Smoke.js - A framework-agnostic styled alert/confirm system for javascript - <AUTHOR> http://ssssnakes.com/smoke/ <comment><USER2> I like its simplicity.

But, I thought this was dead:

      onClick="javascript:smoke.alert('this is a normal alert');"

... apparently, not.

The 'javascript:' (attempted psuedo protocol), is just acting as a pointless label here.

I also thought we said goodbye to obtrusive JS altogether.

Also, the API isn't great. There's no instance to work with... It doesn't work in IE7 (probably because it doesn't cater for non-W3C events APIs). The source is littered with getElementById calls, and non configurable HTML IDs and classes. And it uses the window's 'load' event to initiate itself, when there's absolutely no need to. There's also 'smoketimeout' polluting the global scope when it could just be a property of the 'smoke' object itself.

<comment><USER3> Most of that is no doubt due to the fact that it's framework-agnostic, meaning it can't rely on all the things frameworks like jquery do to make it easy to create reliable, unobtrusive javascript.

I don't so much have a problem with the getElementById calls, as that really is the best and quickest way to do things. Even jQuery's $('#some-element') selector is simply calling getElementById('some-element') under the hood and then wrapping it in a jQuery object.

And technically the onClick stuff can still be unobtrusive, as long as the link still works as intended with javascript disabled (i.e. it's a normal link and doesn't have something like href="#".

But all technicalities aside, I totally agree with your sentiment. Almost every site I build now is using jQuery or some other framewor; I'd prefer not to use some library that has to re-implement all the bindings and selectors and browser-specific hacks and work-arounds that are already being included elsewhere in my framework.

Furthermore, if my site is so low-level or small that it can't easily include jQuery, I doubt I'll be worried about replacing or trying to spruce up the standard javascript confirm dialog.

<comment><USER4>
      var listen = function(el, evt, cbk) {
          if (el.addEventListener) {
              el.addEventListener(evt, cbk, false);
          } else {
              el.attachEvent('on' + evt, cbk);
          }
      };

No jQuery or whatever necessary ... if all you're doing is basic event handling and you know how the DOM works for other things, it really isn't much trouble to include this and a couple other small functions in a one-off, and is far preferable to including a hefty all-purpose DOM abstraction library like jQuery or MooTools.

Their example including an ugly onclick attribute doesn't imply that that is the only way to do things, it merely demonstrates the absolute simplest way to use the library. Of course any fool can use a script that includes the function above and locates the element manually.

<comment><USER5> > if all you're doing is basic event handling and you know how the DOM works > for other things, it really isn't much trouble to include this and a couple > other small functions in a one-off, and is far preferable to including a > hefty all-purpose DOM abstraction library like jQuery or MooTools.

Why is that far preferable?

So you can throw out all that extra code as soon as your events have to actually _do_ something, and you decide you do need jQuery? :)

To be honest, I do the same thing. It starts off as a small project one-off, and I think nah I don't have to include jQuery for something small if I just code these tiny DOM helper functions.

And there hasn't been a single time, when after an hour or so of coding, I didn't wish I had started out using jQuery right away :)

But sometimes then it's already too far, easier to just kludge along and finish the task than include jQuery and rewrite all the code so far to use it.

So how's this preferable again?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Similar interface <http://thrivingkings.com/apprise/>

<comment><USER7> +1 for Apprise

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks useful, but why make smoke.confirm work differently from plain confirm? It uglifies the API for no gain, IMHO.

<comment><USER9> How would you make it return true/false immediately when the user has to click OK or Cancel?

<comment><USER8> Oh, good point. I clearly need more caffeine in my system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel like the alert and confirm modals should not be allowed to be dismissed by clicking outside. Especially confirm: "Destroy all. Yes, No?" -> click outside...nothing.

<comment><USER11> It's the "panic" action, akin to a "close dialog" button. Clicking outside (should) default to the "safe" choice, in this case, "no".

<comment><USER12> I would disagree. If there is a choice to be made, and that choice truly matters, I believe there should be no way to accidentally make the choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wouldn't use it, because it doesn't use the main hotkeys for user interaction on the alert box (enter, space) or the confirm box (enter, space, escape).

I also would have liked it better, if the default functions of alert and confirm would have been overwritten, instead of recreated into an object. Overwriting the existent functions would have been made it a snap to integrate smoke.js into existing projects.

<comment><USER14> To my knowledge, you can't overwrite the existent confirm function because you can't pause the running of JS like the standard function does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish it also did prompt(). That would save a lot of work when you just want to input one field or want to let users copy-paste a URL to the page.

Edit: rgbrgb posted <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2748038> about Apprise. It does what smoke.js does and then some. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't work on ipad

<comment><USER17> Doesn't work on the iPhone either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fly.

On the usability tip, why don't you allow making the dialog appear near the user's mouse? Having to move it from the link (or wherever the user's mouse is at the time) to the action buttons is unnecessary.

<comment><USER12> A counterpoint: I don't like things that appear near my mouse. My mouse is rarely positioned where I'm looking, and anything that appears under my mouse when I'm about to click on something interferes with (and occasionally "steals") normal clicks. The worst is when a dialog pops up with important information, and the OK or Cancel button right under the mouse, just as I was halfway through clicking on something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Show stopper for me is that it breaks the convention of disabling clicking with alerts and confirms.

</comment><comment><USER19> want to get the gold star? make it to where I can have a styled confirmation box when onbeforeunload gets fired and make it have cross-browser support

</comment><comment> dav-id It seems to be broken on an iPad.

</comment><comment><USER20> I like the CSS stylings.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sorry, but this is the latest entry in obsolete and obtrusive functionality. It's useless for mobile (just tested iOS Safari and Opera), which is the platform you should start with, and it's been proven out to be an annoying hindrance to the user on the desktop.

Don't interrupt CRUD. If you can't trust the user to not perform an irreversible action, then you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER22> Noticed that it didn't work on my iPad as well. May be an early release, but mobile compatibility is crucial.</comment></comment>


Inside the offices of LA gaming startup Scopely - <AUTHOR> http://www.themuse.com/companies/scopely

<comment><USER2> Just a quick note on the page design: I see the influences of both the Pinterest-style "pins" and the MS-style "metro" look here.

Honestly, I find both of those styles incredibly difficult to navigate and I think they offer poor UX. My eye just doesn't know where to fall on the page. I know this sort of design is trendy and contemporary, but frankly I hope this fad passes soon.

That being said - the office looks cool, the company sounds cool, and the more gaming startups out there that do well, the more fun there is to be had in the world (and that is a Good Thing(tm) in my humble opinion ;)

<comment><USER3> > the office looks cool

I agree it looks "hip." I also happened to like the friendly shots of the employees who looked like real people I might want to know.

However, that's an office for sales people. I wouldn't want to be a developer working on hard problems in the middle of that.

...also didn't realize that Hollywood was part of "Silicon Beach," although to someone out of state I guess it's all beach. There's another startup on that corner, named Pop-up Pantry.

<comment><USER4> (disclaimer, I work at Scopely) I don't _quite_ understand what you mean by saying that it's an "office for sales people". Agreed, it's a bit crowded! I think we doubled (or more?) our team's size since we moved into this space. But other than that, the type of office suites me and most developers quite well. We are working on acquiring more office space and making dedicated "quite rooms" for people to work in with less distraction.

<comment><USER3> It would be no big deal to check email in such an environment, but hard problems... uggh.

Do you allow employees to work at home (even go to the library) part of the day/week? This would mitigate things I'd guess.

Back to the point: It's well known (now) that interruptions destroy developer productivity.

"Human Task Switches Considered Harmful" <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html>

The original: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects_and_Teams)

Aimed at the boss: <http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html>

<comment><USER5> For better or worse, every startup has an open plan office like this. The new breed of 22 year old software engineers do not appear to be negatively affected. Joel and Peopleware need to do a re-assessment using younger people who grew up with 24/7 internet.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, though I'd be surprised that humans have evolved much in 15 years.

I have worked in such an environment though and there were huge costs (and true a few benefits). What I found though was that the hard work got done from 9pm-12am over the VPN ... a recipe for eventual burnout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Scopely creates addictive, multiplayer mobile games loved by users around the world, and it also provides a platform for independent game studios to publish mobile games of their own._

Looks like they've got a conflict of interest there? Likely one model will flourish without the other.</comment>


Mac mini review–a testament to Apple's stubbornness - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/mac-mini-review-a-testament-to-apples-stubbornness/ <comment><USER2> I've been debating my next "laptop" purchase actually be a Mac mini. Ie, every day I'd throw it in my backpack, head to work _(when I go into office)_ , and plug it in there.

Why? Well, I already do that. I have a MacBook Pro 2017, and I treat it like a MacMini. I don't use it like a laptop. Partially because I have monitor/keyboard setups that I prefer at both work and home, but also because I simply don't trust the laptop to withstand any real usage. The keyboard, mainly. I have two friends with the same laptop, under sane conditions and both have experienced problems _(with the keyboard)_.

So what do I do when I actually need a laptop? I travel with my trusty 2014 _(or whatever year it is)_ MacBook Pro. I love it to death. And when it dies I guess I'll upgrade it. But I've realized I prefer a lesser, small and portable machine for my travel laptop. My "main" work machine is too expensive to feel safe traveling with. My travel laptop is in a separate category.

So when the need occurs, I'm debating hauling a Mac mini between work and home as my daily driver. For travel, it will be a smaller, much more cheap laptop that if I lose/damage I won't be out $3.5k. It just seems to fit my needs better.

