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Show HN: Markdown Navigator - neilellis https://vladsch.com/product/markdown-navigator ====== neilellis This isn't my product (no affiliation), but it so awesomely good that I had to share it with everyone.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Coffee drinking linked to lower mortality risk again - colund http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/coffee-drinking-linked-to-lower-mortality-risk-again/ ====== parasight I fight nasty withdrawal symptoms like severe headache, fatigue, and rheumatic pains right now after not drinking coffee for two days. It feels like a really bad flu. From experience I know that this will be better very soon. That is the reason why I want to give up coffee completely. I don't want to be addicted to a substance. I don't like to get headache or feel tired only because I choose to not drink coffee for a day. Maybe there will be a day when I can not get a coffee. I don't drink that much coffee. A pot of coffee in the morning and usually 2 - 3 espressos during the day. I guess I am sensitive to it. ~~~ barry-cotter > I don't drink that much coffee. A pot of coffee in the morning and usually 2 > - 3 espressos during the day. I guess I am sensitive to it. That is a lot of coffee. I have an Americano in the morning. If I have two it's not great for my stomach and if I have two in the morning I really better not have one again until five. If you're drinking it as your drink rather than as a stimulant try switching to tea. ~~~ dasboth I agree, I'd say that's a lot. I have two shots a day (either espressos or americanos, usually one of each) and I find that if I have a third I always feel terrible. I get agitated and jittery, so I guess that's a way to control my intake because I always stop at 2 now. ------ yojo I'm skeptical that it is sound to just throw out smokers and make a claim about coffee health benefits. By taking people that use a lot of one common addictive substance (caffeine) and none of another (nicotine) they might just be selecting people with low potential for addiction/high will power. I believe those kinds of people might have lower mortality rates for reasons other than coffee consumption. ~~~ polyfractal It's very common to remove smokers from studies like this (anything looking at mortality). Smoking increases your chance of so many health issues: heart disease, lung cancer, COPD, high blood pressure, stroke, aortic aneurysm, general infection due to chronic inflammation, etc etc. It's well documented and pretty unambiguous. If you smoke, your risk of all the above increases dramatically. Which means as a researcher you can't leave these people in a study looking at mortality rates since they would confound the results too much. Basically, the risk of confounding your results with smoking-related mortality is a bigger problem than biasing your population with fewer people who consume addictive substances. _Source: I 'm an ex-molecular biologist, my significant other is a PA._ ~~~ paulddraper That's not what confounding means, from a stats perspective. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding) Excluding smokers can cause a confounding variable, not the other way around. A better choice of word would be "obscure", as including them will make it harder to reach significance (though the end result should be the same, if the variable was not confounding). ~~~ polyfractal Oops, sorry, you're right. It was very early this morning and pre-coffee when I wrote that, was paraphrasing colloquially instead of technically (and not thinking) :) ------ andrewvc These studies that equate lower mortality with good for you ( that is always the implication ) are quite harmful I think. When people say "I just read something that says coffee is good for you again" that's where the harm is done. This says only that you may die a little later in life, the question of whether it is good for you is alltogether separate. Now it may be that things that make you live longer are generally good for you in the comprehensive sense, but there are better ways to measure that. ------ google15 Fascinating study, and the journal article is free online[0]. It's an observational study, but of a single occupation and large N, with many other factors accounted for[1]. My take is that coffee, like other psychoactive substances, contains powerful chemicals that are likely to have _some_ effect on total mortality. I will stick to my two cups a day. [0] [http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/10/CIRCULA...](http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/10/CIRCULATIONAHA.115.017341.abstract) [1] _The regression models included calendar time in 2-y intervals as the time scale, and were stratified by age in years. In the multivariable analysis, we further adjusted for body mass index (BMI), physical activity, overall dietary pattern (aHEI), total energy intake, smoking status, sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and alcohol consumption, all of which were updated from follow-up questionnaires._ ~~~ wobbleblob How did they correct for people who reduced their coffee use because of failing health? I mean, have they proven once and for all that drinking coffee is good for you, or just that healthy people drink more coffee? When you are diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes, heart disease etc, you tend to get the advice to drink less coffee. Older people start drinking less coffee as their health declines because it makes them jittery. ------ cageface As much as I love coffee and I'm happy to hear that drinking it is actually healthy, I think I'm just personally too sensitive to caffeine for it to be beneficial overall. My baseline stress level goes way up even with one cup a day and I have a much harder time falling and staying asleep. For some reason tea doesn't affect me as much. ~~~ chrisballinger I've heard that the L-Theanine [1] in green tea is responsible for a calmer caffeine effect. Although I haven't tried it, I've heard that you can get the same results by taking a supplement before your morning coffee. 1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theanine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theanine) ~~~ sbank I second this, and have used it for years with caffeine for this exact reason. By itself it also has an anti-anxiolytic and calming effect, and has been used to treat ADHD as well. If you want to try it out, make sure you get Suntheanine. A dose that works for many is twice the theanine than caffeine, but YMMV. ------ dghughes I drank a moderate amount of coffee but it gave me heartburn both the acid and the caffeine caused my GERD to be bad so I cut back and switched to decaf now my GERD is 99% gone. But I may quit since it's decaffeinated using methylene chloride which doesn't look very gut friendly or maybe I just discovered a cure for GERD. ~~~ rikkus Choose coffee which has been decaffeinated using a safe process such as Swiss Water. There are even some beans which taste very close to proper coffee after decaffeination. ~~~ dghughes I agree but the Swiss water decaf method is hard to find or that method is not stated (So I assume it's the cheap way). I really don't drink enough to go out of my way finding it. ~~~ rikkus In the UK Swiss water decaf is everywhere - maybe 50% of decaf. I buy my coffee through Amazon UK and there are lots of 'safe' decafs there. ------ tmlee As much health benefits coffee has, always take then freshly brewed black. Tasty and prevents too much of sugar fat intake. ~~~ privacy101 Both fats and sugars are helpful too, if you don't abuse them (probably the same for coffee). ~~~ thatswrong0 (Certain) fats yes.. but sugar? I can't imagine that it's helpful in any way. ~~~ azm1 well you get suger in bread, fruits etc. You don't have to eat sweets to get daily intake of sugar(For example brain needs sugar for it to work). Brown sugar is definitely better as a sweetener compare to the white refined sugar as all the healthy parts are stripped. ~~~ orbifold The brain needs glucose to function not sugar, which is one glucose and one fructose. ~~~ dpratt71 In everyday English, when someone mentions sugar, they are probably talking about sucrose aka 'table sugar'. And you are correct that sucrose consists of a glucose and fructose molecule bonded together. In a more...official or scientific context, "Sugar is the generalized name for sweet, short-chain, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food." as Wikipedia puts it. That means that sucrose, glucose and fructose (and many others) are all considered to be sugar. ------ mkagenius Now my brain is confused. It says, drink lot of coffee but what about caffeine addiction? Also, should I filter the coffee as it increases LDL cholestrol? Some even say cholestrol is not that bad. Also, is 5-9% better mortality rate worth considering? What about other stuff people with better mortality consumed? Did you know the effects of those substances on mortality? ~~~ meowface Substance addiction would not necessarily affect mortality. In fact, addiction isn't necessarily bad for health at all, if you reliably feed it every day, and the beneficial effects outweigh the negatives one. For example, consuming moderate amounts of caffeine every day, but always at least 6-8 hours before bed. ~~~ mkagenius 3-5 cups seems too much to finish 6-8 hours before bed time. Seems like you will need to have coffee every two hours. ~~~ timClicks Really? I can have three cups before I leave for work some mornings.. ------ motosynthesis As stated in the article, we can't be certain of causation. I tend to prefer a simpler approach. The simple act of moving lowers the risk factors for cardiovascular disease. 5 cups of coffee per day is going to get most people moving. ~~~ semi-extrinsic > 5 cups of coffee per day is going to get most people moving. You could even hypothesise that people who live more hectic lives (and thus move more) are likely to drink more coffee.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bravo now casting Silicon Valley reality show - jamesjyu http://gigaom.com/2011/10/06/bravo-now-casting-silicon-valley-reality-show/ ====== rdl This kind of thing never goes well for the companies profiled. Earth Class Mail, a Seattle-based postal to digital mail interface, did another reality show ("Start-Up Junkies"), and I heard nothing good about the process from them. It might be a good choice for someone who just wants to be known as a "personality", vs. actually doing anything (Paris Hilton style), but nothing good would come of every up and down at a startup being documented (and distorted). ~~~ dmor It would also be tough to keep secrets about any deals, launches, etc ------ PStamatiou It appears there is a separate network casting for a different (competing?) show. A casting director got in touch with me: "I'm currently casting a show which is a Nerd/geek/intellectual competition based show, designed to showcase the passions and knowledge of nerds/geeks/intellectuals. It will be hosted by 2 of the original cast members from Revenge of the Nerds." It seems these things come around and fizzle away. In ~2008 I had a meeting with a director trying to pitch an idea to CBS/Sony about a potential pilot for some kind of reality show following around 6 entrepreneurs/startups in their daily life. I think they quickly realized how mundane startup life is and decided not to go through with it. They were going to pay to have a camera crew follow me around. I quickly told them that there would be no following around as I only ever worked at home in my apartment all day. ~~~ jamesjyu It's 2011. I think the world is now ready for the Stammy show. ------ swanson This sounds pretty groan-worthy - I'd be much happier to see more shows like Bloomberg's TechStars reality show or a software-focused Dragon's Den/Shark Tank than "The Real Silicon Valley Young Professionals". ~~~ hristov Those are not good examples either. They both suffer from the reality show disease: they try to set up artificial conflicts and show "larger than life personalities", i.e., try to get people to act like melodramatic idiots. ------ rmason There's already a reality show about startups: TechStars NYC <http://www.bloomberg.com/tv/shows/techstars/> Its not too bad but they're trying real hard to amp up the drama in the editing room. But with partners quitting and pivots galore it's not really needed. Willing to bet that pg has already turned down (wisely imho) attempts to bring the cameras into yCombinator. ------ naner Kevin Rose also posted a full copy of the letter a couple days ago: <http://twitter.com/#!/kevinrose/status/121724449551687680> <http://twitpic.com/6vp80w/full> ------ j_baker I'm reminded of this SMBC cartoon: [http://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1898](http://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1898) ------ felipemnoa Considering that a lot of time is spend in front of the computer not sure how much drama they can create. Plus, people in reality shows become diminished in my humble opinion so not so sure it would be a good idea for any serious entrepreneur to do this. You need to really focus on your startup and the cameras would only be a distraction. It would probably be a strong signal for investors not to invest in you. ------ chopsueyar ...and the bubble goes - _pop_ -. Like eDreams or Startup.com? ------ mkr-hn Penny Arcade TV is a good model to look at for this. ------ epicviking Real Housewives of Silicon Valley? Sign me up! ~~~ dmor now THAT i would watch ------ joshu Hah. I got this and just assumed it was crap. ------ jQueryIsAwesome \- "What are they doing this week?" \- "Coding" \- "You mean like sitting all day in front of the computer?" \- "Yep" \- "Ok... we are going to put some music and a lot of green zeros and ones like in matrix... for half an hour"	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft Sucks at Naming Products - wolfgke https://www.howtogeek.com/338120/microsoft-sucks-at-naming-products/ ====== at-fates-hands This is a huge pet peeve of mine since I've had several windows phones. Trying to find the "windows mobile app store" or "windows phone app store" online was nearly impossible since they kept changing the name. Then when they went to Windows 10 Mobile, they lumped all the apps together. You'd search for an app you found online and then find out it wasn't compatible with your phone when you searched the store on your phone. Trying to find any articles out about the Windows phone? Maybe you're looking for a better Twitter client or music player? Good luck. Some authors would use "Windows Phone" or "Windows Phone 8" or "Windows Mobile" or several different variations including the 10 versions depending on what the flavor of the month was. Do I want to do 10 different searches just to find a handful of reviews? Not really. It was so frustrating to and find _anything_ related to your version of Windows Mobile or whatever they were calling at any given time. It was just another issue that didn't help being a Windows phone user and made it even harder for Android users to switch over. Why would you want to switch if you can't even determine if the Windows Phone store has the apps you need? To me, this was another Achilles heel for the whole Windows phone experience and another reason their phones never did well. ------ simonblack The other annoying thing thing that MSFT does is to label _everything_ with its word-du-jour, so we had all sorts of .NET things, LIVE things, SURFACE things, etc. etc. So we might have 'Aardvark.NET' one day and then it's called 'Aardvark Live' the next. Way to confuse folks unnecessarily, Microsoft!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
WTF – A personal information dashboard for your terminal - jcamou https://wtfutil.com ====== cptnapalm I've been wanting something sort of like this for my login screen. Little box for the login, of course and a whole bunch of scary-to-everyone-but-me looking output, like hollywood ([https://github.com/dustinkirkland/hollywood](https://github.com/dustinkirkland/hollywood)). +1 if I could use the terminal emulator of my choice so cool-retro-term ([https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro- term](https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term)) could make it look like the screen is about to melt. ~~~ weinzierl The login screen is ultimately just a regular process. I haven't tried it but there is nothing against starting cool retro term and hollywood inside of it. The most difficult part is probably to make it display on the framebuffer. For the login itself you could then just reuse the decades old _login_ binary that provides the login prompt you see in text mode terminals, if you like. Shouldn't be too hard. ~~~ cptnapalm I did, naively, make an attempt once and it kinda sorta worked in a horrible "are you mad?" way with shell, ssh, xterm and Xephyr. It only worked with a couple of simple window managers and if you hit ^C at login prompt, it cooperatively dropped you to a prompt owned by root. Oops. Still, not bad for a relatively rapid prototype proof-of-concept. ~~~ weinzierl When I looked at the Linux boot process the first time I thought this just kinda sorta works in a horrible "are you mad?" way*:-). Just short of three decades later the boot process didn't really change a lot but I don't have the same feeling about it. I just got used to it and in the end all that matters is that it works. ------ carokann Neat. For people looking at alternatives for configurable dashboards i suggest sampler[0]. It has a weird license but free for personal use. You can report any output of a terminal command with a custom time rate. E.g. you can SSH and pipe HTOP of a remote system, query your local DB and do a timeseries etc. all in one place. [0]: [https://github.com/sqshq/sampler](https://github.com/sqshq/sampler) ~~~ TuringNYC These are all great, but I'm curious if anyone can suggest browser alternatives (I've looked before w/o success) -- It would be awesome to have something like this open up on the home browser tab. Any suggestions? ~~~ penagwin I'm in the same camp as you are, a funny method that would "kinda work" would be to use something like [https://github.com/yudai/gotty](https://github.com/yudai/gotty) but I feel like that's a pretty hacky solution haha. ------ maweki This looks pretty nice but without secret management it's not really that useful. Without that you can't share your configs or have your config in your dotfiles-repository. That makes it really not that portable. ~~~ senorprogrammer If you have thoughts on this, I'd love to hear your use-case. Issue #517 is specifically about this topic. ------ shay_ker Honestly curious - why do people live mostly in their terminal? Is it a productivity thing? ~~~ iwalton3 In my experience, it is easier to automate a workflow using command line applications. The GUI versions of tools have to try and predict every possible workflow, while terminal applications can be easily combined in scripts. That being said, there are definitely major productivity features to be had with GUIs, such as those with web browsers and IDEs. ~~~ shay_ker what's an example of a workflow you've automated on a terminal? ~~~ inetknght -> download 1000 files using curl, then validate their checksum, then build stuff -> take an almost-CSV report generated by one piece of software, remove a bunch of extra garbage at the top to turn it into an actual CSV file, then send the CSV file to data analysis pipeline. -> join two CSV files selecting columns 2,3 from one file and 4,5 from the other file, keyed on column 1 from both files. like excel but for CSV files sized in hundreds of megabytes -> take a bunch of CSV files and pump them into a rabbitmq queue -> query whether a queue is empty. if so, start a new analysis job. if not, sleep another hour -> grep for data in a directory to find specific files containing that data, then point those paths to another service I can go on all day. CLI tools are far more wieldy than GUI tools IMO. CLI tools give me a generally-stable interface (or at the very least, a straightforward method of parsing and adapting to changes) and usually have _way_ better documentation than GUIs. ~~~ shay_ker Many of these actions seem like something you'd just never do in GUI though? Except maybe some of the CSV stuff. ~~~ m_mueller See, there is a reason don't do this in a GUI. For a short while it looked like Apple's Automator would get there. Maybe Microsoft can crack this in a couple of years if they go nuts with python as a GUI scripting language with native OLE support. ~~~ jankiehodgpodge Powershell is already there. ------ dspillett Nice. I might have to try use it. I use tmux (wrapped in byobu) a lot and tend to end up with one screen (on each host I usual a fair amount) as a dashboard like this, manually constructed from many panes each running a tool like iftop, watching a log with "tail -f", or regularly running other checks via "watch", ... ~~~ sdan Why do you use byobu? Just curious as I only use tmux. ~~~ dspillett Habit as much as anything else. I used byobu around screen for a time before switching to tmux. I've not looked into what tmux can do by itself, compared to screen, without byobu's additions. ------ mjfisher The list of modules ([https://wtfutil.com/modules/](https://wtfutil.com/modules/)) looks really quite impressive. I can imagine getting some good use out of this ------ enriquto I would appreciate a list of requirements. Does it only work on mac? What kind of terminals can be used? ~~~ bogle Also available as a Docker container: [https://hub.docker.com/r/wtfutil/wtf](https://hub.docker.com/r/wtfutil/wtf) ~~~ enriquto I do not really see the point of providing docker containers for tiny command line programs. I feel like an old curmudgeon that cannot make sense of the modern world; at all. ------ unixhero You know. This _could_ be configured to be a, [really nice] poor man's Bloomberg Terminal. Yikes! Hold my beer! This will take all weekend. ~~~ kilroy123 If you do configure some kind of Bloomberg Terminal, please share! ------ MrCharismatist Google Apps/Calendar but no CalDAV for those of us who left the google mothership takes away a big reason I'd use this. ~~~ brbrodude It's FOSS though, if devs swarm it with contributions anything is possible ;P ------ atarian Why are so many of these command-line tools/dashboards written in Go? ~~~ hultner I haven't used Go much but I've gotten the impression that tooling is very good, it's easy to create a self-contained executable and startup time is low. All this while the language itself aims for simplicity and doesn't include a plethora of features rarely used or needed creating an almost python-like simplicity. ~~~ tamrix I can't be the only one. I just don't see a lack of features being a feature. You can easily statically link most languages by passing switches to the linker. Python like simplicity is a far stretch. Golang basically just C with co routines and some of the annoying syntax cleaned up. ~~~ ibly31 Lack of features hasn't stopped C from being an extremely useful and prolific language. Your last sentence, to me, reads as a pro rather than a con. C + coroutines - bad_syntax = Great language to me. Mind you, I don't use Go in a professional setting, so take what I say with a grain of salt. ------ thanatropism This actually looks really useful if you have multiple screens. (I tend to type on my laptop connected to a monitor above it.) I keep concocting shell prompts that are more and more complicated (current git branch, IP, python virtualenv and so on and so on) -- this might just be the ticket to stop wasting time on that. ------ Kaiyou My first impression was that it looks cool, but than I tried to think of a use case and failed. It still looks very cool, though. If I want to look anything up I just look it up, no need for something to run somewhere to occasionally glance on. ~~~ stjohnswarts You're probably not the typical user. This comes in handy for someone who always has a bunch of data inflow like a sysadmin, devops, tools person, etc. Or just an overworked programmer. ~~~ Kaiyou No, sorry, I was unclear. I do see the need for a dashboard (at work), just not for monitoring the things this one offers. And for my private workstation, which I was thinking of when posting before, I don't see the need. ------ hnarn This pairs very neatly with cool-retro-term[1] :-) [1]: [https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro- term](https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term) ~~~ Exuma Someone please install this and try it and take a screenshot. I just want to see it but don't want to do it myself haha ~~~ cmg Here you are. This is the standard config file with Euro time removed and fewer US timezones represented. I've blocked out my IP info. The terminal size in cool-retro-term is around 30x140-ish. [https://imgur.com/yb0G39m](https://imgur.com/yb0G39m) ~~~ hnarn Did you anonymize the entire image? Because the text is not supposed to look like that (i.e. unreadable). ~~~ cmg Interesting! If I have cool-retro-term on my external display (27" Thunderbolt display at 2560x1440), it's all messed up like that. On my MacBook Pro's built-in display, it looks like this: [https://imgur.com/BbVcyA7](https://imgur.com/BbVcyA7) ------ rpmisms Why does everyone feature a world clock in their information dashboards? Yes, it's a handy feature to have, and yes, it's easy to build, but very few people actually use them. ~~~ calvinmorrison very useful for multi-time-zoned projects. Working with overseas times means you get good at mental translation but with daylight savings, people moving around, new people on the project, etc - it becomes very handy. One of my favorite clock related features is in KMail where it says "Senders current time", which is often helpful as well. ------ roryrjb Does it support the mouse? I didn't see any mention of it and I haven't tried it yet. If not then I think this would be unusable for me. I live inside the terminal and use Vim, tmux but once a TUI gets quite complicated (another example for me is wee-slack plugin for wee-chat or multiple accounts in mutt) I struggle a bit and find I'm faster in a GUI. ------ darekkay This is really impressive. I'm currently developing a web-based personal dashboard [1] and I'm sure WTF will provide me a lot of inspiration here and there :) [1] [https://github.com/darekkay/dashboard](https://github.com/darekkay/dashboard) ------ kup0 I like this. Might actually use this as an always-on dashboard on one of my spare PCs. Probably could find a neat use for it. ------ andrewbinstock Does it run on Windows? I can't tell if the lack of Windows binaries is because the author didn't compile it/test it for the platform or because for some reason it won't run there. For a desktop project, supporting the OS of 60+% of desktops would seem a boon to adoption (putting aside the politics and all). ~~~ senorprogrammer Windows support is being tracked in issue #103 on GitHub. People have had success building from source. Automated Windows builds currently fail for reasons unknown. ------ BeetleB How does this compare with conky? ------ synunlimited Something very similar that I've used in the past [https://github.com/notwaldorf/tiny-care- terminal](https://github.com/notwaldorf/tiny-care-terminal) ------ brbrodude I'll definitely be trying this one out <3 Thanks for this work ------ Gys Reminds me of [https://getbitbar.com](https://getbitbar.com) to 'Put anything in your Mac OS X menu bar' ------ aluenakyla This is great. Probably one of my favorite things shared on HN in a while. Great job! ------ SergeAx I am curious why the binary is so large? Almost 60Mb, bigger than Docker. ------ champagnepapi This is super cool! Thanks! ------ ausjke wow this little CLI made my day! just installed it and used sample.conf and it already looks great, will customize it later but this will be used often by me, as I live and breath with CLI daily ------ cosmotic Also an option: a real GUI ------ rhacker It's odd that I can't find what "WTF" stands for, and if the F stands for the F-word, that's just pretty ghetto. Aaaand confirmed on the glossary page. I mean couldn't it have been something clever like "Wednesday Thursday Friday" ? ------ deadbunny Only takes x11 color names and not hex? wtf. ~~~ senorprogrammer The underlying libraries WTF is built upon use colour strings to define colours, so WTF does too. But this is a cool idea. Issue #546 has been opened for this. ------ ephaeton Obviously written by someone who is not living on BSD, and doesn't know about wtf(1) :( ~~~ deadbunny Good thing the binary is called wtfutil because of this very reason. ~~~ ephaeton not what I was getting at. I'm aware it's wtfutil on the cmdline. I was rather sort of amused that, say, I write a 'least squares' utility, call it 'ls' and have it be invoked by calling 'lsutil'. ...anyways, moving on with my life... ------ buckminster There's a detailed screenshot but I can't zoom to see the detail because the website designer has gone the extra mile to make it non-zoomable. Why do people do this? ~~~ johnisgood I do not know but I encountered this more often than not. Direct links to images are a rare occurrence in my experience. I usually just right click on the image, then click on "Open Image in New Tab" which will get me what I want. Off-topic but: was it not Google that tried to work around this so one could not do even this in the search results? ~~~ n8henry Google removed that functionality because of a settlement with Getty. ~~~ giancarlostoro That is awful and fundamentally flawed. If it's on my device, I can save it. Edit: Come to think of it, if it's on my device, it's already saved in some way, shape and form. Clearly nobody technical at that company made that decision to sue Google. What Google should of done is offered to advertise that an image is available to purchase... ~~~ dspillett _> awful and fundamentally flawed_ Unfortunately the law often does not make objective sense. And even when it seems to from your perspective, the way others interpret it does not. _> nobody technical at that company made that decision to sue_ Technical people can be arseholes too you know. Many patent trolls are technical people, not just legal eagles, for instance. ~~~ MichaelApproved > Unfortunately the law often does not make objective sense. This isn't about the law. It's unclear if the law would require something like this or not. Google decided not to find out by settling. The settlement terms were up to the two companies to decide and were not mandated by laws. ------ drKarl How does it compare to tmux or GNU screen? ~~~ caymanjim You could run it inside a tmux window. ~~~ smitty1e Needs an emacs mode. ~~~ abdullahkhalids First thing I thought of was, can I run this in a shell inside emacs?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How can DigitalOcean be so cheap? - jorgeecardona I've been trying to understand how can they offer for 10USD: 1Core, 1GB 20GB disk. I've been looking for massive dedicated servers in different providers but their prices are not even close. Even the spec of servers does not fit the needs for DigitalOcean service.<p>A machine with 8GB/2 cores can cost more than 100USD in almost any provider, but they need to virtualize 8 cores (I imagine they virtual core in DigitalOcean doesn't map to a real one), even using machines with 32GB/64GB the prices are extremely biased from DigitalOcean prices.<p>Just a little example:<p>- Softlayer: http://www.softlayer.com/dedicated-servers/all-servers<p><pre><code> 4 cores/4GB: 160USD 32 cores/32GB: 1699USD (DigitalOcean charges around 320 usd for something similar) </code></pre> - http://www.servercentral.com/cloudbuilder<p>14cpu/112GB: 1990USD (DO charges around 1120 for this) I imagine the 14cpus expand to more cores in this case.<p>Almost any other provider: Linode, gogrid, gandi, rackspace.<p>I was looking for companies in Amsterdam and I couldn't find enough info, softlayer has servers in there.<p>I just want to figure it out how can they provide such nice service at this prices, do you know of any other provider with cheaper prices for dedicated servers? Can you tell me a bit more about the possible infrastructure they are using? I don't know the full details in cost of a data center, but just compared with other companies it seems really amazing. Not even serverstack which is the former company of DigitalOcean CEO can make it.<p>Bye. ====== mschuster91 8GB RAM and 2 CPU cores? Uh, take a look at <http://manitu.de> \- 60€ a month for 8GB and 6 CPU cores. Real hardware, no VM stuff. Also, my bet is that they're overprovisioning physical hosts and move off resource-intensive VMs on demand. ------ staunch I run Uptano (<https://uptano.com>), so I have some experience with this stuff. We're offering dedicated hardware at really low prices. The biggest reason we can do this is by having really low overhead. Our pricing is competitive with doing it yourself. Most providers are baking in a lot of additional costs that have nothing to do with the actual cost of your server. Namely employees and centralized hardware infrastructure. ~~~ anonfunction _Each virtual server gets its own internal and external IP address. You pay nothing extra per virtual server._ So I can create hundreds of virtual servers to get the same amount of IP addresses? With your pricing being so low I have to doubt if you'll be around for long. ~~~ zagi Even though our pricing is low we still generate profit on every unit that we sell, therefore we will be around for a long time. We have a ton of expertise in the server industry and we've already been around for 18 months. Here's looking forward to the next 18 years :) ------ olefoo I suspect that they are overprovisioning vms If you notice how it can seem laggy when logging into your vm at first? And since the swap partitions of the physical host are all SSD's it's not impossible that they are oversubscribing memory as well. ~~~ zagi We do not oversubscribe memory and we do not provide SWAP space by default. Since its SSD based and memory is so cheap we recommend users size the machines according to their needs/requirements. ------ ibudiallo I have a small website that run on a custom built framework. I pay $10 a month. So far digitalocean works like a charm, recently I've had a swarm of visitors from reddit and didnt hurt a bit. I say so far I am satisfied with the service. ------ ksec Because you are not looking at the right place. Even OVH sells much cheaper Dedicated Servers then what you get in Softlayer. ~~~ jorgeecardona Constant (<https://www.constant.com>) also has cheaper server in <http://www.constant.com/servers/specials/> but OVH seems way much cheaper, do you know of any other provider like this? ------ YuriNiyazov I don't know, but they could be selling the extra capacity from serverstack for cheap.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
402: Payment Required - nmcfarl https://medium.com/@humphd/402-payment-required-95bc72f06fcd ====== nmcfarl Here's an old hacker news discussion about the 402 code in the spec which is fairly interesting: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7857236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7857236)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dimer – simplest way to write and publish beautiful docs - jmedwards http://dimerapp.com/ ====== adamrogersuk Wow. This app looks beautiful and so simple to use! Can't believe this was missing from my technical writing app arsenal.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why we are excited about Elixir - dynjo http://blog.oozou.com/why-we-are-excited-about-elixir/ ====== lectrick It's a great language that deserves more attention!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Day of the Dead website with 12 Free illustrations - Calebbarclay https://dayofthedead.holiday/design-kit/ ====== jordigh "Día de los muertos" sounds so weird to me, like we're talking about a particular group of dead people (say, the dead from a war) instead of the dead in general. I would say "día de muertos" and most Mexicans in Mexico agree. It's obviously a back-translation from the English which requires the article. I also wonder when did the face-painting tradition start. The first time I saw it was in 2005 at a Halloween party. I thought it was awfully clever and recognised it as inspired by Posada's catrinas. The popularity of Día de Muertos in Mexico is kind of strange. Most Mexicans did not observe most of the traditions that have now become popular. It was a very regional thing from Michoacán. Talking to other Mexicans, it seems that during the late 20th century, the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) started putting Día de Muertos and other regional Mexican traditions into the curriculum, which made knowledge of the holiday spread. It would be as if Mardi Gras became a national holiday of the US and became an icon of US identity worldwide. And then we have the James Bond Day of the Dead parade from a movie that we thought was so cool that we decided to do it for real. It's an odd thing to see traditions getting established during my lifetime. ~~~ lentil_soup I don't doubt it's known as "Dia de Muertos" over there, but technically "Dia de los Muertos" is also correct in Spanish. It's the day of the group of people that are dead. Just like you would say "Dia de las Madres", "Dia de los Niños", no? ~~~ jordigh I always heard "día de muertos". The first time I heard "día de los muertos", I thought it was some kind of protest over some massacre. We have many prominent groups of dead people in Mexico. :-( ------ corpMaverick Mexican here. Not everybody does the whole enchilada as it is portraited in the movies. On this day, my dad used to got to the cemetery to visit his parents. Clean the tomb and leave some flowers. But now that he is gone and I don't leave near him any more we are starting a tradition to make an altar with some photographs just to remember them and make sure that the members of the family understand that we didn't come from nothing, there is a family history and people that left a mark on what we are today. I think it is a beautiful tradition, not as fun as Halloween but it has deeper meaning. At least to us. ~~~ jordigh How old are you, and what part of Mexico are you from? I really think it was in the early 1980s when the SEP started to spread the holiday. It's kind of hard to figure out. ~~~ tremendo I am 55 and we did celebrate Día de Muertos back in the 60's. Then we would bring flowers for our deceased, and outside (and inside) the cemetery it would be a lively scene with basically the whole town there doing the same, vendors of flor cempasúchil, sugar skulls, little calaveras (skeletons), etc. it's been an event my whole life, and something my parents celebrated, it's not new. ~~~ tremendo I have to mention that it precedes "Día de todos los santos" so it's (or was) a two-day celebration. First remember the dead, then celebrate they've gone to heaven. ------ eldoza1 Assets load after about 15 secs, but oh man this is really well done! :) ------ blahpro Nice! I think there's an error in the bottom-left of the footer, which says "Day of the Day", instead of "Day of the Dead"? ~~~ Calebbarclay Thanks for that, got it updated. ------ forgotmypw It seems futile to bring up JS-off browsing in this thread, but I will anyway. ------ asdojasdosadsa For me, the images on the page won't load edit: 50% of them load, 50% give 504 ------ jameskegel None of the assets will load. ~~~ kodis I suspect that's just the server being suddenly overloaded. For me they load, but take a few minutes to due so. As always, try back later. ~~~ jacoblsievers Probably killed by reddit... ------ Isamu Very nice work!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Drone crashes into Space Needle - Animats http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-pilot-who-crashed-a-drone-into-the-space-needle-cou-1791160751 ====== Animats Some clown crashed a small drone into the Space Needle. At the time, workers were setting up a fireworks display there. The drone missed a fireworks array by about one meter. Bad place and time for bad drone operation.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Plague of Entropy - yarapavan http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2009/09/plague-of-entropy.html ====== yarapavan From the article: " When developers are writing code, entropy is low. When we submit bugs, we increase entropy. Bugs divert their attention from coding. They must now progress in parallel on creating and fixing features. More bugs means more parallel tasks and raises entropy. This entropy is one reason that bugs foster more bugs ... the entropic principle ensures it. Entropy creates more entropy! Finally there is math to show what is intuitively appealing: that prevention beats a cure. "	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why does Google Hangouts still not work in Firefox? - fletchowns It seems a little ridiculous that Google Hangouts video calling still does not work in Firefox 57. Why is it still not supported? ====== ungzd AFAIK, it uses NPAPI plugin. Chrome stopped supporting NPAPI plugins, but that only means user can't install them, Google chooses now what plugins you should have, and it bundles Flash and Hangouts with browser. These plugins are well hidden, no more chrome://plugins and I can't find them in filesystem. You can see "Extension: Google Hangouts" in Chrome Task Manager when Hangouts is active. But I still think it's not malicious trick for browser wars, more likely that they abandoned Hangouts and will shut it down after some time, launching even more half-working chat services before that, with machine learning, VR, brands engagement, integrated video news and other crap everyone can't live without. ------ bfrydl For the same reason Microsoft used to make things that only worked in Internet Explorer. ------ auganov AFAIK Google Hangouts uses non-standard WebRTC functionality. Found a decent write-up: [https://webrtchacks.com/hangout-analysis-philipp- hancke/](https://webrtchacks.com/hangout-analysis-philipp-hancke/) Can't tell you whether or not that's the real reason. But I can definitely confirm that the lack of widely supported 'Plan B multiplexing' is (was?) a real pain point for WebRTC devs. ~~~ Hydraulix989 Vanilla WebRTC in its current form is still too unstable to actually be usable for production video chat applications. Its limitations affect all of the leading commercial providers: Tokbox, Twilio, Agora, etc. For example, on MacOS, there is a severe breaking CoreAudio bug in WebRC that hasn't been fixed for over 3 years which affects 8% of users by causing unmuted microphones to not transmit any audio [1]. We've never seen this problem come up with Hangouts though. iOS builds for Google's WebRTC libjingle_peerconnection library have been broken for over 2 months, too [2]. It's no surprise that there is some core Hangouts team within Google building something else. Even Google's own AppRTC "reference" application implementation has some seriously questionable design decisions in its code (such as sending signaling messages to Google App Engine to forward over websockets). Google needs to figure out how to bridge the gap between both organizations so that everyone can benefit from the stability gains made by the Hangouts team. [1] [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/webrtc/issues/detail?id=4799](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/webrtc/issues/detail?id=4799) [2] [https://github.com/pristineio/webrtc-build- scripts](https://github.com/pristineio/webrtc-build-scripts) ------ db48x There is no technical reason, Google has simply decided that they won't support Firefox. ~~~ Sylos Hey now, they're "actively working to develop a solution that will enable Hangouts to work in Firefox without a [NPAPI] plugin" [0]. These things take time, you know. Especially with the limited resources of Google, Mozilla not already having announced the deprecation of NPAPI plugins two years ago [1] and there not already being a web standard, mainly pushed by Google, that enables video and audio calling for every modern browser out there [2]. [0]: [https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2017/02/google- hangouts...](https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2017/02/google-hangouts- temporary-issues-with-firefox.html) [1]: [https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi- plu...](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in- firefox/) [2]: [https://webrtc.org/](https://webrtc.org/) ~~~ robert_foss That's some hugh quality snark right there. Thank you good sir. ------ ascended It’s never not worked for me if you’re referring to [https://hangouts.google.com](https://hangouts.google.com) I use it daily as my primary IM and am primarily a Firefox user across all platforms. Never had an issue with Hangouts even after the Quantum update ------ NightlyDev I used to be a Firefox user, but I switched to Chrome. With the new Firefox and the way Google are doing things nowadays I'm really considering switching back. ~~~ goostavos I made the switch. I want to say its glorious, but there are definitely some pain points. Not with Firefox itself, mind you (it's seriously amazing), but with 3rd party apps. Things that I use every day _suck_ on Firefox. Top of the list right now is Lastpass, which while completely seemless on Chrome, doesn't even have the ability to copy a username or password on Firefox (what??) (anyone have a two-factor auth alternative?). Still, they really nailed it with quantum. The dev tools are excellent (finally!). I can deal with the second rate extensions if it means compartmentalizing just a small slice of my life from Google. ~~~ soupshield When I switched to Firefox I also switched to bitwarden for password management. Auto-filling is still in beta but I don't miss it. The Firefox extension is fast and simple to use. [https://bitwarden.com/](https://bitwarden.com/) ~~~ StavrosK I use the built in auto fill with Kee (for KeePass). It works great, my password manager types my passwords in initially and Firefox stores and syncs them across devices with reliable auto fill. ------ Molaxx Google search also looks lousy on Firefox mobile for no apparent reason. ~~~ dblohm7 They use user agent detection to serve Gecko-based browsers a lesser version of their pages. Override your user agent to WebKit and you'll see what I mean. ------ dmarlow Slack also doesn't support FF for its Slack Calls functionality. It's infinitely infuriating. ~~~ ascended Not true, I’m a work from home consultant and use slack calls vie Firefox several times a day without a problem even after the Quantum update ~~~ klez "Doesn't support" does not mean "doesn't work". It just means that if you have a problem with slack on Firefox that doesn't happen in Chrome, they will not go out of their way to fix it and, probably, that they don't test slack on Firefox (or not as much as they test it on Chrome). ~~~ dmarlow I should have been more clear. I meant that it doesn't work. I get a message saying that I should use chrome. I'll get a screenshot and update here. Here is their doc: [https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/205138367-Common- is...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/205138367-Common-issues-when- connecting-to-Slack) ------ dm319 Also web.whatsapp.com, mighty text and the allo equivalent - none seem to work on firefox. ~~~ jeroenhd Whatsapp Web works perfectly for me in Firefox, but only after messing with my adblocker settings; the website depends on javascript from at least three domains to work.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Books That Should Be Read - kiba I realize that I was not the only one who have a favorite book that I think everybody should read.<p>So, what books do you think that everyone should read, or at least should know about? ====== hga Ah, that turned out to be easier than I expected, after I remember that I always keep a copy to give to someone depressed (it fully satisfies the "or at least should know about" criteria): _Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy_ by David D. Burns, M.D. ([http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Therapy-Revised- Updated/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Therapy-Revised- Updated/dp/0380810336/)) This is the best popular treatment of cognitive therapy (nowadays cognitive behavioral therapy, I haven't read this newer edition). Anyone who's depressed really needs to try this out, with or without the aid of anti-depressants. The thesis is that you, at least in part, make yourself depressed by telling yourself depressing things that are largely false, about yourself, about what others are saying and doing to/about to you, etc.; in general, incorrect filtering of what you perceive. So you identify those things and do you best to correct your mis-perceptions. Since I read an earlier edition in the '80s, behavioral therapy has been added to the mix, and that's supposed to help (I can't vouch for it either way). Anyway, after I read this (and a few other cognitive psychology works) talking therapy became absolutely useless ... I'd "fixed" myself as much as possible in this way. (Knowledge of this is also _really_ useful to understanding the end of the Evangelion anime TV series (seriously, the creator was coming out of a multi- year bad period, "living by not dying").) ~~~ DanielBMarkham Second the Burns book recommendation. Burns wrote a book in the 80s about how to meet people. It was the best book I ever read on how to meet girls. No gimmicks, just advice that works. [http://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Connections-David-D- Burns/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Connections-David-D- Burns/dp/0451148452) ------ JacobAldridge Similar previous discussion - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=199722> Which, in turn, included links to these previous suggestions - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176710>, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110899>, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85840> ------ aarongough '1984' by George Orwell - Even after all this time it is a chilling look at one of the many ways a society can go wrong, particularly relevant these days because so many parts of it are coming true. 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson - Awesome cyberpunk novel that anyone with an interest in programming. 'The Night's Dawn Trilogy' by Peter F. Hamilton - Fantastically engrossing series of books that are so good you will finish them wishing they were longer. The portrait painted in the books is so vivid that you will remember it for years to come. (In case you can't tell, I like Sci-Fi :-p) ~~~ mikecane Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson ~~~ aarongough +1 for The Diamond Age, that is a killer book! ------ lochnessy "Ender's Game" [O.S. Card even wrote his own review on Amazon] "The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship" [a Bukowski book about getting high on making good work] ------ mikecane Hunger by Knut Hamsun, Wait Until Spring by John Fante, Post Office by Charles Bukowski, The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary, The Outsider by Colin Wilson, The Price of Greatness by Arnold M. Ludwig, Touched With Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison Just off the top of my head without any ordering. ~~~ s2r2 +1 for Hunger my recent favorite: Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner ------ kristianp Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Pirsig. The lecturer recommended this in a first-year computer science course, (a while ago now). ------ hellotoby Neuromancer - William Gibson Anything by Haruki Murakami ~~~ kimfuh I still get a kick out of playing the old Neuromancer game til now. ------ andrewhyde Catch 22, Monkey Wrench Gang. ------ kimfuh Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Survivorship bias: understanding the case studies that make everything look easy - KevinEldon https://alexdenning.com/survivorship-case-studies-easy/ ====== StijinM This is interesting. The obvious problem is it's natural to ask successful people how they became successful. That said, taking advice with a larger grain of salt and asking more difficult questions as you suggest and about "why, did this really work?" is definitely valuable.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Make the Metric system the standard in the United States - ovechtrick https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-metric-system-standard-united-states-instead-imperial-system/FndsKXLh ====== veidr It's obviously a great idea, and obviously (to Americans) unlikely to happen in the lifetime of anybody reading this forum. Does anybody else from America remember being taught the metric system in public elementary school, and being told that we'd be switching to it over the next few years? I was taught this around second grade (1981), I think based on the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act>), which was not just signed by some random interweb tubers -- it was signed into law by the president. But IIRC, it was a toothless and impotent piece of legislation that was effectively stymied by the US auto industry. P.S. Amusing visual evidence that the US system sucks: [http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/03/metric-...](http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/03/metric-system-1024x450.png) ~~~ smackfu Amusing visual evidence that speaking English sucks: <http://cnrsociety.org/images/English-Official_Map-s.png> ~~~ bjustin >1/6 is a rather sizable fraction of the world's population (India itself is ~1/6 or 1/7 at over a billion people). Are there any other languages that are official for so many people? The metric system graphic indicates <1/6 of the world's population highlighted as not using the metric system, making gp's point stronger. ~~~ funkaster > Are there any other languages that are official for so many people? Yes, Chinese for one. And Spanish closely follows English[1] [1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_numb...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers) ------ krschultz Most of the comments in this thread are talking about the units for personal height, weight, local road signs or for the weather forecast. Those are by far the _least_ important things to be worried about. All of those things are local and there is no carrying cost for them. There would be a cost to change all those signs and forecasts - for no real gain. However, dimensions of physical goods are a constant recurring cost to the economy. Anything that crosses the borders for trade (all resources mined/farmed, everything manufactured) has to be dealt with in both sets of units. There is massive redundancy in fasteners, components, scales, paperwork, etc. It requires companies to keep two sets of tools (and not just wrenches, also drills, taps, dies, cutters, etc). ~~~ JoeAltmaier THe 'sets of tools' argument is kind of spurious. I already have a box full of wrenches; I'd need some more in the box. Nobody argues 'lets get rid of 5/32 bolts, so I can get rid of that wrench'. Its the mental effort to rationalize them that is the real cost. Lets see, slightly larger than 1/4 - is it 7mm? or 8? or 9/32? ~~~ Xylakant When I had the tires on my buell motorcycle changed the guy here in germany only had metric wrenches. He had to "fix" one to get the wheel of. ------ SideburnsOfDoom Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say _nope_. The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish. ~~~ oneandoneis2 Actually, I think metric could be improved with a few imperial equivalents - A "metric foot" as 30cm, for instance - because they _are_ convenient measurements. e.g. If somebody asks me "How tall is that person?" it's easier to say "About five foot" rather than "I dunno, about 155cm?" (I'm British, btw) ~~~ sirn I only live in Metric-using country and I have no slightest idea how tall is five foot, whereas 155cm instantly comes to my mind as, ah, at around my eye level. It's all about familiarity. ~~~ danielbarla Sure, but that's 3 digits versus 1; if the requirement is to express common, human sized-objects with rough accuracy in as few words as possible, it works just fine. Really, it's all semantics (as you say), but there are specific cases where one might be a better fit than the other. It's the inconsistencies in imperial that are truly horrible, not the arbitrary standard unit... ~~~ cygx > Sure, but that's 3 digits versus 1 It isn't, really. If asked about my approximate height, I'd say 'eins-achtzig' ie 1.8m (notice me omitting the unit), which in practice also has only a single significant digit (or 2 if you account for tall people) and to me isn't any more unwieldy than '6 foot'. ------ stdbrouw I moved from Belgium to the US last year, and one of the things that surprised me was that metric measures actually see a fair amount of use in the States. It makes a convoluted system even more weird, but it's also just plain fascinating. 2L bottles of coke and 9mm bullets, miles except when people suddenly switch to kilometers, 50 meter pools and 5K jogging runs but a 120 yard football field, 2 oz shaving cream but eye drops come in a 20ml bottle and so on. Guess that's what globalization does for ya. ~~~ eloisant To be fair, non-metric units are also use worldwide in some specific fields. In aeronautics, height is in feet. In a boat, distance are nautic miles (not even the same miles as Americans on the road). Quick quiz: what's the diagonal size of your laptop screen in centimeters? Your mobile phone? So it doesn't matter if you use completely unrelated metrics for different things. When you want to buy a laptop you know how many inches you want. When you swim, you know what a 50 meters pool means. But do you care how many laptop diagonals you're swimming? Probably not. Now back to US switching to metrics: I think the real argument in favor of sticking to imperial is the cost and risk of the switch. Risk because confusion between metrics could lead to a catastrophe (example: filling the tank of a plane with liters when it should be the same number of gallons). ~~~ rohern You understand, though, that the reason laptop screens are measured this way is because of America's continued use of the imperial system. ~~~ curiousdannii Yes, TV screens are measured in cms, no reason why computer screens couldn't be too. ------ goodcanadian Only vaguely relevant, but I grew up in a rural area in Canada which caused me to learn a strange set of units. For me, highway distances are measured in kilometres, but country roads are measured in miles. Groceries are priced per kilogram, but my weight is in pounds. I readily swap inches and centimetres for measuring small sizes and distances (sometimes on the same project). I am more comfortable with Celsius, but the thermostat in my parents' house was in Fahrenheit. Just to throw an additional wrench into things, prior to official metrification (which technically predates my birth), Canada used "imperial" (i.e. British) units, not "standard" (i.e. U.S.) units. Because of this and the close proximity to the U.S., one had to be careful about just which gallon or pint you were talking about. People younger and/or more urban than me seem to be 100% metric. I am starting to learn my weight in kilograms, but I still have no idea what my height is in cm without converting. ~~~ RyanMcGreal Canada also has so-called weak metric measurements: 454g of butter (1 lb), 354 ml of pop (12 oz) and so on. ~~~ goodcanadian Yes, though I think this is largely due to trade with the U.S.. It probably helps keep some standard units alive in Canada. ~~~ gutnor Indeed in country fully converted to metric, the old unit are converted to their closest sane metric equivalent. For example, my grand-mother still talks about buying a pound of stuff. However a pound is now understood as meaning 0.5 kg, we even learn it that way in school. ------ dickbasedregex At the risk of being lumped in with the negative/unhelpful/HN-is-on-the- decline comment crowd, and I hate naysaying here but... Seriously? 