What Makes Monopoly, World of Warcraft, and Mario Kart So Much Fun? - <AUTHOR> http://systemsandus.com/2015/01/04/the-feedback-loops-in-games-what-makes-monopoly-world-of-warcraft-and-mario-kart-so-much-fun/ <comment><USER2> Calling Monopoly fun is a very bold claim, I don't think I've ever seen a game where players are still having fun by the end.

I did a bunch of BoardGameGeek rating analyses recently, one of which was collating a list of "least hated games" [1]. It might be interesting having a look at those sorts of games instead of widely derided games like Monopoly.

World of Warcraft seems like an odd one to analyse in terms of fun too, it's so divisive in the gaming community, you'll find a huge amount of people who find it boring and repetitive.

[1] [http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/183180/rating- analysis-50-...](http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/183180/rating- analysis-50-least-hated-games)

<comment><USER3> While I agree that Monopoly is a rightfully derided board game among the pantheon, I think the author pulled meaningful analysis from why it did initially appeal to the public.

Also, in case anyone unfamiliar with modern board games is reading, if you buy one board game this year, buy Pandemic. It's a challenging co-op game you can play with just your spouse or with up to 4 friends and it guarantees a fun night. That, or Cards Against Humanity :)

<comment><USER4> Due to it's co-op nature (which is fairly unusual to non modern boardgamers), some people might have a poor time playing Pandemic if there is an overbearing person quarterbacking the entire game. Some people love working together to discuss and find the absolute optimal solution collaboratively, but other people feel the need to play their own "character" and work towards the goal as best they can.

With that in mind, I find Ticket To Ride a far less hit-or-miss modern boardgame for new players.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> that was a light analysis of player motivation. These links are more in depth on a similar subject:-

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1419/designing_for_mot...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1419/designing_for_motivation.php?print=1)

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_d...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_design.php?page=1)

<comment><USER6> I think this is more a short discussion on positive / negative feedback systems in games, rather than player motivation. The links you shared are interesting regardless though, so thanks for sharing!

Some other motivation-related links: [http://chrishecker.com/Achievements_considered_harmful%3F](http://chrishecker.com/Achievements_considered_harmful%3F) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF7aJMXU_W0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF7aJMXU_W0) [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130155/rethinking_carr...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130155/rethinking_carrots_a_new_method_.php?print=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Minecraft is another such game that would be a great subject to discuss.

Some like the creativity part (LEGO style), some the adventure aspect (random procedural generated worlds), some the zombie survival part, some the fantasy (dragons and other monsters), some the electronic/logic stuff (red stone), some the role playing aspects (villages, buying resources), some have lot's of Youtube/Twitch subscribers (Let's Play), etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just wanted to voice my opinion that the best Mario Kart is still the SNES version. I bet I've played that game more than any other. Still holds up like crazy, though I wish we could smooth out the Mode 7 graphics a bit.

<comment><USER9> Your opinion is wrong. Mario Kart Double Dash is the best Mario Kart.

/thread :P

<comment><USER10> I agree, it's the best mix of graphics, characters, courses and gameplay in my opinion. MK8 comes pretty close for fun (especially with the excellent value DLC), but I will always be fondest of Double Dash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Monopoly isn't fun. WoW is arguably just physiologically addictive, while many enjoy the grind/payoff cycle or social aspects I can't agree game is actually fun.

<comment><USER12> There are more elements to WoW and similar games though. I am not a massive fan of the grind aspect but enjoy the team based coordination aspect.

<comment><USER13> The grind aspect is a trap. WoW is incredibly fun when they bring out new content and you are in a close-knit group that can - with dozens of attempts, strategy re-adjustment, and luck - just barely take down a new boss. Add skype and a drinking game and few things compare.

<comment><USER14> But to get to that point you have to basically kill 50 mobs to collect 10 Items hundreds of times for 70 hours (hyperbolically spoken).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What are the balancing loops in Monopoly? Jail and Go?

<comment><USER16> There really aren't any. Which is sort of the point of the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You're confused... people don't think Monopoly is fun. 100% of people I know hate Monopoly and refuse to ever play.

</comment><comment><USER18> The only reason these three games are fun is the people you play them with.

</comment><comment><USER19> World of Warcraft wasn't mentioned once outside of the title.

</comment><comment><USER20> I lost all interest in playing games when I was 20 or so. So many more interesting things to do.

<comment><USER21> Like making comments in discussions on hobbies you don't like?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> False premise anyone?

</comment><comment> bcit-cst monopoly sucks.

<comment><USER23> Years ago, I got ahold of an NES emulator and decided to try out a Monopoly ROM. I ended up playing that game for _hours_ a day. My Monopoly marathon lasted about a week or two, but damn was that game fun.

I tried the SNES version some time later, and it just wasn't the same...

<comment><USER24> The PC version they used to give out in cereal boxes was a lot of fun. I can't tell if it was "Monopoly 3" or "Monopoly New Edition", but I still remember the intro: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DuXg9kP0do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DuXg9kP0do)

My brother and I played it together for hours. The computer opponents put up a challenge and were quite smart—you could do trades with them, which they would accept or reject depending on the situation; sometimes they would even offer you a trade on their own. Each piece had its own personality, animations, and voice clips. I think it might have had online play, too.</comment></comment></comment>


Body's defenses against common viruses may mess up neurons, spark depression - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/bodys-defenses-against-common-viruses-may-mess-up-neurons-spark-depression/ <comment><USER2> "The tested for depression using a standard swim test method, which basically works by dropping the rodents into a container of water and measuring how long they frantically splash around to try to get out. Depressed mice give up more quickly."

I don't know if that is the best unit test.

<comment><USER3> Reading this article about the various ways "scientists" tortured mice in order to draw completely meaningless, subjective conclusions about nothing makes me depressed.

<comment><USER4> These "scientists" try to understand depression in order to help people. If you do not want that you do not have to take the mediciation. Contrarily, I would. And that you call this torture is a simple case of you mocking every person who has ever been really tortured. These experiment are undertaken with extrem precaution and after a paper trail that can be measured in trees. On the other hands, mice that are killed by pesticides usually die of internal bleeding. That is torture.

<comment><USER5> Or the millions of mice that find their way into the blades of combines in wheat and corn fields...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This could also help explain chronic fatigue syndrome -- most cases seem to occur after a viral infection.

</comment><comment><USER7> Arguments for/against the process aside, I could see this as a result of evolution. Tribes who's members remained social while sick would be more likely to spread disease and self-destruct?</comment>


Facebook's Perfect, Impossible Chatbot - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604117/facebooks-perfect-impossible-chatbot/ <comment><USER2> Is it still a chatbot when a human replies?</comment>


Futures and gRPC in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://pingcap.github.io/blog/2017/09/12/futuresandgrpc/ <comment><USER2> We have also implemented a Rust wrapper of gRPC Core: [https://github.com/pingcap/grpc-rs](https://github.com/pingcap/grpc-rs)</comment>


Show HN: Sprite. Draw charts in code. Render in real-time. Embed anywhere as png - <AUTHOR> https://sprite.link <comment><USER2> Works in Chrome. Blank canvas on Firefox 65.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know, looks like FF treats the flex-box a bit differently there.

Should have found it during testing, I'll fix it as soon as I can! :-)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Essential skills for any computing professional - <AUTHOR>

There are many sub-areas within the computing world: not only programmers and systems administrators, but web programmers, java programmers, .net programmers, ... , and linux administrators, windows administrators, network administrators, etcetera, etcetera, ...
However, there are skills that are useful for all of them. Skills that no one should go about not knowing.
For example, I see a lot of people not really understanding regular expressions, which I find a very important and transversal skill.
What other skills are there that absolutely everyone in the computing world should know? <comment><USER2> There are probably few high-level things EVERYONE must know, I'd focus a bit lower. A pro must know how to/understand:

\- read/write english

\- type (mentioned)

\- parts of a computer & what they do, GUI

\- exposure to Windows, OSX, and Unix

\- networking, tcpip, internet basics

\- unicode, i18n, L10n

\- use of a web browser

\- how to search (google) effectively

\- email, office suite, edit photos

\- command line

\- script repetitive tasks

\- make backups, version control

\- security basics

\- troubleshooting

\- planning, testing procedures, i.e. make one change at a time, staging, production

\- SDLC

Then move to the requirements for your discipline, such as developer, qa, or admin... which get highly specialized quickly. I could list some but this post would get too long as I'd have at least three lists.

I believe regexes are overused, and wouldn't recommend them to most.

</comment><comment><USER3> How to type on a keyboard. I don't think you have to have perfect touch typing, but you should be 30 words per minute at the very least.

The other one is testing and debugging. Something I'm always trying to do better, personally, but whatever you do, understanding both the process of debugging, but also the though process (edge cases, common issues, breaking problems up into sub problems, etc.) is important.

