Kinect Hacked to Control Humanoid Robot: First Steps to Avatar - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1713032/kinect-hacked-to-control-humanoid-robot-first-steps-to-avatar

<comment><USER2> Another impressive aspect is how quickly Kinect hacks are coming out. Some products seem to strike a chord with the enthusiasts, plus all of these things look very cool in videos, which makes for good publicity.

<comment><USER3> I think it takes a mixture of product quality vs hackability vs popularity. There's little point in being huge in any if you don't have all three.

Kinect is insanely popular - by its sales figures. It appears exceptionally hackable - given how quickly and how many hacks have come from it. Finally it appears to be of exceptional quality (at least for the $ value) for these hacks to actually be using it so innovatively.

<comment><USER4> Also, it doesn't require dangerous procedures that could brick your device to add the ability to hack on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What would happen if you sneeze?

I want matrix style interface (wireless if possible) where I can put my arm in the air for hours without felling pain or my body could stretch or morph in the same way the robot can (no need to stick to humanoid robots) and I want to feel like my eyes are really firing up laser beam while I'm doing the war crimes stuff.

</comment><comment><USER6> Bring on the Gundam style mech fighting games! (Then again, the possible home acrobatics are both a technical and legal challenge.)

EDIT: Perhaps this can be a fixture at arcades? One could have a game where the players are in some sort of harness, allowing full acrobatics in safety. A lower cost version would allow for tumbling moves on a gym mat.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Code available here: [http://taylor.veltrop.com/robotics/khrhumanoidv2.php?topic=v...](http://taylor.veltrop.com/robotics/khrhumanoidv2.php?topic=veltrop- ros-pkg)

</comment><comment><USER7> Extremely impressive, just a few years ago that would have required retro- reflective markers all over the place to detect the multitude of joints positions.

</comment><comment><USER8> The first thing I thought of after trying the Kinect was the robot in the reboot Lost in Space. At one point the kid uses a VR type device to control the robot and right off hundreds of space spiders. Not so great a movie, but very cool looking piece of technology.

The potential for a interesting control schemes using Kinect is just amazing.</comment>


China scrambles to stem manufacturing exodus as companies leave - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-scrambles-to-stem-manufacturing-exodus-as-50-companies-leave <comment><USER2> Nikkei and Bloomberg seem to have an ideological axe to grind. From someone who's on the ground here, China's manufacturing base is shifting up the value chain pretty rapidly, which naturally shifts its relative attractiveness to foreign companies as a source of contract manufacturing.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, pretending like the tariffs haven't been a bloodbath for Chinese manufacturing seems unrealistic. I'm the CFO of a small company. Last year, 100% of our products came from China. This year only 20% are coming from China. And we're trying our hardest to shift the remainder. Every other company in our market has either made the same shift or is planning to.

<comment><USER4> According to Peter Zeihan's _The Accidental Superpower_ (2014), manufacturing in China has gone from being one quarter as expensive as in Mexico to 25% more expensive. He expects that the US shale and natural gas boom will further reduce costs in Mexico and the US.

Also see "Why China should follow Trump's example and cut taxes" [http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2056874/why- ch...](http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2056874/why-china-should- follow-trumps-example-and-cut-taxes) . Quote: "As far as manufacturing is concerned, according to Cao, everything is cheaper in America apart from manpower."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, how much of this is due to import tarifs and how much due to rising wages?

<comment><USER6> It feels like a lot of it is due to the publicity around the tariffs.

The cost alone isn't enough to make corps shift, but assuring the stock market that the Corp is robust against continued tariffs and possible unrest appears to be worthwhile.

There seems to be some combined anti-China, pro-anywhere-else marketing involved as well.

<comment><USER5> But hasn't there been talk of moving from China to India/Vietnam for some years now?

Did any of that actually happen or was it just talk until now?

<comment><USER7> A lot of countries including Nintendo have moved and are moving to "Southeast Asia".. Okay so sue me for not reading the article first; Nintendo is mentioned. Giant is another. Not sure how widespread it is but it's real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> India, Vietnam and others are a big beneficiary of the US-China trade war.

<comment><USER9> I would hope that Africa would be, too, but it seems like that is a hope for the future.

<comment><USER10> The infrastructure seems much less developed in Africa?

<comment><USER11> And it's much riskier to invest in countries with wide-spread corruption.

<comment><USER10> I'd argue that as long as the (hidden) rules of corruption are somewhat known and stable. That would be fine.

Also, some would consider the US lobbying industry is a legalised form of corruption. (just an example, not trying to single out the US)

Anyway, am talking theoretically and it's all comparative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A man in manufacturing here. Lets do a mini-AMA

<comment><USER13> What exactly do you _do_?

<comment><USER12> Develop software, some times web dev of backends for IOT stuff, some times closer to firmware.

And as of recently, I am an involuntary salesperson as we began gaining clients in ex-USSR, and India/Pakistan/Bangladesh.

Over the past 12 years, I did work almost solely with either small OEMs or companies buying from them. And I did a short dash with dotcoms. Wasn't able to cope with PHBism there.

I'm very glad that my scope of work drifted towards something with a more narrow scope over the years. Work with small OEMs is all about being a "do everything man."

Previously I did simple circuit engineering, simple mechanical work, worked as an interpreter, did commercial negotiations on behalf of clients, did parts and product logistics, sourcing, even done package design and making up adhoc brands few times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Vietnam is actually very attractive, since it also has a FTA with India. It's in the middle of the Asian Tigers and China, and is also not subject to the colonial 'english-only' education system that is ravaging India and causing large-scale unemployment.

<comment><USER15> I'm sorry, how exactly is the education system in India causing large-scale unemployment? Citations needed.

<comment><USER16> I was interested to learn more about this too and found this article: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/india/494396/indias- obse...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/india/494396/indias-obsession- for-english-is-depriving-many-children-of-a-real-education/amp/)

<comment><USER15> Like most articles on the topic, it misses the point. The education system in India is broken indeed; broken to the point that the _language of instruction is more or less irrelevant_. The problems lie elsewhere. I'd love to expand further, but (a) this would deviate from the topic of the thread, and (b) would take much more time and space. Another time, another place, perhaps.

<comment><USER17> > _language of instruction is more or less irrelevant_.

Since it is 'irrelevant', perhaps the colonial state can stop sapping our taxes to fund 'english-only' universities, and instead educate and 'skill' the 90 % (instead of teaching them broken english). It's insane that being pro- British empire is a stance that is even morally justified in a nation of 1 billion.

It's not at all surprising that India's socio-economic indicators are worse even compared to Africa. How would it not be, when the state sucks the blood of the non-elite basically to create an endless supply of white-collar labour for English-speaking nations.