1) If you haven't seen enough of these White House Polls go by yet (and there is a never ending list of inanity, for example: <http://www.modernman.com/12-dumbest-whitehouse-petitions/>) let me clue you in. They do nothing. Nothing. No one reads them. Just go back to wishing on a star. 2) The belief that something like this would ever be on the White House's radar/todo list is honestly just retarded. 3) Why is this even here? This isn't Reddit. The focus of HN is pretty nebulous these days but this is well outside the realm of entrepreneurship and programming which I believe has always sort of been at the heart of HN. 4) _Rabble rabble_ HN is in decline. ~~~ Avalaxy It does have a lot to do with programming actually. I'm building an international application and I have to convert all my dimensions and weights to make it work in the US. ~~~ dickbasedregex No. It has as much to do with programming as currency conversion does. It's a problem involving numbers that people occasionally solve with the use of code. By your logic beanie babies have a lot to do with programming because someone built a site to list and sell them online (ebay). But hey, the metric system seems more sensible to me too. _Edit_ I don't mean to come off as a jerk. I haven't slept yet and just got a BS call from m boss so I'll probably read this later and wish I were more diplomatic. ------ fennecfoxen There's a couple of things you'd want to consider converting to metric: long distances, short distances/dimensions, volumes, weights, and temperature come to mind. Long distances: swap out a bunch of highway signs, consider that 60mph (a mile a minute) ~= 100km/h, not too hard on people but a lot of signage needs to change. Feasible. Volumes: people are used enough to 2-liter bottles of soda, expect the 3.78 liter milk to stay around for a while because of supply chains. Gas prices will be modestly interesting for people, but really easy on the industry. Short distances/dimensions: now things get tricky and potentially expensive. There are a lot of fractional-dimensioned parts out there in industry in different supply chains. Weights: 2.2lb = 1kg and you're pretty good. Nobody _really_ uses ounces anyway! Temperature: Here's the thing about temperature: converting would be relatively useless because Real People don't do math with the temperature outside. Even scientists don't do math with the temperature outside all that much. For most people, a scale that starts at 0="civilization shuts down because you can't ice the roads" and goes up to 100="heatstroke territory" is a _fine_ representation of humanity's day to day temperature. Why would we bother changing it? ~~~ smackfu >not too hard on people but a lot of signage needs to change. Feasible. Very expensive though. Signs normally have a 20 years expected lifetime. Now you need to replace them all at once. Plus a lot of the sign locations need to be changed, unless you want all those "Exit 29 1 mile" signs to now say "Exit 29 1.6 km". ~~~ jzwinck You do not need to replace them all at once. For example the new signs could be European style, red ringed white circles with the number inside. Virtually every car has both readings already. This would make new speed limit signs immediately recognizable to more visitors in the future while avoiding ambiguity of units during the transition. They could even say km/h during the first generation. ~~~ DanBC Road signs need to be very clear and instantly understandable. Adding a tiny delay to comprehension; a tiny bit of lack of attention to the road; could, when multiplied over the number of kilometres driven and number of drivers and time mean many deaths. Whether that's acceptable or not is another matter, but it'd suck if "km/h KILLED MY FATHER" became a meme. It is odd how some countries make massive national changes overnight. eg, Sweden: ([http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/driving%20on%20the%20...](http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/driving%20on%20the%20left.htm)) > _In 1955, the Swedish government held a referendum on the introduction of > right-hand driving. Although no less than 82.9% voted “no” to the > plebiscite, the Swedish parliament passed a law on the conversion to right- > hand driving in 1963. Finally, the change took place on Sunday, the 3rd of > September 1967, at 5 o’clock in the morning._ Leaving it until now has meant the UK would find it very hard to change. ------ Tloewald Sad it only has 237 votes as of my visit (waiting for my acct to validate so I can sign). The problem is, I think the US has already declared itself to be metric to little effect. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act> It's not the do-nothing congress this time, it's the learn-nothing public. ~~~ ry0ohki Just a simple measure like forcing all government signs to use metric would go a long way. ------ thinkling It's nice to be reminded that there will always be fresh waves of not-yet- cynical people to take up issues like this. But boy, am I cynical about the chances on this one. The wikipedia article on Metrication in the US [1] isn't the best article ever but is worth reading for mentions of previous efforts. A few things: \- the US Congress has in various ways 'blessed' the metric system, more than any other. However... > _Proponents of the metric system in the U.S. often claim that "the United > States, Liberia, and Burma (or Myanmar) are the only countries that have not > adopted the metric system." This statement is not correct with respect to > the U.S., and probably it isn't correct with respect to Liberia and Burma, > either. The U.S. adopted the metric system in 1866. What the U.S. has failed > to do is to restrict or prohibit the use of traditional units in areas > touching the ordinary citizen_ [2] Did you know that Jefferson proposed a decimal system for the US before the SI system had come about? (See e.g. [2].) There were also proposals to measure land in decimal units rather than in 640-acre sections. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States) [2] <http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html> ------ sakopov I was born in Russia and used the metric system until i moved to the US. Imperial system is so archaic it's amusing to see a developed nation use it. A few centuries ago Russians used to measure weight in "handfuls" and short distances in "elbows." (scratch that, it's "cubits") When only a fraction of the population had any sort of education, it was easier for everyone to understand an anatomical measurement. Eh, some things never go away. I don't anticipate US dropping this... ever. ~~~ yareally Sadly, we (US Citizens) all learn the Metric system starting in at least 7th grade (was for me at least back 15 some years ago). We continue to use it through High School for courses such as Chemistry and Physics as well as University studies. However, many of those that are not interested in going into a Science field tend to discount the Metric System in the United States as nothing more than a "means to an end" in order to get a passing grade. They quickly forget it or just pay lip service to it as they don't see the need for it outside of the classroom. Until that changes with some sort of mandate by the US Government, I'm afraid as you mentioned, the larger percentage of the United States will feel no need to care about the Metric System outside of a few Science courses they took back in school. ~~~ sakopov You're absolutely right. Technical people would most likely embrace the switch. Everyone else will brush it off. I find that Americans are typically very cautious of any kind of change. Especially baby boomers. Let alone a change that is "imposed" by the rest of the world. That isn't going to fly here. We don't do things in the same way the rest of the world does them. That's just our mentality. Imagine a football field marked with metric units. Man, I just cringed a little bit. :) ------ davidw The way I explain this one to my European friends is: Do you remember the transition to the Euro? How you had to mentally convert prices at first? And how old people had more difficulties with it in some cases? Now, imagine that, not just for one unit, but weights, lengths, temperatures and volumes, all at the same time. ~~~ bjourne Oh, the problem with the Euro was that they raised prices everywhere where they introduced the new currency. What was previously 0.8€ becase 1€, 28€ to 30€ and so on. Economic power also moved from individual countries to the ECB in Brussels. If the US started using SI (Systeme International), it's not like you would be subject to a metric-controlling organisation in Paris. :) ~~~ allerratio The ECB is in Frankfurt, Germany. ------ Keyframe ISO 216 paper sizes while you're at it, please! ~~~ TomAnthony I'm surprised paper hasn't formed a larger part of this discussion. The 'A' system for paper has many advantages, and actually would be something that could be accessibly changed (all printers and scanners handle it just fine). ~~~ masklinn > The 'A' system for paper has many advantages The ISO system in general, ISO 216 and 269 provide 3 series (A, B and C, A is the base series, B is the geometric mean between two sizes of the A series, C is the geometric mean between the A and B series at a given index, and is thus mostly used for envelopes for the A series: an envelope Cn will hold an An sheet without folding, and of course a Cn envelope will fit an A(n-1) folded in two) ------ jamesjguthrie I look forward to everywhere using metric. I'm in the UK, 27 and still struggle at times to comprehend lbs, ounces, stone, feet, inches, yards, miles etc., when everything I was taught in school was in metres, litres, newtons and kilogrammes. ~~~ jamesjguthrie We ask for a footlong, a quarter pounder etc when we go out for fast food. Our fat friends are 16 stone, 17 stone. We live miles away from each other. Penalties in football are taken in the 18 yard box. We use cup measures for flour, sugar etc in cooking. The average penis is ~6 inches when fully erect. I've got two 4 pint cartons of milk in my fridge. I could go on. Imperial units are absolute muck and I cannot wait for a entirely metric world. ~~~ UnoriginalGuy > We use cup measures for flour, sugar etc in cooking. We do? My cookbooks are in metric units. In fact I own no books that use "cups." ~~~ jamesjguthrie As an example go have a look at <http://gordonramsaysrecipes.com/> which hosts a collection of Ramsay's receipes. All in tablespoons, teaspoons and cups. ~~~ UnoriginalGuy That's an American web-site. His books are in metric. [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gordon-Ramsays-Ultimate-Cookery- Cour...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gordon-Ramsays-Ultimate-Cookery- Course/dp/1444756699/) Click "search inside." Everything is in grams. edit: That web-site isn't even associated with the chief. It is just some fan site. Here is a legit web-site and it is all in grams: [http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/chefs/gordon- ramsay/go...](http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/chefs/gordon- ramsay/gordon-s-lasagne-recipe) ~~~ jamesjguthrie > Click "search inside." Everything is in grams. There's loads of references in that book to knobs of butter and tablespoon/teaspoon measurements. ~~~ DanBC teaspoons and tablespoons are metric - one teaspoon is 5 ml; one tablespoon is 15 ml. I'm not sure how useful it is having a volumetric unit instead of a mass[1] unit; but that's one thing I like about US cooking. "About a cup of this; about to cups of that" - it's all nice and intuitive. I know roughly what 500 g of flour is, or sugar, but 80 g of butter is tricky. [1] sorry if I'm using the wrong term. Friendly corrections welcomed. ------ tokenadult From the petitions.whitehouse.gov petition kindly submitted for comment here: "The United States is one of the few countries left in the world who still have not converted to using the Metric System as a standardized system of measurement. Instead of going along with what the rest of the world uses, we stubbornly still adhere to using the imprecise Imperial Unit - despite the fact that practically every other country that we interact with uses Metric." This petition has the same problem most petitions submitted to the White House have--its factual premise is incorrect. I'm an American who has lived in another country (Taiwan) for years. The National Institute of Standards and Technology reports that "The United States is now the only industrialized country in the world that does not use the metric system as its predominant system of measurement." <http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/upload/1136a.pdf> But the same government report notes that ". . . . In 1866, Congress authorized the use of the metric system in this country and supplied each state with a set of standard metric weights and measures. "In 1875, the United States solidified its commitment to the development of the internationally recognized metric system by becoming one of the original seventeen signatory nations to the Treaty of the Meter." In other words, the United States has treated the Metric System as official and legal since before my great-grandfather was born. The customary measurement system is, by contrast, simply customary, not mandatory. The United States has been metric since 1866 "in the sense that Americans have been free since that time to use the metric system as much as they like." <http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html> If a particular individual or corporation engaged in manufacturing or trade wants to use metric measurements to meet customer needs and gain a profit, no one in the United States is stopping that. If someone desires to use customary measurements out of sheer habit from long-established custom, no one is stopping that either. My late dad the industrial engineer was aware of plenty of industries in the United States that from the 1970s, at the latest, had gone fully metric simply because those industries were involved in vigorous international trade. Perhaps the best governmental nudge that can be given for more use of metric measurements in the United States is more encouragement of developing international markets for domestic businesses. I note that customary measurements are often used in other countries even long after metric measurements are adopted officially. For example, the Republic of China (the regime that governs Taiwan at present) has been officially metric since before I was born. Japan (the former governing country in Taiwan) was metric from the 1920s. But the unit of weight for vegetables bought in an open-air market in Taiwan is still the traditional 斤 ( _jin_ "catty," or Chinese pound), although that is now standardized at 500g. Prices are given in monetary units per 斤 for most fruits and vegetables to this day in markets in Taiwan (and in China). A Facebook friend with a scientific education recently told me about the saying "A pint's a pound, the whole world round." If the United States begins using metric-standard units more for selling foods and the like, then perhaps a half-kilogram (500g) package will be considered to be one new "pound," just as a half-liter (500ml) package will be considered to be one new "pint." It is interesting to me that traditional Chinese culture and traditional British culture both had weight units in that range, about a half kilogram even before standardization to metric units. How are grocery measurements treated in Britain these days? ~~~ jacquesm That's a typical case of theory and practice. Yes, in theory the US is a country that supports metric. In practice, go and ask anybody in the country outside of the military for the following: \- An M10 bolt \- a 16mm wrench to drive it with \- a 3 meter long 50 mm od pvc drainpipe \- a tape-measure that measures only in metric \- a highway sign that is posted in km And so on. See how many people can point you to any of these. Then try this: \- a 3/8th " bolt \- a 9/16th " wrench to drive it with \- a 10' long 2" od pvc drainpipe \- a tape measure that only measures in Imperial \- a highway sign posted in Miles. The petition is dead on in the way the US approaches the metric system, in practice it is imperial all the way. As long as the practice doesn't change what the technical situation is won't matter one bit. The only way to get out of this is to change the law, and to deprecate Imperial in favor of metric. ~~~ blhack Have you ever been inside of a hardware store? Every hardware store I've ever been to has a section for metric. Our lab, for instance, keeps a supply of bolts, and as far as I remember /only/ has metric. Also every socket set I've ever used has a metric and standard set. Why would you care about road signs? And why would you care about a tape measure that is /only/ in metric? The second one seems kindof silly. The only thing I know of that isn't available commonly in metric sizes are machining tools like mills. As far as I know, machining is always done in "mils", or thousands of an inch. ~~~ ahlatimer Or if you happen to ask anyone who works on a vehicle that isn't from one of the American manufacturers. My Toyota used all metric, AFAIK, and all of my motorcycles have used metric. I can't say I've ever even used the standard set of tools that came with my toolset (which had both metric and standard). ~~~ tadfisher Toyota is weird, in that all of the nuts & bolts on their cars are metric, but their tolerances in the factory service manual are listed in thousandths of an inch. I did a double-take when I saw the deck flatness tolerance of ".002" for my car, for example. ------ dmoo Ireland has converted mostly to the metric system, we switched to kilometers for speed limits in 2005. To be honest you get used to it pretty quickly. There are a number of items, particularly those that are traded with our neighbours in the UK that are shown as both metric and imperial. You still get a pint of Guinness in the pub but all bottles and cans of beer are in metric. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Ireland> ------ RyanMcGreal _Metrickery is a socialist plot to weaken America. First it's units of measurement divisible by ten, then it's universal health care, then gun control, and finally off to the gulag for the last remaining freethinkers._ Sadly, there are people who believe more of less exactly what I just wrote. ~~~ javert Actually, the "Europe is better and the US is inferior" mantra, which is very widely held in the American left-of-center, _is_ a significant factor in all of those. ~~~ RyanMcGreal As a Canadian, I'd be inclined to call it the "every other industrialized liberal democracy on earth is better" mantra. Countries tend to converge on an optimal balance of individual liberties and social protections because it _measurably works_. The US is a notable outlier, and the various comparative social and economic indicators are pretty damning evidence that the continued American insistence on an 18th century approach to governance actually _is_ inferior to a number of other approaches that have been more inclined to take evidence-based best practices into account. ~~~ javert > Countries tend to converge on an optimal balance of individual liberties and > social protections because it measurably works. That's just utter nonsense. What measurement are you optimizing for? What makes you think that moving the US to the left moves it closer to, say, Germany, instead of closer to, say, Brazil, India, and Mexico (which is what I think will happen)? And even if it did move it closer to Germany, _I wouldn't want that,_ which speaks to the fact that your "measurably works" claim probably refers to some non-objective sense of optimality. > the continued American insistence on an 18th century approach to governance That's a straw man. Predominating sentiments in the GOP are strongly contra the Founding Fathers. I mean, George W. Bush greatly expanded the welfare state. ~~~ RyanMcGreal > What measurement are you optimizing for? Take your pick. The US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. ~~~ javert Most or all of which would not be helped by liberal attempts to emulate Europe. For example, high child poverty is to be expected in a country that harbors many poor immigrants from Latin America. For another example, high rate of incarceration is largely to be blamed on the "War on Drugs," which has the same effect as the prohibition on alcohol did. For another example, low rate of doctors is largely to be blamed on the fact that medicine is a _guild_ (as in, midieval guild) where med school is super tough to get into, doesn't select for competency as a medical practitioner, and creates a "class hierarchy" within medicine where a highly-trained nurse can perform as well or better than a doctor in many common situations, but is not legally allowed to practice in that capacity. This could go on and on. Overall, American liberals want a society where everybody gets whatever they demand, to the degree that there is enough to go around, except the actual producers. That society already exists, and it's called India. ~~~ RyanMcGreal > Most or all of which would not be helped by liberal attempts to emulate > Europe. You mean the rest of the industrialized world, not just Europe. > high child poverty is to be expected in a country that harbors many poor > immigrants from Latin America. You mean unlike a country that harbours many poor immigrants from Northern Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe? > high rate of incarceration is largely to be blamed on the "War on Drugs" Yes, and it is the conservative right that most strongly favours continuing the War on Drugs. Those left of centre liberals you don't like generally favour ending the war on drugs and following a more - dare I say - European approach to legalization. (Sadly, Canada's Republican-lite Conservative government has taken a more American approach to the War on Drugs, establishing mandatory minimum sentences and other punitive measures that have already failed in the US.) > low rate of doctors is largely to be blamed on the fact that medicine is a > guild That's true across all the industrialized countries, but the other countries are much better than the US at achieving a higher rate of doctors and much better overall health outcomes, despite spending only 40-70% of what the USA spends on health care - and running various incarnations of universal health coverage. > American liberals want a society where everybody gets whatever they demand That's a lazy straw man attack. American liberals, like liberals in other industrialized countries, want their country to value human rights, pay attention to evidence-based public policy and invest enough in public social and physical infrastructure to ensure everyone has an adequate standard of living and the opportunity to work hard and prosper. Ironically, the USA has among the _worst_ levels of socioeconomic mobility in the OECD. Poor Americans are more trapped in their poverty than poor people in countries that do more to level the playing field so everyone has a fair chance of escaping poverty. ~~~ javert > despite spending only 40-70% of what the USA spends on health care Right. And if the USA tries to emulate Europe in healthcare more than we alreay do, we will end up wasting _even more_ money. There is no solution to be had here through _more_ regulation. > value human rights > ensure everyone has an adequate standard of living Contradiction. But providing a moral basis for individual rights requires understanding a complete philosophical system, which is out of the scope of an HN comment. > ensure everyone has an adequate standard of living and the opportunity to > work hard and prosper You're asking something that may be outside the scope of reality. > Poor Americans are more trapped in their poverty As someone from a poor part of rural eastern North Carolina, all I can do is LOL at this, because it's utterly, utterly false. That is a complete myth. I mean, we already have free universal education, de jure through high school and de facto through college. ~~~ RyanMcGreal > if the USA tries to emulate Europe in healthcare more than we alreay do, we > will end up wasting even more money. The evidence is that American health care costs would go _down_ significantly, given the clear correlation across industrialized countries between the extent to which health care spending is private and the overall cost (either per capita or as a share of GDP). > Contradiction. It's not a contradition, the latter follows necessarily from the former. It's why nearly every industrialized country has converged on public health, public education, public health care, affordable housing, and so on. > But providing a moral basis for individual rights requires understanding a > complete philosophical system, which is out of the scope of an HN comment. Or we can dispense with the 18th century a priori legerdemain and just recognize human rights as a self-evident basis for a fair, just and humane society. > You're asking something that may be outside the scope of reality. And yet the rest of the industrialized world does a much better job of it than the United States. > As someone from a poor part of rural eastern North Carolina, all I can do is > LOL at this The plural of anecdote is not data. ------ rohern Every objection that is being raised on this thread was raised when other countries enacted metrication. You are free to read the history of these processes. Nations did not collapse and people learned how to use new units. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication> I would more support a petition that was well and cogently written, however. ------ drcube We already have the metric system. An inch is defined as 2.54 centimeters. Et cetera. I can't think of a single way in which we're NOT metric, except that stubborn people refuse to let go of gallons, miles and pounds. Every item you buy in the stores will be measured in metric units. Just because we call it a gallon doesn't mean it isn't actually 3.785 liters. And just because the serving size is a cup, doesn't mean it isn't actually 240mL. And check the nutrition label sometimes. It's all metric. [http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov- public/documents/image/...](http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov- public/documents/image/ucm225384.jpg) So what's the problem again? ~~~ mpyne > So what's the problem again? America sucks and is like the worst thing to ever happen to the world. Or something, it all blends together eventually. Oddly no one ever makes a serious push to ban languages other than English or Mandarin Chinese throughout the world, or currency other than USD which would _actually_ have beneficial effects on global interaction. Instead they compare the U.S. to Myanmar as if Americans should seriously be offended by that. ------ jacquesm It very likely is never going to happen. The main reason for resistance apparently is the various land boundaries that would have to be re-scaled to metric, which would be a source of endless legal wrangling. Already houses in the US have the longest history attached to them, sometimes all the way from the homesteading days if the plot is old. I've used both metric and imperial, for construction imperial is lots easier, for physics and other things that involve frequent conversions metric is far easier. The Canadians officially have metric, try buying a 250x125 sheet of plywood. Everybody will look at you as if water is burning. ~~~ lmm >Already houses in the US have the longest history attached to them, sometimes all the way from the homesteading days if the plot is old. That's young by European standards. Somehow we managed the conversion. ~~~ brudgers How many European countries are there? How many of them have had the same government for 230 years? The US surveyed and then subdivided much of a continent into townships. Land was sold and granted by the section, halfs and quarters thereof. Flying over the Midwest, the manifold rectangles on the ground show how problematic even the slightest of conversion errors would be. Maybe it's technical debt. But it exists because the legal system is stable. ~~~ jacquesm How many of them even have the same borders over the last 230 years? I'd wager very few. ~~~ brudgers I think the reference for US borders is probably better put at 150 years - outside of Hawaii. ------ jesusabdullah > the imprecise Imperial Unit englilsh units aren't any less precise than SI/metric ones. They're just more awkward and less used worldwide. The cases which I find particularly irritating in US units are lb mass vs. lb force, and HP/BTU/foot- pounds/calories/Calories (and kWh) when all you need is a J. ------ lifeformed I understand and agree that metric is strictly better, how much better is it? Do the benefits outweigh the costs of changing the whole system? ~~~ SideburnsOfDoom What about the recurring cost that we have now of using both systems? ~~~ ScottWhigham I'll play along. What "recurring cost"? ~~~ SideburnsOfDoom As mentioned elsewhere on this page: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4996563> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4996646> And also things like the occasional cost of writing off a Mars probe (and they aren't cheap) because not enough was spent on checking unit conversions. ------ AlexeiSadeski I could care less about using metric, but don't touch Fahrenheit. Celsius (water based) is inferior to Fahrenheit (air based) for those of us whom just so happen to reside in the atmosphere instead of the sea. ~~~ Thrymr It's more accurate to say Fahrenheit is brine based. 0°F was based on the freezing point of a brine solution used by Ole Rømer: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B8mer_scale> ------ noselasd Might as well start now - these things take time. In Norway, we introduced the metric system in 1889, but there's still a lot of non-metric measurements still around, at least in common speak. * Length of a boat are measured in feet. * Lumber is measured in inches, two-by-four and so on. * Most engines are measured in horsepower(though nowadays the kw/h is usually given as well). * Firewood have different measures, most of them derived from the pre-metric system. * distances at sea are measured in nautic miles * Boat speed is measured in knots. (not sure what the status of these last 2 is regarding SI these days). ~~~ ubernostrum _Boat speed is measured in knots._ Knots are non-SI, since they're based on the non-SI nautical mile (1 knot = 1nm/hr). But they are a good example of why context is important; the nautical mile is absolutely superior to the kilometer for use in navigation (at sea or in the air). Forcing the SI unit there would actually make the relevant tasks more complex and more difficult. ~~~ guard-of-terra "the nautical mile is absolutely superior to the kilometer for use in navigation (at sea or in the air)." Why is that? ~~~ ubernostrum It solves headaches that come from trying to project the not-flat earth onto flat charts. As Wikipedia puts it: "In most projections, scale varies with latitude, so on small scale maps, covering large areas and a wide range of latitudes, the linear scale must show the scale for the range of latitudes covered by the map." "Mariners generally use the nautical mile, which, because a nautical mile is approximately equal to a minute of latitude, can be measured against the latitude scale at the sides of the chart." ------ neves Water is the most important substance for life in Earth. It boils at 100º centigrades and freezes at 0º centigrades 0.1m³ is one liter (1L) of water, so 1m³ is 1,000 liters of water 1L of water is 1 Kilogram The imperial system is awful, please bury it. ------ davvid I think most engineers would naturally support this idea. The reality is that doing something like this is pretty tough because the current system has so much weight. It's akin to asking a company to abandon a perfectly functioning legacy software system just so that someone can rewrite it. My dad was an engineer with Caltrans and he told me about how California was ready to make the switch. It was going to be a gradual transition where signage would start listing both metric and imperial speed limits. They had actually gotten pretty far along into designing signs, etc. He told me that the state eventually killed it because no politicians supported it and there was no strong desire from the public. While I think this is a great idea, I don't have my hopes up. Apparently the state did a lot of work actually switching over to the metric system (all manuals, standards, etc. were updated to metric) but the plan was eventually aborted in favor of English units and much effort was then spent on switching back. :-/ <http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/DD-12-R1_Final.pdf> <http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/metricpg.htm> ------ attheodo Metric system is way more understandable and easy to mentally manipulate. The only good argument against standardizing it, is people are used to it for many years. But so were my grandparents with our country's currency before we switched to Euro. There's an awkward "bootcamp" period where you just convert every unit to the old one just to get the feeling of the "quantity" but after a couple of months the new units feel normal. ------ stinos what a coincidence, just yesterday I saw a comedian making fun of UK&US for not using the metric system and instead something he considered archaic ~~~ yarrel Imperial is very visible in the UK (for road instances and for beer glasses in particular) but the country is pretty much metric now and has been for decades. ~~~ dphnx Funny you should mention beer – I've noticed an increasing tendency for pint glasses to be marked "568ml". Milk also doesn't come in pints any more, but does come in 568ml and 1 litre varieties. Still, as a nation we ask for and think of our beer and milk in pints. ~~~ jamesjguthrie The 2 cartons of milk in my fridge right now, say "2272ml 4 pints" on them. ~~~ alsothings This is because in both the US and the UK, imperial measures are legally defined in metric units. A pint _is_ 568ml, by definition (well, in the UK, the US believes a pint is 454ml, but that's another argument). ~~~ jamesjguthrie The milk is clearly sold in pints though, if they were selling it in litres they would've sold 2 litres, not 2.272 litres. ------ beefman Measuring metric adoption by counting countries with official adoption is common. Less common is measuring by aggregate PPP-GDP and actual adoption by the public. To approximate actual adoption, I give the US, UK, Canada and Jamaica completely to traditional units and the rest of the world completely to metric.* Using 2011 data from the IMF, I then conclude that traditional units command 31% of usage worldwide. * These are the countries in red on this table [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#Chronology_and_stat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#Chronology_and_status_of_conversion_by_country) But a review of the UK article shows that the language "partially complete" is pretty fanciful in describing the current situation in the UK. The story in China is more complex... ------ andrewdubinsky Don't we have bigger problems than this right now? Our schools are so badly mismanaged that we're not even graduating people who can use either standard. We've got millions of people unemployed who would love to turn a wrench regardless of metric or standard. (Not to cast aspersions at either party, they are both very nearly equally to blame) ------ VaedaStrike Ironic that a post designed to attempt to rid the world of obfuscation and confusion has a UI that commits the cardinal sin of auto loading the signature list so that it's virtually impossible to get to the footer without letting all the signatures load. :) Reminds me of getting classes on water conservation in High School only to walk outside of class and see that they are watering the High School's parking lot. How very often the government evokes the classic hypocritical parent of the old anti-drug campaign commercial of the 1980's where the son finally breaks and yells at his Father "I learned it by watching you Dad!" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo> ------ ComputerGuru Everything else aside, can someone explain to me the obsession with fractions (w/out common denominators, even!) in the imperial system? I love metric, but I have no problem using the imperial system for my work - however, the fact that all objects made for the imperial system are built on fractions makes it _impossible_ to work with. There is no 0.1" there's only 1/8. There is no 0.15", there's only 5/32. etc. Given the bottom is almost always a power of two (2, 4, 16, 32, and 64 at the most) the conversion isn't _hard_ but there is a _definite_ cognitive overhead to comparing 1/8" vs 5/32" whereas comparing .125" to .15" is an order of magnitude simpler. ~~~ mpyne Fractional measures are useful when you often have to sub-divide a thing, but you are right in that they make the problem of comparing two things more difficult. But with that in mind the answer to your question is that when the scales were first devised in the first place that it was apparently more important to be able to evenly split things up easily without grade-school arithmetic than it was to be able to compare a 3/32" socket to a 1/8". ~~~ ComputerGuru But why not just use /64 or /32 for everything? 3/32" vs 4/32" is win-win compared to 3/32" vs 1/8" or .09375" vs .125" ~~~ mpyne The stupid answer is that it's easier to add 1/2 and 1/4 than it is 32/64 and 16/64. Keep in mind this is the kind of measurement system that might evolve in the time before most people had a formal education. ------ ddorian43 Did any of these petitions accomplished anything? ------ sterna Regionalized units have the same damaging effect to manufacturing as closed software ecosystems has to software development. The only reason most US citizens do not feel the pain of this fragmentation is that they do not have to buy anything that is not adapted to the US market. Again, this is because the US is the biggest market on the planet and thus it is profitable for big companies to adapt their products to US standards. However, supporting several unit systems is a huge tax on startup companies that work in manufacturing and therefore they reduce innovation and competition, causing harm to everybody along the way. ~~~ mosburger This is actually an argument, for some people in the U.S., to keep using imperial units. The use of imperial units acts as sort of an "artificial trade barrier" to foreign competition - it's like a tariff that international trade agreements can't touch. ~~~ achy That is a ridiculous argument for a country that is already so heavily reliant on foreign manufacturing. If anything, at this point, the imperial standard is a barrier to having the US become a manufacturing nation once again - because so much industrial technology has been developed without a thought to the archaic measurements. ------ joeguilmette Maybe it's just me but, while I agree with this, I would like our government to focus on gaining a certain level of basic competence. The last few years seem to have brought to light just how impotent and incapable the US legislature is. The other two branches seem to be doing fine, but I'd like to focus our attention on perhaps changing this ridiculous farce into something that might work, just a little bit. The big problem is that due to our system of govt any change will be brought of the back of legislation, which, unfortunately, will have to pass thru the broken and disfigured legislature. That said, I hope this petition succeeds :) ------ edj The US use of imperial units definitely requires a good bit of annoying overhead - owning two sets of socket wrenches and hex keys and never knwowing which one a manufacturer has used is just the first such inconvenience that comes to mind. So I agree that it's well past time to complete the switch. That said, I will miss imperial units if they go. There's a natural poetry to them that metric lacks. Imperial units seem to embody and communicate their own history - history of path-dependence and weird math, to be sure - while metric units seem too perfectly consistent, and therefore somehow sterile. ------ sigzero I don't see this ever happening. There just isn't a push from within to do it. ------ pelle I grew up with the metric system but have now come to largely accept the imperial system as a more humane system. Nassim Taleb actually talks about the benefits of it in his latest book Anti- Fragile as well. The metric system is already used for anything important in the US and doesn't need to be further legislated. Look at any food item you buy in the supermarket it already has grams or ml on it. I wrote a piece a few years ago about this: [http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/08/28/in-defence- of-i...](http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/08/28/in-defence-of-imperial- units) ------ sudowrestler I remember being at a 1971 conference in London, when a Brit asked a member of our party "When will the US go metric?" My buddy quipped without hesitation, "As soon as you Brits learn to drive on the right side of the road!" ------ tmrhmd I don't think politicians would ever allow this, especially during these times, since the proposed change would cost millions in change of signs and anything where the imperial system is used. ~~~ davorb You would save that pretty easily in not having to write separate software/everything for the US and for the rest of the world. Not to mention things like [http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric....](http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric.02_1_climate- orbiter-spacecraft-team-metric-system?_s=PM:TECH) ------ micampe Not the first time it's been tried: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States) ------ lancefisher There were still some kilometer markers on the roads in Alabama when I moved there in 1997. Apparently, the state spent $3.2 million to put up km markers and signs in addition to the mile markers and signs. This proved to be too confusing, and they were all taken down. Most the people I knew didn't miss them. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19971128&...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19971128&id=Q8gnAAAAIBAJ&sjid=SscEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1434,4556205) ~~~ simmons I lived in Alabama for a while back in the metric days. The article you link to seems to confirm the general impression I had of how it went down. US: "We're switching to the metric system, everybody!" Alabama: "Yay! Switching to metric!" Alabama: "Okay guys, we've got all our new metric highway signs up, how's everyone else doing with theirs?" (crickets chirping) I personally thought the kilometer signs were pretty cool. The person's comment about the metric initiative being hard to defend when none of the other states followed through seems to ring true -- it's easy to see how the public might have thought they had been talked into a boondoggle. ------ jhales Another petition which may be more effecitve would be directed at the more rational/scientifically minded people at Google (in as much as they don't have Rick Santorum on their pay roll) to rename nexus 4/7/10 to be in terms of metric units not inches. That would may lead to a very rapid comfort with metric sizes for a large and influential chunk of the population. This would also avoid the potentially unpleasant comparison to those who hope to eradicate Spanish by demand English be _the_ state language. ------ Surio Interesting war story around Imperial to Metric conversion errors. Relevant to the discussion... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider> ------ mark-r One thing I never see mentioned is the awkwardness of the metric names. The older measurements are all one syllable, while their metric replacements are often three or four. mile -> kilometer inch -> centimeter pound -> kilogram The only one that comes out even is ounce -> gram. Obviously it's not a huge impediment since many other countries got past it, but I'm sure it just adds to the discomfort people have with it. ~~~ eurleif >The only one that comes out even is ounce -> gram. Gallon -> liter? And most of the extra syllables are because SI uses prefixes, instead of inventing completely different units. I think the verbosity is justified by enhanced understandability. ------ clinth The real cost is in manufacturing and maintenance. What is the cost of replacing every machine, every factory, every load tolerance specified in every standard? Every screw, every nut. Things that need to work, in place for decades, which we can't arbitrarily take down. Power plants, water filtration systems. How would you roll it out? It's _because_ the US is so large and industrialized that _makes_ it expensive. ------ mosburger One argument some people make against switching away from imperial units - it acts as sort of an artificial trade barrier for foreign competition. It costs non-domestic manufacturers more to package their products for distribution in the United States, making it sort of a "tariff" for foreign goods that international trade agreements can't touch. ~~~ huherto But it works both ways. It is a "tariff" when you want to export. ~~~ mosburger I didn't claim the argument made sense. :) ------ acomjean I've Given up. BUT, the metric system in the US has ben usurped by base 10 US units. As a civil engineer the measuring tape was in feet and "tenths of feet". A "mil" is a thousandth of an inch. I worked for the US government civil engineers in the 1990's. They were going to issue contracts in metric years ago. I don't think they ever did. ------ jcfrei related question to people from the US: did you actually learn the metric system in primary school? did you learn it besides the imperial units? I believe as Tloewald pointed out that the adoption really depends on whether people are learning it and not what politicians declare to be the standard. ~~~ davidw You learn it, but academically. Growing up with everything in feet, miles, pounds, etc... you get a _feel_ for whether to put on a sweater if it's supposed to be 60 degrees out or not, or how long it might take to drive 10 miles on the freeway, or about how far 20 feet is. So even for someone like myself who has lived in Europe for a long time, metric units don't feel quite as 'native' or ingrained, except for temperatures, because you deal with those every day. ------ tippivenus This is fantastic!! They told me in 2nd grade (1968) that the metric systems was coming in 4 years and we had to learn it. This is great news. Finally I will be able to use those metric socket wrenches I bought. Oh, wait I already do. ------ hcarvalhoalves Just a note: Brazil adopts the metric system, but we measure diameters in inches and land in acres. Adopting the metric system doesn't mean getting rid of non-metric units, some things just _make sense_ to measure in units that follow human scale. ------ jemeshsu The tech industry has to take the lead by renaming their products: MacBook Pro 33cm, Nexus 18. Using inch for display is a worldwide standard, not just US. It would be strange to look for a 35.5cm notebook or a 100cm HDTV. ~~~ ciupicri Maybe in the US. People from other countries want a TV with a diagonal of one meter. It even sounds better because 1 meter is like a barrier unlike 40 inches which is just a number. ------ gcv So we'd have to rename the quarter-pounder with cheese to royale with cheese? ------ pconf The Metric system would probably be ubiquitous in the US by now if Ronald Reagan had not disbanded the U.S. Metric Board in 1982 and overturned laws encouraging schools to teach kids the metric system. ------ gojomo A bit of helpful contrarianism about how Metric isn't always best: Dan Bently, "Metric Doesn't Work", OSCON 2012 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdK-Cr1pe30> ------ kolbe I'll just leave this here. [http://www.theonion.com/articles/metric-system-thriving- in-n...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/metric-system-thriving-in-nations- inner-cities,458/) ------ smackfu While we are at it, why not standardize: * date and time formats * language * time zones * currency Seems about as easy and has the same kind of benefits. ~~~ redial It seems to me that time zones are standard. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_time> ~~~ smackfu For the most part, although daylight-saving time rules are very non-standard even from year to year. ------ lifeguard OMG, I actually learned the metric system in public school in the 1970s. Then Reagan got elected and canceled it. Now American kids have to get into drugs to learn the metric system. ------ evolve2k Why not start a bit of a geek pro metric movement to raise awareness on the issue. I could imagine some funny Tee's and stickers if nothing else. ------ beefman The metric system? Pff! Sign this petition instead: <http://wh.gov/UNMa> ------ teeja One sure way to get metric passed in the US: tell all the 220-lb ladies that their weight will drop to 100kg. ------ jonhendry Never happen. The crazy right-wingers will see it as a another "sign" of the UN trying to take over the US. ------ Zash Please do this. Regards, The rest of the World. ------ el_don_almighty <http://wh.gov/UQye> Help stop the metric system! ------ darkhorn Well, you can make a change too. Don't use products that are not in metric. ------ JacksonGariety Why do they have to make this page look like propaganda? ------ introspectif US uses US standard measures, not imperial. ------ shmerl Yep. It's long time overdue.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Paywalled Garden: iOS Is Adware - bangonkeyboard https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/02/17/the-paywalled-garden-ios-is-adware/ ====== anko I think it's probably worse for people in the US, but I am certainly getting sick of news promoting articles that i can't see unless I pay for news+. Quite often the article headlines are bigger than a screen and it doesn't tell you it's apple news+ until you either tap into it or scroll past it. It's cheap, and I expect better from Apple. I was also thinking about getting a news+ subscription when I buy a new ipad - waiting for a new model to come out - now I'm wondering if I should bother with either. I don't even mind occasional ads, to show me what i'm missing, but they should be clearly marked as such. ------ chadlavi A platform offering you more of it's own services feels distinctly different from a platform selling your data to advertisers or displaying their ads. Does Win10 still have casual gaming ads in the system menu? ~~~ stevestreza Offering and offering and offering and offering. There's no way to say "I don't want this", you will get "offered" (meaning: advertised to) all the time when using these apps that previously worked just fine. ~~~ chadlavi Maybe I've drunk too much of the koolaid, because I have never noticed one of these "ads". I don't use apple music or apple tv, and my phone has never pushed these services on me. It's not like they toss an alert when I open Spotify to ask me if I'd rather use Apple Music. Where are you getting served these ads? Are you talking about getting upsold to a paid apple music subscription while listening to apple music for free? (Do they even have a free tier?) Or getting shown an option to upgrade icloud storage when looking at icloud settings? Because... those seem fair enough. Pay for the services you use. ~~~ asiachick I see the music ads. As one example if I click "Search" (which I do to search my own music) even before I've typed anything there are "trending" recommendations. As soon as I click to make the search active it defaults to Apple Music, instead of Your Library. I switch to "Your Library" but for whatever reason from time to time it ends up back on "Apple Music". Other times I accidentally press the heart icon at the bottom thinking it's my favorites but it's an ad is are "browse" If I could replace the default music player I would. ~~~ chadlavi > even before I've typed anything there are "trending" recommendations How is that an ad? > As soon as I click to make the search active it defaults to Apple Music, > instead of Your Library. How is _that_ an ad? The apple music app defaults to searching the apple music service. > Other times I accidentally press the heart icon at the bottom thinking it's > my favorites but it's an ad is are "browse" I don't even know what that sentence means but that's the "for you" recommendations section. Even if it doesn't work if you don't pay for Apple Music, how is that an ad? This is a gated feature. I agree that it doesn't sound like the apple music app is a good experience for you, but none of those are ads. ~~~ asiachick Recommending something I have to pay for not on my phone is an ad by almost any definition of ads. When I go to google and search I get many recommendations which are ads. All of the results in the Music app are links to sign up for Apple Music. That's an ad. If those recommendations were only for music on my phone they would not be ads. If those recommendations were just for random webpages that contain related music they would not be ads. But as a non-subscriber to Apple Music they are all ads for Apple Music. ------ taylodl YMMV as the old saying goes. I use my phone to listen to music, send & receive text messages, take pictures and videos, and record musical ideas. My iPhone lets me do these things without getting in my way and it's been doing it for _years_ (I don't upgrade unless I have to and so far my iPhone SE has been doing the job for nearly four years now). ------ RandomWorker I never though of the red dot around on my service menu (get iCloud) to be an add. Now, I’m pissed because it is exactly that. I still have a Gb free, why is it notifying me that I need more space. I will never use that space. ~~~ grawprog >I never though of the red dot around on my service menu (get iCloud) to be an add Yet I see comments regularly criticising Microsoft's embedded one drive ads(not by you in particular, in general and not that I support that either). That's the insidiousness of Apple's marketing, they've sold their products as a brand, ecosystem and lifestyle so well, nobody notices every time they use an Apple device, they're essentially not only being constantly marketed to, but are walking advertisements themselves. Being locked down in a curated, walled off ecosystem controlled by the purveyor of your device is the epitome of being trapped in a bubble of constant marketing for their products. How far we've come from the days when everybody lost their shit because an os vendor bundled a web browser with their os. ~~~ redacted Apple's iCloud upsell is far worse than Microsoft's to boot. To disable: MS / Windows 10: Uninstall the preloaded OneDrive app in the standard way Apple / macOS Catalina: Reboot to recovery, mount the system drive (avoiding SIP etc), use Terminal to move a plist from the System LaunchAgents - named "followupd", in case you thought it wouldn't be hidden / obfuscated. Unmount and reboot, praying you didn't break your OS. Then delete a few preference files for System Preferences.app. Oh, and likely have to repeat the process after updates Which one would you be comfortable helping a less technical person do? And given the trajectory of macOS, I wouldn't be surprised if they close that "loophole" soon... ~~~ asiachick I actually kind of feel like there is some false advertising around iCloud. If think the wording has changed over time but it arguably implies you get 5gig of storage when you buy an apple device. Except you don't get 5gig of storage PER device. you get 5gig of storage per account. So if you buy 4 devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad, AppleTV) it _seems_ like you should be able to get 1 account with 20 gig of storage or 2 accounts with 10gig, etc. But if all those devices are for the same person you only get 5gig. I know the wording used to be something along the lines of "every iPhone comes with 5gig of icloud storage". The new wording is "iCloud is built into every Apple device ... Everyone gets 5GB of free iCloud storage to start" ------ samwestdev What is wrong with Health.app on iOS 13? Honest question cause nothing changed for me from iOS 12 (UI changes aside). People in that twitter thread are talking about how they they removed the 'Steps' but it still shows up for me. ~~~ RodoBobJon I think they're mad about the "Apps" section on the Summary tab. But I don't really get the complaints or see it as an advertisement; it's at the very bottom and users may genuinely be wondering how they get more data into the Health app, and a curated list of apps that do that is useful. ------ egypturnash God I am so tired of iOS Music constantly showing me ads for their streaming service. I've been paying them to ITunes Match my collection between my Mac and my phone/tablets for years and yet it keeps on trying to upsell me to their streaming thing. And sometimes it just brings up a blank screen over the music instead and hangs for a moment; sometimes that becomes a streaming service ad, sometimes it just hangs until I close the whole app. I am betting that OSX Music will start doing that too if I upgrade to Catalina - one more reason to put that upgrade off until absolutely necessary. Apple isn't alone in this though. I've been opening up the Kindle app a lot less lately ever since its home view changed from "here are all your books" to "here are some of your books and here are some books a lot of people are pre- ordering that we think you might wanna buy and here are some books we think you might wanna buy", especially since they launched that new view the same week a book with Trump's angry orange glare prominently featured on the cover got a shit-ton of pre-orders. Exactly what I wanna see when I'm looking for some relaxing bedtime reading, thanks Bezos. ------ m463 Interesting article - makes an assertion, backs it up with lots of third party references.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Smartwatch hack could send fake pill reminders to patients - rbanffy https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53333633 ====== vanous Just use Gadgetbridge wherever possible. One could use broadcasts for further automation... [https://gadgetbridge.org/](https://gadgetbridge.org/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sea Pirates Hacked Shipping Company to Plan Attacks, Find Valuable Cargo - dredmorbius http://news.softpedia.com/news/sea-pirates-hacked-shipping-company-to-find-valuable-cargo-501268.shtml ====== lawless123 "The hacker lacked talent, was easily discovered Fortunately, the hacker wasn't that skilled. Verizon says that the attacker used a Web shell that didn't support SSL, meaning that all executed commands were recorded in the Web server's log." Yeah, easily discovered AFTER they already got the loot... ~~~ dredmorbius And punished ... by blocking his IP address. I'd say the percentages are pretty good here. ------ dredmorbius @dang: I just realised this is a 2016 story, title adjustment?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Live Justin.tv feed of YC Q&A Session in Boston with Alexis and Harj - Harj http://www.justin.tv/harj#/w/459029824 ====== mahmud Is there a conference line to dial into? I am looking at the video but there is no way to interact. Am I missing some kind of chat widget that's hidden somewhere on screen? ~~~ dkasper It's over, so the link takes you to the recorded video rather than the live page that has chat. ~~~ mahmud Oh. I just shot a tweet to @kn0thing. My bad. Thanks dkasper.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