It's hard to talk about generic skills for computing though. There are many useful skills I have, but I'm not sure they cross domains.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny enough, in every discussion that I have about this subject typing never comes up... Indeed there are a lot of people in this profession than can't type properly. I wonder if this isn't one of the underlying issues when discussing CLIs vs GUIs.

<comment><USER4> Typing isn't nearly as important as it may at first seem - how much code do you really type? Sometimes I might produce 10 lines of code in a day, all the effort going into knowing exactly what those 10 lines should be. Even the worst typist can beat 0.05wpm.

<comment><AUTHOR> Typing isn't just coding. Even if you code a lot, you probably spend more time typing other things than code.

The importance of typing fast is not letting your typing slow you down.

<comment><USER4> The same applies there, albeit to a lesser extent - if typing slows you down, you might not have thought things through.

That said, I have been typing more than writing for many years and am now thoroughly incompetent with a pen.

<comment><USER3> Actually I spend a lot of time typing documenting my code, so that my though process at the time is clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How to convince people that their design could be improved. Say "How about if we..." instead of "You should...".

What to do when other team leaders keep asking you for help. Tell them to ask your manager so he can set the priority of the task.

How to work on multiple projects at the same time. I found it helpful to have a prioritised todo list for each project with a master todo list covering the most urgent or important tasks for all of them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Specific skills don't matter much, and you'll never be able to cover more than a tiny fraction of them anyway.

What really makes a difference is basic problem solving and logical reasoning. For just about any specific task google will give you some code samples, but if you can't form a consistent mental model of what the computer will do with that code, you won't be able to use it effectively.

Regular expressions are just an implementation detail.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to go the "touch feely" route:

Curiosity (How does that do that? How can I do that?)

Imagination (I think I can do that better, or cooler, etc... This may be optional, administrators may not need that as much.)

Drive (Not just talking or thinking about stuff but doing it.)

Persistence ("Crash on ME? oh, yeah? Well, how about I do this!")

Patience (if there isn't a way now there will be sooner or later)

<comment><USER6> One more -

Memory (being able to keep things in memory short and long term, really help solve problems.) Reason why a lot of programs are poorly documented is developers keep most of it in memory. Mainly because they work faster that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One that I think is vastly overlooked is being able to really comprehend numerous forms of technical documentation quickly. I was always surprised how some developers take quadruple or more time to work their way through than other devs. I have even come across devs that seem to be unable to do so and must rely on tutorials and how-tos.

</comment><comment><USER8> The ability to learn from reading. That and knowing were the parenthesis keys are without looking.

</comment><comment><USER9> How to find information. I think you know what I mean and why.</comment>


Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8.epdf <comment><USER2> Fossil energy is just too cheap. If pollution, climate change and other negative effects were really priced in, Bitcoin miners would stop mining or switch to green energy, for example geothermal in Iceland. After all we know there are big mining farms there already.

<comment><USER2> Just got the electricity bill. I am mining at home. The electricity company told me that my electricity is about two thirds renewable energy and one fifth nuclear, the rest (exactly 8.2%) is unidentified, perhaps fossil energy. This energy is not cheap, on average 28 cents/kWh, but should I ever reach ROI on the mining appliance, I still have a net gain. If difficulty still rises, I will switch to mining at night only (20 cents/kWh), and even later I will need to speculate on rising prices to justify continuing mining.

It's a hobby, probably not profitable in the end. But hey, FOMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is no reason to assume developing economies suddenly stop using fossil fuels, so the idea is irrelevant. Extrapolated crypto electricity trends are rising until the cost of mining reaches above payout, there is no "exponential curve until it consumes everything".

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone have access to the full text? What's the quality of the analysis look like?

<comment><USER5> It's a 3 page document that makes a number of false assumptions. They extrapolate bitcoin to having 300 billion transactions and means no lightening or L2 solution and the block size would be 3gigs. Nor do they even factor in the halving. Wasn't even researched properly, just utter nonsense for the papers.

And Joe Rogan was showing how easy it is to publish fake papers in journals. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZZNvT1vaJg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZZNvT1vaJg)

here is the paper by the way behind a shitty paywall. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8)

<comment><USER6> I thought Nature was one of the Big Journals that only publish high impact things. How does stuff like this slip in then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are these people going to do in 25 years when none of these predictions come true? Who will be held accountable for this?

<comment><USER8> No one because it's a random offhand comment that will be forgotten. Bitcoin mining would obviously transition to use renewables (it mostly does as it is, cheap hydro is what most large scale operations are using), and no one will care.

Why don't we see articles like this for more important bigger problems like plastic waste that won't be solved by renewable energy? Because making random claims about bitcoin STILL somehow gets clicks. And to the top of HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How many °C will go up because of wasted power on not turned off computers and AC in bank branches only in US?

</comment><comment><USER10> D'oh, I submitted secondary reporting about this yesterday [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18333353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18333353) because this one is paywalled.

<comment><USER11> Free version: [http://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s41558-018-0321-8](http://sci- hub.tw/10.1038/s41558-018-0321-8)</comment></comment>


Cars That Avoid Crashes by Talking to Each Other - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/06/08/us/politics/ap-us-talking-cars.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> My parents spent the better part of the last year contracting on this project. They traveled with car company engineers, DOT people, and test cars equipped with the system around the country to various race tracks to test the system with normal drivers.

On the race tracks they would put normal people in these V2V-equipped cars with (I believe) a professional driver/racer riding shotgun. Then, they would run people through scenarios that would set off the system - i.e. they would send two cars barreling towards a t-bone collision, and the testers would be instructed to not stop until the buzzer/light went off - at which point they were to slam on the brakes as hard as they could. My dad said that this test was the scariest and he chickened out while in the driver's seat. The system is great for blind corners where you cannot see the oncoming car, but on an open race track it is scary to see the other car on a collision course with you.

After the race track test, my parents would debrief and interview the participants.

Here are some scenarios I remember them testing:

* The peek-a-boo: Three cars are driving down the road. The first car slams on the brakes. The middle car veers to avoid it. You are in the third car and suddenly there is a stopped car that you are barreling towards. The system would have alerted you as soon as the first car panic-braked.

* Oncoming car - you are on a country road, about to pass a car. You start to pull into the oncoming lane to overtake the car, but the system senses an oncoming car that you did not see and sends an alert to you.

Also, I recall a problem with testers who were former policemen. Apparently they are taught to drive with two feet - one on the brake and one on the gas, for quickest reaction time. I think this fooled with the system because the alert was disabled as soon as you put your foot on the brake, and having a foot on the brake at all times caused problems.

One final tidbit: If you are ever looking to rent a race track in the USA, apparently the Disney/Richard Petty track has the best catering for the least money, compared to all the other tracks!

<comment><USER3> Regarding the two-foot driving police: I thought the purpose of using one foot to brake and accelerate was all about removing the mental process that occurs when having to choose which foot to use. I was always taught that removing that decision was the reason for using one foot. The point of heel-toe pedaling is that your foot can reach both pedals simply by pivoting, which theoretically makes both pedals equally quick to access. I learned on stick, which clearly dictates that style. But, I'd be interested in hearing what others think.

Regarding the stories from your parents: pretty cool info!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Warnings, yes please. Allowing my brakes to be controlled wirelessly by anyone clever enough to spoof the right data, no thank you!

</comment><comment><USER5> For the curious, there is a system built-in to every modern aircraft called TCAS ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sys...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_system) ), Traffic Collision Avoidance System, that does something similar for airplanes.

<comment><USER6> TCAS is definitely useful but it's not be-all end-all in collision avoidance, and unfortunately I think that translates well to automobiles as well. There's always the possibility of failure with the devices or perhaps sending erroneous(perhaps malicious) data that could screw with the system in other people's cares.

That said, I do like seeing these kinds of innovations!

<comment><USER5> Yes, a very tragic example that happened quite close to where I live was a mid air collision between a freighter and a regular airliner ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid- air_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid- air_collision) ), with 71 fatalities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Combine this approach with Google's driverless cars and allow pedestrians to participate via their cellphones and the future looks brighter, safer and hopefully quieter

</comment><comment><USER8> I worry about the potential for reliance on this system - 30 years from now (the time the article stated it would take for mass adoption), will we have head-on collissions around corners because one of the cars was malfunctioning and neither driver bothered to look "because the computer said it was OK?"

<comment><USER9> > I worry about the potential for reliance on this system

People also worried that drivers using ABS would be less competent than drivers not using ABS. Before that, we worried that drivers wearing seat belts would be less careful than drivers not wearing seat belts.

Risk homeostasis is a real problem (witness the number of SUVs lining the highway ditch during a snowstorm) but the sheer benefits to engineering-for- safety more than offset the risk of encouraging cavalier behaviour.

