EFF to Supreme Court: The Fourth Amendment Covers DNA Collection - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-supreme-court-fourth-amendment-covers-dna-collection <comment><USER2> Although I agree with the EFF, I question the legal argument, and whether or not the case will be in their favor.

(1) Although DNA should be protected in the sense the government cannot take it from you, without a warrant (or claims your a terrorist). It's difficult to argue that if some hair falls off my head in public, should it not be considered "fair game"? Picking up papers out of the trash has always been fair game for law enforcement, so why should the hair be different?

(2) Unreasonable search and seizure is relative, it's not _reasonable_ to pluck a hair off someones head. The same way you cannot go through someones office without _reason_. However, if someone disregards the hair, then it does seem _reasonable_ to take the hair, because it is not invading a persons time/space/property/anything.

(3) It is a powerful tool to fight illegal activity. I have trouble believing a judge doesn't/wont (to some point) empathize with this and have a slight bias.

I find mass DNA collection very scary, but I don't know if this is fully valid or winnable case.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how this would be different from lifting fingerprints from a discarded cup. Does that happen in real life or is that just a movie/tv thing?

<comment><USER4> The difference is that lifting fingerprints can only tie you to a crime scene. In this case the DNA evidence tied him to the actual crime.

<comment><USER5> What about the DNA tied him to the crime as opposed to the just the crime scene? The article doesn't really go into that.

If they're just comparing the DNA that was left behind at the police station to DNA they found at a crime scene, I don't see any issue.

<comment><USER4> This was a rape case. Leaving fingerprints or even DNA on a bloody knife can only confirm you picked up the knife, and therefore that you were present at the scene. In this case the DNA identified him as the perpetrator of the crime.

IMHO the EFF have chosen the wrong case to fight here.

<comment><USER6> You can't choose what cases will set precedence, and, once set, it is very difficult to "unset".

<comment><USER7> Lawyers can and do choose which cases will be set for precedent all the time. It's somewhat difficult to ensure that your case is the only one going after the said precedent at the right time, but just about any time a new law is passed that people object to, lawyers begin shopping for ideal candidates and then determining the best ways for them to break the law in the least damaging way, and in the best possible district to get the law deemed unconstitutional.

This typically happens with civil rights cases, and it's worth noting that there are certain legal groups that are better at it than others -- the Second Amendment Foundation is exceptional, and it's a large part of why their win record is so good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Genetic material is funny. On the one hand, it's as personal and private as things can get. Your DNA is basically _you_. But on the other hand, it's also the most public thing about you. It's a biological equivalent of an open, unencrypted radio broadcast. You leave it absolutely everywhere all the time - you can actually imagine a mist of your genetic material floating behind you as you walk around. Dead skin cells, hair, whatever you excreted through sweat - you leave it on everything you touch or otherwise interact with, be it public or private property, or other people.

I'm having trouble reconciling those two views and developing intuitions around how we should handle it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been listening to Alastair Reynolds _Blue Remembered Earth_ and _On the Steel Breeze_. The notion of ubiquitous surveillance is an underlying concept, affecting how characters can behave as the plot moves forward. While it is an underlying concept, I'd love pointers to books where this concept is taken head-on.

So far, I don't see how we can avoid ending up with a "surveilled world", though it scares me to death (we don't have the benevolent AI overseer to watch it). With the progress of technology coupled with ubiquity of networks, it is going to be hard to avoid.

</comment><comment><USER9> Other considerations aside, DNA analysis is so easy and getting so cheap, its inevitable it will be used in every facet of our lives. So learn to live with it. Or become a luddite hiding in a cave.

<comment><USER10> Even though you're at the bottom of the comments, I'm inclined to agree. In case you're interested, here's an discussion of how this trend might at least be amenable to creating unique cryptographic IDs without the need for central governance.

[https://github.com/MrChrisJ/World- Citizenship/issues/22#issu...](https://github.com/MrChrisJ/World- Citizenship/issues/22#issuecomment-62255242)

<comment><USER9> As a password, biometrics are notoriously inappropriate (have to use the same one for everything; can't change at will; leave it in the open all over the place). But maybe as a sort of username?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ancient daily reader/lurker here (even far before my registration date). I want to chime in because this is my area of expertise.

Disclaimer: I stand neutral in this issue; however, DNA/law is what I currently do for a living.

While it is true on the most basic level that law enforcement do 'collect' and 'store' information about 'who we are,' 'where we come from,' and 'who we will be.' It is only true because crime labs are typically required to store samples long term (mostly because of an idea that in the future, technology in the future will provide better discriminatory power, and for quality control testing/confirmations).

Law enforcement does not process DNA samples in the way that the article suggests, in fact, the vast majority of the time (and legally, this varies state by state), crime labs only use DNA typing technologies that produce information that is limited to "identifying an individual." What this means is in the most elementary way, is that the data generated from DNA samples used in law enforcement today, only contains information equivalent to a fingerprint. DNA samples processed in crime labs (the vast majority of the time) is based on STR technologies and (again, most of the time) it is unlawful for crime labs or law enforcement agencies to use this identifying information any further than the capacity to identify the "who" which is most of the time only searched in a database of convicted offenders, detainees, sex offenders, and/or arrestees.

So no, law enforcement agencies aren't generating/processing information different in capacity to that of a fingerprint.

Is it lawful to collect a fingerprint (or in this case a STR DNA profile) without a warrant or probable cause? I think so, but in their minds searching "forensic unknowns" to a database such as CODIS (you'll have to google this) to generate investigative leads is paramount to finding unconvinced offenders.

Example: Bob is arrested in 2015 for burglary and has a history of misdemeanors the past 10 years. DNA is collected for forensic evidence of this burglary to build a case to convict him of this crime. His DNA profile is searched in CODIS and happens to hit to an unsolved rape case in 1998. His DNA profile matches that found on a vaginal swab of the rape victim. Bob will now be charged with rape in 1998, but who would have otherwise gotten off scott free for the rape if it weren't for CODIS.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm really not trying to stir the pot and get any vitriol but I'm genuinely curious: do organizations like the ACLU, EFF actually get things done?

There has been pretty much no change in the state of affairs with regard to NSA mass surveillance, and the same can be said for RIAA DRM technologies continually pushed forth in the mass market. Everytime I see an EFF related article here or on reddit, I just get the sense that it accomplishes nothing real. Maybe things would be different if the big tech giants started suing the agencies and the US federal government for various abuses, but even then, it wouldn't make sense for them to attempt this because of legal backlash from the US (or other more insidious forms of backlash...) All in all, it feels like quite an unwinnable struggle.

<comment><USER13> The serious answer is: very rarely they win important victories. It does happen though. Most of the time they spend their very limited resources fighting uphill battles against a government with nearly unlimited resources (and an ever expanding legal basis for their increasingly vast powers). While the EFF is trying to check the government over here, the government is over there expanding laws in their favor.

The government system of the US is now the size of Japan's entire economy fiscally. I don't see how that is ever going to be contained. There's no way to pass enough controls or restrictions to hold something that massive in place, and there's no way to afford to monitor all the restrictions even if you got them into place.

The other problem I rarely see addressed is culture. No two governments are the same. The US is an aggressive government, that is its culture (at least since WW2 or so), and that will be very, very difficult to change. Some people naively think you can trust a large government like the US Govt., as you might Sweden's government - but that ignores the fact that their cultures are drastically different.

Orgs like the ACLU and the EFF are very valuable institutions, and they're trying to do what few others are. The odds are severely stacked against them, but given the context is so extraordinarily important, it remains worth fighting for. Maybe all they can accomplish is to slow the process of rights erosion down, that too is valuable (some of course argue it'd be better to accelerate the implosion instead, rather than have a long slow erosion).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Protection from DNA collection is impossible, for the same reason the EFF wants to forbid it: We shed DNA all the time.

Currently, DNA does not contain "vast amounts of private information", and even the little amount we can get from it requires serious science and hundreds if not thousands of Dollars per sample to retrieve it. Currently it is more effective to prohibit specific abuses, like insurance tests.

In the future, DNA data will be as cheap and obvious as fingerprints, gender or body height. DNA sequencers will pick up human DNA all the time even by accident. Therefore, DNA and its information will be in plain sight, if we like it or not.

