Angular 2 Fundamentals Course - <AUTHOR> http://courses.angularclass.com/courses/angular-2-fundamentals <comment><USER2> Angular 2 is great, just look at all the features you get: WebWorker, Server- Side Rendering, mobile, progressive web application, Lazy loading support, Router, Material Components, Precompile your app. Tree-Shaking support, fast rendering, CLI, and TypeScript. The framework is backed by Google and Microsoft

<comment><USER3> You don't need all that to create SPA app. it's bloated framework.

<comment><USER4> I wonder where the happy medium is. Setting up React/Redux/React-redux/react- router/react-redux-router/react-redux-router-thunk/webpack-hot-module-oh-my- god-what-am-i-doing takes forever.

<comment><USER5> Honestly, the fact that people put up with this in Js ecosystem amazes me to no end. I've been working with ClojureScript on the front-end for the past year, and it's just night and day.

There's a single build tool ([http://leiningen.org/](http://leiningen.org/)), and it manages dependencies, tests, builds, etc. Things just work.

Setting up a new project is as simple as:

lein new reagent-frontend myapp

I can go and start developing it by running

lein figwheel

After it starts I can open the browser at localhost:3449 and any changes I make in the source will be immediately reflected. Once I want to package for release I just do:

lein clean lein release

That's it, I now have minified and pruned Js file that's ready for production.

<comment><USER6> This is pretty much what we're doing with Create React App.

        npm i -g create-react-app
        create-react-app my-app
        cd my-app
        npm start # start devserver
        npm run build # build for production

<comment><USER5> Sure, but how do you go about doing things like managing dependencies, doing hot code loading, running tests, and so on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting coincidence. This week I've been tasked with looking into a JavaScript framework to replace our pure-Clojure stack at work.

One of the front-end candidates is Angular. But we're considering cutting it from the race.

The three main things we're looking for in a front-end framework:

1\. Longevity: we don't want to adopt yet another fad framework that we'll have to replace in 2017. The current trend looks to be moving towards React- style FRP, and Angular seems to be catching up in version 2, but nobody seems to be using that yet, which means nobody will start using it. It looks like another Python 3 problem to me. I don't see Angular lasting long.

2\. Flexibility: we want to quickly be able to change what pages we have and what's on them, without needing to tear down and rewrite the entire front-end. If Angular is only just now beginning to adopt React-like patterns, how can I be assured that it got them _right_ , and that I won't run into rigidity issues 2 weeks into writing Angular code?

3\. Convention over configuration: our data will live in MongoDB, so all our models are straightforward JSON. I'm hoping to find a stack that _assumes_ this and doesn't require me to write tons of boilerplate that should be assumed for me by my frameworks. I'm not sure how Angular fares in this, but so far none of the candidates really shine in this area.

For the record, we're currently looking into Sails + Ember + Mongo. But we're not super excited about this since it still doesn't look like it'll hit all three of our needs really well. I'm particularly concerned that Ember is going to have the same issues as Angular, especially if the community is looking to regularize tools around React.

<comment><USER8> > Longevity: we don't want to adopt yet another fad framework that we'll have > to replace in 2017.

No such thing. They're all pretty much fad frameworks.

<comment><USER7> Looking back, though, I might have said the same thing about Rails or Sinatra or Laravel, but they stood the test of time, and people still use them. A lot of what gives a framework longevity is just whether or not big players adopt them and developers love them, these two factors will go a long way in ensuring a framework continues to get upgrades and continuous maintenance. At least longer than Backbone, anyway.

<comment><USER9> So Angular is the COBOL of Javascript frameworks?

Actually, I think it's probably more comparable to some kind of Java FactoryProviderServiceFactory thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been reading Switching to Angular 2. Are collections still propagated via EventEmitter<Type>? Seems like the implementation is bleeding into the user code.

I maintain Angular continues to be a bad reimplementation of JSF except mostly on the client side.

<comment><USER11> Not sure what you mean by collections, but the EventEmitter is just an alias for a Subscriber in RxJS. So it's an observable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Learn Angular 2 fundamentals while rebuilding a real app."

Wouldn't it be great to turn business requirements into code training documentation and crowdsource the development of things?

<comment><USER13> I laughed. Then I started to think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I heard angular is a framework and react is lib. angular 2 or react. Coming from nodejs, python, php, jquery experience which should I learn?

<comment><USER3> Ignore both. Learn vue.js to get shit done.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't address the issues the comment just above you (at time of writing) brings up, namely that even with Vue you still need to set up all the tool chain around it, whereas Angular brings a lot of that to the table for you.

<comment><USER3> I handle a big React app at my job. It's messy as fuck with JSX. We made a transition to Vue. Couldn't be happier.

<comment><USER15> What in particular about JSX makes it messy compared to vue? Messy template code can happen in both.

<comment><USER16> Vue templates support conditional rendering (v-if/v-show/v-else) which I didn't realize I missed until using them. Also, conventions around component data are really nice and help keep markup tidy and very readable.

I like to think of Vue as React with sensible conventions. That said, both are terrific and solve UI problems very elegantly.

<comment><USER17> React handles conditional rendering better imo. You use regular JS instead of having to learn a new API. You can use control logic in your render methods to great effect.

<comment><USER16> I definitely agree that React is clean for the reasons you state and I always enjoy building UIs with it. I suppose my comment was just a reflection on the differences that I found refreshing - to my surprise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have only one question - when NG2 will be released? Because now it is not possible build real applications, many libraries are not stable, and still in beta or rc... Four month I'm trying to do real application and I must say that it was my big mistake when I decided use Ng2., with every new release I always have troubles with some dependencies or with new API, and there are no many stable components which I can use without pain. Ng2 has good promotion however we need wait official release., and then make some conclusions about it.

<comment><USER19> I've been working on an enterprise app with Angular 2 for over a month now and it's been mostly ok. I think the only horrible problem was the change in the form framework that went largely undocumented (super secret doc: [https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1RIezQqE4aEhBRmArIAS1...](https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1RIezQqE4aEhBRmArIAS1mRIZtWFf6JxN_7B4meyWK0Y/pub))

Once you get to forms 0.2.0 and rc4 of everything else; the framework is beautiful and even though I hated Angular 1.x with a passion, Angular 2 is awesome.

<comment><USER18> What about new router? And yes NG2 much better than NG1, I agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If anyone has ever tried Anthony Alicea's JS/NodeJS/Angular1 course, please let me know if AngularClass' or any other course is similar to it. I really really liked anthony's course as it gave quite a deep look into sub topics, which are usually only attainable from books, while at the same time keeping it very interesting and also contain lots of best practice material and keeping a healthy focus on understanding over imitating courses. Do let me know if you guys know any other courses of the same style.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just wanted to say Thanks for the course link!

</comment><comment><USER22> AngularClass knows what they're doing. This course is gonna be legit.</comment>


CSS Frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://hiddenpixels.com/css-stuffs/css-frameworks/

<comment><USER2> So he did a google search for CSS Frameworks? How about some reviews/positives and negatives? Why do I care about any of these?

<comment><USER3> I agree that the original post lacks in critique.

On the other hand, he does provide a great place to start from when considering CSS frameworks. By laying them all out on the table, we should be able to have a conversation around them to flesh out their relative pros and cons.

In an attempt to start a constructive conversation, I'll outline my brief experience with Blueprint.

Pros for Blueprint:

      - 24 columns to layout the page. E.g., you could have one 12-unit column, and 2 six-unit columns.
      - Basic text formatting, nice line-height handling.
      - Some decorators like borders between columns.
      - When you need tables, they look good.

Cons for Blueprint:

      - Fixed 24-column layout can be limiting in some situations.
      - The occasional floated item breaks layouts.
      - Fixed height on headers is problematic for text with line breaks. (can be overridden, I think, with height:auto)

I have less experience with other frameworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What frameworks do other YC folks use?

I've been running with Blueprint for a while now and it's working great. The simple 24-column system makes a lot of sense for layouts, but I'm not tied to it necessarily.

<comment><USER4> I am in the same boat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am not a professional web designer, but I have made a couple of webpages (15+) and never found myself in the need for a "CSS framework".

Please forgive my maybe silly question, but is it worth learning Framework x,y,z in order to get the job done considering the extra effort?

At what point does a Framework make sense compared to the "build everything yourself" strategy?

How do these Frameworks behaive over time regarding Browser updates?

Thanks for any hints and pointers.

<comment><USER6> I am also not a professional web designer, although I have done some freelance work.

In my experience, if you don't have a problem just writing the css yourself, you may as well just do that. Read the css specs, and do it yourself, and you should end up with cleaner, more concise css rules than you would otherwise.

I would guess that a css framework would be useful if you either didn't have much experience with css and really needed to get something done, or were doing something very complex with it.

<comment><USER7> I think that the other benefit of using a framework is the testing behind it. At least in theory, the framework will be tested across IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. That gives a bit more confidence that your basic layout won't explode on any of those platforms.

<comment><USER6> I would assume that to be true.

I use a CSS-reset stylesheet which helps a lot with cross-browser compatability. It gets hard if you're looking for pixel-perfect appearance across all major browsers.

Of course, the browser that is the biggest pain requiring the most non-valid CSS to render correctly is IE.

