Crowdforge.io – Find open source projects to join, or get help with your project - <AUTHOR> https://crowdforge.io <comment><AUTHOR> What do you guys think about a place where you can post ideas that you don't have time to, so others looking for inspiration/experience could pickup and work on.

It would be like sharing your open source project with the world, but from the idea level. Someone forking your idea instead of your code. We can also have commits, so that people can discuss and collaborate on the idea before writing any code.</comment>


Healthcare.gov crashing because backend doomed in the requirements stage - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/10/21/obamacares-website-is-crashing-because-backend-was-doomed-in-the-requirements-stage/

<comment><USER2> > In my case, even the most expensive plan for our family in the State of > Maine, where we live, is half the cost of what we are currently paying, > exclusive of any subsidies.

The elephant in the room is that this is not the typical case - [http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/25/double-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/25/double- down-obamacare-will-increase-avg-individual-market-insurance-premiums- by-99-for-men-62-for-women/)

<comment><USER3> > The elephant in the room is that this is not the typical case - > [http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/25/double-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/25/double-..).

It still boggles my mind that people are surprised by this. Mathematically, including people with pre-existing conditions will mean either that those people are required to pay for the (expected, not actual) costs of their own care, or that other people will be required to pay for those costs[0]. This effect is _much_ larger than the effect of mandating insurance for younger, healthier people who otherwise elected out of getting insurance[1].

Note: this is _not_ a normative statement about whether this is a "good" outcome. This is just a a mathematical observation about the way insurance works, from a mathematical and economic perspective.

[0] Subsidies come from taxpayer money, so they have no net effect on this accounting - it changes _how_ the money changes hands, but the money still has to come from somewhere.

[1] I'm waving my hands around the math here, but if people are interested I can dig up the more detailed blog post draft that I did a while back explaining this in full detail.

<comment><USER2> > It still boggles my mind that people are surprised by this...

I was surprised because I was told that this new coverage affordability came from getting insurance companies greed in check.

I didn't know that insurance companies were actually lobying _for_ Obamacare, not _against_ it.

[http://www.policymic.com/articles/62541/here-s-the-proof- oba...](http://www.policymic.com/articles/62541/here-s-the-proof-obamacare-is- for-the-insurance-companies-and-not-for-you)

<comment><USER4> Of course they are; this bill feeds them a guaranteed customer base. This is the largest issue I have with ObamaCare. The sole job of an insurance company is to assess risk. With a government mandated customer base there is no longer any risk to asses.

So... Why are the insurance companies involved at all? Why are they still in business? That's rhetorical, I know the answer, and I don't like it. We're all paying a middle man to do nothing for us.

<comment><USER5> > Of course they are; this bill feeds them a guaranteed customer base. This is > the largest issue I have with ObamaCare. The sole job of an insurance > company is to assess risk. With a government mandated customer base there is > no longer any risk to asses.

I'm no fan of insurance companies, but this statement does not compute. Of course there's still risk involved - the risk that the patient's costs will exceed premiums. If you set the premium too high, the customer will flee to a competitor. You also can't raise your premiums too high, because you have the 80% medical loss ratio - you can no longer just eat the rest as profit [1].

Totally agree that government should be the single payer or even the sole provider of healthcare (though that model isn't as widely implemented (UK NHS, US Veterans Admin) and has it's challenges as well).

[1] [http://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Resources/Forms-Reports-and- Other-R...](http://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Resources/Forms-Reports-and-Other- Resources/Downloads/2012-medical-loss-ratio-report.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If there is anything that can come of good of my taxes (a ridiculous amount of it in fact) is that we should educate people on the difficulties of software development. This would make a fantastic case study on what I presume are the issues at hand:

\- Maintaining complex code (+1mil LOC)

\- Classic "waterfall" approaches to software development (and the inherent problem with trying to blueprint requirements up front)

\- The mythical man month[1]

\- Change management

Funny thing is...these are all human problems.

[1] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man- Month](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month)

</comment><comment><USER7> Thoughtback [[https://thoughtback.com/](https://thoughtback.com/)] sent me a pertinent reminder this morning. No affiliation, just a great tool.

        Organizational metrics, which are not related to the code, can predict software
        failure-proneness with a precision and recall of 85 percent. This is a significantly
        higher precision than traditional metrics such as churn, complexity, or coverage
        that have been used until now to predict failure-proneness. [1]

[1] The Influence of Organizational Structure On Software Quality: An Empirical Case Study

[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=7053...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=70535)

\--

edit: formatting

<comment><USER8> "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler" \-- esr

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know the people who worked on this. This is not what happened. Just yet another propaganda piece by Forbes.

<comment><USER10> Well something happened. You might want to tell those guys that 500 million lines of code is a bit ridiculous.

<comment><USER11> I wonder what those LoC were for? XML parsing remote API calls between various disparate systems? Sounds like it's well beyond operation system complexity. Linux kernel is currently 15M LoC.

Then again, kernels and operating systems are quite logical and laid out by architects. Systems like these are rats nests defined by bureaucrats and integration nightmares.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I bet you half the problem is the software being specified in a synchronous and not asynchronous manner.

If a flow chart is expressed synchronously, it immediately bottlenecks around the slow backend systems. e.g. check the applicant has 4 kids, and if that checks out, present them with these options.

I attribute some of these problems to inadequate advances in today's mainstream programming languages.

For instance, if futures/promises were common parlance in programming, some of these bottlenecks would have been identified earlier.

I once read an interesting essay on what future programming languages could work on. One of the interesting ideas is a language that allows programmers to implement undo/redo easily. Recently there was a blog post about fuzzy computing, where a function is able to return approximate values when it is busy. The Knight Capital incident teaches us that if we architected our monitoring systems the same was as intrusion systems are done, we could have stopped activity when suspicious incidents occur outside the normal operating range. There was another incident where a Japanese trader accidentally keyed in the wrong number and promptly lost his employers a lot of money. Languages that incorporate ideas like validation and expected values as first class constructs might be able to help here. The Adriane reminded us how badly humans do when reasoning about systems where multiple agents perform the same task.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't wait to see what the report of it didn't work actually says. It's quite possible that one of the services that the website hit couldn't handle the traffic which in turn caused a bottleneck in other systems.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, this particular excerpt from the article is stretching things a bit too thin:

"Clearly there are problems with the government's IT procurement processes, but if the same level of dysfunction had been present in the software behind Obama's political campaign (as it was, apparently, behind Romney's) the President would have never been reelected."

Really? I doubt the campaign websites were the deciding factor.

Anyway, a lot of speculation in this article...not very insightful or informative.

<comment><USER15> They aren't talking about the campaign websites. Both campaigns had complex internal software systems to help target field worker campaign activities, get out the vote efforts, monitor and respond to turnout data on election day, etc.

According to various reports, the Obama campaign was hugely successful in this endeavor [1] while the Romney campaign's election day voter turnout system was a disaster [2].

[1] [http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/software- deve...](http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/software-development- in-the-obama-campai/240146307)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-project-orca- disaster-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-project-orca- disaster-2012-11)

<comment><USER11> But that is a very agile, very incentive aligned project. You don't need to negotiate compromises and tip toe around various laws to run some stats for your media predictive analytics. Your vendors want you to continue in the campaign, so they still have contracts. Everyone is running for the same goal line.

Health care and insurance entitlement programs are clearly orders of magnitude more quadmired before a single line of code is written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why government software projects go wrong [[http://www.mrobinson.ca/2012/09/why-government-software- proj...](http://www.mrobinson.ca/2012/09/why-government-software-projects- going.html)]

ibid - Part 2 [[http://www.mrobinson.ca/2013/08/government-projects-going- wr...](http://www.mrobinson.ca/2013/08/government-projects-going-wrong- part-2.html)]

</comment><comment><USER17> Could anyone share which platform / framework they used?

<comment><USER18> mnsure.org was throwing springframework exceptions the day it launched

<comment><USER19> healthcare.gov itself was a Ruby Jekyll static site. It _was_ on GitHub[0] for a while, but mysteriously disappeared. Here[1] is a clone of it, and what seems to be the currently agreed upon canonical version.

