Oregon Blogger Isn't a Journalist, Court Imposes $2.5M Judgement - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/12/crystal_cox_oregon_blogger_isn.php <comment><USER2> The article (which rightfully provides the original decision) ignores the subsequent paragraph:

 _Second, even if she were otherwise entitled to those protections, O.R.S. 44.530(3)specifically provides that "[t]he provisions of O.R.S. 44.520(1) do not apply with respect to the content or source of allegedly defamatory information, in [a] civil action for defamation wherein the defendant asserts a defense based on the content or source of such information." Because this case is a civil action for defamation, defendant cannot rely on the media shield law._

This changes things somewhat. The article says "she's entitled to those protections." This says, even if she were, here's why it doesn't apply.

NB: I think the settlement sucks, but that doesn't mean the judge was the complete idiot the article made him out to be.

<comment><USER3> It's worth noting that the guy that wrote the corresponding law for the State of Washington explicitly blames obsolete laws for the nonapplicability of the shield law: "Oregon's law was probably written before blogging was accounted for." [1] He goes on to say that she probably would still have been judged against, since withholding the source means she can't prove her claims are factual, but that she still should have gotten that protection.

[1] [http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/12/unlike_or...](http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/12/unlike_oregon_bloggers_are_jou.php)

<comment><USER4> I Did Provide My Source. The Court Threw It Out. [http://www.obsidianfinancesucks.com/2011/12/in-obsidian-v- co...](http://www.obsidianfinancesucks.com/2011/12/in-obsidian-v-cox-i- provided.html) I was never asked to retract the post, and under Oregon Retraction Laws denied that law because I am a blog and not TV, or Traditional Broadcasting.

<comment><USER5> Should talk to the EFF and see if they'll take your case. Representing yourself in court is such a bad idea that even lawyers hire other lawyers to represent them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> " _Representing herself in court_ , Cox had argued..."

Coders and bloggers are good at what they do and in those spheres it would generally be a good idea to defer to them for advice, however, in the sphere of law it's generally a good idea to defer to someone with expertise in that field.

<comment><USER7> It says there she had blogs about the legal industry, so it is likely that she is a lawyer. Of course it is usually not a good idea to represent yourself even if you are a lawyer, but maybe she could not afford representation.

Hopefully the ACLU would take up her cause on appeal.

<comment><USER8> As they say, the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.

<comment><USER6> Yup, even if you're a rockstar lawyer, it's always good to have one because your lawyer views the case in a more impartial manner with out the emotional attachments that you may have to the case.

It's pretty easy to get blinders on if you're representing yourself.

<comment><USER9> It's not just that; AIUI if you represent yourself, you can get in a lot more trouble for saying something later decided to be false, or making a statement not supported by evidence. There are explicit bonuses built into the system for those who have a representative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> By representing herself and appearing largely ignorant to the law she not only lost the case but essentially made it so that the judge could rule no other way. Ignoring the sensationalist article and looking closer at the actual trial documents as linked [http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/obsidian- finance-group-v-...](http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/obsidian-finance- group-v-cox) You can see that in many of her responses instead of trying to make a legal argument she just rants about how much she hates the plaintiffs and thinks they are idiots and states things like "This connection is further reason as to why Defendant [sic] Crystal L. Cox Feels [sic] that Kevin Padrick of Obsidian Finance is involved in a plot to kill her."

In addition, she replies to the platiniff "So I want to Let you know and Obsidian Finance that I am now offering PR Services and Search Engine Management Services starting at $2500 a month to promote Law Firms... Finance Companies.. and to protect online reputations and promote businesses.." Which the legal firm didn't take kindly to, "It could hardly be clearer that Ms. Cox is attempting to use her outrageous and utterly false payments about plantiffs as leverage to extort a payment from them."

Also, she ignored a deposition in Montana for which the plaintiffs are requesting the court place sanctions on her which if she didn't would also have made it trivial to move the case to another district court where some weird wording in the Oregon shield law wouldn't have mattered.

The Judge probably wanted to hang himself after reading her motions.

<comment><USER11> Is it illegal for a judge to think? If one side presents a really bad case, do they have to lose even if they are right?

I've experienced this myself, so maybe my comments should be thrown out as biased.

<comment><USER10> When you essentially don't try to defend yourself but instead insult and berate the court and opposing council in the legal documents you submit to the court you open up a very large window for the judge to side against you when there is any sort of leeway...

<comment><USER12> From a programmer point of view it makes as much sense as deleting a file if it fails to load. Not sure why poor argumentation skills should be the cause to a 2.4M fine. They are unrelated. The woman is not to blame, the system is for not managing situations like this. Like I am to blame if I don't manage exceptions in my code.

<comment><USER13> Trials are to be judged on the evidence presented in court. This is notoriously not always the case, but it is the way the law is supposed to be.

<comment><USER12> That's what I was saying. It is not justice. It doesn't matter if this is the definition of a trial. Invent a word for something better... And invent that something too. Until then, law is flawed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems to be a case of a judge ignoring a few words in order to be able to misinterpret a law. Oregon's media shield law applies to people who are "connected with, employed by or engaged in any medium of communication to the public", and defines "any medium of communication" thus:

 _"Medium of communication" has its ordinary meaning and includes, but is not limited to, any newspaper, magazine or other periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system._

Apparently, the judge didn't spot the " _but is not limited to_ " part of that definition.

(The text of the relevant laws: <http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/044.html>)

<comment><USER15> As kevinalexbrown noted, this also seems to be a case of people ignoring the next paragraph of the decision.

<comment><USER16> I don't really think the second paragraph matters so much. If he is saying "bloggers aren't 'the media'" or that you essentially have to be employed by a big name media agency in order to get protections, that is a big deal.

He could have easily said that she is part of the media, but that the law doesn't protect those in the media from these types of lawsuits. Reading the law, I think blogging does fall into the category that gives it protection, even if those protections wouldn't have made a difference in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Regardless of shield laws, you absolutely cannot commit libel in public writing.

There is a reason why Journalism Law is a first-semester course at any respectable j-school.

<comment><USER18> "...you absolutely cannot commit libel in public writing..."

Does that mean that it's absolutely impossible to commit libel in public writing?

Or does it mean that one "cannot" because there are dire consequences?

A la "you can never put too much water in a nuclear reactor."

<comment><USER19> Yeah, "absolutely cannot" is a strange substitute for "shouldn't" in this case. I'd further restrict it to "...in public writing that has a decent chance of gaining a large audience", and possibly adding "...and which is against a party likely to notice and sue". Libel laws don't seem to deter most of the online-based libel happening all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Regardless of any particular case, in my opinion, civil law is a complete farce everywhere in the world (as far as I know).

The problem is that the risk of litigation is sometimes totally disproportionate. While one side may risk a small budget overrun in their legal department, the other side might find their life in ruins for decades, including things like paying for their children's education.

I think this needs a constitutional amendment urgently.

</comment><comment><USER21> If this is upheld, the existing 'old world' media organisations just became gatekeepers to a very useful status.

We need to start a Bloggers Media Network.

</comment><comment><USER22> > but because she wasn't employed by an official media establishment.

What the hell is "official" media establishment? It seems that the judge is saying thet there are separate "official" and "unofficial" establisments but if that is the case, who decides what is official and what is not?

<comment><USER23> It's determined by the opinions they present. For instance, if the journalist is saying there is a conspiracy, then they're a conspiracy theorist.</comment></comment>


Every function can be computable - <AUTHOR> http://jdh.hamkins.org/every-function-can-be-computable/ <comment><USER2> > _What I mean is that there is a universal algorithm, a Turing machine > program capable of computing any desired function, if only one should run > the program in the right universe._

But is the selection of the right universe a decidable problem?</comment>


Ask YC: Startup Poker Night? - <AUTHOR>

I know alot of us work hard, but sometimes we need to play hard too; and a game of poker with fellow hacker's entreprenuers seems like a fun thing to do.
I think i have about 5 people interested in a poker night, but i would like to have an interested group of about 10-20 so we will at least have 1-2 tables.
Is anyone here interested in a poker night a couple times a month?
Any recomendations on a place?
What social network should we organize on?  meetup, facebook, upcoming, myspace, hi5, google calendar?  yc news? <comment><USER2> Where are you thinking of holding the game? We put a little something together pretty much weekly in San Francisco.

<comment><AUTHOR> well not at my crapy apt.

there is a 24 hour starbucks near by apt in laurel heights, but i wouldn't mind going to haight asbury, the lower haight, japantown, north fillmore, or.... somewhere else, just as long as i don't have to take 2 buses or a cab to get there.

i am still new to the area (june 30th), but i am getting the feel for the place.

<comment><USER2> We hold a game in SOMA, which might entail two buses or a cab... It's still a cool game, though. Shoot me an email if you want to be put on the list.</comment></comment></comment>


How Iceland recreated a Viking-age religion - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190602-how-iceland-recreated-a-viking-age-religion <comment><USER2> Unfortunately a lot of the pagan and related spiritual movements are being coopted by white supremecists. I find this stuff fairly attractive as someone with Scandinavian heritage, but it seems like I've been overtaken in the space by racists and fascists.

<comment><USER3> > Unfortunately a lot of the pagan and related spiritual movements are being > coopted by white supremecists.

So have other religions. Millions of people use Christianity (especially the evangelical sort) as an excuse for their white-supremacist behavior. The intersection of religious and ethnic-supremacist beliefs even exists among some Muslim and Hindu adherents. I'm sure I could find other examples, despite the fact that most religious people practice their respective faiths with peace and respect toward others.

