Django is now (officially) on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/django/django

<comment><USER4> I still find it terribly ironic that a free _D_ SCM wound up at the heart of such a massive drive toward proprietary centralization. I think a lot of people envisioned things heading in a rather different direction.

Which is not meant as backhanded flame of GitHub's product, by the way. Rather, as far as observations go, it can only speak to the opposite - <USER2> that everybody _can_ roll their own, they may be doing something right. OTOH, I think it does call for vigilence on whether they're going to start adding lock-in systems, unless they have already.

<comment><USER5> The big benefit about DSCM is by definitions that they are in fact very portable so I don't think this is an issue. I can't really see how github could ever lock in their customers, if their product becomes inferior to others the switch will always be very painless.

<comment><USER4> > I can't really see how github could ever lock in their customers

Really? It's easy: Add an additional service that doesn't store its data in git repositories and doesn't allow for that data to be exported easily. Then make it enticing by integrating it really well with the stuff you're already using. Now you're going to think twice about migrating away, because suddenly it's hard.

Not like it's rocket science, and it happens all the time when companies find themselves in a corner (obviously we're talking a hypothetic scenario here). Heck, it even happens with initial good intentions on all sides, because a well-integrated add-on may be a lovely thing by itself.

I really don't want to be panicmongering, but if you "can't really see a way" you're not cynical enough. Don't stop thinking at "it's a DSCM, we'll be safe". You're not using git, you're using GitHub. That's why you're there, right?

<comment><USER6> GitHub Issues. Pull Requests (and their comments). And so on.

How do you migrate this data? There's ALREADY some lock-in.

<comment><USER4> Well, to be fair, I think pulling out Issues is quite doable via the API right now. Like I said, I'm not after panicmongering; I just advocate a healthy dose of critical thinking. As in, did you _check_ you could pull out Issues via the API before comitting to the service, and did you make sure the service vendor is committed to offering that API going forward? If you're actually on a paid plan, if you actually intend to make your livelyhood depend on the vendor, do you have any hard guarantees on that in the contact? And so on.

FWIW, I was involved with putting together the git hosting infrastructure used by the KDE community (which I wrote about at length here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2972107>), which incidentally was done only after negotiations with Shortcut AS - then the company behind GitHub competitor Gitorious.org - fell through, since we couldn't come to an agreement acceptable to both sides. Things like data export guarantees were part of our goals back then.

And there's more data you want to be able to export than you might think, too. For example, if you actually let accounts push directly to your repository, you very likely want to have logs of what account was used to push what data for liability reasons - that's data that's not in the repo, because push != commit. Rather, it's data coming from the infrastructure that handles authentication for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Big problems with older projects that want to move to GitHub.

GitHub's bug reporting API has no means of importing bugs from other systems, without losing all date and user information. Projects that have moved their issue systems over have the full expanse of issues all opened/resolved on the same date and by the same person, and are basically unreadable (sorry, comments with the original info in them don't count). Django in this case is keeping trac for issue reporting.

I've emailed github about this, and I got kind of a sleepy "no, we don't really do that, shrugs". I had an insight at that moment, that Github probably does this because they don't _want_ big, ugly old projects moving their 8000 big ugly tickets into their shiny system (Edit: but they've just responded that they want to do this! so, great). My inspiration to move SQLAlchemy to github went to zero in an instant. Fuck that. Old projects and old history about projects matter. A lot.

Keeping issue reporting on Trac - AFAICT, Django hasn't solved the issue of coordinate changeset links from trac back to an external service like github. They still seem to have their SVN repo linked in trac. Though this could be solved, with a fair degree of tedium, by first converting all the SVN links in their bug reports to be the equivalent changeset id in git, then hosting a mirror of the git repo. I originally did this when we moved from SVN to mercurial.

<comment><USER8> We have an early alpha program if you want to import your tickets to GitHub. We helped move Parrot (and a few others) over. Contact firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER7> sounds great. Will there be an open API ? I'm not in a hurry, I'll wait til it's up for real. It just needs to accept timestamps for all tickets/comments/updates and allow the owners of tickets/comments/updates to be github names (which might be a thorny security issue).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> looking at djangoproject.com they still use svn, the github repository also does not contain any of the release branches. has there been any announcement about a migration to git?

according to <https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoBranches> this is a git mirror that is synced with svn

<comment><USER9> to answer my own question, [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/django- de...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/django-developers/9 --P57ezyBs) has more details, for now indeed only trunk is migrated, at least release tags would be nice to migrate over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems GitHub is certainly king now... But how long will it last? I feel that Version Control is such a great market that surely some significant challengers will appear in the next few years. Thoughts?

<comment><USER11> They'll have to invent something really new or have an uphill battle, because GitHub now relies a lot on network externality. In simple words, it is the effect that you chose a popular network for the number of projects on it. I do submit bug reports to projects on BitBucket and GitHub, and not to private bugzillas/tracs (I'm tired of registering and confirming every time.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is incredibly awesome. Very excited about this. Hopefully we'll see more cool stuff getting merged in via pull requests.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice, really happy about this. Hopefully our patches will finally get to go through. If you're in Europe and working with Django have a look at our Job openings, <http://djangogigs.com/gigs/1182/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Interested in the history of the project...was it simply on SVN all this time? Or were there other issues that held up its migration onto Github?

<comment><USER15> For long time core devs wanted to use support the common denominator (svn) and let users choose their frontend (hg-svn, git-svn, svk).

Now they realised that github presence will raise number of contributors.

<comment><USER16> I stopped following Django more than a year ago but lack of contributors was never an issue; quite the contrary. A bigger problem was the unresponsiveness of the (tiny) core team to the occasional contributors providing patches and raising bugs, often left open for months and years. Hopefully things move faster now with more devs being entrusted with the commit bit.

<comment><USER17> I hope it will too. Particularly now that Adrian Holovaty is back as a more active BDFL.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss (the other BDFL) wrote a bit about the changes in the core team over the last couple of years in his "Measuring the Django Community" review:

[http://jacobian.org/writing/django-community/django- communit...](http://jacobian.org/writing/django-community/django- community-2012/#s-contributors)

The core team has grown a lot in 2012: 33 partial committers and 28 full committers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is great!, Now just waiting for the announced python 3 support in the next version (1.5) and were all set!

<comment><USER19> <https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2012/mar/13/py3k/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why can't Opens Source Orgs roll an independent repo hosting server with something like GitLab (gitlabhq.com)?

<comment><USER21> What for?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> good to see django on github

hey dowvoters i am not a troll, many python projects avoided github initially because github was powered by ruby, see it in context chef, puppet,vagrant,heroku are of ruby origin but now loved by people from various technology backgrounds

<comment><USER23> Your conjecture that GitHub was initially avoided by people who don't use Ruby because it's written in Ruby is pointlessly divisive and quite silly.

<comment><USER24> If _anything_ , it was avoided because Git was not in Python.. But yeah.

<comment><USER25> From PEP-0374 [0]:

> _Lastly, all things being equal (which they are not as shown by the previous > two issues), it is preferable to use and support a tool written in Python > and not one written in C and shell._

Okay this pertains to Python itself but could easily have mattered to Django.

[0] [http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0374/#why-mercurial- over-...](http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0374/#why-mercurial-over-other- dvcss)

<comment><USER26> Note that this is python-core - which has an obvious python bias for a variety of reasons, and also doesn't pertain in any way to github (see the fact they self-host HG). In actuality, having HG be written _in_ python has helped python-core write plugins and resolve other issues.

So; in summation pick the right tool for your _team_ not due to some techno bigotry, which is what that PEP outlines.

<comment><USER25> > in summation pick the right tool for your team

Precisely and I was not saying otherwise. The Python team chose hg partly (but not only) because it is written with Python, just as the Django team could have decided to choose Bitbucket partly because it is written with Django[0]. And they could have chosen hg partly because it is written with python, or chosen git (which they did), as both were supported by Bitbucket.

