Airport lounges will let anyone in, provided you can fake a QR code (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2016/08/05/airport-lounges-will-let-anyon.html <comment><USER2> What's the takeaway here? That they use a rudimentary security system as a mild deterrent which is easily exploitable. That it's okay to commit fraud as long as you use tech to do it?

You wouldn't see this kind of thing on a lockpicking forum, "Airport lounges will let anyone in, provided you brink your kit."

<comment><USER3> Exactly! Just because the flaw is there, that doesn't give you the right to gratuitously exploit it. Do we really want to force people to implement super- strict security for relatively trivial things like this?

<comment><USER4> Oh the poor airlines! They would never, ever gratuitously exploit their passengers. How could these mean awful people take advantage of them like this?

It's pretty hard to root for a corporation when it's smart individual vs faceless multinational ineptitude. Human nature perhaps?

<comment><USER5> By that logic, shoplifting from sufficiently large stores is ok. Not stealing bread to feed your family, just randomly grabbing stuff because you feel like it (and it isn't locked down).

<comment><USER4> Stealing physical items for fun != exploiting ineptitude to have a less terrible layover. It's also harder to even begin to measure the economic cost.

I think it's more akin to buying terrible cheap seats to a show and moving into a better yet unoccupied section once it starts.

The internet has always seemed to have a lot more moralists than the real world.

<comment><USER6> Actually no, the internet is just where many people realize that the things they think are OK sometimes aren't, because on the internet they're telling the whole world what sketchy stuff they do, instead of just their buddies that they do sketchy stuff with. You're much more likely to interact with people you wouldn't normally cross paths with on the internet, and the audience is much wider.

Tangentially, I really hate buying good seats and getting to a show to find some cheapo sitting in them because they're proactively hoping no one shows up. If you want good seats, buy good seats. Lots of people in the real world feel that way, and respecting other people's wishes (even, and especially, when you think it's unreasonable and can't relate) is a basic part of being a grownup.

<comment><USER4> Your first point is spot on and interesting. I would also argue that we all have different flaws and it's easy to judge others for theirs while pretending ours are somehow less bad. For example the most judgemental people I know are also some of the "worst" people I know. Their morality matrix is just incredibly biased towards looking favorably upon themselves vs others.

As for the tangent, if you can't be bothered to show up for a show by the time it starts you can at least be bothered to say "Hey, these are my seats." I've been on both sides of that interaction many times. Every time it's been resolved immediately and amicably.

That might be too much human interaction though. Maybe we should get further away from humans talking to each other and invent another app to solve this "problem".

<comment><USER7> It sounds like you have no problem using services/goods you didn't pay for. I don't think you're going to have any productive discussion trying to convince other people that your moral position is correct because it directly results in a terrible society that cannot operate on trust at all.

<comment><USER4> You've been casting a lot of stones in the comments.

If you've really never torrented a song, used a friend's Netflix account, snuck onto the floor of a concert, took an extra travel bottle of shampoo from a hotel maid's cart etc. etc. etc... Then I truly commend you. The world needs more people like you.

But I highly doubt that's the case. Meanwhile I'll be the monster over here creating a terrible society by using some free wifi and a place to charge my laptop to get some work done halfway through a long trip.

<comment><USER7> >But I highly doubt that's the case.

No, I stopped doing that kind of stuff around my second year of college after some economics and ethics classes. I objectively evaluated these types of actions and realized in nearly every case where I hand-waved away with "nobody will notice because its trivial", I was basically justifying theft of small amounts of resources by claiming it was negligible.

>Meanwhile I'll be the monster over here creating a terrible society by using some free wifi and a place to charge my laptop to get some work done halfway through a long trip.

I can tell you're trying to be sarcastic, but when people behave like you it does make it miserable for everyone else. You increase the costs for honest people or at a minimum deprive them of some of the value they would have received if you weren't there (more seating, shorter bathroom queues, more available outlets, less congested wifi).

Also, in most clubs it's not free wifi, it's wifi provided for people legitimately allowed access to the club. You are just stealing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You don't even have to fake a QR code to get into a lounge: There was a case in Germany a few years ago where someone bought a fully flexible business class ticket, used it to enter the business lounge in Munich and then rebooked it to another day from inside the lounge.

After doing that 36 times, Lufthansa noticed it and sent him a bill over 1980€ (55€ per lounge visit). He refused to pay, got sued and lost.

Source (in German): [http://www.justiz.bayern.de/gericht/ag/m/presse/archiv/2014/...](http://www.justiz.bayern.de/gericht/ag/m/presse/archiv/2014/04407/index.php)

<comment><USER9> There is also a Chinese case but he did it for a whole year.

[http://nypost.com/2014/01/29/man-uses-first-class-plane- tick...](http://nypost.com/2014/01/29/man-uses-first-class-plane-ticket-to- eat-free-for-a-year/)

<comment><USER10> I keep meaning to do that someday, just so I can say I've done it, but if you think about it the hassle of traveling to the airport, going through security, paying $12 for a cocktail in a sterile room full of strangers, etc. would probably make for an overall crappy experience.

Edit: Oh, now that I clicked the link I see he got to eat for free. Hmmm...

<comment><USER11> Also useful if you have somewhere to fly on an economy ticket. Noteworthy is that often the alcohol is free, along with the food. Having flown business on a couple of trips I can tell you with 100% certainty that I'd rather wait in the lounge than out at the gates. Because, beds & showers.

<comment><USER12> FWIW, Emirates has free Alcohol on their flights for economy passengers. Don't know about the selection as I tend to sleep most of the flight, but they have at least red & white wine and Jack Daniels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Life hacks" like this are part of the larger category "crimes that Americans like to brag about".

There's some strange cultural thing where people are proud of telling others how much they can get away with. You hear this all the time when talking about taxes, "yeah I figure out how to put all my personal travel down as a business expense". It's especially egregious with warranty/insurance fraud, such as when people drop their phone in water and then pretend it's a manufacturer's defect.

None of this really bothers me, but we wonder why companies look to nickel and dime us all the time. It's because we can't be trusted! Give the american consumer an inch, and he takes a mile. We have an adversarial relationship with almost everyone we buy from / sell to, which I think is a big source of pain and inefficiency.

<comment><USER14> I think you have the cause/effect reversed. People don't want to fuck over their local coffee shop. But companies have consolidated into giant monopolistic mega corps with no humanity that try to fuck you over, which makes returning the favor an enticing idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Then there's the time United cancelled my early morning flight from SFO to LHR and rerouted me home via an 8pm flight to Dulles and refused to let me use the lounge when I suggested it would be a nice gesture ('some people have paid an annual fee for the lounge you know...') so I spent the whole day moving between restaurants and seats in the departure lounge.

That was the last time I flew with them.

/Not bitter..

//Hell, yes, I was sooo pissed.

<comment><USER16> There is no early morning flight from SFO to LHR. In fact there are no morning flights (on United) from SFO to LHR. It just doesn't make any sense in terms of timings.

And random flight cancellations happen on any airline (and rebooking options can be limited depending on time of year). Its part of flying, deal with it.

<comment><USER17>
      > There is no early morning flight from SFO to LHR.

It took about 20 seconds to have Google Flights show me a 6:40am departure from SFO to LHR via ORD.

<comment><USER18> I assume OP meant that there are no early morning _nonstop_ flights from SFO to LHR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Up until relatively recently, there was an iOS tweak (if you were jailbroken) that would inject status signifiers into your Delta/United/America/Airline app. Or something. Via the "Flex" jailbreak app, you could tweak and change all sorts of flags in your current apps – e.g. "Infinite Skips" in Pandora, or "Remove banner ads" in Candy Crush – and one of the most widely abused one was a tweak that would put, say, "Diamond Status" on your device's boarding pass.

I don't know if this got you into lounges, but users reported it did at least get them into expedited security lines.

<comment><USER20> They can still check by requiring either that your ticket corresponds to the "fast lane" or that you have the status card indicated

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> From a security standpoint, I'm actually relieved that 3rd party operated airport lounges don't have direct apis to match passengers to flights.

I'm sure there's some middle ground solution that protects info, but I'd prefer this situation to the polar opposite of unfettered API access.

This seems to be a deliberate case of light protection on purpose...not much is lost if you grant access. I can sneak into a local gym easy enough as well by catching the door before it shuts.

<comment><USER22> This is a case where the airline should sign the information in the QR code. Lounges get the airlines' public keys and pick the one for the passenger's flight and, after verifying the signature, can trust the information in the QR code. No API access necessary.

Don't over think, just use HMAC. It's disturbing how often that advice is needed.

<comment><USER21> Yes, that's a solution, but the boarding pass is used by different entities like the TSA. So it's unsurprisingly a big political event to change what's encoded.