<comment><USER10> Re. ABS, one study seemed to indicate that when drivers have ABS they tend to adjust their risk taking upward

"Among a total of 747 accidents incurred by the company's taxis during that period, the involvement rate of the ABS vehicles was not lower, but slightly higher, although not significantly so in a statistical sense. These vehicles were somewhat under-represented in the sub-category of accidents in which the cab driver was judged to be culpable, but clearly over-represented in accidents in which the driver was not at fault. Accident severity was independent of the presence or absence of ABS."

<http://psyc.queensu.ca/target/chapter07.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can you really trust what other cars are telling yours? This sounds like an interesting security problem.

</comment><comment><USER12> In Orlando FL, (one of the car-crash capitals of the world), the devices would be issuing warnings every 15 minutes (causing warning fatigue). I have to deal with these situations:

1\. I am cruising on a road 45 mph. A perpendicular street intersecting the road has a stop sign. They are accelerating toward their stop sign. If they don't brake, there will be a collision. I often brake a little and prepare to brake hard if they don't brake at the last possible millisecond. A collision system would warn me in that situation.

2\. People behind you accelerate up to you to 5 feet behind your bumper to "make a statement" that they didn't approve you pulling in front of them. Ethics aside, the system would think the person behind is out of control, causing a warning.

3\. On the interstate going 75mph, cars pull in front of you with about 5 feet to spare. Cars coming into near contact with each other. A crash detection system would issue a warning.

So it means these crash detection systems need a "Tolerance" dial, that the idiot drivers are going to set as close to zero as possible because of warning fatigue. Also, this system will embolden the idiot drivers to drive even more dangerously. A system like this must account for warning fatigue in places where people drive like in Grand Theft Auto and would be confused if a system told them that what they are doing is dangerous.

<comment><USER13> > A system like this must account for warning fatigue in places where people > drive like in Grand Theft Auto and would be confused if a system told them > that what they are doing is dangerous.

No, it doesn't. In that case, people will just disable it or ignore the warnings, and continue their existing unsafe practices. People who drive like that aren't going to improve because of a box beeping at them.

I don't think that widespread reckless driving is a problem that can be solved with technology, short of full automation (driverless cars).

I'm not saying this isn't useful - but for those drivers, feedback that what they're doing is dangerous isn't going to change their behavior. Deploy it anyway, for the rest of us. It at least won't make reckless drivers any worse.

<comment><USER14> it would be interesting to have those warnings go directly to the car black box, even when disabled, it might help in case of collision. Or have it send the "log" every month to the DMV and remove points from the driver's license, and revoke it when it reaches zero, but this sounds too Orwellian to many people.

<comment><USER15> There's a device called Snapshot from Progressive that seems to do this. In fact, they set your car insurance rates based on the logs. You plug it in right under your dash.

<comment> excuse-me The problem is that it's based on YOUR sudden braking

So some idiot cuts you up and you brake to give them a safety zone - you are penalized, if you blindly drive at top speed causing total chaos the box gives you a gold star

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fascinating to consider that within a few decades that annual 32,000 fatality rate could be reduced by some radical amount (95%?) with software. That's an incredible amount of lives waiting to be saved by some good programming; 300k per decade is a staggering number of people.

I'm not aware of too many other private sector problems that you can go to work on that can have such an impact (with programming), outside of biotechnology perhaps.

<comment><USER17> In several European countries, fatality rate was reduced by a dramatic amount by being stricter on speed limits, alcohol, reckless driving, etc and building (much) better cars. See the statistics:

[http://www.securite- routiere.org/Fiches/statistiques/statint...](http://www.securite- routiere.org/Fiches/statistiques/statinter.htm)

In fact, USA are about the only developed country which didn't make any significant progress in the past 20 years.

<comment><USER18> _only developed country_ Sorry, but the numbers don't support your argument.

Grèce 1502 1511 1699 1737 1790 1995 2008 2076 1993 2068 2000 2182 2116 2037 1880 1654 1605 1619 1658

USA 46390 47087 45582 44599 44508 39250 40150 40716 41817 42065 42013 41501 41717 41945 42116 42815 42884 42636 43443

[http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...](http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:GRC&dl=en&hl=en&q=population+greece)

[http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&#...
So, both countries has reasonable population growth and the rate of fatalities dropped by a similar amount relative to their populations. What's different is the absolute number peaked in Grece in 1990's and dipped in the US in the 1990's.

<comment><USER19> To expand on that:

The second table on wazoox's link give the number of fatalities scaled to the population (in death per million) for European countries. It doesn't include the USA for some reason, but you can estimate it from Retric's info.

      - 1990: 186.3
      - 2005: 147.2

So, improvement there has been.

<comment><USER17> It still is much worse than most of Europe except Greece which just qualified in the last decade as a developed country for road infrastructure.

From my personal experience, the average American driver seems to have a frighteningly low driving ability coupled with a surprising self-confidence; and I've seen more road rage in 6 weeks in the US than in 40 years in Europe (apparently tendency to reckless driving is proportional to distance from the Ocean, too; Californians seem reasonable enough). There are probably lots of progress to be made in teaching and punishing there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PostgreSQL Templates - <AUTHOR> https://supabase.io/blog/2020/07/09/postgresql-templates/ <comment><USER2> We are using PostgreSQL templates to speed up our integration tests. This allow us to have full blown (and non mocked) databases which are isolated to each parallel running test.

We have recently open-sourced our core-server managing this (go): [https://github.com/allaboutapps/integresql](https://github.com/allaboutapps/integresql)

Projects already utilizing Go and PostgreSQL may easily adapt this concept for their testing via [https://github.com/allaboutapps/integresql-client- go](https://github.com/allaboutapps/integresql-client-go)

<comment><USER3> We have found H2 in Postgres mode to be the fastest way to test db stuff, at least in Postgres and Java. In Go you might lose most of the speed advantage since its not running "in JVM". It also doesn't support many of pg's advanced features

<comment><USER2> I'm generally not a fan of emulating database behavior through a mocking layer while testing/implementing. Even minor version changes of PostgreSQL plus it's extensions (e.g. PostGIS) may introduce slight differences, e.g. how indices are used, function deprecations, query planner, etc. . It might not even be an erroneous result, just performance regressions or slight sorting differences in the returned query result.

We try to approximate local/test and live as close as possible, therefore using the same database, with the same extensions in their exact same version is a hard requirement for us while implementing/testing locally.

However, I have no experience with H2 (and the modern Java ecosystem in general), so cannot talk about how close their emulation implementation resembles PostgreSQL behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We're using PostgreSQL teams to create a database from a template for every integration test worker (Jest).

This way every worker works on their own database. The speedup was 5x-7x as tests are now running in parallel.

<comment><USER5> Do you store test data in the template?

My team uses a migration framework (in our case Flyway) such that we can easily create completely fresh DBs on a factory fresh(+ user roles) instance of Postgres. We do this for our testing as well. This means the schema tools are always tested as well. Is there a benefit to using templates? They're faster perhaps?

<comment><USER6> I'm using templates as well for the speedup in testing. We build a postgresql docker image with the migrations + seed data, then create a few databases for parallel testing.

When migration or seed files have changed, rules rebuild the image. That way the price of migration (about 2 minutes for our Django app) isn't paid on every test run.

Creating a DB from template is 2 seconds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used this in the past for testing depending on how much seeding was required prior to the test, and how much parallelism was required. Other than that I haven't been able to find any useful real world scenarios to exploit this functionality. I suppose if you wanted to have a source database and a bunch of children and could prevent connections to the source it might be helpful... somehow?

<comment><USER8> I worked on a SaaS project who's customers are companies in an old-fashioned industry. A common requirement was that their data shouldn't be stored in the same database tables as any other customer. They were fine with it being co- located on the same cloud servers, using the same credentials... as long as their data wasn't on the same tables. So I used postgres templates to make a database per customer.

Didn't make much sense to me either but whatever pays the bills I guess.

<comment><USER9> Just don't fall into the trap of creating a database schema per customer. Having different databases is better (as TXID is not shared)

<comment><USER10> Can you elucidate or provide some reference about this? I'm not familiar with any problems in this space (it's not clear to me what problems a shared TXID could cause), and schemas seemed neat.

<comment><USER9> That all depends on how many customers you expect to have in a single database, and how many tables each one needs. EDIT: also, transaction volume.

Ok, so let's imagine your application requires 100 database tables.

If you have 1 customer, you have 100 tables. Every transaction performed in this database (including updates) will increase the age(datfrozenxid) by one. You now have 100 tables you need to vacuum.

If you only had one schema, that's no problem at all. Even with the defaults and a high number of writes, the default 3 autovacuum workers will quickly deal with it. Even though they can only vacuum a table at the time.

