Category Theory, Syntactically (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hedonisticlearning.com/posts/category-theory-syntactically.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand why anyone thinks step 1 in conveying any concept is definitions. This is not how brains work. Definitions are how you formalize your understanding once you've developed it. If this is meant to be an introduction, it's entirely backwards.

Also, if your examples are made only of the thing you're trying to explain, they're not examples.

<comment><USER2> Introduction to Cake Making

A cake is a baked good containing one or more edible substances, created by a baker. Cakes are made in a kitchen, using appliances, implements and utensils. An appliance is a powered mechanical device used to augment the baker's abilities, different from an implement and a utensil. Implements and utensils are unpowered tools used by hand to produce batter from ingredients. A batter is a mixture produced in stages, consisting of a base starch, proteins and flavoring agents.

For a concrete example of a cake, consider a cake containing one or more fruits. The fruit may be uniformly distributed among the cake's contents or clustered in toppings. This produces the cake's characteristic flavor and color, though color may also result from artificial coloring agents.

Through prolongued exposure to heat, we can transform batter into a cake. Molds may be used for this. Any bowls, spoons or whisks used in the process may contain residual batter suitable for direct consumption. [1]

In some ways I've stopped just when things were about to get good, but now you should have a solid understanding of the fundamentals.

[1] Licking is actually quite natural in this context.

<comment><USER3> More recipe books should be written by mathematicians ;)

<comment><USER4> Euginia Cheng, a category theorist, has written Cakes, Custard and Category Theory: Easy Recipes for Understanding Complex Maths, and How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics.

<comment><USER5> Fascinating! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenia_Cheng](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenia_Cheng)

She even appeared on the late show ([https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mA402F5K47o](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mA402F5K47o)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And... I still understand nothing about category theory.

Are there any more comprehensible primers out there or is this just a field of mathematics that I shouldn't expect to understand without years of prior study in other requisite fields? Or am I better off building something in Haskell and learning by doing? I know some discrete math, but all attempts at broaching category theory have been so far totally unsuccessful for me.

<comment> a-saleh My understanding was made better when I started thinking about utilizing category theory in programming, more in a way of "here are some design patterns stolen from abstract algebra", rather than "man! now I should learn this entire branch of mathematics".

The branch of math itself would be mostly useless anyway, because it is mostly concerned about relations between categories, and as programmers, you usually work just within a single category, category of functions and types in your programming languages :-)

But from the practical, design-pattern viewpoint, I would suggest trying purescript :-)

My journey was working through the purescript book [1] up to the Applicative Validation chapter. And then I played around with the flare backend in try- purescript [2]. And then it clicked for me and I was suddenly able to read and comprehend Typeclassopedia [3] :-)

[1] [https://leanpub.com/purescript/read](https://leanpub.com/purescript/read) [2] [http://try.purescript.org/?backend=flare&session=a06d83dd-d0...](http://try.purescript.org/?backend=flare&session=a06d83dd-d0a9-e686-4533-7f7ad9940e40) [3] [https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia](https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia)

<comment><USER7> I'd say there is not much point to Category Theory if we where to restrict ourselves to a single category. For instance Monoids are categories (with a single object) that is not the category of functions. Another set are the Kleisli Categories[1] that are equivalent to monads.

You mention Applicative Functors, which form another (different) category where arrows from a to b are on the form `f (a -> b)` and composition and identity laws of these arrows are equivalent to the applicative laws.

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

<comment> a-saleh I got my point about single category from a friend of mine that studied category theory and applied it to problems topology.

Way he explained it, they often were searching for relations between categories that didn't at all intersect.

And way I was learning the applications of category theory in i.e. haskel, I viewed it more as learning about algebraic structures in the category of haskel types and functions.

So right now I have reasonable idea about i.e. applicative functors in haskel. But thinking about applicative functors as their own category is one abstraction step above what I am usually used to :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Learning Category theory should be as easy as A -> B -> C.

A is a category

A -> B is an arrow, often called a morphism, but we're not going to be all highfalutin about this.

Think of A -> B like a function which takes type A, and returns type B. After all, types can be seen as a specific kind of category, and functions can be seen as a specific kind of arrow. It can be helpful to pretend say A is an int, and B here is a string, maybe C is a float but really they can be any type as long as they are not the same.

The rest of it is just stuff you already know. To qualify as a category it must be associative aka (A -> B) -> C == A -> (B -> C) and it must be possible to make arrows that don't change the category such as A -> A, B -> B and C -> C. You can see how if f = A -> B; and g = B -> C we can compose f, and g to make an arrow from A -> C.

Any time you have things (categories), and verbs (arrows) which meet associativity, and identity (which is usually the verb of doing nothing) you can do category theory to it.

<comment><USER9> I think you mean that A is an object of your category...

<comment><USER10> Unless the category is, e.g., the category of small categories.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I thought I could get away with omitting a term but it's too specific and really fails to catch how broad categories are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A simple (but potentially dangerous) question - is there any _practical_ application of category theory?

(I have PhD in quantum physics theory... yet, each time I see category theory, it looks to me as abstract nonsense. The only example when it was for me anyhow insightful is the abstract definition of tensor product; but for more mundane stuff, all examples I know can be implemented with functions (or even: matrices :)).)

<comment><USER12> The prime purpose of CT is unification, showing that many familiar things are instances of the same idea. In that sense CT is shallow, you can always in principle do without CT what you can do with. But without the abstract view afforded by CT, you may not see similarities.

Here are moderately practical things that came from CT.

\- CAML, the predecessor to OCaml had a virtual machine based on category theory.

\- Monadic effect handling, which is an approach to modularising computation, is based on category theory.

\- Remarkably, Bell's theorem from physics and database theory share a surprising amount of structure, see [1].

\- Modern libraries like Scala's Scalaz.

[1] S. Abramsky, Relational Databases and Bells Theorem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My talk at LambdaConf last year. Practical category theory refactoring couched in the language of middle school Algebra. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhw4FD0pCU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhw4FD0pCU8)

We learned sums (a+b) and products (a*b) well. The leap is understanding that exponents count function spaces a->b.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can someone explain what the symbol that normally means "approximately equal" (≈) means in the article?

<comment><USER15> a≈b means (a,b) is in the equivalence relation ≈</comment></comment>


Scientists bust myth that our bodies have more bacteria than human cells - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/scientists-bust-myth-that-our-bodies-have-more-bacteria-than-human-cells-1.19136 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10871694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10871694)

</comment><comment><USER3> So there are 39 trillion bacterial cells in a human body, and ~30 trillion 'human' cells in our body. EXCEPT that 25 of the 30 trillion human cells in our body don't even have any human DNA in them (red blood cells lack a nucleus, cannot divide, and do not contain human genetic information).

So depending on how you draw the line there are 39 trillion non-human nuclei in a human body, and only 5 trillion human nuclei. That brings our non- human:human genetic ratio right back to 10:1. Though that too is misleading given the amount of DNA in each of those nuclei. (human cells have significantly more DNA in their genome than bacterial cells)

These headlines are ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> Bacteria don't have nuclei.

Also, you could enlist the population of mitochondria to weigh against bacteria if you really wanted to.

<comment><USER3> Yep - you're correct, bacteria do not have a nucleus either. I was swapping the words around to try and create a parallel sentence and I thought I had corrected 'nuclei' to 'genomes' in my edit, but apparently I did not.

"there are 39 trillion separate non-human genomes in a human body, and only 5 trillion human nuclei." And you'd be correct in pointing out that that sentence is also a little wonky.

Which is the best metric? Nuclei, cells, dividable cells, base pairs, non- redundant base pairs, protein-encoding base pairs, expressed human protein, mass, species, etc?

It's difficult to get the nomenclature exactly parallel between mammalian and bacterial cells, much less fungal or viral material. But that's also the point. It's tricky to compare, and shouting that one comparison is _wrong_ is just kind of click-baity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Money quote at the end:

> "It is good that we all now have a better estimate to quote," says Peer > Bork, a bioinformatician at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in > Heidelberg, Germany, who works on the human and other complex microbiomes. > "But I don't think it will actually have any biological significance."

</comment><comment><USER6> See also: Ed Yong in The Atlantic, who has a nice story on this that includes some rather fun sentences [1]: [http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/youre- pro...](http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/youre-probably-not- mostly-microbes/423228/)

[1] Such as: "In 2014, Judah Rosner from the National Institutes of Health drew attention to this "fake fact" in a letter to Microbe magazine. More recent estimates, he noted, put the total number of human cells at anywhere from 15 trillion to 724 trillion, and the number of gut microbes at anywhere between 30 trillion and 400 trillion. Which gives a ratio that can best be expressed as ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯."

</comment><comment><USER7> Myths need busting when the myths are misleading. The _idea_ hat there _about_ as many bacteria cells in me as there are human cells in me is not misleading (whether it is less, more or order of magnitude more is not relevant) - it's the fact that I have a Eco-system of bacteria in and on me and recognising that is valuable

</comment><comment><USER8> "the researchers produce a ratio for microbial to human cells for the average man of 1.3:1, with a wide uncertainty"

Even given a "wide uncertainty" their estimate is still on the side of the microbial cells. That hardly warrants a headline saying "scientists bust myth" as the "myth" was often just phrased as a "there are more" not as a specific ratio of 10:1.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hemoglobin molecules are still only 0.04% iron though, right?</comment>


D3 heatmap representing time series data similar to GitHub's contribution chart - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DKirwan/calendar-heatmap <comment><USER2> Another similar visualization to add to the list. This one by Mike Bostock, the D3 author. The month outlines are a nice addition.