Whatever, I'm not saying they _should_ have, just that they _could_ , and that dogfooding is a valid point if it is not blindly overrated (i.e bigotry) but carefully considered.

[0] [https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoSuccessStoryBitbuc...](https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoSuccessStoryBitbucket)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What took so long?

<comment><USER28> I can't speak for any of the core Django team, but as a user of Django I am glad that they took their time with this one. IMO github 'won' the social coding and source hosting battle a while ago, but I am glad that the Django team don't immediately jump to the new hot thing. There are a lot of things to consider with such a move, and moving too quickly would be a disservice to Django users.

Having said that, I am very glad they have moved. I think the previous Trac/SVN setup had more friction in terms of submitting, reviewing and accepting commits. Hopefully github will make this process more fluid.

<comment><USER29> Interesting. I didn't know Django was on SVN until now. Why didn't they choose Bitbucket? I think it could have been as productive as Github.

<comment><USER17> From following the discussion, the impression I got was that more core developers and contributors were using Github.

Beyond the "key user" metric, the raw numbers also seem to lean in favour Github: there are 665 watchers on Github, 266 followers on Bitbucket; 56 forks on Github, 39 on Bitbucket.

<comment><USER17> Just an addendum to the Github numbers, I hadn't realized Adrian Holovaty had renamed the previous Github repository to django-old, replacing it with the brand new repository (with the SVN history, etc).

So if you look at django-old's numbers: <https://github.com/django/django-old>

Watchers: 4,030

Forks: 753

compared to Bitbucket's:

Followers: 266

Forks: 39

So the raw numbers are dramatically in Github's favour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Couldn't ignore the irony. Github is a Rails application.

<comment><USER30> All the Pythonistas I know are very pragmatic WRT programming languages and frameworks. I see no real difference between Rails and Django - they both solve very similar problems in very similar ways. And they are both, certainly, good enough. I can have long discussions about the merits of buildout (I call it Python's Maven), but it's much more for practicing the almost-lost art of debate than for anything else.

It all boils down to taste. I don't use HN because it's written in ARC - <USER3> come for the discussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Misleading title, I've flagged this.

This is an offical branch of Django on git, this github branch has been around for a while. The offical Django development is still on svn.

<comment><USER32> "GitHub migration done!" [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/django- de...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/django-developers/9 --P57ezyBs)</comment></comment>


WasmWinforms – .NET WinForms in a browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/roozbehid/WasmWinforms <comment><USER2> I was one of the main engineers on Windows Forms circa 1998-2005. This blows my mind in so many ways.

<comment><USER3> Off-topic: but why did they opt for Windowed (hWnd'd) controls for WinForms when VB6 seemed fine with windowless controls and while there are advantages to windowed-controls (e.g. getting the latest enhancements to Common Controls) it seems WinForms defaults to using older versions and still overrides things like painting events. Almost as if WinForms couldn't tell if it wanted to be like AWT or more like WxWidgets.

<comment><USER4> Didn't VB use windowed controls as well? I distinctly remember everything being a ThunderSomething when looking with Spy++.

<comment><USER3> VB (1-6)'s "built-in" controls like Buttons and Checkboxes were windowless, most of the others were ActiveX controls which were windowed. This carried- over to VBA where some controls are windowless built-ins and the rest are ActiveX too.

<comment><USER5> VB 1 - 4 used VBX controls implemented in C, only with VB 4 came the support for COM (aka ActiveX, aka subset from OLE 2.0).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Calculator example breaks when attempting to divide by zero:

        Uncaught abort(20) at Error
            at jsStackTrace (https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/Calculator/mono.js:1063:12)
            at stackTrace (https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/Calculator/mono.js:1077:11)
            at abort (https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/Calculator/mono.js:18097:43)
            at nullFunc_ii (https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/Calculator/mono.js:14694:2)
            at b20 (wasm-function[10723]:31)
            at emterpret (wasm-function[922]:12351)
            at _do_icall (wasm-function[8343]:63)
            at emterpret (wasm-function[922]:7917)
            at _interp_exec_method_full (wasm-function[7977]:65)
            at emterpret (wasm-function[922]:7129)

Which is weird, because in the actual code[1], there's a division by zero check which should pop up a message box:

        case '/':
            if (opr2 != 0)
            {
                result = (opr1 / opr2).ToString();
            }
            else
            {
                MessageBox.Show("Can't divide by zero");
            }
            break;

Given a closer look, I doubt this is a WasmWinforms bug, but rather mono-wasm (or somewhere else along the compilation pipeline).

Edit: I'm wrong, it's a WasmWinforms bug.

[1] [https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Simple- Calcul...](https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Simple- Calculator-54ec8e4a)

<comment><USER7> Maybe the problem is the MessageBox method.

<comment><USER6> Given an even closer look, you're right ;) I saw MessageBox here[1] and assumed the implementation would just go through. After all, why would all other components compile fine, except for MessageBox? But actually, it even logs in the console

        dl_mapping_symbol MessageBox - proc name MessageBox not matched

So yep, MessageBox has no matched symbols so it crashes and burns.

[1] [https://github.com/roozbehid/WasmWinforms/blob/master/winfor...](https://github.com/roozbehid/WasmWinforms/blob/master/winforms/external/mono/mcs/class/Managed.Windows.Forms/System.Windows.Forms/MessageBox.cs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ERROR> [https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/Calculator/mono...](https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/Calculator/mono.js\(1181\)): Uncaught RangeError: WebAssembly.Memory(): could not allocate memory

<comment><USER9> I got RangeError: bad Memory initial size

<comment><USER10> Calculator demo uses around 1.5gb of memory so I wouldn't be surprised if it runs into various memory pressure issues.

<comment><USER8> That explains it as I have only 512MB.

<comment><USER11> Wow. Is that a VM or an actual PC?

<comment><USER8> Mobile

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the ReadMe: "There are many many bugs and this project/product is not at all recommended for production. It is pre-alpha phase!"

</comment><comment><USER13> THE CYCLE IS COMPLETE!

More seriously, looking forward to when CLR can compile down to web assembly directly rather than requiring a large runtime. Baby steps.

<comment><USER14> This is one of the targets of the CoreRT project, and a very limited version of it works today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and- death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of- javascript)

<comment><USER16> i saw that video in the past, but watching it again now took me 15 minutes to realize this was supposed to be a fun video about an absurd future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, does this mean that (in the near future) we'll be able to take that HUGE repository of WinForms apps and port them to the web? Would be exciting...

<comment><USER18> They will run, but of course the WinForms UI is not exactly optimized for mobile (even high DPI support is patchy).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I gave up after five minutes with a screen that said "Loading...". Any reason why <textarea> was thought to be so inefficient?

</comment><comment><USER20> Similar to Qt for WebAssembly:

[http://example.qt.io/qt- webassembly/widgets/richtext/textedi...](http://example.qt.io/qt- webassembly/widgets/richtext/textedit/textedit.html)

<comment><USER21> And somehow it's more snappy and responsive than some of the pages that are done in HTML today, amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> WebAssembly is amazing technology and in my experience is already pretty mature and can do incredible things. Definitely worth taking some time to understand it I think, especially if you have experience with "non-web" languages like C/C++. I thought Lin Clark's cartoon intro was excellent: [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/02/a-cartoon-intro-to- webasse...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/02/a-cartoon-intro-to-webassembly/)

</comment><comment><USER23> That is really cool that that is possible! Could the same approach be used for WPF? How do WinForms and WPF differ at that layer? Would WPF be a lot bigger of a project than WinForms?

<comment><USER5> Kind of, Uno allows for UWP on WebAssembly.

[https://platform.uno/](https://platform.uno/)

Yes I know it isn't the same XAML.

<comment><USER4> Well, it _is_ the same XAML, it just uses different controls from a different namespace. At its heart XAML is just a way of encoding object graphs in XML and can work with pretty much anything that has a default ctor and properties. As far as generic serialization formats for XML go it's one of the nicer ones in my book.

