Blockchains for Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bigchaindb.com/blockchains-for-artificial-intelligence-ec63b0284984 <comment><USER2> This really doesn't make any sense.

>blockchains introduced three new characteristics: centralized / shared control, immutable / audit trails, and native assets / exchanges.

Blockchains aren't immutable, they are just expensive to mutate.

Blockchains aren't centralized.

Blockchains didn't introduce audit trails, these have always been possible simply through having a transaction table that is only appended to. This of course does require trust in the central authority.

>(4) Leads to provenance on training/testing data & models, to improve the trustworthiness of the data & models. Data wants reputation too.

Is training set fraud really an issue in training AI?

>(1) Leads to more data, and therefore better models. >(2) Leads to qualitatively new data, and therefore qualitatively new models. >(3) Allows for shared control of AI training data & models.

The author has a poor understanding of both AI and blockchain technology[1]. Blockchains are for decentralized consensus, but it seems the author is vaguely proposing using a blockchain as a mass datastore (with ownership labels) for both training data and AI algorithms.

Of course AI is an exciting field so this means you can generate hype by implying the field of AI has yet to solve the problem of sharing data with fellow researchers until now.

[1] [https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/alts.pdf](https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/alts.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, it's the author here.

> This really doesn't make any sense.

Disagree. Below, I respond to each of your points.

> Blockchains aren't immutable, they are just expensive to mutate.

Agreed; very little is truly absolutely immutable. It's all shades of grey. I actually prefer the word "tamper-resistant" and I usually say that next to the "immutable" definition, such as in the first paragraph of [https://bigchaindb.com/whitepaper](https://bigchaindb.com/whitepaper). But "immutable" makes for a good shorthand, especially because that's the label that the community uses.

> Blockchains aren't centralized.

Oops, that was a typo. I meant to say "decentralized". Fixed it. (That was a pretty big oops!)

> Blockchains didn't introduce audit trails ...

Correct.

> ... [status quo] require[s] trust in the central authority

Exactly. And it's crucial to note that once you don't have to trust a central authority to store your audit trail, you have a way more trustworthy audit trail that improves many applications and unlocks new ones.

> The author has a poor understanding of both AI and blockchain technology ... > "treatise on altcoins"

Disagree. First, you don't need an "altcoin" to have a blockchain. To understand of what's special about blockchains, you first have to understand what already exists for distributed databases, then what the delta is.

Second, consensus in a distributed database has been around for decades; Satoshi did not invent it. Lamport laid down much of the theory for FT and BFT consensus in 1982. What Bitcoin brought forward, in addition to BFT-ish consensus, was Sybil tolerance (addressing attack-of-the-clones).

Third, as for my understanding of AI: I've been doing it professionally since the late 90s; here are my publications: [http://trent.st/publications](http://trent.st/publications). Doing AI in the 90s was one of the least popular things one could possibly do, so I certainly didn't do it for the hype.

> vaguely proposing using a blockchain as a mass datastore (with ownership > labels)

Obviously I gave much more specific proposals than that. I have other writings that dive into more detail on some of the use cases, such as an IP registry [1] and for AI DAOs [2].

[1] [https://medium.com/ipdb-blog/a-decentralized-content- registr...](https://medium.com/ipdb-blog/a-decentralized-content-registry-for- the-decentralized-web-99cf1335291f) [2] [https://medium.com/@trentmc0/ai-daos- and-three-paths-to-get-...](https://medium.com/@trentmc0/ai-daos-and-three- paths-to-get-there-cfa0a4cc37b8)

<comment><USER3> > First, you don't need an "altcoin" to have a blockchain.

Hmm, you're treading on thin ice here. What exactly do you mean by a "blockchain", then? I tend to work on the assumption that people are talking about something closer to the whole Satoshi consensus stack on top of hashed linked lists (the _actual_ blockchain), rather than just the hashed linked list data structure. Which segues into -- Satoshi consensus was designed against a stringent set of requirements, and the security model for the algorithm he devised absolutely demands a miner reward of some sort that's denominated in the same currency as that being used in transactions (in those circumstances, double spend attacks can be proved irrational once a transaction is deep enough inside the chain)

I'm not saying you're flat-out wrong, but you do need to specify which properties of Satoshi consensus you are willing to discard to make that statement true.

<comment><AUTHOR> Throw a rock in the blockchain space and you'll find a different definition of blockchains, or what it means for one thing to be a blockchain or not. It doesn't really help anyone to argue for hours on end over this, when it's largely a matter of opinion. To me, what's more interesting is to identify what are the new characteristics (in terms of benefits) that blockchains have, above and beyond traditional distributed databases; which in turn unlock new applications or improve existing applications. To me, those characteristics are: decentralized, immutable, assets; I describe them in the article, and also in more detail in [https://bigchaindb.com/whitepaper](https://bigchaindb.com/whitepaper).

<comment><USER3> > To me, those characteristics are: decentralized, immutable, assets;

How do you achieve fully trustless decentralisation without the currency aspect, while still being resilient to sybil attacks? Or are you willing to sacrifice truslessness? In which case, how are you defining decentralisation?

<comment><AUTHOR> I define "decentralized" as "no single entity owns or controls". It can be further distinguished with "server-based decentralization" and "server-free decentralization" [1].

You only need to be Sybil tolerant if you want your validating nodes to be anonymous. There's certainly some applications where that's useful. But it's not a requirement for being decentralized. (Some will argue otherwise, and that's ok; once again it depends how you define "decentralized"; my approach is about what benefits come to the application.)

[1] [https://blog.bigchaindb.com/the-dcs- triangle-5ce0e9e0f1dc](https://blog.bigchaindb.com/the-dcs- triangle-5ce0e9e0f1dc)

<comment><USER3> Care to link to sources for server-based and server-free decentralisation that aren't your own blog posts?

(Also, that blog post you linked is flat out wrong -- Bitcoin, Ethereum, et al are all instances of eventually consistent systems that can and do prevent double spends)

Still -- if you're willing to sacrifice anonymity for the sake of avoiding sybil attacks, then how do your nodes federate without a central authority?

This is why having precise definitions matters: With each question I ask, we're eroding away the guarantees that such a system provides, and the implementation requirements with them. At what point do we just give up on "blockchains", and just adapt a run of the mill distributed log-based db instead, which gives you BFT and immutability, and where the asset layer is easy enough to add to the top?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Care to link to sources for server-based and server-free decentralisation > that aren't your own blog posts?

The best precedent is simply the long-standing difference between servers and clients in computing systems.

In blockchain discourse, this difference had not been acknowledged as much; though of course a similar pattern exists between full nodes vs light/SPV clients.

To my knowledge, no one else had made the clarification of "server-free" vs "server-less" as different types of decentralization. It is a useful distinction as the article discusses.

> Also, that blog post you linked is flat out wrong -- Bitcoin, Ethereum, et > al are all instances of eventually consistent systems

As the article states, they can and do prevent double spends, so we agree there. But that's not what "consistent" means in a CAP setting. As the article states, "they they never have a deterministic guarantee of a consistent order; they're only eventually consistent (in a probabilistic sense). But let's be generous and call them consistent, because in practice they are used that way, the workaround being higher latency as one waits for a sufficiently high probability of avoiding inconsistency."

> how do your nodes federate without a central authority?

Each node votes on any transaction coming through. The transaction only clears if it gets enough positive votes.

> just adapt a run of the mill distributed log-based db instead ...

Well in some cases that's all that people actually need; sometimes find myself referring people to Kafka and the like.

But Kafka and the like are still controlled by a single admin; you can do more to decentralize. As for immutability, it's all shades of grey, and certainly being a log-based db (read-only) helps a lot. You can do more with Merkle DAGs, continuous backup to write-only media, etc.

To me it's not about "eroding" guarantees. It's about saying "ok, I have this database, what properties do I want?" The potential results might be blockchain-like or not. If decentralization, immutability, or assets are potentially interesting, then a blockchain technology could be interesting. Otherwise it comes down to other questions to choose among traditional DBs.

<comment><USER3> > As the article states, they can and do prevent double spends, so we agree > there. But that's not what "consistent" means in a CAP setting.

You're the one who asserted that CAP-style consistency is required to prevent double-spends. Eventual consistency is a weakened form of consistency in the CAP sense. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum have eventual consistency as much more than a "theoretical" concern. In your own words: "But let's be generous and call them consistent, because in practice they are used that way, the workaround being higher latency as one waits for a sufficiently high probability of avoiding inconsistency." The only way this is true is if you accept latencies measured in hours. For real-world applications, you absolutely need to deal with the eventual consistency (and, in fact, I've written several applications that deal with precisely that).