<comment><USER15> The language of instruction is irrelevant because there are deeper issues to fix. The issues you mention ("pro-British") are irrelevant too, they are not the problem. But I'm going to stop here and not engage with you further.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


UK research network Janet under ongoing and persistent DDoS attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/07/janet_under_persistent_ddos_attack/ <comment><USER2> This attack has been continuing for over 24h. It looks like a sustained co- ordinated attack.

They are possibly monitoring JANET response team tweets to adjust their actions: [https://twitter.com/jiscmi/status/673835355683057664](https://twitter.com/jiscmi/status/673835355683057664)

This directly affects ALL UK University networks: both outgoing from their networks and incoming traffic.

The economic impact must be fairly large. This makes me think this is not just a random attack but a state or large non-state actor.</comment>


Ask HN: What can you buy for $1 in 2017? - <AUTHOR> Doesn't matter which country, but just state which country you're in. <comment><AUTHOR> You can get a crappy e-book from Kindle or an app. In the physical world stuff is harder I guess.

</comment><comment><USER2> In what country?

Here it will buy you a small meal for one from a street vendor.

Edit: ok, well 'here' is Thailand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't matter which country. Just mention which country you're in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lots of crappy little do dads in the dollar store.

</comment><comment><USER4> 0.00036622 Bitcoin

</comment><comment><USER5> A meal that can feed a homeless for one or even two times.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can get 100 cents for $1</comment>


Esty Vets Launch Postling as a Radian6 for the Non-Marketer - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/new-york/2011/04/19/postling-from-etsy-com-veterans-looks-to-manage-social-media-for-the-non-tech-savvy-business-owner/

<comment><USER2> Just FYI, a slight typo in the title: Etsy

<comment><USER3> And man, is that title dense or what?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't the one mom and pop shop which benefits from social media an exception to the rule?

If you are a dentist in Scottsdale, Arizona, how many people could be talking about your business online to justify investing time in social media monitoring tools?

</comment><comment><USER5> That may very well be the worst headline I've ever seen here on Hacker News, and not just because of the Etsy typo (though that plays a part in it).

I couldn't even parse what it was trying to say until after clicking through to the link.</comment>


The Future of Fossil Fuels - <AUTHOR> https://rhsfinancial.com/2020/02/12/future-fossil-fuels-collapse/ <comment><USER2> Funnily, people in the comments make the common mistake of talking of electricity generation when talking of energy. But electricity production only amount to about 25 to 30% of our energy consumption.

Most of electricity in the world comes from coal. Coal usage must drop to zero as fast as possible just to keep the climate in a barely liveable state, and we're not heading there, frankly.

One very big elephant in the room is _why_ does renewable power looks so cheap at times: it's because _production occurs either at fixed times (solar) or random times (wind)_ , so basically renewable power is often produced when it _isn 't needed_ therefore _worth almost nothing or even less than nothing_. That's the main reason why renewable power looks cheap: because as long as we have some other reliable sources to fulfil demand and they really don't amount to much power anyway, their production isn't very useful.

Oil OTOH is what propels 99.8% of everything that sails, flies or drives. Oil is what makes globalisation possible. Oil consumption represents 50% more globally than electricity generation, so there's no believable way to replace the first with the second. So far, we have absolutely no idea on how to replace oil at scale. Most probably globalisation as we know it will end not because of evil trumpian protectionism, but because we won't be able to afford it anymore for lack of oil.

<comment><USER3> That is one reason why a lot of serious environmentalists are such ardent fanboys of Tesla - Renewable generation is already extremely cheap, but it has less utility without some adjacent means of storage. It's really energy storage, not sustainable generation, that needs to get cheaper to muddle through the end of fossil fuels. Funding energy storage research by attaching wheels to batteries and selling them above market rates is a pretty genius bit of economic hacking when seen in that context.

<comment><USER2> As I said renewable generation is only cheap because 1° we use our fossil- fueled infrastructure to build it 2° we have fossil fuels (mostly gas) to make up for its foibles.

But we don't have the resources to build up enough batteries and windmills without destroying the climate doing it.

The ecological and climate situation is absolutely cataclysmic. Rich people from rich country are far-removed enough from down-to-earth reality to minimize it most of the time, but the truth is that current trends are not only unsustainable but _must_ be reversed as soon and as fast as possible.

We're falling towards the ground and accelerating, but as long as we haven't hit the ground we still believe everything's fine and someone will pop a parachute out in time. But all we have are handkerchiefs.

I'll remind you that the "climate goals" from the Paris agreement are 1° much too low to actually "save the climate" but at the same time 2° we're far from attaining them!

I'll tell you what "serious environmentalism" is:

Actually you, we, I, everybody should be _terrified_ of the current situation. Planetary collapse is about to occur about any moment now, but the orchestra's still playing on the upper deck. If you haven't trouble finding sleep about climate and mass extinction at night, then you're probably not having a good grasp of what's happening.

It's the heart of winter here and fruit trees are blossoming. There isn't any snow in any ski resorts under 2000m in the Alps; they're _hauling snow with helicopters_ ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEuTKMkgY6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEuTKMkgY6A) ) because it's not even cold enough at night for "snow guns" to work. I'm out there in t-shirt while it should be freezing. It's been the same temperature in Scandinavia last week as is normal in June. Half of the "non-return" points have been reach 40 years sooner than expected in the worst scenarios. 60% of wild animals worldwide have died. 65% to 80% of insects have disappeared in Europe. 88% of freshwater fish worldwide. Only 20% of land worldwide haven't been negatively impacted by human activities yet.

<comment><USER4> > It's the heart of winter here and fruit trees are blossoming. There isn't > any snow in any ski resorts under 2000m in the Alps; they're hauling snow > with helicopters ...

I think you are confusing weather with climate: [https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/weather-vs- climate](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/weather-vs-climate)

<comment><USER2> When abnormally hot weather repeat month after month and year after year, we call this climate. 17 of the 18 hottest years worldwide were among the past 20 years.

The current climate evolution is _way worse_ than the _worst predictions_ from recent IPCC reports. We'll reach +2°C before 2050.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if fossil fuels, especially natural gas, will be substantially replaced from the energy mix till we figure out massive high density power storage mechanisms at scale.

Fossil fuels provide base load power that, without storage, we simply cannot rely on most renewables to directly substitute. The only alternative has been, and likely will continue to be, nuclear power, which has its own set of challenges.

If you accept this contention, then the big driver / trigger / marker for the "end of fossil fuels as bulk power sources" is the development and at scale deployment of power storage. And I don't see compelling evidence that is happening anytime soon.

