Show HN: Stop the Bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jacquerie/stop-the-bullshit <comment><USER2> I find it fascinating how paternalistic this whole topic is, and "Stop the Bullshit" is part of this. The goal is not developing independent thinkers, but merely ensuring that blind trust is given to the "enlightened people".

The whole idea behind this sort of filtering and vetting is not about teaching people how better to reason about the world and judging the truth of those that would tell you what is happening and why, but rather it says that most people are incapable of making those types of decisions for themselves and that an informed elite should be in control of what information is available to the plebs. Once you concede this, how far is it before we make "fake news", or rather unapproved news, simply illegal? How long until news simply becomes propaganda?

There absolutely is a problem with "fake news" from all quarters and it is nothing new at all: whether that was "bat boy" at the grocery checkout, the sinking of the Maine, or the news and characterizations during the recent campaign. "Stop the Bullshit" and filtering efforts is not a solution to the problem, merely the creation of new problems such an even less thoughtful populous and a new set of arbiters of the truth that I for one won't trust any more that the current ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice project, I will definitely be using it and will try to contribute in my spare time.

One recommendation I'd have is not to use the word 'safety' in this context, it feels kind of overprotective. Perhaps the link should read "Take me back to reality" instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> I like "reality" : )

I chose "safety" because I think I copied Chrome's message when visiting a website with an invalid certificate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There have been a lot of these projects lately. It's clever, but I am not close to being convinced that fake news is a problem that we can engineer our way out of.

<comment><USER5> If it at least amplifies awareness in the general public about the problem, it's done it's job.

<comment><USER6> People read what they want to read. For instance [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning) You can get rid of the fake news outlets, but you can't get rid of fake news as long as there is free speech.

<comment><USER7> Eliminating it would be an overly ambitious goal. We only need to mitigate its effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting project, Is censorship the best coarse of action? Bare with me for a second, would it not be better to somehow overlay a meter or light indicating that this story is likely false. Even better, some sort of indicator that showed the # of sources (if any) and devised some sort of rating of quality/truthfulness.

I'm against all the fake news in Facebook et all but if we dont teach people to be good at detecting it we're just putting a bandaid over a broken bone so to speak. Am I being overly optimistic of society, that learning how to detect bullshit is better than doing the hard work for them?

<comment><USER9> Censorship is not the best way forward. People need to adjust (read: acquire) critical thinking skills. But let's start with the media. For example, quoting unvetted tweaks should be grounds for shaming, or worse.

In addition,it should be not that this tool can be used to apply any prejudice, bias, etc. I certainly empathize with the sentiment here but this can quickly becomes a case of be careful what you wish for.

<comment><USER10> When Google blocks cialis spam from your inbox, do you consider that censorship? Because that's what these sites are: spam.

<comment><USER11> doesn't google lable it and just put it in the spam folder?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone smart enough to install a browser plugin (much less visit GitHub) really need something to identify fake news sites?

<comment><USER13> You never know. Also, the smart enough person can install it on browsers on less smart people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> To people who believe this kind of project is "paternalistic" or that filtering out noise is somehow weak or irresponsible, I disagree.

Time is finite. It is impossible to consume all of the information that is published in the world. It's not just a little impossible: the fraction of information that an individual can consume is very near zero. Most people who have worked in an academic or scientific field know that it is impossible to consume even a fraction of the domain-specific publications in their field, much less "all the news that's fit to print."

It makes sense, therefore, to have a strategy for selecting a subset of information that one trusts as "worth considering," which might include a spam filter (just as email has, for good reason).

I personally very seldom read news articles shared online, because my experience has been that they are consistently of very low quality. Speaking for myself, I get big world event news from the Economist, which has earned some trust, and the rare nytimes/wsj article that is about something it can't possibly fuck up (anything outside the borders of the United States is generally beyond NYT/WSJ).

Would I be wrong for filtering all of the shared news articles from my feed? The only reason I keep them there is that I skim Facebook to get a feel for what people are thinking about and feeling on a given day (to stay slightly "in touch" with people, even if I think they wallow in a world of self-serving garbage information and would be better served by finding something more interesting to occupy their minds).

A better criticism of this kind of filtering might that it is intrinsically arrogant, but I don't think it is any more paternalistic or irresponsible than a spam filter for email.

</comment><comment><USER15> How is the clustering analysis going to work?

Because the current hard coded list of URLs is a start, but it's not really a scalable solution to the issue.

However, from what I can see in this file:

[https://github.com/jacquerie/stop-the- bullshit/blob/master/d...](https://github.com/jacquerie/stop-the- bullshit/blob/master/discriminating-fake-news-from-real-news.ipynb)

It just seems like it's going to compare examples of articles included in the source files, as found here:

[https://github.com/jacquerie/stop-the- bullshit/tree/master/d...](https://github.com/jacquerie/stop-the- bullshit/tree/master/data)

So how is it going to detect the difference between a real or fake piece from this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Given two clusters, I can predict the class of a new article by choosing the cluster whose centroid is closest to the article.

So, given some training data that produced two reasonable clusters with respect to the ground truth, I have a model that I can expect to generalize well on new data.

Now, this is not what that notebook shows, because it's missing the evaluating on testing data! The main point of the notebook is that the Jaccard Distance of the tokens of the HTML of the page, despite being very simple, appears to generate a reasonable model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I like the friendly notification/explanation, any tool targeting fake news should do a little better in establishing its own credibility. You want to persuade, not block. I'm not sure the dollar amount is enough. We see it in these very comments: show the user a sample of obvious falsehoods they published. This way you could probably come up with a threshold where you just give up.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an excellent idea. I wrote the copy on that page trying to convey "can I get your help against these bad people?", rather than something blaming the user, or a scary looking warning.

But showing them the _reason_ why a certain website is blocked can become an opportunity to teach people critical thought, something that other comment threads point out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was working on something similar, but with a database that would contain credibility ratings from users and users would rate the website. The extension was supposed to display the rating and ev. warnings on top of the website.

Nice project. I may use it :)

<comment><USER15> So in other words, Web of Trust for news sites.

Sounds like an interesting concept, though it'll need some really careful moderation to stop it getting abused. I've seen sites get low WOT ratings because the staff banned a few members and said members then took it out on their WOT page.

You'll need a good way to stop these negative SEO type attacks from being weaponised against a news site's rating by its competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You need a browser extension for this nowadays? Is the target audience so judgement-impaired that they can't, you know, not click on obvious clickbait and think about what they're seeing on Facebook?

<comment><USER19> > Is the target audience so judgement-impaired

As we've seen this last election, yes, they are. How else do you explain millions of shares on "news" stories that are immediately, obviously false to anyone looking past the headlines?

<comment><USER20> are we really pretending that those people would've changed their vote had they not seen the "fake" news?

I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of these shares were by people who wanted the news to be true anyway. I have friends who shared some stuff like that. they were never gonna change their vote/view. everyone else would just roll their eyes.

I'm with Zuckerberg on this one. fake news did not affect the election. people are just looking for an excuse to blame. I would love to see how many people will still be against fake news come April first

<comment><USER21> You seem to enjoy pretending that Hillary lost because of fake news and "clearly everyone else is just plain stupid" and not because she's the most corrupt politician possibly in our country's history, so why not pretend about more stuff?

<comment><USER22> Please don't post only snarky comments. We ask that HN users comment civilly and substantively or not at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fake news isn't the problem. People willing to think critically is. The problem is, no one wants to know their baby is ugly. So the bury their heads in their person echo chamber.

</comment><comment><USER23> My feeling is that people with good critical thinking skills wouldn't buy into fake news anyway so wouldn't need an app to help them and people that buy into fake news don't want to improve their critical thinking skills so wouldn't use an app to help them either. People like being surrounded by other people that agree with them.

Are there any examples of subtle fake news stories? My feeling is they're really obvious especially if not being covered by major news sites.

</comment><comment><USER24> Define bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER25> This will be subjective at some point beyond the BuzzFeeds of the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nice! I love this idea. What happens when most sites that deliver news have at least some bullshit?

<comment><USER6> That's really the issue. It's just a question of whose bullshit. Bullshit of the rich media mughals? Right wing conservatives? Liberal elite? Environmentalists? Alt-right nutters? At the end of the day, media has stopped being about objectivity, just as long as there is a semblance, anything goes. People tell lies, or next to lies in order to get people to see things their ways. It's just a question of the level of sophistication of those lies. Outright lies are the lowest level of sophistication, all the way up to manufactured consent.

<comment><USER27> How can you distinguish between news that pisses a lot of people off and news that is fake/spam?

If I write a blatant hit piece which is based entirely on factual information a lot of people will report it because they are upset over it but it doesn't change the fact that is truthful.

How do you prevent people from suppressing opposing view points by reporting them as fake?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> if anyone doesn't want to use a clunky browser addon, you can just ask me. Like the author of the app, I too know what is true and what is not and I will guide you on what news is safe for you to read.

Please, let me do your thinking for you.

</comment><comment><USER28> Zoom out one meta level: Show HN: Stop the Stop-the-Bullshit. A Fake Fake News Detector Detector.

Wait, but then we would need Stop the Stop the Stop-the-Bullshit.... um... but what if?!!

</comment><comment><USER29> How does it work? Is it just a blacklist?

> "Also includes a clustering analysis that could lead to an algorithm to > automatically detect Fake News."

This implies that they want to do automatic fake news detection, but aren't quite there yet. Is that correct?

<comment><USER30> Looks like it's currently using a hard coded list of urls that are considered to be bad.