My state appears to be using Joomla based on the meta-generator tag in it's head tag. [http://www.avenueh.com/](http://www.avenueh.com/)

[0] [https://github.com/CMSgov/HealthCare.gov-Open-Source- Release](https://github.com/CMSgov/HealthCare.gov-Open-Source-Release)

[1] [https://github.com/blencorp/HealthCare.gov-Open-Source- Relea...](https://github.com/blencorp/HealthCare.gov-Open-Source-Release)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I didn't see anything that meant it was doomed from the requirements stage.

This was more of an Obama love fest and defense of ObamaCare than a technical article describing who the backend was doomed.

For what this cost to build it could have been much better, much simpler, and handled the scale gracefully.

Yes privacy concerns keep it off the elastic cloud. (not a point mentioned in the article)

Yes authenticated users limit caching and make scaling harder. (not really mentioned)

But when you are talking about everyone in the US, you only have so many combinations. Income in something like 32 ranges, number of kids 1 through 12 (greater than 12 they are all free) a bunch of ages.

We just saw a post that only 15 searches are new to google each day, so the number of combinations is much less than search which does lots of caching.

The requirements were messed up, the implementation was. Clearly not built by people who had ever done "Facebook scale" stuff.

<comment><USER21> Well, some reports are that the requirements were changing until 1 week before launch, and that development didn't start until March of this year due to requirements delays. Just those two factors alone would doom just about any project of this scale.</comment></comment>


The Scientific Implausibility of Starkiller Base - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2015/12/22/the-scientific-implausibility-of-starkiller-base/ <comment><USER2> "It's real. All of it."</comment>


Peter Thiel to enter Trump inner circle as tech adviser - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/peter-thiel-to-enter-trump-inner-circle-as-technology-adviser/ <comment><USER2> For all the doom and gloom predictions it would appear a Trump presidency is turning out to be a pretty vanilla republican administration. The world didn't end in 2000 when the last republican administration had a republican congress, and it won't end this time either.

<comment><USER3> We just had the largest terrorist attack on US soil, 2 wars, and a handful of financial crises. No big deal.

<comment><USER4> Well, good thing Trump wants to crush ISIS, doesn't want war with Russia, and doesn't want to meddle in Middle East's affairs. He also wants to make improve the economy by making it finally profitable for companies to do business in the United States again.

Will he succeed? We will have to wait and see (he will).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That would be an excellent choice. I hope that comes to fruition.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel Oh this is nice. The guy who helped create a firm for the sake of spying on people (Palantir). Yeah, totally not questionable in the least. Also, he's probably being used to cover Trump's other nominations which oppose LGBT rights and support gay conversion therapy (even forced when it comes to children).

</comment><comment><USER6> On many levels I _hate_ who Peter is as a person... but he will make an astounding tech adviser.

</comment><comment><USER7> Out of curiosity: Which of the two is richer?

<comment><USER6> Thiel, without question.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SplitCSS - new API for reducing unused CSS - <AUTHOR> https://splitcss.com/ <comment><USER2> Are you seriously showing HN a _holding page_ for a project?</comment>


Facebook Patents The Feed - <AUTHOR> http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/02/facebook-feed-patent/

<comment><USER2> Software patents really need to die now.

<comment><USER3> agreed. it's pretty clear to me now that basically if any reasonably intelligent engineer, with a reasonable understanding of what tools/patterns are available to him in devising a solution, sits down and devices what seems to him to be a pretty obvious solution, that, according to the USPTO, it's very likely patentable. So it becomes a race to see who is the first person (who are we kidding here: large company) to reach the USPTO with the right paperwork. Little guys lose. Mind-blowingly dumb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lets be fair here. Any US company worth anything needs to protect itself from patent aggression, whether from competitors or from patent trolls. Its the cost of doing business in America, and the only way to lose is to not play.

We should reserve the 'facebook are fuckers' comments until they try to enforce this (non-defensively).

<comment><USER5> > the only way to lose is to not play

I think you meant the only way to win is to play. There are always _many_ ways to lose!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Brief look at the claims suggests to me that this patent probably won't cover Twitter, or much else for that matter. It looks like it has two pretty severe limitations: (1) there has to be a link to an online activity that feed readers can participate in, and (2) the feed must be limited to certain users prior to the feed's existence.

Here is Claim 1 (all the other claims look to be similar):

 _> 1\. A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment, the method comprising: monitoring a plurality of activities in a social network environment; storing the plurality of activities in a database; generating a plurality of news items regarding one or more of the activities, wherein one or more of the news items is for presentation to one or more viewing users wherein one or more of the news items is for presentation to one or more viewing users and relates to an activity that was performed by another user;_

It is a news feed about user activities. So far, nothing looks so interesting.

 _> attaching a link associated with at least one of the activities of another user to at least one of the plurality of news items_

Ok, the news items in the feed have links. But...

 _> where the link enables a viewing user to participate in the same activity as the another user;_

So this is interesting. This means that it has to be an online activity (otherwise how can a link "enable" you to participate in the activity?).

 _> limiting access to the plurality of news items to a set of viewing users;_

So the news feed cannot be public. Although Facebook might try to argue that this covers situations where the feed is sometimes private and sometimes public, it seems likely that this element would be read to require limiting all the time. If Facebook intended the opposite, then it should have said something like "determining whether to limit access." (Alternately, it might mean that the damages for the patent would be cut off by the fraction of feeds that were private.)

 _> and displaying a news feed comprising two or more of the plurality of news items to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewing users._

And you display the news feed to some of the users. That word "predetermined" is interesting--it suggests that the viewing users have to be chosen before the feed is made.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ahem: <http://twitter.com/kellan/status/9651902873>

<comment><USER8> This will definitely be a patent for some enterprising soul to dive into and check the breadth of the claims being made. There is a ton of prior art out there related to this, so unless the claims are relatively narrow I can see this becoming another "let's break this patent" poster-child.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks to be the first patent granted to Facebook.

From the references in the patent, there are many more in the pipeline:

U.S. Appl. No. 11/639,655, Mark Zuckerberg, Systems and Methods for Social Mapping, filed Dec. 14, 2006. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/646,206, Aaron Sittig, Systems and Methods for Generating a Social Timeline, filed Dec. 26, 2006. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/493,291, Mark Zuckerberg, Systems and Methods for Dynamically Generating a Privacy Summary, filed Jul. 25, 2006. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/701,698, Jed Stremel, System and Method for Digital File Distribution, Feb. 2, 2007. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/713,455, Jed Stremel, Systems and Methods for Automatically Locating Web-Based Social Network Members, filed Feb. 28, 2007. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/701,566, Jed Stremel, System and Method for Automatic Population of a Contact File with Contact Content and Expression, filed Feb. 2, 2007. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/502,757, Andrew Bosworth, Systems and Methods for Generating Dynamic Relationship-Based Content Personalized for Members of a Web-Based Social Network, filed Aug. 11, 2006. cited by other .

[...]

<comment><USER3> Here's the template version:

U.S. Appl. No. <somenumber>, <some guys>, System and Method for Doing This Really Pretty Obvious Solution To Some Problem That Thousands of Engineers Have Been & Would Otherise Continue To Be Independently Devising In Isolation For Quite Some Time Now Thanks, <date>. cited by <whatever> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm thinking its about time we dispense with the pretext of the patent altogether.

Big companies just give a bunch of money to the government and a union/cabal of elite lawyers. Later, if someone else comes up with a business plan that threatens their profits, they can just ask the government to put them out of business.

Whoever's put the most money in wins. Its like a giant ebay auction, but for the whole market.

</comment><comment><USER11> So they basically patented the "rip off what twitter/flickr are doing" business model?

</comment><comment><USER12> Good timing. I need a patent to study and write a quick report on for an IP class I'm taking. This will do nicely.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I've already patented a "System and Method of Reading Websites To Come Up With Ideas On What Patent To Study and Write a Quick Report On for An IP Class One Might Be Taking"

my license rates are reasonable

<comment><USER13> But are they non-discriminatory?

<comment><USER3> I have patents on both discriminatory and non-discriminatory licensing rates. I also have a patent on patents, and patent offices. I have also patented all thought and communication. Resistance is futile. All your base are belong to us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network" — Well, we're doomed. Doooooomed.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hehe, this is getting ridiculous...Wasn't friendfeed.com created before facebook? Even if it wasn't (or was) there is no way this could hold up.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure Facebook bought friendfeed. I'm not sure exactly how patents work, but it seems this would mean you couldn't cite friendfeed as prior art.