Now your business is growing. 1 customer becomes 10, 100... 10000?

At 10k customers, you now have 1 million tables (maybe more, as TOAST tables are counted). Every single transaction increases the 'age' of every table by one. It doesn't matter that 99% of all tables have low TXIDs, the overall DB "age" will be on the table with the highest count.

The default 3 autovacuum workers will definitely NOT cut it at this point(even with PG launching anti-wraparound autovaccums). You can augment by "manually" running vacuum, but in that case the overall database age will only decrease once it's done vacuuming all 1 million tables, so start early(before you reach the ~2.1 billion mark)

Alternatively, you could write a script that will sort tables by age and vacuum individually. This may not help as much as it seems, as the distribution will depend on how much work your autovacuum workers have been able to do so far. Not to mention, even getting the list of tables will be slow at that point.

So now you have to drastically increase the number of workers (and other settings, like work_mem) – which may also means higher costs – and you'll still have to watch this like a hawk (or rather, your monitoring system has to). There's no clear indication that the workers are falling behind, you can only get an approximation by trending TXID age.

You can make this work, but it is a pain. Even more so if you haven't prepared for it. For a handful of customers or a small number of tables or a small number of transactions this may not matter. Our production systems (~200 tables, excluding TOAST) started to fall behind after a few thousand customers. We have had at least one outage because we didn't even track this at the time and the database shutdown. 20/20, but nobody remembered to add this to the monitoring system.

Another unrelated problems with multiple schemas is: database migrations are much more complex now, you have to upgrade all schemas. This is both a blessing and a curse. Database dumps also tend to take forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> i use templates to create a "quick save" backup of a database quickly during development:

createdb -T old_db new_db

<comment><USER12> Neat trick. Is this any faster than pg_dump and pg_load? Note: there's plenty of optimization you can apply to pg_dump and even use pg_restore, none applied below.

Like so:

        function save_database() {
            mkdir -p /tmp/database-snapshots
            DATABASE_NAME=$PROJECT_NAME
            pg_dump -Fc "$DATABASE_NAME" >"/tmp/database-snapshots/$DATABASE_NAME.dump"
        }

        function restore_database() {
            DATABASE_NAME=$PROJECT_NAME
            DATABASE_DUMP="/tmp/database-snapshots/$DATABASE_NAME.dump"

            if [ ! -f "$DATABASE_DUMP" ]; then
                echo "No dump to restore"
                return
            else
                psql postgres -c 'SELECT pg_terminate_backend(pid) FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE pid <> pg_backend_pid()'
                psql postgres -c "DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS \"$DATABASE_NAME\""
                psql postgres -c "CREATE DATABASE \"$DATABASE_NAME\""
                pg_restore -Fc -j 8 -d "$DATABASE_NAME" "$DATABASE_DUMP"
            fi
        }

<comment><USER13> Yes, it's significantly faster because it doesn't require rebuilding indexes (among other reasons probably). Downside is it consumes more disk space.

Stellar is a tool that wraps the template mechanism, and has some benchmarks: [https://github.com/fastmonkeys/stellar](https://github.com/fastmonkeys/stellar)

<comment><USER14> My understanding has always been that creating a database is essentially a series of file copy operations from the template.

<comment><USER13> That may be true! The point is the template has the indexes already built ready to copy. Where the dump file does not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another approach is to use thin clones of Postgres to create disposable databases for fast iterations.

We've made Database Lab tool working on top of CoW file systems (ZFS, LVM) that is capable of provision multiterabyte Postgres instances in seconds. The goal is to use such clones to verify database migrations and optimize SQL queries against production-size data. See our repo: [https://gitlab.com/postgres-ai/database-lab](https://gitlab.com/postgres- ai/database-lab).

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this similar to doing something like `rails db:schema:load` and then `rails db:seed`? i.e. set a brand new db to a certain schema + preload a set of fixtures into it?

<comment><USER17> The effect will be relatively similar -- you arrive at a new database with the proper schema/structure in place, but the difference is in execution. Doing this _within_ the database engine is likely 10x faster than loading the schema through a client library making a series of CREATE and ALTER statements (ala the schema:load rake task).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anybody know why template1 isn't utf8 by default? Because of that I always need to create new databases from template0 to use utf8 f.e like this: `createdb -T template0 -E UTF8 newdb`</comment>


How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-realized-putting-radium-in-everything-was-not-the-answer/273780/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Make one wonder if some things we use are the 'radium' of the future, and we don't think of it as harmful now. Recalled products and bans are just the tip of the icebergs: what if something harms us in non-"cancer in 4 years if you drink radium" way, but alters the genes or reduce our health in other ways(think xenoestrogens)? What if the harm isn't realized in everyone(e.g. only 4% of people)?

Its not profitable for radiumCo to be preemptively pro-consumer, their only consumer-centric concern is PR/reputation after the fact, so until they get publicly shamed they won't stop selling their radium. If they have no competition eager to take them down, they have even less concern of what consumers think since radiumCo has stable market.

<comment><USER3> I think all of the nano stuff will be in this bubble. Just thinking about disposing of stuff that has graphene and carbon nano tubes in it. There's no regulation at the current time, and this is definitely something that we can ingest, how will our body(or any animal body) deal with it? Could be fine, but do we really know?

<comment><USER4> If you look up how asbestos damages the lungs, perhaps carbon nanotubes are something we wouldn't want to ingest.

I can't say the effects would be remotely similar but:

\- asbestos was considered safe (or some type of it). Used in pretty much everything.

\- broken / agitated asbestos releases microscopic fibres into the air

\- those fibres pierce the lining of the lungs leading to asbestosis and eventually a mesothelioma, a cancer with 0% chance of survival. This takes some time to present.

\- took decades to realise what was going on and decades more to eliminate the problem, with many lives lost in the process.

I wonder if carbon nanotubes could damage in a similar damage over such a long timespan such that it takes decades to fully realise, regulate and eventually fix. After all, my garage roof is asbestos. Coincidentally, my grandfather died before I was born due to long term asbestos exposure.

<comment><USER5> The occupational hazards of working with carbon composites are already known to closely resemble those of asbestos.

This is especially true for smaller scale operations utilizing hand layup and generally requiring more raw material handling and abrasive finishing steps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We all laugh at this nowadays, but 100 years later, Radium (or rather Radon, a radioactive gas) is still being used nowadays.

I once stumbled on homoeopathic advice to visit a radon cave. While I don't have the original site or link at hand, googling will lead you to sites like this:

[http://www.gastein.com/en/radon-therapy- austria](http://www.gastein.com/en/radon-therapy-austria)

I have no words for this.

<comment><USER7> Some time ago I read that no radiation exposure might actually be worse for organisms than low radiation exposure like background radiation. We know the effects of high doses and everyone just assumed that the negative effects go to zero as the dose goes to zero and extrapolated it this way from high doses to zero while in reality there might be a very different relation at low doses. I will try to find some sources, I am no longer sure how convincing the argument was.

This does not really change the fact that there seems to be no good evidence that walking around in a cave with elevated Radon levels does any good, but it would be less obviously a bad idea if what I mentioned above has any merits.

EDIT: Found it, it is called radiation hormesis [1].

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

<comment><USER8> I think what you're getting at is the old adage of doing things in moderation. Little bit of alcohol seems to have more positive effects than none at all, severely negative effects when overdone. Same with many drugs, foods and types of exercises.

The one that really comes to mind for me is bacteria. The idea of probiotics is still pretty new to the public. Probably not a great idea to ingest a ton of bacteria all the time, but a little bit can be super beneficial, and much more beneficial than none.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found a scan of the famous Wall Street Journal article about the unfortunate fellow whose jaw fell off: [https://www.scribd.com/document/188172930/The- Radium-Water-W...](https://www.scribd.com/document/188172930/The-Radium-Water- Worked-Fine-Until-His-Jaw-Fell-Off)

<comment><USER10> Any idea the year this was published? I don't see a date, and I googled the title and found several references (even on wikipedia) without a date mentioned.

<comment><USER11> 1 August 1990

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm always curious what the voices of caution were at times like this. Was there anyone demanding more study before we put radium in everything?

<comment><USER13> I "recently" (several years ago) read the original Conan stories and the Wizard of Oz books (there are many).

One thing that leapt out at me was how they both talked about radium. The cultural view of it at the time was radically different. Radium was a source of health and magic, capable of solving any problem. There was a passage in which the protagonists encountered a mysterious phenomenon, and "logically" concluded "this must be done with radium".

These are fantasy stories, but their similar ideas about what radium was ("magic") and what it was good for ("everything") had to come from somewhere, and had to be acceptable to their anticipated audience.

