New genetic map of Britain shows waves of immigration going back 10,000 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/new-genetic-map-of-britain-shows-successive-waves-of-immigration-going-back-10000-years-10117361.html <comment><USER2> > It reveals that the white, indigenous English share about 40 per cent of > their DNA with the French, about 26 per cent with the Germans, 11 per cent > with the Danes and in the region of nine per cent with the Belgians.

Don't we share a ludicrous amount (>50%) of DNA with bananas? What's the more precise (and less false) statement hiding behind this?

<comment><USER3> Global DNA variation of humans is about 0.5% of genes.[1] So I think that implies an average Brit shares 40% of that 0.5% with the average French. 0.4*0.005 == 0.002 -> 0.2% of the genome.

Funnily, as a casual observer I would agree that the English language is 40% French (vocabulary) and 26% German (structure).

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

<comment><USER2> Even of the part that varies among humans, it's hard to believe that English people share only 11% with some other Europeans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love this type of thing - it shows those of us who spend their lives pontificating that Britain should be more British by halting immigration are arguing such a deeply contradictory argument (as if it wasn't obvious enough already)

Really, the best thing is to remember we're all just human beings, and should try our best to try and look after one another as best as possible.

<comment><USER5> Do you write anodyne Christmas card mottos as a side project?

With price a consequence of demand, <all> Britons on average salary (about $38K pa) have given up any hope whatsoever of buying their own home thanks to demand exacerbated by an influx of immigrants unprecedented in any of the last two centuries. Indeed even professionals earning around $150K are very hard pushed. Of course planning permission & other factors have played a role in this but unquestionably, Britain is overcrowded and folk-in-the-street looking for jobs and accommodation are suffering thanks largely to a smug rich elite who accumulate moral brownie points opining on the value of immigration. I would have thought that enough is enough.

All this is redolent of vitamins: "If Y mg of vitamin X is good for you then Y*10 mg is ten times as good for you!". Really?

<comment><USER6> I think you'll find that 1) the housing problem is strictly localized to London and surrounding areas, rather than Britain as a whole, and 2) it's mostly due to rich speculators keeping buildings empty, rather than everyday immigrants looking for cheap accomodation.

<comment><USER7> apart from the very centre of london where there is an unavoidable shortage of space, the main cause is planning restrictions, with the refusal to expand on to "green field" sites the biggest barrier to more affordable housing. rich speculators cannot hold up the price of property all on their own without very strong supply side restrictions...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Abstract of the Nature article "The fine-scale genetic structure of the British population" by Donnelly et al is available at [1]. The text is paywalled but someone has made it available (for a while, anyway) at [2]

[1] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14230.html)

[2] [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2055577/nature14230.pdf](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2055577/nature14230.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> FYI: Posted Thursday 19 March 2015, so not a "new genetic map" anymore

Here's a similar map for all of Europe that isn't as fine-grained as OP's: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735096/figure/F...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735096/figure/F2/)

</comment><comment><USER10> "we're all just human beings"

Do you think these kids will "integrate": [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3362342/Babes- arms-I...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3362342/Babes-arms-ISIS- gets-toddlers-pose-deadly-weapons-latest-twisted-propaganda.html)

?

..Of course we are all humans, but that doesn't say anything about what you have been taught since birth, what you believe to be true, your values, etc.

This is not "immigration". It's invasion by 80% military age young men with unknown past, and very questionable beliefs.

<comment><USER11> The fix to failed integration is not to prevent people from getting in. It's to improve integration.

I can't believe this has to be said on HN. When you find a bug in one of your app's features, you don't remove the feature, you fix the bug.

Edit: As a sidenote, linking to the daily mail as a source for immigration- related matters is akin to linking to timecube as a source for physics papers.

Edit 2: Someone replied to my edit, but deleted their post and I didn't reply in time, so posting my reply below:

The Daily Mail doesn't so much reflect "the feelings of a large portion of the country", as much as "the feelings of a large portion of the country" happen to be easily manipulated by outrage-driven media. As for integration failures, one of the main drivers is islamophobia. Removing that really _does_ come down to treating each other as human beings instead of being afraid of "The Different Ones".

<comment><USER10> Did you actually see the pics on the link? Do you think a person indoctrinated since birth to hating / wanting to kill the infidels, can be "fixed" 2 or 3 decades later? I think it's a losing game, at the extremely very best.

As for the quality of the daily mail, I don't know, but those photos have been posted on various news sites around the net. They are not disputed at all.

<comment><USER11> I'm not disputing the photos, I'm disputing the source. The Daily Mail has an agenda and constantly tries to show the worst of the worst of any situation.

Are those kids actually coming to europe in waves of immigration? If not, why do they matter in talks of immigration?

And let's imagine for a moment they _are_ \- is denying them entry the right approach? Leave them in whatever neighbouring country they happen to be in at the time? These kids can be fixed. They're not wielding weapons because they're inherently evil. They were raised in a terrible environment and need to be treated like other, non-immigrant kids raised in terrible environments. We don't give up on people just because they're from somewhere else.

We _are_ all humans. This doesn't merely mean that we should treat each individual as a human being - it also means that we should treat our neighbouring countries as we would want our own country to be.

<comment><USER10> We don't know who is coming. I don't want to learn in the Paris way. And I think the probability for that kind of events is scarily high.

I didn't say they are "inherently evil". I say they are being taught since birth to be evil, and they naturally internalize it. "Being from somewhere else" being a problem, is totally irrelevant, I didn't say or believe that, and you are distracting from the real issue of what are their learnt since birth values and beliefs.

"We are all humans." Well, my VM is running Linux. Maybe I should try win 3.11. After all, "they are all OSes". Maybe I should try to "improve" and "integrate" it. Or maybe I will continue running Linux.

<comment><USER11> > _" We are all humans." Well, my VM is running Linux. Maybe I should try win > 3.11. After all, "they are all OSes". Maybe I should try to "improve" and > "integrate" it. Or maybe I will continue running Linux._

I would actually like to think that I'm having a discussion with someone who is above such _ridiculous_ analogies. I wouldn't even say "racist" but you _did_ just compare "immigrants" to "a primitive operating system nobody wants to use".

To address your other point: I'm french, and my sister lost somebody in the Paris attacks. This doesn't mean we have to close ourselves down in a bubble.

I'll elaborate on this another time (maybe when you come up with better arguments) - but the mentality of closing borders for fear of what might come through is akin to never going out for fear of hitting a car. And car accidents happen a fuckton more than terrorist attacks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to sell? - <AUTHOR>

I am an engineer. I have a startup and a co-founder. We have a well-developed product line and an ever-increasing amount of customers.
The nature of the business makes it heavily reliant on offline sales and offline salespeople. In the beginning of our business, I handled product development and my partner handled sales. We have now gotten to the point where my employees can basically handle future product development and maintenance and our biggest bottleneck is our sales process. I've been hesitant to move away from being an engineer, because I love engineering - in fact, I've been procrastinating for quite some time now - but my partner has quite rightly pointed out to me that the area where I can add most value to our business is in the sales process. We both believe my procrastination has helped a competitor catch up to us a bit. I am determined to make the transition to a salesman, because that's what we need right now.
The problem is I really don't want to sell things. I have no background in sales. I don't like being around people - I've been an introvert my whole life and talking to strangers (or even friends) physically exhausts me. But, due to some peculiarities of my business, from a sales perspective I am a unique asset - something my competitors cannot easily copy. In many ways, I should theoretically be the lead salesperson, not my partner.
Do you guys have any recommendations - perhaps books and techniques - on how I can gain confidence and become a good salesman? <comment><USER2> Hire someone who likes sales.

Seriously, hire someone who likes sales.

I hate selling. I like building. I started my company in 2006. In three years, I signed 3 deals. Then I found a partner who lives and breathes sales. In the past three months, I have signed two additional deals and have five more in end stages of negotiation. Thanks to our new head of sales, went from actively talking with 15 concurrent prospects to actively talking with 150 concurrent prospects.

Don't kill yourself doing sales. Kill yourself finding someone who will do it well and love it.

Edit: I should mention that the average value of our contracts is going up too. Well-executed sales strategy can generate more revenue off of the same quantity of goods sold. Don't underestimate it.

