Why even strong crypto wouldn't protect SSNs exposed in Anthem breach - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/why-even-strong-crypto-wouldnt-protect-ssns-exposed-in-anthem-breach/

<comment><USER2> _Encryption is a useful tool (and a fun research area), but like all tools, it 's only useful if properly employed. If used in inappropriate situations, it won't provide protection and will create operational headaches and perhaps data loss from mismanaged keys._

 _PCI is a useful tool (and a fun research area), but like all tools, it 's only useful if properly employed. If used in inappropriate situations, it won't provide protection and will create operational headaches and perhaps data loss from check lists._

 _Concurrency is a useful tool (and a fun research area), but like all tools, it 's only useful if properly employed. If used in inappropriate situations, it won't provide protection and will create operational headaches and perhaps data loss from lock contention._

 _AI is a useful tool (and a fun research area), but like all tools, it 's only useful if properly employed. If used in inappropriate situations, it won't provide protection and will create operational headaches and perhaps data loss from Skynet._

 _Computers is a useful tool (and a fun research area), but like all tools, it 's only useful if properly employed. If used in inappropriate situations, it won't provide protection and will create operational headaches and perhaps data loss from solar flares._

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't actually agree with this article, but it's interesting, and Bellovin is always worth paying attention to.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am developing financial software and need to keep customer data and other secrets secure against OS compromise. Servers will have keys stored in a hardware tamper-proof USB. All such data will be strongly encrypted. When possible, the data will be used in its encrypted format, and if required to decrypt, the plain text will be transient within the program.

What am I missing?</comment>


Ask HN: Good materials for teaching undergrad Software Engineering? - <AUTHOR> I'll be teaching an undergraduate software engineering course this Fall and am looking for public/free teaching resources.<p>It would be great for me to learn from other instructors to know how to organize my course, see how they present info in slides, etc. <comment><USER2> A Fresh Graduate's Guide to Software Development Tools and Technologies: [http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~seer/book/2e/](http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~seer/book/2e/)

NUS Software Engineering class textbook and syllabus (with notes): [https://nus-te3201.github.io/website/index.html](https://nus- te3201.github.io/website/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> What level? What topics? CS101? A practical course on professional software development?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a junior/senior level course on SE. These generally entail a group project and lectures on software process, design, testing, etc.</comment></comment>


GNES – a cloud-native semantic search system based on deep neural network - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gnes-ai/gnes <comment><USER2> The project looks impressive, but it doesn't seem clear to me at a first glance what does it do or the advantage it has over other solutions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Names sounds like an NES emulator. Maybe one using GTK+.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, please give it a different name, OP. It looks like you've put a good amount of work into the project itself;

However, as a normal tech user looking at various things, I would be confused by looking at the name too. Please give it a unique name - find one that isn't already on GH, PyPi or what not.

TL;DR: Brand identity = Unique name

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fact that any technology runs Dockerised or within K8 can't be its principal selling point (above what the tech itself does) imo.

This 'looks' cool but I had to read a lot and still had to make some guesses about what it does.

How about a comparison of some real world use cases? For example, could I use this to store and query some structural information that might come from an hOcr or ALTO formatted ocr output? Can OCR even be plugged in? Can I intelligently index the diff of multiple versions of a file and query that?

I have no clear idea 'cos the team behind it are so focussed in their literature on the technical detail.

</comment><comment><USER6> What is "cloud-native semantic search"? What does it do?

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure either, but: cloud=someone else's computer, cloud-native=living on someone else's computer, semantic=meaning of things, semantic-search=Find the meaning of something. Maybe it can explain what it self is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's called Generic Neural "Elastic Search" - but does it use "Elasticsearch?"

Sorry if it's a dumb question, poking around I don't see where it interacts with Elasticsearch (maybe it doesn't)

<comment><USER9> My guess: I think they mean the searches are elastic (i.e. F fuzzy). This is the same meaning that Elasticsearch the product emphasises through its product Name. There is crossover in functionality

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The name wins buzzword bingo.</comment>


ASP.NET or Java? - <AUTHOR>

At my company, we are trying to make a decision on whether to use ASP.NET or Java for our web app. We are planning to host our app on EC2, and developers on the team are split on which to use (no clear consensus either way). Thoughts from folks who have used both? <comment><USER2> I've done projects in both and I would say to go with Java. It is much more widely used, fast, capable of much more, and has a great documentation.

<comment><USER3> I am inclined to agree. The open source nature of Java and many of its tools make it a more appealing choice to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The site's running slow, but I'm pretty sure searchyc.com will have some good information. I'm pretty sure this discussion has been hashed out before.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've written code in almost everything under the sun and don't really give a damn one way or another.

That said, choose Java.

If you have to choose between C# and Java, go with Java because the JVM runs everywhere and the dotNet runtime runs only on Windows (excepting Mono).

Go with Java. You can run everywhere there's a JVM and you have access to better libraries.

</comment><comment><USER6> Are those really your only two options? What were your reasons for narrowing it down this far?

Off the record, I lean away from Java.

</comment><comment><USER7> What sort of skill set do you have in house? That should probably be among the things you use to decide.

All things being equal, I would probably go with Java. I'm a Microsoft stack developer today and it's fine; but there seems to be a better ecosystem in the Java world.</comment>


How to Get a Job Using a Technology You Don't Know - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonswett.net/how-to-get-a-job-using-a-technology-you-dont-know/ <comment><USER2> Summary: If you want to learn a new technology, consider implementing a side project with that technology.

<comment><USER3> It's a fine article, but the implied answer to the title is: you can't. Know the technology, then get the job. I was hoping it was about getting a job when you wouldn't know the technology until you started.

<comment><USER4> I got a job as a Rails developer without knowing Rails. Here's how I did it.

I went out to local community events with a focus on software and networked with other developers. Word got out that I (a student at the time) was a competent developer with open source experience. When I graduated, a few of my new developer friends tried to recruit me.

I took a job at a local startup as a software developer. I was going to build a new product, though the tech stack wasn't decided yet. Soon it was decided to be Ruby on Rails. I worked through the Rails guide on building your own blog, then continued to learn it on the job by doing a small project that shipped. At that point I had enough experience to design the important project and start building it.

It's worth noting that while learning Ruby/Rails, I completely surrounded myself with resources. I would answer questions on StackOverflow, follow Rails blogs, watch screencasts, hang out in the IRC channels, read and review Ruby books, watch and learn from public projects on GitHub, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cached version, because it's down for me:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iG01hdg...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iG01hdgwv6kJ:www.jasonswett.net/how- to-get-a-job-using-a-technology-you-dont-know/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER6> If we're talking about full-time salaried jobs (and not just consulting gigs), the easiest way of getting a job using a technology you don't know is to find one of the many companies that value the overall engineering background over things like syntax.

For many years I recruited for companies (mostly mid/large) that would only hire engineers with a highly specific technical background - X years of this language, Y years of this framework. Then I started working with smaller shops that weren't nearly as concerned about the specific tools, but were more focused on overall software development knowledge. I've placed Ruby devs into Python shops and vice versa, Java devs into Scala and Clojure shops, etc.

This is not as easily done if you're looking for someone to hire you as an independent consultant, but for perm hire it's now common.

<comment><USER7> This has actually been opposite of my experience.

I've seen that bigger cos, owing to being better resourced, can be more patient about the payoffs of long-term bets (including training young/inexperienced employees). Microsoft can afford to fight 10-year wars of attrition; small startups with 3 months of runway can't.

Overall I've found that consulting gigs turn on value delivered immediately, whereas the stronger of a "software" culture that a company has, the more willing they've been to invest in training and letting people get up to speed with newer tech.

<comment><USER6> Larger companies can be more patient about long-term bets, but in my experience I've found that they aren't regarding experienced hires. Of course they'll train the young and inexperienced, but I don't see as many large firms hiring experienced developers with a different skill set than they are ideally seeking. Part of this can probably be explained by the traditional big firm HR departments.

Tech culture is probably the key ingredient regardless of company size, though I'd theorize that the type of culture open to diverse tech backgrounds is generally found in smaller shops.

<comment><USER8> This has been my experience as well. With large companies, once you have "Senior" in your title, you are officially pigeon-holed. I broke out of that by going to a small company[1], but I think my varied background and career path is now blocks me from ever going back to a large one.

