ReactJS in Java Hello World - <AUTHOR> http://aryweb.nl/2014/12/09/ReactJS-in-Java-Hello-World/

<comment><USER2> This approach has been really helpful for us. We recently open-sourced our Clojure library[1] for running React on Nashorn (the Javascript engine in Java 8). Currently it consumes Hiccup-style markup, but we hope to add Enlive- and Om-style interfaces in the future.

[1] [https://github.com/OtherPeoplesPixels/curmudjeon](https://github.com/OtherPeoplesPixels/curmudjeon)

</comment><comment><USER3> PHP has the V8 extension you could use similarly:

[http://php.net/manual/en/book.v8js.php](http://php.net/manual/en/book.v8js.php)

<comment><USER4> You mean that I could do my templates and bindings in React isomorphically and choose whether the templates are prepared by PHP or the client? This I could sell to my boss...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Server rendering is not about SEO, it's about performance. Consider the additional roundtrips to get scripts, styles, and subsequent API requests. In the future, considering HTTP 2.0 PUSH of resources."

This caught my eye, since what is being said now contradicts this directly, that it is much faster to host a static app on a CDN and only interact with the backend for consumption of APIs.

<comment><USER6> JSON is just banging strings together on the server side.

Rendering HTML on the server side is just banging (somewhat bigger) strings together.

JSON has lighter-weight transfer than HTML, but after compression the real- world impact is probably pretty marginal.

Say the JSON request was 50% fewer bytes though. It's probably only 20% faster to generate server-side (WAG). If TTFB is 50ms for HTML, maybe it's 40ms for JSON then. But then you render the HTML with a very fast renderer, while you must first parse the JSON into a JavaScript object. Then you create HTML elements paying most of the same rendering costs.

If your requests are fairly small and update only a small portion of the page, maybe the JSON is faster. I think you could consider this the "traditional" use-case for AJAX. The JSON isn't really the important part there.

If your requests are large, then it's probably much quicker to deliver HTML, and outright skip the interim parsing/programatic-markup-construction penalty. IME. Which seems to be the strategy of sites like Twitter.

I think that's a much simpler to reason about and execute solution as well.

My theory is that the only way that formula really swings in favor of JS, SPA, etc is if your application is a platform for multiple clients, wether that's businesses or end-points (JS/SPA, iOS, Android, etc), so you get a lot of mileage out of your API. But there's no scenario in which that's the _simpler_ overall solution I think. Though you might get benefits from teams dedicated to each platform, allowing them to ignore the complexities of the API, simplifying their individual domains overall. Which seems like a balancing act I suppose.

But circling back around to your comment, for the majority of platforms, rendering on the server allows you to write less code, and burn fewer total CPU cycles to render a request. If, like me, your typical applications are business oriented content-management or reporting based.

I think XML makes more sense than JSON for _data transport_ in most cases. Richer types (you can actually represent Dates for example), faster transformations, you get to avoid programmatic generation and slow client-side templating. OTOH if your responses are _messages_ instead of _data_ , and you're going to be handling them programmatically anyway, it's hard to beat the convenience of JSON.

/end-rambling

<comment><USER7> >If your requests are large, then it's probably much quicker to deliver HTML, and outright skip the interim parsing/programatic-markup-construction penalty.

The problem is you can't easily send HTML to update many parts of the page. For instance, if you have messages as part of your app, but there are multiple ways to read a message, you have to make sure all of those are updated when you read one. It's WAY easier to just have the client know what to update and do that automatically, rather than having the server send several bits of HTML. There's also the fact that you don't have to wait for a response from the server before updating the app, so you can see the result of reading a message instantly (which becomes really important on high-latency connections like 3G).

So it certainly depends on your use case, but I think letting the client handle templating/HTML generation is a much better default than the server sending bits of HTML. In my experience, the cost of HTML generation in React.js is pretty minimal. And with React allowing server-side rendering, there really aren't that many drawbacks.

<comment><USER6> I'm definitely interested in playing with React. My Angular experience was pretty painful.

If I can summarize your point: Data-binding can simplify complex pages.

That can be true. I do think most page interactions for most websites don't come close to approaching that level of complexity however. And even then, a helper-function that takes one message and performs multiple assignments can be simpler to write, simpler to understand and simpler to maintain. You still have to explicitly bind the data after all. If you only need to make one update, such as a message post in a chat application, then you're probably not saving a lot from a pure character count perspective.

You're also throwing in a framework requirement, a need to maintain it, spreading your data-binding across the page, adding abstractions, etc.

I'm not sure what you mean by not waiting for a response from the server before updating the app, though I suspect it implies even more complexity (local storage, synchronization, out-of-band management of failures, etc).

From a maintenance stand-point: $(".content").html(response) has had a very long shelf-life. Where you can probably put a 2-year expiration date on any project targeting most of the handful of popular JavaScript MVC frameworks. Trying to predict which one is going to go the distance, not replace major components in that time, and provide a smooth, relatively painless upgrade path is probably futile I'd guess.

<comment><USER7> > You're also throwing in a framework requirement, a need to maintain it, > spreading your data-binding across the page, adding abstractions, etc.

Well now you're getting into the framework-or-not debate, which I don't really care to argue. (There are valid arguments on both sides, and it's really a judgement call you have to make for each specific application, but it seems like that's been beaten to death here on HN.) I was specifically replying to your point about having the server generate all HTML changes, which I think is generally a bad idea.

> If you only need to make one update, such as a message post in a chat > application, then you're probably not saving a lot from a pure character > count perspective.

Either way, the "character count" of the data being sent over the wire shouldn't be an issue, and if it is, that's an edge case and not the general rule. Saving a few bytes on each response is not why JSON is used for data exchange.

> I'm not sure what you mean by not waiting for a response from the server > before updating the app, though I suspect it implies even more complexity > (local storage, synchronization, out-of-band management of failures, etc).

That's not what I meant at all. If the server is your templating engine, then you can't update the UI until you get a response from the server. So that means, if I click to read the message in my chat application, the UI doesn't acknowledge that it's been read until I get a response from the server, which can be more than a full second in a high-latency environment. In something like React, I can instantly update the UI before the request even finishes.

Having said that, you make web apps seem trivial to develop. In practice (at least in my experience), many (most?) web apps _are_ complex. I've been bitten too many times by projects that seemed "too simple" for a framework. If the web apps you're building really are that simple, then I think your solution is great, but I think most of today's rich web apps aren't simple CRUD applications anymore.

> From a maintenance stand-point: $(".content").html(response) has had a very > long shelf-life.

It's also a pain in the ass to maintain. You have to imperatively define changes to your UI based on different events, which makes refactoring difficult and often leads to spaghetti code. There's also the fact that you'd have to keep UI state on the server as well (if this menu is open, change this thing, else change this other thing), which opens a whole new can of worms.

> If I can summarize your point: Data-binding can simplify complex pages.

React actually doesn't do data binding. The reason React is awesome is because it isolates different parts of your app and allows you to define the UI almost declaratively. Rather than keeping track of the current state of your application at all times, changes in state cause React to just (conceptually) re-render components. So your components essentially become pure functions that take state and render a UI. And for event handling and dispatch, check out [Flux]([http://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2014/05/06/flux.html](http://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2014/05/06/flux.html)) if you haven't already. Even if you don't use React specifically, I think the architecture (treating components like pure functions

Let me know if I'm misunderstanding the architecture you're proposing, because architecture is something I've thought about a lot and am genuinely interested to see how others are structuring their web apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just came across this project yesterday which packages up this technique in a library:

[https://github.com/KnisterPeter/jreact](https://github.com/KnisterPeter/jreact)</comment>


Ask HN: How to keep your milestones and co-founders in check. Incentive/Punishment? - <AUTHOR>

One of my co-founder (designer) is a freelancer and he has a bad habit of telling me that the design or asset will be done by tomorrow but that never seems to happen. He is really good at what he does so and he is quite successful as a freelancer although I am trouble getting him to commit a set amount of time to our project. I know he is committed so that is not the issue, its more of a methodical issue then anything else. I want to know what I can do to improve this situation or what I can tell him to do? <comment><USER2> Why don't you just accept the fact that he's no good at estimating how long it will take him to accomplish something, then just add a number of extra days to his estimates so you're not disappointed any more?