<comment><USER6> A way to reduce base load power requirements is to raise the rates for it. A _lot_ of power requirements can be time shifted, as a residence is inherently a large battery.

For example, the electric hot water heater. It can run when power is cheap, and not when it is expensive. The water will stay hot for a couple days (I know this from experience with power failures).

The same goes for heating/cooling the house. When power is cheap, heat/cool to the edge of the comfort zone. When power is expensive (i.e. base rate) let it drift to the other extreme. Houses have a great deal of thermal mass (again I know this from power outages) and this can be increased by using a pile of rocks as a thermal "battery".

In order to motivate people to use this method, raise the cost of the night rate.

Edit: of course, the more water in the hot water tank, and the more rocks in the hot/cold pile, the better this works. Fortunately, water and rocks are cheap.

<comment><USER7> > A way to reduce base load power requirements is to raise the rates for it.

You are heading straight to a civil war.

> A lot of power requirements can be time shifted, as a residence is > inherently a large battery.

Go tell this to people living through Canadian winter with sub-zero temperature...

<comment><USER6> > You are heading straight to a civil war.

Just reduce the daytime rates. Besides, it doesn't make sense to have fixed electric rates 24/7 when the cost to supply it varies dramatically. Look at gasoline pump prices, they very all the time due to supply+demand and nobody is fighting a war over that.

> Go tell this to people living through Canadian winter with sub-zero > temperature.

I agree that any solution that doesn't cover 100% of use cases is quite useless and inapplicable for the 98% of the population where it would work.

Besides, I live in Seattle which is next to Canada, and this solution would work fine in the PNW climate, which includes Vancouver B.C.

<comment><USER7> > it doesn't make sense to have fixed electric rates 24/7

Electricity is the least popular form of heating in Canada, by far, dwelling are heated with gas furnace. This, and my supply prices are contractually locked for the next 5 years regardless of the actual market price.

> Besides, I live in Seattle which is next to Canada, and this solution would > work fine in the PNW climate, which includes Vancouver B.C.

Come on, Seattle/lower mainland look like the tropics compared to the rest of Canada.

<comment><USER6> Most of the Canadian population is within 30 miles of the US border or something like that.

<comment><USER7> Because the weather in Seattle is just like the weather in Calgary... or even Toronto !

<comment><USER6> Average temp in Toronto is 46.6 degrees Farenheit. It's 52 degrees in Seattle.

Source: google

<comment><USER7> ... and there is a 2deg C average global temperature between the last ice age and now. Averages are irrelevant. Seattle has more constant temperature, whereas Toronto tends to min-max, and on top of that, you took the southernest Canadian city.

But sure, continue thinking Canadian weather is the same as Seattle...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Based simply on the current "dig up everything we can while it's still worth something" push from the industry, it's clear they're dead in the water with a lot of soon to be stranded assets.

Much like the tobacco industry, they have sway.. right up until they don't.

</comment><comment><USER9> Leaving it here without a comment:

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

Full report by BP:

[https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business- sites/en/global/c...](https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business- sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats- review-2019-full-report.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Thank you. I personally like to link directly to the wikipedia chart to show people that renewables and nuclear account for pretty much a tiny insignificant portion of the world's energy consumption.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#/me...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#/media/File%3ABp_world_energy_consumption_2016.gif)

Almost all of the worlds energy consumption is fossil fuels. So the idea that we are going to do anything to change that fact any time soon is an impossibility unless we want to trigger worldwide economic collapse. Not that facts and data and charts really helps when it comes to the most ardent climate change activists.

Throw in the fact that only about 20% of the world is part of the developed, industrialized world.

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

So we have 80% of the world ( about 5.6 billion people ) who are looking to become part of the developed, industrialized world. That means more energy. Which means more fossil fuels. Unless we intend to keep the 5.6 billion down trodden down, I'd say the future of fossil fuels is bright.

Barring some truly revolutionary advance in energy, we'll be mostly powered by fossil fuels for a very long time.

<comment><USER3> >A very long time

I suppose, if you consider 120 years a very long time. Given the scale of the problem though, it seems obvious that the time to think seriously about replacements now, not in 119 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author claims fossil fuel will collapse in the 2020s...not here in Providence, RI. Stand in any parking lot or on any road and count the number of EVs, it's less than 1%. There are no charging stations at hospitals, downtown, apartment buildings, condos...

Meanwhile, there are a ton of shiny new luxury ICE vehicles, even in my lower- middle class area. These vehicles will need gasoline for all of the 2020's and into the 2030's. And we still don't even have 2% of new vehicle sales to EV.

The idea that Rhode Islanders are going to be not using IC engines in 2030 is laughable. We've locked in a ton of natural gas electricity production, we have shipping ports without charging for ships, and an airport that uses NO battery EV planes.

We have a LONG way to go before fossil fuels are gone, probably 2050 for 75% of applications, and 2100 for 95% of applications. This makes sense: we've been on fossil fuels for literally hundreds of years...you don't dismantle 100's of years of infrastructure in a decade.

</comment><comment><USER12> The thing is, oil and gas are super useful raw materials for everything from clothes to furniture, fertilisers and pharmaceuticals. Setting it on fire to keep ourselves warm will look like insanity in 100 years time.

</comment><comment><USER13> There is no meaningful ETS in Australia. The chart used must come from around 2013.

The stranded assets story is pretty bad: states are going to have to step in and remediate giant toxic industrial waste zones. Remember that methane leak from an underground gas storage site? Now magnify that thousands of times for the uncapped fracking, open cut mines.

Then add the methane clathrates releases from Arctic zones....

There is also "the rush to the door" effect. Burn it now to make profit now?

<comment><USER14> I think the methane clathrate risk has been downgraded in the current science? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis#Curre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis#Current_outlook)

<comment><USER13> Good if true. Fugitive gas from fracking and mining still bad, but this was the scary one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Full disclosure. I mostly skimmed the article.

They start off citing a prediction that didn't come true, then they bravely predict the coming end of oil. Next they show that fossil fuels are getting less expensive as a sign that they are failing. A few paragraphs later, make that claim that since renewables are getting cheaper, they will take over. That doesn't make sense in my opinion. Both things get cheaper yet for gas it's a sign it's failing and for renewables it's a sign it's gaining strength. Their graph for this is only 3 years in the past. Seems cherry picked.

I don't trust this person's analytical skills, and thus their prediction. Honestly with the article starting the way it does I would say this is satire.

</comment><comment><USER14> The position of the oil based economies will really be interesting, if/when we decide to disincentivise extracting the remaining fossil fuels from the ground using trade policy, international institutions etc. Will there be a climate denialist bloc vs the rest of the world bloc split, with the latter trying to use embargos etc to stop the oil producers? Or can the oil producers be bribed and coaxed to fall in line.