For general requests: [https://github.com/jacquerie/stop-the- bullshit/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/jacquerie/stop-the- bullshit/blob/master/src/js/background.js#L11-L34)

For facebook: [https://github.com/jacquerie/stop-the- bullshit/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/jacquerie/stop-the- bullshit/blob/master/src/js/facebook.js#L3-L25)

<comment><USER31> Yeah, it's just some arbitrary list of a few hardcoded URLs right now... Is this really useful??

<comment><AUTHOR> Consider that I built it this night for [http://lauzhack.com/](http://lauzhack.com/), so it's not intended to be a fully-featured solution to the problem.

The main issue I wanted to address is the fact that such a blocker must be widely installed to be useful. Therefore, the Facebook message is intended to prod current users of the extensions to ask that their friends install it as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Little Black Box That Could Change Guitars Forever - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5994116/how-inventor-paul-vo-created-a-little-black-box-that-could-change-guitars-forever

<comment><USER2> This is pretty darn impressive, it changes the way the guitar sounds like by manipulating the vibration of the guitar all without amplification. It seems a little over-the-top though, impressive from a technical perspective in how it alters the sound in realtime but this device would probably be more expensive than altering the sound downstream.

There is a lot more innovation in the guitar space than people actually think. A company called Line 6 has been pushing the boundaries of amplifiers and guitars for a few years now, albeit digitally but on the same level. They have a line of Variax guitars that allow you to digitally down-tune your guitar by turning a knob and ability to program them via a software application.

Really impressive device nonetheless, I never thought such a thing would be possible without amplification on an acoustic guitar.

<comment><USER3> > I never thought such a thing would be possible without amplification on an > acoustic guitar.

Of course there _is_ amplification. There is a huge battery pack in there driving the strings.

<comment><USER2> There's amplification and then there's amplification. Strings vibrating within a hollow body cavity is a form of amplification, but I was referring to amplification via an external amplifier and speaker as most guitarists would imply and know when using the word amplifier.</comment></comment></comment>


Husky Starcraft: From Burgerville to 500K YouTube Subscribers in 2 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/06/07/husky-starcraft-from-burgerville-to-500k-youtube-subscribers-in-2-years/

<comment><USER2> I really like stories like this. I was a pretty decent Starcraft player myself and I started watching his videos last year. He does a great job of announcing the matches and just watching the videos makes you a better player. Congrats to him.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's also interesting that Starcraft players themselves don't make anything close to this. new-age movie studios if you will. Not that there's anything wrong with that. These guys actually love what they do, and spend a lot of time doing it.

<comment><USER4> The top players make quite decent salaries, over 200k USD/yr:

<http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=142342>

Although you literally have to be in the top 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't forget to check out their parody of Bieber's "Baby", entitled "Banelings": <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzMhh8zhTiY>

<comment><USER6> They also put it on iTunes. I wonder how many they sold?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 200 million views is somewhere around $400k - $600k ($2 - $3 CPM).

It's crazy how many people are earning a good living off YouTube. Not a lot in absolute numbers, but when you compare it to the number of TV show hosts on cable/broadcast TV it's quite impressive.

The dream of independent niche content producers finding an audience and making good money is actually happening.

<comment><USER8> So you are estimating 100% click through rate on those pre video commercials? They are not even shown every time.

<comment><USER9> staunch's estimates were using CPM, not CPC, so click throughs are irrelevant (CPM - cost per 1,000 impressions displayed).

That said, $2-3 CPM sounds high to me. But I don't know anything about the YouTube ad market.

<comment><USER10> I know about the YouTube ad market and $2-$3 is reasonable, especially for gamers who get higher CPM thanks to very targeted advertising.

<comment><USER8> Ah yea, missed the CPM part there. That's a ridiculous amount of money then. Husky and HD have 10+ videos a week with 150-200K views.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any HN Starcraft2 players looking to do some playing?

<comment><USER12> Forget the downvotes. SC2 is actually a great way to meet and befriend people remotely, especially if you're on skype. Conversations quickly move to other common interests, which should be pretty easy among hn folks.

How about hn peeps meet in channel HackerNews?

<comment><USER13> > _How about hn peeps meet in channel HackerNews?_

I'm taking a coding break and will be on for the next hour. HNers are free to add me on BNET using the email in my profile.

<comment><USER11> This is why I love Starcraft2(prev war2 even only couple years ago) because you can play the quick game as a mental break but not break(even boost) adrenaline! Just saw this reply so I missed playing with you man but another time! Was watching MLG matches of recent. gg

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Husky & HD (another StarCraft caster) both have a healthy revenue stream from their Youtube Channel. There are at least 12 other casters/players in North America/Europe making a living casting StarCraft II games.

Husky wasn't the first to cast. Guys like Day9, Artosis, & Tasteless cast too, and are quite popular. But HD & Husky were the first to focus mostly on "Virtual" tournaments. The other successful casters focused more on "Real life" tournaments. Artosis & Tasteless even went to Korea for a year to comment StarCraft II games on GomTV. Day9 regularly travel to big tournaments.

And yet, none of them make as much money as Husky & HD (supposedly, I don't have hard numbers.)

It shows the power of the web. The old medias are here to stay, but most of the creativity & growth today comes from the web.

<comment><USER15> Husky and HD appeal to the more casual audience. Their casts are more for entertainment, and they don't do too much in-depth analysis. Artosis, Day9 and Tasteless among others are pretty friendly for the average viewer, but they are definitely more knowledgeable and insightful.

Just a slight correction. Artosis and Tasteless are actually still living in Korea and casting fulltime.

<comment><USER16> _Just a slight correction. Artosis and Tasteless are actually still living in Korea and casting fulltime._

Aye; this past weekend at MLG they even identified themselves as "from South Korea", not America. They'be been there for a few years and haven't announced any plans to move.

<comment><USER17> Anyone wanting to see their stuff can go to <http://www.gomtv.net/>

You'll need to pay 10$ to watch all matches from a 'season', but many are free.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Versus: Performance Brain Training - <AUTHOR> https://getversus.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm one of the engineers working on Versus. Happy to answer any questions, pass on comments/suggestions/criticism :)</comment>


CodaHale Email to Martin Odersky about Scala - <AUTHOR> https://codahale.com/downloads/email-to-donald.txt <comment><AUTHOR> *backstory, and keep in mind the timeframe. But sill many things in here all relevant today.

[https://codahale.com/the-rest-of-the-story/](https://codahale.com/the-rest- of-the-story/)</comment>


Does innovation in West Africa rest on focusing investment on basic education? - <AUTHOR> http://theideascout.com/2011/01/18/i-debate-for-one-week-every-month-join-us-for-a-debate-about-ideas-and-innovation/

<comment><AUTHOR> Question for the hackers: How do you think my team can increase user engagement during our monthly online debate(s)?</comment>


Microsoft confirms Windows 10 Enterprise to become subscription service - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2016/07/14/microsoft-confirms-windows-10-new-monthly-charge/#7e7ec622dfab <comment><USER2> Clickbait title. Windows is changing its enterprise licensing. Makes sense in the context that they won't be pushing a new OS every few years (or so they say).</comment>


Cracking the 12+ Character Password Barrier, Literally - <AUTHOR> http://www.netmux.com/blog/cracking-12-character-above-passwords <comment><USER3> _Because remembering the password "horsebattery123" is way easier than "GFj27ef8%k$39"_

One way I like to remember long yet high-entropy passwords is to memorise a long, somewhat nonsensical phrase and use characters from it. The reverse is also possible. E.g. that one could become "Gordon Freeman joins 27 electric fences 8% kills $39"

<comment><USER4> I am pretty suspicious of my meat-based random phrase generator. A lot of the analysis on the entropy of correcthorsebatterystaple type passwords assume the words are uniformly drawn from a vocabulary of whatever thousands. But if you have a large enough dataset of passwords I bet you can find the true (non- uniform) distribution of words people actually draw from and the entropy will be a bit lower. And if you further restrict it to be almost grammatically correct phrases it will be further lower[1].

Am I just paranoid?

[1] RNNs can learn the distribution of your grammar easily [http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn- effectiveness/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/). The worry is that human generators will condition their random words too much. e.g., "correct" ooohh brain just did a adjective let's throw it a noun next "horse".

<comment> nommm-nommm This is where diceware comes in. You are supposed to pick whatever word you roll on the first try, no exceptions, for this very reason. Rolling until you get a word you "like" reduces randomnesss significantly. They even say you should use _only_ use real, meatspace dice to generate passwords to be truly random, not pseudorandom.

[http://world.std.com/~reinhold/dicewarefaq.html](http://world.std.com/~reinhold/dicewarefaq.html)

>There are some obscure words in both lists. If you passphrase includes a word you don't know, look it up in a good dictionary. Learning the word's meaning will aid you memory and your vocabulary.

Of course there's exceptions when you should start from scratch.

[http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html](http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html)

>Because some words on the diceware list are two characters or less, you can get a very short passphrase. If your passphrase, including the spaces between the words, is less than 17 characters long, we recommend that you start over and create a new passphrase. You should also start over if your passphrase is a recognizable English sentence or phrase. (These situations are extremely rare.)

(If it were me I'd just keep adding more and more words if my password was 17 chars or less)

<comment><USER5> When I use diceware I use random.org for the dice rolls. They claim true randomness generated from atmospheric noise.

<comment><USER6> Is that because Random.org is really random, or because your threat model doesn't include state level actors taking over random.org?

<comment><USER7> If state level actors really are interested in what you have to say, then either you're a high enough level spook that you aren't using a web service for your entropy source, or your crypto is not going to be the weak point in your defense.