If The X-Men Worked In IT - nickoakland http://www.zetta.net/blog/xmen-worked/ ====== hyuuu I really disagree with wolverine's position as a customer facing role. Because, you know, he's wolverine.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook Is Building a 394-Unit Housing Community Near Its Offices - aashaykumar92 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579111792834660448.html#! ====== joonix Eh, not really. They are "working with" a real estate developer. Sounds like they just made a deal, mostly for the marketing aspect, to promote it as "connected to the Facebook campus." Facebook is not building it, and all but 15 units will be available to the general public, not just FB employees. ~~~ nonchalance You clicked the link -> mission accomplished ------ birken When making short term trips to remote offices within a big company, having nearby corporate housing is awesome. This is probably the main reason Facebook is going to have 15 (not 394) units in this nearby complex. But that wouldn't fit the narrative of the article though, so I'm sure it is whatever the author said. ------ jgalt212 Clickbait aside, the perks are just getting out of hand in the Valley. In the past, NY was seen as a bad place for a tech start up because it was very expensive to outbid the banks for engineering talent. Since 2008, this is less so the case, but I'd still think twice about trying to poach a coder from a Hedge Fund. What had been said for NY, now seems to have good relavence for the Valley. The big shops just pay so much in salary and give so much in perks, it's becoming very hard to recruit talent to the low wage/hi risk jobs that start-ups offer. So where does that leave us? Where's the best place to start a biz these days with most compelling combination of easy access to both talent and funding? ~~~ jcomis >Where does that leave us? Seattle, Austin, Denver maybe? ------ Jun8 Hope they learn from the mistakes of earlier similar efforts, e.g. the Pullman District in Chicago [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_District](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_District). ------ ihsw _Doggy_ daycare? Get a human daycare.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Log: Real-time data's unifying abstraction - boredandroid http://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying ====== justinsb The idea of the log goes well beyond just real-time data (as the blog post describes, although the title does not). I think it might well turn out to be one of core building blocks of _all_ stateful systems. Amazon's Kinesis has for the first time exposed a reliable Log-aaS on the cloud; I think we'll start to see more systems built around it. My personal "24 commits for December" project is to build a set of open-source cloud data-stores, all backed by a distributed log using Raft, "blogging all the way". I'm half-way through, and I've implemented a simple key-value store, put a Redis front-end on it, used that to implement a Git server, and am currently working on building a document store with SQL querying. All with the same architecture: the log provides fault-tolerance and consistency, we have a data structure specific to the particular service (e.g. message queue or key- value store), we periodically take state snapshots so that we don't have to reply the whole log after every failure. Feel free to follow along / provide feedback: [http://blog.justinsb.com/blog/categories/cloudata/](http://blog.justinsb.com/blog/categories/cloudata/) ~~~ boredandroid Yeah totally agree. I focused on real-time data because offline data processing is often able to be less principled about the usage of time and doesn't need an explicit log (e.g. many ETL pipelines work this way). ~~~ justinsb Hi there - I see you're Mr Kafka :-) I wanted to use Kafka instead of Raft for my project, but for my application I couldn't tolerate the (even highly unlikely) possibility of losing a message (when we lose all the nodes in the In-Sync Replica set). I understand why this tradeoff is there (for the clickstream use-case), but I hope it might be possible to retrofit reliable writes to support other use cases as well. The more open-source reliable log services we have the better! ~~~ boredandroid Yup, agreed. Wanna help? :-) ~~~ justinsb I'd love to help (I opened KAFKA-1050 on the issue), and I even started coding, but I got stuck on how to deal with the rollback problem when a write isn't acknowledged by a quorum. I think it requires a "real" distributed consensus protocol (unlike the current design), which is a fairly big change! It may be that the answer is to use Kafka's efficient storage design with Raft, which is something I explored a little on day 1 of my project: [http://blog.justinsb.com/blog/2013/12/07/cloudata- day-1/](http://blog.justinsb.com/blog/2013/12/07/cloudata-day-1/) ------ chaz > Finally, we implemented another pipeline to load data into our key-value > store for serving results. This mundane data copying ended up being one of > the dominate items for the original development. I'm always amazed by how difficult it is to simply get the data. Sounds so simple, but it's fraught with all kinds of issues in structure, timing, reliability, and scale -- and it's usually underestimated. Every BI project I've ever worked on was mostly spent simply getting the required data together into a single database. After that, it's a relative snap. A bit off topic -- I'm guessing that healthcare.gov's biggest technical hurdles were similar. Simplistically put, it's a shopping comparison site and the UI/functionality is fairly trivial (which is why several HN comments suggested that a small team could built out the whole thing in days/weeks). But imagine if the data to support it was from 36 different legacy sources that were unreliable, poorly documented, and built/managed by completely different vendors. That's going to take up the majority of your time and frustration. Database-driven websites are easy if the data is already built for you. Great article -- thanks for writing it. ------ strictfp Hmm. >Event Sourcing. As far as I can tell this is basically the enterprise software engineer's way of saying "state machine replication". It's interesting that the same idea would be invented again in such a different context. Event sourcing seems to focus on smaller, in-memory use cases. Fowlers article doesn't read like that at all if you ask me. He is talking about the general concept of using an event log as a storage mechanism. Very similar to the OPs afticle. And if you look at the date, Martins article is from 2005. Credit where credit is due. In the Java world, the idea of event sourcing was made publicly known by the project 'prevlayer'. These guys boldly suggested to store the current snapshot in RAM, yes, but had also built mechanisms for event logging, snapshotting and replay. The log was persisted on disk and replayed at startup. The prevlayer guys were in fact not enterprise at all, quite the opposite. Their ideas caused quite a stir in the enterprise world. ~~~ kitsune_ A couple of years ago, Event Sourcing / CQRS was a really hot topic in the DDD enterprise world, especially within the .NET community: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/jj554200.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/jj554200.aspx) [http://codebetter.com/gregyoung/2010/02/13/cqrs-and-event- so...](http://codebetter.com/gregyoung/2010/02/13/cqrs-and-event-sourcing/) [http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/2011/05/why-i-still-love- cqrs...](http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/2011/05/why-i-still-love-cqrs-and- messaging-and-event-sourcing/) [http://vimeo.com/28457510](http://vimeo.com/28457510) LinkedIn's approach sounds fairly similar in a lot of ways. ------ pixelmonkey Great article. A highly relevant quote: The log is similar to the list of all credits and debits and bank processes; a table is all the current account balances. If you have a log of changes, you can apply these changes in order to create the table capturing the current state. This table will record the latest state for each key (as of a particular log time). There is a sense in which the log is the more fundamental data structure: in addition to creating the original table you can also transform it to create all kinds of derived tables. Also, a good architecture diagram: [http://engineering.linkedin.com/sites/default/files/full- sta...](http://engineering.linkedin.com/sites/default/files/full-stack.png) At Parse.ly, we just adopted Kafka widely in our backend to address just these use cases for data integration and real-time/historical analysis for the large-scale web analytics use case. Prior, we were using ZeroMQ, which is good, but Kafka is better for this use case. We have always had a log-centric infrastructure, not born out of any understanding of theory, but simply of requirements. We knew that as a data analysis company, we needed to keep data as raw as possible in order to do derived analysis, and we knew that we needed to harden our data collection services and make it easy to prototype data aggregates atop them. I also recently read Nathan Marz's book (creator of Apache Storm), which proposes a similar "log-centric" architecture, though Marz calls it a "master dataset" and uses the fanciful term, "Lambda Architecture". In his case, he describes that atop a "timestamped set of facts" (essentially, a log) you can build any historical / real-time aggregates of your data via dedicated "batch" and "speed" layers. There is a lot of overlap of thinking in that book and in this article. It's great to see all the various threads of large-scale data analytics / integration coming together into a unified whole of similar theory and practice. Interestingly, I also recently discovered that Kafka + Storm are widely deployed at Outbrain, Loggly, & Twitter. LinkedIn with Kafka + Samza and AWS deploying a developer preview of Kinesis suggests to me that real-time stream processing atop log architectures has gone mainstream. ~~~ pragmatic The link to Nathan Marz's book: [http://www.manning.com/marz/](http://www.manning.com/marz/) Still in early access as of Dec, 17 2013. ------ adolgert It makes me so happy to see such a clear picture of how service logs relate to the input and output token streams of finite state machines. We usually think of finite state machines as these little objects with a few states, but the category theory version of them is an essential definition of what it means for a system to be deterministic and depend only on current state and given inputs. It's a set of allowable input tokens (the input log), a set of allowable output tokens (the output log of actions taken by the system), an internal state Q, a dynamics delta that decides the next state from the previous one, and an output function lambda that decides what output token to return given the current input state. By making the statement that logs are streams of tokens which have deterministic effect, this author is assuming that the services are finite state machines. This may not be the case if, for instance, they do not set random number generators to a known state. Any way a service doesn't just depend on its previous state violates this principle. If it meets this principle, then the logs are, by definition, taken from the strings of allowable input tokens X or the strings of allowable output tokens Y. The debate in the article about at what level to log is a debate about which portion of the service to treat as an FSM. It boils down nicely. Oh, a dense but beautiful article on this is Machines in a Category by Arbib and Manes. ------ akrymski Logs should be studied in CS together with Turing Machines - they are a vital component of today's architecture. I applaud the effort of clearly describing the role of logs in today's distributed architectures in concise and easy to grasp way. Everyone studying database systems and distributed architectures should read this article. Thank's Jay! We too have arrived at using logs at Post.fm, however with a slightly different application: syncing email clients that can go offline with remote servers (similar to Exchange). Instead of the traditional approach taken by most web apps - calling remote APIs directly (the new-age remote procedure calls in effect) I believe the new client-server architectures for web-apps will use logs to synchronise state. This is increasingly possible with the availability of local storage (web-sql, indexed-db, etc). Another fascinating concept is Acid-State ([http://acid- state.seize.it](http://acid-state.seize.it)) which "keeps a history of all the functions (along with their arguments) that have modified the state. Thus, recreating the state after an unforeseen error is a simple as rerunning the functions in the history log." The idea of a log being transparently generated at application run-time is fascinating. Function calls elegantly map to 'transactions' when modifying multiple rows this way. Another interesting outcome of thinking about database systems as logs, is that the tables are in effect read-only. You don't really "modify a row in a table", but add an entry to the log. At some point the database system updates the table to reflect the additions to the log (eventual consistency). If you make the database system wait for the log processing to complete before returning - you essentially get ACID. Sometimes I wish there was a simpler, more transparent database system that made the log front and center, letting me specify if a SELECT requires the table to be updated with respect to the log or not. Current DBMSes seem to hide lots of functionality instead of providing a simple model that can be tweaked to a particular application. ------ irickt Just a coincidence I guess that logs will be denied to Linkedin's customers. From an email this week: "... We'll be retiring the LinkedIn Network RSS Feed on Dec. 19th. All of your LinkedIn updates and content can still be viewed on LinkedIn, or through the LinkedIn mobile app. ..." ------ chubot This is a fantastic and insightful article, and I'm sure the relatively few comments are a result of people's minds slowly bending to this new way of thinking :) I particularly liked the list of related resources of the end. I have been looking through academic papers, open source, and also "enterprise integration" stuff, and it always strikes me how people re-invent the same things under different names. One question though: What about access control and security? Everyone having the chance to subscribe to all data at a company is of course fantastic for product development and productivity. But as a company grows it will also become the case that not every system _should_ potentially access all information. ------ timmclean > I suspect we will end up focusing more on the log as a commoditized building > block irrespective of its implementation in the same way we often talk about > a hash table without bothering to get in the details of whether we mean the > murmur hash with linear probing or some other variant. The log will become > something of a commoditized interface, with many algorithms and > implementations competing to provide the best guarantees and optimal > performance. Very insightful. Thanks for the in-depth write-up. ------ EGreg What can I say: [http://qbixstaging.com/QP/features/streams#column=2](http://qbixstaging.com/QP/features/streams#column=2)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: HereBy = photos nearby - bobsil1 Made an iOS app which lets you share and see photos taken nearby, with radius from a block to 500 miles. It's visual place discovery for beaches, trails, food, events (comedy shows, weddings, games) and news (downed trees, accidents). Hosts, doesn't scrape, and it's not Color: https://herebyapp.co<p>Made in Swift/Obj C and Python back end on a retina iMac. Looking for feedback and bug reports. Thanks! ====== haidrali where is the link to download ....? ~~~ bobsil1 [http://herebyapp.co](http://herebyapp.co). Apparently HTTPS URLs aren't auto linked on HN?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
LiShield Is a Smart LED Bulb Prevents Photos by Confusing Cameras - chriskanan https://petapixel.com/2017/11/03/led-light-bulb-protects-privacy-confusing-cameras/ ====== cvwright Very cool. Does it work against HDR? Or can you remove the noise by combining multiple exposures? ~~~ anotheryou Would be a pain in the ass to remove either way. I'm very sure though, that long exposures work just fine. ------ pmdulaney EW comes to cameras... ------ nerpderp83 What are the health risks?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Generalizing the inverse FFT off the unit circle - gok https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50234-9 ====== lawrenceyan Very cool. This should have a great deal of application in many signal processing tasks.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce - yoloswagins http://www.phatbeetsproduce.org/uglyproduce/ ====== DoreenMichele I spent nearly six years homeless. I ate at soup kitchens and got food from food banks for a small portion of that time. I grew up with a garden in the back yard. My dad hunted and some of the meat on our table was squirrel and deer he killed. My mother cooked from scratch. I'm used to eating well for relatively little money. Most of the food at soup kitchens and food pantries fails to meet my expectations for food quality. Food stamps (EBT) are a good program. You can use them to buy the same food from the same stores as anybody else and you get to decide what to spend it on. (Though the program could use more funding. They tend to last only 3 weeks of the month.) Soup kitchens and food pantries tend to suck, even the better ones. I'm not saying we shouldn't provide compassionate support to anyone. I'm just saying some programs for doing so would be acceptable to people with middle class expectations and some wouldn't be. For many reasons, including germ control, we need to be shooting for programs that fit middle class sensibilities and not act like "beggars can't be choosers." Furthermore, if you are homeless, you are living without a fridge. Produce doesn't keep well under those conditions. When I was around a lot of other homeless people for a time, it wasn't unusual for free produce to go to waste, in part for that reason. Some idiot would give a homeless person some giant bag of apples. They could eat a few of them before they rotted, but not all of them. Maybe they managed to give the rest away. Maybe they didn't. Last, I have serious reservations about creating systems to serve the poor instead of creating systems to help them resolve their problems. Systems designed to serve the poor tend to actively keep poverty alive, a la the Shirky Principle: _" Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution"_ [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle) ~~~ AnthonyMouse > Food stamps (EBT) are a good program. You can use them to buy the same food > from the same stores as anybody else and you get to decide what to spend it > on. Food stamps tend to suck for a lot of the same reasons food pantries do. You're still telling people what to buy. It's not as bad because there are more choices, but it's still the same general problem where you have a bureaucracy telling you what to buy instead of being able to buy what you need the most like anybody else. Sometimes what you really need is food. Sometimes -- or some specific days -- you have access to food and what you really need is to save up enough for a working car or gas to put in it so you can go to job interviews. Or something else that the person in question knows they need but arbitrary politicians have no way to predict. But if you give people food stamps, they'll buy food with it. Even if they already have suitable food, because it's free money that can only be used for one thing. Then it costs the taxpayer $1 and provides the person with $.05 worth of value, which they take because $.05 is more than $0. Meanwhile just giving the person $1 cash would give the person $1 in value and cost the government _less_ , because then it isn't necessary to administer a system to force people to buy the thing they needed less instead of the thing they needed more. And eliminating that bureaucracy reduces the Shirky principle problem. ~~~ skrebbel You didn't at all consider the reason why food stamps might exist in the first place. I don't know anything about them, but I'd assume it has something to do with a correlation between homelessness and life problems that make financial discipline extra hard (eg addictions). I'm not trying to imply that all homeless people are addicts (quite the contrary) but if I'm a crack addict and you give me money I'm not sure I'd be using it to save it up for buying a car one day. ~~~ dragonwriter > You didn't at all consider the reason why food stamps might exist in the > first place. I don't know anything about them, but I'd assume it has > something to do with a correlation between homelessness and life problems > that make financial discipline extra hard (eg addictions). I wouldn't assume that, since food stamps aren't particularly focussed on the homeless. In fact, the original purpose of the food stamp program was clearing agricultural surpluses (hence why the program was created in the Department of Agriculture and not the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare where you would have expected it to be if it were a welfare program and not an ag industry support program); you originally had to purchase food stamps, and for every dollar you got $1 of unrestricted (but still only for food) stamps, and $0.50 of restrictes-to-items-deemed-to-be-in-surplus stamps. The exact restrictions and mechanisms changed over time in subsequent iterations of the program (and it's hard to find a clear purpose for many changes because lots were compromises between competing visions with fundamentally opposed goals.) ~~~ ada1981 If your a crack addict, you’ll prob sell your food stamps or the food you bought to get crack. Unprocessed trauma coping circuits (aka addiction) highjacks intelligence to get the dopamine trigger, it doesn’t nessesarily eliminate intelligence. ~~~ astura You can't sell food stamps so easily anymore. They used to be paper currency, but they are in the form of a debit card now, still possible to sell, just requires some planning ~~~ fipple Every few weeks I get a person approaching me in the grocery store offering to buy me $2x of my groceries for an $x cash payment. ~~~ Broken_Hippo Exactly this. More food for less money is a good deal if you are just-over- the-line for getting food stamps or the ones you have don't go far enough to really feed your family. ------ jchw >Our BeetBox CSA supports small farmers of color mostly farming under 50 acres, [...] ... >Imperfect Produce is only able to make a profit by working with the larger global agribusinesses, not the picturesque small and mid-sized farms they project in their marketing campaign. Can someone explain what I'm missing? They get their produce from small farmers, Imperfect Produce gets their produce from large farmers, where is the overlap? >it certainly doesn’t help small, local farmers or address the source of waste: overproduction by industrial farms as they produce the perfect produce sold in supermarkets. So in this context, the over production is being considered "waste" but once Imperfect Produce uses it, it's perfectly good food that food banks and soup kitchens no longer have access to. Also, there is a lot of implication that all of the food waste going to support communities is being utilized effectively. But certainly they, too, discard some portion of food, not to mention issues with quality or sanitation. Clearly I'm missing something. That, or they really called it on the "sour grapes" thing. ~~~ subpixel They (Phat Beets) are operating under the common misunderstanding that small farms are always 'better' than larger ones, and that 'local' produce is, ipso facto, more sustainable than produce grown elsewhere and transported efficiently in bulk. There are valid arguments to be made against high-input agriculture. None of them are discussed in this blog post, which seems to be not so much a case of sour grapes as one of rigid ideology. As an aside, a valuable lesson here about what matters to consumers: people buy things to address their own needs. The business that makes it easier for consumers to feel good about themselves wins. 'I eat ugly vegetables' is an easier, even more fun consumer story than 'I help fight entrenched societal ills by buying vegetables from bad neihborhoods.' All else being equaly, IP would still dominate here based on resonating with more consumers. ------ hinkley My girl signed us up for the ugly fruit box, and I’ve done a couple shifts doing processing (sorting) at two food banks. Maybe this is different elsewhere but the two streams of food had very little in common. What has shocked me is that I expected ugly food to get turned into processed food. You know, lopsided potatoes made into soup or Pringles. Weird looking apples into fruit juice. What I get instead is oranges the size of grapefruit, grapefruit the size of oranges, and a reality check. The food I’m picturing is made on machines. Machines like to work with uniform inputs and usually can’t cut out bad bits. So maybe they’re turning all the apples that are between three and four standard deviations below normal size into applesauce, but they probably aren’t turning giant or scabby grapefruit into my breakfast beverage. It does kind of make me wonder if there’s a market for making machines that _can_ do that though. We have to be close to building that sort of tech at a competitive price. ~~~ sokoloff 4 standard deviations excludes 63 in a million. Why would a designer of food prep automation design around that? Why would a market for such outliers form? At some point, it’s cheaper and more efficient to compost 0.006% of food than to design ultra-flexible processing equipment. What’s surprising to me is that the alternate market for such outlier food evolved. It would seem cheaper to just compost it. I actually wonder how much of the market is genuine economically driven vs “feel good”/signaling. ~~~ hinkley OK nerd. When was the last time you saw the word “maybe” in sentences that are intended to be scientifically accurate? But I’ll bite. Do we know for certain that fruit sizes are a normal distribution? If not then you can’t estimate sigma the way you did. Most of our tree fruit comes from genetic clones, with a different root graft tuned to soil type. So size is going to come down to weather, health and inputs (water nutrients and sun), but not really to genetics. Compost should be the third or forth option for this process. The one cull we did, all of the rotting fruit went to compost, and the too far gone or gouged fruit went to a farmer for his cows. Pigs should work just as well (better, really, since pork is much more efficient than cow, caloricly speaking). Maybe free range chickens too. My friend who is somewhere between overachieving gardener and homesteader gives her spent cider apples to her chickens. And I know of small scale chicken farmers who collect restaurant waste and let their chickens forage on the piles. But at industrial scale it probably goes to compost. But even compost and manure can still have a life if the right people are involved. We should be doing more of that. New Belgian Brewery (a B Corp), last I heard, double composts their spent grains. First anaerobically to get methane to fire the boilers, and a second aerobic composting which gets spread on the property. And one voice in the permaculture community, Mark Shepard, rotates his cows and chickens so the fly spawn on the cow patties are in the larval stage when the chickens arrive. Good protein and the manure is dispersed “for free”. Even the food we don’t eat can do good. ------ komali2 >Imperfect Produce claims they’re saving the world by reducing food waste–and helping farmers by buying surplus ugly produce that would have been thrown out. Sounds great. The reality is that this produce would have otherwise gone to food banks, to be redistributed for free. I've been chewing on this for a while. Who's in charge of setting up a social safety net? Whose responsibility is it to make sure people don't starve in the streets? I thought I paid taxes to my government to socialize the issue across my representative district, but my government (in the USA) has disagreed with me - that money is to be spent on fighter jets (to quote the executive branch), while the churches are responsible for taking care of the homeless. And by the way, the homeless are responsible for policing themselves (to quote my mayor). A couple weeks ago Domino's Pizza filled a bunch of potholes and stamped their logo on the asphalt after. I thought that would cause a national discussion. I thought at the very least, the city that it happened in would be humiliated enough to make the foolish mistake of maybe trying to slap back at Domino's for putting their logo all over the street. Nope, business as usual. In other words, why suddenly are people starving again because imperfect produce found a capitalist way to reduce waste? ~~~ couchand > found a capitalist way to reduce waste? I don't know anything about either of these groups, but the article says that this is simply the marketing of Imperfect Produce that doesn't bear out in reality. Do you have information contradicting their points that you decided not to share? ~~~ komali2 I don't think I understand what you mean... But I almost certainly have less information than them or probably you, so am happy to hear more. ~~~ sleepychu IP assert: " _This food was going to be thrown out_ & going to waste. We are using it for something!" Article asserts: " _That food wasn 't being thrown out_ it was going to food banks and homeless shelters." So while IP is almost certainly helping the farmers by paying them for produce they can't normally sell they certainly aren't reclaiming mountains of food otherwise destined for rot. ------ fipple The author seems to be saying “don’t sell imperfect produce to people... only sell them perfect produce so that you have to waste huge amounts of resources in overproduction so that the leftovers can be donated to the poor.” No. Feeding the poor is important but there must be a better way than that. ~~~ seem_2211 It's not the strongest supporting argument, but I think you can make the case that Imperfect Produce also do a good job of destigmatizing eating and using ugly produce. If you look at the formation of a lot of Western welfare systems, most had a focus on dignity. It's no fun to be the one kid with the ugly produce, or explicitly going to something that's for the poor kids. We see it a lot with adults as well - how many people don't take advantage of benefits they deserve, because they don't want to be people that have to take these benefits. If we can support a culture that says produce doesn't have to be perfect to be socially acceptable, then I think everyone benefits. While I'm sure Phat Beets do good stuff, I'm not sure if their constant refrain on helping the poor and marginalised is helpful in the long run. In my view, a good local grocery store that sells fresh produce at an affordable price is going to be a massive help, and I think both they and Imperfect Produce do the same thing. Finally Phat Beets only deliver in the East Bay. Imperfect Produce also come to San Francisco. ------ ggm Food banks are charity which should be tackled by the welfare state. Food banks do good work. They do amazing work. But it's work which shouldn't have to be done, and it's an indicator oF economic failure. Commoditising ugly fruit and veg is good. We should stop treating perfectly good food as reject and we should stop assuming the best use of ugly food is donation to the poor. Poor people need jobs and state intervention not food banks ~~~ komali2 What about when there aren't enough jobs? ~~~ occamrazor They need other welfare services: food stamps, long-term unemployment benefits, medicaid, vocational training, minimum income guarantees, free daycare for children, etc. These services should be provided by the local government rather than charities. ------ darawk > It’s a clever money making scheme, but it certainly doesn’t help small, > local farmers or address the source of waste: overproduction by industrial > farms as they produce the perfect produce sold in supermarkets. No...that's literally exactly what they are addressing. They are creating demand for the imperfect produce. That was the problem in the first place, lack of demand for imperfect produce and the inseparability of imperfect produce production from perfect produce production. ------ p1mrx Does the food industry have a moral obligation to produce waste for the poor? It seems they discovered a market segment that had been previously overlooked. Being transparent about where the food _would_ have gone might make people think twice before lowering their quality standards, but in aggregate, I think the technology to route second-rate food to bargain hunters is a genie that won't be easily rebottled. ~~~ eropple We are all, at the close of everything, equally human, and I would argue that there is not a human alive who _has_ who does not bear some measure of responsibility for those who _have not_. Even a small measure at the very least, and getting shady at the expense of nonprofits and foodbanks is probably enough for, y'know...most Americans with the luxury--and it is a luxury, an extreme one--to _found a venture-backed startup_ to surpass theirs. ------ rabboRubble I signed up for Imperfect Produce about 6 months ago. I'm relatively happy with the service. Despite calling the produce "imperfect" often the freshness and taste is better than what I find at the store. Caveat, I have not liked the quality of the fruit so I stick to their vegetable offerings. The main driver for me sticking with the service so long is that a) we do not have to make grocery trips as frequently, b) my diet has improved. I feel a pressure to eat the veg we have on hand before the next delivery, which means eating veg for breakfast many days. And lunch. And twice for dinner. I also don't own a car, and having services like this helps me continue the car-free lifestyle. I am sympathetic to phatbeets' criticism. Despite leaning towards not changing my consumer habits, I will have to mull over their points and evaluate my priorities. At some point though, I need to eat and if the service fits within my overall lifestyle but I care about community hunger, maybe I can donate a box of produce to a food shelter through IP? ------ gertiew I’m beginning to think VC is the most important driving force of rising inequality. It replaces natural flourishing of community connected entrepreneurship with a winner take all market. It crushes the less connected and resourced with tactics that would be called dumping in other markets. ~~~ calhoun137 I strongly disagree. In my opinion, the relationship between VC and rising inequality is indirect at most. The primary factors which contribute to inequality in a given country are related to the number of available jobs, the distribution of wages among various subsets of the working population, the robustness of social safety net programs, and the underlying distribution of political and economic power. Our startup movement, more so than any other segment of the global economy, embodies the idea of the "American Dream" that if you work hard you can be successful and move up the social ladder. It's not perfect, and clearly it's not a pure meritocracy, but to claim that the VC world is "the most important driving force of rising inequality" is very inaccurate in my judgement. It is true that silicon valley style tech companies are more and more becoming an important part of the economy, but the types of startups which are part of the tech startup eco system are creating jobs and are disrupting existing industries as part of a healthy capitalist process. Here are two factors which I consider to have a much more significant influence than VC's on the global trend of rising inequality: 1) It is well understood that middle class families keep on average the majority of their wealth in the form of a house which they own. The housing crisis, which was fueled by wall street excess, wiped out an incredible amount of wealth from poor and middle class families and the bailout and shorting transferred this wealth to the top 0.1% 2) Approximately 3 trillion is collected by the US government every year in taxes, and approximately 1.5 trillion is borrowed by the government, for a total budget of approximately 4.5 trillion. This money is handed out by congress members to powerful banks and corporations from their state as a form of quid pro quo for campaign donations. The budget deficit is then used to justify a never ending cycle of cuts to social safety net programs. ------ hycaria Article is terrible. At the last part >A Case of Sour Grapes? I thought there was going to be something interesting but no, that's only a header no content afterwards to answer that rhetorical question. Also I am kinda bothered by the repetitive use of small farmers of color. This also surprisingly seems to be mentioned nowhere else on their pages. Why not just Precarious ? local? Engaged for affordable quality or whatever? Is really color the most accurate and essential way to describe the farmers in this project? I already have no sympathy for this organization after reading what should be an unfair case that could help to bring traction about them. ------ sidhuko Social programs should really plan for these types of disruptors more often. We've had Asda (Walmart to you US folk) trying to do the same by adding boxes of below commercial grade into supermarkets couple years ago. It really pressured our local small suppliers by people seeing the cost of two trips higher than the difference in prices. I don't think the author should feel more cornered though - imperfect food still makes perfect meals at a higher margin - perhaps they should use this encouraging response from their community to take their stock, teach to cook healthy and retain profitablity to support their existing programs? They would even be able to maintain a reliable % for food banks and reducing waste by converting excess into food for a later time. ------ skybrian Does anyone have a better source than this article on what's really going on in the industry? I don't know anything about it, but I'm skeptical. I would have thought that an ugly carrot would end up as carrot juice or sliced up into bits and put into soup. ------ gandutraveler Many here are not getting the point of this article. Imperfect produce claim that most of the ugly produce used to get wasted , which is not true. Imperfect produce is also killing small non profits like Beetbox by taking away their customers. Also, what happens when Imperfect produce gets big enough that there isn't enough ugly produce to source. This is a problem with investor driven, profit hungry companies. Other example is SeatToTable which claimed to deliver fish from local fishermen to your doorstep was actually sourcing from other parts of world. ------ jondubois It seems that industries have become negative-sum games. In the software development industry, there is a similar problem; SaaS services have been replacing free open source solutions even though they are expensive and they take away flexibility from those who use them. Advertising has become too powerful - It allows for-profit companies to use big VC funding to fund campaigns to trick people into making bad decisions. They end up paying more for the same thing. In effect, they're changing the world for the worse but they're packaging it nicely. ~~~ chillydawg With SaaS and as a business owner and operator, I see the value in a specialised company offering hosted X and charging for it. My general purpose sysadmin employee will never be as good at looking after whatever niche tool than the SaaS company offering it and charging me $500/mo or whatever. Even at several thousand/month (approaching thr salary of a sysadmin), the economics can work out fine as you're being more productive and the sysadmin can be working on the really custom things that are core to your business like specific CI pipelines or monitoring and optimising our own software. It's the same argument as AWS. EC2 is really expensive, but it's still usually cheaper than actually running your own hardware at the same service level as AWS can provide. Scale of operation changes things, but the vast majority of companies are small enough that spending money on SaaS and IaaS is usually better than building a local team of commodity staff doing nothing unique for the business. ~~~ jondubois The idea that it's difficult to self-host these open source solutions is often part of the marketing but it often isn't true. Many times, I've seen companies host their own HTTP servers but outsource their WebSocket servers even though they don't require much additional DevOps skills if they used the right open source tools. Often, those companies would actually have benefited from being able to integrate their backend systems more closely. Regarding back end services; I've used various Amazon AWS services at different companies and, every time, it made development and deployment way more complicated - For example, one corporation I worked at, there was only 1 person in the whole company who had the full knowledge to work with our Lambda setup; this person worked very slowly (probably not their fault) so they were blocking all other teams in the company. It would have been much faster if the company operated the server themselves. ~~~ jondubois Big for-profit companies have always been marketing against open source software; before, they would say that because it's free; it means that it's insecure and low quality. Because it's now obvious that this is not true, for-profit companies have resorted to focusing their marketing on the idea that it's "too much effort to manage and scale" open source software. ~~~ user5994461 >>> they would say that because it's free; it means that it's insecure and low quality. It's not free, it costs money to setup and keep running. It's also often abandoned and unmaintained. ------ Joboman555 So they’re complaining that they’re being out-competed? ------ woohuiren Why are the comments dissing about phatbeets produce? Their cause is immeasurably better than Ugly Produce. Remember just recently there was a Chinese browser that received shit tons of money and turned out to be just Chrome browser? There are plenty of shitty startups out there and this is an obvious case that Ugly Produce is one of them. ~~~ peteforde What comments diss phatbeets produce? I just read literally every one and I haven't seen anyone complain about the product. Look: I live in Canada. I've never heard of phatbeats OR Ugly Produce, so it's fair to say that I don't have much of a horse in the race. However, it seems like your ultimate conclusion (UP is a shitty startup and they should DIAF) is based on logic that isn't nearly as "obvious" as you've decided that it is. Please, feel free to add more information. I find this topic genuinely interesting. ------ peteforde I debated whether to say anything or not because this seems zero-sum and the potential for downside is huge. Yet, here I am at 4:30am, in Canada, being opinionated about a problem that I am far-removed from. 20 years ago, I was a 20y/o radical activist. I spent a significant amount of my time, energy and money participating in street-level activist organizing - all while holding down a job as a software developer by day. I have protested the KKK (the Ohio police put us in a big cage while robed Klansmen hung out with a PA on the courthouse steps). I have personally been involved with shutting down white power skinhead concerts, which often involved physical confrontation. I wasn't "in Seattle" but I was "in Washington", for those of you old enough or inclined to catch the reference. I've held placards at Free Mumia rallies. I almost got arrested for jabbing Fred Phelps (the God Hates Fags asshole) with an umbrella. I offer this - if you're willing to trust me - not to brag or signal virtue, but to offer some context when I say that holy fuck the language that they use in their call-to-arms manifesto is irritating to me. Maybe it's true, what they say about getting old making you conservative. Maybe this post is giving me an existential crisis. And yet, I don't think so. What I actually think is that perhaps East Bay food activists are just guileless in their messaging and are completely tone-deaf to how incredibly elitist that this kind of intentionally polarizing propaganda actually sounds to anyone who might not shake their fist at the concept of capitalism still existing in the bathroom mirror every morning. Ranting about how a startup is stealing your thunder / community groups because they are _gasp_ effective is the literal definition of sour grapes. It has nothing to do with capitalism, which is true regardless of how many comments you delete. Seriously, phatbeats: when did you get so scared to innovate? You don't have to do it in a capitalist framework, but you have to get creative and try new things or you won't have a legitimate argument to make to 99.9% of the population. Even Canadians who are moved to tears by Bernie Sanders find your tone to be grating. I want so badly to support people who spend their energy making the world better for people. Maybe these Imperfect Produce folks really do have blood boys and drink the tears of orphans. But my knee-jerk reaction to your post, as life-long self-identified progressive, is to cheer for them. That should not be what's happening, and it's not just because I got old and sold out. Meta: I am genuinely impressed at how civil this discussion is. We HN commenters often get a bad rap. We often++ deserve it, but today, we can have nice things. ~~~ CodeWriter23 I was kind of thinking the same thing. Calling themselves “PhatBeets” though a clever play on words, does little to describe their mission and implant a memory in viewers. They now have to compete with a startup, they need to be kick ass marketers themselves. Why just surrender the food supply that Imperfect is acquiring? Get out there and get some of that for the PB programs. Corporations have philanthropy programs, you just need to talk to different parts of the company. Expanding beyond taking supply from farms owned by people of color seems like a logical step to increase the supply in their system. Learn all that stuff and then do some training among other programs that are suffering. Maybe all of my ideas suck and would fail. My point is I didn’t hear one word about what they’re going to do about the situation they find themselves in. They’re just whining that their business model has been disrupted. And the key thing about their messaging. They’re not building themselves up, they’re tearing someone else’s thing down. That’s never a successful strategy. Though I am thankful for the reveal about Imperfect (who are greedy assholes)...I think hey would have done a lot better shopping this story to SF Gate or SacBee. And then using those stories as a touchstone for their new launch of how they’re going to overcome this issue. ~~~ peteforde Exactly this: it reminds me of how the ACLU joined YC to learn to think and act more like a startup. The ugly truth is that perhaps the most real problem these folks have is the need to decide whether they are _prioritizing_ fighting capitalism or feeding poor people. It's quite likely that they cannot effectively do both at the same time, but would benefit from focused priorities. ------ raqueldelacruz9 Is anyone else extremely frustrated with Phat Beets about this article? Or are we all too busy burning down a conveniently placed straw man? Phat beets haven’t produced any stats or facts of their own here. They just keep tearing down the ones that Imperfect is providing. Nitpicking statistics and shaming a company for trying to feed more people with less waste is just as bad as whatever greenwashing they claim to despise so much. It’s pretty undeniable that Imperfect is making an impact on food waste and until they or any other company are using all of the billions of pounds of food that aren’t getting eaten every year, it’s utterly counterproductive to try to tear them apart for trying to help this food find a home on someone's table. Why are they so obsessed with fact-less mudslinging? Why is Imperfect the chosen target and not a real villain of the food industry like Bayer/Monsanto, Walmart, or McDonalds? Here are some facts for you: In 2017, Feeding America reported that they received over 1.47 billion pounds of produce. As a reference, Imperfect claims to have recovered 30 million pounds of produce to date. Feeding America and the NRDC also reported that over 6 billion pounds of crops go unharvested or unsold ever year. This study was based on 7 key crops so the total is likely much higher, but let’s assume its 6 billion to be conservative. This means that even if Imperfect went through 100 times the amount of ugly produce every year that they’ve recovered to date, they would still be using less than half of the available supply. Phat Beets, your math doesn’t add up! Provide meaningful statistics and facts to back up your argument or everyone will see through your emphatic nourishment of the outrage machine of social media for the reactionary Zooming out, there’s also a huge aspect of this that’s a messed up apples to oranges comparison. Imperfect is a business with a social mission related to food waste, not a nonprofit solely focused on ending hunger. It’s great that they are making a difference while also making money but it’s not fair to ask a company to overthrow capitalism. Do you expect Lyft to overthrow the freeway system, or ask the computer that you wrote these words on to end exploitative mining practices that provided the copper for the circuitry? It seems like you’re making the good the enemy of the perfect and in so doing ignoring the reality of the situation which is much more nuanced than you portray it. Isn’t there a way for community CSAs to work alongside companies like Imperfect? It seems to me that these two groups are working towards admirable, but very different goals at different scales and this is actually a good thing. There is plenty of work left to be done and there is clearly more than enough food for both of you to achieve your goals and then some. Save the abstract critique of capitalism for philosophy class, the rest of us live in the real world where we have to make compromises and embrace the grey areas. My sources- Feeding America report: [http://www.feedingamerica.org/assets/pdfs/feeding-america- pr...](http://www.feedingamerica.org/assets/pdfs/feeding-america-produce- one.pdf) NRDC report: [https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food- IP.pdf](https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf) ------ dcgudeman > “Some may claim we have a case of sour grapes. This is capitalism at its > best.” Yep sounds about right ------ ohthehugemanate I don't understand. Now it's bad for people to buy food waste, because otherwise food waste is donated? TFA smells like anti-capitalism, upset that someone is doing something profitable with the source of their charity work... And double upset that capitalists might have a (gasp) positive impact. Personally, I am angry and upset at this Phatbeets, for taking food waste away from the hard working farmers who would otherwise use it for compost. But I'm also angry at the farmers who, by using ugly food for compost, are stealing jobs from the good folks of the waste department. Stop undermining our social systems, you capitalist farmers! ------ delbel The ugly food should be ground up, fermented, and turned into whiskey moonshine for the homeless. The spent grain should be fed to pigs to make bacon. Any other waste should be ran in my flattop 1946 Ford 9n tractor to make more ugly food, with manure from the pigs and free labor from the homeless, in exchange for the whiskey moonshine and bacon diet. Win/win	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Elon Musk says Mark Zuckerberg's understanding of AI is 'limited' - mcone http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/25/technology/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-ai-artificial-intelligence/index.html ====== fossuser They're talking past each other because "AI" has become a useless term. Musk's comments are about a potential (maybe conscious) artificial super intelligence and the risks that could come from that if we enable one somehow without understanding the preconditions. Zuckerberg is just talking about "AI" in the sense that machine learning can solve a valuable class of problems. The super intelligence risk could be serious or not - it's hard to know since we haven't really dealt with an intelligence that wasn't created through natural selection with those biases for survival. We also don't really understand how consciousness works either. One risk of AI is that if Musk's argument is right we won't be as 'lucky' as we were with nuclear weapons. Enriched uranium is hard to get so nuclear weapons are easier to control and hard for an individual to make. Turning on an AI or copying the code for one and spreading it would probably be easier. If it does end up being dangerous that's not a great situation. ~~~ 6d6b73 >Turning on an AI or copying the code for one and spreading it would probably be easiear. What people never mention in any discussion with AI is that the AI will be as limited by physical world as we are. AI It's not just code, it's also the hardware that will run the code. That hardware has theoretical and practical limits, and requires a lot of power. It's not like AI running on some peta/exascale supercomputer will be able to jump to your laptop and take it over and spread itself to every electronic device in the world. ~~~ fossuser I think the main argument against this is once you're in the world of "super intelligence" you're severely outmatched. If for some reason it had an interest in staying on it might not be easy to stop. ~~~ 6d6b73 super intelligence will not happen overnight. AI will keep evolving with us and before it's truly conscious it will give us better understanding of math, physics, medicine.. This will help the AI grow, but at the same time we will be growing with it. It will be a symbiotic relationship. ~~~ fossuser Not necessarily, there's the idea of an "intelligence explosion" \- basically that while it may take a while to figure out the initial conditions it might be able to self improve rapidly from that point. Also consciousness may not be required (or possibly even preferable). ~~~ 6d6b73 "intelligence explosion" is also limited by the physical world. AI won't be able to come up with a better understanding of physics simply by reading academic journals. Yes it might have some good ideas, and find some of the stuff we're missing by simply connecting the dots, but that in no way will cause "intelligence explosion". Just think how much money and time we have to spend to test just a few of all of the theories in physics. And no, AI will not be able to suddenly come up with better theories simply by simulating physical world. ------ TDL I question whether either of these guys have a good understanding of AI. ~~~ Dzugaru I'm pretty sure noone on planet Earth has a good understanding of AI yet. I stopped reading about "what AI is, what AI isn't" completely. ------ pesenti A majority of the experts in AI would side with Zuckerberg on this one. See for example: [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/07/18/artific...