Why a veteran web developer finally turned to OS-native apps - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/06/01/going-native-why-a-veteran-web-developer-finally-turned-to-os-native-apps/ <comment><USER2> The primary advantage of a web platform for webby, desktop and mobile applications is to be able to write one set of code that works on all devices.

It seems strange to me that so many young developers don't seem to comprehend why that is a big advantage.

I want to code in CoffeeScript and use nice simple APIs.

I'm sorry but Objective-C is outdated and overly complex. The only reason people accept and even learn to love it is because if you are an Apple person you have to. You have no choice in the matter. Its like people in North Korea have to love their Dear Father Leader or something.

I'm sure the Android Java libraries are much better than before, but they are still based on what I consider to be a dated type of development. The framework APIs are inferior and constantly specifying types is unnecessary.

To me CoffeeScript with Node.js modules are the state of the art in terms of language design, dependency management, and API design.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I think the case for web gets even more compelling with Meteor, where you can really share components across both sides of the wire.

As I alluded to at the end, the web case makes a lot of sense for companies with unique services who want to roll out across platforms. e.g. If you're a corporate insurance broker, you have a few hundred users who just want some conveniences from native apps, that's a good case for HTML5.

Another example I saw recently is an agency making "viral" apps. Just one-time apps for short contests and so on, and they can do a great job with HTML5.

Deep-level integration though needs native, whether you like Obj-C or not.

<comment><USER2> Yes Meteor is very amazing. Of course they have another HTML5 thing in WebRTC that when it becomes well supported (actually fairly soon in Firefox and Chrome) has peer-to-peer data capabilities that for many applications supersede server-based models. Of course, I know that for some applications, that won't be workable, and there are problems to solve, but I believe that most of the problems with synchronization and data ownership have reasonable solutions in peer environments.

I am still hoping that PhoneGap/Cordova will work out ok for my next 'native' app. Have you found that it isn't adequate?

<comment><USER3> I'm the OP, so yes, I found it inadequate :). For a podcast app, even using PhoneGap (rather than browser-based web app) would lead to several issues:

* Hard or impossible to do rich, interactive widgets, notifications, and lock-screen in HTML5

* Unclear path for downloading and saving large files. (Might be possible, but again would need native bridges or native code; forget about Ajax and offline HTML5 storage.)

* Mediocre UI. If you work hard at it, you can build a reasonable UI, but one of the feedbacks we got from reviews and reporters is how they like the way we implemented Android's Holo look-and-feel. A lot of people feel an emotional attachment to their OS and appreciate apps that fit within the guidelines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Discoverability and system integration are huge problems, sure, but Cordova mostly addresses these concerns.

The reason everyone always cites for going native is "performance", but, tbh, it seems like most web projects don't pay attention to the same level of detail as native apps because the web is so much faster to prototype. I bet if devs spent the same amount of time working on perf and loading states on the web as they did on native, the performance argument would have much less impact.

<comment><USER5> There are entire types of things not possible in web apps, such as true threading with a dedicated processor, accessing OpenGL accelerator support with custom shaders, getting at purposeful hardware support in general, whose reason for existence was cumulative need over more apps for more years than JavaScript and doms have existed.

<comment><USER6> The great big bullet point features (like OpenGL) are getting added. It's the small, subtle features that are being neglected.

The test case that I'd like to see is someone replacing notepad.exe with a webapp in such a way that an end user cannot tell that a change has been done. It's the Turing test of usability. Web Apps can do an excellent editor, but the finer details like (associate *.txt, save, save-as etc.) are still a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I understand that attempting to write once, run everywhere doesn't make for a good user experience. For the best experience, it will probably always be necessary to develop a different front-end for each platform.

However, what does one do for logic that belongs on the user's 'device (i.e. client-side) and will be the same on all platforms? Especially considering that one of the targeted platforms may well be the Web.

One solution is to use the Xamarin suite for native targets, and something like Script# or JSIL for the Web. Of course, Script# and JSIL can only support a subset of .NET functionality, e.g. no shared-memory threads and therefore no blocking APIs (unless one of these compilers can transform code into continuation-passing style). Another possible solution is Haxe, which can compile to JS, Java, and C++ among others. The trouble with both of these solution is that when working on the Web version of the app, one has to know both the Web stack and the other language.

It seems to me that the best solution is to write all platform-independent client code in JavaScript, minimizing the use of browser APIs for that code (e.g. only XHR and setTimeout). Then, for the native mobile versions of the app, integrate a JS engine (note: not a web view), find or write stand-alone implementations of XHR and whatever other APIs one needs, then write the front-end in the native language for that platform.

Any thoughts on this? For native mobile apps, are we stuck rewriting _everything_ in ObjC and Java, and maybe also writing a JS version for the web?

<comment><USER8> In case you missed it, this made it onto the front page a while ago: [http://www.steamclock.com/blog/2013/05/apple-objective-c- jav...](http://www.steamclock.com/blog/2013/05/apple-objective-c-javascript- bridge/)

So there are some signs that you might (eventually) get what you want.

It will be interesting to see if anything related gets announced next week at WWDC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The idea that you have to be a "native person" or a "web person" is ridiculous. Let's just use the tools that make the most sense for the project at hand.

<comment><USER3> The idea that you have to be a "law person" or a "medicine person" is ridiculous. Let's just use the tools that make the most sense for the project at hand.

