Introducing Ixoth, Siri's little helper. Webhooks for Siri - <AUTHOR> http://ixoth.com

<comment><USER2> Good idea. Though I don't have Siri so I have no use for it at the time…

It feels that it should work like <http://ifttt.com> with recipes and pre- defined actions rather than having to code and host each webhook manually.

The difficult thing is that you don't get to benefit from Siri's ability to understand the meaning rather than the specific phrase said. Which means you either have to have your own engine or have a fairly specific list of commands for each webhook.

edit: (granted I understand this is a very early version) the thing with having to write your own code is that right now you're just removing one step from me doing it myself. I could get my own Twilio number, and do the sorting by keyword myself before running the different scripts.

edit: also, see <http://tyranotext.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> This uses SMS right? Isn't that a bit costly?

Could you do that same with email for instance?

It's a great idea all in all. Lot's of companies will be looking for a way to integrate with Siri, and this approach seems quite fair.

I see possible uses:

Messaging with your dry cleaner. "Siri, ask My Dry Cleaner when my dry cleaning will be done" Send email/sms to contact with name "My Dry Cleaner" with text "when will my dry cleaning be done". Get email/sms back with date and time

Messaging with your TV [schedule]. "Siri, ask My TV if [enter name of show] is running tonight" Get sms/email back from your TV :)

This will all need natural language parsing on the backend though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's using SMS. This will be a paid service.

I am really excited to see the use cases here, and to become a "platform" of sorts to build on top of.

<comment><USER4> Just curious, what sort of SMS backend/API are you using to accept and deliver messages?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curses. Had this same idea the day Siri came out but no time to execute. Good job! Interested to see how people put this to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Jeremy! If you have ideas related to it I'd love to see how I can help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised you named a product designed to be spoken by name something so unpronounceable.

<comment><USER2> I agree that the name is not easy but the good news is that you can call it whatever you want since Siri just sends a text to the contact you're telling it to, and you can call the Ixoth contact something easier to pronounce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure why this is Siri specific. I can send text messages using my voice with Android as well. Maybe I'm missing something, but this looks like a service that interacts via SMS instead of anything specific to Siri. I do like the concept of this service and I can think of many uses for it.</comment>


The Story Behind the Cover for the Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen - <AUTHOR> http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4605 <comment><USER2> I met Bunnie while living in Shenzhen a few months ago. His knowledge of the electronics supply chain in the city was immense and he gave a lot of useful tips on what to look for and ways that vendors could screw you over. If you are looking into electronics manufacturing, there is no way you don't end up in Shenzhen at some point.

My personal opinion of the city is stay away when you are still in the early prototyping phase and don't have a MVP yet. Ordering from Digikey is way more reliable (though more expensive) then walking for hours searching for the right vendor in the Shenzhen markets. Once you have a functioning prototype, Shenzhen is great for finding similar IC's for much cheaper and streaminglining your supply chain and figuring out your manufacturing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Given bunnie's knowledge, I had expected the cover to be an usable circuit boards which you just had to solder in through-hole components and you'd have a working book cover - maybe via a very thin PCB on the "back side" of the cover ;)

Seriously, it looks very nice and I hope to get my hands on it soon!

</comment><comment><USER4> >As an engineer, I disliked how over-simplified the design was. There really should be bypass capacitors around the digital components. And SATA requires series DC blocking caps.

Beautiful.</comment>


Ask HN: GPG. NaCl. NSA. Thoughts? - <AUTHOR>

We now have a better idea what the NSA can and can't do. It seems they have ways to compromise endpoints, and have poisoned algorithms and implementation they have a hand in. GPG is the old standby. NaCl is a popular outsider. I do not know, at this time, however, of any easy integration of NaCl into an email client. Do any of you have thoughts on how to go about encryption for emails and other communications in the modern era? <comment><USER2> Let's be clear...there is precisely nothing that has been revealed that indicates that the NSA has some ahead of the curve ability to compromise underlying cryptographic technology (see: [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/the_nsa_is_bre...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/the_nsa_is_brea.html)). This is social engineering...they got the companies involved to backdoor their own products. And if they own your end points...well...

All I can think of is only use open code on open hardware (including the disk drives) done by folks whom the US or other cooperating governments don't have leverage against (psst...no, the answer is not OpenBSD). I don't think that exists.

<comment><USER3> Sorry - you are saying that there is no answer? Or that there is but it is not openBSD (and why not openBsD?)

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's an answer in that there is no answer to backdoored hardware. Someone recently demonstrated how to reprogram the controller on hard disks (they're ARM based SoCs) to monitor/modify the data. No one is going to come up with an alternative open source hard drive.

As to software, whenever the topic comes up, someone shouts out "OpenBSD!". Unfortunately, it's by no means beyond US pressure, at least at the individual developer level. The whole "FBI IPSec backdoor" fiasco a couple of years ago is tacit acknowledgement by the OpenBSD core that such a thing is possible.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CutEm for iOS – makes your video without pauses - <AUTHOR> http://laconiatrimvideo.com <comment><USER2> Some sort of sample video showing what it actually does would be ideal

<comment><AUTHOR> your right! here some promo [https://youtu.be/nTboiPfpc70](https://youtu.be/nTboiPfpc70)</comment></comment>


Why it's all about # of iterations for startups - <AUTHOR> http://cyclin.posterous.com/why-its-all-about-of-iterations-for-startups

<comment><USER2> Funny, once I have the assumptions written down, I've found it's pretty easy to test them. For instance, I looked into a "turbo tax for personal bankruptcy" idea, and one assumption was "people considering bankruptcy have an internet connection". That was easy to test - when I talked to my target market, I just asked them about their internet connection. Turns out that's their lifeline to the world and they would never give it up - I got the impression they'd practically starve before turning off their internet connection.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Chris point of writing down your assumption and verify against it is really important to find your path to success. To summarize ones assumption is not that hard. I found that the real challenge is in analyzing and making the right conclusion against the assumption made.

</comment><comment><USER3> good post, re spending $1k to test out the hypothesis....the challenge for me as a first time entrepreneur has been exactly where to place that first (or only) $1k. do i get some mockup work done to show potential partners/investors how it will look? ...build some foundations of the initial code (paying someone to do that)? agreed to invest a little and test the idea, i think the challenge for me is what is the most productive first step in doing so.</comment>


Do atoms ever touch each other? (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/04/16/do-atoms-ever-actually-touch-each-other/ <comment><USER2> > If "touching" is taken to mean that two atoms reside in the exact same > location, then two atoms never touch at room temperature because of the > Pauli exclusion principle. The Pauli exclusion principle is what keeps all > the atoms in our body from collapsing into one point. Interestingly, at very > low temperatures, certain atoms can be coaxed into the exact same location. > The result is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate.

This is a bit of a weird explanation, since the Fermionic matter (where the Pauli exclusion principle applies) and Bosonic matter (that can form Bose- Einstein condensates) are polar opposites.

Sure the Pauli exclusion principle is at least partially responsible for keeping electrons apart, but I'd be willing to wager that the electromagnetic force is the main thing keeping matter apart in normal situations. This _can_ break down, for instance in neutron stars, but those situations are hardly normal.</comment>


Travel Delay Tracker - <AUTHOR>

A while ago someone posted a link to their website which predicted airport delays long before the airlines would tell us.  Does anyone have a link to that site to help with the thanksgiving rush? <comment><USER2> <http://www.flightcaster.com/></comment>


Houston: what are the long-term consequences? - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/08/houston-what-are-the-long-term.html <comment><USER2> Recommended reading: _Forty Signs of Rain_ by Kim Stanley Robinson, plus the two other books in that trilogy: _Fifty Degrees Below_ ; _Sixty Days and Counting_.

</comment><comment><USER3> The first comments are overly dramatic. 27 and 28 are getting realistic. Currently it's even less damage than Allison, even if the water flow and volume is much higher. The level is not yet as high.

<comment><USER4> Less damage than Allison?????? I lived through Allison and currently going through Harvey. There is absolutely no comparison. In Allison it was localized destruction. With Harvey, every area of the city ( and well beyond of course ) has incredible damage.

In other words, with Harvey, all the same places have damage as Allison, plus many more.

Your comment just does not make sense on any level.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your favourite non tech-related IRC channel? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> ##tea on freenode

</comment><comment><USER3> im on an AA type channel so I don't do drugs / drink</comment>


Existing drug may downgrade Covid threat to common cold level – Jerusalem study - <AUTHOR> https://www.timesofisrael.com/existing-drug-may-downgrade-covid-threat-to-common-cold-level-jerusalem-study/ <comment><USER2> _An existing medicine can "downgrade" the danger-level of coronavirus to that of a common cold, a Jerusalem researcher is claiming, after testing it on --- > infected human tissue. <\---_

This is the cell culture equivalent of the "... in rats" meme</comment>


Bulmaswatch – Free themes for Bulma - <AUTHOR> https://jenil.github.io/bulmaswatch/ <comment><USER2> Bulma Swatch is great.

Shameless plug for [https://bulmathemes.com](https://bulmathemes.com) as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep! good stuff right there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Going to be a while before someone rips Bulma + Vue out of my hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> Buefy? Really nice together!</comment></comment>


Why there were no fundamental discoveries in physics since the quarks in 1968? - <AUTHOR> Why was the first half of the last century full of fundamental discoveries in physics like the photoelectric effect, Quantum physics, Nature of light etc, but no significant discoveries are made since the 60s ? Did we become so obsessed with building new tech and optimizing the existing ones to the extent that we forgot about fundamentals? <comment><USER2> > Why there were no fundamental discoveries in physics since the quarks in > 1968?