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/07/18/artificial- intelligence-elon-musk/). It's not that we shouldn't worry about AI, it's that the issue Musk is raising - AI as an existential threat -, is distracting from the real issues. ~~~ caio1982 Was Isaac Asimov being distracted from the real issues as well just a few decades ago? Food for thought :-) ~~~ pesenti This is not about science fiction. It's about science today and in a near future and its consequence on policies and regulations. ~~~ caio1982 I honestly believe some of Asimov's concerns regarding AIs are not science fiction but rather forward thinking and will eventually happen. ~~~ pesenti "eventually" is the key word here. Most experts in the field admit to have no clue how and when these predictions will ever come true. It makes discussing them an overly speculative exercise. ------ JustAnotherPat I don't trust Zuckerberg on any issue in which Facebook has much to gain from one side. We all know how much money he'd like to make by having some AI programs follow us around 24/7. ~~~ hourislate One guy is trying to change the world and one guy is trying enslave it. When you have the likes of people like Stephen Hawking agreeing with Musk, why wouldn't you listen and be wary. Mark doesn't seem like a very intelligent person, just a very lucky person. ~~~ icebraining Musk was the guy that created a car that can track and report everywhere you go using a permanent connection to his mothership, plus films and uploads the surroundings and even has an camera inside. The only protection being his word that they won't read it unless you allow them. ------ josefresco Zuckerberg sells / appeals to a mass-audience who needs reassurance that AI will not take over the world and murder their grandkids. Musk sells / appeals to techies, and those seeking to embrace cutting edge technology and are not scared by "AI is dangerous" talk. Different audience, different messaging. ------ hndamien Wow. Mark used an example of self-driving cars being good for humanity as his example of why AI will pose no danger; to make a point about his perspective in a feud with the guy that is leading self-driving car revolution pointing out that AI could potentially be dangerous. I hold great concerns for Facebook's future. ~~~ hourislate Lets hope farcebook has no future.... ------ MarkMMullin Facebook is capable of monetizing current ML capabilities to do things like constantly tune individual news feeds so that its profit is maximized. Certainly counterproductive to some degree for modern society, but it is profitable. Straightforward goal. straightforward outcome. Elon's claimed that Tesla will have level 5 autonomous vehicles in 2 years. Yeah, in your dreams Elon, that's a massive cognitive stack you can't fit in the vehicle, one we've never built out to such a degree, and your car's autonomy level is going to be a function of its bandwidth to the cloud anyway. The mean part of me wonders if Elon plans on covering this wild assertion with 'Well, we can't now. Regulations and stuff' \- if he's just worried about putting a weapon on a solar powered drone that patrols some area and shoots baddies, yeah me too. But that's just human stupidity, it ain't AI, it ain't intelligent, it's just a dumb program with effectors. All ML really is these days is real big boundary relaxation systems, calculating the massive number of coefficients we need to make the equations work out the way we want. But come on, it's stupider than a rock. It's an equation solver and its brittle as hell. As a tool I love what we can now accomplish, but there's a long road from here to Hal. It's not bloody magic, it's just math. ------ mcmacintosh Honestly I'm pretty appalled by Musk's statements. There's no indication from recent research that we're close to the "dreadful super intelligence". I think he has an a very naive and scifi-ish understanding of the state of AI and his fear mongering is irresponsible at best. Or maybe he's right and private companies are so technologically advanced that they surpass academia by a wide margin. Somehow I highly doubt that. ------ AndrewKemendo Mark Recruited Yann Lecun, arguably the top "AI" practitioner in modern times (backprop anyone?). Lecun agrees with Mark and I would be surprised if Mark wasn't taking most of his direction in AI from Lecun. ~~~ arcanus Good point. Another noted expert in "AI" is Andrew Ng (formerly Google and Baidu) who stated that, "Fearing a rise of killer robots is like worrying about overpopulation on Mars." ...For some reason Elon is really hung up on gradient-based descent methods terminating all of humanity. We just aren't close to that possibility yet. It is not even in sight. ~~~ AndrewKemendo The problem is that both are potentially right. The majority of the ML field still ignores entirely the AGI discipline - and in general rightly so as there are enough narrow problems to solve to fill a lifetime. That's the perspective of Lecun/Ng etc... because they are scientists. The others Bostrom et al. are philosophers, so they approach it from a different perspective. There are valuable reasons to think about it at both levels. ~~~ hndamien Correct. There were plenty of economists that said Bitcoin would fail, and philosophers that thought otherwise. The jury is still out, but I know who is winning. [https://twitter.com/damiendonnelly/status/91766074021904386](https://twitter.com/damiendonnelly/status/91766074021904386) ------ 659087 “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The possibility of using AI to surveil and manipulate Facebook users (and non- users) on a mass scale (and probably give his presidential campaign a boost along the way) is worth far too much money for Zuckerberg to admit to the potential downsides. Zuckerberg isn't optimistic about AI, he's optimistic about the money and power AI will grant him. ------ __s Seems this pivots on a disagreement of AI as a risk Musk seems very anxious of existential threats-- it isn't surprising he may overestimate the danger of AI It also comes off as very monkey-centric. Is it so bad if human intelligence isn't what proliferates the future? Perhaps AI is a kind of memetic evolution for our culture, evolving into a form of life which can achieve sustenance with much less waste ~~~ jdietrich >It also comes off as very monkey-centric. Is it so bad if human intelligence isn't what proliferates the future? For humans, it's an absolute disaster - look at what happened to the lesser apes when Homo Sapiens became dominant. The odds are very good that a sentient AI will decimate us or make us extinct, simply by adapting our habitat to its own needs. ~~~ AndrewKemendo Are you expecting that Sapiens Sapiens would somehow last as a species forever? ------ vowelless I would love to see a new Jobs Gates style rivalry. Maybe Musk - Zuckerberg? ~~~ maxerickson How about Elon vs Musk? ~~~ loceng Elon's Musk would win. Edit: No playfulness on HN allowed today apparently ------ macmac Musk is being very generous in his assessment. ~~~ loceng From my perspective, Mark has always seemed like a controlled thinker - including controlling his actions, behaviour, etc. in a very fixed way. In contrast, Elon's always seemed to be a holistic thinker, starting from founding principles and then understanding what his actions will lead to. Elon's openness to thought leads me to believe his thinking style would lead to understanding how AI could evolve better than Mark's more controlling behaviour. ------ mindcrime Is there any particular reason to think that Musk's understanding of AI isn't also "limited"? I don't recall him being known as an AI researcher. I mean, there's no doubt he's smart, even brilliant... but being brilliant in one field doesn't necessarily mean you are an expert in others. ------ tarr11 Here is a pretty good article where many of the players are interviewed in depth. [http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion- dol...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion-dollar- crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x/amp) “If you want a picture of A.I. gone wrong, don’t imagine marching humanoid robots with glowing red eyes. Imagine tiny invisible synthetic bacteria made of diamond, with tiny onboard computers, hiding inside your bloodstream and everyone else’s. And then, simultaneously, they release one microgram of botulinum toxin. Everyone just falls over dead. ~~~ pesenti That example has absolutely nothing to do with AI... ------ danso As overloaded as the term "AI" has become, to the point where mainstream discussion is unlikely to be substantative, I'm glad a tech-business leader like Elon Musk is at least taking a public position of some skepticism. AI can be as empowering or as dangerous as we design and constrain it -- but to a layperson, AI and "algorithms" seem like inevitable magic, in the way that iPhones have steadily "improved" in hardware specs and in life-augmenting features. ~~~ rspeer Musk's view of AI relies on AI being magic, too. He's using the definition of "AI" that exists only in hyped-up promises about the future, and evaporates when applied to present technology. Musk dismisses AI experts who tell him that his claims bear no resemblance to real technology, because Musk isn't talking about the same AI as them. He's talking about sci-fi AI. There are no experts in sci-fi AI because, if there were anything there that one could understand well enough to be an expert in it, it wouldn't be sci-fi AI anymore. ~~~ hndamien Don't underestimate the exponential. ~~~ rspeer And don't overestimate the S-curve, which looks the same when you're in the first half of it. ------ notwhiteknight Even billionaires end up wasting their lives bikeshedding. ------ Asdfbla Musk maybe oversells the state of AI a bit when he says it's potentially an existential threat to mankind - but on the other hand, the advances of the recent years alone are enough to disrupt the daily lives of almost everyone. In that sense, some alarmism might be appropriate, especially considering control of the best machine learning systems will likely be concentrated in the hands of few powerful players. ------ yumraj Is it "limited" or "biased" \- as in biased so it serves the purpose one is trying to achieve. It would apply to both though :) ------ josh2600 What does it mean to have an understanding of AI that's limited? Have you ever talked to someone who is way smarter than you? Have you tried to imagine how they think? I suspect thinking about the future of AI is a little bit like that, insofar as it's hard to model the future state intelligently. ------ drivelous I understand that Musk's ideas of doom and gloom concerning AI are far into the future (loceng drops the Andrew Ng quote that draws parallels to people worrying about the overpopulation of Mars) but even if that is the case isn't it still worth noting now? My simple understanding of this all is that once we create AI that surpasses the intelligence of the human race, we as inferior beings will no longer be able to predict what they will do. If that's the case and the desire of AI (can AI have desire...?) runs contrary to human will, then there's no way to cut it that bodes well for the continued existence of the human race. And once that line is crossed, it's never going back. Is that not a reasonable thing to be worried about even if it's 200 years away? Even On the Origin of Species was published only ~160 years ago. ------ nibstwo Musk and Bezos are clearly smarter than Zuck and Dorsey. ------ wwwhatcrack I'd say both of these guys have limited understandings of everything. ------ JCzynski FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! ------ infimum Elon Musk's recent comments on the topic makes me say that his understanding of AI is similarly 'limited'... ------ phasnox I love Musk. He is brilliant and I think he has truly shaped the future. But he is wrong. Artificial Conscience(what he is referring to) is NEVER going to be achieved. I repeat NEVER. Its impossible. Conscience is in the form and not in the matter. In one word, there is never going to be an AI with free will. However, eventually we may build a super intelligent system with great power over our lives, that goes wrong, has bugs, or misbehaves. But, since the fact that such as system will never be conscious, we are always going to have power over it. So yeah, Musk is being an alarmist, and I believe he is the one with a limited understanding of AI. ~~~ sebular Let's put aside your absolute and close-minded certainty about the future for a minute. Unless you can provide some quotes, you're putting a lot of words in Elon Musk's mouth. He's made some goofy pop culture references during interviews, and it seems to be a calculated decision on his part to flirt with sensationalism in order to publicize the issue, but he's never seriously argued that the movie Terminator is a documentary about the future. Call it conscience, intelligence, whatever you want. The danger isn't that some ominously calculating and murderous robotic mind is going to spring into being and hide from humans while plotting our downfall. In order to understand the danger, all you have to do is look at what the US military is already doing with autonomous weapons. Killer robots aren't hypothetical, they're historical. In fact, you're the prime example of the danger of AI. You probably have a stronger than average understanding of computers, and maybe you know a lot about actual AI implementations, which is what makes you so self-assured that there's nothing magical about them. So you trust them, and you're a big fan of throwing an ever-increasing amount of trust into AI. You even admit that there will be bugs (there always are) and misbehavior (now who's humanizing programs?), but you fail to see why that's a problem when the stakes are raised from "crap, an app leaked private data online" to "crap, the autonomous weaponized drone mistook backyard fireworks for an attack and bombed a family." The way I see it, Musk is far from alarmist, and all the kidding about "summoning demons" is almost a way of coping with what's starting to seem like a terrifying inevitability. We've been building "dumb programs" for decades, and there's still a constant stream of breaking news about software that didn't do what it was supposed to. And you want to believe that there's no danger in building software that has increasingly fuzzy logic and connecting it to real-world I/O? I'm guessing that Elon Musk saw this problem when he first started toying with the idea of self-driving cars. You say he has a limited understanding of AI, but Tesla autopilot says otherwise. And he probably became keenly aware of the stakes when he realized that people would willingly entrust their lives to the decisions made by his company's software, and that without regulation, it's entirely up to Tesla's QA process to make sure their cars don't accidentally kill people.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Earth API Set for Execution - umeboshi http://www.programmableweb.com/news/google-earth-api-set-execution/2014/12/12 ====== wendell78 Since Google doesn't have a replacement ready, what are the best available options out there?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Requesting feedback on automated spreadsheet triggers for Google Sheets - jporras Hi all, I'm an early stage CEO building a "Zapier for spreadsheets" that basically enables the automated workflow to be triggered by changes in spreadsheet cells. Right now we've built support for Factivate and Google Sheets and have received a lot of attention from marketers who want to use this engine because they don't have to write scripts or code (simple conditional formula is all they need).<p>My question is, do you see it being useful beyond the marketing/advertising industries? I'm a marketer by training and know that industry well but don't have as much experience in other industries.<p>I know workflow functionality has been requested from spreadsheets for a while but we're looking for some real feedback on polishing our product-market fit before we do a larger launch. Who better to ask than the genius Hackernews community. For our product description, you can visit: https://factivate.com/spreadsheet-actions/<p>Thanks! ====== jporras Hey everyone, forgot to mention that our Google Sheets Actions Addon now has a waitlist due to the overwhelming demand we got from early signups. We'd still love to hear how it can be used in other industries so please add your thoughts in the comments section. Cheers!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Common problems when translating games into Japanese - NicoJuicy http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/328996/Common_problems_when_translating_games_into_Japanese.php ====== baud147258 The problem with this article: pictures with text on it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Columbus blamed for Little Ice Age - pwg http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/335168/title/Columbus_blamed_for_Little_Ice_Age ====== zeteo The must-read book for the context is _1491_ , by Charles C. Mann [1]. The main point is that pre-Columbian America was much more densely populated than previously thought, with the Native Americans managing a good deal of the ecosystem. European contact brought in diseases (mainly smallpox) that killed off the vast majority of the inhabitants, with momentous consequences for the ecosystem (e.g. the extreme proliferation of bison and passenger pigeon). But really read the book, it's very well written, based on the latest research, and quite enlightening. [1][http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before- Colum...](http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before- Columbus/dp/1400032059/) ------ russell Interesting theory except, as others have pointed out, the Little Ice Age started perhaps 2 centuries before Columbus. The North Atlantic ice pack was growing by 1250. In 1315 the European climate changed permanently for the worse with with heavy rainfall and a permanent drop in temperatures. The deepest part of the Little Ice Age occurred with the Maunder Minimum where sunspots virtually disappeared (1645-1715). Unfortunately, there were no sunspot observations for the 13th and 14th centuries to to show whether the start of the Little Ice Age occurred with a solar minimum. ~~~ saalweachter You're confusing the end of the Medieval Warm Period with the start of the Little Ice Age. During the Medieval Warm Period from 950-1250 sea ice was temporarily reduced, allowing the colonization of Greenland. This is not necessarily related to the Little Ice Age from 1550-1850. ~~~ russell It's really a matter of deciding when is the start of the Little Ice Age. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age> Some put it at the end of the medieval warn period, others hundreds of years later. I favor 1315, because over the period of a few years the climate of Europe tanked for hundreds of years. Of course a 1315 date argues for the cause being a long solar minimum and not reforestation. My opinion was greatly influenced by Brian Fagan: The Little Ice Age, [http://www.amazon.com/Little-Ice-Age- Climate-1300-1850/dp/04...](http://www.amazon.com/Little-Ice-Age- Climate-1300-1850/dp/0465022723). ~~~ Steko It's really just a matter of basic honesty to admit the consensus dating (1550-) up front. The 11 critical comments you're following from the linked article all fail to do this. ------ mooism2 > This new growth could have soaked up between 2 billion and 17 billion tons > of carbon dioxide from the air. That seems like a lot of uncertainty. ~~~ drats I am not sure you are allowed to question climate science like that. But it does make me wonder about large tree planting projects as an approach to climate change. Although I've heard there are problems with water tables in China where they have conducted green belt strategies to limit growing deserts. edit: [1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Wall_of_China#Problems> edit2: -2 wow, anyone care to explain? Sarcasm not permitted? ~~~ onemoreact Generally, sarcasm is to be avoided. It tends to downgrade the discussion and many people will down vote comments they agree with if they dislike the tone. It's often argued that this was even the original intent of voting and doing anything else is the path to Reddit. ~~~ nitrogen In response to Hisoka: it looks like your "Did Google pay you to say this?" comment got your account auto-killed. ------ Vivtek Wow, so in the 1400's we were _already_ on the way to anthropogenic global warming, essentially! ~~~ hvs Um, no? Did you read the article? It is talking about a massive _reforestation_ event due to the Native Americans dying off. This is the exact _opposite_ of anthropogenic global warming. ~~~ gyardley He read the article. He's implying that we _were_ on the way to anthropogenic global warming, and then Columbus and those who followed him inadvertently put a stop to it. ------ jimworm The size of California is 423970 square kilometres. At the higher end of the population estimate (80 million), and assuming complete annihilation of the population, that's 0.53 hectares (or 1.3 acres) of constant deforestation for every man, woman and child. ~~~ onemoreact This is over North and South America and I have seen estimates that disease wiped out over 80% of the native population. Some areas lost well over 95% of the population others much less so. But, disease tends to spread more rapidly though more densely populated areas, so it’s effect is going to be concentrated on farming communities. And those areas where early europeans spent most of their time aka South America. Still, it's hard to estimate what percentage of those people where farmers, but based on current results from slash and burn agriculture in South America sustained clearing of 10+ acres per person would not be unreasonable considering the crops and methods used during that period. Also, even non farmers are going to start a fair amount of forest fires simply by cooking food. So over all their numbers seem far more credible than you might expect. ~~~ lizzard What's being described is not slash and burn agriculture in the way it's practiced now, or "deforestation", but a regular seasonal burn-off of prairie or savanna. It prevented trees from taking hold in very wide areas. The book 1491 has good pointers in its bibliography to reputable sources about pre- Columbian grassland burns. ------ scarmig For an older, non popsci article treating the topic, check out this one from 2006, "Evidence for the Postconquest Demographic Collapse of the Americas in Historical CO2 Levels": <http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/EI157.1> ------ iwwr Biological weapons appear to trump any other sort of manmade or natural disaster, short of a killer asteroid. ~~~ VladRussian it is more like the whole humanity is continuously trying to win a Darwin Award. One can imagine galactic version of <http://www.darwinawards.com/> where aliens laughing at human race frantically trying to once more increase [under the "domestic /independence" sauce] production of fossil fuels instead of just harvesting free solar and wind energy. Stupid as stupid does. ------ CountHackulus Interesting, so to extrapolate from this theory, we could halt and even reverse global warming by killing off tons of people. Seems obvious in hindsight. ~~~ lambdasquirrel I read somewhere that the US may actually accidentally come close to its Kyoto targets because of the recession. So yes. Nuclear as your argument may be, you are probably correct. =P ------ FrojoS So how much forestation would be required to reverse a significant part of the effect of the industrial revolution? Lets say the CO2 emitted in the last 30 years. Would there be enough vacant area on earth to handle such an amount of forestation? In Europe, I could only imagine a significant reforestation if our agriculture becomes much more efficient. ------ jimmar Please correct me if I'm wrong, but over its life and decomposition, isn't a tree carbon neutral? While growing, trees basically absorb carbon, and when they decay that carbon is released back into the air. Therefore, planting more trees will not reduce carbon in the long term. ~~~ DavidAdams You're correct, but only if the tree's entire carbon store is released to the atmosphere, such as by being burned. Not all of the tree is able to decay and release its carbon. The portion of the organic matter that fell to the forest floor, was covered by other organic matter, stayed there for a long time and eventually becomes coal or oil. In other words, you can end up storing a lot of carbon in the soil. I suppose one good way to sequester carbon is to plant trees then cut them down at maturity and build durable buildings out of them. ~~~ bh42222 _I suppose one good way to sequester carbon is to plant trees then cut them down at maturity and build durable buildings out of them_ Or dump the trunks into any oxygen starved bog. Or ship them to the northern parts of the world and bury them in the shallow permafrost layer. Except both of those hold the risk of a sudden return of massive amounts of CO2 to the air due to some unforeseen (fire!) event. The most low risk is probably to turn them into charcoal, mix that charcoal into the soil they came from and plant new trees there. As long as some of the carbon is still in the soil by the time you repeat the process, you have a net gain of CO2 sequestration. ------ tententwenty Speaking as a layman..this all sounds a bit far-fetched. A drop of 80 million people in the Americas then is as nothing compared to what's happened with world populations in the 19th and 20th centuries. Despite a growth by billions we're still debating if climate change is definitely happening today. Maybe I'm just becoming more cynical as I get older	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Rise and Fall of Atlantic City - stickfigure http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_4_atlantic-city.html ====== gist "A long experiment with legalized gambling, launched in 1976, has failed to reenergize this once-iconic locale" It didn't fail exactly in the way this sentence seems to want to imply. It did work (and it significantly built up the surrounding areas). What killed Atlantic City post gambling 1976, was other states legalizing gambling and cannibalizing the market that they had to themselves and Las Vegas. Also gaming on Indian reservations. And a decision early on not to move poor people out of Atlantic City [1] (similar to what Las Vegas did) making it less attractive as a vacation spot. There is blight all over and close to the equivalent of "the strip" for lack of a better way to put it. [1] [http://articles.philly.com/2010-07-29/news/24970511_1_casino...](http://articles.philly.com/2010-07-29/news/24970511_1_casino- atlantic-city-entire-city) ------ JVMsOfGor Much longer article about same subject [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/07/the-death- and-l...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/07/the-death-and-life-of- atlantic-city) ------ whoopdedo Not mentioned in the article is the effect air conditioning had on where people go for vacation. Atlantic City was one of the escapes from the hot summer heat. Now you just turn down the thermostat. ------ barrad0s Very interesting read for me in special. I happened to be there for the first time this past Saturday. What an awful place. Truly shady and scary. Dirty, it seemed like a ghost town. ------ jxramos +1 for City Journal, love that stuff.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Review my startup, LivingPlug - NatWilde LivingPlug / http://livingplug.com/<p>The INLET is a device that you plug into the common electrical outlet, that will modify it in a variety of ways: Child safety (removes the receptacles from eyeline, and can be anchored securely to the wall), Added functionality (bonus receptacle, usb port), Energy efficiency (vampire charge kill switch), and incorporating interior design (customizable faceplates that can either match decor, or become a unique accent piece).<p>We officially launched the INLET in June at Dwell on Design. We experienced great succes at the three day conference, gathering numerous valuable contacts, receiving substantive feedback about the product, and actually selling every INLET that we brought.<p>After that initial spark of success, we were excited to really kick everything into gear, open up our online store for business and start selling. But sales haven't gone as smoothly online as they did face to face. We are getting people to the site, via social media and email campaigns primarily, but are having a hard time converting that traffic into a purchase. Any advice is welcome. ====== smt88 I have a lot of thoughts on this, but you should take my thoughts (and others on HN) with a grain of salt. This is a very specific community, and we aren't representative of your target market. My recommendation would be to put together a focus group. Don't compensate them, and don't run the focus group yourself. If you compensate them, they'll feel like they can't criticize the product. Same situation if they think the people running the focus group could have their feelings hurt. My thoughts: 1\. The branding needs a lot of work. Is the product called Living Plug or INLET? Why can't the company and the product be called the same thing? (I like the name Living Plug a lot, by the way.) Also, the content on the site is confusing. You're listing too many benefits, and you're often doing it with too many smashed up bits of text with different amounts of fading. It's hard to read and overwhelming. Spend a few hundred bucks on a SEO expert (a real one, not a glorified WordPress jockey) and turn your images into text and get the copy right. 2\. The price is way too high. The product is essentially a large splitter with a USB port, which you can buy at Target for $3. True that yours has the faceplate and "off" button (more on those later), but it's still a huge price difference for something no one needs. 3\. The faceplates are good and, in my opinion, the biggest selling point. Outlets are kind of ugly, when you think about it. The "off" switch to avoid vampire charges is not useful. I'd call it an anti- feature. No one is going to hit a switch whenever they want to use an outlet. Outlets are often in hard-to-reach places (behind tables, near the ground, etc.) Compared to, say, lowering A/C or heating bills, the benefit here is tiny compared to the amount of extra annoyance. If you think I'm wrong, give a few people free INLETs and ask them in 2 months how much they care about each feature. If you can take a feature or two out and decrease the price, you'll be in better shape. 4\. Don't pitch the child-safety angle unless you have proof that it works. Even then, say "safer" rather than "safety". Otherwise, you're opening yourself up to a lawsuit. Many children will not be stopped by the socket facing another direction. The only safe socket for a child is one that is completely inaccessible. 5\. Sell this on Amazon and other places where you'll get social exposure. Ideally, you could sell it to Target, Best Buy, or some other such retailer. I know it's expensive to put products on grocery store shelves, but I have no idea about other retailers. 6\. If you aren't internet marketers, you may get to the point where you can't make the business work for you. If that happens, you should be aware of sites like Flippa.com that will allow you to sell the whole business.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Oracle sued by Strip club over employee's unpaid tab - X4 http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Strip-club-sues-Oracle-over-employee-s-unpaid-tab-4834821.php ====== brubaker "New Century's attorney David Cook wasn't talking either, telling us only that the lawsuit speaks for itself." Is that Saul Goodman's long lost brother?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Software aims to whack drive-by malware threat - coondoggie http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/67104 ====== david_shaw From the article: _BLADE "thwarts the ability of browser-based exploits to surreptitiously download and execute malicious content by remapping to the filesystem only those browser downloads to which a programmatically inferred user-consent is correlated, BLADE provides its protection without explicit knowledge of any exploits and is thus resilient against code obfuscation and zero-day threats that directly contribute to the pervasiveness of today's drive-by malware."_ This sounds like a great idea, but here's the problem that I have with BLADE: if we're going to create something to semi-intelligently decide whether browser content is actual user data or something malicious. Okay, that sounds good in theory, but I think it's a little more difficult to implement in practice. Wouldn't it be easier to simply _prompt_ the user to ask? I know, I know--users would just be fooled by tricky malware or would deny session ID cookies because they look like a random string of letters and numbers (looks like a _hacker!_ ). Instead of reinventing the wheel with an academic system that can't possibly stop _all_ malware and can't possibly allow _all_ legitimate traffic, why don't we simply encourage end users to run noscript and adblock (pretty much eliminates the adware aspect) and the ability to allow "drive-by" downloads on a per-site basis?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
SMS Relay in 99 Lines of Code - alain94040 http://blog.letslunch.com/2011/02/14/sms-relay-for-letslunch-in-only-99-lines-of-code/ ====== geoffc Neat use of an SMS anonymous relay, very cool! Ditto on Twilio, we use it at GroupFlier.com and love it, definitely an enabling platform. ~~~ alain94040 Twilio is great. I was hoping I could get this feature coded in a day. Actually, it was done after 2 hours. ------ jrockway This seems to have the same problem that mail relays have; you just try setting your caller ID to every phone number, and then you can spam people in a way that looks like it's LetsLunch spamming them. ~~~ alain94040 That sounds like a really inefficient way to spam people. You might as well send text messages to random numbers directly. ------ JonnieCache Expected this to use the osmocomBB open source GSM stack. Disappointed. <http://bb.osmocom.org> ------ wiks Anybody got the invitation code? ~~~ alain94040 Try "HNWIKS".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Jeff Dean: Challenges in Building Large-Scale Information Retrieval Systems [PDF slides] - ntoshev http://carbon.videolectures.net/2009/other/wsdm09_barcelona/dean_cblirs/wsdm09_dean_cblirs_01.pdf ====== ntoshev Actual talk recording: <http://videolectures.net/wsdm09_dean_cblirs/> Summary: [http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/02/jeff-dean-keynote-at- wsd...](http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/02/jeff-dean-keynote-at- wsdm-2009.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Judge orders arrest of Defense Distributed founder for alleged sex crime - anigbrowl https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/judge-orders-cody-wilsons-arrest-demands-pictures-of-his-upper-legs/ ====== savethefuture I'm sure this investigation had nothing to do with his 3d gun printing business.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Usability Ain’t Everything – A Response to Jakob Nielsen’s iPad Usability Study - fun2have http://johnnyholland.org/2010/05/26/usability-ain%E2%80%99t-everything-a-response-to-jakob-nielsen%E2%80%99s-ipad-usability-study/ ====== Nekojoe I used to read a lot of Jakob Nielsen's writing, on his website and books. I don't read his work so much now because I find what he says tends to be too conservative. He tends to be too strict with guidelines. For years he insisted that all unvisited hyperlinks should be blue and all visited ones should be purple. One of the tricks with usability I've found is knowing which rules to stick to, which ones to bend and which ones to break. ~~~ mstevens I'm still in the "all unvisited hyperlinks should be blue and all visited ones should be purple." camp. It's simple and everyone knows what to expect! ~~~ imp You've managed to use this website though, despite no blue or purple links. ~~~ mstevens It's true. I've managed to use Lotus Notes, too, that doesn't mean I think it was a good idea. ------ MWinther First, I dispute saying that just because it's touch based, the iPad doesn't have a Graphical User Interface. Second, another kind of device which got a no-holds-barred canvas to create beautiful and stylized interaction-based content was the DVD. The DVD menus for a LOT of titles are seriously crappy. Even though Nielsen might err on the side of caution, he definitely has a point. People without guidelines have been producing pretty-but-non-functional GUIs before. Let's not keep the traditions alive. ------ pedalpete I've always thought the flaw in Jakob Nielsen's thinking was that he was completely focused on standards and almost ignored design. I much prefer Donald Norman's work. As a contrast to 'design around standard so that people understand what to do', Norman says 'make things beautiful and playful so people want to use them'. ------ ThomPete All standards are learned. What Jakob nielsen misses is that the touch interface is a new paradigme because it removes abstraction from the interaction. You can't judge it on old metrics that themselves in so many ways are wrong and clumbsy. Jakob nielsen is wrong and have been for a long time. Usability isn't any longer a field to be taken serious in itself. Only when paired with actual design skills does it start to make sense. As a qualifier not as a discipline in itself. I've said it before. In five years from now usability is nothing more than another tool in the designers box on the line of grid systems typography etc. ~~~ butterfi When you say "Neilsen is wrong", you really need to back that up. The Neilsen/Norman group conducts empirical studies and has a fair amount of transparency about their work. Most of the "professional" web designers I've worked with tend to favor their design over the user's needs. I would agree that Neilsen advice falls into the conservative design camp more then I appreciate, but at the very least he has actual metrics and user testing to draw his conclusions on. Having been in multiple user testing sessions and seen many a fancy design go down in flames of user confusion, I'll believe that "usability is nothing more then another tool in the designers toolbox" when I see it applied more consistently. ~~~ fun2have I don't think anybody that knows about Usability Metrics takes "Neilsen" that seriously. Neilson is more popular with the 5 user is enough camp while most people dealing with Ux Metrics believe that you need to be testing with at least 50 to 300 users. ~~~ tokenadult Jakob Nielsen (correct spelling) says that testing on five users is enough to identify serious usability problems that need correction soon. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html> He does NOT say that you should stop testing as soon as you have testing with five users, but rather that you should build usability testing into your development process throughout all of its stages, but especially the early stages. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weekly-usability-tests.html> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/experienced-users.html> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/multiple-user-testing.html> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/user-testing-showbiz.html> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/quantitative_testing.html> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050815.html> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050214.html> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040719.html> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030120.html> ~~~ fun2have Ok Nielsen did this test with 7 users We have moved along way since the simplistic rule of thumb that 5 users is enough. A very good argument in why 10 is not enough is Woolrych and Cockton 2001. They point out an issue in Nielsen formula (1-(1-0.31)^5) in that he does not take into account the visibility of an issue. They show using only 5 users can significantly under count even significant usability issues. The number of users you need is dependent on how many issues there are, the cultural variance of your user base, and the margin of error you are happy with. Five users or even 10 is not enough on a modern well designed web site. For example if we assume that designers of a web site have been using good design principles and therefore an issue only effects 2.5% of users. Then 10 users in a test will only discover that issue 22% of the time. If your site attracts a 1 million visitors a year the issue will mean that 25,000 people will experience problems. The easy way to think of a Usability Test is a treasure hunt. If the treasure is very obvious then you will need fewer people, if less obvious then you will need more people. If you increase the area of the hunt then you will need more people. Most of the advocates of only testing 5 to 10 users, experience comes from one country. Behaviour changes significantly country by country, even in Western Europe. See my blog post here :	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Home office advice. - zerohp In a few weeks I start my first job as a full time telecommuter. In preparation I'm moving to a new home with an extra bedroom so I can separate my work area from other personal space.<p>Does anyone have other suggestions for finding maximum productivity and focus while working from home? ====== swombat The most important productivity tool at home: a closed door. Make it clear to your family/flatmates that when you're working, you're working, and that non- urgent interruptions are not appreciated. Otherwise your productivity will go down the crapper. Also, treat work-time as you would if you were at work. I.e., don't do household chores during work hours. ~~~ ra Also, keep a record of your work environment and your productivity, try to identify associations, good or bad between the environment and your concentration. I made a list of things that help me concentrate that I can pull out when I'm having trouble concentrating. For example certain types of music help me immerse; having a clean (uncluttered) desk helps me. Before lunch is better than after lunch, etc. Remember your home office is not your office, and you will have to be disciplined to stay productive in the long term. ------ paulcarey I think you've already done the most important thing you could by creating a separate room that delineates home life from office life. The biggest distraction I've found while working with a remote team is dealing with IM. In practice I've found this can be more distracting than low level banter in the office - you can tune out to this, and it's always obvious if a message is directed at you. Not so with group IM, where unread messages may or may not be directed at you. In short, and assuming your colleagues are happy with it, I recommend going 'Do not disturb' for a few hours every day while you focus on work without distraction. ------ brudgers > _"Does anyone have other suggestions for finding maximum productivity and > focus while working from home?"_ Realize that working from home may not be for you. For example if your peak productivity time is between 4pm and 8pm and staying late at the office was a strategy you used before telecommuting, that's not going to be effective if you are working from home and have a family. Some people cannot work when there are dirty dishes in the sink or the dogs want a walk or the front door needs a coat of paint. ------ proexploit Keep the room tidy. Think of it as business-only when you walk through the door. If it's within your means, use an entirely different computer to read HN, news sites etc (or LeechBlock). Hang a couple motivational quotes.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Visual 6502 in JavaScript - kijduse http://visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html ====== flohofwoe I recently wrote a "remix" of visual6502 (just for fun), with C (and a bit of C++), compiled to WASM to see whether the rendering performance of the chip visualization can be improved while still running in browsers, and also to improve the "UX" a bit: [https://floooh.github.io/visual6502remix/](https://floooh.github.io/visual6502remix/) Check Help -> About for a list of dependencies used in that project (lots of good stuff in there), the two most important being the original data sets from visual6502, and a C re-implementation of the transistor-level simulation, called perfect6502 [https://github.com/mist64/perfect6502](https://github.com/mist64/perfect6502)) ~~~ jakear Does yours have a clock speed readout? Can’t seem to find it. ~~~ flohofwoe No display for that, I was mostly interested in the single-stepping capability for investigating the chip behaviour and validating against my CPU emulators. But when clicking the "play" button it's throttled to one half-cycle per 60 Hz display frame (requestanimationframe) so "usually" it should run at 30 Hz. I haven't checked how fast the WASM version would run unthrottled compared against a natively compiled version of perfect6502, but performance should be somewhat close (much closer than to the JS version anyway). As far as I have seen, the C rewrite in perfect6502 uses a handful compact arrays for the simulation state, unlike the Javascript version which seems to be more like a huge graph of linked nodes, where each node is a JS object, so the C version should be a lot more cache-friendly. ------ wldcordeiro This page was confusing to me until I followed the Github project page and saw this "Transistor level 6502 Hardware Simulation in Javascript". Why this same sentence couldn't be anywhere on the demo page though, is a mystery. ------ cypressious A bit offtopic, but I'm constantly annoyed by applications using 'x' and 'z' for related operations like zoom in and out in this case. The reason is, German keyboards use the QWERTZ layout and as you can tell from the name, the 'z' key is in the upper row, right in the middle. Maybe use 'w' and 's' instead? That's the default in first-person-type games. Actually, never mind, that doesn't work for the French who have AZERTY... ~~~ ASalazarMX Since mouse dragging works fine, I expected the scroll wheel to control zooming. In fact, that was the first thing I tried before reading the instructions. ------ cogburnd02 When this came out in 2010/11 (not sure when I first heard about it) it blew my mind. However, I was really, really hoping that we'd have a version for the Z80 by now. ~~~ flohofwoe Here you go :) [http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert-z80.html](http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert-z80.html) But AFAIK nobody really knows yet whether it works in all situations, because not all of the "trap transistors" had been found yet which the Zilog designers put in to make reverse engineering harder. ...maybe it would have been better to decap one of the "unlicensed clones" of the Z80, like the East German U880, because that definitely had the trap transistors fixed ;) The U880 had some minor differences in the undocumented behaviour too though. ------ dang Some previous related threads: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=visual6502.org%20comments%3E0&sort=byDate&type=story) ------ bilekas Really cool, I remember seeing it over 8 years ago from here too ! :D [http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert.html](http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert.html) a nice throwback for sure! ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108557)) ------ drew-y Is there any information on the program the simulator runs by default? I couldn't find anything in the user guide or the FAQs. ~~~ unoti Here’s the source code (or at least comments about the assembled op codes) to the example program: [https://github.com/trebonian/visual6502/blob/master/testprog...](https://github.com/trebonian/visual6502/blob/master/testprogram.js) It looks like that subroutine they call at $0010 has a special hook that writes to the console whenever they write to memory address $0f. ------ 2fast4you Visual 6502 is a godsend for emulation. For a brief time I dabbled in emulating the 6502 and every question that couldn’t be answered by the manual was answered by this. Couldn’t live without it <3 ------ srcmap Any chance to compile some benchmarks (spec int) for this and see how well it compare to the original silicon? ~~~ flohofwoe You can actually check on the webpage when the simulation is running: on my machine it shows around 17 Hz, so it's about 60000x slower than a 1 MHz 6502. For comparison, the C reimplementation of the transistor level simulation, running unthrottled and without visualization (I think that's the main performance killer) is about 150x slower on a modern CPU (according to the readme here: [https://github.com/mist64/perfect6502](https://github.com/mist64/perfect6502)) ~~~ mycall Is that 150x slower based on single core? ~~~ flohofwoe Yes, but IMHO spreading the simulation over multiple threads would be quite a challenge. As far as I understood, the simulation essentially starts with an initial state of high/low nodes/paths, and then for each node, switches each connected node throughout the node-graph accordingly, until the entire chip simulation "settles down", and then moves on to the next node. Maybe this linear algorithm can be converted to some sort of parallel "cellular automata", which would then probably be a much better fit for GPUs than CPUs. ------ raxxorrax This is just completely crazy, thank you for posting. ------ kebman Reminds me of all those MineCraft computers lol. <3	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How current loops and solenoids curve space-time - johnchristopher http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.00333 ====== brudgers First version on arxiv.org: April 1, 2015	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is There a Bot to Generate StackOverflow Answer from IRC Channel Logs? - onetimePete I'm in a very small software community- we have a wiki, which is eternally outdated, because we are understaffed. We tryied to run a Answers page, and it failed due to maintenance- all we have is IRC, with someone who can answer- sometimes and the board. So is there a way to generate answers from IRC-ChatLogs and boards? ====== onetimePete Nobody? Could you train a neural network to do that? Or should i try classic text parsing, looking for question answer queues? I'm quite willing to put in some work, if its a one time effort.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Find samosas near me (try on mobile) - lappet https://samosasnearme.com ====== slantyyz I kinda had doubts clicking on the link, but the results are pretty accurate for me. I live in a suburb outside of Toronto, Canada that has a lot of east Asian food options. I assumed that the search would be US-centric. Nice work. ~~~ lappet Hey there, thanks for trying it out. It uses Yelp's API, so it will work only in countries where Yelp has a presence. ------ mithrilmaker Very cool! Can we include custom search? I want to search for pancakes, boba or bikes you know ~~~ lappet Yes, that can be done ------ bbcbasic I had doubts clicking on the link and they were justified. No results in Sydney. ~~~ lappet Sorry :( this uses Yelp's API. What do you use in Sydney? ~~~ bbcbasic I'd try aggregating the various food deliveries like Ubereats, Foodora, Menulog, Deliveroo etc. However I was being tougue in cheek, with a 20m population it probably not worth focusing on Australia first. Wait until you are a unicorn. ------ lappet I apologize, but this will only work in countries where Yelp has a presence ------ abvishek doesn't work in india (: have to find smaosas myself ------ dasistdaniel what about the metric system? just use km's like everyone else!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Complete Replication of FiveThirtyEight's Bechdel Test Analysis - brianckeegan http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/brianckeegan/Bechdel/blob/master/Bechdel_test.ipynb ====== yebyen I am not going to pretend to have already read all of this, but from skimming/reading down in "The Hook" and on to "Start your kernels" I can see that you have really uncovered a stunning leap of illogic in the article reviewed, and you have certainly done your homework and then some when it comes to writing up what the numbers do or don't actually show. Bonus points for making an effort to see that we can actually replicate your experimental results!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Language Design: Use 'ident: Type' not 'Type ident' - pcr910303 https://soc.me/languages/type-annotations ====== TazeTSchnitzel A more practical reason as a language designer is that C and C++-style type- before-name syntax is a nightmare to lex and parse, as you can't tell whether A * B; is a multiplication or a variable declaration, or whether A<B, C> D; is a two comparisons with a comma operator or a templated variable declaration, without first knowing the names of all declared types. This means in practice that you have to declare types before they are used in a file, which means forward-declarations if they are defined later, that you can't separate lexing and parsing because the parser has to provide constant feedback to the lexer, and that misspelling a type name can lead to a _syntax_ error! C++, not content with merely inheriting C's problems, throws in the “most vexing parse” as a bonus. ~~~ mariodiana I was just thinking about pointer syntax today, and if you ask me, there are a lot of problems that could be avoided if language designers took a page out of Guido van Rossum's book and extend his idea of forced spacing. Take the first example you've given, and let's just talk about variable declaration: int* a; int * a; int a; That's all the same. That's wrong. Obviously, you can write a lexer and parser that doesn't give a crap, but the human mind does. If you think it doesn't, that's only because you've internalized the various cases. It should be this: int a; The type we're talking about is a pointer to a variable of type int: in other words, "a" is an int-pointer. If you were to create a macro, you'd do something like this: #define int_ptr int* Do you see what I'm getting at? The star in this case is a suffix, equivalent (in our minds) to "_ptr". Conceptually, it doesn't belong anywhere else than attached to the type. It's a compound type, conceptually. Now, take the star being used in a different context: int b = 10; int* a = &b; printf("%d\n", a); There, though we see the same character, it's a completely different thing. It's a dereference operator. Conceptually, it belongs attached to the pointer variable it is dereferencing; and since the star is already used in one context as a suffix, here it should be used as a prefix. This is no good: printf("%d\n", a); It doesn't matter that "this compiles." That's not what this is about. Many C programmers (and programmers in other languages, even Python) are used to writing things like this: int c = xy; That's wrong. Sure, the lexer and parser don't care. But that makes the language worse, for the human operator. "But it saves space!" Spare me. The thing with this one example, using the star, is that what we have is the equivalent of a homonym. We have one sign that is actually three different words. Mandating spacing removes the ambiguity you're complaining about. C is what it is, but if we imagine someone were going to write it today, they should incorporate the above and mandate spacing. For the sake of the humans. "ident type" is not the only solution. ~~~ earthboundkid A pointer to an int "should" be &int, not int. That we use , the dereference operator, to indicate pointers is wrong. in a type means it's an address, but * in a value means it's not an address. That's nuts! Make it consistent and use & both places. If you need to have a distinction between refs and pointers, it should be that pointers are nullable refs: &int? or some such. Edit: How to escape asterisks in HN? ~~~ saagarjha I’ve had luck with not putting something directly after the asterisk. ~~~ earthboundkid Apparently HN does not have an escape character which seems like a real oversight. :-/ ------ Izkata Strong disagreement here. "type ident" flows with the data during assignment, doesn't confuse the infix operators, and doesn't misuse ":" from a human- language standpoint. For example: val x: String = "hello" The type interrupts the flow of data from "hello" to x, so one thing that pops into mind is that this is typecasting the value to a string before storing it. Nope. Another possibility I instinctively see this as is doing a comparison and assigning the result (either true or false in this case) to x. Nope. And human-language wise, colon is "description: explanation" (or more generally: general to specific), which actually fits this syntax better: val String: x = "hello" ...and at that point, just remove the extraneous stuff: String x = "hello" ~~~ lliamander I agree, though I could see the merit for a standalone declaration: val x: String x = "hello" The type at this point is almost like a comment. For declaration and assignment though, I agree that reading "ident: Type" is harder for me. Perhaps an interesting idea would be to have the type at the end of the _expression_. Like so: val x = "hello": String Essentially, you're making a type assertion on an expression. Since it's an assignment expression (the value of which would be the assigned variable) then it also type checks the variable. ~~~ djur Most statically typed languages don't even need the type assertion in a case like this, though. A literal has a definite type (hopefully), so the type of x can be inferred. val x = "hello" Standalone declarations are the most important problem to solve here. ~~~ lliamander Yeah, type inference is preferred (and pretty common). I'm just saying that, if I had (or wanted to) set the type, at the end of the expression would be my preferred place. ------ nitrobeast It is presented here that name before type is easier to read as a matter of fact. I’m not so sure. In math or languages where type info is optional, we often write “x = 5”. When type info is required, it is natural to evolve to “int x = 5”. Readers would naturally focus on the latter part. When we write “x: int = 5”, the type info is in the middle. We cannot skip it even when we just want to focus on the name and value. ~~~ andrewla Many languages allow you to elide the type, which is another nice thing about the type following the identifier. In Scala, in particular, types are not the assigned type like in C (where they also serve as the storage specification) -- they are assertions, that the compiler will check are compatible with the code. So `val x: int = "hello"` is no good and the compiler can cut it short right there; this is especially useful as call-site documentation. ~~~ throwanem Conversely, a lot of languages will infer type from first assignment, so in e.g. TypeScript "let x = 5", x is inferentially typed as 'number' and the type checker will throw if the implicit constraint is later violated. This reduces the need for explicit type annotations, clearing up a lot of the visual and cognitive noise. ------ Pfhreak Interestingly, I find ident: Type significantly more difficult to read. Having the type information helps me contextualize what I'm about to read -- it narrows the mental search space I need to explore when parsing the name. For example, knowing something is a float, double, int, or string can make an ident named "releaseTime" mean different things. I also find that whitespace is more consistent when using Type ident, you get rivers where the spaces all line up, so all the type declarations AND ident declarations align. Whereas with ident: Type, I find it much more difficult because of the variable length of identifiers. (Yes, one could fix this by using tabs, but if idents vary in length by more than one tab stop, it becomes difficult to read horizontally.) ------ kevmo314 This feels a little nitpicky/idealistic, I don't think the post does a good job of conveying why it's more beneficial. > This means that the vertical offset of names stays consistent, regardless of > whether a type annotation is present (and how long it is) or not. Why is this necessarily desirable? Strong typing systems have very expressive types, to the point where if something is typed correctly, most of the time my property names are just an alternative casing of the type. Types can be just as expressive or even more expressive than variable names. > The i: Int syntax naturally leads to a method syntax where the inputs > (parameters) are defined before the output (result type), which in turn > leads to more consistency with lambda syntax (whose inputs are also defined > before its output). Maybe this is nice in theory? But `Int` really isn't an output here, and the value being assigned isn't either. Rather this seems more like `f(i, Int, value) -> assignment`. It seems just as arguable that `f(Int, i, value) -> assignment` is appropriate. It seems like some of these are rooted in a "pure mathematical" approach which I can surely appreciate, but ultimately lambda calculus is as much a language as any other programming language, saying "lambda syntax does it this way" doesn't convince me very much. ~~~ echelon I've been using Rust a lot recently, which puts names before types and inputs before outputs, and I will absolutely attest to how much mental work is saved by ordering things this way. Skimming or reading Rust comes twice as easy as reading Java, and I do a lot of both. Sure it's an anecdotal report, but I have a real sense here that I feel compelled to report. As other posters have stated, this order makes parsing easier. But