<comment><USER5> My opinion as well, the side remark as oriented towards those that always complain about WPF, Silverlight, UWP and Xamarin XAML being a bit different, when they actually share the same underlying concepts anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Now we just need to embed this in an MVVM WPF application!

</comment><comment><USER25> Am I the only one worried about how much easier this might make it to trick our less-tech-savvy friends into thinking their device "has a virus"? Might be enough to confuse my parents, at least.

<comment><USER26> It's just rendering to a canvas tag so it's not doing anything you can't already do in a browser (and haven't been able to do for years)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> A similar project is Uno. It lets you run UWP apps on iOS, Android and WebAssembly.

[https://github.com/nventive/Uno](https://github.com/nventive/Uno)

</comment><comment><USER28> The more WASM projects are being released , the more I'm telling myself that WASM has nothing to offers to regular JavaScript developers.

Solutions like this have already existed and still exist today. ASP.NET Webforms was basically the same attempt as this but with HTML5 base controls.

Running .NET on the browser was a great idea on paper for cross-platform application , but seing how much time it takes to load the entire .NET framework it's just isn't a suitable solutions for production.

<comment><USER29> This isn't a real project, it's just an experiment.

Blazor is the official Microsoft project that uses a small .NET runtime with Razor components and is already smaller and faster than many JS bundles without any optimizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So ActiveX (or its offspring) in the browser is apparently back :-)

On a positive note, as I watch the assemblies load, Angular sites with 50k or so npm packages doesn't seem so heavy :-)

<comment><USER31> ActiveX has never left IE (not Edge). Although Microsoft patches have broken it a few times. So you can run Winforms in the browser on a full Microsoft supported stack for the time being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Something I've wondered about with Web Assembly applications is, how do I actually view the web assembly/compiled blob? E.g--with normal Javascript, I can go to "sources" tab in developer tools and download all the JS, but how do I download the wasm?

Am I misunderstanding how web assembly works?

<comment><USER33> If you are using a fairly new version of chrome any wasm should indeed show up under sources, under a special wasm domain. It looks like this [https://webassemblycode.com/wp-content/uploads/Chrome- Wasm-D...](https://webassemblycode.com/wp-content/uploads/Chrome-Wasm-Debug- WasmView.png)

It doesn't show the source file because the browser is not actually aware of where the js on the page got the wasm its running from. From the browser's perspective it just fetched an opaque file and then separately got told to run some wasm.

You can see the actual source file for the wasm for one of the demos here, it still shows up in the network tab (but for example if the js on the page generated the wasm then it wouldn't). [https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/mono.wasm](https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/mono.wasm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Am I the only one that reads "Watcom assembler" when I see WASM? :)

In any case, it's pretty insane what they do now but I sort of fail to see how W(eb) assembly is different from let's say a Java applet?

It is not native code is it?

</comment><comment><USER35> That thing is glitchy as F. My machine used almost 1.5gb of ram running that thing. Couldn't barely drag the window or click any buttons, and froze my mouse cursor.

</comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone have an example/list of popular applications that use .NET WinForms? The only ones I can think of are bespoke...

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder at what point Apple is going to add wasm-support to iOS.

It's starting to feel quite left behind at this point.

<comment><USER38> Just tested, and this demo runs fine on iOS. It's kind of funny to use a classic Windows-style interface on a touchscreen. Loading time needs work, though.

<comment><USER37> Might be a ram thing. I tested on my iPhone SE and even while waiting a long time, it didn't seem to provide any visible results.

Edit: Trying it in Firefox desktop it fails too[1], so obviously this is not really fully cross-browser compatible yet.

[1] RangeError: bad Memory initial size mono.js:1181:26

<anonymous> [https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/Calculator/mono...](https://webassembly.z19.web.core.windows.net/Calculator/mono.js:1181)

<comment><USER38> Makes sense. According to other comments in the thread [1] the page requests a wasm heap of 1.25 GB (...hopefully unnecessarily!), while the iPhone SE has 2GB of RAM total, so it's easy to imagine that the remaining amount isn't enough for both other allocations in Safari and other processes. I tested it on my iPhone X which has 3GB of RAM – not that much more, but apparently enough.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18983109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18983109)

<comment><USER39> > the page requests a wasm heap of 1.25 GB

Par for the course in the "modern Web"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Well now this was an unexpected early UI API for Web Assembly.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why does it look like Windows 95?</comment>


What should I learn other than programming language, framework? - <AUTHOR> I have some free time after work and on weekends, nothing else to do. I want to learn something other than programming language or a new JS framework. I already know node, react, socket.io, redis, vue.js, angular, laravel and php. I want to learn some thing related to computer vision and machine learning but I have not good understanding of math behind ML and computer vision so I am really stuck here. <comment><USER2> You can try Python. Scikit-learn is one the most popular ML libraries.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks.</comment></comment>


The CIA isn't reporting any data to federal transparency site - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/06/fearing-the-mosiac-effect-the-cia-declines-to-report-its-unclassified-contracts-to-federal-transparency-site/ <comment><USER2> What is missing from this article and the debate: some transparency can be a strategy to avoid broader leaking that would result when the public starts to converge on the idea that current levels of secrecy are harmful. this is something that future administrations are going to wind up giving more importance to because this type of convergence is set to increase in the US as americans become increasingly exposed to the global community and take on the impression that civil liberties are universal and not just an american thing. the broadening of communal identity brought the arab spring in Egypt but for the US it is coming in the form of this transparency struggle. everyone is astonished that the current administration has brought more whistle blowers to prosecution that any administration in history, combined. few are examining why there "ARE" more whistle blowers than ever before.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's ironic that they can cite the "mosaic effect" in this context while in the same breath abusing civil liberties by gathering communications data.

<comment><USER4> budget numbers are only meta data</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please give me some webapp ideas - <AUTHOR>

It would be great if I submit a project idea for my college tech fest. I've to submit an idea by tomorrow. I'm interested in webapp, but currently I've no idea about what to make. So pleaes give me some ideas... I'll make it.. I've to submit the idea by tomorrow and Final code will submit later.. <comment><USER2> Start with the business model canvas. Look at the options you have per category (so for example: for revenue streams, list all the ways to make money you can think of, for value propositions list all the unique ways to stand out, for customer segments list the different types of user groups you can think of). Now pick a random topic that you're interested in, shuffle all the pieces around and see what new business model you can think of.

It's also great that you can then just hand in a business model canvas that explains your idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its a good thing you're taking college seriously and working hard to complete your assignments.

I'm sure you'll do well in the future with based on the initiative you've put in so far.

</comment><comment><USER4> Network API--replicate some command line program functionality into an API

Improved package tracking interface. Put in your hash and get like an actual map or something.

Browser extension to browse amazon with unit pricing. "$0.05 cents per ounce" or something.

Online app for the game werewolf

</comment><comment><USER5> How about an idea collector

Campus map/direction tool

Local resource directory

Pocket dorm room inventory

</comment><comment><USER6> I would say just start working on something. My best ideas all come from when I get stuck with a portion of another one.</comment>


The collapse of the information ecosystem poses profound risks for humanity - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/19/the-collapse-of-the-information-ecosystem-poses-profound-risks-for-humanity <comment><USER2> I think the press also made the mistake that it too often excused, ignored or even justified bad behavior of special interests. Their own ambitions to protect their business model and their monopoly on information left the role of the 4th estate neglected.

I think that information available today is more accurate than a few decades ago. Sure, weighting the quality has become harder because the quantity increased, but people will learn to adjust to that.

It is quite sad though. I remember my favorite newspaper writing about itself how it is economically forced to use services of facebook to get enough engagement and how they would still report critically about their business partners. That was around 2013-2014 I believe. The newspaper in question is quite a big player in the media landscape (not US).

