims \"the platform\" as many media companies learned the hard\nway by putting so much of their focus on Facebooks platform in the past\ndecade.\n\n------\nomouse\nShopify is just the next closed-source iteration of WordPress and Magento.\nWordPress has one of" -"\nAsk HN: Introducing my wife to programming - salttrail\nI am experienced Java developer but I'm not sure whether it's something I should start with or teach her python. She have knowledge about what programing is and she would like to do career change so if you have any tips to share in which direction I should go, it would be helpful. \nAt the end of the day either web or mobile development is fine as long as she is able to have steady learning curve and less "huh?" moments, until she feel comfortable with whatever hack the programming is :).

My plan is to

1. Tackle OOP fundamentals

2. Introduction in one of the frameworks

3. Build simple apps\n======\ngt2\nI think #3 goes at the top.\n\nOpen an editor and start a python script, , new Xcode project\nfrom template, etc.\n\nThen do the minimal amount of work to make a \"program\". Would be great to have\ninput from the user and output something interesting. But many programs/apps\nare just informational right?\n\nSo you start with the most basic program.\n\nAnd you add to it.\n\nOccasionally jump over to a huge codebase and show her how editing one line\nchanges the" -"\nAn Overview of Curcumin in Neurological Disorders - mrfusion\nhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2929771/\n======\ntheseatoms\nI've been incorporating turmeric in my diet for the past few months. I enjoy\nthe taste and the placebo effect, so why not?) I'm curious if others here have\ndone the same.\n\nI wouldn't go as far as to make claims regarding it's effectiveness.\n\nOne tip I've heard is to take it with black pepper to increase\nbioavailability. I don't understand the mechanism, but the active ingredient\nis apparently piperine.\n\n~~~\nmrob\nI mix cocoa powder, turmeric, black pepper, and enough extra virgin olive oil\nto form a smooth paste. I then add hot water and it forms a suspension and the\noil mostly doesn't separate out. I think the bitter taste and the fact that\nall the ingredients are plausibly active makes it an effective placebo, even\nif it turns out not to actually do anything.\n\n------\nToast_\nThis isn't too surprising considering curcumin is a mitochondrial\nuncoupler[1][2]. For the curious, another example of a mitochondrial uncoupler\nwould be 2,4-dinitrophenol, which is currently being looked into as a\npotential anti-Alzheimer treatment[3]. Cool stuff.\n\n1:\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19715674](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19715674)\n\n2:\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1567840/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1567840/)\n\n3:\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16754295](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16754295)\n\n~~~\nfasteo\nThanks for the references 1 and" -"\nSam Altman: 'The greatest threat to this country is incompetence of governance' - dkasper\nhttp://www.businessinsider.com/y-combinators-sam-altman-on-government-incompetence-2015-9\n======\nwaterlesscloud\nWhy should cities build more densely now if truly massive job displacement is\ncoming in as little as 10 years?\n\nWhy do people need to live in cities? To be near jobs that won't exist? Why\nshouldn't they be moving to less expensive low density situations if they're\nnot going to have jobs?\n\nIf you're going to think and talk about these massive fundamental structural\nchanges to the economy, then it's best to step 5 or 10 steps further back and\nstart looking at the really big pictures.\n\n~~~\nefoto\n> Why do people need to live in cities? Short answer: economy of scale. Higher\n> population density is ecologically more sustainable as well as it lowers the\n> cost of services.\n\n~~~\nZeroGravitas\nIt's a bit of a paradox then that city living is generally considered more\nexpensive given that the economies of scale should kick in.\n\nPresumably someone is making money here, probably owners of the land, which\ngoes up in value thanks mostly to the efforts of the other people in the city,\nnot anything the land owner does, as" -"\nWhy the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste (2010) - gus_massa\nhttp://www.csicop.org/sb/show/shooting_for_the_sun/\n======\nleni536\n> To reach the Sun you need to subtract 100 percent of Earth\u2019s orbital\n> velocity; to reach solar escape velocity you need only add 41 percent to it.\n\nYou could send the waste with near solar escape velocity to travel on a really\nlong ellipsis trajectory, at the furthest point you can get rid of the\nremaining kinetic energy with minimal fuel and let the waste fall back\nstraight into the Sun. Subtracting Earth's orbital velocity is by far not the\noptimal method to reach the Sun.\n\n~~~\nkllrnohj\nA straight Hohmann transfer requires ~0.5-1% more dV than a bi-elliptic\ntransfer. Calling this \"by far\" not optimal is by far not correct. So instead\nof 32 km/s you need 31.68 km/s. This changes nothing.\n\n~~~\nbenjoffe\nWhere did you get the \"0.5-1%\" figure from? That may be true in some cases,\nbut not in this extreme case, here it's closer to half the delta-v (which, due\nto the rocket equation is enormously less difficult to achieve).\n\nSolar escape velocity is about 16.5km/s* , and since ~99% of this manoeuvre's\ndelta-v budget is" -"\nYour False-Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead - jseliger\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/your-false-equivalence-guide-to-the-days-ahead/280062/\n======\nlmg643\ni thought debt ceiling jockeying has been a normal feature of politics for at\nleast a decade. what is new this time is that the negotiating position of the\nout-of-power party is more aggressive, but the in-power party is also more\nintransigent - \"no negotiation.\" as they say, it takes two to tango.\n\ni saw jack lew on TV the other day, talking about how important it was that\nthe US uphold full faith and credit of its obligations. and of course that is\nimportant. but a borrower's creditworthiness is a function of many things,\nincluding total debt, growth in debt and interest rate on debt, etc.\n\nin short, the conversation at a national level is \"we should increase the debt\nceiling otherwise we won't be seen as a secure borrower\" but the flip side, of\nthe danger of continually increasing the debt load until lenders reach the\nsame conclusion for different reasons, is considered a crackpot\ninterpretation." -"\nThe impact on middleware of expanding APIs with Go's interface smuggling - zdw\nhttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/programming/GoMiddlewareVsInterfaceSmuggling\n======\nnickcw\nI had a lot of problems with this in rclone.\n\nRclone has backends which connect to cloud providers. These all implement a\ncommon interface. So far so good.\n\nHowever some cloud providers can implement optional features, say a server\nside copy of an object.\n\nRclone used to use interface upgrades to discover these. Still so far so good.\n\nHowever rclone has backends which wrap other backends, for example the crypt\nbackend which encrypts file names and data.\n\nThis backend has to implement all the optional features - you want to be able\nto server side copy an encrypted file if possible.\n\nThe problem comes when the crypt backend wraps another backend which does not\nsupport server side copy.\n\nWhat rclone used to do here is return a special not implemented error. This\nworks, but isn't ideal because you have to call the method to find out if it\nis supported and often you'd like to know before that.\n\nI eventually gave up on interface upgrades and resorted to good old function\npointers which you can check against nil. When the crypt backend starts up" -"\nThe Lynx Queue - jsnell\nhttp://www-dyn.cl.cam.ac.uk/~tmj32/wordpress/the-lynx-queue/\n======\npkhuong\nWhy do the authors report performance at O0 and O1?\n\nAFAICT, the experiments are all single socket. There's an important difference\nin coherency overhead for single VS multiple sockets; same for futzing with\npage protection. It also looks like they only tested a single\nproducer/consumer pair. I expect page protection tricks don't scale as nicely\nwhen you have 20+ pairs on two sockets: contention on the page table _and_ IPI\nstorms. The mprotect trick also seems to depend on using small (4K) pages,\nunless you're OK with fairly stale data; probably not ideal for overall app\nperformance.\n\nAlso while they indirectly mention the batching trick of the disruptor (keep a\nreader-local copy of the write index and vice versa), it's not tested\u2026 and\nalso not tested with a forced lag between the reader and the writer. If you\nwant to avoid the ping pong, you can let the reader keep a copy of the\nwriter's write pointer (and update the copy when the reader catches up), and\nartificially make the reader lag behind the writer. That lag gives much\nsimpler code on the hotpath than the MCQueue they mention, which would be" -"\n\nNew YC clone planned in Philadelphia - kkim\nhttp://philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2007/12/24/story2.html?b=1198472400%5E1566817\n\n======\ngaborcselle\nThis sounds very methodical: They have \"innovators\", \"strategists\" and\n\"gurus\".\n\nWhat they'll be lacking, though, is access to the entire nation's talent pool.\nThey have no desire to attract people from all over. Unlike Boston or Silicon\nValley, PHL is not a desirable place to move to.\n\nAlso, they lack the pull of having a PG who is known to a hacker community.\nThis is the main reason why you and I can't clone YC (and yes, I've thought\nabout it: [http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2006/04/on-cloning-\nycombinat...](http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2006/04/on-cloning-ycombinator-\nin-europe.html))\n\n~~~\njwinter\nNo PG is a big drawback, but you're wrong about Philly.\n\nPhilly's got lots of great restaurants most of which are BYOB, plenty of cool\nlive music spots, great bars, cheap taxis, way more affordable downtown\nhousing, etc. A friend of mine pays what I'm paying in rent: he lives in a\nspacious apartment overlooking the waterfront in Philly; I live in a tiny\nthird-floor walk-up a mile away from the closest T stop outside Davis Square.\nCrime is starting to become a problem there again, but other than that it's a\ngreat place to live.\n\n~~~\nicky\n> No PG is a" -"\nAdvice to Young Web Developers - EvanAnderson\nhttps://tumblr.beesbuzz.biz/post/621010836277837824/advice-to-young-web-developers\n======\nmroche\n> _Browsers change. Relying on browser-specific behavior means you\u2019re relying\n> on that one browser at that one point in time. Code to the standard, and\n> test everywhere._\n\nI wish this was listed at the top of the list, in the middle, and at the end.\nIt\u2019s super annoying when a site or application isn\u2019t \u201csupported\u201d because it\nwasn\u2019t tested in a separate browser (i.e. non-Chrome browsers).\n\nI know it\u2019s not always easy with a fair amount of nuance which the Chrome\nCompatibility post[0] touches on, but developing the web platform should be\ndone openly, with the browser vendors working together to be compatible with\neach other and not introduce developer or user inconvenience. Otherwise you\nend up with web ownership and a fragmented platform.\n\n[0]\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23563525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23563525)\n\n~~~\nnon-entity\nNothing pisses me off like getting a message that some website only supports\nChrome in 2020\n\n~~~\njjoonathan\nIt's so sad that it became \"acceptable\" to not test in Firefox (as estimated\nby the number of sites I randomly encounter that don't work in FF but do in\nChrome) right around the time that Firefox Quantum happened and Firefox became" -"\nGo\u2019s Type System Is An Embarrassment - mikeevans\nhttps://functionwhatwhat.com/go%E2%80%99s-type-system-is-an-embarrassment/\n======\ncolin_mccabe\nWhat's embarrassing is that people are still evaluating programming languages\nlike they were bags of features. The more features you stuff in the bag, the\nbetter it must be!\n\nThe reality is that generics aren't free. They result in difficult-to-\nunderstand error messages and more cognitive complexity.\n\nTo quote Yossi Krenin, \"You may think it's a StringToStringMap, but only until\nthe tools enlighten you - it's actually more of a...\nstd::map, std::allocator\n>, std::basic_string, std::allocator >,\nstd::less, std::allocator\n> >, std::allocator,\nstd::allocator > const, std::basic_string,\nstd::allocator > > > >\"\n\nOf course, it would be nice to have generics, or something like them, for\nwriting typesafe containers. But there are other goals in the language like\nfast compilation, easy-to-understand error messages, and overall simplicity. I\nhope they can come up with an implementation of generics that can keep those\ngood properties of the language. But if they can't, it shouldn't be added just\nto get a feature bullet point. Use the right tool for the job.\n\n~~~\nalok-g\nI am not convinced that C++ examples are valid as a generalization of the\nfailures of" -"\n\nFun human computation games to produce high quality language translations. - amichail\n\nAlthough automated language translations are often sufficient to get a rough understanding, it would be better to use high quality translations to localize your site/app.