I also suggest this benefit extends to your own brain's parsing ability as well. The old order is indirect and suboptimal and makes you think harder. ~~~ dntbnmpls > and I will absolutely attest to how much mental work is saved by ordering > things this way. As you yourself noted, personal anecdotes are really not an argument. Someone could say they find Java easier to skim than Rust and we'd be nowhere. Like arguing which end of a boiled egg to crack first. > As other posters have stated, this order makes parsing easier. Programming languages don't exist to make itself easier to parse. They exist to make it easier for programmers to program. Otherwise, we wouldn't have such things like syntactic sugar. Hell we would just write in machine code and do away with assembly and higher level programming language. And parsing is a simple and superficial one time step. Being a tad bit more difficult is not a convincing argument. > But I also suggest this benefit extends to your own brain's parsing ability > as well. Based on what evidence? This is the problem with tech evangelism. It has the same problems as religions, lots of claims, no evidence. ~~~ kelnos > _As you yourself noted, personal anecdotes are really not an argument._ Then what is? If you're looking for a randomized sampling of programmers with sufficient sample size, you're not going to find it here. > _Programming languages don 't exist to make itself easier to parse._ No, but a fine example is that of C++: the difficulty in parsing means that if you make a typo, the error message you get might be bizarre and confusing. A compiler for a language that's easier to parse will have a much better idea of the programmer's intent and can provide a much better error message. I find it astounding how often rustc can figure out exactly what I wanted to do and suggest it as a note after the error message. I would think that more-useful error messages pass your test of "make it easier for programmers to program". While we're talking about making it easier to program, "name: Type" make it possible to avoid typing out "Type" at all, and letting the compiler infer it (no, this isn't good and readable to do in all situations, but often it's fine). If you have "Type name" style, and try to add the ability to infer types, you end up with Java's "var" abomination. Regardless, I'm in agreement: I find "name: Type = blah" much easier to read. I read it as "name is a Type that is equal to blah". This also is an improvement in parameter lists, when they're lined up vertically: def foo(bar: String, baz: Int, quux: Foo) I find that _much_ easier to mentally parse to determine parameter order than void foo(String bar, int baz, Foo quux) Worse, imagine that all three parameters were of the same type, requiring a scan to the right to read the names. The important information to me at a glance is the name of the parameter, not its type. As someone who cut his teeth on C and later Java, much later learning Scala and Rust, I immediately liked the style of the latter two much better. Lately I've been doing a lot of Java and get constantly annoyed at the "backwards" order. > _This is the problem with tech evangelism. It has the same problems as > religions, lots of claims, no evidence._ I suppose you could argue that what I've written above is just personal preference, but I see it as a bit stronger than that. ~~~ dntbnmpls > Then what is? If you're looking for a randomized sampling of programmers > with sufficient sample size, you're not going to find it here. Evidence. Maybe a study showing programmers have a natural preference? Or scientific evidence? Anything more convincing than "Rust evangelist" anecdotes. > No, but a fine example is that of C++: the difficulty in parsing means that > if you make a typo, the error message you get might be bizarre and > confusing. Difficulty parsing? If it didn't parse and found an error, then it means it didn't have any difficulty parsing. That has more to do with the complexity of the language itself than parsing. Parsing is a very simple matter. Or maybe the compiler for one language is better? Also, I thought we were comparing Rust to Java? > I would think that more-useful error messages pass your test of "make it > easier for programmers to program". It does, but once again all you've done is provide anecdotes without any examples or evidence. > Regardless, I'm in agreement: I find "name: Type = blah" much easier to > read. I don't. The most important part of "name: Type = blah" is the Type. So it's nice to have it first. But then again, there are people who love dynamic programming languages. So once again personal preferences and personal anecdotes aren't convincing arguments. > As someone who cut his teeth on C and later Java, much later learning Scala > and Rust Yeah, I too fanboy over new languages I learn. But then I get over it and move on with my life. My guess is you just wrote toy programs in scala and rust and nothing substantive. > I immediately liked the style of the latter two much better. Lately I've > been doing a lot of Java and get constantly annoyed at the "backwards" > order. So then use Rust? Why are you using Java? > I suppose you could argue that what I've written above is just personal > preference, but I see it as a bit stronger than that. I don't have to argue it. All you've provided is personal preference. "I find "name: Type = blah" much easier to read. " is personal preference. It's no more a convincing argument of anything than you prefering chocolate over vanilla shows that chocolate is better than vanilla. ------ jyounker I think the author misses the single biggest advantage of `identifier: Type`. The moment `Type identifier` syntax encounters higher order functions and types, you end up with messes of parenthesis. Figuring out what a type means then involves bouncing back and forth across the type definition. With `identifier: Type` complex higher order types still parse linearly left to right. It's enough of a UI issue that people will end up avoiding higher order functions in `Type identifier` languages simply because they're a mess to express. ~~~ Too Yup, especially with structural typing as in Typescript when you don't have aliases to your all your type constraints, having identifier:{complex:mess, of:{nested:stuff}} is easier than other way around. ------ millimeterman Language Design: This stuff doesn't matter that much. Focus on more important things. Syntax isn't unimportant, but don't waste energy on trivial matters like these. Just pick something and people will get used to it. Focus on the semantics of your language - that's what really matters. ~~~ mamcx >Syntax isn't unimportant #104#101#108#108#111,[Space]world![Space][Space][Tab][Space][Space][Tab][Space][Space][Space][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Space][Tab][Space][Tab][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Space][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Space][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Tab][Tab][Tab][Tab][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Space][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Space][Space][Space][Space][Space][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Tab][Tab][Space][Tab][Tab][Tab][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Tab][Tab][Tab][Tab][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Tab][Tab][Space][Space][Tab][Space][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Space][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [Space][Space][Space][Tab][Tab][Space][Space][Tab][Space][Space][LF] [Tab][LF][Space][Space] [LF][LF][LF] yep, no important at all. ~~~ millimeterman I didn't say "syntax doesn't matter, pick any ridiculous thing you want". That's what I mean by "not unimportant", though I admit it's not exactly clear that's what I meant. My point is that within the space of reasonable, comprehensible syntaxes, there are no demonstrable differences worth arguing about. ~~~ mamcx >there are no demonstrable differences worth arguing about. That is a big claim. Is very easy to believe (I do it before, when my knowledge of programming languages was about just 3 or 4. Now is more than 12). : But is clearly false, and is easy to prove: async/await go chan fn sort<T>(of:list<T>...) try/catch match All the above are just small things that have a HUGE impact in how develop programs. Also, in matter of "small" stuff that could look insignificant: [1, 2, 3] + 1 = [2, 3, 4] this one is a huge deal in certain niches, also, another "small" and insignificant thing: SELECT ... FROM source source SELECT ... All this are just small things. Not all that obvious at the time. Remember how before the times of GOTO the idea of more specialized control flow was unthinkable in the minds of many. Syntax MATTER MOST. Because, is OUR interface. The space of improvement is not super-big, truth, but it impact hugely. Also, when done correctly, it make the semantics fit like a glove or not. Another obvious example: Do concurrency whithout syntax help (just using threads). Or performant, safe, concurrency friendly, zero-gc, system- programming, etc without what rust and other langs have bridged. ~~~ millimeterman I also know many languages (which is hardly some grand accomplishment) and it’s my firm opinion that syntax MATTERS LEAST. You spend some time getting used to it and it never really bothers you again. Semantics matter most - syntax is just an interface to the important stuff. The difference between Python, C++, Haskell, Common Lisp, Prolog, and SQL isn’t syntax. If it was, everyone would pick their favorite syntax and use it all the time. What matters is how well the semantics (and their potential performance implications) match your problem. The syntax just needs to be a decent enough interface to the semantics. Frankly, it seems to me like most of your “counterexamples” are about language semantics, not syntax. Here’s the thing. Would I like every language to have a consistent, beautifully designed syntax backed by UX research and testing? Absolutely. But language designers have bigger fish to fry. There’s little value in wasting energy talking about syntax once it reaches a basic state of acceptability. I do amend my statement - you’re right that it’s a big, unsubstantiated claim. There are no _demonstrated_ differences. I haven’t seen an ounce of evidence that it makes a difference beyond familiarity. Furthermore, even if it did, that wouldn’t make it top priority. It would just make arguments about it sensible. ~~~ mamcx > The difference between Python, C++, Haskell, Common Lisp, Prolog, and SQL > isn’t syntax Ok, let's try: Do SQL without the SQL syntax. P.D: I don't think we are that in disagreement ("The syntax just needs to be a decent enough interface to the semantics"), is that the claim of "syntax don't matter" make it look is just an irrelevant aspect of the language. Can be argued how much relevant, but after years on this trade, go to the C++ community (for example) and tell them to change the syntax to lisp syntax and see how much it will succeed. Syntax is 100% tied to paradigms, idioms, and such. Is intrinsic to the language we use. ~~~ ogoffart > Ok, let's try: Do SQL without the SQL syntax. Select(`my_table`, [`column_A`, `column_B`]) .Filter(`column_C` > 53 && `column_D` == $varA) .Sort_by(`column_C`) There you go: you have the exact semantic as a traditional SQL query (1:1 mapping) and only the syntax is different. Now, one may argue that the syntax is "ugly", less familiar, that the ` are hard to type or whatever, but this is just taste. One simply get used to it. The expressiveness and semantic are the same as in SQL > Syntax is 100% tied to paradigms, idioms, and such. Is intrinsic to the > language we use. I think then we don't have the same definition of syntax. The way i understand it is that the syntax is just the way to represent these idioms and paradigms visually. What the parent is saying is that these paradigms and idiom as what is important, but the exact way they are written, not as much (as long as it is within reason) ~~~ mamcx I was to talk about the SQL stuff, but I think it will be wasted as long we get blind to the fact syntax IS semantic. However this: > but the exact way they are written, not as much (as long as it is within > reason) Then what is "within reason?". Is more logical to only have GOTO than IF, is better to have ELSEIF or nest IF?, what happened if my lang say that null is the same than Option.None?, what if generics use [] and not <>?. Whitespace matter, yes? no? Allow unicode? CamelCase, snake_case or what? What if all const are lowercase, types mixcase and the rest UPPERCASE? For some, APL syntax make more sense than algol. Talk about _why_ , that is the point of this kind of talk. Is VERY easy to rug this kind of stuff. VERY. I WAS in that camp before. But now, I try to build my own lang (relational), and DAMM, it start to be much clear why syntax matter, even "the exact way they are written", because switch _this_ to _that_ and suddenly, my lang is ANOTHER paradigm (or worse, will be CONFUSED as be). Naming, is one the hard things in computer science. \--- I understand why is easy to dismmis this as irrelevant. Sometimes I don't see why some people are so upset about typography and font selection, or why my profesional brother complain about framing in photograph. But go and SEE what the DESIGNERS of lang say about this stuff and you will note that for them, even this apparent less-significant thing matter. you can even get a prize on the field for show the importance of syntax ([http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pd...](http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pdf))! If that mean that most will not see, GREAT! That is the mark of good design. ------ thom You'd have to show me some data that one is easier to work with than the other, because fundamentally types _are_ names, and I find them just as expressive as variable names (many of which are just named after types, lets be honest). Even if I didn't, I don't think my brain struggles to read things in either order (or indeed in languages where types are rarely mentioned). ~~~ adamnemecek It's easier to parse if nothing else. ~~~ Ididntdothis That seems to be the main problem. Otherwise it’s just something to get used to in my view. ~~~ adamnemecek I think it also makes more human sense. The parameter name should in some sense be telling you more than just the type. Like "size: Size" is kind of repetitive. ~~~ Ididntdothis I don't know. Seems programming languages are cryptic no matter what. ~~~ adamnemecek They are not cryptic. They are trying really hard to come up with good syntaxes and semantics actually. I think that modern programming languages tend to have very clean syntaxes. ------ andrewla Another very nice thing about this is that it is much much easier to parse, because only one kind of thing can go in each position of the phrase. Simplicity in parsing is something that I think is underrated in language design; the harder it is for a computer to parse, the harder it is for a human to parse, and parsing code is 90% of the programmers work (the other parts being 9% debugging and 1% authoring new code). ~~~ Pfhreak I replied elsewhere that I found the opposite to be true. So I suspect that different people will find different styles to be easier/harder to parse. > the harder it is for a computer to parse, the harder it is for a human to > parse, I don't think this is true -- assembly (or bytecode) is very easy for the computer to parse, but much, much harder for humans to parse. English is much easier for humans to parse, but pretty difficult for computers to parse. ------ qppo I disagree. The syntax design should flow from the design of the language itself and whether or not you use prefix or postfix notation for type annotations depends heavily on what makes sense within the semantics of the type system. Design a language before you design a syntax. ~~~ throwanem Granted that the pathological case of the error you warn against is Perl, and that should be enough of a cautionary tale for anyone. But a language is a user interface for programmers, too. Some affordance is merited, especially in a case like this where prefix vs. postfix may affect ease of parsing, but seems most unlikely to influence how the type system actually behaves. ~~~ qppo You're right, I just don't care for the author's notes on language design because they're all on syntax design, which is an impossible task to do in morsels without knowing anything about the rest of the language or how it is supposed to work. I do prefer postfix because I think it flows very nicely "this is-a thing assigned-to that" is nicer than "thing called this assigned-to that." In terms of the impact on the language, optional postfix annotation makes it a bit trickier if you want to make the identifier optional, and in languages that support it you tend to see special syntax to deal with that case (which breaks the author's fetish for self consistency). Personally I think ordering of the trio of "alias" "thing" "value" should be consistent across the language, which extends far past variable assignment, and any one of the trio can be left out. ~~~ disconcision What are examples of language semantics which are better served by pre/postfix type annotations? Also, what exactly do you mean by making the identifier optional? ------ marmada A benefit of ident: Type is that it allows you to express complex anonymous types. Example from Typescript: const foo: 'A' \| 'B' \| 'C' = 'A' Which states that foo must belong to the given union type. How would this look in a Type ident language? const 'A' \| 'B' \| 'C' foo That doesn't seem right. There's no clear barrier between the type and the identifier name. Here's another contrived example: const foo: () => Promise<void> = async (x) => console.log(x) Here foo is of type "() => Promise<void>". How would this look in a Type ident language? const () => Promise<void> foo = async (x) => console.log(x) To me, this is unclear because it is hard to tell where the type ends and the actual function begins. Last example. const foo: { [string]: number} = {"hello": 3} I believe says that foo is an object with string keys and number values. What does this look like in a Type ident language? const { [string]: number} foo = {"hello": 3} I think all of the Type ident examples are more confusing because it's to tell where the type ends and the name begins (this is most clear in the first example). This probably makes syntax highlighting worse/parsing more complicated/is tougher on the user. With ident: Type, it is very clear that the type starts after the ":" and ends before the "=" sign. ------ palerdot Language Design Notes on Rust [0] from the same blog looks interesting too ... [0] - [https://soc.me/languages/notes-on- rust.html](https://soc.me/languages/notes-on-rust.html) ~~~ echelon This is an interesting list. Some of the things have been addressed (`extern crate`). Many of the issues I disagree with: `Buf` is strictly better than `Buffer` (less typing, like `fn`). I have no issue with mixing `CamelCase::snake_methods`, and actually find it to be quite beautiful. The good parts of being Pythonic. I would like to see the alternatives to turbofish. What exactly is the author suggesting? And what's wrong with `println!` and `format!` ? It isn't articulated. `[]` misuse is bad, semicolons aren't consistent, `PathBuf` is inconsistently named, etc. Agree. `io::Result`, ... Maybe there will be some cleanup in a future language edition. ------ pansa2 > This means that the vertical offset of names stays consistent This is also an argument for using keywords of the same length for introducing a variable and a constant. If that’s desirable, it rules out the obvious choices `var` and `const`. Possibilities include `var` and `val`, which may be too similar-looking, and `var` and `let` - but are people used to (from JavaScript) `let` being mutable? Any other options? ~~~ Someone “Let” is mutable in Basic, too, but the part of the population that is used to that is shrinking. As to short, equal length options for ‘let’ and ‘val’: one could consider using punctuation. Forth uses colons instead of ‘fun’, and I think, in a concise language, one could get used to using, say, ‘!’ for immutable and ‘~’ for mutable. Unfortunately, they aren’t easy to type. An alternative could be to always assume immutability and only use ~ in the rare cases where one needs to mutate. So, a simple foo = 3 or, if one wants to simplify parsing: = foo 3 introduces a new immutable variable, and ~ foo = 3 or ~ foo 3 a mutable one. If we allow leaving out spaces: ~foo 3 that starts to look like using sigils to indicate mutable state. I think that might be a good option in a mostly immutable language. I think I would use Forth’s colon instead of ‘=‘. That would make ‘=‘ available for equality testing, allowing us to get rid of ‘==‘. ------ Ono-Sendai One downside of the 'ident: Type' approach is the extra colon character. The major downside of the 'Type ident' approach, is that if 'Type' is optional, then the parser can't be sure if its parsing the 'Type' or the 'ident' when encountering the first token. In practice this isn't too hard to solve however, it can be handled with some backtracking. In my language, Winter, I have chosen the 'Type ident', approach, mostly due to similarity with C, C++ and Java. I do sometimes wonder if I made the right choice however. Maybe it could be an option? :) ------ tlbsofware I’m surprised this didn’t touch on the IDE autocomplete suggesting variable names. In Java you would have something like `LocationBuilder locationBuilder` which makes users just tab complete the variable name to quickly have access to a variable. The argument in this article was about names being prioritized and I think forcing no auto completion on a variable name would force the developer to be slightly more descriptive than the variablized string of a class name ~~~ mr_tristan In Kotlin, IntelliJ has no problem with this. As you type a new value: `val id`, and you have `IdentName` defined in scope, the value `identName` is suggested automatically. Not all IDEs are the same, though, and I'm not sure how sophisticated this feature was to implement. ------ geofft > _The ident: Type syntax let’s developers focus on the name by placing it > ahead of its type annotation._ If this were true, we'd have to conclude that speakers of name-then-honorific languages like Japanese ("Graham-san") are better at remembering and focusing on people's names than speakers of honorific-then-name languages like English ("Mr. Graham.") But there's no evidence of that, is there? ------ melolife The most important result of this design is that the syntax unambiguously determines whether you are referencing the type or value axis, and enables you to split them accordingly. Having worked with Scala and been forced to return to a C-style language, this is probably one of Scala's most overlooked features. ------ js8 One additional reason why it is beneficial is that you can then naturally extend typing to any expression, not just identifier. This can help the type inference (and also can serve as documentation), which is (IMHO) a must in a modern programming language. ------ malwarebytess Seems a solution in search of a problem. Worse I think it creates visual clutter. ------ IshKebab Yeah I'm pretty sure the real reason for this is that it is way easier to parse types if they are after the name. Especially complex ones like functions. ------ dirtydroog > 1\. Names are more important than types I can't really agree with this at all. With type aliasing the new typename can render the variable name pretty much redundant. ------ MayorMonty The first point is the most appealing to my brain at least. Type inference is a really useful feature (when paired with a nice IDE) and having a single standardized prefix to declare variables regardless of what type it is can help the mental model. This is especially true with more complex non-obvious types, where you may not know exactly what type you have without the hint from your environment ------ scriptproof If consistency if so important, why do we have: function, func, fun, fn, def, etc... depending the author? For clarity, use "function", for simplicity use "fn", other forms are just fancy. ~~~ tharax If consistency if so important, why do we have: function, func, fun, fn, def, etc... depending the author? For clarity, use "function", for simplicity use "func", other forms are just fancy. "This is the standard we should all adopt!" [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/) ------ gherkinnn Rob Pyke talks about this in more depth here in the Go blog [0] 0 - [https://blog.golang.org/declaration- syntax](https://blog.golang.org/declaration-syntax) ------ strictnein Sorry, but this article starts off with an excellent example of why this is horrible: val x: String = "hello" String x = "hello" The first line reads: "value X is of type String and contains hello" The second line reads: "String x contains hello" val and : are fluff and add nothing. Arguments about it being tougher to parse would have some merit if this wasn't all figured out almost 50 years ago. ------ SamReidHughes Even better: Use ‘ident Type’. ------ TOGoS > The ident: Type syntax let’s developers focus on the name by placing it > ahead of its type annotation. I agree with the sentiment, but that apostrophe is bugging me.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Game Oldies: Play Retro Games Online - doppp http://game-oldies.com/ ====== sjuut Just a heads up, visiting this page resulted in a Segfault on my rMBP 2014 using Safari on El Capitan 10.11.5 beta	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Issue 62938 – Barometer driver hangs and kills accelerometer on its way - cryptoz https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62938 ====== simias Aaaah I2C, one of the simplest protocols there is and also probably the one that gave me the most debugging time. If someone wants to look into it and is willing to tinker with the guts of the phone, the first thing is to see the state of the bus when the devices stop responding. I2C's "idle" level is high thanks to pull ups, the devices only drive the bus through an open drain. Sometimes a device's state machine will go fubar (either because of a hardware bug or programing error) and will lock the bus down, basically making it impossible for anybody else to use it. If this happens the next step is to disconnect/reset all other devices on the bus to make sure which one is screwing up (that's the difficulty with I2C, since the two lines can be driven by any master or slave you can never really know who's doing what when things go wrong). An other thing to look for is the level of the line. Since there are many devices and pull ups on the wire it's not common to have messed up levels (0 is really 0.2 or 1 is really 0.8, if the pull up is too strong or too weak respectively). Depending on temperature and other factors that can lead certain interfaces to sample bad values. And then well... you have to capture the transaction that causes the lock up and try to understand what goes wrong... As a quick fix it might just be possible to force a reset of the bogus chip when a lockup is detected, that would prevent having to restart everything. There's usually a GPIO for that (if they wired it...). I hope you have a good oscilloscope! Quite frankly I can empathize with the dev not wanting to look into this bug, by the looks of it that's the kind of minor bug that'll take several days to track down and fix. ~~~ mik3y Very good summary, though let me throw in some doubt: > it might just be possible to force a > reset of the bogus chip when a lockup is > detected [..] There's usually a GPIO for > that (if they wired it...). Yes, _if_ they wired it. In my experience, actual design with this best practice is frustratingly rare. It's as if the hardware designers think, "Oh, it's just I2C, what could go wrong." If they didn't do it, the chips are probably only connected to a master board level reset, and you're basically screwed. To find out whether it's the case on the affected devices, absent schematics or a scope, I'd grep around the kernel sources and look for definition of such a pin. (If sources aren't available, try symbols.) ~~~ joezydeco You're being _way_ too kind to these chips. Look at the datasheet for the BMP280 barometer chip, the AK8963 compass, and the MPU6500 accelerometer (close enough): [http://datasheet.octopart.com/BMP280-Bosch- datasheet-1369120...](http://datasheet.octopart.com/BMP280-Bosch- datasheet-13691204.pdf) [http://www.akm.com/akm/en/file/datasheet/AK8963.pdf](http://www.akm.com/akm/en/file/datasheet/AK8963.pdf) [http://dlnmh9ip6v2uc.cloudfront.net/datasheets/Components/Ge...](http://dlnmh9ip6v2uc.cloudfront.net/datasheets/Components/General%20IC/PS- MPU-6000A.pdf) The compass (AK8963) has a reset line, the other two have no reset line at all. Your best bet is to drop VCC, but what are the chances the hardware guy just tied them to the power bus and left it at that? ~~~ kosma > The compass (AK8963) has a reset line, the other two have no reset line at > all. Your best bet is to drop VCC, but what are the chances the hardware guy > just tied them to the power bus and left it at that? That is, if you also have even more circuitry to disable the bus pullups; otherwise they will continue to power the device via clamping diodes, potentially calling further confusion. The hardware guys don't implement I2C slave power control for a reason: it gets _bloody expensive_ real fast - both in terms of BOM cost and PCB estate. Having said that, the lack of a RESET line on many I2C slaves is just ridiculous. I have a sticker on my monitor that says "fix the hanging MMA8451Q bug"; it's been there for at least three months. The very thought of debugging I2C transactions makes me stop even trying. ~~~ joezydeco Good point about the pull-ups. Forgot about that. ------ bichiliad Pedantic, but: can we replace the title with something like "Bug in AOSP breaks barometer, accelerometer usage." ~~~ tsuraan No worries, it won't be long before a helpful mod comes along to change the title to "Issue 62938: Barometer driver hangs and kills accellerometer on its way." Enjoy the context we have until that happens. ~~~ hnha What context? Right now the title is empty clickbait: "This bug in AOSP is impeding science. How to best get Google's attention?" ~~~ tsuraan Context, being what does it affect, and why should anybody care. The current title accurately states what is affected (AOSP), and does a less great job of saying who should care (all scientists and probably the entirety of humanity, apparently). The "correct" title gives no indication of what is affected, and little motivation for caring. The title probably will change (they seem to do that, anyhow), but it will probably change for the worse. This is an argument that's been going for years, and it's not going anywhere, but I'm still going to gripe about it from time to time. ------ iam It would be a lot easier to get their attention if there was an actual 'adb bugreport' attached to the bug. There's very little context on what the bug is and how to reproduce it besides some vague references to PressureNET (which means very little to someone who hasn't used that before). ------ btian How do you know it's a bug in AOSP. It could well be a driver issue. ~~~ pyre It affects the Nexus 5 (and to a lesser extent Nexus 4), shouldn't that be stock Android? ~~~ ajross The Android Open Source Project refers to the components released by Google as open source. This is the framework for the most part, plus a few Java apps. The drivers are part of the per-device "BSP" layer, and not part of AOSP. They're sometimes delivered as source (certainly the kernel components are), but often not (the userspace HAL libraries are almost never source-visible). This bug looks to be between the kernel driver and sensor HAL to me. It might be fixable in code we can see, but none of that is part of "AOSP". ------ sucramb This is a hardware issue that only affects some of the phones. I did a factory reset and no additional apps installed and still the phone stopped to auto- rotate every day needing a reboot. RMA'd the phone, the new one does not have the accelerometer problem anymore. However, it has the focus problem in low light conditions which the first one didn't have. Not sure I will buy another LG phone in the future. ------ chinpokomon Ah, I'm glad I stumbled upon this. I've seen this exact problem on my device and didn't know what was triggering it. I've been running a widget to track barometric changes, specifically SyPressure, and since I installed it, at least 3 times I've seen the orientation sensor stop working. I hadn't made the correlation since I was in other applications when it would fail. ------ lifeisstillgood It's probably embarrassing to admit but I read the title and wondered if Barometer was an Uber competitor and some driver had gone postal. It did not quite fit the meaning but it was the best I could do till I read the bug. but the whole embedded market seems like this now - everything just the wrong side of reliable and abstractions an impossibility. maybe I am just too new to the area. ------ VLM Look on the bright side, my first interpretation of the subject line was "solder in a new chip" not "This can only be fixed via reboot." ------ taopao Please, won't anybody think of the science?! ------ pawn Promise them cake. That worked for GlaDOS...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Printing Money - saadalem https://neal.fun/printing-money/ ====== tptacek This is fun, but Amazon and Walmart's revenue are sort of misleading, since they obviously don't get to keep most of it. ~~~ TimTheTinker One could argue that personal income is also a kind of "revenue", since much of it is spent on taxes, cost of living, etc. I think the two are analogous. ~~~ tylerl Say I was a freelance salesman. I buy and sell expensive things that I can't afford. I line up the deal and make it happen. This month it's a cruise ship. It costs $500 million from the manufacturer in Amsterdam, but I can get a client in Dubai to pay $504 million delivered. I get a short term-loan which costs me $200k, plus short-term insurance for $400k. I buy the boat where it is for asking price, and pay $2.7mil to deliver it to the customer. I made $700k on the deal, not bad. I _moved_ more than half a billion. The _revenue_ number is huge but mostly irrelevant from my personal perspective. Almost all of it was money that was never mine, that I never made. ~~~ TimTheTinker Yeah, your example stretches my analogy far past its breaking point. You’re right, revenue can be a pretty meaningless number. But where costs are relatively fixed, it can be helpful. In the case of companies, it can also show how much of the market a company has captured (when revenue == sales). ------ sarthakjshetty This is really cool! Can you explain how you factored the velocity and also how the backend works here? ~~~ TheDong The velocity is the actual speed you're earning money. The time it takes to earn one dollar at that wage is the time it takes for one dollar to scroll off the screen. $7.25 an hour means you earn a dollar every 8 minutes, so it takes about 8 mintues for one dollar on the top row to disappear off the side. If you look at the code for the site, it's not obfuscated, so you can see all the math: speed={this.perHour(7.25)} .... perHour(amount) { return amount / 60 / 60; } .... let offset = (1/dollarsPerRow * dollarWidth * speed * Date.now()/1000) % dollarWidth; Those are the key bits. Also, there is no backend. It's all written in frontend react. Again, it's not obfuscated, you can poke around easily enough. ~~~ thulecitizen So fun when it’s all our there to learn from. I can’t wait for the web to be an archive of torrented Git-versioned repositories à la Ceptr.org. ------ thulecitizen “ …today, a tiny minority of people and corporate interests across the world are accumulating vast wealth and power from rental income, not only from housing and land but from a range of other assets, natural and created. ‘Rentiers’ of all kinds are in unparalleled ascendancy and the neo-liberal state is only too keen to oblige their greed. Rentiers derive income from ownership, possession or control of assets that are scarce or artificially made scarce. Most familiar is rental income from land, property, mineral exploitation or financial investments, but other sources have grown too. They include the income lenders gain from debt interest; income from ownership of ‘intellectual property’ (such as patents, copyright, brands and trademarks); capital gains on investments; ‘above normal’ company profits (when a firm has a dominant market position that allows it to charge high prices or dictate terms); income from government subsidies; and income of financial and other intermediaries derived from third-party transactions.” \- Prof. Guy Standing, The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay ------ bentcorner Slightly unrelated, but the scrolling effects remind me of [https://www.testufo.com/](https://www.testufo.com/) (motion tests) ------ gcj Any change we can get the source of it? I'm interested in how you did the animations ------ nojvek The US deficit is growing at an insane rate. So does military spending. What’s gonna happen if this is left unchecked for another few election cycles ? Like how fucked are we? ~~~ thulecitizen Honestly, I don’t believe the current systems can deal with the complexity. Like, it’s an unsolvable shitshow until we start using better tools. [https://medium.com/metacurrency-project/the-future-of- govern...](https://medium.com/metacurrency-project/the-future-of-governance- is-not-governments-9c894e17b1cd)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to learn best practices when you have no one to teach you? - bradhoffman I am currently working for a startup and am one of 3 developers. Most of my work revolves around building the API in Node + Express as well as some small projects with MongoDB. The other developers don't really assist me since they have their own projects to work on, and, honestly, they have less experience and knowledge than I do.<p>So my question is: What is the best way for me to go about learning best practices in API development, or using MongoDB, or even just being a better software developer in general? ====== WestCoastJustin Conference Youtube videos. They are a goldmine of useful tips and tricks. Go look for videos from the Node [1] and MongoDB [2] conferences and you will find tons of war stories and what is actually working for people. Using this option arguably connects you directly with some of the best people in the world who are actually using this stuff. ps. using the youtube 2x playback speed option can really help digest lots of video content quickly [3]. I use this almost exclusively on youtube now. [1] NodeConfEU 2018 - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMgMSb7d-Os&list=PL0CdgOSSGl...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMgMSb7d-Os&list=PL0CdgOSSGlBY7DBgOp1xsRvV31AAUZrX2) [2] MongoDB - [https://www.youtube.com/user/MongoDB/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/MongoDB/videos) [3] [https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/52-video-playback- speed](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/52-video-playback-speed) ~~~ LandR I would say do not look to conference videos for how to write production quality code... Most talks at conferences are shallow and at worst just the blind leading the blind. Be very careful, I've even seen people from places like Microsoft showing code at conferences that would fail even a decent code review process. I think for this reason conferences are a complete waste of time. Talks are too short to go into anything approaching useful detail, and s spend an hour talking about pointless demo quality code.. Or the talkers arent experts in what they are talking about. Waste of time. I would say the same for the majority of blogs. Most are garbage and it can be difficult to tell the code is garbage if you're a beginner. I dont know a single development blog worth reading... ~~~ askmike The blind leading the blind? Most conferences have lineups of well respected people involved in an ecosystem. From language authors to open source maintainers and such. It seems you don't seem to understand the purpose of conferences and blogs. These talks are not to showcase the best quality production code that can pass any review process. They are to showcase new developments and new approaches to do things in a specific field. It's meant for people already in the field (or starting to get into it) trying to learn more. If such talks have high quality production code in slides the message would get easily buried under stuff that isn't important for conveying the message they are trying to say. ------ iheartpotatoes "Best practices" is a bit of a red herring. Every company differs considerably, and online blogospher experts throw the term around as sort of a gatekeep-y way to keep the order ("What do you mean you don't know (arbitrary) best practices??!?!") The only way to learn best practices is to work at multiple companies / projects. For example, I worked at Intel, Lucent, Apple and DEC. Each one had significantly different "best practices". When I look at how we did code there vs something like, oh, the GNU project, they were WORLDS apart. So even if you made the claim, you'd still fall short from the new environment. If you're lucky, eventually YOU'LL be the one defining best practices. ~~~ Gibbon1 I'll second that a lot of 'best practices' is cargo cult like gate keeping. Just learn how to write idiomatic code in whatever language / framework you are using. At least the approaches are good enough. And other OCD/Autistic programmers won't lose their shit when they see it. Do try to write code in an active AKA explicit way. Whne you read the code it should be obvious what it's trying to do. Code where the right thing 'just happens' is never clever it's just bad. Do remember the process you use for a tiny team is different than google or facebook or a web dev sweatshop. ~~~ seniorsassycat 'idiomatic' vs 'best practices'? ~~~ Gibbon1 My inner Northcote Parkinson sort of triggers on 'best practices'. Best tends to imply that all the other ways to skin the cat are 'bad.' Which is likely objectively untrue. Idiomatic is more neutral and means basically just do it the way everyone else tends to. The real advantage to that is you generally avoid pitfalls and annoying other coders. ~~~ colechristensen They can mean very similar things so that the question could be: How to learn idioms when you have no one to teach you? ~~~ spydum To which I think we land on the recommendation: seek good examples and mimic them. Trouble is finding them. ~~~ LandR It is. I work in c# and if we take idiomatic to be how most devs write c#, then idiomatic c# is garbage. ------ opportune I did a quick control-f "read" and almost everyone is telling you to read books or articles about best practices. That might be useful once as a highlevel overview when getting started on a topic, but my personal advice is to only do that briefly. You'll get the most bang for your buck READING CODE. There is no better way to improve as a developer than reading good code. Reading articles and books will teach you things that sound good but may not hold up in real life. Code is battle tested and real. To learn about art, you can read volumes about form, shape, color, composition etc. but you really need to look at great art. Same with code. Of course, you may wonder "how do I find good code?" I would just try to find high-profile OSS that deals with whatever kind of tech you are interested in. It may not all be good, but if you diversify the code bases you read, you will notice the differences and learn for yourself why some might be better than others. ~~~ afarrell How do you learn to read code without guidance and without getting lost? How do you keep your thoughts organized? At each step, how do you confidently decide where to go next? ——— I’d like you to take as given that I’m reasonably intelligent — I graduated from MIT and have been working as a software engineer for 6 years. Yet when I sit down to read [https://github.com/cypress- io/cypress](https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress) or [https://github.com/webpack/webpack](https://github.com/webpack/webpack), I don’t know where to start or how to incrementally build up an understanding. How can I learn how to read a project’s worth of code? ~~~ olikas I've spend my career reading code. I find it particularly difficult without guidance. I would recommend using some old school technology (pen/pencil and blank paper) and draw diagrams, write down every question and observation, notes. Others may recommend using some digital tool, but be mindful how much energy you spend organising your thoughts, drawing with a digital tool. If your goal is to understand a software, then don't waste time creating beautiful documentation first. It is also important to have a clear goal. Let's say you want to understand how webpack starts up, or how it does a specific feature. Make this question your main concern and don't wander around. Don't try to understand everything at once. Divide and conquer. It is also useful if you can ask questions, but please spend some time coming up with a theory first why things are the way they are. Formulate a hypothesis (e.g. "this piece is necessary because it handles an edge case", or "this piece of code looks uglier than the rest, is there a reason?") and try to prove it. If you can engage with the community, the better, but please don't outsource your "thinking efforts" to other project members. You can't learn how to reason about code, if you don't reason. The most important one: be humble. Just because you would've solved a problem differently, it doesn't mean that the code is bad. Don't spend time judging the code. You are there to learn from others, so be open to other solutions. Whether it is a good or bad example is so difficult to judge... be patient and you will realise what kind of code is easy to understand. Once you have some idea, take that knowledge to your next project. This may take weeks/months/years depending on the project size. ~~~ dmux This is all great advice. Two things that have helped me in particular (1) applying the "analytical reading" rules defined in "How to Read A Book" to a code base. One of those rules, as Olikas said, is formulating hypotheses and questions and "actively engaging" with a code base (or any text). (2) Compare and contrast a similar project (i.e. using the same language and framework) to figure out whether the structure of the project in question is following a general layout or not (e.g. Maven projects in Java). ~~~ afarrell > “How to Read a Book” I’d seen that book a while ago but not picked it up. I’m now going to. Thanks! > formulating hypotheses and questions I think this reduces to “how do you keep those hypotheses organized?” which sounds kinda like the problem of “How do I write an outline?” > Compare and contrast a similar project This makes sense to me for web apps. Less so for a package manager. I suppose that means the questions splits off into lots of domain-specific quesions like, “what should I pay attention to when reading a RESTful service?” “What should I pay attention to when reading a package manager?” Etc. ———— For a RESTful service, I would recommend first getting and idea of the core models from the API docs and then from reading structure.sql or models.py or whatever holds the relationships among tables. Draw an entity-relationship diagram on a big piece of paper of the important models. Then, try and trace the path of a web request from the outside in through middlewares to the controller then to rendering and back out again. ------ d0m Adding on top of what others have said.. * Switch job to a place where you can be pushed and mentored * Make a lot of mistakes, but be sure to learn from them * There are so many amazing books where the authors shared their mistakes/experience and how they made things better * It's often much better to slow down and get things right by researching, discussing and prototyping than rushing and having to rebuild it a few times or maintaining shitty code. * Try to think of the 10X when working on something. Of course, optimize for the current spec, but what happens if you get 10X more loads/users? Is there a way you can make it work for that use-case with roughly the same time? Often, the answer is yes by using a well-tested library and better tools. Ironically, sometimes being forced to think at a bigger scale makes you realize that your solution wasn't that great after all.. and that this problem was already solved. ------ barbs In general I think it's good to be in touch with communities centred around your language and framework to get a good idea of how people are solving similar problems to yours. Things change so much over the years and there are multiple ways to solve the same problems that you won't get from just reading official documentation. Once you get a sense of the general playing field you can deep dive into certain topics. I can't speak for other languages and frameworks but I know with Android Development it's useful to keep an eye on the subreddit ([https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/](https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/)) to see what the latest general consensus is with libraries and frameworks. There's also a #android-dev channel on Freenode IRC that I dip into from time to time. Meetups are pretty good too, and people tend to enjoy conferences although personally with my poor attention span I tend to switch off. There's a weekly newsletter as well which I find really useful ([https://androidweekly.net/](https://androidweekly.net/)). No idea what the equivalents would be for Node + Express and MongoDB but I'm sure they exist :). ~~~ zamalek > No idea what the equivalents would be for Node + Express and MongoDB but I'm > sure they exist :). GitHub, up for grabs issues. If you really want to learn, stick with the more popular proects, as they usually have more experienced developers involved. The problem with this is that you need to work after-hours, which is not everyone's cup of tea. ------ rabi_penguin I'd like to give a contrasting answer, which is that you should go somewhere where you can be mentored and learn. If you're concerned about your ability to continue learning best practices and level up as an engineer, you should keep in mind that there are many engineering organizations where you'll be able to work directly with engineers much more senior than you who you'll learn a lot from -- in my prior experience, it was this kind of collaboration that I learned the most from. It's true that I learned a lot when I was younger from self-teaching and experience, but there was a certain amount that I'm not sure I could have (or should ever have) picked up on the job in production, because it would have been infinitely more painful and less productive than collaborating with someone who could help guide me in the right direction, as well as whom I could look up to as a mentor and a guide. If you want that (which is reasonable because it's an excellent almost invaluable resource for your career), you have to first find an organization that provides that. Where you're at may or may not be that place. ------ tuxxy All of these responses are missing a huge point here: If you're a solo developer, stick to _standards_. There are standards for how something should be implemented (like REST), there are standards to how things should be written (like PEP8 for Python), etc. Follow those standards as close as you possibly can. Ultimately, you'll find issues with them -- that's great! Perhaps you'll even find a more clear way of doing something that the standard doesn't suggest. This means you can probably iterate on your original design. Join a Slack/Discord/IRC with other developers using your toolchain and ask questions there if you have concerns. If you're worried about design decisions, find others who have been in similar boats and ask how they did things and what the result was like. Typically, best practices are those that emphasize 1) clear code, 2) readable code, and 3) the KISS principle. Anything that favors complexity over simplicity _must_ have a good reason for doing so. ~~~ zimablue I massively disagree with this, as the other part said a lot of standards don't make any sense. REST always seemed very suspect to me, and Facebook with some of the best developers in the works basically threw it straight out of the window with graphql, seeming to validate the scepticism. Html also has complicated standards about elements which everyone ignores with divs everywhere. There seem to be a lot of nonsense standards around. ~~~ tuxxy The reason you massively disagree with it is the reason why OP should try and do it. Nothing better than learning from the mistakes of others. ------ haolez You have a lot of people to teach you! It's just that they use books and GitHub repos to communicate :) Emphasis on GitHub repos: you can learn a lot of good practices and efficient solutions in open source projects somewhat related to your problem domain. ------ gdulli "Best practices" are not the best way to think about your output nor your (personal) development. The term is flawed to start with in the sense that it invites you to think of practices as fixed or objective rather than contextual. You should think of your development as striving to amass the experience/wisdom to recognize the practices that are likely to work better in each situation on the fly. And that just comes with hours and hours and hours of trying different stuff and seeing for yourself (consciously) what you like best and what works best and when. It's slower, but finding that stuff out through experience is really the only true way to learn. Knowledge is a commodity, wisdom is what matters. And there's a lot more subjectivity to it than we normally treat it as. A given practice can be better along dimension X. But two (great) developers can disagree about whether X is the dimension to optimize vs. Y. If what you need is a specific practice that is working for people in one specific context at one specific time, you can search the web. But even then, it's not a black and white "best" thing and without your own instinct to judge what you're reading or being told by someone, you're making at some level a guess. ~~~ ahartmetz I think you're somewhat taking down a strawman here. Some practices (e.g. using source control, being super extra careful about state changes) are indeed almost always best, and it's rather likely that you'll also learn when to use them for the best practices you do learn. We're - so I hope - not talking about some nonsense like learning design patterns by heart or some such. ~~~ gdulli Using source control is basic and vague, the specific practices around it you might be tempted to call an education are just as subject to getting lost in dogma vs. developing personal wisdom as anything else. ------ gridlockd > So my question is: What is the best way for me to go about learning best > practices in API development, or using MongoDB, or even just being a better > software developer in general? The path to enlightenment leads through suffering. I particularly like "Why I stopped using X" or "X sucks" or "Pitfalls when using X" kind of blog posts. Browsing Stackoverflow to see what kind of issues other people run into also can help sometimes. Focus on the negative. If nobody complains about it, it's probably not a real problem. That's also why I'm often skeptical about so-called "best practices". It gives people excuses to do questionable busywork passed off as "polish". Real work is not about getting an A+ with a smiley face, it's about choosing the trade- offs that provide the most value. That implies cutting out a lot of "nice" things that aren't strictly necessary. ------ salex89 I don't think this will help tremendously, but don't feel frightened if there is nobody to mentor or push you. When I started fresh from college (although that is some kind of experience), I found myself in a small start-up with 4 people, one of which was my good friend, but we were not leaders, just executors. The owner was the business guy, with little technical knowledge. Nevertheless, we pushed on hard. Learned ourselves (each of us four had little overlap, we interfaced). And you know what, although I felt lost and disoriented, I learned a lot, in perspective. Partially because I was inexperienced, but everything we did was quality, I must say. Some years after I got into a company where everyone was much more experienced, and with mentors and all that. You know what? I become a mentor to most of them in a matter of months... Don't know how it happened, but it turned out that I've proven more agile. Now I'm in a much more experienced and serious company, and now I do have seniors than myself. That helps a bit by helping me differentiate valuable from invaluable knowledge. But again, if you don't push yourself, no body will instead of you. I'm not that experienced, it was only 6 years since I graduated. ------ allan_s I would like to point out a possible problem with the generic advice "read books" "follow blogs etc." => technological bias As you are from Node/Express and Mongodb background the biggest risk is trying to become only better in these technologies. So you will only know how to make faster horses, how to train them for the best, but you will never learn car exists. More than best practices, what makes a great developer valuable (especially in a position like you where other people in your company are less experienced than you) is your ability to see wider not deeper. Try to challenge the status quo ? Why MongoDB? What kind of alternative do you have ? Same for Node + Express. Doing so will force you to see where your tool shine and where it reach its limit. Doing so will permit you to know when you need to dig deeper on "how to use better this tool", and when to step back and "wait a minute, no amount of best-practices/knowledge will balance the fact that MongoDB is just no the right tool here" So read a lot, but also from people that are not from your community (and to be honest HN is a good starter on getting different point of view) The other important things is about perspective, it's not because a googler/guy from netflix wrote about how they needed to split the code in microservices, or needed to implement $design-pattern-with-a-very-cool-name that it does apply to you. Especially looking to the size of your dev team, I think the worst things that could happen to you in your journey of trying to be a "better developer" is to try to be use too complex tools and too complex developments techniques these articles explains better what I mean: [https://programmingisterrible.com/post/139222674273/write- co...](https://programmingisterrible.com/post/139222674273/write-code-that-is- easy-to-delete-not-easy-to#_=) [https://medium.com/@rdsubhas/10-modern- software-engineering-...](https://medium.com/@rdsubhas/10-modern-software- engineering-mistakes-bc67fbef4fc8) Being able to stop your fellow developers from writing too smart code will be even more valuable for the companies you will work for. And at the end of the day, that what will define if you are a good software developer for your boss. ~~~ sjellis "As you are from Node/Express and Mongodb background the biggest risk is trying to become only better in these technologies. So you will only know how to make faster horses, how to train them for the best, but you will never learn car exists. More than best practices, what makes a great developer valuable (especially in a position like you where other people in your company are less experienced than you) is your ability to see wider not deeper." Yes, you need to balance the need to be proficient with the stack that you have now with the big level-ups that come from learning something quite different. The best way to grow as a developer really is to learn a different programming language, and the thinking that goes with it. I've never written a line of production code in Clojure, but learning Clojure taught me lessons about immutability and functional thinking that changed the way that that I wrote everything afterwards. ------ pjc50 > The other developers don't really assist me since they have their own > projects to work on, and, honestly, they have less experience and knowledge > than I do. Best practice tip: no developer should be an island. You should all have some idea what each other is doing, at least once a week. You should be reviewing each others' code, and asking about the decisions and tradeoffs involved. ------ rocky1138 Don't worry about good code at a startup. Worry about building something people want. Once you hit hockey stick growth you can hire the technical talent. ~~~ enraged_camel >>Don't worry about good code at a startup. Totally depends on the startup. Building a new blog engine? Sure, go wild. Making financial software? You need to be very careful, and write good, secure code. ------ beat A lot of it is about learning how to learn. Developing skill and mastery is a similar problem in almost any field, and you can learn a lot by reading from masters in other fields. I'm currently reading _Handmade: Creative Focus in the Age of Distraction_ , by Gary Rogowski, who makes furniture. The first half of the book, at least (that's how far I am) is all about the wide variety of difficult lessons he's learned on the way to mastery of his craft. There are many other books like this, and they tend to be very instructive. ~~~ dcx This is interesting to me. Would you have any other book recommendations in this vein? ~~~ beat _Effortless Mastery_ , by Kenny Werner. _The Music Lesson_ , by Victor Wooten. Both of these are about music, but are really about mastery. _Shop Class as Soulcraft_ , by Matthew B. Crawford. This is a much more philosophical/academic argument that skilled manual labor is both intellectually and morally superior to most office work - you're shaping reality, rather than shaping yourself. I happily lump the craft of software development in with physical labor here, though, as it faces the same kinds of reality-based limitations. _Zen Mind, Beginner 's Mind_, by Shunryu Suzuki. Transcribed lectures by a well-known Zen monk. The entire book is basically about learning how to sit still. If you can't even sit still, how do you expect to do anything else well? And do you have any idea what it even means to just _sit still_? ~~~ dcx Thanks for the recommendations, I've added these to my book list! In exchange, have you seen this [1] report about excellence in competitive swimmers? The lifetime of a swimmer is short and outcomes vary wildly, from local swim meets all the way to the Olympics. It's a great case study on the differences at each level. There should be copies on sci-hub or other online summaries. I also liked Mastery by George Leonard [2] - it's a little booklet about mastery with the same kinds of generalisable takeaways, drawing on his experience as an Aikido practitioner. [1] [https://www.jstor.org/stable/202063?