<comment><USER3> Don't worry, the USPTO doesn't know how patents work either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Uh, lol. Facebook didn't invent the idea of aggregation, it just made it easy to aggregate your friends' photos and quips, mostly by virtue of getting a lot of people to use it, even people up to a few generations older than the people that usually used this kind of stuff.

Facebook didn't invent anything. The whole point of it is that it's an "RSS feed of friends' lives".

Why are people such retards? This kind of stuff makes me angry and I have a hard time dealing with it.

<comment><USER17> Don't get angry, get a patent! That's probably the rationale Facebook is using with regards to IP rights ("We don't like the idea of patents, but we dislike even _more_ the possibility of a patent troll extorting us for something that _should_ be obvious, so lets act preemptively and file for a patent").

<comment><USER18> Defensive patents don't stop trolls. That's the whole point of trolls (or Non- Practising Entities), you can't counter-sue or cross-licence, you either pay lots of money to win the court case or you pay lots of money to the troll.</comment></comment></comment>


Test your Git skills - <AUTHOR> https://www.gitlitup.com/ <comment><USER2> these test repos are hilarious.. heartbleed and trump's wall in prolog

</comment><comment><USER3> > Woah! Check yo self befo you wreck yo self.. just login/signup.

How about I don't just to take a (probably automated) test.</comment>


YouTube: The Big Copyright Lie - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000972.html <comment><USER2> Well, it's interesting what YouTube is doing. Their policy is simply there to cover themselves legally and shift the blame to the users. However this opt- out policy allows them to host the videos and continue making money (or at least getting traffic) from them until the copyright owner calls to complain.

In YouTube's defense, it's nearly impossible to verify the copyright of user supplied content and since YouTube is simply offering to provide hosting of user supplied content it shouldn't be liable for copyright infringements just as your ISP is not liable if you decide to post illegal material on their servers. They will remove the material (and possibly terminate your account) if someone reports the violation.</comment>


Learn the ways of Linux-fu, for free - <AUTHOR> https://linuxjourney.com/ <comment><USER2> This is one of those HN 'anti-exemplar' posts where I can't tell if the people are serious and sincere or whether they are all involved in a satirical group troll or a self-promotion ring. Or both.

In broad strokes:

"Finally! After 20+ years _now_ there's a way I can learn Linux!"

"If _only_ a way I could 'save' this and revisit later... or a way to 'share' it with others... hmmmm..."

and someone just asked how to wipe a hard drive (?!)

etc

and __415 __upvotes?

It is not April 1st, and I'm not on The Onion. If everyone is sincere, great, and good for you, but I'd love to know that.

Is it because school is out for the summer now? At least here in the US.

And I'm curious: did any one else have a similar reaction?

<comment><USER3> I agree. It looks nice but that's it. It's full of errors and misinformation.

People would be FAR better off with "Linux for Dummies" which despite the name is an excellent book.

And it has a free "cheatsheet" : [http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/linux- for-dummies-chea...](http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/linux-for-dummies- cheat-sheet.html)

<comment><USER4> Hey what kind of misinformation are you talking about? Can you point out a few instances?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish HN had a save post feature similar to Reddit. I'm not really a bookmark guy and this is exactly the kind of site I know would be a life saver some time in the future.

<comment><USER6> Good point. Does anyone have a good web based bookmark tool? I hop between a dozen machines on different networks so keeping bookmarks is kind of tedious.

<comment><USER7> I've been using [https://pinboard.in](https://pinboard.in) for years and can't recommend it enough - it's brilliant.

<comment><USER8> $11/year?

Certainly not bad, but there are hostable solutions that would work on $15/year VPSs, and that's at consumer pricing and supports multiple users.

On the other hand, this is just penny pinching and <$1/mo is phenomenal.

<comment><USER9> There's a story behind it - apparently there was a better response from consumers with annual pricing. People often didn't understand the concept of a one-off fee for a web service, and got confused between the once-off and the recurring options

> Right now, users pay a one-time signup fee that grows by a fraction of a > penny with each new signup. At the moment, this fee is $10.55. Pinboard also > offers archiving accounts, which cost $25/year. Users who upgrade after > joining Pinboard can deduct the signup fee from the first year of archiving.

> Under the new scheme, basic Pinboard accounts will cost $11/year, while > archiving will continue to cost $25/year.

> My main reason for making the change is so that I don't have to keep > explaining how pricing works. An astonishing number of people already > believe that they're paying annually for Pinboard. Others accuse me of > baiting and switching them when they upgrade to archiving and get a renewal > notice. Note how much easier it is to describe the new policy than the old > one.

[https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/11/new_pricing_policy/](https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/11/new_pricing_policy/)

<comment><USER10> So he changed it from a one-time cost of ~$11, to a recurring annual cost of $11? That seems like a pretty big change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >By default the echo command takes the input (standard input or stdin) from the keyboard and returns the output (standard output or stdout) to the screen.

This isn't right is it? Echo doesn't read anything from stdin:

        echo <<< HelloWorld

Does this command makes any sense?

        $ ls | grep *.txt /tmp
        grep: /tmp: Is a directory

I found the whole text-fu section quite confusing...

<comment><USER12> This doesn't work either:

        $ echo The quick brown; fox jumps over the lazydog > sample.txt
        The quick brown
        bash: fox: command not found

<comment><USER13> You're terminating the command at ; so bash is looking for the fox command, which it can't find. Quote the text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a beautiful site for teaching the command line, while not being too over the top in its aesthetic...I'm on my iPad so I'm not seeing the issues others are having on mobile

</comment><comment><USER15> "During this time other efforts such as BSD, MINIX, etc were developed to be UNIX like-systems. However, one thing that all these UNIX like-systems had in common was the lack of a unified kernel."

BSD and MINIX lack a Unified kernel? What?

</comment><comment><USER16> Learn the CSS foo. Layout and navigation completely broken on mobile

<comment><USER17> That's because this is the year of the Linux desktop. /s

(Yes, I know Android is linux, but you know what I mean you pedantic know-it- alls).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is for OP if its their project. Feedback your mobile version needs work. I see that it's responsive, but a lot of the content is off the screen.

</comment><comment><USER19> Don't teach people ifconfig! It's all about ip now.

<comment><USER20> Yes, I can't stress this enough. I teach all the users at my company to use ip instead of ifconfig.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> think some keys got mixed up here:

h or the left arrow - will move you left one character

j or the up arrow - will move you up one line

k or the down arrow - will move you down one line

l or the right arrow - will move you right one character

<comment><USER22> There are a lot of little typos (such as stating '..' and '-' arguments for 'cd' labeled as "previous directory" or suggesting Ubuntu uses Debian because it's made by Canonical). I wonder the best way to contact the author about revising these small but obviously not terrible errors.

<comment><USER23> There's a "Contact Us" section in the footer that points to - firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER24> The author is also active in this thread:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4m4mko/i_made_a_site...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4m4mko/i_made_a_site_to_learn_linux_what_do_you_think/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There doesn't seem to be any mentions about pacman in the package managers section.

It's a shame, I've felt wonderful switching to Arch based distributions just due to pacman.

</comment><comment><USER26> On my Blackberry the site does not layout well. It might be worth looking at % of users coming from mobile and if you see a lot of that kind of traffic fixing the layout.

<comment><USER27> The fact your username is IE6 and you mentioned rendering issues makes me smile :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was just about to jump into the world of Linux and this is perfect.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is really well done. Can you talk a bit about how you built it?

</comment><comment><USER30> Good one. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER31> Anyone offer advise on a good program for wiping the hard drive on an older PC - pentium / Duo core 2 ; 2009 for a fresh install of Ubuntu or some other Linux distro -install.

