Linux sandboxing improvements in Firefox 57 - <AUTHOR> http://www.morbo.org/2017/11/linux-sandboxing-improvements-in.html <comment><USER2> I'm so hyped by Firefox 57, haven't felt like that about a webbrowser since Firefox 1.5

<comment><USER3> Why, with the ability to write powerful extensions removed it is basically a second Chrome now.

I think WebExtensions were a good idea, but removing the raw access is removing what made Firefox great in the first place. Hopefully they will add an escape hatch in a future release but I'm not holding my breath. I wonder how long staying on nightly will allow "legacy" extensions.

But sure, a bit of performance is nice I guess.

<comment><USER4> >> but removing the raw access is removing what made Firefox great in the first place.

The raw access is also what made Firefox slow and cumbersome compared to Chrome. The recent performance improvements would have been impossible with the legacy extension apis.

Honesty I think this is a good move.

<comment><USER3> > The raw access is also what made Firefox slow and cumbersome compared to > Chrome. The recent performance improvements would have been impossible with > the legacy extension apis.

This is simply not true as evidenced by the fact that Nightly still has the legacy extension API and the improved performance.

That being said FF was slowing down to keep extensions compatible. This is why I think WebExtensions are a good idea. They should be the recomended path with promised future compatibility. Then FF can not worry as much about refactoring the internals as there are fewer extensions that would be broken and they "signed up" for it.

I would rather have a faster FF and have to patch VimFX every couple of releases then have FF show down development for fear of breaking things. That being said loosing the extensions that gave FF it's magic is not a good tradeoff in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> The legacy API is not on nightly. I think they have a similar API in WebExtension Experiments, but in nightly, legacy add-ons do not work.

<comment><USER3> [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Firefox57](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add- ons/Firefox57)

On nightly the extensions.legacy.enabled can be set to allow instalation of legacy extensions.

<comment><USER6> > To assist with performance analysis leading up Firefox 57, in Nightly only > we are turning off add-ons that require shims.

This was for pre-57 and doesn't apply to 57+.

<comment><USER7> That isn't true, I'm running 58.0a1 nightly with legacy add-ons enabled.

<comment><USER8> The point is that many APIs no longer work even though you can "enable" legacy addons. Pretty soon, this setting will be a no-op.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People tend to assume that if Firefox 57 or other version will be faster then Chrome, then a lot people would then start to use Firefox instead of Chrome.

As much as I would like to see that its not gonna happen, and I am writing this as a Firefox user.

Remember what 'REAL' Opera 12 did in its times comparing to Chrome or Firefox? It loaded pages faster, used less memory, was most standards compliant and also came with bundled torrent client, and mail client and RSS client and ... and having 100+ tabs opened DID NOT EVEN SLOWED IT!

... and guess what, both Firefox and Chrome had more users while Opera had about 4-5%.

It did not mattered if it was faster or better.

Currently Opera is just a Chrome with different skin, so I moved to Firefox with Midori and Iridium as 'backups'.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't be that pessimistic. The key difference is that Firefox used to have a lot of market share that it lost to Chrome, whereas Opera never really had any to begin with.

<comment><USER11> It had market share when Google gave it free advertising on _every single Google search_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can anyone tell me how secure web browsers are on linux generally. I was looking at the pwn2own results and was quite impressed with the edge compromise that got out of the host OS it was running in. However, I didn't see any web browsers on linux being compromised - is that because it is harder, or no-one bothered?

<comment><USER13> Comparable to Windows. Windows is a high-profile target for web browsing so you're seeing more exploits.

Web browser escapes usually target the operating system kernel in order to break out of the sandbox. Chrome can reduce its attack surface on Linux using seccomp, and while there's a win32 syscall filter on Windows 10, I'm not sure if Chrome uses it. Windows has stronger kernel self protection features than Linux, but also more attack surface.

Chrome uses Linux namespaces (like LXC/Docker/...) for isolation in addition to seccomp-bpf.

Chrome is by far the most secure one right now, but as evidenced by this blog article, Firefox is catching up.

<comment><USER14> Chrome disables all win32k syscalls in its renderer/extension/plugin processes (at the very least flash and pdf). This has been the default for a while now.

I believe the specific win32k syscall filter you're referring to (where you can white/black list specific syscalls) is still only accessible to Microsoft applications (Edge uses it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel like I should point out that Firefox won't be getting backported to Debian stable[1]. Until the next Debian stable, it seems that Firefox ESR 52 will be the only version of Firefox.

[1] [https://mozilla.debian.net/](https://mozilla.debian.net/)

<comment><USER16> Doesn't Debian follow the ESR releases for their stable branches? E.g. when support for ESR 52 ends they'll upgrade stable releases to ESR 59?

<comment><USER15> Normally, yes. However, something on that page concerns me:

"Jessie and Stretch backports of Firefox release and beta are gone because of the requirement of rust to build them, which is not available in Jessie or Stretch. Please update your apt sources to use Firefox ESR instead."

I'm not sure how that Rust requirement and ESR 59 will play together; I'll assume they won't play together very well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> OT: Do the Quantum changes get into the Android version or is this a completly different software?

<comment><USER18> There's a planned Photon redesign that already landed in Nightly on Android, but, if I remember correctly, it won't make it on time for 57 desktop version (probably around 58 mark). I am not familiar with the other improvements.

Disclaimer: Affiliated with Mozilla, but not with the Firefox team.

<comment><USER19> It's rolled out to Firefox _beta_ (so yes, version 58) on Android now. (FWIW I've used beta for years and very rarely had any issues.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _> We could not block the web content rendering entirely from reading the filesystem because Firefox still uses GTK directly - we draw webpage HTML widgets using the same theming as the native desktop._

Is there a way to build Firefox without GTK? For example for something like Plasma Mobile? It would be good if there was some fallback mode where Firefox would render UI elements using HTML itself, without relying on UI toolkits.

<comment><USER21> I don't fully understand this, but I think this is a lot more complicated than it might seem. Because well, you'd first of all need to set up a separate Gecko instance to render the UI, which isn't fundamentally different from what they're doing with tabs, but still an architectural change.

Well, and then you'd probably run into security restrictions, as under normal circumstances, you don't ever want something from inside Gecko to communicate with extensions and probably other things, but for this you need that capability.

Having said that, Mozilla is actually exploring into this direction: [https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml/blob/master/READM...](https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml/blob/master/README.md)

And presumably, this is the future, as it would also allow them to get rid of the XUL UI Toolkit, meaning they can entirely focus on core browser technologies. (Which is something different from the XUL/XPCOM extension API that they're deprecating on Tuesday.)

<comment><USER22> I have to say though, having chrome that is virtually indistinguishable from a webpage is a phisher's dream. You also lose 25 years of low-level graphic development in platform toolkits, which likely means losing _a lot_ of performance.

<comment><USER20> The alternative would be maintaining many toolkit backends. We already see how well that worked out. Qt backend wasn't maintained in a while, and fell into bit rot. That basically prevents Firefox from being used Plasma Mobile and the like. Having HTML backend is better than having none at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How does this compare to IE's Protect Mode, Enhanced Protection Mode, and Edge's execution in an app container?

</comment><comment><USER24>
      security.sandbox.content.read_path_whitelist

Are extensions allowed to change that?

<comment><USER25> Not WebExtensions (which are the only kind of extension allowed on Firefox 57+ unless you change another pref).

I mean, Firefox even has a `security.turn_off_all_security_so_that_viruses_can_take_over_this_computer` pref (used in testing; you won't see it in about:config but IIRC you can manually add it. Don't.). Prefs that break security are not new :)

<comment><USER24> Oh, really? I hope not in production builds, at least.

Defense in depth concept is not new either.

<comment><USER25> You also need an environment variable to be set for it to work.

But yes, it seems to be something you can flip in production. The argument being that if you're in a position to flip prefs you already can break security in a million ways. It's not something you can accidentally flip either.