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/202063?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) [2] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81940.Mastery](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81940.Mastery) ------ sbr464 One method I’ve found, although slightly obscure and more frontend related: 1\. Visit a complex web app, check if source maps are enabled. 2\. Using Chrome DevTools, download the sources and source maps. 3\. Install shuji, [https://github.com/paazmaya/shuji](https://github.com/paazmaya/shuji) 4\. Run shuji recursively on the source maps to output normal code. 5\. Review Components/code to see how current companies are carrying out (best) practices, etc. For me, it helped break down how different companies (with closed source) are structuring React/Redux code for complex apps. ------ e12e My advice: 1) learn (read guides, books, code) eg: find something close to what you're doing at one of the books at: [http://aosabook.org/en/index.html](http://aosabook.org/en/index.html) Read about nginx if you're working with web servers - even if your server is in node. Read about postgresql or mysql if you work with data. Etc. 2) implement Try things out. Do a module in ttd (red/green/refactor). Pack a sub system up as a node module, distribute it on npm. 3) automate If you have _any_ tests - set up CI. See that all your commits "pass" (ok, because you only have that _one_ test - but now it's easy to add more). Once CI is working, you can set up automatic lining. 4) repeat/improve In general, try to find the smallest step from where you are, towards where you want to get to. Avoid leaps. Change one thing at a time (eg, you've used mongodb+node+express+react: try using typescript _or_ change out react for vue. _Or_ look at using postgres over mongodb etc. I'd also try to encourage some kind of internal sharing. Maybe tech lunch Friday - where you can each give a lightning talk on some small nice thing you've found/used recently. Try to "budget" for improving. Make it work, then spend an hour or two making it (more) beautiful. ------ marcamillion I love this question, but I would like to extend it a bit. Even though the body of the question the OP asked is about software dev specifically, how do you learn other non-software dev best practices when no one is there to teach you? Specifically, how do you learn how to build a company around your product? Or how to build a board of advisors/directors? What are the best practices around managing those? How do you shift your cash flow management thinking from spending out of the reserves built up, to spending out of future cash flows? In other words, aside from building product, there are so many other skills that a founder has to learn as they grow their company. I assume most YC companies learn this stuff from YC or their batch mates that have done it before them. But for those of us not in the Valley or in YC, how do we learn this stuff? Also, I guess the main premise behind my question was how do we learn best practices in company building in general? Ie how do we build the machine that builds the machine using best practices for everything, or as many things as possible (for both tech and non-tech companies)? ------ Townley It's hard to get "better" at something because it can mean so many things. Describing the attributes that makes you better with MongoDB, APIs, or software development gets you a lot of the way towards learning how to do it. Take Mongo for example: is the issue that your database keeps going down? If you frame it that way, it doesn't take long to discover clustering, replicasets, and monitoring. Is the issue that your queries are hammering the server? If so, googling that leads you down a months-long rabbit hole that ends in indexing, caching, and denormalizing strategies. Are you frustrated with the amount of boilerplate needed to get mongo data to the frontend? That's a good hint that you're in the market for a library/framework that might help with that. Much in the same way that one of the hardest parts of solving a bug is knowing what to Google, specifically defining what "better" looks like is the first step towards getting there. ------ johnwheeler 1\. Make lots of mistakes. 2\. Experience pain in the form of late, buggy software and angry clients. 3\. Read books and work on side projects. (Martin Fowler’s were my favorite). 4\. Repeat for 5-10 years with hopefully ever-decreasing amounts of 1 and 2. You probably think I'm kidding... ~~~ scarface74 That really doesn’t help. How do you know that what you are doing is a “mistake” if it works? 10K line UserManager classes “work”. That’s how you get the “expert beginner”. [https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of- th...](https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-the-expert- beginner/) The only feedback you get as a sole developer are your compiler and errors in production. You would never know that it isn’t a good idea to write your own AcmeDatabaseManager or AcmeLogManager. ~~~ mindcrime _How do you know that what you are doing is a “mistake” if it works?_ Reading. Plenty of books, blog posts, and forum posts point out that you shouldn't have "10 KLOC UserManager classes". The thing is, one has to figure out how to _integrate_ "book learning" AND real world experience, so that they're constantly synthesizing a newer, better understanding. ~~~ badpun Funny thing is, if you look at codebases of some opensource projects [1] doing complex and ambitious stuff, written by some real experienced engineers, you’ll see the common „dogmas” (don’t have long classes, don’t have long methods etc. etc.) are not obeyed. And yet, they shipped very complex and successful software. It’s almost as if these rules are mostly arbitrary and don’t really matter. [1] I’ve noticed that in codebases of Apache Spark, Apache Oozie, Apache Cassandra, and Firefox. ~~~ mindcrime _It’s almost as if these rules are mostly arbitrary and don’t really matter._ Definitely. I mean, _some_ of them probably have some objective basis. But clearly some of them are indeed subjective and arbitrary. Take "long method names" for example... I believe method names should state what they do, and should be however long it takes to do that. To my way of thinking, making a method name shorter just for the sake of being shorter, and eliding semantic information, is an anti-pattern, not a best-practice. _shrug_ ~~~ sbov Reminds me of other comments on this subject: one person's best practice is another person's bad practice. ------ mikekchar I'll follow the pattern here of expressing incredulity on the fact that my personal way of dealing with this is different from everybody else's ;-) Read code. Look around the internet for projects similar to what you are working on. Try to find and fix a bug or two in each. Concentrate on how you feel working on these unfamiliar projects. Was it straightforward to work on it? Was it fun to poke into? Did you feel straight jacketed in your approach? When you submitted the fixes, how was the reaction? Was it easy to get a positive reaction? Did people thank your for your contribution but then rewrite everything you did? Did they tell you that you didn't understand the issue and reject your contribution? These are all big clues on the success (or lack thereof) in the approach taken on those projects. ------ JamesSwift There are a lot of niche slack communities popping up. I've gotten a lot of great insight being a fly on the wall of a couple. Other than that, just consume multiple sources of 'best practices' recommendations and see where they line up. Figure out what works by applying what you read and form your own opinion. ------ jinfiesto My advice would be not to worry about this too much at this phase. A lot of "best practice" is institutional and has to do with how the stack/org/community is structured. There's not a lot that's "best practice" in a vacuum. In terms of stuff that would be considered best practice in a vacuum, you can maybe look at some of the classic stuff like Code Complete, or any of the TDD or pattern books. Other people have mentioned that "best practices" can be a double edged sword. Software engineering is very varied and it's hard to abstract out "best practices" that apply in all situations. Don't get blinded by "principles" and evaluate each technical situation on its own merits and weigh the tradeoffs of the solutions you can think of before proceeding. There are way too many variables for you to have a playbook that reads "in x situation do y" most of the time. With regard to best practice being institutional, you'll formulate a lot of it on your own as the org grows (if it does.) For example, having code reviews would widely be considered a best practice across the industry, but in your situation it is obviously not reasonable. Who would review your code? You? Lots of institutions have style guides for software engineers (I would consider this a best practice) to keep software easily readable to as many team members as possible. In your situation, what engineers are you trying to keep on the same page? None? In your case, this is then not a useful best practice. There are community best practices that sometimes spring up around quirks of the language and its tooling. I would say the best way to deal with the first is to use a lint. That will teach you a lot. The second is something you usually have to get bitten by to find out. Finally, read a lot of code in your language/framework of choice (critically of course.) You'll learn a lot of tricks, and will also see a lot of traps to avoid by doing this. If you're in Node, reading the source to Express is probably a good place to start and is obviously applicable to your work (and can only pay dividends in that respect.) ------ hackermailman Use Google scholar to find papers on API design. Here's one [https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub32713.pdf](https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub32713.pdf) Here's many more papers [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~NatProg/apiusability.html](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~NatProg/apiusability.html) and here [https://sites.google.com/site/apiusability/resources](https://sites.google.com/site/apiusability/resources) Check 'cited by' to find more papers ------ mcs_ \- online curses \- hours of youtube conferences Sometimes learn is impossible at work, or... i had and experience... i was working for a bizarre company, the culture was very far from what i could consider decent, in some cases they were toxic. Nobody could understand what i was trying to say/do. MSSQL, C# and other very cool stuff. But wait... they weren't able to understand what i was doing but... i was able to understand what their business was, their special use-cases, their customers and requirements. Those moment are in the past now. But i learned a lot from people that could not understand me, having a completely different background. Everybody can teach us something... ------ lasereyes136 I suggest: 1\. Read - books and articles about what you are doing 2\. Go to conferences and meetups and ask questions 3\. Make learning and self-mentoring part of your daily flow 4\. See mistakes as learning opportunities and get your team to see it the same way, talk about mistakes with your team 5\. If possible, find someone to mentor you externally, maybe even just an hour or two a month, just to ask them questions Learn how to learn and how to figure things out. A mentor is there for perspective and pointing you in the right direction. Working with other like minded people that can help you at least think of things from a different perspective can go a long way. ------ grishaandrianov There are three ways of learning 1\. by doing a job and making mistakes 2\. by studying theory 3\. by observing how more experienced colleagues do a job that is very similar to yours (design review, code review, pair programming, daily conversations) You are already using the 1st way. You definitely can use the 2nd way by reading books (Martin Fowler, Bob Martin, Eric Evans, Kent Beck etc.), watching some video courses, reading code of open source projects, etc. But in your case it is almost impossible to use the 3rd way. And as for as I know the 3rd way is far more efficient then others. I would propose to quit the job where you can't use the 3rd way. ------ meuk Just my two cents: learning by "experience" works, but is extremely inefficient, and you don't always get the feedback of your work. You always learn by experience, but you do as much as you can to learn to avoid making mistakes in practice. Compare it to learning to drive: Yes, you learn driving by experience, but you still need driving lessons to avoid getting in accidents. You can try to learn on your own by reading, but if you want to make serious progeaa, you need a teacher, it's as simple as that. ~~~ afarrell This is a great metaphor. ------ markbirbeck I would start with the book 'Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World'. That is not to go against other advice in this thread about watching videos, reading other books, making lots of mistakes, and so on. And it's also not to imply that there is a single 'best practice', either. But what this book gives you is a load of solid places to start, on many different subjects that are important for developers. Subjects like issue- tracking, code style, how to learn and stay up-to-date, tests, infrastructure, resilience, working in a team, sharing knowledge, and so on. It doesn't relate to any particular language or architecture. And it has some great tips for the situation you describe, where you are trying to do a good job in the context of a team that doesn't have any clearly defined practices. I'd buy the paperback, not an eBook, and scribble in every margin. When you've read it, carry it with you and dip in and out. Once you have read this, then a lot of other sources of material will make a lot more sense. Some of them might contain better ideas than those in this book, which is fine; the great thing about reading this book is that you'll be in a good position to evaluate other ideas. ------ anthony_doan Books & projects. I google around for recommendation on books and get books and read them and do projects. Books will go over a concept but it won't be enough for me to get it in my head so I would google around for blogs about the concept and do the examples in those blogs. Here's an example of me practicing the GenServer concept ([https://github.com/mythicalprogrammer/elixir_genserver_pract...](https://github.com/mythicalprogrammer/elixir_genserver_practice)). I also find code reviewing of library very helpful in writing better code. I used to do this with Scala and Javascript. Most of the stuff I've learned is on my free time and something I'm passionate about. Currently it's Elixir. I spent sometime reading and then did a project. Currently burnt out from the project but I learned a lot and I'll come back to it. I know many people just jump in and do stuff. What works for me is to read a bit do project then read a little bit more. My elixir project went through 3 authentication systems btw. I started with Coherence then Guardian then Coherence and now POW. I relearn session and learn a bit more about tokens and API. ------ Fradow Been there, done that. Little story time: I co-founded a startup (as technical co-founder obviously) straight out of education, and never really had any mentor. 6 years later, I've certainly done lots of mistake, but no critical one, and I can count on one hand the mistakes that had important consequences. Now, here are what I think is the most important: experience, planning and critical thinking. Experience you gain overtime, there is no shortcut. But you can plan from the beginning, and think hard before you commit. You're already asking yourself the questions. The internet is vast, there are lots of answers. And guess what, someone's best practices are someone's else bad practices. It's about your company trade-offs. Since you are in a startup, you'll probably need to do lots of modifications on your business logic. That means for you, API development best practices includes planning for the future, so probably having versionned API. Is your business logic mostly about CRUD? Read up about REST. Or mostly about RPC? Might want to read up about SOAP. You also need to know what's the time expectency of your code. Is it just a POC? Go ahead with the fastest, dirtiest way to do it. Is it a MVP that is going to change quite a bit? A bit cleaner, but you can get away with a few shortcuts. Or are you building a well-defined product that isn't going to change much? Document, test, and do it as clean as you can. You are still going to need to refactor a bit every year or two anyway, when you get more experience. Keep at it long enough, while thinking about better ways to do things every day, and eventually you'll learn all you wanted to know. Don't worry, you'll still have a ton to learn, given the opportunity. ~~~ DelightOne > Or mostly about RPC? Might want to read up about SOAP. Why would one use SOAP over grpc in a new stack? Understandable in an old stack though. Rest is gold. ~~~ dustindiamond 'Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.' Also, we don’t always get to choose the technologies of 3rd party providers with whom we are required to interface. ------ afarrell I was asking myself this in 2013 and in 2014 I quit my job because of it. I thought [https://www.codementor.io/](https://www.codementor.io/) was going after this problem. —— If not, it pains me to know that there still isn’t an answer besides, “quit and be skilled enough at determining that a company is good at teaching best practices.” > books Are a way to absorb information that the author thought a broad audience would want to know and be able to digest. They don’t replace being able to get detailed individual feedback on your work and your particular questions. > make mistakes In my experience, mistakes have one big flaw: They don’t teach you a way to do something _correctly_. It is possible to go into a situation thinking, “I don’t know what to do here and I need help.” And to come out of the situation saying, “Yep, I did my best and I failed in pretty much the way I thought I would. New information learned: none.” Ideally, you would be able to shop for or come up with a workable solution yourself. In reality, humans benefit greatly by learning from the past solutions of others and from getting personal recommendations. ------ mindcrime Create an iterative loop with three major steps in it: 1\. Consume external knowledge by reading books, watching videos, taking classes, etc. 2\. Apply the new knowledge, plus your intrinsic store of knowledge to whatever problem you're working on. 3\. Note mistakes, lessons learned, synthesis of ideas between "new" and "old" knowledge, etc. Update your bank of intrinsic knowledge. Lather, rinse, repeat. ------ antoineMoPa Since you are using node, a good first step is to setup ESLint. It will help you stick to a standard and probably teach you new things. That's how I learned about const, let and arrow functions (I think I was using airbnb standards at that time). Otherwise, it will improve the overall consistency of your code. ------ rifung Personally I actually think you will gain a better understanding because you have nobody to teach you. If you work with people who are already experts, they will always prevent you from making mistakes. Being able to actually make those mistakes gives you a much better understanding of why people do things though. ~~~ tracker1 I wouldn't say that... I'll often put in "for next time, look at..." type advice in Pull Requests from more junior coworkers. Sometimes working is more important than ideal. It's when a Junior-Mid dev has to add a feature that's made difficult by their own choices and then rethink to make things better they tend to learn. That said, plenty of Jr-Mid devs don't advance with more practice, they stay jr- mid. ------ hombre_fatal It's a real challenge. You really just need someone to tell you "no, do this, don't do that." A lot of things are just wrong in subtle ways or invisible until you hit a certain scale, so you have no idea. For example, I built my first production application taking a database connection from the pool in middleware and then returning it to the pool at the end of the response. My much more experienced friend looked at my code and told me that connection pools are made for taking out connections and returning them to the pool as soon as you were finished with them. And that I should use timestamptz instead of timestamp. And so much more. It makes me cringe to think how long I would've gone without figuring out these things had it not been for someone to set me straight early on. ------ anigbrowl Fail a lot and cry yourself to sleep until you get pretty good at it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. ------ mooreds Conferences. Meetups. Hackathons. Reading books (google for "best software books" and you'll find some lists). Hanging out in online communities whether general (like HN) or language/tech specific. Read articles. Follow interesting people/companies on twitter. Blog about your work. All of the above can help, but you need to pick what works and is fun so you can stick with it. ------ MaBeuLux88 The best place to learn about MongoDB is the MongoDB free e-learning university website: [https://university.mongodb.com](https://university.mongodb.com). You can follow free courses here - MOOC style. ------ munk-a Advocate for time, the time you'd spend making those mistakes is going to be a loss on the company compared to convincing your manager (or their manager) to allocate some of that senior dev time to mentorship. This isn't about walking you through tickets step-by-step but make sure that you get smallish tickets in these new areas of tech and ask your co-workers to vet your work (this usually happens in the form of a PR review). Most (really, honestly, most) developers are interested in the way they do things and aren't opposed to teaching new people the ropes, so I don't think it's unlikely that you'd be able to get this through. ------ samat Self learning is one thing and being completely on your own without a way to ask specific questions on the daily basis is totally another. If there is no one to answer your questions in your company - try and find some buddies on the internets or even change company, as in my experience, ability to ask stupid questions and get answers quick is crucial in learning programming. StackOverflow is good, but not quick enough. ——- Ouch, sorry, misunderstood your question. I am not sure there is a book on best practices on APIs, but it’s definitly possible to have someone experienced help you as a company. There are good developers with experience doing this type of contractor work. ------ dilatedmind Keep things simple and idiomatic. Use dependency injection and hook everything up in main. You should be able to open up your code and understand what's going on just by looking at this setup. Your public apis should be based on the shape of your data. I would prefer postgres over mongodb because your data probably has a schema. If you have the time, learn some other languages. Each language has their own ecosystem where problems are approached slightly differently. You'll pick up patterns and be able to apply them to your work. I would recommend elixir, which has a very focused ecosystem and a standard library with well thought out apis. ------ morazow Read code reviews of senior developers. I follow several public and private projects that I do not contribute at all. Any time there is a review comment on a pull request from senior devs, I try to check if it is new to me. If so, I note down the problem and suggestions. Here are some examples: \- Aleks suggested to limit the try to the places where exceptions can be thrown and move everything else out of the try. \- Thomas suggested to use =StringBuilder= instead of =String.format=. The former is faster and more robust. \- Oscar suggested to use a =parameter object= or a =builder= when there are many (more than 3-4) parameters. ------ brianm Reach outside your company. Genuine appeals for focused help are rarely dismissed. You don't need to know almost everything (and derive what you don't from first principles), that is unreasonable. You do need to have a network of folks you can ask help or feedback from. Being on a small team without much support will force either very fast growth or failure, and your ability to be intellectually honest (is this true or do I want it to be true?) and identify folks who can and are willing to genuinely help are important factors. ~~~ j88439h84 I'm having trouble imagining how to do this. What does it look like? Emailing a friend at another company to ask for code review? ~~~ brianm I am old fashioned, so I use IM to say things like "Hey, Martin, I'm thinking about ... Does it make sense?" Not so much mailing out code reviews, but sharing design ideas, approaches, etc. Former coworkers you are still friends with, open source collaborators you have become close to, etc all work. Basically, build and maintain relationships with people who have good judgement. Help them out, ask for help yourself. ------ grigjd3 So, avoiding the discussion of what constitutes best practices, it's important to recognize that you don't know everything (which you seem to get), but also identify the things you don't know and learn how to research them enough to handle your task, which is definitely more than Wikipedia but most often you don't need to be an expert in a thing. Unfortunately, if you don't have people around to grade your work, developing a sense of this can be quite hard. ------ drallison By the time things have been reduced to "best practices" the intellectual rush of discovery has been cooked out. If you a still fishing for best practices: experiment, make mistakes, fix, learn how things work, run tests, try things that make sense first, talk through problems with smart friends, and enjoy the fruits of discovery. It is often helpful to find a mentor, someone who can help structure the search for "best practices" and who will give advice. ------ karakrakow Learn from your own mistakes. But that doesn't scale too well, therefore, learn from other people's mistakes. \- ex-boss Also,find out why something is or isn't a good/bad thing to do. ------ modzu you're already doing the right thing by thinking about best practises. your question is pretty vague though, which is probably what invites so many comments about "experience" being the best teacher. just saying to "learn the hard way" is doing you a bit of a disservice though, because there is a ton of material out there!! read it. oreilly my friend. and be sure to share it with your team ------ edouard-harris See if you can find someone external to your company to mentor you. Easier said than done, it's true, but most people who are currently employed can find someone in their social graph within one or two degrees of separation that's able and willing. In most cases, the leverage you'll get from this, compared to trying to learn everything yourself, tends to be overwhelmingly greater than the cost of searching. ------ hartator Books. IMO, Books is the best way of aquiring knowledge. It’s dense and visual. It’s also more carefully crafted and corrected through time then say blog posts, online videos or podcasts. Compared to a coach or a teacher, you also are getting the actual root of the information and not a distilled and approximate version of it. Even when the person teaching is the one who actually wrote the book! ------ caseydm I'm in the same boat as a solo developer. I recommend subscribing to Safari Books Online ([https://learning.oreilly.com/](https://learning.oreilly.com/)). As your first action, watch the video series for Clean Code. It's just incredible and has helped me grow as a developer more than any other resource. ------ crashbunny Talk to your workmates and boss about the advantages of doing regular code reviews. You review their code, they review your code. Nothing too formal or in-depth, best done frequently before additions get too large, but I guess you also don't need to review every since added line. "This is the feature I worked on, I chose this approach, any suggestions?" ------ zokier Everyone is already piling with sources to learn from, so my biggest advise is avoid falling into the trap of cargo culting and overfollowing the internet echo chamber. Personal experience is worth so much more than reading something from a blog post somewhere, even if that somewhere would really be good information which is not at all such a given ------ austhrow743 "when you have no one to teach you?" Isn't this likely to change for you one way or the other reasonably quickly given that you're at the earliest (most volatile) stage of a startup? Unless you drag things out longer than they need to in denial of failure, you're going to either be building a team or joining one shortly enough. ------ bahmboo Lots of good advice, I will add: revisit your own code from a previous project. Best place to learn about your own habits. ------ karvalhus Look up node.js best practices at GitHub. It's a great repository with some real nice tips on production ready node. ------ z3t4 Use a lot of API's to experience the pain points. Read a lot of other peoples source code. For example the code of your dependencies. Learn by failure, but also other peoples failures. Read blog post and articles about what you are doing. Participate in chats and forums. And be persitant and have good confidence. ------ dewey Usually if you are the smartest person in the room it's time to move on to a new job, otherwise you are only hurting yourself especially when you are still in the early stages of your career where you'd want to learn fast. Otherwise I'd suggest to look at projects that the "community" deems well written. ------ euph0ria There are a lot of articles here on HN explaining problems other people ran into, solutions and best practices. Just keep reading. I read for 30 min every day on new tech and ideas even if I don't use them regularly. Keeps me in the loop and a lot of the ideas and principles are portable to other projects. ------ njepa There is about five to ten books that will be commonly recommended to be a better programmer. Code complete, Smalltalk best practice patterns, clean code etc. You can find lists online. Read a few that seem interesting and at least you will have common ground with many other programmers. ~~~ scarface74 Speaking of which, my list: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794561) ------ mattlondon Today's best practices are tomorrow's legacy codebase. Don't get hung up on "doing it right" if your code works & your comfortable with it, i.e it is maintainable and it is reliable. My best advice would be to try and use one of the publicly published coding standards from a big company as there is usually a lot of good knowledge/experience baked into those. Use a linter religiously and do not commit code with lint errors. For every commit, take a step back and think "is this code shit?" If I had to explain it to someone who I thought was a ' _better_ ' or _more experienced_ coder than me, would I be embarrassed about it? Generally you'll get a gut feeling about code being good or bad - how reliable it is, how often you have to tweak it, how easy it is to change etc. If it is _hard_ to make changes to some code or its really buggy or brittle then trust your gut: You Are (probably) Doing It Wrong. That is when you can go and read around different approaches online to see what other people have done to approach the same/similar issue and learn from them. Some approaches will resonate with you, some won't. Make a professional judgement on which (if any) you want to learn from/emulate in your codebase and why you made that decision (the thought process helps - sometimes you just need an 'ah ha' moment to work out your own approach) tl;dr - beyond fundamentals, everyone does things differently. Do what works for you and what is reliable and maintainable. ------ slifin I recommend: [https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey- fanclub/blob/master/R...](https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey- fanclub/blob/master/README.md#talks) I find I learn a lot as a developer who doesn't use Clojure ------ namank See if you can work with them to plan your code before you guys write it. And afterwards, if you can do a code review for each other. This is hard in startups but it can avoid a lot of bugs downstream; cuz I'm guessing you don't really have any QA either. ------ gashaw Direct your learning by what you need for your work. You can watch videos on the frameworks and tools you're using, read blog posts on issues you might have etc. After you have some more experience (and confidence) start reading books. Your first one should be Code Complete 2. ------ csteubs This approach is definitely up for debate but I stay abreast of emerging "best practices" by reading the blogs of the tools I use. I'm a software tester interested in project management and find myself reading Atlassian's QA blog quite a bit. ------ thecrumb No one to teach you? Google, Udemy, GitHub, YouTube, Dev.to, etc. etc. When I started there was no internet and all I had was a book and 'phone a friend' if I broke something :) Break stuff. Fix it. If you can't fix it ask for help. Rinse and repeat. ------ rooam-dev Human evolution at single person scale :) The key here is your journey to get experience. Every time you try something, you will be using your past knowledge. To speedup things you should learn from others' mistakes _too_, but don't forget to learn from yours. Just my 2 cents. PS: Good luck! ------ smilebot 1\. Reading and learning from other people's work is certainly a good way to learn new approaches. 2\. Learning to measure how your code/application performs will let you test various approaches so you can decide for yourself. ------ jic94 Got to relevant industry/community forums or Slack channels, and participate in the discussions. You'd be surprised at how willing people are willing to share insider secrets when you're participating in the community. ------ agoldis Go to GitHub and start contributing to open source projects that use the same stack. ------ aloisdg Read and if possible contribute to an Open Source project you are using everyday. ------ jrockway I learned a lot by working on open source projects in my younger days. People were always around on IRC to answer questions, especially when answering my questions got them closer to their own goals for the project. ------ eskatonic There are a lot of famous books on the subject of best practices: "Code Complete" and "Clean Code" are the first to come to mind, but I'm sure the folks here can recommend others. ~~~ chrisgoman These are the _timeless_ books and should be required reading Pragmatic Programmer: [http://amzn.com/020161622X](http://amzn.com/020161622X) Code Complete 2: [http://amzn.com/0735619670](http://amzn.com/0735619670) ~~~ rcavezza Refactoring by Martin Fowler is a great one [https://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Existing- Addiso...](https://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Existing-Addison- Wesley-Signature/dp/0134757599/) Design Patterns is also very well known [https://www.amazon.com/Design- Patterns-Elements-Reusable-Obj...](https://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns- Elements-Reusable-Object-Oriented/dp/0201633612) ------ satisfice Best practices is a marketing term. Put it aside. Your problem isn’t that you lack some particular practice, but rather that you feel incompetent and inferior. New techniques won’t fix that. ------ crispyambulance I sympathize with the situation of having "no one to teach you". I don't know why, but in my experience software practitioners are apt to be incurious and beginner-hostile. They tend to expect questions to be absurdly well-formed-- almost to the point of answering themselves. I believe this is part of the reason why stackoverflow seems like it is overrun by assholes. The fact is, the best way to learn anything is by having a good teacher or mentor. A truly good teacher won't merely answer questions. A good teacher ASKS QUESTIONS and provokes the student into discovery. Good teachers are rare, but they aren't necessarily subject-matter experts, they just need to be a few steps further than the student along the path. Even if you don't have someone that you can call a mentor, you can get on a rewarding path to learning new stuff by forming a workshop to learn a subject with colleagues. Exploring new subjects and solving new problems together with another person is an amazing and energizing way to learn things. It almost doesn't matter what skills you have relative to others, if you're far ahead in some topic, you will get better in it by teaching it to someone. If you're far behind, you can depend on the other to give you some clues for proceeding. If the chemistry is good and the environment allows it (not a sweatshop) this will work just fine. ------ acconrad I haven't seen this advice yet but follow thought leaders on Twitter. They'll post blogs and offer advice to keep you up-to-date on what the zeitgeist of your lingua franca is. ------ aboutruby You can always find people to help you. I'm not a node + express specialist but I do a fair share of JS, you can contact me at localhostdotdev@protonmail.com if you want. ------ theprotocol I did my best ever learning working with a peer who had about the same skill level as me. We grew together and exchanged notes about things we learned. ------ djohnston I would say contributing to a popular project would be a good starting point if you want to see the end result of conventions. ------ dansman Look up github repositories that with desirable implementations. Follow people on twitter posting about their experience. ------ gpsx Wait until the next engineer, however experienced, inherits your code and he will tell you everything you did wrong. ------ karvalhus Look up node.js best practices on GitHub. Great repository with a lot of tips for writing production ready node. ------ segmondy Read engineering blogs, most big companies have it. Follow HN topics Read books Go to conferences ------ stackzero Some practical things that have helped me, by no means an expert: 1\. Practice writing new project's from scratch. not so much todo apps but challenge yourself e.g. I wrote my own function as a service engine The main point of the exercise is to show: \- Best practice is contextual, so first you need context ;) \- Think about the big picture and all the pieces to get there \- Repetition. It will help you improve your development flow and process, and become better at your craft You can borrow design/implementation ideas from current projects that you're familiar with or use a design pattern you found on a blog etc. it will help you recognize when certain practices are the "best". 2\. Rewrite this code continually. Is there a better way? more concise? faster? easier to test? It seems there's many ways to do the same thing. Which one is best depends on the situation. 3\. Optimize last. No seriously. If I could count, the amount of times I've thrown away code because I optimized to early... tl;dr best practice needs context. This requires big picture thinking. Learn to recognize contexts and the best practices are alot clearer ------ 1337shadow Try to contribute to open source projects ------ mychael Join a programming Slack group. ------ funkjunky This is something that can be difficult to learn even if you've been working in the industry (lord knows we've all seen awful practices at various companies in our career). This is probably not popular advice, but of all the places I've worked, Google seemed to have the highest standards for best practices I've seen. I recommend paying attention to Google's best practices, in their blogs, certification programs (like the google cloud developer cert), Coursera courses, product docs, codelabs, style guides, git code, etc. Obviously everything they do won't be a right fit for your company, but it's something to aim for. Enforce code style (be specific and use a linter), and write tests as you go. Try to keep bad code out of your repo before PRs can even be merged. I use Jenkins and git hooks to enforce this for the whole team. Draw up design docs and understand business needs before diving into projects and features. Understanding good architecture and operational principles will make you much more valuable as a developer than your peers. Read the Google SRE book, it's free. Also read [http://highscalability.com/](http://highscalability.com/) articles and learn from other companies' triumphs and mistakes. Books about architecture include the micro services book by Sam Newman. You may not ultimately be responsible for making these decisions, but demonstrate your value by being able to understand and provide quality feedback to your tech leads and architects. Study and learn about project management techniques and craft/enforce your process. Not everything boils down to good code and architecture, if your development process sucks, everything else will definitely fall apart. Be able to spot the flaws in your organization and offer ways to improve their process and quality. By doing so, you will also improve your own. If you have a cloud provider and a support package, use it often. Most of what I know about best practices came from supporting Google Cloud customers, seeing what they were doing poorly, and working together to find better solutions. Be sure you're not just abstracting your API libraries, but your use of 3rd party libraries and services as well. You don't want to have to refactor all of your code just because you need to swap out one technology for another. If you're actually better than the rest of your team, you should be mentoring them. Teaching others is incredibly helpful at solidifying our own understanding of topics, and exposing the gaps in our knowledge. Read "The Phoenix Project". It probably applies more for the DevOps/SRE/Management side of things, but I think there are VERY important lessons to be learned for everyone in there. Highly recommended. ------ xiaodai Use common sense and think through ------ BucketSort Blog posts other developers make detailing the way they've built a particular project have helped me gain some perspective when looking to understand how people are working in a particular stack. Learning from other projects is good for understanding how people are using contemporary tools. Github is also a great source for this, you can search with those tags to find relevant projects. As for software engineering in general, there is more academic materials which cover various methodologies ( you can just search software engineering and find many resources ). There are so many resources out there; I don't personally have a systematic way of navigating it. Once I find a good resource, I tend to look at what else the author has done and who else is connected to that author and then I walk around what that social circle's body of work, picking up various things. Finding the sages in a particular area, finding out who really knows about the area I'm studying at the moment, then learning from them... all starting from Google searches and some sleuthing. ~~~ reaperducer _Blog posts other developers make detailing the way they 've built a particular project_ The hard part is finding the _right_ blog. There are a ton of blogs out there from developers with little experience who are convinced that their way of doing things is the best/only/right way. The blogs are often nothing more than SEO for their resumes. For that reason, I'd lean heavier on books. At least with books there is _some_ filter. Yes, it can be incomplete and sporadic, but it's often better than the wild west of bad information out there, especially in web dev blogs. ~~~ BucketSort Yes, good point. Usually you can filter blogs by reading the comments and seeing the reception it got as well as the popularity. If it is an open source project, you can see the stars on GH and read through the issues on the repo to further filter. Books get outdated very quickly for modern tech stacks. I would recommend them for the fundamentals, but not contemporary stuff. You obviously have to do your due diligence here. Researching the author is also important obviously if you are going to truly heed their advice. ------ diminoten I recommend participating, daily, in communities, particularly ##programming or #python (if that's the language you're learning) on Freenode. It's less that you'll learn best practices, but you will expose yourself to the zeitgeist, which I feel is important to being a good dev. Again, not to blindly follow it or even agree with it, but to understand it and why it's pushing in one direction or another. ------ crimsonalucard Stackoverflow. No joke. I'm not saying look up stuff on stack. I'm saying literally ask your expert level questions on the site. The wealth of experts willing to answer obscure questions is incredible.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Trouble sleeping? Maybe it's your iPad - edw519 http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/13/sleep.gadgets.ipad/index.html?hpt=Sbin ====== heseltine The light in your fridge goes off when you shut the door anyway	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Prenda Law's Trip To San Francisco Turns Out Badly - greenyoda http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/23/prenda-law-trip-to-san-francisco-turns-out-badly ====== tzaman It would be nice to have some TL;DR on popehat, I don't always have the time for the full _Law and order_ episode :) ~~~ eridius It would be nice to have a tl;dr on the whole case. I don't really know the backstory here and popehat doesn't seem inclined to recap. ~~~ DArcMattr Prenda Law's escapades in the past: 1\. Sloppy detective work to look for people torrenting porn 2\. Fish for quick settlements from these people Several of the accused have decided to fight back. In doing so, there have been revelations that Prenda has many problems. 1\. It's not clear that Prenda has the right to sue on behalf of the copyright holders.The holding company it claims to represent seems to be founded on forged documents, and temps acting as corporate officers. 2\. Prenda's not willing pay for a bond for one case, and wants to terminate many cases and absolve itself of any sort of expense associated with them. The judges involved aren't going to set Prenda walk away so easily. Edit: Thought this was using markdown, derp ------ vy8vWJlco If April 26 is "World Intellectual Property Day," I declare April 27 to be "World Imaginary Property Infringement Day." A Merry WIPID to all, and may you all enjoy a bountiful harvest.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I’ve started building with paper – Haverzine - derfbwh http://haverzine.com/2014/08/06/ive-started-building-paper/ ====== notduncansmith This is really interesting. I think I'm part of the generation immediately preceding the "digital natives", but I use paper so rarely that I still identify with the symptoms. I feel like "maybe I should get a notebook", but I already have `bb` (for brain blast) in my shell for `vi "~/ideas/$1.md"` so I don't feel terribly encumbered by my computer, which I have either open or near at hand for the vast majority of the day.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Boost VC Welcomes Bitcoin - Sindrome http://adamdraper.com/post/44563343164/boost-vc-welcomes-bitcoin ====== Sindrome Boost (<http://www.boost.vc>) is getting ready to incubate their 2nd class this Summer. For this class hey have a strong preference for accepting companies revolving around Bitcoins.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Intel’s Core M Strategy - msh http://www.anandtech.com/show/8475/intels-core-m-strategy-cpu-specifications-for-9mm-fanless-tablets ====== rasz_pl Intels mobile strategy is to bleed $2Bill a year by engaging in anticompetitive behaviour by giving away chips nobody wants [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186367-intels-mobile- divi...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186367-intels-mobile-division-has- lost-an-astonishing-2-billion-dollars-so-far-this-year) Intell is trying to undercut Allwinter/Mediatek/Rockchip by selling Atoms at $5 a pop in China. [http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/intel- sel...](http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/intel-sells-quad- core-atom-for-tablets-for-5-per-chip-report/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The era of "Developers First" has begun but somehow servers got left behind - BenfromOz https://codemason.io/blog/developers-first/ ====== ericpauley This is a poor attempt at blogspam. Article complains about hosting being challenging and cites raw compute providers. Plenty of companies (Heroku, App Engine, Elastic Beanstalk, for example) offer easy, templatized hosting with effortless autoscaling, availability, auditing, monitoring, logging, everything you could possibly need. If you're trying to compete with these providers at least be upfront about it, instead of purposely misrepresenting the state of the market. ~~~ BenfromOz Thanks for the feedback You are probably right, I should have probably mentioned them But none of those options give you choice when it comes to your server provider and since the post was about servers and my opinion on the fact that servers have been left behind while the rest of the developer facing market moves to simplify things, I do feel somewhat justified in not mentioning them. Regardless, I’ve added a clarification to the post.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The “Vulgar Mechanick” and His Magical Oven - dang http://nautil.us/issue/12/feedback/the-vulgar-mechanic-and-his-magical-oven ====== speeder Sometimes I wonder, what magic still exists to be invented? I am glad for my world full of science, but sad that all my ideas have been done before, and better than I could do no less. ------ mturmon I don't have time to read the whole thing this afternoon, but this looks like a fantastic piece. The concept of the thermostat as one of the first autonomous machines is worth remembering. The frontiers of AI are pushed back in hard-to-perceive ways.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: I'm at a crossroads, any input is appreciated - djsamson I’m a twenty year old from upstate New York and I’m thinking about moving to San Francisco/the Bay Area. I’m a business student and I took this spring semester off to launch a startup which wasn’t very successful. I dropped that idea and tried to land an internship in the Bay Area this summer but I haven’t heard back from any of the three I applied to.<p>I’m learning to program but I don’t think I would be a good hacker intern because I don’t think I’m that good yet. I’d be a much better business/marketing guy at a startup.<p>I’m at a crossroads in my life and I could use some advice. I know this is Hacker News, but I think a lot of people in this community are much more intelligent than some of business communities I take part in.<p>I think I’m facing two options:<p>1.) Move to the Bay Area and try to find a business dev/marketing job at a startup. If I can’t I’ll work anywhere to make ends meet while I try to launch a startup of my own. I’ve been told the Bay Area is rich in entrepreneurship; upstate New York is probably the least entrepreneurial place in the country. I want to be around like minded people.<p>2.) My other option is to go back to school in the Fall. If I do this, I’m going to have to work to get through it. My plan would be to take a real estate course this summer and then start working as a commercial real estate agent while I’m at school. My biggest concerns with this are that I really don’t have any interest in real estate, I would be doing it just for the money and between school and real estate I wouldn’t have much time for a startup. And even if I have a successful stint in real estate I would never want to become complacent and make a career out of it, which basically just makes this a means to an end portion of my life.<p>Staying in school and doing real estate is a lot safer, but moving to the Bay Area would be a direct way to accomplish my goals. Do you have any advice?<p>Thank you for your time. ====== triviatise Real estate is not safe. It is just as hard as starting your own company because it is starting your own company. To be successful you will need to sleep, eat and breathe it. If you have no experience and no equivalent to a portfolio of personal projects, I'm not sure why anyone would hire you to do marketing. Paul Graham says the key factor he is looking for is determination - you have had one "failure" and you are letting that completely derail you. You can be a semi competent programmer that people will pay you money for in 3-6 months if you focus on a single area of expertise. Build a portfolio of personal projects ( should be reasonably quick to do). Those personal projects can be the minimum viable product for a potential startup but can also prove your ability to build things to get contract jobs to pay the bills. ------ rhizome You aren't good at business, you're not getting internships and you're just learning to program. Stay in school. ~~~ rudasn ..Stay in school and use your free time to find out what you really want and how to get it. ------ dotBen My advice to you is as follows. Make the decision now, at this stage in your life/career, whether you want to be a developer or not - and stick to the plan that follows. If you do, then you need to work hard to obtain the level of proficiency needed to cut it in startup world (the "it takes 1000 hours to become a master' quote comes to mind here). I'm not sure if that is the 'going back to school' aspect you are considering but there a numerous ways to learn to be a _good_ developer. It also means that most of your business school teaching - while still useful - will go unused as a dev. I'm not sure how much debt you have from school but is it worth wasting that education at this point? Or decide that you don't want to be a developer and stop trying to be one. If you move to SF/Silicon Valley you won't hack it trying to be a "part-dev/part- business-{blah}". If you are not sure what you want to do then I'd suggest coming out here and working for a funded startup or BigCo to get some stable salary and also build up your contact network (business or marketing out here requires a strong contact network). If you want to start another startup you will need a technical co-founder and so this also gives you time to meet such folks. Hope this is useful. ~~~ djsamson If I decided to just stick to business, could I realistically get a job at a startup without a finished business degree? ~~~ dotBen I don't think anyone could give you a firm yes/no on that. What is your major? Have you done anything that sets you out from the crowd (ran a successful startup already, etc). To be honest, the answer might be "stay in school and complete your studies". I myself don't have a degree but then I have a technical background. ------ nhangen You don't need a business degree to get a job at a startup. You need to be able to show that you've been able to recruit users or launch something successfully. The best way to do this is on the streets, whether in your own company or with someone else. Screw real estate. I had a friend with the same plan and he didn't even pass the test. I know a lot of Realtors that quit because the money wasn't good enough. Why not move to the bay area, join some hacker groups/meetups, and work to support yourself while you pick up the skills of either biz dev or programming. I'm 32 with a wife and 3 kids, a mortgage, and a shitload of debt. You don't realize how lucky you are to be 20 and agile. I have a friend that lives in SF and supports himself with freelance WordPress development and writing for major blogs. In his spare time he works his true passion, and it's working. I imagine that you could do the same. ------ epc Understanding that New York City is anathema to anyone north of I–84, still, you might consider spending some time in NYC before moving cross–country. Join nextny (<http://nextny.org/>) or the NY Tech Meetup (<http://nytm.org>). ------ Zev Upstate NY is big. What part? What school are you going back to, if you don't mind me asking? There are a number of very good colleges up there in the form of RIT, U of R, Syracuse U, a ton of SUNY's[1] and others. Paychex and Kodak were founded in the Rochester area, for example. So its not like you're guaranteed to be in a desolate rural void just because you're in upstate NY. What would you focus on if you were to go back (note: not what would you major in, but, what would you spend your time doing?) 