</comment><comment><USER32> Spent ages trying to work out what the hell Linux-FU is ... then eventually realised it's like kung-fu .. wtf.</comment>


On Reading Issues of Wired from 1993 to 1995 - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/on-reading-issues-of-wired-from-1993-to-1995?currentPage=all <comment><USER2> > In "Scenarios," a special edition from 1995, the guest editor Douglas > Coupland took it upon himself to compile a "reverse time capsule," which he > deemed "not a capsule directed to the future, but rather to the citizens of > 1975." What artifacts, he asked, "might surprise them most about the > direction taken by the next 20 years?" Included in the capsule—alongside > non-tech items such as a chunk of the Berlin Wall, Prozac, and a Japanese > luxury sedan—were a laptop ("more power in your lap than MIT's biggest > mainframe"), an Apple MessagePad ("hand-held devices are replacing > secretaries"), and a cellular phone. Scanning my apartment, I can spot > progeny of all three. One suspects that, were we to engineer our own reverse > time capsule today and ship it back to the citizens of 1995, they might not > be all that surprised by the direction we've taken.

I remember 1995 pretty well; I think 2016 has a lot more in common with it than 1995 has in common with 1974. Honestly, I don't think life has changed all that much in the last twenty years. Sure, everyone has a smartphone, and back then almost no-one had a _cell_phone, and the Internet is faster, and computers can do more and are more reliable, but things really aren't fundamentally different.

We had the Web then, and we have it now. We had internet communities than, and we have them now. We listened to music then, and we listen to it now. Computers have been integrated far better into our lives, but they're doing essentially the same things (I still remember watching a QuickTime video of The Spirit of Christmas back in 1996; that's no different in kind than Hulu or Netflix, just in degree).

<comment><USER3> > > One suspects that, were we to engineer our own reverse time capsule today > and ship it back to the citizens of 1995, they might not be all that > surprised by the direction we've taken.

Well, yeah, though I think the changes wrought on the average persons way of life from 1995 to 2016 were in some ways greater than 1974 to 1995, the things that have changed the most aren't so much the kind of bits of kit that would go in a reverse time capsule. The ubiquity of digital communication is a huge change, and the software and services that the average person regularly consumes based on them are -- but the bits of kit that we use to access them, at least in outline, wouldn't be all that surprising in 1995.

> We had the Web then, and we have it now. We had internet communities than, > and we have them now

For _vastly_ narrower definitions of "we" in 1995 than in 2016.

<comment><USER4> And, perhaps especially in 1974, after they got over the shock of using an iPhone or modern laptop to access the Internet, they'd be equally flabbergasted to see that voice access to this "Star Trek computer" still doesn't really work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is by Anna Wiener, the same author who wrote the recent "Uncanny Valley" piece:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565691)

Really enjoy her writing.

</comment><comment><USER6> My favorite was Neal Stephenson's "Mother Earth Mother Board", from December 1996, about the Fiber Optic Link around the Globe ("FLAG").

I wish I had all those issues I saved for a decade or so.

[http://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](http://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

<comment><USER7> I remember that thing being super long. Is it really worth going through the whole thing?

<comment><USER8> If you like Neal Stephenson, yes. If you dislike Neal Stephenson, probably not. If neither of the above, could go either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wired used to be a really interesting magazine. Now it's just a dumbed-down catalog of high-tech gadgets. Like a SkyMall catalog.

<comment><USER10> Wired was silly dumbed-down hype-catalog from the start.

It looks better in retrospect when we forget that we were dumb, young and inexperienced when it came out. They had few good articles now and then just like they have now, it depends on what kind of writers they have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > A few moments later, I was on eBay, where I started to bid on strangers' > dusty collections of early issues of Wired, all from the years 1993 to 1995

It's interesting that the author never tried to get these from a library (or at least doesn't mention it). Do libraries not keep back issues anymore? Growing up in LA, I could get back issues of almost any magazine from the library going many decades back. Sometimes my local library didn't have it, but the LA system did.

Also, since she lives in SF, I'll bet should could just head over to Wired HQ and ask to use their collection, and they'd probably be thrilled that someone is interested in back issues. They have them all on a bookcase since the beginning of time. I used to read them when taking breaks.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure most libraries have them in storage, but perhaps not handily available and they quite possibly won't allow you to take them home. Honestly, if they're easily available on Ebay, that's probably the best solution, if for no other reason than that you'll get to read them in your favorite chair with a glass of wine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was a subscriber since issue 1.

I loved that when some issues would arrive, they'd straight up smell like spray paint.

I think it was something to do with the metallic paint.

</comment><comment><USER14> somebody from wired should do the same with the new yorker

</comment><comment><USER15> The excerpt of Microserfs they published was for me the epitome of 90s silicon valley. Coupland hasn't impressed me since then but damn that was a perfect time capsule

</comment><comment><USER16> Let me remind you about the most hip programming language of today: PASCAL. [https://archive.org/details/byte- magazine-1978-08](https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1978-08)

(There's a lot more there, don't accidentally drown.)

<comment><USER17> Meh... ;-)

[https://archive.org/details/byte- magazine-1981-08](https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> And don't forget Mondo 2000. Earlier, more counter-culture and techo-utopian (or maybe dystopian...)

</comment><comment><USER19> > DataHand, a two-thousand-dollar sensor-laden, ergonomic "keyboard without > keys."

Not as defunct as you might think! See: [https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0](https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0)

</comment><comment><USER17> Wired is for newbies. For a real trip one should try OMNI and Creative Computing.

<comment><USER20> My parents have a small collection of OMNI they had kept over the years. I've always meant to read through them but forgot when I had the time. Thank you for reminding me.

<comment><USER17> My mom had a Fortune subscription for most of my childhood. Both stories and ads provided a surprising perspective of the computer revolution as seen from the management side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I loved 'Uncanny Valley' by Weiner. Wired is one dimension of the mid 90's, Morph's Outpost was another, less corporate one. More Kai's power tools than Adobe.... [https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/2800394161_32c40ecc6c.j...](https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/2800394161_32c40ecc6c.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER22> Ah yes the era of light pink text on a striped yellow background. The future was going to be just like Max Headroom.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't have deep knowledge of what it's like in literary land, literature degree programs, etc., but oh goodness can they blather on, Painting Pictures longer than my interest holds.

"on MUNI, at bars, in bed in my apartment in Haight-Ashbury" sounds like someone who came from somewhere regarded as lame and is hoping that coolness is now on them.

"it's a document of a time when consumer technology was still clumsy and undefined" \-- I'm not sure consumer technology has reached its pinnacle of perfection.

And that's as far as I got. I'd actually been hoping we were going to hear something like "Here is the nonsense of 1994, which lets us think more clearly about what's probably nonsense in 2016", and maybe it's in there somewhere, buried.

</comment><comment><USER24> On a similar note, things found in a 1995 copy of '.Net - The Internet Magazine'

[http://www.codeulike.com/2008_01_01_archive.html](http://www.codeulike.com/2008_01_01_archive.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> > A sidebar on Wacom's ArtPad, from 1995—"If you've ever sketched with a > pencil, you'll be able to use ArtPad"—made me wonder why it took Apple so > long to roll out its Pencil stylus for the iPad.

Because in 1995, the handwriting recognition of the Apple Newton was so bad that it was a Simpsons joke.

<comment><USER26> I don't think the author is talking about the Newton. I think she's pointing out that the iPad was out for years before Apple released a stylus for it.

\-- Which I think was because His Steveness hated styli. I guess this was because, back in the days of the Palm PDAs, people tended to lose them -- though I never had this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The spines make for interesting patterns: [https://www.instagram.com/p/UZdhB/?taken- by=nevrs](https://www.instagram.com/p/UZdhB/?taken-by=nevrs)

(I have every single issue).

</comment><comment><USER28> An alternate take on the history from people who lived through it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaDdLhnIoA4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaDdLhnIoA4)

</comment><comment><USER29> The "original" Wired was written by people well outside mainstream journalism. It was OK for a news piece to be quirky or obscure. When it was taken over by "Encorpera" it changed greatly.

</comment><comment><USER30> What on earth am I reading?

      One thing I've noticed since moving to San Francisco is that my cohort
      in the tech world doesn't talk that much about the industry's past.

How is the above different in any other industry? I don't hear my fellow consultants talking about the history of consulting, I don't hear my programme manager wife and her programme manager friends talking about the history of programme management etc.

Waffle

</comment><comment><USER31> doh [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856835)</comment>


A Cellphone's Missing Dot Kills Two People, Puts Three More in Jail - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail <comment><USER2> Missing dots don't kill people, people kill people!