[http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4063318](http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4063318)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks, sebg, for submitting this! The main difference between this and some other heatmap charts is the UI design, and the fact that is a 1 year moving window of day aggregated data. Thanks for sharing all of the other heatmap examples in the comments, many of which I haven't seen before.

This is still in the early stages so if you have any questions or suggested improvements, just comment them here - I'd love to hear them!

</comment><comment><USER4> See also Google's Calendar Chart.

[https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery...](https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/calendar#a-simple- example)

</comment><comment><USER5> How does this compare with cal-heatmap? [http://cal-heatmap.com](http://cal- heatmap.com)

<comment><USER6> This project seems to just be for daily data while cal-heatmap can do different levels of aggregation. I guess the flipside is that this project looks a bit easier to call and is probably lighter.

I used cal-heatmap to track at what time I was exercising [http://trengrj.net/2015/04/05/visualising-location- activity....](http://trengrj.net/2015/04/05/visualising-location- activity.html). Really enjoy these types of github-like charts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is nice! I once attempted my own heat map type control that didn't use d3. It didn't look too bad but it fails pretty hard at the edge cases of having too many labels, etc and it doesn't look the prettiest. I think my next attempt will use d3.

BoPattern.js if anyone is interested in seeing my meh attempt [https://github.com/immuta/bopattern.js](https://github.com/immuta/bopattern.js)

</comment><comment><USER7> Oh I feel I should mention there is yet another d3 based heatmap that I'm actually working on using right now. Plottable.js. Here are its examples: [http://plottablejs.org/examples/calendar/](http://plottablejs.org/examples/calendar/)

<comment><USER3> That's really nice! Highlighting the month's data on hover is a cool feature

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like this and had just started to integrate it into my project when I saw that in Firefox it doesn't render completely. The month and day of week labels are cut off: [http://i.imgur.com/CrZyEUt.png](http://i.imgur.com/CrZyEUt.png) (that's the example code from the github project.) I like the simplicity of it compared to the other options.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it would be much better fit for d3 if it received a D3 selection instead of a selector.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another to add to the list, this one for my run tracking website. [http://smashrun.com/chris.lukic](http://smashrun.com/chris.lukic)</comment>


Ask HN: Where to find contract designers? - <AUTHOR>

With Sortfolio dying any day now, what other sites do you recommend to find contract designers?<p>I'm already aware of Dribbble and Forrst. <comment><USER2> First, decide what kind of design you actually need. Write a really detailed design specification of what you're looking for. Don't worry about what programs the designer will use or the details of how they will accomplish the job. Just think about the end result and what you want the designer to actually deliver.

Remember that there are many kinds of design, so it's helpful to think about what core value you're looking for. Do you want something that's based on an existing corporate identity, or is this something built from scratch? Will you supply excellent copy, or will the designer have to write it (or bring in a writer)? Is this more about "how it works" or making some existing functionality pretty? These are just a few questions to think about; the more "thinking" work you do in advance, the better the results. (If you find a designer who can help you think through all these topics in detail, then you'll really be cooking with gas.)

Next, determine if you want to actually pay; or if you want to pay some pitifully small amount. For the latter, post your design spec on Craigslist. For the former, locate your local chapter of the AIGA and start networking.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is a good place to start! I am a front-end guy here with a foundation in design. I am a bit busy at the moment, thus unavailable, but there are many more like me that frequent the board. Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> How about <http://99designs.com/> ?

You could choose the one you like best, and approach the designer for additional work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately the result is usually pretty crappy.

I'm looking for great designers like those who advertise on Sortfolio, not just a "cheap" one, which seems to be whom 99designs is targeting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can help out. <http://masswerks.com> is me.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.dribbble.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> UI designer over here! o/</comment>


A Gentler Capitalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-callahan31jan31,0,498171.story

<comment><USER2> When you see the term "living wage" in an article you can stop reading. I would make an exception to this: You may continue reading if a definition of "living wage" is given, but no definition has ever been given, to my knowledge.

A company's obligations are 1) To obey the law and 2) Meet the demands of the stockholders. That's it.

<comment><USER3> The example I like to bring up: have you seen the people that shop for huge TVs at best buy? Their problem is not lack of "living wage".

No one ever brings up the fact that a marginal decrease in rate of GDP growth will leave people significantly poorer a generation down the line.

But measures of poverty aren't really designed to be reasonable. Everyone alive today is much more wealthy than the vast majority of people to have ever lived. Some definitions are relative: the bottom quintile.

If you define poverty as a percentage of the whole, unchanging, then you have defined an intractable problem. I suppose that is the point for bureaucrats and perpetual activists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [sardonic remark]

Slow news day?</comment>


Developer Color Picker - <AUTHOR> http://www.panic.com/~wade/picker/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only programmer who chooses color codes by just typing in hex values with the help of a bit of intuition and some trial and error?

<comment><USER3> I do this from time to time (especially when writing CSS), however, color picker is very useful when you're creating GUIs because most colors you need already present in the OS, you just need to pick them and apply to your project.

Also, with Cocoa I became tired of writing too many things like

      NSColor *aColor = [NSColor colorWithCalibratedRed:1.000 green:0.810 blue:0.439 alpha:1.000];

Now I can click "Copy declaration" and paste the code.

[Before this amazing color picker I used DigitalColor Meter included with Mac OS X, and then my own simple app CocoaColor (<http://dchest.posterous.com/cocoacolor>).]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On linux I have the following script bound to F19 on my apple keyboard:

       #!/bin/sh
       grabc | tr -d '\n' | xclip

No GUI, just drops the picked color into the clipboard. Has worked well enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> For everyone interested: This is a MacOS application.</comment>


2018 Isn't the Year of the GNU Hurd - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNU-Hurd-Half-Way-2018 <comment><AUTHOR> The lead up to and spike in 2013 was likely partly due to the GNU project's 30th birthday. To celebrate, version 0.5 of the GNU Hurd was released September 2013. Also, it appears the 2012 and 2013 Summer of Code sessions had some influence. As I am very eager to use a pure GNU Hurd-based OS in future projects, I do hope we see more activity and interest. Summer of Code is a good idea and maybe simply celebrating every birthday moving forward with a hackathon would help (wink).</comment>


I'm 15 and I slept on the floor for a year. Here's why - <AUTHOR> https://joshternyak.com/i-slept-on-the-floor-for-a-year/index.html <comment><USER2> When I was in my later teens and early 20's (my poor student days), I mainly slept on the floor in much the same way. My first proper bed post-school and gainfully employed gave me incredible back pains until I eventually got used to it.

Maybe it's why I sleep so well when camping. I still don't really see myself returning to those days, even though I'm sure it wouldn't be all that much of an issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> The raised-bed-but-not-mattress, which I think you're picturing, definitely exists in the form of bamboo beds/'mattresses', which are just raised platforms of woven bamboo with a little give. They work well in places where a mattress would be quickly destroyed by humidity, but where air conditioning is uncommon (I've seen them in southern China).

</comment><comment><USER4> Sleeping on a hard surface may cause issues with your back muscles, like knots, so I'd recommend researching this before trying it.

Back muscle includes fascia (overlapping layers) that can develop adhesions.

</comment><comment><USER5> I did that for most of my 20's as I did not have the space or money for a proper bed, and my back never hurt. In fact I remember staying in a hotel room for a night when I was about 25 and I woke up in the middle of the night with my back in terrible pain. Slept the rest of the night on the hotel room floor, and I felt a lot better.</comment>


2 Israeli teens responsible for international cyber attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Two-teens-nabbed-for-cyberattacks-that-caused-widespread-damages-501901 <comment><USER2> These were the teens Brian Krebs tracked down last year, Yarden Bidani and Itay Huri.

[http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/israeli-online-attack- ser...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/israeli-online-attack-service-vdos- earned-600000-in-two-years/)

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/03/alleged-vdos-owners- pois...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/03/alleged-vdos-owners-poised-to- stand-trial/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure what's up with this article, neither of the vDOS founders have been arrested recently.

Possibly accidentally posted an old article or something? The vDOS founders were raided a long time ago and the case has been steadily falling apart ever since.

Edit: Looks like they've been indicted, not arrested, but haven't been served the paperwork themselves yet. [http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/233609](http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/233609)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if there's any eventual consequence for the buyers.</comment>


Time-Lapse Twitter Visualization Shows America's Moods - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/07/21/twitter-moods-map/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

<comment><USER2> I mean no offense, but based on the folks I know using Twitter (at least here in NYC), I'm not so sure that people on Twitter are good representations of all of America.

</comment><comment><USER3> The density-preserving map is somewhat hard to understand at first, and reminds me of the cover of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Check out the actual researchers' web page (at the bottom) for a conversion of the standard "darker-is-denser" map to the density-preserved map:

<http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/amislove/twittermood/>

</comment><comment><USER4> People in Florida seem to stay fairly happy, never actually reaching the red at any point during the day. Perhaps it is because there are more retired individuals, and less people in the workforce? It would be interesting to have more data about the cause of the moods, or how the mood analysis is done, what keywords were used, etc.

<comment><USER5> That would only make sense if the use of twitter was pretty equal across all age groups. Given that most retires are probably not using Twitter it is unlikely that the amount of retirees in Florida has an impact on the visualization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm very surprised that with the amount marketing and promotions stuff on twitter, that the results haven't been skewed to the happy side of the scale.

