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How Companies Became People a.k.a. the need to change the 1st US Law - wetzeljohn https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140702111720-20747703-the-power-of-words-change-the-1st-us-law ====== wetzeljohn There is also a petition at [http://wh.gov/lF14K](http://wh.gov/lF14K)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Unix Toolbox - eitland http://cb.vu/unixtoolbox.xhtml ====== eitland > This document is a collection of Unix/Linux/BSD commands and tasks which are > useful for IT work or for advanced users. This is a practical guide with > concise explanations, however the reader is supposed to know what s/he is > doing. Something I bookmarked back in June 2010 :-) ------ masonic Most recent previous submit, 490+ points: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10022729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10022729)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Git Horror Story: Repository Integrity with Signed Commits - alexis-d http://mikegerwitz.com/papers/git-horror-story ====== mitchtbaum 1201 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4007229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4007229) 461 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7827828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7827828) This article reminds me of Schneir's article, [Are you sophisticated enough to recognize an Internet scam?]([https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2003/12/are_you_sop...](https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2003/12/are_you_sophisticate.html)), where he talks about "semantic attacks."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hotmail Adds New Feature "My Friend's Been Hacked" - mjurek http://www.tekgoblin.com/2011/07/16/hotmail-adds-new-feature-my-friends-been-hacked/ ====== drdaeman > Hotmail is also working hard to eliminate accounts that have simple > passwords such as “12345678″ and “password” by increasing security measures > and not allowing simple passwords to be created. Awesome. Not like I use Hotmail, but... So now if someone's password generator just happen to generate "weak" password not containing, for example, a digit (uh, even `openssl rand -base64 12` provides such outputs from time to time) user'll have to step away from usual password generation scheme and create special password just for hotmail.com. Please, for the love of sanity, never ever forbid any passwords (except for too short ones, with a reasonable minimal length). Just freak user out so he'll think twice before using possibly weak password. You'll educate users this way instead of frustrating them. (And never limit maximum length or set of possible characters, except for rare cases where there are technical obstacles requiring to do so - like non-8-bit- safe protocols. If user wants to authenticate with a passpoem, written in runic alphabet — let him have it.) ~~~ hammock Curious, what is your reasoning behind allowing 123456 in order to keep some kind of crazy "random generator" purity, but at the same time requiring a minimum length? Suppose my pw generator randomly generates passwords of different lengths? It seems to me the same operating principle behind why you don't want to limit character selection/order applies to string length as well. ~~~ drdaeman I thought that a minimum limit's there just to ensure sanity of a generator. You can't generally predict how a hash function will behave, but you can certainly define a minimum output length. What I was thinking about, that the restrictions are too strict, and there's a gap between what's secure and what looks secure. I believed that it's generally expected that a password generator would produce passwords of a certain minimal length. At least I considered that nobody would write a generator (intended for a real-world usage) that'd produce, say, 3-character password for some edge case. However, you sound reasonable. This leads us right to the extreme case - should empty passwords be allowed? (Considering that the user will be bugged like hell before letting him to do so.) I should think more about this. ~~~ tiddchristopher I remember creating a blank password on Mac OS9 in grade school. It was clearly a bug that allowed me to do it, because the minimum password length was set to six characters, if I recall correctly. After I set the null password, I couldn't change it, but it worked fine for logging into my account. I was too embarrassed to ask the admin for help, so I was stuck with no password for about two years. ------ cdcarter The people I know who use hotmail these days all love it. Unfortunately an @hotmail.com email address in my field is just instantly regarded as unprofessional and laughable. ~~~ synnik Oh, be serious. I still use my @hotmail.com account extensively. I've had it since before MS bought it, so I think it is more a sign of my longevity online than anything else. Most professional software engineers that I know feel the same way. My experience is that people who judge you by your email tend to be very young and inexperienced software folk. ~~~ carbonx I'm in the same boat as you as far as how long I've been using hotmail. I've been migrating more and more to gmail, but I've got that hotmail account tied to so much shit over the years, I'm not even sure what I'd be losing if I ditched it completely. ------ planb >Hotmail will put the account in recovery mode which will cause a password reset. This sounds like it could be easily abused. How will the password reset work if the hotmail address is the only one a user has? What will he need to do to reclaim access to his account? ~~~ contextfree in comments to the original blog post, the PM for this feature mentions that the "my friend's been hacked" reports aren't enough by themselves to trigger this, they have to be accompanied by suspicious usage patterns on the alleged hacked account. ------ mathrawka I think that this is a great idea, but there will need to be a few things in place to make it secure enough for use. \- Only friends that communicate "a lot" should be able to report it (and not repeatedly). \- If the account's password was compromised, then the attacker will enter the account recovery flow on next login attempt. So the AR flow will need to ensure that the user is not the attacker (SMS and e-mail that are trusted, based on age and usage, is pretty good). But why not just create a system that will alert the user when a successful login was made from a new device on their account? And include an account lock link in the e-mail, so they can quickly lock their account from anywhere with cell phone access. ------ tshtf I've noticed that Hotmail's spam filtering has improved significantly in the past year or two (I still have an old Hotmail account). It may be 7 years to late to compete with gmail for new customers, but it's nice to see these improvements from Microsoft. ~~~ rodh257 An added benefit of this is Exchange customers can take advantage of what Microsoft has learnt from filtering Hotmails spam by using FOPE (<http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/forefront/cc540243>) as a cloud based spam filter. It's amazing how well it works ------ citricsquid Has anyone ever seen Microsoft confirm a problem with Hotmail _itself_ being "hacked"? I have an account with Hotmail I don't use and haven't done since 2007, I logged in recently to discover it had been sending spam emails. Every single person I know with an active or inactive Hotmail account has the same problem. ~~~ dangrossman I have several old accounts, I just logged into a few and they haven't sent any mails. I have family that use Hotmail and don't get spam from them either. Maybe you and your circle all happened to use some of those other big profile sites (Gawker, Sony, etc.) that have had their e-mails and password lists stolen... ~~~ citricsquid Hm, how strange. I've not used the account for anything other than msn, a google search for it only yields results from 2 forums where I've posted it (in "add your msn" topics) from ~2006 and the password is what was used for a variety of other things at the time, none of which were "hacked", so I always assumed it was the result of an internal Hotmail breach. How strange, maybe it was just me and my friends then. Confirmation bias at work... ------ benologist Summary of a summary of [http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archiv...](http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/07/14/hey- my-friend-s-account-was-hacked.aspx) ------ rocktronica Is this a testament to the innovation of the Hotmail team or the non-savvy of its userbase? Honest question. ~~~ burke Both, really. It's a sort of clever way to deal with a problem that plagues non-savvy users. ------ kaiyi haven't tried this feature yet. and don't expect to try any time in the future either. if my friend is hacked and keeps sending me email, i'll just block that person. ------ Empedocles99 So, they've made it easier for people to launch simple denial of service attacks on hotmail accounts. ------ funkah What if you have a contact who has been hacked and uses Hotmail, but you don't? (This is actually the case for me right now.)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What’s the coolest thing you have built - mraza007 Hi HN, As I’m getting more involved in HN community. I would love to see the coolest side project you have built since this will inspire me others to start building side projects ====== softwaredoug I created one of the most popular Elasticsearch plugins, Elasticsearch Learning to Rank[1], which uses machine learning to optimize search results. HN helped make this happen - I built a 0.1 version for one client (Snagajob). I encountered someone from Wikimedia Foundation on Hacker News who was going to build something similar. We ended up partnering after meeting on Hacker News, and now work together on version 1.0 of Elasticsearch Learning to Rank which ultimately has been used on Wikipedia's search[2]. Wikimedia Foundation ultimately had super deep Elasticsearch internal knowledge which helped tremendously, whereas I mostly worked on building out the docs after the initial prototype[3]. I'm rather proud of the docs as it's a bit of a mini book on Learning to Rank :) [1] - Plugin itself [http://github.com/o19s/elasticsearch-learning-to- rank](http://github.com/o19s/elasticsearch-learning-to-rank) [2] - WMF article on the plugin [https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/10/17/elasticsearch- learning...](https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/10/17/elasticsearch-learning-to- rank-plugin/) [3] - Docs [http://elasticsearch-learning-to- rank.readthedocs.io](http://elasticsearch-learning-to-rank.readthedocs.io) ------ DarrenDev SmartEdit Writer, a desktop app for creative writers. Not a commercial success, though the Microsoft Word add-in does sell a few copies a month. The editing functionality is unique. [https://www.smart-edit.com/Writer/](https://www.smart-edit.com/Writer/) A lesson I've learned is that coolness and commercial success are not tightly connected. You can build something great that users still will not be prepared to pay for. B2B is the way to go, not B2C. ~~~ mraza007 Really good project and looks very similar to word If its okay to share can I ask what technologies did you use ~~~ DarrenDev C#/.Net. I've outlined the tech stack in more detail here (aimed at a non- techie reader): [https://www.smart- edit.com/Blog/Post/TechOverview/](https://www.smart- edit.com/Blog/Post/TechOverview/) ------ fiftyacorn A few years ago I built a virtual cycling platform connecting ANT+ to Google Streetview. It was before the current breed of indoor cycling platforms like trainerroad and zwift. I ended up using it for my own training I regret not trying to market it more, or moving into the virtual cycling space - [https://dzone.com/articles/virtually-cycling-the-alps- with-a...](https://dzone.com/articles/virtually-cycling-the-alps-with-arduino- and-streetview) ------ dchacke I just released my first programming language called Berlin: [http://berlinlang.org](http://berlinlang.org) I had no idea what I was doing but it was super fun. Hopefully it's useful to some. ~~~ mraza007 Oh wow that’s pretty cool. I’m pretty sure you learned alot while doing this project ------ xgenecloud Xmysql, an instant REST API generator for MySQL was a side project which led to XgeneCloud[1] XgeneCloud now generates REST & GraphQL APIs on any SQL Database. Plus there is much more! :) Supported databases : MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQLite, MariaDB & AWS Aurora [1] : [https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud](https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud) ------ mvanga [http://artbuffer.com/](http://artbuffer.com/) I made Artbuffer to create my own wall art without having to spend years learning to paint. I've successfully used it to create my own :-) Some examples: [https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=wslyHCoGjqoA3ZKgsQ_hNAlnshT...](https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=wslyHCoGjqoA3ZKgsQ_hNAlnshT- jt) [https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=-9Wr6aLtgF383zsAWxchXJbt8CW...](https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=-9Wr6aLtgF383zsAWxchXJbt8CWjko) [https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=OuIs3I6vHAyqV- PoMb6EFiRVAFw...](https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=OuIs3I6vHAyqV- PoMb6EFiRVAFwRb5) ------ mkovach I built three cigar box guitars for my son, my father, and myself make from repurposed wood from my son's', my father's and my baby cribs. Coolest computer related thing? I used to run [http://uptime.openacs.org](http://uptime.openacs.org) (which I port from Oracle -> Postgres) and [http://myturl.com](http://myturl.com) (a tinyurl clone written in AOLserver). But as things tend to do, both projects are shutdown. I still find the cigar box guitars the cooler thing. ~~~ potta_coffee Cigar box guitars are really fun and they sound neat! They look like toys but they actually do something. ------ sunnyam Six Degrees of Kanye West, a fun little website that lets you search for a muscical artist to see how closely they're connected to Kanye West through collabs. [https://sixdegreesofkanyewest.com/](https://sixdegreesofkanyewest.com/) I built it back in 2016 and haven't updated it since so newer artists don't show up. ~~~ mraza007 Looks really cool How did you do it since I love music ~~~ sunnyam Thanks! I posted about it in my blog [1] at a very high level. To summarise, I used a Python library called Spotipy to request track information from Spotify and then stored a big list of artists based on who has collaborated with Kanye and built that web outwards. [1] [https://blog.sunnyamrat.com/six-degrees-of-kanye- west/](https://blog.sunnyamrat.com/six-degrees-of-kanye-west/) ------ seanwilson I'm happy with my work on Checkbot, a Chrome extension that checks multiple pages at a time for SEO, speed and security best practices: [https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/) I also wrote up a concise guide on everything the extension checks for and why those checks are important: [https://www.checkbot.io/guide/](https://www.checkbot.io/guide/) I found working on the above solidified by existing knowledge I'd picked up as a web developer and filled in the gaps. It's satisfying to know the extension is helping people identify website problems every day and teaching them tips they didn't know before. Also, I've been wary of what seems like SEO snake-oil advice in the past (like a lot of developers) so it was good to digest all the evidence-based SEO advice I could find and condense it into small actionable tips most developers would agree with. ~~~ mraza007 that's really helpful.Looking forward to use your extension ------ brettkromkamp Contextualise, a (personal and collaborative) knowledge management system: [https://contextualise.dev/](https://contextualise.dev/) It's open source: [https://github.com/brettkromkamp/contextualise](https://github.com/brettkromkamp/contextualise) ~~~ mraza007 Really interesting project. Love your idea since managing knowledge is the best thing and I keep a small blog to keep things I learned ------ karterk I've been working on a fast typo tolerant search engine ([https://github.com/typesense/typesense](https://github.com/typesense/typesense)) for 4 years. It initially started off with a question of "Why is ES so difficult to grok and manage?". Then I started researching around various data structures for efficiently storing text and numerical values and various algorithms for sorting the data in real time to surface relevant documents. After 4 years of development, the project is pretty stable but I'm still adding features and has been getting some traction finally. I recently added a raft based replication aka clustering. I used a production ready Raft library for that, but it was still very nice to understand the nitty gritties of the Raft implementation. I doubt I would build something more complicated ever, but who knows right :) ------ mguerville I made a card game (www.intrapreneurs-game.com) to teach innovation to the corporate crowd (I teach MBA classes part time and do speaking engagements here and there). Building the mechanics of the rules and the game content was fun and I tried to balance actual gaming entertainment with actual learning and even built a companion app with supporting material for every concept in the game. ------ karmakaze My most recent is a keyboard layout (Qwickly) because Colemak/Tarmak was too slow to learn. [https://github.com/qwickly-org/Qwickly](https://github.com/qwickly- org/Qwickly) ------ wreath A bench for bench-pressing. It’s the single thing that I built and actually use. I built a lot of software and never cared to use it myself (it never solved my own problems, always a customer/user.. ) ------ deepaksurti A library (macOS, iOS) that converts the files supported by Assimp to Scene Kit scenes. [1] [1] [https://github.com/dmsurti/AssimpKit](https://github.com/dmsurti/AssimpKit) ------ zooboole futuretodo, a little software project management app. It can be useful especially if you want to keep your notes, tasks, and the project progress in order. [https://futuretodo.org](https://futuretodo.org)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
California debuts ‘digital’ license plates - arunc http://amp.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/back-seat-driver/article211828814.html ====== tomcam Let me get this out there first. If they are not already equipped with GPS, they will be. They will then be used to track your speed and give you speeding tickets automatically. They will also be used for per-mile taxing purposes. Eventually, access to the best roads will be auctioned off, so that in the name of “traffic management“, the highest bidders will be given access to Rhodes first, making it even harder for the poor to get by in California. ~~~ soared Do you have anything at all to back up your claims? Because I could just as easily say: "Let me get this out there first. If they don't already allow custom images to be displayed, they will. They will then display gifs and moving images. They will also get wifi and LTE connections. Eventually, full movies will be streamed on these license plates, making it even harder for me to avoid spoilers for the avengers." ~~~ tomcam Fine if you don't believe me. I pray I am wrong. Reason to write this: I'm an American. The American government never just steps when it can overstep. California is the most taxed state in the country and spends like a banana republic. They want more more more, and they will get it. Once they iron the kinks out, it will spread to other states. Probably Washington, Oregon, and New York on that order. ~~~ acct1771 All via private contractors, of course. ------ oliv__ As much as I love tech, things like this make me hate this industry. All that technology seems to be used for these days is to collect more data, chip a little more at your badly bruised privacy, track you, and overall make everything more square, rigid, and controlling. At first computers were designed to empower and free you and now it's all being turned on its head and the computers control you. This is terrible. Please, everyone, keep the free spirit alive, even if it's by doing something as small as sharing your code on the internet. ------ foxyv I think it would be really cool to have cars driving without visible license plates. They would just look better that way. Not to mention if the car is in an accident we could automatically record the plate to track down hit and run drivers. Usually a pedestrian or cyclist that is hit isn't able to see and memorize the plate. A lot of people in California already have radio transponders for toll roads, this wouldn't be much different than that anyhow. Then again though, there are plenty of horrible things you could do with this tech too. Mostly, it is the same as what they are already doing with plate readers. Tracking the innocent and guilty alike... ------ arcaster This seems like something that should be blocked by California's own proposed privacy legislation... Also, who on earth would choose this over a plate of screen-printed metal for $699 with a monthly fee...? ~~~ Fins Not sure why any _sane_ person would want them (and why taxpayers would allow Sacramento to purchase those for their own fleet), but the same people who bought Juiceros or stand in line for the latest iPhone would snap these up.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Japan starts space elevator experiments - Futurebot https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/japan-starts-space-elevator-experiments-2018-08/ ====== snowmaker It's unclear to me if this is real or the continuation of a publicity stunt from Obayashi (who has been getting press about their plans to build a space elevator for years). I'm as excited about the theoretical concept of a space elevator as anyone. But the problem remains that no one can produce a cable even close to strong enough. This article has a good description of the material science problem: [http://www.spaceward.org/elevator-when](http://www.spaceward.org/elevator- when). Basically, we would need to find a material that is at least 10x, probably 25x as strong as any cable today. Carbon Nanotubes are theoretically strong enough, but no one knows how to manufacture them. The longest carbon nanotube tether that has ever been manufactured is only a few _inches_ long, a millimeter in width, and not particularly strong due to imperfections in the manufacturing process. Obayashi is planning a 10m cable. Even building a 10m cable made of carbon nanotubes would require a Nobel Prize worthy breakthrough. ~~~ rapnie I agree on the publicity stunt feeling. Space elevators are thought-provoking stuff of science fiction. It would be _fantastic_ if we could build them. Most I've read on the subject (this article included) are very thin on details, or point out the great scientific hurdles and breakthroughs that still need to be overcome / made. This article made me think of the publicity stunt some years ago to build a mountain of 3,560 feet high in The Netherlands for $432 billion. The stunt was taken seriously and became world news: [https://www.businessinsider.com/400-billion-manmade- mountain...](https://www.businessinsider.com/400-billion-manmade-mountain- netherlands-2011-8?international=true&r=US&IR=T) If this is indeed a PR stunt I wonder if it would reflect positively or negatively on Obayashi? Would be like proposing an unrealistic, probably under-priced project. Of course they don't say when it can be realized.. ~~~ de_watcher There is a very good youtube channel by Isaac Arthur where they look at different options. There is better stuff like the orbital ring which looks very expensive but actually feasible with current technology. ~~~ mrhappyunhappy I watched that entire video on space elevators - very fascinating. ------ cstross This isn't the first such experiment (with tethers in space) but previous ones (such as the Shuttle tether experiments from 1996 onwards: [https://www- istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html](https://www- istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html) ) discovered some unanticipated and terminal problems ... and as they flew aboard a time-limited Shuttle mission there wasn't really any scope for attempting repairs/fixes on orbit. Also, it's arguably obvious with 20/20 hindsight that trying for a 20km long tether on the first experiment was maybe slightly over-ambitious ... ------ ridgeguy I'm curious about space elevator phenomena related to lateral ∆V. At Earth's equator (zero altitude - i.e., on the ground), an object moves spinward at about 0.46 km/sec. In geosynchronous orbit, an object has to move at about 3.07 km/sec. A space elevator car ascending from stationary on the equator to a terminal at geo altitude would require a tangential (lateral) ∆V of 2.61 km/sec. This is in addition to the energy needed for ∆ altitude-related potential energy change. Am I thinking about this right? The faster the ascent, the greater the lateral reaction force on the elevator because ∆V/time increases. Has anybody done that model? I didn't find anything in a brief search. The lateral ∆V also suggests it could get windy on ascent because the atmosphere rotates with the earth on a macroscopic basis. Maybe later tonight, I'll calculate lateral wind velocity as F(altitude) and see if I can fold in pressure drop to get wind pressures as F(altitude). I would love to see even a prototype attempt in my lifetime. ~~~ jimmcslim Wouldn’t payloads travelling up the space elevator and departing for the rest of the solar system and beyond ultimately deprive the earth of angular momentum and send it hurtling towards the Sun? ~~~ leereeves Not hurtling toward the sun, but payloads traveling up the space elevator would slow the Earth's rotation (the 24 hour daily rotation about the Earth's axis) in the same way an ice skater spins slower when they spread their arms. When the payload detaches from the elevator, the angular momentum of the Earth about the sun does decrease (some of the AM goes with the payload) but the mass of the Earth also decreases, and the angular velocity of the Earth about the Sun doesn't change. ~~~ schiffern >the angular velocity of the Earth about the Sun doesn't change. It does if your spaceship escapes from Earth in a prograde[1] direction (equivalent to Earth throwing a ball forward, causing a retrograde reaction upon the Earth). This type of escape trajectory is necessary to reach any destination _farther_ from the Sun (Mars, asteroids, etc). It's a tiny change obviously, but it's non-zero. Note that returning from Mars/asteroids and aerobraking should add angular momentum, speeding up the Earth and at least partly counteracting this effect. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_and_prograde_motion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_and_prograde_motion) ~~~ leereeves You're right, the portion of a rocket's exhaust that is recaptured by the Earth would raise or lower the angular velocity a bit, depending on direction, and gravity between the Earth and the spacecraft would have a tiny effect in the opposite direction. Those are separate from the disconnect I was talking about; I meant a gentle disconnect after which the spacecraft remains in orbit. ------ timonoko The Giant Space Wheel (of Seveneves) is so much more attractive than space elevator. That is a large mass on geostationary orbit having smaller pods rotating at the end of ropes. Those pods can be lowered to atmosphere and synchronized with earth rotation. Elevator pod comes down and can stay down maybe couple of hours and then jerked back to heavens. All energy comes from the sun - collected at the center station. Safe because pods can be quickly reeled back to space and stay out of atmosphere until conditions are optimal. ~~~ roryisok Seveneves is a great read! ------ ghaff For those looking for a popular culture examination of space elevators--albeit from a number of decades back--check out Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise. It also deals with some of the engineering issues, though again it's quite old. ~~~ djsumdog Also the Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson. Honestly that's my favorite Sci-Fi novel series of all time. Just give Red Mars a try and I prosome you won't be able to put it down. ~~~ jimmcslim Given a major plot arc in the trilogy was... (SPOILER!!!) ... the destruction of the space elevator by a terrorist organisation and the consequent destruction on the surface of Mars as the cable, released from its counterweight, wrapped itself around the planet... I’m not sure it’s a great example :-) ~~~ hutzlibu To be fair, the "terrorists organisation" was not called like this in the book and was just shown as one party in the war of independency from earth. And the elevator was controlled by earth and brought down earth troops who hunted down the resistance. So you can argue it was a valid military target ... terrorist(in my definition) target civilians. They just acted very rughless. But I liked in the book, how it did not actually took sides, but just showed the implications of what violent struggle/war for independency on mars means for different sides. And mainly from the perspective of Nadia, the engineer who build things. And she sees everything just gets destroyed and smashed. (I got moved a bit by the memory) ------ blahedo > _"...six oval-shaped cars, each measuring 18m x 7.2m holding 30 people, ... > eight days ...."_ Whooooa. Let's think about this for a second. Eight days means people need to sleep (and not just sitting up in a chair, no matter how comfy). At 1m x 2m per bed that would be a 15m x 4m space even without aisles to walk between the beds or down the middle or any sort of privacy separators. Also, a bathroom and actual washing facilities of some sort are mandatory, and a kitchen with at least minimal food-prep capabilities (even if it's mostly pre-made); modern airplane galleys only need to deal with trips in the tens of hours. 18m x 17.2m is really _really_ not a lot of space for all that. ~~~ curiousgal How much space would they get on the ISS either ways? It'd be a good practice. ~~~ bencompanion The end of this cable would be 36000km up, compared to the ISS's 400km. The first space elevator would primarily be used to shift stuff, rather than people at first - there's no point having convenient transit for people if they've got nowhere to go at the other end. ~~~ jessaustin That's where the end of the cable is, but there's no rule that that's where anyone has to get off the elevator. ~~~ peeters Interesting thought. Note that getting off 300 km up would not put you in orbit; you would lack the orbital velocity required for that. So if you get off there you'd have to burn around 8 km/s of delta-v, which is quite a bit of fuel to haul up. For efficiency you'd want to go higher. There'd be a point much higher than 300 km where detethering would put you into a highly elliptical orbit where the periapsis is 300 km. Then you'd just have to burn retrograde to circularize. Off hand I'm not sure what the math for that would be but it should be pretty simple algebra. ------ mortenjorck It’s cool that any kind of space elevator experiment is happening at all, but temper your expectations with the numbers: this is a 10m cable. It is literally a 1:9,600,000 scale model of a real space elevator. ~~~ TheSpiceIsLife This isn't a scale model of a real space elevator at all. From the article: _Shizuoka University and contractor Obayashi aim to launch two small (10 sq cm) satellites connected by a 10m steel cable from the International Space Station._ I don't see any ways in which this is a _space elevator_ related experiment. ~~~ cptaj They're testing the cart pulley system in space. Sure, the cable itself is the core technology needed for this, but you still have to work on the rest of it. These nanosats are a good, cheap way to move the TRL forward a bit. ~~~ tomatotomato37 I actually wonder if that is the true purpose and not what the media glued together out of "thing moving on cable." It could just as well be a test for a space tether or cable centrifuge, with any space elevator research being a secondary thing ------ zmix > _using six oval-shaped cars, each measuring 18m x 7.2m holding 30 people_ Hmmm...is that 30 people/car or 30 people/6 cars? You will be enclosed with them on 18m x 7.2m, that's 120m², for 8 days! The former case would sound like torture, in the latter case it could be done comfortably, though, but it would still require some good nerves by the travellers... ~~~ dmurray 120 m² is a substantial 3- or 4-bedroom house. People endure a lot worse for much lower payoffs than going to space. In spacecraft, Soyuz is about 6 m³ for three astronauts for two days. Apollo was 6 m³ for three astronauts for two weeks. The Japanese proposal is spacious in comparison. ------ stcredzero Given enough investment, Stirling engines could beat internal combustion for many applications due to a theoretical efficiency advantage. However, economies of scale and many decades of R&D give internal combustion such a huge advantage, that this probably will never happen. At what point does the 20 year amortized cost of a system involving a space fountain or launch loop acting as the 1st stage of a vastly simplified and downscaled rocket break-even with some small multiple of the 20 year amortized cost of a space elevator? I suspect that this multiple might be small enough that economies of scale and optimizations of other systems could keep space elevators out of the picture forever. ~~~ TeMPOraL ICEs gave us another boost in civilization, expanded the scale of our economies, which eventually led to enough R&D in electric engines that the latter are slowly but surely replacing ICEs now. Maybe the same thing will happen here? The system you've described could open the Solar System for us, and time + advancements in in-space manufacturing could eventually lead to people building space elevators as an alternative. (Also, Earth is not a good place to get the experience in building space elevators. The Moon is much better, and probably Mars would be a good candidate later on.) ------ sandworm101 Carbon nanotubes are cool, but i will believe space elevators possible once someone shows me a carbon nanotube rope i can climb with. I'd settle for a bike or motorcycle chain. A nanotube-based shoelace would be worth a noble prize or two. ~~~ Torkel Given strength and size and other properties that carbon nanotube ropes would need have... Wouldn't a carbon nanotube shoelace be like the worst idea ever? ...strong as a steel cable, but so thin as to be hard to see and handle. And brittle and not so good at bending. => First it slices up your hands when you tighten it and then it breaks when you tie it :) ~~~ eponeponepon I believe the expectation regarding carbon nanotubes in the sphere of space elevators is that they would be woven and layered into a sheet of human scale; these sheets would be used to construct a curved ribbon for the gondola to climb. You could apply the same principle and weave a bootlace from them, but the limits of current technology would render that an _exceedingly_ expensive bootlace. ~~~ sandworm101 Given the amount needed for a space elevator, it better be cheap as shoelaces. At 10s of thousands of miles they should have more than enough on hand to disrupt the shoelace market. ------ breatheoften I saw a bunch of people throwing out good sci-fi space elevator examples and had to drop a reference to the space elevator in Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. The descriptions are epic and do a good job of giving a real sense of placiness to the result of truly enormous engineering. ~~~ on_and_off Then let me drop a reference to Sundiver by David Brin, which is the start of the uplift cycle. The elevator is by far the least interesting idea of these novels which center about a future where we have uplifted (given sapience) monkeys and dolphins. We are also trying to survive in an unkind universe where Earth is a third world political power that is making religious fanatics angry. ------ DEADBEEFC0FFEE Google was reported to be looking into this a few years ago. And determined that there was no material strong enough at the time. [https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180682-google-x- admits-i...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180682-google-x-admits-its- working-on-a-space-elevator-teleportation-hoverboards) That aside, how might adversaries disrupt such an expensive and precarious venture? Seems a very hard to defend machine. ~~~ ObsoleteNerd 99% of the comments about this story online think that they're talking about making one NOW. They don't think they can do it now. They're starting initial research into a few isolated systems required to do it one day in the future when materials science and all the other aspects catch up. It will take decades of R&D, but someone might as well start on the bits we can do now, like a system for climbing the tether (which this is, and it's being done purely in space). ~~~ DEADBEEFC0FFEE Fair enough. We have to start somewhere. Perhaps a tether climbing rig will be be useful in future megacity skyscrapers. ~~~ djsumdog The base tether point would need to be far away from anything! In the book Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, one is placed in Trinidad and Tobago. The most dangerous part would be slowly dropping the cable; lower it to the point where it could be pulled into a magnetic clamp -- without destroying everything in its path. ------ pier25 I know nothing about physics... but wouldn't the space station need to counter the cable tension? ~~~ ghaff Most theoretical designs that have been proposed would require a very large counterweight, e.g. a captured asteroid. ~~~ twic Or you just build the cable out beyond geosynchronous orbit. The further out your counterweight mass is, the more force it exerts, so, AIUI, the most mass- efficient way to do it is an extension of the cable. ~~~ jandrese The problem is how you keep the tether from dragging behind the orbit when you do that. Space elevators require a fairly delicate balancing act to keep the mass directly over the base of the elevator, otherwise they turn into giant slings. ~~~ theothermkn The center of mass of the cable-counterweight system orbits at geosynchronous height. Also, the gradient of gravity will Stabilize the attitude in the desired orientation. None of this should be construed as an endorsement of space elevators, though. They will never happen on Earth as it exists now. Over and above the material science, you have to clean out LEO of all satellites before you even start construction. It’s just a really dumb idea all around. ~~~ Bahamut The satellite issue is why I don't think a space elevator as currently conceived will ever make it. ~~~ Aeolun If you have a cable capable of holding a space station and counterweight, no satellite is going to stop it. ~~~ theothermkn > If you have a cable capable of holding a space station and counterweight, no > satellite is going to stop it. A satellite impacting the tether will definitely "stop" it, in that it will, at the very least, melt an impact crater into it if the cable is wide enough to not be cut. It is unlikely that the cable will be that wide. I feel like a broken record, lately, but the dominant concerns of impact modeling at orbital velocities are (a) mass and (b) energy. Everything traveling at 8 km/s effectively splashes into whatever solid object it hits, both because the room temperature shear resistance of the materials involved is orders of magnitude less than the shears involved, and also because the kinetic energy is dumped into thermal energy, melting or vaporizing the materials involved. One tends to get results like: ([https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2009/02/Hyperveloci...](https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2009/02/Hypervelocity_impact_sample)) That link notes that pressures of 365 GPa are reached, and typical yield stresses of theoretical nanotube cables are around 100 GPa. A carbon nanotube cable is unlikely to be more than an inch or two across at LEO. You need that kind of strength to beat the space-elevator-equivalent of the rocket equation, which governs the taper needed to get the cable to even support its own mass in Earth's gravitational field. ~~~ Aeolun Fair point. I stand corrected (or at least, until I spend more time thinking about this myself, I’m much inclined to believe you have a much better idea than me). ------ yohann305 i remember reading here on HN someone explaining why space elevators are not possible. I can't recall why, but he/she had very convincing arguments. Anyone here remember that thread and can link it back here? Thanks ~~~ cuddlybacon Kelly and Zach Weinersmith discuss space elevators in their book Soonish. The summary of the downsides is: * If would need to be the most precisely engineered thing we've every produced just to stand a chance of being good enough. * Because of that, it will be particularly sensitive to wear and tear. How the maintenance would work is an open question. * It will probably attract terrorists like crazy. * It needs to never get struck by lightning. It is a particularly attractive lightning rod. * It generally should avoid bad weather. Whatever it is attached to on Earth needs to be able to move. When moving it you have to avoid not only the bad weather but everything in space, too. * If the cable breaks, bad things could happen. Bad things can range from burning up in the atmosphere to it whipping around in space damaging satellites, or anything else. ~~~ mrep I love the idea of space elevators, but I agree that it probably won't be practical on earth for a long time if ever. > It needs to never get struck by lightning. It is a particularly attractive > lightning rod. Haven't buildings solved this problem with lightning rods? On another note, I am personally fascinated by space elevators which is why I am somewhat interested in going back to the moon where we can build a space elevator with today's tech, avoid all of these problems, and have a large body of resources to build/fuel spaceships with. ~~~ TeMPOraL Yeah, I've never seen a reasonable explanation for that either. If the car is a Faraday cage, and the cable is conductive and grounded, what's the problem? The only thing I can think of is that all that energy unloaded into cable at once might ablate some of it, causing it to no longer be able to handle the tension. ------ mtgx Isaac Arthur thinks an orbital ring is a better idea: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E&index=9&list=PLI...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E&index=9&list=PLIIOUpOge0LsGJI_vni4xvfBQTuryTwlU) He has other videos on ways we could get into space more cheaply, including by space elevators (which he basically doesn't think are feasible). ------ avmich Let me quote Pyotr Makovetskii, the book "See the root cause" ("Zri v koren'" in Russian), from chapter 28: ([http://n-t.ru/ri/mk/sk028.htm](http://n-t.ru/ri/mk/sk028.htm)) "And overall, such a tower is a diabolical invention. Rotating in equatorial plane it will knock off everything it encounters. And since any satellite orbit intersect the equatorial plane, sooner or later all satellites with orbit lower than the tower height will be knocked down. At the base of the tower will lay remnants of almost the whole cosmonautics." I'd assume this closes naive discussions about space elevator, at least until the proponents will explain what they are going to do with the problem of hitting satellites. Yet I see this problem again and again with hardly any progress in this area... ------ zepearl Thinking about a "counterweight" orbiting a planet to which it is connected by a cable: as the cable offers resistance to the planet's atmosphere, and as the planet's atmosphere is active/changing, the "thing orbiting" would still have to have an excellent aerodynamic shape to survive the planet's atmospheric effects, right? (as e.g. the lower part of its cable would probably soon or later be "pushed" by winds therefore initially speeding up the counterweight but lowering its altitude - and/or later after some iterations of push/pull generating maybe a slingshot-effect, sending it into a potentially full crash- course towards the atmosphere/planet's ground). ~~~ comboy Centrifugal force would keep straightening it up. ~~~ zepearl Yes, but probably only in general (meaning only from a theoretical point of view without considering external forces)? E.g. as soon as the cable has headwind (in the opposite way of the planet's rotation) the cable would slack off, the thing in orbit would slow down & lower its altitude (how much? Would it anyway have to always skim the upper atmosphere?) => then as soon as the cable gets tailwind the opposite would happen, with relative slingshot-effect. ~~~ jaggederest For practical purposes the atmosphere ends at 500km altitude. The cable is going to have to be 36,000 kilometers long. Atmospheric effects are pretty much rounding error at that point - imagine trying to swing a 10 foot long pole by blowing on the first inch. ~~~ joering2 Just fantisizing here, but helium baloons go over 50km up; can this elevator cable be vertically supported by solar-powered helium-filled heat packs alongs its way, with horizontal stabilization of large fans blowing in oposite direction (lower atmosphere) and tiny rocket boosts in above-atmosphere region similar to how sattelites correct their orbits? Just fantasizing here.. ------ yohann305 Someone patented space elevators in 2015. [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?patentnumber=90858...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?patentnumber=9085897) No comments... ~~~ zepearl Thanks for the link. I'm personally very conflicted about patents. In this specific case I classify it as a "speculative" patent => I'm totally against this it. Patents should be allowed only for something that exists / can be demonstrated (which would ensure that patents are something somebody invested in, and therefore at least believed in). ~~~ worldsayshi Yeah, I wonder if anyone has patented human teleportation... ~~~ skissane Don't patents only have a 20 year lifespan? If you patent human teleportation, and nobody actually develops it in the 20 year life of your patent (a prediction which is highly likely to be true), then you've simply wasted your filing fees, made a charitable donation to the patent office (and your patent attorney). ~~~ zepearl Again, "teleportation" would be a "speculative" patent (you have thought about the concept but didn't present anything that works). If you would/could take ownership of only its "concept" then I would reply "screw you - I would take ownership of [humanity]" and you would become nothing. Yo :) ------ chriswarbo I really like the space fountain concept: it's utterly ridiculous, but completely feasible. It also doesn't _need_ to be as big as a space elevator to be useful (a partial space elevator wouldn't work); space fountains can be as big or small as desired, and applications like radio towers have been mentioned. It would be nice to see even a metre long demo, which I imagine might be possible as something like a student project (4 coil guns exchanging ball bearings). ------ rietta The experiment sounds great. But should this work and a real cable to orbit is built, what happens when the cable snaps!? Can such a structure be made failsafe? ~~~ tristanj There are various simulations of what may happen. Here is one that demonstrates what may happen if the cable breaks at various points. [http://gassend.net/spaceelevator/breaks/](http://gassend.net/spaceelevator/breaks/) In summary, if the cable breaks at the base, the elevator will fly harmlessly into space. If it breaks at the counterweight, a large portion of the cable (several thousand miles long) will collide with the Earth’s equator. ~~~ cantagi _The piece that falls to Earth ends up wrapping faster and faster, this causes centrifugal force on the tip, increasing the tension in the ribbon. Often the ribbon breaks on its way down and some fragments go flying out of Earth 's gravity well. I didn't expect this at all._ The space elevator would become a space whip. I wonder whether this has a use case, like getting hardened unmanned space probes to speeds required for interstellar missions, or just much faster missions to other planets in the solar system. ~~~ Hextinium Space elevators can be used this way because once the tether goes beyond geostationary orbit the tether is going above orbital velocity. Go far enough and its above escape velocity. So you just drag a probe out far enough and let go and it will escape the gravity well. ------ stretchwithme I don't understand how a space elevator would be advantageous in terms of the energy required to get something to space. The load still has to reach orbital velocity. Will the station at the end of the tether still need a rocket to deal with the additional mass? Is the fact that this rocket only has to go up once the core advantage? Wouldn't the load going up the elevator pull the tether to one side? ~~~ Filligree Since rockets lack infinite thrust, they take a finite amount of time to reach space. While they're doing so, they need to fight gravity -- ~all the thrust that's directed downwards, as opposed to horizontally, is wasted energy. There are more reasons to build a space elevator, but that's a big one. It really would be far more energetically efficient. ~~~ darkmighty The big problem with rockets is actually that you have to carry your propellant with you, and progressively waste energy accelerating your own propellant. Finite time or limited thrust don't actually affect this (increasing the exhaust velocity does though -- at the cost of energy efficiency). It's the infamous tiranny of the Rocket equation ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation)) To get near 100% efficiency, it follows from the kinetic energy formula and conservation of momentum the body you're pushing against must have a much larger mass than you[1]. So discounted exotic phenomena, the only way to travel efficiently through space is to push off a very large mass, departing at full velocity, or in the case of near-Earth travel, simply push Earth. The space elevator is essentially an elaborate staircase. It is in a stable equilibrium, and climbing it doesn't steal energy from the counterweight (which in fact doesn't move in fact because it is in constant tension); you're just pushing Earth away. In the grand scheme of things the very low efficiency of maybe 10% (in my guesstimation) to LEO isn't so bad (not even the maybe ~5% interplanetary efficiency); especially considering the costs of space systems in general in comparisson to fuel cost. This small fuel cost makes reusable rockets quite an attractive option near term (as noted by SpaceX). But long term, that's quite a steep inefficiency. If we were to endeavor large scale colonization or exploration of exoplanetary resources it seems to me either a kinetic launch system or at least a space elevator variant would be a necessity. [1] Derivation: M1 v1=M2 v2 => v1^2 = (M2/M1)^2 v2^2; M1 v1^2 + M2 v2^2 = E => M2^2/M1 v2^2 + M2 v2^2 = E; M2 v2^2 (1+M2/M1) = E => K2 = E/(1+M2/M1). As M1->infinity, all the kinetic energy goes to K2 and none to K1 (which is why you don't give Earth any meaningful energy by walking). ------ pankajdoharey If they could do it would be so cool, and another one of Arthur Clarkes ideas turned to reality after Geo Stationary satellite. ------ bariswheel I will file this next to graphene, where these pursuits do everything in our wildest dreams except exit the lab. ------ sigmaprimus I'm a bit confused the ISS is only 408km from the earth's surface so why would it take 8 days at 200kph? Unless they are including the speed of orbit in which case the earth is already rotating at 1600 kph. What am I missing here? ~~~ mojomark They said the tetger would be 36,000 km. 36,000/200kph = 180 hrs... 180hrs/24hrs/day = 7.5 days. Why the tether needs to be 36,000km long wasn't mentioned. ~~~ chriswarbo In terms of angular speed (e.g. revolutions per minute), lower orbits are faster, higher orbits are slower (think of a Mercury year versus a Neptune year). The ISS circles the Earth every 92 minutes. If we dropped a cable from the ISS (or another satellite at the same height), the anchoring point (e.g. something like a floating oil platform) would also have to circle the Earth roughly every 92 minutes. That's not feasible. Satellites at 36,000km circle the Earth every 24 hours, which is the same speed that the Earth rotates. If the satellite is orbiting around the equator, going the same direction as the Earth's rotation, then we would not have to move the anchor (the Earth's rotation would do it for us) ------ snarfybarfy All this talk about nanotubes, when the real question is: What kind of music are they going to play on the way up??? ------ somegraypoupon There was an interesting talk about space elevators at the 33rd chaos communication congress [https://youtu.be/EtMJgEggVWQ](https://youtu.be/EtMJgEggVWQ) ------ m3kw9 I like the start the small and ramp up method they are using. This should get plenty of investors mouth watering if they can prove it works and can scale ------ mothsonasloth My favourite Space Elevator concept was from the Halo franchise. There would be multiple elevators on the continents of the planets that were tethered to orbital platforms. They didn't seem to survive the covenant well [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfU524OBKhc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfU524OBKhc) [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Space_elevator](http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Space_elevator) ------ jonthepirate How can the forces exerted by weather patterns still make this viable? ------ BenJahman I wouldn't like being stuck in that elevator! ------ cryptozeus If they build this from japan, how would they deal with earthquakes ? Last thing you want is to be flying off to space in 18 x 7 m car ~~~ black6 FTA: > Obayashi envisages a space elevator using six oval-shaped cars, each > measuring 18m x 7.2m holding 30 people, connected by a cable _from a > platform on the sea_ to a satellite at 36,000 kilometers above Earth. 36000 km is GEO, so it would be near the equator, away from land and safe from quakes. ------ yters So many dumb major tech projects. Don't take your ideas from sci fi authors. ~~~ dang Maybe so, but can you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN? ~~~ yters It's substantive, pointing out there are many major tech projects these days based on pipe dreams born of sci fi books. The fact there are so many means either our tech leaders are not very smart, are scamming the government funds, and/or are out of good ideas. Which leads to the bigger question, what has happened to our vision for the future? ~~~ dang I believe you that you had those words in mind, but they're not what you posted. ~~~ yters Well, I appreciate you civilly correcting me, which you seem to have a good history of doing, so I apologize for my tone. ------ ourmandave _The cars would travel at up to 200kph and arrive at the space station eight days after departure from Earth._ These early cable experiments are important, but someone should also be working on the composing an 8 day Elevator Muzak score that won't drive you insane. ~~~ BacioiuC What is kph? I can't be 200 km per hour and have it take 8 days. ~~~ p1mrx For a space elevator, the "space station" is near geosynchronous orbit. 36000 km / 200 km/h is roughly 8 days. ------ scalablenotions This is one day where you REALLY don't want the elevator to jam on the way to the office. ------ coygui Anyone has watched GUNDAM OO?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Who are the biggest badasses in Internet history? - tannerc http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1mz745/who_are_the_biggest_badasses_in_internet_history/ ====== beat Richard Stallman. He hacked the _law_! The GPL is one of the most important things that ever happened in software, and created the foundation for so much we love today.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hunting down my son's killer (2012) - Tomte http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/ ====== Tomte Matt Might is now leading a medicinal institute at the University of Alabama. That‘s an impressing cross-transfer from computer science. This text is one of the texts I have read most in my life. Not only is it emotionally powerful, but I have spent weeks translating it into German. At one time, Matt asked on Twitter if there was a German willing to translate, there was a deadline and it was important (for reasons he explained later in personal mail). I offered my help, with the caveat that I‘m neither a professional translator, nor with any medical background. I wasn’t totally inexperienced, I had translated a few things here and there, like Mark Nottingham’s Caching FAQ. But boy, was that text a challenge! I always wanted to write that up, but by now my memory has faded a bit. Quite stressful, but it felt more meaningful than translating a technical text. And I learned a few things along the way. And I found several errors in the original. I had read the text many times before, but only when translating, you‘re really struggling with the text on a fine-granular enough level to actually notice things. Like when you look up the list of ultra-rare genetic conditions in some medical research database I‘ve never heard of before — because (a) Wikipedia doesn‘t have an article for all of them, (b) if so, the German-language Wikipedia doesn‘t, and (c) some of those have names in German that are not straight translations of the English name — you may notice that Matt listed one or two diseases twice, where the disease has two common names or aliases. In the end I wonder if anyone really cared about the translation, because the original reason for wanting a German translation kind of fizzled out, in my perception. Still, it was a cool time. ------ vesrah I enjoyed the read, here is a follow-up article - [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/21/one-of-a- kind-...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/21/one-of-a-kind-2) ------ purplerabbit My girlfriend's lab at the University of Utah just published a paper on this disease a few weeks ago: [https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article- abstract/27/6/1055/4810...](https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article- abstract/27/6/1055/4810719?redirectedFrom=fulltext) Biological pathways are insane... I'm really impressed with what's being uncovered in this field of research. ------ ptspts The article has a misleading, sensationalist title. In fact there is no murderer and there was no violence. The article is about the author's journey of diagnosing a genetic disease in his son. ~~~ danso "Killer" does not necessarily denote murder nor violence. ~~~ ptspts Indeed, ``killer'' has the other (nonviolent) meaning: cause of death, fatal/deadly illness, destroyer, threat to life, menace, plague, scourge, peril. The author of the article could have easily used any of the above less ambiguous words in the title, but he didn't. Hence I formed the opinion that the title is sensationalist. ~~~ danso Not everyone agrees that “destroyer” and “scourge”, etc, are any less emotive of words. In fact, they end up being suggestive in unnecessary ways. ------ bassman9000 [https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/12315/deficiency-...](https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/12315/deficiency- of-n-glycanase-1) ------ Tomte Also interesting: [http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/](http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/) (That‘s a repost, because the Quora question has been deleted) ------ eruditepanda I had the opportunity to interact with Prof. Might when I was in grad school; hearing about his son and the struggles has been heart wrenching at times, more so after hearing him speak about it in person.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
