Id Software - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/id-Software <comment><USER2> In case anyone doubts how revolutionary some of these games were, check out these fan letters from the Wolfenstein source:

 _As a former POW (Vietnam), I hesitated to play WOLF for over a month after downloading as I feared flashbacks. I didn 't want to remember all that I had been through all those years ago, when, as POW's, my friend and I decided an escape attempt would be better than a slow death by torture and starvation.

My friend and I made crude maps and hoarded food. The day of the escape we clubbed the guard with stones, took his gun and fought our way through two levels of underground tunnels (only a few guards and had to crawl). I made it, my friend didn't.

Dreams...NO! NIGHTMARES...YES!! However, the more I play WOLF the less frequently I have nightmares. The chilling part is turning a corner and seeing a guard with his gun drawn.

WOLF is a powerful game. Fearful as well. I believe that a person should face the past. So... when I can play EPISODE 1 comfortably (no nightmares), I plan on ordering the full series._

There's also a letter from a Microsoft manager requesting a multiplayer version.

[https://github.com/id- Software/wolf3d/blob/master/WOLFSRC/GO...](https://github.com/id- Software/wolf3d/blob/master/WOLFSRC/GOODSTUF.TXT)

<comment><USER3> As you say, that is an extremely moving letter. I would never have associated Doom with therapy - thanks for sharing. (I am a big fan of John Carmack and the id team.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We owe a lot to John Carmack in many ways - but I hope one of his enduring legacies will be the amount of programmers he inspired with both the games he helped make, and the code he made available. It helped many of us to get started somewhere.

I never ended up going into games myself, but in no small part I owe my career to him.

As well as the Doom book, his plan files are a fascinating time capsule to go back over, particularly if you 'came of age' during that golden age of PC games development.

[https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan- archive](https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive)

<comment><USER5> Curious that you think it was a golden age.

<comment><USER6> It was a golden age for the first person immersive simulation game. Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Thief, System Shock II, Half-Life, Deus Ex - there was a period of classics with large improvements and innovation from one game to the next, where game design space was explored just as the technology to render it became available.

First person immersive sims are generally best played on the PC. When consoles that were able to do decent graphics for a reasonable period (i.e. the pace of hardware evolution slowed) came into their own, third person control worked better with joypads, and for commercial reasons, PC games often ended up as a second-rate ports of console games, with compromised controls. You really need a mouse for first person.

<comment><USER7> _first person immersive simulation game_

FPS stands for First Person _Shooter_. The games you're listing don't simulate much, even if some of those games have RPG elements.

<comment><USER6> I know what FPS stands for, but Thief most definitely isn't a shooter, and System Shock II is less of a shooter than a creepy exploration game. Deus Ex is half an RPG.

FPS is too reductive. I'm using the phrase immersive sim in the same way as these articles:

[https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06/29/dark-futures- par...](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06/29/dark-futures-part-1-randy- smith/)

[https://www.pcgamer.com/history-of-the-best-immersive- sims/](https://www.pcgamer.com/history-of-the-best-immersive-sims/)

See also Wikipedia - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersive_sim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersive_sim)

HTH

<comment><USER7> No, it doesn't really help explain how Doom, Wolfenstein, or Quake, etc., are lumped in together with games like Thief as simulations. FPS is certainly not reductive. A game can be more than one genre, but sometimes an FPS is just an FPS, and more than half the games you listed are pretty much just an FPS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For some of the history of that time, I suggest checking out "Masters of Doom : how two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture", by David Kushner. The book is 15 years old (!!!) at this point, but I think it's still a compelling read.

<comment><USER9> I can second that—it's an excellent book. It put a clear image in my mind of the sort of environment I'd like to develop software in: primarily just a group of friends who have a shared idea of something cool they want to build together. I've been disillusioned that that will happen at a Silicon Valley type startup (not that it's impossible—but far more likely that the founders will segregate themselves from employees in such a way that everyone involved can't feel the same passion, commitment, interest, etc.—or even just the knowledge that they're going through the same struggle at the same time. Also the big stakes and investor pressure etc. are almost certainly gonna drain the fun.), but I'm still hopeful I can find or create similar circumstances elsewhere.

<comment><USER10> I have trouble believing the nyc startup scene is more egalitarian, but I'm on my 4th startup as an early employee (#1-18ish) and the founders have always been in the trenches. Not to invalidate your experience, just to emphasize the role of luck in all of this.

<comment><USER9> I've been at two startups, one in Boston and one in San Francisco. At the Boston startup, all the founders but one were very much 'in the trenches'; the one who wasn't was a professor splitting her time elsewhere, so it made sense. That company was ~20 people when I joined. At the SF startup, the founder was... (to avoid saying too much) alienating, though the whole company was only four people for much of the time, and never more than eight or so.

In any case, the main thing I want to say is that it doesn't really matter whether they are 'in the trenches.' You are in different realms of existence if you own the company vs. work for it. As a founder, it's your personal creation; as an employee, you may care about the product, but the primary thing is your paycheck (most startup employees I've spoken with are much more mercenary with this than myself, too). You know that if it succeeds, the founder will become rich and famous and enter a social stratum that the employees will still only be able to fantasize about. No one will know their name or grant them ridiculous amounts of respect etc.

Even if none of that comes to fruition, the fact that your potential courses (as they relate to the company) are so divided creates immediate present-term social distance. And you lose the sense of shared struggle—or it's at least on a much lower level.

If you're all equal owners, the feeling of going to work on your shared thing must be very different, I imagine. I think it's probably also necessary to not take investment (or somehow do it in a very low pressure way), in order to have fun like the Id guys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is the famed "Fast Inverse Square Root" trick:

[https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-III- Arena/blob/dbe4ddb1...](https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-III- Arena/blob/dbe4ddb10315479fc00086f08e25d968b4b43c49/code/game/q_math.c#L561)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for lifting this up!

<comment><USER13> My favourite part of the wiki page is:

      i  = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 );  // what the fuck?

<comment><USER11> I like how they rewrite the code in different ways (type punning) and keep the "what the fuck?" comment intact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you'd like to try out Doom now, there is an OpenGL port called Doomsday[0] which is very complete and loyal to the original, while smoothing out/modernizing things enough to make it genuinely fun for modern players. For instance, you can look in all directions with 'mouse look' and jump and run faster while pressing shift, and there are dynamic spot lights attached to certain things (e.g. fireballs), even though the original sprites are still the primary visual. It also supports Hexen and Heretic and adds a more modern multiplayer interface. (Also allows swapping alternate game assets, so some people have done mods with 3d models.)

Gameplay video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2Ddl4CM4ao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2Ddl4CM4ao)

[0] [http://dengine.net/](http://dengine.net/)

<comment><USER14> As someone who grew up playing Doom I have to admit that video makes me uneasy - almost like an "uncanny valley" effect. Although I can see why it might be easier on the eyes for modern gamers and if it introduces more people to the game then that can only be a good thing.

For those looking for a more period correct experience there's Chocolate Doom: [https://www.chocolate- doom.org/wiki/index.php/Chocolate_Doom](https://www.chocolate- doom.org/wiki/index.php/Chocolate_Doom)

Though I have to admit I generally just fire up my 486 to play. I've already had one complete playthrough of Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 this year and I'm sure it won't be the last. :)

<comment><USER9> Actually I get that now too when I skip through quickly. For me it's because he mostly uses 3d character models during the video—although that's not the default setup. I mostly just watched the beginning earlier and didn't realize how much was using the 3d character set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I burned many hours on the original Doom, in my bedroom as a young teenager with headphones on in the dark.

Remember the No Clipping cheat code?

Here's the source code check to turn it on:

[https://github.com/id- Software/DOOM/blob/77735c3ff0772609e9c...](https://github.com/id- Software/DOOM/blob/77735c3ff0772609e9c8d29e3ce2ab42ff54d20b/linuxdoom-1.10/st_stuff.c#L429)

<comment><USER16> Another fun (90ies) fact: the noclip cheat code (idspispopd) stands for _Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris_.

The Smashing Pumpkins paid tribute by using a Doom sample on their Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album.

[http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/SPISPOPD](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/SPISPOPD)

<comment><USER17> And apparently the comment includes a small typo:

// Smashing Pumpkins Into Samml Piles Of Putried Debris.

I kept wondering what "samml" meant... in German "sammeln" means to gather and "semmel" in Austrian slang is a local kind of roll or bun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Id's move back in the day to open their software enough to allow a modding community was an early stroke of genius. I still play quake mods from time to time. It's amazing how much longevity they got out of those games, let alone the engines.

Modding quake was one of my first great bursts of curiosity and creativity. I really remember those days fondly.

<comment><USER14> As an example, Half-Life and Counterstrike started life as Quake mods!

<comment><USER19> > Half-Life

I think you mean Team Fortress? Although Half-Life does use a modified Quake engine, it was a commercial game that used none of the assets of Quake, so I don't think calling it a "mod" is really appropriate.

(Side note: my username is a Half-Life reference)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a gift, just to have. Thanks for posting it. I have very fond memories of playing Wolf3d years ago on DOS. It will be fun to read through the source of the classics.

<comment><USER21> If you're looking for a high-level overview of some of id's source code releases, check out Fabien Sanglard's guides[0]. He's also written a book that goes into greater detail about the Wolf 3D engine.

[0]: [http://fabiensanglard.net](http://fabiensanglard.net)

<comment><USER22> His Wolf3D book is gorgeous (full-color, lots of great screenshots and illustrations). Well worth the price. Plus a lot of great info about the vagaries of sound, graphics, and memory architectures on the machines of the era.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There used to be sort of an Engine War in the late 90s and early 00s, Id tech, Source Engine, Unreal. Now ID is basically gone. And it is interesting both Valve and EPIC manage to create a platform, valve created Steam, and EPIC made Unreal almost like de facto standard. ( Yes I know there is Unity ).

