Show HN: PaperTrail – track your database history in Elixir - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/izelnakri/paper_trail <comment><USER2> My first reaction was to associate this with [https://papertrailapp.com/](https://papertrailapp.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I'm aware of the similarity. paper_trail gem is 5+ years old and its well known in the ruby community. I'm just giving the credit to where its due ;)</comment></comment>


Tech sector blasts IBM and ABS over [Australian] Census failure - <AUTHOR> http://www.afr.com/technology/web/security/tech-sector-blasts-ibm-and-abs-over-census-failure-and-demand-compensation-20160810-gqpbih <comment><USER2> I don't get how anything designed in the past couple years for something like this could be done in such a way as to crash and burn like this...

I mean, a couple geo-redundant C* clusters, and a load-balanced API server... Hell, design around (AWS|Azure|Google) cloud's big-data offerings, provided they meet legal/security concerns, and this would have been highly unlikely, or at least had appropriate help from the cloud provider for what that structure would have brought.

I don't know the details, but a multi-million dollar project for something like this should have been able to handle a _LOT_ of load, if properly engineered like a project such as this should have been.</comment>


Explosive Novels of the Cold War - <AUTHOR> https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/novel-explosives-of-the-cold-war/ <comment><USER2> As mentioned in another top-level comment, the explosives were actually novels -- a bit of a play on words there, clearly.

One interesting thing to me, was to read that millions of copies of Orwell's Animal Farm were distributed from West Germany via 10-foot (diameter?) balloons, which were subsequently targets of communist airforces.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great essay for the Spectator,* but what I'd really enjoy reading is some James Bond style spy novels from the eastern side of the iron curtain translated into something I can ready.

Soviet SF has been translated but can anyone recommend novels of derring-do against the capitalists?

* I was a long time subscriber to the speccie for the quality of its writing, though most of it seemed like an (unwitting!) absurdist sendup of establishment toryism. It was especially enjoyable when Johnson was editor.

<comment><USER4> Try Yulian Semyonov's works. "Seventeen moments of spring" is about WWII spy, but he has many novels generally of the other side of the story.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please note that, misleadingly, this article is about literature, not chemistry.

<comment><USER6> Literature: [http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201111h.html](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201111h.html)

Chemistry: [https://archive.org/details/milmanual- tm-31-210-improvised-m...](https://archive.org/details/milmanual- tm-31-210-improvised-munitions-handbook)

always a joy to link both of those

<comment><USER7> Your first link, _" Homage to Catalonia"_ by Orwell -- a fantastic book. I recommend it to _anyone_.</comment></comment></comment>


How porn links and Ben Bernanke snuck into Bitcoin's code - T-A http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/02/technology/security/bitcoin-porn/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> When you attempt to make something that "no one can control," then things like this happen. Same thing with child porn on Tor .onion addresses.

I'm curious what the implications of making some of these removable from the block chain though. Would it just end up being some central authority deciding which transactions are 'appropriate?' Is there a deterministic way of filtering out these 'data spam' transactions (without side-effects)?

<comment><USER2> re: "is there a deterministic way[?]"

I would assume so.

Perhaps adding a word-checker to bitcoin clients that looks for recognizable words (or attempts to validate a URL found inside the most recent block).

If block contains words or URLs, disregard it. If not, accept it.

Now Namecoin on the other hand...

<comment><USER3> If I understand correctly, these people are using special software to encode data in transactions, namely the output addresses. You can only embed arbitrary data in blocks if you're able to mine a block (like Satoshi's headline in the genesis block and Dan Kaminsky's Ben Bernake ASCII art), otherwise you need to encode it in the transaction data.

<comment><USER2> Well then all of the worries about this child-porn being in the blockchain are warrantless.

You could create a link to child-porn from this very comment I just posted using the right cipher. I am sure of it.

<comment><USER4> What if A) your comment was preserved as a part of the block-chain that could not be removed without doing serious damage to bitcoin. And B) the cipher you are using is a publicly known cipher recognized as the standard way of encoding data into the block-chain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wait, HN is now a source of comments for _CNN_? That's worrying.

<comment><USER6> I dunno, I think I'd trust random HNers for accuracy in their technical commentary more than I would CNN.

(This is more criticism of CNN than praise of HN, understand.)

<comment><USER7> I don't know about that. With care there is a hell of a lot to be learnt here and at least the crap gets down voted, where news site promote popular stories. Link bait versus quality comments and voting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The aspect that worries me about this is that links to child pornography websites concealed within transactions could make it theoretically possible for people to share child pornography in a somewhat anonymous way. Given the anonymous nature of the currency it appears it could be used to transmit highly illegal content within the transaction.

Although having said that, the same could be said for the Tor network and onion addresses contributing to the same thing. That's the name of the anonymous game, people will do illegal and questionable things that's just the way it will always be.

How would these injectable pieces of data be removed from transactions without exposing transactions to attacks?

<comment><USER9> You can't put arbitrary data in a transaction, at least not very easily. The bitcoin devs are pretty clear that the bitcoin network and blockchain should not be used for messaging or store non transaction related data.

What actually is happening here, is that miners have the opportunity to put a small amount of arbitrary data in a block when they mine. Ideally this is should be random data, its purpose is to change the data being hashed so you get a different hash each time you try.

In my view the author of bitcoin set a bad precedent by including a newspaper headline referring to bank bailouts in the very first block. However I can't begrudge him for that too much. Since 2009, people have included prayers and accusations of illegal activity (trolling) in blocks.

Assuming increased bitcoin adoption, I see mining getting more and more centralized, already I don't think any of the major mining pools would be silly enough to include CP or other illegal content. It would take many blocks to store a non trivial sized image in the blockchain, and if they put a link in instead then of course the host could be taken down.

<comment><USER10> > You can't put arbitrary data in a transaction, at least not very easily.

No; it's very easy. Anyone sending Bitcoin can add arbitrary data in his transaction; no need to be a miner: <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script#Transaction_with_a_message>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was surprised when I didn't see this on HN first. I wonder what would happen if an organization like wikileaks began injecting documents into the blockchain.

<comment><USER12> There's already a 7z binary of wikileaks crap in there. About 3MB of the stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I understand this correctly, the blockchain transaction file is already pretty big (i.e. a couple of GBs). When you first setup Bitcoin on your machine you are basically required to download this file, and it is then kept up to date using Bittorrent, presumably with partial updates?

I believe that there is a way (within the bitcoin design), such that the file size can be limited, firstly by only downloading the transaction headers, and / or secondly, by removing historical transactions (by breaking off branches from the Merkle tree [[http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10333/blockchain-...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10333/blockchain- long-run-issue\])).

However, when do those measures come into play? Do they have to be switched on? If so how, the whole thing is decentralized? Are the full transaction histories already being pruned?

<comment><USER14> The header only download is a client side thing and can be done already (with a client that supports it). The Unused Output Tree (UOT) - the second thing you mentioned - needs amendment to the blockchain (adding checkpoints).

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Thin_Client_Security#Header- Only_...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Thin_Client_Security#Header-Only_Clients)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is dirty money and then there is _dirty_ _dirty_ money.

<comment><USER16> but how to tell the difference ? lol

<comment><USER2> Come on guys, this is HN. Not Reddit.

<comment><USER17> Face it, all web communities eventually evolve into YouTube comments.

<comment><USER18> Although, especially recently, YouTube comments have gotten much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you know a bit about web security (think Stripe CTF 2.0) and would like Bitcoins to try this, you can visit <http://bitcoinctf.com>

</comment><comment><USER20> This could get very _"interesting"_ if people started building a communication system on top of BitCoin. It could get bitcoin shut down....

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be interesting to see a tool that searched the blockchain extracting possible plaintext decodings.

</comment><comment><USER22> Short sell bitcoin; then insert base-64 encoded child porn. (or perhaps salt multiple transaction and then leak decode process of higher res image) _bling_ criminal mastermind or future jailhouse bitch...</comment>


Ask HN: How can we stop downvoting mobs? - <AUTHOR> I've noticed that lately certain companies seem to hire downvoting mobs to combat negative (developer) pr. Any comment that can seem negative is downvoted immediately.<p>Is there a way to flag block this type of behavior? <comment><USER2> Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: Basic data analysis can pick up most if not all the shenanigans. Doesn't matter how much they "age" the accounts or hide their tracks, eg IP address etc. Don't even necessarily need high powered hardware or even machine learning. They do help in particular ways if you choose to use them.

Fake vote detection is now a choice not to rather than a technical blockage.

<comment><USER3> > Short answer: yes.

> Longer answer: Basic data analysis can pick up most if not all the > shenanigans. Doesn't matter how much they "age" the accounts or hide their > tracks, eg IP address etc. Don't even necessarily need high powered hardware > or even machine learning. They do help in particular ways if you choose to > use them.

> Fake vote detection is now a choice not to rather than a technical blockage.

I don't believe this is correct. Bots can create simple sentences that very much appear as a human. Spread these out across enough accounts, and filtering noise becomes very difficult.

There are also apps that activists use and I'm certain PR firms as well which alert humans to go and vote in certain ways.

These and other technologies combined with IPv6 make it exceptionally difficult for site admins and moderators to discover manipulators. Plus, many sites have few resources to put into the task anyway.

HN has at least put one step against it by not having downvotes on article submissions, though that doesn't help against upvoting manipulators.

<comment><USER2> You are operating on the assumption that analysis of the text is required. Nothing I'm admittedly vaguely mentioning requires analysis of any bulk amounts of text or requiring massive manpower or anything that ends in a hopeless sense of "it can't be done reasonably". It most certainly can.

Distributed mobs of clever humans or bots can't actually hide.