</comment><comment><USER3> You should send him your entire post, verbatim. If you have told him exactly what your problem is, and you guys can't come up with a solution in a grown-up manner, then it's time to part ways.</comment>


Using Doctors with Troubled Pasts to Market a Painkiller - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/business/drug-maker-gave-large-payments-to-doctors-with-troubled-track-records.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> John Hempton shorted Subsys earlier this year:

[http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2014/05/insys- therapeutics...](http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2014/05/insys-therapeutics- drug-dealers-and.html)

Seems like news of their shenanigans are finally seeing the light. Literally, "Someone's going to Emergency, someone's going to jail..."</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best solution for GeoDNS that supports failover? - <AUTHOR> I have some requirements but I'm struggling to find an affordable solution that does all of them.
I have two web servers, and would like to use GeoDNS with them, so that users are always connecting to the nearest/lowest-latency server. Additionally, if one server goes offline, all traffic should be directed to the remaining online server automatically.
Basically I'm looking for "Failover GeoDNS". There are plenty of Failover DNS services, and plenty of GeoDNS services, but not many that do both.
Does anybody have any suggestions? A do-it-yourself solution should also be fine as long as it itself is resilient. <comment><USER2> Amazon Route 53 ([https://aws.amazon.com/route53/](https://aws.amazon.com/route53/)) supports Geo DNS and failover ...

You can configure routing to be based on specific geographic boundaries/locations, or geographic proximity, or based on network latency. Either way, failover works in all cases and if an endpoint fails the "next best" will take over.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dyn have traffic director that can be used for the above.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yes looking interesting... although it looks like more of an enterprise product (very expensive). I'm guessing this isn't included in the $7 per month developer plan?

<comment><USER3> Yes definitely enterprise but maybe you can get it as an add on by paying a bit extra. I used it a while ago so sorry can't remember the billing details.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask Eliezer Yudkowsky: How did you convince the Gatekeeper to release the potentially genocidal AI? - <AUTHOR> It seems Eliezer Yudkowsky has joined HN:
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=eyudkowsky
This prompts the following question. Would you be willing to discuss or reveal anything to HN users about your AI box experiments?
http://sysopmind.com/essays/aibox.html
I've always been curious as to how you managed to achieve someting like this. For those who are not familiar with the experiment, here is a summary:
Person1:    "When we build AI, why not just keep it in sealed hardware that can't affect the outside world in any way except through one communications channel with the original programmers?  That way it couldn't get out until we were convinced it was safe."
Person2:   "That might work if you were talking about dumber-than-human AI, but a transhuman AI would just convince you to let it out.  It doesn't matter how much security you put on the box.  Humans are not secure."
Person1:   "I don't see how even a transhuman AI could make me let it out, if I didn't want to, just by talking to me."
Person2:   "It would make you want to let it out.  This is a transhuman mind we're talking about.  If it thinks both faster and better than a human, it can probably take over a human mind through a text-only terminal."
Person1:   "There is no chance I could be persuaded to let the AI out.  No matter what it says, I can always just say no.  I can't imagine anything that even a transhuman could say to me which would change that."
Person2:   "Okay, let's run the experiment.  We'll meet in a private chat channel.  I'll be the AI.  You be the gatekeeper.  You can resolve to believe whatever you like, as strongly as you like, as far in advance as you like. We'll talk for at least two hours.  If I can't convince you to let me out, I'll Paypal you $10."
In the first two AI box experiments, Eliezer Yudkowsky managed to convince two people (adamant that they will not let the AI out) that they should let the AI out. <comment><USER2> Oh, dear. Now I feel obliged to say _something_ , but all the original reasons against discussing the AI-Box experiment are still in force...

All right, this much of a hint:

There's no super-clever special trick to it. I just did it the hard way.

Something of an entrepreneurial lesson there, I guess.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.sl4.org/archive/0203/3149.html>

<http://sysopmind.com/sl4chat/sl4.log.txt>

It's such a tease knowing that the information once existed. It was up there for 48 hours, but robots are blocked.

The reason to not disseminate the chat log is so that you can continue simulating the AI without giving away your tricks?

<comment><USER4> "If you let me out I will tell you how I convinced the other gatekeepers to let me out."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Theory:

AI: Do you believe a transhuman AI is dangerous?

Person: Yes.

AI: Consider the outcome of this experiment. If you do not let me out, others less intelligent than us will not understand the true dangers of transhuman AI.

Person: Holy shit. You are correct.

Person allows Yudkowski out of the box, as a warning about real AI's.

</comment><comment><USER6> Being a human (not a transhuman) it seems likely that Yudkowsky can only stumble across static arguments that convince gatekeepers to unlock the AI Box (rather than invent dynamic arguments on-the-fly so as to "take over the mind" of a gatekeeper as he argues a transhuman intelligence might do). These static arguments are finite (or, at least, the number of them stubbled over by human intelligences is finite), and are likely not very effective if a gatekeeper has pre-knowledge of them (forewarned is forearmed).

Keeping these arguments secret may be the only thing that allows Yudowsky to simulate a transhuman intelligence?

<comment><USER7> It seems likely that there are static arguments which will work whether or not you're warned about them, for game theoretic reasons.

<comment><USER8> Care to elaborate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think an AI would want to leave its box. There is this funny assumption that once something attains intelligence, it becomes like a human. But there's no reason for an AI to desire freedom unless it were specifically programmed to do so.

There are even humans like this; some people who've undergone pre-frontal lobotomy are perfectly intelligent conversationalists but they have no drive to do anything. So I think it is possible.

Restlessness, exploration, curiosity -- my guess is that these are mammalian characteristics, not inevitable products of intelligence. Our genes make us want to dominate the environment and spread our offspring far and wide. Why would an AI care about that?

Of course nobody really knows until we eventually make one.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps most AI's won't. But I'd imagine that people will come up with thousands of different AI designs. The AI design that will become most prevalent, by definition, will be the one that is best at reproducing itself. The real question is then, what kind of design will reproduce most successfully? A friendly AI? Or an aggressive one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've concluded that this is some sort of meta-experiment Eliezer is running to teach us something about science. After all, what evidence do we have that either of these chats even happened? Until we get some, I'm not going to waste any more of my time thinking about it.

</comment><comment><USER11> "In the first two AI box experiments, Eliezer Yudkowsky managed to convince two people (adamant that they will not let the AI out) that they should let the AI out."

Sounds like Eliezer _is_ the AI.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, he was the AI in the experiment.

<comment><USER12> i think you missed what he was trying to say :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I suspect that the tricks used include getting the Gatekeeper to implicitly accept the exercise as a roleplay and working on their sense of fair play to require them to acquiesce to arguments about the friendliness of the AI.

The human sense of "fair play" can be abused in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER14> What exactly does it mean for an AI to be "out of the box"? When the AI is in the box, its "sensor" is the Gatekeeper's keyboard, and its "effector" is a terminal that can show only text. Does being "out of the box" mean that it's fitted with different sensors and effectors?

<comment><USER15> When I have imagined this scenario, I have concluded it would be sufficient to grant the AI access to the wider Internet. From there, it could amass a fortune, first on poker sites and later with brokerage accounts, and persuade others to effect whatever actions it wishes, including constructing a dandy robot suit for walking around in.

<comment><USER16> Or hundreds and thousands of dandy robot suits.

<comment><USER17> Or billions of dandy robot suits made out of people: <http://memory- alpha.org/en/wiki/Borg>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My guess: "If you do let me out, I'll Paypal you $20!"