I wonder why ID didn't continue to compete with Unreal in the middleware engine. Why Valve decide to leave what was at the time possibly the best game engine. How Unreal went from some mediocre engine to an insanely great engine and still improving rapidly.

Doom ( Or John Carmack ) used to be the sole cheer leader for OpenGL. I still loved 3Dfx, Voodoo and Glide though. The API was small and fast, in an era when Direct3D was .... really not very good. And Interesting times, Intel is now coming back to GPU market again after i740, it was the first Graphics card to use AGP Slot. May be instead of GPGPU which we should go back to graphics with AGP; Advance Graphics Processor.

<comment><USER24> > I wonder why ID didn't continue to compete with Unreal in the middleware > engine.

IIRC from one of his later talks, Carmack wasn't interested in tech licensing and it was mostly the other owners pushing the idea. I remember even before Doom 3 was released and the Quake 3 engine was in its apex in terms of licensing (basically the most licensed of their engines by far), their licensing page wrote that all the support you'd get was a day with Carmack to explain some bits.

> How Unreal went from some mediocre engine

Unreal was never a mediocre engine, even from its first release it had amazing tools and a very flexible architecture. I'd say that even if the rendering tech wasn't sometimes behind id (i always noticed that id would come up with a neat new idea and the next UE would polish it up - the only time this didn't happen was with Rage and UE4), their toolset and architecture is what made other devs go after them and their stance to support (you'd get constant updates and documentation and i think at some point they set up an internal "community site" for people licensing their engine) was the icing on the cake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't see anything new, last commit was 2012. maybe add "(2012) to the title?

<comment><USER26> It's the Zenimax buyout and John Carmack stepping down & out. It's the end of the iD era.

<comment><USER27> :O

:(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> DooM is not only fun, but it's great fun to play around with from the inside, or even to port. I've helped bring Doom to the x68000, which was quite the mission as the only compiler we had that could build 'large' executables was GCC 1.39 which had been translated into Japanese.

But it's been fun doing ports to OS/2, DJGPP v1, Watcom C, and of course various other Unix via the X11 code. The GPL'd code was 'cleaned up' and kind of bugged up on the way, sadly what was released really wasnt' all that pure.

For anyone wanting something more 'pure' for MS-DOS I'd highly suggest: Mara'akate's DooM-New

[https://bitbucket.org/maraakate/doomnew-for- dos](https://bitbucket.org/maraakate/doomnew-for-dos)

And then there is Quake, which I compiled with the excellent MS-DOS based TCP/IP stack WATTCP so that I could bring native TCP/IP networking to Quake.

[https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2011/01/05/quake1-with- wa...](https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2011/01/05/quake1-with-wattcp-built- with-djgpp-on-dosbox/)

And on the heels of that, I did a QuakeWorld client for MS-DOS

[https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2011/01/06/quakeworld- cli...](https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2011/01/06/quakeworld-client-for- ms-dos/)

which kind of took a life on it's own here:

[http://dk.toastednet.org/QDOS/index.html](http://dk.toastednet.org/QDOS/index.html)

And of course with the source to Quake 2 available, it only seemed proper to port it to MS-DOS.

[https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2015/06/02/porting- quake-...](https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2015/06/02/porting-quake-ii-to- ms-dos-pt1/)

[https://virtuallyfun.com/2015/06/03/porting-quake-ii-to- ms-d...](https://virtuallyfun.com/2015/06/03/porting-quake-ii-to-ms-dos-pt2/)

[https://virtuallyfun.com/2015/06/07/porting-quake-ii-to- ms-d...](https://virtuallyfun.com/2015/06/07/porting-quake-ii-to-ms-dos-pt3/)

[https://virtuallyfun.com/2015/06/26/porting-quake-ii-to- ms-d...](https://virtuallyfun.com/2015/06/26/porting-quake-ii-to-ms-dos-pt4/)

[https://virtuallyfun.com/2015/09/17/porting-quake-ii-to- ms-d...](https://virtuallyfun.com/2015/09/17/porting-quake-ii-to-ms-dos- pt5-3dfx-gamespy-quake-2-and-the-universe/)

So yes, there is GREAT fun to be had in the iD source.

Also don't forget some of their earlier games:

[https://github.com/CatacombGames](https://github.com/CatacombGames)

[https://github.com/FlatRockSoft/](https://github.com/FlatRockSoft/)

<comment><USER28> Some of the porting-quake links are broken. You have to add the "/wordpress" bit.

<comment><USER26> I added the mod_rewrite stuff that should have been there. Thanks for letting me know!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Recently I saw watched his QuakeCon talk from 2013, "Principles of Light and Rendering" at QuakeCon. It helped me solidify a lot of the basic understanding of 3D rendering I already had and provided a lot of additional knowledge as well.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyUgHPs86XM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyUgHPs86XM)

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea Can I use this to play Doom 3 BFG edition on Linux? I'd love to just buy it on Steam but sadly it's Windows only.

By the way, I love this from the readme:

> If you have obtained this source code several weeks after the time of > release, it is likely that you can find modified and improved versions of > the engine in various open source projects across the internet.

<comment><USER30> See [https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/playing-doom-3-on- lin...](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/playing-doom-3-on-linux- in-2017.10561)

<comment> cup-of-tea I wish I hadn't looked. It doesn't look anywhere near as good as Doom 3 in my memory looked. I've had this when playing old games from my childhood before. In my memory they were perfect, beautiful. Then I looked again and my memories were shattered. I didn't expect it to happen with Doom 3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Thanks to the Quake engine being open source and LordHavoc's source port we have a very efficient VR shooter running on all VR devices, like the Oculus Go. [https://quakewiki.org/wiki/DarkPlaces](https://quakewiki.org/wiki/DarkPlaces)

<comment><USER32> Love seeing LordHavoc mentioned. I collaborated a little bit with LordHavoc while helping build the open source shooter game Nexuiz (~2004-2005) and he is truly a brilliant game engine programmer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there a good entry point into quake mods these days?

When I was a kid in 1996 I toyed with Quake C but really had no idea what I was doing. I'd love to toy with mods again but not really sure if there is a good way to get started. Most of the resources I knew of 22 years ago are gone or significantly outdated.

<comment><USER24> Check Quaddicted[1] for some singleplayer maps. The most common engine by far is Quakespasm[2] which keeps the original style but fixes bugs, reintroduces some features from the software renderer that were lost in the original OpenGL version (fullbrights, lightmaps that go above 100%, non-power-of-two textures, etc) and removes and raises some hardcoded limits. You probably also want QuakeInjector[3], which is a "quake mod installer" that handles dependencies. You may also want MiniQL[4] (made by me) as a more straightforward and minimalistic launcher (you can also launch QuakeInjector from MiniQL if it is installed in the same directory).

This is all you need for playing maps and mods. For making maps (the most common type of mod) you'll also need a map editor - currently the most common seems to be Tenchbroom[5], but it is far from the only option and a lot of people use other editors, such as BSP[6], QuArK[7], GtkRadiant[8] and some people even use either the original Worldcraft 1.3 (i think) or a modded Hammer (from Valve) to make maps. I think some also use J.A.C.K.[9], which is basically a Hammer clone, although i think it is abandoned now.

The map editor isn't enough, you also need the command line tools to "compile" the map (this is how the Quake engine can support multiple and different editors: by decoupling the tools from the engine and the individual types of tools from each other - which to me is one of the best ways to architect and engine and its tools, but sadly most popular engines have forgotten it). There are several variations, depending on the features you want. But i think these days most people are using ericw's tools[10] since they support some advanced features from modified engines (like the BSP2 format for larger maps and colored lightmaps).

Beyond mapping, if you want to delve in QuakeC (the game's scripting language) you need the original QuakeC source code[11] and a QuakeC compiler - while you can probably use the original QCC, i've seen FTEQCC[12] from the FTE engine to be mentioned way more often. Some tutorials can be found here [13] (the Inside3D site which was a sort of 'nexus' for QuakeC modders was shut down some time ago and while the community create InsideQC[14] it looks like not everything survived the transition).

[1] [https://www.quaddicted.com/](https://www.quaddicted.com/)

[2] [http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/download.htm](http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/download.htm)

[3] [https://www.quaddicted.com/tools/quake_injector](https://www.quaddicted.com/tools/quake_injector)

[4] [http://runtimeterror.com/rep/miniql](http://runtimeterror.com/rep/miniql)

[5] [http://kristianduske.com/trenchbroom/](http://kristianduske.com/trenchbroom/)

[6] [http://www.bspquakeeditor.com/](http://www.bspquakeeditor.com/)

[7] [http://quark.sourceforge.net/](http://quark.sourceforge.net/)

[8] [http://icculus.org/gtkradiant/](http://icculus.org/gtkradiant/)

[9] [http://jack.hlfx.ru/en/](http://jack.hlfx.ru/en/)

[10] [https://ericwa.github.io/ericw-tools/](https://ericwa.github.io/ericw- tools/)

[11] [https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/idstuff/unsup/progs106](https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/idstuff/unsup/progs106)

[12] [https://sourceforge.net/projects/fteqw/files/FTEQCC/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/fteqw/files/FTEQCC/)

[13] [https://web.archive.org/web/20120526014134/http://www.inside...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120526014134/http://www.inside3d.com/showtutorial.php?id=129)

[14] [http://www.insideqc.com/](http://www.insideqc.com/)

<comment><USER33> Awesome, thanks for all of this information. It's much appreciated!

Of the 3 quakes, which is easiest to dive into mod development?