To me in the 21st century, it was obviously insane, since radioactivity is best known for ruthlessly murdering anyone in proximity. There's culture shock for you. :/

<comment><USER14> Sounds like how many people talk about Marijuana today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Truly worth watching: _Radium City_ the story of the mentioned _Radium Girls_ of Ottawa, Ill

[http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-09/entertainment/ca-8748...](http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-09/entertainment/ca-8748_1_radium- city)

[https://vimeo.com/ondemand/radiumcity/166116025](https://vimeo.com/ondemand/radiumcity/166116025)

</comment><comment> King-Aaron Another interesting thing to look into is the Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe- fitting_fluoroscope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope)). Basically a box you put your feet in, with an x-ray gun at the bottom and a hole to put your face over at the top.

Spoiler alert, it didn't end well for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER16> I see a pattern here - something is discovered, then it's seen as a magic solution to many many problems until devastating health issues are discovered.

Rontgen, radium, asbestos. PVC, carbon fiber, nanotubes are promising candidates for the list. Non-ionising radiation (phones, wifi, radio communication) is omnipresent and I really hope it will not follow the pattern.

<comment><USER17> Can anyone 'in the know' explain to a layman why the parent comment is no reason for concern (especially when it comes to 'non-ionising radiation'?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yeah, I've run into a lot of performance bottlenecks using Radium in all of the React components in a large, complex web app.

</comment><comment><USER19> Flash forward to 2100: How We Realized Filling Our Bodies with Millions of Nanobots Was Not The Answer

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow, this is interesting history!

</comment><comment><USER21> How We Realized Putting Blockchain in Everything Was Not the Answer (2020)

<comment><USER22> I'm thinking in a hundred years it will be "How We Realized Putting Microprocessors in Everything Was Not the Answer"

<comment><USER23> Let me guess, security vulnerabilities in literally every object.

<comment><USER24> Can't recall if I read it here or on twitter but there was a great quote along that line : "The 'S' in IoT stands for 'Security'"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How we realized putting WiFi in everything was not the answer (2018)

</comment><comment><USER26> How we realised putting machine learning in everything was not the answer (2117)

</comment><comment><USER27> Did anyone ever believe such a thing?

<comment><USER28> RTFA:

> _The glowing element was hailed as a panacea for everything from blindness > to hysteria._

Literally the second paragraph.

<comment><USER27> Hailed by whom?

That sentence is immediately followed by:

> "No medicine, no drugs," raves one ad

Note the word ad.

So most of the hailing, possibly all, was in advertising copy.

The article mentions advertising and marketing several times but makes no convincing case that those without a financial interest in selling the goods believed the claims.

And quite likely most of those selling the products didn't believe them either; many were just the latest in a long line of quacks selling snake oil and neither knew nor cared if it worked or not, it was just a cool name to attach to product.

<comment><USER28> Your comment was, __" Did anyone ever believe such a thing?" __

Again, from the article:

> __One particularly disturbing medical innovation was the "Radiendocrinator," > a device the size of a thick stack of credit cards to be worn with an > adaptor "like any 'athletic strap.'" Its inventor, who fervently claimed to > use the product, later died of bladder cancer. __

The inventor used the product, and presumably so did the poor people consuming the quack products. Prevarication doesn 't change the logic here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Language can reveal the invisible, study shows - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.wisc.edu/22062

<comment><USER2> Another typical psychology study.

A quote: "If you're drinking a glass of milk, but thinking about orange juice, he says, that may change the way you experience the milk."

And they call this science.</comment>


CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market - <AUTHOR> https://crashplanforhome.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/115000102091-Announcement-details <comment><USER2> Glad I saw this. I had missed their email telling me so. That would have sucked.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to put ads on a web app? - <AUTHOR>

Hi!<p>I am looking to put some ads on a web app I run. What are the best approaches for that? <comment><USER2> Sign up for an ad network like Google Adsense and place the ad codes on your site.</comment>


Coding Retraining Program for Miners Sued - <AUTHOR> http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2017/12/21/miners-sue-mined-minds-program/ <comment><USER2> (multiple auto-start videos)</comment>


The European Court of Justice Opts for Scattergun Censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/hidden-in-plain-sight

<comment><USER2> The end of this article is particularly interesting. And as it happens, this happened just after Vic Gundotra was fired.</comment>


SecureDrop - <AUTHOR> https://ssl.washingtonpost.com/securedrop <comment><USER2> If the leaker visits this page before opening the Tor Browser from a regular browser to copy the onion url, the whole thing is as safe as SSL as there will be a trail of the SSL connection just before the visit to SecureDrop. And they don't even explain to avoid it.

OPSEC is hard.

<comment><USER3> (Securedrop dev here) This is a really good point. Unfortunately, we're "as safe as SSL" no matter what, unless the source has a separate way to verify the .onion address on the SSL-protected page. They can use the SecureDrop directory for that (and we're working on other schemes as well), but it's not automated so only a handful of very cautious sources would likely do this.

I'm not sure how we could explain to avoid it - where would the explanation go? Visiting that page would be just as much of a correlation, no? It's kind of a chicken and egg problem, unless the source is already using Tor.

Avoiding the "trail of the SSL connection" also suggests we should be doing something to combat website fingerprinting, which we have discussed but do not have a clear solution for yet.

Our current thinking is that just visiting the landing page is not enough to prosecute a source. We can do better, and are working on it, but it's difficult.

<comment><USER4> A few things that may be helpful:

1\. Make the entire site available under `ssl.washingtonpost.com` (ideally without the `.ssl` prefix).

That way, the domain won't be as suspicious as it is right now. I suspect that this is more or less the only content hosted on the domain.

2\. Include an iframe for all (or a random subset of) visitors, loading this particular url (hidden).

By artificially generating traffic to the endpoint it will be harder to distinguish these from other, 'real' requests.

Use a random delay for adding the iframe (otherwise the 'pairing' with the initial http request may distinguish this traffic).

3\. Print the link, url and info block on the dead trees (the paper), as other has suggested.

4\. Add HSTS headers ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security))

<comment> vhost- Also, if you can swing [https://washingtonpost.com?page=securedrop](https://washingtonpost.com?page=securedrop), the request will just look like it's to [https://washingtonpost.com](https://washingtonpost.com) since query parameters are encrypted with ssl.

<comment><USER5> So is the rest of the URL, it could just as well be [https://washingtonpost.com/securedrop](https://washingtonpost.com/securedrop)

<comment> vhost- Oh right, paths are too. Sorry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anyone from WaPo visits here, you've got some typos on that page:

"Download and install the Tor browser bundle from Download and install the Tor browser bundle from [https://www.torproject.org/"](https://www.torproject.org/") should be "Download and install the Tor browser bundle from [https://www.torproject.org/"](https://www.torproject.org/")

"You will be provided with a codename that you will use it to log in to check for replies from The Post." should not have the word "it".

Otherwise, great work! I'm really glad that you're doing this and featuring it prominently on your home page.

</comment><comment><USER7> I worry that the Washington Post has unintentionally created a honeypot for leakers. I wonder if the Post has the resources to sufficiently secure it:

The requirement for security is to make successful attacks more expensive than they are worth for the attackers. (There is no perfect security, of course.)

How much is information leaked to the WP worth? It's information that can change the course of history; it could make war or peace; it could be worth billions or even trillions of dollars; it could simply change the course of the stock market or of one stock and be worth billions to an individual.

If I ran a state intelligence service, with the fate of my nation and all my citizens in my hands, I would be irresponsible not to invest in monitoring the Washington Post (and the NY Times, and others') "secure" tip line. If I ran an unscrupulous business, it would be worth it, if only for the information relevant to the stock market. EDIT: Also, the information can change the course of elections and be a target of unscrupulous politicians.

I find it hard to believe that the Washington Post or any news organization has the resources to protect assets that valuable.

</comment><comment><USER8> In case you don't have Tor installed and want to know what it looks like: [https://imgur.com/GbwKfuG,D2aWi25,glApNg3](https://imgur.com/GbwKfuG,D2aWi25,glApNg3)

<comment><USER9> Very refreshing to see a big, red warning in the screenshot about the fact that Javascript is _enabled_! Usually you see the same thing when Javascript is disabled, asking you to enable it.

<comment><USER3> (SecureDrop dev here) Glad you like it! It's hard to tell people who get excited about fun UX ideas that they can't use JS, but from my experience as a browser security engineer, eliminating JavaScript (and plugins, which the TBB does already) dramatically reduces the browser's (unfortunately enormous) attack surface.

