Should All Locks Have Keys? Phones, Castles, Encryption, and You [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPBH1eW28mo <comment><USER2> This is a very good video that gives you insight into both sides of the debate, but I'm not sure it will change many minds because the central idea of the video isn't really supported by anything. The entire thing rests on on argument, "There is no way to build a digital lock that only angels can open and demons cannot." However, there is nothing in the video to back up why that argument is true now and/or will continue to be true in the future. That is where Clinton's whole "Manhattan Project of Encryption" idea comes from that she mentioned a few months back.

It also makes the entire debate black and white which isn't the case in the rest of our legal system. Nothing there is 100% accurate. There are guilty people who get off and innocent people who are convicted. If we could devise a lock that keeps out nearly all demons and lets in most angels, would that satisfy both sides of the debate?

<comment><USER3> _> However, there is nothing in the video to back up why that argument is true now and/or will continue to be true in the future. _

It seems obvious to me why it's trivially true but maybe you had something else in mind.

Let's say you have an equation like this: x+3=10.

How do we make it so the answer of "x=7" is only given by angels but never by demons? Cryptography is mathematics and for the entire period of its existence, there's no math that only the good guys can perform but the bad guys can't. _Math and numbers don 't have a concept of angels vs demons acting on it._ Same idea as a physical key not knowing if the hand using it is a legitimate police officer or a criminal.[1]

Also, the distinction of angels-vs-demons is not as simple mapping it to government-vs-terrorists. _What if the actors in government are the demons?!? "_ Examples are police officers using their computers to digitally stalk people or CIA officers probing into citizen's private files that they're not authorized for.

Clinton said, _" There must be some way. I don't know enough about the technology,"_[2]

Ok, it seems like someone can just sit down with Clinton and outline the math above. Or, if we really really wanted to play along with the " _there must be a way_ " idea, I suppose we could postulate a math device that only performed mathematics after scanning the users brain and determining that the neural patterns constitute a "good guy" with lawful intentions. Well, what about all the electronics and math unrelated to the biometric verification? Just bypass it.

[1][https://www.google.com/search?q=tsa+keys+leaked](https://www.google.com/search?q=tsa+keys+leaked)

[2][http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/hillary- clinton-w...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/hillary-clinton- wants-manhattan-like-project-to-break-encryption/)

<comment><USER2> I think the obvious response to your first argument is that encryption already works on the angels vs demons system. Except with the current technology the angels are the owner of the data and anyone with which they share the data. Why does the mathematics work for that but you can't expand it to a larger group of angels.

As I have said elsewhere in this thread, your second point isn't an argument involving encryption. You are arguing that we can't trust the government. While that might be true, that is an entirely different debate that is relevant in a whole bunch of other areas and not specifically encryption.

<comment><USER3> _> but you can't expand it to a larger group of angels._

Your phrasing and labeling of "angels" is not the same as mine. We are starting from different assumptions.

In my opinion, you've made a leap of logic and _a priori_ called the abstract actors in the government, "angels".

I would weaken your sentence to say: _" but you can't expand it to a larger group of 3rd-parties."_

It's critical that I call them 3rd-parties because it is _not yet known_ if they will behave with angel or demon _intentions._ It's also impossible for technology to determine that.

 _> You are arguing that we can't trust the government. While that might be true, that is an entirely different debate_

I respect that you consider it a separate issue but I think that bad actors (or sometimes incompetence without malice[1]) within the government is _intertwined_ with what an "angel" is.

To not get bogged down on "angel", let's say we just consider if there's a way for technology to create a backdoor that only works for the government but not non-government. Again, the answer would be no.

[1]such as the leaks of SSN, mothers maiden name, etc from OPM backround checks: [https://www.google.com/search?q=opm+background+checks+leaked](https://www.google.com/search?q=opm+background+checks+leaked)

<comment><USER4> There are ways to make perfectly secure (from a mathematical standpoint) backdoors. Theoretically, there is no reason that every encryption couldn't have a second key known to the government that doesn't weaken the encryption by any significant standard.

The problem is about trusting the government, which can mean (at least) two things. Either you don't trust them to use the key properly. Which is a valid concern. Or you don't trust them to keep their official backdoor key secure. Which is also valid, secure data is stolen all the time and we can't even be sure that they'd notice or admit if it did get stolen.

Again, the technical challenge here is that in the real world keys can be stolen. The "system" can be secure from non-government actors even if the system comes installed with a backdoor that the government has access to. The weakness isn't in the theoretical "system", it is in the fact that now instead of one point of weakness (you yourself protecting your own key) there are two real-world points of weakness (your key and the government's key). The "system" is still impregnable to the same types of attacks, but now rather than tricking you out of your key someone might be able to trick the government out of theirs too.

<comment><USER2> Now hypothetically, what if you divide the "government key" in half. Give half of that key to the vendor controlling the encryption and half to the legal system. As long as you don't restrict the company from speaking out about its cooperation, that would seeming prevent abuse as well as minimize damage if one key leaked.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why a Health Program That Works in America Failed in Britain - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/nurse-family-partnership/412000/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Lede is buried in the middle:

 _One reason the U.K. results were so lackluster might be that the Lancet study compared home-visiting to "usual care," or the health care new moms would receive anyway. But since the U.K. has universal health care and the U.S. does not, it could be that there was less of a difference between the two British groups than the two American ones._

<comment><USER3> Also

 _most of the American studies on NFP were conducted by the program's own developer_

<comment><USER4> _Scientifically, it's not ideal to have the same person who came up with a program trying to determine whether the program is any good._

Not ideal?

This is a great example of the use of understatement if there ever was one. I'd say such a conflict of interest would put the credibility of the entire study at risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Just as many moms who were visited by nurses had a second pregnancy within two years.

It is just hinted at in The Atlantic's article, but the original Lancet article confirms that they wanted to reduce second pregnancies.

Why was that?

</comment><comment><USER6> It should read otherwise. Why America never attempted to copy successful British model of healthcare. Paracetamol is the key!

</comment><comment><USER7> Fail -> Isn't Needed.

<comment><USER8> No, it is needed.

There's a bunch of public health stuff where England needs to do better. (Mothers smoking through pregnancy, mothers drinking too much through pregnancy, mother taking drugs through pregnancy, mothers eating too much through pregnancy, children not breast fed, children weaned too soon, children weaned with wrong food, children given added-sugar drinks, children and mothers at risk of violence, children and mothers at risk of accidental harm, etc etc. (It's a long list! And there's plenty more)

This are partially helped by the universal access new mothers have to health visitors, and access to things like Sure Start Centres (I'm not sure if those centres are still available though), but there's still a lot to be done.

<comment><USER9> Drinking during pregnancy seems pretty usual across Europe. I don't think I ever saw a pregnant woman drinking even once in the USA.

<comment><USER10> It's known and accepted in the UK you can't drink/smoke when pregnant. It's social taboo. I've never seen it in the UK.

<comment><USER8> "never seen it" is not the same as "it doesn't happen".

Smoking during pregnancy has been on the decline for years, and 2014 was the lowest it's been.

[http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/4788/Prevalence-of- mothers-s...](http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/4788/Prevalence-of-mothers- smoking-whilst-pregnant-is-lowest-on-record)

> Today's report shows the prevalence of women who classed themselves as > smokers whilst pregnant fell to 12.0 per cent (75,910 out of 632,960 > maternities)3 from 12.7 per cent (83,490 out of 658,110 maternities) in the > previous year4, and this continues the steady decline from 2006-07 when this > was 15.1 per cent.5

Lowest on record, but still 12% is pretty high. I suspect the reason, as you say, is the taboo. A pregnant woman who smokes faces a lot of judgement, so she's probably going to smoke at home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What you are describing is "stupid." Why even bother to try to fix stupid?

Stupid people do stupid things and the more you try to support them, the more they do it.

People need to learn discipline.

<comment><USER8> What a nasty, judgemental, comment.

You support people to stop smoking / drinking because being a judgemental cunt and yelling "JUST STOP SMOKING" at them doesn't work, and we know it doesn't work.

Your approach literally kills babies.

<comment><USER11> All right, but the smoking point is not really relevant and the rest of your comment is just emotionalism and insults.

If you can't make an actual argument, and all you can do is whine, you are just showing that you don't _have_ a rational argument.

<comment><USER12> > the rest of your comment is just emotionalism and insults.

> Stupid people do stupid things and the more you try to support them, the > more they do it.

You're a hypocrite.

<comment><USER11> I hate to see a discussion become a degraded flame war but I am the one who was attacked and who called it out, not the one who started it.

<comment><USER13> This is the first comment I saw, as I spend a good bit of time on the new comments page. I used to get attacked a lot on HN, so I came here intending to be supportive.

Unfortunately, unless I missed something, you were not personally attacked. Your _comment_ was critiqued, and accurately so. If you do not want people to describe your comments as nasty and judgemental, it helps to make sure they aren't.

So I will suggest that rather than defending your right to making sweeping judgements, you try to up your game. And, for now, walk away from this one and let it go. Sometimes, not digging your grave deeper is as good as it gets.

/wisdom from the school of hard knocks

<comment><USER11> I was attacked. The following comment:

> You're a hypocrite. (-rogered)

I responded to that comment twice. First, defending myself as not having made hypocritical comments. Then, somewhat "regretting" that, I made a second comment pointing out that I regretted flaming but that I had been attacked and was merely defending myself.

So at the point of making that second comment, where I said I was attacked, I was actually referring to the immediate parent, the one I quote above, not the original comments by DanBC.

