Secure Package Distribution for Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2015/05/secure-package-distribution

<comment><USER2> This is one of a series of innovations happening recently to improve Haskell's package ecosystem (which was not tooo bad to begin with). If "cabal hell" or anything like that has even ruined your attempt at Haskell: this is the time to try again.

The language and ecosystem are really mature now. But the main reason to go Haskell is simple and still the same: less bugs.

<comment><USER3> I'd recommend Yorgey's cis194 course to start learning: [http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis194/spring13/lectures.html](http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis194/spring13/lectures.html)

Each `lecture` is comprised of recommended reading material (sourced from LYAH, RWH, Typeclassopedia, and others) and some reasonably difficult homework problems that build on the learned concepts.

<comment><USER4> Do you recommend Spring 2013 for a reason?

The Spring 2015[1] has a similar but different set of lectures/assignments. Do you think that is better/worse?

[1] [http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis194/](http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis194/)

<comment><USER3> They're likely both good starting points. From a cursory glance of Spring 2015, here's why I like 2013 more:

2013 starts with Functor and builds into Applicative then Monad. I like this a lot, as each builds on each other: fmap has a tight relationship with <$>, and Monad is pretty much Applicative with bind (>>=). Applicative is a Functor and Monad is an Applicative (as of 7.10 I think).

I'm by no means super experienced here, but the 2013 course was the first learning text that really got me into Haskell.

<comment><USER5> > fmap has a tight relationship with <$>

Yup, it's really tight: <$> _is_ fmap

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great - but as this is a new command, shouldn't --verify be the default, with --no-verify as an option?

<comment><USER7> Even without --verify, stackage-update is providing a far more secure setup than what you get from cabal update today (since it downloads over SSL). I didn't want to make GPG configuration an impediment to people using this tool, thereby pushing them towards something even less secure.

Longer term, we need a better answer, most likely using a config file to state your preference, and eventually switching the default to --verify.

<comment><USER6> I don't want to re-hash an old argument, but in my opinion dropping the gpg- key at a well known location secured by ssl (or better yet, bundled with all binary packages of haskell), and using gpg for trust is better in many ways.

Suddenly secure off-line distribution (think CDs), bittorrent, plain http/ftp... becomes [ed:trivial to] secure (if not private).

And anchoring everything at a gpg key makes the trust chain _simpler_. No longer can a rouge CA distribute signed software updates, you only have to trust your kernel, haskell and gpg -- not the usually large and somewhat arbitrary bundle of CA certs that come with the OS etc.

[Ed: not to mention: the gpg signing key can live "mostly offline" \- the ssl key is "always online". Only the server hosting the gpg key (if first-trust is anchored in ssl) is critical for distribution]

[Ed2: You already ask people to install trusted binaries (to boostrap cabal/haskell) -- surely a gpg-implementation can be squeezed in there?]</comment></comment></comment>


Demonizing Edward Snowden - <AUTHOR> http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/06/demonizing-edward-snowden-which-side-are-you-on.html

<comment> brown9-2 The idea that one needs to choose sides reduces every part of this debate to a binary decision which I think is foolish.

It's completely possible to question or dislike some of this guy's decisions and/or motives, and also be thankful of some of the things that he has revealed and the other disclosures that have followed (via government leaks) due to it. It's also not a contradiction to think that some of his leaks were useful to the American public and some were harmful. You can be glad at the outcome some of his actions have brought about (such as the increased knowledge we now have) without having to label him "a hero" and reserve your skepticism or judgement for other things he might do or will do.

<comment><USER2> (Beware, I never visited the US, all I write is based on my distant perception)

It seems like Americans like to black-and-white every decision, binarize every election (leading to two political parties; any alternative is disregarded). That mentality is taught since generations and cultivated by those press articles and many cultural products. It eases the herding of mass opinion, and by denying immediate access to intellectual subtlety, it makes philosophical though more alien and generates anti-intellectualism in scientific and cultural areas where subtlety and self-criticism are key.

Maybe my indirect reading is biased by the most prominent cultural exports of the US, or their the most vocal representatives. I would welcome the opinions of insiders.

<comment><USER3> If you have not visited the US, please resist the urge to make sweeping generalizations about it. OK?

<comment><USER4> Why? His data is from the outside and so is a generalization... But that's what are government is about... the majority. I'm from the US. i tend to agree with you. I believe overprotectve schooling and parenting (in general) has led to this mindset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is it exactly that Snowden did that so many Americans consider to be bad? The legality and morality of the spying program shouldn't even have to be an issue when one is determining whether to support Snowden or not. If an American supports the spying program, how is it any better or worse now that he knows of its existence?

It's not like Snowden destroyed the program. All he did was tell us that it exists. The program still operates freely and "protects us" as much as it did before. Why would a citizen now be unhappy that he's burdened with the knowledge of such things?

Terrorists aren't now saying, "oh crap, I better be more careful with my communications now." I'm sure they were already taking proper precautions. The existence of the program was probably already safely implied by the people it's targeting the most.

<comment><USER6> > _What is it exactly that Snowden did that so many Americans consider to be > bad?_

I don't think anyone who thinks Snowden is a traitor actually has considered it at all, they are just eating up the standard post-911 narrative that has been driving this country for over a decade now. The problem is that being anti-terrorism is such a political bi-partisan pillar that even appearing to rationally consider the cost-benefit (let alone the constitutionality!) of something as obscene as the NSA's domestic spying program in its current form is political suicide . It's a sad state of affairs, but the public debate driven by politicians is based on the strength of Twitter-length arguments. Based on current sentiment, can you can concoct a stronger sound bite pro or anti NSA surveillance? Critical thinking doesn't enter into it at all.

That's why only the people can change this debate. We need to convince each other of the slippery slope we're on, and the futility of an ever-increasing police state in 100% prevention of terrorism. Then we need to make the politicians aware that we do believe in the first and fourth ammendments, and that we will _not_ allow our proxy power to be used to spy on ourselves en masse, and we will vote out of office any politician who does not respect the limits of government power.

A little help from the media would be nice, but big media is almost as beholden to political winds as politicians are these days.

<comment><USER7> "I don't think anyone who thinks Snowden is a traitor actually has considered it at all..."

You're completely dismissing the fact that he took an oath to keep certain secrets, and a few months later decided to take it upon himself that the entire world needed to know what he was working on. There are avenues to report these things, to voice concerns without completely going against your word. Call your government representatives, go up the chain. There are phone numbers to call and people to contact if you're uncomfortable.

It's people like you who make the whole issue a "black-or-white", "for us or against us" situation. Probably shouldn't assume that just because people have a different opinion on an issue are "just" anything.

<comment><USER8> > There are avenues to report these things, to voice concerns without > completely going against your word. Call your government representatives, go > up the chain. There are phone numbers to call and people to contact if > you're uncomfortable.

Have you seen what happened to every whistleblower who did what you suggest? You'd have to be an idiot to follow them and expect different results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I genuinely don't care about Snowden. I want him to force Greenwald to give us some more fucking information instead of this pussyfooting, because at this point all I'm seeing is those two skewing a lot of facts and getting a lot of this horrifically wrong. Except they've completely clammed up, so now we get no clarifications or additions to the story.

If his stuff turns out to be completely 100% true, awesome. If it's mostly true, but somewhat skewed, then whatever, okay. If it's mostly false, a giant pile of hyperbole, and it turns out they don't have our SSL cert keys, they're not gathering all possible social network data(or even most of it), etc etc? Then I'm just gonna shake my head.

<comment><USER3> The point is simply to get the message out there, not to verify anything. Once it's out, it can't be undone.

<comment><USER9> Then what reason do we have to believe anything Snowden/Greenwald say?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> After all, you're either with us, or you're with those who want to destroy our freedoms.

That big wheel just keeps on rolling...

<comment><USER3> Both the pro-Snowden and pro-NSA sides seem to have this attitude (you're either with us, or you're with those who want to destroy our freedoms).

Apparently it isn't a valid option to not particularly be a fan of either one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "His failure to criticize these regimes suggests that his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the U.S., not to advance Internet freedom and free speech."

Perhaps the only way you _can_ advance free speech necessarily involves injuring the US national security?

<comment><USER3> Or - to be the devil's advocate - perhaps the only way to advance free speech is to defect to North Korea (like Joe Dresnok)? Or give secrets to Israel (like Jonathan Pollard) or China (like Peter Lee) or Russia (like Robert Hanssen)? I mean, who really knows what could turn out to be the only possible way to advance free speech? With the US as the "biggest villain," perhaps absolutely anything done to oppose the US is the only possible way to advance free speech?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As noted, this is a false dichotomy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma). Human actions are a complex and spectral subject and cannot be binarized. We are completely eating out of the hands of media on this issue (not commenting on the integrity of the New Yorker - just in general).

Though I agree that Snowden's affairs are an issue warranting discussion, media outlets are rapidly (and perhaps vapidly) distancing themselves from the core issue of the huge fucking datacenter in Utah SLURPING UP EVERY BIT OF DATA IT CAN TOUCH. There are so many other facets of this conversation that can generate pageviews for journalists that don't have to do with following some dude's plane flights across the planet and obvious bureaucratic troubles.

Where is the discourse on the history of similar surveillance states? Where are the people working to decipher the architecture of PRISM, the datacenter, and its complete capabilities (I'm assuming they're waiting on Snowden to tell them)? Where are the journalists that went to the ends of the earth to speculate on the political connections and underpinnings of our previous, numerous, dubious national actions?

