HN create account removed from login page - <AUTHOR> http://news.ycombinator.com/newslogin <comment><USER2> pg (or possibly another admin these days) will remove the create-account functionality if HN suddenly becomes very popular, as with the LinkedIn thread. I'm trying to find one of his comments where he mentions this, but there are 8,511 to wade through, and the obvious searches haven't found it yet.

edit: I may have misremembered; the first reference I've found was <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481174>, but I'm still looking.

edit: Gave up looking. I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER3> Here you go: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481174>

<comment><USER4> That was a very classy way to say "I don't want reddit to do to HN what Digg did to reddit."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, but if you try to comment on something, it will prompt you to create an account.

Go ahead an log out of your account and try to comment on this link.

<comment> why-el Indeed that whats I tried exactly. it also makes sense for "newslogin" page to show just that, a login.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also, OpenID has been removed. How do I login with my Google account?

<comment><USER7> You can't anymore. There was a post a few months ago that you should set a password on the site itself to be able to continue to log on in the future (future being now, since a couple of days or maybe even weeks already).

<comment><USER8> I'm glad I saw this, because I didn't have an email or password set up.

In the future, when a major feature like this is removed, it would be nice to see a banner across the top for people who will be affected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That is one fancy log in page...not even a "forgot password" link.

<comment><USER9> Its funny how defensive HN readers are. I love HN and its content but I'm just wondering why there isnt a forgot password link? Seriously...?

<comment><USER10> I wondered that for a while, too. But there is a forgot password link, actually. You just have to enter your username and leave the password field blank, and then hit "login." You'll then be presented with a link to get a newly-generated password in an email.

<comment><USER11> That's... intuitive.

<comment><USER12> It's not supposed to be, it's a hacker filter. Same with the color scheme, design, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps related....

The past few days I've gotten _several_ emails from 'firstname.lastname@example.com' telling me that I have a new password. (I received several new passwords in the past few days.)

The header seems to indicate that the message was actually sent from news.ycombinator.com.

Are these legit? Why am I receiving them? Has anyone else got one?

I've ignored them for now.

<comment><USER14> If you try to log in with a valid username, but no password, you'll get a link to email yourself a newly generated password. The text of the email is:

New Hacker News pw: <new password>

So someone probably thinks they have your username and are wondering why they can't remember the password or receive an new password.

Far less likely is that someone could be trying to discover/exploit a timing attack on the forgotten password generation algorithm.

<comment><USER15> > _Far less likely is that someone could be trying to discover/exploit a > timing attack on the forgotten password generation algorithm._

Didn't somebody do that already?

<comment><USER16> It was the session cookie key not the password, and it wasn't really a timing attack in the sense the parent means.

But yeah <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have been a tad out of the loop. Can someone clue me as to what LinkedIn thingy is being referred to?

Thanks.

<comment><USER18> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4073309>

LinkedIn's password database leaked earlier today.

<comment><USER17> Thank you. I am short of sleep and just didn't put 2 and 2 together. Duh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> you can still create new account when submitting new content (while being logged off)

</comment><comment><USER20> HN Search is broken too, or stopped updating circa 5 days ago…

…makes the site _much_ less useful for me, I must confess.

<comment><USER21> seriously... I have it as an autocomplete in chrome: hn[tab] and I can get community-vetted stuff ^_^

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> countdown to people selling HN invites like it's a damn torrent tracker </joke>

hopefully this maintenence takes care of the issue of the login page being unstyled. i always thought it was supposed to go in a popup on the same page, that would make sense given its unstyled markup.

<comment><USER23> I dont think we are going to see a single pop-up anytime soon on HN. (Quick edit: Site has minimal 'html/css only', _flat_ feel and pop-ups are a different breed.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Noticed this today and assumed it was my local settings. Not that HN need to consult or communicate to users but was this announced?

I suspect you can still sign up but via another screen?

<comment><USER25> This is a change to the registration interface. It shouldn't impact most (any?) existing members...

The loss of openid button definitely affects existing members though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This could just be maintenance. I can't imagine its good for YC's business model to shut down sign ups.

<comment><USER27> Please tell me more about YC's business model.

<comment><USER28> HN is mainly goodwill for YC (any VC would pay a fortune to have HN and its audience).

So the parent comment seems to suggest that it's damaging to the goodwill of the site to disable signups.

If this was a permanent change, I'd agree, but it may be temporary, and it's not totally disabled (you can still signup by submitting content, as someone else wrote).

<comment><USER29> vladd, while I completely agree that "HN is mainly goodwill for YC," I think potentially your subsequent parenthetical statement shows misunderstanding of a different business model, the VC model. Or, maybe it was just ambiguous language easily misinterpreted by me (and, I'd assume, others as well).

Many content-based companies would love to acquire HN and its audience (e.g. Conde Nast's Reddit acquisition). VCs would love to invest in an HN spin-out to reap returns from said investment via a sale of the entity. However, "VCs would pay a fortune to have HN and its audience," reads more like VC-as- owner/PE rather than VC as investor.

Maybe I'm digging too deep in the semantics here, but this seems to be a point that is often lost and VCs vaunted (or derided) as less investors-cum-advisors and more private equity slash-and-burn corporate raiders.

Might a VC chime in here?

*edited for spell check and readability.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CS230: Deep Learning – Project Reports and Posters, Spring 2018 - T-A http://cs230.stanford.edu/proj-spring-2018.html <comment><AUTHOR> How did they generate their posters? The poster winners used the same software?

[http://cs230.stanford.edu/projects_spring_2018/posters/82658...](http://cs230.stanford.edu/projects_spring_2018/posters/8265861.pdf)

[http://cs230.stanford.edu/projects_spring_2018/posters/82857...](http://cs230.stanford.edu/projects_spring_2018/posters/8285741.pdf)

[http://cs230.stanford.edu/projects_spring_2018/posters/82845...](http://cs230.stanford.edu/projects_spring_2018/posters/8284514.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Powerpoint or Keynote are popular for this type of work. I've used Inkscape to quite satisfactory results.

I would really advise against using Latex for posters.

<comment><USER3> Why don't you like LaTeX? I find it great for posters.

<comment><USER4> Likewise. And it's the only way to get decent typesetting on complex equations for one - though it might be a mistake to include those on many posters.

<comment><USER5> FWIW, I believe the most recent versions of Pages and Keynote both support inline LaTeX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did the winner just run this repository? [https://github.com/junyanz/pytorch- CycleGAN-and-pix2pix](https://github.com/junyanz/pytorch-CycleGAN-and-pix2pix) Looks like they didn't do a whole lot else than that and change some parameters.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is the lectures videos of cs230 available anywhere

<comment><USER8> Except for one weekly in-person lecture (and the project-related material) cs230 consisted of deep learning.ai Coursera modules, so videos and code are on coursera.

</comment></comment><comment> J0-nas How advanced are those student in their studies when they take this course?

Their work is probably good but I can't help but think many of the reports/posters seem underwhelming. I doubt they would be accepted at the universities I know.

<comment><USER9> It's a 10 week course, while taking other courses, these are quite good.</comment></comment>


Roger Ebert's bleak assessment of the next 100 years - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/things_fall_apart_the_centre_c.html

<comment><USER2> He was with me until he started bringing earthquakes and volcanoes into the mix. What's bringing that about? Too many fat people pressing on the Earth?

Sure, there's a lot of crap going on right now but sometimes it comes in bunches. When that happens, folks start noticing the old plaster crack over the sofa and the basement sink that's leaked for years, and everything starts looking like a disaster.

It sounds like Roger just sat down to write on an 'off' day. That would have been me about a week ago. Things are bad (they're _always_ bad to someone) but they're not '100 years' bad.

Pour yourself another eggnog and add a bit more rum to it than usual. We'll resume tackling our difficulties tomorrow.

For now, we could all use a moment's pause to collect our wits. Let's pull our way out of this in 2009.

<comment><USER3> well there's a lot of earthquakes at Yellowstone park these last few days, which is on top of a supervolcano: [http://www.seis.utah.edu/req2webdir/recenteqs/Maps/Yellowsto...](http://www.seis.utah.edu/req2webdir/recenteqs/Maps/Yellowstone.html)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but the Yellowstone volcano blowing its top is one of those "so bad and unlikely its not worth worrying about" scenarios, like asteroid impacts.*

*That's not to say someone shouldn't worry about asteroid impacts. It just shouldn't be us average Joes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always been a fan of of John Stossel and a while back he had a special on "10 foolish myths". The number one myth was "Life just keeps getting worse". Here's a summary I found on-line, written by Mr Stossel(here:[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-12_28_05_JS....](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-12_28_05_JS.html))...

"Life getting worse is myth No.1 because in TV newsrooms, I hear a constant whine about life getting worse: avian flu will kill us if terrorism doesn't get us first; crime and pollution keep increasing, and the poor are suffering. But in truth, life keeps getting better. We live longer than ever, and with less pain (think about dental care in the 1960s). Crime is down. In America, even poor people have homes, cars, and access to music and other entertainment that was once only available to royalty. Pollution? The air and water keep getting cleaner. I jumped in the Hudson River not long ago to illustrate the point. There I was, swimming away and looking up at the Empire State building. Despite eight million people flushing nearby, the health department says swimming in the Hudson is now perfectly safe."

To me that pretty much says it all. Desepite the nay-sayers the world has gotten better and better. In no small part thanks to technology.

In fact, I think it's oddly appropriate that this shows up on Hacker News because Mr. Ebert's outlook is exactly what technological minded people should be fighting against.