The idea here can only be described as an indecent proposal at best. Business financing the news media? This is basically back to the roots with all the problems but with far more subversive methods. I think if the need increases, people will find a way to finance investigative journalism again. There are already some creators that are on this path. And they seem to be way more independent.

Many really good journalists might get lost on the way though.

</comment><comment><USER3> The guardian is hardly helping.</comment>


Building a new Tor that can resist next-generation state surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/08/building-a-new-tor-that-withstands-next-generation-state-surveillance/ <comment><USER2> I have a feeling that an "anonymous twitter" would quickly become a 4-chan style shitstorm

<comment><USER3> It probably won't be that bad. A few more mentions of currently illegal activities and products (like certain types of drugs). But given that Twitter and GNU Social and other services are already pretty anonymous (at least in not having to identify yourself with a real name) and moderated pretty poorly, I suspect it wouldn't be much worse than that.

For anyone not following the current equivalent of Silk Road or the likes, you probably won't be seeing much that's different to normal Twitter type services.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How Do You Know When a Crypto Token Is Dead? - <AUTHOR> In traditional business, it's pretty clear to know and understand when a businesses is dead.  You can check business licenses, store fronts, email addresses, websites, or get in touch with someone.  In the decentralized crypto token world, things seem to be a little more ambiguous.  What are some ways to audit a token's status of being alive or dead? <comment><USER2> I would suggest to check developments on github or official channels. Active project usually have a lot of activity on github or push out a lot of other developments that are being actively discussed within the crypto community like on slack channels. Another point is: if you cannot reliably measure the progress of a company or project, maybe you should not invest in it or keep the exposure very limited.</comment>


What is the most advanced AI I can go and speak to right now? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Try Cleverbot

</comment><comment><USER3> Why?

<comment><USER4> Why not?

What programmer doesn't think of the Turing test from time to time? :-)</comment></comment>


Carnegie Mellon launches free high school CS curriculum - <AUTHOR> https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2019/january/cmu-launches-high-school-computer-science-curriculum.html <comment><USER2> The article mentions "rigorous Advanced Placement courses". The test for Computer Science AB hasn't existed for years, and it has been even longer since the tests used a language without garbage collection. The available tests haven't been rigorous for the past two decades.

This is off too: "This isn't 'drag and drop' programming," Kosbie said. "We're teaching them to use Python, a text-based programming language that is the most widely taught language at the university level."

Nothing prevents a drag-and-drop code editor from being used with a serious language. On the other hand, Python is nothing to get excited about.

<comment><USER3> "Python, not scratch." But explained without using jargon for those who aren't jargon fluent.

I'd love to see anyone make a better fit of it than they did from the perspective of their target audience. It's not obvious to me how to do it but someone may have good ideas.

</comment></comment><comment> bra-ket they should just focus on "cracking the coding interview", it's all that's needed to get a job in CS

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a good, challenging course for 9th graders, but is there room in the curriculum to provide this course to all kids?

They already have 4 separate courses in math, science, language arts, and social studies/history/poli sci. And an art/music/shop elective. And maybe physical eduction.

Perhaps secondary school math instruction should evolve to include basic CS concepts? (Or blend CS into a combined math/science/CS double-length course?)

A minor quibble: the first line of code listed on the web site is:

Polygon(72, 47, 85, 65, 55, 66, fill='lightGreen')

Named arguments instead of raw integers might help kids keep the argument/parameter relationship front and center.</comment>


The AI Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mijordan3/artificial-intelligence-the-revolution-hasnt-happened-yet-5e1d5812e1e7 <comment><USER2> Well said:

> Thus, just as humans built buildings and bridges before there was civil > engineering, humans are proceeding with the building of societal-scale, > inference and decision making systems that involve machines, humans and the > environment. Just as early buildings and bridges sometimes fell to the > ground — in unforeseen ways and with tragic consequences — many of our early > societal scale inference and decision making systems are already exposing > serious conceptual flaws.

<comment><USER3> that's a trivial statement, unless he can suggest a different way to do things. Should people have held off building any bridges, until the 20th century arrived ? Building things and science have always evolved side-by-side in a feedback loop.

<comment><USER4> Actually it's not a trivial statement. He's saying that we don't have enough theory guiding us and instead we just spin up a tensorflow library without having any clue what's going on underneath the hood. And I don't mean understanding linear algebra in neural networks, I mean we don't have a good theory of computation for Artificial neural networks like we do for Boolean electronic circuits. There is a little bit of work out there, but no one seems to be interested in the theory and why these work. The fact that we still represent networks as fully connected when many many of those weights w_ij are completely spurious tells me that we don't spend enough time figuring out what's going on and instead focus on the result. And this lack of attention will be why we'll hit another wall. We should be reverse engineering intelligence and comparing that to AI so that we can build up the theoretical equivalent of aerodynamics.

<comment><USER2> We already hit a wall - neural nets are easily hacked. The field is called Adversarial Attacks and Defences of Neural Nets. There's no perfect fix yet and it is a major security flaw.

<comment><USER4> You're example doesn't prove they hit a wall, only that they're fallible. Humans 'get hacked' every day. I wouldn't exactly say human intelligence has hit a wall because of it, rather that human intelligence may have weaknesses and can be exploited. Frankly I wouldn't expect neural networks to be any different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I saw Prof. Jordan give this talk in person, and the 2nd paragraph resonated with me. I wish there was more critical thinking involved in science/research/higher ed/industry but unfortunately most there's a lot of cheap money floating around with "experts" slurping it up without care for outcome.

"But the episode troubled me, particularly after a back-of-the-envelope calculation convinced me that many thousands of people had gotten that diagnosis that same day worldwide, that many of them had opted for amniocentesis, and that a number of babies had died needlessly."

<comment><USER6> Like we have defensive programming: assert this field is not a stupidly large number. Perhaps we can encode our assumption as probabalisic asserts, and defensively encode that our assumptions are not violated. E.g. the current distribution looks like my training data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The biggest challenge yet unconquered is getting your "average" business ($1-100m revenue, zero AI knowledge) using ML to help with _literally anything they do_.

I'd wager less than 1% of businesses outside of SV even have a clue where to begin, or what to use it for, my employer included. "Do we hire some AI guys?"

We'll need to crack the 1%-using-it mark for me to consider the revolution "begun"...

<comment><USER8> I work for an actual tech company, which actually told me to look into a couple of ML projects to improve our operating efficiency, which actually produced good results and had an obvious and short path to being put into production... and which were promptly shelved.

Business people make no sense.

<comment><USER9> Can you go into why they were shelved? Were they normal technology and business reasons - or related to ML directly? I ask so that potentially others can learn to either navigate around those in the future.

<comment><USER8> I wish I could. I have very little insight. I presume it's some sort of "normal business reasons", but the from my point of view the decision process went something like this:

Me: "It's finished, here are the areas of strength and weakness, and here's where we can deploy the system for maximum effectiveness."

Business: "We're thinking about the best way to deploy this."

Me: "This is how you deploy it."

Business: "We'll think about and get back to you. Don't do anything until we tell you."

Me: "..."

Business: "..."

<comment><USER10> Perhaps they needed you to elucidate the risks or possible downsides?

<comment><USER8> That's the "weaknesses" part. And I did in fact spend a good bit of time with my manager going over exactly what the model _does not_ mean, and what you _should not_ conclude from it or use it for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not an AI researcher (although from my internet reading that's not a hard title to claim ;)) but I feel that ML/DL can't go much farther than they already have. The concept of "we just need more power" is an obvious fallacy to me.

<comment><USER12> Humans are proof that machine intelligence can be improved quite a bit. We are just complicated machines, no?

<comment><USER13> We're animals who have to worry about surviving and passing our genes on in a variety of social settings.

Machines are the tools we make to aid the above.

<comment><USER14> And your body and worries are just tools that help your genes reproduce.

<comment><USER15> And your genes are just tools that help the chemical environment they regulate reproduce.