So the question is whether you can get high quality translations as the output of fun human computation games.

As an example, one can have a two-player ESP Game-like service where each player is shown a web page and a specific sentence to translate. The game would check that all words used are indeed words from the target language. The score obtained would be based on the similarity between the translations submitted by the two players.

A variant on this idea only requires players to know the target language. The idea is to use Google Translate say as a first step to produce a rough translation. The two players would be shown an automatically translated web page with a sentence whose translation is to be improved. The game would check that each player submits a translation that is sufficiently different from what Google Translate produced. Again, scoring would be based on the similarity of the translations submitted by the players.\n======\nwallflower\nThe game method sounds" -"\nWhen it comes to composition and length, passwords mostly don't matter - deegles\nhttps://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Directory-Identity/Your-Pa-word-doesn-t-matter/ba-p/731984\n======\ndillutedfixer\nIn my opinion, Microsoft's implementation of MFA on Office 365 (at least our\ninstance) is broken. SMS MFA is inadequate and should not be used, the SS7\nnetwork is apparently trivially hackable in some circles and text messages can\nbe rerouted. So they want us to use MS Authenticator, great. However the 365\nlogin screen always has the \"Sign in another way\" option in which I can just\nbypass the Authenticator app and use an SMS text. I cannot remove my mobile\nnumber from my profile to disable the option to SMS text because they are\nworried about me losing access to my app. I don't know if this is a limitation\nof Office 365 through our VAR or what, but it just seems pointless to offer an\nAuthenticator app if there's an easy way to fall back to SMS and no way to\ndisable SMS. If someone has my password and can reroute my text messages, a\nfancy shmancy Authenticator app is pointless. If this is not how it is for\nothers with 365 I would love to know that, I hope it's" -"\n\nAsk HN: Good blog or publication that covers startups (both tech and non-tech)? - stevenj\n\nOne(s) that primarily just cover new products, companies, etc.

Not general industry news, etc.\n======\ntemplaedhel\n covers weekend projects, hackdays, and other\n\"hacker culture\" such things. It is not updated daily, more like weekly, but\nstill good to have in an rss reader somewhere.\n\n~~~\nthehodge\nThanks for the mention :), I'm trying to update daily but my computer died\nwhilst I was in Wales and I couldn't write posts on my iPad ;)\n\n------\nevancaine\n and sister site \n\n------\naspir\nInc.com\n\n~~~\nstevenj\nInc.com covers a lot of general industry news.\n\nI'm thinking more like the \"Show HN: Please Rate My Startup/Web App...\" type\nof posts that reveal tech products, or a local business that just opened, or a\nnew, tangible product that just launched (and is ready to be purchased and\nshipped).\n\n------\nfrankydp\nwww.mixergy.com\n\n~~~\nstevenj\nIf I remember correctly, Mixergy primarily takes a look back on successful\nproducts and companies.\n\nI'd like to read/learn about products and companies that are just becoming\n\"real\". Ones that have just shipped." -"\nFormer Freemium Developer Details the Grim Mechanics of F2P Mobile Games - uhhyeahdude\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/7igijd/i_was_a_game_designer_at_a_freetoplay_game\n======\nuhhyeahdude\nFrom the Developer's Introduction:\n\n\" _Cracks Knuckles_ Let's do this dance!\n\n* My soul is the chase prize in a lootbox, along with other, extremely valuable content (gotta be in good company after all). We'll call this box 'The Soul Box'.\n\n* You can't directly purchase The Soul Box from the store. It's a rare drop on a powerful, Dark Souls style boss monster. High HP, insta-kill attacks, very timing heavy, the works. We'll just call this 'The Boss Monster'.\n\n* The only way to fight The Boss Monster is with a Boss Fight Ticket, which is the rare chase prize in the 'The Wheel Game Loot Box'. A ticket cannot be obtained any other way.\n\n* The Wheel Game Loot Box can __only __be obtained by getting the Five Keys from the Wheel Game. It costs hard currency (currency bought with real money) to spin the Wheel. Getting the Keys is rare, spins usually get you lesser loot boxes. Each of the Five Keys is different, and you can get duplicates. This means that you could have 20 of the other Keys, but" -"\n128-bit storage: are you high? - iuguy\nhttp://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/128_bit_storage_are_you\n======\nacabal\nThe most interesting thing in this article is the reference to \"Ultimate\nphysical limits to computation.\" It's something I never thought about before\nand honestly it kind of blew my mind a little bit...\n\n~~~\nsammcd\nA proffessor once told me never to believe the physical limits. He mentioned\nhow a wavelength of light was the smallest we could etch silicon. He then\nmentioned that today (at the time of the class) we were etching with 1/20th\nthe wavelength of light.\n\nHe then said that he could not explain how the new 1/20th of of a wavelength\ndrawing works because new physics had been learned, and it had not been in his\nphysics book.\n\n~~~\njessriedel\nYour sentiment is healthy, but you should distinguish between \"we don't know\nof a way to do X\" and \"X is impossible under the current laws of physics\". The\nformer is like etching sub-wavelength silicon. The latter is like moving\nfaster than the speed of light.\n\n> new physics had been learned, and it had not been in his physics book.\n\nAgain, there is a difference between learning new techniques and phenomena\nrunning on" -"\n16 lenses on one camera - XioNoX\nhttp://www.light.co/\n======\njay-saint\nThis camera is not only doing bracketing, it is simultaneously capturing\nmultiple images at multiple focal lengths and exposures. It is then stitching\nthis data in software to make composite images that can be re-focused, re-\nzoomed and change depth of field after an image is composed.\n\nThey are calling it the first multi-aperture computational camera.\n\nedit: Just discussed this some around the coffee pot, that the real value of\nthis tech will be in new cell phones 2-3 generations down the road. I then saw\nthis press release about light.co and Foxconn. they have already licensed this\ntech. [http://spot.light.co/light-partners-with-\nfoxconn/](http://spot.light.co/light-partners-with-foxconn/)\n\n------\nan_ko\nTo skip to the content:\n[https://vimeo.com/141273968](https://vimeo.com/141273968)\n\nThis is a great product, but the landing page needs work.\n\nThe first video on light.co shows people taking photos with what looks like a\nsmartphone, with no further explanation. I almost left at that point.\n\nThe rest of the page's text is very general, never explaining to me why having\nmultiple cameras is a good idea, other than wishy-washy \"this is amazing\ntechnology\" self-praise. It sounds gimmicky.\n\nThe /camera page is much better. It explains your value propositions; great\nUX," -"\n\n3rd Shellshock Vulnerability Found - propercoil\nhttp://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q3/741\n\n======\nskuhn\nThis is not a vulnerability, it is intended functionality. Some scripts\nundoubtedly depend on overloading a shell builtin command with a function\n(even though it is gross).\n\nThe post's proposed exploit path is not possible on Linux and most OS's,\nbecause you cannot have a setuid script.[1]\n\n[1] [http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/364/allow-setuid-\non-...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/364/allow-setuid-on-shell-\nscripts)\n\n~~~\nbodyfour\nEven if you have a setuid script it appears that bash won't import functions\nin that case.\n\nHowever the fact that the script isn't setuid isn't really the concern for\nthese shellshock, since a setuid program could indirectly run /bin/sh.\n\nAgain, though, this doesn't seem to another shellshock problem. In shellshock\nyou only needed to control the value of an environment variable, not its name.\nIf you can control the name _and_ the value then there are plenty of other\nways you can attack programs.\n\n~~~\nkentonv\n> However the fact that the script isn't setuid isn't really > the concern for\n> these shellshock, since a setuid program > could indirectly run /bin/sh.\n\nA setuid program which runs _any_ child process without having first cleared\nthe environment or authenticated the caller for root access is already broken" -"\n\nCall Girl: What I Learned During My Year as a Customer Service Representative - kevinalexbrown\nhttp://bygonebureau.com/2013/04/23/call-girl-what-i-learned-during-my-year-as-a-customer-service-representative/\n\n======\ngraeme\n>If you think you\u2019re talking to an expert when you call a customer service\ncenter, you\u2019re probably not.\n\nThis strongly affects my opinion of a company as a consumer. _Some_ companies\nhave great support.\n\nFor instance, I've published a book with Createspace. They are phenomenal.\nThey call me when I put in a support request, and within ten seconds I have an\nexpert rep.\n\nUsually the call takes only 20-40 seconds, including authenticating my ID,\nbecause the reps are very knowledgeable and efficient.\n\nContrast this to most support calls where I waste about 20 minutes of my time\nwaiting (I do other things), and often 10-15 additional time speaking to a rep\nwho doesn't know things, and eventually transfers me to someone who does.\n\nThe company pays those reps by the hour, so they lose money, AND make me hate\nthe company.\n\nThis doesn't mean it always makes sense to provide knowledgeable support, but\nI suspect there is a stronger case for it than many companies suspect.\n\n~~~\netchalon\nI think it comes down to scale and cost.\n\nI've spent a bit" -"\n\nOn moving from CouchDB to Riak - franckcuny\nhttp://labs.linkfluence.net/nosql/2011/03/07/moving_from_couchdb_to_riak.html\n\n======\nsmanek\nI went through a length evaluation process of Riak recently, and came away\nwith a generally positive impression.\n\nFirst of all, it's beautifully engineered, as long as you just need a KV store\nor a graph DB (I wasn't in love with the MapReduce stuff, but that's another\nstory). None of the hassle that Hadoop/Hbase have about some nodes being\nspecial (HBase Master, HDFS Namenode, etc). Also, no running multiple daemons\nper server (e.g., no distinction between regionserver and datanode daemons,\nlike HBase). Easy config files, simple HTTP API (so you can just throw an off\nthe shelf load balancer like HAProxy in front of it), and lots of little\nthings that just make life easier.\n\nI also really like how it's very explicit about the CAP tradeoffs it makes -\nwith powerful conflict resolution available for when consistency has been\nsacrificed (instead of trying to sweep the issue under the rug, like many\nother distributed dbs do).\n\nHowever, there are a few downsides.\n\nFirst, as mentioned in the article, with the default backend (a kv-store\ncalled 'bitcask') all the keys per node have to fit in memory (and" -"\nFewer Calories (Carbs, Protein or Fat) Are Called Weight-Loss Key - tocomment\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/health/nutrition/26diet.html?ref=us\n======\nEliezer\nThis old lie again? This study just shows that four attempted diets, none of\nthem particularly sophisticated, all work equally well - which is to say, not\nvery.\n\nYes, the laws of thermodynamics hold, but what if, oh, say, _what_ you ate had\nan influence on _how much_ you felt impelled to eat? Or how energetic you felt\nand how much you moved around? If your fat cells are rapidly absorbing what's\nin your bloodstream, you'll feel hungry and eat more, and you'll feel tired\nand move less.\n\nThe number one experimental result of dieting is that 95% of the people gain\nback the weight a few years later.\n\nIf Seth Roberts is right, all we're seeing from this study is a temporary bump\nthat results from changing your food habits in _any_ direction, which leaves\nbehind the old flavor-calorie association, which makes you less hungry. And if\nthey stick to this diet a while, they'll develop new flavor-calorie\nassociations and gain back the weight. (This is a very elegant theory which,\namong other experimental support, explains a lot of the chaos in dietary\nscience;" -"\nAsk HN: Any recommendations on dealing with a company restructuring? - startupnomore\nThe company I work for will soon go through a major restructuring. At the moment the company has a /very/ flat, start-up like structure (3 levels: 1 CEO -> 2 Managers -> ~100 employees). There are also roughly 10 team leads in charge of service lines/products, but that are not involved with the business side of things at all (e.g. budgeting, leave approval etc.).

