Show HN: Spy Codes: free booklet for kids (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://www.secretgeek.net/codes <comment><USER2> This is fantastic! I got into cryptography with books like this when I was younger, but they seem to be few and far between nowadays.

Also, kids don't seem to like books anymore ;-)

<comment><USER3> I did also. I would check out the same three code-making/spy club books from my elementary school library.

Now that I have kids I will see how it fares with them.

Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> re: getting kids into things, only thing i'd add is to be patient.

Often kids will see a thing and not connect with it at all. Then two or three years later think it's the greatest thing they've ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To the OP: On the page with the pigpen cipher and knights templar code, the code at the top is the same as braille and morse.

I really like this! Great way to introduce codes and make your own secret language. Also a good way to lead into how to decode them with pattern recognition.

</comment><comment><USER5> Related: check out the "Encyclopedia Brown" series of books from 40 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER6> I started writing in Elian Script which is a Pigpen cipher. I really like the result. Thank you for the PDF.</comment>


The People's Republic of Zuckerstan  - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebaffler.com/past/peoples_republic_of_zuckerstan <comment><USER2> Tl;dr: Cranky hipster bemoans, five years too late, that Cambridge is overrun with VCs and their money, and the clean, boring bistros they go to, and that the money even managed to squeeze the seediness out of Central Square.

Every cool person, and cool place, has moved to Somerville, but rents are way up there, too.

So go to the Gods, and to the Cantab Lounge, while you can. Before some story of a deal that closed over PBRs in plastic cups shows up in TechCrunch.

<comment><USER3> Oh no, people who are willing to pay more than you to live somewhere have caused you to have to live somewhere else. TL;DR: The same thing that has been happening since the dawn of time continues to happen.

<comment><USER4> The issue that OP is concerned with is that those who are displaced don't necessarily have the means to relocate to an area and remain in the same living situation they were previously in. When you uproot lower-income residents from their existing social structure, which may have served as their safety net, where are they supposed to go? They may relocate physically but the economic and mental/psychological strain from being forcibly moved may have detrimental consequences that we haven't properly taken the time to understand.

'Progress' and residential gentrification are not necessarily evil things, but they become destructive when the people moving in have no interest in maintaining social services for people other than themselves. If the tech sector wishes to maintain the image that it is an industry with a 'heart', it would behoove those of us working in it to inform ourselves as to the consequences of our economic decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As usual, The Baffler is smug and ignorant to the point of dangerously distracting incoherence.

Having visited and lived in Cambridge and Somerville for about 20 years, the problem has nothing to do with entrepreneurs and everything to do with the prices/value of transient housing. There have always been hugemongous factories intermingled with the residences (remember Necco? Junior Mints? Analog Devices?)

With or without recent crass attempts at branding, the area has been a legendary entrepreneurship hot bed, from World War II radar to Ms. PacMan to Guitar Hero and everything in between. It doesn't need explicit branding to achieve this status. Innovation here comes in _waves_. Biotech was big 10 years ago. Now it's online social stuff with biotech still fairing strong.

There are more specific problems, such as Harvard's capital buying out houses and turning them into faux fraternal organizations and ever more dorms. Or my favorite frustration, the generation of do-nothings in Somerville and Medford who inherited three-deckers from their parents and do little but collect rent from Tufts, Harvard and MIT students.

Confounding the process is that fact that so much of the population is temporary - 2 to 5 years in resident that they can - and hardly desire - political coherency, thus yielding power to the incumbents.

</comment><comment><USER6> What a bizarre rant. It's like an angry former chamber of commerce booster knocking the only thing going on.

Be real. Cambridge is a dump. The full-time residents are angry old folks and poor people, the city is dirty and the infrastructure is awful. The housing is a mix of ghetto and college town -- lots of houses cut up into a warren of teeny apartments and condos.

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea that entrepreneurship is somehow opposed to "liberalism" is just laughable. Startup communities welcome people no matter what their background (high school dropout, college dropout, who cares?). At least, that is their goal. This is not to say that there isn't some cognitive bias in favor of those with access to elite educations (I'd say much less so than in older institutions such as law, and even in modern institutions like banking and consulting). However, the barriers to entry in technology essentially do not exist in the way they do in banking and law (try getting one of those jobs without a degree). Or even becoming a politician. Just off the top of my head, Paul Buchheit started at Case Western Reserve. Jack Dorsey started at the Missouri Institute of Technology. The President of the company I work at went to USD. Evan Williams went to Nebraska. Biz Stone went to Northeastern, then UMass. Trevor Blackwell started at Carleton. Other YC partners went to schools like Bucknell and Stetson.

Apologies for the rant-like post, but this is becoming a major pet peeve of mine.

<comment><USER7> "entrepreneurship" inherently favours those who can take risks - which means those who are already financially secure, or from privileged backgrounds where they can be sure of finding a new job quickly. It favours those who can get money from VC, which is very much an old-boys club. And it favours the kind of businesses that make a profit quickly, whatever their other effects.

<comment><USER8> "living" inherently favours those who can breathe - which means those who are already breathing, or from oxygen rich environments where they can be sure of finding new O2 molecules quickly. It favours those who can get air from tanks, which are very much old apparatuses. And it favours the kind of lungs that exhale quickly, whatever their other effects.

<comment><USER9> I believe this is known as "reducto ad absurdum".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't follow this essay. I'm not sure how the ex-NSA entrepreneurs ties into transit workers working later because the train schedule was expanded. It reads like a list of unrelated complaints instead of a cohesive argument against...what? Trying to attract businesses?

</comment><comment><USER11> Funny, I'm what you'd call a paleoconservative, lived in Cambridge for 6 years (Harvard undergrad and MIT work after), but I think this "no one here but us liberals and loonies" rant is more or less right on. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER12> Stupid title and a long wandering article padded with disconnected complaints disparaging the City's efforts to remain a tech hub. This alleged "hard-core nerd" was even in favor the software tax, pathetic.</comment>


Ask HN: Does environmental impact influence your choice of employer? - <AUTHOR> If [x] = all considerations influencing your decision, for example {salary, culture, location, colleagues, technology, benefits, environment, other factors}<p>What % of [x] = the company's environmental impact? <comment><USER2> X varies and only matters at the extremes.

No matter how awesome the culture is, I'd never work at Exxon-Mobil.

A job listing from an org seeking new solutions to climate change might make my ears perk but all other factors would still have to meet my standards of sufficiency.

For 99% of prospective employers it's a non-factor.

</comment><comment><USER3> I will consider it. I guess I won't work on proof of work based cryptocurrency.</comment>


Performance scores between Windows 7 and 8 - <AUTHOR>

Running Windows 8 in VMware is surprisingly fast:
Running Experience Index on Windows 8 inside of VMware gives a score of 4.8 (on 2 CPU, 4GB memory and SSD)
Process:6.2 RAM: 7.5 Graphic:5.6 Gaming Graphic:4.8 Disk:7.4
<comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
Yet the same test results in a score on 4.6 on its bare Windows 7 host machine (4 CPU, 8GB and SSD)
Process:6.9 RAM: 7.4 Graphic:4.6 Gaming Graphic:6.1 Disk:7.5
Is this test flawed or Windows 8 really rocks? </comment><comment><USER2> Two problems with this. 1. The experience index may have changed in windows 8. 2. It reports the smallest number from the individual scores as the overall. It doesn't really tell you much that the gaming graphics are the lowest score in the VM.

More useful would be a benchmark, or better, how well the the software you want to actually use runs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you have other benchmarks to show that the VM is not really that fast? Maybe it really is that fast. Try installing Win7 in the VM and benchmark it.</comment>


Aircraft Electrical Wiring Interconnect System (EWIS) Best Practices [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.faa.gov/training_testing/training/air_training_program/job_aids/media/EWIS_job-aid_2.0_Printable.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> I enjoy youtube. I was looking at some videos of soldering technique (because I'm looking to teach my child), and I noticed a bunch of videos have terrible technique. There are videos about splicing wires with millions of views that are just really bad bodges.

I'm not going to train my kid to FAA or NASA standards (yet), but I do want to emphasise good practice.

This FAA document doesn't include much about soldering, but it does include a lot of examples of poor practice for EWIS, and also what happens when things go wrong.</comment>


Ask HN: How are your eyes? - <AUTHOR>

First submission here on HN, but longtime reader.
Just curious to know, since most of us are hackers by trade, how your eyes feel/work before/during/after hacking sessions...
After 10 hours, I rarely (but enough to bring up) get very short, sharp pains.
In addition, do you have bags under your eyes?
I've read about computer glasses, do they work, and what are some other solutions? <comment><USER2> For the sake of your other body parts: lower back, neck, wrists

take breaks and do little exercises

<http://www.slifelabs.com/>

<http://www.floydprice.com/2008/08/productivity-tip/>

<http://bc.tech.coop/blog/060131.html>

<http://www.workrave.org/>

<http://www.lcdf.org/~eddietwo/xwrits/>

<http://cameronyule.com/2008/11/taking-regular-breaks>

</comment><comment><USER3> Used to be 20/20 w/ an astigmatism and never needed glasses. After working w/ computers for about 7-8 yrs, I went to the eye doctor to complain about my eyes hurting. Strangely enough I still have 20/20 vision yet, due to eye strain, my eyes have trouble compensating for the "fuzziness" of fonts; the doc said that my eyes try to smooth them out. I got a mild prescription and it's great. No worse after 3+ years.