<comment><USER16> And the chemical environment is just trying to maximize entropy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The main problem with "AI revolution" today is that 95% of things that practitioners tell you it can do are just nowhere close to sufficient accuracy under the range of conditions they'd need to work in in the real world. Easily more than a half of them don't even work at all outside a demo with hand picked examples. And nobody seems to care. This narrows down the scope of applicability to a tiny sliver where you can tolerate high error rates, and even there it's a hard slog to get anything done, and AI is relegated to the role of the "cherry on top", rather than baked into the pie.

There are a few areas where performance is good enough to be practically useful. One of those (facial recognition and tracking) is currently causing a "revolution" in China. I'm just not sure it's the kind of revolution we want.

<comment><USER18> I have this idea that the only way to create true AI necessarily results in something that has feelings.

<comment><USER17> I'd settle for probabilistic, context aware cognition, myself. Sadly (or thankfully, depending on one's perspective) this won't happen in my lifetime.

<comment><USER19> What do we want?

Context aware language processing!

When do we want it?

When do we want what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A related talk that Michael Jordan gave at a machine learning conference called Sys ML last month.

[https://youtu.be/4inIBmY8dQI](https://youtu.be/4inIBmY8dQI)

<comment><USER21> To anyone upset by MJ's Medium post, please watch the video. It's a much better representation of his thoughts on the current state of machine learning than the blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Most certainly we will see the comeback of "logical" AI too, including systems built on Prolog.

<comment><USER23> Prolog _horror intensifies_

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The problem had to do not just with data analysis per se, but with what > database researchers call "provenance" — broadly, where did data arise, what > inferences were drawn from the data, and how relevant are those inferences > to the present situation?

Plug: I work at a company ([https://www.pachyderm.com](https://www.pachyderm.com)) whose product is designed precisely to track data provenance across pipelines and through a company's larger data-processing operation for this reason

<comment><USER25> You all should really play that up more in your messaging - "provenance" is one of the hardest and least-addressed components of building AI/ML/data science systems that actually have measurable impact (rather than analysts making plots and speculating). In general having a structured, centralized representation of business processes is super valuable I'm sure.

If you write a blog post describing how critical that is to practical data science efficacy with some examples I bet you'll end up in a bunch of VP inboxes.

<comment><USER24> It may be time for a refresh, but our CEO has such a blog post from about a year ago: [https://medium.com/pachyderm-data/provenance-the-missing- fea...](https://medium.com/pachyderm-data/provenance-the-missing-feature-for- good-data-science-now-in-pachyderm-1-1-2bd9d376a7eb)

<comment><USER25> Nice - I went to the blog page on your site and this wasn't there. Good stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What are we defining as AI now? It seems like AI has had a lot of hype in the past few years, but I really don't think we're even close unless it's created by mistake. We don't understand the brain fully, we don't understand consciousness, we just know so little in the grand scheme of things.

Do we have the computing power to come anywhere close to what we need, will we have that computing power any time soon without a major breakthrough?

<comment> Ar-Curunir Did you read the article? Some of your questions would have been answered

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This sort of distraction arises whenever we try to adjust logic to words and not the other way around. It is said that this kind of distinction is only relevant to scientists. The article is very convincing though, that in the case of AI, the general public must be able to make those distinctions.

</comment><comment><USER28> Where is the end game? The problem with this kind of AI revolution is that it relies on data about us. And this is responsible for the feverish attitude towards collecting or scraping data, sometimes from the public domain, but more than usually, from us. I for one, am having none of it.

<comment><USER29> It will probably not end very soon. The author did mention some concerns about privacy, but only once, and then moved forward with his reasoning like nothing had happened. Also, it's disheartening to see that his reaction to a piece of technology that could have probably killed his unborn kid (the medical device at the beginning which was fed bad data) was to say "we should use more technology!", he was not questioning the underlying premises behind the whole operation at all: like, is it ok to "let" a machine help decide a technological untrained person (the doctor) if my unborn kid should support a life-threatening intervention or not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone who's working/worked in the Healthcare "Intelligence Augmentation" have something to say about the challenges they've faced in setting up an "Intelligent Infrastructure"? Maybe someone who's worked with the DeepMind Streams application?

<comment><USER31> A lot of people don't think about how hard validation can be. You need a lot of high quality labeled data to confidently say that your algorithm works. I don't see a way around this even if learning algorithms become very data- efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> An A.I revolution may not be happening but an 'Augmented Intelligence' revolution is

</comment><comment><USER33> I've been finding it difficult to find concrete examples of where AI is useful. Suggestion engines? Alg optimization? What would be something my parents would recognize that is being helped by AI?

<comment><USER34> I like the category of "augmenting human skills". Google's Quick Draw is an example of augmented drawing, but you could use the same concept for writing, creating music, even programming. DeepFakes are basically the beginning of augmented video production. Imagine if you didn't need a green screen and body tracking suits to replace any person or scene in a movie with whatever you want. The whole field of generative deep learning is interesting and, to me, a really unexpected result of AI research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> ...AND IT WON'T for a VERY LONG TIME. Those of us who know the origins of Ray Kurzweil, knew back then he was nothing special, and his ideas were derived from much smarter people around him.

As I recall, the article in WIRED from like 20 years ago, talked about how he missed his dad, and how in the future you would be able to take a room full of all his dad's old crap, and AI would be able to recompile his dad into dad 2.0 in the cloud!

(he didn't use these terms but that was the gist of the ridiculous and absurd WIRED article interview with him.)

Why do I bring up Ray? It's because circus acts like Ray and the Singularity University, sold a bunch of people certain goods, which were VASTLY overestimated in terms of delivery times, and in terms of the good themselves.

First of all, many folks don't want to admit this, but WE MAY NEVER BE ABLE TO CREATE A SYNTHETIC CONSCIOUSNESS! I think we will eventually, but it's definitely not a certainty. It just may not be possible for a completely synthetic 'consciousness' to exist.

This type of hype has become almost religious in nature, just like the folks who really think Moore's Law is an actual scientific law and not just an observation and prediction based on very limited data.

In conclusion, you'll get your AI just like those folks in the 50's, or was it 60's? ...well anyway, back when they had those world's fairs and predicted flying cars.

We're just not there yet. We don't even have basic foundations to build this yet. There is always a possibility of a brilliant individual, who may leapfrog humanity, but for right now, it's just vaporware.

AND YES. Even IBM's Watson and Google's GO winning "AI" are just vaporware machine learning and big data sets, it's not AI even a little bit.

Sorry folks, I love futurizing, and inventing words ;) , just like everyone else, but... if AI is in the stadium, we aren't even in the parking lot.

\---

And now, after my rant, I shall read this article since it looks really interesting. I'm surprised it's on Medium.

<comment><USER36> Not sure how you can claim things like Deepmind are "vaporware" since it achieved exactly what it was intended to do. If you disagree that it should be called "AI", well that just comes down to semantics, but I think "Artificial Intelligence" is exactly what it is.

Of course it will be possible to create synthetic consciousness eventually, why wouldn't it be? It may take 10 years or 10,000 years, but if you think it will never happen for the rest of human existence, that is nonsense. If it already exists in nature, then there is absolutely no reason why it can't be done synthetically.

<comment><USER35> This came as no surprise to me, and hence, I was spared the pangs of disillusionment, but there are countless people who have actually dealt with IBM's marketing gimmick, Watson, and have come away with a serious hangover:

\---

"Watson is a joke," Chamath Palihapitiya, an influential tech investor who founded the VC firm Social Capital, said on CNBC in May. __

A Reality Check for IBM's AI Ambitions - MIT Technology Review

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607965/a-reality-check- fo...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607965/a-reality-check-for-ibms-ai- ambitions/)

Why Everyone Is Hating on IBM Watson—Including the People Who Helped Make It

[https://gizmodo.com/why-everyone-is-hating-on-watson- includi...](https://gizmodo.com/why-everyone-is-hating-on-watson-including- the-people-w-1797510888)

Is IBM Watson A 'Joke'?