Fighting DNA collection will be a lot like fighting copyright piracy. The information is copied and distributed so easily, no way we can keep our DNA private.

</comment><comment><USER15> Presumably we have the fourth amendment in the first place because we saw the dangers of living in a surveillance state.

Now that technology has given us multiple end-runs around the fourth amendment, it would be to our benefit to look how to preserve that original intent.

</comment><comment><USER16> How do we ensure a proper association between the samples taken and the person in question, in particular as described in the case from the article, especially without some sort of formal framework and authorization before hand?

<comment><USER17> tl;dr - It would be a huge coincidence if you found DNA that matched the actual perpetrator despite the fact that you collected it in the course of following the wrong guy, or canvassing for DNA at random.

Usually this happens by way of other non-DNA evidence. Imagine: you pick up a hair (or swab a coffee cup, whatever) in public that you believe (but, to your point, do not _know_ ) to be from your suspect. You take it back to the lab and, sure enough, it matches your sample from the crime scene.

Now, if you know nothing about the people in the vicinity of there you picked up your test hair, and were just randomly canvassing for DNA, this might not prove much. But presumably you were following a particular person, whose hair you tried to collect because you also have other evidence against him (though probably none so strong as DNA identification). This puts you in a very different epistemic situation with respect to that hair. Now you know that you picked up a hair in an environment full of people, only one of whom was a suspect in your investigation. It so happens that this hair matches a hair from the crime scene. It is, of course, _possible_ that you picked up an unknown person's hair, and that person just happened to be your culprit -- but it is far far more likely that the hair you got is from your suspect, since he's the only one in the area believed to have any relationship at all to the crime.

(Of course, there could be situations that confound this analysis, for example if you collect hair at the end of the day from an interview room that's been used to question a bunch of suspects in the same crime. But law enforcement will not usually be this sloppy. They are well aware of the need to positively associate a hair with a particular person.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Advantage: Identical twins.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't live on USA. But having watched Law & Order, C.S.I., et. al. I thought this use of DNA was very common.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't think it does if you leave it in a public place like a restaurant.</comment>


Virological assessment of German hospitalized patients with Covid-2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2196-x <comment><AUTHOR> Much more infectious (1000 times more virii in throat swabs) much earlier (peak before day 5 of infection) than SARS.

Different viral sequences for virus in throat vs virus in lungs.

Virus seems to replicate even in cells with low ACE-2 expression.

"no abrupt virus elimination at the time of seroconversion" \- are antibodies not that effective?</comment>


Spain: The Tiny Abandoned Villages for Sale - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191121-can-tiny-abandoned-towns-put-galicia-on-the-map <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure the author made a mistake in the first line.

Meiga does not mean "witch or wise woman", it refers to a "soft" or "sweet" woman.

Perhaps there was confusion with that word and "maga", which does mean "witch" or "wise woman"? They sound very similar when spoken

<comment><USER3> It does mean witch in galician (probably in portuguese as well). Kind of a soft witch, and not an evil one. Galicia had, until recently, quite colorful magical traditions.

Your etymology seems plausible.

<comment><USER4> "Meiga" does not mean "Witch" in Portuguese, it means a "gentle woman".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just ran the camino de santiago this september and went through Galacia. I can't believe these are so cheep, would love to have property here -- absolutely beautiful country and people!</comment>


Circa 1964 Livermore Data Systems Model A Modem (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.phreakmonkey.com/2009/05/circa-1964-livermore-data-systems-model_28.html

<comment> TD-Linux Youtube link for those without Flash: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9dpXHnJXaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9dpXHnJXaE)</comment>


Guix Further Reduces Bootstrap Seed to 25% - <AUTHOR> https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/guix-further-reduces-bootstrap-seed-to-25/ <comment><USER2> I'm really glad that guix has been working on this area. Apart from using scheme this is one of the core areas that really distinguish them from nix.

Just compare the difficulty of trying to use the third party nix-bundle to produce a binary for another system versus guix pack.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know of a recent comparison of NixOS vs Guix? Both these projects are awesome and I'm a NixOS user but I want to learn more about Guix. I've found older ones but nothing in the past year and with all the recent developments in both communities I'd love to see a side by side comparison.

<comment><AUTHOR> I generally don't like to talk about other projects negatively, because I don't think that Nix and Guix should compete. They are different takes on the same concept. But as I'm very familiar with Guix and have occasionally looked at how they deal with some of the packaging problems I worked on in Guix I can say that the Nix colleagues are often punting on problems instead of solving them. Let me give you a few examples.

In Nixpkgs there are quite a few generated packages, some of which cannot be built. I'm maintaining R packages (from CRAN and Bioconductor) in Guix and I see that the equivalent packages in Nixpkgs do not accommodate some of their quirks, so they cannot actually be built.

Another example where Nixpkgs does not build packages from source is TeX Live. The SVN repository of TeX Live contains countless generated files, and all of the TeX Live packages in Nixpkgs merely copy the generated files from SVN instead of building them from source.

Java packages in Nixpkgs often seem to include pre-built jars whereas in Guix we're going to great lengths to build _everything_ from source. This comes at a cost, of course: Guix has fever Java packages because of that, but those that it has are actually built from source.

Of course, I'm biased towards Guix, but I must say that I'm very fond of the level of integration that Guix achieves. When I look at Nix I see a bunch of seemingly separately developed tools that are written in a mix of languages (with Shell code being rather common). In Guix all tools are written in Scheme, use the same API, behave similarly, etc. It just feels much more polished to me.

That said, there is no animosity between these communities, and I think we would all be better off avoiding the mental pitfall of competition; we work on the same problems with different values and thus our approach differs. This leads to diversity rather than duplication of work.

Here are some more things I wrote comparing Nix and Guix in the past: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19807042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19807042)

<comment><USER4> > This comes at a cost, of course: Guix has fever Java packages because of > that, but those that it has are actually built from source.

Truly this is much more valuable than actually being able to use the software.

<comment><USER5> If you just wanted to download and run a binary (or jar) - you can still do that?

While freedom zero (the most important!) is the ability "to use the software" \- being able to improve, patch and adapt the software is also very important!

<comment><USER4> > If you just wanted to download and run a binary (or jar) - you can still do > that?

If it were that simple, why would we need package managers at all? Sadly, the Linux community as a whole have dedicated themselves to a structure that makes this seemingly simple task remarkably difficult.

<comment><USER6> > If it were that simple,

It is that simple.

> why would we need package managers at all? Sadly, the Linux community as a > whole have dedicated themselves to a structure that makes this seemingly > simple task remarkably difficult.

Because there's a huge difference between a user downloading/running a binary, and software package management in an OS. The former is not maintainable, your binaries will be out of date soon, etc. But, if you insist on wanting to do this, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from doing it. Have fun.

<comment><USER4> > if you insist on wanting to do this, there's absolutely nothing preventing > you from doing it. Have fun.

I really do want to do this, precisely because the software in the repo is often out of date, if it is even there at all! I really don't like the idea of a mandatory middleman between the developer and the user.

And since I really do want to do this, and do it often, I can say with quite a bit of certainty that

> It is that simple.

Is complete and utter _bullshit_! Sometimes you get lucky and the developer produces AppImages or a static binary, sometimes you're less lucky and have to grab the binary and its dependencies and write a startup script that sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH, sometimes you're even less lucky than that and get to use patchelf to force it to use a compatible ld.so, but most of the time you end up having to compile the damn thing from source like it is 1975.

<comment><USER7> Oh wow that sounds exactly like the kind of problems package mamagers solve. Your complaint basically boils down to - nobody prepared a one click package of latest version for free for me.

<comment><USER4> My complaint comes down to the following: why must there be a middle man between the developer and user, why must there be a separate middleman for every repo, why must said repo prevent me from installing older versions, why must the package manager prevent me from installing to alternative paths... basically, why does the community insist that this simple task that was the de-facto way to install software for DOS, MacOS (classic), NeXT, RiscOS, and MacOS (recent) insist on being complicated and restrictive in Linux?

And if package managers really solved the problem, why do so many projects deploy with Docker? Why do FlatPak and Snap exist, let alone my preferred AppImage?