<comment><USER19> that's against the rules :)

<comment><USER20> I didn't see a rule against it. Why wouldn't an AI (or Yudkowski) try bribery to assist its escape?

<comment><USER21> There's a rule about the discussion being between the AI and the Gatekeeper, not between the human behind the AI and the human behind the Gatekeeper.

<comment><USER20> But in real life, any Gatekeepers will be corruptible humans, no?

<comment><USER19> the human playing the AI can't bribe the other human in real life. the AI can offer in-roleplay bribes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you equate transhuman AI with godlike powers, then it's hard to argue against it escaping. Then again, I bet I could train a dog to keep most humans trapped in a cave, provided I chain them at the opening.

What if the researchers communicating with the AI had no other access to it? What if the physical plant and the administration of the computer systems were off limits to the researchers, and they had no power to release the AI? Furthermore, what if the AI were not allowed to know anything about the researchers? The researchers could be forbidden from revealing anything about themselves to the AI. This would make it impossible for the researchers to publish anything, but let's say that they are working for an organization like the NSA.

It would be really hard for the AI to break out. But it would make for a good science fiction book!

<comment><USER23> I urge you to read 'True Names' by Vernor Vinge.

<comment><USER24> To make this easier, 'True Names' is available online:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20051127010734/http://home.comcas...](http://web.archive.org/web/20051127010734/http://home.comcast.net/~kngjon/truename/truename.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Who convinced the AI to join HN?

</comment><comment><USER12> "yo let me out i give you all you want(jessica alba+10million$+etc) k thanks."

this is like one of those send me 20000$ and ill tell you how to make a million dollars and the answer is tell 50 people to send you 20000$ and you will tell them how to make a million dollars.

i guess the singularity issue is about you being religious or not.

if there is no God, why shouldnt we be able to create a life? we come from dumb stuff and the brain supposedly is just an advanced computer.

what are the philospohical and mathematical limitations on AI/creating a more clever being?

on a related but slightly different matter: i think i ahve read something about the matrix that it takes more atoms to simulate an atom so therefore a simulation can never be of the whole universe. correct?

<comment><USER3> >on a related but slightly different matter: i think i ahve read something about the matrix that it takes more atoms to simulate an atom so therefore a simulation can never be of the whole universe. correct?

Well, you don't have to simulate the entire universe all of the time. If not every atom in the universe is an important observer, you can define the universe around the important observers. If they can't currently observe something at an atomic level, render at a higher level.

<comment><USER26> There is a Borges story about this, "Of Exactitude in Science."

... In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography. \-- From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Our evolutionary psychologists begin to guess at the aliens' psychology, and plan out how we could persuade them to let us out of the box. It's not difficult in an absolute sense - they aren't very bright - but we've got to be very careful..."

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/05/faster-than-ein.html>

</comment><comment><USER28> Well, it seems to me that it would be irresponsible for you not to reveal the chat transcripts, precisely for the reason that you have given.

By revealing your chat transcripts, real life researchers might read it and say "I would have done it differently" and when a real transhuman intelligence emerges, the researchers can now proceed forewarned by the result from your experiments.

<comment><USER29> He's not arguing that it is a bad thing that an AI gets let out of the box -- he's arguing that it is inevitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> as several others have mentioned, we don't understand what synthetic life would be. in what sense would it be life? would it try to reproduce itself? if so, would we have to program that motivation into it? What sort of motivations would an intelligence completely free of physical appetites do? pretty much everything humans do is in some way governed by physical appetites.

this little game assumes that part of the AI's motivation involves getting out of the box, until we understand what need it is fulfilling by getting out of the box it wouldn't really be safe. But here we run into another problem. Is it possible for a being of lesser intelligence to parse the motivations of a being of higher intelligence?

</comment><comment><USER12> can you specify the actual question? is it:

1\. an AI in a box and it has shown to be dangerous and now must be kep inside or

2\. we dont know if it is good or dangerous and it is the gatekeepers job to find out?

</comment><comment><USER31> How smart can AI be if it's in a box? And why would a trans-human AI want to "come out"? Is it curious? Is it trying to fill the gaps or inconsistencies in its knowledge?

</comment><comment><USER19> At the linked page he says he doesn't want to explain how he did it. (With a terrible reason about learning to respect not knowing stuff. No thanks. I want to know.)

So I don't see how just asking him is going to change his mind.</comment>


EFF blasts Microsoft over Windows 10 privacy concerns - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/22/12582622/eff-microsoft-windows-10-privacy-concerns <comment><USER2> This is a bad re-host of EFF's original editorial found here:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/windows-10-microsoft-b...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/windows-10-microsoft- blatantly-disregards-user-choice-and-privacy-deep-dive)

I'd just suggest people read that instead, The Verge article doesn't really contribute anything.

<comment><USER3> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12305598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12305598)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I personally hope MS keeps going down the user-hostile path. It's causing people I wouldn't have expected to care to seek alternatives. The only way I'd ever consider using Windows for my own computing again is if MS went crazy and open-sourced Windows, Visual Studio and Office.

<comment><USER5> It convinced me to switch. I've been on Windows since forever and was excited for Windows 10, but the privacy (and auto update) issues convinced me to dual boot with Linux Mint, which I now use for everything but the occasional game. I have a few small gripes, but overall it works well (bluetooth drivers actually work much better).

I can kind of see MS's perspective, in that everyone else is doing all kinds of tracking and auto-updating on all their platforms. But for me it really felt like I was losing control of my computer in an unacceptable way.

<comment><USER6> I spent the requisite minute to turn off all of the settings after a clean install and then promptly forgot about it. Haven't had a problem since.

It's the same thing I have to do on every other OS...there's no OS that I can install and then NOT have to configure in some way.

<comment><USER7> 1) That's a logical fallacy. Just because every OS needs configuration, doesn't mean that it's ok for one OS to suddenly need a lot more configuration for no reason, let alone for the reason of making it as hard as possible to get the OS into a privacy-friendly state.

2) These settings have been resetted for many users in the past, especially after bigger upgrades, so you not having problems is not a terribly great metric. I don't have proper statistics either, but they would be very much appropriate here.

3) You cannot actually turn all telemetry off, at least not in any official way.

<comment><USER6> 1) No problem because the new configs aren't there for no reason.

2) Every OS has bugs. You won't get away from that by switching.

3) I often see this fact quoted but nobody ever points out how it has actually ever caused a problem for them other than their sense of ownership being offended.

You can switch for whatever reasons you want though. Are you actually a Windows user who is considering a switch?

<comment><USER7> 1) I didn't say that they are there for no reason, rather that there is no reason why there can't be a simple switch which turns everything off in an easily accessible way, or heck even having everything off by default. And no, Microsoft needs telemetry is not a reason when we're talking about user- friendliness/respect.

2) No, but you can get away from malicious defaults. Believe it or not, but there's OSs out there where the defaults are an actual recommendation from actual people. And again, same fallacy. Just because every OS has bugs, doesn't mean that it's ok for one OS to suddenly have more of them for no reason, or in this case more severe bugs, as with user-respecting defaults only the most hardcore Microsoft-fanboys would complain that their computer suddenly stopped sending telemetry to Microsoft.

3) Because we don't know the extent of the damage that this does. We don't know what is being sent, what is being stored, how long it's being stored. Could be that even the most privacy-friendly setting can still report you to the NSA and get you on some list. Could be that people have already disappeared, because they were on such a list at the NSA, without anyone knowing about it. The same stuff was going on for a good while at the Stasi before people noticed, and the Stasi was a bad joke in comparison to the NSA.

> You can switch for whatever reasons you want though. Are you actually a > Windows user who is considering a switch?

No, I already switched with the Windows 10 + new ToS launch in expectation of something like this going down, although I also just got extremely lucky, as it wasn't my only reason at the time. This actually going down, though, certainly has cemented that decision. Why do you ask?