At least, I think that's right.

Anyway, I appreciate the advice, and I did indeed walk away (actually, I did it before your comment---I made a comment stating as much).

I comment less and less on HN.

edit: This conversation has been disconnected by the mods from the original thread, otherwise I wouldn't be willing to clutter up the thread with this mess. Also, that I'm still getting downvoted on a thread that is disconnected perhaps supports my slight suspicion that I get auto-downvoted by a bot whenever I post.

\---

edit: here is my response to the below comment which I found, only after writing it, I could not post, due to being rate limited.

I'm pretty surprised by your comment here.

I wasn't crabbing at you or trying to argue.

You said I hadn't been attacked, which was mistaken (an entire comment only consistent of "You are a hypocrite,") and I poited out your mistake.

I told you I appreciated your advice.

I pointed out that this kind of meta-conversation is only acceptable to me because it has been disconnected from the main thread, and by that I was trying to demonstrate that I am trying to behave ethically. In other words, I'm trying to say "I don't want to keep flaiming the issue, but I think it's OK to have this out-of-band conversaiton."

So what is your problem?

> "I don't agree but I am not going to argue it" instead of deleting your > comment is still arguing it.

I don't agree with this. The comment I was responding to said:

> Your "rational argument" amounted to "people are stupid, fuck 'em."

And that is a malignant distortion of what I said.

I think it's fine for me to state that, while I'm not going to offer a rebuttal, I don't agree that it is accurate.

tl;dr your aggression here is unwarranted. You come in supposedly offering "wisdom" and trying to help and you just become aggressive when I take you up on that and actually try to talk to you. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I guess the sentiment of what I was saying to you didn't come across.

<comment><USER13> "Walking away" = "shut up and stop posting". You are failing to do that. Editing your comment to say "I don't agree but I am not going to argue it" instead of deleting your comment is _still arguing_ it. Coming here to crab at me some about the whole thing is _still arguing_ it.

I have a great deal of sympathy for your frustrations, but the way you are handling this is only going to make things worse.

I don't care to have an argument with you, so this will be my last comment.

Take care.

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty surprised by your comment here.

I wasn't crabbing at you or trying to argue.

You said I hadn't been attacked, which was mistaken (an entire comment only consistent of "You are a hypocrite,") and I poited out your mistake.

I told you I appreciated your advice.

I pointed out that this kind of meta-conversation is only acceptable to me because it has been disconnected from the main thread, and by that I was trying to demonstrate that I am trying to behave ethically. In other words, I'm trying to say "I don't want to keep flaiming the issue, but I think it's OK to have this out-of-band conversaiton."

So what is your problem?

> "I don't agree but I am not going to argue it" instead of deleting your > comment is still arguing it.

I don't agree with this. The comment I was responding to said:

> Your "rational argument" amounted to "people are stupid, fuck 'em."

And that is a malignant distortion of what I said.

I think it's fine for me to state that, while I'm not going to offer a rebuttal, I don't agree that it is accurate.

tl;dr your aggression here is unwarranted. You come in supposedly offering "wisdom" and trying to help and you just become aggressive when I take you up on that and actually try to talk to you. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I guess the sentiment of what I was saying to you didn't come across.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 99% of science today involves people self-reporting results, with tenure, grant money, etc. dependent on those results.

So are you saying that the credibility of 99% of science is at risk?

Note that peer review doesn't get out of this because it really is "peer" review, i.e., an old boys' network.

<comment><USER14> This should make anyone think twice when they see that next study on climate change.

<comment><USER15> Why do climate change deniers always assume that anything that even vaguely implies a problem with even one climate-change study is a complete refutation of the entire field of climate science?

<comment><USER14> Because its not 1 study. Its 99% of all studies..and if the system is this way, how can you possibly trust any studies?? The system needs to be scrapped and started over. If you cant see this or dont want this, you are part of the problem.

Hackernews is supposed to be about free thought and open source and in reality, anyone with an opinion against the narrative is silenced.

Im not even close to a troll and i have had many of my comments silenced over the past week.

True science is striving for the truth, even if it makes that same person wrong.

without truth, we will have no progress. I suppose this means that myself and hackernews just dont have a good 'culture fit'. Im more about getting to the truth, expressing free thought, and having intelligent discussions. Not having to walk on egg-shells and fear the down vote and account ban for saying something that goes against the personal beliefs of the mods.

the community rules are also heavily skewed toward one group, because like many other inclusive groups, its an attempt to socially engineer the thoughts and beliefs of the community. Dictatorships and evil people have been using these techniques for centuries.

If i wanted this, i would work for a big corporation again.

Im done. Its only been a week, but im not coming back.

<comment><USER15> > _Because its not 1 study. Its 99% of all studies..and if the system is this > way, how can you possibly trust any studies??_

That's exactly my point. You're saying that the many, many studies that support the idea of climate change are meaningless, because science is a lie. But you still want me to trust _your_ studies that say climate change is a myth. If your premise is true, then we can't trust anything, ever, not even the stuff you like.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Patent That Could Destroy Monsanto and Change the World… - <AUTHOR> http://www.ecosnippets.com/environmental/patent-that-could-destroy-monsanto/ <comment><USER2> There is a TED video linked in the story [1] that is a really interesting watch. Mycelium is some fascinating stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> Farmers tried to switch to natural predators (ladybug lavae etc.) from pesticides. Monsanto ramped up the marketing for pesticides.

Today they are a leading provider of natural predators.

Monsanto will not "be destroyed" by one patent or market shift.

</comment><comment><USER4> more self-promotion. this is bad, mkay?</comment>


The 10 Can't Miss Hardware and Wearable Device Events at SxSW - <AUTHOR> http://founderdating.com/10-hardware-and-wearable-devices-events-you-cant-miss-at-sxsw/

<comment><USER2> Will some of these be available as live streams?</comment>


Applebot, the web crawler for Apple - <AUTHOR> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204683 <comment><USER2> _"It looks like someone at Apple is running a web crawler written in Go."_

Likely explains [1] from last year (see [2] for HN thread).

[1] [http://jan.moesen.nu/2014/11/06/apple- crawler.txt](http://jan.moesen.nu/2014/11/06/apple-crawler.txt)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8567205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8567205)

<comment><USER3> nice catch!

I remember some thread from the Safari's early ages where they hid the user- agent, to avoid raising attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >If robots instructions don't mention Applebot but do mention Googlebot, the Apple robot will follow Googlebot instructions.

So if I set in my robots.txt to disallow all bots except Googlebot, Applebot will index anyway? I don't think I like that precedent.

<comment><USER5> Serious question, because I can't imagine your use case - under what circumstances would you wan't to block all bots except one?

<comment><USER6> I'm not an expert but my guess is: limiting bot traffic, but keeping the site available for the most popular search engine.

<comment><USER7> My experience is that the worst bots don't respect robots.txt anyway.

Getting crawled by the major search engines typically isn't that bad, they tend to know what they're doing. Getting hammered by some crappy local search engine is what's annoying.

We don't limit any bots, except once where we completely blocked Eniro in our firewall. Google, Bing and a ton of other could index at the same time, with no issue. Eniro for some reason decided to just index way to much at once, no reaction to robots.txt and no reply from the email they so kindly included in the headers.

But I see your point, it's just a bit sad when Google has become "The Internet".

<comment><USER8> I thought FB was the internet. Googlebot is just the Kleenex of indexers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple is making a smart move by not wanting to depend on anyone else.

Results may suck in the beginning, but well, competing in hard stuff is hard, this is another apple maps. Hopefully they won't get bashed so hard since this is not so user facing.

<comment><USER10> _Apple is making a smart move by not wanting to depend on anyone else._

That's one way of looking at it. A different one would be that the wealthiest company in the world could work with practically anyone and get a better product than they could build themselves more quickly with more features. The idea that they have to do everything in-house to get the best is paranoid and stupid.

For example, rather than build AppleBot, why couldn't they pump a few billion into DuckDuckGo to get use of DuckDuckBot? Or fund archive.org to access their index? Or buy in to commoncrawl.org?

It would be possible for Apple to use its fortune to benefit both their customers _and_ the world. Google and Bing are not the only options.

<comment><USER11> Is DuckDuckBot for real? While I'm sure they are diversifying, DDG's results are still based on Bing.

<comment><USER12> As far as I know DuckDuckGo has mostly been using Yandex's results lately. DuckDuckBot is a real thing (and has been for a long time), but it doesn't do much except power their anti-spam signals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is interesting.

A while back, I think either Cook or Jobs mentioned that Apples makes PRODUCTS and doesn't sell ADS.

If that's true (and stays true) AND this is the beginning of a search engine for them, it's going to be VERY interesting to see what it looks like.

<comment><USER14> Apple already sells ads, and in fact restricts some technology to advertising partners. WebGL, full screen ads etc. They also have a patent on unskippable ads.

I don't know why people don't treat statements like that with enough cynicism.

<comment><USER15> WebGL is no more restricted technology in iOS 8+. Btw it was restricted only in Safari.

<comment><USER14> Sure, but I find it quite unfair to say Apple doesn't sell Ads when they not only own their own exclusive Ad network, they control their entire platform, own many ad related patents and actively restricted access to new technologies to their advertisers in order they could outcompete anything else on iOS.

<comment><USER16> They don't outcompete anyone on iOS. Advertisers hate iAds because they don't have as much access to user data as they do with Adwords etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please let this be the beginning of an Apple search engine. We really need some better alternatives to Google.