U.S. Federal Individual Income Tax Rates History, 1862-2013 - lisper http://taxfoundation.org/article/us-federal-individual-income-tax-rates-history-1913-2013-nominal-and-inflation-adjusted-brackets ====== Animats Take a look at 1953. Top rate, 92%. Consider the 1950s. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the general in charge of winning WWII in Europe, a Republican, and very much into heavy defense spending. That administration developed, mass-produced and deployed nuclear submarines, B-52 bombers, ICBMs, aircraft carriers, A-bombs, and H-bombs. Bases were maintained all over the world, with large numbers of troops. Plus, the US paid some of the costs of putting Europe and Japan back together, and the interest on the national debt from WWII. Financial regulation was tight. There were commercial banks, which could take deposits and make loans, but couldn't trade in the stock market. There were savings and loans, which could make loans on houses and take deposits but not much else. There were stockbrokers, which could deal in stocks but not trade for their own account. Most stockbrokers were partnerships, such as Merril Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Beane, with the partners personally liable for losses. There were a few investment banks trading for their own account, such as J.P. Morgan. They were using their own money, and if they went under, that was their problem. Finance was very clearly subordinate to doing real stuff. The CEO of United States Steel made about $42,000 a year. The first billionaire had not yet appeared; John Paul Getty, a Texas oilman, broke through that barrier in the 1960s. Yet this locked-down economy produced the greatest economic boom in American history. ~~~ cpursley Keep in mind that the rest of the developed worlds' infrastructure and productive capacity had been bombed to oblivion. Of course it was a boon to the American economy, despite the political situation. The US was the only place left standing that could mass-produce complex goods in conjunction with its new-found standing as the most powerful military. The world we live in now is very different - it's flattened out. A large number of nations have either matched or surpassed the US in both productivity and standard of living. ~~~ jordanb Trade was a very small part of the US postwar economy. The economic boom was almost entirely Americans making stuff and selling it to other Americans: [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/11/19/opinion/11191...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/11/19/opinion/111912krugman3/111912krugman3-blog480.jpg) ~~~ cpursley You reinforce my point. Buying products from overseas was not viable because their capacity was bombed to hell. Not many electric washing machines coming out of these places after the war: [UK] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/scotl...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/scotlands_blitz/includes/resources/images/clydebank_ruins.jpg) [Japan] [https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-PR-Japan/img/USA- PR...](https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-PR-Japan/img/USA-PR- Japan-447.2.jpg) [Germany] [http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2013/12/berlin_ww2-P.jpeg](http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2013/12/berlin_ww2-P.jpeg) ~~~ jordanb You're making a case against free trade then. If things were so good for so many Americans because we weren't trading with anyone, then why'd we start? ------ applecore Just a reminder: due to the exceptional circumstances following World War II, the top marginal individual tax rate was around 90%. (The effective rate was really about 70% for the highest incomes since so few paid actually the top rate.) This was largely to prevent war profiteering, though it lasted until 1964 when the top marginal tax rate was lowered to 70%. It's not really relevant to our times unless you're forecasting another global war, in which case all bets are off. ~~~ ceejayoz > It's not really relevant to our times unless you're forecasting another > global war, in which case all bets are off. According to [http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new- economy/2011/1025/Iraq...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new- economy/2011/1025/Iraq-war-will-cost-more-than-World-War-II), the Iraq war will wind up costing "more than the $3.6 trillion the US spent to fight World War II, even after adjusting for inflation". Add in Afghanistan and the ongoing airstrikes and likely expansion into other areas of extremism, and maybe we should start talking about Americans at home paying a bit for the militarism in the form of higher tax rates. ~~~ MCRed Is that an argument for higher tax rates or lower ones? After all, if you are anti-war, would you really say tax rates should be higher so that we can have more wars? The weird thing seems to be that the people who are most anti-war want higher tax rates for things that are not war, and then when the money gets spent on war, they want even higher tax rates for the things they were originally promised but didn't get. Looking at tax history it seems like a repeating game of bait and switch. ------ ck2 Just a reminder that modern wars are done off the books without "pay fors" that congress insists on for everything else or your taxes would be absolutely insane. Like the $2 Trillion Iraq War. ~~~ MCRed I'm not sure about the "pay fors" you're talking about, but I believe your sentiment is correct-- and effectively, that $2T came out of the economy via the hidden tax of inflation. While people would be mad to see the $2T in direct taxation (what you called "Absolutely insane") they do not realize it when it is done via inflation. (Eg: your gas prices, food prices, everything else is higher, because the government just printed the money to spend on the war, increasing the debt and devaluing the dollar.) From The Economic Consequences of the Peace: “Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.” John Maynard Keynes ~~~ jpgvm Generally when new spending is proposed it needs to be budgeted and either money repurposed from somewhere or new taxes introduced. This is sometimes referred to as "pay-fors". ------ mgalka Cool data source. Thanks for sharing. In case anyone is curious about the early history of the income tax, or why it is so spotty prior to 1913: The income tax was first imposed in 1861 to help pay for the Civil War. Prior to that, the government got most of its income from excise taxes and tariffs. In 1895, the Supreme Court declared the income tax unconstitutional, since it was not apportioned fairly between states, which is why the government added the 16th amendment in 1913, which gave it the power to impose an unapportioned income tax. ~~~ brobinson I still find it baffling that the USA has _not_ had a Federal income tax for about half of its existence. ~~~ jordanb During that time the US Federal Government was funded through tariffs and through selling land on the western frontier. ~~~ brobinson This is interesting because the federal government still owns a lot of the land in the western half of the country. I saw an infographic recently (sourcing a federal agency's statistics) which said that 48% of California's and 88% of Nevada's land are owned by the federal government. ------ hihithere God Damm, 90% tax rate!! ~~~ jeremyt I see this kind of comment an awful lot, and I have two immediate reactions: The first is a sort of dumb and dumber "we landed on the moon!" feeling where I actually can't believe that someone didn't know that there used to be a 90% marginal tax rate. Perhaps you live outside of the United States? The second is that the 90% tax rate is completely misleading, as there were so many deductions and loopholes that hardly anybody ever paid it. Every time somebody brings up the 90% rate, it's always someone on the left attempting a "We could raise tax rates a whole lot more; just look at how high they used to be". It's one of the most disingenuous arguments in politics. ~~~ bmmayer1 There's also the point pg brought up in his most recent essay[1]: "To some extent this was an illusion. Much of the de facto pay of executives never showed up on their income tax returns, because it took the form of perks. The higher the rate of income tax, the more pressure there was to pay employees upstream of it." [1] [http://paulgraham.com/re.html](http://paulgraham.com/re.html) ------ mtgx Instead of having all of these tax brackets, which for all of the smart people and companies they are meaningless anyway since they take advantage of the hundreds and hundreds of loopholes (also called "deductions") so they don't pay the full amount, why not have a flat 15-20% income tax for _everyone_ instead - rich or poor? I think it would be simpler, more honest, more transparent, and more fair (slightly favoring the rich, but it more than makes up or it in other ways). You also wouldn't have these endless discussions about whether you should tax the poor 10% (because the tax affects them more) and the rich 30%, or the poor 30% and the rich 10% (because they are the "job creators")? A moderately fair flat 15% income tax for everyone. No deductions for any special interest. I'm not a huge fan of subsidies either, but if you really think you need to "make it easier" for some vital or up and coming industries, then you could give them some subsidies for a while. That would also be a more direct and more transparent approach than giving them lower taxes, because then you'd know exactly how much of the taxpayer's money is going into aiding an industry and there would be bigger pressure to end that subsidy eventually. ~~~ cpursley Easy answer - it removes divisive politics from the equation. No more "the rich don't pay their fair share" from the _left_ and "what's mine is mine" from the _right_. Both of those are powerful tactics that the bureaucrats employ to keep us bickering while them and their cronies rob us blind. ~~~ cpursley By the way, a number of countries have a flat income tax: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_flat_tax_systems) ~~~ cpursley It's interesting to get down votes for sharing link to wikipedia. Is taking a look at functioning flat-tax systems of other governments not even worth investigating, or does the very idea simply clash with some folks political agendas? Several of the nations are able to provide for both social welfare (including free secondary education and basic healthcare) as well as national defense on a (typically low) flat tax. Russia's 13% stands out for a large country and Estonia's 21% for a small country.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to write a good job description - sgdesign http://folyo.me/guides/how_to_write_a_good_job_description ====== sixtofour An enjoyable read, with good food for thought. One disagreement: "We’re pretty nice guys to work with, as long as you love cats like us of course (dog people need not apply, sorry!)." Having "need not apply" in a job description can be off-putting. You might be in violation of the ADA (Americans with Dogs Act), and you unnecessarily antagonize people with dogs and people without dogs.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do you really get a good Software Engineering job? - seeminglylost It seems like anything I do is never good enough. I can know how to code in multiple languages and provide decent coding examples. But, there is always one little thing that I didn't have in order to get the job. It feels like job postings are not very honest at what they are looking for either. An example would be of a 'Frontend Engineer' job posting that I got an email response back from the hiring manager for, and he asked for a link to a fully functioning and non-trivial web app that I had built before. Wtf? I have not built that as of now (even though I am confident I could). And it would not have been in the companies preferred stack anyways. I just want to know one thing: WTF do hiring managers <i>actually</i> want? And why do they almost <i>never</i> seem know themselves? Sorry for the rant but it just seems like this industry is a load of bullshit. ====== enkiv2 A lot of job listings are actually for internal candidates, and although the employer is required by law to perform interviews, the external candidate will never get the job over the internal candidate (since the external candidate is a higher risk). What hiring managers actually want is a candidate that has been personally vouched for by developers they trust, and ideally an internship or contract period at a lower pay rate so that they can pull out if the candidate isn't as good as they say they are. So, make friends with people who have jobs in the industry and convince them that you have the necessary skills. ~~~ StandardFuture This is honestly not much better than nepotism. What happened to merit? ~~~ dllthomas What happened to merit is that "make friends in the industry and convince them you have the skills" is a more reliable means of finding merit than a typical interview process. It also has tremendous blind spots and will exclude many legitimate candidates in an unequal way and that all sucks, but the goal is "find someone reliably competent you can work with." It's really hard to determine either of those without long term interaction. ------ dllthomas Most important is to keep looking, and not let the search get you down (which is _hard_ , for sure). Remember that looking for work is a full-time job. My current position I found through a connection, and that doubtless helped, but I've gotten jobs before through responding to university postings and craigslist ads. I've also been turned down at plenty of places that I've found both ways - for any given position, most of the time you won't get it (of course, since there are going to be multiple candidates). ~~~ neduma >> Remember that looking for work is a full-time job. +1 Being employed is side effect of that. ------ MortenK Hiring managers are looking for proof that you are as good as you say you are. Inexperienced / young programmers often vastly overestimate their own abilities and experienced managers know this. Having hired a couple of gung-ho self proclaimed supermen only to see them not deliver, the hiring manager now wants to see proof. If you are new in the industry, you don't have people to vouch for you. That's why you get requests to see your actual work, rather than own cherry-picked code examples. "I could do it easily if I just got the chance" won't fly if you are in a location where there are more developers than jobs. You'll have to make yourself stand out. The easiest way to do that is to build stuff. Doesn't have to be groundbreaking stuff, but it should work and be within your "specialty" language(s). Then next time someone asks you for a non-trivial example, you can just send them a couple of your projects, rather than a couple of clever code snippets. ------ codegeek "there is always one little thing that I didn't have in order to get the job" I hear you. Many times, it is not even you. Like you said, the hiring manager is probably too hung up on _one specific item_ that they really think will hit the home run. Now, that depends on the situation. If they need an expert in a very specific niche for a 1 month contract, they probably care about that one thing. If they are looking to hire someone fulltime who can grow in the company, being hung up on that one thing is plain stupid. "WTF do hiring managers actually want? " I have been interviewed by tons of managers being a consultant. I would say majority of them are not always sure what exactly they want. It can change. For example, I interviewed once for a role which required a very specific vendor system experience in finance. Apparently, that system was so niche and new that they could not find anyone unless they poached from the vendor directly. So the manager decided to look at other "relevant" candidates. The problem: He had no clue what to look for. True story. So don't get too upset about this. I say move on and keep looking. There are many great hiring mangers out there who not only understand what they want/need, they also know how to interview and find the right person without being too hung up on one thing or other. ------ phantom_oracle I feel your pain buddy. A lot of good advice given so far. Perhaps I can add another perspective to it. Relocate to where demand outstrips supply by a big amount. Relocation is tough, but if you pick the right spot, you will get a job by applying some of those networking principles others have mentioned. Cities/Areas I'd consider (where you will find it easier to get a job and do interesting stuff) in no particular order: Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Berlin, [insert city name here], etc. I can't think of anymore right now, but those are great places to look at (unless you have enterprise-knowledge, in the form of C#, .NET - which changes things). It's ironic that programmers use technology everyday to eliminate inefficiencies, yet nepotism in hiring is something even programmers face. Based on this, consider your CV dead for a little while and hustle till you find something. Good luck! ------ pascal1us Don't assume it's your fault. Hiring, often times has biases. There could be any number of reasons: either technical or personal. Hiring decisions are often subjective, despite the fact that they try to be somewhat objective. And it's especially hard for people with less than 5 years of experience. Keep trying, you'll get it eventually. ------ JSeymourATL One way to get a good software engineer job is to zero-in on firms that look like they are doing interesting work. Don't send them a resume. Instead, approach individuals in a friendly peer-level manner. Start a conversation-- as a fellow coder, I was curious about the work you do. ------ dccoolgai Avoid recruiters like the plague. Go to Meetups in your area. Got my current job through doing that and it's awesome. In DC, the custom at tech Meetups is to have a 10-minute "who's hiring" litany before the talks start. I'm pretty sure it's that way in most other cities, too. For mid-to-senior level devs lately, I hire pretty much exclusively from the pool of people I see as regular attendees at deep-language meetups. They are spending their free time getting better at their craft: best 1st-line filter ever. ------ ankitgarg43 [https://medium.com/@mikeleeorg/how-to-find-great-software- de...](https://medium.com/@mikeleeorg/how-to-find-great-software- developers-15355bfb5880) i guess this would help to some extent ------ TheFiachna In my experience, even having non-trivial apps won't get you anywhere. Networking is the only sure fire way to get a position where I am, and a lot of that comes down to luck in finding the right people at the right time. ------ srblanch I would say that besides technical skills, the number one reason I didn't recommend people for hire is because of poor communication or interpersonal skills. In today's environment, these are essential skills and you should practice if you struggle in this area. Nobody wants to work with somebody that is not a team player, no matter how brilliant they are technically. ------ wturner I couldn't find anything so I gave technical tutorials a shot. I found some companies to contract me, but the time involved basically makes the work a less-than-minimum wage 'job'. I know front end development to a degree, but I'm also below the poverty line. I can't answer your question but I can at least validate your perspective first-hand. ------ gesman Position yourself not as a programmer (or glamorous version of that: software engineer), but as a person who can boost residual value of a business. People like these are assets. "Programmers", "developers" and "software engineers" are essentially liabilities. These are the first to let go when things gets uncertain. ~~~ wturner This sounds great but there is one caveat. The person that does the hiring probably doesn't care about the business, they usually just care about their job. It's two different things. The exception are start ups where the person doing the hiring might be the founder or closely tied to them. ------ whichdan "know how to code in multiple languages and provide decent coding examples" "a fully functioning and non-trivial web app" If you haven't written a full app in a language, can you really claim proficiency in it? ------ mc_hammer get a open source contrib on your resume - something they will recognize by name, and hopefully quote something cool - "sped up rendering by 99%" get a good past job that they will recognize the employer name and you will have an easy time. ~~~ useyourloaf +1 for this. A caution: don't just "join" a project: you have to _do_ something in the project and be able to point at the actual code contribution you made.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: now that Mavericks broke gmail support, what will you use? - tigroferoce Mail.app does not play well with gmail. Sparrow was bought by Google (and therefore has uncertain future on OS X. Inky seems nice, but it's terribly slow and is a resource monster. So what do you use for your email? ====== robmil I'm using MailMate[1], which is a brilliant client developed by the Danish coder Benny Kjaer Nielsen. It has too many neat features to name, but the one I absolutely couldn't live without is the ability to write emails in Markdown. [1]: [http://freron.com/](http://freron.com/) ------ bobthedino Why not just wait and see if Apple manages to fix Mail.app? [http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/04/apple-preparing-bug- fix-...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/04/apple-preparing-bug-fix-updates- to-mail-ibooks-safari-and-remote-desktop/) ~~~ tigroferoce I need email for work. If I cannot be sure about my mail client I must change client. However, Mail.app never satisfied me 100%, so I took the opportunity to scout for better clients. ------ thetron I started using Airmail[1], and I love it. Mainly for label support with Gmail, but there's lots of little bits of UI features that I love about. Definitely worth the $1.99 or whatever it is on the App Store. [1]: [http://airmailapp.com/](http://airmailapp.com/) ~~~ tigroferoce I've seen it, but I read that it's very bugged. Did you experienced any problem? ~~~ hashtree None here, thus far. Best mail client I've ever used. ~~~ tigroferoce Good to know. 2$ is definitely worth. Pity there is not a trial version on the app store. BTW, is it good to keep zero inbox? I'm so desperate that I was thinking about writing my own zero inbox-oriented client ... ------ koralatov I use mutt[1] for all of my e-mail. It's a bit of a bear to set up intially, but really worth it. There are lots of guides online that ease the pain of setting it up. [1]: [http://www.mutt.org/](http://www.mutt.org/) ~~~ tigroferoce I think I could switch to mutt either :-). I've read that gmail IMAP support is a little broken. Are you having problems with mutt? ------ benologist I'm using outlook.com + mail.app to spread things out. One side benefit is you can still get fullname@outlook.com lol. ~~~ ghuntley Have migrated over to Outlook.com as well and can confirm that the user interface is quite refreshing when compared to the deteriorating state that is gmail. Be aware that Outlook.com is not 365 and there is unfortunately no paid or premium support option, however entire domains are supported via going to domains.live.com. Perfect for family emails/domains, etc. After migrating I authored a plugin for Google Chrome that makes Outlook.com your default email application and provides a button to compose a message to quickly share a link via email. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-from- outlookc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-from-outlookcom- by-g/jgjbncjbianlocbolfhpanbbpaobldod?hl=en) if your using Chrome + Outlook.com check it out. ------ adam-_- What's wrong with gmail.com? ~~~ tigroferoce I don't like the interface. I find it too clumsy with features I don't use. Said this, at the moment I'm using it :-(. I used Gmelius to get rid of most of the interface and it is usable. However I'd like a better integration with the operating system.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GoReplay 4th anniversary and 0.16 release - LeonidBugaev https://leonsbox.com/goreplay-v0-16-and-4th-anniversary-5408b1fd72e0 ====== sergey_mo Awesome! ------ matiasb Congrats!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
World fails to meet a single target to stop destruction of nature – UN report - pera https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/every-global-target-to-stem-destruction-of-nature-by-2020-missed-un-report-aoe ====== eindiran FTA: > From tackling pollution to protecting coral reefs, the international > community did not fully achieve any of the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets > agreed in Japan in 2010 to slow the loss of the natural world. It is the > second consecutive decade that governments have failed to meet targets. Though this is a bit better: > The 20 Aichi biodiversity targets are broken down into 60 separate elements > to monitor overall progress. Of those, seven have been achieved, 38 have > shown progress and 13 elements have shown no progress. Progress remains > unknown for two elements. It seems like conservation of "vital biodiversity areas" is improving, but the situation for marine ecosystems is not improving (with regard to overfishing, coastal development, pollution, or climate change/ocean acidification). Marine ecosystem preservation seems like a tragedy of the commons issue, and this is the result. The lands in your nation are directly yours and there can be national movements to improve them. But the oceans are everyone's, in the sense that they can be harmed by any nation's inability to curb pollution, overfishing, etc. Eg 10 rivers as the source of 88 - 95% of all plastic in the ocean[0]. [0] [http://oceanrep.geomar.de/43169/4/es7b02368_si_001.pdf](http://oceanrep.geomar.de/43169/4/es7b02368_si_001.pdf) ------ zaro Is that really suprising ? All the world powers are preocuppied with wars ( both hot and economic) , neocolonialism , and keeping the inssanely broken and injust finnacial system from collapisng. Enviromment and the ecosystems are like ecomosists like to says externlaities.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Ventures: Your Design Team Needs A War Room. Here's How To Set One Up - kevinwuhoo http://www.fastcodesign.com/3028471/google-ventures-your-design-team-needs-a-war-room-heres-how-to-set-one-up ====== runlevel1 Slightly off-topic, but can anyone explain how they're using the <video> tag in #page-jumbotron? I presume it's somehow being used to smooth the GIF animation.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google's Schmidt warns regulators against killing innovation - cwan http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-google-schmidt.html ====== naner _Asked by an Iranian member of the audience if Google will stop blocking Android or Chrome downloads in his country, Schmidt said that the ban was due to US sanctions on Iran and that "we can't violate US law."_ Is this due to crypto within the software or what? ~~~ cube13 That has to be the reason, because any software(libraries or executables) that contains SSL encryption code is covered as a weapon under export rules. ~~~ lotu That stopped being the case years ago. ------ toddnessa It is for the most part an unfortunate fact that regulators are a stifler of innovation. What has their recent push for SOPA just taught us? If they want to regulate it to truly protect people that is one thing. For example, children need to be protected from predators who would exploit them on the Internet. However,when regulators attempt to regulate out of greed (because their pockets are being laced by Hollywood or some other interest group) they ruin things for everybody. ------ worldimperator I can live pretty well without innovations in privacy intrusion systems. ;-) But I'm looking forward to their innovations in deleting or hiding interconnected data. That's still a huge problem, I'm wondering what they 'innovated' to delete my G+ account while not becoming totally inconsistent on related pages of people following me etc. (I intentionally deleted it yesterday) ~~~ lotu I can assure you Google and any sane Internet company never truly deletes anything, such that it is unrecoverable. They just mark it as deleted so that, it doesn't get served up but nothing is invalidated. ------ vacri Regulations kill innovation, yes? Software patents are regulations... let's start there.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
US may tie social media to visa applications - Sami_Lehtinen http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43601557 ====== janoc I think it is long past the date when the EU should have started to apply reciprocally onerous standards to the US citizens traveling to Europe. Unless the US travelers start raising fuss at home about their treatment abroad, this BS will continue. I am pretty sure that this nonsense would change very fast the moment CEOs of big US companies get a proper interrogation on arrival at Heathrow or Frankfurt and/or get denied entry for arbitrary and undisclosed reasons (as is common in the US). (before someone jumps on me that the article is about visas and not ESTA applying to EU countries - well, the ESTA questionnaire is pretty much identical to the visa one, including the "have you been a member of a terrorist organization?" questions. Just you normally don't need to go to an embassy interview and it can be handled online as long as you don't get flagged for some reason). ~~~ esbranson The EU did consider reciprocally onerous standards. The European Commission decided against revoking visa-free travel privileges to Americans in March 2017. European Parliament resolution: [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&langua...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P8-TA-2017-0060) European Commission response: [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/AUTO/?uri=CELEX:52...](http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/AUTO/?uri=CELEX:52017DC0227) European Commission press release: [http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-17-1148_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-17-1148_en.htm) Social media reporting only applies to visa applications. Most EU states have visa-free travel privileges to the US, so this is not applicable to them. However, the US _would_ require social media disclosure for Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania nationals under this proposal. The US does not need social media information from most EU citizens. We get this from their interior ministries, who do a much better job. (Nationals' own domestic spy agencies are the likely source of these "arbitrary" reasons for detention and denial of admittance.) ------ anotheryou I don't know the user handles of 90% of my accounts of the past 5 years. I use a different email for every service I use. Most of my profiles use fake names. My phone number has not changed in 5 years, but by a quirk in the system I would have been going through about 4 temporary phone numbers while switching providers. It will be fun times. ------ vinni2 > They would have to disclose all social media identities used in the past > five years. > Applicants would also be asked for five years of their telephone numbers, > email addresses and travel history. I wonder how they would find out if some details are omitted. It is not an easy task to link/resolve people's current online identities let alone past (deleted ones). There is a ton of research centered around this but they are not so effective in practice! I know this because we tried to implement this for a research project on entity resolution. ~~~ jaclaz >I wonder how they would find out if some details are omitted. It is not an easy task to link/resolve people's current online identities let alone past (deleted ones). There is a ton of research centered around this but they are not so effective in practice! I know this because we tried to implement this for a research project on entity resolution. I suspect - I may well be wrong of course - that they won't actually check anything on most people/visa requests, BUT they will have a signed legal document where you declare something, and when/if for _any_ reason you will become a target and they will actually look at that, if they can find the omission they will treat it as a false statement and use that to negate the Visa or to prevent future entries to the country or worse. ~~~ tenpies Agree. It's also worth noting that while they may not have the capability to do much with the information today, they probably will in the future. I could very much see a future where with just a couple of profile names they can reasonably extrapolate which user names you would have selected in the past. Or a quick scan of your current social media content reveals your writing fingerprint and it becomes trivial to tell which accounts/posts were yours with a high degree of confidence.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple Introduces Revamped Two-Factor Auth for iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan - tomkinstinch http://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/08/ios-9-el-capitan-two-factor-authentication/ ====== tomkinstinch The process for enabling the current (opt-in) two-factor verification is described here: [https://support.apple.com/kb/PH14668?locale=en_US](https://support.apple.com/kb/PH14668?locale=en_US)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft's Bing versus Google, some observations - Encosia http://jacquesmattheij.com/Microsofts+Bing+versus+Google,+some+observations ====== RiderOfGiraffes This link doesn't work for me. A link that does work, and lots of discussion already there, can be found here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2174677> ------ sjs382 Working URL: [http://jacquesmattheij.com/Microsofts+Bing+versus+Google,+so...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/Microsofts+Bing+versus+Google,+some+observations)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Arizona Senate votes to accept tax payments in Bitcoin - nokcha http://fortune.com/2018/02/10/arizona-bitcoin-taxes/ ====== BoorishBears I can’t wait for the obsession with “Blockchain Technology” to final fizzle out for the few realistic non-groundbreaking applications to emerge. Every “out of touch with tech except when some crazy new dangled “stuff” seems to be printing money” is coming out of the woodwork to get a slice... except they’re the exactly people being fleeced to print this new money. They don’t understand the the reason adding blockchain to your name gives you a 100% bump in stock isn’t because blockchain technology is revolutionary, it’s because of people just as clueless as they are and just as scared of missing out. ~~~ colejohnson66 It’s just the dotcom bubble all over again ~~~ DoreenMichele Tulips anyone? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania) ------ bootlooped "the primary goal is to foster technological innovation in the state" “sending a signal to everyone in the United States and possibly throughout the world that Arizona is going to be the place to be for blockchain and digital currency technology in the future.” So this isn't the solution to a problem, it's an advertisement. ~~~ dragonwriter An advertisement is a solution to a problem (a problem of people's behavior not being what you'd prefer it to be.) ------ alextheparrot > Includes a provision mandating that cryptocurrency payments be converted to > U.S. dollars within 24 hours of their payment So there’s a massive, planned liquidation period (Aka tax time) - this can’t be exploited at all. ~~~ lithos Tax season is almost 4 months long in the US. ~~~ alextheparrot My intuition was that taxes would be paid mostly near the deadline. I ran the numbers [0] based on IRS numbers to check this intuition. While it is a matter of degree, and it is definitely less pronounced than I initially thought, the last week sees roughly double the number of filers than the minimum week, with another peak in early February. I'm not aware of a comparable comodity market where there would be a seasonal, forced sell-off to actually speak to the effects. I am, however, convinced that this at least presents an opportunity for adverse behaviors which could make this an untenable policy. It also doesn't speak to that there are 8 months for the markets to prepare for exploit this period. [0] [https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/2018-and-prior-year-filing- seas...](https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/2018-and-prior-year-filing-season- statistics) Results (2017): Week : Filers (Millions) January 27 : 8.3 February 3 : 11.1 February 10 : 11.4 February 17 : 9.6 February 24 : 8.9 March 3 : 8.1 March 10 : 7.6 March 17 : 7.2 March 24 : 6.9 March 31 : 7.5 April 7 : 8.9 April 14 : 13.1 April 21 : 13.9 ~~~ dragonwriter Tax _filing_ and tax _payments_ are not necessarily simultaneous. ------ tekproxy Cool. Call me when I don't have to calculate capital gains taxes every time I spend Bitcoin.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Deep Learning Shirt for Charity - some1else http://some1else.tumblr.com/post/124922361439/deep-learning-shirt-for-charity ====== therobot24 $30 for a shirt with a screen printed image from some random deep learning paper? You don't even cite the paper. Assuming the source is published in some venue then the publisher (ACM, IEEE, etc.) owns the copyright of that image and while i haven't heard of IEEE going after people for copyright infringements this seems to be pretty cut and dry. Also, using the language, "for Charity", doesn't sound great when you link to a tumblr blog instead of the actual charity website. The whole thing just looks shady as hell. ~~~ some1else The price is steep because charity. I used output from Caffe[1] which is open source software. You can get a similar output yourself, just by running their Python notebook[2]. The festival website is linked within the post[3]. I am using Tumblr to see if it's a viable medium for mini fundraisers. Thanks for the feedback though, I will set up a landing page instead. [1]: [http://caffe.berkeleyvision.org/](http://caffe.berkeleyvision.org/) [2]: [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/BVLC/caffe/blob/master/ex...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/BVLC/caffe/blob/master/examples/00-classification.ipynb) [3]: [http://kudplac.si/portfolio/tknp/](http://kudplac.si/portfolio/tknp/) ~~~ therobot24 Looks like the filters from the notebook are a re-organized view of figure 3 from [http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fritz/absps/imagenet.pdf](http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fritz/absps/imagenet.pdf) (as the caffe page cites at the top). I'm not a lawyer, so i don't really know if making a 'new' image using the components of the copyrighted image is derivative or not. > Thanks for the feedback though, I will set up a landing page instead. Please do, if this is really legit, it's in your best interest to set it up in the most professional way possible. It'd probably be better to get the organizers of the festival to put the content of the post in one of their pages and you link there. ~~~ some1else The first layer only contains basic features, which are shared among different sets of images[1]. It seems that the ImageNet photos themselves are indeed very protected[2], so I should probably use another dataset as input. Plugging in my iPhone camera roll should result in very similar filters. It will be very interesting to see how much they differ. Update: The author of Caffe just got back to me with word that the filters are in public domain, therefore safe to use as design elements. [1]: [http://i.stack.imgur.com/Hl2H6.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Hl2H6.png) [2]: [http://www.princeton.edu/main/administration/legal_complianc...](http://www.princeton.edu/main/administration/legal_compliance/copyright/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Passive TCP/IP Geo-Location - blaskov http://geoloc.foremski.pl/ ====== phire I see the bug. If the ping times are high enough (~250ms) it will happily create circles which exceed the area of earth, and the google maps API will happily draw negative circles which exclude the user's likely location. Really there should be a max function that shades the entire earth (or ignores it since that result really can't tell you anything). ~~~ contingencies If ping times are over 250ms the user's likely location is China (but could also be online via satellite, or in space). Of course, if the user is in China, Google Maps won't display. ~~~ maz- Eh? RTT between London and Sydney for example is around 300ms and testing that page, I see a 316ms RTT from Singapore (in London). Theoretical minimum RTT's based on the speed of light for systems on the opposite side of the world is nice and all but doesn't take into account the realities of packet processing on the internet. ~~~ contingencies Yes but speaking statistically, since virtually nobody lives in Australia or London versus China, the user's likely location is China. ------ lucb1e I did this a few years ago, a simple tool that pinged places all over the world and calculated where you should be. This only ever gets as close as your ISP, or perhaps a local routing center if your ISP has multiple (mine has only one in Amsterdam, I live on the other side of the country). This means it's less accurate than your typical GeoIP database. Edit: I'm no longer sure this is the same. The title mentions "passive", and from another comment I understand that the author meant that you can find someone's location if you are the man in the middle, observing traffic to various places around the world. This is definitely something I had not considered yet! ~~~ chias It isn't passive. See lines 64-73 of the code [1]. This seems very similar to what you describe, but rather than you pinging a bunch of places around the world, it has a bunch of places around the world essentially pinging _you_. If you check the HTML source, it's src'ing scripts from machines around the world (I assume whatever host is being used, the author has spun up a VPN in each of their data centers). Here's an example of one [2]. Each of these sends you a constant value over and over again, and the server side measures the latency, before finally reporting the average round-trip time to you. [1]: [http://geoloc.foremski.pl/tcpinfo.go](http://geoloc.foremski.pl/tcpinfo.go) [2]: [http://46.101.226.53/DE_Frankfurt.js](http://46.101.226.53/DE_Frankfurt.js) ------ aw3c2 > This website demonstrates IP address geo-location by passively measuring > TCP/IP round-trip times of web requests made to a few servers spread around > the world. I don't get how that could be called passive. This is making your browser issue requests or am I missing something? ~~~ HowardStark I believe the author's point was you could determine the location by monitoring other applications and their network calls. That being said, I highly doubt there are many requests being made to Bangalore, India and this appears to require requests to a wide array of locations all over the world. ~~~ lucb1e Aside from the disproportional amount of traffic going to America (I'm from Europe), there was still a significant portion of traffic that went all over the world when I last checked for my private traffic. Additionally I once made a map of destinations from our school's "security lab" network. This is 30 minutes of traffic: [https://snag.gy/aJqrg2.jpg](https://snag.gy/aJqrg2.jpg) The map is a modified version of the one generated by Wireshark (circles are proportional to the amount of data going from/to that IP address). It seems to use Maxmind's GeoIP database. ------ IshKebab The ping times seem sensible, but I can't work out any correlation between them and the map. Just seems like a random collection of circles... ~~~ whorleater I assume each circle has a radius proportional to the rtt, thus the area in which the circles overlap is roughly where you should be. The limited amount of servers + wide range of rtt gives a massive margin of errors, but this is probably easily improvable through some extra servers and some kind of knn-ish analysis. ~~~ planetix Well in my case somehow javascript places Singapore circles center to middle of Indian ocean close to Antarctica. San Francisco and Bangalore are in South America. ~~~ chinathrow That's not an inclusive circle, it means anything within the circle is _not_ reachable within the RTT reach of ie. Bangalore or Singapore. ------ abpavel Delay component of the round trip time contains sum of: 1\. delays in buffer queue 2\. serialization delays 3\. processing delays 4\. propagation delays While propagation delay usually makes up the largest portion, it is not always the case. Furthermore, the routing efficiency varies widely, depending on IX peering and INET upstream arrangements of your ISP. It also helps to know the topology of the underlying physical networks, or at least major POPs. This is like measuring intensity of the Sun with the naked eye. ------ nebulous1 I think there's a bug in the circle placement. They don't appear to be correct for me. I'm assuming they're supposed to be centred on the locations listed. ~~~ chronial I though that too at first, but they are correct. It looks like this because these are circles on a globe. The outline of a very big circle around a location is the same as the outline of a small circle around the point on the opposite side of the globe. Look at the color-tint to find out what is inside and what is outside a circle. ~~~ nebulous1 Ah yes, I see. My ping times to Singapore are so bad that it looks like a circle over Columbia/Ecuador, ie the other side of the globe, but what looks like a circle is actually what's outside the circle. ------ cyphunk While GeoIP databases might be more accurate this method _may_ in some situations provide location information of users behind proxies. lame self- reference, discussion on the topic: [https://deadhacker.com/2011/03/13/predicting-location-of- one...](https://deadhacker.com/2011/03/13/predicting-location-of-one-hop- proxy-users/) ~~~ zrm Sort of. You measure the latency from the user to the proxy + the proxy to the site, so what you end up with is the approximate location of the proxy and a radius around it where the user could be. But the radius is liable to be 3000 miles, and you can't even assume the user isn't really closer to the proxy than that because the user could be using more than one proxy or anything else that adds fixed network latency (including on purpose to prevent this). Which is the same problem with using it to determine if the user is "too far" from the server. You can get extra latency (and thus false positives) whenever there is bufferbloat or a lame corporate network that routes traffic from New York to New York via a network appliance in California or similar. ~~~ Tinyyy Assuming that the user only uses one proxy, you can use GeoIP to get his proxy location, and then if you account for the proxy-webserver distance, you can get a pretty accurate geolocation. ~~~ zrm > Assuming that the user only uses one proxy, you can use GeoIP to get his > proxy location, and then if you account for the proxy-webserver distance, > you can get a pretty accurate geolocation. A congested network link can easily add more than 100ms of latency due to buffering. At the speed of light that's thousands of miles. You can't even say that if the latency between the proxy and the browser is only 10ms then the user is physically close to the proxy, because you don't know if the user is running the browser on a VPS with something like X forwarding. ------ weberc2 This is wildly inaccurate. I'm in the U.S. (not even a southern state) and it thinks I'm somewhere well off the coast of Peru. Perhaps my results are atypical, or there's a rendering problem? Perhaps this could be improved with more servers and a better algorithm for resolving the times? ~~~ nickodell Actually, what it's trying to tell you is that you're _not_ in Peru. If you're 220 ms away from Singapore, you must not be in Columbia, since a speed-of- light transmission would take longer than that to make a round trip. For me, the most specific fix is provided by New York and San Francisco. Together, they can tell that I'm somewhere in the US, Canada, or Mexico. (But, of course, you could have figured that out from GeoIP.) ~~~ weberc2 Ah yes, that makes more sense. Thanks for the help. :) ------ Svenskunganka Don't forget that this is a proof-of-concept and is not meant to be an reliable solution for you to replace GeoIP with, but rather a concept to play with thoughts. The first thing that comes to mind would be combining this with peer-to-peer pinging - which if the swarm is big enough could potentially provide a fairly decent geolocation mechanism. ------ rmdoss Really cool tool. If he added a few more servers and set a max ping rt it would become a lot more accurate. And it doesn't really replace geoip, but implemented correctly can be used very affectively for latency based routing (similar to what AWS has). ------ alpb Honestly this does not seem to be a very smart thing to do at all. Your ping times is probably just going to reveal on which coast of US you are on (unless you're speedtest.com or something like that). If you want city-level accuracy, at least in US, just use geo IP lookup: [https://geoiptool.com/](https://geoiptool.com/) This finds my city perfectly, unlike the link above (which says I'm somewhere on US West coast). ~~~ tedmiston How does Geo IP Tool make these predictions? Like, where is the data it's associating my IP with coming from or how are they obtaining it? ~~~ pyvpx they start with WHOIS data and add what they can from there to improve accuracy. Quite a few residential ISPs register blocks of IP addresses (subnets) to a city, town, neighborhood, etc. ------ kerkeslager Little Snitch[1] does a very good job of preventing this sort of attack. Even if they give names to the servers that make me think they're something I want to allow, the time I spend clicking the "Allow" button is well outside the margin of error of the latency measurements. I'm in NYC and the tool places me in Frankfort, Germany. +1 for Little Snitch. [1] [https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html](https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html) ~~~ nathancahill Yes, I use and love Little Snitch too, but don't you have a rule that says Browser = Allow all? ~~~ kerkeslager Nope. It only took me a few days to work out whitelists/blacklists for the sites I use often, i.e. most citicards.com subdomains get an "allow" but cardoffer.citicards.com gets a "deny". On other sites I come across it's usually trivial to whitelist the domains that provide their functionality, and most adservers and tracking servers I've already blocked. Given browsers are the main place I get tracked, putting an allow all for my browser seems to defeat the purpose. That said, it was pretty annoying the first few days. ~~~ nathancahill I see. I use uBlock Origin for the browser, and Little Snitch for application level connections. Similar strategy though, starting with deny all, and gradually building a whitelist to get sites functional. ------ dzhiurgis I have a question about geolocation when using Google Compute. All of the geolocation services identify my server as US based, when in fact it is located in asia (ping and traceroute reveals). Was wondering perhaps HN big heads can explain it to me:) I suspect it is somehow related to how Google operates its SDN and that IP is assigned to massive AS block. Nevertheless, I think there is a decent performance risk when CDNs serve from US based cache rather than local. ~~~ jimktrains2 GeoIP databases work based on the _owner_ of the IP address. The owner can cooperate with a geoip database and provide more granular locations for the blocks they use. Others, like Google apparently, don't and as such, you'll show up as the registered address for the allocated block. ------ mkj Nice idea. Digitalocean's Singapore routing seems a bit terrible. From Perth I get 50ms to a hop in Singapore (aarnet), but the endpoint is >100ms! ------ dewyatt Seems a bit off for me in Virginia, USA. [http://imgur.com/TblQSSu](http://imgur.com/TblQSSu) ~~~ gkfasdfasdf Looks about right, the circle around Columbia is not shaded inside - that is, the center of the circle is on the other side of globe. So Virginia lies in the most heavily shaded region. ------ xfour Smart, but I don't know how granular you could get unless you had known servers at every possible datacenter. ~~~ chinathrow Just use a CDN with decent edge coverage. I'm sure those results can be improved drastically. ~~~ planetix You did notice that the backend code is Go code snippet that needs to run at the end points? ~~~ chinathrow So? I'm sure some CDN out there allow you to run your own code, hence it could be more granular (as OP was interested in). ------ sheerun I've created slightly improved version here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11993451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11993451) ------ xg15 I'm not impressed so far. The demonstrator on the linked page found out that I live... somewhere in Europe. You could get a more precise location by simply reverse-DNSsing my IP address. ------ SimonSelg Works for me! Correctly identified my location as Germany. ------ avodonosov my result: [https://snag.gy/4X5ZyN.jpg](https://snag.gy/4X5ZyN.jpg) ~~~ SomewhatLikely I think that means you're in Europe. ~~~ avodonosov I am. How do you see this? ~~~ jimktrains2 The circle around the Indian Ocean, and the 2 near/over South America are inverted. _Inside_ the circle is where you aren't. As such Europe is the place where all circles overlap. ------ Canada Tried with Tor. Not even close. ------ rocky1138 Am I looking at the area in which the majority of circles intersect, a la Venn? ~~~ planetix Intersect? In my case they intersect in a weird way: [http://i.imgur.com/eFqyCEq.png](http://i.imgur.com/eFqyCEq.png) Those circle centres don't even look right. ~~~ andyfleming It's obvious. You are either in the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean! ------ rad_gruchalski So it approximated me being in Frankfurt. Not bad, just about 100 miles away. ------ sgt Not very accurate - got my location incorrect by over 10000 km. ------ VoidWhisperer I apparently live in the middle of the Caribbean. Ha. I wish. ------ sergers earlier it had me in California/Oregon. now it shows me in Ecuador? i am actually on west coast canada ------ formula_ninguna it even doesn't show a continent properly where I am . ------ necessity Only works if JavaScript is allowed by default. ~~~ kpcyrd The demo, yes. The attack, no. ------ mSparks this puts me in one of about 6 locations in the world each with an accuracy of several thousand kilometers. probably because i suffer from quite unpleasant packet loss. but not convinced it works. ~~~ milcron Some of the circles are inverse circles. I thought it was inaccurate at first too, until I realized the India result was telling me "you're NOT in Peru". ~~~ mSparks Just done it from the office. I'm definitely "not" in the ocean. [http://i64.tinypic.com/28ujms7.png](http://i64.tinypic.com/28ujms7.png) ~~~ milcron Lol! Looks like this is saying: Green: Not in the Indian Ocean. Blue: Not in the Pacific near Ecuador. Yellow: Not in the Southern hemisphere. Red: Somewhere in Europe, Greenland, North Africa, or Svalbard. In your case, the red circle is the only one that really matters. Yellow took a tiny slice out of it near Iraq.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The YouTube Martyr - noonespecial http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195060/The-YouTube-Martyr-How-beautiful-music-student-symbol-help-topple-Irans-fanatical-rulers.html ====== noonespecial Is Joseph Stalin's brutal calculus finally ended by the cell phone and twitter? Have "statistics" now become a million little tragedies?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Major Music Festivals Have Pledged Not to Use Facial Recognition Technology - innovateee https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywakpj/40-major-music-festivals-have-pledged-not-to-use-facial-recognition-technology ====== skratchpixels This is great that people are against this technology but facial recognition will probably still be done through social media which a lot of these attendees will stream the entire time.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The ABC Conjecture has not been proved - misleading_name http://mathbabe.org/2012/11/14/the-abc-conjecture-has-not-been-proved/ ====== duaneb God dammit. Of course it hasn't been proved yet, nobody is viewing the theorem as accepted by the mathematical community. But such a headline makes me think that his proof was debunked, and is just as bad as claiming it was proved.... which, again, was not exactly a common viewpoint. I did, however, like the bit where the writer proposed that the ultimate interpreter of the supposed proof should receive credit as well as the original thinker; from the look I took at the theorem, it looks to be an arduous task (to say the least). EDIT: I am not a maths person, and I do not keep in touch with the mathematics community except where the news is big enough to reach other fields (as this supposed proof did), so perhaps my 'nobody' is unsourced. But I believe anyone who would be 'in touch' enough to read this blog post would understand that the supposed proof is far from being accepted as a true proof. ~~~ wging Who's to say that there's going to be a single 'ultimate interpreter' of the proof? If it's a community effort do we pull a Time Magazine and say everyone proved it... oh, and I guess Shin Mochizuki helped. This whole article is just kind of silly. The fact that we don't understand it is a fact about ourselves, not about Mochizuki's reasoning. The argument is meaningful and correct or it isn't, and our perceptions of it are secondary to the thing itself. ~~~ rizzom5000 I have to agree with this. There is a lot of discussion about this proof, and also with the idea that the reasoning that leads to it may reveal new insight. There is little to gain by lamenting the potential difficulty of verification by pointing out your interpretation of the accessibility of previous famous proof attempts. ------ ISL Calling out the lack of peer review is a red herring. There is plenty of incorrect work accepted into journals every day. If Mochizuki's work is correct, then in most senses, the result is proven. Whether that proof is yet accepted is another matter entirely. ------ marshray This region between mathematical brilliance and madness appears really strange. ------ adrianbg too long, don't bother reading: A proposition is only considered proven when a bunch of experts reach a consensus that a proposed proof is correct. This is currently not the case for the ABC conjecture. ------ nate_martin has not been proved...yet, and is currently under review by the math community. ------ chris_wot Given its name, saying the ABC Conjecture has not been proved is really repeating yourself.