<comment><USER8> > why must there be a middle man between the developer and user, why must > there be a separate middleman for every repo,

Guix allows you to easily write own package definitions which are treated as part of the whole system. If you submit them and they are accepted, they simply become part of Guix.

> why must said repo prevent me from installing older versions,

Precisely this is a case that Guix solves extremely well: One can start environments with specific versions of packages, like in Pyhon's virtualenv.

And by the way, the complexity is caused by the issue that many many components need to fit together. That does not happen by chance, it is a massive amount of work to make it fit in a manageable way, and check that it works. That's what distributions do.

<comment><USER4> And yet many operating systems throughout history have not needed to do that. The complexity is not inherent to the problem space, it is a creation of the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Who funds Guix development? This this one of those experimental/hobby/academic projects? I never hear anything about Guix outside of HN or F/OSS boards (and even then, very little). How does it continue?

<comment><USER10> It's part of GNU [0] (which in itself is a community), but GNU as a whole is additionally funded in part by the FSF [1] ; And then as always: volunteers. I suspect since Guix heavily utilizes Lisp quite a few Emacs lovers might watch Guix closely and even contribute ; students might pick GNU projects as part of a thesis et cetera.

And I am unsure how 'active' development is, I have no insight, but it has been in existence for so long and still no one I know has ever used it. On the other hand NixOS[2] (or Nix as a package manager in similar vein) seems to be used heavily by some Power Users.

[0] [http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html](http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html)

[1] [https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/](https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/)

[2] [https://nixos.org/](https://nixos.org/)

<comment><USER2> In GNU fashion they're using savannah mailing lists and email patches so to those who are comfortable with git{hub,lab} it's slightly less familiar.

Here is their git repository: [https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix](https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix)

Here is the web interface to their issues and patches mailing list: [https://issues.guix.gnu.org/](https://issues.guix.gnu.org/)

As you can see although the project is less popular, it is no less actively developed and you can easily find system configurations by searching git{hub,lab}.

<comment><USER10> I fear it being 'GNU' they will shoot themselves in the foot somehow. Bad marketing, unnecessarily geeky and childish nomenclature, GPLv3 and make it all free software, no proprietary drivers, hard to get proprietary third party software to install et cetera...

'GNU Guix is a transactional package manager and an advanced distribution of the GNU system that respects user freedom.'[0]

NixOS is developed using the MIT license and does seem to just want things to work.

I am bringing this up purely as a question, is that fear justified or am I missing something? Would be glad for a take on this from someone who knows more.

[0] [https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix](https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix)

<comment><USER2> I guess it depends on what you mean by shoot themselves in the foot. There are major differences in philosophy and bar the "superficial" differences these are quite different projects.

For one nix simply doesn't have a project focused on bootstrapping. As another example compare rust bootstrapping[0] versus using a rust binary[1]. Nix also has no alternative to guix challenge[2] or guix pack[3]. Even a comparison of their documentation shows this difference.

The question is if you consider these measures useful, and if you think bootstrapping is even an issue in the first place. To me this is the bigger question when comparing the two projects, as depending on your philosophy guix is either taking necessary precautions or unnecessary mitigations.

Given posts like this their marketing is okay, I haven't seen much unnecessary childishness - but both projects are fundimentally complicated thus have to invent words for concepts and there's nonguix[4] and most people run nix on GuixSD for their non free software needs.

I doubt guix will be more popular than nix anytime soon, but I don't think NixOS will be more popular than Arch anytime soon either.

[0]: [https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2018/bootstrapping- rust/](https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2018/bootstrapping-rust/)

[1]: [https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/85542](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/85542)

[2]: [https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix- chall...](https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix- challenge.html)

[3]: [https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix- pack....](https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix- pack.html#Invoking-guix-pack)

[4]: [https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix](https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix)

<comment><USER11> Nix has `nix build --check` which should do the same thing as `guix challenge`. I think there may be more fine tuned options in challenge though.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not the same. Guix also has "guix build --check" which builds a package a second time to compare potentially different results.

"guix challenge" challenges different substitute servers and also compares what they offer with what you may have installed (whether you built it locally or downloaded it from elsewhere). It's really quite different from "guix build --check".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love the idea of Guix. I also love Scheme and Free software. It seems Guix and I would be a match made in heaven. But then I read things like this: [https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/deprecating-support-for- the-l...](https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/deprecating-support-for-the-linux- kernel/) (turns out this was an April fools joke)...

I'm not sure I love Hurd so much. Admittedly, I have not used it, but would be hesitant to rely on it for any important work. Maybe it will prove me wrong. It just seems like it has been an awful lot of work to get Linux to where it is, and it was a pretty bumpy ride at times.

Edit: I guess I'm pretty dense. I hate April fools jokes! But now I'm happy I can start using Guix without fear of being forced into Hurd. That said, I will try out Hurd just for the fun of it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I see that guix is a declarative package manager like nix. Where does it have a leg up over nix?

And how's the GUI integration with KDE and gnome? Is there a backend for KDE Discover or the Gnome Software Center?

Finally, I see that installation goes over a "curl | bash", which imo is a pretty insecure method of installation. I can understand why such an insecure method exists (so many different ways of installing software on linux), but that's like saying HTTP is a good idea because it's easier than HTTPS.

<comment><USER2> This post is a pretty good example, for I don't know of any nix projects that are attempting to work on the bootstrapping problem. Guix pack[0] solves a parallel issue of distributing your nicely dependancy managed ecosystem whereas nix's alternative with nix-bundle barely works.

At the moment neither have gui integration and unfortunately both could use a lot of work with onboarding and beginner (I'm taking non programmers) friendliness.

[0]: [https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix- pack....](https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-pack.html)

<comment><USER14> > _At the moment neither have gui integration and unfortunately both could use > a lot of work with onboarding and beginner (I 'm taking non programmers) > friendliness._

I think non-programmer friendliness can wait till there are enough technical users that the superficial daily-experience bugs get ironed out, and also the newbies have a social support system for onboarding. Trying to jump that curve will prove painful in the long term.

I would love to see the guidance and tools for _technical_ users to try this out and start switching over the next few years.

AFAIK, Gnome/KDE or some other DE can be built/installed like any other package, so one can certainly have pretty much any GUI, just like any other Linux distribution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is extremely neat but the name "gash" is... a poor choice. Gory in standard English, worse as a slang term

<comment><USER16> Why do you pronounce it like that, though? I pronounce it like "geesh" or "guish" or "guiche" (not sure how to write it phonetically). It is just the Catalan word for "chalk".

<comment><USER17> Not Guix, Gash: [https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gash](https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gash)

<comment><USER18> Gash is a slang term for the female sexual organ.

Not a good name for a project.

<comment><USER19> If we were to reserve every word that is also used as slang for sexual organs we'd be out a lot of words. Peach, purse, shaft, sheath, tool, pocket, etc, these are all slang as well, yet we still use these for their original meaning. It's all about context. I'd also say 'gash' is quite regional. I've only ever heard it used in the U.K.

<comment><USER20> Australia too. Quite vulgar but not especially common nor especially rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is anybody using this? What do you like about it versus a more typical linux or unix? Is hardware support good enough to run on a relatively recent laptop?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using Guix System on new Dell servers, old Sun servers, a Dell laptop, a Purism Librem laptop, an old Thinkpad --- it works just fine.

I think the fear of missing drivers when using Linux without blobs is extremely overstated. Yes, certain WiFi cards won't work without blobs, and yes, the 3D graphics situation is not great thanks to NVIDIA and AMD.

> What do you like about it versus a more typical linux or unix?

Oh, so many things... But most important for me is stateless configuration, reproducible builds, no-nonsense application bundles without all that Dockeresk cruft via "guix pack", ad-hoc environments, etc.

<comment><USER22> > 3D graphics situation is not great thanks to NVIDIA and AMD.

AMD is now one of the good guys when it comes to open source:

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

Basically, since 2015, AMD has offered an official driver under an MIT license for Linux and *BSD. Personally, I'm definitely choosing AMD for my next laptop :).

<comment><USER23> Unless things have changed recently, AMD GPUs still require proprietary firmware and thus do not work on a fully free system. I bought an AMD GPU a few years ago to try it out and it didn't work.