[1] Incidentally, a non-enterprise Java shop, where I was hired despite not having written much code in Java.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those of you getting a DB error: [http://web.archive.org/web/20140718143333/http://www.jasonsw...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140718143333/http://www.jasonswett.net/how- to-get-a-job-using-a-technology-you-dont-know/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Didn't expect to make first page. Working on getting the actual site back up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Still it's pretty hard to sell GitHub projects to HR drones who want "commercial experience" and might not even know about GitHub. No matter how good your code is, if it's not seen by someone who can judge it, you can't even get your foot in the door.

<comment><USER11> My solution to this is to write beautifully formatted README.md's with demo links and gifs.

Since most HR (and most engineering managers) aren't going to clone your repo and install your code to test it, this is the most efficient way to illustrate your awesomeness.

I just record the desktop with QuickTime screen record then edit in something like GifBrewery to get brief gif loops.

You'll want to make sure the demos are short and to the point... maybe 15 seconds per gif.

<comment><USER10> I don't expect them to clone my repo and see my work AND I don't expect them to see the readme. They won't understand (quite understandably) most of the work I do and it will not have any GUI candies to show either :)

What you suggest is useful in many scenarios given that they are willing to go thorough the trouble of following the links and checking up the work. All they want to hear is "x years on y tech a z company". Not all of them are like this but so many are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems to be overloaded, cached: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.jas...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.jasonswett.net/how- to-get-a-job-using-a-technology-you-dont-know/)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is exactly how I went from not knowing Rails, to getting a high paying gig with a Fortune 100 working on a high scale Rails app within 3 years.

I went from first Rails side project -> Freelance consulting -> Early Stage startup -> Acquired startup at Fortune 100.

</comment><comment><USER14> ...amen</comment>


Hiring BYOT: Bring your own team - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@daspecster/hiring-byot-bring-your-own-team-c5d0e81a7e84#.xtqjglx9g <comment><USER2> Really interesting read, curious to see if this becomes a mainstream trend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah me too, I really would like more data on it TBH.</comment></comment>


The Dream of Enlightenment by Anthony Gottlieb review - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/05/dream-enlightenment-anthony-gottlieb-review <comment><USER2> This article has little to do with the clickbait title of philosophy being over. It's mostly just a review of a book of revisionist history of Enlightenment-era Western philosophy.

<comment><USER3> The book apparently attacks the popular idea that philosophy is over.

And that word "revisionist," used so frequently to dismiss what one thinks they already know -- how useful is that word in advancing anything but maintenance of the status quo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very clickbaity. I agree, of course, that philosophy isn't dead, though people may have become dead to it, and that's the problem. Philosophical questions always surface, regardless of whether the person who forms the question or makes a claim in that regard is aware that he is treading on philosophical ground. Of course, without the awareness and without the education, his philosophy is bound to be mediocre and, if it isn't blatant bullshit, a rehash of something previously explored. Those who do not study philosophy are bound to repeat its mistakes.

I haven't read these books, but if the article is correct, then I find the grandiose claims that everyone's gotten all of these major philosophers wrong over the lat 2500 years (not just one or two) and that Gottlieb has properly comprehended all of them is suspect, at the very least. Worth noting is that people debate over what a given philosopher means by X all the time. While it's fine to say that a philosopher has been misunderstood in some way for centuries (and here, Aquinas stands as an example; the existential Thomists of the early 20th century made just that claim about the so-called principle of existence), the kind of broad claims being made here raise eyebrows. To understand just one philosopher thoroughly (not counting the research that goes into expanding their theories) can occupy a philosopher for a lifetime. There was one quite well known philosopher who said that he only truly "got" Aristotle in his 50s.

</comment><comment><USER5> I read the original book about 8 years ago (which is still 6 years after it was published). Highly recommend it as a very readable but still fairly deep introduction to philosophy in antiquity.

Bit blown away that he's finally published the second part.

</comment><comment><USER6> "where Socrates postulates an ideal world of which our own reality is but a shadow" I think he means Plato.

<comment><USER7> It's an understandable mistake (if it was one), as Plato wrote most of his works as dialogues between Socrates and other Athenians (including Republic, where the Allegory of the Cave originates).

From another angle, the paragraph in reference is a summary of what the article's author believes the author of the book being reviewed alleges is the macro-narrative in regards to philosophy as presented today and understood by philosophy-averse intellectuals. As the article-author explicitly mentions Plato later in the article (in reference to an earlier work by the book-author extolling Ancient Greek philosophy) and distinguishes between the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, it seems impossible that either author doesn't realize the Cave isn't Socrates' idea. Although sloppy, it seems that the article- author is simply implying that there is so little familiarity with the full breadth and depth of philosophy that the average individual with passing knowledge of the ancients might know of the Allegory of the Cave/theory of the Forms/etc but would wrongly attribute it to Socrates as he is the mouthpiece in Republic.

<comment><USER3> Well, wait a minute. The Eleusinian mysteries were ancient by the time that Socrates was mentoring Plato. Plato was just the first to write this stuff down. How do we know that Plato wasn't reporting what Socrates taught him? And, if true, how can we be sure that Socrates didn't get the idea from someone else?

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

<comment><USER8> There is a lot of work that traces developments in Plato's ideas, and a rough consensus that some dialogues are more Socratic and others reflect Plato more ([http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/#HisSocEarMidLatDia](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/#HisSocEarMidLatDia)). There's a mixture of stylometrics, contemporary accounts, and other arguments that are used to try and assign responsibility. It's an inherently imprecise project, and I didn't do much ancient philosophy so I can't tell you much about it, but it seemed sensible when I took courses on Plato.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only lasting source of enlightenment seems to come from science, and "The philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." -Feynman

<comment><USER2> I would be very interested to know how much Feynman actually knew about the philosophy of science. My guess would be not very much at all.

Feynman, like some other famous scientists, gave in to the temptation of pontificating on subjects he knew very little about. Philosophy in general was something he seemed to have contempt for, without knowing much about it. I'd take his pronouncements on it with a huge grain of salt.

<comment><USER10> Feynman was pretty sophisticated philosophically when it came to scientific matters. I'm not sure he studied the philosophical literature much partly because a lot of it is kind of bad.

See him on why questions for example - [http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_wh...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_why_questions/)

Or his talk on cargo cult science - [http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

Or the discussion of quantum mechanics in QED.

I've yet to see similar clarity from a philosopher of science. I think the philosophers annoyed him because they weren't very good but self important in spite of that.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for these.

On the "why questions" video from the first link, which I've seen before, Feynman's answer only shows that he's used to answering the kind of question asked of him, regarding why magnets repel, and similar questions involving physics.

Yes, he realizes that there are larger issues involved in such questions and their answers, but he steers all the answers and questions back to physics, which to him are the more interesting answers and questions.

Nowhere is there any evidence that his own answers are informed by any kind of reading of philosophical literature or familiarity with the world of philosophy.

Regarding the "Cargo Cult Science" essay. In it Feynman states _" even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFO's, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world."_

His interest in the question of what is and isn't science, and his answer to it are some of the central things that philosophy of science studies. No amount of physics experiments are going to give you any insight in to that question. To attempt to answer it, as Feynman did, is to practice philosophy of science, which Feynman himself in the original quote which started this thread decries as useless.

The whole essay is really an attempt to engage in philosophy of science, but without any evidence that Feynman is familiar with the field. The result is interesting both because Feynman is an entertaining and capable writer, and because of his obvious familiarity with the practice of science and its ideals. But it's not nearly as insightful as it could have been had he actually undertaken to study the subject academically. It's really an opinion piece aimed at explaining in very general ways some of the practices and ideals of science as Feynman sees them to laymen and other scientists, and almost a polemic on scientific integrity.

Also, it should be pointed out that the philosophy of science studies a lot more than just the questions addressed in this essay. They are important questions, but there's a lot more about science that is philosophically interesting.

Regarding your point about the clarity of Feynman's writing compared to those of philosophers: it's sadly all too true that way too many of them are very poor and obscure writers compared to Feynman. On the other hand, many others are very clear (if usually pretty dry).

When there is lack of clarity, some of it is due to lack of writing ability or interest in clarity (or even wilful obscurity), but in other cases it's due to the specialized knowledge or terminology that is required to understand it -- much like that which would be required to understand a paper in an academic physics journal. If you attempt to tackle such a paper without a great deal of academic physics under your belt, you are likely to be confused. So it is with philosophy, where you'd be a lot better off with some philosophy courses under your belt before you try to make sense of much of it.

<comment><USER10> >But it's not nearly as insightful as it could have been had he actually undertaken to study the subject academically.