So I'd say don't feel bad about it. The more counterexamples there are, the weaker the white-supremacists' excuse becomes. If you want to honor your own heritage without denigrating others', more power to you.

<comment><USER4> My viewpoint is different: religion is a way for a group of people to make themselves feel different and special ("we're the chosen ones!"), and a natural consequence of that is racism/supremacism.

As for "most people" practicing their faiths with peace and respect toward others (meaning those not following the same faith), I'd say that most of history contradicts that claim.

<comment><USER5> That would go against the teachings of at least Christianity, and as far as I know also Islam and Hinduism. In practice, this is indeed an easy trap to fall into, humans being what they are.

<comment><USER4> What teachings of Christianity? Throughout the Middle Ages, Christians were happy to burn people alive if they weren't Christian or weren't the right kind of Christian even. Are you going to try to convince me now that all these countless religious leaders throughout many centuries were wrong, and that I should instead listen to you, some random person on the internet who likely isn't even a devout Christian, on what the "correct" teachings are?

It's the same with Islam. I can easily find many Islamic religious leaders who will happily tell me that violence to promote their brand of Islam is good and right. Are you even a Muslim? No? Then why should I believe you over them about what the "correct" teachings are?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _The Ásatrú faith also celebrates Old Norse mythology and its pantheon of > morally ambiguous deities – gods such as Odin, Thor and Loki – that came to > Iceland during the Viking Age, when the island was settled by Norwegian > famers looking for new pastures. These deities were worshipped across this > 'land of fire and ice' until the year 1000, when, under pressure from the > influential Norwegian crown, the country abandoned heathenry and adopted > Christianity._

The subtext from the BBC is interesting, the Viking gods are 'morally ambiguous deities', the arrival of christianity is summarised by 'the country abandoned heathenry'. Is worth noting that heathenry is still a synonym in english for 'uncivilised'. This is presumably to stand in contrast with some notion of the supposed moral certainty and civilisation of the Abrahamic god. The BBC should really be above playing team sports with religions, but I guess they just can't help themselves.

<comment><USER7> But those gods _are_ morally ambiguous: they're not everything-I-do-is-right like the God of Abraham (in any of the religions that worship him). It's an accurate part of the news and implying that Loki is a paragon of virtue would be misleading people about the subject.

And "Heathenry" is a term used by practitioners of this faith. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathenry_(new_religious_movem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathenry_\(new_religious_movement\)) If it's got a negative connotation, well, that's the limits of working in a colonizer language.

<comment><USER8> The god of the old testament is morally ambiguous too. The christians defined the evil aspects away and made humanity responsible for all evil in the world.

<comment><USER9> The religion itself presents God as doing good; pagan religions don't have such framing, thus the classification "morally ambiguous."

<comment><USER4> >The religion itself presents God as doing good

Does it? I seem to remember a part in the Old Testament where the Abrahamic god orders his followers to commit genocide against some other tribe. How is that "doing good"?

<comment><USER10> The point is that those events, in the context of Christian thought, are seen as good - their god is telling his people to clear some unbelievers. Christian dogma maintains that their god and his commandments are fundamentally moral, that they are the very base for objective morality. In Christian thought, by definition, anything that their god wanted to happen is good.

Norse religions, on the other hand, make no such claims about their gods. Within the context of Norse beliefs and religious moraloty, Odin has done evil things, Loki has done evil things, etc. That is why, within their own system of beliefs, the gods are morally ambiguous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well, apparently it's not passed down, it's being reconstructed (started in the 70s unsurprisingly).

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like fun (pageantry, costumes, songs, ceremonies)! Similar to the SCA or Renaissance Faire. But maybe not a serious religion?</comment>


Biotech Company's Pig Vaccine Leads to New Alzheimer's Approach - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/united-neuroscience-s-alzheimer-vaccine-just-might-work#gs.vnXZjohD <comment><USER2> >"The patients demonstrated improved brain function and showed a reduction in the protein plaque gumming up their neurons, the company's report says."

Still chasing the amyloid hypothesis I see. This is a symptom, not a cause, so they are wasting their time (in terms of actually helping the patients, eventually someone will randomly get "positive" results and a bunch of money if enough trials are run).

1) Up to 30% of cognitively normal elderly have detectable amyloid deposits: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17444214#17453147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17444214#17453147)

2) Only 70% of dementia patients have detectable amyloid deposits: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17444214#17445337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17444214#17445337)

3) Amyloid-related genetics can only account for < 10% of Alzheimer's cases: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17444214#17457198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17444214#17457198)

4) Amyloids are the most thermodynamically favorable structure that polypeptides can form (ie require constant vigilance by the cell to prevent): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14914528#14917057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14914528#14917057)

5) Can anyone find a disease state where they looked for amyloids and didn't find a positive correlation? I doubt it.

<comment><USER3> > The patients demonstrated improved brain function

If this part of the quote is actually true, then what you are saying is either wrong or irrelevant. They appear to have evidence it is true, and are continuing to verify it.

There are various ways this could be helping (if it is):

1\. The amyloids are a cause of Alzheimer's

2\. The amyloids are a symptom of Alzheimer's, but are a cause of the memory impairments

3\. The drug has a side-effect which helps the memory impairments.

In any case, what is your expertise? I love random comments that say that scientists who have spent decades in a field are simply "wasting their time" because they haven't read some article that was posed on the web. (NB, this may not be the case with you, if you are indeed an expert in the field.)

<comment><USER4> It's a Phase II trial, which means it is focused on identifying dosage ranges and side effects in human rather than a large-scale efficacy trial. (It's also the first time you actually give a drug candidate to humans).

You also forgot that there is a fourth point: there is no actual effect, and the apparent effect is statistical fluke.

It's hard to understand what could be going on from this article alone, because it spends a whopping 1.5 paragraphs on explaining any details about the putative vaccine. The rest of the piece reads as a generic PR fluff piece, which makes me think that this was largely based on company-provided PR and so anything approaching details is based on the most positive light that they can be spun into.

<comment><USER5> > ... a Phase II trial, which means it is focused on identifying dosage ranges > and side effects in human rather than a large-scale efficacy trial. (It's > also the first time you actually give a drug candidate to humans).

FWIW your drug candidate is administered in all phases. Phase I you look for side effects ("safety and tolerability"). Phase II is, as you say, a dose ranging study, but you can't exceed dosages you've already tested for safety. You usually have multiple arms (a placebo and a couple of dosages); when you find an seemingly efficacious dose you then proceed to a Phase III where you test that dosage (or several) on a statistically representative enough sample to hopefully predict results in the population at large.

(former drug designer who has designed some Phase I and II studies).

==

Fun fact: when you file your IND with the FDA to test a new drug you aren't actually asking for permission. You're asking them to tell you that if you follow the protocol you have sent them, based on the evidence you've sent them from what you know already, they won't prosecute you for violating the law on administering unapproved drugs. Section 505 for the food and drug law has a bunch of exceptions -- you ask then to tell you you fit in one of the exceptions.

And if they don't tell you "no" in a 30 days...you can go ahead! I wonder if the shutdown extends that 30 days.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the correction. I thought Phase I was a pre-human clinical trial for safety, rather than a human clinical trial. I appear to have been mistaken.

<comment><USER5> No problem. Preclinical work is indeed called preclinical work :-).

Typically you do a bunch of _in vitro_ and _in vivo_ studies when developing your drug candidate. When you're ready to file the IND (asking permission to test on humans) you do a different set of studies specifically to generate the data you need for your submission. Sometimes the agency will even tell you where its concerns may lie so you might use a specific animal or specific test to address them. You also include a lot of in vitro work about how you manufacture (and control the mfg of) your test product.

The difference might be that you take and process a lot of samples in your R&D stage, and then when you prepare your submission you get independent labs to do the work (to show the agency you don't have your "finger on the pan" so to speak). For example on a depot-injectable drug I worked on we did six experiment sites per guinea pig (because we knew tissue diffusion would be only a few millimeters) which saved us time and a lot of money but when preparing for the FDA we did only one per, so we could guarantee to them that _any_ trace of drug found anywhere in the tissue came from a single injection. Likewise we did a lot of pathology ourselves just peering through the microscope (and learned a lot!), but for the FDA we had the animal lab send tissue samples directly to an external pathologist who then sent us a report without any input from us. Etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Although the small number of patients prevents United from drawing any major > statistical conclusions

A small number of patients only prevent drawing major statistical conclusion if the effect is too small compared to the size of the group.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone have a link to the clinical trial?

</comment><comment><USER8> Can't read with uBlock Origin default settings. Text is fuzzed.

<comment><USER9>
        .blur-container {
            filter: blur(5px);
        }

Who thought that was a good idea?

Defeated by reader mode.

<comment><USER10> I always forget about reader mode. I'll try to remember it more in the future. It let me read this site without having to worry about enabling javascript or dancing around ad-blocker issues.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Hitcount.me – Live Website Popularity - <AUTHOR> http://benwilber.github.io/nginx/syslog/redis/logging/static/blog/hit/counter/2015/08/31/hitcountme-live-website-popularity.html

<comment><USER2> Cool project! Some suggestions:

1) Add rel="nofollow" to your links on [https://hitcount.me](https://hitcount.me) ... or say hello to SEO spammers!

2) [http://hitcount.me](http://hitcount.me) isn't forwarding to [https://hitcount.me](https://hitcount.me) properly. I get the default nginx page. Don't forget HSTS headers and other friends.