Only through optimism can we realize all the good we are capable of doing.

<comment><USER6> Stossel for the win!

I too am a bit of a fan of his. A few years back, I actually got the chance to be interviewed by him for a 20/20 piece. I was pretty excited to get to meet the guy and tell him I liked his work...never happened. He couldn't have been less interested in talking to me and the other people in our group interview and flew out of the room right after it was over. Still think he does good work though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That article wasn't Ebert's bleak assessment of the next 100 years. It was his review of the new Jim Carrey movie "Yes Man."

</comment><comment><USER8> How come everyone in the media is reporting such dire consequences? Do they plan to scare people? Why can't they just motivate people. Suggest things that need to be done, what changes need to be made, instead of criticizing everything? I think it's not the time to go over the same things over and over again, it's time to try and get back on our feet again. And the media should be ashamed of not playing an integral part in it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ebert isn't "the media"; he's an esteemed American writer writing what he's thinking. Do you think that people called Mencken "the media" last century? Maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a rising cynicism today that reminds me of growing up in post- watergate America (I was born in 1967). We survived that previous wave of downspirit and this wave will also pass. There's no guarantees in life that our world will survive a 100 years but there's no reason to give up hope either.

Still, I'm a big fan of Ebert and appreciate his essays. As always, I take his opinions as food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like Ebert's writings on movies a lot. But in this case, I get the sense that old age is a factor. Or more precisely, a certain rather distinctive kind of pessimism that sometimes afflicts old people. It happened to a professor of mine that I love. And earlier this year I heard an NPR piece about the 100th birthday of Claude Lévi-Strauss that talked about how he had lost all hope for humanity. As I said, there's a kind of distinctive quality to this that makes me think it isn't really about the state of the human race... it's rather more self-centered than that (which sounds more judgmental than I'd like).

<comment><USER11> Yeah. To be fair to the poor guy, he's gone through a pretty miserable last few years. Lost his voice, disfigured his face, saw the most hated movie critic in the nation replace him at his flagship show. I'm guessing it's not easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> And maybe aliens will invade and enslave us all. That sounds about as likely as anything else he's saying.

I can't stand things like this. Instead of analyzing potential problems, looking for solutions, and encouraging people to work toward them, why do people proceed to assume the absolute worst case scenario for everything simultaneously and then sit back and say "it's so bad that there's nothing we can do to stop it"?

I hate it. It does nothing but depress you and make things worse, instead of making anything better.

</comment><comment><USER13> Let's turn to someone with (possibly) more credibility than Roger Ebert. Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, thinks number one issue facing us on this time scale is population growth:

[https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches- testimony/land...](https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches- testimony/landon-lecture-series.html)

"Today what I'd like to do is spend a little time with you not on the close fight, but on the deep fight, and to look at three global trends that point to a 21st century that will undoubtedly be quite different from the century just ended. ... In thinking about the future, one of the most important things that our analysts brought to ... my attention was world demographics. ... Today, there are 6.7 billion people sharing the planet. By mid-century—by mid- century, the best estimates point to a world population of more than 9 billion. That's a 40 to 45 percent increase—striking enough—but most of that growth is almost certain to occur in countries least able to sustain it, and that will create a situation that will likely fuel instability and extremism—not just in those areas, but beyond them as well."

He goes on to talk about demographics in different regions of the world and how this will affect Americans.

I kind of buy it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I know it's human to turn these issues into stories, but:

 _One partner has been laid off, the other fears the same._

This implies an unemployment rate that is, at a _minimum_ , twice that of the Great Depression at its _worst_. If we hit 10% unemployment, we're still at 90% employment -- the majority of us will have jobs (that don't pay as well as we'd hoped, that don't move along as fast as we'd like).

</comment><comment><USER15> What a depressing bit of hang-wringing.

As a movie aficionado, I've been watching Ebert for a long time. Ebert makes a great point to somebody else's counterpoint when it comes to movie reviews.I like him, and I like watching him.

I don't share his view of reality, and I'll put a hundred bucks down that his vision of the next 100 years is wildly pessimistic. That's not saying that bad things won't happpen -- it wouldn't surprise me to see a nuke used in terrorism within the next 30 years -- but overall the next 100 years will be as great as the last 100.

<comment><USER16> Anyone with a pessimistic view of the world should watch this TED talk by Steven Pinker: it's possibly the best TED talk I've ever watched. It completely demolishes the notion that the world is getting worse with a barrage of statistics that will blow your mind. [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html)

<comment><USER17> Yeah, that talk is excellent. For a double dose of optimism about the human race, follow it up with the Hans Rosling TED talks. First he shows you some visualizations of economic data to convince you that we're not hopelessly fucked, then he swallows a sword. I love that guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> People have lamented the dismal and rapidly decaying state of society since the beginning of time and yet here we sit.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I share his politics, but not his outlook.

Not Hacker News? Well, more so than some of the other political stuff here: Ebert is probably one of the best "blog" writers working today, and it's been fascinating watching him acclimate over the last year.

</comment><comment><USER19> Typical case of watching too many news on TV. Cure: stop watching (or reading) the news.

Although I admit I also feel a bit uneasy about living so far removed from food production.

</comment><comment><USER20> Well it was nice knowing y'all. I'll be in my underground bunker until all this blows over...

</comment><comment><USER21> He brought up every "doom and gloom" scenario except the feared and scarce- mentioned-aloud "man-bear-pig".

Neither the Pakistan-India nor the Israel-Palestine situation is beyond hope of being solved.

The planet is resilient, and with proper policy making, the Arctic ice will return.

The economy is in recession to be sure, but recessions have happened before, and a good Keynesian approach to it should work - as Nixon said, "we are all Keynesians now".

So while Mr. Ebert continues to warn us about the perils of man-bear-pig and the like, I think the rest of us should think about good, practical solutions, to real, solvable problems. Hysteria doesn't get us anywhere. Smart policy does, and frankly I think the President-elect is on the right track so far.</comment>


Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn't a Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/style/sleep-problem-late-night.html <comment><USER2> It's 1:41 am. I'm back at my 20yo sleep schedule. This is the stupidest mid- life crisis ever.

For years and years I got up with my kids at 5am. I was sleep deprived all the time but it was way easier than new-infant world so I felt fortunate-ish.

Eventually I ran out of kids. Things went along for a time, mostly normal hours. Then 2am became my new sleeptime. Which was annoying because my bedtime was much earlier.

I'm not stressed. I lay there thinking of nothing for hours. Eventually the ability to sleep shows up. I've often tried to walk it back or forward or jump over it & I might score a couple of days of difference than back I go. 2 am.

Eh, whatever. It's better than Covid.

<comment><USER3> maybe your brain arent tired enough. or maybe you couldnt go to sleep due to low frequency city hum that decreases only around 2am at your place

<comment><USER2> We're suburban/rural. All housing except for an ALF and a mega supermarket 1k ft away.

Also bedroom is interior w/o windows, noise resistant.

Supermarket's schedule changed with the pandemic. Hum from there should have changed with it.

Really interesting line of thought tho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea that late to bed and to wake up my not necessarily be a bad thing, but super curious to know if for me that's because of a genetic predisposition or many hours in front of screens.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry - should have 2018 in the title.</comment>


Anger, Anxiety, Resentment, Stress, and Basic Humanity - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/201708/anger-anxiety-resentment-stress-and-basic-humanity <comment><USER2> The ancients thought a lot about what makes a human "good", and they came up with the notion of virtues[1]. If I'm not mistaken, none of them was particularly oriented towards altruism. It seems to me altruism was very much introduced by Christianism. I vaguely recall that Nietzsche analyzed the subject in details, for instance in ''On the Genealogy of Morality''[2].

Now, I'm not saying one of this point of view is right and the other is wrong, but at the very least there is a debate to have. Therefore it seems presumptuous to me to call one of them "basic humanity".

Philosophy, or in the present case psychology, should use accurate words as much as possible. IMHO "Basic humanity" is not satisfactory in that regard.

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

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Genealogy_of_Morality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Genealogy_of_Morality)

<comment><USER3> They are valid points, but in his case, after a PhD and 3 decades working with people, the phrase ' basic humanity' is a lot more memorable than, '12 things that will define you: here they are'.

At some point, the knowledge is too dry unless transferred and having impact. People that want to change will look into what basic human virtues are, and more.

The rest will remain adamant no matter how appealing the approach is.

Sometimes professionals sum up things for the audience.

The more professional they are, and the less time they have, the more one hears : maybe, most likely, etc.

It's not that they don't evaluate the cases, it's the realization that a complete educative list will bore out the audience, and they will miss other, more basic, points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've come to realise that if I'm run down or hungover or guilty in some way then my mind automatically starts to relive old resentments. I think it's a form of projection. There's a bad feeling internally and so memories are activated to 'explain' the badness and direct blame elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> This is 100% real and everyone experiences it. Academics talk about it as mood congruence; it's a well studied phenomenon in psychology and some work I've done in the past has touched on it. Basically you're more likely to recall past events that match your current mood.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think if we could get to the point where we admit that racism (or more generally, bias against or fear of those outside our group) is a normal human trait, and not something deliberately chosen by hateful people, then we could more effectively discuss how to counter it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the article. He keeps it simple and the advice matches my experience. One nitpick though is that not being in touch with basic humanity is not the only reason for anger. Even the nicest people will eventually get angry if they are treated badly.