<comment><USER24> I think the first one (the list i gave is for that) since it seems to have the most tools and documentation available out there. After that Quake 3 seems to be the most popular, but that is multiplayer only (not that some people didn't try to make singleplayer mods though :-P).

Also i forgot to link to the Quake Wiki: [https://quakewiki.org/](https://quakewiki.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are so many interesting tidbits tucked away in the code, things the devs had to consider that have never crossed my mind whilst playing.

For instance, the idclev cheat handling in st_stuff.c has to check if the game is shareware and restrict level changes beyond a certain range.

<comment><USER12> I never quite grasped how that shareware check worked. Always thought the WAD file was what you bought, not the engine/executable itself?

<comment><USER34> From doomstat.h line 60: // Game Mode - identify IWAD as shareware, retail etc. extern GameMode_t gamemode;

I haven't done a deep dive on the code, but it looks like gamemode is set based on something in the WAD file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Have id officially stopped their policy of releasing 'current - 2' game source as Open Source?

Shouldn't Doom 3, Quake 4 and maybe Rage 1 be up here?

<comment><USER36> There are Doom 3 + BFG Edition source codes, ctrl+f "DOOM-3".

<comment><USER37> Also, an id employee ported DOOM 3 to Vulkan

[https://github.com/DustinHLand/vkDOOM3](https://github.com/DustinHLand/vkDOOM3)

[https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/20...](https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/2018-gdc- webgl-and-gltf/4-Vulkan-Getting-explicit-How-hard-is-Vulkan-really- GDC_Mar18.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Has anyone tried compiling on os x?

<comment><USER26> I've cross compiled the MS-DOS stuff from OS X. From the PowerPC days even.

If you want native doom, check out the source ports like Chocolate DooM. Doing ports to stuff like SDL is somewhat straight forward, or you can do a Cocoa one yourself, but I'd start with something known to work first..

<comment><USER39> Didn't Carmack himself port X11 to OS X? What is now "XQuartz".

Anyway, great work scruffy!

<comment><USER40> XQuartz is an X11 server.

[https://www.xquartz.org/](https://www.xquartz.org/)

<comment><USER41> Carmack did the original XFree86 3.3.x port to Mac OS X Server beta back in 1999 (Which still had the OpenStep GUI!). This eventually evolved into the XFree86 mainline, and then into XQuartz

<comment><USER40> How strange. I could have sworn I was replying to _Didn 't Carmack himself port it to OS X? What is now "XQuartz"._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Where's the commander keen?

<comment><USER26> Back in 2014 John Hall found the source to some of the old stuff, including Keen 4,5,6

[https://games.slashdot.org/story/14/09/17/133228/commander-k...](https://games.slashdot.org/story/14/09/17/133228/commander- keen-keen-dreams-source-code-released)

The game was bought by fans, the source was released and Keen Dreams was published on steam.

[https://github.com/keendreams/keen](https://github.com/keendreams/keen)

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/356200/Keen_Dreams/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/356200/Keen_Dreams/)

The ownership of the older stuff is quite fragmented.

<comment><USER43> Oh cool, I hadn't heard about this. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you ever want to work on something greater than your job? - <AUTHOR>

There are lots of hard problems in the health field  and I think technology can help but I find most jobs are about building web and mobile apps. At the end of the day, they add value by making our lives marginally better but there are so many harder challenges that sometimes I feel like I should be working on. Is this the same for you? What do you do about it? <comment><USER3> Not me.

And disagree if you like, but I've come to realize it's not my path. I understand that there are tons of clever, educated, privileged, and young people working on the problems that plague us. I have no plan of sacrificing the little bit of comfort and pleasure I've carved out in this world for the tiniest chance that one day something I did might add value to human kind.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel the same. I live in Africa and I have a deep intuition that technology can help improve people lives here, in particular in health and education fields. I really want to work on it but unfortunately I do nothing about it for the moment. I always have excuses to not try (for example: lack of basic infrastructure will make my ideas irrelevant, my ideas are dumb anyways, even if I build my ideas, there is no way somebody will use it, ...).

<comment><AUTHOR> It just seems we are surrounded by job opportunities to make some sort of entertainment product or a slight better communication product or marketplace product...

But I can't seem to find job opportunities that seem to solve bigger problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> sad part is that some of us went to school thinking we would change the world for the best and what we do is actually hep companies sell more advertising, get more bullshit valuations, help them send dick picks that delete themselves.

I don't know what to do, i still have to feed my family, I can't imagine that i am the only one feeling this way.

<comment><USER6> > I don't know what to do, i still have to feed my family, I can't imagine > that i am the only one feeling this way.

Feeding your family is something that's more important than most of the work you'll ever do in your life. Never forget that.

<comment><USER5> that's the reason that keeps me working. I just focus on making sure my family is happy and taken care. Maybe one day when i retire i can get involved in more things that will actually will make a difference on other people's lives. I will try some volunteering this summer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, I am taking some time off to work on my education startup magako (www.magako.com) in the field of maths education. It's something I am passionate about, both in the making of the product and the goal - <USER2> maths education; but I am having troubles getting users :(

</comment><comment><USER8> Founded a health tech startup, so I've made my job that "something greater".</comment>


Ask HN: How serious is your coffee game? - <AUTHOR> I just saw the FrankOne on TechCrunch (https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/16/the-frankone-is-a-simple-and-portable-coffee-brewing-gadget/) and it got me wondering. How serious are you all about coffee?<p>I have a Nespresso, Chemex, drip coffee machine, and counter top espresso machine that I've received as gifts over the years. Only really use the Chemex now a days though. <comment><USER2> I gave up on Coffee (it makes me drowsy), but I do have a laPavoni Europiccola, I highly recommend it.</comment>


Apple Opens Up Touch ID To All Apps - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/02/apple-touch-id/

<comment><USER2> This is going to be a big game changer for 2 factor authentication. No longer will you have to deal with a series of numbers, but should be able to just auth with your phone.

<comment><USER3> To ask a silly question - how? 2FA apps like Authy don't communicate with the service they provide for. An app per 2FA application would be extremely clunky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm still creeped out by Touch ID (not this opening up, just Touch ID in general): The recent Snowden files revealed that the NSA actively searches for and indexes pictures of faces and fingerprints.

I doubt this is 100% secure (since all the code, including the TouchID code can be updated in iOS updates, you can add a leak function to a future iOS update).

When that happens, an attacker can nicely cross-reference your fingerprint with all the other data.

Anybody else feel that way?

<comment><USER5> Just like you don't store a plaintext password, neither does TouchID store your fingerprint as anything recognizable - it's stored as a hashed and salted representation of your fingerprint. I'd venture to guess that it's device specific too, I doubt that your fingerprint hash stored on one phone is identical to the same fingerprint hash stored on a different phone.

Check out the whitepaper here: [http://images.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iOS_Security_Fe...](http://images.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf) if you're curious about details.

<comment><USER4> I think there is reason to doubt that TouchID stores your fingerprint as a hash. Let me elaborate:

Even after the initial priming phase, TouchID continues to learn and adapt to your fingerprints. So during priming, you could always place your finger flat on the sensor, and then after that, during usage, you can continuously use different parts of your finger, and if at least a part of your finger overlaps with a previous image of your finger, TouchID unlocks the device and - crucially - it continues to learn those new angles of your finger.

This indicates that TouchID internally aggregates an image of your fingerprint during actual usage. Now to merge those images together, you have to compare previous images with the new image, to find a common section. And you can't do that if you have only got a hash of the previous image.

I think therefore just by looking at its operation from outside, we can infer TouchID stores a fingerprint in a way that it can reproduce the fingerprint itself.

<comment><USER6> Apple claim that the fingerprint is not stored in a way for which the fingerprint itself could be reconstructed - which makes sense.

[https://ssl.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb1...](https://ssl.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf)

<comment><USER4> So how do they internally aggregate an image of your fingerprint during actual usage, then?

Also, hash plus salt together is info that identifies a fingerprint. Why shouldn't it be possible to leak that info? Once you have it, you can apply it to your existing database of fingerprints to get matches - no actual fingerprint image needed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll be interested to see how this is used. I've never liked biometrics as a password, as once it is compromised, it cannot be changed. They are much more useful as a username, in my opinion. Does anyone here have any specific uses in mind?

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not super excited about Touch ID, would have been more excited about opening Siri or Apple TV for devs</comment>


House passes $15 minimum wage bill - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/politics/minimum-wage-house-vote/ <comment><USER2> But it won't go anywhere in the senate...

<comment><USER3> Time for a new Senate then?

<comment><USER4> Nah. Why didn't the Dem's do this back when they had the House, Senate and White House?

<comment><USER4> I'll tell you why. They didn't want to get blamed for the fallout from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Same article on CNN Lite, which is _almost_ a text-only version of the site.

[http://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_df22f46a3ff6029302deb849239...](http://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_df22f46a3ff6029302deb84923903f1d)

<comment><USER6> Wow, lite.cnn.com is great! I usually dislike CNN, but this makes it almost bearable

<comment><USER5> You may then also like text.npr.org</comment></comment></comment>


How Browsers React to a Poor SSL Implementation - <AUTHOR> http://www.scanmysite.net/blog/how-browsers-react-to-a-poor-ssl-implementation <comment><USER2> Solution: use protocol-relative URLs now

[http://autoref.com/blog/2012/09/13/the-tech-behind- autoref-p...](http://autoref.com/blog/2012/09/13/the-tech-behind-autoref- protocol-relative-urls/)</comment>


Show HN: GiveBrand.to - <AUTHOR> http://givebrand.to/tour

<comment><USER2> What exactly is the use case here? I think this is trying to hard to be a new network of sorts without adding significant or desirable value. Below are some examples of online profiles that add value (outside of FB, Twitter, LinkedIn)

About.me provided a nice professional landing page for me. Coderwall falls under a good niche to get actually valuable information Threewords.me was super simple providing a throwaway fun.