Or is most of twitter really that negative? It appears to be mostly unhappy with just a few brief spots of happiness each day. Is that really how most people live?

</comment><comment><USER7> Hmmm, does the data correlate with stock indexes?</comment>


OpenStreetMap Then (2007) and Now (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://mvexel.github.io/thenandnow <comment><USER2> This ends up being rather boring in the United States, the "then" has the barest sketch of major highways.

The difference is also perhaps overstated, much US data is still the 2006 TIGER data from the Census, which is much lower in quality than present day TIGER.</comment>


Pingdom is down - <AUTHOR>

Has been intermittent for a little while now. <comment><AUTHOR> Server Error

Something went wrong. Please try again later, or contact Pingdom support for help.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

<comment><USER2> I wonder if they were using Pingdom to monitor the Pingdom service?

<comment><AUTHOR> Eat your own dog food right :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be back to semi functional.</comment>


What we can and need to change to keep climate change low – the scientist view - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10991-science_for_future <comment><USER2> On youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGyLCl757OM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGyLCl757OM)

(Because ccc.de is a bit slow atm)</comment>


LinkedIn and Censorship in China - <AUTHOR> https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2015/jul/linkedin-technological-and-financial-giants-morally-pygmies

<comment><USER2> I deleted my LinkedIn account months ago and it has had no negative impact whatsoever.

Just less emails telling me my mom has endorsed me for Javascript.

<comment><USER3> I mean really, what do they do for me exactly? I have never heard of a friend that got a job through them or found any real value. Besides having a digital rolodex function, one that my email client does anyway, how do they help me? It just seems like a liability, one more thing that can mess up in my life or that I can inadvertently mess up.

<comment><USER4> Counter anecdote: I got my current job through LinkedIn. Recruiter reached out the first time, and I said I wasn't interested. A few weeks later I decided to test the waters and I put my resume on Dice.com. The same recruiter reached out on LinkedIn a few hours later, saying he saw my resume on Dice and asked if anything had changed. It had, I interviewed, and I've been working here for a little over a year and a half.

For me it's a convenient way of having recruiters reach out without having my normal inbox completely spammed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everyone hates LinkedIn, yet most people keep using it (myself included). Where's the kickass LinkedIn competitor so we can all move on to ?

<comment><USER6> Just curious what are the things you hate about linkedin specifically.

<comment><USER7> The completely pointless 'skills' sections, where anyone can add whatever skills they like to their profile. Oh, you're skilled in 'Data Center'? How utterly meaningless.

<comment><USER8> I know someone with multiple endorsements for "General Awesomeness". To be fair, he actually deserves those. But yes, not exactly a "skill".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two wrongs don't make a right, but since the author is in the US, I'd like to ask him: do you know why it took Al Jazeera so long to get into the US? Do you know what Al Jazeera had to create a separate entity, "Al Jazeera America" ?

</comment><comment><USER10> Not that I don't think the Chinese government does evil things, and not that I think LinkedIn has any moral high ground on anything whatsoever, but is it an American company's job to solve Chinese political oppression?

I'm more concerned about the NSA and whatever shenanigans American corporations are capitulating to back home. That is something where I have the context, cultural awareness, and moral duty to try to effect change. But when it comes to the Chinese government, I don't see how western individuals or companies have any capacity to impose their moral compass. If you don't comply with local laws then you don't operate in that country. China will simply build their own LinkedIn and the world will be less connected. I don't see how that adds a modicum of pressure for the Chinese government to reform, change has to be demanded from within China.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting opinion, but The stipulations to becoming an entity in China are not much different than in the U.S. and other countries. Replace their government censorship with our social media outrage, and the parallels become clearer. I don't see how this makes LinkedIn morally bankrupt - or more accurately, the whole industry is morally bankrupt as the game is zero-sum.

<comment><USER12> _> Replace their government censorship with our social media outrage, and the parallels become clearer_

They are not even remotely the same thing. You can choose to ignore "social media outrage" and stay out of jail; try ignoring government demands in China and see how it works out.

Cultural pressure to conform may be strong, but as long as it's informal, it's relatively easy to survive. When it becomes formal, you have to deal with a lot of people legally allowed to physically hurt you.

There _is_ censorship in the West (especially in the UK, where the police started jailing Twitter trolls and Facebook bullies, as well as censoring DNS calls), but it's nowhere near the scale of what you see in China... yet.

 _> I don't see how this makes LinkedIn morally bankrupt - or more accurately, the whole industry is morally bankrupt _

Maybe LI is a bit morally-bankrupt _er_ than the average?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" In its heyday, Weibo employed 4000 censors in house"_

I thought Weibo was still big in China, yet this implies that the service is on the wane?

<comment><USER13> I think WeChat started being more popular a year or two ago, due to less censorship (at the time). However, this is all based on vague impressions from reading sinocism.com and not by any hard data whatsoever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Technological and financial giants, but moral pygmies" (as HN edited the title) is better than the original which has an error. Heads up.

EDIT: Now HN has edited the title again to something completely unlike the original title.

</comment><comment><USER15> Technology recycle - Slow Death !

</comment><comment><USER16> Seriously China is a fucked up country when it comes to software,services and IT.

<comment><USER17> Your handle shows promises of honesty, but where is it when you end up bundling a "country" of some one billion and a half people under the all- encompassing banner of an pejorative qualifier such as "fucked up"? Come on.

<comment><USER18> > where is it when you end up bundling a "country" of some one billion and a > half people under the all-encompassing banner

Yeah, well, the "country" has an all-encompassing government, which is pretty consistent in applying a uniform set of policies (at least when the policies benefit the government, anyway). In the context of an article about censorship and cooperating with authoritarian governments, it makes perfect sense.

<comment><USER17> Fair enough, I would tend to agree.

Just wanted to point out that many Chinese citizens are victims of the system you're describing and it would be unfair to them to use too broad a stroke when talking about a "country" (as opposed to "The Chinese government" or even "some factions of the Chinese government").

<comment><USER16> Which is obvious ? Do not paint them as victims because not all of them are.

They have the money to buy iPhones but not your average 0.99$ app ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a substantive post, but the title is too baity for HN, so we've changed it to something neutral. Happy to change it again if anyone suggests a better one.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's funny how quickly anti-China comments in this thread are being downvoted. Hey underpaid China censors+bots, are you there?

<comment><USER21> Right now, the only one I see that's been visibly downvoted is yours right here. Which I am about to downvote myself, because I have a general policy of downvoting complaints about downvoting (because they are boring) unless there's something more to them than "waaaaah, I'm (or my political/religious/social allies are) being downvoted and I don't like it".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you determine market potential? - <AUTHOR>

Howdy HN,
I have an idea for a web application that seems suited to a subscription based revenue model. There are already a small handful of similar products but they all look really pathetic with the exception of maybe two which fall squarely into the marginal category.
I believe I can implement my idea well enough that it puts the other services to shame but I worry that the lack and shoddy look of the existing services might indicate a near non-existent market potential. Or, maybe a market that's just very difficult to get any traction in.
How can I test the market? Are there ways to get an idea of how much traffic or how many customers these other service might have (there's nothing listed on the sites)? I've heard people talk about using Google AdWords to test for market interest but I've also heard that there's a learning curve to figuring out how to effectively use AdWords. Any ideas?
Regards
--update-- For anyone interested, I did find this:
Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online service, step-by-step
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/using-adwords-to-assess-demand-for-your.html <comment><USER2> Those other people that are doing this right now in their crappy way in a sense already validate your market.

Can you figure out how large they are (alexa, compete), can you make a stab at their conversion rates ? That should give you (with some room for error) an idea of turnover at a given size. Then look at how long they've been doing it, that will give you an idea of the 'runway' you'll need to get to that level (or any intermediate level).

hth

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I hadn't considered using the age of these other services as any sort of indicator.

<comment><USER2> Conversion rate is the hard one to estimate, you could easily be off by an order of magnitude or more.</comment></comment></comment>


CDC employs social networking sites to educate people abut H1N1 (aka swine flu) - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE57Q5T320090827

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, an interesting Economist article on mathematical models, epidemiology, and policy, which sheds some light on the CDCs vaccination policy: [http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?...](http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14257705)</comment>


Boogiemarks.net is a free online service with modern way of saving bookmarks - <AUTHOR> https://boogiemarks.net/ <comment><USER2> I did not register but had a look at the page.

One thing I like but is not clear from that page: is it possible to add a comment to a link ? I like to add a few words explaining to my future me why a link is added or is important.

Does the list also show at which date a bookmark is added ? Is useful for the same reason I think. And filtering on that date ('show only links older then one year') seems useful to me as well.

More futuristic: optionally auto tag a link, based on the textual contents or even auto summarize.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. Idea of the service is to easily save links for later use. There is some hidden tags automatically created when saving a link. ;)

You cannot comment a link but you can edit the title or add tags. I use "note" tag for links that I need to check later. It reminds todos 'cos after I've checked the link I remove it.

The date saved is shown when editing a link. The architecture is quite flat and everyone needs to find what works for them. I hope you could register and test the service yourself. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Smooth user experience, fast UI load. Good job! You could add a feature, take a screenshot of the webpage the user added, just like I did at my bookmark manager ( [https://Bookmaz.com](https://Bookmaz.com) ). Will test /use it more even though I own an identical service ( more of side project I would say)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. This is a MVP and I have lots of things in my roadmap that I would like to do. My main expertise is in design, so I've not yet been able to do all the things I've wanted.