I personally view the time it would take me to evaluate and learn enough CSS frameworks to make a good choice about which ones to use where is worth less than the fairly trivial amount of time it takes to write CSS rules.

My opinion may change if I ever need to do something really amazing with CSS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've tried both 960.gs and Blueprint. I didn't find either all that useful outside of the reset they both come with. And it felt dirty to have classes with names like span-12 and grid_8 in my code.

</comment><comment><USER9> I (obviously) like the YUI stuff. I think it would have been good if he'd mentioned that it:

* Works the same across the Y! A-grade list (<http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/>) such as the awesome font scaling solution (<http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/fonts/>)

* Have style sheets to normalise fonts/styling across the A-grade browsers

* Plenty of documentation, demos, screen casts.

I also like Eric Meyer's posts on his CSS reset stylesheet (<http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/01/reset-reloaded/>) because it nicely dissects what he has done.

I've also used Blueprint from the article. That's pretty nice, I like how it's a properly FOSS project. It's a lot like the YUI CSS project but it sets up some defaults which can be handy to quick get things going. The documentation is pretty good and is a wiki on Google Code so you can add to it.

I only wish it was slightly more x-browser. I might be wrong but I don't think they support quite as many things as YUI.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why would I take CSS advice from someone with such an exceptionally ugly blog?

</comment><comment><USER11> > I miss that 960.gs, i put that in my list now.. Keep it up…..

Maybe this blog is his side project after his Dell tech support job.

edit: check out <http://hiddenpixels.com/about/></comment>


Investing in Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/25/investing-in-artificial-intelligence/ <comment><USER2> Hey I'm looking for hackers/engineers that want to help build Playa ([http://getplaya.com/](http://getplaya.com/))

We're going to be the heroku for autonomous intelligent agents. If you're interested in distributed cognition, cybernetics, AI, cloud robotics, probabilistic robotics, multiagent systems, ambient computing, hit me up. I'm @dpg on Twitter or email me dan.p.gailey@gmail dot com

I basically sold everything I owned to crash in my van in Palo Alto and build this.

<comment><USER3> I'm a little confused what Playa is going to do. Heroku basically hosts code so you can upload some and have it run. Are you going to do that?

<comment><USER2> Possibly, it's still really early but I'd like to host the data (expert systems, knowledge base, talent graph, sensor data, etc, etc) and manifests for the agents. It will also provide the ability for agents to search and provision services through contracts.

<comment><USER4> Any reason for the focus on old symbolic-AI techniques? Things like expert systems have fallen out in favor of learned machine learning models. Yes, machine learning is 'popular' and 'trendy', but it also happens to work better and require less engineering effort to build and maintain than symbolic-AI systems.

Is there a market for traditional AI techniques as a service? Or maybe the wording is just throwing me off? The word 'agents' in particular is used a lot in 60's AI papers (Minsky's influence), so maybe I'm misinterpreting?

<comment><USER2> Pardon me for any confusion, I'm often reminded of this quote: "Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis." I'm new to all of this, but still humbly learning and building.

If modern machine learning models are better for every application, then that's most likely what we'll support. I think symbolic AI still holds some merit when thinking about how to interact with traditional physical interfaces, no? There seems to be a complement in the methods when considering a full stack thinking and acting approach, but perhaps I'm being naive.

For example, if I'm a robot in the world, it would be easy for me to access interface knowledge, and how I could interact with it to complete my task, without needing to reason what the interface does or is. This gives me a basic understanding or knowledge base. Now if there is a higher level method of thinking that produces ingenuity, and as a result a more efficient method for solving a known problem, then I assert more modern techniques can be used to adjust older symbolic representations.

I'm just imagining how an android/autonomous agent would need to operate in the real world, perhaps akin to how we might perceive and function within it, a posse ad esse.

Also I use 'agents' because I _am_ going back through older research and it seems to fit the description of the entities involved (software, hardware, robots, devices, people). I don't see any reason for some of the vocabulary or terms to have fallen out of favor.

In a world of autonomous intelligent multi-agent systems, there is a market for knowledge representation about the world, how to complete tasks, as well as higher level thinking/reasoning functions, et cetera.

<comment><USER5> I run a robotics company and we tend to do the same, namely using agent terminology.

This does indeed not preclude new methods. SLAM is of course what everybody uses in autonomous robotics. But you also have reinforcement learning and imitation learning and a wide diversity of representations and models from DEC-POMDPs to Bayesian models to neural nets. Each time you'll need somehow to decompose into modules, units, etc. Agents represent something in the real world and are often the right term for a module that has (virtual) sensors and actuators.

Apart from that I would recommend to focus on something, so you can really excel in that part of AI.

We have chosen "understanding where an AI is located in the real world" as our main goal. I can imagine there is something similar you would like to achieve for AI.

Just my two cents! Good luck!!!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the reply and perhaps we can work together someday!

The platform I'm currently building is just to facilitate the provisioning and correlation of third party services for emergent results.

Thanks again for the info. I'll conduct more research. Cheers. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The space for AI-powered venture-backed companies is really booming.

Full list of companies mentioned in the article:

Enigma - [http://enigma.io/](http://enigma.io/)

Sift Science - [https://siftscience.com/](https://siftscience.com/)

Ravelin - [https://ravelin.com/](https://ravelin.com/)

H2O.ai - [http://h2o.ai/](http://h2o.ai/)

Seldon - [http://www.seldon.io/](http://www.seldon.io/)

SigOpt - [https://sigopt.com/](https://sigopt.com/)

Gluru - [https://gluru.co/](https://gluru.co/)

x.ai - [https://x.ai/](https://x.ai/)

SwiftKey - [https://swiftkey.com/en](https://swiftkey.com/en)

Matternet - [https://mttr.net/](https://mttr.net/)

SkyCatch - [https://www.skycatch.com/](https://www.skycatch.com/)

DeepMind - [http://www.deepmind.com/](http://www.deepmind.com/)

Vicarious - [http://www.vicarious.com/](http://www.vicarious.com/)

Scaled Inference - [https://scaledinference.com/](https://scaledinference.com/)

Sentient Technologies - [http://www.sentient.ai/](http://www.sentient.ai/)

MetaMind - [https://www.metamind.io/](https://www.metamind.io/)

Unbabel - [https://unbabel.com/](https://unbabel.com/)

Ravelin - [https://ravelin.com/](https://ravelin.com/)

Signal - [http://signalmedia.co/](http://signalmedia.co/)

Sano - [http://www.sano.co/](http://www.sano.co/)

Deep Genomics - [http://www.deepgenomics.com/](http://www.deepgenomics.com/)

Atomwise - [http://www.atomwise.com/](http://www.atomwise.com/)

Flatiron Health - [http://www.flatiron.com/](http://www.flatiron.com/)

Enlitic - [http://www.enlitic.com/](http://www.enlitic.com/)

Zebra Medical - [https://www.zebra-med.com/](https://www.zebra-med.com/)

DueDil - [https://www.duedil.com/](https://www.duedil.com/)

Premise - [http://www.premise.com/](http://www.premise.com/)</comment>


Peter Thiel to serve as Trump delegate - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/279331-paypal-co-founder-to-serve-as-trump-delegate <comment><USER2> This is surprising mostly because Thiel is a libertarian. Trump has staked out policy positions that provoke a much stronger central government.

To be specific.

\- Increased federal regulation. Especially especially around restrictions of foreign trade. China/ Korea etc.

-Speech restrictions. Trump has advocated new laws against the press and others than disparage him (i.e. those small hands jokes for example or like Bill Maher- called him son of a chimp and was sued- trump lost and wants to change the laws so he'd win)

-Intervention in leading American business sourcing and investment decisions. Carrier AC is an example and of course Apple.

\- Pro Gun control. This is in direct contrast to libertarian views. They dont want any rules from the government on gun control.

Now one could argue that Trump has a non interventionist military policy which is a traditional libertarian view. However, Bush ran on that platform in 2000 but becasue he was so inexperienced he ended up started several large wars including Iraq which was a dramatic failure. Trump is less experienced than Bush was so it's possible he is at a high risk of entering new wars as well.

There is zero about trump that has anything to do with being a libertarian. That's the puzzling part.

<comment><USER3> > Pro Gun control. This is in direct contrast to libertarian views. They dont > want any rules from the government on gun control.

While he has certainly made pro-gun-control statements in the past, Trump's currently stated position on guns is fairly strongly pro-gun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just want to send a wrecking ball to Washington DC - I'm not really picky which wrecking ball it is (Trump or Sanders).

So while I'd prefer Sanders, its clear to me that there are some fundamental problems with our economy - both of the two wrecking ball candidates have touched on something in common, which is average americans have lost in the balance of free trade - and that government is far more accessible to the rich and powerful than it is to the common man.

In the end, we lived thru 8 years of GWB - and very frankly, I have enough faith in our system of government to feel that its self regulating that we could put pretty much anyone in the office of president and they'd not be able to fuck it up too much.

Yes, I expect to get downvoted for tacit support of Trump.

<comment><USER5>
        > I have enough faith in our system of government
        > to feel that its self regulating that we could
        > put pretty much anyone in the office of president
        > and they'd not be able to fuck it up too much.

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong other than....

Nomination of supreme court justices that take back decades of progress.

Starting new and unnecessary wars, making the geopolitical situation more dangerous and unstable : George W started 2 of them, didn't finish, and we're still dealing with the mess.

