Show HN: I made a chatbot to get excused from meetings - <AUTHOR> http://www.chadbot.co/ <comment><USER2> Just pointing out a small potential issue of the person wondering who Chad is, seeing the @chadbot.io, going to the website and seeing that Chad is a bot that is suppose to "excuse you from events you don't want to go to".

Might not go over well with the person who wants to meet with you. Although once there is support for @company.com it won't be as much of an issue, and more people will be willing to use it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Small suggestion: I'd reformat the date since the current format ("on Thursday, 26 at 9pm") doesn't seem to work well with Gmail [0].

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/dLaKF4a.png](http://i.imgur.com/dLaKF4a.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, will do!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a joke this is kinda funny but I hope no one uses it..</comment>


Microsoft: Is Steve Ballmer In or Out?   - <AUTHOR> http://woorkup.com/2010/06/10/microsoft-is-ballmer-in-or-out/

<comment><USER2> Who could Microsoft possibly get to replace Ballmer? Besides Bill Gates, of course...</comment>


Justin's imaginary friends -- why not create some? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> It might be interesting to allow viewers to control imaginary friends that can interact with Justin. Only he and the viewers would be able to see and hear them.

<comment><USER2> Wow, I love the enthusiasm, but that would be a bit too creepy.</comment></comment>


The Contradictions of Eric Hobsbawm (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2019/02/contradictions-eric-hobsbawm <comment><USER2> The key thing to understand about Hobsbawm is not just that he was a Marxist, but what particular version of Marxism he prescribed to.

Marxism was introduced in the middle of the 19th century, but toward the end of that century there were two enormous changes. The first was vanguardism. Marx thought the working class would soon spontaneously rise up and overthrow capitalism. But when that failed to happen, Lenin decided that the working class had been tricked into false consciousness, and instead they needed to be lead by a highly disciplined elite.

Secondly, Marx predicted the overthrow of capitalism and its replacing with socialism would take place in the advanced industrial countries. When that failed to happen, the idea arose that it could instead take place in pre- industrial countries, something the original Marxism considered impossible.

These two ideas were combined in the Russian Revolution and lead, not to the free, anarchistic socialism of Marx, but Stalin's brutal totalitarianism. And the same thing happened in every other pre-industrial country where vanguardist Marxists came to power, and also in the Eastern European industrialized countries where it was imposed from the outside.

Hobsbawn, from what I understand, continued to believe til the end of his life in vanguardist, pre-industrial Marxism.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read his "Age of Extremes"[1], and thought his point that there was an awful lot of Socialism going on in the U.S. system was a cogent one.

Arguably he averted his gaze from some of the excesses at the other end of the argument.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Age-Extremes-History- World-1914-1991/...](https://www.amazon.com/Age-Extremes-History- World-1914-1991/dp/0679730052/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=age+of+extremes&qid=1587316901&sr=8-2)

<comment><USER4> An interesting review / commentary on that book, and his worldview, by someone with a rather different one:

[https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/brad-delong-eric- hobs...](https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/brad-delong-eric-hobsbawms- age-of-extremes-hoisted-from-the-archives.html)

"He is writing for readers who take the central theme of twentieth century history to be the tragical-heroic course of World Communism."

<comment><USER5> Looking at the examples Delong gave 25 years ago, history has been much kinder to Hobsbawm's bleak vision than Delong's.

> What has happened in the past decade that has so darkened his vision of our > human future?

> The past decade has seen good news along a number of important dimensions: > The environment is in better shape: the clean-up of the first world > continues; the clean-up of the ex-Communist world has begun; and the third > world is more aware of environmental degradation. Progress has been made in > creating the international climate to guard against ozone depletion and > global warming.

<comment><USER4> If all you take is bleakness, then perhaps. But Hobsbawm's bleakness is more specific, it's about the demise of actually existing Communism as a pole of the world order. And I would say that putting that anywhere near the top of your list of world events to feel sad about seems even stranger now than in 1995.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> His denials of the evils of eastern block communism are unforgivable imo. He lionized Stalin until the day he died.

<comment><USER7> That's a very facile take on a complex thinker: [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/17/eric- hobsbawm-...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/17/eric-hobsbawm- mi5-communism-stalin-historian-private-papers)

<comment><USER8> And yet, had he been accused of supporting, say, Mussolini, or had he a lifelong fondness for rightist nationalism, he would have been milkshake- ducked into irrelevance today.

Nuance, per Marcuse, is something we can only afford for the left.

<comment><USER7> >And yet, had he been accused of supporting, say, Mussolini, or had he a lifelong fondness for rightist nationalism, he would have been milkshake- ducked into irrelevance today.

Heidegger would like a word</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nonplanar Printing - <AUTHOR> https://tams.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/research/3d-printing/nonplanar_printing/index.php <comment><USER2> This is how I'd like to see academic work done. Using FLOSS as an existing framework for new ideas, with source code under the same or compatible license. It may or may not get incorporated, or someone may expand on it. The work may live beyond the paper.

Oh, and if it does get taken upstream, consider publishing the paper along with the code for documentation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool. Simple idea, well-executed, with great results. It was a little "wtf how come nobody has thought of this before?" moment for me.

Also very cool that they are releasing their full Slic3r implementation for anyone to use, rather than just publishing a paper.

<comment><USER4> It's not an entirely new thing, there was this article[1] with accompanying code[2] from 2016. It just used to be quite unwieldy to use (a separate script to deform the gcode).

[1] [https://hackaday.com/2016/07/27/3d-printering-non-planar- lay...](https://hackaday.com/2016/07/27/3d-printering-non-planar-layer-fdm/) [2] [https://github.com/makertum/non-planar-layer- fdm](https://github.com/makertum/non-planar-layer-fdm)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is better because it has uniform extrudate geometry. That is, portions of past planar layers are omitted and then the nonplanar layer is of uniform thickness.

<comment><USER5> Intuition tells me variable extrusion generally should yield stronger parts. Adhesion between stair-stepped and non-planar layers in this method is probably subpar (with the emergence of new gaps). With variable extrusion, as long as the variability isn't too large layer adhesion should be kept fairly unchanged, maybe even stronger if there's a certain waviness (the waves increasing surface area).

Actually I wonder if internal waviness could be a useful method to add strength in general (area should be increased as ~1/cos(angle), or ~(1+angle/29) for very small angles, i.e. about 3% per degree).

<comment><AUTHOR> What I'm saying is that the first variable layer is of relatively constant thickness, compared to previous approaches which attempt to taper layer thickness to slowly introduce curvature.

The problem that results is the actual dynamics of the extrudate varies a lot, going through a fixed size nozzle: there's a relatively limited range of shapes that do not excessively impede flow (and risk jamming/clinging to nozzle/dragging) and are sufficiently smashed into the previous layer. So if you have layer thickness varying a bunch over an otherwise continuous layer, pretty easy to have poor adhesion in many places or pressure building and later overextrusion.

Also there's a fair bit of lag-- often hundreds of milliseconds- between extruder movement, pressure change, and extrudate geometry changes. When you're moving the nozzle at, say, 100mm/s over the surface, the uncertainty of this lag translates to a big uncertainty of where on the part extrusion thickness changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I printed using "Bread" way back when they were developing it originally. The dev (nickparker)used to frequent #reprap@freenode. It was an interesting concept but yes the nozzle collision is an issue.

Here is a video of an early print when I was helping him test. He generated the gcode for me based on his machine settings so it wasn't perfect and very rudimentary. [https://youtu.be/M3Bwo0AVML0](https://youtu.be/M3Bwo0AVML0)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is something I've wanted to do for a long time-- and they've taken a particularly simple approach where the extrudate volume doesn't vary wildly over the nonplanar layers.