3) If you're going to have keepalive on, make sure your sysctl settings are tuned to handle it! Having worked on pixel servers for an ad network, I recommend sending a "Connection: close" but enabling SSL session caching/resumption. (see #4) This doesn't really matter that much until you become popular.

4) SSL could use some tweaks. Initial handshake is quite slow. Caching/resumption should be on, too. [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=hitcount.me](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=hitcount.me)

Also, looks like you're triggering a pattern in uBlock. Not sure about other adblocker plugins. I guess "hitcount" has been used by other networks/stats systems in the past: [http://i.imgur.com/C47gHwD.png](http://i.imgur.com/C47gHwD.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for the tips! Yeah I need to tune ssl and a few other things. I fixed the https redirect and nofollow, thanks!

<comment><USER2> Looks like you're getting spammed now by that OHFB site. :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _I'm sure you can figure out ways to break it, but it's a waste of your time (and you need to get a life)._

If it's not worth gaming then why waste time making it in to a game by producing a leaderboard? If your answer to making a leaderboard is 'because it's fun' or 'to learn something', then those reasons apply equally well to working out a reason to game it so you're at the top.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that was meant mostly tongue-in-cheek. There are plenty of ways to break it, I just didn't imagine that anyone would bother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just hitcount doesn't seem to be a great measure of quality. What I think would be more interesting would take into consideration time spent on page. That could really help kill clickbait that has nothing to do with the actual content.

For example, if I could find where people are spending more than 2-3 minutes on a page, those are probably much more valuable reads than just hits.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool and I appreciate the ease of implementation. I feel that the best content on Reddit, HN, and the like is often not intentionally seeking traffic but is rather unexpectedly shared. Unfortunately, that content is often hidden amongst articles that are specifically posted on those sites to increase traffic. Since you have to implicitly embed the Hitcount.me .gif file on your website, Hitcount.me could act as an aggregator for finding the best traffic-seeking content, while hopefully leaving Reddit and HN to power the community-driven content and hidden gems.

</comment><comment><USER6> does it pass the `ab -n 100000` test?

</comment><comment><USER7> One more rule added to my filter. Thanks.</comment>


Did I Make a Mistake Selling Del.icio.us to Yahoo? - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2018/10/did-i-make-a-mistake-selling-del-icio-us-to-yahoo.html?__twitter_impression=true <comment><USER2> The short answer is yes.

Yahoo has proven over and over that they don't understand community or know how to capitalize on crowd wisdom. After Yahoo took over del.icio.us, they didn't know what to do with it despite it being a huge trove of valuable data: 1) desirable, tagged sites, 2) the social network, and 3) the tags/interests of del.icio.us users.

Yahoo made similar blunders when it acquired Flickr, alienating its most active users.</comment>


Telekinesis in Unity - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@janjilecek/telekinesis-in-unity-part-4-gamedev-series-8cc110b8ab55 <comment><USER2> Interesting, I've implemented something similar in our VR game, but it allows you to pull any sized object and it's resized to fit the hand. If you want to see it in action [https://stressout.net](https://stressout.net)</comment>


Which Deep Learning Frameworks Are Most in Demand? 2018 Power Scores - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/deep-learning-framework-power-scores-2018-23607ddf297a <comment><USER2> Isn't keras just a high level API for various NN backends such as tensorflow and theano? Counting it as its own category seems silly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your message. I thought about that issue a bit as I was writing this. It isn't a perfect comparison. However, I think comparing both the higher and lower level APIs together in terms of usage and popularity does provide value when trying to measure usage and interest.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, listing Keras and FastAI in the same category as other original frameworks seems wrong to me.

On the other hand you should have absolutely included Caffe, as it is one of the major frameworks, and while there's a plan to merge it with Pytorch, it's hasn't happened yet (expected in Pytorch 1.0), and meanwhile if you want to use Caffe2 it's a very different tool from Pytorch.

Also, should have included Chainer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your message. I'm going to add Caffe because of it. I misread its status earlier. I might add Caffe2 and Chainer, but they score very low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is Theano (2007) "younger" than TensorFlow (2015). Even if you trace TensorFlow to DistBelief, it is still 2011.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment. I state Theano is from 2011. Did I mistype somewhere and say it is younger than TensorFlow?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Improved Google Search and Arxiv metrics at Francois Chollet's suggestion.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Updated to include Caffe, DL4J, Caffe2, and Chainer. Thank you for the comments!</comment>


Journalists Detained Attempting to Video NSA Building where Snowden Worked - <AUTHOR> http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2013/06/13/journalists-detained-attempting-to-video-record-nsa-building-where-snowden-worked/

<comment><USER2> Is it really news when someone points cameras at a possibly secret government facility and is then told by government security that they're not allowed to do that?

Next article, please.

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised at the nonchalant dismissal.

Everybody gets in a dizzy when some bill may or may not infringe on the 2nd amendment, but the same response is noticeably absent when it comes to photographers' rights.

Even though photographers are legally allowed to photograph a government building from public property, why the dismissal when the government is in contempt of her own laws?

The steady erosion of personal rights and laissez faire attitude towards government behavior is what lead to the PRISM situation to begin with.

More info:

[http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/you-have-every-right- photogr...](http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/you-have-every-right-photograph- cop)

<comment><USER4> We shoo away photographers who are mapping out the gates to our military bases as well. The U.S. Embassay bombing in Lebanon is only one of many, many examples of why there is a valid security interest in not having people map out your physical security vulnerabilities if you can avoid it.

<comment><USER5> isn't "if you can avoid it" the crux here? there's a trade-off between freedom and protection. and the idea was, i thought, that people decided that together, as a community, and created laws that reflect it.

but what's happening here doesn't follow any law. it's extra protection, and less freedom.

and what's so weird is the way people like you come out of the woodwork as apologists for this process.

when are you going to stop?

the usa already has laws so "protecting" and "un-freedom" that it seems the nsa can assemble huge databases on your communication. if you hadn't noticed, there's a huge fuss about that right now. yet the best you can come up with is to argue that _less_ freedom than the current law provides is a great idea?

it kind of boggles the mind. how little freedom do you actually want?

<comment><USER4> Unless I'm mistaken there _is_ a law, FISA. It even uses warrants with judicial review, and FISA itself has been publically known for awhile, so it's hardly some fait accompli. The people have bought in, whether on purpose or not.

So, people aren't complaining that this is _illegal_ , per se, they're complaining that there _shouldn 't be that law at all_. Didn't you watch the Daily Show clip from the other night?

P.S. When are people going to stop calling those with a view not 100% aligned with their own "apologists" and acknowledge that there might even be different conclusions that reasonable people can reach on a topic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are several such events every day, where someone is hassled, arrested, or assaulted for photography. They're carried on the blog "Photography is not a crime" [http://photographyisnotacrime.com/](http://photographyisnotacrime.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Contrary to the blog's URL, photography IS a crime ... if it's of certain military installations. [http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/795](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/795)

It probably shouldn't be applied in this case( there seems to be little sensitive information in a photograph of a building, though maybe they didn't want personel identified) , but it can be.

<comment><USER8> I can see concern of people being photographed entering and leaving the building, but even then it's silly. If someone wants to know something of these people then just follow them from work. If the person's identity and involvement of what's going on inside needs to be secret then they shouldn't be seen at all entering or leaving the facility.

Also, it isn't that photography "is" a crime but that it "can" be a crime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> huh. the centre for advanced study of language (casl) at the university of maryland really isn't on google maps, afaict. [http://maps.google.cl/maps?q=centre+for+advanced+study+of+la...](http://maps.google.cl/maps?q=centre+for+advanced+study+of+language,+university+of+maryland&hl=en&sll=39.774944,-75.73025&sspn=5.225779,5.196533&hq=centre+for+advanced+study+of+language,+university+of&hnear=Maryland,+United+States&t=m&z=10)

ah, but the wikipedia article links to [http://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Center...](http://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Center_for_Advanced_Study_of_Language&params=38.97398_N_76.92558_W_) so i guess it's here [https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=38.97398,-76.92558&q=loc:38....](https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=38.97398,-76.92558&q=loc:38.97398,-76.92558&hl=en&t=m&z=11) (is that the sign shown in the article main photo?)

<comment><USER8> What's with the weird arrangement of what appears to be traffic cones in the old parking lot to the east of the building? Plus, why did they build a fence that cuts the east parking lot in half?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey NSA, if you have nothing to hide...</comment>


Deep Learning in Clojure on GPU: A Simple Neural Network Inference API - <AUTHOR> https://dragan.rocks/articles/19/Deep-Learning-in-Clojure-From-Scratch-to-GPU-11-A-Simple-Neural-Network-API <comment><AUTHOR> The introduction and rationale is at

[https://dragan.rocks/articles/19/Deep-Learning-in-Clojure- Fr...](https://dragan.rocks/articles/19/Deep-Learning-in-Clojure-From-Scratch- to-GPU-0-Why-Bother)</comment>


Symbian: Evolving toward open - <AUTHOR> http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2009/06/symbian-evolving-toward-open.html <comment><USER2> I've been going to a lot of Symbian events in the Valley and have been watching closely how they're trying to reinvent themselves.

They've got some great people involved, but it's hard to shake the feeling about how the Nokia mindset is always lurking in the background.

Nokia's involvement is both a boon and a curse to Symbian, but this author articulates two points that are always on my mind when thinking about Symbian:

1\. "but that can't be achieved in three months. 'In three years time,' is what I wrote in my notes. That is simultaneously very honest and a little scary."