Have a leader who is a laughing stock, much like Berlusconi was in Italy.

<comment><USER6> How funny that Democrats are fine with electing another candidate who actively voted for one of those wars.

<comment><USER7> One candidate or another is going to eke out a win requiring superdelegates to put them over the top, in the most divisive nominating race the party has seen since 1968.

A very significant fraction of Democrats aren't "fine" with the candidate you are referring to, even to the extent of seeing that candidate as a tolerable choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I missing something here? Being a pledged party delegate is very different from being a true supporter of a candidate. It just means that you intend to cast your delegate vote for a particular candidate. There's essentially no one but Trump left in the Republican Primary, so is it really surprising that Peter Thiel, a Republican, would pledge for him?

<comment><USER9> Actually the surprising thing is getting involved at all. Right now even whiff of support for Trump is toxic.

<comment><USER10> Toxic in what sense?

Edit: It seems you mean career toxicity. Thiel, being able to write his own ticket, would founders really be unwilling to work with him on the basis of his political positions?

<comment><USER11> What happened to Chris Christie's political career after endorsing Trump would be one sense of the toxicity

<comment><USER12> Yes, because he was ascendant in NJ before that.

What will happen to Christies career when Trump appoints him AG?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess this is on HN because people are surprised that not all programmers are atheist members of the Democratic party.

<comment><USER14> Everyone that knows about Peter Thiel knows he's an outspoken libertarian, critic of the GOP and DNC, and that's he's homosexual. The surprise isn't that he's not a Democrat (everyone knew that) it's that Trump isn't exactly the libertarian on...any issue (at least not openly.) There is the assumption that Trump will be a major disruption to the establishment, that I have seen some libertarians and liberals both embrace.

I have a hard time believing Thiel actually embraces Trump, and it's more that he was going to be a delegate and will now be legally bound to cast his first ballot for Trump. I am frankly a fan of Thiel, a lot of people here at HN love Musk but I think Musk is a corporate welfare queen; and Thiel is not.

<comment><USER11> > I think Musk is a corporate welfare queen

Can you elaborate on that?

<comment><USER15> People dislike that he's benefiting a lot, directly and indirectly, from government subsidies. I usually point out that oil&gas get a tremendously larger amount of subsidies, but some people counter that by saying Tesla is different because it wouldn't be feasible without the subsidies. I am not sure I see the logic in that, if anything it seems like an argument for it to _have_ subsidies because it's creating value that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

<comment><USER16> Not just oil and gas, the auto industry and aerospace (i.e. his direct competitors) have received tons of subsidies and bailouts over the years. To expect Musk to get by without any subsidies would be to hold him to a higher standard than anyone else in his industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is Thiel a neoreactionary?

Trump is actually a great candidate for the neoreactionaries: an apolitical strongman with barely veiled ambitions for unchallenged sovereignty. I'm surprised Mencius Moldbug isn't on the delegate slate as well.

FWIW, I've had some success persuading conventional Republicans to write in Hillary Clinton as a protest candidate in the upcoming California primary.

<comment><USER18> Thiel is a libertarian. If you're up for reading... [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-i-a...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-i-am-not-libertarian.html) dives into some differences. The key one IMO being that no neoreactionary should actually vote. Trump is of course the obvious best candidate from one branch of the NRx perspective, but him taking office doesn't fundamentally change things. Another branch of NRx could argue Hillary is the "best", too, but the reasoning may be surprising.

The underlying reason for which I think Thiel might support Trump is that Trump is ultimately a businessman, like Thiel, and one in the messy business of real estate development at that. (For a fun fairly anti-Trump piece that could also read as support: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/19/book-review- the-art-of-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/19/book-review-the-art-of- the-deal)) A common NRx thread is that pretty much any chief executive (which includes military generals) would do a better job at being President (and even better King) than the more traditional list of possibilities like lawyers and professors.

<comment><USER19> > A common NRx thread is that pretty much any chief executive (which includes > military generals) would do a better job at being President (and even better > King) than the more traditional list of possibilities like lawyers and > professors.

Which is immediately disproven by the disastrous presidency of our first "MBA President" GWB. (See the fellating articles before people realized how awful he would be at managing the country[1])

[1] - [http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2004/08/the_first_mb...](http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2004/08/the_first_mba_president.html)

<comment><USER20> not pro or anti NRx ideas, but GWB is better described as a favored son of a political aristocracy -- his MBA and CEO are more a form of inherited wealth than business success of someone like Morgan or Thiel (or even Gates, who certainly to a leg up, but was also a successful businessperson)

<comment><USER18> Yeah, there are many qualifications one could make to the "give us a CEO-King, doesn't really matter which CEO". For instance one might disqualify anyone from Harvard, or only count CEOs that managed large companies and didn't drive them into the ground, etc. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_life_of_George_W....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_life_of_George_W._Bush) is an interesting wiki page though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Peter Thiel:

"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron."

[http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter- thiel/education...](http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter- thiel/education-libertarian)

Fits right in with Trump.

How's the seasteading going btw?

</comment><comment><USER22> It should say 'Peter Thiel', not PayPal co-founder, imo.

<comment><USER23> The title isn't wrong. The original article uses 'PayPal co-founder' and HN guidelines suggest using the original title unless it is misleading (which, in this case, it is not). While Peter Thiel may have name recognition on HN and in Silicon Valley, he is better known as a co-founder of PayPal in political circles and the rest of the US.

<comment><USER24> I agree the title isn't wrong, but I believe most hacker news readers know who Peter Thiel is. There were many Paypal cofounders, however. A change in the title isn't needed, but would have simplified some things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Could we close and merge the other submissions on this:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=thiel&sort=byDate&prefix&page=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=thiel&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

Note: this is one of the few that doesn't have "Thiel" in the title.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does Thiel _support_ Trump or is he just legally or contractually bound to cast a vote for him because he's a Republican party delegate? I smell click bait.

Of course the real question is why Thiel would be a Republican delegate at all. Does he not have better things to do than carry water for a bunch of dimwits and apparatchiks?

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if Thiel is still as enthusiastic about Trump after The Donald's recent comment about printing money to pay off the national debt.</comment>


TSV Utilities: Command line tools for large, tabular data files - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eBay/tsv-utils <comment><USER2> I've been noticing more swiss army-knife-like cli tools in the last few years. It would be cool if there were some that could support avro/parquet/orc formats. This one is notable because it's written in D lang by a mega corp.

Some useful cli data wrangling tools --

[https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv](https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv)

[https://github.com/dinedal/textql](https://github.com/dinedal/textql)

[https://github.com/n3mo/data-science](https://github.com/n3mo/data-science)

[https://stedolan.github.io/jq/](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/)

[https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/parallel](https://gitlab.redox- os.org/redox-os/parallel)

[https://github.com/willghatch/racket- rash](https://github.com/willghatch/racket-rash)

Would you have any others you recommend?

<comment><USER3> jwalk parses JSON into a stream of TSV records: [https://github.com/shellbound/jwalk/](https://github.com/shellbound/jwalk/)

<comment><USER4> >parses large documents slowly, but steadily, in memory space proportional to the key depth of the document

If parsing JSON with shell scripts and awk is your idea of the most ideal way to "slowly, but steadily" get the job done.

[https://github.com/shellbound/jwalk/blob/master/lib/jwalk/co...](https://github.com/shellbound/jwalk/blob/master/lib/jwalk/commands/parse.awk#L137)

I know that everything looks like a nail if your only tool is a hammer, and it's fun to nail together square wheels out of plywood, but there are actually other tools out there with built-in, compiled, optimized, documented, tested, well maintained, fully compliant JSON parsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like a waste to do CSV->TSV without going all the way:

[http://www.tsvx.org/](http://www.tsvx.org/)

The problem with TSVs and CSVs is that you might get an odd datatype 1TB into a file. For example, what you expect to be an integer value is somehow a string.

TSVx extends TSV to add standard formats for things like headers which allows for strict typing. You can do things like export a database table and import losslessly. You can even export from MySQL and import into PostgreSQL most of the times without pain.

The strict typing also avoids a lot of potential security issues. And in an environment where you control both ends (so you don't need to worry about security of where the file came from), it leads to much nicer APIs: you can refer to things by names rather than column numbers. It's more readable, and if the order or number of columns changes, nothing breaks.

<comment><USER6> It wouldn't seem that tsvx is "going all the way", it's a completely different thing that dirties your numbers with silly metadata.

<comment><USER7> TSVs aren't just numbers. A TSV might be numbers for the first terabyte, and then include a string, just for the heck of it.

I'd call that "dirtying numbers," rather than an removable header which allows you to programmatically validate that your numbers have not, in fact, been dirtied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi all, Primary tsv-utils author here. Thanks for checking out the tools! I hope some of you find them beneficial.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for these. I've rolled my own implementation of many of these over the last 20 odd year, most of them living in ugly shell scripts embedded as aliases in my env. This will make my life easier!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It makes me cry how much time has been invested in formats like CSV's, TSV's, etc. ASCII (and UTF-8) has characters reserved for column, row, and even group separation. Just use them and save a lot of pain.

<comment><USER11> We've discussed this at length and I'm squarely in the DO NOT camp. The drawbacks of using non-readable meta characters exceeds the benefits:

1\. TSV can be read and imported by almost everything.