One potential shortcoming is it looks like their model of nozzle geometry (they need to be able to detect interference) assumes it can be modeled with an angle plus a distance where there's bigger things. But real nozzles are more complicated than that.

The worst thing is that the bottom of the nozzle is flat, and any Z movement downwards is going to smush the just extruded trace.

<comment><USER7> The video and pictures show real prints from an Ultimaker.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I'm saying they treat the nozzle like it is a cone to determine whether it'll interfere with the previous layer's top surface. But this is a little optimistic because the bottom of the nozzle is flat, so you get variable "smush" based on convexity. You can see this a bit in their pictures of prints where the surface is steep along the print line.

<comment><USER8> Yup, I did research on this with my own little slicer [0] back in 2014. With conventional nozzles your surface finish goes to crap past about 20 degrees.

If you really want conformal layers you need a five axis platform. The flat tip of FDM nozzles is an important part of layer adhesion. I've seen a little bit of experimentation with pointier nozzles and it went very poorly.

Nowadays I'm building the five axis version and packaging it up in a service [1], along with a bunch of other improvements that are only feasible when you stop trying to build a machine lay-people can operate.

[0]: [https://github.com/nick-parker/bread](https://github.com/nick- parker/bread) [1]: [https://www.praxismfg.com/](https://www.praxismfg.com/)

<comment><USER6> Nice to see you are still at it. I just posted a video above from 4 years ago when I was testing bread in #reprap.

Can't wait to see more of what you are doing soon.

<comment><USER8> Hey ccecil, long time no see! I was just checking on Continuous Composites' website the other day and thought of you.

I should have some fancy demo prints online in a few weeks here, keep an eye on the website!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't quite follow.

Is the idea to print planar (xy) support layers, that does have stair stepping, and then to print the final layer by either tilting the bed or by simul-stepping in {x,y} and z?

If so, it seems you'd still have quite a lot of variability in the surface because the underlying support layer is stair-stepped. But that variability would be smoothed due to it being printed continuously at the angular offset from horizontal.

<comment><USER10> That's exactly what it's doing. If you watch the video at the bottom you can see a comparison of the "smooth" print vs the normal fixed layer approach. Three things on this:

1) In general, you set the number of layers above and below the supports that you want when printing so that the variability of the support layer gets smoothed out. It seems like this should be possible here as well.

2) End products of 3D printing, especially for things like props/costumes, almost always have to be post-processed via sanding, filler epoxy, and/or primer filler paints before they're considered good enough for actual use. This process could make that post-processing step a lot faster.

3) This process is specifically for FDM printers. On an SLA/DLP printer, you would mitigate the stepping issue by lowering your layer height (layers in the example here look quite high - SLA/DLP would probably be 1/10 the height)

<comment><USER9> If you are crossing the stair steps orthogonally, or at an offset, I suppose it would be possible to dwell longer when you're over the low point of the stair step? so your motion across the offset plane would be jerky instead of smooth? thus putting more material in the low part of the stair stepped support layer, and less material on the high parts.

or if you moved the head "with the grain" you can move faster when you're on the peak of a step and slower in the valleys.

or maybe if you can place the planar ridges closely enough, you can always go "with the grain" when you are off-plane, always in the valley, and thus improve flatness. of course this requires an axis of rotation or stepping in {x,y} simultaneously.

<comment><USER10> It shouldn't really be necessary to do this. In normal printing, infill can have gaps of several millimeters and the final surface will still look smooth if it's flat. The plastic essentially bridges the gap before hardening, and over successive layers the imperfections are averaged out. The same thing should happen when moving in both X/Y and Z like this - the first layer will be non-perfect, but if you do 3-4 layers it should end up fairly smooth.

<comment><USER9> several _millimeters_??? wow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cgrand-net Similar work: "CurviSlicer: Slightly curved slicing for 3-axis printers" presented at this year's SIGGRAPH [https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-02120033/document](https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-02120033/document)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty cool - and some of the comments here have mentioned things I didn't know about either (ie "ironing") - so thank you to those people, too.

I'm glad they released the work OSS so it can be incorporated into other slicers and such; I don't have a 3D printer yet, but it's on the drawing board for the future.

Hopefully, though, this will be an option that can be turned off, because sometimes you might want that "stairstep" effect...

</comment><comment><USER12> Brilliant!

The algorithm looks pretty lousy. Even so, it's a big improvement.

With a really good algorithm, I bet you could get much better results (source: I do similar stuff with a 3d pen). I hope this triggers a rush of researchers seeking to one-up each other. This could get super-impressive if it copied what human artists do, or surpass it.

This is one of those things I (and probably a million other people) feel dumb for not having thought of before. It's so obvious in hindsight.

</comment><comment><USER13> And now I have a bit more motivation to buy a 3D printer. Cool stuff!

</comment><comment><USER14> So they make the cake the planar way, then they smooth it out a bit with the 'icing'. Not a bad trick.

Would this be smoother still if they made 2 passes with the non-planar layer?

<comment><USER15> From the video, it looks like they do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, I think this is a fantastic idea and obvious in hindsight!

</comment><comment><USER17> Curious what kind of math is used to generate g-code for the "icing" step?

<comment><USER18> [https://github.com/Zip-o- mat/Slic3r/tree/nonplanar/lib/Slic3...](https://github.com/Zip-o- mat/Slic3r/tree/nonplanar/lib/Slic3r/GCode)

arcfitting, motion planning, pressure regulation

[https://github.com/Zip-o- mat/Slic3r/commit/9fcd7f38de44ecaa0...](https://github.com/Zip-o- mat/Slic3r/commit/9fcd7f38de44ecaa09c40db0b3846e7adaf6e0ef)

edge detection

then some random other random geometric stuff.

I'm sure its way more complicated than that. Not something you pick up in 10 minutes.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for this, time to feel mathematically overwhelmed for a few weekends lmao.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> now that E3D has seeded the idea of tool changer, I would probably just iron the part with a hot ball?

<comment><USER20> The Cura slicer from Ultimaker has a setting to enable that kind ironing on top surfaces although just with the regular nozzle but it works surprisingly well!

<comment><USER19> Oh yes, that's where I got the idea, I don't do smart. Tool changer from e3d, ironing from cura, lollipop tools from the cnc industry.</comment></comment></comment>


From Hacker Culture to a Mature Engineering Organization - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@olegguryanov/from-hacker-culture-to-a-mature-engineering-organization-614a752989c1 <comment><AUTHOR> Have you heard of software companies struggling to go through the stages of business development? Yes, of course, all of them do. The CEO oversees the company, ensuring that there are enough funds and the team is set up to get the right things done properly. But this is not a one time phase. It is an ongoing challenge. The company must continue to develop to remain competitive and infiltrate new markets.

</comment><comment><USER2> Step #1.

Avoid false dichotomies and other fallacies.</comment>


Keys to Being Excellent at Anything - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2010/08/six-keys-to-being-excellent-at.html <comment><USER2> Here's an alternate view. Practice methods matter a great deal because our biology allows us to be extremely adaptive. However, not everybody's biology is identical and those differences will dominate in competitions between groups of highly motivated and well coached individuals. Phelps is a particularly clear example:

 _Phelps, the six-times Olympic swimming champion, has size 14 feet, which act like flippers to propel him through water. He is 6ft 4in tall but has arms that span 6ft 7in from fingertip to fingertip. "If you're putting a human being together from science this is what you want," said Rowdy Gaines, the winner of three Olympic swimming gold medals in 1984.

Phelps is also faster at processing lactic acid, the fluid which makes muscles ache, than any other known human.