(The pref doesn't actually "let viruses take over the computer", it just turns off all the security checks)

<comment><USER26> I feel like having a global switch for all security checks is already not a good idea.

<comment><USER27> It's unlikely to be abused by am attacker, if it requires starting Firefox with a certain environment variable. Chrome has the same thing with a command line switch.

Useful for some internal unit/integration tests for release and test builds, but really dangerous when pointed to the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've not been inclined to use this browser since they started with pocket, moved to offering a voice and video chat service, forced PulseAudio as a mandatory dependency and eventually enacted mandatory opt-in telemetry in the browser.

sandboxing is great, but if the site is spooky enough im just going to load it in elinks/lynx and grok the text. Chromium also has sandboxing, and if youre really paranoid enough, surf from suckless.org is a webkit style do-it- yourself browser thats fairly reliable.</comment>


Ask HN: Why "Ops"? - <AUTHOR>

There seems to be a trend of calling everything "ops". In some tech places DevOps is what used to be called "Ops", and "Ops" now means managing the startup's office, ordering meals, etc. Today I see "TalentOps" [1].
Where this trend is headed? How did it get started? Why was SysAdmin called "ops" in the first place?
1: http://www.meetup.com/The-SF-TalentOps-Meetup/ <comment><USER2> "Operations" as opposed to "engineering" for systems admin.

The "DevOps revolution" is predicated around increasing the amount of automation involved with ops, though in my experience that's 1) simply a continuation of long-time best practices and 2) often frustrated by the non- programmable tools employed in some "DevOps" tools (e.g., RightScale, which utterly lacks scriptability).

More on RightScale, FWIW, somewhat dated, though it matches my own experience and impressions:

[http://www.codelord.net/2011/07/27/why-i-regret-choosing- rig...](http://www.codelord.net/2011/07/27/why-i-regret-choosing-rightscale/)

</comment><comment><USER3> In an IT context, Ops refers to Operations (maintaining the operation of your IT infrastructure). If your infrastructure fails, Service(s) may be impacted (down/unavailable). Operations exists to keep the infrastructure (and resulting Services) alive and operational. A System Administrator (SysAdmin) is one of the roles (of many) in the traditional operations team. I see the traditional operations model evolving as infrastructure itself evolves. DevOps is a new operations methodology with a focus on leveraging development capabilities to simplify and automate traditional operations tasks. For example, identifying that a specific process always dies on a Server when x y and z happens, and in turn, writing a script/program to automatically restart the process when it experiences the defined behavior. Or another example, identifying that a network ACL needs to be modified when a new Server is provisioned, and in turn, writing a script/program to automatically populate the ACL when the Server is provisioned. Regarding TalentOps, seems to be a play on words to me; aka identifying other verticals of your startup staff and referring to it as <whatever>Ops as in "this person is responsible for <whatever> to operate".

<comment><USER4> Interesting take: "leveraging development capabilities to simplify and automate traditional operations tasks". I think of it as the opposite: leveraging operations discipline to improve development processes. We're talking about identifying bottlenecks in the development pipeline, for example manual testing, and targeting those for automation in order to elevate system throughput. This is the application of Lean manufacturing concepts such as Kanban to software development work.

I guess it's both: development applied to operations, and operations management applied to development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> At some places developers do everything including support and IT now that the cloud has replaced a lot of what IT did. Hence the term devops. Instead of other people dealing with developer mistakes, developers now have to pay with their time. IT people and sysadmins now work on cloud services instead of maintaining things for specific systems.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would really like for this to be answered.

</comment><comment><USER7> It sounds more official and serious and makes people feel more important so they title themselves that way.

</comment><comment><USER4> The field is maturing. People are starting to figure out what Toyota learned sixty years ago and American manufacturers figured out thirty years ago: _process matters_. Funny thing about the Agile manifesto, if you read it carefully, they wrote in 2001 (?) that "we've discovered from experience that these things work" (I'm paraphrasing) but they do not say "we have theory to explain _why_ these things work". It turns out that ten years later, we're learning that the reason they work is that they either make the process and its problems visible (Scrum, Kanban) or offer techniques to improve the process (Scrum, XP). Beyond software development, Lean concepts (again adapted from manufacturing) are being applied to entrepreneurship. Why wouldn't an entrepreneur who's read _The Lean Startup_ want someone specifically to focus on the "ops" of his process? I admit that I don't think meal ordering processes are likely to be a meaningful bottleneck, but who can say?</comment>


Apple iPad supply dwindling? NYC Metro area sold out? - <AUTHOR> http://runningipad.com/2010/05/18/ipad-plagued-by-shortages-in-nyc-and-beyond/ <comment><USER2> All Manhattan stores were sold out the weekend of the 8th. I gave up after a few days and ordered mine online. It arrives Friday... Probably be a short supply for a while. International sales are gonna be big too.</comment>


Galaxy has 'billions of Earths' - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7891132.stm <comment><USER2> Slightly misleading headline from BBC there... it should really be "Galaxy _may_ have 'billions of Earths'". There's no proof of it, it's just an estimate/guess. It may well be true, but there's no proof yet.

Billions of earth-like planets. Makes you want to live forever to get to explore all that stuff, doesn't it?

<comment><USER3> I suggest adopting RFC 2119 or something similar to avoid misleading titles on HN.

<comment><USER4> It would be great, but it's unenforceable, and newbies wouldn't know about it. Besides, in this case the inaccuracy is in the referenced article.

We could probably do something, but it would require a lot of hacking, and wouldn't necessarily be worth it. Perhaps it's currently good enough.

<comment><USER5> _in this case the inaccuracy is in the referenced article._

The article title is not inaccurate.

<comment><USER4> > _The article title is not inaccurate._

So, the article itself says:

 _There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, ..._

The title says:

 _Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'_

In the title we don't have any of the words "could", "might", "may", "possibly", or any other words indicating the uncertainty. To me, that means the title is inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This has been "known" since the 60s. The Drake equation estimates the number of habitable planets in the universe. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation>

<comment><USER6> The Drake equation is just a guess based on other guesses.

<comment><USER3> True, but a more educated guess than "billions".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not to derail the conversation, but, question: What impact would the undeniable discovery of alien life have on organized religion? Would theists abandon their beliefs _en masse_ or would they find a way of explaining the new discoveries with their existing doctrine?

<comment><USER8> Creationism -- the belief that some deity created all we see -- wouldn't have a problem with life on other planets. We see them. What kind of creation would only involve certain planets or creatures?

ID -- the belief that our perceptions can either be of completely natural artifacts or artifacts created as a result of an external intelligent agent -- also not implicated. Interestingly enough, there may be a counter-movement here: if intelligent life were discovered, arguments could then begin to be made that some sort of intelligent agent had some play in our cultural/geological history. That would be new.

This religion-vs-alien life question has been going around since the 1950s, at least. What a lot of people forget is that most major organized religions have been adapting to situations like this since their beginnings. Christianity, for instance, thought of the "world" as basically Eurasia for hundreds of years. People in Africa and the Americas were not considered fully "human" until fairly recently. That meant, for all intents and purposes, that places like the New World were 1) far away and almost impossible to reach, and 2) not part of the normal world, and 3) inhabited by creatures that were somewhat intelligent but not completely human.

Religions, especially successful ones, adapt. I would be extremely surprised to see any impact at all. The more you study it, the more of a non-issue it is.

<comment><USER9> My early childhood religion always taught me that man was special, so I think there would be an impact if we were to find intelligent life elsewhere. In fact, I feel like that idea that man is so special is used as an argument against evolution. They use the 'disgust' of hearing that humans could be related to modern day apes, and thus is not so special.

As you said, religion would have to adapt, but that is an impact. I'm more curious what path they would take. As you said, they could deny them full privileges of being sentient...that is they are less than human. Or they could accept them as being on the same level, but that would require a small alteration to their beliefs.

<comment><USER8> Worst-case for religion, I guess, would be the discovery of obviously super- intelligent beings who claim that belief in God is an evolutionary defect.