<comment><USER3> Indeed, the sickest thing about this story is that it's the missing dot that's emphasized instead of _mass killing with knives_ over _words_.

<comment><USER4> But that's the "fun" part. People brutally stabbing each other is booooring!

In reality, I'm sure this guy would have murdered someone else anyway. I don't think one text message is enough to drive a sane person to attempt murder. The phrase "ticking time bomb" comes to mind.

<comment><USER2> The other big problem with the story: the two words don't just differ by the dots on the "i"s, they also appear to end with a different vowel.

<comment><USER5> I know nothing of Turkish. But it's extremely feasible that the trailing vowel is decided by tense or inflection. Note that the active subject changed between the two phrases. "You run out of arguments" vs. "They are ____ you."

<comment><USER6> I studied Turkish in college, but it's been a few years.

Turkish has "vowel harmony", so a suffix's vowels are determined by the preceding vowel. The ending "-IncE" (capital = "correct-by-harmony-rules vowel here") means roughly "when doing", and it can look like ınca or ince (or other variants) depending on the last vowel of the verb it's attached to.

Literally "Zaten sen sıkışınca konuyu değiştiriyorsun" = "Anyway you (when-)get-stuck (to-the-)topic change(-now-you)". They don't quote the other reading of the sentence (or even the alternate word), so I think the "they are __ you" form was just the English translation.

It's not even clear the message used an "e" -- just that "sikişince" is what it "looked like". I propose that people, when reading, tend to place more value in the root of a word than its suffixs. He probably typed "sikişinca", which I admit looks more like "sikişince" than it does "sıkışınca".

Aren't agglutinative languages fun?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You have to be careful when typing languages where "they are fucking you" and "you run out of arguments" are only one letter apart.

<comment><USER8> Due to the dirtiness of the human mind, I expect _most_ languages have innocent phrases that are one letter apart from suggestive ones. E.g.: "You're such an uninteresting person... At parties, you're always telling dull stories and boning everyone."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This _is_ hacker news (in more ways than one).

<comment><USER5> Slasherdot: News for Kurds, Stuff that Splatters

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmm... The software apparently didn't pass the Turkey Test.

<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001075.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps the deep and abiding problem here is not that all cellphones are not nationalized, its that there are people in this world that _kill each other over SMS messages!_

But yeah, sure, go ahead and fix the dot. I'm sure that will solve everything.

<comment><USER12> I guess those people have a slight evolutionary disadvantage in our modern world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Punctuation and capitalisation can also be problematic: <http://www.bash.org/?367896>

</comment><comment><USER14> Unicode is good for your health.

</comment><comment><USER15> Linkbait title at its best.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen All for the want of a cellphone pixel.</comment>


Political amateurs are a threat to democracy – Vox - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2017/7/12/15959032/political-amateurs-threat-to-democracy <comment><USER2> And so are the professionals.</comment>


Humans to Asteroids: Watch Out - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/opinion/26schweickart.html <comment><USER2> It's really sad to me that we give NASA less than a percent of our national budget. Along with the (now cancelled) Superconducting Super Collider, it's one of the few ways in which you can make huge leaps for humanity with a relatively small investment.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I think the investment vs leaps for humanity ratio is much better for "small science" projects than for big-ticket items like NASA and the SSC.

Is it better to give $20 billion to building an SSC, or a million bucks to research on fruit flies and a million bucks to research on earthquakes and a million bucks to research on lattice gauge theory and a million bucks to research on whale mating and ... so on twenty thousand times? Do that and you'll get huge amounts of interesting research, or varying importance from "dull" to "hugely important". Smash some atoms together and you'll either find a Higgs Boson or not -- a single hypothesis either confirmed or rejected, big deal.

NASA has done some great stuff too, but their greatest stuff has been in relatively small corners of their budget, like Hubble and Kepler.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree that the size of the budget does not determine the value of the science. In my mind, though, the huge value in NASA comes in fulfilling our species wanderlust. The entire history of our species is filled with exploration; it is hard-wired into our DNA. At this point, there are few places left to do that.

On the other hand, I keep hoping the Higgs Boson (or a discovery soon after it) will hold the key to either anti-gravity or wormholes. There is no scientific basis for this, I just want to be able to fly or jump across space. :)

<comment><USER5> > On the other hand, I keep hoping the Higgs Boson (or a discovery soon after > it) will hold the key to either anti-gravity or wormholes.

Unfortunately, the Higgs has next to nothing to do with either of these. The fact of the matter is that it is very improbable that anything discovered at frontier accelerator (e.g., the LHC, SSC, CLIC) will produce anything useful for many hundreds of years, if not longer. Rather, these accelerators are built to learn about the universe _for its own sake_.

<comment><USER4> I believe that many (maybe even all) scientists working on these kinds of projects feel this way. The people who ultimately fund the projects do not. It would be wise to remember that.

The people who fund them do not expect a wormhole generator to fall out of them (gads, do people not have a sense of humor?). There is an implicit expectation that the knowledge for the sake of knowledge will have the potential to provide real, tangible benefits for the people who are really paying for these experiments. If that expectation wasn't there, scientists wouldn't bother justifying the expense[1].

Again, with no scientific basis, I am still hopeful that these experiments and the knowledge gained from them will result in a leap, perhaps in a way similar to the classical-to-quantum knowledge caused us to leap forward.

<http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-09/defense-lhc>

<comment><USER5> >There is an implicit expectation that the knowledge for the sake of knowledge will have the potential to provide real, tangible benefits for the people who are really paying for these experiments.

This is the thing that most laymen don't understand: in terms of potential for applications, the LHC (and the past 3 or 4 accelerators) are different than the pure, curosity-driven research which preceded them. In the past, scientists studied things because they were generally curious, _but the things they studied were actually accessible at sensible energies and distances_. That means that the knowledge they discovered was potentially useful, regardless of motivation. However, modern accelerators operate at energies which are inconceivably far from the real world. The chance that they produce practical knowledge is much, _much_ lower (though of course not zero).

>If that expectation wasn't there, scientists wouldn't bother justifying the expense.

This is wrong. There are large incentives for scientists to not expend much effort making it painfully clear to the public how impractical the LHC is.

>I believe that many (maybe even all) scientists working on these kinds of projects feel this way. The people who ultimately fund the projects do not.

This is kind of true. Yes, if politicians and the public knew how unlikely it was that the LHC would produce anything useful, they would be less likely to fund it. But don't forget that the US federal government funded the Apollo program and still funds things like art.

<comment><USER6> Are you saying the Apollo program was entirely impractical?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "only 250-300 million added to the budget"

Yes research is important. Yes exploration is important.

But at least show some respect for tax payers. Asking for 250 million is the equivalent of asking 3000 people to work for nothing for a year.

<comment><USER8> That's a little sensational, don't you think? Virtually every morsel of our federal budget can be put in the same terms, and many are orders of magnitude larger than this.

<comment><USER7> Yes, fair points and I understand it's a tiny slice of a massive pie.

Maybe I respect tax dollars too much, but I did get a somewhat annoyed reaction about the way spending tax dollars was so flippantly worded in the article

<comment><USER8> You're ascribing a lot of authority to an article. It really bears no indication of the deliberation, or lack thereof, on the part of those setting the budget.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Alternate YC Summer 2011 Class - let's do it ourselves - <AUTHOR> http://www.ycreject.com/2011/04/were-you-rejected-for-summer-2011-y.html

<comment><USER2> Or, you can start showing up at cool hacker spaces like the Hacker Dojo or Noise Bridge.

Get a stack of business cards, and hang out at Hackers & Founders </shameless plug> or 106 miles and make a point of having coffee with a couple of cool new people every week.

Join one of the dozens of cool co working spaces in the area. (Avoid Plug and Play).

Spend $9 on the "Pitching hacks" ebook. Best money you'll spend as a founder.

Work on building:

       team with at least one technical founder
       workable product
       refined pitch
       gain some traction
       preferably find one or two people to be your advisors (aka social proof)

And then apply to Angel list.

You need demo day for "social proof" in front of investors and to get a press bump. Demo days aren't essential for funding any more now that Angel List has turned funding into an API.