<comment><USER7> To run an embargos, you need a decently sized army, to have a decently sized army you need energy, and on soy-boys tears ain't as effective the other side good old diesel ICE (which you can still run on vegetable oil if dinosaurs juice runs out).

<comment><USER14> I actually meant to write trade sanctions.

But yep plenty of ways to make diesel out of renewables.

<comment><USER7> You still need to enforce your trade sanction by force. History has shown that wars are won by the side with the best energy supply. Your solar panels aren't gonna cut it.

Actually, you still need to fertilize your crops (not to mention harvest, seed, weed-out, etc.), which which need a hell of a lot of petroleum derivative and/or manure, both of which are on the environmentalist hit-list.

<comment><USER14> Trade sanctions don't require use of force if you have most countries on your side, you can just threaten to extend the sanctions to any non compliant trade partners of the sanctioned countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Damn website uses light grey and white. Makes it unreadable for many of us.</comment>


NYS to Make Own Hand Sanitizer to Stop Price Gouging - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_TAcT4IYdE <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently this is being made by Corcraft, a company that gets its labor from prisoners. [https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/ny-gov-reveals- state-h...](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/ny-gov-reveals-state-hand- sanitizer-amid-price-gouging-fears/2318446/)</comment>


Reasonable Education: In Praise of Homeschooling - <AUTHOR> https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/reasonable-education/ <comment><USER3> "So why not use it to test the premise that an insular, educative family can be a refuge and a moral counterweight to the ubiquitous and inevitable intellectual tendencies of our time"

Indeed, and one of the many reasons why, more than 20 years ago, we made the decision to educate at home. And so far, it's working for us as a family - <USER2> quite well I might add (2 children have almost completed engineering degrees and 2 others are doing well academically and are senior NCOs in Air Cadets).

</comment><comment><USER4> > The home is not subordinate to the school

Great article. By far, this is the most important point of the whole article. No one has the right to teach a child anything against the parents wishes.</comment>


Pentaho (Open source BI) Takes $12 Million Series C - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/21/pentaho-takes-12-million-series-c/

<comment><USER2> Pentaho's Mondrian datacube solution is quite nice, especially so if you like Java and XML. Unfortunately, it may have a limited market because, in many cases, a bespoke solution requires equal or less effort and gives more control.

</comment><comment><USER3> How do you pronounce "Pentaho"?

<comment><USER2> "Pen-ta-ho" - and that's direct from a Pentaho employee.

<comment><USER4> Like five women of negotiable affections? :-p</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook is testing Timeline layout with single column of posts - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57543175-93/facebook-looking-into-a-slimmer-trimmer-timeline-layout/

<comment><USER2> Wow that looks much better

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't that called a blog?</comment>


ICloud and Apple's truth: can you win if you don't play? - <AUTHOR> http://thisismynext.com/2011/06/13/icloud-apple-strategy-flaw/

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems to me that Topolsky's complaint can be summarized as, "Apple is is messing this up by not providing a web-based front end to these services, a front end with which I can access my iCloud data from any device, anywhere."

But do 80% - 90% of customers want this? Doesn't the complaint that iCloud services are not accessible from any computer rest on the assumption that people are frequently accessing their data from different computers? What are the reasons someone would do this? I could think of a time a few years ago when, say, I was at a friend's house, sans laptop, and needed to check my email, so I logged into Gmail, etc, but I have my smartphone now. The email _is_ with me on the go. Where is the data to support the claim that consumers use web services frequently on anywhere other than their own computers? I'd like to see that.

And I think Apple had a study sample in MobileMe that showed that even _with_ web front ends to the 3 arguably most important on-the-go services: contacts, calendar, and email, that customers _rejected_ (or didn't need) the web app because they owned smartphones! What's more, this is a biased sample, the customers who found the service so compelling that they paid $99 a year for it. It was very likely that the data showed that the web apps were by and large ignored.

Apple's iCloud represents a bet that the rest of the Internet services-- Google, Flikr, Facebook, can take the other side on, and we'll still be able to use those services on Apple products.

<comment><USER2> I don't know how often people access their email from a friends house. I do know that the ability to do so in a pinch is invaluable.

I'm also not sure how many consumers are on only Apple devices. I would assume that the majority of iOS users are also Windows users. Will there be a Windows client for all of the iCloud compatible services?

<comment><AUTHOR> Outlook?

<comment><USER2> And for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, pictures?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pictures go to your photos folder. As for the rest, it's incumbent on Microsoft and/or Google to do a mobile version of their apps, or is it not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't know on what information the article is based and really doubt that Apple will not provide at least some sort of web access. And iOS users aren't forced to use iCloud - GMail, Dropbox and all the others will still be available ... even in iOS.

But Joshua Topolsky mixes two aspects here: Having (limited) web access vs. providing full-fledged web apps that make a native app obsolete.

Apple is selling hardware and therefore is interested in pushing native apps instead of web apps. Google on the other hand sells no hardware and uses web apps to sell advertising. These are completely different approaches.

Moreover, its not really fair to write down a product that was just announced, is 3 months from release and wasn't seen and used by anyone.

</comment><comment><USER2> I agree completely. Apple's stance on the web is confusing. On the one hand they do make an excellent browser, so they must understand that it's important to their customers. Yet on the other hand I feel that iCloud is them finally saying that they will not participate in the web economy.

I don't know how consumers will react to this. I don't know if the convenience of signing up for iCloud because you have an iPhone is more important than the inconvenience of not being able to check your mail anywhere. It doesn't work for me though. If I'm shopping for a new computer or a new phone and I have to stop and consider whether or not it is compatible with my email provider; it's time to ditch the email provider.

</comment><comment><USER4> It simply doesn't make business sense for Apple to build a suite of web apps. Their business is built on hardware sales. Web apps commoditize hardware.

They don't want customers asking themselves why they're buying shiny expensive Apple hardware when they could get 95% of the same experience on any computer or mobile device with a modern browser.</comment>


How much to ask for as Freelance dev? - <AUTHOR>

So, I have a project that I've been working on for the last 3 months and I've been paid $40/hr at around 40 hours a week.
However, I had to split that with the designer I've been working with, as I'm strictly backend, so it's clear that I wasn't making nearly as much as my job demands.
The 3 month contract is now up and they'd like to continue working with myself and the designer even after launch. In other-words, they'd like to sign us to a 12 month contract/yearly agreement and have us on fulltime.
At $20/hr each it's not worth it, but I'm thinking about purposing an $80/hr, 40 hours a week agreement. So that we're both making $40/hr each as we should be.
Is this reasonable? It is to me, considering there's no benefits, dental, etc...
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Can you provide more information?