2\. People can add and adjust TSV files from any editor.

3\. What's the way to insert meta characters again In VIM? And now nano? Argh I'll just try and copy and paste it. Ugh that doesn't work.

Just use CSV/TSV folks. Anything more complicated and reach for a better serialization format (json, yaml) and _not_ a better delimiter.

<comment><USER12> Both JSON and YAML are very difficult to construct parsers for.

To make matters worse, both formats are full of pitfalls:

[http://seriot.ch/parsing_json.php](http://seriot.ch/parsing_json.php) [https://arp242.net/yaml-config.html](https://arp242.net/yaml-config.html)

using either of these, in my opinion, is extremely misguided.

<comment><USER11> The flip side to that is that json and yaml parsers exist in every language, and would be more than capable of replacing any logic you'd find in a CSV.

<comment><USER12> CSV's are a data structure. They do not contain any logic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There're lots of tools in this space that are similar in a very general way, but have widely different design choices. My tookit is

[https://github.com/dkogan/vnlog](https://github.com/dkogan/vnlog)

It's tsv-utils-like, but is strictly a wrapper around existing tools. So filtering and transformations are interpreted literally as awk (or perl) expressions. And the various cmdline options match the standard tool options because they ARE the standard tools. So you get a very friendly learning curve, but something like tsv-utils is probably faster and probably more powerful. And it looks like tsv-utils references fields by number instead of by name. Many of the others (mine included) use the field names, which makes a MAJOR usability improvement.

Other tools in no particular order:

[https://csvkit.readthedocs.io/](https://csvkit.readthedocs.io/)

[https://github.com/johnkerl/miller](https://github.com/johnkerl/miller)

[https://github.com/eBay/tsv-utils-dlang](https://github.com/eBay/tsv-utils- dlang)

[http://harelba.github.io/q/](http://harelba.github.io/q/)

[https://github.com/BatchLabs/charlatan](https://github.com/BatchLabs/charlatan)

[https://github.com/dinedal/textql](https://github.com/dinedal/textql)

[https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv](https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv)

[https://github.com/dbohdan/sqawk](https://github.com/dbohdan/sqawk)

[https://stedolan.github.io/jq/](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/)

[https://github.com/benbernard/RecordStream](https://github.com/benbernard/RecordStream)

<comment><USER14> Adding another one which I'm one of the authors of: [https://github.com/cube2222/octosql/](https://github.com/cube2222/octosql/)

It tries to provide ergonomic data munching of various formats, but using a sql interface, which most will probably feel immediately at home with.

<comment><USER15> With respect, who actually feels at home with SQL?

It's about the most alien and obtuse language I've ever had the misfortune of encountering, and in that category I rate it worse than COBOL, FORTRAN, Assembly, C, Prolog, Sendmail re-write rules, BASH, and every other language I've ever encountered and had to use, but which I cannot recall at the moment.

<comment><USER16> SQL gets rather mistifying when you move towards some complex joins and data mapping. PSQL can also feel Sadly out of place.

But their is real nice clarit in what you want at its foundation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool that there are some specialty tools in this space and will use if I hit that performance challenge.

Minor nit, I found the performance table ([https://github.com/eBay/tsv- utils/blob/master/docs/Performan...](https://github.com/eBay/tsv- utils/blob/master/docs/Performance.md)) confusing at first and second glance. Alternating colors indicate.. different OSes? That doesn't seem to be the important message to convey as you are trying to show the speed of your tool and not the OS. Recommend to use the coloration to provide differentiation between tools instead of OS.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the feedback. I agree, the performance table would benefit from better formatting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Worth to note clickhouse-local: full featured ClickHouse SQL engine for files in CSV/TSV/JSONLines, whatever...

[https://www.altinity.com/blog/2019/6/11/clickhouse-local- the...](https://www.altinity.com/blog/2019/6/11/clickhouse-local-the-power-of- clickhouse-sql-in-a-single-command)

<comment><USER19> Nice! Or even just Sqlite

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> With AWKA, in my tests I was able to get an instant 100% speed boost without modifying any of my AWK code. So using AWKA would likely beat the tools presented here, without needing to invest the time to learn a new tool, which for me at least is of paramount importance.

[https://github.com/noyesno/awka](https://github.com/noyesno/awka)

</comment><comment><USER20> I remember there was a TUI app that could handle CSV, HDF, etc. I can't find if for the life of me though. I remember the author even made their own TUI library for it. I've been looking for it for a while now, if anyone knows please let me know.

<comment><USER21> must be visidata

<comment><USER20> I think that's the one, thanks so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dear author: thank you for making multiple small programs instead of a single command with 400 flags.

<comment><USER23> Agreed!

My pet peeve: open source packages that have no separation of the actual IP from the embodiment in an app or environment. Is it so hard to create a library? And put the real feature in there, instead of wrapped up in some run- on main module?

Kudos to this writer for doing it well.

<comment><USER8> Thank you both! I too like the Unix philosophy of small tools that do a specific job. In a package like this, people may find they only care about one or two tools. They can ignore the rest and mix and match with other tools as they see fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've had something like this for 10 years, self made. I use cut, grep, sort, uniq from the system, but added a tool to compute counts per field, do value processing like awk (using a one line Perl script because I didn't want to learn awk), randomise order, split files by percentage, join multiple files by column and pretty format the data.

Sometimes I make a chain of them 3-4 lines long, at which point I switch to a script.

</comment><comment><USER25> I always get excited by these types of tools and then end up going back to awk. How do you beat something that's already pre-installed on every Unix system for the last 40 years?

Having said that ... these do look like they have some useful extras, in particular, around the annoying part of retaining / manipulating header rows ...

<comment><USER26> I totally agree. awk, sed, grep are amazing and it astonishes me how many people aren't fluently able to write scripts in it. I used to be in that camp few months earlier and I used to write everything in Python, but one day, I determined to learn shell scripting and I loved it.

awk::Python what Java::Python. What we can do in 10 lines of Python can be done in one line of awk and it doesn't have to be unreadable!

Main pain in the neck is finding a good tutorial. As usual, I started documenting what I learnt in an end to end guide here, [https://github.com/thewhitetulip/awk-anti- textbook](https://github.com/thewhitetulip/awk-anti-textbook)

<comment><USER27> The original awk book from the creators is in my opinion really good. [https://archive.org/download/pdfy- MgN0H1joIoDVoIC7/The_AWK_P...](https://archive.org/download/pdfy- MgN0H1joIoDVoIC7/The_AWK_Programming_Language.pdf)

<comment><USER26> I found it to be a good introduction, but the issue is, it does not go in dept and teach by example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel like this might explain atrocious unicode handling and special character escaping in most eBay properties... Looking at you gumtree!

</comment><comment><USER29> Check out Nushell if you missed it a few days ago on HN: [https://github.com/nushell/nushell](https://github.com/nushell/nushell)

Related HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783006)

</comment><comment><USER30> Looks cool! The presentation of the benchmark data could be improved by charting the values, however.

</comment><comment><USER31> Mario is a tool for manipulating data in your shell with Python functions. It supports csv, json, toml, yaml, xml.

[https://github.com/python-mario/mario](https://github.com/python-mario/mario)

</comment><comment><USER32> [http://www.lueftenegger.at/produkte/csvsplitter-gratis- progr...](http://www.lueftenegger.at/produkte/csvsplitter-gratis-programm-zum- splitten-von-csv-dateien/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Wouldn't a relational database be better and faster-querying and more space efficient in most cases, e.g. sqlite? Wonder what use cases would favor large collections of text / TSV files?

<comment><USER34> If you're getting TSV files from an external source and are interested in just some aggregate results, you'll get better performance by computing the smaller results and storing these than if you first import, then process, then delete the data in a SQL db. Also you don't have to store the data twice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> `keep-header` is a superb gem of do-one-thing composability.

</comment><comment><USER36> You might want to check out Apache Drill. It allows you to access structured files as database tables through JDBC/ODBC.

<comment><USER37> Dremio replaces Drill for a lot of that too, some of the original team has worked on it. Here's a tutorial from some folks who have used it: [http://www.helicalinsight.com/technical-guide/connecting- csv...](http://www.helicalinsight.com/technical-guide/connecting-csvexcel-via- dremio/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> eBay has an api project that appears to have been half-completed and then abandoned. Trying to understand exactly how to use their APIs is extremely confusing because they don't have anything definitive and basically a frankenstein-like API so I've given up. I frankly wouldn't trust anything coming from eBay at this point, they appear to have extremely poor developer support and no investment in making their APIs better to use.</comment>


Boing  Boing serializes The Deal: a novell about an Apple-like startup. - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/06/boing-boings-seriali-1.html

<comment><AUTHOR> And here's part two: [http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/13/boing-boings- seriali-2....](http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/13/boing-boings- seriali-2.html)</comment>


Why getter and setter methods are evil - <AUTHOR> http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-2003/jw-0905-toolbox.html

<comment><USER2> Whan was this published? "09/05/03" doesn't say anything to me.</comment>


List of the Best Free iTunes Alternatives - <AUTHOR> http://crenk.com/list-of-the-best-free-itunes-alternatives/

<comment><USER2> Like Steven Finch said, "Most people im sure would probably agree that Apple's iTunes software isnt a lightweight application. I was wanting to put together a great list of free alternatives to iTunes that are actually worth checking out."