<comment><USER10> Uhm what? If you are law person you deal with law, if you are medicine person you deal with diseases. How does this apply to the situation where you deal with apps, only done using different tools?

<comment><USER3> It's all specialisation and one human mind can only do so many things. The web side alone is vast now. It's a common conversation in the web community about how a new developer is supposed to pick everything up.

I agree if you're a company, you can't afford to turn your nose at one or the other. But there's few unicorns who can build excellent apps in all of web, Android, and iOS. And despite a lot of software mythology, I don't believe most programmers can just learn a platform in a few days, not to be seriously capable at it.

<comment><USER11> I actually thought you were being serious in your previous post. Humans cannot specialize in everything, but we can do _a lot_ more than just one thing.

<comment><USER12> In my experience, people who claim to do both iOS and Android development well vastly overestimate their abilities. At the highest levels, writing an iOS or Android app is like being a game developer and pushing the platform to its limits (in a non-hacky way). To attack the problem of smooth scrolling, ~60fps on a list (especially one doing async fetches and/or database and/or complex cell layouts) requires different experience and knowledge on each platform. To build a beautiful app (not an average app) on either platform, requires almost a craftsman-level touch and level of care. To attack the problem of data synchronization... don't go there (just use Parse)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We're currently making a HTML5 web app that works in Chrome and iOS Safari.

It's an audio app (SpeakerBlast) where you sync the same audio across devices; used to amplify audio amongst friends or throughout your IP devices for gatherings, flash mobs & playing audio throughout your home!

We feel it's easier for to tell your friends to go to this link to join in then, "Hey download this app so we can all play audio in sync."

No doubt that the current market says native apps, but this will change within two to three years. Web technologies are catching up in regards to what can be achieved via Android (specifically Chrome) and Apple mobile web browsers.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. URLs are the #1 feature of the web that native apps are lacking.

The second being metadata and search engine indexability of the content.

<comment><USER3> It's not entirely true that native apps can't deal with URLs. On Android, they can handle them well with intents and on iOS, they can at least open URLs of a certain protocol.

The main issue is that the receiving user probably doesn't have the actually app. That's the benefit of web presence from a sharing/virality perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wrote this HN mobile client in less than 3 weekends. it works on Android, iOS and wp8. Also works on all desktop browsers. It took less than 2 weekends, but new chrome on android is a big pain in the ass. Had to rewrite part of it to make it work on latest android chrome.

<http://hn.premii.com>

Also, available on android app store. <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn>

It's not easy, but I think you can write very good mobile web app using HTML5 that works on all major platforms.

Just don't use any frameworks/libraries. They are quite slow on mobile devices.

<comment><USER15> I'm on Windows Phone 8 and that is beautiful, thank you! Very nice work. How are you getting the articles in your UI?

Also, is there no meta tag to designate a WP8 tile image when pinned to the start screen?

<comment><USER14> I have favicon, and tile for windows 8 and neither works for wp8. I googled it but couldn't find anything regarding wp8 website tile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It all depends on what kind of app you're building. Lots of people are telling me most apps are crap and they say they use no more than 5 - 10 apps : Mail, Maps, Messages, Camera, Twitter, Music and the browser. If you're building a podcast app, then you should absolutely build a native app.

</comment><comment><USER17> For me, the big gap between native and web is in UI. Performance is a solvable issue with either Javascript-native bridges or just devices getting faster. Even ignoring the Android/iOS "look", I've yet to come across an HTML5-based framework that can be used to build a complicated user interface with the same usability as native development. Cordova's great for what it is, but it's still a tool designed to wrap web app in a thin native shell, not a framework designed from the ground up to create a strong mobile UI/UX

<comment><USER18> You can build any UI with SVG [ so your app = svg + javascript ]

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The web is very good for some things - its primary role is that of a giant online encyplopedia that is constantly updated and transformed. It enables digital collaboration.

This is in fact very close to Vannevar Bush's idea of the memex.

But we are trying too hard to make it good at something that we already have a good solution for. People forget how much software runs natively, from medical devices, to airplane and missile control, to celestial navigation and radio astronomy.

Theres no good reason to webify many of these areas. Ultimately its not the web vs native. The web is a way for me to write better native software, through the practice of digital collaboration. It makes possible a new way of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER20> However the web is a great way to start/test user response to a product. For start-ups with minimal resources and wanting to build the way they know how (using web technologies), there are now great integrations with 'native' mobile features, like the camera and music controls.

For a great example, check out the web version of the article's featured app <http://player.FM>

<comment><USER3> Yes, absolutely. The article's main purpose is to make the native argument, but there are still many benefits of the web approach, and fast iteration is one of them.

And not just because of the store submission process (which only takes a few hours in Android's case anyway). HTML5 has such a rich set of resources, as well as great desktop browser environments, that it can be a super-fast way to get projects going. Thanks to Backbone, Angular, etc, and in the future Web Components, it's easier to scale the architecture too.

Notice all of these benefits are centered around developer experience. User experience is the biggest gap right now.

<comment><USER21> > Notice all of these benefits are centered around developer experience. User > experience is the biggest gap right now.

From all the benefits of web technologies, "developer experience" is the worst one.

Developing (good) UIs using web technologies is an exercise in masochism. It's forever piling hacks and finding new frameworks to bend a browser to do what you need (a broken model). Then, worry about cross-compatibility.