Seems to me that Judaism is a major world religion that applies for Jewish people, although there are many kinds of people in the world.

Christianity is a religion of mankind, hence the need to dehumanize native peoples. The logical progression would be that Christianity would simply follow the lead of Judaism, i.e., Christianity is just for men.

Of course, that's a big-picture, long-range guess. One of the reasons Christianity is so resilient is that there are so many versions. What would happen would be a thousand different possible ways forward. Most wouldn't last 200 years. A few would succeed.

The "man is special" disgust with coming from monkeys thing is just a limited reaction to Darwinism. It's already dying off. Within another 300-500 years it'll be completely gone. There were similar reactions against Copernicus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I doubt any have intelligent life though...

[http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2007/04/aliens-dont- exist....](http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2007/04/aliens-dont-exist.html)

Apologies for Richard Kulisz's more asinine qualities, but I've never seen a convincing refutation of the argument he presents there.

<comment><USER11> He claims to start with one assumption, but actually starts with many. For instance he implies "any species which could colonize the galaxy, will". I don't accept that all possible intelligence would try to take over the galaxy.

He also says that it's not in an alien's interest to leave one planet (Earth) just in case we develop - but he doesn't consider that they might have colonized the galaxy but left Earth precisely because they _did_ find life on it. Even the slightly unimaginative at times Star Trek had the idea of humans only colonizing 'empty' areas and leaving anything with existing life on it alone.

Also, he states that colonizing the galaxy takes ~110,000 years because humans took 10,000 years to evolve + 100,000 years to cross the galaxy. He completely ignores that humans actually took many tens of millions of years to evolve _from scratch_ not from existing life forms.

Also, he assumes zero chance of catastrophic accident leading to exctinction as an explanation for why aliens might not exist. Maybe they did exist but wiped themselves out.

Also, he assumes 100,000 years to cross the galaxy, but that means traveling pretty much at the speed of light, which is currently not possible/forseeably practical. Yet he doesn't consider how aliens would stay as a coherent civilization when a light speed ping response starts taking years, let alone tens of thousands of years.

Also, he doesn't consider any kinds of future technology, IT, AI, singularity or similar. Maybe any culture which gets a thousand years past where we are now does not become a galactic conquerer, but a Matrix-style virtual reality.

Lastly, what if aliens decided the best way to colonize the galaxy was to spray terraforming machines and life seeds, and we _are_ the 'alien' intelligence colonies? Who says alien ideas of 'colonize' have to be like human Earth colonies of the last thousand years?

<comment><USER5> Many of your concerns were addressed by the author in the comments section: [http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2007/04/aliens-dont- exist....](http://richardkulisz.blogspot.com/2007/04/aliens-dont- exist.html#c1380930991729913672)

 _He completely ignores that humans actually took many tens of millions of years to evolve from scratch not from existing life forms._

Kulisz responded:

 _The point is that it didn't have to. Nothing in the universe prevented a technological civilization from arising 8 billion years ago. And certainly not 65 million years ago back when the dinosaurs ruled._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do they believe that only Earth-like planets can support life? Or is it that Earth-like planets are one type of planet that supports life, with many other possibilities? I would think the first assertion to be short-sighted.

<comment><USER13> I agree with you. We know that our planet and the qualities that it possesses are appropriate for sustaining life. Who's to say a form of life couldn't arise on a planet incapable of sustaining life as we know it. Would that life, then, view our planet as incapable of sustaining life? If it did bump into us, would an intelligence arising on a planet "incapable" of supporting life even see us as life forms?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How many of those are getting warmer, gibsonf1? :), couldn't resist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most likely only those planets exposed to our sun would have had any warming similar to us (or cooling as is happening now), but I would need some help mounting an expedition to find out for sure. :)

<comment><USER14> I'm with you. Just warm up the starcraft!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Earth is complex product. Tides, created by the Moon, are important to mix water and to clean coasts. Metal core of the Earth is producing magnetic shield. All that is created due to collision of Earth with large object, which is comparable to Earth, and capturing it.

It is unlikely, that our Galaxy will contain too many systems created by two objects with comparable mass, because such systems are unstable. We can calculate this number by comparing number of star systems with two comparable stars in the system to number of regular stars.</comment>


Getting Silly About NoSQL - <AUTHOR> http://pl.atyp.us/wordpress/?p=2713

<comment><USER2> An interesting example of how writing style can affect perception. Regardless of who's "right" or not (though it's usually a bit of both in situations like these), Forbes' piece was very easy to read and digest, whereas this comes off as an unedited tirade.

<comment><USER3> Please try to remember that it was originally written as a comment on Dennis's article, not as an original article in its own right. So yes, it is essentially unedited. Sometimes facts and timing are more important than polish.

<comment><USER4> "Facts" stated but not backed up by anything aren't worth much. "I personally measured..." is a worthless comment if he doesn't show his work (i.e. his tests or claims are not reproducible at all).

<comment><USER3> I did say that I'd written about it on my site. Here are a couple of links.

<http://pl.atyp.us/wordpress/?p=2240> <http://pl.atyp.us/wordpress/?p=2258>

Here's one from Randy Bias, which I had also alluded to.

<http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/virtual-disks>

Now, why don't you take Dennis to task for _his_ lack of supporting information? He provides even less information about methodology, and his results are simply not grounded in reality at all. In my experience, application of a double standard strongly implies preference for outcome. Why don't you actualy _state_ your position, and then back it up to the same degree you demand others do? I know this is Kibitzer News and all, but it would be nice to see something besides sniping from the sidelines for once.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The magic of ion channels in the neurons - <AUTHOR> https://i-kh.net/2020/08/26/the-magic-of-ion-channels/ <comment><USER2> For the Nobel winning work on this from long ago, I heartily recommend:

      Hodgkin, A. L. (1958). The Croonian Lecture: Ionic Movements and Electrical Activity in Giant   Nerve Fibres. Biological Sciences, 148(930), 1–37. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/83088

This contains my absolute favorite figure caption ever:

 _A fresh and lively squid was taken out of the aquarium and immobilized by cutting the nerves connecting the head with the stellate ganglion. The mantle was opened ventrally by a single cut and was spread out under cooled oxygenated sea water in a transparent dish. Using a motor car headlamp to illuminate the animal and a binocular microscope to watch the penetration,..._

<comment><USER3> Somewhere in the multiverse, a scientifically curious Heptapod takes a fresh and lively humanoid from its terrarium and immobilizes it by cutting the nerves connecting the stellate ganglion...

<comment><USER4> Ender's Game series comes to mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I sometimes wonder if the phrase "they are an egg head" is not so much to do with baldness but more to do with knowledge and intelligence. Phosphatidylcholine (aka Lecithin found in Egg Yolk and elsewhere - 4 egg yolks a day to meet RDA levels) can do wonders for your cell membranes and Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) does wonders for your myelin sheaths. I'd be surprised if F1 drivers & fighter pilots werent supplementing above RDA levels with these. Using Potassium Chloride (sometimes called the good salt) helps one to relax in the evening, and sodium chloride as a pick me up in the morning. I wonder if this neuronal ion exchange is anything like the Sodium - Potassium ATPase pump found in other cells as they seem similar. Life is just a complex real-time chemical reaction.

</comment><comment><USER6> How might the nervous system have evolved?

Wikipedia says: "Action potentials, which are necessary for neural activity, evolved in single-celled eukaryotes. These use calcium rather than sodium action potentials, but the mechanism was probably adapted into neural electrical signalling in multicellular animals. In some colonial eukaryotes such as Obelia electrical signals do propagate not only through neural nets, but also through epithelial cells in the shared digestive system of the colony."

So, the first "thought" was "hungry, want food"?

And everything we do to get to the 7/11 for snacks is built on that?

