Apple's Low Latency HLS differs from the community-developed solution - <AUTHOR> https://mux.com/blog/the-community-gave-us-low-latency-live-streaming-then-apple-took-it-away/?a=b <comment><USER2> I've been recently tasked to find a live video solution for an industrial device. In my case, I want to display video from a camera to a local LCD and simultaneously allow it to be live streamed over the web. By web, I mean that the most likely location of the client is on the same LAN, but this is not guaranteed. I figured this has to be a completely solved problem by now.

Anyway, so I've tried many of the recent protocols. I was really hoping that HLS would work, because it's so simple. For example, I can use the gstreamer "hlssink" to generate the files, and basically deliver video with a one-line shell script and any webserver. But the 7 second best case latency is unacceptable. I really want 1 second or better.

I looked at MPEG-DASH: it seems equivalent to HLS. Why would I use it when all of the MPEG-DASH examples fall back on HLS?

I looked at WebRTC, but I'm too nervous the build a product around the few sample client/server code bases I can find on github. They are not fully baked, and then I'm really depending on a non-standard solution.

I looked a Flash: but of course it's not desirable to use it these days.

So the solution that works for me happens to be the oldest: Motion JPEG, where I have to give up on using a good video compression (MPEG). I get below 1 second latency, and no coding (use ffmpeg + ffserver). Luckily Internet Explorer is dead enough that I don't have to worry about its non-support of it. It works everywhere else, including Microsoft-Edge. MJPEG is not great in that the latency can be higher if the client can't keep up. I think WebRTC is likely better here.

Conclusion: here we are in 2019 and the best low latency video delivery protocol is from the mid-90s. It's nuts. I'm open to suggestions in case I've missed anything.

<comment> squeaky-clean I have no idea what the underlying tech is, but Steam Link can do extremely low latency on the same network and very low latency over the internet. It can also stream non-game applications, though I imagine automating steam is a nightmare.

<comment><USER3> And Steam uses RTMP for upload like anyone she would do. Just like OBS and other tools.

Sadly browsers do not come RTMP enabled.

<comment> squeaky-clean Thanks for the info. I did a quick search before commenting but couldn't find out what the backend was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The major criticism the author has is the requirement for HTTP2 push for ALHLS, which many CDNs don't support. While I agree it is a valid criticism, I am glad Apple is forcing the CDNs to support push. Without the 800lb gorilla pushing everyone to upgrade, we would still be using pens on touchscreens.

I am not a fan when Apple obsoletes features that people love and use. But I always support when Apple forces everyone to upgrade because friction from existing providers is what keeps things slow and old. Once Apple requires X, everyone just sighs and updates their code, and 12mo later, we are better off for it.

That being said, I agree with author's disappointment that Apple mostly ignored LHLS instead of building upon it. Chunked encoding does sound better.

<comment><USER5> There are good reasons CDNs don't support http/2 push. It's hard to load balance and hard to operate, since it requires a persistent TCP connection with the client for the entire duration of the stream, which can be hours. It has consequences that echo almost everywhere in the architecture.

<comment><USER4> I agree. But now there is motivation for the CDNs to solve these problems in a clever way so that users can get better performance and lower latency.

<comment><USER5> They are likely to "solve" them by charging more. Serving low-latency HLS to Apple devices will cost more, continuing consolidation into the few tech giants big enough to pay what it takes to get inside the iOS walls. Hardly progress.

<comment><USER6> I believe Cloudflare supports it and it's free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's ironic that "live streaming" has gotten worse since it was invented in the 1930's. Up until TV went digital, the delay on analog TV was just the speed of light transmission time plus a little bit for broadcasting equipment. It was so small it was imperceptible. If you had a portable TV at the live event, you just heard a slight echo.

Now the best we can do is over 1 second, and closer to 3 seconds for something like satellite TV, where everything is in control of the broadcaster from end to end.

I suppose this is the tradeoff we make for using more generalized equipment that has much broader worldwide access than analog TV.

<comment><USER8> Google seems to think they can implement video gaming over IP. And they probably can, my ping to them is only 9ms, less than a frame.

There is just a broad lack of interest in reducing latency past a certain point unless there is a business reason for it. People don't notice 1 second of latency.

<comment><USER9> > Google seems to think they can implement video gaming over IP.

No the didn't. Early attempts at streaming videogame were unplayable even with a server in another room or a direct DC connection.

And they want it to work over an average internet connection in America.

No, the definitely did not solve the issue

<comment><USER10> And yet, I was able to game competitively from my apartment in Brisbane, using a server in Sydney, using Parsec; usually coming in at less than a frame of latency, sometimes just over a frame. This was two years ago, too. And Australia isn't known for it's amazing internet connections (though mine was better than most).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This title is unnecessarily inflammatory with intent to gain our sympathy to the position presented.

The technical writeup of this post are spot-on, though. I prefer less drama with my bias but I'm very glad I read this.

<comment><USER12> Thanks, that's exactly how I felt — that there's a _really good_ and useful article in here, but clouded by assumptions and an attempt to create controversy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like as far back as 2014 research has pointed to some big gains using HTTP/2 push: [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2578277](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2578277)

</comment><comment><USER14> > A Partial Segment must be completely available for download at the full > speed of the link to the client at the time it is added to the playlist.

So with this, you can not have a manifest file that point to next future chunks (e.g. for up to next 24 hours of live stream) and delay proccessing of http request until the chunk became available. Like HTTP Long Polling used for chunks.

> On the surface, LHLS maintains the traditional HLS paradigm, polling for > playlist updates, and then grabbing segments, however, because of the > ability to stream a segment back as it's being encoded, you actually don't > have to reload the playlist that often, while in ALHLS, you'll still be > polling the playlist many times a second looking for new parts to be > available, even if they're then pushed to you off the back of the manifest > request.

Which could be avoided if Apple didn't enforced the availibilty of download "at the full speed" once it appeared in the manifest. (long polling of chunks)

LHLS doesn't have this issue as the manifest file itself is streamed with chunked responses hence it makes sense. (streaming manifest file)

> For the time being at least, you'll have to get your application (and thus > your low latency implementation) tested by Apple to get into the app store, > signaled by using a special identifier in your application's manifest.

And this makes me to think about the implementability of the 1st and 2nd point on ALHLS. Maybe the current "implementation" is compatible but not with the specs itself.

<comment><USER15> To your last point,

> Maybe the current "implementation" is compatible but not with the specs > itself.

It's perhaps worth noting that this is a "preliminary specification" and an extension of HLS. HLS itself is an IETF standard (well - an "Internet Draft"): [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live- streaming...](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-23)

<comment> TD-Linux It is not an IETF standard - those have RFC numbers. It is just a personal draft - any IETF member can upload one of those, regardless if it's useful. I'm happy that it has a specification - but it's just a one-man project, not something that has gone through the IETF standards process.

<comment><USER16> A couple of years ago it finally was published as an RFC: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8216](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8216)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apple low latency test stream I set up if useful (uses CDN) [https://alhls- switchmedia.global.ssl.fastly.net/lhls/master....](https://alhls- switchmedia.global.ssl.fastly.net/lhls/master.m3u8)

</comment><comment><USER18> Any chance some of this is related to patent avoidance?

</comment><comment><USER19> > measuring the performance of a blocking playlist fetch along with a segment > load doesn't give you an accurate measurement, and you can't use your > playlist download performance as a proxy.

I don't see why this would be the case. If you measure from the time the last bit of the playlist is returned to the last bit of the video segment is pushed to the client, you'll be able to estimate bandwidth accurately.

<comment><USER15> > from the time the last bit of the playlist is returned to the last bit of > the video segment

Based on my loose understanding of HTTP/2 server push and ALHLS, the sequence of events will be:

1\. Client requests playlist for future media segment/"Part"

2\. Server blocks (does not send response) until the segment is available

3\. Server sends the playlist ("manifest") as the response body along with a push promise for the segment itself

The push then begins with the segment.

