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Why the world's biggest military keeps losing wars - Thevet http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/why_the_worlds_biggest_military_keeps_losing_wars ====== orbifold Most of those conflicts are a pretense to funnel trillions of dollars into the economy, but almost always also a fight to maintain spheres of influence. This was certainly true for the Vietnam war, where above all a communist Indonesia had to be avoided, but also obviously for any conflict in the Middle east. What I find worrying is that the War on Terror is a poor substitute for the Cold War. The enemy is technologically unsophisticated, so there is no chance of a sputnik shock, no real competition to gain the upper hand technologically and therefore potentially less incentive to use the vast resources of the military to fund high technology research as it was the case during the Cold War. Moreover the technology developed to "hunt terrorists" can be turned against the population much more easily than the rockets, nuclear weapons and computer systems of the past. ~~~ wahsd You aren't quite hitting the nail on the head. It's not about funneling money into the economy, it's about manipulating the systems of governance to make theft of public resources and money tenable. It's the same reason that we have predictable "unpredictable" "bubbles" in the economy and it is why we start wards who's sole purpose is justification to steal public money for private gains. In many ways, there is even a disincentive to winning a war or military conflict at all. Imagine if we had responded to the 9/11 attacks in a smart manner; it would have cost maybe upper double digit millions of dollars to apprehend or kill OBL, but going into Afghanistan like buffoon cost us no less than $1,000,000,000,000.00 in direct expenditures and probably about another trillion in opportunity cost and indirect costs. THAT's the name of the game. Stealing public money to enrich private individuals. As long as there is an incentive to manipulate America into blowing our money and efforts on military boondoggles, we will do exactly that. ~~~ bduerst Could you elaborate on why it's theft? Your comment didn't really explain it other than saying the Afghanistan war could have been cheaper. ~~~ noelwelsh Were does the US military budget money get spent? A small portion goes on wages, but every soldier needs equipment, food, and requires infrastructure. This is mostly provided by private companies. "Defence" companies are in the top lobbyists by expenditure, at about $200M each per year. They lobby hard to get the lucrative contracts to provide all the above and more (e.g. the F-35 program). Who pays for all this? The government of course. And where does the government get its money? The tax payers. I.e. the public. So the reasoning goes that the industrial military complex exists to transfer money from the public, via the government, to private companies. ~~~ cgearhart See the table on page one of chapter 5 (page 51 in the pdf) of [http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudge...](http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2015/fy2015_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf) Actual expenses in 2012 show that military pay and benefits accounts for 34.6% of the DoD budget, with total pay and benefits (including civilian) accounting for 47.8%. According to a CBO report I read in 2010, the growth in personnel costs for the military was one of the biggest concerns for long term budget planning. The _vast_ majority of the military servicemen costs are due to the cost of providing healthcare, because the military isn't exempt or immune to the cost growth experienced in that sector. As an additional aside, expected outlays for the post-9/11 GI bill are much higher than initial estimates because the cost of college has grown so much and the benefits are transferrable. ~~~ noelwelsh Thanks for linking to that. I tried searching for an exact figure and couldn't find one. ------ dreamweapon _One desert night on a Marine base outside Basra, I chatted with an Egyptian interpreter hired by the US military. Knowing that Cairene Arabic is vastly different from that of Southern Iraq, I asked him if he had any trouble understanding the local dialect. He shook his head. “I have no idea what they are saying. I have a much easier time understanding you.” His English was excellent, which is presumably why he got the job, but his comprehension of Basrawi Arabic was almost nonexistent. But Marine officers, who inevitably spoke no Arabic, depended on him to explain what the locals were trying to tell them. Since the interpreter just made up what he thought his bosses wanted to hear, the Marines were operating with negative intelligence._ As good a synopsis of the last 60 years of this country's foreign policy, as any. ~~~ stevenjohns Both of them - the Egyptians and the Basrawis - are able to communicate without issue using Modern Standard Arabic, and worse comes to worse, the Basrawis wouldn't have much problem to emulate the Egyptian accent (almost all of the TV dramas, films, actors and music is in a Lebanese and Egyptian accent, so pretty much every Iraqi living in Iraq would have no issue with it). It would never reach a point where they can't communicate with each other. The paragraph itself seems slightly misleading or enhanced for dramatic effect. If this situation did actually take place as claimed, it's likely that the locals were intentionally trying to confuse the interpreter. ~~~ nayefc Also to add: any Arab will pick up any other local dialect/accent pretty quickly as well. I highly, highly doubt any Egyptian living in Iraq for a period of time would not be able to pick up the dialect rather quickly. ~~~ dreamweapon _I highly, highly doubt any Egyptian living in Iraq for a period of time would not be able to pick up the dialect rather quickly._ Except when you're working for an occupying military force, you're not really "living" in the country you're occupying. Unless you're native, you're living on a military base -- i.e. with the occupiers, and not with the locals. Which is one of many, many reasons why these kinds of military operations tend not to work so well. ------ smacktoward The "don’t invade a country if you are too lazy to learn the language" point is particularly telling. When the post-9/11 wars started, I thought one of the highest priorities would be to get combat units to a point where they didn't need external interpreters for the regions they were going to be operating in. An interpreter is a massively dangerous potential point of failure -- he could be incompetent, as the article suggests, or worse, he could be actively conspiring with the enemy to tip them off about your movements, feed you misleading info and make you look bad to the locals. If you can't speak at least the rudiments of the language yourself, you have no way of knowing. But after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, American combat units appear to be just as dependent on external interpreters as they were going in. I suspect part of the reason for this that the article doesn't touch on is the idea of the rotation. Combat units don't see themselves as being stationed in Iraq "for the duration," but as units that happen to be in Iraq today but could be in Afghanistan tomorrow and Korea the day after that. What's the benefit of learning Pashto today if you're leaving Afghanistan in three months and may never rotate back there again? ~~~ Htsthbjig It is not just the language. It is the culture. Americans live in their own isolated world. If you understand the culture you don't need to make the war or could reduce it to the minimum. E.g. In the first Gulf war the Americans told the population to go against Saddam because they were to enter Iraq. A significant part of the people did. But Americans left betraying those who had supported them. Repression by Sadam was terrible, over a million people died. Americans couldn't care less about them. This action alone meant USA was never going to be trusted again in Iraq because families don't forget the betrayal, and never will until the widow of the man who was tortured and killed for helping Americans is alive. Another example is how the Americans burned poppy fields in Afghanistan while not replacing it with anything that could make the families live. Helping people growing food puts families on your side. I had been in safe places of Afganistan and Iraq. The people there prefer non Americans like British army because they have much more experience helping native communities, and understand their culture much better. ~~~ smacktoward I actually agree with this sentiment, but learning the local language is the best first step to learning the local culture. It's much, much harder to really understand how people live without first understanding how they talk to each other. ~~~ bkmartin And I think that people really underestimate how hard it is to learn these languages well. It can take years of immersion to be fully fluent to where communicating really really effective. I would think that we would have jobs in our military that would be responsible for learning languages from all kinds of places around the world, should we need to be there. ~~~ smacktoward The Army, at least, appears to already have a MOS for interpreters/translators: [http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse- career-and-job...](http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-career-and- job-categories/intelligence-and-combat-support/interpreter-translator.html) But they clearly either don't have enough people in that MOS or have enough but specializing in the wrong languages, if frontline units still need to rely on hired translators. ~~~ blister The Defense Language Institute has massive failure rates for students in the Cat 5 languages. Most of these courses are also at least a year long, if not more. They would probably have to increase the overall size of that facility 20-fold to produce enough linguists annually to have qualified linguists embedded in every unit. The other big problem is that the people that (traditionally) do best in a linguistics MOS are usually highly intelligent and work well in an intelligence type of career field. Most of these would not do well in a battle-hardened infantry unit. ~~~ bkmartin There has to be enough people in our ranks with enough intelligence to learn these languages. You don't have to be the best linguist, just a capable one that is willing to work hard. Not to mention that every combat troop should probably be getting at least cursory training in the local language as part of their on going training when not out in the field engaged in combat. Our soldiers are not stupid, and if we treat them like the intelligent and invaluable human beings that they are then I think we might see far more success that we can even imagine. Imagine if you could understand the locals even 20% of the time vs our current nearly 0% for most units. How much more effective would we be in not only our intelligence in the field, but being able to convey our support for them and helping to relate to the local population. ~~~ jwhitlark It's not intelligence, but motivation that line units lack, in my experience. People who volunteer for the front line are more interested in solving problems with firepower than more peaceful interactions. This sort of observation led to a suggestion that the American military should be divided into a Leviathan part and a System Administrator part, an idea I think is worth considering. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map) for more. ------ pluma The problem is that most "wars" the US has been involved in across the recent decades weren't conventional wars, even when the US was treating them as if they were. The ongoing "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan (which miraculously have been "ended" unilaterally by the US many times over) aren't wars. They're garrisons. Even ISIS (ISIL?) isn't a conventional enemy, despite having tanks. These aren't nation states and those aren't, for the most part, soldiers. The reason the "War on Terror" is still treated as a war is that there is no reason not to. The article explains that quite nicely. ~~~ adam77 [The reason the "War on Terror" is still treated as a war...] ...is for its legal status (empowering the US executive to carry out certain actions it otherwise couldn't). A number of laws were changed/reinterpreted following 9/11 with respect to what constitutes war and how it may be implemented. ~~~ LordKano None of the legal mechanisms of war apply to what the US is doing in the middle-east. Congress has authorized certain actions but there has been no declaration of war. ~~~ adam77 I think technically the US is 'at war' with certain terrorist groups, allowing certain tools of war to be employed (esp. in the middle east). Something along the lines of: "In times of war... * the battlefield is wherever the enemy is (just about anywhere you can draw a link to terrorist activity); * the battlefield may be 'prepared' (drone strikes, assassinations, covert ops, etc). ~~~ LordKano We have allowed the word "War" to be bastardized in everyday usage with things like "The War on Drugs" or "The War on Poverty" and now the "War on Terror" but "War" is something very specific. The United States of America is not at "War" unless there is a Declaration of War from the Congress. The Congress of the United States of America has not declared war in over 70 years. It's not likely to happen unless this country is facing a very real, existential threat. Declaring war is like flipping a switch on our Constitutional and economic systems. ~~~ dragonwriter > The United States of America is not at "War" unless there is a Declaration > of War from the Congress. The Constitution gives the Congress the power to declare war, but the extension of that to "war doesn't exist unless Congress declares it" is reading something into the Constitution which is not expressly there, and which there is a fairly good historical argument (which every Supreme Court case to take up the issue, starting fairly early on in the Republic, also sided with) is not at all intended. > The Congress of the United States of America has not declared war in over 70 > years. This is not true; just as Congress doesn't have to use magic words when it invokes, say, its interstate commerce power, or its taxation power, neither does it when it choses to exercise its power to declare war; acts of Congress like the 2001 "9/11 AUMF" and the 2003 "Iraq AUMF" are both examples of exercises of the power to declare war (in both cases, declarations made conditional on executive acts.) > Declaring war is like flipping a switch on our Constitutional and economic > systems. Declaring war is _not_ like flipping a switch on the Constitution. Nor the economic system, really, though _separate_ radical acts in the economic arena may be _premised_ on the existence of a state of war. ------ voidlogic I think many of the points raise are very valid areas of improvement, for example: "Learn the Language"; Others are products of politician reality: "Fear of Casualties". But I think the premise: "the World’s Biggest Military Keeps Losing Wars", is wrong. 1\. Conventional forces have trouble wining asymmetrical conflicts unless they are allowed to wage total war (which is usually precluded by modern political/moral concerns). Nothing new here- the Romans had experience with this. 1.A Note the single "win" on the list of post-Korea conflicts was the first Gulf War, a conventional conflict. 1.B It is arguable that the U.S. is actually better than most other conventional militaries at asymmetrical warfare: [http://www.warriorlodge.com/blogs/news/16298760-a-french- sol...](http://www.warriorlodge.com/blogs/news/16298760-a-french-soldiers- view-of-us-soldiers-in-afghanistan), however that may just be a product of being better at conventional warfare improving overall fitness. 2\. "Winning" define this? Winning means very different things in total war vs. occupation/garrison/nation building actions. While its fair to say the U.S. lost Vietnam, I think its fair to say the U.S. won in Iraq and Afghanistan as they are now governed by friendly democracies... Military action is just a way of attempting to physically impose political will- If a nation's military helps the leaders reach _their_ goals, it won. ~~~ quanticle >I think its fair to say the U.S. won in Iraq and Afghanistan as they are now governed by friendly democracies... I dispute that Iraq is governed by a friendly democracy. Iraq, presently is largely split between the Islamic State and the post-Saddam regime currently headed by Haider El-Abadi. Neither is especially friendly towards the US at this point. Islamic State is... well, Islamic State. The Abadi administration, on the other hand, has largely fallen into the orbit of Iran, owing to their shared Shia Islam heritage. The outcome of the Iraq War reminds me of the old joke about the French and Indian War. "Who won the French and Indian war? It was the British." Likewise, "Who won the America/Iraq war? The Iranians." ~~~ ta75757 The French and Indian War wasn't the French fighting against the Indians. It was the Americans and British fighting against the French and the Indians. ------ leroy_masochist Article is much better than I thought it would be. Money quote is last sentence: "The most fundamental reason America’s huge military can’t win wars is that it doesn’t need to." He's exactly right. ------ carsongross This is a pretty shallow analysis. Bill Lind has done some deep thinking on why the US military can't win modern wars (tldr: the armed forces are a graft system, not a war system; no one has figured out how to fight non-state and semi-state wars without going full roman burn-and-crucify.) I highly recommend his articles and books, particularly to people on the left who might be initially put off by his social conservatism. ~~~ Kalium > without going full roman burn-and-crucify This is the key factor, right here. We do know how to win these wars. It just requires things we are not willing to accept. ------ wahsd The answer is that we have been goaded into seeing our military as a tool rather than an necessary and reluctant engagement for self defense, by an enemy more heinous, pernicious, and destructive than any enemy our country will ever face. The enemy within and in our midst, the military services cabal that does not care whether American wins or looses, as long as we are engaged in or agitating and preparing for war and the money flows. If anyone had any interest in preventing our warmongering, they would look at changing the incentive structure that surges towards war and death and killing and supporting despotic foreign dictators and shelters horrible people who do horrible things in our own country. As long as we want to condemn foreigners while giving immunity to degenerate f!@#-ups like Rumsfeld and the whole Bush administration, there is nothing more that can be done. They should have all been thrown alive in a grinder and turned into pig feed for the high treason of deliberately and knowingly lying to America and the world and starting wars that killed Americans for no reason. We are a hollow farce if we can't apply the same Nuremberg Trial precedent to our own leaders. ~~~ maxxxxx I think this is the problem with a professional army. I bet Vietnam would have gone on for much longer if there had been only volunteers there. And the Iraq invasion would not have happened of there had been a draft. ------ netcan GWYNNE DYER: 1 April 2008 _Suppose an Arab military force was currently bringing peace and freedom to the oil-rich, violence-torn country of Texas. What would they be reading in the Arab newspapers five years after the occupation of Texas? They’d be learning about the minute doctrinal differences and the irreconcilable rivalries between Catholic Hispanics and Protestant anglos, and even between Southern Methodists and Southern Baptists. They’d all know about Texas’s long love affair with guns, explaining why Texans were killing Arab soldiers. They’d constantly be reminded that the dominant minority in east Texas is African-American, while in west Texas it is Hispanic. Everybody in the Arab world would know far more about Texas than any sane non- Texan should ever want to know — without understanding anything at all._ If you don't understand, it's dangerous to convince yourself you do. ------ matthewowen "Before Korea, America never lost a war." Really? I feel like there's a decent case for the War of 1812 (the USA attempted to seize Canada and failed). ~~~ AcerbicZero Thats a bit pedantic, as well as inaccurate. I wouldn't call any party in the War of 1812 a clear winner, as there were gains and losses of approximately equal value in the end. So depending on how you want to view the Civil War, the US was 6-0-1, or 5-0-2, until Vietnam. ~~~ matthewowen I agree: I was being pedantic, but I don't think inaccurate: there is surely some case: the USA declared war and didn't actually achieve their principal objectives. Does awarding "victory" depend upon who declares war? Surely there's some case to be made that for Britain, maintaining the status quo was a victory: unlike the USA they hadn't aimed for a change from the status quo. ------ johnnyfaehell It won both Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Both governments were overthrown, pretty quickly too which was their original goal. With Afghanistan they had a secondary goal to find Bin Laden they achieved that goal too. hat then happened was what is commonly known as peacekeeping. They then got hammered by what is commonly known as terrorist using guerrilla warfare. Even then, not like they lost. I'm all up for bashing America, but let's not bash them for not carpet bombing a bunch of civilians. ~~~ EliRivers _they had a secondary goal to find Bin Laden they achieved that goal too._ In a different country, a decade later, by completely different means, after he'd been allowed to escape Afghanistan. Hardly a rousing success. In fact, a total failure, necessitating a number of different subsequent attempts. If you fail repeatedly and then succeed once, you don't get to call the first failure a success. _What then happened was what is commonly known as peacekeeping._ No. What then happened is commonly known as alienating the local population repeatedly, losing all your popular support, becoming the laughable tool of local animosities, and in so many ways just fucking everything right up in an orgy of incompetence, aided so admirably by the British who shared many of the incompetencies, but managed to demonstrate some of that at even greater levels and still, to a large extent, refuse to accept how appallingly badly they did. Face the facts; initial invasion a success, attempt to build a nation total fucking cluster. ------ amyjess There's a difference between winning the _war_ and winning the _peace_. In Iraq, we won the war hands-down. We went in to effect regime change and bring Saddam to justice. We did exactly that. We toppled Saddam's regime, established a new one in its place, and then captured and executed the man himself. However, we lost the peace _badly_. We failed to anticipate the rebels, the influx of al-Qaeda, the sectarian civil war, the rise of ISIS, etc. ~~~ refurb Couldn't you say the same for the Vietnam War? After the Tet Offensive, North Vietnam was reeling from it's failure to achieve its military objectives (it was an absolute success politically). The US got North Vietnam to agree to a peace treaty and then left South Vietnam. Vietnamization failed and once the North Vietnamese realized the US wasn't going to help the South anymore, they just took the whole country. ------ discardorama The author makes some very good points. The British were able to control vast swaths of the world with minimal military power. They fought _smart_. I remember watching Restrepo and other similar documentaries. I come from a tribal culture too; and there were several instances where I could clearly see how the Americans were making a mistake in their dealing with the locals. Those people have been living and dying by their tribal codes for millennia, and "democracy" and "freedom" means nothing to them. Minor nitpick: it was GHW Bush who committed US troops to Somalia, just as he was leaving office, in December 1992; a nice welcoming present for Clinton. Edited: It was pappy Bush, not Dubya. Thanks @theorique :) ~~~ rhino369 >The British were able to control vast swaths of the world with minimal military power. They fought smart. The world changed. The British and French couldn't control those colonies anymore. Guerrilla insurgencies are very hard to beat. In order to win you either have to convince the people to support you, which is almost impossible as an outsider. Or you make them fear you worse than the insurgency. That is impossible under international law. But if the US really wanted Afghanistan to bend to it's will and didn't care about international law? Just carpet bomb villages that don't support you against the Taliban. Relocate tribes to reservations and resettle your supporters. Why didn't Japan and Germany have insurgencies? They were afraid of what we'd do. ~~~ rodgerd > The world changed. The British and French couldn't control those colonies > anymore. Guerrilla insurgencies are very hard to beat. In the case of Britain, they spent so much on WW I and had barely recovered by WW II. They were literally a fortnight away from having to surrender during WW II. The US played a masterful hand in helping the UK out, and the one of the post-war prices was US pressure to decolonize so the US could expand its sphere of influence. The fact the Britain was also reduced, financially, for relying on ex-colonies like New Zealand and Australia to send free food and pay down its war debts[1] meant that they didn't have much choice. Less a straight military loss - the British had plenty of experience putting down rebellions as brutally as needed, after all - and more having dropped from a superpower to a US client state. France was different, since De Gaulle had preserved a great deal more autonomy for France in the post-WW II era (hence a lot of US hostility). But France was a lot weaker as well, even if it wasn't a US client state. They did, however, hang on to more of their colonies, even in the face of persistent opposition in places like New Caledonia. [1] For sentimental reasons, not particularly well repaid with the manner of the British entry to the EU. ~~~ rhino369 Part of it was that the US signaled after WWII that it would support Western Europe, but it wouldn't help them colonize the world. The British and French were shocked (and pissed) when the US sided with Egypt and the Soviets against European colonialism. The only reason the British didn't suffer a string of horribly embarrassing loses to insurgencies is because the British just gave up after Suez. They would have had their Indochina and Algeria had they tried to keep it all. ------ lordnacho Of course the bigger your military, the more likely you are to think the next engagement will be a walkover. And because you think it will be easy, you are more likely to gamble on that marginal gain. And because the gain is only marginal, you don't want to lose any troops. And since you don't want to really bet those lives, it's harder to win. ------ jdietrich I believe it all boils down to the facts revealed by the Millennium Challenge 2002, a massive battle exercise conducted by the US military. The exercise simulated a conflict between the US ('blue force') and a hypothetical middle- eastern nation ('red force'). During the exercises, the red leader (Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper) used asymmetric warfare strategies, designed to exploit weaknesses in US military doctrine. Rather than using radio and risking eavesdropping, orders were sent via motorcycle courier and signal lamps. Rather than squaring up along battlelines, the red team used hit-and-run attacks, including suicide bombings. After massive losses for the blue team, the exercise was reset and the red leader was ordered to follow a preordained script to ensure a blue victory. The exercise was deemed a complete success. The US military learned absolutely nothing from this exercise, and continued to make exactly the same mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a doctrinal belief in the 'correct' way to win a war, and the notion that technological and logistical advantages can guarantee victory in any conflict. US military strategy is designed to justify procurement decisions post-hoc, rather than actually win wars. We invest heavily in eavesdropping infrastructure, _therefore_ it is strategically invaluable. We have a fleet of multirole fighters, _therefore_ air supremacy is a vital objective. There is an ideological drive to transform all warfare into the bloodless technological dispute of the cold war, regardless of reality. To quote Lt. Gen. van Riper: "My experience has been that those who focus on the technology, the science, tend towards sloganeering. There's very little intellectual content to what they say, and they use slogans in place of this intellectual content. It does a great disservice to the American military, the American defense establishment. 'Information dominance,' 'network-centric warfare,' 'focused logistics'—you could fill a book with all of these slogans. What I see are slogans masquerading as ideas. In a sense, they make war more antiseptic. They make it more like a machine. They don't understand it's a terrible, uncertain, chaotic, bloody business. So they can lead us the wrong way. They can cause people not to understand this terrible, terrible phenomenon." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002) [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/immutable-nature- war.h...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/immutable-nature-war.html) ~~~ Agustus To be fair, the pre-ordained script was put together to utilize the resources that were brought in to run the challenge after General van Riper wiped the floor with them. Yet, even with the victory accomplished by General van Riper, the military had to suffer losses in Iraq before it changed the leadership to handle the asymetric nature in 2005. The issue with militaries is that unless they lose, there is no need for improvements. The Romans troddled along until Hannibal wiped certainty off their face, the Romans retooled, focused around a military society, and learned sailing from captured triremes to beat the better adversary. Prussia lost to France and the professional soldiering class was built up that is still reflected in German society today in their cultural approaches with bureaucracy. Without the political will to go in a different direction, the entrenched forces within a military will avoid the hard choices needed to changes its system. ------ niels_olson I remember eating lunch on February 5th, 2005. We were at the Officer's Club at the Naval Academy. All the officers had assembled to hear a lecture by Admiral Crowe, one of our political science professors, better known from his time as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He forwent his prepared remarks to discuss current events, opening with "Perhaps we would all be better served watching CNN right now, to hear Colin Powell address the UN General Assembly. Unfortunately, I am afraid the machinery of war is to far gone for any of it to make a difference." "I am afraid the machinery of war is to far gone for any of it to make a difference." That sentence will ring in my ears for the rest of my life. ~~~ hackuser 2003? ~~~ niels_olson doh, yeah ------ jacques_foccart What is conveniently avoided is that Japan, Germany and South Korea are at (relative) peace and prosperous because of immense investment by the US. All three are still, technically, militarily occupied territory. The wars were total wars, won at the cost of millions of lives and financial and industrial commitments that reshaped the culture of both nations, at enormous civilian costs especially on the losing side (Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima...) and the territory kept at peace via millions of boots on the ground, enormous military effort (how much does Okinawa cost per annum?) and enormous financial spending, justified by Pax Americana being presumably worth more than its bill. In the case of WWI, not invading the losing power after breaking its will to fight resulted in a worse war a couple decades later. Another unpalatable and often glossed over fact is that in both Germany and Japan, middle management was kept in power because the invading authority (such as MacArthur) realised that chaos would follow otherwise, and that in a statist, single-party state, all the talent would converge to the ruling party anyway. Today's taxpayer does not want to pay for another Japan or Germany, and some people in Washington have sold him the unicorn of "instant happiness once the bad guy is removed with a few skilled operators and cool tech" (aka COIN), ignoring decades of history. Either the American taxpayer needs to push for colonialism (call a spade a spade), or it needs to accept that furthering US interests will create side effects for locals. The latter is obviously a lot easier to stomach, especially with free speech allowing comfortable, safe civilians to complain loudly about how unfair it all is, so it has been the default position of successive administrations since Johnson. Option 3 is to accept the occasional bombing and attack on your civilians, in exchange for isolationism. The risk of that option is well described by the example of Chamberlain in the 1930s. ------ DanielBMarkham Here are a couple of clarifying notes to the essay: 1) the United States has not declared any wars. The last war we were in was in the 1940s, over 70 years ago. Since then we've done "police actions" "limited military engagements", and all sorts of other nonsense, but no wars. 2) Yes, there's too much emphasis on the wrong things. But there's a huge problem here that the military is working through: what do you want your military to do, anyway? The general consensus is that we want these highly- sophisticated fighting units able to take a fight to other highly- sophisticated militaries, like the Russians or the Chinese. But guess what? That's not the fight we've had. So we keep spending trillions of dollars for a military built to do one thing, and then we keep asking it to do something else. You might think the answer would be "Just re-factor!", but it's not. As it turns out, if you want B2 stealth bombers, you gotta have this huge industrial complex churning away for decades to get them. You can't just turn it off and on. If there's ever a fight requiring high-tech military versus high-tech military, all of that prep will pay off. If there isn't? It still might have been worth it -- having it in place could have prevented the fight. You don't know. The real problem is that the Pentagon and various administrations are unable to have an honest discussion about the issues. There are too many lucrative contracts and jobs on the table. The risks are too great to boil down into slogans. For now, my recommendation is to form a new branch of service dedicate solely to large numbers of low-tech groud-pounders who specialize in nation-building and international rescue/response. Whether we like it or not, that's what we keep ending up doing, and the existing services do not seem to be able to mentally make the trade between one bomber and, say, 100K peacekeepers. Plus the missions are vastly different. ------ dominotw I saw a frontline documentary on iraq called : losing iraq. [http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=80017023&trkid=13752...](http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=80017023&trkid=13752289&tctx=0,0,iraq:e30d03a0-dfdc-479d-bf0b-8bd9c3fec7ca) I gained a whole new prespective on the war ~~~ dennisgorelik That's a great documentary/post-mortem. ------ germinalphrase The military strategist Thomas Barnett has an interesting (and entertaining) TED talk where he described two different functions the US military needs to fulfill. It responds well to the criticisms presented in this article. The first: the Leviathan force. This is the military as we know it. Go in an break stuff quickly and thoroughly. Staffed by slightly pissed off, gung-ho young Americans. We're already pretty good at this. The second: the Systems Administrator. Go into a broken country (by us or otherwise) and 'wage peace'. Help build governments, keep peace, develop social services, etc. Staffed by older, more experienced individuals from a variety of fields who are not (primarily) front-line soldiers. We don't know how to do this. Link:www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace ~~~ refurb _We don 't know how to do this._ We did a pretty good job in Japan and Germany after WW2, no? And South Korea? ~~~ wtbob Yeah, I think the issue is that we're not _willing_ to do this. Japan and Germany remained peaceful for a number of reasons. First of all, they _knew_ that they had lost, and lost hard: their cities were in ruins; many of their leaders were dead; a large portion of their populations were dead; and huge numbers of foreigners were occupying their nations, making decisions on their behalf with little consultation. Psychologically, they were cowed. Secondly, there was still an external existential threat: the Soviet Union (or, for the East Germans, the West). We were considered the lesser of evils, so they were more willing to do our bidding. We won't reproduce these conditions: we're not going to shatter cities and decimate populations (there's also generally no other existential threat). That's morally good, but it makes successful nation-building much more difficult, or impossible. We should carefully consider if, given that we won't do what it takes to succeed at a task, it makes sense to attempt it anyway. ------ joshontheweb I wonder if the surge in military suicides has anything to do with their perception of the 'righteousness' of our warfare. It seems like it would be much harder for a soldier to feel good about what they were doing now as opposed to WWII for instance. ------ tomohawk "War traditionally was mostly an excuse for plunder. In the modern world, Angell argued, armies slaughtered not prospective slaves but potential customers." It would appear that many are joining ISIS precisely because they do like obtaining plunder and (sex) slaves. ~~~ kbart It's one of the false westerners' believes that keep from fighting ISIS effectively. Just yesterday here was a good article on this topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9061725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9061725) ------ markbnj The answer is at least partly related to the question he asks in the second paragraph: "how can America spend more on its military than all the other great powers combined and still be unable to impose its will on even moderately sized enemies?" What is "will" in a representative democracy? Even when the country is united with a strong plurality for action against some state, it doesn't extend to tolerating much bloodshed or internal discomfort. We may be the first post-modern nation that has simply become unwilling to project its power with the blood of its own citizens. I wonder what that might mean when the drone revolution really arrives? ------ aluhut That brings us to Ukraine, and Russia vs. US (again). What is the global context to that? Where is the point there? I know it started with the Eurasian Economic Union vs. the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement but from what I've heard the EEU is not really worth it and Belarus is not very sure about it anymore. Was that really enough to start the whole show? I mean, Putin can't get out of it now. He's too deep in his own propaganda. While the EU seems to want to get back to calmer times, Obama waits with the fuel tank around the corner reminding the EU and Putin of the fact from time to time. But...what is this supposed to be? A new Cold War show? Really...?? ~~~ olegious Ukraine is caught in the middle of the competition between Russia and the USA. For the US, it isn't about democracy, it is about bringing NATO to Russia's borders. Russia is terrified of NATO (the 2008 war in Georgia was basically the preview of Ukraine). ~~~ adventured More than being terrified of NATO (it's not), Russia wants to retain a very high degree of control over its former satellites if it can. Including specifically Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. Russia influences those countries practically as proxies as though they still belong to the old empire. Russia fears losing that control, it doesn't fear the NATO military alliance. I think it's a lot more afraid of trade ties with Western Europe and culturally changes that drive political changes. ~~~ aluhut Yes, I guess this is it and we probably crossed the line now. I'm curious how this will end if everybody wants to save their faces. ------ leroy_masochist The problem with many of the conspiracy theories presented by other commenters on this thread is that they assume that the government (and by extension the overall military-industrial complex) is much, much more competent than it actually is. ~~~ nraynaud Ahah, I had the same remark recently. I think it's the contrary, they are putting rules, and they no real control over the complex effects. ------ coffeemug We're not losing wars. We're winning them very quickly. We're losing the aftermath -- policing and rebuilding foreign countries _after_ we win the wars. That's a much more challenging problem, and we aren't good at that at all. ------ hotgoldminer The will to win isn't politically viable. War is heavily scrutinized and almost entirely unpalatable (to say the least). Sure America may have the might, technology, and numbers, but their enemy lacks political constraint. Now they're faced with ISIL. Their decision makers obviously strive to make visible the least palatable aspects of war in the belief it will expand their sphere of influence. America should re-think military strategy. Do they wish to 'win' wars with violence? Can they? Or perhaps cyber war, surveillance, and infrastructure-- all soft forms of control--are the strategies of the future. ------ lazyant From my European perspective this article is almost stating the obvious, nothing controversial here. The only point is that conditions for victory ("winning the war") need to be clearly defined and they haven't. ------ adwf I would say he missed the biggest reason: Because we've changed the definition of "winning". It used to be that you just trounced the enemy army and didn't give a damn about what the country looked like afterwards. Go in, kill them till they surrender. This is true of pretty much every war before 1950. Nowadays we're generally not fighting an established government but instead some form of guerrila force. There is no-one to declare a surrender, therefore the war will never really end. ~~~ discardorama > It used to be that you just trounced the enemy army and didn't give a damn > about what the country looked like afterwards. You're forgetting the Marshall Plan. ~~~ adwf That was a consideration after the war, not during. Nowadays we hold back from razing entire cities like we did with Dresden/Nagasaki/Hiroshima. ~~~ laurencerowe Fallujah was razed. Phosphorous incendiaries were used as in Dresden. Casualties were much lower though as most of the population had fled by that point. ~~~ rodgerd And razed to support mercenaries, as well! Not a good look hearts-and-minds wise. ------ lexcorvus The answer can be summarized in two words: _asymmetric warfare_. More accurately called _symmetrized warfare_ , USG's policy of binding itself to different rules of engagement than its enemies, in such a way as to ensure that the two sides are closely matched, is a recipe for unending conflict. The _political_ reasons for this policy are complicated, but the _military_ reasons for the effects of the policy are straightforward. ------ StudyAnimal I wonder what sort of correlation there really is between learning the enemies language and winning a war against them. This big army doesn't win wars because it holds itself back for political reasons. It is not that hard. You have to be 100% focused on total destruction. That is what created the modern Germany and Japan. This half-assed modern style of warfare is good for the arms industry I guess. For them a long war is better than a won war. ------ SocksCanClose Very interesting article...a second corollary might be that we have become encumbered to the point where our enemies are running circles around us: [http://www.projectwhitehorse.com/pdfs/boyd/patterns%20of%20c...](http://www.projectwhitehorse.com/pdfs/boyd/patterns%20of%20conflict.pdf) ------ yellowapple I wouldn't really say that the second Iraq War was "lost", per se; it _did_ meet its objective of eliminating the regime of a dictator, after all. It's the swarm of smaller-scale conflicts following it that the United States struggled with. I agree with all the points presented, though. Very well put. ------ anovikov I completely disagree that any of these conflicts other than Vietnam, were lost. They were just inappropriate use of the military power, akin to the Soviet invasion to Afghanistan. Americans never had a big problem of defeating any enemy, problem was what to do next (and Iraq-91 was a victory for exactly that reason: they quickly withdrew and left defeated Saddam to deal with the mess, with Schwartskopf correctly stating that there is no interest for U.S. to 'run the country'). If you see 'victory' as 'Iraq (or Afghanistan) adopting a stable US-style democracy', which apparently was an intent, than this 'war' is not winnable, and there is nothing to blame military for in this fact. ~~~ adventured The Vietnam War being lost is similar to proclaiming that Iraq was lost after the invasion (the occupation time frame). There was no victory basis in either case. Vietnam was a holding pattern, as the US chose not to march north with its full might. Not to mention, the Vietnam War was a civil war. Would we declare that France lost the Revolutionary War, had the colonies been defeated by Britain? I'm skeptical. Had the US abandoned South Korea like it did South Vietnam, people would proclaim the Korean War a failure as well. The primary difference between the two, is the US chose to protect South Korea perpetually. Had the US stayed and protected South Vietnam, I think it's very unlikely that war would be regarded as essentially a total failure. It's not very complicated, the US chose to leave because it was exhausted culturally, not because it was defeated militarily. ~~~ rodgerd Ah, the old stab in the back; a favourite myth throughout the ages. ------ known Any type of hegemony will have awkward repercussions and collateral damage. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye) ------ jgreen10 They overthrew Milosevic, Taliban, Hussein, Austin, Noriega, Bosch, Gaddafi, ... Fighting guerrilla wars is the problem. Firepower obviously doesn't help in guerrilla wars. ------ offshoreguy41 Maybe the goal is not to win. Maybe the goal is perpetual war. ------ danielmiessler We're losing wars because we're not fighting them. ------ bane In individual battles, the U.S. almost never loses. The raw military capability the U.S. possesses is _staggering_. It's so vast that in actual wars, the Army doesn't even do the bulk of actual fighting anymore, and massive garrison forces in Europe and Asia barely see a dip in total manpower. Special Forces and Marines go in to clear the way for big Army to come in and sit and patrol like an overamped police force. The opening invasion of the first Gulf War was over in what, 5 weeks? This was a military power that Iran fought to a virtual standstill for almost a decade. People forget about this part, because the rest of the occupation was such a debacle. But when the U.S. military gets pointed at an objective, it will generally get the job done. The military on military loss exchange ratios are _astonishing_ , like 150:1. In most of history, 4:1 or 5:1 is considered overwhelming. In the Korean war, it was about 4:1 for example. Vietnam was about 1:1 The problem is that the world has changed _and_ the U.S. has changed. Achieving occupation no longer counts as "winning" and the U.S. no longer has the will to simply carpet bomb and shell an enemy to the point of complete annihilation. The U.S. fights wars for precision and to minimize non-combat casualties. Genghis Khan would simply raze a city to the ground and murder every man woman and child if he faced resistance. The U.S. orders Marines to go in for a door- to-door clearing operation and try real hard not to shoot too many innocents. And if that didn't work they'd just go and do it again.[1][2] War is supposed to be terrible, and there are no "winners". Victory has always been the last to give up or run out of people to throw at the enemy's swords. By sanitizing the terribleness out of war, the U.S. has managed to ensure that it never "wins" anything in particular. It's turned war into large-scale police actions, which means it's regularized it. The U.S. hasn't fought a real war in ages. Everything else has been policing. The U.S. doesn't really have many big enemies, it has rabble rousers and riff- raff on the edge of it's sphere of influence it needs to deal with -- rogue and failed states, non-state actors, whatever. Most of the world is America's town and it sends in police/soldiers to deal with the bad parts of town and "keep the peace" In a normal town, nobody cares if the police "win", just so long as things are relatively safe for the good parts of town. Police are part of the infrastructure of successful nations. The U.S. military strives to be the global police infrastructure of a successful world. The commander-in-chief has just been turned into chief-of-police of the biggest baddest police force in the world. 1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah) 2 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah) ------ fierycatnet I can recommend "The Utility of Force" book for further understanding of modern warfare and it's evolution. ------ diydsp > implying the goal of fighting the war is to "win" it. The purpose of fighting the war is to motivate the mining and weapons development industries. If a constituency receives $50 million dollars to produce a type of ammunition or equipment and research the next generation, its large business owners, skilled workers and labor have "won," at least in the short term. ~~~ Amorymeltzer >The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living... >The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. ~~~ ctdonath For some reason China's "ghost cities" come to mind: enormous efforts expending tremendous resources, only to leave entire urban regions to decay unused. ~~~ jafaku That happens everywhere to some degree. In corrupt countries it's very common that politicians announce the building of big schools and hospitals, but the projects are never finished. The construction companies bribe the politicians to get the contracts, and then it doesn't even matter whether they ever complete the job, no one will control that. ------ uptownhr We're playing the wrong game with the wrong rules and using wrong tools for the job. ------ offshoreguy41 Maybe the goal is not to win. Maybe the goal is simply perpetual war. ------ jkot I often criticize US army, but this article is just b * t. And not single word about what is actually wrong with US army (F35 and similar projects) > _More than three-quarters of Americans in Iraq didn’t fight. A ridiculously > large number_ 75% of servants in army (support roles) is pretty stable number since Roman Legions times. > _the American military is too big and bulky. Special Forces are lean and > mean and_ Fighting street by street, block by block takes large number of men. > _Egyptian interpreter hired by the US military. Knowing that Cairene Arabic > is vastly different from that of Southern Iraq, I asked him if he had any > trouble understanding the local dialect. He shook his head. “I have no idea > what they are saying._ > _If more American soldiers understood Arabic, their insight and awareness of > Iraqi culture could have made a huge difference._ Army should not do police work. There should be para-military units (gendarme) composed from locals, but from different regions. US did great job at Philippines with this strategy. > _Fear of Casualties_ > _It is impossible to imagine William the Conqueror, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, > or Patton focusing above all else on not losing soldiers.... . Historically, > officers are happy to use their men as cannon fodder if it will help them > achieve their objectives._ I will take any US 'war hawk' over this guy anytime. BTW Russians captured Crimea with 2 casualties, so much about 'not enough deaths'. > Only go to war if it is worth sacrificing your children. When Hitler invaded > Russia, Stalin’s son went to the front, was captured and eventually died in > a POW camp Paragraph about Yakov Dzhugashvili is nice, perhaps just add what happened to his family after he was captured. Also UK prince served in Iraq as far as I know > _Fifty thousand Americans died in Vietnam. So did more than 2 million > Vietnamese. If war were a numbers game, America would have been victorious. > But war is ultimately a matter of will. The North Vietnamese were willing to > suffer more than the Americans were, because victory was more important to > them._ And how many of those Vietnamese were killed by other Vietnamese, French, Koreans...? Americans lost because they could not go near Chinese border. Please read some facts about that conflicts. > _War, What is it good For? Absolutely Nothing. ... When William conquered > Britain, when Cortez conquered Mexico, their soldiers made fortunes. War > traditionally was mostly an excuse for plunder._ So nobody, not a single person, made any sort of profit on any war in last two decades? ~~~ Guvante > And not single word about what is actually wrong with US army (F35 and > similar projects) This is a silly mindset. Your preconceived notion about the worst problem shouldn't stop someone else from talking about a different one. If you looked you will notice that other than quoting complaints at the beginning, the vast majority of the article ignores costs. They speak only of effects. It is easier to question military spending by first pointing out why throwing money at problems isn't working, since you can't easily quantify the benefit of the military you can't just apply cost benefit analysis and have a convincing argument. > 75% of servants in army (support roles) is pretty stable number since Roman > Legions times. And that number works great in Roman style conflicts. When you have a force power huge logistic lines make a great target, refocusing your logistics is a way to minimize that weakness. > Fighting street by street, block by block takes large number of men. You assume that is the ideal method of fighting the conflict. > Army should not do police work. There should be para-military units > (gendarme) composed from locals, but from different regions. US did great > job at Philippines with this strategy. You didn't actually disagree with him here but frame it as if you did. He said they sucked at understanding local needs but acted on what information they had. You said that they shouldn't act on local things. > I will take any US 'war hawk' over this guy anytime. BTW Russians captured > Crimea with 2 casualties, so much about 'not enough deaths'. Was the goal of Crimea to minimize casualties? Because it isn't the results he is criticizing but the mind set. "#1 don't let anyone die. #2 win" isn't the best strategy if you want to win. > Americans lost because they could not go near Chinese border. Please read > some facts about that conflicts. You aren't actually disputing his point, but simply pointing to a different one. There are lots of things that cause Vietnam to go bad, their ability to sustain casualties certainly helped. ------ classicsnoot Largest military by nation list on wikipedia is interesting. ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel) ) Vietnam is at the top. Lel. I appreciate that the author was in the Theater of Operations. I respect that he has an enormous amount of anecdotal data about military personnel and conflict. That being said, this person appears to have a rather shallow understanding of the nature of conflicts as it pertains to Geo-politics. To say the US has not won a war since Korea is idiotic, as the US did NOT win; there is a de facto state of war between the Koreas and the US is bound to the South by alliance. I get the feeling that the author is European (just a guess). I wonder what the answers would be if you asked a large range of people (age and nation of association) who won WWII. Asking an American who won the Cold War will probably yield a more homogeneous pool of responses. Ask a N.Korean who won the Korean Conflict and the diversity of answers would drop even further. The point is that anyone can say anything that they want; the winners are decided over and over again culturally as well as historically. There has not been a 'real' war since the Second Global Conflict in terms of losses in material and personnel. If the Ukraine Conflict becomes a shooting war between Russia and Ukraine, the losses in one week could total the entire losses of the US in the ten years of brush beating. 5K soldiers is a paltry sum: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll) . The world has not known war in many years, and it is precisely because of the political efforts of the US, Russia, England & Friends, and more recently China. They do this not out of compassion for their citizens, but out of necessity for their profits. In forums like these, people love to belabor the trope that war brings technological advances and benefits the D-Con companies solely. They use this as some sort of reasoning behind why the US invades the countries it does. This is silly. War turns an economy to shit. It does this to both sides, though obviously it takes longer for the 'victor' to feel it. Peace == Prosperity. Regardless of the 'billions' that are said to be invested in America's wars, they are trickles compared to the naked power of a well cared for middle class. There is so much more money to be made when people are free to save it and spend it. this is the fundamental principle behind US Capitalism: 1)make peace through force 2)inundate with currency 3)?????? 4) Middle class appears. Instead of large wars heralding dramatic shifts in power and means, a background of smaller conflicts in emerging raw material provider countries keeps the weapons sales up and makes the way for more ethnically homogeneous locals when the drilling crews show up. One can say the US loses, and on many counts we do. But the world* wins. We invaded Iraq to stabilize oil supplies, guarantee supremacy, and foment regime change: the European and Chinese oil supply, the supremacy of Saudi Arabia over Iran, and regime change in the Middle Eastern monarchies. Somewhat non sequitur, but if you want to learn about an amazing american geo- political victory that used some of that 'excessive' spending, try to find info about the shadow campaign waged across the -stans to secure power and water as a preemptive strike against nascent extremist populations. Good luck; there is not much documentation ou there. Having a clear definition of terms is important, both in conflict as well as in blogposts. *Europe ------ gnrlbzik in love with warfare ~~~ gnrlbzik why down vote? US is in love with warfare, for past many decades, people make money off these events and as such make a lot of money. It sucks that this is so, but it is so... ------ foobarqux "I don't think that Vietnam was a mistake; I think it was a success. [...] To determine whether it was a failure you have to first look at what the goals were. In the case of Indo-china, the US is a very free country; we have an incomparably rich documentary record of internal planning, much richer than any other country that I know of. So we can discover what the goals were. In fact it is clear by around 1970, certainly by the time the Pentagon Papers came out, the primary concern was the one that shows up in virtually all intervention: Guatemala, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile, just about everywhere you look at. The concern is independent nationalism which is unacceptable in itself because it extricates some part of the world that the US wants to dominate. And it has an extra danger if it is likely to be successful in terms that are likely to be meaningful to others who are suffering from the same conditions. " \-- Noam Chomsky ------ Htsthbjig _" Genghis Khan, Napoleon, or Patton focusing above all else on not losing soldiers. Historically, officers are happy to use their men as cannon fodder if it will help them achieve their objectives"_ It is interesting that those three people were famous for being the first one in the battle fighting and risking their lives. I bet it will be different with generals today. _" If their primary interest was oil, American diplomats would have told Saddam to grant exclusive contracts to select oil companies and he would have gladly complied in order to avoid invasion."_ Not really. American diplomats told Saddam to grant exclusive contract to US companies. What happened is that Saddam refused, he even started selling the oil in Euros in order to get European support, but did not. When USA invades a country and spends a trillion dollars on it, it is not Americans the ones who have to pay for it, thanks to the magic of the petrodollar, but the rest of the world. But Americans companies are those that benefit from the reconstruction effort. American oil companies are the ones who extract the oil. And the petrodollar system remains one year more, because if someone dares to go against the petrodollar(like Iran) sanctions are raised or their country is invaded. ~~~ Amezarak > American oil companies are the ones who extract the oil. No, they aren't. US companies comprise a fraction of the oil companies extracting oil in Iraq.[1] Moreover, for the American companies operating in Iraq, Iraqi oil supplies < 2% of their worldwide production. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Iraq#Serv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Iraq#Service_Contracts_Licensing_Results) [2] [http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/25/are- these-w...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/25/are-these- western-oil-majors-operating-in-iraq-at.aspx) ------ at-fates-hands _" how can America spend more on its military than all the other great powers combined and still be unable to impose its will on even moderately sized enemies?"_ Aside from the the reasons he cited, you can put up there fighting with both hands ties behind our backs. The politicians want the military to win the hearts and minds, have surgical strikes to reduce civilian casualties, and spend more time keeping up diplomatic relations then killing our adversaries. The media have never been pro-war, never been able to stomach seeing and reporting the brutality of what war really entails. Patton once said, "Attack rapidly, ruthlessly, viciously, without rest, however tired and hungry you may be, the enemy will be more tired, more hungry. Keep punching." We haven't done this since Vietnam. You want to win the wars in the middle east? You throw away the Geneva Conventions, you take off the handcuffs and employ the full force of the military. Like Patton said, you attack rapidly, ruthlessly and viciously. If the US even used a fraction of its full firepower, and instead hunted down and killed the terrorists and then made examples of them, their enemies would shrivel up and put down their weapons. You wanna know why the Mexican drug cartels are feared? You wanna know why people are scared of ISIS and terrorism here in the states and what they've done in Europe already? Because they don't have rules, they instill fear with violence, something the US Military has been unable to do - because of politicians and the media. Take off the handcuffs and let the full force of the military come down on these people and you'll see them broken, tired and without refuge. ~~~ pluma For the record, the US didn't win in Vietnam either. Despite not pulling any punches. But yes, if the US gave a 100%, it may have a chance of actually winning those wars. Considering the collateral damage from decades of "surgical" strikes and drone attacks, I'm not even sure an all-out war would be any worse for the civilians on the receiving end. It would absolutely ruin any pretence of moral superiority and "clean" warfare, however. And that would make it even more difficult to explain to allies why the US is better than Russia, China or Saudi Arabia. ~~~ rstupek I'm not sure you can classify Vietnam as a place where the military didn't pull its punches. We didn't invade North Korea, for example. ~~~ BerislavLopac You did, in fact: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#UN_forces_cross_part...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#UN_forces_cross_partition_line_.28September_.E2.80.93_October_1950.29) ~~~ dba7dba Answer is less clear. US was hesitant to go above the 38th parallel line once N Korean army was routed. They were happy to stop there and go back to having 38th parallel line before the Korean War started. However the S Korean troops just marched across 38th parallel in order to reunite the peninsula under 1 government. And the US troops in away just kept going with them. Because the Korean war was so unexpected, no thoughts had been given on what to do. The Korean peninsula had been 1 kingdom for over 500 years, far longer than Germany as a nation. Both N Korea and S Korean leaders had been calling for a united Korea, even with force, even before the Korean War. For this reason, US govt hesitated giving heavy weapons to S Korea before the start of the Korean War. So no, US didn't exactly invade N Korea. N Korea invaded S Korea first. ~~~ BerislavLopac This is not what the Wikipedia article describes. ------ karmacondon My problem with this article is that the author doesn't define the criteria for "winning". What does winning look like in Iraq or Afghanistan? I generally don't understand what the point of this article is. The US should learn the language of the countries where its soldiers are operating? I can't think of very many armies that have ever done that. Historically it would be the very rare case. And we should we willing to tolerate more bloodshed? The argument seems to be that if we aren't willing to needlessly sacrifice the lives of our soldiers as cannon fodder, then the conflict isn't worth being involved in. I don't think that makes a lot of sense, either. There are some very flawed premises here. I think the bottom line is that the US military is still the envy of the world. Recent conflicts have been poorly planned in terms of goals and exit strategies, but it's a bit disingenuous to imply that the armed services aren't able to meet military objectives or face threats of all kinds at any point on the globe. There have to be better ways for the author to say "I don't like recent US military actions".
