Mac OS X Lion: This Is Not the Future We Were Hoping  - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5819418

<comment><USER2> The author doesn't seem to understand that "taking the good elements of iOS" doesn't mean making OS X into iOS: this will never happen, Apple has no intention of dumbing down the OS or to put it another way, Apple understands that the desktop and mobile platforms are different. However what Apple does intend is to carry over some of the multitouch and other nuances that have been refined in iOS to the desktop: it's visible, it works, and Lion is an accomplishment in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with two things:

1) Bringing touch based user interfaces/behaviors to the desktop is not going to work when the keyboard and mouse are the means of operating them. For desktops I don't see the mouse and keyboard going away since I would not wish to spend as much time as I do in front of a computer with my arms extended out the whole time (or at all actually). The only reason why I'd see doing this would be in hopes of having one OS run on different types of devices and therefore having the need to support multiple modes (IE: the win8 reason).

2) Limiting your calendar/contact apps to look like the physical objects they're meant to replace is an incredibly bad idea. The whole point of going digital was to remove constraints and make performing tasks easier through the freedom of not being stuck within the confines of paper. Where's the advantage now? More intuitive apps? Were the majority of users not able to figure out how to use the old calendar app? Why do I feel like more people just wont use it now because it will be too tedious to perform tasks they became used to with the previous versions?

Not to mention this makes it look like it was intended for elementary school students. OS X had the advantage of having a very clean and professional look to it that I am sure won it a lot of customers before. I mean I get ill looking at ANY Windows text editor (since they all seem to come with like 50 icons spread out over 5-10 different toolbars), but if the alternative is an app that has a giant crayon for a cursor -- because that's so intuitive -- I'll still stick with Windows.</comment>


NY Times down due to alleged cyber attack  - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/foxbusiness/status/367675755679211521 <comment><USER2> One of my favorite tweets re: this: "Who's reached their article limit now?????????????" Nick Greene(@Nick Greene)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Site has been down for over 30 minutes: [http://www.nytimes.com/](http://www.nytimes.com/)</comment>


Disney will spend billions to fight Netflix - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2019/4/12/18307539/disney-streaming-launch-cost-billions-netflix-strategy-change <comment><USER2> ...and likely lose?

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing that everybody's going to lose for a while.

When Netflix began offering streaming services, the major studios weren't certain enough that it would take off to develop their own, but they were willing to loan out their catalog, make some money off of licensing, and see how things played out. Netflix had a large and varied library, and it was available in one place for a reasonable price. Now that the model has been proven though, the pendulum's swung the other way and everybody's trying to start their own streaming service.

I really don't think the market can support this fragmentation, though. Best guess: after a few years of loss, media companies with B-list streaming services will decide it's just not worth it to maintain and decide to go back to licensing. In that case, all Disney has to do is weather the storm for a few years and then buy up enough other catalogs to become a real player (e.g. in my view, Disney = not worth a second look, but Disney + Sony + Star Trek from CBS = maybe).</comment></comment>


Cyph – Privacy starts here (1-1 encrypted chat with OTR) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cyph.com/

<comment><USER2> I may be wrong but wasn't there a HN discussion on this not too long ago? I vaguely remember a pretty heated discussion in the comments. I may be losing my mind.

<comment><USER2> Ahhh yes...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8659456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8659456)</comment></comment>


Will Comcast destroy net neutrality? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2276607/pagenum/all/#p2 <comment><AUTHOR> Aplogies for linking to page 2 of the single page view of the article, that was unintentional.</comment>


Ask HN: Compendium of business activity - <AUTHOR> Curious if anyone knows of resources that in great detail discuss a broad spectrum of "business activity". Essentially, a 'How Its Made' but for businesses. Unordinary hacky/quick buck business activity is especially welcome and interesting, in addition to traditional small and big business experiences. The goal would be that, by reading these, you would get an interesting, broad perspective on how individuals and businesses get products out, make money, or just get things done.<p>Examples:<p>- An individual's experience with dropshipping, from first finding out about the concept, to raising money, to the calls and negotiations they had to make to put it all together, to how they're faring now and thoughts they had on the process<p>- An individual's experience starting a grocery store, covering how they put together the funds, decided where to open the store, supply their shelves, hire their workers, keep track of how well they're doing<p>- An individual's experience building a network and name in the sneakerhead world. How they talk shop with buyers and sellers, how they manage their inventory, how they keep up to date on things<p>- An individual's experience quickly piggybacking off of recent trends for a quick buck, like making a flappy bird clone, pokemon go map, deepstyle image maker, or particular meme maker<p>- An individual's experience investing their savings. How they learned about investing, information about it, the many choices and trade-offs one can make, including specific things like why they choose e-trade vs fidelity.<p>- An individual's experience living cheaply by passively referring lots of people to on-demand delivery startups<p>- A startup's experience self-funding themselves by selling cereal boxes with presidential candidates' faces on the box.<p>- A farmer's story of how they maintain their farm, the daily, weekly, and seasonal considerations of their job, who they answer to<p>(more examples in comment) <comment><AUTHOR> More examples:

\- An individual's experience becoming internet famous and trying to monetize it and what eventually worked

\- An individual's experience going from 'this would be cool if it existed' to getting an engineer to design it, a factory to produce it, and finally marketing and selling it

\- Someone's experience turning an Etsy or Ebay shop to a multi-person operation with a decent revenue stream

\- Ways lobbyists have affected policy in Washington to provide value for their companies

\- How someone went from finding out there was oil in their backyard to getting a rig installed and working, how hard it was to get the rig installed including talking to oil companies and dealing with local, state and federal laws, how long it took before they made a net profit.

\- An individual's experience starting a now-successful non-profit, including how they got donations, got the word out, distribute funds, how well it's fared since passing hands and how that was done

\- The process a record company has to go through to get an album out, from signing artists, to recording, to marketing, to making and distributing CDs, to sharing the audio file to apple music, spotify, etc

\- A publishing company's experience reviewing books, editing them, publicizing them, and finally distributing them.

\- The way a company like Sears uses data from memberships, past sales data, locations, etc. to inform their stock, marketing, etc.

\- How a company like Lockheed-Martin secures contracts and fulfills them

\- An analysis of the ways luxury brands grew to their current status, who their customers are, how their customers found out about them, and how their clothing is produced</comment>


Show HN: Convert 170 currency rates using your terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/xxczaki/cash-cli <comment><USER2> Ah, thanks for this. Have something similar using fixer api, but only displays quotes. Not conversions. And not as pretty printed ;)

Uses Fixer.io - Foreign exchange JSON API

[https://fixer.io/](https://fixer.io/)</comment>


Ask HN: Graduate job in financial industry or PhD in IR and machine learning? - <AUTHOR>

I'm 24 and just got my BSc in SW engineering, next step is either a graduate job in the financial sector or a Master's/PhD in information retrieval and machine learning. What would you do? <comment><USER2> 'graduate job in financial industry' is too generic to give you any meaningful advice.

There are grad jobs that essentially involve writing a minimal amount of code, changing config files and doing support and there grad jobs that involve working on algorithmic trading systems. So, if I were you, I'd find out more about the job before deciding.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless you have funding and are debt free take the job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Coincidentally, I do have funding and am debt free. What would you do?

<comment><USER3> Both are fulfilling roads to go down. It all depends on what kind of person you are and what you want out of life...

All I'll say is, if you get into academia make sure you do internships in industry, so you get to see both sides. All the best.</comment></comment></comment>


Couple of guys make a mint off of generic domains. - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_26/b4040059.htm <comment><USER2> Converting visitors to buyers with generic named URLs is hard!

Placing well known "brand name" affiliate marketing image code is simply a bad idea.

I dropped out of the Linkshare network when I realized I was displaying their affiliate images hundreds of thousands of times to visitors to my sites.

I took them all out and use Google ad-sense code sparingly. I think we should be about the content we all want on our pages, not the other stuff, because when more queries and feedback forms come in with stuff people care about there is a ton of good will generated and lots of future potential customers.

I think building a site to expect revenue from affiliate code Ad turns is like playing the lottery: the house always wins.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another one for the I-wish-I-had-business-foresight. Who knew generic domains would be immensely valuable properties back in 1993/1994ish? They did. Back then, I wanted to register command.com - clueless still I am (DIS research owned command.com since 1990ish).

</comment><comment><USER4> All of the other people who own generic or semi-generic doorway pages should pay attention to what these guys are doing. There's probably a business in creating the ad and content relationships that can then be matched up with the appropriate domains ...

</comment><comment><USER5> This will likely continue to be a solid strategy. As new technologies and innovations come to light new generic groups are created. Maybe one technique would be to keep track of emerging internet meme's and jump on related domains ASAP?

</comment><comment><USER6> Building a brand online doesn't have that much to do with the URL anymore. There are really too many company examples to name.

The fact is that everyone knows how to use google. Even serious tech laggards understand that you search in google and then click a link. The days of people searching in the address bar are very over.

It sounds like these guys have done a great job building an Internet property, but the value is in their content partnerships, SEO, distribution etc.