</comment><comment><USER8> "The only significant and lasting improvement in life and relationships results from becoming 'a better person.'

We become better persons by staying in touch with basic humanity, the survival-based capacity for interest in the well-being of others.

Basic humanity motivates respectful, helpful, valuing, nurturing, protective, and altruistic behaviors. In adversity it motivates sacrifice. In emergency it motivates rescue."

Fantastic article. In essence when we dwell on ourselves or our insecurities, we tend to get stressed out. When we act of out service mindset (give first) doing good for all(much harder in practice), where our own good is included, we will be more fulfilled in the long-term.

<comment><USER9> Agreed.

I found that a strong feeling of mortality brought upon me the basic humanity described in the article.

I immediately noticed a difference in how others treated me (and how I treated them) for the rest of the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am a cynic. I do agree with compassion and kindness as basis of humanity. Eudaimonia.

But I do reject shame and guilt as motivation. For me this is just a mechanism of social coercion, especially for urban societies. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_\(philosophy\))

<comment><USER11> I would agree with the rejection of shame and guilt, they can certainly catalyze action but that action usually carries a strong element of self- sabotage along with it.

I'm intrigued by your mention of eudaimonia - I've been interested in the concept since coming across it in a computer game in my early teens - but I have a hard time finding discussions of it. Is there any reading material you could recommend that looks at the concept in more depth?

<comment><USER10> Sorry for late reply. This book is pretty good introduction for modern reader. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13629522-philosophy- for-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13629522-philosophy-for-life)

I am also close to epicureism (enjoying intellectual pleasure without interacting with busy world) and stoicism (quieting one's emotion) and studied buddhism for some time.

However I am impressed by how modern and contemporary are dilemmas brought by Diogenes. He had been a sort of investment banker charged with debasement of currency. He explained that he attempted to undermine the system (financial, capitalism) from within.

He rejected purse of material stuff (broke a chalice when realized that he could drink water from a his hands), real estate (living in a barrel), favors from those in power ('Stand out of my sunlight'). But most of all he criticized and ridiculed compromises and social mechanics of urban life. For me this is quite relevant today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> After reading the first few paragraphs, it occurred to me he was talking about what Buddhism calls metta, or loving-kindness practice.

</comment><comment><USER13> Mostly nonsense said with authority. Psychology and dietary advice really are crap sciences.

<comment><USER14> So was medicine at one time... and all the rest. We got a lot of stuff wrong, and a few things right and built on that.

Psychology isn't all bad, since a lot more folks with severe mental illness can now go on to lead a much more normal life due to medication and coping mechanisms. Same for folks that go through trauma and have after-effects. But we are still refining this stuff, so some of it is going to be crap and there are going to be lots of pseudo-psychology fed to the uneducated masses.

Nutrition is somewhat similar. We simply don't have the knowledge to understand its complexities right now. But it isn't all crap: We understand connections between malnourishment and stunted growth, for example. Understand folic acid helps prevent birth defects and vitamin C helps prevent scurvy. To confound matters more, we have a lot of misinformation, partially due to politics and business practices. This isn't really confined to nutrition, though. Society is prone to reject new ways of thinking. Heck, the US pushed against modern "european-style" medicine back in the 1800's - they didn't think they needed science in their medicine or something like that.

<comment><USER15> (I have an undergrad degree in Psychology.) Psychology has the means to be a proper science, but historically a significant amount of hasn't been. The examples you present tend to come from neuroscience, which in turn tends to be a much more empirically based field.

\- [http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology- studies-f...](http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail- reproducibility-test-1.18248)

\- [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-s- cred...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-s-credibility- crisis-the-bad-the-good-and-the-ugly/)

\- [https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/05/25/was-the-crisis-in- socia...](https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/05/25/was-the-crisis-in-social- psychology-really-that-bad-have-things-improved-part-one-the-researchers- perspective/)

<comment><USER14> _Disclaimer: I 've read the articles well because I just woke up, but I'll read have the read in a bit (I like the subject)._

I do understand some of that, and probably see more of the psuedo-science application than most: there is a psychological model of occultism folks follow, some of it heavily leaning on Jung's work... who didn't have passable education that we'd like now. And that was pretty common for early psychology: It was more akin to basic philosophy and unbased theories than science.

But I realize that is changing and I realize the good the system really does - my ex was schizo-affective (though he got diagnosed with regular schizophrenia after we broke up). Without the whole system, both the stuff based on shaky psychology and the more pure medical portion with the meds and psychiatrist, he'd have died - no exaggeration.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Transcrypt: Python in the Browser - <AUTHOR> https://transcrypt.org/home <comment><AUTHOR> "Currently the following standard modules are available for Transcrypt: math, cmath, re, itertools, time, random (most important functions only), logging, warnings, turtle. There's also a port of a small part of Numpy called Numscrypt, available separately from PyPi."</comment>


The term 'Hackathon' has been trademarked in Germany - <AUTHOR> http://www.young-targets.com/formation-of-tech_hub-started/

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/register/3020120...](https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/register/3020120063403/DE?lang=en)</comment>


Immune Cells Measure Time to Identify Foreign Proteins - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/immune-cells-measure-time-to-identify-foreign-proteins-20190603/ <comment><USER2> "This process works because the immune system undergoes a sort of training period during its early development: Nascent T-cells are presented with all the self molecules in the body, and cells that bind for more than five seconds to anything get weeded out. That way, the T-cells left to make up the body's immune system are those that bind for a long time only with things they've never seen before."

Suggests a mechanism whereby withholding something (e.g. peanuts) from an infant could reduce the likelihood of a serious allergic reaction later. As I recall, in 2000 the American nutritionists society formally recommended not exposing any child to peanuts until they were several years old, and then they had to backtrack in 2010 and revoke that recommendation because of evidence (from cross-cultural studies of genetically similar groups in the U.K. and Israel) that this made peanut allergies more common.

Also suggests why "too clean" in early life could result in a higher incidence of severe allergies.

<comment><USER3> The former quoted text is the process of positive and negative selection, the mechanism of central tolerance.

The latter part you posit is the hygiene hypothesis.

The two are probably not the same mechanism as selection occurs in the thymus and marrow.

You can become allergic to any epitope at any point in your life if immune cells upregulate in response to it. Immune responses are particularly heightened during illness, which can sometimes trigger auto-immune or allergy development.

<comment><USER2> Well I don't doubt you know more about it than I do, but I recall research that, for example, people who worked on farms in Bavaria as children had fewer allergies later in life, than those who did not. So, while it is certainly possible to get allergic to something later, it might suggest that your early- life immune system learning of "how weird is too weird" could conceivably have an impact.

But, it is not my field.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I'm not disagreeing! I'm just giving you the names for these two distinct concepts so they're not conflated:

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A couple years ago, a very funny experiment was published on "Cell", that used conjugation of DNA strands to TCR transmembrane chains to quantitate in terms of base matches the energy required to elicit ZAP70 cascades. Pretty awesome!</comment>


Is this something to solve US visa issues? - rush-tea

an international water HQ<p>http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/silicon-valley-billionaire-funding-creation-artificial-libertarian-islands-140840896.html <comment><AUTHOR> Same story as here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2883126>

And why didn't you put the URL in the place for URLs, instead of in the text box? Color me confused ...</comment>


[PDF, Slides] Tesla is a zero - <AUTHOR> http://www.tilsonfunds.com/TSLA-Spiegel-RH16.pdf <comment><USER2> This may be bad news for Tesla, but it's good news for the world! The one thing I took away from reading David MacKay's book [1] was that electric cars are one of the best things we can be doing to reduce carbon emissions.

Also, this is good news for smart people everywhere: the amount of talent that these self-driving projects will absorb is pretty significant.

[1] "Sustainable Energy – without the hot air", David J. C. MacKay, 2008.</comment>


An expensive line of code: scaling Node.js on Heroku (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://micheljansen.org/blog/entry/1698 <comment><USER2> "And then it hit me"... ok, a great story, but you have to wonder what people would do if they didn't just guess the answer.

That much slowness may be disk I/O bound, which would show up in the USE method, or even just my Linux performance checklist[1]. It'd also show up by tracing blocking events, even an off-CPU flame graph, but that's overkill.

[1] [http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/11/linux-performance- analys...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/11/linux-performance-analysis- in-60s.html)

<comment><USER3> This is on heroku though. You cant really do any of that?

<comment><USER2> Ah, you may be right! I have not used heroku. I'd hope they'd make some of the metrics available somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not responding. Google cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4cZEfU...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4cZEfUFT2rUJ:micheljansen.org/blog/entry/1698+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER5> [http://archive.is/MSAav](http://archive.is/MSAav)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Careful what conclusions you draw from this post. The comments have further discussion which are very relevant:

> Edward Muller says: 1 October, 2013 at 20:29

Was/Is this app located in the EU region? If so, we recently (yesterday 2013/9/30) fixed a problem where each log line would result in a separate, almost synchronous post to logplex. This problem should now be solved.

> Michel (ed: Blog Author) says: 21 October, 2013 at 10:33

@Edward and Fred: the app is indeed running in the EU region. I haven't gotten around seeing if the performance has improved (the app in question was very ephemeral to begin with), but I'm glad this helped you close in on this issue!

Also, another commenter tested the blocking vs. non-blocking property of stdout and found the default is "pipe" on Heroku [1].

So the most simple conclusion is that this was a problem affecting Heroku logging in the EU region that was identified and resolved back in 2013.