It's similarly surprising how often devs think the problem is solely technical :)

<comment><USER23> AFAIK the portion of the barcode related to the TSA actually is signed in some cases. That's part of the integration required for airlines to let their passengers use TSA PreCheck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here's the text from the QR code in the YouTube video:

> M1SIMPSON/BARTHOLOMEWMEXYZ123 ISTLGWTK 1965 099C005A0015 100

Looks like XYZ123 is the PNR and TK 1965 is the flight number. I haven't looked at how the 099... field is encoded yet, but it appears to be date + class of service + checkin sequence number.

<comment><USER25> Looks like page 27 has the format: [http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/stb/Documents/BCBP- Implementati...](http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/stb/Documents/BCBP- Implementation-Guide-5th-Edition-June-2016.pdf)

Starts with M1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Needs a (2016) on it; the article is almost a year old.

Also, per the comments, seems very YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER27> I know United checks your ticket and flight info before they let you in. That's been my experience in the U.S. at least.

<comment><USER16> It's worth noting that most airlines can view most tickets given the name and ticket number (you can use the saudia website to view the gory details of tickets issued by most TAs and airlines yourself if you wish). Whether or not they do is a separate question, but United certainly do check (partly since the itinerary can grant lounge access even if the flight you are taking next doesn't).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've never been in one of those lounges... Do they contain anything worth committing fraud for? Cool trick either way, though.

<comment><USER23> Domestic US lounges, eh. They're better than the terminal but not worth going out of your way for. Exceptions are the Amex Centurion lounges and certain lounges run by foreign airlines, like the OneWorld first class lounge at LAX run by Qantas—cook-to-order food, full bar, nice showers, etc. All complimentary. Good tacos.

Internationally, it's a different story. At Lufthansa's first class terminal in Frankfurt (yes terminal, not lounge) you have private security and passport control and get driven to your plane in a Porsche across the tarmac. Thai Airway's first class lounge in Bangkok has complimentary sixty minute massages (not that kind). Cathay Pacific's lounges in Hong Kong have full cook-to-order restaurants, foot massages, etc. all complimentary. All Nippon's first class lounges in Tokyo have 17-year-old scotch just sitting out for whoever wants it. Japan Airlines offers a sushi bar—with the sushi chefs right in front of you—and complimentary massages.

Not a bad way to travel. So far I've managed all on award tickets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> That's nothing compared to the state of PNR security: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8WVo- YLyAg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8WVo-YLyAg)

</comment><comment><USER30> It's been years

Question: can a member bring in a guest?

I assume yes as my spouse accompanied me.

So? Why not create a way (app) to have members already in the lounge come and let in their "guest/SO"?

"Im available / not available for "guesting" flag

<comment><USER31> Uber for airport lounges! It's like a temporary AirBnB. First we can...

I suddenly feel terrible about myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The talk in question: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnq0UfOUTlM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnq0UfOUTlM)

</comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like a good answer to "When have you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage?"

<comment><USER34> >non-computer

<comment><USER35> I mean they aren't hacking a computer system, they're hacking airport lounge security... with a computer. Still counts!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Couldn't this have been simply prevented by salting the name?</comment>


Ask HN: Behavioral Interview Questions. - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone have any tips or helpful suggestions for answering Behavioral Interview Questions during a job interview?
(explanation and examples: http://www.quintcareers.com/sample_behavioral.html)
If you are an employer, do you find using this interview technique effective?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> I have a negative experience with behavioral interview questions, both as an employer and employee.

There's a lot of room for embellishment and most behavioral questions don't properly summarize the candidate's qualifications. They're a snapshot of an hour or two when the candidate was faced with a problem, or had to exceed a goal, or had to wow someone with a presentation. Anyone can think of one or two things that they did extraordinarily well and one or two things that challenged them, but that doesn't qualify or disqualify anyone from a job.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've never used these in hiring. Assuming the candidate doesn't have the questions beforehand, seems you're mostly testing someone's ability to BS/improv and promote themselves on the spot. For coders, I don't find this skill to be closely tied to job performance. Possibly an inverse correlation.

Providing them beforehand would possibly be more useful, but in this case there's no real need to "practice" so I don't think that's what the link you provided is referring to.</comment>


Show HN: Track your Git commit statistics - <AUTHOR> http://hulkort.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> relevant, for mercurial:

hg has an extension for that <http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ChurnExtension>

results are easy to parse to generate some other view

      zalew:~/webprojects/x$ hg churn -f '%u-%a' -s
      1-Mon   1690 **
      2-Tue   4756 ******
      3-Wed   3007 ****
      5-Fri  70758 ****************************************************************************************
      (dj125)2011-10-25 17:38:36
      zalew:~/webprojects/x$ hg churn -f '%u-%a' -s -c
      1-Mon     12 *****************************************
      2-Tue     26 ****************************************************************************************
      3-Wed      4 **************
      5-Fri      9 ******************************
      (dj125)2011-10-25 17:38:58
      zalew:~/webprojects/x$ hg churn -f '%H' -s -c
      02      1 **********
      03      4 ****************************************
      04      6 *************************************************************
      05      3 ******************************
      06      8 *********************************************************************************
      07      3 ******************************
      11      1 **********
      12      2 ********************
      13      3 ******************************
      14      5 ***************************************************
      15      3 ******************************
      16      9 *******************************************************************************************
      17      3 ******************************

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds interesting, but what kinds of commit statistics can I expect to see if I sign up?

Also, is there any way to get statistics on existing commits in a repo I have? It would be awesome if I could do something like:

      cd ~/code/myproject
      curl https://hulkort.herokuapp.com/load.sh | sh

and get back a URL with all my stats for that repo fully loaded.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently there are only time based statistics like commits per day!

I really like your idea. There would be no need for an account on the user side so they could try it out right away!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> After one of my articles (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2965626>) got on HN, I built this little website with a friend. It's very simple and only tracks the commit count with the help of Git hooks.

Looking forward to any comments!

<comment><USER4> When you say it only tracks the commit count, is it just a simple counter (e.g. "256 total commits across all branches") or does it break it down at all (by repo, branch, day, week, month, etc)?

The first section of the website could be more clear in this regard...

<comment><AUTHOR> No repo/branch data is tracked. But the time when the commit happened is saved. So it's possible to break it down to year/week/day/hour. You can set your timezone in the settings to get correct times.

Currently a commits per day graph is available.

And I agree with your suggestion for the homepage, it should be clearer and have graphics or example graphs. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the love of god, let us see an example.

<comment><AUTHOR> I added an example graph. Thanks for pointing out!</comment></comment>


Epic Goes to War with Apple over the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/2020/08/epic_app_store_war <comment><AUTHOR> There have been numerous links submitted on this topic, I haven't seen this one so apologies if it is a duplicate.

What fascinates me is the ballsiness of this offensive and now thoroughly Epic has prepared for this day. Gruber does a decent job of summarizing Epic's offensives.

Once a few years ago I signed up for Fortnite and played a few games before deciding it wasn't for me. Today is the first time Epic has ever emailed me, and what was amazing was how innocuous it was, "we're offering a discount" complete with a link to a blog post that they've since updated covering Apple's measures and Epic's countermeasures.

"We're trying to do something good for you, our customers! But the evil Apple Empire won't let us! Help us help you free Fortnite" in essence, with a #FreeFortnite hashtag to round things out. I don't have a horse in this race, but I am fascinated to see how this one turns out.</comment>


AWS Service Post Mortem, annotated and corrected [png] - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/ldP1f.jpg <comment><AUTHOR> Originally from: <http://intraspirit.net/images/aws-explained.png> \- I put it on imgur to reduce server load.

</comment><comment><USER2> I seriously think they write long texts explaining outages so that people won't read it.</comment>


Google Voice Gets Neural Network-Powered Transcription to Slash Errors - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/google-voice-gets-neural-network-powered-transcription-1719909699

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like Google Voice isn't dead, or being replaced by Hangouts, after all.</comment>


An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting - <AUTHOR> https://blag.mpcsh.xyz/0001 <comment><USER2> There's a bunch of academic research in this area -- how to build an encrypted ballot box that lets you audit that your vote was counted correctly, but prevents anyone else from seeing what your vote was.

However, a fundamental problem with any kind of online voting is that it doesn't prevent your vote from being coerced: [https://freedom-to- tinker.com/2006/12/12/erosion-secret-ball...](https://freedom-to- tinker.com/2006/12/12/erosion-secret-ballot/) The best known way to do that is to make you walk into a secure area, secretly make your vote on a piece of paper, and put it in a common ballot box. That's the system most countries already have!

E-voting also fails to solve voter suppression problems -- how do you decide who gets a voting ID?

Finally, this kind of thing just isn't needed right now. Is anybody claiming that fraudulent voting was a significant problem in this election, or in any recent US election? Where's the evidence? The current highly decentralized system is already pretty robust against widespread fraud (though slightly less so as electronic voting machines become more popular).

There are far more important problems to solve, like voter suppression and the extreme polarization of politics.