<comment><USER24> As do Intel[1] and Nvidia[2].

[1]: [https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux- firmware.git/tree/LICENSE.i915)

[2]: [https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux- firmware.git/tree/LICENCE.nvidia)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Githtml for Chrome and Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://ryt.github.com/githtml/

<comment><USER2> This was submitted and discussed twice yesterday

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4199745> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4198064>

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice plugin. It would be great if the X and +links buttons could be automatically hidden.</comment>


AWS Ground Station - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/ <comment><USER2> This was sufficiently close in timing that I wasn't sure for a moment whether this was just an early caught April Fools.

Then again, the more I think about it, the more this makes sense. Satellite business is hard and capital intensive enough as it is, for starters in the micro-satellite business it would be absolutely prohibitive to run their own hardware just to receive those signals.

<comment><USER3> They do have some impressive "I didn't know anyone would need that!" services. I also love this one:

[https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/](https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/)

> AWS Snowmobile is an Exabyte-scale data transfer service used to move > extremely large amounts of data to AWS. You can transfer up to 100PB per > Snowmobile, a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container, pulled by a semi- > trailer truck. (...)

<comment><USER4> I work on Google Cloud and have an obvious bias here, but having thought about this for a couple year now, this does not seem like a good or cost-effective way to move that much data.

In particular if you have ~100PB of data to move and you are in a location that can be reached by a 45-foot long shipping container on a truck with access to the ~350KW of power it takes to run Snowmobile, you're clearly not somewhere _completely_ inaccessible. Given that 100PB of data will cost you $400k/mo in storage costs on AWS Glacier (before the discounts that you'll obviously negotiate for), even relatively remote locations become "accessible" for 100 Gbps+ fiber or microwave connectivity, and _very_ remote locations for tens of Gbps. The Snowmobile itself is only 1 Tb/s, so if you think you're going to save time this work, consider how long it takes to move it to you and then move it to an AWS facility versus the time it takes to fill it.

I don't get where this is the right call for _any_ customers, even as a one- off. I'd love it if someone from AWS could tell me where my math is off on this.

<comment><USER5> There is your first mistake: thinking the customer wants to solve the problem in a a good or cost-effective way.

Snowmobile was built because a pre-sales engineer sarcastically said backing up a truck full of hard drives to a customers datacenter would be the fastest way to import X PB of data. It's probably loading from a tape silo and spent 18 months at the customer site.

<comment><USER6> No, it was built because a solutions architect sat next to a film producer on a plane and talked about how to solve for his unique needs.

<comment><USER4> Miles, I can't tell if you're messing with me or just stating what actually happened :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We also can offer you an actual satellite for rent, starting 2021. Have a look at [https://www.exodusorbitals.com](https://www.exodusorbitals.com)

<comment><USER8> I have no use for this right now but will totally file it away in the back of my head for later. My first question would be: If I want to run code on one of your satellites, do I have to place an order for a server to be added to the payload of a future launch vehicle, or do you just launch satellites with servers running on them and then rent out compute/instrument time on a per hour basis?

<comment><USER7> You do "git commit" and we will deploy your code on our satellite, that's it. Similar to Heroku model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you are interested in an open satellite ground-station network, with 330+ ground-station you may want to check out SatNOGS. [https://satnogs.org](https://satnogs.org)

The SatNOGS Network (https//network.satnogs.org) collects data from hundreds of satellites through hundreds of stations globally. More details on the satellites we monitor are on our satellite database([https://db.satnogs.org](https://db.satnogs.org)). In some cases we are able to visualize the teremetry data on our grafana dashboards([https://dashboard.satnogs.org](https://dashboard.satnogs.org))

If you are interested in participating on our community, want info to build you own ground-station or get your own equipment on-line don't hesitate to check our wiki([https://wiki.satnogs.org](https://wiki.satnogs.org))

disclaimer: I'm a member of the board of Libre Space Foundation([https://libre.space](https://libre.space)) the non-profit organization developing and operating SatNOGS.

<comment><USER10> That was my first thought, "oh, it's a commercial satnogs".

Which I suppose proves it's a good idea. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amazon has a habit to make it's internal tools into AWS services (while still using them internally). I think it shows a tip of some space-related works inside.

<comment><USER12> to my knowledge, amazon had done a lot of satellite image processing for certain three letter agencies. this is probably related to that more than anything.

<comment><USER13> That would not be done on Ground Station, at least in standard regions. Once you hit that level, you are into at least the Gov region.

That being said, those agencies already have huge ground stations at their disposal run by NASA and other "groups". They don't need this service, they would ingest them over NIPRNet or SIPRNet directly into AWS Gov or AWS Gov Secret for processing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Unfortunately looks like this is not available to almost anyone except in rare cases: "To add satellites to your account, please email aws- email@example.com with the NORAD ID, your FCC license information, and your customer account number and someone will contact you."

<comment><USER15> You'd have both those pieces of information handily available if you had satellites in space. If you don't have satellites in space, not target customer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thank god I now have an easy way to communicate with all my satellites.

<comment><USER17> You joke. But maybe you've never considered what satellite data applications you could have written because it wasn't easy to do in the past?

<comment><USER18> True enough for me at least. But now that I have thought about it, I yet remain of GPs opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I thought this was an April fools joke once I clicked on the link. The bandwidth they are operation on (54 MHz) is ridiculous though! Truly sci-fi- ish stuff going on here. Also, did Amazon build this from scratch or did they acquire a company that had the basic infra for this kind of stuff?

<comment><USER20> Not really, that's the bandwidth of an average mid-end SDR like LimeSDR(300$) or BladeRF(500$)

<comment><USER21> I have never heard of a LimeSDR putting out a 54Mhz wide signal for broadcast. Can you describe how you are configuring things?

<comment><USER20> Haven't worked with LimeSDR myself, but here's the paper that suggests that it's possible [https://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/handle/2117/119623/memor...](https://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/handle/2117/119623/memoria.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The satellite ground station market is quite dynamic at the moment. As the data generated on-orbit continues to grow, the need for robust ground infrastructure becomes that much more important.

Ground-Station-as-a-Service (GSaaS) is something that AWS stepped into given the fact that AWS is used quite extensively for the data processing chain, so it was a logical play for them to verticalize. AWS partnered with Lockheed to build out the hardware network [1][2].

They've got some decent competition in the market. We published a round-up article of ground station providers a while back [3].

The move to higher frequencies is changing the market substantially. This year, a number of optical ground stations were supposed to be deployed, given growth of satellite terminals [4]. We'll have to see with the virus what actually ends up happening.

[1] [https://spacenews.com/amazon-lockheed-venture-casts- shadow-o...](https://spacenews.com/amazon-lockheed-venture-casts-shadow-on- ground-station-startups/)

[2] [https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en- us/products/verge.html](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en- us/products/verge.html)

[3] [https://blog.satsearch.co/2019-09-25-ground-station- service-...](https://blog.satsearch.co/2019-09-25-ground-station-service- providers-an-overview-of-telemetry-and-telecommand-communication-services-and- networks-for-small-satellites)

[4] [https://blog.satsearch.co/2020-01-22-optical- communications-...](https://blog.satsearch.co/2020-01-22-optical- communications-for-small-satellites-and-cubesats-product-roundup)

Edit: Added/updated references

</comment><comment><USER23> Talk by Tom Soderstrom[1] of JPL on this from December 19. They announced a partnership last year for various things, including downlink of high definition video from the ISS. [2]

1\. Tom is part of the office of information technology office at JPL 2\. [https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-web-services-nasa- team-...](https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-web-services-nasa-team-stream- video-space-via-cloud/)

</comment><comment> flicker-rate > To add satellites to your account, please email firstname.lastname@example.com > with the NORAD ID, your FCC license information, and your customer account > number and someone will contact you.

Does anyone know how to get a NORAD ID?

<comment><USER7> Launch a satellite, obviously. But you can look up existing ones at [http://celestrak.com](http://celestrak.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if this is related to Amazons Project Kuiper satellite broadband constellation, would make sense for them to be building out their ground station capabilities.

<comment><USER25> Probably more likely an offshoot or requirement from Blue Origin.

<comment><USER26> More likely Kuiper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wasn't this announced last year?