Coupla protips: * Don't code on a white background - hurts/strains the eyes moreso than a gray bg

* Buy a great monitor - $100 more in cost isn't worth saving if you lose x% of eyesight or have pain.

</comment><comment><USER4> I keep eye drops at my desk and usually around 3pm I'll stop and use them, otherwise my contacts get to be super dry and painful.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not wearing any galsses. Still no problem with eyes.</comment>


Achieving Abstraction In JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.yusufaytas.com/achieving-abstraction-in-javascript/ In computer science, abstraction is to hide certain details and only show the essential features of the object. There is not any built-in support for abstraction in Javascript. In this post, author tries to give insights about abstraction for JavaScript. It gives examples for defining interfaces and implementing them. <comment><USER2> good article.</comment>


What did Samsung create with its "Artificial Human" and what's the impact? - <AUTHOR> https://www.neon.life/ <comment><AUTHOR> More details: [https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-neon-heres-when-well- get-d...](https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-neon-heres-when-well-get-details- on-the-mysterious-ai/)

<comment><AUTHOR> ... and here's a video that includes footage of Neon that Samsung apparently accidentally left hidden in the HTML (or whatever) on their website and have since removed [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6f6EXX-79w&feature=emb_titl...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6f6EXX-79w&feature=emb_title)</comment></comment>


"Just get started" is bad advice - <AUTHOR> http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/getting-started-is-bad-advice/

<comment><USER2> Handy phrase, "painstaking practice and ongoing iteration"

Cal Newport's guest post is good contrast to the anti-meeting and bias-toward- action viewpoint. I think his points apply to more than academia.

Maybe instead of meetings we should be having debates.</comment>


Control Flow Visualizer (CFViz): an rr / gdb plugin - <AUTHOR> https://botondballo.wordpress.com/2017/12/22/control-flow-visualizer-cfviz-an-rr-gdb-plugin/ <comment><USER2> > While designed with rr in mind, CFViz also works with vanilla gdb, with the > limitation that it will only visualize the rest of the function's execution > from the point where it was invoked (since, without rr, it cannot go > backwards to the function's starting point).

I'm not sure this is correct. If you have a new enough version of GDB, I think you can reverse-step and reverse-next.

<comment><USER3> GDB's built-in record and replay target is too slow to be very useful. It laboriously breaks on every instruction, decodes it, and records its effects; rr is much, much smarter. With GDB you might record execution for a short a minute or two, but with rr you can record everything, all the time. It's fast enough that you could record your every-day browsing sessions just in case you encounter a bug.

On the other hand, you are technically correct.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is 15$ per year for a niche subscription based service too high? - <AUTHOR> Is 15$/year for a niche subscription based service too high? Suggest a niche tool or service for which you are likely to pay 15$/year ? Please name already existing service that you are using for which you pay under 20$/year. <comment><USER2> You're asking the wrong question.

How niche something is is largely irrelevant, because your userbase is self selecting and doesn't care how many of them there are.

What you should be asking is: Does the value of what you're offering justify $15/month?

Also consider doing A/B testing at different price points. Just ask for email addresses, and see if you get a different response rate at $5/10/15/20.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not asking 15$/month its 15$/year. What kind of service would you be ready to pay 15$/year.

<comment><USER3> When talking to customers, pay more attention in the answers they want to give than in the answer you wanted to get.

The parent assumed it was by month and not mentioned it being too high. So, clear indication that $15/year do not present itself as too high without any further info.

And as other commented, it might be too low. As I type this, both primary comments have very valuable advice. Listen to them and not to the fact they did not answered your proposed question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I see what you are trying to say here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The service may be niche but pricing should depend on various factors like complexity, value add compared to competitors (you always have competitors even in niche) and ultimately the most important: Who is your target audience ?

$15/Year could be too low in fact for a niche. You may as well charge $15/Month and still get enough clients. In fact, I will say that a good niche service should be high margin because it is most likely low volume. This means your pricing should be high enough to create a sustainable business.

Going back to the Target Audience point. Imagine this. You have a service/product that for some reason can be sold to both students and large educational institutions. Would you ask a student to pay $15/year ? Perhaps you won't get much luck there. Would you be able to get $15/Year from an institution ? Most likely. Of course, sales cycle may be longer and it may take a bit more time to get the institution on board. But they may easily pay you $15/Month or even $100/Month if they get enough value out of what you are offering.

</comment><comment><USER5> As others have said . . . too low.

It's not even going to be worth accepting the subscriptions at that price. If it involves any amount of effort to setup/maintain/pay for hosting etc.

look for an idea that is in the $29/mo+ range.

It's more about the value than just the lowest price.

If it's too low you won't make money unless it happens to be really hands off.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it too high? It might be too low.

I pay $20/year for feedbin.com, under a grandfathered rate. The currently advertised price is $30/year.

I'd probably be willing to pay $5/month (or more? I haven't given it much thought) for this service, though. I use it _a lot_ , and I use it almost _every day_.

What are you thinking about building?

</comment><comment><USER7> Users will _only_ consider your pricing to be expensive(ridiculous) if the service you provide does not match up to the money they are paying.

The easiest way to know if you are being too expensive(ridiculous) is to compare your own service and pricing, to the average service and pricing provided by companies offering a similar service.

I pay $19.29 annually for the Pro Finch VPN service.. [https://www.finchvpn.com/order/?product=pro](https://www.finchvpn.com/order/?product=pro) I don't think the pricing is high,,, i find it very fair compared to the service i get.

</comment><comment><USER8> My hunch would be, unless it's very low-effort for you or potentially reaches a massive customer base, that the price is too low rather than too high.

I can think of almost no services I pay that amount per year for. I can think of several I pay that amount per month for, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you list down some of them please ?

<comment><USER8> Browserstack, VPSes from a couple of companies, a private forum in the filmmaking market, just off the top of my head.

Of course, most of those are business rather than personal expenses.

Seem to recall my Spotify account comes in around $15 too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If $15 per year is too high, just round it down to zero and analyze the business from there. On the other hand, if it's a niche product that has monetary value the price should probably be several hundred a year or more.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the behavior depends if you are marketing a consumer based product or enterprise based product. In the beginning when I launched my enterprise SAAS product, it was vastly underpriced. I gradually increased the price to market rates (about 4x higher) and the subscription rate has been the same.

</comment><comment><USER11> You could pay around that price for a website monitoring service. E.g. [https://datasnitch.co.uk](https://datasnitch.co.uk)</comment>


Toilet Paper Algorithms: I didn't know you had to be a computer scientist to use toilet paper. - <AUTHOR> http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/toilet_paper_algorit.html

<comment><USER2> that's funny, it made my morning :)

In a high school expository writing course I was required to write a parable. As with most assignments at the time, I wrote it during the last 20 minutes of the preceding class. The topic I came up with was 'always check for TP before sitting down.' I think it had something to do with an airplane crashing, and the man in the restroom who didn't check for TP was the only one who didn't get a parachute. I don't know. Anyway...always check. It pretty much solves the usability problem of TP rollers.</comment>


Public Domain Donor: donate your IP to the public upon your death - <AUTHOR> http://ni9e.com/public_domain_donor.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Too bad companies own most of my IP.

</comment><comment><USER2> Who would come to collect this when you're dead?

</comment><comment><USER3> I...DECLARE.... BANKRUPTCY!</comment>


No Bathroom Relief in Sight for Thousands Living on the Street - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecity.nyc/2020/8/13/21365521/nyc-homeless-bathroom-penn-station-subways-manhattan <comment><USER2> The homeless should go to their second home.

-Some rich politician

</comment><comment><USER3> Conservatives explain homelessness as due to liberalism. They say this works two ways.

In way, liberal values causes people to make poor life decisions that lead to them lose their jobs.

In the other way, liberal economic policies lead to a lack of jobs and also overly expensive housing.

<comment><USER4> I read the article. Did I overlook the part where partisan politics, and their depth of responsibility for the homelessness problem of NYC was covered? If I did, my mistake. If I didn't, why are you bringing up how conservatives affect the homelessness in NYC? I'm pretty sure conservative policymakers in NYC are as common as hens teeth..in NYC.

<comment><USER3> I brought in conservatism because homeless is in part due to national level policies. Conservatives and liberals agree on that.

<comment><USER5> If national policies cause homelessness, why isn't there a homeless problem in western Kansas?

<comment><USER3> The effect of national policies vary according to region.

But let me ask, what do you think causes homelessness?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bad engineering properties of oo languages - <AUTHOR> http://lucacardelli.name/Papers/BadPropertiesOfOO.html

<comment><USER2> This article would have needed to define what it mean by object orientation, and then derive comparisons out of that.

As it stands, it derives conclusions out of nothing. Lets have a clarifying example:

"Object-oriented style is intrinsically less efficient that procedural style. In pure object-oriented style, every routine is supposed to be a (virtual) method. "

I'm pretty darn certain no definition of object orientation I've seen have included virtual methods as part of the definition.

And another: Polymorphic: "Economy of large-scale development. Data abstraction and modularization have methodological advantages for code development. Large teams of programmers can negotiate the interfaces to be implemented, and then proceed separately to implement the corresponding pieces of code. Dependencies between pieces of code are minimized, and code can be locally rearranged without fear of global effects. Polymorphism is important for reusing code modularly."

OO: "Economy of large-scale development. Teams of programmers are often involved in developing class libraries and specializing existing class libraries. Although reuse is a big win of object-oriented languages, it is also the case that these languages have extremely poor modularity properties with respect to class extension and modification. For example, it is easy to override a method that should not be overridden, or to reimplement a class in a way that causes problems in subclasses."