2\. "Nokia could decommit from the OS (or just waver long enough that developers lose faith)"

Nokia moves like a battleship with course corrections spanning years, and while Symbian tries to be nimble, I keep wondering if Nokia will pull the plug on Symbian before anything worthwhile materializes.</comment>


Asynchronous image loading with jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://blog.realmofzod.com/2009/04/09/asynchronous-image-loading-with-jquery

<comment><USER2> I haven't tried it but I think you get the same effect by setting the width and height of the image and using a spinner for the background of an enclosing div.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention that the markup and code for the jQuery solution is incredibly ugly in comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two thoughts immediately rushed through my head:

1) Netscape Navigator did this 15 years ago, although not nearly as cool

2) Why did he just show a screenshot? Couldn't he have given, you know, a link?

<comment><USER5> Me too, but then reading what he's doing I realized that this technique could definitely give a page an extra bit of polish that could really make a big subconscious effect on users precisely because it's such an unexplored area. I imagine seeing this done the first time I might think I was looking at a Flash site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The page layout might break if you do not set a width and a height. That problem at least can be solved fairly easily.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hello, I'm the post author, the reason I didn't give a link was because the site shown was a closed beta. It is open to the public now so check it out at <http://community.wacom.com></comment>


Ask HN: How do I *easily* edit and sign PDFs in *nix? - <AUTHOR>

Hi
I read quite a bit of material on the paperless office recently.
Here is something that I came across that isn't as easy as I thought it would be.
In order to edit and sign a PDF (supplied by a vendor) I'd have to 1) print it 2) scan it 3) send it as a PDF.
I need a SIMPLE to use GPL tool that can take a PDF, allow me to edit in overlay mode (typed text) and append my signature.
I slogged through an hour of PDFEdit and GIMP editing this morning to get something with 4 fields and a signature done, and frankly, I'd rather buy a printer.
Any suggestions on this? I must be missing some application out there. Other suggestions welcome. <comment><USER2> maybe this can help you out (it also integrates with openoffice): <http://jsignpdf.sourceforge.net/en_US/pdf_signatures.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> One technique that I've used in the past is to print the PDF to file as SVG, edit in Inkscape, then print the SVG to file as PDF.

I think I used Evince to open the PDF and print to SVG.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Let me just clarify - not electronic signing.

A vendor sends a PDF they want you to 1) print out 2) fax back.

So, basically an app in which (in the InkScape sense) you can quickly scribble on, and save to PDF would be perfect.

</comment><comment><USER4> As far as electronic signing goes, I've had clients use RightSignature. It's not free, but it's much more painless than PDF signatures.</comment>


Some excellent HTML5 games in this top 30 - <AUTHOR> http://www.casualgirlgamer.com/articles/entry/28/The-Best-30-HTML-5-games

<comment><USER2> From that list I collected some javascript-based game and physics engines used in those games.

Akhihabara - <http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/>

Diggy - <http://github.com/lostdecade/diggy>

Three.js - <http://github.com/mrdoob/three.js>

</comment><comment><USER3> Shameful self-plug :)

I would like to think Last Man Standing was excellent :)

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/165110/lastmanstanding/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> Game query was used in at least on of those games. <http://gamequery.onaluf.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> After checking a few of them, I came to the conclusion that Flash has nothing to fear for the time being</comment>


The Card Game - How Visa, Using Fees Behind Its Debit Card, Dominates a Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/05visa.html <comment><USER2> I love credit cards and think they are one of the wonders of the modern world.

Picture this: you operate a Quiznos selling fatty subs of goodness at the Detroit Metropolitan airport. A lanky twenty-something comes up to you and says "Hey, I'd like some meats and cheeses, but I don't actually have money to pay for them. Don't worry though, I'm good for it." Now, traditionally you might rely on social capital (sort of hard when he grew up in Chicago and is flying from Washington to his home in central Japan) or cheap discriminatory heuristics like "He's a white guy wearing a business suit, which means he'll probably pay me if he says he's going to pay me. That black kid with the sagging pants behind him, though..." Or you just don't make the sale, and then he goes hungry and you lose revenue.

But it is the modern era and we have plastic. Plastic which certifies that a bank in Michigan trusts a company trusts a bank in Japan trusts a software consultancy trusts a university to pay their invoice to pay his paycheck to cover his debts to make their transfer to make their wire to pay for his $10 worth of artery blocking goodness.

And we can do this _instantly_. For _fifty cents_. So reliably that fraud is _rounding error_.

We are living in the freaking future.

<comment><USER3> In civilized countries that use instant direct debit for everything, the fee is more like 5¢.

In the US, where credit is the default, the fee for a card-present transaction is more like 35¢ + %2.

<comment><USER4> I despise businesses that don't take credit/debit cards almost as much as I do the companies that make the cards.

If it's some taqueria that's keeping things off the books, I'm fine with that. But if it's some pretentious place that I'm paying $9 for a sandwich and I have to go to an ATM and pay another $4 to withdraw a $20, then that just makes me not want to patronize the place.

<comment><USER5> In civilized countries, we don't pay to withdraw money from an ATM, regardless of which bank we have have.

(I would really like to know how that business model works though, if the banks just soak it, or if local businesses can pay a bank to get one)

<comment><USER6> We do when we are in a different civilized country than the one that issued the bank card.

<comment><USER7> In NL this isn't the case. I popped over to Belgium yesterday, took out €50 from a Fortis ATM (my bank is ABN Amro), no charge. I was in Istanbul for New Years, using HSBC's ATMS, no charge.

When I go back 'home' to visit family (the US), ABN Amro charges me no fees for taking out money at local ATMs. The ATMs themselves (rudely) may charge a fee, but last time I was there there were still some ATMs that had no fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can watch the excellent companion Frontline TV documentary for this free online at:

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/creditcards/view/?ut...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/creditcards/view/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=proglist&utm_source=proglist)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a decent thread from reddit where a Visa employee fields questions (on fees, among others): [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/al3tl/iama_fraud_preve...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/al3tl/iama_fraud_prevention_agent_for_a_major_credit/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting story a while back about Visa/Mastercard expanding their debit card business in Canada (which already had a quite efficient debit card system). It can basically be summarized as "giant monopolies colluding to increase their profits on the backs of small businesses, mostly with encouragement from governments."

<http://www.nationalpost.com/m/story.html?id=2171251>

</comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of a "finder's fee", where you pay someone for recommending your product. It's similar, because the recommender has an incentive to promote your product, regardless of whether it is appropriate for the buyer or not. I know these kinds of arrangements are common, and they form a nicely logical model - but I don't like the moral hazard.

It also reminds me of advertising-supported media (free to air TV, newspapers, magazines, and of course... google's internet), in that there are two parties who may collude to the detriment of the consumer. So, you have "advertorial", that appears to be impartial, but isn't; and advertiser-friendly news stories and angles. Have you noticed how the Simpsons and Futurama depict drinking alcohol? Have you ever thought "I wouldn't mind a drink" while watching? Advertiser-friendly. Even Sponge-bob square-pants features burgers prominently. And that's just for cartoons!

What to do about VISA... Protest? Buy stock? [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=V&t=2y](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=V&t=2y) Or start-up a competing transaction provider? (e.g. Paypal).

<comment><USER12> It seems like it's pretty much up to the merchants to protest, since these fees don't (directly) effect me. I would say many people don't even realize that the merchant gets charged a fee for each transaction.

As far as I'm aware, Sam's Club is the only major merchant I've run into that does not accept any Visa cards, only Mastercard and Discover.

<comment><USER13> Most anything that substantially alters most every merchant's costs does affect you. You may not see it as a line item on the reciept, but it's in there.

<comment><USER11> Yes, the article says the costs are "passed on to consumers". Because goods are prices the same no matter how you buy, I think this means that the price increase is passed on to all consumers, whether they pay by VISA or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"What we witnessed was truly a perverse form of competition," said Ronald Congemi, the former chief executive of Star Systems, one of the regional PIN- based networks that has struggled to compete with Visa. "They competed on the basis of raising prices. What other industry do you know that gets away with that?"_

</comment><comment><USER15> It looks like market wants merchants to pay for credit cards maintenance, and part of these merchants fees are going into customers' pockets (various promotions like air-miles and cash back). It was clearly a smart move on Visa's part when they decided charge merchants more for using credit cards.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've found this paper quite enlightening (PDF warning):

[http://www.kansascityfed.org/publicat/psr/rwp/WP04MerchCardA...](http://www.kansascityfed.org/publicat/psr/rwp/WP04MerchCardAcceptance12-28-04.pdf)

Aparrently merchants continue to accept expensive fees even when those fees exceed the benefit of accepting that form of payment (WTF?)</comment>


Ask HN: is it worth forking out $1995 for TechCrunch Disrupt? - <AUTHOR>

I have a bootstrapped startup, with obviously not a pile of cash to spend. Is it worth spending 1995$ to attend Disrupt? <comment><USER2> No. Unless you get to present on stage in the Battlefield, of which only a handful are chosen, the Alley is a complete joke. Majority of the people there will be focused on the Battlefield and hardly any will frequent the Alley floor except mostly other TCD Alley folks and some random people here and there including MAYBE some off handed press folks. Of all the conferences I've attended, by far one of the worse from an attendee perspective (Launch is up there too), much less, a company with a table.