I hope this doesn't become another oil spill and drop out of peoples' minds. It's too important. I'm afraid most people don't care though, and will eat up the latest gossip rather than meaningful commentary. We should aspire to more.

      [PHOTOS] Snowden orders ungarnished tuna sandwich, Gordon Ramsay comments

</comment><comment><USER13> Can an unbiased person explain to me how this revelation is a threat to national security? Are terrorists going to stop saying, "Ok we blow up white house tonight!" over Skype or something? Are people just afraid of the bad publicity that goes along with spying on citizens and other nations? If that's the case, it's really sad: It's like a mother yelling at her children for speaking up about her once-secret abusive nature. I fail to see the danger or wrongdoing in this.

<comment><USER14> You're combatting an argument that the people supporting surveillance aren't making.

They don't care that the program hadn't been dismantled as a result of Snowden's actions. Their reaction is out of principle, and it's actually very reasonable and consistent with their side.

If surveillance is a good thing and they are right for supporting it, they are also right in being opposed to Snowden because he can _potentially_ dismantle the program or discredit it. He can weaken public perception of the government. He literally prompted the whole NSA conversation. He is a lightning rod spearheading all public discussion of this topic.

Saying people shouldn't demonize him is like saying you shouldn't demonize a presidential candidate before he's had a chance to impact you in office. Sure, okay, but that's not how human beings operate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Media observers will note that snowden has become the story... Very little is being reported on the actual whistle blowing (or gutless treason, if you listen to the media).

As i watch this massive PR engine start to tear apart Snowden,,,, I'm finding it very hard to post anything critical of the government. It's just a little too easy to flip a binary switch somewhere.

I wonder if this is how it started with those countries we consider repressive?

<comment><USER14> I studied psychology in school, so I know I read this but sorry for not being able to cite it:

If you tell someone the same message over and over, they begin to believe it. I don't mean that in a cliche way, I mean literally and clinically. IIRC, the average you had to pad a message was 60 repetitions before it "sunk in" to someone.

If anyone has a citation or the study, please, supplement this comment :)

I'm not being so brazen as to say the media intends this effect. But I think humans know it exists on some level and have always exploited it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Snowden Snowden Snowden

There should be a prize for ad hominem journalism. Whether Snowden is evil or not is as important as the president's hair color.

<comment><USER14> Small nitpick: I don't agree with media focusing exclusively on the man and not the story.

That being said - it's not ad hominem to open debate about credibility based on a person's history, intelligence, knowledge or expertise.

For example, questioning if Snowden understood the documents he leaked because he does not have a high school diploma or certifiable, checkable expertise (aside from landing the access) in mass surveillance is not ad hominem. It's a reasonable way to express doubt and question someone's ability to be capable as a whistleblower. It's also reasonable because whistleblowers should be both accountable and rigorous.

Character defamation on the other hand is bad. I'm not against Snowden, I just wanted to make it clear that it's not unreasonable to question him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "...and significant damage to our country and to our allies." You mean the kind where the "terrorist" now know this too ? Or the PR kind ???

If your laundry wasn't dirty it wouldn't be a problem if it hung out in public !

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm on the side that doesn't turn every controversy into ad hominem nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER19> _I 'm on the side of good, justice, and the American way. I just can't decide which side that is._ (Joking)

The truth is Snowden committed a crime and those guys are never going to let it slide or else their whole secret community falls apart. Am I glad that this information came to light? Definitely. Would I ever do the same thing he did? Never. I would never take an oath to keep something a secret and then expose it to the world, knowing full well I was going to do it from the beginning. That's deceitful and I think that explains the caution around Snowden. We need to see the _whole_ story come out over time before making judgements. But I can dislike the NSA programs and also dislike Snowden's maneuvers. They are separate issues.

In other words, simply claiming it's black and white doesn't make it so.

<comment><USER20> An undercover cop, who swears allegiance to a gang he is infiltrating, only to testify against them later, is he deceitful? Wrongly so?

It may be that Snowden did an immoral thing. But I think it is possible to hold allegiance first to a higher ideal, and break later promises to uphold it.

<comment><USER19> Damn, good point. But I could counter that the cop has been appointed by society to uphold certain laws. Now that dives down into the whole philosophical question regarding authority where I'd rather not go, but I think the minimum we ask of people acting on behalf of society is to inform us first that you will be acting on our behalf. Otherwise we get vigilantes acting outside of our justice system and doing what they feel is just. Let's at least agree on it first.

I think that's what really ticks me off about this whole thing. That there was no mechanism in place to voice concerns about the system and our representatives completely failed us by writing a blank check to _the watchers_. So we get vigilantes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't have a "side." I don't care about Snowden, although I wish him the best in his country-hopping endeavours. What I care about is that these leaks are analyzed and outrage pours in from the public.

That hasn't happened, and the media is concentrated on Snowden's activities rather than the leaks themselves.

It's shameful, disgusting, and the only one doing anything about it is Greenwald. Unfortunately, not many others are.

</comment><comment><USER22> While it's not a popular view on HN (to say the least), I am hugely looking forward to Snowden spending the rest of his life rotting in federal pound-me- in-the-ass prison.

<comment><USER23> What's not popular is single line (slightly homophobic) statements of implied gratification from the punishment of others, without even a sentence (or word) of justification for your opinion.

Maybe if you actually stated _why_ you were "hugely looking forward" to someone being imprisoned for a crime that hasn't yet been proven in any way, according to any legal body or representative (charged yes, convicted no.), they'd be more inclined to debate the point, and your view wouldn't be quite so unpopular (to say the least).

<comment><USER22> The opinions on HN regarding Snowden are so lamentably one-note in unconditional support that I really dont have the strength to articulate my counterargument. What's the point? I probably agree with many others who feel the same so I'll just point you towards other people, lazy as that may be.

As for my "homophobic" joke, I'm merely quoting Office Space.

<comment><USER24> Right, but you can be lazy _and_ link to others. The absence of argument _or_ links makes it hard to evaluate the substance of your POV. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Automated private GitLab hosting - <AUTHOR> https://githost.io/

<comment><USER2> Any questions or comments please let us know!</comment>


Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective - <AUTHOR> http://qntm.org/gay <comment><USER2> I can't say I've even _seen_ a database that had redundant man/woman tables in this way. Regardless of where your politics lie on the issue, it's a violation of normal form with no benefit and any number of inherent problems.

When I was writing code for a medical facility, the guy who designed the database was as straight-laced and socially conservative as you'll meet.

But his design handled same-sex marriage/bigamy/polygamy/transgender issues, etc.

(It was a mental health facility. You get all sorts of interesting data problems when tracking the outliers.)

His philosophy on the design --and I'd imagine this isn't so odd amongst geeks-- was that data was data and needed to be tracked in a proper and robust manner, regardless of rightness or wrongness or personal feelings.

Assuming a male/female table is a reasonable logical starting point because 'some people feel this way' is akin to suggesting redundant christian/muslim/dirty_atheist tables would/should be expected to occur in professional code, because 'some people feel this way'.

<comment><USER3> I can't think of anything more irrelevant or distracting than debating marriage policy based on database schema.

<comment><USER4> However, it makes for entertaining reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So we start with "how to put gay marriage in a database" and end with "marriage is a union between any number of people, where people can come and go as they please." By that definition, I could be married to the company where I work.

Truly, an obliteration of any meaning to the word "marriage."

Really, I think we should start over. What is marriage, in the eyes of the state? Why should it grant special privileges to encourage it? Does society reap benefits from having a man and a woman committed to each other? Does it benefit from having eight people of varying sexes and self-declared genders semi-committed to one another in varying degrees? Are we prepared to draw a line somewhere and - gasp! - judge some unions better than others?

If we don't have widely-accepted answers to that, maybe we should stop recognizing marriages legally, substitute designations like "this person can make decisions for me if I'm ill," and leave marriage to be a religious designation only.

<comment><USER6> Right now by defining it as "one man, one woman" the opposition is pissing off 10+% of the population. Claiming that gay marriage will lead to polygamy or bestiality is inflammatory. It's like saying that being religious is a dangerous choice because everyone knows it leads you to kill unbelievers.

Redefinition depends on how far you want to go to deconstruct the term "spouse". In addition to making decisions when you are ill, how about "adopting my children", "inheriting my property (and debts)", or "becoming my common-law spouse after 6 month's co-habitation", or "perhaps not in my church but ok in another one", etc?

After a certain point you either have to draw a line, ie "sorry, you can have this much dignity and no more", or you eventually accept the strong form of gay marriage. Anything else would be politically unstable. You can, politically, rule out polygamy and define marriage as "two people". It doesn't have to lead to chaos and anarchy.

<comment><USER7> >Claiming that gay marriage will lead to polygamy or bestiality is inflammatory.

What argument would you use to defend gay marriage that would not also allow polygamy? Or what argument would you make against polygamy that wouldn't also apply to gay marriage?

<comment><USER6> My argument would be amoral but straightforward: a politically-significant % of people want gay marriage, and make a strong case for it. You could reasonably implement it as "two persons" and go home. The % of people seriously agitating for polygamy is much lower so you can safely ignore them.