The push stream can presumably occur concurrently with the response body stream. So I don't think you can wait until every bit of the playlist comes in. Likewise, you can't use the playlist bits itself to gauge bandwidth because the server imposes latency by blocking.

<comment><USER19> It's still over the same TCP connection, so there is no way for the push to beat the playlist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As usual, Apple pushes NIH, instead of supporting DASH which is the common standard. And they also tried to sabotage adoption of the later by refusing to support MSE on the client side that's needed for handling DASH.

<comment><USER21> > As usual, Apple pushes NIH, instead of supporting DASH which is the common > standard.

I mean... HLS predates DASH. It would've been hard for them to support a common standard which didn't even exist at the time. Initial release of HLS was in 2009[0], work started on DASH in 2010[1].

I'd also disagree with the characterization of DASH as "the commmon standard" \- it's certainly a legitimate standard, but I feel like support for HLS is more ubiquitous than support for DASH (please correct me if I'm wrong).

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP)

<comment><USER20> Predating doesn't stop them from supporting something else once it becomes common. They don't do it since they want to impose HLS on others. And their refusal to support MSE[1] on iOS stinks even more clearly as an anti- competitive method to do it.

[1]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions)

<comment><USER22> Why didn't MPEG just adopt HLS?

I think you have the NIH cause-effect the wrong way around.

<comment><USER20> Apple isn't exactly the champion of free standards. Is HLS free for others to adopt? DASH is. The same messed up story happened with touch events for JavaScript. What Apple were pushing wasn't free.

<comment><USER23> > DASH is free to adopt

Citation needed :)

From [https://www.mpegla.com/programs/dash/](https://www.mpegla.com/programs/dash/)

> The royalty for DASH Clients, which is now payable from January 1, 2017 > forward, remains US $0.05 per unit after the first 100,000 units each year.

<comment><USER24> And that sounds like reason enough for Apple to ignore the DASH spec. Case closed IMHO.

<comment><USER20> Apple should be out of video business, if they are scared of patent trolls.

But the problem is the reverse here. Apple have patents on HLS itself which are not free, so it's not suitable for general adoption.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is the new Airport Express an iOS device? - <AUTHOR> http://infincia.com/blog/airport-express-ios-device

<comment><USER2> Whatever it is, it's worse.

The new one requires a power cable. The point of the express was that it's entirely self contained. You could throw it in your bag and take it with you on trips. Now you can't.

So it's just a crippled airport extreme.

<comment><USER3> Well, it does have AirPlay.

<comment><USER4> Original AirPort Express also does.

Although I wish they could retain the old design, the extra LAN port and no more artificial 5 clients limit is more than welcome.

<comment><USER5> 10 clients limit, apparently. Thanks for mentioning this - I have had my AE for a long time and never knew.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is pure uninformed speculation. Does the A5 even have PCIe or Ethernet?

<comment><AUTHOR> All of the things the Airport Express needs to do are already being done by the Apple TV, so the capability is there.

The only sticking point is perhaps that 2nd ethernet port, the Apple TV with the A4/A5 seem to use a separate ethernet chip made by SMSC connected to the processor via USB. As far as I know they don't support ethernet internally but they may not need to either.

<comment><USER7> That would explain why the Ethernet ports are still 100mbit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just nmap it? The OS fingerprinting will tell you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I got the device this morning, this is what Nmap says:

        Device type: general purpose
        Running: Apple NetBSD 4.X
        OS details: Apple AirPort Extreme WAP or Time Capsule NAS device (NetBSD 4.99)

I was not aware the Extreme and Time Capsule actually run NetBSD (interesting as well), I assumed they were running the same basic platform the older Express does:

        Running: Wind River VxWorks
        OS details: VxWorks

So there's a change here for sure, it's obvious this new device is more capable but may still be running NetBSD. The Verge ran a story[1] a while back suggesting they were porting Darwin to run on these things for the purpose of replacing NetBsd, which is interesting.

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782694/theres-no-secret- pr...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782694/theres-no-secret-project-to- port-os-x-to-arm-because-it-already-exists)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This post is simple blind conjecture based on the shape of the case. Apple might have moved to iOS or might not. The Darwin core does support network routing, but they wouldn't be able to market it as an iOS device without paying a hefty chunk of cash to Cisco (who own the IOS trademark, licenced by Apple).

I really dislike reading articles like this on HN. It's upvoted because it looks like something new at first glance but has absolutely no data points and is idle speculation. When someone confirms whether or not it _is_ an iOS device I'm interested, but until then, forget it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a curious observation, the shape of the case is the tipoff but it makes sense if for no other reason than for the one listed in the article, Apple wants to be using ARM+iOS wherever possible.

Apple TV isn't marketed as an iOS device either, they go out of their way to call the firmware "Apple TV Software Updates". At one point the version numbers on the firmware were even different than the iOS version they were built on, it only matters internally.

An Apple TV with one more ethernet port would not only look almost identical, but it would be almost functionally identical as well to the point that an Apple TV could do the Aiport's job with the right software loaded.

They're also the same price already, we know they can sell this sort of hardware for $99 if they want to, and it would probably be even cheaper as it wouldn't need as much RAM, as much flash, a GPU or an HDMI port at all, nor would it need the infrared remote receiver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> He guesses it is iOS because the case is the same shape?

<comment><USER11> Well it's a pretty good guess IMO. It's so small that it makes sense.

<comment><USER10> That is inane. How does the size matter to the OS?

I have a portable router that is radically smaller and lighter than an appletv. It doesn't run iOS...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Why would Apple build an iOS router?

Sounds like a walking trademark lawsuit. IOS being a networking operating system and all.

<comment><USER11> Sorry, I don't understand. Apple own the iOS trademark

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure how they've worked it out, but Cisco has a registered trademark for IOS, which is their operating system for network equipment: [http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6537/products_ios_sub_...](http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6537/products_ios_sub_category_home.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Outgoing FCC Chair Warns Against Overturning Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/01/20/technology/20reuters-usa-fcc-internet.html?src=busln&_r=0 <comment><AUTHOR> Wheeler tweeted a farewell Friday morning: "Upon my FCC departure, I would like to sign off with 3 words of wisdom that guided me well: competition, competition, competition."</comment>


Craig Newmark's New Hit List - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/love-hate/craig-newmarks-new-hit-list-624341007d72 <comment><USER2> Craig does amazing work to support veterans. As someone who helps to run a non-profit aimed at getting more veterans to start tech companies he has been a supreme advocate and has put his money where his mouth is.

</comment><comment><USER3> He could start by not suing people using Craigslist to build cool apps:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc).

It's ironic that he created a business making classified ads "free" but then sued when someone tried to do it to him...

<comment><USER4> I think you overestimate his involvement in the day-to-day operations of the company he started.

Actually, I know you do. :-)

Craig's a good guy.

<comment><USER5> legit personal reference - if you don't know who Jeremy is already. ;)</comment></comment></comment>


React – A quick cheatsheet for beginners, with examples - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@BenSassiAladin/react-a-quick-cheatsheet-for-beginners-with-examples-b2b04a5ca571 <comment><USER2> Does Medium not have a code block formatting feature? The code in this article is made difficult to read due to the lack of indentation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not that I know of, dev.to is much better for technical writing. I'll post this article on there as well.</comment></comment>


Nice app, horrible source code: Telegram for Android - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/src/main/java/org/telegram/ui/ChatActivity.java <comment><USER2> Did a quick search to find out the background - it turns out that the author had almost no prior Android development experience, and in 2013 it won the first place in the Android app challenged conducted by Telegram.

[https://vk.com/wall-55882680_36](https://vk.com/wall-55882680_36) [in Russian]</comment>


Foursquare Still Matters Says CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.techieinsider.com/news/13229 <comment><USER2> It does matter but it needs to innovate. They are just sitting still with their features and it gets real boring being the mayor of the same place everyday.</comment>


EASTL officially open sourced - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/electronicarts/EASTL <comment><USER2> Whoa, that's actually really exciting to have a full, official release.</comment>


How Apple and Google are censoring the mobile Web - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2017/08/21/how-apple-and-google-are-censoring-the-mobile-web/ <comment><USER2> An app store is not the mobile web.