The reorg's purpose is to introduce more structure and delegate responsibility (I guess all startups go through this?). Effectively the plan is to elevate the 10 team leads to managers of the various service lines and products they lead now, including some of the business responsibility.

I am one of the team leads, and also one of the most senior developers on staff. There is a big strategy session being planned to discuss and implement the reorg. The meeting will be politically laden (some guys manage 3 people, some as many as 20, with varying years of experience).

So I have two questions:\n1) In general, what is your advice for handling the restructuring? Any experience, advice or mistakes, pitfalls or caveats you can recall I should" -"\n\nOpen Source Climate Data - grandalf\n\nEvidently the source data is still available from NOAA. Would anyone on HN be interested in creating a fully open source set of tools for generating a climate data set?

The project should simply be a script that expects to find the raw NOAA measurement data in a directory and that outputs a single csv file.

The NOAA data availability is mentioned here: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35233_Did_Climate_Scientists_Destroy_Data_A-_No

Anyone interested in collaborating? I'm pretty handy with awk. Over time this could turn into a great resource for climate change research.\n======\nfuruiman\nCheck the Alliance for Global Open Risk Analysis (AGORA)\n\nwww.risk-agora.org\n\nand post there. Maybe there will be people interested to help." -"\nShow HN: BemTV \u2013 Hybrid CDN/P2P Architecture for HLS Broadcasts - flavioribeiro\nhttp://blog.flavioribeiro.com/bemtv-hls-p2p-webrtc/\n======\nokal\nGreat work. I'm always excited by attempts to marry the centralized nature of\nthe web with all we've learnt about P2P. Best of both worlds. Just gave it a\ntry. The video was a bit choppy for me, on a ~3Mbps connection, but I'd like\nto see how it works with a larger swarm (it's remained fairly stable at 8).\nI'll take some time to look at the code, too, though it's likely beyond my\nimmediate grasp :)\n\n~~~\nflavioribeiro\nthank you! I still need to calibrate when a peer gives up to receive by p2p\nand goes to CDN, but it seems it's working for some swarms with low RTT.\nRegarding the code, I bet you'll not have problems to understand but feel free\nto ask me anything you want.\n\n------\nCaveTech\nI hate the fact that as a Canadian, I can't really support any video streaming\nservices relying on P2P simply due to our archaic bandwidth restrictions.\n\nMost Canadian ISPs have combined Up/Down Bandwidth Caps, which are already\ninsanely easy to hit with any sort of media streaming (they usually range from\n40-80" -"\nFind running median from a stream of integers - J3L2404\nhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/10657503/find-running-median-from-a-stream-of-integers\n======\ndude_abides\nHere is a clever algorithm to find the median of a stream of integers by using\njust one variable:\n\nThe idea is to maintain a floating median. Start with an arbitrary number, say\n0. If the incoming number is greater than the estimate, num += 1, else num -=\n1.\n\nIt is easy to prove that for a large enough stream, assuming the stream is\ndrawn from iid samples, this would converge to the median, by central limit\ntheorem.\n\nUsing two variables instead of one, you could converge faster. So instead of\nincrementing/decrementing by one, you store how big your leap is, and have a\nschedule to change it.\n\n~~~\nbjornsing\n> It is easy to prove that...\n\nReminds me of a similar comment in the margin of a old book:\n. :)\n\nBut it does sound both plausible and brilliant. How do you prove it (in broad\nterms)?\n\n~~~\nnjs12345\nSlightly off topic, but looks like toemetoch has tripped one of the hellban\nfilters, isn't a spammer, and has no contact info in his profile. Might want\nto sort that out if you're reading this toemetoch!" -"\n\nTips for Difficult Conversations - alrex021\nhttp://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/dowling/2009/03/7-tips-for-difficult-conversat.html?cm_re=homepage-031909-_-body-left-r1-_-recession\n\n======\nyummyfajitas\nMost important: actually have the conversation.\n\nDifficult conversation: \"You are highly unlikely to ever finish your Ph.D.\"\n\nNet result of postponing: student spends 8-12 years in grad school, 5-9 years\nmore than necessary. 3-5 years of support (approx $60k) are wasted. Multiple\nstudents who might succeed are rejected from grad school.\n\nYou are not doing anyone any favors by avoiding difficult conversations.\n\n------\ntezza\nMaybe worth mentioning again:\n\n* Try using the personal pronoun \"I\" as much as possible.\n\nThis is used in the 7 rules itself \"I... and I... and I...\"\n\n* Try to have the difficult conversation 1 on 1 and face-to-face\n\nAvoid situations where there is more at stake for the person you are having\nthe difficult conversation with.\n\n~~~\nfirebug\nTrue. Helping someone to save face should never be underestimated.\n\n------\nvillageidiot\n->\"Adopt the \"And Stance\". Take control of the conversation by pre-empting distractions, objections and blame by using \"and\". \"I know you worked all night, and I know you want to do well, and I know you just joined the company, and I know the graphics people sometimes get the data wrong, and I know I" -"\nHey Dropbox, build MailDrop. I will pay you to replace my Gmail - iProject\nhttp://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/03/15/hey-dropbox-make-maildrop-and-i-will-pay-you-to-replace-my-gmail/\n======\njubari\nIncidentally, that's somewhat what I've been building since my recent\nsubmission: Show HN: A personal Gmail.\n()\n\nI learned a lot from HN about trust and got a lot of great feedback via email.\n\nBasically, I currently manage my own email via a native app I build with\nTideSDK and AngularJS. MailGun catches the emails and my rails service drops\nthem into my dropbox as JSON files.\n\nThere is some magic going on regarding conversation views, labels,\nattachments, etc.\n\nSadly, I came across a critical memory leak in TideSDK, which currently\nprevents me from releasing the app/service to the public.\n\nFeel free to drop me a message if you're interested in updates." -"\nTikTok and Microsoft\u2019s Clock - joshus\nhttps://500ish.com/tiktok-and-microsofts-clock-c4c9fd082b89\n======\nchvid\nWhere is EU in this embarrassment?\n\nSuppose Margrethe Vestager called and said TikTok, you are banned unless you\nlet a \"very european\" company take over your business? And by the way. We\nwould like a cut.\n\nAnd would the US still being able to say \"national security\" if it was fully\nowned by German business running on servers in some Swiss mountain?\n\n~~~\nlovetocode\nBecause the Chinese cyber threat is incredibly real. The United States should\nbe playing hard ball. The US TikTok systems are compromised by Chinese\nspammers already.\n\n~~~\nFooBarWidget\nIf the threat of Tiktok gathering data is so real, then isn't a much better\nsolution, to pressure Google and Apple into improving their security models?\nThat way, _nobody_ can spy on your phone anymore. Or do you think Tiktok is\nthe only and last threat there will ever exist?\n\nBut nobody's talking about actual solutions. All this looks more like a witch\nhunt to me.\n\n~~~\nfr2null\nI don't think the key data that TikTok is gathering is anything you can really\nblock on your phone. It doesn't ask for your phone number, it doesn't ask\ncontacts, it" -"\n\nHow HTML 5 link prefetching can make your site load faster with one line of code - ronnoch\nhttp://keyboardy.com/programming/html5-link-prefetching/\n\n======\nwillwagner\nGoogle already does this prefetch on some search results pages with the top\nresult. For instance, in firefox if you search for \"hacker news\":\n\n\n\nthere is a link element added to prefetch news.ycombinator.com.\n\n \n \n \n \n\nI assume if you aren't careful in your logs, you could be overestimating your\ntraffic.\n\n~~~\ndaleharvey\nwow I certainly didnt realise google were going this\n\nI guess some people with top search results can infer some pretty accurate\nstats from this.\n\n------\nWillyF\nHow will this affect web analytics? Let's say that Google chooses to prefetch\nthe #1 result for any given search term. Will the #1 ranking site's analytics\npackage report a unique visitor for every time that query is searched? If so,\nthat would be a serious problem for those who rely on analytics.\n\n~~~\njeff18\nIt shouldn't affect Google Analytics and other JavaScript based analytics, but\nfrom the article,\n\n* If this becomes popular it has the potential to skew logs and stats. Consider what happens when a bunch of prefetch requests are made to one of your" -"\n\nDo developers really love beer, or is it just a myth? - dsberkholz\nhttp://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2012/08/03/do-developers-really-love-beer-or-is-it-just-a-myth/\n\n======\njmduke\nOkay, originally I was going to write this off as mere blogspam but I wanted\nto have some fun.\n\nIssues:\n\n1\\. An ordinal scale with subjective verbiage?\n\n2\\. An ordinal scale with no natural middle (there are six options!)?\n\n3\\. An ordinal scale with 'select all that apply'?! How does that even work?\n\n4\\. The percentages add to more than 100%! That's not how percentages work. At\nleast normalize the scale -- or change the Y axis.\n\nThere's nothing wrong with trying to promote your analysis firm (I like\nRedMonk!) but at least try and, you know, have good analysis.\n\n~~~\ndsberkholz\nMaybe you do didn't notice, but it wasn't our survey, and we had nothing to do\nwith its design. I agree that the design is not great, but c'mon, this is just\nfor fun. When you can select multiple answers, the percentages no longer total\n100 across options, only within each option vs all respondents.\n\n~~~\ndsberkholz\ns/do didn't/didn't/\n\n------\npetercooper\nDevelopers also, on average, enjoy sex, recreational activities, and going on\nvacation. And bacon. Never forget the bacon.\n\n~~~\n51432\nI'm" -"\nOur Approach to Privacy - fjk\nhttps://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/\n======\nwyc\nApple sells hardware differentiated by integrated software for premium\npricing. They want to build better and more expensive products through\nsuperior design and quality control. Collecting and analyzing personal data\nisn't the most important thing for their business. They might see more benefit\nby eschewing personal data collection and marketing a privacy-focused message,\nwhich they seem to be doing.\n\nIn contrast, Google and Facebook are companies that sell advertising. The\nvalue they can offer to publishers and advertisers completely relies on how\nwell they know their users. Their competitive moat involves collection of\nproprietary data to continuously improve their products. These are clear\nincentives to be sticky and greedy with your information, but also to keep it\nprivate and proprietary for their own sake.\n\nWith these incentives in mind, I more readily trust Apple when it says that it\nwill not collect my data compared to data conglomerates, and Apple hasn't done\nanything to aggressively betray that idea in its history (to my knowledge).\nCombined with the technical security advantages of iOS, I'm inclined to\nbelieve Apple products to be the least-bad option for the security-minded\ntoday.\n\n~~~\nmirimir\nI do" -"\n\nAsk HN: Redesign after HN critique (instant \"coming soon\" pages app) - weirdcat\n\nHi everyone,

Last Thursday I asked HN for a review of my web app for creating instant \"coming soon\" pages. The response was great -- you guys really, really didn't like it (and deservedly so). :)

* Here's the original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2123228

* This is how it looked before: http://soonhere.com/original.html

* Here's how it looks now: http://soonhere.com

It's obviously still a work in progress (there are still some issues, especially with IE, the interface needs polishing, there's no help etc.) but the main functionality is there.

Some stats:

* The original thread got 5 upvotes and 5 comments (not counting mine);

* The site got 150 visitors on Thursday and 30 on Friday (40% from the US, 20% from the UK -- half of that from London -- and 4% from Canada);

* Of those, 5 visitors created an account (1 or 2 with email addresses that looked real).

I'd like to thank nudge, komlenic, SHOwnsYou (I used your first instinct idea after all), pacifika and dlsay for their comments in the original thread.