I quickly checked your service. Looks interesting. Maybe we should collaborate and not compete with each other? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like [https://www.wallabag.org/](https://www.wallabag.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this. I still think that Boogiemarks is different. I try to really focus on UX and simplicity.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tenyks – The service-oriented IRC bot I've been working on - vhost- https://github.com/kyleterry/tenyks

<comment><AUTHOR> A modular IRC client some friends and I wrote/use:

[https://github.com/iibot-irc/core](https://github.com/iibot-irc/core)

Based on ii (a file-system-based IRC client from suckless) with cron for regular tasks, inotify for responding to things etc.

(Not actually intended for other people to use, although its been abstracted enough that at least one other person has.)

<comment> vhost- I've always enjoyed ii. And anything from suckless for that matter. I was a heavy dwm user until I switched to xmonad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> This is pretty neat. I've taken a similar approach in writing an irc bot using evented PHP and phergie-irc-client-react using redis to pass JSONed messages back and forth between services. It's surprising more IRC bots aren't taking advantage of message queue type architecture instead of monolithic plugin based bots.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty interesting approach...I assume your idea is that people will use this as just a "means to an end" for connecting some sensor service to IRC for notification purposes, or to respond back to the user(s). However, I do have one question: Why is there data duplication? Like, why do you have both `fullmsg` and `full_message`? Same with the incoming payload, you mean to tell me that I have to have both `"fromchannel":true,` AND `"from_channel":true,` in there? That seems a little silly.

One more thing, I noticed the README says "I'm also planning a 2.0 branch which will use ZeroMQ instead of Redis."...did you ever try just using Go's channels to make this work? It's kind-of like a built-in ZMQ...

<comment> vhost- Thanks! The data duplication is due to my laziness. I've been running tenyks for about a year now and I have written a large number of services for it in python. They expect "full_message", but I wanted to make the API more go-like in the core, so I decided to go the fullMsg route. I should have been more pragmatic about it and just stuck with full_message. I may just rip out fullmsg and fromchannel.

ZeroMQ isn't for internal goroutine communication. It's to provide pub/sub for external services written in any number of languages.

I hope this answers your questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is nice! I've tried something similar myself as a first project and I'm learning some neat things from your code. Thanks for sharing :)

</comment><comment><USER5> In the Linux desktop world, Telepathy serves a similar role: it's a unified daemon that handles all account connectivity (XMPP, Irc, Sip, Jingle, Aim, MSN, &c), and other programs talk to Telepathy instead of making their own connections. Telepathy and Tenyks are both communications services.

D-Bus is used to talk to Telepathy, which fills the role ZeroMQ plays in Tenyks.

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks great! I tinkered with building a similar service-oriented bot, using ZeroMQ for communication (though not very robust as it would block for responses IIRC); [http://demonastery.org/2012/07/building-a-decoupled-irc- bot-...](http://demonastery.org/2012/07/building-a-decoupled-irc-bot-part- zero/)

<comment> vhost- Have you looked at ZeroMQ pub-sub yet? It has a flag for non-blocking publish.

Also thanks!

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the heads-up! Would be a fun project to revisit</comment></comment></comment>


It seems that Apple will no longer ban apps that might compete with their products - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/01/14/apple-dismounts-from-high-horse-approves-3rd-party-browsers/#commentshttp://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/01/14/apple-dismounts-from-high-horse-approves-3rd-party-browsers/

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't say that Apple has come around too much. It's nice to see them being a little more relaxed, but these are kinda niche browsers. Edge Browser is a full-screen Safari (so it's just implementing Safari with a slightly different interface). Incognito is a browser that eliminates your history on close. Webmate adds tabs. Shaking web adjusts the screen as your hands move.

But they aren't allowing a full scale, other rendering engine browser in quite yet. These all have value added, but in the end they're built on top of Apple's stuff rather than competing with it.

I'm not quite sure what Apple's reasoning is behind wanting competitors off their platform, but if it's something like creating an experience for Safari- based apps that's consistent, these don't threaten that experience. Nor do they threaten the increasing Safari consciousness in mobile web development (especially as Palm and Google have both adopted WebKit for their handhelds). We'll see what happens if/when Moz tries to get a browser on the iPhone. Here's hoping for a more open Apple!

</comment><comment><USER3> Will that podcast updating app be approved now? Or someone creating a calendar app would awesome. What other competing apps would be good?

</comment><comment><USER4> well i guess its time for plugins to flourish!! but if the other browsers had javascript wouldnt that be in violation of the "you shall not build interpreters of any kind" rule?

Also with multiple browsers now does this mean developers having to worry about incompatibilities on the iphone?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would apple change its mind on this?

<comment><USER5> Apparently, none of these browsers has Javascript. I'm not sure they really are competition.

<comment><USER3> Is that how the object works?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Senior dev to CTO - tips for context management (devs, coding, etc) - <AUTHOR> I'm a long-time generalist "full-stack" developer. Past 9 years I've been a freelance iOS developer and I could take on as much work as I wanted, pick how it was done, etc.
Now, I'm the CTO of a small web development shop and manage 4 developers. I'm struggling with being pulled in a million directions and have a hard time focusing enough to get work done. I'm happy setting up technical architecture, mentoring junior developers, etc.  But, I'm also seen as the tech guru who can and should do anything needed quickly and I simply cannot because I need to focus to be productive.
I'm either in full on people mode or full on hyper focused tech mode and switching kills me.  Do you have any tips/books/videos/anecdotes/advice for a newbie "C level" developer?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> To be fair the role is made harder because you are in a small firm. The larger the firm the more specialized the role is so it becomes somewhat easier as task switching at least stays in one domain. Right now you have to switch domains, which is normal given the size but not easy.

There are literally way too many details to try and explain here. But IMO, it boils down to this, given the size of firm and team, your job is just complete and total expectation management. Expectations of the business on engineering, expectations of clients on what is doable within budget and time constraints and expectations between the engineers to keep a healthy team.

You can/should split your day and/or split your week into domains and tasks. e.g. do customer followups every morning, team meetings every Tuesday and Friday at 10am or whatever makes sense. This is just about time management and again, setting expectations. Once it has been in place for awhile it will become routine and people will know what to expect and when.

Lastly, you need to stay out of day to day coding at this point as much as possible. Given the size you are too small a firm for you probably not to have some code interaction, but your real role is not to be in code -- or get out of it as quickly as possible after helping a developer. CTO of a company with less than 10 developers is really just a normal team lead with a few extra tasks and a C level title which helps with external customers. I don't mean that as an insult, it just helps frame it some for people. However, what the title adds is client facing responsibilities and business execution responsibilities that wouldn't normally be on a team lead. My personal advice, stay out of product code/client code, but focus on pre-sales demos and mockups etc which can keep you fluent and let you set the tone and pace for the team. Again, if you split your week you should have at least a couple of days a week where you can focus on these tasks.

<comment><AUTHOR> > My personal advice, stay out of product code/client code ...

Sage advice and I understand and agree with what you wrote about the role. The founders do not see a CTO in this light. They see me as more of a Super Senior Developer, Dev Team Manager, and Lead Architect all in one.

For instance, when the client and the founders have meetings about upcoming feature dev, the tickets are by default assigned to me if they are too complex as the juniors won't be able to handle it.

And I'm only 3 months in so I don't want to push too many buttons and push back because this stuff needs to get done and there's no one who can do it at this time.

Thus, I don't see it changing much as we have 4 junior to mid-level developers and have a ton of big platform style projects...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You need to learn to use your calendar. I mean both the concept and the actual app like google calendar.

You need to do you "light management" in prescheduled meetings that are on the calendar, and you need to fill the space around those meetings with tasks, so that other people don't interrupt you during those times.

Tell everyone that if they want your time, they need to book an available slot on your calendar first.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be a solution if it were not for the 24/7 reliance on Slack for almost all team communication. I really really hate Slack-like in-your-face- all-day interruptions. It's hell.

<comment><USER3> Senior leadership of a company is there to be in the service of the individual contributors. One of the prerogatives of the leadership is that leadership gets to define how that service is delivered to the ICs.

As CTO, you get to set the communications culture of your team.

You should announce that you will check your slack notifications once every two hours and no more. Anything more urgent - come to my desk. Anything less urgent - schedule a meeting for tomorrow.

If people start abusing the "come over to my desk" loophole, start explaining to people what urgent means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your job is now about making the team productive, rather than just yourself. Switching between coding and managing is only possible IMHO if you started out as an individual contributor, became expert in the codebase and environment, and then moved up to lead. If you're producing project plans for business and management stakeholders - and you should be - do not assign coding and troubleshooting tasks to yourself. Regard yourself as contingency resource, and pitch in at crunch time. You can scratch your coding itch in between meetings by working on POCs, futures & prototypes that are not on the critical path for client deliveries. If those POCs etc end up on the critical path hand them off to ICs.

<comment><USER5> I think this is a sensible advice and the one I personally follow. I manage around 10 people and as much as I love to write code and be involved in everyday engineering, the real success measure for me is to see everyone succeeding in the team. This requires a personal sacrifice and picking left overs which aren't in the critical path. Initially, I tried to over compensate by putting more stricter requirements on writing code equal to doing people management but when I got more people, it just turned out exponentially harder. If you aren't able to make this sacrifice in a few months time, you should reevaluate and maybe take a different role. You'd do yourself and your team injustice if you focused more on yourself than the team.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you and GP in that I'd gladly take on less coding and focus on delegation and mentoring which I'm finding I really like. However, it seems the founders see me sort of as superman of all things tech. This means, that I'm stuck for now in both worlds. It's a bit claustrophobic but I feel that many people must be in this boat with me.