Maybe the URL gave them motivation to start the company, but they would be doing just as well with choco-latefan.com

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting in the light of the Auctomatic story last week.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems like they built a useful and profitable retail and info site, could have done this without paying 300k for chocolate.com probably

<comment><USER9> But a generic domain such as 'chocolate.com' probably receives tons of targeted, type-in traffic every day that can result in $$$ if they know how to convert their visitors.</comment></comment>


Our GeoDjango Amazon EC2 image for news applications - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apps.chicagotribune.com/2010/02/17/our-geodjango-amazon-ec2-image-for-news-apps/

<comment><USER2> Totally awesome. I just built geoDjango functionality into my site. I look forward to seeing your upcoming example of an app using this. Cheers</comment>


Text messages to replace stamps in Sweden and Denmark - <AUTHOR> http://m.thelocal.se/32436/20110307/

<comment><AUTHOR> Short version: Danish service Post Danmark and Swedish postal service Posten AB are adopting a high-tech system to make it easier to post letters, packages and cards. Users simply text-message the word 'porto' to the number 1900. In return they receive a unique code that is written where people would have previously stuck a stamp. The letter or parcel is then posted as normal, and the code is read by sorting machines just like a normal stamp.</comment>


Tweak, don't pivot: how we solved our product's identity crisis - <AUTHOR> http://blog.handcraft.com/2011/05/tweak-dont-pivot/

<comment><USER3> Sounds to me like they missed an opportunity to also host, in addition to being a prototyping site.

The correct answer for that client was "If you want to host that site with us, the URL will be X and it will cost you Y per month."

Chances are they just wanted free hosting, but if they didn't, you've got more income and an additional revenue model. Without much work.

<comment><USER4> Right, a seamless deploy to a 'production' site would be worth an added fee to a lot of people. From the blog post, it seems like they spent a lot of mental effort around the development direction and sidestepping a possible added revenue stream. The hosting doesn't have to be part of the core product - <USER2> 'publish site' button to a hosted solution would be great for the users who want it (and not horribly complex).

<comment><AUTHOR> We're considering that kind of functionality, eg. a button or something similar allowing you to publish the prototype to your own site. But that's different from hosting a live site within Handcraft.

<comment><USER5> I've been following you since the last post you had, it was a very enjoyable read - I'm one of the two guys behind <http://bushi.do/>

I'd definitely love to speak with you - email@example.com, lemme know if you have a chance to chat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even if they don't want to host it themselves, they could partner with a host and coordinate the single button click push to production for their customers.</comment>


Crowdcube crashed because so many people want to invest in app-only bank Mondo - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/mondo-crowdcube-crash-2016-2?r=US&IR=T <comment><USER2> It looks like more than a few people managed to complete their investment: [https://twitter.com/ilovefluffy/status/704305351504617473](https://twitter.com/ilovefluffy/status/704305351504617473)</comment>


WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/09/webos-will-on-every-hp-pc-shipping-next-year-says-ceo/

<comment><USER2> Ok, I know I need another coffee, so I apologise in advance for being the Grinch here, but...

This is pure CEO puffery. When will these guys get it? When will they start looking up to Steve Jobs instead of treating him like a guy who just happened to get lucky eight times (Apple II, Macintosh, Pixar, Macintosh again, iPod, iTMS, iPhone, App Store, iPad)?

Steve does not talk about what will ship on every Macintosh next year. He might talk about what will ship in the next sixty days if there is an SDK he is shipping to developers today. Steve does not talk about Apple investing in R&D. Steve invests in R&D.

Talking about the future is the action of a person interested in how he looks and sounds, rather than the actions of a person interested in how the company performs.

Steve ships. Leo had better spend less time with his PR people and more time with his engineers. I have nothing against shipping WebOS on every HP PC next year. But please, Leo, just fucking do it. Talk to your engineers, not to me.

<comment><USER3> This is kind of cultish. Jobs being successful with a certain approach doesn't mean that it's the only possible successful approach and everyone else should copy it.

Not that you can't make an argument for his approach to disclosure, but it'd be better if not couched in hero-worship.

<comment><USER2> _it'd be better if not couched in hero-worship_

I admire what the man has accomplished. That doesn't make me blind to those of his policies that I dislike. For example, I do not develop for iOS at this time, despite owning a collection of said devices, and knowing lots of people who have made excellent coin developing for iOS.

Anyhow, I'd like to admire Leo as well. I have opinions. They are often based on feelings. Those feelings are often backed up by rational thought and are perfectly reasonable, but they are still feelings and opinions.

If you're looking for a dispassionate argument where everything is in the passive voice, I am not the right person for you. I take the same approach to my work. I try to make things I can admire. Or at least, I try to make things that are less then contemptible. It's the same thing.

Anyhow, I don't think that admiring what Steve has accomplished and pointing out his track record is inappropriate when criticizing Leo's choice of announcement in a personal forum like this. It's a personal opinion, which means it's _personal_.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Sometimes writing can convey a sense of objectivity which is not really justified. It can be a kind of affectation, which I've been guilty of, and can come off as pretentious or even bullying. My post had a pseudo- objective tone, but it was my personal reaction as well.

<comment><USER2> I'm very cool with that, and I especially agree that there are many paths to success. IBM was especially famous for pre-announcing things to undermine the competition. Microsoft picked that up as well, and it was an effective business strategy.

<comment><USER4> A successful tactic for one situation for one company is not guaranteed to transfer.

There was once a time where some people anxiously awaited what was coming next from Microsoft or IBM.

How many people are eagerly awaiting HP's marriage of the PC and WebOS?

<comment><USER5> My question, unanswered after reading the link, is this: what is WebOS?

<comment><USER6> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I believe it means the PC's would run _BOTH_.

> every HP PC being able to run WebOS and MIcrosoft Windows as an integrated > experience in 2012

I have an HP touch screen laptop/tablet. It has a mode where you can boot into a "light" OS that just has a web browser.

BTW, I've never used it.

> Instant Web is an instant on software solution that allows users to quickly > and easily get to a browser, an IM client, and their media in a secure, fast > booting environment.

I believe its based on Splashtop: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splashtop>

</comment><comment><USER8> I'll be blown away if HP is actually the first company to put their mobile os on a full desktop computer. I always imagined I would love running something like Android on a desktop; easy to use for everyone, no worries about viruses or software updates, nice modern UI design...really, it's a wonder that these machines don't work like that already.

I can't believe I'm rooting for HP on this one, but I sure hope this works and I hope it kicks ass.

<comment><USER9>
      > no worries about viruses or software updates

    ?

<comment><USER8> Fair point. But that's the way it's _supposed_ to be. I guess my comment might seem humorously ignorant given the current Android situation, but it'd be tough to argue that it's not directly in Google's interest to get all that fixed up.

On the other hand, it's not in Microsoft's interest to make software updates easy or viruses to go away. They're side problems that other companies deal with. HP's webOS should be more like Android than Windows, at least in the user experience philosophy.

<comment><USER10> >On the other hand, it's not in Microsoft's interest to make software updates easy or viruses to go away.

Huh, why not? How easier updates should get? If set to automatic, they're almost done Chrome style (except for the reboots GRR). And what about MSE?

>HP's webOS should be more like Android than Windows

With Windows, it gets updated instantly whichever OEM built your PC. With Android. it can take upto a year after getting released, or never come out at all.

<comment><USER8> > Huh, why not?

Business. Look at IE6. Microsoft can't force system-wide updates for all their customers, so nearly 0 customers get dramatic software improvements. Of course, everyone gets security updates.

> With Windows, it gets updated instantly whichever OEM built your PC. With > Android. it can take upto a year after getting released, or never come out > at all.

This isn't really relevant to the point I'm trying to make. I understand that right now, OEMs aren't updating Android frequently. I meant more user software updates; my Android apps seem to get updates every week that add features, fix bugs, etc. This process is streamlined and automatic. This is not true with traditional desktop operating systems (aside from most Linux distros).

<comment><USER11> Microsoft could simply add an automatic update service right into the operating system, similar to how they have MSI for installations, and then apps would be updated similarly. It's quite possible they're actually working on something like that -- updates seem to get better and better all the time.

<comment><USER8> For at least the last 15 years, there has been no central way to upgrade user software on Microsoft Windows. Today, in 2011, there is no way to do this. Maybe it's coming eventually, sure. But again, these points are seriously minor issues compared to what I'm trying to suggest:

The "mobile" OS space is consistently more user-friendly than the desktop space.

Maybe desktops can catch up. Maybe MS is working magic behind the scenes. Forgive me if I'm pessimistic here. I find it far more likely that there's a slow, worldwide shift to "mobile" OSs on all computers. It'll probably resemble some sort of iOS/Android/webOS future spawn, or something. I don't know.

The automatic software updates was merely an example to show where "mobile" excels and "desktop" fails. There are many others, and even those this example may change I feel my point is still made.

<comment><USER11> > For at least the last 15 years, there has been no central way to upgrade > user software on Microsoft Windows.

For most of the last 15 years, most people installed their software by sliding shiny round things into their computer.

> The "mobile" OS space is consistently more user-friendly than the desktop > space.

Unless you want to print something. Mobile OS's are considerably more limited, which with very little effort makes them much more user-friendly. A pocket calculator is also consistently more user-friendly than a smartphone.

> The automatic software updates was merely an example to show where "mobile" > excels and "desktop" fails.

But that's actually such an _easy_ problem to solve. Mobile operating systems (and, in my cases Linux in general) are very bad at solving the hard yet common problems -- like seamlessly printing documents or working with arbitrary hardware and software.