> Each node votes on any transaction coming through. The transaction only > clears if it gets enough positive votes.

I didn't ask how you establish consensus. I asked how the nodes federate -- if a node tries to peer with you, how do you decide whether or not to accept the node? You suggested anonymity is out the window, so who controls node identity?

<comment><AUTHOR> > You're the one who asserted that CAP-style consistency is required to > prevent double-spends

Could you point me to where? I like my thinking and expression to be consistent (pun intended:)

> I asked how the nodes federate .. who controls identity?

Each node has a list of the public keys of other nodes. There are various ways to handle key distribution, of course.

<comment><USER3> From the blog post you linked three comments up or so:

> Big "C" means all nodes see the same data at the same time. Being big-C > consistent is a prerequisite to preventing double-spends, and therefore > storing tokens of value. There are many models of consistency; we mean > "consistent" in the same way that the CAP theorem does, except a little bit > more loosely (for pragmatism). Little "c" means strong eventual consistency, > such that when data gets merged there are no conflicts, but not consistent > enough to prevent double spends.

> there are various ways to handle key distribution, of course

Right. Having the public keys advances the discussion precisely nothing, because public key auth is pretty much a given if we're talking about the servers identifying themselves.

What tells us if we have a decentralised system with no central authority is: who's the gatekeeper? Who controls key distribution, and which keys are accepted into the pool?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > They're Software-as-a-Service on steroids.

I've been writing about this for a while and I'm thankful someone else "gets it" on a level. The key to understanding why blockchain data structures are a big deal for software (including AI) is realizing how they enable change in business models and the more customer focused "business layers" in which those models operate.

It's worth pointing out that SaaS is a evolutionary step up from the older MSP models. Assuming software models do not change over time is dogmatic.

Blockchains, like Bitcoin, enable a means by which suffering/cost of work can be encapsulated in a transaction that cannot be altered later by the consumer of that suffering cost or the producer of that suffering cost. This means the suffering (work units) incurred by the AI (or the human involved) can be preserved in a way that is immutable and used later for efficiency improvements. That's not to say the work done by the AI is necessarily valuable, but by making it immutable the work done by the AI can be judged/measured to have been worth the amount of resources it took from something else (i.e. an other's suffering) to do the work it did.

It is my belief that adversarial machine learning may benefit from blockchain based data stores.

All of this is very important given our current infrastructure, and all software models that go with it, resemble Swiss cheese from a security perspective. Super viral growth models may make VCs and a few scrappy millennials wealthy, but they don't scale long term for customer satisfaction. We certainly don't want an AI going around creating super viral growth models that drain the world's economy either!

Blockchains enable "do better". "Do better" is the first step on the path to enlightenment.

I should note that my use of the term "suffering" relates to the cost of causality, either by one's own choice or by something outside one's own choice. It is not meant to refer to the human emotion of suffering, although the two can certainly be related.

<comment><USER5> But the definition of work changes and the value of that work also changes. Bitcoin's internal self-referentiality and internally self-transparent genesis sidesteps this issue.

"This means the suffering (work units) incurred by the AI (or the human involved) can be preserved in a way that is immutable and used later for efficiency improvements. That's not to say the work done by the AI is necessarily valuable, but by making it immutable the work done by the AI can be judged/measured to have been worth the amount of resources it took from something else (i.e. an other's suffering) to do the work it did."

I think you are alluding to that fact in that above quote, but I think it still begs the question of preserving a standard, abstract 'value of work' across a constantly changing AI dataset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As I see it, the main challenge with much of this proposal is that it isn't clear how to convince the kind of broad sharing much of this needs (for training). There's some incentive, in the sense that if you participate you reap AI improvement, but traditional (and regulated) players will be hesitant, on pure risk-management terms (and conservatism).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the author here. (Hi!)

I agree, for the use cases that involve sharing, how do you incentivize this when many see data as the moat? This is why I wrote the section about "Hoard vs. share?". In some applications, there will be more incentives to hoard; in others, to share.

Note that one thing that softens this impasse is the idea of data exchanges. So rather than "hoard vs share" you can think of all data as potentially "for sale, but with a price" and where the price could vary dramatically. And that's where a data exchange could come in to reduce friction for price discovery.

<comment><USER7> I don't understand the assertion made regarding blockchains/digital signatures supposedly increasing accuracy or trust in IoT sensor-reading reliability.

Also, how do you respond to the inevitable criticism that advertising your solution as a "shared global registry" invokes the "How Standards Proliferate" XKCD[1]?

Finally, I like the idea of creating a marketplace or exchange for AI training information, but it's strictly not necessary to use a blockchain for this purpose unless a very large portion of your users are hyper-concerned about their anonymity. It's also misleading to try to build a marketplace of signed IoT data, with the assumption that it is more trustworthy than unsigned IoT data, when that is simply false.

[1]: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thoughts. I'll respond to each point in turn.

> I don't understand the assertion made regarding blockchains/digital > signatures supposedly increasing accuracy or trust in IoT sensor-reading > reliability.

If each IoT sensor has a known public key then we can know that the data came from that sensor.

It doesn't solve all reliability problems of course. E.g. if you have a hardware failure, a digital signature ain't gonna help:)

> Also, how do you respond to the inevitable criticism that advertising your > solution as a "shared global registry" invokes the "How Standards > Proliferate" XKCD[1]?

I get this. What's cool is that IPDB doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be) the "one network to rule them all. The path is to leverage other existing standards and new connectivity standards, so that IPDB (or whatever registry) plays well with other emerging & existing registries.

The main lesson is from the internet itself, which was born by combining together disparate networks (ARPANET, NSFNet, etc) that didn't communicate previously, via the invention of TCP/IP. All the networks had to do was alter their top-level protocol and suddenly they could talk to other nets. There's a similar protocol for blockchain tech, called Interledger ([https://www.interledger.org](https://www.interledger.org)). Whereas TCP/IP connected networks with data, since you can re-send packets etc it doesn't account for double-spending; Interledger does this. You can view it as a way to connect networks of value.

Interledger has already been used to connect Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many centralized payment networks.

There are other protocols that are closer to the data level. E.g. simply using JSON-LD helps. And ILPD on top of that (roughly, a Merkle-ized JSON-LD). And domain-specific value transfer protocols above that, like COALA IP for intellectual property (which plays well with existing protocols like DDEX for music, PLUS for photography).

> Finally, I like the idea of creating a marketplace or exchange for AI > training information, but it's strictly not necessary to use a blockchain > for this purpose

Agreed; and I wrote about it: "An exchange could be centralized, like DatastreamX already does for data. But so far, they are really only able to use publicly-available data sources, since many businesses see more risk than reward from sharing. What about a decentralized data & model exchange? ..." and I went on to list some benefits.

> unless a very large portion of your users are hyper-concerned about their > anonymity.

To me, there are much greater benefits. I'm hoping that the biggest benefit will be to further catalyze a truly open data market.

> It's also misleading to try to build a marketplace of signed IoT data, with > the assumption that it is more trustworthy than unsigned IoT data, when that > is simply false.

I'm not sure why you say this; knowing the provenance of the data has clear trust-related benefits in some cases like I described. Obviously just standing on its own, it has no benefit, it's all about usage farther along in the pipeline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just an observation on ML--

If the key to making ML useful has been huge sets of training examples, then that shows that current ML algorithms are much worse than humans at generalizing from a small number of examples. That suggests that current ML algorithms are leaving a lot on the table in terms of how much they are able to learn from each example, and there is a lot of room for improvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right - there is a lot of room for improvement. One of the big research threads in ML is better unsupervised learning - to learn from data without labels. Another hot topic is adversarial networks, which generate their own training data by playing against each other. (15 years ago this was "competitive co-evolution";)

> If the key to making ML useful has been huge sets of training examples

BTW this is only for some ML approaches and problems. There are some problems where getting more data is just way too expensive; e.g. building a model from silicon manufacturing where each mfg. run costs $50M; i.e. each datapoint costs $50M. Guess what - there are still useful ML-y things you can do here. Less extreme, there are many problems with only 100-1000 training points available, and you can still do a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Big Data + Blockchain + AI, looks quite hand wavy, have you found a practical use case for BigchainDB yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Articles like the "AI + Blockchain" one are meant to be forward-looking, to help inspire people to build. Call it hand-wavy if you wish; I call it laying out a vision:)

But we're all about real apps getting built. Many comanies are building on BigchainDB. For example, I describe some of them here: [https://blog.bigchaindb.com/where-does-blockchain- scalabilit...](https://blog.bigchaindb.com/where-does-blockchain-scalability- matter-specific-use-cases-from-digital-art-to-hr-9cf5ad8f7042).