On that note, anyone think a Mac mini will survive daily hauls like that? I am concerned that it will be too much movement for a non-laptop. Thoughts?

<comment><USER3> Is there some reason you don't just get two Mac minis, one for home and one for work? I used to bring my laptop back and forth between work and home frequently, but now I just have two work laptops, one that lives at work and one that lives at home (and comes with me when I travel). I find it a lot more convenient. Everything is in the cloud these days anyway, so it's not like I need files stored on the local machine.

<comment><USER4> I guess it depends what you are working with. Some things are just a pain to keep synced, like large files, lots of repos, installed packages, containers, customizations, etc..

For a while I did have an iMac at work, iMac at home and small laptop for whatever. But it was too much hassle.

<comment><USER5> So use an external HD! A 2.5" usb3 SSD will fit in your pocket. Comes with the added advantage that you save the copy step of transferring files to colleagues.

Additionally depending on OS / hardware similarity at each end you might even be able to make it bootable and carry your toolset everywhere too.

<comment><USER6> I've tried doing just that, and it's still somewhat inconvenient. There's quite a bit of stuff that resides somewhere in the $HOME dir, from config to application files. I considered symlinking part of it, but then you have the problem that nothing works without the SSD connected.

<comment><USER7> Install macos + your environment and data to the external drive and boot from it?

<comment><USER6> > ...but then you have the problem that nothing works without the SSD > connected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you remove the hyperbole here, i think a bunch of the author's points are probably right:

IE

"Need a Mac because you're wanting to explore iOS development? Get the Mac mini and continue to use the keyboard/mouse/display that you've already got on your desk. It's no longer the affordable way into the macOS environment that it once was, but it's the best thing Apple really has to offer."

"Apple's refusal to build, y'know, a regular desktop computer means that the mini often ends up being the best option if you really are committed to using macOS."

etc

I've own/owned 5 or 6 mac mini's at this point (including the 2018)

At this point, i buy them to shove them in a closet somewhere. Size is not a factor in that.

It's big enough at this point (compared to NUC's, etc) that it has no meaningful size advantage.

As a server, you'd want some different tradeoffs. As a desktop, the only reason you'd use it is, as the author says - you don't have a lot of options in what you can use for MacOS and this checks some boxes the other option doesn't.

It'll probably be the last computer i buy from apple to set up for others - MacOS isn't as bulletproof as it used to be.

For the second time, I had to debug obscure apple bugs for my parents over thanksgiving - which is why i set them up with a mac mini in the first place - to stop having to deal with this on windows or linux.

<comment><USER9> You haven't appreciated MacOS until your entire family has hosed windows 10 laptops that they've been saving up to bring around so you can fix them at Christmas...

<comment><USER8> Yeah, i only mean "i'm gonna try something else".

The world in fact, may still suck elsewhere, but MacOS is no longer so good that i'll avoid trying. It used to be.

<comment><USER9> I just make sure people get iPads if I don't want to deal with shit :)

Problem? Apple store mate. Go ask there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's clear what Apple is doing here.

The smartphone market is saturated, the tablet market is saturated, the laptop market is saturated, the desktop market is almost dead and Apple doesn't have (a lot of) users in the workstation market.

So why put a lot of effort in designing new products every year?

What we now see is that Apple is focusing on people with money and on paid services.

And it works. They won't tell you how many iPhones they sold but the profit will be huge.

<comment><USER11> Of course it's clear. It's no great conspiracy. Apple has been emphasizing their service revenue growth for years and they said they are emphasizing making their products last longer. iOS 12 is compatible with the 2013 iPhone 5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the form factor is great. The argument that there is no room for a dedicated GPU is imo simply false. If a mobile VEGA fits in a MBP it will fit in a Mac Mini chassi. Apple decided against it, for whatever reason and that is the only problem I have with this machine.

<comment><USER13> Physically having room for the chip and having enough space that you can actually run it without running into thermal issues are different things. Laptops have a bigger surface area to get rid of the heat but thermals are still a challenge for laptop design. I don't know for sure that Apple couldn't have pulled it off but the issue is not just physically having space to cram the chip in, it's being able to run it cool enough.

<comment><USER12> I doubt that's the reasoning, but even if they could've made it slightly larger. No one cares if their mini is 5mm larger on one side.

<comment><USER11> Well, anyone who has a rack of Mac Minis probably appreciates them keeping the size the same. I know Mac Mini Colo does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "there isn't a PCIe slot to be found across the entire range of systems"

Thunderbolt is PCI express.

</comment><comment><USER14> the author complains that the mac mini has no power brick - why not just have a power brick? he says. but he complains that an external GPU is a dumb idea?

this guy didn't like apple and his review simply reflects his emotion, nothing more.

<comment><USER15> Peter Bright is Ars's Microsoft guy and is known for his Apple antipathy. Not sure why he's doing this review.

<comment><USER16> To be fair he called this out up front (although until your note I didn't know what he was taking about -- but I got the idea).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have no use for a personal laptop. Every job provides a laptop for work and for my personal non developer work, my iPad suffices.

I'm always using a multiple monitor setup anyway and the Mac Mini supports three. I don't need large internal storage, I can always add external hard drives.

<comment><USER17> I have a personal laptop that doesn't see much use (though I am using it right now, coincidentally). However, whenever I'm working on non-work projects, I use the personal machine to ensure that there's no question of copyright ownership.

<comment><USER11> That's what I am saying. My work laptop moves between two places - my job with a dual monitor setup and my favorite Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and my home office with a dual monitor setup and a separate set of the keyboard and mouse.

So why buy a more expensive, less capable laptop that will only be used in one spot at home for my personal use instead of just buying the Mac Mini?

Second question is usually why not just buy a cheaper PC? I'm slowly moving away from the Microsoft Windows ecosystem - but I still will be using some .Net Core - and the macOS is real certified Unix that just works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's indeed annoying that there's a bit of a gap in Apple's product range for a high-end-but-not-excessive machine. I'd go right ahead and buy a higher-end Apple desktop machine, with enthusiast-level components, and the ability to bump the memory, storage, and GPU up myself at a later date. I don't need a tiny enclosure or dual GPUs or built-in screens, so the Mac Pro and iMac Pro are not cost-effective products. I really do miss the old Mac Pro, which fitted this use-case perfectly.

I'm genuinely pretty surprised there's not a market for that kind of thing among software developers in particular.

<comment><USER19> There is and Apple already announced that they will fix their mistake with a new, modular Mac Pro in 2019.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> At this point, someone should just make a Space Grey Mac Mini Casing, with 1 or 2 NVMe housing on the side, along with 7nm Radeon Vega. Stack them up and connect the two via Thunderbolt, upgrade the Mac Mini yourself with 64GB Memory. Done!. Apart from the CPU limited to 6 Core, I think this is about as close to "Mac" as most people want.

The only problem is I am not sure about the performance penalty of eGPU, may be two Thunderbolt connection instead of one will help?

</comment><comment><USER21> > And if you're a suspicious sort who wants ECC in their build farm, then a > Xeon or an AMD processor of some kind would be a better fit.

What does ECC refer to?

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm struggling what to get, I largely need a Mac just to test Safari against web-sites I develop, and while you can do that on an iPad, the lack of a real browser development console makes tracking down JS bugs a nightmare (and, yes, I've seen the hacky iFrame websites that "add" a developer console to iPad, it isn't good enough).

So that leaves me with a Mac Mini, Macbook, Macbook Air, or one of those services which claims they can do virtual Safari testing (but I'm unclear how that would work on localhost/internal sites). Is there any real advantage to the Mac Mini aside from slightly more power and ports? For the same money a Macbook/Air comes with its own screen, keyboard, and mouse.

<comment><USER24> For you, it must be annoying that Apple killed Safari for Windows, but I always wondered why they did that to start.

<comment><USER25> I can't imagine that Windows Safari usage rates were very good. According to the last 90 days of federal website analytics [0], Safari was used by 28.9% of users (Chrome and IE are 46.6% and 10.5%, respectively). But only 14% of Safari visits were from MacOS -- i.e. 4% of all browsers.

0: [https://analytics.usa.gov/](https://analytics.usa.gov/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I bought a previous rev of the Mac Mini in 2014 to use mostly as a media server. It fits in a small media closet. It's quiet. It was relatively inexpensive. It's more than powerful enough to do the job so I have no need to upgrade.

The only goofy thing was that I had to buy a doodad[1] to stick in the HDMI port to get it to switch into certain resolutions even though I'm running it headless. While not a big deal, that seems like kind of a bug.

Overall, I continue to be very happy with the purchase.

1\. [https://twitter.com/harryh/status/527180708465639425](https://twitter.com/harryh/status/527180708465639425)

<comment><USER27> I think that use case was a very good one for the Mini, but with the price hike I just don't see why anyone would choose this latest model. You can pick up a HP MicroServer Gen8 for ~$150 or the latest ones for ~$450, and those offer tons more variety on configuration, more storage expansion capacity, and they're extremely easy to maintain (I'm far from a HP fan, but they sure can build a solid server).

<comment><USER2> I've been looking for small closet servers, this looks neat! Thanks! Any other brands/models you'd recommend?

<comment><USER28> FWIW, I have a HP Microserver Gen8 with the dual-core Celeron and 16 GB of RAM, including 4 3 TB HDDs I paid about 800 bucks. I have had this machine for three years now, and it has given me no trouble whatsoever. It is quiet, reliable and for my use case, it performs well (I use it as a file server, DHCP and DNS server, plus I run a few low-end VMs on it).