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/07/02/is- ib...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/07/02/is-ibm-watson-a- joke/)

\---

The final article, is the most telling, in its revelations. Of course, you must speak the language to understand IBM's gartner magic quadrant-esqe based reasoning: Their argument is because a bunch of businesses they convinced to sign up have 'Watson' stamped on their engagement contracts, it's PROOF that Watson is breakthrough technology, catapulting research into a new era of big data and machine learning....lol

I'm not saying some of the things that IBM claims it does, cannot be currently done, but I no doubt at all the IBM is not doing it, and Watson is most certainly behind closed doors a complete joke.

<comment><USER36> I didn't even mention Watson, since I know nothing about it. Even if Watson is a complete sham, it doesn't mean ALL AI projects are shams!

For example, you can't say that DeepMind is vaporware. AlphaGo is real, and it works. Self-driving cars are real, and they work, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can someone with more karma modify the title to be less click-bait-ey?

</comment><comment><USER38> Michael Jordan is just mad he missed the boat on deep learning. Must be tough being that brilliant and at the same time get left in the dust by algorithms from the 90's and just sheer brute force. The AI revolution is here, from Google search to Uber pool to auto correct to recommendation engines, it is just a slow process.

<comment> Ar-Curunir Lol Michael Jordan is at the forefront of ML, Stats, and yes, deep learning. He's not missed any boat.

<comment><USER38> Michael Jordan is a mathematician far more than an engineer. I've never heard of any deep learning papers or open source software coming from his lab. Like a lot of mathematicians though working in stats and ML, he's been forced to adapt. There is lots of resentment amongst mathematicians about the current AI revolution, to me this reeks of that. I could be wrong!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The AI Revolution is happening right now. There's enormous proven potential which is materializing in ever increasing rates. The first generations of hardware accelerators are slowly coming out and they're going to leave everyone astounded.

It's a bit like the early days of the internet, it's not always the most practical solution, but it definitely works.

<comment><USER40> If it were there would be no one denying it. I don't see _that_ though so my conclusion is that, no, there is no revolution yet.</comment></comment>


Sequence Thinking vs. Cluster Thinking - <AUTHOR> http://blog.givewell.org/2014/06/10/sequence-thinking-vs-cluster-thinking/

<comment><USER2> Interesting distinction. I had a colleague once who struck me as very good at following a chain of reasoning -- one of the best I've ever met at that -- but not good at maintaining perspective. This made him an excellent implementor but not so great a designer (in my opinion, anyway).

<comment><USER3> If you think of reasoning like a linked list, you want to make sure you keep a pointer pointed at the head of the list so you can quickly find your way back out and into the right context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, however I believe other formulation of the thinking theory might be also used. If you think of all beliefs that a person has as pieces of the puzzle. Those pieces have to be interconnected in order to create a perception of the object/world. If new knowledge is introduced to the system, one piece of the puzzle is taken away and new piece substitutes it. This kind of thinking is stable and can react fast to changes.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article made me think of the importance of function currying. When you take one variable at a time you are forced to think about an ordering of the variables and what you do at each step. See Pajer's talk at FlatMap, [http://vimeo.com/96639840](http://vimeo.com/96639840)

</comment><comment><USER6> If I were to try to understand this in terms of analogies, would [Sequence _vs_ Cluster] be analogous to [DIY _vs_ Outsourced]?</comment>


Tell HN: AT&T added fees on their service; now you can cancel the contract  - <AUTHOR>

AT&T added $0.61 fee on all mobile phone service.
Per the following AT&T contract, now you have an opportunity to cancel your current contract without an  early termination fee:

  1.3 Can AT&T Change My Terms And Rates?

  We may change any terms, conditions, rates, fees, expenses,
  or charges regarding your Services at any time. We will
  provide you with notice of material changes (other than
  changes to governmental fees, proportional charges for
  governmental mandates, roaming rates or administrative
  charges) either in your monthly bill or separately. You
  understand and agree that State and Federal Universal
  Service Fees and other governmentally imposed fees,
  whether or not assessed directly upon you, may be
  increased based upon the government's or our calculations.
  IF WE INCREASE THE PRICE OF ANY OF THE SERVICES TO WHICH
  YOU SUBSCRIBE, BEYOND THE LIMITS SET FORTH IN YOUR CUSTOMER
  SERVICE SUMMARY, OR IF WE MATERIALLY DECREASE THE
  GEOGRAPHICAL AREA IN WHICH YOUR AIRTIME RATE APPLIES (OTHER
  THAN A TEMPORARY DECREASE FOR REPAIRS OR MAINTENANCE),
  WE'LL DISCLOSE THE CHANGE AT LEAST ONE BILLING CYCLE IN
  ADVANCE (EITHER THROUGH A NOTICE WITH YOUR BILL, A TEXT
  MESSAGE TO YOUR DEVICE, OR OTHERWISE),

  AND YOU MAY TERMINATE THIS AGREEMENT WITHOUT PAYING AN EARLY
  TERMINATION FEE OR RETURNING OR PAYING FOR ANY PROMOTIONAL
  ITEMS,

  PROVIDED YOUR NOTICE OF TERMINATION IS DELIVERED TO
  US WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS AFTER THE FIRST BILL REFLECTING
  THE CHANGE
 <comment><USER2> Definitions of their numerous and vaguely named charges:

<http://att.com/additionalcharges>

Here's their explanation of this one in particular:

      The Administrative Fee helps defray certain expenses AT&T
      incurs, including but not limited to: (a) charges AT&T or
      its agents pay to interconnect with other carriers to
      deliver calls from AT&T customers to their customers; and
      (b) charges associated with cell site rents and maintenance.

Edit: Screwed up formatting by trying to post in markdown again.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, you can't. It is an administrative surcharge, not a service price increase. Thusly, it falls outside the sections you quoted.

What they _will_ do, _if_ you argue the point enough, is credit you the extra amount times the number of months you have left on your contract.

Also, the fee is per line.

<comment><USER4> I'm an attorney and have been pondering for hours about whether this would permit one to break their contract. Certainly, if the fee was a tax, one couldn't break their contract since neither party really can control what the government does. But what gets me is that it appears to be a price increase disguised as a tax. Looking at the AT&T additional fees page, it's clear that this fee essentially covers operating expenses. (ie: regular AT&T business costs). Labeling a price increase as an "administrative fee" or a "surcharge" doesn't change the legal nature of it. Courts tend to look at what the fee is, not what it's called. I'm going to do some research on this one.

What if the monthly fee was $100? From a legal standpoint, the amount of the fee doesn't matter. You really don't think we could invoke Section 1.3 of the contract?

<comment><USER5> The contract says "administrative charge". My bill says "administrative fee". In the dictionary, there is a difference between a charge and a fee. So to the lawyer -- is there a difference between a charge and a fee? If so, then there's an out.

<comment><USER4> I don't believe there is a difference legally. Courts tend to disregard the label applied to an amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm trying to find this fee on my bill. My AT&T bill labels every charge with a number. On your bill, is the new charge labeled or numbered?

Edit: I found the notice of the charge. It's on left-middle side of page 2 of my April 2013 bill and is called a Mobility Administrative Fee.

Edit 2: On my May 2013 bill, the charge is labeled #8.

</comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone successfully canceled their service while under contract without early termination fees via this method?

<comment><USER7> I bought a tablet through T-Mobile with a two year contract at $50 a month. Bad idea, I know. I ended up regretting the monthly plan due to using it primarily at home on a wifi.

After 8 months, I luckily found out that T-Mobile was changing their pricing based on roaming charges. I called them to ask for a cancellation with no ETF. I explained to them that the change of terms is a cost change to how I use the tablet. Through a story of "I use this tablet in remote areas for work...", I was able to get it cancelled. It took two phone calls to make it happen, but I soon found out many others tried but failed to take this approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> AT&T's quoting

`(other than changes to governmental fees, proportional charges for governmental mandates, roaming rates or administrative charges)'

at me; still fighting it and will let you know how it goes.