I agree that there will be a shift to "mobile" OS style on computers -- it's already happening with Mac OS X and the Mac App store. No doubt Microsoft is already planning a UI for Windows that is also much more limited and they are certainly working on an app store. Taking a mobile OS and making it work on a PC is much more difficult than taking an existing desktop OS and making it function more like a mobile OS.

<comment><USER12> >Mobile operating systems (and, in my cases Linux in general) are very bad at solving the hard yet common problems -- like seamlessly printing documents or working with arbitrary hardware and software.

You're out of date. Printing is actually _easier_ on Linux than on Windows.

Part of why you can't take a stock version of android and install it on any phone because the hardware discovery on cell phones is entirely lacking. Think back to the days when you had to select the type of sound card and it's address and all that jazz. Now apply that to every single hardware component.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> First thing: Don't assume that this means they're going to replace Windows! :-)

Besides the guts of the OS which talks to the hardware (a very slick Linux build) on webOS phones, the platform is basically just HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It has always been easy to run and debug applications in Chromium.

You can download the SDK today and run an x86 build of webOS in VirtualBox. If you haven't played with webOS before, I urge you to try it.

Web developers who care about mobile will go absolutely bananas for it, and their new framework 'Enyo' is an even better experience for developers.

Here's a blog post about webOS I wrote quite a while back: [http://bethesignal.org/blog/2010/06/07/why-im-excited- about-...](http://bethesignal.org/blog/2010/06/07/why-im-excited-about-palms- webos/)

</comment><comment><USER14> It will be so great if HP gets its groove back. It's really sad to see one of the great American companies flounder for so long. Ever since Carly merged it with Compaq they've been basically stagnant, IMHO, I think WebOS might really set them up for a big power play against Apple over the next few years.

<comment><USER15> The only PC I've ever hated was a HP. Overpriced for poor parts, slow as hell for its advertised purposes and using their provided software, and when parts broke I had to pay for special HP parts because they used custom sizing and screws.

<comment><USER16> Sounds a lot like Apple right before they bought NeXT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just as Windows on a tablet sucks because it's not optimised for touch, isn't WebOS on a desktop PC going to suck when using a mouse?

<comment><USER18> The thing I'd really like to see in a portable computer is a touch- interface/mouse-interface hybrid. For example, you dock your iPad in a keyboard docking station (with mouse), and the interface morphs into standard OSX, with all the power and abilities that come along with that. Take it out of the keyboard dock, and it's an iPad again, with the finger friendly iOS touch interface (and limited to touch apps). Desktop apps and touch apps could share data, but would ideally have different interfaces. E.g. OSX's Mail.app and iOS's Mail app.

For HP of course, substitute webOS "slate" for iPad and custom desktop Linux distribution for OSX (I wish).

<comment><USER17> This is a cool idea. I'd also like to use the "full" OS when using it as a tablet if I want to, and maybe vice versa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a stupid idea, imho. If you want Windows as the OS, get a PC with Windows. If you want WebOs, get a PC with WebOs. But getting one with both, is just an annoying thing and most users won't really care.

I'm not buying a powerful machine with GBs of RAM and a dual-core processor, to just run that WebOs thing. It works well with a tablet, but a PC is a computer and not a tablet.

It'll be a good idea, though, to install WebOs on Free DOS machines.

<comment><USER20> It's impossible for me so far to picture how a dual-OS system will benefit users. I keep hearing about some ability to boot the "little" OS when you just want to surf the web a little... that sounds horrible and I don't at all understand why you wouldn't just unsleep the machine from the "big" OS instance and use that. Is it just that sleep mode doesn't work well? ... So we're gonna throw on a whole other OS, too, to mitigate that? Surely I'm missing something because this sounds ludicrous.

<comment><USER21> How about battery life? If you could throw in a arm chip in there and have the webOS parts always on then you could get great battery life. Essentially this would work very similar to nvidia's optimus technology where machines ship with a low power intel gpu alongwith an nvidia gpu. When you do real 3d work the nvidia gpu kicks in, otherwise youre running off the intel chip. Key thing is how seamless the transition between webos and windows is.

<comment><USER22> Dell shipped this (Latitude ON or something) and then never spoke of it again. Yo dawg, I put a computer in your computer so now you have to learn two different UIs, configure all your settings twice, try to sync data, etc. just to save some battery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A shame that HP are coupling webOS with HP PCs, instead of putting webOS on the Web, where it might better thrive and spread.

With webOS on the Web, Pre3 and TouchPad owners could log in at webos.me (or similar) from any WebKit browser and see their apps and data pre-synced; isn't that a better vision for a company that 'believes the Web is the future'?

HP's new Enyo SDK already allows developers to build apps for WebKit-based browsers that resize for desktop, tablet, and mobile screens[1]; it is a joy to use and targeting multiple screen sizes works great, so it feels like a missed opportunity that webOS developers will spend their time building apps in a WebKit browser, but be unable to publish them for others to use in a WebKit browser too.

If they're trying to attract developers -- the Web offers a much larger userbase than HP machines ever will. I think it worth sacrificing desktop and laptop sales to build mobile sales and create a healthy future for webOS.

[1]: [http://www.precentral.net/hp-posts-enyo-development- walkthro...](http://www.precentral.net/hp-posts-enyo-development-walkthrough)

<comment><USER24> > HP are coupling webOS with HP PCs, instead of putting webOS on the Web

There is no reason to believe they will not also do this.

Use the service architecture to allow Enyo development to expose device specific system services (telephony, etc).

But license (open source?) Enyo for web development for pure web based apps, or even things like PhoneGap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think WebOS will be like Steam is on PCs or like the Apple App store is on Mac based computers. In this case the purchasing and updating of apps will be consistent and easy to maintain, however they will still run side by side Photoshop and Games.

WebOS apps will run on WebTops to compete with ChromeTops on the netbook side, but those apps will also run on the desktop.

A key difference between WebTops and WebOS apps and Chrome apps will be the "Touch to Share" feature that will allow you to wirelessly share data between paired devices. This will make it really easy to have a phone, watch, TV, netbook, tablet and PC and share data between them.

I bet you will even be able to configure a home network by using some sort of "Touch to Share" configuration stone.

Only WebOS apps will have this feature and you may need special HP hardware to allow that functionality to work. With 100 million devices using "Touch To Share" next year, I hope we have a click-wheel level UX experiance to Rival Apple.

</comment><comment><USER26> So that's why they were porting that to Windows. I just hope this won't end up killing WebOS. It was great on the Pre, I think it will do great on a tablet, but porting it to a PC might require HP to take WeBOS in a direction that will be worse for the platforms it was originally designed for.

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe they can do this for their printers, too... ;)

<comment><USER28> That might have had a ;) with it, but (if that was supposed to be a joke) you might want to read some of the fodder from last year:

[http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/05/hp- introducing-...](http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/05/hp-introducing- the-webos-printer.ars)

HP did appear to be (per Mr Hurd's comments back around the time of the Palm acquisition) considering using WebOS in their printers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There are two ways this could go, using WebOS as an instant-on OS. Or some form of framework running within Windows to allow WebOS applications to be run, with notifications being forwarded over Wi-Fi from WebOS devices. Remember the new Enyo framework was actually demonstrated running within Google Chrome. Either way this could be a boast to the developer eco-system, and reduce the cost per HP PC.

</comment><comment><USER30> The great thing about webOS is that it's all HTML5 and CSS based, even the apps. For their mobile devices they choose to run a Linux kernel on the hardware but in principle it doesn't matter what the kernel is, as long as they have some way to show the apps.

<comment><USER31> Well, to start off with the initial SDK was just HTML5 and CSS. Later the PDK was released to enable actual native level coding, most of the higher end apps are PDK apps.

As a side note, the original iPhone was also all web technology based. It wasn't until a year or so later that a native SDK became available.

<comment><USER24> I'd say the "higher end _game_ apps" are PDK apps, often because they're just porting existing iOS code. They have no need for the HTML UI.

With OS 2.x there are now options for hybrid apps as well - native code, but HTML UI. And the option to do backend work as node.js based services.

Essentially they've got a great mixed model depending on what you want to build.

All HTML/JS in the app. Or abstract backend services but still code in js (node.js). Or ditch all that and write a native code app with its own custom UI. Or write a native code plugin with HTML UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't wait to see the implementation. Maybe they'll do something interesting like making use of Cygwin or virtualization.

</comment><comment><USER33> port over the adobe suite and textmate, maybe some other dev tools and you will kill the market...

</comment><comment><USER34> I liked the bit where they said they'll shoehorn a mobile OS into a desktop just for the hell of it.

I also liked the bit where it was all bollocks.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is crazy! Say goodbye to HP. Who will be their client base. Google will beat them at the simple platform of straight to the internet! I have the Google Chrome CR-48 and its my first choice to surf the internet.

When there is now an Android phone running Linux when connected to a laptop shell, HP is doing the opposite!

<comment><USER36> "What I like/think" != "What everyone likes/thinks". This is hardly "say goodbye to HP" material (besides to you apparently).

<comment><USER35> Please explain what would make anyone buy this over Windows, Mac OSX or Google Chrome???</comment></comment></comment>


Global Trade Is Why Your Television Did Not Cost $6,200 Like It Did in 1964 - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/articles/global-trade-is-why-your-television-did-not-cost-6-200-like-it-did-in-1964/ <comment><USER2> AEI does not care about American workers.