One other thing: I'm not expressing a theory up for debate. I'm only mentioning that there are already alternatives of detecting downvote mobs and similar interference. This is already in production.

The old saying "If you believe its impossible then you're right".

As for HN, many downvotes are (ab)used for disagreement rather than the comment being wrong or factually incorrect. I've seen this on HN plenty of times. At minimum, all downvotes should require an associated comment or upvoted reply so the offending commenter knows exactly what happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Upvote only. Promote signal rather than discourage noise.

This does come with a need to specify a filter.

Or, a sort and aging scheme.

But then we get upvote mobs, hello reddit.

</comment><comment><USER3> This kinds of activities have been going on at least since Digg.

<comment><AUTHOR> I always assumed it was on the positive side. Buying likes and such, but not downvotes.

<comment><USER3> I believe that is where the phrase "bury brigade" originates. here's one older story.

[https://www.wired.com/2007/03/hunting-down-diggs-bury- brigad...](https://www.wired.com/2007/03/hunting-down-diggs-bury-brigade/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ancient Underground Cities of Turkey - <AUTHOR> http://www.xpeditionsmagazine.com/magazine/articles/turkey/turkey.html <comment><USER2> exploring some of these on a 3 month trip to Turkey in the late 90's was definitely a highlight of all travels i've had; get there if you can and give yourself time in the region if you can</comment>


Show HN: Cpi – Immediately compile and execute c++ program like a scripting lang - <AUTHOR> http://treefrogframework.github.io/cpi/ <comment><USER2> This is great! Nice to see another project in the history of C/C++ interpreters including:

\- cling: [https://root.cern.ch/cling](https://root.cern.ch/cling)

\- cint: [http://www.hanno.jp/gotom/Cint.html](http://www.hanno.jp/gotom/Cint.html)

\- Ch: [https://www.softintegration.com/](https://www.softintegration.com/)

If people know of other ones, I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

<comment><USER3> From what I remember from watching Terry's videos he also did something like this in TempleOS with his compiler HolyC. His shell is apperently just his compiler running in an interactive mode.

HolyC is "kind of" C from a compiler perspective so I think it counts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a task on Rosetta:

[https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Native_shebang](https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Native_shebang)

Also:

[https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Multiline_shebang](https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Multiline_shebang)

I contributed the C one here.

</comment><comment><USER5> Rather than using shebang notation for running C source files, which as noted leads to code which isn't legal input to a normal C compiler, there is a standard trick to please both the shell and the C compiler:

        #if 0
        /bin/env cpi "$0"
        exit
        #endif

And you don't need this cpi program depending on your tolerance for hacks:

        #if 0
        out=/tmp/$RANDOM
        gcc "$0" -o $out
        $out
        rm $out
        exit
        #endif

<comment><USER6> This only works if invoked by the shell, I believe. If you exec that file directly it will fail unless I'm mistaken (can't test at the moment).

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I should have mentioned that. Whereas shebang notation is understood by the executable loader, not the shell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I do something very similar to this, but just using cmake and basic bash scripts to launch the compilation and then run the executable all at once. And for the interpreter mode, a bash script can just automatically dump that into a main function, and then compile and run it all at once.

It's cool, but you can set something up like this just a few lines of bash code.

</comment><comment><USER8> The page claims that CPI is an interpreter, but as this post says it is not. It just uses a regular compiler to build the input, then fiddled with the file descriptors to hook up the new executable's I/O to cpi's existing fds.

</comment><comment><USER9> If nothing else, the interactive mode is going to be a life saver for me.</comment>


Would you exercise these stock options? - <AUTHOR> Hey all,
I have a scenario I'd love to get the community here to weigh in on.
I've been working at a startup the past 5 years. I was roughly employee #1 and have helped grow the business from no revenue to a run-rate of $7M. I've worked alongside the CEO the entire time running sales for the organization. I've closed more than 85% of our clients thus far.
I was awarded a fair amount of equity early on at the unit price of ~$0.35 with a 4-year vesting cliff. All the documentation has standard language regarding exercising and vesting periods etc. The current fair market price is in the ballpark of $1.50.
I'm ready to move on to my next opportunity and I'm considering buying my options which I have the cash on hand to do so. Well, the problem is the CEO is saying that equity granted is not eligible for purchase by departing employees, despite the legal documents saying the contrary. He's stated that he views equity as valuable only to employees who stay long enough until a liquidity event.
The situation isn't whether legally I'm able to purchase my options, or whether their value will appreciate. The issue is that my CEO has been a mentor who has helped me build an invaluable skill set and a friend but is pushing back on my ask to purchase my options.
He is extremely set in his view and feels that by me wanting to purchase my options I'm somehow am personally taking advantage of him or his business. My thinking is either: I exercise these options at the risk of being blacklisted by my CEO and the connections in our networks with a vendetta held over my head or deciding to move on and invest my money in myself and future projects I embark on while maintaining a professional relationship with my CEO.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2>
        He is extremely set in his view and feels that by me
        wanting to purchase my options I'm somehow am personally
        taking advantage of him or his business.

Funny, since by trying to get you to forgo part of the compensation HE AGREED TO he's attempting to take advantage of you.

If he doesn't want those options exercised, he should be prepared to replace them with something of equivalent value.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an excellent point and great suggestion as an alternative option. Thanks for sharing it. I'll bring it up during my discussion with him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the main reason he doesnt want you to exercise is nothing about being personal. He is legally liable to expose significant amount of information about the company to you going forward, whether he likes or not, which includes every fund raising, aquitions, 409 and more.

My other surprising thing is, how could you be a sales guy, doing 85% of 7M and still be naive to believe in personal vendetta?.

Either you are too young or something is missing in the story.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the additional insight into his possible perspective.

As for your question - I joined the company while still in my undergraduate studies and it has been my only "real world" work experience thus far. I'm guessing the point you're trying to make is that business is business and not personal?

In that case, I shouldn't have any hesitation to exercise since it's legally viable to do so. Regardless of what that may do to the relationship and potential opportunities in the future. I understand your point, but at the same time, I still feel (maybe my naivete) that there may be some negative recourse for doing something that he feels so strongly opposed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is the AMT amount you are looking at?

Even for 100,000 options, you have to pay tax on $115,000 i.e $40,250

(28% federal tax, 7% CA state tax)

<comment><AUTHOR> AMT is in the ballpark of what you shared. I included it in my calculations for the cost to exercise in addition to the options when evaluating if it would be a worthwhile investment or not.</comment></comment>


Non-green plants - <AUTHOR> https://washingtontrailruns.com/Blog/Details?year=2015&month=6&title=nongreen-plants

<comment><USER2> I get "An error occurred while processing your request." on both Chrome and IE.</comment>


How to Develop a Price Comparison Tool in Python - <AUTHOR> https://blog.datahut.co/how-to-develop-a-price-comparison-tool-in-python/ <comment><USER2> A more accurate title would be "One way to read a JSON file using python"</comment>


In Cyberattack on Saudi Firm, U.S. Sees Iran Firing Back - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/business/global/cyberattack-on-saudi-oil-firm-disquiets-us.html?hp&pagewanted=all&_r=0

<comment><USER2> > United States intelligence officials say the attack's real perpetrator was > Iran, although they offered no specific evidence to support that claim.

US says Iran (or any other middle eastern country) is behind something evil without any evidence? I'm shocked.

</comment><comment><USER3> So because all evidence points to the contrary, the U.S. concludes that Iran was behind this? That makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone have any theories on why the Government has decided to create a boogeyman out of computers?</comment>


Ask HN: Is it too late to find a mentor after 30 for a software developer? - <AUTHOR> I got into software development without any education or prior experience at the age of 25 and learned iOS development. I work as an iOS developer & consultant and I feel I'm doing dead-end freelance gigs, which doesn't feel like they will get me very far. I want to be involved in backend development as well but I don't have a clear path as to how I can make that happen. A mentor might have been very good to have here to at least offer second opinions, but I am unable to find one, since the people good enough to be a valuable mentor usually don't stay in this country(I'm in Turkey). Even if there was, I feel like age might be an issue.
Where and how does one find a mentor? Is it too late to find a mentor after 30? <comment><USER2> My best advice from a fellow 30 year old: Try to find an in-home caretaker that also knows programming.

They're uncommon but invaluable when you find one. My caretaker is a young man currently in school for computer science. He comes by once a day to check on me and gives me brief programming lessons while heating up my soup, helping me up the stairs or doing jigsaw puzzles with me.

<comment><USER3> I'm _guessing_ this is a reference from something. What's it from?

<comment><USER4> I assumed it was mocking the tech industry's infamous tendency to assume that anyone 30+ is past their prime, e.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15974603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15974603)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its not too late at 30, 40, 50, or any other age... a mentor is simply someone who guides you down a road you haven't been down before, and that can happen at any stage of your career. That applies whether you're a new developer or one who's mentoring your own mentees.

Look for someone who is doing what you want to be doing, who's friendly and open to starting that kind of relationship. It doesn't have to be someone near you geographically, though that helps if you want to have frequent face-to- face meetings over coffee or a meal. I would encourage you to look for someone who's not only doing the things you want to be doing, but who has also faced similar challenges getting to where they want to be. For example, because you're currently freelancing, it might be helpful to find someone who has experienced life as a freelancer or a consultant in the same kind of commercial environment. I don't know but I'm guessing that being in Turkey is going to work differently than being based in the US, for business reasons if nothing else (a fair bit of the advice I give out to young consultants revolves around our own somewhat Byzantine tax system.)