So many people are stuck on Itunes because so many people have Ipods, which is the newest, gadgety, user friedly handheld device on the market. That's a given. But Itunes is really the only service that works seamlessly with the Ipod. Of course this is done on purpose, and I don't blame Apple. Gotta protect your product, business, and market share. But, a combative service can be built to loosen Apple's grip. Just takes less complacency, and greater "out of the box" thinking.

Foobar 2000 and Songbird are looking good. But, they still have a ways to go to actually be considered competitors, and not just alternatives.</comment>


How I made $2k in a day pretending to own a valet company - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/aylx5g/how_i_made_2k_in_a_day_pretending_to_own_a_valet/ <comment><USER2> Actually, the fact that he pulled off all the logistics and the service was completed as advertised, and insured, I don't really see anything fake about this.

It is no different than what Talent Scouts / Head hunters / etc do, except he was actually more hands on than they typically are.

Compare with a party planner - they aren't the cooks, the clowns, etc. But they do hire a team to conduct those activities. Their customers hire one main point of contact to do all of it. And if what you and your team do is worth the money invoiced for both the buyer and the seller, we're all good.

Perhaps the guy accidentally did a good job and discovered a latent talent. It might feel like it started in jest, but he obviously got serious quickly, and pulled off every detail. This is more of an awakening than a sin to be confessed.

It was a good experiment either way you look at it.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like he was diligent in researching the companies and spent a lot of time making sure that nothing went wrong. In other words it wasn't one day of work.

He probably shouldn't have run any of the cars himself, since he wasn't insured, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The risk side was, when a Lambo got totalled by a drunk kid and somebody says "ok, the valet company insurance will pick it up"

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this not, in essence, just subcontracting?</comment>


First self-assembled superconductor structure created - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/01/first-self-assembled-superconductor-structure-created <comment><USER2> Unfortunately I am completely ignorant about the subject; could this, in the long term, lead to a breakthrough in the development of superconductor- equipped hovering vehicles?

<comment><USER3> All progress is important. However the type of technology you invision would require higher-temperature superconductors. There has been a large effort towards understanding the pairing mechanisms in these types of materials.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, it is a very interesting field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure if this is the same form of self assembly, but this video has a nice explanation of at least one type: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dp6EFyROT4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dp6EFyROT4)

</comment><comment><USER5> No link to the paper?

<comment><USER6> > The group's findings are detailed in a [paper published in Science > Advances][0], Jan. 29.

There are some great visualizations in the PDF[1].

[0] [http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/1/e1501119](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/1/e1501119)

[1] [http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/2/1/e1501119...](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/2/1/e1501119.full.pdf)</comment></comment>


Apple getting sued over OS X Lion fast boot - <AUTHOR> http://www.tekgoblin.com/2011/08/09/apple-getting-sued-over-os-x-lion-fast-boot/

<comment><USER2> I can't help feeling that a relatively easy fix to this whole patent mess would be to make patents indefensible if a company doesn't have an actual product available on the market that actually uses the patent. Furthermore, only the company making the product can use the patent. - They could sell it to a competitor, who also has a product that uses the patent, but if a patent troll wanted the patent they would need to create an actual working product before trolling.

It wouldn't solve all of the problems of patents, but it would be an easy fix for getting rid of some of the more egregarious abuses of the patent system (companies filing thousands of pie-in-the-sky patents just so that others _can't_ , patent trolls that exist just to buy patents and pursue actual innovators, companies filing patents and then sitting on them, preventing others from developing a new technology that would disrupt the company's product).

It would be a modest change to the system which would correct at least some of the current evident problems.

<comment><USER3> Maybe such a system should also have an expiration date.

Lets say IBM is developing a very new technique. They file a patent but they discover the market is not ready for the actual product. So they decide to wait.

In this case IBM doesn't have an actual product available on the market. It would be nice if IBM could wait for lets say 5 years without loosing the patent.

<comment><USER2> I would much rather that a patent not be granted until a product exists. If someone else beats you to market, to bad so sad for you. Patents exist to encourage innovation, and I don't see how that goal is furthered by letting someone sit on an idea without using it to the detriment of someone that is actually ready to do something with the idea _right now_.

<comment><USER3> Well maybe you give the answer yourself.

 _"Patents exist to encourage innovation"_ Sometimes innovation is costing a lot of money and time (research and development). When you can make sure you can protect the outcome you are more likely to keep on innovating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The obscurity of the company filing the claim is one of the things that's wrong with the current U.S. patent system. Whomever they are, they haven't existed for very long and they _obviously_ don't have any actual engineers working on things like computer boot processes. As far as I can tell they're just a bunch of guys with a checkbook and some lawyers who bought a patent much like any other speculative investment that could pay off.</comment>


Is there an Internet intercom?  Need help for a friend and his mom. - <AUTHOR>

My friend lives in California.  His mom, 90 and now with failing short term memory, lives in New York.  Even dialing the phone can be an iffy experience for her.
What he'd like is an intercom so he or his brother could monitor his mom's apartment and speak to her without the necessity of her doing anything.  The sticking point is use from her end must be totally passive.
Does such a system exist?  Thanks. <comment><USER2> I would get a IP Phone that supports intercom, or intercom like features and get two of them. Lots of phones (I think Polycoms do this) support intercom via a auto-answer feature thats enabled for a special extension or something like that. Digging into Polycom's XML firmware might be a bit daunting for the uninitiated though, so you might want to see if Snom has something that will work for you (hell if they don't, the phones run linux!). You will probably need some kind of proxy for the phones, I like FreeSWITCH, but you can use something simpler, or Asterisk if you like it better.

</comment><comment><USER3> Use grandstream gxv3000 ip video phones. You can dial by IP (no pbx or sip service required), set the phone to auto answer on her end and administer it via web browser. (Why a video phone is more desirable in this case than a regular phone should be self evident)

This means you don't have to depend on computers or buggy software being on and set up just right and turned on to work. If nat is a problem thanks to your internet carrier, use a pair of open-wrt boxes with openvpn to make sure you're always connected to each other.

</comment><comment><USER4> The commercial products used widely in similar situations are called "senior medical alarms" (or "alerts"). There are a number of providers. It is hardware (e.g., waterproof button worn around the neck, communicating wirelessly to a base station which includes a specialized loud speaker phone) plus a data-rich monitoring service. When the button is pushed, the base station connects 24/7 to a service rep who can use the loud speaker phone to converse with the wearer. In case of emergency, the rep has a list of nearby friends and possibly distant family to notify, and also has prepared data on hand to summon the correct local emergency services and tell them how to gain access. Monitoring services offer other functions, including calling the senior's base station regularly just to check in and chat briefly, or calling to prompt and check on specific medication. Additional hardware is available, such as motion detectors which activate the base station in case of unusual or missing activity, and multiple units to cover larger living spaces. A lot of development has gone into solving this specific problem, so possibly specialized service would work better than just an intercom.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think this would be an interesting idea to implement.

Although, maybe 1. ask his mom to get a separate phone, specifically for your friend to call her and 2. for her to keep it on the line, constantly.

now _that_ is pretty iffy, but it's a quick hack.

although I think a program would be much better, obviously.

</comment><comment><USER6> I played around with Flash Media Streaming Server a while back it and might be able to do what they need it to:

He could setup the freebie developer's version (at least it used to be free) on his computer. Then you'd need to make a flash player or two that will stream the video and audio back to the server so they can each see and hear the other. Then just stick those players on webpage somewhere, and you're pretty much set. This could be done as an Adobe Air app as well I think...

If they have the computers and webcams (hp mini or eee pc would work!), I'd be happy to see what I could do to help them out: admin (at) hpminiguide . com

(Sorry if this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I'm super tired and coming down after a few strong drinks)

</comment><comment><USER7> Aren't there web enabled baby monitors?

<comment><USER8> Somebody here at HN built this for justin.tv: <http://www.slumbervision.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This may seem a little too 1984, but you can set up a camera with an external IP address in her apartment:

[http://www.networkcamerareviews.com/articles/portforwarding....](http://www.networkcamerareviews.com/articles/portforwarding.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Just get a single button telephone with their number hardcoded. Or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Look into VoIP. A specific system probably doesn't really exist yet, but you/your friend might be able to cobble something together.

Or an auto-answering skype client?

<comment><USER12> Or, if you don't want to do any programming, Skype plus VNC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's time for your friend's mom to stop living on her own.</comment>


Lego IKEA Bygglek – First Look - <AUTHOR> http://www.brickfinder.net/2020/07/11/lego-ikea-bygglek-first-look/ <comment><USER2> As for the set (and the LEGO economics that HN loves), 201 pieces for €14.99 is 7.45 eurocents per piece, which is lower than the average price per piece for all sets (around 11 cents per piece) but around the average price for this style of sets (which is around 6/7 cents per piece.) However, unlike most Bricks and More sets, this one includes two minifigures and some nifty window/door pieces.

<comment><USER3> I think the main issue with Brick sets is supply. My step-mum ran a toy store a few years ago, and Lego wouldn't sell her sets of bricks unless she bought several hundred pounds worth of the themed sets.

<comment><USER4> For some reason I feel really saddened by that. The management at Lego are the custodians of a significant cultural artifact. Really seems like they've lost their way.