<comment><USER8> If every hacker uses random.org, it's more cost-effective to compromise the service than to take a wrench to every single hacker's kneecaps. It wouldn't be a targeted attack, but it might be very useful if a sufficient subset of 'interesting' people use random.org.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Practically, if one doesn't use a password manager, they probably have a much more serious problem than weak passwords, i.e. password re-use.

<comment><USER10> As opposed to having your manager DB lost or compromised by a trojan.

<comment><USER11> Using zx2c4 pass with a Yubikey 4. Passwords are GPG encrypted. The private key is on the Yubikey and cannot be read out. The Yubikey 4 is set to require a touch per password unlock. The only passwords at risk are the ones unlocked. At that point, the trojan could install a keylogger and have the same amount of success.

Losing the password store isn't a problem either. It has a git remote on a USB stick. There's a backup if it's ever lost.

<comment><USER12> In that setup, how do you handle needing passwords on your phone?

<comment><USER11> There's an app for that. Android Password Store[1]. You can use a Yubikey Neo with NFC in combination with Open Keychain[2]. Both are available on F-Droid.

[1][https://github.com/zeapo/Android-Password- Store](https://github.com/zeapo/Android-Password-Store)

[2][https://github.com/open-keychain/open-keychain](https://github.com/open- keychain/open-keychain)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really like Password Chart[1] as my "password encryption" scheme, since it gives me nice long wacky phrases out of something memorable, per-site.

[1] [http://passwordchart.com](http://passwordchart.com)

<comment><USER14> Except until a couple of sites leak their plaintext passwords, and the attacker can start piecing information together. firstname.lastname@example.com's PW on Yah _oo_.com was ZuBrDf _PgPg_ , and on P _a_ tre _o_ n.com Sk _Br_ OxPdGq _Pg_ Lu. Any chance his PW for _Therapy_.com might be OxDfGqPdBrSkZu?

Such attack is more attractive and more effective the more people use this specific method.

<comment><USER15> I highly, highly doubt that anybody is going to do that as a general attack vector. Computers change, but people are people and are not like, in great numbers, to suddenly start having good passwords, just as they are not likely to suddenly start exercising.

<comment><USER16> You are essentially relying on security through obscurity, it might work but it fails to add security when viewed through Kerckhoffs's principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >until auto-generating password managers gain mass adoption, this vulnerability will always be around.

When auto-generating password managers gain mass adoption, there won't be much point to cracking password hashes. Presumably, one would use a different password for everything in that scenario, which makes the clear text password basically useless anyway.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think there is a relatively simple rule of thumb: If you can reliably memorize the password with moderate effort, it is very likely not safe. The approaches described in the linked article are clever but they do by far not exhaust the possibilities. One big issue is the following: When you try to come up with random words to compose a password, the words that you'll choose are going to be very very non-random. Example: Tell a person to name a random musical instrument. Most people will say violin or piano. Other instruments will rarely be mentioned. Likewise with tools, most people will say hammer or screwdriver. This has something to do with how words are represented in our mental lexicon. There is a lot of research on that that you could easily leverage in software for cracking passwords, at least the type of password that's using supposedly random words.

<comment><USER18> > When you try to come up with random words to compose a password

That's why you don't. Give a 64ki word dictionary from your native tongue to your computer and let it choose four words uniformly at random out of it. This gives you a password from a distribution with 64 bits of entropy, and is reasonably easy to memorize with moderate effort.

This means an attacker is expected to proceed to 2\ _\_ 63 hashes to crack such a password. It would take almost 4 year to crack its MD5 digest on the rig used in the demonstration. If you not using a password manager for external sites (which might not use proper KDFs), you can throw in a fifth word, and be safe for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I get it. The thing is that many password guidelines do not emphasize how important it is to draw words randomly, and that makes all the difference as I tried to explain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Considering the ease with which "correcthorsebatterystaple" type passwords can be cracked, I hope Randall Munroe updates that page and recommends people use a password manager.

<comment><USER20> Only if you're limiting your words to those in a small dictionary - <USER2> regenerating until they're "common" words, which is the same thing (fwiw, "staple" isn't in the Google list of top 10,000 English words that they're using).

<comment><USER6> > Only if you're limiting your words to those in a small dictionary

Diceware uses a 7776 word dictionary. How insecure is a 6 word diceware passphrase? That should give 77 bits of entropy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is why most of my important passwords are at least 30 characters

<comment><USER22> 30's probably overkill because it works out to 178 bits of entropy. You'd probably be fine with 128.

<comment><USER23> How are you making such a specific assessment without any knowledge of what the characters are?

<comment><USER24> It doesn't matter what the characters are; only what characters are potentially valid.

<comment><USER23> Would you say the password "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" has high entropy?

People have gotten their Bitcoin wallets owned with 60-character passphrases, because they used phrases that appeared in a Web crawl. Number of characters is not the important thing.

<comment><USER25> It would be reasonable to assume that someone who reads HN will understand that "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" would not be good, even if it is 30 characters long. Donatj probably considered this.

That said, your point is valid and it's possible you're right.

<comment><USER26> That's obvious. What's not obvious is whether donatj's 30 characters are individually random or composed of words. And 'individually random' could mean anything between the 4 bits of hex and the >7.7 bits of codepage 1252.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If my password was typed in Chinese would that make it hard to crack?? Or would it just result in collisions?

<comment> shawn-furyan There are a lot of hackers who know Chinese, so it probably isn't gaining you any ground. See diceware.com for how to generate strong passwords (in many different languages). Also, use a password manager with a password generator for less sensitive accounts and so that you aren't reusing passwords.

<comment><USER27> I already use 1Password with min 20 characters, unless the site has a length limit ><

I was more curious about extending the characters past alpha numeric / special characters, to include Chinese characters as well. That would open up the number of characters required to brute force and probably result in relying on a collision. Until technology catches up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've had many other devs link me to that XKCD post about how any standard password is 'safe', yet fail to acknowledge the major differences in how those passwords are hashed and stored. So many people just quote the math and say: "Math can't lie". It can't, but the very complex math behind the actual hashing is different from just multiplying charsets.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a dupe.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13355850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13355850)

<comment><USER30> limited reposts are allowed on HN, so please only flag and link to previous discussions if they have more than just a few upvotes and/or comments, or if something has been submitted more than a few times already. Otherwise such comments just add noise.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

> _Are reposts ok?_

> _If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill > reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok._</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is your hero? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> To chose one hero would be too tough. I try to incorporate the best qualities of my heroes into my life. There are close family members and friends whom, I respect and love. For many reasons. There are everyday heroes, we just don't get to know as many of them. Impact on people's live is relative, alot of the people we read about have a small impact on many peoples lives. These people have had a huge impact on a couple of people's lives.

Speaking of small impact on many people's lives, I absolutely love to read biographies/profiles of people and companies. Some of my favorites include: Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Aldo Leopold, Jerry Garcia, Einstein, Alan Turing, Ted Turner, Brian Cranston, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Bernie Sanders, Richard Branson, and so many more...

And then there's people like Jesus, Marcus Aurelius, Marx, and the Budda. Who seem to have made an impact on another order of magnitude.

(Not joking about Jesus... I'm not necessarily religious but Jesus was a radical dude who lived a radical life and spoke radical messages. Pretty cool when you think about it in a historical context. There are some valuable lessons to be learned from him.)

Even after knowing and reading about the stories of many great people who have lead unique and innovative lives. I still am blown away by the life of Marcus Aurelius. His life was a rare intersection of power, compassion, philosophy, and understanding. Reading Meditations was a major inflection point in my life. I try to emulate his example in some ways.

</comment><comment><USER3> My heroes on the computing world:

        Claude Shannon
            As important, or more important, than Alan Turing.
            we owe digital electronics to him!!

        John McCarthy
            Invented (or perhaps "discovered") Lisp

        Seymour Papert
            invented LOGO and thus
            brought Lisp to little kids

        Alan Kay
            invented Smalltalk-72 to bring OOP
            to little kids.

        Ivan Sutherland
            Computer graphics pioneer

        Douglas Engelbart
            mouse, hypertext, GUI... see "the mother
            of all demos." Hugely influential.

and...

        Everybody at Xerox PARC in the 70s and 80s.

</comment><comment><USER4> My great-grandmother, who at the age of 14 traveled halfway around the world on her own to start a new life in a country with more opportunity than the one she left.</comment>


Show HN: Vue.js popover and tooltip plugin - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/euvl/vue-js-popover <comment><USER2> Why does this have to be tied to Vue? Wouldn't it be more useful to create a tooltip library that can be used independent of it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because why it should not be?

There are dozens of tooltip libraries in the world of javascript. But this one solves the problem for people who write their webapps using Vuejs framework.</comment></comment>


BitScope: 3000-core Raspberry Pi cluster computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/bitscope-3000-core-raspberry-pi-cluster-computer/ <comment><USER2> Another neat use-case for this hardware is scale testing of systems management tooling, eg. provisioning, configuration management. HPC centers are looking at the possibility of having to manage 100k+ nodes in a single cluster.

Additional links:

[http://cluster.bitscope.com](http://cluster.bitscope.com)

[http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release- archive/2017/Novem...](http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release- archive/2017/November/1113-raspberry-pi.php)

My favorite form factor to go build a Pi-like Cluster is something like this: [http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&p...](http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=211).

\- Gigabit Ethernet MAC on-board, Pine64's SOPINE and Raspberry Pi Compute Module both require per node networking components to be on the carrier board.