The one thing that was a little annoying is that it does not have UEFI firmware, and the BIOS cannot deal with GPT, so I cannot boot off the HDDs and need an additional USB flash drive for that. Other than that I cannot say a bad thing about it.

<comment><USER27> I rigged mine to boot off an SSD wedged into the "CD Drive" bay at the top. Cheapy connector to power it off the CD power connector and a SATA cable and it works great. There's an option in the BIOS to swap the disk controller to a dumb version, which works much better for me (I use ZFS anyway so any built-in RAID stuff just gets in the way), and that picks up the SSD and lets you set it as a boot drive.

I might think about rejigging my setup soon to use that SSD as an L2ARC cache and instead boot off a pair of USB sticks. 16GB of RAM max on the Gen8 is a bit of a pain with ZFS, so that might be a sensible evolution before I eventually look to get a newer model :)

<comment><USER28> I considered that option, but as far as I could find out, that would force the SATA controller in to RAID mode, making it impossible for ZFS (I use ZFS, too) to get at the SMART data from the disks.

My server runs FreeBSD, and I have restricted the ZFS ARC to 8GB, so I have some RAM left for the other stuff, performance has been okay for me. Then again, a) a home network with about half a dozen client devices is not that big a challenge, and b) due to a combination of laziness and stupidity, my home network still is 100MBit, so I do not have to worry about any bottlenecks on the server. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I was only 15 years old, I'd received an inheritance from the passing of a relative to the tune of $2000 USD.

I was living with my Father at the time, who worked for Microsoft in networking (he now works at Azure), and he had nurtured my interest in programming from the age of 8 or 9.

He agreed we could put half aside for my college fund, and I could use half to buy or build a new computer, among some other niceties.

So I basically had an $800 USD budget for a computer, including any RAM or HDD upgrades I wanted to do, or any extra peripherals I wanted.

I had a vast interest in moving away from Windows, and a continued interest in audio production/recording already - I fell in love with the original iMac G4, and, while it was definitely out of my price range, being an all-in-one starting at, I think, $1,199 - but all I wanted was to make music with GarageBand, movies with iMovie, and try to explore MacOS and learn about xCode and Objective-C.

So, at $499, the original 1.42ghz G4 Mac Mini was, for me, as a high school student - who literally would've had to save months for it had they not been so lucky - well, it might has well have been a Lamborghini to a 15-year-old.

But, I was fortunate, and, given my desire to explore in the Apple ecosystem, I was willing to invest in what my Father thought was a very underpowered machine for the money.

What makes me sad is that today, that same 15-year-old kid could not have walk into that store and have the same experience.

Today, I'm a professional iOS developer at a major bank, when I'm not running an independent music label with artists that exclusively run on Logic Pro X systems that I configure for them, so collaboration is seamless. Everyone loves them.

But I exclusively use 2010-2013 MacBook Pro hardware for my artists that I purchase, upgrade, shove an SSD and the most RAM I can in them and often experience better performance, or at the very least certainly a more enjoyable experience, than the 2017 15" Touch Bar Macbook Pro I'm 'typing' on right now. (While I was writing this post, I accidentally brushed the lock screen button and was temporarily locked out.)

The Mac Mini was a very important and crucial product in their product line. Something at least _reasonably_ affordable. Something you could basically justify with, well, hey, it's got a $100-200 Apple Tax on it, but at the end of the day, it's still something affordable for education and low-income markets who may otherwise simply need to turn to other hardware.

The $999 MacBook/Air was also a crucial piece of hardware in this position.

tl;dr: an increase of price of this magnitude would've probably have robbed me of my future career of an iOS developer if it'd happened to me when I was younger.

<comment><USER29> The best equivalent today is probably the older model MacBook Air (still in Apple's official line up) - new for 800 euros is the lowest Black Friday price around here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> yawn.</comment>


How Apple and Microsoft Armed 4,000 Patent Warheads - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/rockstar

<comment><USER2> I find it interesting that Apple/RIM/Microsoft are backing a company like Rockstar. They couldn't buy the patents themselves because they'd be less valuable, as using them exposes the company to counter-action, so instead they all set up a shell company to act as a patent troll on their behalf. Doesn't this have any traceability? Surely they are business regulations in place to stop this kind of crazy behaviour? If not then there certainly should be.

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea behind patents was (essentially) to protect the inventor against being ripped off by those slower-moving but richer than he. They have become exactly the opposite: tools of the rich and the powerful to extract oligopoly rent from those without patents of their own to 'fight back'.

It is a completely absurd situation. We would be better off without them.

</comment><comment><USER4> So Rockstar is a patent troll like IV, and they're just waiting for a company to step on a patent landmine to go after them. Hopefully they will be involved in a high-profile case soon, so the Courts or the Government can shut them and others like them down.</comment>


GitHub Is Your Resume Now (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://anti-pattern.com/github-is-your-resume-now <comment><USER2> That's silly. I don't even have a GitHub account.

All my professional life ( 20+) I've been writing code or building solutions for private companies, all the cool stuff I programmed lies in a private repository.

And for the reference, I am always sending nicely PDF-formatted, very relevant, but succinct, CV and not a "poorly formatted, badly designed Microsoft Word template filled with irrelevant information you've carefully curated to make you look like the best programmer ever".

What's wrong with this guy??

<comment><USER3> I don't agree with this guy, and I spend a lot of my time hiring developers.

However: if you don't have open-source code, I tend to assume you don't do much programming in your free time. And if you don't program in your free time, how are you going to become a really strong developer? How will you get exposed to a range of technologies outside what your employer uses, and a range of problems outside your work domain? At the very least, upload your working from that time you worked through SICP or your experiments with Haskell or the AngularJS page you made for your husband's dog grooming business or whatever.

Job-seekers: when your CV arrives, I will use it to find you on LinkedIn. From LinkedIn, I want to see your CPAN/RubyGems/npm/whatever link and your Github link. I want to see a bunch of endorsements from coworkers and open-source collaborators. Show me your Slideshare account from that time you gave a killer talk on ... whatever. Maybe you spend a bunch of time on StackOverflow or PerlMonks or maybe you wrote and published a killer Ruby tutorial in Brazilian or whatever.

Show me you love programming.

<comment><USER2> C'mon. I assume you are relatively young. But, here are the obvious answers:

1\. I have tons of free time. But I am spending it with my kids and family or reading books. Sometimes I am going out with some old buddies.

2\. You have no idea what level of technology or engineering I am using at my work. I could be programming microcontrollers or writing risk calculation for a bank. Both require same skill: attention, read documentation well, invent the solution, implement it and maintain it. That is a "strong" developer.

3\. You better do following when I am seeking a job at your gig: invite me for a in person interview, tell me the story of your company, tell me the current pains, I tell you what can I do for you, how long I need and how much it costs you. If it matches then we have a deal.

<comment><USER4> ^ This covers my exact thoughts!

I have next to no public repo's available simply because I don't have the time to maintain an open source project, my free time is spent away from the computer attempting to enjoy life!

In answer to How will you get exposed to a range of technologies outside what your employer uses, and a range of problems outside your work domain? Get thrown in at the deep end, put my headphones on and work it out. Hasn't failed me yet!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I agree that Github is a part of your resume, I don't think it's the whole thing. If I was providing a link to my account when applying for a job, I would probably link to some specific projects and provide some narrative around them, rather than just saying "here's 20 projects I've worked on, go nuts". If the recruiter wants to look through everything else then fine, but they shouldn't expect perfection from everything.

Some other thoughts I had on the article:

"Too many forked repositories": You just need to click on Sources[1] to see the user's actual repos.

"Missing or unclear descriptions": If repos are just simple little side- projects, they don't necessarily need descriptions - I know what they are, I know what they do, they aren't there for anyone but me, I don't expect them to be starred or forked.

"Old repositories": So because I wrote something a year ago, I can never go back to it? What's wrong with having a record of achievement? A display of progress.

"Mediocre code": If we were only allowed to store perfect code, there would never be any code on Github.

[1] [https://github.com/danielsamuels?tab=repositories](https://github.com/danielsamuels?tab=repositories)

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "If repos are just simple little side-projects, they don't necessarily need descriptions - I know what they are, I know what they do, they aren't there for anyone but me, I don't expect them to be starred or forked."

Why put it in a public repo then?

<comment><USER6> Because private repos costs money, to encourage public activity and sharing. That's the github model.

With that model in place you cannot expect anything else.

<comment> k-mcgrady Free private repos: [https://bitbucket.org/plans](https://bitbucket.org/plans)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The work you did a year or more ago couldn't possibly still be relevant today."

Are you 16 years old?

Tech changes quickly, but not that quickly. A GitHub repository with older projects would be useful to show depth and variety of experience. Just because it's not all using the latest Rails 4.1 doesn't mean that it won't show insight into professional skills like, say, well organized code, playing well with others - not to mention a longer-term outlook that isn't just chasing the latest shiny thing.

<comment><USER8> When you are a beginner, a year ago seems like a very long time.

<comment><USER9> And code that a beginner wrote a year prior might indeed be worth not sharing.

<comment><USER10> Commits are timestamped.... a hiring manager who's truly interested will look at the most recent stuff first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No, it is not my CV. I share and star everything I find interesting. I push any code I want without worrying if it is cool or not. I am a programmer, not a pop star.

<comment><USER12> Which _is_ quite interesting to see.