<comment><USER3> It would be interesting to hear more about how you found your sales partner. Did you search for and evaluate many candidates, or just happen to meet the "right one" and hit it off?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Start with Why: <http://mixergy.com/start-with-why-simon-sinek/>

Basically, start by talking WHY you and your company do what you do rather than WHAT it does. In conversation, people are constantly trying to determine the underlying motives and beliefs of the other party. Don't make them work for it, tell them.

ex: "As an engineer, I enjoy discovering new ways to do things more efficiently. I highly value tools that are pragmatic and well designed. I founded CompanyX to embody these values. We just happen to make the most pragmatic and most efficient Widgets currently on the market."

So you start with Why, and the What(product) will naturally follow.

Start with No: <http://mixergy.com/negotiate-jim-camp/>

The default answer people will give you is "no", because "no" maintains the status quo and is therefore always a safe choice. If you start by telling the potential customer:

"It's perfectly fine to say NO, I promise I won't personally be offended. If our Widgets are not what you're looking for, feel free to offer suggestions as I was the lead engineer and we are constantly improving our products"

They will become more relaxed and put more genuine effort into hearing what you have to say knowing it's fine to say no.Basically you want to disengage their defense mode.

Also, you can strongly leverage the fact you are an engineer and not a salesman. Literally tell potential customers "I am primarily an engineer not a salesman, but I'm very passionate about the products I've helped design and want to tell people about the cool stuff we've created"

</comment><comment><USER5> I too am an introvert who's physically exhausted by talking to strangers (but not friends). Here's what I did when my programming and system integration work was behind ~ $3.75 million of $5M total for FY92 of the company I was working for:

Frequently the senior salesman, our "closer" (and he was _good_ ), would take me to a customer to convince them we had what it took, understood their problem and would solve it, integrate with their systems, etc. etc. etc. (For verisimilitude I'd be wearing my normal business casual attire of a dress shirt, black jeans and visually quiet running shoes.)

I'd spend up to a few hours before a whiteboard with their people and honestly sell our proposed solution, and it worked very well. I wasn't good for _anything_ the next day, but that was more than an acceptable cost.

Anyway, my point here is to echo russell, you may be able to do this with a division of labor approach. Get some salesmen who are good at sales and good enough with the domain to do the work you find the most hard, and reserve your sales efforts for where you can make the most difference.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't become a salesman. Become an evangelist for your product. Selling comes in all flavors, but if you're comfortable talking about your product and helping potential customers understand how you can help them, then focus on the pre-sales process and let your partner close the deals. You don't have to be a bare knuckled closer to be a salesman. Many CTOs in startups are actually glorified sales engineers--I know I was. After the engineering grew they became self sufficient and I spent most of my time with customers, helping them understand how my product could help them solve their problems. I never once negotiated a deal, we had "sales guys" for that--but I was most certainly selling.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI>

Always Be Closing

"The hardest thing in life is sell" <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/>

* * * The biggest step in my opinion is the psychological one. After that, everything comes in much easier than before.

<comment><USER8> Great movie, but I don't think people should use Glengarry Glenn Ross for sales tips, unless you want to end up like Shelley Levine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> First, go read Steve Blank's book ([http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany- Steven-Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven- Blank/dp/0976470705)). It puts a comforting amount of structure around the sales process and turns what's normally a big ball o' confusion into a set of tasks with concrete steps & goals.

It also helped me to spend a lot of time in bars and cafes talking to strangers until I was comfortable with both the approach & conversation.

<comment><USER10> I'm reading this book now and highly recommend it - I think it's important to think of developing your business around your customer(s) needs, not your product development.

If you know (not guessing!) what your customer needs/is missing, you can build something that makes sense from a business perspective.

Of course, I'll definitely agree with another reply regarding hiring someone who excels in and loves sales. It will quite likely be worth the salary/commission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really really listen, and steer the conversation with questions. Focus on real pain they have that your product can solve. Let them come to realize for themselves that your product will solve real problems for them, and then get the hell out of the way while your partner closes.

You're selling something you believe in. That makes it easy.

A specific book I'd recommend is "SPIN Selling" by Neil Rackham. He did actual research into successful solution sales cycles. He outlines the best way to go about making somebody realize that your product is exactly what they want. It's from 1988, but most tactical solutions-selling books since have felt to me like a branded rehash of SPIN Selling.

</comment><comment><USER12> I once tried to turn myself into a salesman, but I coulnt. I think that an engineer has to love selling to sucessfully make the transition. One thing that worked for me was to use an intelligent, personable woman to do the initial setup. Then I would come in for the in-depth pitch. It was a lot more comfortable for me. It is important, however, for you to learn the sales process from a good book or, better, a good coach. Engineers tend to over pitch and over promise. There is a non-obvious point in the process to shut up and take the order.

</comment><comment><USER13> You can probably read thousands of books, take classes and seminars etc. but in order to be a good salesman, all you really need to do is to be willing to listen to your clients, and really try to understand their problems and how your solutions can help them.

Once you really listen to your clients, understand them, and make them feel like you understand them, you're good. The rest will come easy once the client feels at ease, and feels like you are willing to take them time and effort to listen to them and put yourself in their shoes.

</comment><comment><USER14> _Do you guys have any recommendations - perhaps books and techniques - on how I can gain confidence and become a good salesman?_

Practice, practice, practice. Get yourself out there, expose yourself to bad situations, tough questions. Start small if you have to, cold calls, emails, whatever.

<comment><USER15> If you do this, start with the 'low value' targets. The last thing you want is to ruin a future big sales contract by making a rookie mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you're in the sales/no-sales dilemma and you're a key asset for selling I recommend first to cowork side by side with somebody with experience in sales.

If you came from some engineering field you must have some idea about selling, probably starting seeing sales as an engineering problem, I recommend these articles:

\- [http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing- machine/jbos...](http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing- machine/jboss-example/)

\- [http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing- machine/intr...](http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing- machine/intro/)

But in my opinion sales is all about no-procrastination and acting very quickly instead of planning too much.

</comment><comment><USER17> Focus on asking the right questions and then giving good answers (this may often involve follow up in a second conversation). Work as part of a sales team so that the presentation burden can be shared. Develop and maintain an extensive FAQ for your product so that others can also speak knowledgeably about it. In the end introverts can make excellent sales people because they are willing to listen and give thoughtful responses. Most of the time you are "selling with your ears" so help your team succeed. SPIN Selling by Neal Rackham is a good intro book on sales.

</comment><comment><USER18> I agree with many postings here but would like to add the following perspective. I dislike labels and "roles" so I would suggest thinking in the following way - you like creating good, viable solutions. You are prepared to go above and beyond to make something work well and work in all applications.The best and fastest way of achieving this is to meet with people who could use what you do and find out what they need. If you use this as an optimization tool, I believe the "selling" part will take care of itself.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm doing a video on this very topic with a great software salesman (security to enterprise) for <http://tractionbook.com>. Please stay tuned.

I've decided that I need to do more of these "vertical" videos in addition to entrepreneur traction stories. If there are particular aspects you want me to cover, or other topics (in other videos, e.g. SEO), please let me know.

</comment><comment><USER20> You need to make people like you as a person first. Then you can sell your product.

</comment><comment><USER21> do a couple of videos and ask for feedback for your existing customers. preach a lot on how ur solution solve your customer's problem.

</comment><comment><USER22> Give yourself a couple weeks to practice selling a product that you're not attached to and that's in an unrelated market.

<comment><USER23> A hardcore introvert can't develop an appropriate skill level in such a time frame. Not possible.

Hire a pro. Have a pro sales friend help you interview him. Read a few sales books too, so you know what to look for.

<comment><USER17> For products above 100K in particular, introverts do much better because they are much more willing to listen to the customer and then work on meeting their needs. It's a dangerous myth that introverts cannot sell. You sell with your ears.

<comment><USER23> Excellent point, thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Top-Level Domains - <AUTHOR> http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/delegated-strings <comment><USER4> 22+ of the approved domains from the list of 30 are all signed to a a single startup[0] called Donuts[1]. ( [http://www.donuts.co/](http://www.donuts.co/) )

Apparently they raised $100M[2] back in 2012.

They have since agreed to distribute these domains through 19 registrars[3] (eNom, Name.com etc)...

Looking at their ICANN PIC submission[4] they have registered no fewer than 200-250 LLCs

[0] : [https://gtldresult.icann.org/application- result/applications...](https://gtldresult.icann.org/application- result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/694)

[1] : [http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Donuts](http://icannwiki.com/index.php/Donuts)

[2] : [http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains- fu...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains-funding/)

[3] : [http://www.donuts.co/news/donuts-adds-another-seven- generic-...](http://www.donuts.co/news/donuts-adds-another-seven-generic-top- level-domains-to-the-internet-signs-19-additional-registrars/)

[4] : [https://gtldresult.icann.org/application- result/applications...](https://gtldresult.icann.org/application- result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails:downloadpicposting/694?t:ac=694)

<comment><USER5> [http://www.donuts.co/about/team/](http://www.donuts.co/about/team/)

Do a ctrl+f for "ICANN" and you'll see how well-networked the Donuts.co team is. Can't be sure if this is true cronyism, or whether they just really know how to play the game. Not sure it's terribly different either way.