Because all know OO people can't talk each other and define APIs. Also, I can't recall anything in any definition of OO that doesn't allow for creating public interfaces or for that matter prohibiting subclassing of certain methods.

There are so many straw men in this article that it is downright silly.</comment>


Berlin Is Banning Most Vacation Apartment Rentals - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/04/airbnb-rentals-berlin-vacation-apartment-law/480381/ <comment><USER3> Some background tidbits the article does not explain very well or at all:

* For short-term rentals (vacation homes) one needs to have a permit and pay taxes.

* Subletting your apartment without permission from the landlord is illegal, making a profit and not declaring it is tax fraud (and most don't declare them because then they'd also have to have a permit and pay tourist tax).

* The landlord has to grant permission for sublets (also whole apartments) if the tenant is temporarily moving out of town but wants to keep the apartment, but also here: no profit allowed. EDIT: The landlord has a right to review _every single_ intermediate tenant - so he can refuse them (this basically rules out the AirBnB model in this scenario).

What really annoys people is that in the best locations there are lots of people who ignore the existing laws and the rest of society has to pay for that: by not finding an affordable space to live, by having to endure a new set of drunk neighbors every weekend who either party in the apartment or come home drunk and very noisy at 4am and who, understandably, don't participate in the house community (and yes, people tend to know their neighbors and even talk to them!).

But before adopting new laws it would have been much simpler to simply enforce the existing laws. Get all these folks who offer apartments on AirBnB 365 days a year and check whether they have all permits and taxes. Let them pay fines. Put them on a list of people whose tax-statements and books are checked annually (they do that with everybody else who commits tax fraud or just annoys the tax clerks).

Calling German laws too rigid is everyone's right, but it is also the right of German people to value diversity in their cities enough to protect it by those rigid laws.

<comment><USER4> Why must everything be taxed? Tourist taxes seem to me to be among the most ridiculous. Tourists bring in economic activity which provides far more value than the tourist taxes collected. Taxing something results in less of it; why a city would want to reduce tourism is beyond me. It isn't like tourists are not paying VAT, transport taxes, etc. The business owners that sell to tourists are making more money, which is also taxed and leads to them hiring more people and buying more products.

However leftists love feeding the government even if it is a net loss for economic prosperity. They want to tax everything without understanding that taxes reduce economic activity.You certainly need a minimum level of taxation, but it's a religion with many people. Next time you rent a car, have a look at the various taxes. Then calculate how many taxes the car company is paying for that euro of revenue. The same transaction is ultimately taxed each time to money touches someone.

As far as subletting, that should be handled between the landlord and the tenant: that's a private contract and the government ought not have any say.

If there's a problem with 'drunken neighbors,' then that also should be handled contractually between the co-proprietors of a particular building.

Government intervention isn't necessary for any of this.

<comment><USER5> I prefer leftism than rightism, because in my mind rightism leads to having your water poison you, Flint-style.

I remember reading an article about Barcelona and how it was actually losing money due to low-budget tourists: the city has to maintain/clean infrastructure for them, but they don't bring much income. Not sure how they tax their bars, but these people would just get wasted and puke in their parks, and the city has to clean up after them.

<comment><USER6> It's just silly to tax the good thing (tourists), just because some of them misbehave.

The correct solution is to fine bad behaviors (littering, public nuisance, overserving drunks, etc.) and instituting fees for operating businesses that directly contribute to the problem (for example bars, liquor stores).

<comment><USER7> It would seem more expensive to police this adequately, prosecute, collect the fines, etc. I'm not sure your plan could ever have ROI.

That's forgetting the impact on the life of people who actually live there in the short term.

<comment><USER6> > It would seem more expensive to police this adequately, prosecute, collect > the fines, etc. I'm not sure your plan could ever have ROI.

Of course it would be more expensive to police it, man-hours are not free. The obvious upside is that it would stop the unwanted be behaviors and not tax the good (tourism).

The is no need for prosecution, as fines are handles through an administrative process nor is there a problem to collect the fines within the EU (from where most tourists in Barcelona are) due to cross-border collections.

The plan would immediately have a ROI if enforcement costs less fines were less than the current costs for cleanup/maintenance. Furthermore current tourism/hotel taxes can just be changed to bar, liquor store fees and licenses, if need be and thus have zero net impact on finances.

Lastly, and most importantly, ROI should not be the primary metric when trying to change bad behaviors. The current situation externalizes the costs of bad behavior, whereas my solution internalizes the cost. Even if there was a real cost to my solution, it has a net positive benefit to the public good, and to society that's worth paying for.

> That's forgetting the impact on the life of people who actually live there > in the short term.

What impact? Not many are likely object to less public intoxication and puking in the parks.

<comment><USER8> I don't think it would stop unwanted behaviors by tourists. So the tourist gets reprimanded and then leaves when their trip is over, the next tourist comes and the process begins again. It's whackamole.

<comment><USER6> Of course it wouldn't stop unwanted behavior immediately, but word does get around.

I'm not condoning any of the following, but: \- you don't bring liquids to an airport \- you don't go to Thailand to insult the king \- you don't bring chewing gum to Singapore \- you don't fly via the US due to the TSA \- you don't overstay your visa

The point is, if you want to stop unwanted behaviors, you make rules and you enforce them, and eventually (most) people, even those that haven't been to your country, will know what isn't condoned and modify their behavior accordingly or stay away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The dynamic is a little different than in most other cities. What's really happening here is that cheap rent is a kind of entitlement in Berlin: rent controls extend _across_ tenants so getting an apartment is really about persuading a landlord to take you rather than bidding at an appropriate price point. AirBnB gets around this by allowing rentals at arbitrary price points. This is true whether it's an owner or a renter doing the leasing, which is very different from other markets in which it's mostly a concern of renters abusing their leases.

> "The Berlin Senate's ruling nonetheless reflects a general feeling across a > city in which homes are getting harder to find: Berliners have had enough > and they want their city back."

Translation: There is no pricing mechanism on rents in the city and it is becoming increasingly impossible to find an apartment.

While it's certainly true that AirBnB essentially allows landlords to flout the law, it's worth noting that the adverse effects of price ceilings on supply are the root cause of Berlin's problems and this will not solve the underlying problem of rents being far from equilibrium.

<comment><USER10> A free market price would not fix anything - every tiny bit of flatland is already used. What you are saying is basically: Only rich people should have the right to live in central districts. I disagree and so do most Berliners.

<comment><USER11> What mechanism do you use to choose who can live in a central district, if not the ability to pay market rent?

Right to live where you are born? That adversely affects anyone not born in a central district.

<comment><USER12> Right to live where you work seems to be a good one. The problem with AirBNB isn't about too many people living in an area like SF, it's about local population being displaced in favor of richer, temporary visitors.

It's certainly a nice thing to be able to travel and visit other cultures and countries. But the advent of massive international transportation combined with few tourism hotspots has created a tourism industry that can outprice locals, and thus destroy the cultures that created the artefacts they show to tourists.

<comment><USER13>
       Right to live where you work seems to be a good one.

The people who work in the center (often government, large companies) are usually also the most well-off, so living close to work is to a good approximation what you'd get with market prices.

       temporary visitors.

Temporary visitors typically visit the center which is where most of the cultural landmarks as well as the party-infrastructure is located.

If we generalise the "live where you work" to "stay where you spend most of your time, then it makes a lot of sense for the visitors to be housed in the centre. Otherwise you force a large amount of commuting on them. For course that doesn't matter much for each individual visitor because they are around only for a short time, but that's not the right metric. It means that Berlin's infrastructure is heavily taxed with all that unnecessary commuting by (every changing) visitors.

<comment><USER12> > If we generalise the "live where you work" to "stay where you spend most of > your time, then it makes a lot of sense for the visitors to be housed in the > centre.

The thing is, it completely reverses the meaning of my point, which was based on concern priority, not transportation efficiency. To me, it seems important that people whose home, job and lifestyle/culture is at stake are treated preferably to people for whom the city is just a tmporary leisure.

By making sure that visitors don't effect too much locals, we also promote a kind of tourism which promotes hospitality, and which ensures that the object of visits is not destroyed by tourism consumption.

<comment><USER13> International captial cities like Berlin are major destinations for travellers of all stripe, and will be for the forseeable future.

Indeed, the boundary between tourists and residents is porous. Capital cities attract a transient population from week end visitors to interns or workers who stay a few weeks, to summer visitors who stay a season, to students who stay for a few years, to proper residents who stay a decade or more. All of them are a source of ideas as well as a source of income for Berlin's industry. "Das ist auch gut so." Hence Berlin needs to cater for all. That includes providing substantial, centrally located living space (whether hotels or apartments) for short-term visitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A city is more than a rental market -- it's also a community. This is where all the-market-fixes-everything kind of arguments fall short. Unfettered development would eventually stack Berlin with enough housing but the disruption to people's lives would be immense; and Berlin would lose much of the charm and character that has drawn so many people there to begin with.

A city is one part market and one part enchanted forest.

<comment><USER15> I absolutely agree. It's ironic that we move to the places we fall in love with, only to modify them to our own needs. But this is the history of cities. It should always be up to local communities to accept or reject us. In a way, you can measure the strength of local culture by how it assimilates outsiders. Conversely, you can probably gauge the strength of an outside culture by how resistant it is to local assimilation. Of course, purchasing power speaks many languages.