<comment><USER8> Given the number of cultures in the world that still practice polygamy, and how historically some cultures in the US did as well, I wouldn't be surprised if a number of "closeted polygamists" started popping out of the woodwork if polygamy were legalized along with same-sex marriage.

I'd also question whether "people seriously agitating" is a good way of determining whether a particular action is right or necessary, as it's the lack of agitation caused by fear that allows discrimination (against any small minority: geeks/nerds, races, genders, etc.) to exist for such a long time before finally being addressed.

<comment><USER9> > Given the number of cultures in the world that still practice polygamy, and > how historically some cultures in the US did as well, I wouldn't be > surprised if a number of "closeted polygamists" started popping out of the > woodwork if polygamy were legalized along with same-sex marriage.

Polygamist have basically the same rights as gay people: They can't marry (in most countries), but nobody forbids you from screwing around (or even loving) multiple partners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author is actually outlining a new market for programmers. This is akin to fixing the MMDDYY errors in databases that brought the Y2K phenomenon (one part factual basis, two parts hype and hysteria). We could call it "Y2Gay".

But, I agree with other posters here. While MMDDYY was indeed pervasive, I've seen very few DB designs that assume role/gender at the schema level. That said, I would not be at all surprised to find logic or 'validation' that would choke on "MM" or "FF" or "was M but now F".

Y2K made lots of consulting firms (as well as retired mainframe programmers) quite profitable during 1998-2000. Here's to new opportunity. :-)

<comment><USER11> the best comment I have read here so far. Y2Gay totally made my day!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just another reason to use object databases:

       role Person { has qw/age height weight serial_number/ }
       class Man with Person { has 'length' }
       class Woman with Person { has 'size' }
       class ... # whatever else people can be

       # assume index on "does Person" set
       my $bob = $db->get_person('Bob'); # isa Man
       my $harry = $db->get_person('Harry'); # isa Man
       my $sally = $db->get_person('Sally'); # isa Woman

       # i think there was a movie about this
       txn_do {
          my $m = Marriage->new( people => [$harry, $sally] );
          $harry->add_marriage( $m ); # in real life, there is a trigger on $m->add_person that does this
          $sally->add_marriage( $m );
          $db->store_marriage( $m ); # harry and sally are stored too
       };

       # didn't work out.
       $m->annul( on => DateTime->now );
       $db->store( $m );

       $harry->is_married; # false
       $harry->has_been_married; # true

       $m2 = Marriage->new( people => [$bob, $harry] );
       ...

       $harry->is_married; # returns $m2

       my $tom = $db->get_person('Tom');
       $m2->add_person( $tom ); # "three way"

       ...

Anyway, object graphs make modeling all the possibilities pretty easy; with the right indexes (on people and marriages) it's fast, with the right data structures it's lossless (annul pushes the marriage onto a history for that person), and with the right triggers (adding a person to a marriage adds a marriage to the person) the data stays consistent.

<comment><USER13> As I reread this, I hoped someone would try to take this out of the relational paradigm. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Originally posted to HN when he wrote it shortly after the CA Prop 8 vote.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=371987>

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow, lots of non-database comments (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Design your systems flexibly, with a reasonable lack of assumptions. If society moves past your system, fix it.

I have one name. _Very_ few online forms have ever allowed me to leave first or last blank. I generally try to get away with first-blank, last-filled in, and then surrender as appropriate.

What's worse, I think, is online groups where only one person can be known by a particular name. Stupid. How you call yourself should be unrelated to how the database needs to identify you uniquely.

</comment><comment><USER16> Another reason to oppose gay marriage: the stable straight marriage problem is solvable, and there is a fairly simple algorithm to solve it. It heavily uses the fact that preferences form a bipartite graph.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem>

In general, the stable roommate/gay marriage problem does not always have a solution.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_roommates_problem>

<comment><USER17> "This is different from the stable marriage problem in that the stable roommates problem does not require that a set is broken up into male and female subsets. Any person can prefer anyone in the same set."

You know that not all gay people prefer all other gay people? If a gay man prefers a gay woman, we call them straight.

<comment><USER18> I call them bisexual, anyway.

<comment><USER19> You'd be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another case for NoSQL databases. (Actually I have no clue how to solve this but, I felt like no HN database discussion would be complete without it.)

<comment><USER13> Actually, I'd _love_ to read a roundup of non-RDBM ways to address this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's the stupidest rationalization I've ever heard for why we should continue to deny basic equality to a significant portion of the population.

<comment><USER22> Reread the article.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Asian or African News Sources? - <AUTHOR>

Thanks to all for a great 2011 with a lot of opportunity to learn together on Hacker News. One of the best things about HN is how international the community is here--Americans like me may make up the plurality of users, but there are users from all over the world. I have a question for all of you who know news sources from outside the "inner circle" of traditionally English-speaking countries: what news sources do you recommend (in the English language, for this question) published in places where many readers use other languages? A while ago on Hacker News there was a discussion about whether a story from India came from a reliable source, and there was a subthread about which newspapers in India are most objective and do the best job of checking facts. Similarly, there is a vigorous English-language press in Pakistan, in several ASEAN countries, and in a variety of countries in Africa. I'd like to hear from knowledgeable readers how the different sources from different countries compare as reliable sources of news.<p>For finding (and commenting on) new stories submitted to Hacker News, what are news sources with good reporting on science and technology developments (always interesting topics here) and what are news sources that accurately report economic trends or business stories of interest to hackers, start-up founders, or investors? What sources are especially good for helping Americans and other people who live in English-speaking countries see the world beyond inner circle of English-speaking countries? <comment><USER2> I can't really speak to the 'accurately' part of the request, but 2011 was the year I added aljazeera to my news sources, due to its coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings.</comment>


Ask HN: Website Rejected from Amazon Affiliates – Bad Customer Service - <AUTHOR> Hi Guys
I am hoping that someone else can help as the Amazon Customer Service for this has been absolutely bloody shocking.
They emailed me shortly after my application and told me that my website could not be viewed.
> Unfortunately, I couldn't view your website
I checked the DNS settings and the website to see if something was the matter but all was working. I asked them to elaborate. Then they replied:
> Your website doesn't appear to meet the conditions of our Operating Agreement, that's why our system blocks it and we are unable to review your site, I invite you to read the operating agreement of the problem in order to fix your site, following strictly the policy: https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/help/operating/agreement .
I emailed them back and said I needed more info, I told them what I did to check and from my point of view the site was working..
They emailed me back and said that the site was sending people to Google and then sending people to their site.
> the browser transfers us to Google results. The links for these results lead to our Amazon Central system. We tried with two different browsers.
I replied and stated that I could not see any links to google from my website. The links to their website were being generated by their own PHP SDK.
They replied with my website was not listed in google.
> when we try to search the site on Google, the site doesn't appear.
I replied and told them that I had no control over what was going on with:
> We are not responsible that we cannot find your website in the Google search. In order to become an Associate, you must have at least one of the following Internet pages: your own website, YouTube channel, verified Twitter account, Instagram profile blah blah
I feel like this is going around in circles and I am at my wits end.
Any ideas anyone? <comment><USER2> Probably a stupid suggestion but ask some of your friends if your website is reachable, it's probably fine for you because you're the developer. But it looks like there's some issue you're not aware of.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Cozumel. Firstly, great name - I have visited the isle or Cozumel many times.

In response to your question, I tried it on work computers and also my phone - it worked there.</comment></comment>


Assist threads - <AUTHOR> http://arrdem.com/2015/10/10/assist_threads/ <comment><USER2> This can be done now with hyper-theads. It is discussed in Ulrich Drepper's excellent 'What every programmer should know about memory' in section 6.3.4.

[http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/cpumemory.pdf](http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/cpumemory.pdf)

To be clear I am not declaring 'been done before, not interested' I like this blog post and if your software is cpu bound then you are almost certain memory access bound. So there is a lot of value in finding better ways to speed up access.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an excellent area to look for optimizations, but my instinct is that a "pre-runner" approach is going to be of very limited use. If it's 1:1 and the problem is bound by memory latency, the pre-runner is going to go no faster than the working thread. If it's N:1, why not simplify the architecture by doing the computation in the pre-runner?

I think the only case it would make sense is with a heterogenous architecture where you have unlimited small cores available, but in this case there may be better solutions. There's nothing wrong with spreading this work across multiple cores, but in most cases every core will have underutilized memory operation ports. What we need are compilers (and languages) that are smart enough to make effective use of these.

I think this is much better solved by small batch processing and more effective use of software prefetch. Instead of having each core handling one "request" at a time, batch them so that it's handling about 5 at a time (which happens to be half the per core limit of outstanding memory accesses). As a batch, issue all the lookups (with prefetch or directly to registers), then as a batch process the now in-cache results of the previous requests. Magic --- by keeping the request queue full, you've increased your throughput 5x[+] at the cost of a small additional static latency while you build your batches!

[+] This would be theoretical for a memory-latency-bound pointer-chasing scenario. There are caveats once you get away from this to the real world, but 2x-4x is achievable if you can parallelize your latencies.

<comment><USER2> Modern CPUs do exactly this right now. If you are using a powerful x86 (not an old atom), it will process your software out of order. Both your compiler and the CPU itself are aggressively trying to execute as many LOADs as possible before work can't continue.

Or were you describing something more than that?