<comment><USER3> There is little evidence of voter fraud because nobody who wants to look for fraud is able to do so (due to many measures put in place to keep voting private, make it easy, and keep it simple), and as Feynman said "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Evidence of fraud does exist, but it is difficult to discern whether it is the tip of an iceberg, or just an ice- cube.[1][2] Given the fact that presidential candidates are spending $5-$200+ per vote, it seems like voting fraud would be cost effective, and is likely done at some scale.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson#Contested_19...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson#Contested_1948_election)

[2] [http://ktla.com/2016/11/03/possible-voter-fraud-being- invest...](http://ktla.com/2016/11/03/possible-voter-fraud-being-investigated- in-san-pedro-after-83-ballots-are-mysteriously-delivered-to-one-womans- apartment/)

<comment><USER2> [1] is from 1948, but [2] is definitely worth looking into. 83 ballots isn't _widespread_ fraud unless it's happening a lot, everywhere. Maybe it is! But it would require a massive and very disciplined conspiracy working at many levels across the country. To me, the burden of proof lies on anyone claiming there is such a conspiracy.

(Trump complained of a vote-rigging conspiracy, of course, but unsurprisingly he shut up once he actually won. He changes his position too often to be credible.)

<comment><USER3> I am not saying there is a vast voter-fraud conspiracy, and those two links are not meant to be an exhaustive list; I included the Johnson link because it is so famous, and the more recent link to show that the phenomenon seems to persist. If there is widespread voter fraud, I would guess that it exists as a (large) number of relatively small operations, probably emanating from 'get- out-the-vote' campaigns.

I am not a 'team player' for any party, and take all allegations by candidates with a heaping mound of salt.

<comment><USER2> I didn't mean to imply you had an agenda, sorry! Trump is just the most recent example of someone making vote-rigging claims.

As people have commented elsewhere in this discussion, an online voting system would probably be _more_ vulnerable to fraud, given what we know of the methods and capabilities of the NSA and other organisations.

I agree that there's probably petty fraud going on here and there but I don't see the need for sweeping and risky changes to try to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A key part of the America system of voting is that we use a "secret" ballot. This important to prevent vote buying and voter intimidation. I like the rest of the proposal.

<comment><USER5> Right, it's important that no one else would be able to know how you voted.

Perhaps the election commission would also have a paper receipt with a different unique key.

Then both your receipt and the county's receipt would be necessary to locate your vote on the blockchain. Then vote verification could be restricted to the same level of privacy as when voting takes place.

<comment><USER6> Great comment. Without privacy for verification the election is open for vote buying which I think is the biggest flaw with the proposed system.

I also like the idea of using 2 paper receipts which I think is easy for people to understand.

<comment><USER7> It's not just vote buying, it's pressuring. If you don't want your employees to unionize, insist they vote for right-to-work laws. You don't have to insist very openly. Just take them out to drinks and mention the election in passing, see who voluntarily shows you their receipt on their phone, and prioritize them for bonuses and promotions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The most common form of vote fraud is probably ballot stuffing by an insider. With this type of attack every voter who actually voted can verify that there vote was counted properly but the aggregate is still not legitimate. One of the advantages of a paper system is that 10000 ballots is physically large and would be difficult to sneak in to a polling place/ballot box.

With something like this you just need a USB stick, the voter registration database, and the records from the last few elections (and/or death records) to figure out which votes are safe to stuff. If you do make a mistake you will end up with some people who's votes are rejected and no way for an election official to differentiate between that and someone trying to vote twice.

</comment><comment><USER9> Honestly, a very naïve solution.

I tried formalizing the protocol but there are so many inconsistencies. E.g. the ephemeral key is mentioned briefly... Who generates this key? Who encrypts the message? What's the purpose?

Critique of the few parts that are clear:

1\. It mentions a vote blockchain. Why blockchain? There's (apparently) no reason to have a chain of votes here. Even a spreadsheet would be fine. Buzzword alert! I know it's irrelevant but it's a huge red flag that a blockchain is crammed there for no reason at all.

2\. _" the government can know who individuals voted for"_ This is a no-no. HUGE no-no. TFA trivializes the impact but I definitely wouldn't vote in a system where _anyone_ but me can verify my vote.

3\. Even if you can verify your own vote, that's pretty much it for verifiability. Everything else relies on trusting election officials. What?

And I stopped analyzing there because frankly that's pretty much a broken system.

<comment><USER10> In regards to 2, for most Americans, it's probably a fairly trivial* matter to infer who they voted for. For a large number, almost their entire lives are digitized in some form or another. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a modern AI could deduce your voting preference just using your public data.

EDIT: *In retrospect, "trivial" is probably vastly understating the difficulty. However, I still don't think this is a "hard" problem.

<comment><USER9> That's a personal choice and, even then, you really _can 't_ be sure. Someone might be a Dem in public and vote Rep in the privacy of the booth. I'm sure this happens _a lot more_ than you think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There should be a zeroth rule that an voting system intended to be used for government which would be that the average person is able to audit / understand the system. This was in an ACM magazine article.

<comment><USER12> Indeed. Pencil & paper, with multi-party oversight, and long nights of counting.

<comment><USER13> Number of ways are developed to circumvent that in countries where police and court are not strong enough:

* bribing of voters to bring their empty ballot to briber;

* fake voters (commission is not police, they are not checking documents as carefully as police do);

* bribing of counters for direct replacement of votes;

* pens with ink which is easy to remove and correct;

etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The main problem with digitally signing/encrypting a vote is that the public key must be known, which means that someone's vote cannot be anonymous.

I like the idea of a county/precinct/district being the entity who signs the results of a vote. This would protect the anonymity of individual voters, since results are reported on a per county basis today anyways. And if a county is suspected of voter fraud, you could always add their public key to a blacklist..

<comment><USER15> You assume that a key pair is (publicly?) associated with an individual. I can generate a key pair, sign something (publishing the public part of the key, but not the fact that it was me owning it), then discard the key pair.

How will you associate the public key to me?

<comment><USER14> What's stopping a single person from generating multiple keys?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I made this comment on a related thread yesterday[0]:

You don't need crypto. You just need a machine that prints out a human readable receipt that the voter can see but not alter, which then drops into a secure holding area on the machine. At the end of the day, you randomly select say 1% of all the machines and hand count all the ballots inside, making sure the counts and votes match. If they do, then you can be reasonably sure it wasn't tampered with, and if they don't match, then you can hand count all the paper ballots using the old system to verify the computer.

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12924053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12924053)

<comment><USER17> How does this accomplish goals #1 and #2 of TFA?

<comment><USER16> What do you mean? It meets all six goals:

\- Be verifiable - you should be able to see your own vote.

You can view the print out of your vote before it drops into the secure box.

\- Be auditable - anyone should be able to tally up the results of the election.

Anyone can count the paper ballots

\- Be secure - it must not leak anyone's vote to anyone else.

It's on an unidentified piece of paper

\- Be genuine - it should be cryptographically impossible to commit voter fraud.

Well, you have to rely on standard methods of preventing voter fraud, but since there have only been five cases of proven voter fraud in the history of US elections, it's not really a big deal

\- Be tamper-proof - it must be impossible to forge results from the inside.

Since the paper is in the machine and verified by a human, you can't really tamper with it any more than you can tamper with paper ballots today, and since those or monitored by adversarial groups, it's basically impossible to tamper with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a fun idea, but I would like to see you expand the article with a little more consideration around the edges. The core idea isn't really new.

Possible expansion topics:

      - Handling a ballot with multiple separate races
      - Backup system for when the computers have gone down
      - Can it assist in any way with "voter suppression" issues

I don't like the idea that the encryption of the full list would be reversible. If I had contrarian views, I might be afraid to vote if that would put me on a list. Stick to one-way with a guardian to entry.

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't believe this talk hasn't been posted yet!

Theory and Practice of Cryptography: Verifying Elections with Cryptography

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s)

This is probably one of the homomorphic schemes mentioned in TFA.

It's very old (2007-ish?) and the state of the art probably advanced, but it's very interesting and addresses a number of points that are not cared for in TFA (like secret ballots verifiable by the voter but impossible to prove to anyone else).

</comment><comment><USER18> I think a major problem with this proposal is that all votes could eventually be knowable. Let's be honest, the state of the art encryption we use today will one day be sub-par. New has become antiquated a dozen times over the last 30 years already.

Put enough compute behind that blockchain and eventually you'll crack it, or run Shor's algorithm on the first Quantum Computer and votes from a decade ago are now public.

My contacts in the intelligence community say this is their biggest fear with intercepted communications today. They may be 'secure enough' today, but some of the information moved around would still be devastating if it were decrypted 20 years from now by a bad actor, not all, but some.

The way you should go about this is little different IMHO. Have two blockchains, one that checks if people have voted, and one that records the vote. If you have not voted, then one anonymous vote may be added to the ledger of votes for final tallying. If you have voted, your request is blocked. Maybe you get a random key that gives you the right to add a vote if you pass the first checkpoint, but that key can not be associated with the record that you voted on the other blockchain.

Cool idea. I for one prefer physical voting. It sucks, but I feel safer with it.

</comment><comment><USER19> You already have open-source end-to-end verifiable secure voting systems.