Back in 1964, a union factory worker could have the spouse stay home, send their kids to college and have a nice home and American car.

Defeating globalism will bring about a great manufacturing boom in the USA - and any other country that does the same.</comment>


Ask HN: Could Google effectively go to a shadow "war" with China? - <AUTHOR>

This is something I've been wondering: Could Google run the Chinese traffic through enough proxies that they could effectively pull down the Great Firewall? Or would it be very difficult to scale that level of dynamic avoidance? Besides pissing off the Chinese authorities, would they be breaking any international laws? I'm pretty naive in this area so any thoughts (and links) you could provide would really help to satiate my curiosity. I'm fascinated that a company, with vast resources, could effectively change censorship as we know it and without clear repercussions (besides further attacks from the Chinese). But is it possible and doable? How would something like that play out? <comment><USER2> _would they be breaking any international laws?_

This is a nebulous concept, since there's really no higher authority to act as judge for something like this.

There exist international _treaties_ , but those are pacts between governments. They're not enforceable in the way this would require -- if you break them, the worst that's going to happen is "sanctions".

But more importantly, Google is a private entity. _They_ don't have any treaty with the Chinese government. So what is it that would constrain them?

<comment><USER3> Just a thought: if Google is found to be intentionally disrupting the operations of the Chinese government, such as their equivalent of the justice department ("injustice department" perhaps), couldn't extradition be used to bring charges against Google for subverting an investigation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How would you prevent the Chinese authorities from learning of the proxy IP addresses and filtering them when you have to tell the general population your IP addresses in order for them to be able to access them.

I think you'd need some sort of software on the end users' computers to make use of distributed search (or at the very least, distributed proxy IP identification).

</comment><comment><USER5> Uhh...

Garply is making some pretty good points. Cyber war on that scale is not for good or even great computer hackers. It is for hackers no one has ever heard of. The people you would need don't work for Google, and are very hard to find.

Best to do all this on the up and up. Although I think it will turn out to be nothing more than Google pissing in the wind.

Actually, here in Ningbo I've noticed that the Chinese companies are not as anxious to work with American firms anymore. (I have a shop that makes Flash Games). Especially since it was reported a few weeks ago that Google's partners will probably be left in the lurch. No one wants to bet his money on an unreliable horse. I think if there are tech companies or entrepreneurs out there that are still looking to get into the Chinese market, you should find your partners quickly. I'm starting to suspect that there will be a lot of companies with no seats when the music stops. The climate is definitely cooling.</comment>


Ask HN: Any tool to generate a page based on my GitHub and SO profile? - <AUTHOR>

It would be helpfull if there was a tool to automatically generate a static page for me to use as a developer and host it on GitHub. That would display my profile info from GitHub and Stackoverflow. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks. <comment><USER2> What kind of information would you want to display ?</comment>


What Your Visual System Sees Where You Are Not Looking (2011) [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrRrTJRB7Bg

<comment><AUTHOR> Paper: [http://web.mit.edu/rruth/www/Papers/RosenholtzSPIE2011.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/rruth/www/Papers/RosenholtzSPIE2011.pdf)</comment>


US and allies launch strikes on Syria chemical weapons sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43762251 <comment><USER2> One only needs to apply basic game theory and skepticism to come to the conclusion that Assad has no incentives to gas citizens. He's winning the war!

On the other hand who would benefit from a gas attack? Obviously, the "rebels" (read islamists). They have been losing ground for the past two years and if the US pulled out (which was planned) and a peace settlement is reached then they would lose.

Now consider that the exact same sequence of events happened almost exactly the same time last year -- the US announced that "regime change is no longer a priority" and a few days later we saw reports of a gas attack. See [http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/timelines-of-gas- attack...](http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/timelines-of-gas-attacks-in- syria-follow-a-similar-scheme.html)

For the game theory see: [http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2018/04/from_game_theor....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2018/04/from_game_theor.html)

<comment><USER3> Hmm, I never thought my informative post would get flagged, while baseless speculation is upvoted.

The parent is pretty much 9/11 inside job conspiracy level stuff. I just stated a few facts about what happened, and how that contradicts the parent's speculation.

Anyway, whatever. Evidently HN is not a forum for reasonable discussion around this topic, because people don't follow what's happening wrt Syria closely.

EDIT: Let's just say, that this reaction is pretty typical. Almost universally, whenever a chemical attack happens and is reported, we're told that rebels are doing it to themselves as a false flag, to inspire western intervention.

After 40th case of rebels successfully throwing canisters with chlorine upon themselves from helicopters they don't have, to inspire intervention that never happened in the last 7 years or didn't bring anything good,... it gets ridiculous...

The problem is that anyone who doesn't watch closely, only sees this one medialized case in MSM, and thinks that false flag somehow may make sense. And "why would Assad use chlorine?" pops up, when it's docummented he uses it regularly.

<comment><USER2> I'm just guessing but maybe you were flagged because of the way you argue. You're both strawmaning my argument and associating it with a conspiracy theory. Nobody would be against a good faith debate.

My opinion is not as fringe as you make it to be. It's true that there are consensus from politicians and the media about what happened but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the truth. In fact, respectable academics are looking at this from scientific point-of-view and coming to the same conclusion.

Here is a UK professor applying probablity theory to understand the weight of the evidence for the alternative explanation in the alleged gas attacks in 2017 and 2013: [https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/who-is- responsib...](https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/who-is-responsible- for-chemical-attacks-in-syria-guest-blog-by-professor-paul-mckeigue-part-2/)

<comment><USER4> I've read that blog post a while ago and sorry but it just doesn't cut it the problem with applying game theory in these cases is that you don't actually have access to correct intelligence and information both in terms of the actual events as well as the motives and parameters under which all the parties operate.

<comment><USER2> In this case he's applying probablity theory which is basically "reasoning under uncertainty". If you're interested in this check out a book called Superforcasters which is an elite team of forcasters that use similar methods to predict and answer questions about geopolitics and other stuff. They beat government and intelligence community forcasting using Bayesian reasoning and similar methods.

<comment><USER4> I have read supercasters and also unmaking the west i think you are either projecting and extrapolating way too much from them.

You are also ignoring the IO that russia is been running which is essentially a carbon copy what they used to run during the cold war, only considerably more amplified and effective these days.

I'm actually frightened by the fact that there are now links here to what is an unquestionably a new breed of academic UIC's now I thought the last of these died shortly after the wall fell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was never evidence shown that the attack was executed by Assad. There has not been any evidence shown that Assad still has WMD. This all started winding up right after the Bolton appointment. As is well known, Bolton was a Neoconservative architect of the Iraq war, and has been pushing hard for an attack on Syria. Also well known is that Assad was almost in full control of Eastern Ghouta, and Trump announced that he was planning to pull out, so why on Earth would Assad do something so dumb as to pull the west back in?

Think about who is most invested in keeping the west involved. That would be the rebels/al queda/Isis who have been armed and supported by the Saudis and the US to fight Russia and Assad.

It was even tweeted that insurgents were going to stage a chemical attack false flag before it happened:

[https://twitter.com/mod_russia/status/973535840646434816?s=1...](https://twitter.com/mod_russia/status/973535840646434816?s=19)

<comment><USER6> What Israel wants, Israel gets. I find it hard to believe that anyone truly believes the narrative being pushed by the West.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _hopes this isn 't the beginning of another 15 year quagmire_

<comment><USER8> Looked at from a certain point of view, it's likely part of the SAME 15 year quagmire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lunacy. Under what rule, law or authority are we just allowed to bomb/attack other nations? Imagine if china, russia or any other nation acted like this. The media would be screaming bloody murder and calling other nations evil, depraved, etc. When we do it, it's "strikes on chemical weapons sites", it's for democracy, it's for freedom. One day, I hope leaders of all nations are held to account for their crimes and not just the leaders of poor and weak countries. And most importantly, I hope one day the media are held accountable for their part in war mongering as well. Rule of law should be applied to all, not just the poor and weak.

<comment><USER10> I mean, he did gas his own people...

<comment><USER9> Of course he did. Just like saddam had his soldiers kill babies in incubators. You have to be extremely naive to believe government and media lies.

<comment><USER8> Look, we can only go by what we're told. We, the people, have no ability at all to ascertain the veracity of assertions of this nature made by our government. It's not that we're naive, it's that we are in no position to go to Syria and watch every second of the hostilities so that attribution can be made independently of government agencies and the media.

If Assad did do it, then we are simply responding to what he did. If Assad didn't do it, well, it's not the first time our government has lied to us. Either way, this military action will not have much effect on the outcome of the conflict so it's not as if we're messing anything up too bad.

<comment><USER5> That's a horrible way to go about modeling reality.

What the government says is only tiny portion of the information we have on any situation.

We also have what 200 other governments say, what academics say, what thousands of different journalists say, what historical precedent says, and what your own logic and intuition says.

Your obedience to the government narrative makes you the perfect tool of those in power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great, it's 2003 again. Even have good ole' Bolton back in there just in time.

<comment><USER12> Well, maybe it's just 2003 again, if we are lucky.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, didn't have Russia on the other side last time, I make light of it but it is honestly terrifying. Unbelievable how few people see history repeating almost identically though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> May this be quick and not boil over. My heart goes out to my Syrian friends, may their loved ones remain safe during these continually troubled times.