\- Basic headers used for connecting to a carrier board

\- Carrier board "only" needs an embedded switch and 5v power. However, I've not yet come across an embedded switch yet that has a non-blocking ratio of 1GbE ports to 10/25GbE uplinks.

\- Carrier board should probably be mini-ITX or other standard form factor to fit in existing chassis. Form factor and embedded switch options are going to limit the number of nodes per carrier board.

<comment><USER3> I'm just looking at the friendly arm website at some of the other NanoPi's, which I'd not heard of before, I'm quite tempted by the Gbps ethernet. How do you find the software/OS support, are they pretty reliable, with longish uptimes?

<comment><USER4> i have some nanopi neo(1)s and they're rock solid - my rule of thumb with arm boards is that support is good enough if it has an armbian _debian_ (vs just armbian ubuntu) release

<comment><USER3> Cheers I might look at getting one then, as I had problems with my Pi's network connectivity being slow compared to a laptop's using the same ethernet over power line adapter.

<comment><USER4> no idea about PoE on either board but if i/o is a concern you might want to take a look at the $25 rock64 with gbe and usb3 - i/o on my neo1 maxes out somewhere just below 20mb/s but my rock64 has no problem doing 80mb/s with some ancient spinny disks and some armbian devs have done ~200mb/s with ssds iirc

os support on the rock64 is not quite there yet however but given the features@pricepoint i expect it to catch up

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a neat way to teach people how to program distributed systems at this scale but I don't understand why they wouldn't use the Raspberry Pi Compute Moudle instead of normal Raspberry Pis. Using the Compute Modules would, I'd think, make for a much easier to integrate system, even possibly allowing higher density of processors per unit volume.

<comment><USER6> Raspberry Pi Compute Modules don't have ethernet built in - that would require quite a non-standard networking system, wouldn't it?

<comment><USER7> Any comments on using Pi Zero as base line module?

      Supposedly only $5 per PCB from
           https://www.adafruit.com/product/2885

      Power and network can go thru usb. (usbnet)

<comment> squeaky-clean Like stan_rogers says, you're limited to buying them one at a time from pretty much any retailer. And it's been this way for years, so it doesn't seem like it will change anytime soon.

You can find more on eBay, but then they're usually priced $15-20 each and it would still be difficult to buy them in the hundreds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 35U? That's a full rack. The cluster looks like a 8U server case.

<comment><USER9> One of the comments mentions that it is a 6U server case. So presumably there are five of them, with 150 rPi3 units in each case.

<comment><USER10> Correct. 144 nodes + 6 spares in one box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I bet the IO throughput sucks. Is the ethernet bus still shared with the usb/sd card bus in the rpi3?

<comment><USER4> yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now, to port _lisp and C_ to it.

The interconnect will be the most interesting part of this cluster.

<comment><USER12> You forgot the _star_ reference. :)

<comment><USER10> No I didn't, HN mangled the text to italics and I did not spot it. Too late to edit. That's why lisp and C are in italics :) How do you make an asterisk in HN anyway?

<comment><USER12> Like this __* (3 for 1)

<comment><USER10> Ah, that's the trick. I tried two and that didn't work. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> waste of (taxpayer) money using the (overpriced) rpi's gimped (no aes, usb3, gbe) soc

the rpi value prop is the community support but that would mean that this cluster is running a 32bit os - so what really is the point of using these instead of something smaller and cheaper or same size and more powerful for the same money

<comment><USER13> The Raspberry Pi 3 model B uses the Broadcom BCM2837 64-bit A53 ARM processor and has been supported since Fedora 25.

Here's the link to the AArch64 server distribution:

[https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora- secondary/releases/2...](https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora- secondary/releases/27/Server/aarch64/images/Fedora- Server-27-1.6.aarch64.raw.xz)

Having said that I agree the Pi is overdue for a refresh; it needs gigabit ethernet and usb 3 at a minimum but faster interfaces would be great. I think people execute these projects because the Pi is a great reference architecture that can be bought at scale and that has been proven by the large user community.

<comment><USER14> I'd love it if the storage and Ethernet weren't hanging off of the same USB. Or on USB at all. The USB is a perennial bottleneck on the RPi.

There are a lot of boards that implement it correctly in hardware, but then make a hash out of the driver support with binary blob drivers that are fixed to a particular kernel version and crash from time to time.

It's probably not technically feasible currently, but I'd love to see a board where all of the hardware is open (even the 3D acceleration!) and already mainlined into the kernel so you could just install whatever distro you want on it and available at a price point under $50. I'm really tired of "you need to dump this proprietary binary blob into the graphics chip before the rest of the board can even start to boot." Why is it taking so long to come up with a universal boot solution, something that could be integrated into GRUB so you don't need to program magic offsets into the bootloader to make it work? PC hardware manufacturers more or less solved this problem 30 years ago, and I'm not taking "but the hardware is so specialized that you can't do it" as an answer anymore. The SBC world is absolutely crammed with stovepipes for no good reason.</comment></comment></comment>


Drones Flying Near Newark Liberty Airport Temporarily Halt Flights - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/nyregion/drones-newark-airport-ground-stop.html <comment><USER2> FYI, here's a video of a drone striking an airplane wing in a test environment:

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=QH0V7kp-xg0](https://youtube.com/watch?v=QH0V7kp- xg0)

<comment><USER3> Can any air people comment on whether that collision would have been fatal to the aircraft? I'm sure it possibly could be, but at what likelihood? Personally I'd be more concerned about a propeller or wind screen strike, but these guys know more about it than me.

There's just no good reason to be flying near an airport. On the other hand, if you're five miles away from the nearest airport, the odds of a collision (even if you break the rules r.e. flying in LOS or under a certain ceiling) are just astronomically low. The sky is an enormous place and the odds of two things occupying the same space in it without trying to are once in a century if that. At the current level of density, at any rate.

Another thing that strikes me, and probably won't make me popular with pilots on this board: dozens or hundreds of GA pilots get themselves killed every year. Most of the time, this is due to pilot error. Drones represent some amount of increased risk to GA pilots. But, at the current level of drone market penetration, it seems empirically tiny compared to the risks GA pilots already faced voluntarily. I don't know what to do with this observation, except perhaps downgrade my personal concerns about the risks of drone <-> plane incidents.

<comment><USER2> > The sky is an enormous place and the odds of two things occupying the same > space in it without trying to are once in a century if that.

Not near an airport. Planes takeoff and land in extremely predictable patterns. And at about the same height as drones typically operate.

I think you're thinking of a meteorite hitting an airplane, which yes is probably extremely rare.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't call "five miles away from the nearest airport" to be near an airport.

<comment><USER5> Five miles off the end of the runway a landing plane is only ~1,500ft above the ground. That's higher than the legal ceiling for drones, but it's certainly well within their technical capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems like this is a cheap and easy way to cause a whole lot of disruption. We're going to see more and more of this.

At some point Congress or some state legislature is going to pass restrictive legislation regulating drone ownership and use much more strictly than is the case today. It might require manufacturers to include backdoors to enable law enforcement to take control of a drone. It will be portrayed as a safety measure, perhaps even as an antiterrorism measure.

This is why we can't have nice things.

<comment><USER7> You could almost replace "drone" with "gun" in your comment and save for the "take control of a gun" line, it would still make sense. You could get an air port to shutdown by shooting a gun yet the consequnces of doing so are severe enough that it is in ineffective means of causing disrucption. The key difference is that a drone can go places a person with a gun cannot so I suspect that methods of finding drone operators will improve and become more widely deployed.

<comment><USER8> Not to mention that you can reconstruct where a bullet was shot from, but a drone could be operated from anywhere. Bullets are also loud when they go off, so localization becomes easier.

<comment><USER9> We've been living with guns for centuries, we've been living with drones for decades, and only the last decade saw them in the hands of many people. I suspect the current "Wild West" of drones is a temporary phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure how we could ever gather statistics but I'm really curious if reported drone sightings could just be other objects mistaken for drones. To really see an object clearly such as a consumer drone like a DJI Phantom you'll have to be very close and at that range it's going to zip by extremely fast.

<comment><USER11> The sun sets in NJ at 5:03 pm tonight, and backtracking through the article, the disruption started around 5:30, probably reported just a few minutes before ATC redirected traffic.

Likely they saw the lights of the drone flying around. It's a clear sky tonight, so they would have been able to see the drone for several miles.

<comment><USER10> It's hard enough to pick out the lights of an aircraft 5 nm away in the sea of lights surrounding the NYC metro area. I highly doubt they were able to identify a drone by its lights from up to 'several miles' away.

Let's assume they did though. All of the drones I've owned have red and green lights. Aircraft typically have red and green lights in addition to white lights facing aft and typically a red beacon and strobes. What's so different about these lights that they're able to distinguish them as those of a drone? Isn't it possible it was a helicopter? A GA aircraft flying VFR? What about the red, green, white lights from a boat?

In my experience there have been many times I've seen something strange in the sky where my mind wants me to think it was something but in the end I really cannot be sure what it was. There's been multiple times something has gone whizzing by at cruise or in the terminal area and for all I know it could have been a bird, a drone, a balloon, a kite, etc. Given the report was at night and it's at an altitude that a drone shouldn't normally be operating it seems questionable to me whether what they saw was actually a drone. With the recent media attention drones have had around airports I suspect there will be an uptick in reported sightings that likely are not drones at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I understand approaching this with an abundance of caution, but the drones were reportedly 17 miles away near a different airport, so this looks like quite an overreaction.