Full Disclosure: yes I work at nVotes/Agora Voting [https://nvotes.com](https://nvotes.com) [https://github.com/agoravoting/agora-dev- box](https://github.com/agoravoting/agora-dev-box)

This approach uses a mixnet (like Tor) to anonymize the ballot so that the secrecy of the vote is preserved. Only if all the election authorities are compromised, the secrecy of the ballot is at stake, but in any case the election is end to end verifiable (this is a sentence that means that specific requirements are fulfilled).

This particular internet/electronic voting system is already being used by many organizations in Spain and Europe.

PD: Yep, nothing is 100% secure. PD2: Yep, census/user authentication is still an unresolved problem in computer science. In Spain we have a government- issued electronic ids but it's no use because of the difficulty of using them.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a software engineer who knows very little about government security and voting security, can someone explain why you can't just build it like a regular web app (with very good security measures -- the usual HTTPS, database encryption, proper firewall rules to servers, etc.), and have the user enter their voter ID and social security and submit their vote via a web form?

From reading this article, it would seem that it satisfies the first 4 points, just not the 5th. Is that the main reason to have to use the blockchain, to prevent tampering from the inside?

<comment><USER21> Because whomever owns the server is now a dictator who can decide the result of the election. When it comes to democracy, "tampering from the inside" is your primary threat model.

Take it for someone who lived in a country where we had 70 years of elections with the same party winning each and every one. Tampering from the inside, when possible and hard to detect, becomes ubiquitous. We only started moving towards semi-fair elections when the election authorities begun to include representatives of all major parties. But in the server example, you would need very complex procedures to replicate that, and make sure there is not a single administrator that can tamper invisibly with the server. It is actually _easier_ to build a tamper evident distributed system than a tamper evident single-node server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity)

</comment><comment><USER23> At least in California, this part is impossible to accomplish:

"And so long as the counties can protect their secret keys..."

</comment><comment><USER24> If want to know why Internet Voting won't work, you should watch Alex J. Halderman's talk at the 31c3 conference about internet voting in Estonia [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os)

</comment><comment><USER25> Internet voting and/or the ability to verify your vote electronically seems like a great idea until you realize how many voters do not have internet access.</comment>


Why I think Tripid - a ride sharing service - will work here in the Philippines - <AUTHOR> http://squawknet.net/why-i-think-tripid-will-eventually-be-great/

<comment><AUTHOR> share your thoughts :)</comment>


Ask HN: What are the better countries to immigrate for software developers? - <AUTHOR> I am currently working as software engineer working in developing country. I am planning to move to another country to work there. I am looking at the countries which provides better job security, compensation, easier immigration rules and importantly better culture(both in work and place)? <comment><USER2> Canada has a culture that is much like the USA, but without the somewhat nonfunctional healthcare and much better merit-based immigration. They want you if you are peaceful and can contribute to their economy/culture. Victoria and Vancouver are both beautiful cities that have tech happening, but also have a decent climate. There are a decent amount of tech meet ups in both.

Salaries are decently lower than the USA though. Taxes can also be slightly higher, but with the new income tax budget that passed the United States taxes should be at about the level of California tech salary taxes.

</comment><comment><USER3> From my limited research Germany and Australia seem good, though it doesn't seem easy in Germany if you want to become a citizen. With more and more job losses and automation, I think this hysteria against (legal) immigration is only going to grow, justified or not. There would always be a place for people with highly valued skills though.

I wonder if there are smaller countries (like Estonia etc) which might be worth exploring.

On this topic, does anyone know of any resource that can ask a series of questions (age, qualifications etc) and suggest countries they are qualified for?

</comment><comment><USER4> Almost anywhere in Europe would be a good choice. Free at the point of use health care. Stable. I'm in UK. Canada is another good choice. Personally I would not move to USA for reasons I won't go into here.

But there's a point worth making here - some of the best opportunities for developers are now in "developing countries".</comment>


SpaceX Tourist Flights may start as early as 2021 - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/spacex-tourist-flights-into-space-may-start-in-2021/2020/02/19/40a1db92-5280-11ea-9e47-59804be1dcfb_story.html <comment><AUTHOR> I expected this, it's basically a quick way to add revenue from re-usable boosters and Crew Dragon capsules. I will be curious to hear what the price ends up being, they price an F9 launch at $62M [1] where the person buying the launch supplies the payload. If they charge $70M (adding $8M for the use of Crew Dragon) then they would need $10M per passenger to launch at "list" price.

They also say you don't need a "pro" pilot on board since everything is automated but I'd hate to be on one of these where something breaks and the tower has to "talk you down" :-). All in all its going to be really interesting over the next decade to see how this plays out.

The Bigelow deal was in 2012[2] which was only 8 years ago. I'm guessing they are ahead of that timeline, but maybe not.

[1] [https://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities](https://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities)

[2] [https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/spacex-announces- dea...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/spacex-announces-deal-to- shuttle-tourists-to-private-space-stations/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I predict that when it happens, and it will happen, it will be at least 2 years later than the 2021 date. I don't have any special knowledge but I know that Musk is over-optimistic most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> So the rich can burn all the carbon they can afford?</comment>


Startup Mentoring Sessions - How to get the most out of it - <AUTHOR> http://klinger.io/post/36812415337/startup-mentoring-sessions-how-to-get-the-most-out-of

<comment><USER2> Being on both sides of the mentoring table, it's definitely an important topic which is hardly covered. One thing I like doing is in case I do use one or more of the tips given by the mentor, email him/her and tell them how it worked out, even if it's a couple of months later. I think that this is the reason entrepreneurs become mentors and most of them are very interested of hearing if their tips were useful. Sometimes I also share things which didn't work for me and why, I find out that mentors want to hear about these experiences as well.

<comment><USER3> Awesome point! I will add that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Author here. Thanks for posting this!

@HN: I tried to summarize the biggest lessons learned that came to my mind - pretty sure i missed a lot.

Please add here which recommendations to startups you would have - i add them to the post afterwards!

<comment><USER4> The only thing I would add is to make it a habit to meet regularly (preferably on the same day and time) with your mentors. Often mentors are giving advice to multiple startups so they sometimes can lose track of what you're working on.

My startup focuses on peer-to-peer mentoring so a lot of what you described in the post applies to what we try and implement in our group setting. Thanks for the tips!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It'd be interesting to know if it's standard practice for accelerators to do intensive pitch/mentoring days like this, or they are more inclined to pair teams off with mentors that make sense centrally or serendipitously.

<comment><USER3> both.

but at the events they usually try to get mentors that fit to the startups but keep the format as mentioned in the article.

during the acceleration time they usually pair them with specific mentors/advisors - but this usually needs to be pulled by the teams as well. (seedcamp and 500 do this very intensively imho)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I added a presentation as a download to the post. This presentation is done by geoff watts for upcoming seedcamp recruits. I really love the presentation as it goes into several really good details - hope it is useful</comment>


Ask HN: How can I get up to speed? - <AUTHOR>

Basically, when I was a teenager I taught myself HTML/CSS, did some low-quality podcasting and blogging with friends, read tech and startup news constantly and did some freelance web design. Then, I went to college across the country, lost touch with my tech friends, studied political science and then business administration, and I've been completely out of the loop letting what limited skills I do have get rusty. So, what is your advice for me (and for anyone else in a similar position, who either has no tech skills or who has rusty, very rudimentary ones) to get up to speed?<p>Super broad question, so any kind of feedback is welcome. Programming languages to learn, a book to read, a blog I should have in my reader, anything. <comment><USER2> Ruby (on Rails) or Python (Django) would be a good place to dig in, to start doing web stuff. Those languages are also applicable to non-web problems as well.

<comment><USER3> If you're going down the rails path, start with this free and great intro tutorial/book: <http://railstutorial.org/chapters/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! This looks great, really comprehensive.

<comment><USER3> It should be noted that it not only gets you going with Rails, but also instills some great practices __from the beginning __\- like test driven development. Get started and you'll have your own little twitter deployed in just a couple of days! ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What do you want to do with this knowledge? We could recommend ten types of hammers when what you need is a screwdriver.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Initially, what I'm looking to do is to learn enough to put together, at least in a rudimentary fashion, the ideas that I have for apps or startups. Right now I'm one of those people with ideas and no ability to execute, and I realize how pretty much useless that is.</comment></comment>


Why go to college? - <AUTHOR> http://roneil.com/2011/09/14/why-go-to-college/

<comment><USER2> A computer science degree from a good school will guarantee you a good job. It doesn't matter if you're even a good programmer, you'll get a good job based solely on your degree.

That's not even a really good reason to go to college.

Are you EXTREMELY self motivated? Will you spend weeks reading incredibly boring Computer Science textbooks without anyone telling you to? Will you devote a few months to discrete mathematics so you can really understand computational complexity? Are you going to learn how computers work all the way from the silicon to the scripting languages? Will you seek out others every day to bounce ideas off of. Will you pester people smarter than you until they can't stand you?