Someone proficient in XCode is likely ten times more efficient and produces a more polished result with much less pain.

<comment><USER22> I have been doing mostly web during the early dot com days (1999-2001), returning to it around 2008.

With every project the conviction that the web cannot move away from the wild west development style grows on me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So embrace and extends tactics of closed platforms attracts people not willing to wait for the standard process to work its way to the same results, slowing it down in the process and jeopardizing the future of the open web?

<comment><USER24> The web has been around for over two decades. In less than two decades since the Altair 8800, we were programming on NeXTSTEP / OpenStep, Mac OS, and Window 95. There is no current IDE for the web or web standard that can do what we did in 1995 much less 2013. That's why developers are using iOS / Android native apps. Open doesn't matter if I cannot ship what I want and get the user experience I want. It is actually easier to hit all the mobile platforms than do a web app of equivalent functionality. Add to that all the capabilities native apps have over web apps (hey look, sensors) and you get the desire. This doesn't even count the assurances graphic designers have going native.

Perhaps, it really is time to look at something past the web for app development and let the [edit] web [edit] go back to displaying documents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One should be able to compile a web app into a downloadable package, with capabilities to run the app completely offline. Until that web will always be second best to fully native. Performance is getting close enough though.

<comment><USER26> Cordova works excellently for adding offline use to web apps, until the day that such features are successfully baked into web standards and operating systems.

"The ultimate purpose of PhoneGap is to cease to exist."

[http://phonegap.com/2012/05/09/phonegap-beliefs-goals-and- ph...](http://phonegap.com/2012/05/09/phonegap-beliefs-goals-and-philosophy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm a fan of the statement made at the end of this article .. which to me boils down to that

A mobile web presence is very important and shouldn't be ignored but if you're going to distribute something as a native app it's silly to build it entirely in a WebView

also it's wise to never forget that technology changes so fast neither of these current platforms will be the same in 2-3 years .. so really just pick something and go</comment>


Mark Cuban: The Student Loan Bubble Is Going To Burst - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-student-loan-bubble-2014-6

<comment><USER2> I was trawling through r/personalfinance and it doesn't take long before the above starts to ring true.</comment>


Research confirms screen time is hurting children's school performance - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/816454/how-much-time-should-kids-use-smartphones-research-confirms-screen-time-and-video-games-hurt-childrens-school-performance/ <comment><USER3> Kids who spend 8 hours doing any one activity - screen or otherwise - <USER2> find little time to do much of anything else...</comment>


Ask YC Startups: How is the economy treating you? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious what the ecosystem looks like from the YC folks. Are you getting hit hard? Do you agree with PG's sentiment that it's a fine time to start? <comment><USER2> I run a small business ($150k/year gross with decent margins) and am building to move markets as I don't like our primary market and think we can do a better job elsewhere. I've noticed a fall-off in recurring revenue with a lot of people mentioning needing to "cut back". The cancel rate on recurring services was about double normal for August and September, but was back to normal in October. Might just be noise though... Personal note, I don't have much money in the financial markets, but a bit of retirement investing spread between Southeast Asia, China, and Starbucks. Total portfolio down 41%. Yuck but whatever, it should be fine decades from now. Business still seems healthy, but we run ultra-lean and focus on margins and amazing products/services anyways. I reckon a lot of "alternative to expensive stuff" businesses could actually thrive in this climate.</comment>


Space smugglers: How Russian cosmonauts sneak booze into outer space - <AUTHOR> https://www.rbth.com/science_and_tech/2017/04/12/space-smugglers-how-russian-cosmonauts-sneak-booze-into-outer-space_740566 <comment><AUTHOR> _" We were amazed when the next cosmonauts returned to Earth and told us they had finished the cognac! How? They had devised a method – one cosmonaut floated to the ceiling and grasped the flask with his teeth and the second hit him on the head. The first descended and the liquid by nature of inertia spilled into his mouth. Then they changed places."_

The more you know.</comment>


I banned email at my company - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/life-at-primeloop/putting-email-in-its-place-27757946d9fe

<comment><USER2> The problems with email in this article are nearly the same as those given by Klink founder Leerom Segal in an INC magazine article about _Outlawing Email_. Though Klink opted to build their own workflow management system to address these issues.

[http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/the-company-that-outlawed- emai...](http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/the-company-that-outlawed-email.html)

Key highlights from INC article:

>"While email makes for a decent communication tool with clients, internally it doesn't facilitate collaboration and basic workflow. Email has no intelligent mechanisms for prioritization, lacks context, lacks a framework for knowledge management, and saps accountability."

>"We've all been on an e-mail thread where people are answering questions but really just creating more confusion," Segal says, "or maybe referencing some missing yet critical attachment. So we looked for tools to help us better manage our basic workflow."

>Knowledge can get lost in a person's mailbox and prioritization is basically nonexistent since inboxes assume that most recent equals most important.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for sharing that draker! Digging around for other gems I can steal!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So because other organisations use email for which it isn't really suited, you "banned" email?

Also, another point to think of: when one of those tools you use go away, how do you salvage your progress / information? It's not bad to try to minimize email usage, but I do find it bad to rely on external services for such critical stuff (meaning the documents with information).

Why not use a selfhosted option? That way you can be sure that it won't go away anytime soon.