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Are you Chasing a Mirage? - dwynings http://marcrandolph.com/2012/02/28/are-you-chasing-a-mirage/ ====== tgrass And here we have the economist who won't pick a twenty-dollar bill off the sidewalk, because if it were really there someone would have picked it up already. ------ Mz I am clear I am doing something "novel" when it comes to resolving my health issues. What I do not know is how to a) promote it to others more effectively and b) monetize it. And please refrain from being the umpteenth person to tell me that either I should give it away for free out of the goodness of my heart or that it has no commercial value. There are literally billions of dollars being spent on more expensive, less effective approaches and all the info on my website is currently available for free out of the goodness of my heart while I am homeless and deeply in debt. Are there any good articles for how to figure the right way to monetize something when you are genuinely doing something unique?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sales of the Galaxy S III rose following the unveiling of the iPhone 5 - neya http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57541312-94/samsung-feels-the-power-as-galaxy-note-2-lifts-off/?ttag=fbwp ====== mdasen That makes sense. If you were thinking about getting a GS3 in late September, you might as well wait to see what Apple was coming out with. If it were known that Samsung would be introducing a new flagship phone 2 weeks after the iPhone, I think a lot of people would have waited to make their decision. Then once they saw both, they would pull the trigger to buy the one they wanted. I bought an iPhone 5, but was definitely interested in the Lumia 920 announcement. If it was going to be announced a week after the iPhone, I certainly would have waited to see what it was. It makes sense that people would delay their purchase decision for a few weeks if they know a competitor is just about to announce something - if for no other reason than to confirm that the original device actually is the one they wanted. ~~~ Steko "Then once they saw both, they would pull the trigger to buy the one they wanted." What's far more common would be more or less uninformed people walked in to buy an iphone 5, and were told it was out of stock for weeks and the salesman (who gets a significantly better commission on Samsung phones) tries his best to sell them the GS3 and sometimes does. I know this is a common story because I've actually seen the exact scenario play out several times in the course of an hour I spent with my wife in the Sprint store activating her phone. ~~~ CWIZO You and mdasen both have a valid theory. Unfortunately it's just that, a theory. ~~~ blinkingled Parent assumes however that everyone walking into the store looking for a phone wants or deserves the iPhone but is sold an (implicitly) inferior one because iPhone is not in stock and / or the salesman gets more commission to sell the S3. The S3 is actually a great phone and I find it hard to believe people don't know the iPhone and accept something they don't like. At the least they consider both and go with the S3 because they like it and partially because they can't buy the iPhone anyways. Remember Microsoft / Nokia paying more commission to sales people hasn't taken WP anywhere. Tangentially is Apple losing their acclaimed grip on the supply chain if they can't make enough iPhones but Samsung can make and sell double that after paying sales people more and still making 7.4B in profit? ~~~ mdasen So, my theory isn't that someone is accepting an inferior device. Rather, that if you think the GS3 is awesome and are thinking of buying it a week before Apple is set to introduce a new iPhone, it's prudent to wait to make sure Apple doesn't have something amazing up its sleeve. Similarly, if Samsung had a press event a week after Apple introduced the iPhone, it would be prudent to wait and see if Samsung had something amazing that they were introducing. ~~~ blinkingled Yeah, sorry I kind of misraead your post and mixed it up with the reply below. Your theory is credible though - as in it has a supporting data point in its favor - Amazon announced that Kindle Fire sales after iPad mini announcement went up 3 times normal. ------ UnoriginalGuy I don't think Samsung's advertising hurt either. Many of which directly targeted (made fun of?) Apple users. Stuff like this: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf5-Prx19ZM> They've been showing that non-stop in the states. ~~~ aes256 That's actually a pretty neat ad. So far the only ad I've seen for the SIII in the UK is this one: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsP-S2nETCc> With selling points such as "it understands you", "keeps track of loved ones", "recognises who you are", "follows your every move", "waits till you're asleep", it sounds like a commercial for a bloody serial killer. ~~~ CountSessine _With selling points such as "it understands you", "keeps track of loved ones", "recognises who you are", "follows your every move", "waits till you're asleep", it sounds like a commercial for a bloody serial killer._ I watched the ad you posted. It's bland. It's too bad that they didn't have something edgier, especially with those quotes you mentioned. Maybe even something a bit more like this, from a few years ago? [http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2006/02/new_psp_ad...](http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2006/02/new_psp_adverts.html) ~~~ aes256 I assume the reason it's bland is because it was designed to be translated into a bunch of different languages, most likely to be used across the whole of Europe, if not the Middle East and Asia as well. I would guess the copy wasn't written in English, and whatever message it was intended to convey was lost in translation. It's not quite as bad as the bland multinational ads we get where they have the audacity to dub English over foreign vocals, but it's not far off... Edit: A sample of the latter for the uninitiated: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IqMa7LOtgo> ------ SoapSeller Also, The 199$ Kindle Fire had the biggest sales day(since the launch) after the iPad Mini unveiled: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/27/3563380/amazon- kindle-fir...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/27/3563380/amazon-kindle-fire- hd-sales-after-ipad-mini-event) ------ acabal For a second I thought this was an Onion article: > 'I was shocked by the numbers,' Kevin Packingham, chief product officer of > Samsung's U.S. mobile arm, said. 'What the heck is going on here?' > the company on Wednesday threw a splashy party for media, d-list > celebrities, and select Samsung fans... > Winning 'Phablet' fans Alright, nice that Samsung is doing well, but come on--this article makes it sound like Samsung is a joke! ~~~ septerr I felt similarly. And that first statement by Kevin Packingham made me gag. Yea, he works for Samsung and made a statement saying he was shocked to see uptick in their sales after iPhone5 release. Plus the article is fileld with too many statements from the company or description of the party.Analysis, comparison, user survey...stuff like that would have been more relevant. ------ ceworthington Supply chain issues really hurt in a market as competitive as smartphones. I wonder how many sales Apple loses per day because they can't keep the product in stock? Buying an iPhone 5 involves either lots of waiting, or hard work to track one down. ~~~ drivebyacct2 People will just buy a different smartphone if they're out of stock? Let alone if it's the iPhone they want? I don't believe it. ~~~ lucisferre It's a large market, I'm not really sure how you can be surprised by significant market segments that don't actually care all that much wich web- enabled phone they get when their contract is up. Not everyone make purchase decisions like a geek. ~~~ drivebyacct2 I'm sorry, I just see "SIII sales rise as iPhone 5 release" -> "Well it's just because they can't buy an iPhone 5" to be asinine. They couldn't buy the iPhone 5 before the announcement either. Playing it off as "they don't care" doesn't make any sense because there's correlation with the iPhone announcement date. Even if they were potential iPhone 5 buyers, they either said: "Meh, not that great" or "Not great enough to bother waiting... 2 weeks". I guess I see a 2 week wait for a 104 week contract to not be a big deal... ~~~ mbreese Sadly, many people don't think that much about phone purchases. Waiting an extra two weeks for a phone might seem like the rational thing to do (if you wanted the iPhone 5 in the first place), but buying things isn't always a rational process. ------ salimmadjd "The spike after the iPhone 5 launch suggests that consumers hung around to see what Apple had to show off, weren't impressed, and went with a Galaxy S III instead." I don't know how they can make this conclusion. It could be that iPhone5 was sold out and since they were already at the store they bought another phone that could give them similar options. The difference is it has less to do by being impressed and more to do with iPhone actually brought customers to stores and helped sell the Galaxy. ------ robryan I got the impression that a lot of people decided to go with the s3 after iPhone 5 launch didn't give them anything truly compelling. As others have said, the average smartphone buyer is quite fickle, so just as easily as Apple can win them they can loose them, even if in effect the person will use the iPhone and s3 the do essentially the same things. ~~~ marknutter Sure, but what's "truly compelling" about the S3? ~~~ vidarh Compared to the iPhone? Bigger screen. Android. It'd take something exceptional for me to consider an iPhone for those two reasons alone. But I'm sure there's enough users who usually fall down on either side that are reasonably undecided enough that they might wait to see whether the "other camp" has something exceptional to offer before making their purchase decision when there's a new big launch around the corner. ------ pzaich I recently switched over to the SIII from the iPhone 4. Honestly, I'm not that impressed. Physically the device is great; I like the size of the screen and the finish is decent, but the screen sensitivity is sorely lacking compared to my 2 year old iPhone. I find myself having to use the back button all the time after clicking on the wrong links or wrong app icons. I don't remember ever having this problem on the iPhone. The battery life is also inferior, probably due to the screen-size and I don't want to have to lug around another battery every day. I haven't tried the iPhone 5 yet as it hasn't been launched in Korea yet, but I seriously doubt that the iPhone 5 is an inferior product to the S III. There are some nice customizations you can do with Android phones, but if you want a phone that just "works", go with an iPhone. ~~~ esolyt I have never heard of an issue with screen sensitivity on Galaxy S3 from anyone before. ------ paul_f Maybe people simply prefer the GS3 to the iPhone 5? Could it be that simple? Yes, it is that simple. ------ suchire More than likely it is difficult to disentangle the fact that Samsung made an incredibly heavy marketing push for the GS3 right around the time that the iPhone 5 launched, so there are no statistics that will tell you whether it's because of the iPhone 5 launch that sales rose or because of the marketing timing. ------ JuDue There was a similar post about Kindle. It should be expected. People wait to see what is available. Of course there will be a flood of Amazon/Apple/Android sales. This does not tell us which one got the most sales. Regardless, Apple may of got the bigger profit. ------ nextstep This is lame speculation over a small uptick. This does not deserve to be on the front page of HN. ------ lrm I think the main reason is that the GS3 is mentioned in so many articles about the iPhone 5. ------ taligent Here in Australia Samsung has noticeably increased the advertising for the Galaxy S3 in response to the iPhone 5. That seems like a much bigger reason for their increase in sales than anything else. ~~~ jemeshsu Here in Singapore, you don't see any iPhone 5 ads. But Samsung ads together with the three local telcos are everywhere. iPhone 5 sells itself as it is hot seller here. No doubt Samsung might sell more due to the ads and more models at lower costs.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Matlab is oversold as a general-purpose language - jordigh https://abandonmatlab.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/309/ ====== jurassic The author is totally biased, but that doesn't mean he is wrong. If the bias offends you, you aren't the target audience. I personally have experienced several of the things he rants about, so I know his pain and now as a policy refuse to produce additional IP in that ecosystem. When friends ask me for help, I now send them a python script. The rage doesn't really come from MATLAB (every language has warts); the rage comes from being forced by the social conditions of the academic workplace to collaborate on problems with totally inappropriate tools. Nobody wants to hear about how you've been procrastinating with python or git... they just want to push some new parameters into the lab's creaky matlab model and publish a new paper. Anybody who---as the lab's "code guy"\---has been handed a disk full of broken, undocumented Matlab code that mysteriously no longer works after the latest update knows what I'm talking about. ~~~ pachydermic I have seen some horrible shit. Terrible, awful, fucked up stupid undocumented code. I have worked in psychophysics shops (go figure). What makes you think it would be any better had they not used MATLAB? I actually like MATLAB. It really excels when used as a glorified calculator and you can plug lots of things into it and have it 'just work' without much fuss. When I worked in a tutoring lab sometimes it was cool to have around because I could quickly whip up something interesting and visualize the whole thing to explain concepts. When I worked in the research lab (after I completely trashed the old application and started my own) I could hook up the computer to some cool hardware, run the experiment and do the statistical analysis all in one place. At my job now, people who aren't good at programming can use a computer to solve very hard problems. I don't know why it's getting so much hate. I agree that it's not a good tool for every problem and that in the scientific community (and _especially_ the psychology community) it is overused. But I don't really see why switching to another language would make things better. ~~~ jurassic > What makes you think it would be any better had they not used MATLAB? Probably the most general cross-disciplinary reason MATLAB worsens an already bad situation is that it isolates scientists and engineers from people who are good at programming. When you seek out help for a particular problem, it's often a blind-leading-the-blind situation. How can you learn to program well if you've never seen a good piece of MATLAB code? Good luck finding good examples and role models to learn from if your programming universe is limited to MATLAB. Poor quality and practices proliferate because there is almost never anyone skilled reviewing changes and helping you get better. People just make a change and pray it still works. ~~~ pachydermic Interesting point. From my own experience, though... I'm doubting you. I really don't think these people see a problem with what they're doing and wouldn't care even if they did - so why would they ask for help? You'd have to have someone sitting over their shoulder all the time training them (most colleges already have introductory MATLAB courses, so apparently that doesn't help much) - no one would like that arrangement. But what you've identified isn't really a problem with MATLAB, is it? It's a problem with the culture of people who tend to use it. It's a real problem, but I'm not sure what can be done about it other than to try to get at these people while they're still young and learning. ~~~ marcosdumay > But what you've identified isn't really a problem with MATLAB, is it? Yes, it is. Everybody that knows what they are doing moves away from MATLAB as fast as they can _. That 's MATLAB's fault. _ Except for teaching, mind you. The entire problem is that MATLAB is a great teaching tool, and a completely worthless tool for anything else. Guess what, lots of people stick with what they learn at school. ------ utopkara 1) Matlab is awesome for scientific computing and simulations. 2) Many Matlab users don't write any code but scientific code. They couldn't care less about how flexible python (or other language) is, when they already use and know Matlab. 3) Matlab doesn't make money from colleges or grad schools, they make money from industry customers. Of course the engineers and scientists of those deep pockets get trained at colleges and grad schools. 4) If you can write python, c++, or javascript, and if you keep publishing scientific code in that language even when Matlab is better suited, then it is possible that others will come with you. I am rooting for you. Just so you know, depending on the field, if you published your code in Matlab or R or whatever is the most popular for the field, you'd probably get more citations. Since academia is rounding error in Matlab's income, you will only be hurting yourself, if you chose not to use Matlab in a problem that it is best suited for. 5) Projects fail for many reasons. But, in your case, could the common denominator be _the university_ rather than Matlab? In universities, it is hard (and I'd say unethical) to keep students for very long, so a research group may end up with a lot of code without owners if they are not careful. Good labs manage their projects, codebase, and hand-offs better. ------ krapht For something to be oversold... it has to be sold as something in the first place. I work at a company which uses Matlab extensively. I don't think anyone here views Matlab as a general-purpose language, even though you can put together some fairly fancy things in it. What we do view Matlab as is an exceptional domain-specific matrix manipulation and data visualization language. The IDE is exceptionally easy to use, and combined with the great graphs/plots makes debugging and iteration very easy. If we need to do something Matlab can't, we write it in a different language and use files for IPC. This approach covers 99.9% of everything we do. I get that Matlab is super expensive, and that annoys me too. I'd love to use it at home, and not struggle instead with terrible development environments(I use SciPy/Matplotlib at home - mostly from an IPython shell - Spyder doesn't cut it, even though I wanted it to so much). But my workplace pays real engineers and scientists fairly large sums of money, and doesn't bat too much of an eye at paying for productivity tools, the cost of which I feel is the main disadvantage of Matlab. ~~~ rrrrtttt I've been working with Matlab for years and have been quite intrigued by claims that SciPy is the new, better, Matlab. But every time I tried it, it felt like a cheap knockoff. For example, let's say I want to apply DCT to a matrix. In Matlab it's simply dct(A). How do you do that in Python? Well, there's scipy.fftpack.dct, but when I try it, it turns out it operates on the rows of A, instead of the columns. So I start searching the help, and find there's a parameter called "axis", with the useless description "Axis over which to compute the transform." So I try axis=1, axis=2, then finally axis=0, and presto, it works. So sure, it's functionally equivalent to Matlab, but do I really want to go through all this every time I want to accomplish a simple task? ~~~ jurassic So, basically, you're panning the massive open collaborative effort behind SciPy/NumPy/Pandas because you can't be bothered to learn a slightly different and more flexible syntax? Because that's what it sounds like. ~~~ maurits No it runs deeper than that. In my experience Matlab is used by people who are not programmers and don't aspire to be them. Ever. They want to easily prototype ideas and have zero interest in the machinery that makes it run. Scipy/Numpy/Pandas are, at the moment, not the comprehensive, well documented and consistent platform that Matlab is. Simple things like a less than painless install process and numpy examples like "a*b" can be element wise multiplication or matrix multiplication pending if "a" is array or matrix are enough to put of my coworkers off for at least a year or two before contemplating a switch again. ------ ghsalazar Paraphrasing the Greenspun's tenth rule of programming: "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran _numerical_ program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of MATLAB/Octave/Scilab." This could be called Gastón's corollary :-). MATLAB, Octave and Scilab are like the UNIX shell but for matrices instead of text streams; this is they problem domain. If you can explain a problem with matrices and their operations, you can profit from MATLAB/Octave/Scilab. If you need more speed from your program, you should profile it and develop a mex-function in C or Fortran. In academia and engineering most programs are developed to run at most thousands of times (<10,000), and this statement could be greatly exaggerated; the developing time must be reduced in order to work in other projects. The usual approach is brute force. The greatest problem that I find with MATLAB is that doesn't allow multiprocessing. In my last project, I ended developing several interpreters in Bison/Flex/C that ran concurrently in order to control a robot, but the main program was developed in MATLAB because it was simpler that way. ~~~ PeterisP In academia I'd say most programs are run (when finished) 2-3 times - once on a smallish testset when you decide that this version is correct, second time on the full data that you have to produce results for the paper (and you don't care how long it runs as long as it finishes before the submission date); and maybe a third time if you get a larger/better dataset somehow. ~~~ ghsalazar It's sad, but you're right. In my field, I've found that there is little interest in experiment design when doing data analysis; you'd be asked to perform an analysis on eight or ten data sets, only because the people think that is exhaustive. ------ mgraczyk MATLAB is a tool that is unmatched in algorithm design. It isn't C, it isn't python, and it certainly isn't Linux. If you happen to work in an industry where you actually do math at your job, then you should probably use MATLAB. Otherwise, just don't use it and stop complaining. Things for which MATLAB is not good: -Systems programming -Web programming -Scalable business logic programming Things for which MATLAB is good: -Robust simulations -Computationally intensive desktop applications -Any computationally complex tool or utility -Mathematical data processing Things for which MATLAB is the absolute best tool available: -Design and rapid prototyping of DSP and GPU bound algorithms. -Windows desktop calculator for engineers -Prototyping communications system (Labview maybe better for very complex systems, but certainly not simple ones) -Design of financial, image processing, communications, signal processing, or control systems algorithms. ------ pachydermic Here's what MathWork's website says: \---------------------------------------------------------- MATLAB® is a high-level language and interactive environment for numerical computation, visualization, and programming. Using MATLAB, you can analyze data, develop algorithms, and create models and applications. The language, tools, and built-in math functions enable you to explore multiple approaches and reach a solution faster than with spreadsheets or traditional programming languages, such as C/C++ or Java™. You can use MATLAB for a range of applications, including signal processing and communications, image and video processing, control systems, test and measurement, computational finance, and computational biology. More than a million engineers and scientists in industry and academia use MATLAB, the language of technical computing. \---------------------------------------------------------- I work at a place where people use (and abuse) MATLAB a lot. The thing is, they're not programmers. As smart as they are (and they are truly brilliant) they're not especially good with computers, programming or computer science. If they tried to use a 'real' programming language, things would undoubtedly be _even worse_! MATLAB is awesome at giving you powerful functions baked right in. That's good because people who aren't good at coding efficiently don't have to. Instead of messing up the whole program from start to finish, they only mess up the top level and that often isn't as big of a deal as messing up the small components that get used again and again and have to be as efficient as possible. I agree that MATLAB isn't a general purpose programming language, but I don't think that that's how MathWorks is really selling it (note that "[creating] applications" is at the end of the list and analyzing data is at the beginning). They're mainly saying it's good for solving a specific group of problems - those that technically minded people (like scientists, engineers, economists and financial analysts) have to solve. I actually agree, especially when you take into consideration the fact that the people who really like MATLAB the most aren't really into programming or even that good at it. Of course that's just my opinion. I'd like to hear how you guys disagree with me. ~~~ kyzyl I'm curious... is the matlabbing that happens at your work related to the simulink/realtime/control parts of matlab? Based on the other things you've said it sounds to me like that might be the case. Obviously I might be wrong. In any case, I've found that those parts of matlab can actually be used pretty effectively. I think the reason is that, even though matlab as a language is pretty crappy (IMO), these domains aren't actually dominated by programming languages. Take for example industrial control. It's extremely common to use PLC's, PAC's or FPGAs. These tools are, like simulink, largely operated via proprietary graphical environments. Essentially, I agree with your points for uses of matlab where you don't write much custom code, and/or where your custom code is very insulated from the 'real world' and even from the rest of the system. ~~~ pachydermic We don't use simulink or anything like that - we just use the typical linear algebra stuff: Markov chains, finding eigenvalues, solving linear systems, etc. ~~~ ankitml try python. it is much more powerful in almost every sense. And it is not easy to write crappy code in python. ~~~ Gravityloss Last I looked, vector and matrix handling was extremely clunky and tacked on in Python. ~~~ pwang Can you be more specific? ~~~ hillbillyjack I'm not the parent commenter but I've used matlab extensively and found Numpy clunky in comparison. All I ever did in matlab involved matrices (usually differential equations with matrix coefficients and other things of that nature) and matrices are super easy to use in MATLAB: A = [1 2 3 4 5 6]; or A = [1 2 3; 4 5 6]; I can input A just like that and it works, try out the python syntax: A = array([[1,2,3],[4,5,6]]) And it just goes on from there. Even if you're doing complicated operations because matrices are the essential building blocks of MATLAB it is easy to use, not so much in python. I tried building my FEA (finite element analysis) project in python after i finished programming it in matlab it and found it to frustrating to continue. ~~~ lake99 Matlab has a terse syntax for 2D matrices. Try creating 3D, 4D and 5D matrices, and the syntax is suddenly completely different. ------ Rickasaurus As someone for who matlab was his 5th or 6th language, I can say it's frustratingly opaque. Even once you have a good feel for how the linear algebra works, you find yourself struggling for hours to transform a simple cell array into the format you'd like. I deeply hope that when Julia matures it puts matlab into its grave. ------ nonchalance From the article: > The first problem is that the MathWorks actively markets MATLAB as a > “general purpose programming language” with all the trappings, something > which it is manifestly not. From MATLAB site [http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/](http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/) : > MATLAB® is a high-level language and interactive environment for numerical > computation, visualization, and programming. "high-level" != "general-purpose". The author grossly misrepresents Mathworks' stance regarding MATLAB ~~~ mgkimsal To be fair, what their website says and what their sales people might be saying in the field could be two different things. ------ kyzyl Okay, I'll bite on this one. I used matlab quite extensively (for years) in the medical imaging field, as well as other miscellaneous engineering (read: electronics, modeling, FEA. Not web apps) disciplines. I noticed several things about the matlab culture: \- In academia, people really do not seem to give a fuck about using the right tool for the job. I used to try to explain to the people in my lab why their software was crashing, why it took four days to finish running, or why it would be easier to write new code than try to adapt the code written by the undergrad from 5 terms ago. About 70% of the time is was because the code had been written in the most naive way possible. The rest of the time it was because it was written is matlab. Seriously, it takes tremendous effort to write matlab code that doesn't suck. And even when you manage that, it's still crappier than if you'd used a proper programming language. So, yes, the author is right to rag on matlab as a language. But you know what? NOBODY CARES! The process goes: Carve off a problem, write some code, produce plot, publish paper, put figure-indicative-of-progress into grant renewal application. The people in charge don't care if twelve undergrads lost their eyesight debugging the code, and it stops working if the lab door is shut too loudly. \- I learned that if I just wrote my software in the proper language, in the proper way, and didn't tell anybody I was doing it that way, everything worked out extremely well. The above cycle was allowed to complete, the people in charge usually didn't even ask, and in a month when they asked me to adapt my work to include the marvelous thing the ultrasound lab had come up with I could just say "Okay!" without wondering if matlab would inexplicably fall on its face when I was 90% through the development. \- Even if you manage to get a conversation about choice of tools going, most of the people present will nod and pretend to be interested, but won't change anything at all. The people who _will_ "see the light" and make an active attempt to improve their understanding are generally the ones who would have done it on their own eventually. (side note: I did successfully--and accidentally--convert a large sect of the physics department to python, and it's all they use now. They even started using proper SCM!) \- When working with matlab, I always had my best results when I did two things. First, keep the approach to coding as simple as possible. Don't try to make things too generic, don't try to make the code too fault tolerant, don't try to implement STM. Second, use the built-in shit! There's a toolbox for that? Use it, ship it. The idiomatic way to do something makes you ashamed to operate a keyboard? Do it anyway (usually). In other words, don't fight it, because you will never get what you want. That doesn't mean don't do _any_ error checking. That doesn't mean blindly use libraries that give you the wrong answer. But overall I found the path of least resistance produced my highest productivity with matlab. \- Sometimes, matlab is actually kind of okay. I can still fit a univariate curve faster in matlab than I can in python, excel, gnuplot, or mathematica. I think R still probably has the most concise syntax for this task. Learn to understand the niche areas where matlab shines, and take advantage of that. \- As soon as the default performance of matlab is not good enough (i.e. profiling your code shows no obviously large improvements available), either change approaches, make your problem smaller, or stop using matlab. There are lots of options for improving the performance of matlab code: distributed computing toolbox, mex files (calling to C), proprietary optimizers/compilers like Jacket, contorting your problem to fit matlab's memory layout... it goes on. However, I've found every one of them to be more trouble than it's worth. \- Matlab is not a general purpose programming language. Know that, and be free. ~~~ Derbasti I could not agree more with every word you have written here. I would like to add that scientists are neither averse to change, nor too lazy to learn new tools. However, they typically only care about the solution to their problem, not about programming in general. It is thus futile to try to convince them to use a different tool from a programmers' point of view--you need to convince them by showing them how much simpler they can solve their problems. We are right now in the process of switching the introductory programming courses at our university from C to Python and I very much hope that we will be able to phase out Matlab as the default choice for the intermediate courses in the coming years. ~~~ dsego I've had an unfortunate opportunity to have to help out a cousin's girlfriend with python. She's studying informatics and it's their introductory course in programming (recently switched from pascal). But python has really too many abstract constructs to explain easily. One example they had was using the for loop. I don't know python, but from the examples and exercises the professor gave them, it doesn't seem to have a "normal" for loop. All the examples used the function range() to generate an array of indices to loop over. Which is silly, since they don't cover functions and arrays until later. I had a hard choice to either go into details of why it works or tell her to just memorise it. Later on in her materials, after introducing arrays, suddenly the for loop doesn't use indices and she has to unlearn the old way. The other problem was explaining strings and methods, which they use (such as str.uppercase()) but their introductory course doesn't cover OOP. The last atrocity was an example of looping over lines in a file using the for construct. Of course, polymorphism, iterator patterns and so on are too advanced, but it really bothers me that they have to just memorise stuff without knowing why it works. I'm glad I had C as the first language. Firstly you generally learn how the CPU actually handles instructions, since C is so close to metal. Secondly, after C you can really appreciate what other languages have to offer. And thirdly, I really prefer the bottom-up approach. Then again, my perspective might be a bit skewed, since I graduated in computer engineering, which is a bit more involved than informatics. ~~~ hackinthebochs Totally agree. I learned C first, then C++. I wouldn't have it any other way. The top-down approach means you truly understand _nothing_ until a year or so down the line. The bottom up approach lets you fully grasp the small world you've been exposed to. And as more concepts are introduced your world expands. At no point are you just left wondering WTF are these magic keywords doing. ~~~ kyzyl > The top-down approach means you truly understand nothing until a year or so > down the line. Is that really true? I think my language ordering went something like: qbasic, perl, visual basic, python/c, php,<others>, more c, c++, <others> So strictly speaking it was at least a year or two before I learned C for the first time. However, while I certainly wasn't as well informed as I am now, I wasn't completely clueless. I knew that the things I was doing in perl were actually allocating memory, that perl was helping me with lots of book keeping, that there were things called pointers that pointed to things, etc. I might not have actually worked in detail with the concepts yet, but I did have an idea that there was something below what I was working with. I think that by bearing that in mind, I was able to 1) know that I would have to learn the 'hardcore' stuff eventually and 2) focus on the _actual_ programming, in the sense of making the computer do what I wanted. ------ Ironballs This is the reason why people should migrate to general purpose languages that _can also be used for computation_ , such as Python and pandas (Python data analysis library, [http://pandas.pydata.org/](http://pandas.pydata.org/)), or languages that are _modern_ and have been designed for such a purpose, like Julia ([http://julialang.org/](http://julialang.org/)). ------ santialbo Julia seems like an easy transition for any Matlab programmer. The syntax is very similar and the built-in package manager makes finding new libraries way easier. And apart from that, performance is awesome. If having an IDE is an issue, Julia also has one ([http://forio.com/julia/index](http://forio.com/julia/index)) which looks a lot like Matlab. ------ jackschultz Wow, that whole blog is focused on bashing Matlab. I find it a little difficult to trust a source that biased. If they can't find something good in a product that has been around for, according to wikipedia, something like 30 years, then that source shouldn't be trusted. I searched around to see if I could find something about the author but didn't see anything. Curious to see what their reasoning is. ~~~ jordigh The author does acknowledge the good parts of Matlab right off the bat in his first post: [https://abandonmatlab.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/hello- world/](https://abandonmatlab.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/hello-world/) ------ lelf It's strange there're no single comment about Octave — [http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/](http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/) It's free software and the language is 99% compatible with Matlab. Edit: and yes, Matlab is not intended for any generalisation/abstraction. It's a big scientific calculator with REPL. And complicated program in it still feels like big calculator ~~~ ErsatzVerkehr As someone who loves Matlab but would rather use a free-software solution, I must say that Octave is not an effective replacement for Matlab. Matlab itself is just so much more feature-complete and polished, turning to Octave feels like going back two decades in technology. ~~~ mheathr In what way is Matlab more feature-complete and polished? With respect to just the actual language Octave is nearly a 1:1 implementation of Matlab, which is an primary goal to stride for and maintain, any differences between the two is considered a bug even. ~~~ mattip Graphics in general, handle graphics in particular, and no I'm not kidding. OOP for visualization can't be beat. ~~~ mheathr So a specific graphics toolkit then? Is it one that is included with Matlab or another toolkit that is necessary to pay in addition for? ~~~ mattip Matlab is usually run as an ide with an interactive window (command line interpreter). Graphics are built in and interactive, you can interact with any number of graphics windows and with the command line at the same time (this is difficult to do in python numpy and matplotlib), and you can tweak the graphics windows from the command line to add GUI buttons, boxes, etc. This all comes built in to the most basic MATLAB commercial offering. ~~~ jordigh Ah, you meant the GUI, not specifically the handle graphics properies, and a GUI to manipulate the graphics. This is all in development and almost completely functional in the current Octave dev branch. I hope our next upcoming release will satisfy you more. ------ hayksaakian And excel is oversold as a general purpose CRM ------ mturmon If this were better written and had a proper sense of proportion, it could be good. But it's not, and it comes off like ranting. Next. E.g., here's a note from the implementors of a probabilistic modeling toolkit, which prominently includes Kevin Murphy [[http://code.google.com/p/pmtk3/wiki/WhyMatlab](http://code.google.com/p/pmtk3/wiki/WhyMatlab)] and here's a note from someone vacillating between several languages [[http://jack- kelly.com/which_programming_language_for_my_disa...](http://jack- kelly.com/which_programming_language_for_my_disaggregation_system_matlab)], either of which shows more nuance and intelligence than the blog in the OP. ------ analog31 In a crowded market, the sales pitch has to anticipate and overcome "negatives." Thus, MATLAB has to be marketed as a "real programming language" to overcome the fear that it will prove inadequate for some task in the future -- especially when you had to beg and plead for the money to buy a license. And amateurs (including me) don't always see the difference between the language and the libraries, so the demand for a "real programming language" results in a huge bloated product festooned with every possible bell and whistle. I wouldn't have a problem with a tool that falls short of completeness (Turing- or otherwise) if it's simple and does something useful for me. I love spreadsheets. ------ joelbondurant Matlab encourages not distinguishing the very distinctly different concepts of matrices, vectors, scalars, and arrays. ------ skierscott Matlab is useful for it's special use case -- for mathematical applications (signal processing, medical imaging, etc). It has good tools to speed up the code too: parfor and the like. But the cost gets to me. It inhibits collaboration, and costs a _ton_ for non- academics. From scientific computing[1]: > $1,900 for the commercial Matlab; $2,800 for Simulink; and typically $800 > for each toolbox. The whole Matlab suite doesn't sit well with me, so I'm most likely a Pythonista. The speed of Numpy/Scipy is comparable, and the quality of the Matplotlib plots wonderful. In fact, I've done a speed comparison[2] between between Python and Matlab. I would have optimized more in Matlab, but didn't have access to the Optimization toolbox. [1]:[http://www.scientific-computing.com/review1.html](http://www.scientific- computing.com/review1.html) [2]:[http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/scottsievert...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/scottsievert/side- projects/master/matlab_vs_python/Python%2520vs%2520Numba%2520vs%2520Matlab%2520vs%2520C.ipynb) ------ kazagistar Is there a "Matlab: The good bits" guide out there somewhere? I think a style preference guide, made by an experienced programmer who worked on large matlab codebases would be valuable both for programmers who have to figure out how to work reasonably with Matlab, and the scientists and mathematicians who just don't know any better. ------ psyklic I also did psychophysics in Matlab. However, the author conveniently does not mention the wide variety of toolkits available for psychophysics in Matlab ... e.g. [http://psychtoolbox.org/HomePage](http://psychtoolbox.org/HomePage) ------ RivieraKid What about Julia? Is it a general purpose language? ~~~ zem It is. It may focus on a specific ecosystem, but the underlying language has been thought through properly as a language. ------ batbomb I'm surprised he's not railing against LabView and Origin too. ~~~ rwg Random "LabVIEW isn't a general purpose programming language...except it kinda is" story: About a decade ago, my then-boss dragged me to a weeklong LabVIEW training course. The course was geared toward scientists and engineers (like my boss — I was sysadmin/programming/IT), and the instructor wanted people to bring data, problems, etc. from their own research to work on during the "hands-on" afternoons. I didn't have research, but I did notice that LabVIEW could open TCP sockets... By the end of the week, I had written a barebones graphical MUA (e-mail client) that could read mail via POP3 and send via SMTP. "Written" entirely in LabVIEW. (The "code" was spaghetti – tons of boxes of all sizes and a rats nest of wires connecting everything together.) The instructor asked for a copy to take back to NI, and I'd like to think that some NI engineers got a good laugh and/or vomit out of it. ~~~ thelukester Yes, the cool thing about LV is allows you to turn an idea on a flow chart into code that resembles the original chart on the high level. And, nothing beats it for data acquisition and testing. Like all visual languages big projects and the finer implementation details can get ugly. Most people focus in LV's visual programming paradigm. But I think its real power come from the Flow Based Programming model. Functional programming is the trendy solution to the problem of concurrency these days. But I think FBP could offer some solutions in this domain too. NoFlo looks a promising new technology in this area. [http://noflojs.org/](http://noflojs.org/) ------ sillysaurus Mathematica, on the other hand, is brilliant. It's a wonderful language with wonderful libraries and functionality, and it's quite clear how to write robust code in it. ~~~ nkurz I'm not familiar with your commenting style. Is this straight up or dripping with sarcasm? ~~~ sillysaurus Serious. Super serious. No, really, Mathematica is great. It can do some amazing things and it's really easy to write reusable code for. ~~~ zzleeper What advice or pointers would you give to start learning & using mma for _real_ problems? I tried to learn it a few times and it worked great for toy problems, but when I tried to write an entire script a la python/c/matlab, I failed miserably ------ davyjones Matlab was my first real programming language. I guess the real "power" of Matlab is the collection of toolboxes (which carry a separate price tag for each) and the graphing capabilities and built-in vector functions that are easy to use. I think it was conveniently entrenched because it was the cheaper than Mathematica(?), I can't be too sure but there weren't many alternatives with a similar set of features. ~~~ mheathr Mathematica is a lot cheaper than Matlab, in the US anyways. Mathematica excels at symbolic computing, where as Matlab excels at numerical computing. Mathematica happens to be poor at numerical computing, and Matlab happens to be poor at symbolic computing, although Mathematica is becoming better at its current weakness at least. ------ slacka Matlab is just another tool for your toolbox. Part of programming is choosing the right tool. I found Matlab extremely useful in college for graphing my lab work. Haven't had much use for it since. Did run across OpenTLD AKA predator. It's is a sweet CV app that is primarily written in matlab. [https://github.com/zk00006/OpenTLD](https://github.com/zk00006/OpenTLD) ------ LordHumungous R for life.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What's your plan for 2016 or What tech you are looking forward - lnk2w A coworker and I were talking about what we wanted to do, and I thought that was a good topic to discuss.<p>I'm looking for a job in a bigger city, and I'm really thinking about learn Go or Elixr. ====== krapp I need to find regular work, and justify the CS and graphic design degrees I now have to pay off. I'm currently working on rebuilding my personal site, hosting my portfolio (currently split between Behance.net and Linkedin) and resume, dusting off various aborted projects and hosting them on my site as resume filler, and trying my best to make a four year gap in employment while I was going to school and only taking short-term and freelance projects not look radioactive. I'm not planning on learning any new tech, but I need to brush up on my art and writing skills, and actually finish a game project that isn't terrible, so i'm planning on doing the 1 game a month challenge just to prod myself. I might wind up trying and giving up on Clojure again. ~~~ sharemywin Pretty sure finishing school is not considered a gap of employment. Also, Could put Self Employed/Finished Degree then list the 4 years and list the projects as bullets underneath. Similar to what I did. ~~~ krapp Yeah, i'm probably unnecessarily paranoid about it but it does still bother me. ------ Cyberdog I had a project idea recently. It's pretty ambitious, but if I can just find the time and drive to complete it, I think it would be profitable. I think my new year's resolution, such as it may be, will be to actually launch the thing. We'll see. ------ B_Howe Starting a new blog. Should I go for free hosting? or buy a domain? ~~~ krapp I would say buy a domain. It's not that expensive nowadays, and if you're concerned about SEO, better to have a good domain and not use it than let someone else get to it first.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Please help us with our Nigerian domains - vahakota Brief history: We (3 developers) reserved a bunch of Nigerian domains when they came available last year and thought we would develop something on them. During the past year we failed miserably to allocate time to do anything to this and now the domains are expiring within 2 weeks, on the 15th-16th of April.<p>To be honest with ourselves, we really don't see ourselves doing any better during the next year on our own. Thus we have pretty much conceded to the loss of the initial registration fees and are thinking of just letting the domains expire.<p>It still feels like a waste to let this great collection of domains expire though, so any advice on what to do with the domains would be greatly appreciated:<p>boati.ng bowli.ng cycli.ng danci.ng fighti.ng fishi.ng golfi.ng hiki.ng hiri.ng painti.ng raci.ng ranki.ng saili.ng spanki.ng swi.ng<p>The renewal of these domains would cost us USD 218.90 per domain on our registrar 101domain.com, totalling USD 3502.40. This is a lot more than we initially anticipated the renewal would cost and in our current life situations we just are not prepared to reinvest that sum, even though there clearly is some potential with these domains.<p>Even the thought of donating the domains to “good use” before they expire has crossed our minds. We just don't really see how we should actually go about arranging this without having to take the risk of ending up paying the renewal fees ourselves in this short timeframe.<p>What should we do? ====== bushido Woah! There are some good mainstream names there that should'nt be hard to work with and monetize (ex. hiri.ng). Some sound as if they were for porn or alternate lifestyles (ie. spanki.ng swi.ng). I'd personally find a cheaper registrar and take OoTheNigerian on his offer. Also, if budget remains a concern, you could trim the list down a bit to the ones which you could work with in the future and let the rest go. ------ mukoshy We offer available option for you guys, $112 at GigaLayer and transfer in less than 72hrs. We also accept international card payments and PayPal. You can email hello@gigalayer.com or that. ;) ------ OoTheNigerian I know registrar that register at the rate of about $100 per domain. Maybe transfer them to halve the cost and seek to sell them afterwards? You may email me if you want introductions to the registrar Cheers! ~~~ vahakota Thank you for the suggestion Oo! Dropping the cost to less than half would definitely make us reconsider just keeping the domains while we figure out what we can do with them. BTW do you happen to have any knowledge on why registering and renewing the Nigerian domains cost so much more compared to other domains? ~~~ mukoshy So far the reason for the cost is yet unknown, except that the registry decided to sell at that expensive rate. Possibly because of available clever domains like traveli.ng, shoppi.ng, flyi.ng etc and maybe they have some overhead operating cost because the country is still in alpha stage of internet penetration and knowledge. Whatever the case, we hope they cut it down soon.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask YC: Expectations and Reality (Startups) - js440 ====== js440 Long time listener, first time caller. Sorry that I didn't put the Ask YC (didn't know if it added it automatically or not). I finally found a few potential cofounders, quit my job, and started working obsessively on my ideas. I'll have a demo in a few weeks and I need to make a decision about whether or not I actually want to go through with this. My main concern is with the funding/stock/control issue. Ignorant or not, I (and the other founder hackers) need to have complete control over things from top to bottom. I am certainly open to suggestions & advice from a board, but the decisions ultimately have to rest with me. In your experience, has this been an issue? Is this an unrealistic expectation? ~~~ brk Unless you have bona-fide, proven successes (plural), you'll probably end up losing ultimate control at some point, and it will probably be the best thing for everyone involved. Why do you _need_ to maintain control? Greed? Paranoia? The idea is too complex for others to understand? (note: none of these are good reasons ;) ) As a leader, you should always strive to ensure that you can be replaced, and that the company can and would continue without you. This is often a big hurdle for many entrepreneurs to wrap their head around, but it is almost always critical to the success of the company. In the beginning, the founders maintain full control simply because they are the only ones that fully understand the idea and market. Over time, you need to do less innovation, and more operation of the business. Founders rarely make good full-time CEOs, and "professional CEOs" rarely make good founders, but they both play their part in the on-going success of the company. ~~~ downer _ > Why do you need to maintain control? Greed? Paranoia? The idea is too complex for others to understand? (note: none of these are good reasons ;) ) _ Note that maintaining _control_ is different from hoarding all the money. The people who understand it best _should_ be in control, regardless of how much equity they give to investors. This is not just in the early stages -- look at Steve Jobs calling the shots at Apple. _ > As a leader, you should always strive to ensure that you can be replaced, and that the company can and would continue without you._ That's just not how startups work, at ALL. Losing a founder basically dooms a startup. It only applies much later on, when the company has a huge bankroll and a life of its own. ~~~ downer And even then, sometimes you still need Steve Jobs. ------ theyoungceo This is as thorny a discussion as which language is the best one. And the ultimate answer is in the same vein: it depends, but the decision should always be driven by the customer. My company had revenue from month 2 and won a $100K business plan because of value we brought to customers. I still looked into raising money, but at the end of the day I reminded myself what I had always thought: I don't need to raise money, and changes that would make existing customers less pleased were on the way if I did. The company is growing fast and customers love it because we concentrated on them and ignored the startup hoopla when it conflicted with bringing value to customers. Ultimately, you should raise money if you think it is in your _customers'_ best interests. ------ js440 0\. Sorry I haven't replied Christmas came unexpectedly. 1\. As always, the average level of the discussion here is far above average for the Internet. 2\. Thank you for contributing your thoughts here. This is a deal-breaking issue for me and will determine whether or not I start a company or not. 3\. It is not about greed, paranoia, or any malicious motivation. It's about doing something that's decently interesting to me, helpful to customers, and the necessary condition that you, knowing the most about the situation as a whole, should have ultimate control over the decisions that directly affect the user experience. ------ edw519 3 ways to maintain 100% control and 100% equity: \- borrow (credit cards, 2nd mortgage, family & friends) \- consulting gigs \- paying customers In spite of all the talk about finance rounds, you CAN bootstrap and succeed. A little slower, a little surer. It's a tradeoff. How fast you want to grow vs. how much you want to control. Your call. ~~~ drusenko It's also a sure-fire way to fail. One thing nobody ever mentions about raising money: You're aligning your interests with some pretty powerful people. The fact is, nobody really wants you to succeed -- everybody is trying to make it themselves, too. But once you get investors, you get growth capital, advice, and a powerful ally, who knows people. The power of having other people who really want your business to succeed to can't be understated. It's: \- Good advice (with the right investor). \- Someone with connections who is constantly talking about you and trying to do good things for you. \- Another person you are accountable to (failure isn't just your own, that's too easy). It all boils down to the type of business you are trying to make. If you'd be happy pulling in 200k of revenues after building a company for 2 years and being barely profitable with 2 full-time employees and other misc costs, then you might be able to bootstrap, maybe. If you're trying to grow a business fast, or grow a huge business, it's just not going to work. ~~~ edw519 "It's also a sure-fire way to fail." 7 million small business owners may disagree with you. I do agree with the rest of your post. Nothing like having the many resources of well connected investors on your side. Still, given the choice of having an investor or a customer on my side, I'd choose the customer every time. I stand by my original post: Want control? Borrow. Want growth? Share.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ta11y – modern website accessibility as a service - transitivebs https://ta11y.saasify.sh/ ====== jareds The fact that I can't tab to the cURL, Python, etc options when using Jaws doesn't fill me with confidence. I realize this may be because of the SaaS platform you chose but it still doesn't reflect particularly well on the developers of this.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dell could emerge as a public company through a reverse merger with VMware - QUFB https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/29/dell-is-considering-a-sale-to-vmware-in-what-may-be-techs-biggest-deal.html ====== chimeracoder I can't wait for Dell to go public again, so that we can someday have a repeat of the last private buyout debacle, in which banks literally couldn't keep track of who owned Dell stock[0], and Dell shareholders simultaneously argued that the stock price was too high while _also_ suing for it being too low.... and won[1]. [0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-14/banks- for...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-14/banks-forgot-who- was-supposed-to-own-dell-shares) [1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-01/michael-d...