<comment><USER3> I'm arguing that modern superscalar out-of-order hardware supports lots of parallelism, but that modern compilers (and software practices) leave a lot of performance on the table. The key to overcoming latency is concurrency, and current software rarely manages to reach its potential. This makes it look like hardware isn't getting faster, but really it's just not getting faster at running software targeted at earlier in-order CPU's.

Consider performing a series of simplified hash table lookups based a list of strings. You hash the first string, use the prefix of the hash as an array offset to look up another pointer, use the pointer to access a variable length array, and then check whether you have a matching element. Then you hash the second string, and repeat. Third, fourth, etc.

To achieve high performance, you need to overlap the lookups, so that the latencies are shared rather than sequential. But I don't know of any compilers (although I'm only familiar with GCC, Intel, and Clang) smart enough to do so. The hardware tries to get out ahead, but will almost always experience a branch prediction error before it can start working on the next iteration. And if it does manage, it will usually get at most a single iteration ahead.

By contrast, if you were to do 8 hashes in parallel (often just as fast with AVX2), and then issue 8 loads, then chase those 8 pointers in parallel, you've increased your throughput almost 8x. Little's Law is the low-hanging fruit, and you don't need to figure out how to do cycle accurate synchronization between cores.

I realize I probably sound like a quack. Here's a more formal paper describing some similar approaches with a Cuckoo Hash: [http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~orestis/sigmod15.pdf](http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~orestis/sigmod15.pdf)

<comment><USER2> I'm glad I commented on your comment. You certainly were describing much more that out-of-order execution. Good food for thought :)

<comment><USER3> Just came across a good paper that discusses these issues: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.05053v1](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.05053v1)

The approach it from a different angle, but come to similar conclusions:

 _Our conclusion is contrary to our expectations and to previous findings and goes against conventional wisdom, which states that accesses to RAM are slow, and should be minimized. A more accurate statement, that accounts for our findings, is that accesses to RAM have high latency and this latency needs to be mitigated._

 _..._

 _Our results show that, in a processor that has speculative execution, one can obtain many of the benefits of runahead even on processors that do not specifically implement it. While this may not be news to hardware experts, to the best of our knowledge, we are unaware of any algorithms (or even implementations) that deliberately make use of it._

I would suggest this is a very fruitful direction to pursue.

<comment><USER2> Great paper, I am building a red-black tree at the moment (well, rebuilding one I wrote earlier), so I will try test out some of the techniques described here and see if I can get any speed out of it.

If I get any clear results, I'll ping you back here. Cheers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fix Windows 10 Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://modzero.github.io/fix-windows-privacy/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry but this is crap.

Any amount of service toggling and hosts file stuffing will not suffice. It just screams ignorance. As a software developer you should understand that plugging holes in a black box is a futile effort. All these tools are doing is giving a false sense of privacy, that the next update will undo by flipping a switch or installing a new service.

If you think the OS is violating your privacy, stop using it or remove it from the Internet. Or both. It's the only way.

Edited to add: If you actually like Windows (I do), just switch to the Enterprise Edition and dial Telemetry down to "Security". Here is an explanation of what little is then shared, and how to even further minimize your footprint: [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/itpro/windows/manage/con...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/itpro/windows/manage/configure-windows-telemetry-in-your- organization#security-level)

Edit to address the availability of the Enterprise Edition: If you are not able to get it via your $JOB, a valid key from MSDN surplus shouldn't be more than $50 if you look around. Of course you'd then be bending the EULA in your favor, but hey, since Microsoft is spying on everyone against their will I think it is fair game, right?

<comment><USER3> The reason why people will continue using a OS that they dislike and distrust, is the same reason why people don't switch to an Free and open source OS. Too much software is _exclusively_ on windows, and that forces the user onto that sticky platform regardless of user preference.

Its the same reason why people who dislike and tries to block advertisement don't simply stop consuming contents that contain advertisement. They don't want to turn into hermits that live on a mountain away from the web, TV, mail, email, radio, billboards, milk cartons, the sky, and practically everywhere where a company can stick a advertisement on something. It is an imperfect solution to an imperfect world.

<comment><USER4> > The reason why people will continue using a OS that they dislike and > distrust...Too much software is exclusively on windows...

Is there any room in your opinion for people who love Windows and think it's better than any other OS that is currently available? Because that's why I stick with it, despite having some very minor issues...

Also, the reason that I don't switch to a Free and open source OS for my desktop is because they all suck. They're slower and clunkier than Windows and they don't have the features that I want.

All of my Windows issues were solved by simply toggling features via Settings and Group Policy though. I think there is one setting that you need the Enterprise version to toggle and that is Telemetry. However, you can disable that service manually too - [http://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-10-telemetry/](http://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-10-telemetry/) Of course disabling Telemetry causes you to lose Cortana, the Windows Store and any use of your Microsoft Account - but I don't use any of that crap anyway and anyone who does want to use that stuff wouldn't care about the basic Telemetry data that gets collected, which is detailed here - [https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-10-feedback- diag...](https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-10-feedback-diagnostics- and-privacy)

<comment><USER5> Slower...?

I really don't understand how something that can run on less than a Pi can feel slower on consumer hardware than something that requires beefier specs.

For example, I _never_ have to wait for my file manager to open. Not half a second.

Secondly, though Microsoft details the telemetry, its encrypted before the user can see it. You have to trust a company, that have a habit of bending over backwards for the US's clandestine organisations. It can't be verified.

<comment><USER4> I'm judging by the speed of the apps that run on top of the OS not the OS itself. Desktop apps specifically.

For example, all of the browsers run slower and are klunkier on Linux.

I'm with you on the telemetry. I just disabled it via the registry though. That option works on all editions of Windows unless I'm mistaken... which I very well may be since I did not go to very far lengths to verify that my machine is not sending back anything. However, I am not worried about US clandestine operations because there's nothing I can do about them anyway. They are into everything around you, not just Windows.

In my opinion the greatest threat is not spying on you. The thing you should be worried about the most is psychological warfare. They are not supposed to be running psychological operations on US soil, but it's so obvious that nobody follows that rule. TV, movies, news...all of them are used to program people. Honestly, there's nothing you can do about that either unless you are seriously rich and very well-informed.

<comment><USER5> Sorry you've found everything slower!

Spying leads to manipulation, true. But my fear is based on _not_ living in the US. And disabling regkeys doesn't stop 5gb of telemetry going to MS a day. Which I find just a tad excessive.

<comment><USER4> Well I have a very nice router that shows me all of the traffic on my network and I certainly do not see 5 GB of data going to Microsoft on any day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All of this "help" for "fixing" Windows 10 privacy issues seems to be based on the "don't worry, I know best" method rather than actual facts explaining the effect each of the items being disabled.

I like using Cortana and Windows Store apps. I like being able to provide bug reports when something hangs.

I don't like the idea of any data going to the mothership that doesn't have an obvious effect on my day to day computing. I'm especially leery of anything that requires (arbitrarily defined) personal information.

I also don't have time to research every one of these registry keys or policies...soooo...thanks for doing some of the work!

<comment><USER7> I am actually quite happy that someone else than me is trying new drugs before they are widely used as a treatment. I have mixed feelings about Microsoft using consumers as beta testers.

<comment><USER8> Most other companies are doing it. Software now is seen as road construction. Always under way and never done.

<comment><USER7> Yeah but Microsoft should have catch the start menu hang plaguing windows 10 recently before it goes into production.

And I am not sure that "everyone else does it" is a good reason. Everyone else does nagging. Apple nags again and again for its icloud, apple pay, apple music, etc. I get some nagging for using instagram all over my facebook feed. Microsofts nags me for using edge, onedrive, etc.

But "the others do it too" doesn't make a good product.

<comment><USER8> They should absolutely fix it. But they just fall back to the "everyone is doing it, so why not us" attitude. I've seen companies include phone-home features after win10 rolled out theirs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is not something new. There are a lot of tools avaiable on GtiHub which are far better than this tool. Infact, the first tool I used was Nummer's DWS [1] (stil the best one out there).

[1] [https://github.com/Nummer/Destroy- Windows-10-Spying/](https://github.com/Nummer/Destroy-Windows-10-Spying/)

[2] [https://github.com/WindowsLies/BlockWindows](https://github.com/WindowsLies/BlockWindows)

[3] [https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat- Windows-10](https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10)

[4] [https://github.com/dfkt/win10-unfuck](https://github.com/dfkt/win10-unfuck)

<comment><USER10> If I were to run just one of those tools, I'd pick the original article. That's because his plain English description is far better than the others. He starts off with "What & Why?" and explains what problem he's solving; the others jump in with words like "remove all spyware modules".

Even for very technical people, unless we're willing to analyze the source code, a good clear description (and reviews) is how we're going to decide which product to try.

<comment><USER11> Author of [3] here, you are right, I do skip the what & why, on purpose. I think there a far better places to learn about the whole spyware / telemetry and privacy topic, even better than the original article. [3] is made for admins which already know what they want (and why) to help them kickstart their own setup scripts. They are advised to read the scripts themselves instead of an inaccurate explanation.

I do not intend to sell you the project. (Sell in the sense of talking you into using it. Either it's what you are looking for or you need something different. And I will not waste your valuable time if you need something different.)

[3]: [https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat- Windows-10](https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "What is normality with Apple since long and apparently has been accepted by OSX users..."