I'm curious to how it could have been improved by insights from academic philosophy. I'm not expert but glanced at the Wikipedia entry on philosophy of science and find it hard to see what you'd go with.

<comment><USER2> It's been a while since I took a philosophy of science course myself, so I can't point you to any specific resources, except to encourage you to take a course in the subject yourself if you are interested.

Just to give you a taste of what to expect though: imagine a lot of very smart people considering the sorts of issues Feynman is raising, but devoting whole books to them, trying to cover these issues from every conceivable angle and taking in to account all of the other points of view on these issues (not just those of Feynman himself or some astrologers or psychics, as Feynman did). Then there are the books in response to those books, trying to be just as thorough in answering the questions the the first author wrote about, and seeing if there's something they missed or any other constructive way to think about them, and so on.

In short, there's an entire academic field that studies these questions and many other related ones, that isn't going to be covered by a little essay by any single scientist -- no matter how brilliant he was. He didn't have the final word, and not even much of a word in the first place, considering his lack of study of and engagement with the field.

Feynmann's own words in the essay on "Cargo Cult Science" are salient here:

 _" It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it"_

It's telling that Feynmann does not apply this principle of integrity to the views he expresses in his own essay. He does not, even for a moment, write about what could possibly be wrong with his point of view. But such questioning is quite common in the philosophy of science. They don't stop with dogmas and ideals regarding what science ought to be, as Feynman does. They go further and question them, and much else besides.

<comment><USER11> In "Cargo Cult Science" Feynman showed a lot of insight into the current replication crisis decades before it blew up -- at least, that's how it looks to me as an outsider. Did any philosopher do better? (Ahead of time, again.) It wouldn't surprise me, and I'd like to check out their work, but from my own reading I can't think of anyone.

By "do better" I mean in an equivalent few pages to advise a new graduate about how to discover things that are true, as a focus sometimes at odds with advancing their career, because that's what Feynman's graduation speech was about.

<comment><USER2> _" Did any philosopher do better? ... By "do better" I mean in an equivalent few pages to advise a new graduate about how to discover things that are true"_

Philosophy of science is less about telling scientists how to behave than trying to understand what actually happens when scientists do what they do, what science accomplishes on a theoretical level, what the difference between science and non-science is, etc.

It's less of "here's how to get to the truth" and more of "can science get at the truth at all?" or "to what degree can science get at the truth?" or (much like Feynman's essay) "what makes these particular actions or beliefs 'scientific'?"

Karl Popper's criterion of "falsifiability"[1] was once a popular one, in regards to what makes something 'scientific'. But that's fallen out of fashion[2]:

 _" Sir Karl Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted or are wasting their intellectual careers. The gulf between Popper's way of doing philosophy and that of the bulk of contemporary professional philosophers is as great as that between astronomy and astrology."_

And so the debate continues...

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

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Criticisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Criticisms)

<comment><USER12> >Sir Karl Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted or are wasting their intellectual careers.

That doesn't really mean Popper is wrong.

<comment><USER2> Let me ask you this, then: can the principle of falsifiability itself ever be falsified?

If it can't then by its own measure, it's not "scientific". Further, if one scorns anything "unscientific" as valueless, then the principle of falsifiability must also be valueless.

<comment><USER12> >Let me ask you this, then: can the principle of falsifiability itself ever be falsified?

In the relevant sense, yes. We switch out conceptual definitions when they fail to encompass the relevant empirical instances. If falsifiability turned out to allow, for example, theology to be considered a science, then we would have to throw out falsifiability. As it is, it's only a coarse-grained principle for demarcation, hence the arguments about string theory.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bringing Impressionism to Life with Neural Style Transfer in Come Swim - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.04928 <comment><USER2> Title: Bringing Impressionism to Life with Neural Style Transfer in Come Swim</comment>


A new survey shows how many families are on the edge financially - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/one-third-of-american-households-cant-afford-food-shelter-or-medical-care-2017-09-27 <comment><USER2> One-third of Americans probably also have full mobile phone and digital cable packages, the latest iPhone, eat out twice a week, and drive a brand new Ford.

Every time I visit the states, I am shocked by the consumerism that pervades every aspect of their lives. Visiting friends and relatives down there, I am shocked at how full their houses are with _junk_ ; toys litter the floors, TVs in every room (bathroom too), drawers and closets full of yesterday's electronics and toys, etc.

It's no wonder 1/3 people are on edge financially, it seems like you aren't "American" unless you're buying the latest crap you see on TV. The American identity is heavily tied to consumerism.

<comment><USER3> There's no evidence that the third of Americans in this survey are the same third you claim spend unwisely. That's just your prejudice talking. You presumably don't want to face the fact almost half of the citizens of the richest country in the world aren't doing very well. It's easy to blame them. It doesn't help though.

Also, even if there was evidence that it was their own fault for spending badly, the idea that poor people should be able to ignore the psychological pressure of social status, peer envy, and plain old marketing is ridiculous. Google, Facebook, etc make _billions_ of dollars facilitating advertising to people - they wouldn't be able to do that if it didn't work. It seems decidedly unfair and unreasonable to say poor people should be ignoring what advertisers put in front of them when no one else is judged for buying stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This gets posted on the same day as the news that median pay at FaceBook tops $240,000 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16854885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16854885) and at Alphabet is nearing $200,000 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16957855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16957855)

Make of that what you will.</comment>


"move fast and break things" almost killed our startup on arrival - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-move-fast-and-break-things-almost-killed-our-startup-on-arrival-9c0dec82d5 <comment><USER2> It doesn't mean ship untested crap, it means don't let fear of breaking something prevent you from making progress.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol. Fair point. But I feel there is a very thin line between your 2 statements. Fortunately, it helped us with progress

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "It's practically stupid to start another File Transfer Service in 2019". That was what almost all my friends said when I told them about MiDrive Transfer.

I decided to build it because I was frustrated with using other services. I felt a little more latitude should be given to the basic users.

2 months after the thought, I launched MiDrive Transfer ([https://transfer.midrive.io](https://transfer.midrive.io)). Transfer large files for free. Full featured include

Free for all to use.

Doesn't require you to sign-up

No ads

Up to 10GB file size for free (compared to 2GB for other platforms)

30 days expiry date (compared to 7 days for other platforms)

Simple and responsive

Everything that added up as a premium feature on other platforms was simply free. e.g. Password Protection.

<comment><USER3> And how will you monetize it when all premium features are free? Will there be premium-premium features that require payment?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol.. well, we have some monetisation ideas. If you tested the platform, you will notice a gif when your upload is complete, we are considering using that space for brand advertisment. We have other ideas too and like I said, they are all still skechy but our focus right now is to see that this is a valuable platform for everyone

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So what's different to say yousendit?

I miss the option to share via link instead of by mail. I'd even argue that a link to copy and a few share-buttons of which email is just one might work best today (though heavy files might be more desktop focused after all, so I'm not 100% sure. Easy to track once built though.).

<comment><AUTHOR> I really don't understand why I have to sign up on a service to transfer a file in 2019. Users will be more motivated to do any other thing after they have done what they came to the platform to do. This is one of the selling points for MiDrive Transfer.

Also, you can actually send via a link to others. So when you send a file via email, there is also a link you can send outside the email to another party to download the files

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It probably means different things to different people. Perhaps useful on a website where you upload funny images of yourself and friends. But not a good idea for anything else.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://trasfer.midrive.io/](https://trasfer.midrive.io/) gives me a "server not found"

<comment><USER6> The link on that page is missing an 'n'. This one works: [https://transfer.midrive.io/](https://transfer.midrive.io/)

<comment><USER7> write fast and break links

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my opinion, "move fast and break things" turned out to be one of the more corrosive and harmful philosophies to come out of SV.

<comment><AUTHOR> Loud it for those at the back sir!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://xkcd.com/1428/](https://xkcd.com/1428/)</comment>


Advertising watchdog to get tough on gender stereotypes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40638343 <comment><USER2> I wonder if all these politically correct apparatchiks realise that they're creating the roots of their own downfall by attempting to control as much of public life as possible. When the political winds change - which they always do - those in opposition to the current wave of post-modernism will find everything ready to banish them and their ideology to the darkest corners of oblivion. Any complaints from their side will easily be taken care of as they did exactly the same to their opponents.

Also, anyone in favour of these gender-related shenanigans should do a bit more study on the subject. Not a study of the latest fluff piece by the local gender faculty, please. The Norwegian 'Hjernevask' ('Brainwash') [1] series is a good introduction, all 7 episodes are freely available. After the series was aired in Norway the Nordic Council of Ministers closed down the Nordic Gender Institute.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> I find this disgusting. I couldn't really care less what advertisers put out, but banning messages simply because they don't conform to the current political winds is troubling.