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-01/michael- dell-bought-his-company-too-cheaply) ~~~ airstrike Appraisal rights lawsuits are essentially trolling in the M&A world. It's a nuisance markets, bankers, lawyers and courts have to deal with, but they're not relevant to anyone who isn't a party to the deal. Dell going public again in no way indicates there will ever be another private buyout. That may or may not happen, and both the market and the industry have changed much since Michael Dell took it private. Different groups of shareholders argued different things... appraisal rights are weird, and at the end of the day 99% of people in Finance will argue that the judge's decision on that case is entirely inconsistent with even the most basic principles of corporate finance and capital markets. Just because one guy who happens to have the power to decide the lawsuit's ultimate fate says his version of the facts is right doesn't mean he is _in fact_ correct. ------ AcerbicZero I do DevOps, with a heavy focus on the Infrastructure side, and there is a comical amount of misinformation buried throughout that article. I don't have the background to comment on the reverse-merger, but the VMware- AWS partnership is generally regarded as a smart move, giving Amazon access to enterprise customers who weren't moving to the cloud, and giving VMware a way to get in on that sweet Cloud OpEx budget. VMware has been doing a pretty good job of being the SDN one stop shop for companies that want that, and selling SDN components a la carte where required. ~~~ Blackstone4 I heard from Dell/Silver Lake that NSX was super hot and could be a major revenue earner for them. Is that true? ~~~ AcerbicZero I've been told its a big deal for VMware, and from my personal experiences its been popping up everywhere lately. I did recently just get my NSX VCIX, and handled several large scale implementations of NSX, so I might be a little too biased to tell if its really taking off, or if it's just a big deal in my little part of the pond. Either way, it's a neat piece of technology, and I enjoy playing with it :) ------ Blackstone4 Dell has a large debt load (not quite as much as some of the news outlets are reporting because they have something like $15bn+ in cash). The change in tax code makes debt more expensive because you can't offset all of the interest. However most private equity executives believe that with the drop in corporate income tax, the effect is roughly net neutral. Not quite sure what the situation is for Dell. I imagine a big motivator for Dell to buy VMware is to unlock the cashflow. They can then use the cash to pay down the debt. Including VMware, the debt load on as a multiple of EBITDA is roughly 3.5-4.0x net debt/EBITDA which isn't that high.... for PE At the moment they own ~80% of the company but can't access the cash even though they book the profits on a look through basis. ~~~ Blackstone4 They have ~$47bn debt with ~$18bn in cash. Giving them a net debt of ~$29bn [https://investors.delltechnologies.com/news-releases/news- re...](https://investors.delltechnologies.com/news-releases/news-release- details/dell-technologies-reports-fiscal-year-2018-third-quarter) ------ bryanlarsen The title is misleading, perhaps a mod could switch to the subtitle fragment "VMware could buy Dell in massive reverse-merger" While legally it would be VMWare buying Dell, practically Dell already controls VMWare. The manoeuvre is a reverse IPO, a way for Dell to go public without the rigmarole. ~~~ acct1771 Of course you mean go public _again_. ...didn't Michael spend a lot of time and angst going public, for long-term success' sake? ~~~ jonknee He did, but the corporate tax cut was funded partially by giving less preferential treatment to debt (only being able to deduct 30% of the interest) and Dell was taken private with tons of debt. The takeover of EMC added tons more debt. ------ dzonga Dell goes public, bet they'll start making shitty PC's again. In 2012 I had 3 of their 'high' end pc's die on me. Btw, I was just a noob CS/CE college student tinkering around with software. Couple of years later 2016, after they went private, noticed my friend's Dell XPS developer edition had, what I would say good quality. Not top notch, like Lenovo high ends or Macbooks but definitely decent. ------ yeukhon The Dell-EMC merger was reported at $67B by cash and stock. I am not sure how much Dell paid out in cash, but I am imagining something like 10,20% were paid to the major shareholders, and the rest were just stock shares? How does this cash + stock payout work in practice? ~~~ mcintyre1994 Apparently Dell has $50B debt, maybe a large chunk was cash? Unless that's private buyout debt I guess. ~~~ Blackstone4 They have "cash and investments balance of $18.0 billion" [https://investors.delltechnologies.com/news-releases/news- re...](https://investors.delltechnologies.com/news-releases/news-release- details/dell-technologies-reports-fiscal-year-2018-third-quarter) ------ tyingq Would be nice. I don't know what happened when they went private, but they are hard to deal with now. 3rd party VARS regularly underbid them for the same exact equipment. And the salespeople can't get out of their own way, seem frustrated, etc. ------ r0m4n0 I can’t get over the rumor mill... Friday, VMware stock jumps 20% on word that Dell would buy the remaining 20% of VMware to then IPO. As of this morning the opposite is leaked and VMware may buy Dell and the shares slide 16% the other direction. Many articles say that the board is going to meet later this month to decide. It’s amazing that tens of billions of dollars in value swing on a few unsubstantiated whispers. There may be some truth to it but I don’t think we are any closer to knowing ------ prbunny Check out how many insiders at VMWare dumped their stock in last 12 mos vs prior 4 years. ------ redwood I read this as "public cloud company" originally...then realized it just said "public company". I wonder if public cloud could be in the cards though. Merge with HPE, Rackspace and maybe even Cisco and be a dinosaur public cloud play competing with IBM for scraps? ~~~ tyingq They all started private clouds, but as far as I know, only IBMs Bluemix/SoftLayer survived. For some reason, there's no real competition in that space. I would guess there are enough overly cautious CIO types out there to support a "big" competitor to Bluemix. Though, I'm hoping Amazon's announcement for official support for K8S starts a new era where public cloud providers actually compete, and drive down things like ridiculous egress pricing. If the public cloud is affordable, the need for hybrid/private/etc drops down. ~~~ toyg _> They all started private clouds_ I see this from the inside professionally and I’m not surprised by the outcome. Amazon, Microsoft and Google are basically unmatchable. IBM likely survives on incompetent managers paying more to ensure they don’t get fired, but nobody else has that advantage. Kids, don’t play datacentre at home. ~~~ tyingq Right...but it stifles progress a bit by encouraging stodgy F500 companies to stay with colo arrangements or worse. Non elastic, or high egress cost apps are still too expensive to run on public clouds. Or, the transition period, where you're half in/half out, kills you because of overpriced egress. ~~~ toyg _> Non elastic, or high egress cost apps are still too expensive to run on public clouds._ Unfortunately for the sector I'm in, this is becoming less and less true every few months. Besides, a lot of managers simply don't care, they'll just compensate higher opex with a few redundancies, it doesn't matter - their capex budget goes down, they cash the big bucks, and if apps don't work it's the nerds' fault. ------ TroubleTicket Never going to happen because of conflicts, VMware makes too much revenue from HPE ~~~ mythz Dell acquired EMC in 2015 and already owns 80% of VMware. This is just talking about DELL doing a "reverse-merger" with VMware as a way to get back into the public markets. ------ revelation This is like those dotcom boom "all shares" sales or two companies contracting each other to record revenue. No wonder they are both tanking if upper management is fully occupied playing valuation games and swapping chairs.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Compcache: in-memory compressed swapping - nreece http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/334649/2120ed5d75248ca0/ ====== pmjordan This is cool. I've previously wondered if this sort of system could be a net gain at all, but it sounds like it is. The last time I contemplated compressed in-RAM swap was when I was working working with a memory-starved game console, where swapping is normally unheard of. I never got to try it due to lack of resources. The other idea that immediately springs to mind after reading this: what about compressing _disk_ swap? Clearly the de-/compression is fast enough (~7-12µs), and the disk latency is the dominating factor. You might not save much, but I'd be surprised if it was worse. ~~~ rythie On traditional hard disks, seek time is the major problem and most requests will be quite small so the throughput increase would be minimal. For example 4k page read @ 50MB/sec = 0.08ms + seek time 8ms = 8.08ms and with compression maybe 8.04ms. ~~~ pmjordan From the article: _With a swap partition located on a 10000 RPM disk, average time required for swap read and write requests was found to be 168ms and 355ms, respectively._ I find this rather interesting, as it's orders of magnitude above the theoretical time. Presumably this comes from I/O scheduling? I'm aware that seek time is a serious problem, but I wonder if you could reduce the number of seek operations by reducing the number of disk I/O operations, full stop. Instead of each page corresponding to one 4kB disk block, you could stuff 2-3 in there and only need to seek and write once instead of 3 times. ~~~ rythie If you could workout which 2-3 pages to put in there you could also just put them adjacently on the disk (assuming you weren't very low on swap space). You could do this the adjacent memory pages as the process sees it, however processes tend to assume they can jump all around memory without penalty. ------ pmjordan Related, random idea that's just popped into my head: what about using compression on the disk cache in memory? This is sort of the opposite, when you've got more than enough RAM. (I have 8GB in my desktop, I rarely use more than 6GB for apps) The rest of the memory gets used as a cache for files, this could be much more efficient if compressed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Which browser is your default, and why? - lbj On Linux I used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkeror for its speed. On Windows Ive been mostly in Opera but frequent crashes and problems with many Google apps made me switch to Chrome again.<p>I've loved Braves privacy and Operas/Firefoxs ability to send tabs directly to my phone, but not so much that I can stand instability.<p>tl;dr: Im back in Chrome and not too happy about it. ====== green-bottle Firefox. When I first got to use a Computer to surf the internet I remember using Firefox and that is what I have used ever since. A lot of people here have said that Firefox was a slow and bloated mess pre- Quantum. I suppose I stuck to Firefox when most people shifted over to Chome because my internet connection had been slow enough that internet was unusable without javascript and images disabled (this is no viable as a significant proportion of websites don't work without JS). Hence my browser ran pretty light and never gave me any issues. At work for development I now use Chrome (for devtools) as Firefox still chokes up on really large javascript files. For anything else Firefox remains my default as it is comparable to chrome now in terms of performance (this only means I haven't noticed any noticeable difference for my web browsing workloads) and has a lot of features that I like (containers, customisability,...). edit: The above refers to my choice of browser on Desktop. ------ thecupisblue I use Brave, previously was a Chrome and Opera (but never again after I learned what the f is going on there). I love that it has the chrome ecosystem but with better built in privacy and some other extra features I wanted (right click and block element). Everything works, sometimes sites break due to script blocking but that's a click away to fix. ~~~ kiterunner2346 thecupisblue _> "...previously was a Chrome and Opera (but never again after I learned what the f is going on there)."<_ What _is_ going on there? ~~~ thecupisblue [https://hindenburgresearch.com/opera-phantom-of-the- turnarou...](https://hindenburgresearch.com/opera-phantom-of-the-turnaround/) ~~~ kiterunner2346 What a great analysis and reveal. Thank you! ------ hieudang9 For Windows, I prefer _portable_ first, I don't want some auto running background services from Google/Mozilla. So I chosen IronPortable & Firefox Development Portable. For Linux, I sticked with default Firefox from OS repository. For mobile, I highly recommend Kiwi Browser - the one of very few Chromium base which let you install Chrome extension like Ublock. ~~~ HomeDeLaPot Nice! Firefox Mobile also lets you install extensions like uBlock. I thought it was the only one. ------ runjake Firefox. It doesn't feel like it's actively working against my interests, unlike Chrome and Safari. ------ jrepinc Using GNU/Linux on all my computers at work and home and I have Firefox as my default one. I trust it the most when it comes to protecting my privacy and having an open/democratic governance of the project. ------ stakkur Firefox. Because Mozilla is actively (and publicly) committed to privacy, which is the opposite intention of Google (Chrome) and Microsoft (IE/Edge/Whatever). ------ fjcp At home I'm using Vivaldi as my main browser. As a heavy YouTube user Firefox isn't a option for me, it crashes frequently and the performance is inferior than Chrome (I think it's not their fault, but it turns it unusable anyway). Vivaldi has the benefits of Chrome for Google sites, is much more customizable than Chrome and it has some nice features that those who used Opera 12 in the past would feel happy about, like tab stacking, tree view and my favorite: mouse gestures. All baked in the browser without the need of buggy extensions. I wish I could be back to Firefox and support the work they are doing regarding privacy, and I'll keep testing every release to see if there are any improvements to performance. ------ askafriend Safari because it integrates with all my Apple devices and it's much more battery/memory efficient than Chrome. The reader mode is fantastic and the password autofill/keychain works great on all my devices too. ------ adventured Firefox without interruption since 2004/2005 sometime. I almost switched due to how slow FF had gotten compared to Chrome. Improvements FF have made more recently have kept me very happy as a user. On mobile I use Chrome. I dislike FF's increasing sprawl / bloat. I suppose a browser with <1% device market share has to survive somehow. I dislike how they instigate opted-in spyware from first install now ("Firefox Data Collection"). I like how text renders on FF versus Chrome, their engine produces a superior aesthetic. ------ __warlord__ Firefox for day to day activities and work, but when I have to use websites that are only available in their native languages I use chrome for the translation capabilities. ------ zafiro17 Pale Moon at the office for anything even vaguely non-work related (i.e. anything I'd browse on my lunch break, etc.). Google Chrome for all official work stuff. At home, Vivaldi on Linux for absolutely everything. Even with that strict separation, the cross-over of adverts from home to work is astonishing. There are things I search for at home that I absolutely don't want showing up on my corporate browser. ------ epc I use Safari for all financial services, Chrome for Google stuff, newspapers, and some other sites I’m fine with being logged into and tracked, and Firefox for routine web browsing (like hn). Firefox is set to purge all cookies and offline data on closing. Chrome is set to purge offline data if I “log out” of Chrome. I use Vivaldi occasionally for questionable sites. ------ jitendrac Firefox. I am using it since 2008. Once I tried to switch to chrome, but memory and other issues were there. The initial reason I used firefox was for firebug,Chrome was not even launched at that time. I have now a soft spot for Firefox, But on mobile I use Chrome, firefox lite is looking impressive but I will wait to get it matured. ------ GhostVII Firefox, because it starts up fast, allows me to customize it to fit my system color scheme, and lets me set up autohide for the toolbar. I open and close my browser constantly so startup time is more important than how fast it is when running. Also chrome doesn't fit with my theme and has a big address bar so it looks ugly. ------ iDemonix Chrome on Mac, it's convenient, and despite robbing all the RAM my 2015 MBP has to offer, it works well. I tried switching to FireFox for two weeks, but found a lot of visual tearing/glitches, and it didn't have pinch to zoom which I use on Chrome constantly. ------ drinkcocacola Safari because the integration with iCloud Keychain, Apple Pay, and its ability to show videos "Picture in Picture" in the Mac from sites such as YouTube. At work I use also Safari, but 40% of the time I use Chrome because the Safari dev tools are kind of limited IMHO ------ rasikjain At Home (Windows), use Firefox browser with add-ons for ad blocking, media control etc At Work (Windows), use Chrome. Like their dev-tools for debugging purposes. On Mobile, I use default Samsung browser on Note 8. I believe browser is lightweight and fast with ad blocking feature. ~~~ kalipsosu Same. Samsung internet is a hidden gem for android. ------ Raed667 Chrome for work because i like the dev-tools and most of our users are on it either way. FireFox for everything personal because its fast and i love the containers. On Android I also use Firefox because I like having extensions to block ads and get youtube to play videos while the screen is locked. ------ Snetry Firefox so I can keep my mobile and desktop experience the same and keep away from the big G ------ AwesomeFaic Used to use Chrome, now I use Brave for home & mobile browsing. At work I'm locked into "approved" browsers so I'm using Chrome. The only alternatives are IE/Edge. ------ soukai Google chrome. At the end of the day, this is the most convenient one for me ------ vvps Firefox. If not for some stupid corporate policies, I would use it at work too. Tried Vivaldi cuz the cool kids were using it but didn't get around to explore all its features. ------ noir_lord Firefox for everything but development. I actually run both simultaneously and it's handy because I know docs/notes/confluence will be in the FF windows and dev stuff in Chrome's ------ companyhen Finally uninstalled Chrome after X amount of years after using Brave successfully for a year. Kept Firefox around just in case. :) ------ pid_0 Firefox by far. Besides being a browser that doesn't spy on you, it is light on resources, fast, and has tab sending to all my devices. ------ bryan_w Chromium. Does everything I need it to. No reason to switch. Also Firefox DoH plan concerns me ------ gshdg Firefox because privacy. Also container tabs to keep multiple accounts open on the same site, etc. ------ huang5556019 Google chrome ~~~ mtmail The question was which browser and why. ------ ecesena Safari for everything personal, Chrome for work-related and Firefox for banks. ------ slipwalker at home: MacOS X: firefox developer edition Linux: firefox ( basically for privacy concerns ) at work: MacOS X: chrome/safari ( chrome/safari are the target platforms for our SPA on mobile ) ------ s4ik4t Chrome, because nobody bothers to do cross browser testing :( ------ decibe1 FireFox at home, the new Edge for work/development.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What would you do if you were a 20 year old with $20,000? - 22yo ====== Casseres It depends what your life goals are. If you're not sure, these are two options that come to mind: \- Find a decent paying job, start investing the money. Time is the biggest thing you have going for you when it comes to investing. Figure out how to become financially independent (not have to work for your money, but make your money work for you). \- Live life for a year or two (do so cheaply, there are a lot of resource on the Internet to help you in that regard). Use that time to write a novel, explore the world, do something unconventional and/or risky. The younger you are, the more risk you can take (because you have more time to recover). It's going to be a lot harder for the average person to do these kinds of things later on in life when you have financial, familial, and other obligations. If you can share any thoughts on what you want to do with your life, that might help. It's cliche, but the sky is the limit, don't let other people's expectations keep you tied to the ground. Also, at this point I would call buying Bitcoins speculating, not investing. When I say investing, I'm talking about the stock market, mutual funds, etc. However, like I said earlier, you're young - you can take more risk. With Bitcoin, the risk is high, but so is the potential reward. With $20,000 and a few more years of continued strong growth of Bitcoin, you could have enough money to become financially independent that way. ------ 2810 Follow your life mission. If you are the person who live by security then learning to invest and save is your best bet. However if you are not worry about your future but the present, spend the money on what you love most whether you love to help the poors, pay to attend your favourite classes, help your parents lessen their burden or anything that you wish for. Viewing from another angle, what you want by end of the day? Short or long term gratification or both? ------ bobsgame Buy and fix up a nice used van to live in, grab a high end MacBook Pro, and invest the rest in BitCoin. ~~~ informatimago Instead buy a small house with a garden, grow your own vegetables. This will give you freedom and time to do whatever else you may want to do. You can get computers for free or cheap, that are perfectly good to develop apps if you want to have fun with programming.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook Has Become The New Yahoo, And It's Obvious Mark Zuckerberg Knows It - Sandman http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-has-become-the-new-yahoo-2014-3 ====== joshdance Is it wrong that I just won't read anything from Business Insider? ------ not_paul_graham It seems like Marissa Mayer is trying to do something similar with Yahoo!'s acquisition binge. Perhaps a lot of it is for talent, but she did make one big play with Tumblr. Only given Yahoo's market cap (vs. Facebook & Google), she can't make bolder plays in the range that Facebook/Google can. I think Mark & Marissa are similar in that respect that they see the past pattern of BigCos ignoring the start-up's potential to grow and haggle on price and want to make a bet anyway because the technology/users/growth is there to pan out in the future. In this example Yahoo (under Terry Semel) missed out on buying Facebook. In 2002 (or 2003) Yahoo missed out on buying Google [0] also under Terry Semel's leadership. Obviously it is easier to point this out in retrospect and Yahoo did make acquisitions that didn't pan out on the scale of GOOG/FB, but in the case of missing out on these breakout companies, it was a result of haggling on price. Of course in an alternate universe Yahoo could have made the bold plays with Facebook + Google and could have been one of the most valuable companies in the world (Hindsight is 20/20). Mark Zuckerberg has been there and seen first hand of what the other side of the table looks like and what founders of young super-growth companies want. He perhaps also has some of the smartest people advising him. And I think that is why Zuckerberg is going to leave his acquisitions alone (Oculus, WhatsApp, Instagram) like the press releases mentioned because he realizes that these "subsidiaries" of Facebook might have a better chance of succeeding as stand- alone teams than as a merger with other facebook staff teams. Also, I'm not sure how much of it has to do with the fact that Google & Facebook are run by founders vs. Semel who came in from Warner Brothers and wanted to personally enrich himself as much as he could (He made north of 450 million from his 6ish year tenure at Yahoo). If I'm making so much money at a company that I didn't help start and I'm already in my late 50s, the last thing I would care about is what the future of technology might look like and how I can capture that value by paying billions of dollars to young companies. Perhaps the case of misaligned incentives? [0] [http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/yahoo.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/yahoo.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple’s major multi-touch plans continue to come into focus - prakash http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/28/apples-major-multi-touch-plans-continue-to-come-into-focus/ ====== stcredzero Maybe Apple could dig into the Newton portfolio for some ideas? That is, if Steve has put away his grudge and allows it to happen. A lightweight tablet computer as a consumer "digital hub" with support from wireless technology and Bonjour actually makes a lot of sense, especially if you can pair it with something like a Mac Mini or Apple TV form factor for the bulk of the storage, and as an interface with the living room HDTV. Better yet, sell small, inexpensive wireless devices that can receive a stream for stereos and video screens around the house, as in Airport Express? Perhaps sell a program that can be used with the Wii? ------ pdubroy I'm going to have nightmares about the hands in those pictures. The first image, where you can zoom in to press the maximize/minimize/close buttons, looks a lot like the Shift technique from Microsoft Research/University of Toronto: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkoFlDArYks>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are you reading during the Covid slow down? and why? - social_quotient ====== mastry The Great Influenza by John Barry for some perspective on current events. A good read so far. ------ op03 Michael Crichton's Airframe. No reason other than it was lying around. ------ bennettbrown The Right Kind of Crazy - For Positive Inspiration ~~~ social_quotient Cool and there is an audiobook for it	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
College Notebook of Isaac Newton - Insanity http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04000/ ====== sbr464 You can download higher resolution versions of the notebook pages by using a dezoooming tool[1] on the image tiles. This example[2] generates a 4898×7711 png compared to a 1270×2000 jpg from the download link[3]. [1]: [https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify](https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify) [2]: [https://ophir.alwaysdata.net/dezoomify/dezoomify.html#https:...](https://ophir.alwaysdata.net/dezoomify/dezoomify.html#https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/content/images/MS- ADD-03969-001-00001_files/13/0_0.jpg) [3]: [https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/content/images/MS- ADD-03969-001...](https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/content/images/MS- ADD-03969-001-00001.jpg) ------ dr_dshiv Newton credited the discovery of the inverse square law of gravity to Pythagoras (5th century BC), just as Coperinicus had credited heliocentrism to him. Here is Newton's argument: "For Pythagoras, as Macrobius avows, stretched the intestines of sheep or the sinews of oxen by attaching various weights, and from this learned the ratio of the celestial harmony. Therefore, by means of such experiments he ascertained that the weights by which all tones on equal strings .. were reciprocally as the squares of the lengths of the string by which the musical instrument emits the same tones. But the proportion discovered by these experiments, on the evidence of Macrobius, he applied to the heavens and consequently by comparing those weights with the weights of the Planets and the lengths of the strings with the distances of the Planets, he understood by means of the harmony of the heavens that the weights of the Planets towards the Sun were reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the Sun." This article has more: [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098) ~~~ philzook That's an interesting suggestion I've never heard before, but your link appears to be down. I'm getting a 404. Is it possible this passage is referring to the reciprocal Pythagorean theorem? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#Reciprocal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#Reciprocal_Pythagorean_theorem) ~~~ dr_dshiv [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.1966.001...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.1966.0014) My apologies, here is the article and citation. And no, not the reciprocal Pythagorean theorem -- learning about Pythagoreanism is a real rabbit hole, highly recommended :) McGuire, J. E., & Rattansi, P. M. (1966). Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan’. Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, 21(2), 108-143. ------ growlist Pages 43 and 44! Although by some accounts Newton could be pretty nasty, a quick look at this almost makes me feel sorry for him given the advancement of his mind versus the state of knowledge at the time. Perhaps though he was in his element at that time, when so much was up for grabs. ~~~ Jenz [http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS- ADD-04000/43](http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04000/43) ------ max_ Is that a "Hand" doodle? [http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS- ADD-04000/15](http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04000/15) ~~~ pvida It certainly seems so. I love how simple-yet-not-too-simple it is. ~~~ jq-r It is the exactly the same hand symbol Henry VIII used to mark down interesting passages in Bible which he hoped would help him to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. ~~~ ian0 Apparently called an index or manicule with examples spotted from the 12th century.. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_(typography)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_$typography$) ~~~ lioeters Delightful! I'd say this manicule is a proto-emoji of sorts. > Thomas Pynchon parodies this punctuation mark in his novel Gravity's Rainbow > by depicting a middle finger, rather than an index finger, pointing at a > line of text. ------ alister Page 32: > _At which time I found that method of Infinite series. And in summer 1665 > being forced from Cambridge by the Plague I computed the area of the > Hyperbola of Boothby in Lincolnshire to two & fifty figures by the same > method. [signed] Is. Newton_ He made a signed statement of his discovery just as in a 20th century engineer's/inventor's notebook. The mention of being forced from Cambridge because of the plague makes me wonder if some great discoveries are being made right now because many bright minds have been forced home by coronavirus. ~~~ josh_fyi What looks like y^2 (or superscript 2) is an abbreviation for "the". ~~~ alister Thank you, I've corrected it. It raises the question of why anyone bothered with a 2 symbol abbreviation for just 3 letters. ~~~ MLR Old English had a letter called thorn that would eventually be replaced with the modern th or a y (ye olde is just said the old). The y^e form was apparently used for the King James Bible in 1611 so it's plausible it might still have been a normal way of writing "the" as late as 1650, rather than as an affectation or abbreviation. Edit: He also uses y^t for that which I hadn't noticed at first glance. ------ vansul I love this book. They currently have his 1659-61 notebook on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (scan available at [0]) Its opened on a page titled ‘Otiose et frustra expensa’ (Idle and vain expenses) where he lists his snack binges (including ‘cheries’, ‘Tarte’, ‘Marmolet’, ‘Custardes’, and ‘Cake bred). [0] [https://mss- cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/manuscripts/uv/view.php?n=R.4...](https://mss- cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/manuscripts/uv/view.php?n=R.4.48c&n=R.4.48c#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=51&xywh=-1483%2C-2%2C5173%2C2778) ------ screpy Why do they tell us about this process in schools only with an apple fall? Actually, there is a lot of effort behind it and we ignore it. ~~~ ponker This has always been the dumbest Eureka myth because... Isaac Newton only noticed that shit falls downwards when an apple fell on his head?! If it was something that gave him some insight into the mechanism... like two differe tobjects falling at the same time and landing at the same time, causing him to think about force and mass etc... that would make much more sense. ~~~ stan_rogers As it was relayed, the apple thing was the moment that he realised that the mysterious force holding the celestial objects in their orbits was exactly the same force as gravity. It's not that gravity was a new concept or anything. In fact, it goes back so far in our history that we still use the silly name "gravity" for the phenomenon; it was once though to be a property of an object or an element (in the "four elements" sense), and was opposed by another property called "levity". You will note that there is no current theory of levity. Galileo had already put numbers to gravity on Earth by that point, and the idea that the force holding things in their orbits acted according to an inverse square law was circulating before Newton got there. (There's no reason to believe he couldn't have come to that conclusion independently, but there's no reason to credit it to him either.) What was missing was the connection; the generalization. That's not obvious in any way. How do you get an inverse square law to work with Galilean gravity? It smacks of equants and deferents until you find a way to put the _effective_ mass of a body, such as the Earth, at its centre. Imagine a world in which there's some inverse square force thingy holding the moon and planets in their orbits, and there's gravity and you know how that works, and nobody has even the slightest notion that they're in any way related. And then you have the OFFS moment. ~~~ emmelaich Was there really a property proposed called levity? I thought that that was only mentioned in parodies of Newton. e.g. [https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/363707/view/caricature- of...](https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/363707/view/caricature-of-newton-s- laws-of-gravity-) ~~~ stan_rogers Yes, and it goes back _at least_ as far as Aristotle (although he would have used a rather Greeker word). Levity would have been a property of fire and air in Aristotelian physics, where gravity was a property of earth and water. ------ rutherblood that handwriting is surprisingly legible ------ dr_dshiv "On music" is on page 288.. A little bit of psychology precedes it. ------ yitchelle It is remarkable that there are not alot corrections among the written text. The text is extremely readable and understanble, even for a non-mathematician like me. ------ noisy_boy Idle thought: imagine if Newton examined modern programming and said "let me show you a new approach I've been thinking about for a while ..." ------ max_ Any possibility to have this typed & formatted for easy reading? ------ bra-ket The funny thing about Newton is that he was treating pseudo-science like alchemy with the same level of seriousness as actual science he helped advance so much. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_stud...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies#Alchemical_research) ~~~ beenBoutIT Alchemy wasn't scientifically disproven until the 19th century, so Newton had no choice but to explore it. If transforming base metals to gold was scientifically plausible and illegal(as it was in Newton's day) most of us on this board would be chasing after it at full speed right now. ~~~ tpetricek It's not just that alchemy was not "scientifically disproven" in Newton's time. There was no such thing as "scientific" and "pseudo-scientific". Reading about Newton's thinking about alchemy is a fascinating look at a way of thinking that we can hardly imagine today. I also thought that it is a nice reminder of the (certain but unimaginable) limitations of our present thinking. There is a fascinating (but pretty academic) book about Newton's Alchemy: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Foundations-Newtons-Alchemy- Cambrid...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Foundations-Newtons-Alchemy-Cambridge- Paperback/dp/0521273811) ~~~ submeta What a wonderful perspective to look at this. We take so many things for granted. The knowledge we have is beautifully compartmented by artificial boundaries we take for granted. All the faculties we have: we rarely question the architecture of this building of knowledge we grow up with. ------ abhayhegde He was certainly having fun! A refreshing peek through his mind. Whenever I mention the likes of Newton and their works, I frequently get attacked by some people. Their argument is that Newton was a terrible human being and despite his contributions to Science, Mathematics, and the process of discoveries in general, he does not deserve praise since appraisal implies we would be condoning his behavior. To that I usually reply, we would never accept some of his behaviors now and that does not mean his contributions are worthless. They believe we can never separate the "works" from a "person", to which I always disagree. EDIT: Grammar. ~~~ dekervin What part of his life was terrible ? ------ hank_z Any modern text recognition technology is applicable to his handwriting?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Game of Thrones author George RR Martin: 'Why I still use DOS' - AndrewDucker http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27407502 ====== keithpeter As computers become normal and not 'new' I imagine the range of ages of machine/software we use will smear out. This chap might need an emulator soon, or DrDos!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Belgian court finds Facebook guilty of violating privacy (Dutch) - michielr https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2018/02/16/brusselse-rechtbank-veroordeelt-facebook-wegens-schending-privac/ ====== callmeal I read the title as "Belgian court finds Facebook guilty of violating privacy (Duh)" and was confused for a sec. ------ biggodoggo Alas, there is no way the U.S. would ever stand up for privacy, they are one of the biggest invaders of it after all. ~~~ ggggtez Free speech is the first amendment, so it's only natural. Europe had to deal with dictators, unlike the US. ------ jacquesm [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16392608](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16392608) Another thread. Threadmerge?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A decade on: Google's internet economy - wave http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7597599.stm ====== josefresco Does Google really need another PR-fluff piece? It would be like another article on how good Exxon-Mobile is at making money. We get it, move on please. ------ someperson It will be interesting to see how Google will celebrate it's anniversary in 2 days time. I guess it would have been a much better time to launch chrome from a marketing standpoint (wouldn't have made much difference though). But i guess the decision makers at google thought about this more than any of us.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: open standards for mail storage? - hyuen Hi all, I was wondering if there are any standards/documentation for storing mail, either in the server, or in e-mail clients? I am specially interested in how companies like Xobni are able to crawl the data from the user's mailboxes. A poor man's crawler could be probably with an IMAP client, but that doesn't sound particularly efficient. ====== Scott_MacGregor Email messages are stored in open human readable text on the email server, unless they are encrypted. An Administrator on a Microsoft server with the proper permission level can open the mail directory on the server and see all of the user directories inside. Then simply open the directory and see all of the email message files. Since they are plain text they can be opened with a text editor such as WordPad and easily read. Linux is the same. I am not sure if XOBNI crawls the user mailbox on the email server. More likely, it is getting the information it needs from the Outlook .pst file that is on the user’s client machine. The .pst file is a little database just for Outlook to use. I went to a Microsoft Office developers brunch a while back (good food) and I think I remember they said that they were opening a lot of their Office products to developers so they could make apps to tie in to them. Here is link to the MSN Developers Network that might help you: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
First analysis of how Uber and Lyft have affected roadway congestion in SF - doener https://www.sfcta.org/emerging-mobility/tncs-and-congestion ====== pftburger To be clear, Uber and Lyft are in cash burn phase, still... Yes, this is essentially still a free market economy but the prices of rides are largely subsidised to bring them to a point where they compete with public transport. That said, public transport is often a last mile problem. How do you get to and from the node, with a baby, in bad weather etc. Public transport is far from ideal and TNCs fill the gap willingly. TNCs fill the gap so easily by piggybacking off the Auto Lobby. If we had more, denser public transport coupled with reliable safe bike lanes (heck sometimes the whole sidewalk is missing...) public would be much more attractive. ~~~ httpz I'm not sure how credible this is but someone who work at one of the ride sharing company told me most of the cash burn happens in new markets for rapid growth and established markets like SF are profitable. ~~~ godzillabrennus I’ve heard the same. Though reaching “profitability” is not really a focus for them until automated vehicles are ready to replace the humans on the road. ~~~ oblio The question that nobody at these companies wants to answer publicly: what if fully automated vehicles are still decades away? ------ TangoTrotFox It seems tautological that uber/lyft would increase congestion. The one and only way it would not be true is if every single person who used the service had a previous option that they were readily utilizing. Though even there nonpassenger driving hours would probably cause a net increase in congestion anyhow. But I think it goes without saying that there are countless people that end up 'driving' far many more miles thanks to uber/lyft, myself being one of them. In other words as you make transport more desirable, available, and affordable - congestion will increase. The natural retort against this is public transport, but route/time restrictions as well as other passengers will always pose a limit on both the desirability and availability of public transport, though it certainly tends to nail the third criteria at least. ~~~ njarboe I've heard that at many times 1/3 of cars on the road in SF are looking for parking. Don't really believe it is that high, but, if true, would be a way for uber/lyft use to decrease congestion in a meaningful way. ------ almost_usual A MUNI bus ride is 1/10 the cost of an Uber or Lyft and people would rather spend the extra money to not deal with the SF public. Ride share to work, your favorite restaurant, bar, and then home. It’s like living in the suburbs in the city. I wonder how many people who can’t afford a vehicle but don’t want to deal with public transit would leave SF if ride sharing was banned outright. ~~~ dahdum TNCs creating congestion makes sense to me for the same reason, so many of my trips simply wouldn’t happen if I had to take public transport. ~~~ Retric Worse they add an extra leg to all trips, not just more trips. At best it’s last drop off location > pickup location > drop off location. On top of that many drivers will go to a fourth location to wait for their next passenger. ------ product50 Uber is really a heaven sent product for me and my family. We have to pick up and drop off our daughter at her day care on a daily basis and without Uber, I am not sure how would we have done it. I hope we can expand studies like this with the quality of life improvement which services like Uber have been responsible. Also, there are other things which have improved too. Such as less drunk driving, improved safety especially when traveling at nights, predictability vs. taxis etc. ~~~ liotier > We have to pick up and drop off our daughter at her day care on a daily > basis and without Uber I'm amazed that Uber is considered an affordable commute device. Is that a SV phenomenon ? ~~~ superfrank Eh, it depends on how you look at it. If you are comparing Lyft/Uber to public transit, yeah they lose out by a lot, but I don't think a lot of people are doing that. I think a lot of people are comparing Lyft/Uber against the cost of owning a semi-new car in a major city and that's much more comparable. Here's a super ball park monthly cost breakdown: \- Car payment: $250 \- Parking: $200 \- Insurance: $85 (~$500 every 6 months) \- Gas: $50 \- Registration: $40 (~$500+ a year) \- Saving for maintenance: $50 (assuming $600 a year, which is probably low) That's super super napkin math, but that's almost $700 a month for a car, which is basically the same as $30 each work day for a month. On top of that, you don't have to deal with the hassle of parking in a city, which has to be worth something. ~~~ product50 No - you are wrong. Dropping off kids has a lot of convenience if you take an Uber. You don't have to worry about parking and can actually spend time with your kid, like read them a story, when you drop off via Ubers vs. yourself. In my estimate, I save at least 15-20min per dropoff when I take Uber vs. when I do with my car. In the morning that 15-20min extra matter a lot. ~~~ user3359 I don't see how your point makes him wrong. If anything, it seems to reinforce his point. ~~~ product50 Well you need to read it again. ~~~ ionised No, he's right. Nothing you said made his point wrong. ------ cavisne “TNC information was based on data originally gathered by researchers at Northeastern University from the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) of Uber and Lyft that show the locations of available vehicles to mobile apps, and then was shared with the Transportation Authority.” Why would they use such a terrible data source. I had always assumed the cars in the Uber map are indicative anyway, not the actual location. Uber gives trip data to cities why not get real data ------ austenallred This is why it blows my mind that scooters are effectively banned in San Francisco. They’re such a perfect solution for inner-city travel. ~~~ TangoTrotFox In many ways, I think solutions like this are just kicking the can. Travel in a place like Bangkok for one day. Red lights look like the start of a motocross rally. There are even motorbike taxis. And motorcycles deciding the sidewalk doubles as a bike line is a common sight. But traffic is still completely brutal. That's also with city wide subway and airtrain transport options as well. The problem is simple. People need access to the roadways in a fashion that grows linearly to low exponentially. But the capacity of the roadway capacity stays constant with an occasional constant bump. Even if you suddenly toss every single driver on a scooter, it's just one of those constant time bumps. You'll eventually bump into the exact same problem of a constant road capacity against an increasing roadway access demand. You need a way of linearly, and indefinitely, increasing traffic capacity, not one-off constant value work-arounds. ~~~ TheCoelacanth Amount of potential traffic can't grow without limit. People need space to do other things. That puts a natural limit on the amount of traffic because people don't go places just to get there. They go places to do something when they get there. ~~~ TangoTrotFox The big underlying factor is population increase, both permanent increases of the local population and temporary increases from visitors. Though I imagine there are also other factors even beyond that one that also increase traffic. It's probably safe to say that increased income results in more activity involving transport, for instance. I'd agree there's definitely some theoretic cutoff where it becomes practically physically impossible to squeeze any more people into an area, but I'm not sure how practical it is to consider that since you're hitting major dystopia long before you get to that point. ------ lewis500 "TNCs had little impact on congestion in the western and southern San Francisco neighborhoods." Recently Supervisor Peskin apparently reached a deal to impose a "net fares" tax on the TNC's. I wonder if they will consider differentiating it by neighborhood: imposing larger charges downtown. Peskin has also lobbied for downtown congestion pricing although that is harder to implement, politically and technologically, than such a tax. ~~~ SllX > Peskin has also lobbied for downtown congestion pricing although that is > harder to implement, politically and technologically, than such a tax. Politically, sure. The idea has been floating around for at least a decade that I know of, and probably longer. Technologically? License plate readers on every intersection, let's say, for the sake of argument, every intersection along Van Ness and South Van Ness going east, and every intersection along Folsom going Northwest. Maybe put the northern boundary at about Washington Street and also have readers at off- ramps. Maybe give people driving along the Embarcadero a free pass though and set the Eastern boundary there. Every car that enters this section of the City has their plate read, and you either pay with FasTrack or get a bill in the mail at the end of the month. If you live in this part of the City, you can apply for a waiver, oh and since we're reading plates and doing a DMV lookup for the address, the City could even charge extra if the vehicle is commuting in from outside the City. Actually, taking that into consideration, you wouldn't even need to apply for a waiver, any vehicle registered to an address within this zone simply wouldn't be charged. In fact, to make this more interesting, if someone calls a Lyft or Uber to an address within that zone, you could have them collect a surcharge which will be paid directly to the City. The technical challenge isn't very hard, actually kind of boring, I think the bureaucratic challenge is a bit harder once you get through the political challenge, which is the real hurdle. That is a potentially large source of revenue for the SFMTA though, between the tolls, the surcharges, and the additional monthly passes sold. ~~~ slivym It's worth noting that London has had a congestion zone for 15 years now and it wasn't particularly difficult technologically back then. ------ notacoward I use Lyft a lot when I travel, but I'm also acutely aware that such services have their downside. For example, using Lyft the way I do spares me both the hassle and the liability of a rental car in two unfamiliar and notoriously bad traffic environments (Silicon Valley and Seattle). How is that possible? Because that hassle and liability are pushed onto the driver, whose livelihood would be far more affected by an accident than mine would be. :( With respect to congestion, there is definitely a problem that so many rides leave the driver somewhere other than where they'd want to be. Taking rides to and from dinner is one thing, because those trips balance out pretty well. Using a TNC as a commute alternative is quite another thing, because everyone wants to go one way in the morning and the other way in the afternoon, leaving every car occupied only half the time. Even worse, the effect is most concentrated in exactly the places people least want to drive themselves because of the pre-existing congestion. Every bad place gets worse. I don't know of any solution that others aren't already likely to mention, but it's definitely a problem looking for a better solution. ------ Hansenq The issue with conclusions of reports like these is that yes, Uber/Lyft contributed to a congestion increase, but what would that increase have looked like without Uber/Lyft? How much would congestion have increased by without Uber/Lyft (due to the strong economy, jobs, etc)? Would people instead have purchased cars and driven them around instead? Would we actually have had higher congestion? Publishing reports like these without controlling for the economy/jobs/popularity of these cities seems to me to be an unfair attack on Uber/Lyft, where the real culprit might just be a strong economy. ~~~ burlesona How exactly would you control for all the rest? Where is there another San Francisco that doesn’t have Uber that we can go measure? I think these estimates pass the sniff test at least. Downtown SF has very little parking relative to demand, so Uber / Lyft are practically the only way to get there in a car. ~~~ chaboud "Downtown SF has very little parking relative to demand, so Uber / Lyft are practically the only way to get there in a car." So, wait... Your argument is that there is a natural disincentive to go downtown with a car, unless one uses Uber or Lyft... But you also somehow doubt that the car traffic that _is_ downtown has been caused by Uber and/or Lyft? So is everyone an idiot because they just drive around downtown, give up, and go home? Or they aren't in on this Uber/Lyft secret that nobody has heard about? Or... And I'm just spit-balling here... Maybe you just argued against yourself very effectively. ~~~ burlesona My point was actually that the traffic is already relatively self-regulating due to the lack of parking, most people don’t get there by driving. Sure it’s plausible that Uber or Lyft increased the traffic, but it’s difficult to assert that in an alternate universe without Uber or Lyft that more parking would not have been built (attracting more cars), or that you’d have more traffic from cruising (people hunting for parking). Development plays a huge role as well, perhaps Uber has allowed more development than would have been feasible without it, or perhaps all the new development would have happened anyway, either way it’s a complex adaptive system that you can’t easily just say “ah, THIS is the one and only cause.” ------ meriimekko TNC - since when was this acronym used? Call it what it is, not some vague NASA-like revision. ------ crb002 They packed SF like a clown car, of course all commute times went up. Not sure how it is Uber's fault. ~~~ wool_gather Who is "they"?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
BYTE Magazine's Smalltalk issue (1981) - helloworld https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08 ====== tonyedgecombe I think this was the first issue of Byte I bought, I remember hoovering up every little detail at the time. ------ RandalSchwartz dartlang.org is the modern heir-apparent to the Smalltalk language, backed by Google, and gaining a lot of traction. ~~~ teapot7 Though Smalltalk is quite alive and happy in a niche way. I use pharo.org, but there's also Squeak, VisualWorks and a few others. There's some good recent work on compiling to JavaScript, which seems to be the universal solvent these days.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Will Remote Start to Affect Tech Salaries? - joelbluminator As we all know many companies who never managed employees remotely are now forced to do it for months and months due to coronavirus. Speculation has it that many companies will find out first hand productivity isn't being hurt when managing teams remotely, and they may actually reduce office space in expensive cities and become more remote friendly. If these assumptions are correct, do you think a cascading affect can happen where Silicon Valley firms start hiring remotely outside Silicon Valley (first from cheaper U.S countries) ? But it's not necessarily going to stop there. Once you are experienced in managing someone remotely from California to Ohio, why not offshore it to Mexico or Canada? The question of tech offshoring has been discussed a lot, but my question is whether the current situation is actually going to give it a very big push. The U.S is just an example obviously, I can see this happening in the EU or anywhere else for that matter. ====== reggiepret Agreed, I think that the EU can look at any talent in their timezone (Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Belarus, Hungary etc.) [https://techbeacon.com/app-dev- testing/top-12-international-...](https://techbeacon.com/app-dev- testing/top-12-international-cities-software-engineers) South Africa has the biggest bang for your buck, even for local jobs, having an international job and living in SA would be a great combo.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Brain Scans Are Not Always What They Seem - Vigier https://www.braindecoder.com/bold-assumptions-why-brain-scans-are-not-always-what-they-seem-1069949099.html ====== prefrontal I am the author of the dead salmon study and even I am getting tired of reading about it in the popular press. The original intent was to provide a salient example as to why researchers should use proper statistics in their studies. In the six years since we originally published the paper the neuroimaging field has gotten much, much better at doing the right thing. Now, the salmon is getting to be a tired cliche used to highlight how fMRI is "flawed". Let it go... ~~~ jacquesm You can update your bio to include name/contact info and email if you want to. ------ s3cur3 There's an insidious fallacy at play in a lot brain imaging studies. I've heard it termed "neurorealism": the idea that something isn't real unless we can point to an area of the brain that "lights up" when it happens. (And the converse: any behavior we can associate with someone's brain "lighting up" must be intimately linked to that behavior.) It's tempting to look at the visible differences between, say the fMRI of a psychopath and that of a normal person and say "oh, look, area x is clearly different, so we've found the center of psycopathy!", but there are waaaaay too many variables in play for that to be a valid inference. The best neuroscientists know this is rubbish... but the press does not.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Hands-Free Heart Rate – Measure Pulse with Selfie Camera (iOS for Now) - Firecracker https://heartrate.hedronvision.com/dl?s=hn ====== ksaj I saw a video showcasing this idea some time back. They showed slowed-down video that exaggerated both the colour red, and the lines on your face, neck and hands, following a steep logarithmic slope. Basically it showed that we imperceptibly blink and undulate like freaky globular aliens, and even consumer level cameras can pick it up. Not so different than a deep ocean jellyfish. Really fascinating stuff, so I'm looking forward to the Android version of your app. Let me know if you want a beta tester for Android. I can test if it matches the heart rate monitor on the stationary bike, and there's all kinds of weird lighting at the gym I go to. Plus I do HIIT, so my heart is purposely increased/decreased to significantly different target rates every few minutes. ~~~ sredmond That's totally right! It's incredible just how much ambient information is visible to consumer cameras that human eyes and brains can't or don't process. We're always happy for more beta testers, especially with a variety of diverse situations and environments (true heart rate, lighting conditions, etc). To sign up as a beta tester, fill out the Android Sign Up form at [https://heartrate.hedronvision.com/](https://heartrate.hedronvision.com/) \- that will let us reach out with a beta app when we build it! ~~~ ksaj Done deal. I'll put in a little sweat for you when it's available. ------ sredmond Co-creator here! Feel free to ask us anything. Check it out if you can — it downloads really quickly, and it's free! ~~~ peterlu Looks really awesome! Does it work in a variety of lighting conditions? ~~~ Firecracker We've tested across quite a few--and it should control for constant, weird lighting. But there are definitely edge cases that are hard to control for--a faint, pulsing red light would probably be the worst one.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What business or strategy books do you read to keep you on course - CHIEFARCHITECT Every yr, I spend one day or so, re-read the classics- Sunzi's (Sun Tzu) Art of War, Laozi (Lao Tzu)"Tao Te Ching", Chinese Seven Strategy Classics, Musashi's The Book of Five Rings, Niccolo Machiavelli "The Art of War" and "The Prince", Niccolo Machiavelli "The Art of War", Marcus Aurelius "Meditations", Karl von Clausewitz "On War"and so forth. What books do you read to get your strategic bearings going? ====== mixmax I've read most of the ones you mention but I find that the best input for strategy is being around people. So to get my strategic bearings going I am on the board of the local yacht club, and a foundation for leisure sailors. The intrigues, back-stabbing and talking behind backs is worse than any boardroom. The great thing about these places is that if I get kicked out for backing the wrong horse or back-stabbing the wrong person it doesn't matter much. It's just a great exercise in political and strategic maneovering. ------ macmac "Information Rules" by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian "Getting to Yes" by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton ------ davidw I've summarized a lot of my favorites at <http://www.squeezedbooks.com> \- a site I created for the very purpose of sharing the "meat" of good business books. ------ rrival In addition to what you list above, Sun Pin - Military Methods (Sun Tzu's great grandson iirc).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Every function can be computable - lisper http://jdh.hamkins.org/every-function-can-be-computable/ ====== kazinator > _What I mean is that there is a universal algorithm, a Turing machine > program capable of computing any desired function, if only one should run > the program in the right universe._ But is the selection of the right universe a decidable problem?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