If you're willing to do all, or most, of that. Then don't go to college. Otherwise, go and have fun. College isn't just about academics you know.

Is all of that stuff completely necessary? No, but learning and understanding the fundamentals is a great way to become a great developer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, you're right, it would be hard to motivate oneself to learn all these things.

Meeting new people and learning more of what I want are two of the big reasons I'm going to college, so its nice to see that someone who's been there already still values the same things.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my first real blog post, so tell me what you think!</comment>


Ask HN: Tools to make some online lectures tutorials - <AUTHOR>

I plan to build a portal where I we can give away any kind of material to help college students learn basics of embedded systems and robotics.
We are funded by government and have significant amount of funds, we have access to some of the best faculty members.
We are planning to do following
1. Let the faculty give lectures in front of a class and we record it.
2. Let the faculty use screen-casting along with PPT and Tablet.
Can you guys suggest the kind of software we can look at for building course content?
We came across a large number of screen-casting software such as Jing and MS expressions studio. We also liked Microsoft LCD. But none of these tools seem to be very refined. <comment><USER2> Students use vidinotes.com to summarize video lectures.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the transition from cubicles to open office like? - <AUTHOR> Found out our office is going to be turned completely open concept soon. This will be a big change as right now we all have cubicles, which I like because they give some sense of privacy and help to muffle the overall noise level.<p>I've never worked in an open office before. For anyone with experience working in open/closed (cubicled)/semi-closed offices, which did you prefer? What should I expect? <comment><USER2> Overall productivity will drop by 50% or more. Everyone will start wearing headphones. Recruiting will suffer. The better programmers will leave. Short answer: death spiral.</comment>


Towards Simple and Flexible Access Controls - <AUTHOR> https://resonantcore.net/blog/2015/02/towards-simple-and-flexible-access-controls

<comment><USER2> Access control logic is one of those things that's hard to enjoy building. Unless you're weird like me. :)</comment>


Alexander Grothendieck: A Country Known Only by Name - <AUTHOR> http://inference-review.com/article/a-country-known-only-by-name <comment><USER2> A layter version (this pdf is cited as [34])

[http://inference-review.com/article/a-country-known-only- by-...](http://inference-review.com/article/a-country-known-only-by-name)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Url (belatedly) changed from [http://xahlee.info/math/i/Alexander_Grothendieck_cartier.pdf](http://xahlee.info/math/i/Alexander_Grothendieck_cartier.pdf).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Grothendieck song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ1S3tFaImo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ1S3tFaImo)

</comment><comment><USER5> The title here is absolutely useless. For those who are curious, the article is a biography of Alexander Grothendieck, a mathematician.

<comment><USER6> Those of you who complain about the title... I can only wonder if you have any poetry in your souls.

Yes, it helps to know that Grothendieck was a big-deal mathematician ("considered by many to be the greatest mathematician of the 20th century").

But what, did you think that "No Country For Old Men" was going to be about geriatrics without passports?

When people quote Hartley's "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there", do you go looking for "Yesterday" in an atlas?

Closer to home, after I read Yegge's Execution In The Kingdom Of Nouns I tried to book a vacation there, but the travel agent made fun of me.

<comment><USER5> Ouch! I suppose you're the guy who came up with title?

For me, the issue was that I didn't know what a "Grothendieck" was and the title doesn't give you any clues either; in fact it explicitly denies that any exist.

It also flouts the convention for fanciful non-fiction titles, which is something like "Clever-or-poetic-part: plain description." Something like "A country of which nothing is known but the name: Grothendieck and mathematical motivation" would be better, I think.

<comment><USER7> > Ouch! I suppose you're the guy who came up with title?

Ouch! The only possible reason for defending it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


AI researchers allege that machine learning is alchemy - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/ai-researchers-allege-machine-learning-alchemy?rs=1 <comment><USER2> >For starters, he says, researchers should conduct "ablation studies" like those done with the translation algorithm: deleting parts of an algorithm one at a time to see the function of each component. He calls for "sliced analysis," in which an algorithm's performance is analyzed in detail to see how improvement in some areas might have a cost elsewhere.

...wait a minute. ML researchers don't already do this?!

Forgive me if I come across as arrogant or naive; I am a scientist but not in the ML field. I just can't fathom ANY field of research in which this very basic approach isn't followed.

</comment><comment><USER3> This has happened few times before. First comes some scientific understanding then it devolves into tinkering, "look what I got".

Renaming parts of machine learning as Computational learning theory was an attempt to distance the research from tinkering that produced AI winters. Leslie Valiant, Vladimir Vapnik and Alexey Chervonenkis produced new insight and new algorithms were produced.

Then Deep Learning stated to work again. Small scientific insights are shadowed by the massive amount of progress that comes with tinkering with parameters.</comment>


Ask HN: Do image hosting sites remove redundant images? - <AUTHOR>

I've started reading: http://www.aosabook.org/en/distsys.html
And his first example is that of an image hosting website.  My mind went on a bit of a tangent and I was curious...
Do image hosting sites keep a hash of their images and only store 1 copy of each image?  I'm not sure the effort it would take to ensure there was a single copy of each image but... it seems like it would save some space.
Does anyone know? <comment><USER2> I don't think so. The average filesize of a JPEG image on the web is what, 50KB? At those sizes, it's just not worth it to put a system in place that could introduce more bugs through extra complexity. Especially since duplicate images would be relatively rare, as in 0.00001% rare. Completely not worth it. You'd still need extra database entries too, so you're not even saving on the overhead, database size or queries.

Look at it this way: during the time spent coding this feature, I'm pretty sure disk drive space would grow more than the extra space you'd need for the duplicates (relatively speaking over the long-term of course).

</comment><comment><USER3> The Imgur-creator recently did an AMA where someone asked the exact same question:

>do you hash and store only one copy of duplicate images?

>Believe it or not, we don't. All the images only use up about 3TB of storage space, so it's not really a big issue.

Source: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_ama/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=feed)

On the other hand, YouTube stores 76 PB: [http://www.afshispeaks.com/2012/08/youtube-storage-costs- per...](http://www.afshispeaks.com/2012/08/youtube-storage-costs-per-year/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe they do and don't even know it. Some database engines will compare blobs, and then delete duplicates.

<comment><USER5> No serious image host is going to stick images in the database.

<comment><USER6> Well, technically a file system is a specialized typed of database. NTFS has some support for removing duplicate files and replacing them with links. Windows server 2008 calls this feature "Single Instance Storage".</comment></comment></comment>


7GUIs – A Notational Usability Benchmark for GUI Programming - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eugenkiss/7guis/wiki <comment><USER2> I thought it would be a good way for me to learn Red's GUI DSL but someone did already, and it it looks as I expected, really small and clear: [https://github.com/greggirwin/7guis/tree/master/Red](https://github.com/greggirwin/7guis/tree/master/Red)

<comment><USER3> ... also crud example does not tell first name from last internally (but no one notices it because the fields do not get updated as you click on rows)

.. and circles example uses self-modifying code, and takes O(n^2) space, because the undo history contains deep copy of the state

now, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make comparitions a little unfair, because other languages do more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The kotlin samples are quite easy to understand though I haven't really learned the language yet.

[https://github.com/eugenkiss/kotlinfx/tree/master/kotlinfx-d...](https://github.com/eugenkiss/kotlinfx/tree/master/kotlinfx- demos/src/main/kotlin/sevenguis)

</comment><comment><USER5> Hidden dependencies is a very opinionated thing to have in a list of criteria, and the description seems to mix several concepts - mutability, global state but also sounds like "explicit is better than implicit" from python which not everyone agrees with.

This is by far the weakest point I think.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there an easy to understand writeup for why one might choose one over the other?</comment>


The LED's Dark Secret - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/the-leds-dark-secret

<comment><USER2> Informative article, though I wish there was a bit more quantitative comparison to fluorescent, qualitatively awful though it may be, not just incandescent.</comment>


Show HN: Falcon 9 – First Stage Simulator - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/d1cx7g/falcon_9_first_stage_simulator/ <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: _David Jorge Aguirre Gracio_ ( _u /DavidAGra_ on Reddit[0]) presented his rocket flight simulator written in _Delphy_ (Delphi community 10.3). This application uses engineering equations to simulate the behavior, efforts and performance, in addition to controlling the power and trajectory, of the first stage of a Falcon 9 (SpaceX) rocket. It has different panels for loading structural information, performance characteristics of engines, throttle control curves and vehicle inclination, etc.

On presented screenshot[1] and screen-cast video[2] demonstrated simulation of _CRS-17 Mission_ [3].