There have been; 1968 was the first physical evidence supporting quarks, but the top quark wasn't observed until 1995.

That's kind of important, because a _lot_ of effort between 1968 and 1995 went into fleshing out the theory around the quark model and confirming it, including hunting down the theorized ones not yet observed. Heck, the six quark model wasn't even _proposed_ until the 1970s, much less confirmed.

Now, if you want to revise the question to "since 1995"...

Then we'll talk about the Higgs boson, theorized in 1964 (just like the original quarks) but confirmed in 2012.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you are making the mistake of assuming that there is always something more fundamental to discover. It could be that we have now discovered all the pieces of the puzzle, all the building blocks are now known about. Maybe the LHC has not discovered anything new, apart from confirming the Higgs, because there is nothing more to be found.

Maybe the issue that is that we cannot work out the theory, the equations that correctly describe it all properly. Maybe dark energy and dark matter and not actually 'other stuff' but just an indication that there are errors in our theories. Fix the theory and the 'other stuff' disappears. Quantum physics and General Relativity need to be combined at some point and doing so may resolve everything! Or it could simply be that human intelligence is not capable of finding the solution. In the same way a dog is never going to understand calculus, maybe you need an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000 to solve physics.

<comment><USER4> > Or it could simply be that human intelligence is not capable of finding the > solution. In the same way a dog is never going to understand calculus, maybe > you need an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000 to solve physics.

In philosophy, this is called cognitive closure. It's possible that we humans are hitting some "edge" just like, in your example, you mentioned that a dog may never grasp calculus. To my knowledge, I'm not sure if there's a way to scientifically test this.

<comment><USER5> Turing disproved this. If the universe is mathematical, we can understand it.

<comment><USER6> Only if you assume unlimited compute time. For instance, if the equations that describe the universe are a million lines long (as opposed to Tegmark's "should fit on a T-shirt" criteria) then it could take an impossibly long time to discover them.

<comment><USER5> That's not how scientific discovery works. We aren't handed a description that might have fractal complexity, but rather we invent models to describe it. Even if reality is infinitely complex, out descriptions need not be. And it's well established that our approximate models can be vastly simpler than underlying reality.

<comment><USER6> We have, today, approximate models that are simple. But they're not quite exact for things like quantum gravity. If you want an exact model, it is presumably longer. Presumably, because smart people have looked for a long time for simple models that are more accurate and haven't found one.

If the exact model is only moderately long, then we (or a Turing machine) can discover and simulate it. But it's at least conceivable that the shortest- possible exact description of physics is extremely long.

<comment><USER5> The issue is more of data availability. Quantum gravity is hard to pin down because the differences are not observable at energies we can test or at cosmic scales we can measure. If we had a probe skirting the event horizon of a black hope the answer might be obvious. But we don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My theory is that after a few generations we've treated Science as a truth, and not a process. Science should be displacing existing science. There are likely some things that we have understood wrong, but nobody is out there trying to actively disprove what we know of physics. Nobody can get funded trying alternative hypotheses that explain the same phenomena.

This might also be because there are no new phenomena to explain. There's a lot of resistance to observing new and old phenomena because that can "disprove science", as if there's some war between science and some kind of alternative. For example, ghosts have been observed by millions, but instead of finding some solid hypotheses for these, we dismiss them as some kind of mental illness in observers. Ghost hunters use electrical signals or some similar sensors, and we dismiss them too, instead of trying to find out what is causing these signals.

A lot of scientific work still happens in fields like psychology/cognitive science, or medicine, which people intuitively feel are off. But little in physics.

<comment><USER8> > _but nobody is out there trying to actively disprove what we know of > physics._

You get a Nobel when you disprove what we know of physics, so it is an interesting research topic. Currently the main problem in particle physics is that everything is working too well, so nobody know where too look to find a new theoretical result.

A few years ago many people was thinking that the neutrino was a Majorana particle (in particular, in implies that the neutrino and the antineutrino are the same particle). I didn't like that idea too much [1], and luckily the experiments failed and that theory is slowly fading [2].

More recently, some other people expected that the next step was supersymmetry (the electron is a fermion, and the supersymmetry says that has a heavy version that is a boson). I liked it [1], but I think the experiments are also not favorable [2].

> _There 's a lot of resistance to observing new and old phenomena because > that can "disprove science"_

No. The LHC is working, and making observations and redoing the old calculations. Sometimes because there are new combinations of particles that nobody had seen before, sometimes because they must give some calculations to the graduate students so they can publish something.

> _My theory is that after a few generations we 've treated Science as a > truth, and not a process._

In other comments in internet discussions I sometime get this feeling too. But don't confuse that with the attitude of the people doing research.

[1] I'm not an expert in this area, I only took a few courses in particle physics. It's more like a coffee time discussion level opinion.

[2] But you never know if experiments at higher energy will revert the trend and have results that agree with the theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This idea is circulating in the web, but it's just cherrypicking what important and discover means to create a storm in a teacup. The main problem is that the experiments are very expensive and the pipeline from the theoretical idea to the experimental confirmation has become too long. So you must wait a few decades to see which of the weird current theories is the correct one.

Note that the bottom quark were discovered in 1974, and everybody expected to see the top quark then, but it was confirmed in 1995. So that push the dates at least 10 years or more.

The neutrino oscillation was discovered in 2001, and it forces a change in the "Standard model" to add mass to the neutrinos. Depending on how you count, this may reduce a few decades the time of no new things.

This year there was an announcement of a possible fourth neutrino, it's unconfirmed because they have only 4.5 sigmas, but it is very promising.</comment>


Show HN: Teamodoro, pomodoro timer for teams - <AUTHOR> http://teamodoro.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> We built Teamodoro because we figured out that the Pomodoro techniques works well for individuals but not so much for a team. A team willing to use this technique must synchronize in order to prevent interruptions. Interruptions kill productivity and require a significant recovery period.

I'd love to get some feedback.</comment>


Show HN: JavaScript spreadsheet web component (HTML/DOM) – New version - <AUTHOR> https://bossanova.uk/jexcel <comment><USER2> Aaahhhh, this is something I was looking for. Thanks a ton.

From the GitHub issues, looks like the team is little hesitant to support JSON input support by default, which I think might lead to a negative effect (especially in the coming years, APIS EVERYWHERE) with someone forking and supporting the native JSON.</comment>


Former Skype, Rackspace Engineers Back HybridCluster in $1M Funding Round - <AUTHOR> http://www.hybridcluster.com/blog/press-releases/self-healing-cloud-technology-receives-1-million-investment/

<comment><AUTHOR> Launching our startup today... we raised $1m and are releasing 2.0 of our product.

HybridCluster 2.0 is an integrated suite of storage, replication and web clustering software, and a drop-in replacement for the end-user control panel, too. Our mission is to make the lives of cloud service providers, hosting companies and sysadmins easier through smarter software — so that you can get a good night's sleep.

Would love to get HN's take on this! Any questions give me a shout...

Cheers, Luke Marsden - CEO, HybridCluster

<comment><USER2> What's hybrid about it? And what happened to version 1.0?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've built a bunch of replication and proxying tech into it which enables "hybrid cloud" i.e. cross region/data center deployments of LAMP apps.

<http://www.hybridcluster.com/product/system-overview/> has a neat diagram.

1.x has been in operation among hosting companies and web agencies for over a year. 2.0 rocks a lot more though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Look pretty cool.

Is this is using LXC Containers ? Are you using MySQL Proxy for in awesome proxy?

Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> We're using FreeBSD jails, actually - and AwesomeProxy contains a custom implementation of the MySQL binary protocol. I tried MySQL proxy but it didn't cut it - as it doesn't allow you to fake MySQL authentication and proxy to a different server based on database/username.

Would you like to try it? You can spin it up on EC2 with just your API keys... sign up for the trial at <http://www.hybridcluster.com/product/trial> and I'll let you in!</comment></comment>


Idris 2 version 0.2.1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.idris-lang.org/idris-2-version-021-released.html <comment><USER2> Differences beteen Idris 1 and 2: [1]

There are a bunch of new features (scroll down to that in the doc) but the main thing seems to be moving to QTT (seems similar in theme to the bicolored calculus of constructions?) which allows explicit handling of erasure. Nice to see this as its the logical next step and consitent with Edwin Brady's larger project of making dependent types practical.

Note also the default target is Chez Scheme (Racket and Gambit supported) instead of C because its faster. Wouldn't it be funny to port it to Chicken?

[1]. [https://idris2.readthedocs.io/en/latest/updates/updates.html](https://idris2.readthedocs.io/en/latest/updates/updates.html)

<comment><USER3> > Note also the default target is Chez Scheme (Racket and Gambit supported) > instead of C (which it still supports) because its faster.

Idris 2 currently doesn't have C code generator. But you can still use external shared libraries implemented in C

> Wouldn't it be funny to port it to Chicken?

Idris 2 used to have Chicken CG :) but it was then removed due to the maintenance burden

<comment><USER2> Woops, misread that, edited my comment. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quantitative types would have caught so many of my bugs over the years. I can't wait for this to become mainstream!

<comment><USER5> There is a Rust RFC for extending Rust's const generics to dependent types.

Part 0 (the minimal const generics) might be stabilized in the near future. Parts 1-3 would hopefully be explored next. Fully dependent types are introduced in part 3: [https://github.com/ticki/rfcs/blob/pi-types- ext-2/text/0000-...](https://github.com/ticki/rfcs/blob/pi-types- ext-2/text/0000-fully-dependent-pi-types.md)

<comment><USER6> These RFCs were closed [https://github.com/rust- lang/rfcs/issues/1930](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/issues/1930)

In favor of [https://github.com/rust- lang/rfcs/pull/2000](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/2000)

No other designs have been accepted to extend this yet. We're still implementing what was already accepted!

