Things I Wish I'd Been Told: Tips For Students with a Bachelors in Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.ir.bbn.com/~craig/things-i-wish.html <comment><USER3> I liked this guide, even though it was brief - there were some useful career koans.

> Finally, don't forget to be well rounded.

When I started my first real software development job at a fairly large company, I was surprised to see that practically everyone worked on their own life outside of work, with a few exceptions (like me, at the time). They were part-time geeks in that they spent time away from the computer - when they were not at work. That was the biggest difference for me - going from college to the work force.

Some had families - which were their focus - every year around Halloween time it was vividly evident how important their children were ("John has two kids!.. I had no idea") and their jobs were (to support their families).

Some invested time in hobbies - whether it involved fixing up motorcycles, renovating their house, and my favorite (volunteering to maintain old railroad steam engines and _run_ them on occasional weekends). The weirdest hobby - <USER2> a guy who did rubbings - as in rubbings of gravestones - when he traveled.

The first years in software development can be intense because you (usually) can hyper-focus on it. Once you get some experience, you'll start to realize it's not about the technology - there are common patterns. And once you have a lot of experience, you might be on the transition path out of wanting to code with the latest out there - e.g. settle down, start a family.

> That point is worth repeating another way: an extra dollar in salary is not > really a dollar, it is 60 cents.

In the crazy dot-com days, I invested a mere thousand and made $25k+ and lost it all on margin calls. And learned to realize how hard it is to actually make $25,000 while paying living expenses. Tracking is the first step to budgeting - and it can be painful.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to put a plug in for doing gravestone rubbings. If you've never tried it, grab a box of crayons and some paper and maybe a date and head over to your nearest cemetery. I've only done it once or twice but I've found some really cool patterns and textures both times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here are some tips that are more relevant for the semi-recent job market (I graduated in 2007):

1\. If you aren't doing an internship or working a job that's related to your field (like doing systems administration / development for the college or a local company), you are behind, even if you are on the Dean's List. These days, employers seem to be able to find enough people who have done something parallel to their education, so if you don't you will look just as inexperienced as if you had no degree at all. The bar got raised and it's possible no one has told you.

2\. I am probably biased towards the job market in my area, but hardly anyone wants entry level, and as I said above, no one wants "ground level" (just a degree) unless you are gunning for a helpdesk / PC tech position. I figure this is because the hiring pool of experienced IT workers is large enough and their quality versus fresh recruits better enough that they feel they don't need to look for junior staff that they plan on training.

3\. As others have said, you will only really use a small set of the skills you learned in school. Work will remind you more of your job / internship / side projects you had during college. This is probably why employers scoff at degree-only graduates.

4\. All of this advice is of course just my personal experience, and many employers probably have different beliefs.

<comment><USER6> I've been recruiting developers for intern and entry-level positions lately. If anyone cares, here are the factors I look at when doing preliminary resume screening (in order of importance).

1\. Time until graduation (we prefer candidates who will be graduating soon so that the good ones can return as full-time employees)

2\. Software development experience that goes beyond class projects (including other real jobs, previous internships, and work on open-source projects)

3\. Familiarity with a variety of programming languages (some schools teach most classes using Java plus a little bit of JavaScript, but we like to see a greater breadth of experience)

4\. Relevance of major (Software Engineering is probably the closest fit, followed by Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, Applied Mathematics, etc.)

5\. School reputation

6\. Master's versus Bachelor's degree status

7\. GPA and academic honors

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I was unusually naive, and probably everyone's more informed these days, but the thing I'd add is that tech companies are very different from other companies for CS majors.

I supposed in my innocence that there were the overtly-sexy apps and the unsexy but still challenging apps* . I haven't had the opportunity to work for a real tech company yet, but my impression is that programming in IT is essentially a different career compared to programming in a software company.

*It's not just a matter of nasty-little-problems. It's also a question of cultural values. More on this at [http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2009/02/22/programming-does...](http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2009/02/22/programming-doesnt-suck-or-at-least-it-shouldnt/).

<comment><USER8> Does anyone have experience with defense contractors? They are a big recruiter of CS grads in San Diego. I would like to know your experience versus working at a tech shop or a corporate IT shop.

<comment><USER9> I work at a defense contractor now (and have worked in a tech shop and corporate IT before).

The main problem I've found in defense contracting is that it isn't flexible, and (in my opinion) too many design decisions are made at too high a level. Details that don't really matter (what implementation of X we're going to use in development, for example) are decided (and made effectively immutable) before it makes sense to do so by people not actually doing the coding. To be fair, I've only been around for a month (and this is just my experience with one contract), so take it with a pinch of salt.

Corporate IT, in my opinion, is pretty boring. There were two of us supporting ~500 users across the world (offices in Chicago, NY, LA, London, etc), and I still had a lot of down time. We had some simple tools that took care of 90% of our work (re-imaging, backups, data migration, etc), and the rest were a lot of reasonably easy one-off jobs (simple tool to parse excel reports, load monitioring webapps, etc) or product evaluation (Evaluate these n products, talk to these 2n vendors (sorry, 'solution providers'), and write a report on your recommendation). There were one or two reasonably interesting projects (a 'visual voicemail' feature hacked onto our avaya phone system and some genetic algorithms for scheduling a conference), but they were the exception. Far more time on the phone talking to end users and vendors than I would like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I recently joined the "workforce" and wish I had had more advices as a student.

It's a good but incomplete article, I would add : \- Working is hard, it's a very difficult commitment. You'll have to keep motivated with little help and you'll be alone in difficult situations. \- You'll be paid less than you think you do in the first years, but it will gradually increase \- The caricatures you see on tv are mostly true in the corporate world \- A lot of stuff you'll learn in school is bullshit, it'll be either obsolete or inadequate at work

</comment><comment><USER11> I would say everything on this list rings very true. One thing I wish I had done sooner is to take advantage of rewards on credit cards. These days you can buy almost anything with a credit card so you might as well get something in return for it. You have to do your homework but several with give cash back, free hotel rooms, free flights etc. These perks can add up over time and save you some money. Additionally using services like Mint to track your various accounts will help you see where you spend most your money and give you a big picture of your total networth in one spot

<comment><USER12> I disagree. I would forgo credit cards entirely. The reason is human psychology: people spend more when they use plastic. I don't care how smart you are or how disciplined you are, it is more painful to part with cash than to swipe your card. Somewhere between 10-20% more painful. In other words, you're likely to spend between 10-20% more than you would if you solely use credit cards than cash.

A typical credit card rewards program pays 1.5 or 2%. Hardly a good deal. I'd switch to cash instead.

<comment><USER13> I've found the opposite to be true; when I have cash in my pocket, I spend it.

I'm very disciplined about paying off my credit card every month, which means I have a fixed total budget that I refuse to go over. A part of that I dump into cash in my pocket for beer and sushi and whatever doesn't accept credit cards, and the rest I set aside to pay off the month's credit card bill.

The effect of this is that I have to keep a running ballpark tally of how much I have left in the credit card pile, and since I've conditioned myself to be deathly afraid of going over, I always estimate conservatively, and I inevitably wind up with a surplus that I dump straight into savings and never touch again.

Why a credit card instead of a check card? Because the credit card company pays me that 2% for free, because if it gets stolen it's the credit card's money at risk and not mine, because if an emergency happens I have the flexibility to break my rules, because it establishes a credit score that I can parlay into lower interest rates when I want to buy a car or a house later.

I think the advice to not have a credit card is pretty terrible, actually. There are so many benefits, and as long as you have a little self-control, pretty much no downside.

<comment><USER12> > I think the advice to not have a credit card is pretty terrible, actually. > There are so many benefits, and as long as you have a little self-control, > pretty much no downside.

I disagree. This is great advice for the majority of people. Not everyone, but the majority.