<comment><USER3> We also tend to execute daily on the concept of "Done is Better than Best." We would certainly look into some kind of self hosted option if/when we need to set up our own wiki. Hackpad was simply faster and "done."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does your company (or the company you work for) send letters? - <AUTHOR>

Just doing a bit of research. Interested in the following bits of information:
1. Whether you own the company or are an employee
2. Rough number of employees
3. How many letters you send per month + as much info you can spare about the content
4. Country you're based in
5. As much info as you can spare about what your company does
Much appreciated :-) <comment><USER2> It would be helpful if you could be more specific about what you consider a "letter." Does that include bills, marketing pieces and alike or is it just one-to-one written communications?

<comment><AUTHOR> Anything that is sent by mail in an envelope or on a postcard. Not a parcel, however.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I built a platform for scripting your own Bitcoin trading bot in Python - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN. I built my own automated Bitcoin trading bot and noticed that many others want to do the same thing, but lack the coding skills required for the harder stuff, like order execution and backtesting.
I like the idea of making automated trading more accessible to existing day traders as well as newcomers. Hopefully this will also inspire some people to learn to code. We're currently in private beta, but please check out the site below. Feedback is more than welcome.
http://tradewave.net <comment><USER2> I'm very interested. I've thought of bitcoin bots but haven't had the time really get into it yet.

just a couple of questions:

How long is it between ticks?

How easily will it be to get money in or out of your system?

Is there any long term storage assigned to the bots? (something that will survive a server reset)

Edit: I just realized that the example uses a storage variable. Can you give me details about that (how large, stable, secure, etc it is)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for checking it out.

 _How long is it between ticks?_

This will be customizable with values in the region of 5 mins, 10 mins, 30 mins etc. We'll be experimenting with this in the beta.

 _How easily will it be to get money in or out of your system?_

We don't hold any funds. Your exchange gives you API keys that you configure with us, so that we can make trades on your behalf.

 _Is there any long term storage assigned to the bots?_

Yes, we plan to persist all the necessary state in case the server goes down.

The 'storage' variable is just a reference to a subclassed dict with some extra functionality like dot-notation. We'll probably pickle it (or something similar) for persistence, which should mean that it can handle a fair amount of data thrown at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice project! Will users be limited to a single exchange?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The plan is to support most of the main ones (Mtgox, BTC-e, Bitstamp, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks good, I'll try it, thanks for sharing.</comment>


Simplify Stream Processing in Python and Wallaroo Using Docker - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wallaroolabs.com/2017/12/simplify-stream-processing-in-python-and-wallaroo-using-docker/ <comment><USER2> Hi, I'm the author of this blog post. If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to answer.</comment>


Ask HN: Does HN know if 30 results per page is optimal? - <AUTHOR> Have they (you?) ever experimented with this to see what would happen? <comment><USER2> Optimal for what?</comment>


Daughter of Tiger Mom responds to controversy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/why_love_my_strict_chinese_mom_uUvfmLcA5eteY0u2KXt7hM

<comment><USER2> Probably the wrong crowd considering HN's readership is probably too young to worry about raising kids... But, as a father of 2 little ones, this "tiger mom" concept is very intriguing to me.

I don't think there's any doubt these kids will be successful in whatever they choose to do. My question (and probably for many westerners too): is this education the best way to raise happy individuals? There seems to be a big divide between most well-off Asian families and most educated Western families when it comes to what is the most important thing in life. No doubt there is a correlation between being happy and successful but one hardly guarantees the other.

<comment><USER3> "I don't think there's any doubt these kids will be successful in whatever they choose to do."

Based on what? Academic performance through high school? The ability to play the piano? Are these really good predictors of success?

<comment><USER4> No, the ability to pour absurd amounts of time and effort into things that you despise, because it's good for you in the long run.

That's how I felt as a Chinese kid growing up anyways - there are a fuckton of things that your parents will force upon you that seem arbitrary, boring, or downright aggravating, but you have to power through it anyways and still give 100%. Or else. This has proven to be useful in the long run for me.

It's not entirely without negative consequences, though. What is traditionally deemed "useful" in a Chinese family can be extremely limiting. I spent the better part of college learning social cues and human interaction that I honestly should've picked up by age 12, and my folks weren't nearly quite as restrictive as Tiger Mom herself!

Even now I'm just starting to explore the arts and my own creativity - something that has basically been trained out of me since birth. It's tough going.

IMHO the stereotypical Chinese family optimizes its success metric in a very limiting way: money. If you follow Tiger Mom's formula, you are probably going to end up with a stable, high-income job, but are going to end up emotionally pretty miserable. As a Chinese immigrant it's something I've seen again and again far too often in my own community.

I can't speak for all Chinese, but having been raised in a Tiger-Mom-esque way, and enjoyed the fruits of its success, I find that I'm spending a large portion of my income these days fixing what my upbringing broke.

<comment><USER5> David Brooks wrote a column which addressed some of the social issues you mentioned:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/opinion/18brooks.html>

I found it pretty interesting, and it's contributed to my growing respect for Brooks.

<comment><USER2> "Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls." Love it. Finally something he and I agree on...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not surprising the daughter feels this way. This phenomenon has been studied in depth.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome>

<comment><USER4> I really don't like being so blunt/snarky/rude on HN, but your comment really irks me.

You are commenting on something you have no experience with, nor intimate knowledge of, and your only exposure to it a sensationalized book (or worse, even more sensationalized and hyperbolic _stories_ about said book).