<comment><USER14> Yes, for all of us sitting at our computers talking about war and international law, Syrians are dying and have been dying. It's a humanitarian disaster. No one deserves to go through something like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who would flag this? This is a pretty major development.

<comment><USER11> I don't think people realize how serious this is. For those of us who vividly remember the events leading up to the Iraq invasion, this is extremely unsettling. I can see younger members viewing this as just more tripe from international news or whatever though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If this is from the bbc, why did they start with US and allies and not the British and their allies? Weird.

<comment><USER16> Maybe because this is a world news article, and us Brits didn't actually start this bombing initiative?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Take out Assad and get this over with!

<comment><USER18> Take out Saddam and get this over with! It'll be over in 9 months! We'll be greeted as liberators!

Good grief, how much of a goldfish can you be?

<comment><USER19> Please don't break the HN guideline against name-calling in arguments, regardless of how wrong another comment is.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good.

I gotta say, I was skeptical of a Trump presidency at first, but when I look at in retrospect so far, things aren't really all that bad, if you ignore all the media circus around Trump's character flaws and the stupid election conspiracies, which in the grand scheme don't matter.

Trump is a random chaotic president, and when his presidency is done the effects of his presidency will linger and new precedents will have been set, some good and some bad, but I think the good will outweigh the bad in more important ways. He is the mutation in the status quo's DNA.

<comment><USER21> I'm not dooming and glooming but I don't think good precedents will come out of this presidency. If anything it has become a litmus test of our democratic institutions in the era of "Fake News" and "alternative facts", and mob boss leadership. I hope we come out better on the other side.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Morality Question: What kind of programmer are you? - <AUTHOR>

I have been struggling with a modification of:

    Guy: "If I gave you a million dollars, would you sleep with me?"
    Girl: "A million dollars is a lot of money, and you don't look that bad, so I guess I would consider it"
    Guy: "Ok, since I don't have a million dollars, would you sleep with me for $100?"
    Girl: (outraged) "What kind of girl do you think I am?"
    Guy: "We've already established the answer to that question. Now we're just negotiating the price"
 The question I'm struggling with is an issue of Social Games. It seems like this great business opportunity: low initial cost -- build something, throw it on the web, see if you can make money; they log everything, do A/B testing, figure out what people like / what people want to buy, and iterate on that.
The downside, it appears is that the amount of money I make ... is directly proportional to how addicted other members of human race is -- which means I become motivated to make the game as addictive as possible.
Have other members of HN dealt with this issue? And if so, how did you resolve it? <comment><USER2> I have a friend who makes a lot of money (way more than me) doing affiliate marketing for adult sites. He's a really cool guy and I respect him a lot. Every time I'm around him, I ponder the things I could have done to make more money. I always come to the same conclusion: that I have no desire to make any amount of money doing anything I'm not passionate about. I think that money is a great incentive, but a horrible motivation.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's an odd way of looking at it. To me, this is isn't even close to any sort of moral dilemma. You want to make a game and you want to make money. So you build a game thats fun, viral, and keeps people coming back. Last I recall, that's called making something people want and serving the market. There's no possible way to entrap or addict users beyond most of their free will. If they love your game so much that they keep coming back, what exactly is the problem? People WANT to have things to come back to, because there is inherent JOY in doing it.

Furthermore, building hits that can bring people back is not an easy task. It looks easy, but companies like Zynga have mastered the process and dominated the industry. You can deduce the business process of anything into a few simple sentences, yet it grossly underestimates the task at hand.

<comment><USER4> To take that view to the extreme: say I invented a new synthetic drug that was addictive. People love it because it is servicing a need in the market, but do I not have any responsibility at all for its potential side effects?

<comment><USER3> Sure, you could take it there. But the reality of it is games do not have physiologically addictive properties the same way drugs and alcohol do. If you look at the cases where gaming addiction severely impacted a person's life, you would be looking at a few outliers who probably had contributing mental factors (like most addiction problems).

We aren't talking about drugs though. We're talking about social games. If there are stories about people's lives being ruined by Farmville, I haven't heard them.

But in your example, yes, you would have a responsibility for the drug's side effects. Thats what the FDA is largely responsible for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Look. It isn't rocket science. Unless you are proud of the work you're doing and do not feel guilty because of it, you should find other work - or in this case different software to program. Only write software you would not only be happy to use yourself but that you'd be happy if your family members used it as well. This is simple common sense and basic human decency. Good luck with your work!

</comment><comment><USER6> Make an addictive learning system that feels like a game.

</comment><comment><USER7> Basically... you have to decide what you can live with. Everyone has a different view/perspective but you're the only one who has to live with your decisions (well and anyone you affect, but im putting them on your shoulders). So, their own fault or your evil genius?</comment>


A User Experience Lesson From a Loaf of Bread - <AUTHOR> http://skylinedesign.co.ke/a-user-experience-lesson-from-a-loaf-of-bread/

<comment><USER2> Well written …</comment>


Learn Photography: Online SLR Camera Simulator - <AUTHOR> http://camerasim.com/camera-simulator.html <comment><USER2> This looks like a great tool for new photographers to internalize the interactions of SLR controls.

<comment><AUTHOR> And it's a good "demo". It was a lot easier to explain quickly a few friends what it's all about using this as a "dynamic example".</comment></comment>


Poof and then Rails was gone - <AUTHOR> http://patmaddox.com/2014/05/15/poof-and-then-rails-was-gone/ <comment><USER2> The problem with software is that it is too easy to get it working. If you would do completely stupid shit while designing an analog electronic circuit you would get completely stuck in your "inventions" very soon and would not be able to deliver anything working beyond the simplest stuff, the difficulty would just force you to adapt a sensible design approach or resign from doing any electronics in the first place.

In software engineering, on the other hand, the kind of wankery presented here lives on for years because there is no reality check - as long as a group of people feels good about themselves inventing fancy words and "techniques" without putting in too much effort into anything of substance, fads of this kind can live on. They can even deliver products written in this manner and get paid, for the projects work, as far as most business projects are concerned, it is simply that the code is just awful to look at.

Meanwhile, serious software from "firmware" for space shuttles, through huge game 3d engines, compilers, operating systems, to scientific software manages to get developed without having any need for this sort of thing. Somehow it's always the rather trivial software that gets those super-"architectures".

<comment><USER3> All of your examples don't exactly make the point you're trying to make:

Ask anyone who's had to debug game engine code, compilers, operating systems, or the worst of the lot, scientific code.

Most of those systems would actually _benefit_ from proper design and architecture, but people like you decrying their "wankery" have relegated such introspection to the dustbin.

And _that_ attitude is why software engineering is mostly a dark joke.

<comment><USER4> I've written more scientific code than most people here, and the OP is right: it's the last place you want wanker abstractions.

KISS applies to scientific code in spades. The concepts are hard enough to get right without all sorts of meta-logic muddling your thinking. Only when applications are truly trivial (i.e. "boring") do developers go on architecture spaceflights to keep themselves entertained.

<comment><USER3> The best way to keep things simple is to keep them small and composable, right? Like, say, in the Unix way?

I'm all for brutally-efficient and single-minded code in domains like mathematics or simulation modeling, where things like object encapsulation maybe don't make a great deal of sense (classic array-of-structs vs struct-of- arrays sort of thing).

That said, keeping that stuff neatly boxed and then moving everything else out (say, file I/O, logging, whatever) into neatly abstracted boxes makes sense. More sense than most of the monolithic piles of Matlab and Java and C and Fortran I've seen, because people were rushing to finish a paper.

But hey, it's not like the next generation of grad students has anything to do _but_ spend long hours debugging poorly-documented and poorly-designed code, right?

And it's not like there is any sort of commercial financial or reaction modeling software that needs to be anything other than inscrutable monoliths, right--you know, something which could actually hurt somebody physically or fiscally. Performance is king, after all.

(Hint: people who sacrifice engineering and design for performance or simplicity deserve neither.)

<comment><USER4> The choice is not _" monolithic piles of Fortran"_ or abstraction hell...there is a middle ground.

All of your comments on this thread seem to be predicated on the assumption that this blog post is an example of something _good_. It isn't. It's a complicated, overwrought non-solution to an imagined problem.

Nobody here is arguing against abstraction, but abstraction needs to be used judiciously, and the best abstractions don't stray far from the application domain. It's a subjective thing that comes largely from experience, but you've likely gone off the path to enlightenment when you start creating ("hexagonal") meta-frameworks to create framework frameworks.

<comment><USER3> You and I know there is a middle ground, but there is something very appealing about deriding the (hard) work of building abstractions and meditating on design principles in favor of "get shit done" coding.

This article was an interesting little exploration--mostly point out that by not using rails but by conforming to the interfaces you could do some interesting things. It was a harmless little piece, not something you might want to do in production but interesting nonetheless in its own right.

The tone of my comments is in regards to the top-level objections and phrasing these people are using--"wankery", "architecture astronauts", etc.

Look, I get it; most of us at one point or another have dealt with JavaEnterpriseFactoryBridgePatternAdaptorAnnotationAnnotationFlyweights and have had to meander through scores of abstracted calls to finally figure out something that should've been a direct function invocation. The dot-com bubble hurt many programmers, sure. Enterprise Jabba is a bloated king in a crumbling castle; whatever floats your boat.