As far as I know, OS X asks for permission for diagnostic data collection on first boot and can be turned off anytime. Unlike Windows, on OS X the data collected is not stored encrypted and can be inspected. They are not equivalent.

<comment><USER13> Seriously. People just irrationally hate on Apple no matter how far they'll go to trumpet user privacy from the rooftops. There is tons of objective evidence of Windows spying, yet no sources for this claim about macs. SMH.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's surprising and sad how much drama people are willing to put up with rather than switch to GNU/Linux. (edit: some) People are willing to get unlicensed copies, exposing themselves to legal consequences and malware, rather than use a free (as in freedom and price) operating system.

<comment><USER15> I tried many times to use Ubuntu as my main machine but I always go back to Windows. Why? more than 4 times when I run a system Upgrade it fails and I end up with a broken system.

The other thing that holds me back is the UI. Hundreds of Themes available but I always see them as "cartoonish" themes that are not well though of.

<comment><USER16> Windows brakes on updates also[0]. It's all about knowing the system well enough to fix it when it does.

[0] Heck, Windows breaks on reboots! Sometimes when I reboot, it either forgets my bluetooth or my wireless. And by forgets, I mean it doesn't think the hardware even exists. Multiple machines, multiple vendors, so it's not just one odd computer.

<comment> ctrl-j Well, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal.

Rough count, I've worked with 30+ different windows machines over the last few decades. I have never seen the problem you are describing. I'm not saying you're not having it, I'm just saying it's not necessarily a common event. Maybe you live/work somewhere with a lot of EM interference?

<comment><USER16> No, not just my machines either. Work machines across the country out in the field have issues with Windows forgetting hardware[0] (network, wifi, bluetooth).

I think people just get used to Windows' issues and don't recall how many times they have to deal with them.

[0] At least once per week out of several hundred machines.

<comment> ctrl-j > I think people just get used to Windows' issues and don't recall how many > times they have to deal with them.

I can recall a lot of issues that I've had with windows. I can tell you with certainty that I've never had a device go missing from the device manager.

I've had printers have trouble being discovered after they are unplugged. I've had driver updates cause hardware to stop working. I've even had windows updates completely mess up my windows installation.

But I've never had the issue you are describing.

> [0] At least once per week out of several hundred machines.

You're saying you have a greater than 1% occurrence rate per year? Google doesn't show the issue in the first three pages for me with the query "Windows forgets network hardware." Have you opened a Microsoft support ticket? I mean, if you're losing device drivers every week, that's man hours your burning! I would want to get that fixed ASAP!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> not to be glib but the best way to fix windows 10 privacy issues is to stop using windows 10 and switch to linux, there are many user friendly, mature distros out right now and they are only getting better: ubuntu, linux mint, arch, manjaro, openSUSE, centOS, etc. as well as up and comer new distros like elementary

<comment><USER18> Please write the tutorial to run all windows games (at the same performance level) on linux and we're talking.

<comment><USER19> Dual-boot ;)

<comment><USER20> That doesn't solve the privacy problem, then.

<comment><USER21> If all you're doing on the OS is playing games there's not much privacy to violate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It doesn't really matter if off-switches exist, the problem is that the features are there to begin with.

In any piece of code, a switch is a point of added complexity. For ANY such toggle:

\- The switch might not be saved correctly.

\- There can be a regression where the switch stops working in the future.

\- The switch, despite being "saved" correctly and displayed by a reassuring checkbox in a GUI panel, might not actually be CONSULTED in all the places it needs to be consulted (resulting in default-on, default-off or "whatever the developer of that component felt like" in various components across the system).

\- There can be a regression in any one of the components consulting the switch in the future, leading to an inconsistent combination of things that may or may not check for this setting over time.

When they give over 100 options, I assume 50 of them don't work and that they have no real incentive to make sure the other 50 keep working.

About the only thing you can trust is a single on/off switch for the _whole thing_ , while simultaneously checking a bunch of low-level things (regularly blocking unwanted hosts, logging network activity, etc.).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Fix Windows 10 Privacy can be used via a GUI or the commandline. Right now it implements about 130 rules, which keep Windows 10 in check, regarding data protection.

And: OneDrive Cloud users or users of others of the above mentioned features should refrain from using this tool at this time, because the functionality of these services will be limited or disabled after running it.

<comment><USER23> Reading through the article, it seems like I remember Windows 10 exposing all of these settings to the end user.

<comment><USER24> "Do you not want to disable spy feature X? Yes means no and no means yes. YES/NO"

The wording on these options is deliberately misleading and there are way too many of them in different places. Microsoft know full well that everyone would just click "NO" when asked whether to activate all these telemetry tools in simple language.

<comment><USER23> I recall the experience as straight forward. I'm curious about examples of misleading setting descriptions.

<comment><USER24> It starts with the 'customize' button being almost illegibly small, hidden and not even looking like a button, compared to the 'use express settings' one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I couldn't imagine having to fight paid software to not invade privacy like that some time ago. Things have gotten out of hand, it's a sad time. How did it come to this?

<comment><USER26> It's been like this for ages, it's like that stain in the ceiling you never noticed before.

Oh, and if you start digging you'll get even more angry. Things you trust without thinking twice (not really but you get the idea) is also compromised or doesn't have a practical alternative: hardware, TPM, certificates, your smartphone hardware and software, ∞

(I'm no expert, I just like to complain about it)

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I think those "fanatics" were right all along. Ignorance is bliss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Side note: The Author has invented a BSD 2-Clause license, making it a 2+1 non-BSD license, by adding: NON-MILITARY-USAGE CLAUSE Redistribution and use in source and binary form for military use and military research is not permitted. Infringement of these clauses may result in publishing the source code of the utilizing applications and libraries to the public. As this software is developed, tested and reviewed by _international_ volunteers, this clause shall not be refused due to the matter of _national_ security concerns.

<comment><USER28> This is disappointing, because some of us do work as contractors, or a civilian employees for military agencies. This is the same issue with Mosh (which uses a patented library with a restriction on military use).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Microsoft officially ended OEM sales of Windows 7 with new Skylake hardware on Oct 31, but there are still some WIndows 7 OEM devices left in retail channels. Some effort is still needed to remove telemetry updates from Windows 7, but you get the benefit of compatibility with existing apps and very few global ongoing changes to your work environment. If you buy a new Skylake device now with Windows 7, you will receive security updates through 2019.

<comment><USER30> Recently (just within the last couple of days), I've been thinking about setting up a Windows 7 Enterprise VM for occasional use. Am I correct in understanding that this telemetry crap is going on in Windows 7 also!? I don't really keep up-to-date on it (I use only OS X and Linux on the desktop) but I was under the impression that only Windows 8 and Windows 10 were affected by this telemetry ("spying", IMO) issue?

<comment><USER29> Telemetry was aadded to Windows 7 around Aug 2015, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10110155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10110155). With a bit of effort, most of the update KBs can be identified and manually removed. It's still a pain though, because there are many sites with conflicting claims about which updates can be removed safely. I also found at least one update that reinstalls itself after removal.

Since then, Microsoft has moved to monthly updates which combine security fixes + functional changes. If you want only security fixes, you need to disable automatic updates and download a separate security-only monthly rollup.

It's a shame, but we're approaching the point where we will need to whitelist all outbound traffic using a firewall that is external to the operating system. Anything that isn't whitelisted should be blocked, logged and audited. Someone should start a VPN service that blocks Microsoft, Google and Apple telemetry. If we had regulators, telemetry could be forced to use stable domain names to enable network filtering, and telemetry traffic would be unbundled from application traffic.

<comment><USER30> Thank you.

I thought maybe I wouldn't have to worry about the telemetry (read: "spying") too much if I stuck with Windows 7 Enterprise (although it wouldn't be on a domain), but apparently that's not entirely true.

I have media that has SP1 slipstreamed and saw that there was a "comprehensive"(?) update that Microsoft put out, reducing the need to downloads hundreds of updates. I'd have to double-check the date on it but I think it was recent enough to include some of the updates you mentioned.

I suppose I had gotten my hopes up that I could just install a volume licensed copy of Windows 7 Enterprise and "be okay". I should have known better. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It doesn't need to be an installer, it would be great to have a standalone executable version too.

<comment><USER31> Frankly it could just be a folder with a bunch of *.reg files in it and a ReadMe explaining what each one does...

<comment><USER7> or a .cmd file with some comments

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How does this compare to ShutUp10, which I've been using for months? [https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10](https://www.oo- software.com/en/shutup10)

</comment><comment><USER33> How much bandwidth does does all the "Telemetry" take?

<comment><USER34> That depends. Usually very little (single KB/s or less), but W10 is able to produce (write to disk) over 1GB/day of logs/traces/dumps that sits there and waits to be requested by the mothership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yet another "helper" that diminishes computer user's computing experience for the sake of supposed privacy, then just sets completely arbitrary policies that have nothing to do with transmitting information back to Microsoft.

This program will mess up most Windows 10 installations. In ways that may take you months or even years to ultimately notice.

Let's look at some of these rules:

\- "[Disable] Let websites provide locally relevant content by accessing my language list." Meaning websites cannot provide a translated version that you'll want (e.g. if you visit a Chinese website, they may not provide an English translation since you aren't sending the language list).