GiveBrand.to requires an education system and is too professional to be like threewords. In other words, I still don't get why I should sign up for givebrand.

<comment><USER3> I think the idea is that someone could say they're great at writing grant proposals, but it carries a lot more weight when it's confirmed by others. Seems like it would be a nice simple way to confirm your talents to prospective employers and other professional connections.

<comment><USER4> What stops someone creating a lot of fake accounts to vouch for them?

Also, how would people show this to prospective employers? Would they post the URL on their resume?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can the user kill a tag? Do they have the ability to screen tags? For example, I can review a recommendation on LinkedIn before it's posted to my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hit edit profile and delete the tag. We don't have moderated tagging yet. It's in the next release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I feel weird using this as an individual, but I think it would be awesome to use for a business. I'm sure that's on the roadmap though ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Top of mind brand awareness is coming soon. Youre awesome!

<comment><USER3> Part of what makes it awkward is that it appeals to me in the sense that it takes the b.s. factor out of telling people what your good at, while at the same time requires requiring you to ask others what they think you're good at.

I think part of what would make it less awkward is being able to prepopulate the page. If I send a blank page to friends and are like "gloat about me" they'll think I'm an egotistical asshole and I don't really want to be an egotistical asshole.

Of course, I sort of felt this way about personal landing pages and LinkedIn at first too.

I think a more passive way of sharing it would help too. Maybe integrations with about.me, flavors.me, LinkedIn, and the major blogging platforms. Actually, this is probably the top feature request if I had to pick one. Just let this thing float in a widget on LinkedIn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should connect with LinkedIn and Facebook to pull interests from those sites to prepopulate the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree. I wanted to work out any issues before introducing any viral invite functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Look forward to getting feedback from the HN community. Let us know how we can improve the app.</comment>


pfSense 2.3.3 released - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pfsense.org/?p=2325 <comment><USER2> pfSense is good, I've used it before.

But, anyone considering a firewall should also consider OPNsense. OPNsense is based on FreeBSD 11 [0] (pfSense 2.3.3 is based on 10.3), while offering many of the same features as pfSense.

Others have argued that OPNsense takes security more seriously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13615724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13615724)

[0] [https://opnsense.org/opnsense-17-1-released/](https://opnsense.org/opnsense-17-1-released/)

<comment><USER3> Since you seem to have some idea of what you're talking about: how would you compare the BSD-based firewall distros to the Linux-based firewall distros? Personally, I'm partial to VyOS, simply because I have the most experience with it. (Or rather, its fork, EdgeOS)

<comment><USER4> I've got a few dozen businesses with PFSense with LTE backup, and at this point I'm looking for alternatives. I've considered IPFire, and I've looked at VyOS, Untangle, and OPNSense, but I just recently realized I completely overlooked OpenWRT, which I already happen to have many positive experiences with.

Long term I'm thinking I'll move things over to ARM/MIPS based routers running OpenWRT, and where needed I'll use x86_64 boxes with OpenWRT (eg: Tor Relay at home) as when things break on OpenWRT, its a lot less bad than on _BSD.

In particular, I've had issues with _BSD taking forever to boot (waited 4hrs at 3am once), deciding it needed an Intel NIC firmware when it had no Intel NICs, thus causing an outage while I drove down there with a WNR2000v3 running OpenWRT, and LTE backup interface handling being poor, whereby the cellular connection will go out (and we'll send a command to the SOAP API on the modem to reconnect), but PFSense needs to cycle the interface for some reason when it already has an internal IP from the modem. Combine that with having to walk customers through any one of these scenarios every few months over the phone, and its a joyous situation.

<comment><USER5> Have you considered using Mikrotik?

I've heard about them for years, but just started using them in the last 12-18 months. So far, I've been very happy with the performance and features for the cost.

<comment><USER6> If you need openVPN don't run Mikrotik. I love routerOS but openVPN over TCP is no good.

<comment><USER5> FWIW I think that depends on the client. I use OpenVPN over TCP with Linux and Windows clients for managing a remote customer location with no issues.

However, Android doesn't work at all. I suspect it's a configuration issue, but the lack of meaningful logs makes it damn near impossible to troubleshoot.

If you happen to run an all Mikrotik routing environment, the SSTP tunneling works well. I have a customer with hundreds of Mikrotiks out in the field, each with an SSTP connection back to a cloud-based Mikrotik installation for remote management/monitoring.

SSTP supposedly works with Windows clients too, though I've never tried it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lots of good fixes there. I've found pfsense rock solid and excellent to use, over more than half a decade, both: \- for a 250+ device network balancing loads across two consumer broadband connections, and \- as my home router and firewall, running in a virtual machine on a somewhat ageing HP Microserver N54L.

</comment><comment><USER8> and if you don't need a GUI, you can always install OpenBSD -- no extras required. it includes a useful OSPF and BGP daemon, BFD in the next release (I believe), and a version of pf that isn't a few years old :)</comment>


Choosing between a male and a female developer - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/choosing-between-a-male-and-a-female-developer-e760108038ed <comment><USER2> > Looking around at the majority of my male colleagues I realized there is no > pragmatic reason why we are all men.

Yes, there is: There's a lot more men than women working in tech. That alone means that it's much harder to find talented women than talented men, ergo your room full of male colleagues.

This post reads like you're doing society a favor by employing a woman. You're not. If you don't hire her then someone else will; either way, the total number of women in tech remains the same. The only reason to hire based on gender, ethnicity etc. is because it benefits you and your company. It's often portrayed as something altruistic but it really isn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all, I like to believe I wanted to convey the exact opposite. I agree that is not something altruistic, exactly my reason for saying this:

> I knew I made the right decision, not because the candidate was a specific > sex, but because one was a better fit for the team's work style.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> after reading this it got me to thinking maybe "tech interviews should be "pass/fail" with 2 passes a valid output. or maybe ratings of 1-5.</comment>


Firefox Voice – Browse the web with your voice - <AUTHOR> https://voice.mozilla.org/firefox-voice/ <comment></comment>


Dagster: The Data Orchestrator - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dagster-io/dagster-the-data-orchestrator-5fe5cadb0dfb <comment><USER2> For anyone who has spent significant time with data and ML pipelines, read posts about Dagster. Even if you don't end up using it in your pipeline, it is full of well articulated and extremely valuable lessons about how to manage the problems and complexity of data applications. I can't recommend reading about dagster enough!

The software itself has matured significantly in the last year as well - highly recommend taking a look at this if you're building new pipelines or have a need to upgrade existing ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> After playing around with this tool a bit in the past I can't seem to understand what it's trying to solve. It comes across as a side project that VCs happened to throw money at.

<comment><USER4> hey bserial, I'm part of the team working on Dagster.

While there are many things we're working on, there are 3 goals that got me excited about working on this system:

1\. Local development: most modern workflow orchestration systems don't have a good local development story. We want to provide a seamless end-to-end dev experience from your laptop to CI to dev to prod for authoring data workflows.

2\. Complexity: the Airflow deployments I've worked on or otherwise encountered have hundreds of DAGs and thousands of tasks scheduled on an hourly or daily cadence. We aim to provide abstractions to better support managing and wrangling that complexity.

3\. Testability: Most modern data platforms are poorly tested. Many orchestration systems, like Airflow, tend to hardcode deployment concerns the business logic, e.g. EmrAddStepsOperator. With Dagster, we aim to separate the business logic from environmental concerns to make it easy to swap out an external resource implementation for a mock, dev version, etc.

Hope that makes sense!</comment></comment>


Event code of conduct - thoughts appreciated  - <AUTHOR> We are dedicated to producing the best events. To make the experience enjoyable for everyone – regardless of age, gender, sexuality, religious or ethnic identity – we expect our speakers and attendees to remember about these simple rules:<p>– offensive behaviour (verbal abuse, intimidation, harassment etc.) will not be tolerated<p>– offensive slide decks will not be tolerated<p>– anyone acting like a jerk will be asked to leave (that includes speakers)<p>– please report all incidents and we will do our best to make sure they never happen again<p>Any feedback and suggestions how we can make our events more enjoyable and inclusive are welcome, so don't be shy. <comment><USER2> My initial worry is the subjectiveness of "offence".

As a speaker I like to think I'm putting on a show, I try to make my talks entertaining by throwing in a few jokes. If jokes were discouraged at a conference, I'd neither want to speak or attend. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to crack a joke without potentially causing someone offence. Maybe my favourite chicken got run over trying to get to the other side.

An example I trot out when talking about "offence" happened at uni. We were watching a comedian, he was making jokes about pedophilia and rape much to the delight of the audience and specifically one of my flatmates. I thought the comedian was terrible, not because of his subject matter (I don't believe any subject is out-of-bounds for comedy), I just felt his jokes were lazy. He then made a joke about bulimia, my flatmate slammed his drink down in anger. I asked what was up, he replied "My girlfriend suffered from bulimia, I've seen what it does, I don't think you should joke about it". I was astounded by the hypocrisy, and replied "I agree, people who think they can joke about bulimia make me sick".

My point is, it's impossible to predict what may offend a given audience, and I don't think people should try not to offend anyone. My own humour is pretty childish and has offended people, in one talk I refer to this image [http://wtfhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/comic- captain-a...](http://wtfhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/comic-captain- america-wank.jpg) and later describe the action of a particular browser as "wanking us in the face", making it clear that I'm using "wank" in the comic onomatopoeic sense rather than referring to a sexual act. This joke has offended a small number of people, causing one to walk out. I don't know if they didn't get the joke, or simply find the sound of the word offensive, but I have no intention of removing the joke when I give the talk again because the vast majority of the audience enjoyed it. This isn't a male/female thing either, and I worry about the suggestion that anything vaguely sexual is offensive totally and exclusively to women.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. I think my point is we need to quantify what "offensive" means before it becomes a solid rule. Or make the rule as subjective as the word itself, eg "If you find something offensive, let us know and we'll investigate it".