Do credit cards offer benefits? Yes--convenience, expense tracking, protection against theft, etc.

Are these benefits free? No. People spend a lot more using credit cards than cash. Maybe not you, but most Americans. I don't care enough about this to look up the stats, but I do have a PHD psychologist friend on the payroll of one of the major credit companies and his job is to contrive ways to make people spend more on their cards.

Think about it like this: your cash is dumb--it justs sits there in your pocket. Your credit card is smart, however. A whole cadre of smart people--who are incentived to get you to spend more and pay late--are tracking how you spend money and are cooking up ways to get you to spend more and pay fees.

I know the empirical numbers would help my case more, maybe I'll dig them up and write a blog post about it.

<comment><USER13> If the numbers show that people spend irresponsibly with credit cards, that isn't necessarily evidence that it's good advice to say "Don't get a credit card". Those numbers you're basing that advice on have a built-in skew towards people who have chosen to use credit cards. You have to ask the question "Would a person who would accept the advice to not get a credit card behave in the same way as the average credit card user if they did have one?"

I would argue that if you're seeking and open to advice on whether or how to use a credit card, you're probably already differentiated from the free- wheeling credit-abusing mob, and that if that's the case, if you know you can be responsible with it, it's actually a really great idea to have one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article perpetuates one of the most common errors that new startup employees make. Namely, referring to a share or option on stock as a value that can be estimated.

The FIRST thing everyone needs to know about stock options is how many there are, and then look at possible exit strategies for the company, how much more funding will be needed, and what the valuation is when your options are granted and what they were for the different funding rounds. In essence, it's more important to know your ownership percentage than an absolute number of options.

</comment><comment><USER15> I told the dean of the college of engineering at my ol' university that alumni such as myself should be tapped for writing articles to the current students with info "we wish we knew back then." More "real world" stuff about the job market in the valley, etc.

He said it was interesting but never acted on it :(

<comment><USER16> Get in touch with your school newspaper (if you have one.) I wrote for mine throughout college and I know that editors are ALWAYS looking for articles from people like you. Trust me, the campus wants your voice, you just have to be proactive about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Tips for Computer Science Drop-Outs Like Me:_

\- Get a decent paying job doing developement or IT. At the very least, something that gives you health ins.

\- Do consulting/contract gigs on the side. Choose projects that will let you expand your skills and learn new technologies.

\- Live below your means and save money for 12 months.

\- Month 13: build and launch your startup.

\- Continue your job for at least 6 more months, but stop doing the side gigs.

\- Month 18: Evaluate your startup. If it's making money, quit your job.

\- If it's not making money, build and launch another startup.

\- Repeat as needed.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish it told exactly how to get 7% a year on an IRA.

<comment><USER19> Good news! It doesn't matter because that 7% interest has been wiped out anyhow!

In the past ten years I've been able to sock away nearly nothing in retirement due to the amount of time I've spent unemployed, and I'm currently 30. While I'm as affected by the market issues as anybody else, one side effect of stock prices dropping back to 1997 levels is that all the interest I thought I was missing out on, it turns out I wasn't after all.

Man, I wish I were twenty and had a good job now, buying my IRAs at the bottom of the market like this.

<comment><USER14> Same here! I put $2000 in a Roth IRA in '98 and never made another contribution. Now it's worth $1800. Of course it would be nice to have $18,000 at 30 instead of $1800, but there is some redemption. Now, about the $5000 in credit card debt...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I kinda think a lot of this stuff absolutely has to be learned the hard way.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like the bit about Managing Your Boss where the workplace now is more of a symbiotic relationship. Interesting realization when mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's quite a bit of good information on this page about how to spend money on yourself, but there's one important thing missing: how to give money away. I think the most difficult money-related issue I've had to deal with is deciding how much of my income I'm going to keep for myself and how much I'm going to give to those who need it more than I do.

When you come out of school and land right in the middle class, as most professional developers do, it's pretty easy to take care of your basic needs. What's more difficult is balancing your (often frivolous) wants and needs in the present, with your needs in the future (retirement), with the basic needs of others. I don't see many people talking about how to do this in a responsible and morally satisfying way.

</comment><comment><USER23> is it me, or is pretty much the entire thing extremely common sense? Maybe I'm forgetting my college years, but I'm pretty sure I knew this back then

<comment><USER24> Common sense, isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The thing that I keep hitting myself over the head is regarding taking risks... I wish I had known that after I graduated...

</comment><comment><USER26> set a high but attainable percentage goal for savings. if you're making typical programmer salary at a young age with no major expenses it isn't impossible to save 50% of your paycheck.

Just remember: once you can afford a down payment you recoup a huge amount of your own income by investing it in equity instead of throwing it away.

</comment><comment><USER27> Choice quote:

"Part of your job is figuring out what your boss is good at and what your boss is bad at, and asking your boss for help with things that your boss is good at, and politely giving your boss help with the things your boss is bad at."

</comment><comment><USER28> I am surprised that the average starting salary in silicon valley was only $50,000 in 1999. I was under the impression that tech salaries never returned to the dot com boom levels.

The average starting salary now must be at least $10,000 more.

<comment><USER29> Inflation. $50k in 1999 is roughly $63k now. <http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/>

<comment><USER28> I didn't realize that inflation was that high.

I also have an anecdotal reference point. A friend of mine who worked at the same company I do in the dot com years made over 80k in an entry level position. I make significantly less than 80k right now, albeit in a different field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> is it better to have stock or just ask for a raise in a startup company?

<comment><USER31> Depends on how well you can predict the future.

In other words, there is a risk/reward function that has the likelihood of the company being successful as a variable. For all intents and purposes, you'll basically be guessing this value (high uncertainty != high risk).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> In other words, the #1 thing for a CS student to know is that the world does not stop at the borders of computer science.

Teach yourself about money, finances, and the absolute basics of contract law. There's a reason why lawyers, accountants, and the like make very good livings.</comment>


Static type system over dynamic language - short stories. - <AUTHOR> http://kailuowang.blogspot.com/2013/06/static-type-system-over-dynamic.html

<comment><USER2> I'm really glad to hear someone talk about the development/debug advantages of static typing. I work in a mixed java/ruby/python shop and issues with typing come up all the time. We catch so many bugs during java compilation that we can't see in ruby/python.

Sure, if you've got great test coverage, you get that with test automation. But I can't tell you how many refactors with "reasonable" (< 100%) test coverage went flawlessly in java with just a compile/fix-compilation-errors loop. I think this is much easier than a run-tests/fix-bugs approach with a type-free language. This is especially true when you've got maturing code and lots of ownership hand-offs.

Any tips on static analysis for ruby/python out there for a curmudgeonly java dev?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your experience. I don't have much experience with static analysis with ruby except the ones from rubymine - it checks for some easy errors, and it's real time which is good. but I think you still need to rely mainly on tests.</comment></comment>


15 Great Examples of Web Typography - <AUTHOR> http://ilovetypography.com/2008/01/02/good-web-typography/

<comment><USER2> I still think that Arial and Times are the pinnacle of typographic design.

<comment><USER3> Come on, you could have at least said Helvetica.