There _are_ people--in this very thread!--who _are_ arguing against _any_ abstraction. They do so in the name of performance, and in the name of domain modeling, and in the name of a dozen other half-articulated little fears and inconveniences.

I've had to deal with code written by academics that implemented brilliant solutions to some problems, and yet remained impenetrable. If asked, "figure it out yourself". These are the same chucklefucks that don't comment their code, that are uncooperative on projects trying to clean up and make libraries out of their work, and generally are people who think that making it out of a doctorate program with a paper about their tiny slice of new human knowledge somehow grants them any weight whatsoever in discussion about software engineering or working on teams.

It makes sense that they'd be against abstraction--them and the trading folks and game developers and everyone else whose livelihood depends on excruciatingly-specific implementation details which are nothing more than an artifact of their time, a form of technical arbitrage which pays for their miserable existence.

Of _course_ they hate abstraction, because it is very hard to convince somebody of something when their livelihood depends on them not understanding it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So... poof, and then Rails was J2EE?

I have a deep dislike for overabstracting a system merely because someone has a list of hypothetical use cases. And make no mistake: it is always about supporting the hypotheticals, never about supporting what's actually really needed by the system.

Down this road lie dozens of layers of abstracted factories and strategy implementations which exist just in case someone wants to "persist" a relational object over a serial printer line. YAGNI.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand how _anything_ on HN that discusses a more complex software architecture is immediately called J2EE/enterprisy and dismissed.

Is this because the majority of the community is self thought? Or is this because most of you only build MVPs which are mostly CRUD apps (and therefore don't know from first hand experience the benefits of a modular system)?

The constant negative reaction to anything a little more complex is frankly laughable.

<comment><USER7> Similarly, any criticism of overcomplexity is immediately met with a dismissal as anti-intellectualism rather than a justification of why it's necessary.

> Or is this because most of you only build MVPs which are mostly CRUD apps > (and therefore don't know from first hand experience the benefits of a > modular system)?

This is what I use Rails for, and its entire reason for existing. It's a set of conventions for CRUD apps, not a general-purpose language for building distributed databases and coordinating space missions.

The problem with these complex software architectures is that they're decoupling Rails from the database, but why in the world would you want to do that? Rails is great because it manages the the meeting point between web requests and relational databases in an elegant, repeatable, commonly- understood way. If you need a complex, general-purpose system that only sometimes will talk to a database for persistence, why in God's name did you use Rails?

<comment><USER8> > Similarly, any criticism of overcomplexity

Come on. Nobody is defending "overcomplexity", which is by definition a rather indefensible position. The issue is the frequent arrogance exhibited here by commenters who insist that certain commonly and successfully used design patterns have no place in the world.

<comment><USER7> Of course I mean defending against the charge of overcomplexity rather than defending overcomplexity itself.

I am sure there are arrogant commenters around, but these commonly used design patterns applied in this case have made his code worse for next to no practical benefit. Besides test speed, there's no reason you'd want to divorce your Employee model from the database it lives in -- the fact that ActiveRecord reflects against the database to decide what attributes an Employee has should be a clue that coupling to the DB is the point of using it in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I read code like this and find that half of the tests are, more or less, a typechecker, it reduces to an argument for static typing.

<comment><USER10> Completely agree with you. Many of the tests don't do any kind of assertion, simply ensure that an exception isn't thrown on the invocation of a method. An interface defined in a static language would render the majority of these tests unnecessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having once been a platonist about this sort of stuff, I've rarely seen heavy code architecture work out well in practice (not so with _system_ architecture.)

I'm reminded of the various Evolution Of a Programmer jokes which end with the master programmer writing the same code as the beginner programmer.

<comment><USER12> I've always read into those Evolution of a Programmer jokes that what the master learned through their evolution is the right and wrong _time_ for all the complicated stuff they did in the earlier phases, and that anything simple enough to form the basis of a joke is merely the wrong time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent. Proof that you can make your code an unapproachable mess to a new team member by throwing out Rails conventions, and in return you get the much greater benefits of shaving 100 ms off your test run times and the ability to run it from the terminal.

</comment><comment><USER13> I actually think that the authors rspec code is too abstract (at least for me). Unfortunately I think he's proving DHH's point.

</comment><comment><USER14> This code is painful to read. As somebody new to a team, how can you "extend" code when you don't have a clue how the rest of the system works because somebody else decided it'd be a good idea to unit test controllers and abstract everything away because "we might need it someday"?

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not a huge fan of Rails architecture neccesarily, but I have to admit I have trouble following the 'hexagonal architecture' stuff, even in simple examples like this.

It does seem to be a lot of abstraction. Of course, with abstraction comes flexiblity, that's the point, I get it. But with (some kinds? all?) abstraction also comes complexity and cognitive load for the developer. If you're not careful, you end up in Java FactoryGeneratorFactory land.

(I hope the next step in the 'hexagonal architecture' isn't using an XML file to specify all the linkages and concrete classes in use. How else do you specify what concrete @db etc your controller is instantiated with?)

<comment><USER16> ... and of course for those who applies modern Java development patterns, we no longer see plenty FactoryGeneratorFactory.

I find it a bit odd that the community who has railed Java hard suddenly came up with something more complex than... _gasp_... the solution in Java-land.

<comment><USER15> I didn't mean to imply that everything in Java was over-engineered, just that certain historical common Java practices were examples of what happens when you over-abstract and over-engineer. Certainly over-abstracting and over- engineering happens in every language too though, it's a hazard of the trade.

What community is it that you think has "suddenly" come up with what solution that's more complex than what "the" solution in Javaland? I'm not even sure what you're talking about. There are of course many solutions in Javaland, naturally, and in every other code land.

I think engineering code, especially code shared between multiple developers/installations, is a constant tension between simplicity and abstraction/flexibility. It's sometimes possible to optimize both, but it requires a lot of skill and a lot of domain experience, and domain experience especially seems to be under-valued and under-present in the current environment. (Plus if the domain changes fast enough, nobody ever has enough domain experience!)

I think individual developers, as well as teams and communities (language- based or industry/domain-based) often swing from end to the other. This legacy thing is too complicated, let's start over with new principles to keep it simple! This simple thing isn't as flexible as I want, let's add in some abstraction to make it possible to do what everyone needs; then do it again; then do it again; then start over at 0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Like others here I'm not sure if this is a joke post or not, but... the TerminalAdapter example is not an abstraction. It's simply reimplementing a very specific protocol that implements "render" and "redirect_to". This protocol is not something that could automatically be adapted to other scenarios than HTTP — say, to a mobile app or to a desktop GUI app. The terminal, for one, might "render", but it cannot "redirect".

</comment><comment><USER18> I might just not be very good at this programming thing, but to me these kinds of articles on testing often (not always) remind me of my annoying tendency to implement a comprehensive productivity approach (often combined with buying yet another task app) that, on paper, really should help me keep track of my life. Usually it's a variation on Getting Things Done, which stands out in its exhaustive, all-encompassing, fine-grained approach.

In practice the whole falls apart after a week or so because I forget to do things the right way or because I don't feel like processing my 'inbox'...

Instead, I seem most effective when I write down my top three tasks of the day on a piece of paper.

Maybe I get that feeling because I've mostly experienced companies where testing didn't really seem to have much of an effect. Whenever I asked about this lack of efficacy, the answer was usually "that's because we're not implementing it completely!"

Which is exactly what I hear (and suggest) whenever I or someone else falls off the GTD wagon.

Am I completely wrong about that feeling? I mean that as an honest question, as I truly don't want to be negative and I'm way to inexperienced to be cynical about these things :-).

</comment><comment><USER19> Cached version, as the site is currently down for me:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0-I-y0x...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0-I-y0xrctsJ:patmaddox.com/2014/05/15/poof- and-then-rails-was-gone/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER20> I love thinking up intricate software design patterns as much as the next guy. They'll cater not only to the current requirements for my project, but also to all possible future eventualities. It'll allow me to, by simply changing one or two lines of code, change my entire database backend, implement system-wide magic caching and to expose my HTTP service as a custom telnet protocol.

The issue I have with posts like this is that they are decidedly NOT just about thinking up wild new designs. Instead, they claim that these designs are somehow BETTER. Unless you can give me a real world use case, I won't believe you.

</comment><comment><USER21> I kind of skimmed the post, so maybe I'm missing something, but what exactly is the "architecture" described here? Dynamically-typed languages will allow the passing around of objects of different types as long as they implement the necessary methods. This is a nice property in some cases, but a lot of times I'd prefer to have static-typing and well defined protocols. It seems like that post ignored the more important parts of the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER22> Frameworks are like cookbooks. They teach you how to make meals.

It's way more fun and tastier to make your own meals.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is one of the cooler blog posts I've seen in a while. Very nice.

</comment><comment> Dorian-Marie Poof and your site hosting is gone

<comment><USER24> The delivery of the page has been abstracted via protocols, and is keeping the application logic independent of persistence and UI implementation details. The 50X is just a side-effect. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> and PHP keeps on ticking</comment>


Characters vs. Bytes - An exploration of Unicode and Byte-strings in Python - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/04/26/UTF <comment><USER2> This seems to be last time updated in 2003. The situation should be a little different today with Pyhton 3.</comment>


Facebook's learning defense system against attacks [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/ldg/a10-stein.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> As I run a forum and we assess all threats manually (a bunch of moderators watching over the forum and reacting to flagged posts), this is an interesting view of what the moderation looks like when it's automated.