Now -- before I spend more time on this instead of other projects I have lined up, I'd like to find out if the" -"\nHacking Work Manifesto - DanielRibeiro\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8xiRGrVgbE&feature=share\n======\nColinWright\nClever video. Artistic, compelling.\n\nDreadful, dreadful, dreadful presentation. Hated it with a passion. It wasted\n3 minutes of my life reading the same text as was presented in a difficult to\nread font, with distracting effects, no doubt to make it difficult to read so\nI'd have to listen to the droning monologue.\n\nI wish people would learn to present well and stop wasting the time of\neveryone who pays attention. They talk about tools holdingyou back and wasting\nyour time. Ineffective presentations prevent your message from getting to the\ntarget, wasting their time and yours.\n\nEven worse, I went to the lunk-to site - \\- and\nmy first click took me to a \"not found here\" page. More wasted time." -"\n\nLeading Civil Rights Groups Just Sold Out on Net Neutrality - poolpool\nhttp://www.republicreport.org/2014/leading-civil-rights-groups-just-sold-out-on-net-neutrality/\n\n======\nsamtalks\nThese groups seem more and more out of touch with the public that they\npurportedly serve. Just look at the outcry over their attempt to manipulate\nthe objective merit-based criteria for NYC's Specialized high schools.\n[http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_3_nyc-specialized-\nhigh-s...](http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_3_nyc-specialized-high-\nschools.html)\n\nWhile there is a critical need for better racial diversity at the schools, to\ntry to 'fix' the problem at the 8th grade level (when it's usually too late)\nnot only seems like a pure PR play, but it also hurts the thousands of\nsacrificing low income students who are currently getting accepted into these\nschools.\n\nCivil rights in this country needs a disruptive reboot.\n\n------\njaekwon\nI'm not a member on any of these groups but I did find one on facebook &\nmessaged them." -"\nFormer FBI General Counsel Jim Baker Chooses Encryption over Backdoors - hsnewman\nhttps://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/10/former_fbi_gene.html\n======\noctosphere\nThis is why Tor and onionland is a lawless wild west. All so that journalists\ncan report and trade documents, and so that repressive regimes can't easily\ncensor access to news and information. This is the _cost_ of encryption: you\nget all sorts of scoundrels in the mix in the name of privacy and security for\nthe masses. Some might say this _cost_ is too high: that scoundrels are\nrunning rampant and won't stop their criminal actions. But without this we get\na broken backdoored Internet where no such privacy/security exists and could\nactually cause _more_ damage to society since spying would be rampant.\n\n------\nmikece\nNot to mention that for counter-intelligence the clues aren't the contents of\na message but who is contacting whom, when, how often, and from where, most\nall of which can be determined from network traffic monitoring even if the\ncontents of the message can't be read. In fact, if someone who shouldn't be\ncontacting someone in China/Middle East/etc is doing so using encrypted data,\ngetting a search warrant should be easier. Requiring back-doors to encryption\nis just laziness on" -"\nThe Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution (2002) [pdf] - lainon\nhttp://msl1.mit.edu/ESD10/docs/darknet5.pdf\n======\nsillysaurus3\nThe scariest project I've ever seen is OpenBazaar. It's a decentralized\nmarketplace. It does for physical things what Napster did for music. Not the\nbest analogy, since you have to pay for the things, but it's not far off.\n\nRight now they only sell trinkets, like sunglasses. But both the founders are\nformer spooks. They live in fairfax, 20min from Langley. And they're adding\nTor and Tails support in the next release.\n\nThe implications are massive and disturbing. 13yos will be able to buy heroin.\nIt's not just breathless speculation. I probably would've done something\nsimilar, not to use it, but just to see if I could. You do that kind of stuff\nall the time as a faux-edgy kid. And it's easy for kids to get bitcoin from\nATMs. I don't even want to think about what will happen in groups.\n\nI'm trying to keep quiet and see what happens with the project. But all the\ndarknet markets are apparently dead right now. It will either be one of the\nmost empowering or damaging pieces of technology. Tor and Amazon had a baby\nand" -"\nCan AI Become Conscious? - MindGods\nhttps://cacm.acm.org/news/244846-can-ai-become-conscious/fulltext\n======\n_Microft\nI can not _not_ think about J. Schmidhuber's thoughts on consciousness\nwhenever the topic comes up:\n\n _As we interact with the world to achieve goals, we are constructing internal\nmodels of the world, predicting and thus partially compressing the data\nhistory we are observing. If the predictor /compressor is a biological or\nartificial recurrent neural network (RNN), it will automatically create\nfeature hierarchies, lower level neurons corresponding to simple feature\ndetectors similar to those found in human brains, higher layer neurons\ntypically corresponding to more abstract features, but fine-grained where\nnecessary. Like any good compressor, the RNN will learn to identify shared\nregularities among different already existing internal data structures, and\ngenerate prototype encodings (across neuron populations) or symbols for\nfrequently occurring observation sub-sequences, to shrink the storage space\nneeded for the whole (we see this in our artificial RNNs all the time). Self-\nsymbols may be viewed as a by-product of this, since there is one thing that\nis involved in all actions and sensory inputs of the agent, namely, the agent\nitself. To efficiently encode the entire data history through predictive\ncoding, it will profit from creating some sort" -"\n\nAnother lovely Google Chrome ad - Extensions - yanw\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ryTLrgTbI\n\n======\nelblanco\nThey really only need to show one thing, the Google translate extension. I\nhave it set to automatic now and I often don't even realize I'm looking at a\npage that's not originally in English. That's some serious Star Trek universal\ntranslator business going on right there.\n\n~~~\nandyking\nIt's not perfect. Whenever I go on a page in Scottish Gaelic, it says \"this\npage is in Irish - would you like to translate it?\" That could cause some\ntrouble.\n\nThe languages are admittedly similar and there's some level of mutual\ncomprehension, but they're not similar enough for Google's translator to work\nacross both - it emits gibberish when you click \"yes\".\n\n~~~\nelblanco\nI have to admit, I do not spend much time on Gaelic (Scottish or Irish) sites.\n\nI've noticed that it's support for East Asian languages is also pretty bad.\nBut Romance languages, German and Arabic are pretty amazing.\n\n------\nfrou_dh\nI'll be grouchy and say I'm put off keeping a lot of the Chrome extensions I\ninstall because they want to plant their brash ugly icons (that apparently\ncan't be toggled or collapsed) on" -"\nThat man who \u2018deleted his entire company\u2019 with a line of code? It was a hoax - empressplay\nhttp://www.pcworld.com/article/3057235/data-center-cloud/that-man-who-deleted-his-entire-company-with-a-line-of-code-it-was-a-hoax.html\n======\ntamana\nCan someone explain how this would win him customers? \"Oh yeah, let's get\nWebHosting with that idiot who trolled ServerFault. He seems like a reliable\nand professional fellow.\"\n\n~~~\ncmurf\nWhat about the $700 juicer that doesn't juice, it uses juice packs, which are\nso bad at preservation the juice can expire, so the whole point of the juicer\nis to scan a QR code to know if the juice is expired because presumably the\nuser can't read an expiration date, and then denies using the expired pack?\nPeople will still buy that ridiculous thing. Same thing here.\n\n~~~\npkroll\nI was so hoping you were joking. A quick search and yep, that's a real thing.\nHopefully not a well selling thing, but that it exists at all is depressing.\n\n------\noconnor663\nThe comments on the original StackOverflow post said the same thing. Sounds\nlike a lot of articles got written without reading the whole thread." -"\nRemembering Sydney Goldstein, Founder of City Arts and Lectures - chmaynard\nhttps://datebook.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/sydney-goldstein-founder-of-city-arts-lectures-dies-at-73\n======\necabraser\nBelated gratitude to Sydney Goldstein for the brilliant insight, impeccably\nand consistently implemented, that great conversation enriches the cultural\nand intellectual lives of all who listen- and she enabled us to listen in to\nsome of the most fascinating conversations ever. I got hooked on City Arts and\nLectures- and did my best to hook others, too- that was easy. We take our\ncultural riches, and those who labor to bestow them, for grated far too often.\nThank you Sydney from a city to whom you gave so much." -"\nShow HN: I made a minimalist spaced repetition tool - mvind\nhttp://memordo.com/launch\n======\nmvind\nCreator here. As a University student I was struggling a lot with the huge\namount of information I needed to remember for my courses. I started using\nspaced repetition (Anki) and it worked great! I enthusiastically shared this\nmethod with my family but they got overwhelmed by the complexity of the Anki\ninterface and all the options. I wanted to change that. So I built memordo. I\nfocused on creating a minimalist but still productive interface for creating\nmemory cards that supports image, latex, code and clozes.\n\nI have already received some feedback from the HN community and I would to\nhear what you guys think again. Your feedback has proven invaluable as I have\nalready gotten paid users onboard.\n\nThanks for reading!" -"\nBlack Swan Events - simonpure\nhttps://danco.substack.com/p/black-swan-events?