<comment><USER28> Yes it was: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-ground-station-ready- to...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-ground-station-ready-to-ingest- process-satellite-data/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Or you could use something like Satnogs.org ;)

<comment> donkey-hotei Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > You can use radar satellite imagery of your various business facilities such > as parking lots, logistic centers, and retail stores

Could this be used to monitor someone's home?

<comment><USER31> Yes. This is just the ground station, though, you would still need to put a satellite in orbit to receive messages from, however. And remember that it's somewhat expensive in terms of delta-V budget to have the satellite over someone's house exactly when you want it to be. Most people that want to spy on their neighbor will just buy a $30 spy cam with a 4G uplink.

<comment><USER32> Surveillance satellites aren't normally in geostationary orbits either, as that's too far away for the optics. Your deltav comment alludes to it. They seem to be into highly elliptical orbits.

<comment><USER33> You would need an insane amount of LEO satellites in order to get a feed which was continuous. I don't even know how to start doing the maths on this one.

<comment><USER32> Well, you're not going to be able to make out a house from 100x farther away either.

Thanks to Trump's inability to not tweet anything he sees, we know that Block 4 KH-11 satellites have a 10cm/pixel about standard (they're in an elliptical orbit, but they use which ever is closest at the time). So we're looking at a 10M/pixel in geostationary orbit, assuming you can get the same optics that NROL was shipping up as late as 2013.

<comment><USER34> > Thanks to Trump's inability to not tweet anything he sees

If there's one thing I hate about that guy, it's his being the most transparent presidency in history.

<comment><USER32> His actions are sort of the worst of both worlds here. On one hand leaking information that's only useful to geopolitical adversaries (probably because he didn't understand the implications of tweeting stuff like that), and on the other hand being a new bar for destruction of public records when it comes to decisions made by the administration (somehow even beating out the Obama administration).

[https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/6/national_archives_reco...](https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/6/national_archives_record_retention_matthew_connelly)

[https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/10/trump-papers- filin...](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/10/trump-papers-filing- system-635164)

It'd be a huge stretch to call it "the most transparent presidency in history".

<comment><USER35> > _On one hand leaking information that 's only useful to geopolitical > adversaries_

What did he leak? From what I can tell, the photo merely confirmed what was already a reasonable educated guess.

<comment><USER32> The resolution of the optics.

<comment><USER35> Why do you think it was a secret to anyone? Any amateur astronomer can figure it out from mirror size and orbital parameters.

A 1968 NASA publication (sold for $3.00) discusses various limitations, concluding: "The telescope objective for best resolution, as viewed from a satellite at an altitude of 320 kilometers, requires a diameter of about 1.6 meters to resolve a 12-centimeter radius" [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/196900...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19690003603.pdf)

That approximately 10 cm resolution has always been a resonable guess of the capabilities of best spy satellites. Trump's tweet surprised no-one. It confirmed what has always been thought to be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Could this be used for downlink only? For example, to pull down NOAA satellite data?

<comment><USER37> I'm like 90% sure it would be cheaper to just build your own antenna and an RTL-SDR setup to do that sort of thing yourself. There's no way it's cost effective for that.

<comment><USER38> Wait, shouldn't there be some sort of authentication step? The only barrier to communicating with satellites is the equipment?!

<comment><USER37> Not with the example given of NOAA satellites. Those simply broadcast data on regular intervals. If you had to authenticate, can you imagine a single satellite dealing with all the traffic of uplink/downlink required for authentication? It simply wouldn't work or maky any sense.

This is not true for all satellites, obviously. There are private ones that use encrypted communications, but weather satellites can be easily used if you have the proper antenna and equipment setup to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Kindel's 3rd Law[1] – Amazon will enter every existing business, channel, and market. If said business, channel, or market doesn't already exist, Amazon will try to invent it.

[1] [https://ceklog.kindel.com/2020/03/30/kindels-3rd- law/](https://ceklog.kindel.com/2020/03/30/kindels-3rd-law/)

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm getting jealous. After a career on the software side of communications (r&d in ble and 4g) I left for the healthcare industry for many reasons but mainly driven by the fact the projects were so monotone. Had I been able to apply to work for a project like this, I surely would have enjoyed staying around longer.

</comment><comment><USER41> Having just finished reading this story [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22718330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22718330) the author might want to check out setting up several AWS ground stations. I suspect the cost could be out-of-this-world.

</comment><comment><USER42> Used to work at a startup aiming to create a similar type of network. AWS joining was refreshing for validating the market and providing a big target to work against.

AWS / Lockheed made a good call with phased array antennas (SpaceX too on the satellite side). Can't scale to many different users if your ground stations can only serve one satellite at a time, similar for a satellite providing internet. I suspect there might still be challenges getting enough gain for high bandwidth, but I'm sure it'll improve with better tech. A dish is just physically stuck pointing at one angle.

</comment><comment><USER43> Honestly, this is simply sci-fi to me. The fact that we have companies providing satellite communication infrastructure, just extremely futuristic. Am I just too slow with the catching up?

<comment><USER44> i mean we have been getting porn from space since like the 80's right?

<comment><USER43> Truly miraculous!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> So where's the free tier?

</comment><comment><USER46> Previously discussed on HN (Nov 27, 2018):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18546272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18546272)

</comment><comment><USER47> It's easy to miss the data processing and storage story. It potentially sounds like a fascinating story of vertically integrating to make your processing, cloud storage, data management (of huge amounts of data) more attractive compared to competition. Also the companies/organizations that this will be interesting to (think defence) are likely to have large overall budget for other cloud services. Well played Amazon!

</comment><comment><USER48> A bit of a tangent, but how feasible is it for Starlink to crowdsource their ground stations? Let people contribute to the constellation by putting up antennas on top of their fiber connections (perhaps via solar roofs).

I think hard thing about Spacex is gonna be all the legalities across the planet of establishing an ISP. In some places it's demonopolised, but in some seems it might require to put up their own network.

</comment><comment><USER49> I recall looking at this a while ago, but I couldn't seem to find what kind of RF hardware amazon is using, is there any information on that?

<comment><USER22> It's leveraging Lockheed technology [1].

[1] [https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en- us/products/verge.html](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en- us/products/verge.html)

<comment><USER49> Thanks a lot! Will give that a watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I think this is the real SaaS (Satellite as a Service ) o.O

<comment><USER50> and next service come as a FaaS (Fusion Reactor as a Service), you can produce your own power and pay as you use it =D

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Use it with this? [https://agi.com/satellite-ar](https://agi.com/satellite-ar)

</comment><comment><USER52> what i'd use it for: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/stock-v...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/stock- value-satellite-images-investing/586009/)

</comment><comment><USER53> Where does one get the satellite to rent?

<comment><USER7> Here to help! Sign up a contract with us, and we'll give you a satellite to rent.

<comment><USER54> who are you?

<comment><USER55> We are [https://www.exodusorbitals.com](https://www.exodusorbitals.com)

<comment><USER54> maybe add it to you profile. thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> How might this impact hedge funds and equity trading strategies? They specifically mention parking lots which I interpreted as gaining sales metrics and throughput data on businesses.

<comment><USER57> Aren't such shots form orbit already available from various commercial satellites? Likely they are already used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Thought they've been doing this for a while?

</comment><comment><USER59> Probably the only costumer is Elon Musk

</comment><comment><USER60> previously on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20991730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20991730)</comment>


Jakob Nielsen: Customization of UIs and Products - <AUTHOR> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/customization.html

<comment><USER2> One part of this deeply resonates with me: get users the "early success experience". I have worked on it over the years, trying to provide more and more of a glide path to people so that they successfully get something coming out of their printer.

It pays off -- I sell to 2.5% of people who get that far, and only about .8% among people who don't. (How do I love thee, analytics software, let me count the ways...)

This is one of the reasons I wince when I see apps which drop people at an empty screen, waiting to be filled by clicking the unobtrusive New Document button in the top corner. Grab them by the collar and tell them what they need to do next ("Click the new document button to get started!").