What caught my eye:

 _Threats to the social graph can be tracked to three root causes. These are compromised accounts, fake accounts, and creepers.

Our earlier phishing classifiers made heavy use of features on IP and successive geodistance. Attackers have responded by using proxies and botnets to log in to their compro- mised inventory. Malware is a tough problem because the attacker is operating from the same machine as the legitimate user, so IP does not provide signal. To combat malware, the most effective mechanism we have discovered is to target the propagation vector using user feedback. Attackers can also try to game user feedback features. That is combatted with reporter reputation and rate limits.

Chain letter volume can explode when spread using the powerful viral channels of Facebook. In the past, they have been observed to reach 1-5% of total user communica- tions in minutes.

Chain letters exploit social engineering to trick otherwise well-behaved Facebook users into propagating the attack. As with other creeper attacks, the best long-term answer is education. In the short-term other mechanisms can be used against chain letters specifically. For example, fuzzy n-gram matching or other forms of locality-sensitive hashing on text.

Like users, attacks use many different channels. For the system to be ef- fective it must share feedback and feature data across channels and classifiers._

<comment><AUTHOR> This is also interesting:

 _The decision about how and when to respond can depend on business or policy considerations. For example, an action in one re- gion might be more creepy or undesirable than in another region. Another example would be applying amore aggressive spamclassi- fier to pages depending on their admin preferences. Business logic or policies of this form do not belong in learned models and would only damage their performance._</comment></comment>


Flaws in Tor anonymity network spotlighted - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/flaws-in-tor-anonymity-network-spotlighted.ars

<comment><USER2> I wish the article's author had done a little bit of background work to find references to the CCC presenter's research.

Here is the paper published last year describing the research on fingerprinting. The second URL at uni-regensburg.de does not require an ACM account to download the paper.

Website fingerprinting: attacking popular privacy enhancing technologies with the multinomial naïve-bayes classifier <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1655008.1655013> [http://epub.uni- regensburg.de/11919/1/authorsversion-ccsw09....](http://epub.uni- regensburg.de/11919/1/authorsversion-ccsw09.pdf)

Dominik Herrmann, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany Rolf Wendolsky, JonDos GmbH, Regensburg, Germany Hannes Federrath, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

"Privacy enhancing technologies like OpenSSL, OpenVPN or Tor establish an encrypted tunnel that enables users to hide content and addresses of requested websites from external observers This protection is endangered by local traffic analysis attacks that allow an external, passive attacker between the PET system and the user to uncover the identity of the requested sites. However, existing proposals for such attacks are not practicable yet.

We present a novel method that applies common text mining techniques to the normalised frequency distribution of observable IP packet sizes. Our classifier correctly identifies up to 97% of requests on a sample of 775 sites and over 300,000 real-world traffic dumps recorded over a two-month period. It outperforms previously known methods like Jaccard's classifier and Naïve Bayes that neglect packet frequencies altogether or rely on absolute frequency values, respectively. Our method is system-agnostic: it can be used against any PET without alteration. Closed-world results indicate that many popular single-hop and even multi-hop systems like Tor and JonDonym are vulnerable against this general fingerprinting attack. Furthermore, we discuss important real-world issues, namely false alarms and the influence of the browser cache on accuracy."

Also related (no account required to download the paper):

Compromising Tor Anonymity Exploiting P2P Information Leakage <http://fr.arxiv.org/abs/1004.1461>

Pere Manils, Chaabane Abdelberri, Stevens Le Blond, Mohamed Ali Kaafar, Claude Castelluccia, Arnaud Legout, Walid Dabbous (All - INRIA Sophia Antipolis / INRIA Rhône-Alpes)

"Privacy of users in P2P networks goes far beyond their current usage and is a fundamental requirement to the adoption of P2P protocols for legal usage. In a climate of cold war between these users and anti-piracy groups, more and more users are moving to anonymizing networks in an attempt to hide their identity. However, when not designed to protect users information, a P2P protocol would leak information that may compromise the identity of its users. In this paper, we first present three attacks targeting BitTorrent users on top of Tor that reveal their real IP addresses. In a second step, we analyze the Tor usage by BitTorrent users and compare it to its usage outside of Tor. Finally, we depict the risks induced by this de-anonymization and show that users' privacy violation goes beyond BitTorrent traffic and contaminates other protocols such as HTTP."

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell This exact same flaw exists for HTTPS. Well, SSL in general. It's not Tor specific.

<comment><USER3> HTTPS/TLS doesn't try to anonymize which site a client is accessing; any intermediate can read the address of outgoing packets to determine the server's identity. It's a little trickier when a server supports SNI, but few do.

TOR is supposed to prevent intermediaries from determining which sites a client is browsing, which is why this technique is interesting.

<comment> mike-cardwell You can use this technique with Tor to make a reasonable guess if a user on your LAN is visiting a certain website.

You can also use this technique with plain https to see if a user that visits a certain website is downloading certain files from it, or accessing certain pages inside the website.

It is an interesting attack, but it's not one to get seriously worried about.

<comment><USER4> > You can also use this technique with plain https to see if a user that > visits a certain website is downloading certain files from it, or accessing > certain pages inside the website.

How do you do this when all the HTTP headers (the Server: and actual GET/POST) are part of the encrypted stream of data? You can't even see the specific domain they're trying to access, only the host/ip of the server.

Am I missing something?

<comment> mike-cardwell I explained this in a comment further up. I'll repeat here:

It's just simple traffic analysis. A page load generates a certain number of request/responses. Each request and response is a specific size, and will be transferred in a specific order. You create a fingerprint of that and it doesn't matter if the page is opened via a plain http channel, or https, or over Tor, The fingerprint will be the same (almost).

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the explanation. I misunderstood the context of your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm doubtful of their 55-60% accuracy claim; how could a statistical analysis of encrypted traffic differentiate between samizdat and benign text? Or, more relevantly, whether someone browsing Wikipedia is looking up Tienanmen or just porn?

<comment> mike-cardwell It's just simple traffic analysis. A page load generates a certain number of request/responses. Each request and response is a specific size, and will be transferred in a specific order. You create a fingerprint of that and it doesn't matter if the page is opened via a plain http channel, or https, or over Tor, The fingerprint will be the same (almost).

<comment><USER5> But it's not that simple if the client is running as a relaying node as well, is it? The mixture of client traffic and relay traffic would make traffic analysis much more difficult.

Of course if you're that interesting that your ISP is doing traffic analysis on your connection you quite possibly have more pressing security issues.

<comment><USER6> Merely reduces the statistical power, doesn't make the inferences go away completely.

And there may be techniques for filtering out relayed material - perhaps relay traffic emerges from the node quickly enough that an observer can then figure out what entering traffic was just being relayed and remove it from consideration (always a concern with a high-performance mix network since you can't randomize retransmission as strongly as you could with email mix networks like Mixmaster where you could wait hours, without rendering it unusable) or relay traffic is constant enough that one can assume any 'spikes' are the user's traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note that we at JonDonym will have developed a strong countermeasure within the next few weeks...

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't get Tor - doens't the risk that somebody does something illicit that appers to originate from your IP render its value questionable?

EG the German arrested when a bomb threat was posted via Tor but traced back to his IP?

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9779225-46.html>

<comment><USER4> A handful of the highest throughput Tor exit nodes (named "blutmagie") are run by a single German fellow who is technically/legally his own ISP. Since it's not the same person, I'm assuming the one mentioned in the article did not go through all the same precautionary steps as the blutmagie admin.

<http://anonymizer2.blutmagie.de/></comment></comment>


The weaker sex - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21652323-blue-collar-men-rich-countries-are-trouble-they-must-learn-adapt-weaker-sex?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709 <comment><USER2> I'm glad this article mentions male suicide. Rates are higher for men and this isn't completely explained by the fact that men tend to use more lethal methods.

The article mentions that men with poor education in rich nations are particularly struggling. This is supported by a bit of data we have: builders are becoming an industry with a higher than average risk of suicide. Other professions tend to have access to means and methods, or detailed knowledge, neither of which applies to builders.

I'm aware of two great campaigns that tackle male suicide.

One is Australian: soften the fck up (they don't censor the word on their website): [http://softenthefckup.com.au/](http://softenthefckup.com.au/)

Campaign Against Living Miserably: [https://www.thecalmzone.net/](https://www.thecalmzone.net/)

I am always interested in hearing about other campaigns from anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand why there is such a disdain for blue collar jobs. Isn't it honest living? The good are tangible and benefits the society.

 _Boys in the developed world are 50% more likely to flunk basic maths, reading and science entirely._

Then why is the media crying out that STEM fields are dominated by men and more women should be encouraged?

The problem in the US is that they cry that manufacturing jobs are going away. Why don't they attract some? Manufacturing complements with engineering. They develop society. The only reason that education and healthcare where supposedly most of the women are present as per the article is still present in the US is because it has not been outsourced. It has nothing to do with high skills.

</comment><comment><USER4> I recently read "Working in the Shadows: A year of doing the work (most) Americans won't do." [http://www.amazon.com/Working-Shadows-Year-Doing- Americans/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Working-Shadows-Year-Doing- Americans/dp/1568586388/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433104880&sr=8-1&keywords=working+in+the+shadows)

It makes some excellent points about how pathetically underpaid some jobs are and how crucial they are to the functioning of society. People (mostly men) who do back-breaking labor, like harvest food from the fields, are critical to the food supply, yet it is often paid less than minimum wage. My dad grew up on a farm and was a soldier for more than 2 1/2 decades. I always find it pretty galling when folks who make good money are basically snobby assholes about the value of blue collar work.