They're showcasing these sites for much more than the typefaces used though. There's a lot of great macro typography and grid design here, along with just pushing the typesetting details beyond what HTML/CSS makes easy.</comment></comment>


Cyber Squirrel 1 Disrupting at the highest levels - <AUTHOR> http://cybersquirrel1.com/ <comment><USER2> Best paragraph ever about squirrels, courtesy of [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/opinion/sunday/squirrel- po...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/opinion/sunday/squirrel-power.html) :

 _Matthew Olearczyk, a program manager with the Electric Power Research Institute, explains that typically a squirrel will cause a blackout by scampering across electrical equipment and touching simultaneously both an energized component, like one of the cylindrical transformers at the top of a utility pole, and a grounded piece of equipment. The squirrel completes the circuit, generating an arc. There is an instantaneous flash of blue light. At its center is the squirrel, combusting._

<comment><USER3> I've had this happen outside my house twice, when it was raining. The squirrel looked kinda crispy and would send up a puff of smoke occasionally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of these brave agents chewed through some PBX equipment when I was in college, and that's how we found out that the phone system's failure mode was to emit a sustained, wraith-like shriek, very similar to the sound we students made as it woke everyone up at 2 AM.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lol, I was just at a tour of the new underground power distribution building in Zürich. Squirrels were mentioned and this new underground building tries to prevent "squirrel incidents" in the future.

Some photos I took: [https://goo.gl/photos/dLpTWm9m8Ggdirzn9](https://goo.gl/photos/dLpTWm9m8Ggdirzn9)

<comment><USER6> Are you sure you want these photos online where squirrels could find them and plan their attacks?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a shame they lose so many good agents out in the field.

<comment><USER8> There's one that's constantly at my back door asking for some food scraps or nuts, but I know it's really trying to proximity-sniff out my Wifi password.

<comment><USER9> He may also be trying to distract the attack dogs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If anyone else is confused by this (as I was), click any pin on the map and you'll get it.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is my favourite vendor email I have ever received:

      The datacenter (Toronto) will be performing emergency maintenance at 3:30 pm EDT today afternoon due to raccoon in the electric system.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well this explains the controversial "warrantless squirrel tracking provision" in CISA.

</comment><comment><USER13> They are organized and they have bootcamps!

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=squirrel+obstac...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=squirrel+obstacle+course+mission+impossible)

</comment><comment><USER14> I couldn't find the Jellyfish incident, I'm curious how that one went down.

<comment><USER15> You'll find it in southern Sweden - "Jellyfish Invasion Forces EON to Shut Down Swedish Nuclear Plant" :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> those are the same bastards eating my pumpkins!

</comment><comment><USER17> I am pretty sure then that my cat is part of an anti-cyber-squirrel team. She takes down about four a year.

</comment><comment><USER18> What has America done to the squirrels?

<comment><USER19> Due to ever increasing development, squirrels can no longer travel the nation by jumping between successive trees as their ancestors once did. Today it involves much more work and danger: crawling down, scampering across open ground, climbing back up, running the wires, and dealing with those high voltage pole pigs. Actually, squirrels have been mad as hell at us for many years now. Thus far they haven't overtaken us because (a) we've appeased them somewhat by tossing them peanuts and filling bird feeders with sunflower seed, and (b) they haven't quite mastered the "opposable thumb" thing just yet. But they are known for adaptability and persistence, and there are reports they are making major advances with (b) by secretly observing our finesse at eating chicken wings at outdoor picnics and festivals. Really, it's only a matter of who gets there first: squirrels and thumbs, dogs and doorknobs, cows and upright walking, or cats figuring out the internet backbone. We'll soon be paying homage to our new overlords, and they won't even be from an alien planet.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Some useless JS that simulates ping in the Browser - <AUTHOR> http://ejjohnson.org/pong/pinger.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a heads up, the reason I say "useless" is that about 1/2 of the servers I tried testing with using the technique in the pong tool just black hole the request.</comment>


Goodyear Welted Shoes - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_welt <comment><USER2> i think paraboots are made this way?</comment>


Ask HN: Master 1 language or learn several languages intermediary? - <AUTHOR> I'm a senior graduate student studying in India with BS in CS. We've been taught several languages throughout the 4 semesters particularly C & C++ in the junior year. But I always felt that the courses of the languages went by in a fast paced manner, without properly grasping it to a certain level where you feel satisfied with the language.
My question is, is it a better idea to completely master 1 or 2 language to the "expertise" level (like for example C++ & Python) or learn several languages (more than 4) at an intermediary level giving them equal time, with a aim to be proficient in multiple-languages?
What impact would either of the decision have on a person's job and career?
I'm really interested in learning C++ and mastering it to the expertise level where I can do pretty much anything without having to think twice. <comment><USER2> I don't think there's any practical benefit in "mastering" any particular language. In my opinion, it's much more useful to master certain concepts/fields or platforms. For example, instead of choosing to master either Node.js or Python, it would be more helpful to master server-side application development so that potential employers can rely on you to develop a well-written backend no matter what the language being used is.

Becoming an expert in C++ has little value because you have to also be good at applying that knowledge to certain fields, and that's especially true when almost every field (machine learning, application development, embedded systems, etc) has solutions that can be implemented in multiple languages.

TL;DR Don't focus too much on the language, focus more on the concepts of the field you want to work in :)</comment>


Code review best practices - <AUTHOR> http://glen.nu/ramblings/oncodereview.php <comment><USER2> This is well written, even if the points it makes aren't novel. The underlying thread is to keep your code reviews moving along quickly and a good tool can help make the best use of your time. The article mentions Review Board, but I humbly submit that [https://reviewable.io](https://reviewable.io) is perhaps even better if you're using GitHub (disclosure: I built it).</comment>


Show HN: Quadcopter Simulator - <AUTHOR> https://usernaamee.github.io/quadsim.html <comment><USER2> Hmmm. Not very realistic unless that is a huge and heavy quadcopter.

</comment><comment><USER3> The camera control is nigh-unusable for me in Firefox 53.0.3

<comment><USER4> I think this is browser-independent. If the author were to position the camera relative to the quadcopter it would be much more usable. Also need to have the camera's target update each frame to track the quadcopter position. Since they are using three.js OrbitControls, they can just call this each frame:

       controls.target.copy(quadcopterPosition);

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would be about 100x cooler if there was an environment you could fly through and not just empty grass.

<comment><USER6> Microsoft has a similar project for testing drone control algorithms in simulated environments: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/aerial-info...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/aerial-informatics-robotics-platform/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Charles River RC Simulator (crrcsim) has a nice quadcopter option.

</comment><comment><USER8> Impressive! Im assuming this was done in sketchup?

</comment><comment><USER9> looks well done</comment>


Signs that can reveal a fake photo - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170629-the-hidden-signs-that-can-reveal-if-a-photo-is-fake <comment><USER2> There's a YouTuber by the name of Captain Disillusion that has a series of debunking fake videos, using many of the same techniques described here.

Where it really gets cool is that he does video work for a living, and in many cases can _even tell you what special effects and stock images from the software library were specifically used_.

It's great stuff. Example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsXQInxxzBU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsXQInxxzBU)

<comment><USER3> This is eye opening to see the tricks used all in getting you to give someone your money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Regarding JPEG compression, there used to be a site that would make a heatmap of JPEG-induced noise for a given image, so you could see hotspots where it looked like it had been compressed twice (i.e. manipulated).

<comment><USER5> ELA? Error Level Analysis?

<comment><USER6> >ELA? Error Level Analysis?

Yeah, that was it. They shut it down but still have an info page on it: [http://www.errorlevelanalysis.com/](http://www.errorlevelanalysis.com/)

<comment><USER7> It's easy to spoof if you try though, so it only works to detect unsophisticated forgeries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great to read _the government or other criminal groups_ in a BBC article!

</comment><comment><USER9> It would be interesting if digital cameras would cryptographically sign photos. I'm sure there would be ways around that too (see also DRM arms race). Or at the very least use the photographer's private key to sign the photo. That might not prevent photo manipulation if the photographer wants to manipulate their photo but would prevent others from manipulating it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Experts can still spot these clues -- for now. How much longer before better tools can create altered images/videos that correct for all these defects? Aligning shadows/reflections seems like something that software should be able to do.