When asked about pornograpy Steve Jobs said they wouldn't let it in the Apple store. If you wanted it you were free to find it with Safari.

Gab can make a version that works in a browser (if they haven't already).</comment>


Insufficient data - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insufficient-data.html <comment><USER3> He successfully defeats his straw man. But aside from greenpeace it's not a correct characterization.

Generally trying to pare down the size of the state, given it's own natural processes cause it to increase, would seem necessary simply to achieve homeostasis. In the last century the long term tread has been strongly on the side of increase but it can't always be or eventually the tax burden would reach unity.

The political side of this is very transparently Scottish left wing. _"... among the UK's conservatives we see an almost masochistic addiction to cuts in public spending"_ the phrase "masochistic addiction" is a current Labour talking point. The actual cuts amount to 2.2% of GDP by 2014-15 added to the the 4.1% Labour had already set.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry, could you unpack your point a bit more? I'm not even sure where he made an _argument_ in that post, let alone "defeated a straw man". It's mostly just musings.

Are you perhaps misinterpreting his post as a question of how far the _state_ can be pared down (given your second paragraph)? Because that's not the question; the issue of government size is nearly tangential and just parenthetically touched on. The question is the minimum size a society can be at our scale of sophistication. One could then speculate about how "governmenty" that society would be but that's really a separate question.

This is really an engineering question, not a political one. Since we're asking about the minimum, we're pretty much assuming that the component people have the optimal organization and the exact details of that organization don't matter to the answer much.

<comment><USER3> _"Conservative politicians in the US...

I think these ideas are mostly delusional because they rely on a fundamental misapprehension about the world around us — namely that we live in a society that can be made simple enough to comprehend.

Let's take a look at the superficial structures around us..."_

He presents a characterization, says these ideas are delusional because, then leads on to his observations. It's not unreasonable to think he was making argument.

The straw man he creates is equating anyone who wants to reduce state expenditure as wanting or believing in an over-simplified world.

That said, the characterization was insulting to anyone on the right, and about half seem to have taken it as their main takeaway and about half seem to have passed it straight by. So that might be why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Although I didn't like the slant "silly Libertarian, politics is for grownups" I like the thought he put into how the economy is shifting. One thing that should be noted is that even though 10,000 engineers might be _somehow_ involved in the creation of, say, an iPhone; proportionally 9000 of them may have only "spent" a relative fraction of a second on just the iPhone. For example, the engineers in charge of designing a common capacitor that is manufactured in the billions are not working a fully person-year on the iPhone. It's like saying that my tumblr blog needed 100k engineers and programmers to create. 2000 for the linux run server, 9000 to create web standards, 7000 to create network protocols, etc. It just gets silly - <USER2> overlaps.

<comment><USER6> It's true that they're not working full-time, but I think it's somewhat indicative of how the knowledge and supply chains are spread out. If you were to try to recreate a modern computing infrastructure on a desert island, you'd have to assemble a _lot_ of those people, from the people who know how to smelt ore, to the people who can figure out how to build capacitors, etc.

A wild card that I'm not sure has been tested is how much you could get away with recreating solely from published materials. Given some smart people with a university-library-quality set of books (and let's say a good index), how many of them and how long do you need to go from stone-age to iPhone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've learned that there are two types of people in the world: those that can extrapolate information from incomplete data,

<comment><USER8> I think this process is at the root of humor. At least, some kinds of humor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> He lost me when he mentioned dislike of big government in close proximity to wishing to simplify society without even hinting how they are connected. Or am I supposed to assume that it's impossible for complicated systems to exist without being run by the government?

<comment><USER6> The connection I drew is of people who have a strong ideological worldview that simple mechanisms would solve things, if only everyone agreed; two examples are the "free market will solve everything" right and the "going back to nature will solve everything" left.

<comment><USER10> If you think proponents of the "free market" think it's simple, you don't understand them. Or it. It's precisely because it's so complex that managing it is prone to error.

I don't actually understand why the same people (in general) will assert ecologies are extremely complex and we shouldn't meddle without being very careful to understand the effects, and at the same time think that the market is manageable from the top down without unintended consequences on the same order as the intended ones.

<comment><USER6> That's a view I can certainly buy, that intervention must be careful and is error-prone--- perhaps even so error-prone that it's rarely worth doing. In libertarian circles at least, though, I often encounter a much stronger claim. I don't hear people say things like: maybe it'd be great if we could intervene in an ideal world, but alas such interventions are error-prone so we'd better not. Instead, a much stronger claim that _no intervention is necessary_ because the unfettered free market is already at least reasonably close to ideal. This is particularly strong in Rand-influenced areas of the libertarian universe. The explanations are usually some extremely simple version of classical economics, invisible-hand, etc., leading to assertions that the free market efficiently allocates resources, rewards merit, etc.

That's the part that reminds me most of the ecologists: a belief that we're fortunate enough to live in a universe perfectly constructed such that these complex dynamical systems (economies, ecologies), if only we'd stop mucking with them, would live on in magical harmony, aligning with normative notions like "merit" and "balance" and whatnot. I tend to view them both, instead, as difficult to analyze, hugely complex systems filled with all sorts of weird attractors and unstable states, which won't necessarily result in particularly great outcomes whether left alone or not.

In short, I agree that most of the people who claim to know what will happen if you intervene in a market are naive (i.e. unintended consequences are likely), but I also think most of the people who claim to know what will happen in a free market (e.g. that it will reward merit) are also naive. And most libertarians I've met fall into the latter category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> All of them. It isn't just that it takes twenty years to train a software engineer, 30 years for a doctor or a lawyer.

It is also the tools we need (I don't even dare think about the complex physics that has to be mastered to make the microprocessors that enable me to encode bits that can be sent halfway around the world so you can see this comment), the tool required to built those tools, the food we eat (easy to make perhaps, but it needs to be brought and sold, transported, stored and finally sold to us consumers), etc.

The interconnections in this world are truly mind wrecking.

</comment><comment><USER12> How many people does it take to maintain out current level of technological civilization? Well I think the size and grandeur of a civilization depends on how abundant the resources are (mostly). An then on how efficiently we extract and use those resources. Improving efficiency is a problem of controlling a complex network of causality, which requires... I'm guessing... a even more complex network to model it. I would say "how densely connected would our civilization have to be.." A large number of people can tackle the control problem better than a small number of people, and people with telecommunications devices can tackle it even better. However, I think that our current level of technological development requires a lot of overhead, because it takes so many engineer to make all those telecommunications devices work, but the payoff is that we can educate ourselves on how to do just about anything, better than we could by hard trial and error, and the occasional face-to-face conversation.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interestingly, Edmund Burke (the founder of post-enlightenment conservatism) had a similar line of thought. The basic idea is that cultural institutions and their impacts are much more complex than we think they are, so radical changes are ill-advised.

</comment><comment><USER14> If the world were less populated it would be cheaper to automate jobs currently done with low-skilled labor. It is notoriously hard to predict the effects of a single change on an economy, there's too many moving parts.

</comment><comment><USER15> As history demonstrate the number of people is not an indicator of technology progress. Ancient china is a counter-example. The biggest enemy of technology is the idea that technology lead people to catastrophe, that is the end of progress. Many people think that we are in a fast car looking through the rear mirror so nothing good is to come.</comment>


#ngTasty - <AUTHOR> http://zizzamia.com/ng-tasty/

<comment><AUTHOR> A lightweight, flexible, and tasty collection of reusable UI components for AngularJS, like grandma used to make. For now it's implemented the table directive and range filter.</comment>


Bill Gates' new startup  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146061231899264.html#printMode

<comment><USER2> Is it fair to the founders of terrapower to call it Bill Gates' new startup?