<comment><USER4> Could not agree more. What I find odd is that this is how most of the people are I come into contact with. Most women I know, including my wife, desire the stereotypical life. She wants to stay at home while I work. It's not like any of our 'roles' are set in stone it is just how things happened. The few friends I still have are in similar positions with their spouses.

<comment><USER5> One could argue that this perspective is essentially drilled into them (and likewise men for the stereotypical man things) from a very young age because we/they are surrounded by media, advertising, and humans that reinforce these desires and discourage others.</comment></comment></comment>


Demoscene, the secret behind Finnish game industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.janipenttinen.com/post/who-is-jani-penttinen-the-game-developer <comment><USER3> So much I'd like to write about demoscene, even though I didn't have the privilege of first-hand exposure... Studying it from afar in South Africa, it was clearly one of the strongest programming forces in the 90s.

In those days, the centre of the demoscene was Finland, with its Assembly demoparty and associated acts of unparalleled programming power (e.g. Future Crew). Those Future Crew and CNCD guys later were associated with a lot of rendering tech, both on CPU (Umbra visibility middleware, which ships with many/most modern games) and GPU (anyone remember the infamous BitBoys GPU hype?); their demoscene efforts morphed into the benchmarking software company Future Mark (with demoscene parody as "Maturefurk") as well as gamedev (Remedy entertainment).

These days, Nvidia created a R&D lab in Finland just for them, and is a great research effort led by Jaakko Lehtinen[1] (responsible much for the recent GAN stuff that went viral), Timo Aila, Samuli Laine and Tero Karras (responsible for the tech behind Nvidia's RTX [2], [3]).

[1] [https://research.nvidia.com/person/jaakko- lehtinen](https://research.nvidia.com/person/jaakko-lehtinen)

[2] [https://research.nvidia.com/publication/understanding- effici...](https://research.nvidia.com/publication/understanding-efficiency- ray-traversal-gpus)

[3] [https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/publications...](https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/publications/karras2012hpg_paper.pdf)

<comment><USER4> > anyone remember the infamous BitBoys GPU hype?

Shrug, probably the same guys who were behind the original Adreno. That obscure GPU architecture running on hundreds of millions (or billion+?) phones.

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

[https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/medfield-krait- smartpho...](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/medfield-krait-smartphone- mobile-soc,3117-7.html)

<comment> david-gpu The original Adreno GPU was a blend of Qualcomm's never-productized QShader architecture and AMD's handheld GPU, which was based on the original XBox GPU. The programmable shader core came from Qualcomm and the fixed function blocks came from AMD.

The Bitboys folks were terrific, both software and hardware, but they were not the only people working on this, or even the majority IIRC. I mis dearly working with them.

Eventually, this combination of former Bitboys, AMD and Qualcomm folks, working from different sites around the world and with vast cultural differences resulted in a lot of internal politics and we lost many great people.

Source: was there, did that.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing, I had no idea! It'd be really interesting to hear more about that era.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> During that era it was interesting to see demos coming mostly from countries at far northern latitudes and wondering why the scene was so focused there. It wasn't until visiting family up around Hudson Bay and discussing winter life that the connection between demo coders and dark cold winters stuck. While the long dark winter nights still exist, what's the future for Finnish coders in an age of easy access to an entire internet of distractions combined with fast hardware? Surely there will be more in quantity, as is the case almost everywhere, but what of the quality forged on those long winter nights?

<comment><USER6> It's either that or start a metal band...

<comment><USER7> Or even write a kernel!

<comment><USER8> Oh come on, it's just a toy project, it will never be something serious as Gnu

<comment><USER9> Hurd is just a couple months away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Swedish game studio DICE (Battlefield series, among other titles) also grew out of the gaming scene. The demo group The Silents grew into Digital Illusions and later DICE.

The Silents produced a couple of amazing demos in the early nineties, and I very much recommend looking them up for those interested.

<comment><USER11> dice also made pinball illusions and fantasies on the Amiga on the early 90s. Which were excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The finish demo "Second reality" of "future crew" blew my teenager mind and still triggers goosebumps when thinking about how we sat in awe watching this magnificent merge of art and technology

<comment><USER13> The Second Reality source code is on Github -- it is fun to poke around through the code and code comments with what seems like little in-jokes between themselves. Also interesting to note the contrast of when English and Finnish is used...you can run into gems like "pikkukuva" and "pakkaamaton formaatti"

[https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality/](https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality/)

<comment><USER14> And don't miss Fabian Sanglard's review of the code. He was featured on HN recently for the reviews of the engine behind Another World/Out of this World and how it was ported to different platforms.

[http://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/index.php](http://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/index.php)

<comment><USER13> I have not seen this at all, thank you for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you like this, check out this recent documentary about the early day demoscene bbs ascii art: [Safe Crackers: The Art of Warez) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd-s9htpHgQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd-s9htpHgQ)

Or this: [https://www.youtube.com/user/DemosceneArchive/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/DemosceneArchive/videos)

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice read, always fascinating reading stories like these about the life and history of people inside the demoscene (the good old years) who then went on to work for some great game studios.

Small trivia about the name: Utopos = The Good Place, The Place of Utopia

But according to the web, the following explanation also exists: "In 1516 Sir Thomas More wrote the first 'Utopia'. He coined the word 'utopia' from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere'. But this was a pun - <USER2> almost identical Greek word eu-topos means a good place."

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, this article made me realize I was a part of the very early generation game devs in Finland getting my first job in the industry in 2001. I was so young and naive then that I didn't understand how early it was.

</comment><comment><USER18> Would argue the demise of Nokia had a greater impact on game development in Finland, pushing people with the right skills to try something new. Some history on that here [https://m.phys.org/news/2013-11-nokia-mobile-games-boom- finl...](https://m.phys.org/news/2013-11-nokia-mobile-games-boom-finland.html)

<comment><USER19> Is that a guess?

<comment><USER18> I heard it first anecdotally from a VC who'd done investments in Finnish game companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Dutch demoscene also has a reasonably decent representation at Guerilla Games, of Killzone and Horizon Zero Dawn fame. Plenty of people working there now don't come from the demoscene originally, but still.

Additionally, Alex Evans (who is working at Media Molecule and dreamt up the wonderful graphical architecture behind Dreams) did some wonderful demos in the late 90s.

The scene's everywhere :)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm still impressed by Second Reality [0], even till this day.

Rumor has it Tim Sweeney hired one of the member of the group who made that legendary demo upon seeing it.

As such, the "Unreal" in Unreal Engine then should probably be referred as a recall to the name of the track of Second Reality, Unreal II [1], or is it just a coincidence?

Fun fact: 3DMark is also made by remnants of Future Crew

[0]: [https://youtu.be/rFv7mHTf0nA](https://youtu.be/rFv7mHTf0nA)

[1]: [https://youtu.be/Dmhtc5S4atU](https://youtu.be/Dmhtc5S4atU)

<comment><USER22> The Future Crew demo before Second Reality was actually called Unreal [0], hence that track name Unreal II.

The Unreal video game soundtrack was also from demoscene musicians. The one I remember most was "Mechanism Eight" [1] from Unreal Tournament, written by Andrew Sega, aka Necros in the demoscene. He's also got a couple of great non- demoscene solo albums as The Alpha Conspiracy, worth looking up on Spotify.

[0] [https://youtu.be/InrGJ7C9B3s](https://youtu.be/InrGJ7C9B3s)

[1] [https://youtu.be/qR9kvbXt4tk](https://youtu.be/qR9kvbXt4tk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like how he carried the bee/wasp/hornet(?) logo from the 1993 Utopos game to the ships on his current game Guntech.

<comment><USER24> It's an even older Aggression logo [https://demozoo.org/graphics/148490/](https://demozoo.org/graphics/148490/) (from times before Jani joined Aggression).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It is also the secret behind three.js if you look at the main contributors over time. Although not the Finnish demoscene.

<comment><USER26> The fun thing is that mrdoob, who originally wrote three.js, wasn't much of a coder during his scene years. He did graphics and direction and the likes (pretty well, I might add!). I've always been impressed at how well he managed to design a library that was, I imagine, among his earlier serious pieces of code.