The Tiger Mom thing is not immune from criticism - far from it, but to insinuate that children that grew up in such families are abused and suffering from Stockholm Syndrome is _incredibly_ insulting. You've essentially dismissed all of the complexities of the issue by hand-waving and saying that their opinions are invalid, they don't know what they're talking about, and they're all just suffering from a psychological disorder.

I'm trying really hard to stay civil here. But please, _get a fucking clue_ before dropping statements like these and tossing around claims of child abuse.

<comment><USER6> I enjoyed your post. It does demonstrate that Tiger mom raised Chinese kids lack any ability to understand humor, being far too uptight and serious about stuff.

<comment><USER4> Sorry for failing to catch on to your attempt at humor, especially when there are multiple other posters in the thread, expressing the same view, who clearly _aren't_ kidding. I apologize for failing to make light of a situation that seems to be inspiring a whole new round of anti-Chinese racism.

And thank you for the ad hominem, it's really what I've come to expect from a place like HN.

<comment><USER6> I enjoyed your post. It does demonstrate that Tiger mom raised Chinese kids lack any ability to understand gentle ribbing, being far too uptight and serious about stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 18 is too young to know for sure whether the parenting style accomplished something.

</comment><comment><USER8> People gave the Tiger Mom death threats? Really? Come on people.

<comment><USER9> It's the internet. Almost anything controversial and widely covered will net you death threats from weirdos.

<comment><USER10> Is there a named law for that? If not, there should be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> John Derbyshire wrote an interesting review of the book and general claims both ways: [http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/HumanSciences/tigermo...](http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/HumanSciences/tigermom.html)

Two telling quotes from his article:

 _Professor Chua's article was a bracing rebuttal to the sappy-clappy "we're all special" sentimentality that is too prevalent in American child-raising. Her methods worked, too, at least in meeting her own goals: Her daughters are straight-A students, and one has played piano at Carnegie Hall. Probably we American parents should practice more tough love with our kids and fuss less about their self-esteem. Few of us would disagree with observations like: "Nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work." And assuming "strength, not fragility" concurs with current scientific understanding of the child's psyche. They are indeed tough little critters._

And later:

 _Children need some nagging and supervision, but they also need freedom to explore, to discover their own interests and aptitudes. We may, in our current child-raising practices, have over-emphasized self-esteem and self-discovery, but that does not make these notions nugatory. Children are entitled to a childhood, with frequent spells of play, idleness, and freedom from hovering adults._

</comment><comment><USER12> Tiger Moms disgust me. We are born once, we live this life once and after about 70-80 yrs we are dead buried in the ground as our flesh slowly rots away. To waste that small amount of time you have on this planet pursuing success in this ridiculous way is disappointing. There is a reason why asian countries like Japan where the tigar mom phenomenon is a way of life has one of the highest suicide rate in the world. As cliche as that sounds I'd rather have my kid enjoy the childhood and grow up work as a waitress for $15/hr and be happy than working the kid like a dog, have them grow up to be a doctor making millions.

I read part of the book and was completely disgusted by it. This person should be arrested for child abuse and thrown in a Russian gulag and see how it feels when the shoe is on the other foot!

<comment><USER4> Relax. I've seen both sides of the issue - westernized Chinese guy who grew up under a Tiger Mom-esque "regime". It's really not as bad as your mind seems to be making it out to be.

Also, your association between Tiger Mom styles of raising children and suicide rate is pretty specious, and if you'd pardon me for saying so, looks like an outsider with no context making wild accusations. For one thing, Tiger Mom is Chinese, and yet the suicide epidemic is largely limited to Japan.

If Tiger Mom styles of raising children existed in both China and Japan, yet the suicide problem largely contained to Japan, it would seem to suggest that it is not to blame for the high suicide rate.

Also, the "work like a dog, doctor making millions" vs. "great childhood, $15/hr waitress" is really a false dichotomy. Most Chinese people who grow up under a Tiger Mom environment _don't_ end up making millions, and similarly most children who had a more liberal/free childhood _don't_ end up busing tables.

I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed in Amy Chua for being so overly sensationalistic in her book and promotion thereof. I'm not sure if her mother approves of the extreme, polarizing way in which she is being presented to the world. The typical Chinese childhood is characterized by extremely high expectations, but in and of itself it does not entail abuse or even really misery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is she really as strict as she claims in the article? To what extent was she trolling? She promoted her book big time. Can her daughter cash in too?

</comment><comment><USER14> [http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/William_Butler_Yeats/3...](http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/William_Butler_Yeats/3388)</comment>


Revealing Algorithmic Rankers - <AUTHOR> https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/jstoyanovich/revealing-algorithmic-rankers/ <comment><USER3> I've been thinking all the recent hostility towards algorithms - <USER2> ProPublica's deliberate lies about them which are cited by this very article ([https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying....](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying.html)) - and what might be motivating it.

I have the following theory. Consider the proposition of formalism - the idea that the stated public rules must, in fact, drive the expression of political power. It's pretty clear that we don't live in a world governed by formalism. As one example, intimately related to many of the critiques of algorithmic decisionmaking, we claim to favor individual fairness (the proposition that individuals should be judged on their own individual merits) yet in practice we push for equality of outcomes (the proposition that processes should make decisions that do not vary across certain reference classes).