There are many, many more companies that have not publicly announced what they're building yet. Stay tuned:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have also thought about the applications blockchains could have for AI. However I didn't consider blockchains as a means to store data but rather as a way to reliably track the performance/quality of various AI services. You can read about it here: [http://jcfrei.com/the-ai-economy- bitcoin/](http://jcfrei.com/the-ai-economy-bitcoin/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh cool! Thanks for the link. I just added it to the "further reading" section on the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just off the top of my head:

* Why use a blockchain rather than a database?

* Why do you require blockchain rather than some other approach?

* Are you positing this as open to the hostile world? If so, why? If not, why use a blockchain?

* If you're open to the hostile world: what's your threat model, and how are you addressing it?

* How do your defences stop this from being the next Tay?

<comment><USER12> Regarding "hostile world," I recently learned that on private networks where all participating nodes are authenticated, blockchains can substitute proof- of-(work|stake|...) for faster and more efficient algorithms for reaching consensus [1] (I only remember raft something). What's the use case then? At least for older data (in blocks far away from the current one), blockchain in an immutable database. On the other hand, it's fun operating with buzzwords.

[1] [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7467408/?reload=true](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7467408/?reload=true)

<comment><USER11> Pretty much none. The very funniest one is Intel's "Proof of Elapsed Time", which might as well be called Proof of Buying An Intel CPU. Rather than have miners compete to produce the next block, a timer running in an environment secured by a DRM mechanism built into your Intel CPU picks if you get to do the next block. The white paper is an extended advertisement for Intel® Software Guard Extensions™ (SGX™). Also, they only have a simulated Proof of Buying An Intel CPU mechanism as yet.

[https://intelledger.github.io/introduction.html](https://intelledger.github.io/introduction.html)

This doesn't provide any security against malicious participants; the excuse is that private blockchains need speed over security. You might think that at that point you don't need a blockchain at all, but you're hardly going to sell any consultant hours with _that_ sort of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article is confusing and contradicting in so many ways. To start with, I was expecting some kind of trustless self-contained system whereby everything can be independently verified and concretely recorded in an autonomous system similar to a blockchain. But instead what OP seems to be describing here is more like a distributed database for storing AI training set data (similar to Storj) where he uses the blockchain more as a metaphor than anything specific.

To give you an example, he uses the distributed nature of the blockchain (as it pertains to storing full copies of the chain on multiple nodes) as a model for storing training set data within a distributed system and the benefit he states for this is that since the infrastructure isn't controlled by one person - organizations will be more inclined to share.

The author then goes on to describe how the integrity of training set data can be attested to in the form of ... "I believe this data / model to be good at this point" which is about as far away from verifiable as you can get. The problem is, the article is very high level and its filled with meaningless buzz words and double-speak like "DAO" ... which is apparently something that can be applied to a human-based reputation system and a blockchain (hence useless.)

There are ways to use artificial intelligence as [part of] the reward mechanism for a blockchain by creating an initial AI to recognize specific types of content and then rewarding miners for finding said content ("datachains" in data mining.) And there are also trustless ways for rewarding people for creating the best general-purpose intelligence for understanding a given type of data. But from the author's account its very hard to see if we're talking about anything concrete here as the article is so technically vague on details.

He does go into detail for several of these ideas. But of the ideas stated none of them are discrete, trustless, self-contained systems like a blockchain (or even really need a blockchain) which is a shame because AI, data, and blockchains can actually be unified to create bullet-proof entities (which in my opinion will be much more purpose-specific than any vague Ethereum-type "AI DAO" non-sense.)

Edit: The authors treatment of AI DAOs is worth the read.

</comment><comment><USER14> I noticed that bigchainDB is written enitrely in python. I love python, but I'm surprised to see it used in the database space!

(if the author is reading this) - what were your interest in using python? Do you have any concern for it's performance/scalability as the service grows?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, this is the author:)

I've been using Python in enterprise-grade, large-scale production systems since the early 2000s. And it works, well. Most python libraries where performance matters have C under the hood. E.g. numpy matrix manipulation. Parallel computing got way better with the async support.

As for BigchainDB itself: it wraps RethinkDB (and soon MongoDB) which is where much of the compute intensive stuff happens. Also, we leverage these fast Python+C libraries, and parallelization. If/when needed, we can always convert some of our core stuff to C or another fast language.

<comment><USER14> cool. thanks for your explanation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> bigchaindb main product is actually a cluster of something like mongodb. Read the whitepaper, was disappointing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, it's Trent here, I'm CTO of BigchainDB and also the author of the blockchains-AI article.

Yep, it's a [database] cluster, and proud to be that:)

But, it's special in that there isn't a single organization that owns or controls it. That is, it's decentralized.

And in fact it draws on traditional distributed DBs by building on them, to get first-class scalability and querying abilities. The first version was built on RethinkDB and we're working on wrapping MongoDB too.

There's also a public version of BigchainDB that's getting rolled out, called IPDB ([http://ipdb.foundation](http://ipdb.foundation)). With IPDB, people building apps don't need to roll their own cluster, they can just talk to it via http.

> was disappointing

How? We're always looking for feedback.

<comment><USER15> Yeah I get that, but a single "mongodb or whatever cluster database behind bigchaindb that you are using was called" drop tables * ; query would actually delete your so called blockchain. Thats a huge security whole, which last time I checked bigchaindb - would be solved "administratively" ie operational security level instead of protocol.

Not to sound like an ass though, I do keep an eye on bigchaindb for what it is to become as the people behind it do seem to have great talent.

Has that security issue been resolved? How is the ipdb secured?

<comment><AUTHOR> We acknowledge this attack vector and others; and list them in github. It's in our roadmap to address them. The current schedule is the following: we're currently wrapping up the a base MongoDB integration (next couple weeks); on the heels of that we'll improve the MongoDB replication (a couple months); and on the heels of that we'll address the "drop" issue (and other unwanted commands) via a wire protocol firewall. More security stuff to follow that.

BTW thanks for the kind words about our team. I think they're amazing too:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What about AI for blockchains?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question. As the article says: there are many ways that AI can help blockchains, such as mining blockchain data (e.g. Silk Road investigation). That's for another discussion:)

I'd love to see more suggestions here or elsewhere. It would be my pleasure to write an article on this.</comment></comment>


Facebook 'Like' Button Takes Over Share Button Functionality - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/02/27/facebook-like-button-takes-over-share-button-functionality/

<comment><USER2> Is there any way for people to share a URL with their friends on Facebook without affecting a globally-visible count?

I have a real-estate site and homebuyers have an incentive not to "tip off" anyone else who could end up bidding against them for a house. You can imagine the same is true for eBay items.

But they would still like to share homes they're interested in on Facebook, among a small network. I put a Share link on our pages instead of one that would actually show the number of shares or likes. But of course, this information is very publicly available (e.g. the Shareaholic shows it for every page).

To be honest, I don't presume it makes any sense for Facebook to support this kind of thing. They are naturally biased towards openness and would rather provide functionality to support that. And this is kind of a unique scenario. But on behalf of users of the personal web, I would love it if Facebook supported:

<meta name="robots" content="nolinkcount">

<comment><USER3> Can't they just share the url the normal way? Before all these services for sharing urls we used to just copy the url and send it via some text medium.

<comment><USER2> I think if you cut and paste the URL into the status box in the normal way, Facebook increments the share count. Maybe if you remove the link preview it doesn't, but I haven't tested it.

I would just like users to be able to use Facebook to easily solicit opinion about a potential home. However, if clicking through a Share/Like button or merely pasting the URL into Facebook causes a global "this was shared" count to go up, users are doing something they might not want to, without even realizing it.

I could already imagine that having Shareaholic running while looking at house listings is probably a good idea. Especially on listings for a home you're selling!</comment></comment></comment>


Is Iceland Poised to Become a Data Center Paradise? - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/telecom/internet/iceland-data-center-paradise

<comment><USER2> It's worth noting that Iceland is currently in the midst of a large ongoing volcanic eruption, its largest eruption in centuries. Large numbers of people find themselves having to hide indoors to escape dangerous gases depending on which way the wind blows on any given day.

The current slow-moving eruption and seismic activity is fairly likely to lead to a catastrophic explosive event and massive flash floods that could destroy a significant amount of hydroelectric infrastructure.