\--Edit--

per chrisacky's link above ([http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains- fu...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/05/technology/donuts-domains-funding/)), it looks like Donuts.co submitted 307 applications at $185k/per, for a total of $56.8 million. That's a hell of a way to earn favors with ICANN while ostensibly just trying to get more picks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can see what a huge scam and insider money play this was by just looking at the names of the companies that got these TLDs.

<comment><USER7> If you're looking for a more open source approach to domain names, check out [http://namecoin.info](http://namecoin.info) and [http://dot- bit.org](http://dot-bit.org)

<comment><USER8> I was a little disappointed to learn that NameCoin domains are so cheap (0.001 NMC), and therefore rampant with squatters. I suppose there will always be an incentive to create a market and seek rents no matter what the domain system. Nonetheless, I hope NameCoin or something like it gains greater traction.

I found myself wondering the other day how long it will be before we see an attempted disruption of Google by a search crypto-currency.

<comment><USER9> That's a really intriguing idea. How do you imagine it working?

<comment><USER10> It can't, really. There's nothing remotely like web indexing in a crypto currency. Indexing websites is massively storage and bandwidth intensive, something which a distributed blockchain is not designed for. It's a nice idea to make a distributes search engine, but has nothing to do with Bitcoin.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I wasn't implying that the specifics of BitCoin would work well for a hypothetical SearchCoin. NameCoin is feasible because the volume of data is much smaller, both for keys and values, and updated infrequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the short term, I'm not too worried: consumers not wanting to enter long/weird domains will probably cause most of these to fade into obscurity.

On the other hand: is ICANN completely broken? This could have more serious ramifications down the road...

<comment><USER12> I think it's super suspect that ICANN, a non-profit organization with a purpose to maintain "the stable and secure operation" of the Internet (as described by Wikipedia), can allow this to happen.

Do these additional generic top-level domains bring _any_ benefits - <USER2> being a license to print money for the tld sponsor&registrars?

<comment><USER13> Do they have any meaningful costs?

<comment><USER12> One pretty big cost is the risk of confusion when visiting "somebrandname.sometld", especially if it's a different entity from the ".com" domain.

It can also be a cost (both moneywise and as a time sink) for brands wishing to protect their identify, if the number of tlds increases with a magnitude. (Multiplied by the number of misspellings and hyphenations etc).

It's probably likely to break a lot of (buggy) software (just try entering an @example.museum email around the web today).

Non-technical people are likely to be confused (so increased support costs, re-education, etc).

What happens to a gTLD and all the registered subdomains, when its sponsoring corporation goes under?

The DNS root zone grows, which may have undesirable costs for caching nameservers and DNS traffic.

It feels like a waste of energy and time that a _non-profit_ like ICANN could have used for more constructive work.

<comment><AUTHOR> good points.

In terms of the semantics: in the end it's up to people using it. I'm more worried about profiteering than confusion. But it's for the market to figure it out.

I don't think the traffic is significant. caching is very easy - you don't need to have all 10^12 - 10^15 domains on disk and even if the size per record is tiny.

Bugs are less significant than possible collisions and fraud.

Definitely agree with the sentiment that ICANN is broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting to see a lot of the domain endings are longer than the standard domains today. It'll be interesting to see what they do with them. Some of the choices seem a little odd considering the price to pay, such as .bike, .guru, or .tips.

I don't like that people (with money) will start buying up these generic top level domains and have complete control over who uses them. I would rather see a non-profit registrar of sorts but I know that would probably never happen.

<comment><USER15> I could see .tips and .gugu could making some sense. eg iphone.tips, php.guru, etc. But .bike is definitely weird.

<comment><USER16> trek.bike ?

Owning the TLD will probably ensure top ranking in that keyword's search results.

<comment><USER5> It would definitely help, but I don't think it'd be a silver bullet.

[http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors](http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors)

I'm seeing the domain name considerations well below bigger factors (link juice, page rank, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really hoping nobody registers ".js" \-- would wreak havoc on searches for a lot of common Javascript libraries like "underscore.js"

Similarly I could see someone registering the ".html" or ".php" tld and causing some huge issues.

Although I must admit, owning the domain "index.html" would endow huge nerd cred.

<comment><USER17> Two letter gtlds are reserved for countries only.

<comment><USER5> To nitpick, "gtlds" are generic top level domains (.com, .net, .etc), while the reserved two-letter tlds are ccTLDs (country-code top level domains).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do we know yet how browsers will be treating these tlds? Eg if I type "diamonds" into the Chrome omnibar will it take me to a Google search for "diamonds" or to [http://diamonds](http://diamonds)

<comment><USER6> ICANN made a decision late in the game to not allow "dotless" domains, i.e. making "diamonds" resolve to something the TLD owner decides.

This crushed the business model of most of the new TLD operators, so don't expect them to be around in a few years.

<comment><USER18> following up, ICANN's announcement and reasoning: [http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-30au...](http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-30aug13-en.htm)

<comment><USER19> _The most prominent example is the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to deliver electronic mail. It requires at least two labels in the FQDN of a mail address. Thus standard-compliant mail servers would reject emails to addresses such as user@brand._

Do most mail servers follow this rule?

<comment><USER10> I remember some ccTLD had A records a while back (bs. was one), but they lacked MX. I think it would just cause lots of form validation errors if that suddenly changed, not to mention the confusion you'd cause with people expecting a suffix. I cause enough issues with not having a ".com" on my email address, people love adding a .com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well, I wonder how that affects mobile. Since there is a move to mobile app topology of information consumption, wonder if domain names will still be relevant 5 years from now.

On the same note why TLDs, not just have a 'name registry'. Seems like technical dictates what is not natural. Why I can't have website name for example "burger" or "pizza" I get that there are designations and control entities. But isn't it a bit contrived? I am not against dot notation but whole synthetic user facing naming system...

<comment><USER21> you CAN technically do that in this way

if you buy .pizza you could technically host one website at

[http://www.pizza](http://www.pizza)

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but www is just another subdomain. [http://www.pizza](http://www.pizza) is technically no different from [http://superawesometasty.pizza](http://superawesometasty.pizza).

<comment><AUTHOR> No - if pizza is owned by one TLD registrar www.pizza and great.pizza would be two separate subdomains under that TLD. I'm not sure there are limitations to the subdomain under the TLD (to prevent collision with www). Someone can register www under .com and make a www.www.com.

<comment><USER22> I wasn't saying they were interchangeable, just that _on a technical level_ [http://www.pizza](http://www.pizza) and [http://great.pizza](http://great.pizza) function in exactly the same way, as far as DNS is concerned.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for most browsers, but that's another topic...

And I'm sure www is a reserved term under most of the new TLDs. Haven't checked though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We don't need 50 crappy new domain extensions. We just need one new one that works well like .com.

Personally, I had high hopes for .co, but it doesn't seem too well adopted yet.

<comment><USER22> It's definitely getting there. It seems .io is where it's at, though, despite the price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why waste time with useless and long TLD's and not introduce a single-letter TLD's, such as .a .b .c ...etc ?

Or .js - to make Silicon Valley go orgasmic?

</comment><comment><USER25> Look at the trends- It's very funny-- the language generator... Almost all these domains are owned by one entity.

</comment><comment><USER26> These domains appear to be going for $30/year, at least the ones operated by Donuts (ie, most). See [http://www.101domain.com/domain-availability- search.htm](http://www.101domain.com/domain-availability-search.htm) and then search for foobar.bike

</comment><comment><USER27> Looking at this, I see the reference to a couple of different dates. There's the "Sunrise Open" and the "Sunrise Close" dates, then there's the "General Availability" date. What does each mean?

<comment><USER28> Gandi does a pretty good job explaining this [1] as a 'trademark brand protection phase'. Basically, if you have a registered trademark and want to defend it from others registering <YourTrademark>.<NewTLD> your opportunity to do so is during this phase. The rest of us commoners get to by the leftovers starting on the General Availibility date.