However, algorithmic decisionmaking _actually implements formalism_. If you tell an algorithm to predict which student is most likely to graduate college, or which loan applicant is most likely to repay, the algorithm will do exactly that to the best of it's ability given the available data.

In many cases, the algorithm will even correct bias in it's inputs: [https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/alien_intelligences_...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/alien_intelligences_and_discriminatory_algorithms.html)

But the thing is, the formalist output of algorithms is not necessarily in agreement with what political power _actually_ does in the real world. For example, political power in the world strives to have proportional representation of different racial groups in college, yet algorithms aiming to predict grades/graduation probabilities would actively penalize blacks (who underperform relative to what a race-neutral model predicts).

As such, algorithms are a huge threat to existing power structures, because they both implement formalism and they also reveal the lies behind our existing stated principles.

I'd love to hear what others think about this theory.

<comment><USER4> There's no reason to think that the bulk of women or black people would have different merits than the bulk of white men. So when we see those outcomes diverging, we assume that some something other than individual merits caused it and we act to bring the outcomes back in line with the assumed-equal merits. In other words, forcing equality of outcomes is just supposed to be correcting for some external thing that does not treat people according to merits.

<comment><USER3> I'm aware of the theory. But algorithms are another way to formally provide equality of opportunity.

The algo formally encodes "admit the best students" or "give out loans to the best credit risks". That's what it does. Maybe your ad-hoc procedure will be reproduced, maybe not.

My belief is that "equality of opportunity" is a lie, just a smokescreen to gain equal outcomes, and automated formalism is a threat to this.

<comment><USER4> Your algorithm would take literally any form of discrimination that had been applied to a student so far in their lives as a signal to discriminate against them even further. It wouldn't look at the reasons a student's grades were low and consider whether it was their "merits".

<comment><USER3> Yes, if your actual goal is some sort of compensation for historical wrongs, you need to openly admit that and formally encode it in your algorithm.

That's formalism.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm Alexis Ohanian + I'd like to be your mentor (+ fund all BK STEM classrooms) - <AUTHOR> http://prizeo.com/prizes/alexis/a-years-mentorship

<comment><USER2> ooo shittttt... this is going to be awesome and its for a great cause. we need more of these peps in the world.</comment>


Financial tech is just hard - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jakefuentes/financial-tech-is-just-hard-c937cc20e148

<comment><USER2> It's important not to fetishize technology here.

I would look at the case of Uber. Yes, they were early with a mobile app, but it is the business model that is interesting (particularly the variable pricing.) It would not be hard for other companies in the taxi space to duplicate the app, but Uber is willing to fight city hall on every city on the planet and that is what makes them Uber.</comment>


This Startup Stranded Customers Overseas with No Refunds - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/we-roam-s-death-stranded-its-customers-overseas-with-no-refunds <comment><USER2> HN original spiel:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11714255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11714255)

</comment><comment><USER3> How on earth is this even legal? Or ethical for that matter?</comment>


Machine Learning in Monitoring Is BS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@moonpolysoft/machine-learning-in-monitoring-is-bs-134e362faee2 <comment><USER2> We are still a good 5 years from any real benefit of machine learning and AI systems. So much research needs to be done still. All the bots we are creating a cool toys, but any real impact is still years ago. We need the Einstein of ML to find his theory of relativity.

</comment><comment><USER3> ML may very well be overhyped and oversold in this domain (as it is many others). But to call it BS is a sophomoric oversimplification, to say the least. And for helping people sort out the various rather nuanced technical issues involved, not very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER4> Machine Learning has a lot to answer for. Look at all the people who use the NIST digits and then go looking for cases where people try something similar with some other characters and you will start to wonder if it would work if you tried something else.

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe Numenta Grok[0] tries to do exactly that: applying ML to monitoring. Anyone knows if it works?

[0]: [http://numenta.com/grok/](http://numenta.com/grok/)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects? - <AUTHOR> Hello all,<p>I've been trying to find some sort of solution to manage various personal projects that I've been working on - creating todo list and goals, creating a list for future projects, that sort of thing. I've tried Trello for a bit, as well as learning Org mode and traditional todo software, but nothing really caught my eye. I'm curious to see what people here use for management. <comment><USER2> Still mostly pen and paper (notebook).</comment>


Steven Spielberg Is Writing a Streaming Series You Can Only Watch at Night - <AUTHOR> https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/06/steven-spielberg-is-writing-a-streaming-series-you-can-only-watch-at-night/ <comment><USER2> This is interesting. It looks like this will be designed for short series content. I'm curious if this type of strategy has been tried for other types of content?</comment>


How did classical music in movies and TV become synonymous with villainy? - <AUTHOR> https://theamericanscholar.org/the-sound-of-evil/#.XIuVuRNKjOS <comment><USER2> > _It was not always this way. Once, classical music was the backbone of > American popular entertainment. Enrico Caruso's rendition of the aria "Vesti > la giubba" from the opera Pagliacci was the first record to sell a million > copies. Looney Tunes lampooned The Barber of Seville's "Largo al factotum, > "..._

This is changing the goalposts. The article talks about "serious" classical music associated with evil characters... then uses two light-hearted comic operas as a counterpoint? Sure, technically both classical, but as far away from each other as you could get.

Look, this isn't mysterious. _Rich_ people are associated with evil in films, and their stereotypical "too-good" pursuits -- mansions, opera halls, tuxedos, and yes, classical music.