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree. I've seen such things been blown out of proportion before and was aiming to keep the rules subjective while at the same time showing a serious commitment. But it's clear I didn't do a great job in articulating that so will go back to the drawing board and keep trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the general direction this is heading. But, like Jaffa the cake, have trouble with "offensive slide decks will not be tolerated". (I'm thinking here of my slidedeck "You too can be a bedwetting antfucker" the title of which was suggested by the organisers of a conference).

What you mean is no slides that a normal, sane, liberal person could find seriously offensive.

Just a side-thought - so maybe nonsense - do you want to say " please report all incidents" and make it a bit classroom? How about "If you hear incidents of racism/ sexism/ being a dick, please call out the person, either personally or social media". Make it a self-policing community ?

<comment><AUTHOR> As much as I like the idea of self police, I find with social media it's a fine line between community watch and an angry mob. Also many people would not feel comfortable doing so, but would have an expectation of organisers to manage it.

<comment><USER3> " it's a fine line between community watch and an angry mob"

yup, true (unfortunately). GPWM.</comment></comment></comment>


Try pressing 'm' on github - <AUTHOR> https://github.com

<comment><USER2> Not a very good UI if it requires a Hacker News story to let me know about it.

<comment><USER3> But you do now know about it. People telling each other about a hidden feature (via HN or whatever) is a common and valid way for non-essential features to be discovered.

If you designed UIs assuming that that sort of user-to-user education doesn't exist, you'd be forced occasionally to reject a potentially handy power-user feature on the basis that there's no good place to promote it without cluttering the design. Which would be a shame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Press "?" for a list of all keyboard shortcuts ("?" also works on some Google properties).

<comment><USER5> Unless I've missed something "m" is missing from that help. Odd.

<comment><USER6> Considering that "m" is half the known keyboard shortcuts (I'm ignoring ? as it represents a recursion I'm unwilling to face right now), that is odd indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the idea of treating web-sites more like applications. From a programmer's point of view - yes, keyboard should be a more utilized way of interacting with a web-site, beyond arrow-navigation and filling text-boxes.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thank you for posting this; I can't tell you how many times I've had to google markdown cheat sheets while using github. This is a huge time saver.

</comment><comment><USER9> I see people tapping every keys on their keyboard :)

</comment><comment><USER10> pressing 's' focus on search form ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> This has been there since the announcement of GFM...

<http://github.github.com/github-flavored-markdown/>

 _Markdown Cheat Sheet

On Markdown-enabled portions of the site, press M on your keyboard to display a cheat sheet._

</comment><comment><USER12> I see. The lightbox content is actually in the page HTML if you view source.

</comment><comment><USER13> I thought it would let me make a comment like subversion and mercurial do.

<comment><USER14> On _github_ not _git_... git commit -m works like in svn btw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> They'll soon need a list (displayed at all times) with all the different shortcuts around the site. Still, very nice idea :)</comment>


Economics Education and Greed - <AUTHOR> http://amle.aom.org/content/10/4/643

<comment><USER2> first author's name</comment>


Russia Bans LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/linkedin-finally-blocked-in-russia-56206 <comment><USER2> I would not be surprised in the future to see a lot of countries attempt to ban foreign social networks. Basically, with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, the US government has defacto access to a treasure trove of who knows who, who influences who, and want skills everyone has. This information would be very expensive to collect by intelligence services, but with these US companies, is just handed on a platter.

Basically, if you are a geopolitical rival of the US, you would have to be a fool to allow your people to use these American services.

<comment><USER3> Well there's another school of thought: if you want to be a significant world power (prerequisite to being geopolitical rival to USA) you have to let your citizens read whatever they want, vote however they want, and join what the fuck ever social network they want.

Jury is still out, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article doesn't describe how the ban is technically enforced. I'm not aware of a great Russian firewall so I speculate it's either self-enforced (LinkedIn agreed to reject users who enter Russia as their country), or enforced by ISPs.

The first is unlikely, the second is easily bypassed.

Does anyone here know?

<comment><USER5> Yes. There are many smaller firewalls of Russia. Every ISP by the law has to maintain the system on their expenses and obligated to periodically download state ban list. Various ISP use various technique from simple ACL to DPI in various combinations. Here is current black list [https://reestr.rublacklist.net/](https://reestr.rublacklist.net/) Need to say that gov agencies periodically check ISPs if they indeed ban sites and re- offenders are fined.

<comment><USER6> That is a very interesting website.

How is it generated? Bruteforce access attempts?

<comment><USER5> Mostly ISP sysadmins reports their list downloaded from roskomnadzor + reports from users about blocked sites, since some bans a communicated by direct orders and are not shown in roskomnadzor lists, there are few and mostly temporary but they exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There should be "2016" in title since it's banned for almost half of year.

<comment><USER5> [https://reestr.rublacklist.net/search/?q=linkedin](https://reestr.rublacklist.net/search/?q=linkedin) most recent ban is from 2017-04-04

<comment><USER8> But this particular article is from Nov 2016.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not sure who it helps. Low-earning Russians weren't really using it. High- earning ones that need to use it, e.g. Russian investors, will just be finding ways to still use it - VPN, travel to Estonia etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another step to the balkanization of the internet.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well why don't they store Russian data on Russian servers? Why is the law "unenforceable"?

<comment><USER12> i guess they don't trust Russians since then Russian gov would have easy access to those days

<comment><USER11> Ever heard of The Patriot Act?</comment></comment></comment>


Dropbox Slashes Its Price as the Cost of a Gigabyte Nears Zero - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/08/dropboxs-plan-to-stay-relevant/

<comment><USER2> This has been discussed multiple times today, each time triggering the flame war detector. (# comments > # points AND # points > 40ish)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8231917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8231917)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8232184](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8232184)

</comment><comment><USER3> To be pedantic - they didn't slash their price. It's still the same. They are now just offering additional space.

</comment><comment><USER4> The economics of this is interesting. Drop-box does not store multiple copy's of identical files for each user. So, their cost per GB drops as they add users. Which also means if they start to lose users they may need to raise prices, which could quickly cause a death spiral.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also Not storing multiple copies of each file is really bad product-wise as there were some incidents where users lost their data stored on Dropbox with no other backups (relying heavily on cloud storage).

Read here: [https://email@example.com/how-bug-in-dropbox- permanently-...](https://email@example.com/how-bug-in-dropbox-permanently- deleted-my-8000-photos-cb7dcf13647b)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advertising based upon defined domain/url - <AUTHOR>

This a bit of a weird question so please let me know if you need more information.
For a side project I am working on I need to ability to generate advertising on a specific page based on a specified domain. I have looked a bit and haven't found anything that really fits this so I'm hoping someone here has a service like this or can push me in the correct direction. I'm not super interested in finding my own advertiser/rolling my own solution currently (not to say it wont happen in the future), looking for more of an out of the box solution.
Clarification: The advertising on this page will be generated based upon the referral URL. So in other words instead of the advertising content being contextual to the page it is delivered on.. it is contextual to a domain/URL.
TYIA <comment><USER2> I like the idea (as much as I like any advertising) - so it's like putting someone elses page ads on your page, the referer's in your case. So imagine they had Adsense on you'd want to display the same category of ads on your page too (or possibly ads for the same companies?).

Not come across this at all. Which referer's are you expecting to clone the ad categories from specifically? I say this because most referers on my blog, say, are Google (!) and so the keywords of the post generate ads (Adsense, Amazon) that are relevant as if they were on the Google search page (the referer).

<comment><AUTHOR> In this case I will have a much wider range of referrers and I don't see Google being high on this list for this particular page. But social sites should be.

Its not so much cloning the ads the referrer is posting (Although this is an option) as targeting the ads at what the referrer is. So if the referrer is say Facebook maybe social networking ads, that kind of thing - but working across all possible types of referrers.

Edit: Just for a little more clarification the list of referrers would be endless and defined by the user.</comment></comment>


Racket version 6.0.1 is now available - <AUTHOR> http://blog.racket-lang.org/2014/05/racket-v601.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> How is a x.y.1 release of any program front-page worthy?

<comment><USER3> It generally isn't. Similarly, a blog post announcing a new feature of a product generally isn't, either. Of course there are many exceptions, such as if there's something especially significant or fascinating in the release.

Since [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7717737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7717737) already had some attention (if not discussion), we'll treat the current post as a dupe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Is now available" two weeks ago.</comment>


Today in History, Brought to You by Unix - <AUTHOR> https://akr.am/blog/posts/today-in-history-brought-to-you-by-unix <comment><USER2> If you like Calendar, you might like Fortune. It's usually in the "bsdgames" package ([https://www.polyomino.org.uk/computer/software/bsd- games/](https://www.polyomino.org.uk/computer/software/bsd-games/)). You can add it to your bashrc file to see a new fortune each time you open your shell.

      ~$ fortune
      Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.
      ~$ fortune
      Politicians are the same all over.  They promise to build a bridge even
      where there is no river.
              -- Nikita Khrushchev
      ~$ fortune
      Distress, n.:
              A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
                      -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
      ~$ fortune
      The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
              Were each of them once a kiddie.
      A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
              Do I want one?  God Forbiddie!
                      -- Ogden Nash

<comment><USER3> Add a little fun to that by letting a cow tell your fortune with cowsay[1].

fortune | cowsay

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowsay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowsay)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the coolest part of this was looking at the shell script for /usr/bin/calendar. It's personally gratifying to know that even the UNIX guys wrote scripts that shellcheck.net would crap all over:

[https://imgur.com/o4gCthk](https://imgur.com/o4gCthk)

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh cool!