1\. As someone from Long Island, Albany, Binghamton and Buffalo are the ones that always spring to my mind when I think SUNY. But, others are still good -- I did't go to either of those three and got a (what I feel is) a pretty good education. ~~~ djsamson Zev, I attend SUNY Institute of Technology in Utica. It's not that I don't think there's entrepreneurship going on upstate, I just don't think there's anything going on with internet startups. If I go back I'm going to split my time between classes, working and launching another startup. I don't have any friends who could be a tech co-founder so I think I'm just going to focus on making money to pay rent and everything left over is for hiring a freelancer. ------ BWallace Real Estate doesn't look so great from my seat [http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-shilling-sell-your- house...](http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-shilling-sell-your-house-2011-5) Id say, at least find a like-minded network online, such as linkedin groups etc...(shameless self promotion <http://www.linkedin.com/in/blwallace>) My friend from Illinois keeps quoting the Beverly Hillbillies theme song "Calafornie is the place ye wanna be" this week he is pitching to angels and VCs in LA after a week pitching in SanFran. Plus, coming from a midwesterner, California is a different planet(in a very good way). ------ ziadbc Why don't you move to SF for the summer. You could do something like a summer program at Stanford [http://www.summer.stanford.edu/programs/program/undergraduat...](http://www.summer.stanford.edu/programs/program/undergraduate- graduate-summer-programs) Maybe you can even swing transferring to something like deanza community college for the spring. Basically, you'd be taking almost no risk vs staying in school where you are at, plus you can do the startup thing. I never really understood the point of going into real estate if you're not interested in it. Its not like money falls from the sky right off the bat in that industry. ------ ohadpr First of all feel good, having many options and opportunities at a young age is a considerable achievement. Secondly, we're looking for summer interns who understand programming but will focus on connecting with and marketing to other developers. If you're self- directed then you can do it from anywhere in the world. We may also be opening a live/work pad in SF soon so that may be an option too. email me at ohadpr at gmail dot com ------ AngeloAnolin You mentioned that you don't have any interest in real estate, which should not even be part of your plans (despite the fact that it may rake you in some dough for the time being). I think you should go with option 1, as this favors more of what you wanted to be doing. I believe more chance of success lies in doing what you are passionate about. Just my 2 cents. ------ abbasmehdi Life is too short to be spent on safe options. Take the risk, keep minimum baggage, find technical cofounders and keep trying... ------ kirpekar You are only 20. Either option will work. I would have chosen #1, but I am not you.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I never thought Skynet will attack the stock market first... - breiner http://www.oded.us/2012/08/skynet-attacks-stock-market.html ====== verelo Sadly the gif seems to just be a single image and never changes?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Building a secure Linux distribution? - csomar I want to build a secure and very minimalist system/OS. I'll be buying a new Laptop for that purpose (thinking of Dell XPS). The purpose of the system is to:<p>- Read/Write Emails<p>- Browse the Web (using Tor; and text-only is fine)<p>- VIM / Rust<p>- SSH to my server securely<p>* I won't be using the system for anything else.<p>* I want the system to be as minimalist as possible. That is, I can do this stuff now with my OS X. But I don't want to have XX applications and packages installed.<p>* I would prefer if I only have a command-line. No desktop environment.<p>Now the hardest bits:<p>1. What distribution to choose? I'm thinking of Arch, but I have little experience in the Linux world.<p>2. Is there a guide that covers what security precaution I should be taking to protect my identity and privacy?<p>3. How to install the system on my FreeOS laptop and make sure that Internet via Wireless both works and secure.<p>I'm doing this to learn Rust and relying on the Command-line completely for all work. I think Email is superior to Slack or anything else for communication. I think the Web is mostly distracting; and I can use my iPad for non-sensitive and casual browsing. I also think that VIM (or NeoVim) are more superior to IDEs; and so is Rust as a programming language.<p>But this is just my opinion. I want to build my dream setup from scratch and I need: 1. advice and 2. reliable guides or books.<p>(PS: I'm not limited or required to use Linux but I think it's the best for my use-case?) Thanks! ====== vezzy-fnord Why do you insist on a Linux distribution to begin with? In any event, I'd recommend either Alpine Linux or Hardened Gentoo for this purpose. The latter has SELinux, rule set access control and the PaX/grsec exploit mitigation kernel patches configured out of the box. The former is similar, but also uses a non-GNU userland in Busybox and musl libc, which should lower the TCB attack surface.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Would anyone use a charitable payments API? - jeremypshapiro Recently built a tool providing a real-time, direct link between donors and recipients (living on ~$2 a day or less). Donors can send cash to very low-income people and exchange messages (e.g., confirmation message, a SMS indicating how the gift was used). Wondering whether it is worthwhile to make it open via API, so that anyone could integrate an option to make direct cash transfers to globally poor people into products, sites, etc.<p>My question is if people would use such an API, or more specifically:<p>a. What are the use cases / potential needs solved that would motivate developers to use the API (e.g., something for people to use for side projects to develop skills, a way to encourage more customer spending)?<p>b. Are financial incentives important (e.g., developers keep 1% of transfers sent through their application)?<p>c. What other motivations might be there for use?<p>Curious to hear thoughts. ====== _bxg1 I definitely think an API for donating to charitable _organizations_ would be extremely useful. Most of them have terrible web flows for making/managing payments, and I've thought for a while about what it would look like to have a single website you could go to to make/manage donations to any number of nonprofits. Could significantly lower the bar and open the door to micro- donations. Unfortunately, such a project would likely require case-by-case relationships with each organization.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Generate Rest API from JSON in Seconds - adrenalinerush6 https://github.com/singerbj/SinatraApiGenerator ====== adrenalinerush6 Code is a bit sloppy still, but i was surprised as to how easy it was to get it up and running...in less than 150 lines!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Older iOS devices outselling newer Android devices - shawndumas http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/09/older-ios-devices-outselling-newer-android-devices/ ====== edw What I find interesting about this is what happens when the mythical iPhone 5 gets released and Verizon has a $50-100 iPhone 4 to sell. Until now (in the U.S.) there's only been a inexpensive iPhone for AT&T.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
PHP Dev wants to learn a framework Symphony or Rails? - scmc What framework is better what is the growth opportunity? Stick with PHP or move to Ruby/Rails ? ====== gexla Growth in which way? If you are referring to expanding your programming chops, then I would move onto something that's not a web scripting language since PHP to Ruby would largely be a parallel move. If you are referring to financial opportunities, then I think you are asking the wrong question. Business / marketing / people skills are far more important than programming languages for making good pay days. You need to learn to sell! In the big picture, picking PHP or Ruby is fine unless you have a specific need for one over the other (available libraries?) Since you already know PHP, it would be more important to be highly proficient in PHP before you worry about moving to a different web scripting language. After that, make sure that you are can easily make "boss level" in Javascript and then start working on your mobile skills. Can't go wrong with JS and mobile! ~~~ KoryFerbet I'd fully agree with the last half of this! PHP is a great language for you to have, especially depending on where you live! I know that in Seattle right now we would do anything for a PHP developer! The next step is to get a lot better at PHP, just learning the language won't be enough you need to become a PHP assassin. Then add JavaScript to your strengths next, strong front end developers are tough to find, get in that space. And finally, the one thing I urge ALL developers to do, get into mobile! Be sure to take on Java for Android or Objective-C for iOS! If you dominate those, you will be very well off without ever having to worry about the business side of things. ------ dpio Ruby/Rails sounds cool from what I hear. ------ ju Django (Python) or Rails (Ruby)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
WikiLeaks publishing over half a million intercepted pages from 9/11/2001 - tlrobinson http://911.wikileaks.org/ ====== brown9-2 Am I the only one who feels a little ... wrong reading these? This isn't a leak in the usual "whisteblower" sense of the word. Instead it's a leak of communication between individuals that was intended to be private. If someone "leaked" emails from Gmail or Facebook, I think most of us would be angry about it and feel as if some sort of privacy was violated. So why do we feel different about this - because these messages are eight years old, or because it's wikileaks? ~~~ anigbrowl The pager network was/is more like a twitter stream. Messages are sent in a plaintext stream of the format [date][time][network][destination #][msg type][content] and individual pages just pull their own messages from that stream. I don't really think there is an invasion of privacy, and in any case I think it has sufficient historical value as to override privacy concerns. True, someone will probably get divorced due to the revelation of some old affair, but I am not going to lose sleep over it. ~~~ brown9-2 Well that is how they are designed technically, but I doubt most of the senders and recipients of the pages were aware of this. ------ martian Good analysis at [http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/ent...](http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/entry5770280.shtml?tag=stack) "It's not clear how they were obtained in the first place. One possibility is that they were illegally compiled from the records of archived messages maintained by pager companies, and then eventually forwarded to WikiLeaks. The second possibility is more likely: Over-the-air interception. Each digital pager is assigned a unique Channel Access Protocol code, or capcode, that tells it to pay attention to what immediately follows. In what amounts to a gentlemen's agreement, no encryption is used, and properly-designed pagers politely ignore what's not addressed to them. " ------ drusenko Wow, there's a lot of confidential info in here. After just glancing over one 5 minute interval: Joe_Brady@Mastercard.com\|\|From:Joe BradyF.Y.I. - Ops is calling a PRT on a SAM (Settlement Account Maintenance) failure - This is NOT a network issue - Unix Ops is working this issue - They are looking to fail over to LKS kfoxwell@lucent.com\|\|Steve, I have an outage in Northampton, PA. They had a power problem and lost the CNI ring. 21,000 lines effected. call me at 717-227-0334. Kevin appworx@db02.gefa.capital.ge.com\|\|PROD Chain Fail for SITERICP Chain=OBI_MF_GL_P 300~MPfetchData:openConnectionToManager:ERROR CONNECTING:192.168.35.97 : www36 connectToServerPort:socket/socket timed out at /home/crdtdrv/creditderivatives/script/MPfetchData.pl line 342, <SOCK_192.168.35.19> chunk 178126. monitor@ccbill.c\|HTTPD Frontend front2r.escrub.co\|ERROR: could not connect to front2r.escrub.com on port 80 (httpd). Timestamp: 20010911015701 kaccount.intel.com/service_status.asp Detailed message is URL: <http://networkaccount.intel.com/service_status.asp> ??does not contain: SFSA0005 SUCCEEDED etc etc etc ~~~ oomkiller Well, thats what you get for sending confidential information over plaintext. Most of the stuff I've seen is just status updates anyways, probably irrelevant after 8 years. ~~~ skywalker It can be irrelevant after 8 years, but could be relevant for someone that could act on it at the moment it was captured. Maybe for some social engineering attack. ------ flipbrad 2001-09-11 06:27:40 Skytel [003928287] D ALPHA TOM. THIS IS RAY, MY CONTINENTAL FLIGHT CANCELLED MHT TO EWR. NEXT FLIGHT IS AT 9:40 AM ARRIVING 11 AM. PAGER NUMBER 1 888 935 8317 EDIT: sorry - the proper place for comments like that is [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/a7xpt/conspiracy...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/a7xpt/conspiracy_theories_commence_wikileaks_to_release/) ------ catzaa Is this some kind of joke? On [http://911.wikileaks.org/files/messages_2001_09_11-08_25_200...](http://911.wikileaks.org/files/messages_2001_09_11-08_25_2001_09_11-08_29.txt): > 2001-09-11 08:26:01 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 93-if you want to say goodbye, i > will understand but i will always be in love with you. that... > 2001-09-11 08:26:03 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 2...will never change. if i don't > hear from you, i probably won't bother you when i get to... > 2001-09-11 08:26:05 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 3...work. so if you want to talk > to me, in this case, you will have to make a move first. if... > 2001-09-11 08:26:07 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 5...how much. i miss you and i > miss us. > 2001-09-11 08:26:09 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 4...not, then i get it. i told > you i'm not stupid. I LOVE YOU!! so much in fact, i hurt with... > 2001-09-11 08:26:07 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 5...how much. i miss you and i > miss us. Sounds like either an affair or someone paging the script to the Young&Restless…. ~~~ aaronsw I've gotten almost that exact txt. Girls really do write like that. ~~~ w00pla And some guys... [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cof...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1odyq) ------ anigbrowl A surprisingly detailed and informative news summary of this story: [http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/ent...](http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/entry5770280.shtml?tag=mncol;txt) ------ akamaka In case you found the title confusing, these are intercepts of pager text messages sent on 9/11 (possibly leaked from some US goverment agency?). There's no explanation of what geographical area or what network providers are covered. ~~~ blantonl There is readily available software that allows you to intercept pager communications. The two protocols mostly used by the paging companies are FLEX and POCSAG, and the nationwide paging networks all operate(d) on the 929-931 Mhz band. The two most prominent intercept applications are: \- POCFLEX, a DOS based software package that requires a 4-level FSK interface to the scanner \- PDW, a windows based software package that uses a soundcard to recover the pager text from the scanner baseband. You can download both packages here: <http://www.discriminator.nl/software/index-en.html> Most likely someone setup a few radios and archived all pager texts from the different major nationwide paging networks, and then consolidated the data into one set of files. ~~~ yters is this common practice? why would someone collect all this info at this point in time? ~~~ Kadin I suspect, although I don't know of anyone doing this myself, that there are people doing this all the time, just as a hobby or for the hell of it. The equipment required is minimal and so are the storage requirements, so you could easily log everything. Even in 2001 it wouldn't have been cost- prohibitive. There are probably people sitting on years worth of data, just because that's a hobby for them. 9/11 is probably one of the only dates that's of interest to the general public. ------ vaporstun 2001-09-11 08:47:46 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA Someone just told me there was an explosion at 2001-09-11 08:47:48 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA wtc....BR This appears to be the first transmission about the actual attack. (Edited to remove garbage in between from other pages) ------ eob Can someone who works on Wall Street explain how pagers are still used? I had no idea that anyone had pagers anymore. ~~~ nollidge Still have pagers where I work. We (developers) share one and rotate it around the team (each person has it for a week) for application support. As far as I can tell, it's better than any of the alternatives. ~~~ ruby_roo Better than email on a mobile device? ~~~ nollidge No return on that investment. Hardly anything can be solved via e-mail. Call comes in, 99% of the time I need to log in remotely to solve it. ------ motters Interesting, but do we know that these messages came from a reliable source? ~~~ stilist How do you know anything on Wikileaks came from a reliable source? Or anything on the web or the news or from your friends? You basically have trust, first-party confirmations, alternate sources giving consensus, and guilty reactions—none of which can be relied on for accuracy either. ------ torpor This really looks like a wonderful opportunity for visualization freaks to get their blit on .. I'd love to have this massive database visualized in some way .. ~~~ anigbrowl I wonder how that would function, ie whether a collaborative tool could be set up to sort through them. I can see easy analysis possibilities employing spreadsheets, but it would be most useful for historical research if there were some way to tag them, filtering out automated status messages and the like. ~~~ Vivtek That's already going on at the Reddit post, e.g. an import into MySQL for querying, filtering out the numerical-only posts, and so on. ------ ilkhd2 I do not think that is gonna lead to something useful, people can fall into "chinese syndrome" syndrome, when a movie predicted what hapeened a week later... Yet it is very chilling to read. ~~~ lsb We're currently T -4 hours from the raison d'être. ~~~ Uchikoma 1 point by lsb 6 hours ago \| link We're currently T -4 hours from the raison d'être	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google developing a micropayment platform & pitching newspapers - dannyr http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/09/google-developing-a-micropayment-platform-and-pitching-newspapers-open-need-not-mean-free/ ====== jrwoodruff This would be serious competition for upstart Online Journalism, which is building a similar system: [http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/09/journalism- onlines-charging...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/09/journalism-onlines- charging-clients-a-20-commission/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What Working at Facebook Has Taught Me About Design Critique - tannerc https://medium.com/@tannerc/critique-is-an-important-part-of-any-design-process-whether-you-work-as-part-of-a-team-or-solo-ef3dcb299ce3#.ie6x6ae4m ====== tkt Learning to give and receive feedback is one of the skills that will make you and your team better and is an important part of communication. Effective communication is crucial, no matter the size of the team. The list of the distinctions between 'criticism' and 'criticism' in this article is particularly valuable. Criticism passes judgement — Critique poses questions; Criticism finds fault — Critique uncovers opportunity; Criticism is personal — Critique is objective; Criticism is vague — Critique is concrete; Criticism tears down — Critique builds up; Criticism is ego-centric — Critique is altruistic; Criticism is adversarial — Critique is cooperative; Criticism belittles the designer — Critique improves the design ~~~ philliphaydon I disagree. Criticism is awesome. If people can't handle criticism then they should change profession. If 1 person says something negative. Then there's 1000s more who feel the same who say nothing. Constructive criticism is even better. Criticism is only personal if you make it personal. Criticism is only egocentric if you make it egocentric. Criticism is on vague when it is not constructive. Criticism only belittles if it is targeted at the person and not the thing being critiqued. ~~~ JustSomeNobody >Criticism is only personal if you make it personal. Criticism is only egocentric if you make it That usually begins with the person doing the criticizing. ------ makecheck It's vital to learn to see past emotion when receiving statements from critics. I have heard lots of comments about my projects over the years and I have noticed some patterns: \- Negative feedback is usually all you get. You have to motivate yourself by imagining that most people are pretty happy based on downloads/client- count/whatever. \- People aren't good at communicating when they're frustrated but they usually turn into nice people once you've fixed the problem. Most people just have a job to do and a deadline to meet. Pay attention to what they say is wrong, and not their mood. \- Strangely, people will spend great amounts of time writing comments on random web sites or review pages about issues that they will _never even E-mail you about_ , no matter how easy you make it for them to contact you. Therefore, if you _really_ want to get some realistic critiques of your work, you may have to scour the web for them. I look at it this way: real, honest feedback is _rare_ and _vital_ to really understand what you may have overlooked. Even if you can't possibly contact the Random Web Commenter, find and fix their issues and you'll end up with a better product. ------ moron4hire I don't think this is useful for startups in general. It sounds like it's good for gigantocorps like IBM and Facebook (and yes, I'm lumping them together, as they have more in common than they differ). For a lean startup, I don't think you're going to have the depth in your staff nor the time to put into these sorts of activities. It's all-hands-on-deck, and we don't have time to slow down and hand-hold each other through their own work. I'd be hiring people I trust to get their work done without me needing to tell them they are or are not doing a good job. I mean, at a particularly early stage startup, establishing the "three roles" could be _the entire company_. In such a scenario, how do we not already know each other's intimate business? ~~~ shalmanese This is one of those "slow down to speed up" kind of things that startups ignore at their peril. People, especially technical types, have a mistaken assumption that "speed" in startupland is based on the amount of code shipped and anything that distracts from code shipping is a distraction to be ruthlessly excised. The real speed that a startup should be optimizing for is the degree of new, actionable, insights produced on the quest towards product/market fit. Code should only be built insofar as it helps provide scaffolding towards that goal. Design critique is helpful because it helps you get faster at getting faster. It's not some crutch that weaker designers need to adopt to keep up with the rest of us, it's a fundamental way in which designers learn and get better at their craft. ~~~ moron4hire But look at the artifice of this whole process. The need to establish "roles". The prescribed language. If I did that with my team, they'd rightly look at me sideways and say, "what the hell is wrong with you, just spit it out already." It's not that I'm advocating a heads-down, never-come-up-for-air approach. It's that I'd expect these sort of conversations to have happened in an organic fashion that doesn't cargo-cult corporate policy gerrymandering. ~~~ lox Sometimes a little bit of ceremony helps change existing behaviors and gives people with different perspectives the opportunities to speak up. ~~~ goldenkey So far from true. At a startup, everyone is blunt, because it pays to be. Everyone there is counting on success. Whereas at a corp, the ceremony was created by someone else who may not even work there anymore, for some superpsionic reasons that everyone basically just shrugs at because they don't want to lose their jobs. It'a a sludsgefest that startups can skip - no point in needless vagaries when in a startup, it's actually appreciated to collaborate organically instead of being culled for doing so. ~~~ lox So much of that response is utterly loaded with flawed assumptions. The irony is that your response is exactly why sometimes it's important to be cognisant of how to conduct critical conversations. It's not about "needless vagaries", it's actually about direct and on-point critique, without the loaded value judgements. This isn't a skill that tends to come naturally to people, that's what the "ceremony" is for. ------ design Read this a few weeks ago. Really useful advice. ------ dasil003 Speaking of design critique, are young people able to read articles with hilarious animated gifs in them? Because I literally cannot; a pity because the first section seemed promising. ~~~ afro88 More and more I'm getting in the habit of hitting the "Reader View" button in Safari. It removes all ads, gifs, "related content" etc. and gives me the pure content: the article in an easy to read font. ~~~ mintplant Firefox also has a built-in Reader View but it leaves the graphics in, in case they are referred to by and necessary to understand the text. ------ forrestthewoods Yes Edit: Fuck your downvotes. I answered his question. HN is such a shit show these days. ~~~ dang > _Fuck your downvotes. [...] HN is such a shit show these days._ Please don't post comments like this. We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10922770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10922770) and marked it off-topic. ~~~ forrestthewoods Someone asked a yes/no question. I answered yes. And got downvoted. I stand by my statement. ~~~ dang Everyone gets downvoted. Yes, it's annoying, but venting that annoyance back on the site adds nothing of value, only off-topic noise. The HN guidelines ask everyone not to do that, so please don't do that. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) ~~~ forrestthewoods How do I delete my HN account and all it's comments? ~~~ softawre [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+delete+my+HN+account+and+all+i...](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+delete+my+HN+account+and+all+it%27s+comments) ~~~ forrestthewoods Thanks for this reply. It saves me from having to explain why I'd want to do such a thing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Would you pay $10/month for this service? - ishener I have an idea for a service to help app developers, and I would love to hear your input.<p>It's a service that let you manage all of your app's strings in a nice and friendly interface. It allows you to change text easily without deploying code, and lets non-coders enter and edit text. It will have an html wysiwyg editor to let people without html knowledge do some basic markup. Also, it let's you manage localization and easily assign translations to translators.<p>From 2-3 people I talked to about this idea, two concerns were spoken of:<p>1. it introduced another point of failure for an app. My answer: all the strings are shipped in a json file that you can put in your s3 account, and cache in CDNs as you like.<p>2. it's relatively easy to create your own string manager/decoupler for your app. My answer: Yeah, but it's also really cheap and easy to pay $10 for an existing solution, no? ====== dmitrygr Until the last few sentences I had no idea what you are talking about and how this coud possibly work. Then I saw "CDN" and realized you mean _WEBSITE_ not _APPLICATION_. Should probably clarify that ------ benologist For us it wouldn't be worthwhile (6 languages), our text just doesn't change very often and being embedded in the apps guarantees instant delivery at any scale. Since we don't have multiple people maintaining text it's trivial to do this ourselves if we needed to, and comparable to how we already manage cross promotions and stuff. ------ crazypyro First reaction, "No, visual studio does this for me." Second reaction, I think this should be packaged with localization tooling or be a simple, low-cost app. I don't understand what the value you are providing to me every month when I look at localization most likely a few times a year. ------ joshowens Thoughtbot had one and shut it down, was called copycopter.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Databot: High-performance Python data-driven programming framework - garygoog https://github.com/kkyon/databot ====== shoo I was staring at the example in the readme, and considering some of the features ("replayable"), and it sounds a bit like what a Makefile does. Well, if you had a single event to process, and decided to use the filesystem to store input, intermediate results, and output. So here's an implementation of the example from the readme using make, and bash, and jq, and a silly python script to implement a timer by modifying a file every X seconds: ~/projects/makething$ cat Makefile default: d b: a curl -o $@ "http://api.coindesk.com/v1/bpi/currentprice.json" c: b jq '.bpi.USD.rate_float' $< > $@ d: c cat $< cp $< $@ ~/projects/makething$ cat timer.py import sys import time def main(): delay = float(sys.argv[1]) fn = sys.argv[2] while True: with open(fn, 'w') as f: f.write(str(time.time())) time.sleep(delay) if __name__ == '__main__': main() ~/projects/makething$ cat go.sh #! /usr/bin/env bash python timer.py 2.0 a & TIMER_PID=$! function cleanup() { kill $TIMER_PID } trap cleanup EXIT while true do while make -j -q do sleep 0.1 done make -j done make decides if things are up-to-date by comparing timestamps of files in the filesystem, so we can emulate a timer that triggers an event every 2 seconds by having a process modify a file every 2 seconds, and rig a rule in our makefile to use that file as an input. ~~~ LiveTheDream I am a huge fan of using `make` for this sort of ad hoc data pipeline. The workflow is very natural, as you can play around with each step on the command line and then drop it into the makefile once you get it right..better for reproducibility than search up through terminal history to replay individual lines! In your example, I would drop the shell and python scripts and simply run: watch -n 2 -d "touch a && make" ~~~ shoo thank you for the review and the improvement! much cleaner. ------ cleansy Recently I started to use Apache NiFi[1] for everything that does not required too complex operations. It's pretty much what this framework does, just with an UI and a lot of monitoring features. However, one downside is the massive RAM consumption. 1GB of RAM even if it does pretty much nothing is quite a bill to start off with. 1: [https://nifi.apache.org/](https://nifi.apache.org/) ~~~ ekianjo Yes, but Nifi is pretty good at what it does. 1GB RAM cost is nothing compared to the time it saves you in the end to make very robust data flows. ~~~ cleansy Of course 1GB RAM is nothing nowadays, but this was something that I wanted to point out since sometimes you have constrained resources available or need to calculate what machine size you want to use. NiFi might not run on an AWS t2.micro instance. Whereas Apache Airflow does. ~~~ ekianjo When you use Nifi usually you are not in a budget constrained environment. Because CPU wise it takes its toll too and you need more than one core to be comfy, so micro instances are out anyway. ------ yetkin [https://www.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.com/patterns/messa...](https://www.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.com/patterns/messaging/PipesAndFilters.html) [https://www.coursera.org/lecture/software- architecture/3-2-7...](https://www.coursera.org/lecture/software- architecture/3-2-7-pipes-and-filters-bYHgh) ------ asavinov Another project relying on lamdas for data processing [https://github.com/asavinov/lambdo](https://github.com/asavinov/lambdo) yet focused more on feature engineering and ML ------ gabcoh This reminds me a lot of reactive programming like ReactiveX [[http://reactivex.io](http://reactivex.io)] which has a python implementation ~~~ Rotareti _> which has a python implementation_ I think this is the most popular one: [https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxPY](https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxPY) This one is a rewrite of RxPY, that makes use of async / await / asyncio: [https://github.com/dbrattli/aioreactive](https://github.com/dbrattli/aioreactive) Pretty interesting stuff! ------ lixtra Somehow I would expect pipes to be connectable and nestable. This does not seem to be the case (by studying the source). Then you could have some function to build and parametrise a sub-pipeline and connect them to something bigger. I'm still looking for a perfect natural python ETL dsl, so I will follow that project. So far I'm using [https://github.com/petl- developers/petl](https://github.com/petl-developers/petl) and mostly happy with it. ~~~ erikb > I would expect pipes to be connectable and nestable. How would that look like? I mean a pipe is something where one writes data into and another loads data from in the same order it was written into. I don't see how that could be nested, or why two pipes would need to be connected. ------ ekianjo So it's like Nifi, but not as good? What would be the benefit to use that? ------ edem Isn't using "performance" and "python" in the same sentence an oxymoron?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Debian drops redis non-systemd support - binaryapparatus http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php/?f=20&t=135039 ====== JdeBP That is only a true headline if one does not read the actual commit, but rather blindly accepts the incorrect descriptions posted on two discussion fora from a couple of people. What Chris Lamb of Debian has _actually_ done is removed _a Debian-specific mechanism_ , that runs a set of Debian-specific scripts (using its run-parts tool) that _are not rc scripts_ , from _both_ the systemd service unit and the van Smoorenburg rc file, and _not_ eliminated any support for an init system. This is stuff that was _never in Redis proper_ and that has always been a Debian addition to Redis, included in the Debian packaging for Redis, and here dropped from that very same packaging and not from Redis proper. It was in fact Chris Lamb that _added_ this Debian-specific mechanism in the first place, and it has only been there since 2015. * [https://github.com/lamby/pkg-redis/commit/e427f8db8954bb7836...](https://github.com/lamby/pkg-redis/commit/e427f8db8954bb78364d89defdb3dee47b8b998a) * [https://github.com/lamby/pkg-redis/commit/0d7bc7aed4202dba0b...](https://github.com/lamby/pkg-redis/commit/0d7bc7aed4202dba0b698a57d703d1a5648caa39) The van Smoorenburg rc file being touched is not even part of Redis proper, _either_. The Redis proper one is markedly different, lacking LSB headers and assuming the software to be in /usr/local rather than in /usr . * [https://github.com/lamby/pkg-redis/blob/debian/sid/utils/red...](https://github.com/lamby/pkg-redis/blob/debian/sid/utils/redis_init_script)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Twitter's community verification system will be a disaster - StuntPope https://easydns.com/blog/2020/02/24/bias-and-b-s-would-be-baked-into-twitters-proposed-community-verification-system/ ====== dijit The post goes into it but I just want to double assert that the blue check mark system is rather absurdly arbitrary. Not only is there a bias towards “Lefty” (quotes) views, but it’s often handed out to people who have no worry about impersonation because they are not a personality in of themselves. Not only that, they (as a group) are not immune to spreading significant amounts of misinformation[0]. Who watches the watchers? [0]: [https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/twitter- verifie...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/twitter-verified- accounts-misinformation/) ~~~ chipotle_coyote > Not only is there a bias towards “Lefty” (quotes) views... Is there a source for this? While it sounds credible, I don't think I've seen any data on it, and I've certainly seen a lot of "Righty" folks with blue checkmarks. (The ones the article you linked to talks about are entirely on the far right, in fact, although of course that article is in _Mother Jones,_ which is...not on the far right.) ~~~ busterarm Getting a blue check is pretty much standard starting procedure for any new journalist at vice/buzzfeed/vox/etc. It's like part of the on-boarding process. Even if you don't have much of a following, your colleagues email someone they know at Twitter and your verified check follows soon after. Twitter's most important and most active users are journalists and they've made that abundantly clear. ~~~ dlivingston On an aside...maybe it’s just me, but being a journalist on Twitter and sharing your personal opinions / philosophies / politics seems like a bad idea to me. We trust journalists - the standard, non-opinion column ones - to be something of an impartial, truth-telling messenger on the state of the world. When I go on a journalist’s Twitter page and see that she’s a staunch Marxist or hardcore Randian libertarian, I can’t help but wonder if that strong bias has seeped into her articles...both in what she’s writing to me, and in what she’s omitting. ~~~ chipotle_coyote A lot of journalists cite pressure from their employers to be online and "engaged." I think it's probably a bad idea -- possibly in general, but particularly for journalists/columnists -- to say anything on Twitter that you wouldn't say in an an article or column. That doesn't necessarily preclude sharing opinions, philosophies, and politics, but it definitely entails a certain measure of restraint. ------ kick Wow, this is a really terribly-written article. You'd imagine a company that had been around for 20 years would have a sense of professionalism or something. When someone is able to pinpoint your exact political alignment and the news outlets you read from a corporate blog post, you're probably doing something wrong. Then again, the guy links to his book (with a subtitle of "Protect Yourself from Deplatform Attacks, Cancel-Culture and other Online Disasters" no less) at the end of the post, so this was probably intentional. I share more or less the same political views as him, but this is ridiculous. ~~~ Thorentis Ah, there's the comment I was expecting to find. Somebody assuming the author's political alignment based on the (awful) Tweets they chose to highlight. You claim to hold the same political views as him, so what are you trying to achieve? More internet points? I found the article to be objective, included good sourced examples, and addressed a serious problem that has been discussed on HN many times before. The blue check mark system is terrible. It unconsciously makes readers trust the claims and assertions made by those that wield them. And as demonstrated in the article, blue-check-marked Tweeter often make horribly unverified claims, or incite outright violence. Both of these things I hope would be condemned by every side of the political spectrum, regardless or who is saying them. ~~~ kick He takes several _obvious_ and _blatant_ jokes seriously, and he does this because not long ago, two right- and right-libertarian outlets with relatively large audiences posted pieces _intentionally_ misinterpreting them, practically admitting to doing so in the pieces. At best, the bad faith seems to be lost on him, of course. The only thing worse than someone on an opposing side to you making a horrendous argument is someone on your own side making a grotesque one, and that's what he's doing here. His "point" is completely invalidated by the examples he used, which (notably) are all jokes, bar one. It only takes someone with the most basic amount of social competency to tell that. It, later, is invalidated further by his claim that "rubes can figure out how to sift through b/s," which he demonstrates to be wrong with the contents of his post. I don't think that twitter should be creating hierarchy on its site, and I'm far from against him politically: an _abhorrent_ argument is still an abhorrent argument, though, and anti-intellectualism like this should be spoken out against wherever it appears, regardless of whose side it's on. This type of person making this type of argument devalues the side they're on as a whole, and should be strongly pushed out. And that's not even getting into the idea that a corporate blog should stray away from overtly-political posts. ------ _--__--__ Not only does Twitter frequently verify users that are not noteworthy (online or off) or likely to be impersonated, the last I had seen they hadn't even addressed the absurdly common fake Elon Musks shilling crypto scams. Even if this has been fixed since the last time I saw it, it's much more likely that they just trigger manual review of any account that uses a name/avatar similar to Musk instead of actually fixing the real problems. The bad behavior of the blue ticks is widely recognized independent of ideological bend, and I predict that many of the accounts of actual value will wear these scarlet letters as badges of honor if this system actually gets implemented. ~~~ kevingadd For a little while putting Elon Musk in your display name got your account automatically suspended, I think when the crypto scam thing was at its worst. I haven't seen anyone talk about that scam lately so they may have moved on to better ones (like the relatively new scam where if someone asks you for a paypal donate URL, a bot impersonates you and posts one in the replies almost instantly) ------ bjt2n3904 I particularly enjoy Arthur the Aardvark's take on false information on the internet[1]. The author is right. Letting the community decide what is true will be a disaster. Really, truth (or lack there of) is outside Twitter's scope. Twitter exists to allow users to communicate. Not to educate users on critical thinking, or arbitrate truth. Even if they "democratize" truth. 1 - [https://youtu.be/YWdD206eSv0](https://youtu.be/YWdD206eSv0) ~~~ pwinnski The very fact that people continue to use Twitter demonstrates that we collectively are not good at filtering anything. The author writes as if they themselves are somehow immune from something they clearly aren't. I do think putting this power into the hands of blue checks is a mistake. But then, I think using Twitter is a mistake. ~~~ Nasrudith I don't see how that follows neccessarily, many aren't there for the filtering or truth but access to the content. It is theoretically possible to filter or avoid the BS. I think they are trapped in a fool's errand no matter what personally given the precedents set up and the problem being humanity which stubbornly refuses to accept it or that there are no good solutions. ------ geofft > _Ryan Broderick, a self-professed hebephile_ It's pretty clear that the tweet in question was satirizing people who use terms like "hebephiles" to defend themselves. While you can argue in good faith whether the satire worked, was a good idea, was appropriate, etc., taking the tweet at face value and saying that he's a "self-professed hebephile" is not arguing in good faith. So either the author doesn't understand what was going on or is choosing to lie about it for rhetorical purposes - either way the author isn't a credible voice. ~~~ StuntPope Actually, no, that is not clear at all. What is clear is that Ryan Broderick demonstrated ideation of a sexual nature with underage children on multiple posts. There were numerous other items from his tumblr and instagram which make it clear broderick was not being satirical. See the screengrabs captured here [https://www.cernovich.com/ryan-broderick-racist-tweets- vile-...](https://www.cernovich.com/ryan-broderick-racist-tweets-vile-jokes/) OR here [https://www.zerohedge.com/political/buzzfeed-journo- reported...](https://www.zerohedge.com/political/buzzfeed-journo-reportedly- blogged-about-pedo-fantasies-rape-jokes-and-doxing) But it looks like you're willing to give a lefty a pass on behaviour that would be career ending from a conservative, which is par for the course. ~~~ geofft 1\. None of that makes it clear he was not being satirical to me. Can you explain? Again, it all seems like extremely questionable humor, and you can question the humor in good faith (and you can also argue that ironic humor still has harmful effects, etc.), and you can certainly say in good faith, "Someone who makes these kinds of jokes should not have a moderation role at Twitter." But saying that _it was not humor_ \- that Broderick was genuinely claiming to be a hebephile - is a large logical leap that seems unjustified to me. Can you justify it? (As it happens, I did read Cernovich's page to confirm that I had the correct understand of the tweet before I commented. I am _more_ confident in my comment having read it.) 2\. I'm not sure this would be career-ending for a conservative, why would it be? 3\. Par for what course? ~~~ StuntPope How is taking a person who describes himself as "us hebephiles" a huge leap? Either people say what they mean or they don't. If they don't, then you _also_ have to give a pass to every conservative off- hand remark that got their career derailed. ~~~ geofft > _How is taking a person who describes himself as "us hebephiles" a huge > leap? Either people say what they mean or they don't._ Genuine question. Are you familiar with the concept of jokes? Again, I am not saying it is a good joke, or a funny joke, or an appropriate joke, or a joke that should merit employment from BuzzFeed, or any such thing. I am simply saying it was intended as a joke. Do you genuinely believe that the point of that post was to earnestly petition the president? > _If they don 't, then you also have to give a pass to every conservative > off-hand remark that got their career derailed._ Sure, okay, pass given. ~~~ StuntPope How about this one, [https://web.archive.org/web/20181223004937/https://ryanhates...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181223004937/https://ryanhatesthis.tumblr.com/post/1315924928/veronicathenoseylady- thosekidssuck-i-dont) I'm sure he's just riffing, right? ~~~ geofft OK, so, you're not familiar with the concept of a joke, in fact. Again - if you wanted to argue that Broderick's posts were in bad taste, sure, that's a defensible argument (and I might even agree with you). But that's not what you said. You said he's a self-proclaimed hebephile. Of course, I don't expect everyone to be familiar with 4chan-style humor. Oprah once earnestly warned her viewers about a message she received about "over 9000 penises": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7liYfhRgXGk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7liYfhRgXGk) Last month, Congressional candidate Regina Marston started reporting the Navy SEAL copypasta to the FBI: [https://twitter.com/samosu_/status/1224169132410753024](https://twitter.com/samosu_/status/1224169132410753024) But if you're running a popular DNS host and writing books about how to protect yourself from cancel culture... yes, I expect you in particular to understand what's going on here, and I stand by my claim that you're not a credible voice. ~~~ Traster It is _very_ clear the argument isn’t being made in good faith. It’s really not worth pursuing further - I assume the aim of these accusations are basically just hoping no one actually looks at the evidence. How could anyone view a twitter post making a personal request to the president as anything other than satirical? They couldn’t. They don’t. Its not worth talking about beyond that. ------ xg15 > _Us rubes can figure out how to sift through b /s and make our own > determinations on what passes the smell test._ Yeah, no. If "smell tests" worked, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. ------ mc32 Yeah, who doesn't think this will devolve into voting rings and positive re- enforcement loops? I don't see how this will turn out well. I think they are better off with self-regulated groups ala Flickr and Reddit with some appeals system (like Flickr). Otherwise it will be abused because it's set up that way. ------ Thorentis The blue check mark should mean nothing other than "this account belongs to who it says it does". And that's it. Unfortunately, Twitter has reinforced the incorrect unconscious bias of treating the blue tick as meaning "credibility/reliability", by removing it from people who state opinions and hold views that Twitter (the company) doesn't like. This has led to a severe imbalance on the political spectrum of who holds blue ticks, and increases the ability for the celebrities and journalists to control the narrative online. This should only be seen as a bad thing for everybody, regardless of your political alignment. ------ nodesocket Twitter verified is inherently a flawed system. I personally know people who got it simply because they knew people who worked at Twitter. Let's not kid ourselves that most high-tech companies based out the bay area are going to have very heavily biased political beliefs and opinions. Remember the Twitter employee (now-ex) that deleted Trump's twitter account? ~~~ Nasrudith I don't think not being biased is possible except /maybe/ an absolute null set. Any position on a mapping qualifies as a bias technically, it just may not map to something considered such or sensible. What is meant most of the time is if it is contentious or controversial which is utterly orthogonal to morals and reality. If enough people dogmatically insist that using punctuation is intellectual elitism or acknowledging gravity is then it may become a "political issue". They would be objectively wrong in every stance but by definition would be right about it being political. A cat walking across a keyboard is biased compared to anyone actually writing even including the worst typists chemically impaired. ------ Traster >In other words, and this applies to all tech platforms, don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about anybody. Us rubes can figure out how to sift through b/s and make our own determinations on what passes the smell test. Does this guy have memory loss or something. There is a reason why twitter is looking at these changes and just saying "Oh yeah go back to how it used to be" is not a sensible response to this. ------ djohnston I am quite excited to see facebook and Twitter's opposing takes on this problem play out over the next few years. ------ wyoh From Twitter's perspective, it won't be a disaster, it will work exactly as they plan. ------ sofaofthedamned If easydns can't survive a HN flood then I wouldn't want to be a customer of theirs. ~~~ annoyingnoob I've never had a problem with their DNS service (only service I use). I don't always agree with Mark. ------ davidw > If somebody else has an issue with somebody’s tweets, I don’t know, maybe > there could be some sort of “reply” function or something where somebody > could rebut the contents of a tweet. The problem is the asymmetric nature of the costs of producing bullshit vs the costs of providing carefully reasoned rebuttals. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Biggest Data Leak in Sweden's History Punished with Half a Month's Paycheck - ColinWright https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/biggest-data-leak-in-swedens-history-punished-with-half-a-months-paycheck/ ====== stareatgoats This so called "scandal" was an incident that was milked to it's maximum potential by the political opposition as an attempt to discredit the government with the aim to provoke a vote of no confidence in the parliament. The attempt failed, not because the government made any serious attempt at defending itself, like tracing the mishap back to the previous government, but because the government ceded defeat and sacrificed a few of it's ministers rather than go on the counteroffensive. It did however reveal a pattern of "siloed" decision making with the Swedish government under the present prime minister, a leadership style that puts emphasis on strict division of responsibilities and where the prime ministers office is kept unaware of everything except the really major events in the various ministries (in part in order to maintain credible deniability no doubt, but in part also because this is a long standing Swedish tradition and in part enshrined in law). The same pattern reveals itself under the present pandemic, where the government (and the opposition initially) argued for letting the public health agency (FHM) take the full responsibility of the Swedish strategy, with no interference from the politicians, in spite the soon glaring fact that the strategy was hijacked by a minority position within the scientific community (the "herd immunity" believers), and that the strategy has put Sweden in an (for the Swedes) unfamiliar pariah state position visavis neighboring countries. Admitting failure is still a long way off, in spite of the virus still running rampant in the society. In part because of the above mentioned long standing Swedish tradition which has close to full support across all party-lines. But also because of the almost endearing trust that Swedes put in their authorities. The people that are protesting are almost always foreigners or from communities with some distance from Swedish traditions for other reasons, like Sweden's Jewish intellectuals who have (with close to one voice) criticized the strategy from day one. ------ axlee I don't see why we would want a public official to be financially ruined for a mistake in which she did not benefit financially. Vengeance is a fool's game, and it's not like she's going to repeat that mistake. ~~~ magicalhippo I think such gross negligence should lead to much more severe consequences for the person in charge. Either way this case sets an example. The current sentence says that gross negligence in handling sensitive data and loss of state secrets doesn't really matter much. At least here in Norway we have the concept of conditional imprisonment, which is not entirely unlike being on probation. I'm pretty sure our Swedish neighbors have something similar. For a case such as this, a conditional jail sentence of a year or two would not be inappropriate. After all, the data included highly sensitive state secrets. ------ lifeisstillgood And a couple of weeks ago I was wondering why on earth anyone would want fully homomorphic encryption (FHE)? So I am wondering if it is possible to do an operation like "add this new address to the record"? ~~~ lifeisstillgood Of course if I don't trust you with the original record i don't trust you with the new address. But I am going round to the idea there is something real opening up with FHE. Wish I knew what :-) ------ T-A (2017)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A former IE dev: Why I switched to Firefox - parenthesis http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2005/why-i-switched-to-firefox/ ====== Herring That post is worthless without discussing extensions. Really complaining about something that download statusbar fixes? FF is 90% extensions.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Sunsetting Google Apps Accounts? - thebiglebrewski Google Apps accounts cost $5/user/month. We have a bunch of "dead" users since we have teachers that start and stop teaching, but occasionally we have to bring them back.<p>I'd love a tool that, for a small one-time fee, backups a user's account and allows it to be restored in one click if they ever "come back from the dead". All the tools I've seen charge a monthly fee for this kind of service. Any ideas? ====== sumodirjo When we delete a user on google apps it will offer to transfer drive ownership to another users. We have File Sharing user that will be the new owner of all documents of the deleted user. For emails you can export data from Google ([https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en)) but I have no idea how to import. You might also want to look at Spanning ([http://spanning.com/products/google- apps-backup/](http://spanning.com/products/google-apps-backup/)) ~~~ thebiglebrewski Thanks for your reply! Spanning looks good but charges $40/user/year whereas I'm looking for a one-time fee solution.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I put together a list of resources for preparing for interviews - ansimionescu https://github.com/andreis/interview ====== minimaxir FYI, deleting and resubmitting links is against HN rules. This is the third time I've seen this one. ~~~ ansimionescu Thank you. I thought I was hellbanned or something. Will behave now.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The finest machine: qphysics, materials science, and the microprocessor - evoxed http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nickblack/the-finest-machine ====== evoxed With preliminary contents found here: <http://dank.qemfd.net/the-finest- machine.pdf> More info in the description.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A survival guide for Unix beginners - ColinWright http://matt.might.net/articles/basic-unix/ ====== dawnbreez I would actually recommend straight Debian, instead of Ubuntu. Ubuntu has supposedly done some questionable things before.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