\- "[Disable] Let apps access/control my camera/location/contacts/microphone/etc." Breaks all apps that use the custom permissions (e.g. Skype). With it enabled they would still prompt you for per- app permission (camera, location, contacts, etc), with it disabled they're treated like you don't have a camera/microphone/etc at all... But only for modern apps, Win32 can still access the camera/contacts/etc. Effectively you're just breaking all modern apps on Win10.

\- Turn back on outdated insecure Bitlocker encryption, turn on incompatible Bitlocker modes, and turn on Bitlocker modes that only exist in higher versions (e.g. enterprise edition). Uhh, k? Why are they dicking around with Bitlocker policies?

\- Encrypt the page file (Even on Bitlocker enabled systems?).

\- Disable auto-complete, password manager, and other useful browser functionality in Edge & IE. Also clear browser history upon exit (i.e. break browser history).

\- Actually disable OneDrive via GPO (i.e. don't just limit it, kill it).

\- Break automatic web proxy configuration (may kick certain people offline depending on network setup).

\- Disables SshBroker (SSH Sever) because, reasons..?

Just go look in the source code. This is amature hour. Someone's just gone through GPO, set a bunch of stuff without understanding what it did, noted down the corresponding registry changes and built this wrapper around it. But they never understood the GPO policies to begin with! Disabling the IPv6 helper may also kick people offline (even if it is very niche, what does that have to do with "privacy," what do 80% of these changes have to do with "privacy?").

I wish this nonsense didn't get upvoted on HN.</comment>


Ask HN: Basic Sites for Slow Internet in Kiribati - <AUTHOR> Merry Christmas from Christmas Island! The connection speed here on Kiritimati is 270 kbps. People here are excited about the Southern Cross NEXT cable coming in 2022, and have no historical objection to it on their land. I'm also hopeful for the new jobs it will bring (anyone want a non-US fast server with a direct link to Los Angeles?).
Everyone here is using YouTube and Facebook, much like in Fiji last week. A lot are using apps (Messenger Lite). People didn't know about https://mbasic.facebook.com. Thank you admins for having a basic site - Hacker News loads very fast.
What other websites/RSS feeds/etc do you recommend that I use and recommend to others on connection speeds this slow? Is there anything else you'd like to know about usage patterns? <comment><USER2> I'm curious about what YouTube is like at 270 kbps.

Some basic text sites:

[https://text.npr.org/](https://text.npr.org/)

[http://lite.cnn.io/en](http://lite.cnn.io/en)

Previous Hacker news discussions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17787816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17787816)</comment>


A Billionaire's Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-12/eddie-lampert-rode-the-worst-trade-of-his-life-all-the-way-down <comment><USER2> One of the most amazing "secret" benefits at Sears is their "Shop Your Way" loyalty program with Uber. Basically since last fall, every Uber Ride or Uber Eats purchase gives you $2-$4 cash back to use at Sears/Kmart online no matter the cost if you linked your accounts. Given my average Uber Pool is around $5, I've basically been getting 40% off all my Uber Pools for almost a year.

It will be missed!

<comment><USER3> In my experience you never actually get your food with Uber eats. I use uber frequently, but Uber eats is crap.

<comment><USER4> If you're having a service or technical issue, try a customer service team before being negative on the internet.

<comment><USER3> I have, their customer service also sucks. I really do like 99 percent of the Uber drivers. But Uber eats is a crappy service, Uber as a company simply has consistently shitty customer service.

They need to get their act together of they have any intention of competitors with GrubHub and the other twenty food delivery services.

<comment><USER5> Their customer service sucks big time. If I order 4 meals and only 3 arrive how do you not fix that immediately? Can't call anyone so you put a ticket in that sits for 24 hours.

Screw their line item refunds too. If I have to drive somewhere because someone is left out of the meal there was no point in ordering at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > most famously when he persuaded four men who kidnapped him in January 2003 > to let him go after holding him for 30 hours, blindfolded and handcuffed, in > a motel bathroom.

Wow, that's pretty badass. It is sad as lot's of people on HN have no idea the monster Sears once was. I still remember as a kid ordering a remote control fire truck from a Sears catalog. It had lights, sirens, full latter control, and even air brak sound effects as it stopped.

I worked at my local hometown Sears after high school selling computers and the original iMac (should have loaded up on Apple stock) as fast as iMac's were selling (Oops).

Let's not forgot Sears employees a great number of people still, and unfortunately they are soon going to be out of a job.

RIP Sears, Roebuck and Company the retail empire of yesterday!

</comment><comment><USER7> Theodore Houser, a former CEO of Sears wrote a book, "Big Business and Human Values".

The book is really worth reading because the contrast between Houser and Lambert (and most all CEOs now) is striking. I think just the title of his book demonstrates how different capitalism is now in comparison to Houser's day.

"Human Values" is not something we hear CEOs or financial talking heads speak of much anymore. (Has Jim Cramer ever used that phrase?)

I will point out that Arthur Martinez did help bring Sears back to a customer centric business model in the mid-90s but he missed the boat when the internet came into the mix. Sears was perfectly positioned to become what Amazon is now and they did almost nothing to move on it.

Hard to imagine anyone rising up the corporate ranks like Houser did these days. I can't think of a single example that compares to it.

I think it would be interesting to review Sears fall from the top from that perspective because I suspect we'd probably see their decline began when they stopped promoting CEOs from within their own ranks. That changed the focus from their customers to their investors, and that's why they're where they are today.

<comment><USER8> Jim Cramer was self-admittedly very left-leaning while he was editor of the Crimson in college. His current philosophy is that whatever increases commercial activity is good - so he does comment on company values in terms of how it affects the company's brand and success.

<comment><USER3> Jim Cramer is also an idiot. To quote Jon Stewart "if you follow Jim Cramers advice you end up with a million dollars if you start with 100 million dollars"

<comment><USER9> Jon Stewart is incorrect, but Cramer's picks make money but do not outperform index funds, so they have too high of opportunity cost (not to mention the time spent watching the show.) Some reading: [https://www.cxoadvisory.com/4811/individual-gurus/cramer- off...](https://www.cxoadvisory.com/4811/individual-gurus/cramer-offers-you- his-protection/)

Cramer himself is not an idiot regardless of the quality of his stock picks. He's a successful entertainer, like Jon Stewart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So many of the assets that Sears was known for, their tools, appliance brands, etc. are all siphoned off into Eddie Lampert's hedge funds.

<comment><USER11> It's almost as though he is "a great vampire squid ... relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

</comment></comment><comment> village-idiot I still cannot believe that Lampert's actions here are legal, or that the board didn't fire him for the obvious conflict of interest.

</comment><comment><USER12> This whole saga with Eddie Lambert is a great example of how the rich fail upward.

<comment><USER13> Interesting.. can you elaborate?

<comment><USER14> He's the CEO of a failing company, but in it failing, he still makes a ton of money because his hedge fund is in a position to make gains from the company failing.

<comment><USER15> That would explain why my local Sears location seems to have suffered a perpetual tornado-strike ... empty shelves and product strewn everywhere. Every time I go in. Nothing interesting is ever in stock. How that place is still open amazes me...

<comment><USER4> They save a ton of money on labor. It's easy for sales to cover salaries if you have no employees to pay.

<comment><USER15> That's the weird thing, staffing wasn't too bad. There were people around most of the sales posts. Good luck finding someone in the aisles though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm reminded of Buffett's saying:

>When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

It's been quite a saga.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone have numbers around how much Lampert personally put in and how much he personally will get out of Sears?

What are we expecting returns to be here after all the financial engineering and various fees from investors?

</comment><comment><USER18> How is it a fiasco? He wanted to gut the place and get the real estate.

He gutted the place and got the real estate.

It's a heist, not a fiasco

<comment><USER19> Maybe he intended it to be a heist, but it surely ended up being a costly fiasco. His fund is in the tank, and his personal fortune most certainly took a huge hit.

<comment><USER20> its not super clear who is making and losing money in this saga

<comment><USER21> Somehow both for Lampert

<comment><USER22> I suspect Lampert the Sears CEO is losing money, Lampert the hedge fund manager is making it via a slo-mo takeover of Sears assets from other Sears shareholders.

<comment><USER23> I would like to believe that someone is checking that he doesn't short his own stock ;)

<comment><USER24> Who's going to get caught when you can just split the profits with a trusted friend?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hubris and an unshakable belief in Ayn Rand...

[http://evonomics.com/the-ceo-of-sears-jon-haidt/](http://evonomics.com/the- ceo-of-sears-jon-haidt/)

<comment><USER26> Rand's legacy fits how she died: penniless and dependent on the institutions she viewed as failures of the human spirit. What a misguided wreak. Too bad she was influential, because much of the idiots stinking up the planet are her ideological children.

<comment><USER12> Objectivism really is a vacant and pretty incoherent "philosophy." It's no surprise she presented in in the form of tedious novels with wooden characters rather than engaging with actual philosphers.

I think its popularity is due to the fact that it tells people what they want to hear, and they can think of themselves as John Galt-esque ubermenschen.

<comment><USER27> > they can think of themselves as John Galt-esque ubermenschen.

Of all the heroes we could encourage people to have, is John Galt really so awful? He's described as bright, hard-working, self-reliant, but also collaborative and supportive of the work of those around him. He's driven and entrepreneurial, but not anti-social. He doesn't come across as anti- government so much as desiring government that isn't kleptocratic or set on regulatory capture. So... is any of that so awful?