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0MTM5Nzg1LCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMzY2MDgsIl8iOiI5R21UeiIsImlhdCI6MTU4NTQ5MjA2NCwiZXhwIjoxNTg1NDk1NjY0LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItODYyMyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.RMd2JQv4ETeqg-LZ_LIppo6gfZY-NIpkSvukYVYbO_Q\n======\nzenlot\nN.N. Taleb repeated many times already that COVID-19 is not a Black Swan\nevent. Author of the article is just a con artist. This should be flagged.\n\n~~~\npixl97\nThe author of this article did not say that COVID-19 was a BSE. They stated\nthe jobless claims were.\n\n~~~\nzenlot\nYou're missing the point.\n\n------\nalpineidyll3\nThe only thing worse than Taleb is dollar store imitation Taleb.\n\nGet this armchair stats newsletter ad off the frontpage plz.\n\n~~~\nyawboakye\nDisclaimer: I didn't read the article because I had a sense it will be a\nrehash of Dr. Taleb's work. That said I'm interested in your criticism of the\nman (or his work instead?). I've read Taleb's volume and found them\nconvincing. They're well argued and pull from several sources (history being a\nbig part, which appeals to me a lot as a history buff). Antifragile is up\nthere with the best book I read and has merited a yearly re-read.\n\n~~~\nalpineidyll3\nTaleb has made a career out of popularizing common financial statistics with\nhistorical flavor. He usually presents himself as a polymath/oracle in this\nwriting although he has never developed any" -"\nIntel announces Cascade Lake Xeons: 48 cores and 12-channel memory per socket - rbanffy\nhttps://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/intel-announces-cascade-lake-xeons-48-cores-and-12-channel-memory-per-socket/\n======\nSantiagoElf\nDesperate move by Intel. They are stuck with Cascade Lake until 2021, when\ntheir 'new' architecture will be available. In order this Xeon to be under\n300W TDP, they disabled the Hyper Threading and when they benchmark vs AMD\nEpyc they disabled AMD's SMT. Just wow.\n\n~~~\neinr\nNot only that, but they also apparently recompiled Linpack with the Intel\ncompiler -- which is notorious for favoring Intel chips -- before running the\nbenchmarks. Some really shady stuff going on here.\n\n~~~\ngeezerjay\nOn the other hand, these shady practices are a testament to AMD's technical\nsuperiority, as the incumbent is showing himself to be very desperate to react\nalthough it has absolutely no answer to AMD's new line of products.\n\n~~~\nKoshkin\nAMD does not have techinal superiority, as Intel cores have better single-\nthread performance. Look at the recent low-end i3-8100 - it is an amazing\nchip.\n\n~~~\napi\nSingle-threaded performance is a toss up and depends on work load. Overall AMD\nbeats them on price/performance and multithreaded performance, which matter\nmore for everything but some games and a few not" -"\n\nAsk HN: What is bioinformatics? - jozi9\n\n\n======\ndalke\nWhat more do you want beyond what the first few web search hits gives you for\nthat question? One of which is\n[http://www.ebi.ac.uk/luscombe/docs/imia_review.pdf](http://www.ebi.ac.uk/luscombe/docs/imia_review.pdf).\nOr what's on\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics)\n? Or the 2001 paper titled \"What is bioinformatics? A proposed definition and\noverview of the field\"? See\n[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11552348](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11552348)\n\nWithout knowing what you know it's hard to say anything more helpful than\nthose.\n\nEdit: Looking at your HN history, I see you have asked a lot of questions -\none per day for the last month - with topics like \"Who's doing some c64\nstuff?\", \"CoffeeScript or ClojureScript for writing a game in JS?\", \"Best\nserver log viewer for Mac?\", and the statement \"We're planning to release a\nproduct for Agile/Scrum professionals, magnetic, erasable story cards that you\ncan use on your Kanban whiteboards.\"\n\nI get the feeling, perhaps wrongly, that you are using HN as your personal\nadvice board, rather than learning how to research things yourself.\n\n~~~\njozi9\nWhat do you mean by personal advice board?\n\n~~~\ndalke\nWhat do you think it means?\n\n~~~\njozi9\nOk, maybe I'm in a mid-life crysis and can't decide what to do. I go and" -"\nWhat The Sleep Habits of Famous Writers Reveal About Their Productivity - angelohuang\nhttp://www.fastcompany.com/3026741/work-smart/what-the-sleep-habits-of-famous-writers-reveal-about-their-productivity?partner=rss&utm_content=bufferff287&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer\n======\nsocrates1998\nThis is interesting, but generally meaningless.\n\nStudying successful people doesn't reveal secrets.\n\nIt's the problem of induction. There are probably tons of unsuccessful writers\nthat have similar habits and write a ton of horrible writing.\n\n~~~\nNursie\nThis sort of article also seems to pander to a certain sort of personal\ncontrol-freakery - \"if I just change this one more thing about myself, then\nI'll be truly successful!\"\n\n------\numjames\nWould love to see this for notable programmers. Don't know if the data is\navailable for their wake-up times.\n\nWould also love to see how many of these writers/programmers took naps during\nthe day, at what time, and for how long.\n\n------\nsukuriant\nOkay, so I'm basically seeing that 9am is a pretty good time to wake up; and\nif you like to wake up earlier, that's good too?\n\nThis is still a very small sample of people.\n\n------\nWalterSear\nWhat did it reveal?" -"\n\nAre Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics? - ig1\nhttp://blog.awesomezombie.com/2010/12/are-posterous-fudging-visitor-statics.html\n\n======\nrantfoil\nOur focus is on building the best product. It so happens to be that we are\naware of the issue and recommend that you use Google Analytics for deeper\ninsight into visitors and views.\n\nHere is a bit of how-the-sausage is made, but you wouldn't believe how much of\na negative response we got from existing users once we went to a fully\nJavaScript analytics system. So by sheer volume of user input we made the\ndecision to return to the original http request method of counting views.\n\nWe are continuing to look at ways to improve this system, possibly with\nMixpanel.\n\n~~~\nig1\nDo you not think the page view stats are completely misleading your users ?\n\nThere's absolutely no indication on Posterous that bots are likely responsible\nfor thousands of the page views shown (which given the long tail nature of\nPosterous I imagine we're talking about the majority of the page views here\nfor a lot of users).\n\nOne user even reported that GA was showing 14 visitors while Posterous was\nshowing 9316:\n\n[http://adamriggins.com/posterous-post-views-and-google-\nanaly...](http://adamriggins.com/posterous-post-views-and-google-analytics-\ndis)\n\nWhenever Posterous has given a response the focus has been on" -"\nNatural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence [pdf] - haltingproblem\nhttps://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf\n======\nbarli\nI'm a Ukrainian jew.. Good topic :) Are you jewish?\n\n~~~\nhaltingproblem\nNot jewish, interested in the variations amongst individuals and groups of the\nhuman race. I have worked with a number of Ashkenazi Jews in multiple fields\nand have been astonished at the overwhelming proportion (relative to\npopulation). There have been many cultural explanations of the phenomenon\n(e.g. Talmudic education) which I find unconvincing. Genetic selection\nsupported by hundreds of years of cultural practices and socio-political\nconstraints seems most plausible.\n\nQ: are other populations where similar phenomena have played out?" -"\nVirtualBox hotfix now available for OS X 10.8.2 problem - isaacsu\nhttps://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/10965#comment:21\n======\nmitchellh\nLet me go over the anatomy of the actual bug, to the best of my understanding,\nso that people can better understanding what is going on here. Note that I'm\nthe Vagrant creator, not a VirtualBox hacker, not a kernel hacker (though I've\nhad my fair share of both in the past few years).\n\nThere is a feature of Intel CPUs called VT-x extensions. Without going into\ndetail: VT-x is set of features built natively into some intel processors to\nimprove virtualization. Any recent desktop/laptop Intel processor has these.\nFor reasons unknown to me, these extensions are typically disabled by default.\nVirtualBox, VMWare, Parallels all contain code to enable these automatically\nfor you. Enabling VT-x extensions requires ring-0 (kernel level) API calls.\nTherefore, it is up to the kernel extension to enable these.\n\nMac OS X 10.6 and greater supports native kernel APIs for doing this[1]. Prior\nto 10.6, you'd have to directly query the CPUs and modify CPU registers\nyourself, and icky business prone to some massive failure. Native APIs are\npretty nice. In Darwin (the OS X kernel), these APIs are `host_vmxon` and\n`host_vmxoff`." -"\nEvolving Lacing Patterns for Bicycle Wheels - alexggordon\nhttp://master.matsemann.com/\n======\nmatsemann\nWow, cool to see my thesis here! I posted a picture of it [1] to r/bicycling\nyesterday titled _I managed to make my thesis in computer science be about\nbicycles!_ , and it got some traction. I answered some questions in the\ndiscussion, if anyone is interested.\n\n[1]: [https://redd.it/3p8hua](https://redd.it/3p8hua)\n\n~~~\nradarsat1\nCan I ask a question, please don't take it the wrong way, as I find\noptimisation a very interesting topic, and in fact it was also the subject of\nmy thesis. However: How is this a computer science thesis, and not a\nmechanical engineering thesis? I'm just curious how you managed to pass a\nwheel-design topic through a CompSci program. Did you have a co-supervisor in\nengineering? Or does your school have a combined CS/engineering program?\n\n~~~\nmaaaats\nIt's really a thesis about EMO-algorithms and how to use them to optimize\nreal-life problems. The wheels just happen to be the chosen _application_ of\nthe optimization, if you get what I mean?\n\n~~~\nradarsat1\nAh ok, I was wondering if that was the case. Wasn't really clear from the way\nyou presented it. Can you summarize your results regarding" -"\nRate my Startup: SnapBill - Automated recurring billing - qixxiq\nHey guys,