Actually the posts about GitHub being or not being your resume are playing the devil's advocates and they will be more or less closer to the truth depending on your potential employer profile.

I keep receiving recruiter emails for "J2EE, Hibernate, JBoss, Struts" developer positions "that might fit me". None of those keywords apply to me and that kind of recruiter will certainly not know about GitHub.

In the end your resume is whatever preferred avenue to know you a recruiter might choose. That could for instance include LinkedIn, or the infamous "CV as a Word document" that a lot of companies keep asking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I read this as a satire, and laughed thoroughly.

I do agree that GitHub provides a good look into a coder's abilities, though, and many companies agree. It's disappointing that, 2 years after this article came out, you still can't select which repos you want to display on your profile. <sigh>

</comment><comment><USER14> Remove all projects over a year old that you haven't touched? Such bad advice. I've fixed up some old projects of mine that are 2+ years old. Was a great way to see what I was doing wrong back then and apply new knowledge.

I don't think this is satire, but it's definitely misguided.

<comment><USER15> I've found so many projects that haven't been maintained but have useful bits of code in them that I can learn from.

Deleting old projects is a disservice to the open source community.

<comment><USER16> Yes this is so true. Please leave your old code up even if you think it is crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I only use bitbucket and all my repos are private. Am I not allowed to have a job?

<comment><USER18> This made me laugh.

I'm imagining someone with massive open source projects pouring hours into open source tools and software that benefits thousand and storing it all in bitbucket while his recruiter is tossing his resume in the bin when he sees that on github he has only starred 1 repo "EugeneKay/git-jokes". lol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's too bad for all of the corporate programmers who aren't able to share the code they've written without violating an NDA or other agreement. Some companies even take ownership of code written outside of company time, via the employment agreement, so even developing things on personal time is a no-go.

<comment><USER20> This is spot on. There is a lot of us that are in such employment agreements and do work for corporate clients that require NDAs. I find it short sighted to believe that your skill should be solely measured by your Open Source projects placed on github since that is sometimes just not possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow, so much bad advice in one blog post. "Missing or unclear descriptions" I'll add a description to my github repos now: "Don't take it as my resume"

</comment><comment><USER22> This makes no sense at all. GitHub is your resume, so here are some silly rules you need to follow to cram that square peg into that round hole. If you need to artificially limit what code you host on a code hosting site to use it as your resume, maybe it's because code hosting sites don't make good resumes.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is troublesome to me. I'm just completing my MS in CS and have been coding at my job, but all of that has been on private repos (and have been rush jobs at times so they're not the most well formatted).

I can't share any work code I've written, and the projects look terrible. Would having several commits that say something along the lines of "made it look like less of a hack job" be a good idea? They can go back and see how terrible it looked before, but it was for a class and I had to get it done before I could start on my other class's assignment.

I feel like what I've written could get me a junior dev job, but I know I would quickly outgrow that based on the work I've done before (or maybe I'm giving myself too much credit).

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a blog post brewing in my head about all of the vanities of GitHub: commit activity, stars, forks, organizations, working on 'important' projects. GH's handling of these is considerably less hacker-oriented (more stars = better projects!!!!).

> The work you did a year or more ago couldn't possibly still be relevant > today

Oh man, wait til you discover Lisp.

This guy's insistence on making a GitHub profile so important really bothers me. I love GitHub, but it's just a stupid account on a webapp. There are plenty of great devs who aren't committing OSS. Since when were hackers so obsessed with image?

</comment><comment><USER25> GitHub is my resume because all FOSS development happens exclusively on GitHub, right? My "resume" is going to be missing a lot of things.

</comment><comment><USER26> For someone who considers GitHub an important part of their online presence, I don't see a link to the author's account anywhere.

<comment><USER27> [https://github.com/brandonweiss](https://github.com/brandonweiss)

<comment><USER26> I googled it without problem. My point is it's not mentioned anywhere on that page, his "about" footer, or the homepage. Strange for someone who values their GitHub contributions so highly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Like all posts on this subject (resumes, interviews, and the like), you should also amend the headline and advice with " when interviewing with me." I've never seen the same set of advice given by two different people.

That being said:

> "The work you did a year or more ago couldn't possibly still be relevant > today. If it is, you aren't working hard enough or learning fast enough. Get > rid of anything you haven't worked on in over a year."

After reading this part, I can't imagine this is a serious article. This is so absurdly false, it can't be anything more than a troll on the idea that Github is your resume.

Can someone add "satire" to the headline?

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't use GitHub to show off, and most of the points in the post are very bold.

"The work you did a year or more ago couldn't possibly still be relevant today." \- yeah I should delete all my work because it is not fresh enough, although there is nothing I have to do.

"Don't waste your time building unimportant things." \- Important for whom? You? Me? Public?

"GitHub is your portfolio." \- No, it is a place to share projects and contribute to others. If you want to use it as a portfolio, It shows your most starred projects anyway.

You take the GitHub as a personal promotional page, rather than collobarative environment.

</comment><comment><USER30> I fought this for a while, then gave in and spruced it up a bit (I mostly commit to private repos not on Github). The argument "If you don't have open repos you don't write code in your free time and are therefore probably not very good at coding" is full of gigantic holes. But, I get that everyone has their little arbitrary things they use to whittle down the herd of candidates.

I'm not doing LinkedIn, though. I'm not.

</comment><comment><USER31> > "The work you did a year or more ago couldn't possibly still be relevant > today."

Funny how the first project on author's github page ([https://github.com/brandonweiss](https://github.com/brandonweiss)) is over two years old.

This is satire, right? Right?

</comment><comment><USER32> This is somewhat unrelated, but wouldn't it be nice if there was a tool that would let you connect with Github, choose 3 or 4 of your favorite projects, and it would generate a cool looking resume/site for you? Does this already exist??

<comment><USER32> To answer my own question, there is [this]([http://osrc.dfm.io/](http://osrc.dfm.io/)) and [this](resume.github.com), but neither of those lets you pick and choose projects, which would be nice

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> So because github is now our cv's we should stop using it as the dev tool that it is?</comment>


Ask HN: Inventing a physical product - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea for a product that I think would be useful to a lot of people and based on feedback I've gotten, others seem to agree. Web apps make sense to me, but, how do you do you make an idea for a physical product a reality?
Say, for example, the idea is for a new type of lumbar support device and that I've made makeshift one out of some wood, duct tape, and pillows from my apartment. Now what?
I'm guessing it goes something like this, though I really have no idea: design it on paper... send it off to have it professionally designed... patent it... find a manufacturer that can make it... negotiate with them... buy a couple hundred...sell them on a website...make some entertaining YouTube videos... and profit (hopefully).
Anyone been through this process or something similar to it? Where do you start? <comment><USER2> I would recommend that you start with a provisional patent application, before disclosing any information to potential partners. A provisional application (which exists only in the USA, to my knowledge) is essentially a placeholder, giving you one year to file the complete application. Since it's essentially a disclosure of the substance of the invention, you can draft it by yourself -- there are sites on-line that will file a self-drafted provisional application for as little as $200. Again, the most important purpose of the provisional application is to capture all relevant features of the invention in enough detail to prove that you are in possession of the invention -- for your lumbar support, you would probably want to talk about the shape and the physical properties (softness, hardness, elasticity) of the materials involved.

If you decide that the idea is really worthwhile, you can follow up with a complete patent application (which will cost you a few thousand dollars) any time within the next year. In the mean time, you have some proof in case one of your vendors tries to misappropriate your invention for their own.

</comment><comment><USER3> Been through that a few times.

Your path depends on if you want to sell/license a patent (and thus have less control over the end product, company, and profits), or if you want to build a company (which often, but not always, tends to require that you develop more than one product, at least over time).

The bigger issue (IME/IMO) is not so much the differences between building a software product and a hardware product on the tech side, but on the legal side. Product liability issues are going to be more "real" when you have a real product, especially if it falls into a pseudo-medical application as your example above does.

Your best bet is probably to lawyer up early on and learn the ropes that way. Depending on your friends/family network, you may be able to find a connection to a decent local attorney who would be willing to work with you on a discounted rate in exchange for some share of stock or profit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like a major pain in the ass.

Are you happy that you did it? How did it work out?

<comment><USER3> I've only done the "official" route for various companies I've worked for.

Personally, I've created some little "widget" type devices for home automation and similar applications. In those cases, I skipped the whole patent/legal thing, as the product did not have the lifespan or net sales volume to warrant dumping too much money into the project. I just setup a properly manages/documented LLC for liability purposes and went at it.

As far as being a pain in the ass, it's all a matter of perspective I guess. I find that releasing actual physical product (typically as a hardware/software combo) is more challenging and rewarding than any sort of webapp. You have to get more things "right" and think more about the consequences of your decisions for short and long term durations when you are putting out a product that you can't fix a defect for by releasing an update to a server under your control. That is not to say that I don't respect or appreciate the webapp stuff, just that I prefer a different set of challenges.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Rolls Out New App Authentication Flow That Ups Privacy and Transparency - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/10/14/app-authentication-extended-permissions/

<comment><USER2> Good, but why not make all permissions truly optional?

I think app authors would be a lot more responsive if they saw stack traces from failed attempts to use a declined permission, rather than the silent number of users who never sign up because permissions are overreaching. Throw up a warning when you decline a permission that the app marks as necessary: "This app may crash if you deny this permission."