<comment><USER8> After being elevated several levels AT&T esentially flat out told me that it was an adminsistrative fee and that was the end of it; they've claimed someone even higher up will call me back within 24 hours — we'll see.

<comment><USER9> Yea, I don't expect their random customer service people to give much of a shit. I assume you'd have to notify them in writing that you're terminating the contract per the price change and see if they balk. If they do, they'll force you into arbitration.

I'd oddly consider all of this, as I consider this a ploy to increase their revenue and see who notices plain and simple (as opposed to other contract changes they pull sometimes that might be arguably necessary) but given that I'm still relying on the good ol' 2007 unlimited iPhone contract, I'm hesitant to risk them agreeing with me and terminating the contract so they can modify the unlimited access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ewszk/att_just_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ewszk/att_just_added_a_061_monthly_fee_to_postpaid/ca4mgcb)

</comment><comment><USER11> Can I terminated the contract and remain a customer?

</comment><comment><USER12> If I were to try to do this would I need to sign up with another carrier first to keep me number?

</comment><comment><USER13> Where is this contract available online?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/articles- resources/wireles...](http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/articles- resources/wireless-terms.jsp)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hacker-friendly in Tokyo - <AUTHOR>

I want to live in Tokyo for a few months this summer, I'm currently looking for a place to stay. I like designing and building circuits, so I'd like to live someplace close to where I can get parts, and that has enough space for me to
set up a workbench for soldering stuff, and desktop computer.<p>I can afford to spend up to $600/month. Anybody here have any ideas? <comment><USER2> You are going to have a very, very difficult time living in Tokyo for $600 a month. Is that $600 you have budgeted out for rent or $600 total?

At $600 total it is, flatly, impossible for you unless you intend to sleep on a park bench. At $600 for rent you can probably find somewhere in the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan area (note: this is _huge_ and can be upwards of 3 hours from Tokyo proper by train) which will take a foreigner for a few months without requiring $2,000 worth of key money, but it will certainly not have a workbench.

</comment><comment><USER3> Be sure to check out Akihbara -- the otaku and computer geek mecca:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara></comment>


Show HN: Nines – Insanely Detailed Uptime Monitoring - <AUTHOR> http://www.nines.ws <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! We're the builders of Nines, looking for some feedback. At a super high level, nines addresses some problems with uptime monitoring solutions (such as the basic ping service that New Relic provides) by 1) allowing you to send probes at up to 1 second intervals, and 2) allowing multiple probes in a given time frame (to exercise load-balanced applications).

Let us know if you have any thoughts!

<comment><USER2> Your previous Show HN has an unanswered question pertaining to ping-only probes. While I understand that the OP had confused your copy's ping with an actual ICMP type of ping, you probably want to clarify it with an example ([https://app.nines.ws/ping](https://app.nines.ws/ping)).

Good luck!</comment></comment>


3d printer could turn space station into machine shop - <AUTHOR> http://www.cemag.us/news/2014/09/3-d-printer-could-turn-space-station-machine-shop

<comment><USER2> I would think some aspects of 3d printing would work better in space? Less worry about sagging without support structures, etc...</comment>


Number of home-schooled students has doubled since 1999, new data shows - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2016/11/01/number-of-home-schooled-students-has-doubled-since-1999-new-data-show <comment><USER2> Was homeschooled K-12, Graduated high school in 2001, still have family that are homeschooled. I'd guess, as the article doesn't mention, that a large driver of homeschooling growth is second generation homeschooling, that is, my cohort of students that were in the first homeschooling growth wave are now homeschooling their own children.</comment>


By Thought Alone: Mind over Keyboard - <AUTHOR> http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/neuro/thought-alone-mind-over-keyboard

<comment><USER2> I can't wait for my first Freudian slip while thinking up an email to my employer. Better yet, an IRC chat.</comment>


New 'gig' economy spells end to lifetime careers - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ab492ffc-3522-11e5-b05b-b01debd57852.html

<comment><USER2> I don't understand what the author is trying to prove here; the need to progress is never-ending. Holding it back is futile.</comment>


Whatever happened to Artificial Intelligence? - <AUTHOR> http://edge.networkworld.com/research/2008/062308-artificial-intelligence.html

<comment><USER3> On one page: [http://edge.networkworld.com/cgi- bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend...](http://edge.networkworld.com/cgi- bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/htdocs/research/2008/062308-artificial- intelligence.html&pagename=/research/2008/062308-artificial- intelligence.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/research/2008/062308-artificial- intelligence.html&site=software)

I hate those multi-page ad-pushers (even with adblock - the clicking requirement is just annoying). It would be nice if submitters would check whether there's a one-page option available, and use that link if it is.

</comment><comment><USER3> What happened to AI depends on who you ask. If it's Peter Norvig during his recent startup school talk <[http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/peter- norvig-at-start...](http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/peter-norvig-at- startup-school-08) > he pointed out advances in image recognition, language translation and driverless cars as examples that AI research is already succeeding. "Now if you only define success as 'Can we duplicate a human?' - well, maybe that's a harder goal. On the other hand, I've done that, too - <USER2> have two kids, and they're pretty smart."

If you ask Kevin Warwick, a.k.a. Captain Cyborg, who hosts this year's Loebner Prize Contest at Reading University, a machine might pass the Turing test a little more than four months from now: "I believe machines are getting extremely close - it would be tremendously exciting if such a world first occurred in the UK, in Reading University in 2008. This is a real possibility." Yes, he really said that <[http://www.reading.ac.uk/research/Highlights- News/featuresne...](http://www.reading.ac.uk/research/Highlights- News/featuresnews/res-news-loebner.asp) >.

Then there are the Artificial General Intelligence guys, like Ben Goertzel, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Pei Wang. Roughly, they claim we're getting there, agree that everybody else is doing it wrong, but can't agree on which of them is doing it right. But wait, even Doug Lenat is still in the game; go watch his Google presentation <[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7704388615049492068...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7704388615049492068&q=engedu) >.

And then there are those who think that AI is a medium ("Expressive AI"), and that the most interesting applications are in videogames like "Spore" and interactive dramas like "Facade". That's what interests me most, personally. Well, I keep track on all the other stuff, too, but I see that also from the AI-as-medium angle, not from a the-singularity-is-coming angle.

Oh yea, and then the article quotes a "futurist" called Daniel Burros: "The first application of successful AI was in the financial services industry for loan qualifications. Loan qualification went from one to two weeks down to minutes." A qualification that struck me as kinda subprime, I must say.</comment>


The NorthSkirt - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UktOOIK_6nU <comment><USER2> I nearly flagged this as spam, but just saw enough to realise that it is actually quite technical, even though there are no real details given.

Perhaps I should be slower to flag ...</comment>


Is your application extremely slow after upgrading to Rails 3.1? Then read this - <AUTHOR> http://martinciu.com/2011/06/rails-3-1-and-slow-asset-pipeline.html

<comment><USER2> It's strange that load_models appears to be the culprit. Do you see the same slowdown in development mode? Did you compile the assets?

<comment><AUTHOR> Compiling assets in development mode does not have any sense. Asset files are generated with MD5 added to it's name, but links to these assets are without MD5 signature.</comment></comment>


Willow Garage - A Robotics Startup  - <AUTHOR> http://www.willowgarage.com/

<comment><USER2> Some other robotics startups with promise: Sebastian Thrun's stealth startup Vutool, in SF area.

Aaron Edsinger's startup in SF, Meka Robotics: <http://mekabot.com/> He made Domo <http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaweber/domo/index.html>

Kiva Systems in Boston: <http://www.kivasystems.com/>

Q Robotics, also in stealth mode in Boston. Some _very_ smart people there. <http://www.qrobotics.com/>

I'd list Anybots if I knew more about their plan. TLB?