<comment><USER13> I think the key phrase from the article was

"The drone was spotted about 3,500 feet over Teterboro Airport"

Drone flying at 3500 feet definitely seems like it could pose a risk to flights out of Liberty 17 miles away

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Instead of trying to take out the drone, someone should take inspiration from that story [1] about lidar ruining some cameras (but not eyeballs) and start targeting the drone cameras.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886283)

</comment><comment><USER15> The drone did not halt the flights. Administrators halted the flight out of fears over a drone.

What I wonder is whether those fears are proportionate. Are drones any worse than a flock of birds?

Edit: video from a sibling comment suggests the answer is "yes" for the case of a collision with a wings's leading edge.

<comment><USER16> > Are drones any worse than a flock of birds?

Yes. A flock of birds has incentive and the means to get out of the way. Drones don't react to their surroundings.

Drones are also hard and do more damage than a bird strike.

<comment><USER17> I'm skeptical that birds have a means to dodge something moving at hundreds of miles per hour. If anything, a human controlling a drone from a distance has more perspective / ability to dodge a plane than a bird does.

Now whether we should actually trust said human to do so... that's a different question, as is the potential damage vs birdstrike.

<comment><USER18> I've nearly hit birds flying (and actually hit one but at night). They're actually not bad at avoiding aircraft going 100+ mph. They'll tuck their wings and dive if they feel they're in danger so typical training is to pull to avoid a strike (and lower the chance it impacts the windscreen). Obviously not all birds are great at this, particularly the larger ones but they do seek to avoid aircraft generally.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PHP and MySQL Quiz for Beginners - <AUTHOR> https://www.codepunker.com/learn/quizzes/4

<comment><USER2> 8 out of ten. I got 5 and 8 wrong.</comment>


Clojure & Complexity  - <AUTHOR> http://lisp-univ-etc.blogspot.com/2011/11/clojure-complexity.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, I haven't seen so much unsubstantiated gushing about Common Lisp since I put Pascal Bourguignon on ignore in the Emacs IRC channel.

<comment><USER3> Btw, I think it's a good chance to ask, why there's no way to specify several directories for leiningen to use as java-source-path?

<comment><USER2> Just provide a vector of multiple paths and it'll work fine. It's just an omission from the docs. Feel free to file an issue.

[https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/blob/master/test_pr...](https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/blob/master/test_projects/dev- deps-only/project.clj)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, good to know, that it's fixed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can I get an internship without being in school? - <AUTHOR>

Do companies take on interns who aren't in school? <comment><USER2> I don't know. Try asking them? Show the initiative that you hope they'll hire you for.</comment>


Why Rubyist Will Love Swift - <AUTHOR> http://littlelines.com/blog/2014/06/11/why-rubyist-will-love-swift/ <comment><USER2> I'm not buying this. It basically says "there are a few concepts in Ruby that map nicely to Swift". There are quite a lot of concepts that don't map, for example evaluated classes, which enable things like:

        class Foo
          include Virtus.model

          attribute :foo, String
        end

Now, I could go on like this, but that would be moot. I just question the basic premise of saying that just because 5 features match somewhat nicely (even if it involves more braces of different kinds), those would be reasons for Rubyists to love Swift. Much in contrast, similarity might not be the most compelling reason to switch to something different.

</comment><comment><USER3> Optional binding in JavaScript is a misfeature, and Ruby's looks that way too, because 99% of the time when you do this:

        if (hasAccess = true) {
            doSomething();
        }

you meant to compare, not assign. So when I saw this Ruby example, I was not amused:

        if current_user = find_current_user
           notify_user(current_user)
        end

However, the Swift equivalent is the best of both worlds:

        if let currentUser = findCurrentUser() {
           notifyUser(currentUser)
        }

<comment><USER4> The thing that's interesting about optional binding is Swift is that it is a special construct for unwrapping optionals, not a normal assignment. If you try to bind to something that is _not_ an optional using that syntax, it won't work. For example:

      if let currentUserIsAuthorized = true { // COMPILE ERROR
        ...
      }

This makes it useful for the one case where you'd actually want it without introducing any pitfalls, because using it incorrectly will be a syntax or type error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      if current_user = find_current_user
        notify_user(current_user)
      end

Funny to see an anti-pattern in C/C++ so lauded in another community.

Also, you know what I like about Ruby? I can write it and it'll run everywhere, and it is maintained by a vibrant community effort. Where's that on this list?

<comment><USER6> You realise that you're talking about a prerelease, right? The language hasn't even been available to developers for a month yet, let alone the general public.

Give the vibrant community effort some time.

<comment><USER7> I could be wrong, but I believe the parent is referring to the inability for a "vibrant community" to maintain Swift as a language implementation (instead of Apple), which is very different than Ruby. There's no doubt in my mind that there will be swarms of people developing _with_ the language, but AFAICT, we'll mostly only see Apple developers working _on_ the language itself.

<comment><USER8> > _There 's no doubt in my mind that there will be swarms of people developing > with the language, but AFAICT, we'll mostly only see Apple developers > working on the language itself._

Well, it's not like there's a "vibrant community" working on Ruby either.

AFAIK, the core developers are Japanese ( [http://rubycoreteam.heroku.com/](http://rubycoreteam.heroku.com/) ) and the core communication and decisions is mostly opaque to outsiders, and new language stuff mostly comes in bunches pre-formed.

As opposed say to Python and the PEPs discussion, PHP etc.

<comment><USER7> I entirely disagree. As most all open source projects, Ruby has a set of core contributors, but is clearly open to community contribution, as can be seen from their Git repo's history ([https://github.com/ruby/ruby/network](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/network)). And no, core communication and decisions are NOT opaque to outsiders, as is the usual case with most open source software (Google groups, mailing lists, IRC channels, etc). And lastly, language features and design is a product of the RubySpec, which is itself a Git repo for people to contribute to possible language design/syntax/core libraries for Ruby VM implementors to introduce ([https://github.com/rubyspec/rubyspec/](https://github.com/rubyspec/rubyspec/)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why Rubyist Will Love Swift? Because Apple has published it.

Disclaimer: I have walked the tutorial and reference and I belive it is fantastic. I am waiting for someone to release a linux compiler.

<comment><USER10> That might be a long while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The comparisons with scala and c++ are stronger. This is a large language, with a lot of complexity from having to maintain compatibility with an existing environment, plus lots of new concepts bolted on top. Like those languages, the time to basic proficiency may be faster than with their predecessors, but the time to mastery will be much longer.

<comment><USER12> Scala, yes, but not C++ at all. Indirectly from C#, perhaps (and there is a fair bit of that), but there is very little that borrows from C++ at the language level.

<comment><USER13> Oh I would love to see a write up comparing it with Scala idioms. As a person who has done C# for a while a lot of idioms translate very well to Swift.

The if let x = whatever {} syntax in Swift is damn brilliant after looking at a ton of C# code with the as check.

<comment><USER14> Here is a Swift vs Scala syntax comparison:

[https://leverich.github.io/swiftislikescala/](https://leverich.github.io/swiftislikescala/)

And also, a comparison to C#:

[http://pietschsoft.com/post/2014/06/07/Basic-Comparison- of-C...](http://pietschsoft.com/post/2014/06/07/Basic-Comparison-of-C-and- Apple-Swift-Programming-Language-Syntax)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a wannabe-rubyist who thinks reading Obj-C is somewhere between having a migraine and using H2SO4 eye drops, so far I'm in love with the language. I'm doing lots of tripping over the Cocoa APIs, though, in no small part due to Xcode.

The error messages you get when you've done something wrong are unintuitive at best and downright misleading at worst.

Example: I've got a field I want to render an image in. It's represented as an object of type NSImageCell.

I've got my image file defined as an object of type NSImage. So far, so good.

I type the . after the image cell, and I'm presented with a number of autocomplete suggestions. One of which is a method called "setValue" which accepts an object as an argument.

Okay cool.

        myCell.setValue(NSImage(named: "myImage"))

Compile and.. instacrash with "Unrecognized selector"

What?

Some research turns up that this error means you've tried to send a message to (call a method on) something that doesn't accept that type of message.

Turns out that the method I needed is called setObjectValue. And it also accepts an object as an argument.

So, Xcode. Why did you give me setValue as an autocomplete when it isn't valid on that object? Why are these method names nearly identical? _facepalm_

And that's before I get into the almost completely worthless inline error messages. "Cannot convert to $T1". What?

I really, really like the language, but Xcode is trying its damndest to turn me away. I've got a stack of bugs/feature requests that need to be entered into Apple's reporting tool - hopefully some of these are just warts that'll get fixed as Xcode 6 comes out of beta.

<comment><USER15> It's still in beta dude. Night and day difference between beta and gold master. If you're turned away from a _brand new_ language due to an IDE's autocomplete, then you're in for a world of hurt when you start learning all the Cocoa APIs.

<comment><USER16> Heh, this is the truth. Most of the difficulty of learning Swift I think will lie in learning Cocoa. Just like Objective-C that.

<comment><USER17> That is true for every programming language and platform pair. The syntax is always the easy part, but unfortunately the only thing most people fixate on.

<comment><USER16> Valid point, also amusing that everyone focuses on the trivial part of syntax over the difficulty of the environment it lives in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not a rubyist, neither I am a professional programmer, but I'm sad that Apple didn't/couldn't choose Ruby as their main language. Nowadays I'm deciding what programming language to learn as a hobby. Reality (market) tells me that should be JavaScript or right now Swift (looks like javascript for me). It makes me sad, I wish it could be Ruby. So clean and clear. Everything makes sense, I don't need to memorize almost nothing.

Edit/Disclaimer: My first contact with programming (besides BASIC) was Autolisp (Autocad scripting) and my professional field is design.