<comment><USER3> You could use a tool like Kissmetrics or Mixpanel to track that easily enough -- just fire one event when the permissions dialog is opened, and another if the user accepts the permissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry that I am too bitter, but at this point it is pretty clear that "Facebook" and "Privacy and Transparency" doesn't go very well together

</comment><comment><USER5> Can this flow be used by non-app apps, or whatever we're calling Facebook Connect-type web sites these days?</comment>


Any evidence that iTunes Genius (incl. Mixes) does what it claims? - <AUTHOR>

By that I mean, is there any evidence that it actually picks "songs that go great together"?
I get the feeling that my mixes are mostly made up of random songs from the same genre (or closely related ones), probably with an emphasis on things I have rated highly.
Is there any indication that Genius looks at other variables, such as tempo, mood, instrumentation, upbeat/downbeat, etc (the way that Pandora does)? <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure they're not using much metadata, but instead using collaborative filtering based on the libraries other iTunes users.

"Apple's proprietary recommendation engine that uses collaborative filtering and iTunes' built-in rating system to generate music recommendations"

from [http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/24/apple_switches...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/24/apple_switches_on_itunes_genius_for_videos.html)</comment>


I made my son cannabis cookies. They changed his life - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-made-my-son-cannabis-cookies-they-changed-his-life/2017/01/06/699b1d20-d1ef-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html <comment><USER2> The war on drugs is probably one of the biggest crime against humanity since WW2 with millions of deaths, millions in prisons, and trillions of dollars and human resources wasted, mostly affecting the poor and minorities everywhere. This needs to stop. Sadly, it looks like it will go on for a few more decades.

<comment><USER3> Really? I have a very deep suspicion that drugs destroy society by making a majority of people lethargic and unmotivated to do anything in real life.

A case could be made for exceptions here and there (like the child in this article) but I don't think it works so well in society.

<comment><USER4> _> by making a majority of people lethargic and unmotivated to do anything in real life._

Almost all of the drug users I know are highly motivated and very successful people. Even if you include illegal drugs.

Perhaps this is just selection bias at work, but that knife cuts both ways.

<comment><USER5> (Not the OP)

There isn't just the selection bias of people you tend to know potentially not being representative of most drug users, but the need for comparing how those same drug users would do without drugs (I'm not sure how this is possible to evaluate). It isn't enough to say that some drug users are highly motivated and successful, which I don't contest.

<comment><USER6> That would be an interesting study, but it's not relevant to the discussion of the war on drugs. The comparison you'd need to make it how those people you know would be doing if they were in prison for using illegal drugs. I'd wager they'd be doing worse.

<comment><USER5> I agree about that study being more relevant to the war on drugs, but my point was simply in response to the anecdotal claim about the motivation and success of drug users. If it were possible, it may provide more insight into how drugs should be viewed in society, regardless of legality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is the opposition to cannabis as a therapy at least part rooted in the fact it is not patentable? Large Pharma can't make enough money from something people could grow themselves?

A parallel story is the guy in the UK researching treating depression with 'magic mushrooms' in small doses (too little to be psychoactive). As I recall it took him 10 years to get a license to do the study! These things grow in your lawn in the UK! The results seemed good when compared to the poor outcomes for people on _patentable_ anti-depressants

<comment> joatmon-snoo > Is the opposition to cannabis as a therapy at least part rooted in the fact > it is not patentable?

The IP is certainly fuzzy but that's no argument. If it can be commoditized and involves some form of creative/innovative work, there's pretty much always some way to create legal protection for it. Besides, just because there's potential for competition doesn't mean that people won't try to enter the market.

> Large Pharma can't make enough money from something people could grow > themselves?

As the article itself explains, growing weed is _not_ simple. A sophisticated operation requires a _lot_ of resources and dedicated man-hours.

The primary reason that no big, entrenched players are moving on it (or that anyone who does it hasn't gotten too big) is that the fact remains that marijuana is illegal. (This is true in a lot of countries, not just the U.S., but the rest of this comment is going to be U.S.-specific because I don't know the situation in other countries nearly as well.)

No matter what the states say, federal law overrides state law, which means that anyone that grows pot has huge legal exposure. There's also a secondary problem: pot growers have a lot of trouble using the kinds of services that are traditionally available to businesses, because B2B's (1) want clients that are not at risk of getting shut down by a DEA investigation and (2) do not want to expose their own businesses to legal risk, which they would be by working with a pot-growing op.

There's a lot of stories about dispensaries in Colorado who are denied, for example, _banking services_ , because of the litigation it would expose banks to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I spent the majority of 2012 in hospitals with two family members fighting cancers. I had a lot of conversations with doctors/nurses and often enough MMJ was discussed. "Off the record", of course. The general consensus was CBDs have many apparent benefits, it was even posited they may inhibit malignant cell formations(further study required). The consensus also was that the THC race to get the most 'chronic' high from a strain is actually eroding the medicinal benefits of MMJ by sacrificing the THC:CBD balance for the greater psychoactive effects. This was a year or two before I saw the documentary on these guys who go the other direction for a non-psychoactive strain( more CBD,less THC).

[https://www.cwhemp.com/](https://www.cwhemp.com/)

<comment><USER9> On the other hand, the strain mentioned in this article is famously high in THC.

<comment><USER10> Here are some strains that are high in CBD:

[https://leafist.com/news/2016/12/19/which-cannabis- strains-h...](https://leafist.com/news/2016/12/19/which-cannabis-strains-have- the-highest-cbd-percentages)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow. The title is click-baity, but the article does make me empathize with the mother's position.

I remember being a young kid in school and seeing the few students that just seemed so mentally imbalanced that they couldn't even exist comfortably, let alone study. My school became a center for "emotionally disturbed" children for the county. For the half-dozen of these students, they had 3 (very strong) teachers.

When there's no respite for a condition that is potentially dangerous to your child as well as others, what do you do? What happens when the medication fails to work or has worse side affects? This sounds like desperation. I'd have an open mind towards about anything if I were in this woman's position.

<comment><USER12> I believe it sounds like desperation because of the societal constructs that make it a stigma to use this drug. If one looks at it from a purely medical point of view, I don't see why this should be construed any different from any current treatment that exists out there. As with most drugs - this would sound true - "The benefits of this treatment outweigh the potential side effects". For the woman's position, she has reached a point to see this truth clearly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In Singapore and a few other neighbouring SEA countries, there's a death penalty for the possession of cannabis.

Possession. Death. Unbelievable.

<comment><USER14> AFAIK, In Singapore it's not for possession but for trafficing. The difference being the amount you can have on your person. For possession you only face (severe) prison time and trafficing is a mandatory death sentence.

<comment><USER13> Well, that is true but would anyone really take that chance of trying to prove it wasn't trafficking when their neck is on the line for a joint? I don't think so. At least from what I've experienced in Singapore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How can a society that allows drinking alcohol and caffeine ban a plant you can grow on your window cill?

How can a society that will give Ritalin to a child, dogmatically refuse to give a child cannabis based therapy?

Why is the state so keen to _control_ cannabis? Is it simply that the state associates it with hippies? Still? In 2017?

</comment><comment><USER15> Currently trying some CBD oil with my moms. Prognosis: groovy. I spend less time anxious, irritable, hyperactive, distant, incapable of eating. It's quite nice. She likes it for going to sleep better and staying asleep longer, and I suspect its helped decrease her allergy/inflammation symptoms that wake her up in the middle of the night, coughing.

<comment><USER16> I'm keeping an open mind, but these all sound like things a good placebo could accomplish

<comment><USER15> I don't disagree.

<comment><USER7> And without the hysteria about cannabis we might have more double blind studies to find out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The crimininalization of marijuana and classification as illicit substance is such a tremendous stupidity.

<comment><USER17> Imagine I live in a country where discussing the law is illegal and can send you to jail for years and worth 70000€ of fine. You can criticize any laws but these one... like google did in order to avoid taxes.

Even if the constitution grant the right to discuss and modify the law... and the country claims being the country of the Human Rights.

Vive la France. The country where some animals are more equal than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> " _We left Rhode Island [and moved to New York, where they cannot get medical cannabis] with almost a liter of cannabis-infused oil, but, even though we measure it out in drops, it won't last forever. And because my son had to turn in his medical-marijuana license when we moved, we can't go back to get more._ "

I hate to point this out, but that one quote nullifies the rest of the article. When they moved, they would have checked the school district. They didn't check their son's medication?

Or is it the case that it's not as bad as it appears?

<comment><USER19> _I wanted to cry, thinking that I could buy bags of White Russian but I wouldn't be able to take them out of Colorado. If we bring our son's marijuana when we travel, we worry that we're committing interstate drug trafficking._

Isn't moving the oil from Rhode Island to New York the same thing?

<comment><USER18> I would assume so. And a liter?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd advice caution on giving any developing brain cannabis.

Although it seems cannabis is fairly harmless in developed brains– there's some evidence it can interfere with development.

<comment><USER21> Constantly banging your head off an iron bath also interferes with brain development; this is a clear case of trade offs, not only medical but also legal and social. I don't think any reasonable mother, probably including this one, would suggest giving cannabis to an "average" child; but this is far from an average situation and so in all likely hood will require a non average treatment.

<comment><USER20> That's totally true! In this case the child's brain isn't "healthy".

Hopefully this works for the child's benefit, and clearly it's a case of a desperate parent grasping for anything that may help. However, it does sadly have potential to do further harm as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It is interesting how sledgehammers like Risperdal and friends are legal and prescribed by doctors, while Cannabis is/was vilified for decades, in a infantile and ineffective "war on drugs".