I think that within the decade, photo/video "evidence" will be something that can be legitimately questioned unless there's some kind of cryptographic proof that it hasn't been altered. Cameras will need to "sign" their images, perhaps?

<comment><USER11> Canon (probably others) have "verification kits" for using digital photography as evidence. This is to verify images haven't been tweaked after the fact. Not sure exactly how it works, but canon at least seems to require the high end 1 series cameras, presumably signing the images..

from the press release: "The kit consists of a dedicated SM (secure mobile) card reader/writer and verification software. When the appropriate function (Personal Function 31) on the EOS-1D Mark II or EOS-1Ds is activated, a code based on the image contents is generated and appended to the image. When the image is viewed, the data verification software determines the code for the image and compares it with the attached code. If the image contents have been manipulated in any way, the codes will not match and the image cannot be verified as the original."

[https://www.dpreview.com/articles/3146736527/canondvke2](https://www.dpreview.com/articles/3146736527/canondvke2)

<comment><USER12> Surely an easy work around would be to take the picture, doctor it, print it out, point the camera at the print out and snap.

<comment><USER13> Not sufficient; you will also need to worry about timestamps.

<comment><USER14> And with the printer resolution matching the camera

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Check out Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment:

[https://youtu.be/ohmajJTcpNk](https://youtu.be/ohmajJTcpNk)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is surprisingly good stuff (for being a bbc.com article - they tend to be overly light on details).</comment>


Nokia's collapse turned a sleepy town in Finland into an internet wonderland - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1720214/how-nokias-collapse-turned-oulu-into-an-internet-wonderland/ <comment><USER2> Oulu is my favorite town in Finland. Its post Nokia prosperity is most certainly due to Finland's generous social security allowing its people the time and means to recover without having to abandon and emigrate, and also the significant stimulus the state put forward to new entrepreneurial initiatives in the region.

There's definitely lessons their for the rest of Europe.

<comment><USER3> The article also notes that Oulu has inexpensive housing. Inexpensive housing is a lesson many cities could use—from Berlin to London to San Francisco. Having affordable housing help everyone from people with high-paying tech jobs to have the time to find new work, to people with lower incomes.

<comment><USER4> 1\. if you want inexpensive housing then you need to find enough voters that would take a X% haircut on their investment in their own home. good luck with that. 2\. i don't think you realise just how small oulu actually is. mega- cities like tokyo, sydney, london or nyc are hugely complex machines.

<comment><USER5> One wonders how many voters in cities own any property, even their own house. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's at least less than half. Possibly much less, but I'd like to see data if its out there. Obviously the sort that own property are more likely to vote, but there are many many more people who rent.

<comment><USER6> The homeownership rate in the US as well as in the UK is 65%.

What it means is that 65% of homes are occupied by their owners. It doesn't mean that 65% of people live in their own homes, but I suspect it is not too far off the share of people living in their own home or in a home owned by a family member or partner.

I guess the difference is people renting a room in a house occupied by its owner. Did I forget anyone?

It may not be the same at all in big cities though. I know that homeownership rates in London have collapsed far below 50% in recent years.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N)

[https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/home- ownership-r...](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/home-ownership- rate)

[https://www.ethnicity-facts- figures.service.gov.uk/housing/o...](https://www.ethnicity-facts- figures.service.gov.uk/housing/owning-and-renting/home-ownership/latest)

<comment><USER5> Yeah the cities thing was what I was thinking about mostly - in the countryside home ownership is higher as prices are less, less apartments and there are less big property owners.

Theres also the question of what it means to own ones house. A lot of people have a mortgage for their house, but the relationship between this and benefitting from the value appreciating is different for different people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Current Oulu resident here, working in the IT sector as well. Less than ten years ago, atmosphere was quite pessimistic when Nokia was laying off lot of people, which also heavily affected also multiple sub-contractor companies. However, everything has gone lot better than anyone expected and currently there are more IT sector employees in Oulu than in the golden ages of Nokia.

<comment><USER8> In general, do you need to speak Finnish to work in Oulu?

<comment><USER9> Pretty much yes. While you can find tech companies that hire exclusively English speakers A LOT of companies require fluent Finnish, even when the internal language is Finnish.

Finland is still in many ways a very conservative society.

<comment><USER8> well there goes a dream, Finnish is also ridiculously hard to learn, coming from English.

<comment><USER10> If you're a developer/coder/sysadmin you can find companies that will hire you speaking only English. This is very common, though much more so in Helsinki.

In everyday life speaking Finnish will be beneficial, for obvious reasons. I've been here a few years now, having moved from Scotland. Using English I've been able to get my brain scanned, buy a couple of flats, deal with daycare (I became a parent after moving here), and most bureaucracy.

Finnish is indeed hard to learn, but even getting the basics down will make your life easier and better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this is a great example why we as a society shouldn't coddle corporations just because they provide jobs. When they fall, others take their place, and many smaller companies make for a much more healthy and dynamic job market than a single monolith.

<comment><USER12> "don't put all your eggs in one basket"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The question I have is what if any lessons can be taken from Oulo's experience and applied to places like Lordestown, OH (losing their GM plant).

On the surface, a big difference seems to be that the current talent pool of Oulo is R&D heavy, vs the assembly labor heavy Rust Belt cities and towns.

The workers of Oulo, despite their initial misfortune and pessimism, faced a growing market for their skills - the government just needed to facilitate their transition to a new set of employers and ventures.

Does such a market exist for Rust Belt assembly workers? Probably not making the same things they made before - the auto industry is in major turmoil as it transitions to a structurally different transportation future.

I'd love to see a future where the collection of assembly skills those workers have are put to use to build the wind turbines and batteries that we desperately need, but it seems like there are both cultural and political hurdles in the way of that happening.

</comment><comment><USER14> University of Oulu, incidentally, is where IRC was born in 1988.

<comment><USER15> All the time I spent on x2ftp.oulu.fi finding DOS and game programming information...

<comment><USER16> Same here :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ah the glorious old days of Oulu FTP...

[http://ftp.lanet.lv/ftp/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/programming/forma...](http://ftp.lanet.lv/ftp/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/programming/formats/00index.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> To be honest, "sleepy Finnish town" sounds much more appealing than "internet wonderland".

<comment><USER19> It does, until you visit one that has lost its jobs...

<comment><USER20> This. There are plenty of rather grim Finnish factory towns that lost their industry and never found anything to replace it. Kemi, just up the road from Oulu and fully dependent on a couple of failing pulp mills, is a good example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The city succeeded to keep talent because they invested in them.

Somewhat unrelated but this really reminds me of Germany's Kurzarbeitslosengeld - short working hour unemployment benefits - which was introduced in the crisis years and is given credit why Germany has high employment and the economy quickly recovered after 2009. Companies were allowed to send employees on "part time unemployment" for a certain period of low work. So eg 300 staff get 60% hours and work 3/5 days per week and get 3/5 of their full time salary and in addition 2/5 of what they would get as unemployment benefits. This kept workers in employment, unemployment and benefit payouts low and helped make it easy for companies to keep skilled staff - and for staff to stay in employment and maybe upskill themselves in their spare time.

The scheme had some issues but overall a similarly positive impact.

I wish more countries & companies would recognise the benefits of investing in and catering for staff, rather than to see workers as replaceable widgets.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like to take every opportunity to tell people, I had the pleasure of working with a lot of folks from Nokia. They were the most talented and hardest working people I have encountered in my 30 years in the IT Industry (and I have been around).

The Company was overflowing with brilliant people and was a wonderful employer.

</comment><comment><USER23> The bridge program sounds amazing, not sure I grokked it correctly and the article only mentions it in passing but it sounds like they let some of the staff they made redundant take some of the firm's IP with them to help them strike out on their own? Does anyone have more details on this?