After a race, most swimmers measure a lacticity of between 10 and 15 millimoles per litre of blood. Phelps's count after breaking a world record last year was 5.6. Genadijus Sokolovas, the Team USA physiologist, has measured 5,000 international swimmers and failed to find another with a post- race lacticity count of less than 10._

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what- makes-...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-makes- michael-phelps-so-good) <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article555183.ece>

<comment><USER3> "Phelps is also faster at processing lactic acid, the fluid which makes muscles ache, than any other known human."

I wish I could recall some details, but that comment reminded me of something I heard about Lance Armstrong, that he possessed some way-out-of-the-norm physiological characteristics that provided some key advantages for bike races.

You have to wonder how common this is, plus the odds of someone with some physiological gift also being attracted to and motivated to pursue a well- matched sport.

<comment><USER4> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6273202.stm>

Larger lung capacity, larger heart, lower lactic acid levels, higher Vo2 max.

Also: "Spaniard Miguel Indurain, who took five successive [Tour de France] titles, had lungs so big they displaced his stomach, leading to his trademark paunch. Indurain's lung capacity was eight litres, compared to an average of six litres."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm skeptical of this. I see no evidence that the statement _"10,000 hours of practice is the minimum necessary to achieve expertise"_ is anything but a tautology.

Excellence is vaguely defined at best. Perhaps the people that dedicated 10,000 hours to developing a skill are sufficiently rare that we recognise them as experts simply because few other people have put in so much effort.

 _xiaoma_ mentions Phelps as an example of someone who has a biological advantage over other swimmers, even though they must put in comparable effort/hours of practice. I imagine that if Phelps had been an amateur swimmer, racking up only 1000 hours of practice, his biology would put him at a considerable advantage over similar amateurs. If an objective definition of an "expert swimmer" existed, I imagine Phelps would have obtained that level with significantly fewer hours of practice that any others. I think the biological/mental differences will dominate at every stage, not just at the top level.

The article mentions "scientific research", but does not cite any.

<comment><USER6> Here's one, and they cite some others in the paper:

K.A. Ericsson et al. "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance" (1993).

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.169...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.169.9712&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

It studied the links between the practice habits and attainment levels of violinists at the Music Academy of West Berlin. They concluded that practice was the dominant factor in attainment and there were no individuals who's "talent" would make up for reduced practice.

Of course other factors (e.g. talent, quality of teaching) could have affected admissions to the academy in the first place, but the studying suggests that these are not significant once a certain level has been achieved.

This was mentioned in Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" which mentions other studies including the birthday distribution of professional ice hockey players (clustered towards the start of the academic year) that suggest that practice is more significant than genetic ability.

<comment><USER5> That looks like an extremely interesting article. Thank you.

A quick skim through showed that the number of violinists they examined was 10, so I am still highly skeptical, but at least after reading this I will be more informed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Talent Code is an incredibly good book - I recommend anyone interested in excellence read it. Another thing that's brought up in the book is the idea of commitment. The people who are most committed to the long term improve the most at whatever they do. Wrote more about this here: [http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/how-commitment-can-make- you-40...](http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/how-commitment-can-make- you-400-percent-better/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm looking for the one key to being excellent at everything.

<comment><USER9> Live forever?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm especially interested in the statistic that great performers rarely spend more than 4.5 hours/day on their craft. I believe it, but I wonder where he pulls that number from.

Any ideas?

It's the sort of thing that seems especially important to my goal of doing great science without neglecting my family and other interests (<http://wayofthescholar.com>).

The real question, though, is how do you use that 4.5 hours?</comment>


What is narcissistic personality disorder, and why does everyone seem to have it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2213740/pagenum/all/

<comment><USER2> The reason everyone seems to have NPD is because the people judging aren't trained psychologists or psychiatrists.

People confuse egocentrism (self-centeredness) with narcissism. Many people are considered egocentric today because of only-child syndrome, when you don't get taught how to get along with others when you're young then you're likely to end up egocentric.

NPD is only present in 1% of people, but is generally higher in clinical tests. Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) presents 3% in males and 1% in females. So it's actually very unlikely one of your close friends would actually have this disorder.

Most people carry some traits of NPD, but it's all relative. "#2) is preoccupied with fantasies of ... ideal love" well that nails virtually every female character I've ever seen, I mean watch 5 seconds of Sex and the City and tell me I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> So the article points at it being a psychological condition - fair enough - and, as with many conditions, exacerbated or originated by one's parenting. I can swallow that.

But the mention of consumers believing they deserved big, shiny houses financed by bad debt got me. Surely that was as much a problem with society's attitudes to debt, money, and rewards - including pressure to keep up with the Joneses - as the person's own narcissism?

It's one thing to think you deserve a shiny new house, or computer, or whatever, and quite another to have society _enabling_ that narcissism by giving you credit. It obviously depends on the person, but having recently been offered a credit deal - even in this economy! - that really shouldn't have been extended to me* , I'm very aware of what some people will throw at you to flatter your vanity, and I do think it's part of the mix too.

* I rejected it, but my inner narcissist had a big cry about it.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is an interesting article in this month's Skeptic magazine that discusses the detrimental effects the self-esteem movement has had in the educational system and it's failure to produce high achieving students. Here's a paragraph talking about the link to NPD:

"Twenge, who is also a psychologist at San Diego State University, examined the responses of 16,475 college students who'd completed the NPI (Narcissistic Personality Inventory) between 1982 and 2006. She found a 30-percent jump in students who scored 'above average' for narcissism between those two end dates - a period of intense self-esteem building activity throughout American culture".

</comment><comment><USER5> Once again I couldn't read the article because it has too little information (facts, to be more accurate) per sentence and that's why I beleive HN is not the right place to post the link. Seriously, it seems like wasting time and I can smell this journalistic approach from the first sentences. Hackers don't write like that, do they?

</comment><comment><USER6> Although this article was interesting, it gives a pretty hazy and sometimes inaccurate description of NPD (it seems to confuse the dissorder with antisocial personality dissorder at times).

<comment><USER2> Agreed, ASPD will likely get you arrested. NPD will just get everyone who knows you to think you're a complete ass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If everyone has it, it is perhaps not a disorder :)

<comment><USER8> Brilliant! Now all we have to do is infect everyone with cancer and AIDS and these problems will cease to exist! Next, we should take away everyone's money and food, and poverty and famine will disappear as well. You sir have just solved all the world's problems. My hat is off to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was going to read this article but I'm too good looking/smart.</comment>


Marketing Is For Companies Who Have Sucky Products - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/25/fred-wilson-marketing-is-for-companies-who-have-sucky-products/

<comment><USER2> Here's the HN submission of the original, rather than the zero-value TechCrunch shell:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2262611></comment>


Hitchsters: Share a Taxi, Save Some Bucks - <AUTHOR> http://startupmeme.com/2007/04/09/hitchsters-share-a-taxi-save-some-bucks/ <comment><USER2> I love the 'you can choose a gender preference of a co-rider' feature. Never hurts to put a dating twist into an idea.

<comment><USER3> good one. Yeah a dating one will be a good add on service. More like a blind- moving date</comment></comment>


Venezuela announces end of currency controls, exchange rate unification - <AUTHOR> http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/205080/government-announces-end-of-currency-controls <comment><USER2> I think you need a geography lesson. Buenos Aires is in Argentina

<comment><USER3> The title should be changed to "Argentina announces end of currency controls, exchange rate unification"</comment></comment>


The joy of single sign-on - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/97421-the-joy-of-single-sign-on

<comment><USER2> Err, this is a joke, right ?

I mean, this guy raises concerns about an hypothetical Facebook/Google Megacorp controlling everything, and surrendering _all_ your everyday computing to Microsoft is supposed to be the solution ?

I'd be scared to know my entire life relied on Live.com being up. (same thing for Google or Facebook, or Apple, or whatever non-local provider).

<comment><USER3> There's a big difference between Facebook and Google running/operating everything, and Microsoft offering a single sign-on service.