There's an open ecosystem in place for this, and it's improving. There are still a number of places in the early stage ecosystem that really suck, however. And, that's why incubators are still able to charge 6% of your equity for fixes to that.

But, some of us are working on fixing these problems. You'll be hearing more from Hackers & Founders about this in the near future.

<comment><USER3> Just curious, what's wrong with Plug and Play?

<comment><USER2> It's all about incentives. Plug and Play's business model is people paying for office space. So, they take anybody who comes and is willing to pay their prices for real estate, and they try to call investors in so that the people paying for office space can present to them.

Investors want to see a bunch of qualified, filtered startups. So, the incubators/accelerators that provide "good deal flow" for the investors have the best reputations with the investment community. Plug and Play doesn't provide that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A word of caution about the name and approach. You'll find when fundraising that branding yourself as "ycreject.com" will make it very hard to raise funding. VCs and Angels are going to think, "if YC wouldn't give them money, why should I give them a much larger amount of money?"

I don't think it's controversial to say that most angels and VCs suffer from group-think and an over-reliance on social proof. That's why finding your first investor is the hardest.

This concept will be perfect for boot-strapers, but not good for someone looking for funding. You'd be better off avoiding all relation to YC and branding yourself as some sort of unaffiliated startup co-op.

<comment><USER5> While your advice makes a lot of sense, I think they can definitely get some traction with this idea.

Here is a wrinkle that I think could work. Limit it to everyone that got an interview but didn't get in.

<comment><USER6> Then, this would disqualify the author of this post because he didn't get an interview.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes.. then I would be DQ'd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was in YC, and I think this is an awesome idea. You can replicate lots of the value, even if you don't have PG giving office hours. However, five isn't enough. Lots of the value from YC was to hear lots of different ideas and opinions and feedback, and you won't get that with five.

What's the downside of taking 30? You're not taking investment, not providing mentorship; there's no cost to taking more.

You're going to want to arrange stuff for you to do, right, speakers for example? So you should split the effort of getting angels to talk, between the companies who join.

Finally, no-one is going to want to give talks (very high value) to five groups, and there will definitely be no demo-day (ultra-high value) with 5 groups.

With five groups you'll gain very little (some, but little). I'd urge you to accept as many groups apply, to a limit of 30-ish at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> You bring up good points especially with getting speakers and getting angels. I do plan to leverage the groups by having them contribute in setting up speakers and finding qualified angels.

I'm more concerned about scaling this (that's the engineer in me thinking). At least five groups is somewhat manageable especially when it comes time to finding space to meet once per week.

<comment><USER7> Book hacker dojo in MV. (Actually, that's right beside YC)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What will happen to people rejected from YC reject? Will they form a YC reject reject group?

<comment><USER9> :) Made me smile

<comment><AUTHOR> There's no reason to not start their own group. But you have to stay laser focused.. otherwise too many cooks spoil the food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good idea, but:

(!) You should invite more people. I can't figure out why you wouldn't want as many as possible

(2) You should change the name. Not only is it not good to label yourself as a "reject," there may also be people who have independent funding (I'm a contractor and make good money that way) that don't need YC money but would still be regular participants. What about "Indie YC" or something like that (perhaps related to a different math theorm)?

(3) Why do you want people to fill out the YC app again?

(4) And why does only one person (yourself) get to decide who gets in or not? There would need to be considerably more trust involved before people are just going to just let you make all the decisions. I tend to think it is better to say, "My co-founder and I will be at this place at this time every week with our laptops and free food." Once you have 3 or so committed startups you probably have traction enough to continue.

That said, I'm moving to the Bay area next month to work on solo ventures. I'm in if something is going on.

</comment><comment><USER11> _"We have to keep this group small in this first batch to make it successful."_

I feel bad for anybody rejected by the rejected...

<comment><USER12> That would simply lead to this: rejectedbyycreject.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I actually like this as a concept, though iamelgringo's advice is probably better in practice. But you could run this social group in addition to taking his advice. Good luck!

Be careful with using the name YC around here though, one of the rules of Hacker News is that you can only use "YC" if you are actually affiliated with YC.

<comment><USER14> Hmmm. Wonder if that's why my post got killed yesterday? I posted for people who weren't accepted this round to check out Startup City in Baltimore and some info and links about Baltimore neighorhoods. I'm not affiliated w/Startup City in anyway and am unsure why the post was "deaded"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I dont think there are many downsides to letting in more people. If you want to keep the quality high, maybe crowdsource and let the YC community vote on who gets in. But 30-40 just like YC is a good idea. It also increases the odds that someone coming out of the group will actually be successful

I suspect as the person organizing you wont have time for your own startup as you will need to keep the thing organized, get speakers etc. but you may be able to get funding.

maybe a name like abiogenesis - spontaneous formation of life would be better than yc rejects

Also I suspect you will immediately be able to get press as everyone loves the underdog

</comment><comment><USER16> i have been rejected from ycombinator multiple times over the years probably because i am a solo founder- its hard to find other guys to work with that i get on with in my local area..

my startup is yrecruit.com - someone mentioned am i ripping of ycombinator - its more a play on words

<comment><USER17> What is your local area?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> YC isn't the end all and be all of your startup hopes. There's awesome accelerators like TechStars, etc. out there.

<comment><USER19> ... and IO Ventures, 500 startups (whose demo day also featured on Techcrunch [1]), and many, many more[2, 4]

Also, you can take 37 Signal's advice that _Outside money is plan B_

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/08/the-seven-most- interesting-...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/08/the-seven-most-interesting- startups-at-500-startups-demo-day/)

[2] <http://blog.shedd.us/321987608/> From Steven Blank's list[3]

[3] <http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/>

[4] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569687>

[5] <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Fund_Yourself.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice idea! Here's something similar we tried in Brighton, UK in 2009: <http://bootcycle.com>

I think being in the bay area and basing out of somewhere like Hacker DoJo would have made a huge difference.

</comment><comment><USER21> A bunch of people will push forward regardless: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2422145></comment>


Apple reveals App Store takedown demands by governments - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/02/apple-app-government-takedowns/ <comment><USER2> This is the №1 reason I choose Android - nobody can dictate what apps I can install.

I always knew you can only install apps from the store on Apple devices and strongly disliked this (I already use some apps which even Google won't approve, e.g. an open-source YouTube downloader only available on GitHub) but once I've found out you can't get some apps (and books) in particular countries (e.g. a book I wanted was only available in the US store) and a government can ban something from the store I facepalmed.

<comment><USER3> An interesting contrast is the story on the front page about Chinese border patrol installing spyware [1]. There, the fact that every app needs to be signed by Apple meant that the surveillance app could only be installed on Android phones. So I guess, yes, nobody can dictate what apps you can install, but also nobody can dictate what apps others can install.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20342063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20342063)

<comment><USER4> > also nobody can dictate what apps others can install

That's one of the main reason why I don't use smartphones: I wouldn't be in control of my own device. With iOS, Apple is in control. With Android, apparently nobody is in control.

But on my Linux machines, I'm arguably in control. If I can find stuff somewhere, I can install it. And nobody else can, unless they root them. It happens, I know. But with LUKS FDE, even booting is arguably hard unless they could read the key from RAM.

So how come we got this smartphone crap, instead of actual portable computers that could, among other things, work as cellphones?

<comment><USER5> > _With iOS, Apple is in control. With Android, apparently nobody is in > control..._

A thousand times this.

The state of the mobile universe right now is such that you have to either effectively trust Apple, or you have to effectively trust everyone. That's why HN User qwerty456127's choice to go to Android was fine, if he wants to be able to install his own apps, but it seriously compromised his privacy and security.

What if you do not want to trust anyone?

Nope. Sorry. No easy to use options for you out there.

<comment><USER6> I can't see a way to "trust nobody" beyond abstaining entirely from phones, computers, etc.

Imagine a Free Software utopia with open hardware running an open source OSes and apps. Someone is writing that code. Someone is manufacturing that device. Someone is compiling and packaging that distribution for you. Someone is running the network.

Having access to the (alleged) source code for everything, and being able to compile it all yourself, would surely be worth something. But it'd be way too much code for you to audit alone. So you're going to have to trust Someone (security researchers, open source contributors) to be doing this for you...