Few comments from _r /Engineering_ thread:

> Q: _Will there be an open source repo or is the idea that the binary itself > is free to distribute?_

> > A: _Initially I 'm planning to share the executable file, but according to > how fast it grows and how many enthusiasts it gets, I could open the source > code. Currently the users can simulate their own missions taking advantage > of a fully customizable interface._

> Q: _For the Falcon 9 simulator will you add Crew Dragon, Cargo Dragon, or > the possibility of adding Falcon Heavy as well?_

> > A: _Sure in the future. For the moment you can change the payload /fairing > configuration (measurements and drag coefficient) to simulate Dragon > capsule. This would work pretty good._

> Q: _How can we get a copy of it to use?_

> > A: _I think one week more, I have to finish only some details. I will post > again..._

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/user/DavidAGra](https://www.reddit.com/user/DavidAGra)

[1] [https://i.redd.it/umr07m1o9el31.png](https://i.redd.it/umr07m1o9el31.png)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAZv5xvEaXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAZv5xvEaXQ)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-17](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-17)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is another screenshot.[0]

Also _u /DavidAGra_ presented[1] CRS-17 Simulation analysis curves.[2]

> Hi guys I downloaded an Excel file with the telemetry information for the > simulation I shared yesterday and I made some curves, I hope you like it and > I would like to hear opinions. Download it from the following link[3]

[0] [https://i.redd.it/p2y0hjtzbpk31.png](https://i.redd.it/p2y0hjtzbpk31.png)

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/rocketry/comments/d0r8x0/crs17_simu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rocketry/comments/d0r8x0/crs17_simulation_analysis_curves_f9sim/)

[2] [https://i.redd.it/a4l9x3r3b3l31.png](https://i.redd.it/a4l9x3r3b3l31.png)

[3] [http://www.mcrenox.com.ar/f9sim/F9sim%20-%20CRS-17.xlsx](http://www.mcrenox.com.ar/f9sim/F9sim%20-%20CRS-17.xlsx)</comment></comment>


Who You Calling a Techie? - <AUTHOR> http://www.boomcalifornia.com/2014/06/who-you-calling-a-techie/

<comment><USER2> > When I tell pretty much anyone outside the tech industry I work at a start- > up, there's usually a pause. I can watch her compose her face, waiting to > hear the worst. If I'm lucky, I'll field questions about foie gras burgers, > daily massages, or what it's like to work with a bunch of clueless bros.

I'm still reading the article, but I'd like to write this while my mind is still fresh on this sentence. I'd started writing a longer pondered comment, but ultimately reduced my thoughts to this:

If your interlocutor can't see anything past the wacky aspects of your job or interest, perhaps the problem is on them. Sometimes a display of ignorance masquerades as cynical, truth-to-power rebelliousness.

—

I almost want to visit SF just to see if there are as many _bros_ as some people have led me to believe. I want to be stripped of my illusion that SF is not a college fraternity, just a place with socially awkward young people who don't quite see the output of contemporary cultural studies and sociology as gospel or particularly insightful, most of them incidentally male.

—

My penchant for reducing serious issues to pithy conclusions is maddening, but I wonder me if a quarter of the people complaining about the _techies_ would be willing to give up the stuff those techies are making.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can imagine how fantastic this article makes Leah feel. Self righteousness is one hell of a drug</comment>


Ask HN: Why do OSX applications look more polished than Windows/Linux? - <AUTHOR>

Not to start a flame war, but can anyone shed some light on why most applications in OSX looks way more polished/beautiful than in other OSes? Is it because of the target demographics? Few examples from the top of my head:
http://www.git-tower.com/ http://versionsapp.com/ http://macrabbit.com/espresso/ http://www.panic.com/coda/
/Obviously this excludes cross-platform apps like Eclipse, Chrome etc <comment><USER2> Here are several reasons why they might look more polished:

1\. Their font anti-aliasing algorithms are different.

2\. Macs are less bumpy. Windows windows have draggable edges on all four sides. Windows toolbars were originally designed to be bumps. Now in Windows 7 the more polished looking toolbars look like a bunch of hills. Windows in Windows have their own menu bars, too. You can't just take an app designed to use draggable toolbars, remove the lines dividing toolbars, and have it work. So the APIs are different because of decisions made long ago.

3\. Making an app pretty is more deeply ingrained into the development culture on the Mac side.

4\. Windows applications just have more text, and fewer icons. There is always more text on the screen than a Mac would have. The desktop has the application name under each icon. They put shortcut arrows on icons.

5\. Windows is skinnable.

6\. Apple sacrifices utility in favor of being shiny.

<comment><AUTHOR> _> >Making an app pretty is more deeply ingrained into the development culture on the Mac side._

This is actually my question, why is it like this? Any reasons behind it?

<comment><USER3> I think that it really has to do with Steve Jobs really thinking that other products are ugly and not refined. He has this deep inside of him. I recall when he bought the Jackling House in Woodside, CA he only had an expensive Bose stereo system and a BMW motorcycle inside because he felt he could not find products he liked. He slept on a mattress on the floor even.

To this day, he doesn't put a plate on his Mercedes because he thinks the font is ugly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The very short answer is the type of person drawn to open source projects. Apple (I imagine) spends a ridiculous amount of time on user interface, paying experts to go over their UI and making sure it sparkles. Whereas the programmers who donate their time to open source are a lot more involved in their projects, and don't spend as much time on the "useless" end sparkle.

To be fair, this is a very broad statement, and thanks to projects like Ubuntu focusing more on user interaction it's starting to make headway, but even just looking at what a mark of pride it is to be using something non-intuitively difficult (vim, emacs, cli interfaces, hand-rolling operating systems and packages...), the realm of UI design on open source projects is vastly underpopulated.

As to Windows, that's anyone's guess. It may be they're just relaxed enough in their market superiority that they don't feel the need to bring as many designers to the table. Or it may be the other way around: Apple knows that one of the only things that sets it apart from other companies (and Microsoft in particular) is snazzy design, and they've chosen that niche to run with as far as they can.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually meant third party applications. Sorry for causing misunderstanding, question updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's also the sum of details (wrt to the setting as a whole. Just to pick one):

The single menubar on top means also: You have infinite space on the top. If you scroll your mouse, because you want to click on a menu item, you can "virtually" scroll beyond the screen, yet still be on the menu bar. When I first read about this, and the reasoning, I found this quite surprising.</comment>


Using Create-React-app with React Router, Express.js and Docker - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@patriciolpezjuri/using-create-react-app-with-react-router-express-js-8fa658bf892d <comment><AUTHOR> This allows future improvements like adding Redux and server-side rendering. But this is a good starting point.</comment>


Early Stage Startups: The Biggest Killers - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollieslade/2014/04/15/early-stage-startups-the-biggest-killers/ <comment><USER2> I found myself saying to the reporter over and over, "This may seem obvious, but..." and it's true that many of ideas don't seem like anything new. But because I see them happen over and over again, I thought they were important to highlight for anyone starting a startup.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the really great advice. I'm interested in the unequal equity. We have a 60-40 split which seemed fair as I'd worked full time on the company and raised a significant Kickstarter funding before my co-founder committed 100%. Could you comment more on issues you see this brings down the line and how this plays out? Also, does this conflict a little with your next point about clear leadership?

<comment><USER4> I'd give yourself a gift for getting the company off the ground. 5% seems right, but I suppose 10% is not out of the question. Then split the remainder with your co-founder. This process would lead to 52.5/47.5 and 55/45 splits respectively. 60/40 is a 20% gift; I think that's a little high but it could be justified if significant progress has been made. Also, your vesting should of course have an earlier start date.

<comment><USER5> 5% is an enormous amount of equity to grant for anything. Recruited executives might get 5%. First technical hire often gets that.

<comment><USER6> > 5% is an enormous amount of equity to grant for anything.

No, it isn't. At a company that has raised capital or generates revenue, 5% might be enormous, or it might not be. It all depends on the company's valuation.

The fundamental problem many early-stage startups run in to is that they haven't raised capital, don't have revenue _and_ they try to use equity as an alternative to monetary compensation.

In these situations, "sweat equity" is almost always a poor alternative because the math rarely makes sense for the recipient. For instance, if you're an experienced developer who can make $125,000/year and a friend wants you to become a co-founder of his business, forgoing salary until some future date or event, how much equity in a business worth $0 today do you need to make up for your salary? It's a trick question, and the answer is not 5%.

Equity can be a very complex matter, but it's also very simple when someone suggests that it be used as a substitute for cash. If somebody wants to pay you for your services using equity, forget percentages. Determine what it's reasonably worth in dollars, if anything, _today_. If you are willing to accept less than the dollar value of your services, you're being generous to the company, not the other way around.

<comment><USER5> 5% is a _gigantic_ grant for an employee.

I don't actually disagree with you about employees asked to work on equity- only and deferred salary. It's just that I call those people "cofounders".

<comment><USER6> While you probably won't receive a 5% grant as a non-executive hire at a venture-backed startup, my point still stands for salaried employees. If you can make $125,000/year, a company offers you $80,000/year and suggests that it's making up the difference in equity, you should still run the numbers. For 5% to compensate you for your sacrifice in this scenario, the company would need to be worth $900,000.