1\. [http://micheljansen.org/blog/entry/1698#comment-522151](http://micheljansen.org/blog/entry/1698#comment-522151)

</comment><comment><USER7> Without digging into sources, since Node is single-threaded, that drastic a performance difference for an IO-bound task would have me looking at whether logging is synchronous. Node's APIs discourage synchronous IO, but don't prevent it.

<comment><USER8> Zeke mentions this in the comments[0] on the article:

 _> The console functions are synchronous when the destination is a terminal or a file (to avoid lost messages in case of premature exit) and asynchronous when it's a pipe (to avoid blocking for long periods of time)._

Which still seems to be the case in the LTS[1].

[0]: [http://micheljansen.org/blog/entry/1698#comment-522124](http://micheljansen.org/blog/entry/1698#comment-522124)

[1]: [https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v4.x/docs/api/console.html#co...](https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v4.x/docs/api/console.html#console_asynchronous_vs_synchronous_consoles)

<comment><USER9> So, always pipe before write?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> node is meant to be used in scenarios when you give most of the work to libuv. However, if you to CPU intensive work in JavaScript itself, such as:

\- serialization

\- encoding

\- cryptography

\- compression

\- etc. ... then, you are better off doing it on a lower level language. express logger counts as a form of serialization, and therefore it is slow.

If you absolutely have to do CPU intensive work... then: limit per-tick execution time and break it down into multiple ticks, otherwise you will block the node event loop and your system will degrade until it stops processing requests.

Now, you can find this faster by profiling. Just use a profiler, like nodegrind or flame graphs or whatever, you will find those bottlenecks very quickly.

<comment><USER11> Or just ditch node and write your server in Go. There is no reason to use node server side today, unless that task is specifically javascript related. There is 0 advantage in using nodejs.

<comment><USER12> A universal React application would be one...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know this is an old piece but this line here struck me as odd:

> Furthermore, as each request needs to be stored in a database, it was not a > matter that can easily be solved using caching. I needed a backend that > could deal with 100+ requests per second without breaking a sweat.

I thought this was why we had databases in the first place. They've been able to deliver this performance without any issues for decades now.

What's the issue?

> I'm a bit surprised that a bit of logging has such a severe impact on > performance on Heroku and even more surprised that they recommend you to > enable logging in their Express tutorial.

While I agree that was certainly a surprise to me too, I'm not surprised by the advice. Not all apps need to scale massively, and how else are you going to debug your app deployed in Heroku when strange things start to happen?

<comment><USER14> It's phrased oddly but what he's saying there in other words is: "I can't use caching for writing to the database". This is of course true but surprising as that has nothing to do with the problem.

Maybe that's was just his usual approach "if it's too slow, cache it" instead of looking at _what_ makes it slow. As mentioned in the first paragraph, he didn't have to "tackle the really problems[tm]" so far. So he didn't have lots of practise yet.

Although I also agree that with 100+ requests per seconds, the database certainly should not be the problem but you need to get the data to the database in the first place (and that turned out to be the issue).

<comment><USER15> I can see the logic - if you have a service that only takes GPS co-ordinates and dumps them into a database, and it's underperforming then my first thought would also have been "why is my DB insert slow?" instead of "what part of my service is slow?" (in fact I'd have probably ditched the DB insert and written a console.log() which likely would've turned up the problem). These sort of educated guesses serve me well most of the time and take a short period of time to verify - if the guess is wrong we can look in-depth using whatever tools are available safe in the knowledge that not much time was wasted

Speaking of tooling, is there much available for nodejs that would allow this sort of investigation into performance, or debugging line by line?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I got a x1000 performance degradation in node from using a simple JSONPath expression. That was an eye opener!

</comment><comment><USER17> Just curious: is the blog running on nodejs?

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the page got slashdotted? There's a bit of irony, article about scaling wasn't scaling ;-)</comment>


Launch HN: K6.io – modern, open-source load testing CLI and Cloud for developers - <AUTHOR> https://k6.io/open-source <comment><USER2> Been using this for a few weeks now and very cool bit of kit. Only using it locally and actually using it for load testing a soap app, but works well! Next step to see about using it for a rest app we got too. Love the idea of influxdb and grafana too.

<comment><USER3> You can give a shot to the "open source load testing stack"[1] we built. It's using TimescaleDB instead of influx which makes it much easier to configure in Grafana.

We are planning on using TimescaleDB as a default database output for the local execution.

[https://github.com/loadimpact/open-source-load-testing- stack...](https://github.com/loadimpact/open-source-load-testing-stack/)

<comment><USER2> handy! will look into that!</comment></comment></comment>


Using the correct terms – Shall, Will, Should (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://reqexperts.com/2012/10/09/using-the-correct-terms-shall-will-should/ <comment><USER2> I'm a bit of a self-confessed grammar nazi. So I like to see people caring about the correct use of language. But I can't help but think those penning such articles as this should maybe set their sights a wee bit lower.

In a world where the majority of the population seems to communicate almost entirely through the use of kindergarten pictograms and where US English has effectively abandoned the use of all adjectives apart from "awesome" and all adverbs apart from "super", fretting about the distinction between "shall" and "will" seems a bit unnecessarily pedantic.

PS: Americans. The past participle of "build" is "built" and "I could care less about..." means precisely the opposite of what you are trying to express. </personal bugbear>

</comment><comment><USER3> See also this explanation [https://qr.ae/pNy9ET](https://qr.ae/pNy9ET) about such terms in IETF RFC documents.</comment>


Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default - <AUTHOR> https://tommorris.org/posts/8677

<comment><USER3> When I was making my color picker (0xrgb.com) - I did it with NoScript in mind as well. I agree that whenever it's possible the websites should deliver content without javascript or flash.

However the web now seems to be both - web sites and web apps. If you run a blog or a news online magazine - it's still a good old web site. It would be nice to have semantic markup and not depend on javascript that much.

But if you're writing a web app - that's becoming tricky. Semantic markup becomes a burden, since all you naturally want is a hierarchy of nested divs/flexboxes with styles (as in any other GUI framework where you have views and layouts, and not text-related "articles", "links", "ordered lists", "headlines", etc).

I always had a feeling that web apps is something out of this nature - <USER2> try to adopt cumbersome markup language, unsuitable layout engine and slowish programming language to create modern interactive GUIs. And I think since it is all too unnatural - we have this endless race of changing frontend frameworks, languages and technologies seeking for a better way to achieve the goal despire of these broken HTML/CSS/JS. There's been some progress, for sure, but it still feels like writing AI in assembler or UNIX command-line tools in C#.

</comment><comment><USER4> You've probably been living under a rock or something. Just because you hate JS doesn't mean you should deprive everyone from it.

It's like having a smartphone without apps.

It's like having electricity but without appliances.

It's like having a DVD player without the DVD.

It's like saying "Hey Google, I don't like JS. Can you please not ship Chrome with it?"</comment>


OpenAI reveals pricing for its GPT-3 API - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/09/03/openai-reveals-the-pricing-plans-for-its-api-and-it-aint-cheap/ <comment><USER2> > According to Branwen, 2 million tokens is roughly equivalent to 3,000 pages > of text. For reference, the complete works of Shakespeare contain roughly > 900,000 words.

For $100/month, seems to be prohibitive except to very special cases. Will foster competition.</comment>


Arctic sea ice may well be gone by September 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/08/arctic-sea-ice-may-well-be-gone-by-september-2017.html <comment><USER2> Huge ocean swells on the coast where the arctic ice used to be only few hundred kilometers away. I lost my spectacles when leaving this bloody beach, because of a freak wave. [https://youtu.be/qtiBerMptUA?t=15m16s](https://youtu.be/qtiBerMptUA?t=15m16s)

</comment><comment><USER3> How reliable of a source is this? I'm not familiar with it.</comment>


Buy these 9 things - <AUTHOR> http://buythese9things.com

<comment><USER2> Seems like a more executive-toyish version of Justin Oullette's theshittoget.com

Why would someone go to the site though? (this post notwithstanding)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, i've never seen this website.. If I had, I would have most likely rethought my design, thinking people would consider mine a knock off.. Oh well, mine isn't, and I like it. (Uncanny though)

I was really aiming for an outlet to sell items, that are personally endorsed by me. I understand HN's viewers will most likely not buy my items- I was assuming the more than likely purchaser would be someone who I know directly, or indirectly, already. I have a large number of contacts of people I know personally, one time or another, who I have healthy relationships with. I'd estimate that number to be in the low 1,000 range.

I want to try and make those 1,000 people know that I 1) run this service, 2) love the items, and 3) update it regularly with new items. If i can get a small base of fans who enjoy this idea, then I can push to expand that number of happy people..

I was really coming to HN for advice on how to grow this into a sustainable business idea. I've gotten great advice so far, and it's all welcomed warmly.

<comment><USER2> The reason I like Justin's site (we don't know each other) is because you can tell it is:

a) personally curated b) not updated too often (i.e. tried and tested products) and c) supposed to be a definitive resource for someone who doesn't want to shop around & trusts his opinion

It might be an idea to avoid the generic or goofy items that make it look like your own personal Pinterest, and instead make it a site where your network of friends genuinely benefit from your personal experience of the items.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome.. Great points to take to heart, since his site and my idea are actually so similar. I'm a little ashamed of myself for not knowing about his site before I started working on 9things.

It's ok though.. He's got a job and a rep. I don't have either, so I've got to make it work for me :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the nice, clean design, and you have cool things listed.