Doesn't necessarily mean Iceland's not a good place to build huge data centers, but it's something to keep in mind.</comment>


iOS White Label App Ban and Easiest Design Solution - <AUTHOR> https://www.cakewalklabs.com/blog/2017/10/20/ios-white-label-apps-app-store-ban-easiest-solution <comment><USER2> The site's Let's Encrypt certificate is revoked, causing SSL errors upon attempt to visit.</comment>


Control Panel Will Be the Next Windows 10 Feature to Get Axed - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-will-axe-control-panel-from-windows-10-were-1844280174 <comment><USER2> Can't wait to use the replacement that implements 30% of the original features.</comment>


Object-oriented design patterns in Linux kernel, part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/444910/a13771395ae01342/ <comment><USER2> Note that LWN is an excellent weekly Linux publication that uses the subscription model. Articles are first only visible to subscribers, and then after a week to the the general public.

As a sort of gesture to the community, they added a "Send a free link" option that allows readers to send an article to a friend or colleague before this one-week period ends. This feature was really a nice gesture towards the LWN community.

Clearly this feature now abused to send an article to a website with a large readership (since it is still in the one week subscriber-only period), which is really sad, given that LWN always had to put a lot of effort into generating enough income to compensate their authors.

So, if you like the depth and quality of the article, please consider becoming a subscriber. It's really affordable, and provides genuinely good Linux/Unix- related content.

Note: I am not affiliated with LWN, just a happy subscriber, sad to see a nice feature misused.

<comment><AUTHOR> From 'Send a free link' page:

"This feature is made available as a service to LWN subscribers, and in the hope that they will use it to spread the word about their favorite LWN articles."

I spread the word about my favorite article in the hope this will attract new subscribers to LWN.net .

<comment><USER2> Why not wait a week until it is generally available?

If a small percentage of LWN subscribers would post their favorite articles to well-read sites, it would quickly defeat the incentive to subscribe to LWN.

Anyway, the main point is: LWN is great, if you like it, consider joining ;).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another interesting way to achieve object-orientedness in C can be found in libdispatch [1], the user space implementation of Apple's Grand Central Dispatch API. It makes use of the transparent_union GCC attribute [2], among other things, and is pretty heavy on macro usage. Cool stuff.

[1] <http://libdispatch.macosforge.org/>

[2] <http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Type-Attributes.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> OO in C can be uglier than in C++ but there's one big advantage: an object can use a mix of functions from different "classes" instead of pointing to a fixed vtable. An object can decide to build its own vtable and patch in optimized member functions.

<comment><USER5> How does C's version compare to the approach in C++ of using composition (instead of inheritance) to combine several objects into one? I guess C allows finer-grained "monkey patching" of one function pointer?

<comment><USER4> Yes, I think the main difference is that run-time changes are allowed. C++ composition and things like mixins using templates allow combining without inheriting but everything is statically typed at compile time.

Of course all this dynamic stuff and more is still possible in C++, in fact, C++ features could be used to build a better "dynamic patching" mechanism than C, so it's not really an argument against using C++ at all, I'm a big fan myself.

The interesting question remains whether C code, no matter what kind of feature is implemented, is inherently easier to maintain for a project like the Linux kernel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> impure functional programing with tables of closures.</comment>


Let's Talk About Burnout - <AUTHOR> https://blog.usejournal.com/lets-talk-about-burnout-79461719d447 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a poignant account, and I'm very happy she wrote it. Perhaps it's a penchant for hyperbole, but if anything, I'm struck by how much _worse_ this could have been. From the article:

      I walked away without fanfare, quietly slipping into a
      new professional life that made me feel supremely
      lucky, like I'd fallen hard but landed on a soft
      cushion that I was surprised to find beneath me.

In a similar situation, "most people" _would 't_ have been able to pay of $250k of debt in 2.5 years. Which only makes her advice more important. So take care of yourself.</comment>


Visual Studio '15' Preview 3 for C# and Visual Basic - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/07/13/visual-studio-15-preview-3-for-c-and-visual-basic/ <comment><AUTHOR> I like the look of the new tuple syntax (although I would call it multiple return values). From the article:

        (int sum, int count) Tally(object[] values)
        {
            var r = (s: 0, c: 0);
            foreach (var v in values)
            {
                switch(v)
                {
                    case int i:
                        r = (r.s + i, r.c + 1);
                        break;
                    case object[] l:
                        var n = Tally(l);
                        r = (r.s + n.sum, r.c + n.count);
                        break;
                }
            }
            return r;
        }

        object[] numbers = { 0b1, 0b10, 0b100, new object[] { 0b100, 0b1_0000 }, 0b10_0000 };
        var t = Tally(numbers);
        WriteLine($"Sum: {t.sum}, count: {t.count}");</comment>


Show HN: Landr – My First Indie Startup - <AUTHOR> https://landr.page <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I released Landr few days back on Product Hunt and it got really good response and reached top 5th product of the day - [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/landr-3](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/landr-3)

Landr is a landing page creator which helps you create websites for your products in minutes.

With growing internet popularity everyone wants to have a digital presence and having a website for their product is a must before they launch. Through Landr, i'm trying to make it easy for everyone to create landing page websites for their products with ease. Landr is very different from the traditional website builders you see on the market today. All these website builders are mostly drag and drop solutions. Even though they provide you with all the tools needed to build websites, unfortunately not everyone is creative enough to build good websites using these tools. Landr solves this problem by providing users beautiful list of templates to choose from and not having to worry about customising them at all. Users just have to select a template, fill all the inputs needed for that template, check the live preview of their website with the current details and then just create it by the click of a button. It's that simple.

In the first version of the product I'm providing SaaS templates. In the next version the plan is to provide templates for other category of users like freelancers who want to showcase their skills,students who want to showcase their portfolio to everyone on the internet.

I hope Landr removes one more problem from this world.I'm happy to answer any question you guys have.

Connect with me on twitter to join the journey of Landr: [https://twitter.com/sunilc_](https://twitter.com/sunilc_)

</comment><comment><USER2> Well done - congrats on shipping! Just be aware Landr is a pretty established audio mastering platform. Not that I'm trying to convince you to 'rebrand' (although certainly easier earlier rather than later) - but picking something where you don't compete on a name will make it far easier for you to 'win' in organic searches and if you ever buy ads (I see Landr already bid on their own name).

Good luck with it all!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)

You're right. I have got this feedback about the audio company several times after the launch.

I wanted to know if I can keep the same domain but rebrand with a different name? Would having a domain with landr in the domain name be a problem later?

<comment><USER2> Honestly, if it was me I'd just buy a new domain that is, or is as close to the service name as you can get. For the sake of $10 it's going to make everything easier for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks cool, congrats on the launch.

What tools did you use for creating the video on the landing page? Veed or something different?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)

I used Kinemaster. It's a mobile app.</comment></comment>


New golang modules and gitlab CI - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Extrawurst/golang-and-gitlab-ci-da97d11bafe1 <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing this great blog post!</comment>


Coinbase releases professional trading platform for institutional clients - <AUTHOR> https://prime.coinbase.com <comment><USER2> They're going to give new tools to institutional traders. Co-location, FIX market data, lending & margin financing products, professional crypto secure storage ('coinbase custody') etc. etc. They'll be faster than non-institutions and have trading options unavailable to the rest of us.

Read this [https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-institutional- deea317d23a...](https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-institutional-deea317d23af)

Right now, the institutions have to play on a level playing field with us one- man teams.

This suite of products will give them their pay-to-win advantages to keep us little guys from being the fastest and best in the market.

I have the fastest bot on GDAX right now, that will only last until these new services are introduced -- since I can't afford to pay $XXk a month for the privilege.

Edit: If you're reading this from your chair at a HFT firm, send me a message if your company is interested in the fastest bot :)

<comment><USER3> It's almost like capital tends to concentrate in the absence of regulated financial markets or something...

<comment><USER4> Two words that perfectly describe financial regulation: accredited investor. Now, what was that about capital concentration?

<comment><USER5> IMO, the SEC accredited investor rules are in place to make it a federal crime to scam non-accredited investors. Though I tend to be anti-regulation in general, I think these are good laws as I can only imagine how many investment scams would be running otherwise.

<comment><USER6> They make it a federal crime to offer securities to non-wealthy people. Characterizing all such offers as scams is a prejudicial over-simplification, and the kind of sweeping and presumptive generalization that rationalizes repression.

<comment><USER7> I think you are being uncharitable to the point they made. Since there are accredited investors, if a bad guy tries to talk an un-accredited investor into buying into a dressed up Ponzi scheme it is a federal crime and thus can be investigated and treated as such. The goal of this is to keep main street investors safe. Yes, it does put some limits on individual freedom but I think this is one area where the trade-offs has been chosen decently well.

<comment><USER8> Nothing stops an unaccredited investor betting the farm on Enron. If there is a less perceived risk, people will use more leverage. So all of this "protection" just amounts to restricted opportunity.