<comment><USER27> That is part of the secret of the success of threejs: 1\. Early launch 2\. API designed by an artist/user point of view, not hardcore graphics programer. Flash API also helped

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> off topic: vimium scrolling doesn't seem to work on this page. Seems like vimium can't keep up with the creativity of nowadays web developers :D

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone from efnet #coders or #nlcoders here? :-)

<comment><USER22> Not from #coders, but I remember the days of #trax...</comment></comment>


Prizm – Nest for your home speaker system – launches on KickStarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.rudebaguette.com/2014/10/14/prizm-kickstarter-launch/ <comment><USER2> I have speakers and a 3.5mm audio cable. These things together cost me $10. If you throw my phone into the mix, I have all the hardware of Prizm. This should have been an app (not that I'd use it either way).

<comment><USER3> Use case of "like + do not like" with or without your phone 1\. plug your phone 2\. open the app 3\. type "like" 4\. receive a sms (which sound on the speakers) 5\. open the app again 6\. tape "do not like"

versus

1\. tape "like" 2\. tape "do not like"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >> [https://prism.com/](https://prism.com/)

<comment><USER5> [http://meetprizm.com](http://meetprizm.com) !

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://meetprizm.com](http://meetprizm.com) !</comment>


The moon may be tectonically active - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/05/moon-may-be-tectonically-active-geologists-shaken-apollo-moonquakes/ <comment><USER2> The abstract from the actual study[1]:

> The discovery of young thrust faults on the Moon is evidence of recent > tectonic activity, but how recent is unknown. Seismometers at four Apollo > landing sites recorded 28 shallow moonquakes between 1969 and 1977. Some of > these shallow quakes could be associated with activity on the young faults. > However, the epicentre locations of these quakes are poorly constrained. > Here we present more-accurate estimates of the epicentre locations, based on > an algorithm for sparse seismic networks. We found that the epicentres of > eight near-surface quakes fall within 30 km of a fault scarp, the distance > of the expected strong ground shaking. From an analysis of the timing of > these eight events, we found that six occurred when the Moon was less than > 15,000 km from the apogee distance. Analytical modelling of tidal forces > that contribute to the current lunar stress state indicates that seven near- > apogee events within 60 km of a fault scarp occur at or near the time of > peak compressional stresses, when fault slip events are most likely. We > conclude that the proximity of moonquakes to the young thrust faults > together with evidence of regolith disturbance and boulder movements on and > near the fault scarps strongly suggest the Moon is tectonically active.

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0362-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0362-2)

<comment><USER3> Didn't people believe at some point that moon landings themselves caused the Moon to vibrate or something along those lines? Always found that eyebrow- raising.

<comment><USER4> The ascent stages of the Apollo Lunar Modules were deliberately crashed onto the Moon to generate shock waves to support seismology experiments:

[https://www.popsci.com/how-apollo-lunar-modules-were- smashed...](https://www.popsci.com/how-apollo-lunar-modules-were-smashed-for- science)

<comment><USER5> Also, for the record this was explicitly discussed in the OP...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe it is ready to hatch. [[https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Kill_the_Moon_(TV_story)](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Kill_the_Moon_\(TV_story\))]

<comment><USER7> My mind went immediately to Seveneves [0].

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

<comment><USER8> Such an amazing book. The first half at least.

<comment><USER9> I thought the second half was great except for the part where it ended right in the middle of everything.

<comment><USER8> I thought it went too crazy on the tech. The ring habitat was fine but the spinning things that catapult them into space seemed a bit too far fetched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As I understand it, the fact that the moon is tectonically active implies that there still is enough heat in the moon's core to cause tectonic activity.

(To anyone who's wondered as well)

<comment><USER11> The article talks about these movements occurring close to apogee (the point in the Moon's orbit when it's furthest from the earth), so it looks like this activity is driven by gravitational tidal forces rather than internal heat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a bit out of my depth here, so someone more knowledgeable correct me if my understanding is wrong.

In the article, they're stating they believe it's seismic activity because it's occurring within some distance of these fault scarps, which also appear to be where the surface displays lines in the images shown in the article?

How are they dismissing it's not a result of material from space striking the surface? Is it that their sensors are able to disambiguate if the source is from the surface vs deeper in the moon?

<comment><USER13> > How are they dismissing it's not a result of material from space striking > the surface?

The earthquakes are magnitude 5.5, plugging that into an energy calculator ([http://earthalabama.com/energy.html#/](http://earthalabama.com/energy.html#/)) gives a result of 0.2 Hiroshima bombs, which I think would be noticeable.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if the calculation requires correction due to moon/earth mass difference.

<comment><USER15> Moment magnitude is generally supposed to be correlated to the amount of energy released, so I would tend to think that it wouldn't need correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks like Arthur C. Clarke guessed correctly in his sci-fi novel [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fall_of_Moondust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fall_of_Moondust), where a moonquake causes problems to a "sand-cruiser" full of tourists.

<comment><USER17> Ha I remember reading that years ago, thanks for the reminder!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In south- and east-asia mythology a frog lives in the moon. This is part of an australian aboriginal myth:

"The frog opened his sleepy eyes, _his big body quivered, his face relaxed, and, at last, he burst into a laugh that sounded like rolling thunder_. The water poured from his mouth in a flood. It filled the deepest rivers and covered the land. Only the highest mountain peaks were visible, like islands in the sea. Many men and animals were drowned. The pelican-who was a blackfellow at this time -sailed from island to island in a great canoe and rescued any blackfellow he saw" \- [http://www.sacred- texts.com/aus/mla/mla09.htm](http://www.sacred-texts.com/aus/mla/mla09.htm)

</comment><comment><USER19> Pun intended.

<comment><USER20> I rolled my eyes, but then thought "ok, that's fair".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> moon worms! joking aside reminds me very much of 50s sci-fi - maybe there will be a mining operation to draw energy from the moon's core in the near future (owned by Jeff Bezos)

<comment><USER22> Or we set out onto a the goal to tame the moonworms by the year 2119

<comment><USER21> Moonworms are gentle, misunderstood creatures that have been horribly exploited by mankind.

These majestic beasts are captured when young, and through a process involving electric shock and sub-nuclear bombardment trained to perform tricks for the amusement of lunar tourists who often like to ride on top of their backs and put pictures of their abuse onto Facebook for exploitative likes.

Please donate 100 credits to Save the Moonworm - an offplanet non-profit organized by the head of Jeff Bezos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if

"Without water, the lunar surface instead gets deformed, stretching from a spherical shape into a more oblong one and back again."

Is enough energy to keep the core of the moon hot? Like maybe the moons mass alone for for 4+ billion years would have cooled but the additional force of the earth stretching the moon like a rubber band creates heat energy...

</comment><comment><USER24> Shouldn't that be something like... "lunology"? Doesn't geo- refer to Earth?

</comment><comment><USER25> *shook

</comment><comment><USER26> I would have loved if they had named the article "Moon shakes, geologists are shaken".

<comment><USER27> Still, the notion of shaken geologists because of earthquakes is pretty funny.</comment></comment>


BasicCoin, a cryptocurrency in less than 600 lines of Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zack-bitcoin/basiccoin <comment><USER2> 600 lines, however the codebase is quite unreadable. Typically, code written in python is rather readable and easy to follow, but this is heavily condensed and somehow completely void of any sort of pythonic code. Programs are the communication of thoughts between fellow software writers, readability should be your #1 priority.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. The author says they are following pep8 but I thought spaces between functions was part of those guidelines. Definitely trying hard to reduce the lines below 600. Yet I feel like if the bragging rights had been "under 1000 lines" we still would be equally interested.

<comment><USER4> Very little of this follows PEP8. The code appears to have been written as tersely as possible, even in cases where it would have utterly no effect on the 600 SLOC limit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wouldn't it be even easier to just use Git for most of the heavy lifting?

\- Ledger is a file in a Git repo

\- Blocks are confirmed by committing them with a SHA1 with sufficiently many leading zeros (adjust a nonce in the commit msg until it fits)

\- Some bot accepts all pull requests into the Github repo that are fast- forward and whose commits have sufficiently many leading 0s (possibly after confirming that the booking is valid ;)

We could call that... oh I don't know, DvcsCoin or so.

<comment><USER6> 'gitcoin'

Perfect name.

Knowing HN this is gonna be a show HN in a couple of days and rewritten in 10 lines of js a week after that.

<comment><USER7> This was a challenge in Stripe CTF3. As mentioned by aljungberg, see [https://github.com/ctfs/write-ups/tree/master/stripe- ctf3/le...](https://github.com/ctfs/write-ups/tree/master/stripe-ctf3/level1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Millions of currencies. I was standing at the back of the room when Andreas said that and I was like, yeah, I can see it.