We're a small team from South Africa that have finally decided our startup is ready for release (been in private beta here for a while).

* Our main focus is on creating Services, and selling them. Once you add a new service to your account, we'll automatically generate signup forms (based on custom fields you specify) and deal with all the monthly invoicing.

* We do provide standard invoicing (ala Freshbooks/co) but its not our focus at all and is purely intended for the once-off invoices recurring billing companies need every so often.

* We only support PayPal for automated payments at the moment, but more support is coming soon - promise!

I'd love to hear any thoughts or comments anyone has.

http://www.snapbill.com\n======\npetervandijck\nI am reading the homepage but don't understand why I would use this.\n\nSentences like this don't help: \"SnapBill is an online invoicing and billing\nsystem with service provisioning capabilities.\" Compare with the writing here:\n\n\nYour explanation here (\"Our main focus is on creating Services, and selling\nthem.\") isn't really clear either. Find a good way to explain that main focus\nin 2 sentences, and put that on" -"\nTim Gowers replies to Elsevier's open letter - ColinWright\nhttp://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/elseviers-open-letter-point-by-point-and-some-further-arguments\n======\nVivtek\nI like the way the open letter says that Elsevier supports open access to\npublic research when Elsevier is actually lobbying against open access to\npublic research. (e.g. )\n\n------\nrevelation\nAll that needs to happen is that public research grants have to require you to\nmake your paper available free of charge through a suitable system. Such a\nsystem is obviously trivial to provide on the internet.\n\nThen we can save the time having to deal with retarded \"open letters\" or\ncreating petitions like servants.\n\n~~~\ntylerneylon\nThere's a bill that could do this - FRPAA = Federal Research Public Access\nAct:\n\n\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nThe solution to this is sadly to revolt, en masse. Which is to say the\njournals cannot exist without papers, and so institutions which are providing\nfree access to their academics papers are effectively revolting. Elsevier will\nnot survive the transition but I do not believe it will be missed either.\n\nAt this moment in time, this instant, there is an opportunity to create an\nalternative to Elsevier and its journals. New journals with a reasonable\npolicy and non-extortionate pricing. If the" -"\nThe Peter Principle is a joke taken seriously. Is it true? - cirrus-clouds\nhttp://timharford.com/2018/08/the-peter-principle-is-a-joke-taken-seriously-is-it-true/\n======\nsofon\nReally interesting article!\n\nThe Peter principle states that \"every employee tends to rise to his level of\nincompetence\". The article cites an example from Sales teams. That it's the\nhighest performing sales people that are promoted to sales team managers, and\nthey don't perform well as managers (team performance drops).\n\nThey then talk about solutions, such are promoting people at random.\n\nBut it seems like at least part of the problem in endemic in our view of\norganisations. People often want management positions because they are paid\nmore, are more secure, or have more power. Maybe if we shifted our view of\nmanagement as \"just being a different skill set\" and not always being higher\npaid then we'd find people without the required skills wouldn't try and obtain\nthose positions and would focus on what they are good at.\n\n~~~\nmasklinn\n> But it seems like at least part of the problem in endemic in our view of\n> organisations. People often want management positions because they are paid\n> more, are more secure, or have more power. Maybe if we shifted our view" -"\nAsk HN: How do you define a toxic workplace? - ANPEQ-1\nI've seen a lot of people talking about how non-toxic/worker friendly workplaces can be a strategic advantage, and I tend to believe it - but I'd be curious as to what you folks define as 'toxic'.