If what they need to do next is perfectly obvious, don't even bother with the text. Consider taking them straight into that funnel, or providing them with a half-built document that they can jump right into.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I not use MongoDB? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys, I'm a mostly front end dev who's built some mildly popular applications where Mongo has worked fine as a data store. By mildly popular we're talking maybe 1 query/s. Today, I just launched a product (www.bliss.flights), and it's unexpectedly gone viral, we have more signups than I could have ever imagined.
I peruse HN a lot so I've read a lot of the recent articles about how Mongo has failed a lot of startups as a production DB. Now that we're figuring out the technology stack for this, I don't want to do work that is going to have to be redone later.
Unfortunately, I've only ever used Mongo, so I'm used to mongoose and it's syntax. Would you guys use a different datastore for something like this, and if so, what? I've written maybe a few lines of SQL in my entire life so not so bullish on learning something new as it will really slow us down!
Really appreciate it. <comment><USER2> "Now that we're figuring out the technology stack for this, I don't want to do work that is going to have to be redone later."

You're worrying about problems that you don't yet have and at scales you may never reach. I'd say stick with what you know and see if you can get initial traction with your users.

If your data is highly relational then yes it's not a great fit but it's still passable if you're happy to give up transactions and the ability to force data consistency etc.

Where I work we have a production API serving thousands of websites that uses Mongo, don't sweat the details too much early on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I feel like through using Mongo I've learned how to model my data in ways that are not relational, which has worked well because using aggregation at all always tends to be really awkward.

Agreed that it could go no where, but, I'm hoping that one project, at some point in my life does well—so learning a technology that doesn't suffer from scaling issues would hopefully be a road I eventually have to take.

Appreciate the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> MongoDB is definitely ready and capable of handling your traffic. There are best practices to follow, however, as is the case with any deployment. I would concur with mattbillenstein that HN definitely skews anti-mongo.

There are many, many companies using MongoDB very successfully. I have found that "issues" being reported with MongoDB are based on old versions and information, or an improperly configured and tuned environment. I recently wrote a blog post covering some topics around this. I'd encourage you to read it: [https://www.kenwalger.com/blog/nosql/mongodb/mongodb- perform...](https://www.kenwalger.com/blog/nosql/mongodb/mongodb-performance- issues/)

I think you'll find that MongoDB will meet, and exceed, your expectations for performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very reassuring, thank you so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> HN skews very anti-mongo, but it can be a good fit for certain apps -- I would stick with what you know until you think you've outgrown what you can do without sharding. I'd probably never shard mongo, but if you can vertically scale it for awhile, I'd do that.

If you're on ec2, the i3 instances have very fast nvme instance storage at a reasonable (cloud) price.

<comment><USER5> What would you suggest instead of mongodb for large scale production db? Our DB size is growing on daily basis and currently near to 200GB on a dedicated machine.

<comment><USER4> It depends -- if it's analytics, I'd look to ship it to a hosted system (I like BigQuery). If it's not, you might be able to scale up to terabyte or two before sharding; then maybe cassandra or one of the sharded postgres things (Citus, postgres-xl?)? I haven't had that problem in awhile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another user of MongoDB here. Thus far it has scaled well for us where we had a similar situation where uptake was faster then expected. The WiredTiger storage engine made most of the concerns of 2012-2013 for MongoDB, non-issues. However, if you try to put a relational model in to MongoDB, you still may see performance issues down the road, but then again it should be about the right tool for the right job. I'd reiterate Ken Walger's post to checkout his blog, it does a great job of comparing MongoDB 2012 vs. MongoDB today. Also, if administration/operations are a concern, then cloud provided MongoDB is the way to go, MongoDB Atlas seems to be at the forefront since it's run by MongoDB itself. Good luck with your apps!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much! We currently use Atlas and it's been pretty great, although prohibitively expensive for my small side projects, where mLab instead has been awesome.

<comment><USER7> Are you aware that MongoDB Atlas has a free tier too? ([https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/announcing-free-tier- and-l...](https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/announcing-free-tier-and-live- migration-tool-for-mongodb-atlas))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The hatred and fear of Mongo is justified. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to switch right now.

If you're just using a document DB instead of a relational DB, you won't have a hard time moving away from Mongo. There just isn't that much to learn.

Even better, there are various databases that actually have Mongo compatibility[1][2], but internally will be more reliable and scalable.

If you have the dev bandwidth, look into switching now and maybe give it a try in your dev environment.

1\. [https://www.torodb.com/](https://www.torodb.com/)

2\. [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/mongodb- int...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/mongodb-introduction)

<comment><USER9> 'Hatred and fear" ? This is a database we are talking about?

Companies all over the globe are betting their businesses on MongoDB and succeeding.

e.g. most recently Ticketek

[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/mongo- mi...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/mongo-migration- just-the-ticket/news-story/fa3356b5ac731fa606b1bfa6252ab218)

<comment><USER10> mongodb employee here

[https://www.mongodb.com/who-uses-mongodb](https://www.mongodb.com/who-uses- mongodb)

I don't see a ton of hatred and fear from Cisco, Facebook and Google.

I dig what they've done, especially facebook, with MongoDB. Reconsider 2012 opinions and read about 2017's MongoDB.

<comment><USER8> Instead of insulting me with the implication that I don't keep up with major technologies in my industry, you probably would've been more convincing if you'd told me what's changed since 2012. However, I do keep up with Mongo, and I do know what's changed.

It still doesn't make me want to use it. Relational data is better for most applications, Redis is better for many others, and I can have both documents and relational data in the same database with PG[1].

It seems like many other people with Mongo experience feel the same way[2].

1\. [http://www.aptuz.com/blog/is-postgres-nosql-database- better-...](http://www.aptuz.com/blog/is-postgres-nosql-database-better-than- mongodb/)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125984)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mongo is the right tool for some jobs, but it's a poor choice for many.

I recommend you learn at least one alternative database paradigm (relational/SQL databases are probably a good choice) so that you can make informed decisions about the trade-offs between data stores each time you start a new project.

</comment><comment><USER12> Running your own Mongo instance will probably be fine for now. I remember Mongo administration being a massive time sink, but it only gets truly hairy when you need to shard and cluster. You can always use a hosted Mongo instance or a hosted Mongo-compatible solution like CosmosDB.

</comment><comment><USER10> hey there, i am a person from mdb:

one thing i should express, many of the negative sentiments of mongodb are related to outdated facts or commentary. review some of the new features to ensure you're getting all the benefits mongodb has produced since the days of 2012.

<comment><USER13> That's not the problem in my opinion. The problem is advertising any kind of document DB as a general purpose storage. If you have a use case of making different aggregates from data, you'll have a bad time duplicating data or creating your own consistency layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> MongoDB is the wrong choice 99.9% of the time. Just use Postgres.</comment>


FreeBSD Kernel Internals Evening Course Taught by a Core Commiter - <AUTHOR> http://www.mckusick.com/courses/introeveclass.html

<comment><USER2> This seems like a great opportunity to learn more about FreeBSD, but for an individual, the price is steep. I even looked at the videos for purchase and they surprisingly cost the same amount as the in-person course. Can anybody attest to the value the course provides?

<comment><USER3> Yah no kidding. I was like oh this might be a fun and interesting side thing to do.... and then it's like oh its 1495.00!!!

Hardly appropriate as a hobby at that price for normal people.</comment></comment>


The GravityZoo OOo porting project - <AUTHOR> http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=19660 <comment><USER2> waffle and nothing to download? There is a windows client available for download. Also read their new blog posting for more information: <http://blog.gravityzoo.com/pivot/entry.php?id=21>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> checked their site and nothing for downloading, no linux software. More waffle than product ~ <http://www.gravityzoo.com/products/downloads.py>

But the idea is worth the read ~ <http://www.gravityzoo.com/products/overview.py></comment>


Professional programming resources - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/charlax/professional-programming <comment><USER2> Not that this is intended to be the end-all-be-all of "Must Read" Software Engineering books, but I find it refreshing that Clean Code isn't listed. It has some good points, but I think in the wrong hands it proves to be too dogmatic and can create friction within certain teams.

Then again, I'm just some random dude on the internet, so what do I know.

</comment><comment><USER3> This resources list is sufficiently far away from a list of serious references (at least for the areas I am best versed, database) as to not even qualify as introductory.

Consider this entry:

 _Safe Operations For High Volume PostgreSQL -- (this is for PostgreSQL but works great for other db as well)_.