<comment><USER16> It's a bit like tourism. You travel to see the places which get destroyed by you being there...

<comment><USER17> And if we take the tourism bit a bit further, the tourist's search for the authentic ends up with companies ready and willing to offer a back door into local culture, creating an impression of authenticity for a tourist audience (often called "staged authenticity" in tourism studies).

This could be compared a bit to gentrification, in which I am reminded of Gertrude Stein's phrase "there is no there there" as well as, albiet more distantly, Marc Auge's concept of nonplaces.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein#.22There_is_no_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein#.22There_is_no_there_there.22)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This might be relevant: [http://airbnbvsberlin.com](http://airbnbvsberlin.com) (Data analysis of AirBnB rentals in Berlin)

Key facts:

* 10% of the users are offering more than one unit (so not just a spare bed)

* Average user rents out 1.3 units

* Top user is renting out 44 flats

</comment><comment><USER19> What about Ferienwohnungen that existed before AirBnB was even a thing? I travel to Dresden every couple of months and stay in a Ferienwohnung in the Neustadt that's been around for at least eight years. I guess under Berlin's new rules that would be gone.

<comment><USER20> What is a "Ferienwohnung"? A cursory search only turned up articles in German.

<comment><USER21> AirBnB minus a website plus a lamp post flier.

<comment><USER20> Ha ha, that's an great description, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> On a somewhat related note, could anyone recommend a legitimate way to find mid-term rentals(3-6 months)in Berlin? Or possibly a month or two on the shorter end?

<comment><USER22> Berliner here, working in Kreuzberg. Text me "Germany + 171 as net provider + 19 48 58 0" either Whatsapp or iMessage or johannkaupen at Google Mail more details and I'll help you! Additionally: you'll find help on WG-Gesucht.de // most of the stuff is in German, but some are texting in English too and Most will ne Sperling German.

<comment><USER23> That's extremely kind and helpful! Would you mind me saving your details for future use? I'd love to setup in Berlin at some point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My favorite phrase applies: dura lex, sed lex. If you don't like the legislation, the regulation then go in and vote to change it. Rally fellow minded people to convince others to vote in favor of what you like. Do not, however, go around the law just because you do not like it.

<comment><USER25> How does civil disobedience fit in ?

<comment><USER26> Isn't that a tough question? There's no way we'll ever answer it, especially on a web discussion board.

It's an important question though, mainly because it comes up every time people have a passionate, and perhaps legitimate, disagreement about what the law ought to be.

High school debates aside, I think almost everyone agrees that civil disobedience is sometimes completely justified. People also almost universally agree that breaking every law you don't like, simply because you don't think it should be the law, would not be justified.

So, where do regulations on short term rentals fit in?

My initial reaction is that this is an easy one. I don't think that regulations on converting a house to a hotel get anywhere close to the standard I'd expect for what wikipedia defines as a "active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is a symbolic or ritualistic violation of the law, rather than a rejection of the system as a whole"…

That said, I would give the nod to people who would seek to violate some types of zoning regulations. It is certainly possible for zoning regulations (school districts, voting districts, and so forth) to reach vile levels of class and race discrimination. A lot of people, for instance, might want to keep a boarding house for migratory workers out of their district - a ban on short term rentals could accomplish this.

In the case of airbnb, I would see that as a bit of manipulation, though - <USER2> general, what I'm seeing is housing that used to be occupied by long term residents, especially children who cost a lot of money and don't pay rent, getting evicted and turned into a fun crash pad for tourists who would like to spend a while in the wine country or the left bank of Paris. I personally think that short term rentals are a real threat to neighborhoods like the french quarter in New Orleans, large sections of San Francisco, and, sure, Berlin.

In short, while I leave the door slightly open for meaningful civil disobedience to excessively restrictive zoning laws that curtail short term rentals, I don't see many of the current measures as coming anywhere close to the standard for civil disobedience.

You'll never get an airtight argument as solid as a mathematical proof on this, though. It just isn't like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How I moved from "impossible" over "how did that happen without me noticing" to "yeah, that sounds great". All the reasons are exactly what I want: less parties, more cheap living space. Hope it works as intended.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's worth mentioning that the influx of refugees into Berlin has dramatically increased the demand for housing, there are stories of landlords putting up an affordable property online for one hour and getting 250 applications to rent it

<comment><USER3> Do you have anything to back up that it's the refugees who put pressure on the market?

Refugees usually don't have enough money to compete on the open rental market in Berlin's central districts. They can apply for "WBS" which can get them an apartment that is subsidized by the state (for which the landlord has to apply upfront) and which tend not to be in the center anymore but in low-income areas where landlords have an incentive to enter that contract with the state - they are sure that they get the rent every month on time in contrast to fighting for months to get rid of tenants who default on their rent.

250 applications coming in over night were already common 5 years ago. I remember that in 2001 I was seeing an apartment together with about 50 other interested people - the ad had been up since the day before 3pm...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Doesn't SV and other areas that had chronic apartment shortages before AirBnB existed now have an even greater shortage due to short-term rentals?

I know that some might argue that "build baby, build" is the solution. However, in an earthquake-zone (which I recall California is), isn't it risky to build skyscrapers and other large structures?

Governments are sometimes oblivious to general needs, but there must be a good reason why more housing-construction has not been approved in some areas.

(I'm thinking in densely-populated cities like Berlin, London and Paris, congestion and pollution might be issues they have to worry about also)

<comment><USER30> _Governments are sometimes oblivious to general needs, but there must be a good reason why more housing-construction has not been approved in some areas._

Earthquakes certainly aren't the reason for SF. It's the city's byzantine planning process, and NIMBYs and entrenched interests who get in the way of new development in the name of "not changing the character of the city".

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's almost like cities (or more specifically, voters in municipal elections) don't realize that the only sustainable way to reduce prices is by increasing supply: [http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High-Matters- ebook/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High-Matters- ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO). We know what to do, we have the technology, and we only lack the political will to make it happen.

<comment><USER20> But in the article it says towards the end that Berlin in building 50K new units in the next 10-15 years. So in addition to banning AirBnB they are also increasing supply. I am unsure how or why "technology" plays into it unless you mean construction technology?

<comment><USER32> How many units were torn down to build those new units, and how desirable are they compared to the old units? What is the price range? How does the quality compare? Where are they located? One number doesn't capture the whole story.

Seattle has a similar problem where we do have a large number of new units going up, but some places are still seeing upwards 50% vacancy after 3 years... because the new units aren't aligned with market demand. I'm talking luxury apartments downtown when the growing demographic is frugal-minded mid-20s/30s interested in neighborhoods 10-20 minute away from downtown. Even constructions in the right neighborhood end up being a net _loss_ of desirable units when the rent is sky high.

<comment><USER33> This is why loosening building restrictive is not a solution - builders always want to charge a premium over the existing market price, which means building expensive luxury flats and leaving new homes empty if necessary rather than reducing their prices.

<comment><USER34> Agreed. That happened in Spain: after the crisis burst the housing bubble, banks and private owner were simply not putting their property in the market to avoid price falling down. I Andalucia, the goverment actually had to pass a law that midly forced people to rent empty flats, because we were at the ridiculous situation where a lot of people were being evicted for not being able to afford rent, yet there were _lots_ of unused space.

So, yeah, more development might help Berlin, but it will be more effective when accompanied by rent camps and strengthening of social housing banks. Otherwise you are just feeding the bubble and exchanging one population by a wealthier one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> They are doing right what London is doing wrong with the so called golfies that rent an apartment and are there only in summer with their supercars.

</comment><comment><USER36> Central economic planning is disastrous.

<comment><USER37> No, central economic planning _has traditionally been viewed as_ disastrous.

Doesn't mean it "is" or "always will always be".

In fact, you undoubtedly live to some extent under the auspices of some form of central economic planning right now. Why? Because at some point it was realized complete lack of central economic planning is disastrous.

But you are really arguing against government controlled rent prices no? I tend to probably agree in most cases.

<comment><USER38> And, heh, I've seen it argued persuasively that the U.S. now operates with the same degree of inefficiency (i.e. resources allocated less than optimally, not responsive to market conditions, etc.) of a centrally planned economy, just due to the concentration of money now. Sort of a de-facto central planning, even though it certainly isn't one in name.

I tried to find the links where I saw this, couldn't. I'll keep looking.

<comment><USER37> It stands to reason. Centralized bureaucracy is centralized bureaucracy.

What was it said about the Soviet Union? That they pretended to pay people and the people pretended to work? Well.....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Cities can make all the rent control laws they want. (See for example NYC and San Francisco here in the USA).

Property investors can decide to never build apartments in such cities.

Then you wind up with a shortage of willing landlords. (See NYC and SF).

Some folks don't think they need willing landlords.

Okay, strike that: _some folks don 't think they need MORE, not FEWER, willing landlords._

Rent control laws _cut the supply to nothing._ Willing landlords will NOT build and operate in these areas.

You may not like it that willing landlords are the other party here -- the tuple of (renter | landlord) --

but they are.

An analogy: cities use very high fines for parking in Disabled People's parking.

By removing the benefit to park in those spots (ie. fining people hundreds of $$) -- the supply of non-handicapped drivers parking in handicapped spots is cut, drastically.

Another example: The supply of willing bar owners selling drinks to young- looking people without checking their ID is small. The reason? BINGO, the city made it unprofitable for bar owners who fail to check IDs.

When a city tells Landlords "you're a pain, here -- making next to nothing" \-- the supply of willing landlords drops.