European Spacecraft Prepares to Land on Mars Next Week - nedsma http://www.space.com/34341-european-spacecraft-mars-landing-next-week.html ====== mattlondon Kinda sad to see that it does not have any cameras apart from the landing camera. Rosetta just captured the imagination of loads of people, yet this one will be a yawn-a-thon for the average member of the public without pictures. I am sure the science will be great, just us Luddites like pretty pictures :-) ------ theobon The landing sequence appears less complex and risky than the skycrane solution for Curiosity. Does anyone know what the tradeoffs between the two options are? ~~~ T-A Curiosity weighs 900 kg. NASA decided that it was too heavy for retrorockets (which would kick up too much dust and create holes in the ground around the rover) and so large (almost 3 meters across) that airbags would be too heavy [1]. Schiaparelli weighs 600 kg, closer to the size of the old Viking landers (576 kg), which did fine with retrorockets. [1] [https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at- nasa/2012/3...](https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at- nasa/2012/30jul_skycrane) ------ dogma1138 Why is this touted as a European (only) mission? It's a joint mission with Roscosmos they built the lander (ESA is building the rover and probe) and the rocket is Russian. ------ pavel_lishin From another article: [http://www.space.com/32254-exomars-mars-mission- launches-orb...](http://www.space.com/32254-exomars-mars-mission-launches- orbiter-lander.html) > _But these instruments will likely operate for just a few days, until > Schiaparelli 's batteries run out. The probe's primary purpose is to prove > out the entry, descent and landing technology needed to get the life-hunting > ExoMars rover on the ground several years from now._ It seems _crazy_ that they're shipping this thing all the way to Mars to get just a few days of data, and then to let it rust forever on the surface. ~~~ jessriedel I agree, it seems like the marginal cost of making it a longer-lived and more powerful rover are low once you've gone to the trouble of putting 600 kg on the surface of Mars. Worth noting, though, that this mission is also putting a satellite into orbit.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: help alpha test our new dating site (it's based on books) - mwsherman http://alpha.alikewise.com/ ====== henrikschroder Are you really going to market this as a dating site? Because you will be steamrolled by actual dating sites that provide substantially more.. flesh.. Dating sites make money because people are willing to pay money to get laid. Doing dating through book taste doesn't exactly signal hookups, so why even label it as a dating site? Make it a social site around book taste and let dating happen in the community by itself? ~~~ mwsherman Good questions. Niche is the only way to go, I think, the big guys have the big middle ground. And honestly, none of them are so great that people should be loyal. (OkCupid does a nice job.) There are other social book sites out there, and they seem to do well. In our case, the difference is that user intentions are clearly about dating. I think (hope) that matters. ~~~ henrikschroder When it comes to big dating sites, people aren't loyal at all, but people go where everyone else is, because that increases their chances of hooking up. Having the best features or design or functionality won't help you one bit if you don't have people on your site. So yeah, niche dating it is, which is why I suggest that you tone down the dating aspects of it. ------ Mc_Big_G hmmmmmmmm My wife is definitely not into the same genre of books as I am and frankly I'm happy with that. Is there some real correlation between compatibility and the books you read or are you just assuming that? ~~~ mwsherman We don't think there's a correlation. We just think it's a good conversation starter. And books encourage people to get reasonably specific about what they are into. ~~~ pmjoyce Anecdotally I observed a distinct gender gap in reading material preferences between the sexes. So much so that I wanted to test that and see whether this would be a reasonable way to segment reading material. My recently launched site [1] is based on measuring and presenting the gender split of readers of any book (and how each sex rate the book) on the assumption that men and women often enjoy different reading material. The data I've gathered so far seems to validate that assumption and points towards substantial gender bias for a great many books. I'm currently in the process of writing a blog post highlighting the most frequently used words in book titles favoured by women vs. men based on the data I've collected. This is my first dip into the "MI" of the data but, despite the simplicity of the initial analysis, again the data shows there is a pronounced difference. What might be interesting is some sort of combination of the datasets. Such as using an individuals reading history to categorise their "average gender preference" for books [2] and how might relate to their choice of dating partners and their book gender preference. It's an interesting proposition and I like the clean look of the site and it's simple workflow. I'll be following your progress with interest. 1\. <http://www.bookhu.com> 2\. If such a thing even exists - just a hypothesis that needs to be tested at the moment ------ iamwil The first thing I wanted to do was SEE who else was on there. Dating sites need to have people to attract others. You don't make it very apparent how to see or search who else is on there. I didn't even read the popup because it GOT IN MY WAY of seeing who else was on there. And then the 'find people' form was off to the side, and I didn't notice it because I looked at the featured profile...a dude...then up top Find people should be first, not getting started. If people find other people they like on there, they'll find their way to the signup screen. First show them your goods, then they'll sign up when they see what they like. ~~~ mwsherman Agreed. It's a chicken-and-egg problem on any social site. Our first challenge is getting that critical mass. The popup is just a welcome for alpha testers. It will go away when we're in production. ------ jrmurad I thought this was a good idea. One of my own particular favorite authors is usually mentioned on social sites but in the form of "I hate people who like <This Author>." Alpha testing: I searched for "Thomas Paine" and got one result. The one profile result didn't seem to match the query at all. I tried searching with the quotation marks and got an error. Exact matching doesn't seem to be supported in that manner? ~~~ mwsherman Thanks! I fixed the error issue with the quotation marks. We are not doing proper boolean searching just yet. Everything is treated as "or" right now. Something to work on. ------ axod Seems like a really small niche. Wouldn't movies be a better thing to match on, or music? ~~~ lsemel Why not offer any type of media or product that you can grab from Amazon.com or another source to match on? Books, movies, songs, travel locations, favorite restaurants, etc. ------ javery How quickly will Moby Dick be the most read book on this site.... ------ mwsherman Right now, we can only add profiles for US locations, sorry about that. International is a top request and is coming soon! ------ aw3c2 <http://alpha.alikewise.com/Profile/danalotus> was the featured profile for me and it scared me. The eyes have eerie glowing spots in them from sharpening. I would recommend either asking that girl for another photo or not featuring her. :( ------ philh If I do a search and then click back, the button still says 'searching...' and I can't do another search. If I then click refresh it goes back to 'find people' but doesn't work. I need to click in the title bar and press enter to do another search. Firefox 3.6 linux. ------ mwsherman One more caveat, there only a small number of profiles on there right now, so search results will probably not be very interesting just yet. We are most interested in feedback about usability, technical issues, and whether we are generally on the right track. ------ ambiate "q=Nietzsche, q=Sartre, q=Camus Hmm, none yet. Try adjusting your search criteria." where are all the a1=18&a2=23 philosophy chicks? edit: q=Paul+Graham, success. We can be hopeless and poor together. ~~~ larrykubin Those girls are too busy going on dates with people in their philosophy classes. No time or need to mess with an internet dating site. ------ Slashed _it's based on books_ means one lists book titles to describe his/her character? Interesting to see how some people would abuse this to become _popular_. ~~~ mwsherman Yup, that's the idea. It's less about revealing character and more about giving people something to talk about. Like flirting at the book store. ------ lsemel You need to put in some hooks to help spread the word about the site. How come you're not encouraging people tweet or post to Facebook right when they sign up? ------ cabalamat Quite a few of my friends are bi. Why can people on your site only be seeking men or women, but not both? ~~~ mhartl This is a ludicrous expectation for a site that's still in _alpha_. ~~~ chronomex This is a _dating site_. The core functionality of it is _I am X seeking Y_. ~~~ mhartl No, its core functionality is _I am XX seeking XY (or vice-versa)_. Most people are heterosexual; it would be crazy for an alpha-stage dating site to spend time catering to users who might be bi. (Unless that's their niche, in which case, more power to 'em.) ~~~ cabalamat The site already caters to people who are hetero- or homosexual. Catering to people who are both should be a minimal effort to change, if it is coded right. ------ lsemel I tried it out and thought it was a fun site. It will be even more so when there are more people on it. ------ snowbird122 This is an awesome idea. I wish I had thought of it. Best of luck to you. ------ javery [bug] - search for books with nothing in search field. ------ jolie Coming soon?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
ChocolateChip-UI - A Mobile Web App Framework - mufti http://blogfreakz.com/framework/chocolatechip-ui-a-mobile-web-app-framework/ ====== mef Disappointed by the lack of demo.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Startup Lessons from StartupRiot - harrisreynolds http://www.simplifyingsoftware.com/2012/02/startup-lessons-from-startupriot.html ====== clayhebert Great post, Harris. Glad you liked the event. I had a blast as well. Were you still around for the last set? I demoed Spindows.com (the enterprise video speed-networking platform). Would love your honest thoughts on it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Fast Iterative Algorithms for the Tower of Hanoi Puzzle - kqr2 http://hanoitower.mkolar.org/algo.html ====== limmeau Before reading, I thought they had found a faster sequence of disk transfers (stop the press etc) -- but it turns out the article is just about generating the same sequence of moves in less time, given the C compilers of late-90s workstations. ~~~ scscsc Highly unlikely to happen, since the upper bound corresponds to a well-known lower bound. ~~~ limmeau Yes, unless you find premises to drop, thus changing the problem. Sorting is Omega(n log n) under the premise that all you have is a computable ordering relation. Radix sort removes that premise and reaches a different lower bound. In the particular case of the Hanoi problem, I don't see droppable premises (except "you can only move one disk at a time" -- drop that and there may be an O(1) solution).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Where Bob Dole Stands on Technology and Internet Issues (1996) - joshavant http://www.dolekemp96.org/agenda/issues/internet.htm ====== lifeguard The whois info is suspicious, I think it is just a mirror.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
PySide: LGPL Python bindings for the Qt Framework - mace http://www.pyside.org/ ====== tuukkah Related work: "Although based on a different technology than the existing GPL- licensed PyQt bindings, PySide will initially be 100% API-compatible with them." Background: "Work on PySide was initiated within the Maemo division of Nokia once the lack of suitably licensed Qt Python bindings became apparent." ------ mrjbq7 It is very disappointing that Nokia and Riverbank couldn't find a way to work together. Phil (at Riverbank) has done a tremendous job of supporting Qt on Python, when Trolltech wouldn't. He has always been responsive, and attentive to details. ------ pavlov I feel a bit sorry for Riverbank, the company that makes the existing PyQt bindings, because their business model is being wiped out as Nokia replicates their efforts 1:1. Riverbank relied on dual licensing (GPL + commercial) to monetize their open source work, but this doesn't work anymore as Nokia has converted the entire Qt ecosystem to LGPL. But such is life for a toolmaker: when the platform provider decides that your product is good enough to be integrated, you're out of business. The best defense is probably to make tools that are not merely API plumbing, but have a user-facing component that is not easily replicated. ~~~ tome Could they just have sold to the platform provider? Maybe not in this case, but in general is a possible and good strategy? ~~~ pavlov The PySide FAQ says: _Nokia’s initial research into Python bindings for Qt involved speaking with Riverbank Computing, the makers of PyQt. We had several discussions with them to see if it was possible to use PyQt to achieve our goals. Unfortunately, a common agreement could not be found, so in the end we decided to proceed with PySide._ It sounds like Nokia wanted to make a deal first. Maybe Riverbank underestimated Nokia's willingness to throw sheer manpower at working around them, or perhaps Riverbank thought that reimplementing the APIs through "cleanroom" reverse engineering would be more difficult than it turned out to be. ------ bd Cool, though there is no Windows or Mac support (so far). ~~~ tuukkah Now that Nokia owns Qt, it'll be interesting to see what stance they take towards Microsoft's and Apple's desktop platforms. Somehow I think proprietary desktops have relevance to Nokia only as platforms for rich internet applications which currently need some access to native APIs, while the main focus is naturally on keeping their mobile offerings number one (based on the number of units in use). Qt as a cross-platform native API is an edge in this against Microsoft's and Apple's mobile platforms. To help in this, they can continue to bring software from the Free desktops to the mobile world (Maemo, Qt, Python). They consider web developers important, which can be seen in their work to integrate WebKit, Javascript, CSS, SVG into Qt.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to find a good startup name? - trez I have never been too talented to find a good name. Which tool/technique did you use to find one? ====== mattquiros Here are the guidelines I personally like to follow. I wouldn't say they're the only way or the best way, but I'd like to share anyway. 1\. There are different ways of coming up with a name--I personally like looking up the thesaurus and mashing words together. But however you arrive at your chosen name, make sure that your target market will at least be able to guess what it does when they hear or read it. Good brand names are expressive of what they do for the customer. 2\. Try three syllables at most, whatever the language. Four is a gamble, but can still work if played well. Five is a huge gamble. 3\. Always go for the .com, even if the trend is to get .ly and .io. If it's not available, take the last two letters of the brand name and check if that domain extension is available for purchasing. If any of those three don't work, try again. ------ DigitalSea Seems like the approach a lot of modern day startups use is this: 1\. Take the name of the niche you're targeting. For this example lets say we're a health startup wanting to revolutionise patient waiting times in hospital emergency awards. 2\. See if the domain .ly is available or if not, .li; patientrocket.ly, waitzero.io 3\. Profit $$$ I don't think there is a set formula. To some names are personal and to others they're just names and don't have any underlying meaning to them other than they're memorable or sound cool. ~~~ trez thx ------ kirtic In the beginning focusing on the product instead of the name seems like a better investment of the time. I feel that sometimes it is just epiphany...you wait for it to come to you. But until then anything that is easy to spell and easy to pronounce and possible self-explanatory is good enough as long as the domain does not cost an arm and leg. I sometimes consult google translate to find quirky words in other languages which relate to the meaning in the name I am looking for. ------ shiraabel I looked for something that felt right for the brand. For my agency I wanted something masculine (we were all women), waspy (we were all Jewish), and sounded 100 years old (it's brand new). I told my friend who does naming that it should sound like 100 year old scotch. She came up with Hunter & Bard (hunting for leads sales & market, bard is the story teller which is how we do it). I was happy. My exact quote was, "I feel Blackwatch plaid all over" ------ johnmurch Checkout <http://www.stylate.com/> \- cool concept - Logo + domain for $250 ~~~ sixQuarks this is pretty cool ------ tdoochin I'd say the best names just come to you. I sat down with my team weighing different names and we ended up mustering out a name that we've used for all applications and VC stuff. None of us loved the name but we gave it time and ended up finding something that just clicks. Don't rush the process. Let it happen. ~~~ trez what is it? ------ bitlather1 Try google translate. Input a word or phrase that describes your product and translate to Portuguese, Latin, etc. Just make sure google translate is accurate before you buy the .com :-) The biggest problem I always had was finding a domain name that wasn't taken by pirates. ------ timkly I use <http://www.namechk.com> to ensure the social media real estate is available for a given name. also you want the .com as most non tech ppl wont remember tricky urls. keep it short and simple ------ sixQuarks <http://www.namestation.com> ------ arielpts I hired a copyrighter. Keep doing what you actually are good. ~~~ trez Is it expensive? ~~~ arielpts In Brazil, i payed USD 200 ------ lsiebert Thesaurus might help.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do we change things? - anthonycerra Members of this community are pretty good at changing the way we interact with the world on a daily basis. Some really cool things have come out of asking "How can this be better?". You already have changed the world for the better.<p>As I read the recent post about net neutrality I got to thinking about our roles and interactions with government. I realized that not much has changed despite the surge of Internet users over the last decade. Our candidates are still spoon fed to us. Decisions are not made with the best interest of constituents in mind. And despite services like Facebook and Twitter many of us feel like we don't have a voice. This observation applies both to national and local politics. There has to be a better way.<p>So my question to the smartest people in the room is, how can this be better? Do we make a Groupon for causes (Groupon's original business) and showcase one injustice a day? Do we create a Facebook for aspiring politicians and level the playing field for those who want to get into public service? We did that for business, why not extend that to politics?<p>How can we change things?<p>Please keep the comments free of party biases. Only the Sith deal in absolutes =) ====== nl 1) There is no _We_. If you want to change something, then it's up to _you_ to do it. It's hard work, but it can be done. Plus, _we_ will never agree with you (because there is too big a range of views to ever be put under a name like _we_ ). 2) You are very wrong about the change that has happened. In the 2004 election Howard Dean was the early favorite for the Democratic primaries because of his huge internet following. In the 2008 election Barak Obama won the democratic nomination and the presidency on a campaign mostly financed by individual donations over the internet. In the 2010 mid-term elections Tea-Party backed Republicans won a huge number of seats based on the Tea Party organizing support on the internet. 3) Change happens in the small. If you want to change everything, find one, small, specific thing and work at it every day until you change it. You'd be surprised at how much else you'd change along the way. ------ thewordpainter "our roles and interactions with government. I realized that not much has changed despite the surge of Internet users over the last decade." \--> a variety of inefficiencies that will be corrected one of these days...maybe by a number of us? " Decisions are not made with the best interest of constituents in mind. " think about the polling systems that are still in place. they call up landlines -- LANDLINES! the only people that are being sampled are our grandparents... "And despite services like Facebook and Twitter many of us feel like we don't have a voice. " government hasn't exactly integrated social software/services. one of these days... "So my question to the smartest people in the room is, how can this be better? " i think one of the biggest issues is the epidemic of groupthink/influence that is plastered all over politics. if opinions were submitted behind an anonymous software, i think a lot of the problems would be mitigated. we've actually got the chief of staff for the majority WHIP in GA approaching his government friends about leveraging our ranking software to address many of the issues you mentioned. happy to speak more about it with you outside of HN as we're just beginning to explore the space & the potential impact. -adam ------ MichaelSalib _How can we change things?_ You cannot change anything until you understand the cause of your problems. The structure of political systems determines the range of possible outcomes. We have a political system that structurally has an unusually large number of veto points (compared to similar western nations). The result is that change is slow and the system is resistant to external forces. In addition, we have a system that systematically overrepresents the interests of rural counties. There is a relatively "easy" way to fix the second problem: states with large populations should start splitting into multiple states. But due to status quo bias such "simple" changes are unlikely to ever happen. Fixing the veto points problem is harder still: it is wired into the fabric of American governance. ------ dstein Technocracy. I'm not convinced that politicians, bankers, and lawyers can solve the problems our society will face in the coming years. The problem is, things haven't gotten _bad enough_ for true change to be possible. They just keep kicking the can down the road. ------ steveklabnik Things won't change until everything collapses. The system has accumulated far too much cruft, and needs rebooting. I may be a bit overly cynical. <http://i.imgur.com/zP5fa.jpg> ------ mrschwabe Open source and decentralize two of civilization's greatest responsibilities: governance and economy.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Assembly Gems - aburan28 http://dflund.se/~john_e/fr_gems.html ====== psykotic Here's a little gem that I don't see mentioned on there. For bit unpacking in C, the natural inclination is to shift out the least significant bit with something like this: u1 getbit() { u1 lsb = x & 1; x >>= 1; return lsb; } However, most assembly languages have a better alternative if you instead shift out the most significant bit. Suppose that the bit buffer is in ECX. Then you would do ADD ECX, ECX to left shift ECX and (this is the important part) put the shifted-out bit into the carry flag. From there the carry flag can be shifted into the least significant bit of another register, say EAX, with ADC EAX, EAX, or you can branch based on the carry with JC/JNC As a full example, here is the gamma decoder from apack/aplib, which despite its simplicity rewards careful study: getbit: add dl, dl jnz .stillbitsleft mov dl, [esi] inc esi adc dl, dl .stillbitsleft: ret getgamma: xor ecx, ecx getgamma_no_ecx: inc ecx .getgammaloop: call getbit adc ecx, ecx call getbit jc .getgammaloop ret ------ userbinator I think this is one of the more interesting ones for its _extreme_ terseness and opaqueness: [http://dflund.se/~john_e/gems/gem003a.html](http://dflund.se/~john_e/gems/gem003a.html) It would be a little adventure to try to figure out how it was conceived, as although it looks like something a superoptimiser would produce, it was around before superoptimisation, and I think it was generated by a human likely related to the demoscene. ~~~ billforsternz This was a well known trick for 8080s and Z80s as far back as the 1970s. Back then there were a lot of assembly programmers, tricks like this were stock in trade. ~~~ bro-stick Reminds me of optimizing microcode back in uni... From the reference implementation of 134 microinstructions down to 61, and it was far more cycle- efficient as well (progressive decoding and Huffman encoded micro representation given sample programs). Since it was a contest for two goals of extra credit, people were pissed that our team captured both. It took about 30 hours to implement. Microinstructione are like a CPU's firmware which implements the external- facing macroinstruction set into a simpler set of microinstructions which coordinate various internal state. ------ tasty_freeze This one has a serious flaw: [http://dflund.se/~john_e/gems/gem0032.html](http://dflund.se/~john_e/gems/gem0032.html) The neg (two's complement) of 0x80000000 is 0x80000000. Thus his trick results in an infinite loop for the most negative value. ~~~ mattst88 Indeed. The x86 equivalent gem ([http://dflund.se/~john_e/gems/gem0001.html](http://dflund.se/~john_e/gems/gem0001.html)) makes a point to note that. Odd that it's not mentioned on the m68k page. For what it's worth, my copy of the C11 spec says The abs, labs, and llabs functions compute the absolute value of an integer j. If the result cannot be represented, the behavior is undefined. 304) 304) The absolute value of the most negative number cannot be represented in two’s complement. ------ toolslive If you're interested in this stuff, bit-twiddling hacks: [https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html](https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html) Some things are due to an algorithmical trick, while others are a translation trick. Some are both. ------ uxcn How many of these are still relevant? x86 has an instruction for _crc_ , _bswap_ , as well as _nop_ now. ~~~ dr_zoidberg Now almost every code to be run is cache-bound for performance, not cycle- bound. So this gems, while may still work, may not be the best means to achieve optimal performance. Optimizing cache access is what brings the biggest speedups today -- see for example NumExpr[1]. [1] [https://github.com/pydata/numexpr](https://github.com/pydata/numexpr) ~~~ uxcn Cache is extremely important, but most of these operate strictly on values in registers. So, losing cycles due to cache misses, latency, contention, etc... isn't a bottleneck. A lot of these are crucial enough that they've been codified in transistors now, and generally can execute in a cycle without consuming extra registers. There are still some very valid bit tricks though. ~~~ dr_zoidberg Well I read some and had the impression they were going for speed or low cycle count. Indeed, most surely still work (there doesn't seem to be anything that is processor-specific). Unfortunately my asm is rustier than I thought and I find it quite demanding to read and fully understand them. ------ Plishar Secrets of Assembly Programming Gurus! ~~~ fao_ I wouldn't go so far to call them secrets, as in my personal experience gurus tend not to keep secrets; they're just neat hacks that not many people know about nowadays.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
RiseShot – Free Mockup generator tool for 4k mockups - jessie_s https://www.riseshot.com/?showhn ====== jessie_s Hey HN! I rarely post here, mostly just looking at what others are building. Anyway, this is my 2nd side project - took me more than 6 months to build. Most of the mockups are taken from Unsplash. Let me know what are you thinking or if you have any use case for it. I built it for myself basically - in part time I am building Prestashop addons to build into marketplace and needed some product mockup tool. Unfortunately there are like 2 poor man free tools and over 100 paid. This is how I ended up making it myself. Cheers ;)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Let’s get serious about ES6 generator functions - jamesgpearce http://facebook.github.io/regenerator/ ====== eldude Good stuff. This will come in handy if node.js 0.12 takes much longer. Watching the use of generators in JavaScript and especially node.js is going to be very exciting over the coming years. We're excited at LinkedIn because we write a lot of node.js, and control flow is always being discussed: step, async, stepup, promises, and async generators look to solve a lot of that. Also, checkout the AGen formal spec[1] for asynchronous generators. Raynos and I put it together recently to encourage interoperability between async generator solutions, and we're both using it in personal projects.[2] [1] [https://github.com/AsynchronousGenerators/agen- spec](https://github.com/AsynchronousGenerators/agen-spec) [2] [https://github.com/Raynos/gens](https://github.com/Raynos/gens) ~~~ bnjmn Thanks for the links! I hope regenerator can make those projects work in environments beyond node.js. ------ bnjmn Primary author here. Ask me anything! ~~~ PilateDeGuerre Why is there not a like button, send button, or facebook comments anywhere on the announcement page? ~~~ bnjmn Done! Thanks! [https://github.com/facebook/regenerator/commit/fe42c74a486fb...](https://github.com/facebook/regenerator/commit/fe42c74a486fbe7fa1aac73d41a9d852939083a1) ~~~ PilateDeGuerre Awwww shucks. I was being cheeky and now your response has disarmed my cynicism. I'm naked. ------ shtylman You should make a browserify transform ([https://github.com/substack/node- browserify](https://github.com/substack/node-browserify)) so that it can easily be put into a pipeline to convert generator code to es5 code. Folks using browserify will be able to use it very easily. ~~~ bnjmn Great idea. Issue filed: [https://github.com/facebook/regenerator/issues/20](https://github.com/facebook/regenerator/issues/20) ------ jessep Thank you! This is so exciting. I've been wanting to try things like go style concurrency ([http://swannodette.github.io/2013/08/24/es6-generators- and-c...](http://swannodette.github.io/2013/08/24/es6-generators-and-csp/)) in the browser, and this seems like it will help us get there. Granted, haven't tried it yet, and really understand nothing about any of this, but ... Anyway, hooray :) ~~~ jessep Okay, tried it, and actually worked with the demo from that article! Yay. ------ zamalek This is similar to my asyncscript pet project[1] (that was met with much resistance on the Node.js mailing list as it was Yet Another CPS Framework). It drew inspiration from the way that C# creates the state machines for "yield" and "await". The project is dead (it only dealt with async calls and I never got round to "enumeration generators"), but if you are wondering how regenerator works I have a nice explanation at the bottom of readme.md. [1]: [https://github.com/jcdickinson/asyncscript](https://github.com/jcdickinson/asyncscript) ------ pornel I couldn't find information why generator functions in JS require '*' in the syntax (ES6 spec/wiki just states this as a fact, but no rationale). Does anybody know? Python manages to work fine without ugly wart in the syntax, and it seems to me that presence of `yield` keyword in body is enough at syntactical level to tell compiler that the function is a generator. ~~~ bnjmn It means you can have generator functions that contain no yield statements, which is not as crazy as it sounds. I've had to do `if False: yield` before in Python to trick the language into treating a function as a generator. An unyielding generator behaves so differently from a similar-looking non- generator function that the extra syntax seems more than appropriate to me. The asterisk also makes it trivial (using regular expressions) to tell whether a string of code contains any generator functions. "Explicit is better than implicit" is a rule of thumb that Python supposedly values, but neglects to follow here!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Proof by Mask - there http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/10/30/proof-by-mask/ ====== dmboyd Youtube (<http://i.imgur.com/VIwYx.png>) doesn't fare too well. It's like they've never heard of the law of diminishing returns. Which is surprising seeing as though Google adwords was launched and is heavily based around an unobtrusive targeted ad-mix as opposed to the flashing GIF / "punch the monkey" style of ads which were prevalent before adwords. ~~~ georgemcbay YouTube is dreadful with the ads these days, both inside the videos themselves and all over the rest of the page. It reached a point sometime in the past year where I actively avoid going to YouTube (even when just following a link in directly to a video) because of the ad noise. Other sites are quite bad too (and getting worse). I've gone this long without running any ad blockers, but we're almost to the point where I'm losing the battle and can almost rationalize doing it for many sites. ------ derleth First, they didn't red out all of the ads on some of the English-language websites. I'm guessing this is an honest mistake. Second, if they masked all of the non-news 'news' things would look a lot worse, but that's another issue entirely.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Skyscraper, a Clojure framework for structural scraping of whole sites - nathell https://github.com/nathell/skyscraper/ ====== nathell Hey HN! Skyscraper is not new, but I've just released a major rewrite that's been long in the making. Of this release features, I’m particularly happy about the database abilities of this release – it can almost automagically produce SQLite databases that you can then do arbitrary SELECTs on. See more at [https://cljdoc.org/d/skyscraper/skyscraper/0.3.0/doc/databas...](https://cljdoc.org/d/skyscraper/skyscraper/0.3.0/doc/database- integration).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
F.C.C. to Change Program That Connects Schools to High-Speed Internet Service - digital55 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/f-c-c-to-change-program-that-connects-schools-to-high-speed-internet-service/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Technology&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body ====== transfire Instead of raising taxes how about promoting real broadband competition! Most places have basically one choice for decent broadband service --and that cable or phone company knows it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Buzz Hacks for Users, Developers, and Haters - andre http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/4_google_buzz_hacks_for_users_developers_and_haters.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+readwriteweb+(ReadWriteWeb) ====== andre this shows you how to gain access to Google Buzz NOW, if you don't have access yet.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Chameleon Colour Converter Updated to Include Colour Schemes - MrJaba https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/chameleon-colour-converter/id901137716 ====== MrJaba I've just updated my colour converter/picker/swiss army knife to include colour schemes! I find it's hugely useful little tool when designing sites or apps rather than waiting for Photoshop etc to load. Really hope you like it!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Journalists Are Reporting Their Colleagues to HR for Political Opinions - jseliger https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/journalists-are-reporting-their-colleagues ====== zelon88 I don't like this piece. It's so vague there's really no story here. "Employee A had a disagreement with Employee B who filed a complaint with HR. HR investigated and took no action." Oh the persecution! > The mere involvement of local ‘authorities,’ whether school administrators > or HR or whoever else, in adjudicating mainstream political disagreement can > of course have a chilling effect on people’s expression of their political > beliefs. That's their job. They go out and verify the claims and take action where neccesary. Since no action was taken one can assume no action was neccesary. That doesn't mean we revoke Employee A's right to complain to HR next time they have a problem. And it's important to note that if 90% of your workplace has a problem with your personal opinion, maybe your expression of political beliefs needs to be chilled. That doesn't mean don't believe what you feel and don't vote how you believe. That just means that if you have a pointed stance on race that flies in the face of civil discourse society is going to step in and make sure you hear the echo's of society. It's the same feedback loop that ensures KKK members know, without a doubt, that they're doing something wrong. That's a good thing. It doesn't mean they can't drink the Kool-Aid, but it means they should probably think twice before selling it at the supermarket. ~~~ lr4444lr All true. There still should be repercussions for weaponizing HR to make someone's life miserable when your only evidence is "accusing his column ... of making them ‘unsafe’" or feeling “shaken up” after a conversation with a colleague. The right response from HR, in absentia of any further evidence from the complainant, is either to recommend to the supervisor to deal with it tactfully or refer the complainant to the mental health resources he needs. ~~~ stcredzero _There still should be repercussions for weaponizing HR to make someone 's life miserable when your only evidence is "accusing his column ... of making them ‘unsafe’" or feeling “shaken up” after a conversation with a colleague._ Somewhere on an emotional level, I feel like there should be. However, if that's the extent of it, and HR decides nothing is needed, then there isn't anything really there. However, if there's civil conspiracy and defamation involved, the repercussions can take the form of lawsuits. My read on Vic Migogna and the #KickVic debacle (which includes already falsified faked accusations on social media) is that it's a weaponized use of HR to get rid of a rival whose politics others disapproved of. ~~~ luckylion > However, if that's the extent of it, and HR decides nothing is needed, then > there isn't anything really there. True, but then again, it will probably go into the permanent file and if more complaints come in later, it adds up. Similarly to how you're supposed to report even small things to the police if you expect more to come. Even if they can't do anything now, it starts a paper trail and will be taken into account if anything else happens. ------ jawns These are flimsy examples of journalists being punished for not falling in line with groupthink -- and I say this as someone who has worked in several newsrooms with relatively uniform ideological views that did not match my own. The first case describes a columnist who wrote a piece that his colleagues disliked so much that they complained to HR about him. But it doesn't quite add up, and I'll tell you why in a minute. The second case describes what sounds like a case where an intern and a staffer were discussing a political issue and got into a heated argument, and the intern complained about it. But it doesn't sound like he got in trouble with HR for his opinion; he got in trouble for the way he expressed his opinion. So I don't think these two examples are really strong cases of journalists being punished by their employers for not holding a certain ideological view. And I think people need to understand that just because a journalist is reprimanded for expressing their personal views, it doesn't mean their employer has done something wrong. In some cases, keeping your personal views to yourself is part of the job requirement. For instance, if you're a news reporter covering politics, you _shouldn't_ be going around telling people your personal opinions about politics. In fact, doing so can get you quickly kicked off the beat, because you're (ostensibly) supposed to be objective and unbiased. On the other hand, if you're a columnist or writing an op-ed, the whole point is to share your opinion, and I think most writers and editors understand that there are going to be columnists with whom they strongly disagree. And that's why the first story seems so strange to me. If a newsroom staffer were to feel so incensed by a particular colleague's column that they think it shouldn't have been published, I would expect them to go to the section editor who signed off on it, or the managing editor, or the editor in chief, and urge them to take it down or retract it ... not to complain to HR that they feel unsafe. ~~~ luckylion > I would expect them to go to the section editor who signed off on it, or the > managing editor, or the editor in chief, and urge them to take it down or > retract it ... not to complain to HR that they feel unsafe. And nobody would expect people abusing the "report content" feature on Twitter, YouTube, FB etc to silence people they disagree with, yet here we are. HR will probably give less push back than an editor. ------ anongraddebt The current American socio-political environment is a vortex of escalation right now. Moreover, we seem to be moving from rabid polarization to a calculus of hatred. I'm not sure there is a controlled transition from this state, except for a sudden (and potentially violent) 'release valve'. \---- I hope my claim is false. I have zero desire to witness/observe the types of historical events that fall under the above category. ~~~ rapsey People say it was worse in the past. I disagree. In the past there was Vietnam which was just a big thorn. The current situation seems to just be a descent into insanity. ~~~ abfan1127 Would you agree that in the past was worse, but we handled it better? Its better now, but we handle it worse? ~~~ chmod775 In the past society used to challenge opinions more directly and immediately, sometimes even descending into outright "intolerant" behavior. Now the pendulum has swung and even the most eloquent, tame, and well thought- out argument is at risk of being labeled as intolerant of something. Add to that that echo-chambers have gone from what used to be small groups of people to the massive ones that exist on the internet today, and we are at a point where many people aren't used to having their opinions challenged. Reactions of people suddenly confronted with an opinion outside their comfort zone vary from responding with fallacies, seeking protection by an authority figure (HR, police, etc.) to losing their composure. ~~~ nerdponx I wasn't alive during the 60s and 70s, but from everything I've read and watched of that era, I don't think this has ever been true. ~~~ chmod775 I'm not sure if "60s and 70s" is supposed to be some kind of strawman, because I specified no such thing (I was really thinking of a time period slightly later than that), but the Zeitgeist in that period was influenced by what happened earlier, so I'll humor you. Here's the sentence I assume you're referring to again: > In the past society used to challenge opinions more directly and > immediately, sometimes even descending into outright "intolerant" behavior. The end of segregation fits well into the time period you specified, so let's use that as an example. \- 1955-1968. Martin Luther King Jr becomes spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement. \- 1956. Montgomery bus boycott. \- 1961. Freedom Riders. \- 1965. Beatles refuse to play in front of a segregated audience. \- 1965. Showdown in Selma. \- 1968. De jure segregation is fully outlawed in the United States. You can imagine that all of these topics were publicly debated back then. Labeling someone a racist or intolerant would've been met with "Yes, I am. So what?" by some people, so that didn't even work as an "argument" by itself. For even more perspective, have a look at these surveys[0] conducted in the period 1960-1970, featuring such questions as: \- "Do you think most Negroes believe in nonviolent action or do you think most Negroes would like to use violence in their demonstrations?". \- "I'd like to ask you if you were in the same position as Negroes, if you think it would be justified or not to march and protest in demonstrations?" Imagine having that kind of discussion today. Yeah I can't either. People would be outraged and try to get someone fired. Maybe rightfully so. It took three decades for half of the opinions that were expressed back then to become "taboo", and another two decades for us to arrive where we are today, where pretty much anything that isn't a mainstream opinion on the matter is now a dangerous topic. Hence the pendulum metaphor. The predominant viewpoints have become entrenched and are being defended against any opinion that doesn't smell the same. Anything that just might threaten them, even if there is no obvious conflict, is labeled "racist", "intolerant", "left", "right", etc and shot down on sight. Debates back then weren't less heated, but there were more "real debates" and there were significantly less taboo topics and opinions. Edit: I rambled on for a long time, so to get back to the issue at hand, please imagine "Story 1" or "Story 2" from the article were set in 1960. They just wouldn't be plausible anymore. Nobody could feel "unsafe" or "shaken up" over these opinions - they are tame compared to the opinions publicly expressed back then. [0]: [https://www.crmvet.org/docs/60s_crm_public- opinion.pdf](https://www.crmvet.org/docs/60s_crm_public-opinion.pdf) The PDF contains public opinion polls about some of the events I listed above, I recommend having a look at it. ------ samfriedman Usually when I read a headline like "X are reporting...", "Y is becoming...", etc. I expect to see some data that shows a trend, with analysis from the author to convince me that the trend is significant. This article is two anecdotes, one of which has since been "credibly contested". It reads to me like an author looking for anything to support a story they already knew they wanted to write, rather than a story that evolves from the facts and data available. ------ tyingq Secondary to the main point, but complaining to HR for any reason is tricky. Their number one priority is to protect the company. Even if you feel that aligns okay with your complaint, they may not. They are also free to change their minds at any time. ------ mc32 Aka the weaponization of HR for political reasons. Obviously this is a tactic to fend off non-mainstream thinking in the guise of political correctness (feeling safe/not safe). HR is loath to be in the crosshairs, so they’ll probably tend to try and hire milquetoast staff. ~~~ justin66 > HR is loath to be in the crosshairs, so they’ll probably tend to try and > hire milquetoast staff. What? The traditional solution is for people to not talk about politics about work. In corporate America breaching that line is often regarded as much more serious than any of the particulars of the politics being discussed. Not because anyone is "milquetoast" (seriously??) but because people are paid to get work done. ------ duxup Not sure I buy into this blog's description as there is so little detail. I certainly have concerns about the scale of some opinions being quashed by corporate of collegiate oversight. But at the same time I see folks with strong opinions very very quickly go to "this is only happening because I have X opinions" and in reality they're just jerks about those opinions and the consequences are related to being a jerk, not their opinions. ------ dbt00 Example A could be the author himself. And example B is already discredited. So that’s not super inspirational... ------ gumby Seems unlikely. I'd think that if either of these situations happened the affected person would publicise it for maximum value. ------ 781 A laywer was fired from a Harvard position at student pressure because he defended Harvey Weinstein: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/us/ronald-sullivan- harvar...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/us/ronald-sullivan-harvard.html) We are on the road to the Soviet Union, where your lawyer turns and testifies against you because only a criminal would defend a guilty person. ------ major505 This is the main problem when you consider free speech as "hate speech". I had to hear a sermon from my young brother who is 15, that something I said was "hate speech" (basically an opnion on abortion if I`m not mistaken), something he learned in school. I had to explain to him to no avail that theres not such a thing. There is only speech, and or is totally free, or is not free at all. ~~~ LostJourneyman Free speech means that you won't be prosecuted/persecuted by the government, not that you're free from social or societal ramifications. Hate speech is one of the exclusions (see Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire decision, ca. 1942) of Free Speech, but again: no legal action is being taken here so this is irrelevant. ------ stcredzero Artists in niche media, like Magic the Gathering are being targeted: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CC2Zy76zfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CC2Zy76zfM) YouTuber who got his start in tabletop games commentary was assaulted at GenCon, and recently settled his lawsuit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASc2EPZBIoA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASc2EPZBIoA) Comics artist Ethan Van Sciver was targeted for his political views, once involving vandalism of a shop. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmrAnkKCoFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmrAnkKCoFU) He went indy again, and ended up with one of the most lucrative comics Indiegogos: (> $800k) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSODv4yD3Lg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSODv4yD3Lg) ~~~ JaimeThompson Oh TheQuartering I really enjoy how he pretends that only the "left" as he calls it wants censorship. His deletion of comments that provide examples of censorship from the "right" "center" "others" appears to show he cares more about views and outrage than actually presenting facts. But he should not have been assaulted. ~~~ stcredzero _Oh TheQuartering I really enjoy how he pretends that only the "left" as he calls it wants censorship._ I spent a lot of railing against censorship from the right. In recent years, there's a combination of many factors: Activists on the left who want to silence views they don't like, who also know people in tech and social media who have the power to enact it. So now most of the danger is from the left. The media power of networked viral distribution, plus monetization is so great, it's a game changer. It's in the same class of innovations as the printing press. (Both in the potential to democratize free thought and to control ideas.) In 2019, there should be a "right of discovery" in the same way our society acknowledges "freedom of the press." In 2019, the failure to acknowledge this new reality would mean that the public is ceding their ability to discover new information to gatekeepers enabled by mega-corporations. Indirectly through those mega corporations, the public is then ceding such power, to governments. (As is happening in China now.) It would be a kind of meta-censorship. It's not technically censorship, however it's actually more powerful.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Turkey bans YouTube - semihyagcioglu ====== seanccox This is going to complicate my last-minute application to Y Combinator...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Want to be better? The answer is simple - boyter http://nathanconyngham.com/want-to-be-better-the-answer-is-simple/ ====== xiaoma This was a bit painful to read. Aside from the 23px font size, it opened with 7 consecutive single-sentence "paragraphs". Actually that's not quite true. The fourth, sixth and seventh were comma splices as opposed to actual sentences. The rest of the blog entry was littered with sentence fragments and comma splices. I tried hard to focus on the content, but the presentation was so poor that it had little impact on me. It's not reasonable to expect tech people to be _excellent_ communicators, but I think it's fair to ask for just a 5th grade reading level for material being promoted here.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Money & Affirmation - andrewfelix http://andrewsplastic.tumblr.com/post/20269735494/money-affirmation ====== yelongren I like what he is saying. Money is just one form of affirmation among many others. All of them respectable, money is just more tangible and conspicuous.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Patreon as a Platform Is in Trouble - felix1996 https://little-noko.tumblr.com/post/625211319027679232/patreon-as-a-platform-is-in-trouble-important ====== dgellow The post is missing context. That's what I can find: \- Owen Benjamin has been removed from Patreon late 2019 \- His fans file suits against Patreon claiming they interfered in their economic relationship with a content creator \- Under Patreon terms of service at the time, such a complaint has to be settled via arbitration under California's laws \- On January 1 Patreon changed their terms to ban users from filing complaints when someone is removed from the platform \- Patreon initiated a counter-suit against 72 complainers \- That has been denied Friday, Patreon will have to pay up to $10k per arbitration case \- Under California laws the updated terms of service can cause other legal issues (?) \- Patreon is now exposed to other lawsuits regarding other personalities removed from their platform ~~~ sweisman The ToS say you waive your right to a jury trial or participating in a class action. Both are wrong. By stating those conditions, Patreon is guilty of deceptive practices. Which is illegal. All Patreon users can file a demand for arbitration now, regardless of whether or not someone they backed was deplatformed. ------ sweisman To understand what is going on, a summary of the legal repartee going on is as follows, written by Vox Day, who formulated the legal strategy and to my understanding, basically wrote all the legal briefs. The crazy thing is that neither the lawyers nor the Trust & Safety people even read the Terms and Community Guidelines. I mean, one can excuse the gammas and the armchair lawyers for not knowing what the relevant rules and laws are, they're mostly reacting to what they've seen floating around the Internet. But it's downright bizarre to me how the freaking lawyers don't even know what they're talking about. They'll write dozens of filings all based on the same false premise. WE KICKED OWEN OFF BECAUSE HE POSTED HATE SPEECH ON OUR PLATFORM! No, he didn't. OKAY, WE KICKED HIM OFF BECAUSE HE POSTED HATE SPEECH ON INSTAGRAM AND WE POLICE OFF-PLATFORM SPEECH TOO! Instagram is free. WHAT? SO WHAT? So Owen's Patreon account didn't fund his Instagram posts. Instagram is free. WELL, UM, WE DID IT BECAUSE HE POSTED SOMETHING ON FACEBOOK! Facebook is free too. TWITTER? That's free too. WELL, HE MADE VIDEOS! ON YOUTUBE. HE FUNDED THOSE ON PATREON! No, he didn't. He was monetized directly on YouTube and he never created a Patreon video project. WE CAN KICK OFF ANYONE WE WANT FOR NO REASON AT ALL! Allow me to introduce you to the Unruh Civil Rights Act of 1959.... ~~~ lliamander I think the thing people sometimes forget is that at the core of all of this drama is a substantive issue (and the reason for the arbitration claims), namely: * Can Patreon kick someone off who did not violate their terms of service? * Does kicking someone off in this manner constitute tortious interference? It's actually somewhat unfortunate that this is going through arbitration, if only because we likely won't ever get the full details of the judgement. However, it is clear that, in addition to the central issue under arbitration, there are a number of errors that Patreon has made that are not working in their favor. ~~~ sweisman My understanding is that NDAs only apply to settlements, not to actual judgements. Also, no one wants to settle. ~~~ lliamander I hope we get to see judgments. This is potentially a big deal for consumer rights. ------ numpad0 Is there actual risk of imminent crash in Patreon? I do know they have/had content policy/cultural disagreement issues but ~~~ Arnt Patreon required binding arbitration in case of certain disputes and promised to pay certain fees, then pissed off a creator, who couldn't do anything. His backers could, though, and several thousand of them requested arbitration. Paying the arbitration fees several thousand times will be a real strain (the total sum is in the millions IIRC), and the working hours won't be easy either. So Patreon tried to group the disputes together, which failed a few days ago. Now some creators are worried that Patreon might break down and take their money along (ie. the money that Patreon collected last month and would disburse next month). ~~~ sweisman There were originally about 100 backers, plus the creator himself, filing claims. Since then, I believe at least another hundred have decided to join the fun. Patreon Delenda Est. ------ Havoc They seem to be creators. Where is this ideal that the whole platform is at risk coming from? ~~~ sweisman Patreon is on the hook for all arbitration costs, minus $250 that the aggrieved consumer must pay as a filing fee. The risk is because Patreon's liability is open-ended. Each arbitration is a MINIMUM of $10K, and escalates from there, depending on the number and nature of claims. If the claimants are not motivated by money, and they are not, they can push each arbitration to a full hearing and decision, rather than accept a settlement offer. Since they violated their own ToS by suing in court and doing so in a class action (two separate violations), they are in serious peril. If they do that, Patreon could easily end up paying $100K per user. Finally, ANY Patreon user can file a claim because of how badly they've botched the multiple revisions to the ToS since then. ~~~ Havoc ah right...googling this suggests it's connected to this news article I missed 3 days prior [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24009301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24009301) ------ smart_jackal It deserves to be in trouble considering they blatantly tried to kill speech of Saragon of Akkad and a few others. Monopoly shouldn't be abused in this manner. ~~~ Sephr In what way does Patreon hold a monopoly?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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