> _Maybe millennials are repelled by classical music not for coherent reasons > but by a vague sense of mistrust, nourished for decades by movies and > media._

This is ridiculous for a million reasons. It's simple, and I say this as someone who has studied classical music for many years (including conducting): classical music isn't that much _fun_ , compared to so many other options today. The kind of people who like classical music are the kind of people who enjoy watching documentaries or reading Shakespeare. It's high-effort, high- reward for a particular kind of person.

<comment><USER3> > reading Shakespeare

This is pretty funny considering the connotation of Shakespeare's works at the time.

Something similar with video games in more recent times. Playing NES games has a slightly high-brow -- or at least higher-status -- connotation, compared to when the games were new. Now they're _retro_ , which means playing them or similar games is more serious or something. Whereas back in their heyday, they were seen as almost entirely the domain of nerdy little boys, a silly thing for silly children.

<comment><USER2> > _This is pretty funny considering the connotation of Shakespeare 's works at > the time._

Well that's because, of course, at the time Shakespeare was highly accessible! The language was everyone's native language, and the cultural references were current.

Today it's basically a foreign language that requires a lot more effort to comprehend at a reasonable level, and a ton of cultural allusions that aren't part of our background anymore.

<comment><USER4> At an 8 year old kid I was uncontrollably laughing at one Shakespearean play. Like modern movies targeting families you don't need to understand everything to enjoy them. They are not meant to be read, and most people are just exposed to the boring crap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is one of those cases where the analysis is waaaaay too smart for the subject material. There's a lot of stuff in Hollywood where it's just cargo culting something that worked once. We have good reason to believe this is the case because it also has a long history of anti-cargo-culting things that failed once. You can see this whenever you have movies that killed an entire genre for 5 or 10 years, only for that genre to explode in success later (superhero movies I believe have been through that cycle twice now), or for some really good movie to surprise its way on to the scene only to be followed by a ton of crap copying only the most superficial aspects of the successful product ("apparently, people really like found footage movies where you can't see anything, so shake that camera even more").

It turns out Hollywood isn't particularly good at understanding what the root causes of a movie's success or failure is, so there's a lot of cargo culting, and cultural shortcuts.

As for how it started, I think it was just a simple class signifier, used for incongruity's sake. (Itself something that Hollywood has cargo culted; incongruity is a powerful tool but IMHO it's more than just jamming things together that don't seem to belong, which is done a lot. There's thought that can be put into what is being incongruous and why.)

(Note this isn't a terribly strong criticism of the article, it's more a terribly strong criticism of Hollywood. Sometimes a subject matter just doesn't have enough strength to support a careful analysis in the first place.)

<comment><USER6> > There's a lot of stuff in Hollywood where it's just cargo culting something > that worked once.

> cargo culting, and cultural shortcuts.

You've just described "cliché", an unavoidable component of any industrial art.

The article explains that very same thing when it argues that Kubrick's "The Clockwork Orange" started the trend.

<comment><USER7> Not quite. The person you're responding to is talking about the motivations and beliefs that lead to the clichés, not the things themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Classical music in film and tv more commonly signals erudition, not simply villainy. When there is a class conflict involved In film, the higher class characters are more commonly the villains, and an appreciation for classical music signals their remoteness.

Philadelphia uses Hanks' appreciation for opera to signal his class status, not villainy. Silence of the Lambs uses music and food same way.

Making the direct hop to villainy is too simplistic, and pointing fingers at Clockwork Orange is absurd. That film's synthesized classical music is used to draw a parallel between the commodification of violence and the commodification of culture more broadly.

<comment><USER9> ...and to create what was, at the time, a stark juxtaposition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Overall, this was fairly interesting until the end. The author very loosely questions whether the association of classical music to villainy is the real reason behind the lagging attendance of millenials in the symphony scene. The piece cites several anecdotal cases, but I couldn't think of a single one from memory that supports this idea. My first thought was Fantasia, which really doesn't fall into this argument.

I grew up as a music student and loved going to the symphony as a kid, so I'm not necessarily the target audience here. But the one thing I notice when I go these days is that sitting through an entire performance challenges my attention span much, much more than it used to.

It's a common theme I've seen around HN, particularly with reading. The symphony isn't really a visual experience (unless they're showing video, which is becoming more common), and it can be really difficult to sit through sometimes, especially if you don't love the music. There are a couple of symphonies I love to listen to all the way, but most have a few exciting themes with several minutes of "meh" in between them IMO.

<comment><USER11> Yes, the article is definitely overgeneralizing from a number of anecdotes, imho. While I tend to agree with the notion that classical music tends to signal a certain remoteness -- thus correlating with villainy -- that's not its _only_ use in movies.

One example: I recall when Star Wars came out, a lot of my friends bought the soundtrack. It served as sort of a gateway to classical music. It's hard to measure, of course, but I'd bet that that had a larger positive impact on classical attendance than, say, Hannibal Lector killing people to Bach's Goldberg Variations had a negative one.

To your lack of visual stimuli hypothesis, I'd also add as other more likely drivers of classical's decline:

a) Live classical music is expensive and getting more so.

b) Sound quality in a concert hall is _different_ than via digital means. It doesn't wash over you like it does when listening via your Bose headphones. It's less visceral and more distant. And you have to tune out the other sounds of coughing, people shifting in their seats, etc...

c) And finally, we have the _best_ recordings of any work available on demand. In economic terms, that creates really cheap substitutes. Speaking for myself, I'd rather just listen to the Vienna Philharmonic on the couch for free than dress up, drive across town, find parking, and pay $100+ to hear the Austin Symphony play the same work.