The result of rent control laws is A SHORTAGE OF WILLING LANDLORDS. A SHORTAGE OF NEW APARTMENT CONSTRUCTION. CONVERSION OF APARTMENTS TO CONDOS.

Rent control REDUCES THE SUPPLY of apartments. When that supply drops -- like it has in NYC and SF -- what happened to rents? FREAKING HIGHEST IN THE COUNTRY! Because the DEMAND is still there, and growing. But the supply is dropping.

The cities with the STRONGEST RENT CONTROL -- have the HIGHEST RENTS IN THE COUNTRY!

Like hearing that? No? Then you cannot handle the truth.

Here's from the article:

The long term effect of these laws (rent controls, restrictions on AirBnB etc) is already clear. Sweden already has these policies. Just look at Sweden to see what the future holds.

Sweden has rent control. This causes the existing housing to be converted to AirBnB and rentals to be converted into condominiums. It also makes it more worthwhile to put investment money into owner-occupied housing than build new rental apartments, as owner occupied housing isn't subject to price controls.

Almost 90% of Sweden's local government areas now report a shortage of rental apartments. This includes countryside areas and small towns. Students cannot get into university because they cannot find housing, or have to queue for years.

In Stockholm, you have to wait for 10 years on average in a government queue system to get just the chance to apply for a rental apartment. It is a similar story almost everywhere else in Sweden. In 2013, one woman waited for 28 years to get her Stockholm rental apartment.

Berlin is already starting to see some of these problems with large crowds of competition for apartments at viewings etc

<comment><USER40> > The cities with the STRONGEST RENT CONTROL -- have the HIGHEST RENTS IN THE > COUNTRY!

And by this simple observation, we have found the answer why the property owners wants to keep the rent control in place.

<comment><USER41> I sometimes really wonder, when companies get huge valuations, how much of that just ends up indirectly in some landlords pocket.

How do startups even afford to live there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> As an AirBnB customer (which I was) you have no idea what it's like to be an Airbnb neighbor.

There are parties with hundreds of kids on the roof, weed smoked in the hall outside our apartment, a broken front door that can only be closed by smashing as hard as possible or not at all, stains all over the carpet outside the Airbnb, people breaking into our house because they're drunk, people buzzing every apartment because they've locked themselves out and it's 4AM. The place is a 365 day Airbnb, which is illegal, and Airbnb know that too and don't care.

AirBnB refuse to take any responsibility, even just to raise issues with the person running the BnB. They have even repeatedly said they can't find a listing by address - seriously, not that the address is wrong, but they they simply do not have the capability. We can't speak to the neighbor because they don't live there, they just rent out their apartment on Airbnb. They got journalists to write stories about how they'd soon have an app for neighbours last year - it still isn't rolled out in Europe despite all the press.

Love airBnB as a customer. 95% of guests are fine. 4% do stupid shit because they're drunk, which is understandable, but having continuously drunk 'neighbors' sucks. 1% are deliberately anti social. But the company absolutely does not give a damn about their impact on the people around them.

Tip for anyone else: call your police non-emergency number or your council. Avoid Airbnb support. They can't help and they won't take responsibility for the source of their income.

<comment><USER43> > _But the company absolutely does not give a damn about their impact on the > people around them._

You can't know that and it by no means follows from what you've said. It's fine to describe your specific experiences, but not fine to cross into overgeneralized denunciation. Especially not to gin up indignation, which is pretty much the sole purpose of overgeneralized denunciation.

<comment><USER44> I think it's pretty awful for a YCombinator employee to come into the comments and chastise a commenter for bashing a YCombinator company. In this case especially, as lots of abuse stories exist about Airbnb.

<comment><USER43> I've addressed this many times. When YC companies are being discussed we apply moderation less, not more—but that doesn't mean we stop moderating altogether. That's the way HN has always worked, and I think it's a good balance. It wouldn't be fair for people to be exempt from HN's rules and standards just because they're criticizing YC or a startup YC funded.

There's no substantive point about Airbnb or any other company that can't be expressed in the way my comment above is recommending. That ought to be obvious to anyone who reads it dispassionately and is familiar with HN.

<comment><USER42> Dan as mentioned upthread, if you think my repeated contact with AirBnB over a year, and the impression I've had as a result, isn't substantive, could you explain why or email me if you prefer?

I've been on Startup News / Hacker News for eight years, so I'm pretty familiar with the site.

<comment><USER43> You're responding to something so far from what I said that I don't know quite what to tell you. What I said was that you shouldn't have posted this to HN:

> _But the company absolutely does not give a damn about their impact on the > people around them._

... because (a) you can't know such a thing and (b) it's corrosive of the kind of discussion we want here.

Reporting specific experiences is fine. Crossing into grandiose denunciations is not. Those add no information; their purpose is to gin up rage, which puts salt on the slug of thoughtful discourse.

<comment><USER42> I'm responding to exactly what you're complaining about:

> > But the company absolutely does not give a damn about their impact on the > people around them.

As mentioned repeatedly, that's an honest impression from a year of constant engagement. I have in no way said it is AirBnB policy to not give a damn, simply that as someone who has attempted to engage the company about these matters, they appear to not give a damn.

> Those add no information

I very much disagree that the resulting impression does not add value, and HN would seem to agree, as evidenced by the HN community's reactions to your post.

People can and do post impressions of services on HN, and have for some time. Part of handling yourself properly is not only avoiding impropriety but also the appearance on impropriety: being told not to post my impressions of a company that is incompetent enough they've repeatedly stated they ___cannot match an address to a listing_ __looks very poor when YC has a financial interest in the company.

Respectfully, you were wrong on this one.

<comment><USER43> I'm surprised that you keep insisting on this. Your statement that I objected to said "absolutely does not". Your defense of it here says "appear not to". Talk about moving the goalposts! If you had said something like "based on my experience they appear not to" in the first place, obviously there would have been no problem.

Perhaps that's all you meant to say, but what you actually said went far beyond it in a way that is corrosive to thoughtful discourse, which is why I objected.

<comment><USER42> You're trying to make up for a mistake by trying to invent a contradiction that does not exist: there is no contradiction in saying Airbnb appears to absolutely not care.

I am recounting my own person experience, so, _very obviously_ everything is how Airbnb appears to me, and I'm sure you're intelligent enough to know that. And again, it's quite reasonable to say that based on those experiences, which I'd be happy to provide police reports, screenshots, and contacts at my local council, Airbnb absolutely does not care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> They're not banning ALL AirBnB rentals. From the article:

"The new laws still don't mean all Berlin homestays will disappear overnight. People will still be able to rent out rooms in their homes, as long as the rooms don't cover more than 50 percent of the property's floor space."

Title should be changed IMO.

<comment><USER19> One has to think though that especially for somewhere like Berlin most people are going to want to rent an entire apartment> I know when I go to Berlin, I would prefer not to have to stumble drunk through someone's apartment while they are there to get to a bedroom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The solution to bad regulation is rarely MORE regulation.

</comment><comment><USER47> Airbnb is the only reason we visited Berlin. Without it, I doubt we would return.

<comment><USER48> This is among the dumbest things I've ever read on HN.

<comment><USER49> How? If Berlin wants to make it difficult to find affordable short-term housing then obviously some people (like me and OP) would rather go somewhere else.

<comment><USER50> By the way, Berlin's hotel market is quite affordable. A room in a decent Best Western is in the order of 50 €, which is way lower than in other European capitals.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a pragmatic list of AI technologies? - <AUTHOR> I learned from another Ask HN post what NER is (Named Entity Recognition) and immediately thought of ways I can apply it to project of mine.
But not being in the space I don't know what all these acronyms are or even what to search for.
Some problems I have may already be solved by AI but I don't know where to start. And I'm sure I'm not alone.
Is there a resource out there that lists AI technologies / categories / algorithms / etc and what their use cases are? <comment><USER2> Here's the most popular:

[http://www.kdnuggets.com/2016/08/10-algorithms-machine- learn...](http://www.kdnuggets.com/2016/08/10-algorithms-machine-learning- engineers.html)</comment>


Righted Museum - <AUTHOR> http://righted-museum.tumblr.com/?

<comment><USER2> Since this is offered without comment, the following is an article about this: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- intersect/wp/2015/03/...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- intersect/wp/2015/03/04/googles-quest-to-make-art-available-to-everyone-was- foiled-by-copyright-concerns/)

Essentially, this is documenting artwork that has been blurred in Google's Art Project because of copyright problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> what... is this?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- intersect/wp/2015/03/...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- intersect/wp/2015/03/04/googles-quest-to-make-art-available-to-everyone-was- foiled-by-copyright-concerns/)

A project apparently exploring how copyright claims result in selective censoring in the Street-View-esque images of museum collections produced by the Google Art Project.

The WaPo article actually conflates copyright and reproduction rights (I work in a museum curatorial dept. FYI) Copyright would apply to works where artists, or their estates, can still make copyright claims over their artworks (although the role of fair use in reproducing images of art is evolving: [http://www.collegeart.org/fair-use/](http://www.collegeart.org/fair-use/))

But why can older artworks that are now in the public domain still have their images blurred out? Although the museum may have agreed to openly release representations of the public domain works that they own, it is often the case that museums may temporarily hang works on loan from private collectors in their galleries. In cases like these, museums and the lenders work out loan terms that frequently include provisions about photography. These loan agreements supersede copyright issues. Whether or not museums should agree to such terms is, of course, a good question.</comment></comment>


Show HN: iosframeworks.com - A curated catalog of iOS frameworks and classes - <AUTHOR>

I'd appreciate any comments and critiques on a new site that I just launched - iosframeworks.com
While developing an iPhone app, I kept stumbling across amazing frameworks/libraries/classes that my the job much easier, however, I couldn't find a concise listing of what was available.
The site currently provides a searchable list of tagged frameworks. My next steps will be:
* Allowing users to submit new links
* Also cataloging the apps that use the frameworks listed. This will allow visitors to see how the code can be implemented.
* Comments and ratings of the frameworks
* A blog with longer-form articles on using the various frameworks
Thanks for your feedback! <comment><USER3> Looks great thanks for sharing. Here are a few things that came to mind while browsing the list.