Though he has done a great job in getting them publicity, telling there story, and opening doors, is it really is startup?</comment>


What things you learned that skyrocketed your productivity as a web developer? - <AUTHOR>

I am an iOS developer. I developed some Rails app 3 years ago (full stack). It seems that there are lot more advances has happened in last 3 years. I was never a highly productive web developer because it was something i had to do to get the job done. Now I am thinking of refreshing my skills on web development.<p>What do you think is the most productive stack for web development right now? or what tools/languages make you highly productive in web development ? <comment><USER2> It really depends on what you want to do.

And I think that's a good thing. There isn't a one-size-fits-all best/most productive stack, but I can say I have seen a trend of most of the generally, a lot of stacks that are getting used frequently focus on starting with very little and having modular bits tacked on -- some do this better than others.

Note also, that productivity is different from performance. You might be able to write an app in some language super quick, and it'll look great, but it will be slower than some other language.

Web Framework Shootout (more info than you ever need to know about speed of frameworks, most comprehensive of it's kind I think with some pretty good use cases): <http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/>

But generally, my advice (not worth much) is to envision, plan, design your product, then go find the right tech to make it happen. Especially if you're making your way back into the market, you're going to be exerting some first- time-learning energy anyway, might as well learn something that will go a long way to helping you get what you want.

Ex. If you're about to make a real-time-chat app, you should maybe probably definitely look into node, pub/sub servers like redis, and things like socket.io and html5/css3/js. You maybe should not be looking at PHP, which is not especially good at long polling/async + mysql (at least for the pub/sub bit).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here is the one skill that has helped me the most: Learning how to organize a project. Focus on learning how everything will work (design/architecture). Then move on to planning around that design. At the end of each work-session, you should plan the next one. So that when you have to sit down and work again, all you need to do is simply follow your own instructions. No need to waste time thinking about where you left off.

</comment><comment><USER4> stackoverflow.com and google.com</comment>


Thousands of blogs shut down over 'terrorist material' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10692501

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess the suspicions about it relating to National Security were right after all. In case you missed it, there was a lot of discussion about this just yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1527449>

This is interesting as well:

 _BurstNet's chief technology officer, Joe Marr, said that the FBI sent a "Voluntary Emergency Disclosure of Information" request to the firm. Sources have confirmed to the BBC that this was the case but FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the bureau does not comment on active investigations. However he did say that the FBI had not asked for any websites to be shut down. The FBI does not have the power to remove content from websites or to take them down. That can only be done with the authority of a judge._

I feel bad for the site owners - these are businesses, not just websites - they shouldn't be able to take down an entire network (and possibly someone's livelihood) over a couple of offending sites.</comment>


Is Pandora done with? Online radio seems doomed! - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2007/03/more_on_the_cop.html <comment><USER2> It's a pretty scary new model. Something tells me this is more of a negotiation tactic than a practical law.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree. The RIAA wants a bigger cut of the internet radio market and don't want to become extinct. I mean it's not going to kill the established ones who can pay it like Pandora or Last.fm. But it will really make the barriers of entry very difficult for new startups trying to take advantage of internet radio. I'd make a guess that the RIAA falls apart in the next 5 years overall all this bs.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is driving cryptocurrency value? - <AUTHOR> Maybe an unusual question for this community, but here goes. I'm interested in speculating a bit on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but my personal code of ethics would prevent me from profiting off of something primarily used for dark or illegal purposes. (Online drug markets, money laundering, etc.) I'm not sure how much of Bitcoin's value is due to this stuff vs. legitimate uses or just excitement over a potentially revolutionary new technology. Any thoughts? Thanks! <comment><USER2> A lot of people here saying crypto isn't used for anything illegal... erhm... Remember silk road boys? sure, the feds shut it down (more popped and and got shut down, I don't know personally but there's probably multiple variants on the theme out there now), but nowadays one of the big drivers is getting your wealth out of china (illegally), and are any of these guys reporting their capital gains to the irs? Shit tons of illegal shit happens with cryptos without even going into scams or hacks.

</comment><comment><USER3> The "It's used for illegal stuff." argument by and large is just meant to scare off ordinary people.

Crypto currencies actually make it easier to uncover dark or illegal transactions because crypto currency transactions are inherently traceable. After all, traceability is the key feature of any ledger, digital or not.

It's precisely because paper money isn't traceable that laws against money laundering were created in the first place.

There's a real ethical issue with speculating in crypto currencies though: Just as with gold or fiat currencies these assets don't create any value.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only ostensible difference between crypto-currencies is in their code and network strength (people and computing power).

By value cash, and namely US $100 bills, are used for more crimes than anything else in the world, ever.

Don't do anything illegal with your bitcoin and you should be fine. Don't worry about what other people do, that's an endless and naive vortex of insanity. Basically mind your own business unless someone asks you a question.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hate being that guy, but if you use any reserve currency(USD,Euro) I'd argue that its those currencies being used in active drug/illegal markets.

If I show up to a drug transaction anywhere with a hardware wallet, I think I'd get laughed out. Yet that's not the same with USD. Or in the extreme case, If I went to Libya to purchase a slave it is safe to say they take Euros.

<comment><USER6> You don't use it in individual transactions.

It's for wholesale drug operations. Usually drugs go at one time, money comes back another time. Only now instead of cash you could just use a crypto, but figuring out how to liquidate enough of it would be difficult.

<comment><USER7> Watching the Neflix doco on Escobar - one problem he had is having to hide large quantities of cash in holes around Columbia.

Not liquidating it all would be advantageous I'd think.

OTOH the DEA would love the traceability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The value is like gold. It is a limited resource. It can't be counterfeit.

The big difference is that gold is portable and much harder to destroy.</comment>


Cormac McCarthy Explains the Unconscious - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/cormac-mccarthy-explains-the-unconscious <comment><USER2> McCarthy's novel "Blood Meridian" [1] is one of my all time favorite novels and continues to be a source of inspiration. Its almost biblical in its prose and unrelating in its pace and violence. I even wrote a song based off it (shameless plug) [2]. The villain of the story, Judge Holden is up there with the Joker for me in sheer evil. I would love to see a movie adaptation of it although I doubt it will ever happen. Too bloody. Too violent. I highly recommend it if you aren't easily put off by its dark tone.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Meridian-Evening-Redness- West/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Meridian-Evening-Redness- West/dp/0679728759)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45jPip11_j8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45jPip11_j8)

<comment><USER3> I love the snippets of prose I've seen from Blood Meridian and The Road, but I am reluctant to read them, even though they're well on their way to becoming classics of the English language. My impression is that the books are saturated in darkness with very little light shining through. The violence and horror will stick in my thoughts long after I put my books down. There are certainly books and movies I regret ingesting for imagery that they've embedded in the back of my mind.

Did you get that feeling reading these books?

<comment><USER4> The way I read it, McCarthy makes it painstakingly clear that destruction is a necessary catalyst for creation. He treats violence honestly and respectfully, but he does like to write about some pretty dire scenarios (massacre of Mexicans/Indians, post-apocalyptic scavenging).

McCarthy expands on this theme slightly in a rare interview: _McCarthy likes the scientists at the Institute for a simple reason: The stuff they explore, like his writing, cuts to the bone.

"If it doesn't concern life and death," he says, "it's not interesting."_ [0]

If you're looking for lighter (but still excellent) storytelling on similar Western/survival themes I'd suggest the Border Trilogy [1] by McCarthy. My high school English teacher had us read these instead of Blood Meridian (his favorite book of all time) because they're much less violent. You won't get the full experience, though, as some of McCarthy's characters are genius because of their depravity, violence, and seemingly chaotic natures.

[0] [http://www.davidkushner.com/article/cormac-mccarthys- apocaly...](http://www.davidkushner.com/article/cormac-mccarthys-apocalypse/)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Border-Trilogy-Crossing-Everymans- Lib...](https://www.amazon.com/Border-Trilogy-Crossing-Everymans- Library/dp/0375407936)

<comment><USER5> +1 for the Border Trilogy; it's very well done, and very... engrossing, I suppose is a good way of putting it.

