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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".
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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 "diffs".<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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{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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? :)
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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 / 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 / understanding of:
o Graph theory and open source graph databases, such as Neo4j and/or GraphDB
o Agile processes and workflows
o Scripting languages (Python, shell scripting)
o Front-end development practices (HTML, React, SCSS)
o Test suits/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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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!
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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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)
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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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/)
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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>"If I try to play hardball they'll just offer it to the next highest ranked student"
"In the contract it says the company can just fire you provided 2 weeks notification, especially if you start trying to change the offer"
"Most companies have large HR departments that scope out other companies' intern salaries, so it's no use negotiating anyways"
etc, etc.<p>So my question is: Is the fear of having a job offer retracted at all reasonable?<p>I'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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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!
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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?
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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!
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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?
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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 / cons?<p>Also say you work remotely, are self-employed / 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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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>
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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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?
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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'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 "inspired" by Apple's Macbook Pro. Copy it'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 "thinness" 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'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 "hip, cool, and happy people use this laptop" 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.
|
{
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Video Brewery Crowdsources Explainer Videos for Startups - conceptfeedback
http://www.videobrewery.com
======
GR8K
What percentage does videobrewery get & what percentage the artists get?
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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"
}
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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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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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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...
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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)
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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