Finding someone you feel comfortable asking to be a mentor may be tricky if you're not well-established, but go to a lot of meetups in your area, and don't be shy about talking to the speakers afterwards. Often a small group of individuals will end up chatting, and if you keep seeing the same small groups doing so you can bet that one of them will have some good advice for you. And don't let your age become the issue here—you're not at all too old to be getting into this field, and its really irrelevant to what you need at this stage of your career.

</comment><comment><USER6> Stop worrying about age. Shit... 30 is young. You have plenty of time to follow these dreams.

Depending on what type of back end development you want to do pick up a book and start learning back end languages. Java, Go, Javascript (Typescript) etc. Also, start learning databases like MySQL or Redis etc.

Just make a simple web based notes app or something that will allow you to hit all these back end technologies.

Just start!

</comment><comment><USER7> I think everyone here is being a bit cavalier when they say "it's never too late". Sure, just like it's theoretically never too late to start a company or even run for president. In reality, mentors tend to gravitate toward younger mentees. There are various reasons for this. Younger folks tend to be, in general, more enthusiastic and less knowledgeable and experienced -- fertile ground when you have something to give as a mentor. Obviously not an absolute but definitely something to consider when you are older yet still looking for a mentor. I think there is also something alluring to mentoring younger folks you think are talented that has to do with getting the chance to help have a hand in some outsized success the young mentee might experience. Ostensibly younger folks have more time to achieve this success so perhaps they seem like a better bet to invest time in as a mentor however unconscious that decision may be on the mentor's part. I'm well into my thirties and do plenty of mentoring but I wish I had mentors of my own still. They get harder and harder to find every year of age and experience I get and I find it to mostly be due to the reasons above.

<comment><USER8> Yep.

There is something in the human heart that falls for people who are young enough to be their children. That same awe-shucks people get when they see a baby is the same feeling one gets when they feel the desire to mentor someone.

In an industry where there isn't many people older than 30, it's going to be much harder to find someone who looks at you as the child they never had.

<comment><USER9> I don't really agree with this. 30 isn't that old. Also, some 30 year olds still look like they're in their early 20s, so you can't tell their age to begin with.

OP, in a university setting it is easier to find mentors. Look for professors, grad students and in-class TAs if possible.

<comment><USER8> I'm often mistaken for a 20 something even though I'm near 40. There is a mentality to older people that isn't the same as a 20 something.

In any case, I was only confirming the answer I was replying to and sharing my thoughts, which you can choose to agree with or not.

The OP is 30, perhaps a bit late to take on a full college schedule.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for taking the time to clarify your points. Although, I still disagree on a few views. Even if OP is 30 there isn't an inherent reason college is too late either at the undergraduate or graduate level. If OP had the funds or made specific life choices they could enroll back into a university and study. Some people aren't married/have kids at that age and can work side jobs or what have you to enroll back in school. Not everyone studied CS in their 20s and are satisfied with the careers they had up until that point. I know of individuals that made career changes in their mid-20s/30s. Most of them went back to school in one form or another. I think for those that did that actually set themselves up for a "career upgrade". I've seen students in class that look much older than everyone else taking undergraduate courses. I don't know their story but they aren't treated any differently by the university and I've even heard from professors they prefer older students over younger ones as their graduate students. Also, I've seen a CS PhD student that is 40+.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Trying to get a mentor is a little like trying to get a Significant Other. In theory, you can "just ask", but in practice you have to fundamentally understand the other person before you can 'ask'.

This article sums up how to get a mentor:

[https://pindancing.blogspot.com/2010/12/answer-to-will- you-m...](https://pindancing.blogspot.com/2010/12/answer-to-will-you-mentor- me-is.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> pfft. First time i hear someone around balkans to want to be mentored... everyone here thinks hirself a know-it-all. See, i have 30y of experience and have mentored people @20 , @30 and @45, and it all works (and happened in several countries). Now i have one @23, one @28.. Basically physical age/skin/gender does not matter, mental age is what matters - i have met 30y people who have become pensioneer-like with "unchangeable" mentality, and know 65y+ old ppl that still think quicker than me...

one thing u have to know though... real mentorship isn't just about how to use screwdriver X or technology Y.. it is also about how to live being someone knowing all about screwdrivers and technology. Esp. in programming where multidimensional schizophrenia is your everyday state of mind :). Without that, it's teaching/lectoring/RTFM, not mentoring.. btw Best way is to find a job where you would be mentored into close-to-desired direction, even if somewhat underpaid for beginning. But there are other ways too.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've mentored people into their sixties.

It's mainly about finding the right relation. Nobody wants to mentor someone they don't see something good in. Most will mentor someone who "gives back" through aptitude, attitude, or gratitude.

Also, try to find an online community or forum. Answer questions from those newer than you, abd ask questions of those more experienced. If you put in the effort to help out, you will likely be helped out in turn. Unevenly and sporadically, but on average, it's true.

</comment><comment><USER13> You're only 30? I thought you meant after a 30 year career and was going to call your bluff on starting with iOS. I'm nearly 30 and just last year switched into my first software engineer role after studying electrical engineering. Everyone has been very supportive of teaching me things I miss, and has been happy to leverage my electrical experience to better interface with the electrical teams in the company.

</comment><comment><USER14> Try to list the distinct reasons why you need want a mentor. E.g.

1\. Camaraderie with other developers IRL

2\. Technical assistance when you're stuck with a technical problem

3\. What else?

Then try to address these needs individually.

Sure, you can find someone to geek out over general technical stuff (1), but maybe you don't geek out over the same technical stuff (iOS vs. back-end web), so he/she doesn't know as much about back-end stuff to help you debug (2). Or vice versa.

For #2, there's so much help online though. For #1, look for a developer group (maybe a HN monthly meetup). If there isn't one, start one, and you'll start meeting like minded people near you. A few years back I started a HN monthly meetup in San Diego, and it was a fun crowd.

</comment><comment><USER15> When I hit a wall in my early 30s, after a decade of testing and writing software, I went back to school and got a bachelors degree in CS. It has proven to be a good decision. It was not easy to manage the logistics, and it cost a small fortune in loans to maintain a family and mortgage through that, but it was worth it. I started out taking night classes at community college and eventually went back full time to finish up. If you just want to branch out a bit a mentor may help but this is such a broad field it's hard to teach yourself all the basics, especially once you have financial pressures and need to keep working. Good luck!

<comment><USER16> I did the same thing. Times are good now, but they were not in 2001, or 2009, and having a degree helps. even saying you're halfway through your CS degree helps.

I was working and took one class a week, at nights and/or on weekends. This was not all that bad because even if it went slowly, I really learned each subject well and got high marks.

At one point I got laid off, and went full-time on my severance, unemployment and savings. When unemployment ran out I got a low paying, part time consulting gig (and cut my classes from 5 a semester to 4 and then 3).

After class or office hours with your CS professors helps. They often know a lot.

Also, there are projects out there like this - [https://github.com/danielgindi/Charts](https://github.com/danielgindi/Charts) . It is in iOS, an OS you know. There are plenty of open issues, and there are plenty of pull requests that have been accepted. It is a pretty popular library, so the devs with commit access probably (although not necessarily) know what they're doing. I'm sure they'd appreciate you jumping in and looking through the issues and seeing if you can solve one of the problems. Then you send it in and see what they say. As you become familiar with the project, you can watch how they handle issues and write code, and will learn more.

That's just one project that might be up your alley, there are many more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is not too young. I've been mentored by peers of mine quite a bit that are my age and a bit older (I'm 31).

As another commenter says, stop worrying about age: both yours and theirs. Focus on being willing to leave your comfort zone.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm more on the bio side, but didn't really have a mentor until I was 35. In retrospect, here's what I'd do:

A) have low expectations, so it's easier to define early success and build motiviation, B) be willing to do work for free, as long as it is mutually beneficial, so likely research with no clear financial incentive C) go to where the mentors are: local universities and corporations and research institutes with open campuses. D) at said campus, find some old person sitting alone at lunch. Ask permission to join them. Strike up a conversation. Rinse and repeat daily until you make some connections, find some mutual interests, and pursue them. This has, in my case, led to actual projects, where they formally sponsor me, I get campus badges (I'd like to think I have a fairly enviable collection of ID badges), and and go as I please. This was especially helpful in residency when I needed a place to study on the weekends, but the thought of returning to the hospital campus on the weekends made me nauseous.

Especially as an iOS freelancer, you need nothing more than a laptop, right? So just work there until lunch. Or after lunch, whatever. I'll bet you can find an accessible power outlet and wi-fi in the same spot if you walk around for awhile.

</comment><comment><USER19> Age shouldn't be an issue. I'm in my 30s and I have a mentor. I mentor others. I've had both older mentors and younger mentors. I've mentored both older and younger people. To me, age isn't a factor.

As the mentee, it's about finding somebody who knows something you don't know and is willing to talk to you and answer your questions. As a software engineer, I find it valuable to meet with and talk to people who know more about various aspect of engineering -- the tech side of things (coding + architecture) and the business side of things (growing in leadership skills and knowledge of how to function within a business).

Even at a large company, depending on location, it can be difficult to find somebody to meet with. I mentor others both local and remote who work at the same company because sometimes they're not able to find anybody else with a similar role in their location. I'd recommend being willing to meet with remote mentors.

</comment><comment><USER20> iOS is pretty niche. I started on backend stuff and through (years of) webapps moved through doing a bunch of business stuff. Now I run larger businesses. I am 35, and spent much of my career physically isolated in remote corners of China, working either on my own businesses or remotely for others. So I understand physical isolation and feel qualified to offer you advice.

First of all, if you feel you want to stick with programming, set yourself larger goals. Any server-side language can be effective.