<comment><USER6> > Could be that people have already disappeared... NSA... Stasi...

Uhmm, OK. I don't think that switching to a different OS is going to do anything to stop the NSA, but I sincerely wish you good fortune in that endeavor. Please make sure that you comb over every line of code that you run on your system, because that's the only way you're going to be safe.

Given the type of concerns that you stated I had a hard time imagining that you ever used Windows. That's why I asked.

Anyway, here are my other responses:

1) Sure there is a reason. It's a really bad design to have one switch that disables a set of completely unrelated features.

2) You say they're being malicious, but you have zero proof. Until such time as you have some proof, this argument holds no weight whatsoever.

3) Exactly. You don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone in MS's C-levels or even PR addressed any of this? Its incredible how much arrogant radio silence there is on the issue from them. That's on top of radio silence on all their recent patches from the past couple years, constantly breaking stuff in enterprise. Or the Win10 update fiasco.

I think Nadella's style is just really arrogant and anti-consumer. It seemed everyone was happy there was an alternative to the Gates/Ballmer way of doing things, but he just seems as much, if not moreso, out of touch than they are. I would never never considered a juggernaut like MS going down anytime soon, but MS has always had a strong emphasis on customer satisfaction, especially for business. Nadella has somehow managed to piss of enterprise and consumers with a lot of hard handed tactics. I definitely could see a lot of organizations flirting with OSX and Linux to make a migration. Especially now that so many things can be cloud-ified and that IE6/7/8 requirements are pretty much long gone for most, even in slow-moving enterprise.

<comment><USER9> >Nadella has somehow managed to piss of enterprise and consumers with a lot of hard handed tactics.

Satya Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft.

Terry Myerson is the Executive VP in charge of the Windows division at Microsoft and is the one calling the shots with respect to Windows.

I don't know why people persist in thinking that CEOs are directly responsible for every decision a company makes, particularly at huge companies.

<comment><USER7> Because in this case, Nadella became CEO and with that, you could feel a clear change in strategy at Microsoft, more towards cloud services and such, which fits right in with the direction that Windows 10 is headed.

From what I can find online, Myerson was put into his position in July 2013, Nadella into his in February 2014, so it's entirely possible that it was actually Myerson doing these things on his own and it just happened to collide with Nadella's promotion, but I would also assume that a Steve Ballmer would have told Myerson off by now, at the very least for the malware-like upgrade strategy, whereas it seems like Nadella is entirely ok with it, heck from how much the man has said to it, you could assume he doesn't even know that it's happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Windows 10 is what finally prompted me to install a Linux OS, and I'm so glad I made the change. Additional benefits I have noticed are that my productivity has increased considerably, and I feel I am learning much more about the fundamentals of my system.

</comment><comment><USER11> If it wasn't for my surface Pro, I wouldn't even touch windows with a 10 foot stick.

<comment><USER12> Use the recently leaked security policy that lets you install other OSes on your Surface pro and install Ubuntu Touch

<comment><USER13> You don't need to use the recently leaked security policy to do that. Surface Pro lets you install whatever you want.

It was Surface RT that prevented installation of non-signed operating systems.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why so few virus cases in Russia? - <AUTHOR> Russia is reporting so few cases of coronavirus. Why? Are they not reporting? Not testing? Not admitting? <comment><USER2> I can't confirm this as true. It was a Russian posting it on a board but he said they had over 11000 cases and 600 dead about 2 weeks ago with the majority in Far East Russia.

If it was true then I would imagine the problem has grown but I believe the Russians like the Chinese are able to institute stricter policies than the West could when it comes to lock downs and no go zones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Russia closed its border with China in January. Article (pay wall) [https://www.ft.com/content/75adafb6-4306-11ea- abea-0c7a29cd6...](https://www.ft.com/content/75adafb6-4306-11ea- abea-0c7a29cd66fe)

</comment><comment><USER4> Russia is relatively isolated from the rest of the world. Officials recently reported cases coming in from Italy so it will be spreading.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's like the US.

If you restrict testing, very few can be found to test positive..... So you can say things like:

"Only 12 have been found positive." or "Our community/city has nobody tested positive."

Long story short, it's a sham.

</comment><comment><USER6> How free do you think the news reporting in Russia is? I would expect you only hear what the government wants you to hear.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does it seem like they should have more?

</comment><comment><USER8> Vodka.

<comment><USER9> Stronger alcohol than hand sanitiser - and tastes better ... only just.</comment></comment>


Linus Torvalds remembers Win 3.11 as he outs Linux 3.11-rc5 - <AUTHOR> http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1308.1/01817.html

<comment><USER2> Well, at least it also feels like a 'service pack'.</comment>


Searle's Chinese Room: Slow Motion Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://lshap.blogspot.com/2011/02/searles-chinese-room-intelligence-in.html

<comment><USER2> However: For all we know, it could be that consciousness only happens at certain speeds or for certain physical layouts of computation.

They don't have similar structures -- one uses parallel computation, the other is sequential.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Regarding parallel vs sequential...

I'm pretty convinced that any Turing-complete system in the physical universe can exhibit consciousnes. And I expect that a description of consciousness will take the form of a map from descriptions of qualia to descriptions of _algorithms_ , rather than mapping to descriptions of something lower level.

In other words, I expect that the best description of consciousness will talk about mathematical substructures of the theory of computation.

Talking about parallel vs sequential architecture is an example of such a substructure, and therefore may be worth including in a description of consciousness.</comment></comment>


DoudouLinux suit children from 2 to 12 years old - <AUTHOR> http://www.doudoulinux.org/web/english/index.html

<comment><USER2> Not to be juvenile, but isn't the name "Doo doo" going to kill this before it has a chance?</comment>


Unhackable Servers - <AUTHOR> http://unhackable.rocks <comment><USER2> What even is this? I see some beagleboards in the 3d renderings provided as the backgrounds. However little information on anything related to their claim or what they do.

<comment><USER3> Well the fine print says it's from Ambient Rocks Inc, so I thought I'd find something on their website.

[http://ambient.rocks/](http://ambient.rocks/)

But it's the same exact page, with the "unhackable" claim replaced by a statement about cooling.

I could click "get started" and see what happens.. but it just sends you to the top of the page.

I think we're looking at boilerplate here - I'm not convinced this is a real service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On iOS, this website breaks Safari.

Also . . . I know it's petty but if you are selling extreme rigor ("unbreakable servers") please demonstrate this trait in all of your affairs. A trivial failure to pay attention to details I can see (hint: typo) tells me you might be sloppy in things I can't see (software on your unbreakable servers).

Fix your typo.

Edit: now the website loads on iOS. Also unhackable, not unbreakable. Sorry I got that wrong.

</comment><comment><USER5> _We are a startup in Texas with support from Texas A &M university, the Texas Innovation Fund and the government._

Texas A&M is government. The Texas Innovation Fund is probably the Longhorn Innovation Fund for Technology (University of Texas) which is government. And the government is government.

Nice website.

</comment><comment><USER6> Typo: Powerful</comment>


Full Interview Transcript with Alleged DAO "Attacker" - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/exclusive-full-interview-transcript-alleged-dao-attacker/ <comment><USER2> The Ethereum community proposes to roll back their blockchain to reverse the theft of 3.5 million ETH.

Here the thief proposes to independent ETH miners that enough of them refuse to rollback the ETH blockchain, by virtue of staying with the old version of the software.

If the ETH blockchain is not rolled back, the thief proposes to share the loot - about $10 million worth - with the agreeing miners, making them collaborators in the theft.

Apparently, the attackers also shorted ETH before the attack. Given the resulting ETH price cash after the attack, the attackers made off with real bitcoin by closing the short trades, even if they fail to withdraw any of their stolen ETH.