<comment><USER5> > These RFCs were closed

Can be reopened after minimal const generics implementation is finished (like the post discussing closure suggests) which it almost is.

> In favor of [https://github.com/rust- > lang/rfcs/pull/2000](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/2000)

That's the minimal const generics RFC.

> No other designs have been accepted to extend this yet.

A design does not need to be accepted for exploration about such a design to start.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that we're really at odds here, I think I'm just more conservative when representing the status of the feature than you are. It's already taken over three years for the minimal version of the feature, and the author of the PI types trilogy RFCs has quit open source entirely. I just don't want to give the impression that this is happening any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good stuff! Thanks to all contributors, I'll have to start porting my libraries :p

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm waiting for someone to update Brew which is currently at 1.3. Installing 2.0 is currently a bit of a faff.

<comment><USER9> idris2 is its own package on brew (and should be everywhere, idris and idris2 doesn't share any code) and there should be no problems installing them in parallel.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. I'd assumed idris2 would replace idris so I didn't try searching for anything else. I've just grabbed it, thanks very much for the tip.</comment></comment></comment>


Creating the future of mobile with Firefox OS – resources, docs and more - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/10/creating-the-future-of-mobile-with-firefox-os/

<comment><USER2> I like the idea of Firefox tablets running this, but not so sure about telephony. Not that it isn't an awesome or commendable effort, it's just going to be tough to succeed where the likes of WebOS failed. A differentiator would be going after lower end tablets and more WiFi centric devices. Same deal with Opera. Like the Chromebooks, but in tablet form.

</comment><comment><USER3> Still no Native code options? No thank you...

Javascript is great for many applications, but multimedia and games are not in this case.

Moreover, I don't see what Firefox OS brings that Android cannot do...

<comment><USER4> People keep complaining about games, which is funny because it is my job to make games using HTML5 and javascript.

No it is not good enough to produce an AAA title -- but those are far from the entire market.

<comment><USER5> Are you listening to yourself? Can you imagine a "smartphone" mobile platform without AAA game titles?

I'm assuming they will have some sort of NDK?

Neat project none the less!

<comment><USER6> _Can you imagine a "smartphone" mobile platform without AAA game titles?_

Absolutely. When the iPhone came out it had no AAA game titles- the major publishers held off until they saw what the market was like. I remember my first purchase (and addiction) being some sort of tank-shooting game that was little more than a glorified QBasic Gorillas.

Don't get me wrong, they'd need AAA games eventually, but everything has to start somewhere.

<comment><USER7> Everything has to start somewhere. Unfortunately, this starting point has moved since the iPhone first came out. Microsoft learned this with Windows Phone; there is reasonable (but low) adoption, unfortunately due to missing features that developers and users consider to be standard, the ecosystem is still missing a few apps and some of the existing apps are/were (things have improved a little since 7.5) lower-featured than those same apps on other platforms. Windows Phone 7 would have been the best thing ever invented if it was released in 2007. Firefox OS would be as well. Windows 95 would have been magic when it was released in 1985.

Everything has to start somewhere. But where it ends up is highly dependent on how far it was when it was released.

<comment><USER6> True, but being the open project it is, Firefox OS doesn't have the same kind of market pressure that WP, for example, does. They haven't even launched (in any consumer-facing sense), so it might be a little early to judge the platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am waiting for a 'boot to servo'.... B2S

</comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this basically what webOS was? Now that it's OSS, why not piggy back off what they've already done?

<comment><USER10> Why throw away over a year's worth of work?

<comment><USER9> I guess it depends on how far that work has come--if what they have after a year is as good or better than webOS then OK, but if not, webOS worked pretty well for all its rough edges.

I guess it pains me for two reasons--I'm a big webOS fan (still use an old Pre 2), and I hate seeing smart developers spending time reinventing the wheel. Though in this case nobody could have predicted the path webOS would have taken so it's not like Mozilla had a choice until very recently.

<comment><USER10> Firefox OS uses the same code base as desktop Firefox, so they don't have to hire all new developers to work on a project that won't integrate with their main product at all. Just makes absolutely no sense for them to adopt WebOS. WebOS never had the same goals as Firefox OS, for one, their goal was simply to use a platform that many devs are already familiar with and using, as a way to gain adoption. It didn't work; turns out devs go where the users are, not where their skills are.

<comment><USER11> WebOS didn't fail due to its web roots; it failed due to lackluster hardware, being late to market, and an untimely power shift at HP. Users not caring about the underlying technology cuts both ways; with better marketing and a couple more years of iteration, it could have become a real contender.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can Uber ever be profitable? Yes. Here's how - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/can-uber-ever-be-profitable-yes-2019-8 <comment><USER2> This article argues that Uber is a good business because it did not lose as much money as stated in the profit and loss statement and it's a growing business. It was really 1.6 not 5.2 billion.

The argument is stupid. Whatever the loss was it is still a large loss. Why invest in a company that does not have a clear way to profit and keeps on losing money?

I think they might eventually find a profitable business model but it will be a much smaller luxury market above public transportation and taxies. But at this point, they are still searching for a profit. How is this a good investment?

<comment><USER3> I don't understand how they're losing so much money. Their product is a mobile app and their risk is nearly zero since they don't pay out until they get paid.

Does it really cost that much to do marketing for a brand that pretty much everyone is familiar with? Because that seems like the main expense other than lawsuits and lobbying to get access to more markets, and they already seen to be available in most places.

I must be missing something but because I cannot understand how they could possibly be losing money. My guess is that they're spending a ton on research that doesn't really need to be done by them. Let other companies figure out self driving cars and help drivers leverage that in regions that allow it.

<comment><USER4> They are paying a percentage of EACH trip, I think it's in the ~30% range so they are more affordable.

And then yeah, they have a BIG team and also spend a lot in the autonomous technology which is their future... I don't Think at this level Marketing is really a big percentage of the overall...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After watching the Tesla autonomy day video I'm bearish on Uber et al.

Source: [https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE](https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE)</comment>


Laziness Does Not Exist but unseen barriers do - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dr_eprice/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01 <comment><AUTHOR> Although I posted this article (it was referenced in a comment in another thread and didn't get much discussion the first time), I don't necessarily agree with with all the author's assertions.

In particular, the author seems to extrapolate all of humanity from college students. I'm not convinced that anecdotal evidence, from a sample that's highly likely to be motivated to begin with, is enough to conclude the non- existence of laziness. [1]

I did, however, appreciate the alternate perspective, which may be particularly applicable here on HN, in our professional lives, another area where the selection is more likely to be biased toward those who are highly likely to be motivated, in which case laziness is less likely to be the explanation for inaction.

[1] At least for certain definitions of laziness that include, for example, a preference for "fun" such as sitting on the couch playing video games or watching tv over "work" such as washing dishes or mowing the lawn.

</comment><comment><USER2> Wish I had this professor in college. I had one final exam where due to undiagnosed ADHD I wasn't listening when they announced they had moved the location of the final, so when I showed up to take it, nobody was there. I was not allowed to take the test later. So I flunked out of school and blamed myself, felt like a useless loser, suicidal, for years.

<comment><USER3> I think the time pressure element of learning is silly. Is the purpose of an exam to test learning speed or understanding of the material? If the former, why not have a specific test for it, as opposed to using a test of understanding of arbitrary material as a proxy? If the latter, why can't you pay to take the test at a later date? Why should it matter how long it took you to learn if your results are up to scratch in the end? Thank god life gives us a chance to accomplish things at our own pace!

<comment><USER4> I sympathize with your view, but I think the time pressure is a very valid thing to be using.

If we view higher education as being more about learning how to learn, rather than simply mastering a set of facts, we have to have limited time resources to measure how effectively a student learns.

In life, business, etc. we are almost always under time pressure. These tasks often include learning something - new facts, new concepts, new context. People who can make better decisions, produce higher quality results, etc. in limited time are precious. The time element of study time/test time is effective at measuring that.

<comment><USER3> Which is fine, but completely denying someone the chance to get any type of qualification whatsoever due to a single event seems very harsh. There is precedent of a sort for softening assessment, in that here in the UK the introduction of GCSEs swung assessment toward coursework rather than exams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Considering laziness a vice in itself is highly silly considering its inherit virtue in labor reduction and innovation - it just requires some hard work to do so. Digging a canal despite being hard work is inherently a lazy way to spare future labor. As any familiar with algorithms knows laziness is itself a strategy.

</comment><comment><USER6> I came here to explain that laziness does in fact exist, but eh whatever

</comment><comment><USER7> It's easy for people whom work "hard" to unreasonably and ignorantly prejudge others to "get a job," when there's various individuals whom have invisible disabilities: can't get along with other people, understand or perform traditional work. Some also can't perform useful work because either accommodations would be costly/extreme or they have debilitating socio- or psychological conditions like psychosis, bad memories or are too kinematically-slow.

It's even worse that in the US, Social Security disability is focused mainly on physical disabilities and randomly excludes certain social/mental imparements due to a patchwork of dumb laws. As such, people in social services are often unilaterally-declared (Abled-Bodied Adult Without Dependents) ABAWD, and have their food (SNAP) and other benefits withdrawn without mandatory participation in programs that basically ignore and discount the reasons why they got there in the first place. In California, for example, SNAP goes away for ABAWD's for 9 months out of the year beginning September 1, 2018. IOW, penniless homeless people are having their food benefits cut off for most of the year if they're randomly assigned this status.