<comment><USER5> LEGO went through a period of financial difficulty around the turn of the century. The pivot to more themed and licensed brand sets is one of the things credited to turning around the company. They still sell the basic stuff but they can't survive on that alone.

<comment><USER6> I imagine video games have eaten up a lot of the market for traditional toys like Lego.

<comment><USER7> Probably, but Lego does have their own video games that do pretty well, and probably motivate some people to buy the real thing.

<comment><USER8> Helps that the Lego video games are all surprisingly very good - far better than the standard for most cash grab themed games

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm getting ready to move to a new apartment this fall and I've also recently gotten back into Lego so this is a welcome surprise!

Storage has always been a pain point given the amount of LEGO you need to have to be able to freely model things.

Aside from this LEGO has been innovating in other areas. I absolutely love the new art pieces - they've got mini sets [1] and larger pieces [2] that are going to be used in my new home. They're a little different from traditional LEGO use but I appreciate them branching out. They look expensive until you actually try to buy wall art for real and suddenly they're a bargain.

There are lots of adults now with nostalgic LEGO memories and they seem to be doing a great job capitalizing on it.

[1] [https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/brick-sketches?icmp=LP- SHD...](https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/brick-sketches?icmp=LP-SHD-Standard- MT_DIsruptor_Brick_Sketches_Star_Wars_lifestyle-TH-MT-HJWHURE7YT)

[2] [https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/andy-warhol-s-marilyn- mon...](https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/andy-warhol-s-marilyn-monroe-31197)

<comment> em-bee i am still working on that storage problem. however i think transparent boxes are better for lego

<comment><USER10> look into hardware storage shelves

<comment> em-bee could you elaborate that please? how does hardware storage look like?

do you mean, these tiny drawers for screws and elecric parts?

i am not sure that helps much. many parts are hard to categorize. you'll end up searching through many drawers. i think larger groupings that don't sort every part into a different drawer are better. i just haven't found the right kind of shelf for that.

<comment><USER11> I'm using this : [https://www.amazon.com/Keter-17185073-KETER-boite- outils/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Keter-17185073-KETER-boite- outils/dp/B003NUIUEW)

The little boxes come in different size and are removable from their enclosure. the boxes are -of course- stackable

<comment> em-bee how much do you get into that? we have more than 40kg of bricks to organize :-)

probably looking at something like it's shown in the first lego movie, but with larger drawers.

<comment><USER12> I use a bunch of these in Clear with the inserts they sell to divide them. I stacked my 10 drawers high, anything higher and you need to secure them to the wall. They're 1000X better than the cheap flimsy drawer systems at Target/Walmart.

[https://reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/usa/html/onlineshop/rub/r...](https://reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/usa/html/onlineshop/rub/rScrap09x9_5lDrawerTower.php)

You pay more for really useful boxes, but they're quality is top notch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What are LEGOs good for? They are good for explaining Graphical Linear Algebra:

[https://graphicallinearalgebra.net/2015/04/29/dumbing- down-m...](https://graphicallinearalgebra.net/2015/04/29/dumbing-down-magic- lego-and-the-rules-of-the-game-part-1/)

<comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods)

<comment><USER15> "Modular arithmetic leading to group theory" can also lead to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyominoes:_Puzzles,_Patterns...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyominoes:_Puzzles,_Patterns,_Problems,_and_Packings) , which is the book that made a lot of theory CS click for me.

(The Cuisenaire colours would make a nice alternative to resistor colours for low-bandwidth covert channels. I enjoyed one of the Aubrey/Maturin books in which the ballroom has been decorated with the following signal flags: [http://tmg110.tripod.com/SigFl/sig-1.gif](http://tmg110.tripod.com/SigFl/sig-1.gif) , encouraging the maritime wallflowers who could read them to "engage the enemy more closely.")

<comment><USER16> That's really adorable! I need to pick up that series again, and actually read it all the way through this time...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Danes and Swedes collaborating?

I am thinking the big motivation here is the tax-free booze on the ferry ride to meetings.

<comment><USER18> It's funny, the biggest Danish multinational (by some measure) is a company that lets people build stuff themselves, and so is the biggest Swedish multinational. Is this something in Scandinavian culture? Denmark is also overrepresented in software tooling, such as inventing C++ (Stroustrup), PHP (Lerdorf), Turbo Pascal and C# (Hejlsberg), Unity, etc.

Even Denmark's actual biggest corporation (by market cap), Maersk, became big by inventing modular, stackable shipping containers!

<comment><USER19> DIY is quite Swedish. Not uniqly Swedish, I can't comment on that, but historically (until end of the 80s especially), the income tax levels made it so expensive to pay someone else to do things such as paint your house, renovations of various kinds etc, that people either did it themselves, or paid someone to do it "without receipt". There was a tax reform around 1990, that put a more reasonable ceiling on taxes on labour, and later also additional tax exemptions for some renovation work, which turned a black economy more white. Today it is much more common to pay for home renovations, but I think a DIY culture remains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As long as its rooted in blocks, I'm all for it. If it becomes rooted in precast IKEA specific shapes, its no better or worse than the Star Wars branded trash. If it becomes dominant, and removes the impetus for non- directed play in blocks, its net-negative.

Lego now is not what it used to be. Minifigs changed it. If you want what lego used to be, Meccano or roblox or some of the other undirected play spaces may be better.

<comment><USER20> I have always been fond of duplo blocks for this reason. They are totally undirected and up to the imagination. The resolution is too poor to really model what you want, so you have to dream instead. As a child my "tree house" was an 6x6 box on top of a 2x2 tower.

<comment><USER21> I wish this were true but the new stuff is just like Lego -- one-off shapes and special pieces, lots of decals and characters and animals.

It's still pretty great though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As with a lot of IKEA product names, this references what the product is: 'bygg' is 'build', and 'lek' is 'play'.

<comment><USER23> Lek also refers to LEGO which is short for danish leg godt (play well)

<comment> jo-m lek (Swedish) = leg (Danish), so lek is short for leg godt in the same sense play is short for play well ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For anyone using this for actual modular storage, Everblock is also worth considering: [https://www.everblocksystems.com/](https://www.everblocksystems.com/)

It's remarkably well constructed. Here's some examples: [https://www.everblocksystems.com/modular- furniture](https://www.everblocksystems.com/modular-furniture)

<comment><USER25> Have you used them? What was your experience?

<comment><USER24> Yes, they did everything they claimed and they're really sturdy, even without the rod that can be inserted in a hole in the center. The two downsides I know of are that shipping is relatively expensive (these blocks are the opposite of flat-pack..) and that the shelves can't be placed right next to one another on the long edge. I wanted to use 2 6x48" shelves ([https://www.everblocksystems.com/accessories/48-lintelshelf](https://www.everblocksystems.com/accessories/48-lintelshelf)) as 1 12x48" and the current shelves don't permit that. It appears to be possible but isn't. Their team told me before I ordered. The team seems very committed.

I also recommended it for a large set of modular office walls/phone booths a few years ago. That company used it for years and was very happy.

For the right situation, I'd gladly buy it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Feels obvious in retrospect, because both brands have a pretty similar vibe (at least for me). I don't really get it, though – is this fundamentally different from a plain old Lego Starter Set, apart from the nicer box?

<comment><USER27> Legos to me are bit more premium than Ikea. Ikea for the most part, with some exceptions, comes across as cheap and disposable —the opposite of Legos which have durability built in.

The main commonality may be the "design language" but not so much the engineering language. Ikea plastics are cheap and degrade rapidly (compared to Legos's premium polymers).

<comment><USER28> I thought this too until I started buying the solid wood IKEA furniture. That stuff will be with me for a long long time.

<comment><USER29> > solid wood IKEA furniture

Interesting, got a list somewhere.

<comment><USER30> My new IDÅSEN powered stand up desk is quite sturdy, albeit with a considerable premium from ikea is fantastic. Since I'll be WFH for awhile I thought it worthwhile.

<comment><USER31> The electronics and frame of IKEA's electronic standing desks are whitelabled products from Rol Ergo - so that's probably why it feels premium, as it's not made by IKEA :-)

[https://www.rolergo.com/products/](https://www.rolergo.com/products/)

<comment><USER32> I have feeling that the list of items made by IKEA is non-existant. Everything is done by subcontractors. I am saying this neutrally.

For example, I am buying some stuff specifically from IKEA, because: 1\. They provide longer warranty 2\. It's cheaper than the non-white label alternative (looking at you, Blum furniture fittings for example)

I need a super good reason why my next gas stove, oven and dishwasher are not from IKEA.

<comment><USER31> Well these are all European products, so yes if you are in the US it's probably cheaper to buy them from IKEA. In Europe you can get the non-IKEA branded version (their appliances are made by Electrolux AB, which has many brands such as AEG, Zanussi, etc) for cheaper from any home appliances store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My heart skipped a beat, thinking for a moment the possibilities of LEGO-like furniture. Oh well.

<comment><USER34> That sounds uncomfortable.

<comment><USER35> easy to assemble, easy to move, modular, sturdy but lightweight furniture is my dream product. hope someone invents something like that!

<comment><USER36> Sounds like Kallax (nee Expedit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Me, looking over the printed product images...

 _...is that a double-decker couch I see?_

<comment><USER38> I got that reference!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> √ I like shopping in IKEA

√ I like Lego

√ I like boxes..