In the browse view it would be helpful to show more of the description as many of them are cut before they get to the point. Also including the visit official website button as well as show details would be a nice shortcut.

On the details page it would be great to include an image where available.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

I agree the descriptions need to be better when browsing. I plan to increase the length and have them truncate at a word boundary.

Good idea to include images when looking at the detail page. I'll add it to my todo list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good stuff, but enough with _curated_ already. Everything that has a specific person behind it has suddenly became curated now - be it a blog, a linkdump, another "Top 10" list and whatever else. It looks like at attempt to look stately and more grand than the reality permits, and that's just tacky.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I was going to go with "iosframeworks.com - <USER2> another page of links", but I didn't like the ring of it.

Google tells me that curate means "Select, organize, and look after the items in (a collection or exhibition)", which seems like an accurate enough description for me. I'm ok with it coming across as tacky to some.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool! I've shared it with the developers in my office who are working on iOS stuff on the side, and they should enjoy it.

Thanks for creating and sharing!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://iosframeworks.com>

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks great. How about an RSS feed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! RSS feeds on are my todo list. Follow @iosframeworks to be notified when it launches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> i've got a few things planned for over summer, iOS apps are in there, i'm sure this will be useful!

thanks,

</comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty cool! Thanks for sharing!</comment>


The Nine to Five: Is It Worth It? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/9-5-is-it-that-bad-zh4e32rk <comment><USER2> Also 8 to 4 is worth

<comment><AUTHOR> any work that brings please is worth it, no matter the routine</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the microservice you wish were built/easy to use, but isn't yet? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I have been wondering if there is an application framework to manage microservices. I'm thinking of something that would deal with routing, collection of performance metrics, errors, and monitoring of resource usage. I know Netflix has released software that addresses some of these needs.

<comment><USER3> I'm working on something that falls into that category at the moment. Micro is a microservices toolkit written in Go that starts with a focus on development. It provides a library for discovery, client/server, routing, etc and also includes an API, CLI and Sidecar for integration of non Go apps. Future goals are to address more feature rich discovery, routing, monitoring, config and a lot more. I previously worked on the platform team at Hailo where we built a microservices platform with 200 services in production.

[https://github.com/myodc/micro](https://github.com/myodc/micro)

Let me know your thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Personally I think we need a foundation of reusable microservices that anyone can then build on top of.</comment>


Zig: software should be perfect [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4oYSByyRak <comment><USER2> There's a certain irony that the presenter quickly dismisses exception-based error handling, and then the first example handles an error by printing a message and exiting -- exactly what an unhandled exception does.

This is more than a small piece of irony with a somewhat artificial example. Often, there simply isn't very much you can do with an error. In a SaaS world, you might not be able to tell the user what wrong, in order to not disclose some private information. You can log the error, but only if the network is available, and you can only log it to disk if the disk isn't full.

And then there are cases where you could try to explain the error to the user, but the reasons are very complicated and/or require intimate knowledge of the architecture to make sense, and/or require intimate subject knowledge to understand, or even obscure legal reasons.

<comment><USER3> I made this argument in the talk: the only problem with exception-based handling is the lack of explicitness. It's too easy to call functions without being aware of the set of possible errors. Many c++ projects disable exceptions entirely. Writing "exception safe" code is tricky and non-obvious. Functions which should be guaranteed to never fail often can throw std::bad_alloc. Try-catch syntax forces incorrect nesting.

Related: Only zig has fast errors with traces. Other languages have no traces or a high performance cost. Look up error return traces in the docs.

<comment><USER4> > the only problem with exception-based handling is the lack of explicitness - > It's too easy to call functions without being aware of the set of possible > errors.

i.e. checked-exceptions?

<comment><USER5> yep! there was a sort of epiphany for me, the first I wrote Java, from Python, when I realized that I can be sure that my code could handle anything the callee could throw at it.

<comment><USER6> There are still plenty of exceptions that are unchecked, i.e. subtypes of RuntimeException, which do not have to be declared on the callee. As well as people who think it's a good idea to throw instances of Exception and just tack a "throws Exception" on their methods.

<comment><USER7> Right — that's a failing of Java the language; not the concept of checked exceptions. At least one problem with Java's exception model that Zig does not have is that some exceptions are "unchecked."

<comment><USER8> The 'failing' of checked exceptions comes from essentially being forced to couple the type signatures of your methods' successful results with their error results. A more explicit way to do this is with Optional/Either types, and now you don't need the checked exceptions feature nor need to get people to remember to check for a global errno or some other data convention like an empty string / null. There's a lot of boilerplate though, just like with checked exceptions.

I prefer a more decoupled/late-binding approach to error handling; so far Common Lisp does it the best I've seen.[0] The key insight CL people had was that often in the face of an error, you need help from somewhere away from your local context to figure out how to resolve it, but then for many cases, you want to return back to where the error has occurred and take the resolution path with your local context. In other languages that automatically unwind the stack to the exception handler, it's too late.

[0] [http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/Condition- Handling-2001.h...](http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/Condition- Handling-2001.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm watching Zig and Jai closely. We need a better C and C++ isn't it. Good luck!

<comment><USER10> I'm betting on Jai.

<comment><USER11> I hadn't heard of Jai yet, but wow! That's a lot of hype (and even _tool support_ ) for something that doesn't work yet.

At first glance, Zig vs Jai reminds me a lot of the Linux vs GNU Hurd thing (or a lot of other "worse is better" examples). A couple of geniuses locking themselves up telling the world "Just wait! It'll be awesome!" seldomly produces something that lasts.

<comment><USER12> >seldomly produces something that lasts.

of course, but sometimes it does.

<comment><USER11> True, but we're casting bets here :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Re: performance claims, I wonder if the C sha256 implementation would have been more competitive with -march=native -mtune=native?

<comment><USER13> Why isn't `-march=native -mtune=native` enabled by-default for every piece of software compiled unless explicitly specified otherwise?

<comment><USER14> Because your cpu has a base ISA, plus extensions. The compiler doesn't know if you're going to only run this binary on your machine, or distribute it to others that may share your base ISA but possibly not your extensions, so it takes the conservative approach and doesn't use them unless signaled to do so via those compiler flags. Also, I think -march implies -mtune.

<comment><USER3> In Zig the default target is native, which turns on all the applicable CPU features. If you want to target something other than the native machine you can use --target-os --target-arch parameters. I haven't exposed extra CPU options for cross compiling yet.

<comment><USER15> Do you consider the default architecture targetted by GCC (e.g. some old Intel) to be cross compiling? That is, can I make a binary that supports most x86 processors rather than just those with the particular extensions I support, with the current Zig compiler?

<comment><USER3> Yes. You can pass the native OS and native arch as the cross compilation target, and produce a binary that runs on your machine and others that don't have the same extra CPU features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The definition of 'perfect software' used in the talk is 'it gives you the correct output for every input in the input domain'. To that end no funny business like hidden allocations or hidden control flow should happen behind your back, because an out of memory error or some exception your code does not deal with explicitly would not be a correct output according to that definition. Of course you do not need that level of control for most projects.

<comment><USER17> While I agree with the content of your post literally, I think we often underestimate the importance of software reliability and performance, and end up giving it less attention than it deserves.

I understand the place for rapid prototyping etc., and that not every software application deals with life-and-death situations — but even those that aren't, I think our industry suffers a bit here. For example, to this day the Windows 10 start menu refuses to open sometimes (randomly) when I click on it, even multiple times. You could argue that this isn't a huge deal, because within 30 seconds it usually "fixes itself" (or something like that), but it still doesn't shake the overall feeling that we're tolerating way too much shoddy software in 2018 than we should.

Or in terms of performance: I know not every application needs bare-to-the- metal speed, but something feels wrong with the world when my "supercomputer" (compared to a 1990s PC, for example) literally lags when I'm typing or scrolling in some apps, when a 1990s era PC could respond to essentially the same content interaction with almost zero latency.

Some few decades ago, we had far more klunkier programming languages, far slower hardware, and yet somehow yielded better tangible/functional results in some cases. Therefore, I'm very much in favor of anything that moves us towards higher quality software, and Zig (and Rust, and others) are all exciting examples of that.

<comment><USER18> In over 6 years working in this industry, in projects with anywhere from dozens of users to millions of users, not a single bug I have encountered was caused by a "hidden allocation" causing the process to go OOM. Not one instance.

One of the two examples he cited in his introduction, the Android one, wasn't even caused by an unhandled OOM error. Android by design will kill unused processes if they're occupying memory that the foreground process needs.

If we want software without bugs, removing hidden allocations in languages is far down in the priority list.

<comment><USER19> The vast majority of bugs aren't are due to corner cases that the programmer didn't think about. Quickcheck and related techniques expose many more bugs than eliminating OOM bugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've wanted a language like this. Java's checked exceptions with some way to offload the bookkeeping to the compiler.