<comment><USER4> Such as?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Single sign on (or SSO) is hard. The problem is not just fro a technological standpoint but from a social one. Most people don't really want SSO.

Lots of people want to create different social profiles for different instances.

Then there is the question of trust. Microsoft is going to be holding the keys to all your services. Do you really want that?

<comment><USER3> Hrm... who else would you trust with your login credentials? (Who would've thought that Sony kept passwords in plain text...?)

There's no reason you can't have multiple profiles with a single sign-on. But yes, SSO does always tie those profiles back to one account.

This is a complicated issue worth discussing though, for sure :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: I created a newsletter to help people get better at coding interviews - <AUTHOR> https://www.interviewdojo.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks exactly like [https://algodaily.com](https://algodaily.com) minus the IDE and ability to actually code.

Also, heads up, under "Spaced Repetition": "The best way to learn is to continually riview content. If you want to master coding interviews keep practicing. Getting an email in your inbox will make it easier to remember and will guide you."

Got a typo at "review". This also doesn't seem like spaced repetition-- there's no mention of any spacing/order. Going to build that in?

</comment><comment><USER3> Also see [https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/](https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/)</comment>


Volkswagen's New Camper Has a Loft Where You Can Stargaze - <AUTHOR> http://www.countryliving.com/home-design/house-tours/news/a44775/volkswagen-california-xxl/ <comment><USER2> This is my new least favorite sport: speaking about concept vehicles in the present tense. "has sophisticated features ... has space for a sink ... includes an LCD projector" Oh wait. "The California XXL is still in the concept stage." Now there's correct usage of the present tense.

Concept cars come to market approximately 0% of the time. In the rare cases that they do actually make it to market (many many years later), they undergo significant changes through the product development pipeline.

Is this the effect of PR people setting the tone for these stories, or is it the authors/editors of the piece that want to trick people into believing it exists? The point about the "concept stage" was buried in the middle of the article.

<comment><USER3> There's a crazy amount of subliminal PR in this vaporware puff piece.

VW PR are trying to get you to think of VW as a nature loving, fun outdoorsy company that's connected to the environment. Instead of that company who cared so little about pollution in the environment that they literally programmed their cars to lie about how much pollution they were spewing.

The car doesn't need to ever exist, what exists is the manufactured image in your mind of VW and a "harmonious" place in nature.

<comment><USER4> Electro vehicles hysteria is much worse for the environment than some diesels spewing a bit more Nox than expected. Vw made a huge mistake because their engines are among the most fuel efficient on the market and now they got all the blame and punishment. Most cars have much worse emissions than the cheating Vw models

<comment><USER3> While you're right in that the extra nox might not be that bad in the scheme of things, what irks me is that they systematically lied and they also actively marketed AGAINST hybrids and other clean technologies based upon falsified data.

<comment><USER5> Is systemmatically hiding that most E Vehicles drive with Coal and/or Fukushima-fuel that much better. The whole debate of e-vehicles versus traditional vehicles is heavily warped.

Im actually for a easily visible sign wethr a vehicle drives with some nature friendly fuel- or the oppossite. Also, what has this debate to do with anything- this is a concept car- it could be e or tradfuel.

<comment><USER6> I understand what you're saying. At the same time, electric vehicles can be powered by electricity generated from any number of sources while ICE vehicles require carbon-based fuels. Even when the electricity is generated from carbon-based sources, those power plants can be located strategically (e.g., away from heavily populated areas), can be run more efficiently (e.g., at peak efficiency for power generation rather than at varying efficiencies in vehicles), and have better pollution controls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems pretty cool then I realize that it would probably cost 100,000$ or so and I realize looking at the stars from a blanket is free.

<comment><USER8> Given the price of comparable Sprinter-based campers, you might even be a little under. But it's all moot. It's a concept vehicle, and even if VW builds it, it won't be coming to the U. S. The pop-top California never did, and the last time VW sold campers in the U. S. was fourteen years ago.

<comment><USER9> This is disappointing. If this RV can relieve the need for house purchasing in Bay Area, 100k price tag doesn't seem to be a problem.

It's a shame that this vehicle is named California and we can't buy it in California. America is such a great place for RV camping (vast area, low population density, plenty parking spaces and so many beautiful places to go), and VW somehow decided not to sell any of these for 14 years!

I mean, just checking the craigslist prices for those second hand vw campers from the 60s, their marketing people should be able to tell there is a strong demand for this in the US.

<comment><USER10> The issue is where to park them. In southern california, there's some amazing rv parks in the desert that you can stay in for under $500 month, you get electricity and plumbing.

Are there many places like that in the bay area?

<comment><USER11> Depends on what you're willing to call the Bay Area. Head east and you get to spots like that within thirty minutes, as long as it's not commute time. If you decided to BART from Pittsburgh/Bay Point or Dublin/Pleasanton you could probably have a twenty minute commute from a cheap RV community and then take the train into the city easily enough. It's much harder if you want to work on the peninsula, although maybe there are easy public transit options from down near Gilroy that I'm unaware of.

Honestly better would be to get a boat. Cheap slips exist all over the place.

<comment><USER10> I've considered live aboard boating, definitely would like to try it at some point

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who's lived in a 'hacker trailer' for an extended period of time and kinda-failed, next time I'm gonna use an LMTV. Uncle Sam paid ~$100k+ for each one of them. Sometimes you can find one with living quarters/plumbing.

[http://www.govplanet.com/Light+Medium+Tactical+Vehicle+%28LM...](http://www.govplanet.com/Light+Medium+Tactical+Vehicle+%28LMTV%29?kwtag=navbar)

<comment><USER12> Looks similar idea to a Unimog[1], which I've seen a few camping out in Europe when I've been on holiday; saw a couple when I drove through Western Sahara (cheap banger rally stuff), and they can get just about anywhere. Some of them are kitted out to a seriously high standard, and you could go just about anywhere and be comfortable in them. I think the fuel consumption might be somewhat heavy though...

[1] [http://www.expedition- trucks.com/brokers/unimog-4x4-expediti...](http://www.expedition- trucks.com/brokers/unimog-4x4-expedition-camper-conversion)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It looks kind of... huge. And cramped at the same time. I'd rather either have a small van and deal with less convenience, or tow a mini-house-on-trailer. That way I have a transportation vehicle that isn't also as big and unwieldy as a boat.

</comment><comment><USER14> I like it although it might get pretty cramped if you plan on spending weeks on the road. Having to make up the bed every night could also prove to be an annoyance. One thing is for sure, however, based on that video. It seems to make you smile all the time.

<comment><USER8> What I tell people about our Vanagon Westfalia (which has even less space), if you're spending a lot of time in the van you're doing it wrong. If you want to live in it, get a Class C (built on a box truck chassis) or better. If you just want a windproof, waterproof container to sleep in that has the conveniences of running water, stove and a fridge, a camper van might be for you. We also have two 60-80 lb. dogs. Space considerations mean the dogs get the downstairs bed, we take the upper bunk. Winter camping (in Seattle == 40F and drizzling rain) gets a little claustrophobic between weather and very early sunset, so we usually spend but a night or two.

Making the bed is no more an annoyance than it is tent camping. Still, it takes me all of five minutes either way: open the valve on the mattress pad, unroll the sleeping bag. If you have a young back, you don't even need the sleeping pad, as it's got a (pretty poor) mattress already.

As for making us smile, yes, it does. My parents offered to chip in for us to buy a larger Class C (enough for us to buy a low-end new one with no money out of our pocket). We turned them down. We wouldn't have room to keep the Westy, and we realized we loved the Westy too much to get rid of him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a big fan of 'panoramic sunroofs' and look forward to seeing them included vehicles that don't have every other bell and whistle.