Second, if I were you _right now_ I would leverage your iOS skills by learning React Native to get competent at producing triple-platform (web/Android/iOS) frontend apps in Javascript, then learn Node JS to get competent at server- side.

By doing this you are offering a huge value business solution (overall app and web and potentially backend solution and ongoing hosting/maintenance) instead of a single project (iOS app frontend only). You can charge a lot more.

</comment><comment><USER21> Google for "development meetup turkey" and go from there. A mentor is unlikely alone, what is likely to work best for you is to find a community, even if it's just online. Substitute meetup with discord, slack, facebook, twitter, irc, etc, all those are places where there may be a community. Different people in there can offer different ideas or pointers to help you move in the direction you want, and to figure out that direction to begin with.

After you choose a target for the type of job you would like to shoot for, it's generally: 1) learn the tech, 2) learn the context/industry, 3) come up with a project you can develop on your own, and 4) develop it to a reasonable level, to prove you know 1 and 2, and 5) start knocking on doors.

</comment><comment><USER22> Selamlar,

A friend of mine followed the path of doing mobile development, and finding a job in Amsterdam with a known travel/booking site. I was wondering if you could do similar path - he recently started working at Google Zurich. I believe coming to US on a visa without a CS background might be hard, but you might use your IOS skills in a EU based company.

Don't be too fixated on backend, I like it more than i do mobile, but eventually, most skills are transferable to different platforms. I'd first try to utilize what I have, and find stepping stones that are more-easily achieved.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think it would even be fine to ask for help here.

You wouldn't have to just ask for a mentor which is a pretty broad request, but could start by asking a couple of focused questions.

This would require a little careful thought about what are the biggest or next obstacles you're up against.

Is it about the fastest way to get up to speed on a tech? Are you already good at backend work but trying to figure out the resume chicken and egg problem?

The point is just that, who here could give you some good advice might depend on the question, and it might be a useful excercise anyway to refine your focus on how you want to proceed.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm ignoring the age question since it's irrelevant. "How to get a mentor" is to get a job working at a company alongside more-senior developers. Freelancing is better for people who are already senior, in charge... people who _are_ the mentor. If you _want_ a mentor then your best bet would be a structured work environment where you're in a position to benefit from someone else's knowledge on a day-to-day basis (as most of those learning opportunities will end up being random and occasional).

</comment><comment><USER25> I never had mentor and never seen real mentor like relationship. So, I am fully convinced that you will be fine even if you don't find mentor. You are probably too old to be mentored anyway, at least I associate that with kids.

Constructively: have a look at coursera courses. Pick up one free that will interest you and be active on forums. There is lecture every week, some homework and forums to discuss at. A bunch of people starts at the same time and it has social aspect, so it might simulate mentor you are looking for. It is also structured and overall more effective way of learning then bouncing around forums.

Since you are interested in backend, find databases oriented courses(a bit of theory and how to write queries), something about microservices and how application servers work. Have a look at jobs in your country and pick up languages/frameworks to learn based on that. I would advise to care more about practicality then about what is cool/hip, at least in the beginning. Never stop learning, that is most important, even after you find that backend job you wish for. Keep track of finished courses and certificates, so that you may show them when looking for courses.

</comment><comment><USER26> It sounds like your problem is not age, but that your mentors are leaving Turkey. Where are they going? Go there if you can.

Also, how did they get good enough to leave? Do that.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm near 40 doing a CS degree and hope for a change of career at some point. Whilst I'm not looking for a mentor I hope I'm not too old.

</comment><comment><USER28> The question: How much risk can you take? how much money do you NEED to live on? Can you move or are you stuck?

I got my 2 year degree in programming at 30 and started at a $21k/year job (bottom of the barrel). I'm now making, 7 years later, many times that as a back-end developer.

I'm "stunted" in my career because I'm unable to move (fiance takes care of mom) and in the sticks - my job is a 90 mile commute from "civilization" and that's how far I have to go to get "good" money.

If you can "work for peanuts" at a job that does what you want... you can leverage your previous experience. It's not like I had more with a 2 year degree and no "experience". You can also prioritize "experience" over "pay".

If you can take a lower paycheck, move to the job you want and are willing to do it... I did it at 30. There are more jobs available now and companies that need experienced developer - and even if you are moving specialties you are still experienced.

</comment><comment><USER29> I started my programming career at 35. I've had many great mentors. Many of them much younger than myself.

I've also __paid __professionals for mentorship for both programming and business.

For the most part people want to help _those that do_. Be a doer. Ask good questions. Respect people's time. Get involved.

<comment><USER30> When is it expected for the mentee to pay and how much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Woah, my story is almost the same as yours except I started out in iOS games and what not at about 27 compare to your 25 then moved to backend stuff around 30 to get away from being stuck in Apple only world and now I'm managing a 10 person team at 34 for a multi million dollar website after being a key player in scaling them up beyond any thing possible before I got there. 27 years old wasn't exactly a clean start at programming for me though I was buying books on it since I was 12 "c,c++,java" not that I always understood pointers much until I really dug into building things with iOS but like I said that was a bit of tunnel vision for my future, go full stack and read about everything all the time.

</comment><comment><USER32> I am wokring on a P2P coding education website where mentoring is one of the main components. Check it out and let me know if you have any feedback: [https://www.coderpact.com](https://www.coderpact.com)

</comment><comment><USER33> No, just find a company that is into Software Craftsmanship and sign up for an apprenticeship. There are a lot out there although you might need to move to a major city if you're not in one yet (ie Chicago, New York, LA, London, etc). Just look for the meetups and the sponsoring companies and you can take it from there.

Difference from a bootcamp: you don't pay them, typically they pay you and provide benefits but it varies. Typically leads to a job offer if everything works out well. Discuss expectations going in and timeline.

I missed you were in Turkey -- a quick Google search with "turkey software craftsmanship" reveals some options there that may or may not be active.

</comment><comment><USER34> There's a bunch of good advice here, but I'll add two other things.

One, look for a full-time job where you can learn from people. When freelancing, nobody has an incentive to invest in you. Go in house with the right people and they will.

Two, start mentoring. Learning to mentor well forces you to really master your technology, and it also teaches you a bunch of new things about people.

</comment><comment><USER35> Books are good mentors

SICP [https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full- text/book/book.html](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html)

On Lisp [http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't think you need one if you already do iOS app development. You're already in good shape to just jump in. You know Objective-C. I don't see the concern here unless you're the world's worst iOS developer. What do you want to learn, exactly? Try Pluralsight.com. That's where I got started with C#.

</comment><comment><USER37> Broadening a subject, I was a mentor to a few junior devs and loved the experience. This was in my last full time employment. Now I became a contractor for all the perks involved but I miss my mentoring role slightly. Do you know of any good places online where I could help someone with building their skills?

</comment><comment><USER38> Not sure where you are in Turkey, but there are technical US military folks there in places like Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, etc.

I suspect one of them would love to be a mentor in exchange for some guidance on local shopping, food, customs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER39> You have already done it with and already made a good start. Now you can repeat it for the backend development work.

The online community is also quite good in providing help and assistance, if you find the right community.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER40> How do you go about finding a mentor? I would think the biggest challenge is finding a rhythm with a suitable mentor. Is there such a thing as a programming big brother/big sisters thing? hah

</comment><comment><USER41> Why would it matter? Mentors just want someone who learns quickly and works hard. They want someone they can watch avoid much of the pain they went through to acquire their skills.

<comment><USER42> Most mentors are heavily biased, they might save you time and help you avoid some common gotchas but they won't teach you critical thinking.

<comment><USER43> 100x this. I've unfortunately never been in a position where I had someone to work under to be mentored (being self taught from the age of 12, 32 now), I've found by far my most important skill is critical thinking.

I'm definitely not the fastest learner and am absolutely stunted in some areas (computer science) but through persistence and critical thinking I've been able to excel in any position I've found myself in.

I've also been able to act as a mentor of sorts for several other developers (all but a couple my senior in age) success always comes through their own drive to learn. While my guidance just fills in gaps and helps them through difficult concepts that I personally wasted tons of time struggling through since I didn't have someone point out the clear path for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> this question seems strange to me. are you looking for help understanding what you should learn? how to learn some specific thing? how to get a job doing something other than mobile apps? if you really want to understand how things work not only are there vast resources but innumerable neckbeards who would be happy to spend days talking about something like memory allocation.

if you want to learn something, learn it. the resources at your disposal already are extremely broad and deep.

</comment><comment><USER45> Sign up to University of the People and take their BSc in Computer Science. Since you're in Turkey you can probably apply for exam fee scholarship (tuition is free).

</comment><comment> vladimir-y You are doing it wrong asking the question instead of starting doing stuff either with your mentor or in your own. It's never too late while you are alive.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'd be happy to chat! email@example.com :)

</comment><comment><USER47> Not at all. Shoot me an email, it's in my profile.

<comment><USER48> I dont see an email on yout profile

<comment><USER47> My mistake, updated

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> no. i've mentored order, and been mentored by younger.

</comment><comment><USER50> Not too late.

</comment><comment><USER42> Without a mentor, your work will be largely ignored and treated like worthless garbage for years. On the other hand, being associated with a mentor who is well known in the industry will mean that your work can easily gain traction, even if it is mediocre.

Having worked on open source projects for almost 10 years, I've come to the conclusion that hype is never a good thing. Hype just gives users a false sense of confidence, gives you a false sense of accomplishment/optimism and hinders real progress.

So in reality, I think that you don't really need a mentor. 'Mentors' are only really useful for PR/promotion when you're already skilled and have already done the hard work.