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Ask HN: Is there a website that tracks revisions to news articles? - alanh It’s increasingly commonplace for journalists and hacks alike to update their articles, dropping or revising the most poorly researched sections, without noting the retraction, much less preserving the original edit.<p>It would make sense for there to be a tool which scrapes news sites and reports on the &quot;diffs&quot;.<p>Does one exist? Have any of you tried to hack something like this together? ====== jaredsohn There are websites and browser extensions (such as [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/page- monitor/pemhg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/page- monitor/pemhgklkefakciniebenbfclihhmmfcd?hl=en) ; haven't used it myself though) that keep track of diffs of pages, but they require that a user first decides to watch a particular webpage. Is this what you are looking for or are you looking for something that tracks news stories automatically? (useful if you want to see how an article changes before you saw it or if you want to discuss changes within a community.) ~~~ alanh The latter. Interested in accountability and transparency.
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Dooby, a command-line tag-driven mini to-do list manager in Ruby - rafmagana https://github.com/rafmagana/dooby ====== devmonk Ack! Name confusion ahead. There is a Duby also already in the Ruby community: <https://github.com/headius/duby>
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Ruby on Rails Documentation (formatted for the iPhone) - zaveri http://pocketrails.com/ ====== ruby_roo Thanks! This is nice. Can we get a nice icon for it though? :)
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Show HN: @, a self modifying shell script/swiss army knife - irrationalidiom https://github.com/lmartinking/monkey-tail ====== fexl Clever concept, and it really shows off a lot of shell techniques in one place. The self-modifying aspect is fun to study (e.g. external-add, ext_insert), and the meta functions are interesting too (e.g. require). I may find this useful sometime, and in the meantime it makes me smile. In my own small way, I too have used self-modify shell scripts, though nothing as far-reaching as what you've done. When I write C code, I use a "build" script instead of "make": <https://github.com/chkoreff/Fexl/blob/master/src/build> (Never mind Fexl itself, I'm just sharing the build script here.) The build script analyzes all the .c files in the current directory and automatically creates another "build" script in the ../obj directory. It then runs ../obj/build. But the next time you run it, it sees that ../obj/build already exists, so it doesn't need to analyze the .c files again. Again, it's nothing quite like what you've done, but it just illustrates how fun and useful self-modifying shell scripts can be.
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How Apple's New Face ID Works (Infrared Projector, Like MS Kinect) - bhouston http://gizmodo.com/how-apples-new-face-id-works-1803813400 ====== occultist_throw Since its biometric, ill assume that it too like your fingerprint, is coersable. Still the only safe way is a PIN.
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Ask HN: How would you solve the Windows Phone app gap? - EpicBlackCrayon ====== PaulHoule I am not a big fan of apps and it seems these days, developers and users hate apps too even if they don't know it. Something better in 2018 would be a personal assistant who is always in your pocket and has a holistic view of your life. I don't think the blocker for Windows Phone is a lack of apps, it is that Verizon and AT&T absolutely refuse to certify new Windows Phones for their networks. ------ brudgers Since Microsoft appears to phasing out Windows Phone...or rather Windows 10 Mobile, I don't see that there's much reason in trying. As much as I wanted Windows Phone to succeed, it's a dying ecosystem.
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Prediction markets on Obama's chance of winning nomination - mhb http://www.intrade.com/ ====== mechanical_fish Richard Feynman: _This question of trying to figure out whether a book is good or bad by looking at it carefully or by taking the reports of a lot of people who looked at it carelessly is like this famous old problem: Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the length of the Emperor of China's nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China's nose is, and you average it. And that would be very "accurate" because you averaged so many people. But it's no way to find anything out; when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don't improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging._ I think tarot cards are a lot simpler and more accurate. Mine suggest that Barack Obama should beware of the tall tower with the lightning bolts, and that a hooded figure carrying three sticks will bring him five golden discs. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton will be menaced by a demon-like creature with the face of Rudy Giuliani, and will fight back by swinging swords at it while blindfolded. Or something. ~~~ dejb People in this market aren't a random sample of people in the street. They are self-selected based on their willingness to bet money on the event. If they are poor predictors they will lose money on average and if they are good they will gain money. After many events the good predictors will tend to prevail over the poor ones because they have more money to bet and they'll be more eager to bet... Oh screw it I give up... some people just don't get odds or markets. ~~~ mattmaroon If there's one thing I know about gamblers, it's that their willingness to bet money on something generally has no correlation whatsoever to their knowledge about it. Their ability to continue betting over their lifetime certainly does, which of course means that any prediction market that doesn't run on real dollars is essentially useless. But that doesn't mean the for money ones are useful. This particular one is not. The infrequent nature of bets of this type, plus the small number of people able to get money onto sites like that in any reasonable timeframe keep it (at least where politics is concerned) from becoming anywhere near efficient. It's simply too small for much in the way of smart money to even bother with, so what you see is mostly just the result of sports bettors who watched an hour of CNN yesterday and have nothing else interesting to wager on. I wouldn't be surprised if they were extremely accurate for European sports, but for American politics they've been way off recently. The good news is, they're very easy to exploit in any close election year. Perhaps I'll blog about how after I do it in November. ~~~ dejb I admit the volume isn't huge. Maybe 10K per day on the presidential nominations. So you might be able to average placing 1K on per day without destroying your odds. If you had even a 10% edge then that's $100 gain which most people wouldn't be giving up their day job for. There are other markets though. Betfair had turned over $3 million on the Dem Nom. The funny thing is the more accurate the market is the less 'smart money' would be attracted to profits and vice versa. Good luck with your trading. By participating you will presumably increase the accuracy of the market. But I think the average trader might be more knowledgeable than you give them credit for (even ones from those non-US places). And you never know... there might actually be something in this 'Wisdom of the Crowds' thing. ~~~ mattmaroon My trading in November (assuming a close race) is more predicated on knowledge of what happens to those betting markets throughout the day of the election than any political knowledge. As you pointed out though, I can't make retirement money on that small of volume. I might be able to make vacation money though. Also I should check to see if there's a difference in odds between betfair and intrade. Might be able to run some sort of cross-site arbitrage if possible. ------ DocSavage He's now down substantially (37 to Hillary's 63). This Irish Intrade.com website is interesting. Seems like their site markets securities per the Howey Test, but I'm not sure. They say the user should know: " _Is it Legal for me to use Intrade where I live?_ The simple answer is that we cant be sure and this is why we require you to confirm to us that your activities are permissible from your own location. If you are in any doubt if your activities are legal from your location then you should not use our service until you take suitable professional advise." Anyone know the current US regulations on betting games of skill and would this speculative market fall under that domain? ~~~ xirium > "Anyone know the current US regulations on betting games of skill and would > this speculative market fall under that domain?" I believe that it is currently illegal to gamble on US elections while in the US. This probably applies to US citizens outside of the US too. It doesn't stop it happening, though. ------ davidw So, finance guys, how do you make money from volatility? This thing is bouncing around all over the place, as results come in. The winning strategy would be one where you make money from the uncertainty, as people overreact to various results. ~~~ dreish Theoretically, you would only make money in an efficient market by taking a position on something people didn't already expect, and being right about it. I think volatility as election results come in is about as expected as sunrise in the morning. In fact, I'd say volatility has been less than I expected, because I thought by now either Clinton or Obama would be above 80%, and instead it's still a coin flip. But if you did want to bet on vol, you would need options, and I haven't seen any derivatives on the election futures markets. Some cursory Googling turns up nothing. ------ mattmaroon They've done a terrible job this year, having been almost as far off as the polls. ------ rrival <http://politicalmarket.cnn.com/> is another one, and it's from InklingMarkets (a Y-Combinator co) ------ far33d Yesterday it was 55% on Clinton..... ~~~ dkokelley And tomorrow, even after the voting, it will still be uncertain. There's an idea for a startup. Create a good, secure voting service (web-based, local machine, etc. who knows?) that calls results immediately and reliably and you'll probably be doing pretty well. ~~~ far33d Except you'd have to sell to the government. And convince technophobes that it's secure. And safe. And reliable. ~~~ mrtron And put money in the right pockets, which are tough to get access to? ~~~ rms That's what lobbyists are for! ------ rms He slipped to 54...
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Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path - joshtynjala https://keavy.com/work/thriving-on-the-technical-leadership-path/ ====== nilkn In my experience, many companies legitimately don't really know what to do with very senior engineering staff. And how many distinguished engineers or principal engineers or technical fellows do you really need for your relatively straightforward technical challenges anyway? The IC track often fails to work in practice for the simple reason that technical work at an extremely high level is just not needed at many companies as much as engineers want to believe. Very senior ICs are also difficult to manage in the sense that the more you pin them down to specific work or projects the less you benefit from their skills. But sometimes all you need is to be able to assign someone to a specific project that isn't all that glorious or interesting or hard but is valuable and needs to be done by a certain time. ~~~ baron_harkonnen My experience has been that the value of very senior technical staff is not that they solve "extremely high level" technical problems but they are very easily able to see how what appears to be a complex problem is isomorphic to a much simpler, easy to solve problem. The difference between expert and advanced/intermediate technical staff is that the advanced engineer has an understanding of complex solution and mistakenly tries to apply them everywhere, so the net effect is to increase complexity. The expert typically sees simple solutions and method of resolving complexity and has a net effect of reducing overall system complexity. Believing that the value add of experienced technical staff is to only solve really hard problem is likely caused by having too many advanced/intermediate people playing the role of experienced technical leads. All of the great technical team member I worked with always make call solutions simpler and easier to implement by knowing exactly what doesn't need to be done and what is essential. ~~~ oarabbus_ Would love to hear some examples of experts decreasing complexity and advanced engineers increasing complexity. ~~~ nilkn A hypothetical example would be one person spending a week or two setting up an extensive in-house Spark cluster to solve a problem that a second person in one day realizes can be solved on one machine using some clever shell scripting tricks. The former person knows a lot and may have been fully capable of the solution the second came up with, but they followed the wrong guiding principles in analyzing the problem and arrived at a solution of considerable complexity. An alternate formulation of this would involve the second person above arriving at a new job, observing that they're using Spark on an expensive cluster to regularly perform a computation, and noticing that actually they could do the whole calculation on a single node using simpler tools. ~~~ saberience You could answer that example problem just by being someone who reads Hackernews a bunch, since the "replace spark cluster with random unix tools" article appears here regularly. IMO, that doesn't really define being a principal engineer, it's basic. ~~~ foobarian Principal engineer: arrives at company, notices expensive Spark cluster, replaces with one server running shell scripts Double digit-strong data science team: speechless ------ bjt She's coming from Github/Microsoft. That is a very different environment than most of us. A company of that size has more money to pay people who live outside the regular product org and more opportunities to do "strike teams". The bullet point list of strategic work that she provides mostly overlaps with what engineering managers do. It's valid to point out that you don't need people reporting to you to do it. It's very cool that she's been at companies that made that possible. But I think it's a mistake to say, as I think many commenters here are saying, that that's the only valid approach. ------ marcinzm Being a technical leader is a set of skills that is distinct from being a great IC and those skills overlap management in many ways (meetings, dealing with people, diffusing conflict, getting buy in, etc.). Except you don't have resources to leverage directly except your own, now very limited, time so everything is 10x harder. I was in that boat, eventually I got tired and just got into management. ~~~ lordfoom >Being a technical leader is a set of skills that is distinct from being a great IC Sorry if I'm being dim - what's an IC? ~~~ arnarbi Individual contributor, i.e. a non-leadership role ~~~ xxpor A non-managerial role* If you're a senior IC and you're not exhibiting leadership in some way you're probably not going to be around for very long. ~~~ arnarbi You're right, that's what it usually means. But gp was asking about it in the context of this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21377401](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21377401) Here it's being used to contrast with both TL-ship and management. ------ taurath My problem in the senior IC track at my company is that of how to influence people to get things done. Managers can very easily utilize resources, where the IC has to convince people and then also horse trade on priorities between managers who usually own a certain area and can’t really spare much help. Strike teams seem to the most effective thing for ICs to lead, and having that be an explicit part of eng culture and the work processes is a prerequisite for that. ~~~ tannerc Your first point rings so true it hurts. I've talked with many of my now manager peers and they seem to not understand that simply walking into a room with "manager" or "director" in your title gives you almost immediate clout (or something similar). Whereas if you enter a room as a "senior IC" there's just not as much authority inherent in your presence. It's unfortunate, it's not right, but it seems to be true. ------ Ididntdothis In my company there is a technical path but it’s really really hard to advance on it compared to the managerial path. We have one guy who is really high on the technical path but he was director before and was a bad manager so they moved him to the technical path. Otherwise I haven’t seen anybody technical promoted beyond the same pay grade of the lowest ranked managers. So it seems to me that the manager path is better just for the fact that it pays better. In addition, a lot of of the main decisions are being made by management before engineers even get involved. Don’t know how to improve this but from what I have seen in other companies this seems fairly standard. ~~~ chrisweekly IME (21-yr career), there's a huge range wrt culture, power structure, and growth oppty across different kinds of companies. The biggest / most relevant diff rel to technical path is btwn orgs that are engineering-driven vs product-driven (except when said product is in a highly technical domain). Maybe obvious, sharing in case it's not. ~~~ homonculus1 Are you paying your ISP per vowel or sth? ~~~ chrisweekly Heh, just typing on my phone in a hurry ------ jdauriemma I'm happy for the author, but did anyone else notice a lack of takeaways for the reader? It reads like a list of accomplishments rather than genuine advice for thriving in technical leadership. ~~~ yitchelle In her closing sentences, she did say "In the coming weeks, I’ll post about how to build strategy and technical leadership skills with the goal of deliberately cultivating a long-term career as an engineer." I guess you need to stay tune for her next blog post. ~~~ jdauriemma Yeah, I read the article. If the takeaway is "read the next article for the thing you clicked on this article for," that seems like the author is squandering the reader's time. ------ waltertamboer I can so much relate to the first paragraph. When you just start your career, you enter a junior role. It's than expected of you to grow to a medior role, a senior role and than somewhere along the line become a lead. Well, that's the biggest BS there is. Not everybody is a good lead. It's a completely different job compared to engineering. It takes people skill, organizational skill and it requires you to approach engineering from a much higher abstract level. Personally I was really unhappy being a lead and I decided to step down. I was doing more harm than good and no-one benefits from that. Not the company, not the team, and definitely not me. FWIW, if you still have to work 50 more years before you can enjoy a retirement, you better learn what makes you happy and do what makes you happy. ~~~ 1MoreThing Most places I've been at don't expect you to ever become a lead. Senior is often a terminal role if you don't want to keep climbing. But there is an expectation that you'll continue to grow to at least a senior level. ------ mi100hael _The Manager 's Path_ by Camille Fournier does a good job covering the various steps from technical individual contributor all the way up through the ranks of management and looks at questions like when to stop getting involved in technical decision making. Would recommend for anyone interested in pursuing a leadership role. ~~~ knightofmars The Fakespot stats on this book and the critical comments in the Amazon listing don't put this book in the same light as you have. Additionally, the conditions surrounding the exit of Camille Fournier and three other C-level individuals from the company which she was a CTO don't inspire confidence that this is good material with regards to the area it is supposed to cover. "It is a significant exodus in a short time, and many former employees describe a corporate culture at the fashion company that is unwelcoming, stressful, and occasionally hostile." [https://fortune.com/2015/11/17/rent-the-runway- exodus/](https://fortune.com/2015/11/17/rent-the-runway-exodus/) ~~~ pkd Having personally read this book, I can add another anecdotal data point to the "it's great" category. It is an insightful book without being preachy and has something useful for people at all levels. Obviously it's mostly based on one person's experience, but there's so much trash in this category of tech books that this read like a breath of fresh air. ------ AndrewKemendo The list of "What does Strategic Engineering Work look like," looks a whole lot like basic management. Each of these things listed below are fundamentally organizational/resources/personnel issues and except for one have almost no relation to the work stream of an IC which would include actually writing new code, refactoring old code, debugging, etc...: \- Tackling technical challenges that span multiple technical and organizational systems. \- Researching and identifying the problems that could be worked on, a year or two from now \- Ramping up strike teams to help build a thing. \- Looking at the big picture including cultural, product and technical challenges, to help inform choices that would be best for the org, perhaps with a 2-5 year view. \- Forming strategies, writing proposals and pitching them across the company, for new architecture, systems or approaches. \- etc... Except for developing prototypes, assuming the senior engineer is actually doing that, that entire list are just foundational management/leadership tasks. ------ dominotw This is bad advice. If you are hitting 40's, please do yourself a favor and go into management. Yes coding is fun but, 1\. Not being able to change jobs because you can't invert a binary tree in 20 secs in leetcode hazing, is not fun. 2\. Being managed by someone a decade younger than you with no family or responsibilities, is not fun. 3\. Spending your weekends learning the latest JS framework because you don't want to be someone "who doesn't keep up", is not fun. 4\. Being paid less than the lowest grade manager, is not fun . 5\. And be honest with yourself, do you really need 20 yrs of coding experience to write CRUD apps? What exactly are you bringing to the table. There is no such thing as "IC track" for almost every one of us, please shake yourself out of your delusion. ~~~ shantly I'm trying but at 35 haven't formally held a title that meant I was leading others. Every posting even for a team lead wants 3 years or 5 years or whatever of leadership already, and that's not even _really_ a management position most places. An MBA and re-entering at the bottom would be very expensive, in direct costs and lost wages. What's the way in? Hope you find yourself in a job where there are leadership positions open and the stars align and you're promoted into one? And you're dead right, not every place is Google or whatever. Hell I don't think _Google 's_ Google, mostly, in terms of what they actually do, but they do pay developers very well regardless, so there's that. But outside a handful of huge pure-tech companies and Wall Street, you better be moving out of development by 40 or so (earlier if you can swing it, really—god I wish I'd started making moves this way years ago), or your career's (pay's) in for a brief flat trajectory followed by a sharp drop way before you'd have liked. ~~~ dfxm12 _What 's the way in? Hope you find yourself in a job where there are leadership positions open and the stars align and you're promoted into one?_ In corporate jobs, this is rarely the way in. Most likely, you'll have to convince your current manager (and maybe theirs) that you're ready to be a manager and look for a manager opening elsewhere in the company. If you think you're ready and your current employer does not, you'll have to look outside. _Years of leadership_ seems like a purposefully vague credential. It's not about a title; if you don't think you've been a leader at work, you probably weren't (or maybe you were and your talent just wasn't managed properly ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ ). ~~~ dominotw > If you think you're ready and your current employer does not, you'll have to > look outside. Is it even possible to find a management position outside without management experience? ~~~ ryandrake I’ve faced the typical deadlock that first time job seekers encounter: you need management experience to get hired as a manager, but nobody will give you a chance to get management experience because you’ve never managed before. ------ this_na_hipster This is a problem I have thought about over my career. The TLDR; You definitely need senior level engineers (Principal's & Above) as a career track in a healthy organization. Here is why - (for the sake of discussion, "principals" refers to principals and above) \- In an org, lets say as a director, I find I rely on my principal engineers to objectively tell me what the right thing to do is. They have less political motivation. \- Principal engineers almost unilaterally have a series of noteworthy accomplishments that create a catalyst for innovation for all engineers around. The depth they create inspires people to really understand tech. \- Discussions with them require managers to have more depth themselves. Rarely can managers win arguments without brushing up on tech. \- Regarding some comments about "CRUD apps" as universal easy things all engineers can solve I find perplexing. Problems in distributed systems are all trying to make CRUD possible and organizations are still figuring out how to do that at scale. \- Regarding arguments about ageism for principals, yes, I agree that ageism exists to a certain degree. However, I find most principal engineers are older as you go up the chain. Therefore, what you are really saying is ageism exists for engineers < principal level. Where you can have new hires know the same depth as them and pay less for. Can you imagine trying to hire folks that built S3, Python, Kafka, etc. be replaceable by younger folks? ~~~ LordHumungous Yep. Well said. People making snide comments about "CRUD apps" probably don't work at scale. ~~~ quickthrower2 "CRUD" apps not at scale definitely have their challenges too. Resolving UI/UX/Requirements and pleasing different types of customers with one interface isn't easy. ------ shrubble I think that this is relevant... 'When I was on TV (Computer Chronicles) in early 1987 showing our product Trapeze the other presenter was Mike Slade who was product manager of Excel. At the time young me thought him some random marketing weenie (young people can be pretty stupid). Yet he started all these companies later including ESPN, worked for Apple in various leadership roles, was a good friend of Steve Jobs and started his own VC firm' [http://thecodist.com/article/my-biggest-regret-as-a- programm...](http://thecodist.com/article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programmer) ------ ttldr > Sometimes being the voice for change, _sometimes being the voice for not > change_. Always weighing up trade offs, always listening. [emphasis mine] i think she makes a really good point here: one that's often overlooked by the "improve"-everything-all-the-time culture that a lot of contemporary tech inveighs. it's easy to advocate solipsistically for an alternate solution that you came up with. it's harder to objectively weigh the merits of extant design decision and admit that your predecessor made an optimal (or more-optimal-than-you-can- muster) choice and defend it. iconoclasts may occasionally create great things independently (perhaps if they're a Linus Torvalds or a Margaret Hamilton), but the meat and potatoes of building functional and robust software is building well on solid foundations, specifically by respecting those foundations when they're sound. ------ LordHumungous IMHO a good senior IC should be performing many of the same tasks as a manager: mentoring and helping junior engineers, setting the team's vision, meeting with stakeholders, and so on. On the other side of the coin, the best managers I've had were also ICs in terms of their code output. ------ sargram01 I don’t see why there is a technical vs management path at many companies, you want management to be a support for the product that’s being delivered and your teams should be skilled in and embody the product they’re making first. Management for management sake makes the product a 2nd goal otherwise. You could argue we can’t find people who can do that, fair enough, but there are plenty of companies that do and their performance is high because of it. ~~~ bluGill There is more than technical situations in focus here. Someone needs to understand the financials and decide if the company can afford to develop a new product, and if so how much to spend. Someone needs to deal with the employee who is harassing a coworker. Someone needs to sell the product. Someone needs to figure out what feature is most important in the new product. Someone needs to figure out if you buy supplies at today's low prices or wait. Someone needs to decide how much quality to sacrifice for lower prices. Someone needs to decide if reusing some subsystem will pay off in the long run. Some of the above decisions have a technical part, but none are entirely technical questions. ------ maximente > senior principal engineer you're telling me there's a difference between a principal and a senior principal? this seems like title bloat (non-financial, meaningless compensation) i think there are just way too many senior engineers and not enough work for them. this title thing feeds into my hypothesis: if you're getting to the principal level and then encouraged towards "senior principal" level, that's an illusion of career progress. i think more senior engineers expect to carry the sort of intellectual freedom they had as high output juniors forever as they become "organizationally woke elite hackers". that's just not a good way to portray yourself, though: eager juniors like that person once was will do the job at 75% cost, and not try to occasionally wade into politics as this free roamer has empowered herself to (ref. bullet about cross-organizational lubricant type) i would be extremely wary of portraying myself as an "elite hacker with enough confidence to meddle across teams" because that is about as vanilla as it could be in 2019. instead i would slot in with an enterprising managerial type and basically become his code peon, pumping out his prototypes, giving him the credit where due, and understanding that he's generating the ideas but not the code, so he can't ghost you very easily and (maybe) he'll keep you safe in the event of layoffs. this keeps you learning new tech and always building, but makes you really valuable to someone with organizational power, so safer than some generic engineer on a larger team. ------ kimchidude Great article. I’d also like to see some evolution to the classic definition of manager. I’m currently in managerial role that essentially replaces half my time (which could be contributed to specialised tasks) with HR-related errands, ie following up absences, helping people acclimatise themselves to the office, etc etc. ------ mrp443 IC vs management is a false dichotomy. The goal should be running your own business and this needs (1) knowledge how things work and (2) connections with relevant people. To get knowledge you work on complex projects and making connections with big people is easy when they are small. ------ lifeisstillgood I am a great believer in "Software Literacy" \- that software is a new form of literacy that we as society will need to ensure is as wide spread as normal literacy. And I find more and more that using this as a lens solves lots of these sort of conundrums What do we do with senior / principal engineers? can be translated to "what shall we do with these really good readers and writers we have hired"? The answer is _not_ invent some parallel path in the company to have them walk around looking for solutions - they become leaders of the organisation ... or they go out. And as for the C-suite. No CEO ever announced that "well I used to read and write but I don't have time for that anymore. I do enable my skip levels to do more reading and writing on their 20% projects however. Sometimes I dream of taking a week off in order to write something - maybe an email, like the good old days" If the management of the organisation is spending less than half its time coding, the company does not have enough automation and will get its arse kicked by 2030 ------ mathattack My takeaway from the article is these last senior resources have earned the right to work on longer term projects. This is vital for organizations to both innovate and clean up technical debt.
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NSA, FBI Warn of Linux Malware Used in Espionage Attacks - maydemir https://threatpost.com/nsa-fbi-warn-of-linux-malware-used-in-espionage-attacks/158351/ ====== fsflover It seems Linux is getting mainstream.
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Show HN: AppCanary – Keep vulnerable software off your servers - phillmv https://appcanary.com/hey_hn ====== jaryd You may want to rethink the pricing. I have several server variants that I effectively clone in different datacenters across my deployment. Since the base images are static I would really only need to run the agent on _n_ servers (where _n_ is the number of server variants that I have) to ensure that my entire deployment is protected. I'm not sure if you would consider this unethical. I would probably feel differently about the pricing if it were tiered levels related to the entire size of the deployment (e.g.: 1-50 servers: $x/mo, 50-250 servers: $y/mo, 250+ servers: $z/mo). ~~~ phillmv >I would probably feel differently about the pricing if it were tiered levels (e.g.: 1-50 servers: $x/mo, 50-250 servers: $y/mo, 250+ servers: $z/mo). Ya, that's fair and a good suggestion. I think we may very well end up doing something like that. We're still trying to figure out what kind of model best suits the server fleets people have. We'll be keeping the first server free, and probably have a not for profit tier. ~~~ pdpi As an added note, $9 per server doesn't seem excessive when I think of our large bare metal servers, but it starts looking _really_ pricy if I look at our $50/mo m3.mediums in AWS. ------ phillmv Hey everyone! appCanary monitors the software on your servers and notifies you when you have to take action. In a previous life, we spent a lot of time worrying about what needs to be updated where and so we built this. We currently let you know about Ruby vulns deployed on any linux, and vulnerable packages if you run Ubuntu. Support for Docker and other vuln sources is just around the corner. We'd love to hear your feedback! ~~~ m00dy How can you figure out whether a software is vulnerable? Parsing public CVEs and matching with version number? ~~~ ryanlol Unless they're watching updates from repos, it'd be very hard to automate this. CVEs are very far from reliable. ------ pki Any way of cheaper pricing for VMs? We have a bunch of VMs that run on not- our-host-node, so it would be effectively $9 for a 256MB RAM instance. ~~~ phillmv We're still getting started, so - give it a spin, and we won't charge you until it's worth your while. ------ timboslice At my day job I am stuck on a Windows IIS stack. Any plans for windows servers? I'd honestly prioritize this after application dependencies checking for Java/Node etc, but just thought I'd ask. ~~~ j_s Check out Mike Taber's¹ cross-platform work-in-progress: [https://www.auditshark.com/](https://www.auditshark.com/) It is targeted more at OS-level vulnerabilities (including IIS) rather than application dependency vulnerabilities, but may provide the solution you're looking for. ¹ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492839) ------ dewey How does this work? Do I need to run your software on my servers? A software calling home to some third party seems to be a problem for many use cases. ~~~ phillmv It's very small and written in golang and up on github [https://github.com/appcanary/agent/](https://github.com/appcanary/agent/) We understand how some people might have problems / have plans to improve upon it - maybe we run a proxy or some kind of enterprise edition. But we think the main pain relief comes from knowing what you have _deployed_ is now fixed. ------ efriese So you're cataloging the software installed and then monitoring for CVEs? ~~~ phillmv There's a stunning amount of elbow grease involved in that. If you're a random company, you have an engineer sitting around whose job involves reading a dozen mailing lists - and we want to save everyone from that redundancy. ~~~ federico3 And that's why there are Linux distributions with security teams doing that work for everybody. How is this service different? ~~~ phillmv 1\. They all do a great job! But there's this last mile problem with managing the information they do put out. If you can handle the downtime, unattended-upgrades will work just dandy. If your postgres restarting in the middle of the night gives you pause, our service can help you choose how to roll out your security upgrades. 2\. We cover app dependencies as well! For now just Ruby, but others as well pretty soon. I'm one of the maintainers of the Ruby Advisory Database [https://github.com/rubysec/ruby-advisory- db/](https://github.com/rubysec/ruby-advisory-db/) \- and we know all about the effort involved. ------ ZeWaren Won't a database of vulnerable servers be something of interest for hackers? Are you confident in your own infrastructure? ~~~ phillmv This is a problem everyone in the security space faces. We used to work as security consultants, so we're more experienced than most, and we're working hard to be transparent and above board. As we grow, we'll definitely be conducting regular audits of our infrastructure. ------ anc84 I had that exact idea a while ago and filed it into my "ideas that might be fun and might be successful" list. Time to cross it off. Good luck with this, it's a great idea! ------ justizin I put together a basic chef cookbook to configure this today: https://github.com/bitmonk/chef-appcanary CentOS / RH / Fedora support isn't in, yet, and for kitchen to pass, you have to edit .kitchen.yml to set your api key. Tomorrow or this evening I'll finish that up and show its' use in a wrapper cookbook. ------ wompa164 Apologies if I'm misunderstanding as I only skimmed the source code but.. Why are you sending the full file contents from the agent to the client? [https://github.com/appcanary/agent/blob/master/agent/agent.g...](https://github.com/appcanary/agent/blob/master/agent/agent.go#L72) agent.client.SendFile(file.Path, file.Kind, contents) Extremely insecure design with a ton of unnecessary overhead. What if those files are configuration files with sensitive data embedded? ~~~ phillmv >Why are you sending the full file contents from the agent to the client? 1\. We only send files you tell us to send in the configuration, and you're not going to be storing any sensitive information in your Gemfile.locks or package.jsons. It's not functionally any different from us parsing it client side - but allows us to support new platforms without having to update the agent. >CRC is not a hashing algorithm. 2\. You're absolutely correct! Which is why we're not using it as a _cryptographic hash_ , i.e. as part of an HMAC. We're only using CRCs to determine if a file has changed, which is the purpose of CRCs :). Do you have any other concerns? We've spent a lot of time being paranoid, and we know it's a hard communication problem. ~~~ brightball "You're not going to be storing any sensitive information in your Gemfile.locks" That's not accurate. When using private gems hosted on github one of the common approaches is to use this in your Gemfile (which shows up in the lock): gem 'my_private_gem', :git => '[https://github_user:cool_password@github.com/organization/my...](https://github_user:cool_password@github.com/organization/my_private_gem.git') ~~~ phillmv Right. I should've been prepared for this response. I can't confirm whether that shows up in your Gemfile.lock but I can say that you _really shouldn 't_ be doing this and switch to keys. We'll likely add a check to beg you to change this in the near future should it show up. ~~~ brightball I agree with you there but to this point at least, I haven't seen another good way to handle this with something like Heroku. It does show in the Gemfile.lock though (just verified). Looking around I did just find a buildpack that tries to solve the problem. That doesn't really apply when using your service on my own servers though. [https://github.com/siassaj/heroku-buildpack-git-deploy- keys](https://github.com/siassaj/heroku-buildpack-git-deploy-keys) I guess the bigger question is simply, are you going to limit your audience only to people already following best practices? An SSL when transferring over these files, just based on the rest of the responses in this thread, would seem to make a lot of people feel better about the service. ~~~ phillmv >I guess the bigger question is simply, are you going to limit your audience only to people already following best practices? No, of course not! We desperately want to bring people into best practices. Most people are simply unaware of what they're doing wrong - or have no good means of knowing what to improve. It's our great hope we can improve _everybody 's_ security. >An SSL when transferring over these files Yup! All communication happens over SSL :D. We have elaborate plans to even add certificate pinning to the agent but that's on pause until we sort out larger infrastructure architecture. Thanks for pointing that out as well. I've noted this elsewhere, but communicating how much effort we've poured into this is hard! ------ iang I like the idea but most of the servers we manage have out going firewalls to block them from talking to the internet. We produce installed package lists during deployment (as much as possible we run immutable pre-built images and replace the image rather than upgrade in place) which could be sent to a service like this but wouldn't want to start punching holes and adding routes for it. To work as is we'd need to add duplicate canary servers in an isolate environment to talk to the service. ------ ihsw > $9 per server How does this affect containers? ~~~ phillmv Docker shall be addressed soon! We'll probably end up sitting on your host and taking a peek inside your container filesystems. ~~~ sandGorgon @phillmv - +1 for the Docker+supervisord version ! Would strongly recommend an "in-container" version, so that I can bake your agent into my Docker VMs. Remember that if I run my Docker VM on CoreOS, then it is very hard to install something on the host. ~~~ shazow It could be a separate docker container with a volume mount to the docker sock. That's probably the best option, a bit better than baking it into all of your images. ------ altharaz Sounds interesting! Is the vulnerability scanner of Gemfile based on bundler- audit[1]? Do you add other value to this part? [1] [https://github.com/rubysec/bundler- audit](https://github.com/rubysec/bundler-audit) ------ kylequest A couple of years ago there was a similar startup called SourceNinja. They used a different method to get the dependency/library info though. It turned out to be not as profitable as they hoped... ------ Animats _" Hey Hacker News! Try out our pilot program."_ Just sign here. It's another wannabe startup that asks people to sign up before disclosing terms, or, in this case, anything at all. And they want access to your server. Right. No business address on the site. A low-rent "domain control only validated" SSL cert. Anonymous domain registration. They do show up as a Delaware corporation, all of two months old: CANARY COMPUTER CORPORATION File Number: 5749511 Filing State: Delaware (DE) Filing Status: Unknown Filing Date: May 18, 2015 They're not known to Dun and Bradstreet, so you can't do a background check on them. Those are all scumbag flags. ~~~ NateLawson I think "scumbag flags" is an extremely inflammatory conclusion to jump to. How about these are all signs for "just getting started"? Sure, if you don't want to do business with a brand new startup, just wait a bit for them to mature. But no need to sound the snake oil alarm. That being said, putting ToS and privacy policy links on the signup and main page would be a good idea. ~~~ Animats That's not enough. This unknown, anonymous outfit wants you to trust them to collect info about security vulnerabilities on your site. That's asking a lot. Remember, in B2B you're selling to the main in the chair[1]: I don’t know who you are. I don’t know your company. I don’t know your company’s product. I don’t know what your company stands for. I don’t know your company’s customers. I don’t know your company’s record. I don’t know company’s reputation. Now—what was it you wanted to sell me? Now see the modern version of this: [2] [1] [http://rhodescomm.com/_blog/Observations/post/Why_You_Should...](http://rhodescomm.com/_blog/Observations/post/Why_You_Should_Care_About_the_Man_in_the_Chair_/) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXG7zYWKHGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXG7zYWKHGU) ------ nickphx $9/server? lol.
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Worst 404 Page Ever? - da5e http://opensu.blogspot.com/2012/03/worst-404-page-ever.html ====== peterbwf It is what it is. Hacker News is a no-frills site. I like it that way :) If it really does bother you, perhaps some greasemonkey might work for you to save you from having to retype the address or hit the favorite again? ------ rachelbythebay Pages which are blank shouldn't throw stones.
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Malcolm Gladwell on Bruce Ratner and the Barclays Center - pauljonas http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7021031/the-nets-nba-economics ====== daniellicht Great Article!
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Deep sea frogfish that walks on the ocean floor found in New Zealand - never-the-bride http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/12108262/Frogfish-Meet-the-curious-creature-that-walks-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea.html ====== nsajko The handfish has a very similar type of locomotion: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handfish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handfish) , also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogcocephalus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogcocephalus). And the tripodfish stands on a tripod :) : [https://youtu.be/yOKdog8zbXw](https://youtu.be/yOKdog8zbXw) And on land, there are mudskippers, which are amphibious and have efficient terrestrial locomotion. ~~~ pluteoid See also the walking sharks: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiscyllium_halmahera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiscyllium_halmahera) Various species of bottom-dwelling or feeding fish have independently evolved pectoral fin modifications to assist their locomotion across the sea floor. ------ pvaldes I wonder how "Found in a beach, spotted in shallow water, and nobody knows where the fish came" ended being translated to "is a deep sea fish". Nope. Most probably a reef fish living around -20m or so. Is an interesting species in any case. UPDATED: Dorsal and anal fins discard Allenichthys. Body rough so is not Phyllophryne, no ocelli in body or tail fin, conspicuous esca (so is not Antennatus), first and two dorsal elongated (so is not Histiophryne): It seems from genus Antennarius. ~~~ vacri They probably didn't mean "deep sea fish" to be taken littorally. ------ MrJagil Have anyone been able to find more photos? Only found this one: [http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11576168) ~~~ pvaldes Yes, there is a third photo of the opened big mouth in Facebook, but do not adds much new info. The ilicium shape and lenght is not clear and there is not info about the size of the fish.
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Elixir Cross Referencer: new way to browse kernel sources - tryp http://free-electrons.com/blog/elixir/ ====== tryp As a longtime browser of cross-referenced source generated by LXR [0] I found this article on their new implementation of the backend interesting. [0] [http://elixir.free-electrons.com/linux/latest/source](http://elixir.free- electrons.com/linux/latest/source)
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My Setup - revorad http://paulstamatiou.com/my-setup ====== pc86 These posts are all meaningless drivel. Does anyone really care what chair someone sits on? Whether they use a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro? Yes, you use 1Password. We get it.
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Hash lookup in Ruby, why is it so fast? - elainejgreen https://blog.engineyard.com/2013/hash-lookup-in-ruby-why-is-it-so-fast ====== cheald This isn't unique to Ruby - this is a property of hash tables in general. Hash tables are Data Structures 101 kind of stuff.
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Google Can't Google? Jeff Barr on Googles Recruitment - danw http://www.jeff-barr.com/?p=1047 ====== danw Anyone else have interesting google HR stories?
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Morph.io – search over 3000 scrapers - dkarapetyan https://morph.io/ ====== btown TL;DR it's cron jobs as a service + a managed result database + GUI + API to the database, all for free (donation-supported) and intended for nonprofits trying to expose government data. For instance, the table at [https://morph.io/planningalerts- scrapers/city_of_sydney](https://morph.io/planningalerts- scrapers/city_of_sydney) is created by running [https://github.com/planningalerts- scrapers/city_of_sydney/bl...](https://github.com/planningalerts- scrapers/city_of_sydney/blob/master/scraper.rb) daily, and the PlanningAlerts organization uses this API to send email alerts when scrape results change. They've created dozens of these scrapers: [https://github.com/planningalerts- scrapers](https://github.com/planningalerts-scrapers) . It's great to see services like this. The need for this does underscore, however, how difficult it is to write a generalized scraper that will work on multiple websites. Google has been attempting to do this structured-scraping-at-scale with its WebTables team: [http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2014/09/introducing- struc...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2014/09/introducing-structured- snippets-now.html) . I remember seeing a talk on the underlying technology - there's a lot of machine learning used to determine whether a <table> is actually structured data, and how to associate things with Google's Knowledge Graph. Solving structured scraping in 100% of the cases is an "AI-complete" problem, but there's definitely progress on getting partially there in an automated fashion.
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Ask HN: What are some good hands-on tech jobs? - mpg33 Non-office tech jobs I guess is what I mean. ====== stonemetal Industrial automation controls. Sure some of your time would be spent in an office coding, but you would also spend sometime with your system out on the shop floor working with the system. If it is a small shop, you would probably have to wear many hats and help build the machine yourself, or at least that was my experience working at a small industrial automation shop.