There's a spectrum here... those who praise Rand and Objectivism might do so with a bit too much fervor. But,I'm skeptical toward those who turn up their nose with disgust.

<comment><USER28> The fundamental problem with Rand's ideology is her cartoonish categorization of everyone that isn't Galt-esque or an enthusiastic, hypercompetent support person as evil looters/parasites. Iirc, Galt is basically trying to collapse society for everyone but the former.

When you realize that you can't just write off people because they didn't turn out to be brilliant entrepreneurs or perky worker bees, and that the workings of government and justice are more complicated than Rand would allow, Atlas Shrugged does become pretty repugnant. Granted, she was reacting to her experiences with communism, so I don't totally blame her for going all the way to the other extreme.

But insofar as someone wants to invent great things and do well from them, I don't take issue with that.

<comment><USER29> Ayn Rand's characters and storytelling is crappy. The correct response when someone asks, "Who is John Galt?" is always "WHO THE #$%^&* CARES?!" That notwithstanding, Rand understood that one can moralize without limitation in our culture as long as one does it in narrative form, and she used her platform to the extreme.

The message and moral I took from her stories was essentially pro-human, where the archetypal good is that independent man who creates according to their own taste, without any overlords, and without the approval of others. The greater any effort is collectivized, the greater the sin.

Rand's is a hyper-optimistic view of the individual - it feels like an atheist's attempt to replace God with Man and then posit him as the highest virtue. And in the introduction to The Fountainhead, I believe Rand even said her philosophy was a form of worship of Man. It's foolish because life is much too brutal for man to ever truly ascend that way. In any case, her brand of optimism is so rare, and that sells.

It's so interesting to me that your critique went to group politics and identity, though. Rand was consistently negative about groups and big government cronyism. She treated her archetypes as equally noble whether they were breaking rocks in a quarry or engineering some new miracle metal. Do you view the world through such a group identity lens that you couldn't see that in her writing? It's absolutely plain.

The evil archetypes in the Randian universe are any nullifying spirit, destroyer, or parasite. Remember, these are archetypes, no-one in the real world is so black-and-white. It's not a bad characterization of evil, and has parallels in religion and literature.

<comment><USER28> > It's so interesting to me that your critique went to group politics and > identity, though. Rand was consistently negative about groups and big > government cronyism. She treated her archetypes as equally noble whether > they were breaking rocks in a quarry or engineering some new miracle metal. > Do you view the world through such a group identity lens that you couldn't > see that in her writing? It's absolutely plain.

I'm not really sure what you're talking about. I do have thoughts on group and identity politics, but I certainly wasn't referencing them in my post. Not consciously or in any way that is obvious to me, at least.

Re: her archetypes being treated as "equally noble", I didn't suggest they weren't? Although she certainly presents a hierarchy of value that depends on what a given character is doing / capable of. Rearden is without question the lesser man in Rand's and Dagny Taggart's eyes, compared to Galt.

<comment><USER29> It was two things you said which gave me some insight into your worldview:

> Galt is basically trying to collapse society for everyone but the former.

There is an interesting feature of the Christian bible where God starts out walking/talking directly with Man, and as the stories progress, God grows more and more distant. Eventually, God can only communicate with mankind via prophets and Jesus. I think the point of this storytelling device was to indicate the increasing sin divide between humanity and God. God, being incompatible with sin, simply could not approach us even though He wanted to.

I believe Rand uses this same 'disgusted separation' device in Atlas Shrugged to remove her heroes further and further away from the fallen world.

That you took Galt's exodus and luring of the most productive people from society as an offensive move to destabilize that society struck me immediately as a "class struggle" thought. You had formed Rand's productive archetypes as some kind of oppressive elite class, or some such.

I _wish_ there was some gray in Rand's writing and thoughts to allow for that. In her philosophy, voluntary denial of one's productive capacity to others could never be considered terrorism.

I clearly see targeted terrorism in Galt's luring of key people out of society, regardless of when and why, because we all need one another, period. But Rand thought Galt was saving those people from an already too-far-gone, collapsing world, there to help rebuild after the old world finally bottomed out.

> When you realize that you can't just write off people because they didn't > turn out to be brilliant entrepreneurs or perky worker bees

This felt to me like another oppressor/victim thought you had where the oppressor might be the employed and the victim might be the indigent or jobless. Life is more complicated than that, so those characterizations are only sometimes true (and perhaps not even mostly true in my personal, subjective experience.) Reducing the world down to too generic terms risks missing the truth of things, giving one false rationale for all kinds of mischief.

You make a good point about gradients in Riordan vs Galt. It's been a couple of years since I read AS, but I recall Riordan's "sin" was that he loved the work too much and gave in to the government cronies rather than just shrugging them off. Ugh, that book was a hot mess...

<comment><USER29> > I wish there was some gray in Rand's writing and thoughts to allow for that. > In her philosophy, voluntary denial of one's productive capacity to others > could never be considered terrorism.

I said that, forgetting there was terrorism (hero blows up a building) in The Fountainhead. AS is definitely a more pure statement of Rand's philosophy, but I think she rationalized away too much in every case to cleanly make her point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> _He saw about $240 million worth of stock that he personally purchased evaporate as the shares tumbled. Another $287 million that he received in compensation has all but disappeared._

... so he made $40 million?

<comment><USER31> How do you get -240 - 287 = 40?</comment></comment>


Coronavirus lockdown ignites an old Italian debate. It's about pasta, of course - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1811768/coronavirus-lockdown-ignites-an-old-italian-debate-its-about-pasta-of-course/ <comment><USER2> Two sentences about the virus, then connection how people buy lots of pasta, everything else is about the history of pasta it seems. I can't see how anything ignites a debate.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the archive link to get around the paywall:

[http://archive.vn/NW0Vy](http://archive.vn/NW0Vy)</comment>


Happiness as Your Business Model - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/missrogue/happiness-as-your-business-model-414463 <comment><USER2> Love this presentation, feels almost like a work of art, reinforces business concepts with such simplicity.

At least I am part of the way there in building something based on Happiness as a business model, HappyWishes, My facebook application. (<http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5595659604>)

It is always nice to hear echoing thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic show! I came away feeling happy just reading it.</comment>


The Big Lie of the Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dareobasanjo/the-big-lie-of-the-google-anti-diversity-manifesto-a-penis-makes-you-better-at-javascript-55ec8f894b78 <comment><USER2> [http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/males-and-females- differ-...](http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/males-and-females-differ-in- specific-brain-structures) Literally five minutes dudes--addressed to the author's dismissal of the comments. There are significant structural differences in the functional areas of the brain due to gender, on average. Some of these areas are involved in spatial processing and long term/short term memory processing. Certainly there appears to be higher density in the areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with executive function in women-- anecdotally n={about 5}, I've seen way better female project managers than men, but that could simply be the industries I'm associated with. There's definitely structural differences that should have a huge impact on focus and attention as well as visual and spatial processing between men and women. It seems that a majority of the male based differences are in the midbrain where memory, emotion, reinforcement learning, etc are processed. How this translates to computer programming skill probably hasn't been explored because postmodernism and reasons, but I'm sure a few weeks with women and men coders in fMRI machines would show activation differences or not rather quickly. You would think that people would be eager to identify these differences or to prove that it doesn't exist, but in my experience, everything that a scientist might be interested in that runs counter to the progressive narrative usually gets dismissed for shaky reasons. Peer review? My first experience with peer review was with a world renowned physicist who was a friend of our dean's who was in town and taught a class and did research with us physics undergrads. I've seen just how non-rational and political the peer review system is which is why I avoided academia. Oh, and I have worked in cognitive research for several years so I kinda have some experience with this stuff. Do I care? No. I've had fantastic women and men engineers as peers and reports and crappy women and men engineers as well. What I do care about is shoehorning people who may not have ability or passion into a career just to satisfy SJW virtue signalers. Honestly, weren't we all signed on to judging by the content of character and not outward appearance?

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for writing this piece. This issue needs more substantiated discussion.

The video at the end though, of which the writer says: "If words don't convince you, watch this video. It changed my life and my views on this topic forever." makes him come across as very naive. It's an ad. A politically correct ad. Everybody knows ads cannot be trusted at all. We don't even know if the girls are real.

If ads like this one change your views, you're not an engineer.</comment>


Static Program Analysis [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cs.au.dk/~amoeller/spa/spa.pdf <comment><USER2> I haven't read it (it's on my list), but I'll pass along a recommendation by someone well suited to know: [https://twitter.com/johnregehr/status/1037098838752784384](https://twitter.com/johnregehr/status/1037098838752784384)

<comment><USER3> This is the same document the original post links to :)

<comment><USER2> Yes, I should've said that. I meant "this isn't some random link posted to HN, it is well regarded."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone knowledgeable summarize the current state of Program Analysis state-of-the-art?

Do we know how to do context sensitive / intra procedural analysis and scale it to millions of lines of code ?

<comment><USER5> I co-created one of the commercial program analysis tools used by many large customers on millions line of code. I have been out of this for a while but track what is going on every now and then. Our analysis was context-sensitive and inter-procedural (this is probably what you meant to ask about as intra- procedural analysis means "within one function/procedure" and I cannot imagine having a function with millions line of code).