What about other run-time exceptions, like divide by zero? Are they checked?

What about Hoare's billion-dollar mistake (null pointer exceptions)? Does Zig have non-nullable references?

<comment><USER3> Zig has a bunch of runtime safety checking. It applies to divide by zero as well as integer overflow, using the wrong union field, and many more. The runtime safety checks are enabled in Debug and ReleaseSafe mode and disabled in ReleaseFast and ReleaseSmall mode. (Actually they are used as assertions to the optimizer so that it can rely on extra stuff being undefined behavior.)

Pointers can not be null. However you can have optional pointers which are guaranteed to use the 0x0 value as null and have the same size as normal pointers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Definitely nice to have tools (compiler warnings, static analyzers) that can keep you from hurting yourself.

Of course many projects don't use them, for various reasons.

I wonder: is turning on full compiler warnings, then fixing them - is it making my software better, or just satisfying some type of neuroticism?

<comment><USER22> There are stupid warnings about nothing to fix, at least in gcc. It's not making the software better.

One warning I recently disabled on $workproject is -Wtrigraphs.

<comment><USER23> Trigraphs can readily be formed unintentionally, so having a warning when they change the meaning of the program seems valuable. There is a good reason they were removed entirely in C++17.

<comment><USER22> They are as good as removed from C.

No compiler I care about has had them enabled by default in more than two decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From the video:

> Documentation is about 80% done

And yet there is not standard library documentation. :(

[https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/965](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/965)

</comment><comment><USER25> Many very bright people in the major sects of ML and Scheme tried to achieve perfection, and they have concluded, many times, that perfection implies a mostly-functional strongly (and, perhaps, even statically typed but with optional annotations only, like it is in Haskell) language, possibly with uniform pattern-matching, annotated laziness, and high-order channels, and select and receive in the language itself.

Such a language could be visualized as strict-by-default Haskell (with type- classes, uniform pattern-matching, minimalist syntax - everything, except monads) _plus_ ideas from Erlang, Go and Ocaml.

Perfection and imperativeness, it seems, does not match.

<comment><USER26> Also, perfection and practicality do not match either, since imperative languages are the most practical for many applications. Pushing software toward perfection gives diminishing returns, and after some threshold, a company will have negative profit due to expensive development costs.

<comment><USER25> ML is very practical. The only reasons why it did not became popular (or has not been chosen as, say, the basis for Java) are social rather than technical and actually are insults to intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It is actually a nice informative video, but the title is as dumb as dumbness itself. Software should not be perfect. It should be useful. In places where perfection increases usefulness (s.a autopilot), go ahead make it perfect. In most cases, striving for "perfection" is a profound misallocation of resources.

<comment> dj-wonk Upvoted since this is a useful comment and worth mentioning.

I'd expect some downvotes are based on negative reactions to this part of the comment: "the title is as dumb as dumbness itself." (Dear avip: if your comment said "the title is off-base" you would have made your point just as effectively and without the downvotes.)

<comment><USER27> Thanks, I really appreciate that (the message, not the upvote).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So... the perfect programming language has error-prone manual memory management and rampant undefined behaviour (well at least it can build the code to crash instead of "nasal deamons")? Yeah right.

<comment><USER29> No one said the language was perfect. The language is to help you write perfect cod which was immediately defined at the start as code which does not produce errors on any valid inputs.

<comment><USER28> Isn't that by definition? After all, if the code produces an error, then obviously the inputs weren't valid...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Oh come on, we already know that logical systems cannot even self reconcile it's own promises, as Gödel proved, now someone claim software should be perfect?!

Edit: the original title does not mention perfect.

<comment><USER31> Come on, a title like that isn't meant to be taken too seriously.

And you're reaching a bit far. You can write a perfect function that adds two 32 bit integers. There is a subset of code that can be written perfectly. Especially if you don't need Turing completeness to write it.

Zig just tries it's best to make it easy to write as much as possible of low level code in a perfect way.

<comment><USER32> > You can write a perfect function that adds two 32 bit integers.

how ? the _problem_ of adding two 32 bits integers is itself imperfect since you may at some point have big integers to sum, so any solution is inherently flawed, too

<comment><USER33> The problem can be perfect depending on how it's stated. If you spell out the contract right, then it can be perfect. Some examples:

Given two 32-bit signed integers, produce a 32-bit signed integer that is a sum of the inputs; if the sum doesn't fit into 32 bits, wrap modulo 32 bits.

Given two 32-bit signed integers, produce a 64-bit signed integer that is a sum of the inputs.

Given two 32-bit signed integers, produce either a 32-bit signed integer that is a sum of the inputs if it fits into 32 bits, or an error code indicating that it did not fit.

The problem with languages like C is that they let you be imprecise and get away with in. If you just run with "add two signed 32-bit integers", and implement it as "x + y" in C, it will compile, and it will run, but the result is _undefined behavior_ if it overflows (note: it doesn't even mean that you get the wrong value - it can literally do anything at all). In Zig, if you write it as "x + y", it will panic on overflow, which is at least well-defined and fails fast; and the language provides you with tools to implement any of the three properly defined scenarios above in straightforward ways (i.e. you can add with wraparound, or you can add with an overflow check).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There is a typo in title in word "profit"

</comment><comment><USER35> Javascript (programming language) and Browser (runtime environment) is a perfect piece of combination. With JS, you have many choices of implementation. With Browser, runtime error doesn't crash user's device.

<comment><USER36> Same is true for the JVM or Python, no?

<comment><USER37> Yeah. BTW it's also true for native apps running in user-mode.</comment></comment></comment>


Apps built using the Desktop Bridge now available in the Windows Store - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/09/14/apps-built-using-the-desktop-bridge-now-available-in-the-windows-store/ <comment><AUTHOR> Too bad you still need a Microsoft account to use the store. That's a deal breaker for me, at least on the desktop (I know you can login separately on each app).</comment>


Pupper: PHP and React framework - <AUTHOR> I'm the author of Pupper, a framework that provides librairies for PHP and React bi-directional communication through WebSockets.
It was inspired by the article "Game Development with React and PHP: How Compatible Are They?" by Christopher Pitt.
Links in the comments.
I'm waiting for your comments and suggestions :)
BTW, first post here, sorry if I'm doing anything wrong! <comment><AUTHOR> Here are the clickable links:

\- Try the online demo here: [http://pupper.cod3.net](http://pupper.cod3.net)

\- Browse through the example app here: [https://github.com/bouiboui/pupper/tree/master/app](https://github.com/bouiboui/pupper/tree/master/app)

\- Read the pupper/pupper-php API documentation here: [https://github.com/pupper/pupper-php](https://github.com/pupper/pupper-php)

\- Read the pupper/pupper-react API documentation here! [https://github.com/pupper/pupper-react](https://github.com/pupper/pupper- react)

</comment><comment><USER2> nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot!</comment></comment>


Smashing the heap by overflowing the stack - <AUTHOR> https://ldpreload.com/blog/stack-smashes-you

<comment><USER2> Not only -fstack-check protects from this exploit, also the new clang -fcpi checker in levee [https://github.com/cpi-llvm](https://github.com/cpi-llvm) and of course the old -fsanitize=address.

-fcps does not catch it.

I haven't checked -fsanitize=safe-stack yet, as my old levee build didn't offer that.

<comment><USER2> Build it now: clang-3.7 -fsanitize=safe-stack does not catch it, and the clang and gcc optimizers with -O optimize it away.</comment></comment>


Firefox 45 Release Notes - <AUTHOR> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/45.0/releasenotes/ <comment><USER2> Mozilla was the only browser vendor that introduced ES6 features not only before actually fixing row-wrap flexboxes, but even before implementing <input type=number>... and now again. Who needs those ES6 classes as long as they are natively supported in FF only?

Push API is a good thing though.

Waiting for an official Arch Linux package.</comment>


What are Stack Overflow unicoins?  - <AUTHOR> http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/227363/what-are-stack-overflow-unicoins/ <comment><USER2> I've been working on an autominer, but there appears to be one in the thread.

        (function uniMine()
        {
            $.getJSON('/unicoin/rock', function(data)
            {
                setTimeout(function()
                {
                    $.post('/unicoin/mine?rock=' + data.rock, {fkey: StackExchange.options.user.fkey});
                }, 10000);
            });
            setTimeout(uniMine, 11000);
        })();

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Unicoins will be coded in unary numeral system, much powerful than the binary numeral system that the bitcoins are coded in.

Unicoins will trump the bitcoin very fast, the questions you will ask on SO on how to mine unicoins will make earn unicoins at the same time, creating a positive feedback loop that will make you rich faster than it took Facebook and Twitter.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unary_numeral_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unary_numeral_system)

</comment><comment><USER3> Dumping all my bitcoins for unicoin. Feels good to be an early adopter.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. I like the "payment" options.</comment>


Stellarium 0.19 - <AUTHOR> http://stellarium.org/release/2019/03/24/stellarium-0.19.0.html <comment><USER2> Those interested in open source software for astronomy might also be interested in KStars [0]. It is a very capable piece of software and, despite what the K might lead you to believe (that it would only run on KDE on top of Linux), it runs on Windows/OSX/Linux.