<comment><USER7> cells can coordinate by diffusion of signal molecules larger multicellular organisms can use circulatory transport to reduce latency of signals. larger complex organisms coordinate systemic functions with neurons and the electrical signaling between distant parts of the body.

latency is not a good thing to have when you are a motile animal, it limits your overall size and complexity. animal phyla with nervous systems were able to evolve larger bodies avoid being consumed by being too big to eat and became consumers of smaller organisms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read somewhere that a significant fraction of the energy budget of the human body is spent on ion pumps (the difference is that ion channels are passive and ion pumps uses energy in form of ATP). That's because keeping an electric potential[1] across the cell membrane drives the mechanism described in this post (and others, like muscle contraction)

Anyway an overview of ion transport mechanisms across the cell membrane is [2]

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

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

<comment><USER9> This would explain the 20% (give or take) oxygen requirements of the brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. I knew most of that more or less but didn't know the mechanism by which the myelin sheath speed up the propagation of action potentials but it makes sense.

<comment><USER11> It starts with the telegraph equation. Try this magisterial and slightly obsessive book: [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cellular-biophysics-2-vol- set](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cellular-biophysics-2-vol-set)

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Oliver Heaviside continues his posthumous exploits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> channel-phd I'm currently studying ion channels from a biophysical perspective for my PhD. Beyond their fascinating role in neuronal physiology, check out the incredible chemistry and biophysics! A great introduction is MacKinnon's Nobel lecture: [https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/mackinnon- lecture...](https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/mackinnon-lecture.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Hate to be the guy to ask this but I like to dig into conspiracy shit like: "5G is bad for our health".

One of the theories is 4G & 5G cause mess with the electrochemical gradient and voltage gated ion channels. Given you are studying them, whats your opinions on this even being possible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Remove the shadow from the website's title.

</comment><comment><USER15> Link 404

<comment><USER16> [https://i-kh.net/2020/08/26/the-magic-of-ion- channels/](https://i-kh.net/2020/08/26/the-magic-of-ion-channels/)

<comment><USER17> Thanks! we've changed to that from [https://i-kh.net/2020/08/26/how-signals- propagate-through-ne...](https://i-kh.net/2020/08/26/how-signals-propagate- through-neurons/).</comment></comment></comment>


Four more journalists get felony charges after covering inauguration unrest - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/24/journalists-charged-felonies-trump-inauguration-unrest <comment><USER2> "A documentary producer, a photojournalist, a live-streamer and a freelance reporter "

Is it just me, or does the bar for what a "journalist" is nowadays seem to be a whole lot lower than 10 years ago?

Does this mean that I can fire up Facebook Live and be a "live streamer" and claim all kinds of protections meant for journalists? Interesting.

And journalists being arrested like this? Not new. Not a "omg Trump" thing. Reporters and journalists do find themselves on the wrong end of handcuffs. It's not terribly unusual at all. (doesn't mean it's right, but the point is that this here is not proving that Trump issued some media crackdown or anything.)

<comment><USER3> Anyone can observe and document reality. The point is, if they're not rioting, then they shouldn't be charged with it.</comment></comment>


Amazon, Clintons and American Heart Assoc Sell High-Sugar "Healthier" Food to Kids - <AUTHOR> https://therussells.crossfit.com/2017/09/10/amazon-clintons-and-american-heart-association-sell-high-sugar-healthier-food-to-kids/amp/ <comment><USER2> Summary:

Amazon, the Clinton Foundation, and the American Heart Association have partnered to sell high-sugar food to children. And they're marketing this junk food as if it's healthy.

The Amazon-Clinton-AHA initiative is called the Healthier Generation Store. It introduces itself as "your one stop shop for Healthier Generation-vetted Smart Snacks and products for students in and out of school."</comment>


Ask HN: What information should be in any job description page? - <AUTHOR> In your opinion how should a job description page look like?
What information should include?
If you were to create the job description page (or careers page) for your company what will you put there?
What information will you add there? <comment><USER4> A photograph of my desk.

Most tech jobs I've seen don't have any photos at all. When they do, it's usually the lobby and kitchen and ping-pong table. Why are you trying so hard to hide the place I'm going to be spending 95% of my time? You wouldn't buy a car without ever having seen the driver's seat, and I spend way less time in my car than at my computer.

When I saw photos of Fog Creek's offices (with programmers sitting at their own desks), I didn't need to read any marketing fluff to know that programmers are treated better there than at any tech company I've seen in Seattle, and if I lived near NYC I'd be beating down the doors to work there. They're not architecturally 'pretty' but seeing 20 desk-level outlets per person shows they've thought about all the little annoyances that developers have.

Of course, on the hiring side, this only works if your workspace is a differentiator for you. If it's a generic open-office floor plan, then it's not, and you probably should hide it from applicants and push salary/benefits and "interesting problems" instead.

<comment><USER5> atter getting offers I always ask to see my work area before deciding and often they'll look at me like I'm crazy! I've even had employers refuse saying it would be too disruptive! I didn't take those jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Salary range. Critical info that most job listings don't have. I'm much more likely to consider a job if I know it has an appropriate salary range.

<comment><USER7> Can't upvote this enough. Even if it's a really wide range, it rules out companies with unrealistically low pay scales.

It also makes it slightly more equitable, since employees are no longer reliant on playing salary poker in order to determine their pay rate. This tends to reduce the salary gap.

<comment><USER8> One of the main reasons I always go through recruiters. They won't waste my time or theirs submitting me to jobs where the salary is not what I want.

<comment><USER9> Have any tips on finding good recruiters to work with? Most of the people that reach out to me are clearly not giving a level of care to their search that I'd be comfortable working with (for instance, I was a PHP dev with some JS for a while and would frequently get requests about Java positions). I'd love to work with a recruiter that cares specifically about placing me somewhere good, but I've never met a recruiter like that.

<comment><USER10> I had great results with this company [http://www.bincsearch.com/](http://www.bincsearch.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Make sure there's a clear description of what the organization does.

For things like programming where there's a lot of variety, some stuff indication of typical working environment is _really_ nice. Daily standup? Lots of pairing? This isn't a right/wrong thing but will help people with strong preferences avoid wasting time.

What's the office environment like? Single offices? Team rooms? Cubicles?

Remote-working policy.

</comment><comment><USER12> For tactical positions like programming, required skills and optional skills are probably a minimum. However, I have found that the most attractive job ads are those that talk about the culture of the company in addition to what they expect of me. I like ads that communicate that I would be an appreciated member of the team.

Dry lists of bullet points are a turn-off; they give the impression that the company just wants a warm body.

I also avoid companies that rely on hyperbole in their job ads--"rockstar," "ninja," "guru," etc. They give the impression that the one who wrote the job ad and/or the hiring manager have no idea how to truly quantify good talent.

<comment><USER6> +1 to "rockstar", "guru", etc being a dead giveaway of a terrible company.

<comment><USER13> Also don't talk about the 'free soda', 'nerf gun wars', 'air hockey table' or something else that indicates you treat your employees like children. I also hate the ninja/rockstar stuff.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. Save that money to pay good talent more, and save the time so I can get out of work in 40 hours a week or less.

<comment><USER15> "Save that money to pay good talent more"

The whole point is all that stuff costs much less than any meaningful pay raise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> An address of the place in which you will work. Trivial. Hardly anyone does it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well, actual duties. Go and ask two to five people of the same/similar team/level to write down what they were mostly doing last week or month.

One of the hardest time for me is on-boarding a guy or girl who is poorly informed about their role. Not any better when I am the new-joiner.

</comment><comment><USER18> Interview Style. Are you going to whiteboard me or do something else?

</comment><comment><USER19> Company - Address - (Remote Allowed?)

Job Title - <USER2>

Description of Company

Description of Job

Tech Stack

Requirements

How Interview Works

Salary Range

Benefits

[Click to Apply without having to retype your whole resume]

<comment><USER20> Excellent list. I'd just add a brief overview of the interview process to be totally complete.

<comment><USER21> As someone currently interviewing for software positions, this x100. I mean, why do I have ask about this every single time?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Pay, Expected Weekly Hours (especially if it's salary), and Tech Stack are the most important to me.