CSS3 Rainbow Dividers - franze http://codepo8.github.com/CSS3-Rainbow-Dividers/ ====== yuvadam Now we just need some CSS3 "under construction" icons and we're ready for 1997! (Seriously, anyone up for the challenge?) ~~~ hackermom Don't forget the CSS class for a dividing line in the form of dripping blood, and one for a rotating cranium. ~~~ kenkeenan A rotating cranium ON FIRE, if you please! ~~~ anons2011 Ah, reminds me of my first site on geocities.com and tripod.com all those years ago! ------ statictype View-Source for more fun. -lynx-animation:charlieeee 2.5s forwards linear infinite; ... #tongue{position:cheek;} /* ^ OMG! An ID! That kills performance! */ ~~~ cdmoyer I can't believe they choose to leave the unicorns commented out by default. ------ kulpreet Finally! Now we can properly emulate the 90s with modern web standards. :) ~~~ chucknthem Don't forget to use a rainbow terminal when you're hacking together your retro 90s site <https://github.com/busyloop/lolcat> ~~~ wladimir I didn't know of that program. It's a pretty funny effect. Thanks :) ------ kmm Huh? The body of the document is enclosed in <sarcasm> tags. Also, I once want to commit with the message "Added unicorn option". ------ gnoupi If you open it with Opera and don't feel it particularly amazing, like I did, open it with another browser. (Only viewing the source I realized it was supposed to be animated) ------ spking Someone should tell this guy: <http://eonweb.com/cgi-shl/foxweb.exe/menu@search> ~~~ gte525u Hah, I had no idea foxpro had a web-front end. ------ crazysim "It uses all the cool stuff your iPhone can do!" It doesn't seem to work on iOS 4.3.3 on an iPad 2. Does this work with iOS 5? ~~~ lachenmayer Just tried it with iOS 4.2.1 on an iPhone 3GS. Nothing appears around the paragraph. ------ netghost Absolutely need to also throw in some RainGlows! <http://monkeyandcrow.com/blog/css3_rainglows/> ------ josteink _This means they are hardware accelerated!!!_ And still choppy on my Xeon (before going full cycle and starting over again). Too lazy to see if this is an implementation error or a performance issue. And yes, I do realize this is a joke. Just mentioning this as a warning: Just because someone says "hardware accelerated" doesn't mean you should go crazy and stop thinking performance. Same applies to CSS3. Use it wisely. ------ dspeyer For those who don't want to wade through it, the key point is: background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient (and moz, o, ms and khtml equivalents) ------ chrislomax Very nostalgic, I was thinking we need a way of emulating blue flames licking around a spinning oval logo! ------ alanh Dang, don't you hate it when you see someone else showing off their stuff when you did it as well, but kept it under the radar? My old-school-style CSS3 HRs (not animated): <http://jsfiddle.net/alanhogan/xjBMV/2/> ------ trocker Swweett Stuff. I've been waiting for something retro like this to be designed in CSS3 - Hardware Accelerated! How about we start off some open css3 design sources and lets make crazy stuff until its just a matter of combinations to make any aw3som3 effect! ------ ivanicus Cool CSS3 experiment... (god forbid this turns "fashion" again!) ------ Aviwein77 This is kind of fantastic, in the 'I almost want to go out and plaster it all over a website just for fun and to laugh at peoples reactions' fantastic. ------ BillSaysThis Chris H always gives an audience what they want ;) Another arrow in the post- modern HTML5/CSS3 quiver. ------ shawndumas <http://www.aliviastoys.com/> ------ Flavius <sarcasm>Great! Just what the web needs.</sarcasm> ------ par I am ready for the css/js spinning earth and marquee! ------ iamclovin lol at #tongue{position:cheek;} ~~~ rimantas Did you know that CSS caused one of the big disasters? #titanic{float:none} ~~~ anons2011 How about .einstein {position: relative;} ~~~ mikeleeorg I hope you all don't mind, but I loved these CSS declarations so much that I whipped this up today: <http://csshumor.com/> If you've got any more, let me know! 8-) ------ harrisreynolds Let's party like it is 1999! ------ indrora I think I just gayed in my pants a little. ------ FrancescoRizzi oooh... it's Geocities! ~~~ sp332 Historical (not sarcastic) analysis of Geocities: <http://contemporary-home- computing.org/1tb/> ------ mickeyckm AWESOME :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
T-Mobile to acquire MetroPCS - apayan http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/metro-announcement ====== e1ven Please forgive me, but isn't this rather old news at this point? Is there any new element?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GitLab – Open Source Git Management Software - hiby007 https://www.gitlab.com/ ====== Rygu We use and love Atlassian Stash ([https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash](https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash)), it's excellent for code reviews. The diff view options and commenting make it easy to create pull requests, get feedback and eventually merge code into the master branch. (Per branch permissions are awesome too.) Long time ago we also assessed GitLab and found it usable but not quite there yet for production use. Though it looks nicer now. ~~~ objnotdefined Thanks for the feedback (and others) on stash. Right now we're down to choosing between Stash and a couple others, and it seems to be the best choice for the team. Hey anything is better than SVN which is what we use now! ~~~ icefox On the Admin side it has been easy to get up and running for testing, the upgrades are pretty painless and come on a time based release cycle. The docs are decent and there is a rest api and the company has been very responsive to tickets we file. And it is _significantly_ cheaper than github:fi. On the user side it hits all of the big items and the interface is useable. It doesn't have some features like GitHub's image diff or gh_pages support, but for many things there are Stash plugins that either exists or you can write. And they provide an easy way to not leak internal url's while using gravatar ([http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-to-stop- leaki...](http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-to-stop-leaking-your- internal-sites.html)) The biggest downside I have at this point would be that out of the box the permissions model is not as rich/robust as gitolite. Although most Git frontend servers are no where near as rich as gitolite. ------ ridruejo BitNami (I'm a cofounder) provides free installers, VMs and cloud images for GitLab. You can also spin 1h demos. [https://BitNami.com/stack/gitlab](https://BitNami.com/stack/gitlab) ~~~ sytse GitLab B.V. CEO here, BitNami has been making and supporting VM's for GitLab for a long time, highly recommended. ~~~ ridruejo Thanks! We are big fans of GitLab as well :) ------ Touche Ah, finally a proper package! [https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/](https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/) This will make GitLab an easier choice in the future. If you're looking for a lighter choice Gitbucket is really nice: [https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket](https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket) ~~~ sytse Glad you like the packages! It took some effort to package it but thanks to the example of Omnibus-Chef it turned out really nice. (GitLab B.V. CEO) ~~~ favadi Why the package version is outdated? 6.5? ~~~ sytse It is 6.7 isn't it? ------ davedx We've been using Gitlab side by side with Github for the past few months. In general it's a very nice replacement, but one thing I've been fighting with lately is code review capabilities. The problem I've been having is when I go to a commit, in Github I'll be able to see what's changed (the diffs), but in Gitlab I often get "diff too big and not shown for perf reasons" or suchlike. This inability to reliably view diffs makes me wonder how we're going to do code review on projects hosted on Gitlab. Does anyone else have experience with this, or any workarounds? ~~~ sytse The main workaround is to keep your commits small. If you run your own GitLab server your can also tune the constants that affect this behavior. If you have a good use-case feel free to send a merge request to increase them so they get better for everyone. ~~~ GFK_of_xmaspast A use-case is "some people insist on making large commits". In a perfect world, maybe otherwise, but not this one. ------ sytse We just released GitLab 6.8 minutes ago [https://www.gitlab.com/2014/04/22/gitlab-6-dot-8-released/](https://www.gitlab.com/2014/04/22/gitlab-6-dot-8-released/) The main new feature of this release is protection against force pushes. Other changes include improvements to mentioning in comments, Merge Request UI improvements and new API features. ~~~ jbrooksuk "Merge Request UI improvements"? Improvements? I beg to differ. 1\. You can no longer assign a MR to someone at the time of creation. 2\. The CSS looks broken. [https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842](https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842) 3\. Successful MR's no longer turn green. There is no quick visual feedback, it used to go green. My team and I _hate_ the new "improvements", but appreciate the work. ------ lucasnemeth I am working on a Brazilian public sector project, and since we only use open source alternatives running on our own servers (for security reasons), we chose Gitlab. It works nicely. The earlier versions consumed a lot of memory, but recently that's getting better. Would not recommend a too lightweight server, though. ~~~ sytse Good to hear it is getting better, see [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/blob/master/doc/inst...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/blob/master/doc/install/requirements.md) for the requirements. ------ SEJeff Kind of surprised no one has mentioned gogs, which aims to be an on-premise github, but written in golang with a single binary deployment: [https://github.com/gogits/gogs](https://github.com/gogits/gogs) ~~~ StavrosK Whenever I see things like this ("like X, but written in a different language"), I can't help but think that there's a lot of effort wasted for something that makes no difference to the end user. Why duplicate the whole thing just to make deployment (something that happens once) a bit easier? Does anyone else feel this way? ~~~ loumf It makes a difference to me what I put on my server. I don't run any rails apps at all because I don't understand the security implications enough and I haven't had a rails app I wanted enough. ~~~ tenken What security implication(s)? ... from _known_ security issues released to the public and now patched ... ... and you know there are 0 security vulnerabilities you don't know about in Go Lang or GoG, and it's 100% now and forever ? ... you know you can run any rails app using a localhost webserver ... just saying. ~~~ loumf You are right, I don't know that. But, I have an opinion on the likelihood of future vulnerabilities and my chance of being on top of them (and my ability to assess and remediate). My point was more that I care about the implementation language than saying that Go was better (for me, it's not). ------ FeloniousHam My previous experience with Gitlab (and others) led me to Gitblit: [http://gitblit.org/](http://gitblit.org/) Gitblit is in another universe in terms of ease of installation, upgrade and maintenance, and very close on features. Even with a .deb package for Gitlab, my upgrade experience with previous versions wouldn't make me leave Gitblit. It's just dead simple. ~~~ danieldk Moreover, Gitblit uses plain text files for everything. It may not scale to thousands of users, but for small to medium size teams, it certainly makes maintenance, backups, and migration easier. ------ thecodemonkey We've been using GitLab for our production projects for almost a year now. The biggest reason for moving from GitHub to GitLab was not having to worry about additional cost for creating new projects (we have hundreds of projects and most of them are rarely accessed long after they were created). It's also neat that we have the ability to customize GitLab if we wanted to, e.g. in 2012 we ran some experiments to create projects from templates directly in the GitLab interface [1] And lastly, since we're not in an environment with six-digit numbers of users and constant DDOS attacks - we're able to keep a much better uptime than we had before with GitHub. [1] [http://enga.ge/development/creating-a-sturdy-deployment- work...](http://enga.ge/development/creating-a-sturdy-deployment-workflow- using-git/) ~~~ sytse Great to hear this! (almost a year and already experimenting in 2012?) ~~~ thecodemonkey Yearh, I started using GitLab for personal projects and after a bit more than a yearh we migrated the company projects to GitLab as well. ~~~ sytse Ah, that makes sense ------ peterwwillis We have gitlab set up at work for our small team, but we never use it. We just do regular old git operations from the CLI and use e-mail and Bugzilla for issue tracking. I've wondered if maybe there was a feature of Gitlab we're not using that we should, but so far nothing's stuck. ~~~ sytse Have your tried merge requests to do code reviews? ~~~ peterwwillis We do merge requests by hand (there's several ways to do reviews/merges with git CLI), and communicate on bugs or e-mail threads. Oh, and I forgot to mention before we integrate git with Jenkins for CI and testing/reviewing/merging. ~~~ sytse Consider giving merge requests a try, once you try line comments you don't want to go back ------ hypr_geek When we migrated over from CVS to git, we installed an instance of GitLab. It is really awesome, a private GitHub for your needs. The setup was a pain though, even after following the instructions. Nice to know they have a single installable package now at [https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/](https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/). We also use Atlassian Stash and JIRA for a client project (the client migrated from CVS to git) and honestly, found it to be quite similar in functionality and not too much better for the extra costs. Mostly, it helps that both (Stash and JIRA) are linked together, but I'm sure that can be done with GitLab and another issue tracking software like Bugzilla. ------ jevinskie I just got my install of Gitlab working last night. I used the omnibus package (bundles its own nginx, ruby, postgresql, etc). I had to tweak the omnibus settings out of the box because unicorn was timing out on the initial page load. After I fixed that, I disabled the bundled nginx so I could instead use the system's nginx. I had to modify the chef configuration scripts to change directory permissions so the www-data nginx could read the git-owned socket. I'm very happy now that I got it working! My only nitpick (aside from some installation frustrations) is that the syntax highlighting for large files can be very slow. Does anyone have any tips for that? ------ joshfng If you like GitLab, checkout GitHost ([https://githost.io](https://githost.io)) We provide hosted private GitLab instances. We handle upgrades, security fixes, and backups automatically. ------ schrijver A nice feature is that it also features a REST API: [http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/](http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/) One thing I’m curious about is performance, as with a personal project I found the `grit` git-ruby bindings rather sluggish when loading in multiple repos… The new `rugged` bindings are supposed to perform much better and if I understand in time Gitlab will switch to them. ~~~ sytse We're switching to Rugged ([https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab_git#move-from- grit-to-rug...](https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab_git#move-from-grit-to- rugged)) and it does perform better. But a current GitLab instance should not be sluggish, even with grit. ~~~ schrijver Alright, I’ll give a go. Dankjewel! ~~~ sytse Graag gedaan ------ pushedx An open source alternative for Mercurial and hg repositories is RhodeCode [1]. Source code at [2], this is RhodeCode running their own software. It's a nice solution for those who prefer Hg. [1] [https://rhodecode.com/](https://rhodecode.com/) [2] [https://code.rhodecode.com/rhodecode/files/tip/](https://code.rhodecode.com/rhodecode/files/tip/) ------ M4v3R We're using GitLab for source code and issue management, as well as for internal documentation, and I must say it's really great piece of software. Plus, it's very actively developed and gets new features/fixes all the time. ~~~ sytse Thanks! Great to hear that you are happy with the development rate. ------ jbrooksuk We use GitLab where I work. I was finally able to set it up a few months ago and we've been using it quite heavily since. Whilst we like using it, the UI doesn't always feel intuitive and has changed a lot over the last few versions, 6.8.0 feels worse to us — mainly due to the weird Merge Request UI changes. [https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842](https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842) Still, I personally prefer the look and feel of GitHub. But it's a good free solution and we're really grateful for the work people put into it. ------ parfe For solo work as a dev surrounded by hardware people, I set up GitLab. Installation took a lot of effort and had a surprising number of service dependencies. For a single user it wasn't worth my time to install or maintain. Though, it is a really nice product once running. I switched to Gitweb and sd ([http://syncwith.us/sd/using/](http://syncwith.us/sd/using/)). I don't love sd, but the overhead of managing source and tickets for myself makes the combo worth it. ~~~ avenger123 This hasn't been mentioned it seems but I just used a turnkey vm (from [http://www.turnkeylinux.org/](http://www.turnkeylinux.org/)) to setup Gitlab. Looks like the vm is not the latest version but it was a painless install. ~~~ krob This is the way I'd prefer to use gitlab. KVM/Vmware/openvz instances are the way to go. I think they also have an amazon instance. ------ krob At my work, we aren't using gitlab, but looked into it for our own hosted git and it's pretty nice, considering you can do properly managed repos. We do currently use phabricator though for source-code review, which is pretty nice. You can also introduce new code into the system through it using their arc tool. I think a mixture between gitlab & phabricator is pretty nice. Using phabricator for new feature buildout & gitlab for bug tracking would be the ultimate setup for me. ------ mrmondo We switched from github + Gitolite to gitlab a few months back and we're loving it. We've had no issues with it and it's really been a great move for us. ------ mekael At my current job we didn't have any kind of version control for our source,(not even a sharepoint to dump things into).I spent some time trying out a whole bunch of different intalls and finally settled on Gitlab. It's pretty nice and I was able to get it up and running relatively quick once I put it in it's own instance rather than sharing a postgres install with something else. ------ dakridge For those that want to view a demo of GitLab: [http://demo.gitlab.com/](http://demo.gitlab.com/) ------ munimkazia My organization has been using Gitlab for a while now. We had a few issues earlier with integrating LDAP authentication and sorting out attachments for the wall, but the latest version does seem to fix most issues. I am still not very happy with the wiki though (doesn't support folders, no way to upload images, doesn't look very good) ------ marciopl Our company has been using Gitlab since Dec 2012, we had a small team and small code base back then. While searching for a good inhouse github replacement I found GitLab had what I wanted and was worth the time effort. It has been nice to see the evolution and all the features available now. ------ yukichan It's cool, and this is a nearly useless comment, but the logo looks to much like an alien out of a Whitley Strieber "non-fiction" story. A little creepy I'm saying. Gitlab needs some branding design love. ~~~ sytse Feel free to suggest one ------ da4c30ff I was thinking what GNU could be if they launched GitLab or some alternative to replace the archaic Savannah. It could take the project to a whole new level. ------ davidgerard Grocer's Apostrophe alert! "wiki's" ~~~ sytse Thanks for commenting, I made a note to change it. ------ balls187 I run a local gitlab appliance (provided by Bitnami) in VMWare on my dev box, so I can easily browse various source code I have, using their web gui. Big fan of it. ------ exabrial I'm curious what other cool webapps people use? I use Gitlab, Graylog, Nexus... anything I'm missing out on? ~~~ tom9729 I've never heard of Graylog, but Kibana (frontend for LogStash) looks pretty similar. [http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/kibana/](http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/kibana/) What about CI (builds)? There's a lot of options here, but Jenkins is pretty good. It's a bit of a hack, but I sometimes use it as a quick way to put a frontend on a shell script. The build history is an audit log and the job config history tracks changes to the script. [http://jenkins-ci.org/](http://jenkins-ci.org/) ------ exabrial +1 for gitlab. Heavy use in prod with both business and engineering users! ------ suyash Can anyone explain why would someone use GitLab vs Enterprise Github? ~~~ panzi Because you don't want to push your business secrets to a (US) company? ~~~ tom9729 Isn't GitHub Enterprise self hosted? I'd imagine the main reason to go with GitLab is that it's free. GitHub Enterprise costs more than Stash (although it offers more). ~~~ panzi I thought not, but maybe I'm mistaken? I know that there is some payed service that isn't self hosted. ------ 62646c Been using GitLab for a while. It's really nice	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft's only gone and published the exFAT spec - MikusR https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/28/microsoft_publishes_exfat_spec_supports_its_addition_to_the_linux_kernel/ ====== MikusR Link to spec: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/fileio/exfat-...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/fileio/exfat-specification)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
French telecom operator, Orange, threatens to sue NSA over cable tapping - andreiursan http://rt.com/news/france-orange-sue-nsa-991/ ====== JumpCrisscross > _Orange has reiterated that the privacy of correspondence and negotiations > can be broken only by special court order, and that the conditions and > reasons for such action should be clearly defined in French law_ So Orange is suing a U.S. government agency under French law? Unless the NSA or its EU affiliates beneficially own assets in the EU (that can be traced to it) this is a PR ploy. ~~~ andreiursan here I found more details [http://www.cbronline.com/news/tech/networks/telecoms/orange-...](http://www.cbronline.com/news/tech/networks/telecoms/orange- to-charge-nsa-for-using-cable-in-surveillance-project-311213-4153796) "An Orange spokeswoman was quoted by Reuters as saying: "We will take legal action in the next few days because we want to know more about the eventuality that Orange data may have been intercepted." Orange is yet to decide to whether to take an individual action or to join the current legal action launched against the federal project. Under the surveillance programme, the federal government had collected metadata including telephone numbers, times and dates of calls, calling card numbers and the serial numbers of phones processed by various operators in the country." ------ andreiursan also mentioned here [http://www.cbronline.com/news/tech/networks/telecoms/orange-...](http://www.cbronline.com/news/tech/networks/telecoms/orange- to-charge-nsa-for-using-cable-in-surveillance-project-311213-4153796) with all these "big brother" news, I almost forgot about the submarine cables - which is a simple way to get all the data.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Exposing NSDictionary (2014) - enos_feedler http://ciechanowski.me/blog/2014/04/08/exposing-nsdictionary/ ====== mbca > I’m fascinated how simple the __NSDictionaryI turned out to be. There may be other cases where one gets something entirely different than the __NSDictionaryI class, depending on how the dictionary was created or how much / what kind of data it contains. There is some evidence[1] that Apple switches implementations of its collection classes based on various conditions, even something very simple, such as when an array contains more than X elements (where "X" is some threshold where the optimization characteristics change). Being able to dynamically change implementations is the main benefit of class clusters after all. [1] [http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/array.html](http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/array.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Slack introduces threaded messaging - silentrob https://slackhq.com/threaded-messaging-comes-to-slack-417ffba054bd#.4uq59cisg ====== curiousAl If the only thing that ever comes of this is containing GIF reactions to the original message's thread this is the best, most productivity-boosting slack update ever. ------ johne20 Very nice (and major) Slack update! The hardest part about this must have been the UX challenges to keep things simple while still adding the thread functionality and not compromising on the overall Slack appeal. Well done team. Any Chatlio customers out there, we are interested in hearing how you might like this new functionality to used in Chatlio. (see sig for contact info)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: NeuralDraw, an AI-powered speed-drawing game, on your iPhone - soonpls https://apps.apple.com/app/neural-draw/id1440577395 ====== beezle suggest 'on your iPhone' if it is not also available on the Android platform.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Notion.so – A unified and collaborative workspace for your notes, wikis, and tasks - rosstex https://www.notion.so/ ====== rosstex Posting this here because I just came across it, and it's a beautiful replacement for Workflowy that I've been using. ------ txcx Thats nice, thank you. gonna have to checkt this out :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GNU Wallpapers - chauhankiran https://www.gnu.org/graphics/wallpapers.en.html ====== dmos62 They're naive, non-professional, obviously from a different time, not too distracting and there's a strange proportion of people who can't help but point out that they don't like it. What else could you want? To go off on a parallel topic for a bit, I haven't used a desktop or a wallpaper for some years now and it's great. Both are a bad idea. The desktop is a magnet for sloppy organization. You'd be surprised just how much more organized and productive file system and shortcut usage gets if you turn off desktop icons. And a wallpaper is just distracting. I've never found a wallpaper that I didn't want to change after a while. I even tried minimal gradients. What ended up working perfect, as in I'll likely never change it, is a solid black wallpaper. Concerning not using a wallpaper, functional benefits aside, someone might think that this would take away the bling of an expensive laptop, but that's exactly what I find appealing about it. This way you're treating the device, not as a status or fashion statement, but as a functional tool. ~~~ lkdjjdjjjdskjd I rarely ever see my desktop, because apps are usually maximized. Doesn't everybody do that? What kind of apps did people use back in the day when desktops weren't hidden all the time? Maybe the idea was to occasionally quit apps and open other ones, not to keep them all open at the same time? ~~~ sovande > What kind of apps did people use back in the day when desktops weren't > hidden all the time? Emacs to the left and one xterm window in the bottom right corner. ~~~ FlyMoreRockets ... with xclock top center. ------ Fice Looks like a collection of random contributions that were not evaluated for their aesthetic quality. For better examples of crowdsourced art see Fedora supplemental wallpapers: [https://fedoramagazine.org/submissions-now-open- fedora-30-su...](https://fedoramagazine.org/submissions-now-open- fedora-30-supplemental-wallpapers/). Also, the GNU project appear to have capable designers: [https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/) ~~~ jancsika > Also, the GNU project appear to have capable designers: > [https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/) And still the images have little speckles and color bleed presumably left there from a poor quality scan/cleanup. ------ self_awareness It doesn't communicate very well. All this website says is: you don't pay anything, so you're getting a sh__tty quality. Plus you have no right to want anything more. There are tons of good free high quality wallpapers on deviantart.com, and for those that aren't "free as in freedom", I think it's up to negotiation with the author of a particular wallpaper. Some of them will probably be delighted to be selected by gnu.org to be the producer of GNU-approved art. ~~~ josefx > Plus you have no right to want anything more. Some of the linked wallpapers do not have their source files linked. As far as I know the GPL requires that the preferred version of the source is also made available and neither png nor jpeg qualify for most image manipulation tools. At least a few have the xcf also linked. ~~~ klez Why do you think they're GPL-licenced? Did I miss the license on the page? Also, if you read about the FSF they don't advocate for all non-software to be free. Some documentation from the FSF is not included in Debian because the Debian developers deemed it not free enough, because some parts are marked as non-modifiable. ~~~ josefx At least this one is [https://www.gnu.org/graphics/this-is-freedom- wallpaper.html](https://www.gnu.org/graphics/this-is-freedom-wallpaper.html) , stated below the image. However that brings up annother issue, which license applies to the images that do not have an explicit license stated? Is it the creative commons stated for the website itself and would this also apply to the externally hosted images? ~~~ klez I guess the CC license is just for the page, as the image are hosted someplace else and are not explicitly included in the license footer (which is the standard footer throughout the FSF/GNU website.) If the images themselves don't specify any license they fall back to "all rights reserved". ------ gattilorenz The design of the website and of these wallpapers communicates this: we're better because we're free, who cares about the looks. I do appreciate the GNU tools and whatnot, but it is hard to "convert" everyday users with the moral argument. ~~~ _ZeD_ the fact that it's free software is in fact the core of the message, so I think the design correctly conveys it succesfully ~~~ josefx Are bad and inconsistent design also core of the message? Because every single linked wallpaper page on that list has a different layout when they don't go directly to a wallpaper of unspecified size. Others have their sized versions listed directly inline and then we have the wallpapers hosted on an external server vs. hosted on gnu itself. It leaves a bad impression when they don't go the last 10% of the effort to present a clean site instead of an unorganized dump. ------ lkdjjdjjjdskjd They all seem to be incredibly ugly. The 90ies called and want their bad designs back? ------ leemailll It looks just like never changed for 20 years. I've visited this page long time before, and still seems no serious effort for these except [this one]([https://www.gnu.org/graphics/meditate.html](https://www.gnu.org/graphics/meditate.html)), which according to copyright notice have been there for 18 years. ------ benj111 Am I missing something with the onion wallpaper? [https://www.gnu.org/graphics/plant- onion.html](https://www.gnu.org/graphics/plant-onion.html) It seems to be more about actual onions than a tor thing?! Edit: Doh, reread the description "Gardeners and tor users..." Thanks for the replies though. ~~~ dmos62 Planting onions is easy, running Tor relays is easy too. The onions in the picture use the same palette as Tor's [https://www.torproject.org/images/tor- logo.png](https://www.torproject.org/images/tor-logo.png) ------ Rjevski It would be better if they just linked to Unsplash. ------ Jerry2 Some of them are quite nice but unfortunately none of them are higher res than 1080p. ~~~ BlackLotus89 What thinkpad that runs libreboot has a higher resolution? ------ la_oveja this one look like a windows 95 program installer splash screen: [https://www.gnu.org/graphics/meditate.png](https://www.gnu.org/graphics/meditate.png) ~~~ kieranph I mean, Libreboot hasn't been updated since 2016, so it might as well be... ------ intea related: [https://www.gnu.org/music/](https://www.gnu.org/music/) ~~~ opencl OpenBSD used to release a song along with every OS release, seems to have stopped last year with 6.2 though. [https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html](https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html) ~~~ jordigh Nooo, they stopped? The release songs were really great, and I always looked forward to a new release song. ------ raverbashing Yeah, I didn't know what to expect. Nowadays my "wallpaper" is the terminal or browser app, maximized ------ offbytwo Gonna start using this one ([https://www.gnu.org/graphics/I_run_GNU_by_GNUlancer.png](https://www.gnu.org/graphics/I_run_GNU_by_GNUlancer.png)) on my Windows PC at work ------ niceworkbuddy It feels like early 2000s. ------ meuk Well, that's embarrassing. ------ zapzupnz Holy cow, these are hideous. Then again, the website itself isn't exactly a Renoir. ~~~ SamWhited It's a little known fact that Renoir did web design on the side.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Crypto-Keepers: Apps promise to keep our conversations secret. But do they? - anarbadalov https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-crypto-keepers-levine ====== ComodoHacker More appropriate title: Pavel Durov tells about FBI pressing him to hand over Telegram users' data. ~~~ emodendroket Well, not really. That's the germ of the story, which goes on to talk about how various US government agencies are funding various encrypted discussion apps and calling into question the idea that we should trust them, to talk about how the OS the phone runs on itself is likely unsafe from government eyes (allowing an endrun around the apps anyway), and, in general, how encrypted chat apps are a poor substitute for actually reining in government surveillance.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Progress Towards 100% HTTPS, June 2016 - dankohn1 https://letsencrypt.org//2016/06/22/https-progress-june-2016.html ====== rogerbinns I keep hoping they will help address non-Internet TLS. For example if you run a HTPC, fridge, printer, device controller or anything similar on your LAN and want to talk to it over the same LAN using TLS. Getting a workable cert is currently not possible: for example the LAN names aren't going to be unique. Plex did solve this in conjunction with a certificate authority, but that solution only works for them. The general approach could work for others if someone like letsencrypt led the effort. [https://blog.filippo.io/how-plex-is- doing-https-for-all-its-...](https://blog.filippo.io/how-plex-is-doing-https- for-all-its-users/) ~~~ Retr0spectrum For local traffic, why do you need a public certificate authority? ~~~ maratd Because some devices and browsers have difficulty determining if they're talking to something on the local network or not. And they don't try to guess. So if your router requires you to connect via HTTPS, which is a good idea, have fun clicking past a nasty warning and then have nasty icons everywhere telling you that you're not secure. And before you tell me to set up my own local authority and add it to the chain on every device ... common, really? Nobody wants to do that. ~~~ Franciscouzo That's not a problem of browsers having a difficulty determining if they're talking to something on a local network or not, just because you're in a local network doesn't means you can't be victim of a MiTM. ------ criddell Just at the entire world is going HTTPS, my faith in the system is seriously waning. When Symantec bought Blue Coat, it made me start to think about how fragile this is. How long before Symantec gets an NSL demanding an appliance that can mint bogus certs on the fly for dropbox.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, etc...? How effective is something like certificate pinning against fraudulent certs? ~~~ agwa > How long before Symantec gets an NSL demanding an appliance that can mint > bogus certs on the fly for dropbox.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, etc...? If the bogus certs are not logged in Certificate Transparency, they will be rejected by Chrome: [https://security.googleblog.com/2015/10/sustaining- digital-c...](https://security.googleblog.com/2015/10/sustaining-digital- certificate-security.html) If they are logged in Certificate Transparency, then the world will know, the offending certificates will be immediately blacklisted, and Symantec will be booted from root programs. With the ongoing advancements in Certificate Transparency, your faith in the Internet PKI should be growing, not waning. ~~~ criddell From the link you posted: > However, we were still able to find several more questionable certificates > using only the Certificate Transparency logs and a few minutes of work. We > shared these results with other root store operators on October 6th, to > allow them to independently assess and verify our research. So finding questionable certificates is trivially easy, but nobody ever bothers to look? What good is that? ~~~ agwa "Nobody"? Google monitors for their domains. So does Facebook. I'll bet a lot of other high value sites are monitoring too but haven't said so publicly. As for everyone else, give it some time. The ecosystem is still very young and we're still developing tooling. ~~~ criddell I'm happy that Google and Facebook are discovering fraudulent certs. When they pop up, hopefully those companies aren't prevented from going public with the information. Are there any end-user tools? When I open twitter.com, I would love for my browser (or my phone if I'm using an app) to tell me that the certificate fingerprint has changed unexpectedly since the last time I visited. ~~~ schoen If you don't mind the risk of false positives (detecting changes that are legitimate), you can get that information from [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/certificate-p...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/certificate-patrol/) ------ 5ilv3r I'm still bitter about this chain of trust model. The fact that I have to get some other party to tell my users that they can trust me just seems wrong. They trust me because of personal history, not because some banner says they should. Browsers and OS vendors shipping CAs seems to be the root of the problem, in my mind. Those should be distributed by the service providers, who are the actual trustworthy entities in the user's minds. ~~~ toomanythings2 And when we visit your site for the first time, having never heard of you before, why should we trust you? That's the point. Having some authority who did at least some minimal checking, to extensive checking, and who will verify you really are who you purport to be. Trust but verify probably plays a part in this. But, remember, you don't have to go to HTTPS. There is no requirement for you to do so. ~~~ 5ilv3r Why should you trust me if you have never met me? If you like what I do, trust me, and please give me money. :) Cert companies only do a phone call check for the very expensive EV certs. There is no minimal to extensive checking. That is a scam. Web tech is all https now. I can't even browse a lot of https sites with some of my older devices. There is a requirement and I dislike it. ~~~ ademarre > _Why should you trust me if you have never met me? If you like what I do, > trust me, and please give me money._ What if a customer who trusts you returns to your site, but ends up on an impostor's site instead? He was no way to discern the difference. ~~~ 5ilv3r I would argue strongly that such users do not have those abilities even with https. A valid cert is a valid cert. My supporting point would be the major browser vendors recent backpedal on throwing mixed-content errors, demonstrating that a smooth ride for the user is far more important than safety to them. Actually I called shutterfly.com on the phone about that mixed content issue. I emailed them screenshots of the error from 6 different operating system and browser combinations, from 3 other users even. They claimed nothing was wrong. They were serving javascript via http on an https page and told me I was wrong and needed to update java, for weeks, on the phone, in chat, and in email, and declined to send the report to their webmaster. Even those wanting to be trusted are incapable of using these tools, from what I have seen. The whole thing is broken. ------ Abundnce10 _Let’s Encrypt has issued more than 5 million certificates in total since we launched to the general public on December 3, 2015. Approximately 3.8 million of those are active, meaning unexpired and unrevoked. Our active certificates cover more than 7 million unique domains._ How can you cover 7 million unique domains if you've only issued 5 million certificates? ~~~ waterphone One certificate can be for more than one domain. ~~~ altano For example, a single cert can serve www.example.com as well as example.com ~~~ gummiruessel That is true, but in this case I think Let's Encrypt and also parent to your comment mean different domains as in e.g. one certificate to cover all three of example.com, example.net and example.org. ~~~ 5ilv3r The same mechanism in cert generation provides that functionality. Hostnames are hostnames. SAN certs just take a list of them. ------ cdolan92 This is great, I use LetsEncrypt for my company. _however_ , the graph is a little misleading. Lets look closer: LetsEncrypt is almost built upon the idea of frequently (and automatically) re-issuing your certificate(s). The graph's line shows what appears to be an accumulated sum of certificates issued by day. If every 90 days most certificate(s) expire, of course the graph will look like that! Whats most interesting to me is the steps up in the graph. It appears that the steps in the graph _roughly_ occur on 70-90 day intervals. Impressive growth for a great mission/service, but I wanted to point out the mechanics behind the graph. Hopefully others can offer some alternative perspectives! _edit_ : Grammar, illogical sentence structure. ------ zzzcpan Is it still problematic to issue lots of certs for lots of subdomains? I mean, still no wildcard certs and crazy rate limits, that disallow issuing 1000s of certs per day for user-generated subdomains? ~~~ tracker1 If you're generating that many subdomains (and you control the subdomains), it's probably worth investing in a traditional wildcard cert. Though, it would be nice if the likes of dyndns names were given exception, since they are effectively second level tld's. ~~~ mieko LE uses the Public Suffix List to decide what's a "domain". Their really-low rate limits have caused a flood of applications which are overwhelming the PSL's maintainers. [https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dyndns-no-ip-managed- dns...](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dyndns-no-ip-managed-dns- support/883/16) ------ yeukhon My understanding is for intranet, you could use Let's Encrypt. For example, if I own _.foo.com, and i want my intranet to be_.internal.foo.com I need to make *.internal.foo.com in the DNS in order to verify I own .internal.foo.com, correct? But then doesn't that expose my 'internal' network? Hope there is a different way to solve this problem. ~~~ pfg You don't need to "open up" your internal network (the ownership validation can happen via DNS), but the hostname would be public through Certificate Transparency. Generally, if you're relying on your internal hostnames being secret (which is a terrible idea anyway), you should consider using an internal CA, because there's a good chance _all_ public CAs will start logging every single certificate they issue to public logs, and that would include all the domains the certificate is valid for¹. Better yet, don't treat your hostnames as secrets. ¹ I _think_ there has been some discussions about allowing CAs to censor DNS labels after the TLD+1 level for Certificate Transparency. Not sure if that's going to happen, I'm not a fan. This would still require that your CA supports this mechanism, something I don't think Let's Encrypt would do. ------ simbalion This is extremely exciting. I've been supporting these folks since the beta. It's great for offering free SSL to clients. ------ rsync Am I the only person that is wary of 100% https ? Remember, once you encrypt a web resource in SSL, you add a ton of baggage on top of any methods that might be used to access it. I like a world in which I can 'nc' a web resource and manipulate it with unix primitives _without_ a truckload of software dependencies. If sensitive information is involved, then certainly - use SSL. I understand that we must give up conveniences for that functionality. But there are a _lot_ of web resources that have existed, do exist, and potentially exist that are completely benign ... I think we're shackling ourselves by chasing after this perfection. Or, put another way, we're chaining ourselves to a world where web resources are only accessed by web browsers, and only by those web browsers that are _chaining themselves_ to a fairly dubious security scheme... ~~~ icebraining Just as you can use "nc" for an HTTP resource, you can use "openssl s_client" or "ncat --ssl" (from the nmap project) or "socat" to manipulate an HTTPS resource using the same unix primitives. Which truckload of dependencies does this require? The Debian package for OpenSSL only depends on libc. I do fully agree that the web is getting more tied to browsers, and to me that's worrying, but TLS is mostly a transparent tunnel over which you can use the same protocols; it's not part of that trend, in my opinion. ------ arca_vorago Is there any alternative to ssl and tls out there? Sshttp anyone? ~~~ nisa Tor Onions are technically an alternative. You access the hash of the public key? and you are only able to put up that URI if you have control over the private key. I guess something similar based on hashing and public key cryptography might be possible outside of Tor but it's not exactly user friendly to begin with. ------ g8oz Blackberry 10 browser refuses to recognize Lets Encrypt certs :( ------ projectramo Is there any work being done on being able to easily switch out standards? That way when https is found to lack some feature, we can easily upgrade to httpz almost immediately? ~~~ vtlynch This will likely never be the case due to how HTTPS actually works. As someone else stated, HTTPs is HTTP + TLS. The "s" in HTTPS is for "secure", and TLS provides that security. TLS is a evolving standard which is updated over time to add new features when necessary. When HTTPS is negotiated, it can seamlessly choose which version of TLS to use, based off what the client and server want to use. So, HTTPS will never die due to lack of features. A new version of TLS will just be approved and deployed, and newer devices can use that while older devices can get by on an older version of TLS. TLS is the successor to SSL. They are backwards compatible, so devices that support TLS also support SSL. The full version history, from newest to oldest, is: TLS 1.2, TLS 1.1, TLS 1.0, SSL 3, SSL 2. In reality, very few servers still use SSL 3 or SSL 2, due to known weaknesses, but colloquially, all the versions are just called "SSL". TLS 1.3 is underway and will shortly be ready for primetime. Firefox and Cloudflare have already written some implementations based on the draft spec (sorta how routers will implemented the newest 802.11 standards before they are 100% official). ~~~ profmonocle Plus, even if we did decide to fully replace TLS, nothing would necessarily need to happen with certificates. We call them "SSL certificates", but the certificate standard - X.509 - actually predates SSLv1 by several years. A TLS alternative/replacement could adopt the X.509 standard as its certificate format and automatically work with the existing CA system. ------ Animats I see this as security theater. Most web pages don't need to be encrypted. Anything with a form should be, but if you're just viewing static content, there's little point. Yes, it obscures what content you're viewing, slightly. An observer often could figure that out from the file length. Encrypting everything increases the demand for low-rent SSL certs. Anything below OV (Organization Validated) is junk, and if money is involved, an EV (Extended Validation) cert should be used. Trying to encrypt everything leads to messes such as Cloudflare's MITM certs which name hundreds of unrelated domains. This is a step backwards. ~~~ theandrewbailey > Most web pages don't need to be encrypted. Anything with a form should be, > but if you're just viewing static content, there's little point. Some really cool HTML and JS functionality will only work over HTTPS. > Yes, it obscures what content you're viewing, slightly. An observer often > could figure that out from the file length. If you have an attacker than can identify content solely from its length, you have bigger problems than an SSL cert can solve. > Trying to encrypt everything leads to messes such as Cloudflare's MITM certs > which name hundreds of unrelated domains. This is a step backwards. I do not see the problem. All those domain owners consciously choose to have Cloudflare host their stuff. The cert might be a few KB bigger, but who cares? ~~~ Animats _> Most web pages don't need to be encrypted. Anything with a form should be, but if you're just viewing static content, there's little point._ _Some really cool HTML and JS functionality will only work over HTTPS._ What "really cool" HTML feature requires HTTPS? There can be problems with mixed secure/insecure content, but that's more of an offsite content issue. _> Yes, it obscures what content you're viewing, slightly. An observer often could figure that out from the file length._ _If you have an attacker than can identify content solely from its length, you have bigger problems than an SSL cert can solve._ An eavesdropper knows the IP address and the length of the content, even if it's encrypted. _> Trying to encrypt everything leads to messes such as Cloudflare's MITM certs which name hundreds of unrelated domains. This is a step backwards._ _I do not see the problem. All those domain owners consciously choose to have Cloudflare host their stuff. The cert might be a few KB bigger, but who cares?_ When sites share an SSL cert, and you can break into one of the sharing sites, there's a way to impersonate others. Cloudflare customers for their lower tiers of "security" often don't realize this. The customer doesn't pick which sites share certs; that's up to Cloudflare.[1] [1] [http://john-nagle.github.io/certscan/whoamitalkingto04.pdf](http://john- nagle.github.io/certscan/whoamitalkingto04.pdf) ~~~ pfg > What "really cool" HTML feature requires HTTPS? There can be problems with > mixed secure/insecure content, but that's more of an offsite content issue. One example would be the the Geolocation API, with more to come[1]. Another example (specifically for HTML) would be Mozilla showing a user-visible warning when it encounters a type="password" field in a form served via HTTP (or with a HTTP target - I'm not certain). This is currently only enabled in the Developer Edition, but will eventually land in stable. > When sites share an SSL cert, and you can break into one of the sharing > sites, there's a way to impersonate others. Cloudflare customers for their > lower tiers of "security" often don't realize this. The customer doesn't > pick which sites share certs; that's up to Cloudflare. This is a non-issue for services such as CloudFlare. Site owners do not have access to the private key, only CloudFlare does. Breaking into one of the other sites won't give you access to the private key, only breaking into CloudFlare would, and such a vulnerability would have nothing to do with the fact that you're sharing a SAN certificate with other sites. I'm not aware of any other cross-site vulnerabilities that stem from shared certificates in an environment where every site on that certificate is served by the same frontend. [1]: [https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium- security/deprecating-...](https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium- security/deprecating-powerful-features-on-insecure-origins) ~~~ rsync "One example would be the the Geolocation API, with more to come[1]." Ugh. Why would they do that ? I can understand that geolocation could be _tremendously sensitive_ and you absolutely would want to offer the option of SSL ... but why limit it to SSL ? geolocation is _also_ something that you'd want to hack into and build into things ... and maybe even things with limited processing power and memory. Wouldn't it be nice to have the option to interact with a geolocation API (over http) with stdio and not include a giant truckload of dependencies and libraries and megabytes of packages ? ~~~ pfg > I can understand that geolocation could be tremendously sensitive and you > absolutely would want to offer the option of SSL ... but why limit it to SSL > ? I think you answered your own question. ;-) > geolocation is also something that you'd want to hack into and build into > things ... and maybe even things with limited processing power and memory. Presumably, once your device is capable of running a modern browser such as Chrome or Firefox (which is what we're talking about here), TLS is a drop in the bucket in terms of resource usage. Or were you talking about the server?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Teen solves Newton’s 300-year-old riddle - norova http://www.canada.com/technology/Teen+solves+Newton+year+riddle/6685617/story.html ====== tokenadult See previous discussion, which digs into the sources and suggests that there is less here than the headline promises: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4029676> Or see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4030148> as an example of how a major mathematical discovery by a teenager is verified and followed up. ~~~ norova Ah, thanks tokenadult. Searched around but didn't see it posted previously. ------ igorsyl Has anyone found the publication? All I have read is hype about this but I can't find the original source.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sign That You’re A Good Programmer - nreece http://www.nilkanth.com/2009/08/08/sign-that-youre-a-good-programmer/ ====== billswift The number one sign that you're a "not bad" programmer (since the essay says there are no "good" programmers) is that you are actively trying to get better. You're learning new languages and tools, exploring different styles and techniques.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Palantir CEO Says Data-Mining Company Is Positioned to Go Public - mayneack http://www.wsj.com/articles/palantir-ceo-says-company-is-being-positioned-to-go-public-1477498155 ====== entee I'm curious about how Palantir works as a public company. It has always looked like a data-centric McKinsey clone to me, and those kinds of consulting companies are usually partnerships. Granted, Goldman Sachs and other investment banks that were once partnerships are now public. But that move hasn't necessarily been a good thing for the companies in question, and some argue it has been damaging. Basically, Palantir looks to me like a law firm/consultancy, those firms typically find it advantageous to stay private, what is the advantage for Palantir to go public except to provide a cash out to investors? ~~~ totalZero They have made buckets of dough at the height of American surveillance activity and now they want to cash out while the getting is good. ~~~ cossatot What indication do you have that the surveillance state will shrink in the near future? ~~~ totalZero It doesn't have to shrink for Palantir to lose share to newcomers in a growing industry. ~~~ stock_toaster Or for certain classes of their customers (maybe governments?) to develop in- house solutions that become "good enough" that they expect to lose those customers in the future. ------ mwfunk I'm curious if going public would lead to more transparency about what they do and for whom. Enron was famously opaque to its own investors until it was too late, but I would hope that public companies have greater requirements for transparency nowadays. ~~~ williamscales I don't think that Palantir being a public company would necessarily give the kind of insight into what they do to satisfy our curiosity. As far as I understand, Palantir could be very financially transparent while still keeping mum about who their clients are and what they are doing for them. I think it's worth remembering that Enron was public. ~~~ SapphireSun I agree with you on the whole, but Enron was pre Sarbanes-Oxley which initiated a raft of reporting requirements on companies, so Enron is often a poor comparison to the present day. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act) ------ hendzen Main takeaway from that article - Alex Karp is a really odd guy. ~~~ hkmurakami You should watch his interview with Charlie Rose. He's not your usual corporate leader, but there's an unmistakable intellect in the way he articulates himself which must work for both leading this particular workforce as well as selling to this particular customer base. ------ 6stringmerc Anybody with first-hand knowledge able to explain to me the difference between Acxiom[1] and Palantir in the grand scheme of things? [1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/technology/acxiom-the- quie...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/technology/acxiom-the-quiet-giant- of-consumer-database-marketing.html?_r=0) ~~~ throwaway746878 Palantir doesn't own any data whatsoever. It is in no way a data mining company, which makes it strange that it's constantly referred to as such. It makes software to allow organizations to do analysis on their own data, which Palantir has varying degrees of access to. Another crucial difference is that marketing is a tertiary use case for Palantir, at best. ------ a-no-n "Government (political), law-enforcement and security agency software company whom happens to use data-mining" Perhaps this is shaking the trees of institutional/sovereign wealth funds/investors is in order to make them seem like they'll miss out. IPO, these days, is a move of desperation and often a murdering of remaining agility. ------ snissn Is Palantir a "Data-Mining Company" or is a military, law enforcement and surveillance company? ~~~ krona You could define Palantir more easily by which customers buy its products (Nat sec/law enforcement/military intelligence), and who specifically in those organisations use their software (mostly intelligence analysts.) By saying they are a "Data-Mining Company" is an obvious (to me) sign that they want to be able to position themselves in the public sector (e.g. banking, retail) with counter-fraud services/solutions, and perhaps more generic cyber security solutions for large organisations. ~~~ jsprogrammer Palantir has been deployed into banks for years. ------ jorblumesea Can someone shed some light on the asian claim? Seems like a really weird thing: a) to bring up at all b) to bring up in an article about ipo what does it have to do with the company going public? ~~~ throaway0xff I will shed light on the fact that at one point over 70% of my team were extremely bright and talented Asians and South Indians. ~~~ iambateman $10 says 'throaway0xff' is, in fact, Alex Karp himself. ------ rhizome _Palantir’s workers “need to know they will have liquidity at a fair price,” said Mr. Karp_ Unless there's a subtlety I missed, isn't this more likely to be driven by their VCs? ~~~ dsl It sounds like the IPO is employee retention driven. ~~~ rhizome They're famous for underpaying and overworking, which I supposed could affect hiring, but yeah, maybe the subtlety is that employees were carrot-and- stick'ed with promises of IPO and now word has got around about work conditions there. Still, it's usually because VCs want their payday. ------ jpeg_hero > saying he is focused on customers who can promise accounts worth at least > $100 million. What!?! Is there a market for that? Who pays that much? Republic of Turkey Secret Police? ~~~ throaway0xff Yes - there is a market. Legitimate companies that make things you use and ride in every day. ------ user5994461 And here comes the paywall. Can't read it from direct link, can't read it from web link, can't read it from private browsing. :-( ~~~ gregoryrueda Copy the title of the article then put it in a google search and click on the first result. You should be able to bypass the paywall. ~~~ Arnavion That's what the web link does, that user5994461 said they tried. ~~~ gregoryrueda Close the paywall ad by clicking the x on the top right corner and it lets you read the article. ~~~ yomly Try web link + incognito / private mode?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Docker Powered Angular tutorial for my students - shaohua http://howtox.com/angular-official-tutorial/ ====== shaohua Weekend project. Feedback greatly appreciated here.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Blast from the Past: Cross Site Scripting on the AWS Console - wendythehacker https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2020/aws-xss-cross-site-scripting-vulnerability/ ====== tylerd22 xss is surprisingly hard to prevent because user input must be escaped differently depending on context (html, css, js, json). User input also shows up in surprising locations such as dns records and whois info. Luckily, an effective xss attack e.g. targetting the admin of a target website, often require a large amount of effort and social engineering. ~~~ kerng This is especially true for reflected attacks, besides doing target spear phishing via email or messenger apps it won't be succesful. For persistent attacks, its mostly just sit and wait for an attacker - they don't really control when/if a user visits the compromised page.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Which advert is the best for next's months Hacker Monthly? - vs2 Hi,<p>I am purchasing a full spread advert in Hacker Monthly next month and since I am a shoe string budget I have decided to do the advert myself. However this is the first advert I have ever created and was really looking for some advice I have two potential adverts created ...<p>http://www.venturesocially.com/advert_1.pdf http://www.venturesocially.com/advert_2.pdf<p>If you could review these and tell me which one you like I would be very grateful. Also if you could tell me if either advert actual would draw you attention!<p>I have submitted items to hacker news before, but they rarely go anywhere. Please make this one popular ====== vs2 links <http://www.venturesocially.com/advert_1.pdf> <http://www.venturesocially.com/advert_2.pdf> ~~~ there the first one looks like it was custom done for the ad, so it looks more attractive in my eye. the second one looks like it's using a stock-art image that has nothing to do with the text, so it looks cheap. ~~~ vs2 do you like the wording? would you notice this ad?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Smart Bookmarks (Browser extension) - johngreen https://raindrop.io/extension/#en_US ====== __Joker I would like to try it, if only there is plan for data in and out. At least, if there is an option to export/import from google bookmarks ? Not that I like google bookmarks, I really doubt if there was any upgrade to google bookmarks in ages, but broken it may be, it holds all my links at this moment.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Anecdote Driven Development, or Why I Don't Do TDD - shard http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/38616 ====== dandelany BTW, for the uninitiated, AMC is streaming all 17 episodes of The Prisoner at <http://www.amctv.com/videos/the-prisoner-1960s-video> ------ stcredzero In many environments, executing refactorings of your code also refactors your tests. (VisualWorks using the Refactoring Browser.) This squashes one of the author's objections.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