What are your plans for generating traffic? A major challenge will be that Google expects affiliate sites to add value and won't rank "thin" affiliates high in search results. How will Buythese9things.com overcome this obstacle, or will you have other ways to bring in users?

<comment><AUTHOR> Traffic: I am figuring out which keywords I want to attack- but I play on going on the paid ad's route for traffic. Hopefully I can get a good base of "fans" who check back now and again to see a new set of items. I have future plans to either allow comments, or to basically write some content on each item. Hopefully that will be good enough for google?

This is also one of my main concerns- and I think it could be one of my largest. I also plan on making this a new way for me Personally to sell items- so over time people come to understand that these items are curated by me, and they either come to trust or distrust (and not come back) my taste

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would add a timer. The end of the time, no matter how long it is, it shows the next 9 things and the timer resets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow I enjoy this idea very much.. It will give an instant incentive to want to check back. Thank you very much Macsenour!

<comment><USER4> You're very welcome. You could also extend this to asking for email adrs to send an alert: "New items are up!".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any thoughts on hooking it up to amazon wish lists or using some sort of recently visited css hack to "guess" what people have been looking at recently? Or even hooking it up to twitter/facebook to see what products users and friends of users are talking about and rounding it down to 9?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was hoping to actually hooking up with companies (9 diff ones?) to offer a new weekly exclusive sale

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would love some crit on this as a business idea.. I'm heavily inspired by everything I see and read here on HN. If you have a moment, read the F.A.Q if you have minor questions. If you could leave any comments here, they will be treasured.

I'd appreciate it more than you could know.

<comment><USER6> So, what's the play here? Do I get to create my own 9 things? (FYI I was hoping I could).

<comment><USER7> Or give me sliders so I can crank down fashion and crank up geek toys!

<comment><AUTHOR> I dig this idea very much. Good tip, I appreciate it MidwestMuster! I will consider this or a variation of it for the future. You'll get credit!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let the user add his/hers emails address to get an update whenever you have new stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> _smacks head_ Duh.. Thank you for pointing this out

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool page. Although I would never put a pixel of mine inside a StarBucks shop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha I understand. It was a cop out item I just threw in, figuring it was cheap, everyone drinks coffee, and I needed a different category of item.

Your opinion is appreciated though, thanks for commenting!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Golsp – A simple programming language written in Go - ajay-tatachar http://github.com/ajaymt/golsp <comment><AUTHOR> Very cool! What are you going to do next with it?</comment>


PVS-Studio: Checking Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0268/

<comment><USER2> I find it interesting comparing C/C++ with Rust in these cases, and I'm happy to say that in this case all of the problems reported would have been caught by the Rust compiler, either as errors or warnings, or are simply not possible.

\- The first one is a standard unreachable code lint, which is by default a warning in Rust. (I'm a little surprised that it wouldn't lead to warnings in other languages/compilers—is that really so?)

\- Integer literals like 0x80 are not of a specific type in Rust, being rather int, i32, i64, uint, u32 or u64 as the context dictates—and in this context it would be inferred as i64. All these sorts of casts are explicit, too, fixing the entire class of issue—anything like this that PVS-Studio would catch is a compilation error in Rust.

\- The whole copy constructors and = operator stuff is not relevant as Rust doesn't have it (which, according to C++ programmers I have heard reports from, is good).

I'm looking forward to Rust being significant enough that tools like PVS- Studio get built around it. Although Rust prevents various classes of errors, human ingenuity is too great to keep all errors out! (Incidentally, you can write custom lints already.)

<comment><USER3> Actually, in rust I get no warning with the functionally similar (and I think idiomatic) code:

        let l = [1i, 2, 3];

        for i in l.iter() {
            println!("{}", i);
            break;
        }

Obviously there's no explicit update as in the C code but since using iterators is the Rust way to iterate over collections I don't think it's fair to say that the rust compiler would have saved them on that one.

<comment><USER2> It's not a break—it's a return. So the stuff after the for-loop is unreachable.

<comment><USER4> The stuff after the for-loop is reachable if the for-loop is never entered. You can consider it to be an if-block instead, with a return at the end.

<comment><USER2> Ohhh, yes. I forgot that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That reads a bit sloppy to me.

"This is some function related to cryptography. I don't know what it does exactly, and maybe I have found a real EPIC FAIL."

Maybe before you wrote your 1000 word article with custom made illustration you could have spent a little timing digging in the code and understanding what this function actually does? Or at least ask some bitcoin devs their opinion? If you have actually found a vulnerability in bitcoin and disclose it that way it's not even sloppy, it's irresponsible.

<comment><USER5> 1) This is a joke. Perhaps unfortunate translation. Below it is written that the risk is small: You see, it's a popular trend nowadays to find epic errors related to security. But this one is most likely a tiny bug or even a correct piece of code written purposely.

2) I can not attentive examine each piece of code. Estimate the amount of work that I do :) - [http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0084/](http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0084/) , [http://www.viva64.com/en/examples/](http://www.viva64.com/en/examples/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since they're not sure if they found a security related error or not, I would rather make a disclosure to Bitcoin dev team fist before going public with it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it's pretty obvious that static analysis is essential when code correctness is necessary. Of course the use of C++ is questionable, unless high performance is needed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hang on, how is this _not_ wrong? It's supposed to iterate through mapCryptedKeys but never gets past the first...

<comment><USER9> From my understanding, that code is just a verification that the password you entered to decrypt your wallet was correct. It works by testing one of the addresses in the wallet (verifying that the secret key matches the pubkey address).

If one works, they should all work. If they don't then the wallet file is probably corrupted. So it'd be a nice check for corruption but doesn't seem to have much of a security implication.</comment></comment>


How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://time.com/956/how-amazon-crushed-the-union-movement/ <comment><USER2> As a former member of a union, I honestly find it odd at how many people think that unions are always good. Of the two unions I was a part of and watching what my dad went through with his Union I'm actually fairly anti-union at this point in my life. I watched a guy get fired for sexual harassment, and rehired due to pressure from the Union. I watched my father not get a manager position, because of seniority ruling, and they gave it to a guy who was fired and then unfired (thanks to the union) for having a secret nap room behind some machines.

I know unions have done a lot of great in the past, but I rarely see much good coming from them anymore. Of course this is all anecdotal, but I've had nothing but bad experiences with them in my life.

<comment><USER3> The biggest problem with unions is that they try and force everyone to join them.

Fine, join whatever private organization that you want.

But please leave me out of it. I do not want to follow your ill thought out rules and I want to be able to negotiate myself. I can get a better deal on my own, and I do not want your collective bargaining that they try to force on everyone.

<comment><USER4> Maybe you're special. And contracts can even be negotiated with a group to recognize individual performance! But the data is pretty clear that when workers bargain collectively, they can negotiate higher pay and better benefits.

<comment><USER5> I think the real issue is what "benefits" means. If benefits means healthcare, then i'm all for it. If benefits means it's nearly impossible to fire someone, or that seniority trumps performance, then it seems more like it will negatively impact many workers than it is supposed to benefit.

<comment><USER4> If that's true, that should make it easy for you to work with your coworkers to allow more lax rules about firing when negotiating and in return -- since management will surely be happy too -- you can probably get management to negotiate something that your coworkers would prefer!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh Hacker News, you beautiful people, let me tell you a quick story, because I am in the mood to tell a story in this current country I live in where we are going to make things Great Again by restoring industrial jobs, as though industrial jobs were ipso facto wonderful, high-paying things. As opposed to dangerous, low-paying shit work that killed the people who showed up 6+ days a week until they all looked at each other and decided not to accept the terms that had been decreed to them.

We didn't used to have great jobs for high school-educated folks, we used to have unions. Because lots of people earning 0.05x joining together are the only way to make things fair when woking for a person earning X. Or 10x.

But that only applies to the slob packing a box to send you a fidget spinner thing. Not to you brilliant coders working in Silicon Valley, obvs. Except here's a thing: I worked for at a 8-to-5 for years before going out on my own for the last decade. And now I can't seem to go back, because all the full time gigs I find quote me $US125-150k. And I make about twice that as a contractor. Nothing fancy, I haven't found some wonderful niche, I just ask for my rate and get it and work. And even after accounting for paying both sides of Social Security taxes, I make 2x the top end of whatever StackOverflow survey you want to look at.

I'm not amazing, I'm just a guy who got a decent education that was paid for in large part by my mom's salary as a teacher. Which was a result of her efforts in a union that had to go out on strike some times. Unions aren't perfect. No organization of humans ever will be. But regurgitating "facts" about why unions failed that have been drilled into you by popular media isn't a way to overcome that. It's a way to get screwed. Good luck.

<comment><USER7> Isn't being a contractor like the complete opposite of being in a union?

<comment><USER8> Their statement is that as a contractor they are my empowered to negotiate better rates then as a full time employee. I believe this is a attempt to say that if we, software engineers, utilized a union we'd be able to negotiate better pay for ourselves.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that. From now on I am going to wait and let you give better responses than my own. Please don't go on strike.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Without my union experience i could not earn a living that i earn today.

The union i belong to has features that were earned/bargained for over years.

When i worked in tech we often wished we had some if the earned "rights" i now have.

No forced Overtime; overtime after 8 hours in a day.

Guaranteed 40 hours a week.

No work before 6am or after 6am (or else premium pat)

No Sunday or holiday work

72% benefits paid by company

Part if a 2m plus benefit plan (great coverage)

Holiday and sick pay earned as we go; 15, 19 or 26 days off a year depending on length of service.