<comment><USER24> This is what I could find:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25965140](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25965140)

Not just IP, but also funding for new companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So you had a company that dominated the highest growing market in the world, and now you have a bunch of barely profitable startups and small businesses, and that's supposed to be a great outcome?

</comment><comment><USER26> Well it's nice to see Oulu in the international news for a good reason for a change.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow that's pretty cool.... Apple been taking over the states

</comment><comment><USER28> Nokia is a perfect example of corporate arrogance: "we didn't do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost" said the CEO at the time. Yet they did everything wrong.

<comment><USER29> Nokia did everything right for a very long time. But when everything is great success, people behind that success shadow the people who could make success in the future.

Netflix is great example of how to do big transition right. Netflix was in renting DVDs by mail business. When the decision to move to streaming was made, Netflix CEO did not allow managers who responsible for DVD renting business into meetings where the future was planned.

People responsible for Symbian should have been locked out from all future planning. They were allowed to participate and of course they sabotaged–both intentionally and unintentionally–all big changes. Moving from hardware and embedded software world to full software platform mindset required completely different people.

<comment><USER30> They were doing things wrong long before the iPhone was released, e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7600](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7600)

<comment><USER31> I think that's a sign of Nokia doing the _right_ things.

Nokia made a metric fuckton of different kinds of phones. Some of them, like your example, were just really goddamn weird and didn't really work out. But the key thing is that they weren't just sitting on their asses making a better Nokia 3310 every year.

When Nokia found a winning formula they absolutely used it and created devices based on that formula. However they were never afraid to try new weird shit. Doing new things and trying to break the mold of a traditional handset was exactly what allowed them to find new features and things to add to phones.

Their real problem was that they were too slow to adopt the changes brought forth by the iPhone, and were too confident in their dominance over the mobile market so they never saw the possibility of someone overtaking them.

<comment><USER29> Nokia had big screen touch-centric smartphone model prototypes long before Apple even dreamed doing phones. It was not like the idea was not there.

It was classical engineer vs. designer/marketer viewpont.

It's slower to write in touch-screen. From objective engineering perspective it's backwards in ergonomy. But most people who are not power users like Obama and his blacberry addiction. They just want to point and drag and big screen is better for pointing.

Steve Jobs saw the trade-off. Uses are willing to write slower and do more errors in exchange of bigger screen. Nokia engineers were doing ssh connections with Nokia Communicator and iPhone UI sucked small planets for anyone writing a lot. Touch-screens are still slower for writing.

<comment><USER32> Pre-iPhone Nokias all had resistive touchscreens. Not a pleasant experience for pointing and dragging. Before 2007 no one was insane enough to put glass on a phone.

<comment><USER33> This. It's not the glass specifically (you can still buy cheap androids with polycarbonate screens), but the capacitative touchscreen, which is more expensive and requires a much fancier controller to read. But without it, either you have to use a stylus, which despite Samsung's belief hardly anyone wants, or press fairly hard. And you can't do multi-touch at all.

Capacitative touchscreen + "real" web browser (not WAP!) was the key capability of the iPhone. The fact that it subsumed the already successful iPod was a big benefit too.

<comment><USER34> > you have to use a stylus, which despite Samsung's belief hardly anyone wants

That's an odd swipe in an otherwise good post. You don't have to use a stylus with the Galaxy Note series but the option is quite popular

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Pretty cool I've heard about Finland too.Well Samsung kinda lost too PS Apple has everywhere wired up....

</comment><comment><USER35> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulu_child_sexual_exploitation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulu_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal)

<comment><USER36> Not sure how this relates to the story. Why did you post it?

<comment><USER35> "Nokia's collapse turned a sleepy town into creepy town"

Except it has always been creepiest place in Finland thanx to Laestadians: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laestadianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laestadianism)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do you often drop the subject in first-person sentences? - <AUTHOR>

It's a trivial and insignificant question, I know, but this is something that I've noticed quite a bit here and in many other places, typically in a professional setting. An example would be someone saying "Would love to talk to you about this further." What's the reasoning behind dropping the "I"? It is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine, I'll admit, perhaps because I've never really understood the mentality behind it. I mean, it is grammatically incorrect.<p>Anyway, I'm just looking to scratch a small itch. Would love to hear your opinions. <comment><USER2> Because sometimes you can drop words without running the risk of being confusing, often because the context fills in the blanks.

For example, if I write something and John responds "That's interesting. Would love to talk to you further about it" -- it's not made explicit who would love to talk, but who else than John could it possibly be? If on the other hand John's reply reads more like: "I liked your post, and my friend Steve found it particularly interesting. Would love to talk you you further" -- in this case you risk being confusing, because would John or Steve like to talk to you?

There's a similar effect with a sentence like: "That's an interesting observation. Might be good to get some more data." You've shortened "It might be good...", but that's OK since there is no risk of confusion.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't mind.

I think this make it more colloquial, hence more personal (at least to some).

Like "Wanna lunch"? You most likely would prefer that over a fully formed, grammatically correct subject line.

<comment><USER4> Or as we say in Pittsburgh, j'eet yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've rarely heard this in verbal communication. Much more common is the contraction, "I'd love to talk to you about this further."

The only time I've really seen this is through written communication, including instant messages, texts, informal letters/postcards, and informal emails. In each of these forms, sentence fragments in general are very common. I've also seen this more and more in formal written communications over the past few years, but usually from people who regularly use the aforementioned informal written forms of communication.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not really sure, but I think it's because a lot of my "dialogue" is internal, and it's annoying to put pronouns in there when it's always first- person. E.g. "I should do the dishes" or "I'd like to see what happened to that HN conversation from earlier." I just think "hm, should do the dishes" and sometimes I talk that way out loud. I know it's really confusing though, because if I say "should do the dishes" out loud, it sounds like I'm telling someone _else_ to do the dishes.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've noticed this habit in personal emails about startup-related chitchat. It could be unique to the tech scene that we all unconsciously reuse in order to self-identify. I'd be curious to see if data can back this up as a trend.

What about 'touch base'? For me, base seems to get touched several times a week.

</comment><comment><USER8> Something that nobody else has brought up so far is that certain media start off with the username.

Facebook, irc, etc al, all _give_ you the subject. So it looks like ' _bmelton_ would love to talk to you about', and such.</comment>


A predicted superconductor might work at a record-breaking 200° Celsius - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/predicted-superconductor-record-breaking-temperature-200-celsius <comment><USER2> Since this is the second story about this kind of research that has been posted this week, I feel it should be made clear that the purpose of this kind of experiment is not to develop room temperature superconductors for use in devices, but to study the physics of BCS (normal, "low temperature" superconductivity seen in metals like mercury, as opposed to that seen in materials like YBCO) superconductivity in materials with much lighter nuclei, and to get an idea of what might occur in theoretical states of matter like metallic hydrogen. It is only "applied" in the sense that it allows one to understand the mechanisms behind superconductivity, no one doing this research thinks that this will be a useful mechanism for making superconducting transmission lines or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER3> "It must be squeezed to extremely high pressure, nearly 2.5 million times the pressure of Earth's atmosphere"

I think I'd rather have the low Kelvin superconductor, thanks.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, this seems like it might possibly be not worth the effort. I'm curious as to applications for this - that's a pressure and temperature that's not practical either.

I mean, unless intel is really committed to it's 14 nm node.

<comment><USER5> A group of these superconductors was discovered by a computer simulation [1], they are not meant to be used in technology, but better understanding of mechanism by which superconductors work, and improvements in quantum mechanical simulations may help in the future to create materials where some atoms are squeezed together by the interaction with other atoms in the material instead of external pressure.