<comment><USER5> Several people went to federal prison and Arthur Anderson went out of business over the Enron shenanigans. This seems as much a deterrent as the Securites Act of 1934. If you're willing to risk federal prison, you can solicit non- accredited investors for unregistered securities.

<comment><USER8> You are missing the point. Insert any publicly listed stock that tanked. How about a nice safe bank, like Lehman brothers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Coinbase lost this radio show's money and won't take responsibility for it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E7FSs6oXak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E7FSs6oXak)

(I'm not the show host, I just enjoy the show)

<comment><USER10> And I'm locked out of my account for 6 months cause 2FA stopped working and now they can't verify my ID. The whole thing is a shit show.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The GDAX servers are hosted on AWS. Us-East-1 if i remember correctly. This allows anyone to have basically free colocation. So not sure why they give colocation as a selling point here

<comment><USER12> Would you have to try instances in multiple availability zones until you get the one with the shortest round trip time?

Surely they load balance across AZs though so results may change...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a reason to prefer trading with BTC rather than the futures?

<comment><USER14> One pays a premium for the security of a future, if you don't need that security, you can buy / sell at a better price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Coinbase is basically nothing and continuing to decline in relevance in the crypto market. The idea that they're capable of providing a higher level of service when they failed miserably at what they do now is amusing.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's an interesting idea. I guess is an institution is going to take on crypto exposure they'll need all the trimmings including real-time market data in order to properly manage their exposure. But beyond the basic risk management... there's not much actual trading going on, is there? What drives the need for low latency? The crypto space has fewer assets than the actual real-currency FOREX market and it's not driven by real economic data, right? The only real "strategy" is momentum trading, right? It's just not clear what low-latency is buying you here.

<comment><USER17> Lower latencies would help any market makers that change bid/offer quotes more quickly when say the price of bitcoin changes on a different exchange, or the FX price changes in the quoted base currency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the good thing about the crypto currency trading world is that everyone have more or less the same access as everyone else on the current exchanges (at least on GDAX). It would be great with more exchanges to fill the gap between the exchanges that wants to be 'traditional' (GDAX) and the ones who cannot be trusted (Maybe Bitfinex?)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm so glad the currency is decentralized so that the existing powers don't have undue influence over monitary policy and the value of the currency I hold. Oh....wait...right...greed wins again.

You can distribute the nodes all you want, as long as the currency can be traded on a financial swap system, it will be nothing more than another commodity.

</comment><comment><USER20> How about they get rid of wash trading first

<comment><USER21> Wash trading makes valuating the market on volume alone harder to do and therefore increases novel activity in the market, making old algo's obsolete and decreasing risk temporarily until the wash trading strategy is identified and made unprofitable.

Wash trading did nothing wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone trust Coinbase at this point?

<comment><USER23> I think the vast, vast majority trust it a great deal, perhaps more than any other crypto property.

So I'm wondering why you would ask such a question?

<comment><USER24> They have developed a reputation for having poor, unresponsive consumer support. Try doing a twitter search for @coinbasesupport. At any given time, it's a horror show.

I personally discovered this after a time sensitive transaction took about 48 hours to complete because of a buggy deploy on their end. The only reason it didn't take longer was because I was able to track down a coinbase support employee on the bitcoin reddit.

<comment><USER22> Same. They accidentally repeated a buy I'd made 5 or so times-- and it took almost a month for the coins to appear in my account.

I ended up making a couple bucks off the deal. But I can't help but think how badly it could have gone.

<comment><USER25> Official Coinbase support is non existent in my experience. There are people on the Coinbase Reddit page [https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/) who seem to be able to move things along if you aren't getting any support from Coinbase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> public service announcement: use square's app to move your fiat to bitcoin instead. Works way faster than coinbase.

</comment><comment><USER26> What does this mean for Gemini?

<comment><USER27> I think Gemini was the first in NY to launch institutional features back in late 2016[1], including the hallowed custodial service. My understanding is that without a qualified custodian[2][3], hedge funds with assets under management greater than $150M were unable to invest in said securities because they need(ed) a qualified custodian beyond this limit.

[1] [https://medium.com/gemini/gemini-licensed-custodial- services...](https://medium.com/gemini/gemini-licensed-custodial- services-c4f2658d7469)

[2] [https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/ia-2176.htm](https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/ia-2176.htm)

[3] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies- funds/l...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-funds/lack- of-wall-st-back-office-deters-mainstream-crypto-investments-idUSKBN1I91WF)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Institutional accounts have already existed on Coinbase for a long time. Maybe the splash page is new?

<comment><USER2> No. Read this [https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-institutional- deea317d23a...](https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-institutional-deea317d23af)

They are getting lower latency, secure storage and new trading products -- only available to Institutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hyperbitcoinization incoming!

In all seriousness, the attention from institutions, growing maturity of custodial solutions and good monetary policy are colliding. Nocoiners, watch out!

<comment><USER30> Coming soon, CDOs (Coin-Debt-Obligations)!

<comment><USER31> [https://dai.makerdao.com/](https://dai.makerdao.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


IPad MiFi Conversion - <AUTHOR> http://dishtvhdstore.com/ipad-mifi-conversion-for-verizon/

<comment><USER3> Wow that's an impressive hack.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's hoping this starts a vibrant community of HackenPad enthusiasts. Void your warranty, lose a bit of bass from your sound, and you've got Verizon for your iPad!

</comment><comment><USER4> But, but, but --

Why not simply use the iPad's wifi via the MiFi as a hotspot?

(Yes, I get it; pure hack value. But honestly, other than the hack value, why chop up a piece of kit like the MiFi and void the warranty on the iPad in order to do ... less?)

<comment><USER5> It takes up less space, and you have to carry around only one object instead of two.

<comment><USER6> Velcro the mifi to the back of the iPad when you're carrying it, and "deploy it" when you need it.

<comment><USER5> It's _also_ reasonably sized and doesn't look like a makeshift solution that someone put together in 30 seconds.

<comment><USER6> I never claimed that his version wasn't better, but the parent stated that "It takes up less space, and you have to carry around only one object instead of two."

My point was that you didn't necessarily have to carry around 2 things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He didnt comment on how much iPad battery was stripped down by MiFi.

<comment><USER8> And I would be a bit worried bypassing the battery-management hardware on the iPad like that.

You really don't want to take LiPolys all the way to 0V. Nor, ideally, do you want to go around the amp-hour counter that lets the charger know the SOC of the battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be pretty slick if someone built CDMA 3G (EVDO? Is that what it's called?) or WiMax board that just plugged into the jack on the iPad's motherboard.

But I wouldn't be at all surprised if that somebody turned out to be Apple in a year or two.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad we have a decent 3G network here in Australia with Telstra - <USER2> roughly get speeds of 3-4Mbps on their 3G network. It's great!

<comment><USER10> Shame that it is so ridiculously expensive, dur to Telstra not having to compete properly with other carriers. Tesltra should really have been broken up, into reatil and infrastructure, it is a big joke that it hasn't been, and all of Australia is the worse of, due to that fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I look forward to the iphone hack to make it work with verizon

</comment><comment><USER12> can't wait to see the clear/wimax version ...

</comment><comment><USER13> This is an incredible hack, kudos!

And for the Apple fans who might consider this a dangerous act of hardware sacrilege, I hear ya! But please consider this as not so much of a practical hack, but rather as a protest hack against the stupid, continued exclusive hardware lock-in to the low quality, over priced phone service of the _Death Star Orifice_ —AT&T.

Everyone knows AT&T simply can't provide the same high level of innovation, service and quality as Apple. It has ceased making sense for AT&T to get exclusive bottom line say-so on what Apple can and can't do with the mobile platform. Apple needs to embrace polygamy because AT&T represents the antithesis of Apple's core mission: beautiful software.

All AT&T can do is fuck up software. (Bell Labs doesn't count.) And it's usually done by imposing stupid, consumer-unfriendly restrictions on the hardware so they can stick to their old telco monopolist business model of nickel and diming all of their customers.

Apple needed AT&T to get a toe in the door to the telco's monopoly. But now that iPads and iPhone are spreading all over the place like a blown out BP oil well, and the entire mobile industry is playing catch up to reach or emulate Apple's tight UI & design in software, it's time for Apple to throw AT&T to the Feds over something. (As much as I despise AT&T, I recognize they are so entrenched that the only way to change them will be another Federal breakup of their monopoly).</comment>


Ask HN: SNI SSL Certificates - <AUTHOR>

Where is the best place to pick up an SSL certificate to use with SNI? <comment><USER2> My understanding is that all SSL certificates work with SNI; it's necessary for the server and client software to support SNI. The awkward squad is IE+Chrome+Safari on Windows XP.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.</comment>


DigitalOcean Indicator - <AUTHOR> http://blog.andrewsomething.com/2014/04/25/digitalocean-indicator-release/

<comment><USER2> Since you are already using an API wrapper, i would highly recommend using a lib that is provider-agnostic, such as libcloud[0], which provides a pythonic abstraction layer over all the crap that various IaaS providers put into their API designs.