This is what "falling between the cracks" looks like.

<comment><USER8> I knocked myself out when I was 17 years old, don't remember two weeks... I used to think I mostly recovered from that head injury, but I've recently realized that it left me rather non-functional. I'm making progress, but I guess I'm "invisibly disabled", in certain ways. Thanks for that description.

I took to taxi driving because of the flexibility: no direct supervision, breaks whenever I wanted, etc. I get nerve pain, so breaks were necessary. I was perfectly happy working 12-hour shifts, though...

> It's even worse that in the US, Social Security disability is focused mainly > on physical disabilities and randomly excludes certain social/mental > imparements due to a patchwork of dumb laws. As such, people in social > services are often unilaterally-declared (Abled-Bodied Adult Without > Dependents) ABAWD, and have their food (SNAP) and other benefits withdrawn > without mandatory participation in programs that basically ignore and > discount the reasons why they got there in the first place.

America is very much "sink or swim". The politicians don't appreciate that sometimes people need floaters to keep their head above water, while they figure out how to get the concrete block off their feet...</comment></comment>


Reverse Engineering with LD_PRELOAD - <AUTHOR> http://securityvulns.com/articles/reveng/

<comment><USER2> I did this back in the day to work around flexLM for maple among other packages. It's a very useful technique, and fun to do to boot.</comment>


What It's Like to Be Noam Chomsky's Assistant - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/What-Its-Like-to-Be-Noam/234667 <comment><USER3> I cannot say that I don't understand why this is being upvoted: Chomsky is a significant person and quite liked on HN. But all these joyous comments make me sigh. Because, really, there's nothing informative here, at all. This piece doesn't answer question "what it's like to be Noam Chomsky's assistant" or any other questions for that matter. She doesn't tell what exactly she does and why her position is needed at all, portraying herself like a very busy nanny for a childish genius.

This reminds all these interviews after someone significant dies, given by someone insignificant who knew him in person. Except in this case significant person is still alive. The only reason why it's read and liked is the name in the headline.

<comment><USER4> Reminds me of this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VTxYQL2SbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VTxYQL2SbA) \- (Fall Out Boy - Uma Thurman)

If only this article was accompanied by an awesome song, it would be interesting to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favorite line _I then watched him do something I've seen a thousand times since: a subtle shift as Noam Chomsky's mind joined his body from a faraway place, and he arrived in full._

</comment><comment><USER6> I had the good fortune to study with Chomsky as an undergraduate in the early 90's and can confirm much of what the article says. To me he was always kind, accessible and warm, even though I was not a particularly promising student.

</comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone seem "Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?" by the same author?

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1817287](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1817287)

<comment><USER8> Yes, I enjoyed it very much. (Any questions I can help answer?)

The author's different though: Michel Gondry, well known for his music videos and films.

<comment><USER7> Oh, I'm sorry, she just stars in it.

I was just wondering if HN folks recommend it, I'm considering taking a look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is amazing:

 _I have no idea how Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G character sneaked through my gate to ask Noam outrageous things like, "How many words does you know?" and "What is some of them?" I do remember that Noam came to me afterward looking dazed. "No more men in gold suits," he said, sighing._

<comment><USER10> I always thought he was in on the joke, even funnier that he wasn't.

<comment><USER11> Probably he knew and the "No more men in gold suits" line was a joke

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I consider Noam Chomsky one of the smartest person on Earth and his assistant obviously has to be as well, to keep up with him. Really excellent read.

</comment><comment><USER13> be able to recite conversations from 50 years ago seems pretty amazing - <USER2> must have photographic memory

<comment><USER14> People also remember things that never happened. For example, eye witness testimonials.

I used to think I could recall conversations, but how do I know they actually happened?

<comment><USER15> > I used to think I could recall conversations, but how do I know they > actually happened?

That seems trivial to verify; just record details about all conversations you have with everyone. I have been doing this since 2009. I have a 5 MB yaml file with details of every conversations (mostly tags), and I might have an above- average memory but yeah I definitely forget things .... (and sometimes I get some of the details wrong even if a conversation happened just minutes ago).

Another way to verify (to yourself only) is to writeup your memory of a conversation, PGP sign it, hash it, give the hash to a friend who was originally in the conversation, then have them do a writeup, then reveal the commitment and compare the two accounts of a conversation. The writeup would be better if it was done immediately after the actual conversation, because otherwise social groups have time to mingle and confuse everyone about what actually happened.

Another way is to do a public group writeup of a conversation after it happens (or an audio/video recording), then have everyone PGP sign the writeup (to confirm their agreement), then later pick a random conversation where this setup was performed, and write down your memory of the conversation. This doesn't work if the conversations where this setup is performed are all unique; probably has to be a few thousand different setups happen before this starts to test memory in any meaningful capacity.

<comment><USER16> > That seems trivial to verify; just record all conversations you have with > everyone. I have been doing this since 2009.

Only on HN...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The weird thing is that I too can speak backwards fluently AND I can juggle lit torches while riding a unicycle. I have only done it once though, and I don't recommend it, because while moving on a unicycle, the inherent wind associated with the forward motion causes the flames to blow into your face.

<comment><USER18> This may be the most pretentious HN comment I've seen to date.

<comment><USER17> Sadly, it is very true.

<comment><USER19> That is pretty darn cool. I don't see it as coming off as pretentious at all fyi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Chomsky can't even have a email dialogue with Sam Harris without becoming oozing contempt and incivility for no discernible reason.

<comment><USER21> Sam Harris is pretty sophomoric and smug. It's hard not to have contempt towards him, even if one is an atheist.

<comment><USER22> Perhaps his attitude is filtering away people who take intellectual arguments personally.

<comment><USER23> Then he would filter himself.

<comment><USER22> He's not debating himself anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Snore. That comment was pretty low-effort.

<comment><USER25> Please don't respond to a bad comment by posting another bad (uncivil and/or unsubstantive) comment. That just makes the thread worse. Instead, downvote and/or flag it.

We detached this from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10772438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10772438) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER24> Will keep that in mind for the future, my apologies!</comment></comment></comment>


Learned helplessness - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness <comment><USER2> The psychologist who discovered this, Seligman, had since turned to studying the opposite: the psychology of happiness. Check out his TED talk, where he talks about his new research: <http://www.ted.com/speakers/martin_seligman.html>

In summary, according to Seligman, the three levels of a happy life (in order of short to long-lasting): 1\. pleasure (physical comfort, great food, etc.) 2\. engagement (loving what you're doing, e.g. getting into flow state while coding) 3\. meaning (be part of something larger than yourself, e.g. Mother Teresa, Gandhi)

Of note is that, in Seligman's original experiment, a percentage of the dogs never gave up, i.e. never learned that they were helpless. they kept on trying despite their efforts never paying off. when they were put in an environment where they actually had control, they quickly took charge of their own lives (at least in terms of avoid electric shocks) -- a heart-warming story to entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER3> > they quickly took charge of their own lives (at least in terms of avoid > electric shocks) -- a heart-warming story to entrepreneurs.

I don't know that anything in or about that study could be described as "heart-warming", but ok

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Helicopter parenting and teacher/student learning as compared to self directed learning strike me as two current trends that may lead to learned helplessness in our society.

So many people in my life need constant encouragement to help overcome learned apathy. I'm not really sure what the main cause is but they seem to be likely candidates.

<comment><USER5> The big difference between thirty years ago when I was a teen and now is the growth of organized extra-curricular activities. Children and teens have even fewer opportunities to decide and plan their own course than we used to. And you can't learn what you can't practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> But how can you help people to get out of this 'learned helplessness'?

<comment><USER7> Learned Optimism.

Seriously. Seligman wrote a great book on the subject: [http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your- Mind/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your- Mind/dp/0671019112)

<comment><USER5> I started reading this back when it was new, but quit fairly early on, when the author wrote that pessimists had a much more accurate view of reality than optimists.

I wrote a post in March of last year, _Optimism - Dangers and Benefits_ , [http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/optimism-is-not- ne...](http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/optimism-is-not-necessarily- as.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> wikipedia says 'People with pessimistic explanatory style—which sees negative events as permanent ("it will never change"), personal ("it's my fault"), and pervasive ("I can't do anything correctly")—are most likely to suffer from learned helplessness and depression.'

It seems to me that if you tended to believe "it's my fault" then you would have the opposite result - empowerment. When you admit that something is your fault, you now are responsible for overcoming/solving/fixing it, which is the opposite of helplessness.

<comment><USER7> Not if it is combined with the other two (permanent and pervasive.) The idea is that if something is your fault, and cannot be changed, and in fact everything is your fault, then the conclusion is that _you_ are hopelessly defective, and there is nothing to be done: learned helplessness.

<comment><USER9> I know a woman who was telling me about a cause she thought somebody should take up. I told her nobody else seemed to be interested in getting the ball rolling, so she should lead the charge. She looked like I'd suggested bending spoons with her mind. "A person like me can't do that," she explained.

She didn't mean that it would be too draining or impractical for somebody in her situation. She just wasn't capable — it was an a priori fact.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Interview Thank You Emails. Necessary? - <AUTHOR> I have been told by an older business man that it is 100% necessary to send an email to anybody you interview with thanking them for their time and to point out one or two things they said that you were really interested in.
To me personally, this feels like it comes across as annoying and is actually a detriment. I am under the impression that the computer science world cares much less about corporate bs and can actually harm you.
I do not know anybody who hires computer scientists, so I wanted your opinions on the importance of these follow up thank you emails.
PS: I am about to graduate from college. <comment><USER2> _...it is 100% necessary to send an email..._

I take it a step further. I always send a hand written Thank You Note by snail mail. Always. I have never failed to do this.