5G and Shannon’s Law - sinak https://www.waveform.com/blogs/main/5g-and-shannons-law ====== twoodfin The scaling of wireless bandwidth is one of the under appreciated technological miracles of the 21st Century. I wonder: Would even the most ambitious of telecommunications researchers in 1990 have thought it likely that in 2020 we’d be rolling out gigabit wireless speeds to handheld devices over nation-spanning networks? The scaling of Moore’s Law was clear by then, and certainly fiber optics represented a practical path to near-unlimited wired bandwidth. What were the radio folks thinking at the time? ~~~ AnthonyMouse I still don't really get the point of 5G. It requires so many towers that you're basically building a wired network, but then it requires billions of dollars worth of wireless spectrum in order to get from what amounts to the street in front of your house to inside, even though there are already phone lines and coax going there that could be used. Even for wireless devices, that would get you close enough to use unlicensed spectrum (WiFi) and save billions of dollars worth of licensed spectrum. The main benefit of cellular is when you're away from WiFi. But unless you're constantly traveling to places without WiFi, you get that from a $20/month plan and the existing cellular network. ~~~ karl-j 5G is not mainly for consumers like you and me. We are not willing to pay significantly more for the faster speeds, most people are plenty happy with 4G. The big difference with the 4G to 5G transition compared to the previous transitions is not speed, but flexibility. 5G aims to allow for completely new applications that were not possible before, and hoping that's where the money will come from. Ultra-reliable and low latency, and massive machine type communications are two new areas 5G is pushing into. The first will allow applications like self driving cars, remote control with immediate feedback, and combined with the increased speeds, augmented and virtual reality. The second area is for the smart city/home type of applications. This is all from my digital communications professor with ties to Ericsson, but on a personal note I'd be hype to explore distant places in real time by wearing a vr headset and controlling a drone with a 360° camera and <10ms latency. You could be anywhere in the world and actually interact with the environment with just a 5G enabled headset and a 5G-drone renting app. Racing through an abandoned mall! Drone laser tag in a redwood forest! ~~~ vkoskiv > ...applications like self driving cars, remote control with immediate > feedback, and combined with the increased speeds, augmented and virtual > reality. The second area is for the smart city/home type of applications. A blurb like this can be found everywhere where 5G is talked about. It sounds technical and knowledgeable, but it actually makes zero sense whatsoever. Self-driving cars? No. If the fundamental assumption is that every single vehicle everywhere is communicating, that system is fundamentally flawed and will never take off. Remote control? This has been possible for over 100 years. You can literally do that with a spark-gap transmitter, let alone current 4G tech. Immediate feedback? In what context? Augmented and virtual reality? Now you're just blasting buzzwords to sound smart. Come on. Smart city/home is another common buzzword, but that's actually where the vastly increased capacity of 5G starts to become relevant. ~~~ karl-j Those are not my words, they're all from my professor and this [1] book, chapter 23. With remote control and immediate feedback I'm talking about closed loop control. Consider industrial automation with image processing done remotely, or immediate visual or tactile feedback to human operators of remote machinery and equipment. [1] [https://www.amazon.com/4G-LTE-Advanced-Pro- Road-5G/dp/012804...](https://www.amazon.com/4G-LTE-Advanced-Pro- Road-5G/dp/0128045752) ------ owenversteeg First of all, this is an excellent explanation of 5G that anyone moderately technical can understand. Great article. That said, do the numbers from the article concern anyone else at all? I'm generally all for progress, but more than 1 million devices per km2? And massive MIMO antenna arrays spraying EM waves in every part of the spectrum from 600 MHz to 50 GHz? More than a million devices per km2 ~= 3 million devices per square mile. Am I the only one that thinks that's a bit crazy? I don't want everything from my toaster to my door to my water bottle to be transmitting massive amounts of information to who knows where all the time. More concerning: the antennas. Current regular MIMO 4G towers are 2x2 or 4x4. Already, there are 5G towers installed today that are 128x128. These are planned to be spaced -extremely- densely in cities, and very close to people (on every floor of offices, on lampposts, etc.) This is a necessity due to the spectrum used. And not only that, but they're using new spectrum that hasn't been used before - instead of the MHz to low GHz range we all know and trust, 5G towers will be up to near 50 GHz (!). Especially the fact that millimeter wave/extremely high frequency is normally blocked by everything from drywall to glass, but now we're intentionally aiming massive amounts of EHF waves with hundreds of antennas in a small space. Call me a luddite, but I'm more and more thinking that we need a high quality longitudinal study about any effects of this kind of stuff before we go from 2x2/4x4 at well known frequencies to putting 128x128 EHF antenna arrays every hundred feet. ~~~ GuB-42 Are you talking about health effects? I don't have a study on hand but I expect the effect to be less than lower frequency waves. First thing to get out of the way, these are not ionizing radiation. Basically, the only thing electromagnetic waves up to visible light can do is heat. UV is borderline. The question is what they heat. The general idea is that the lower the wavelength, the deeper the penetration. 2/3/4G frequencies will heat your insides, 50 GHz will only heat your skin. Of course the power is so that under normal conditions, the heating is negligible. As for the effect of millimeter waves, while testing this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System) they subjected people to massive (100kW!) doses of 95 GHz radiation. High enough to actually burn you, and yet, the adverse effects were minimal. If you are talking about technical problems, like interference, and how to deal with radio waves that are starting to act a bit like light. I guess that 5G is designed by people who know what they are doing. Simply that we are able to make it work is almost like a miracle to me. ~~~ owenversteeg Human health would be the first thing on my mind, but there are many other things it could have an effect on - everything from the neighborhood pigeons to trees. And yes, I am sure that 5G is designed by some brilliant people. Anyone getting that close to the Shannon limit is smarter than me. My hat is off to them. But the reality is that this stuff just hasn't been trialed in any real way. Sure, the US government found 600 adults to get zapped for a few hours and only injured eight of them. But how about living with it for ten years? What about different frequencies? 100 nm is a world away from 300nm which is a world away from 500nm. Sure, they trialed 95 GHz and it was fine. What about 48 GHz? 25 GHz? All the other frequencies being used? What about with 256 antennae transmitting at higher power than anything before, right next to you, day in and day out for a decade? One big claim is that all this 5G radiation is blocked by the skin, so we'll all be fine! Oh wait, what about babies? Turns out babies' skin is thin enough that mm waves can penetrate the dermis... Furthermore, ionizing radiation and heating are not the only two ways EM can harm you. Just look at all the news about blue light for one example! EM radiation in the mm-wave range is still far understudied compared to the cm wave range. Look, I think that 5G is probably going to be fine, health wise. But for something as big as this, it absolutely deserves at least one good longitudinal study. Of which there have been zero. ~~~ mhh__ The EM spectrums are already nearly full - is that not proof in itself? On top of that the military uses absolutely enormous energies in their RADARs and there's still little if any evidence of risk even including powers where you might as well have you head in a microwave oven ~~~ owenversteeg >> The EM spectrums are already nearly full - is that not proof in itself? ... What? I have no idea what "full" would be, but by any definition they are certainly not. Just a bit of air is enough to attenuate mm waves of even high power. (That's why we need so many towers!) There is not a lot of ionizing radiation out there, that's why we're not all dead (and why x-ray film even works.) Maybe you're thinking of outer space? But it's not even true there - for an obvious example, visible light, which there is very little of by human standards pretty much everywhere in the universe. "The military used it for some time and nobody died so let's put it pointing everywhere in our homes and offices" strikes me as a very weak argument for something's safety. As just a simple counterexample for why you cannot use that to demonstrate safety, consider that while mmwaves do not penetrate the adult human dermis, babies' skin is thinner and is easily penetrated by mmwaves. ~~~ mhh__ The electromagnetic spectrum is in use pretty much everywhere someone can build a radio to operate on that frequency. > "The military used it for some time and nobody died so let's put it pointing > everywhere in our homes and offices" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fylingdales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fylingdales) This is a 2.5MW Phased Array. If there was any provable health risks to these (there are ~10 of them in the west) we would know - there have been suspicions, but they have been investigated and no evidence has been found. Why do we care about microwaves in particular when there are huge installations like these operating at much longer wavelengths which as you say penetrate further? If there was immediate danger from electromagnetic radiation it would have been observed years ago - powerful microwave emitters have been in use in very proximity to humans since the second world war (Randall and Boot developed their magnetron in 1940) I have quite a few of the papers that 5G nuts cite, and they are not convincing in this slightest - there is not a single paper that is both dealing with radiation within FCC limits, on animal test subjects, and have any macroscopic threat to health. This also doesn't include the issue that these papers are usually reports of fairly limited research so there is no discussion of the relative risk of their findings if there are any at all (Historical Evidence as mentioned previously sets an upper bound on that risk too). ~~~ owenversteeg >> The electromagnetic spectrum is in use pretty much everywhere someone can build a radio to operate on that frequency. Well, first of all, "the electromagentic spectrum" is "in use" everywhere in the universe, and includes things like radios and the sun. What I think you meant to imply is that humans have been living with mm-waves before for extended periods of time. Which is absolutely false. The problem is that mm- waves are attenuated by air, or clothing, or buildings, or the atmosphere, or what have you. There are some mm-wave sources that humans have messed around with, but always for short durations (usually on the order of hours/days) and nearly always with a strongly attenuated signal (air, cars, buildings in the way.) The reality is that no group of humans have ever lived their normal lives with a mm-wave source, period. The closest you can get is police speed guns, the vast majority of which are in the 10-25 mW range at 10-35 GHz. They are pointed away from the user; either you're the cop aiming them at someone, or you're the person in the car being tracked (if you're in the car, 35 GHz won't penetrate.) Even if you're a cop that decided to just point the radar gun at your face 40hr/week for ten years, that's far, far less exposure than someone living in a city equipped with 5G. So nobody's lived their lives with a mm-wave source, OK. In order for mm-waves to ever actually get -to- your body, you would have to propose a new massively expensive system deploying massive amounts of unprecedented power mm-wave radios closer to humans than ever before: in other words, 5G. >> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fylingdales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fylingdales) (and the rest of your comment) Come on, that's completely different from what we're talking about here - that's a centimeter wave system. Humans have lived with the presence of centimeter waves for a while, and we are fairly sure they're safe. Cell phones, microwave ovens, RC cars, everything uses centimeter waves. >> I have quite a few of the papers that 5G nuts cite, and they are not convincing in this slightest Well, I'd like to point out I'm not a 5G nut. I typically don't bother clicking on those weird rabbit holes of conspiracy blogs tied together with red string based on some inconclusive data. I'm also not saying 5G is dangerous. I simply believe it's unknown. We simply do not know, as a species, what living our lives bombarded with unprecedented amounts of mm-waves will do, as nobody has done it before. Likely it will be harmless; however, there is a chance it will not be. As with many things, it may be the cumulative dose over many years that is harmful. ~~~ mhh__ > Well, I'd like to point out I'm not a 5G nut I wasn't accusing you. They're usually well-meaning rather than overly conspiratorial - although there are a few near me who, let's just say don't mention the Rothschild family near them. In line with your final paragraph I suppose I agree that we don't know for sure, but it's unlikely. As to high frequency radio waves specifically, Fighter aircraft have had millimetre band radars which people have worked with for half a century at least now (along with microwave links in the cities and satellite links etc.). I feel like it's important to point out that long term exposure can't be too long term in the sense that the phenomenon has to be weak enough to have not yet been observed yet strong enough to outpace the churning of biological material in effects. As a final remark, here is some actual data about 5G exposure in relation to local limits (UK in this case) i.e. fractions of a percent of the ICNIRP guidelines at most. Also, no one I'm aware of has proposed a mechanism as to why the wavelength matters at this scale? [https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/190005/...](https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/190005/emf- test-summary.pdf) ------ sumanthvepa One thing to note is that the frequency bands specified only apply to US 5G. Huawei's 5G spectrum uses a much lower frequencies: Around 3.8GHz. This falls in the mid-range spectrum, which makes it cheaper to deploy, because the waves travel further and you need fewer towers. That is the attraction of Huawei, for most countries (outside of the US). Ref: [https://www.huawei.com/en/about-huawei/public- policy/5g-spec...](https://www.huawei.com/en/about-huawei/public- policy/5g-spectrum#:~:text=Sub%2D8GHz%20frequency%20band%20for,primary%20bands%20in%20specific%20countries). EDIT: Fixed typos. ~~~ o-__-o Also interferes with a lot of hospital devices that operate in that freq range. It’s a fight I am casually observing from the sidelines with popcorn. ~~~ jessaustin Wifi has been around a long time now. Why can't the hospital devices just use that like everyone else? (Oh except wireless microphones in churches, which are also some special snowflake exceptions for some reason...) ~~~ chongli Because everything interferes with WiFi. It’s junk spectrum. You don’t want critical, lifesaving devices operating on the same spectrum as the microwave in the break room. ~~~ jessaustin "Critical, lifesaving" functionality is for the most part hardwired. Some devices use radio over extremely short range (think arm's length), but any radio communications over longer distances are for reporting or something else non-critical. ------ barryaustin Excellent article - still I can't resist a rather large quibble. The commonly stated assertion that spectrum is a limited resource is not quite accurate. Spectrum is technically defined as a range of frequencies. That's all. In business parlance spectrum is also attached to large areas of land - this spatial dimension is more important than most people realize. Radio signals themselves exist in space and time, not just in a range of frequencies. More radio signals - and data bandwidth - can be packed into a given space by shrinking the volume a given signal "occupies". We can do this by reducing signal power and increasing cell density, in addition to other techniques described in the article. More cells, smaller cells. This is a big part of how 5G expands cell network capacity. But the telecoms have downplayed the effect of this relative to the the claim that spectrum is limited. The mobile carriers have financial incentives to do this. These incentives are lower costs and monopoly control. Fewer bigger cells at higher power are cheaper than many smaller cells at lower power. The monopoly part is exclusive use of spectrum on a given piece of land. The problem is, the legal attachment of spectrum works with very large areas of land (where km^2 is a smallish unit) and large periods of time (years), relative to radio signals. Both attachments are grossly inefficient. By shrinking cell size (power) and increasing cell density, several orders of magnitude more network bandwidth is possible, plenty even to share (modulo cost of physical infrastructure). Spectrum scarcity is a myth. The current legal regime enriches monopolists and is otherwise a tremendous waste of potential. We pay higher prices for unnecessarily limited bandwidth. ~~~ mNovak Spectrum scarcity is also a function of our wasteful utilization. What you describe (small cells) is one version of what we call spatial multiplexing. Basically, reuse spectrum in physically separate areas. But you can also do this in a way that doesn't sacrifice the centralized, large cell architecture. Namely via beamforming. You don't have to share spectrum if you're not dumping power in all directions. Already cell towers are split into three sectors; you could continue to increase sectors, or dynamically point beams at individual users. Being suitably isolated from one another, each beam allows spectrum reuse. It's not free obviously, it requires more expensive base station antennas, but I think a direction we'll be heading in. ------ fyfy18 Would anyone like to speculate on what new tech we will see that will take advantage of this? I can already stream (to my device) a 4K 60fps video while in a park, and at home I have gigabit fiber (up and down) which is barely ever used to it's full potential. What cool stuff will I be able to do in 10 years time when I have 10Gbps upload while sitting in a park? ~~~ Nursie You'll be able to ditch the home fibre connection. You'll have lower energy use modes available for battery powered IoT devices. You'll be able to be in a very dense crowd and have your services still work. It is also lower latency that 4G, so things like gaming over your 5G connection become more possible. These may not matter to you, but they are use-cases that 5G allows. ~~~ ghaff It's not clear to me that it makes sense to replace wired with wireless when density is such that fibre can be economically laid to a location. 5G has a lot of possibilities both for improved mobile data and for last mile where it either doesn't exist or is some old 1Mbit ADSL line. But I'm not convinced it will generally make sense to ditch good wired broadband just because 5G is available. Even if you technically could, I expect the economics won't work out, e.g. throttling/caps/overage charges, for people trying to do a lot of data-heavy things like video streaming if they have an alternative. ------ lmilcin Actually, low range of high frequency signal is beneficial. The reason is, that even at relatively large transmission power the signal dissipates quite quickly meaning you can have stations service relatively small area. This means the spectrum is shared by less users, the uplink is shared by less users, you can serve higher concentration of people. ------ jessaustin No mention of unlicensed bands? After the demonstrated superior utilization of those tiny portions of this range allocated for ISM? My goodness, it's almost as if FCC works only to perpetuate outdated "giant telco" models to the detriment of all consumers! Out here in the country we'll operate our own "small cells" without permission from ATTVZN and without paying FCC a cent. If anyone notices there will be "investigations" but mostly no one will notice because physics. Eventually industrial users of this tech will realize "hey we don't need those telco goofballs either!" and their lobbyists will muscle through some exceptions. Eventually everyone whose house has sheetrock walls will be so excepted. ~~~ ac29 This article wasn't about unlicensed/ISM radio, though there have certainly been advances there as well. I'm genuinely curious about which parts of the ISM range you see with "superior" utilization compared to cellular networks - I work with those type of radios for a living. ~~~ jessaustin For most of the spectrum, the devices and services that consumers may purchase are limited to those available from giant hierarchical oligopolies. In the ISM bands, we have a bunch of different technologies, but most importantly Wifi. There are much less stringent barriers to anyone using or selling devices and services that use Wifi. And it all works! Those who live in dense urban areas sometimes scoff at Wifi, but what they're seeing is the tiny segments of spectrum allocated to unlicensed use, not inherent problems with open spectrum. The excuse offered in the past for spectrum oligopolies was "oh it's physics" because the very simplest radio technology we could imagine in the 1930s does suffer from interference at lower frequencies. Of course we've had more advanced radio tech for a long time, but ignore that... at the frequencies under discussion for 5G, interference over any but the shortest range is no longer a threat. That means that most of the claimed justification for telecom monopolies (and perhaps the agency created to enforce those monopolies) goes away. It's sad that TFA is still focused on "carriers". ~~~ ac29 Sure, I dont want to understate the impact that WiFi has - its a good technology, and its great that it can be used without a license. I wish more spectrum was available unlicensed - a portion of my income depends on it! My unlicensed radio experience is largely with 900MHz ISM systems, and I wish "its just physics" was a lame excuse. Fact is, the #1 thing limiting performance on these systems in most urban and suburban places is noise - I've installed plenty of radios capable of high order QAM that were limited to QPSK or even GMSK strictly due to noise. I'd say the noise floor in 900MHz ISM is something like 3-5 orders of magnitude higher than in similar sub-GHz licensed systems. Uncoordinated frequency hopping systems are noise-resistant, but still leave a lot of theoretical performance on the table. Cellular systems have their purpose too - WiFi is not a good technology for covering a city with internet access, as many attempts to do so should prove. Nor would it be wise to allow unlicensed use at high power - ask anyone who's ever lived in an apartment how their WiFi is, then imagine if power levels could be increased by an order of magnitude to or two. ------ k__ _" 5G towers won’t be “towers” – instead, they’ll be “small cells,” mini-cell sites mounted to light poles that cover just a small area"_ I had the hope, 5G would finally solve the coverage problems in rural areas. sounds like it's just a vanity project after all... ------ badrabbit [https://www.gaia.com/article/5g-health-risks-the-war- between...](https://www.gaia.com/article/5g-health-risks-the-war-between- technology-and-human-beings) We should not listen to scientists about 5g health concerns? 5g highband is basically an always on radio that can pinpoint specific users. Like,you would be tracked as you move room to room and interact with people. Why is everyone ok with this? Especially when hardware killswitches are not the norm or legally required. ------ ksec Just a note. Massive MIMO is not a 5G only thing. 3GPP Rel 13 on 4G already had it for FDD- LTE. And for TD-LTE it was supported from Released 8 or 10 if I remember correctly. Massive MIMO in 5G only meant NR was designed with it in mind. Although mostly in the sense of TDD still, FDD Massive MIMO still has some on going work to do. But yes, in many case 5G is more like 4.99G. It is pretty much a evolutionary step from 4G Rather than a big leap from 3G to 4G. And we should expect capacity to increase from 5x to 10x. ------ donclark How does Starlink fit into this scenario? ------ AtomicOrbital if anything 5G will put extreme pressure on more efficient computational paradigms to replace our half century old silicon approach ... biology evolved the human brain to run on 40 watts of power ... the massive additional carbon footprint of 5G will accelerate our escape from silicon ------ baybal2 Multipath MIMO can effectively beat both Shannon, and Nyquist through utilising multiple spatial channels. ------ m000z0rz Warning, this page does the annoying chatbot thing, but with the addition of sound notifications. ~~~ ehsankia I thought the one lesson we all learned from Clippy is that this kind of interruption is more annoying than useful, I guess the new generation of developers have never experienced Clippy? Also why would I need help when _reading a blog post_?? ~~~ anonymousab >I thought the one lesson we all learned from Clippy is that this kind of interruption is more annoying than useful It's not about usefulness, not really. It's about engagement and retention - much like newsletter spam and annoying please-subscribe popups, The Metrics always apparently show that they work amazingly compared to a clean page. ~~~ metaphor Oh yes, _hand-waving_ "The Metrics". What do they say about how often and the speed in which reader view was enabled? ------ cinquemb > there are theoretical limits for each medium. I would rather say that there will always be limits of our understanding and building equipment for usage in various mediums, even in a vacuum, we're still only probing our theoretical knowledge of null boundary interactions between photons[0]. > For example, a standard cellphone can fit an array of 72 antennas operating > on the 39 GHz mmWave band. A similar 72 antenna array in the 700 MHz low- > band frequency would be larger than a typical home door. And what would it cost? In an environment where cellphone sales have been declining for at least 5 years now at least on the high end (all the games Apple has been playing with sales reporting…), which end users will be willing to bear the cost of the device now? [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH7OGkEZX7I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH7OGkEZX7I)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
MP3: Scientific Attempt To Create Most Annoying Song Ever - petercooper http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/04/a-scientific-at.html ====== pmjordan The _actual_ song is linked to from the article and can be found here: [http://blog.wired.com/music/files/KomarMelamid_The-Most- Unwa...](http://blog.wired.com/music/files/KomarMelamid_The-Most- UnwantedSong.mp3) I would describe it as bizarre. Mostly it's just a total clash of styles and instruments. And yes, it would be incredibly annoying to listen to it as music. (as opposed to a scientific work) The song exists of multiple parts, so calling it one song is a bit of a stretch. ~~~ petercooper The reason I didn't link directly is because then people would miss the link to the "Most Wanted Song" alternative :) <http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/05/survey-produced.html> The Most Wanted Song is arguably worse than the Most Unwanted Song. This is ideal evidence that crowdsourcing doesn't yield ideal results! ~~~ hugh Wow, that was truly awful. At least the most unwanted song had some bright points of originality. In fairness though, I'm sure that the elements here: love, soprano sax, string swells, power chords, and cheesy male-female harmonies, could be combined into a much better song than this. Probably still not as good as an idealized Walmart holiday operatic tuba rap though. That'd be awesome. ------ zitterbewegung I smell an ignoble prize winner. ------ steveplace For the masochists in the audience, you can listen to it here. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 ~~~ unalone 1) oHg5SJYRHA0 is just as well-known as uiuU, or whichever that old one was. Find a new URL. TinyURL works well. 2) This is Hacker News. I'd like to think we're a little bit above 4chan for at least the next year or so. ~~~ steveplace I'll take the hit. At least it isn't politics.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Our Marketing Team Spends Money Each Month - kawera https://open.buffer.com/marketing-budget/ ====== capkutay Most people are focussing on their advertising spend, but it looks like they've built their marketing team for inside sales rather than growth. $3k/month on advertising means they're getting spending about $100/day. That's too low to properly target a SaaS audience for actual growth. My guess is that because they have 80k customers (according to their website), they focus most of their marketing plans around customer success and renewals rather than acquiring new leads. You can see they have a lot of budget tied to mailchimp...a sign that they spend a lot of time on lead/customer nurturing campaigns. I don't think this blog post is meant to be useful for any company that doesn't already have mass traction. ~~~ soneca Their advertising could be focusing on kickstarting their content marketing material. Spend big money creating good content, spend small (but smart) money promoting on niche targeted audiences, count on it to be further spread through word-of-mouth. ------ was_boring I see a lot of comments about people are amazed by $3k/mo advertisement spend and most goes towards salary. I would say they have chosen wisely. HN is a forum for technical startups and people who work in the field. Yet here they are, without spending anything on advertising on the front page. The blog post was written by the marketing director, and just by being here they are marketing buffer. This is lead gen. ------ analyst74 Not marketing professional here, but I'm surprised at how almost all of the budget went to payroll related expenses. I would have imagined higher percentage spent on advertising spot, online and offline. ~~~ waisbrot Yeah, it's cool to see a budget. But then it's puzzling because I don't know what a marketing team _does_ besides advertise. ~~~ soared Pasting from another comment. Advertising is a section of marketing (You could get a degree in either one). The rest of the team works on things like branding, identifying markets/customers, picking price points, running tables at events, writing content, working on the website, researching potential new products, understanding how current users use the products, analyzing web site traffic for insights, etc. At some places things like ui/ux fall under marketing - like making it easier for a user to purchase a product, writing manuals/user guides, etc. ------ nishantvyas So to summarize, they have "10-Person Marketing Team" spending 93k/month total, with 2 major breakouts, 1\. Teammate Expenses (73,225 + 9,402 + 367) = ~83K 2\. Everything Else (or Actual Marketing) = ~10k Why do they need 10 person team for $10k budget (actual money spent to bring customers in)? unless these guys are literally going door to door. P.S. I'm not marketing professional. ~~~ soared Advertising is only a small portion of marketing. Probably 1/3rd of 1 persons job is spending that $3k media spend. The rest of the team works on things like branding, identifying markets/customers, picking price points, running tables at events, writing content, working on the website, researching potential new products, understanding how current users use the products, analyzing web site traffic for insights, etc. At some places things like ui/ux fall under marketing - like making it easier for a user to purchase a product, writing manuals/user guides, etc. ~~~ sjg007 I would do more sales... ~~~ Daktest May not be necessary for their kind of product and market. Looking at their company page, there doesn't seem to any salespeople at the company. Would suggest that you check out Patrick McKenzie's post about SaaS companies. Buffer fits the 'Low-touch SaaS' description pretty squarely - which would mean that they don't necessarily require a dedicates sales unit. [https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/business-of- saas](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/business-of-saas) ------ tvanantwerp While lots of folks may think the salary-to-advertising ratio here is way too high, I think it probably makes sense. I have to imagine that most of the Buffer marketing team is either creating marketing materials or promoting them in highly targeted ways. (I.e., they must be doing things that don't scale.) Moving that entire salary expense into ads would probably yield far less value to Buffer. What's more useful: an article from a well-read tech site talking about Buffer's cool features that came about from direct outreach, or some more easy-to-ignore Google ads? ~~~ pascalxus but doing things that don't scale is a temporary move until you figure things out. The results of those experiments must yield something. they must be doing something that will eventually scale. ~~~ jermaustin1 You are thinking about doing things that don't scale as a feature of your service/product. The non-scaling feature of Buffer would be something like if a customer queued something to post to their Instagram feed, then a human actually posted it for them. Sure it doesn't scale, but you can probably do that for a while until the tech stack is built out. GOOD Advertising is always much more hands on. ------ butler14 Staggeringly low media spend, particularly on Google, which is the channel most likely to help drive sales within a suitable return on advertising spend threshold. ------ forkLding I'm always amazed at the amount of data Buffer makes transparent ~~~ mprev It's as much part of their marketing as anything in the budget that they shared. ------ libertine Is it just me who finds odd they put advertising production and media buying all mixed into "adversiting", yet break it down by media channel? It's usually: production + media I read their advertising breakdown as media purchased, unless production is diluted in the value (which I doubt because you can use ads across social media channels for example, despite having different specs). Or they just don't want to disclose it, which is completely fine :) ~~~ soared Its possible they do everything in-house and use free stock images. For facebook you don't necessarily need a designer, someone can easily write search ads, and they don't do any banner/video/etc advertising. Not how I would run it, but I don't know much about them. ------ wkemmey I know it's not the main theme of the article, but I'm really interested in Buffer's laptop policies. How do you handle it if a laptop needs repair? or is stolen? What if the breakage is the employees fault, but they are not a repeat offender, so to speak? I'm curious how Buffer handles these things that I've seen problematic at other companies. ~~~ kevanlee Good question. I lead the marketing team at Buffer, and we've had a couple cases where the computers have failed earlier than the renewal date (every 3 yrs). We reimburse a new laptop if it's needed. Otherwise, I really haven't experienced any "at-fault" scenarios or stolen laptops. My sample size is pretty small though (4 years, 10 marketing teammates). ------ soared Amazing to me that their media budget is only $3,000. That is absolutely tiny! I'm curious why they don't do any programmatic (like display), and how they only spend $500 on search ads (I'd imagine brand-only terms would be over $500/mo). ------ jl87 Yeah...I'm thinking you guys need to start spending on some advertising. ------ jclegg What about rent? ~~~ kevanlee Good one. Buffer is a fully remote/distributed team with no office. That being said, expenses like Internet go to the admin budget and not marketing. Thanks for the question. (I work at Buffer and wrote the budget article) :) ~~~ leonroy Not even a coworking type office for management or receiving mail/having an official company address?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Importance of Simplicity - abi http://abcdefu.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/simple/ ====== abi I'm the author of the blogpost and I feel I didn't write enough about how I differentiate simple and complex. Here's a good but very software-specific example that might illustrate that. Imagine you told a programmer (or team of) to create a Digg clone. How many of them would build the entire system with all the features (submissions, comments, friends, profiles, media types, categories, etc.)? I'll wager that most people will attempt to do so. As a result, they'll probably fail. That entire Digg "system" is what I would call complex. On the other hand, when given such an assignment, you should try to write something simpler which would at once also be useful. In this case, write something like Hacker News (but take out comment threading, karma and a few other things)! Once you're done building that, you can slowly add profiles, categories or whatever would benefit the community the most. That's the meaning of "start simple, use a lot and evolve" Another thing, it's important to remember that what was complex yesterday is simple today as we move to a higher-level of abstraction. ~~~ jzachary In the academic/applied research setting, I find sensor networks are the canonical example of this phenomenon. People jump off into "secure energy- efficient self-organizing" sensor network architectures, that they lose the ability to even articulate the problem they are ultimately trying to solve. ------ swombat Very good article, and very true for start-ups. I am always skeptical when I hear someone describe their start-up and it sounds really complicated (especially if they haven't launched yet). I suppose it is possible to deliver complex systems that work for users, but it's extremely hard. And it's already very hard to deliver even simple systems that work for users, so if you like to change your 1% odds into 0.01% odds, either you have money/time to burn, or you're making a bad gamble. ~~~ jzachary Echo that sentiment. When I hear an overly complex solution or idea, I think that person either doesn't know what they are talking about or that the solution is for a hyper-niche situation. Usually, asking a few "Heilmeier- type" questions will lead to classifying the person in the former group. And I admit to being a member of the former group myself, too often, I'm afraid. ~~~ swombat What are "Hellmeier-type questions"? ~~~ jzachary George Heilmeier was a former DARPA director, for whom the Heilmeier Cathechism is used by DARPA PMs to judge projects. These simple questions are excellent for understanding other projects, and I use them to keep my own projects on track. I also use them as the basic outline for presentations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Heilmeier#Heilmeier.27s_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Heilmeier#Heilmeier.27s_Catechism) ------ mixmax _A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system._ this isn't always true. Basically you can do two kinds of products: evolutionary and revolutionary. Evolutionary products can start as something simple and evolve into something more complex. They are the ones we usually talk about because they are easy to do, and make up the bulk of all digital products. Revolutionary products are the ones that can't evolve from something simpler but have to be complex from the start to serve a meaningful purpose. The Apollo space program is a good example: It probably wouldn't have worked very well if they "launched early and launched often" and fixed problems as they went. It would also require too many suicidal astronauts ;-) It had to be perfect the first time. It's basically the same issue as irreducible complexity in evolution: All the intermediate steps have to be useful, or you won't ever get to the finished product. Incidentally this is also why you don't see moving parts such as wheels in biological organisms: The steps leading up to it are no good. Aeroplane manufacturing is the same thing: Either it works or it doesn't. The areticles advice pertains only to evolutionary products and startups. ~~~ stcredzero _The Apollo space program is a good example: It probably wouldn't have worked very well if they "launched early and launched often"_ Actually, they did iterate and take small steps. They started with unmanned suborbital launches, went to manned suborbital launch, then manned orbital launch. And that was just the Mercury program. Next, they went to launching 2-man capsules, spacewalks, and on-orbit rendevous in the Gemini program. _It would also require too many suicidal astronauts ;-)_ You have an implicit assumption that rapid iteration means poor quality control. It doesn't have to. I've met people with _formal methods_ tools who say they are capable of rapid iteration. (And yes, these are marketed to the aerospace industry.) Also, if you manage a project from the start with automated testing, low defect rate is very doable. _Aeroplane manufacturing is the same thing: Either it works or it doesn't._ Uh, no. There are _lots_ of examples of planes that _kinda_ worked. This is why test pilots have to be so good. You have to be very good to get a kinda- working plane back on the ground in one piece, or sometimes even to just manage to eject from it. Your point may be good, but it suffers from drawing from examples which you don't have very good knowledge about. ~~~ mixmax Sorry about the examples :-) And reading yours and the other comments in the thread, I'm not so sure I'm right. Oh well, you learn every day...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Should I practice competitive programming and stop doing side projects - elon_musk I am a junior undergrad studying CS at one of the top universities. I have co founded a company, participated in Google Summer of Code and done interesting projects (some of which even won prizes).<p>I applied to some companies like Dropbox, Google, Palantir and Facebook for a summer internship but got rejected from them at some stage in the interview process (even after reaching the host matching stage for Google). I see my friends who were able to get those internships inspite of having almost no software development experience just because they are good at competitive programming and wonder if this is all that companies care about? Should I stop building stuff and improve my competitive programming skills if I plan to get a job after graduating? ====== throwaway19935 If you get past the resume screening stage (which it sounds like you'll have no trouble doing, with your resume), then those four companies you mentioned only care about your interview performance. You're correct that side projects won't get you a job at Palantir. What you should do is practice, practice, practice technical interview questions. Get Cracking the Coding interview and do every problem. Getting a job / internship offer at those four companies is the exception, rather than the rule, so don't feel bad about getting unlucky this year. I squeaked by Facebook intern interviews, but was rejected from Dropbox, Google, and Palantir. Better luck next year! ------ mathgeek Let me preface this by saying that above all else, your soft skills are important. Learn to interview. Read Cracking the Coding Interview. Practice your people skills. It's likely that your friends who "were able to get those internships inspite of having almost no software development experience just because they are good at competitive programming" are really good at the soft skills in addition to being good problem solvers. Assuming that your soft skills are up to task... It really depends on how many side projects you already have, either open sourced on GitHub or tangibly published (such as iOS apps on the App Store, for example). You're best served by having a balance of tools in your skill set. If you already have side projects that you're proud of, getting better at "competitive programming" (which is really just getting better at solving problems in certain domains quickly) will make you a better candidate overall. Companies like Google want junior devs and interns to be problem solvers that they can mold into senior developers. That's what "competitive programming" tests for. However, if you have the soft skills and the pedigree of presentable projects to demonstrate, you can make it work. ------ RedGreenCode You need a certain amount of programming puzzle skill to get past the interview process at most tech companies. Competitive programming is a good way to practice this skill, but you don't have to do it at the exclusion of other types of programming. You may want to take a break from side projects for a few weeks or months while you work on your coding interview/competitive programming skills. After a certain point, there are diminishing returns unless you get interested in the competitive programming world and want to keep competing. If you want more information on this topic, it is often discussed on Quora. Here are a few relevant posts: * Why tech interviews are the way they are: [http://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-current-tec...](http://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-current-tech-interview-process) * Preparing for a coding interview: [http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-prepare-for-a-software-enginee...](http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-prepare-for-a-software-engineering-job-interview) * Possible reasons for getting rejected after an interview: [http://www.quora.com/What-are-possible-reasons-for-getting-r...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-possible-reasons-for-getting-rejected-for-a-programming-internship-after-a-phone-interview-after-writing-correct-code) ------ alain94040 On the contrary, continue with your side projects. That's probably why you even managed to get interviews with those companies. Did you compute the odds of landing an internship at Google? How many people apply? How many people get in? Make yourself really good. Write code that amazes. Then you'll be able to control your destiny.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Am I Hellbanned? - cdvonstinkpot Hi,<p>I recently submitted a story with a 4 letter word in it, and afterward the next story I submitted was immediately dead, so I presume I'm hellbanned.<p>I then tried to submit the same second story by means of a second account I have (with much less karma) that I rarely use, and it wasn't immediately dead, but was soon after submission, so now I wonder if it was the URL of the particular story that just goes dead for some reason.<p>So now I have to ask someone if I'm indeed hellbanned. The offensive story didn't get retitled, btw. So I don't know.<p>Thanks in advance for letting me know. ====== wglb No. A recent submission of yours under this account was automatically marked dead as it was a link shortner. ~~~ cdvonstinkpot Thank you very much for the explanation! ------ lazugod That 4-letter-word story is now the top link on HN, actually. ~~~ cdvonstinkpot I see that, and I notice you can see my 'Ask' post, so I guess I'm not. Thanks.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Scaleway C2 Dedicated Intel (€11.99/quad X64/8GB/50GB SSD/300Mbits Unmetered) - headmelted https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/ ====== eip I am curious what type of ARM processors they use.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