One of the problems employees face in Silicon Valley is that the valuations on angel and venture-backed startups are exorbitant, so the equity is overpriced. Seed stage startups with no traction (and sometimes no launched product) can still sport million-plus valuations. As an employee, it takes a leap of faith to believe in these valuations and use them as the basis for valuing your equity. Fortunately for these startups, enough individuals are willing to take that leap of faith.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Regarding the co-founder problem, time for a music analogy...

As a student there is this idea that you should be in a band, making music. Getting there needs lots of brainstorming to come up with the songs, lots of practice, jamming sessions, rehearsals, going out to try and get gigs, musical collaborations, partnerships with DJ's and support acts, getting gigs and publicising the gigs. Then there is the dream of getting signed by a record label.

The idea that you could do all of this on your own is quite laughable, isn't it? Even solo artists usually have a producer or a song-writer that is in effect a 'co-founder'.

Yet some get there on there own. Take for example Cliff Richard. The Shadows were his band but also mere hired hands with no equity. Cliff Richard didn't even have to write songs, those could be acquired somewhere else much like how a developer can pick up frameworks and make them their own.

In music there is an understanding that an artist can be solo. Just because they are not in a band does not mean nobody believed in them. Record labels don't tell them to go away and come back when they are in a band, if the talent is there then they will sort out whatever is needed, whether that be session musicians, songwriting or production.

This music analogy may appear a long way off software MVPs, however, it isn't. Another thing to learn from the music industry is that people don't expect a product (a song) to be number one on the hit parade for eternity. New shiny things on the web should be seen that way too, expected to be popular for a while in the 'top 40' and then to 'sell' consistently as back catalogue.

<comment><USER8> You seem to be confusing "solo founder" with "single person company". A solo founder can go and hire ten people, build an amazing team and knock it out of the park. A "single person company" is severely bandwidth limited across all required disciplines. That's the case of your music example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's striking that choosing a cofounder one barely knows is a common problem. I'm trying to get something going with my best friend (I've known him since we were six years old), and people we meet will sometimes ask us if we would consider bringing on some guy they know as a third cofounder.

The people who band together for a startup after having known each other for a month would never marry someone they have only known for a month. Clearly the message that startups are a big deal for any relationship hasn't sunk in as it has with marriages.

<comment><USER10> Choosing your best-friend isn't a guarantee that you won't have co-founder issues either. One of you has to be the CEO, and if you are both used to being equals, the one who isn't CEO has to deal with the fact that their role is less than the CEO.

There will be times where the demands for your time will be greater than theirs, and vice versa, and if one of you is strongly technical, while the other isn't, you may see an imbalance of work, especially when you're building your MVP.

Business & startups in particular, come with an enormous amount of stress, and may put you two at odds with each other, which can be tough, as the two of you, under different circumstances, might have been each others coping mechanism.

<comment><USER9> You are absolutely correct. I made a mistake in not mentioning these potential pitfalls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like Jessica, but it would be nice to get a perspective outside of the Y Combinator philosophy on starting a company.

<comment><USER10> This article mirrors what is considered conventional wisdom du juor w.r.t. startup success.

Running out of Money.

Co-Founder Issues

Lack of Traction

Those are the startup failure trifecta.

<comment><USER12> IMO biggest issue - creating a product no one really wants. How many startups create "next Facebook or Google" that no one really needs/use.

<comment><USER13> Surely that's implicit in 'lack of traction'?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A list of free programming books - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md <comment><USER2> mjd's Higher Order Perl should be on most people's must-read list: [http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/](http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/)

<comment><USER3> This is one book, you absolutely must read. Even if you don't program in Perl.

This is basically the equivalent of SICP for the scripting world.

<comment><USER4> I checked it out after you recommended it in another thread. Its great. Any other recommendations ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems worth mentioning specific books by name, since lists of lists don't help people differentiate the great from the good. Algorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani looks really promising as an introductory algorithms textbook. I wonder if anyone has experience using it in class?

[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html)

I wonder a little about that text's status as a freely available draft and whether it would be kosher to distribute the pdf if that site disappears.

<comment><USER6> It's basically just the lecture notes for their class bundled up into a book. I took the class it was based off, and, well, it was _okay_ but not _great_.

It lacks any sort of underlying narrative or structure--I think this is common with algorithms texts in general. Probably why I didn't like the course much. It feels like a bunch of disjoint topics held together _very_ loosely by some techniques that get repeated a bit.

I compare it very unfavorably to Sispser's _Introduction to the Theory of Computation_ which, I felt, was much more coherent as a book. It's not a fair comparison at all because they're about different (although related) subjects, but I think it neatly illustrates my point.

Also, I don't believe Sipser's book is free, so it's not entirely relevant in that sense either. I just brought it up because I think it's the best example of the underlying narrative and structure I was talking about.

<comment><USER7> Two and a half years into my bachelor's, Sipser's _Introduction to the Theory of Computation_ is the only computer science textbook I've had so far that I'd say I really found useful for anything beyond the homework problems, besides K.N. King's _C Programming: A Modern Approach_.

(To keep this on topic, my assembly instructor -- the legendary [to NC State students] Dana Lasher -- posts his course pack online. [1] It's a comprehensive introduction to computer architecture topics and original 8086 assembly programming.)

[1] [http://courses.ncsu.edu/csc236/lec/001/cops.htm](http://courses.ncsu.edu/csc236/lec/001/cops.htm)

<comment><USER5> How does Sipser's content compare to Ullman's (free) Foundations of Computer Science?

[http://i.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html](http://i.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html)

As far as x86 assembly goes, I found Kip Irvine's book to be pretty great. (not free) It's not a subject I would want to spend more time on, though.

<comment><USER8> They're not similar at all. _FoCS_ is mostly about introductory programming and data structures (with a tiny bit about automata). Sipser's book is about computation and complexity - it's comparable to Hopcroft and Ullman's _Intro to automata theory, languages, and computation_ , for which Ullman recommends _FoCS_ or equivalent as a prerequisite.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Thanks.

Coincidentally I just signed up for Ullman's Automata course at Coursera. The description makes it seem pretty basic but I'm interested to see what he does with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting to see how git/Github as a platform replaces Wikipedia in certain cases for collecting information and enabling people to contribute.

<comment><USER10> Yep. There are huge advantages to a GitHub model over Wikipedia for collecting information.

Shameless plug, but highly relevant: I'm trying to make 'git as a platform' more accessible for non-programmers with a project I'm working on - [http://www.penflip.com](http://www.penflip.com). Wrote about it in detail here: [http://madebyloren.com/github-for- writers](http://madebyloren.com/github-for-writers)

Glad to discuss it further if anybody's interested.

<comment><USER11> Have you seen Draft [0]? It seems fairly close to your concept of "github for writers".

[0] [https://draftin.com](https://draftin.com)

<comment><USER10> Indeed I have. Nate's got something great going with Draft, but I don't know if I don't think he's shooting for a github-esque platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Similar lists/sites:

[http://www.coderheya.com](http://www.coderheya.com)

[http://hackershelf.com](http://hackershelf.com)

[http://pineapple.io](http://pineapple.io)

<comment><USER13> Hah! Thanks for the link, didn't think anyone remembered it. Coder Heya was fun to build, I wish a community would have built around it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Similar list with more differences than the Stack Overflow one: [http://programming-motherfucker.com/become.html](http://programming- motherfucker.com/become.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> [http://programming-motherfucker.com/become.html](http://programming- motherfucker.com/become.html)

Another great list of books for programming languages/tools/frameworks/gen dev

</comment><comment><USER16> This one about building Android apps using HTML/JS/CSS isn't free anymore - [http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449383268/](http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449383268/) \- itwas in Open Feedback Publishing System some time ago. Now you'd need to buy it. (BTW, it has 2.5 stars on Oreilly site.)

<comment><USER17> That's already been identified as an issue in the github repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://addyosmani.github.io/backbone- fundamentals/](http://addyosmani.github.io/backbone-fundamentals/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Here's a nice collection about the same on Stack Overflow as well - [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely- ava...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available- programming-books)

<comment><USER20> I discovered that when I Read The Fine Article directly. I also discovered that the original list os frozen and out-of-date. It includes at least one book that is no longer freely available, and omits my own JavaScript Allongé, which was made free this month.

<comment><USER21> I just started on "JavaScript Allongé" and am really enjoying your prose and working through the examples. Good job!

I had to look up what _allongé_ meant as I've never heard it ordered. It sounds like the perfect drink.

"coffee beverage made by using an espresso machine to make an espresso (single or double dose or shot) with much more water (generally twice as much), resulting in a stretched espresso"

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like how this is nearly exactly the text from the stack overflow question...

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely- ava...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available- programming-books)

<comment><AUTHOR> README.md says : " This list initially was a clone of stackoverflow - List of freely available programming books by George Stocker. Now updated, with dead links gone (hopefully) and new content. "

I've had this SO list in my bookmarks for long enough, and there were more and more dead links in it. I felt the need to move it to github in order to keep it up-to-date and to augment it.

I apologize if the intention or original source were not made clear.

<comment><USER20> This is the right thing to do. SO has a very specific vision, that of finding and displaying the definitive answer to an objective question.