If you're hoping for exposure, this isn't it, unless again, you're in Battlefield. Just about any other tech conference would be worth your money instead, and a lot less generally speaking.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe if you're a B2B company targeting other startups and you're confident you can generate >$1995 in direct sales.

Otherwise it's probably not a great use of funds. There is always the off chance you'll meet the right person and it will help you in a big way, but $2k is a lot to gamble as a bootstrapped startup and there are free ways to meet people.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think you're supposed to hangout in the foyer, that was some tip I read a while back. You just might look weird without a name tag if you can even get in. Parking lot would look desperate.

</comment><comment><USER5> The fact you have to think about it says 'no' to me. My .02.

</comment><comment><USER6> Try to get into the hackathon and build something semi-related to your startup. $1995 then becomes free - the hackathon gives you a free ticket to the event.

</comment><comment><USER7> No.</comment>


Police union slashes number of 'get out of jail free' cards issued - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2018/01/21/police-union-slashes-number-of-get-out-of-jail-free-cards-issued/ <comment><USER2> Is this article satire? How is blatant corruption like this a thing?</comment>


Ask HN: How did you learn Ruby/Ruby on Rails? - <AUTHOR>

I recently started learning Ruby in the beginning of the Summer by reading Why's Poignant Guide. After Why's poignant guide, I purchased and worked my way through Foundation of Rails 2 and created a simple Rails app up on Heroku. Now I'm reading meta programming of Ruby until Agile Web Development with Rails fourth edition is released.<p>I'm just curious how everyone learned to program, because my college's professors are simply abysmal when it comes to mentoring. I've found out that a majority of my professors haven't created anything in ages, and their skills are outdated. <comment><USER2> I find writing something I want to use the best way to go about it. I wrote a few things, private pastie, bookmarking app, blog, remote log viewer. Just write something you need and keep building on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> By creating web sites. Is there any other way? You won't know what you've learned by reading unless you try and apply it in any case. Your professors are possibly more CS guys in any case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point</comment></comment>


Iannis Xenakis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iannis_Xenakis <comment><USER2> I would definitely recommend checking out his string quartets. I saw the JACK Quartet perform them a couple of months ago. It was insane.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_adso67GUd4> (ST-4/1,080262)

</comment><comment><USER3> This made me curious to check his actual work. It seems like math and music is not always a winning combination:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZazYFchLRI> (Metastasis)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yge7GNl5p_k> (Psappha)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XroZgeGOdys> (Terretektorh)

</comment><comment><USER4> He came to CMU in the 80's and I got to see him "perform" one of his works - more like a live mix. Shortly after that I bought an album of his at a used record store - I couldn't believe I found it, he seemed very obscure to me.

Anyway, if any of you have my album, I want it back. Serious.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Pythagoras knew it, but Bach demonstrated it: without mathematics there is no music." [1]

RIPJSB.

[1] <http://www.ntnu.no/gemini/2000-06e/32-34.htm>

</comment><comment><USER6> His book: Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition

[http://books.google.com/books?id=y6lL3I0vmMwC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=y6lL3I0vmMwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Formalized+Music:+Thought+and+Mathematics+in+Composition&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false)</comment>


What David Foster Wallace Circled in His Dictionary - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2010/04/what_david_foster_wallace_circled_in_his_dictionary.html <comment><AUTHOR> Excellent source for interesting startup names. My favorite ones that sound interesting and don't have an offensive meaning, from a cursory scan: Aquavit, Chalcedony, Girasol, Kakemono (a Japanese work bit may not be good because it brings to mind the A. Greek stem _kakos_ ), Mantic, Pedicel (Pedisel also sounds good), Sedilia, Sprachgefuhl, witenagemot.

Of course, all .com versions of these are already taken (except for pedisel.com, there you go).

He also circled Elaine.</comment>


HN frontpage 3 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20070405175109/http://news.ycombinator.com/ Thought it would be amusing to take a trip down memory lane. I'd forgotten that we used to be "Startup News". Standout items for me:<p>- DropBox soliciting early feedback - PG's business plan for ViaWeb - Even then people were complaining about YC News addiction :)<p>Other frontpage editions here: http://web.archive.org/web/*/news.ycombinator.com <comment><USER2> The change in content is by design: <http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78166>

PG: "As of today we've expanded the focus of news.ycombinator.com from news about startups to news interesting to hackers generally. To reflect that we've changed the name to Hacker News."

"The goal is not to have just articles about hacking, but articles of interest to hackers. We're not trying to make something like programming.reddit.com, but something like www.reddit.com was in 2006."

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool to see Dropbox's Tell HN post on there.

<comment><USER4> Exactly what I was thinking. \-- Update 4/4/07: We haven't launched yet, but we are admitting people into the beta. We'd be happy to keep you posted about the beta program and launch (your email won't be used for anything else.)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Made me chuckle - I'd forgotten that we were "Startup News" back then too. Posts of interest for me include:

\- The original DropBox post

\- Paul Graham's business plan for ViaWeb

\- People back then complaining of addiction to YC News :)

Other frontpage versions at <http://web.archive.org/web/*/news.ycombinator.com>

<comment><USER5>
      People back then complaining of addiction to YC News :)

It's interesting, that link isn't in either the archive or the contemporary HN. I wonder what happened to it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also interesting to note that there are 50 stories on the front page instead of 30. Was loading 20 more stories really that inefficient that this had to be dropped?

<comment><USER7> Probably. See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1283312>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone conclusively know what happened to nickb?

<comment><USER9> The last Miles & I heard from his friend, Nick B was/is alive. After that we didn't pursue it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting to see the points inflation: where would you now find a 3 hours old story with 14 points? Certainly not at the top of front page!

<comment><USER11> There's currently a 3 hours old story with 13 points in position 27; ie near the bottom of the front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm interested in almost every item on the hn front page from 3 years ago. Now I'm usually interested in only about 25% of them. I wonder what's changed, me or hn?

<comment><USER13> Probably half and half. I read less than half of the stuff on HN now.

Part of it is a lot of it is not new now. I've read a lot about the lean startups, or joel's ben and jerry vs amazon, or mel the programmer, or the 500 mile email. I've been here long enough to have seen repeats of the same themes. As you grow, the less things surprise you, and hence perhaps less interesting.

And the other part is that I don't really care for the apple gossip, or a picture of woz, or the lighter stuff, but then again, I've only sporatically submitted stuff too.

I've noticed you've submitted less stuff and don't participate as much. The edw519 era has gone, where you submitted stuff and commented. Nowadays, it's the patio11 era, where he submits his own stuff and comments.

<comment><USER12> _The edw519 era has gone_

Oh I sure hope not. I love building things. I love hacker news. And I love talking about building things on hacker news.

It just seems that lately, I've been doing a whole lot more building than talking. Whenever I take my hn breaks, not much on the front page jumps out at me, so I just get right back to work. (This is a good thing).

It's probably just another phase. For the edw519 era to be truly gone, they'd have to pry my keyboard from my OCD hands.

[Ditto on patio11. Great stuff.]

<comment><USER13> Haha, great! I just notice that you've been posting less.

And where the heck is nickb? He also disappeared off the leader board, so I have my suspicions. :) hrm.

<comment><USER14> A lot of people whose karma otherwise rate leaderboard status have been manually removed (especially pg).

In nickb's case, it's likely because his account has been dormant for almost a year. He may have passed away (<http://markenomics.com/item?id=395>) but it's also likely he just decided to take his leave of Hacker News and a number of other online communities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm glad it's not called "Startup News" any more. I probably would have just glanced at the page and left. And then where would I find the kind of techy, software development article links that I regularly add to my company's wiki?

</comment><comment><USER16> Viewing your 3-years-hence profile is fun too. [http://web.archive.org/web/20080113124511/news.ycombinator.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080113124511/news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fogus)

</comment><comment><USER17> Ah how times have changed. Two of those top stories were submitted by me (albeit, not very interesting ones). I haven't submitted a front page story in ages.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Wow, I was just accidentally browsing the "3 years ago" HN for about 5 minutes, not even realizing that I wasn't looking at the current view.

</comment><comment><USER18> The more things change the more they stay the same?

MSFT: Always one step behind I am addicted to YC News Why to Not Start a Startup

</comment><comment><USER19> Holy shit, 2007 was 3 years ago

</comment><comment><USER20> The leaders page is interesting: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070406233614/news.ycombinator.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070406233614/news.ycombinator.com/leaders)

I think I've gotten more karma on some posts than existed in the system at that time :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Did anyone else open the page in a new tab and forget about it, and then later on wonder why the heck every link on the HN front page went to archive.org?

It was crazy confusing until I noticed the address bar.

</comment><comment><USER22> I remember emailing Dharmesh after he made that post. I was still in school and had just started getting absorbed into the startup culture.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have some occasional complaints, but I like it how it is now, and it seems to be handling growth reasonably well. I vaguely remember reading it when it was Startup News, but I feel like I've absorbed most of the "common startup knowledge" already, hence those articles are ones my eyes drift pass. There was also a lot more overt pg-fandom in the early site.

</comment><comment><USER24> Haha awesome! One of the, very few, days that one of my posts was in the top 3. Thanks, you just made my day.

</comment><comment><USER25> The articles were really only the gravy. The meat and potatoes back then were the discussions and comments.