[1] [http://www.gandibar.net/post/2013/10/29/The-launch-of-the- ne...](http://www.gandibar.net/post/2013/10/29/The-launch-of-the-new-gTLDs)

<comment><USER27> Ah, alright. That explains it, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Oh. no - not language specific TLDs! They wanted to introduce them like 7 years ago, and a lot of people agreed that it would just be a detriment to the Internet as we know it (freely accessible and global).

<comment><USER30> Don't you think that .com and .info and .biz etc. already are language specific? They are just specific to the/a language you happen to speak.

<comment><USER31> There's no reason to have a separate namespace though. .com in other languages should just map to .com domains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love the .today domain.

Anyone knows which registrars are supporting these new domains?

<comment><USER33> I am with the impression that they wont be made available to the public - <USER3> at least not for a flat fee.

<comment><USER12> Actually I was of the impression that new gTLDs wouldn't be accepted unless they were generic enough and available to the public. (so no buying ".google")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> .guru seems like a good one with tons of app/saas appeal

</comment><comment><USER35> I am sure someone proposed the .meow or .cat domains. I just wonder how far they got

<comment><USER36> .cat already exists [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat)

<comment><USER37> [http://www.nyan.cat/](http://www.nyan.cat/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can we have this TLD:

.yetanotherkindausefulbutmaybenottld ? :)

</comment><comment><USER38> still holding out for clownpenis.fart

</comment><comment><USER39> Might as well just start using freetext at this point. Register your search term with Google, then forget about it.

<comment><USER40> Sounds like the AOL keyword days. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I have brokered .com domains for many startups over the past few years, and I can say almost every time the domain was fairly priced and a deal was reached without too much negotiating or time wasted.

I really think a lot of startups shoot themselves in the foot by just saying "everything in .com is taken." Well maybe, but that doesn't mean you can't pay $2-5k and actually secure your domain.

What I am saying is shelling out a few grand now for the appropriate .com will save you loads of time and headaches than if you try to brand on non dot-com and eventually realize you can't live without it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I disagree. .com is mostly a historic artefact. how about my.startup?

<comment><USER42> > how about my.startup?

Why would you want "startup" as part of your permanent brand identity?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Easily convert spreadsheets into accessible URL endpoints - <AUTHOR> https://www.apicastor.com <comment><USER2> I see what you did there, but do not really see what is it good for ? It is only static data right ? Check out this: [https://ipushpull.com](https://ipushpull.com) where you can create true live data out of your excel files. I think some examples on your website would help people to understand better...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hadn't seen ipushpull. Thanks! You're right about the examples. The one differentiator which isn't out yet will be the stripe integration, allowing people to profit off their data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is no content in the HTML title tag on [https://www.apicastor.com/](https://www.apicastor.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> What Excel formats do you support? I tried a simple Excel 97-2003 .xls, with no VBA or addins, and got some kind of format error.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just csv at the moment. Let me know if you still have an issue if you export to csv and try again!

<comment><USER5> With regards to Excel, many "in the wild" Excel workbooks will contain multiple worksheets, so it's not really practical to export a CSV for each one. Would be worth considering doing this well and supporting workbooks with multiple worksheets (same applies to Libre Office as well).

Can I also suggest you let folks play around without having to create an account (I abandoned at that point so haven't been able to play around), or at least provide a demo account that mops up stuff older than 24 hours.

<comment><USER4> Many in the wild Excel workbooks will contain formulae as well. You can't export those to a CSV.

<comment><USER5> Oh sure, I was just talking about workbooks containing multiple sheets with static data.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Today's VC Industry: Too Big to Fail?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/101158/todays-vc-industry-too-big-to-fail/

<comment><USER2> I think that this whole process is completely natural. At this point in the VC game, investors will really only trust the most experience VCs with their money. And it's possible that soon, small VCs with small initial capital and much more focused investment strategies could garner large returns and take the stage. Or conversely, big VC funds' exclusivity, emphasis on experience, and hesitation to hire could turn them into small, successful executors of their managers' vision, and investors will put their money in new funds at the managers retire. It could really go in many positive growth directions, but the point is that this is completely natural. Big companies dominate in cycles. If they decide to hire, new VCs are ushered in, and if they don't, new firms take their place. Point is, no company can last longer than the people who run it, and no trend in the markets can exist longer than the companies that fuel it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's totally reasonable to say "I only want $ from big firms" because they can actually do followon rounds. As much as USV seems to be regarded pretty well, their stated preference is to only put a few million in over the life of a company - if you're expecting to build something capital intensive, you're better off going with a firm that can back you sufficiently. Even relatively early rounds ($12M at 60 pre for Uber, etc) are getting done for more than the smaller VC firms want to put in over the entire life cycle.</comment>


Black holes may be brick walls that bounce information back out - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28159-black-holes-may-be-brick-walls-that-bounce-information-back-out/ <comment><USER2> Basing this on personal hunch instead of any theoretical hard standing whatsoever I think black holes are really just the event horizon, there's nothing 'inside' the event horizon.

I believe that the collapse into a 'black hole' 'stops' at the moment that space-time curvature creates a sphere of space-time that geometrically appears to us 'outsiders' as the surface of a sphere or a shell - ergo the event horizon.

That is, I believe that there is _nothing_ inside the event horizon (literally nothing, no space-time, no anything), the event horizon is just the region of space-time occupying the surface of a shell inside which there is NOTHING.

I don't believe you fall 'through' the event horizon, I think that the matter that would otherwise make up the singularity at the centre of the black hole is smeared over this surface/event-horizon region.

There are problems with this idea, but those are somewhat related to the fact we believe matter becomes infinitely dense (why wouldn't material on the surface of the sphere collapse to smaller spheres/event-horizons of their own) But infinite density is clearly not a 'proven' theory, however widely it's postulated - so we clearly don't understand if that is even a physical possibility.

I've not seen anything concrete that says you can't model a black-hole as a shell of mass. As I understand it, to an outside observer a shell behaves gravitationally identically to a point mass at the centre of such a shell would.

Of course, I'm no doubt very wrong, but whenever I've mentioned this to anyone, no one has really come up with anything to say it absolutely isn't possible, not without holding on to other things we 'think' we know like matter 'should' continue to collapse to infinite density once past some arbitrary point. Something I'm not convinced is true.

<comment><USER3> A few comments. I doubt that many or even any serious physicist imagine something of infinite density inside a black hole, infinities are just the way our theories tell us that we don't understand things well enough and got the math wrong. The event horizon can be a very ordinary place with almost flat space and no strong gravitational forces. You can probably cross the event horizon of a large black hole without even noticing what you just did and that you are doomed. So imagining that the event horizon is kind of a wall with nothing behind the wall most likely does not work. Lastly the singularity is not a place but a time, the common pictures of black holes are highly inadequate to think about black holes.

<comment> guard-of-terra Event horizon is an ordinary place that happens to be bombarded by high energy particles coming from the whole galaxy in great numbers. I think you'll note.

<comment><USER3> Black holes are not active all the time, after cleaning out the surrounding space they can go through extended periods in which they are not aggregating more mass. I am not even sure if you should expect particles with high energy rushing in. Why not gas clouds with densities of a few atoms per cubic meter drifting into the black hole with modest velocity? If I remember correctly you can even be inside the event horizon before the black hole actually formed, I would definitely not expect high energy particles in such an scenario.

<comment> guard-of-terra When you approach event horizon you witness the galaxy age and die, and also get multiple billion year load of heavy particles, possibly even blueshifted thermal photons.

<comment><USER3> Nothing special happens when you approach or cross the event horizon. If you look back, even from inside the event horizon, everything looks normal to you, at least until you are close enough to the singularity so that the curvature becomes significant. Only observers outside of the black hole see the event horizon as a special place. For a pretty accessible introduction including a discussion of falling into a black hole see for example [1].

[1] [http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses/general- relativity/201...](http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses/general- relativity/2012/fall)

<comment> guard-of-terra It does. Galaxy speeds up and then you witness it age and die. Also harvest all its decay products in very short period of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always thought they're not really holes but black spheres that absorb everything close to them including light.

<comment><USER5> The thing to remember is that space isn't flat. Gravity warps it, like a bowling ball warps a flat bed sheet, but in 3 (technically, 4) dimensions. A black hole is a warping where instead of a gradual dip in the sheet, there is a cone that plummets down seemingly infinitely. But the principle of relativity means we don't really know what's on the other side; just that anything that goes over the edge of the quasi-spheroid line (the event horizon) can't ever go fast enough to come back.

<comment><USER4> I like my black sphere theory better, but interesting the similarity with a cone nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always been told that the laws of physics are reversible, so I don't think information can be trapped anyway.