If the Rubik's Cube were invented today, would anyone care? - amichail Now that computers are commonplace, physical novelties such as this are perhaps not that interesting. Moreover, today's games involve complex and accurate depiction of the real world, not simple abstract games.<p>Would the Rubik's Cube succeed if it were invented today? ====== Bjoern Most certainly. That thing is still "reinvented" these days. Different shapes, difficulties, lights, all kind of variations. If the Computer-age would have made it uninteresting why are still so many of Rubik cubes produced these days? e.g. see here <http://www.toytalk.co.uk/2006/03/eye_on_the_past.html> \- Huge sales in Books and other related materials \- IPhone cheating application e.g. downloaded 30k+ <http://efaller.com/blog/2009/02/13/15-minutes-of-fame/> aso. ------ ajdecon Probably it would still be popular, tho maybe not as much of a hit. Physical toys and puzzles are still pretty popular among non-gamers. And some pretty technical people still enjoy playing with this kind of puzzle: during undergrad I noticed that Rubik's cube was always popular with the mechanical engineers, physicists, etc. This kind of tactile problem-solving can also be a lot more instinctively satisfying than achieving the goal of a video game. ------ ganley Puzzles such as those produced by ThinkFun seem to be doing just fine. Those are a little easier than Rubik's Cube, but IMO this is a good thing - I've known very few people who were actually able to noodle out the cube from scratch. Speaking for myself, who admittedly isn't the target demographic of your question, I still love physical puzzles, and don't play any other solo games (neither computer nor complex realistic physical games). ------ dandrews I don't think I ever once had the patience to solve a cube that someone handed me. The puzzle just never interested me, much like a 15-puzzle fails to interest me. But I certainly spent lots of time playing with the mechanism itself, trying to divine how it was built. So to answer your question I'd have still bought one today if I'd never seen it before, computer games notwithstanding. It remains a clever hack. ------ csbartus no way. i'm selling gadgets & gizmos and another smart stuff (thinkgeek like), people is not interested anymore in something which is not digital (except laser sabers)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What happens when you search 'ugly hack' in GitHub - BaltoRouberol https://github.com/search?q=ugly+hack&ref=cmdform&type=Code ====== DCKing I love the term 'ugly hack'. It's a very short way of saying 'a solution for a problem that assumes too much of the current context in which this component is called, and is guaranteed to break when the context changes'. It also implies 'this is intended to be temporary because I don't feel like doing the proper solution at this moment' which is accompanied with the intent 'we should fix this later' although most people who write it also have the wisdom that that almost never happens. All of this is expressed in just two words :) ~~~ madeofpalk When I write it it usually means I know it sucks, but I'm reasonably happy with it - but if someone catches me out on it it's ok because I already criticised it myself ~~~ andrey-p Excellently put. It's like lampshading[1], for code. [1]: [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging) ------ gjm11 Some results normalized by overall language popularity. Specifically, the entry in row R and column C is 1000 * (hits for C in language R) / (hits for "the" in language R) or "\---" if either the numerator or denominator was small enough not to make the top-10 list on github. All the scraping was done by hand and the numbers rounded to a limited number of places in the process, so there may very well be mistakes. [EDIT: oops, initially I failed to paste in the actual data.] ugly hack ugly beautiful lol wtf buggy xml --- --- 14.330 72.775 2.489 --- c 6.348 35.421 0.670 0.768 3.650 32.009 html 1.359 9.001 34.791 4.233 3.095 5.870 rb --- --- --- 4.483 3.151 --- py 9.051 35.614 28.506 --- 11.135 15.066 php 3.731 8.333 1.781 39.037 1.792 3.754 c++ 2.851 12.507 --- 0.501 102.657 7.579 js 6.850 16.826 2.643 2.635 7.406 29.761 Tentative conclusions: Python is ugly-hack-iest and (almost exactly tied with C) ugliest; HTML is most beautiful with Python a close second, XML is lolliest, C++ is WTFiest, and C is buggiest. Tentative meta-conclusion: these numbers have no value beyond idle amusement. But they idly amused me, so that's OK. (The weirdest result of the lot, to me, is XML coming top for "lol". If you do the search and click on "XML" on the left you'll see why it is. Lots of instances of what I think are the same file, full of "&lol;" entities. LOL, that's pretty ugly. WTF? An ugly hack, I guess.) ~~~ adamc I read your table and immediately jumped to a different conclusion: That python programmers are more sensitive to ugly hacks and more likely to call them out. Not saying I'm right, but I don't know that the data can distinguish the hypotheses. ~~~ brudgers Not picking a language fight. My intuition tells me that if your alternative hypothesis were true, then php programmers have higher standards because they ajudge more code 'ugly and C++ programmers are universally perfectionists...or at least when they are not confused which it appears they usually are. Just for fun with hypothesizing, does Python's near 50/50 split between 'ugly and 'beautiful suggest a large degree of random use? Or more interestingly, does it suggest there is a tendency to classify middle cases as extreme cases, and is this a result of the community having 'a Pythonic Way?' ------ namuol Pretty interesting/amusing to see the language breakdown of various words (with big grains of salt): [https://github.com/search?q=beautiful&type=Code](https://github.com/search?q=beautiful&type=Code) [https://github.com/search?q=ugly&type=Code](https://github.com/search?q=ugly&type=Code) [https://github.com/search?q=lol&type=Code](https://github.com/search?q=lol&type=Code) [https://github.com/search?q=wtf&type=Code](https://github.com/search?q=wtf&type=Code) ~~~ ntaso So, HN's hate-child PHP is funnier, more beautiful, less ugly and less confusing than sexy JavaScript. Although Python rules them all. ~~~ DCKing To be fair, PHP has a well-known problem of a lot of people not being able to properly judge the quality of the code they write ;) [1] [1] Of course I don't mean you, my dear PHP writing comment reader. ~~~ girvo And no other widely used language has that problem ;) ------ watwut I love this one - someone made Java annotation for ugly hacks: [https://github.com/benpage26/libxron/blob/016dd953a54eacada2...](https://github.com/benpage26/libxron/blob/016dd953a54eacada2c8a00ed1592dee3d63a8be/src/main/java/org/xron/annotations/UglyHack.java) ~~~ mcv That is some real dedication the the Java way. ------ jamesk14022 "Fix ugly hack to at least be consistent with itself", haha, this is brilliant. ------ amirmc I'd be curious to see if there's a relationship between 'ugly hack' in code commits and the languages being used (though it'd probably say more about the programmer than the language). The bar chart on the left of the page hints that it's possible, but would have to be normalised. My hypothesis is there'd be no real difference, but it would be fun to explore nonetheless. ~~~ fuzzix > I'd be curious to see if there's a relationship between 'ugly hack' in code > commits and the languages being used Perl is not in their list. Either everything we do is an ugly hack, or everything we do is simple and elegant. :) ~~~ giancarlostoro Or... nobody writes in Perl anymore... or... every Perl developer is a seasoned Perl developer. ~~~ fuzzix Welp, neither of those are true. ------ mysterywhiteboy Another fun search on GitHub - looking for the code paradox i.e. this should "never happen". [https://github.com/search?l=c&p=7&q=never+happen&ref=searchr...](https://github.com/search?l=c&p=7&q=never+happen&ref=searchresults&type=Code) ------ paddyoloughlin Amusingly, a lot of Python's hits appear to be hacking the import logic. [0]: [https://github.com/search?l=python&q=ugly+hack&ref=cmdform&t...](https://github.com/search?l=python&q=ugly+hack&ref=cmdform&type=Code) ------ KhalPanda It looks like ugly hacks are far more popular than clever ones. [https://github.com/search?q=clever+hack&type=Code&ref=search...](https://github.com/search?q=clever+hack&type=Code&ref=searchresults) ~~~ reidrac Look for dirty hacks; still... C way ahead the rest. Interesting that "ugly" places PHP over Javascript, but "dirty" is the other way around. I wonder what does it mean. The comments and the "ugly" or "dirty" qualifiers are just part of the perception of the person writing the comment, and they're contributing to spread that perception to others. What qualifies as "ugly", "dirty" and "clever", or even as "hack", may be quite different depending on the language and the community behind it. ~~~ leni536 Yeah, I don't think "ugly hack" or any other variants is frequent in bash script comments. ------ hugofirth Haha: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7rwshax2e9zwln/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7rwshax2e9zwln/Screenshot%202014-07-17%2011.13.10.png) Not even PHP can come within a factor of 5 of C when it comes to ugly hacks. EDIT: And its not exactly like there is a bias at work: [http://goo.gl/ZezFiP](http://goo.gl/ZezFiP) ~~~ torrent-of-ions But is it because C programmers make more ugly hacks or that C programmers are more likely to know when they are making an ugly hack? ~~~ krapp I think PHP is more or less just for the web, giving C programmers more ugly hack surface overall. Also PHP itself is an ugly hack of C anyway. ------ wildmXranat Search for "temporary fix" [https://github.com/search?q=temporary+fix&type=Code&ref=sear...](https://github.com/search?q=temporary+fix&type=Code&ref=searchresults). 3 million plus and counting :) ~~~ mcv That also matches with just "fix" or "temporary". This one works better: [https://github.com/search?q=%22temporary+fix%22&type=Code&re...](https://github.com/search?q=%22temporary+fix%22&type=Code&ref=searchresults) Now to figure out how old these are. ------ zmk_ Some hacks are just beautiful! [https://github.com/search?q=%22beautiful+hack%22&ref=searchr...](https://github.com/search?q=%22beautiful+hack%22&ref=searchresults&type=Code) ------ miohtama Maybe some ducklings too? [https://github.com/search?q=ugly+duck&type=Code&ref=searchre...](https://github.com/search?q=ugly+duck&type=Code&ref=searchresults) ------ stared I was not surprised to see tex (even though it is not a popular language on GitHub). It seems that one have to resort to (ugly) hacks when dealing with it. (That said, I love its fruits.) ------ buddha "dirty fix" [https://github.com/search?q=dirty+fix&type=Code](https://github.com/search?q=dirty+fix&type=Code) ------ diminoten A modern-day batman might do this search and then submit pull requests which fix the "ugly hacks". ------ xvirk it's even better when you search for "temporary hack" [https://github.com/search?q=temporary+hack&type=Code&ref=sea...](https://github.com/search?q=temporary+hack&type=Code&ref=searchresults) ------ pnngndclsng Simple question: does "ugly hack" mean "a quick fix before relase" ? ~~~ jobigoud It usually means that something out of your control is acting strange and you don't know or can't properly fix it, but you have found a weird workaround that should probably not even work, or an very contrived way to achieve the result. As one obviously only writes extremely elegant code, it is important to notify the programmer coming after that you were _forced_ to write it this way. ------ karlcoelho1 I love how Ruby isn't even included in the list. __RUBY THE BEST __ ------ aadlani No ugly hacks in ruby! that's a great news. ------ jonheller Surprised CSS isn't on the top of this list ------ JetSpiegel 400k results for C, the next one is 40k for PHP ------ miohtama Looks like Ruby doesn't have ugly hacks. ------ nXqd How about 'for now' :D ------ JimmaDaRustla Wait...you mean...I find the words "ugly hack" in source files across thousands of projects on GitHub? ------ n0body I have no idea why this is on the front page. ~~~ mkesper fun? meta-programming? ~~~ n0body You and I have a very different definition of fun, and meta-programming. ------ kvirani Mostly C!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What’s one thing you don’t regret buying? - yarapavan ====== user_agent There's a couple of them: an used high-end office chair, a good mechanical keyboard with ortho layout, a trackball instead of mice, a proper coffee maker from Italy, my videoconferencing setup with a head-on mic and a Canon cam instead of a webcam, a cat that keeps me company, a smartphone with 128GB+ memory, a couple of cheaper BT headsets instead of one so I can charge them interchangeably, LED desk lamps with regulated light color (I have 6), an electric scooter, a worst-case-scenario emergency supply for 2 weeks... I like this thread! ------ 27182818284 Breaking the rules and posting more than one item. My Nintendo Switch. I hadn't bought any sort of console since...well never... the other closest console was an N64 from my parents. I had huge buyer's remorse walking out with it and a game for more than $300, but the value I've gotten out of it has far exceeded what I paid. I knew nothing about Super Mario Odyssey and the nostalgia struck me like lightning. I teared up during the city-level-whatever where you turn 2D and jump past Donkey-Kong-style barrels while the music is cheering you on. My Late 2012 MacBook. This has been, by far, the best laptop I've ever used, period. Its battery is awesome. I can do any task I need to with it. It connects to wifi instantly. It has a MagSafe connector that has saved me at least once. As far as I'm concerned, Apple could have just iterated on this design for life and I'd be happy. I think the 2015 model that _pg_ mentions in this tweet are an upgraded form of this laptop: [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1157084442365534208](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1157084442365534208) Kitchenaid Food Processor. I've had this thing for 10+ years and it has been phenomenal for me. Only small problem is that I'm noticing discoloration in the handle after a decade. I'm sure there are more, but those items come to the top of my head. ------ m463 Mueller pod coffee maker $40 [https://amzn.com/B07PYPX7M9](https://amzn.com/B07PYPX7M9) (that is not a tracking link) Thought it might suck compared to a regular drip coffee maker, but I found with the low effort I actually drink coffee every morning. Costco has lots o pods to choose from. I've been good all lockdown. ------ karmakaze LG 43" 4k monitor. I don't use 'spaces'/multiple desktops. [https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-43UD79-B-4k-uhd-led- monito...](https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-43UD79-B-4k-uhd-led-monitor) ------ thiht A good chef knife. I wonder how I cooked anything before I had one. ------ tech_dreamer My lawn mower ~~~ jpesal Same! #countryliving ------ SamReidHughes My Sun Mountain Four5 golf bag. It seems to work fine. ------ oblib My late `09 Mac Mini. Still using it and still really don't need anything more powerful. ------ cameron_b Mid 2014 iMac, bought as a refurbished unit from Apple in 2015 ------ lostmsu Of all things I've bought, I only regret a few. ------ Gibbon1 Battery powered finish nailer. ------ econcon Lathe and milling machine ------ cyberbanjo Thinkpad x220. ------ rsaxvc My Bluetooth OBD2 plug ------ feiss My books. ------ Finnucane My bicycle. ------ koolhead17 coffee beans and lettuce.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: alternatives to launchrock? - armenarmen I'm looking for an easy squeeze/email capture for a product that I'll be launching this summer (a backpack) and I wanted to know what alternatives to launchrock were around and what your experiences with them were like.<p>Did you use a service or build it yourself? or what? ====== nistha0202 Hi, I built launchvalue - <http://launchvalue.com/> that offers clean interface with google analytics and twitter integration. I also offer customized solution that you can self host for more control on a consulting basis. Let me know if you might be interested. ------ makerops There is a great project by Daniel Kehoe, that I used for <http://makerops.com>: <https://github.com/RailsApps/rails-prelaunch-signup> This, along with a 5-10$ bootstrap theme and heroku, makes it very easy, and it integrates with mailchimp. ------ brotchie I've recently used Prefinery (<https://www.prefinery.com/>) to handle a Beta launch. Highly recommended. Out-of-the-box support for "viral" social referrals, exporting to MailChimp, webhooks to notify of new sign-ups. Nice minimalist bootstrap interface as well. ~~~ armenarmen Neat, I'm looking at it right now! ------ benologist I spent yesterday and today playing with the API from MailChimp, it's easy to use + they have various embeddable widgets. It would be viable to just use them although you'd need something for the analytics as well. ~~~ armenarmen Would google analytics do the trick? ~~~ benologist Yeah I think it'd be okay, although LaunchRock also looks at Twitter and LinkedIn sharing. ------ hkarthik I vote for <http://kickofflabs.com> I know both cofounders and have worked with them in the past. They're standup guys and provide great support too. ------ mlebel What's your email? I'll shoot you our custom solution that uses Campaign Monitor to collect emails. ~~~ armenarmen Great! I'll hit you up tonight! ------ pclark whats your email? we've built this at userfox and would love to get you involved. we'll do everything for you. i am also interested because i care deeply about backpacks. ~~~ armenarmen Cool! I'll shoot you an email tonight!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Forbes Announces Social Networking App with Tinder for Its 30 Under 30 Community - chkuendig http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2015/08/05/forbes-announces-launch-of-social-networking-app-for-its-under-30-community-members/ ====== stephengillie This is an advertisement for Forbes' new app. They got Tinder's help in making it. The rest of the "article" is an advertisement for Forbes' new age-ist community, for which the app was built. ~~~ senjutsuka Not really age-ist. I am a member and invited to this app but I am over 30. There are lots of members of this particular community that are over 30. The only qualification was having attended the last summit, or presumably attending this years summit. It is an exclusive community which you get for the ticket price. So, you're mistaken.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is it possible to have forum type community running without a database? - escapologybb This question came about as I've been asked to set up a very small forum type community running on a Raspberry Pi, and the thought occurred to me that statically generated websites can handle reasonable amounts of traffic whilst using relatively small amounts of resources.<p>So I wondered if it is possible to run a forum type community - something along the lines of [elgg][1] or [Friendica][2] - but without the MySQL or other type of database backend?<p>Now I may be about to get laughed at silly for asking such a daft question, but I would genuinely like to know the answer. So, does HN think something like this is possible? And if not, could you please explain why not? And if it is possible, have you got any recommendations!<p>Thanks in advance. E<p>[1]: http://elgg.org/ [2]: http://friendica.com/ ====== sz4kerto File systems are databases of some sort: there's a way of storing and retrieving data. Using the FS won't necessarily be simpler or less resource- intensive than using sqlite or something similar, because you _will_ store and retrieve data, and the helper layers you build on top of the FS will probably be less optimized than existing lightweight databases. ------ gaius Sure. HN itself has no database, only the filesystem (or rather the filesystem is the DB). ~~~ escapologybb Really, Wow. Would you mind expanding a little on how that works? I mean, is HN just stored as a series of files on a server somewhere? ~~~ hartror Ask PG: Database, flat files or other for YC News? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99092) ------ javaguy_98 I hate it when people change the question so they can give the answer they want to give, but I'm going to do it anyway, as I think its a relevant data point; I think you're dismissing the ability to run a database too quickly. I have done almost exactly what you're talking about with a raspberry pi, using Ruby on Rails (3.0.x era) and sqlite. the Rasppi (model B) had enough horsepower to run in development mode on webrick and handle ~5 rps with page rendering and database calls, and that was in develop! when running in production, rails does less reloading of resources, so should be even more efficient. ------ JohnBooty So I wondered if it is possible to run a forum type community - something along the lines of [elgg][1] or [Friendica][2] - but without the MySQL or other type of database backend? You're attempting to optimize the wrong part of the architecture, I think. A simple read-only query to SQLite or a NoSQL database is fast - generally just a few milliseconds and often less than one millisecond. The odds of you doing it much faster yourself are low. _Rendering pages_ is the slow part. Because each forum page you render is going to involve multiple queries to your storage engine (whether you go with SQL or roll your own) and a ton of string manipulation/concatenation. So what I'd do is.... \- Use SQLite for my storage engine. The 256 or 512MB of RAM on a RaspberryPi is plenty for SQLite. \- Cache _rendered pages_ (and/or page fragments) to disk, rather than writing my own storage engine. I'd use a lazy caching/prerendering strategy. Suppose a discussion thread has 50 pages. One of your mods deletes a post on page 1. Now all 50 pages need to be re-rendered. You have two choices. You can either re-render all 50 pages right away, or you can simply delete all 50 pages right away and re-render & re-cache them as needed, when a user actually requests one of them. I'd do the latter. I've used this strategy myself. It was a very common paradigm back in the 90s and early 2000s when web servers commonly had hardware specs (700mhz, 256/512MB RAM) that was quite similar to what a RaspberryPi has today. The hardest part of this strategy is getting _cache invalidation_ correct. Every time your code writes to the database, it has to also be aware of which cached pages/fragments it needs to blow away. (You know the old joke: "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.") ~~~ wlievens Actually there are four hard things: cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors. ~~~ vxNsr I don't know if I've ever seen this joke not answered in this way, gets me everytime though. ------ Udo You're probably overthinking this. While the Pi is limited in processing power and I/O, if it's really a small community it will run a forum just fine. Here's what to look out for: 1) Make sure you run NginX, it's fast and memory-efficient. 2) Install PHP-FPM and have NginX connect to it using a _socket file_. Keep the number of FPM workers small. 2a) Zend Opcache comes standard with PHP now, but there are scenarios where you might want to look into using APC instead, especially if you want to hand- tweak some caching into the forum app. But see if it's necessary first. 3) I had good experiences with MariaDB, a MySQL fork, which comes with the Aria table type. If possible, change the forum tables to that type, it's very fast. The worst table type on a Pi is InnoDB, it's pretty is much unusable. 4) Beware of flash medium write wear, buy a larger-than-needed SD card or place files that update frequently on an external USB hard drive. ~~~ VLM "While the Pi is limited in processing power and I/O" This line is the key to the question. Simply roll back time until the specs of the Pi would be a "decent" or at least "cheap" webserver for that time, the kind of server you'd run a small forum upon at that time. OR if not decent for bare metal hardware, decent for a virtualized image on a bigger server. Its not like 2014 is the first year in human history with webservers or web based forums. So people were running forums on tiny virtualized servers with about those specs on linode perhaps just a couple years ago. Perhaps even today either on very tiny linodes or competitors. The only real problem is the software. So use old stuff open to individual and class of vulnerabilities that were fixed 5 years ago, or take an obese beast of a modern forum and give it a liposuction? Look into puppet and run the master somewhere else and automate it enough that you can go from a bare metal Pi to a live host in ten minutes or so. You'll be doing it again sooner or later at a time not of your choosing, so may as well get it right now. Also, implement a backup strategy and automate its restoral process (and integrate with above) ------ gedrap Depends on your goal. If you want to learn a lot about development, write a lot of code, you can use flat files and treat them as a small database. Implement simple SQL analogues of WHERE, etc. It could definitely be fun to implement! A lot of educational value. You would learn more about designing APIs consumed by other applications, etc. But if you just want something that would run on r-pi, you would be better off by using a standard database. Some of them are around for over a decade, written in C and thousands of men hours were spent on optimizing them. As long as you are not doing something a bit crazy (e.g. 3 fields in WHERE statement, non of them are indices), you will be just fine. ------ kijin Yes, it's totally possible to write a blog, forum, or pretty much any "Web 2.0" application without using a database. You just need to be very, very careful with how you design your filesystem layout and file format. As for the file format, it would be best to stick with standard formats like JSON, XML, or YML. Or the standard serialization method for your favorite language, such as pickle() for Python and serialize() for PHP. Try not to invent a brand-new format, it's going to be error-prone and generally slower than using a standard format. A more difficult task is to maintain an index of some sort, separate from all the individual files, so that you won't have to read and parse every single file in order to generate the forum listing. Whenever a reply is posted, you'll need to bump a thread to the top of the listing. Think about how you can implement this without modifying or renaming several files at a time. And then you'll need to ask yourself how you're going to prevent inconsistencies in your data over the next few years. What if you decide to add a new field to the JSON schema and all the old files don't have that field? What if you delete a thread but an error occurs halfway through and some of the individual posts still remain? You'll need to write logic to handle such edge cases as well. SQLite solves a lot of these problems while offering the same sort of performance, if not better, on resource-constrained environments. As far as SQLite is concerned, a Raspberry Pi is a very powerful machine. There's no reason why you sholdn't be able to enjoy all the benefits of flat files together with all the benefits of a relational database. ~~~ JohnBooty As far as SQLite is concerned, a Raspberry Pi is a very powerful machine. There's no reason why you sholdn't be able to enjoy all the benefits of flat files together with all the benefits of a relational database. Yes. There are reasons to avoid databases, but saving resources usually isn't one of them. Definitely not on a RaspberryPi where you have 256MB or 512MB of memory which is plenty for a lightweight database like SQLite. By the time you're done reinventing all the things a storage engine like SQLite or one of the NoSQL storage engines would give you, you'd be hard- pressed to do it more efficiently than they do. ------ krapp Once upon a time, when I was playing around with Perl on Tripod, I wrote a very very basic forum with a flat-file "database". Essentially each "post" was a single delimiter-separated line (yes - posts were oneliners because everything was done through GET queries and I didn't know any better) in a text file holding an id, parent id and the post content. As an actual implementation, of course, it was horrifying and terrible but it's quite possible. I think the forum script from Matt's Script Archive (which still exists) basically edited the html thread files directly, and didn't use a database connection either. ~~~ dwd You are correct about the Matt's Script Archive forum. I ran a few 10,000+ message forums back in the late 90's that were based off it. They ran mostly without any issues and only occasionally you would find a parent node's tree was not saved correctly and truncated. In most cases this could be manually repaired. The biggest issue was archiving as the main file would need to be manually edited to remove older threads. I had moved on to other things by the time phpBB was released. ~~~ krapp Oh wow... and I even found a few of those Matt's Script Archive forums still running, too. So much nostalgia.. ~~~ dwd The Golden Age of Webmasters! ------ azeirah Hi there, you ask interesting questions. I have two things for you that aren't _exactly_ what you're looking for, but they are definitely relevant. First of all, a while ago I made a serverless chat for in your browser. It's just a proof of concept, it does work however. There will be nobody there, but you can test it by opening two browser tabs or using a second device. It works in the same way that Skype works, peer to peer. It's cool, because it is in the browser. [http://codepen.io/Azeirah/pen/BHnbz](http://codepen.io/Azeirah/pen/BHnbz) Second of all, you know bitcoins, right? It has this blockchain thing. People are starting to realize the potential of the blockchain. I've seen multiple initiatives and examples of applications using the blockhain to store the data without a __static __database. Note however, the data is still stored somewhere, on the users ' pc's! This is __not __a database-less application, it is __decentralized __. It 's still very cool however, and may have a huge influence on the internet in the future if it stabilizes. [https://eris.projectdouglas.org/](https://eris.projectdouglas.org/) (and their github: [https://github.com/project- douglas/eris](https://github.com/project-douglas/eris)) ~~~ jaeh all hail eris! all hail discordia! kallisti. the goddess looks at this creation and she is happy. ------ ejr You can run a community of sorts, but the feature list will be sparse. The only viable system sans-database that comes to mind is plain-text. I'm a member of a forum that had an old system in the beginning that used plain text "database" for a very long time. Performance was fairly reasonable at 5000 visitors per day, if the daily hit counter was to be trusted. They since moved it to SQLite, which is very reliable in its own right, and now it's Postgres. It was only now that we got searching as a "feature". The system was written originally in PHP 4.x, but they did move it to 5.x. I'm not sure what version they use now. I do know they were running ancient hardware and was up solely due to the charity of the admin. I think there was an index file that stores new topic summaries, as there was no field for titles, when they were created. They used microtime() as the ID, but the topics were stored by splitting it to 3 digit directories. Seconds as 1234567890 and decimal 0.12345618 were combined to create _/ 123/456/789/012/345618.html_ There's no registration system or other way to identify the user so I believe the posts were separated by some kind of entry separator in a single file. I think the pagination system created an array of sequential IDs and checked to see if files existed in those directories. There were no numbered links for pagination, only next/previous and if you reached the end, the next page would be blank. There's no reason you should ever get laughed at for being curious. ~~~ escapologybb Thanks, I appreciate the nice answer but it's amazing how often newbies get laughed at for being curious! Glad it hasn't happened today :-) So on to your answer, I'm going to be running this community at way less than 5000 visitors per day! So from what I understand, the site was run using PHP and every time somebody made a new entry a new file was created on disk with a reference to that file in the main index page. With the name of the file was based on the time it was written to disk, with some checking to make sure to avoid files with duplicate names. I assume the main index file was the front page of the site? Have I got that right? And if so, where do you think I should take my studying to set something like this up. I mean, are there any frameworks that you know of like Jekyll for instance or would I need to learn PHP before I could set it up? ~~~ ejr There are lots of samples for PHP, but you don't need to study that. As d33n suggests, there are examples that already use flat files as a database and you can browse Github for code examples. Our forum was setup so that one thread = one HTML file. Any new replies to the thread were appended to the bottom of the file right before the footer. The added benefit of this is that it was very quick to read new posts as there was no processing taking place after the post is created. Ex: If a new thread is being created, it will generate an ID, say _140585637400000000_. Now this gets translated into a path : _/ 140/585/637/400/000000.html_ and a file is created there. The body of the new thread is added to the HTML file. Any subsequent replies are added to that same file right below the previous one. So when a visitor requests example.com/topic/140585637400000000, the script takes the last part, turns into a file path, adds a template - which has the reply form with that ID - and sends it to the user. No additional processing needed. When a new reply is made, the script builds the path again and adds it to the bottom of the same HTML file. And so on... I think your biggest hurdle is the initial planning. Try to carefully plan this out as much as you can, but obviously you won't know what future circumstances will bring. If you build it in such a way so that the storage mechanism doesn't need to change much or at all, you should be most of the way there. Edit: Maybe I can convince the admin to publish some of the source. You're not the only one to be interested in something similar and I think there's a real demand for lo-fi community software. ------ ryangee Yes, it's possible. There is a blogging platform called Greymatter which used to be popular that you can draw inspiration from. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greymatter_%28software%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greymatter_%28software%29) When you'd add a comment to a blog post on Greymatter, it would write that content to it's own flatfile database, then trigger a rendering update which would read the content, transform it with a template, and produce a new .html file, overwriting the old one. Bam! Dynamic site based on (mostly) static pages. I don't see why a forum or social platform couldn't be built in a similar manner. You won't be able to do much in the way of per-user authorization, but as long as all your content is supposed to be viewable to everyone, you should be OK. One problem with Greymatter was that if a thread or site grew large, sometimes generating new files from templates would take so long that your connection to the CGI would time out before they were finished. Another problem was that two updates to the site posted at about the same time could stomp on each other during the rendering phase. 'Cause hey, flatfiles are hard. That's why I wouldn't forgo using a real database in favor of flatfiles. If you don't want to run MySQL or Postgres on an RPI, then use SQLite. There is, after all, a reason that these products exist. Let SQLite or MySQL deal with the flatfiles for your instead of re- inventing yet another wheel. I also wouldn't update the .html files the moment someone posted. I'd have the scripts just commit the post to the database, and then regularly re-render the files from a cron script. This avoids having your rendering stage stomp on each other, provided that the rendering time is less than your rendering interval. ------ cwmma A file database like sqlite or leveldb might be a good compromise between the features of a database and the ease of a flat filesystem ------ FeatureRush Have a look at 4chan - once the thread is done, it's gone, no need for db for that and the community is still there. ~~~ userbinator I don't know about now since I don't visit 4chan anymore, but the imageboards very clearly used a DB - during periods of high load one of the most common error messages was "MySQL connection error" which became a sort of minor meme for a while (this was several years ago.) On the other hand the textboards do appear to not use a traditional RDBMS - they were running a modified version of Shiichan ([http://wakaba.c3.cx/shii/shiichan](http://wakaba.c3.cx/shii/shiichan) ); Kareha ([http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/web/wakaba_kareha](http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/web/wakaba_kareha) ) is another popular textboard script that doesn't need a database. ------ cessor I sure do think it is possible. I am not sure how soon you will actually run into problems, but I have been using Dokuwiki, which uses text files rather than a database for all storage purposes. Although it is not in itself a good example for a community-centric software, it shows what can be done, the contents are versioned, there are access control lists and so on. If you can build a wiki based on files, why would you not be able to do so with some kind of forum community? Maybe Dokuwiki is already a good solution for you. I feel that the others readers reactions show that you could elaborate your motivation some more. A database can be a quick and useful solution and solves many problems, such as distributed access, central management and administration, security and backup. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DokuWiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DokuWiki) ------ winter_blue It is _sort of_ possible to do this statically. The benefit of static websites is not only fast loading, but also that GitHub Pages offer _very high-quality free_ static hosting. For a forum: 1) You'll need a server with an API for submitting posts. You can use the filesystem as the DB, if you'd like. 2) This server will update the static website (i.e. regenerate it, and push it to GitHub Pages) on a regular interval (which could be as small as one minute). So it's definitely doable, and offers huge benefits. For one, static pages can be served _very efficiently_. If you use GitHub pages, you can leverage its global Content Delivery Network (CDN) for free. And you are guaranteed a nearly zero downtime for free by GitHub. The only "drawback" is the insignificant one minute delay before a new post goes "live". Shoot me an email if you'd like to collaborate on a static forum project! ------ vertex-four I would look into running a Citadel BBS[0] if it's something on the order of a personal project. Essentially, it's a BBS with Telnet, API, web, and email interfaces. [0] [http://www.citadel.org/](http://www.citadel.org/) ------ joeclark77 Back around 1999-2000, there was a popular free forum software that did exactly that: it generated new static pages every time someone made a post or commented on the thread. Reviewing my personal timeline, that was before I learned PHP, so it was probably something that ran on Perl. It may have been YaBB ([http://sourceforge.net/projects/yabb/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/yabb/)) ([http://www.yabbforum.com](http://www.yabbforum.com)) or some predecessor with a long-forgotten name. The earliest commit on that sourceforge site was 2003, but the screenshots look similar to what I remember. ------ philrykoff Several people have made use of a lightweight webserver like Lighttpd in combination with PHP/SQLite in order to set up boards or wordpress installations on Raspberry Pis. Would that be something for you? ~~~ jsilence Another lightweight stack would be Openresty. Scripting nginx with lua. Both blazing fast. Lapis might be an appropriate web framework to start developing with. ------ captn3m0 I'm not sure if this counts as a database, but you can try out things like Firebase or Parse, which allow you to fetch data from a cloud server, and render it on your server. So your application will be just a dumb static client containing templates and application logic in HTML/CSS/JS, while the data would be stored on the firebase servers, directly fetched from there by your visitors on page-load, making your work pretty easy. ------ LarryMade2 Dokuwiki is a flat file based wiki, and there is a discussion plugin for it, maybe that might give you some insight [https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:discussion](https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:discussion) Though I think you could get the messages in a flat file (heck, BBSs did that since the 70s) though having a small db or some sort of link lists for user access, message indexing and such would probably add to the speed of the system. ------ a-saleh Long time ago (~7 years ago, while at high-school), I have used pm-wiki[1] for a small lab-team (~10 ish people) to collaborate on our research projects :-) We eventually moved to tarballs and emails, but wiki was really easy to setup, had a lot of plugins and didn't require a database (all data are plaintext). Maybe it would suit you. [1] [http://www.pmwiki.org/](http://www.pmwiki.org/) ------ takemikazuchi If the only requirement is to run it on a raspberry pi, and you find that a RDBMS will be too resource intensive, you can always use one of the cloud data storage services out there. Amazon has an RDS offering as part of AWS, MySQL, Postgres, etc. Then your app only needs to talk to the database over the wire with zero local resource consumption by the database. ~~~ escapologybb Wait a minute, not sure I follow. Do you mean that I can run something like one of the forum communities I mentioned on the Raspberry Pi, but then offload all of the grunt work to Amazon? Obviously that would mean that the Raspberry Pi would always need to be connected to the Internet which wouldn't believe much of a problem, but aren't there fairly significant privacy concerns with doing something like that? Or do you think it's possible to mitigate those concerns by encrypting the link to Amazon, I am only speculating wildly here while I furiously Google all of the acronyms you mentioned. :-) Thanks! ~~~ janpieterz You can indeed run a forum community but offload the work to Amazon. Speaking about that, you can easily run everything on Amazon, because the latency between your webserver and the database might become a problem. Privacy concerns wise, Amazon and Azure and the sorts are probably way better protected than your own installation. Of course the privacy with Amazon and Azure are all clearly written in their terms of usage and privacy statements. And NSA wise, if they get into an Amazon (either politically or technically) they will easily be able to hack your own installation. ------ cleverjake One of the main points of static sites is that they don't update terribly often. Forums, on the other hand, update constantly. You are wanting something with good caching (server side and client side), and thats about it. Otherwise, you are going to be regenerating the pages constantly on every post/update. ~~~ oneeyedpigeon "good caching" needs to be "stores in cache forever, unless an update is required, at which point, only the content that actually changes is updated in cache" to be as good as static files. In my experience, caching is never that good. What's the problem with writing to the fs on every POST? The number of GETs will still outweigh the number of POSTs significantly. ~~~ michaelt It's my understanding that forums like HN and Reddit don't regenerate the front page for every post or view; rather, it is regenerated every second or two and cached in RAM. Of course, it's unlikely you'd run a forum as big as HN or Reddit on a Raspberry Pi. ------ alexvr If the point of getting a forum site running on a Raspberry Pi is just for novelty & challenge, ignore this. But I think the most practical solution here is to forget the Raspberry Pi altogether or to set up the majority of processing and storage on a separate machine and have the Raspberry Pi server talk to it. ------ mozboz Yes. People (including me) are thinking about and working on personally owned and hosted data. Your forum posts live in _your_ cloud, and in a way that the features as brickcap describes are achievable. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8049890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8049890) ------ steverb The first forum software I wrote way back in 1998 didn't use a db. Basically I just marked up the html file with some data to tell me where the posts were and then when someone would post a new comment the perl script would just insert it into the html. Serving the forum was just pulling the html files from the disk. ~~~ iamadeveloper I assume that you just handled the concurrent write situation with a file lock? ------ thexa4 I've used SimpleForum for that purpose a long time ago: [http://freecode.com/projects/simpleforum](http://freecode.com/projects/simpleforum) Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be in active development any more. ------ brickcap This is a fun exercise :)All right. Let us first analyze what the requirements should be. Obviously I am assuming a lot of things and thinking about this in a way I would go about building a (minimal)forum on raspberry pi:- 1\. There should be a couple of predefined categories. 2\. There should be a way to authenticate/authorize users. 3\. There should be a way to search the previous posts. 4\. There should be a facility to moderate. __Static forums __ Very neat idea. All we need is a simple webserver, I am thinking, nginx that transforms and renders our posts to a user. Our first requirement that of predefined categories can be easily met by creating sub directories inside the directory that will be served. And we can avoid duplicating the pages between the sub directory (ie. a tag) and the main directory by using symbolic links[1] and configuring nginx to serve the symlinks [2]. Moderation of posts can be done by migrating a post in and our of a `moderate` folder that is not served by the application. But that obviously limits the moderation only to the webmaster. The trouble arises in two cases a) When we need a facility to manage sessions. There is no way we can do that in static pages. b) It will be quite difficult to create a search index for our application. Now nginx is a good choice as it is pretty light weight and we will keep it. But what if we could have another application that can easily talk with nginx, manage user authentication for us, allow us to create search indexes, takes care of our data and still be light weight. Other have already suggested sqllite.How about couchdb?[3] First couchdb has built in authentication and authorzation support. It will take you no more than 3 http requests to implement your own register-login- logout-scenario[4]. Second it is pretty easy creating simple search indexes with couchdb[5]. You can serve your forum directly from couchdb. It does not statisfy your orignal requirement of no database but it certainly gives you a way to work without any application layer. But perhaps most importantly it is very low on memory consumption. Not as low as sql lite but still quite low. [1]([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1951742/how-to- symlink-a-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1951742/how-to-symlink-a- file-in-linux)) [2]([http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#disa...](http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#disable_symlinks)) [3]([http://couchdb.apache.org/](http://couchdb.apache.org/)) [4]([http://www.staticshin.com/programming/easy-user-accounts- man...](http://www.staticshin.com/programming/easy-user-accounts-management- with-couchdb/)) [5]([http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/View_collation#String_Ranges](http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/View_collation#String_Ranges)) ------ johnchristopher I haven't seen anyone mentionning it yet: what about a mailing list ? You could even offload its presentation layer to a third party nntp reader. ------ utkarsh42 Checkout NoNonsense forum (camendesign [.] com/code/nononsense_forum). It works without a database and stores everything as RSS. ------ lowlevel You could build it on text files, but it's still a database... so I think the answer is a pretty clear no. ------ collyw Sure its possible (plenty of people I work with use files instead of a database), but why would you want to? ------ hnha I don't see why the Pi would be unable to run a database. In any case, sqlite would work. ------ mc_hammer you can write it to disk you can also hold all the data in memory but when the memory is full you have to get rid of the old threads, but if your server app restarts you lose all threads you could also use a message queue, something like firebase ------ adamzerner I'm a beginner, so forgive me if this is stupid, but consider using Disqus - [https://disqus.com/](https://disqus.com/). ~~~ duskwuff Disqus isn't really appropriate for a forum. It's a simple turnkey commenting system, intended for blogs and whatnot. It doesn't have the capabilities that you'd want for a more involved forum. ------ spagbb git or mercurial can be use to track content, furthermore libgit2 api also useful.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Photographer designd web site to exactly look like Google to stand out - Jun8 http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2010/09/photog-distinguishes-himself-by-looking-just-like-google/ ====== Jun8 I found this brilliant. Currently the "search results" are hardcoded links but he plans to add real Google results about himself.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: SpeckJS – Comment Driven Development - Luke_Savage http://speckjs.github.io/ ====== lukegb Interesting - reminds me of Python's doctest[1] module and all the associated caveats, though! 1: [https://docs.python.org/2/library/doctest.html](https://docs.python.org/2/library/doctest.html) ------ omnidan Amazing. And it even works with Atom :) Is there a utility that automatically creates the test files in a specific directory? Would be nice to add speckjs to `package.json` so it builds and runs the tests before, for example, publishing. Is something like this possible? Or what would be the best way to automate the generation - is this even what you intended? EDIT: I just tried it out and it doesn't seem to work for me (I'm probably doing something wrong :D) - would be great if you could help me out: [https://github.com/speckjs/speckjs/issues/150](https://github.com/speckjs/speckjs/issues/150) ------ cschep Woah, this is really cool! Now .. who is going to write the vim plugin? :D	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The largest confirmed waterfall in Earth's history - Tomte http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170601-the-largest-waterfall-that-ever-existed ====== candiodari I don't know if this was the largest. Both the mediterranean and the Black sea, each a lot larger than any water body in America. Anyway, both of those were dry at one point and the water of the oceans broke through. The Black sea went from low lying valley (akin to the dead sea valley, but much bigger) to open sea in less than a week. I don't know, but that even seems to me must have been pretty spectacular (to watch from a SAFE distance). ~~~ mcv That was exactly what I thought about when I read the title. It may have been a very temporary waterfall, but it must have been enormous. So does the Black Sea waterfall not count because it was so temporary? Was it still somehow smaller than the one from the article? Or has its size not yet been verified? ~~~ johnlbevan2 I think there's a definition of waterfall that includes a longevity requirement; i.e. as there are some "waterfalls" which only exist shortly after rainfall, then dry up again, and thus can't be called waterfalls. I'll try to dig up a reference for that half-recalled fact... ~~~ johnlbevan2 A very wordy, non-scientific defintion here: [http://www.world-of- waterfalls.com/featured-articles-waterfa...](http://www.world-of- waterfalls.com/featured-articles-waterfalls-101-what-makes-a-waterfall-a- waterfall.html#3) ------ xrd This flood carried the Willamette meteorite, a 15 ton space rock, embedded in a chunk of a glacier, from Montana to just south of Portland. It is the largest meteorite found in North America. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willamette_Meteorite](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willamette_Meteorite) ------ wiredfool The article doesn't really emphasize that glacial Lake Missoula filled and drained multiple times over the years. In the Missoula valley, there are multiple historical beach areas on the mountain sides as a horizontal topo feature. Each one is at a slightly different height. I have a book in storage on this (helpfully titled "Glacial Lake Missoula") -- The craziest statistic that I can remember is that the calculated outflow through one of the canyon choke points was a mile wide, hundreds of feet deep, and travelled at 60mph. There are scars from passing icebergs on the walls. ------ hourislate Randall Carlson along with Graham Hancock speak of this in quite some detail on Joe Rogans podcast. They speculate that some sort of meteor or comet shower melted the icecaps 12k years ago and caused a flood of biblical proportions. It is a fascinating podcast. [http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/graham-hancock- randall...](http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/graham-hancock-randall- carlson-2) ~~~ arethuza We've been having glacial periods fairly regularly for the last couple of million years - not sure why you need to introduce a meteor shower to explain the icecap melting: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period) ~~~ avenoir Science in general is very split on the Missoula flood theory and from my reading about the event it seems that this is mainly because Geology has moved on from Catastrophism to Uniformitarianism which doesn't really explain the event very well. Bretz who spent most of his career studying the region and originally introduced the theory of the Missoula flood suggested that there was only a single, catastrophic flood, but he eventually ended up settling for a possibility of multiple floods just to get his theory accepted after fighting with the Geological community for years and eventually moving away on to other work. He eventually received many high-ranking accolades for his work, but to his last day he was convinced that the flooding was a single event of very rapid melting of the glacial ice. Carlson sides with Bretz and suggests that there is compelling evidence that the flood itself lasted days not years. Honestly, this entire debate paints a very bad picture of modern Geology disregarding evidence because it challenges the status quo. ------ tdy721 This is really neat, but I'm slightly miffed that they didn't include an image of the giant ripple marks. I watched a PBS Documentary (Nova?) about this area that went into great detail. I might be mixing some things up... More info for fellow Geo-Nerds: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_current_ripples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_current_ripples) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMbsGHVzXRU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMbsGHVzXRU) [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/megaflood/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/megaflood/) ------ theprop Niagara Falls is at something like half its potential power. There are talks to open the floodgates so to speak once a year and let Niagara Falls be really gigantic (bigger than Iguaza) one day a year. ------ wallflower This immediately reminded me of the Lake Peigneur disaster. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ddlrGkeOzsI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ddlrGkeOzsI) ------ curun1r > It was twice as high and three times as wide as Niagara Falls Having seen both, I'm not sure that doubling and tripling Niagara would make it larger than Iguazu Falls...probably taller, but Iguazu is really, really wide. ~~~ lentil_soup Same in height when compared to the Angel Falls which are 980m high[1] vs 51m for the Niagara Falls. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Falls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Falls) ------ dredmorbius A simulation of the Lake Missoula flooding and ice-dam collapse: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=27BP4CL66Tk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=27BP4CL66Tk) Eastern Washington's Scablands are pretty impressive relics. ~~~ jonah There's a pretty interesting natural rock dam[1] that holds Garibaldi Lake[2] in. It's just a loose pile of rocks and has the potential of collapse[3] which would release the entire lake down the valley. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barrier) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garibaldi_Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garibaldi_Lake) [3] "The area below and adjacent to the Barrier, a geological feature upholding Garibaldi Lake is considered hazardous. Although imminent danger is unlikely, special regulations are in effect to make you aware of the potential danger and to minimize the risk to life and property in the event of a landslide. Posted signs identify the Civil Defence Zone. Do not camp, stop or linger while traveling through the zone. Camping or remaining overnight at or near the Garibaldi Lake parking lot is prohibited. Developed campgrounds are located nearby at Alice Lake and Nairn Falls Provincial Parks." \- [http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/garibaldi/](http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/garibaldi/) ------ gerdesj "We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com." _sigh_ ~~~ clort I also get this, is it because they have adverts on the page and the BBC is somehow not allowed to show adverts in the UK? I wonder what actually prevents them just showing the page without adverts to UK readers, rather than showing the placeholder; I'm supposing that its for political reasons as in, they _wont_ show it, rather than _cant_ ~~~ dTal It's political. Note that BBC Good Food is in exactly the same scenario, legally. Yet it's fully accessible in the UK. ~~~ detaro As far as I know, BBC Good Food doesn't belong to the BBC, it just licenses the name. ~~~ dTal "This website is made by BBC Worldwide. BBC Worldwide is a commercial company that is owned by the BBC (and just the BBC). No money from the licence fee was used to create this page. The profits we make from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes." [https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/](https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/) C'mon man, it's right there on the front page...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How encrypted SNI works - the_other_guy https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypted-sni/ ====== KingMachiavelli Interesting, Chromium 71.0.3578.98 on Archlinux requires enableing TLS 1.3 via a chrome flag or perhaps ssllabs client checker won't detect it unless downgrade protection is enabled? It doesn't apper thet qtwebengine has TLS 1.3 support yet despite it being based on chromium. ------ 3xblah If it doesn't work, there is always CurveCP.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Customizing My Postgres Shell - craigkerstiens https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2017/07/16/customizing-my-postgres-shell-using-psqlrc/ ====== rleigh The article doesn't mention enabling unicode output. \pset linestyle unicode and other related formatting options. Some examples here: http://postgres.cz/wiki/Pretty_borders_in_psql http://okbob.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/styles-for-unicode-borders-are-merged.html It's off by default for compatibility, but makes much more readable tabular output. I wrote this back in 2009 for 9.0, but not many people are aware of its existence (at least, I see plenty of ASCII output, and only occasional use of unicode in public writing). ------ yangyang This is cool. Always worth spending some time setting up psql. In my psqlrc I also have a bunch of "macros" (unfortunately no parameters in psql) for common stuff like transaction handling and SET ROLE / RESET ROLE, lock monitoring etc.: [https://github.com/hollobon/psqlrc/blob/master/psqlrc.conf](https://github.com/hollobon/psqlrc/blob/master/psqlrc.conf) Some of it only works on <=9.4. ------ Cieplak Also, check out pgcli: [https://www.pgcli.com](https://www.pgcli.com) ~~~ mpd I used pgcli for awhile, but really missed being able to set \x auto. I do like the tab completion quite a bit. ------ Symbiote Useful, though I choose: \pset null ␀ i.e. U+2400 SYMBOL FOR NULL as my null symbol. ------ emilsedgh \x auto All these years I didn't know about this. ------ sourcesmith The prompt 1 setting in the article emboldens everything and leaves you terminal with the bolded setting on exit as it is missing a '%' It should be: \set PROMPT1 '%[%033[1m%][%/]%033[0m%]% # '	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