[1] [https://uspex-team.org/en](https://uspex-team.org/en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if the cross section area of the superconductor is relevant. If it is not then it could conceivably be enclosed inside a carbon nanotube to hold its pressure. A carbon nanotube can hold about 620,000 atmospheres of pressure. Not quite 2.5 million but maybe another substance can be found that can superconduct at a lower pressure. Perhaps multi-walled tubes could be made. I'm sure someone has already thought about this though.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube#Mechanical](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube#Mechanical)

<comment><USER7> It doesn't even have to be nanotube? Just regular diamond tube or something else that can hold the pressure. Maybe it could be done in the same way diamonds are made, just put the superconducting stuff inside first.

<comment><USER8> The pressures we're talking about here are almost 2 orders of magnitude more than what is used to make diamonds.

<comment><USER7> They use diamond anvils to create the required pressures though. I wonder if it's somehow possible to lock these kind of molecules or other stuff inside an unbroken diamond carbon lattice and what would happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can we please change the meaning of "high temp superconductors" to "material that start being super conductors and high temperature and low pressures" ? Everyone agrees that these records don't mean anything in term of direct applications. I agree that they give us a way to check our theoretical models, which might help getting to usable stuff, but all the "record shattering" language is really not making science look very smart IMO.

<comment><USER2> I think this argument is quite facile. These people are scientists trying to understand superconductivity at a basic level, and this theoretical research (as well as the experimental results posted on this forum earlier this week) are a genuine advancement in that field. You are judging this research based on how it is directly applicable to making handheld devices with room temperature superconductors when that is not what these people are attempting to do at all. The fact that a superconducting state can be maintained at these temperatures at all is, indeed, "record shattering". We do not have the ability to simply engineer a material that can superconduct at ambient temperature and pressure at will. I don't mean to be to confrontational, but reading the comments on these articles it really pisses me off to see the hard work of actual scientists judged by the rubric of whatever science fiction garbage internet commenters think should be possible.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it sounds like the only downside to calling them "high temperature superconductors" is it briefly misleads you when skimming HN headlines.

I don't think scientists should change their entire domain-specific language to improve your web browsing experience.

<comment><USER9> And that attitude is in my opinion what will increasingly get in the way of science being disregarded

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To me the most important thing here is that we can finally make an educated guess regarding the circumstances in which something becomes a superconductor.

</comment><comment><USER12> While this seems... interesting... Isn't it actually safer and easier to cool something to 2°K than to pressurize to 36,000,000 psi

<comment><USER13> The huge pressure would only be needed during manufacturing no?

<comment><USER14> The linked article is a bit ambiguous about it, I think, but the abstract [1] is clear: the pressure must be applied for the material to be superconducting:

> Here, we identify an alternative clathrate structure in ternary Li2MgH16 > with a remarkably high estimated Tc of ∼473 K at 250 GPa [...]

[1] [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.097001)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _" The newly predicted superconductor — a compound of hydrogen, magnesium and lithium — [...] must be squeezed to extremely high pressure, nearly 2.5 million times the pressure of Earth's atmosphere [...]"_

Sounds risky ...

<comment><USER16> It doesn't seem to be a gas, so applying pressure would be as easy as tightening the enclosure, like fastening a bolt. Cables could be made by just sticking a superconducting core inside a compression sleeve, although they'd probably have to be segmented, and breaking the sleeve in any place could make the core stop superconducting and overheat pretty fast. Other than that, it should be perfectly safe.

<comment><USER17> The values suggested are north of the ultimate tensile strength for carbon nanotubes and graphene. It's in the ballpark of the center of the earth. I don't think it's as simple as tightening a bolt.

<comment><USER9> I think it's literally tightening a few bolts : [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell)

<comment><USER17> A DAC works because you use it on a tiny surface area (measured in microns). The application was power transmission cables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _At high pressures_.

Seriously, I think I need to start a Twitter account for that ;)

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't really have a good understanding for why the high pressures are required.

Any ELI 5 explanations?

<comment><USER20> I'm not a physicist, but I work adjacent to people who do neat stuff with superconductors... hopefully they wouldn't be too mad about the broad strokes I'm using here.

Superconductivity isn't just a property of a material -- it's a property of an arrangement of atoms. When you put a material under extreme pressures, the atoms are smashed closer together; and the properties of the material can change significantly. For example, diamonds are made by smashing graphite at extreme pressures -- sufficiently high pressure can completely rearrange the crystalline structure.

That prepares us for the question; what's superconductivity? The answer is complicated, physicists don't really know the full story; but here's a simplified intuitive picture. We imagine atoms as being positively-charged nuclei with clouds of negatively-charged electrons. When these atoms are packed into a crystalline lattice, and the resulting material is a conductor, then the electrons are fairly free to move about the whole lattice -- they aren't bound to a single atom. When the electrons move about, they attract nearby nuclei -- the atoms in the lattice shift towards them! In a superconductor, something quite amazing happens: when atoms shift towards one electron, it can make room for another electron -- this process causes the electrons to buddy up, and act in a coordinated fashion. These two electrons quickly make other friends, and in short order they're all acting in concert!

So, back to high-pressure superconductivity. We've applied a high amount of pressure to a material which isn't normally superconducting. Its atoms have rearranged themselves into a new crystalline lattice, which is quite densely packed. The electrons, too, must be densely packed -- so they have greater opportunities to make friends.</comment></comment>


Why cant the Americans with disabilities Act go after those god awful - <AUTHOR> Google cpatchas. Everyone hates them , both able-bodied and disabled and find them impossible to solve. They are not designed to stop spam, because if they were they could just do the checkbox instead of the other stuff. Rather they are designed to limit access and has a disparate impact on the visually challenged . Rather than suing bushiness that don't install ramps, this would be a much better use of legal resources because it would benefit both the able-bodied and disabled. <comment><USER2> Don't most captcha have audio fallbacks for the visually impaired?

Also, as far as I know, Google just uses a checkbox now.</comment>


Copyright is not a divine right: India Delhi High Court - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Copyright-is-not-a-divine-right-Delhi-HC/articleshow/54372014.cms <comment><USER2> No need for theatrical language. There are various exceptions to copyright that have been granted. It is a pragmatic monopoly right, not to confused with a fundamental human right.

One exception that is interesting to me is for the blind and visually impaired (in the US.) You can get digital copies of books for free.

</comment><comment><USER3> The current IP situation is crazy. Copyright shouldn't exist for 100 years.

<comment><USER4> Why not? How long should it last?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Parallax – A distributed query-engine for private data written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/openquery-io/core/tree/master/parallax <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN. We're Christos, Damien and Nodar, founders of OpenQuery to answer any questions you may have.We've spent the past few months working tirelessly developing a distributed query engine for dealing with sensitive data.

The project skeleton has just recently come together and we couldn't wait to share it with the community.We want to take the technology we've developed with Parallax and push it in the right direction solving real-world problems. If there are any particular use-cases you'd like us to look into we would love to hear about them!</comment>


BBM for Android and iPhone Update - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.blackberry.com/2013/09/bbm-for-android-iphone-launch-update/ <comment><USER2> > Our teams continue to work around the clock to bring BBM to Android and > iPhone, but only when it's ready and we know it will live up to your > expectations of BBM.

No rush, guys. The good news is it already lives up to my current expectation of BlackBerry - late to the game.

<comment><USER3> Well, they better hurry and get this out before they go bankrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm speculating another issue at hand (not that this one caused issues for BBM itself) that a substantial number of users downloaded fake BBM apps that were made to look like from "BBM Inc" or "BlackBerry Inc" (BB itself is registered in Google Play store as "BlackBerry Limited").

These apps had full access permissions to Phone Logs, SD Card, and Network Communications. Users were forced to provide a rating for the apps before the app "allowed" them to login and then crashed.