<comment><USER7> That's precisely the bit that is at issue. The boundary of a black hole seems to be asymmetric regarding information and the arrow of time. Not reversible, which would be a new thing.

<comment><USER8> Stupid question: is this any differen from the "everyday" problem of information loss? That is, we know phase space is conserved, and yet, if you burn a piece of paper and mix up the ashes, you can't practically recover what was written on it.

Is there information loss (per the claim in the dispute) in a stronger sense for black holes? Is it a case where multiple start states map to the same final state, or just another case of in-practice irreversibility like in the burning paper example?

<comment><USER9> While from a human perspective information seems to be being destroyed, really it's just being obfuscated beyond our means of recovery.

If you were to pause time, with enough analysis and knowledge of the _present_ state of your burning parchment you could recover the state from a split- second prior to that.

No-hair theory says that the event horizon of a black hole is different. One moment the information exists, the next moment it's just gone.

<comment><USER10> This is a key point: recovery of the information requires some knowledge of time. If you were handed a pile of ashes (assuming ideal combustion of every molecule) you have zero chance of recovering any information but if you watched it burn, you can theoretically recover the initial state.

Thats where the analogy breaks down with black holes: when a singularity absorbs a particle not only is any information about its identity lost, but also where it was in time.

If you were to mix a bunch of ashes after watching several different documents burn you could still recover the initial state of each one but because of the extreme conditions in a singularity, even this basic axiom of cause and effect is no longer valid.

<comment><USER8> So black holes really do shrink phase space, and it's not simply a matter of it being too computationally expensive to extract out "what went inside it" given the microstate of the black hole radiation?

<comment><USER10> Yep. The big unanswered question as far as I know (from a layman's perspective) is whether the matter/energy in the singularity at the center of a black hole even follows the laws of nature as we have observe them or if all of that is out of the window past the event horizon. If you don't know the laws of nature describing what happens inside (and you can't study them due to the destructive nature of those forces), no amount of computation will be able to help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra I find this black hole information debate akin to medieval ramblings on amount of angels dancing on diamond pin head. Can we please move on a little and come back when we have new angle?

<comment><USER11> Exactly. I call it exploitation of the unknown. You can generate lots of "theories" by just combining a couple of mysterious things into one. For example, something that hasn't been tried yet afaict, is a theory that black holes are a gateway between the physical world and human consciousness (or self-awareness).

<comment><USER12> Oh i like the what if games.

Black hole (as singularities that may have formed without collapsing stars) played a central role in early universe by swallowing matter and anti matter and radiating energy by hawking radiation which then fueled energy decay into standard matter, and that may explain the current imbalance between matter and anti matter or it may be mad internet rambling.

Still medium worthy?

<comment><USER13> Your theory doesn't make much sense. There's really nothing special about "normal" matter vs antimatter. You could as easily call the matter I'm made of antimatter and reverse the names and the physics is the same for both.

<comment><USER14> You've set up a strawman. The GP doesn't claim that there's anything special about antimatter. He simply provides a wacky explanation for the unsolved problem of baryon asymmetry.

<comment><USER15> The question is: Why would the black holes swallow up more antimatter than matter, if everything is completely symmetrical?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Waze: Google's New Spying Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=4827 <comment><USER2> The "I am not a lawyer" should be in the back of your mind whenever the author talks about the legalities of this software agreement.

It is possible to both anonymize and aggregate GPS-data to a degree where it is neigh impossible to reverse engineer.

The "we provide data to governments when we have a good faith belief that legal standards are met" is boilerplate. From Facebook, to Atlassian to Wordpress.com, all privacy policies have that wording.

I found this article to be unfounded and harsh of tone. Google doesn't even need Waze to spy on you. If anything: Google-NSA spying has decreased since the Snowden-revelations. They now actively secure most communications, lobby to be more transparent to their users, and fix security bugs like Heartbleed. All the while keeping their profitable marketing profiles on you (call that spying and the word loses its meaning).

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm an avid waze user due to a long and traffic-dependent commute. It's hard to get worked up about the concerns raised in this article simply because I view where I'm driving essentially as public information (as almost all of my commute is on public property), and because the data collected is so clearly necessary for providing the features the app advertises.

> _Your GPS location and driving routes. Of course, some of this is needed to > deliver the services described, however it does not need to be stored > indefinitely. Waze's privacy policy states that this information will be > used to "create a detailed location history of all the journeys you have > made". The question, of course, is "for whom, exactly?"._

It's for you, and for the Waze community at large. When you drive, your most recent routes are saved and you are allowed to edit some area around your route for some amount of time after. This allows you to update the map both for yourselves an others (new road closure near your house? Mark it on the map), which will affect Waze's routing when giving you directions. Tracking where you've been ensures you only edit areas you're legitimately familiar with.

> _To spam you with marketing and advertising materials when using Waze; > specifically location-specific advertisements using your GPS history._

These are pretty unobtrusive, and I don't really disagree with them in principal. There are already location-specific ads along my route in the form of billboards and signs.

> _To email you marketing and advertising materials_

I've never gotten an email from Waze, but I could easily block it if I did. I would only be concerned if they were giving out my email to other third-party advertisers that would be difficult to block.

> _To conduct surveys and questionnaires (possibly for others, using your > data)_

I've seen these a couple of times, they're easy to ignore and dismiss. They only show up when you're stopped somewhere. And they're pretty benign, like "Have you seen one of these brands on the map recently?" (referring to little fast food icons which I find rather helpful)

But the biggest thing to note here is that you can turn off Waze at any time, and if you don't trust it to not use GPS when sleeping, then you can enforce that at the OS level.

<comment><USER4> > It's hard to get worked up about the concerns raised in this article simply > because I view where I'm driving essentially as public information (as > almost all of my commute is on public property), and because the data > collected is so clearly necessary for providing the features the app > advertises.

That part makes sense - you're driving on public roads - but the article mentions a very long list of _additional_ information that is collected on you. Most of which is _not_ clearly necessary for providing the advertised features. That's the worrying part.

<comment><USER5> In this context it's worth noting that Waze is available in Europe too. And contrary to the US, in Europe you generally have an expectation of privacy even in public and on public property.

Of course you can give that privacy up voluntarily, but I don't think being tracked on your daily commute would sit well with most people over here.

<comment><USER6> I totally get why people don't want to be tracked, even on public roads, but the transportation engineering/urban planning part of me feels like the (anonymized) data would be FANTASTIC for transportation agencies who spend time/money on getting similar but less accurate data through surveys.

I considered trying to figure out if people could voluntarily submit their trip/GPS data (also anonymized) to agencies instead of the traditional survey but have little idea how to do that kind of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If all of the things have been found in the EULA why it is called spying?

<comment><USER7> It would have been a great thing explaining what is wrong in my comment

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _This is just too messy for me. Waze's privacy policy guarantees anything > but privacy. It's a misnomer to call it a privacy policy, when in fact, it's > a very lengthy document granting the company (and Google) the rights to > claim ownership of, and potentially abuse, your personal data. There are > virtually no consumer rights stated in this privacy policy whatsoever, in > fact. The entire policy only benefits Waze legally, financially, and in > virtually every other way._

I propose "Privacy Policies" be renamed to "Tracking Policies", because that's what they really are these days. They are all about the ways in which you allow the company to track you, keep and use your data.</comment>


Ask HN: Best multiplayer game engines for JavaScript/Node.js 2016? - <AUTHOR> What are you using for your multiplayer games written with node.js and javascript on the client? <comment><USER2> I don't have a wealth of knowledge on the subject as I'm not really a javascript dev, but I do know that Javascript and unity work pretty well together using it as a scripting language. Where nodejs would fit into this, I'm not so sure, but hopefully someone else can chime in on their experience

<comment><USER3> If it's multiplayer, you could use Node along with something like socket.io to handle real time communication between players.

You could maybe, possibly, use WebRTC for peer-to-peer communication if you don't mind excluding anyone running Safari and IE. But with a game written in JS and running in the browser, it seems like it would be too easy for someone to modify the code and cheat without a server side component at least trying to verify that everyone is behaving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've seen a lot of people using Phaser as the game engine, and socket.io or ws running on Node to communicate between players.</comment>


Show HN: Mailbox App's waiting list turned into a startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.betaq.co

<comment><USER2> Maybe it should be called MetaQ?</comment>


Ask HN: Of all the products Apple released today, which is/are cool? - <AUTHOR> For me its all apple watch, and some iPad OS <comment><USER2> I'm waiting for the rumoured SE sequel in march. If that doesn't come out, none of it really excited me.</comment>


Wordpress demands $10,000 for DMCA Takedown Censorship - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/wordpress-demands-10000-dmca-takedown-abuse-140615/

<comment><USER2> I remember that when the DMCA was new, false takedown notices would be punishable as perjury. What happened to that?