</comment><comment><USER23> Although the relief may be worth it, the drug is not without its potential side effects over long-term use:

On short term memory: [http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article...](http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article- abstract/2484906)

On dopamine levels: [http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcolleg...](http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_1-7-2013-11-49-21)

and the development of brains in adolescents: [http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00053/full)

So the real question is whether it's worth the potential side effects? Perhaps in this case, since it seems the parents have researched their options and hopefully continue to research future options.

A cure should be counterbalanced with its negative side effects. That seems obvious to say, but often I hear the misguided statement or see the attitude that marijuana is not associated with any problems. Sure, it's not lethal and shouldn't be Schedule I, but it's not something that should be taken lightly as a long term treatment.

</comment><comment><USER24> I find it strange in this story that anyone would suggest Risperdal for a child. Risperdal is an antipsychotic which comes with long term neuroleptic damage to the person taking it (flat affect, shuffles, etc..). I had a rather unsuccessful time with Abilify which is prescribed to people with depression but also comes with the same drawbacks. I somehow got a neuroleptic disease from taking it called 'akinesia' which I can only describe as a living hell. I promptly quit taking it and the disease ran its course. Psychiatry is in its dark ages and in a lot of cases does more harm than good. The harm just can't be immediately seen or measured and we tend to write the patients off as hyperbolic.

</comment><comment><USER25> A great article. There is one thing the author got wrong. Pot IS addictive. My brother can't go more than 3 hours w/o smoking it. If he does, he starts to sweat like crazy. He once went an entire weekend without it and he had a very rough time.

<comment><USER26> Pot isn't physically addictive, though. Those things are his brain causing the symptoms.

Seriously. I've smoked heavily for years, with sudden breaks, and at most I get a couple days of off appetite and bad sleep. No big deal.

I've met exactly one person that had withdrawals from pot: In his case, he was self-medicating with it. It wasn't that he got withdrawals from pot, but that mental illness simply reared its head more when he stopped.

<comment><USER27> TBH I never understood this "it's not physical" subtlety. Last time I checked, the brain was a physical entity with physical processes running around in it.

If it looks like addiction, walks like addiction and quacks like addiction, then it is addiction. And it exists in marijuana users.

<comment><USER26> The difference is in the way the body acts - and the treatment is completely different for the two. I'm not a doctor, so do a bad job of explaining the difference between the two, but the general gist is that with physical addiction, your body needs the drug to function correctly.

People who want to live die from physical detox.

It isn't that psycological addiction doesn't have physical symptoms: Indeed, many psychological problems have them - anxiety and an upset stomach, depression and aches. Not to mention panic attacks. But the treatment isn't the same at all. You don't actually have to wean someone off of something psychologically addictive - that's why folks aren't weaned off of gambling, for example. And they won't die if they don't have it (suicidal is a different issue).

Pot generally has mild withdrawal symptoms. I'm pretty sure a few get in a bad situation with it - just like folks do with anything else - but underlying psychological problems kind of mess that stuff up.

Yeah, the sweating? Could be anxiety as well, for example. And to the layperson, it would seem like withdrawal symptoms instead of the anxiety coming back. Before his diagnosis, my ex would use about anything to get the voices inside his head to shut up. Friend of mine? Had a lot of trouble not smoking, but also was a bit... off. Brain damage from a car accident + a few psychological issues to boot. In all my years, I've never seen this sort of stuff from a reasonably balanced person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I can't believe no-one in the comments here or the original article suggest growing their own. It takes 10 square feet of space, about $500 one-time investment, a day or two to build and about an hour per week of maintenance. It can be done safely, discreetly and odor-free.

Sure, it would be illegal, but the chances of getting caught are pretty miniscule. Although I don't know how severe penalties are in place where the author lives or are there any secondary repercussions that make it not feasible (such as children taken into custody if caught).

<comment><USER29> I believe everything except odor free. Got a link to evidence?

<comment><USER28> No, I have not (only anecdotal evidence) but getting odor free is a matter of getting an active carbon filter (big enough, 3-10 kg) and a good ventilation system (required for cooling anyway). This ensures that the grow space is slightly underpressurized and all the exhaust air is odorless. Without these measures, it will stink.

It needs a bit of investment and some time to get the build right, but it can be done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Allowing MJ with other drugs is a no brainer. I also very glad the author found a way to help his son and it should be let alone. However, saying things like that is not very responsible:

> But Lester Grinspoon, a psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School > who has been researching cannabis since the 1960s, reassured me that the > worst we could do was make our son fall asleep.

One study had shown that even if there is no long term effect on adults on IQ, teenagers experience on average 10% less IQ than no consumers - even after stopped completely taken it for years. Another study has shown that if you are DNA predisposed - less than 3% of the population - MJ can induce schizophrenia reshaping the brain long term even after years after taking it. I don't fully get this is not common knowledge. Maybe, this is not hype enough and people want to not being perceived as reactionary. But, facts are facts.

</comment><comment><USER31> Without getting into the debate about the recreational use of marijuana ... we've classified it as a drug so I don't see a reason we can't agree that there might be some legitimate uses for it.

<comment><USER4> It's classified as schedule 1. A criteria of schedule 1 classification is "The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States"

So, at least the folks who wrote down those schedules disagree that Marijuana has legitimate uses.

Note that "accepted" here basically means whatever the person in power wants it to mean. There's absolutely no criteria that "accepted medical use" corresponds to doctors' opinions on the matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think this article is irresponsible. Cannabis might cause permanent damage to cognitive functions in the developing brain: [http://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/11/marijuana- brain.aspx](http://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/11/marijuana-brain.aspx)

<comment><USER7> Fits of rage 300 times a day, and constant pain might cause permanent damage to cognitive functions in the developing brain.

Conventional medicine has no treatment available. What would you do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> So, it works like medicine for some cases, and you say now everyone grow in their backyards? Doesn't make sense, though I'm not against it.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm for the legalization of marijuana, but I really hate the arguments these articles present in favor of it; I'm sure your raging 9-year-old kid would chill out on a strong dose of heroin, too. We should not falsely elevate marijuana as some wonder drug. Surely, there's a better argument that can be presented for legalization?

<comment><USER35> This article is propaganda. It doesn't contain any interesting data, just a rehash of the policy landscape and a single, heart string-tugging anecdote.

<comment><USER36> Unfortunately, it's the heart string-tugging anecdotes that make policies happen in the US, not data.

<comment><USER8> After 80 years of ignoring the data, I do not know how else one would effect change other than employing the same tactics. Empirical data is available, anecdotal data is available, historical harm has accrued for non-violent "offenders". The rarely spoken facets of the hemp plant's superiority to pulp derived paper and cotton fabrics have been ignored for almost a century. Before "reefer madness" was invented, the aforementioned products couldn't compete, hemp was common and priduced superior products. The reasons for demonizing _hemp_ , not marijuana, were economic forces and lobbyists pushing their agendas at any cost.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger#The_campaig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger#The_campaign_against_marijuana_1930.E2.80.931937)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> You know, I'm not at all opposed to weed (I smoke weed myself on occasion) but I don't think we should encourage experimenting with drugs on 9 year old kids by people who are not medical professionals...

<comment><USER38> Article says it was a last resort option suggested and approved by medical professionals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So the child had temper tantrums and the parents drugged him? Wait what? I hope I am mistaken.

<comment><USER40> You're getting downvoted because you didn't read the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I was a little brat as well. Lot's of tantrums. My parents punished me (probably not enough). My grandma once said: "how old are you?" This works.

Nobody ever gave me drugs. I don't think it is ideal to give kids weed (I'm an adult who can barely handle weed). It is linked with psychiatric problems. That's not anti-drug propaganda, that's a fact. All that said, I don't think this is any worse than giving a kid ritalin.

<comment><USER42> Did you also undergo multiple surgeries on your spinal cord as an infant, have a chronic pain condition and severe autism like the child in the article?

<comment><USER41> No, and in fact I did not really read the article. Point taken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > Then, a couple of years later, the medication stopped working. And his > aggressions exploded.

> Once, when my son was late getting his cannabis oil after school, he put his > head through a window and cut his face in a frenzy of pain. We gave him his > medication, and he calmed down enough that we could bring him to the ER.

Any reason to believe history won't repeat itself here?

<comment><USER43> Different medicine with completely different bodily interactions. Different age of the child.

Any reason to believe it will, other than it being a cliche?

<comment><USER35> I used medical marijuana _heavily_ for many, many years. Tolerance builds and it ain't the same, trust me. There, now we have an anecdote against the one in the story. See where this sort of journalism gets us? At some point there are demons you have to tackle head-on, or cope with otherwise. Anecdotally, for me, cannabis was a quick fix and a mistake.

<comment><USER44> How much research have you done into the science involved here, do you have a strong understanding of the fundamentals?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> If you're ok with this, ask yourself if you'd be ok wih a parent giving a kid bourbon to put it asleep. This used to be a common household trick before people decided it was probably not a good idea.

Granted I think the war on drugs is stupid but I also think a failed parent shouldn't be the one championing the anti-war-on-drugs movement as that's only going to give the opposition ammunition.

I'm also not a developmental psychologist or a medical professional but I don't think this is the best thing for a young developing mind. I'm probably wrong because I've done limited reading on it but giving a young kid any drugs that haven't been exceedingly studied by the medical community doesn't sound like a smart idea.