The blockchains deliver trusted communication of stored work to us. The network has value in and of that function alone. That I can verify you have thing of X value and I have thing of Y value and that the ratio of X to Y is such as established by these market APIs/feeds. Which themselves are running on a trusted computing platform that is a fair and accurate representation of what is what in this world, up to a point.

That there will be a million blockchains working together in a mishmash of interconnected markets, is no more difficult than imagining a million seperate computer networks, each of which is using a private address block 10.0.0.0/24\. Some things are meant to be highly distributed, some are not.

Why would you ever expect a cryptocurrency based on the thesis of high distribution to ever be a singleton itself?

<comment><USER2> See Sidechains[0], and Treechains[1]. But as always, without the proper incentives a block chain is unsustainable and vulnerable.

[0]: [http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/32108143/](http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/32108143/)

[1]: [https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin- firstname.lastname@example.com...](https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg04388.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unless I'm missing something, the only advantage of it being only 600 lines of code is for educational purposes. But condensing the code in such way to reduce line count goes against such objective. Any other reason to advertise brevity in LoC?

<comment><USER10> Fewer points of failure for consensus.

Of course, being written in a dynamic interpretive language goes against that.

<comment><USER8> We'll do it in 600 lines of assembler!

<comment><USER10> That would be vastly better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Honest suggestion: Change the tagline to "less than 1000 lines" or exclude the GUI or whatever, but don't just not include line breaks anywhere.

You have 7 very sensible, and indeed admirable, style guidelines and while no line breaks only clearly violates one of them (PEP8), it's not really in the spirit of the others either. I opened gui.py and immediately was overwhelmed, rather than compelled to dive in and digest your small codebase.

<comment><USER12> As someone more accustomed to Lisp than Python I must say the lack of extra line breaks didn't feel so weird to me :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Basically unreadable. Not sure what you were going for, but I think it was the wrong thing.

Off the top of my head:

1.) There's no reason not to use newlines. They have no chance of introducing bugs in any reasonable language and they aid readability.

2.) You're using closures all over place and I haven't checked every occurrence, but I strongly suspect that almost all of them are unnecessary and unhelpful. Closures are not free in terms of code complexity. Use them only when necessary.

<comment><USER14> 1) newlines reduce the amount of code that you can see on the page at a time. Skipping newlines is identical to purchasing a bigger monitor.

2) Some people group similar functions into classes. I dislike classes and prefer grouping code this way.

<comment><USER15> > Skipping newlines is identical to purchasing a bigger monitor.

Wat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very cool! Though it looks like "less than 600 lines" made you write awfully styled code :/

</comment><comment><USER17> I wish you tried to make the code readable rather than making as many 1-liners as you could.

</comment><comment><USER18> I am bother by the desire to get smaller and smaller. A secure implementation will have a lot of code to verify incoming data and handle exceptions. It is fun to learn and implement HTTP server from the raw socket module (I did that once for my security project in my computer security class too), but if you are just looking for a simple server that you can handle GET and POST look into bottle.py

A single file / pip install write into setup.py and you are good to go.

This I consider as educational, which I assume is the case by the desire to go smaller and implementing such socket server.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have to say I think crypto currencies is an area where the keep it simple approach is extremely beneficial. If it means fever optimizations, and leads to a greater dependency on off chain transactions, so be it. For genuinely wide spread adoption, more important than speed and transaction volumes, are an ironclad faith in the integrity of the underlying code itself.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's awesome idea but..could you add comments? (hint: you don't need to count the comments when counting lines of code :) it's normal to have more comments than code for a dense code, and it make things easier to understand )

</comment><comment><USER21> The idea seems legit ; however trying to reduce the number of lines of code by a "no skipped lines & no comments" policy is not helping the ease of modification, which seems to be one of the target.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find it depressing that someone puts into the work to make a cool library and 2/3rds of the comments are whining about the author using the "wrong" number of newlines and other stylistic issues.

</comment><comment><USER23> The idea is cool and helps to learn crypto coin systems. But restricting the number of lines of code might only make it obfuscated. :)

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder how practical it would be to take Bitcoin Core and gradually reduce its # of (non-blank) lines.

<comment><USER25> Sadly, the core client has the job of being capable of bootstrapping itself starting at the genesis block and ending at the most recent block.

That means that, barring a huge design change in Bitcoin itself, the core client has to support every single feature ever implemented in Bitcoin, no matter how half-assed or poorly thought out.

That's why things like the way P2SH got implemented really grind my gears. Bitcoin has a few idiosyncratic and unintuitive design additions that make it really hard to make simple clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can anyone figure out where in this code it determines the addresses of other peers?

<comment><USER14> tools.py it uses pybitcointools library.

<comment><USER22> Hmm... I still don't understand...

There has to be some place(s) online where peers register their existence, to find others to connect with.

Near as I can tell, this app doesn't have a feature for this yet. I'd argue it isn't a cryptocurrency unless there's a mechanism for finding other peers included in the code.

(That said, this is still an awesome proof of concept, and I'm going to work through all the source code carefully.)

<comment><USER14> You are correct. This is the basic platform for building currencies upon. I have not launched any genesis blocks yet.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for this library!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If I'd get one Bitcoin for every cryptocurrency that is promoted on HN, ...

</comment><comment><USER27> This is really poor</comment>


What kind of Apple Mac did Arthur Dent have? - <AUTHOR> http://www.douglasadams.com/cgi-bin/mboard/info/dnathread.cgi?1546,2

<comment><USER2> I like D.A.'s answer, but to be fair, there are certain contexts in which questions of this sort are not assumed trivial. I'm thinking specifically of Joyce's _Ulysses_ ; there's every indication that the author thought through every last detail of his fictional Dublin. The book demands that the reader negotiate her way through a thicket of of raw _facts_ , and it has produced mountains of scholarship on seeming trifles, not all of it in the service of deep profundity, but some it quite startling in its cleverness and insight.

If my experience of growing up with _Star Wars_ and reading about fans' notions of canonicity is any indicator, I'd expect that readers of SF and fantasy often have similar expectations of total world-building on the author's part, for better or for worse. There are thousands of "facts" which _Star Wars_ fans "know" about the _Star Wars_ universe, though that universe is not real, and none of those facts appear in the movies. (Sometimes those "facts" sprang into being to suit Kenner's needs.) Which is to say that, contra Adams, fictional worlds -- though not _real_ \-- often do have a sort of reality that extends beyond the author's primary text.

(The difference between my _Star Wars_ example and _Ulysses_ , though, is that the _Ulysses_ "facts" are literally _in_ the text or are inferred from it.)

<comment><USER2> Having said that, D.A.'s answer is clearly in the spirit of his work. One of the fundamental points of the whole _HHGTTG_ franchise is that asking questions which plainly have no objective answers will always yield absurdities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A better answer: "What kind of Apple Mac do you imagine that Arthur had when you read the book? That's the kind he had."

</comment><comment><USER4> The thing is, some authors _do_ imagine the world in more detail. Some of them are very visual, and when they're writing about Arthur Dent at his computer they're imagining it in enough detail that they could tell you the model that was in their head at the time.

</comment><comment><USER5> It was an SE/30. By sheer coincidence, I have one too!

</comment><comment><USER6> He had the Earth computer.

Or perhaps it was the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER7> Simple. He had a Lisa.</comment>


Ask HN: I have no problems. How do I change this? - <AUTHOR> I've always wanted to start my own company. It seems as though the prevailing wisdom is to create a product that 'scratches your own itch'. My problem is that I have no itches.
My life has always been incredibly privileged. I've grown up in a well-off family, lived overseas and gone to private schools. I graduated high school and went to one of the best universities in the country to study CS. I graduated 18 months ago and got a great graduate job working with friends in a well-funded startup and making good money. I'm incredibly grateful for how easy and comfortable my life has been.
The problem is that, as far as I can tell, all of my problems are already solved. How can I move past this and grow as a person? How can I identify real problems in the lives of others and work on things that I feel truly matter? <comment><USER2> If your problem is truly that you have no problems (rather than an inability to identify opportunities): open a restaurant, buy an old home, or do something to help others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, that's an interesting point. Maybe instead of focusing on problems I should practice identifying areas of opportunity.