<comment><USER19> Swift is not anything like JavaScript. And unfortunately ruby isn't powerful enough to do what Apple needs, but I agree that it would be nice if they could have chosen something with more syntactic elegance, although I'd have preferred it if they'd just gone in the direction of Smalltalk.

I presume you haven't programmed lisp, because although there is very little syntax to memorize, there are a huge number of functions.

<comment><USER20> >And unfortunately ruby isn't powerful enough to do what Apple needs

If this was the main and only reason such that removing this limit Apple would have used Ruby, then why in your opinion didn't Apple try to implement themself something like RubyMotion (which was made by a company a thousands orders of magnitute smaller)?

<comment><USER21> RubyMotion author used to work for Apple. When Apple shut down their MacRuby efforts, he left Apple and started his own company to continue the work.

Doesn't prove anything about Ruby's suitability, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google and Pivotal Engineers Talk Cloud Foundry on GCP - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/01/partnering-on-open-source-Google-and-Pivotal-engineers-talk-Cloud-Foundry-on-GCP.html <comment><USER2> For those wondering why you should care: money.

Google has the cash, software, hardware and networking investments to expand very quickly into a very fast growing IAAS market.

Google doesn't have Amazon's long-lead momentum or Microsoft's established sales channels. It needs something, anything, to get a foothold in enterprise IAAS.

One such way is Kubernetes, which paves the road for "why are we building all these other bits ourselves? Let's just host on GCP".

Another such way is Cloud Foundry, which paves the road for "Goodbye, ${other_iaas}, we're moving our Cloud Foundry installations to GCP".

So Google works on both. For big companies rolling their own platforms on Kubernetes, Google has a solution. For big companies who leave platform- building to platform-builders, Google has a solution. The same is true of Microsoft Azure, which is another Pivotal partner. AWS are not as keen so far.

In the long run, for all three of the IAAS majors, we're talking sources of revenue that at a scale that _alone_ would qualify as an F50.

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal ...

Disclaimer: ... and none of this should be considered official comment. I'm just an engineer and I know next to nothing about anything, except how to name variables.</comment>


New Approaches to Network Fast Paths - <AUTHOR> https://anarc.at/blog/2017-04-29-netdev-fast-path/ <comment><USER2> Discussion of LWN edition, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14218162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14218162)</comment>


Should Your Startup Persevere, Pivot, or Shut down? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidteten/2013/04/05/should-your-startup-persevere-pivot-or-shut-down/

<comment><USER2> _So the key test is: have you persuaded a new investor, new employee, or new client, with no historical relationship to your business, to invest time and /or money in your firm? If so, that's a sign that your business is likely worth persevering with in its current form._

That's an interesting test. By that standard, we're definitely justified in moving forward as we've added an intern who may be joining the team on a more permanent basis soon, added a new member to our advisory board, and reach tentative agreements to formalize our relationships with 4 other members of our advisory board. And while we are still pre-revenue, we have some irons on the fire that give us reason for hope.</comment>


4 Things Startups Can Do to Better Manage Interns (written by a Startup Intern) - <AUTHOR> https://everywhere.pluot.co/4-things-startups-can-do-to-better-manage-interns-dbacc23f7b09#.pypis1bw4 <comment><USER2> Definitely agree with the 4 things mentioned, but what about also advocating for 1:1 mentors for the interns? When I was interning, my mentor was an invaluable asset and I wouldn't be the developer I am today without his help.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do start ups have interns? When you're trying to turn out an MVP with a handful of people I wouldn't have thought interns would be the top priority.</comment>


IA or AI? - <AUTHOR> https://vanemden.wordpress.com/2015/10/09/ia-or-ai-2/ <comment><USER2> The IA advance which is most obvious to me (yet somehow not yet a reality) is the nomenclator.

In Rome, a nomenclator was a slave who remembered people's names for you, and as they approached would whisper to you that this is Gaius Tullius Castor, his wife is Flaminia, his eldest boy is Marcus, and he owns beanfields.

A Google Glass camera on your eyeglasses and a speaker in your ear, hooked up to Facebook's face recognition and social web, can tell you a quick precis of who you see across the room before they get to you. Add a touch sensor in your pocket or on a ring for unobtrusive control, and a mic to pick up your annotations or commands, and you've got a product that should be a major hit by the second generation.

<comment><USER3> Google famously banned face recognition on Glass after I and some other developers made demo apps and APIs for using it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1aeMJY1AO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1aeMJY1AO0)

Even now that Glass has been canceled for all but commercial use, it's still in the guidelines that you aren't allowed to use face recognition: > [https://developers.google.com/glass/policies?hl=en](https://developers.google.com/glass/policies?hl=en) " Don't use the camera or microphone to cross-reference and immediately present personal information identifying anyone other than the user, including use cases such as facial recognition and voice print. Glassware that do this will not be approved at this time. "

Amusingly, my nursing notes demo was me trying to be politically correct. People were more interested in things like cross referencing most wanted lists and sexual offender lists.

<comment><USER4> That ban made me uninterested in Glass. Face recognition would have been such a help to elderly folks. Add object recognition and GPS and you could have had an assistant to help the elderly through their day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" [...] good notation is worth a whopping increment in IQ points. Except that the really good ones allow one to have thoughts that are impossible without."_

I posit this post tangentially explains the nagging feeling that many parents[1] experience when their children struggle with mathematics. The benefits of basic language literacy are clear, but follow-on analogies such as the above emphasize a point of view concluding that an inability to attain mathematical fluency excludes the next generation from any implied augmented intelligence benefits.

The extrapolated message would be that mathematically disinclined adults will then be completely unable to comprehend certain important thoughts in [insert arcane, highly-specialized technical field].

Regarding the question posed by the title and last sentence in the blog post, I'm not sure why the thrust is framed as an XOR, and not as an AND. It's not like we can't focus on both IA and AI at the same time.

[1] Anecdata warning: I am a parent. I have this nagging feeling.

<comment><USER6> > an inability to attain mathematical fluency excludes the next generation > from any implied augmented intelligence benefits.

Well, only in some ways. I don't have to understand how a refrigerator works in order to use it. Improvements in quality of life produced by use of augmented intelligence ought to be accessible even to those without it.

<comment><USER7> The problem only happens when no one bothers to learn how something works. Look at all of those big iron systems out there that few people know how to program, there is reason Cobol and Fortran programmers still make good money.

Oh and refrigeration is simple, it is just an application of the ideal gas law PV=nRT, and a pump. Refrigerant is compressed then cooled through use of a heat-sink then pumped into the refrigerator and allowed to expand where the refrigerant absorbs thermal energy and is pumped out and repeated.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure it's a problem. It's encapsulaiton. Systems _should_ be designed so that there is a difference between the knowledge required to operate the device and the knowledge required to design/service it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems obvious to me that IA is where the tremendous benefits to society occur. Imagine a world where everyone has the equivalent of a genius IQ today. A lot of problems suddenly disappear.

AI, on the other hand, while very useful, doesn't change people. And frankly, most problems we have are because people lack understanding. I don't know about you, but I don't actually want to replace mankind with something else, I just want us all better.

Of course, what "better" is--is highly debatable, so that definitely gives pause as well.

<comment><USER10> > A lot of problems suddenly disappear.

Not to be negative but citation needed.

Also (I guess we'll cross "isolation" of the list): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Social...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Social_and_emotional_issues)

<comment><USER9> An interesting point. I think your citation adds to the point though.

In observing my "normal" peers, honestly, they do a lot of very strange things just to be considered normal.

I mean, it's pretty expensive just to keep up with current trend of sunglasses size or sock length, just to be seen as normal.

Not to mention that you have to hold your hands a certain way and talk incoherently.

There is a lot of "normalizing" behavior that becomes unnecessary when everyone has the capacity to see how inane and impractical such behavior really is.

<comment><USER11> A lot of smart men have been passionate about the proportion of columns, or the proportion of numbers, or even the aesthetics of curly braces. So why is it inane to care about the proportion of clothing, or the angle of the hand? I think people play to their strength. Also, the trend has to change as the world changes, because aesthetics is about the whole. So it's not because it's everchanging that it's necessarily arbitrary. The more one can afford not to care about it, the more impractical it is, but I wouldn't say it is impractical to society. It is architecture for the person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> EDW387 [0] (which doesn't have NN0 or NN1 pseudonyms either) seems to be pretty clear about what the "anti-intellectualism" comment was about.

>The undisguised appeal to anti-intellectualism and anti-individualism was frightening. He was talking about his "augmented knowledge workshop" and I was constantly reminded of Manny Lehman's vigorous complaint about the American educational system that is extremely "knowledge oriented", failing to do justice to the fact that one of the main objects of education is the insight that makes quite a lot of knowledge superfluous.

Wish the author went into more detail on why now may be different than during Kay/Engelbart's time.

[0] [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/E...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD387.html)

<comment><USER13> There is this "Tim van Gelder on Douglas Engelbart, Intelligence Amplification and Argument Mapping"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P77FvUy- NGA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P77FvUy-NGA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The EWD by Dijkstra now actually mentions Engelbart by name: [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd03xx/EWD387.PDF](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd03xx/EWD387.PDF).