<comment><USER3> The penalty is 0 in practice.</comment></comment>


Mark Suster: Entrepreneurs Don't "Noodle" They Do - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/02/04/entrepreneurs-dont-noodle-they-do/ <comment><USER2> This post gave me a bit of a kick in the ass, reminding me that making decisions, and moving forward a little bit everyday is at the core of where my focus needs to be.</comment>


Suggestion: Make text posts display in a readable colour - <AUTHOR>

Same goes for ads. It's very irritating on the eyes. <comment><USER2> I agree. Text posts always being grey is also confusing -- text post pages very closely resemble subthread pages, but in a subthread page, the top post is only grey if it's been downmodded. Compare (picked at random off the front page):

Text post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3966301>

Subthread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3965661>

I often find myself thinking "Huh, why has this post been downmodded? Wait, no, it's a text post, not a subthread."

<comment><AUTHOR> That is exactly what annoys me about it too. It looks just like a dead or downmodded post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> PG has stated it's deliberate, in order to encourage people to post longer submissions instead to their blog, and then submit the link to HN.

<comment><USER4> Would a nicer solution be some coded limit for length of first posts?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are ORMs overkill for using SQL databases? - <AUTHOR> SQL is something fundamental we learn with programming. The syntax is mostly standard.
Why trade this 'CONSTANT' with myriad variations of ORMs across languages/frameworks for using same flavour of SQL.
I feel ORMs are overkill. For simple queries ORMs are ok but with complex queries - there is extra effort spent on translations/debugging/optimisations etc.
- -
Having said that - ORM can be helpful in one-off cases like below:
- if-and-when database migration happens from one type of database to other (eg: postgres->mariadb etc)
What is your take on this ?
edit: rephrased sentence <comment><USER2> I'd go with a very useful It Depends.

ORMs are great for smoothing over some of the rough spots between SQL and OOP. It's kind of a drag to manually hard-code all of the cascade behavior for your whole class hierarchy. Hand-rolling your own caching isn't so great either. Most languages have a lot of boilerplate around setting up SQL queries and working with the results, particularly if you want to convert the rows into objects.

Flip side, some of them have a ton of their own boilerplate and confusing setup, and can generate strange errors and poor behavior. I still haven't figured out how to use Entity Framework well, despite working with C# for years. They're good enough for like 90% of things, but the other 10%, you can get big savings writing your own SQL.

Nowadays, I think Ruby ActiveRecord is my favorite. It handles everything that's reasonable for an ORM to do without a ton of complex setup, supports some more complex stuff easily, and makes it easy to drop to SQL when you need to.

FWIW, I've never actually seen any company try to switch to a different type of database.

<comment><USER3> "FWIW, I've never actually seen any company try to switch to a different type of database."

The active record pattern, where you have objects like RoR's ActiveRecord or Django's Model that directly wrap a row in a table in a database, has a nasty hidden trap that rears its head once your app is complex enough.

By tightly coupling your database backend to your application models, it all but guarantees you can't switch to another database without a major rewrite of your application.

This is probably why you don't see companies switching databases. They _can 't_.

<comment><USER4> "This is probably why you don't see companies switching databases. They can't."

I think we don't see companies switching databases because it would be a pain to support the transition. There are implementation specific features that could be used that would break on a switch. Then migrating all of the data and stored procs/functions/views/etc would be a pain too as they would need to be updated for the syntax of the new database. Simple things like TOP in T-SQL do not exist in other database implementations, so that is a simple thing that would have to be fixed. Other things like CROSS APPLY in T-SQL do not (to the best of my limited knowledge) exist in other RDMS, so that would be a more complicated re-write.

<comment><USER2> TOP actually exists in all other RDBMSes that I know of (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite), except it's called LIMIT and goes at the end of the query instead of the beginning. CROSS APPLY is in PostgreSQL as well, except it's CROSS JOIN LATERAL instead. AFAICT MySQL and SQLite don't support this. I don't have much experience with Oracle, so I'm not sure what it supports, but I'd be amazed if it didn't support some variant of LIMIT/TOP.

LIMIT/TOP is a good example actually of the sort of thing that every ORM I've used is great at covering between databases. I haven't seen any ORMs that support queries with sophisticated JOINs, much less CROSS APPLY/CROSS JOIN LATERAL.

But I would agree that, if you're using the more complex stuff like custom functions, stored procs, triggers, etc, you're much more likely to get tripped up by that switching between databases, though ORMs mostly don't touch that kind of stuff.

<comment><USER4> Yea I knew of limit which is why I knew you would have to change the query. It is a simple change but a change nonetheless. I didn't know that PostgreSQL also had a CROSS JOIN.

Anyways, my point was that it wouldn't be ORM support or tied to ActiveRecord that would prevent a business from switching databases but a whole lot of other work that would need to go on.

<comment><USER3> Even if the company were treating their database as nothing more than a dumb data store, without stored procedures or the like, tight coupling within application code would still stifle any ability to integrate other data sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like that you asked this question and I'll probably refresh this page a few times to read the responses.

I use an ORM called odb by CodeSynthesis. It is one of my favorite ORMs and an extremely high quality product. This ORM has saved me in more ways than one, but the biggest benefit is exactly what you've described.

I can't speak to other ORMs, but odb has such a nice system that it makes C++ development involving databases tolerable. Prior to this, managing queries, transactions, and keeping on top of problems related to interactive with specific databases was a real nuisance. There are enough quirks and differences between databases that I feel like it's too easy to understate what a pain the differences between variants of SQL can actually become in a large project.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would go one step further and claim that SQL-databases are overkill for most purposes. Relational logic is very useful, as is transacted storage and indexing; but the SQL-standard is clearly overkill in many cases.

An ORM is a simplification; it offers a single, convenient, but ultimately limiting perspective with most complexity swept under the rug. Anyone who's actually tried migrating between different databases or spent a week or so chasing down nasty coherency/performance-problems in their chosen framework knows what I'm talking about.

A more constructive approach that's rarely taken is providing storage/indexing as first class abstractions within the language to build your storage logic on top of.

Embedding raw SQL in a piece of software makes it much harder to reason about and maintain. Since storage/indexing are often fundamental, they deserve a more sophisticated interface than simply passing written notes back and forth on cocktail napkins.

Lately, I've been implementing my own, special purpose storage/indexing ([https://github.com/andreas-gone- wild/snackis/tree/master/src...](https://github.com/andreas-gone- wild/snackis/tree/master/src/snackis/db)) to cut down on the complexity and get a tighter fit with the application.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like to use orm for simple projects. If there are some complicated queries or other heavy stuff I use views and stored procedures to make a suitable abstraction layer. Then I use the orm to access those views and stored procedure. Just to be clear, there is no business logic in those stored procedures.

Most orms generate awful sql queries, and then everybody wonder about bad performance (...and then they switch to nosql..because performance...).

</comment><comment><USER8> Sometimes ORMs can be very convenient for reducing time to complete complex things as well. I recently did a project which had a graph data model that was mapped to a relational database, and SQLAlchemy saved me a lot of manual query manipulation to get that done. Many ORMs would make it rather difficult to achieve that sort of thing, though. Some are much more robust than others.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't like to use ORMs because for every language it's kind of different, so I always implement a DAL class wrapper and write raw SQL. This way I don't have to learn/relearn another library every time I start a project or going back to an old one.

</comment><comment><USER10> For the most part I prefer to use technologies like JdbcTemplate that only provide a very thin layer between the relational and the object-oriented world.

ORM systems usually try to paper over the impedance mismatch between these two worlds. This mismatch will always be there. There's no way around it. So, we might as well keep the systems dealing with it as simple as possible and not try to force object-orientation on relations and vice versa.

Document-oriented database systems are good alternative in many cases, too because by their very nature they're much more amenable to storing objects.

</comment><comment><USER11> ORMs are good for only one thing, saving your models to the database and retrieving your models from the database for display on a single page.

Once you start using them for other things like generating lists of objects, pagination then you start hitting issues. In fact here you are better off using straight SQL and PDO to return an array of data that you format into HTML for display. [https://19216811wiki.wordpress.com/](https://19216811wiki.wordpress.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the biggest plus for using an ORM is increased security over rolling your own interactions with the database.