I guess I feel as though moving beyond my comfort zone may help with both of those things...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Volunteer. Join Tech4Good events. Attend Hackathons. Get INVOLVED.</comment>


Some Sessions from the Python Language Summit - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/821412/9fbb4093d7945bdb/ <comment><USER2> Nice points about the mobile Python. My old company ported Python to Symbian operating system (Nokia phones) around 2008. The problem for Python in mobile is the same as for JavaScript / React Native: The startup time is slow because modules cannot be imported or statically loaded fast.

Even though mobile phones have gotten fast, this is an severe issue with React Native apps. And Facebook is pouring in a lot of engineering to tackle it. But the progress is incremental at the best. As a result some code gets rewritten in C++ because of this issue (see e.g. Trust Wallet). Even though I love Python as a programming language I would not recommend it for consumer grade mobile application development and I feel it is unlikely to get there ever unless some breakthrough happens in runtime development.

<comment><USER3> I have an Android app on the Play Store which uses Python and can confirm that the startup time is slow because of the imports. I think one possible solution could be to invoke the start of the interpreter outside the UI thread, at least it could give the illusion of a faster app start. Unfortunatelly the app gives me ~5€/month so it is not profitable enough for me to care.

I opened source the idea at [https://github.com/joaoventura/pybridge](https://github.com/joaoventura/pybridge)

The thing that makes this different from a pure android python project is that I only use Python as a kind of mobile RPC backend. The UI is completely native in Java/Kotlin.

As a side note, today I've open sourced the same technique, but for iOS ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23335704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23335704)). I'm able to share all the python code but adapt the UI using the native tools..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > One of the problems that CPython has struggled with over the years is its C > API for extensions.

Honest question: is there an example of a language that does C extensions well? As a professional programmer, I have worked at different times with C extensions in Node.js, Java, R, and Erlang, (in addition to Python). Erlang and Node.js were maybe ok, but had their own challenges.

<comment><USER5> I found Lua <=> C interop very easy to use, I guess because Lua has been designed as an extension language for otherwise native projects (but it works just as well in the other direction, extending Lua projects with native code).

The same is most likely true for other "scripting languages" where the main purpose is to add a scripting API to otherwise native applications (like Wren: [https://github.com/wren-lang/wren](https://github.com/wren-lang/wren))

<comment><USER6> LuaJIT's FFI inspired the PyPy team's CFFI (which also works with CPython.) [https://cffi.readthedocs.io](https://cffi.readthedocs.io)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Curious for people who have tried Hypothesis, what did you think? Is it worth using if you've been using standard unit tests?

<comment><USER8> For instance, in traditional tests you may need two test cases for some behaviour. One is for usual inputs and one for some edge case.

With Hypothesis, you can combine those two tests into one, by letting Hypothesis generate the inputs for you. Hypothesis is pretty smart to find edge cases that you usually don't think of.

Overall, it reduce my time to write tests by at least half, maybe 75% even.

The caveats are: 1/ Tests may take visibly longer to run. 2/ If you have setup/teardown or fixtures that you want to repeat each generated input, you have to do this manually. This is imo the biggest weak point of Hypothesis right now.

<comment><USER9> I like pytest for the ergonomics of its static setup/teardown/fixtures (plus not having to stuff everything into a unittest.TestCase). Unless you mean using generated input in those bits? In which case yeah, not ideal. At $dayjob we do some chonky processing; generating new input for each property we're testing is just barely ok right now, but that's probably not going to hold for very long.

[1] [https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest-subtests](https://github.com/pytest- dev/pytest-subtests)

<comment><USER8> Sorry for not being clear. This is what I was talking about:

[https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest/issues/916](https://github.com/pytest- dev/pytest/issues/916)

It is a known issue. Basically your fixture/setup/teardown, which you expect should run for every example generated by Hypothesis, actually only run once.

<comment><USER9> Oh yeah I remember that. Hasn't been an issue for me, thankfully.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is it time to chrome my web browsing? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.binarybalance.com.au/2010/12/02/is-it-time-to-chrome-my-web-browsing

<comment><USER2> Leads to a 404 page. Here's the working URI:

[http://blog.binarybalance.com.au/2010/12/01/is-it-time-to- ch...](http://blog.binarybalance.com.au/2010/12/01/is-it-time-to-chrome-my- web-browsing)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. It would seem that my blog platform is having a little trouble with dates/times at present.</comment></comment>


Which NoSQL Platform is Right For You? - <AUTHOR> http://hunch.com/nosql-data-stores/ <comment><USER2> Is that really a sane question to ask?

"I don't know what my datastore requirements are, but I do know I don't want anything that supports this particular standardized interface. What's available?"

<comment><USER3> They should include all datastores and recommend the best one, be it relational, k/v, document, or whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is CouchDB taken out when I choose "Object-oriented: No" ?

To quote the CouchDB website:

 _"What it is Not"_

 _An object-oriented database. Or more specifically, meant to function as a seamless persistence layer for an OO programming language._

</comment><comment><USER3> Top 7 results for me: Voldemort, Scalaris, Cassandra, Riak, Tokyo Tyrant, Terrastore, CouchDB.

We're already using Riak and have no plans to change.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not sure I'd call neo4j NoSQL. Its a graph DB as listed in the link. Is the new trend to call any data store that is not SQL, NoSQL. I even heard Lucene being called NoSQL, [http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2010/04/30/nosql- lucene...](http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2010/04/30/nosql-lucene-and- solr/). I guess search engines are NoSQL now?

<comment><USER6> I consider something like Solr to belong to the NoSQL family, even though full text engines predate the term by decades. NoSQL to me means thinking about storage options beyond a RDBMS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Without any info about your requirements, MySQL is most likely the best choice for now.

Also, the same as with programming languages, at some point it doesn't really matter.

</comment><comment><USER8> Where is Windows Azure Table Storage?

<comment><AUTHOR> that would never be a right choice I guess - See, in a world without walls, who needs Windows?

<comment><USER8> Its no different than Amazon Simple DB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The survey doesn't include BerkeleyDB? Half the packages are either built on it or are knock-offs. VSAM KSDS, anyone? Booyeah!

<comment><USER10> Response of most of the NoSQL advocates I've spoken to: BerkeleyDB was written before I was a programmer, therefore it cannot be trusted since it's "old".</comment></comment>


Show HN: Online resumes by Applicantio - <AUTHOR> https://resume.applicantio.com/ <comment><USER2> Wait. This is supposed to be a good looking resume (see [https://imgur.com/a/60YgW](https://imgur.com/a/60YgW))?

Why would anyone voluntarily choose to make their resume look like that?</comment>


Court Allows Woman to Sue Bank for Lax Security After $26,000 Stolen by Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/citizens-financial-sued/

<comment><USER2> Well, good for the court, but I have a rather different take on this.

As far as I can tell, based on the information given, the "hackers" (no, I don't like this use of the word, either) didn't steal money from the woman. _The bank did._

Consider: Do I care how much money my bank gives to someone who is using my identity? Not much, really. Of course, I'm generally in favor of my bank guarding its resources prudently, but, really, $26,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to the assets most banks have. If my bank wants to give $26,000 to some random person who happens along, well then, I think they're stupid, but it's not a huge problem with me.

However, for the bank to claim that _my account balance has been reduced_ by $26,000 as a result of their stupidity, well, that _is_ a problem. Giving out money to random people is dumb, but covering their stupidity by taking money from me -- that is theft.

The conceptual error occurs when you say that the "hackers" withdrew money from my account. No, only I am authorized to do that. These people obtained money from the bank by means of fraud, but the fact that my identity info was used, is not relevant to my account balance.

Another way to think about it is that the bank does not have a box somewhere with my name on it. Instead, a savings account (for example) is a _loan_ from me to the bank, on which the bank pays me interest. The account balance is the amount the bank owes me. So, the bank got stupid and gave some money to some nasty person. Does that affect how much they owe me? Nope. Is the fact that the bank _thought_ they were partially repaying my loan, relevant to how much they owe me? Nope.

A final thought: suppose the tables were turned. I owe the bank money (I have a mortgage). Suppose someone came to my door and said, "Hi! I'm from your bank, and, for your convenience, I'll take your mortgage payment." And I'm stupid, so I stuff a wad of bills into this person's hand. Now suppose that this person is not really from the bank. Does their action affect my mortgage balance? Of course not. Further, in this situation, would any reasonable person claim that my visitor stole _from the bank_? Of course, not, they stole from _me_. If I refuse to pay back my mortgage now, then _I_ am the one ripping off the bank, not my visitor.

I conclude that, again, the problem this woman has, is not that some "hacker" stole her money; it is that _the bank_ stole her money.