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Analyse Asia Podcast #59: China's Five Year Plan and Huawei with Kitty Fok - bleongcw http://analyse.asia/2015/09/13/episode-59-chinas-five-year-plan-and-huawei-with-kitty-fok/ ====== bleongcw Synopsis: With Kitty Fok (Country Manager, China) from IDC, we discuss the Chinese government’s five year plan specifically on their ambitions on technology, innovation and digital infrastructure for the next 5 years. In the same conversation, we analyse Huawei, one of China’s top technology companies where they are now growing in three important segments: (a) carriers in the telecommunications industry, (b) enterprise and (c) consumer where they have beaten Xiaomi in market share and sought to dominate in other markets. With an in-depth discussion on Huawei (which is a private corporation), we discussed how they are innovating and growing as one of the top Chinese companies leading globally along with the Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent (BAT) Axis.
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Handwriting recognition for Kindle Touch (sudoku) - sblom http://www.geekwire.com/2012/kindle-touch-handwriting-recognition-slick-feature-puzzazz ====== royleban This article was also picked up by MSNBC: [http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/14/10408891-sta...](http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/14/10408891-startup- gets-kindle-touch-to-understand-handwriting) ------ martinpannier I wouldn't have suspected the Kindle touch screen to be sensitive enough for this kind of technology. I also didn't suspect that there was a whole category of Kindle content I had never heard of. Now I feel stupid. ------ RuchitGarg congrats Roy! Exciting stuff
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The Toggle that Wouldn't - qwph http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Toggle-that-Wouldnt.aspx ====== yan hah "The toggles... they do nothing"
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What you do versus what your customers want Venn diagram - reubenswartz http://www.mimiran.com/small-business-owner/what-you-do-versus-what-your-customers-want/ ====== Millennium Certainly you want the overlap to be large, but if you always do only what your customers want, there's no room for innovation or vision (which, by definition, users haven't thought to want). But that said, the "frustration/annoyance" factors that the diagram outs outside the overlap are also real, so there are tradeoffs to be made. The real problem is in figuring out the proper balance. ~~~ reubenswartz Great point, Millennium. As Henry Ford said, "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." If you can work through to the next level, though, and realize they wanted efficient, affordable transportation, your vision actually serves the customer's wants/needs better than a horse. Another conclusion is that if customers want something too different from what you do, maybe you shouldn't pursue those kinds of customers.
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Leaving Github - srl http://bytbox.net/blog/2012/08/leaving-github.html ====== akent You can still get the full git diff out of a pull request by appending .diff to the pull request URL on github. Even better, you can get output similar to git send-email by appending .patch. Likewise there's nothing stopping you applying an emailed patch in your local copy and then pushing to github. This post seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill. ~~~ masklinn > Likewise there's nothing stopping you applying an emailed patch in your > local copy and then pushing to github. Right. Now let's say you are the one not using github (you use raw git), and you want to send a patch to somebody using github ("not git"). As TFA notes, either nothing gets done (you send-email and the other guy just doesn't see/want it) or something has to give, you have to create a github repository with the result of your patch or the other guy has to learn git-am. That _could_ be fixed if github had better mail integration (and more generally more hooks for standard git behaviors) and you could essentially create a pull request by git-send-mail-ing some sort of special address @github. And the pull request got its own mail thread (so the initial sender got replies & al without needing to go on github). As far as I know, that's not the case. ~~~ bryanlarsen That's something that github could easily add, given their current level of resources. The million dollar question is "why haven't they added it?" There are at least two possible answers: not many people have asked for it, or to increase lock-in. It's a feature that github SHOULD add. There are some people who want it, and these people are the type of people that can become quite vocal proponents or detractors. More importantly it signals quite strongly that github intends to become a good citizen in the nation of git rather than trying to appropriate it. ~~~ masklinn > There are at least two possible answers: not many people have asked for it, > or to increase lock-in. Watching Zach Holman's various presentations on Github and how they work interally provides a third one: since Github uses pull requests internally (and new githubbers are probably github users in the first place) nobody has any issue with _not_ supporting `am` and `send-mail` there, so nobody went and built support for that. ------ mbleigh GitHub is closed source, but has open APIs to interact with every aspect of the system. It would be completely possible to create an email dropbox for git send-email that would create pull requests from an email. The reason that such a thing doesn't exist is that nearly everyone loves the crap out of GH pull requests. If you don't like pull requests, you can use GitHub as nothing but a git remote. If you use <https://github.com/defunkt/hub>, you don't even ever have to visit the GitHub website once you've signed up. GitHub does enhance and doesn't replace git. You're proclaiming an "embrace, extend, extinguish" when the fact is that nothing on GitHub is incompatible in any way with git off of GitHub. If one day GitHub were to torch their servers and disappear, all I'd have to do is git push to another remote and we're back in business. I'd lose my issues, but git doesn't exactly ship with an issue tracker. ------ mh- _"services like github and sourceforge are just fads, with very little (I think no) added value."_ I can't tell if the author is being hyperbolic or is just out of touch with reality. _"A couple nights ago, I needed to set up gitweb (a story for another post), and learned that no, nginx did not support CGI, and fcgiwrap was a little annoying to get working on OpenBSD. I whipped up a quick 80-liner in go to serve a single CGI script, and then told nginx to reverse proxy." (from previous blog entry)_ oh. ~~~ dustyleary He's out of touch with reality. _Xanga, MySpace, Digg… the lists extends to infinity, and only fools could think that Twitter and Facebook, giants now, won’t be added to that list within the next five years._ I wonder if his tune will change in 5 years when Twitter and Facebook are still giants? I'm not sure how much I'd be willing to bet that they'll still be "top dogs" in 10 years... But asserting that " _only fools could think they'll survive 5 more years_ " is crazy. ~~~ fruchtose I agree with you about the 5/10 year deal, but I think it needs to be said _why_ Facebook will survive, and why Xanga, MySpace and Digg did not. All of the latter three sites did multiple things wrong: 1\. Fail to compete with competitors 3\. Fail to build a community Issue 1 manifested itself differently for each site. Xanga couldn't keep up with LiveJournal, which not only arrived on the scene after Xanga but out- innovated them as well. MySpace was a clusterfuck of design and functionality that got stale while Facebook was improving constantly. Digg ignored the hell out of its users and simply had nothing compelling vs Reddit. Also, none of the sites pulled in people and kept them. The narrative for MySpace users was that people were becoming "friends" with hundreds of people who they did not know. It doesn't take a genius to realize that this essentially invalidates the whole point of a social network. Xanga never got a large audience and also suffered from the same problem of anonymous users. Digg? Digg never even really tried. Shouts were pathetic. Facebook solved these problems. While MySpace appeared to do nothing after News Corp acquired them, Facebok kept changing the site in a very public way-- and even when they got negative publicity (e.g. privacy settings), they made sure that people knew they were actively developing the site. Additionally, users on Facebook know the people in their network, and users are constantly given a reason to come back (communicate with your friends! apps! interact with companies!). Faceboook survived because they made it clear that they are the best game in town. ------ sc68cal _Github is not like that. The github engineers quite clearly see github as a product built on git (the technology) rather than a product operating within git (the protocol). They do not improve or contribute to git itself_ GitHub has a number of employees that contribute to libgit2 (<https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2>), and the language bindings for a number of languages. I think that is a serious contribution to the Git ecosystem. full disclosure: I replaced GitSharp with LibGit2Sharp (the C# bindings to libgit2) in Git-Tfs ------ molecule This is quite an audacious article, considering that the author's web- interface to his destination git repo is not set up properly: <http://git.bytbox.net/> <base href="http://localhost:8081:8081" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="static/gitweb.css"/> <link rel="alternate" title="bytbox.net Git projects list" href="?a=project_index" type="text/plain; charset=utf-8" /> <link rel="alternate" title="bytbox.net Git projects feeds" href="?a=opml" type="text/x-opml" /> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="static/git-favicon.png" type="image/png" /> ~~~ anaran Yep, it's still broken. <base href="<http://git.bytbox.net/> /> fixes that page, but pages reached from there are still suffering the some bad base href. ------ bryanlarsen I also get that "silo" feeling from git's pull requests, but for a different reason. That great big "merge & close request" button seems nice and handy, but if you press it, you're doing it wrong. You should probably be merging it locally, running your automated tests and some manual sanity checks, and then pushing it to github. What github should do is have a button that pops up a dialog containing some commands you can cut and paste to the command line to do just that. My flow looks something like this: \- click around to find the author's repository URL \- git remote add it \- git fetch that remote \- copy the author's issue branch name from the pull request page \- git merge that \- run the automated tests, and check functionality \- then either git push or delete my own master branch and then check it out as a tracking branch from origin/master That last step is probably suboptimal, but it doesn't happen often and I know how to do it that way. It illustrates my point, though: why doesn't github tell me how to do it? ~~~ substack I've complained about this before too, but if you click the "i" with a circle around it in the bar that says "this pull request can be automatically merged" you get a nice box with all the git commands to do a local fetch and merge. I think this functionality should be less hidden away but it is there and quite useful. ------ FlukeATX I see this guy's point, and I understand it's not unique (we've seen Linus' thoughts on Github's Pull Requests), but personally I don't see it as a big deal. Pull Requests are very simple to use and in my experience, do what they are meant to very well. I recently made my first contribution to an existing open source project, and it was an interesting experience. One of the things I always wondered was, how do I go from "Ok, I have a bug fix / new feature" to "Great, it's part of the software now!". For this particular project it was as simple as forking the Github repository, making my changes, and sending a pull request- done. I could leave that Github repo on my account to easily show off my contribution to friends or potential employers, or delete it if I felt it was clutter. I didn't have to learn how `git am` or `git send-email` work or making a patch and sending it to a development list or anything like that. And if someone wants to contribute to a project of mine on Github, but they don't want to use Github's system, that's cool too. If you're willing to help me out, I'll gladly learn how to take your contribution and get it into my project. ~~~ taligent Same with me. I recently made my first contribution to an open source project using Github. There is no way I would have done the same if I had to deal with patches, emails, arguing with other developers or some other process that wasn't as simple as a few clicks. I honestly believe Github is the best thing to happen to OSS in a long time. ------ jlarocco I was under the impression that GitHub stuff is orthogonal to git. In other words, GitHub pull requests don't make the existing git functionality go away and there's nothing stopping anybody from using whichever one they want. If you don't like GitHub pull requests just don't use them. Am I mistaken? ~~~ mh- >Am I mistaken? no. as others have pointed out in the last few minutes, GH is perfectly capable of being a standard git remote. I've only found two limitations to hosting on GitHub: * Can't use real git hooks. understandable in the shared environment, but an annoyance and it's worth mentioning. * Can't prevent force pushes; no fine-grain permissions- grant read or read-write to a repo. The permission gripe has a solution in GitHub Enterprise, but I don't use it and can't speak to its usability. ~~~ nuclear_eclipse > _Can't use real git hooks. understandable in the shared environment, but an > annoyance and it's worth mentioning._ It's also worth mentioning that the selection of hooks available pretty much trumps any standard git hooks that I've ever dealt with. And if you really need some custom functionality to fire, you can set up a custom webhook URL that points to your own server somewhere. ~~~ oinksoft This then requires exposing a crucial part of your development workflow at a public URL (even if the resource is authenticated). For various reasons, this is quite simply a non-starter for many shops who might otherwise be prepared to bite the bullet and put their source code on Github's servers. ~~~ llimllib > this is quite simply a non-starter for many shops And, for those people, github offers an appliance that sits on your network. ~~~ oinksoft I didn't know github offered an appliance, that sounds like a good fit for those folks as long as it's priced reasonably. ~~~ Karunamon It's actually absurdly expensive :( It's a very cool app (Github, only on your own server, basically), but it's priced out of the range of anybody but large enterprises. ------ binarycrusader I'm sure I'll get downvoted for this, but the fact that github makes it so that I largely don't have to use git is why I use it. Despite my best efforts, every time I try to use git I run away screaming in terror. I've used sccs, cvs, svn, mercurial, and a few other version control systems over my development lifetime and I can just never wrap my head around git. That may be because I spent so many years using Mercurial before git, but I just can't seem to bring myself to enjoy using it. git makes things far more difficult than mercurial (in my opinion) and has encoded it's creators process and workflow into the tool. Tools like github for mac (or the arguably superior tool, SourceTree) make git bearable for me. ~~~ srl This is, I think, a legitimate reason to use github (although I personally think you'd be much better off really forcing yourself to use and grok git). But it would be better for the rest of us if, despite not using git, github made it look exactly like you _were_ using git. But that's not quite the case - quite a bit of git's functionality is missing (cherry-pick), and other bits are replaced with non-compatible pieces (PRs vs am+send-mail, which provide the exact same functionality, but can't talk to each other). As things are, collaborating with you on a project would require me to use github's interface. Or in reverse, if you wanted to collaborate with me on a project, you'd have to use raw git. If github supported foreign clones and PRs (via send-email and friends), it would seem much less "trapping". ------ ricardobeat I thought this was about an employee leaving GitHub and thought "oh shit, there goes their winning streak"! On the actual post: what prevents one from using `git am` locally and then pushing the changes to GitHub? ~~~ msbarnett > On the actual post: what prevents one from using `git am` locally and then > pushing the changes to GitHub? Absolutely nothing. His entire 'Github vs Git' thesis is a false dichotomy. ~~~ dfc _"false dichotomy"_ How can you commit to the linux kernel using github's interface? I have not seen a button for `git send-email`. ~~~ mh- I'm not sure I understand the basis for your conclusion.. There's a lot of git operations you can't do with the Github web interface. How do you do a non-ff merge? A rebase? You use the git cli. ~~~ dfc I think that is the thesis of the linked story. I did not write the linked story nor am I in complete agreement with the author. But I think that the thesis is that there is the github way and then there is the git cli way. To use the author's analogy to gmail, what actions do you drop to the shell to complete instead of using gmail's interface. ~~~ chris_wot If that is the thesis, then his example of gmail is strange. After all, he uses fetchmail, alpine, mutt and Thunderbird to use the service. I strongly doubt that gmail has every single feature of mutt in their web UI! ~~~ spullara It is also strange since gmails IMAP implementation is so horrible due to the way they changed how email works (labels, archive, etc). ------ sthatipamala Github is not loyal to the Git way of life. They reinvent or add sugar to parts of Git that do not appeal to amateur developers. For example, Github for Mac hides the Git workflow with semantics that are similar to Dropbox and SVN. They have also switched the default authentication from SSH-based to username and password based. This is very intelligent on their part. Less scary = more developers = solidified Github as THE code repo of the Internet. ~~~ primatology Increasing the accessibility of Git isn't treason. Quite the opposite: Git is now used by far more developers. That's a win for the "Git way of life." And the original, "expert" workflow is still available for those who want it. ~~~ benatkin > That's a win for the "Git way of life." No it isn't. That's a win for the GitHub workflow. People learn how to use git locally, if they aren't using the mac or windows client. They don't learn how to collaborate the standard way, though. ------ geofft I agree wholeheartedly with disliking their pull-request interface (the encouragement to use a non-mailed-patch workflow plus the fact that push notifications don't include diffs means that diffs never land in my inbox, which is unfortunate), and disliking the popular equivalence of Github with git. That said, "They do not improve or contribute to git itself" is simply untrue. Many of the most active git contributors are Github employees. The git website itself was designed by Github people and is hosted by Github; the Pro Git book is written by an employee. ------ ftwinnovations I see where the author is coming from with his arguments, but I'll bet 10 bucks his project won't be seeing any pull requests moving forward. Github did not supplant git, it created the market for git. If it weren't for github, we'd all still be using SVN (yes yes and mercurial and blah blah other minor league players). ~~~ oinksoft I have little doubt that a great many of the programmers here adopted DVCS long before commercial web frontends became popular. You have it backwards: Github has git to thank, and not the other way around. ~~~ snogglethorpe Er, both are true. Github is fundamentally a "value added" on top of git. It obviously owes a huge amount to git's fundamentally good design, and especially in the beginning, to a pre-existing git community (which jumped at a somewhat slicker way to set up git repos and interact with other git users). But OTOH, github's slick layer on top of git really helped push git into areas that might have been a harder sell otherwise. [and that's what's amazing about git these days: not that it's popular amongst hackers (duh!) but that it has become popular amongst more conservative corporations and less technically inclined users.] They help each other. Win-win. ~~~ benatkin Let me spell it out for you: git would exist if not for github. The inverse is not true. ~~~ takluyver I doubt git would be nearly as popular without a really polished hosting site, though. Github is git's killer feature. And there are other DVCSs. As it is, the main hosts for bzr and hg are clearly less slick and less popular than Github. But had Git not been there, it's quite plausible that someone would have built an equivalent site around another technology. ~~~ benatkin > I doubt git would be nearly as popular without a really polished hosting > site, though. Github is git's killer feature. GitHub isn't polished. It just has engagement mechanisms like twitter does, that keep people coming back. When people say how much they like GitHub they're usually talking about the community or git, both of which GitHub takes way too much credit for. > And there are other DVCSs. As it is, the main hosts for bzr and hg are > clearly less slick and less popular than Github. But had Git not been there, > it's quite plausible that someone would have built an equivalent site around > another technology. There were a lot of people moving to git from hg when GitHub came out. I think it was clear there was demand, and if not for GitHub other services would have sprung up to fill in the gap. ------ storborg This doesn't make sense. You can use Github purely as a git remote, and nothing else--just as you can use Gmail as an IMAP host, and nothing else. ~~~ srl > You can use Github purely as a git remote, and nothing else And then you start receiving pull requests. Github, purely as a git remote, adds no value over self-hosting, and is significantly slower. (Seriously - try self-hosting and notice how different 'git push' feels. It surprised the hell out of me.) ~~~ nowarninglabel You don't receive pull requests if your repo is private. So where is the value you are asking? Well for one, we don't worry about the server git is on going down. But more importantly, we are exposed to a lot of tools usable via the site that are hard to replicate on the command line. For instance, they have a great "view changes" feature for comparison between repos, this help sort out why master was ahead of development by some commits the other day. I could go on (stats, ease of sending links to diff to non- technical people that just want to see a text change was made, etc.) but go take a look yourself. That's not to say that git is for you, but your premise that github offers no value as a git remote is false. ~~~ oinksoft Well for one, we don't worry about the server git is on going down github has been down for far longer in the past four years than the server where I keep my repositories, which has only been offline for maintenance reboot. This is my main reason actually for not wanting to put anything commercial on github; the performance benefits are just gravy on top of that. they have a great "view changes" feature for comparison between repos, this help sort out why master was ahead of development by some commits the other day It sounds like you're referring to branches, not repositories. `git diff` handles this very well for me and is far more flexible. Even on an open source project I host on github, I'm going to use `git diff` to perform this operation. ease of sending links to diff to non-technical people that just want to see a text change was made, etc. gitweb handles this fine if I need it to, though. ~~~ lotyrin Yeah. And I could easily set up a box with postfix, an IMAP daemon a webmail and a spam filter. But in my personal case it's a waste of my time compared to just using GMail. Obviously that's not true for everyone and I'm not trying to say it is. Nor do I thing the pro-Github folks in this thread are trying to say github is always the answer. ~~~ oinksoft It is simpler and easier to set up a new git repository on a webserver than it is to do the same on github. It is also simpler to set up post-receive hooks and the like when you want them to do sophisticated things. The ramp-up to get git working on a webserver is this: Do you have SSH connection? Are your contributors' umask okay? To compare this to the complexities of configuring good SMTP/IMAP/POP with SSL shows that you don't know very much about any of these matters, or that you are not thinking seriously about them. P.S. I find great benefits of hosting my own email, chiefly, once again, that I can guarantee that my mail service is working, and that I get my mail very quickly. gmail has been offline more in the past four years than my mail server. I also don't have to worry about password resets, a webmail UI constantly in flux, or Gmail constantly hitting me up for my mobile phone number. ~~~ taligent >It is simpler and easier to set up a new git repository on a webserver than it is to do the same on github. Is this a joke ? ~~~ saurik If you already have a webserver, even just a ~/public_html folder (something very common for people at universities, for example, to have), anywhere on the Internet that you have SSH access to push content to (and honestly: I would find it highly unlikely that your average developer does not have at least one), you can push a local repository to it with a single shell command: you just push to a folder on the server as if it exists, it will be created, and the folder can then be used via the web server for anonymous git clones and pulls. As in: if GitHub requires even a single additional step of "type in the name of a repository into a website" it has already far lost; so no: it doesn't seem even remotely reasonable to insinuate that oinksoft's comment is "a joke". If you don't already have a working web server (again: seriously?) then setting up an account that has one in this day and age is really not going to be much harder than getting an account at github, and once you have one it will again be simpler per repository to push. ~~~ tonyarkles I'd argue that the "average developer" has probably never used SSH, or so rarely that it's practically as if they don't know what it is beyond a way to type commands into a remote machine. Think FTP. _That_ is something that would be a little safer to assume that an "average developer" would have. I have to consciously remember that a lot of the development tools I use on a day-to-day basis (ssh, git, emacs, rails, django, js unit testing, diff, etc), while commonly discussed on HN, are not actually the norm in "the rest of the world". FTPing a pile of PHP files, versioned using .zip files, and merged by hand without diff tools seems to be the "average developer" when I start looking around a bit. ------ hunvreus The real added value from Github is not Git support per se. It is the knowledge that you won't need to do what the author is about to do; maintain one more service by yourself. It's not that it is a particularly daunting task, so isn't maintaining your own mail server, mailing list, NAS, blog... But it piles up, and at the end of the day you're probably better off not wasting your time supporting things that other people can do well enough (and probably cheaper). ------ ozataman Not that I'm against compatibility or that I'm in love with Github, but what about having one place where you track most/all of your OSS project of interest? Integrated issue tracker? Ability to collaboratively work with people across the planet with line by line comments? The value of having entire communities completely familiar with a common platform to collaborate on? Github can and should further improve its relevance while becoming increasingly compatible and just right. But I fail to see how whipping up a self operated server replaces all of that. I don't even want to mention backups, security updates, power interruptions... ------ eschulte I've been using github side by side with self-hosted git repositories for years and I've yet to notice github doing anything to my git repositories which makes them harder to use outside github. Am I missing something, or is this article just FUD? ~~~ dwc The article is a bit mixed. The valid complaint of pull requests v. send-email is fairly important. The rest of the complaints aren't well thought out, and seem to be pure whinging. ------ dtorres That title is misleading... I expected blood! About the post itself: I personally use github as a git host of public code only, other than viewing code (which does a great job at, IMO) and hosting I have no other use for it. All the other things I do them with the cli. ------ gingerlime How is pull-requests in github different from e.g. tasks in gmail? If you use the gmail task feature, I believe you are unable to access it via IMAP or from your mail client either. Or perhaps the filter options in gmail too? (can you sync these easily with procmail?). I don't use it much, but some of the google-plus integration might also go beyond simple email... I think there must be other examples of unique features that gmail offers over email. That being said, if I continue to look at the email as an analogy, look at what's happening with facebook. They removed the subject line, gave people facebook.com address, built their own messenger app, all seems to work quite well, with many of my friends stopping to use email and rely solely on facebook messages. Sure, it sends you an email, but effectively obscures your email address from your friends... I think this is worrying, and I can understand at least some of the sentiment of the author about github implementing a feature that people like, use and depend on, but one that is essentially incompatible or draws away from git. ------ methodin Can someone explain to me why these articles are so popular here? They are always subjective, reflect a single viewpoint and are typically decorated rants - yet for some reason they constantly appear. Why? ~~~ zhov Because this website is awful and full of drama queens. ~~~ asparagui LEAVE HACKERNEWS ALONE! ------ MetaCosm If you are leaving github and self-hosting, check out <http://gitlabhq.com/> \-- still has some rough edges, but getting better fast. Fine grained permissions as well. ------ azakai Valid complaint. I felt this exact way when I first started using github 2 years ago, and I almost didn't use it because of that. But everyone is on github. It won. Even if the article makes 100% valid points, that won't change anytime soon, and until then, I'll be on github. And despite the problems mentioned, it is still an awesome free service. ------ bconway OP isn't the only one who feels this way: [http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/torvalds_github...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/torvalds_github/) ------ jcoder I think the author's personal feelings towards Github the company are blinding them to logic: > They do not improve or contribute to git itself (edit: as pointed out on HN, > many individual employees at github are git contributors - but none seem to > do so under the auspices of github, and the most prolific were contributors > well before github came into being) Sure...by hiring prolific Git contributors, and allowing them to continue to work on the product, they display their disdain for raw Git, because they didn't make them use a company account. ------ pooriaazimi I agreed with most of the article, but the last paragraph is really silly: "ultimately, services like github and sourceforge are just fads, with very little (I think no) added value." ------ smagch related HN discussion : Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3960876> ------ conorwade Funny post… Github is built on git. Usually whoever is running a project sets up the protocols for contributing. So any confusion over the send-email versus pull-request is a bit over blown. I have watched experienced devs struggle to come to terms with Git. Github makes the transition easier. Then piece by piece they investigate how to use Git properly. Why do these posts show up after major funding happens. Is it because Github is now not the plucky underdog? ------ donnfelker IM assuming this rant is about public open source repos that allow users to submit pull requests. Reason I say that is because I've used git for years with numerous teamsall of which used a bit repo. We had no issues you speak of. We never logged into the WebUI to do anything other than admin of adding users or keys. ------ AznHisoka Funny, I had no clue git even existed - I thought Github was Git. Honestly, I don't really care if Github follows the git protocol, it makes version control so painless and easy to use. Setting it up manually is tedious and time consuming. So in short, it solves a pain for me. That's all that matters. ------ repoman This is why I always use Bitbuekt. As far as I am concerned, I dislike Linus so I won't use git. Well, I still use Linux because it's a great software, but git? Nah. Stick with Mercurial myself. No wonder why Python and Django and Python stick to Bitbucket lol ------ jcoder The author makes It sound like Github actively prevents him from using git://github... as a simple remote: > Self-hosting is easy and cheap, I easily collaborate with people who prefer > other solutions, and pushes take a quarter of a second. ------ DiabloD3 Actually, why isn't there a git extension for github tasks? Theres no reason why I shouldn't be able to do git send-github gitusername <branch> and have it pop up a commit editor to type the pull request text, etc. ~~~ bkbleikamp <https://github.com/defunkt/hub> ~~~ bryanlarsen But that's not an extension. It could easily be. The fact that it isn't, and Defunkt's suggestion to alias hub to git nicely illustrates the original author's point. ------ olalonde > As far as marketing goes, git has effectively become _git_ , just as search > became google. I think this should be: > As far as marketing goes, git has effectively become _github_ , just as > search became google. ------ wldlyinaccurate To be honest, the _only_ reason I am still using GitHub is because it's by far the easiest way for me to show my work to potential employers. ------ gbog I just discovered the git note command. To add to the article github could have used that for their commit comments, or do they? ------ ghotli I think of github more in terms of a foundation than a fad. Something that ought to last throughout time and forever. ------ orefalo Let me guess... you are a LEX & YACC fan!
{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: GreyNoise Visualizer – Monitor Internet-wide scan and attack traffic - a_morris https://viz.greynoise.io/ ====== a_morris Short video showing basic usage: [https://vimeo.com/351627637](https://vimeo.com/351627637) ~~~ A2017U1 this is real neat do you have plans to monetize it or more a hobby thing? Think you could do well, the space could do with some competitors. ~~~ a_morris Thanks! Yup- we've actually been monetizing it for about two years now. Our customers pay us for 1) significant API usage and 2) commercial rights to the data. The visualizer is really more of a way to get people excited and get their feet wet in the data.
{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How can we thank Google for their commitment to free expression? - censormuch It seems to me that Google has been taking a lot of heat lately with denying the request to remove the Mohammed video and their Brazil chief being detained for refusing to remove a user-uploaded video attacking and "slandering" a mayoral candidate in the country. If Google were to censor something, we'd be all over it. Maybe we can figure out a way to let them know how much we appreciate their stance? ====== Robby2012 Google doesn't censor things because of the money, do you really think they do it because they're good people? In that case why are they always tracking us and spying all our data? why do they own all the rights over the info I upload to Google Drive? Google IS evil ------ lumberjack Google aren't idiots. They won't censor something that is already popular. It would achieve nothing and put them in bad publicity. ------ debacle The same way we damn them for their poor customer support - impotent blog posts. ------ paulerdos The Brazil chief was not detained over the Mohmed video.
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Soon, It Will Cost Less to Sequence a Genome Than to Flush a Toilet - motyka http://www.businessinsider.com/super-cheap-genome-sequencing-by-2020-2014-10 ====== jMyles I'm always a little wary of predictions that try to tell me when the "game- changers" are nigh. I have no doubt that we live in incredible, historic times - I'm super psyched about it. At the end of the day, though, I think that the cost of flushing a toilet is too high for much of the world. 1 cent? Maybe in my purchasing power here in the first world. There are plenty of other people who, to be crude, don't have a place to shit, and it's worth a lot more than 1 cent to them to have that fixed. If anything, that's the takeaway here.
{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Puntly – Twitter meets pinterest (save, share the stuff you like) - theianwhiteley http://punt.ly ====== theianwhiteley Everyone has something useful to share (or remember). Think Product Hunt for everyone - and everything. It's fully live. If just testing with random input you can also delete posts. ------ ryannevius That background is awfully distracting.
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Two dozen mathematicians wrote a 600 page book in 6 months on GitHub - jacoblyles http://math.andrej.com/2013/06/20/the-hott-book/ ====== anandkulkarni The most interesting suggestion, to me: "However, there is something else we can do. It is more radical, but also more useful. Rather than letting people only evaluate papers, why not give them a chance to participate and improve them as well? Put all your papers on github and let others discuss them, open issues, fork them, improve them, and send you corrections. Does it sound crazy? Of course it does, open source also sounded crazy when Richard Stallman announced his manifesto. Let us be honest, who is going to steal your LaTeX source code? There are much more valuable things to be stolen. If you are tenured professor you can afford to lead the way. Have your grad student teach you git and put your stuff somewhere publicly. Do not be afraid, they tenured you to do such things." This is a fascinating idea. I'm curious. If we did this (say, with an upcoming technology paper), would anyone want to contribute? ~~~ kleiba _open source also sounded crazy when Richard Stallman announced his manifesto._ rms: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" (Background: [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point.h...](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)) ~~~ AlexanderDhoore Richard Stallman still sounds crazy. But open source software has gotten credibility because it's very good. Linus Torvalds had more to do with the acceptance of open source than Richard Stallman. PS: I hate the stupid fights over words: "Gnu/Linux", "Free software"... It's called "Linux" and it's called "open source software". Now get off my lawn. ~~~ easytiger > Richard Stallman still sounds crazy. He doesn't sound crazy he is just very eccentric as a individual. And he has an "extremist" position, some would say. IMHO we need someone like that to keep us honest. Remember all the years people like Microsoft put actually money into discrediting FOSS? Would a wishy washy attitude have done much good then? Diplomacy doesn't work worth a damn when your enemy wants to destroy you by any means possible, be it by embracing you or extinguishing you ~~~ slacka His extreme positions sure sounded crazy to me. Like "I refuse to have a cell phone because they are tracking and surveillance devices... many can be remotely converted into listening devices." After this NSA scandal broke, I feel I was a little quick to judge him. I'm not going to give up my cellphone, but I've already quit using FB and have started using more digital privacy tools like OTR in pidgin. ------ jere Another post that actually loaded for me: [http://homotopytypetheory.org/2013/06/20/the-hott- book/](http://homotopytypetheory.org/2013/06/20/the-hott-book/) [incidentally, it's the _official_ post announcing the book] ~~~ jacoblyles I like this blog post better. It goes more into the radical innovation (for academia) of the authors' process: "But more importantly, the spirit of collaboration that pervaded our group at the Institute for Advanced Study was truly amazing. We did not fragment. We talked, shared ideas, explained things to each other, and completely forgot who did what (so much in fact that we had to put some effort into reconstruction of history lest it be forgotten forever). The result was a substantial increase in productivity. There is a lesson to be learned here (...), namely that mathematicians benefit from being a little less possessive about their ideas and results. I know, I know, academic careers depend on proper credit being given and so on, but really those are just the idiosyncrasies of our time. If we can get mathematicians to share half-baked ideas, not to worry who contributed what to a paper, or even who the authors are, then we will reach a new and unimagined level of productivity. Progress is not made by those who break rules." "Truly open research habitats cannot be obstructed by copyright, profit- grabbing publishers, patents, commercial secrets, and funding schemes that are based on faulty achievement metrics. Unfortunately we are all caught up in a system which suffers from all of these evils. But we made a small step in the right direction by making the book source code freely available under a permissive Creative Commons license. Anyone can take the book and modify it, send us improvements and corrections, translate it, or even sell it without giving us any money. (If you twitched a little bit when you read that sentence then the system has gotten to you.)" (borrowing the google cache link from below: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?strip=1&q=cach...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?strip=1&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fmath.andrej.com%2F2013%2F06%2F20%2Fthe- hott-book%2F)) ~~~ jere That seems like quite a contrast from Mochizuki. ~~~ NerdShame Yeah... Bummer.... ------ susi22 Some direct links: [https://github.com/HoTT/book](https://github.com/HoTT/book) [http://hottheory.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hott- online.pdf](http://hottheory.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hott-online.pdf) [http://hottheory.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hott- ebook.pdf](http://hottheory.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hott-ebook.pdf) First commit in Nov '12\. Most work seems to be have been done since Jan/Feb '13: [https://github.com/HoTT/book/graphs/commit- activity](https://github.com/HoTT/book/graphs/commit-activity) ------ anigbrowl Quibble: I downloaded the pdf, which defaults to a file called 'hott- online.pdf'. Why not Homotopy Type Theory - 1st Edition.pdf'? I download a _lot_ of pdfs (mainly because of being a law nerd), and I am sick to the back teeth of having to rename virtually everything that I download so that I'll be able to find the filename again later. I do use Mendeley to keep my documents more-or-less organized, but what have people got against human-readable filenames? Really I ought to be able to get semantic metadata for everything I download. As for the work itself, great stuff, I look forward to reading it, or at least dipping into it (not a mathematician). ~~~ bloaf Zotero has a feature which will attempt to read metadata from a PDF and create a bibliographic reference for the PDF. It also has a feature which allows you to rename the PDF based on the bibliographic reference it creates. Using those two together has been a really easy way to earn brownie points with my professor boss. ~~~ tmzt A similar application exists for Gnome, called Referencer ([https://launchpad.net/referencer](https://launchpad.net/referencer)). It keeps a library of PDF files and can extract metadata such as title and DOI. ------ csense Someone should make an effort to market Git to mathematicians (and academics and scientists in fields where Git exists). This article is a start, but it would probably be stronger if the author had a nuts-and-bolts tutorial about how to use Git from the point of view of someone whose use case involves LaTeX markup rather than source code. ~~~ acadien Honest question: what is the advantage of Git over something like Dropbox or remote centralized storage accessed via ssh? The only possible answer I can think of is you get a revision history, but this doesn't seem terribly useful. If you could provide a use case to demonstrate how Git+latex is a winner, I'd genuinely appreciate it! Edit: As soon as I submitted this it occurred to me that for collaborative editing Git is the obvious choice. ~~~ cocoflunchy I think the most important difference is conflict resolution. If you modify a file on DropBox and save it while someone else still has it opened, you're going to end up with two files, one named youFileName (conflicted copy of someone 06/20/13).tex and the original. Not only does Git allow you to see and fix the conflicts when you merge, it does it automatically most of the time, which is a huge advantage. ~~~ mjn I haven't found git to work much differently in practice, at least with papers (I haven't written a book in it). You will end up with way too many conflicts unless you basically "lock" sections through either a software mechanism or agreement, because edits often touch or reorder many paragraphs. A copyediting/wording pass will typically touch _every_ paragraph, for example, and these are more frequent in writing than refactoring or variable-renaming passes are in coding. You can _somewhat_ improve the situation if you adopt a somewhat weird source- formatting policy, where you write each sentence on one separate long-ish line, rather than flowing by paragraph. Then you will be able to automatically merge as long as nobody has made an edit or move that touches the same sentence, giving you better merge granularity. But even then conflicts happen pretty often, and few people like this style of formatting (maybe it'd work better with tool support). For a book this might work better, though, because I assume you'd be making less frequent edits, and people would less often be working at the same time. ~~~ jessriedel Note that in principle it's probably better to change your diff software to recognize sentences than to change how you write your latex. ~~~ nickzoic Sure, but in practice, starting each sentence on a new line isn't difficult and works great with standard 'diff'. I actually quite like it for proofreading, since fragments and run-on sentences jump out at you. ------ mkehrt Looks like I'm in the minority for being mostly excited about a solid book on homotopy type theory! ~~~ ek To be fair, this is a community of mostly non-mathematicians, most of whom will probably have no use for this work. But yeah, certainly that's the real "big deal" here. ~~~ guelo Well, homotopy type theory is in the same general area of study as the type theory studied in computer science. ------ kryptiskt So it's basically Bourbaki with modern tools. ~~~ Someone For those who don't know about Bourbaki, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki): _" Nicolas Bourbaki is the collective pseudonym under which a group of (mainly French) 20th-century mathematicians wrote a series of books presenting an exposition of modern advanced mathematics, beginning in 1935."_ ------ kryten Even better: _One surgeon_ wrote a mathematics book in a decade in Microsoft Word! It's better than anything I've read from any mathematician. They seem to forget that people don't know what they are talking about to start with. [http://www.amazon.com/dp/039304002X](http://www.amazon.com/dp/039304002X) ~~~ anigbrowl I found this new book surprisingly readable, but agree with your general criticism - I hope others will be inspired by this project to do more elementary open-source affordable books aimed at a more general audience. Imagine if kids could afford to buy their own maths books instead of having them dispensed by the school district with all the corruption that entails. I quite like this book that you linked, BTW. ------ cocoflunchy I wonder if GitHub are planning to add LaTeX files compilation any time soon. It would be amazing to be able to see diffs on a generated output rather than source code. ~~~ adrianN You can roll your own using latex-diff. It comes eg. with TexLive and has some (limited) built-in support for different versioning systems. ~~~ twog We are rolling out support for Latex & Git with our new latex editor in the next two weeks. Sneak peek here: [http://cl.ly/image/3u3Z3f40382K](http://cl.ly/image/3u3Z3f40382K) Drop me a line toni@banyan.co if you want early access. ------ tel Shamelessly copied [1] from tactics (go upvote him there) from the Haskell subreddit in case it's of interest to anyone here: "Homotopy Type Theory is a recent advancement in the area of dependent types. Think Agda, Coq, Idris-style languages if you're familiar with them... otherwise think GADTs on supersteroids gone berserk. Dependent types allow you to be extremely precise with your data types. You can talk about not just lists or lists of strings.... but also lists of strings of length n (for some natural number n). In the far future, it may be the key to getting fast-as-C performance (think removing bounds checking on arrays completely safely) and software verified correctness of a program simultaneously. This isn't software, though. This is a math book. There was a realization a few years ago that equality types (the ability to express x = y in the type system) gave rise to a mathematical structure called a weak ω-groupoid which was giving homotopy and category theorists a hard time. Homotopy Type Theory (HoTT) is a typed lambda calculus that makes studying these things easier. In fact, every data type corresponds to (a very boring) weak ω-groupoid. What this allows mathematicians to do, though, is to create new interesting data types corresponding to more interesting examples of these things. You get a data type for a Circle, or a Sphere, or a Torus. You can define functions between them via recursion the same way you'd define a function on lists or trees. These new fancy data types are called higher inductive types, and while they don't (currently) have any use for programmers, they pay the meager salaries of long beards in the ivory tower. The other novelty of the theory might be more interesting for programmers some day (at least if you believe dependent types will save the world). A guy named Voevodsky proposed a new axiom called the Univalence Axiom that makes HoTT a substatial alternative to the former foundations of mathematics. The Univalence Axiom formalizes a practice mathematicans had been using for a long time, (despite its technical incompatibility with ZFC). tl;dr, the Univalence Axiom says that if two data types are isomorphic then they are equal. Eventually, this axiom may allow a programmer to do some neat things. For instance, a programmer could write two versions of a program -- a naive version and a "fast" version. (Currently, all programmers only write the "fast" version). If you want to formally prove your "fast" program doesn't suck, it's nasty. However, it might even be humanly possible to prove some correctness about the naive version. The Univalence Axiom (once given "computational semantics") may be able to let us prove things about the dumb, slow, reference implementation of a program or library, then transfer that proof of correctness to the fast one. To give a small example for anyone familiar with a dependently-typed language, you may notice that in Coq and Agda and whatever, the first data type you learn (and one you stick with for a long time) are the unary natural numbers. That is, you have 0, and 0+1, and 0+1+1, and 0+1+1+1, etc.. We use unary numbers because they are reaaaally easy to prove stuff about. But as any programmer might guess, actually doing anything with them is suicide. The Univalence Axiom would allow us to keep on working with unary numbers for all of our proofs, but then swap them out for actual, honest-to-God 2's complement representations when it comes time to run the program. So there's that. Not everyone cares about software correctness, though. But if you're sold on category theory, here's a neat trick. You probably know that equality becomes a hairy, nasty thing in category theory. Two objects can be equal or isomorphic. If you move onto 2-categories, two categories can be equal, isomorphic, or equivalent! And for higher category theory, you end up with even more notions of equaltiy, isomorphism, equivalence, etc, etc. In a univalent foundation of category theory (which appears in the later chapters of this book), we see that all of these notions of equality collapse down into just one. If two things are isomorphic, then they are, by definition, equal to each other. You no longer have to worry about that stupid squiggle over your equals signs, because univalence means that every construction must respect the structure of your data. There are no leaky abstractions in your data types!" [1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1gr3uw/the_homotopy...](http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1gr3uw/the_homotopy_type_theory_book_is_now_available/) ------ broken_symlink I guess no one on here has heard of the stacks project. Its over 3800 pages and I counted 93 contributors on the first page. Also, the LaTeX source is freely available on github. [https://github.com/stacks/stacks- project](https://github.com/stacks/stacks-project) ------ sp332 Google cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?strip=1&q=cach...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?strip=1&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fmath.andrej.com%2F2013%2F06%2F20%2Fthe- hott-book%2F) ------ pseut So, obviously I don't want to sound ungrateful and I'm impressed that they put this together and made it freely available. I'm not sure that creative commons is the right license though, since it doesn't require the LaTeX source to be redistributed if the pdf is (unlike the GPL or the GNU Free Documentation License). (They're providing the source on GitHub, but if interest in the project trails off and someone else forks it, the person forking is under no obligation to share the modified LaTeX). I can think of many sets of notes on the MIT OCW site that are CC, which I'd like to be able to modify and share but can't because the source is missing. Anyone else have thoughts on the right license for this sort of project? ------ a-nikolaev Btw, the blog author, Andrej Bauer, is an amazing guy. I was really fascinated by some of his older blog publications (and I was only scratching the surface): [http://math.andrej.com/2007/09/28/seemingly-impossible- funct...](http://math.andrej.com/2007/09/28/seemingly-impossible-functional- programs/) (by Martin Escardo, an article about a Haskell program doing exhaustive search over the “Cantor space” of infinite sequences) [http://math.andrej.com/eff/](http://math.andrej.com/eff/) (Language Eff, a functional programming language based on algebraic effects and their handlers.) My understanding is that in this language all effects and evaluation order are explicit; effects and pure functions are easily and explicitly composable. Something like monads but more advanced. (My interpretation is probably wrong!) [http://andrej.com/plzoo/](http://andrej.com/plzoo/) (The Programming Language Zoo). A number of mini languages which demonstrate various techniques in design and implementation of programming languages. (calculator, mini-ML, mini-Haskell, mini-Prolog, etc) ------ cinquemb If I were to go back to college, I'd probably try to get all my engineering friends to use git for projects to the point of getting their annoyance. Even now when I ask them why they don't use github to do something that would make their job easier, I get blank stares… so is life I suppose. ~~~ wisty I guess it's partly resistance to change. If you tried to follow every recommendation a friend gave you, you'd go mad. But sometimes it's hard to encourage VC simply because it shifts the balance of power. You can't hold anyone hostage with "your" code. Mistakes are traceable. You can't waste as much time in meetings, discussing things like project status and interfaces. Silos exist for a reason, it's just not a good reason. ------ acjohnson55 I'd love a good epub or mobi version of this, if anyone's got one ------ garysweaver > NOTE: my blog is being slashdotted by Hacker News :) I think we need a new verb here. ~~~ charlieflowers ycombinated? ~~~ tel pointfixed, recursed ------ tel For anyone interested, with a little background in Coq or Agda it feels like (from what I've read so far) this book is pretty approachable by mathematicians and computer scientists alike. ------ jdn One of the authors listed, Thorsten Altenkirch, teaches quite a few second year Computer Science modules at Nottingham. He's absolutely mad. Here is a selection of some of his best moments: [http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~txa/thorsten.html](http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~txa/thorsten.html). Note that this hasn't been updated in 13 years. The gold that has been lost since then truly saddens me. ------ twog This is awesome! Great use of git & latex! This is the exact problem we are tackling at my startup, Banyan, with our new latex platform [http://cl.ly/image/3u3Z3f40382K](http://cl.ly/image/3u3Z3f40382K) ------ Dove Bourbaki! ~~~ otoburb A more forthcoming Bourbaki since all the HoTT authors are publicly listed. No conjectures needed. ~~~ keithpeter Less opportunity for guessing games and amateur sleuthing though. Seriously Bourbaki was the first thing that came into my head when reading the blog post about the book linked to in these comments. ------ johnchristopher I am going to refer to the latex code for my future assignments in electronics and mathematics classes. Really nice to have the source. ------ charlieflowers Off topic -- The title of the hacker news submission made me chuckle. It reminds me the old software principle that "9 women can't have a baby in one month." ------ jacoblyles git treats every paragraph as a single line. That seems like an annoying default for english text. ~~~ jdpage The issue is less that git treats every paragraph as a single line, and more that git treats every line as a single line and they've put the paragraphs onto one line. It turns out that LaTeX actually looks for a double line break between paragraphs, and you can insert single line breaks into paragraphs without having them appear in the output. So what you actually want to do is put a line break after every sentence and possibly after every clause, so that in the LaTeX source diffs work sanely, while the output looks as normal. ~~~ Stwerp I'd argue that what you _want_ to do is write English language as you're accustomed. Paragraphs with multiple sentence in a single line. What you'd like Git (or whatever your diff'ing program) to do is parse the individual sentences as individual lines for version control. To each his own though. I have trained myself to start putting LaTeX sentences on separate lines to accomodate for this, but don't think that this is the best solution.