<comment><USER18> My question is: why do we need an alternative really? What is better when even more companies index everything and perhaps screw with your privacy? My intuition agrees with you though. More companies == more competition. At some point privacy might be a selling point for them.

On the other hand: it is kind of crazy that when I read about "indexing the web" it starts ringing all kind of privacy bells, while apple's incentive might not even be to violate people's privacy.

<comment><USER7> When one company have more than 90% market share then: Yes, we do need an alternative. (Google market in search has been reported to be as high as 94% in countries like Denmark).

If a company manages to upset Google then that company ceases to exists online, regardless of the validity of Google reason to blacklist that company. Ideally no search engine would be above 20% market share (20% being a random low number I just made up).

Right now websites and marketing material/money is directed at Google exclusively, making it continually harder for new search companies to succeed.

<comment><USER19> I agree with you. Google has too much power over small webshops. If you somehow come in bad standing at Google you can just shut down your operation, because you won't make much money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _please contact us at: Apple-NOC "at" apple.com_

Can't Apple build itself some spam protection??!? Search is harder than this.

</comment><comment><USER21> Based on logs it would seem that the crawler, or at least parts of it are written in golang. When following some redirects the useragent would be cleared and would identify itself as golang.

</comment><comment><USER22> Introducing Apple Web Search. Only available on iOS and OS X devices.

</comment><comment><USER23> >If robots instructions don't mention Applebot but do mention Googlebot, the Apple robot will follow Googlebot instructions.

This is nice to see for a change. There are a lot of search engine bots out there and forgetting a a lot of them is easy to do.

</comment><comment><USER24> Will this be more focused on improving search for digital products (App Store) or more toward creating a comprehensive catalog for digital/physical products to index + download/purchase?

</comment><comment><USER25> Apple trying to get do what Google does faster, than Google doing what Apple does.

In other words: Both Apple and Google in the mobile OS and device space. Both Apple and Google in the (mobile) search space.

<comment><USER26> Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> small-letter footprint:

        Risks are inherent in the use of the Internet

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if Apple Search will be as close to Google Search as Apple Maps is to Google Maps.

That is to say, not very close at all.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you can't see the expected results, you are probably searching it the wrong way! But, it's so shiny. Yes, but all the results seem Apple specific?</comment>


Ask YC: Is web 2.0 over? - <AUTHOR>

So is it? <comment><USER2> well, i think you need to look at things this way:

a) A big trend emerges, it's the cutting edge. All new. aka Web 2.0 three years ago. It brings about new philosophies, cost structures, ways to communicate,etc. An entire culture thrives around it, tons of money is poured in, and we find out what works via trial+error. b) This trend eventually normalizes and becomes "standard". Everything we learned via this trial and error, becomes part of all products. Social networking is becoming less and less a "site" as it is becoming an integrated feature of existing properties. It's also influencing the way startups are run and built. Think about it, the trends + technology in the past 3 years, have made it possible for things like YC to exist (OS software, low cost requirements, ease of distribution, distributed teams,etc.)

So in short, not it's not over, it's just becoming assimilated into everything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you f __king kidding me? Web 2.0 just mean the web is starting to work right.

Seriously, Web 1.0 isn't over. Step out of the reality distortion field. Nowbody outside of digg/reddit/news.y/oreilly knows what the heck the web really is let alone web 2.0. Just make good stuff. That never goes out of style...

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh yeah, you need to run Windows Update to get Web 3.0 now ;)

<comment><USER2> sorry, Web 3.0 isn't compatible with Vista. You'll have to wait for SP2 for the drivers to work :-P

<comment><USER5> Windows is attempting to download valuable new updates from the Internet. Cancel or allow?

There has been an error from which Windows could not recover. Windows will now restart your system. Cancel or allow?

Windows recovered from a serious error which requires updates to repair. Cancel or allow?

Windows is attempting to download valuable new updates from the Internet. Cancel or allow?

There has been an error from which Windows could not recover--

Windows has detected that your machine has been hurled from a 14th story window and will now report your malfeasance to Microsoft. Cancel or allow, bitch?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Define "web 2.0" and then I'll try to answer the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is up to your interpretation

<comment><USER7> <http://web2.0validator.com/>

(Yeah, I made that ...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, I'm not fond of the term Web 2.0 as you can see from an article I wrote. [http://duffsdevice.blogspot.com/2008/01/from-web-20-to- web-3...](http://duffsdevice.blogspot.com/2008/01/from-web-20-to-web-30.html)

Web 2.0 is over when this bubble pops. Web 3.0 starts with the next bubble.

</comment><comment><USER9> $ web --version

3.4alpha

You're a bit behind...

</comment><comment><USER10> We've already upgraded to web 3.0, a.k.a., facebook apps.

<comment><USER11> I think Facebook apps are Web 2.5.

Web 3.0 might be the meshing of the interactiveness of Web 2.0 with premium content that goes beyond YouTube. Think Joost, only evolved beyond crap video.

Web 3.0 might be content designed and built for the web, as TV transitions into an internet appliance (through stuff like Apple TV) rather than a one-way entertainment destination.

And until we start to see this stuff in full swing, Web 2.0 can't be officially declared dead.</comment></comment>


Is Airbnb Full Of Fake Listings? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-fake-listings-2011-8

<comment><USER2> The tabloid presses seem to have blunted Occam's razor. I have used AirBnB in the past and have come to realize that a lot of renters lose enthusiasm in time and simply don't respond - sometimes they respond half-apologetically after a week or two. Also, given that it's summertime, I wouldn't be surprised if a number of New Yorkers are on holiday (and perhaps ignoring their e-mails).

I am pissed with AirBnB for how they've handled the recent events but speculating like this is just kicking them when they're down.

</comment><comment><USER3> This story provides some interesting new information about the client experience on Airbnb. I wonder if other press accounts will confirm this information.

Note to onlookers: a CNN new report submitted by another HN participant, which I found interesting, and which included the new information that Airbnb "is working on a 'response to our community' that would be released Monday afternoon," has now been made dead.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2834066>

That's too bad, because many of us who are curious about the future prospects of the Airbnb company are trying to gauge whether the company is successful in keeping ahead of the press cycle or not.</comment>


Ask HN: Startup ideas you're too busy to work on? - <AUTHOR> Anyone have any ideas for startups they would like to see but don't have time to work on themselves? <comment><USER2> A few Ideas I'd have liked to explore if I had time (and some money):

\- Code/Product Documentation SaaS tool for early stage tech companies (very few good products, one is ReadMe.io)

\- An ad network for progressive web apps (PWA have good future and as of now there is no exclusive ad network for them)

\- CRM kind of SaaS app for startup founders (where founders can manage all their relationship, communication and contacts like investors, journalists, team, power users, etc.)

I wish you good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the ideas! I'm curious, for the CRM for startup founders, what would be unique about this product vs other CRM tools? In other words, why couldn't a startup founder use an existing CRM?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm bundling up a lot of the tools that I use for various projects ([https://pollygot.com](https://pollygot.com)), and I realised that I'm enjoying that process more than the other projects. I would love to make it a full time job, but still need to find out if it's actually valuable to others

</comment><comment><USER4> technically not a startup. but a side project. Rick Rolled retargeting. It's a website you send your "friends" to then they start seeing a sampled Rick Ashley video ads all over the internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be hilariously awesome</comment></comment>


Supercomputer quietly puts U.S. weather resources back on top - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2016/02/22/supercomputer-reston-noaa-cray-ibm/80290546/ <comment><USER2> It's a very exciting time in weather forecasting. We're getting all kinds of new observations available, from cheap LEO satellites to smartphone sensors to smart umbrellas and everything else. And faster computers! And more parallel computers! Think about every single iPhone and every single Galaxy S in the world as a useful sensor array _and_ a parallel processor...

Weather forecasting accuracy is still constrained by both the available observations and the ability to run the forecast models. This new supercomputer won't be nearly enough to process all the new data that will arrive in the next few years, so the pendulum will swing back to the bottleneck being computing power soon enough. I think the most exciting things will happen over the next 5-10 years, as we end up with another 2-3 order of magnitude increase in the available observations to the models and we'll build new supercomputers to process them. I bet we can get incredible improvements, things like reliable 2-week weather forecasts.

<comment><USER3> just curious, do you have references to smartphone sensors being utilized in numerical weather prediction?

i'd been browsing through some WMO reports and other associated NWP lit recently and i'd seen stuff on GPS-RO, but nothing on anyone assimilating "smart" devices.

<comment><USER2> Sure. I've been working on this problem for about 5 years now, starting with the collection of barometric pressure from Android devices. I'm currently working on this with iPhones at Sunshine [1], where we collect pressure data (along with other metrics), but pressure is the most valuable.

There are researchers who use this data - we have collected about 4 billion atmospheric pressure measurements that we have distributed for academic and government research. The primary researchers are Cliff Mass and his lab at the University of Washington. There are also groups in Canada and the US that are using the data. IBM is now also collecting and using smartphone pressure data through their mobile apps. [2]

Generally speaking, the current trend is to take the live data stream, run it through a quality-control algorithm and then use kalman filters in the WRF data assimilation package.

There are some papers published, but it is still early. I will find some links to papers if you'd like to read them. [3]

[1] [https://thesunshine.co/](https://thesunshine.co/)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/technology/ibm-to- acquire-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/technology/ibm-to-acquire-the- weather-company.html)

[3] Utility of Dense Pressure Observations for Improving Mesoscale Analyses and Forecasts: [http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~hakim/papers/madaus_hakim_m...](http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~hakim/papers/madaus_hakim_mass_2013_pressure_assimilation.pdf)

<comment><USER3> ah, thanks, that's fascinating.