Is it diverse demographic representation? If so, what's the right mix?

Is it just high retention?

Is it a good Glassdoor rating?\n======\ntlb\n\"A toxic workplace is a workplace that is marked by significant drama and\ninfighting, where personal battles often harm productivity\". More at\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_workplace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_workplace)\n\n------\nBlakestr\nWhen you are in love with the work but don't want to go into the workplace\nbecause of the people who are there.\n\n------\n943_924\nGlassdoor has made themselves next to meaningless since they'll take money\nfrom anyone who wants their bad reviews taken down and honestly we need a new\nplayer in the area who actually cares about transparency over taking bribes.\n\n------\ntwoquestions\nIn addition to what others have said, it could also be where your're evaluated\non non-work factors. Nepotism is the classic case, but it's still very\nfrustrating when your status at work is decided on factors that aren't\ndisclosed to you.\n\nOr" -"\nLayoffs and Loyalty in a Liquid Valley - tim_sw\nhttps://medium.com/@louisgray/layoffs-and-loyalty-in-a-liquid-valley-4b42bd5e26d7\n======\nhwstar\nYou need to be prepared at all times. You never know when (not if) they are\ngoing to come for you. I lasted 25 years and 11 months at one company before\nthey came for me. (In hindsight, I should have quit long before the company\ngot into such dire straits, but it was an easy commute, and the co-workers\nwere great people to work with)\n\nLayoffs in the tech industry will happen. An emergency fund or F.U. money is\nrequired to deal with it. Once you are over 50 like me, you need to be in a\nposition financially to live several years without a paycheck because it could\ntake years for the job market dynamics to change and become more favourable\nfor the employee.\n\nDuring the time you are out of work for a long stretch take some time to learn\nsome new skills, contributing to open source software is an excellent way to\ndo this.\n\nYou must always place your interests ahead of the company you are currently\nworking for, the company is not going to place your interests ahead of it's\nown. You are" -"\n\nLots of Ideas But Have Little Resource To Start Project - AngeloAnolin\n\nI have a lot of ideas for projects which I believe has the potential to hit big on the market. The only thing I lack is the resources and the drive to actually starting them off. Would anyone be willing enough to collaborate with me in turning some of these ideas into reality?\n======\nmindcrime\nAre your ideas software related? If so, what resources do you need? Your\nprofile says you're a software developer, so presumably you have coding\nskills. You're logged onto HN, so I think we can safely assume you own a\ncomputer. Compilers, editors, IDEs, VCSs, databases, frameworks and libraries\ngalore are freely available as open source... Cheap VPS servers can be had for\nsomething like, what, 10, 20 bucks per month; and Amazon AWS makes ridiculous\namounts of computing power available \"on demand\" in affordable increments.\n\nI think you'd get more mileage out of posting a request like this on HN if you\nat least started building something and then got to a point of maybe saying\n\"Hey, I've got this prototype, but to take it to the next level I need\nsomebody with" -"\nAsk HN: Are Facebook keeping data on deleted accounts? - jimnotgym\nI deleted my Facebook account some time ago, maybe 2 years. I did it with the service where you ask them to delete everything. Recently I had a need to use Facebook again. From a new computer I attempted to register an account, to find I got an immediate ban! I really did need to join this group, so I used my work computer to create an account from a work email. It worked ok, so I added it to my phone app, and I got an immediate ban. I certainly never had this phone when I was on Facebook before. I was on 4g at the time, so it was nothing to do with IP addresses. I don't understand how this is possible unless Facebook withheld data about me after deletion. I also don't understand why they banned me, do they ban people who leave and rejoin? Has anyone else had this. I also note that 'due to Coronavirus' you can't appeal. This raises the issue of how Facebook can become a service that society relies on whilst arbitrarily denying access to certain users with no right of" -"\nAre Atheists Genetic Mutants-A Product of Recent Evolution? - Melchizedek\nhttp://www.unz.com/article/are-atheists-genetic-mutants-a-product-of-recent-evolution/\n======\noldandtired\nSince atheism has been around for at least 4000 years, I don't think they can\nattribute it to \"bad\" genes. It is a choice by people to believe in a god or\ngods or no gods.\n\nThe funny thing I find is that intelligence is not an indicator of whether one\nbelieves in or does not believe in a god, or gods.\n\nFor example, there are those who were believers in Jesus Christ as God and\nhave come to the position that there is no god. These are at all levels of\nintelligence. There are those who didn't believe in a god and now argue\nstrongly for Jesus Christ as God. Again these are at all levels of\nintelligence.\n\nThere are those who fit in the autistic spectrum and sit on both sides.\n\nWhether or not you are an atheist boils down to what you choose, it is not\nyour genetics or intelligence. Based on the evidence that is placed before me,\nI have come strongly to believe that there is God, that He is Creator and that\nHe is Jesus Christ. How other people see and" -"\nAsk HN: Suddenly afraid of flying, not sure why or what to do about it - throwaway713\nHi HN,

I thought I'd post here about a weird issue that's cropped up that maybe someone can offer advice on.

For some reason, I have suddenly become terrified of flying. I had a few flights this past week, and for the entire duration of each flight, I had intense fear, anxiety, a strong sense of doom, and I felt like I was going to throw up.

I have no clue what triggered this. I've never been afraid of flying before. My best guess is that it's either all the news about the 737 MAX or the fact that I work at a large tech company and see the huge number of bugs that even really good software engineers make.

I've flown frequently ever since I was young, and I currently average about 8-10 flights per year for work, vacation, or visiting family. I have another flight coming up in a week and am tempted to take a $400 loss just because the thought of getting on a plane again is making me feel sick. I've always heard that the best way to eliminate a fear is" -"\n\nAsk HN: What do we do with an iPad app built on a recently shutdown Google API? - thegrossman\n\nMy coworker and I have spent the last few months building an iPad app on top of the Google News API, which has just yesterday been slated to shutdown: http://code.google.com/apis/newssearch/

We were motivated to create the app based on a lack of quality \"hard news\" sources (for lack of a better term) on the iPad. There is no shortage of \"social\" news apps such as Flipboard and Pulse, and there exist a slew of quality RSS readers (Reeder is indispensable to me). But I also crave conventional, un-sexy, non-web2.0 journalism; a simple reporting of the news of the day.

I used to spend obscene chunks of my day parked on CNN.com, click the refresh button incessantly... before the quality of their reporting diminished. And while there are iPad apps for individual news outlets (the NY Times, CNN, etc all have their own apps), the great thing about Google News is the fact that they aggregate content from news outlets around the word, from the Times to Al Jazeera to my tiny local newspaper.