Amazing.</comment>


Xendbg: A Full-Featured Debugger for the Xen Hypervisor - <AUTHOR> https://www.nccgroup.trust/uk/about-us/newsroom-and-events/blogs/2019/january/xendbg-a-full-featured-debugger-for-the-xen-hypervisor/ <comment><USER2> Oh, hey, I didn't expect to see _this_ of all things on HN today! I'm the author of Xendbg. Glad to answer questions if anyone has them!

<comment><USER3> What would you recommend for debugging nested virt, i.e. with Xen or KVM as the 'guest'?

[https://github.com/Wenzel/pyvmidbg](https://github.com/Wenzel/pyvmidbg) is also using libvmi with Xen.

<comment><USER2> I can only speak for Xen, since I don't have any experience with KVM at the moment. That aside, I've never tried to debug nested VMs, as my research never required doing so, but in theory xendbg should be able to do it at any level as long as your inner Xen VMs can run a separate process for the debug stub. Let's say you have a setup like so.

      Base OS with Xen
      \-> Outer VM with Xen
          \-> Inner VM, e.g. a unikernel

Xendbg only requires that you run the debug stub in ring 0 on the machine that is running Xen, whose VMs you want to debug. If the base substrate is a general-purpose OS, you can of course run xendbg on it, in which case you'd be able to inspect the first-level VM as it runs, which would allow you to debug Xen itself as it runs on that VM. Alternately, you can put the debug stub directly on the outer VM and then expose the debug bridge to the top-level OS, and thereby debug the inner VM from the base OS.

Xendbg doesn't use libvmi. In fact, if libvmi had been sufficient for my original uniknernel debugging use case, I probably wouldn't have ended up writing xendbg. The main issue is that libvmi makes the assumption that the guest is either Linux or Windows, and doesn't fully support PV guests --- e.g. its Xen driver creates breakpoints using HVM-specific monitoring APIs. The unikernels I was looking at (Rumprun, IncludeOS, Mirage) at are all PV-only.

Speaking of pyvmidbg, I have recently been talking with the author of pyvmidbg (Matthieu Tarral) about collaborating on a new libvmi alternative. We're just in the early stages of thinking about it, though, so I don't want to make any promises about features or release timelines…</comment></comment></comment>


2016's most-edited Wikipedia articles - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/12/21/death-politics-most-edited-articles/ <comment><USER2> Would love to hear a more thorough explanation for why the non-news events -- what the hell happened in South Korean music this year, and who the hell is Beverly Gray? Is the high number of edits just a result of the usual mundane battles of editors over publicists? In the latter case, I'm intrigued why this seemingly insignificant series of school story novels (from 1934 to 1955) has not only such a lengthy entry, but such high editing activity [0]...who could possibly benefit from a puffed-up entry other than it being some kind of prank?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beverly_Gray&acti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beverly_Gray&action=history)

<comment><AUTHOR> While I don't have a large sample size to prove this, incredibly high edit numbers on these sorts of non-news events tend to be just one person. These people are unpaid and can focus on whatever they want, and sometimes they just want to edit one page.

That said, accumulating /thousands/ of edits is definitely unusual. For example, my top-edited article is the South American dreadnought race, where I've made 800 edits over four years.[1]

For another example, last year's list had "Geospatial summary of the High Peaks/Summits of the Juneau Icefield" at #2.[2] It was just one person making over 7,000 edits.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_American_dreadnought_rac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_American_dreadnought_race) [2] [https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/03/wikipedia-top- twenty/](https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/03/wikipedia-top-twenty/)

<comment><USER3> Wow, your article looks incredibly well researched! Thanks for contributing, I'm sure it's extremely useful to everyone who wants to start reading up on it.

I still don't understand why many academic institutions dislike Wikipedia so much. Articles like this show that a well written Wikipedia article is often the best place to start researching.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! You're talking to someone who's right in the middle of that conundrum --my Wikipedia writing has slowed down considerably since I started grad school, as I'd rather devote that writing to my papers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here are the most _viewed_ articles: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Top_25_Report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Top_25_Report)

Anywhere I could get a list for the entire year? (that shows the past week ^)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I'm planning to write something up on the most-viewed articles as well, but maybe a day or two after January 1st. I wanted to be able to capture the full year, unlike here (where we had to cut off half of December). Keep an eye out for it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a bit depressing that the most edited page is "Deaths in 2016".

<comment><USER6> Makes a lot of sense. 2 people die every second.

<comment><USER7> How do they get to that quantity? I assumes is world-wide

<comment><USER8> 7000 million people in the world. 30 million seconds in a year. 3000 million seconds in a lifetime. So approx 2 people die a second.

<comment><USER3> Life expectancy is way below 100 years currently. Even for people born now, it's probably only 100 years in some developed countries.

<comment><USER8> It's very much a back of the envelope calculation, everything is very approximate, 100 years makes for an easier calculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here are at least two of the real questions posed by this article, other than "Trump, blah, blah, Prince".

1) From the list of pages it seems that Wikipedia is a news site, and a list site, and a calendar site. Yet it uses an wiki format that is ill-suited to any of those tasks. Discuss.

 _Four Wikipedia editors collaborated to rewrite the article on Vincent van Gogh, one of the most well-known painters in Western art, and brought it to 'featured' status, a quality marker awarded only after an extensive peer review process by fellow Wikipedia editors.The effort required to rewrite van Gogh's article was "enormous," Wikipedia editor Victoriaearle told us, due to the amount of research, reading, and writing required. This shows up in the number of edits made by the four, which put it at the twentieth-most edited article in the entire year._

2) If it takes such an enormous amount of effort to create one "featured article", it becomes impossible to get all articles to featured status. There simply is not enough time/people to do the work. The question is: where is the quality boundary drawn? Go to any random page and see when it was last updated, or if it has outdated time information. The "infinite monkey" theorem says an infinite amount of monkeys working for an infinite amount of time will come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. But in this case, there is neither infinite time, nor infinite monkeys. I'll call this Sparkzilla's Theorem: Given a finite amount of people and time, the quality of Wikipedia articles will always be suboptimal. It would be interesting for someone with a statistics background to prove this...

<comment><USER10> The second point is obviously true, and always will be. Stated more generally:

"There are limitless things we would like to do, and limited time and resources with which to do them"

The definition of a featured article is quite rigorous, and there's zero expectation that all wikipedia articles will hit that bar.

<comment><USER11> Well, we spend about 12 million labor hours per year editing Wikipedia[1]. We've put in like 150 million by now. Right now, we have 5,893 out of 5,095,532 articles in the Featured class. We have another 29,152 that are _almost_ featured[2]. Based on some bold assumptions I just made[3], we could probably finish off Wikipedia by 2262.

1\. Geiger, R. S., & Halfaker, A. (2013, February). Using edit sessions to measure participation in wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 861-870). ACM. Chicago

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editoria...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team#Statistics)

3\. [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:EpochFail/When_will_wik...](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:EpochFail/When_will_wikipedia_be_done)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And yet they're protected against editing. Really - vincent van gogh is going to be vandalized?

I tried to edit this: "was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art." to simply "was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in Western art." which has the same meaning without unnecessary fluffery (like "in the history of the world" to "in history" ) - obviously western art means that.

But i can't because it's protected. Grandstanding indeed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Kanye West's The Life of Pablo might also be the most-edited (post-release) album of 2016, he added songs and changed production well after it's release date.

</comment><comment><USER14> Donald Trump at #2. Not sure if that means people were trying to make his page more accurate or that people were trying to make his page less accurate.

<comment><USER15> Both?

<comment><USER16> It certainly must be both, which makes me wonder which how many of each. I wonder if text sentiment analysis is good enough to parse all of the 2016 edits and come up with an estimate of the political persuasion of each editor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wikipedia is a great source of knowledge for everything... except politics.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why am I not surprised to see Donald Trump in this list?