<comment><USER26> While there are less "start a thread without a URL" discussions on the HN front page these days, I still value greatly the HN discussion about the links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Quite a lot more emphasis on startups. I like the current mix of news more (I wasn't here back then), but the original crew apparently doesn't like it that much (I've seen complains about us new readers turning this into the new Slashdot/Reddit/whatever)

</comment><comment><USER28> The page back then feels like a small village community. There aren't a crazy number of comments, just a few tacit ones. Today, HN feels like as if the small village had a gold rush of visitors and "tourists."

</comment><comment><USER29> How come nobody appreciated the UI!!! I personally believe HN has an awesome UEx quotient and would look the same even 3 and more years later!!

</comment><comment><USER30> Where are all the Apple and Erlang stories?

</comment><comment><USER31> The more things change, the more they stay the same.

</comment><comment><USER32> HN has now gone back in time and jumped itself!

</comment><comment><USER33> I felt emotional for a quick minute.</comment>


Sandboxie Open Source Code is available for download - <AUTHOR> https://community.sophos.com/products/sandboxie/f/forum/119641/important-sandboxie-open-source-code-is-available-for-download <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/fxmx3s/sandboxie_op...](https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/fxmx3s/sandboxie_open_source_code_is_available_for/)</comment>


Tell your friends about your favorite movies.. - <AUTHOR> http://sharemovi.es/

<comment><AUTHOR> see also facebook page [http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=145334765507...](http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=145334765507139)</comment>


Octopart Part Browser, built with JavascriptMVC - <AUTHOR> http://octopart.com/partbrowser

<comment><USER2> This looks very promising. Great work!

<comment><USER3> Congratulations to the Octopart team for the fantastic work! For those wanting to try out javascriptMVC3.0 here's where you can get it: <http://github.com/pinhook/framework>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It'd be a little more interesting if the source wasn't obfuscated or provided in full elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> I was planning to upgrade to JavascriptMVC 3.0 before open sourcing it but if you want to see the source as-is let me know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its very neat and simple. I think its going to be a winner.

</comment><comment><USER7> Needs filters to be useful but otherwise very cool.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the feedback. If you click on the magnifying glass in each column header you'll get a filter for that column.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't a filter icon be more obvious?

<comment><USER5> What do you mean by filter icon?

<comment><USER9> For filter icons usually a funnel is used:

[http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=fil...](http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=filter+icon&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=g2&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

Magnifying glasses typically represent search.

<comment><USER10> I think the magnifying glass is perfectly acceptable here. I think the "filter" icon is much less recognizable to the majority of users. (case in point, the author of the app hasn't heard of it).

<comment><USER11> A funnel gives me precisely the opposite connotations as filtering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The back button works! Hallelujah!

</comment><comment><USER13> Some things would be improved with more attention to accessibility. Ext.tree.TreePanel, for instance, allows keyboard navigation out of the box. In a similar vein, the results grid doesn't allow row selection/keyboard navigation (ref. Ext.grid.RowSelectionModel).

<comment><USER14> JMVC doesn't provide packaged widgets (though it is starting to). It's about providing a middle layer (above jQuery, less than customizable widgets) to build customized apps that are as light as possible.</comment></comment>


Reproductive biology: Girls on top - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15125173

<comment><USER2> FYI for people who may be confused by terminology: in the biological sciences, the word "abortion" refers to any termination of pregnancy, natural or otherwise, displacing the non-technical term "miscarriage." The medical procedure is usually qualified with adjectives such as "induced," or occasionally "elective." I don't want anyone to skim the article and think that women are getting elective abortions on male embryos. The article is saying that the natural miscarriage of male embryos & fetuses (feti?) is more sensitive to environmental stress than that of females.

<comment><USER3> > fetuses (feti?)

I believe the convention for -i/-es pluralization is based on the Latin root of the word. In this case the correct version is "fetuses". I don't mean to correct - I figured I'm not the only one with a dash of language nerd in them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A long time ago I saw research on boys born in Berlin from WW II that found that stress in mothers during pregnancy lead to an increased incidence of homosexuality. I wonder if there is a possible correlation.

For instance could it be that the stressed out mom flushes the fetus with female hormones to give a girl a better start in adverse circumstances, but those hormones increase the odds of abortion or homosexuality in boys?

</comment><comment><USER5> That certainly is surprising. I know some research has suggested that a stressed mother is less likely to conceive in the first place. This is the first I had heard of stress leading to spontaneous abortion.

</comment><comment><USER6> Once again I find myself wishing that less active tone was used of evolution.

It is not that more girls are born because they have a better chance of reproducing in a famine or other stressful condition; it is that _genomes that exhibit this tendency have become prevalent precisely because of that effect, which is why we see it now._

</comment><comment><USER7> Excellent article, but I was completely overthrown by the use of the word "ain't" (with an apostrophe, too). Quite atypical of The Economist.

<comment><USER8> "It ain't necessarily so" is a common turn of phrase (also a song), which the author was playing off.

<comment><USER9> Right. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Ain%27t_Necessarily_So>

I'm not sure what crazed style nazi is downvoting you for being informative. It's a common reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Girls are on top yet more boys are born even in stressful times? "Over the whole period 52.4% of births were of boys. In some months, though, that fell as low as 51.2%."

<comment><USER11> On average there are 105 boys born for every 100 girls. I believe it evens out in the end with more boys dying in an early age than girls, but I don't have any hard data on that.

<comment><USER12> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio>

I believe it doesn't even out until relatively late late in life, with male mortality being slightly higher at all ages. From the wikipedia article:

The "First World" G7 members all have a gender ratio in the range of 0.95–0.98 for the total population, of 1.05–1.07 at birth, of 1.05–1.06 for the group below 15, of 1.00–1.04 for the group aged 15–64, and of 0.70–0.75 for those over 65.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> +1 for the double entendre.</comment>


iPhone Owners Irate After iOS Update Bricks Cellular Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomsguide.com/us/ios-12-1-2-cellular-data-bricked,news-28922.html <comment><USER2> "Addresses an issue that could affect cellular connectivity in Turkey for iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max" [1]

What exactly did apple do here? Kind of suspicious that they made adjustments to the eSIM specifically for Turkey when Erdogan announced he would be banning iPhones because of coup fears [2]. Did they enable Turkey to listen in?

[1] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209084](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT209084)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/business/turkey- erdogan-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/business/turkey-erdogan- apple-iphone.html)

<comment><USER3> >Did they enable Turkey to listen in?

why would they need an Apple backdoor to do so? AFAIK carrier equipment already have "lawful intercept" mechanisms built in (which is no surprise because it's not e2e encrypted).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yikes, this is very unfortunate timing for the regions who have holidays this time of year.

This reinforces my constant reluctance to update anything around holidays or other chaotic travel periods.

I wonder if Apple shouldn't have waited until after the holiday season to push major updates. I mean, we all know stuff happens, this is just reality, but waiting a few measly days would not only have saved the inconvenience for the iOS team members who were surely pulled in to work during family holiday time, but probably more important to Apple, it would have saved the customers ability to communicate during the busiest family travel time of the year.

<comment><USER5> I read a rumor that Apple pushed this update to work around Qualcomm patents so they can keep selling iPhones in China. Would explain why the update appears rushed. Must suck for the devs to be called back to work over the holidays.

<comment><USER6> That would make a lot of sense. I bet they've re-written big chunks of the LTE stack in a real hurry to work around various patents.

Mobile standards and modems are a massive kludge of compatibility layers and hacks. Just look at the 'Hacks' section of the mediatek modem engineering app and you'll see all kinds of tweaks to allow the phone to connect to a certain network in a certain country which does something slightly wonky.

My guess is that hurried rewriting of bits of a mobile stack probably led to them not perfectly replicating all those hacks, so certain phones with certain combinations of base stations, mobile networks, sim card models and authentication servers no longer connect properly.

On the plus side, most of those mobile networks will probably now be snowed under with complaints from angry iphone owners, so rapidly updating their systems to become compatible again, even if apple refuses to re-implement the hacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The worst is that if you don't update the iOS constantly reminds you to update and if you say no you are given passcode to give it permission to update it by itself in the middle of the night.

</comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18747302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18747302)

</comment><comment><USER9> Yikes, during the holidays, too....

<comment><USER10> Whether you're traveling or not, this could be a problem - I'm at home all week, and I'll be on WiFi. If I hadn't seen this, I might not have thought to check to see if I was impacted for another week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I never update my iPhone. Or rather, I update the software when I buy a new one. I don't trust Apple, I believe in forced obsolescence, and I find it's just better not to update.

<comment><USER3> enjoy not getting security updates and getting hit by RCEs that were patched months ago.</comment></comment>


The New Minimalism - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/223.html <comment><USER2> Being so stack focused, I found forth code of more than a couple of lines almost impossible to follow without a pen & paper or digital equivalent to keep track of what the stack is doing at a given point in time in the program.

I find many other languages far easier to dive into other peoples code and understand what data structrues they're working with and what they're attempting to do to it.</comment>


Ask HN: Did anyone view your YC video pitch? - <AUTHOR> Did you check the statistics on youtube and found out someone other than you has viewed it? Could be PG <comment><USER2> Ours wasn't viewed by anyone other than my cofounders and I. I take that as an indication that we're not in the running for an interview. If you do get a view, at least you know there's some interest from YC. I suppose it's possible that some applications are good enough that the founders forgo watching the video in the interest of time, but it's unlikely.

Good luck to everyone. Looking forward to seeing the next batch of YC companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> We should update these posts with the results to see if there is a strong relationship between the number of views > 0 sec and a invitation to interview. I'm sure future applicants would appreciate it (or re- applicants...)