I'm kind of a 'mentor' myself right now so I'm not saying this out of spite. I just don't have any illusions about my true purpose. There are plenty of severely undervalued developers out there who don't really need any mentoring; they just need someone to help their projects get the traction it deserves.</comment>


Ask YC: I just got laid off, and I have some startup dreams. - <AUTHOR>

Some background: I graduated college a little over a year ago with an Economics BA. I have the start of a career in game development; I did level design and scripting on a work-for-hire console license, which went six months from contract to ship. (Not a sane schedule.) There was stress, long hours, a month of working weekends, but I'm fine now; and the game shipped.
Since then the company hasn't gotten new gigs to support its staffing, so they had to let me go. Both the founders said they'd have me back in a heartbeat; I can probably find a job in gaming again with some time. I'm also working on some open source game tech ( http://gamesc.sourceforge.net/ ) - If I had to point to one technical skill I'm best at, coding is probably it.
However, starting a startup intrigues me more than game projects, and this seems like the time to consider it seriously...but although I'm in the Bay Area, I don't have connections in the startup world, and I really want to tap into that experience. Also, being deeply into games, I'd like to stick to that topic for business ideas. I don't know if I could buy into any old web app. Working on any old game is better, but only a little bit. I'm really keen on finding something innovative to do in the sector(business-wise) and a team to do it with; something that's really disruptive. I think it's possible. But I don't think I can do it alone.
I guess my question would be: What would be the right steps to take, to meet the kinds of people I want to meet that would work together on this kind of startup? Staying in the industry might be the way to meet the people I need. But I'm not convinced it's the best, or the only option. <comment><USER2> I just got home from the Hackers and Founders Meetup 20 minutes ago. And, I started the group because I wanted the exact same thing: To hang out and talk with people who are serious about founding startups.

We get together in the Bay Area every two weeks to hang out, have a tasty beverage and talk about startups, the web, stuff we read on Hacker News, etc...

We've had between 20-30 attendee's the past few meetups, and people really seem to enjoy it.

Our next get-together is going to be a little different. The founders of Heysan and Snipd have agreed to give a presentation. So, there will be a 1-1/2 hour presentation and we'll be adjourning to the hotel bar after that for socializing.

Anyway, the address for the meetup is <http://www.hackersandfounders.com>

If you're interested, stop by or drop me a line. I'll buy you a drink.

<comment><USER3> Does anyone have a good writeup somewhere of all such (public) groups? I trust HN pointers/analysis over just searching meetup. I'm relatively new to the valley, it would be nice to figure out what part of the technology social network I fit best with.

<comment><USER2> A lot of it depends on what you're interested in. There are Meetup groups for most technologies out there: Rails, MySQL, LAMP. And, then there are Web 2.0 groups, "New Tech" meetups, general entrepreneur groups and business groups. Each one tends to have a focus and a slant. Some are sponsored, some aren't.

The Hackers and Founders group I host tends have about 1/3 to 1/2 of members read Hacker News on a regular basis. I'm also running it to simply build community. I'm not getting any financial return on the deal. I'm really just doing it to get to know other Hackers and Founders.

There are also non-Meetup.com groups like super happy dev house: <http://superhappydevhouse.org/> and various and sundry Tech Crunch get- togethers, Digg parties, etc...

My advice would be to try a couple out. Worst case scenario, you're out a couple hours of your time.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I got my game gig it was through demonstrating work at a Meetup group(San Francisco Game Developers), so I know this is a good place to start. I'm planning to show for as many of these events as I can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you like games, then do games, don't do web apps. Web apps are good for stuff that needs the web, but for stuff for whom the web is just a nice thing, but not neccessary, web apps are often not the best solution. It's easier to sell desktop software than web software.

And another important thing: Don't start a business from a position where you have little money. It will make you cut corners for the sake of making money, and you will not like your product as much as if you had time to really craft it out. So I advice you to find a job which is stable and does not take too much time, then develop your game on the side.

Game programming takes looooong, and nobody will finance you while you try to make a game. Get a job, do it on the side. It's the adult thing to do. Anyone who tells you to quit everything you have and play the lottery with your life savings probably has something to gain by you doing this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Go work for a start up. It's the best place to meet and learn from talented developers, founders, VCs, well-connected board members, etc. Build and keep those relationships.

Brainstorm ideas and then sleep on them.

Hack on the weekends.

And then when you're ready, make your move.

<comment><USER6> I think this is good advice if I would have known more about the startup world I would have worked at a startup out of college instead of big business.

If you are not opposed to moving there is a great opportunity to work with some cool startups in Boulder, CO

<http://boulder.me/>

Shameless plug, I am in Boulder. My startup is a bit to small to be a part of Boulder.Me, but I know a bunch of the teams involved and it is really cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> pffft.. screw startups, go work with the best people in the business on one of the best projects out there, Bioshock 2. 2K Marin are looking for level designers.

<http://www.2kmarin.com/>

tell em Jay from 2K Aus sent ya.

<comment><USER8> Given your current position, this is really sound advice. The team behind Bioshock was innovative, relatively small, and they made an incredible impact on the gaming world.

As many before me have said, it's better to start a start up when the opportunity and market timing are right, not when your timing is right. In the mean time, working with a bunch of performers with a proven track record isn't a bad alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd get another day job while I come up with an idea for a startup. Good ideas don't come by that easily.

<comment><USER10> Why is this modded down? I agree.

<comment><USER11> Mixing the job suggestion (which is probably good) with the idea suggestion (something people are biased against: execution vs ideas). alaskamiller's comment below/above is more practical in terms of the job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Start going to the local hacking/entrepreneurship/etc meetups, there're probably 4-6 per week in your area. meetup.org

<comment><USER13> I second that. Meetups are the best way to get in touch with like-minded and interesting people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This post is a good start. Contact me, we might be able to work together. Or I will give you tips anyway.

My email is i.akhund (at) gmail (dot) com

</comment><comment><USER15> Hey rtf, I'm in the Bay Area too. There are _tons_ of meet ups, hackfests, and user group meetings you can go to.

SupperHappyDevHouse is coming up this Saturday (Oct 3rd) and the Hackers & Founders meetup is Oct 16th.

Usually the goal of these meetings isn't to find another founder though, it's just to have fun by hanging out and sharing interesting ideas w/ like minded people.

I think it might be a good place to start though.

</comment><comment><USER16> You might want to try your hand at iPhone games. There's currently a lot of room in the industry for new players. It has low barriers to entry, yet people are seeing a huge return on investments, and you can get projects out the door in a smaller time frame than most games take to develop and market. To me, it seems like the perfect space for a new business with little capital and lots of skill. I'd even say its perfectly suited to you. You can learn a new language and practically make yourself golden when it comes to being employed if your venture doesn't work out, because there's huge demand for iPhone programmers.

</comment><comment><USER17> _"... the game shipped ..."_

Bummer. This highlights a problem making games. Revenue is project based and a bit like farming a crop. Miss the schedule, a hardware release, market and you don't get paid as much.

 _"... What would be the right steps to take, to meet the kinds of people I want to meet that would work together on this kind of startup? ... I'm in the Bay Area ..."_

A job for "Gabriel Weinberg's" AskYC Archive ~ <http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive> look under Founders

<comment><USER18> Thank you for this Link!!!!

It is a huge amount of information that I really need. Thank you.

(coming from a guy who also wants to start up a business)

Thank you.

<comment><USER17> _"... Thank you for this Link!!!! ... It is a huge amount of information that I really need. ..."_

Save the thanks for Gabriel for the "Best-Of" links and the Askyc team for comments search & where I go to find things. They are really adding a great deal of value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> rtf, while you call your startup ideas "startup dreams", don't go for it. Go for it only when you start calling it "passion" and know where to start

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comments, everyone. I'll start following up on specific comments shortly, but some general thoughts:

My reasons for wanting to go for a new business have to do with the calcified nature of the development process; now that I've "seen the elephant" in this side of the business it's all much less interesting, and it won't get better just by changing my employer. It won't get better by going indie, even. I want to go beyond shipping products and find the next level - the franchise, the organization, whatever term might apply.

So in that sense I'm not worried about the product idea, just the process - the potential of changing and improving it. That's where I think the startup world has something to offer.

</comment><comment><USER20> Well you can try doing one of those mobwars type games. Some of them are profitable, just come up with a good idea, and make some good images(most of them have crappy looking images).

</comment><comment><USER21> Do you have money saved up? If so budget that to work on your ideas and network for 3 to 5 months. If not, get another job.

Networking in the valley is not that hard. You can establish a pretty decent network within just a few weeks. My email is email@example.com, I'm in Cupertino, let's get in touch.

</comment><comment><USER22> rtf whats your email?

<comment><AUTHOR> email@example.com</comment></comment>


Show HN: Sakura – Hacker News reranked by how fast ranks change - <AUTHOR> https://hnsakura.xyz/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see another entry point to HN. Is there some way to see how many comments the posts have? I think reading the discussions is a huge part of why people use this website.

<comment><AUTHOR> The small "hn:<item_id>" link under the title will take you to the page on HN.

I was lazy to make that info available here. Because of the way the HN API works, I believe you need to make a separate request to get the number of comments ( maybe traversing the tree? ) and doing that in a way that makes sense would involve more code, so I just left it out.

I had the idea today I should have called it ∂HN since the reranking is just taking the first or second derivative of the ranks. I think that way of presenting it may be more interesting to HN readers than "Sakura", which was the original idea / name that I liked.

If you code and could be bothered you could always submit a PR to add the comment count functionality. I would really like / appreciate that. Let me know and I'll make the code available on GitHub.</comment></comment>


Coke Engineers Its Orange Juice—With an Algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-31/coke-engineers-its-orange-juice-with-an-algorithm#r=rss <comment><USER2> >Natural flavors and fragrances captured during squeezing are added back into the juice to restore flavor lost in processing.