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General Commission – Full-Time, Full-Stack Developer – Denver, CO - Eidamj1 We are a newly formed bespoke data research firm set out to pioneer a new kind of data-backed research product. We provide unique insights to customers across the fintech, medical device, and artificial intelligence spaces, and are seeking to expand our customer offerings and technology platform capabilities.<p>General Commission (GC) is seeking a Full-Stack Developer for a Denver, CO &#x2F; Remote-based role, where you will serve as the lead engineer in driving the future direction of our product offerings and tech platform. We are looking for candidates who are entrepreneurial technologists at their core, self-motivated, and passionate about building new products from the ground up. In this role, you’ll see immediately connection with the direct impact of your work.<p>Seeking candidates with the following experience:<p>Experience with: o React (or equivalent Javascript framework) and Flask (or equivalent back-end framework) o Web applications, APIs, and services (incl. REST) o Database support and administration, including relational (MySQL, Postgres) and NoSQL (Elasticsearch, Mongo) databases o Dev tools, such as package managers, bundlers, task runners, linters o Git, BitBucket, and version control flows o Agile development methodology o All stages of Software Development Life Cycle<p>Working knowledge &#x2F; understanding of: o Graph theory and open source graph databases, such as Neo4j and&#x2F;or GraphDB o Agile processes and workflows o Scripting languages (Python, shell scripting) o Front-end development practices (HTML, React, SCSS) o Test suits&#x2F;frameworks, unit, and integration testing o Object-Oriented Design and data structures Sound engineering practices: coding standards, best practices, and principles<p>We offer competitive salary, transaction bonus eligibility full benefits, unlimited vacation, flexible work schedule<p>Please email me at jason.eidam@generalcommission.com for more information. ====== verdverm HN is not a job board, please see the FAQ for relevant sections.
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SF Gentrification/DropBox Community Service – Mission Playground Is Not for Sale - keebEz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awPVY1DcupE ====== skullum This is really sad. I'm not from the Mission but I used to play pickup here all the time. Never had any problems. I hope they all just shut up and played together. ~~~ jamesli Agree it is really sad. The guy who held the permit was entitled, condescending, and insulting. The tall guy in the neighbourhood was very patient and reasonable. I don't understand why the dropbox guys didn't want to play games with the neighbourhood kids. It is a good opportunity to interact with people from different backgrounds. American society is getting more polarized.
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'A direct, toxic chemical injury': What vaping does to the lungs - ceejayoz https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/direct-toxic-chemical-injury-what-vaping-does-lungs-n1061151 ====== wahern > "But I will not be shocked when we discover 20 years from now that some > patients have chronic lung disease because they’ve been vaping." Well, she'll only have to wait a few more years. Vaping got started in 2003, and by 2005 was already exploding--I personally knew several developers who vaped regularly at that point. (I'm not a smoker, so it's notable that even I was familiar with vaping at that point.) It's a pity what this hysteria and moral panic is doing. Both of my parents successfully switched from smoking cigarettes to vaping. My dad had been chain smoking unfiltered Camels since he was about 15. But now they're getting calls from friends and family "concerned" about their vaping. I just hoping it doesn't result in them relapsing. Anybody who thinks vaping, using reputable products, is even remotely comparable to cigarettes is a dangerous nut. Tainted vape juice and coils which are too hot have been a known concern since the very beginning. The solution isn't the hysteria over vaping, it's to stop these kids and young adults from buying black market products. That's the first thing I told my parents--only buy vape juice and devices from reputable suppliers and manufacturers with a well-known presence, preferably manufacturers in the U.S. If the medical community is truly concerned, they'd either push the FDA to release some sensible standards; or create their own standard, tap an existing pharmacologic auditor (or whatever you call them) to verify manufacturing methods, and initiate a publicity campaigned to advertise their trademarked label. It's ridiculous the way that not only the media but _medical_ _professionals_ gloss over the hard facts of these cases--e.g. black market products, mostly verified THC products with every reason to believe the vast majority of THC notwithstanding claims--to pass judgment on vaping generally. Or how the "epidemic" in vaping (including both nicotine and THC), at least until the end of 2018, hadn't even exceeded regular marijuana usage by high schoolers. Their patently illogical reasoning and irrational conclusions are the type of thing we've come to expect from Trump, not doctors.
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Big Brother is not watching you - gaius http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1095609/Big-brother-NOT-watching-Cash-strapped-towns-leave-CCTV-cameras-unmonitored.html?ITO=1490 ====== prospero I work for a company in this space. Our product tracks and describes things of interest (faces, text, moving objects), and allows the user to search for similar items at other times and on other cameras. It doesn't make security guards obsolete by any stretch, but it can make reviewing past footage much less tedious. The whole "intelligent video" industry is in its infancy. An interesting point, though, is as these analytics improve, so does our ability to limit the scope of video that can be watched. Irrelevant footage can be made off-limits, faces or license plates obscured, etc. It's not going to happen overnight, but the trend is clear: surveillance video is going to become more structured as time goes on. But this can be used to uphold personal rights as easily as it can be used to bypass them. Laws will just have to adapt in the face of technology. ~~~ khafra I'm afraid it's much easier to bypass personal rights than to uphold them. Even though the technology for either is there, the panopticon is a design pattern that keeps occurring in political space. I'm curious, though--does your company do the kind of thing covered by Steve Rambam in his talk at The Last HOPE _? ie, recognition of activities as well as of faces, text, etc.? _ [http://www.thelasthope.org/media/audio/64kbps/Featured_Speak...](http://www.thelasthope.org/media/audio/64kbps/Featured_Speaker_- _Steven_Rambam_)(Part_1).mp3 [http://www.thelasthope.org/media/audio/64kbps/Featured_Speak...](http://www.thelasthope.org/media/audio/64kbps/Featured_Speaker_- _Steven_Rambam_)(Part_2).mp3 ~~~ prospero Activity is an awfully vague term. I know of one company that's hired professional actors to act out different scenarios, in the hopes that they can distill the essence of suspicious activity, and thereby automatically detect it. I'm not optimistic about their chances. However, it's relatively straightforward to detect people tailgating at security entrances (using one passcard to let two people in), or walking the wrong way into the exit gate at an airport. In both these situations, though, the environment is controlled, and the difference between proper and improper behavior is well-defined. Neither of these things are true on, say, a street corner. Human interaction and body language is _complicated_. I expect we'll have a good way of automatically detecting behavior sometime around when we have general artificial intelligences, and not before. ------ Anon84 That's debatable... if they store the footage and are able to produce it upon a law enforcement/court request then Big Brother is still watching, when it matters. Might be a good opportunity for a real-time image analysis start up, though... ~~~ sh1mmer The cameras can't look everywhere, without operators helping to guide where they should be looking there are lots of things they miss, or potentially incriminating evidence they miss. For example, if a crime is committed but the criminals face isn't seen, it's the camera operators that track them until they run into another camera on the system that has been angled to see their face. A system running on autopilot is going to miss a lot of that. ------ ivankirigin I used to work in automated surveillance. Studies show a trained operator will miss 90% of events looking at a single feed after just 20 minutes. It's even worse over a longer time and over multiple camera feeds. No one is really watching. Once automated surveillance gets better, that won't be the case at all. The systems are only currently useful for after-the-fact forensics. ------ robertk They monitor(ed) the CCTV footage _on the spot_? Jesus, that makes it even worse. The only places I've heard that at is high- security corporate and military locations. Certainly not town squares. ~~~ ashleyw Yep, they definably did in my town — cause they had massive speakers attached, and the people monitoring the cameras could (and did on many occasions which I witnessed) shout at people for littering and causing trouble. ------ Stubbs I wish the original site was included in the RSS feed then I wouldn't have to read anything from this "news" source any more, I hereby coin the phrase Mailrolled. ------ bprater Eventually, computers will be able to do the job of the human, and 4 million cameras won't be a problem to watch. ------ axod This is not Reddit thankyou.
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A primer on elliptic curve cryptography - amboar http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-primer-on-elliptic-curve-cryptography/3/ ====== andrewcooke If you understand DH key exchange (the one where you multiply numbers modulo something) then you know what the discrete logarithm problem (DLP) is. All that EC crypto is, is a way of doing the same maths, but replacing integers with points on a curve. If you remember a bit of maths theory you know that you can define groups and things with multiplication and the like. It's that kind of idea. The advantage is that the known best approaches to solving the DLP for integers don't carry across to the points on a curve (because the points don't work like integers for all of maths - they support enough to the crypto, but not enough for the attack). So you can use smaller keys. AFAICT. IMHO. IANAM/C. ~~~ theboss Except there are a few added difficulties of EC that don't exist in DH due to the maths. There is also the matter of mapping your numbers to points on the curve. Lot's of extra maths for saving time and space. The important take-away from the extra math is that, unless you are a cryptographer then you should leave the implementation up to someone else. ------ lisper Another one: [http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/02/a-simple-solution-to- cred...](http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/02/a-simple-solution-to-credit-card- fraud_28.html) ~~~ pbsd I'm going to be a little pedantic here: the trick of using a PRF (hashing with a secret) to obtain the DSA nonce was not invented by Dan Bernstein. In the Ed25519 paper it's attributed to George Barwood and John Wigley in 1997. Also published in [2] around the same time. [1] [http://ed25519.cr.yp.to/ed25519-20110926.pdf](http://ed25519.cr.yp.to/ed25519-20110926.pdf) [2] [http://www.di.ens.fr/~pointche/Documents/Papers/1998_sac.pdf](http://www.di.ens.fr/~pointche/Documents/Papers/1998_sac.pdf) ~~~ lisper That's not being pedantic, that's helpfully pointing out a fairly serious attribution error. Thanks! I will fix it. ------ sillysaurus2 'tptacek commented 17 days ago about EC crypto ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6608163)): _You should never, ever, never, nevern, nervenvarn build your own production ECC code. ECC is particularly tricky to get right. But if you want to play with the concepts, a great place to start is the Explicit Formulas Database at[http://www.hyperelliptic.org/EFD/](http://www.hyperelliptic.org/EFD/) ; the fast routines for point multiplication are mercifully complicated, so copying them from the EFD is a fine way to start, instead of working them out from first principles._ He went on to say that only Adam Langley or Daniel Bernstein should be implementing ECC. Probably because there are so many ways to slip up; few others would have the experience necessary to avoid all the pitfalls. 'theboss agreed: _I 've implemented ECC and you are 100% correct. Nobody should implement ECC unless you really really know what you're doing. Mapping points to the curve, multiplying points, point addition, there is too much math stuff to mess up on. Just don't do it. If you read one thing tptacek says, read the last paragraph._ ------ yk I believe the previous discussion was [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6607661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6607661) ( Which I only still have open because I wanted to program the article at some point...) ~~~ j2kun See I've got a working program, and have been hoping to publish a primer of my own with the implementation and experiments :) Alas, the time... ------ Buge The link goes straight to page 3. ~~~ chimeracoder I thought that was weird too. But there is no single-page version, and the first page doesn't really have much content on there (just a basic walkthrough of modular division). ~~~ taspeotis > But there is no single-page version For what it's worth, Ars subscribers get single-page versions of articles. ------ startswithaj Doing 256 bit sign ecdsa's for 10s: 42874 256 bit ECDSA signs in 9.99s Doing 2048 bit private rsa's for 10s: 1864 2048 bit private RSA's in 9.99s That's 23 times as many signatures using ECDSA as RSA. 42 874 256 18 642 048 23 times as many signatures? ~~~ sandstrom I think it's 42874/1864=23. (256 and 2048 is presumably the key strength).
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Google,Bing and Yahoo not giving me any results for "-moz-border-radius". - devasiajoseph I couldn't find references for " -moz-border-radius" in Google, Bing or Yahoo. The only search engine that gives me the result is duckduckgo ====== nbpoole Because the leading minus sign indicates that you DON'T want a particular term (in this case, moz-border-radius) in your results. Since that's your only term entered, no search happens. Try searching moz-border-radius.
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Show HN: Our First Month Since Launching: Open Review - JacobAldridge http://everydaydreamholiday.com/2013/01/15/startup-business-review-launch-first-month/ ====== kerno Would love some honest feedback, especially things we can do better or haven't thought about yet.
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WikiLeaks, iPhone Incidents Show that U.S. Needs Shield Law - rbanffy http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/07/wikileaks-iphone-incidents-show-that-us-needs-shield-law182.html ====== isaacpthomas The United States' global reputation as a champion of free speech is at stake. This is partly because the legal framework has not kept pace with the evolution of free speech, and also because the Freedom of Information Act is not being applied correctly. Today, the U.S. is in danger of losing its place as the bastion of free speech because other countries are stepping up and creating new ways to protect freedom of expression.
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Inside the Atari 800: It's the 30th anniversary of this 8-bit PC classic. - hshah http://www.pcworld.com/article/181421/inside_the_atari_800.html ====== david927 I had the 400 which had a plastic membrane instead of keyboard. And it was always running out of memory. Good times.
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Ask HN: Fax Over Voip - relm86 I want to setup a web app for sending Fax over Voip. What would be the best way to go about it? I know I need to obtain a SIP trunk and an asterisk server. Where can I get one at a good price? What are the biggest hurdles to doing this? I really appreciate any advice you can give. ====== viraptor The biggest hurdle is that it doesn't work. Ok - it does in general, but 1) you need a T.38-compatible termination (to get past ~90% reliability) 2) Whatever you do, you're unlikely to ever reach 99%. Unless you peer directly to the SIP termination network, standard packet drops and jitter will give you enough random connection errors to annoy at least one customer. Other notes: 1) Please don't assume "voip == asterisk". Have a look at FreeSwitch or Yate too. 2) If you don't feel like reading and understanding most of RFCs 3261, 4566 and some texts about T.38 renegotiation -- start looking for some experienced VoIP person to set you up with the basic gateway. VoIP is unfortunately far away from the "make install && forget" types of services - it needs a maintainer who knows the stuff inside out. So the best way to go about it? Unless you've got some VoIP / telecom. experience, I'd recommend finding someone who can do it for you either on the *-biz mailing lists, or on typical freelancer portals.
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Visualizing Philadelphia tax changes parcel by parcel - pselle http://axisphillyapps.tumblr.com/post/44714283089/how-we-made-the-avi-map ====== stephengillie This is very cool. I don't know much about Philadelphia, but I'm interested in how much this reflects/affects rental trends -- would people move from a higher-taxed property to a lower one? Are the taxes increasing in areas with less crime? Are the taxes increasing in areas where elected officials live? Looking at the way this is done, it seems like the hardest part of doing this for another city is getting accurate geographic and valuation data in the correct formats. ~~~ pselle I'm not the reporter on the project, but from what I've heard in the media, it sounds that renters are supposedly the biggest losers -- some properties are seeing thousands of dollars in tax increases, which they'll most assuredly pass onto renters in a tax hike (my opinion, also that of some other Philadelphians). Related article: [http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local//taxipedia/51402-ar...](http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local//taxipedia/51402-are- phila-renters-at-risk-from-avi-hikes) ~~~ gertef assuredly why? is rental pricing competition purely cost-driven? Since rental units don't have much marginal cost, that seems unlikely -- They are capital investments, financed by mortgages or owned outright. ------ thrownaway2424 Great maps. I'm curious if anyone has information about the tax plan in question. It seems decidedly regressive. For instance, the taxes on this dump (<http://goo.gl/maps/Fm3sT>) are going up to $1230, while the taxes on this place (<http://goo.gl/maps/ubtzA>) will be $10743, even though the latter place's assessed value is 50x higher. ~~~ pselle The impetus behind the AVI is to "value at market rate" -- the idea is that by updating the valuations, they'll eliminate the unintentional tax break/overcharge some people were getting. A funny thing about gmaps and Philly -- Philly's changing so fast that that 'dump' is probably a new renovation by now. The building I live in now still appears on Gmaps in its unrenovated state. ~~~ thrownaway2424 Regardless of whether it remains a dump or doesn't, the reported valuation of the dump for 2014, according to the linked application, is $92k, while the nice place has a valuation over $5m. So the dump is paying over 1% while the mansion is paying .2%
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Ask HN: Do you use PHPMyAdmin as an alternative to your app admin? - paraschopra Just curious if any of you substitute PHPMyAdmin for constructing an admin interface for your MySQL based application. Is it a recommended practice NOT to use PHPMyAdmin or other database scaffolds for administrating the application? ====== ivanstojic It really depends. There are some scenarios where it's impossible to administrate an application by fiddling with the database - for instance in cases where the application uses caching of any kind. My revelation regarding administration interfaces came when I realized that my admin interfaces do not have to be polished, AJAX gems of perfection because they are not meant to be used by the clients. They just have to expose some amount of the application's innards to the tech staff. ~~~ noodle its also nice to have a custom admin panel in situations where there are more complex data interactions and you want to make sure you don't ruin things in the database accidentally ------ SwellJoe I use the Webmin MySQL module quite a bit for this on our Drupal site. I don't see why it would be recommended not to use whatever tool fits the situation. If you understand your application well enough to hit the database directly, you probably understand it well enough to not break its integrity by modifying it directly. ------ nreece I have used phpminiadmin ( <http://phpminiadmin.sourceforge.net> ) as the app admin alternative once before. It worked out pretty well. ------ jncraton I generally like to use frameworks that take care of the admin interface for me so that I don't have to worry about it. Django is a good example of this. ------ skwiddor No also consider <http://www.google.com/search?q=phpmyadmin+exploit>
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Sony Files Patent for Digital Rights Storage on a Blockchain - srameshc https://www.ccn.com/sony-files-for-blockchain-fueled-drm-patent/ ====== wglb You want to remove the /amp/ from the end of the URL, otherwise desktop folks might not get the story. ~~~ sctb Updated. Thank you!
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Groupthink - mrfusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink ====== dredmorbius Related: hive mind / collective consciousness. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_consciousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_consciousness)
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FaCT: A Flexible, Constant-Time Programming Language [pdf] - gbrown_ https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~dstefan/pubs/cauligi:2017:fact.pdf ====== jedisct1 The language is actually called ConstantC, and its implementation has just been made public on GitHub: [https://github.com/PLSysSec/FaCT](https://github.com/PLSysSec/FaCT) ------ nickpsecurity FaCT was good work. The other one in this space is Jasmin for high-assurance, constant-time programming. [https://acmccs.github.io/papers/p1807-almeidaA.pdf](https://acmccs.github.io/papers/p1807-almeidaA.pdf)
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Tell HN: Happy Pi Day - kull ====== eth0up And the anniversary of Hawking's departure (3.14.2018). Unfortunately, it could all be a lot more happy. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking) ------ _0ffh Out of curiosity I just looked up the year 1592 on Wikipedia, to see if anything interesting happened on 3.14. that year. It is marked "Ultimate Pi Day". ------ fuzzfactor Irrational, but well rounded.
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Ask HN: What are some good programming blogs? - FramesPerSushi An example of what I like is http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/ ====== hendzen 1) <http://www.altdevblogaday.com/> 2) <http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/> 3) (Not really a blog, but so great) <http://lwn.net/> 4) (For entertainment) <http://thedailywtf.com/> ------ jun4k <http://net.tutsplus.com/> ------ QuantumGuy xkcd.com
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Ask HN: Suggestion on which framework to use - trapped123 I am planning to write an app which should run on iOS, Android and also on a web browser. The app needs to use camera as well as GPS. I also want the app to be available from appstores. I understand that I need to use HTML5 and other mobile web technologies. IS there some framework that can make writing such an app easier, preferably, having only a single codebase. ====== samarudge Have you looked into Titanium Mobile? [http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile- applica...](http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile-application- development/)
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Show HN: Learn about a Watsi patient every time you open up a tab - zaytoun http://www.donatetab.co/ ====== VertexRed This way I'll get emotional each time I open a new tab. I also didn't know about Watsi before coming across your plugin, seems like a really interesting idea! I also noticed that the "%" symbol is on the wrong side of the numbers. Anyway, good luck with the addon. :) ~~~ zaytoun Hey thanks for checking it out! And nice catch on the % symbol -- fixed that. :) ------ yoamro This is great, I'm sure Watsi would love it. ------ endswapper I love Watsi. I added the extension. ~~~ zaytoun Watsi is great -- thanks for the add!
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Ask HN: Should I worry about having a job offer retracted? - jacorreia At my school, many students are about to receive offers for summer co-op terms within the next two weeks. However, none of them have ever even considered negotiating their offers, and when I try to show them how easy it could be for them to make a couple thousand dollars extra they immediately start protesting:<p>&quot;If I try to play hardball they&#x27;ll just offer it to the next highest ranked student&quot; &quot;In the contract it says the company can just fire you provided 2 weeks notification, especially if you start trying to change the offer&quot; &quot;Most companies have large HR departments that scope out other companies&#x27; intern salaries, so it&#x27;s no use negotiating anyways&quot; etc, etc.<p>So my question is: Is the fear of having a job offer retracted at all reasonable?<p>I&#x27;d love to hear any experiences from either side of the negotiating table! ====== byoung2 Always negotiate your salary. I have gotten 10% higher starting salaries a half dozen times in my career simply by asking. My first full time junior programming job offered $50k, I countered with $60k and we met in the middle at $55k, a 10% increase. The next job I negotiated $58k to $70k. The hardest part is just being ballsy enough to ask. ------ helen842000 I worked as a recruiter for a number of years and never saw an offer retracted because someone tried to negotiate. They will either say no, sorry or they may ask you why. It's harder to have a good reason when just starting out. You can always say "If I didn't push for better it wouldn't show much initiative would it" Increases early in your career really help you when moving up/on. ------ S4M Bear in mind that they already spent lots of money one way or another on you before they made you the offer - at the very least, interviewing cost them in developers time. The worse that can happen if you ask more money than they offer is that they tell you "We are sorry, but we offered you the maximum our budget allows, but we will consider something in 6 months - 1 year", in which case will still be able to accept it. It's not in their interest to dismiss someone they judge competent just because he asks for more money. ------ ylabidi I don't think there's an issue with negotiating per se. The question here is what would you negotiate about, and what are your arguments for that negotiation? If you have demonstrated abilities that warrants a salary raise, I think in some places where employee performance is valued, you won't even have to ask about it. Otherwise, you better work out your line of reasoning before attempting such negotiation. ~~~ patio11 This models the hiring manager like he is a professor or judge of a competition. He isn't. He does not care about truth or light or merit or beauty, to a first approximation. He is just a corporate officer with a mandate to buy certain industrial inputs while staying within a budget. He wants to purchase your services and makes a bid. That bid will virtually never consume the entire budget, because he has the rational expectation that he does not need to spend the entire budget to acquire your services. You say "I will offer you my services, but the bid was too low." If he is still willing to purchase your services at the higher number, he accepts. Otherwise, a few words are exchanged, and he re-offers the original bid. People make salary negotiation feel like it is a Greek tragedy. It is not. It is a routine financial transaction. The really big "but!" attached to that is that it is the routine financial transaction which will have the largest impact on your personal finances, by several orders of magnitude, at least until you decide to purchase property. ------ Bahamut I feel like earlier on in your career, you have less of an ability to negotiate unless you bring something special to the table. However, it doesn't hurt to test the waters if you have multiple offers I think - you probably don't really want to be at a company that plays hardball with you anyway, but that may be my own personal views showing here.
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A Breakthrough Blindness Treatment Will Cost $425,000 per Eye, If It Works - Jerry2 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-03/biotech-to-charge-850-000-for-blindness-treatment-if-it-works ====== sctb Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16068163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16068163).
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The Accidental DBA - craigkerstiens https://charity.wtf/2016/10/02/the-accidental-dba/ ====== user5994461 > This morning there was yet another comment thread on hacker news about Yet > Another outage involving MongoDB and data loss, this time by some company > called “CleverTap”. After hundreds of blog posts relating real life disasters with MongoDB, maybe it's time to pick up that there is something wrong with MongoDB itself. Sure, there's some case of half-assed sysadministration going on here and there, but MongoDB is partially at fault for turning many issues[1] into a case of "all systems are down, data is now inaccessible and the only salvation is hardcore disaster recovery". [1] Most of which don't exist in other databases.
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Startups Attempting to Reinvent the Magazine Industry - erin_bury http://betakit.com/2012/04/14/startups-attempting-to-reinvent-the-magazine-industry ====== pikewood Ever since pg put magazines out as a fund-worthy idea, I've kept an ear open to see if anything innovative had been started, because it sounded like an interesting challenge. But these ideas are a bit obvious and sound like they've taken the TV playbook and tried to apply it to magazines: Add a cable tv subscription model! Add an interactive tv model with a chat box and games! Put TV on a different device! So, here's an idea I'll throw out there: Someone create a magazine where the content is controlled by the subscriber base. Basically, take the idea of a sprint planning meeting into consumable media. Or, call it micro-commission media. This would probably be easiest to start with a review type magazine, like a Consumer Reports. I often notice that the reviewed products aren't the ones I'm interested in learning about. Instead, upfront, you can let each subscriber allocate a set of points to review product X. Get enough points, and the product is reviewed. If you get manufacturers buying up a bunch of points to ensure their product is reviewed, so what--all that means is the product is bought and reviewed fairly. It takes away the hope that the article is something that someone will want to read--the readers have already indicated this by putting their money down on it. It takes care of a revenue model, and it melds a methodology that many people are passionate about into a different world. ------ rayhano It's all about the advertising partners...
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Ask HN: Cloudflare stock as a long term investment? - plg I know the IPO bump already happened ... but I wonder if it might be advantageous to buy some now anyway. Who are their real competition? What is their business plan? ====== JakeTheAndroid Fastly opened at 16 and has hovered around 26-28 dollars for a while. Akamai, which I believe cf is closer to in terms of features and overall structure is around 90 a share. At 18-19 a share it seems possible that cf would gain another 10-20 per share from where it's at today. Obviously this is just projecting. I bought shares on Friday above where it closed and today it's up so far. I think the window is still open but idk how much longer that will be true. Time in market usually beats timing in market though. ------ dangxiaopin The competition is Fastly for example. The downside is that there are fewer and fewer independent websites.
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The Panacea for Putting Things Off - johns http://thinksimplenow.com/productivity/the-panacea-for-putting-things-off/ ====== michael_dorfman Stay Tuned. Coming soon from the same author: The panacea for quitting smoking _(Don't Smoke!)_ and the panacea for depression _(Cheer Up!)_.
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Google employee collapsed on the job; coworkers say corp. culture is to blame - SeanBoocock https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/02/a-google-x-employee-collapsed-on-the-job-and-coworkers-say-corporate-culture-is-to-blame/ ====== walrus01 If you have a sufficiently large number of employees (in the tens of thousands), basic laws of statistics say that eventually you will see nearly all of the types of medical emergencies that are experienced by people going about their ordinary day to day lives everywhere. Heart attacks, strokes, grand mal seizures, etc. It's unfortunate and sad but I don't think trying to equate "Google = Bad Thing that Stresses Employees Until they Break" is fair. In fact I bet if you had access to the aggregated private medical data of 10,000 google employees and compared it to 10,000 randomly chosen people from the population at large, the google people experience less medical emergencies. To put it crassly, because they have higher salaries and better access to preventative medical care than 10,000 randomly chosen American citizens from all socioeconomic classes. ~~~ Veratyr This is true but in this case the health issue doesn't appear to be an instance of something statistically normal just popping up for a work- unrelated reason. It seems very clear that the manager acting on Google's behalf directly impacted the health of the employee in a negative way by placing an unreasonable amount of stress on him and the employees around him, while ignoring their complaints. I suppose the question is whether the manager's behaviour is something permitted by Google as a company and the quotes from HR in the article imply that it is. ------ mc32 It looks like VB is taking one incident somewhere in Atwater/Merced and attributing it to work culture of the co at large. From my limited interaction with googlers as well as hearsay, it would rather seem very atypical of what goes on over there. For me most part they seem somewhat coddled rather than overworked. And then as if that unfounded generalization were not enough, they also sprinkled something about harassment and bro culture --which as far as I understand, google fights very hard against. I mean, it would seem the last big co one could accuse of sex harassment and bro culture would be google. Someone wanted to try to write something explosive where there isn't. ~~~ sjg007 12 hour days in 100+ weather and you think they were coddled? The more disturbing parts are the political pieces. Because of this manager you've now lost a bunch of good people (and maybe a good team). And of any company google should be able to find a new job for a qualified person who requested a less demanding role due to a health issue. There should be HR and executive review of these actions. ~~~ mc32 I'm not saying this didn't happen and that that can't be overwork, but they are trying to paint it as a company culture issue, or at least an X issue --where this might have been one manager and one team. I think unless they have more evidence this is a very isolated incident. Google is not known as a company which works people to death, most of the accusations, even by VB is that people at Google have "first world" problems and overwork is the least of their issues. VB is peddling this as part of a larger "tech companies are bad and foster bad behavior in their ranks, to an extent it's noticeable and worse than industry in general" meme.
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How Does One Boy Survive a Plane Crash? - edw519 http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=10627064 ====== jacquesm I think this may be related to why a horse falling down a mineshaft will explode on impact whereas a mouse thrown down the same mineshaft will probably experience just a shock and wander off. Adults weigh considerably more than small children so the energy of them impacting anything will be much higher than the same thing happening to a smaller child. It's not going to be a huge difference, but it might just be the difference that swings the odds around from an instant death to being 'just' severely wounded. Incredibly sad story this, it's all over the news here in NL, the majority if the victims is dutch.
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Ask HN: Giving raises after a series A round - mpc Do co-founders usually give themselves large pay raises after closing their first big round of VC money?<p>For example, a startup that has lasted for 1year on 200k of seed and angel money closes a 3 million dollar series A round. The company has 3 cofounders and 2 additional hackers and everyone is taking just a little more than their monthly expenses.<p>Do you avoid the temptation in order to save as much as possible? Here in Cambridge, hiring top notch development talent costs about 100k or more if a huge chunk of options are not offered to the person.<p>It seems like a no-brainer to keep your salary as low as possible while you keep most of the equity and your employees get the higher salary.<p>If I had to guess, I would say that this is not the case in most VC backed startups. If so, then why? ====== sanj I believe the goal should be NOT to be an outlier. Get a good sense of how the market would value you, independent of being a founder, and get paid that. Getting paid too much is just asking to to be singled out to be removed as a "cost saving measure." Getting paid too little makes everyone value you less. And you're at risk of being viewed as sucker. I have some strong memories of how annoyed I was at how much money our "new, post-series A management hires" were spending while I was still doubling up in hotel rooms with the other founders. At least we weren't still sharing beds... ------ Flemlord I ran into this situation about ten years ago. (With the _exact_ same amount of seed funding and series A funding oddly.) I didn't want to do raises and my co-founder wanted to do a huge raise that would have doubled his salary. We compromised closer to my side and just did a slight raise. We also sold some personal stock to the Series A investor. I banked it and forgot about it. He went on a spending spree and his performance at work went down and never recovered. He ended up quitting a year later, wrangling high- dollar consulting contracts from a couple of our larger clients who later regretted it. Asshole. I suppose this is more of a lesson about picking the right founders than whether to give yourselves raises. But I'd be a bit wary of anyone who wants too large of a raise. ------ RyanGWU82 I've been told that investors will generally veto any attempts by founders to give themselves "large pay raises." Series A investors will likely allow small raises so that you're not living off ramen anymore, but founders should still expect to be paid below market rate. My guess is that compensation would be a topic of board discussion -- especially executive compensation. In an early stage company, it would be politically impossible to argue that you should be paid more simply so that you don't jump ship. Threatening to quit does NOT go over well with investors. It's pretty common that early employees and non-founder executives are paid more than the founders. Obviously, the founders will own considerably more stock. ------ amohr I've never been through this before, but I feel like getting through series A is a milestone and should be treated as such. I think founders who have been busting their asses to get this product up-and-running deserve some sort of bonus, especially because they just presumably diluted their equity. Maybe this could be solved with some sort of one-time bonus or at least a big effin' party of some sort. ------ brezina You should include your pay raises in your budget you provide VCs before closing your series A. I would suggest paying yourself somewhere around or a bit above what you would make at a big company if you were doing the 9-5 gig as an engineer or whatever other position you'd hold. ------ white Be adequate with what you are asking for. You have the right to get paid fair salary. What investors may worry more then a few grands of salary raise, is how to keep your attention on the startup as much as it's only possible. If you're underpaid and cutting your expenses, you can't be a good person to develop a strategy on spending invested money. Know your value and you'll be fine. ------ Payton In my opinion, getting a big injection of VC money doesn't make it alright to turn up your burn rate a significant amount. I have never been through a round of funding, but it would make sense to keep your costs down wherever possible. A founder who just got a round of funding should be thinking on ways to increase the value of the company instead of their salary. I would like to know what is the norm in VC backed startups. Are there significant pay raises or bonuses after a round of funding? Do the founders and the employees share the wealth? Or are things kept fairly similar to the status quo.
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Did humans create the Sahara desert? - upen http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/11260.html ====== DrScump blogspam of [https://blog.frontiersin.org/2017/03/14/did-humans-create- th...](https://blog.frontiersin.org/2017/03/14/did-humans-create-the-sahara- desert/) which is in itself a summation of this David K. Wright paper, complete with images and references: [http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feart.2017.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feart.2017.00004/full)
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The Crisis of the Multiverse - dnetesn http://cosmos.nautil.us/feature/120/the-crisis-of-the-multiverse ====== justinpombrio > Theoretical and observational evidence suggests that we are living in an > enormous, eternally expanding multiverse where the constants of nature vary > from place to place. Really? What is this evidence? I didn't see much of it in the article. Also, the "sleeper" argument (at least as presented?) seems to be flawed. To repeat, the argument is this: Suppose you are cryogenically frozen, to be woken up in either 1 year or 100 years, determined by the flip of a coin right after you're frozen. Furthermore, say that the population of the Earth doubles every year, and each year 1% of people undergo this experiment. Now suppose you wake up, and wonder how much time has passed. There are two lines of reasoning: 1\. Obviously, the odds are 50/50, since the result was determined by the flip of a coin. 2\. Whatever year it is, most of the people waking up from the experiment were frozen last year (when the population of Earth was higher). The article then concludes that "The fact that two logical lines of argument yield contradictory answers tells us that the problem is not well-defined." But they're not contradictory; either may hold depending on what you know. The probability of an event depends on your knowledge. Assuming you remember when you were frozen, then there are two possibilities: "I am John Doe who was frozen in 2020 and woke up in 2021", or "I am John Doe who was frozen in 2020 and woke up in 2120". Thus line of reasoning #1 holds. On the other hand, if you're an experimenter who's _greeting_ people as they wake up, then there are many possibilities: "It's 2120, and this was one of the 70 million people who was frozen in 2020", or "It's 2120, and this was one of the 140 million people who was frozen in 2119". Thus line of reasoning #2 holds, and the person you're greeting was probably frozen last year. No contradiction. ~~~ kordless > The probability of an event depends on your knowledge. This is a false statement and hints at the dissonance in the argument made for hard determinism. ~~~ justinpombrio I'm not saying what you think I'm saying. I'm not saying that if we had full knowledge, then the future would be deterministic (on the contrary, I agree that this is false). However, we almost _never_ have full knowledge, and how much knowledge we have and what that knowledge is determines the probability of something. For example, what's the probability that a RNG produces 38434 as its next u32 output? Usually, it's 1/(2^32). However, if I just wrote a program to reverse engineer your computer's RNG as part of an attack, that program knows _exactly_ what the next output will be, and to it, the probability is either 0 or 1. Or take another example. You're teaching a probability class, and I'm a student who has just taken your test. What's the chance that I fail? To you, who doesn't know much about me, the probability is 5%, since only 5% of your students fail the first test. But _I_ know that I didn't study, and peg it at 50%. So again, the probability of an event depends on your knowledge. ~~~ YeGoblynQueenne But your knowledge of stochastic events depends on the number of observations of the outcomes of those events. If you know only how well you do in probability tests, you can peg your chances to pass at 50%, but that doesn't tell you anything about the chances of the rest of the class. I think you're arguing that you're just another observer, however you're not. You're the event and you have some sort of expectation about your outcomes. The observer here is the tutor, who has seen enough of you and others like you to have some more or less justifiable state of belief about the outcomes _of the class_. Are you needlessly complicating what amounts to a very simple and reasonable point? You can't know what you don't know until you've seen enough of it to know it. This goes for both deterministic and probabilistic knowledge. If you observe all possible outcomes of an event, you can deterministically predict its outcomes. If you observe sufficiently many outcomes of a stochastic event, you can probabilistically predict its outcomes. If you don't observe enough outcomes - and an infinite event will never give you enough outcomes - then you're stuck with inaccurate predictions for ever. ~~~ justinpombrio > You're the event and you have some sort of expectation about your outcomes. The event is the test grade. I am not a test grade, I am a person. If it's problematic that I'm _taking_ the test, how about I tell my friend that I didn't study, and my friend give a 50% probability that I fail? > you can peg your chances to pass at 50%, but that doesn't tell you anything > about the chances of the rest of the class. I wasn't talking about the rest of the class, I was talking about the probability that the _professor_ would give _me_ of failing the test. Is your probability theory so weak that it refuses to make a prediction for that? What are we supposed to use instead, our gut feelings? > If you observe all possible outcomes of an event, you can deterministically > predict its outcomes. If you observe sufficiently many outcomes of a > stochastic event, you can probabilistically predict its outcomes. The laws of probability apply just as well to deterministic and stochastic events. There is no useful distinction between a deterministic event of which we have partial knowledge (enough to assign a good "probability" to each outcome), and stochastic events of which we have full knowledge. As an example, take a board game that uses dice. How does the gameplay change if we replace the dice with a seeded RNG picking numbers from 1-6? Moreover, think of your favorite (classical) stochastic process. What if it's secretly deterministic, but only you know enough information -- an impractically large amount of information? What changes? ------ nonbel There is some interesting background to Nautilus magazine. It is funded by an organization that has the goal of using scientific methods to prove "spiritual" stuff. Since the "spiritual dimension" is so ill defined and hand- wavy, this requires pseudoscientific methods. I am one who sees _a lot_ of pseudoscience out there these days. Undeniably, the primary funding source is US taxpayers, but this looks like another one. [http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110216/full/470323a.html](http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110216/full/470323a.html) [https://www.templeton.org/what-we- fund/grants/nautilus](https://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grants/nautilus) ------ FascinatedBox I'm not sure why, but this site is adding several history entries. It's even worse when I try to navigate down using arrow keys. ~~~ derrickdirge On mobile safari it completely fills the back button history, making it impossible to actually go back. Pretty egregious UX. ~~~ MattRix Yeah it's awful, though you can go back if you hold the back button, which will pop up a list of history entries. ~~~ derrickdirge That list is exactly what I'm talking about. By the time I wanted to go back, that list was completely full of links back to the current page and I had to load HN from my favorites instead. ------ woodandsteel The article assumes that string theory has been proven correct. From what I understand, that is very far from being true. ~~~ miles7 My impression is that, far from being proven correct, it's actually falling out of fashion. Some ideas originating in string theory, such as the AdS/CFT correspondence, are having a heyday though. ------ protomikron Unbelievable, this fucking modern UI designs. How can you publish a page, where the back button is broken, and just call it a day. It is freaking text and some images. We know how to do that, there is no magic, please do not use technology that breaks basic expectations of users. ~~~ trav4225 You must have missed the memo -- back buttons are now "considered harmful". ;) ------ nobrains The crisis of the nautil.us website back button ~~~ trav4225 BackGATE!