[0] [https://libcloud.apache.org/](https://libcloud.apache.org/)

<comment><USER3> > pythonic

Not to state the obvious, but that's not terribly practical for anyone except those writing in Python.

<comment><USER4> but:

a) the indicator _is_ written in python b) there are equivalent cloud- abstraction libraries in other languages, like fog[0] in ruby, jclouds[1] in java, pkgcloud[2] for node and maybe others.

The point I believe was that if you use an abstraction layer over many providers, you can instantly make this useful for other/any cloud providers, not just digital ocean, and without any extra code. At least in theory.

[0][http://fog.io/](http://fog.io/) [1][http://jclouds.apache.org/](http://jclouds.apache.org/) [2][https://www.npmjs.org/package/pkgcloud](https://www.npmjs.org/package/pkgcloud)

<comment><USER3> > the indicator is written in python

Ah. Good point, my bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great! Would you mind sharing how you got started? Is there a great tutorial out there for building indicators and widgets for unity?

I tried to do this twice, once for unity and another time for the gnome shell and I couldn't find anything useful out there (or even figure out what programming language I needed to know) and became pretty discouraged. I think that was about a year or two ago and it seemed like outsiders to those respective dev communities faced an exceedingly uphill battle.

I mentioned this to a gnome dev I know and he agreed that the docs were lacking but is there a secret or something new we don't know about?

<comment><USER6> The source is on Github and in Python so looking through it may give you some clues: [https://github.com/koalalorenzo/python- digitalocean](https://github.com/koalalorenzo/python-digitalocean)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh heck yes. Call me weird, but little hacks like this are why I'm struggling to decide what laptop to get. I want to get a MacBook Pro, but I enjoy using Linux so much (Ubuntu in particular) I'm struggling to decide whether or not I should!

<comment><USER8> I've had two MBP since 2007 and I'm done with Apple for my next system. The hardware is fine but I always feel like I'm going to break something irreversably when I tweak something in OSX. The hardware doesn't justify the price either so just booting Linux on it does not appeal to me. The one other thing I can't standcabout MBPs is the keyboard. Too much space between keys.

Problem is finding a good non-Apple laptop I can put Fedora on... It's probably going to be a Dell or Lenovo.

<comment><USER9> I have a MBP, and recently bought a Lenovo X1 for Linux, but have found the trackpad is pretty awful compared to my MBP. Even with Windows, so it's not Linux specific. Despite numerous attempts at tuning one of it's 200 settings, I can't seem to get it to not move the cursor a few pixels before I tap it to click, and thus clicking the wrong thing. Good luck.

<comment><USER10> If you use synaptics try this. Should fix your issue. nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf (find Section "InputClass" and add this option) Option "FingerHigh" "8"

<comment><USER11> I love Linux and is in the same dilemma re MBPs - but this just makes my blood boil. How can this work well in Windows and OSX but require Linux users to hunt down magical incantations and fiddle hundreds of settings? Isn't it possible extract the settings from the running driver in Windows/OSX and apply those?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great work! I see myself using this for my droplets. Developing Unity indicators can be fun since it's so simple to create small notification apps for various services. (shameless self promo [https://github.com/nilgradisnik/coinprice- indicator](https://github.com/nilgradisnik/coinprice-indicator))

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice! Any plans for a Linode version as well?

<comment><USER14> would love a linode version!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm getting "W: Failed to fetch [http://ppa.launchpad.net/andrewsomething/digitalocean/ubuntu...](http://ppa.launchpad.net/andrewsomething/digitalocean/ubuntu/dists/raring/main/binary- amd64/Packages) 404 Not Found "

Does anybody else have this problem?

<comment><USER16> I'm not using his PPA, but the reason you're getting those errors is because his PPA only has builds for saucy and trusty, and you're using raring.

Easiest thing to do would be to ask him to add a build target for raring.

<comment><USER17> > _Easiest thing to do would be to ask him to add a build target for raring._

Many PPA developers have a policy of only supporting Ubuntu releases that Canonical also supports.

Official support for raring expired 3 months ago. AFAIK it didn't even get the Heartbleed patch. The _correct_ thing to do would be to update to trusty. It might even turn out to be the easiest thing as well, because you'll run more and more into these kinds of issues as everyone else leaves raring behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is really super cool. Hope someone makes out something similar for windows.

</comment><comment><USER19> Very nice!

</comment><comment><USER20> The top comment as of the time of my writing is as follows:

 _OS x version, please!!_

Screw this. I'm on a Mac, but this is crap. This guy put in a bunch of time and made something awful, and the top voted comment is asking him to port it to another system, without even thanking him for his work or acknowledging how often what he made is? Ugh. Talk about entitled.

Want an OS X version? [https://github.com/andrewsomething/digitalocean- indicator/fo...](https://github.com/andrewsomething/digitalocean- indicator/fork)

<comment><USER21> I think you mean "made something awesome", no?

<comment><USER22> Well, "terrific" can be used as "awesome" too so...</comment></comment></comment>


California man sues Uber claiming it stole ride-sharing idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/15/uber-secrets-lawsuit-idUSL1N0Y619720150515

<comment><USER2> If Halpern really did share his prototypes etc with Kalanick then it is quite unethical what Kalanick did but I doubt there is legal recourse. Then again I wouldn't be surprised when it comes to Travis's ethics.

This does give founders food for thought to be less open and protect their ideas until they have something solid. NDA's don't work but you can try to keep a low profile as much as possible.

<comment><USER3> It also points out that execution is more important than the idea. Halpern could have also built an Uber-like service, since it sounds like he had a prototype of one already, and beat them fairly in the market. But since he failed now he is whining about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some funny quotes;

> At the time, unlike the persona portrayed today of a dismissive and > aggressive mogul, KALANICK was an approachable fellow entrepreneur who had > been humbled by failure. (#71)

..

> Following KALANICK's assurances of confidentiality, HALPERN shared the > Celluride concept, described its architecture, and showed KALANICK the > interface sketches and designs as well as a working cell phone demo. HALPERN > also gave KALANICK the Celluride Brochure and showed KALANICK the Celluride > slide presentation that he would show investors and potential partners or > team members. (#78)

..

It sounds like there's a bit more here than the early press was hinting at.. If the emails back all of it up, it seems that Halpern was developing this app for a few years, showed prototypes and business plans to all of the founders and VCs behind Uber immediately before they launched their competing service. I bet there's going to be a very large settlement coming his way...

</comment><comment><USER5> Not a lawyer, but this seems like trolling (I could be perfectly wrong here, it just feels this way).

Was there a patent there?

<comment><USER6> Thanks to the crackdown on business method patents, the Uber concept probably isn't patentable in the US.

<comment><USER7> And rightfully so. Providing a marketplace to connect drivers to riders is not an "invention". Surge-pricing is an attempt to create well known market dynamics, but again, not an invention.</comment></comment></comment>


We need a new model for tech journalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/tech-journalism.php <comment><USER4> > To even visit the offices of tech giants—itself often a rare > privilege—requires journalists to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Why is it weird that journalists have to sign an NDA to visit premises? Your job is explicitly to spread information and you're visiting a commercially sensitive area. I've worked with small companies (< 30 people) where entire floors were off limits if you didn't sign.

It's easy for a journalist to describe something without realising its importance within the community. There was an article recently about a tour of a Nikon lens factory and they were forbidden to talk or describe certain furnaces. If you weren't an expert in glass manufacture, you might let slip a key fact like "we saw a big machine before process Y" or "the glass at this point is red hot" (maybe everyone else has it orange-hot).

Why should _any_ corporation let you visit their premises without suitable assurances?

<comment><USER5> The NDA terms are sometimes onerous. For example, prohibiting you from talking about unreleased products regardless of how you come to know about them, not just from what you see on the tour. Every decent journalist would respect that parts of a tour would be off-the-record without the need for a legally binding document.

I've declined the opportunity to receive pre-release review devices before because I didn't like the restrictions the NDA put on what I was allowed to say about them.

<comment><USER6> > _every decent journalist would respect that parts of a tour would be off- > the-record without the need for a legally binding document_

Then they shouldn't have a problem agreeing to that in writing.

<comment><USER7> >Then they shouldn't have a problem agreeing to that in writing.