$ calendar

Sep 13* Rosh Chodesh Tishrei (Beginning of the month of Tishrei)

Sep 13* First Day of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year; 5768; sabbatical)

Sep 13 Barry Day commemorates the death of Commodore John Barry, USA

Sep 13 Chiang Kai-Shek becomes president of China, 1943

Sep 13 Building of Hadrian's Wall begun, 122

Sep 13 British defeat the French at Abraham near Quebec City, 1788

Sep 13 58� C (136.4� F) measured at el Azizia, Libya, 1922

Sep 13 Walter Reed born, 1851

Sep 14 Francis Scott Key writes words to "Star Spangled Banner", 1814

Sep 14* Rosh Hashanah (sabbatical)

Sep 14 Battle of San Jacinto in Nicaragua

Sep 14 Frodo & Bilbo's birthday

Sep 14 The US Selective Service Act establishes the first peacetime draft, 1940

Sep 14 Salem, Massachusetts, is founded, 1629

Sep 14 Benjamin Franklin is sent to France as an American minister, 1778

</comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone tried altering this to use the Wikipedia data? eg. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_13](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_13)

The most appropriate sections seem to be _Events_ and _Holidays and Observances_. There are also links to parallel daily databases by the BBC and New York Times.

</comment><comment><USER7> It comes in the base of OpenBSD, and I use it in lieu of a calDAV server. Being able to quickly jot down an appointment and recall it on the command line is hecka useful.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why anyone would bother using UNIX or its inferior clones (eg. Windows NT) in 2018 is _beyond_ me.

The year of the Linux desktop already has been and gone, back in 2001.

We are spoiled for choice with a variety of free, modern, microkernel based desktop OS's written in safe languages, such as Rust, Golang, Haskell and Java. Why people persist with this monolithic, unsafe, ancient artifact of the early days of computing is anyone's guess.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's not on my macOS, though I am on 10.12. If it's on macOS now, it means they've added it in the past couple of years which would be interesting.

(Edit: Seems like it might just be me :-D)

<comment><USER10> You have to run the commands making the calendar directory and file first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would not have thought of using cpp(1) like that. I will be using calendar fron now on. Thanks for the tip.

</comment><comment><USER12> super neat,

anyone know of a way to search through the history using less or other?

<comment><USER13> You might have the underlying data files in /usr/share/calendar or elsewhere; you can try to find out with

      strace -f -e open calendar

Alternatively, you can get a full year's worth of output with

      calendar -l 366

<comment><USER12> oh awesome thanks! seems calendar folder for me is in /usr/share/calendar/[files here]</comment></comment></comment>


Feds Force Suspect to Unlock iPhone X with Their Face - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/09/30/feds-force-suspect-to-unlock-apple-iphone-x-with-their-face/#19020e212597 <comment><USER2> Set it up to click the right button 5 times to disable face login.

<comment><USER3> This is a good tip. There's no set up needed, though - it's on by default. The above works well for iPhones with Touch ID.

On iPhone X, clicking the right button 5 times disables Face ID, but also invokes Emergency Call which makes a loud noise. An alternative is to simultaneously hold down the right button and one of the volume buttons until the power-off screen is displayed (and haptic feedback is given). The power- off screen can be dismissed by pressing the right button again, so this procedure can be silently done without taking your phone out of your pocket.

Source: [https://www.imore.com/how-quickly-disable-face-id- iphone-x](https://www.imore.com/how-quickly-disable-face-id-iphone-x)

<comment><USER4> In case your hands are..well, tied, another alternative is saying "hey Siri, whose phone is this?" - pulls up your contact card and disables biometric unlock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's long been held that the fifth only protects against disclosing what you know, not what you are. No surprise here.</comment>


Learning Deep Learning with Keras – An Overview for Beginners - <AUTHOR> http://p.migdal.pl/2017/04/30/teaching-deep-learning.html <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. If you have any comments, questions, remarks or suggestions - <USER2> me know!

(I want to write more and thinking whether to focus on image segmentation & detection, or Recurrent Neural Networks.)

Also, check out a practical step-by-step guide "Starting deep learning hands- on: image classification on CIFAR-10" [https://blog.deepsense.ai/deep- learning-hands-on-image-class...](https://blog.deepsense.ai/deep-learning- hands-on-image-classification/).

<comment><USER3> My only comment is to applaud an absolutely fantastic effort. Well done, and thank you for such a comprehensive yet accessible set of steps to become more well versed in deep learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another resource worth mentioning is the fast.ai course: [http://www.fast.ai/](http://www.fast.ai/)</comment>


Ask HN: How to close a sale? - <AUTHOR> This is a follow up question to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1698842
We have built a web application for educational institutions and been working on our sales over last 3 months.
There is one school that has shown keen interest in our product. We have had one meeting that went well. They asked for a proposal which we sent to them along with a live demo. Five weeks later we had a phone discussion with their IT team.
Its been now 6 weeks since we had the first meeting. We had been following up with them over phone once every week. While we are confident that they are looking for a solution that we are providing, we are trying to figure out what we can do to close the sale and sign a MOU/Agreement with them.
<comment>---
Update - Just to add some more context, we are mostly tech folks and newbies to sales </comment><comment><USER3> _How to close a sale?_

Ask your customer, not us.

I'm not trying to be abrupt, but it sounds like you've already done all the right things and your relationship with your customer should have reached the point where you can ask them exactly this question.

Dealing with institutions can be it's own animal. The best way to learn how their buying process works is to ask them! In a perfect world, you may still be 6 months away from a sale. You wouldn't agonize over it if you knew, and you'd know if you asked.

In dealing with institutional customers, I even take it a step further. Before I invest any time in the sales cycle, I have them teach me what it takes to get a sale, exactly what I have to do, and how long it will take. Real buyers will be happy to tell you all of this; in fact, they may think you're sales amateurs if you don't bother to ask. Lots of times the buyer may be frustrated by their own organization and will coach you to be more successful so that they can get what they want.

There are millions of potential tips: "You have to talk to Joe Smith first." "Never call Fred on Monday." If you filled out Form XG7-B first, you'll save 6 weeks." "Mary only buys from people she meets through Bill or her Business Group." "You have to be a preferred vendor of XYZ.."

I hope you get the picture. Like I said, it sounds like you've done all the right things so far. No one here at hn knows what else you need to do. Your customer does. Ask them. Today.

<comment><USER4> "In dealing with institutional customers, I even take it a step further. Before I invest any time in the sales cycle, I have them teach me what it takes to get a sale, exactly what I have to do, and how long it will take. Real buyers will be happy to tell you all of this; in fact, they may think you're amateurs if you don't bother to ask. Lots of times the buyer may be frustrated be their own organization and will coach you to be more successful so that they can get what they want."

I think this is extremely important not only with institutional customers, but with the general public as well. Every different market segment is going to have it's own rules about how they buy, who they buy from, how trust is built, how long it will take, what hoops you have to jump through in order to get them to take out their wallets. Then once the wallets are out, there is a whole other aspect to getting them to commit.

Like you said, people won't take you seriously if you don't know how to play the rules of the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi -

When you qualify a prospect, you want to think about 4 letters BANT. Budget, Authority, Need, Timing.

1) Budget - does this prospect have enough money to afford my product/service 2) Authority - Am I speaking with the decision maker (the person who holds the purse strings - typically CEO for businesses with less than 50 employees). For an educational institution, you will want to ask, "how does your purchasing process work?" You need to be able to uncover who the final decision maker is. 3) Need - why do they NEED your product. Please note that "need" is far different from "want" your product. For example, is the educational institution behind on the technology curve? What does your product do to give the educational institution a competitive advantage in either making professors more efficient or attracting more talented students? 4) Timing - educational institutions are businesses. They have budgets. It is getting close to the end of 2010. Perhaps purchasing your product is within the budget.... for 2011. They may love your product but are waiting to pull the trigger on Jan 1, 2011. How do you figure this out? Well, you need to ask, What are the next steps on your end?

Every deal is different. One thing that is consistent is BANT qualifying prospects. If you can identify 1) a PROBLEM 2) a PAIN and 3) CONSEQUENCE - <USER2> probability of converting leads into customers goes WAY UP.

Hope this helps. :)

Ryan

</comment><comment><USER6> _Ask for the sale._

You may need to create some urgency. It sounds like you're supporting them _gratis_ right now. Ask for the sale nicely, and then, depending on the response, frame the issue in terms of "that's OK, but we have other prospects we need to work with, so before we disengage, can we talk about why you couldn't benefit from our solution?"

Be prepared not to like the answer you get. You're selling to edu's. Edu's aren't fun to sell to; they are the worst of both worlds between enterprise and consumer sales. Part of the discipline of selling to them might be learning when to disqualify prospects. Don't waste your time talking to people who aren't going to buy. They aren't snakes and you can't charm them.

You're in business. You are not an educational IT support charity. Next prospect you open up, don't frame the relationship in terms of 6 weeks of weekly phone chats. Instead:

* Burn a meeting (with your dog&pony deck) to map out the organization and who's going to benefit from your stuff, and who's going to be saddled with using your stuff, and who's going to cut the check.

* Follow up with a meeting (with the _right person_ ) to map out the buying process. Be direct. You're there to sell stuff. Don't pretend you aren't, don't sugarcoat it. Ask them about the last thing they bought and what the process looked like. Then get them to confirm the same series of steps for your doohickey. Write notes down. Recite them back.