A resource like this doesn't fit their model, even if you strain it by trying to invent a question that appears to fit their format.

 _" This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed."_

<comment><USER23> This is thing I hate about SO. Its view of what is _on-topic_ is completely arbitrary and narrow-minded. I understand that Jeff's initial vision was to create a site for _objective_ questions & answers, but over time SO mods have taken it to the extreme.

The list of _best_ programming books may not be totally objective, but the wisdom of the crowds just should be enough to filter out what's good from what's bad. When mods lock the allegedly non-objective questions, they force content to become stale and rot - but still showing up at the top of search engines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Red-gate has some decent and current t-sql programming books and mssql dev books available for free.

[http://www.red-gate.com/community/books/](http://www.red- gate.com/community/books/)

</comment><comment> mck- Reminds me of [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely- ava...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available- programming-books)

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes, this is basically a carbon copy of other lists, but I found at least one resource that was new to me - [http://refcardz.dzone.com/](http://refcardz.dzone.com/) So cool.

Thanks :D

</comment><comment><USER25> [http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-lisp- intro/](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-lisp-intro/) 404

<comment><USER26> [http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/eintr.html)

This is where the resources has moved to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Great list. Thanks a lot!

I couldn't find this url in this post and it made me pretty happy when I found it. A website full of IT book which can be downloaded for free.

[http://www.it-ebooks.info/](http://www.it-ebooks.info/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Semi-OT: For e-book reader owners: you can use pandoc to convert from HTML to ePub.

<comment><USER29> Full-OT: pandoc requires ghc, which takes about 1GiB of disk space, which I found very odd, given that gcc is about 75 MiB.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, but dude, it's fukken haskell :D. Good comment anyway, I didn't realize the drawback...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It seams the Learning Android book was removed by O'Reilly.

</comment><comment><USER31> Now all I need is an automated way to download them all

<comment><USER32> I used to have the same reaction when stumbling upon lists like this. But it has never proved to be a great idea. You get easily overwhelmed by the amount and variety of content available. Before even starting reading one of these books, you need to filter them by topic, by scope, by usefulness, and by quality. You inevitably end up starting none of them.

I prefer focusing on one subject or programming language, search the internet for feedbacks and reviews, select the _one_ book (free or not) that fits my needs and read that one. I'm consequently more informed about what my further needs are: do I want to learn more about this programming language? Or about a different but complementary one? Or do I need to reach for a more language- agnostic topic?

It's the usual "quality over quantity" issue, that prevents yourself from taking no decision at all when facing too many options.

<comment><USER33> i had that same experience. most books are good but are usually replaceable. some books i can't understand how good they are because they're beyond my level. And a few are just right, and also take you to that "a-ha moment."

you need to do your research and select that one right book and work through it. If in the middle of a book you think you're not making good progress, you should just drop it and find another one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The biggest question now is, where do we start?

<comment><USER28> From a topic you deem interesting of course. But be aware of the fact a book does not give the experience you gain by working hands-on to something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER36> wish there was a list of !!!good!!! programming book, not even free. Like, book that would make you a better dev.

<comment><USER37> Can you point out at least one programming book which makes you a worse developer?

Doesn't it depend on what specifically you are trying to learn?

<comment><USER38> I think the point is that there are only so many hours in a human lifespan. While I'd love to read everything that the world has to say on the subject, I'd like to focus on books that will be the most enlightening (or entertaining).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Aren't they all free?</comment>


Zero-day flaw found in web encryption - <AUTHOR> http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39860592,00.htm

<comment><USER2> What a fabulously badly written, sensationalistic article. The TLS problem published last week affects virtually none of the applications that use HTTPS on the web today: they're currently only relevant to applications in which the _client_ is required to carry a certificate to authenticate themselves.

<comment><USER3> That was the initial report from one of the researchers, but there are claims that it can be demonstrated to work in cases not involving client-side certificates, too. See <http://extendedsubset.com/?p=8> : "Cases not involving client certificates have been demonstrated as well."

Unfortunately, that's all the data I have on that, that one sentence, and a few other places that have the same basic info which may or may not simply be reflections of this one. I haven't seen any additional substantiation.

<comment><USER2> The flaw here is that TLS tunnels multiple sessions inside a single connection, and, particularly with HTTPS, the first one of those sessions is both client-anonymous and (the bug) "live" --- in that any commands received in that session will be processed as long as a subsequent session is client- authenticated. That's the "authentication gap" being talked about in the reports.

What's also true is that there are lots of protocols, many of them very obscure, that either rely on client auth, or that may themselves have an app- layer notion of multiple sessions which will conflict with TLS's session renegotiation.

I'm not going to eat my hat or anything if this happens, but I'd bet againt someone finding a plausible MITM attack that beats server certificates using this attack. I think it's reasonably safe shorthand right now to say this attack largely applies to apps that use SSL outside of its common case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The "web encryption" being discussed are the TLS and SSL protocols.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does zdnet understand what zero-day really means?

<comment><USER6> They used it correctly.

From wiki: _"Zero-day attacks occur when a vulnerability window exists between the time a threat is released and the time security vendors release patches."_

A flaw exists. No released patches yet.

<comment><USER7> I was surprised to read this. Wikipedia also has "Zero-day warez: copyrighted works that are pirated on the same day they are released", so the meaning of zero-day is different depending on the context.

I'm not quite convinced by the Wiki quote though; more than once, I've heard 0-day attacks to mean a vulnerability found on the day a new version of a software is released. Perhaps both meanings exist.

<comment><USER8> > I've heard 0-day attacks to mean a vulnerability found on the day a new > version of a software is released.

I've never heard that meaning. It doesn't really make sense - why would someone care if the vulnerability was the same day of the new version or not? (Except to show off.)

Zero day to me, means it's the first day after the vulnerability was found. i.e. it's a brand new vulnerability, and no one else knows about it or has a defense for it. (It being assumed that all vulnerabilities are fixed the day they are found.) Extending it to mean "until it's fixed" makes sense too when dealing with certain vendors who don't fix things very fast.

<comment><USER2> No matter who's defining it, the term is always _very much_ about showing off.

<comment><USER7> Exactly - warez group love to show off. Just look at those 'old school' cracks with the tracked music and animation, all coded in raw assembly for the sake of speed and glory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And a FYI - SSH is not vulnerable to it.</comment>


Show HN: Monitor web apps for seo, speed, privacy and availability - <AUTHOR> https://nonstop.qa <comment><USER2> No option to sign in with email. I won't link things to google or git until I know what I'm dealing with.

Perhaps a demo account providing results of Moz or Heroku or something that shows off your service nicely? Failing that some screenshots of sample results.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is valuable feedback. I'll work on the home page to better show what it does.

Also, the feedback about email sign-in. I didn't think that'd be desirable at all.

<comment><USER2> It's easier to spin up a temp email than fake Google a/c. If I found you on the web, until I know you're not going to mailbomb me to death (the SEO space can have this habit) I'll give the site a temp.

Even when paying I prefer to sign up with something like me+nonstop@ or me_nonstop@ so if I start getting spam to that address, I know either you a) sold, or b) got hacked. If I am getting a lot of spam, I can nuke just your email, and spin up another for your service.

I'm more than average on privacy and anti surveillance awareness, but I suspect on HN, and in the SEO and web dev spaces you'll also find more of this cynical to all things online than average. ;)

I'm interested to see how this develops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why no option for email/pw auth?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't think anyone would want it.</comment></comment>


Recommended compiler and linker flags for GCC - <AUTHOR> https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/21/compiler-and-linker-flags-gcc/ <comment><USER2> oh, no no no... i only get my gcc compiler and linker flags from gentoo forums! #funroll-loops

<comment><USER3> As I begin to laugh at this joke I realise how old I am.</comment></comment>


Why I'm excited for Vulkan - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mecheye.net/2015/12/why-im-excited-for-vulkan/ <comment><USER2> _" The games industry has had a term called "dev-to-triangle time" when describing API complexity and difficulty: take an experienced programmer, put him in a room with a brand new SDK he's never used before, and wait until he gets a single triangle up on the screen. How long does it take?"_

That reminds me of [http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=7745](http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=7745):

 _" In the main engineering room, there was a whoop and cry of success.

Our company financial controller and acting HR lady, Jen, came in to see what incredible things the engineers and artists had come up with. Everyone was staring at a television set hooked up to a development box for the Sony Playstation. There, on the screen, against a single-color background, was a black triangle."_

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm excited for less of a stack. I recently brought Fallout 3, which had a big warning about it not playing well with window 7 and later.

That's a sad state of affairs given that the game is not playable to non technical people.

I managed to get it running well on osx and wine but I still got random OpenGL crashes due to OOM. Clearly the windows driver was fixing a bug in the game.

</comment><comment><USER4> Site is down. Alternative: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dHi67qG...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dHi67qG5uosJ:blog.mecheye.net/2015/12/why- im-excited-for-vulkan/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)</comment>