<comment><USER15> Props to Dijkstra for choosing the right topics to have strong opinions about, which is the hardest part in making an intellectual contribution -- far harder than being right or wrong about a given topic. The writeup is like code that's correct but for a sign error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> John Markoff's new book "Machines of Loving Grace" is a great one about this AI vs IA topic. [http://www.amazon.com/Machines-Loving-Grace-Common- Between/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Machines-Loving-Grace-Common- Between/dp/0062266683)

</comment><comment><USER17> > The point I am making here is that Engelbart and Kay were unrealistic in > expecting that their technologies would give quick results in the way of > Tools for Thought. They had no appreciation for the vast and rich culture > that produced the tools for thought enabled by the traditional technologies > of writing and printing. They did not realize that a similar culture needs > to arise around a new technology with augmentation potential.

I am guilty of deifying Englebart and Kay, and castigating "our society" for failing them. After my honeymoon period with the "tool of thought" people, I've calmed down.

Here's my radical belief: portability is for people who can't write their own programs. (copped from a Torvalds witticism)

Consider writing and literacy: If you really grow up in a literate culture, you can start with a blank page and end with a bespoke document that suits your needs. If you don't grow up in that, you have to modify others' documents. This limits you. Hallmark cards are for people who can't write poetically (no judgment intended).

So too for programming. Today we rely on hundreds of millions of lines of code of others we can't even realistically modify. But I think the future resembles Forth: in less than a hundred lines of code, you write something that suits your needs[0]. You can't do this yet because computers suck.

I'm talking loosely and at a high-level.

[0] I think Forth is a powerful vision for the future: no operating system, no types, no compatibility, no syntax. An executable english language.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great piece. I got a chance to work with Douglas Engelbart several years ago and wrote up some responses in reply to Maarten's IA or AI post: [http://codinginparadise.org/ebooks/html/blog/ia_vs__ai.html](http://codinginparadise.org/ebooks/html/blog/ia_vs__ai.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> That enforces my belief that the influx of new programming languages will continue for some more years and it will only get better.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nothing is more high-tech than culture, it's _everything_ even if we tend to work over the seemingly faceless Internet these days - it's people all the way down.

</comment><comment><USER21> The idea of "notation as intelligence augmentation" is the reason (or one of them) that Haskell programmers are so enthusiastic about things like functors and monads; type theory is its own branch of mathematics that could be appended in the list of things like calculus and vector analysis [1], and might bring in the same kind of new levels of thought and abstraction.

[1] Disclaimer; I am not a mathematician.

</comment><comment><USER22> When considering intelligence amplification, the book that comes to mind is _Psychohistorical Crisis_ , by Donald Kingsbury. Computer-to-brain interfaces may go a long way in the next few thousand years.

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

<comment><USER23> Also Vernon Vinge's _Rainbows End_ which has both IA and AI in a fairly plausible near future scenario:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> oblig. [https://xkcd.com/903/](https://xkcd.com/903/)

We already have amplified memory (see also: books, mnemonics). and google amplifies _retrieval_.

But what is "intelligence", that we might amplify it? For me, limited short- term working memory is an obstacle (EWD's "limited size of skull"). As complexity is added, earlier parts drop out.

There is the "technology" of hierarchical decomposition and the pyschological instinct of chunking, but every problem has irreducible complexity... if this is greater than my working memory, I cannot grasp it.

Artificially enhanced working memory may help here, but I suspect the limit is due not so much short-term memory itself, but it having associations throughout all long-term memory. That is, it's less a cache limit than a bandwidth limit, interconnecting with the entire mind. We aren't Von Neumann architectured.

PS: there's an argument that we might not be able to grasp intelligence itself, if its and its components' irreducible complexity is greater than any person's working memory - even if we formalize a correct model, we mightn't grasp it ourselves. Thus, IA may be essential for AI. Or, AI is essential for AI.</comment>


Nice review of real estate ico - <AUTHOR> http://www.smarticoinvestor.com/real-real-estate-asset-ledger-ico-good-bad-ugly-real-estate-icos-pt-1/ <comment><USER2> Till recently there were few options to really be able to use bitcoins and Ethereum for transactions.

But it seems they are finally starting to connect with the real economy.

Real state fractional investment through block chain sounds quite an interesting proposition, specially for Ethe owners wanting to cash out some of the earning of last months.</comment>


Ford Releases SDK For Sync Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.socialcarnews.com/blog/1050300_floodgates-officially-open-ford-releases-sdk-for-sync-apps

<comment><USER2> Is anybody else concerned about what a rogue app could do to your car? The SDK supports mostly read-only operations so that is better, but I'd be concerned if something like repeated status polling would impact my car while driving....</comment>


U.S. should look abroad for education reform, study says - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_18162590?source=rss&nclick_check=1

<comment><USER2> This study has a curious methodology. They compare the US (a primarily white, black and hispanic nation) to a bunch of countries with lots of Asian students, Ontario (a Canadian province which has a disproportionate number of Asian students), and Finland (an outlier in Europe).

I wonder why the article doesn't mention the fact that Asian students tend to perform really well in school - after all, isn't that a major confounding factor?

How do they know the reason Singapore beats the US isn't solely because Asian students perform better than the black, white and Hispanic students the US is full of?

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do- above-...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-above- average-american.html)

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth- abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa- scores-usa.html)

<comment><USER3> I have never read, heard or observed that any race is, intrinsically, intellectually superior to another. Give this, your comment isn't interesting.

Now, I have read, heard and observed that Asians tend to have a different cultural emphasis on academics. Given this, it seems much more reasonable to suggest that the problem in the US is that the culture doesn't value learning.

<comment><USER2> _Given this, it seems much more reasonable to suggest that the problem in the US is that the culture doesn't value learning._

Asians in the US don't seem to have this problem. As a result, they perform as well as Asians in Singapore, Japan and Shanghai. This strongly suggests that schools are not responsible for the difference. After all, if American schools sucked and school quality mattered significantly, shouldn't Asian Americans be dragged down as well?

You can debate whether it is cultural factors or intrinsic intellectual superiority. It's irrelevant for this conversation. The fact is the study seems to be measuring student quality but attributes the differences to school quality.

<comment><USER3> Making a general statement about American culture, which I did, doesn't, necessarily, say anything about the details of the culture. As you suggest, and as I've also generally observed, among the Asian Americans that I've met, they tend to retain a culture that's more interested in academics than what is generally found in the American culture.

I think you allude to a good point that I would like to restate.

In this study, and in others like it, the blame seems to be put on the educational institution. But, it's not hard to see places where success is gotten independent of the institution (like, for your example, Asian Americans). So, it seems wrong to put all your faith in and all the blame on the institution.

I've tutored 100s of people and I've done lots of independent learning and, based on my interactions, I think I can say that the schools could be changed however you want and they won't fix the problem in America. See, the students that I've tutored didn't mainly have a problem in understanding the material, as far as I could tell, they had a problem in not wanted to learn. And, if I can teach myself calculus, physics and programming, you don't need schools to learn things.

As far as I can tell, one large problem is that, in America, it's more prestigious to be a manager, lawyer or securities trader than it is to be an engineer or scientist. Engineering and science is associated with curiosity and learning (things good schools should have), the other disciplines are more associated with prestigious and financial comfort and generally are not as socially or economically valuable. There's an interested piece in the New York Times on this (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2598158>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's the link to the study mentioned in this article [http://www.ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Standing- on-t...](http://www.ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Standing-on-the- Shoulders-of-Giants-An-American-Agenda-for-Education-Reform.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> How about unschooling/homeschooling? Being stuck in a classroom all day was torture and do you really think students learn best when they're forced to be obedient?

 _And on the job, rather than the adversarial management vs. union mentality of a factory, teachers need to be given the responsibility and autonomy to improve teaching and student performance._

So what they're saying is that homeschoolers/unschoolers have had it right all along. However, they want to bring in only some of the ideas that make unschooling successful. Small reforms never really amount to anything.</comment>


American Education: Much Worse Than You Think - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-koerner/american-education-worse_b_867129.html

<comment><USER2> This submission mostly pertains to English grammar and style, and is based on anecdotes. Another submission today

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2600580>

refers to mathematics, and is based on international data from two scientifically designed series of educational achievement studies.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this seems a bit too anecdote-based. It would be good to pair the anecdotes with statistics.

<comment><USER4> agree. pretty tough to make a universal claim off of a couple stories.

although, i do agree that ivy league education is very VERY overrated, especially for the price tag. although, in some cases the brand may justify the $.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was a willing victim of an Ivy-League humanities education and I learned virtually nothing except that people will spend all kinds of money for connections, since connections combined with frenetic activity is what leads to more power and money in the current age. I also realized that the true ticket to elitism is denying that one is an elite and then gushing for the little man that one never sees but vaguely plans a tax credit or boost in spending to (preferably at election time and without any measurable results). I've seen so many grades go to people who simply towed the appropriate line I stopped caring early on.

The simple fact is that the educational system is working for its intended purposes. The American elite cares not that the elite has actual talent or ability, only that it becomes a part of the next American elite, which since the Boomers grew up has been primarily determined by saying the correct political slogans. We assume, on the basis of some reality, that virtually everyone is forced to play in our sandbox, so it doesn't matter if our own citizens are educated well -- we can outsource virtually everything and import finished products so long as our hands stay on the financial spigot.

Americans used to be great, they used to dominate the world by the force of their actions, because they were great builders and, moreover, believed in sacrificing for their nation and ideals. I think even of the great entrepreneurs, the Fords, Rockefellers, and Carnegies that built empires on fresh American soil -- and gave back virtually every penny to future generations.

This present generation of elites is nothing but a bunch of dullards more committed to talking about how much effort they spent avoiding military service and making vague promises to the rest of the world on the basis of Twitter and other things they didn't create, while pretending to cut back the immense growth US government but then voting for military intervention and pork projects as soon as a dollar slips into their grubby hands.