Um, you seem to have missed this part:

>The NDA terms are sometimes onerous. For example, prohibiting you from talking about unreleased products regardless of how you come to know about them, not just from what you see on the tour.

See, there's more stuff in the NDA than what common sense dictates. You can't just agree to the parts you don't have problem with.

<comment><USER8> Not my area of expertise, but isn't that unenforceable?

<comment><USER7> Not mine either, but why not?

"We have shown X during the tour. Joe and Mary certify that. The article mentions X. This is a violation of the NDA."

Even if X was common knowledge, once you sign the agreement, you're setting yourself up for trouble if you do something you agreed not to.

<comment><USER8> Well, that's kinda my point. If it's common knowledge, are you in trouble?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I write a media literacy guide for engineers:

[https://github.com/nemild/hack-an- engineer/blob/master/READM...](https://github.com/nemild/hack-an- engineer/blob/master/README.md)

The key thing this post is missing, is it talks about this as _journalists could do better_ , as if these issues are simply a moral failing. Instead, the key issue is reader and economic incentives (like how tech journalism monetizes through conferences — and the importance of page views and virality).

Here's Nick Bilton talking about the things that influence tech journalists:

>"It's a game of access, and if you don't play it carefully, you may pay sorely. Outlets that write negatively about gadgets often don't get pre- release versions of the next gadget. Writers who ask probing questions may not get to interview the C.E.O. next time he or she is doing the rounds. If you comply with these rules, you're rewarded with page views and praise in the tech blogosphere. And then there's the fact that many of these tech outlets rely so heavily on tech conferences. "If you look at most tech publications, they have major conferences as their revenue," Jason Calacanis, the blogger and founder of Weblogs, told me. "If you hit too hard, you lose keynotes, ticket buyers, and support in the tech space.""

[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/theranos-silicon- val...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/theranos-silicon-valley-media)

<comment><USER10> If saying things _is_ your business and people don't like what youre saying, youre bad _at_ business and dont belong _in_ business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's nice to see journalists actually reflecting on how to make journalism better for once. Sometimes I wonder if engineers and doctors are the only profession that constantly hold conferences and write blog posts about how to become better at their jobs.

But it's kind of a weird and poorly constructed argument:

 _It's easy to see why some readers would feel whiplashed by the current, critical coverage of Facebook and Google, which seems to come out of nowhere._

Whiplash ... came out of nowhere ... so journalists changed their view too fast then. Next sentence:

 _That's our fault as journalists: We've been too slow to spot how things have changed_

Wait, did journalists change their views on tech too fast or too slow? It seems to be both at once in this paragraph.

Later he appears to lament the historical dearth of "serious tech journalists", but he defines serious as journalists that "hold tech to account" which in turn simply seems to mean attacking them because they're big. I guess I'd use a definition more like "understands technology", with Jon Stokes at Ars Technica being a good example.

We do need a new model for tech journalism and indeed all journalism - we need journalists who are more interested in neutrally reporting accurate facts and news rather than engaging in poorly thought out social advocacy. Given the contents of this essay I'm not holding my breath.

<comment><USER12> > It's nice to see journalists actually reflecting on how to make journalism > better for once. Sometimes I wonder if engineers and doctors are the only > profession that constantly hold conferences and write blog posts about how > to become better at their jobs.

Journalists actually do have tech conferences and events, as well as blogs about the profession. Though the former are ridiculously expensive given their audience, making me almost wonder how any actual journalist could afford to attend one. It's not like in tech where someone can get a few hundred grand a year in some jobs, it's 'would struggle with rent in a medium sized town' level salaries.

<comment><USER11> Journalists have _tech_ conferences? That isn't quite what I meant.

What I mean is, what's the journalism equivalent of proggit or hacker news or arxiv - a place where people come together to debate the latest techniques for raising the quality of journalism on a massive scale? Do they have one? In all my years of reading I've never encountered a rigorous attempt by journalists to define new systems for better quality journalism or debate the decline in their trust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd love to see a tech news mag that covered tech the way "The Microprocessor Report" covered microprocessors.

Tech news today is more like TMZ for the tech industry and all about either "coolness" or about "causes".

<comment><USER14> Amen

"Phone manufacturer X should be embarrassed for putting a notch on their phone!!!"

What does that even mean... it's a phone....

<comment><USER15> It means that it is considered a sign of shoddy design. Granted it is technically a matter of opinion of if having a screen flanking the camera or giving its own space above or below is better but there have been complaints about comparability being broken.

Like complaining about a release crashing as breaking the build being unprofessional - while testing is a role internally it should compile and run at least beforehand.

Meanwhile 'Samsung Galaxy Note 7 catches fire' is objectively bad since a phone should never catch fire on its own unless perhaps it includes a self destruct feature (which needless to say would be very niche to be approved for sale).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I guess I agree, but covering companies like Google or Amazon or Apple or whatever, no longer feels like "tech" journalism. It isn't niche or easily categorized anymore. It is just journalism. Much like covering Exxon isn't "energy" journalism. I don't feel "whiplashed" by the shift in coverage, I just feel like people now care about these companies whereas 10 years ago they weren't that important.

The coverage that Google currently gets feels much like the coverage that Microsoft was receiving in the 90s and early to mid 2000s. There hasn't been a shift really, just Microsoft was relevant earlier.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article seems like it could be describing games journalism almost perfectly, with the sole exception of the whole 'their business affects every aspect of society' thing. In that field you've also got:

1\. Reporters acting more like cheerleaders for industry figures than journalists

2\. Overly secretive companies with strict control structures.

3\. Journalists being stretched thin as they're forced to cover too many stories at once in too many areas without getting the time to research them properly.

4\. A lack of coverage regarding actual issues in the industry, or anything resembling investigative journalism.

5\. Misunderstanding their audience in general.

But hey, I guess you could say many of the issues are really true of most niche or entertainment focused media.

<comment><USER17> Gaming journalists understand their audience. The problem is that their bills are paid by advertisements from AAA studios.

You've described the problems of ad-sponsored media. If you actually paid for your news, all these problems would go away.

<comment><USER12> > If you actually paid for your news, all these problems would go away.

We all did. They were called magazines, and you paid for subscriptions. There were gaming magazines, tech magazines, music and TV magazines, celebrity gossip magazines, etc. Most of them had many of the same issues as modern sites for those topics.

<comment><USER18> That's because the subscription basically paid for mailing you a paper copy. Everything else was still covered by advertising.

<comment><USER19> Some magazines but certainly not all. The publisher I worked for most recently had three sister titles: one entirely ad-funded, another entirely subscription-funded (no ads at all), the third (which I edited) half and half.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> News flash! Some journalists are lazy, just parroting press releases! Video at 11!

Still, the Columbia Journalism Review is right about the need to rethink how news outlets cover "tech." Too much tech journalism fills space and time with breathless playback of the founding myths of companies, or breathless coverage of scandals.

The big Sili Valley companies are big enough to deserve the same kind of journalist scrutiny as outfits like GM, Proctor&Gamble, and Cargill. Some business journalists specialize in finance, while others specialize in product, distribution, employment, regulatory, and the like. It certainly makes sense for some to specialize in software and telecom, but those fields apply to Cargill just as much as they apply to Google or the stealth startup in the incubator.

It's common for business journalists to accept embargos on stories, holding off publication until a certain, and near, date. This is quid pro quo for early access. But the moment they accept long term confidential disclosure agreements is the moment they stop being journalists. If we don't want our trade secrets in the media, we should not show them to journalists.

</comment><comment><USER21> Journalists can get charmed just like us normals. Their main bias is they are constantly in search of narratives and aim to frame information in that way (cause it makes their pieces interesting). "This tech will change the world" is an exciting narrative that a lot of journalists are more than willing to write a piece around.

<comment><USER18> That's true but the bigger issue with a lot of trade press is that there's expected to produce a lot of pieces quickly, often across a rather broad range of topics. The better journalists still do a pretty good job of it; I'm constantly impressed with how much readable and, as far as I can tell even in areas I know a fair bit about, accurate prose some turn out. But you're not going to get much truly investigative journalism out of people who are on the hook for 2 or 3 stories per day.

There are also often incentives to be provocative rather than "just the facts." But that's another issue related to incentives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article doesn't seem that good but really I think the state of journalism in general is that it is an ungainly hybrid trying to serve two masters and failing to serve either. As a business they face declining revenues and as a source of information they face increased competition from non-journalistic sources and frankly often aren't very good. Activists don't have the business as the issue but they have their own axe to grind and everyone knows it and reacts accordingly which ironically limits their ability to influence - <USER2> either sign on at referral and follow until alienated or ignore them if they aren't interested.