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How bad is the Windows command line really? - momo-reina http://blog.nullspace.io/batch.html ====== byuu It's really, really, _really, really_ really bad. It doesn't even have a logical history. Despite having used it for many years, I still don't understand why when I type one command (eg make), and then another (eg out.exe), I have to toggle between pressing up or pressing _down_ from the new command-prompt to access the previous commands. I can't make the window more than 80-characters wide dynamically. (I don't want to change settings and restart the program to get the width to change.) So any time I want to copy and paste one of the infamous wall-of-text C++ template errors, I have to waste a lot of time reformatting the text. Copy-and-paste as well is just complete garbage that takes forever. I have to dump batch files into a folder in PATH because there's no alias support nor .profile startup script. I can't color-code the prompt separately for visibility. There's no tab- completion. There's no shell escaping backticks. On and on. Batch scripts are just hopelessly broken. It really feels like we're abusing the hell out of them to do things they were never intended to do. The language is closer to Malbolge than C. PowerShell is a whole other can of worms. I don't care for it either, but that'd be a separate discussion. Bash on Windows sounded promising, up until "Windows 10 only" and "doesn't play nice with the regular Windows environment." ~~~ sixothree I agree it's pretty bad. But... > I can't make the window more than 80-characters wide dynamically. Windows 10 fixes this. You can resize the window and it wraps text better than any other terminal out there. > Copy-and-paste as well is just complete garbage that takes forever. Turn on Quick Edit. Now drag to select and right click to copy. > There's no tab-completion. Tab completion for filepaths works quite well for me. ~~~ byuu > Windows 10 fixes this. You can resize the window and it wraps text better > than any other terminal out there. Don't want to derail with Windows 10 arguments, but for me, that's a total deal breaker at this time. But thanks for pointing it out! Now if I find out Windows 10 can handle LF-formatted text in Notepad, I'll have to check and see if Hell froze over :P > Turn on Quick Edit. Now drag to select and right click to copy. It's not just having to go to the menu to click edit, it's that it bounds selections as a rectangular box when you paste the results. I also don't like the way quick-edit is so quick to select white blocks just by clicking in the window without dragging. Then to get rid of it, I have to right-click and kill whatever was in my clipboard. A bit OCD there, but ... I like bash a whole lot more. Normal text highlight, middle-click to paste what was highlighted elsewhere, and it's formatted properly. This is especially important when copying those 200-character long C++ template error messages. > Tab completion for filepaths works quite well for me. ...... indeed there is. How in the world did I miss this?! Very sorry, I can't edit the parent post to fix this now. ~~~ mappu _> Don't want to derail with Windows 10 arguments, but for me, that's a total deal breaker at this time._ I'll bite. What's holding you back? Ever since 7 / 8.1 got telemetry backported in, they're on equal footing with 10 from a privacy standpoint. I guess you could cherry-pick out which windows updates you want to install, but that's frankly unsustainable. You may as well get the new WDDM, the new DirectX 12, the new virtual desktop support, the new command prompt, and all of that. _> if I find out Windows 10 can handle LF-formatted text in Notepad, I'll have to check and see if Hell froze over :P_ It doesn't, and it hasn't :P Love your work by the way. bsnes/higan is a significant contribution to the human race. ~~~ byuu > Ever since 7 / 8.1 got telemetry backported in, they're on equal footing > with 10 from a privacy standpoint. I primarily run FreeBSD. But when I run Windows, it's a fresh SP1 install with updates disabled. I am not worried about the safety of it. I have a firewall, behind a router, and I don't install much of anything. I just use Windows for chatting and browsing online, watching streaming media services, etc. If something were to become compromised, I'd just wipe the drive with nothing of value lost or stolen in the process. I have another Windows box that doesn't even have internet access that is solely used to build and release Windows ports of my software. Telemetry is part of it. I also find the interface ugly as sin (duller than Windows 3.1), don't like how bloated it's becoming (Metro tiles, Cortana, etc), don't like how difficult it is to disable updates, etc. To be honest, if I had my way, I'd be on Windows XP (classic mode) still for what I use Windows for. The main draw to 7 was that XP's 64-bit drivers were mostly garbage or just plain unavailable; and I have lots of RAM and like the speed boost for 64-bit software too much. > Love your work by the way. Thank you very much! But ... > bsnes/higan is a significant contribution to the human race. I don't know about all that o_O' At the end of the day, it's just video games. ------ brudgers In computing, "batch" connotes long running processes in addition to "script"'s connotation of collapsing multiple commands into a single one. The seemingly redundant parsing by the Batch interpreter is a feature, not a bug. 1\. The parser allows modifying a .bat file during its execution and having those changes execute without restarting the Batch interperter. [1] This is in keeping with the rationale for batch processing -- facilitating serial execution of computationally expensive operations. 2\. The Batch interpreter allows self modifying code.[2] In the early 1980's when Batch was designed, sophisticated COBOL programmers might have felt right at home. Lisper's were probably more hit and miss. This is a case where historical context is useful. Today, it might perhaps be worth mentioning Powershell in a discussion of the Windows command line. Batch was the DOS command line and exists in Windows for evolutionary reasons. In the days when abundant RAM and fast CPU speeds were prefixed with "mega" and distributed computing often happened at BAUD rates, not restarting a process was a big deal. More importantly, then as today, the execution speed of the batch interpreter was not a critical section of a batch process. [1]: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/906586/changing-a- batch-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/906586/changing-a-batch-file- when-its-running) [2]: [http://swag.outpostbbs.net/DOS/0019.PAS.html](http://swag.outpostbbs.net/DOS/0019.PAS.html) ~~~ j2kun But bash was around in the 80's, too, right? And it didn't seem to need those features. How did bash users get around your claimed need for this? ~~~ userbinator Bash first came out in 1989, but the typical shell of the time was sh, and it ran on Unix systems with more memory, storage, and CPU power than the typical PC. Thus it's no surprise that the sh family started with more features, while COMMAND which cmd evolved from was extremely minimalistic. DOS 1.0's COMMAND.COM was just slightly more than 3 _kilobytes_ and didn't have conditional nor goto statements: [http://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos/dos-1-0-and-1-1/dos-1-0-dir/](http://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos/dos-1-0-and-1-1/dos-1-0-dir/) [http://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos/dos-1-0-and-1-1/](http://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos/dos-1-0-and-1-1/) ~~~ Roboprog Even if the *nix machine was no bigger than a PC (e.g. - Xenix on '286; BSD on a PDP-11), it could still swap out processes, vs sharing a single real memory space. But as you said, this allowed (at least the illusion, on some machines) more total memory to work with. ~~~ brudgers In the 1980's a 80286 would have been toward the high end of x86 systems. The 80386 started shipping in bulk in 1986 and the Compaq DeskPro 386 and IBM PS/2 Model 80 were well north of $5000 in 1987 and the "prosumer" PS/2 was the Model 60 with a 80286 when the line was released. Even in the late 1980's 8088 based systems were pretty typical and why IBM included the PS/2 25 and 30 in its initial product line. ~~~ Roboprog I remember using (sharing!) an XT (8088? 8086???) at work in 1985. One good thing about the 386 in 1986 was that it made the price of 286 (AT/clone) systems come down. I almost never saw an XT after 1986. We started seeing quite a few more clones (Compaq, etc) about that time, as well. Which is of course a big tangent off of "why/whence command.com & .BAT files" :-) OS/2 and Windows were a big deal in virtualizing memory use in PC land, with widespread Linux use still "a few years" in the future. (and effective adoption of NextStep even further out) ~~~ brudgers I think the 80386SX was also a factor in lower 80286 prices after the 386DX came out. Those systems were really popular. When I bought the Amiga 500 in 1988, 8088 Turbo machines were still the entry level clone system. My vague recollection of the consumer and small business market was that that obtained for a couple of more years. ------ elchief Powershell is garbage. .Net does utf8 by default but powershell, built on .Net, manages not to. Try type utf8Encoded.txt > out.txt in cmd.exe and posh. Cmd works and posh fs it up. And after you do figure out utf8 encoding in posh, it'll always add a BOM just to screw you ~~~ stephengillie This has frustrated me to no end. I've given into using WriteAllLines as a work-around. [IO.File]::WriteAllLines($filename, $content) (from [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5596982/using- powershell...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5596982/using-powershell- to-write-a-file-in-utf-8-without-the-bom)) ~~~ lqdc13 I get OOM with larger files even when they should fit in memory. Powershell is like a poor Java/C# interpreter instead of a quick and dirty shell. ------ itaysk Agree about Windows command prompt being lame compared to bash, but I really find PowerShell amazing, even more so then bash. If you look at all the recent (even not so recent) products from MS, it is clear that PowerShell is the shell for Windows, and not batch. I didn't get the cure for polio analogy that's in the article but I really think anyone that's comparing shells should compare with PowerShell. ~~~ nailer You're on Hacker News. Most people who say they hate powershell have done so little posh they don't even know 'select' or 'where'. ~~~ vetinari Nobody starts using posh just because some new cool thing in the shiny new OS. My first impression of it? It went like this: Task: you need to connect to Hyper-V VM console via Remote Desktop. Hiccup: for that, you need to know it's GUID. How to find it out? Just run this handy posh script... ([https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/virtual_pc_guy/2014/11/25/u...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/virtual_pc_guy/2014/11/25/using- rdcman-v2-7-to-connect-to-a-vm/)) Another hiccup: That script does not work, it needs some library that's not loaded by default. Try to find out how. Another hiccup: It does not load, because it breaks some policy, that's off by default. Investigate, what to do. How it ended: forget it, I have better things to do than solve problems with Powershell. Look into VM files and find out, that it's one of the GUIDs there. Result: Won't touch posh again and anyone singing about its virtues is getting promptly ignored. Maybe it's not fair to Powershell, but the first impression counts. ~~~ nailer Totally agreed the default policy thing (you can't run scripts until you allow it) can be a nasty shock, especially to folk (like me and everyone else here) coming from Unix. OTOH, you'll spend way less time scraping stuff for regexs and actually just asking posh for fields. It's really, really worth learning. ------ EvanAnderson I get perverse joy out of using the Windows CMD.EXE shell (and the earlier COMMAND.COM from MS-DOS). Yes, it's tremendously crufty, idiosyncratic, and sometimes seems down-right illogical in its behavior. Arguably, just about anything else is better, but it holds a special place in my heart. ~~~ conceit If I could downvote you, I would. That's probably why I'm not allowed to. :) ~~~ choosername kill-it-with-fire kind of downvote, not a HN smug just-because-I-can kinda downvote. ------ jasonjei This isn't completely related to Windows command line but I thought I would post it out here. I was trying to run a Bash script from a Git repo mounted in a Docker container. When running the Bash script, I kept getting all kinds of errors. I ran the exact same script in the same Docker container on a different Linux computer that had cloned the repo. It turns out the \r Windows line endings (which I later normalized in Git settings) caused my script to barf. ~~~ chipperyman573 You can also normalize them using the dos2unix package, which is available on most distros. ~~~ bluejekyll Have the line ending wars ended yet? Apple is finally Unix \n, but most internet protocols are \r\n as are Windows. Though honestly, Windows just doesn't even matter any more to me, I haven't needed to touch an MS product in years... ~~~ userbinator [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline#History) \r\n, CR+LF historically speaking was the first, but \n, LF became dominant because of Unix. ~~~ Jaruzel If you break it down and view them as terminal codes (or as the spec was designed, on a teletype), CR+LF is correct, and LF is not. However, the inconsistencies of this over time have become really annoying. My long term pet peeve is in VB.NET when I have to do this: ' This works - using the VB6 interop Split(StringName,vbCrLf) ' This doesn't work - using the native .NET function ' because .split is only expecting a Char, and not a String) StringName.Split(vbCrLf) Really, really annoying. ~~~ Retra Why would you want strings to be formatted using terminal codes? It's just textual data. It has nothing to do with terminals, other then the fact that terminals need to handle text. I see little reason that text should have to handle terminals. With that said, CR+LF is just inefficient, since doing both of those tasks together is what is overwhelmingly desired for a newline. ------ kmiroslav Personally, one of the reasons why I fell in love with Ruby 10+ years ago was because I realized I could use it instead of CMD or bash to write all my scripts from now on. Regardless of the platform. Obviously, this applies to Python as well if that's more your thing. I've never gotten into PowerShell but I have absolute respect for the concept behind it, and how much more advanced it is than any shell you can find on UNIX. Think about it: instead of piping several commands through an unspecified string protocol that varies between each command (essentially what UNIX does), you are now piping real language objects in a uniform binary protocol defined by the shell itself. ~~~ bad_user > _you are now piping real language objects_ Which is in fact a bad idea, because in order for stdin to accept objects and stdout to output objects, now those commands have to be powered by PowerShell and .NET. In other words you're in a very finite and closed environment that does not interoperate with the outside world. You know, love or hate Unix, but the fact remains that this family of operating systems, including its command line, has survived the test of time. And it has done so because it has at its core a set of philosophical principles. And one of those is that programs that handle text streams are preferred, being highly interoperable, as text is a universal interface [1]. And you know it's funny how people loathe Unix, but at the same time rediscover its principles (and often implement them badly) again and again. [1] [http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s06.html](http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s06.html) ~~~ adzm Those who don't understand Unix are doomed to repeat it. ~~~ tbyehl Those who haven't read the Monad (Powershell) Manifesto[1] are doomed to keep repeating Unix's failures. [1] [http://www.jsnover.com/blog/2011/10/01/monad- manifesto/](http://www.jsnover.com/blog/2011/10/01/monad-manifesto/) ------ alkonaut It's absolutely laughable. But I've almost come to see this as a feature - It's so terrible that no one relies on it or uses it. Bash in my opinion is overused. ------ mschuster91 I usually write shellscripts in PHP. Works pretty good, and PHP is by far easier to write than either bash scripts or Windows shell script - not to mention that one single syntax can be used for both OSes, which is nice when you do development on both Linux and Windows, and even nicer when you're also developing on OS X which ships a horribly outdated bash (and other coretools). ~~~ nacs I am by no means a PHP hater (I do some PHP dev for work) but PHP not only has multiple versions (4, 5, 5.3) but has a ton of modules for everything (curl, mbconv, openssl, etc) that have to be setup the same way for you to get the same behavior across OSes. Not sure it makes a great shell script for that reason. ~~~ mschuster91 On systems I control, I currently stick with the latest PHP5 release, unmodified - either the distro maintainer version, or in case of Windows, the official binaries. Configuration customization isn't really needed, only the usual date.timezone to get rid of the warning (and hell, this is annoying! can't PHP just use the OS-provided time zone?!), and in extremely rare cases the memory limit and max_execution_time. ------ tr1ck5t3r Its good enough to bypass UAC & AV and run whatever you like. You dont even need to give your software a ".exe" extension to run code. Just rename a program removing its .exe extension, then call it from the command line. It will run! Its perhaps better to compare dos BATch files with bash. ------ agumonkey just in case, [https://mridgers.github.io/clink/](https://mridgers.github.io/clink/) only 600kb to enjoy your sanity back ------ ams6110 I honestly feel like I am missing something. What is the current excitement about bash on Windows? It's been available (and something I commonly use) via cygwin for years. And cygwin's bash can run .exe binaries. ~~~ tacos Cygwin is quite slow due to problems emulating fork (large builds take forever!), plus the package support is spotty. I'm excited because I can eventually ditch Cygwin and VMs for much of my Linux compatibility testing and cross-platform work. And I'm glad Microsoft is finally putting some effort into this long-neglected area. For the moment, I'm still stuck with Cygwin, shaking my head a bit too. ------ adzm I've just spent way too much time trying to get utf8 to work well on the command line, ugh. ------ b34r Why even make batch available? Just make PowerShell th default and be done with it. ------ tacos There are, of course, choices beyond Bash, Batch and PowerShell. I'm a Microsoft fanboy and I find Python far more structured and faster than any of the above for anything beyond the most simple shell scripts. (If only the inventor of PowerShell had spent ten minutes outside the Microsoft ecosystem before locking himself in a seafoam green office for two years...) Doesn't solve the IT admin scenarios PowerShell is good for but I don't go there. And if I did, I'd use C# anyway. No need to learn a new language to loop and call objects, that's solved. With the .NET Core stuff, I'm using C# and Microsoft.DotNet.Cli.Utils and the end result is briefer and saner than Python argparse, and file operations work great cross platform. Less issues than even Python, plus I can use LINQ to sort and remove dupes. Handy. As for the "Windows command line" (cmd.exe) well, it still sucks. Console2 plus Clink and ... well, you'll still miss zsh on cygwin or what just works out of box on Mac... but, hey, it's a start. ------ dingo_bat The cmd.exe on Windows 10 is a significant improvement from older versions. So much so that it has become actually useful now. ~~~ daigoba66 I think you're thinking of conhost which is the console window program used to run cmd.exe, PowerShell, et al. That has some new features. But I don't cmd.exe itself saw many, if any changes in Win10. ~~~ dingo_bat One of the biggest (maybe silly) change is that cmd is fully resizable. I think Powershell was already able to do this in Win 7. So I think apart from the changes to conhost, cmd itself has been upgraded in some ways. ------ sklogic Unreadable on mobile ~~~ brudgers Noticeably faster than average on desktop. There's no silver bullet. ~~~ chickenfries Setting a max-width on the body text would make this incredibly more readable on narrower viewports. At 636kb and 48 requests, this page probably isn't as "minimal" as you think it is. For example, should there be any reason you can read the disqus comments at a reasonable size but not the body of the post? ~~~ brudgers I tried it on mobile. It still loaded fast. As with many pages, Firefox Reader Mode improved the experience. Though for me, the bulk of the improvement comes from text formatting, part of the improvement is hiding blog comments, ads, email signups, etc. Anyway, my experience is that touching Firefox's reader-mode icon in the address bar is usually faster than a boatload of formatting logic; produces more readability than a website's general optimization, and bypasses all the ancillary crap that people concerned enough to optimize for mobile tend to add. ~~~ sklogic Fast-schmast, I do not care, cannot read anything at all (chrome on android). ------ YeGoblynQueenne tl;dr: batch will steal your soul and sell your kids to the Great Old Ones' cultists. Bash is meh (the author doesn't really know much about bash). User Powershell. Save the world. ... and it's all true.
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New YC Startup: Buxfer - pg http://www.buxfer.com/index.php ====== Alex3917 I'm imagining two intersecting lines. The positively sloped line represents the amount of time saved increasing as transactions of this kind increase. The other negatively sloped line is the cognitive overhead of using the system, i.e. higher when the number of transactions is small. I'm trying to figure out where exactly they cross, because while I like the system in theory I can't really see myself using it, at least at the moment. P.S. Congrats on launching to the founder(s). ~~~ ashu Well, that's a challenge for us, then. Let's see if we can make the y-coord of the overhead line start below the time-saved line :P Also, we'd love to know what is causing your inertia at this moment. ~~~ Alex3917 OK, I sent you guys my thoughts using the feedback link. ------ abstractbill Congrats to the founders for building and launching a very nice-looking site. At this point though, I'm more likely to use something like wesabe for keeping track of my spending since it understands my existing online bank accounts rather than requiring me to enter transactions by hand - that seems like a killer feature to me since my spending these days is overwhelmingly electronic. [disclaimer: I haven't used either tool. My opinion is based only on having seen the online demos.] ~~~ ashu This is Ashwin - one of Buxfer's founders. Glad you liked the look of the site. We do allow you to import transactions from your bank and credit card accounts - provided they are in Quicken or Microsoft Money format. Integrating directly with banks is on the cards as well. One of our goals (besides tracking shared expenses) is to be able to better reason about cash transactions. Our experience as students indicated we spent close to 30% of our income(!) on coke and coffee combined. To capture all these little transactions, we allow reporting expenses via text-messages. (More ways coming soon!) Ultimately the goal is to understand *all* your expenses completely at a central location. ~~~ herdrick Integrating directly with banks is on the cards Did you mean 'in the cards' or are you an Agile/XP shop? ~~~ ashu This could just be my English crapping out at the wrong time. All I meant was "coming soon"! ------ jwecker I think it looks great. Well done taking the concept and getting it to the "just right" stage without overdoing it. The start page/index is perfect- in 5 seconds I know pretty much what it does and whether or not it's something that I've been waiting for. Does anyone over there mind if I ask what the plans are for monetization? Paid subscriptions at some point? Tie-ins with other financial institutions like credit card companies? Ads? (it looks like too clean of a site for that, but I'm sure you could make it work if that's the plan). ~~~ ashu Your guesses are pretty accurate. And ordered from most - least preferable. :) We'd really hate to place ads particularly if they reduce usability and cleanliness of the site. ------ wastedbrains I really like the ability to just use my existing accounts, it was enough to have me take a little look around. ~~~ sly Me too ------ mynameishere Looks a little too cartoony for a financial app. Actually, umm, if Windows media player looked like this, I'd say the same thing: Too cartoony. Just to give you a baseline. ~~~ ecuzzillo Probably the problem is just the color scheme; it's fruit salad. ------ dmnd Wow, I have a half implemented (and nowhere near as nice-looking) version of this app on my computer. I guess I should have searched a little deeper before starting to convert my finance spreadsheet to a web app... back to to brainstorming for me. I suppose I better sign up, then! ------ python_kiss I read Buxfer's review on TechCrunch earlier today; congratulations to YC and the founders on getting featured there! :) The site looks great but they have some tough challenges ahead since Buxfer is coming late in this market. The key is to resist the temptation of copying features off their larger competitor (Wesabe) and build something different. I think a great lesson we have all learned from Reddit is that a startup can survive in the face of tough competition merely by filling the gaps left by their larger competitor. So far Buxfer seems to have done a great job at it :) \- Jawad Shuaib ------ plinkplonk Hi, What web framework are you guys using? Rails? Django? something else? (Awesome product btw) ~~~ ashu Just object-oriented PHP. No framework, yet. ------ supahfly Isn't this just billmonk? ------ juwo If my bank allows it, can you access my bank account? I think this is a great idea that can even upstage Quicken. I stopped using Quicken - it is a pain to have duplication. However I cannot annotate my transactions with my bank. (this cheque was a donation for charity http://lydiapress.com). As a result, actually, I dont keep track of my account (shouldnt confess this here!) Yes, it is a great idea because IF I GIVE YOU READ-ONLY ACCESS TO MY ACCOUNT, WHY SHOULD THE BANK CARE? WOW!
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Second longest bull market - gopalakrishnans https://qz.com/928808/the-bull-run-in-stocks-that-started-in-2009-is-the-second-longest-in-history/ ====== smallduck Thanks, Obama! Oh, which one is bull again?
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Amazing Charts showing Viral Loops - socmoth http://productplanner.com/gallery/ ====== Radix I'm very interested in this, but I do not see the chart. Could you please post a comment on how I can see it and why you find it interesting.
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Undebt: How We Refactored 3M Lines of Code - Yelp http://engineeringblog.yelp.com/2016/08/undebt-how-we-refactored-3-million-lines-of-code.html ====== spejson 404 not found error ------ PaulHoule woo hoo!
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A Man Who Got Away with Everything (2002) - vo2maxer https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/14/books/the-man-who-got-away-with-everything.html ====== acqq > the well-known photograph of his fibula and tibia, a favorite exhibit on > display in the Army Medical Museum in Washington, which in the 19th century > was one of the must-see attractions of the capital. It's still popular! In 2014: [https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/179/9/1051/4159552](https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/179/9/1051/4159552) "At the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) in Silver Spring, Maryland, “Sickles' leg” remains one of the most frequently requested objects." Worth reading that short article too, even if you don't read the NYT one, as the former has a nice summary of his major "achievement." ------ hos234 If you come across, and have to deal with a Sickles day to day - maybe as a boss or colleague or employee or in social circles - what would you do? Does anyone have any good strategies? ~~~ rhombocombus Having worked with folks approaching that level of obstreperousness my advice would be to get as far away as you can as quickly as you can manage. ------ davidw Curious if you come across his name while reading the NYT opinion piece on the "Lincoln Project"? ~~~ vo2maxer Yes, I did. Good pickup, you’re very perspicacious :-) ~~~ davidw Rick Wilson's writing has been a small point of light in otherwise very dark times. ------ coding123 Paywalled and Not Supported by Outline... ~~~ vo2maxer A quick search reveals a vast armamentarium of options. It has also been discussed in HN ;-) In addition from HN FAQ: Are paywalls ok? It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
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Pi-Hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements - tosh https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole ====== ignoramous I absolutely love the DNS based solution for ad-blocking and preventing tracking. I use AdGuard DNS on my PC (DNSCrypt) [0] and phone (DoTLS) [1], and it has improved performance of apps (not just websites), 'cause I guess there's a lot less going on under the hood now (trackers like new-relic and segment might be consuming a good percentage of resources which they wouldn't now since their domains are NX'ing?). What am I worried about is DNS based black-holing is trivial to workaround against (as an ad-provider, one could simply force use a custom DNS client and pin to a DNS resolver of choice) [2][3][4]. What's next for pi-hole and solutions like AdGuard DNS short of re-writing packets going through UDP/53? Not sure how one would intercept the DoTLS / DoHTTPS connections, to rewrite those. I'd like to hear if anyone has some thoughts on this, or if this has been discussed elsewhere. [0] [https://simplednscrypt.org/](https://simplednscrypt.org/) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788410) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19170671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19170671) [3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19106023](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19106023) [4] Firefox 64 for PC, by default, was configured to ignore OS/Network Interface provided DNS resolver and used CloudFlare's over HTTPS. ~~~ 1over137 Re #4: really?! I missed that news. Sounds horrible. So instead of using my ISP, that I chose and trust, all my DNS queries now go to some foreign megacorp?! ~~~ meowface This is also the first time I heard about it, but my immediate reaction was "sounds amazing". \- Removes all DNS leak privacy issues, for all Firefox users, automatically \- Removes all possibility for a MitM to view or corrupt DNS queries or responses, for all Firefox users, automatically And Cloudflare claims to delete all DNS-related logs of Firefox users within 24 hours: [https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/commitment-to- priv...](https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/commitment-to- privacy/privacy-policy/firefox/) Even if you distrust Cloudflare or think they're not secure against breaches, it's still a massive security and privacy upgrade over using your ISP's DNS servers, which will pretty much always leak sensitive information about your connection (potentially leading to deanonymization while using an anonymizing service) _and_ send/receive everything in unauthenticated plaintext. And in addition, your ISP likely is less trustworthy and less secure against breaches (even if you aren't using Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T) than Cloudflare. But again, even if you don't trust them, this would still be the best move for security. Plus it's a big latency decrease and performance boost for most or all users. ~~~ 1over137 Sure it has some advantages, but it has disadvantages too. It really erodes my trust in Mozilla that they did this without notification upon upgrade, and as opt-out instead of opt-in. My ISP is trustworthy and is in my own city/country. Today I've discovered that all my DNS queries now go to a foreign company that I know nothing about, and did not consent to communicate with. I'm all for encrypted DNS, but I'm not for my DNS server choice being silently overridden. ~~~ philliphaydon How do you feel that even with your isp your data still passes through servers in multiple countries before it gets to you? When you request to view a site it’s not a single hope from you to the server the site is hosted on. ~~~ gdfasfklshg4 Is that not the point of SSL? ~~~ bobwaycott DNS is in the clear by default. ~~~ gdfasfklshg4 I thought that once DNS is resolved the DNS request doesn't go any further and the actual request is sent to the IP address... ~~~ bobwaycott Yes, but the parent comment you replied to was, I believe, referring to data leakage via DNS, not data leakage over HTTP requests. Two different things. What they were getting at is your ISP's DNS servers--and every DNS server hit along the path of resolution--know something about every request made by one of your devices when your devices route DNS through them. Assuming every request to _domain.com_ is encrypted, your ISP may not know _what you 're sending to domain.com_, but they do know _you are sending data to domain.com_ because DNS is in the clear by default. This has led a number of ISPs to capture this information and use it for purposes a customer often does not know about, understand, or may object to--such as selling that information, using it for injecting advertising or hijacking requests, and other actions. What's worse is that many ISPs (in the US, at least) ensure this behavior can occur by requiring customers to use gateways/routers that are locked down to ISP DNS servers, and many of these devices _prevent_ users from modifying the DNS servers used. Encrypted DNS and devices like the Pi-hole provide end users a means of bypassing this behavior by avoiding ISP DNS servers entirely so even _where you 're trying to go_ isn't known by them. ~~~ meowface This is one of the many concerns, yes. Another big concern is privacy from the other side: if you're using Tor or an anonymizing VPN while visiting a website looking to deanonymize users, and the website owners see a DNS query to their nameserver from a Comcast DNS server somewhere in a midwestern state timed perfectly before your HTTP request coming from a Tor exit node or anonymizing VPN, they can potentially infer your broad location and ISP, and potentially narrow your identity down from there (especially if you ever visited that site, or an affiliated site or site that shares data with them, in the past without using an anonymizer), negating the purpose of the anonymizer. If all they see is a query from 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8, you could be anywhere in the world, using any ISP. And your ISP can do this in an even more precise way. Customer makes DNS query for siteispsdontlike.com and then immediately sends a lot of traffic to a server registered to an anonymizing VPN company. That tells the ISP "this customer is visiting this 'suspicious' website, and also covering it up by using this specific anonymizer". ------ muppetman If you want to test pihole you can just run it in a docker container to see what it's like. You don't need to buy a Raspberry Pi! [https://hub.docker.com/r/pihole/pihole/](https://hub.docker.com/r/pihole/pihole/) ~~~ kissgyorgy I'm running the Docker image for my home network, it is really convenient. ------ jedberg Right now I use AdBlock plus. Occasionally, to get a webpage to work, I have to disable it. How does Pi-hole mitigate this issue for non-expert users? My main concern is that if I set this up at home, my wife will get annoyed when her web pages don't work and won't have the patience to learn how to add to the whitelist. ~~~ nonamechicken I am using pfsense with pfblockerng for ad/tracking protection. My wife spents a good amount of time on a mobile fashion game. In addition to the forced in app purchases once a month, it makes her watch plenty of video ads every day. She has to watch those ads to get virtual currency that can be used to purchase things that is a must for playing the game. With the protection enabled, the ads won't show and she can't play. So I had to whiteliste her mobile in pfblockerng. She still complains that it doesn't work. So she uses mobile data to play the game. I am not sure what else in pfsense is breaking it for her, I haven't looked further into it. One good thing is it helps me save bandwidth. My home internet has 500gb limit after which it drops to 1/10th of the speed. She seems to be using up close to her 1.5gb daily limit almost always, just from this game and facebook. So I get more bandwidth to download stuff! ~~~ blablablerg Jesus that game sounds like a big trap ~~~ nonamechicken It is. I have been trying to get her to stop playing it by introducing to other games. But no. She spents a good chunk of her free time on this. Since she is a teacher, she gets a lot of free time at work too. It hasn't affected either of us negatively that I know off, so I sometimes think let her do what she enjoys. I hope it is not indicative of her being unsatisfied with something in our life. The game's name is Covet Fashion. They have a huge following in Facebook. The main theme of the game is to dress up models and others vote on it. Whoever gets the "top look" wins (winner gets virtual currency to buy more dress I think). I think they even form teams through Facebook. Sometimes people get kicked out for not helping the team and so on, so I guess there is some drama like reality TV. ------ schappim There are some good discussions on Pi-Hole over on this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18075159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18075159) ~~~ tosh sorry, didn’t realize it was already on 5 months ago ~~~ lucb1e No problem, since people upvote it you're apparently not the only one who thought the content is useful to the site. Reposts are fine (heck, posts that are decades old come up from time to time), though it's somewhat customary to link previous discussions. ------ realPubkey I wonder why there is no public official dns-server with the pi-hole blockings included. This would allow me to just insert the dns-ip into my fritzbox without having to setup and run a raspberry. ~~~ clarkmoody You're probably going to want to whitelist a domain here and there relative to the default blacklist. And the pi-hole has a few blacklists that aren't enabled by default, since they are much more strict. So pi-hole-as-a-service doesn't make too much sense. ~~~ realPubkey Ok thats a good argument. But the few pihole-users i know do not have a single whitelisted domain and likely will never have one. Also I could still whitelist most domains by adding the ip to my etc/hosts ~~~ xythian I'm a long time pi-hole user and follow the subreddit and discourse regularly. You'll find many a pi-hole user with whitelists. The following are pretty common. * [https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/commonly-whitelisted-domains...](https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/commonly-whitelisted-domains/212) * [https://github.com/anudeepND/whitelist](https://github.com/anudeepND/whitelist) I have ~2.2M domains blocked. There's just no way that I wouldn't have false positives in that big of a list. ~~~ lostlogin 1 million here - nothing whitelisted or knowingly broken. ------ snazz Should the URL be [https://pi-hole.net](https://pi-hole.net) instead of one of their GitHub repos? ~~~ tosh I find the Github readme easier to parse (often the case with open source projects actually) ------ dsissitka If you're interested in Pi-hole you might want to check out AdGuard Home: [https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome](https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome) Pi-hole isn't difficult to setup but AdGuard Home is much easier. Just download the binary and run it. If you want it to start on boot run it with the `--install` flag. Works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. ~~~ Moru Pi-hole replaces your DNS on the local network so one device is protecting all your other devices without you having to do anthing else. Yes, even that Wii or whatever :-) ~~~ dsissitka Same with AdGuard Home. :) ~~~ Moru Except it stops running the second I turn off my computer :-) ~~~ dsissitka Then don't install it on your computer? :P You can install it on a Pi just like Pi-hole. ------ xd1936 I've been running an instance of this on a DigitalOcean VM for a couple of years now. Keeping my instance external is nice so I can use it from home, work, and for friends and family, with all of my devices. Fantastic project, highly recommended. ~~~ muppetman How do you stop the general public from finding it and using it? Strict firewall rules? I have a pihole at home (not a Rasperry Pi, gosh I wish they'd ditch the marrying of the two) but to access it I establish a VPN. ~~~ obituary_latte I set up a simple python server that listens on a specific (highly unlikely to be guessed) url and when visited runs a shell script to add the visiting ip to iptables dns whitelist. So I can visit a relatives house, go to that page then add my dns ip to their router (if they want me to). Also helps for when traveling or when isp renews dhcp lease. ~~~ muppetman This is a beautiful solution. I love it, bravo! ------ Down_n_Out I recently talked about Pi-Hole in another thread[0]: I'm using Wireguard in combination with Pi-Hole on a cheap VPS as a VPN on my iPhone, it's blazingly fast and super stable. Will be trying this on my Mac as well now. I only allow access to the console from a fixed IP-address to add whitelists when needed. Everything loads much faster, websites, even apps I feel, though it might just be wishful thinking that last one. [0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19186795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19186795) ~~~ Jemm What VPS and how much is it costing you? ~~~ Down_n_Out About 3 Euro per month using a CX11 over at Hetzner[0] [0][https://www.hetzner.com/cloud](https://www.hetzner.com/cloud) ------ kang How pi-hole works and what is FTLDNS, if anyone is interested: [https://pi- hole.net/2018/06/09/ftldns-and-unbound-combined-f...](https://pi- hole.net/2018/06/09/ftldns-and-unbound-combined-for-your-own-all-around-dns- solution/) ------ tbronchain I came across this article last month: [https://ifelse.io/2019/01/12/secure- ad-free-internet-anywher...](https://ifelse.io/2019/01/12/secure-ad-free- internet-anywhere-with-streisand-and-pi-hole/) It was surprisingly very easy and straightforward to setup, and working very well! It's most useful on Android/iOS. One small change I've done is to set the Pi-hole DNS server only on a specific set of VPN connections (using specific ports) in order to have a full, unfiltered VPN if necessary. ------ scoutt Forgive my ignorance on the matter, but: 1) Are the DNS request sent to oblivion or a fake address is returned instead? If the former, wouldn't a failed DNS request generate some sort of timeout? 2) Would a failed DNS request generate multiple retries to load a resource that is not available? (I can imagine this for application other than browsers). 3) How long until pages with ads will start solving addresses through some sort of script? Like in the section of the page responsible for showing an ad, manually crafting and sending a DNS request to 8.8.8.8 or whatever. edit: for clarity ~~~ ownagefool It runs a local DNS server and a local http host. You make a DNS query to badsite.com, your local DNS responds with your local http host and you load a pixel image instead of whatever it should have been. ~~~ vSanjo So in that regard, what does a page look like with Pi-Hole running? As 'aesthetic' as uBlock? Or does it still show the ad's dimensions - just not the ad? ~~~ dwater In my experience I don't notice things being different when I'm using the Pi- Hole. It just seems like regular functional internet. When I'm not connected is when I'm surprised by how many ads there are and where and when they appear. ------ LVDOVICVS I run it at home and have use the dhcp server, too. All the numerous family PCs, Kindles, phone, etc, use it and it works great. For a family of four with two teen-age kids, it blocks about 20% of the DNS traffic we create. Love it. ------ forinti As much as I like the Pi, I think a better solution would be to use OpenWRT on a regular router. ~~~ muppetman Well, I disagree. OpenWRT is great at being a router, let it be that. pihole is great at being an adblocker, let it be that. I think you're better off to fire up a Docker instance! [https://hub.docker.com/r/pihole/pihole/](https://hub.docker.com/r/pihole/pihole/) But why do you think OpenWRT is better? Because it has a (somewhat clunky and not as feature rich) adblock solution built it? So does pfSense with pfBlocker-NG which is also another common adblock solution people use. But for a basic user to just augment their home network with ad-filtering, way better off to just have add a pihole, than to totally replace their router. ~~~ forinti Yes, OpenWRT does have an adblock solution. It might not be as shiny as the PiHole but it works. Also, you can buy a decent router for less than you would pay for Pi+Cables+Case+Power Source. I use a tp-link wr842nd. I even have a Telegram bot on it to interact with it. A Pi would be more powerful, sure, but the router serves my needs. ~~~ muppetman Right, I was more curious why you thought OpenWRT was a better solution. ------ veb A friend and I just launched an MVP a couple of weeks ago so people in New Zealand (and kiwis abroad) could have a VPN with PiHole hosted here in NZ: [https://expatvpn.co.nz](https://expatvpn.co.nz) \- however from the early users it seems everyone's just been using it for their phone mainly. I'm thinking I might rebrand it to be more for secure mobile browsing or something... ~~~ Down_n_Out I use it also on my iPhone with WireGuard VPN, it's super easy with the app from WireGuard and it's blazingly fast, so I can definitely recommend this. Would be interested to know how you'd approach this and provide some insights if needed. ------ m0zg If any contributors are reading this: please consider adding separate blocklists per IP range. The use case is very simple: adults in the house get to see things kids don't get to see (and get their Youtube and games shut off if homework is not done), yet ads and tracking are still blocked for everybody. ~~~ xythian This will almost certainly never get implemented because the community has a more or less accepted workaround. Run more than 1 pi-hole. It's a common-ish practice in the community to have a restrictive pi-hole running in your guest/kids network and a more permissive pi-hole running in the trusted/adults network. Pi-holes require so few resources and maintenance that it's not much burden to run more than one. It would be a pretty large feature to support separate blocklists per IP range. ~~~ m0zg That's what I do, but it's a maintenance burden to run several instances. I run three PiHole VMs: one for parents (banning ads only), one for little kids (banning ads and mature content), and one for teenagers (banning ads and temporarily banning "time drain" sites until homework is done). I'd like to further customize the one for teenagers based on whether or not they have missing homework in school, but not quite to the level of spinning up (and maintaining) yet another instance. ------ IanSanders My concern is that this kind of solutions, while neat, may push advertisers to start requiring content owners to host the advertisement content and/or directly communicate with advertiser api. In other words, Pi-Hole will only work while not terribly popular. ~~~ darkarmani > may push advertisers to start requiring content owners to host the > advertisement content Good luck with that. There is a reason they want you to load directly from their ad-network. It's the surest way they have to accurately track valid clicks. ------ tjpnz I tried this out over a weekend but decided to abandon it due to some of the sites I frequent being blocked. Whitelisting isn't a viable solution here as I would then need to teach my girlfriend how to do it and any family members who decide to visit. ~~~ KeepFlying PiHole has the option to have blackholed domains show a "This was blocked by PiHole, click here to whitelist this domain". It doesnt work perfectly (ex. Hulu just craps out for me with PiHole because of some domain under the hood being blocked), but it is something. And for guests you can disable PiHole for any time period with a click of the button on its web page. Or kick your guests/roomates/gf onto a different subnet. That said though, it is clearly not perfect and could use some work and TLC to take care of. But in case you (or the nest person reading this) wanted some ideas, I thought I'd offer. ------ buro9 I am starting to be concerned that the ability to use DNS to block tracking, malware, and advertisements is only going to prove temporary. There appears to be more effort generally to secure and encrypt the entire DNS system. This is really good and should be applauded and supported. But it will come with a downside... once we reach a future in which DNS records are encrypted end to end, and DNS records are only valid when signed by certain keys, and authenticated NXDOMAIN records... then things like Pi-Hole start to become more difficult as for security of DNS we'll have lost the convenience of changing the answers. ~~~ TheLilHipster There would be a market for a DNS provider to provide a PKEY setup for the user to blacklist ad domains or whatnot similar to what the pi-hole does. There is always a technical solution, that's the beauty of it :) ------ waltwalther I have been running a pi-hole server in my home for almost a year now, and I love it. We usually have around 30 devices (including IoT devices), and have never had any issues. Adding/removing sites, disabling (when necessary), updating...its all there and very easy to operate. The logs are just ok, and the blacklist/whitelist is handy. It was quick and easy to setup on an existing Ubuntu server install. ~~~ nvr219 All the issues I've had were related to the DHCP server that ships with pihole. Once I replaced that with a different DHCP server - smooth sailing. ~~~ waltwalther ahhhhhh...ok. I have never used pi-hole for DHCP. I already had some static routes and firewall rules setup when I added the pi-hole. So I left the builtin DHCP server disabled. ------ whalesalad Can any of the DNS wizards here explain the potential performance implications of using this? I have been meaning to install this and begin using it but the latency of a Cloudflare DNS request is so low (and reliable) that I don't know if I want to risk introducing this into my network stack. I have an R720 and a few old RPi's... so either major overkill hardware or major weaksauce hardware. ~~~ lucb1e DNS wizard checking in. This stuff was designed in the 80s and I ran BIND on the kind of potato that has a quarter of the RAM that a raspberry pi has, together with apache, mysql, php, vnc, utorrent, and some other stuff, and it still performed great. I don't know by heart which dns server pihole uses, but no, the latency added by a server on your LAN is negligible. Case in point, most (all?) routers do dns forwarding by default (is that not common in the USA? Since you mention cloudflare, which got to be slower than the default option unless you have some really cheapo isp). ~~~ gerdesj "and I ran BIND on the kind of potato that has a quarter of the RAM that a raspberry pi has" 256MB RAM? - bloody luxury! A very quick and a bit rubbish experiment: $ ping 9.9.9.9 5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 10ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 9.982/10.838/12.531/0.888 ms $ dig @9.9.9.9 www.google.com A ;; Query time: 13 msec DNS is pretty quick. Note how I mistakenly use ICMP and a UDP service response time to imply _something_. If I'd tried to claim that DNS adds about 5ms overhead, I would have been first to put the boot in. The basic result stands though - DNS is quick. The above results are from: my laptop -> wifi -> switch -> switch -> APU2c based pfSense box with quite a lot going on -> modem (FTTC in UK - PPPoE/A) -> ISP .... etc. ~~~ lucb1e > 256MB RAM? Oh, an eighth then, I didn't know the raspi had that much RAM. And this was on a ~2002 laptop in 2011 or so, I'm not old enough to have run it in the 80s on a real potato :( ~~~ abrugsch only the first revision (and the A/A+ until the 3A+ came out) had 256Mb. It was soon upgraded to 512 as one of the first design changes (before moving to the "plus" form factor with 40 pin GPIO header) the early A's even had 128Mb but they are a rare thing as the original A was not promoted much before the first upgrade cycle. ------ undersuit I have a Pi-hole running on a Raspberry Pi Zero. The Pi is connected to my home router using the USB Ethernet gadget features. The home router handles local DNS requests from those forwarded by Pi-hole, but the rest of my DNS just flows through the Pi. It's pretty nice. Never had an issue with the router's DNS, but OpenWRT also doesn't have the ease of Pi-hole. ------ mawaldne I love this project. I also donated to it. I've been using it now for about 6 months and it blocks about 15% of my traffic. ~~~ luckylittle Me too, i've been using it in combination with CloudFlareD (DNS over HTTPS daemon) and it works like a charm. Except when my ISP changes my public IP and CloudFlareD hangs so i have to restart the service. There is a bug for it, but the Pi-Hole itself works really well. ------ zelon88 I setup a Pi hole about 6 months ago and I love it. It has never caused me grief and it has never gone down. One of my favorite parts is being able to show people who come over to visit all the queries their cell phones make to ad networks while we're just carrying on a typical conversation. ------ dandare Is there an option to buy a raspberry pi with this pre-installed? Asking for a non-technical friend. ~~~ sabas_ge A user linked in this thread the shop [https://pi-hole.net/shop/](https://pi- hole.net/shop/) ------ kgwxd I bought a Raspberry Pi specifically for this, then I realized the obvious, it's useless outside of the house :) It was good for the old Wi-Fi-only iPad the little one was using, but pointless for my needs. I like having the Pi to play with though. ~~~ xythian Setup a VPN tunnel for your DNS traffic and benefit from your Pi-hole wherever you go. I use Tasker on Android to automatically detect when I'm not on home wifi and then trigger OpenVPN to connect to my home VPN for Pihole and local network access. ~~~ kgwxd On my phone I use Firefox and uBlock Origin and I don't install ad funded apps, or any closed source apps I'm not forced to have, so I haven't really felt the need to go that route. The only ad supported app my kids use on their devices is YouTube but, last I checked, Pi-Hole isn't able to block those ads. ------ gyrgtyn Does anyone know any alternative projects (that are still dns based)? I don't need all the web interface parts. I think I just want a good, recent dnsmasq config. If it does new crypto dns stuff, that'd be cool too. I'm not up to date. ~~~ BFLpL0QNek I use Unbound[1] for DNS caching and local DNS. I have Unbound configured to forward queries to a local Stubby[2] instance that does DNS over TLS to CloudFlare. Stubby does keep-alives and not restricted to a single thread and opening a new connection per query like Unbound which is why I used it as a forwarder as a few more features than Unbound. In my Unbound config I have an include to a blocklist generated from [https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts), essentially I pipe the data from that repo through awk [3] I have an Android TV box so also have a firewall rule to redirect all queries to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 port 53 to my local DNS server. No GUI's, solid and stable. Only thing missing is I need to write a cron job to fetch the latest block list, validate, convert to Unbound format and reload the daemon. It's only a 10 minutes job just something I haven't got round to yet. OpenBSD is really good for running this stuff. [1] [https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/about/](https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/about/) [2] [https://dnsprivacy.org/wiki/display/DP/DNS+Privacy+Daemon+-+...](https://dnsprivacy.org/wiki/display/DP/DNS+Privacy+Daemon+-+Stubby) [3] [https://deadc0de.re/articles/unbound-blocking- ads.html](https://deadc0de.re/articles/unbound-blocking-ads.html) ------ dbg31415 [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/h...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts) works well too. ------ hartator Does it make sense to make it run on a small virtual server box? ~~~ OJFord If you're already running one, absolutely. RPis are popular and the namesake because they're relatively cheap, low power consumption, but powerful enough - so a good choice for people that don't already have some always-on hardware to run it. ------ moltar Great project, but unfortunately doesn’t block YouTube ads. ------ systemtest I use Windscribe VPN. In the online settings menu you can alter the DNS to block Malware & Phishing, Ads & Trackers and even Social Networks. ------ fastbmk Are there any technologies that can reinforce ads on a site? I know a site owner can track visitors with ad-blockers and show them warnings, but that is not it. ------ tehlike How many of you would pay for a paid adblocker? Where the funds go to content owners? ~~~ laputan_machine Like Brave? [https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/) ~~~ tehlike Ish. Not exactly. ------ vlg How is it any better or more efficient than host blocking à la [1], if at all? I'm a brainlet, use baby language if you're going to explain. [1]: [http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm](http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm) ~~~ muppetman It's network wide. Anyone joining your network and being given the PiHole as its DNS server means it gets the ad blocking benefits. It also updates the hosts files itself on a regular basis, you don't have to remember to do it as a manual task. It gives you a nice webgui to show you what devices are accessing what hosts, how often they try to access them (at least, how often they request their DNS name) and has different modes of blocking (vs a hosts file has to return 127.0.0.1) ------ Havoc Also comes in docker form for those so inclined. Useful for home servers ------ vasili111 What is the advantages of using pi-hole vs uBlock origin? ~~~ LocalPCGuy pi-hole covers all of the machines on your network, not just the browser. That said, I didn't uninstall uBlock Origin. They can be complimentary. ------ otter-in-a-suit pi-hole is amazing. It blocks ~20% of my network traffic, based on ~1M domains. I'm still amazed that they recommend piping curl to bash though... ------ a_imho Also consider obfuscation like AdNauseam. ------ RyanShook What makes this better than Adguard DNS? ------ fastbmk What if it is a scam to get the free content of the site without watching its ads? ------ nfRfqX5n does it work on a gigabit network yet? ~~~ tombrossman Yes, easily. What problem did you have using it on a gigabit network? I'm using it for two years now on my gigabit FTTH connection, running in a LXC container on my router. No problems to report. ------ fastbmk Here is a Unicorn idea for a successful startup! Develop a technology that protects ad-supported web sites from ad-blocking scammers ;) ~~~ tomcatfish There are a lot of people, myself included, who just want to be able to use websites. I am trying to avoid two major things when I block advertisements online: 1\. Dangerous ads - Cryptominers, viruses/whatever, and the like. 2\. Wasteful resource usage - I also block most scripts and unneeded fonts because the value to me of downloading all these add-ons is very low compared to the cost to me through network congestion and possible vulnerabilities. I pay to support content creators I get value from, and if more creators followed a reasonable, proportional, fee I would support more.