<comment><USER6> I'm a huge fan of CM however I found the BT and it's obsession on horses almost indecent. I would recommend BM, The Road and No Country ... in that order.

I really don't see what ppl like about the BT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Worth reading simply for the quality of McCarthy's writing. And that he can write about language and the mind without mentioning fMRI's, 'the part of the brain that ___' and 'emerging neuroscience'.

<comment><USER8> I found it wonderful that McCarthy has avoided conflating the brain with the mind. I get very frustrated trying to read through the literature on this subject (a passion of mine, was my career track before I dropped out of academia and learned how to program) and seeing the cult of the brain taking over. McCarthy is not so encumbered with materialist scientism. He is willing and able to discuss the mind in all its ethereal glory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only Cormac McCarthy novel I've read is Suttree and it's incredible. Apparently it's semi-autobiographical, and it reads like a Huckleberry Finn outcast/hobo/dark alternate reality and extremely funny and sad the entire way through. It's entirely gripping and so very well-written. I read it voraciously a few summers back after a trusted friend's recommendation.

</comment><comment><USER10> It need not be stated that McCarthy's work is some of the most powerful and well crafted fiction of the twentieth century, but this article came off as a little strange and underdone. He has a few insights, but he jumps between ideas without connecting them and doesn't provide much backing for his arguments. The conclusion too is terribly weak: McCarthy presents his central idea (that the unconscious isn't used to language so it speaks in symbols), he mentioned it to someone he respects, the listener responded favorably, case closed. Really? Its a fresh viewpoint but there seems like so much more to explore here, so many more questions raised by the conclusion than those addressed. For once his art of omission has worked against him.

<comment><USER11> > McCarthy came up with his idea (that the unconscious isn't used to language > so it speaks in symbols)

I tought this was Carl Jung's idea.

<comment><USER10> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "Why is the unconscious so loathe to speak to us? Why the images, metaphors, > pictures? Why the dreams, for that matter." [from the article]

This is true for majority of us. But for some people, unconscious doesn't even use images. E.g. Aphantasia.

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how- it-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to- be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/)

What would Cormac say about this? Say if human evolution would have picked up the "Aphantasia" gene to spread then Cormac's main question the "Kekule problem" would dissolve or won't arise.

</comment><comment><USER13> This McCarthy quote from the (linked-to) essay caught my eye:

 _How the unconscious goes about its work is not so much poorly understood as not understood at all. It is an area pretty much ignored by the artificial intelligence studies, which seem mostly devoted to analytics and to the question of whether the brain is like a computer. They have decided that it's not_

Is that true? Who has decided the brain is not like a computer? That is news to me.

<comment><USER14> I love McCarthy's work but this is nonsense. Current AI work is all about the relationship between differdntiable connectionist systems and algorithmic/symbolic computation. AI researchers are well aware of the parallels between this and subconscious/conscious human thought and things like Kahnemann's system1 vs system2 thinking. "Is the brain like a computer" is too ambiguous a question to take seriously.

His article is interesting in parts but really arrogant and not as novel or anti-mainstream as he seems to think it is. It sounds like someone who spent a long time chatting with physicists or biologists and no time reading research in artificial intelligence, at least from the last decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, I haven't read his Nautilus piece yet, but I think that I will like it. I love his fiction. And it seems quite clear that consciousness is mainly just an observer.

<comment><USER16> I don't think it's quite clear at all. What distinguishes observer from observed?

All experience is the working of consciousness. The feeling of subject-object distinction is no more real than the distinction between hot-cold sensation.

<comment><USER15> That voice in your head is the observer. It fancies being in control, but that's mostly illusion. Effectiveness depends on getting it out of the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The subconscious becomes way easier to understand once you meditate a bit on the structure of the brain and do a little reading on the split-brain condition.

The two hemispheres of the brain are connected by a neural superhighway called the _corpus callosum_. If you cut the bundle, then the hemispheres can still communicate, but the bandwidth is cut to a trickle. In this situation, the hemispheres develop divergent personalities and they can often fight over broader executive control of the organism.

With the bundle intact, the halves settle into roles, with the left brain taking the conscious aspect. The right brain forms the unconscious.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for reminding me about the corpus callosotomy. I think I've read about it at some point, and then it somehow merged with lobotomy in my mind, although it's of course almost unrelated. Do you have a recommendation for some good literature about the condition?

<comment><USER17> I'd simply google split brain and start reading case studies. That's what I did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My unconsciousness has no choice but to speak to me, given I can't visualize.

</comment><comment><USER20> >It may be that the influential persons imagine all mammals waiting for language to appear. I dont know.

>Did it meet some need? No. The other five thousand plus mammals among us do fine without it. But useful? Oh yes.

> There is no selection at work in the evolution of language because language > is not a biological system and because there is only one of them

Organisms don't 'wait' for new traits to come along. They just come along and if they are useful and benefit the organism, they propagate across the population through successful reproduction. Evolved traits propagate themselves precisely through being useful in helping the organism survive and reproduce. McCarthy doesn't seem to understand the elementary process by which natural selection functions.

>The invention of language was understood at once to be incredibly useful. Again, it seems to have spread through the species almost instantaneously.

>For while it is fairly certain that art preceded language it probably didnt precede it by much.

There is absolutely no evidence for any of this whatsoever. It's pure supposition. How can he know language propagated so fast and arose so suddenly? Some evolutionary biologists analyzing the physiology of early hominids think there is evidence of physical adaptations for language as far back as Homo Ergaster over a million years ago, but vocal language leaves no archaeological evidence. There is just no way to know how long it took to develop to modern forms and no reason to suppose that physical representation in the form of art predates spoken language.

Edit: McCormack's premise seems to be that Language did not evolve from any preceding capacity, including any preceding ability to communicate. We know that modern primates other than humans communicate in very primitive pre- linguistic ways, but McCormack specifically dismisses the idea that human language is descended from or evolved from similar capabilities in our common ancestors. This seems absurd to me on several grounds.

Our common primate ancestors did not have vocal cords or throat configurations capable of modern speech, or anything close to it. McCormack even points this out in the essay and highlights the fact that reconfiguring our throats for speech is, independent of any advantage language gives us, a serious disadvantage because it makes us more susceptible to choking. Yet then he goes on to say that language gives us no evolutionary advantage because it's 'not a biological system'. If it gives no evolutionary advantage, how does it compensate for the increased risk of choking?

Speech-like non-verbal communication must have preceded physical adaptation in order to make the adaptation advantageous, otherwise there would again have been no compensating factor for the choking risk. So early forms of language- like communication would necessarily have been non-verbal (by which I mean involving gestures sounds like those made by some other modern primates but not 'spoken'). This early communication was less efficient and advantageous than spoken communication, otherwise physical adaptations for spoken communication would not have increased fitness.

So it seems far more plausible that language-like communication originated as more complex forms of gestures and sounds our common primate ancestors already used and then evolved into a form dominated by spoken language in order to increase it's efficiency. After all, our ancestors going back millions of years had complex physical culture including manufacturing composite artefacts, creating and managing fire, processing and cooking food. All of these would need to be taught somehow. Yet McCormack's thesis is that this teaching involved communications no more sophisticated than the basic communications we see in other primates and other mammals today, until spoken language somehow burst on to the scene fully formed 100k years ago.</comment>


Imagination Technologies Debuts Raspberry Pi Competitor - <AUTHOR> http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr-developers/new-mips-creator-ci20-development-board-for-linux-and-android-debuts <comment><USER2> Liliputing is claiming the first batch of those board will be given away for free[0]. However i can not see the same information on the blog post for Imagination.

[0]: [http://liliputing.com/2014/08/imagination-giving-away- first-...](http://liliputing.com/2014/08/imagination-giving-away-first-mips- based-dev-board-free-people.html)</comment>


Interviewing as a Senior Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://blog.larrold.com/2017/04/25/interviewing-as-a-senior-engineer/ <comment><USER2> > "Some head hunters are decent – I worked a little bit with bamboo talent and > they were actually fantastic. But most still are used car salespeople trying > to sell you bad goods."