A related article here: [http://trak.in/tags/business/2013/09/21/fake-bbm- apps-fools-...](http://trak.in/tags/business/2013/09/21/fake-bbm-apps-fools- thousands-android-users/)

<comment><USER5> The Google Play store has significant trademark issues. It reminds me of all the years fake iPhone chargers were being sold as by "Apple" on Amazon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6>
        ...more than 1.1 million active users in the
        first 8 hours without even launching the
        official Android app – is incredible.

        Consequently, this unreleased version caused
        issues, which we have attempted to address
        throughout the day.

"[C]onsequently" is an odd word to use here.

1.1 million unexpected users overwhelmed the BBM service? I would've expected BBM, given its enterprise-ready status, to be more than capable of handling that kind of extra load.

So, what's the real story? Is it that BBM simply isn't capable of handling bursty load?

<comment><USER7> Not sure why you think there's more to the story. It's extremely common for "unreleased" versions of various apps/services to have bottlenecks that the production-ready versions would not. That's typically why they're "unreleased".

<comment><USER8> Maybe because Blackberry just halted a worldwide rollout of their Android AND iPhone BBM product without saying why?

If this isn't a service-overload issue, I'm having a hard time imagining what kind of problems this unreleased Android version could have caused.

<comment><USER7> They themselves said _"..this unreleased version caused issues"_. That could be referring to anything - including service-overload issues but I don't know why that would be that surprising.

This is exactly why companies like to have tight control of the roll-out of new products. They want to find these types of bottle-necks and glitches in rather controlled environments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 2 years ago, 8 out of 10 ungrads in my college i saw use BB or at least own a BB (along with other phone). these days? probably less than 1 out of 10.

People already settled down with other messaging apps I guess. At least, it's the situation here in THailand.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ouch, I feel for these guys. A false start, unauthorized launch right when BB announces the bad news. I'm sure they have had a very long week!

</comment><comment><USER11> Surely there was a better way to handle this? 1.1 million users in 8 hours on an un-official version? That's brilliant enthusiasm, which Blackberry don't often get these days. Simply shutting that down and telling them to register for some email updates is a bit of a dampener.

Couldn't they have become some massive trial group etc.? A giant set of early adopters to keep rolling out improved versions too (All with a big "alpha" caveat if that's what it takes), that can get people not yet in the group excited.

I think the little bit of hype and excitement from interested users is just the sort of thing BlackBerry needs, and putting a plug on that is crazy.

</comment><comment><USER12> BBM is at a dead end. The company behind it is getting bankrupt, and will soon probably try to sell its assets anyway (if they can), which means the survival of BBM will be on the hands of whoever buys it.

Since Google failed to buy Whatsapp, it might be a good idea for them to buy BBM. They should at least get some pretty significant user base in both North American countries, and in some emerging ones. They'll have to kill the branding, though, as they fold it into Hangouts, but they could probably do that slowly, to get people through a smooth transition, and in the meantime just make Hangouts and BBM interoperable.

<comment><USER13> I don't think Google needs it. Once they finally get around to integrating Hangouts with SMS, they'll have a pretty competitive platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I suspect their servers are overwhelmed. They're probably not used to managing the traffic that comes from a successful smartphone platform.

<comment><USER3> I doubt this is a tech issue, I think this is a fiduciary issue. Leadership is trying to figure out how to extract the most money from this thing in a rapidly changing landscape.

Mark my words, the official BBM software, when released, will not be free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those who were able to download the app before the rollout was paused, are still able to use it. The app is fully-functioning[1], and they didn't pay for it. Looks like this initial offering of the app is indeed free.

1\. It is missing some features that the BB10 version has. Those will apparently be appearing within a few months. Maybe _that_ will require money to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> the walking dead in action - no good engineer, developer, whatever is still with BB. of course they all left already. left behind is the B and C league, stuck in their jobs for various reasons, incl. Mr. Heins, the accidental CEO.</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I find a US city to metro-region association? - <AUTHOR>

For example, the SF Bay Area is commonly broken down to the City, Peninsula, North Bay, East Bay and South Bay.  I need to build a region to city association table and wonder if someone (or site) has done the work for me.  For example, I'm looking for Peninsula: Atherton, Belmont, Brisbane, Burlingame ... Woodside.  Or East Bay: Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, ... Walnut Creek. <comment><USER2> Beware... from working on Wikitravel I can tell you that you need to be careful because most region labels do not have a precise definition.

For example, Silicon Valley is a prestigious label. There is tendency for surrounding communities to try to relabel themselves into it. Fremont, Redwood City, and Menlo Park were excluded from the original definition, but now the definition has been stretched to places as far afield as Aptos and Pleasanton.

The labels "South Bay" and "East Bay" precede the existence of Fremont. Depending on the definition used, Fremont can be slotted into either category.

Wikitravel eventually did what Craigslist does: give up and redefine the terms to mean a specific set of counties. For example, on Craigslist the term "East Bay" is defined as Alameda and Contra Costa counties. It may not be perfect, but it lets you assign the specific boundaries so that you can move on to real work instead of spending all day fussing with the boundaries.

Good luck finding what you are looking for. Just keep in mind the flaws in the result.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good. I found a handful of well organized lists on Wikitravel, but as you state there were far too many inconsistencies between major metro areas.

I did end up finding that OpenTable has done the hard work here for us. If you visit their sitemap: <http://www.opentable.com/opentable-sitemap.aspx> and view source you'll see that they have a very well organized list of regions and matching cities.

This was likely a manual process for them, but from the looks of it, they had the manpower to do it right. Very clean and comprehensive data.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OpenTable has the best list I've found of region to city associations.

<http://reviews.opentable.com/0938/allreviews.htm></comment>


Free, Public Data Sets - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/Free%2C+Public+Data+Sets <comment><USER2> If anyone is looking for more datasets, see:

<http://datasets.reddit.com>

<http://opendata.reddit.com>

and

[http://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-get-large-datasets-open- to-...](http://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-get-large-datasets-open-to-the- public?q=dataset)

for some good lists of available stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> get.theinfo is the best way to find data sets. They are a bunch of data hoarders who can help you: <http://groups.google.com/group/get-theinfo/?pli=1>

I always ask there if I can't find what I'm looking for.

Here are more and more data sets. These are general data sets. Email me if you have a specific data set in mind (e.g. web-as-corpus, spam, images, social, reviews, etc.). I have a big file of information.

        http://theinfo.org/
        http://infochimps.org/datasets
        http://ckan.org [Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network]
        http://www.datawrangling.com/some-datasets-available-on-the-web.html
        http://del.icio.us/pskomoroch/dataset
        http://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/
        http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1242029
        http://www.reddit.com/r/opendata
        http://www.trustlet.org/wiki/Repositories_of_datasets
        http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/data-for-data-mining/
        http://www.quantlet.org/mdbase/
        http://datamob.org/
        http://freebase.com/
        http://infochimp.info/ics/data/ripd/www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/netdata/
        http://www.archive-it.org/public/all_collections

        Large:
            http://www.ckan.net/tag/read/size-large
            http://www.diggingintodata.org/Repositories/tabid/167/Default.aspx

Web as corpus:

        Good instructions:
            http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/internet.html#description
        http://sslmit.unibo.it/~baroni/bootcat.html

        http://www.drni.de/wac-tk/index.php/Documentation

etc. Email me if you need more <http://cleaneval.sigwac.org.uk/> [http://liste.sslmit.unibo.it/pipermail/sigwac/2007-November/...](http://liste.sslmit.unibo.it/pipermail/sigwac/2007-November/000041.html) <http://wacky.sslmit.unibo.it/doku.php?id=> <http://clic.cimec.unitn.it/marco/research.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's some more links to data sets:

<http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/open-data-pointers.html>

[http://www.datawrangling.com/some-datasets-available-on- the-...](http://www.datawrangling.com/some-datasets-available-on-the-web)

<http://del.icio.us/pskomoroch/dataset>

<http://infochimps.com/collections/datamob> (and the other collections on the site)

<http://www.data.gov/>

</comment><comment><USER5> The wikipedia dump is great, but I've started using <http://wiki.dbpedia.org/> which has an API to query the dumps.