</comment><comment><USER23> Salary range and the attributes of what a candidate would need to get to be the top of that range.

Appearances of avoiding or deferring that discussion frustrate me immensely, as it seems like the company is trying to compensate with fluff before getting to the facts of it. This is because - at the end of the day - salary is simply the most important thing. It is how you provide for yourself and your family. It is how you build wealth and stability and safety for your life, and nothing else comes close. When my company provides me, via a solid salary, this financial security, I am 200% invested in making its mission successful, whatever the tech stack or other details of the role.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pay range and what skills would get you to the top of the range.

What are the required skills and nice to haves.

401K match and vesting schedule.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've come to appreciate job listings that include the actual team/project that I'd be working on. If a company of more than 10 people can't tell me what they actually need me for it strikes me as a company that's wildly disorganized and/or with a lot of employee turnover.

"We don't hire for specific roles, we just hire good engineers" (read: your job is whatever we say it is any given moment).

<comment><USER25> It can be project turnover. Take mine for example:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16283252](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16283252)

It has that attribute you are complaining about, but without the problems you presume. Suppose we hired you. Perhaps a couple months pass between when the job ad is posted and when you physically show up for your first day of work. We aren't going to put projects on hold while waiting for you; we'll assign those to other people. Once you show up, we'll get you started on a project.

That project assignment won't last forever. We may decide that you are more valuable elsewhere, perhaps after you get a security clearance. (another reason we can't say much, along with plain ordinary proprietary information) Projects tend to last a year or two.

It's not as if we have no idea. We can say in general terms what kind of stuff you could work on. Telling you about a project that might be done before you start your first day of work would make no sense at all.

I wouldn't call it wildly disorganized, but the details are not perfectly predictable. There are people managing a pipeline of upcoming projects. They propose things to customers, get feedback, place bids to do the work, get contracts, set things up for doing the work, and then match up employees with projects.

<comment><USER8> I wish more employees would have the kind of job posting you have in your link. It would tell me I wouldn't want to go anywhere near the company.

 _Pick Florida or Texas to live in a place with solid gun rights and no state income tax._

Why do I care about _gun rights_ when I'm applying for a job. That implies a culture that is always bringing politics into the job -something I avoid like the plague.

 _We proudly fly the American flag. One in our cafeteria looks to be about 8x15 feet. Our veterans hold an annual Flag Folding Ceremony in honor of Veteran 's Day._

I respect veterans (my father is one) but along with the gun rights statement it still feels like bringing non work related stuff into the job. I just want to do my job and go home.

 _Many employees choose to go shooting together, but there is no pressure to participate. It 's just a normal all-American activity._

Another red flag....

When someone asked about salary range, the response was

 _We are hiring at multiple levels and in multiple locations, so it 's a big range. You don't want an upper bound on it, do you? That would be limiting. :-)_

Another red flag....

<comment><USER25> I agree on that first point. The goal is not to attract the maximum number of job seekers. Driving away people who would be unhappy is good.

I suspect that "always bringing politics into the job" and "bringing non work related stuff into the job" are not the real cause of your dislike. Can you confirm that you would reject both Google and Facebook due to being excessively political? We're far less political at work than they are. We didn't fire our Bernie supporter.

There are no red flags. We exclusively fly the American flag.

I keep seeing that people suspect a lack of a salary range indicates nefarious intent, but it's not like that. User rb808 had it right in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16555622](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16555622) when he commented that "if you put a typical range you wont get the best people. If you put a high number out you get every nutter in town applying."

I did drop a few hints which you ignored, but the salary range spans more than 6 dB. Everybody seems to underestimate us, and glassdoor's obsolete data doesn't help, but that isn't totally a bad thing. I have no interest in wasting time on people who just spam all the job ads that offer large salaries. I get enough spammy stuff as it is... no, web development experience isn't going to cut it.

The value that you provide to one company is not the same as the value that you provide to another company. Consider two companies and two developers. One developer does C++11 and one company wants that. One developer does C# and one company wants that. Applying to the matching companies, perhaps both people are offered $200,000. Applying to the non-matching companies, perhaps both people are offered $100,000. There is no reason to be offended or assume nefarious intent when you get a low offer during a career change. Heart surgeons and stock traders may both get paid well, but a heart surgeon who switches his career to stock trading should not expect prior experience and pay to be at all related to value in the new career.

<comment><USER8> _Can you confirm that you would reject both Google and Facebook due to being excessively political_

I never see on their job postings that they have Bernie rallies every week.

But I am not a big company person. I've worked for over 20 years and have only worked for one company that anyone has ever heard of -- a company that at the time was a Fortune 10 company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Skills required to complete the job. Maybe 1, 3, 6 month goals.

</comment><comment><USER27> Tell me what the job actually is.

And salary, salary, salary!

Vacation policies.

</comment><comment><USER28> Pay range. It can be vague of you want, but just add a pay range. Those get top priority every time, even if the job doesn't sound as good.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have no idea why job descriptions look the way they do today, but I've devoted the last ~9 months of my life encouraging companies, specifically engineering teams, to provide more information up front about who they are and what it's actually like to work there. Candidates want to know so much more than just salary and tech stack.

[https://www.keyvalues.com](https://www.keyvalues.com)

Candidates want to know about as much as possible before investing hours/days/weeks interviewing at a company. Who wants to waste all that time trying to get an offer from a company they don't even want to work at?!

Here are things candidates might want to know about:

\- office layout

\- on call schedule

\- lunch traditions

\- support for personal development

\- organization/structure (ie. pods vs. teams)

\- engagement with the greater community

\- participation in meetups/conferences/hackathons

\- ability to move between teams and change projects

\- culture of promotion (external or from w/in?)

\- hiring goals for the next 6, 12 months

\- composition of team (X frontend, Y backend, Z data, etc)

\- interview process

\- employee retention

\- diversity goals and metrics

\- flexibility of working arrangements

\- frequency and duration of meetings

\- opportunities to mentor interns or junior devs

\- code reviews

\- post mortems

\- tooling (ie. for revision control)

\- how often do people pair?

\- channels to provide feedback to executives

\- contributions to open source

\- average age?

\- support/benefits for parents

\- "busy times" or "peak seasons" for the company

\- runway

\- hobbies/interests of current team members aka future coworkers

\- level/amount of interaction between me and users/customers

\- ability to work remotely

\- support for IC vs. management tracks

\- amount of collaboration between departments

\- is this job available because they're fortifying existing teams or spinning up new ones?

\- general, day-to-day working hours

The list goes on and on.

I also wrote tons of questions for candidates to ask during their job interviews to get information about all of the above: [https://www.keyvalues.com/culture-queries](https://www.keyvalues.com/culture- queries)

<comment><USER4> I've run across keyvalues.com before, and it's a great idea, but I found it didn't really help me. For one thing, there doesn't seem to be any way to filter by location (not that it would help me, since they're mostly in California).

But the bigger issue for me is that a "value" for me is either something that ought to be universal (like racial/gender equality), or a deliberate choice between valid options. For most of these values, I have no idea what the opposite choice might be. For example, GitHub picked "CUSTOMER COMES FIRST" (ironically, as their #2 value), but I'm not sure what the alternative would be. Investors come first? Make art, not products? Do any software companies have such values?

You mention on the "About" page an example of a value you originally wanted to search for, "whether they favored speed or perfection when it came to shipping code", which I think is a perfect example of a value I'd want to search for, too. Unfortunately, in the list of 50 values, I can't find any that represent either of these positions. The closest I can find are "HIGH QUALITY CODE BASE" and "FAST-PACED ENVIRONMENT", but they're not exactly opposites, and sure enough several of the companies picked both of these values, in adjacent positions. I don't see any way for companies to indicate they hold the _opposite_ of one of these values.