</comment><comment><USER16> I find it... ugly?

<comment><USER14> Well, it is a Volkswagon after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That looks fantastic. I look forward to buying the low end model on craigslist in a few years :p

</comment><comment><USER18> That thing is an awesome little big package!!</comment>


Direct Democracy: Iceland's crowdsourced constitution submitted for approval - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/31/icelands-crowdsourced-constitution-submitted-for-approval-nyan/

<comment><USER2> The Constitution is not about direct democracy at all, it's setting up a parliamentary republic. And the drafting of it involved a lot of online feedback and participation, but was ultimately written by a committee of 25 people.

Some noteworthy aspects: It guarantees universal health care, the President is elected with preferential voting (where voters rank their choices 1,2,3,etc.), and to amend the Constitution, Parliament must pass a bill and then a vote is held within 1-3 months. It's also possible for Parliament to unilaterally amend the Constitution, but only with a 5/6th super super majority.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a good step towards Governments and Parliaments that are more representative for their people. Direct Democracy sounds like something idealistic that would never work in practice, but that's only because people think of it to the extreme - as in literally the whole population deciding what laws need to pass and so on. And I don't think you should look at it like that, and instead using it as a scale - how _direct_ do you want it to be exactly? Where are the specific situations where people can directly influence legislation and governance?

The current representatives in all countries seem to have gotten out of hand, and they mostly do what they want, especially if it's an issue that threatens their power.

To most young people voting seems pointless because they know it's a very weak form of feedback to vote a "party", and it's a feedback that happens too rarely. This is why they couldn't care less anymore about who get to be the next country leaders.

If they could engage a lot more with the representatives, and feel like they helped shape a certain legislation, I think they will become a lot more enthusiastic about it. They'd also like politicians to be a lot more accountable, because too many times they get away with voting for legislation that isn't for the benefit of the population at all, neither in the short term, nor in the long term. Warren Buffet seems to agree with politicians becoming more accountable, too.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNEp7q30JCw>

<comment><USER3> The main question to ask would be, is this system scalable to larger more diverse populations. Iceland is tiny (approx. 250K i think).

<comment><USER4> In Australia for Federal election, there's a 'ticket' for electing senators. In NSW, there's over 150 candidates. The way to vote is in two ways; 1) Must accurately vote for each candidate in a numeric incremental fashion. One mistake = invalid vote. 2) Or pick just one party. There's 15 parties.

With 2) If you pick a party, you voted for that particular party preferences where the party pre-filled the preferences for all 150 candidates for you.

That is very scalable until there's 150 parties. Or maybe 1500 parties.

I believe eventually that the government will be forced to provide a 'policy platform' department where the voter gets to 'vote' where their concerns are, eg do you support granting prisoners right to vote (Yes/No or Strongly/Disagree) and the output is the party most closely aligned.

Then the onus is on the parties to submit all the relevant positions to the policy platform department. I tried to create this platform [0] and closed it, code is available for others. I think I'll add it to Github soon actually!

I don't believe the platform will happen for a long time as parties complain that they can't fulfill all their promises while the voters believe that the parties will fulfill their promises. Leading some to rage when politicians call them 'non-core promises' [1].

Also, some parties treat election policies as trade secrets.. seriously. They won't reveal them until election time because gasp, the current government might implement them immediately.

[0] <http://joakal.com/topic/shockseat/>

[1] [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=non- core%20pr...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=non- core%20promise&defid=1485810)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A little bit of backstory in case anyone's interested. This endeavor started out as a constitutional congress, members having been elected in a low turnout election in late 2010. For some legal-technical reason the election was illegal and therefore the powers that be decided to appoint the congress elects to a committee instead. All this was done as an appeasement response to public anger following the economic downturn in 2008. A clever, if expensive, political ploy as it made the government look like it was making an effort. The reality is that it makes no difference whether or not this committee makes any changes, anything they decide will be non-binding and advisory only. Most people in this country think the whole thing is monumentally pointless, being as there aren't many contentious issues in the current constitution to begin with.

<comment><USER6> Icelander here.

 _This endeavor started out as a constitutional congress, members having been elected in a low turnout election in late 2010. For some legal-technical reason the election was illegal and therefore the powers that be decided to appoint the congress elects to a committee instead._

True.

The reason the election was disqualified was debatable at best, but it was due to a lawsuit by some IMO rather slimy true-blood partisans of the highly corrupt opposition party _Sjálfstæðisflokkur_ ; The lawsuit involved technicalities in the voting process. The courts are appointed by congress representatives - very many from _Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn_. The judiciary appointment process here is IMO ethically problematic, to say the least.

 _All this was done as an appeasement response to public anger following the economic downturn in 2008._

Interpretation, not fact.

 _A clever, if expensive, political ploy as it made the government look like it was making an effort._

Interpretation, not fact.

 _The reality is that it makes no difference whether or not this committee makes any changes, anything they decide will be non-binding and advisory only._

Not strictly false, but is very difficult for the current govermnent to totally ignore the results of the committee; The election may have been low- turnout for example, but the committee process has been high-profile.

 _Most people in this country think the whole thing is monumentally pointless,_

Interpretation, not fact; IMO even a rather biased interpretation.

 _... being as there aren't many contentious issues in the current constitution to begin with._

And this is where you go to far IMO. You cannot state that as fact. There exist in fact long-standing and very public arguments here about: The separation of powers, judiciary appointment, a highly disputed clause about the president's power to impede legislation (it's very fuzzy and highly open to interpretation - this MUST be clarified), human rights, media, etc. etc. etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> AFP link if you want to avoid the stupid at engadget ;) [http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jbxT7zuFK...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jbxT7zuFKWBTWF767LVU0xZMWRrw?docId=CNG.6b44e7e4e2bbd63a32abdf8eea663c41.01)

</comment><comment><USER8> Another pompous title. It was not crowdsourced, but they used social media for online discussion with the committee that drafted it. May not be practical for countries with >300K souls, though.</comment>


Aks HN: How did you improve the quality of your code base? - <AUTHOR> Our company builds a java openGL CAD/CAM application suite for windows desktops. We have a couple tens of million LOCs, with ~50 projects and 1000s of packages. We grew to ~50 devs. Our teams are distributed worldwide in several locations. After ~10 years of neglection we need a strategy to increase the code quality (lots of dependencies, feature envying inheritance hierarchies, spaghetti code, similar problem are solved in myriad ways, all that jazz).<p>+ How do you measure code quality? How do you interpret the metrics?<p>+ What are good tools for a windows/java/eclipse dev environment?<p>+ How do you act on the metrics and actually improve code quality?<p>+ Can you recommend any resources of success stories on how companies managed to increase code quality of a big, tangled system?<p>What we are doing ATM:<p>- code reviews via Gerrit<p>- Jenkins for build + testing (~ 5% code coverage, tests run nightly and take ~1h)<p>- Scrum with 2 week sprints with 30% time allocated for refactor/ writing of tests
  + 1 week maintenance to work on bugs backlog<p>- small team (2 members) increase GUI tests to automate validation<p>- developing guide lines for reviews and coding <comment><USER2> * Code review and care. * Always leave code in a better state than you arrived.

This project is big, it's definitely not your average webapp express node.js you see these days.

From my experience in projects this big with a big team, there's absolutely no better solution than reviewing code carefully and caring about quality.

I was in the same situation as a consultant a few years back and the rule to leave code better than you arrived at it is a real trigger to most people that respect what they do.

I'd say that the VP ENG should be involved in the process and set some rules for what is acceptable quality and what isn't.

One more thing

Everyone knows a smell, every single member of your team has some piece of code he/she saw that doesn't make sense. Keep a document with all of these and just make sure you scratch them off EVERY single day.