Most? I'm not sure I'd be so uncharitable, but certainly _a lot_ are. And they and their jobs are overrepresented for the same reason poor candidates are: anyone who struggles to 'sell' is going to compensate for a poor 'product' by making more noise about it. These are the recruiters who phone persistently, edit your resume and even sometimes apply for roles on your behalf, without permission.

But how do you find a good recruiter? I mean, someone patient and sensible who isn't going to go into meltdown if they can't reach me in a meeting, littering my voicemail messages.

Whilst we're on the subject: recruiters who won't take 'no' for an answer. I had an interview last year and turned down a second stage, at which point my consultant basically exploded and angrily demanded a list of reasons why, refusing to accept any I gave, and telling me I'd wasted everyone's time when I'd only agreed to interview after extensive arm-twisting anyway. I just didn't think it was an interesting job and my interview quickly confirmed that. Experiences like these make me dread recruiters.</comment>


Show HN: Check all of your bank accounts with Dinero - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mwlang/dinero <comment><AUTHOR> Tell me what you think.</comment>


Uber Faces FBI Probe Over Program Targeting Rival Lyft - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-faces-fbi-probe-overprogram-targeting-rival-lyft-1504872001 <comment><USER3> If Papa John's calls in thousands of fake pizza delivery orders to Donimos, are they doing research on response times and how many drivers their competitor has, or are they committing a crime?

<comment><USER4> That depends, did Domino's pay for each pizza in full or cancel them when they made it 90% of the way there?

<comment><USER5> They'd probably still be charged. Also dominos and papa johns and even Pizza Hut don't compete in delivery zones (unless there is so much demand for pizza that it doesn't matter). The losers are the local shops. Prices are nationwide which is where the competition is. They really just want people to order a pizza delivery.

Unless your are in New York but I guess that local pizza wins. Maybe a few downtown areas as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, good.

It's an investigation, not a definite thing. The FBI isn't charging anyone with anything, they just are saying "let's have a good look here and see if something illegal has gone on". There's lots of reasons to think they might be right, but I leave it to them to make the call.

We should want investigations into possible crimes, especially when the overall victims are consumers who will have less competition for their money.

<comment><USER7> _We should want investigations into possible crimes,..._

Of course. That said, though, I wish they'd keep this sort of thing private so that there is more chance folks are actually innocent until proven guilty instead of having public opinion labeling you as such before the trial.

<comment><USER8> That is not going to happen in the US - mugshots of suspects are public _way_ before people get their day in court. I know at least 1 European country (can't remember which) that won't allow the publication of suspects' names (or was it photographs?) until they are convicted.

<comment><USER9> There's issues with going that way though - it gives the police the power to arrest and detain people in secret and prevents anybody talking about it. Historically police forces have a bad record of abusing that kind of power.

It's also going to be pretty unenforceable in the era of social media.

<comment><USER7> The abuse of power in the US is a _much_ larger problem to be sure, and honestly that stuff has already happened [1]. And this is with the stuff supposedtly being public. Surely there are other ways that blend protecting privacy of the presumed innocent without letting up on police forces.

We can do things like keep mugshots of unconvicted people out of public view, especially on police websites and media outlets. We can quit putting folks' names on the front page when covering a story. Sure, publish arrests the cops have made with a general location, withholding people's names and addresses. We can have all cops wear body cams that may or may not be recording and release them to the public once we've blurred the person's identity.

Some of this would take changing a system. Stiff penalties to cops that break the law and are convicted. Better training. A chip sewn into uniforms (which can be laundered at the station with no need to take them home to protect the police during their personal life) to track movements. A bail system that actually looks to see if someone is a flight risk and limits on how long we can keep folks in jail. A robust public defender system (it is a right to have a lawyer, after all, even though some states make destitute folks pay for it nonetheless).

We could start public service announcements asking folks not to judge folks before they are found guilty with evidence. We could use official, licensed services to do background checks and disallow arrest records to be part of the check (probably a few exceptions for security reasons). Train police officers a bit better so they minimally can be aware of their natural biases and work against them.

I'm not saying this list is perfect nor all inclusive, but it is a start.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan- square...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan-square- chicago-police-disappeared-thousands)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This probably explains why Uber charged me $2 last time I canceled a ride with them. They need a billing paradigm that prevents them from being taken advantage of by strategies like those that they employ against their competitors.

Nevermind that the ride I canceled was 10+ minutes away, and was canceled immediately upon being booked.

Advantage: Lyft.

<comment><USER11> Hey William, the reason Uber charges a cancellation fee is to compensate the driver for driving towards you.

Without cancellation fees, drivers would have to eat the cost of whatever progress they made towards you.

While the policy varies by city, typically an UberX or UberBLACK vehicle can be cancelled for free within 2 minutes.

UberPOOL rides typically get billed cancellations immediately, because the canceling rider may have also added to the ETA of an Uber rider already in the vehicle.

Uber will occasionally waive the cancellation fee when the ETA of a POOL pickup is significantly higher than the prediction given pre-booking.

If you believe you may be eligible for a refund, you can contact Uber support. Read more here: [https://help.uber.com/h/24e75a3b-cf44-44e4-abae-8c2dce3b07a3](https://help.uber.com/h/24e75a3b-cf44-44e4-abae-8c2dce3b07a3)

<comment><USER12> > Hey William, the reason Uber charges a cancellation fee is to compensate the > driver for driving towards you.

Sorta? So one of the last times I cancelled a ride the driver was 8 minutes away which, not ideal, was fine. The problem was the driver was sitting at a restaurant. After 15 minutes passed he was _still_ 8 minutes away but occasionally his car icon would move a little here and there (but staying at the restaurant).

I cancelled and it charged me a cancellation fee. Fortunately, after talking to a few friends of mine, it seems no matter why you get the cancellation fee (your fault or not) they will immediately refund it with credits if you complain.

Pretty aggravating experience, however.

<comment><USER11> Hey Kris, I'm sorry to hear that you had a bad experience, but it sounds like you were able to get your situation resolved with the support team.

The situation you describe happens pretty rarely--Uber has done over five billion trips in seven years, and typically drivers are fairly intent on finding their rider quickly and delivering a five-star experience.

In the future, perhaps various improvements to the product can mitigate the situation you describe. For example, Uber uses accelerometer data from the driver phone to improve ride safety. [https://eng.uber.com/telematics/](https://eng.uber.com/telematics/)

If you have any thoughts on further improving the Uber experience, feel free to reach out.

<comment><USER13> Are things so bad at Uber that they've decided putting a PR guy on HN is a worthwhile investment?

<comment><USER11> I don't work at Uber anymore, but I visited the office recently and things look pretty good! :)

I just really love the company. I only left because my best-friend-in-the- whole-wide-world and I wanted to start a startup.

Although if the startup doesn't take off... I'd definitely consider going back to Uber.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/uber-is- apparent...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/uber-is-apparently- facing-a-third-federal-criminal-investigation/)

</comment><comment><USER15> At this point, it would be more newsworthy to see what Uber is _not_ being investigated for.

<comment><USER16> Making a profit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Serious question, Who gets the proceeds of an eventual settlement? It appears that Lyft was hurt or Lyft investors and uber was committing essentially fraud. But I feel like these settlements are normally used to line the pockets of the regulatory and persecutory bodies.

<comment><USER18> These are two different things...

For a criminal probe such as this, any possible fines generally go into the administration's coffers. I know many people like to believe that prosecutors may be motivated by that money, the people making decisions on prosecution (US attorneys in this case) are so far removed from the general budget of the federal government that it's an absurd idea. The amounts are also negligible in the scheme of things.

Then, there are class action lawsuits, where the settlement is usually divided among a large number of citizen that were actually harmed, and a rather big chunk goes to the lawyer.