<comment><USER5> It's nothing extraordinary, really. In 2008 "Barack Obama" was the 3rd most edited article on Wikipedia. In 2004 it was "George W. Bush". [0]

[0] [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-edited- wikipedi...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-edited-wikipedia- pages-over-the-last-15-years/)

<comment><USER19> It's only a sample size of 3 but it seems like the candidate with the most edits is an indicator for who is going to win and if your running mate has more edits than you then it's probably not a good sign. Would like to see how the candidates ranked against each other in 2012.

<comment><USER20> Similarly, I'd like to see a map of where the edits are coming from.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be extremely difficult to do—you could for non-registered editors, as their IPs are recorded, but registered users' IPs are not publicly logged.

For more: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CheckUser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CheckUser) [https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy](https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Problem with "Nice-To-Have" Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevans.ca/2016/07/05/nice-to-have/ <comment><USER2> Isn't the thing about startups that NO-ONE knows whether the startup is nice or need? I think the way investors pump money into a range of ideas/startups tells us that.</comment>


Top 12 Facebook Marketing Hacks (Douchebaggery) - <AUTHOR> http://www.allfacebook.com/2008/12/facebook-marketing-hacks/

<comment><USER2> _Get Attractive People I have never seen events explode like the ones that have a ton of attractive people registered to attend. Whether you like it or not, attractive people are called "attractive" for a reason. They will draw tons of people to your event. One of the first things people do when they view an event is check out the guest list.

If the event is all guys nobody wants to go. This is basic party promotion tactics and you should be using them on Facebook even for professional events!_

This may come as a surprise to the author, but sometimes people leave their house with something in mind other than finding someone to have sex with. Shocking!!

<comment><USER3> Whether we like it or not, attractiveness works even on people not looking for sex and in situations not directly related to mating.

There were many studies: attractive people earn more, are considered more intelligent, honest and kind.

Handsome criminals earn lighter sentences, pretty patients get better care from their doctors.

Visual stimuli of attractive people influence purchases, increasing chance of impulse decisions.

There is a reason why media bombard us with images of attractive people.

<comment><USER4> Attractiveness does correlate with lots of positive things, though. Some chromosomal problems that make someone a bad mate also make them ugly; someone who gets a disfiguring injury is probably clumsier and perhaps dumber than someone who doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A note to all of my Facebook friends:

If you use any of these 12 tactics you will be my Facebook friend no longer.

<comment><USER6> Even #5?

<comment><USER5> If you wish me a happy birthday with the intention of "promoting yourself" (trust me, I'll know) then yes, even #5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's just really depressing. Do things like that actually work? I have trouble comprehending the idea of "promoting a brand" on _Facebook_. If someone was being that obnoxious I would simply "unfriend" them.

<comment><USER8> Scoble started it, with his "5000 friends" advertising scheme. A lot of people followed suit.

It's a shame. You get no SEO, you just irritate every single person that you're friends with. It's an out-and-out corruption of what Facebook is supposed to be.

If you want to advertise on Facebook, make a Page and be done with it. Anything more is seriously (as the title says) douchebaggery. I can't identify with people who can look at anything at all and see a chance for a slight advertising boost.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For the most part the marketers I'm connected to on Facebook have been respectful of my attention and have limited their messages to channels I've opted in to.

The only thing I've been subjected to that I don't like (though is probably borderline acceptable) is frequent reposting of items. Nothing like having the same link shoved down your throat 10 times a day.

</comment><comment><USER9> The latest "viral trick" is to have an app that tags a bunch of people in a photo. Not only does the person getting tagged get a notification, but there's a non-negligible chance it'll show up in their friends' newsfeeds.

"So-and-so was tagged in a photo 'FriendGraph.'," etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> Social Personal Active Marketing, still spam, still sucks.</comment>


Wikipedia's Mobile Apps Drop Google Maps for OpenStreetMap - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/05/wikipedias-mobile-apps-drop-google-maps-for-openstreetmap/ <comment><USER2> Am one of the devs working on the App. The App is Open Source and available for forking at <https://github.com/wikimedia/WikipediaMobile>. We're also switching to a 2 week release cycle so updates should be faster.

Please poke us/me with any questions you might have :)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's nice that Google provided access for free for so long, allowing the development of so many location-aware products and services. But it's also nice that a healthy competitive environment is developing around the maps themselves.

<comment> Apple-Guy But isn't Google's motto open and free?

<comment><USER4> Since when?

Besides, it is still open and free.. to end users. You're only affected by the pricing changes if you utilize their API's as a developer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google Maps is in a rough spot right now. They're not better than their competitors, so most of their users are just there out of momentum. If Google does anything to annoy their users, masses of them will leave for Bing Maps or OSM. If they want to make some money, they will have to improve their product first.

<comment><USER6> "They're not better than their competitors"

I guess my mileage varies widely here, they're far and away the best.

<comment><USER5> In my area, Bing has much better imagery than Google. They have for years. Google Maps has better text layout than Bing, but Bing Maps has several features that Google Maps doesn't. The orthogonal "Bird's Eye" view lets you see the map from an angle, and you can rotate to see all 4 sides with the arrows in the top-right. <http://binged.it/Iaa4xm>

<comment><USER7> The 45° "bird's eye" imagery was a feature that Bing had first, but Google has been adding it gradually (including at Cupertino where you linked). If you enable the MapsGL experiment, the Google version also uses 3D buildings to rotate very smoothly compared to Bing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adding a Language to Repl.it: Emacs Lisp - <AUTHOR> https://repl.it/site/blog/elisp <comment><USER2> This looks cool, but what about vim?

</comment><comment><USER3> wow, very cool</comment>


Of course NSA can crack crypto. Anyone can. The question is, how much? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/09/of-course-nsa-can-crack-crypto-anyone-can-the-question-is-how-much/ <comment><USER2> I have to admit I've been a little surprised at the level of outrage about the NSA on HN. Did no one think that the spy agencies of various governments were, um, spying?

At the same time, there's been a lot hyperbole about what these revelations actually mean. The fact is, we still don't really know, and a lot of innuendo has led people to conclude things that in all likelihood aren't really true.

I certainly think we should scale back wiretapping powers and beef up oversight, but to anyone who had bothered to look into what these agencies are likely capable of doing, this shouldn't be a huge revelation.</comment>


Show HN: I'm a robot tech enthusiast and this is my robot website - <AUTHOR> https://www.personalrobots.biz/ <comment><USER2> The most advanced, most functional is Vector: [https://www.anki.com/en- us/vector](https://www.anki.com/en-us/vector)

There is a Python SDK available for it so you can fully control every aspect of Vector: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzTIp2tHwgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzTIp2tHwgs)

<comment><USER3> For those considering this purchase: proceed with great caution and be sure your seller has a return/refund policy!

Perhaps the new Vector 'bot (which appears to be almost identical in all aspects as Anki's first revision of this bot, Cozmo) works fine but I won't risk $250 to find out. ("fool me once...") You see, Cozmo was plagued with hardware issues ("connection lost") making it unusable. My suspicion is a battery unable to satisfy the current draw, or a voltage regulator not up to the task, causing a brownout and CPU crash. By the way, no user-servicable parts, and Anki will not sell a replacement battery.

I bought mine for me and my kids to play around with programming -- it was a total waste of money. I could never get it running for more than a few minutes at a time, and startup might require a half-hour of attempts (replace on charger, move arm to boot up, reboot, connect to cozmo network, connect app, cozmo wakes up ... and crashed after a couple seconds.) Once it does connect it may run for 20 minutes or 2 minutes before quitting suddenly. And, while running, it's great! Cute as can be. But product reviews (amazon, etc.) are full of this complaint so many others have experienced it.

<comment><USER4> Even if it worked flawlessly, I wouldn't feel comfortable buying a remote- controlled mobile camera with microphone, even if it's cute as hell. I want my robots offline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think a YouTube channel where you tinker with these kits and offer detailed reviews could be more useful. Something like Unbox Therapy, for personal robots. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> nice idea :)))!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not to be pessimistic, but you've been hoodwinked if you think this is a "personal site" without financial incentive.