<comment><USER6> You need to explain this to your founders and get them on board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> yc-kraln CTO is a strategic position. It sounds like what you're doing is engineering management + strategy + product development, which is a recipe for burnout and failure. Identify which one of those things you prefer to do, and clarify your responsibilities within that role. Are you more strategic? CTO. Are you more people manager? VP Engineering. Are you more individual contributor? Senior Architect or similar, non-people-responsibility tech role.

If you go the people management route, expect to be constantly supporting others and developing them--contexts will always be changing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps we just need more people to which I can delegate work. I love designing big architectures and also mentoring junior developers. But then also doing a lot of the work or jumping between 5 projects to bail a junior out is spreading me thin. So, we'll see. We ARE hiring more people so maybe I just need to be patient.

Our founders do all the client management, we have a product manager who deals with the WHAT, and I deal with the HOW, with 4 developers under me hopefully as means to implementation.

<comment><USER3> No you don't need more people. It doesn't sound like there's too much work to do, it sounds like you haven't developed as a manager.

<comment><AUTHOR> Clearly! That's why I am looking for help in any form in order to improve.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A rationalist's guide to psychoactive drugs (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/45u/a_rationalists_guide_to_psychoactive_drugs/

<comment><USER2> Ugh. These lesswrong people don't know what "rationalist" means and they are so ignorant while being full of confidence. Really quite distasteful to read.

"This is a work of postmodern fiction..."

Seriously?!

<comment><USER3> Less Wrong is a tentacular, all-encompassing organism that uses the word "rationalism" and "bayes theorem" in subtly overloaded senses as aesthetic ideals, life goals and in general as meliorative qualificatives.

It's one of the most polarizing and memetic thing to happen in popular philosophy and epistemology, and cultists typically end up moving into less sectarian areas of the internet pretty quickly.

LW has a culture that encourages and celebrates self-consciousness, and knowledge and correction of one's cognitive biases.

LW is a place where people have flame wars about epistemology. LW is a place where the participants of a given flame war adopt the logically correct conclusion reached through civilized and organised discussion.

LW is beautiful.

Let it go.

<comment><USER2> It's not beautiful it's sickening.

"Pop philosophy" is ridiculous since philosophy is already digestible</comment></comment></comment>


How to mess with your roommate - <AUTHOR> https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/how-to-mess-with-your-roommate/ <comment><USER2> So by now that roommate is probably convinced that Ubuntu (and Linux, by extension) is impossibly glitchy and unusable in the real world. Gee, thanks a lot from all of us working hard to make all that stuff actually work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, he's a die-hard Linux user like me. He's actually the one who convinced me to switch to Linux on the desktop full-time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This belongs on Reddit.

<comment><USER4> I'd say this kind of pranking is exactly the kind of thing that fits in a place called _Hacker_ News!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not very funny. Just a bit of a shitty thing to do to someone.

<comment><USER6> Uh, random pop-up is easy to spot. A really unfunny thing would be blinking the display and changing resolution.

<comment><USER5> It seems to have wasted a lot of the person's time.

> I cannot count how many reboots, driver re-installations, kernel > modifications there were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, this is taking pranking to the next level..</comment>


What's relevant in the Ruby Universe? - <AUTHOR> http://www.omniref.com/blog/blog/2014/02/18/whats-relevant-in-the-ruby-universe/ <comment><USER2> That's some cool software. It would be cool is they applied their deep understanding of Ruby code to a code browser.

Often times to understand how a piece of Ruby code works it's not enough to just look at the source of that specific method. For example if I type in 'ActiveRecord.find', the second result is the one I want, ActiveRecord::FinderMethods.find, and I click it. The documentation is a bit long, so I click 'view source'. The code is short and sweet, but not very enlightening, it's just a wrapper around 'find_by_ids'.

Now luckily 'find_by_ids' is a public method so that's documented and I can search for it. But almost guaranteed at some point the code is going into private api's and I can't use the documentation anymore to understand it.

This is why I always have a local checkout of the Rails code and any other big gems, so I can just 'ack' my way through the source from identifier to identifier.

It would be super awesome if omniref in that 'view source' block would find identifiers, and try to guess what they refer to, and make them clickable so we could really just browse through the source. The user interface is perfect too for fuzzy search, as it shows the item its most confident in in the main window, but has the rest of the results in the bar on the left side, can't go wrong with that!

<comment><USER3> Great example. A code browser is on our radar, but it would be a big enough undertaking to do "right" that it hasn't made the cut for low hanging fruit. Our next step may be to just hyperlink all methods/classes/constants in the source to their docs, and from there, the real work left will be front end js.

P.S. Omniref documents "private" methods, even rdoc's :nodoc: methods, with their source. Mainly because of this problem, Ruby documentation isn't complete unless you can view the entire implementation.

<comment><USER4> Most Ruby implementations have some kind of inline cache - they remember at each call site what object you normally see there, and what method you're normally calling. Could you get that data out and use it to report the correct method at each call site?

<comment><USER3> The dynamism of ruby does make things difficult, if not impossible, to fully realize until runtime. Incidentally, tests are popular in ruby, and give us runtime examples to work with for stronger analysis.

If we're just spitballing, as big as TDD is in rubyland, I'd love to see tests themselves become first class documentation, built with the rest of the class docs as yet another form of annotation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Coming from Java the biggest surprise to me was a lack of good API documentation for Rails and Ruby gems.

Javadoc used to drive my productivity. It is quite frustrating sometimes with Rails that more often than not I can't find good api docs.

Rails and various Ruby gems have very good tutorials, but sometimes no api docs at all.. Tutorials are great for getting started, but you're in trouble when when you want to do something slightly unusual.

Slowly I'm realising that to be really good with Rails you need to look into the source code of libs you're using to get a better grasp.

As an example, I wanted to find out if it was possible to do something with ActiveRecord.to_json that I haven't seen in any tutorials. Spent 10 minutes searching for docs and then looking at the code.. which in Java would have been done in 20s.

Having said that, I really like Rails and enjoy a lot of productivity gains. I just wish it had better api docs.

<comment><USER6> The relative terseness and readability of Ruby code makes it so that turning to reading the source code is often favored over a lot of documentation.

It would be a bit more difficult to operate in the same way in a Java environment.

That said, the fact that it's kind of viable in Ruby doesn't mean that it's the best thing. Ultimately, I agree with you: better documentation would be very welcome.

<comment><USER7> Yes and source code only tells you how it does work not what it should do. I find it tricky to follow a call path through polymorphic and mixin based code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tim. You're a pessimistic bastard but I love you. And I love Omniref. (When I remember to use it.) Maybe consider a sublime text plugin and complete sublime's inevitable march toward IDE-dom?</comment>


Google cutting web cookies, ending lucrative tracking tool for advertisers - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-privacy/google-cutting-web-cookies-ending-lucrative-tracking-tool-for-advertisers-idUSKBN1ZD2L0 <comment><USER2> Great, so what will be tracking us now, something harder for us to block? The article says there are already things in place that won't affect the bottom line if cookies are cut, so, what are they?</comment>


Scum of the earth: x-ray vendors - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/fdorvf/scum_of_the_earth_xray_vendors/ <comment><AUTHOR> This was a roller coaster ride for me. At first, it's hilarious. Then maddening. But now I'm just sad that quality software and good support can be so irrelevant to commercial success. Where are the niches where that's not true?</comment>


White House Asks China to Stop Hacking, "What Hacking?" Says China - <AUTHOR> http://thebrief.io/news/white-house-asks-china-to-stop-hacking-what-hacking-says-china

<comment><USER2> That's an invitation to hack back, assuming that it isn't already happening.</comment>


German student ditches apartment, buys an unlimited train pass - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2015/08/25/german-student-ditches-apartme.html

<comment><USER2> I believe there are some street people that do this with buses as well. I travelled between Toronto–Buffalo on Megabus and Greyhound ($15-18/ticket) and I'm pretty sure there were some international homeless people that would flip back and forth (and probably drift to NYC and other stops as well).

I thought it was funny that some of the people you see on the street might be much more travelled and worldly than me ;)

<comment><USER3> I have seen folks who have done this to get some sleep in a warm area, the '22' bus route on El Camino in the Bay Area is sometimes called the 'hotel 22' by folks who buy a ticket and ride from one end of the run to the other and sleep on the bus the whole way.

<comment><USER4> And some of the drivers are nice enough to let them sleep in the bus when it goes out of service at night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can buy a large used van for sleeping at night and 15 pound gym membership in the uk.

The reason why housing prices have skyrocketed has to do with the inelasticity of demand.

You can build a fully carbon neurtal small house for 10,000 pounds using 2015 tech. So why are empty parking lots priced at 200,000 pounds ?

I wished more millinenials would take the homeless route as an act of civil disobedience. Most of them have no idea how badly they are being rent seeked.