Also, do you note a pattern on the locations? :)</comment>


Greek Anarchists vs. The Islamic State - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/athenslivegr/greek-anarchists-vs-the-islamic-state-9aac1e335495 <comment><USER3> AFA / AntiFA, the extreme left terror organisation is going to Syria to learn warfare and build revolutionary organisation. Even though I applaud them for fighting ISIS, I cant help but find this more than a little worrying.

<comment><USER4> Yes. Some of us still remember the days when RAF and Red Brigades worked together with PFLP, PLO and whatnot. Since plane hijackings are now more difficult, we'll be seeing the left and Middle Eastern radicals working together to bomb European soft targets like concerts, markets, railway stations etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reinforces my opinion that it's a good idea to restrict warfare to state actors and make it a criminal offense to join armed movements in foreign countries.

I have a lot of sympathy for Kurds in their struggle for a nation of their own, but having members of the public travel from European countries to fight for or against Daesh, be indoctrinated to kill, and then return to Europe carrying both the technical learnings of warfare, the ideological baggage collected, and the emotional trauma of war, can lead to further atrocities in Europe.

Armies of governments aren't all good and nice, but they do have more restrictions on what they can and will do, compared to ad hoc militias - <USER2> more follow-up of how former service members are doing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Or - if you switch off the clickbait title - anarchists as the pawns in the irredentist movement spread out over four sovereign states.</comment>


Show HN: The claims are real. I've been working on it for two years - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-core-wireless-speaker-system

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been melting audio retailers brains with in person demos since CES. The product honestly sounds like an integrated amplifier with a pair of bookshelf speakers, but you're always in the sweet spot. If you're in the Toronto area I'll be doing demos around town next week. I've already hit NYC, SF, and Denver. Plans for another tour when we're about to ship.</comment>


Congratulations You Have Received a Meaningless Endorsement - <AUTHOR> http://www.whitegloveapps.com/2013/05/17/congratulations-meaningless-endorsement/

<comment><USER2> "Enthusiasm for tweeting about everything that goes into, and comes out of, your body" = my favorite part.

I don't have a problem with LinkedIn's endorsement system. I think users think they're doing something nice for their friends by endorsing them. But employers and clients probably don't really take the endorsements seriously, so they end up being online noise (like YouTube and newspaper comment threads, which is one of the points you're making here).

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking of someone who tweeted "I really need to find a bathroom!" Then put down your phone and go look for a bathroom--I don't think anyone on Twitter will help you with that. (In addition to the usual, "here's what I ate for breakfast" tweet.)

I do endorse people on LinkedIn when _I know_ that they have that skill because I've worked with them on that particular topic; in that case I agree it's a nice thing to do. A lot of times, I know that skill is part of their job, but if I haven't seen them do it, I don't feel qualified to endorse them. I guess I'm missing the point by not just blindly endorsing people...</comment></comment>


I tried to be a Monk, here is what I learned - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dave-craige/monk-day-bf84215abc92

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I would love it if you checked out this new project I am working on. Thanks!</comment>


Google Introduces Physical World Hyperlinks to the U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/google-qr-codes-print-advertising

<comment><USER2> Oh no! I hate those 2-D bar codes: it seems my brain cannot refrain from looking at them and trying to make sense of them. They are extremely annoying.</comment>


Big iPhone App Opportunity: Blocking of Unknown Callers - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=How+do+I+block+unknown+callers+on+my+iphone&aq=f&oq=How+do+I+block+unknown+callers+on+my+iphone&aqs=chrome.0.57j0l3j62l2.8347&sugexp=chrome,mod=8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

<comment><USER2> That there is - but there is no API that gives access to this functionality, which means if Apple doesn't want to provide it, it's not happening.</comment>


Sorry Bootstrap, it's over between us - <AUTHOR> http://red-badger.com/blog/2013/04/19/sorry-bootstrap-its-over-between-u/

<comment><USER2> Realize that Bootstrap is as much an HTML/JS framework as it is a CSS framework.

Looking at Bootstrap's examples it's pretty obvious how easy it is to make a Bootstrap-backed site look completely different.

Bootstrap was made to be used in parts, or as a whole, and has a lot of useful plugins (like their carousel).

Abandoning it outright because you don't like the way it looks just makes me think you're a back-end developer that doesn't want to put any effort into the UX/UI of the front-end.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please correct me if I'm wrong; Bootstrap is to get started quickly and to focus on functionality before you focus on form. Bootstrap allows you (as a developer) to quickly prototype without having to be bogged down by HTML/CSS details.

However, when you're ready for the next stage and want to implement your "real" design you don't have to shoehorn it into Bootstrap. You can just toss it out and use something else. And if you decide to keep using Bootstrap that's cool too...</comment>


Has the HP Touchpad Site Been Hacked? - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/hp-touchpad-site-hacked

<comment><USER2> In related snark, is this REALLY the URL for the Touchpad's product page?

[http://h41112.www4.hp.com/promo/webos/uk/en/tablet/touchpad....](http://h41112.www4.hp.com/promo/webos/uk/en/tablet/touchpad.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> So anyone familiar with HP able to connect the dots for us between HP and Indian labor?

</comment><comment><USER4> wtf * 2. This has not been a good week for HP. even worse if this is for real.

</comment><comment><USER5> wtf?</comment>


What Happens To Google Employees When They Die - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/08/08/heres-what-happens-to-google-employees-when-they-die/ <comment><USER2> So, they're large enough and, in aggregate, young enough to affordably self- fund de facto term life insurance.

At my last corporate gig, I received a certain amount "for free" and could purchase roughly equivalent coverage for something like $50 or $100 a year additional out of pocket.

Not to put it down, necessarily. But non-Googlers may already have access to something comparable.

P.S. The term life insurance pays a lump sum up front. OTOH, it typically excludes certain high-risk activities and perhaps some other stuff that may have you talking to a lawyer to sort out who owes you what, in some niche cases.</comment>


ESLint hits 3.0 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eslint/eslint/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md <comment><AUTHOR> Just found the blog post... a little easier to consume:

[http://eslint.org/blog/2016/07/eslint-v3.0.0-released](http://eslint.org/blog/2016/07/eslint-v3.0.0-released)</comment>


Apple's Icons Have That Shape for a Very Good Reason - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/apples-icons-have-that-shape-for-a-very-good-reason-720d4e7c8a14#.wt0skdze8 <comment><USER2> Something can be refined and intentional but still annoying and worse than before. They can use whatever math they want, it doesn't mean that the design is "good" now.

First, "consistency" makes no sense as a design goal for rounded corners! When there are two nested rounded-corner shapes, you _never_ make both curves exactly the same: the outer curve has to be a little different than the inner curve in order for the shapes to look good together. Therefore, iOS should never use exactly the same curve as the device: it should use something that is slightly smaller.

The modified icon shapes are just not "comfortable" to look at. They also don't blend well with other shapes that appear in the majority of app icons either, like inner circles and straight lines.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple's curves are effectively superellipses, so-named by Piet Hein -- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superellipse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superellipse).

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish there was a good way for generating these curves in something like Illustrator because hard corners are rather jarring when rendered at certain sizes.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of what Alan Watts calls "prickly goo" or "gooey prickles".

</comment><comment><USER6> Why is this desirable?</comment>


Ask HN: How to trace the pirated versions of a mobile app? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
Is there a way to find out if there are pirated/unauthorized installations of our mobile app (not downloaded from the App stores)?
More specifically is it possible to find out how many times our mobile app was installed and is in use when it doesn't send out any analytics report of the installation/launch on different devices/users?
Thanks much, Ashwini <comment><USER2> Yes. If you're on Android, do a checksum of your classes.dex file. If you use the Android LVL, chances are the cracker will patch your app, and thereby change the checksum of classes.dex. You can use the checksum to then decide whether or not the app is pirated, and report it to your servers.

For iOS, you can check if the app is pirated by seeing whether or not the cryptid flag is set in the LC_ENCRYPTION_INFO of the MACH-O header, and then report it to your servers if it's not.</comment>