</comment><comment><USER40> Why now, and not thirty-plus years ago? I suspect this may be the result of some lengthy negotiation process.

IKEA could have brought in off-brand LEGO-compatible blocks years ago. It seems like a no-brainer. Any half decent dollar store in North America has them.

Maybe IKEA carrying off-brand LEGO-like blocks would have pissed off LEGO, who protect their brand quite vehemently.

So then if you want real LEGO(tm) blocks that are simultaneously IKEA-branded, you need a deal; and who knows how long that had been brewing.

<comment><USER41> Ikea seems to have a relatively new effort to do these kinds of collaboration.

The other one i'm aware of is with Teenage Engineering [https://www.ikea.com/us/en/news/frekvens-limited- collection-...](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/news/frekvens-limited-collection- pubcd6f39e0)

<comment> crooked-v They've also got a thing going on with Sonos, and the Ikea-branded Sonos- compatible speakers are the cheapest ones you can get for that ecosystem currently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Not available in IKEA, USA :(

<comment><USER43> TFA says October was the planned launch. This early release in Munich might be a test market thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's getting more and more used as an embedded thing. Many times people showed ideas how to integrate legos for practical use (electronic cases, lego patterned strip to attach stuff). Quite fun

</comment><comment><USER45> Ikea has been doing a lot of cool collaborations these days, with a wide variety of focuses. Its pretty cool to see and hopefully they produce enough so its not sold out everywhere on the first day.

</comment><comment><USER46> That's pretty cool. Definitely would get younger me to stop groaning and sighing for the remainder of the shopping trip, it's unique, and the price seems reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER47> forget that, where is the new mindstorms inventor 51515?

</comment><comment><USER48> With so many lego collaborations, special sets, special parts, I kind of miss the days when lego was more simple and required more imagination.

<comment><USER49> Licensed sets saved them from bankruptcy, and now that they're healthily profitable again they've been releasing more "classic" sets like the Lego City, Lego Creator (and Creator Advanced), and Technics sets.

As someone who's been into Lego for life, and as a middle-aged parent who still regularly buys sets to build myself independent of the sets I buy for my kids, I'm more than happy for them to crank out the licensed sets (which I ignore) in exchange for them to still be here making those Creator/Technics ones for me.

<comment><USER50> >Licensed sets saved them from bankruptcy, //

Do you have a source on this?

Not doubting it, Lego is a good product with almost indefinite reuse, so it's not surprising if sales can't perpetually expand.

If we're to make it through the resource and energy crunch we're facing we need an economic system that allows entities to continue even when everything they make is made to last as long as possible - be repairable, reusable; heirloom grade.

<comment><USER49> > Do you have a source on this?

This is a late reply so you might not see it, but:

[https://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-lego-made-a-huge- turn...](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-lego-made-a-huge- turnaround-2014-2)

> The only reason Lego survived during this difficult time was due to the > success of the Bionicle and "Star Wars" series. The first "Star Wars" Lego > kits launched in 1999 and represented the company's first foray into > licensed series, many of which became integral to the company

Infographic showing the revenue curve before/after licensed sets were introduced:

[https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/underwire/2024/01/in_lego...](https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/underwire/2024/01/in_legos_large.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I really wish lego would create expansion packs for mindstorms. In mind, thats their most underrated set.

</comment><comment><USER52> How is this not just spam for a new IKEA item?

<comment><USER53> hacker news is for topics that we might find interesting:

> _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes > more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the > answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._

> _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they > 're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or > disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's > probably off-topic._

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

this definitely falls into the former for me.</comment></comment>


ListenBrainz moves to TimescaleDB - <AUTHOR> https://blog.metabrainz.org/2020/07/22/listenbrainz-moves-to-timescaledb/ <comment><USER2> Fun fact: TimescaleDB exists because we were using InfluxDB + Postgres for a previous IoT project and also found it unworkable (developer experience, query language, reliability, scalability and performance, operations, etc).

We first built TimescaleDB as "Postgres for time-series" for our own needs and then decided to open-source it for others. :-)

<comment><USER3> Have you thought of making a TimescaleDB app like the Postgres.app for macOS? Or could I use Postgres.app to make a TimescaleDB app?

<comment><USER4> It seems you can use the Postgres.app and install TimescaleDB on it

Here's some instructions on how to do so: [https://github.com/slashdotdash/til/blob/master/postgres/ins...](https://github.com/slashdotdash/til/blob/master/postgres/install- timescaledb.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting read and thanks for sharing.

Not too long ago, I was asked to work on some analytics project and it required time-series data. I'm not a rockstar programmer and don't really know much about trends. So, I ended up googling and stumble upon InfluxDB. It felt like that right choice and I started playing with it. As the time passed, I realized that it might be a good software and I'm sure people love InfluxDB, but it wasn't the right choice for me. I didn't really like the docs, maybe its good now. And I had the same feeling about query syntax, it felt weird.

I moved to TimescaleDB and never looked back. I have it production for almost 2 months now. 20 tables and over 100Million writes/week. One of things I really liked was staging, I don't use docker and or anything fancy. I have bash script that and it runs on centos box and all timescale extension and postgres database are packaged together.

I was impressed by the timescale compression feature. I wasn't using it earlier because I had to be careful about what columns I need to segmentby. I would love to see some more features but I'm sure timescaledb team is already on it.

<comment><USER2> Hey 120bits - thanks for the nice words!

What new/other features would you like to see? (Also feel free to join slack.timescale.com or reach out at mike (at) timescale.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> +1 on escaping measurement names. Quoting from their source code:

        def get_escaped_measurement_name(user_name): # ... comment omitted
            return '"\\"{}\\""'.format(user_name.replace('\\', '\\\\\\\\').replace('"', '\\"').replace('\n', '\\\\\\\\n'))

<comment><USER7> That looks somehow worse than regex in C literal.

<comment><USER8> Although it seems about par for the course for regexp in elisp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey! I've been working on ListenBrainz [0] for the past 3-ish years. Happy to answer questions if anyone has any.

[0]: [https://listenbrainz.org](https://listenbrainz.org)

<comment><USER10> I read that whole page and I have no idea what the project does.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, we need to fix that landing page. It's basically an open repository of your music listening history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm in the process of moving from InfluxDB to TimescaleDB myself and can't wait to get rid of the hoops I have to jump through to get InfluxDB to answer some basic questions, mostly stemming from the fact that InfluxQL doesn't support boolean expressions. Something like 'SELECT MAX(temperature) > 10 FROM...' doesn't work.

<comment><USER12> (InfluxData solution architect here) Boolean is supported. You query it in the WHERE clause. Try `SELECT MAX(temperature) FROM ... WHERE temperature > 10`. That said, I'm not sure why you'd run a query like that in InfluxQL as it's the same as `SELECT max(temperature)`. :).

<comment><USER11> It's not the same thing. 'SELECT MAX(temperature) > 10 FROM ...' gets you all the datapoints, with a value of true or false. Moving it to the WHERE clause only gets you the datapoints where temperature is > 10\. Yes, you can fill with 0 after the GROUP BY, but if _all_ datapoints are less than 10, you get nothing back from the database. That's confusing: were all datapoints less than 10, or was there nothing registered in the time window I'm querying? Impossible to tell the difference. Not to mention some user interfaces just bailing: no data. I need to show a chart with a timeline of this condition being true or false.

Plus my actual use case is even more complex, not only do I need something like MAX(temperature) > 10, I need (MAX(temperature)) > 10 && (MAX(temperature) - MAX(dewpoint)) > 4.5).

<comment><USER12> Yep you're right -- oversight on my part. To be clear, the "not sure why you'd run a query like that" was referring to doing it the InfluxQL way (which is not the same thing)...where your results would end up being the same controlling for time range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> (TimescaleDB co-founder). Thanks for the kind words! I feel especially proud about the first point "openness" \- this is something we strive for both technically and culturally.

For example, we have a pretty active Slack channel[0] where you can ask us anything. We've probably given away $$$$ of free support over the years ;-)

[0] [https://slack.timescale.com/](https://slack.timescale.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> We too started off with influx but it wasn't a good fit mainly due to use having issues with high cardinality. I don't know if this is still the case with current implementations, but what it boils down to is if your data is searchable by a "user_id" really look elsewhere. That might be an oversimplification but that's the gist of it.

I was fully ready to just roll my own partitioned table and gave TimescaleDB a shot. It worked well. There was a bug we ran into, but it was an existing one documented on github and was addressed pretty quickly.

I still like influx, and would use it again but beware of the cardinality issues.

<comment><USER15> If you have cardinality issues in InfluxDB, then just substitute InfluxDB with VictoriaMetrics :) [1]

[1] [https://medium.com/@valyala/insert-benchmarks-with-inch- infl...](https://medium.com/@valyala/insert-benchmarks-with-inch-influxdb-vs- victoriametrics-e31a41ae2893)

</comment></comment><comment> awinter-py timescale is a postgres extension. 'postgres as a platform' is an interesting world to live in.

postgres built-in RBAC is clunky or people would be relying on it, but an ecosystem of postgres plugins could include cleaner or smaller versions of this feature.

Even things like complex migrations (github's gh-ost, for example) could exist as DB plugins.

</comment><comment><USER16> As someone who wants to pick up a time series DB to learn, what would be the best in terms of being the "industry standard"? InfluxDB? TimescaleDB?