Location (You, client and designer (City, State)), programming language and frameworks.

Is this simple or advanced work in your opinion?

You will need to add money to cover the following and should have different rates for your designer depending on the level of effort, experience they have and the skill set required.

You need to get paid for: Taxes, food, rent/mortgage, gas, vacation, medical, dental, sick days, vision, savings, rainy day money, retirement, investments, entertainment, software, hardware, an accountant, other businesses expenses and any other things you may want or need for your job. So these should be added to that final rate that you charge the client per individual.

Since they want to take you on full time I recommend forming a business (at least an L.L.C.) and have your designer and anyone else you need as a contractor or employee to you. This would allow you to hire more people and get a higher rate than what you are receiving now along with more flexibility in growing with the client.

I recommend creating a chart with all of your current and possible future expenses for an entire year so you can get a better look at where the money will disappear too. As there might be some things that are now showing up for you now that you might only see when you have everything in front of you.

For your contract I recommend preparing things to take to a business lawyer first by breaking it down into separate projects and pay rates for you vs the designer. This can be the same rate if you want it to be but normally someone doing development/engineering/programming/architecture work is paid a higher amount than someone doing design unless it is high end design(architectural drawings, advanced 3D simulations, etc.).

Work up a summary of work along with official documentation on what is expected for each role, the minimum hours per week, business hours, what you require from the client and milestone deadlines, what the penalty costs are if deadlines are not reached or required information is not given, along with wording on an agreement for changes that occur and what the cost of said changes are after x amount of time. Do you supply your own hardware, or will the client supply it for you. As depending on what is required you may be classified by law as an employee of the company or a contractor, which you will need to check with an attorney about.

Once you have a draft ready have an attorney take a look over what you have so you can make sure you are covered legally with the business your are working with along with any of your contractors. Also take a look at the rates of people along with their benefits on popular salary sites so you can get a better idea of what your rate and your designers rate should be set at.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic advice. Thank you.

To answer your questions:

My Location: Toronto, ON. Client: Orange County, CA. Designer: San Fran, CA/Bangaldesh India (he's back and forth).

Combined Programming Language/Framework exp: Rails 4.0, Ruby 2.0, JavaScript, JQuery, CSS3, HTML5, AJAX, Vast understanding of web architecture (http, TCP/IP etc...)

The work itself is quite advanced compared to other projects I've worked on. I feel a bit strange boosting the hourly rate up double but the reality is, taking a project like this on fulltime I need to make sure that my needs are met/covered.

<comment><USER2> Those are extremely in demand and high paying skills. For that area (Orange County, CA) the average salary with benefits is ~$100,000/year+ for a Ruby on Rails Developer.

You can use sites like indeed.com and salary.com to get an average, but depending on your skill level: beginner (journeyman), intermediate, senior, expert or master you may be better placed in the top percentile or higher. For now since you may be starting out going with an average of what you find on indeed.com/salary and salary.com

I recommend reading up on rates of employee vs contractor, as contractors will bring in more than an employee since they have to pay costs that are normally covered by an employer. Read [http://www.salary.com/pay-yourself-right-when- being-your-own...](http://www.salary.com/pay-yourself-right-when-being-your- own-boss/) and [http://career-advice.monster.com/salary-benefits/salary- info...](http://career-advice.monster.com/salary-benefits/salary- information/how-much-should-contractors-charge/article.aspx) for more details. I also recommend searching glassdoor.com for senior software engineer and senior consultant.

As one mistake you and your designer would not enjoy and could not change if it is in black and white is getting what your worth and cover all of your expenses + personal money for entertainment and the big rainy day. It does feel strange raising that rate but for a Senior Ruby on Rails developer contractor the going rate in major metro areas is around $150/hour to $250/hour or more depending on your specialty. If you want to play it safe I would recommend doing some more research on RoR developers salaries/contractor rate to get an average and move it up or down depending on what your expenses are and how much left over money you would be happily comfortable with after expenses and taxes.

Here in the USA as a contractor your in the highest tax bracket so pulling in a gross of salary of $350,000/year+ is not unreasonable as you will net 50% of that (around $175,000) or less depending on your businesses and tax expenses. Just be careful with the amount as you have to be careful that your being paid a fair rate to take care of yourself. If your really good you should be compensated very nicely for it.</comment></comment></comment>


Promising innovation in stain resistance - <AUTHOR> http://www.tribonet.org/promising-innovation-in-stain-resistance/ <comment><USER2> No ketchup stains anymore!</comment>


Happiness is a place called Charlottesville, Virginia - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/27/happiness-place-called-charlottesville-virginia <comment><USER2> Near Charlottesville is one of the oldest (50 years) secular intentional communities in the US, Twin Oaks [0]. And several others these days, including a few trying to get started in Charlottesville. While Twin Oaks is not right out side the city, Charlottesville is the closest larger city (amusing to see it called a "big city" in the article :/) and some people find the rural community isn't quite right for them and move to the city. While the city is large enough for that to not have a much direct impact, it is small enough that I suspect over the decades it has helped encourage a more community minded approach.

Twin Oaks is an egalitarian (income sharing) community part of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities [1]. There are quite a few other communities around the US and the world as well [2]. The Seattle area also has quite a few communities.

[0] [http://www.twinoaks.org/](http://www.twinoaks.org/)

[1] [http://www.thefec.org/](http://www.thefec.org/)

[2] [http://www.ic.org/directory/](http://www.ic.org/directory/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ignoring the obvious link to current events: Charlottesville also has a lot of wealth per capita. That kind of thing correlates strongnly with happiness.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hrmrmrmmmmmrm..... saw this on le reddit today about Charlottesville:

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/12/virginia- uni...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/12/virginia-unite-the- right-rally-protest-violence)

"He said that they would not back down fr" ... article starts to get pretty scary about here...

... side note ... I feel like my comment is at least semi-appropriate response to this article (sans rhetorical styling), and yet feels a bit off-topic for the website. I wonder if one could parse the site and split into 'social articles' and 'tech articles' with some textual analysis / browser extension-y magic..

to continue my point, I'm sure Charlottesville is usually a decent place, but maybe needs a diversity education program or something before it is a /really/ nice place, idk.

</comment><comment><USER5> Provo/Orem has long been high on the happy cities lists..I really enjoy Utah, sometimes it's not as progressive as I'd like politically but if you can get past the 'red state' thing it's pretty nice. The people are nice'ish, lots of Tech companies moving here left and right, beautiful landscapes, tons of outdoor activities and things to do in the mountains...