"KStars ... provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes up to 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects,all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets, asteroids, supernovae, and satellites. For students and teachers, it supports adjustable simulation speeds in order to view phenomena that happen over long timescales... For the amateur astronomer, it provides an observation planner, a sky calendar tool, and an FOV editor to calculate field of view of equipment and display them... Included with KStars is Ekos astrophotography suite, a complete astrophotography solution that can control all INDI devices including numerous telescopes, CCDs, DSLRs, focusers, filters, and a lot more. Ekos supports highly accurate tracking using online and offline astrometry solver, autofocus and autoguiding capabilities, and capture of single or multiple images using the powerful built in sequence manager."

[0] [https://edu.kde.org/kstars](https://edu.kde.org/kstars)

<comment><USER3> KStars/Ekos is fantastic, especially the astrometry.net integration [1] for offline plate solving.

[1] [https://indilib.org/about/ekos/alignment- module.html](https://indilib.org/about/ekos/alignment-module.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remembered when I was in junior high school, I used to play with this software and also Celestia. I even created my own sky culture just out of curiosity and because I love looking up at stars at night. It feels beautiful that we can change the time, travel back and noticed that its the same stars people had been seeing since ancient times.

Celestia also helped me understand how alone and isolated is our planet. I would move the focus to mars, then sun, then nearby stars, then my personal favorite Alcyone, then out of the galaxy. It showed me how vast the universe is.

Stellarium helped me see the stars from earth. Celestia helped me see the earth from the stars.

Amazing software that make my childhood feels wonderful.

Thank You!

<comment><USER5> I'm curious, what makes Alcyone your favorite?

<comment><USER4> I think its because I remembered reading about Alcyone being a star that our solar system orbits. It was called the great sun I think?

Also if you opened Stellarium and looked at the Pleiades where Alcyone resides, you could see blue-ish formation and it looks beautiful for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stellarium is awesome, but the devs should probably accept that their software has been quite mature for a long time now and either release a 1.0.0 or change their numbering scheme.

Edit: Whence the downvotes? It's a 20 year old program. I know many OS devs have a certain aversion of making the jump to 1.0, but semver is a useful concept, and versioning that looks like semver, but in practice is not, is not the best way to communicate the maturity of your software to potential users.

<comment><USER7> Came to the comments to write a similar comment. I've used Stellarium ~10 years ago, and it's been awesome even then.

Seeing v0.19 version feels misleading and discouraging new users to try it out of curiosity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Stellarium is fantastic, I use it for the little night photography I do and love it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Related (free of charge but not open-source): [http://spaceengine.org](http://spaceengine.org)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a great open-source project to try contributing to. The maintainers are very responsive and open new features as well as bugfixes.

I had a tiny improvement in this release: [https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/pull/612](https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/pull/612)

</comment><comment><USER11> Stellarium is one of the great under-sung feats of open-source. And it's great for learning.

A person may have learned to identify many objects in the sky. The planetarium feature (motion at various rates) makes it much easier (and faster) to comprehend how it all fits together at various times of the day and of the year. Fascinating.

For example, turn on the line of the ecliptic and watch its motion around 'due south' as the day goes by. (Wild at this time of year.) Or tell the program to 'track' a constellation (e.g. Orion) and then fast-forward by days to see how it rises/falls wrt the horizon because of the Earth's tilt. Or watch (and try to figure out) why the Moon moves _all over the sky_.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a > realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars > or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your > coordinates and go.

<comment><USER13> This made me realize that it might be a fun idea to get a projector and point it at my ceiling, could use this to explore the stars with Stellarium.

<comment><USER12> This is actually one of the fun little things I like to do with my VR headset. Just lie down in the middle of my room and look at stars (there's a similar program for VR).

<comment><USER14> What program do you use for VR?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17906113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17906113)

</comment><comment><USER16> I just tried this software out a bit and it looks great.

In relation, does anyone have good telescope/camera recommendations? I've been looking for something relatively cheap, that is less than €5000, that can take good photos and be used with the naked eye?

I am looking at celestrons and sky-watchers but I'm a complete noob here when it comes to judging optic qualities.

<comment><USER17> I'm not an expert myself, never graduated past my small refractor telescope but I think an important question is to know if you are more interested in the Solar System or the Deep Sky.

<comment><USER18> True. Mostly has to do with focal ratio. Big f-ratio scopes are better for planetary observations, where small f-ratio scopes are better for wide-angle views. Generally, Cassegrains fall into the first camp and Newtonians into the second. Refractors are somewhere in the middle.

Regardless, more aperture is always better. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Trusty old XEphem[0] is still with us, ("Free download"). It has that charming old Xlib dependency but packs a lot of surprising options to compute and display planetary motions etc.

[0] [http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/](http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For a second, I confused it with Celestia and was thrilled it'd have a new version.

<comment><USER20> Why the downvotes to that post, people? Most who use stellarium have played with celestia, and vice versa, I've also personally always associated the both of them together.

Celestia was THE play tool I used to play with my new screens/graphic cards for a very, very long time -- not a silly game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use Stellarium to check where Venus is in broad daylight and look for it in my binoculars (if I see that it's away enough from the Sun). I love looking at the crescent of Venus in daylight.

</comment><comment><USER21> Stellarium is my childhood memory! I didn't know it's open-sourced until now. And now I can contribute to it :-)

<comment><USER22> Talking about memories: anyone remembers Skyglobe for DOS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This looks awesome. I can't believe I am just discovering it (looks like it has been around for a long time).

</comment><comment><USER24> It is a surprise it is open sourced and is not v19.0. Used it from time to time for ... 10 years. Sorry.</comment>


Ask HN: What is Microsoft's endgame in open-source? - <AUTHOR> I was just reading, http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-shows-vmware-and-oracle-how-to-get-real-about-open-source/.
I cannot still figure out what is Microsoft's endgame with open-source. I really love VSCode, but I am worried that I am just a pawn for the famous [Embrace, extend, and extinguish](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish) ploy and its just [MSJVM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine), again.
As a victim of ie6 apocalypse as a developer and still fighting to keep my win7 machine at work as I just hate win10. I believe that Nadella is just a decoy & I am just waiting for Baller to jump out screaming "gotcha!" & go on one of his crazy rants. <comment><USER2> it's all about Azure now. why do they care whether you win windows or linux on Azure?

and the easier you can write a client that talks with code on azure the better.</comment>


How four underdogs took on M.I.T. in underwater bot championship (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot_pr.html <comment><USER2> And then all of them could not go to college due to immigration status and lack of money. They do manual labor now. Great American Underdog Story.

<comment><USER3> even when they raised $90k of money from donations after their story was in Wired, two of them went but both dropped out. I think they work at a catering company now? it is a very american story.

and of course, most likely the team from MIT they beat are all now working at high tech companies or in graduate schools.

<comment><USER4> "The point of the game is not to win the game. The point of the game is to take the prize home."

Reminds me of a mini-competition that happened between some San Antonio unis about who got to do a NASA internship. The girl who got 3rd place went because the winner and runner-up were not American citizens (I was the runner-up).

We ended up collaborating on the design remotely. In later life, I had at least one person tell me that I couldn't put that on a resume. This person was not hurt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> NYT covers these engineers and their immigration status last month:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/opinion/the-cruel-waste- of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/opinion/the-cruel-waste-of-americas- tech-talent.html)

For Wired:

> "What will you say," [Ira Mehlman] asks, "to an American kid who does not > get into a state university and whose family cannot afford a private college > because that seat and that subsidy have been given to someone who is in the > country illegally?"

I would say, "We need to restore state college funding to the level it was when Ira Mehlman went to college; to make practical advanced education accessible to all, because it's the best investment we can make in our nation"

</comment><comment><USER6> Hasn't this been read and read over and over again?

<comment><USER7> A film has just been released in select US cinemas based on their story

Spare Parts (2015) - [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3233418/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3233418/)

<comment><USER8> Yes, I have seen the film and it is quite good. The story itself and the cinematic execution are definitely above par, I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars for entertainment and quality.

Also, I'm reluctant to call it an underdog story. It's more a "coming of age" story, which is a different thing. There are many, many emotional aspects to the film (family dynamics - multiple generations in a home, absent father or a deported mother) which serve to enhance the overall themes of what happened.

Lastly, it's one of the few films I've seen recently that doesn't rely on CGI to show off important parts of the story. As the credits indicated, there were teams of robotics professionals who built the units used in the film.

I recommend the film and will buy it to have in my house to put on in the background when the mood strikes me. Others that fit that bill for me are _Rush_ , _Shawshank Redemption_ , _The Crow_ , and _The Big Lebowski_. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know why, but I kept reading this as underwear bot championship...</comment>


Ask HN: How can I estimate my conversion rate? - <AUTHOR>

I am very near launching a rental service.  I did a few $100 Google Adwords experiments, in which the ad was exactly what I was renting along with the price.  I got a bunch of clicks at an average of $2-4 per click, so I know I can get clicks.  The problem is, I have no idea how many of those are going to convert to sales.  I'm hoping that because I'm announcing my product and price in the ad that I won't waste a lot of money on window shoppers.  Anyone have any experience with this stuff?  How many sales per click are you making?<p>Thanks for any advice, Kevin <comment><USER2> It's almost impossible to know until you try it. It depends a lot on how good your offer is, and how good your site is. A rough guideline would be: expect between 2 and 10% of people. Which in your case would mean that the cost to acquire a customer would be between 20 (2 x 10) and 200 (20 x 50) US$ per purchase, which is fairly typical for, say, a consumer subscription product.

It all depends though, on what you're renting out etc. You just have to try it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just try it.</comment>


China's Subway Boom Slows Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/ <comment><USER2> Would be better with a link to the specific article rather than the front page of the site.</comment>