Plus the time savings/overall security using a framework that is typically tied to the ORM.

So I would recommend using a framework and ORM.

If you're just getting started and are working on a web app for your own use I would recommend building at least one from scratch. Rolling your own Auth, etc. Once you do that you'll understand more of what appears as 'magic' in a framework like Rails/Laravel.</comment>


Billion-dollar offer for .org a 'bad deal' - <AUTHOR> https://www.itnews.com.au/news/billion-dollar-offer-for-org-a-really-bad-deal-534797 <comment><USER2> In general, I'm not sure how much I really care at this point. Only because .org really isn't restricted in any meaningful way vs most TLDs out there. Though, I'm leery of why any company would want to buy .org in general.</comment>


Letter of Resignation from the Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Commission - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@katevershovdowning/letter-of-resignation-from-the-palo-alto-planning-and-transportation-commission-f7b6facd94f5#.3d2hmimfq <comment><USER2> Very, very interesting to see, especially for someone who lives in the Palo Alto area. From friends in real estate, the conversation at many of the town hall meetings break down to: existing property holders, and those who have moved to the area for work. So depressing to see, as it has second- and third- order effects in terms of who can come to SV to work. As the article points out, certain types of folks (e.g. those with families, or other financial obligations) are being priced out of the workforce. A total disaster.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's equally interesting is that right across the highway in East Palo Alto, there appears to be significant opportunity with much lower housing prices. Now, there are definitely reasons for this, but the economic variance seems to be more than simple financial cost. One of the commenters in the original article mentions this disparity, but it was given short shrift. EPA is not PA...but i can't help but believe that in the next 10 years it will become far more gentrified, simply due to growth pressures.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu considers end of traditional release cycle - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/01/ubuntu-considers-huge-change-that-would-end-traditional-release-cycle <comment><USER2> Milestone release vs. rolling release is a red herring. The real problem is the issue of shared libraries and shared dependencies. This is one thing Windows got right--updating one program (usually) doesn't affect other programs on the system. But in Linux, updating one library or program might introduce bugs into all of the programs using it. Hence was born the milestone concept, where we freeze a known stable state of the entire system and use that, because all the interdependent clockwork seems to work ok at that point; and then the rolling release concept, where we acknowledge the need for new software, but update everything, top to bottom, so frequently that breakage is common.

These approaches have the added side effect of making the distro the curator of the galaxy of 3rd-party software running on it. I find this the most surprising thing--why should the OS provider have to spend the energy curating every single well-known program that runs on the OS?

What we really need is a reform in the way dependencies and packages are managed so we can update one aspect of the system (Firefox, Pidgin, etc.) and not drag in new versions of libraries that can introduce bugs in to other parts of the system. Gobo Linux started edging towards this approach but it's sadly no longer maintained.

An approach that combines a stable core--kernel, video/network drivers, etc.-- that is thoroughly tested and rarely updated, plus sandboxed apps that update at their own pace and are not curated by the distro maintainer, would be the ideal approach, I think. We could even keep the concept of centrally-sourced packages.

Is this possible given that Ubuntu inherits Debian, or given the general philosophy and practices of OSS? Maybe not. But it'd go a really long way towards assuaging the constant and unforgivable breakage that happens with every new Ubuntu release. (And before someone chimes in with "you're wrong, it works perfectly for me", I have a single anecdotal data point to counter your single anecdotal data point.)

<comment><USER3> I _really_ do not like that my windows machine takes longer and longer to log in as every single software provider has to have their own 'phone home' mechanism to see if there's an update. Windows did _not_ 'get it right'.

<comment><USER4> Updating software is orthogonal to software modularity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to enjoy the "continuous release" aspect of Gentoo. But every now and then it would go _horribly_ wrong and I'd have hours of sorting it out to do.

That was ok since I was a hobbyist who was trying to learn Linux better.. but Ubuntu's always been about "Just Works" so they'll have to be _really_ careful with this.

If they can make it work, it'll be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER6> This might be of interest: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7pkyDUX5uM&feature=yout...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7pkyDUX5uM&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

Theo de Raadt(OpenBSD founder) explain the importance of "Release Engineering".

</comment><comment><USER7> Just when I decided I'm only going to be using LTS releases in the future. If they actually go through with this I hope there will be a general update option like choosing between "conservative" and "cutting-edge" updates.

<comment><USER8> The proposal is to keep LTS releases - but lose the interim releases. I assume after an LTS release you'd be given an option "upgrade" to the next LTS testing branch which give you updates until it that LTS is released.

<comment><USER3> I propose they have three releases: Stable, for the bi-yearly freeze, Testing, for the generally-okay rolling update, and Unstable, for the untested cutting edge stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, they would essentially adopt the Debian way of doing things? Have a stable release every two years and updates (Debian testing) in between.

</comment><comment><USER10> one of the things keeping me on ubuntu right now is that 3rd party linux software (be it proprietary or open source stuff that's not in the repositories for some reason, or perhaps that canonical has screwed around with) is today almost always packaged for ubuntu. i imagine that's going to be much harder when there isn't a specific release that those 3rd parties can aim for.

i actually thought ubuntu hit a nice sweet spot with their 6-month release cycle. it was one of the many things they got right in the early years that gave them the leadership position they still have today, even if a lot of us are less fond of what it's become.

</comment><comment><USER11> On my work machine (laptop) I've been on Debian sid (unstable) for a few years now, which is probably close to what they have in mind. For somewhat experienced users this works great: Occasionally there are a few hiccups, but they are few and usually easy to fix or work around.

But I would not recommend this to inexperienced users, and I think there the current Ubuntu rapid release cycle hits a sweet spot: It's reasonably well tested to be able to recommend it to inexperienced users or set someone (grandparents, ...) up with an Ubuntu box and just let them have a go at it, while also being mostly up to date.

</comment><comment><USER12> Do they have reason to care less about enterprise use now? Either all the enterprise use is on LTS with support contracts, or they all fizzled out and went back to Windows?

<comment><USER13> We fizzled out and went back to Debian stable. LTS is far from supported, even when you pay for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Meh... It just means am even less likely to use ubuntu in the future.. I have already moved out of it, due to the amount of fixing i need to do, just to compensate for the problems introduced by apt-get update. Now it seems i'll just end up using debian or even fedora. Well, that may actually be a good result..

</comment><comment><USER15> This is similar to what Chrome and Firefox are both doing now, lots of smaller incremental updates. Problem I'm experiencing now is both browsers are less stable with all the updates.

</comment><comment><USER13> Now it can incrementally suck more.

Seriously, after the shit ton of badness canonical have pumped into Ubuntu in the last 3 years I couldn't trust them on this.</comment>


Google TV launch hardware looks to be expensive, clunky - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/10/google-tv-launch-hardware-to-be-expensive-clunky.ars <comment><USER2> The basic problem becomes obvious once you compare the device shown on this page with the Web TV hardware from 1997 (<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2325942,00.asp>): They both have a similar looking keyboard. A TV interface with a keyboard is bound to fail. The interaction has to be minimized.

But what to do if we want to enter search terms, etc., you ask? How about using your smartphone or iPad to do it. That way they could have also reduced the cost from the ridiculous $300.

If this is so obvious why didn't they do it with GTV? They made the mistake of partnering with a hardware maker (Logitech) who has a stake in selling more equipment, not less and is not exactly known to make the simplest remotes. After years of TV remote development from Logitech, I think still the most intuitive and comfortable remote is TiVo's.

<comment><USER3> Smartphone integration for typing is a great idea for a set top. XBMC needs this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the Sony controller-keyboard-remote-thing IR, or RF? It might be tricky to type and point it in the right direction if it's IR.

Other than that I don't see the problem with it, all the complaints seem to be the typical new-Apple-fan snobbery (like the fact that making things out of plastic is now apparently déclassé even though my favourite Apple designs, from eMate through to the new Apple TV, via UFO Airport and dalmatian iMac, are all made of plastic).

I'd probably have bought something like that controller for my XBMC setup if it had been available at the time. My many Apple remotes weren't really up to the job so I had to buy one with a few more buttons.

</comment><comment><USER5> A startup I worked at 10 years ago (Ucentric, acq: Motorola) learned the hard way that keyboard interfaces are bad for TV control. Even mouse-based cursor movement (we had a keyboard with a little joystick nub thing) didn't work very well.

The arcade-style text entry (like Tivo uses) works best for 99% of the audience. Some more tech-savvy users will use or want a keyboard, but the majority of users STILL just want a couple of buttons and simple options. It's really a (fun) UI design challenge.