A tiny mention at the end, but this is 90% of the show. Try this: buy a half gallon of from-concentrate orange juice and a bottle of orange extract. Put a tablespoon or so of the orange extract into the half gallon of orange juice, and shake it up. Now taste it, and tell me that "not from concentrate" has much to do with anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder, doesn't everyone of the big corp's do this?

E.g. I remember an episode of some show like "how it's made" showing some big producer of pasta, where they have all this machinery to check and balance out the different qualities of incoming wheats (gluten content, minerals etc).

And I assume changes in wheat are not as noticeable as those between half-ripe and half-rotten oranges.

<comment><USER4> Without further details from Coke, I believe you are absolutely correct. Oranges do not have constant flavor throughout the year, and the various species of oranges which mature at different points in the season have quite different flavors. For example, in Florida, Valencia oranges rippen after decemeber for a few months, and are probably the most delicious orange you will eat. This supply of oranges is not enough to last the whole year, so most of these oranges are squeezed, pasteurized and stored for later use. The rest of the year, you might squeeze naval orange (kinda shitty orange), early-mids, or other oranges. Even worse, oranges have varying flavor throughout the season. When Valencias first come into season, most are half ripe, or half green. Maybe only for a few weeks out of the year will you get that perfect tasting orange. And god help you if those oranges are oragnic, and half of them are covered in mold.

Rather than sell you an orange juice with varying flavor throughout the year, or even throughout the season, it is much less wasteful and much higher yield to blend the oranges together to produce some rather fine tasting juice. All of the companies receive these blends (and essentially the same blends), the only difference between the companies is in what they do with these blends. Some choose to produce a less bitter juice, or sweeter, or more pulp. etc.

Anyways, it's not clear how their algorithm is different from this advertisement.

<comment><USER5> Damn that's a lot of knowledge on Oranges :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was a book written a while back about orange juice production called "Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice"[1]. The author did the talk-show circuit back then and you can find some articles and interviews here and there.

[1][http://www.amazon.com/Squeezed-About-Orange-Agrarian- Studies...](http://www.amazon.com/Squeezed-About-Orange-Agrarian- Studies/dp/0300164556)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm officially calling bullshit on the algorithm requiring "one quintillion variables".

<comment><USER8> I was skeptical too, but all it takes is 60 bits, i.e. 60 "yes/no"-questions in their "black book". Doesn't sound too far-fetched. But, of course, I do hope they're not brute-forcing it.

See [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log2%28one+quintillion%...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log2%28one+quintillion%29).

<comment><USER9> That's only 60 _variables_ , which can produce a quintillion _variations_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish someone would sell Sicilian red orange juice in the US. That stuff is infinitely better than the bland crap you guys have over there.

I guess for starters you'd need Sicilian red oranges in the US.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=spremuta+di+arance+rosse&...](https://www.google.com/search?q=spremuta+di+arance+rosse&hl=en&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=PncSUfP6IsiTtQbKmoHIDg&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=944)

<comment><USER11> Blood oranges are indeed great, and no doubt fresh squeezed blood oranges are wonderful.

But I have (and still occasionally) live in Italy and have been very frustrated and annoyed with Italian OJ. I have to vehemently disagree with the notion that any kind of Italian OJ, at least as sold in grocery stores in Italy, is even _remotely_ as good as the US kind. Italian OJ is high- temperature pasteurized, depulpified, put into tetrapak cartons, and radiated. It tastes like a mixture of the orange juice you get in plastic bottles in US vending machines, plus Tang. The blood orange version strongly brings to mind Minute Maid Fruit Punch. And it's expensive!

The US OJ industry makes stuff which is far from fresh-squeezed, but it is absolutely _light years_ ahead of European variations in taste, and I think the reason is simple: Americans drink a ton of it. It is one of the very few foods in the US which Europe simply cannot approach.

<comment><USER10> You're drinking the wrong stuff, is all I can say. You've got to get the ones from the refrigerated section, not that crap that is sold at room temperature - that's no good.

And if you don't want it out of a box of any kind, you can get it fresh squeezed from many places. Nothing beats that.

<comment><USER11> > You're drinking the wrong stuff, is all I can say. You've got to get the > ones from the refrigerated section, not that crap that is sold at room > temperature - that's no good.

Trust me. I've been there many times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an interesting description even if it probably isn't completely true. It's amusing that anyone would be disappointed to learn this. Orange juice is sugar water. I don't think anyone gets worked up about how Mountain Dew is produced.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is fascinating, I always thought I was a not-from-concentrate snob, now I know I've just been slightly misled all these years. OJ is pure sugar anyway, not something we should be drinking tons of.

<comment><USER14> I think Nassim Taleb called the idea of OJ being thought of as very healthy as a trick played on poor people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is why I buy Evolution. I didn't know the reason until now, but their juice actually tastes fresh squeezed, unlike this crap.</comment>


Black holes are a passage to another universe, says Stephen Hawking - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/black-holes-are-a-passage-to-another-universe-says-stephen-hawking-10471397.html

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Unfortunate space travellers won't be able to return to their own universe, according to Hawking. But they will be able to escape somewhere else, he has proposed at a conference in Stockholm."_

I'm even more impressed by the discovery that Stockholm is in another universe.</comment>


Joel Spolsky to stop blogging; shares insights from JoelOnSoftware success - <AUTHOR>

From the March issue of Inc. Magazine's "How Hard Could It Be?" column...

  Let's Take This Offline
  A decade ago, I started Joel on Software, a blog
  that put my company on the map.  But as the
  business matures, I've come to realize that
  blogging is holding me back.
 Later in the article:

  So having become an Internet celebrity in the
  narrow, niche world of programming, I've decided
  that it's time to retire from blogging. March
  17, the 10th anniversary of Joel on Software,
  will mark my last major post.  This also will be
  my last column for Inc.  For the most part, I
  will also quit podcasting and public speaking.
 The article also has some good insights into why most startup blogs are awful and boring.  JoelOnSoftware, on the other hand, was by accident an effective blog for the niche of readers who might use Fog Creek products.  Short answer: blog about topics interesting to people who haven't yet heard of your startup, but who might be customers one day.
I haven't been able to find the text online, possibly because Inc wants the print edition to circulate first? <comment><USER2> Joel has mentioned a couple times in the past -- I think this started around the time people like Jeff Atwood said he jumped the shark -- (the Wasabi incident; sorry, I'd never be able to find links from Joel on this) that he's written about everything he knows about software development and has run out of things to say.

I'm a little surprised that he will stop speaking and podcasting as well, but it make sense for similar reasons. Bands get tired of doing all their greatest hits all the time, I'm sure it's the same for public speakers.

It will be interesting to see where he goes next. The hg init site is really nice. Perhaps he will focus on larger projects like that. Or maybe he'll focus on vacationing in the Hamptons.

I feel like I've learned a lot for Joel over the years, so bon voyage.

<comment><USER3> _"...jumped the shark..."_

If you suffer from literalism (inability to process idioms), _'jump the shark'_ ~ [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jump%20the%20...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jump%20the%20shark) in this instance means Joel's creativity has reached it's maxima - as if.

<comment><USER4> I _do_ suffer from literalism, and I'm having a hard time parsing the phrase "Joel's creativity has reached it is maxima - as if".

Normally I just gloss over the many poorly written comments on the Internet without being a grammar nazi, but since you specifically wrote this for us literalism sufferers, I thought I'd point out that it was not in fact helpful.

<comment><USER3> _".. I do suffer from literalism .."_

So do I, that's why I paused to find it. What I should have said was _"I don't think Joel's creativity is at it's maxima."_ You are absolutely right.

<comment><USER5> I think dasil is making reference to the grocer's apostrophe you inserted into "its".

* its - third person neutral possessive pronoun (see also: my, your, his, her, their)

* it's - contraction of "it is".

<comment><USER3> _"... think dasil is making reference to the grocer's apostrophe you inserted into "its". .."_

Thanks RyanMcGreal.

<comment><USER6> While we're nit-picking, maxima is the plural. Wouldn't someone's creativity (singular) reach a maximum?

<comment><USER3> _"... While we're nit-picking ..."_

Good point, now enough trolling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Joel's early writing really gave us a solid model for building our company 9 years ago (for better or for worse) and inspired us to start the thing in the first place. For that I will always be grateful.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for sharing. I'm surprised the StackOverflow podcast, with its current hosts, lasted as long as it did. It takes a long time and a lot of effort to produce a podcast like theirs.

It also takes a good chunk of time to listen to one, that could be used for other things, even when driving, like listening to an audiobook or music. For that reason, I tended to only listen to the podcast occasionally. I think the one with Steve Yegge as a guest was worth my time, though.

<http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/10/podcast-25/>

<comment><USER9> Also on <http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/podcast-50/>

<comment> brown9-2 Steve Yegge's appearance in this episode cracked me up to no end.

<comment><USER9> His two and when the Reddit guys were on (32 I think?) are my favorites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "But as the business matures, I've come to realize that blogging is holding me back."

How so? Does he mean in terms of time commitment. It seems like this a great marketing function, and would continue to be. I certainly would have never heard of Fog Creek without it.

<comment><USER11> I haven't read the article but I think I can see where he's coming from. The developer market is pretty much saturated as far as marketing is concerned. If you're a developer you know who Joel is. So continuing to blog won't yield as many customers as spending time on marketing to other segments.

I personally think it would be smarter to slow his posting frequency rather than quit all together but anyone whose read Joel's blog knows he has a certain love for the dramatic.