Google News doesn't have a spectacular web interface, especially when accessed" -"\n\nHow to get Bitcoin from the early adopters to the early majority - andrewoons\nhttp://andrewoons.com/post/93339555434/how-to-get-bitcoin-from-the-early-adopters-to-the-early\n\n======\ncbeach\nI think social trading apps / websites are the way forward - get friends\nhelping each other with the learning curve, and P2P transactions well away\nfrom centralised exchanges.\n\nI built CoinTouch to find friends of friends that trade crypto currency. It's\nbeen live since February and has 1700 users now.\n\nThere's a critical mass on CoinTouch such that most new signups see orders\nwithin their (two degree) social network. FB and Google+ are supported, and\nall transactions are P2P. No fees.\n\n[https://www.cointouch.com/](https://www.cointouch.com/)\n\nFeedback welcome.\n\n------\nhigherpurpose\nIt's the other way around :)\n\n~~~\nandrewoons\nChanged. Thanks for pointing it out :)!" -"\nThe P programming language - msoad\nhttps://github.com/p-org/P\n======\nqznc\nFinally, a proper \"P\". I only had P'' and P# on my list.\n[http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/one_letter_proglangs.html](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/one_letter_proglangs.html)\n\n~~~\nklibertp\nNice list! There's also F* under \"F\": [https://www.fstar-\nlang.org/](https://www.fstar-lang.org/)\n\n~~~\nqznc\nThanks! Added that as well.\n\n------\nacjohnson55\nThis sounds a lot like the actor model (e.g. Erlang, Elixir, Scala + Akka).\nIt's a great primitive for concurrency and distributed computing.\n\nIs there a big difference here, or is this basically just an alternative\nlanguage for that model?\n\n~~~\ntekacs\nWell at the top of the manual, the list of constraints[1] reads the same as\nthe actor model[2] (it explicitly uses local state ('store') to model\nbehaviour changes), with the word 'machine' substituted for 'actor'.\n\nIf anything it reads like the restricted form of the actor model produced by\nusing only Erlang's gen_fsm or Akka's FSM mixin.\n\n(to be clear, using a restricted form with more constraints is a great thing -\neven better here, where one of the domains they're serving seems to be fairly\nrestricted execution environments)\n\n[1]:\n\n \n \n > Each operation either updates the local store, sends messages to other machines, or creates new machines.\n > In P, a send operation is non-blocking;" -"\nThe highest ROI way to increase signups: Make a minimal homepage (Guest Post) - instakill\nhttp://andrewchen.co/2013/07/29/the-highest-roi-way-to-increase-signups-make-a-minimal-homepage-guest-post/\n======\nkrapp\nWhenever I see a minimal homepage with nothing but a glib sentence and a\nsignup form I just assume this is a service that only cares about getting my\ndata and bleeding me like a turnip.\n\nI understand that it might work and why it might work and yes, a minimalist\nlayout gets the clutter out of the way and comes straight to the point but\npersonally it's not a model that inspires confidence.\n\nHow well would it work if I walked into a store, and they insisted on having\nme agree to a purchase before I even got to see what it is they sell? Much\nless a tiny store whose interior was nothing but a blank white room with a\ncredit card machine inside, that just said \"The Best Thing Ever\" over the\ndoor, and nothing else?\n\n... actually that _would_ probably work and that's what annoys me.\n\n------\npushkargaikwad\nJust like Manish, I too do not agree with what Andrew is saying. It is\nridiculous to compare DropBox, Linkedin, Quora, pinterest to the home page of\nsome unknown startup." -"\nEnglish rivers polluted by neonicotinoids, first tests reveal - Red_Tarsius\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/13/english-rivers-polluted-by-powerful-insecticides-first-tests-reveal\n======\njesperlang\nThis reminds me of trophic cascades and e.g the unintuitive link that killing\nwolfs affects riverbeds:\n\n[https://shadowproof.com/2014/02/20/trophic-cascade-how-\nwolve...](https://shadowproof.com/2014/02/20/trophic-cascade-how-wolves-\nchange-rivers/)\n\nIt like we can't understand complex systems very well. Almost everything we do\nseem to have to have major unintended consequences. We see this over and over\nagain, we have to abandon the \"as cheap and fast as possible\" thinking !\n\n~~~\nprojectileboy\nFWIW, this is why some people have fears around GMO foods. It's not that they\ncan't appreciate the benefits, it's because they fear that we're testing\nsystems in production that we don't fully understand.\n\n~~~\ntstactplsignore\nYou can say that about all agriculture ever even more than you can about GMOs.\nWe understand exact, precise genetic changes that have a much higher standards\nof testing than all of the genetic changes we've made to food using\ntraditional techniques (mutagenesis, cross-breeding, selection) which modify\ndozens or hundreds of genes in highly unpredictable ways. We should be careful\nabout all agricultural changes in a way proportional to what changes we made\nin the system, and not classify using modern science as always \"too scary\" to\nrely on." -"\n\nHeroku down for production and staging apps - julioademar\nhttps://status.heroku.com/incidents/554\n\n======\njulioademar\nI still dream of the day they'll let us set up different availability zones.\nNot that I'm sure this wouldn't occur, mind you.\n\n~~~\nsync\nDynos already run in different availability zones:\n[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/production-\ncheck](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/production-check)\n\nYou can take that a step further by running dynos in the European (eu-west-1)\nregion:\n[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions)\n\n~~~\njulioademar\nThat's still in Beta though.\n\n~~~\nkxu\nI'm running a production webapp since May on the Heroku EU region, not a\nscratch since then. It's a Beta suited for production apps since February:\n\n\"Beta Testers,\n\nHeroku Europe is ready to begin running your production apps!\n\nCreate an app in the region:\n\n \n \n $ heroku create --region eu\n \n\nThen add add-ons, deploy, and scale as usual. Please note we're still adding\ncapacity in this area, so contact us if you expect to run more than 30 dynos\nor do more than 500 reqs/second on any app in Europe.\n\nAs always, private betas should be considered confidential. Please don\u2019t\ntweet, blog, or talk about this feature publicly until we announce it\nourselves.\n\nDocumentation:\n[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions)\nQuestions & feedback: eu-beta@heroku.com\n\nBest,\n\nThe Heroku Team\"\n\n~~~\nrichardwhiuk\n\"Please don\u2019t tweet, blog, or" -"\nDo Not use namecheap.com for any large site or important domain - highclass\nNamecheap.com seems popular for a lot of tech companies. However, they seem to be not only cheap in price but in management.

I run a forum site with MILLIONS of visitors and about 5,000 TB of traffic per month.\nNamecheap.com suddenly sent me a link warning that they will suspend my domain completely within 24 hours, if I did not delete two problem images (which were inappropriate/troublesome images but in the context of the forum posts, "a very poor attempt at humor").\nI deleted the images and avoided being suspended, but the way they threatened to suspend my domain due to two images was ridiculous. If I missed the warning email or checked my email after 24 hours they would have completely suspended my domain.\nI'm talking about a site with MILLIONS of visitors per month and ten thousands of posts per day, not some small blog.

They may be suitable for some blog, but I can now say to NEVER use them for any enterprise site.\n======\nLorenzoLlamas\nMaybe I missed it, but did someone point to the actual site with \"millions of\nvisitors and 5 PETABYTES of" -"\n\nCommercial CAPTCHA breakers for sale - bct\nhttp://www.lafdc.com/captcha/\n\n======\nhenning\nMany CAPTCHAs are positively pathetic.\n\nAdding little bits of salt-and-pepper noise, light-colored lines, and other\ncutesy antics do nothing.\n\nThe simple fact is that machines are better at recognizing individual letters\nand characters than humans are.\n\n------\nmynameishere\nIt might (obviously) tend to weed out the color blind, but I think these would\nbe hard to crack:\n\n\n\n------\nfar33d\nIsn't the best way to break captchas to offer \"free porn\"? Offer free porn,\nask them to send you their email, respond to a captcha... send out spam about\nthis free porn and bam...\n\nmillions of example images solved.\n\n------\nbct\nI'd love to know what's written below.\n\n~~~\nROFISH\nI can't read Chinese, but I've read some English discussion about how that's\ndone. You know how spam filters 'learn' what is spam and what isn't, this is\nthe same idea. It first splits each letter from the image. Then you create an\nalgorithm that compares the current letter it has to process versus what it\nhas learned. The hard part is that algorithm. You can technically do it with\njust image matching, but it's far better to programmically teach" -"\n\n[Ask HN]How many of you still uses SKYPE? - neoyagami\n\nIm just wondering (with a friend) if all this surveillance over calls and Skype are just method to get stats on "how many people we piss off" if whe tell that we are spying on them. just to end passing a law to make it legal because "not to many people protest on this"

im not from EEUU but this clearly affect me because i sed skype some time ago and now im afraid of just starting it\n======\npearjuice\nIt is non-freedom respecting software so I see no reason why anyone would\nvolunteer to use it." -"\nThe Somali Pirates' Business Model - robg\nhttp://www.undispatch.com/somali-pirates-buisiness-model\n======\nIgorPartola\nAnybody here read Heinlein's \"Citizen of the Galaxy\"? To stop think kind of a\nbusiness, you make it unprofitable. The question is \"how?\"\n\n~~~\nankeshk\nThats actually a very good question. I can think of a few ways to make\npirating unprofitable. Or dangerous. But unfortunately can't think of any non-\nviolent way.\n\n* Equip all the ships with armament. The pirate teams are small in size. So hopefully, the investment in arms wouldn't be a lot to fight them off.\n\n* Turn the table. Offer an insane \"Reward\" to anyone who captures one of the local elders - the people who give anchoring permission.\n\n~~~\nhkuo\nNot sure either of those would work.\n\nI don't think companies would want to spend money for weapons, nor the cost of\ntraining employees to use them, nor the liability of what happens if they are\nused and any ensuing results. They want the police or government to simply\ntake care of it, and they spend no money at all. Unless that happens, it's\nprobably less cost to simply accept piracy as a cost of busienss.\n\nFor the reward to capture or off" -"\n\nSo you've Upgrade to Snow Leopard? Post Dev Feedback Here - whalesalad\n\nThose developing on the mac generally have lots of added libraries and tools... like Fink or MacPorts, different Python or Ruby versions, etc..

In my case, I don't use the base install of Apache and run my own, with mod_wsgi. I also run my own build of MySQL. Because of things like this, I tend to shy away from all of the automated crap (such as the migration tools, and upgrading a point release rather than a fresh install) and I don't think i'm alone. I upgraded my older Macbook Pro to Leopard by formatting and installing fresh, then manually moving data.

Because Snow Leopard is a smaller release and more of a glorified patch or service-pack if you will, I am wondering if I really need to do this. I'd love to get feedback from all the Mac hackers out there who have upgrade to Snow Leopard. What kind of problems have you noticed, if any?\n======\nGreggW\nI just told my wife, \"The next time I want to be an early adopter, just hit me\nuntil I fall to the ground and stay there.\"\n\nI have a bilateral" -"\nShow HN: Request your college application with comments from admissions - tommygibbons46\nhttp://ferpaAccess.com\n======\nbojo\nLack of any information about what is going on with this webpage does not make\nme feel confident about putting my information in there.\n\n~~~\ntommygibbons46\nThat's great feedback bojo, what type of information would you like? I've been\nusing it mostly with friends, so figured I would keep it barebones\n\n~~~\nunholygoat\nIt'd be nice to see an example of what is sent (before it's actually sent) as\nwell as resource links to how it's possible (i.e. Family Educational Rights\nand Privacy Act info).\n\n------\nkidcoder\nMy University (fairly large, big 10) isn't listed, despite all our satellite\ncampuses being there." -"\n\nAsk HN: Coming up with ideas? - jwdunne\n\nI'd like to build a few small but useful apps to build experience and a portfolio outside of my workplace, an area shamefully neglected.

I'm stuck at the first hurdle and I haven't got a clue where to start or what to build first!

Do you have any tips for coming up with ideas?\n======\nmc_hammer\ni usually just get the ideas while im working, from things that suck\n\nneed to write a regex for css parsing... why isnt there a regex generator yet\n\nneed to debug my javascript... why isnt there a repl?\n\nwriting windows 10 hello world,