Also read a study that introverts do better emotionally surrounded by mountains than not.. (I'm originally from Dayton OH, which I remember as a good place growing up but lived there from 2008 - 2014 and it's become a real cesspool).

<comment><USER6> SLC/Provo looks great but the inversion keeps me away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this a vile attempt at irony given the deaths and injuries in Charlottesville today?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> (July 2014)</comment>


Disney Tried to Hide the Millennium Falcon – But It's on Google Maps - <AUTHOR> https://amp-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.businessinsider.com/millennium-falcon-is-on-google-maps-and-disney-tried-to-hide-it-2017-11 <comment><USER2> "No ship that small has a cloaking device!" \-- Death Star captain Needa</comment>


Ask HN: Do FedEx, UPS, TNT and DHL have an oligopoly in the courier market? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN community, we've just launched the beta for a comparison tool and database for international courier services (www.goshippo.com). Intention is to make sending (and selling) stuff internationally cheaper and easier. The trick is to include small local courier services in our database because they offer better rates than Fedex but are harder to find. Looking for feedback and beta testers right now. Any thoughts are highly appreciated. Right now Northern Europe and US works as outbound countries. I'm happy to prioritise integrating any other country in exchange for beta testing and feedback! <comment><USER2> Hey laurabw,

Just tried to look for a rate from '90210' to 'Berlin', but couldn't get further than this: [http://cl.ly/image/1z3k0u3s0h1Y](http://cl.ly/image/1z3k0u3s0h1Y)

I remember reading recently about several similar apps tackling the same problem. shiphawk comes to mind.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi mmvvaa, thanks for letting me know. That sucks, I'm really sorry. It's fixed now and should be working well again! Shiphawk is one of our competitors but we're focussing on international shipping, meaning that our UPS lies in a database of lots and lots of international shipping providers. Thanks again for giving it a try. If you happen to know any startup that sends a lot of stuff internationally, please do let me know :)

<comment><USER2> Can't think of anyone I know personally. Glad the bug is under control.</comment></comment></comment>


WebKit Shutting Down (April Fools 2007) - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/blog/100/webkit-shutting-down/ <comment><USER2> What a landscape change a decade brings!

The WebKit based Safari still reigns supreme in keeping mobile experience (user privacy, tracking) and standards at a level (to the consternation of many people).

The WebKit based Safari on Mac is the best battery efficient browser you can get (if you include only graphical browsers).

Gecko is around (sadly) as a smaller player, but it's still meaningful and serves the public good.

Trident is gone and its publisher replaced it with a fork of WebKit (the Blink engine, which the Chromium project uses).</comment>


Ask HN: Is personal GitHub information public domain? - <AUTHOR> Who is correct in this case?
I've been rather constructive in attempting to resolve this matter with gitpay to simply remove my information. However they have not been cooperative.
This person also provides an argument that is not valid.
What are your thoughts on this conversation?
https://github.com/gitpay/website/pull/4 <comment><USER2> To the extent copyright applies to such information (which would vary by jurisdiction and the details of the information), it most certainly doesn't fall in the "public domain" (a widely misused term). You've granted Github a license to use it, and Github allows others to view it. The question then becomes whether users of Github's API may copy that information. Legally, Github has the ability to grant permission to third parties, so if they choose to do so, you can't un-grant that permission, because you've already granted it to Github. However, Github doesn't have to grant that permission, and may set conditions on it via their ToS and their API ToS. And it doesn't seem entirely clear whether Github's ToS allows what Gitpay has done.

Legal issues aside, though, scraping another service to create pseudo-accounts and _refusing to provide even an opt-out_ does not seem like a good business practice. While Gitpay appears to have done several things right that other services get wrong, this definitely isn't one of them, and it needs fixing.

<comment><USER3> It is unlikely your contact details are copyrightable in the first place, in the US anyway.

It is unlikely you have the legal ability to prohibit someone from publishing your contact details... _under copyright_. There may be other laws related to privacy that are relevant.

If the publisher in question is referring to "public domain", they probably have no idea what they're doing legally, "public domain" is unlikely to be relevant.

Practically, I would complain to Github itself, who is likely to frown at them doing that, and cut off their API access or what have you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, contact details as far as I know aren't copyrightable nor under public domain. Things like your personal contact details though are subject to privacy violation laws if they are used without your consent, I believe. So nothing stopping from one publishing them, but if one asks to have personal detail taken down, they should be honoured without hesitation.

I've brought the issue to Github as well for them to judge whether there is any breach. They are best to decide I guess.

<comment><USER2> > Things like your personal contact details though are subject to privacy > violation laws if they are used without your consent, I believe.

Far fewer laws about that exist than most people think, especially in the US. Some law and case law exists, but fairly narrowly. "Public disclosure of private information" doesn't apply here, since you posted the information publicly. "Intrusion of solitude" and "false light" don't apply. You could _perhaps_ make a case for "appropriation" (using someone else's information for commercial gain without consent), but submitting that information to Github (and thus granting permission to Github under their terms, which they can choose to further grant to others) would negate that.

In any case, making legal threats doesn't seem likely to help here, and seems like overkill given the current state of the situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good clarification! However, no legal threats have been made as of yet. Simply pointing out TOS clauses, and discussing the matter with the community.

By the time lawyers get involved, which would be after the New Year, then the author might have already merged the PR and problem solved.

At the moment, it's simply a matter of discussion.

No urgency to push the developers to take action either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems to me it should be

a) reasonable for gitpay to offer a way to 'opt out' if you don't want your information there anymore, even if they're not legally required to.

b) fine to let the gitpay folks wait to add that until the end of the holiday season.

The user who created the issue linked from the top of this thread seems to be overwhelming the developers, who have graciously taken time out of their vacation to say they'll follow up next week. The relative severity of this does not seem to warrant a more urgent response.

<comment><USER5> The _take a breath and chill out_ approach is the most reasonable considering its the holidays. Calls for shaming on social media over New Years is going to drain any charity these devs have for OSS.

<comment><AUTHOR> It _is_ the holidays and the right course of action really is to simply take a breath and chill out. I'd agree with you.

This post isn't really for the purpose of shaming though. It's to bring up the issue of such sites doing this kind of thing.

This topic could have been easily brought up after the holidays... but why wait? It's a topic to be discussed.

<comment><USER6> > This topic could have been easily brought up after the holidays... but why > wait? It's a topic to be discussed.

The way you're going about this entire conversation is simply too much. It sounds like you've reached out to multiple personal emails, created multiple issues, responded to those issues asking for updates, and brought the issue to social media in less than a day. During the holidays. That's overwhelming and doesn't put the devs on your side.

As others have mentioned, even if you're right, you really need to give the devs some time to think through the alternatives, consider your argument, come up with a solution, and implement it. This takes some time.