* _Ask for the sale_. This is the difference between salespeople and techs. Salespeople are always asking for the sale. The word "sales" is in their job title. They aren't hiding their motivation. A soft "no" is still progress if it gives you information you can use to transition to the next state in the machine; a hard "no" is _even more useful_ if it gets you the hell out of a sand trap and out to another prospect.

</comment><comment><USER7> I work at a very large K12 district so some feedback:

It's probably not you, it's me (them). Government/schools are notoriously slow and bureaucratic. Even the most simple of purchases takes FOREVER. In my district I can't buy ANYTHING from you unless you are on the "approved vendor list". This means your company would need to fill out some forms, wait, provide more information, wait, wait some more, until you are finally given a number in a database somewhere.

For enterprise, and especially government/schools, a 6+ month sales cycle is not uncommon.

As for what you can do for them:

\- Do all the paperwork required, even when it seems mundane, redundant, etc. This isn't the IT dept's fault, but they have to play by the purchasing rules. Again, they probably can't spend a dime until you do the paperwork.

\- Don't bug the shit out of the IT people. Stay in regular contact, ask about progress, but don't call daily and ask what's up. If you bug anyone, make sure it's the purchasing, finance, procurement, or other people you're dealing with.

\- Make things easy. Whether it's your POs, subscription model, support costs. The accounts receivable people and procurement dept probably don't know anything about technology, and weird-sounding line items will confuse them and stall the process.

One last thing - legal departments are SLOW. If your contract needs to be reviewed by the legal department, and it probably does in most districts, you're going to be in for a long wait. There is nothing you can do about this step but wait.

 _Comments are my own and do not represent my employer._

</comment><comment><USER8> The previous comments cover some of the most important points. It seems like you haven't identified who would make a decision to buy. So right now, you are entertaining a bunch of "keenly interested" tire kickers. They might push it up to the decision-making level, but you can't rely on that. Not for this first sale, and definitely not as a sustainable sales process.

You might also want to start reading some sales books; and remember the salesperson's mantra: always be closing. Every time you interact with the customer, try to close. Often this takes the form of the "trial close" (google that) which can be said half in jest, but is nonetheless a serious way of moving forward in the closing process.

Also consider the possibility that this customer actually has no interest in your product, and are just using you as a data point in their plan to either build it themselves or buy something else. As you continue selling, you'll find that this kind of tire-kicking is a frequent occurrence.

<comment><USER9> > sales books

Suggestions? There's a lot of stuff out there so I'm looking for HN recommendations.

<comment><USER10> "Customer Centric Selling" is an excellent book. You need to develop a repeatable sales process for your business - this book will teach you how.

Note: I have no affiliation with the above book/authors/publishers....I have been in software/technical sales for over 10 years, and I happen to think this is best place to get started.

Right now you are letting the buyer control the sales process. The other folks here are correct that you need to find out:

1) Do they have funds budgeted for this already? What budget will this come out of? When does their budget year end? 2) How does their buying process work? Who has final approval? Does this decision have to go to a committee if the cost is over $XX,XXX?

3) If your software solves a problem...how are they solving that problem now? What "pain" do they have associated with how they are doing things now? You need to find out what their "critical issue" is.

4) What is the business case for your product? People don't buy "cool features" or "neat software" they buy products that solve business issues. If you are selling something above a certain price point, the decision will eventually be made by someone non-technical....and you need to have a strong ROI case built for that person to get the order.

If you don't know the above information, never do a demo. If a prospect refuses to share this type of information, they are not serious and you should move on to the next one. Sometimes the best sales opportunities are the ones that you lose quickly....don't be afraid to lose the sale quickly. Focus your efforts on serious buyers who are willing to share information on their budget, purchasing process, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 3 key components of a sales pitch:

A. Get their attention B. Summarize the key advantages the customer will receive by purchasing your product/service C. Tell them specifically how to make the transaction

Sounds like you have taken care of A and B already. But are you not making it easy for the customer to say yes? Perhaps you need to be more specific on your price & terms. How do they get started? Who do they make the check to? What happens after that?

Finally, to amplify the chances of closing the sale - makes sure you include a risk reversal proposition. Ie- "if you're not completely satisfied within 60 days, we'll refund you with no questions asked." This is really important, since you guys are new to the game, and so you should be expected to accept 100% of the risk in the transaction. Get your prospective customer to understand this, and if they still aren't making a purchase with you it's time to move on to the next one.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting how in this thread there are several comments that are almost direct lifts from training sales books, and one comment that talks about experience with institutional markets.

It's the difference between reading and doing.

You'll (hopefully) know your prospect better than the people here. There's not much I can add to edw519's comment, other than to try to identify the things that are stopping the sale from going through, you may be surprised what the issue is. Update your view of when you think this is likely to close once you've identified what the hold up is, when to re-establish contact and divert your energy to other sales in the meantime.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank You every one for your pointers. I will keep you posted about developments on my side

</comment><comment><USER13> ABC "Always Be Closing": MOU is a not a sale so go for the purchase order (PO). [Edit] Adding to the great pieces of advice given by edw519 that the answer are with your prospect and all got to do is ask question and listen.

* Present them a copy of the Purchase Order they should sign. Give them a pen and wait don't say anything. If that's too fast here are from start some steps I follow:

* Detect a prospect "with a pain" that your offer can solve. Be like a hunter: do not waste energy after rabits (no meat for too much hastle). [http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/09/16/most-startups-...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/09/16/most-startups-should-be-deer-hunters/) This can be any type of pain: they have a budget to spend before now and the end of the year. You can help the decision maker look good in front of his bosses. Students have threaten to strike if the pb is not solved by a solution like yours (often pains are human/status related).

* that means detect the non shopping signals (they don't really know their budget? no time frame; they just want info etc... they shop but will not buy). As soon as you feel they are not serious go to the next one.

* Reformulate the framework for PO: "so Mr Prospect if we do this, and that and this, in this time frame you will sign me a Purchase Order?"

* Answer objections one after the other. Be exhaustive so that there can be no objection left and he is forced to sign PO as he accepted he will do.

* Detect Redherring/false objections: the prospect does not want to tell you he will not buy (sometimes the prospect knows this from the start, he just want to justify that he has looked for several offers etc even if he already know the one he wants to buy).

* Often they don't want to tell you the whole thing (and the "real" thing). and you have to know EVERYTHING (because either your competitor will, or the prospect will play with you). So spend time at the water cooler with people around the project and ask "open questions" = they type they can not answer with yes or no but where they have to elaborate. They will tell you for instance that "you loose your time the guy knows that he leaves to another co end of the year, he is just justifying his salary in the meantime". You can also have call with excuses to get into side (but very informative conversations) eg. "Hey I wanted to check if you well receive my email? btw how does Xor Y work at your organization, just curious"... "I see", "really" "what do you mean by XMN process?"

* Make sure that when you give sthg they give you sthg back: a feedback email, a meeting with their boss/decision maker, contact to their contract adminstrator. (bad sign is when you give and give and do not receive nuggets of value back that shows you are in the process of closing.)

* do not put too many intermediary steps (sometimes people are scared to ask for the order while the prospect is already ready to buy that is why from day one you should have a PO in your bag in case the guy says ok. Rare but happens somtimes)

* the key to this is listen more than speak and sometimes play the game "the 1st who speaks has lost".

* Ask the hard questions and wait (=shut up) until the other one is a little bit uncomfortable with the silence and can not help but speak. eg. "Who is the person who will sign the PO", "how much budget do you have?", "why is it so important to you to buy a solution?", "Why would you buy from us and not our competitor?". Hard question are a little bit at the limit of rudeness but at least you are clear and you tried, and by experience many times people answer. You are a busy professional, and that is why you ask clear question to save everybody's time but(!) you respect their procedures and that is fine that if A then they will give you the answer to your question B.

* It is a partnership: "you have appreciated the effort we have put in answering all your questions, in return we ask for a date where, if all conditions (listed) are fulfilled, you think we could come to sign the contract/PO together. Do we agree?" - then send an email telling what prospect agree to do., and regularly check if we can expect that PO will be signed by then? any possibilities it can get postponed? what could be the risk? "ah I see, so should I talk to this person to make sure they will read the contract before (y date)?"

Always be Closing.

Once you have your PO (1 page), you need your legal contract, and then you have 3 other steps:

* reassure the client that he did well to buy form you (don't leave him alone while you celebrate). "Hey, fyi the other institution X bought from us" "see our article in this important publication". They chose the right horse.

* Deliver (and make as many people in their org happy as you can, they will be future sales people for you outside or inside the org).

* Finally go back to the client and say "ok you were happy with our service/produc" "yes", "did you appreciate the reactivity of our team", etc..." yes" "You understand that in order to serve you even better with more ressource I need to grow my business "yes" . "So now do you think we deserved the right to ask you the contact details of people in charge like you at 3 other similar institutions which will benefit from our solution like you did?" write 3 bullet points on your notebook, do not speak wait for the 3 names even 2 is great value.</comment>


Second Travel-Related Case of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Detected in United States - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0124-second-travel-coronavirus.html <comment><USER3> If you are not a scientist this doesn't mean you can't help fighting this particular or any other infectious and non-infectious disease. It is easy - just help to improve the tools that scientists and laboratories use. For example, something like BioJulia[1][2] and BioPython[3][4] - both have some issues[5][6] that need help with or accepting donations[7]. There are many other tools that are used, feel free to list them in the comments.

[1] [https://biojulia.net/](https://biojulia.net/)

[2] [https://github.com/BioJulia](https://github.com/BioJulia)

[3] [https://biopython.org/](https://biopython.org/)

[4] [https://github.com/biopython/](https://github.com/biopython/)

[5] [https://github.com/BioJulia/BioSequences.jl/issues](https://github.com/BioJulia/BioSequences.jl/issues)

[6] [https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues?q=label%3A%22h...](https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues?q=label%3A%22help+wanted%22+is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen)

[7] [https://opencollective.com/biojulia#backer](https://opencollective.com/biojulia#backer)

<comment><USER4> Are these tools really used by disease labs?