Why? Because if someone has spent an hour of their time (I don't care if it's on company time) to potentially change my life, the least I could do is take 5 minutes to share a sincere Thank You. I always take the time to hand write it, I always make it personal, and I am always sincere. (If you're going to be even 1% phony, don't bother, people will see right through it).

There are some nice byproducts. It demonstrates professional courtesy. It demonstrates good communication skills. It demonstrates good customer service. It gets you remembered. Every time.

But I don't do it for these reasons. I do it because it's the right thing to do. It is never "annoying" or a "detriment". Almost everyone I have ever sent a hand written note has told me that they really appreciated opening it and reading it.

Sometimes I even take it a step further. Several times, I have asked public speakers what their favorite restaurant is, and then sent a gift card in the Thank You note. I really want them to understand what a difference their contribution has made in at least one attendee's life. The gift card is a nice idea because I know they will use it and enjoy it, and maybe even think of me that night. I would _never_ send a gift to an interviewer - that's not the same thing.

<comment><USER3> I don't quite get your reasoning here:

> _if someone has spent an hour of their time (I don't care if it's on company > time) to potentially change my life, the least I could do is take 5 minutes > to share a sincere Thank You._

That implies that choosing a slower method of communicating somehow shows greater thanks than would, say, an email or phone call. I suppose to _some_ people (certainly not me), a snail mail letter may seem more personal or professional than an email, but I don't think the mere fact that your message arrives via snail mail vs. email would reliably earn you points with those in charge of hiring.

<comment><USER4> The main reason to chose snail mail is not that it is slow, but that it shows some amount courtesy and appreciation.The cost (in terms of time) of writing an email v/s letter should not be measured in terms of the number of minutes. I think of it this way, somebody who had take the time to get some postal envelops, stamps, sat down and wrote the letter _leaving his work in some way_ and then dropping it off to a post box is much more classy than someone who composed an email in his/her already open client and wrote a bare bone email with a template in their drafts folder.

<comment><USER3> When you talk about the time it takes to compose and send a physical letter, I simply don't agree or understand. How does taking more time mean you're more thoughtful, serious, or classical? If you're just saying that snail mail seems classy because of its cultural significance, then I understand, but just taking a long time alone doesn't seem particularly thoughtful, serious, or classy.

<comment><USER4> think of it this way, I could be doing something else while I was composing your letter. Also hand written things are always much more personal than email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Courtesy is courtesy no matter what field you're in. I've always sent a thank you note no matter what. They took time out of their schedule for me, it's the least I could do.

Here's two tips to help you:

        1) You can never be too courteous.

        2) There is nothing wrong with being the best dressed in the room.

(Note: I've never worn a suit to an interview, but still always try to dress nicely even if I know the company is a shorts/sandals/t-shirt kind of place. In those instances a nice pair of jeans and an ironed shirt usually work.)

<comment><USER6> The rule of thumb to use in most interviewing situations, not just Software Engineering, is to dress one "degree" up from your interviewers. If you're being interviewed by jeans and a T-shirt, wear a dress shirt and slacks. If you're being interviewed by a dress shirt and slacks, you can't go wrong with a casual suit.

If you're being interviewed by a formal suit, though, don't go busting out the tux :-p. That's the top level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've only ever hired one person, so my experience in this is limited.

I was on the fence between the two top people. Both were great, right out of college and seemed eager to learn. One sent a thank you card, the other did not.

I hired the one that didn't send a thank you card because I was more concerned about keeping out a (potential) kiss-ass in the thank you note writer.

Also, I don't think a thank you note is courteous. If I believed that I'd also need to think that not sending a thank you note is a sign of an absence of courtesy.

Making courtesy a function of thank you notes would cause them be thrown out ad nauseum and would lose some meaning.

</comment><comment><USER8> Please read this: (this is why I was able as a very socially awkward college student not stumble through the first job search):

[http://www.collegegrad.com/interview/thankyouletterafterinte...](http://www.collegegrad.com/interview/thankyouletterafterinterview.shtml)

Sending a Thank You email takes almost no effort. Sending a Thank You letter in the mail takes a bit of effort. Consider a job fair where a recruiter gets a hundred resumes. Could sending a sincere Thank You note in the mail possibly make you stand out from the crowd? Most especially in these days of longer hiring cycles where the difference between a minute of effort to send an email and the ten minutes to write, print, sign (with blue ink to contrast from black printer ink), and mail might make a difference.

There is a better site and a book, <http://collegegrad.com> that really exposed the behind-the-scenes of hiring because it was written by a hiring manager. Pretty much everything I'm saying here has been paraphrased. As the site says, the secret to an effective Thank You letter is to restate your interest in the position after thanking them and most important have a future promise to follow-up: "I will call you next Wednesday at 3pm to discuss this further" Even if you don't get the person on the line, by calling when you said you would - you earn professional credibility.

</comment><comment><USER9> Certainly not necessary. I did several hundred in-person interviews of college candidates during my time at MSFT, with at least a hundred of them while I was the hiring manager, and I can remember only three thank-you notes (two via e-mail, one via snail mail).

That said, I remember all three.

<comment><USER10> Very few recruiters pass on the email id of the hiring manger to candidates. Also, many candidates write an email to the recruiter thanking him/her and the interviewers which usually never gets to the interviewers.

<comment><USER11> always ask for a business card...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a hiring manager, most of the time my mind is made up 30 minutes into the interview (though it's not considered polite to cut it short or notify them at that time). However, in the very rare case of a tie, a follow up email (or handwritten letter) will definitely swing it in your favor.

Actually, despite it being the common advice, they are quite rare to receive. So I tend to take notice and remember that person much later even if they are not selected. I would be likely to give the person another shot if they re- applied for another position, or pass their resume along to another position where I think they'd fit better. I'd never do that for someone who didn't follow up.

</comment><comment><USER13> It makes a big difference.

I interviewed with a Y-Combinator funded startup, and having felt that the interview went really well I awaited the plan for moving forward. Days turned into weeks turned into months and eventually I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to get a call. It was upsetting not only because I really wanted the job but because I spent those weeks hoping just to hear anything at all, whether it was good or bad, so I could move forward or move on.

Interestingly enough, 6 months later the position is still listed as open.

</comment><comment><USER14> The problem I have with thank you notes - both as an interviewer and an interviewee - is that not only are they mechanical in nature but also manipulative. The interviewee has something to gain by sending a thank you note.

When all the people you have interviewed send you a thank you note because it's "the thing to do," then it is hard to gauge the level of sincerity.

For me, the enthusiasm and energy demonstrated at the actual interview is far more indicative of whether either party really actually appreciated spending time together.

<comment><USER15> You don't send the note because you have something to gain (in my opinion). You send it because you wish to be courteous, and for no other reason, and with no other expectation.

<comment><USER14> So is not sending a note a lack of courtesy? And who should send the note? The interviewer? The interviewee? Both?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> it really varies from place to place and company/industry. Which probably means its fading out. I recently went through a few rounds of interviews with several people at a large software company and i did not send thank you emails. I was given the job but it was brought up over beers later on with boss and peers how i did not send thank you emails. they mentioned how during their interview process that most people were not doing that and it seemed to them that was becoming outdated.

Now i was briefly a hiring manager before and i hated getting follow up emails from people i interviewed. It is so obvious that people know it's something they have to do and just kicked out these canned scripted thank you messages. Most people's inboxes are already full and they are busy why would they want this?

And my personal opinion is that, honestly they should be thanking you. I mean, they need help. They put out a "Help Wanted". You have skills that can help them. They asked if you wouldn't mind taking 3 hours out of your work day so you could go down to meet several of their team members so they could evaluate you and help them make certain they are hiring the right person. Maybe they should be thanking you?? It's a two-way street.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interviews are a two way process. People seem to think it's about the interviewer showing up and answering a bunch of questions, but the goal is to try to make a connection. Sending a thank you is part of making that connection.

Your 'thank you' can include specifics of the conversation that interested you, or more questions that you have in order to show your interest. It's another opportunity to communicate with someone you may want to work with.

</comment><comment><USER18> I generally e-mail people I interview afterwards, and call them to let them know the decision. There's a fair few that don't make the cut, particularly when it comes to investigations, but they're always good to keep in touch with.

I'm also with edw519 on the courtesy front, it's just that in this modern day and age I find that people's attention spans when it comes to job worries are more suited to a quick email than a letter a few days later.

</comment><comment><USER19> This isn't corporate BS, this is you following up and letting them know you were listening to what they were saying, perhaps continuing a discussion that was had or sharing links to some things you talked about.

If you can't bother or aren't excited enough to email the people you interviewed with, who will potentially be the people you spend 50% of your waking hours with if you get the job, why bother applying in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER20> it depends, but it couldn't hurt. I see such emails as fluff, but that's just me. I wouldn't hold it against someone either, because that would be incredibly petty. but, you never know, so why not? as long as it's concise and (at least sounds) sincere, only a total jerkwad would hold it against you.

(funnily enough, the job I have now is the only one I didn't bother sending thank you emails for, since after weeks of interviewing I got tired of the whole ritual. go figure.)