<comment><USER9> Agreed with you completely. Every time a new web app is posted to HN and it doesn't work without enabling Javascript, a small circle of security-conscious people complain about it. The responses from other people are in the lines of:

 _" Are there really people that browse the internet without enabling Javascript in 2014?"_

 _" Well, 0.01% of your users have Javascript disabled, you can safely ignore them"_

 _" Javascript is an important part of the web, if you have it disabled, you have no right to complain"_

We need more people like you to advocate secure browsers without using Javascript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Guardian has also released a secure drop platform:

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/05/guardian-l...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/05/guardian- launches-securedrop-whistleblowers-documents)

[https://securedrop.theguardian.com/](https://securedrop.theguardian.com/)

<comment><USER11> This is a different deployment of the same product [1]. Which, incidentally, was originally created by Aaron Swartz. The Wikipedia page[2] has a list of well-known deployments.

[1] [https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop](https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureDrop](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureDrop)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for pointing that out. I just watched "The Internet's Own Boy", the documentary about Aaron, and it is positively incredibly how many projects Aaron created or played a critical role in creating. An unthinkable shame that he left us so soon — one can only imagine all the things he had left to create.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know what the codenames are like? If they are easy enough to remember, then they may be easy enough to brute-force?

I think this is a great concept, yet perhaps too little, too late (Journalists should know PGP and drop boxes like these should have been common already). I also worry a bit because of Washington Post's track record with leaks, of the top of my head:

\- Washington Post was Snowden's first choice, but they put up enough demands for Snowden to move to The Guardian. [1]

\- Washington Post, according to Assange, had access to the "Collateral Murder" video a whole year before WikiLeaks published their edited video. [2]

\- Washington Post employs op-ed columnists that call for assassination of "criminally dangerous" leakers like Assange [3]

[1] [http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/nsa-leaker- shop...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/nsa-leaker-shopped-his- story-around.html) [2] [http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2010/s3040234.htm](http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2010/s3040234.htm) [3] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/08...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080202627.html)

EDIT: More information on SecureDrop: [https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop](https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop) and source here: [https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop](https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop)

<comment><USER3> Securedrop dev here. We tried to balance the memorizability of codenames (aka Diceware passphrases) with their length. The current minimum length is 8 words from a list of 6969 words, so you get math.log(6969 __8, 2) = 102 bits of entropy, which is quite good. Additionally, the codenames are stretched with scrypt with affords an extra (approx.) 14 bits of entropy (that 's our current work factor).

We are continuing to discuss and debate this trade-off. Other ideas welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tor hidden services are not bulletproof. Just as a really simple example, you can do network traffic analysis to find network nodes with one-way traffic to hosts without a correlated public service and deduce if a hidden service is nearby.

There are several exploits which have been used in the past to expose Tor hidden services, and several papers on theoretical ways to expose them. Many of these attacks can be used in reverse to expose the origin of a connection to a hidden service.

In the [not so] extreme case, the govt can always issue a National Security Letter to WaPo and scoop up any data it wants directly from the hidden service servers, similar to its Silk Road and Freedom Hosting takedowns.

The FBI TOR Exploit [ [http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/fbi-tor- exploit/](http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/fbi-tor-exploit/) ]

Heartbleed used to reveal Tor hidden services [ [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/openssl-bug- cve-2014-0160/](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/openssl-bug-cve-2014-0160/) ]

Hot or Not: Revealing hidden services by their clock skew [ [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/ccs06hotornot.pdf](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/ccs06hotornot.pdf) ]

Tor Hidden Service Passive De-Cloaking [ [http://blog.whitehatsec.com/tor- hidden-service-passive-de-cl...](http://blog.whitehatsec.com/tor-hidden- service-passive-de-cloaking/) ]

</comment><comment><USER15> If all Post correspondents used SecureDrop to submit their stories that would be a start.

One would have to assume that all the traffic going to the server is logged by the NSA and anyone else who can manage it. If the traffic volume is low then timing correlation with even a large pool of suspects is simple. An active attacker can differentiate between the SSL connection from a web browser and one from a tor node, so the background SSL traffic to the Post would not provide cover.

I think it could be improved by using a mix network (eg mixminion) accessed over tor, rather than just tor.

Unfortunately the mixmaster/mixminion networks are currently too small to provide meaningful complexity. Large scale adoption by, eg, newspapers, is not technically hard and would significantly complicate the adversary problem.

I'd love to see more discussion of bitmessage and Pond ([https://pond.imperialviolet.org/](https://pond.imperialviolet.org/))

cf [http://www.syverson.org/](http://www.syverson.org/)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is brilliant, and a smart move for the WP, despite some of the criticism's below. I think it's a much needed, if romantic, idea that harkens back to the transparency of Wikileaks, and gives WP a great little heads up over some of the other papers. I wouldn't be surprised to watch the others follow suit soon.

</comment><comment><USER17> Random question: has anyone attempted to build a Tor-like system (or bridge to the actual Tor network) using WebRTC?

Assuming you were able to avoid the "JavaScript crypto problem", would this be a good or bad idea?

</comment><comment><USER18> Sometime in the near future, I predict that the US will require some form of photo I.D before using an internet kiosk. As usual, the spin will be to protect the children.

<comment><USER19> USA is pretty low on the list of countries I could imagine implementing something like this. Given Russia's, China's, and a large portion of SEA countries' internet censorship track records...

<comment><USER20> I'd put the USA pretty high on that list. They've implemented plenty of their take-downs over the past year, and are more capable of introducing something like this than any SEA state.

<comment><USER21> I think many people living in the US are unaware of just how bad the rest of the world has it, sometimes.

<comment><USER22> That's not the point at all. The USA claims to be a bastion of democracy and freedom. Therefore it has significantly higher standards to live up to than countries like Russia and China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you depend on your anonymity, do _not_ use Tor.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow, Tor is still a thing? We have confirmation that security agencies have taken over exit nodes and injected spyware before to track targets. I'm surprised anyone uses it. It's like the security lottery.

<comment><USER25> The NSA leaks reveal that for the most part, Tor is still secure if you're using a sufficient number of intermediary nodes.

If anything, the real concern here is the implicit encouragement to use local library computers, which would be much easier for a government agency (or cybercriminal) to infect with malware and observe.

<comment><USER3> (Securedrop dev) That's not an implicit encouragement, despite it being your interpretation. Library computers, in my experience, do not typically allow you to install software on them, such as the Tor Browser Bundle, which is needed to access SecureDrop.

The explicit encouragement that is clearly written on the landing page is to use a personal computer (not a work computer) and a public network (e.g. a coffee shop).

<comment><USER25> Apologies, you're completely right. I think I got that impression from something someone else said in this thread.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Crops take root in unlikely city spaces - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/content/f3e49c7e-ad2e-11e8-8253-48106866cd8a#myft:my-news:grid <comment><USER2> There's a similar company in NYC that grows in shipping containers called Square Roots. They are planning to expand across the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER3> Huh, such a wasted opportunity to include many photos.

<comment><USER4> Like, lush greenery framed by Eiffel tower? Nah it's just plants in metal shelves under magenta grow lights.</comment></comment>


Japan's Nikkei down 10% - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^N225 Where can I buy financial Dramamine? <comment><USER2> I hear the federal government has got some good sedatives. They've been asleep at the wheel for some time now.

EDIT: This should have been posted under the comment about Dramamine.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Where can I buy some financial Dramamine?</comment>


PHP tutorials from Codular - <AUTHOR> http://codular.com

<comment><USER2> Awesome and easy. Nice design on the page! Easy to learn.</comment>


Do You Need a $400 Juicer? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lutHF5HhVA <comment><USER2> Doesn't this product defeat the entire purpose of a "juicer". What a total waste.</comment>


Nintendo Says Profits Slid 66% in Last Quarter - (Partially) Blames iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/07/30/business/business-nintendo.html?_r=2&ref=technology

<comment><USER2> Title is still misleading even after the edit. iPhone is but a minor detail editorialized into it for upvotes.

Totally left out from the article is the fact that Wii users just don't buy games like Xbox or PS3 ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> It may be minor in its overall contribution to Nintendo's slide, but it also jumps out as the most salient and noteworthy detail.

For Nintendo to explicitly mention Apple's iPhone in an earnings call, acknowledging its impact on their business, is what makes the report interesting, different and relevant.

I'm definitely open to changing the title based on an actual suggestion, but find your reasoning for my motivation ridiculous (obviously not my article).

<comment><USER2> It didn't say they're blaming their revenue slide on the iPhone at all. Not even partially, as your edited title suggests. They merely mentioned them as part of the competitive landscape.

It's certainly interesting that a phone might be getting noticed in the gaming industry, but that really has nothing to do with the article at hand, and especially not the title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> All of the Wii games I am looking forward to come out at Christmas. Until then I am half way through the SNES Zelda (never played it before) which is plenty of fun. If there are no games I want, you don't get my money :)

Edit: For clarification it is an actual SNES cart (birthday present) for my SNES (also for my birthday, awesome wife), not a wii emulator game.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hint: Nintendo should open up their platform to easily develop applications so that people can download them via the dsi. Right now you need to be a big development house to build an application. The bar is lower for an iphone and the plethora of apps available is mind-boggling (not that 99% are worth anything, but their is an app for everything).