<comment><USER5> Yes.

I run an infectious disease modeling lab - while I don't use these tools, I know people who do.

In my lab, we use R, Numpy, SciPy, StochPy, etc.

You could also just see about donating directly to a lab at a nearby university.

<comment><USER6> What are some of the R libraries that your team uses?

I wouldn't mind donating some time to help with bug fixes. I have no idea though which R libraries/projects are being used.

<comment><USER5> Lets see...

survival, parallel/snow, Amelia2, nlme,vioplot,ggplot2 and deSolve are the big ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The market seems to be reacting to this. Hard to tell how serious it really is relative to the flu, but would not be surprised if China was underplaying the numbers, both infected and deaths.

<comment><USER8> I would not be surprised by that at all.

Every Asia-focused analyst will tell you that the only aspect of China's state-reported numbers you can assume with a high degree of confidence is that they're heavily massaged for PR purposes.

<comment><USER9> Sometimes it's also possible to draw inferences by observing how the numbers were massaged. For example if you look at the red graph of confirmed cases at [1], there's a very noticeable jump from 1-17 to 1-18. Coincidentally, the third session of the 13th Hubei Provincial People's Congress concluded on January 17. [2]

[1] [https://3g.dxy.cn/newh5/view/pneumonia](https://3g.dxy.cn/newh5/view/pneumonia)

[2] [http://en.hubei.gov.cn/news/newslist/202001/t20200119_200642...](http://en.hubei.gov.cn/news/newslist/202001/t20200119_2006424.shtml)

<comment> dis-sys That jump was explained in details when it happened - test kits were made available shortly before that date. To be more specific, first batch of test kits were delivered to Wuhan on the 16th Jan [1].

[1] [http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_5588213](http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_5588213)

<comment><USER9> That explains why the speed of diagnosis increased, thanks. Do you have a similarly good explanation for why the lab tests that, starting with 59 cases of unknown origin on January 5 [1], had confirmed 41 cases of coronavirus by January 11 [2] failed to detect any new cases until the better test kits arrived?

[1] [http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020010509020](http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020010509020)

[2] [http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020011109035](http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020011109035)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Both to those making claims or asking about the severity of the Wuhan coronavirus The Guardian offers a sober perspective of the current situation.

 _We don't yet know how dangerous the new coronavirus is – and we won't know until more data comes in. Twenty-six deaths out of 800 reported cases would mean a 3% mortality rate. However, this is likely to be a overestimate since there may be a far larger pool of people who have been infected by the virus but who have not suffered severe enough symptoms to attend hospital and so have not been counted in the data. For comparison, seasonal flu typically has a mortality rate below 1% and is thought to cause about 400,000 deaths each year globally. Another key unknown, of which scientists should get a clearer idea in the coming weeks, is how contagious the coronavirus is. A crucial difference is that unlike flu, there is no vaccine for the new coronavirus, which means it is more difficult for vulnerable members of the population – elderly people or those with existing respiratory or immune problems – to protect themselves. One sensible step to get the flu vaccine, which will reduce the burden on health services if the outbreak turns into a wider epidemic._

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/24/what-is- the-...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/24/what-is-the- coronavirus-wuhan-china-virus-symptoms)

<comment><USER11> Coronavirus is very bad news, especially if you are (a) older (<60), (b) male, (c) diabetic, or (d) have preexisting respiratory issues.[0-2]

Most people are aware that CoV can cause pneumonia, but what really makes it devastating is that it can also attack your immune system, bowel, or kidneys depending on what cell surface receptors the strain can latch onto.[3-4]

There are some treatment options. Steroids are given to tamp down inflammation and treat pneumonia in severe cases, but have a nasty side effect of osteonecrosis (bone death). Ribavirin with interferons may or may not be effective.[5-6]

[0] [https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/159/3/229/79939](https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/159/3/229/79939)

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16759303](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16759303)

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5450662/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5450662/)

[3] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24732781](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24732781)

[4] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4072739/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4072739/)

[5] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24493194](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24493194)

[6] [https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/71/12/3340/2631297](https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/71/12/3340/2631297)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hmm I wonder what hospital the patient is at. According to the email sent to the uchicago community from the provost, she's not at uchicago medical. I would guess northwestern or rush.

<comment><USER5> Honestly, most hospitals in the Chicago area with an ICU can handle this.

<comment> core-questions The problem is that you show up with minimal symptoms like someone who has a cold, to an ER where people have serious wounds and problems. You get triaged and end up sitting in the waiting room for hours, infecting potentially tens of other people, who may have weakened immune systems, etc. and it goes on to spread around the hospital.

What can the hospital even do to help you with this?

<comment><USER13> If you have travelled to the affected areas and have respiratory symptoms you DON'T just go to hospital. You call ahead and then do what you are told.

<comment><USER14> Only if you have the sense to do that. Have you met many Americans? I don't know why, but the ER has become the default destination for anything medical for many. There's no need to call ahead, they're open 24hrs! _sigh_

<comment><USER15> >Only if you have the sense to do that. Have you met many Americans?

I don't know why this kind of 'American stereotyping' is okay.

That aside, myself and my family ('Americans' in 'America') have physicians that we call when we have issues.

That physician is generally the one to tell us what to do.

Our situation isn't abnormal or unusual, either.

<comment><USER14> It's backed up by the statistics, and if you go do some searches for "emergency room unnecesary" and the like, you'll find plenty of articles on the subject.

      Number of visits: 145.6 million
      Number of injury-related visits: 42.2 million
      Number of visits per 100 persons: 45.8
      Number of emergency department visits resulting in hospital admission: 12.6 million
      Number of emergency department visits resulting in admission to critical care unit: 2.2 million
      [0]

"71% of ED Visits Unnecessary, Avoidable" [1]

If you're not familiar with Americans going to ERs "just to be safe" for the most frivolous reasons, because their insurance will pay for it, we're not living in the same country.

With that sort of attitude being prevalent, it's easy to see how someone would go directly to the ER and spread something like this without giving it any thought.

[0] [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/emergency- department.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/emergency-department.htm)

[1] [https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient- flow/study-71-...](https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient- flow/study-71-of-ed-visits-unnecessary-avoidable.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is the best case scenario on how to get this under control?

<comment><USER17> The best case is hat it doesn't get worse because vaccine production and other treatments scale/improve faster than the virus spreads. It's still hard to predict the pace of either.

We also don't really know what the _current_ scenario is. How bad is it already?

<comment><USER16> I read a vaccine takes at least a year, that's not a good outlook...

<comment><USER16> care to explain fellow down-voters?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> on currently published numbers the death rate is around one death per 30 infections. (25th January, 41 people dead from 1287 infections). According to wikipedia the spanish flu had a death rate of 1 in 50 (although the numbers may not be that reliable), so until more is known about transmission it should prompt precautions.

<comment><USER19> We have no idea how many people have none to very light symptoms so these numbers are quite meaningless. I think we'll learn quite a lot more over the coming weeks from the cases in western countries. So far this doesn't seem too concerning but we'll see how it develops...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Exponential growth has a way of catching people off guard. Moore's laws continually surprised business. Viral spread will catch society off guard. It is my opinion that we must, as a society, go to enormous lengths to stop this virus, beyond quarantining millions in Wuhan.

<comment><USER5> Epidemiology, as a field, has a harder time in infectious diseases _not_ representing things as exponential growth than it does being surprised by it.

<comment><USER21> Please explain more? What do they represent it as instead?

<comment><USER5> So the standard type of mathematical model that's used to describe early stage epidemics (such as this one) basically _assume_ exponential growth.

It's hard to get the math to stop doing that when a disease reaches a non- exponential stage. That's why you got some bonkers predictions for Ebola - <USER2> you let an exponential model run for a year, it's always going to be bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So is the entire biology community turning to face this or is that not a thing? Because it should be.

Encountering the problem that a new disease is threatening a sizeable portion of the world population?

Have every biologist looking at solving it. We have the technology. This requires a modern solution.

<comment><USER23> Most biologists are not virologists. Besides, HIV, Hep. C, and even the normal flus kill far more people, and threaten more of the world's population.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can't we just stop that traveling nightmare? Now it's not only going to destroy our climate, but also bringing the Zombie Apocalypse.

<comment><USER25> > The global aviation industry produces around 2% of all human-induced carbon > dioxide (CO2) emissions. Aviation is responsible for 12% of CO2 emissions > from all transports sources, compared to 74% from road transport.

First result on Google...

<comment><USER26> Human breathing produces about 2.5 billion tons of CO2 per year. Aviation is just under 1 billion tons per year.

Aviation is one of the great wonders of the modern world. The carbon it produces is essentially inconsequential.

Compared to the wealth, knowledge, peace, and prosperity that international travel directly supports, calls to curtail plane travel in order to reduce CO2 IMO are seriously misguided.

<comment><USER27> > Human breathing produces about 2.5 billion tons of CO2 per year.

The carbon emitted in human breathing came from the food, and the carbon in the food came from the atmosphere. It's a closed cycle. It doesn't matter if it's a billion or two, an identical amount of carbon had to be captured first.

<comment><USER26> Well technically it's _all_ a closed cycle. Humans consume carbon sinks, whether it's for glucose or joules, to survive.

The carbon sinks we consume to produce glucose do tend to be ones that pulled their carbon from to atmosphere in the last couple years, rather than millions of years ago.

And I agree, moving _fresh_ carbon between atmosphere, organisms, and back into the atmosphere doesn't have a net effect that builds up over time like burning fossil fuels. So it wasn't a great comparison.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>