UPDATE: Started reading the article again. The more I read, the more ridiculous the thinking appears. Look at the first sentence: "An Illinois district court has allowed a couple to sue their bank on the novel grounds that it may have failed to sufficiently secure their account, ...." Dumb. I think they should sue the bank for taking their money and wrecking their credit without cause. Why should the bank's security have anything to do with them?

</comment><comment> onreact-com I'd rather sue the banks for the lack of security when it comes to losing billions by a so called "financial crunch".

26k is peanuts.

That's always the case though, shoplifters get prison sentences or they get downright killed like at Walmart but the big fish are untouchable.</comment>


Ask HN: What does your company spend too much money on? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Sometimes the biggest waste of money is being cheap: Penny Smart, Dollar Dumb.

Like a company that will spend a lot of money on hiring people, but won't give them a decent laptop because they had a different one from 7 years ago. Or refuses to give someone the training that they need.

Or a company that shuts the heat or AC off exactly at 5pm to save a couple of bucks on electric cost (and chase all their people out).

<comment><USER3> Keyboards, mouse, monitor too. They're dirt cheap compared to recruiting, improve productivity and the likelihood that someone is going to want to work for that company.

But IMO shutting the AC off at 5 PM might actually be good company culture to encourage everyone to get everything done by then and go home.

<comment><USER2> Yup, I've brought my own stuff in before, because it's what I wanted. Happy that I now work at a place that isn't like that!

I could see what you mean by that, but in this instance, the owner was a notorious penny pincher. It was because he was cheap. This was also back in the early 2000's when the company culture was that of drinking during work on Fridays. You may think it was the 80's... everyone called the place "The Country Club"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I once worked for a company that didn't track their expenses too well, and we found out the maid was getting over 10K a month for working 2 hours 5 days a week. The maid.

I did the hourly break down and realized she was the highest paid person in the company (CEO included) for about a year and a half.

I couldn't believe it.

<comment><USER5> could be hush money for some kind of sexual thing

<comment><USER6> It's unproductive to make suggestions like this completely absent evidence of any sort.

<comment><USER7> The specific allegation to be sure, but in general, an obscenely overpaid employee can reveal something more going on (say an unauthorized consultant)

<comment><USER8> There's also a pun about maids and laundry somewhere in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Managers hiring more managers.

Once worked for a company where the founder had an idea for a new software product. He hired a friend to be the product manager who then hired a project manager to manage a team of three programmers and two architects who didn't agree on anything. When the project failed to meet a founder set deadline, the project manager was fired and a new one hired. In the space of 18 months the company went through 5 project managers. At that point I resigned, couldn't handle the constant changes that each project manager brought in. I met the product manager at a conference 5 years later and they had only just released the "product".

<comment><USER10> Yeah. Managers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Coffee.

Now before you get upset, my company spends thousands of dollars a month on shitty coffee beans, rented coffee machines, and a monthly cleaning service for those machines. They purchase Peet's coffee which is expensive but tastes like brewed cigarette butts and brew it in standard drip coffee machines that cost the equivalent of 3 new coffee machines each month. Most of the employees don't even drink the coffee, they brought their own Keurig machine and brew their own pods instead.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like a worthy point to raise. Peet's is some truly awful stuff. When I think of it, my mind conjures images of "peat" the fertile gardening soil made from decayed vegetation.

<comment><USER13> It truly is the worst of the coffee offerings out here. When I see people in SF walking around with Peet's I always think "why?", you are literally surrounded by some of the best coffee in the world.... hell even Nestle Sell out Blue Bottle would be better than Peet's

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not paying attention to details in general, I can spend what I want on aws, I have told them I can save them thousands and no one cares until we have a bad month. On top of that 2 times a year we lose a service because a bill wasn't paid , when does it kick in that there is a problem?

<comment><USER15> Make them an offer: You'll spend your time out of normal office hours to cut down the AWS expense. Add half to your salary, they can keep the other half.

And suddenly, they'll care a lot.

We're having some struggles with this at my workplace too. Engineers and even some management I'm finding rather cavalier about cloud spends. I wish they'd be as cavalier about my salary... "yeah, sure, you want another $200K/year, no sweat, whatevs dude." You don't mind if I click a button and accidentally spend $2K/month on a system that I'm using 1% of, but when it's in _my_ favor suddenly we can't do that.

(I'm not responsible for much in the cloud yet, but I do try to be responsible, even if for now it doesn't seem to benefit anybody. I'm sure at some point someone is going to raise hell about this and I'm not planning on being in the line of fire.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In Germany there's lots of paranoia, some justified and some not, about the NSA/Patriot act/etc. that leads to complete avoidance of American service providers and clouds. I've seen German companies at small scale doing mundane things running everything under the sun themselves like it's 1999, and with security infrastructure and procedures fit for a bank, protecting a small amount of uninteresting data.

<comment><USER17> I would not call that a waste. The US has one of the most hostile governments regarding tech. It may feel wasteful now but being self-reliant (and having the knowledge of how to be) frees those companies enormously.

And, yeah. Monopoly positions are toxic too. So curbing that is also of value not only to Germans but to all foreign states.

<comment><USER16> There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Having developers attend meetings they dont need to be at

</comment><comment><USER19> Interns. We have a tendency to hire college kids as testers, qas, and marketing interns, and we almost always end up spending a lot of time and effort onboarding them, and managing them, and training them; then they either never become useful, or leave for something else.

<comment><USER20> I don't see why they wouldn't leave. They will have the experience to earn much more.

<comment><USER19> Unless it's being done as charity, it's pretty pointless, for us. It just creates more work that detracts from revenue generating activity, but the boss likes having them around for some reason.

<comment><USER21> What incentives are offered so they don't leave?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Incompetent managers who waste time, money, and non-grey-hair. Stuff-waste cannot compete with bad-behavior-caused waste.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see a lot of early stage companies spending way too much on marketing before they have a product to launch.

Because the marketing team is ready to boom it, the product has to even more stable than it otherwise would be. So ironically, they keep adding more features and launch too slowly. Or they could have some fixed launch date and developers end up hacking in buggy features to meet a deadline. The pressure costs a lot more in terms of engineering as well.

I've seen some budget around $50k marketing to get around 1,000 downloads.

</comment><comment><USER23> meetings!

is there an ADP/Google Cal integration that tells you how much each meeting costs the company? (by multiplying effective hourly rate * meeting length for a in attendee)

<comment><USER24> I wrote a quick little web page that I'd fire up each meeting. # employees * average hourly salary * time taken in meeting... and at the end of the meeting I'd say how much that meeting cost.

I wasn't popular. :)

<comment><USER25> Do you still have this code? I want to be unpopular too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Honestly? Bringing everyone into the office. I got hired as a remote worker. About a year and a half later, they gave everyone an option: come into the office or get laid off.

They claimed we needed better communication.

Only me and one other person moved across the country. About 150 people were let go.

Got to the office.. communication still isn't that great.. it is actually about what it was before I moved, but now we talk through Slack instead of email and everyone sits a cubicle next to each other, so yeah, great communication.

As for why they spent too much money? I mean, it worked out great for me: I went from having no benefits, no bonuses, no 401k, no health insurance, no vacation time, a lower salary, and I worked from home.

Moving me into an office gave me PTO (Paid Time Off), sick days, floating holidays, health insurance, 401k, bonuses, a higher salary, and of course, the benefits of working in an office, such as parties and all that company stuff. And finally, this year, I got a new laptop!

But then again.. maybe I was a good investment? Been with the company for 5 years now.

</comment><comment><USER7> Unoptimized cloud resources (not buying reserved capacity, instances that were spun up for a test and never spun down etc)

</comment><comment><USER27> Trying to take over other companies.

</comment><comment><USER28> According to the court, Uber spends too much on hush money.

</comment><comment><USER29> people, we could be doing better with more process and better communication. Instead of automating things, we are hiring people to do manual work.

</comment><comment><USER30> My Salary

</comment><comment><USER31> Technology trainings that are irrelevant to our products.

I understand it's good to train employees to give them more value, but the things their being trained on aren't relevant to our work, and then quit to use those skills at a competitor.

</comment><comment><USER32> Honestly? Microsoft products...

</comment><comment><USER33> Our lawyers.</comment>


My New Song - <AUTHOR> Hi, I have just created a song called 'I'm Your Guy'. It has got that vintage rock sound to it and I would really appreciate it if you could head over to YouTube and check it out and share it etc.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ehcQ61q1dY <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if its a production quality issue or what but your timing and tone is off. Might wanna re-record this.</comment>