Stuff like: * User Creation is using LOCK on table_x and it shouldn't * Form submit code is too complex, need to be better * Extract component X into a microservice

etc...

If you go through a list like this and fix things one by one, you'll be better off in a short amount of time.

Don't try and take it all at once, create manageable consumable pieces that your team can relate to, understand and get behind.

Good luck

</comment><comment><USER3> The main business goals of code quality improvements are to 1) reduce the number of problems customers encounter thereby reducing customer support costs 2) reduce the amount of unplanned work/firefighting engineers do and 3) increase the pace of innovation. Therefore along with code metrics you should be tying these quality changes out to business metrics such as number of customer-filed bugs per a month, number of customer support calls a month, etc. This should provide validation to code quality improvements, and give you a way to sell further improvements to management. Also keep in mind that there are non-technical ways to improve IT efficiency (improve project management, improve release management, improve testing etc)

So how do you go about making code quality improvements: 1) See if you can remove unused code/dependencies/features. Less code means less code to support, and faster compile and testing times. Look at metrics like code removed

2) Focus on the most problematic areas of the code and eliminate errors and bugs. If you can eliminate a significant source of unplanned work/firefighting, you'll have more time to spend on planning development instead of just reacting to work. These problematic areas are where tests will be most useful

3) Add static analyzers and linters to easily detect simple problems (like unused variables, style problems, problematic constructs such as if(foo = bar). As you develop your coding guidelines, implement the rules in these tools to automatically find these minor problems. This will allow your code reviews to focus on the big picture instead of nit-picky implementation details.

4) Do things to close the feedback loops for development. Consider running testing throughout the day. Maybe try to increase release cycles. Maybe add UX earlier in the cycle

</comment><comment><USER4> This thread might give you some ideas: [http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/15548...](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive- inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now)

</comment><comment> sethu-b In our company, we use community-edition of SonarQube to help improve Code Quality. SonarQube can help you setup different metrics and fail builds if they are not met via maven-sonar-plugin. The new SonarSource project has plugins for all the modern IDE's and does a quick analysis on the current file.

</comment><comment><USER5> This might be difficult to do but can you explain your overall architecture design? What sorts of issues are you having? Where are the pain points?

Going from top to bottom:

> Our company builds a java openGL CAD/CAM application suite for windows > desktops

If it's an application suite then, from my understanding, you'll be building a main set of libraries and then a set of tools that all use these libraries. Have you considered a hierarchical plugin design? Have a main application that starts and setups all of your main rendering and CAD/CAM magic. Then go from there to working out a simplest of APIs to what everything actually _needs_ access too.

Your main application basically just manages UIs/drawing to an OpenGL port. From there you can load modules to do other things. If you abstract what is needed then each module should only need to define How a functionality is executed, not where and what a functionality should look like in the UI. For instance refactor your code to follow such a structure:

       Master UI System (Exposes: "Options", "Renderables", "Views")
        -> Drafting Plugin (Exposes: "Models", "Collision", "Faces")
        -> CAM Plugin (Exposes: "Routing Paths")

Master UI does not need to know anything about Design Plugin and CAM Plugin.

Drafting Plugin needs to know about Master UI but nothing about CAM Plugin.

CAM Plugin needs to know about Master UI and Drafting Plugin.

That's what I would try and do if this was a new project but this isn't one and uprooting your entire (or even any recognizable percentage of your code base) is unreasonable.

> We have a couple tens of million LOCs, with ~50 projects and 1000s of > packages

If you've got that many packages then you might want to find out what sort of abstractions are being used, not working correctly, and remove them/replace them with simpler solutions. How much of these packages are filled with Interfaces/Abstract Classes/Implementations of interfaces

> After ~10 years of neglection we need a strategy to increase the code > quality (lots of dependencies, feature envying inheritance hierarchies, > spaghetti code, similar problem are solved in myriad ways, all that jazz).

One at a time:

> lots of dependencies

Slowly replace dependencies by either abstracting features further, replacing with new standard library features, or by implementing other solutions to the same problems. Every dependency is an added layer of complexity in my book so it's best to avoid this as much as possible.

> feature envying inheritance hierarchies

This comes as a side effect of not knowing what a level of abstraction is actually meant to be doing. Have a team meeting and ask what each team thinks the actual problems that are needing to be solved are. The people knee deep in crap will have a better idea of what's the correct or natural abstraction for these cases if the ones currently being used are unnatural. It may just be that the code base has had too many large scale changes or even just have had too many features pushed in at once (which for a CAM/CAD tool is definitely not unheard of, this is a very specialized and hard task)

> spaghetti code

Get some sort of static analyzer. I remember one group I worked with used Sonar. Also remember that the best code quality tool is a good agreed upon set of standards. Somethings that have worked for me on some group projects I've worked on has been: Avoid complicated constructors, always default a variable to final, avoid complicated logic statements always exit early rather then filter before in a for loop, use all the up-to-date constructs to aid with code clarity (try(stream), for(var:set), and more).

> similar problem are solved in myriad ways

If there is one problem that exists in two places this is an opportunity for you to pull the part out, abstract it, and use it as a library. This is a double edged sword since these two parts actually need to contain the same problems which some times is not the case.

Now to the nitty gritty:

> How do you measure code quality? How do you interpret the metrics?

(How many times does the code result in an error) * (The time in hours that it takes to debug the code).

Larger number is worse. Keep a notebook/log of these times, graph them, and use that as a map to decide what is worth refactoring. If a piece of code "just works" but looks ugly it can wait to be refactored if there is another piece of code that looks "visually appealing" while still causing daily side effects in the active development of the project.

> What are good tools for a windows/java/eclipse dev environment?

I've always managed ANT scripts for my group projects since they are very very cross platform. Maven works great but I'm not a fan of the complexity of install for non-linux users. Also check out IntellJ for built-in maven support.

> How do you act on the metrics and actually improve code quality?

Change your code by coming at it from a different perspective. If that perspective yielded a more promising piece of code (that is easier to understand, causes less side effects, and uses less external/non-standard functionality) then you keep it. A lot of my code I write is code I throw away. This is much harder to justify to business people but it's an important part of the process to sketch up what you think _might_ work even if the attempts aren't always fruitful.

> Can you recommend any resources of success stories on how companies managed > to increase code quality of a big, tangled system?

Check out the U.S. Digital Service for the only recent success story that comes to mind [1].

If anyone knew the secret sauce they wouldn't give it out for free. The ability to "Fix" all the "Broken" projects isn't an issue on the scales that we think they are. A large portion of all technology-related projects fail [0]. If anyone could prove they where able to reliably fix these issues they'd be billionaires over night.

[0] - [http://www.zdnet.com/article/study-68-percent-of-it- projects...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/study-68-percent-of-it-projects- fail/)

[1] - [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the- se...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-secret- startup-saved-healthcare-gov-the-worst-website-in-america/397784/)

Edit: Removed "What do you mean by thousands of packages?"

Looking forward to what you think of all this.</comment>


Tacit knowledge: you don't know how much you know   - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627624.900-tacit-knowledge-you-dont-know-how-much-you-know.html

<comment><USER2> Until the machine(s) can learn without human help. Maybe they will learn our tacit knowledge, or even stranger, develop tacit knowledge between itselves.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      Just as I think there could never be a fully automated editor of my books,
      I also think the limits to intelligent machines and automation will lie
      in a much better understanding of tacit knowledge - and especially of
      collective tacit knowledge.

Now hang on just a minute. Is he postulating that Strong AI is impossible, here, in the very last paragraph of the column?

</comment><comment><USER4> >>I call this, cat-like, brain-and-body kind of tacit knowledge "somatic tacit knowledge": it is knowledge stored in the muscles, nerve pathways, and synaptic connections.