It is pitiful what this country has become. Since it is Memorial day, let me say a word for our veterans. I salute you, I salute every American soldier who has fought in every war that this nation has been engaged in, whether waged under false pretenses or on the basis of true American ideals. You are the backbone of this country. When I was in high school I facilitated a forum where World War II vets told their stories to the upcoming generation. They had hardened eyes and weathered bodies, showing the signs of those who had stared death in the face -- and emerged victorious. There were many true heroes among them, not dithering for some constituency, but wiling to pay the ultimate sacrifice for the nation they loved.

This may make some uncomfortable, but I pray for this country, that it would become what once was -- a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal -- not that some people are more equal than others by inheriting wealth or because of well-placed slogans. If we kill the American dream, we kill America.

In some ways, that's why I believe in YCombinator so much. I think it is one of the few ways where we can see the American dream flourish again.

The only way to a renewed America based again on hard work is through entrepreneurship. Higher education will not voluntarily reform itself, it will continue to inflate and suck up capital until their ugly bubble is popped by a real alternative.

Unschool? Uncollege? I don't know, but do know that Khan and others committed to math (and hopefully also a renewed humanities) will be a major contributing factor to any chance America has to re-make itself.

Btw, if anyone is working on educational startup ideas, please contact me.

<comment><USER6> I'm kicking around one (submitted to Imagine K12; rejected). Shoot me an email!

<comment><USER5> Done.</comment></comment></comment>


Mermaidjs: create diagrams and flowcharts from text - <AUTHOR> https://mermaidjs.github.io/ <comment><USER2> We did this 3 months ago, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16889181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16889181)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was just doing some diagrams last night. And my wife told me:"Why don't you make a program that makes them?" and I just thought: "She has no idea how hard that would be".

Awesome work!

</comment><comment><USER4> I still don't understand why you would write this instead of a Graphviz renderer.

<comment><USER5>
      The future is already here — it's just not
      very evenly distributed. -- William Gibson

Everyone doesn't know about Graphviz. It's older than some HN'ers. So old that it comes from the glory days of Bell Labs. Graphviz. [http://viz- js.com/](http://viz-js.com/)

Viz.js is a port of Graphviz for browsers, [http://viz-js.com/](http://viz- js.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just tried using this for a project last week. Whatever algorithm it uses for positioning nodes is terrible. You end up with a huge confusing spaghetti mess of a diagram.

<comment><USER7> I had the same problem until I realized that the order matters very much. You may want to try to move the code around a bit and see if the result is improved.

</comment></comment><comment> yoz-y Looks nice and I am just looking for a replacement for plantUML.

The syntax looks very similar and I wonder whether it is a superset of plantUML format. That would actually be great.

</comment><comment><USER8> DiagrammeR uses Mermaid to do flowcharts in R. I used it to do the gantts for a project I'm running last week!

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the recommendation. Link for the lazy: [http://rich- iannone.github.io/DiagrammeR/](http://rich-iannone.github.io/DiagrammeR/)

It would be really cool if you could have mermaid/graphviz blocks in your R-notebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> can i use this using a cli ? I'm not able to find the documentation for this for using it through the nodejs cli.

Edit. - found this [https://github.com/mermaidjs/mermaid.cli](https://github.com/mermaidjs/mermaid.cli)

</comment><comment><USER11> Why not just use tikz / LaTeX?

<comment><USER12> I am not going to draw hyperbola, math equations or whatever that is. I don't want to spend next week configuring LaTeX. I just want to plug in some js library and have Gantt/Flow/Sequence diagram, which I don't want to draw by hand or save in some binary format but want to put it in GIT repo.

I tried LaTeX twice it just does not work on Windows, and I don't really need it that much. I have no time to find out why it does not work out of the box for me. Just like dropbox, I install app and it syncs my files, setting VPS with Rsync could work but I do not have time to troubleshoot it in case something is not working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there any way to make diagrams render in a github readme?</comment>


Technology behind new Gmail could challenge Apple's control over third-party applications. - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/22424/?a=f <comment><USER2> This is a fascinating topic (HTML5 allowing web apps on phones and similar devices to become richer and provide an alternative installation route than the App stores controlled by platform owners) but this article is vague, desperately seeking conflict, and has a troll-y headline.</comment>


Phrases that should set off an alarm in every software developers brain - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jonasbandi.net/2010/02/phrases-that-should-set-off-alarm-in.html In software development there are some requirements that should immediately trigger all available bells in your subconscious alarming system... <comment><USER2> Seems a little bit light on content. Yes, these are alarming phrases, but just listing four phrases does not necessarily make a noteworthy article.

</comment><comment><USER3> "This will probably never need to change"

also

"Nobody would ever want to enter something like that / use the system in that way"

</comment><comment><USER4> "We'll be integrating everything at the end, just make sure your bit works"

</comment><comment><USER5> "Working with that library will take too long, we can do this faster if we just write it ourselves"

</comment><comment><USER6> "Stop worrying about the users; if they want to keep getting paid, they'll use it."

</comment><comment><USER7> "The client has agreed the ship date; I'll need your estimates by next week."

</comment><comment><USER8> "The multimaster replication will fail if two sites edit the same <redacted> at the same time, but that would never happen."

</comment><comment><USER9> "We don't have time to do automation / refactoring / code reviews now. Just make it work and leave it for later."

</comment><comment><USER10> "The system must be completed tomorrow."

</comment><comment><USER11> "It will be done early next month."

</comment><comment><USER12> "We're going to update one of our dependencies - it's just a minor dot release"

</comment><comment><USER13> "This data contract won't ever change..."

</comment><comment> aka- ...and make it secure.

</comment><comment><USER14> "I read about this cool new language in beta...."</comment>


Ask HN: How do you imagine the US in 50 years? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Alas, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

50 years after Roe v. Wade, we're closer than ever to a virtual ban in many states. Not because of protests or media, but smart lawyers designing hurdles legislators can use that pass court muster.

For 50 years, most progressive victories have been won in the courts, and not the legislature. Given the Electoral College and where our courts are, they're not got going to be there for the progressive side for at least a generation now.

So whatever anyone's hangup is for voting in November (should we get that opportunity), remember - it's a choice for what court your kids will live under. Who do you want selecting RBG's successor?

</comment><comment><USER3> In terms of wealth and power, probably equivalent to France in today's world. An ex-imperial nation, still with lots of prestige, but little political, financial or military strength remaining.

A question to ponder: The year is 1520, Portugal is still very rich and very powerful - How do you imagine Portugal in 50 years?

Portugal was a superpower in its day. No doubt the Portuguese envisaged that situation lasting forever.

</comment><comment><USER4> Barring some serious changes, far more divisive than today. Wealth disparity seems to be growing. Media seems to be extremely polarized - having watched more news recently, it feels like CNN and Fox News are just two sides of the same coin.

<comment><USER5> I think the opposite. That can't go on forever. And regular people are already well sick of it.

Besides, you can't run society like this for long so eventually it resolves somehow. Hopefully the "somehow" isn't terribly unpleasant and we are still intact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Moar 'Merica!</comment>


20 Years of Impulse Tracker - <AUTHOR> http://roartindon.blogspot.de/2014/02/20-years-of-impulse-tracker.html?2=2

<comment><USER2> Impulse Tracker and mod tracking is the reason I got into computers; I really enjoyed reading this.

If you're curious to try out trackers, Schism Tracker is a modern cross- platform Impulse Tracker clone [1]. If you're looking for files that you can load into it, aminet [2] is a great resource. I remember downloading a lot of celsius [3] drum n' bass tracks back in the 386/486 days.

[1] [http://schismtracker.org/wiki/Schism%20Tracker](http://schismtracker.org/wiki/Schism%20Tracker)

[2] [http://aminet.net/tree?path=mods](http://aminet.net/tree?path=mods)

[3] [http://aminet.net/mods/cels](http://aminet.net/mods/cels)</comment>


The Known Known - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/09/27/privacy-technology-known-known/ <comment><USER2> Super interesting read. Especially:

>"The privacy right established by Roe was not absolute. In the words of the Court:

'The pregnant woman cannot be isolated in her privacy. She carries an embryo and, later, a fetus, if one accepts the medical definitions of the developing young in the human uterus…. The woman's privacy is no longer sole and any right of privacy she possesses must be measured accordingly.'

This, as we've witnessed in the intervening years, is the legal wedge that the anti-abortion movement has used to pick apart Roe."

As someone who has grown up in a country whose highest jurists have also historically been members of the higher parliament chamber and therefore subject to continuous parliamentary review, I'm continually interested in the way the decisions of 9 purposely separate individuals can set the political discourse of an issue of many generations, if not permanently.

Abortion with Roe vs Wade is obviously an extreme example, but are there any other times this has happened? Are there any US movements, other than extreme libertarianism or political anarchism that do away with this current process?

Any resources/book recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.</comment>


Tesla Model X driver shares unbelievable story of DEA plane crashing into car - <AUTHOR> https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-x-dea-airplane-crash/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if the software has been trained for landing planes? </comment>


It could be 'five to 10 years' before the world drags itself away from IPv4 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/05/ipv4_v_ipv6/ <comment><USER2> I think ipv4 is just fine for private home networks.

<comment><USER3> Sure, 4 billion addresses is plenty for a home network, but I haven't used a home network without Internet access since 1998.

<comment><USER2> ha, I meant private wrt internal network addresses, not being "lan"-locked with no outside access.

<comment><USER3> When you connect a network to the outside world, 4 billion addresses are no longer sufficient. That's the whole point.</comment></comment></comment></comment>