Note that the latter is also kinda how the system is supposed to work: almost by definition, class action lawsuits are used in cases where each individual was harmed only slightly, making an individual lawsuit too much of a hassle. The lawyers take on most of the risk of the trial.

In both cases, it's more important where the money is coming from than where it's going: the preventative effects of such costs far outstrips the importance of healing the actual harm that occurred.

<comment><USER17> Im not 100% convinced authorities are not motivated by settlement funds.

In ny, the mayor used bank settlement funds to buy iPads for police. It was a significant amount of money.

[http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/490-14/mayor- de...](http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/490-14/mayor-de-blasio- commissioner-bratton-district-attorney-vance-major-initiative-to#/0)

Mortgage settlements were large and went to various administrative entities including prosecutors office.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/business/dealbook/24mortg...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/business/dealbook/24mortgagelist.html)

<comment><USER19> Even more simply, a prosecutor can point to settlement or damage amounts as a measure of their 'effectiveness' and there won't be much analysis beyond the dollar amounts involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting to compare this to the recent LinkedIn case that favored web scrapers. Similar techniques, only difference is Uber's approach likely had a material impact on Lyft's service and cost.

I think I'm okay with this trajectory of scraping being legally acceptable so long as no meaningful harm is done to the entity being scraped.

<comment><USER21> This is generally how I've thought about it, too.

Intent clearly also matters, and is easy to infer in many cases - <USER2> information looks quite a bit different than feeding a competitor's dispatch database with garbage events. Although I would love to hear a creative lawyer's story about how that was actually benign.

If you're scraping data, make sure you go out of your way to be nice to their servers. With some fragile sites, it is easier than you think to knock them over, and you really want it to appear that you're going out of your way to not cause problems. (Also, look for another role - maintaining scrapers is miserable.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there any possibly that Travis will face jail time?

</comment><comment><USER23> Paste the link in Twitter and click the first result for a non-paywall version.

<comment><USER24> Facebook version: [http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farti...](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fuber- faces-fbi-probe-overprogram-targeting-rival-lyft-1504872001)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Non-paywall link?

<comment><USER26> WSJ will show the full article if your referer header is set to twitter.com. You can do a search on Google like so: "[https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber- faces-fbi-probe-overprogra...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-faces-fbi- probe-overprogram-targeting-rival-lyft-1504872001) site:twitter.com"

[https://twitter.com/binarybits/status/906145108277559296](https://twitter.com/binarybits/status/906145108277559296)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There is definitely a fierce competition between ride hailing companies for the bigger market share in the industry. Uber has already damaged its reputation by how it does business in the past. Now the new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has more problems to solve and FBI probe on Uber is just an additional one.</comment>


Real Tales of Learning Computer Science as a High School Girl - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2012/06/real-tales-of-learning-computer-science-as-a-high-school-girl-stuyvesant/ <comment><USER2> The last response, from Ellie Abrams starts with

 _'What is that?' I asked my sophomore friend in chorus what the jumbled letters, numbers, returns, spaces, indents, and parentheses on her failed test meant. She shrugged and responded, 'It's comp sci. I can't understand it—this is all bullshit.' The only other sophomore friend I had was a boy, and he told me computer science was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. With only these two views on computer science to refer to, I entered my intro course clueless and under the impression that computer science was for boys._

This struck me as somewhat oddly constructed. I'm sure her two friends were different from each other in a great many ways, but she settled on sex as the differentiating factor. She goes on to say

 _To put it simply, the reason for [boys having a stronger CS background before taking the class] comes down to video games. Boys are expected sit in their dungeons of junk food and fiddle with their PlayStations and computers (I can't even think of a popular video game to mention)._

That doesn't make much sense to me either. Most video games don't teach anything about computer science. They may serve as a vehicle to get children interested in what computers can do, but no CS skills are required to play Halo.

More generally, parts of the responses seem forced. I get the impression that there was a fairly detailed question posed to these students with suggestions to address certain topics. For example, half the responses contain the word "humanities". I wouldn't expect most high school students to choose that word on their own. I'd expect to see more specific subjects like art, history or English. I'd really like to see the exact question they were asked.

<comment><USER3> _"That doesn't make much sense to me either. Most video games don't teach anything about computer science. They may serve as a vehicle to get children interested in what computers can do, but no CS skills are required to play Halo."_

1\. First part of the answer is simple: Boys like videogames. They play videogames. Videogames are a great vehicle for getting interested in "Hmm, I wanna make a better awesomer videogame ... wonder how I go about doing that". Curiosity takes care of the rest.

2\. It is, apparently, culturally acceptable for a boy to arse around on a computer all day, while the same does not hold true for a girl. This makes it harder for girls to learn subjects that take huge amounts of "being alone and thinking".

<comment><USER2> _"Hmm, I wanna make a better awesomer videogame ... wonder how I go about doing that". Curiosity takes care of the rest._

That's true, but it doesn't seem to me that a large percentage of programmers I know got interested in programming that way. I haven't conducted a formal survey, but that's the impression I have. It's very possible that my impression is wrong or that I'd get different results talking to a high school CS class than programmers in their 20s and 30s.

 _It is, apparently, culturally acceptable for a boy to arse around on a computer all day, while the same does not hold true for a girl._

I think that's less true now than it used to be in large part due to the increase in social uses of computers. Some of those social uses lend themselves to the sort of customization that would get people interested in coding as above. I'm thinking specifically of things like FBPurity, a browser extension that hides unwanted content on Facebook.

There's certainly an underlying issue with cultural stereotypes where boys are expected to tinker with technical/mechanical things and girls aren't. The distinction might be entirely arbitrary, as girls _are_ expected to tinker with things thought of as feminine. Few people would be surprised by a girl making alterations to her clothing.

<comment><USER4> > That's true, but it doesn't seem to me that a large percentage of > programmers I know got interested in programming that way. I haven't > conducted a formal survey, but that's the impression I have. It's very > possible that my impression is wrong or that I'd get different results > talking to a high school CS class than programmers in their 20s and 30s.

I don't know any programmers who didn't get in to programming that way.

That said, I do work at a game company, so I meet more game programmers that not, but even in my university days, all the serious students had started programming before they entered, and the initial motivation for that was games.

<comment><USER5> >> It's very possible that my impression is wrong or that I'd get different results talking to a high school CS class than programmers in their 20s and 30s.

> I don't know any programmers who didn't get in to programming that way.

My first attempt at programming was asking our TRS-80, in English, if it would make a laser sound. "Syntax error" was it's reply.

But yeah trading stories about mucking with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to get games working is par for the course when I meet tech people in their 20s and 30s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was a very interesting read, it hit home and I wish I had been given this opportunity. My own story of being 15 and showing ability for programming? 'uh, the computer room is full of boys'. Don't underestimate the power of needing to be around your own gender as a teenager, or at least, the disturbance of being around just the other gender in an elective class. I'm sure some of you had similar experiences being male. I also regret not taking shop and car repair classes for the same reason - I didn't start coding again until in my early 20s when the passion to build kicked in after graduating with an arts degree where other women were around me also building things.

</comment><comment><USER7> An interesting side note from one of the stories: "some universities with multiple colleges house [English and computer science] in different schools, making double majoring... impossible."

These universities demonstrate remarkable short-sightedness. Studying different subjects, particularly at the undergraduate level, makes people intellectually well-rounded and far more interesting. Imagine telling Leonardo that he cannot study painting and engineering at the same time.

<comment><USER8> Imagine telling the engineers that they might have to mingle with the mendicants! As an anecdote, at U of Michigan the arts college is called LS&A (Literature, Science and the Arts), but the Engineering school students referred to it as LS&Play (at least circa 2000).

<comment><USER9> At CMU, we called Humanities and Social Sciences "high school studies." In retrospect, it was kind of immature and shortsighted. Social psych was one of the most valuable classes I took, and I found I was missing the kinds of literature classes I had in high school.