</comment><comment><USER21> I honestly think it doesn't matter. I have about 10 years of professional experience, and while I used to write thank-you e-mails and even snail mail letters on every job interview I went on when I was younger, I stopped doing it a long time ago. Here's why:

a) A startup or a mid-sized company will usually act pretty fast in making an offer or informing the candidate they're declined. The bureaucracy at bigger companies may mean it could be awhile before you hear back from them even if they liked you, but for the most part I felt silly sending thank-you letters after my employment at the company was already determined.

b) It's common to go on an interview loop and meet 4-8 people. I found myself basically copy-pasting them same letter to everyone I had met and I felt really foolish. The alternative was to think of something unique to everyone, but this felt equally contrived ("I really enjoyed those questions about how Perl handles multiple inheritance!")

c) Business cards are pretty passe now and a lot of engineers don't get them at companies because they don't need them. So I would ask the employees I would interview for their cards, they wouldn't have any, so I had to awkwardly quickly jot down their full name and e-mail address while the next interviewer was already walking into the room. Or sometimes I would forget to ask, and then I'd e-mail the HR contact, and I doubt it ever got to the interviewer.

d) When I got older, I quickly realized I never made any difference to me as a hiring manager. If I liked a candidate, I hired him. If I didn't, I didn't hire him. If I received a thank-you e-mail, it didn't make a lick of a difference. I know it can demonstrate good communication skills, etc, but I already made my judgment on the candidate's communication skills in the 1 hour I spoke to him, not in the 15 seconds I took to read his thank-you e-mail.

e) At a company I interviewed at, I once sent everyone a thank-you e-mail, and then I was hired. Somehow my personal e-mail address was made the default in everyone's Outlook address book for my name, and it was literally weeks until it was fixed. Until then I had to keep checking my personal e-mail as well as my work e-mail. This is obviously more a failure of Outlook or that company's IT department, but that was basically the last time I ever sent thank-you e-mails.

Look, it won't hurt. If you're paranoid and getting a lot of 'old-school' advice, then go ahead and do it. But seriously, at no point does a candidate's offer status hang in the balance on his thank-you note. An interview debrief never ends with, "well, sounds like we could really go either way on this guy... let's see if he's the kind of polite young chap that sends a thank-you e-mail."

So good luck with the interviewing, and if you're concerned about coming off as polite and well-mannered, the best way to to express is it in the interview itself... not a contrived thank-you e-mail that the interviewer probably won't get anyway and won't influence his decision even if it does.

<comment><USER22> I'll disagree. Here's why you should send a thank-you note: Though it may not matter to some hiring managers, it can make a difference for others. I put myself in that latter category.

Whenever I'm in a hiring position, I take a close look at the candidate's courtesy and interpersonal skills. Candidates who are polite, even to the receptionist, and who follow up with a thank-you email always get a little bump in "points" in my book.

The person who is thoughtful enough to thank me for my time not only understands social protocol, but is more likely to be respectful of others around the office.

It's not enough to get you hired if you don't have the skills for the job. But if there's a tie, the person who sent me a thank-you note will always get the job over the person who didn't.

And ties like this _have_ happened in my experience.

So the moral is that you just never know if it's going to matter or not -- so you might as well do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Courtesy is appreciated by most people who don't have Aspergers! I assume that you are asking from the perspective of the interviewee. You don't have to send e-mails if you don't want to. But don't kvetch if you are not getting jobs and not getting any feedback after being interviewed. The interviewers might think that you are arrogant and no matter how brilliant you might be, that cold be a strike against you.

<comment><USER24> Why taint good advice with a slur?

<comment><USER23> Aspergers is a symptom, I did not mean it to be taken as a slur. In fact, one difficulty with it is that people who have it are often only marginally aware of having it. That is why they find it difficult to even seek help with the finer nuances of social interactions.</comment></comment></comment>


J Source to be released under GPL - <AUTHOR> http://old.nabble.com/J-Source-GPL-td31045068s24193.html <comment><AUTHOR> For those of you who don't know anything about J, it's a modern dialect of APL; an extremely concise functional programming language based on function concatenation and vector operation. The APL languages are _very_ interesting, but have historically been proprietary and somewhat insular.

* <http://jsoftware.com/>

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_%28programming_language%29>

* A good intro - _J for C Programmers_ (<http://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/contents.htm>)

* A more casual intro - "Mind if I do a J?" (<http://jeffzellner.com/miidaj/>)

<comment><USER2> > _J for C Programmers_ (<http://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/contents.htm>)

Thanks. For those who prefer PDFs, that book and more material are available at <http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Books> . (Had to dig around a bit, because, in spite of the original URL, the book was not listed in the help page.)

Question: I have a vague memory of seeing a web page named something like "A Garden of ..." with neat examples, either for J or K. However, my search-fu is failing me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Something like <http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays> ?

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's probably it, thank you. (There's a couple of brain cells in the back muttering that the page was less dense and tan colored, but I told them to shut up ;-)

Now let's sell tickets to some cage fights, for instance <http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Sudoku> versus <http://norvig.com/sudoku.html>

P.S. The credit at the bottom of the J Sudoku piece led me here: <http://www.vector.org.uk/> . Seems an interesting place to visit. It even features articles headed "APL is not for programmers" (quote: "At this point the average programmer turns off, drops out, gets his coat and leaves the building, heading for mom and the kids. We, on the other hand, will continue.")

<comment><USER3> If you want cage fights, you should also include the lean contender: <http://nsl.com/k/sudoku/aw3.k>

(I'll copy it here, because it's short enough for that:

      p,:3/:_(p:9\:!81)%3
      s:{*(,x)(,/{@[x;y;:;]'&21=x[&|/p[;y]=p]?!10}')/&~x}

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Super ultra extra awesome.

There is already an open source K implementation called kona <https://github.com/kevinlawler/kona> , and now J is joining. There are old J source codes floating around, but the latest is from 1993 if I'm not mistaken.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! I've been experimenting a LOT with kona.* K seems more my style, but I'm really excited about J being opened too! The APL family is way too interesting to have it confined by extremely expensive licenses and niche industries.

* Also, from communicating with the author: it's a clean re-implementation based on experience with it, not an open-sourced version of "real" K. (I've never used K or Q.)

I got the '93 J to work, too (on OpenBSD), but it's evolved a lot since then, and having the _official_ version open will draw a lot more attention.

Also, thanks for answering some of my questions about J, K, and valence/rank a while back.

<comment><USER3> K is a lot more my style too: J has the kitchen sink. K provides closer to the "bare necessities". And yet, K programs are often shorter, simpler and more verbose.

Also, K operators often rhyme with the C meaning of the same characters: &=and/min, |=or/max, monadic*=first (like C dereference when applied to a vector; trenary?=[vector]choose. I think there are a few others.

Also, you're welcome :)

<comment><USER3> > and more verbose.

I meant less verbose, of course. But it's too late to edit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hui & Iverson (1991) The J Dictionary. <http://cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall05/G22.2110-001/dictionary.pdf>

This is the reason to learn J. It is a clean, fast course in a programming style that puts linear algebraic concepts at its heart. If you are interested in functional programming, work through this book. The "tutorial" part is about 60 pages, which should be worked through, and the dictionary part about 150 pages, which can be dipped into.

<comment><USER5> You should really reference the online version of the dictionary <http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/contents.htm>, it is the current version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I keep wondering if it's worth learning J, if only to understand this thing:

        quicksort=: (($:@(<#[) , (=#[) , $:@(>#[)) ({~ ?@#)) ^: (1<#)

Anyone who does any significant amount of work in J care to comment? It seems like a super-niche language, which would take more time to come up with and mentally-parse existing code than the same operations in other languages. Of course, once you're fluent, you're fluent, but it looks like Vim to the Vim'th power...

<comment><USER7> We have a guy at work who uses J for everything, since he came of age doing data analysis in APL, when APL was the only interpreted and powerful matrix language out there. (Fortran was compiled and low level.) He loves it, but he doesn't know any other languages.

Personally, I found J a very interesting interesting exercise, and APL is historically SUPER important, but for practical uses they have been way superseded by matlab/ Octave/ R and the T _/P_ /R* scripting languages. (At times my friend will say something like "in J you can compute the sum of a matrix IN JUST ONE LINE... and I will point to "sum(A)" in matlab, as opposed "$&$%^%$%M" in J, or whatever it is.)

K may be more brain friendly than J. But as far as I am concerned, J makes assembler and badly written Perl look easy to read.

<comment><USER5> Sum in J is +/ not, $&$%^%$%M. Is +/ really too hard to comprehend? I agree with you that APL is historically important, but J is Ken Iverson's last and greatest gift to the programming community. He used the 26 years between the release of APL and J to address many of the shortcomings of APL. Take a look at <http://bit.ly/hMmGWV> for some background.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That is actually quite cool, I do remember seeing all the crazy solutions to projecteuler when I was doing those and it even made me try to grok some of what J did and you don't even need an APL keyboard to write it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Excellent! I've been intrigued by J for a while, but I won't use languages which don't have at least one free/open-source implementation. Now I'll need to take another look at it!

</comment><comment><USER10> Brilliant news! Good idea to get some friendly eyes on the pre-release package, too.</comment>


Experience Report: Erlang in Acoustic Ray Tracing [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://homepage.cs.uri.edu/faculty/hamel/pubs/icfp08.pdf

<comment><USER2> I find this paper on the first view a bit weird. Please let me explain why. First of all Erlang has for instance here [1] proven to be viable for HPC. Erlang is useful mostly for high scalability problems e.g. Clusters etc.

The authors claim that their pthread implementation scales better than Erlang. This is most confusing as I suspect them to have made design errors in their Erlang system. They wrote they "ported" it. Erlang is a SSA based FP lanugage specifically designed for soft real-timeness and scaling out of the box. There are even works currently to get it running under hard realtime constraints [2]. While this is not exactly targeting high performance it is still important to point that out. If performance is so crucial a fortran based implementation might be better probably.