No-layoff clause after 4(or 6)years

In my union there is absolutely no advancement opportunity and we dont get rich.

In tech we looked down at bargained employees - but now i think it was jusy not understanding them

The union machinery is vastly different than the rank and file..their only goal is extracting $$$ from union members.

But now there are many poor suffering delivery people who just dont know how much power they hold collectively if they decide to disrupt the status quo.

If all uber drivers said FU and banded together - uber is NOTHING without the drivers - they would hold enormous power.

Same for Amazon workers.

It just is the existine aflcio and other unions don't represent the drivers etc. They cant because they dont fight the fight

If the honeymoon the disrupters are having now is broken it will be by organizing the downtrodden driver, part timer, giger, and servant of the rich

</comment><comment><USER10> Looking through the comments, I see a combination of anecdotal evidence about Unions being bad/good and a few (very logical) statements about how collective bargaining leads to higher wages & benefits.

Here are my two pennies:

Private sector unions are great for collective bargaining, though I prefer they abstain from broad political platforms (immigration, for example), as these are so far removed the intent of the union. I tend to view these Unions as being political vehicles first, collective bargaining agents second. That isn't a compliment.

Public sector unions are awkward in that tax payer is not represented at the bargaining table. They should be restructured to make bargaining comparable to the private sector case (or reverse Aboud).

My personal experiences with Unions are very negative.

In the first experience, in SoCal in the early 90s, I saw first hand when the Teamsters moved to unionize drywall framers. My dad was a small scale developer in the San Gabriel Valley and during a protest, a Teamsters boss on a megaphone encouraged a mob of picketers to run through the project with hammers and destroy recently hung drywall. My dad also received death threats and we had a rock thrown through a window.

My second experience was doing campaign targeting for AFSCME. The people I met from that org were in the extreme far left part of the political spectrum (as in "Stalin had some good ideas"). Take from that what you will.

<comment><USER11> > Private sector unions are great for collective bargaining, though I prefer > they abstain from broad political platforms (immigration, for example), as > these are so far removed the intent of the union. I tend to view these > Unions as being political vehicles first, collective bargaining agents > second. That isn't a compliment.

The feature you're describing is not an accident. Lobbying for restrictive immigration laws (not just political platforms in general, but that specific platform and issue) is the exact reason that unions like the AFL originally gained the size and political power that they have today.

<comment><USER10> Things have changed: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_policies_of_Americ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_policies_of_American_labor_unions#Change_in_attitude_of_the_AFL- CIO)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've only seen new Unions end badly in places doing so.

Companies just move the work elsewhere. As now companies are often owned by bigger companies/have multiple operations. So it's much easier to do so.

Managers are often overworked/overpressured to perform, get by with less, competing with foreign companies with 'free' labor. And some Workers are jaded by the old Auto Factory days their parents worked. Makes for very toxic environments.

<comment><USER13> The problem you're describing is an effect of today's global capitalism. Workers seeking a dignified income are not able to find that through collective bargaining because free movement of capital allows management to relocate to cheaper markets relatively quickly.

One wonders if the system is worth keeping around in its current form if so many people get screwed by it. What do we have an economic system for, anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is more a story of "Why the Union movement has been dead since the 1980s".

Amazon employs tens of thousands of people. These people are trying to organize 27. And failing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Pairs well with Bezos' request for philanthropic ideas: [https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776](https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776)

<comment><USER16> Relevant: [https://twitter.com/DemSocialists/status/875511888049778688](https://twitter.com/DemSocialists/status/875511888049778688)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let me share a "concept" in my union.

It's n against y.

"It's 15 against 1"

You dont have to be in a union to be able to gather together for the common Good.

So lets say your "manager" tosses out some ridiculous rule and each person individually thinks it stinks.

With the right leader, if you simply say "its us against you." and let them know you dont have a concern about consequences, it will get you very, very far.

Be daring. Be challenging. Dont get walked on. Stand up for what is right.

Having a union frame of mind can actually help.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I form an LLC for my side project mobile app? - <AUTHOR>

Or am I just being paranoid? <comment><USER2> I think you should ask yourself what you will gain by having an LLC.

* Are you trying to reduce your liabilities in the event of lawsuit (how likely is one?)

* Are you trying to get certain tax advantages with an LLC over a sole proprietorship or s/c-corp (are you actually going to make money?)

* And so on...

</comment><comment><USER3> The devil is in the details (is the app making real money, are there potential legal liabilities, etc.) — so that may be a conversation to have with an accountant or lawyer that you trust.</comment>


Get To The Point First - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webnet-it.co.jp/2010/03/05/get-to-the-point-first/

<comment><USER2> I totally do this, and I'm going to stop right now.</comment>


React, JSX, and CoffeeScript - <AUTHOR> http://neugierig.org/software/blog/2014/02/react-jsx-coffeescript.html <comment><USER2> Like the post author, I use Coffeescript+React -- and don't care for JSX. (I'd go further and say that XML of any kind has shown itself unfit for direct editing by humans, but that's a larger discussion.)

Coffeescript has its problems as well, though, and one of the glaring issues is cutesy syntactic corner cases. Some of these are ok, taken individually, when they make the code maybe slightly more terse -- or more clear. But in the aggregate, they can leave us with something that is baroque, off-putting to the uninitiated, and hard to maintain. That's pretty much what I see in code here.

Having the curly braces around an object literal be optional was a language mistake: it simply introduces ambiguity. It doesn't save many keystrokes, and it wastes the time of the people who may eventually have to read code like this

        R.p null,
          R.a href:'foo', 'bar'
          R.a href:'foo2', rel:'nofollow', 'second link'

Quick, is rel:'nofollow' part of the same object as href:'foo2', or is is the second argument to R.a?

More alarm bells went off when I learned that we are using this Coffeescript clunker I did not know about previously: "beyond the first argument, the trailing commas are optional when you have newlines".

Wat? _Just the first line_ needs a comma? Did Ruby teach us nothing, folks? Irregular, tricksy syntax like that is a caterpillar, waiting to turn into a beautiful butterfly of a bug when some stranger innocently barges in to make a change 6 months from now.

Even if the language offers features like that, don't use them.

<comment><USER3> The language offers features so that you can use them well. Any bit of syntax can be abused. `))))))`, for example ;)

Optional braces around object literals allow you to write lines like this:

        rectangle x: 10, y: 15, width: 500, height: 500

... and having newlines separate elements in lists makes a _ton_ of sense in a language where whitespace is significant:

        requires = [
          "jquery"
          "underscore"
          "d3"
        ]

... and _also_ helps with the famous trailing-comma-in-IE error and comma- first controversy.

If you're writing something that's convoluted enough that the features aren't helping you ... don't use 'em.

<comment><USER2> Hi Jeremy, if you'll please pardon the the somewhat flame-y tone above -- and the Coffeescript language is 'done' so these subjects are mostly moot anyway -- my experience has suggested that:

\- optional braces cause more ambiguity (manifesting as either strange parse error messages on the front side, or bugs on the back side) than is warranted by the need to write:

        rectangle { x: 10, y: 15, width: 500, height: 500 }

\- newlines separating elements of a list is good, but it's really confusing to me why the following program would/should work with no comma after the "a":

        foo = (a, b, c) -> console.log a, b, c
        foo "b",
          "a"
          "r"

Plainly, it _does_ work, but to me it feels like using a hole in my sweater to scratch an itch on my elbow.

<comment><USER4> I don't know coffeescript, but I'd guess it's because the first comma indicates "this is an argument list," so the next few items get treated with list/array syntax rules where commas aren't required.

(Had this comment thread left open in my browser since Friday. Noticed no one replied so I figured "why not," even though I might be wrong :V)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another trick I like is to import the React functions you want all at once

        {div, ol, li} = React.DOM # global exports
        div null,
          ol null,
            for result, index in @results
              {a, span} = React.DOM # local exports
              key = doSomeLookup( result, index )
              href = otherLookup( key )
              li {key}, [span(null, "Hello "), a({href}, "world")]

<comment><USER6> That changes the "feel" of composing without JSX more than anything I've seen so far. Trying to work JSX into my compiling pipeline was an uncomfortable hassle. I'm going to give this a try.

<comment><USER7> If you're looking for a more flexible compilation/build pipeline, I'd suggest gulp[0]. I have a project that uses gulp-react (among other things) and it's blazing fast. Here's my gulpfile[1].

[0]: [http://gulpjs.com](http://gulpjs.com)

[1]: [https://github.com/jjt/LUXTRUBUK/blob/master/gulpfile.js](https://github.com/jjt/LUXTRUBUK/blob/master/gulpfile.js)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm torn. Syntax-wise, I find that many programming languages are similar enough that moving from one to another is pretty straightforward. Even Objective-C makes some kind of sense to a Java/PHP/Python/etc programmer.

But CoffeeScript doesn't feel this way to me, which makes me want to stay far away. Yet so many smart people are building cool things with it, which makes me wonder if I just need to suck it up and get familiar with this new syntax.

<comment><USER9> If you learned Objective-C, CoffeeScript is a walk in the park. A peaceful, elegant, enjoyable walk in the park.

<comment><USER10> Very true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> React contributor here. The bit about removing event handling abstraction doesn't make much sense.

1\. Since React's event handling is also virtual (just like its DOM), cross- browser inconsistencies are taken care of for you. Sure, you could always attach your native events after mounting a component, but unless you're using jQuery or something with very good cross-browser support, you're bound to trip over the same browser bugs we already solved (IE8+!).