GL everyone, try not to stress too much

<comment><USER2> I don't think number of views will correlate with an increased chance of getting an interview, but I'm pretty sure getting no views will correlate with not getting an interview.

Totally agree that none of us should be stressing about this. Cheers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quoting from Quora "The advice we received was that they really like them to be a minute or less because founders/partners only have a few minutes to read each application.

It could be that you gave enough information in that time or that because it was 1:30 they just watched some of it to get an understanding. I wouldn't worry about it though."

[http://www.quora.com/Y-Combinator/Our-YC-application- video-f...](http://www.quora.com/Y-Combinator/Our-YC-application-video-for- Winter-2013-batch-wasnt-watched-till-the-end-Is-that-a-bad-sign)

<comment><USER5> That is good to know; mine was watched for < 1 min as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This should calm your nerves:

<http://askolo.com/ycalumni#4f851fc828e186c372000201>

Good luck to everyone!

<comment><USER7> awesome link here on the YC app process. Thanks to the YC alums for the detailed answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Team video: one 0 minute CA view (auto embed?) on the 2nd then one full view from CA the next day.

Demo video: unsure, I shared the link with a few people in CA so that messed up those numbers. However, no actual views (time > 0) on the same day the team video was viewed for a minute. Again, a 0 minute view on the day of submission.

</comment><comment><USER8> We've had someone in California view our team video on the 12th but I guess this is no indication of things cos they could watch the video and promptly put you in the no pile as easy as the yes. Fingers crossed and good luck to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER9> My team video was viewed a handful of times. I feel reasonably comfortable knowing it was YC because the moment I submitted, the video view count jumped.

It's like reading tea leaves though, not sure ultimately what this means.

Good luck everyone,

Jenny

</comment><comment><USER5> We got a view; though, we don't necessarily know if it was by PG et al. It could have been the YC alumni that pre-screen applications.

Best of luck to everyone on their applications.

</comment><comment><USER10> 6 views since Nov 4. 3 for full 1:50 duration, 3 for only ~:20 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER11> Are video views a good barometer to measure YC interest for interviews?

<comment><USER2> That's a great question. I say yes based on a question Harjeet answered on Quora regarding what makes a good YC application:

"- PLEASE include a video. it makes such a difference and will significantly help your chances of making interview."

[http://www.quora.com/Y-Combinator/What-should-be-included- in...](http://www.quora.com/Y-Combinator/What-should-be-included-in-a- successful-Y-Combinator-application/answer/Harjeet-Taggar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 2 views on 11/2. 1 view on 11/4. 1 minute estimated watch time.

</comment><comment><USER13> 3 views here, all made last week

</comment><comment><USER14> 6 views from California.

</comment><comment><USER15> We wish, no visits :(</comment>


Advice to the CEO for BEFORE you run into financial trouble - <AUTHOR> Do not let your employees accumulate alot of annual leave. This is a financial liability which becomes a real problem if you do run into trouble.
If humanly possible, do the right thing and pay all your suppliers fully. I have no respect for people who run their company off the backs of their suppliers.
Make sure your company is always paying its full entitlements to employees and always up to the minute on these payments - this is not the right area to start scraping up cash when it is tight. If you don't have the money to pay entitlements then you're better to go bust than stop paying them.
I've never had investors but presumably it is very much in your interest to keep them up to the day informed about the cash position and ask them and involve them in the process - they will be justafiably angry if this is a surprise to them, they may have solutions if you get them involved, and they have some level of ownership when the bell finally tolls if they have been well informed constantly as the plane drops from the sky.
Don't break the law, ever - your reputation is the only thing you have.
Always know every day how much debt you would be in if the company folded today. If debt > $0 then sink the ship immediately.
Folding a company with debt will ruin you personally for years to come, perhaps forever. Folding a company without debt lets you get straight on with life.
If the writing is on the wall then think very seriously about folding the company whilst there is money to pay out all suppliers and employers. Every day of operation for a company destined to fail is simply less cash to pay out suppliers and employees. Being bankrupted is an INFINITELY different thing to shutting a company down cleanly. Your company is not out of business when it has $0 cash, it is out of business when its liabilities cannot be met by the cash you have.  Don't make the mistake of running it down where you don't have enough cash to pay all liabilities. <comment><USER2> "Do not let your employees accumulate a lot of leave"

Err.. Are you proposing forcing employees to take vacation against their will?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's common policy for a company to require employees to take their leave beyond a certain accumulation.

It's good for the financial health of the company but importantly it's good for the employees to be rested.

It should be reasonable of course, but yes it makes alot of sense to have a company policy that you can't let leave accumulate beyond a certain amount.</comment></comment>


The Secret Life of JavaScript Primitives - <AUTHOR> http://javascriptweblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/the-secret-life-of-javascript-primitives/

<comment><USER2> This...is incredibly typical of JavaScript's design.

<comment><USER3> True. I'd argue that it's the best of both worlds: Unlike Java, you have access to a bunch of helpful functions on every primitive, and you can add more by modifying prototypes; and unlike Ruby, primitives are immutable, which puts a cap on the level of complexity (you could write a whole book on Ruby's string objects).

<comment><USER2> You could do something similar by having each primitive type share a global prototype á la Lua's "string" metatable. Most operations are implemented as primitives in the VM, but any non-primitive operations on primitive types go to the type's metatable.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup (SNS for Creatives) - <AUTHOR>

Prezlog.com is a social network for creatives in Asia to showcase their creations and brand themselves. The site also helps them network with corporations and other creatives. Right now we are in public beta and trying to get a few users to test the site before launching. It's bootstrapped by me, and I outsourced the design and development to a web development agency in Nepal.
It's run by Buddypress, and I'd love to hear your thoughts and/or suggestions, especially for those who are familiar with wordpress.
Thank you!
Link:http://www.prezlog.com <comment><USER2> Having this not directly link to the site & instead having to read this, copy & paste the url into the browser...unacceptable</comment>


Is the time ripe for a DHT-based Twitter clone? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kragen/status/697508298011123712 <comment><USER2> Sounds like Twister P2P, that has been around for more than two years now:

[http://twister.net.co/](http://twister.net.co/)</comment>


Show HN: A single email covering the important developer-related news each week - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailydrip.com/blog/weekly-drip-046-1-dinosaurs-teach-css-developer-compensation-cargo-cult-development-and-reasonml-finds-traction <comment><AUTHOR> This is this week's post, but we produce them each week. We might experiment with a second distribution channel that produces three per week and continue publishing this one every week, see what uptake looks like in the different formats. Thoughts?</comment>


China Says: If You Must Infringe On Copyrights, Use Baidu - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20081110/0025482785.shtml <comment><USER2> "This would be the same Baidu that first became really popular when China shifted all Google traffic to its site, and also the site that stayed popular because it made it easy to download unauthorized music."

This illustrates why allowing the government to compete with private companies should not be allowed. Government should be neutral.

</comment><comment><USER3> China has money, which means they can get away with pretty much anything. It's too bad really, I'd like to see an international "great wall of tech" that would force China to change it's ways.

/not holding my breathe</comment>


Android Experiments - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidexperiments.com/

<comment><USER2> Your opening animation is too long. I was tempted to just close the tab and read the next HN story before it finished.</comment>


Why new diseases keep appearing in China - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54 <comment><USER2> Probabilities. Any new disease is more likely to appear in the biggest population slice. The biggest population slice is China with (approx.) twenty percent of the world's population.</comment>


Show HN: CoinGap – Monitor arbitrage opportunities - <AUTHOR> https://coingap.org/?hn <comment><USER2> So... I have filled-in the filters and nothing happened (on Google Chrome)</comment>


Incremental Backups Using GNU Tar and S3 - <AUTHOR> https://ops.tips/blog/incremental-backup-linux/ <comment><USER2> If you're intrigued by using basic unix primitives for tasks like this you'd probably also be intrigued by a cloud storage product that _was built to act like a unix primitive_.[1][2]

If you're interested in point-in-time snapshots, you're probably also intrigued by our ZFS platform that gives you day/week/month/quarter/year snapshots that you don't have to configure or maintain - you just do a "dumb" rsync (or whatever) to us and the snapshots just appear.

If you're interested in _encrypted backups_ you should look into the 'borg backup' tool which has become the de facto standard for remote, encrypted, changes-only-upload backups.[3][4]

Finally, if S3 pricing is important, you should email us about our "HN Readers'" discount.

[1] [https://www.rsync.net](https://www.rsync.net)

[2] Examples: [http://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html](http://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html)

[3] [https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail- backups/](https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/)

[4] [http://rsync.net/products/attic.html](http://rsync.net/products/attic.html)

<comment><USER3> Regarding rsync.net, I'm sorry but I won't trust any company to protect my data if they can't spend a few minutes to put an SSL certificate on their website. The rsync.net url just redirects to an http link with no SSL certificate.

<comment><USER4> What's the threat model for serving a read-only, public, marketing site over http? Or is it just a general principle?

<comment><USER5> That website is not a read-only, public marketing site. It contains their order page, which asks for personal information: [https://www.rsync.net/signup/order.html](https://www.rsync.net/signup/order.html)

Their _unencrypted_ pricing page links to that encrypted order form page. We all agree there should be no http to http transitions like that, right?

If you'll note, that encrypted order page is on the same host as their unencrypted pages. Both rsync.net and www.rsync.net covered by the cert. _They have SSL set up already, and they just purposely redirect away to http for their static pages. That is a well-known ssl antipattern._

<comment><USER6> When you say "on the same host" do you mean "have the same DNS name" or do you mean literally on the same server? It's possible it's just behind the same load balancer so I'm curious what the threat model that you're concerned about is specifically.