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The 50% divorce rate stat is a myth, so why won’t it die? - prostoalex http://qz.com/306166/the-divorce-stat-that-just-keeps-cheating-50/ ====== carsongross By not discussing the plummeting marriage rate [1] and changes in the data sets [2] this article is deeply flawed. There is reasonable evidence that divorce rate has remained about the same for the last 20 years _despite_ the plummeting marriage rate [3]. People correctly sense that marriage is a deeply wounded institution in the west, particularly for the lower (and, increasingly, middle) classes. [1] - [http://www.prb.org/images10/usyoungadultmarriage.gif](http://www.prb.org/images10/usyoungadultmarriage.gif) [2] - [http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/ny-times-happy- talk-...](http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/ny-times-happy-talk-about- divorce/) [3] - [http://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and- sci...](http://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and- sciences/NCFMR/documents/FP/FP-12-05.pdf) ------ mhd Is it because we only use 10% of our brains? ------ Shivetya Well maintaining that believe relieves those from toughing it out to fix their marriages, supports the divorce lawyer market and their marketing, and politicians who like to capitalize on strife. Seriously, I know the holidays are tough but my drive to and from work the local stations are all covered with divorce lawyer ads. ~~~ coldtea > _Well maintaining that believe relieves those from toughing it out to fix > their marriages, supports the divorce lawyer market and their marketing, and > politicians who like to capitalize on strife._ That's pop psychology. Plus assumes the belief is some myth... The divorce rate IS close to that number. Whether it's 50% or 45% doesn't matter much, as another poster said, it's not like its 5% or 15%. From Wikipedia: In 2002 (latest survey data as of 2012), 29% of first marriages among women aged 15–44 were disrupted (ended in separation, divorce or annulment) within 10 years. Using 1995 data, National Survey of Family Growth forecast in 2002 a 43% chance that first marriages among women aged 15–44 would be disrupted within 15 years. More recently, having spoken with academics and National Survey of Family Growth representatives, PolitiFact.com estimated in 2012 that the lifelong probability of a marriage ending in divorce is 40%–50%. ~~~ bryanlarsen Actually, I think you can easily get that number down to 5 or 15%. Well below 25%, anyways. The stat that people really care about is, if _I_ get married to my partner, what's the divorce rate of people similar to me. If you're reading HN and are thinking about marriage, it's quite likely that most or even all of the following apply to you. All of which have shown indications that they lower the divorce rate. The first three alone drop the divorce rate below 25%. \- getting married later then 1980 \- first marriage for both \- both older than 30 \- both have college degrees \- both make wages > $60k, < $1M \- similar ages \- man makes more $ than woman \- getting married later than 1990 \- neither goes through an extended period of involuntary unemployment \- neither goes to jail ~~~ dragonwriter "Later than 1980" distorts because _lots_ of marriages newer than that haven't ended through either divorce or death yet. If you were looking at, say, a 20 year success rate and the window in question was 1981-1994, it might be comparable to earlier periods where you were looking again at the 20 year success rate. ------ pmorici Am I reading this wrong or does this article start out by implying that the number is over estimated and then goes on to give two examples of general long term trends, increasing population, and decreasing marriage rate that would lead to underestimating the number by the commonly used method? ~~~ coldtea Plus it never gives an actual number, and never mentions tons of estimation efforts and stats that place it close to 35-50% (as if all of those were merely based on repeating the myth). ------ athenot Dataviz angle here... To me, it's like determining the age of a population. Saying that the population is 40 years old on average doesn't have much value. Instead, we need a richer representation, like an age pyramid [1]. Plot on a histogram the number of divorcees for each year they got married. Of course there is going to be few divorces for those married this year, and a lot more for those married 50 years ago. Then you can compare the shapes of the histogram over time or between regions. And that can yield insight on the matter. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_pyramid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_pyramid) ------ pherocity_ Sorry, but this is bollocks. We don't know what the number is because we don't have the data or an agreed upon methodology to calculate the stat. But I have seen stats that do indeed put the rate in the 40% range; whether you agree with the methodology or not, does not mean that the number is a myth. And any pedant saying that 46% isn't 50% is correct, but clearly missing the forrest for the trees. ~~~ Flimm 40% of what? ~~~ pherocity_ Seriously? ------ dragonwriter The entire article here is equivocation -- a rate is a ratio between one variable and another, and the frequently cited 50% rate is a ratio of (marriages ending in divorces):(all marriages), and the lower rate that the article presents and charts is the ratio of (divorces in a year):population. ------ epx Well, the actual divorce rate is certainly not that different in magnitude. It is not 5-10%. ~~~ intopieces I think the actual number is not the point of the article, exactly. The author is trying to point out that the method is flawed, and statistics is much more complicated than anyone one number from one source. ------ cousin_it So what's the actual number? The article doesn't say. It's kinda rambling. ~~~ Ntrails Nobody knows, because no one even agrees how to calculate it. Divorces/Marriages in a given year is worthless. Divorces (of people married in 1970) / Marriages (of people married in 1970) gives you a number for that "cohort" but isn't exactly true - there are many years left for them to divorce, and that is generations ago. Personally I'd say it would be useful to look at divorce rates and marriage rates in terms of overall population and growth and argue whether (Divorces / total people married) was increasing compared to (Marriages / total people unmarried) (I'm sure a statistician can tell me I'm wrong) ~~~ nodata > Nobody knows, because no one even agrees how to calculate it. What's wrong with "percentage of marriages that end in divorce"? ~~~ privong That can be skewed by people who marry and divorce multiple times, making "percentage of marriages that end in divorce" somewhat disconnected from the probability of any one marriage surviving. ~~~ nodata But if people do marry and divorce multiple times, wouldn't we want the divorce rate to change with it? ~~~ privong It depends on what one wants the "divorce rate" to mean. ------ intopieces I think the title should be "The 50% stat is meaningless." This would head off at the pass the arguments in this comment section, which seem to focus on what the number actually is instead of the point of the article. ------ tempodox According to every TV show in the country, the divorce rate must be at least 100%. If anyone still wants to get married, they have to get un-divorced first and nobody seems to think it's worth the trouble. ------ guilbep What? what about those stats? [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm) Article not worth reading ------ aleh Now, if something as seemingly straightforward as divorce rate is controversial to calculate, how about causes/existence of global warming which is orders of magnitude more complex and is driven by much more powerful special interest groups. ~~~ cowsandmilk The US government stopped tracking divorce rates in 1996, so we have little data. We still have a shitload of weather stations and air monitoring stations that actually give us data. ~~~ aleh Yep, we have shitload of data and then use complex model of earth climate to extrapolate this data. Being complex the model is extremely sensitive to parameters (Butterfly effect) and gives a lot of freedom in choosing parameters, which in turn makes it easy to tune the model to get the expected result. In itself it would not be too bad, this is how we learn how things work, but add a media looking for sensation and political interests and this whole area of research becomes as scientific as astrology. ~~~ snowwrestler Your comment reflects a common misunderstanding, which is that the theory of global warming depends on the use of computerized general circulation models. It does not. The physical basis of the theory is easy to understand, and was discovered in the 19th century: the atmosphere is obviously a heat reservoir, so what is trapping the heat? The answer is that certain atmospheric gases absorb and re- emit infrared light. The obvious hypothesis is that if you increase the amount of those atmospheric gases, you'll trap more heat--just like building a taller dam will trap more water in a reservoir. This hypothesis was first proposed at the end of the 19th century. And today, that is indeed what a wide variety of measurements are showing: the gases are going up, and so is the temperature. The hard part is predicting what exactly will change in a given location. Will New York get warmer or colder? Will Seattle get drier or wetter? Will Tokyo see more of the same storms, or fewer stronger storms? These are the questions that computerized GCMs will help us answer. But we know that _something_ is going to change. You can't dump more energy into a complex system (the climate, in this case) and expect it to keep working exactly the same way. ------ the_mitsuhiko The 50% divorce rate is pretty spot on. 50% of all marriages end in a divorce. This has been calculated independently for many different countries over different years (and within a year) and from what I can tell those numbers do not vary much. That obviously does not say the likelihood of an individual marriage succeeding given that some people marry more than once. ~~~ intopieces Since you're going against the facts presented in the article, would you mind citing your sources? It will help readers evaluate your claims more effectively by allowing them to account for biases. ~~~ spydum The article never actually provided fact or studies showing it is NOT 50%, they just ridiculed the national marriage project. All they showed was that less people per population were getting divorced. This does not answer the question about the divorce rate or where more or less people were getting married. ~~~ intopieces Not quite. The article says there is insufficient data. The commenter says there is (by virtue of making the claim). If I am to be convinced the opposite of the article's claim, I need to see the data the article claims doesn't exist.
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Vancouver Airport blocking ads with information on travellers’ privacy rights - dredmorbius https://globalnews.ca/news/5203960/yvr-rejects-ads/ ====== floatingatoll As an airport traveler, I'm glad they blocked the ads for the phrasing submitted, but I'm upset that they refused to explain their reasoning and negotiate better phrasing. For example: "Know your digital rights at the border" is great. It's in the classic tone of raise-awareness campaigns, does not use fearmongering, and can be safely ignored by anyone who already understands them. "Your phone isn't safe at the border" is not great. It makes you feel afraid, mis-describes the issue (what about laptops?), and doesn't specify the vested interest (it's about rights). Both parties deserve censure for their choices. ~~~ rndgermandude "Your phone isn't safe at the border" is a statement of fact, really, not fear mongering. It is not safe from warrantless searches. ~~~ fhbdukfrh But you just answered the GP's concern, safe from what? Also, just my phone? What about my laptop? Safe from searches? Pickpockets? Malware? There's a big difference between raising awareness of issues(ex know your rights - check out xyz.com for more info) vs big brother is, watching; trust no one, followed by a border security queue ~~~ Sir_Substance >Also, just my phone? What about my laptop? Safe from searches? Pickpockets? Malware? If slogans had to be that comprehensive to be allowed, we would be blessedly free of advertising. "Your phone isn't safe at the border" is on pretty much the same level as "for everything else there's mastercard" on the accuracy<->drama scale. I think your standards are beyond unreasonable here. ------ apo > “In reviewing Open Media’s request to place advertising at the airport, we > determined that it did not serve all of our stakeholders as we felt it > pitted two groups against each other and it also has potential to add undue > stress to the travel experience,” wrote spokesperson Brock Penner. What should cause every single person passing through that airport stress is the idea that their fundamental assumptions about personal security are incorrect. ------ RickS Good idea, bad approach. "Your phone isn't safe at the border" might be a hard fact but it's nonetheless an intentionally divisive expression of that sentiment. It's ambiguous, fearmongering.... facts can be clickbait, and this is one such case. If the ads said "You can be legally compelled to X, even if Y. Learn more about your airport rights at www.url.com" then it would be much less objectionable IMO. I don't get why campaigns keep making this mistake. Take the freaking high road. Imagine the mind of your opposition, and accomodate the low-hanging complaints they're going to have. Craft a message that's maximally agreeable to the people who disagree, while maintaining accuracy. Weasels on both sides here, IMO. ~~~ sithadmin >If the ads said "You can be legally compelled to X, even if Y. Learn more about your airport rights at www.url.com" then it would be much less objectionable IMO. It's 'less objectionable' because it's bordering on bootlicking, and could even read as a tacit endorsement of the status quo. ~~~ RickS Is that really bootlicking? I struggle to understand how that's the case, and I'd prefer to hear a dispassionate reading of reality that lets me decide how to feel based on my own values, rather than one that's intentionally extreme to try and scare me into subscribing to a position. ~~~ deogeo The phone is not safe from prying - their description sounds very accurate to me. Or would you describe a broken lock as 'safe'? ~~~ mikekchar I wouldn't describe it as "unsafe". It's neither. Locks aren't dangerous. There is a whole level of subtext going on there and if you are in on it (which you seem to be), then it makes complete sense. If you are not, it leaves you scratching your head (as I was). I will argue that it is completely ineffective wording as the only people who will understand what it means are the people who don't need to read it. ------ Zak > _They said we didn’t fit into the criteria but weren’t able to tell us at > that point what were the criteria_ This kind of thing is problematic when someone has a monopoly, which governments and major airports do by default. It might be reasonable under some conditions to have criteria for rejecting ads that are too political, controversial, unfair to the airlines, etc... but those criteria should be published. ------ marcrosoft > “In reviewing Open Media’s request to place advertising at the airport, we > determined that it did not serve all of our stakeholders as we felt it > pitted two groups against each other and it also has potential to add undue > stress to the travel experience,” wrote spokesperson Brock Penner. I now have undue stress because of you Brock Penner and your stakeholders. Who are these two groups? Your customers and an oppressive regime? ------ saagarjha > YVR aims to be non-political …telling people about their rights is non-political. ~~~ admax88q That's a dishonest quote, you didn't include the context that was provided on why YVR considers it political. > Additionally, YVR aims to be non-political and Open Media’s borderprivacy.ca > website promotes an online petition with a political call-to-action directed > towards government officials. Not that I agree with YVRs decision not to allow the ad, but I find it hard to argue that a website including a petition and urging visitors to message the government about the issue to be "non-political." ~~~ rosser Your point is technically correct (the best kind of correct), but consider that in the US, the IRS's rules for 501(c)3 organizations, for example, allow those organizations to advocate for political policies without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status, but not for or against candidates. There is a legitimate argument to be made that policy advocacy is a different kind of "political" than what people generally take that term to mean. EDIT: That said, I agree with the many other comments here that the tone of the ad in question was confrontational, counter-productive, and fear- mongering. They could perfectly well have made their — again, technically correct — point with a more constructive or informative tone. ~~~ mynameisvlad I get that you used it as an example, but IRS's rules wouldn't apply or likely even be relevant to a Canadian airport's internal policy. ------ Sideloader Advertises and marketers mislead and exaggerate with near impunity and use legalistic language drafted by lawyers to cover their asses. It is standard practice for companies to knowingly deploy psychological trickery in order to manipulate consumers, including very young children. This is accepted because capitalism is the one cow that can not be slaughtered. Profit is always good. Caveat emptor. But a civil liberties group informing citizens of their rights in an attention catching way is deplored as intrusive and inappropriate and not “objective” enough. This attitude speaks volumes about a society that has lost its way and is slowly collapsing under the irreconcilable contradictions it refuses to honestly address. ------ logicallee I encourage people to read this article as it more or less gives each side their "best shot" by fully quoting the airport's position, in their own words. I'm sure the side blocking the ads would prefer that the headline redd "rejects" or "chooses not to run" (rather than blocks), but in the body of the article they have a chance to state their piece in full. I'll quote this part (in the article this is followed by a direct quoted rebuttal literally starting with the words "This is wrong"): >“In reviewing Open Media’s request to place advertising at the airport, we determined that it did not serve all of our stakeholders as we felt it pitted two groups against each other and it also has potential to add undue stress to the travel experience,” wrote spokesperson Brock Penner. >“Additionally, YVR aims to be non-political and Open Media’s borderprivacy.ca website promotes an online petition with a political call-to-action directed towards government officials.” (It should go without saying that I am not endorsing this statement.) ------ jammygit A recent student software engineering competition competition in Canada gave first prize to a team that used cell phone signals and embedded devices around an area to locate a person and track their movements. It was a sponsored project, the idea being to use it in airports. The sponsor was very happy. ------ Scoundreller Can’t we target mobile users that just arrived within a geo fence from a long- distance-away geofence? ------ deogeo Yet another example of the failure of the narrow view that free speech only concerns government. A view that is disturbingly popular (see [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)) despite an ever larger portion of public speech being conducted through corporate platforms. ~~~ rosser Requiring private parties to convey speech they disagree with is, itself, a violation of their freedom of speech. EDIT: Otherwise, please explain to me how _compelled_ speech is "less bad" than its restraint. ~~~ deogeo You skipped a step, jumping straight to a possible solution. But that may not be the only solution, and even if it were, it shouldn't prevent us from acknowledging the problem. And it gets blurry when the private parties are ISPs or phone companies. Edit: Alright, taking the hypothetical that the solution is compelled speech, I'll try to explain how it's less bad. First is that there's a distinction between original speech and _conveying_ the speech of others. E.g. it would be pretty awful if ISPs or phone companies started interfering with what they'll transfer through their networks. I frankly disagree with calling what a telecommunications provider does 'speech' \- they're paid to move bits, like a moving service is paid to move furniture. And second, if you don't look at it through such an abstract "free speech vs. compelled speech" lens, but through a pragmatic "who can speak and what can they say" one, you'll see that almost no-one has effective free speech. Online, almost all of the audience is on (a small handful of) private platforms, carried by private ISPs, hosted on private servers. Offline, people spend much of their time in privately-owned spaces, such as airports. If you cut all those away, how much speech does the great 1st Amendment buy you? You can yell on a street corner (not Wall street though - those streets are private!), or in the woods, and send a few paper letters through the government-ran post office. You'll reach maybe a handful of people. Meanwhile speech blessed by the platform owners will reach millions. Difference from complete censorship is negligible. That's why you shouldn't legislate in a vacuum divorced from reality, where only platonic ideals of free or compelled speech exist. You'll choose an ideal free speech law, and the effect will be that a handful of corporations will get to decide what can be said. ~~~ rosser Re: your edit: The First Amendment doesn't guarantee you an audience. It only guarantees you that _the State_ can't constrain your speech without a damned good reason. It is utterly orthogonal to conduct between private parties, and it's specious as hell to bring it up in that context. For example, even in the case where it effectively limits your ability to sue people for speech you don't like, the _actual_ constraint is on the ability of the State, in the form of the court system, to be leveraged against an individual's speech, not on your ability to sue. ~~~ deogeo I know very well the 1st Amendment applies only to the State - my whole series of posts is about the problems that arise due to that. Free speech as a concept is not limited to the 1st Amendment. ~~~ rosser Your right to make noise with your pie hole in no way obligates anyone else to listen to, or even hear you, let alone broadcast that noise to a larger audience than you would have had without their help. Full stop. There is absolutely a legitimate, and very, very important conversation to be had around whether, e.g., online censorship or moderation or "deplatforming", or whatever, might constitute something functionally akin to prior restraint, where the edge cases are in those questions, and what to do about all that. That said, having those discussions about private behavior using terms that are — and historically have more or less _always_ been — used in the specific context of the State only confuses things. My point being: if we're going to have that discussion, which we for reals should be doing, let's try to do it in a way that doesn't make it _harder_ to have, let alone have productively. The attempt to expand the specifically and narrowly constrained notion of "Free Speech" (note the capitalization) to domains other than a constraint upon the State is a specious conflation, and ultimately yields more heat than light. EDIT: I mean, really, how productively can that conversation be had if it's using terminology that enables randos who don't meaningfully understand this distinction to pile on, all, "But the Twitters violated my 1st Amendmentses!"? ------ gesman globalnews.ca blocks videos if you use ad blocker. ~~~ admax88q good. Autoplay videos on most news sites are useless. ~~~ stordoff At best, useless. At worst, detrimental to the experience. It's a good way to drive me away from your site. I can't think of anything I hate more (in design terms) than the current trend of auto-playing videos following you down the page. ------ frgtpsswrdlame “In reviewing Open Media’s request to place advertising at the airport, we determined that it did not serve all of our stakeholders as we felt it pitted two groups against each other and it also has potential to add undue stress to the travel experience,” wrote spokesperson Brock Penner. Just so much wrong in this quote, three questions for Brock: Which stakeholders aren't being served? What two groups are being pitted against each other? Is stress that results from knowing the extent of your rights 'undue'? ~~~ cortesoft I am guessing the two groups are border security and airline passengers. ------ emptybits I'll assume the two stakeholder groups referred to are travellers and CBSA. I believe they should let the advocacy and informative message run. The message is sensational, but no more so than any other ad with an agenda (i.e. all of them) and many travellers through YVR (Canadian or otherwise) would benefit from considering what they may be compelled to share, without warrant or regular safeguards, with CBSA. And if CBSA wants to run a sensational, informative, and fear-based campaign of their own, let them. (As if they already aren't.) ------ scarejunba When at airports, I want to see kinda harmless ads: beautiful homes, greenery, that sort of thing. I'm fine with this. Traveling is stressful enough as it is. If this were a frequent event it'd be fine, but it's a rare event, so I'd rather be chill. Like having a big ad saying "Your plane could crash" before the gate. No thanks. Not worth it.
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Is there any addon that can help me to recover abandoned carts? - John_Michael Looking for reduce cart abandoned addon that can help me recover the abandoned cart. ====== sharemywin which platform?
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What rss feeds do you subscribe to? - johnsocs ====== ScottWhigham It's a neat idea and all but I just have an issue with posts like this. It's a "leech" style post, isn't it? It's a "You give me something and I'll enjoy it" type of post. Why should I or anyone else spend 1-5 minutes writing what we like? You haven't given us anything in return. I might have been interested if you had posted some of yours and I saw some common interest. I might have been interested if there was some/any text other than the headline. As it is, your post is just not inspiring thus I'm not interested. Sorry - there are just more and more "You give me what I ask just because I asked" posts and it's my turn, I guess, to be "that guy". ~~~ johnsocs Scott - I'm sorry you feel this was a 'leech' post. The fact is I don't have any RSS feeds and was actively seeking great feeds to subscribe to that meet the interests of readers of HN. HN followers I assume have similar interests given the content of the site, so I guess I figured it was a great place to 'leech' some links. Regards, ------ vrikhter Entrepreneurship: <http://cdixon.org/> <http://derekandersen.me/> <http://davidcummings.org/> <http://viniciusvacanti.com/> <http://www.steveblank.com/> <http://37signals.com/svn> Startup/Tech Marketing: <http://www.responsys.com/blogs/nsm/> <http://startup-marketing.com/> <http://blog.kissmetrics.com/> <http://unbounce.com/blog/> Venture Capital: <http://bhorowitz.com/> <http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/> <http://www.feld.com/wp/> <http://www.avc.com/> <http://vcinjerusalem.typepad.com/vcinjerusalem/> <http://sixkidsandafulltimejob.blogspot.com/> <http://redeye.firstround.com/> <http://informationarbitrage.com/> ------ karlzt <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2543601> Edit: BTW to answer your question, I don't subscribe to any rss feeds. ~~~ johnsocs Thanks for the link, this is exactly what I was looking for.
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Why do coincidences happen? - karlzt http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/49009/why-do-coincidences-happen ====== mooism2 Wouldn't it be spooky if there were no coincidences? ------ lutusp The article bends over backward to avoid anything resembling a rational explanation, preferring the woo-woo "reasoning" favored by New Age thinkers. Here's an example of a rational explanation. Bob walks up and says, "I flipped a coin 20 times and guessed every singe flip correctly. Without psychic ability, that's impossible!" Alice, Bob's scientifically trained friend, says, "Actually, no, the probability that this can be explained by chance is 2^-20 or 1 / 1,048,576." Bob replies, "But doesn't that mean the same thing?" Alice replies, "Not at all. if a group of a million people flipped 20 coins, the probability that one or more of of them would correctly guess all 20 is 61%, better than even. That means if you pay attention to the world, coincidences appear all the time -- we tend to filter out the boring events and focus on the rare coincidences that fuel irrational belief in magic." In short, they're called coincidences for a reason.
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How I learned to code in my 30s - bradcrispin https://medium.com/udacity/how-i-learned-to-code-in-my-30s-61ad21180208 ====== soneca I started to learn to code last November at 37yo. About 30 hours a week for two months I finished the Front End Certificate from freeCodeCamp (highly recommend the site for starters). Then I decided it was better to build my own projects with the tech I wanted to learn (mostly React) using official documentation and tutorials. This is what I accomplished in around 3 months: www.rodrigo-pontes.glitch.me Then I started to apply to jobs. After around 4 rejections, last week I started as Front End Junior Developer (using Ember actually) at a funded fintech startup with a great learning environment for the tech team. Very proud of my accomplishment so far, but I know the rough part is only starting. ~~~ bricestacey It looks like you've learned a lot, but a lot of people are going to criticize you based off your design skills. Frankly, it's ugly so you're automatically not going to be doing any product work. If you could clean up your demos to look more acceptable to the modern day reviewer, I think you would have better presented yourself. ~~~ Dolores12 This is constructive and honest opinion. Why downvote? ~~~ NotSammyHagar Because it's unnecessarily tactless and bordering on hurtful. Learning how to give honest feedback without being so cutting is a skill the commentor should learn. ~~~ Dolores12 How do you define degree of tactlessness? It was so nice of him to call that website 'ugly'. It is totally unacceptable to downvote someone for telling the truth(no matter how ugly it is). ------ oblio Somewhat related, perhaps the most spectacular story of a late coder I've ever heard is that of [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pruteanu](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pruteanu) (somewhat controversial Romanian literary critic and politician). Basically, despite having a major in Romanian literature and spending a lifetime as a literary critic, with almost 0 contact with computers, he decided in his late 40s and early 50s to understand the things behind the internet. So he picked up on his own: PC usage, internet browsing, PHP and MySQL coding, enough to make his own website and a few apps. That, starting from a point where he could barely use a mouse. When asked during a TV show how he did it, he replied: Like I did things for my literary criticism: I read an 1 meter [high stack] of books about the subject. Every time I need motivation I think about that quote :) ~~~ flubert >I read an 1 meter [high stack] of books about the subject. Sounds like a good hook for website. Instead of learn X in 21 days: [http://www.1meterofbooks/programming](http://www.1meterofbooks/programming) ~~~ samstave That unit of measurement should be dubbed the Pruteanu As in: " __ _How many Pruteanus until I 'll be proficient in ML if I have zero understanding of the subject"_ __ ~~~ quakeguy So shall it be! 1 Pruteanus (1 Prt) is measured as the amount of learning from a 1m high stack of any books given. obv /s ~~~ sethrin You could use some standard figures for page and book size (in Kb) and measure Pruteanus in megabytes of text. And you joke, but there's nothing in particular that is required of a unit of measure other than a lot of people thinking it's a good idea. ~~~ samstave Should also consider an information density: __ _This book may look small, but has about .125 Prt in its pages!_ __ ~~~ quakeguy Golden! ------ brandonmenc When computers were invented, a lot of the people involved were already adults - plenty in their 40s and above. Before home computers, you didn't get to use a computer until your 20s. Therefore, the first few waves of programmers included a lot of "already olds." This is always overlooked as evidence that older people can learn to program. ~~~ ianai And the computer science field branched out of mathematics. The age thing, I think, really is just shortsightedness. ~~~ AstralStorm Actually cheapness. Young employees don't know their value or how to negotiate. ------ chrisdotcode I'm sorry, but I can't help but be incredibly cynical and jaded about this, and from reading the comments, nobody seems to have the same sentiment. If this was titled "How I learned to play the piano in my 30s", I don't think anybody would bat an eye: learning an instrument is not like joining some secret cult, and anybody can develop basic music literacy over a year or two. I also do not doubt this man's proficiency, but 30 is not old outside of tech circles. This youth fetishization in tandem with the "everybody's dog should learn to code" meme I think is very short-sighted. Tech is wildly lucrative, is in current demand, and is _not_ physical labor. That reduces the barrier to entry to anybody who has a laptop and an Internet connection. Honestly how many people would be so eager to learn to code if you dropped down the average tech salary to 45,000 (matching other professions)? I think far less: people seem to learn to want to code to ride the high-pay wave, not for the actual love of code. Again, let's compare to music. Anybody can go to a guitar store and buy a 200$ keyboard. But if I took a 14-week class and afterwards had the aught to call myself a "Music Ninja Rockstar" or some other such nonsense, and start applying to orchestras and bands, I would be called crazy. Software has eaten the world, and it's here to stay. Increasing the general software literacy is no more different than saying we should teach everybody how to read (and a good thing). However, throwing each person in a bootcamp telling them "coding is wonderful! _you_ can master it in 5 seconds and make 200k a year!" is no different than holding a similar bootcamp for any other vocation and then wondering why the average plumber can't actually fix your house, but can only use a plunger. I sincerely hope this trend stops. This mindset is broken, and the paradigm is highly unsustainable. Where will we be in 20 years? ~~~ bradcrispin > However, throwing each person in a bootcamp telling them "coding is > wonderful! you can master it in 5 seconds I am not sure if you read the article? The point is that age isn't a barrier but that becoming a software engineer is a lot harder than just going to a bootcamp and expecting a job to appear. This is about spending a year trying to find a job. I have zero problem being compared to a plumber with a plunger! If something breaks in the middle of the night, I get paged, grab my mop and my tools, and fix it. Why does it matter if the average plumber "can't fix your house"? The pay is good because of supply and demand but I really do not know programmers who decided to get into it for money. ~~~ lordCarbonFiber I'd go so far as to say most programmers working today are in it for the money. Despite the constant pressure to maintain the illusion otherwise, no one is passionate about making shitty CRUD apps enabling today's questionable business fad, and that takes up a large chunk of available work. ------ oweiler I've started learning to code when I was 26 and people told me I was too old and should stay with my shitty job. Fast forward ten years and I'm a senior software engineer which gives trainings on Spring Boot and Microservices and helps companies implementing Continuous Delivery and Microservice architectures. You may think I'm gifted but I'm actually not. I'm a very slow learner and bad at Math. I mostly program from 9 - 5 and only work on side projects when I'm feeling to (which sometimes means not doing any commits for months). But I like what I'm doing and work hard to improve. ~~~ richardknop 26 is still young! I would understand if people would tell this somebody who is 56 (9 years from retirement), there might not be enough upside to changing career at such late point. But even then I'd say it might be worth it. But 26 is still a blank canvas you can learn anything easily. I think there might be a bias as many hackers started learning programming when they were 15 years or younger so they assume it has to be like that for everybody. ~~~ NotSammyHagar Yeah, that's bull shit, 26 is not too old. I'm 50+, just quit my last job where I was a principal software engineer, did 4 interviews, got 4 offers, took the one that made me director of a project (I have previous management experience too). If you keep coding and don't become just a manager, the world is open to you in software. I have many years of experience and built up expertise, but I was in grad school until I was almost 30! ------ projectramo This is generally a decent article about the balancing non-technical skills, and exerting effort in learning. I found it noteworthy that the "hook" in the title is that the person started in (gasp) their 30s. Why should that be noteworthy? Why wouldn't someone start coding in their 30s, 40s or 50s? Now it is true that starting a new profession late in life may not always make sense because, presumably, you have to little time left you might as well "ride it out" contributing what you know. So, yes, it is unusual for a doctor to start learning mathematics in their 40s (though not unheard of: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endre_Szemer%C3%A9di](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endre_Szemer%C3%A9di)), but it isn't less strange to make such a change in computer science than any other field. ~~~ buckbova > Why should that be noteworthy? Because there's perceived ageism in this industry, so saying you're just getting started in your 30's is interesting. ~~~ projectramo Isn't the same ageism -- true or perceived -- in all industries? Would you be feel comfortable starting med-school in your 30s? A PhD? Training to be a plumber or an architect? If anything, because programming takes a shorter time to become productive (say 2 years), I would think it would attract older job switchers. (edit: Before people give me counter-examples, note:I know these things do happen) ~~~ csa > Isn't the same ageism -- true or perceived -- in all industries? Hmmmm... in a handful of industries I might say yes, but in many others I would say no. I see an abundance of discrimination against younger in many industries. Either they are looked at as lacking knowledge, experience, or both. Often times this perception is justified, but often it is not. Of course, there is no legal recourse since age discrimination in the US is mostly (always?) for people 40 and older. That said, the ageism in technology in the Bay Area and a few other areas is peculiar and does not seem to be particularly widespread outside of these regions (at least in the US). This ageism seems to follow a few patterns: 1\. People in the capital class working young people hard for low pay... because they can. Most older folks won't put up with it for justifiable reasons. These are often terrible places to work and are often terrible businesses as well. 2\. Really smart and creative young people who want to work with similarly- minded people without having to manage a potential or real generation gap. This is probably closer to being justifiable when at a very small scale, but it's still potentially illegal, especially as scale increases. This is the sort of headline discrimination that is seen in the Bay Area -- a 20-something superstar typically doesn't have the "soft skills" necessary to manage someone a decade or two older. Few people at that age do, but this is especially true for folks who spent their younger years developing their non-managerial specialist knowledge. 3\. "Culture fit". Some (many?) younger folks in the Bay Area seem to want to extend their college partying years. This means that older and potentially more conservative or parent-like figures are not particularly welcome. I think that this is not uncommon at any favored destination of recent high-achieving college graduates (as well as wannabe high achievers). If someone in their 30s or 40s wants a job in tech, one easy way is just to get away from the areas that are flooded with high-achieving recent college grads. The areas that are flooded with these types have very real ageism problems. The areas that have few of these folks (most areas) largely don't have ageism problems -- if anything, younger applicants are more likely to be perceived negatively. Admittedly, the latter places are often less cool (i.e., not Bay Area, not NYC, not Austin, etc.), but these places have jobs. ~~~ truthseeker1024 I am a mature worker looking in the Washington dc area. There seems to be a lot of competition. Do you think I would have better luck in Atlanta? ~~~ csa I honestly don't know what the job market is in Atlanta. That said, the US government and contractors thereof desperately need programmers and programmers who can do other stuff (e.g., manage a contract, project management, etc.). I would try to meet some people who do this type of work and have a coffee with them. Many of these folks live in the D.C. area. It's not sexy at all, and you won't get rich via a startup, but there are very solid middle class jobs in that category. ~~~ truthseeker1024 thank you for the reply and advise ~~~ ckib16 Lots of contractors are hiring in DC. Check out places like Excella consulting. Good luck. ------ bradcrispin I once said that "I realize nothing I do in engineering will ever end up on the front page of Hacker News." Feels like a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Thank you ~~~ ronilan Been there at the top once upon a time. _" We create our own demons."_ ~~~ bradcrispin I couldn't agree more. I had a few paragraphs on impostor syndrome that I edited down to "doubt" but I hope it was implied, you must ignore impostor syndrome. There are always going to be people doing Mount Olympus code and that is great! These are the people we can learn from. I get to build things people use and I love it. ------ cryptica I've been programming for 13 years. I started when I was 14 years old and studied software engineering at university. These days, when I take on well- paid contract work, sometimes I find myself working alongside people who only started learning to code at around 25 and never went to university. It's upsetting for me to think of all the fun I missed out on in my early life because I was learning programming and pushing myself through university and it turns out that it doesn't even get me a higher pay check in the end. These days, nobody cares that I'm proficient in all of ActionScript 2 , ActionScript 3, C/C++, C#, Java, Python, AVR studio (microcontroller programming), MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB, RethinkDB, PHP, Zend, Kohana, CakePHP, HTML, CSS, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, JavaScript, Node.js, Backbone, CanJS, Angular 1, Angular 2, Polymer, React, Artificial Neural Networks, decision trees, evolutionary computation, times/space complexity, ADTs, 3D shaders programming with OpenGL, 3D transformations with matrices, image processing... I can't even list them all. I could wipe out 95% of these skills from my memory and get paid the same. It only gives me extra flexibility... Which it turns out I don't need because I only really need two of these languages (C/C++ and JavaScript) and a couple of databases. ~~~ tvelichkov So you did learn programming, because you wanted a great paycheck 13 years later? Lol, that's just stupid. I advised everyone from my circle to stay away from programming unless they fell in love with it. It's pointless to be a programmer if you don't have it in your heart. However, if you did enjoy, then there is nothing to be upset about, I mean you are doing what you love right? If its all about your paycheck you could try finding another employer, but not everything in this life should go around money, there are more important things, find people who could appreciate you and your values, be happy what you do and maybe the money will come later. ~~~ UncleMeat Really? If I didn't have to work I wouldn't write another line of code in my life. But its a great career that hits all of the notes I wanted for a job. What's wrong with that? ~~~ tvelichkov > I wouldn't write another line of code in my life. I personally see this as a problem, having to do something I don't like.. for years... probably for life? ------ analog31 When I was a kid, my mom was teaching high school, and thought that she might get laid off due to declining school enrollment in the rust belt. She took a year of programming courses at a community college. The next year, they asked her to teach the course, which she did. Most of her students were 30+, many were working in the auto industry, including assembly line workers. At the time, there were a lot of bright people working the lines because it had always been possible to skip college and land a decent middle class job at the car plants. But that was coming to an end. Her students were taking one year of CS and getting hired into reasonably decent programming jobs. In fact, I was also interested in programming, and learned it in school. When I went to college, my mom discouraged me from majoring in CS because she literally thought programming was too easy to justify 4 years of classroom training, and she thought that the job market for programmers would quickly saturate. Let's just say we guessed wrong. ;-) But at the time, college level CS was still maturing as a discipline. Many of the 4 year colleges didn't have full blown CS major programs. I'm betting it's harder now, but I honestly don't know if programming _per se_ has fundamentally gotten any harder. Edit: Noting some of the comments, I certainly don't want to disparage the CS degree. After all, I majored in math and physics -- hardly a turn towards a practical training. I think these are fields where you have to be interested enough in the subject matter, to study it as an end unto itself. Being able to do actual practical work in a so called real world setting is always its own beast, no matter what you study. ~~~ owebmaster > Let's just say we guessed wrong. ;-) Not that wrong, imho. > my mom discouraged me from majoring in CS because she literally thought > programming was too easy to justify 4 years of classroom training, and she > thought that the job market for programmers would quickly saturate. This part is real wisdom. The best developers I know (and I myself, which I consider an above average programmer) learned how to program by themselves (before, during or after high school time). And it is not uncommon to find people with CS degree unemployed or with difficult to reallocate with the current state of tech, at least here in Brazil. ~~~ koolba That's the distinction of coding vs CS. Building CRUD apps using existing frameworks is coding. Building said frameworks and the rest of the software that powers those CRUD apps takes more. I don't mean to rag on simple projects or coding either. It's just as noble as any other profession. But to say that a random Rails or Node developer could write something like Postgres is laughable. It's not the degree that makes that possible either. There's plenty of idiots who've graduated. It's the difference between studying how to do something and studying abstract concepts. People who have done CS degrees are more likely to have been exposed to the latter. ~~~ bitcrusher I don't mean to belittle you either, but this is hogwash. Of course a Rails or Node developer wouldn't be able to write Postgres without ramp-up time... Maybe what you're saying is that the ramp-up time would be LONGER for someone starting from Rails or Node only knowledge to being an infrastructure developer? Any highly sophisticated application ( Postgres, LLVM, etc ) requires some advanced levels of domain knowledge but they aren't impenetrable fortresses of skill that no mere mortals can access. I think, somewhere along the way, a lot of developers started believing this fantasy that they were the keepers of secret knowledge that only a few select individuals knew... GOOG and MSFT perpetuated that with esoteric interviewing processes and cult-of-personality style branding. The truth is... the fundamentals of CS aren't terribly difficult nor are they even terribly exciting. You can absolutely learn them on your own or even as you go. ~~~ anarazel > Any highly sophisticated application ( Postgres, LLVM, etc ) requires some > advanced levels of domain knowledge but they aren't impenetrable fortresses > of skill that no mere mortals can access. Indeed. I think too many problems in our industry are seen as unapproachable. There's a lot of people working on postgres, me included, who did not have any sort of deep background in databases before. You start working on smaller things (I started making int -> text conversion faster), review other people's patches, start to develop new features, ... Gradually that gives you a more and more knowledge in database architecture. And you read a few good papers here and there. Obviously that approach doesn't really lend itself to writing something like postgres from scratch - but realistically that's not something you're going to do on your own _anyway_. And if you do start a new project you don't set out to do something absolutely complete, but build it iteratively. With more domain knowledge, you're more likely to get the architecture halfway right initially, but in either case you're going to have to redesign and redesign and redesign. ------ jarsin What i always tell people if you find yourself naturally drawn to it then you will eventually find some level of success. If your in for just the money then you will not stick with it and it probably won't happen. Same is true for just about most things in life. This guy found he was naturally drawn to it. End of story. ~~~ ice109 people say this a lot but it's pretty hollow. if you're smart enough you can do it even if you don't like it. anecdotally I'm a fairly good dev (full stack, know several languages, several projects under my belt) and I hate it. the day I move from technical to management will be the greatest day of my life. ~~~ jarsin I honestly have never worked with anyone in software like that. I think you are a lot more rare than you know at least when it comes to software dev. But I do know other industries are filled with smart people that hate it and somehow stuck with it only for the money. For example attorneys... ~~~ Trundle I don't think you'd know if you'd worked with someone who is just in it for the money. If they're coding just for the money then it stands to reason that they'd also be willing to pretend to like coding just for the money as well. ------ teekert I also learned to code after 30. At some point Excel and Origin weren't dealing well with ever increasing data sizes in my field (biology). I did an intro course on Python (2) of 3 days (basic Python and some Numpy). Back on the job I immediatly switched to Python 3, learned about Jupyter and was lucky enough to have a job where I could take time to learn (although it doesn't take much time to get back up to Excel/Origin level data analysis skills with Pandas/Seaborn/Jupyter!). That combination is still gold for me although bioinformatics is forcing me into VSCode/Bash/Git territory more and more. I can recommend anyone wanting to do data analysis to start with the Jupyter/Python/Pandas/Seaborn combo, the notebook just makes it very easy to write small code snippets at a time, test them and move on. Writing markdown instructions and introductions/conclusions in the document itself help you to make highly readable reports that make it easy to reproduce what you did years ago. ~~~ Osiris30 Would you know, or can recommend, any good datasets (or practice exercises) using "Jupyter/Python/NumPy/Pandas/Seaborn" for someone with a similar Excel background (and basic understanding of Jupyter/Python/Pandas)? ~~~ teekert Seaborn has a standard data set (now that I searched it, it is part of scikit I think) [0], however, I think what made learning fast is that I used the same type of data as I did before and had a clear goal. Excel sheets are easily loaded into pandas: import pandas as pd file = pd.read_xlsx('some_excel_file.xlsx') file # Just typing this will display the file as a table in jupyter, after ctrl-enter to execute the code block To plot: import seaborn as sns %matplotlib inline # This makes the plot appear in the notebook instead of in a separate window sns.violinplot(file) Boom, that is it (assuming the Excel file is a number of columns with labels as the top row). [0] [http://scikit- learn.org/stable/auto_examples/datasets/plot_i...](http://scikit- learn.org/stable/auto_examples/datasets/plot_iris_dataset.html) ~~~ Osiris30 Thanks! I also just did a quick google and found the below resources if anyone else is interested [http://www.dataschool.io/best-python-pandas- resources/](http://www.dataschool.io/best-python-pandas-resources/) [https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-learn-data-analysis-with- Pyth...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-learn-data-analysis-with-Python-via- projects/answer/Karlijn-Willems-1) [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-learn- algorith...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-learn-algorithmic- trading-in-Python-and-test-out-models) ~~~ teekert Such resources are nice, certainly, they give a feel for what can be done. But in my experience you learn when you get your data loaded and start putting together code based on stackoverflow (or other) answers. Not by "dry-reading" someone else's work. There is no moment where you say: "I'll learn X now", there is a moment when X is the best solution to your problem en you start using it... and become an expert before you realize it. Imho. Maybe it's different for you of course. And, I may have been in a nice position where I had a job that started to required X at some point. I realize that. But then maybe you can find a problem of your own (maybe you want to plot the data from your fitness tracker?) I once spend a lot of time plotting the details of my mortgage (cumulative paid, rent, decreasing dept as function of monthly payments), such data is just the result of some input and you make a table out of it yourself (in Excel if you want, in Pandas if you feel comfortable enough). ------ colmvp > Immersion means 100% focus. If possible, no friends, no drinking, no TV, > just reading and writing code. If you take five minutes off to read the > news, be aware you are breaking the mental state of immersion. Stay focused, > be patient, your mind will adapt. Eliminate all distractions, of which you > may find doubt to be the loudest. Immersion is the difference between > success and failure. Certainly, I think Deep Work require full concentration. So when in the mode of learning, I find keeping focus instead of going to a website to read news, or checking e-mail/messages to be incredibly important in maximizing the incremental process of grasping concepts. That being said, whereas the author seems to prefer taking a few months to go deep into it, I prefer to immerse myself over a long period of time by learning and practicing a few hours per day (just like an instrument), letting my mind stew in the knowledge during diffuse thinking periods, and then come back to it the next day. ~~~ bradcrispin I agree that for rapid learning, focus and repetition are essential. I don't think you have to quit your job in order to change careers into coding, but for me it took a very full year of effort. ~~~ x2f10 Hi, Brad. I'm now embarking on a non-programming learning crusade. I agree with your comments on immersion, but I find it quite difficult to become immersed. I am often distracted or don't have the "energy" to do the serious work I need to to learn. Do you have any tips I can steal from you? Great article BTW! ------ AndyNemmity I'm 36 and learning how to be a real programmer. Was a Linux Admin, and an architect for my career. Did presales, and became an expert at a lot of different roles within the field. Never was truly a developer, and decided I wanted to accept a job as one. I've programmed in the past, how hard can it be? Wow, it's been enlightening. Really hard. I thought it would be straight forward since I've used scripted quite a bit in perl in my past, but being a developer is much more than writing a few scripts to automate a task. I'm a few months in now, and I am still slower than all my colleagues by quite a bit, and the main language I'm working in has changed already, moved from Python to Go. Even right now, I'm stuck on an issue around pointers and data structures that feels like it should be easy, and I'm just not getting it. All you can do is keep confidence up, and keep at it. Immersing in it, and knowing that irrational levels of effort will lead to results. I thought it would be easier though :) ~~~ bradcrispin Soon you will love pointers and structs and everything Go. Keep going (pun intended). Your colleagues are worried about their own work and your manager has made a long-term investment in you, not about the first few months. :) I couldn't agree more that it is tough going when you realize a challenge is more than you expected. That plus impostor syndrome is what caused me to quit on my first try. We are moving a lot of things from Python to Go at the moment and it has been great. ~~~ AndyNemmity Appreciate the positive feedback. I certainly feel the management are making a long term investment, but feel my actual team is... concerned about the lack of deliverables. Which I think is fair from their perspective, I think they expected a developer by trade to have assumed the role, and in actuality it's someone who has done a tremendous number of jobs around development. I'd be a bit concerned as well. The great thing is, I'm learning a ton of cool technologies, and already see the major progress on a lot of fronts. ~~~ mianos Actually knowing where you are at puts you way ahead of the curve. Many developers don't even know they are not that good. If you love it and seem to have excelled already in a similar area you just need time. Even just knowing that good development is not just writing a quick perl script or copying and pasting the tutorial code or stack overflow answer is a good sign and would probably set you apart from most I know. ------ makmanalp Every time I see stuff like this I think of Grandma Moses, an accomplished artist who started painting at 78: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses) ------ alexee My father is 59 and started to learn programming half a year ago. So far I was giving him algorithmic tasks to learn basic language constructs, he is now comfortable with basic Java and is able to solve most of easy problems from programming contests. And idea where to go from here? I don't think solving more difficult problems (like that involving algorithms or creative thinking) would make sense at this point. I tried to give him simple GUI project (tick- tac-toe in Swing), this kind of worked with lots of my help, but of course it was badly designed with model-view mixed, and he is unable to understand design pattern concepts at this point. ~~~ politician I guarantee you that if your father is 59, that at some point in his life he's found a way to be more efficient at whatever his workload was at the time than a raw beginner. Design patterns are exactly that: patterns of efficiency. The terribad thing about them is that they don't often explain why they are more efficient than the the naive path. I'd recommend that you pose a series of tasks to your dad, and work with him to build them out, rebuilding them several times if necessary, to start that deep understanding of the art. Adopt a posture that this work is critical, and that you are working together. You'll both learn why as you do it. ------ paul7986 At 31 I took my savings for my house, quit my robotic customer service job and started a startup. I worked on my 1st startup for three years and along the way taught myself front end development and design. Which I now do for a living. I say startup and if it fails like 80 to 90% due you gained an in-demand skill that you can use to make a nice living. ~~~ martijn_himself Would you have any advice especially on how to master design skills and how to deal with pressures around personal finance when starting out on your own? I'm about to quit my job in 'enterprise' software development because I am bored to death. ~~~ paul7986 Save up a lot of money, ask family & friends to invest and apply to incubators that provide seed capital. Also move back in with family if that's an option. This is what I did and it allowed a three year runway to try and make it happen. It didn't happen in terms of a financial success but it was a lot of fun! Way more then working for the man in any field! ------ partycoder "Learning to code" is somewhat vague. The "Sorites paradox" is something like: how many grains of sand form a heap? if you remove or add one, is it still a heap? So, exactly what exactly makes you a programmer? that varies a lot depending on who you ask. Someone said a programmer should be able to detect and report a bug to a hardware manufacturer. Some others say that "learning" (partially, because most programmers don't know every single aspect of a programming language) a general purpose or Turing-complete language makes you a programmer. I define an "X programmer" where X is backend, frontend, data, whatever... as someone who can not only implement a feature, but do it through understanding rather than through a heuristic of trial and error or reusing code. Also, a person that is able to troubleshoot what is going on if some of the underlying systems is not working as expected. ~~~ Bakary I would argue that the most relevant definition would have to address a programmer's role in society rather than their level of actual skill. In this sense anyone having learned enough material to have an actionable skill that regularly comes into play in their lives can credibly be said to have learned to code. ------ sonabinu I started in my 30s after an earlier stint in high school. It was a real struggle. I work in a SE engineering role now with a focus on data science. My stats and math skills have given me an advantage but I still feel like I'm a rookie in many ways. It is important for more of us who transition to SW careers to speak about our struggles and techniques to hang in there. It will render confidence to those who feel alone as they try to find their footing. ------ dzink You need more stories like this to show people who wouldn't normally consider CS as a viable, lucrative path to a second career. Areas with high unemployment and people in dwindling old industries may get a second wind in life if they tried his approach. A big change like this also requires multiple exposures to the currently much easier to reach CS education as a possible solution, so I hope more people produce accessible content like this. ~~~ dschulz I'm 36 and already feel "old" and unfit to continue pursuing a career as a software developer, which I consider(ed?) my dream job. I began programming at ~20 yo but had to work in another barely related field (still in IT) because where I live it's more profitable as a lone ranger. It's difficult to find peers in my area. I work as an independent consultant wearing many hats, doing all kind of weird network related jobs for small cable operators and small/medium businesses in a shitty country in south america. This includes devops tasks, planning data networks with structured cabling, fiber optics, setting up and maintaining servers, routers, switches and a bunch of appliances that I didn't even know they existed a few years ago (all that ugly shit in HFC networks). I hate my job and feel _very_ unhappy and depressed. I'm on meds, many visits to psychiatrist lately. All these years I kept learning all I can. I'm an avid *nix user, can program in a few languages and have read more about programming languages, libraries, frameworks, etc. that any other subject that I can think of. I dropped out of university only a few years from getting a degree but continued spending my free time learning about software development just because I like it. I enjoyed many detours with many technologies, loved learning Java, C++/Qt, Python, Go, Perl, etc. I spent too much time and money in books, online courses, software licenses, etc that I feel failed and guilty. ~~~ pacomerh This mentality makes no sense to me. I don't understand why young people feel old in this area so much. It would make sense if you where pursuing Tennis (the sport), but software? Software is a lot of solving riddles and recognizing patterns. Seriously, Silicon Valley is poisoning peoples minds. ~~~ sngz age discrimination in the industry is real, especially for those who don't go the management route. ------ ptr_void As student trying to make sense of job space and prospects, there's just too many statements that gets posted on the internet that seems to contradict each other. ------ hamersmith Going from not working in the industry to leading a team of developers in just a few years is extremely impressive. I have over a decade of experience as developer and have not made it yet to that kind of lead position. Is this because your technical skills were superior to your peers or because you possessed additional soft skills, if so, what advice would you give for moving into Lead Developer/Engineering Manager roles? ------ jordache Is a full stack person still realistic with today's web technologies? I mean to build up expert level skillset, you'd have to really dedicate your self into learning the particularities of not just languages but also their runtime environments. Unless you have no life, and only sleep, eat, code, or super intelligent, being able to absorb and stay current with everything..... Other than that, I just don't see the full stack mentality working ~~~ jamestimmins The value of being a full stack dev is not to be an expert in everything, as you're right that isn't really feasible. The value comes from being able to do a good job at each piece, so that you can take an entire project from concept to completion. Most full stack folks naturally develop areas of strength and focus within that, either frontend or backend, but still benefit from the fullstack context and mindset. That has been my experience anyways. ~~~ jordache as an org, what is the value of hiring full stack vs specialized individuals for each part of the stack? I guess one reason is if money is of concern. I can't think of any other reason for doing so. ~~~ jamestimmins Money is always of concern. But additionally a full stack can take lead on an entire project. There's also an increased organizational/communication overhead for every additional person you put on a project. It simplifies things a lot if there's a small number of people working on it, even if more devs are available. ------ cr0sh A possibly similar tale is the one being done by some former Kentucky coal miners: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/fossil- fuels/the-...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/fossil-fuels/the- kentucky-startup-that-is-teaching-coal-miners-to-code) ~~~ Barrin92 Here's a longer great Wired article about (I think) the same group of coders [https://www.wired.com/2015/11/can-you-teach-a-coal-miner- to-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/11/can-you-teach-a-coal-miner-to-code/) ~~~ phlakaton Another similar group I've been following with great interest, in part since I remember the founders from Strange Loop and Overtone hackery: [http://www.minedminds.org](http://www.minedminds.org) ------ cafard I learned to code at 18. I did not fall in love with programming: this owed at least in part to Fortran IV, punch cards, and a Burroughs mainframe that was often under maintenance. But I coded a craps game simulation, and passed. I relearned to code at 31 or so. There was data over here that I needed in a different format over there, and didn't care to retype. I taught myself some minicomputer assembler from the instruction set reference. At that same job, I learned to write macros in the OS's command-line interpreter. I found that I enjoyed programming. And I went back to school. That was a while ago, long enough that the second or third language that I learned on my own was Perl 4. I would never have called myself a ninja or a rockstar. Yet I have over the years written some very useful code. ------ kulu2002 I learnt C, C++, Shell scripting gnu makefile creation directly on project. When I did my degree I only knew C just for sake of passing. I was directly exposed to writing device driver for I2C and SPI the very first day and someone just dumped a 1GB of technical junk on my PC which include some APIs of RTOS I was supposed to work on! But I would say that that was really a steeeep learning curve... I am amazed and surprised today when I look back from where I started 13 years back :) ------ digi_owl I have found that the problem i have with learning programming is not the logic of it, but of memorizing and internalizing all the functionality provided by the standard lib etc. ------ logingone What I found recently of someone who switched from another career to programming is not that they struggled with programming so much but that they struggled with the environment. I had the misfortune of working with an ex- lawyer, two years of programming experience. Hell. He also lacked the ability to have any sort of interesting conversation about programming as he had no background to reference. ------ chirau So do bootcamps teach data structures and algorithms? ~~~ bdcravens Generally no. Most jobs building Rails or React apps don't require those skills either. ------ skocznymroczny I read this as "How I learned to code in 30s" and I thought it'd be a parody of "Learn X in Y" tutorials. ------ maggotbrain Reading that makes me glad to be a network engineer. Ethernet, BGP, and OSPF don't change all that much. I am all for learning the latest Python, NetMiko, NAPALM stuff for network automation. This article reads like masochism. ~~~ torbjorn mother earth is pregnant for the third time... ------ sAbakumoff 2017 : codecamps produce an army of amateurs that make interent of shit. ~~~ onion2k I've been making websites for over twenty years, and I can assure you that there have always been bad web developers. Some are self-taught and some learned at university. Just as there are good ones who have learned in those ways too. Codecamps are no different - there'll be bad developers and good developers who learned through attending them. There's nothing inherently or automatically worse about codecamp graduates. It's all about the individual. ~~~ sAbakumoff Ok, I have been working in IT for 15 years and have seen some shit too..and I would never hire a person who attended codecamp, to me it does not seem to be reliable way to grow a developer. It's more like a trick that only takes the money from people who want to live the software developer life in the Bay Area. ~~~ RedPandaPounce Wow that's extremely shortsighted given that there are definitely world class engineers at Google, MS, etc who never had formal training. ~~~ sAbakumoff definitely? Do you have any solid base behind this claim? ------ thinkMOAR The title implies as if you are ever 'finished' with learning to code, anybody thinking about starting, this is a lie, it's a never ending road :) ------ mattfrommars I'm facing problem of finding a mentor and space I want to succeed is being able to do anything with power of Python! ------ CognacBastard This is great advice for someone learning to break into the coding world. ------ lhuser123 Good inspiring story ------ minademian contains a lot of real advice. the sharing of experiences and insight into his process makes this piece really great. ------ kodepareek I started learning to code when I was 31. Though I did have an engineering degree, but I learnt basically nothing after getting into engg school. Spent most of the 4.5 years worrying whether I was smart enough for this to do this and setting myself up for very dismal results. Became an advertising copywriter after college and spent 7 years in the copy mines. It was truly a profoundly uninspiring industry (though I continued to doubt myself and never really got to where I wanted to and should have) Founded a startup with a friend hoping for a fresh start. Took forever to find a developer so in some strange moment of overconfidence (sanity?) I decided I would take a shot at it and started learning Python. Found myself hypnotized by the codeacademy course and knocked it off in 3 days or less. Some a few started programs then a developer friend came on board as an advisor and told me to pick up Django. In a few months (with him and another good friend doing all the heavy lifting) I got enough into the thing to be able to scrape data, make API calls and develop the admin interface. With everything I learnt I found a block of that constant self doubt melting away. I had never felt so capable and in control in my entire life. Startup wound up though and I had to take a job at a design agency. Though I picked up the basics of HTML and CSS there most of my work was managing clients (aarghh) Left in a few months as a writer at this startup working part time. But within a month of me joining the CTO quit and the company was in massive flux. I just stepped forward and said I would code. The other developers happily took the help and I got my first job as programmer. The next 1.2 years were just full days of writing scripts to automate our workflow and figuring out this danged JS, Node thingy (which I really love now btw) When this place wound up too and I studied React, now have a big 6 month project at this company helping them automate their workflow with an admin app. Am writing the fullstack code, all by myself. Which is so exciting and empowering. Programming is awesome. It's my one advice to anyone who asks me for advice these days. It changed my life completely. From being a constantly depressed and volatile guy I am now fairly confident and really rare to anger. Surprise bonus, I have become far more creatively productive after leaving the creative industry and have written a bunch of songs (that I don't hate) and also started learning to play the Piano, something I always wanted to do. Next up is Algos and Data Structures the next time I have enough saved for a 3 month immersion. I really do think they are super important. Plus picking up a new language. Suggestions welcome. ------ LordHumungous It's not that hard jeez
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Three cheers for the onion - chestnut-tree http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30549150 ====== aw3c2 I was hoping for a rebuttal of the sad [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30637010](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30637010) fear mongering. ~~~ pluma Tor is no longer an acronym. I was actually expecting praise for The Onion (the satirical news site) until I noticed the intentional lower case. ------ nsxwolf I hate onions.