<comment><USER10> I'm an alumnus of H&SS. I majored in Information Systems, which is (amusingly, I still think) in H&SS rather than the Tepper School of Business or the School of Computer Science.

Sure, we had some occasional teasing ("H and Less Stress" was another one) but I found it invaluable to go through H&SS' general studies curriculum. Everyone in H&SS studies philosophy, history, communications, economics, writing, and math (among others) in addition to their core major classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm glad to hear that they are using Scheme in introductory programs like this. MIT stopping that just depresses me. I'm not sure what universities still do, except for North Eastern.

<comment><USER12> Colleges still have trouble trying to decide if they should provide a proper Computer Science education or if they should be software engineering trade schools. This is made all the more difficult because students enroll in CS programs but almost always what they typically want and need is the SE trade school education.

<comment><USER11> A particularly aggravating problem when the college in question already have a separate software engineering major.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Accessing this on the iPad I'm totally confused about how to read the actual article - what's up with their interface?

<comment><USER14> Yeah, they are using an annoying tool called onSwipe that is supposed to deliver a delightful experience on the iPad. In reality, it delivers an aggravating experience on the iPad.

I don't know why sites still use them.

I had to switch to the desktop version, repeatedly, until it actually took, then everything worked fine.

<comment><USER15> Because they bribe the sites with ad revenue and promises to not have to develop a mobile version themselves, presumably.

Which would be ok, if the OnSwipe user experience didn't suck so much for end users. I wish they'd publish a list of sites using onswipe so I could just skip those sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice pictures with flowers in the background. Framing...

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember when I was in high school, I had a girl classmate who took AP Computer Science online to pad her resume and get into college. Somewhere along the line she starts asking for help and seeing how I was the only one who knew any programming I volunteered to help. I didn't know very much Java, just knew programming from learning Perl, but Java was easy enough to pick up.

Initially, I was excited. Hey, here's this girl taking computer science. But towards the end, I think I'm the only one who walked away really learning Java and ended up "coaching" her through all her homework, basically just telling her what to type although trying to make sure she understood the concepts each step of the way. I ended up disappointed because she only wanted to pad her resume instead of really learn computer science. Maybe it was taking the class online that didn't let her get interested in the subject, or maybe she just wanted to get the grade and get it over with.

The point is, I think we need to do a better job getting kids in general interested in computer science, not just girls, if we want more girls to go into computer science. Get rid of this misconception that it's just graybeards in a dark room hacking away through the night and put it in kids heads that computer science, or even just programming, is something everyone can do and have fun doing. And maybe try to de-emphasize getting a grade as a goal and emphasize actual learning as a goal. But most importantly, expand computer science availability in high school, so you don't have to resort to taking online classes, which I think are a bad idea in general but particularly bad for kids in high school who are still developing study habits.

<comment><USER18> It's also possible that she chose to rely on you for the easy grade as well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am flagging every post that is about someone's gender, they always degenerate into flaming and oneupmanship (no pun intended).

<comment><USER20> Oneupsperson.</comment></comment>


Rails and React Server Side Rendering, with Webpacker and Hypernova - <AUTHOR> http://bessey.io/blog/2018/08/04/rails-webpacker-react-ssr/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, I realise that neither Webpacker nor Hypernova are brand spanking new tools, but when I went to find a "getting started" tutorial, I found nothing up to date. Even the official Hypernova docs are written for Rails ~3.2 era and don't explain how to set up your JS build to support client + server side rendering. So hopefully this tutorial is helpful to someone else too!</comment>


Our Latest Project: Typeforms.com Custom Forms + Real Time search engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.typeforms.com/

<comment><USER2> I liked the idea... a few things that I noticed:

\- It is not clear for me what "Create Survey Account" check means. \- The "URL to survey" is showed blank, as I haven't created a survey yet. (maybe it shouldn't visible yet) \- I find it very confusing to create new stuff, as it shows the listing of all the records above the form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great Feedback! We will address those issues to make the ride smoother with TypeForms, Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It appears to be a nice idea, but, honestly, I can't read that green type. It hurts my eyes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, we change the color to a darker green. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Switching to open office plan killed more than productivity - <AUTHOR> http://idiallo.com/blog/open-plan-office-design-fail

<comment><USER2> It's amazing how many people are in favor of open office plans given the countless stories and (more importantly) studies that repeatedly show they are not beneficial ( _especially_ for developers).

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is, if you disagree you are viewed as the anti social.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A privacy policy you might actually read - <AUTHOR> https://www.voo.st/about#privacy

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to hear some discussion about whether this kind of approach is actually a good idea, vs sticking with the boring legaleze.</comment>


Google's upcoming Allo messaging app is 'dangerous', Edward Snowden claims - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-allo-unsafe-dangerous-edward-snowden-app-release-date-a7052746.html <comment><USER2> I would love to think that animated speculation on the breathtaking suite of abuses an always-listening in-home web appliance invites was one of the first reaction to Echo and Allo of most HN readers. It certainly was among my coworkers.

The list of horrors just starts writing itself.

Is that a reason to not pursue the technology?

Normally I'd say 'of course not, but let's keep such possibilities front and center...'

In this case, my gut instinct is to say 'not in my home!'... not until we have some frank and detailed consensus on safeguards against abuse.

The words blackmail, gag orders, backdoors, 'anonymized'-that-isn't... they are all blinking red around me.

<comment><USER3> Google Allo is the chat app, you're thinking of Google Home.

Snowden is saying Allo is dangerous because end-to-end encryption is an opt in setting and not the default setting. Google set it up this way to provide Google Now style automated context based annotation to messages. Users can turn on an "off-the-record" style mode with end to end encryption but it disables the message annotation.</comment></comment>


Computing in Dwarf Fortress - <AUTHOR> http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Computing

<comment><USER2> It's amazing just how nuts you can go within the Dwarf Fortress game engine. I spent ages building my wooden stilted fortress entirely out of lumber. Farms were created by hauling buckets of water up onto the roof to make mud and plucking wild berries for seeds to plant.

Another fun consequence of the game engine is how the creature generation created Zombie Sharks all by itself. According to the game's rules, any creature can be zombified, and one of the results of this is that the creature no longer needs to _breathe_. You haven't known fear until you have seen zombie sharks flopping along on land, heading your way.

</comment><comment><USER3> If someone can figure out how to implement a flip-flop, then we're in business. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_%28electronics%29>)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's already a mechanical implementation:

[http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Mechanical_logic#Flip...](http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Mechanical_logic#Flip- Flop)

<comment><USER3> I can't tell if those are diagrams of what the circuit should look like, or actual in-game implementations.

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

One of the best things about dwarf fortress is that playing it using that initially-confusing interface rather than shiny graphics is like doing math using symbols and equations rather than paragraphs and paragraphs of words.

<comment><USER3> Except the diagrams I saw didn't look like the other in-game circuits I saw. So, I'm still unsure if those are diagrams or in-game implementations. If you know, please tell me.

<comment><USER5> They're in-game inspired diagrams. The key is in the paragraph above the start of the 'Unclocked Logic' section.

         A
      →o * o→M O
       o * o
         B

The mechanical power goes in the first →, and the [M O] part is the output. A and B are the AND inputs. Gearboxes actually look like *, but o is also being used for gearboxes, albeit gearboxes that are just there to drain power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please be careful. I find this game maddeningly addictive.

</comment><comment><USER7> This makes me enormously happy.</comment>


Show HN: A simple CMS side project built with Golang - <AUTHOR> https://www.wemebox.com/ <comment><USER2> Very cool, I'll download it and give it a run this evening. Two quick questions:

1\. Is there a live demo anywhere of the dashboard (or even screenshots)? I feel like that would remove a lot of the friction to installing.

2\. Is there any meaning behind the name? Sorry if it's silly but I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out.

1\. There is no demo setup currently. But I will setup one soon. Thank you for the suggestion!

2.There is no particular meaning behind the name. I was thinking the product as a "website management system out of the box". And abbreviated it to something anyone can pronounce easily.</comment></comment>