Thanks for these, iisbum. I wish more public data was available in db, xml or similar structures - too often I find myself scraping government sites or pdfs to get the tables I need

</comment><comment><USER6> We've got quite a lot of public economic data: <http://timetric.com/>.

If you're up to something in the economic data space we'd love to talk. Happy to take this to email (email@example.com) if anyone's interested.

<comment><USER7> I looked at the site, and I see some data but I didn't find what I would have hoped for. I couldn't find yield curves, and historical exchange rates <i> up to <i/> today (available on the ecb site in xml format). Certainly I would have thought yield curves were a front page item.

Things that would be very cool would be 1. financial statements in a database format. I know you can scrape this but I don't know if they are available legitimately? 2\. Historial Implied volatilities and historical observed volatilities.

<comment><USER6> <http://timetric.com/dataset/exchange_rates_forex_europe/> for the exchange- rate data, at least.

<comment><USER7> Okay - it's there...

Is it your site? Are you going to add yield curves?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.kdnuggets.com/datasets/index.html>

<http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/datasets/>

<http://datamob.org/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Heh, a day after he leaves HN he makes the first page. He will still be here whether he visits the site or not.

</comment><comment><USER10> And I recently discovered Google Refine, for cleaning up messy datasets.

<http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/>

<comment><USER11> née Freebase GridWorks [http://blog.freebase.com/2010/11/10/google-refine- previously...](http://blog.freebase.com/2010/11/10/google-refine-previously- freebase-gridworks-2-0-announced/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about <http://ckan.org/> ?

The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network! Pretty sweet resource really.

<comment><USER13> The CKAN software is a platform for hosting data and metadata, but as far as I see, <http://ckan.org> does not actually list data sets.

<comment><USER14> try <http://ckan.net> for the data, <http://ckan.org> is for the software behind it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Kinda surprised no one has mentioned Factual. I'm using some of their diabetes data for my side-startup.

<http://www.factual.com/>

<comment><USER16> Their write that most the data is available for download. I can't find it anywhere though, only the various APIs. Have they remove the possibility of downloading the data?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Don't forget Stack Overflow! <http://data.stackexchange.com/>

</comment><comment><USER18> There is also the IMDB database in various format provided by IMDB itself here: <http://www.imdb.com/interfaces>

Edit: Although the use of this database is not free, I believe for personal use is just fine to download and experiment...

</comment><comment><USER19> Non-Free Google data:

[http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/Catalog/CatalogEntry.jsp?catalogId=...](http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/Catalog/CatalogEntry.jsp?catalogId=LDC2006T13)

This data set, contributed by Google Inc., contains English word n-grams and their observed frequency counts.

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't forget the Lahman Baseball Database with information from 1871-2010

<http://baseball1.com/statistics/>

<comment><USER21> And, for very detailed play-by-play data for decades of games, check out retrosheet: <http://www.retrosheet.org/game.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> <https://datamarket.azure.com/>

Some free, some paid.

</comment><comment><USER23> <http://infochimps.com> also has a bunch.

</comment><comment><USER24> For those interested in transit data, check out the GTFS Data Exchange, a directory of many agencies' scheduling and map data, following the Google Transit Feed Specification.

<http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/>

</comment><comment><USER25> Open Directory RDF Dump: <http://rdf.dmoz.org/>

</comment><comment><USER26> For international relations data, Correlates of War hosts a number of data sets: <http://www.correlatesofwar.org/Datasets.htm>

</comment><comment><USER27> I have links to a few govt.-provided data sets at <http://elev.at>

</comment><comment><USER28> United Nations stats (lots of goodies)

<http://unstats.un.org>

some free, some paid

<http://infochimps.com/>

AIS Data (Marine Traffic)

<http://www.aishub.net/>

<http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/>

And there's a great list of sources on Quora

[http://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-get-large-datasets-open- to-...](http://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-get-large-datasets-open-to-the- public)

</comment><comment><USER29> <http://www.gapminder.org/data/>

</comment><comment><USER30> OpenStreetMap data : <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm>

Geonames : <http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/>

OS Open Data (UK Specific) : <http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/opendata/>

</comment><comment><USER11> I track datasets that I come across at <http://www.delicious.com/tobym/dataset>

</comment><comment><USER31> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1493768>

</comment><comment><USER32> <http://www.naturalearthdata.com/> From the website : Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales as tightly integrated vector and raster data ...

</comment><comment><USER33> Does anybody have precinct-level election results for the USA? A set for recent elections would be great for public access redistricting apps that will become relevant this year.

</comment><comment><USER34> anyone know of a dataset that has dates for when companies when companies registered or announced in the news? For example I would like to see the data hackernews was launched.

</comment><comment><USER35> i've had trouble finding geographical boundaries on neighborhoods in U.S. cities (e.g. downtown areas and residential neighborhoods). anyone know where i can find this?

<comment><USER36> It's not exactly neighborhoods, but the US Census TIGER database has block and blockgroup boundaries with associated demographic data. You could probably synthesize that into "neighborhood" definitions. [http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.ht...](http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Some US Gov't data sites no one else mentioned:

<http://data.govloop.com/> has data and lots of pointers to local government data.

Also I'm surprised no one mentioned Carl Malamud's site: <http://public.resource.org/> \- Lots of US gov't and legal data in friendly formats.

</comment><comment><USER38> Heaps of useful info: <http://www.nationmaster.com>

</comment><comment><USER39> I'd prepared (based on other datasets) a smallish movie tweet dataset. You may find it useful, if working with tweets and/or reviews.

<https://github.com/mohitranka/TwitterSentimentCorpora>

</comment><comment><USER40> CIA World Factbook (demographics, geography, communications, government, economy, military stats of countries):

<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/download/>

</comment><comment><USER41> Thank you all for posting links and links to links to datasets, I have an unrelenting interest in data aggregation and machine learning, and didn't even know where to start. So helpful, and I am no longer stuck. :)

</comment><comment><USER42> do all of them have some uniformed api? that would be great, ideally. query and cache all of them on demand from your own app without additional programming.

bookmarked and shared this thread.

</comment><comment><USER43> I looking for free public domain large high-resolution imaging datasets.

Something like satellite imagery, medical imaging, semiconductor masks and wafers photos or CAD files, etc.

Any pointers?

<comment><USER44> Here are medical imaging datasets I am aware of: Neuroimaging (see <http://www.nitrc.org> for others) OASIS <http://www.oasis-brains.org/> ADNI <http://adni.loni.ucla.edu/> (huge dataset, requires application) OpenfMRI <http://openfmri.org/> EEG <http://eeg.pl/epi>

Some other applications, example CT Colonography <http://www.acrin.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is a real treasure to come across. I hope we'll keep seeing jacquesm's blog postings here.

Anyone know of any publicly available song lyric databases?

</comment><comment><USER39> Anyplace I can find _small_ free web spam dataset? ( for commercial use, sorry :( )

All the datasets I found on www, are Huge (in double digit GBs..).

</comment><comment><USER46> Wow, useful stuff. This thread goes into my bookmarks.</comment>


We could colonize the moon for just $10B – and make it happen by 2022 - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/it-would-cost-only-10-billion-to-live-on-the-moon-2016-03-17 <comment><USER2> The problem is solar radiation when going so far away from the earth shield. Harms humans in a short span of time, except when filming the Apollo missions.

The veracity of the Apollo missions is matter of debate across the globe.</comment>