Here's one possible goal for anyone writing a new software engineering job search site. Every month or so, someone posts a link to "They Write the Right Stuff" here on HN, an article about the Lockheed space shuttle software group. Make a job site that would let me find that as a career, never having heard of it and not having any prior interest in the field. For example, it could have a "speed"/"perfection" dial, and show me aerospace jobs if I turn it all the way to "perfection".

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Job descriptions as a whole are in need of a major overhaul to start to include more contextual information about the roles being hired for.

A study by TheLadders.com showed that candidates spend on average 49 seconds on a job description before deciding if it's a fit or not. The majority of that time is spent above the fold.

JDs should include the most vital information about the role above the fold. Which languages should the candidate know? What certification is required? Any specialized training? Location? Education? All above the fold. No need to lead a candidate on only to reveal in the last sentence: "Must speak Mandarin".

Salary. Mention salary. Every candidate wants to know. At the very least, give a range.

Once you get past the basics, add in required skills with context. Avoid the temptation to use cliche "communication skills" or "customer service skills" without adding additional context.

Simple formula: You will use [skill name] to [desired result] within/using [time frame/technology]

A great example of a very effective JD is from 37Signals a few years ago: [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2544-were-looking-for-an- offi...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2544-were-looking-for-an-office- manager-executive-assistant)

It's pretty difficult to read that JD and be confused about the role. They avoid ambiguity at all costs and keep everything tied to specific duties/tasks/outcomes.

Finally, give candidates insight into not just your company, but the people doing the work. Their stories and experiences are tremendously more effective than marketing copy written by legal or a content team.

We're actually working on this exact problem at [https://www.Ruutly.com](https://www.Ruutly.com) \-- converting text-based job descriptions into contextual candidate experiences, above the fold.

edit - <USER3>

</comment><comment><USER31> Salary range; Remote Ok, and from where; Stack used;

</comment><comment><USER32> The pay range, where the actual job is, and what the duties of the job would be.</comment>


New Alzheimer's treatment fully restores memory function - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/new-alzheimer-s-treatment-fully-restores-memory-function <comment><USER2> Let us know when they have clinical results in a subject(s) that can communicate in a bit more detail than mice. The authors say the trials may start as early as 2017, so I don't expect a useful answer before 2020, maybe 2019 at the earliest.

I'd love to be wrong but I've seen too many promising ideas die in clinical trials. Let's hope for the best.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is from March 2015. It's an interesting technique and I would be interested to know if they have further results.</comment>


Mary Meeker's 2019 internet trends report [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bondcap.com/pdf/190611_Internet_Trends_2019.pdf <comment><USER2> From page 29, average customer acquisition cost has risen by ~33% in _just the last two years_... they make the point on the next slide that having customer acquisition costs exceed a customer's lifetime value can't really succeed for long.

I think this, specifically, is what will spell the doom of Uber and Lyft, and potentially many of the food delivery companies -- they rely on insane growth curves to generate new investment, and customer acquisition is just so unbelievably competitive/expensive, it's an arms race that (IMO) has to collapse at some point.

<comment><USER3> > will spell the doom of Uber and Lyft

Car sharing isn't going anywhere. It's too convenient. The prices will rise, the number of drivers and passengers will fall and the companies will shrink, but they'll still be around. I have trouble seeing suddenly seeing a day when there's no car share service because they all finally went belly up.

<comment><USER4> I don't think car sharing will go extinct either, but be careful with your analyses. Uber and Lyft are precariously balanced on a system of ( _substantial_ ) low-income demand, high-income demand, and subsidy. If prices rise, low-income demand plummets, ending subsidies. High-income pricing could rise significantly higher than you might expect, at which point you no longer have "ride sharing" so much as you have private car services with app hailing instead of phone hailing, and, like NYC in the 1990s, so expensive that most people will only use it to get to the airport.

<comment><USER5> It seems pretty reasonable to assume that equilibrium looks like taxis and private cars with app hailing. Personally, it wouldn't affect my usage much; I just use these services when I'm traveling because they're better experiences for the most part than taking a cab.

But, anecdotally, a fair number of urbanites regularly use Uber/Lyft instead of public transit or just because they don't want to drive. Presumably, significantly increasing prices would lose casual users who are using these services because they're a bit more convenient.

<comment><USER4> I think it's important to remember that a big part of the value prop of these services is that when you open the app to hail a car, you're pretty much assured of getting that car within 15 minutes or so. Change the current equilibrium much and that benefit might go away. I could hail a cab by phone before Uber, but, in Chicago, where we have pretty reasonable cab service (certainly light years better than SFBA's), it would often take multiple attempts and involve a 30+ minute wait. You could reliably get a private car in NYC, but, as I recall from all the times I worked in NYC, you weren't getting that car in 15 minutes.

<comment><USER6> You're overestimating how good the cab systems are outside of Chicago and the coasts. There is a lot of value in just having a reliable hailing system with a review system and tracking of where your pickup is, even if there is a 30 min delay.

The state of the art of cabs in smaller cities is getting hung up on, ghosted, or massively delayed when given a different ETA if you don't book the cab hours in advance.

<comment><USER4> I think I'm doing the opposite, and saying that on-demand hailing of cabs without subsidy was and, when subsidies collapse, likely will be a _lot_ worse than people think they'll be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "With which company would you share your health data?"

[https://www.bondcap.com/report/itr19/#view/287](https://www.bondcap.com/report/itr19/#view/287)

This certainly isn't what you'd guess from reading comments on HN.

<comment><USER8> This is quite shocking. :/

<comment><USER9> Yeah. Who would think that almost half would share their data with... Samsung.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As the years go by, I feel more and more underwhelmed by these. It feels very surface level, handwavy. How would one execute anything but decisions based on confirmation bias using this information?

<comment><USER11> It's not supposed to help you execute anything; it's an advertisement.

<comment><USER12> Explain?

<comment><USER13> Not the OP but I dug a little into _which company_ published this. The link takes you to "Bond Cap" which seems to be an offshoot of Kleiner Perkins [1] . Bond Cap is another VC fund according to their webpage [2]. Putting 2 and 2 together: if you were a prospective investor and are considering two firms A and B and A happens to publish a report every year that seems to indicate that they know the internet landscape very well, who would you invest with ( other things being equal of course )?

[1] Wikipedia says that Ms Meeker works for Kleiner Perkins.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Meeker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Meeker)

[2] [https://www.bondcap.com/#investments](https://www.bondcap.com/#investments)

<comment><USER12> That's fairly much as I'd suspected (though it'd be nice to hear OP's rationale).

I'm coming to the conclusion that much publishing is really a highly-ornate calling card or advertisement.

<comment><USER13> If you follow a16z podcasts or their blogs, you'll see they too doing quite a bit of this :-)

[https://a16z.com/posts/](https://a16z.com/posts/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow, just kind of crazy how virtually all the top 20 Internet companies are US and China. The only other country represented is Japan with Recruit Holdings, and a huge part of that (maybe majority?) is due to them owning Indeed, which was founded in Austin.

</comment><comment><USER15> slide 94:

nearly 4.2 million people streamed in december 2018 at least once on twitch

that seems incredibly high. I wonder how many of those are streaming games vs. talk/conversation vs. travel/outside social etc.

I also wonder what the cost of all of this is. How many of them will actually be unprofitable for twitch due to not having any viewers. The streaming infrastructure must be more expensive than say a yt vid that no one watches, no?

<comment><USER16> I'd argue against this solely based on the deflationary costs within computing. Factor that in, and the outlook for twitch looks great.

Article readers -> Video consumers(YouTube, Facebook etc)-> livestream (initially games and now anything)

Streaming games might be the first high value use case but I can def. see twitch gain traction in other niches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The only thing that I had doubts on was the 'Video Watching Daily Minutes' portion Page 49. ISPs like Comcast game their cable numbers. How? They provide incentives to customers where it's actually cheaper to have a basic cable plan bundled with internet vs just internet. Guess what plan customers are going to pick regardless of whether or not they really watch cable TV? Assuming seniors aren't disproportionately consuming video vs everyone else, it's probably closer to 40 / 60 - television vs digital respectively. Unless Comcast and other operators with similar practices provide their DAU, television watching statistics will be inaccurate.