"It also learns every time you actively report to the community on sky conditions and hazards, translating this information into weather predictions."

does sunshine actively run a numerical weather prediction model like WRF?

it'd be great to assimilate all these extra sensors into the NWP centre's models, but i imagine things like cal/val and WMO agreements to share data might make things difficult for commercial companies?

<comment><USER2> Yes, Sunshine is running WRF!

And yes it would be great to have all these sensor readings available to NOAA, Environment Canada, ECMWF, and everywhere. I have made lots of progress in getting them to talk about it, but it's a long road before any government starts using this data in its own NWP models.

<comment><USER3> you're probably already aware of this, but there is some US legislation trying to open up commercial data to gov't entities:

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house- bill/1561...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house- bill/1561/text)

there's some stuff being written this year as well for the side that i work (space). with all the upcoming sensor gaps, they're looking at alternative ways to cover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm bothered by how the article says "three years ago European models delivered a blow to the U.S. weather apparatus". Better models by Europeans do not make the models by Americans any worse. Improved models help everyone.

<comment><USER5> I talked to a (very) senior scientist at the World Meteorological Organization not too long ago. He was of the opinion that the U.S. weather models were about 5 to 10 years behind on the European models, and that this was caused by structural underfunding over longer periods of time (i.e. past decades). As I understood it these weather models are basically humongous software programs that are developed in house, but based on publicly available science and fed by data from weather stations.

Does your software become better if you run it on a faster computer? It will certainly help, but he instilled on me the impression that the US had a bit more catching up to do than just buying a new supercomputer.

<comment><USER6> He is correct. The European model still outperforms the US (GFS) model: [https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/700216724067586049](https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/700216724067586049)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great that there is a more powerful computer helping predict the weather! One should know that weather is a chaotic system and after three days its very hard to predict the weather correctly. This is known by the lorenz equations.

[http://www.uvm.edu/~cdanfort/research/danforth-bates- thesis....](http://www.uvm.edu/~cdanfort/research/danforth-bates-thesis.pdf)

Here is the UK met office. "Most of the time the atmosphere behaves rather like the lower-left picture where we can predict with confidence for a few days and have to use probabilities thereafter. " [http://research.metoffice.gov.uk/research/nwp/ensemble/conce...](http://research.metoffice.gov.uk/research/nwp/ensemble/concept.html)

<comment><USER8> Indeed! though the constraints that chaos imposes on predictability is a subtle question. See, e.g., ftp://mana.soest.hawaii.edu/pub/rlukas/LSASI/ENSO/Prediction/Predicability_a_Problem_2006.pdf

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe it's me, but having the backup in Orlando sounds like a bad idea. Anyone able to comment on the logic behind this?

<comment><USER10> Could they have built it underground?

<comment><USER11> "Underground" isn't very feasible in Florida. Most of the state is effectively a sandbar with a very high water table. Underground construction is uncommon.

<comment><USER12> _" Underground" isn't very feasible in Florida._

Here in central Texas, we have the same thing, but for the opposite reasons. Our water table is pretty deep - typical wells in my town are 900ft deep. But rather than sand, we've got limestone. Typical land has _inches_ of topsoil sitting on top of solid limestone, so excavating a basement is prohibitively expensive.

<comment><USER13> >Typical land has inches of topsoil sitting on top of solid limestone, so excavating a basement is prohibitively expensive.

So you're telling me one could blast out a _cave_ in the backyard? Spare no expense!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there anyone here who works on weather models who would be able to explain why custom supercomputers are still needed vs. large commodity clusters?

Thanks!

<comment><USER15> Modern supercomputers essentially _are_ large commodity clusters. Nobody builds a single fast machine ala Cray-1 anymore. It's just not scaleable past a certain point and we're long since past that. However, they still like to give them fancy names as marketing, because they cost tens of millions of dollars.

The main differentiation vs a standard datacenter is low-latency high- throughput interconnects, often with a specific or reconfigurable topology. Something like InfiniBand, where you can ensure very consistent, very favorable bounds on your latency and throughput. So think of it as being a "custom installation" or "custom cluster" instead.

Nowadays there really are only a few real choices left in high-performance computing hardware: CPU vs GPU, processor architecture (eg POWER vs x86), and interconnection. Everything else is more or less irrelevant.

I have to admit though, I've always wanted to see what you'd get if you built a Cray-2 with GPU chips (eg Pascal) or Xeon Phi as processing modules. The sheer density of chips Cray managed to cram in that case is impressive.

<comment><USER16> What kind of latency do they expect from these things? Less than 50 microseconds for a small RPC or small RDMA access? I'm wondering how far these things really are from commercial cloud clusters.

<comment> semi-extrinsic For a relatively modern cluster the standard is FDR Infiniband, which gives you 56 Gbit/s throughput. The latency for a small (< 32 kbytes) packet is less than 10 microseconds, down towards 1 microsecond for a 8 byte packet.

Glenn Lockwood has a nice blogpost with much more detail: [http://glennklockwood.blogspot.com/2013/05/fdr-infiniband- vs...](http://glennklockwood.blogspot.com/2013/05/fdr-infiniband-vs-dual-rail- qdr.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's the biggest bottleneck for better forecasting: better observations, better models, or better supercomputers?

</comment><comment><USER18> Cliff Mass also blogged [1] about the NOAA supercomputer. While a day after the USA Today's article, many folks appreciate his perspective. He's posted on this several times in the past year [2].

[1] [http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-national- weather-s...](http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-national-weather- services-new.html)

[2] [https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=supercomputer+site:+cliffmas...](https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=supercomputer+site:+cliffmass.blogspot.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> Even though the US now has more computing power, the Euro model is still doing a better job at forecasting: [https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/700216724067586049](https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/700216724067586049)

</comment><comment><USER19> For a newbie in this domain, how do we start doing our own toy forecasts (lets say for Bay area)?

<comment><USER20> A really nice intro is this classic paper on numerical integration of the equation for barotropic vorticity:

[http://mathsci.ucd.ie/~plynch/eniac/CFvN-1950.pdf](http://mathsci.ucd.ie/~plynch/eniac/CFvN-1950.pdf)

It's something you can solve in a few lines of python and run with minimal compute resources. A nice thing to try is to feed in some data from somewhere like below and watch what happens as you integrate it forwards in time.

[http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalys...](http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well, this is happening just in time for all the weather patterns -- as we know them -- to change due to global warming. I guess it'll be not unlike understanding the universe according to Douglas Adams...

</comment><comment><USER3> for anyone interested, this paper has a nice background on numerical weather prediction

[http://www.elsevierscitech.com/emails/physics/climate/the_or...](http://www.elsevierscitech.com/emails/physics/climate/the_origins_of_computer_weather_prediction.pdf)

<comment><USER22> I got about 3 pages into this and felt like I was following the discussion until the discussion of an incorrect prediction result that:

> In fact, the spurious tendencies are due to an imbalance between the > pressure and wind fields resulting in large amplitude high frequency gravity > wave oscillations.

Since this paper was published within the last 20 years, I can't imagine what they were referring to by 'gravity waves'

Do you know what is meant by this statement?

<comment><USER23> Gravity waves are waves in a fluid that obtain their restoring force from their buoyancy relative to the surrounding fluid. See [0] for the gory details.

Some examples of gravity waves in the atmosphere: [1] [2]

[0] [http://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Gravity_wave](http://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Gravity_wave) [1] [http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/2051](http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/2051) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXnkzeCU3bE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXnkzeCU3bE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _" Mass was highly critical of the federal government's lagging computing > capacity in recent years.."_

Perhaps he should have been having a chat with the NSA boys...

</comment><comment><USER25> Wish they would stop using the library of congress' collection as a reference...

I know it's big.. no idea how big.. it's not tangible to me.. never visited.. I'm sure most americans have not visited.

<comment><USER26> You do not get an idea of how big it is by visiting; the stacks are off limits and much of the material must be ordered in from suburban warehouses.

<comment> semi-extrinsic They probably also have most of the bookshelves on rails? The local uni library keeps their old books on a system like this, it's really quite cool. The room can fit, say, 54 bookshelves tight-packed with no room to enter anywhere. So they put 52 shelves in on rails, and between each pair there is a wire going across. Disconnect a wire between two shelves, and all the shelves slide apart so you can enter where you opened the wire.

<comment><USER26> I'd estimate most university libraries have a system like this, though the "disconnect a wire" part is strange. Usually they're just a button on the shelf.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I think the wire is a safety feature to avoid accidentally crushing people. If you try to disconnect a second wire, nothing happens, and you have to go find the first disconnected wire and reconnect it. Then you will see if there is still someone in there. (When you're finished in a row, you're supposed to reconnect behind you when you leave.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


H-1B Visas: Bill introduced to raise min salary to $100,000 and tighten rules - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2017/01/06/h-1b-visas-u-s-lawmaker-re-introduces-bill-to-tighten-rules/ <comment><USER2> This move is only going to affect large and small Indian consultancy firms, who bring in tech people from India under H1-b visas with given hopes to file their Green Cards. They are usually deployed on 3-6 months projects across the US. These firms pay them minimum allowed wages by keeping lion share of the hourly consultancy rate.

Foreign graduates from US colleges are not going to be affected as they are interested only in working full time with US companies who are going to pay them market rate anyway if they can't find an American skillful enough to fill the job.

This move will also in return, loosen up the H1-B pipeline hence getting rid of the lottery system. I think it is a good move in a better direction.