All Programming Languages are Wrong (2018) - jashkenas http://users.rcn.com/david-moon/Lunar/all_programming_languages_are_wrong.html ====== mfDjB Does anyone else consider these type of articles the clickbait of the programming world? They tend to all follow the formula of 1\. Make over the top statement in title. 2\. Vaguely address the over the top statement in content. For example the author hasn't shown us why "All" programming languages are "wrong". They haven't shown how they would fix them to make them "right". Their premises (e.g. "computation is almost always free") are flawed. I wonder, if the title was called "A rant about some popular programming language paradigms" would it be as popular? ~~~ nuclx "computation is almost free" actually triggered me. that's the java argument from 20 years ago, now we have go and rust. it implies electron is actually a sane approach to ui development. the author is very vague about why exactly numbers don't fit in the type system, and in which languages. first class types for numbers exist in some languages. is he advocating for default overflow checks, which bloat code size? ~~~ dragonwriter > the author is very vague about why exactly numbers don't fit in the type > system No, he’s quite specific: “hardware details such as the number of bits supported by an integer add instruction show through in the language semantics.” Now, it's also true that there are quite a lot of languages where this is not true, e.g., Scheme, Haskell (IIRC with the default numeric settings), Ruby, Python, for instance, and many more have numeric types in core language or stdlib that don't face this problem but don't make them the default for simple numeric literals. ------ dusted Computation is not almost free and people are doing just fine writing slow code without the language helping them. Taken that we've more or less stalled with regards single core performance, I'd argue that computers are now getting slower (because software is bloating faster than single core performance is increasing). ~~~ gridlockd > Computation is not almost free... In the vast majority of cases, it is. He's talking about the ALUs actually performing work, as opposed to waiting on memory. He rightly points out that cache misses make the biggest performance impact on modern systems. Most languages these days do not address this, there's tons of indirection by design. > Taken that we've more or less stalled with regards single core performance, > I'd argue that computers are now getting slower (because software is > bloating faster than single core performance is increasing). Again, if you can actually give your ALUs enough work to saturate them, your problem is most likely embarrassingly parallel, in which case single-core performance is not the bottleneck. Otherwise, you will want to optimize for memory access. ------ hr0m I wonder what the author would do, when performance is critical. Today too many people rely on fast cpu and large memory. There are lots of applicants, where you need to optimize. ------ bcrosby95 > For example, one cache miss might take as much time as a hundred add > instructions. > Today's languages contain far too many features that do almost the same > thing but have slightly different performance characteristics, for example > regular and virtual functions in C++. Odd example. Virtual functions help enable certain designs, but avoiding virtual functions is commonly recommended when writing cache friendly code. ~~~ spaced-out Honestly it really hurts the author's credibility. Virtual functions hurt performance (generally not significantly) but allow for OOP design, in theory to make the program structure more clear/organized. Exactly what the author is supposedly advocating. ------ rmist Each programming language is suitable for solving certain type of problems. So when I see a catch-all statement like "All Programming Languages are Wrong", it seems to me the author is implying that "None of the programming languages solve my (or this specific type of) problem." > It does not reflect the realities of modern hardware, where computation is > almost free, memory size is almost unlimited ... Well, no, this certainly doesn't apply to all problems! > ... because they seem to be in love with the idea of "object" or "abstract > data type." ... Again, there are many different paradigms of programming, OOP being one of them with its own pros and cons. ------ bedobi IMO the biggest problems with almost all popular programming languages are 1) null 2) exception based error handling such that, when you call foo() where foo is String foo(){ blabla } you can get a String, null OR an exception (!!!) and most compilers happily let you treat it as if it only ever returns a String. I hope some day null is no longer a thing, and that Functional Programming types like Option, Either, Try etc in the native libraries is the new default. ~~~ quelltext I am probably in the minority here but I think Java was on the right track with checked exceptions. ~~~ bedobi I used to think so, but * Java also has unchecked exceptions, and, incredibly, there's _still_ no consensus as to which exceptions should be used for what and when, though these days the most common approach is to simply stick only to RuntimeExceptions, which is terrible. * Functional error handling using Option, Either, Try etc are arguably much simpler, safer and more powerful than exceptions. Simpler because they don't rely on dedicated syntax- they're just regular objects no different to any other object. Safer because unlike exceptions, they force callers to handle all potential outcomes, but no more. (no risk of ignoring errors and no risk of catching a higher level of error than desired, ubiquitous bugs in exception based error handling) Powerful because they support map, flatmap, applicative etc, making it easy to eg chain multiple computations together in desired ways, which is unwieldy and bug prone when using exceptions. It could be that, when learning Java, Python and any other language, we learn that methods return objects... and that's that. No weird dedicated syntax and magic, special treatment for returning anything other than the happy path, and the HUGE complexity that comes with it, eg the dedicated syntax itself and how it behaves, differences between checked and unchecked exceptions, hierarchies of exceptions etc etc. When lists and booleans also implement map, flatMap etc, you can actually reduce syntax of languages even further- there's no need for looping syntax like for, while etc, and no need for if else either. This is probably too extreme for most people, but think about it! ~~~ dkersten Slightly off topic, but what should a map or flatMap implementation on boolean do? Presumably run on true and skip on false? That’s not really what I expect from map (that it’s filtered the input). I could imagine book.filter.map as a way to conditionally execute ~~~ karmakaze I rather like that, `if condition` is a 0/1 iteration with no input. flatMap can return empty, what should map return when run on false, None? ~~~ mrgriffin I'd probably think of Bool as being isomorphic to Maybe (), which would mean your map implementation looks a bit like: map :: Bool -> (() -> b) -> Maybe b map True f = Just (f ()) map False _ = Nothing Or, in Haskell because you've got laziness you could go with: map :: Bool -> b -> Maybe b Which already exists as a combination of Control.Monad.guard and Data.Functor.(<$). map tf b = b <$ guard tf ------ codr7 This is part of the introduction to a language he's been designing since forever. I attended the International Lisp Conference in Boston around 2005 and he did a presentation there of what seems like a precursor to this. Some of his views might be controversial, but he has plenty of Lisp implementation experience and clearly knows his stuff. And from what I've read so far, he writes excellent documentation. I'd recommend anyone to at least skim the whole thing [0]. [0] [http://users.rcn.com/david- moon/Lunar/index.html](http://users.rcn.com/david-moon/Lunar/index.html) ------ valenciarose Referring to David Moon namelessly as "the author" in comments about language design (on Hacker News of all places) does not inspire confidence. Whether or not you agree with him, Moon has been involved in language design and implementation for decades. His perspective is directly relevant to discussion that's primarily focused on large scale trends in language design. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says here, but it is definitely worth thinking about, especially where it challenges accepted dogma. ------ mogl1 Is this just my feeling or this this text completely ignore languages which are of functional / declarative nature? Iirc Prolog doesnt "care" so much about performance (on a language level at least). Haskell knows Integer, Rational, Num etc. Same goes for Idris Languages from that area (lambda calculus) are, by definition, not based on the idea of some specific computer architecture. Totally possible that i missinterpreted something tho. ------ user2994cb To put the original in more context, David A. Moon is a major figure in the Lisp world: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._Moon) ------ perfobotto What a bunch of bs. There are so many places where computation is far from free and size matters (embedded, HPC for example). And the end of Moore law is just gonna emphasize the need for performance even more. This article just tells me that the author didn’t have to write any performance critical code in his life and he just extended his experience to everything ~~~ patrec Yeah, what would David Moon of all people know about performance critical code. [https://www.h2o.ai/blog/a-brief-conversation-with-david- moon...](https://www.h2o.ai/blog/a-brief-conversation-with-david-moon/) ~~~ perfobotto It doesn’t really matter who wrote it. It’s a comment about the article , not the author himself and the article is approssimative at best. It makes a statement that’s not true in a lot of cases (“computation is almost free”), makes some statements that while agreeable are too high level in how they are expressed like “cost of communication is high” and then the piece ends without any explanation or examples on what he means exactly or what is wrong and how to solve it in enough details to actually be an informative article. It seems like an oversized rant a programmer would make after a bad day at work on Twitter. ------ erezsh The author has a good point, although he miscommunicates it: The common use- cases, such as servers, business logic, glue code, etc., don't usually require hyper-optimized performance. It only needs to be reasonable and predictable. They need a language that is easy to work with, and share with others, and there are few that really do that. But of course, there are. Go, Python, Julia and others I'm sure, all prioritize comfort over performance. Although, as compilers improve, they might one day actually become faster -- since the user writes more abstractly, there is a wider search space for optimizations. ~~~ random_guy1234 > But of course, there are Your statements are contradictory. > they might one day actually become faster faster compared to C/C++ ? Of course, Performance is improving day by day. What's the point? ~~~ erezsh It's not contradictory. I'm saying that the things he says are true, and there are many languages that follow that line of thought. Yes, faster than C++. Better abstractions can, sometimes, give the compiler more flexibility to optimize. ------ _bxg1 Pretty vague and empty argument (rant?). Doesn't really say anything I haven't seen complained about (and disputed) elsewhere and doesn't really propose any actual solutions. ~~~ gridlockd > ...doesn't really propose any actual solutions. The proposed solution is the language he designed: [http://users.rcn.com/david- moon/Lunar/introduction.html](http://users.rcn.com/david- moon/Lunar/introduction.html) ~~~ _bxg1 Ah. That could've been made more clear in the link title ------ random_guy1234 > Most current-day programming languages seem to be based on the idea that > computation is slow, so the user and the compiler must work hard to minimize > the number of instructions executed. Instructions executed is not the only metric to consider! It doesn't makes sense to have loads and stores in the program with all of them having a cache miss. Does the author mean that the memory hasn't caught up with the computation here? I don't think so. > For example, one cache miss might take as much time as a hundred add > instructions. This is why compiler must work hard! > Today's languages contain far too many features that do almost the same > thing but have slightly different performance characteristics, for example > regular and virtual functions in C++. This just encourages programmers to > waste time on micro-optimization when they could instead invest time > understanding the large-scale behavior of their program and optimizing that. Not all programs need to worry about insane performance. But most do. It is totally upto the developers to choose the features of the language which they need. Choosing the right features/language for the right kind of programs is an important skill. Efficient code generation for all possible hardwares and all possible workloads with a restricted language features is not going to work or else Python would have been one of the very few languages to survive. Elon Musk wouldn't have tweeted that he needs C/C++ engineers ;-) It seems the article suggests that neither the hard working compiler nor the hardware friendly language is required to get good performance! ~~~ pasquinelli There's also energy consumption. Maybe the inefficient implementation isn't noticably slow to me, but i'll be unhappy if it drains my battery. ~~~ random_guy1234 Yes, there are so many things to consider. Another would be size of the binary.. Different kinds of problems are solved by different languages. Simply rejecting them without stating the details doesn't fly! ------ terminaljunkid I can't agree about the dot. Dot makes it easy to chain things left to write, and also almost always dot based syntax is more readable than stuffing all arguments in parenthesis. xs.delete(x) vs delete(xs,x) And virtual / regular function distinction exists in performance centered languages for a good reason. Either you have to go out of your way to prevent dynamic dispatch or use clunky function pointer syntax and manage vtables manually. Similar can be said to many features he complains about. ------ pkolaczk He claims all programming languages are wrong and then he bashes C++ virtual functions vs regular functions, C++ templates, single dispatch and fixed precision arithmetic. Looks like "all languages" means C++ to him. There exist languages with arbitrary precision arithmetic, e.g. Python or languages with much sophisticated polymorphism e.g. Haskell, Scala or Rust. ~~~ lazyjones > _There exist languages with arbitrary precision arithmetic, e.g. Python_ Floating point numbers are implemented using double in C. All bets on their precision are off unless you happen to know the machine you are working with. [https://docs.python.org/2.4/lib/typesnumeric.html](https://docs.python.org/2.4/lib/typesnumeric.html) ------ imtringued Yeah exactly, we all know that the most used programming languages like Python and Javascript are way too focused on performance. ------ juancn Computation is definitely not free. I spend a lot of my time avoiding non- essential computation as much as possible. I actually would like more control in many of the current languages. ------ dboreham Hmm...BCPL isn't from the 50s. C++ isn't from the 70s. ~~~ Taniwha yeah that was my immediate thought, stopped reading at that point. BCPL was from the late 60s, most people were introduced to it in the 70s, C++ from the mid-80s ~~~ pjmlp And it was never intended to be used as full programming language rather to bootstrap the CPL compiler, hence the B. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPL_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPL_$programming_language$) In an alternative universe, had the CPL project not suffered management issues and C would never had happened. ------ lejalv While computation might be sometimes pecuniarily cheap, it is often environmentally costly. ------ jeffrallen But some are wronger than others. (I'm looking at you, Brainf*ck.) ------ StreamBright Is there a cached version? I could not find it anywhere.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Fire at a homeless encampment sparked Bel-Air blaze that destroyed homes - kyleblarson http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-skirball-fire-cause-20171212-story.html ====== DoreenMichele Maybe we could do something crazy, like bring back SROs, instead of de facto as a society acting like we think it is better for people to sleep in a tent than have "sub standard" housing. Because tolerating rampant homelessness while turning our noses up at modest rentals basically amounts to the nation saying that is exactly what it thinks. _Miner said she was skeptical of the proposed campaign to educate homeless people about fire risks._ Yeah. A homeless person making a cooking fire is probably hungry and probably has no other viable option. Trying to "educate" the homeless about fire risks sounds like "Honey, we don't care if you starve. Just make sure you don't burn down any mansions. Kaythxbai." ~~~ GarrisonPrime I don't disagree, but I will point out that many homeless people want to be homeless, if being housed means submitting to questions and forms. Autonomy is a powerfully strong motivator. ~~~ DoreenMichele The vast majority of homeless do not want to be homeless. If we provide enough affordable housing -- at market conditions, with no more forms and the like than other rentals -- you will be left with a much smaller number of quirky hobo-by-choice types. Shrinking the problem is very worthwhile. ~~~ TheCoreh Don't rentals require a credit score, a stable source of income, and usually a guarantor? ~~~ DoreenMichele Yes. But I am trying to make the distinction that most poverty relief programs are much more invasive and bureaucratic than most market based solutions. I am thinking of low cost rentals where they require you to live there and won't rent it to well off people looking for a weekend getaway that is cheaper than a motel. But other than that, I don't want a lot of extra requirements tacked on. ~~~ crankylinuxuser I think you're very misguided about "market based solutions". The homeless don't have money, therefore they have limited/no exposure in the "market". I don't know if you've been present before about why companies don't form around low income or homeless segment - there's no market in them. No money = no RoI. You cater to people who have money. You're describing something that price discriminates and doesnt at the same time. > I am thinking of low cost rentals where they require you to live there Forced to be there X amount of time. This is a reduction of freedom, which sounds like reinstating the bureaucratic nightmare you talk of. > and won't rent it to well off people looking for a weekend getaway that is > cheaper than a motel. Means-testing. The homeless aren't going to have the paperwork to show lack of means. Remember, these people probably have no ID or anything. The census allows them to highlight landmarks where they "frequent", along with voting homeless allowed similar. > But other than that, I don't want a lot of extra requirements tacked on. And what you stated is already too much. What needs done: if you're homeless, you get a small room. It's yours. It won't be much. We can at least afford that as a population. ~~~ DoreenMichele The homeless are not some other population. They are people who currently lack housing. With enough affordable housing, some people would never land on the street to start with. They would move to an SRO temporarily, get their act together and return eventually to more conventional housing. I am not talking about a homeless service. I am talking about policies that shrink the problem in part by preventing homelessness to begin with. I will add not all homeless are completely penniless, and I have formally studied the subject. ~~~ crankylinuxuser > The homeless are not some other population. They are people who currently > lack housing. True, however not having housing then brings on a host of other problems. Basic sanitation and food are just 2 of those big issues - and the food issue is why the fire happened in this place. > With enough affordable housing, some people would never land on the street > to start with. They would move to an SRO temporarily, get their act together > and return eventually to more conventional housing. Or, they would do like what we see happen in China and Japan - where the prices keep going up and up and up, and those people never leave the SROs. That's also a market eventuality, and a noted fact in those areas. This idea that SRO's are some "gift" to homeless and that they'll clean right up is a farce. > I am not talking about a homeless service. I am talking about policies that > shrink the problem in part by preventing homelessness to begin with. I have a completely curveball outfield suggestion: We the government/people build SROs. If you're homeless, you can have 1. End of discussion. Because shoving this on "The Market" is how in part why they became homeless. So yeah, splatter more "market". It's about as true as trickle-down theory (aka: getting pissed on by above). > I will add not all homeless are completely penniless, and I have formally > studied the subject. Yeah, so did I. I _was_ homeless. You researched it for a single sociology class. When I was homeless, we met _lots_ of students from the local university. The homeless epidemic has gotten nowhere but worse. But hey, there's some papers published reaffirming time and again the same things. ------ kurthr What's not really mentioned here is that these sorts of encampments are usually build along CA freeways because those are policed only by the state (Caltrans / CHiPs) rather than the locality (city/county). Even when there is an obvious hazard (garbage buildup and drift into the road, visible fires burning, throwing objects at cars, walking/crossing the highway or on/off ramp) nothing is done. Typically, it takes a call to your CA state senator to get any action (caltrans doesn't respond to messages within a month). ~~~ tiredwired Yes, there is one between my complex and a highway in San Jose. There was a big fire there last week. No news coverage. We were lucky it did not burn our homes down. These people have been offered help in the past and refuse it. The area gets cleared out and they return. They harass women in the neighborhood and steal everything they can get their hands on. They have to go. ~~~ zxcmx Go where, though? ~~~ tiredwired The arsonists and thieves can go to jail. The rest can take advantage of the existing programs and stop refusing help. ------ pizza _When I first got to Baltimore there were a lot of studies on cities, and I became very involved in the problem of housing -- housing finance, housing collapse in the inner city, housing conditions in general. I was fascinated to do a series of reports for the city, and also for other agencies, about how to approach the whole question of urban regeneration, which is very much on the agenda there._ _It was extraordinary to me that some of the ideas I got for that came out of reading Engels 's famous saying on the condition of the working class in England in 1844; and also the housing question where he says the bourgeoisie had only one way to solve its housing problem: it moved it around. When I started to look at what some of the proposals were, they were about gentrification, which, in effect, would displace people and just simply move the problem around._ _So I made a big pitch in these reports, saying, "If you're going to address this question, you can't address it in a way that simply moves it around. In order not to move it around, we have to deal with basic questions about income distribution, wealth and the like, and, also, of course, racism, and housing markets and so on." This was a very important principle that came out of reading Engels, and then importing it. I put it into these reports; I didn't cite Engels. I didn't cite Engels, and everybody thought this was a fantastic insight, and somebody said to me, "Where did you get that from?" I said, "From Engels," and they said, "Who is he?"_ _" Tom Engels, the local congressman"!_ _" Does he work for the Brookings Institution?" or something like that. It was funny. But this was how I would sometimes find myself using this stuff in factual ways, and it resonated with people. I got a lot of encouragement to stay with this framework, that when you actually laid it out, used it in this way, using these kinds of concepts, people understood what you meant. The only time they turn around and walk the other way is when you tell them where it came from._ [http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey- con2....](http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con2.html) ------ pizza Heard of the quote "You don't hate Mondays - you hate capitalism" ? I doubt the urge to scapegoat the homeless will become a widespread one, but I'm sure that some (ie land grabbing developers..) need to hear this: "you don't hate the homeless - you hate how they serve as a reminder that you can _always_ face ruin. The more you make, the harder it gets to empathize with a guy with a sign, or even to look him in the eye for more than a glance... ~~~ crankylinuxuser I hate the fact that we have involuntary homeless. We have more than enough in this country to fix that. It's a choice of the voting public and the politicians that scorn and hatred and blame is pushed on them. ------ s0rce Seems like we are going to be seeing more of this with drier conditions and ever growing homeless camps across California. There are numerous fire code violations at these camps and these were devised for a reason. Not sure what the best course of action is but clearly something needs to happen. ~~~ ajross Devil's advocacy: must "something happen?". The point to allowing semi- permanent homeless camps is that people were being forced into hiding, sleeping in ditches and eating garbage. That's a serious social ill (no, I don't have numbers, but would be interested if someone does), and one that was trivially solved by allowing them to pitch tents and cook food. It's still not a great existence, but it's a whole lot better and it's something that lots of people will legitimately choose. And if the cost of that is some non-zero number of burned homes? Dunno, but my gut says that's a worthwhile trade. Not that I'd argue with running power to those camps and paying for some hot plates either, of course. ~~~ s0rce I agree that a tent does seem to be a step up from a ditch but I'm not sure you can say the issue was trivially solved. At least in the bay area many of the camps are in parks. This seems like a very controversial opinion but I really enjoy walking around parks and this really isn't possible with bustling, trash filled homeless encampments occupying the neighborhood parks. I don't have a solutions but I don't think tent camps are the way to go either. ------ jlgaddis That seems a bit ironic. ------ vorotato People are either a liability or an asset, and how California responds to their housing crisis will ultimately play out in the consequences. ------ sitkack I have a modest proposal. ------ imgabe Well if that's not some kind of social commentary, I don't know what is. ------ sunstone Can you say, "False economy?". See, I knew you could. ------ chrissnell Mayor Garcetti has been very soft on the homeless and refused to enforce laws targeted at these encampments: [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-garcetti- homeles...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-garcetti- homeless-20150630-story.html) ~~~ pizza Look...maybe you have a low opinion of him.. maybe you see him as slacking off from his Mayorly duties or decrees or whatever he should, in your eyes, be doing, fine... and I'm sorry for this wall of text but I just cannot allow a comment like that to not bear my scrutiny. But just the !!insane!! rate of growth of the homeless in _the last two years alone_ completely changes the game. It appears that, no matter where you look, all throughout the city of Angels is that housing is fucked expensive and in fucked supply. > The startling jump in homelessness affected every significant demographic > group, including youth, families, veterans and the chronically homeless, > according to the report. Homeless officials and political leaders pointed to > steadily rising housing costs and stagnant incomes as the underlying cause. > [0] I beseech you to be receptive to the idea that the problem goes far far far beyond simply flipping an "enforce preexisting laws" switch, or hiring more blue-suited hardasses that'll shine flashlights into the eyes of the homeless as they weather every night's accompanying total lack of guaranteed security... Your 2015 article is by Gale Holland -- now compare the urgency of her writing, from earlier in 2017. The title alone is enough to alarm the shit out of you... Headline: L.A. County homelessness jumps a 'staggering' 23% as need far outpaces housing, new count shows [0] > Even the homeless veteran population jumped in 2017, marking a backsliding > of the gains made last year by city, state and federal programs that slashed > the number of homeless veterans by a third. With the number of veterans > placed into housing slightly down, the count of 4,828 homeless veterans was > up ___ 57%. __ (emphasis mine, but holy shit!) > “There's no sugarcoating the bad news,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said > at a news conference Wednesday where the Los Angeles Homeless Services > Authority released its report. “We can’t let rents double every year. I was > particularly disappointed to see veteran numbers go up.” > Garcetti called homelessness a problem that has persisted “through > administrations, through recessions,” adding, “Our city is in the midst of > an extraordinary homelessness crisis that needs an extraordinary response. > These men, these women, these children are our neighbors.” > The Homeless Services Authority linked the worsening problem to the economic > stress on renters in the Los Angeles area. More than 2 million households in > L.A. and Orange counties have housing costs that exceed 30% of income, > according to data from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies > included in the report. > According to the nonprofit California Housing Partnership Corp., median > rent, adjusted for inflation, increased more than 30% from 2000 to 2015, > while the median income was flat. \-- Assume a plain-Jane compound interest growth formula (it's just a sketch, right?), use the rule of 72 with that 23% figure, and bam -- if that's how the process plays out, 3 years will be all it takes to double the number of people out on the street. That can't just be a linear issue of the number in bad situations either - it seems like super-linear complexity headache, with respect to the n = the growing number of disenfranchised people.. \- How will you pay for the massive influx of cops necessary to address the doubled homeless population? \- What about the impact on the small businesses or cafes or corner markets and shit that will have a slowly-but-surely drying up of customers? \- Add to that, the ensuing evaporation of taxes funding the city.. \- How much you wanna bet we won't have saved up enough to not hurt ourselves in the process of splurging on the whole 2028 Olympics extrava-freakin-ganza. Surely it'll be one of those hyper-spectacular moments in this boring dystopia of ours :) \-- And, once again, because it damn well bears worth repeating -- _LA 's homeless population jumped by 23%... IN THE LAST YEAR ALONE_. AND _The year prior had a 20% growth rate!!!!!_ And when they go homeless, it's more often the case of a gradual, year-long descent because of inability to pay, rather than a pinpoint-able, spontaneous event that made your home suddenly unlivable or irretrievable. Look up the ancient Latin concept of the exiled man, _homo saracer_ \- a man whose life is worth so little that he may be murdered, freely and without any and all repercussion. Someone who is totally bereft of even being empathized with... How can it be that the society can discard people to such _tsunamic_ extent that we barely bat an eye at the fact that these slums share zip codes with the ultra rich and yet live worlds apart. Right at this very moment you are reading this sentence, dozens of wanderers - blacks, whites, latinos, disabled, boys, girls - extremely cautiously stepping along the highway. Petrified by how instantly their bones could be crushed into dust when you share a lane with any of the hundred thousand or so totally fucking insane drivers that live around here. To live like a dog, to be defenselessly curled up to rest their weary souls. To have nowhere to go except for the side of the road where tipsy assholes toss their empty sodas out their passenger side windows... [0] [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless- count-2...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless- count-20170530-story.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sign cell unlock petition,get free ATT iPhone unlock. No strings, for real. - Exoseq http://www.signunlockpetition.com ====== jgeorge Legit? Probably so but I'm always wary. Anyone else done this?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Boxee wants a buyer - forgot_password http://allthingsd.com/20130613/boxee-wants-a-big-round-or-a-buyer/ ====== joaoyc After the boxee box fiasco, no wonder sales are going down hill on the new device. ------ forgot_password In situations like this, do startup founders leak the word that they want a buyer? It seems like they wanted to put the word out there, but doesn't that kill their leverage in acq discussions?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Updates to eBay User Agreement (agreement to Arbitration unless you opt out) - SonicSoul http://announcements.ebay.com/2012/08/updates-to-the-ebay-user-agreement-and-privacy-policy-2/ ====== SonicSoul I got this agreement update in my email today, but there is no mention how to opt out of below. _"Unless you opt-out: (1) you will only be permitted to pursue claims against eBay on an individual basis, not as part of any class or representative action or proceeding and (2) you will only be permitted to seek relief (including monetary, injunctive, and declaratory relief) on an individual basis"_ is this standard? ~~~ nrlucas Standard not to mention it? Not sure. But it's referenced in other places of the user agreement, see below. Pretty much exactly like the pay-pal opt-out. Opt-Out Procedure IF YOU ARE A NEW EBAY USER, YOU CAN CHOOSE TO REJECT THIS AGREEMENT TO ARBITRATE ("OPT-OUT") BY MAILING US A WRITTEN OPT-OUT NOTICE ("OPT-OUT NOTICE"). THE OPT-OUT NOTICE MUST BE POSTMARKED NO LATER THAN 30 DAYS AFTER THE DATE YOU ACCEPT THE USER AGREEMENT FOR THE FIRST TIME. YOU MUST MAIL THE OPT-OUT NOTICE TO EBAY INC., ATTN: LITIGATION DEPARTMENT, 173 WEST ELECTION ROAD, DRAPER, UT 84020. (from, <http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement.html>)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to Self Study Deep Learning? - mtsx How can I teach myself deep learning? Is it possible to learn such a complex subject without attending to uni? What would be the best resources? ====== mtsx HI [https://wordpress.org/plugins/one-click-read- more/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/one-click-read-more/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are scientifically valid ways maximize my life expectancy? - mxschumacher Fasting? Blood transfusions? Avoiding UV-radiation, smoking alcohol? A plant based diet? Regular exercise? High mental activity?<p>Ignoring genetic predispositions and accidental death, how can I maximize my life expectancy? Bonus points for peer reviewed scientific sources ====== rthomas6 Here are some scientifically valid answers that are more interesting. * Restrict calories to 30% less than you want to eat. ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19075044](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19075044)) * Starve your father when he was a child. ([https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,195...](https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1952313-1,00.html)) * Don't sit down very much. ([http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/02/19/27946075...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/02/19/279460759/sit-more-and-youre-more-likely-to-be-disabled-after-age-60)) * Don't take Prilosec/Nexium/Prevecaid. ([http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heartburn-drugs-proton-pump-inhi...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heartburn-drugs-proton-pump-inhibitors-ppi-risks-prilosec-nexium-prevacid/)) ~~~ mars4rp I am going to have a short life then :) I better enjoy it! ------ Mz 1\. Eat right. 2\. Exercise, preferably strenuously and several times per week. I am not going to back that up with sources. It is easily googled and routinely ignored by people wanting fancy, quick fixes with a lot of flash. Re accidental death: I paid accident claims for over five years. Very few of the claims I paid were genuinely "Wrong time, wrong place. Shit happens." Not counting people gaming the system, even most legitimate claims had an element of "Why the fuck were you doing that to begin with???" In some cases, this element was glaring enough to make the claim deniable under the list of provisos that boiled down to "If you are doing something egregiously stupid and dangerous, we won't cover your so-called accident when this results in injury or death." Some basics you probably already know: Do not drink or do recreational drugs. If you do choose to drink or drug, arrange ahead of time to do so under safe circumstances. Follow the safety instructions on medication or dangerous equipment. Don't make an exception "just this one time." Do not consistently be a horrible, horrible asshole to people. (I paid a claim where that basically got someone shot.) If you own guns, dangerous equipment, etc, strictly follow safety practices. No exceptions. ~~~ miguelrochefort > 1\. Eat right. That doesn't meat anything. ~~~ rayj Yes it does. Heres a start. [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy- eating-...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating- plate/) ------ PaulHoule Blood transfusions are pretty dangerous. Isaac Asimov died of AIDS thanks to blood transfusions after cardiac bypass surgery, and even though there is better surveillance of the blood supply there will always be new infectious agents, see [http://www.nature.com/nrneurol/journal/v2/n6/full/ncpneuro02...](http://www.nature.com/nrneurol/journal/v2/n6/full/ncpneuro0214.html) ~~~ mxschumacher I mentioned it because of this recent article: [https://www.economist.com/news/science-and- technology/217249...](https://www.economist.com/news/science-and- technology/21724967-might-be-true-people-too-blood-young-animals-can- revitalise-old) ------ tyrw HN is probably the wrong forum for health advice, as it's not really something you'd "hack". Your best bets are mostly mundane according to the large, peer- reviewed studies that have been done, and you could summarize them as: * Eat a balanced diet, avoiding excess * Exercise regularly, avoiding excess * Don't smoke * Don't drink more than a glass of alcohol each day, if at all * Cross your fingers and hope for the best ~~~ blacksmith_tb I am skeptical many people could manage to exercise to 'excess', a little digging online suggests there isn't much evidence[1] there's a real danger, with the possible exception of some competitive athletes - one example that comes to mind is Graeme Obree[2] 1: [https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/can-you-get-too- mu...](https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/can-you-get-too-much- exercise/) 2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree#Taking_the_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree#Taking_the_record) ~~~ freebish It depends on your definition of "excess", I guess. If you work out in the cardio section of any gym, you will eventually see regulars who are hitting some machines very hard, with a visual appearance of anorexia. I'm sure some of those people were just skinny, but not all of them. It's not my role, as a fellow gym member, to recommend psychiatric help. But heavens knows I thought it, more than once. In addition, gyms are built around luring in people while assuming that a large percentage of them will quickly stop attending. Some of the drop-off is just from laziness or dislike of exercise. But some of the drop-off is from going too hard, too fast, resulting in injury, especially for first-time weightlifters. ~~~ blacksmith_tb That's fair, I wasn't considering psychological problems (it would remain to be seen if borderline-OCD exercising had negative or positive physical effects, though). Along similar lines there's 'bigorexia'[1] 1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_dysmorphia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_dysmorphia) ------ lordCarbonFiber On the other side of the question: why do you want to increase/maximize life expectancy? I'd focus on living a fulfilling life now, as opposed to trying to squeeze out a few more years after your body has started to fall apart. ~~~ jf22 The alternative approach is to maintain a healthy lifestyle so those last 10 years can be as fulfilling as possible. This video inspired me: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo6QNU8kHxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo6QNU8kHxI) ~~~ mxschumacher also: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUmp67YDlHY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUmp67YDlHY) ------ awkwarddaturtle Just a caveat. A lot of these scientific studies tend to be funded by industries with an agenda. So I'd take scientific sources with a grain of salt. Every other day there is a study saying coffee is good for your heart, tea is good for your liver, so on and so forth. Though most scientific publications are "peer reviewed", most of them are not "peer replicated". [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713953) As sad as it is, a significant portion of the published scientific material are false or can't be replicated. I suppose peer reviewed scientific articles are better than old wives' tales but not by much. > smoking alcohol? A plant based diet? Regular exercise? High mental activity? Well according to some people, moderate drinking can reduce risk of heart attack by 30%. But who knows how valid those studies are. [http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/21/health/wine-healthy-food- draye...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/21/health/wine-healthy-food- drayer/index.html) ~~~ Graziano_M I'd avoid taking it with a grain of salt... that'll kill ya. ------ db48x The problem with your question is that we can deal only with averages and statistics rather than with individuals. We might find that X increases the average lifespan of humans by 10 years, but that's no guarantee that it will help any particular individual human at all. That said, I suggest jogging regularly; just don't get hit by a bus. ~~~ mxschumacher Also: which datapoints would you need to give pointed advice? ~~~ Gregaros Medicine knows much, much less than it _ought_ to know (from the perspective of hard limits to current knowledge.) ~~~ gozur88 Studying this kind of stuff is difficult since it depends almost entirely on surveys. ------ jerrylives I'm 65 and still coding. My secret is to vape weed every day, which I've been doing since my late twenties when my then boyfriend showed me how to "hot knife" hash. ~~~ mxschumacher 65 is a good start, I'd like to take aim at 100+ ~~~ jerrylives I'll let you know in a few ------ Top19 Look at the book "How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Greger. His two big things were cruciferous vegetables, so mainly brocolli, and the Indian spice turmeric. He hammered away at the importance of these two items across 500+ pages. ------ irremediable From my understanding of general health evidence, your best bet is: * Avoid smoking and excessive drinking (excess is easier to reach than you think!). * Eat a healthy diet (not too many calories, not too many carbs, not too much saturated fat -- in order of descending importance). * Get regular exercise. Aerobic and anaerobic, plus flexibility. You want to be supple, strong and healthy. * Avoid occupational hazards -- for the HN crowd, probably eye problems and posture problems. Just taking regular breaks from the screen will go a long way here. * Make sure you get good healthcare, especially when you're older (60+). * Have good genetics. (Sorry, not much you can choose about this one.) ~~~ miguelrochefort What's wrong with saturated fat? ~~~ irremediable I put this last in that bullet, because IMO its likely effect size is smaller. Basically, there have been a number of studies looking at the health effects of sat fats (especially cardiovascular health) and they've had mixed findings. But the overall recommendation, from various health organisations and the authors of systematic reviews, is that Western diets should probably cut down on sat fats, even if just as a precaution. ------ SirLJ I think it is about the quality of life, otherwise you might not live 100 years, but you might feel like it... My recepie is enjoy everything in moderation and this includes single malt and cohibas ~~~ mxschumacher also, who knows whether putting the system under some stress (sipping cohibas) doesn't have some positive effect in an antifragile sense. I agree with this notion, my practical solution to this is to not worry about drinking moderately in social situations, because it makes many of them more enjoyable ------ paulcole Do you want to maximize your life expectancy or figure out a balance of how to achieve a life that's as enjoyable as possible for as long as possible. A bunch of shitty years at the end really aren't likely worth it. But dying at 40 from partying too hard isn't likely worth it either. ~~~ mxschumacher if that really is a tradeoff (I suspect it is not) - I want to maximize the time in great health. ------ sotojuan Exercise and fitness in general has worked for a while. I know 75 year olds that have exercised their whole lives and others who haven't - completely different. Sure, it's not guaranteed but I think we can all agree that it's a good start. ------ vajrapani666 I'm really surprised intermittent fasting hasn't been mentioned. I've found eating one meal/day or restricting eating to a 3 hour window to be very beneficial for my energy levels, focus, time, and financial habits. I'll probably live longer too, > In recent studies conducted in overweight humans, caloric restriction has > been shown to improve a number of health outcomes including reducing several > cardiac risk factors (Fontana et al., 2004, 2007; Lefevre et al., 2009), > improving insulin-sensitivity (Larson-Meyer et al., 2006), and enhancing > mitochondrial function (Civitarese et al., 2007). Additionally, prolonged > caloric restriction has also been found to reduce oxidative damage to both > DNA (Heilbronn and Ravussin, 2003; Heilbronn et al., 2006; Hofer et al., > 2008) and RNA, as assessed through white blood cells (Hofer et al., 2008). > Thus, findings of initial human clinical trials appear to support the > promise of caloric restriction demonstrated in animal studies, at least in > overweight adults. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622429/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622429/) > In this review article we describe evidence suggesting that two dietary > interventions, caloric restriction (CR) and intermittent fasting (IF), can > prolong the health-span of the nervous system by impinging upon fundamental > metabolic and cellular signaling pathways that regulate life-span. CR and IF > affect energy and oxygen radical metabolism, and cellular stress response > systems, in ways that protect neurons against genetic and environmental > factors to which they would otherwise succumb during aging. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3919445/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3919445/) > The most common eating pattern in modern societies, three meals plus snacks > every day, is abnormal from an evolutionary perspective. Emerging findings > from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that intermittent > energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health > indicators and counteract disease processes. [http://www.pnas.org/content/111/47/16647.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/111/47/16647.full) One last study, separate because this is on rats. > Among the 137 rats, the male rat which lived the longest died at 1057 days > and the oldest female died at 1073 days. Both rats fasted for 1 day in 2, > but the optimum amount of fasting was on the average 1 day in 3. With this > amount of fasting, the life span of the males was increased by 20 per cent, > and that of the females by 15 per cent., but the life span of the fasted > males just reached the life span of the female controls. Pre-experimental > nutritional conditions and genetic factors had a considerable influence on > any specific life span. There was a high degree of genetic uniformity in > spite of different regimes of feeding and fasting. [http://jn.nutrition.org/content/31/3/363.extract](http://jn.nutrition.org/content/31/3/363.extract) ~~~ atmosx Can you elaborate on the eating habits you are proposing? What/how do you eat in a week? ~~~ vajrapani666 I just eat in a 3 hour window starting at 6pm every weekday. I sometimes do this on weekends as well. If you're curious what I eat in that window, it's mostly non-starch based vegetables, tofu, and paneer. ------ FullMtlAlcoholc Besides restricting calories, limiting intake of orocessed foods, and exercising, maintain healthy social relationships and maintain a level of curiosity about the world ~~~ mxschumacher feel like the latter two are counter intuitive (how could one's drive possibly impact biological life?) but possibly true (some data would be interesting here) ~~~ FullMtlAlcoholc > (how could one's drive possibly impact biological life? There's a wealth of literature on these topics, but I'll leave this here: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26729882](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26729882) It shouldn't be mysterious, your outlook and mood determine your behaviors. However, it goes deeper than that. As for maintaining a level of curiosity, think of the brain as a muscle. Inactivity will cause it to atrophy while exercising it will make it more robust and perhaps help prevent dementia. Our thoughts have a biological basis and like any complex, chaotic system, small changes in one area can lead to large changes elsewhere. The human brain is literally the nerve center of our body and among its many functions are communicating, coordinating and regulating the organs and bodily functions. Particularly, it's in "control" of the endocrine (hormone) and lymph (immune) systems. Consider this: Has thinking about your own mortality made you feel depressed? That's an example of your cortex influencing your limbic system. Have you ever seen or read anything that triggered moral disgust? The part of the brain responsible for making us gag when we eat spoiled food is activated when we find something morally objectionable or unfamiliar. Has thinking about an upcoming deadline caused such anxiety that you feel pain in your chest or become short of breath? As a more apt answer to your question, consider the scenario of a drug addict purchasing their narcotic of choice. The anticipation they experience right before doing their drug is almost as powerful as taking the drug itself. People who do stimulants feel the need to go #2 right before doing the drug. ------ wcummings Smoke alcohol? What? ------ JPLeRouzic There is an efficient way to maximize life expectancy, it does not involve taking risks with proposals bordering snake oil and it minimizes the medical knowledge you must acquire: Employ at every time three personal high profile doctors at a salary far above what they could expect, and fire one of them each year. The choice of who is fired is based on written proposals by each of them. Having three doctors makes it possible to use majority logic. Make sure that two of them do not collude. ~~~ drakonka > Make sure that two of them do not collude. How? This alone would have the potential to bring down the entire plan even if someone did have the money to hire three doctors. ~~~ JPLeRouzic >> How? That is why they have to write a proposal, it could be used to get advice from someone else. Another possibility is to use a more complicated algorithm (like, if two doctors gave the same advice last year, one of them should leave this year). >> This alone ... That is why I mentioned it. The question was about "scientifically valid ways to maximize life", my assumption is that only one (or more) doctor could provide a valid advice, I also assumed the parent was not interested in trivial answers on an Internet forum. HN being what it is I supposed some clever and funny algorithm would do the job (I was clearly wrong). >> even if someone did have the money... I do not get this part, hiring three doctors is not a big business for companies. Even if you limit it to individuals, you can look at other parts of the world, for example in India doctors start at $20,000 per year. Hungarian doctors earn roughly one tenth of what a western European doctor earns [0], etc... [0] [http://budapestbeacon.com/public-policy/hungarian-health- car...](http://budapestbeacon.com/public-policy/hungarian-health-care-workers- earn-110th-that-of-their-western-counterparts/20371)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: CodeceptJS – end to end testing framework for Node with synchronous API - davert http://codecept.io ====== MrSnoozles Awesome. Loving Codeception for PHP. Very nice to see it coming to node. ------ kaflan Coll ------ kaflan cool	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Beanstalk launches Mercurial support - alexknowshtml http://blog.beanstalkapp.com/post/21854530710/introducing-mercurial-repositories-and-svn-1-7-coming ====== alexknowshtml As of today we have native support for SVN, Git, and Hg. We've also open sourced the Ruby API we wrote for Mercuiral: <https://github.com/isabanin/mercurial-ruby> Enjoy!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Survival of the Wrongest - anupj http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/survival_of_the_wrongest.php?page=all&print=true ====== JohnsonB I can't speak for the rest of the article, but this guy's take on low carb diets is a bit...odd: >Unfortunately, it’s an approach [Low carb diets] that leaves the vast majority of frontline obesity experts gritting their teeth, because while the strategy sometimes appears to hold up in studies, in the real world such dieters are rarely able to keep the weight off—to say nothing of the potential health risks of eating too much fat. So he's saying that studies do support low carb diets having high efficacy rates (for weight loss), but "in the real world" this doesn't pan out. What is this unbiased, statistically significant source of data on "the real world" that he's relying on? He's ruled out studies, and it's obviously not anecdotes because that would be even worse. That basically just leaves intuition. He then goes on to cite the risks of a high protein diet (while linking it as high fat only) by linking to a WebMD article which appears to be written by an unnamed author who has poorly collated the research on the issue and left out major advances of our understanding of issues like cholesterol levels. ~~~ anonymous I think he means that they work under controlled conditions, but it's hard to replicate them in the real world environment. Can't go to most restaurants, can't make a lot of dishes, can't do social gatherings, definitely need to cook yourself everything you eat, and so on. ~~~ JohnsonB That applies to any diet though, if the advice is good, but people don't follow it, it's not the fault of the diet. The point is he is singling out low carb diets as if it's the diet itself that is at fault, not just the common problem of people not following through on a diet regimen. ~~~ rafcavallaro It doesn't apply to any diet. For example, a simple caloric restriction diet might simply require that you leave half of everything you're served on your plate and never have seconds. This would allow you to eat anything in any social context, just not as much. A low carb diet would require you to forego the cake and ice cream entirely at your own child's birthday, etc. ~~~ Snoptic Having a bite of cake is still low carb. ------ shokwave It's all well and noble to say "health journalism is flawed, everything is breathlessly reported as a breakthrough", but when you put Tara Parker-Pope and Gary Taubes in the same category, you're committing more of the same mistakes. There's nothing noble at all in shooting down _all_ of health journalism. He goes on to say: "Worse still, health journalists are taking advantage of the wrongness problem. Presented with a range of conflicting findings for almost any interesting question, reporters are free to pick those that back up their preferred thesis." It appears that this author's preferred thesis is that when presented with conflicting evidence, one should throw one's hands up in despair and do whatever you want ("apply common sense liberally"), instead of some kind of analysis of the evidence to find which side of the conflict is more reliable. ------ tokenadult The previous submission of the canonical URL <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5019442> received no discussion, but I think that's too bad, and I would love to see discussion of this interesting article begin here. ------ jisaacstone The problem with personal health news is that is is never news. A single study that contradicts conventional wisdom or purports a new finding is not meant to be digested by the general public. Ideally such a study would be published in a medical journal, and other researchers would then perform studies to corroborate or disprove the original; After a sufficient amount of evidence is gather a systematic review would be published, and the results of that would be distributed to doctors and health advice reporters, who would present the information to the general public in a clear, unified and easy-to-understand manner. In a perfect world. The reporting of every study only leads the general public to believe that nothing is certain (because dissenting views are published) and not take any of the advice seriously. It is almost as bad as politics. ~~~ tbrownaw _Ideally such a study would be published in a medical journal, and other researchers would then perform studies to corroborate or disprove the original; After a sufficient amount of evidence is gather a systematic review would be published, and the results of that would be distributed to doctors and health advice reporters, who would present the information to the general public in a clear, unified and easy-to-understand manner._ Ideally everyone would be rational, and honest, and have aligned interests, and trust eachother enough to all outsource their critical thinking to experts. Except... that sounds quite boring and I rather like being a somewhat-independent individual instead of a single-purpose cell in a larger collective organism/society. _The reporting of every study only leads the general public to believe that nothing is certain (because dissenting views are published) and not take any of the advice seriously._ Since things are in fact not certain, I would think this is a good thing? ------ rm999 I think this is an important article for the HN crowd. Educated STEM people usually have a strong devotion to science, but science very often fails at revealing the truth (dangerously, in a misleading manner). The article points out the problem isn't malice or incompetence, it's bad expectations. To me, a critical analysis of research is often more valuable than the research itself. ~~~ jkubicek > To me, a critical analysis of research is often more valuable than the > research itself. Critical analysis of research _is_ science. I'm perpetually frustrated with articles like this that seem to portray science as a failure by citing faulty studies, ignoring the fact that everything is working as it should. ~~~ jkubicek It bothers me to no end when people discuss "science" as if it were just one of many options available. Science is the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of truth is science. There are no alternatives. ~~~ tedunangst Science is a means of pursuing the truth. People who read tea leaves also believe they're pursuing the truth, but nobody would say that's science. ------ breadbox Ben Goldacre's recent book "Bad Pharma" is all about how easy it is for pharmaceutical research to go astray (and/or be led astray). I would recommend it for anyone interested in the details of this thorny subject. ------ csense If a p-value of .05 means a study's results are significant, then 20% of studies will arrive at an incorrect conclusion through chance! If counterintuitive conclusions make interesting articles, but negative results are somewhat boring even to professional scientists, is it any real surprise that the end result is a steady stream of dubious advice? This argument was shamelessly paraphrased from XKCD [1]. [1] <http://xkcd.com/882/>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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