First of all: real bugs and security vulnerabilities can can be found and were found with these kind of tools. But state explosion is real. To deal with enormous computational complexity of sound program analysis, corners must be cut. Program analysis is usually defined as sound (i.e. all warnings you get are about real bugs, i.e. no false positives) or safe (if there is a bug, it is found, i.e. no false negatives). You can make analysis sound but it will not be safe, or you can make analysis safe, but it will not be sound. Both extremes are useless, because in the former case you end up with very few warnings (if any) that are definitely real, but you miss a lot of interesting cases, in the latter case you are inundated with a huge number of warnings the vast majority of which are false positives.

All commercial tools and most open source tools that I know are neither safe nor sound but try to hit the sweet spot to be useful.

I believe most progress in program analysis is done by migrating to safer languages (Rust) and runtimes (Java, Go) over time, where different aspects are eliminated or mitigated, like memory leaks with GC or deadlocks with co- routines in Go or message passing in Erlang. Proliferation of IDEs and ubuquity of lightweight static analysis tool (lint-like) during the development also helps.

<comment><USER4> Many thanks for the reply. Yes i meant inter-procedural.

For a POC project, which (open source) library/framework would be a good starting point today?

We are focused on some deep analysis of some very specific pointer/array analysis. We can target either C/C++/Java. We have varying experience with compilers/JITs/builders.

(I have worked with WALA/Java 5yrs ago..)

<comment><USER5> These are very different languages. For C++ there are not too many open source b/c C++ is tough. There is cppcheck, but if you want to do something very custom, starting with clang may be an option. For java FindBugs/SpotBugs/HuntBugs was the most prominent some years ago. Also check: [https://github.com/mre/awesome-static- analysis](https://github.com/mre/awesome-static-analysis)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Djangy is shutting down - <AUTHOR> http://blog.djangy.com/2011/02/27/final-djangy-newsletter/

<comment><USER2> Did you guys even try to sell it, even for a firesale price? I ask because recently Xmarks went through a similar decision - didn't want to continue running the service, and announced they were shutting it down.

After an outcry from the user community, and a quick survey to see how many would be willing to pay for it, they offered it for sale instead, and it was bought, gained a premium component, and continued existence.

I hate seeing promising work like this just eradicated from existence without even considering whether there might be another organization out there willing to take it on and continue developing it.

And surely there's some value in the name, market presence, email list of beta hopefuls, and current work/infrastructure. Despite listing other services that provide cloud hosting for Django projects in your announcement, Djangy is the only one I'm personally aware of. Surely there's value in that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shimon from DjangoZoom here. I wish the best for Dave and Sameer in their new directions. For anyone looking for Django hosting, we're working every day to build the best Django deployment and hosting solution, and will have big news real soon now. Although we've been quiet lately, it's because we've been heads-down developing the latest version of DjangoZoom, and we expect to send out more invites in a couple of weeks.

It's odd to see a competitor give up. We think this is a very promising space and are personally very excited about it. We're in it for the long haul, and welcome any suggestions or questions.

</comment><comment><USER4> Aw, that's too bad. Can we at least get a quick overview of your stack and how everything worked now? I'm always curious to hear how people design these setups.

<comment><AUTHOR> That can probably be arranged.

<comment><USER5> considered just pushing all your code to GH ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If there's already a built platform and some traction, wouldn't it be better to sell it to someone who would/could continue to grow the service (assuming that someone exists)?

"Flipping the site" might sound cheap, but I imagine the users would be better of with a service that may have a future instead of the one that doesn't (and at least a longer data retention period for their data), and the founders might somewhat recoup their time/money/energy expenses.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a beta Djangy user, nor have I been using other similar services yet, but I am a Django user and find those really interesting).

<comment><USER7> I'd sell the platform and business. There's an increasingly large number of services aimed in this area, so folding into another, being bought by one, or something like that seems better then a total shutdown.

Ep.io, Gondor.io, DjangoZoom, the list is growing daily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is one month really adequate advance notice to tell people on a platform that their data is going to be permanently deleted? I think I'd be upset that I had so little advance notice — what if I was about to go on vacation? I understand they had a "zero lock in" architecture, so maybe it isn't that big of a deal. And yet, what can you really compare this to? (Etherpad? They gave users a bit more time.) Thoughts?

<comment><USER9> Well they we're in private beta...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would you please opensource the code?

It will help the python/django community a lot.

</comment><comment><USER11> There is still a large gap in this market. Looking just at Python, none of the 5-6 cloud hosting providers have even launched into public beta.

I've signed up for at least four, and finally got into one -- just to find that it was like pulling teeth compared to Heroku.

<comment><USER12> app engine is surely in public beta if not production? although agreed that it's a stripped down version of core python.

i imagine it's difficult for companies like these to compete with the likes of a google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What exactly went wrong? I might be being dumb, but from what I can gleam from the blog post, the main reason you shut down is that you didn't want to pursue the business, despite opportunity that was there. Was that the case? How can we learn from this?

<comment><USER14> I'm interested to know this as well. With the success of Heroku for Rails deployment, there's definitely room for a parallel player in the Django market — and probably the opportunity to make a lot of money, too.

<comment><USER15> The post states, in a pretty clear manner, that nothing really went wrong, they'd just rather do something else than run with this for years and deal with the investment headaches it'd inevitably produce.

I think what they just did was awesome. Do what makes you happy, striving for money is utterly pointless in the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are there any plans to open source any of the code?

<comment><USER17> That would be interesting. Particularly, I'm curious about the python sandboxing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The post mentions they didn't want to make a multiple year commitment by taking investment dollars, but I have to imagine there are others out there willing to take the risk. Sell the business. Cloud computing is hot everywhere, but doubly so with VCs. Heruku's huge exit only helped fuel this fire and should make something like Djangy attractive to look at.

</comment><comment><USER19> What's confusing to me is their 'thanks' to investors.

I'm not clear that one _can_ raise money from investors, and then wholesale just decide to leave as a team. At the very least just to fulfill fiduciary duty, the company should be listed as 'for sale' and go on the block, even if just on ebay.

Some guesses:

a) Acqui-hire in the works with money for early stage investors

b) serious, serious, serious team problems / investor problem, so toxic that they can't be solved in the current structure

c) 'investors' is like mom and dad, so no big deal.

Anyway, best of luck to the team, and I'm hoping for something big and exciting next!

<comment><AUTHOR> We never took money -- just met with quite a few different investors over the course of a few months. They gave us invaluable advice.

<comment><USER19> Got it. Hope you have some good things in your future!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Quite respectable that they knew what they wanted and made the tough decision. Nothing wrong with striving greatly and failing, as long as you're in the arena.

<http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html>

<comment><USER21> That's the thing though: they didn't fail, they quit.

<comment><USER20> Fair point. I feel like it's somewhat similar here. If djangy was [becoming] a success the team may have made a different decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> i quit following djangy once i quit using django. i had been signed up for an invite for what seems like years, though. too bad i never got one. :(

edit: feel free to continue down voting, but this was not meant at sarcasm. i genuinely looked forward to using it. i still seek a high quality python app cloud deployment solution. although, now i'd ideally like it to not be tied to any particular frameworks.

<comment><USER23> Past a certain point, I doubt they gave out any more invites via signups. I think everyone I knew who had an account got invited by an existing beta user.

Kind of a shame they shut down - they had a good name to help distinguish themselves from competing offerings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I believe it was a perfectly logical and most importantly fair decision to make. Rather than having taken the investment and not really being passionate about the work. However the alternate course of action that they may take are: 1) Sell it to someone who would like to buy it and is passionate about it for the right reasons (not money) 2)Open Source the codebase 3) Simply write a post about the architecture

What I mean to simply say is "hand over your legacy". Don't just leave it to be forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER25> i loved djangy - it was as simple to use as heroku was. too bad you are shutting down :(

<comment><USER26> I completely agree. I wrote and deployed a project to Djangy on Saturday, in large part to try out my beta account. It was a simple app, but deploying to Djangy's cloud was trivial. (I think I spent more time figuring out GoDaddy's domain control panel than setting up Djangy.) It's sad to see such a promising service go away.

I wish you guys the best in whatever it is you choose to pursue next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well, that explains my unanswered support emails! Sorry to hear this guys, Djangy was a good service and I'm sad to see it go.

</comment><comment><USER28> Dave, too bad it didn't work out. I really wanted to try it! Good luck, I look forward to your next product.

</comment><comment><USER29> The really nice thing about deploying with a git push is that you always have a backup.

I'll miss djangy. it quickly became my go-to for a quick django prototype. hopefully zoom/gondor take off.

</comment><comment><USER30> Huh, that looks like it would've been cool. Sad that I didn't hear about it until it shuts down.

</comment><comment><USER31> Note to self: don't use a product these devs create. Or, don't ever depend on 'beta' programs for anything.

I get that you have to do your own thing for your life, but what a way to let people down. You had two options for supporting existing users, then you say, "No, we're just shutting it down."

Could have given it away, even.

<comment><USER32> > _don't ever depend on 'beta' programs for anything_

Surely you already knew this principle.

<comment><USER33> I agree with this in principle, but in our Web 2.0 world, "beta" has become almost meaningless half the time. Gmail has only come out of beta last year, hasn't it?

<comment><USER34> Perpetual public beta is a problem, but there's a huge difference between a public beta from a huge corporation and a small private beta from a startup. I think it's pretty easy to judge based on company size, service momentum, number of competitors, etc. if a service is likely to last.</comment></comment></comment></comment>