Knowledge "stored in the muscles" is probably more like procedural memory than tacit knowledge.</comment>


4Chan Takes Over The Time 100 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/21/4chan-takes-over-the-time-100/

<comment><USER2> "...the notorious online bulletin board where hackers like to hang out." lol

But seriously - here's the fun part: [http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/15/inside-the-precision- ha...](http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/15/inside-the-precision-hack/)

</comment><comment><USER3> man techcrunch is pretty slow, I think this 4chan thing is like a week old

<comment><USER4> Most publications: Breaking News

Techcrunch: Broken News

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It was a slow news day so they dug through the 'meh' folder of their tips :)

</comment><comment><USER6> On HN today - yesterday's reddit top stories.

reddit become obsessed with 4Chan recently, is HN going that way as well?

<comment><USER6> Just wondering if I'm being devoted because HN is definitely not going the way of reddit. Or because 4Chan is teh lolz and how dare I criticize it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing what you can do with a room full of monkeys.

</comment><comment><USER8> -1 for making me lose the game.</comment>


U.S. meets tech leaders, forms task force to fight online militants - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-tech-idUSKBN0UM25Q20160108 <comment><USER2> First they came for the militants... yada yada yada.

This strikes me as an end-run around limits on censorship. That is, convince/coerce gateway corporations to do things that the government can't for legal reasons.

What happens when the gateway corporations start to censor other things, like news of illegal corporate behavior, or politics that isn't pro-business/pro- aristocracy? Who steps in to say that's a bad idea? The government is already approving of the censorship.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you work for one of these companies they met with (or have an idea of what went on), would you mind sharing your two cents? The Guardian article made it seem like the vast majority of it was very positive, but everybody seems to have a lot of reservations about it.</comment>


Green Peace Taunts Senators With Internet Dating Site - <AUTHOR> http://ecopolitology.org/2010/02/13/greenpeace-taunts-senators-wit-internet-dating-site-spoof/

<comment><USER2> The positive power of mockery needs to be embraced -- shame seems to have no effect.</comment>


Separated by a common language - <AUTHOR> http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/nominate-wotys-untranslatables-month-ii.html?m=1

<comment><USER2> Forget England and America being separated by a common language, _regions_ of both countries are also separated by the same language ;-) I'm a British southerner who moved north ten years ago (the British cultural equivalent of a US northerner moving to the south) and the language up here flows in a different way and has all sorts of phrasings and words that wouldn't fit into what one might consider typical British English.

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat blog. Wish the text weren't light gray on white.

<comment><USER2> It's not if you go to the regular URL: [http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/nom...](http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/nominate- wotys-untranslatables-month-ii.html)

The extra ?m=1 on the submission seems to put it into a print or mobile specific version.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Guess I'll be sure to read it at home.</comment></comment></comment>


Leaving comments in real life - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/leaving-comments-in-real-life.html

<comment><USER4> There was a great anecdote (or perhaps an urban legend). Back when Mir space station was still operational, one of its crews lost something. What it was exactly doesn't matter, but they looked _everywhere_. Twice, and then some. Out of utter desperation and puzzled beyond belief they started peeling off parts of the cabin walls and looking underneath. And what do you know - <USER2> one panel there was a folded piece of paper that said "It is not here. We already looked." Signed by another crew from a year ago. Apparently they also lost something, but were thoughtful enough to leave a note.

So, yeah, notes are great... even if not terribly useful :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice post.

I do the same for "accessories" - for e.g if I buy a desk and assemble it - <USER3> then take a zip-lock bag, put in the wrenches, extra screws, fasteners, what- have-you, and tape it to the desk where you can't see it (usually on the back, or bottom if possible).

I do this for almost everything I own - I even tape the instruction manuals to the back of appliances.

This way, I don't have random items floating around the apartment, and I know if I need to fix, replace, or dissemble anything, I know I don't have to hunt around.

I guess this is an extension of jgrahamc's idea - take pictures as you assemble, fix, dismantle stuff, and put them in the zip-lock bag. Saved me endless head-scratching in the past.

<comment><USER6> Heh, I do the exact same thing. Especially with Ikea furniture - I would tape the wrenches, manuals, etc somewhere not easily noticeable.

Another thing I do is behind my TV, or in the back of my computer, I create little paper tags that I tape onto the power cables. So, in case I need to unplug something from the wall, I don't need to trace the connection to know if I'm going to unplug the TV and lose all my presets, or just the floor lamp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a brilliant use case for augmented reality. If I could look at something and have my HUD display "turn this valve to disable all water flow to the upstairs" from the previous owner of my house (or from the contractor who plumbed the house, though who am I kidding?), that would be really cool.

<comment><USER8> We can't even get people to leave a copy of the appliance manuals when they move.

/waiting for new fridge to be delivered, no thanks to previous owner.

<comment><USER9> Good practice to leave the manual on top of the appliance, e.g. fridge, water heater, furnace, etc. Or put them all in one drawer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just do it for _everything_ \- I have a tiddlywiki [1] full of notes about how to fix/install/setup/tune etc. things on my computers.

This started after I spent hours figuring out how to fix a network problem the the Nth time last year :) Now all I have to do is search the Wiki.

1\. <http://www.tiddlywiki.com/>

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately I tend to use a number of different devices to connect to work with.

So no tiddlywiki for me :(

<comment><USER10> Dropbox it for cross-machine access :) (& I also tag entries if it relates to a specific device)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you do this, and you should, then please do it with a permanent marker as opposed to pencil or biro. In 10 years it will not fade away leaving a tantalising tag with no information.

I refer you to my home fuse box :(

</comment><comment><USER13> I've done this (read: had to do this to save my sanity) for years now. Learnings: Most inks (like inkjet printers, pen inks, and even pencils) fade (esp if in light for extended time) and laser toner will stick to other surfaces in heat, so like another poster mentioned, sharpie perm marker is usually the best option. Yellow sticky notes do not stick after years, sadly. Duct tape is great, electrical tape often gets gummy and peels (at least, the cheap kind I buy).

<comment><USER14> I'm a fountain pen fanatic, mostly because they are awesome to write with and improve your handwriting. One of the perks is that you can use archival grade ink.

My favorite are Noodler's Inks (<http://noodlersink.com/>). Forgive their 1995-esque website, they make fantastic fountain pen ink. Their Bulletproof line is not only archival quality, but also nigh-impossible to remove from paper.

And their Heart of Darkness black ink is like peering into the very abyss itself.

<comment><USER13> Very true. Conversely, the water-based "won't stain your clothing" ink fades very quickly, which is pretty bad for archiving. Perhaps you can guess which one I used when I "commented" things around my house a few years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My washing machine has a water filter?

<comment> X-Istence Glad I am not the only one with that reaction. Now I must find out and clean it if necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The oil change people do that when they put the little see through sticky on the top of your windshield.</comment>


Show HN: 30-second Slideshows for Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://jdan.github.io/cleaver/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

I recently started an Open Source club at my school, and one of the key aspects of the club is that I (along with a few others) give quick tech talks. I found that it took far too long to whip up a short slideshow, so I wrote this. Its entire purpose is to allow you to get something presentable and interactive out quickly.

It's sort of a two-birds type deal because we'll be actively working on this project through the club :)

I'd love to hear your feedback!

<comment><USER2> How does it compare with Pandoc[1], which is the swiss-army knife of Markdown- to-foo converters, and also handles presentations.

[1]: [http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just looking through the "HTML Slides" examples, seems like Pandodoc is more than capable of achieving what Cleaver does (and much, much more).

<comment><USER3> You didn't find a solution that met your precise needs, so you started building one. Don't let the fact that other solutions exist get you down.