I'm familiar with some basics of kdb and use it often in my day job, but from what I understand that isn't widely used outside of finance?

<comment><USER15> The following time series databases are popular right now:

* ClickHouse (this is a general-purpose OLAP database, but it is easy to adapt it to time series workloads)

* InfluxDB

* TimescaleDB

* M3DB

* Cortex

* VictoriaMetrics

The last three of these TSDBs support PromQL query language - the most practical query language for typical time series queries [1]. So I'd recommend starting from learning PromQL and then evaluating time series databases from the list above.

[1] [https://medium.com/@valyala/promql-tutorial-for- beginners-9a...](https://medium.com/@valyala/promql-tutorial-for- beginners-9ab455142085)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In some cases it is difficult to define the table columns up front. Instead, a few tables: Object, Property, Time and Value (example below) are defined which make it possible to create new items on the fly. This works reasonably well up to a few billion records in the value table. However it does end up taking a lot of space (covering indexes/requisite memory are required for performance). It would be great to see a Postgres compatible solution that solves this problem in a more optimal way than a stock RDMS.

Object objectId objectName other...

Property propertyId objectId FK propertyName other...

Time timeId time other..

Value timeId FK propertyId FK value

</comment><comment><USER18> > If you ever write bad data to a measurement in InfluxDB, there is no way to > change it

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain you can just write data with the same timestamp again and it gets updated. Deleting is also easily possible.

<comment><USER9> ListenBrainz dev here. We wanted stuff like the ability to do stuff like "DELETE FROM measurement where field = blah" and that support didn't exist last time we looked. [0]

Another thing that's not mentioned in the post but was a pain point for us was that it's not easy to query for fields with "null" values [1].

I figure a lot of our pain might be because we're not as good at Influx as we are at PostgreSQL. We've been running MusicBrainz[2] for ~18 years on PostgreSQL, that knowledge will hopefully transfer over a little with Timescale.

[0]: [https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb/issues/3210](https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb/issues/3210)

[1]: [https://github.com/influxdata/docs.influxdata.com/issues/717](https://github.com/influxdata/docs.influxdata.com/issues/717)

[2]: [https://musicbrainz.org](https://musicbrainz.org)

<comment><USER18> True, deleting by value does not seem to be possible. I can see how that would be painful if it's necessary for your use case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Figured I'd use this as an opportunity to plug my own service: [https://eqe.fm](https://eqe.fm)

Only works on jailbroken devices but it works well, has a local backup, and has been maintained (by me) for 2 years now.

Server costs are $2.50/mo, so this will stay up as long as I am alive.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd love to hear more about how your data ingestion works. I'm thinking of implementing TimescaleDB myself, but in my initial read of the docs, the focus seemed to be managing the database, not getting data into the database...

<comment><USER21> same way you'd insert data into postgres.

<comment><USER20> That's not really helpful. Let's assume you have a distributed system; you probably don't want all of your system components connecting directly to TimescaleDB. You also probably want to have some layer that implements queuing and handles back pressure if it can't insert into the database at the rate that events are coming in. You may want to batch insert data.

I'd assume that most anyone building a system like this at scale has to solve these problems; does everyone roll their own?

<comment> k-rus There are number of tools, which can be used in front of TimescaleDB or PostgreSQL. There are plugins for Telegraf, Kafka, Prometheus as described in [https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using- timescaledb/ingestin...](https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using- timescaledb/ingesting-data)

Timescale builds connector and entire workflow to run Prometheus on top of TimescaleDB and support Grafana in flexible way: [https://github.com/timescale/timescale- prometheus](https://github.com/timescale/timescale-prometheus)

<comment><USER20> Perfect. Thank you for the reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Has anyone used Prometheus as well as TimescaleDB in production and have thoughts to share on those, comparatively?

<comment><USER13> We have quite a few in our Slack channel: slack.timescale.com

Feel free to ask over there :)

(Btw - TimescaleDB is designed to work with Prometheus. You can see more here: [https://github.com/timescale/timescale- prometheus](https://github.com/timescale/timescale-prometheus))

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really want to love timescaledb, it's great.. except for the minor issue of not being able to back up.

[https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/issues/1835](https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/issues/1835)

<comment><USER13> TimescaleDB definitely supports backups :-)

Here is a page from our docs on how to perform Backup & Restore: [https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using- timescaledb/backup](https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using- timescaledb/backup)

Not sure what's going on in that one Github issue, but we are looking into it.

<comment><USER24> It seems to be affecting multiple people too. :(

<comment><USER13> That issue is now closed by the original author:

"Data is successfully dumped. also i can see the constraints, indexes are also copied successfully."

[https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/issues/1835](https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/issues/1835)

<comment><USER24> Cool. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Surreptitiously Weakening Cryptographic Systems - <AUTHOR> http://eprint.iacr.org/2015/097

<comment><USER2> This paper is great and contains some really interesting historical examples of backdoored crypto. For example, Lotus Notes 4 circumvented export controls by using a 64-bit key but taking the first 24 bits and encrypting them with a public key available to the NSA, thus meeting the 40-bit limit.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I'm at liberty to cite explicitly another example, but I will allude to it: At the time when only 512-bit-RSA was permitted for general export, export a 1024-bit-RSA based system by ensuring that each time public key encryption is performed, a 512-bit key pair is generated, the wrapped symmetric key included with the payload, and the 512-bit key pair discarded.

Removed in later versions, AFAIK, as regulations relaxed, e.g., with the advent of Wassenaar.

<comment><USER4> SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 did this (with a ServerKeyExchange message), with the limit being 512-bit for 40-bit export cipher suites and 1024-bit for the 56-bit export cipher suites. This is another reason why it is unfortunate that the 56-bit export cipher suites was disabled in OpenSSL in 2006.

<comment><USER3> Wow, timely: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2015/03/03...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2015/03/03/freak-flaw-undermines-security-for-apple-and-google- users-researchers-discover/) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9139273](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9139273)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm upset that the paper didn't include known 'sidedoors' designed in to get Windows Device Encryption (Bitlocker) keys, nor the controversy over remote TPM attestation, nor the 12 bit keyspace that Apple provides the user through its Secure Enclave.</comment>


Backup Your Google Docs With LTech's New Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/07/backup-your-google-docs-with-ltech.php <comment><USER2> This is a really good idea. Just taking stock of how much of our info and personal history resides online for a minute should highlight the need for simple backup solutions.

Humans make errors, hardware fails, companies go out of business or change services. Even in the redundant cloud, you can't rely on anyone but yourself for the safety of your data.</comment>


Rackspace Will Pay for Your Upgrade to Apple's Snow Leopard - <AUTHOR> http://www.rackspace.com/email_hosting/blog/2009/08/free-snow-leopard To go along with the launch of Snow Leopard today, and to celebrate the OS's native support for Microsoft's Exchange 2007, world-renowned hosting company - Rackspace - will be giving a free copy to those that sign up for an Exchange account. <comment><USER2> So what? In other words, Rackspace runs $30-off sale. By attaching a "cool" angle to it, though, they manage to get it in the news. Well done to their marketing department, I guess.

<comment><USER3> Much more (and less). They will pay for each client that accesses an Exchange server you run at rackspace. You could upgrade a dozen desktops on their nickel.

But it is limited to the first 1,000 people. So think of it as a $30k ad buy where they cut out the middle man and paid some of the end eyeballs instead.

<comment><USER4> It's $30 credit towards your rackspace hosted exchange service (which is $12.50/mo. per user) - obviously their costs are much less than $12.50. In reality it is just a discount code - it's like google giving out a free adwords credit.

On another note: I am actually considering going with Rackspace to host my main email address (personal/freelance stuff). Currently using Google Apps, but if the Snow Leopard exchange integration is as good as Apple says - then I will definitely be wanting push everything. I would use MobileMe, but there's no option to use your own domain.

<comment><USER2> _In reality it is just a discount code_

.. which is exactly what I was trying to say.

You want to run your own private Exchange server!?

<comment><USER4> .. which is what I was trying to explain to jws who called it a $30k ad buy.

No, I do not want to run my own private exchange server. I want to use Rackspace hosted exchange to host 1 email address. A shared exchange server.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is It Cheating to Use Wolfram Alpha for Math Homework? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2010/01/22/is-it-cheating-to-use-wolframalpha-for-math-homework/

<comment><USER2> Enjoyable presentation. Conrad Wolfram basically suggests teaching math like programming is often taught. (focus logical on problem solving, by changing the belief that computing by hand = math skill)</comment>


WordPress to ditch React library over Facebook patent clause risk - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/wordpress-to-ditch-react-library-over-facebook-patent-clause-risk/ <comment><USER2> More discussion on this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15253781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15253781)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15261213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15261213)

</comment><comment><USER3> While the patent clause is part of the issue, the WP leadership has been given a lot of backlash for their choice of React. It is (rightfully) seen by many as overly complicated and not a great fit for the WP admin panel.

When you combine this with a lot of uncertainty over the upcoming Gutenberg editor, I feel it's good to take a step back to evaluate options, but am also afraid of Gutenberg not shipping, which would be disastrous for WP since the current TinyMCE editor badly needs an overhaul.

<comment><USER4> I'd be fine with Gutenberg being delayed until next year if this means a switch away from React.</comment></comment>