<comment><USER12> He can't slow down posting to his blog TOO much, it's a shock when new content comes up as it is.

<comment><USER13> I just looked and it actually seems like he picked up posting a bit more than he used to. For most of 2009 and maybe earlier, it was just product announcements and links to his column (which always seemed dumbed down.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Quitting blogging he's mentioned in the past, so that's not a huge surprise. Killing the podcast (which I assume they are, since Joel's got all the equipment) makes sense as that's been going farther and farther downhill for a while.

Quitting/cutting back on public speaking, however, kinda surprised me. Seems like those are still an effective way to reach new people, though I may be crazy.

</comment><comment><USER14> His Mercurial tutorial/promotion of Kiln was a great example of how to present dense technical material in a colorful, expressive way. But between the constant drive to squeeze every penny he can out of StackOverflow, first by charging for Careers and now by looking for VC money, and the relentless agenda-pushing of his own products, I feel like I need a shill filter for anything he says.

</comment><comment><USER15> Strange decision, his blog is a real asset that gave him tons of free marketing when launching StackOverflow and would probably serve him well in the future. Can't imagine how it would make sense for him to quit now, but then again I'm not in his shoes.

<comment><USER16> The problem is that he didn't reach a _new_ audience with StackOverflow: the people who hang out on SO are the same people who read his blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always found the posts about minor details of running a company to be the most interesting. Like the one on leasing NYC office space. There are plenty of programming blogs, but not a lot on those "starting a company" subjects.

</comment><comment><USER17> I always enjoy watching things like this. People love to say, "I'm quitting $foo forever", but most of the time they come back. (Be it drinking, smoking, programming, writing, whatever... most people always come back.)

I think it's funny because I know three people in the Perl community that publicly said they were leaving Perl forever a few years ago, and now they are all back on IRC just like old times. Forever indeed...

</comment><comment><USER18> _shrug_. i never quite liked his subtle tone of self-serving, nor was i happy about many of his downright erroneous advices and zealous indoctrination in programming.

<comment><USER19> Even if self-serving, he offered a number of points to think about. One does not have to always agree in order to learn a lesson. A wise man learns even from fools, so much better from smart men who are also successful.</comment></comment>


Mind blowing Ruby String#split bug? - <AUTHOR>

Ran into a weird bug because of this:
> x = "a"
=> "a"
> x.split('*')
=> ["", "a"]
Expected => ["", "a", ""] or ["a"]
It feels bizarre. Anyone has an explanation for this? <comment><USER2> Assuming by the notation you mean what jordsmi says and you mean:

        x = "*a*"

.. then it's not surprising. It works similarly with anything, not just asterisks. For example:

        ",a,".split(",") # => ["", "a"]

But I don't consider this behavior odd, and it's been the same behavior all the way from 1.8.6 (the oldest implementation I have installed to test with) through 2.2.

Think about what's necessary when splitting up a row of CSV, say (or even some space limited logs or configs). You want that first 'missing' value to be represented in the output as it affects the position of later values. However, you don't need the final missing value represented as it has no significance - it's merely a trailing null value.

Also remember that Ruby has its heritage in Perl with methods like this, and Perl behaves similarly:

        perl -e "print join(':', split('\*', '*a*'));"  # => ":a"

</comment><comment><USER3> For people not being able to recreate this is because he doesn't mean x = "a" he means x = "yay" with y being asterisks.

So

x = "yay"

x.split("y")

=> ["", "a"]

</comment><comment><USER4> This must be an older version of Ruby. I can't reproduce the issue.

<comment><USER5> I am also unable to reproduce this.</comment></comment>


Joanna Hoffman: Facebook is peddling 'an addictive drug called anger' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/12/joanna-hoffman-facebook-is-peddling-an-addictive-drug-called-anger.html <comment><USER2> Once again, legacy media complains that new media is better at the shitty thing they've been doing for 50 plus years...

<comment><USER3> In what way does Hoffman represent legacy media? As well, when do you trace the rise of rage based enticement? 50 years ago was 1970.

<comment><USER4> I assume legacy media was referring to CNBC.</comment></comment></comment>


Super Cheap Data Backups with Amazon Glacier Storage - <AUTHOR> http://spin.atomicobject.com/2015/02/15/cheap-long-term-backup-amazon-glacier-storage/

<comment><USER2> Be careful with Amazon Glacier, retrieving data usually leads to a rude awakening.

Glacier bills on "peak retrieval rate". Say you have a 100mbps connection and 1TB of data. Retrieving all 1TB over a 24-hour period at an even rate will cost you ~$300. Not great, but not awful.

But this calculation is wrong. The real story is much worse.

You're not retrieving your data directly from Glacier. You're restoring it to S3, then downloading your files from there.

Amazon is going to bill you at the peak retrieval rate _from Glacier to S3_. If you're lucky and it takes four hours (and at an even rate), you'll rack up _$2000_ in charges.

This has happened to me and to many others. The solution is to carefully meter your restoration requests. Or, better yet, don't use Glacier in the first place. It's simply not suited for the everyday user.

Play with the numbers for yourself: [http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html](http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html)

And I'm certainly not the first to warn of this:

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4412886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4412886)

\- [http://www.wired.com/2012/08/glacier/](http://www.wired.com/2012/08/glacier/)

<comment><USER3> "It's simply not suited for the everyday user."

True, but it seems like a reasonable secondary/off-site backup. If my machines and primary backups are both destroyed or stolen I'll pay whatever is necessary for to recover data (within reason)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Consider this. To store 500 GB in Glacier it would cost be $5/month and I would have to do:

\- Use a tool to manage my uploads, or write my own thing, or use the CLI or Web UI

\- I get charged money for downloading content out. So checking that my backup works costs more than the backup. And it takes longer.

\- Manually manage what has been backed up, and figure out the differences to get any kind of syncing or incremental backups.

\- Have no idea about how Glacier data is actually stored or how redundant it actually is. Amazon will not talk about this publicly.

Or... I could spend $5/month on Backblaze where I could:

\- Store as much data as I want

\- Access it at any time, instantly, from any device, for free

\- Get free, supported, automatic, "only upload the diffs" software to keep everything in sync

\- Know exactly how my data is stored because Backblaze is super transparent about their storage pods, the harddrives, and the reliability of the various components. They even open sourced there hardware designs.

Glacier is neither an easy nor cheap backup solution for the end-user. Seriously, for an end-user computer just go get Backblaze, or Crashplan, or anything else.

(For businesses that already store things in S3, yet, I can see an advantage to "aging" data into Glacier. But this is a rather specific use case)

<comment><USER5> Does Backblaze still forcibly exclude /Applications on my Mac? Because that's a deal breaker.

<comment><USER6> Does it run on Linux, last time checked it didn't?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On a complimentary note - if you have a Synology there is an officially supported Glacier backup app which works very well. You can simply select the files you want maintained in the particular backup and you go from there. I treat Glacier as a catastrophic failure last resort. I have local backup (and lots of it) for reasons apparent to maintaining all of my digital archives (which are mainly contributed to by a lot of large camera photo and videos).

I don't, unfortunately, trust CrashPlan anymore. I've had a significant number of restoration problems with the clients. I think they've done a poor job maintaining them over the years and, as others have stated, there are features missing unfortunately. It's cheap and you get what you pay for at this point in time. I think it used to be a great product, but when you lose trust in a backup provider there's no point. Just my opinion, I know others still think they're great.

</comment><comment><USER8> My case against Glacier:

a) if you're using it for backups it's discouraging you from periodically checking your backups, which is standard good practice.

b) if you're using it for backups of your backups, dude what are you smoking? Why don't the backups of your backups have backups? Or second breakfast and mid-afternoon tea[1]? Where does it end?

For most of us mortals, it's a hard enough job doing one set of offsite backups and convincing our loved ones to get with the program. Find the one right offsite backup solution for yourself, periodically compare your on-site archives with your off-site backups, and get on with your life.

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLXeL4HbPr4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLXeL4HbPr4)

<comment><USER9> For me, it wouldn't be a backup of backups, but more a backup of expired files off my regular backups. So I'd keep say 3 months of files in my primary backup, anything older (up to say 3 years) would then go to Glacier. That's the best use case of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Arq and S3 Glacier are a fantastic combo. Uploads encrypted diffs.

</comment><comment><USER11> I use Amazon Glacier storage for my backups. It's pretty cheap, I backed up 161GB for around $1.70/month. Since I took an Amazon AWS survey, I received a $25 promotion for AWS so my Glacier storage is paid for the next 2 years. :)

<comment><USER12> Which tool(s) do you use for Glacier backups?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you have a large amount of data, even the 1 cent per gigabyte per month quickly becomes not the cheapest option.

I have a CrashPlan family plan. 10 computers, unlimited data for like $6 a month with a four-year commitment (when I signed up).

The service just works. I'm not sure how much I'm backing up but let's be conservative and say each computer is backing up 100 GB. That's $0.006 per gigabyte per month.

As you back up more services like CrashPlan become a lot more appealing. If you've got kids, I can imagine you're gonna keep snapping pictures and videos of them! :)

</comment><comment><USER14> 1) Push data to S3 and keep it there for 90 days. If I need something, it's there (testing, retrieval, etc).

2) After 90 days, allow the data to be moved to Glacier. At that point, the data is good to have but I wont need it any time soon.

It is really about risk management. How often and how far back you need to pull data? A good strategy is required to minimize risk.

Glacier is for cold storage only. You should not expect to retrieve data from Glacier unless it is absolutely necessary. I think the pricing is justified but some use it incorrectly.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would also recommend Microsoft Onedrive/office 365 to anyone looking for really cheap only storage. For roughly $6 a month you can get 5 accounts with 10TB each.