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My first startup: a happy failure story - thomask http://laurentk.posterous.com/my-first-startup-a-happy-failure-story ====== IsaacL Isn't the obvious problem that it's a terrible idea? I can't comment on subway commuters, but I've never been especially interested in meeting people on my commute, beyond the occasional random smalltalk. "Each one of my co-founders was a kick ass guy/girl in their own expertise but every tech/web startup needs a tech guy. This guy is actually the core of any startup, anyone else is expendable (early stage)." This is why it's so great being a "tech guy"; you get an idea like this, build a crappy version in a weekend, if people like it, great; if not, you find out before burning through two years of your life, a bunch of personal relationships and a giant wad of VC cash.
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Clouds, a Documentary Shot With Kinect, Explores Beauty of Code - lnguyen http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/06/clouds-code-kinect/ ====== kevingadd Parts of the footage really had me convinced I was looking at an ordinary film recording of a human being, which is pretty damn impressive given that it's actually a textured 3D model - and they seem to be doing post-processing on it to make it look less than real. I can't wait to see what's possible with the inevitable 'second generation' of Kinect (that probably includes a better depth camera).
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Lithium-ion batteries start to take on the big stuff - lasonrisa http://www.economist.com/node/17352944 ====== amac Lithium is a finite, and more importantly - concentrated - resource unfortunately. We should aim to make use of more abundant metals such as zinc.
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Show HN: Clothes shopping app UI built in React Native - atf19 https://github.com/ATF19/react-native-shop-ui ====== IBCNU I used Redux when it first came out, but now use Mobx as it's just... easier and has less boilerplate. Also it's easy to extend into a reframe-like pure function state management system if you want to avoid passing around objects/inheritance. ~~~ robertAngst My new note to self: Dont read threads about the stack I'm dealing with. It will only make me question everything. ~~~ su8898 So true. I must start doing this as well. I recently started picking up momentum on my React-Redux skills. Constantly reading various opinion pieces (irrespective of whether they are supported/non-supported) are tempting me to take a look a look at (or evaluate) other libs/frameworks. ~~~ paulwithap If it helps, I’ve used Redux in a couple production apps and loved it. Boilerplate can be a bit tedious at times, but in exchange you get a lot of sanity and clarity in your code. ------ jeeeeefff I was surprised to see that this uses React without Redux for state management. I'm aware that Redux is a separate, optional, codebase, but from how people have been talking, it seemed like just about everyone was Redux or bust. How many production-scale projects don't use Redux? Is this more common than I'm thinking and hearing? ~~~ kbcool I wouldn't get too excited. This is just a shell app, a few screens, no remote data, only temporal state persistence and nothing really functions (eg no form validation, no payments etc). I assume it was used for some tutorial?! Not saying you can't get away with not using redux at all but this isn't an example of that. Try mobx or unstated for simple state management. Personally my projects tend to use it because I'm used to it. Once you get your head around it the boilerplate is not too much to deal with and it slides in so nicely with react. You just need to think in a functional way. Also features like redux-persist make it powerful. You wouldn't believe the number of apps released on the stores using RN that don't persist state and simply restart when the phone runs out of memory or gets rebooted. ~~~ robertAngst Heh, when I saw UI, I was thinking- So what? Javascript, RN, flux, elements, etc... there are soo many ways to make it pretty. That was the whole point. Pretty for android and ios. The redux tutorial is awful, you dont run the program until the very end. Needless to say, it didnt work and I ended up following a medium guide... Now I'm trying to get redux working with laravel who requires a CSRF token on each post request. Not a big deal, but getting this CSRF token to be submitted doesnt seem to be trivial since it needs to be requested from the php and submitted all at once. Not complaining because this is just logic and the job, but the difference between a working RN app and a working RN UI is 10 months. ~~~ chrisco255 Not sure what Redux would have to do with a CSRF token? That's HTTP logic. ------ buildbuildbuild I love exploring structure and approach in codebases written recently, it’s one of the best ways to learn a new language or mentally refresh on what new libraries and tools exist. Anyone know of good resources or proper search terms for “show me fully executed applications built on X language/stack within the past year” ~~~ Jamieee I've found realworld.io is pretty good for working examples of different stacks. Maybe not as up to date as you're looking for, but a good start for new languages and frameworks. ~~~ chrisweekly Thanks for the great tip, Jamieee! realworld.io looks worthwhile. ------ estsauver This is really cool! Thanks for releasing it, I love seeing how other people structure medium sized applications. Why'd you pick react native? ~~~ robertAngst Works on android and IOS? Is there anything else that does both? ~~~ Klathmon Not to be cheeky, but why not just react? ~~~ robertAngst Isnt react web only? ~~~ Klathmon But the web runs on all of those platforms, and there are a ton of ways to wrap a browser view into a native "wrapper" to put in the app store (including react native) ~~~ robertAngst Right, but web looks like web even if you wrap it. RN is supposed to feel like an Android or Iphone app. (Btw, someone prove me wrong because I have a full blown working website/database and the front end is RN and I'd love to stop because I hate front end auth and multiple platform...) ~~~ jgalentine007 Onsen UI could maybe tackle that (I'm working with it) - gives you material or Cupertino look on the fly. Still caveats with Cordova vs Native but it's alot less work... ------ specialist Hi Atef. Nicely done. Good screen designs. I'll check out your code soonest. And I'll try to dig up an android device, so I can try your demo. I just wanted to acknowledge your effort and good taste, since everyone else got distracted by the framework wars. Without revealing too much about me, since this is my anon account, I work in a nearby field. If you wanted to pursue this domain (fashion), I encourage you to focus on product discovery. Either something novel, or excellent execution and refinement of current solutions. I don't mean personalization, recommenders. (Unless you have something awesome.) Rather, I mean UX for better forraging behavior. By analogy, the digital equivalent of wandering around in libraries, museum, or retail. Whatever that looks like. Happy hunting. ------ cridenour I feel like Redux has been the love child of the React community (not necessarily HN) and I have felt like a crazy person for not loving it and clinging to AltJS and then to MobX. Good to see a lot of other MobX fans in this thread. ------ cubano I am wrong to wonder why this doesn't run in a browser, or does it? I was under the impression React uses the browser DOM (or virtual DOM of course) to render its components...wouldn't that mean it can run on the desktop in a browser? ~~~ awinograd This project is using React Native which is slightly different from ReactDOM (commonly referred to as just React/ReactJS). In the past, ReactJS and ReactDOM were completely interchangeable. However, some time ago now React split the DOM specific parts of the library into ReactDOM which allowed the non-DOM specific parts of the library to be shared more easily across different rendering targets. Some examples: * android (via react-native) * ios (via react-native) * canvas https://github.com/Flipboard/react-canvas Since the release of React Native there have been a couple of interesting projects that allow developers to use the same APIs as React Native, but rendering to the DOM instead of android/ios native views. [https://github.com/necolas/react-native- web](https://github.com/necolas/react-native-web) is a great production ready lib but requires a bit of setup to get it working with a react-native project. [https://github.com/vincentriemer/react-native- dom](https://github.com/vincentriemer/react-native-dom) is an extremely cool experimental idea to bring react native projects more seamlessly onto the web. It's still in early stages and has some significant tradeoffs compared to react-native-web. For one, it includes a webassembly implementation of Yoga ([https://yogalayout.com/](https://yogalayout.com/)) which makes layout much more consistent among ios/android/web but at the cost of delivering more JS upfront to the browser. ~~~ johnmarinelli another cool custom renderer using React is this: [https://github.com/toxicFork/react-three-renderer- fiber](https://github.com/toxicFork/react-three-renderer-fiber) it wraps the React API over three.js. Unfortunately it's a very wip-ish state, but I think it has a lot of potential. ------ deltateam very nice! this is one of those "git clone and walk away" moments, because something this good and free won't be around forever
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Ask HN: How did you decide where to live? - insta_anon Where are you currently living, what were the reasons for moving there and what are the pros &#x2F; cons?<p>Also say you work remotely, are self-employed &#x2F; working on a new idea or are (financially) retired and could live anywhere on this beautiful planet, where would you go? ====== insta_anon The last 8 years I lived in Berlin, Germany as I got a job here and I am German. It has been a great time however I plan to leave Berlin and Germany next year to hopefully move to Australia. I really liked the time here in Berlin, however it is getting more and more expensive (especially rent), and more and more crowded. I also really dislike the weather and have the feeling that Germany in general is moving towards a suboptimal direction, therefore I am looking for new inspiration. Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18688647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18688647) ------ insta_anon If anyone is living in or around Brisbane (especially Gold Coast), I'd love to hear your opinion about moving there as a self-employed tech worker / startup founder! ------ meiraleal I work remotely currently from Buenos Aires, Argentina, South America and the reasons are: \- cheap with good life quality \- great night life and Argentinians amazing people to interact \- Best meat and best wine ~~~ throw51319 Where are you from originally? How well do you speak spanish? ~~~ meiraleal I'm from Brazil and Portuguese <-> Spanish is not that difficult, at least to be able to communicate so currently I speak a "bad" fluent spanish. ------ insta_anon Obligatory mention of Nomadlist ([https://nomadlist.com/](https://nomadlist.com/)).
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Statistical analysis of web performance data - bluesmoon http://www.lognormal.com/blog/2012/08/13/analysing-performance-data/ ====== cliff_crocker This was a great overview of how to approach large data sets and make sure your analysis is statistically relevant. The explanations were straight forward, and make sense especially when you are looking at user data - which typically is extremely variable and hard to analyze. ~~~ bluesmoon thanks cliff. A compliment coming from the Big "Walmart" Data guy himself :)
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UK Cops Say Visiting the Dark Web Is a Potential Sign of Terrorism - askl56 https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pay4gz/uk-cops-say-visiting-the-dark-web-is-a-potential-sign-of-terrorism ====== gozur88 The fact that cops would want to be aware of people using the Dark Web doesn't seem particularly surprising or alarming. When you're looking for bad actors you build up a profile based on previous bad actors. I used to work in fraud prevention, and we found, for example, for our particular product if someone opened an account and then changed addresses within two weeks, there was a pretty good chance it was identity fraud. Of course there's nothing nefarious about opening an account two weeks before you move to a new place, but it would get you looked at because so many people who did were fraudsters. The goofy thing about this story is the fact that they circulated a _leaflet_ listing something like this as suspicious behavior. They're going to get buried under bogus tips from nosy neighbors as actual terrorists avoid doing this kind of stuff publicly. ~~~ techmagus Yes, exactly. For those who are not like you and me, people who probably subscribe to "if you have nothing hide…" will suddenly get suspicious of us. Sure, maybe not terrorism, maybe buying "unusual" items, say illegal drugs. It's the way they worded it. Too encompassing. Lacking information, and yes, distributing leaflets. People who doesn't understand what the dark web is will simply believe what they've read. (And "dark" being in the phrase…) ------ techmagus "holds passports or other documents in different names for no obvious reason" \-- their spies are terrorists, wow "travels for long periods of time, but is vague about where they're going" \-- seriously?! Must every citizen post their travel itinerary now? "is visiting the dark web, or ordering unusual items online" \-- well, they need to start arresting thousands if not millions of people \-- also "unusual items" like what? When is something "unusual"? These UK Cops are spreading FUD and turning people, families, against each other. ~~~ jomkr I'm a liberal/hacker/software-engineer - you know the type, even joined the Pirate Party years ago. But am I the only one that doesn't have a problem with this. The set of people that visit the dark web intersects with the set of terrorists so obviously they should look into those people. >their spies are terrorists, wow Their spies are a special case. If you don't want to abide by the laws of the UK then nobody is forcing you to live here. ~~~ xkcd-sucks >If you don't want to abide by the laws of the UK then nobody is forcing you to live here. Oh please, this is just another way of saying "if you're disenfranchised you don't belong here." People born in the UK are absolutely forced to live there in the short term-- You need a passport to leave the country, and the means to afford resettlement. ------ petre The only country capable to deal with terrorism today is Israel. In the UK and the US there's a generalized state of paranoia. Or maybe finger pointing is just a sign of incompetence? Everybody is _suspicious_ now, yet they failed to act on warnings from Italian security agencies regarding the perpetrators of the London Bridge attack. ~~~ techmagus Add to that, the intelligence the Philippines gave to the US re: threat of, what we later know as, 9/11, was ignored. No doubt (and this was also reported) because they don't trust "third-world" countries, or from intelligence agencies that is not themselves. ------ savethefuture Maintaining privacy is now terrorism, what a world. ------ sitkack Probably true, it moves someone from 1-in-15m to 1-in-14.5m chances of being a terrorist.
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12 innovative programmers working to change technology forever - mac_attack http://www.businessinsider.com/12-innovative-programmers-working-to-change-technology-forever-2015-7?op=1 ====== angersock It'd be nice to see more folks on that list for, you know, actually programming. If the list contains Rob Pike and the Mesos developer, and two people whose noteworthy contributions were apparently being harassed, I question the validity of the definition of "innovative programmers" and its application.
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Can Help You Believe in Climate Change - kobyconrad https://www.quirk.fyi/how-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-can-help-you-believe-in-climate-change/ ====== bch132 I wonder if the same would work for homosexuals in repressive countries - perhaps they could convince themselves they were not homosexual because 97% of their fellow citizens think being gay is bad?
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FanDuel Raises $275M - prostoalex http://recode.net/2015/07/13/fanduel-raises-275-million-snags-billion-dollar-valuation/ ====== drsim First Scottish unicorn? Perhaps Skyscanner is up there too after a $800m valuation in 2013. ...and a rare success story for public funding from Scottish Enterprise. I worked at a spectacularly bad startup funded to the tune of $1m by Scottish Enterprise. ~~~ thomasrossi spectacularly bad startups are a must have in anyone resumee:) more on topic: what is wrong with people? Fantasy-daily-esports? Is it for real? ~~~ irishcoffee Don't knock it 'till you try it. If you're a moderate or greater sports enthusiast, with ~20 bucks to spare, you can make turn it into a few hundred pretty quickly, like within a week or two. I legitimately use it to supplement my income, started with 20 bucks. ------ gojomo _" FanDuel, which still isn’t profitable, has now raised $363 million since 2009. The company has a fast-growing revenue stream, though, and made nearly twice as much as rival DraftKings in 2014."_ Danger ahead. If payouts are even a little subsidized by investment/marketing dollars, into slightly-positive-expectation territory, this sort of business can achieve almost arbitrary revenue growth. (Plenty of smart money, or even just intuitive-do-whatever-works-until-it-stops-working money, will be happy to buy $10 bills for $9.50, over-and-over. Lazy susan revenues.) But when the promo subsidies end, or the happy-to-lose-for-a-while fish who are attracted by mass advertising reach 'extinction', the bulk revenue can disappear just as quickly. Will this remain a favored form of negative-expectation gambling afterwards? Maybe, but probably at a size way below its novelty/subsidy-goosed peak.... which might already be behind us. ------ downandout I would like to see the term sheet for this. My guess is that these investors are going to be extracting returns from revenue as it comes in. Here's why... UIGEA, [1] the legislation that was used to take down the online poker sites, contained an exemption for fantasy sports. However, that exemption is only valid if the business is operating in compliance with individual state laws. There is an increasing sentiment that DFS is sports gambling under a number of state laws, and many people are just waiting to find out which state will prosecute first. At the time the UIGEA exemption was created, legislators hadn't even contemplated the concept of DFS, and the very legislators that wrote the exemption have expressed concern over it. Since investors with this kind of money have done their due diligence, my guess is that they just want to ride the revenue train until the inevitable state-by-state crackdown occurs. It's no coincidence that this investment is occurring just before football season, which is their biggest revenue driver by orders of magnitude. [1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_E...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006) ~~~ jegutman I am definitely not a lawyer, if you listen to me for legal advice you're an idiot, however: I don't know details, but I think Fan Duels model has had some court tests and it was ruled a game of skill (in a way that poker was not somehow) somehow because you a) picked your lineup and b) there were no random number generators. Here's a few articles: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2013/10/09/fanduel-s...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2013/10/09/fanduel- secures-an-important-victory-in-daily-fantasy-sports-lawsuit-however- plaintiff-plans-to-appeal/) [http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2013/09/03/is-it- leg...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2013/09/03/is-it-legal-to- play-fantasy-football-for-money/) That second one seems to specifically mention this clause of UIGEA: "1\. In many cases, playing fantasy football for money is entirely legal under federal law. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 includes an explicit carve-out for fantasy sports games that meet three criteria: (1) the value of the prizes is not determined by the number of participants or the amount of fees paid; (2) all winning outcomes reflect the relative knowledge and skill of the participants; and (3) the fantasy game’s result is not based on the final scores of any real-world games." So it seems as long as the individual tournaments run have fixed prize pools they satisfy (1), (2) seems to be met because there's still sports knowledge of the sport that can improve performance, and (3) is met simply by their scoring system not having to do with final scores (and includes lots of other stats to help) although this one would probably need a text check to say what "based on the real-world scores" means exactly. ~~~ downandout The problem is that each state had its on set of laws and definition of what is and is not a game of skill. DFS is legal under federal law; however it may not be under each of 50 different sets of state laws. Additionally, if the state determines that it is illegal, then it becomes illegal under federal law, since that is how UIGEA works. It essentially just puts federal enforcement behind state gaming laws. ~~~ jegutman Sometimes the 50 different sets of laws is a feature sometime it's a bug. The spec is pretty terrible. ------ doctorpangloss In case anyone is puzzled about what FanDuel and Draft Kings do, Recode is definitely being very pedantic with its description "daily fantasy sports." These are a form of real-money-payout online gambling. They're legal. How quickly they evolve into pure casinos, as opposed to just 95% casinos, I don't know. They can't do something as clinically addictive as virtual slot machines and give payouts, but I bet they can come pretty close. ~~~ NhanH Since I don't know much about the topic, how much gambling is involved in fantasy sports? In other words, how much skill would be involved in all the drafting and picking etc, as opposed to just pure luck? ~~~ ericdykstra There's a lot of skill involved, but Fanduel (and DraftKings, the other major DFS site) take ~10% of every entry fee, which makes it very hard to be a consistent winning player. It's not _that_ hard to be break-even given you know the players across the league well and have a real understanding of the underlying mechanics of the sport. As far as the business goes... At some point they'll run out of new players, and the sharks will have a big enough bankroll to basically suck all the dead money out of the game leaving almost nothing for good, but not fantastic players. When that happens, either people will keep playing because it's fun and Fanduel has a great business on their hands (precedent: sports betting) or people who are not making money will get out, and new players will be discouraged from joining an established scene (precedent: online poker). I'm leaning more towards it going to the fate of online poker eventually, but it might not happen until sports betting is legalized in the US. ~~~ waterlesscloud I don't think the 10% fee will be sustainable in the long run. Price competition will be inevitable once the manic growth phase is over. ~~~ acconrad Except there are a ton of competitors and it's already become an oligopoly. FanDuel and DraftKings alone have accounted for 95% of the DFS revenue as of 2015, and just acquired the two other biggest competitors in the space (DraftStreet and StarStreet). Big prize pools drive harder than lower fees. ------ theklub Anyone else hate the phrase "Unicorn"? ------ skaplun Online poker 2.0, and I will bet that they follow the same route. Enter regulation, margins go down and casino comes into place ~~~ waylandsmithers Their saving grace might be the sports leagues themselves, which have varying degrees of tacit approval for betting, since it drives up interest in their products. They are much more likely to use their clout (billions in revenue and political favor that allows inexplicable tax exempt statuses like the NFL) to keep Congress from outlawing daily fantasy. Although it does feel like one wrong move could result in the rug being pulled out from them tomorrow. ------ prawn I suspect we'll see another class of fantasy comp develop soon for less- interested and more time-poor players where you don't even pick your team, but are given a random team. If fantasy or daily fantasy is sports betting, then this underclass of fantasy sports would be something akin to a lottery ticket or "scratchie" rather then these head-to-head games. If you ask me to play daily fantasy, I'll say "No time, sorry" and ignore it. But if you give me an app/page with a pre-picked team and moderate financial interest in it doing well, I may watch the game and track stats. You could send out random teams ("Your team for tonight is x, y and z!") with an adjusted under/over (for stats, totals, etc) and then give people the option to double-or-nothing with a bet, or whatever. "Win a $5 Amazon voucher, or bet 10 tokens now to have a chance at a $50 voucher!" The sports leagues are actively interested in gambling as something that gives people another incentive to watch games. If you have no-name in your fantasy team, you suddenly care about every time they touch the ball. ~~~ gojomo Such a random-team option might run afoul of the "game of skill" loopholes that have so far allowed these businesses to operate. ~~~ prawn Might be able to make it less about betting and more about a virtual currency that is used with some sort of promotion. Eyeballs still have value to sponsors or the leagues involved. I can imagine they might set it so that you have to be viewing the stats/screen within x minutes of a result, to prevent people from just checking in the next day. ------ fmsf They have been very active across the UK sponsoring conferences (.e.: ScottlandJS) and attending events (i.e.: Silicon Milk Roundabout). ~~~ Grue3 When I go to their home page it says "Fanduel is only available to users in the US and Canada". So it's not even available in their home country?
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Show HN: Android Password Store - nohawp https://github.com/zeapo/Android-Password-Store ====== nohawp That is my first android application ever. I am not a java guru either. Suggestions, issues, and pull requests are welcome.
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You made app for Android, iOS, Windows - what about the UI? - iProject http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/25/cross_platform_abstraction/ ====== fiznool Not sure I agree with the prediction: > My prediction is that Xamarin will come up with its own GUI abstraction > framework in future, along the lines of SWT. It is a compromise; but one > which delivers a lot of value to developers who want to create cross- > platform apps with the maximum amount of shared code. This will almost certainly create the 'uncanny valley' which the author refers to in an earlier paragraph. I consider the fact that Xamarin has two APIs for the two platform UIs a real advantage. You can still write your business logic once - so the time to create an iOS and Android app reduces from 2 to 1.x, and you still get the benefit of a fully native feeling app.
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On the Social Deficits of Current Mobile Device Design - whoisstan http://whoisstan.tumblr.com/post/21753719270/on-the-social-deficits-of-current-mobile-device-design ====== stoolpigeon This made me chuckle. I can picture it - the looking around trying to find something to grab onto as a conversation starter. It's funny because to one personality type this is a negative impact and to others it is positive. Me - I'm thrilled that my generic device does something to help me from being approached by strangers. And as a general tip - looking at the screen only makes you creepy it doesn't help - because you can't decide for someone else if what they are doing is interruption worthy. I know a guy in my office who does that and it makes me want to punch him in the face. ("Oh - you're on HN! Good, then it's not a problem if I interrupt you right now.") ~~~ whoisstan _chuckle_ is a good thing:) Having a breadth of designs between generic and super special will relax the scene a bit, I am kind of freaked about our enforced gadget conformity. Lets get a little freaky!
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Refined Hacker News - memexy https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news#highlights ====== plibither8 Hi all, developer of Refined Hacker News here! Happy to see that it has been posted about again. I had initially posted it last year as a Show HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173974](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173974) and my philosphy behind the extension (as mentioned in the my comment) is: > There are many extensions out there that add quite a few features to Hacker > News, but they also always do one thing, which I have realised, is a > slippery slope: changing the minimalistic design and style of Hacker News. > I created this extension with one thing in mind: I am NOT going to mess > around with the overall design or style of Hacker News. It's sacrosanct. Thanks, I'm up for discussion! :D ~~~ warpspin I really liked the idea, but the layout jumping during initial page load (used the Firefox version) was really annoying me so much, I had to deactivate it again. ~~~ plibither8 Hi, thanks for using the extension. The "jumping" of the layout is probably due to the insertion of the options bar on the top. You can change this setting to position it on the bottom instead in the extension's popup window (it has a a lot more settings which you can tweak around to customise your experience). This issue is also addressed here: [https://github.com/plibither8/refined- hacker-news/issues/25](https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker- news/issues/25) ~~~ warpspin Wow, thanks. There's the level of support I wish to have from some commercial software providers :D ------ weinzierl If I had one wish for a feature of this extension to be made available on HN then it would be: _" Easily favorite items and comments"_ I really like the favourites feature and use it a lot but the original UI makes it really hard. ~~~ dang What would make it better? Making the links work the same way as vote and flag? I'm a bit disappointed in that feature. The intention was for users to browse others' favorites to find interesting things to read, but I've not seen any indication that it worked out that way. ~~~ nkurz I agree: it should be a great addition, but it hasn't really been used to advantage. I think the main thing is that it needs some publicity: many people have never even noticed it. I've tried to use it for comments, but it's hard to be diligent if no use of it is ever made. Another easy thing to do would be to add "Most Favorited" to the "Lists" page. Maybe it would be possible to show the number of favorites that a post or comment, with a reverse link to who has favorited it? Maybe add a notification to the creator of a comment that is favorited? Possibly instead of just having a link on people's profile page, you could have a rolling list of the their most recent favorites? Or maybe for "person" discovery, you could automatically show who else has else favorited something after you do? It seems like a good feature to start publicly experimenting with. Announce something, try it out for a week, then post a thread asking people what they think and how it can be improved. ~~~ memexy I think adding "Most Favorited" would create a popularity contest and people would start looking for ways to game the system. I don't think favorites should have metrics associated with them because as soon as metrics are introduced people will try to optimize them. Now that I know comments can be favorited I plan to bookmark comments that include useful reference information on topics I find interesting. Adding counters for how many times the comment was favorited wouldn't really help me with that use case because I doubt anyone else cares about collecting useful references so my favorites would never make it to the "most favorited" list. I personally don't care if I make it to the list or not but I'm certain some people would care and they would go around and start playing a popularity contest instead of looking for ways to favorite information that would be useful to them. ~~~ captn3m0 The [op] tags are really helpful. ------ ScottFree The gifs in the readme showing the functionality you want to highlight is a nice touch. I wish more projects did that. ------ skulk This looks really slick and I'd love to use it. Does it require any browser- specific APIs? If not, I'd definitely try to compile it into a userscript so I can use it with qutebrowser. ------ thinkloop I've always wondered whether HN's "off-putting", "serious" interface (it is when you first see it) is an important factor in it not devolving into reddit. ~~~ krapp People have been accusing this place of devolving into Reddit so often for so long the mods specifically call it out in the guidelines as a semi-noob delusion and tell people to knock it off, which they never do. The interface is merely simplistic, it's neither serious nor very off-putting. No more than, say, Craigslist anyway. For that matter, 4chan's interface is far more offputting, and its culture is far worse than Reddit. Like, do people here _really_ believe HN would instantly descend into chaos and madness if the layout used proper typography, modern HTML or (god forbid) AJAX? ~~~ misterhtmlcss It's more inviting then, so I think it would draw more randoms. Now it's basically home to people who know the value already and choose to join because that's what matters to them. That's at least why I come here. I hope that's a motivator until the lights go out one day. Without a doubt the most consistently intelligent conversations happen here. ~~~ krapp "Randoms" wouldn't hang out on a site called "Hacker News" to begin with, much even know that it exists. A more "inviting" layout wouldn't change that. ------ remarkEon The auto-refresh feature is cool. I find myself hitting F5 a lot. ... On the other hand, I really appreciate how minimalist this website is - both in how it's designed and how it's moderated. It's a nice retreat from the rest of the internet that's often overbuilt and thoughtlessly controlled. ------ majkinetor Very nice. I would like to be able to collapse entire thread by clicking on its line, even when I scrolled. For that lines should be visible for entire thread duration, not only original comment (like new reddit). I would also like to see autorefresh on topic itself. ~~~ koheripbal Also, the linked area of the line is too thin - I can barely click on it. ------ walterbell Feature request: color coding of usernames by reader-defined groups. User could specify group name/color via a CSS style with a common prefix. The extension would need to maintain a local database of usernames in each group. Enables visual highlighting of user comments and stories based on previous experience. ~~~ koheripbal If there's an extension, maybe we could have a collaborative tagging system so we can see what other people have labelled the author as? ~~~ walterbell Potentially, although that gets into social networks, feedback loops, status dynamics, information warfare, reputation systems, voting rings, sock puppets and other fun topics :) Step 1 would be private lists. ------ Shared404 I think that this looks cool. I would be perfectly fine with most of these being integrated into default HN, on the condition that it would gracefully degrade back to the current form if you have JS disabled. ------ mrep I love this extension for it's ability to highly new comments you haven't seen before. Only downside is it does not work for comments after the first page. ------ kiddico Add in the facelift changes from 'Hacker News Enhancement Suite' and I'd be all about it. I wonder what happens if I use both... Actually it works fine. Not sure what the spinning icon on the main page is all about. edit: you can turn that off. I think I've found my new HN setup :D It does some weird things to the popup for user profile info, but I don't think that'll be an issue. ------ michaelmrose I really like the ability to reply without losing context. ------ sebazzz I think the basis interface of Hacker News prevents some people from participating in discussions on this website. That is a double edged sword. ------ joshspankit Respect for linking directly to the visual demo. ------ twistedanimator This looks great, like the start of a "Reddit Enhancement Suite" for hacker news. It would be great if it also worked with hckrnews.com as I find that to be my main interface for browsing the day's discussions.