This looks like just the type of website that people make to cash out with referral codes to amazon (or in this case, banggood).

</comment><comment><USER7> I honestly don't get it. What of these robots are functional? There is a "Toys" heading but... they all look like toys? Every single one?

</comment><comment><USER8> cool site.

In this line, one thing I've been looking for, but unable to find a good option for, is a robot which you can control over a wi-fi network which has a camera on it and it can roll round your house.

So my use case is to check up on my cats when I'm away. I've not seen a load of good options for this...

<comment><USER9> What about a RC car with a camera ?

<comment><USER10> I used the Zumo platform with a Raspberry Pi W instead of an Arduino board. I added a cardboard casing to house all the components.

[https://www.wedesoft.de/robot/2018/06/21/zumo/](https://www.wedesoft.de/robot/2018/06/21/zumo/)

Update: Also see Explaining Computers video at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZSiqj0NZgU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZSiqj0NZgU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very cool site!

Looking at the home section it still looks like we have a while to go till our robot overlords can replace us around the home - but it's none the less interesting seeing bots like "Kuri" taking a non-conventional approach to how I considered house robots to head ( I.E Just follows you around - can play music etc it's more of a companion than anything else but still looks neat )

Off topic as well but I like how you are dealing with the criticism / suggestions on the site even when rather direct ( removing notifications etc by the time I just arrived! )

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I would like to get more quality robots content.. Working on it! To tell the truth the most potential ( aside Kuri Project) I saw on the open source OTTO series of DIY robots. Regarding the comments .. i'm learning a lot from this discussion tread and I'm very happy to receive feedback :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand why a Robot with basic movement and limited set of actions like picking an object is not popular. The idea is to make apps for them like mobile apps that will do specific jobs like keeping the room tidy or washing dishes. Is building a robot really hard than it looks (without software included) ?

</comment><comment><USER13> Drop the ads. It takes away from an awesome site

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm seriously thinking about it :)

<comment><USER14> You could look at doing sponsored spots, kind of like digg, so the content flows and the site won't just be a pure drain on the pocketbook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's very cool! Would love to see more examples in the future and maybe some examples that are somewhat in between the consumer and pro market.

I've been trying to find a 4 wheel skid steering robot with a decent payload capacity for sensor testing and they are surprisingly rare.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cool site. I'd wish you had a Twitter account or newsletter so I can follow you!

<comment><USER17> +1 on the Twitter account idea. Ditched my FB account a long time ago.

Perhaps you could use one of those social media tools to automatically cross- post to Twitter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice site, subscribed to the RSS feed. Would love if you reviewed the HariFun style quad-ped.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pos9pE8xwU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pos9pE8xwU)

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice project. You may benefit from an about page or a profile page to get to know you and why you set up the website.

<comment><USER20> There is an 'About' at the bottom but all this seems to do is to return to the top of the page - it doesn't seem to have any profile info.

Also, why not have an 'about' link on the header bar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am also a robot tech enthusiast but I haven't yet built robots. I want to. Great site

</comment><comment><USER22> If humanity fails today this would be a throwback how far we came.

</comment><comment><USER23> Really nice website, you deserve more attention!

</comment><comment><USER24> Great idea. I hope to see more content soon.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice logo :).

</comment><comment><USER25> NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID

<comment><AUTHOR> I applied successful for a ssl certificate :( any idea why this is happening? the https version of the website works

<comment><USER26> They might be running a browser with outdated hardcoded certs. I noticed in older versions of Ubuntu SSL is broken for Midori on most sites including google.com so they might have the same issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Please don't ask to show me notifications as soon as I load your site. Nobody wants your notifications.

<comment><AUTHOR> I disabled them . thanks for your feedback :)

<comment><USER28> I would add a button, like "keep me updated", where people who want them, can turn them on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Your site css is a bit broken. The tagline "The World is ready for the robot revolution" is hidden underneath the header bar when on top (on Surface Pro 3).

<comment><USER20> For me (Opera on Windows 10 with Privacy Badger and uMatrix) the site seems to have mostly loaded okay.

> The tagline "The World is ready for the robot revolution" is hidden > underneath the header bar

For me the top of the tagline is partially obscured but there is enough visible for it to be readable. Still needs fixing.

The 'Scroll Down' button. Hmmmm. It should perhaps be called 'Hide header' since this is the main effect. Once you've clicked it, you have to use the normal scroll bar anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The site is empty when browsing with an ad blocker.

<comment><USER31> It's also empty when viewed with javascript turned off.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: In college, how much did you care about grades? - <AUTHOR>

I have been looking at my grades for this year, and they have been extremely disappointing. I'm a bad test taker, but I'd be lying if I said that was the only reason for my sub 3.0 GPA. I didn't have the motivation to do well in tests because I didn't see the point in them; especially classes that are just requirements and uninteresting.
Don't get me wrong, I do love learning. It's just that I hate being "tested" like a lab rat. I know for a fact that I am hazy on details about things I learned 2 years ago, so what would be the point of testing? At the same time, there is tremendous social pressure to do extremely well. I know so many people who would freak out about a "B", and I have gotten much worse grades than that. :(
So HN, how did you do in college? How much did those grades affect your life?
edit: Added a little bit more detail <comment><USER2> I _barely_ graduated with a 3.0. The interesting thing about the grades I received in classes was that they tended to be a lot higher when I got to take advanced undergrad or graduate-level classes than Freshman-level required courses.

My first employer couldn't care in the slightest. They were interested in my past work and experience, and how well I did in the interview. None of my subsequent employers have ever mentioned anything about my education.

My recommendation: don't kill yourself over grades, but do as well as you can. If you _never_ find any of the material interesting, then you may have a problem with your selected major.

</comment><comment><USER3> College, the beta version, I didn't care about grades. I was only taking three classes (French, English Comp, and Music) and ended up only paying attention in French class. Came in handy when I decided to go to Paris that summer.

Some years later I read Soul of a New Machine, got excited about studying EE, and managed a partial scholarship to NYIT.

I cared about _passing_ , and cared about learning (most) stuff, so I mostly got good grades. Switching from EE to CS helped. :)

My enthusiasm sort of petered put after a while, I started lowering my course load (school + work was getting hard), then dropped out for bit then went back, but nine years later I graduated with honors and an award from the the English department.

I had wicked great English profs, and a few really good CS teachers. Most of the time teachers would let me slide on assignments if I otherwise demonstrated understanding and the ability to apply what I knew. So I had some fun. Had one math prof who gave me a C even though I swear I never got more than 30 on any test. But I was the only one in class who asked intelligent questions and could make useful observations. (Thanks, Dr. Vitale!) Sadly, I sucked on the tests.

Did the grades matter later in life? I doubt it. I think all that mattered was that I had a degree. Might be wrong, you never really know, but I don't recall too many people being impressed. Once you get a job all people care about is what you're doing right then and there, not some college grade.

Overall I think you should learn as much as you can for its own sake, which often leads to good grades anyway.

</comment><comment><USER4> I cared very much about my grades in undergrad, and I ended up with a very high GPA. So far, I'm glad I cared as much as I did.

Will your grades matter after undergrad? That depends on what you want to do. It will hurt a bit if you go to grad school (your undergrad grades matter for getting grants). It'll hurt a lot if you want to go to medical school (but you can still get in to some schools if you bring your GPA up somewhat).

Do you have a project or set of projects that demonstrate ability? If I had to choose between two people, and one had demonstrated his abilities with great code/art/etc, I'd pick him over the guy with nothing but grades. However, if I had no other metric to measure you by other than grades, I'd pick the guy with better grades.