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure that app store model would work as well for the DS. I think I'd go somewhere in the middle. Probably require a minimum of $5 sale price for every game (with free trials for sure) or something like that.

It's an interesting thought though. What if they opened up more? And why hasn't Microsoft done this? They are a little more open with Xbox Live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well they sold 50m+ Wiis and 100m+ DS's, how many more do they expect they are going to ship? Also the Wii is kind of lacking good games at the moment and Nintendos announcements at the E3 for this years titles wasn't that exciting either.</comment>


SashiDo – The Real Parse Alternative - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/becoming-the-real-parse-alternative-f2a5474c830f#.5odar5g0g <comment><USER2> please allow me to read and view your documentation prior to signing up.</comment>


Spotify acquires and shutters MightyTV, a content recommendation startup - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/27/spotify-acquires-and-shutters-mightytv-a-content-recommendation-startup-founded-by-admelds-brian-adams/ <comment><USER2> If Spotify is planning on pushing their subscription service more in the near- future, I'm happy they are purchasing companies that will work to improve their algorithms even more. Having lots of music on the go without downloading will get a lot of people in- but if they are making their already good discover even better, that will be really effective in keeping customers paying.

For anyone who hasn't paid for the upgraded version, it's half off for students. It is worth trying for sure, I've found a lot of new music with the daily discover you get.</comment>


The birth of Flask - <AUTHOR> http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2010/4/3/april-1st-post-mortem/ <comment><USER2> This is great, fascinating to know that Flask was inspired by Armin Ronacher's April Fools joke!

Still got to appreciate his resolve to bring out better microframework than the existing alternatives at the time.</comment>


Starting an Internet Business in China - <AUTHOR> http://blog.popupchinese.com/?p=35

<comment><USER2> Sounds like they run their servers outside China. This works if most of your users are outside China. It can be highly problematic if most users are inside China.

I do not agree with using "pseudo-legal registration hacks" unless you really have to, that is, your business is doing things the China gov frowns upon or your biz model can't be easily classified. In years past, there was little choice. Now, its not too difficult to run a proper China Internet entity. You do need a local Chinese company to hold your Internet operating license. This is not your license for your business and real/intellectual property, this is a license for operating a server in China. This creates trust and contract issues, but there now exist trustworthy partners. I recommend to anyone wanting to target the China market to have a local Chinese business partner. It doesn't matter how smart an expat you are, the locals will always understand some things better than you.

Hosting within China does cost more. As an example of the low end of server hosting, I ran a 2U server (I owned it) for an annual fee of $1200. For that I receive an unmetered 1Mb connect. That was the contract. In reality, I was connected to the IDC's 100MB switch and nothing was managed. I never had problems. Some IDCs are better managed than others.

As for payments, if your users are paying outside China, you use a HK or other entity for those payments (you'll most likely need an HK entity anyway to comply with China regs). For payments in China, use a China bank and China payment system.

Final note: for bootstrapping and proof of concept stuff, it can make sense to crank things up in the U.S. or HK and ignore all local rules until you know more. But you should plan to clean up your China requirements as soon as possible.

<comment><USER3> jhancock, you're based in Shanghai right? If you have time, I'd love to get a drink with you and talk... send me a mail at pm -squigly sign- gom-jabbar.org

Also for any shanghai based hners here, feel free to contact me and let's meet up :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "final caveat: none of this is relevant if you want to start a company that is technically registered in China and bills in RMB. If you need to do that find someone who has done it and buy them a drink. No-one posts about their pseudo- legal registration hacks on the Internet but the expat community in both Beijing and Shanghai is pretty supportive and the successful entrepreneurs I've met here have been incredibly grounded and very open to sharing their stories and trying to help out others."

I find it totally ridiculous starting and investing your own money and life in business that is created on "pseudo-legal registration hacks". One day you may lose everything!

<comment><USER5> Indeed, you may. In fact, it's quite likely if you ever show real profitability. That's part of doing business in the PRC. There's a _long_ list of foreign entrepreneurs who got robbed blind, often with government support.

That's why the article strongly recommends doing business in Hong Kong. In HK you still have some measure of order and civility in the business world, and there's some legal protections for your business. On the mainland, it's the law of the jungle, where the person with the highest government connections takes everything. Hint: that's not you.

One more thing. There are two types of laws in China. There's the "public" laws, that are published. There's also the private laws, that are not. You have no way of learning about these laws, and you're always in violation of _something_. "Quasi-legal" is usually as good as you're ever going to get.

<comment><USER2> those are some good points. Here are some examples that may or may not support this:

1 - We have a company formed in a Shanghai district. The company is categorized to be in the IT business. We have a favorable tax policy. Very favorable I'd say. Much better tax position than anything I've run in the U.S.

2 - We have an HK entity as well as our China entity. They actually are not legally connected except through individual owners/investors. For the most part, the HK entity gets used for money moving around outside China. The China entity gets used for all things within China. Oh yeah, we also have a U.S. LLC. Wouldn't want to dodge the U.S. for money moving around there.

I agree that if you get big, you need to spend some amount of energy ensuring you have local government patronage. But you have to be very large or very naive to run afoul of these problems. I know people that have run afoul. They were mostly being naive and not taking care of certain clear signs that could have helped. I lost millions my first couple years in Shanghai. But it wasn't because the government swooped in. It was because I could not collect from my business partners. They got paid, and when I tried to collect my share, they made excuses, dragged their feet, until I was too weak to be a big bother to them. This is very typical Chinese behavior and had nothing to do with the government. I was naive. I paid my dues and moved on.

Maybe Beijing is tougher, but Shanghai is pretty easy to run your company and handle employees correct. Sure, the rules "adjust" from time to time, but everyone is effected by rule changes so there are lots of examples for how to adjust. It does take an education and knowing whose advice to trust. I'm very fortunate that my wife is Chinese and has run several online media companies and was liaison to the gov years ago when they designed their Internet and telecom policies. So now, I do the tech work and she does the biz work and makes sure our contracts are written so we get paid and everything runs smooth. But you don't always have to marry into this. There are many solid local Chinese to partner with.

<comment><AUTHOR> John,

You're right that our servers are outside China. Also that businesses that need to bill in RMB are more complex to setup and it's a good idea to do things by the book. The process isn't clear cut and starting a WOFE is much more expensive than starting a business abroad.

Beijing seems less accustomed to having large foreign-owned businesses and some of the rent-seeking strata I saw in Shanghai hasn't developed as fully here. The expat community also feels a bit more integrated into society, which widens and softens the support network. The administrative issues we've run into while starting up have mostly come at us from abroad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Factor in the excessive drinking. Always do that when it comes to business in china.

<comment><USER7> It's only a byproduct! You haven't lived until you went to business negotiations with Chinese guys at 11AM, went for lunch at 1PM, came back for more negotiations until 7PM. By 4AM the following day, all of you are still in your suits, sans a few missing ties and pants, sitting at a pavement somewhere and laughing like crazy. I really miss China.</comment></comment>


Ask News.YC: What is the best scenario for the future of Microsoft and Xobni? - <AUTHOR>

First off, Xobni is awesome.  It's so awesome that it invokes feelings like, "I wish I thought of that!" (but surely such an idea requires proper execution, which I probably could NOT have managed as well as they have).  I applaud the Xobni guys for what they've done and admire YC for investing in them and supporting a small band of amazing/innovative developers.
This question stems from the 80s/90s dream of being acquired by Microsoft.  Those were the days when hitting the big time meant getting acquired by Microsoft.  The game has definitely changed with the internet and in many ways Google is to the internet as Microsoft is to the desktop (but that's a different discussion altogether).
I noticed over the years that Apple has cultivated a culture of "grassroots development" such that there is an amazingly gifted community of developers creating innovative products that are growing the appeal of OSX as both user-friendly and developer-friendly (by "developer-friendly" I am referring to the anecdotally evident numerous small companies that have been established to fill a need for many small niche applications and those companies seem to do quite nicely; for example Delicious Monster, OmniGroup, Pixelmator...).
When I say "gifted developers" that could be restated as "enabled/empowered developers" in the sense that Apple has gone through great lengths to ensure the applications developed for OSX are clean, beautiful, and uniformly usable.  I get the impression that Apple has more of an interest in spreading diversity on its platform through encouraging independent developers to innovate such that additional value is brought to OSX from many sources instead of from Apple as the sole provider of value.
And thus we arrive at the heart of my question: which of the following scenarios is "optimal"?:
1) Microsoft acquires Xobni.  Outlook becomes better and Microsoft maintains dominance on their own platform.
2) Microsoft promotes Xobni as an example of grassroots development and starts to make it easier for independent developers to innovate upon the Windows platform.
3) <add your own scenario>
Which is the better scenario in the long-run for:
1) Microsoft
2) Customers
3) Xobni/YC <comment><USER2> 1) Scenario #2 - Xobni would be a drop in the bucket to Microsoft so they wouldn't have the incentive to manage it properly. The Xobnis can make it much more prominent and important than MSFT would. Plus, Xobni is about the only thing I can think of that gives MSFT products some hacker cred.