Thirdly, I suspect that the portation of their system doesn't take care of language pitfalls like proper tail recursion etc. which would explain the problem in scaling. (See page 1 section 3)

Other thoughts in bullet version:

\- Pseudocode is iterative style, Erlang is a FP

\- "variance was negligible" -> Error bars in Graphs would tell us that.

\- Point 6.1 actually gives me the impression that a implementation in C++ would be preferrable compared to Erlang due to the emphasis on performance

\- I think the memory issue on the last page is the key why erlang performed so badly... "multiple invocations of the GC"

Of course regarding the memory footprint I have to agree this is clearly a disadvantage for Erlang compared to manually tuned memory management.

Comments? :)

References:

[1] High Performance Computing in Erlang, <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1411273.1411281>

[2] Tworards Hards Realtime Erlang (HARTE) <http://www.erlang.se/workshop/2007/proceedings/05nicosi.pdf></comment>


Déraciné Is a Return to from Software's Pre-Dark Souls Roots - <AUTHOR> https://uploadvr.com/deracine-is-a-return-to-from-softwares-pre-dark-souls-roots/ <comment><USER2> The headline is confusing because "From Software" is a Japanese video game development company. The headline mistakenly used "from Software".

"Dark Souls" is one of their RPGs.

I did not know any of this, and thought it was something about the soulful root of software in general, which didn't make sense but sounded potentially interesting in a socio-historical way.</comment>


50 Best Websites 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/0,28757,1809858,00.html

<comment><USER2> A pretty horrible list with maybe a few bright spots (mint, freerice).

The list really shows how heavy the style/shopping environment is. Not sure if this actually reflects the popularity of this space, or just that there are too many start-ups?

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, what a load of crap. I love Penny Arcade, but I'm not sure why it's even on the list, let alone at #1.</comment>


Facebook advertisers can replace headlines on news stories - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/facebook-ads-headlines-1.5283197 <comment><USER2> And they have nerve to call independent investigation reporters as fake news ?

Facebook is so fake and ridiculously 2 faced company that I have ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER3> The main problem is that according to my understanding you can publish an ad with a link without actually proving ownership of that link's domain, allowing you to "frame" the innocent domain owner for seemingly saying certain things (at least according to your ad).

I guess the solution here is twofold - either have the advertiser prove they own the domain via a DNS challenge, or teach users that anything inside an ad is not to be trusted and can be fake/malicious. The latter is of course detrimental to Shitbook's business model but would do so much good to society.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Conservatives in the UK got caught for this: [https://www.complaintsdepartment.co.uk/news/2019-09-conserva...](https://www.complaintsdepartment.co.uk/news/2019-09-conservative- party-facebook-advert-altered-bbc-headline/)

</comment><comment><USER5> MSMAAS

Main stream media as a service</comment>


Twilio launches in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.twilio.com/blog/2011/10/twilio-launches-in-europe-opens-office-london.html <comment><USER2> For values of Europe equal to: the UK, and France, Poland, Austria, Denmark, and Portugal in beta.

<comment><USER3> Can't tell whether this is snark, but I will respond as though it's not.

Obtaining phone numbers in every country is a bit of a tricky legal process. If we waited until we had all of Europe lined up it would take quite awhile and that wouldn't be very "lean" of us. What if it turns out nobody wants to buy numbers in Croatia but we spent a bunch of time trying to get numbers there?

In the end we will roll out incrementally as we bring on new carriers and forge new relationships in other countries in Europe.

<comment><USER4> Have you considered letting people sign up to hear news about when Twilio launches in their country? E.g., I'd love to hear when Twilio launches in Israel.

<comment><USER5> We don't currently have a form for all countries, but if you email firstname.lastname@example.com with your request for a country it gets tagged for the future and we will keep you posted. So please drop us a note, every request motivates us to work faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great, but any chance of having a UK pricing page that's in £ (you know, the local currency we use here)?

<http://www.twilio.com/uk/pricing>

<comment><USER5> We're working on it, for now we have to charge in dollars and we wouldn't want to have to give you something that changes every time the currency exchange rate changes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just pick a UK price that gives you some margin, and re-evaluate once every quarter. The exchange rate doesn't change _that_ much.

<comment><USER7> Their merchant banking setup may only allow charging in USD. It would be worse to show a price in pounds and then be billing an amount that differs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh right. Then yeah, they have to keep the price in dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of the best "What the hell does this thing do" pages I've seen. I wish every business had one like that for their products:

<http://www.twilio.com/api>

Takes about 4 seconds to explain what their service does. Wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great when it will have SMS support.

Since most of the people I know have unlimited SMS it opens the possibility to many services. Including "extending" Siri.

<comment><USER5> SMS is currently in private beta, you can request access here: <http://www.twilio.com/pricing>

Just click the "let me know when its ready" link and enter your email address

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Damn, got all excited about this until I noticed the no-SMS in the UK bit.

<comment><USER11> Indeed, launching without SMS is really frustrating as this is what most people will be interested in

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great guys, welcome to this side of the pond!

Does this mean that outbound rates to EU countries (e.g. Holland) will drop sometime soon?

</comment><comment><USER13> Does this mean Patio11 needs a UK salesperson for appointmentreminder.org now? :-)

<comment><USER14> I plead terminal stupidity on this, but it actually requires code changes to AR in about ~12 places to support a new country at the moment, so I can't just flip a switch. That said, UK support should be out by the end of November.

<comment><USER13> Cool! Good luck. Let me know if you need any local advice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great stuff, looking forward to meeting some Twilio folks at the Silicon Milkroundabout this Sunday.

</comment><comment><USER16> Apart from a Developer Evangelist... what other roles will you be hiring for in London?

<comment><USER17> we're looking for sales people too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Quick workaround: buy a number on Skype (or any other international service) and forward it to your Twilio number.

</comment><comment><USER19> Any chance of including video chat (not just voice) in future?

</comment><comment><USER20> What is twilio?

</comment><comment><USER21> Just looked the other way for a tiny moment and Europe is equalled with the UK.

But perhaps from 501 Folsom St. Third Floor San Francisco California 94105 Europe looks so awfully far away, that one can only see the UK.

<comment><USER5> Twilio is GA in the UK today, we have 5 more countries in Europe in beta today, and 11 more announced to go into beta in the coming weeks leading into the end of 2011... with the rest of Europe to open. No geography lessons, no shenanigans.

<comment><USER21> I stand by my comment. When you launch in the UK you should write "Twilio Launches in UK instead of "Twilio Launches in Europe".

Same as for "Twilio Launches in Chile" instead of "Twilio Launches in America" when you launch in Chile.</comment></comment></comment>


Five Worlds - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/05/06/five-worlds/ <comment><USER2> The key part to me:

"""Here's an important thing to know. Whenever you read one of those books about programming methodologies written by a full time software development guru/consultant, you can rest assured that they are talking about internal, corporate software development. Not shrinkwrapped software, not embedded software, and certainly not games. ...

Last week Kent Beck made a claim that you don't really need bug tracking databases when you're doing Extreme Programming, because the combination of pair programming (with persistent code review) and test driven development (guaranteeing 100% code coverage of the automated tests) means you hardly ever have bugs. [But this doesn't apply to our shrinkwrapped product. Our shrinkwrapped product has to be robust to a variety of environments and use- cases whereas software for corporate environments doesn't.] ....

Kent is right, for other types of development. For most corporate development applications, none of these things would be considered a bug."""

EDIT: I don't often see context like this brought up in discussions. But at the same time, I think principles like "shorter iteration cycles are a good thing" can _loosely_ be applied in different cases, even if not quite in the same way for different 'worlds'.</comment>


Lenovo: Apple is losing out in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/604d1d54-87b9-11df-9f37-00144feabdc0.html <comment><USER2> Well, first of all the article is just a PR release from Lenovo claiming Lenovo is ahead of their competitors. Not very surprising.

Not to say that they are wrong. But I think the main reason is piracy. Windows has been so popular in China and Eastern Europe primarily because pirated copies of the OS could run on a variety of hardware. Apple OS is designed to run on a rather limited set of hardware. This is also coupled with generally a easier way to download pirated version s of Windows software vs. Mac OS X versions of the same software.

The large availability of Windows then creates an environment for a home grown software market that runs on Windows only, which in turn make Windows even more desirable.

A third factor is perhaps the design. Apple products cost a lot more, it seems, because Apple feels their applications have a much better designed UI. It is true, and I am not arguing with that. But that UI is designed to appeal to American and Western tastes and preferences. Or, rather, Americans and West Europeans would pay a lot more for a well designed UI vs an an with equivalent functionally but without a polished UI. In other words, they are happy running Office in Windows and using Windows' file manager vs paying more to run the same version of Office and using Mac OS X file manager on Apple hardware and software.

<comment><USER3> The article hasn't mentioned OS X or Macbooks anywhere. The article is talking about the limited success of the iPhone.

> _that UI is designed to appeal to American and Western tastes and > preferences_

You know, even in the American and Western countries it took Windows 7 just one month to surpass OS X's marketshare, reaching 10% in only 4 months.

After the failure that was Vista, you could say that customers are fed up ... but apparently a lot of people prefer Windows. Over 90% of them, Chinese or not.

<comment><USER4> obligatory Win7 joke: <http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/30/seventh- house/> (my sentiments exactly)

I wonder if the beta launches helped things... my _dad_ tried the beta. Probably the first beta he's ever touched. But I'm not aware of the scope of 7's beta push as compared to Vista / XP / whatever, just that it was pretty shockingly successful from what I've seen.