<comment><USER4> I feel like this always happens when I'm either done or almost done with my projects as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Exactly. I've been looking out for (and possibly missed) a tool to make a Reveal.js-ish slideshow [1] from _just markdown_ rather than _' HTML with optional markdown in each slide'_. This is that.

With Reveal.js you can do:

      <section data-markdown><script type="text/template">
        #markdown slide here
      </script></section>

But that's a bit of a hard-sell when I'm trying to open non-softie eyes to the benefits of markdown-everywhere (as they have to encounter HTML too). So yeah, I realise that a regex that replaces `---` with the above and hoicks it into a Reveal.js template is (almost) all that is needed to achieve what this project does, but I'm thankful for it all the same.

Worth noting that I've also used the `slideshow` gem [2] back in the day. This does basically the same thing as this project, and with the Google HTML5 Rocks [3] theme it isn't bad as a 'just markdown to slideshow' tool, but it was a bit fiddly to get started and 1) that homepage is a big undersell with all the old crappy themes/defaults on it and 2) I think their version of the Google deck is now pretty outdated (was buggy when I used it). Still, worth looking into for Rubyists I think.

[1] [http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js](http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js)

[2] [http://slideshow.rubyforge.org/](http://slideshow.rubyforge.org/)

[3] [http://slideshow.rubyforge.org/tutorial.html5.html#slide1](http://slideshow.rubyforge.org/tutorial.html5.html#slide1)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to explore adding an optional to render a reveal.js slideshow, instead of using my "reinventing the wheel" approach. Shouldn't be terribly difficult, just a matter of adding a new template :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a nice project. I wrote my own version earlier, but it was not nearly as slick! I wanted fancy SVG-based animations, but never got it to a working state.

Coincidentally, I think some _subtle_ animation would be great--maybe just have the slides slide in or out. They are, after all, _slides_ :P.

I currently use a very similar tool written for Emacs's org-mode. Org-mode is incredible. I mostly use it for notes; the slideshows are just another nice feature. I think the results[1] are quite good, given that it's just as easy as this except better-integrated into Emacs.

[1]: [http://jelv.is/synthesis-slides.html](http://jelv.is/synthesis- slides.html)

I put this presentation together at _literally_ the last moment before speaking--I wrote the last slide just as the previous speaker was taking questions. Despite the bad timing, I think it worked reasonably well.

It's great, but I do sometimes have to modify the CSS for certain slides by hand. Happily, this is very easy, and I have never needed anything complicated.

I use a modified version of an elisp script written by some Googlers[2], but org-mode can output slides with a bunch of other backends[3] like Beamer or S5. You can even use Emacs itself to give the presentation! I've seen a presentation this way and while the aesthetics are questionable, it confers an undeniable hacker panache.

[2]: [https://gist.github.com/kinjo/509761](https://gist.github.com/kinjo/509761)

[3]: [http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/non-beamer- presentatio...](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/non-beamer- presentations.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I had a play and it seems really neat, congratulations. I ran "watch -n0.2 cleaver presentation.md" to preview changes, but there is probably a better way to do it with some sort of filesystem watcher.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll be sure to add a `make watch` command or something along those lines, seems like a no-brainer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems similar to mdpress, a ruby script which I've used successfully.

[https://github.com/egonSchiele/mdpress](https://github.com/egonSchiele/mdpress)

</comment><comment><USER9> Very nice. I would suggest adding url support to be able to go back and forth between slides (using browser's back/fwd button), emailing dirct link to certain slides, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just merged an awesome PR that does exactly this [0]. It doesn't take over the forward/back buttons, which is a good thing in my opinion.

[0]: [https://github.com/jdan/cleaver/pull/25](https://github.com/jdan/cleaver/pull/25)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why do hackers need this simplistic bullet point slides? Encouraging death by bullet point?

I could understand features like code-highlighting for hackers.

<comment><USER11> p_slides[1] does just that.

1\. [https://github.com/munen/p_slides](https://github.com/munen/p_slides)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> maybe can add export option viz to pdf

<comment><USER11> what you need is p_slides[1] - it supports export to pdf (via printing to pdf) as well as syntax highlighting

1\. [https://github.com/munen/p_slides](https://github.com/munen/p_slides)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> this needs mathjax</comment>


Twitter Suggested for Nobel Peace Prize - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/168273/twitter_suggested_for_nobel_peace_prize.html <comment><USER2> Err... That's ridiculous.

Although important, that's was not promoting peace, it was promoting a revolution. And why should the creator of the platform receive the credit for its user content? If it was not Twitter people would be doing the same over email. Should we award instead the creator of the the web, or the creator of the integrated circuit or ...

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's completely absurd.

I mean...if you're going to suggest that a _technology provider_ be given a Nobel Peace Prize for Iranian protests, at least pick something that had a significant effect -- like a cell phone network. Because despite all of the press that Twitter received, there's not that much evidence that it played any significant role in the protests. And for every one person using Twitter, there were hundreds -- if not thousands -- of people using cell-phones to communicate about the protests, with little fanfare or media attention.

<http://www.slate.com/id/2220736/>

<http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/remember_moldova.php>

<http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/04/17/04>

<http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/06/19/01>

I suppose that you could argue that Twitter was responsible for bringing the Iranian protests into the American media spotlight, but the thing about the coverage was that it was mostly about Twitter, only superficially about Iran. You could tune into any major media outlet and hear gobs about how precious, precocious Twitter was so important to the Iranian protests that the US State Department wouldn't let them take downtime -- but you didn't hear that much about the Iranian protests! It was an example of US media navel-gazing, at its finest.

<comment><USER4> Cell phones didn't let people outside Iran convince themselves they were "a part of things" by changing their timezones or using green icons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where to begin...

First the article says that a former US national security advisor thinks twitter should get a Nobel peace prize. There's a long way from that to credible speculation that they'll get one. There are no claims from inside sources, a claim that PG thinks Sam Odio should get the Nobel Prize in physics would be equally credible.

Second the committee that decides who gets the prize is secret and doesn't leak information. And it's in Sweden. The article qoutes US sources that have nothing to do with the process.

Third historically nobel prizes are only given once it's proven that you weren't wrong, primarily for political reasons. Twitter isn't _quite_ there yet, they may well be bankrupt next year. There are exceptions to this rule but they are rare.

<comment><USER6> Minor note: the peace prize is actually handled in Norway, not in Sweden. The other prizes are in Sweden, though.

More at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize>

<comment><USER5> Ah, good catch. I had no idea.

<comment><USER7> It's because they used to be the same country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is definitely ridiculous. It would be nicer to give the nobel peace prize to someone like kiva.org Twitter is just another communication medium - cool? yes, fun? yes, but hardly revolutionary

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh please. Not this again. Read <http://blogs.reuters.com/great- debate/author/reeseerlich/> for the take of someone whose knowledge of Iran predates June 2009. Provides a lot more perspective than the social media wankery.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Err... That's ridiculous." indeed, let's give nobel peace prize to the pen writer used...

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, given that they guy that invented dynamite is giving his name to a peace prize we shouldn't really be surprised that it gets used in ways that are creative with words.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't think Twitter had anything to do with the peace protests in Iran. Its a real time communication mechanism which enables people to do things. And also a very noisy one.

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe if it were the prize for literature. Have a look at some of the forgotten and forgettable who have received that...

<comment><USER4> Eh, the Peace Prize has had a lot of dubious winners, too. (Doesn't mean suggestions like this guy's shouldn't be mocked, but still.)

</comment></comment><comment> onreact-com Wow. The guy that suggested it is a 200% neocon war-monger and ardent supporter of George W Bush. Just read his Wikipedia entry which is obviously very flattering of him, maybe a tad too much... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pfeifle>

Plus he currently just has 239 followers n Twitter. Maybe this is just "get more followers" stunt.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh boy. Just what Biz and Ev need.</comment>