I suspect that they are largely mis-motivated as part of the issue - <USER3> doesn't become a music star just by wanting to be famous yet they are focused the most on clicks. Similar to how just having as a goal to sleep with people isn't a very good approach to being sexually desirable. Some real soul searching would be needed to rise to the top again - a fundamental desire to inform people first and then financial success may follow ironically if they don't care about it. I doubt that the existing institutions are capable of it because they are fundamentally businesses and asking them to stop caring about profit is about as absurd as asking a peasant to stop caring about food.

</comment><comment><USER22> "The result is the big four tech giants have a head start of 25 or more years in building their business models and laying their groundwork ahead of receiving serious scrutiny"

Except that Google isn't quite 20, and Facebook is like 15. Amazon is _almost_ 25\. Meanwhile Apple is what? 40+?

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure why this author thinks this is because of the way tech is covered and not just the way business in general, and particularly tech businesses work. Seems a very self centered view of the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> PR. PR drives the news cycle for tech companies. Hell. If you pop the hood and start to dig into most stories, lots of journalists dont even _write_ them. They're just written by agencies who pitch and pass on pre-drafted content

</comment><comment><USER25> Tech journalism, especially in mainstream publications, has gotten notably worse in the past few decades. A lot of times it reads more like an advertisement than actual journalism, with journalists doing little research of their own (See articles covering solar roadways, and other infeasible ideas).

It might just be nostalgia goggles but I remember magazines like Popular Mechanics and Wired going into intricate detail whenever they reviewed or covered a product. Graphics and charts explaining how exactly things worked, instead of just regurgitating the company's "about" page.

<comment><USER26> I'd say that _all_ journalism has gotten notably worse in the past few decades. We may just notice it more in tech journalism because we know more about tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> >> That's our fault as journalists: We've been too slow to spot how things have changed and to cover the sector as the corporate behemoth it is

Journalists were very happy to help Facebook while it was profitable for them and now that Facebook has obviously turned against them, suddenly they have a moral epiphany.

I wonder if the journalists who lined their pockets by promoting certain startups while working for tech publications like TechCrunch, Venture Beat and the others will also have a similar moral epiphany some day... Probably not.

</comment><comment><USER28> Heres an MP3 of the Kara Swisher interview that is mentioned.

[https://content.production.cdn.art19.com/episodes/1454f1b6-4...](https://content.production.cdn.art19.com/episodes/1454f1b6-4ad7-4e3b-8342-e35a555d4bd3/25023ab20cd98b78ca1e6b1d388fd34124cdfad061ac8483aee685a990bc7a0bb14866370f071f3eea90eeaad9b41b5bc95969fe912fefbade2bc456c66a7107/RecodeDecode_180718_MarkZuckerberg_MIX01.mp3)

</comment><comment><USER29> There _are_ dedicated reporters at a lot of outlets for each of the tech giants, I don't understand that complaint. I've talked with several of them, they show up at like every tech gathering they're allowed into, and many people at those companies know their names/faces and avoid them like the plague.

</comment><comment><USER30> Tech has the same problem entertainment and fashion reporters always had. The CJR appears to agree that most tech writers are hacks trading fluff jobs for access, swag, and perks.

</comment><comment><USER31> Blank page with JS disabled.

<comment><USER32> I have JS disabled and it loads just fine

<comment><USER31> Are you sure? Dunno what to tell you. I see a blank page with a reddish orange bar at the top. If I enable a few JS sources I get the content, revoke them and it goes away.

I'll beef hooked if I'm going to read an article about what "tech journalism" needs from a site that already shit the bed IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What is game journalism doing right [if anything] that tech journalism can borrow or learn from?

<comment><USER34> It's very strange to me how many people on the Internet constantly want to talk about "games journalism", which seems like an extremely niche area. So many very strong opinions about something that... really doesn't matter? I feel like there's more games journalism journalism than just games journalism, and I cannot even begin to approach an explanation of why that is.

<comment><USER35> _" games journalism", which seems like an extremely niche area._

Gaming is huge. Absolutely huge. Why do you think that games journalism is not only niche, but extremely niche?

 _I feel like there 's more games journalism journalism than just games journalism,_

?

<comment><USER36> > Why do you think that games journalism is not only niche, but extremely > niche?

I can't really speak to whether or not its niche in an objective sense (i.e. the readership of games journalism), but it may seem that way because the stakes are so low. Games are essentially just entertainment and the availability of accurate information about them is not nearly as important as information about the functioning of government or the actions of large companies that can impact your life.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Smart Fruit – A Python schema-based machine learning library - <AUTHOR> I've made a small Python library, designed for quick-and-easy prototyping of machine learning models. It's built on top of scikit-learn, to serialize and deserialize data from the forms you're likely to have, to the format used in scikit-learn.
https://github.com/madman-bob/Smart-Fruit
It's pretty bare-bones at the moment, but I thought I'd see if there was any interest before spending too much time on it.
Let me know what you think. <comment><USER2> I've recently written a related library - given a DataFrame it'll run sklearn's RandomForest to check which columns predict other columns. The goal is to learn which relationships exist within a DataFrame. Typically in the exploratory process in machine learning we want to learn how the data holds together - this tool helps with that discovery exercise. It'll auto- LabelEncode text and allows classification or regression. There are two example Notebooks (Titanic & Boston) to show what it is doing. Correlations (Pearson, Spearman, Kendall) can also be calculated. The RandomForest result can show non-linear relationships that aren't exposed by correlations. [https://github.com/ianozsvald/discover_feature_relationships](https://github.com/ianozsvald/discover_feature_relationships)

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked the boldness of this idea. But 'something' needs to select the sklearn model, tune its hyper-params - how long can you keep it all hidden away from the user?

The training phase can be considerably long. Have you thought of some kind of an async wrapper that Smart Fruit might provide or will the user be expected to code it up?

This is more of a user experience comment - when the interface is designed to feel as if one is interacting with a DB / ORM the user may come to assume that the outcomes will be deterministic... While the returned results will remain deterministic given the training data, model and hyper-parameters remain the same - it won't feel as deterministic when either of these is updated... I am not sure if I communicated my concern clearly. I am trying to understand who the intended end-user is, of this package...

<comment><USER4> I would propose a potential user as someone interested in some of the meta considerations and patterns of statistical reasoning, aka machine learning. There are is a _vast_ amount of particulars the second hand on my watch operates (e.g. vibrating quartz, digital), but I can use that mostly reliable device to investigate higher level phenomenom, like calculating distance of planets by timing their movement. This library opens a direct line to these algorithims such that one might intuit, and apply, their high level behavior; as I could not time planets if consumed with the fidelitity and reliability of resonating quartz, it would slow my ability to explore this kind of reasoning if concerned with the minutiae.

That said, all points taken. If this sparks interest in someone, as is stands, it would be on them to dig in to all the considerations you've outline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love it. Pasted in the column headers to `iris.data` from the Iris website. Voila, up and running per instructions on Github. For prototyping / exploring ideas, for the syntactical layman, but conceptuallly familiar, what a boon.

</comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a good porcelain to sklearn. Many including myself find it intimidating at times.</comment>


Internet Defense League creates "cat signal" to save Web from next SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/internet-defense-league-creates-cat-signal-to-save-web-from-next-sopa/ <comment><USER2> Story from the Internet Defense League itself already on Hacker News front page with multiple comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4266112></comment>


Gnome extension for quickly switching applications - rwx<comment> https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/973/switcher/ </comment><comment> rwx</comment><comment> Alt-Tab sucks if you have tone of windows open. Switcher is a useful extension that save me many key strokes for switching applications.</comment>


Why don't we follow password security best practices? - <AUTHOR> https://increment.com/security/password-security-best-practices/ <comment><USER2> To answer the article's title question fully in the context of business, I believe the following 4 major causes need to be acknowledged:

\- Legislation: (Data Privacy acts et al.) Does not hold people accountable (yet), especially in small business. It is (in human history) still a relatively new application of the concept of freedom & rights. Further, it's still more profitable (tangibly) to break the law then absorb any resulting fines.

\- Corporate Governance and cohesion (lack of). Especially acute issue due to the previous point (lack of government legislation holding orgs accountable -> leads to lack of corporate governance holding employees accountable). Lack of Corporate legal governance is mirrored by a lack of Corporate ethics governance (a generalization of the global economy)

\- A combination of the Gambler's fallacy, normalcy bias and optimism bias. People just don't expect repercussions, and focus on apparent small risk instead of the size of repercussion.

\- Obstacles / Path of least resistance: Things make it difficult. Lack of simple SSO, password requirements, fundamental limitations of the human brain (memory etc.). Since the technology is not simple enough for us, we revert to an easy method.</comment>