2\. The virtual event system is super performant. It does event delegation for free. Internally, it's implemented as one single event handler at the top; no need to worry about whether you should put a click event on the list items, or on the list itself anymore. Events are also pooled.

3\. Since the system's virtual, it opens doors to custom event plugins, i.e.:

In fact, React's mobile tap event is a custom plugin. Removes the 400ms delay. You get the point.

<comment><USER12> (I'm the post author.) Thanks for reading and commenting!

As I mentioned in the footnote, for my purposes (an app where I am likely to be the only user) I don't care about IE8 support, so it's kind of a bummer that I have to ship support for it. (In my day job I use Google's Closure library which has the same problem -- lots of additional complexity to work around IE bugs. I appreciate that removing this support isn't as simple as just compiling it out, too.) Similarly for the 300ms delay: the delay is gone on current Chrome on mobile (when you're using width=device-width; I only know this because I used to work on Chrome), which is the mobile browser I use.

Another way of saying this is that React is a combination of the virtual DOM stuff and a bunch of other "useful webapp stuff" like making events work across browsers and installing event listeners on the root element etc. I appreciate for you and the React authors' purposes those are the same problem and difficult to disentangle, but all I wanted to use was the virtual DOM part. (I guess the analogue would be like thinking Rails's ActionDispatch library is neat but then discovering you had to use their code-generation scripts and ORM library as well. Sorry if that metaphor failed, I'm not so knowledgeable about Rails.)

Anyway, since I'm mostly just tinkering with React etc. the size thing doesn't matter so much, which is why I put the comment way down in a footnote. But the whole "you must swallow the whole thing at once" thing is also the reason I've never looked into Ember or whichever other comparable framework. Maybe at some point, as a continued learning exercise, I'll attempt to reimplement the subset of React that I actually use to better understand the design space you already know.

<comment><USER13> Removing event management from React core is a common request but it wouldn't really be a wise decision.

1\. Need a way to manage events: All the applications are handling events in one way or another. So you've got to have a way to implement event handling in a React application.

2\. Cannot use existing event libraries: Because React manages its own Virtual DOM and has a very declarative nature, it is not easy to use raw DOM imperative APIs in other to implement event handling. Therefore, you cannot just plug in any event handling library, you've got to have one that works on- top of the Virtual DOM abstraction.

3\. Performance is a requirement: The way you code in React is by describing the way you want the DOM to look like at all time. If not implemented properly, the performance is extremely bad. The fact that we implement global event delegation is not just a bonus, for some of our apps adding/removing event listeners is actually the bottleneck.

4\. Bonuses: Having compatibility for IE8 and custom event plugins is actually the cherry on-top of the cake. Since React has its own event management, supporting those is pretty trivial and isn't a big amount of code.

We worked very hard so that React core is extremely small and doesn't contain "other useful webapp stuff". We have a special addons section for that: [http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/addons.html](http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/addons.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For an interesting bit of prior art, check out Reactive.coffee — an MIT project that implements a reactive HTML DSL in CoffeeScript:

[http://yang.github.io/reactive-coffee/](http://yang.github.io/reactive- coffee/)

... note that it's not related to Facebook's React — just shares the name, and some similarities in surface area.

<comment><USER14> Have you considered adding a macro system to cs? I think it would eliminate the need for stuff like JSX which seems to get reinvented every so often.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. There's a bunch of interesting work in that area:

[https://github.com/paiq/blackcoffee](https://github.com/paiq/blackcoffee)

[http://mrluc.github.io/macros.coffee/docs/macros.html](http://mrluc.github.io/macros.coffee/docs/macros.html)

[https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee- script/pull/3171](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/pull/3171)

<comment><USER14> Wow that's looking pretty nice already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This post made me realize how infrequently we've been seeing HN posts about CoffeeScript in recent months, and the data seems to back that up: [http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=coffeescript](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=coffeescript) I guess we've passed Peak CofeeeScript.

<comment><USER16> Here's JavaScript vs CoffeeScript on the same graph: [http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=javascript%2Ccoffeescript](http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=javascript%2Ccoffeescript)

Both have huge strange drop in Q3 2013. Problem with trends data?

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I think you're right. A bunch of popular terms have precipitous, unexplained drops in Q3. Still, even if you ignore Q3, there's still been a drastic drop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> having html inlined in your js code is ugly. so is mashing strings toether.

a friend at twilio pointed me to a library called JUP

[https://github.com/hij1nx/JUP](https://github.com/hij1nx/JUP)

it lets you express html as json. i don't understand why this isn't more popular.

[ "div", { class : "a-class" }, [ "span", "you can use all of your json tools to edit the DOM" ] ]

so awesome!

<comment><USER18> > [ "div", { class : "a-class" }, [ "span", "you can use all of your json > tools to edit the DOM" ] ]

So, that means

        you can use all of your json tools to edit the DOM

, right?

<comment><USER19> Probably, but that syntax is awful.

This syntax makes more sense to me:

[{"tagName":"div","class":"a-class","children":[{"tagName":"span","innerHTML":"you can use all of your json tools to edit the DOM"}]}]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "It also breaks a rule that I've never cared for, where your templates are supposed to be separate from your code."

This is not a "rule" that I came upon - I figured out how crappy having your templates tied to your JS makes working with quickly on my own. It is an absolutely ugly pattern.

<comment><USER21> it's an ugly pattern when you're inlining function strings as HTML attributes.

if you can reference functions directly as attributes of your views it actually makes perfect sense.

mixing your templates and your code sucks when you're working in 2 languages across 2 files and you have to glue everything together. as soon as you're writing them both to the same target it makes perfect sense. especially since react still uses the DOM event model behind the curtains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My Reaction to CoffeeScript over time: CoffeeScript is Shit CoffeeScript is OK CoffeeScript is Awesome! CoffeeScript is OK CoffeeScript is Shit

<comment><USER23> Exactly this. I feel more in love with TypeScript than CoffeeScript at this point. I think that part of it is that ES6 is absorbing a lot of the need for CoffeeScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you'd like to use React + JSX + CoffeeScript I built a little workflow [1] using Gulp that works pretty nicely; it takes advantage of the backtick character in coffeescript compilation to let you do cool things [2].

[1] - [https://github.com/davemo/react- battleplanner/blob/battlepla...](https://github.com/davemo/react- battleplanner/blob/battleplanner/gulpfile.coffee)

[2] - [https://github.com/davemo/react- battleplanner/blob/battlepla...](https://github.com/davemo/react- battleplanner/blob/battleplanner/app/js/components/character_selector.coffee)

</comment><comment><USER25> The event handling was something I also thought I didn't want at first. It is actually important though because it allows you to register event handlers before the component is mounted in the DOM, which comes up all the time because of the stateless abstraction React provides.

React's event handlers also serve as a unit under which state updates are batched. In a normal DOM event state updates are performed synchronously. (It seems like rAF should allow batching by default, but this hasn't been enabled because of some edge-case related to unit testing that I don't quite understand.)

</comment><comment><USER13> You can also use a more lispy way to write React code in CoffeeScript

        {div, h3, textarea} = React.DOM
        (div {className: 'MarkdownEditor'}, [
          (h3 {}, 'Input'),
          (textarea {onKeyUp: @handleKeyUp, ref: 'textarea'},
            @state.value
          )
        ])

[http://blog.vjeux.com/2013/javascript/react- coffeescript.htm...](http://blog.vjeux.com/2013/javascript/react- coffeescript.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow, that is really concise!

ClojureScript also has a nice react kind-of-thing (now named reagent), though all the parenthesis makes it more noisy.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's also Om:

[https://github.com/swannodette/om/wiki/Basic- Tutorial](https://github.com/swannodette/om/wiki/Basic-Tutorial)

<comment><USER27> There are three ClojureScript React libraries I've seen, each with a very different approach.

Reagent is basically just a native interface to React.

Om sort of reimplements React on top of React with a few modifications to make it more ClojureScripty (e.g. taking advantage of persistent data structures for state).

Quiescent takes React and turns it into a simple rendering library, leaving out any concept of state management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Learning Reactjs the last couple weeks really got me excited. I love the philosophy about writing highly decoupled peaces to build a bigger one. Also i discover that usin with coffeescript make the syntax very declarative, it look like Kivy language.

<comment><USER29> > I love the philosophy about writing highly decoupled peaces to build a > bigger one

Glad to see people are wising up to the benefits of minimal coupling.

For too long, web development seemed to revel in being a pig squalor of software engineering: "move fast and break things/just use Rails!/coupling doesn't matter anymore!" It's probably the influx of new developers. I don't mind that the mistakes are made as much as the collateral damage that occurred to analysis and design phases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Though I do wish it was smaller. I wish I could cut all the support for old IE bits and the event handling abstractions."

Shameless plug here because author's site doesn't have comments: maybe you could try Vue.js: it is <12k gzipped, support IE9 and above only, and even less opinionated.

[http://vuejs.org](http://vuejs.org)

</comment><comment><USER31> I was working with CoffeeScript for last ~2 years, nowadays I kinda prefer to use plain old javascript with underscore library. No coffeescript, just got tired of constant mental mapping between two languages.

<comment><USER9> huh, I don't find myself mental mapping to js. unless you're referring to during debugging.

<comment><USER32> If you're doing it during debugging, you might want to turn on source maps instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://github.com/lantiga/react.hiccup](https://github.com/lantiga/react.hiccup) is also nice.

</comment><comment><USER9> couldn't you curry out all those nulls?