<comment><USER6> How many sqft (or sqm) is this house? Are you including foundation and utilities hookups in this calculation? Do you have a link?</comment></comment>


Strange seismic waves were picked up circling the globe on November 11 - <AUTHOR> https://thewest.com.au/news/offbeat/strange-seismic-waves-were-picked-up-circling-the-globe-on-november-11-and-seismologists-are-now-trying-to-figure-out-why-ng-31a4e88570f95dfea9e1a0fe7a7daf2e <comment><AUTHOR> Full title (too long for HN): Strange seismic waves were picked up circling the globe on November 11, and seismologists are now trying to figure out why</comment>


Show HN: Code Fight Club – Become a better developer by fighting - <AUTHOR> http://code-fight.club

<comment><USER2> Pretty cool. Recommendations below:

1) Have the original authors post a description on their thought process when solving the puzzle

2) Have voters discuss _why_ they believe one process is better than the other.

Both points 1 & 2 would help make CFC a learning material for new developers (such as myself)!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. Both of these points could be achieved my people using the fight-description box and voters could comment with their reasons for voting for one or other.

Nethertheless, maybe this could be made more obvious.

Thanks again!</comment></comment>


Do any of you tech folk ever think about just quitting tech altogether? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/sonniesedge/status/1158373106257453056 <comment><USER2> I often reminisce about working in a warehouse and going home without any looming thoughts about work. I mean, you can't really take the sweeping and forklifts home with you.

These days it takes serious effort to put the work aside and not think about either current or future problems that I am being paid to solve. Sometimes this industry feels like a field of rabbit holes and it requires almost perfect balance not to fall into them.

<comment><USER3> The ability to turnoff is a huge reason I think about other careers. The other reason is wanting to find a job where I can work 7-9 months and have the rest of the time to travel and get outdoors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think about it very often. Most of big tech nowadays seems to be more about treating customers like shit, stalking them, bombarding them with ads, dark patterns, lies & fraud, intentionally misleading terms & conditions, etc. It's becoming very hard to find a gig where my work will actually make people happy instead of just being a necessary evil they have to put up with.

<comment><USER5> Right, which make the opportunity that much bigger.

For new startups, it would be much worse if companies respect customers, did not lie, did not mislead.

<comment><USER4> Most of this I've noticed with startups. I guess it's the "move fast and break things" they all talk about (even when "things" include the law).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I quit tech last year. Moved to San Diego. Currently in the process of opening a dog boarding business.

So far the first big lesson is that landlords don't want to rent to someone who's going to put 100 dogs in their building, but I'm still excited about it!

</comment><comment><USER7> Very nearly did!

Failed startup, batshit insane startup (6 bosses, 12 months), went Wall St. only to narrowly escape a layoff and a psycho manager (harassing me for leaving), thought I found the perfect job. Turned into the worst job I've had. Ended after 4 months.

Ended up taking a 33% pay cut to join a local municipal, 8-5 with an hours lunch, business casual dress, etc. Never been happier.

If you're stuck in a rut, look for jobs you would normally turn your nose up at. You might be pleasantly surprised why you find.

<comment><AUTHOR> > If you're stuck in a rut, look for jobs you would normally turn your nose up > at. You might be pleasantly surprised why you find.

This is a simple and for some (like me) maybe a non-obvious approach. An excellent idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Absosmurfly, yes!

I would love to participate in the broader discussion, but then I would have to join Twitter.

If I could muster the penchant for finishing things, perhaps I could join academia.

If I can hold my breath long enough to cash in my stock grants, I will take time off to launch my art career.

In the end, though, it seems like it would be safest to leverage my Canadian citizenship to move to the arctic coast and build a fortress to endure the coming zombie apocalypse.

<comment><USER9> I've wanted to quit tech, and recently resumed drawing, so I want to ask:

Do you want to quit tech because you don't enjoy the tech, or because of the people and culture in tech? If it's because of the people and culture, then do you believe the people and culture in an art career would be any better?

While investigating drawing recently, I learned that it can be approached in a very technical way, and that there are many different areas of study. I found it to be more similar to programming, in this way, than I would have expected.

I love programming and the tech, but I don't like the culture very often. I've been frustrated with the CEO at my company, who sells our amazing software and AI. What we really have is a basic CRUD app (which we've managed to make very buggy and unreliable) and our AI is humans who manually review things. Yet I believe the CEO is sincere in his delusions. I've been appreciating drawing because there can be no such delusions. What you see is what's there, and our brains are very good at detecting oddities and making them very apparent. It seems to leave much less room for self-deception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Almost 2-3 times per week. Stuck in a rut because I stupidly spent all the available, waking hours of my youth on computers playing video games and figured I'd go into a career with computers, because.

Not too sure what I should do at this point - whether I should stick it out or just keep pushing and hopefully I'll find another "area" of IT interesting enough to keep my attention.

</comment><comment><USER11> all the time. if only the pay were half as good doing any of the things i would like to switch to.

moving to the bottom and retraining, working my way back up doesnt bother me, but not being able to provide for my family to the best of my ability does. Tech doesnt bother me too much, but it would be nice to try other things.

</comment><comment><USER12> > There's a huge number of replies from devs who would be doing anything else > if it paid half as well. That says a lot about our industry...

What does it say about our industry? I can't think of anything that isn't true of any profession, particularly ones that pay well.

</comment><comment><USER13> All the time, current plan is to cash out in a few years and open a Brewery or Brewpub. Making beer makes me happy and is way less stress.

</comment><comment><USER14> Quit IT a few months back. Now work at a startup serving lattes for the barista

</comment><comment><USER5> No.</comment>


Under 9000 and Starting Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.sproutly.com/2008/10/18/under-9000-and-starting-up/ <comment><USER3> The idea that there is ever a bad time to do a startup is ridiculous. There are horrible times to attempt an exit. During the crash would be one of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now might be a bad time to do a start up that deals with sub prime mortgage backed "securities"... ;)

Seriously, though... the idea is the key, not the "time"

<comment><USER4> People have been trying to raise money for distressed debt funds since mid-2007. One of these times they could get the timing right, although investor cash might be drying up for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the point he almost makes about there not being many jobs anyway is a good one. when there are lots of well paying jobs, there is social pressure to take one.

When things are quiet, there is less of that pressure to go get a nice job, and you can take your time (kind of forced to).

I think someone else mentioned it here as "someone else moved your cheese" - <USER2> like that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Obligatory it's UNDER 9000 post.</comment>


Say Goodbye to the Last Vacuum Tube Product - <AUTHOR> http://electronicdesign.com/blog/say-good-bye-last-vacuum-tube-product <comment><USER2> This story really buries the lede. You can get 250W of radiated RF power out of a transistor! That is pretty neat. Back in college I got to hear how the magnetron would not ever be feasible in a solid state device, the free electron path length was too short. Another impossible thing, now available from Digikey. Also a bit scary as it makes some previously impractical weapons more so (like the MASER).

If they are cheap enough (and I suspect they are) they might make a good bird abatement device as well.

<comment><USER3> A press release[1] indicates the price is $26 - $37 each in 10k lots.

[1] [http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20141005005052/en/Free...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20141005005052/en/Freescale- Modernizes-Microwave-Oven-Appliance-Industry-Solid-State#.VEgwQXW9-V5)

<comment><USER4> That puts the cost at over $100 for a 1kW oven though; seems like it will only be in high-end ovens at first.

<comment><USER3> Basically what happened with LCD panels and televisions. Once Freescale ramps up and someone else, like Triquint, enters the market the price will come down.

<comment><USER5> And also what happened with magnetrons in microwave ovens. They were so very expensive 6 decades ago. Now I can go to Costco and get a 1kw microwave source for less than $100. It's great for home-brew plasma deposition systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have two tube headphone amps on my desk, one of which I just bought new a couple months ago right in front of me, and 3 other people in my office have similar tube amps. Probably not the norm, but still the death of tubes has been greatly exaggerated.

edit: photographic evidence: [http://jdon.at/15kV9](http://jdon.at/15kV9)

<comment><USER7> That was the first thing I thought also, but I guess you can't argue that tube amps (for headphones, guitars, whatever) is a pretty niche product these days.

<comment><USER8> They are not at all hard to find.

<comment><USER9> Not much is, anymore.

<comment><USER10> They have never been hard to find. Virtually every guitar store has carried a wide variety of tube amps since rock music went mainstream.

<comment><USER11> You know what electronic part is hard to find these days? Variable capacitors! At the caps needed to make radios. Sure, you can buy them in bulk or at ham fests, but I've found it frustrating as a hobbyist.

<comment><USER12> You can fairly easily build your own.

<comment><USER11> You're right. I've followed instructables on how to do it (e.g. some cds and some foil). However, I am mesmerized by the beauty of some old school variable capacitors. Wish they still made 'em.

<comment><USER12> We used to call them meat mincers :)

If you want good quality variable capacitors then your best source is flea markets and thrift stores, look for old tube radios that you can scavenge them out of. And if the radio is nice enough then maybe restore it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My perspective, as someone with some experience with truly high power microwave tubes (multi-MW, not sub-kW): It's great that that a quarter kilowatt can be done in solid state, but it's not a death knell for microwave tubes. 58% efficiency at 2.45GHz and 63% efficiency at 915MHz sound reasonable but aren't a breakthrough, especially for a narrowband application like RF heating. The big savings come from ditching the strong magnets and high voltage power supplies. Size _may_ be a significant improvement, but these devices still need to dissipate more than a third of their power as heat, so it's not as drastic as pictures may imply.

Solid-state devices have been gradually encroaching on vacuum tubes for a long time, but vacuum tube tech has been advancing, too. I'm not sure that cathode lifespan is much of a concern anymore at the power levels that solid-state devices can reach. The upper limit of how much power you can get out of a single tube is still growing, as is the efficiency. There's a lot of low- hanging fruit for the design of microwave tubes now that we can actually do a 3d simulation without a supercomputer.