Edit: I read the article a little further and I don't think the parent is "failed" anymore. It's sad that the kid had such an already tramatic upbringing and I understand why you'd do this but I don't think that it's the best of ideas for most people alive.

<comment><USER4> _> I'm also not a developmental psychologist or a medical professional but I don't think this is the best thing for a young developing mind._

TBF the parents _did_ talk with a neurologist and medical experts at Brown, which is hardly a backwater.

I understand what you're saying, but I also think that this is a _tough_ parenting decision that should be left to the parent and their family doctor.

Experimenting with dosage and type in a home pharma lab is pretty terrible. The people refusing to reschedule marijuana despite widespread medical support really are terribly evil for putting a parent in that situation...

<comment><USER45> > Experimenting with dosage and type in a home pharma lab is pretty terrible. > The people refusing to reschedule marijuana despite widespread medical > support really are terribly evil for putting a parent in that situation...

I agree on all accounts.

> TBF the parents did talk with a neurologist and medical experts at Brown, > which is hardly a backwater.

> I understand what you're saying, but I also think that this is a tough > parenting decision that should be left to the parent and their family > doctor.

I did see that and I didn't read that until after I wrote the post. I mainly kept my post up in whole (despite my edit at the end) because I don't belive in covering up my mistakes.

My position given the new information isn't exactly as hardline. I don't think they are moraly or ethically at fault but I think their methods are very flawed. Just trying random things at home isn't a good idea.

I'd rather have seen them contact, and I know this is going to sound really stupid, but someone who is an expert at creation these confections. Going to someone who works with canabis every day at a medical dispencary (or even writing them and CCing your doctor who talked with you) would have probably lead to better results. It's still very irresponcible to just mix and match with a person's life.

I wouldn't want someone who couldn't consent entering drug trials so I wouldn't want someone doing it to their kid. But then again it ended up going well.... this time that is. If it happens again and someone mentally scars their kid then I think people won't be too happy with it then.

All that being said (and I think this needs to be spelled out) I don't think what I think should influence the parent in this case. I don't belive in interference unless directly requested by an effected party. That's just butting your nose into some place you don't belong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I recall in 70s/80s Denmark and Netherlands made pot legal in parts of Amsterdam and Copenhagen. The areas quickly turned into dumps. I'm fine with Slab City but do we wan't this for all of US?

<comment><USER47> Amsterdam is very far from being a dump. Sure, the (very small) red light district might not be the kind of place you take your mother-in-law, but outside that it's a wonderful, picturesque, friendly, vibrant city.

<comment><USER48> Such a ridiculously gorgeous city. And besides, it's not even legal in Amsterdam anyways...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Mildly disturbed that she medicates him against his knowledge with something that we think may be harmful for young brains (although we don't know, because drug laws make research impossible).

We excuse this because she's in a desperate situation and there's a lack of support. But other people in her situation resort to more harmful forms of quackery.

The answer shouldn't be "quackery is fine so long as it doesn't result in terrible harm", but "we as a society fail people with autism and learning disability, and we need to do better".

<comment><USER7> >against his knowledge

He is a child, they are his parents. They have every right to choose his treatment

>quackery

If medical science had an alternative you may have a point. These parents ran out of options

<comment><USER49> No, parents don't have the right to do what they like to their children.

> If medical science had an alternative you may have a point. These parents > ran out of options

Exactly the point I made above. Lack of options does not mean parents can just try anything else. Some parents with no options chose bleach to treat autism. [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/health-news/autism-potentially-lethal-bleach-cure-feared-to-have- spread-to-britain-a6744291.html)

This mother has no idea what harm might come to the child as a result of her experimental treatment. If she's doing it to herself that's one thing, but she's inflicting it on a child.

<comment><USER7> That is not what I said, I said _choose treatment_ not experiment. The mother states that she consulted with various medical professionals in the article. Once you have consulted you have the right to choose treatment.

The article says She consulted with people specifically about the risks involved and was advised they were extremely low. How is that equivalent in any way to experimenting on children????</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HTML 5: JavaScript demos and experiments - <AUTHOR> http://www.dhteumeuleu.com/index

<comment><USER2> Awesome.</comment>


Ask HN: A project you gave up on? (time, cost, you were not smart/ready enough ) - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I haven't given up on it yet, but my hobby project is a portal for free live music gigs in my local area. It's working well enough on Wordpress, but real life always seems to get in the way of my attempts to move it to a standalone product. Probably because it's always my go-to project when I want to learn something new, so I've ended up with multiple unsatisfactory versions because I've not had any experience with the language/framework.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure this counts; since I less "Gave up on" and more "figured it was done enough for what little time I had to work on it as a personal toy; to my later regret," but...

Maybe 4-5 years ago I wrote this. [https://github.com/Gehn/JustADistributedVPL](https://github.com/Gehn/JustADistributedVPL) (I uploaded it to github ~2 years back on the request from a friend who wanted to use it.)

It was a hobby project to control the raspberry pis around the house by giving me a visual programming language to connect programmatic modules in a graph via a web UX, including allowing networked hops between nodes. IFTTT for IOT.

I thought I was being derivative even at that point given yahoo pipes and some similar concepts, but having seen the IOT control/home automation boom since then (and the many products who later moved far past what I had been thinking of), I do feel like there might have been opportunities to be ahead of the curve there.

<comment><USER4> I planned a project for home automation in 2008, and many of my ideas are in the market today (like doorbell video, smart smoke alarms, etc.).

However I don't think I missed out because the bar for execution is so high in hardware, and the winners are most often large incumbents with networks effects. Like, even if I pushed out a product, I neither would be able to establish protocol standards nor would I have services like Alexa on top of it. Then of course is economy of scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The world's first search engine for sales tax (in Canada): [http://isittaxed.com](http://isittaxed.com). I have over 10K goods and services in the database, for all provinces and territories in Canada. All told, it has cost me almost 4K to develop. Monetizing it has been more difficult than I thought.

</comment><comment><USER6> I worked on project to make any database with a change log realtime (like Firebase) [https://gist.github.com/jatins/11aac836f25257148a1d61def2c72...](https://gist.github.com/jatins/11aac836f25257148a1d61def2c7270c)

Ultimately, when you are building a developer oriented product even an MVP needs to be confidence inspiring, which needs money and people, didn't have much of either. And couldn't get much investor interest just on the basis of alpha - they either need traction, or someone to vouch for you.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have some vague ideas. One idea was a fb integrated music app, but after fb scandals I just gave up that idea. I didn't invested on it at all. I am not sure many people will use it after fb scandals.

</comment><comment><USER8> You mean every project I've ever worked on?</comment>


Ask HN: I want to be a game developer. What should I do? - <AUTHOR> I'm 22. I have a bachelor's degree in CS and slightly more than three years of professional experience. None of my previous experience involved game development or even computer graphics, but I really want to work as a game developer because I'm carrying a big love for computer games through my entire life. It began with "Bobby is Going Home" on Atari 2600. Then there were the NES games that shaped my childhood: Flying Warriors, Mario, the various versions of Contra, Mighty Final Fight... And finally, there was the PC with Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Doom, Quake and the Half-Life series, which I consider the best FPS game ever.
I have always admired games and the technology that makes them tick, but never had the chance to work on a real game because where I'm from there are simply no game studios.
But I have recently moved to the US. There are much more opportunities here, but the problem is that I lack the experience necessary for a game developer. In my understanding, modern games are very complex and it would be extremely difficult for a person with no previous experience in this area to just jump in and start working on them.
So, my question is, what should I do to qualify for a software engineering job in game development? What do I need to learn? And another thing - if you are an engineer at Valve reading this, what would I need to show you to get a job at the company?
A little bit on my background, if it helps: I'm a C++ guy, I do know C and can write low-level or system-level code if necessary. Understanding of linear algebra is present. I did work on some simple games in my spare time, but a) there was little spare time between my day job and my studies, so the games had to be really simple b) they all look like shit because I'm no artist. <comment><USER2> I agree with the suggestions already given.

Just to throw another idea out there, a further alternative would be to work/look at open-source games. Technology wise you are definitely in the correct direction, most common languages in game dev are C++ and various scripting languages (from my experience).

I have no idea how much time you have or what sort of stuff you want to do in games (e.g. graphic/sound engine, networking, ai...) but since you mentioned FPS games, you could look into Xonotic. It is a fast FPS game, open-source and based on a heavily improved Quake3 engine.

That might give you a better idea of what components make a game and you will not have to worry about artworks etc. if you want to contribute/fork.

But I figure, while contributing to open-source will help you understand games better, it will not get you hired without networking I think. You can also check out the SIGGRAPH convention presentations, lots of interesting, although maybe too specialised, stuff there.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have no idea how important thorough knowledge of game design is at a bigger company where you'd likely be working on something small. For smaller experience with games there's a bunch of frameworks - Flixel, Flashpunk, Unity, etc...that might be a start?

I'm interested in this question as well I suppose, so upvoted.

</comment><comment><USER4> check out the forums at gamedev.net, this topic gets covered all the time.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Game Developer" is a misnomer. There are _many_ jobs to be done in the "game development" arena, and most are not development of the game. Just to name a few, you have:

>> tools devs, who build the tools needed to manage the game environment;

>> server devs, for those games with a multiplayer component'

>> network stack devs, because that piece of code must be bulletproof and FFFFFAAAASSTTT!; and

>> AI devs, to guide the NPC's to their prey...;

Gone are the days of Epic's Sweeney and ID's Carmack, guys who would sit and write an engine in a week. Valve-type games are now million-dollar budget epic sagas. That said, there's nothing wrong with Plants Vs. Zombies... or Angry Birds... they've both made millions.