2) Scenario #2 - more people/companies are helping customers so they're more likely to get an offering that fits. Microsoft might do a good job taking care of customers, but a diversity of ideas is more likely to produce the right fit for any given customer.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is everyone spending time at Hackathons and not at Sellathons? - <AUTHOR>

I've learned that 5% of a business is the idea, 15% is the product, and 80% is the selling. The number one reason companies fail is because they do not know how to sell? Isn't it better to spend more time at "Sellathons" learning how to sell - and less time at Hackathons? <comment><USER2> I like what you're saying and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

How do we start that??

<comment><USER3> Where did you see newsletter at?

<comment><USER3> I fail to see why I was down-voted for this.

"I've learned that 5% of a business is the idea, 15% is the product, and 80% is the selling. The number one reason companies fail is because they do not know how to sell? Isn't it better to spend more time at "Sellathons" learning how to sell - and less time at Hackathons?"

There is absolutely nothing in here about a newsletter. I feel it's a valid question.

<comment><USER4> lol it was a rhetorical comment!

<comment><USER3> Oh oops! Missed that! Thanks for the clarification. =)

<comment><USER2> It was :D

But yeah... what happened with this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be better but selling is scary and requires asking something of real people. Its not the easiest thing to do so I think people shy away from it.

</comment><comment><USER6> How would you go about doing a sellathon?

<comment><AUTHOR> You spend some time telling each other how you are selling/marketing your product/service and come up with new ways

<comment><USER7> I like where this is going. Too many times there are great products out there that get little recognition because they don't go about marketing and selling properly. I could see this being great if there were some newer companies having sales issues and learning from sales people. Coming from a sales background, one of the hardest things is understanding who might be having the problem you are trying to solve and then going after them. There are plenty of very successful SaaS companies that didn't have a super viral launch but once they figured out their customer went and crushed it. (b2b applications come to mind)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> or pairing up tech founders with skilled salespeople who want to work in tech.</comment>


Google Analytics-Driven Game Development by Example - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/creative/game-design/google-analytics-driven-game-development-by-example-r4132 <comment><USER2> Interesting article. Anyone know what programming language was used to make it?

<comment><USER3> Hi, I am the author of this article. The game was created in Cocos2d-x-JSB so the language used was Javascript.

<comment><USER2> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


A Better Way to Manage CSS and JS (+ source code) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gathercontent.com/combine-and-compress-css-and-js-on-the-fly

<comment><USER2> While I don't mind the concept proposed, a few things immediately caught my eye:

1) How often are changes made to these CSS files? It seems to me that caching would be far more crucial than any marginal benefit of this practice. Also, what of allowing multiple CSS files to download in parallel via multiple <link> tags?

[nitpicking from here out]

2) Why does his minify code remove all whitespace and then remove whitespace before '{' and after ':'? They're already gone.

3) Removing all whitespace makes the assumption that no whitespace is necessary. This will completely break, among other things, font-family: "Some Embedded Font";

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) CSS on dev setup changes very often. Limiting number of <link>'s was one of the goals.

2) It does not. The ' ' is actually a double space.

3) Point 2)

<comment><USER2> Ahh double space, that makes much more sense. Sorry for not looking more closely before posting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've done this before and its far from the best way.

Pre-compilation is better and is CDN safe out-of-the-box.

</comment><comment><USER4> So on the fly you open tons of text files to glue them? Seems i/o intensive.

Why not do the same thing on deploy?

<comment><USER5> _We'll introduce server-side caching in the future, but a goal of this script was to provide users with the latest CSS/JS at all times..._

<comment><USER6> Surely, it would be acceptable to microcache for a few seconds? It's rather easy, with nginx in front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rails 3 asset management / precompiling FTW

</comment><comment><USER8> Better than what? This doesn't mention any of the other asset management tools out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Better than using only one file with all css inside

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> out of topic but couldn't help noticing shorthand php tags <?= ?> these make me cringe

<comment><USER10> Why? If your server is running PHP and you're not worried about confusion with some other language processor, then why not use shorthand?

<comment><USER11> It's no longer a valid SGML processing instruction, which largely rules out decades of tools for working with markup.

<comment><USER10> I'm curious as to what tools you're using to work with files containing PHP code. I mean that sincerely -- if you've got something you really like, it'd be great to learn something new!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you cope with or overcame social anxiety and/or shyness? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If you are in SF/Bay Area, I would highly recommend taking a course from Jaunty ([http://www.jaunty.org](http://www.jaunty.org)).

I took their Co-Ed Comprehensive course (twice!). They are not cheap, (around $1600 for eight week course when I took it), but for me, there is a clear demarkation in my life pre-, and post-Jaunty.

I read a lot of books (Art of Conversation, Seduction, How to Win Friends and Influence People, etc), but none of them came close to this course.

They target social intelligence with basic conversation skills, humor, body language, etc.

I would also highly recommend taking improv comedy classes. In SF/Bay Area, I recommend Made Up Theater ([https://madeuptheatre.com/](https://madeuptheatre.com/)). I took their classes for over 3-4 months. That really helped me build on conversations (Yes, and...) and not let them die.

</comment><comment><USER3> Podcasts may not be your thing, but here's a bit of my story on how I did it.

[https://completedeveloperpodcast.com/episode-190/](https://completedeveloperpodcast.com/episode-190/)

tldl; I used to be painfully shy and now I have a weekly podcast, speak at conferences, and am pretty outgoing. I start out with a discussion of some of the things that made me reluctant to engage with other people socially and then follow up with some strategies I used to get past them.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you live in England you can self refer to your local IAPT service. They'll triage you and then assign you to either high or low intensity talking therapy. Current wait times are good.

Be aware that social phobia and social anxiety isn't just being anxious in social situations! here's a good guide to treatment for people who have social anxiety at the more severe end: [https://www.div12.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/Comprehensi...](https://www.div12.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/Comprehensive-CBT-for-Social-Phobia-manual.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> Aside from the usual go to therapy:

A mistake you may make is reading too many things about the subject. Get a basic CBT workbook about your issue and work with it. Do the exercises. Focus on improving your main weaknesses.

</comment><comment><USER6> Books by David Burns, who is credited with giving rise to CBT, are good. Specifically, Feeling Good.

Personally, I had pretty bad social anxiety, but worked through it with a therapist and hard work. There aren't any short cuts or magic tricks, it's hard work and it puts you out of your comfort zone.

I'll preface with saying I'm not a doctor, but, I'd avoid mediation unless you have general anxiety and/or depression. There's a lot of evidence that shows that medication and therapy are equally as efficacious for problems like this.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a book "Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness" by Gillian Butler. I think that will help you.

</comment><comment><USER8> As far as medications go, Nardil (Phenelzine) is noted as being the best drug, though for numerous reasons it isn't prescribed much anymore.</comment>


Templates to Get Freelance Clients in Social Media - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone!
In a case you are freelancing constantly or into it sometimes it always makes sense to use your connections.
This is why I have created these pictures - use them as a template when you post that you are open to some freelancing.
Here are some ideas on how to use it:
 Choose a template in the package;
 Fill the correct text on PowerPoint with your template;
 Share on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and Get Hired!
A link to templates: https://periodix.net/blog/60-pics-templates-to-show-your-freelance-availability-free-download/ <comment><USER2> Looks pretty good! Thanks for sharing.

Have you tried them by yourself?</comment>


The Single Open Intermediate Language Initiative - <AUTHOR> http://soil-initiative.org/ <comment><USER2> Is this different from initiatives of the past, like the Open Software Foundation's ANDF ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_Neutral_Distribut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_Neutral_Distribution_Format))?

The "soil-initiative.org" URL causes Chrome some heartburn when I try it: too many redirects.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I'm also seeing the redirect issue with the link, going back and forth between root and www domains.

It does reach the site from: [http://www.soil- initiative.org/](http://www.soil-initiative.org/)

\---

Here's a document that goes more into detail:

[http://soil-initiative.org/prospectus.pdf](http://soil- initiative.org/prospectus.pdf)

So far it seems to be a long-term plan to build on the work of WebAssembly, towards a vision of a single infrastructure to "support all major languages on all major platforms".

<comment><USER2> That link went nowhere. Sounds quite close to ANDF. $20 says it ends up the same way: couple of guys work on it for 18 months, make some, but not a lot of progress, there's a PDF or two of conference talks, and it stalls out.</comment></comment></comment>