These are my two cents as a beneficial of H1-B visa system, who went to US college.</comment>


Star Wars 3D Scrolling Text in CSS3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/css3-starwars-scrolling-text/

<comment><USER2> Hehe, I did the same thing 2 years ago [1], hooked up the mousewheel and also made it so the text could be selected and modified. Back then the browsers implementation was still very early and the text would disappear. Glad to see that it works properly now.

[1] <http://mrdoob.com/lab/css/starwars/>

<comment><USER3> Nicely done, I was disappointed to see that this one couldn't be scrolled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Live code demo: <http://codepen.io/squarecat/pen/KuHsl>

Edit: The article has a demo, but live code is sexy.

Edit2: Now with music, courtesy <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693403> (rudimentary play/pause control at top left via partially-exposed video)

</comment><comment><USER5> It looks like most of the comments are about how the 3D scrolling text does not work in this or that browser. Detecting support for CSS3 3D transforms is nontrivial (and perhaps impossible).

We deployed something similar on the homepage at <http://art.sy>. I wrote a post about our struggles detecting CSS3 3D transform support here: [http://artsy.github.com/blog/2012/10/18/so-you-want-to- do-a-...](http://artsy.github.com/blog/2012/10/18/so-you-want-to-do-a- css3-3d-transform/)

Our code <https://github.com/zamiang/detect-css3-3d-transform>

</comment><comment><USER6> Maxed out both my cpu cores. Is framelimiting or similar techniques hard to do in Javascript?

<comment><USER7> That's wierd - I show a cpu usage of about 48-52% on one of my four threads (2 cores) when I have the tab open, and under 5% on all with the tab closed.

This is on Firefox, Linux.

A side note: I started involuntarily humming the star wars theme to myself as the text started to scroll... I dare say: George Lucas has hacked my brain!

<comment><USER8> Intel i7 (4 cores w/ hyperthreading) running Ubuntu and Chrome 22 and that at one point was >60% on 3+ threads. On the bright side, it's great that Chrome is able to so seamlessly multithread complex CSS operations. That said, this is a rather fast CPU and I would have expected it to perform better.

<comment><USER9> How soon will we see "Please update your video drivers to their latest versions before using this site."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Watch the demo with <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjMNNpIksaI> on, in the background. It makes it much more enjoyable! ;) Haha

</comment><comment><USER11> The text doesn't show up for me on Chrome 22.0.1229.94/Ubuntu 10.04. I get some flickered "short time ago" and "Star Wars", but just blackness after.

Looks cool on FF.

<comment><USER12> Not working in Chrome Version 22.0.1229.94/OSX either, and Chrome says it is up to date...</comment></comment>


Microsoft Surface RT price announced - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/16/microsoft-surface-rt-priced-32gb-for-499-without-touch-cover-599-with-64gb-for-699/

<comment><USER2> Pricing like an iPad, fewer apps than Android tablets, and no way to run legacy Windows applications. It's hard to see what the selling point is here.

<comment><USER3> $100 cheaper than an iPad.

<comment><USER4> $100 more expensive than an iPad 2.

<comment><USER3> New things cost more than old things.

<comment><USER5> Its more equivalent to an Ipad 2 than the Ipad 3 since it doesn't have a retina like screen. The Surface pro has the screen where pixels aren't visible.

I do wonder if the surface will be more reliable than a xbox 360. I'm on my second one and it just broke again. Microsoft isn't know for reliable devices and as a business, i can't have tablets die on my employees. With apple, i haven't had any issues with three year old ipad that is used daily.

<comment><USER6> > _I do wonder if the surface will be more reliable than a xbox 360. I'm on my > second one and it just broke again. Microsoft isn't know for reliable > devices and as a business, i can't have tablets die on my employees. With > apple, i haven't had any issues with three year old ipad that is used > daily._

Well if we're trading anecdotes, I went through 3 Macbook Pros in 3 years. Two screens broke and one trackpad stopped working. One of the headphone jacks also broke. Apparently the issues I hit were fairly common, at least on the generations I had. This doesn't mean Apple makes bad hardware. It means that their hardware isn't perfect (no one's is), and that I got unlucky.

My wife has a Dell laptop that's years old and has no problems except that the battery needs replacing. Anecdotes don't count for much.

Disclosure: Microsoft employee

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> $110 for the soft keyboard cover, $120 for the hard keyboard cover. They think $10 difference is big enough for giving customers confusion of choice.

It's still the same company that released 6 editions of Vista.

<comment><USER6> > _They think $10 difference is big enough for giving customers confusion of > choice._

Who says they're trying to confuse anyone? The touch cover is the primary offering, which is why it's in all the ads. The type cover is a secondary offering, intended for people who want a more traditional keyboard and are willing to tolerate the extra thickness. The $10 difference presumably covers the difference in manufacturing costs.

I guess you'd be happier for some reason if they didn't offer the type cover?

Disclosure: Microsoft employee

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So with a price similar to the iPad it's obvious MS doesn't want to compete on price but rather on features. Well good luck on that.

<comment><USER9> Well, they may be the only party able to do that. While Google and its herd of OEMs play catch up, MS is actually trying to think different...

<comment><USER10> Excuse me, but I believe it's actually the android ecosystem that produces many different products and the user really has a lot to choose from.

One example: <http://youtu.be/AxE_Im20UZM>

Another example: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX9KG369evA#t=10m34s>

Yet another: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wf_PqPi2tw>

Now, I'm not saying that those examples are better than products from iOS or WinRT ecosystem, but you can hardly say that there's no innovation.

<comment><USER9> Well, these are nice experiments. Remind me of the good old Nokia...

In the meantime, the mainstream Android tablets (Fire, Nexus, Galaxy Tabs) are actually "me too" devices, lagging visibly behind the iPad.

Disclosure: I'm a happy Android user, both phone and tablet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really hoped that it will be priced lower than that. Now it's very uncertain if this will be a hit with the Windows Store Apps so few and developers still not convinced about the platform as well.

It's still $100 cheaper than the 32GB iPad but storage is useless if you don't have Apps to fill it.

<comment><USER12> That's a nice note on the dev perspective. If they were smart, they'd have something similar to Google I/O and give tons away to potential developers.

<comment><USER13> They already did that for Windows Phone, nearly every mobile dev i know got a free Nokia Lumia or similar at certain conferences (Droidcon Berlin was an odd choice tho).

It didn't seem to have helped that much.

<comment><USER14> I think it did help. They have 100K+ apps in the Windows Phone Store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting that there's no mention of Office in the screenshot. I had assumed that at that price the inclusion of it would be the differentiator over the iPad since the Surface RT app ecosystem is minimal right now.

Personally, I'd have a very hard time recommending this as a purchase. I'm much more bullish on Surface Pro as its legacy support can mitigate any Win8 App Store holes.

<comment><USER2> Right at the bottom: "Pre-loaded with Windows RT, Microsoft Office 2013 RT...". I'm not sure it will be enough to set it apart from the competition, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, it doesn't have 3G standard! If it came with 3G I think this pricing would be acceptable. As it is, good luck MS!

<comment><USER17> Indeed, Meh.

No 3G or 4G. I'd spend the extra $30 for the entry level iPad2 instead of the entry level RT tablet. And I don't even like Apple...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As early adopter of WP7, i'll make that mistake again. Those devices always looks great on commercials and (biased) reviews, but when you start using them on daily basis you notice that they're missing some important features (like buggy notifications on WP7).

Also, metro apps often crashes on my desktop Win8 rtm, and not third party- ones ....

</comment><comment><USER19> Terrible strategy by Microsoft. Don't they realize they are behind in the race? MS Phone still has no devs...The iPad is viewed as "cooler". Average users won't see the tech differences between the iPad and Surface. At the same price they'll pick the iPad because it's "cooler" and the Joneses have it too.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really like the look of this. I don't mind Windows and if I didn't have an iPad - which I only use for consuming content and browsing the web - I would probably consider getting one. Maybe when Apple stops supporting iPad2 eh?

The problem for me is the price. With Apple you know you are paying a premium for what is a luxury item.

Microsoft's brand to me isn't luxury. Its functional or economical. Its like the XBOX. Its a nice system but its middle of range in terms of cost, design and specs. Maybe this is the start of Microsoft re-branding? The trouble is I still have memories of cheap laptops taking a minute+ to boot up running windows. I associate these horrible machines with the Microsoft brand. This is why I find it hard to see myself paying what is essentially an Apple price for a Microsoft product.

<comment><USER21> If the iPad is a luxury item why have other companies not beaten it in price/performance? The Surface doesn't have a retina display, for example. Yes, Apple make a profit on their hardware, which is apparently not the case for Nexus tablet or Surface (rumor has it), but their devices are pretty competitive in price for equivalent quality. They just ignore the low-end market in the non-iPod category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like the idea of windows 8, just not the execution. If MS' future is Metro, they should have went the iOS route with dedicated devices -- windows phone 8 and windows tablet metro that run the same apps -- and eventually added classic desktop as an app when x86 emulation was good enough on arm.

There should had been a clear distinction between the two environments. As it stands now, metro is billed as the only start menu on x86 devices, but the full os on RT devices. This is confusing and offers no compelling reason to buy the RT version.

I see Apple releasing OSX as an iOS app in the near (>=5 years) future. The reason that will work for them is because iOS is a standalone brand that people understand.

Just my 2¢, I'm not a windows user.

<comment><USER23> You do realize that Microsoft is going to release exactly that in a little under ten days.

The "desktop" is a tile on the Start Screen.