A one year Office 365/Onedrive Home Premium pack with 5 licences costs $70 on amazon. By default Onedrive accounts only have 1TB right now, but microsoft announced a few months ago that they are changing that to unlimited and are rolling that out right now. You can request an account to be upgraded to 10TB right now[1]. The upgrade only took 1 day for me.

So that makes it $6 for 5x10TB total, or $0.12/TB/month.

And you also get all the actual Office products. I recently started using that as an extra backup location since I've had to many issues with crashplan to trust them and dropbox or google drive's storage plans don't work out very well if you just need a little more than 1TB.

[1] [http://preview.onedrive.com](http://preview.onedrive.com)

<comment><USER16> How exactly does one use it? Are there open source clients? Can I use it on Linux? What kind of limitations are there to file size or number? How fast is it to store/retrieve?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Dropbox Pro is same rate ([https://www.dropbox.com/plans](https://www.dropbox.com/plans)). You do have to buy a it $10/month at a time, but you can get to it whenever you like without paying 9 cents per GB. AWS is usually worth it but it is never super cheap.

<comment><USER18> Which is around the same price as google drive: 1TB ~= $10. You will also get it immediately without going through the 3-5hrs penalty and supports instant preview of most files.

Although, the increment is much higher (Next tier is at 10TB ~= $100)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You could also use this thing, a "Cloud NAS": www.cloudengines.com. Basically a device that exposes itself as a drive via SMB/CIFS and works exactly like a normal NAS, but it's hooked up to a cloud backend, so there is no local storage and it scales. Costs the same as Glacier (1c/GB/Month), but without the retrieval fees. Plus it won't take days to get your data! Obviously it won't run out of the box as a backup application since it's just a drive, but you could do pretty much anything with this thing that you could do with a normal NAS as long as you don't need blazing fast performance.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised nobody has mentioned tarsnap yet. Simple to use (I simply run a cron job to backup my home directory once a day). Backups are incremental (you don't pay for a full backup every day). Rock solid security (powered by cperciva). Reasonable pricing. Granted, the UI is a little rough around the edges when compared to e.g. crashplan but I live in a terminal already anyways.

<comment><USER21> Tarsnap is fantastic, and I'd _love_ to be able to use it more, but it's 25x more expensive than Glacier (not counting the whacky retrieval costs) and 10x more expensive than S3, so it's not really practical for bulk backups unless your data is particularly valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So true, that's amazingly cheap!

Still, you need tools and a real strategy for your backups in the Cloud: S3 and IAM will help as well! [http://cloudacademy.com/blog/amazon-s3-vs-amazon- glacier-a-s...](http://cloudacademy.com/blog/amazon-s3-vs-amazon-glacier-a- simple-backup-strategy-in-the-cloud/)

</comment><comment><USER23> RunAbove (OVH) offers $0.01/GB/month. It's Openstack so everything that works with Rackspace works fine.

[https://www.runabove.com/storage/object- storage.xml](https://www.runabove.com/storage/object-storage.xml)

</comment><comment><USER6> So far I like crashplan for remote backups on my personal machines (a few Ubuntu and one Windows machine). I did a little research and it fits my needs.

Initially looked at Backblaze and saw Mac and Windows only support so that was a no-go.

<comment><USER24> I really wanted to use it with Ubuntu but it was incompatible with an encrypted /home. The daemon would start at boot and, unable to mount my target directory in /home, would create a new target directory in / and fill that up.

I opened a ticket and their support people seemed confused by Linux, and told me to check the user forums. Since this is a paid product I saw this a poor service and cancelled.

It did look interesting but I got the impression that Linux wasn't really supported - just that a Linux client existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you're an Amazon Prime member you've already paid for free unlimited online photo backups. Prime is only $8.33/month and offers tons of other benefits. Just saying.

<comment><USER21> Only for JPGs, though, no RAWS or anything else. And upload speeds are capped. And all your photos are in cleartext on Amazon's end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I just use smugmug to backup all my photos. It's $40 per year and supports unlimited photos</comment>


Talk to Yourself - <AUTHOR> http://blog.inklingmarkets.com/2010/06/talk-to-yourself.html <comment><USER2> Interesting. When I write, I most certainly "talk to myself"; any passage that I'm in the slightest doubt about I speak aloud and see how it sounds to my ears.

"Talking to yourself" for writers block sounds promising, I'll have to try it sometime in the future.</comment>


JQuery.aim – guesses which element user is going to be hovered/clicked - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cihadturhan/jquery-aim <comment><USER2> I find the idea very interesting... Nevertheless I always expect determinism when browsing webpages so I think this would throw me off more than not. :)

<comment><USER3> Yes.

I think voronoi diagrams are more predictable.</comment></comment>


Twelve LaTeX packages to get your paper accepted (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://andreas-zeller.blogspot.com/2017/01/twelve-latex-packages-to-get-your-paper.html <comment><USER2> Caution: if you can't figure out this is a joke, your academic career is in jeopardy; if you can't nod on a few, your academic career is in jeopardy

<comment><USER3> Reading the first package: I really need this. Reading the second package: Wow this is amazing, but slightly implausible. Reading the third package: Ah fuck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My eyes were getting wider until package 4 — then I realized the joke. I was trying to figure out what DB autocite scanned…

<comment><USER5> The best part of the joke is that this is somewhat plausible. It would be relatively simple to write a package that threw in a "nocite" of your leadership's key papers so they show up in the references even if you don't cite them in your paper.

The translate package could be implemented with Google Translate or similar. The INTERCAL language required saying "please" in your code, something similar could be done for the boast package. I bet someone sufficiently motivated could make a decent stab at most of these, except for the award and accept packages. Some might require a few config options though.

<comment><USER6> Translate was the one that threw me off immediately, and then I caught on the joke. To my knowledge, you cannot make HTTP requests with LaTeX (maybe some processor has commands to do so, alas I don't know of any).

<comment><USER7> You should be able to do this with \write18.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I actually wrote code for the autofit. Didn't do multiple pages, but it would adjust the size of a text to fit it into a given space (it was for printing chemical bottle labels). That was a fun project. I had a customized font set made by Bitstream for setting the Japanese text (this was years before Unicode was a viable thing, so we were encoding non-Latin scripts using SJIS) and had to go through a couple hundred pages of character tables to verify that we didn't have any coding errors when we switched to that font from the free bitmapped font we had previously.

</comment><comment><USER9> These packages are already implemented in emacs.

</comment><comment><USER10> You'll also want this to give it a bit of that "used/read" feel: [http://hanno-rein.de/archives/349](http://hanno-rein.de/archives/349)

<comment><USER11> "It adds a coffee stain to your documents. A lot of time can be saved by printing stains directly on the page rather than adding it manually."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where is the {makemyresultsreproducible} package?

<comment><USER13> You don't need it to publish

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A tool that did something like #1:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080705135647/http://www.jmlg.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080705135647/http://www.jmlg.org/pssq_postscript_squish.htm)

A small number of old NIPS (now NeurIPS) papers may even have used it.

</comment><comment><USER15> So that's why TeX needs to be Turing complete.

</comment><comment><USER16> I suspect that something like _coauthors_ package could actually work.

</comment><comment><USER17> #6 was written by Udo Dirkschneider.

<comment><USER18> The only solution when your submission deadline's got your balls to the wall, man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> ha</comment>


A testing system for catching visual regressions in Web applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebookarchive/huxley <comment><USER2> This project hasn't been updated in two years. A couple of active alternatives:

[https://github.com/BBC-News/wraith](https://github.com/BBC-News/wraith) Wraith: A responsive screenshot comparison tool.

[https://github.com/garris/BackstopJS](https://github.com/garris/BackstopJS) BackstopJS: visual regression testing by comparing DOM screenshots over time.

[https://github.com/Huddle/PhantomCSS](https://github.com/Huddle/PhantomCSS) PhantomCSS: Visual/CSS regression testing with PhantomJS.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is also Sikuli [http://sikulix.com](http://sikulix.com) (Desktop-based) and Kantu [https://kantu.io](https://kantu.io) (Chromium-based) for visual regression testing. While these two are primarily for automation, one can use the FIND (image, similarity) commands to compare certain parts of the website with given templates.

Depending on the use case, checking just key parts of the website can even work better and create more stable test cases than whole website checks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's been replaced by Jest: [https://facebook.github.io/jest/](https://facebook.github.io/jest/)

<comment><USER4> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that's quite accurate. Jest does snapshot testing[0], but that isn't screenshot regression testing.

[0] [http://facebook.github.io/jest/docs/tutorial- react.html#snap...](http://facebook.github.io/jest/docs/tutorial- react.html#snapshot-testing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A couple of weeks ago, idle speculation led me to discover both the existence of screenshot-diffing QA as well as some other options:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136205)

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like Facebook doesn't use this anymore. I wonder what they replaced it with?

</comment><comment><USER7> For people interested in this topic/catching visual regressions take a look at Kontrast

[https://github.com/harrystech/kontrast](https://github.com/harrystech/kontrast)

</comment><comment><USER8> I tried to set up a system like this for catching differences between browsers but eventually gave up. I used selenium which didn't work well at all as the browsers constantly lost connection ur hung. I think testcafe [1] looks like a promising alternative. Image diffing is the simplest part but getting consistent images to compare can be tricky. Automatically finding regressions with few false positives ain't easy. [1]: [https://github.com/DevExpress/testcafe](https://github.com/DevExpress/testcafe)

</comment><comment><USER9> I have used [https://ghostinspector.com/](https://ghostinspector.com/) which is a fremium alternative.

</comment><comment><USER10> FYI: Halted project.</comment>