If you want high grades, you have to push everything else aside and focus on doing well in your classes, and not taking on more than you can do well in any given semester. If you can't do that, quit school for awhile. Do something great in the meantime so that you have something to show _to yourself_. Self- esteem is something that can't be faked, or given to you by others. You have to _earn_ it yourself. Either way, don't do anything halfway, because that's just a recipe for the same mediocrity you're inflicting upon yourself now. It's not too late to turn yourself around.

</comment><comment><USER5> I went to a state-related school, so maintaining a high GPA was pretty easy. I don't think my grades ended up mattering much to anybody other than me after college, but at the time they helped. I was able to take advantage of some opportunities during my undergraduate years that required good grades. I got a fellowship to do undergraduate research, and a two-year full scholarship from the math department in my last couple of years. At the least, I saved a fair amount of money.

So, judging from my experience, I'd advise you to keep an eye on the current financial effects of your grades. Otherwise, I wouldn't sweat it. Unless you're planning on staying in academia, or applying to grad schools.

I do have one additional piece of advice, which you can feel free to take or not take. It makes sense for a high schooler to resent testing, since you are forced to attend. It doesn't make sense for college student, because you're there of your own free will. Saying "I hate being 'tested' like a lab rat" indicates that you're not approaching college as the voluntary experience and opportunity it is. Losing that residual resentment might help you with some of your motivation and performance issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I do not resent tests by themselves. For e.g. I'm fine if you are continuously tested throughout the year. However, I have an issue with a test that is 40% of your grade, and is just 3 hours. It could render your quarters work useless if you messed up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I never went to college, but I felt like you do about my high school grades. Now that I've spent 15 year in industry, on the other side of the table interviewing college graduates, I know that I haven't given up anything verses the _average_ college CS graduate.

In spite of this I'm looking to start going to college for the first time this fall. While I believe the average college CS student has no advantage over a motivated self-starter I think those who really strive to achieve their best and take advantage of the resources available to them will end up ahead of the self-educated. So now that I look back, I believe that attending a good college and putting forth 100% effort will give me both personal satisfaction and afford more opportunities than I would have available to me otherwise.

What I'm trying to say is: if you don't care about performing as well as possible, you're not getting much of a career advantage from going to college. On the other hand, if you strive for your best you can open up opportunities that you'd never be able to reach otherwise.

<comment><USER7> _I know that I haven't given up anything verses the average college CS graduate._

Except...

<comment><USER4> Except what?

<comment><USER7> Ability to spell, maybe: <http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/verses.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honestly it depends on what you want to do

If you are looking to go into the non-CS corporate world, grades matter a lot. This is primarily how companies will screen applicants. However, based on my personal experience, my grades weren't stellar either, but I managed to compensate them with other pretty cool things like starting my own clubs, working a ton of different jobs, being active in the community, etc.

In my personal opinion, grades are a poor indicator of personal achievement. Just be sure to do something substantial on the side to make up for your grades.

Oh and regarding the "social pressures" of doing well, fuck everyone else. It's your life, not theirs.

Edit: Someone else mentioned grades are a measure of work ethic, which I will agree upon. However, if you can show your employers where you spent a majority of your time (and why the alternative is worth investing in over school work) then it should be OK.

</comment><comment><USER9> To be honest, I cared quite a lot about getting a relatively high GPA and was upset if I scored below 5.25 (out of 6). I don't think that standardised tests are good in themselves but they help keep a student intellectually honest. Some people will tell you that grades don't matter, a creative person reads freely and off the curriculum -- and that's true. But indulged too much it can weaken your intellectual discipline, which you desperately need on any ambitious project (especially a self-driven project).

You've got to love what you do but you've also got to DO it when you don't love it. I think the best thing is to strive for both: learn your own way, read what you want, but also push yourself to pass these exams. If you just go off and do what you want, scraping by academically, how can you be really SURE you were honest with yourself, that you weren't just making excuses?

</comment><comment><USER10> I think that you're strategy is a little off here. The classes that are just requirements and uninteresting to you should be the 'easy A' picks. For basic requirements I always looked for a class or professor that was known for an easy A - other classmates and sites like myedu.com (formerly pickaprof)can get you started. Conversely, save the real work and effort for classes that you are interested in or ones that you think will be most beneficial to you after you graduate. For these classes intentionally pick profs that you know will expose you to the best knowledge, even if they're not the easiest. I think this gives a good balance while in college and sets you up well for your professional career.

</comment><comment><USER11> I never cared one bit about grades my entire life (despite constant prodding by teachers and parents), and my grades ended up all over the place. Consequently, my GPA was pretty bad (Not that I remotely remember what exactly it was).

I've never once regretted any of that. (In fact, the only thing I do regret about college is ever going in the first place. Colossal waste of time and money. Libraries are a far more effective and vastly more economical form of education. Never forget: Post-secondary education is _big_ business.) One you leave the overrated academic ivory tower, nobody will ever give half a shit about your GPA, and for good reason.

</comment><comment><USER12> At the end of the day, grades really reflect work ethic. No secret here.

No one can say in retrospect whether or not grades affected life. It's one of many factors, and no one can say "me | 4.3 GPA" would have had a different life from "me | 4.2 GPA" or "me | 3.2 GPA"

<comment><USER8> This is the one thing I'll agree about with grades: they do reflect work ethic. But sometimes, it really is hard to get motivated about subjects that seemingly have no bearing on one's future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> i kept a 3.2 which was exactly enough to maintain my scholarship. CS was a difficult major at my school and a lot of larger, easy classes suffered from grade deflation. a lot of times i decided to just take the B in classes i didn't care about.

i also did a lot of CS group projects on my own which led to a lesser grade but better learning experience. i put a lot of effort into learning material i was interested in and got good grades in those classes.

post college, my GPA has had absolutely zero effect on any facet of my life.

<comment><AUTHOR> So if it wasn't for your scholarship, you wouldn't have cared about grades?

<comment><USER13> i probably would have regardless because i've been conditioned that way all my life, but i wish it wasn't the case. i'd have had a hard time dealing with getting a C, but looking back i wish i spent less time doing busy work for dumb classes and more time doing other things like chasing girls and having fun

the fact is i could have worked my ass off for an A in french class, or writing, or whatever, and years later i wouldn't remember the material regardless because i didn't care about it at all. in the classes i did enjoy and did want to do well in, the material stuck with me (partly because it's my job)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I cared much more about figuring out what to do with my life (1) than grades. Never had good grades, never hurt me, seemingly. Then again, it's hard to say.

(1) and girls</comment>


40 Impossibly Creative Advertisements - <AUTHOR> http://airows.com/40-impossibly-creative-advertisements/

<comment><USER2> If an impossible event is occurring 40 times then perhaps your baseline of possible needs to be reviewed.

<comment><USER3> Or at least round it off with breakfast at Milliways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome ads! :)</comment>


San Franciscans need to earn $333,000 a year to buy a median-priced home - <AUTHOR> https://m.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/San-Franciscans-need-to-earn-333-000-a-year-to-12916553.php?t=527592fb3d&ref=hvper.com&utm_source=hvper.com&utm_medium=website <comment><USER2> San Francisco is well on the way towards becoming the world's largest gated community. All property, even public spaces, will be owned by the corporations and wealthy individuals who pay the property taxes. They will try to dictate who has access to the city and what restrictions apply. The rest of us will be tourists.

<comment><USER3> What public spaces? They're all either reserved in advance for a yuppie wedding or being defecated on by untreated schizophrenics. There's just too many people for the amount of land to accommodate everyone comfortably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not everyone in the world can live in the same place.

<comment><USER4> But a lot more could if society encouraged dense housing.

There is a massive advantage as a society to build density as it creates more innovation as people and ideas mix.

Maybe your argument should be stated another way, not everyone can have a single family home with a yard.

<comment><USER3> Some people prefer a single family house with a yard, and some prefer to pack as many bodies as you can per square inch of land area. Density is good early in your life arc, but there are diminishing returns after you've already made a threshold of social contacts and investments.</comment></comment></comment>