The editorial comment couldn't be more wrong in it's fundamental assumption as the article discusses implementation specific limitations of PostgreSQL and their implementation specific workarounds. This isn't on par with reading, for example, Oracle's SAME methodology ([https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/performance/opt-...](https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/performance/opt- storage-conf-130048.pdf)) which might be generalizable to other databases since the paper deals as much with storage in general as it does how Oracle makes use of that storage.

I would be wary of spending more time on this list based on the overall quality I've seen in this area.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. _The Psychology of Computer Programming_ , by Gerald Weinberg.

Yes, from 1971. The best discussion of professional programming and the difference with amateur programming is just one of the important topics.

2\. _Essentials Programming Languages_ by Daniel Friedman and Mitchell Wand.

The other side of learning programming languages. In addition to learning specific languages, it's useful to see what some basic features of proglangs are and how they work.

</comment><comment><USER5> One of the problems that I feel we face these days is the challenge of discovery. Sites like HN, Reddit, Pinterest help to some degree, but I can't help but feel that they're just scatter-shot.

I miss the days of web directories. I really appreciate that the programming community is creating more and more of these curated lists ("awesome" lists), but I'm disappointed that other categories aren't as popular.

Perhaps there's room for an AwesomeAwesome, someday... A Wikipedia-like curation of worthwhile resources. I doubt it's feasible once a certain critical mass is achieved, what with gaming the system or disagreements about what should or shouldn't be included. Wikipedia can at least limit conflict _somewhat_ by saying that something is or is not factual or backed by a reputable resource. To determine what should or should not be on a curated list is a lot more difficult.

Maybe a voting system could help. Or maybe that's too easy to game.

Anyone else miss web directories?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome! I always love seeing curated lists.

Is there a way to contribute to this list? e.g. PR, Issue?

<comment><USER7> There are four PRs in the linked repo, all merged, it's probably an acceptable route to contribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great list, probably can be improved by a voting page, actually github should support simple polls, i.e. visitors can suggest their favorite votes without git-clone-PR steps.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Editors & IDE

mentions only Sublime and Vim...hardly professional.

<comment><USER10> Incomplete? Biased towards a certain style of editor? Sure.

"Hardly professional"? What's not professional about either of those?

<comment><USER9> That is seems more like a personal preference list than a comprehensive list used at work. It takes 5 mins to google IDE market share, e.g. check out the results of Stack Overflow surveys.

<comment><USER10> I think you misunderstood the point of the repo, then.

Personally, I could list off the top of my head several likely candidates for the top editors and IDEs, but I don't have anything useful to say about most of them, because I don't use them. I fully expect the author is in the exact same position.

You're absolutely right that the list is not comprehensive, and it's probably the author's own personal preferences. But if he uses mostly those editors, what's he to do? Just list off a few more editors/IDEs with no links to any useful resources, when the whole point of the repo is to have actual resources you can read? How would having a header saying "IntelliJ" or "XCode" or "Visual Studio" make that list better? How would just adding a random link for some blog post about any of those help, if the list's author can't vouch for their validity?

It's overall just best to put in what you know, and leave the rest to PRs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great list !

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice list. Appreciate it. But I see there are a few amazing software books missing from the list such as:

\- Clean Code (by "Uncle Bob")) [[https://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook- Software-Craftsma...](https://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software- Craftsmanship/dp/0132350882/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1547741401&sr=8-1&keywords=clean+code)]

\- Design Patterns (by "Gang of 4") [[https://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns- Elements-Reusable-Obj...](https://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Elements- Reusable-Object- Oriented/dp/0201633612/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1547741422&sr=8-3&keywords=design+patterns)]

\- Introduction to Algorithms (by "CLRS") [[https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-3rd-MIT- Press...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-3rd-MIT- Press/dp/0262033844/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1547741480&sr=8-1&keywords=algorithm+clrs)]

<comment><USER13> A book about the design patterns is a good idea, the original book by then the gang of 4? I disagree, IMHO this book isn't well written, now the question is: is there a better book on this topic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Head first is a much better option IMO [https://www.amazon.com/Head-First- Design-Patterns-Brain-Frie...](https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Design- Patterns-Brain-Friendly/dp/0596007124)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Hourly. Helps you approximate your best hourly rate in your country - <AUTHOR> https://git-toni.gitlab.io/hourly/ <comment><AUTHOR> Future todos:

\- Add more countries ( msg me for one in particular!).

\- Add average healthcare costs by country.

\- Chart comparison of several countries at once.

</comment><comment><USER2> I enjoyed a lot the chart comparing taxation between countries :-)

I miss more countries, too ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks! It's just a small experiment for now. But I would like to certainly add more countries, cross-country comparisons, etc. What countries would you like covered for example? :)</comment></comment>


Tis the season for Grad School Advice - <AUTHOR> http://vonahn.blogspot.com/2009/12/advice-on-grad-school-applications.html

<comment><USER2> _To save all the kiddies from embarrassment and rejection (which typically implies you'll just end up making more money at some tech company)[...]_

I've never heard this one before. Usually the myth goes that people who go right into the workforce earn on average the same or slightly more than those who go into grad school. But what these myths don't take into account is how crucial timing is. I graduated from college in 2001 which just happened to be a terrible time to find a job. I was able to make ends meet for 2 years before finding a steady job, but I would have probably made out better going to grad school. Either way, I wouldn't have made any money.

<comment><USER3> Yes, you're right, 2001 was a tough year to graduate. That being said, von Ahn's focusing on PhD programs, where the time to finish may be as short as 3 years, but more likely is in the 5-7 range. While these programs do pay a stipend, if you stay in the program for the entire time (instead of dropping in, waiting out the recession, and then leaving), the total compensation over those 5-7 years is likely much less than you would make in industry if you'd gone to industry straight out, even taking timing into account.

One key thing is that a "great" EECS grad student stipend, say the one offered by the National Science Foundation fellowship, is (or was) $25K. Most tech salaries are 2x or 3x that or more. A lot of grad students make less. So if you made $0 for the first two years pursuing industry, then landed a job at $50K, you've made up those two years. (Not really, of course, due to tax issues and the fact you had to defer the money, many grad students make less, etc.)

Another key thing is that if you stay in a PhD program for the full 5-7 years, the economy may change radically around you. So if you stick with it, you forego the higher-paying jobs available at that time. Of course, you could always just drop out and start a company or something at that time...plenty of people do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From an anonymous comment on the blog post:

> I heard of one similar to #9. It said something like "If I were adCMUted to > CMU." I don't think that guy was adCMUted.

</comment><comment><USER5> The guide that basically walked me through the entire application process was also written by a CMU professor. It's a much drier read, but, if you're applying to Ph.D. programs in computer science, it's gold.

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't it a little late in the season for grad school advice? I know there are schools where the deadline has already passed, and even assuming you could get together an application for one of the ones that hasn't, it would be poor form to ask for a recommendation this late.</comment>


Show HN: A js library to create and manage highly customizable modal windows - <AUTHOR> https://madprops.github.io/Msg/ <comment><USER2> The "press escape to clear textbox and again to close the modal" example doesn't seem to be working for me (vivaldi 1.11.901.3 (64-bit) on Windows 10), it just closes the modal on the first press.

Will test other browsers.

Edit: Works in Chrome (59.0.3071.115) and Firefox (54.0.1), must just be a Vivaldi quirk - they're always breaking _something_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Works for me on Vivaldi 1.10.867.46 (Stable channel) (32-bit) (Windows)</comment></comment>


Isis have seized 'enough radioactive material to build their first WMD' - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isiss-dirty-bomb-jihadists-have-seized-enough-radioactive-material-to-build-their-first-wmd-10309220.html

<comment><USER2> Have they found the ones hidden in the desert in Iraq?</comment>


Optician Sans – A free font based on the historical eye charts - <AUTHOR> https://optician-sans.com/ <comment><USER2> Is it just me, or is the gaussian blur effect on the website a bit excessive / headache inducing?

<comment><USER3> Cover your right eye. Do you still have the problem? Now try the left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why anyone would want that. I'd imagine that the eye charts use characters that are intentionally close to each other, in order to better measure visual acuity. Just look at how similar the C and the O are, for example. This font seems like it would make text _harder_ to read, not easier.