Solid-state devices haven't surpassed any of the fundamental limitations on vacuum tube devices except for the entry costs of having a high-temperature high-voltage cathode, a vacuum chamber, and a strong magnetic field.

<comment><USER14> I kind of wonder what someone with your background thinks of the following articles:

[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal-efficiency- co...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal-efficiency-cooking- stoves.html)

[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/07/cooking-pot- insulatio...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/07/cooking-pot-insulation- key-to-sustainable-cooking.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> These sexy things don't seem to be going away: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_fluorescent_display](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_fluorescent_display)

A fluorescent lamp also qualifies as a vacuum tube:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Principles_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Principles_of_operation)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Cold_cathode_l...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Cold_cathode_lamps)

 _" Most fluorescent lamps use electrodes that operate by thermionic emission, meaning they are operated at a high enough temperature for the electrode material (usually aided by a special coating) to emit electrons into the tube by heat."_

Thermionic emission is how vacuum tubes work, like the 12AX7's and 6L6's or whatnot in your guitar amp.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ahem... the _last_ vacuum tube product?

[http://www.samsung.com/us/2012-vacuum-tube- amplifier/](http://www.samsung.com/us/2012-vacuum-tube-amplifier/)

<comment><USER17> The last _useful_ vacuum tube product.

Tube amps distort the sound more, and clip more gradually. This basically means that a digital amplifier can perfectly emulate a vacuum tube amplifier as long as you aren't maxing out the range and clipping the digital amplifier. (You may need a slightly higher rating on the digital amplifier to achieve the same volume.)

<comment><USER18> I take it you're not a guitarist. Tube amps can generate tones and sounds that are impossible to emulate accurately via solid state. I've owned some really nice solid state amps that can do amazing things, but even a shitty tube amp can do overdriven fuzz better than any solid state amp.

<comment><USER19> > impossible

Not impossible. Hard, expensive, or currently not available but not impossible.

<comment><USER20> Well, allow me to go into a bit of science detail. The two polar opposites in amplification technology today are Class A and Class D amplifiers. Class A is the classic one, and any audiophile and sound engineer will swear by them on the quality metric. Class D is modern, based on transistors (usually MOSFETs), and while it dumps the linearity, it has a huge advantage in energy efficiency. Only in recent years has Class D become competitive in quality with the lower end of Class A technology, as the linearity of amplification makes a huge difference in high quality systems at higher amplification where the details pop out more.

Class A uses tubes, and works in the simplest and most accurate way by amplifying the complete signal. It maintains the most important characteristic needed to perfection - linearity of waveform amplification. When you try and get extra juice out of it, instead of the annoying clipping you get from digital amplification, you get a nicer sounding and more gradual reaction. The main drawback is energy efficiency. There's a theoretical peak efficiency of 50% to Class A amps, and what's worse is that it's usually less than half that. It makes tube amps that aren't small require massive heat sinks, and increases the BOM.

Class D is totally different. It dumps linearity out the window in favor of energy efficiency. It basically outputs a bunch of pulses, and then applies a low-pass filter to remove the annoying artifacts. While you might say that it's close enough - it isn't for high fidelity systems, especially in production studios, live performance, and audiophile cases. While competitive in quality with the low end of amplifiers (under $200), if you are looking for accurate detail reproduction there is no replacing linear amplification yet. The advantage is that even at the worst use scenarios, Class D amps have over 50% energy efficiency, and usually manage over 90% for higher volumes, making them need far less in the way of heat sinks which allows for leaner designs, and a better price/performance ratio.

The Class D amps will eventually win out. Class A amps have decades of R&D as an advantage, but Class D is improving by leaps and bounds. Eventually, Class D will become "good enough" and replace Class A altogether because of the advantages in price and energy efficiency. But that day has not yet come.

That being said, I use a class D amp for my home set up. It's close enough, and my power bill thanks me monthly.

<comment><USER21> >Class A uses tubes...

Class A amplifiers can be made in solid state as well, very easily. As a truly simple, DIY example: [http://headwize.com/?page_id=31](http://headwize.com/?page_id=31)

There's nothing about solid state that requires a circuit that "outputs a bunch of pulses, and then applies a low-pass filter" \-- true linear amplification exists in the transistor domain just as well.

And even if solid state did require quantization (beyond the shot noise that vacuum tubes suffer from also), given that we can do direct digital synthesis up to the 100's of MHz regime pretty easily these days (i.e. beyond the bandwidth of most audio tube amplifiers), with 24+ bits of resolution, there's no reason that a solid DSP system couldn't emulate a vacuum tube response well enough to be electrically indistinguishable from the actual tube.

But, as the grandparent post notes, it's one heck of a lot easier/cheaper to just use vacuum tubes. Which is why I'm staring at a tube-based headphone amplifier on my desk right now. Though it does use solid state buffers, which incidentally are way more linear than the typical ways -- capacitors, transformers, etc. -- of removing the DC offset inherent to tubes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Maybe the magnetron is really not the last vacuum tube product"

Not by far. A more obvious example than the ones the article gives would be tube amplifiers.

</comment><comment><USER23> I dunno, I think a microwave with a vacuum tube will make my food sound warmer and trued to the original analog food I remember as a kid.

</comment><comment><USER24> Am I wrong, or is this a press piece for Freescale's new transistor?

</comment><comment><USER25> I think this article is focused on consumer products? Last time I checked, large scale items such as radar were still using vacuum tubes. I know there were huge breakthroughs in solid-state radar back in the 1990s, but I don't think that technology has seen a wide commercial roll-out.

<comment><USER26> I went to college with this guy who was on a scholarship to study tube design. (This would have been 1981 or 1982.) I said, "What are you studying that for? Semiconductors are going to make tubes obsolete." He said, "You have 6000 amps you're trying to control. Try that in a transistor." I mean, yes, there are schemes that try to use multiple high-current transistors in parallel, but... 6000 amps is a _lot_ of current for semiconductors, even today.

<comment><USER27> There's been a lot of progress since then.

One IGBT pair. 1200 amps. 4500 volts. 140x190 mm housing:

[http://www.infineon.com/dgdl/Infineon-FZ1200R45HL- DS-v03_01-...](http://www.infineon.com/dgdl/Infineon-FZ1200R45HL- DS-v03_01-en_de.pdf?folderId=db3a304412b407950112b4095b0601e3&fileId=db3a304345087709014516f875431b4b)

<comment><USER13> Impressive, except that the times are listed in units of microseconds, so it's completely irrelevant to microwave use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think more than a couple of people still buy guitar amps!

</comment><comment><USER29> _They often cook unevenly and typically lose power over time as the magnetron filament and cathode deteriorate. At last it is possible to replace the magnetron with solid state devices._

My microwave is several decades old now and its magnetron hasn't ever needed replacement, and I haven't noticed any degradation in power level either. I wonder if these new "all-solid-state" ovens will last nearly as long - I've read plenty of reports about the "inverter" types (essentially an HV SMPS) that use many more components which are often operated near their maximum limits and fail sooner, compared to the older design with a simple (but more expensive) large HV transformer.

<comment><USER13> Magnetrons are rated for thousands of hours of operating time, and the degradation is gradual. Unless you use your microwave oven to the exclusion of all other heating sources, a 40 year old oven should still be doing alright if it was well built to begin with. It's only industrial uses that have to worry, and even so the amortized cost is tiny. (I've seen an estimate of $1/hour for a 100kW industrial heating magnetron with a rating of 8000 hours, which is quite a bit smaller than the operating cost.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Don't forget about the krytron, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krytron](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krytron) If you need to switch thousands of amps in under a nanosecond you'll probably need one.

<comment><USER31> I know I made the mistake of ordering these and Beryllium sphere at the same time. Oopsie!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Vacuum Tubes are very popular in high fidelity audio spectrum.

[http://www.head-fi.org/t/655961/pictures-of-your-high-end- sy...](http://www.head-fi.org/t/655961/pictures-of-your-high-end-system-ii- same-rules-apply)

</comment><comment><USER33> There are some very interesting stories in the history of vacuum tubes. One is the 416A planar triode for the Bell Labs TD-2 microwave relay network: [http://long-lines.net/tech-equip/index.html](http://long-lines.net/tech- equip/index.html) (I like especially the story of the terrorist attack on the microwave relay station by the "American Republican Army")

Another is John Pierce on Klystrons and TWTs: [http://www.smecc.org/john_r__pierce____electron_tubes.htm](http://www.smecc.org/john_r__pierce____electron_tubes.htm)

</comment><comment><USER34> TWTs are going to be around for a long time. There are only a handful of companies in the world that make them, and there are no real alternatives to producing high power microwave signals.

<comment><USER13> Well, TWTs are just one member of a family of vacuum tubes that can do things solid state devices can't. There are also IOTs, klystrons, and BWOs, and their cousins from the gyrotron side of the family. There's a lot of territory for solid-state devices to conquer before vacuum tubes are obsolete, and solid- state devices can't even operate in most of those regions, let alone outperform vacuum tubes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Even within the article under "Related" there's a link to a story titled "Long Live Vacuum Tube Amps" from earlier this year. Perhaps a more accurate title would be "...Last Mass-Market Vacuum Tube Product". Because even just last year I bought a nice little desktop tube guitar amp, and it looks like the Fender Greta is still being sold. (Which I'd recommend if you're looking for a tiny amp to noodle around with and still get crunchy tube goodness.)

</comment><comment><USER28> I think more than a couple of people still buy guitar amps.