<comment><USER22> Well, the "desktop" in RT is completely different than the desktop in x86. What I said was that Metro and Windows 8 should be separate products until the x86 desktop can be emulated as an app inside of Metro.

As it stands now, your RT "desktop" apps will not run in the x86 desktop and vice versa. Those two desktops are only similar in look and feel. I do think that the Metro apps will run on both x86 and RT, not too sure about this though.

This is so fucking confusing. We have two versions of Windows 8: x86 and RT, both with two separate environments: desktop and metro. If an app can run on metro in both rt and x86, the consumer is faced with a 1/3 chance that a given app will work on their Windows 8 machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> james-skemp For those who don't like TC, $499, $599, or $699. According to the mistakenly launched product page.

</comment><comment><USER24> The only way I'd get an RT tablet is if all of the XP (yes, I'm still using it!) programs I use came out with an RT version. That's very unlikely. Is there still a controversy over Firefox having an RT version, btw?

I'll wait for the full 8 Surface -- but if the rumored $899-$999 pricing for that is true, I might wait and wait and wait for prices to drop.

</comment><comment><USER25> Not the price point many people were hoping for.

So now I have to do a "proof of concept" that I can use it for business - I'm going to download Win8 and test apps before I ever buy the tablet.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you read Hacker News, this product isn't aimed at you, sorry...

<comment><USER27> So who is it aimed at? Why would my mom or college-attending cousin get this over say, a Transformer or iPad?

Windows apps? Not available for RT option. Cover? $100 more.

What need does this product fill for it's users that it shines at?

<comment><USER26> My parents bought an ipad and then paid $100+ for a keyboard case, they use their ipad like a laptop - even though that's not really the intention of the ipad whereas it is with Surface

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The new TV ad is here <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mSckyoAMHg>

The Surface RT does some things better than the iPad. For example, it has a MicroSD slot and a full USB port. The side-by-side multitasking view is pretty nice to put a chat or Twitter client while browsing/working etc. The built in snap out stand is also pretty cool.

<comment><USER28> Oooh. _Who on earth_ will like this ad?

<comment><USER29> The crazy people who are proclaiming this as an iPad killer before it has even gone on sale

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Still no information on battery life.</comment>


Galago: a hardware prototyping platform - <AUTHOR> http://kck.st/Tt4VpR

<comment><USER2> I am interested in this; however, the section for differences from Arduino is very short and not convincing.

The kickstarter page should have more tech details to convince me; for example: I had to go the product webpage to see what the development environment was like (seems to be an ACE-esque editor).

</comment><comment><USER3> They claim major usability advntage over arduino, but no details? ... On it's face this seems like a weak arduino-killer attept.

<comment><USER3> Just read an update somewhere else...there actually are some pretty cool features with it: one being a browser-based IDE. Might actually be worth a look. Here is the update: [http://hackaday.com/2012/09/10/galago-the-latest- in-a-series...](http://hackaday.com/2012/09/10/galago-the-latest-in-a-series- of-awesome-arm-boards/)</comment></comment>


Startup Quote: Scott Heiferman, Co-founder, Meetup - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/7638861735

<comment><AUTHOR> When things change, I think that's easy to get really wrapped up in the complaints.

\- Scott Heiferman (@heif)

<http://startupquote.com/post/7638861735></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to write requirements/specs? - <AUTHOR>

Currently I use a combination of Word, Excel and Visio to create requirement or spec docs.  While it ultimately gets the job done, there has to be something better out there.<p>What do you use?  Interested in free, open source and paid solutions. <comment><USER2> We use mediawiki, and each client gets their own wiki site.

I set them up so the client only had read access to the main content, buy has write access to the talk pages.

This allows us to publish version controlled specs, with closely tied discussions (on the talk page) for each spec.

The biggest problem with this though is getting the clients to edit the talk page correctly.

</comment><comment><USER3> confluence + gliffy. this combo has everything for a logical spec with great authorisation levels. one space / project.

with atlassians 10$ move its almost free for small teams.</comment>


Confessions of a mortician - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/confessions-of-a-mortician-7a8c061bbda3 <comment><USER2> "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour)." \- Vladimir Nabokov

</comment><comment><USER3> Some 10 or so years back HBO had the Six Feet Under show. It was centered around a funeral home family business. But it was a pretty good show all around. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER4> I've never seen any of it, but I do know it was a real jumping point for Michael C. Hall, who went on to star in "Dexter". I just know I'm going to have a hard time not being freaked out by his character being semi-normal.

<comment><USER2> He still talks to dead people if that helps! His brother in the show, Peter Krause went on to star in Parenthood. Parenthood grows on you, I originally started watching it for Lauren Graham but it's become one of my favourites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Much of what we do every day is motivated by a fear of death. This is a well established psychological fact (supported by over 500 studies), yet ironically few are aware of it.

It goes by the name of "Terror Management Theory" and a decent review is here: [https://www.uni- ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.16...](https://www.uni- ulm.de/fileadmin/website_uni_ulm/iui.inst.160/Psychologie/Sozialpsychologie/19_Greenberg_Arndt_Terror_Management_Theory.pdf)

Interesting to note how difficult it was for them to get their idea taken seriously. Let that teach us to beware over-valuing our contemporaries opinions.

Note: a more recent review that's harder to get full text is here: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215091914...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215091914000042)

<comment><USER6> > Much of what we do every day is motivated by a fear of death.

Everything we do is motivated by reproduction. Avoidance of death increases the probability of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those of you who liked reading this, I (tangentially) recommend Irvin Yalom's book, "Love's Executioner" [1]. Irvin Yalom is a truly talented writer and a very talented psychotherapist; in this book (and, really, in his work), he focuses on how he and his patients grapple with death. I have a copy on my shelf that I read from time to time, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Loves-Executioner-Other-Tales- Psychoth...](http://www.amazon.com/Loves-Executioner-Other-Tales- Psychotherapy/dp/0465020119)

</comment><comment><USER8> Being one to get distracted by irrelevant details, I wondered why the "CHECK FOR PACEMAKER" sign was so prominent in one of the pictures. It turns out pacemakers causing explosions in cremator furnaces is a major problem, in some cases damaging the cremator entirely or injuring staff: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279940/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279940/)

<comment><USER9> The article discusses this in its very first paragraph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I work in the industry and there are two things that helped me through my feelings of internal dread.

1) Becker's "The Denial Of Death" is an incredible summary of Otto Rank's psychoanalytic work, explains Freud"s fallibility and explains more about human motivations in life and death (from corporations to cults, from fetuses to fetishes) than any book I've ever read.

2) A colleague once told me "life is like cake". I immediately asked him to stop because it sounded banal, but he continued with something like this: Don't waste the enjoyment of eating cake by worrying that you can't eat it forever. Just because it doesnt last forever doesn't mean you shouldnt ennoy it (just tbe opposite) . Things weren't so bad before you had the cake... and when you've finished yours, who knows, maybe you'll get to have cake another time later..

I probably butchered it and who knows where he got that from, but I found it much more motivating and comforting than carpe diem.

</comment><comment><USER11> The raw terror of the inevitability of death without comfort of distraction or mental illusion — "fleshing," as Puchner describes it — was brilliantly captured here in a way I've never before heard or read expressed by another person.

It's relieving, in a way, to know that I'm not the only human to chronically go through it.

I especially enjoyed his comment on the difficulties of erecting a comforting fantasy of an afterlife:

> I've endeavored, in my weakest moments, to believe in heaven — or at least > some vague, harpless afterlife my brain won't snicker at. But I'm still > pretty much paralyzed with fear.

It's a curse, in a way, to have (be?) a brain trained to recognize and solve problems, optimize expected outcome, and see through bullshit when the popular solution to existential debilitating dread — religion — crumbles at the slightest analysis. Ignorance is bliss, to add to Puchner's ostensibly empty bromides.

That said, I've personally found that two core ideas can consistently keep me grounded (even in fits of hypercritical 4 a.m. breathless terrors):

1\. I'm conscious, which is fundamentally the only thing I can really be sure of. For consciousness to arise in a completely material universe is so outside of any scientific understanding (at least currently) that there may very well be room for a kind of immortality. If consciousness is the universe experiencing itself (to borrow from Alan Watts), perhaps life is just a temporary segmentation of a tiny piece of eternal consciousness that will later be rejoined.

2\. If you're reading this (ie: enjoying the temporary luxury of life), you've got a fair chance of living considerably longer than any human that has ever existed (Kurzweil et al.). It's _possible_ that unbounded mortality could be achieved within your lifetime. This presents a new problem: the inevitable heat death of the universe (I realize the irony of immediately complaining about a lifespan that has reached eons, but it would still be a finite existence), but it's _possible_ that there are areas of physics that have yet to be discovered that would permit hopping to a new one.

I write this precisely three weeks before getting married to the most wonderful, caring, talented, driven, intelligent, and just generally enjoyable companions I could have imagined spending my life with. I think this event has resurfaced these previously successfully buried distresses: when you have more, you have more to lose.

I'm reminded of the "4EVER YOURS" story from this year's Valentines Day Google Doodle[1] that really hits me hard:

> "This will end someday...someday, one of us will die, then the other will > die, but we have now."

The mental tricks are nice for when I'm in a moment of weakness, but there is something starkly beautiful and painfully focusing about the possibility that this could be it. That every time I hold her hand, every adventure we take together, and every late night goofy conversation is limited. It's a clear and constant reminder to really make these cherished moments count, though I wish with every fiber of my existence that I could make them last forever.