<comment><USER5> Typography is has subjective aspects such as evoking the feeling of a particular aspect of design. Just as old western fonts, Art Deco type, and Baskerville; Optician Sans is a brilliant take on typography. A large number of people have glasses and at one point or another, we've carefully studied and read the letters on the eye charts, yet it's so obscure and not something people think about.

As far as the application is concerned, it can be used for perhaps for a optical company branding? The recognition factor is a huge asset in branding.

Legibility argument falls apart - otherwise we wouldn't have Zapfino and Bodoni. In certain situations, legibility takes a backseat over stylistic intentions. In other cases, yes you're right - I wouldn't want my blood test results to be misread. Another area where fonts can have devastating effects is say for example lack of a slashed 0 in nuclear missile launch codes. But we are in good hands with respect to typography and design for serious things - the Martin Baker EJECT seat handles in fighter jets don't use comic sans and they have bright yellow stripes for super fast visual recognition. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's interesting that "sans" seems more important to indicate something is a font, than indicate it has no serifs.

<comment><USER7> Like US soccer teams with "United" in their names.

<comment><USER8> or FC (and I'm an FC Dallas fan)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, but it is just all E's!

<comment><USER9> I invite you to do a pull request here: [https://github.com/eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee/eeeeeeee...](https://github.com/eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee/eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)

with only the E characters of the font. It would be a welcome addition.

<comment><USER10> alas it ees archived

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Curious if somebody compressed all existing font designs into a small latent space, using vector representation. It seems to me that fonts are quite similar (or can be clustered that way) with a few hard choices on shapes of characters like "a", "G", and weight, slant.

<comment><USER12> You may be interested in "computational typography"[1], "mathematical typograhy"[2], and "variable fonts"[3].

[1] [http://printingcode.runemadsen.com/lecture- typography/](http://printingcode.runemadsen.com/lecture-typography/) [2] PDF: [http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~millerpd/docs/501_Winter08/Kn...](http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~millerpd/docs/501_Winter08/Knuth79.pdf) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_fonts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_fonts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I enjoyed the mistake in the Alphabet. (-:

That licence almost certainly does not count as "free".

<comment><USER14> Haha, typo is fixed! And to clarify licensing, I've updated it to SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE.

<comment><USER13> Brill.

Sometimes WYXZ is a hidden clue in an alternate reality game. Sometimes it is just an QWERTY typing error. (-:

I hope that M. Krzywinski gave you some inspiration for lowercase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why are the last 3 letters in the alphabet ("Y X Z") out of order?

<comment><USER16> It seems to be a mistake. The image files are named as being characters 25 and 24 correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some background on the history of eye charts: [https://ilovetypography.com/2015/07/12/what-are-optotypes- ey...](https://ilovetypography.com/2015/07/12/what-are-optotypes-eye-charts- fonts/)

(Found via [http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/snellen-optotype- font/](http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/snellen-optotype-font/), when searching for a Snellen font)

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't enjoy reading anything using the lowercase letters in M. Krzywinski's fonts. (-:

I see that xe went back to the original "e" shape in July 2017.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >"LICENSING Feel free to use this typeface on your website, print, startup or organisation. But don't be a jerk and distribute or sell the typeface as if it was your own. A link back to this site from your website would be really much appreciated! And let us know if you use this typeface for a project you think we should know about."

this is not a license, people, please just stick the CC license of your choice on it or something.

<comment><USER19> In this case, though, it's likely the creators would be more than receptive to giving you a legitimate CC-BY license if you ask. They're likely just not familiar with the CC-BY details. Rather than shaming their work for it, let's enjoy it with the understanding that there are humans in the loop with the flexibility to offer bespoke licensing, and licensing will be sorted out if it needs to be.

<comment><USER5> This is not excusable when you're putting out the work and claiming it to be free to use and later some chap uses it, they get sued because the wording was vague. There is some level of professionalism and ethics that is required to avoid nasty situations. Criticism of their wording, lack of license and the need for adopting existing licenses (don't roll your own license if possible) is valid.

"Rather than shaming their work for it,.." \- No one is shaming their work. We are talking about the licensing terms. I love the font concept and I think its brilliant.

<comment><USER20> The creators are obviously not interested in suing some chap for using the font unless he claims it's his own font. And even then, the poorly worded license would make suing harder, not easier.

People should be able to share their work under common-sense terms without being sucked into Kafka's swirling cesspool of legalese and bureaucracy. The demonic inhabitants of that dimension can just... choose not to use it.

<comment><USER21> Regardless, any legal department worth its salt will avoid touching this wording of a license with a ten foot pole. Which means that only hobbyist will use it.

It would be great if businesses worked on common sense and honor, but that's not the world we're living in.

<comment><USER20> The legal department can give advice, but they can't stop the company from using it anyway. So just ask the legal department: Realistically, how likely are we to be sued if we use this font according to the most obvious interpretation of the license as written? (Free to use, but don't take credit for it.) Listen to the answer, and then apply common sense.

<comment><USER22> It's policy at most companies to terminate employees who act against the express advice of legal department on legal matters (especially where a low- value asset like a font can trigger high-risk legal exposure). In many companies, that would even be considered a for-cause termination, meaning no severance.

So think about it this way: is it worth risking your career over a silly font? Because common sense in this situation is to just do what Legal says.

<comment><USER20> So don't use it. Just be clear that it's a self-imposed limitation based on irrational fantasies and there is little to no actual risk. Back on Earth, the font's creators clearly gave permission to use it under one simple condition that would be hard to violate. There's more risk of being sued for using GPL software because it's easier to violate.

If the font's creators do turn out to be loonies and start filing frivolous lawsuits, that's an ever-present (small) risk regardless of the license.

<comment><USER22> But they didn't give "clearly give permission" (in the original release). Because they also said "don't be a dick about it" which is an incredibly vague restriction. Is that limited to claiming ownership of the font? Does that include using it in military applications? What about criminals?

At any rate, this point is moot since they re-licensed it under a real license by the time I responded to your comment.

<comment><USER20> It was already just as "real" as any license, and I'm disappointed that they caved to the ridiculous people, but it just validates my point that they were in fact giving permission to use it. The new license is more restrictive about sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like it. It would have been nice to include at least the full set of ascii char glyphs. It seems to be missing a few basic chars such as tilde, gt and lt.[1]

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/di6oHxV.png](https://i.imgur.com/di6oHxV.png)

<comment><USER14> You're right, it's missing some basic characters. Thinking about releasing it open source to see if anything would like to contribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Odd that the site does not use the font they are proclaiming is better.

<comment><USER25> It's better for eye charts, not running copy on websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One thing I learned from this link is the traditional eye exam charts are from a set of only 10 characters. Interesting, good to know.

</comment><comment><USER27> Looks beautiful, I'm glad I've found this.

Nevertheless I've been actually click-baited by the post title thinking it's a font designed for reading efficiency based on eye movement analysis.

What are some fonts actually made to help you read faster, easier and comprehend more?

<comment><USER28> This one appeared on hn some time ago:

[https://sansforgetica.rmit/](https://sansforgetica.rmit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> A typography site that breaks it's main headline on mobile is a bit too much carelessness in my book.

[https://imgur.com/5qcmUg1](https://imgur.com/5qcmUg1)

<comment><USER14> Woops! Fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> After the fourth or fifth tine I'm now realizing that great fonts are the most work-life enhancing thing I've interacted with on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER31> The G looks exactly like the Google logo.

<comment><USER14> Geometric G = Google. Basically. You can always use the alternative G glyph included in the font!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wish they had a monospace version. Doesn't work well as a terminator font, I tried. heh.

<comment><USER14> Great idea! Maybe We'll make that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Looks like a great alternative to Microgramma and its cousins.

</comment><comment><USER34> Finally... I can cheat on my eye exams and get a good grade

Edit: This font is pretty great imo</comment>


Ask HN: How to design a reputation-system like Stack Overflow? - <AUTHOR>

Suggest the best way to design a "fair" reputation system. (Ex: StackOverflow, HackerNews(karma)) Support your answer with a mathematical reasoning!<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> Mathematical reasoning? Sounds like one of _those_ interview questions. How about ↑ == ++rep and ↓ == --rep ?</comment>