And I think a lot of customers prefer (their) Windows (-only software), and what's familiar over something more radically new (however minor). Don't discount people's laziness in choosing what to buy. Similarly, Apple is pretty wrapped up in being _fashionable_ now, and I wonder how well they'll do if any _real_ design-competitors arise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, premium gadgets are worse off in a country where the entire national income is about 2.5 times less than the disposable income of the USA?

Shocking.

<comment><USER6> Na. Chinese pay good money for high quality stuff. They'll pay a high proportion of their income into a few well-targeted purchases. If they don't want a good item, then they pay next to nothing for a low-quality knock-off. But high-quality stuff sells well.

Mac is losing because QQ (IM client) works better on Windows, and Xunlei (torrent client) is Windows-only.

<comment><USER7>
      Mac is losing because QQ (IM client) works better
      on Windows, and Xunlei (torrent client) is Windows-only.

Those are two pieces of software which would be trivially easy to port to OS X. I doubt they're the primary reason the Mac isn't doing well in China.

<comment><USER8> > Those are two pieces of software which would be trivially easy to port to OS > X

Not really. QQ login requires QQDoctor which is a ring3 level driver. Thunder has it's own network stack to speed things up.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, what?

<http://cl.ly/6d3c5bbf3dc88653693e>

<comment><USER8> it lacks several core features, like audio & video chat, group file sharing, etc. Millions of years passed now it's still Beta.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Speaking of Apple's chief executive, Lenovo's founder and chairman, told the Financial Times: We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn't care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble.

Perhaps Steve Jobs worked out long ago only Chinese companies, e.g. Lenovo, succeed in China, so why try too hard.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yeah. In other news, thinkpads are the best laptops ever.

(not sarcasm. There's a need for some lenovo fanboys, too.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Most of the article reads like Lenovo CEO's scorned-love-poem from China: ". . . a manager needs to be the string on which he puts one pearl after another. But Jobs himself is a big pearl. . . has such a bad temper and doesn't care about China. . ."

I suppose that Lenovo's CEO really wanted to talk about their new phone. But whatever tiny sliver of competition acknowledgement he let slip in turned his news coverage into a weird "CEO gives the competition advice" article.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how well the iPed is doing.

<comment><USER13> Lots of iPhone clones & Gucci bags on the subway last time I was in Shanghai: when the device is mostly a fashion accessory UI & hardware quality does not matter all that much. Not sure if the iPad is a fashion accessory in China yet though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not really - Apple still has the better product.

China is losing out on Apple.</comment>


Port 25 will be blocked for South Korea from December - <AUTHOR> http://zombie-storage.com/?p=95 <comment> mike-cardwell <http://www.postcastserver.com/help/Port_25_Blocking.aspx>

      ISPs that block Port 25

      This list contains some of the major ISPs that block port 25 on their servers:

      AT&T (can be unblocked at the request)
      MindSpring
      BellSouth
      MSN
      CableOne
      NetZero
      Charter
      People PC
      Comcast ATTBI
      Sprynet
      Cox
      Sympatico.ca
      EarthLink
      Verio
      Flashnet
      Verizon
      MediaOne

I don't know how accurate or up to date this list is, but I know that _loads_ of residential ISPs in countries all over the World block outgoing port 25.

<comment><USER2> I think this is irrelivant. Don't these ISPs still run SMTP servers on port 25, but they force you to use theirs? Their SMTP servers then contact other SMTP servers on port 25 to actually deliver the mail.

<comment> mike-cardwell Yes they do. And thus botnets are forced to route via the ISPs intermediary server instead of making a direct connection to the recipient mail server. That intermediary server can apply rate limiting and blocking.

ISPs who implement blocks on port 25 and force everyone to use their mail server are able to take responsibility for the spam leaving their network.

Note, ISPs don't block ports 587 and 465, so they're not preventing you from using services like GMail etc.

Also, it is completely relevant as they have all done exactly what is being proposed in the article being discussed. ISPs in South Korea will _also_ provide mail relays for their subscribers to use.

<comment><USER2> But this is really easy to work around. Isn't the Soth Korea arguing that all mail relays should block port 25, not just those on residential networks?

<comment> mike-cardwell I haven't seen them say that anywhere. If they block port 25 everywhere, then they simply prevent the ability to send or receive email within South Korea. That's clearly not their plan.

The port 25 block is _designed_ to force compromised systems to route email via controlled boxes. The fact that you can route email via controlled boxes doesn't mean you've worked around the block, it means you've been forced to do exactly what the intention was.

<comment><USER2> Maybe I've misunderstood something. I wonder how much spam is sent via compromised residential systems and how much is sent via less than perfect commercial systems?

<comment> mike-cardwell The vast majority is from botnets, which compromise mostly of compromised residential systems. [http://www.theblaze.com/stories/email-spam- down-82-percent-s...](http://www.theblaze.com/stories/email-spam- down-82-percent-since-july-2010/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Same decree issued by telco authority here in Finland. Nice combo with the mandatory data retention laws (must use isp mail servers + isp must keep and hand out logs to authorities).

<comment><USER4> That's actually pretty sinister. I'm in Norway, and although there hasn't been any push to centralize and consolidate the e-mail servers in the name of spam, the EU data retention directive was passed here in April after lots of resistance.

I hoped that our neighbors were in a better position to fight these attacks on liberty online. Is privacy on the web really under this much pressure in Finland?

<comment> mike-cardwell You may consider it sinister, but it's a fairly common practice all over the World for residential ISPs.

<comment><USER5> "Must use archiving ISP mail servers" is sinister.

<comment><USER6> Email is a postcard, not a securely sealed envelope. If you want it to be securely sealed use PGP, then the archiving doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would a better alternative not be to not allow insecure mail servers? Why don't mail server providers disallow their programs from being open relays or have IP/Username and password restrictions in place.

I configured our mail server to only accept mail from our internal work IP address and from authorised users.

Obviously mass mail providers will only be able to impose a username and password restriction but I would say the best way is to stop people producing mail software that can be open.

<comment><USER8> _I configured our mail server to only accept mail from our internal work IP address and from authorised users._

So if one of your office PCs catches an e-flu, it will have no trouble using your mailserver to spread spam.

The way I see it, the only way is to make SMTP authentication mandatory _everywhere_ (except perhaps on your desktop localhost, which should accept mail from you, but should be required to authenticate when pushing your outgoing mail to your upstream mailserver).

<comment><USER9> So that if one of your office PCs gets compromised the SMTP authentication is also compromised, and therefore you have the same problem. This is assuming you don't require that someone type their password everytime they send a message--that'd be ridiculous.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I imagine there is malware out there which can read smtp credentials from an infected host, but majority can't, and will just try sending out without authentication. If nothing else, resulting amount of spam is decreased severely.

OTOH, if smtp auth became mandatory, or at least widely used, malware would just adapt, and its ability to sniff out credentials would improve. Arms race and all that. So scratch my idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> IMHO The best way to reduce spam is to identify the problems in the current incarnation of email and design a new system that takes such problems into account.

<comment><USER10> Well, the same problems apply to postal mail, IM and phone calls, etc.

I think the two properties which a comms method needs to have a spam problem are:

1) it is inexpensive to communicate with someone

2) it is has a fixed, human-memorable "address" which can be communicated out of band (business card, verbally etc)

Once you have these two things, such lists of fixed address can accumulate and be circulated - and they can be spammed.

(2) implies that your comms method accept comms from unknown people. (1) is necessary for spammers to bother to do to use that channel to communicate with you.

I think you have to give up one or the other of these things to avoid spam. Note that (1) is a sliding scale. Physical post is significantly more expensive than email to send, and suffers less spam - but it is not non-zero.

Basically if cost of "customer acquisition" < "cost to send spam" on that comms channel, then you'll get some (if (2) is met).

[*] I suppose some heuristics to decide if it is OK for "random unknown user X" to contact me can help. But false positives are the very devil here...

<comment><USER2> Why can't I be asked the first time someone communicates with me? (This is ofc client-side spam prevention, but it should be passed upstream ideally)

However, this isn't necessary for all communications. For instance, if a communication is signed by a reputable company (bank, for instance), then don't bother asking. ISPs should keep the list of reputable companies as short as possible and, regardless, it gets rid of phishing emails.

<comment> mike-cardwell If people see a message saying "x has tried to contact you, do you wish to allow them", some of them will say yes. So spammers will continue to spam just as hard as they always have.

Also, considering how easy it would be to spoof "x", they could probably make people click "yes" a significant amount of the time.

<comment><USER2> You have defined problem number (3): the ability to spoof. Introduce certificates and signing - problem "sorted".

<comment> mike-cardwell You mean like S/MIME, PGP, DKIM?

How does this prevent me from getting a certificate for "Viagra Salesman" or even "Roger Smith" and sending spam selling viagra?

<comment><USER2> Directly, it doesn't. However, I can block your certificate., or better, I can block the CA signing certificates that represent either businesses I don't want to talk to or people who don't really exist.

Whilst I don't generally believe governments should intervene in the internet, this is one area they could intervene in. They could act as a certificate authority.

Of course, CAs will make mistakes, but they can revoke certificates when things go wrong.

<comment> mike-cardwell You can also currently block IPs, domains, URLs and specific message content. There are even globally distributed lists of such things.

This is already how we manage to block most spam on the edge. What you're proposing is just a small iteration on the existing defences. An expensive one, which wouldn't work unless you managed to get everyone doing it at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> it's a good idea. but scary to think what govt can't do.

<comment><USER12> Blocking port 25 doesn't impact people in a meaningful way, only spammers. For years virtually every ISP has offered an alternate port like 587.</comment></comment>