Removing information from a database may not seem hard to you, but you don't maintain the service. Sending a pull request is fine, but maintainers don't blindly merge anything. They have to review it, make sure it's the policy, quality of code, etc. that they want in the product, merge it, and deploy to prod after possibly testing everything.

Give it time (not measured in hours) and work with the developers.

Edit: This is exactly why maintainers don't blindly accept pull requests: [https://github.com/gitpay/website/pull/4#pullrequestreview-1...](https://github.com/gitpay/website/pull/4#pullrequestreview-14492965)

<comment><AUTHOR> > The way you're going about this entire conversation is simply too much. It > sounds like you've reached out to multiple personal emails, created multiple > issues, responded to those issues asking for updates, and brought the issue > to social media in less than a day. During the holidays. That's overwhelming > and doesn't put the devs on your side.

Not at all. All that I've done is sent an email.. waited to hear back. Haven't heard back, thought it'd be a good idea to submit a pull request, and then took the conversation to github.

I have not been badgering the dev on multiple emails or social accounts at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Social Linked Data: Gitpay follows the SoLiD specification for the next > generation of web apps

[http://gitpay.org/](http://gitpay.org/)

> Users should have the freedom to choose where their data resides and who is > allowed to access it by decoupling content from the application itself.

[https://solid.mit.edu/](https://solid.mit.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Regardless of whether or not they are legally in the right, this is a definite dark-pattern. Users should not exist on your site unless they signed up. Full stop. This shouldn't be a question of whether they should allow users to delete themselves, but rather why they are creating users for people who don't even know about the service.

</comment><comment><USER9> The future of gitpay: [http://web.archive.org/web/20160325072958/http://blog.readab...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160325072958/http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement)

Collecting money on others' behalf without prior consent is a terrible idea, and prepopulating your site with others' data to make it look like you have consent is even worse.

</comment><comment><USER10> This website is just asking for an SQL injection. My goodness.

Edit: I spoke too soon. The database has been dropped: [http://gitpay.org/user.php](http://gitpay.org/user.php).

<comment><AUTHOR> Well the PR got merged, and finally he responded to my original request via email:

"Im sorry I did not get back sooner as I and another family member have been unwell in bed most of the last week.

I'd like to you for spoiling my Christmas

Now, someone hacked the server and deleted the whole gitpay database.

This was just volunteer work, so that open source developers like myself who get no pay might be able to a tiny amount of donations.

I have now lost a huge amount of work.

I hope you feel quite satisfied."

<comment><USER10> That sucks that he didn't have any backups, but it was just a matter of time before it happened. But nobody hacked the server; you can literally just throw SQL into the url: [http://gitpay.org/user.php?user=%27%3B%20DROP%20DATABASE%20d...](http://gitpay.org/user.php?user=%27%3B%20DROP%20DATABASE%20database_name%3B%20%27). That's why you should never trust any user input.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It depends on what the licence is for Github, both in terms of information contributed to them and information obtained from them.

IANAL and I'm too lazy to read it, but I suspect the case is you've given Githuba very broad licence to use the info but they've passed on a much more restrictive one to their users so they can't just run g1thub, an exact mirror of the site. Public domain is very unlikely, but that doesn't mean gitpay is in breach of their terms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Macha, good point. Yeah whether gitpay is in breach of github's terms is a bit unclear. On one hand, you allow your content/information to be viewed but not necessarily copied.

So, information is not really in the public domain it's just publicly available. In this case, gitpay should allow anyone who does not wish to have their information available on their website should have a delete feature, and should not hesitate on takedown requests.

Odd that they launched without such a feature.

Upon inspection of their code, at least what is public, they don't have any function for deleting information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Linkified: [https://github.com/gitpay/website/pull/4](https://github.com/gitpay/website/pull/4)

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree you are on the right path here. You have three options from my point of view (this is not legal advice):

1\. Get lawyers involved

2\. Get social media and shame involved, which will probably make them take action. You seem to be doing 2 by being in the front page of HN, take it to twitter as well. This is ridiculous but it's "easy and cheap" way of doing it.

3\. Nullify your account by setting up fake data and making them update it (automatically?). This is why you sometimes want throwaway services or [http://mailinator.com/](http://mailinator.com/) , for companies who abuse people's data as seems to be the case.

Waiting for others to comment here, as it's a really interesting topic and I want to see other options as well

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks franciscop and thank you for your advice! It's definitely an interesting topic as it touches upon a few ethics.

I'm considered #1 but the thing is it might take time. The person stated that the PR will be reviewed in the New Year, so by the time I involve lawyers the matter might have already been resolved.

So, at the moment I've taken the matter to social media to bring up the matter of ethics in this case.

Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If the info was scraped from public Github pages then I think it's legal for Gitpay to use it, assuming they aren't violating the Github TOS.

That doesn't mean it's not a shitty thing to do, and I really think it _should_ be a violation of the Github TOS to republish the information without the user's explicit consent.

This has come up a number of times, and I'm really surprised Github hasn't addressed it already. I don't care if people read my info on Github (that's why I made it public), but it's really sleazy to co-opt that information to automatically create accounts on other services for people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. You don't have control over other services spawning up accounts for you. Which is just an annoyance if they have a way for you to take the information down (most do) but when they don't... that's a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Exposing personal information like that, while maybe not illegal (I don't have the qualifications to say), is something I definitely see as unethical; at least if an opt-out option isn't even provided. Beyond the personal info like email, full name, and profile picture (all of which is definitely easily scrapable and not a _huge_ deal to me), I noticed that it had made the type, modulus, and exponent of each of my RSA keys available. I know that these can be derived from an RSAPublicKey, but I'm not sure what making them easily viewable means (if anything). Could someone with more encryption knowledge shed some light on that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Curious about that too now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now I'm kinda curious how many other sites pull this type of stunt. I'm definitely torn on how I feel about this, I find it even more weird that there's people listed as following me on a site that I just have a shadow account on. Most of all I just want to know how many other weird sites I have shadow accounts on and what kind of interaction people have with shadow-me.

As far as the product decision on this one, man, I can't imagine which alternative universe this would ever play well in. Is it like a Silicon- Valley-esque VC numbers pumping game or what?

<comment><AUTHOR> A bunch of freelancer and recruiting type sites do that as well. However they make it easy for you to have your information removed.

> Is it like a Silicon-Valley-esque VC numbers pumping game or what?

That is my initial thought too. If you create a website and create shadow accounts or "LinkedData" then you're creating the illusion that you have a larger following than you really do.