</comment><comment><USER18> 50% of the world with access to the internet, that's staggering. Slide 10 shows that there's still a lot of room for growth in Asia Pacific and Africa & Middle East regions, but clearly there are bigger issues involved there.

<comment><USER19> 80% the world has never been on an an airplane, either.

Many of what we take for granted in the developed world, and even in India/China, have barely been introduced to the vast majority of people.

<comment><USER20> To be fair, in almost all parts of the world, the cost of getting on a plane are significantly higher than the cost of internet connectivity AND there are cheaper alternatives to air travel.

<comment><USER19> Oh, absolutely. My point was more that huge swaths of the world are underserved by things that we take for granted and would otherwise assume "everyone" has been exposed to. And so, there's still a ton of headroom to grow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Correction: Booking is founded by a Dutch guy (slide 260): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking.com)

<comment> shaki-dora That's a pretty amazing slide even with that error(? see below). 15 of the top 25 tech companies had 1st or 2nd gen immigrant (co-)founders.

As to booking.com: from reading the Wikipedia entry I gather the original dutch-founded booking.com was at some point acquired by Priceline Group (which had an American founder), which later changed its name back to booking.com. It seems the slide is (technically) correct, and any attempt to capture such cases in a workable definition would be complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How do you view this on a phone? It says tap to begin. Then what?

<comment><USER23> Reading the report is left as an exercise for the reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those of you who want a quick skim :

A great summary on (of all the things :-)) Twitter : [https://twitter.com/investing_city/status/113854955878977945...](https://twitter.com/investing_city/status/1138549558789779458)

</comment><comment><USER24> Did anyone else start picturing the first two slides (the ones labeled "Context") in a Star Wars-movie opening crawl? Something about the voice it's written in totally had me seeing it in yellow text perspective scrolling off into the background.

</comment><comment><USER25> huh, _Atlassian_ is on the huge company list?

<comment><USER26> The list only includes internet companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Please link to the PDF[1] if possible.

[1] [https://www.bondcap.com/pdf/190611_Internet_Trends_2019.pdf](https://www.bondcap.com/pdf/190611_Internet_Trends_2019.pdf)

<comment><USER28> I kinda like the slideshow, it lets me send someone a link to a specific slide.

<comment><USER29> Maybe it's just me, but I didn't understand the (slideshow) interface. I saw "click to begin" and I saw a down arrow, so I put the two together and clicked "down" to begin. Then I saw a list of archives, and if I continued down, it ended. I assumed I had to click 2019, so I did that and I was back where I began. It took me trying that twice before I realized I had to click... anything except the arrow.

<comment><USER30> Took me way longer than it should to figure it out. Then the slideshow took over my browser history :(

<comment><USER31> It's poorly done for a high profile report about the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What took me by surprise was that telegram had more users than whatsapp or iMessage

<comment><USER33> I think you misinterpreted the graph, telegram has significantly fewer monthly active users than any of the other messaging services listed on the graph.

<comment><USER32> doh sorry about that, I did read it incorrectly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If anyone else is wondering about the 'bondcap.com' URL, it seems a Kleiner Perkins brand.

<comment><USER35> no. It's Mary Meeker's new fund (a lot of them are from the KP growth team) but separate fund now

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Dear Mary,

Social Security is not an entitlement in anything but the strictest sense of the word. Every year you put it in your report and group it in like it's some sort of handout by the federal government, but it's not. And every year, you put up a few slides pushing your politically-motivated world view of cutting "expenses", but never bother to note what USA Inc. could do to increase _revenues_ like raising taxes on the insanely wealthy back to 1950's levels: 91 percent top marginal tax rate would go a long way to balancing USA Inc's books.

Also, it's amazing how many slides you dedicated to the national debt during Obama's presidency, and yet now it barely gets a mention, and definitely no dire predictions of ruin and destruction for all. I wonder why?

Every year I point this stuff out in HN, because I want to make sure the bias is well and truly noted in case others missed it. It makes me question how much irrational partiality infects the rest of the report - quite a lot I suspect.

<comment><USER37> Please don't take HN threads on generic political tangents. Your points may be good but this is clearly a step into generic flamewar and therefore the wrong direction for HN.

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

<comment><USER38> I am usually 100% behind you on your attempts to moderate, but I'm not sure I follow you here. But thank you for doing what you do!

In this case it doesn't seem to be a generic political tangent, but specifically addressing what appears to be bias in the report.

I found the post informative and adding context, but then, I'm probably politically aligned with the GP. Which certainly colors my view. :)

<comment><USER37> There may be such a bias. But the question from our point of view is which exerts the stronger gravitational pull: details of how such bias affects this analysis? or a generic political flamewar about "entitlements"? Since the latter topic has far more mass and charge, it's going to win every time. Does that make sense?

The dynamics of introducing hot controversies into a discussion are predictable. If a comment is to avoid having that effect, it needs to include information specific to the topic at hand and eliminate any traces of flamebait.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Homesteading - <AUTHOR> http://zackarymorris.tumblr.com/post/16528366560/homesteading

<comment><USER2> Somehow it looks like discussing the basic foundation of our industrial structure is not interesting to HNers...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya heh, I suppose I should actually build something instead of just talking about the shortcomings of business. I'm trying to document my jumping ship over to self employment but it's much slower going than I anticipated.

<comment><USER3> Here's another distraction you might enjoy: <http://blog.opensourceecology.org/> (they're attacking the problem in their own way)</comment></comment></comment>


Myself (interactive programming demo) - <AUTHOR> https://codepen.io/jakealbaugh/full/PwLXXP/ <comment> King-Aaron That was extremely cool, and would make for a useful little demo for front end development students (and maybe also for people working in the field, grinding their teeth looking for something to engage themselves with!)</comment>


After the Sidekick fiasco, should we be afraid to store data in the cloud? - <AUTHOR> http://socialfact.com/reader/monitron-after-the-sidekick-fiasco,-should-we-be-afraid-to-store-1

<comment><USER2> I do not do it.

I am not so much afraid about data loss, but about the privacy of my data. It does not matter how nice or unevil a company is. There are several cases of companies being forced to spy on their users. I try to minimise the exposure of data, that I consider to be sensitive, to outside sources as much as possible.

Looking at successful online mail or calendar applications, I have to admit that I never ever thought that so many people will hand their information over.

I still do hope that we will get a bigger awareness about privacy by the general population. Like environmental activists and parties changed the mind of the general population during the last...hmm..lets say 30 years. Somehow those parties had a big effect. No party could talk nowadays about industry projects without talking about dangers to the environment. (At least they pretend to talk about those issues..) I would like to see privacy concerns on topic more often. Once data is 'free'... there is no way back. (umm.. yes, I do know that the Sidekick fiasco was not about privacy.. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> No</comment>


Acer C720 Chromebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/acer-c720-chromebook.html <comment><USER2> I see that this one has a USB 3.0 port (unlike the HP one that was announced a few days ago). That said, it seems to me that Google is making it hard to pick one given how many similar offerings they have on the page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully the build quality on this one will be a little higher than the C710. Last year's model did not feel very nice to use compared to Samsung's series 3, despite being more powerful under the hood.</comment>


A better arXiv - <AUTHOR> http://www.kenvanharen.com/2011/10/better-arxiv.html

<comment><USER2> Theres a lot of members of the mathematical & computer science online communities who have spent time discussing and thinking about this sort of problem.

Timothy Gowers for example [http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/abstract- thoughts-abo...](http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/abstract-thoughts- about-online-review-systems/)

The problem with all the semi active (or at least working demo) proposals is that they wind up looking like stackoverflow or the like. This is probably not ideal, especially for a system that might be intended to help evaluate a scientists professional work. Not every good scientist is active on the internet beyond posting their papers and replying to email.</comment>


Trump demands FED to cut interest rates to zero 'or less' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/business/economy/bonehead-trump-jay-powell.html <comment><USER2> USD is heading towards a 40% devaluation.