You need to decide what parts of the process appeal to you, and focus on those. Or, you could write a game, from the ground up, and spend a few months to a year cutting your teeth to learn how it works.

Then, there's always an internship if you feel you can afford a few months working for nothing to get your foot in the door.

If it were ME, and it has been (I sold my game company back in '94 for a pittance), I'd spec out a simple game, write it, add a network component, write it, and get some friends to test it in play to see how it goes. You don't even need cool graphics to start... those can be added later if you design it correctly.

Good Luck!</comment>


Forget Net Neutrality, ISPs To Serve Up "Address Not Found"  - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/10/15/forget-net-neutrality-isps-to-serve-up-address-not-found/

<comment><USER2> In Vernor Vinge's novel _A Deepness in the Sky_ , there is a line (which Google can't seem to find) something like this: "Any ubiquitous network on which local nodes are compelled to run government code inevitably devolves into tyranny." It sounds like a very dangerous slippery slope to start down.

<comment><USER3> Is this the passage that you were referring to? [http://books.google.com/books?id=-t2y0JJ1ZYQC&dq=A+Deepn...](http://books.google.com/books?id=-t2y0JJ1ZYQC&dq=A+Deepness+in+the+Sky&pg=PP1&ots=2Mt77h7E8k&sig=IAFh3D4-8NLrtgxOamiw- mML_lk&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA108,M1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why the future tense? This is already in place!

[http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2008/2008101521160...](http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2008/20081015211606:ED4B0910-9B1F-11DD- AC3F-8097AF3B1AF4/)

We need to switch the global namespace from being 'human meaningful' to 'secure' (on Zooko's triangle) and then use something like Petnames to provide human meaningful names to end users.

</comment><comment><USER5> _There are a lot of bad things on the Internet: spam, child porn, malware, phishing and so on._

You know, I'm actually quite fine with the government not getting involved with my spam, malware, and phishing problems. I don't really want to get into the Child Porn witch hunt, but pretty much everyone is capable of self regulating there, too.

Pretty soon we're going to need things like Tor just to get a clean end-end IP connections between hosts.

We need to strengthen our crypto laws _now_ before lawmakers realize that in order to continue their self-given rights to continue nannying they need short keys and escrow.

</comment><comment><USER6> OpenDNS ftw?

</comment><comment><USER7> goodbye internet. we hardly knew ye.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best managed web hosting solution for high traffic? - <AUTHOR>

Help HN!
We're a startup in desperate need of a rocksolid managed web hosting solution for an increasingly popular Wordpress website. Our current solution is EC2, but server tasks distract us from focusing on business matters and we simply need to hand off all hosting duties.
Thus, we are looking for a 100% managed solution that can not only handle current demands, but future growth with speed and ease, and that's where we've run into a brick wall. Searching the web for hosting providers or reviews is all web spam and offers nothing of value, and we don't know anyone in a comparable situation to get experienced advice from. Every forum thread seems to suggest a DIY dedicated or DIY VPS, which is what we do now and need to move away from.
We don't have the revenue to afford something like Wordpress VIP. What else is out there? What else can support this kind of traffic with reliability, speed, and ease?
Some details are listed below.
- 7 to 9 million visitors per month and growing - 1500 to 9000 concurrent visitors - 12 to 18 million pageviews per month - 3 to 5 TB of outbound data (mostly pictures and video) - Basic Wordpress with caching plugins
Any advice would be tremendously appreciated! <comment><USER2> I recommend switching from Wordpress to a static website, using something like Jekyll or Octopress. Then, hosting with S3 and CloudFront is very cheap.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are way too reliant on Wordpress to move away from it, though we have considered it. We're already with a dirt cheap Amazon solution, but the low cost of operation is entirely negated by the time requirements to maintain everything, which is why we need a managed solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you looked at PaaS providers like Heroku? They'll scale to anything you grow to and handle a lot of the scaling issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have not, and I'll investigate more later, but from a quick glance it looks more complex than what we do now. Ideally, we dump the DB somewhere, upload data, and be done with the server side of things for good.

<comment><USER3> That's pretty much what you do with them, you can automate their capacity provisioning (to handle requests) with 3rd party tools like HireFireApp (<http://hirefireapp.com/>) and then the rest of it is you or they making sure your database and other supporting infrastructure can keep up, most of which can be handled by them or their partners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems like <http://wpengine.com/> would be perfect for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> We looked into them months ago, but they don't offer 24/7 support (or even a support phone number), and have no plan that even comes close to addressing our traffic needs. Perhaps worse, there are a variety of horror stories in web master forums of how WPEngine edited customers websites without consent. We all agreed that no support + editing client code is completely unacceptable.

<comment><USER4> Their two higher-end plans both seem to offer phone support - wouldn't that be the support phone number you're talking about? It seems like you'd need to talk to them about their Premium plan, but it might come in cheaper than Wordpress VIP while still being managed and specialized for Wordpress.

I'm not a WPEngine customer, so I have nothing to say about others experiences with them - I've heard good things, but that's all I've got. You've got to do what makes sense for you - good luck.

EDIT: after doing some more reading, their Enterprise offering seems like exactly what you want (assuming they don't still make edits to sites): <http://wpengine.com/enterprise/> \- the price tag is out of your range, though. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't seen their enterprise option, but if our budget allowed for $5000/mo we'd be with Wordpress VIP anyway. Maybe someday! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo Email 2 factor fail - <AUTHOR> So.  I had a Yahoo! mail account.
A half-hour ago, I attempted to log into it.  It's a long-neglected thing, something I care about on a roughly 12-18 month basis.  Gave CmdrTaco well-wishes through it once, back when it was merited, otherwise it largely collected spam and served as my Slashdot contact if I forgot my password.
After attempting to log into my Yahoo! account tonight, after what must be ten+ years of my account's existence, I now receive this: "Traveling somewhere new?", and a link to a hidden e-mail address where a code can be sent to verify, well, me.
I remember my username and password.  But, and this might be super-archaic, I also remember a time when this was sufficient to give me access to my account.  I haven't a clue where b@p.net is.  I've suspicion it was an 11+ year old redirect to an ISP email address I haven't had for 11+ years, and it is of no use to me that I can send a code to it in lieu of them allowing me to log in with, you know, the actual credentials I have and have supplied to them when creating the account.
I post this whining to Hacker News for this: please, don't chase an idea so far that you lose sight of your users' actual needs.  In this case, 2-factor only matters if I can be counted on to know both factors. <comment><AUTHOR> I was limited in what I could write in the post, but this was something that just hit me after years of being able to log in with my username/password on Yahoo!.

I'm sure it was a well-intentioned guard against spammers that mercilessly attack Yahoo! accounts, but it's effectively locked me out as a genuine user. I'm definitely miffed because it'll cost me, but at the same time, I implement systems like this for small businesses for a living, and it's a constant thing on my mind how what I do will impact users down the line. I get so nervous about inadvertently pulling something like this!</comment>


Regression with non-Gaussian Noise assumption - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/abhimanu/LinearModelWithNonGaussianNoise Hello. It's very hard to find machine learning libraries with non-Gaussian (noise) regression settings. This is a small contribution towards this. Hope it gets enough people excited to start contributing to more popular libraries like scikits-learn etc in this direction. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Clickable: [https://github.com/abhimanu/LinearModelWithNonGaussianNoise](https://github.com/abhimanu/LinearModelWithNonGaussianNoise)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Ben.</comment></comment>


Dorian Nakamoto's Amazon Reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/ATILATX3PEXZ4/ref=pdp_new_read_full_review_link?ie=UTF8&page=1&sort_by=MostRecentReview#R3TSLVUH8PQGTV

<comment><AUTHOR> The writing style does not match at all with the writing style of the Bitcoin paper.</comment>


The Performance of Distributed DataStructures Running on InMemory DataGrid - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/8/20/the-performance-of-distributed-data-structures-running-on-a.html <comment><USER2> That's very cool stuff, and a nice way of demonstrating how B-trees perform in a system with heterogeneous memory access times. It would be interesting to hear about other data structures and common algorithms, too.

<comment><USER3> The B-tree property that writes percolate from the leaves upwards, while reads descend from the root is a perfect fit for this architecture.

And you're right. This analysis applies to any NUMA implementation, although it is most pertinent when inter-node communication cost dominates other operations.

I would like to know of any similar analyses out there. I think there's a lot of interesting distributed data-structure research that could be done with Galaxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> OP here. Just need to mention we're YC S12.</comment>


Starliner makes a safe landing–now NASA faces some big decisions - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/starliner-makes-a-safe-landing-now-nasa-faces-some-big-decisions/ <comment><USER2> Different divisions, I'm sure, but I'm leaning towards "don't take Boeing's word for anything," given recent events.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm really curious to know more about the bug that caused this, and whether it could have been prevented with modern tooling (or languages), or if it was just an unfortunate circumstance.

<comment><USER4> Yeah the aircraft probably just needs improved CI and a phased migration to rust.</comment></comment>


There Is No Way to Prevent the Next Cheating Scandal - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/college-admissions-scandals-are-impossible-prevent/585361/ <comment><USER2> Cheating implies a game, with legible rules. Poker, taxes, tests or somesuch. If the admissions system is "holistic" and is not rule based.. I'm not sure if I'd call it cheating. Fraud is certainly possible, but cheating? Can you "cheat" a job interview?</comment>