Whether that was gitpay's intention, probably not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Relevant previous incident with another git tipping site: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542969)

</comment><comment><USER17> the gitpay site also lacks a posted privacy policy, making the site illegal in CA [https://consumercal.org/about-cfc/cfc-education- foundation/c...](https://consumercal.org/about-cfc/cfc-education- foundation/california-online-privacy-protection-act-caloppa-3/)

<comment><USER18> They appear to be located in California, check:

        whois gitpay.com

<comment><AUTHOR> wrong domain: Gitpay is gitpay.org.

<comment><USER18> Got it. They are in the UK.

<comment><USER17> Then they probably need that "we use cookies" banner, and will fall under the Data Protection Act.

"The Data Protection Act does not define fair processing. But it does say that, unless a relevant exemption applies, personal data will be processed fairly only if certain information is given to the individual or individuals concerned. It is clear that the law gives organisations some discretion in how they provide fair processing information – ranging from actively communicating it to making it readily available."

[https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data- protectio...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data- protection/principle-1-fair-and-lawful/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe this is off-topic but I'm wondering what people think about tech recruiting websites that scrape profiles on sites like Github to sell you to other recruiters (or for other purposes, like GitPay).

With badly coded websites like GeekedIn the attack vector is all of their data being public like so: [https://www.troyhunt.com/8-million-github-profiles- were-leak...](https://www.troyhunt.com/8-million-github-profiles-were-leaked- from-geekedins-mongodb-heres-how-to-see-yours/)

But with the websites that aren't as badly coded, the annoyance is recruiters messaging you on your Github account pitching you random jobs. Do you get those?

This is something we deal with at Stack Overflow (where I work) a lot. People love trying to scrape our content and creating Chrome plug-ins that when someone loads up a Github or SO profile shows all the random bits of info they've been able to scrape about that person. It leads into a lot of issues for us e.g.:

Recruiter claims to have gotten my email address from Stack Overflow [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/318621/472021](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/318621/472021)

to the point where we've (semi) recently changed our ToS to directly be able to fight cases like this:

A Terms of Service update restricting companies that scrape your profile information without your permission [http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/277369/a-terms-of- se...](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/277369/a-terms-of-service- update-restricting-companies-that-scrape-your-profile-informa)

Do you think Github should try to do something similar? I just want to have a place to put my code and be able to easily talk to others working on code, not something that results in recruiters messaging me and random websites taking my data hostage.

Edit: In case you want to see what the "attack vector" looks like, find any of your recent Github commits, e.g. for me:

[https://github.com/jc4p/quick-hue- toggle/commit/28f4cf724968...](https://github.com/jc4p/quick-hue- toggle/commit/28f4cf724968557cfae1e90793561c1b96d80384)

and add a `.patch` at the end to get the patch file:

[https://github.com/jc4p/quick-hue- toggle/commit/28f4cf724968...](https://github.com/jc4p/quick-hue- toggle/commit/28f4cf724968557cfae1e90793561c1b96d80384.patch)

and bam, my e-mail (per my git user config) is right there. Should we all be using fake e-mails when we commit to git?

<comment><AUTHOR> jc4p, you're totally on topic. The issue here is very similar to recruiter sites. Gitpay is doing essentially the same thing where they are scraping data and creating in-active accounts.

This is sometimes annoying, in the case of recruiters. However sometimes it can be useful if the product has potential.

Gitpay possibly originated from a good idea.

Regardless however, they should launched with an opt-out feature. Many such website that scrape content and create accounts _for_ people have an automatic opt-out feature.

You do open a really good question though if this should be allowed in the first place.

Say if I deleted my github account.. by deleting my account, it doesn't get deleted off of this website.</comment></comment>


Sulong – A high-performance LLVM bitcode interpreter built on the GraalVM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/graalvm/sulong <comment><USER2> A few potential use cases:

\- Compile once, run anywhere for low-level languages like C++. With limitations, of course.

\- More debugging capabilities. Maybe it could be used for dynamic analysis. Theoretically it should be possible to change code at runtime.

\- Something like Valgrind? Valgrind is really complex and doesn't run on Windows at all. It seems like you could make a portable substitute with this.

\- Maybe GraalVM can be used to provide additional memory safety guarantees, not sure.

Kind of hard for me to say because I don't actually know exactly what GraalVM provides, so it's kind of a guess. But it does seem like there are some genuine use cases beyond the neatness of it.

<comment><USER3> I believe that one compelling use case is to avoid the overhead of cross language boundaries (ie JNI) when the native code is compiled to bitcode and run with Sulong.

<comment><USER4> Previous Graal show offs had Ruby running C extensions by implementing a Graal JIT for x86. I imagine LLVM a nicer level of abstraction to intercept at

This seems to imply only implementing a C JIT, so my memory may be wrong: [http://chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/cext](http://chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/cext)

Truffleruby seems to be using Sulong now: [https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby/commit/f16a52934437a96...](https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby/commit/f16a52934437a968bf2d2320ed56ce8910d52605)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Compiling without optimizations is not recommended with Sulong. In > particular, cross-language interoperability with Java or another Truffle > language will not work when the bitcode is compiled without optimizations.

This is _very_ weird. How can (lack of) optimizations possibly interfere with things like calling conventions? Whatever they're doing, it smells of fragile.

</comment><comment><USER6> On a related note, Sulong is what makes Nokogiri and OpenSSL possible on TruffleRuby. This only happened two weeks ago, may be it is the reason why Sulong is posted again to HN.

I am trying hard not to get overly excited, let see some real world benchmarks once Truffle is ready to run Real World Rails.

</comment><comment><USER7> How much faster/slower is it than aot code? I'm disapointed to see no benchmarks.

<comment><USER8> It's in the papers. About 20% slower.

The main use case seems to be speed up dynamic languages (ruby, python, javascript, R), and Sulong is used to handle the C extensions, so that the optimizations can be performed across the language boundaries. Unboxing and inlining mostly in the hot paths. Makes sense. Plus more memory safety than C/C++/Fortran.

<comment><USER9> Sorry I couldn't find the paper in github page. Can you give a link?

<comment><USER8> There's a docs dir. [https://github.com/graalvm/sulong/blob/master/docs/PUBLICATI...](https://github.com/graalvm/sulong/blob/master/docs/PUBLICATIONS.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hm. Cool work, but I'm not sure I really see a practical use case? Ideas welcome.

<comment><USER11> For example I use it to run Ruby's C extensions on the JVM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Polyglotting and being able to run it on any platform is pretty cool

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if it would be possible to run other languages such as rust, d, or ante, that use llvm, on this? Specifically interested in how languages with gc like d or nim will fare.

<comment><USER14> Rust runs. Look at the PR queue.</comment></comment>