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Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support - estel http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support ====== d_r The current situation is somewhat unfair to the indiscrete / non-tech-savvy consumer since they might buy an Android phone without understanding the differences from the iOS ecosystem. At least several of my friends did. "They're about the same right? And this one was $30 cheaper!" And I genuinely feel bad every time this happens. Note that I of course have no gripes with Android OS/concept itself -- it's a good contender to iOS. My gripe is with the current gouging of consumers by hardware manufacturers/cell phone companies, of the fragmented/poor/outdated hardware coverage in many models, lack of upgrades, et cetera. And don't forget the mandatory "crapware" that carriers pre-install. This is quite different from buying, say, a Dell/HP PC vs. a Mac -- in both cases do you get a working, upgradeable machine. ~~~ SamColes Are OS updates really that important for most consumers? I have a Desire running Froyo. I don't think I've really missed out on a huge amount by not getting Gingerbread. ~~~ davidedicillo While it may not be directly important to the final users (if you don't count security upgrades between versions), it definitely impact the ecosystem. If you need to pick a platform to develop for, you go for the more homogeneous one from a OS point of view. Also enterprises invest more in devices that have a longer support life. They want to buy something that even in 2-3 years is fully supported by the manufacture. ~~~ vetinari Enterprises don't care about device support life. They care, if the phone will survive for about two years. Then the employees will start bug you, that they want new gadget (I know, we have several hundred of them...). ------ degusta I wrote the piece / did the research. Happy to answer any questions or comments people might have. ~~~ robinduckett You should include iPod Touch and how apple forces a charge for updates on that device. This chart is also skewed a bit and should be based on intervals of releases rather than "years since". I don't recall seeing any iOS5 backports to iPhone 2G or 3G. ~~~ degusta No, the original iPhone & 3G don't support iOS 5. But they did support the current version of iOS for 3 years after they were released - far more than any Android phones of the period. (And, no, they don't charge for iPod Touch updates any more - that was technically an accounting regulation issue that the government changed.) ~~~ cbracken Though to be honest, for the iPhone 3G, the longer green bar is easily misinterpreted as a positive thing, when for the most part, iOS4 rendered the phone very painful to use. 15-30s wait times for camera shutter, frequent hangs, constant crashes in Maps, being the main pain points with the two that my wife and I owned. If they'd have continued security and minor app updates for iOS3 on the 3G, I'd have been much happier. ~~~ jsz0 The first releases of iOS4 for the 3G were pretty bad but the subsequent releases greatly improved things. I recently sold my old 3GS so I updated it to the latest 4.x version and it was totally usable. Slower than iOS2 but for a 3.5 year old device I thought it was completely acceptable performance. In the rush to release iOS4 I think Apple didn't have time to optimize the 3G release. They seem to have learned their lesson with iOS5 for the 3GS. ~~~ mschaef There is an __enormous __difference between a 3G and a 3GS. My wife and I have one of each, both running 4.2.1. Her 3GS is usable, my 3G really isn't. The 3H suffers from lots of OOM-killed applications, and a huge number of 30-40 second pauses that freeze the entire UI. (Although AT &T seems to be equally good at dropping calls placed from either.) I hear you on the 'Apple didn't have time to get the 3G release right'. That's fine. I have no problem with being stuck on iOS 3.x. Good iOS 4.x would be best... Good iOS 3.x would be almost as good... but bad iOS 4.x is awful. They either should have invested the time to do the release correctly, or just not ship the update to the 3G. ------ ajanuary Limiting it to 3 years masks the fact that lots of people still had iPhone 3G phones on 2 year contracts when Apple stopped offering updates for it. That said, the fact even that's off the scale is worrying for Android. ~~~ betterth You're right, but as a current iPhone 3G owner not getting updates, I can say that I had a great life for this phone (3.5 years and counting) and that I'm not mad Apple decided to stop supporting it. It's a very old device with very little memory - very difficult to support I imagine. And I'm okay with it because I know Apple has conservative product life cycles and will stick to it. And I know the next iPhone get will be supported for 2-3 years at least, as well. ~~~ masklinn > I can say that I had a great life for this phone (3.5 years and counting) > and that I'm not mad Apple decided to stop supporting it. I think ajanuary is talking about the fact that the 3G was still for sale until right before the iPhone 4 was released (see black rectangle). So people who bought a 3G right before the 4 was released (not necessarily a smart move) got about 10 months of support (support essentially ended in March 2011, with iOS 4.3) ~~~ watmough I speak from experience when I say, putting iOS 4 on the 3G was just a terrible idea. The 3G should have stayed with the 2G in being restricted to iOS 3.1.3, which whilst no speed demon, at least runs reasonably well, even now. The 3GS is the lowest hardware that should have been given iOS 4. ~~~ tptacek Didn't they address that in a subsequent iOS 4 update? My understanding is that 3G iOS4 support got a lot more tolerable. ~~~ masklinn 4.2.1 did improve things significantly, but it only made the 3G go from "completely unusable" to "slightly painful to use". The device is still much slower and less smooth than on 3.1 due to higher base memory requirements (as a result, not only are most applications slower to load some will not load at all on 4.2 and will instead crash due to going OOM and not being able to clear out anything upon receiving an OOM signal). ~~~ watmough I say this somewhat tongue in cheek, but you wouldn't say 'improve' if you'd ever seen my wife swearing at her phone. My own app FemCal, runs pretty well on 3.1.3 on a 2G, but I think almost everything is a struggle for iOS 4 on the 3G. In particular, the new Facebook app appears to be unusable on the 3G nowadays. ~~~ masklinn > you wouldn't say 'improve' Improve over 4.0, which was completely and utterly unusable. I still have my 3G, so I can see what it is daily. A 4.2.1 3G is generally slow and laggy, but for the most part it works (as far as I'm concerned anyway: all tapbot applications run acceptably, Instapaper, Wikipanion and Terminology work and so do most — though not all — of my games). Not saying it's great, or even good (compared to 3.1), but that I can use my phone is a net improvement over 4.0, which had essentially killed the bloody thing. > In particular, the new Facebook app appears to be unusable on the 3G > nowadays. I wouldn't know about that. I have no use for facebook's application. ------ jsz0 The lack of feature-updates is disappointing but they can get by forcing people to buy new phones for new features. It's the security side of this that could really blow up in their face. It's only a matter of time before these lingering security issues come home to roost. I wonder if Google has any plan to deal with the possibility of millions of Android phones and their associated user accounts being compromised? The risk is amplified by having all your eggs in the Google basket. What happens if your phone gets exploited and you just can't login to GMail tomorrow? (and you can't call Google for help) Unless you happen to be a high profile blogger or journalist you're going to have a hard time dealing with this type of thing. ------ SandB0x There's a major point that can be added to the _Why Don’t Android Phones Get Updated?_ section: Third party skins and interfaces. HTC's Sense, Motorola's Motoblur and co can only introduce an engineering overhead and delays in upgrading. I would much rather they concentrated on making awsome hardware and leaving the UI to Google, rather than attempting to differentiate themselves in this way. ~~~ billjings If I were Motorola or Samsung, though, there's no way I'd do that. Without differentiation, you're selling a commodity product. If you're selling a commodity, there are no margins. I agree with you that it would be better for the Android ecosystem if they would, though. ~~~ dman HP, Dell, Lenovo and Sony would like to have a word with you - they have been selling PC's without custom UI's all this time. ~~~ jfb And look at _their_ margins. ------ kalleboo How many PC users are still using XP, a 10 year old OS? If the version of the OS you have still works, it still works. The real issue here is security updates. Google need a way to update core OS component that aren't affected by the manufacturer's UI skinning. ~~~ drivebyacct2 Most people don't know this, but Google actually retains the ability to hotfix core security issues without the manufacturers. This has happened with devices when a weakness was found in how passwords were transmitted for sync. Also, manufacturers push out security updates from different teams than their Sense/Blur/etc teams. ~~~ andrewpi I believe the Google sync hotfix was a server-side fix. ------ juliano_q I think that the fact that the chart stopped at June 2010 makes it looks much worse than it is now. Android is newer than iOS and works on a very different environment. Support 4 devices is much easier than 4 thousand. If you extend this chart to 2011 you will notice that the platform is more mature and most of the phones will receive ICS (my wife Galaxy S is a relatively old device and will get it). ~~~ degusta You might be right re it gets better - though not as sure about the ICS bit. It is my intention to keep at it & add (ideally) every phone. ~~~ fluidcruft Here, I'll fill in a data point you missed: Motorola Milestone XT720 released June 2011 (USA: August) Runs 2.1 No bugfixes No updates No upgrades Buggy as hell. 2.2 upgrades and flash support pledged by Motorola sales/support at the time of release in the US -- later clarified that those employees had been "confused" when the mothballing was made official in late November. Those Apple green bars look quite nice, but I'm not a fan. Maybe add some Windows phone. The problem as I see it is that since Android is Open Source, the manufacturers don't abstract their innovations into a HAL. For example, Motorola's FM radio and HDMI support is peppered all over inside the core eclair framework. So, someone has to mix it all together again with each new release. Usually in the FOSS space, we like to believe that the effort of maintaining private forks encourages companies to contribute their efforts back to the open source project. That doesn't work here, because manufacturers like Motorola also have the viable option to simply abandon their forks. Which is even less effort. Apple has a huge economy of scale--only four or five devices (most very similar) with relatively humongous market share per device. The personnel/device ratio obviously supports a much better customer experience than any Android device can offer (with the exception of perhaps the Android developer phones). I can only assume Microsoft knows what they are doing and enforces abstractions and barriers that limit the scope of manufacture monkeying. ~~~ andrewpi This phone was released in 2010, not 2011, right? ~~~ fluidcruft Yup, sorry, don't know why I typed that. ------ ricw It's funny that these kind of long-term "features" don't get taken into consideration for any of the phone reviews. Its probably one of the most important features of a phone. I'm currently torn apart between buying an iPhone 4s and the galaxy nexus, but given that I can expect the iphone to be supported and updated instantly and regulary for a long time, and not with any of the android phones (less than 2 years for the original nexus phone), I think iphone it will be.. despite prefering the openness of android. ~~~ bad_user There's a flaw with that list ... it makes it seem like iOS 5 is supported on iPhone 1 and iPhone 3G. It isn't and there's nothing you can do about it. It is deceptive, and for HTC G1, the first Android device, official support may not be good, but you can painlessly install Froyo on it, because it isn't locked and Froyo works well on it. You can also install Gingerbread for that matter, but CyanogenMod dropped the support for it because of severe hardware limitations. Basically if you get a Google blessed phone, like the Nexus One, or the Nexus S, or the next Nexus, you will be able to install the latest Android as long as the hardware itself is capable enough. I do agree that iPhones are a lot more comfortable. ~~~ loire280 The chart cuts off after 3 years - the point is that the original iPhone was supported with the current version of iOS for 2 years after the last one was sold (minus two days - iOS 4, the first version to drop support, came out June 21, 2010). On AT&T, at least, most iPhone customers are eligible for an upgrade after 18 months because of the cost of their plan, so everyone was eligible, by a significant margin, for an upgrade before their phone was droppped. ~~~ ajanuary Not true if you got a 2nd generation iPhone. You could have gotten a 3G as the latest phone and been unsupported for 9 months on an 18 month contract. ~~~ loire280 True, and I've heard that iOS 4 didn't run so well on the iPhone 3G in the first place. However, even once support was dropped, the iPhone 3G was still on the current _major version_ (4.3, a relatively minor update, is the version that dropped 3G support), and it doesn't seem like apps required 4.3 until well after that version was out. That's a big difference than being 1-3 major versions behind on Android (especially considering the rather substantial changes in each major version of Android). ------ zmmmmm While it's definitely a problem for Android and extremely disappointing that devices under contract are not supported with new versions, looking at it on a device basis is somewhat unfair : the actual number of such handsets 3 versions behind in the real world are miniscule - according to the actual usage statistics, 84% of users are on 2.2 or better, and the functional differences between 2.2 and 2.3 are fairly small. The percentage of users on < 2.0 are down to ~2% at this point. I'd much rather see the platform being pushed forward than spending great amounts of time trying to shoehorn it onto extremely old devices used by 2% of people. ------ joebadmo 1\. Anyone who cares about OS updates would only have ever owned three or four of the phones on the chart. 2\. Anyone who cares about OS updates doesn't keep a phone for longer than 2 years. Most spring for an early upgrade after 1.5. Many (like me) finagle a new one every year or so. 3\. My wife has never updated the OS of any of the 3 iPhones she's owned. I believe she is representative. ~~~ kisielk According to some sources, it looks like iOS 5 adoption is up to 1/3 of eligible devices: [http://www.localytics.com/blog/2011/ios-5-already- powering-1...](http://www.localytics.com/blog/2011/ios-5-already- powering-1-in-3-eligible-devices/) ------ methodin So the point of the graphic has to be that most people don't really care, right? ------ Rabidgremlin Whilst I agree that this is a problem (especially since it looks like my Nexus One won't get the the upgrade) a mitigating factor as an app developer is Android's backwards compatibility. For instance is my app targets 2.1 it will run on all on 2.1 and above which is currently ~97% of all active devices. Check out [http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform- ve...](http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform- versions.html) for the active OS version stats collected by Google in the last 14 days. ------ gnubardt From data we've collected[1] more iOS devices (the majority) are running the most recent version of the OS, compared to Android. Even though they may have an update available (non-eligable devices excluded) not every user knows how or is able to update their device. [http://blog.brightcove.com/sites/all/uploads/image/brightcov...](http://blog.brightcove.com/sites/all/uploads/image/brightcove- html5-graphic-1-1.jpg) [1] http://blog.brightcove.com/en/2011/10/brightcove-unveils-next-generation-video-cloud-smart-player ------ masklinn The graph is debatable for the 3G: its last update was 4.2.1 released __28 __months into the phone's lifecycle, but it did not get iOS 4.3 release in March 2011. Talking about "major version" sounds like a lie/cop-out in that case, since iOS receives pretty major updates in "minor" versions (4.3 included personal hotspots, ASLR, a JITed javascript engine, settings rearrangements and reworks, the ability to cancel an application update or remove an application being updated mid-download, ...) ~~~ delackner From a developer standpoint, the Major version releases are far more important. All I have to choose is "am I going to support 3.1.x devices, or am I going to limit myself to 4.x devices". Even better, now that iOS5 has arrived with (very pleasantly smooth) support for the 3GS, the choice is "do I support 3.x or 5.x" since the last years of devices ALL support the APIs in the most recent OS. That is huge. Just yesterday I realized that a long-standing bug is fixed by iOS5, and that since nearly all of our customers will be running 3GS or newer hardware, I can depend on that fix with confidence when we release our next version soon. ~~~ masklinn > From a developer standpoint, the Major version releases are far more > important. Sure, but the graph seems to take user-point considerations foremost (#1), before developer-point considerations. ------ dman The android team needs to pick a leaf out of the Google Chromes book. Chrome makes updates seamless and I wish android was the same. ------ iaskwhy How do buying apps works on Android and all its versions? I remember buying apps on my first generation iPhone that then wouldn't support iOS 3.x but the Store still let me buy it. Is it the same on Android (but worse since there are so many different versions around)? ~~~ juliano_q No. The apps are targeted to a version (like 2.1 or above) and the devices below 2.1 don't see the app in the market. ------ RexRollman To me, Android is a fragmented soup sandwich. I like the idea of having choices for hardware, but under Android: \- You can't assume what's going to be on the phone, software wise. Each maker evidently messes with it, sometimes even changing the interface itself. I've also read stories of bloatware being added. \- You can't be sure how software updates are going to be handled, because that varies depending on maker and carrier, meaning you might not get updates they same time others do (this is also a problem for Windows 7 Phone). \- Crappy cell provider logo plaques on the hardware (I detest that). \- Multiple/competing app stores. I believe that Android has a lot of promise, but Google really needs to start exhibiting some control over what's going on. ~~~ angryasian the interfaces and multiple app stores are strengths of Android. If I don't like the default launcheror the default lockscreen or the keyboard, I can change it. Customization is a strength. It might be hard for IOS users to understand. Also multiple appstores is a strength because, competition is always good for the consumer. If you are afraid of the relaxed rules of the google market use amazon. If you want huge user base, use appbrain. ~~~ RexRollman Customization is fine, when end users do it, but companies should not be messing with Android like they do (or at least, they shouldn't be able to refer to their Frankenstein creation as "Android"). ------ pasbesoin I'm getting sick of Google's "see what sticks" and "let the end user fend for himself" attitude. I really wanted their various platforms to work, but now I'm just getting tired. ------ AlexV I compare Google's Android ecosystem to a restaurant: I ate once and received wonderful food and service. I go there again next week and the food is cold and the service is rude. Android's inconsistency is as big problem for Google as it is to the restaurant - if it's inconsistent, I stop going. I own several Android devices, with the SGS2 being the latest. If it is going to be inconsistent with the update & timing as the rest of them - next time I'm going to the competition, whoever it might be. ------ bpolania It's an important omission not to mention that Android-based phones prices are declining at a much faster pace than iOS based phones. This is important because in many cases updating from one android to the next version (and sometimes to the next next version) is less expensive than buying a simple iPhone, rendering the need for further support unnecessary. ~~~ maukdaddy But people are limited by a 2 year contract for the "cheap" phones. They can't upgrade until that two year period is over. Suggesting that people upgrade to a new phone vs. upgrading software is terrible business and environmental practice! ~~~ vidarh You can't pay to upgrade? I'm in the UK, and here you can upgrade at any time - you'll just pay more for the phone if you upgrade within your current contract period. As for environmental practice, there's a number of companies that'll refurbish used phones and sell them on, and they'll even give you a bit of cash for it if it's a reasonably recent phone. Here in the UK most of them will send you a prepaid envelope you can just drop your old phone in, and mail you a check when they receive it. ------ asmosoinio Looking at the big picture from Android Market point-of-view, developer can easily ignore the 1.5/1.6 crowd, and 2.1 is a small part of the whole: 1.5/1.6: 2.5% 2.1: 11.7% 2.2: 45.3% 2.3.x: 38.7% 3.x: 1.9% [http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform- ve...](http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform- versions.html) ------ ticks This is why the phone gods gave us CyanogenMOD. ------ hamletdrc2 Am I misunderstanding this: "7 of the 18 Android phones never ran a current version of the OS." "12 of 18 only ran a current version of the OS for a matter of weeks or less." That makes 19 out of 18 phones. That looks like an error. I wonder what other errors there are here? ~~~ degusta Yes, it's 7 that were "never" and 5 more that were "weeks", so 12 total that were "weeks or less". I struggled with that phrasing a bit - either way seemed wrong. ------ Mordor This guy is a hero :) ------ gcb Great graph. and to think i switched from a series of Nokia phones (because they loose support every 6mo, to the point you can't even buy a working headset cable or extra charger for them) and bought a nexus one because i thought "spending $700 to buy an OPEN phone directly from google will get updated software for life and consistent use of cables and standards" ~~~ mdwrigh2 To be fair, you do get to use all of the new accessories and cables. Plus if you want to run ICS, while Google may not support it, it certainly seems like Cyanogen will have a version for the N1. ~~~ gcb hum... you may want to check your facts. the desktop dock and car dock was discontinued what? 4 months after the launch? HTC only resumed selling 1.5yrs later. During that period the car dock was selling for $200 used on ebay. I have no idea if HTC still sells those now, but wouldn't be surprised if not. As for "new accessories" i bet most of them will use the near field thingy and be useless for the nexus one. ~~~ mdwrigh2 I have yet to see a new /accessory/ use NFC (really, the only thing I've seen use it is Wallet-like applications and check-in type applications). The desktop dock is still sold by HTC, but the car dock doesn't appear to be. Regardless, they're just a device that holds the phone and charges it. There are plenty of generic docks that still /do/ that (and probably a few third party ones that do it as well). ------ dsfasdfdfd And this is one reason why Google bought Motorola Mobility. ------ jellicle Apples and oranges. An actually useful version of this graph would compare the Google phones to the Apple phones, and then in a separate table, compare the support for OS updates for other parties using the operating system (Apple would have no entries in that second chart, of course, but that's their choice). In the first hypothetical chart, I believe Google's support for Google phones compares acceptably well with Apple's support for Apple phones. ~~~ ericd Semantics. What matters to consumers is whether their phones get the new features, not who wins this pissing match. ~~~ drivebyacct2 It _is_ an issue of Semantics. Buying a Sense ridden phone from HTC and buying a Nexus from Google mean two entirely different things about the consistency of the phone and the timeliness of the software updates. ~~~ ericd Right, I was talking about my original parent's point about how to make it fair, the chart maker should have split off the ones not made by Google and just compared the Google made ones vs. the Apple made ones. But not many phone purchasers actually care about that comparison - which company spawned the better ecosystem, they care about the phone they end up with. Hence, throwing them all together like he did in comparing the ecosystems was the appropriate thing to do.
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Slides from FourSquare's presentation on using the Lift framework (Scala) - henning http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dcbpz3ck_24f3v83ggz ====== henning Here's the video to go along with it: <http://www.vimeo.com/8057986>
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Chennai floods: The Hindu not published for first time since 1878 - devnonymous http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34981328 ====== kshatrea Like many other people, I have family there and there is no doubt about it, this is one of the worst disasters to hit Chennai. We will have to wait out the storm to see the cumulative damage, but most of my family and friends are reporting Venezuela-like conditions of empty store shelves and lack of mobile and internet networks. In such a condition, I don't think The Hindu had a chance. On a more positive note, here is how startups are helping: [http://yourstory.com/2015/12/startups-rally-help- chennai/](http://yourstory.com/2015/12/startups-rally-help-chennai/) ~~~ jeswin >but most of my family and friends are reporting Venezuela-like conditions of empty store shelves and lack of mobile and internet networks What is a Venezuela-like condition? Never heard such a phrasing before. Also, don't agree with negative associations to a country/people in a wholly unrelated discussion. ~~~ kshatrea I can only apologize - I presume I heard it somewhere and internalized it. Not like I am making fun of Venezuela, at least not intentionally. ~~~ late2part You're making an analogy (simile/metaphor?) based on a supportable fact. Folks can argue about the veracity of your fact, but it's extremely supportable: [https://www.google.com/search?q=venezuela+condition&oq=venez...](https://www.google.com/search?q=venezuela+condition&oq=venezuela+condition) Don't give in to the politically correct folks. Support and back up your opinions, and don't shrink from asserting facts. Next thing you know, people will say we should outlaw words like antediluvian. ------ user_no_2 Huge problem this. My family member had surgery on Monday and got stuck at the hospital along with my wife. Over night the hospital turned into an Island. Spent all day today trying to get people to get some food and water for them. They are home now, safe. Must mention: Chennaiites really came together for this one. People helping each other with everything they have. Made me proud. And it helped me relax a little knowing that I can reach to people for help. Amazing all around. Any number I called, everyone tried to help. Everyone took the info and did what they can. ------ aidos The first I heard of this was yesterday when Chargebee (our subscription billing provider) responded to a support request saying that they're running a skeleton staff and only dealing with urgent issues. A couple of hours later they then went on to help me out anyway (they have amazing support for anyone who hasn't dealt with them). It's made me stop and think a little about the vulnerability of the services you rely on to run your business. The situation could have been different and they could have been put out of action temporarily or permanently. It's all too easy to ignore the risk of services going down (for whatever reason) when you're doing your evaluations. In this case I'd still use chargebee in a heartbeat but I do need to put something in place to snapshot all my billing data from their system on a regular basis (thankfully they make it very easy). Horrible situation for those involved (my heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones) and I wish the region a speedy recovery. ~~~ skrish Thank you. Krish, cofounder of Chargebee here. We were worried about couple of team members who were specifically in areas that were worst affected but glad to know that everyone of them is safe. Thanks to distributed infrastructure the services were at 100% and we had DR plans in place. But support wasn't very distributed. Lessons learnt. Having our San Francisco team member onboard was very helpful to get to urgent call back requests but still limited. Some of us stayed in office to provide support, as it was one of the safest places with power backup for weeks for such eventualities, internet and most importantly food. We also had a few folks who needed a safe place to stay. As a critical infrastructure provider we do have our disaster recovery & business continuity plans, but thankfully the service availability was not affected. But I think it is equally important to ensure we distribute team more globally as we continue to grow, so that data safety & availability is not dependent on what you as a customer plan for, rather something we have also baked-in as part of service. Thank you for the support and shoutout. Cheers. ------ markplindsay I arrived in Chennai on the evening of the 30th. The rain really got started later that night and it poured all day and all night on the 1st. On the 2nd I realized it might be a good idea to leave if I could—but I couldn't. No trains, no buses, and no taxis were willing to try. I was very lucky that my hotel was situated in a relatively unaffected area (near Spencer Plaza) and we did not lose electricity. But obviously most people were not so fortunate. I was finally able to get someone to drive me and another guy to Bangalore on the 3rd, but even then we were almost unable to find a route out. It took us 2 hours just to get out of the center, and we had to drive through many completely flooded stretches. It was a scary experience, but I was so impressed at how Chennaites and concerned folks from outside Tamil Nadu were helping each other out on Twitter. Twitter was actually essential in my own escape—there was a lot of discussion of open routes out, and I was able to pass along some key street names to my driver. ------ simonh I have a colleague over there. What with transport blockages, loss of power and communications, etc it's been a rough few weeks. My colleague's home has now flooded and the family has moved in with relatives in another city, so at least they are safe. The team over there has done brilliantly, with people staying in each other's homes when they got cut off and the company putting people up in hotels, but it's been a losing battle. The office is shut down now and everyone's just getting to safety. The next problem is going to be sanitation and disease prevention, with the drains blocked you can imagine the issues. ~~~ allpratik Yes, I too fear for rise of diseases after this disaster. Though still now we don not have any staff there but We are currently in process to deploy EpiMetrics epidemics intelligence engine to report and predict on disease outbreaks. [http://www.epimetrics.in](http://www.epimetrics.in) ------ mknits The flood in Chennai is man-made. [http://www.ndtv.com/chennai-news/chennai-floods-a-man- made-d...](http://www.ndtv.com/chennai-news/chennai-floods-a-man-made- disaster-say-experts-1246050) ~~~ eitally And besides what's stated there, there has been at least one case where the state intentionally flooded an area in order to prevent a dam burst that would have had an even worse impact. (I have friends over there, too, and it's been ... hard to maintain contact.) ------ univalent My mother is stuck with some neighbors on the second floor of my house. First floor is 3/4 flooded. They are OK for now but food and water is going to become a problem if the rains don't let up :-( My aunt had to be evacuated by boat from her place. I haven't lived in Chennai over 15 years but it is surreal to see the pictures. Very frustrating that the government spent money on laying fiber and setting up a subway system over the past few years without doing anything to improve the drainage system. The city faces cyclones every year. This was just waiting to happen. ~~~ praneshp I empathize with you (my dad lives in chennai, and we are yet to make contact with one of my friends). The worst seems to be over, so hopefully the city will be fine. I moved out 3 years ago, so I wanted to reply to the fiber/subway part of your comment. Those two were absolutely essential, and a better drainage system would not have helped much in the floods. In the last 10 years or so, there has been ridiculous construction on what used to be lakes, and today the worst affected areas are those. See my comment here on HN from almost 2 years ago . ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7881544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7881544)). This was waiting to happen, but not because the drainage system sucks, there is literally nowhere to drain the water off to. ~~~ univalent A dumb question: Shouldn't they be able to setup drainage into the ocean? ~~~ praneshp I hope they will do that with the (1000Cr - corruption) they got as relief package. It's clear the lakes aren't coming back. ------ sudhirj Chennaite here. Large parts of the city are submerged and a lot of phone networks and lines are down. The rains have stopped for now, though, so the situation can only get better until they start again. ------ kasapisa Well, technically speaking, that's not true exactly because, they are off, 4 or maybe 5 days a year during major festivals. Remarkable achievement, nonetheless. ~~~ manojlds Unplanned stoppage of publishing maybe the right term. ------ antoaravinth My mom stays in Chennai, I should say the situation is worse. No phone networks makes it even worse. Its been almost 19hrs I spoke with her. Pray for Chennai. ~~~ manojlds I am in Chennai. Twitter is good place to reach out with hashtag #chennairainshelp. Tell me if I can do something to help. ~~~ antoaravinth Thanks for your reply. Mom called me from landline few mins ago and said she is safe. ------ noipv4 Friends have been reporting that the ground floor of their homes are 3/4th submerged.
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Ask HN: You have a monthly subscription to hardware product – how do you price - samstave Assume widget one costs you 100, and they will pay monthly for 3years for the device. How much do you charge per month?<p>And widget 2 is 30<p>And they will have hundreds of widget 1. But thousands of widget 2.<p>Is there some standard models I can follow? ====== Finnucane Isn't that basically a lease? Is the user returning the product or is there an option to buy at the end? ~~~ samstave I wasn't quite sure if widget lease amortization? would be the same for a small widget as opposed to a car. And no - they would not purchase. Monthly service subscriptions for SaaS/PaaS are priced how? Total cost of doing business/number of clients+profitEpectation/time etc?
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Show HN: Toc Messenger – A distributed messaging app that syncs across devices - lewisl9029 https://github.com/lewisl9029/toc ====== lewisl9029 Hi HN, Toc is a project I've been working on for more than a year now. I'd love to hear what you guys think about it. =) Toc is a proof-of-concept distributed messaging app designed from the ground up to support user data synchronization for use across multiple devices. It uses Telehash for its messaging stack, and is built on top of an Om-inspired architecture oriented around a central app state tree that gets encrypted using a custom encryption layer for persistence locally, and then synchronized seamlessly between devices using remoteStorage. Originally, Toc started as our group's fourth year Computer Engineering design project at the University of Waterloo. After we graduated in May, I wanted to polish it up a bit before releasing, but evidently went a bit overboard and ended up working on it for another six months (albeit with a healthy dose of procrastination sprinkled throughout that period). Toc is only a proof-of-concept, and has a list of awful issues that makes it rather unsuitable for long term general use. However, I'm hoping that by releasing Toc, we can bring more attention to the awesome technologies for building great decentralized applications that Toc uses, and inspire more developers to take another serious look at building distributed apps, as I hope we have demonstrated with Toc that a decentralized app can in fact have great UX if you design your apps with UX in mind from the start. With that said, I am now officially looking for work. If you have any openings for a ClojureScript frontend project, or a React project that makes heavy use of functional techniques and immutable data, I'd love to hear about it. You can reach me through the email on my GitHub profile[1], HN profile[2] or through my Toc account[3]. ;) (disclaimer: that last option might not be completely reliable) [1] [https://github.com/lewisl9029](https://github.com/lewisl9029) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lewisl9029](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lewisl9029) [3] [http://toc.im/?inviteid=9b0d50b86dd596aa8c7a94bd116c2ed4a24f...](http://toc.im/?inviteid=9b0d50b86dd596aa8c7a94bd116c2ed4a24ffb0f2d88d44231d3747f655fb27a) ~~~ gobengo Dude. Nice. Is this the most advanced GUI Telehash Client? ~~~ lewisl9029 Glad you like it! Not sure about whether it's the most _advanced_... Toc's feature set is pretty sparse (text chat only) considering what Telehash is capable of. We do hope it's the most user friendly one though. =) ------ Nilzor Interesting. How does this scale? Any idea on how the clients world perform with say, 10000 users logged in? ~~~ lewisl9029 The seed server I'm running probably can't handle all of them doing bootstrapping at the same time, but once they're bootstrapped and have their own lookup tables stored locally, theoretically it should scale much better than a traditional centralized app since individual messages and status updates won't need to be coordinated through any single server. Of course, the Telehash version I'm using is very old and unsupported, so there's no guarantee that its integrated DHT can handle any significant scale. ------ philprx Great. However... Your name is way too close to Tor Messenger which last release a few days ago shows very good progress. Why this matters? Your project states that it's not secure. Their project aims at being secure. One person wanting security may inadvertently install your and end up being in a less secure state as what he would get with Tor Messenger. Changing names following name space collision is no big deal... At the beginning ;) When your name is well known it's a total different matter. ------ dksidana Have you planned for group chat as well ? ~~~ lewisl9029 Yep I did plan for it. All messages in the app are sent through channels that support an arbitrary number of recipients. That arbitrary number just happens to be always set to 1 at the moment. A naive group chat implementation (i.e. an inefficient one where every participant sends each message to every other participant until they receive it) should be very doable, but I decided against implementing it for the release because it'd add quite a bit more complexity and would be rather tedious to test. ------ humbleMouse Looks pretty sweet, going to have to give this a look. ------ z3t4 Can I talk to someone not on my seed server? ~~~ lewisl9029 Probably not, unless the DHTs the two of you belong to are connected somehow. For example, if the other person's seed server uses your seed server as a bootstrapping server. ------ trengrj As mentioned in the readme, the name is really unfortunate given Tox exists.
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Realtime encoding - over 150x faster - felixge http://transloadit.com/blog/2010/12/realtime-encoding-over-150x-faster ====== JonnieCache Maybe, if we keep bringing it up on here, startups will finally start putting a couple of lines of boilerplate at the top of their blog pages so we will know what on earth it is that they do when we end up there from HN. A guy can dream, can't he? At least this time the logo at the top links back to the main product page. Oh, and I see that the title text of the logo has just such a description! You're almost there guys! ~~~ felixge Thanks for the suggestion, we definitely screwed that up. ------ aquark I don't really get the 150x bit: "Since our servers can encode video much faster than most of your users can upload it, this means there is literally no more delay between the end of the upload and the video finishing encoding. In the screencast above this makes a 150x speed difference." Surely the upper bound is 2x if you could transcode faster than the upload before. Unless you are just measuring the time between the upload finishing and the transcode being done. But why would a user care about that metric rather than the total elapsed time? ~~~ felixge > Unless you are just measuring the time between the upload finishing and the > transcode being done. That is what we are measuring indeed. > But why would a user care about that metric rather than the total elapsed > time? Because that is the time where the user feels he has already done his part, but the site he is on is taking forever to do what he needs it to do. Another reason why we measure the time from upload done to encoding done is because that's what our customers pay us to do. ~~~ sophacles I demand you address the OP question of why you haven't fixed the physical constraints of crappy upload bandwidth? Seriously, wtf would we pay your for otherwise? </snark> ~~~ felixge As funny as this sounds, fixing the upload bandwidth problem is also something we will work on. Getting a good route between your users and servers can make a real difference. So at some point in the future we'll offer upload servers in all major geographic areas. ~~~ nitrogen It's interesting how difficult this can be. I was recently evaluating Linode locations for a new virtual server, and though I'm geographically much closer to California, the Texas location gave me almost 20x the download speed. To be precise, I was able to download from a California node at 300K/s, while I got close to 6MB/s from Texas. Comcast used to route my traffic to California through Seattle, Washington, then down to San Jose and then Fremont, but now, it's going to Texas first, then across to San Diego, then up to Fremont, across a saturated link. ------ dkubb It's nice to see people thinking about processing input as a stream rather than waiting for the entire message to be received before doing anything. If you start to think about input and output in web app as streams rather than buffered data, alot of neat possibilities arise for reducing latency. ~~~ jon_dahl This is often true, but not always - some video formats put header data at the end of the file, not the beginning, so you can't just start encoding as bits come in. Or if you can, you're encoding blind. ~~~ felixge Sure, but we think it's possible to "prepare" those videos on the client site before uploading. ------ GeneralMaximus A video starts playing the moment you navigate to that page. Note to OP: please add a play button to your video. The video should start only if the user has specifically requested it. It took me a minute to hunt down the tab that was the source of noise in my otherwise quiet work environment and, once I found it, I killed the tab without even glancing at the page title. ------ felixge As you can probably tell, we are super excited about this, feel free to ask me anything : ). ~~~ zdw This is really neat, but since you said "anything"... I have a legal question that I haven't been able to find the answer for: How do you deal with the licensing issues regarding open source encoding software? Do you pay the MPEG-LA a fee directly for use of the software? Is it per file/per minute/flat fee? Just wondering about the mechanics of this, mainly for an in-house streaming application. ~~~ jon_dahl IANAL, but generally, you need a license if you're using open-source encoders or decoders and you're the one who actually compiles them. (Again, not a lawyer, but that changes ffmpeg from "a source code description of an encoder" to "an encoder.") MPEG video stuff is generally pretty cheap or free for low volume. Audio codecs are fairly expensive, on the other hand. AAC + MP3 + AMR is >$20K in minimum fees. ------ tstrong One small question: if a user has their upload stream redirected to your service, and for some reason this upload is unable to finish, are we now forced to have the user try the upload again? It seems one advantage of the two step process would be the ability to try the process again on behalf of the user rather than making them wait and that should be weighed into the convenience formula. I've never used your service so I'm not sure exactly how the upload stream is redirected to your platform, so this concern might not be totally valid if the upload is running through the client platform anyways. ~~~ felixge > if a user has their upload stream redirected to your service, and for some > reason this upload is unable to finish, are we now forced to have the user > try the upload again? If the upload doesn't finish the user needs to redo it. > It seems one advantage of the two step process would be the ability to try > the process again You got me confused here. If the upload never finished, there is nothing you can do to fix this. That being said, resumable file uploading is the next thing we'll tackle. ~~~ tstrong > It seems one advantage of the two step process would be the ability to try > the process again I should have been more specific: consider the special case that the encoder on your side encounters a random error whereas just a "plain" upload to the client platform would have finished, so precluding any network transmission errors. Although, with resumable uploading and a simple go-between service on the client platform between the user and your platform all manner of fanciness could be achieved, I think. Thanks for quick response! ~~~ jemfinch Your question is answered in the link itself. Did you read it? ------ matwiemann The biggest challenge to me seems to be spinning up instances once you get a spike of realtime jobs in parallel. Keeping the 'realtime' promise is often hard once your systems go into production. ~~~ felixge Of course. But since most people upload with insanely slow speeds, we can actually handle a spike much better with this feature than we could before : ). ------ cnanon Isn't the whole purpose of pre-encoding before uploading is so that you shrink the file size and upload faster? Why would I want to upload 4GB of video when I can encode it down to 700MB then upload? ~~~ ItsBilly It's not for end-users. It's a service for developers to add to their web application. You can certainly try to coax all your users into pre-encoding their video - and understanding how to do that - if you like.... ------ csytan Kudos on launching the new feature! The pricing is a tad expensive, but doesn't look bad at all when you consider the need for an on demand encoder for the entire time that the user is uploading. ~~~ felixge We know we're a little expensive. But we did this so we could lower pricing in the future (which we will), and to attract people who are getting more value out of our service initially. If you have a project and pricing is a deal breaker, just email us and we'll set you up with a discount. ------ damienkatz I was thinking this should be done in realtime on the client machine and streamed up the server. Then you cut down on both transfer and encoding time, and use far less server resources. ~~~ felixge This means shipping a plugin, or porting ffmpeg and friends to flash / javascript. Maybe something to think about if we ever decide to raise VC : ). ~~~ detst Isn't this a great use case for Native Client? Maybe it's not ready but it seems to be something to look forward to. ------ jey " _While this sounds easy in theory, it is rather difficult to pull off on most stacks._ " Why is it difficult on most stacks? Because it's tying up a request handling thread? ~~~ felixge Because most stacks don't have a single threaded, non-blocking I/O event loop. Sure you can do this with threads, but it's gonna get very tricky to pump data between a socket, file and process using threaded programming. ~~~ jey First, I agree that it'd be silly not to use thread-per-CPU non-blocking I/O. However, I don't see why it'd be tricky in a threaded server. The thread gets an fd to recv() the incoming data from, and it popen()s an ffmpeg process then loops to recv() and write() the data until done. ~~~ felixge I'm not saying it can't be done. In fact the multipart parser we have build for transloadit has already been ported to C++ [1] and I imagine Java has decent libraries as well. But most people just sit on a request/response oriented Python/Ruby/PHP stack with possibly stupid buffering load balancing in between (nginx buffers uploads). If you build this from ground up, it is certainly possible with a lot of technologies. [1] <https://github.com/FooBarWidget/multipart-parser> ------ nitrogen Is that "contact us" link correct? It adds an e-mail address to the end of the URL, which conveniently opens a comment page, but it still seems wrong. ~~~ felixge Ouch, fixed it. Thanks for letting me know! ------ jared314 It is not faster, just parallel processing with the upload buffer. This would be a nice feature to add to most web servers/web scripting environments. ~~~ felixge The fact that it's not actually faster is the entire beauty of it. While our competitors have been super busy to actually make their encoding faster, we have just taken a huge bite of free launch by making the encoding happen in parallel. ------ falsestprophet You may want to avoid using the word "sucks" in a professional context because there is a population of people for whom the word evokes the idea of oral sex. Try substituting "is not so good." This will have the added virtue of being super charming in your German accent. edit: I usually don't bitch about being downmodded. But don't you guys know any old people? And know that old people tend to be in charge of things? In any event, you shouldn't rely upon business leaders of any age being ignorant of the language. -<http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sucks> 5\. Vulgar Slang To perform fellatio on. -suck, Old English sucan, corresponding to Latine sugere "to suck." It's of imitative origin. Meaning "do fellatio" is first recorded 1928. -Slang sense of "be contemptible" first attested 1971 ~~~ jonursenbach Since when has the word "sucks" evoked that? ~~~ StrawberryFrog Since before it hung out with the hip words.
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How will my plan to build and sell aluminum unibody laptops fail? - butimnotarapper * Aluminum unibody<p>* Normal scissor-switch laptop keyboard<p>* Off the shelf high resolution IPS panel<p>* Large glass trackpad<p>How hard could it be?<p># Design<p>Laptops don&#x27;t need a lot to be a world apart from plastic laptops that flex and creak and overheat. Apple seems to be the only manufacturer that knows this, apart from IBM with the ThinkPad which Lenovo is now diluting (RIP) and Microsoft lately (shoutout). Key is a sturdy unibody bottom piece made of a material with good heat conduction (aluminum). Run the fans only when you have to, avoid filling up with dust. Basically get &quot;inspired&quot; by Apple&#x27;s Macbook Pro. Copy it&#x27;s airflow design.<p>Make it have a simple, attractive shape with flat surfaces and rounded corners. Taper off the edges to make it seem thinner and also to allow it to be picked up from a flat surface.<p>Get a good off the shelf high resolution IPS display.<p>Have a large glass touchpad.<p>Sacrifice 1-2mm of &quot;thinness&quot; and put a proper normal scissor-switch keybard in.<p>75-100 watt-hours of flat lipo batteries.<p>Put in a couple of key ports that are sorely missing from the MacBook. Don&#x27;t go overboard, save yourself from the cost and complexity.<p># Execution<p>Hire one or two highly experienced electronics design and manufacturing professionals. Hire a core team of highly motivated and moderately to highly experienced engineers. Start with only one model: the 15 inch. Go for a price around $1000-1500. Market at small scale to developers for the first couple batches of laptops. Iron out potential quirks in product, supply chain, and customer support. Then, if all stars align: launch at $999, same hardware features as a MacBook Pro plus some ports minus the touchbar. Create and ride the Macbook killer media hype and simultaneously run a quality &quot;hip, cool, and happy people use this laptop&quot; marketing campaign to build the brand. Get more funding and run more marketing campaigns. Sell a lot of laptops to people who want a great aluminum unibody laptop. Profit. ====== kitsunesoba I would argue more than hardware (there are decent-ish non Apple options out there), the problem lies in software. As such I think perhaps a better plan would be to start a company that owns the entire end-to-end user experience of a Linux distro, ruthlessly chasing down inconsistencies, jank, rough edges, etc and putting huge priority into responsiveness and “just working” over being interesting or novel. Some would argue that Canonical does this with Ubuntu, but I don’t think they go far enough... if they did, practically nobody would consider anything but Ubuntu for desktop usage, but that’s far from the truth. I would even go as far as forking major FOSS projects like LibreOffice and giving them the same treatment (upstreaming the more universal improvements, of course), making the apps fit perfectly into your distro. Include WINE by default along with “profiles” that are constantly updated and automatically kick in when running popular Windows programs (eliminating tedious config). Find 2-3 PC vendors to tightly couple with for day 1 support on new models and such. Essentially, you’d be reproducing Apple’s software software strategy except fully FOSS, making money off of support and PC vendor kickbacks. ------ wmf The NRE would be millions, maybe over $10M and the COGS alone would probably be $1,500 so I don't think the unit economics work. An ODM model might be a better idea; ASUS is probably willing to design and build a customized ZenBook with your logo for a much lower price than you could do it as a separate company. ------ tlb There are a few products out there like what you describe: Dell XPS: [https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell- laptops/xps-15/spd/xps-...](https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell- laptops/xps-15/spd/xps-15-9560-laptop) ASUS Zenbook: [https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ASUS-ZenBook-Pro- UX501VW/](https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ASUS-ZenBook-Pro-UX501VW/) That doesn't mean you can't do better. I think the machinery to make unibodies will mean a large capital cost, so you might need large volumes make the economics work. ~~~ wmf Also [https://www.razer.com/comparisons/blade](https://www.razer.com/comparisons/blade) and [https://consumer.huawei.com/us/tablets/matebook-x- pro/](https://consumer.huawei.com/us/tablets/matebook-x-pro/) ------ thiago_fm It will fail because building laptops isn't a profitable business as you think. The margins kind of sucks and the equipment in order to make it is very expensive. I don't believe Dell or those companies that make it, make the whole thing. They generally don't even assembly it. It makes no f. sense as companies are able to work in limited scope, otherwise they start to become very ineffective. Companies that make money with it probably make it due to having a large scale and being able to negotiate a good price for the hardware it gets in. If I would try to do so something, I would try to understand well the business and see what makes it expensive. For example, is it physically feasible to make the bodies cheaper in a 10x scale? If yes, then maybe open a company that sells only that part that you figured out and after you try to get into that market. It's a very, very, very tough market. If you think it is a good business, buy those companies stock. I wouldn't though. ~~~ butimnotarapper Do the margins really suck on a $6000 Macbook Pro? I have a strong feeling there's a significant margin on these laptops, even the $2400 Macbook Pro. ~~~ notahacker The OP isn't Apple. They're competing with sub $1k laptops made by reputable manufacturers who spread their branding and marketing costs across a lot more products, probably by trying to offer higher-value internal components which must be acquired without access to the larger manufacturers' low cost supply chain and bulk discounts. ------ slipwalker try to pick and choose your hardware to be 110% compatible with macOS. Be a cheaper (clone) Mac, and let the users to easily hackintosh it... but with proper plausible deniability.
{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Video Brewery Crowdsources Explainer Videos for Startups - conceptfeedback http://www.videobrewery.com ====== GR8K What percentage does videobrewery get & what percentage the artists get?
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It’s Time for Open, Shared Home Wi-Fi - kennethfriedman http://recode.net/2014/08/05/its-time-for-shared-open-home-wi-fi/ ====== xur17 I'd be happy to share my extra bandwidth, but then I have to worry about people pirating content or viewing illegal files, and getting stuck with the legal issues. Since it's of no direct benefit to me, this makes the effort not worth it. Basically, I need some way to keep that traffic from being attributed to me - send it over tor, some sort of vpn, etc.
{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Test Driven Development Cargo Cult - d0ugal http://ntoll.org/article/tdd-cargo-cult ====== jones1618 tl;dr - Developer writes a legitimate test to prove Test Driven Development will force us to write decent code. We write code that cheats by using knowledge of the test to pass in the lamest possible way. This proves that TDD is worthless? Really? I agree with his view that TDD has a "behaviorist" mindset if approached in the most superficial way. But, his example only shows that while you can go out of your way to perfectly cheat a unit test, if they had programmed a sensible component (that also happened to pass the unit test) they'd have some assurance that it was in good working order. That's all that unit tests do. Create simple tests to assure basic functionality. Add more complex tests to verify more complex functionality and wider range of test cases. Rinse and repeat. ~~~ d0ugal > This proves that TDD is worthless? No and the I don't think the article suggests anything along those lines or attempts to prove anything.
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No, Brits aren't googling 'What is the EU?' because they don't know what EU is - tekheletknight http://www.geektime.com/2016/06/25/no-brits-are-not-googling-what-is-the-eu-because-they-dont-know-what-the-eu-is/ ====== Nadya First politically-related thing I've bookmarked in ages. I especially love the comparison to the "What is the internet?" thing. The media bias/slander for "What is the EU?" trending speaks more to me about the current state of mainstream media and it's blatant biases than it does the "stupidity of Leave voters" that the media and even a good portion of people is trying to push. ------ CyberFonic Many of the people who voted to leave - do not know what Google is ! ------ DanBC > What is more plausible? That millions of British citizens don’t actually > know what the European Union is This is very plausible. Look at the terrible UK newspaper coverage of the EU (so poor that the EU needed a mythbusting page[1]). Ask a few British people if they know what bits of the EU do what. Add to that the misinformation coming from political parties over the past few decades, and especially from the Leave / Remain campaigns over the past couple of weeks. There are people who voted who honestly think that it would reduce the number of migrants (It won't). [1] [https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/category/euromyths/](https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/category/euromyths/) ~~~ J_Darnley The EU debunking myths about themselves is really believable. I especially like the one about TTIP: "Regulatory cooperation under TTIP can help businesses and consumers. It cannot undermine lawmaking powers". Yeah(!) ISDS doesn't undermine national laws and courts(!) ------ Scoundreller europa.eu seems to be hugged to death at the moment. And I just want to find out if my wife can force the retailer of her headphones to fix them under the Product Warranty directive...
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NetWare 3.12 server taken down after a decade and a half of duty - pavel_lishin http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/epic-uptime-achievement-can-you-beat-16-years/ ====== RexRollman Previously submitted twice with no comments each time (but I think it is a cool article as well): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7385399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7385399) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5462445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5462445)
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