1\. [http://www.google.com/doodles/valentines- day-2014-us](http://www.google.com/doodles/valentines-day-2014-us)

<comment><USER12> Fear of non-being, whether through death, losing one's mind, dementia etc is one aspect of the problem of living. I have found in my own case that the purely rational, aspiritual approach in life leaves me with a pretty anemic and empty philosophy on how to live, composed of a few cliches and self- aggrandized 'staring into the abyss'. Eventually I found this rather unsatisfying. I was hoping for something more than a constant reminder to make good use of my short and brutish life, which I don't do anyway. On the other hand, spiritual belief systems spend all their time addressing the question of how live in expansive and well packaged detail - and there doesn't seem to be a competitive secular equivalent. That could just be my own intellectual frailty... maybe others have found such a thing, or don't think it is necessary.

The logic of atheism is inescapable, but then what? What is the point of an axiom that leads to not only nothing, but actual nothingness?

<comment><USER13> >The logic of atheism is inescapable, but then what?

Is it? I find that when people refer to atheism, they implicitly add to it things it does not mean. The broad definition of atheism would be the absence of belief that any deities exist, but in practice, most people who define themselves as atheists lump it up with a set of false beliefs that, although being far better than believing in a "bearded old guy in the sky who cares what I do", are still very far from being solid truths.

For example, atheism usually comes bundled with the belief that consciousness is some unreal emergent property of real stuff that is "out there" or the belief that there exists a separate material world "out there" which is different than my subjective experience "in here" (while any honest introspection into where is it that "you" leave off and the rest of the world begins would start to show the cracks in this belief).

Personally, I find the various nondual teachings far more advanced in understanding these truths than atheist-materialist philosophies and definitely far more than childish religious beliefs, and therefore better at dealing with suffering, change or acceptance of the end of a personal existence.

Of course these are deep questions and while I admit to not having clear answers, I do think answers are achievable (though not at an intellectual level) and there are enough hints to follow for who really wants to find them or (to paraphrase from an old Hassidic story), at least learn where not to look for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Recently I heard the woman behind "Order of the Good Death" on Fresh Air, who also has the "Ask A Mortician" channel on Youtube.

It helps when I'm in the beginning of writing my will and directives -- 'cause I expect to die sometime, hopefully later than sooner.

</comment><comment><USER15> I thought the article was interesting, especially the author's fear of nonexistence. I know I'd much rather think of more pleasant things.

I wonder if the dearth of comments here is due to a general uncomfortableness with nonexistence.

A nice reminder that we should all be doing what we love.

<comment><USER16> A huge number of people don't believe that after death is "nonexistence" and therefore do not fear it.

<comment><USER17> Hmmm... I guess we can never know the hearts of men, but it seems like many people state that they don't fear death because of a belief in the afterlife, but the vast majority of people seem to behave as though they do actually fear it.

Similarly, the religious often talk about how they're "not really saying goodbye," yet they seem to grieve as though they really are saying goodbye forever.

Not judging or anything, losing a loved one hurts and people need ways to cope. Still, people's stated beliefs often seem at odds with their actions.

Edit: a word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For those who are uncomfortable with the notion of dying, I recommend the book "Staring at the Sun". Irvin D. Yalom, a therapist gives his views on death from counseling terminally ill patients.

<comment><USER19> I'd recommend the book/pamphlet _Death is Wrong_ by Gennady Stolyarov. ([http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615932045/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615932045/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting article; no doubt there are some interesting things to learn about death from a mortician - however this article felt way too long.

<comment><USER21> Funny. Poignant. A little scary. A little gross. Eye opening (a la the Matrix). That's a lot of value for a 10-minute read.

<comment><USER22> In fairness to jgmmo, Medium.com estimates it's a 25-minute read. You can see their estimate at the top right of each article.

<comment><USER20> I did not even know about this feature; thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hacker News is one of the few places where the Comments to an article are supplementary and constructive. I almost got more from your comments than the article.

<comment><USER24> I don't want to be mean, but you adding this one is not exactly contributing to that.</comment></comment>


Is this mysterious stone a clue to the 'Lost Colony' of Roanoke? - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/07/05/dismissed-as-a-forgery-could-a-mysterious-stone-found-near-roanokes-lost-colony-actually-be-real/ <comment><USER2> Non-paywalled coverage of the same story:

[https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/05/lost-colony- roan...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/05/lost-colony-roanoke- virginia-eleanor-dare-stone-mystery/)</comment>


Marg - A Simple Request Router written in PHP - <AUTHOR> http://vaidikkapoor.info/blog/marg.html Marg is a simple light-weight request router written in PHP.
It was a weekend project and I worked on it for my personal use and to apply whatever I had learned in the past few months. Its new and it perhaps needs a lot of work.
I'd be really happy to get some feedback. Positives and negatives, both! <comment><USER2> Up vote for the effort. This seems to be one of the many PHP routers in existence these days. To bad you didn't model it after the routing used in Kohana. That's still the best and most flexible routing I've seen so far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing out. I haven't seen Kohana at all actually. Will check it out soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> nice! probably no one except me will upvote this b/c its PHP which is so uncool. But I think this is a really thin, nice lib, though I would say you're gonna have problems with your REQUEST_URI if you're depending on PATH_INFO (check out the getRequestUri in Symfony2 httpfoundation for good fallbacks). I know its supposed to be micro, but you might want to consider extending the request class for other basic stuff people would like to use like HEAD / PUT / DELETE, good job though :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't imagine getting a response so early! :o Thanks for that quick response! :)

I know about how PHP is considered uncool around here. I am not here to debate that. Personally I use Python more but I started off with PHP 3 years back and I do use it sometimes for quick prototyping. Its not all that bad for everything. Is it? I guess you'd agree.

Yes, PATH_INFO is an issue I am aware of. Thanks for that Symfony reference. I will definitely check out how they do it.

The request class can still handle other HTTP methods like HEAD / PUT / DELETE. The verb property ($request->verb) has the HTTP method used for the incoming request. Therefore, you can handle different HTTP methods as well.

Thanks once again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well I like it. Simple,Easy to pick up and integrate. Looking forward to use and contribute.</comment>


New NIST/NSA Revelations (1993) - <AUTHOR> https://epic.org/crypto/dss/new_nist_nsa_revelations.html <comment><USER2> "New NIST/NSA Revelations (1993)"

New NIST/NSA/MSFT Revelations (2013)........related?!

I've been looking to obtain NIST Statistical Test Suite C source download, I have only found C#(Microsoft) on Sourceforge/Google Code, PDF docs, a sts-2.1.zip (41+MB what!?) spectral test update that failed to unzip. Is this now difficult to obtain?

I'm not really interested in putting this forward as more tinfoil hat hysteria, I simply want to run the NIST tests on some PRNGs. A tar.gz download link, anyone?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/rng/documents/sts-2.1...](http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/rng/documents/sts-2.1.1.zip)

via [http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/rng/documentation_sof...](http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/rng/documentation_software.html)

via [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7214239/nist- statistical-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7214239/nist-statistical- test-suite)

<comment><USER2> Thank you. I also encountered dieharder:

[http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/General/dieharder.php](http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/General/dieharder.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Signature_Algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Signature_Algorithm)

(Thanks mods for updating the title)

<comment><AUTHOR> Doublethanks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is some advice that has made your life better? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It helped me a lot to fully internalize the reality that every person is truly doing the best they can, given the genetics and environment they were dealt by the universe.

There's no reason to feel hatred towards any person for being flawed. This applies to yourself when you eat too many donuts as much as it applies to a serial killer that tortures people. It simply doesn't make sense to feel loathing for anyone. Pity is the rational response towards the flaws of humans.

This doesn't mean people can't be improved _to a large extent_ with an improved environment. This definitely works, which is why some self-help books work for some people or why joining the military can help some people improve themselves.

This realization also focuses your efforts on the environment (food, sleep, exercise, books, etc) which is another great aspect of it. Knowing that the way to improve a person is through environment removes the shame of failure. The answer is always to improve the environment and never to blame the person for not being better than they are genetically. Blame the environment for not being good enough to help the person, and then improve the environment until it is.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Treat yourself like you would treat someone you really love._

Something like that, it's part of Louise Hay's _How To Love Yourself_ , a one- page list of things. Also I learnt from _Effortless Mastery_ (about piano playing) to stop all the negative self-talk! Which I used to do a lot. Saying awful, cruel, mean, self-defeating things to myself that I'd never say to someone else. Being kind and patient with myself. I guess I had to learn that while it's great trying to being kind to everyone--you yourself are one of those people. That also helped overcome the very low self-esteem I'd been bullied into at school and at home. And helped with happiness in life. :-D

<comment><USER4> Does this really help? I'm being very self-critical and way demanding towards myself - on a level I would never require from anyone else. But I feel that's the only way to really push forward and improve myself instead of stagnating into the feeling of comfort.

<comment><USER3> Does stopping saying awful, cruel, mean, self-defeating things to oneself help? To ask that is to answer it. Sure, I don't mean never to self-criticize. That's how u get better. In _Effortless Mastery_ , he says--when you rehearse/practise, then's the time for ruthless self-criticism etc.--but on the gig, never. I used to, while playing gigs, often be thinking "Oh yuk! Oh that sux. Oh no. Oh god Im so awful" constantly etc ..beating myself up, so it sounded awful. Since then I totally stopped doing that; I just enjoy myself and let the music flow. It's hard to believe I used to be so self-destructive. It's so easy to be so mean to ourselves in a way we never would be with other people. Maybe you didn't grow up with that problem. It's part of what 'loving yourself' means, which I definitely had to learn, in my twenties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For someone who hated routines and felt trapped. The simple advice that schedules are my friend and I should schedule my day in a way that would make me happy when I go to bed. Been doing this for 2 months now. Never been more productive or happier.