We really need to do something about making sure that critical jobs get paid a living wage -- not out of compassion or charity but out of enlightened self- interest. That's the only way the spoiled educated people who made "good" career choices will get to keep sitting on their asses at a computer and still eat. Sigh.

There are some things very wrong with this world. Not in a "gosh, we are all assholes" sort of way but in a "gosh, we are all idiots -- what happens if we can't fill these blue collar jobs and the grocery store shelves sit empty?" sort of way.

</comment><comment><USER5> There appears to be some concerted effort to leave unhinged comments on any popular article that might be construed as feminist.

I wonder how they'd justify these rants? Do they actually think they're convincing people? Is this related to conspiracy theories in some way?

This article would appear to be what the commenters would want, greater support for disadvantaged men and boys, but it seems to have wound them up even more.

<comment><USER6> When I was still a fairly generic STEM kid, skeptical of "feminism" and a bit tempted to oppose it via "egalitarianism" or something like that, I got into an argument over the internet where my opposite said this:

 _" Mainstream, sex-positive feminism is about equality and is concerned with the rights of men whenever they're in question. I'm a total feminist who believes that the significance of male rape is hugely devalued by society, that family court relies on outdated standards, and a few other 'MRA' bulletpoints. I find nothing but agreement when I pursue these ideas in a public, academic, or otherwise serious sphere. The Men's Rights movement, however, is not a legitimate offshoot of a cruel and uncaring feminism. It's a reactionary, hostile internet culture that inevitably finds itself tied up in aggressive takedowns of feminism, responsible for fomenting a lot of denial of its legitimacy through a cherry-picked view of fringe perspectives, poorly considered, half-scientific 'biotruths' and a thin veneer of concern for the rights of men.

Feminism is not called feminism because it hates men. It's called feminism because it comes from societies with a history of gross, outrageous repression of women. As we move closer to equality, it becomes natural that men should involve themselves in the movement and ensure that it considers their rights as well. But feminism does that. MRA denies that only as a stepladder to get into a denial of the legitimacy of the female accomplishments of feminism. That's what it is at its core."_

I was very impressed. I conceded, and it's stuck with me to this day.

<comment><USER7> Regardless of club affiliation, generally speaking it makes no sense to have women stand up for men's rights. Men need to stand up for men's rights because then at least you can assume authenticity based on shared self-interest. In that respect, even MRA is, for men, an improvement on feminism.

<comment><USER4> I'm female. I prefer to stand for human rights. Last I checked, men are still human.

FWIW, I don't generally self-identify as a _feminist,_ though I get accused of being one quite a lot.

I think anyone who claims to want a better world and is vindictively hoping that some class of people with more "privilege" gets their come-uppance is doing it wrong.

<comment><USER7> Cool, but your last sentence goes too far. There is politics to worry about. Hasn't feminism proven that a non-partisan stance (egalitarianism) is less effective politically than a partisan one? I can accuse you of the same 'vindictiveness' that feminists face when men say that feminism is wrong because it's all about women. It's not wrong, it's politics.

<comment><USER8> I thought her last sentence was actually spot on. When people argue for egalitarianism, I actively support them. When people argue using the approach she condemned, I vehemently oppose such people because it's toxic, drives people apart (as does any type of identity politics) and breeds resentment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This may mark me out as an asshole, but I don't have very much sympathy.

Back when I was about 15 and still in school, a bunch of our classmates dropped out to go working in construction jobs after completing the Junior Certificate ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_Certificate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_Certificate)). At the time Ireland was enjoying a boom in construction, so there was decent money to be made for anyone willing to stop their education and haul bricks around a field all day.

To my friends and I this was a transparently idiotic strategy, grasping at an easy short-term gain which no-one believed would last more than a few years. But of course we were made out to be the real chumps for staying in school.

Fast forward to now and every one of the dropouts is un-employed, having enjoyed a few short years of decent wages and then witnessed their livelihoods disappear into an economic black hole around 2008.

<comment><USER10> What happens when the tech bubble bursts?

Yes, certainly we live in the information age, and there will always be a need for tech workers, but the demand will fall with the economy. So isn't there an element to short-term gain for people who went into tech simply because of the past decade?

<comment><USER9> What happens when the medicine bubble bursts? Or the engineering bubble? We could say this about any profession, that the good times may end some day. That doesn't make the decision of those young men any less short-sighted.

They had every chance at _not_ being under-educated labourers, but they chose explicitly to take that path, even when most around them advised that the construction bubble was in serious danger of collapse in the near future.

Maybe I too will be destitute some day, but that's a different story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be nice if Economist could post an article discussing the supply of _" marriageable women"_ (using their words).

Also, plenty of old failing _" you can have it all"_ narrative like:

 _" Women have learned that they can be surgeons and physicists without losing their femininity."_

vs

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3078210/Number- wom...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3078210/Number-women- freezing-eggs-soars-400-one-year-careers-prioritised-motherhood.html)

 _In much of the world they still enjoy social and legal privileges simply because they have a Y chromosome._

vs

[http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-logic-behind-France- banning...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-logic-behind-France-banning- paternity-tests)

But there were some good conclusions: _" More generally, schools need to become more boy-friendly..."_.</comment>


Ask PG: How many submissions yet? - <AUTHOR>

PG, How many applications yet for the next season of YC funding? <comment><USER2> We're not going to quote the number any more. The reason is that we now have competitors, and we don't want to get in an application number war. It's easy to get massive numbers of applications by encouraging applications from people you know you won't accept: for example, undergrads who don't really want to drop out of school. We don't want to tempt anyone to do that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok. Let me ask you another question. Any interesting applications?

<comment><USER3> Do you think the answer could possibly be No?

<comment><USER4> No

<comment><USER5> Fo' Sho'

<comment><USER6> Ye' Def'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A more interesting question: Do you think any of your applicants are also applying with you competitors?

For the applicants: are you applying to more than just Yc?

<comment><USER8> Unless you're desperately short on connections, the correct answer here is, "yes."</comment></comment>


Comments are decaying documentation - don't write comments - <AUTHOR> http://ecarmi.org/writing/decaying-documentation/

<comment><USER2> _Rather, great code doesn't need comments._ \-- Yeah, right.

I think the author is green and has gone from the extreme of commenting everything to the other extreme. Depends, depends, depends.</comment>


Ask HN: Books you read in 2017? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Here are all the books I've read in 2017! [https://booknshelf.com/@tigran/shelves/the-books-ive-read- in...](https://booknshelf.com/@tigran/shelves/the-books-ive-read-in-2017)

</comment><comment><USER3> The Boys in the Boat: The True Story of an American Team's Epic Journey to Win Gold at the 1936 Olympics > [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24611866-the- boys-in-the...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24611866-the-boys-in-the- boat)

Truly a remarkable story, well told.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am reading a lot and so far the greatest book published in 2017 for me is:

A Man for All Markets by Edward O. Thorp

[http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all- markets/](http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all-markets/)

A truly remarkable man and very inspirational life story...

</comment><comment><USER5> I read Disrupted by Dan Lyons over the summer. It's by no means an objective piece, but I don't think that Lyon's negative opinions of the VC-tech scene are undeserved. Also, he is an exceptionally talented narrator.</comment>


Show HN: Super-Sunshine – A ray-tracer written from scratch in C++ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/diegomacario/Super-Sunshine <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone!

This year I embarked on a quest to learn as much as I could about computer graphics.

I initially focused on building small applications using OpenGL, but after completing a few of them, I couldn't stop feeling that I did not fully understand how they worked. OpenGL was simply hiding too many details from me.

Hoping that building something from scratch would give me more insight, I started working on this ray-tracer. The whole experience quickly devolved into a ridiculous passion project. I built the ray-tracer from the ground up, starting with the API used to perform operations with points, vectors, normals and transformation matrices. I also read Scott Meyer's "Effective C++" book while I worked on it, which really helped me improve my C++ skills.

Once I finished it, I challenged myself to explain everything I had learned as clearly as I could. For that purpose, I designed and generated all the images and animations you see in the readme (except for the ones of the Stanford Dragon and the human head). Most of the images started out on paper; I would draw them, break them down into triangles, and figure out the coordinates of each vertex. I found it very satisfying to generate images in such rudimentary fashion. I feel that the constraints imposed by my ray-tracer just push one to be more creative!

I now believe that building a ray-tracer is the best way to start learning about computer graphics. The whole experience is simply illuminating.

I hope you enjoy the readme!</comment>


Ethereum hard fork creates a competing "Ethereum Classic" currency - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-hard-fork-creates-competing-currencies-support-ethereum-classic-rises/ <comment><USER2> IMHO this is a good thing for both chains. ETHC benefits from more centralized (efficient) development on ETHF, while ETHF can use ETHC as leverage to avert future forks. ie "We tried to fork in the past, look what happened! If we fork again everyone will just use classic".</comment>


Greenland's ice sheet melting so fast sea levels have risen 0.5mm in a month - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/greenland-weather-temperature-heatwave-ice-melt-sea-level-a9030361.html <comment><USER2> Wild.</comment>