<comment><USER7> For some people, I think it's actually exciting for them to think about how independent they are and how nobody can spy on them or trick them out of money because they consider themselves to be so worldly and knowledgeable about such things. And maybe they are compared to their families or the people they deal with during their day-to-day. I've known plenty of people (myself included at times) who get some of their feelings of self-worth from this sort of thing. But because it's more of a fun or emotional or ego-boosting thing than a rational thing, they'll often make big bold binary blanket statements about all the products they refuse to buy or web sites they refuse to go to or companies they refuse to patronize. And that's all great, actually, as long as it's rational and based on facts rather than some narrative in their head. We need more skeptical people, we always do.

But it's not always rational, and sometimes it is more like they're LARPing through some exciting narrative about the world, and in that narrative they're the heroes who know stuff that the normies don't. They're more like survivalists living an adventure in their head than rational people making rational choices. And that's where people can also get into trouble, both for having a false sense of confidence about their ability to avoid risk, and for giving others bad advice based on excessive confidence or rose-colored glasses about the same things.

I'm all for better security practices based on ever more openness, but I agree 100% with your example: people are kidding themselves if they think just because they run binaries built by other people from open source, it's almost as good as if they had personally inspected every line of code themselves. And when people are making those sorts of utopian statements, it's generally coming from the LARPing survivalist narrative part of the mind rather than the skeptical rational part of the mind and should be viewed with that much more skepticism. Not rejected, but just considered with an extra dollop of skepticism, because they hopefully at least mean well.

<comment><USER4> That's me, for sure.

But here's the thing: It's always just a game. So sure, call it LARPing. However, consider that the US came out of LARPing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The actual report[1] is very interesting to read.

I was surprised that there were zero App Store takedown requests from governments in North America, South America, and Australia.

All of the takedown requests came from China, Vietnam, and Europe; including Norway and Switzerland.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/pdf/requests-2018-H...](https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/pdf/requests-2018-H2-en.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Also, a National Security Letter may require that the takedown not be publicized in any way. This is in part what led to the concept of warrant/NSL canaries: a statement in a legal doc such as terms, etc. that says there have been no warrants or takedowns orders received. If the canary is removed from the doc then it is not publicizing the NSL, but the canary's absence is supposedly required by law (IANAL) because keeping it in there would be a falsehood in a legal document, and so the absence indicates the NSL/takedown occurred.

<comment><USER9> Just to add to this, Apple did have a warrant canary. It disappeared in 2014 [1], suggesting that they have been receiving warrants and possibly takedowns for the last 5 years.

[1] [https://gigaom.com/2014/09/18/apples-warrant-canary- disappea...](https://gigaom.com/2014/09/18/apples-warrant-canary-disappears- suggesting-new-patriot-act-demands/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Germany issued the most legal demands for the six-month period ending > December 2018 with 12,343 requests for 19,380 devices. Apple said the large > number of requests were primarily due to police investigating stolen > devices.

In scenarios like this, is "... primarily due to ..." good enough? I'm inclined to say no: They need to all be accounted for.

<comment><USER11> I don't think I understand what's going on here. How does removing an app from the app store help them track down a stolen phone?

<comment><USER10> My understanding is that there's two things they did: take down apps, and grant access to devices (presumably access to personal data). I'm specifically talking about the latter. Context:

> Apple said it received 29,183 demands from governments — down almost 10 > percent on the last reporting period — to access 213,737 devices in the > second half of last year.

<comment><USER12> Presumably investigation of stolen devices has the owner's consent, should it be really counted as information demanded by the government? Or can the police demand information about my phone that I myself wouldn't have access to?

<comment><USER13> To make it easy, the owner should only have to go to the police, with them taking care of everything else. I wouldn't want some old lady coordinate the data exchange between Apple and police. But this makes it hard for Apple to verify the owners consent. Thus I'm fine with them only knowing "... primarily due to ...".

On a second thought, how much detail should Apple get in the first place. If police suspects me of some wrongdoing, I probably wouldn't want any third party like Apple to get details about the cases as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Apple said it received 29,183 demands from governments — down almost 10 > percent on the last reporting period — to access 213,737 devices in the > second half of last year.

> Apple also received 4,875 requests for account data, such as information > stored in iCloud — up by 16 percent on the previous reporting period — > affecting 22,503 accounts.

I wish they were more specific. What does "access" mean? Location? All local data? Even encrypted data?

What data from iCloud? Email addresses, or the full contents of Notes and Drive?

Maybe I'm being naive, but I assumed that when something says "Apple can't read X data" it means under all circumstances. But if they have a backdoor, client-side encryption probably doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER15> The common thread here seems to be

"there are bad governments in the world, and mobile phones should allow people who want to oppose their own bad governments to install apps that will help them in their opposition?"

Honestly if our goal is to rid the world of truly bad governments then _phone apps_ are in not in anyway the first or most effective method.

<comment><USER16> > rid the world of truly bad governments

and who makes the judgement on what a "truly" bad gov't is?

I say if you own the hardware, you should be allowed to install any app you wish on it.

Apple can claim that this voids your warranty, but they (or any other actor (including the gov't)) cannot be allowed to _prevent_ you from doing it. .

<comment><USER17> > and who makes the judgement on what a "truly" bad gov't is?

Maybe common sense, human freedom index, etc.

Are you really arguing that as Westerners we cannot tell a bad government from a good one?

<comment><USER18> > as Westerners

What distinction are you trying to make here? Many Western governments ( namely, the US and its closest allies) engage in warrantless wiretapping, unlawful search and seizure, imprisonment without due process, warfare without democratic authorization and even taxation and regulation without representation. None of these matters register on the radar of public concern. So can we, as Westerners tell the difference? Apparently not, but we sure are smug about our geographic orientation.

<comment><USER17> Yup, the US are absolutely awful. That's why everyone wants to move there.

Unless you're a college kid or just came out of college and you've just been brainwashed by your Marxist professors, I have no idea how you can have a vision that is so far from reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also interesting, but not mentioned in the article, is that Apple provides data on how often they comply with such requests in addition to how many they get.

<comment><USER12> Yes, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341997)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reports available at [https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/report- pdf.html](https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/report-pdf.html).

<comment><USER21> I was curious about which apps where taken down in Switzerland (Table 13, page 16), and the report says:

> All or vast majority of requests relate to illegal gambling investigations.

<comment><USER22> Those will only increase with this year's new gambling law, which bans and requires blocking of unlicensed/foreign online gambling providers: [https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified- compilation/20172704/...](https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified- compilation/20172704/index.html#id-7)

<comment><USER23> As far as I know all gambling sites are still accessible, with only some having decided to suspend their activities in Switzerland (Betfair comes to mind).

<comment><USER22> The blacklist is currently empty, the first set of blocks will go online in Autumn 2019: [https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/07/01/schweiz-netzsperren- gelds...](https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/07/01/schweiz-netzsperren- geldspielgesetz/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There were apps which tracked US bombings and violations in war zones which were removed. I hope they're on this list.

<comment><USER25> That wasn't a government takedown request, so it wouldn't be on this list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not paying your Youtube Premium subscription is enough to take down the entire App Store on your phone.

Imagine if Windows wouldn't let you install software until you updated your Paypal with a valid credit card.

<comment><USER12> It used to be possible to register for an Apple Id that you could use to install apps without providing your credit card details. It it not entirely obvious how, but I managed to do it in the past by registering from the device itself and skipping the part where it asked for card info. I no longer own an Apple device, so can't verify whether that is still possible.

<comment><USER27> Apple Id signup without credit/debit card is still possible. I don't have any card linked at the moment, and I help friends/family signup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How is this categorically different from other goverments demanding social media credentials?

[https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/445766-government- su...](https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/445766-government-surveillance- of-social-media-related-to-immigration-extensive)

</comment><comment><USER29> Pretty ridiculous the FBI refers to Apple Inc as Apple Computer in 2017, it seems, which would be many years after legal renaming.

<comment> master-litty I wonder -- Could that render these requests invalid? They're not properly addressed to the entity after all.

Not that I'd recommend trying that luck :)

<comment><USER30> The RMS defense. Like when he's asked about Linux and he says he doesn't know what that is unless you specially say "GNU/Linux"

<comment><USER31> And by "he says he doesn't know" you mean he meticulously, in paragraphs, explains the difference between GNU and linux, and how he basically started the GNU operating system out of a desire for freedom, but that he technically or philosophically has nothing to do with the linux kernel, which is correct, technically and otherwise?