I wasn't convinced at first, but it makes sense after you think about it on a longer time scale.

The amount of sovereign debt is just unpayable in any real terms ( basket of goods ).

75 million baby boomers ! with rising projected fiscal deficit from here on out.

The easiest solution is to let the currency take a hit and default nominally.

It won't cause a huge amount of inflation, only ipads, and foreign imported goods gets slightly more expensive.

I also do not think other countries devalue as many pundits think.

CNY has been trying to gain purchasing power, as a side karma benefit, the CCP gets to own people taking money out of china and moving into USD, when USD falls by 40% then nowhere is safe ! It reduces pressure from chinese citizens to move assets abroad.

The amount of dollar denominated debt globally is just too high, so trump is right.

</comment><comment><USER3> For the clueless among us, is he suggesting that the Fed pay immensely profitable businesses money to borrow money from the Fed? Wouldn't that literally be saying "give tax payer money to incredibly profitable banks and organizations for no reason"?

</comment><comment><USER4> What do the history books tel us about money?

It always gets devalued!! Look at the USD trend since the fed was created over 100 yrs ago.

Soon $100 will be the new dollar bill.</comment>


The Beauty of Programming (2001) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bowdoin.edu/~ltoma/teaching/beautyOfProgramming.pdf <comment><USER2> A lot of the same reasons that Fred Brooks listed in The Joys of the Craft in The Mythical Man-Month:

1\. The sheer joy of making things.

2\. The pleasure of making things that are useful to other people.

3\. The fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts, and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning.

4\. The joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task.

5\. The delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of imagination.

Not inclued in the list above is the insight "find the right approach and suddenly the problem just goes away". It ties in with this quote from Linus that I really like:

"Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."

[https://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/02/why-i-love- coding/](https://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/02/why-i-love-coding/)

<comment><USER3> I enjoy programming games and other things as a hobby, but the work can fall short of your points especially in my experience in web development:

2\. After days of work, your entire branch can be discarded when the feature spec changes 4\. Repetitive tasks abound 5\. Not so much creating from pure thoughtstuff, but rather intractable legacy codebases on top of bothersome system configuration

Your last quote sounds nice, but ignores the reality of coding. Even good coders have to write ugly (hard to maintain regardless of data structures) code sometimes. The real world just introduces edge cases which make even the most beautiful system have warts in places. Web development exposes concurrency, scaling and other things which can lead to tradeoffs against code cleanliness.

<comment><USER4> I'm maintaining an old, sprawling Django app right now. It's decidedly un-fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Besides bad font and no technical insight, it is a beautiful piece of text full of truth. I can feel how he did not write it for someone else (to impress or similar), but for himself only.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks; I hadn't seen this. It's reminiscent of Tolkien's characterization of an author as "sub-creator".

</comment><comment><USER7> > when you tell the computer to do something, it will do it.

I have read this so many times. Telling students that - "when you write a program, you are ordering computer to do something"

This should fascinating. But initially its not. Because after writing 8-10 lines of code and explaining for more than 30mins make things boring to students.

<comment><USER8> Not sure how old your students are but I'm teaching my 8 year old daughter programming (just been few days). I started exactly by telling "when you tell the computer to do something, it will do it." But instead of showing her any piece of code or explaining variables etc programming concepts I showed her how to command computer by writing simple 1 step commands like clear, date and echo in a terminal.

After she saw how she was asking computer to clear a screen of terminal, asking computer to tell current date or simply echoing what she typed, I moved to scratch programming editor [https://scratch.mit.edu/](https://scratch.mit.edu/)

With scratch, I showed her how to tell computer to move an image to the right and left with single "move 10 step" and "moved -10 steps" command (still on single commands to computer to do what she want)

Then I showed her how to ask computer to do something repeatedly by introducing "repeat" block (it helped that I asked her to physically imitate a pony moving on screen by few steps to right and left). And by using "repeat" block she learned to make onscreen pony dance. By this time she understood how to piece together multiple commands together and loop concept, X-Y axis as I also showed her on computer she can move a subject in 4 directions by manipulating X-Y axis values)

Next she wanted to spin the onscreen pony so I introduced her the concept of direction and the whole degrees measurement. After that it was pretty simple for her to grok that by turning 1 unit clockwise and then doing it on "repeat" made the pony spin.

During the whole process I didn't type a thing. I let her drive the whole thing by clicking/adding/removing and making mistakes to learn. It has been great fun and she already has tons of ideas about what she want to try and make computer do it for her.

<comment><USER7> I like both concepts - Introducing first terminal command then Scratch. And that's what I basically like.

But unfortunately they ( students ) are first year graduate with no computer experience and the language that need to teach them is C!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > As any mathematician knows, you literally can have a set of mathematical > equations in which three plus three equals two.

What does that mean?

<comment><USER10> In the cyclic-4 group (integer arithmetic modulo 4), 3 + 3 = 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did he deliberately choose a font that resembles Comic sans - just to offend us? ([http://www.identifont.com/differences?first=Chalkboard&secon...](http://www.identifont.com/differences?first=Chalkboard&second=Comic+Sans))

<comment><USER12> Obligatory:

[https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans- asshole](https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sans-comic-sans version: [http://cs.brynmawr.edu/content/the-beauty-of- programming](http://cs.brynmawr.edu/content/the-beauty-of-programming)

</comment><comment><USER14> > If you're good enough, you can be God. On a small scale. And I've probably > offended roughly half the population on Earth by saying so.

Which side of population Religion's or Atheist's?

<comment><USER15> Probably the religious side more so. Atheists would just laugh at that, most likely. If anything, it'd prove their point.

Religious people on the other hand, might be much more interested in defending the sanctity of that title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one bothered by the blank last page and the comic sans like font? I hope not because then I will be lonely.

<comment><USER15> I think the font is Comic Relief Regular. I have a hard time taking anything using a Comic Sans-like font seriously, especially when it's something technical. And the blank last page, yeah...</comment></comment>


GuiLite – Build all platforms UI framework with 6,000 lines code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/idea4good/GuiLite <comment><AUTHOR> Support: iOS, Android, Linux, Windows(UWP), Mac</comment>


Ask HN: Share an idea? - <AUTHOR> If you're like me, you often have a lot of ideas that you don't have the time or resources to execute on.
If so, why not write it down for your fellow hackers' enjoyment?
Topics can be anything: product ideas, service ideas, blog post topics, stand up comedy skits, research initiatives you wish could get funded, etc.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836508 <comment><USER2> A fully decentralized alternative to DNSSEC that isn't Namecoin. Specifically:

        - Use EdDSA (i.e. Ed25519) for digital signatures
        - Use BLAKE2b as the hash function
        - Keep record sizes small
        - Recursive resolvers should use DNSCurve with pinned public keys

We would not only need a solid implementation, but a formal RFC for the IETF to consider/approve.

The idea here is to make it so that _no government_ can influence or control domain name <-> IP address allocations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Short story dispensers:

[http://www.konbini.com/us/lifestyle/french-city- introduces-s...](http://www.konbini.com/us/lifestyle/french-city-introduces- short-story-dispensers-public-areas/)

Yeah I know, already done, but all the best ideas are co-opted and marketed better. What if instead of this, we could also have:

\- Disposable $10.00 phones

\- Disposable 'Tweet' cards, or single use tweet tokens

\- Disposable emoji greeting cards etc

</comment><comment><USER4> User's social media popularity level (followers, friends, likes, etc.) allows them to get discounts. The user takes a picture with the product or uses a hashtag to promote the brand.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm creating a new computer-assisted language for children.

I need a team.

</comment><comment><USER6> A platform for AMA specifically.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hola for academic papers.

<comment><USER8> Done: "Colloquial salutational oral gesticulations in Ibero-Romance languages".</comment></comment>