</comment><comment><USER6> That remote irks me for one reason:

Sony's already made a small keypad and a remote for the PlayStation 3... Duct taping them together would be strange, but it would still look (and probably work) better than that Jaguar-esque oddity.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been working with this hardware for a month. I have _not_ been impressed. The GTV interface itself isn't bad. The Google TV team have really been working their asses off for the last few weeks cleaning stuff up and fixing bugs.

Some of the downsides are basically around performance in the browser. The hardware in question (pictured in the article) has only about 2-3x the javascript performance of an iPhone 4. CSS transitions and animations work pretty well. The other big downside is the keyboard. Its a cheap plasticy thing thats hard to type on and feels like it was made for $4.

I am anxiously waiting for different companies to start making some very performant hardware for it. I think the OS has a lot of capabilities, but I can't recommend getting this particular hardware.

<comment><USER8> What do you think makes it problematic that it has "only 2-3x the javascript performance of an iPhone 4"?

I could see problems if its 2D or 3D graphics were slow, but Javascript? Are you thinking of specific sites that require lots of it?

<comment><USER7> I have been developing a GTV-specific webapp for it. I have not seen any native apps yet, other than Chrome itself and one for Amazon. It's problematic because webapps are meant to be a big part of the GTV ecosystem. I had to greatly cut back on many several features of our app because of performance hits with js. My 2-3x number comes running sunspider on my iPhone and the GTV hardware simultaneously. In some instances while browsing the same sites, it felt that my phone was faster. Another issue I completely forgot to mention is the abysmal performance of Flash. Yeah, GTV supports it. The Flash runtime is, typically, the worst part of the user experience yet again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it interesting that Apple's recent offerings of the iPad and AppleTV are surprisingly price competitive.

I know people have been getting their hate on for that Sony Remote for GoogleTV, but I thought a blackberryesque keyboard was probably needed for a web surfing device. Entering text on a PS3 using the standard remote or an Apple TV with its even more spartan remote becomes a chore quite fast.

<comment><USER10> All of Apple's iProducts are price-competitive; it's just taking people a long time to unlearn the "Apple is expensive" meme.

<comment><USER11> iProducts are expensive if you factor in the iTunes media sales/rentals, vs. free content on something like hulu, pandora (or bittorrent). While Apple TV makes sense if you use it as a Netflix box (although everyone has an xbox360 or ps3 already for that), renting TV shows looks quite expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a very hard time seeing anything that requires a keyboard as being any kind of success outside of the techie community.

Typing on a TV screen sucks, it sucks a lot.

<comment><USER4> My cable provider just updated their software so that I can find on-demand shows by using T9 style prediction (i.e. press 1 three times to make C). It's a million times better than paging through long alphabetical or chronological lists and that's despite the software being relatively clunky.

I'm not wanting to write the sequel to war and peace, I'm just trying to navigate a ridiculous amount of content. I need text entry.

<comment><USER12> Fair point, I tend to think of typing things into the XBox or the wireless keyboard on my HTPC (which annoys me whenever I have to use it), but I've used Tivo search before and it's not bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks dreadful. Why would I want yet another box and remote connected to my TV, especially when it looks as cumbersome as this to use?

Who is this actually aimed at?!

<comment><USER14> "Sony is expected to launch a line of Google TV-powered Bravia HDTVs sometime this month"

Sounds like you won't need an extra box if you have a new tv. As far as the remote -- I'm guessing they're going for "one remote to rule them all," with GTV driving all the other boxes you might have.</comment></comment>


The Shared Antibiotic Resistome of Soil Bacteria and Human Pathogens - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6098/1107.abstract

<comment><USER2> This is an awesome study because it highlights the fact that bacteria can sometimes evolve at lightening speed. Whatever antibiotic we can come up with, bacteria will be able to rapidly evolve resistance to it. Without serious investment in the development of new antibiotics, humanity may suddenly find itself vulnerable to bacteria disease once again.

I just wish they had come up with a better title. Resistome? What the hell does an -ome really mean anyway.

<comment><USER3> -ome is a name given to a total set of members of a complex biological system. So we have genome (all of the genes in a cell/species), transcriptome (all of the mRNA in a cell/organism/species), proteome (all of the proteins in a cell/species), metabolome (all of the small metabolites in a cell/species), etc.

Accordingly, resistome would be set of all the genes providing antibiotic resistance to bacteria.

<comment><USER2> So this scientific article belongs in the scientific article-ome?

<comment><USER4> "Logome", perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just found the full PDF, hosted by one of the article's authors: [http://dantaslab.wustl.edu/Dantas_Pubs/2012_Forsberg_Soil_Sc...](http://dantaslab.wustl.edu/Dantas_Pubs/2012_Forsberg_Soil_Science.pdf)</comment>


Disheartened EPA Officials Are Leaving in Droves - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/22/climate/epa-buyouts-pruitt.html <comment><USER2> I work in D.C. and you run into these stories all the time and I can't help but wonder "How does you leaving makes things better?"

<comment><USER3> When one can't help by being on the inside, it is sometimes better to go outside so that one can better use this one life that one gets.

Also, continuing to work there and complying with their new-speak policy while waiting for the axe to fall (3200 cuts planned at the EPA according to the NYT) might be seen as endorsing this adminstration's policy.

<comment><USER2> Guess the term "public servant" doesn't apply anymore if one's politics are that important to their job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that climate change is probably he most likely possible cause of human civilization collapse, with accidental nuclear war in a close second place. It's a shame that the current administration obviously doesn't see things this way.

<comment><USER5> They're old, they'll be dead before any serious consequences for climate change are realized. The whole system rewards politicians for short term gains that may have terrible long term results because humans generally suck at making sacrifices for long term benefits that ttey themselves won't realize vs. taking the instant gratification route. Maybe the next species that replaces us will be marginally better than we are, assuming we don't annihilate them all when we kill ourselves.

<comment><USER6> Not to diminish the threat, but I think the impact of climate change on human civilization is often overrated. Countries most affected will include India, Bangladesh, Indonesia... none of them in the modern global powers. What I expect 50-100 years from now is:

In most affected countries, mass precarity, mass migrations, hardening of borders, end of the relative post-WW2 world peace.

In Europe/USA, flooded areas will be evacuated/relocated. Living conditions will worsen as a result of the end of globalization.

In Russia/Greenland/Canada, warming temperatures will create more temperate areas. This will create new economic hubs, and the economic growth paradigm will prevail. Business will continue, and conditions will worsen for another 100 years.

After that, a sizeable portion of Earth will be unfit for humans, and human population will have decreased a great deal. But no end of the human race visible for now.

<comment><USER4> I think that (and I don't mean to argue that you think this these are OK) "a sizeable portion of Earth will be unfit for humans, and human population will have decreased a great deal" is a pretty terrible outcome. Those people will be starving to death, dying in migration related conflicts, or choking to death on wildfire smoke. Not pretty. You're right, it may not cause civilizational collapse, but I find those other outcomes totally unacceptable and we ought to be doing more about it right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The best way to guarantee that an agency or business won't have your ideas or opinions affecting it is to leave.

I know being disheartened is difficult but you don't enact change by going home with your ball everytime you hit a bump.

</comment><comment><USER8> excellent news, now I can hire them to our climate+tech startup [http://airminers.org](http://airminers.org)</comment>


Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE and Egypt Cut Diplomatic Ties with Qatar - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/04/saudi-arabia-bahrain-and-egypt-cut-diplomatic-ties-with-qatar.html <comment><USER2> And this is the answer in Al Jazeera, news site owned by Qatar, ([http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/saudi-arabia-uae- egypt...](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/saudi-arabia-uae-egypt- bahrain-cut-ties-qatar-170605031700062.html)) "Qatar calls decision by Gulf nations and Egypt 'unjustified', saying allegations against Doha have 'no basis in fact'. [...] The dispute between Qatar and the Gulf's Arab countries escalated after a recent hack of Qatar's state-run news agency. It has spiralled since."

</comment><comment><USER3> So basically, you can support isis all you want. But don't you dare befriend iran!!

This is yemen all over again...</comment>


AlphaLab (Seed Accelerator in Pittsburgh) application cycle is open - <AUTHOR> http://alphalab.org/survey_overview.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys: CloudFab went through AlphaLab, and their cycle is open again.

Pros: pretty low equity take, $25k.

Cons: Some strings attached to the Western PA area, since AL is ultimately funded by the state of PA.</comment>