</comment><comment><USER6> There are two pieces of advice I never forgot:

The first one isn't actually an advice but a friend once told me this: "We start dying when we stop being a child."

There are many things behind that advice. When we're kids we're always curious, we ask questions, we seek answers, we don't care about making mistakes, we're spontaneous, etc. I could list dozens of things. At some point in life, we stop doing those things. We stop being a kid. We stop having all those dreams we once had. That's when we begin to slowly die. In this world of grow ups fighting each other because of stupid things, I'm always trying to remind me myself to never stop being a child.

The second one is related to the Nonviolent Communication approach by Marshall Rosenberg. There's always a big difference between what someone tells us and what we understand. Most of the time we implicitly make a judgment about others' actions and that judgment is just something from our mind. Many times we get offended (or upset) by something we don't realize the other person had no intentions whatsoever to offend or upset us. In the end, it's actually an exercise of empathy: if something is upsetting or offending you, figure out why before engaging in a useless fight with someone else.

</comment><comment><USER7> Never do business with someone you don't trust.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't drink beer or coke while eating fondue.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do it. Just don't do it. But do it anyway.

</comment><comment><USER9> When you are buying a house and you know 100% know it's the right one. Don't worry about it, there will be another one.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can learn something from everyone.

</comment><comment><USER11> 'If you don't move forward - you begin to move backward' \- my mother was telling me this often and I completely agree with this.

Embrace the change, learn new skills, get new experiences. Do not settle.

</comment><comment><USER12> You are not your thoughts. Took me 45 years to fully understand it.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Nobody really knows what they're doing. Some are just better at pretending like they do." Kumail Nanjiani

Don't care too much what others think

</comment><comment><USER14> Never believe random advice from the internet.

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't work on weekends.

</comment><comment><USER16> Low carb,high fat, mod protein diet

Stoicism

Memento Mori

</comment><comment><USER17> Get enough sleep

</comment><comment><USER18> Don't panic

</comment><comment><USER19> Don't expect too much.

</comment><comment><USER20> _feelings are an illusion_

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you expand on this one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Charge more

</comment><comment><USER22> Work hard.

Be strong.

Don't complain.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there RSS/newsreader software that groups related stories together? - <AUTHOR>

In my modest (71-feed) Google Reader, much of what I see is essentially a repeat of other things. A press release goes out, a few blogs pick it up, a dozen more echo it, two or three do some good analysis, and a few hundred comments pile up under blogs and in reddit and HN.
Is there a solution to this that I can use to browse through the topics that the blogosphere is talking about today, along with the various comments?
If not, I already have a domain name picked out. <comment><USER2> So, <http://techmeme.com> for all topics, but sources limited by what you're subscribed to?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you could seed it with some feeds and then it could suggest others that have common topics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Haven't had a chance to try it out myself, but Fever (<http://feedafever.com/>) has attracted some attention the last few months and looks promising. From the makers of Mint, 30$ a month a believe.

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks very slick. I'll be trying it out for sure, but I had a different idea about how to organize something like that. I'm going to start sketching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been building a site which does this for news, with plans to allow arbitrary feeds.

<http://www.newsdive.net></comment>


Web start-ups almost always fail. So why are these guys launching one? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2250727/

<comment><USER2> A very nice backgrounder on the Redbeacon team that won TechCrunch50 this past year.

Most impressive item for me (besides the talent, prudence, discipline, and perseverance of the founding team, which is evident): having the willpower to defer VC funding until they can do it on terms that are reasonable for the founders (a lot of startups use this strategy now but to be able to do it after drawing interest from 19 VC firms in the wake of the TC50 win is commendable). Also, their realizing that getting premature VC funding can actually mess up a company by skewing its goals toward premature expansion.

These guys have a business model that will live or die by whether it can scale well, and that challenge still lies before them. But what they have done so far is really the perfect picture of a highly disciplined lean startup that is done right.

I must say, I am growing weary of the "fail" theme. It is just not in the spirit of an entrepreneur to be focused on failure and I wish those who write about them would stop beating this theme to death. Founders have better things to focus on, as do those reading about their ventures.

<comment><AUTHOR> As this is part 2 of a 4-part series Dickerson is doing for Slate on the character of risk in America, I can understand his particular focus on "failure".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Differs from the normal startup stories you so often hear about - they don't have funding, they don't have much in the way of private cash, they're not ridiculously young, and it's taking them a while to get traction. They're basically going it totally alone on a wing and a prayer. Kudos to them.

<comment><USER4> Going "alone on a wing and a prayer" is fine, but you gotta make damn sure you know who you your god is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How risky is it to be an entrepreneur? 10-30% chance of sucesss. On the surface this might seem like bad odds but we are talking about businesses that have the potential over a life time to be worth over 10million dollars. And so the expected value of starting one is 0.1 * 10million = 1million. These figures are arbitary but it's more to illustrate the point that they aren't that insane to start one. The thing about entrepreneurship is that if you fail you can always try again. Try 12 times and that puts your probability of success to 70%. Assuming the trials are independent, but they are not most entrepreneurs will succeed in 4 tries.

<comment><USER6> "Assuming the trials are independent..."

This is a big assumption. Same entrepreneur, same personality, more or less same skills, same contact networks... It can hardly be independent.

<comment><USER5> I know that's why i say that in actuality the number of trials is 4. Each trial compounds on the previous.

<comment><USER7> He might be saying that some people will fail at it no matter how many times they try.

<comment><USER5> Yes some people will fail no matter what cause it's a probability. But it doesn't negate the fact the more you do it the higher the probability you will win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ex-googlers - I wonder how much of an advantage that gives them in terms contacts and possible future buyout.

(especially seeing as it is dead center in an arena Google could easily want to expand into)

<comment><USER9> There's certainly a networking and pedigree advantage to be had:

 _"Social marketing is just starting to bubble up and everybody wants in. But only ex-Googlers needed to apply to invest in MyLikes, a social marketing ad network which just raised a $630,000 seed round. The company, which was founded by two ex-Googlers—former Google Apps product lead Bindu Reddy and former AdSense tech lead Arvind Sundararajan—took money only from 11 other ex- Googlers."_

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/13/mylikes- raises-630000-seed-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/13/mylikes- raises-630000-seed-round-all-from-ex-googlers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So is the main difference between this story and any of our bootstrapped stories that they were high profile and declined the VC money?

<comment><USER11> People have heard of RedBeacon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is what REAL business is. I'm so glad real entrepreneurs like these guys are getting some attention.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure the slow start is what's called for here, if CL were so inclined they could permanently make these guys irrelevant in a week or two.

</comment><comment><USER14> Startups founded by ex-Googlers have a 70%+ chance of failing? That seems incorrect.</comment>


Perspective Mockups using CSS3 3D Transforms - <AUTHOR> http://thecodeplayer.com/walkthrough/perspective-mockups-css3-3d-transforms

<comment><USER2> Made an extended version with some JavaScript toppings: [http://thecodeplayer.com/walkthrough/de50114d70b2b94b404acec...](http://thecodeplayer.com/walkthrough/de50114d70b2b94b404acec4a809b294)

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool, animating within the screens could make it really come alive.

P.S: 2/4 comments are about the thecodeplayer site and not the real content of this submission. I've seen it happen on other posts. I get that most of us here are developer but seriously... Just focus for a second on what matters.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seeing more and more of these extreme perspective mockups on dribble and elsewhere. Definitely makes mockups look "cooler" but it makes it so hard to read / see what is going on.

Just a little perspective goes a long way!

</comment><comment><USER5> Click to freeze / unfreeze should not jump like it does (looks like it takes the delta of cursor position at the freeze click, should be at the unfreeze click)

</comment><comment><USER6> That site breaks the back button during the animation.

<comment><USER7> Not in Chrome.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you distribute your software releases? - <AUTHOR> My team is looking for solutions to make new releases of our desktop application available to end-users.
We need to make them available to the auto-updater, update the website with the latest version and, in some way, keep track of downloads.
I'm curious to know how other companies and developers distribute their software. Can you please share your experience? <comment><USER2> C# UWP: you need to create a .appinstaller file

C# WPF/Winforms: [https://github.com/oleg- shilo/wixsharp/wiki](https://github.com/oleg-shilo/wixsharp/wiki) C# WPF/Winforms: Or, you can create a .vdproj which will createa an .msi ([https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualSt...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualStudioClient.MicrosoftVisualStudio2017InstallerProjects))

I've used all 3: depending on your needs, you may choose one. If you need more info, let me kwow more details about your use case.

</comment><comment><USER3> You might get better answers if you tell which OS you wonder about.

Also, maybe look at how open source projects have solved this issue. Their tools might be useful for you.</comment>


Report: Steve Jobs' private funeral held Friday - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/07/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-funeral/index.html

<comment><USER2> Title: "Steve Jobs' private funeral held Friday"

First paragraph: "The funeral for Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was set to be held on Friday, the Wall Street Journal was reporting."

The reporter needs a refresher on present tense vs future tense, although I guess today is Friday, so maybe it was held already?

Submitter: Please update the title to say "will be held" or at least copy the CNN title exactly.

</comment><comment><USER3> I take it Westboro didn't show up?

<comment><USER4> Let's not pay them any more attention.</comment></comment>