To be clear: I don't like transitions like that either but that concern is something I've only previously had with sites that do e-commerce or login portal that's not on a different (sub)domain. Apple and some banking sites are notable examples that used to concern me (though I doubt they are still like that).

<comment><USER7> The threat for http to https transactions is that man in the middle can rewrite, drop, or add data before the user reaches the https site. See sslstrip[0] for an example of this attack.

[0] [https://moxie.org/software/sslstrip/](https://moxie.org/software/sslstrip/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can do much the same thing with less work using the Tarsnap tool and service. Rather than incremental backup, blocks are deduplicated on the client and only unique blocks are backed up. This has about the same storage efficiency as incremental backups, but has the benefit of not relying upon "full" backup plus incremental diffs to achieve the final snapshot contents.

(I have no affiliation with Tarsnap other than Colin seems like a nice guy and I am a customer.)

I have full backups configured every 12 hours. Just for example, on my last backup, the total logical size was 12 GB; the compressed size of the undeduplicated blocks was 7.2 GB; the total size of actual new data, uncompressed, was 181 MB; and the final sum uploaded for this new full backup was 72 MB. Logically, Tarsnap stores 2.9 TB of my backups, but after compression and deduplication the "physical" requirement is only 16 GB.

For this I pay about 17¢ USD/day, or $62/year. I could probably try to lower my use storage use somewhat (the largest component of that cost, 13.4¢/day) but it hasn't been worth my time yet.

<comment><USER9> Tarsnap is really slow to restore big files. Just saying in the hope it can help some people.

<comment><USER10> As a tar-based backup system without a separate index, restoring a single file is approximately as expensive as restoring the entire backup.

Systems that split metadata and data streams do a lot better (restic, attic, borg, bup).

<comment><USER11> Err... Tarsnap _does_ split metadata and data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to have a "poor man's time machine" system based on rsync + hard links to files that didn't change with new backups. Essentially it was the same concept than time machine. Of course you couldn't upload a single "snapshot" because tar wouldn't know what's a hard link. One advantage of using rsync is that you can also keep track of things you delete.

Today I'm using zfs with real snapshots. For systems with no zfs support (my wife's iMac for instance), I have a zfs fs that those systems rsync to, after the rsync is done I create a snapshot. All scripted. The snapshots can be stored in another server for an additional layer of backup, or incrementally send them to s3 if you want.

<comment><USER13> _> I used to have a "poor man's time machine" system based on rsync + hard links to files that didn't change with new backups._

I build something similar, that runs on a Raspberry Pi and creates backups for the machines in my home network [0]. The Pi pings each machine every hour, if a machine is online and a backup is due, it starts a backup process. My Pi uses a USB battery as a UPS (unlimited power supply) [1]. I put all the hardware in a little medicine cabinet on the wall [1]. It's been running stable for month now, without a single reboot. It needs about 15 minutes to backup my dev machine over WiFi. It's a little independent backup module, I'm really happy with it. :)

[0] [https://github.com/feluxe/very-hungry-pi](https://github.com/feluxe/very- hungry-pi)

[1] [https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00FAU7ZB2/ref=oh_aui_searc...](https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00FAU7ZB2/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

[2] [https://www.amazon.de/HMF-Medizinschrank-Arzneischrank- Hausa...](https://www.amazon.de/HMF-Medizinschrank-Arzneischrank-Hausapotheke- Original/dp/B002CVKEWY)

<comment><USER14> Surely you mean Uninterruptible Power Supply. I would indeed be interested in an unlimited one myself.

<comment><USER13> This makes sense now that you say it. Whatever it is, it _powers_ my Pi very well :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you have a large amount of data to backup, cloud storage may be too expensive.

My data set is about 8 TB (my wife is a professional photographer), and it would be too expensive to keep in S3, so I have an "offsite backup system" that is hosted at my in-laws. It's just a RaspberryPi + an 8 TB drive encrypted with LUKS (in case it gets stolen or tampered with).

Every night, the RPi syncs the data from my house with rsnapshot (which is a TimeMachine like tool that uses hard links with rsync over ssh).

Because of how rsnapshot works, I can always go there and look for a file in one of the directories: it looks just like the original hierarchy, and I can just browse the filesystem as I would on the original system.

I also don't have to "trust a 3rd party" that the data is really there. I remember some posts on HN about people who used some backup services successfully... until restore time. I'm always cautious about the magical "set it and forget it" service that is a black box.

The first sync has to be done "on the premises" because of the sheer amount of data to transfer, but then the few daily Gigs of data can easily go over the net while everyone is sleeping.

<comment><USER16> S3 is expensive not just because it's "cloud", but because it keeps multiplies copies in monitored drives, whereas your single drive is a ticking time bomb.

I have a couple of drives in RAID 1 (mirror), yet I still don't rely on it exclusively for really important data.

<comment><USER15> Well, all of my data exists in 3 copies. One in my house, one in the detached "granny unit", and one in the offsite location that I described.

My single offsite drive is indeed a ticking time bomb, but it's easily replaceable with no loss of data when it dies.

The problematic case is when all the drives hosting the 3 copies happen to die at the same time. Perhaps I don't have good protection about this case, but I think I've reached diminished returns in terms of backups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would really recommend using duplicity[1]. It supports gpg, incremental backups and more.

[1] [http://duplicity.nongnu.org/](http://duplicity.nongnu.org/)

<comment><USER18> Can anyone else vouch for this being a stable, long term solution for backing up my home directory from macOS? Every single backup/cloud file storage gives me anxiety that I did something wrong or that there are bugs not discovered by retrieving random archives as a test.

<comment><USER19> From: [http://duplicity.nongnu.org/features.html](http://duplicity.nongnu.org/features.html)

> Although you should never have to look at a duplicity archive manually, if > the need should arise they can be produced and processed using GnuPG, rdiff, > and tar.

I haven't set it up yet, but it's going to be my holiday project this Christmas..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tar works for small things, but over an arbitrary file number file size combo it becomes unwieldy. Rsync, rbackup, rsnapshot, are great tools based on rsync, and these days Borg has been getting a lot of traction. Bacula is great but complicated to setup and manage. There is a newer very interesting one called Ur that seems promising... And my mind is blanking on some of the others, I'll comment when I'm not mobile so I can look at my list.

Also don't forget zfs/btrfs functions that might be relevant.

<comment><USER21> I second Bacula as something to look into. The configuration does take some time to understand, but it is incredibly flexible. It's also industrial strength and reliable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Worth checking out for backups is git-annex with remote bup repositories:

* [https://github.com/bup/bup](https://github.com/bup/bup)

* [http://git-annex.branchable.com/special_remotes/bup/](http://git-annex.branchable.com/special_remotes/bup/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know about `bup`! Thanks for the reference! I was reading the README and it indeed looks pretty great. Have you been using it? What's your experience with it?

The ability to recover from a left state seems pretty amazing:

> You can back up directly to a remote bup server, without needing tons of > temporary disk space on the computer being backed up. And if your backup is > interrupted halfway through, the next run will pick up where you left off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A great, though non-free, backup tool that supports incremental encrypted backups is Arq[0].

Arq supports painless back ups to multiple cloud storage providers, with budget enforcements, etc.

[0] [https://www.arqbackup.com](https://www.arqbackup.com)

</comment><comment><USER24> With Btrfs or ZFS the whole concept of incremental backup is reshuffled: basically you have consistent full backups, only occupying the space of a full backup + all the diffs, and you only transfer the changed blocks. It's really something with no comparison to other methods.

While I love ZFS, let's not forget that btrfs has its strengths (a lot more flexibility, mainline support), and, provided that your use case is single disk, Raid 1 or raid 10, has been working super reliably for some years now.

</comment><comment><USER25> I recently wanted to get backups going in a similar way (incremental with copies on-site and off-site). I ended up using Borg and rclone, sending the backups to s3 compatible Wasabi storage. It's been working great, and coupled with zerotier on machines that are not in the house (family members), I ended up with a pretty resilient system that only costs a few dollars per month. I wrote up the details here: [https://localconspiracy.com/2017/10/backup- everything.html](https://localconspiracy.com/2017/10/backup-everything.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not sure if tar is a good format for backups, due to its extremely sequential nature ( _e.g._ you can't get a list of the files in an archive without scanning the whole archive...)

<comment><USER27> What overhead does that add in practice? Like a second or so to scan a few GB of tarball? Does that matter?

<comment><USER28> It often is, especially if the tarball is compressed (especially if you use anything but Zstandard) or on a network store rather than fast local ssd. Typically a rule of thumb is a hard drive with a spindle may five around 100mb/sec throughput, so that is likely the bigger bottleneck, followed by cpu if using slower compression algorithms.

Zstandard at a high compression level gives a good tradeoff of decompression speed vs underlying physical throughput, be it network or spindle.

Even so, yes, the sequential nature of tar is not great for this reason.

Squashfs files, which can be used on Linux and Mac (using fuse for OS X), are a very good alternative for archIves, though without some of the features described in the linked article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Note that one point of failure of this setup is that you are keeping the snapshot/index filed locally. Ideally, you want to back those up as well.

</comment><comment><USER30> I use restic to minio stored on a raid1 btrfs system and I love it.

</comment><comment><USER31> You'd definitely want to do a full backup occasionally.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree!</comment></comment>