I guess he doesn't know a lot then.

<comment><USER30> He doesn't do that in interviews. And he's just being pedantic prick about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm glad this article puts a spotlight on this, but my gosh! Could it be more vague? What are the subjects of the NSLs? Was this article written too soon after the documents' release to give a summary of the juicy bits?

To me this basically reads like "a company released some government documents". Is this typical of TechCrunch?

</comment><comment><USER33> If only Apple reported it's own takedowns - a.k.a. censorship of the competition on the app store. Anyone remember how they retroactively changed their policies to "takedown" Steam?

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what the violation of privacy law was for the apps taken down by Kuwait (and Saudi Arabia)...

</comment><comment><USER35> only took them 5 years.

<comment><USER36> The reports go back to 2013: [https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/report- pdf.html](https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/report-pdf.html)</comment></comment>


A poor man's TCP firewall - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/richardweinberger/pmtfw

<comment><USER2> I love that not only does it not use pcap, it's practical for many purposes... Starbucks wifi too slow for you? Reset everyone's connections but your own =)</comment>


Min.us Chrome Extension [ Release ]  - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kgphklnbopgbelmcambccnaecijlnhno

<comment><AUTHOR> Firefox 4, Safari and Opera extensions to come next! Watch out for a huge update next week :) <http://blog.min.us>

We'll be @ SXSW!!

</comment><comment><USER2> Neat.

</comment><comment><USER3> awesome!</comment>


Steve Jobs' Advice to Freelancers - <AUTHOR> http://www.freelanceschool.com/2010/07/steve-jobs-advice-to-freelancers/

<comment><USER2> Well, this guy surely loves Steve Jobs and Apple products. But c'mon, this is a little way over the top:

> From the immense success of the iPod to the hysteria over the iPad, Steve > Jobs' innovation has changed the world forever.

Innovation? or brilliant marketing? how did it change the world exactly?

> The world's biggest tycoons can only dream of seeing half the success which > Steve Jobs enjoys every year.

He probably dreams to have half the success of Bill Gates...

> For me it is not his monetary success which makes him admirable but rather > the way he is shaping the world.

How did he shape the world exactly?

> Steve Jobs can therefore be a role model for freelancers, but if you analyse > him closer, he can be a role model for anyone in business.

Was Steve Jobs a freelancer? Is Steve Jobs a freelancer?

I rarely see, so much crap in one place... I could go on and on, but let's rename this to: "A love poem for Steve Jobs"

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you're as much a Steve Jobs (or maybe just Apple) hater as this guy is a Steve Jobs lover. Maybe the article is a tad ridiculous, but at least some of the quotes are really good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> fluff</comment>


Elon Musk Walks Back Full Self Driving Claims - <AUTHOR> https://mindmatters.ai/2019/11/elon-musk-walks-back-full-self-driving-claims/ <comment><USER2> As far as I'm concerned, Musk has earned the right to be incorrect about previous assumptions because he's already accomplished so much.

I never understood critiquing Elon Musk of all people.

Aren't there other people that are better targets for criticism?

<comment><USER3> Of those things he has accomplished, how many were even close to his promised timeline?

It's important, because these aren't just idle promises. They are projections given on official investor calls.</comment></comment>


China just announced one of the largest single layoffs in history - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/627467/china-just-announced-one-of-the-largest-single-layoffs-in-history/ <comment><USER2> My uninformed takeaway is HOLY SHIT the 2008 crash was super-extra-really bad. We were shielded to a degree.

Any study on the global deaths associated with this act?

Maybe this is how Alimentarius23 is supposed to happen?</comment>


Novel pointing devices? - <AUTHOR>

The RSI in my right hand is getting pretty bad recently.  My arm aches all the time, and my fingers are sore when I use them.  My thumb joint has started clicking :-(
I finally figured out what it is I'm doing this time (there have been times before, when I've had to adjust after getting into a bad habit).  This time I'm exclusively using the track-pad on my macbook-pro and, to get better accuracy, I'm resting the weight of my hand on the tip of my thumb while I use my forefinger to mouse.
Yeah, I know it sounds dumb.  It was completely unconscious though - I've only just noticed I do it.
I think I need to get a new pointing device.  I've tried many normal mice, and I went through a period of liking track-balls for a while... is there anything else that might be better?  Something different from all of the above? <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I work for this company.

I don't have any scientific studies to back me up, but the marketing for Wacom tablets says they help:

<http://www.wacom.com/comfort/index.cfm>

<http://www.wacom.com/index2.cfm>

It's a very different experience to working with a mouse; the active area on the tablet maps to your entire desktop, so after you're acclimatized, it's almost like the pointer moves in reaction to thought.

(Edit: fixed formatting)

<comment><USER3> I had a friend who really hurt his wrists from coding too much, and he switched to a Wacom tablet. It was a little strange to watch him mouse around a webpage with the Wacom pen, but he claims it helped him tremendously.

Otherwise, learning the keyboard shortcuts for your favorite programs might go a long way to help you reduce strain.

Also, I haven't personally used it, but I like the concept of this mouse, it slides into your laptop's PCI slot (probably not too good for the wrists, though): [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000G1D8HU/ref=cm_rdp_produ...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000G1D8HU/ref=cm_rdp_product)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My wife swears by the Roller Mouse:

<http://www.contourdesign.com/rollermouse/>

It sits underneath a keyboard and uses a roller that rolls up and down and slides left and right. Takes a little getting used to, but significantly reduces hand motion and strain.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fellows has some interesting products which I've used in the past with some success. In general, using a variety (I also use a wacom sometimes, and often use a mighty mouse with my ibook)

<http://www.google.com/products?q=fellowes+microtrac> [http://fellowes.com/Fellowes/site/products/ProductDetails.as...](http://fellowes.com/Fellowes/site/products/ProductDetails.aspx?Id=99928)

They used to have a presentation version of this that was wireless and had a pistol below the trackball cage. I bought two and still use one if and when I have an office. I haven't tried this microtrac version but it would definitely take all stress off your wrist!

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't use a mouse for more than a few minutes, but I use a trackball all day long.

Kensington Expert Mouse does it for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> \- Perific mouse... \- One of those ergonomic 'sideways' mice... that look like: <http://www.fentek-ind.com/lmvmr3sb.jpg> \- Drop the mouse altogether and learn VIM/Emacs. \- Get a Wacom Tablet (Bamboos are cheap), or \- Get one of those head-tracking devices

<comment><USER8> "Drop the mouse altogether and learn VIM/Emacs."

Seriously, you can almost completely avoid having to use the mouse. I have tons of key shortcuts set up in Gnome, I call all my programs from the keyboard, etc, so it's not that hard. Plus, it will save you a lot of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I spend 90% of my time in Emacs already.

I've learned a few firefox shortcuts this morning though, and that is helping!</comment></comment></comment>


CloudFlare is Down - <AUTHOR> http://cloudflare.com/

<comment><USER2> It's not really down.

 _Looking into an issue with one of our upstream providers, affecting multiple colos_

<https://twitter.com/CloudFlareSys/status/246997504950956032>

<comment><USER3> Pingdom reported several minutes of downtime for my domain which is hosted through cf. seems back up again though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Their site was down for a while as well. It's back up now, but the routing is still down. Quick tip: Go to control panel, select the gear drop-down by your website and select 'pause cloudflare' until things resolve.

<comment><USER5> That doesn't help much when cloudflare.com itself is inaccessible.

(And I'm about 2 blocks from the CloudFlare office)

<comment><USER4> Their site should be up right now. If it's not from one connection you tried, try another. It is okay for me.

<comment><USER5> yeah, doing better now. i tunneled around until i could reach them and paused the service

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> All of my cloudflare sites are still not resolving for me and I also can't get to cloudflare.com to pause it (texas)</comment>


Hystrix is no longer in active development - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Netflix/Hystrix <comment><USER2> If it's in maintenance mode, suggest they archive* the repo so that it is super clear to everyone.

*) [https://help.github.com/articles/archiving-a-github-reposito...](https://help.github.com/articles/archiving-a-github-repository/)</comment>