</comment><comment><USER36> Consider the array of new tube combo guitar amps carried by Guitar Center right now:

[http://www.guitarcenter.com/Tube-Combo-Guitar-Amplifiers- Com...](http://www.guitarcenter.com/Tube-Combo-Guitar-Amplifiers-Combo-Guitar- Amplifiers,New-Gear.gc?ipp=25)

</comment><comment><USER37> There are plenty guitar amplifiers still made with tubes. Look up Fender Twin for example.

</comment><comment><USER38> [http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/introducing-...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/introducing- the-vacuum-transistor-a-device-made-of-nothing)

</comment><comment><USER39> Are you kidding me? People who are serious about music swear by an all-analog mastering process with tube amps. The even harmonics make for a warmer sound than the harsh odd harmonics of transistors.

<comment><USER40> The only reason you get _any_ harmonics is if you drive them to nonlinear distortion though.

If you have enough headroom, you can get near-zero transistor distortion and then apply your tube modelling digitally.

Audiophiles are often stuck in the 1970's with this stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Aren't vacuum tubes still used in photomultipliers?

<comment><USER42> A photomultiplier is a special kind of vacuum tube, but it's a pretty niche market. Plus avalanche photodiodes are making inroads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Virtually every kitchen has a built in microwave? I'm not so sure about that monsieur.

</comment><comment><USER44> Um, vacuum tube diodes?</comment>


Supreme Court's Myriad decision is deeply confused over cDNA - <AUTHOR> http://blog.carbocation.com/post/52902698213/supreme-courts-myriad-decision-is-deeply-confused-over

<comment><USER2> These are exactly the concerns I had[1]...I don't understand why the Court is under the impression that cDNA is something magical and patent worthy. Its ubiquitous in Nature and is no different than any other DNA. The Court seems hung up on the fact that it's "exons only" based on my reading of the Majority opinion and that somehow makes it unique

_____

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5874506](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5874506)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, in particular because of logic similar to that in JosephBrown's post [1]:

> The justices seemed to argue that removing the introns was the step that > makes cDNA patentable, but the introns are already removed from an mRNA > molecule

If we take this decision at face value, then scientists simply have to decrease reliance on cDNA intermediates. But I worry that we will have to deal with fallout from analogies to the cDNA logic for decades to come.

1 = [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5874580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5874580)

<comment><USER2> I do too, especially since I work with mRNA's and cDNA's on an almost daily basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> herein lies the problem with allowing 80+ year olds with no scientific training to rule on complex scientific questions.

<comment><USER4> If only they had young clerks working for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems clear to me that such a confusing and scientifically-confused decision will not last long. Hopefully this decision paves the way for a more reasonable standard in a few years. Meaningful modification should be the standard. Removing introns, which is done naturally, is clearly not such a modification.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Meaningful modification should be the standard.

This would have been a much more useful and realistic ruling. They explicitly don't address meaningful modification (they mention it to say that they intentionally do not address it), so I suppose we shall see where they stand on that eventually.</comment></comment>


Delta Copying - <AUTHOR> https://bvckup2.com/kb/delta-copying <comment><USER2> TL;DR: "rsync" but tracks checksums of every block of the file so the remote end does not need to read all files. As long as the remote file has not changed. Also has a mode that uses the NTFS journal to identify the modified blocks.

<comment><AUTHOR> The only commonality with rsync is that both algorithms split file into blocks and hash them, a common trait for any algorithm that does block-level updating.

<comment><USER2> I mentioned rsync in my summary, in part, because the linked article mentions rsync. But mostly because the readers here would be somewhat likely to know the rsync algorithm, so I explained how it was different. As you say here, it is a common trait for any algorithm that does block level updating. This technique is, generally, called the "rsync algorithm", because it's what Tridge used when he made rsync. Additionally, the title you chose "Delta Copying", begs the comparison to rsync, and is generic enough that it really needs a TL;DR. A much better title would have been something like "Replication without receive-side disk reads".

I think you are under the impression that I'm diminishing Bvckup2 by saying it is just rsync? I believe my summary was neutral, explaining how it was different from rsync.</comment></comment></comment>


When's your next prime birthday (in days) - <AUTHOR> http://www.primebirthday.org/

<comment><USER2> My birthday isn't in 14 days.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean the next time the actual day your of birth is a whole number of years ago isn't in 14 days. Fair enough - I didn't assume that was what this meant. This tells you when next your day of birth was a prime number of days ago.

I thought that was interesting and just a bit of fun.

<comment><USER2> It's a neat idea, but I don't quite trust it:

      http://skitch.com/dlsspy/dieqd/prime-birthday

<comment><AUTHOR> Why don't you trust it? Have you checked the result and found it to be suspect?

<comment><USER2> Because I didn't read what it actually was. :) My actual birthday is in about 30 days, so when it said it was in 15, I assumed something was confused.

I now see that that something is me. Perhaps it should also tell me when these two birthdays next intersect.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coding Horror: UI-First Software Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001091.html <comment><USER2> Quotes from Jef Raskin on this:

        * Once the product's task is known, design the interface first; then implement to the interface design.

        * Users do not care about what is inside the box, as long as the box does what they need done.

        * As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is more than 'paper prototypes' -- you actually need to know how the system should work, from the users' point of view.

Ben Cchneiderman (<http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben/>) took this a step further in 1987: design the documentation first:

Shneiderman, B. (1987), Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

I referenced the technique in my thesis, and proposed it for aircraft autoflight systems!

[http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/1721.1/37310/1/ICAT-2000-3.p...](http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/1721.1/37310/1/ICAT-2000-3.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> I introduced paper prototyping at the place where I was working & it's amazing how much it can help you define your product. It's a great way to side-step the feature-bloat trap at the specification phase in waterfall development. We focussed on finding out what _not_ to build. I work in a pretty risk-averse environment & was surprised how well it was received.

</comment><comment><USER5> It really gets interesting when you do it on wallpaper. I usually use the 30" brown wrapping paper from CVS or Wallgreen's, a lot of duct tape or masking tape, and different colored markers. Much better than a white board because someone gets to keep it.

Just this week, a client called me in to review a wallpaper prototype I did for him 2 years ago. He posted the whole thing in another room, gathered his team, and said, "Let's get started on this."

Funny, everybody in this week's session who was also in the first session looked at the paper and vividly remembered that day, even the food we ate while we did that.</comment>


GitHub extension for Visual Studio - <AUTHOR> https://visualstudio.github.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks like there's finally a proper git support in VS with that extension, gonna try it out and see if it is easy to integrate into my workflow :)</comment>


Mozilla Will Nearly Double SF Office, Add 125 People In Early 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/31/mozilla-will-nearly-double-sf-office-add-125-people-in-early-2013/ <comment><USER2> They sure appear to need it. I've been following Mac-related Bugzilla-reports during the past year and it seems to be desperately understaffed.

But you don't have to frequent Bugzilla to see that. For example, Firefox on OS X still has the pre-10.7 scrollbars while Chrome got the new ones fixed shortly after the OS-release. That was now over a year ago.

Despite this, Firefox (or Nightly) is still my primary browser for many reasons, including add-ons and the fact that I truly believe that Mozilla want what is best for the web.

That last reason is also why I'm so sad to see them fall behind like this. Without their market-share, they won't have much say on web-matters and should the web be shaped completely by money-driven interests, the users would suffer.

Please Mozilla, get your act together and don't neglect your browser on any platform. Every user counts.

<comment><USER3> It's not really a matter of neglect, it's a matter of finding people who actually want to do this. OS integration is pretty difficult with Firefox's codebase, partially because it's not really a native app. Parts are real (like the titlebar) but most isn't (including scrollbars). It's hard & dirty work being done by a very small team.

(I'm a former Mozilla employee who added Lion Full Screen support and did some other OS X integration work. If you know somebody who cares about Firefox and wants to work on OS X related work let me know and I'll git in touch with the right people to make that happen.)

<comment><USER4> This is one area I'd love to work if I end up not doing my startup. The qualifications are pretty steep though. 5+ years Objective C experience :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure if they still do this, but they used to give each new employee a physical object and say "This is your 1,000,000 users. Try not to abuse them - too much."

<comment><USER6> Sadly, I haven't received such a physical object after working at Mozilla for 3 years. When I joined though, we did have over 1 million users per paid staff member. That _is_ a lot of responsibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What do these "product development and product management teams" do? Is this for the Boot to Gecko project?

I'm quite frankly surprised at the number mentioned. I'm also disappointed that they made the decision to put Thunderbird basically on life support. A self-hosted web version would have made a nice product.

Does anyone have a link to the official announcement? I see nothing on Mozilla's blog and Techcrunch has failed to provide a link.

<comment><USER8> I don't think that Mozilla wants to get in on the web service bandwagon or they would have before now. In any case, it was abundantly clear that Thunderbird was not going anywhere without some new ideas, so shutting it down was probably the most cost effective move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Open an Austin office. :)

<comment><USER6> Even though there's not an Austin office (yet), you should still apply. A significant portion of paid staff work from their homes, hacker spaces or cafes. I worked remotely for Mozilla for 9 months before I moved to the Bay Area.

Check out the Careers page and see if there's anything you like: <http://careers.mozilla.org/>

<comment><USER10> That sounds like the GitHub working model. Is GitHub and Mozilla, along with a lot of small startups, the only groups that practice it? It sounds so convenient for recruiting from a wider pool of talent.</comment></comment></comment>