</comment><comment><USER34> Great post. I also use plain React (no JSX) with CoffeeScript. I've used Ember, Backbone, Angular, but for me React/CoffeeScript is by far the most productive.

<comment><USER28> Remember that you can use Backbone Models and Collections and Router with Reactjs only caring for events and views. They really work pretty well.</comment></comment>


Stages, Structures, and the Work of Being Yourself - <AUTHOR> https://thefrailestthing.com/2019/03/14/carnival-of-the-self/ <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyoka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyoka)

</comment><comment><USER3> While he's far from my favourite philosopher, there's a similarity between this article and Sartre's discussion of Bad Faith (itself similar to Marx's alienation) as both discuss the societal pressure to conform to roles and the conflict inherent in attempting to do so.

As the article observes, the liberty of expression offered by social media may itself compromise our individuality and authenticity by pressuring us to stage-manage an image of ourselves compatible with societal norms: an image that we aspire to but can never fully realise.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_(existentialism)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_\(existentialism\))

[http://existentialcomics.com/comic/101](http://existentialcomics.com/comic/101)

</comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone a solution to this problem? Except for just leaving the internet?</comment>


Light Table reaches 300k necessary for Python support - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table?ref=live <comment><USER2> The bp editor has similar features (code bubbles), though dynamic evaluation and code bubble workspaces are still in development. And I'm pretty sure it won't cost me 300k to finish it. <http://blitzprog.org/>

<comment><USER3> That website is awful.

<comment><USER2> Alright, what do you want me to fix then?

<comment><USER4> Not the op, but some considerations:

The screenshot isn't readable, feels odd tacked on at the bottom, and if you click it, you don't get an enlarged version. This is a language, not an editor, right? That's what the title says. But where is the hello world? Where is the list of snippets to give you a feel for the language?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try to work on it. Both the language and the editor are currently in development (it's just an alpha version) but as a user you need to use the editor due to technical reasons (syntaxless). Of course you could write your own editor and just use bp as a standalone compiler but that would mean you need to develop an editor that can produce the generic XML output. I'm pretty sure nobody wants to do this so I'm working on a default IDE to make it more user-friendly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still can't believe people are paying this much attention to a glorified text editor.

<comment><USER6> As programmers, we spend most of our working time in glorified text editors (I'm using mostly Emacs at the moment, which that is certainly an apt description of). I guess it's natural to be excited about new alternatives for our primary tool.

<comment><USER7> Light table is a neat concept but there is a lot more to an efficient text editor than that one concept...

<comment><USER8> Psst, dont tell anybody, they are asking for money because they know a concept is not enougth and the need money to implment what you call 'a lot more'.

<comment><USER7> Good, so you understand that most of the problem is not this one concept. How does the one concept justify reinventing the wheel? There are several very good editors and IDEs. What is wrong with them?

<comment><USER9> They are just glorified text editors is what is wrong with them (to re-use your initial argument).

This concept/potential implementation has more syntactic intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would love to run Light Table on a Surface <http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/default.aspx> Feature request! :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> As if money would magically make hard things happen :)

Seriously, what if Python is specially hard to support for some reason? I feel if it was in the easy-to-medium-hard space, there would be a Slime port to Python, and if there isn't, its because its probably hard...

<comment><USER12> > Seriously, what if Python is specially hard to support for some reason?

Many of the cool features in LightTable are already supported by fancy python interpreters like iPython and bPython.

LightTable must either implement a Python parser and a partial interpreter/evaluator that is used to analyze call graphs and such or use the relevant parts from the Python core. Not a simple task to implement (and maintain) but most definitely doable.

<comment><USER13> What call graphs? Everything in python is call-by-name. `globals()['foo']` isn't exactly a very strong reference, and anyone can change it.

<comment><USER14> In practice, those things are hardly changed. When they are, users understand that the IDE might not be able to help them,

<comment><USER7> Yep, that kind of thing is pretty strongly discouraged anyway and as a Python programmer I definitely have never expected (say) lint tools to understand them. Life goes on, it's just not that important for getting things done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would be great, when they got android support (for tablet). And with an Bluetooth keyboard you could rock also a lot. I don't know how complicated this is, because of the dalvikJvm engine.

But this IDE is amazing, really nice. Would be great to get also Rubysupport (with plugins you can Rock this also i think).

Does anybody know if they are working with flash, opengl or something like that? The look remembers me on Adobe Air and i hope this is not their engine.

</comment><comment><USER16> Up next... Ruby!

How much I wonder? I can't decide whether it would be more complex than Python or less...

<comment><USER17> It seems like the difficulty would be relatively similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why does this project keep reminding me of Bitcoin?

<comment><USER19> In both cases, the potential for change is large. It's the adoption of the concept that will decide if it will change everything or remain a niche thing.</comment></comment>


A market for G-rated (kid-safe) social networks? 'My Secret Circle' - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=42933&tsp=1 <comment><USER2> The USB monetization model:

"...charging $19.99 for one My Secret Circle USB key, or a "B.F.F. Pack" with two keys for $29.99."</comment>


Show HN: Launching Namevine, Instant Domain & Social Media Vanity URL Search - <AUTHOR> http://blog.namevine.com/post/19214005056/introducing-namevine-instantly-find-your-domain-and

<comment><AUTHOR> As the developer behind Namevine I'm really looking forward to hearing feedback from the HN community.

The use-case Namevine is targeting is early in the brand creation / ideation stage of a product or business. I figure the startup types and entrepreneurs in the HN community might have some worthwhile insights that I could bake into v2 of the tool.

Criticism is welcomed too! :)</comment>


Show HN: Ply – a dynamic tracer for Linux - <AUTHOR> https://wkz.github.io/ply/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've now reached a point where the compiler reasonably stable and you can actually do some useful tracing with it.

For now, there's only kprobe/kretprobe and tracepoint support. uprobe/uretprobe support is at the top of the todo list.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is the pricing page the most common call to action? - <AUTHOR>

I am just wondering why most standard web 2.0 websites have the main call to action button on the homepage send the visitor to the pricing page?
This is assuming a pretty typical navigation structure for the site that includes a tour page. Even though ultimately you want the visitor to hit the pricing page and sign up, I would have thought the conversion rate would be higher if they went via the tour page first.
Why do people not have the tour page as the main call to action, with the tour page then trying to funnel them to the pricing page?
A good example is 37signals and http://www.basecamphq.com
Is this just a case of everyone following without questioning, or is there some solid logic/evidence behind it? <comment><USER2> I can't speak for everyone but most people should or hopefully do split testing (A/B testing) to figure out what is the best conversion rate for their landing page. It's the only best way to know what is optimal (or most optimal).</comment>


Redis official site not working because it cannot connect to a redis - <AUTHOR> https://redis.io/ <comment><USER2> Hi, sorry for the issue, the instance Redis.io runs on is very small and has only 1GB of memory, so the OOM killer killed the Redis instance. Normally this was not possible, because redis.io itself uses just a few keys, but lately I installed try.redis.io there, and apparently this uses a lot more keys, I'll have to monitor the keys usage and change the code in order to flush the old sessions faster. The current instance is costing 5$/mo at Digital Ocean, maybe I sent too cheap on this :-D But the idea was that I own everything and don't ask for expenses about Redis OSS official stuff, this was the idea back then. Now no longer makes sense in the new setups but still...

EDIT: just to be a bit safer I set a memory limit in the instance as well.

Btw if you see this as being not very professional, well _it is_ :-D The website was setup by a friend of mine in an afternoon once we upgraded the site to use SSL. I have access and do sysadmin tasks without knowing very well how it is configured (it uses systemd for instance, while I setup things differently usually in my machines). The instance was configured without even a proper configuration file, just a few parameters on the command line. The thing is: we handle this as a "community" thing. And after all considering the near zero-efforts, and the 5$ instance for many many years, it kinda works well.

Anyway all the content is public and open source... (see redis-io and redis- doc repositories), and all our releases are tagged on Github. So the site is not vital in case it goes down for some short time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since when dumping out stacktrace and surrounding source code and env is OK for the world to see?

<comment><USER4> "You're seeing this error because you use Rack::ShowExceptions."

Seems like somebody forgot to configure that...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would have been even more embarrassing if the Redis site was down with a MySQL error

<comment><USER6> Or memcached

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Archive for when this is inevitably fixed: [http://archive.is/icwry](http://archive.is/icwry)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a bit awkward, but a good reminder that actually 'embarrassing' show stopper bugs aren't necessarily as bad as you think.

As a result of this, here we all are, talking about and thinking about redis. I know I wouldn't have otherwise. It's funny, but stuff like this can turn out to be a net _positive_ once you're over that feeling of 'argh, production went down!' :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> At least we know they eat their own dog food :-) Hopefully there will be a good post mortem.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sub-pages work, so you can still read the docs at [https://redis.io/documentation](https://redis.io/documentation)

EDIT: Seems that page was cached, it's one of the only ones still working.

</comment><comment><USER11> I hit refresh like for a solid minute continually & it loaded fine now.

</comment><comment><USER12> It works alright for me, it loads Redis News.

</comment><comment><USER13> at least they're dog fooding.

</comment><comment><USER14> Working right now. Guess they fixed it

</comment><comment><USER15> isn't the guy from italy, is this related to other news ?

<comment><USER16> He is, but it's not. He explains here: [https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1238132866682359813](https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1238132866682359813)

(He also has a comment above, but this has slightly more detail.)</comment></comment>