<comment><USER12> > I recall when Star Wars came out, a lot of my friends bought the soundtrack. > It served as sort of a gateway to classical music.

Same for my generation w/r/t the soundtrack to 2001

<comment><USER13> Except that 2001 was already existing as classical music. (Strauss and maybe others.)

<comment><USER14> That's not up for debate, really here--is it? Rather the pointed argument seems to be that for some of a certain age group, their exposure to the genre was Star Wars. It seems merely in this case, yours was a different movie.

Besides that, there's an important difference between 2001 and Star Wars: 2001 utilized _existing_ classical scores that are excellent for their own reasons, whereas John Williams composed entirely _new_ scores for Star Wars that were similarly excellent.

It is just my personal opinion, but I think it will be a very long time before we see another symphonic movie score that embeds itself _so deep_ into the cultural fabric as Star Wars did. Not only was the music phenomenal and stands well on its own, so many of them are elevated _because_ of the action taking place with them on screen.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_OSeRxhGOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_OSeRxhGOY) Still gets me as excited today as it did when I was 8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a devil's advocate--while there is definitely associations classical music with wealth, classical music for evil I don't entirely see. Classical music is a very deep trove of, mostly, royalty free music. Hannibal Lecter listening to the aria from the Goldberg Variations is probably less about signaling his sophistication, and more about the fact that it is a profoundly calm, even serene, piece of music playing during a scene of horrific violence. It mirrors the scene earlier where the said something like "his pulse never got above 80, even when he ate her tongue." It shows the calmness in Lecter despite the violence--this is not a crime of passion or hate.

Another small reference that I think is misused--he mentions Fritz Lang's M, and the "Hall of the Mountain King" melody that the killer whistles. First the film was made around 1931. Classical music would not have that sort of reference to the audience at that time. In my opinion M was the first movie to really understand sound film. The whistling tunes was a way to use sound to evoke presence without the character on screen. We could see a child playing, and hear the whistle in the background, and know that this child was being targeted without having to cut away. We get this kind of film information all the time in movies, but this is the first film that used the technique, and it had nothing to do with classical music. (Lang also invented some other sound dependent techniques in this film.)

This is not to say that some of the other examples are not instance of signaling "bad person" sing classical music, but I don't think its evil. I think the association of classical music with wealth/elitism is well established in modern films, so its presence for a wealthy/elite killer is expected, without taking that to also denoting evil.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Author and I obviously have different definitions of classical music.

They point out a 'villain' playing Bach. But to me, the whole film score is classical music. Yes the film is about an evil thing but the music conveys other things.

He identifies A clockwork Orange as a turning point . I could point to a host of 70s and 80s film that had classical music scores, Star Wars, Indiana Jones etc, etc.

I'll admit 'pop' music has become more popular in recent films, but classical music is still really good at communicating certain moods, including but not necessarily villainy.

<comment><USER17> > I could point to a host of 70s and 80s film that had classical music scores, > Star Wars, Indiana Jones etc, etc.

Let's not forget Zardoz (1974)!

Weird sci-fi, Sean Connery, and Beethoven's Seventh; what's not to like?

<comment><USER16> That's the one with Sean Connery with pony tail and underpants?

I want to look to confirm, but then I don't.....

Edit: Even worse than I remember. I had forgotten the bandolier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would say the premise itself is bogus

'Classical' music, old and new, is prevalent in movies

As a guess, because it is able to affect mood indirectly, 'in the background'

<comment><USER19> I think the author is distinguishing "real" classical music from "movie music", which isn't the same just because it uses the same instruments.

<comment><USER20> "Real" classical music, like the 19th century Russian opera "Ruslan and Ludmila", the title music for the sitcom "Mom"?

<comment><USER19> I'm pretty sure "jacknews" was talking about standard cinema scores, written specifically for the movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know about this. In the past, entire soundtracks consisted of classical music. One track for the good guys, another for the villain, but all were orchestral. I think classical music works well for soundtracks because it can convey feelings well, without the distraction of lyrics. Some of my favourite games ever were from the Final Fantasy series, and they often used composed music that was a similar style to classical music, and it added greatly to the ambiance, whether it was walking around a village or fighting a boss. Classical music just conveys a lot of emotion without the use of lyrics.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is far simply, if a character like X genre, what it is signaling?

\- Classical music: Signal of a "cultivated"/intelligent mind. Similar to how many villains play chess.

Also, is a _contrast_ of how some high evil actions contrast with the "calm" cold mind of the villain.

\- Pop music: Signal of fun. Depending also, romance, liberation, etc

\- Rap music: Signal of the oppressed. Street-wise.

\- Rock music: Signal of rebellion, action.

\- Jazz music: ?

\- Latino music: Is Latino!

<comment><USER23> Jazz music: "cool" criminals pulling off a heist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's just too easy to find counter examples to this claim. Hard to take it seriously. I think the author was just very good at finding data points to fit his theory.

Take the movie "Shine", for example, from 1996. The story of David Helfgott. There's a dark side to be sure, but nothing like villainy. The classical music in that movie, in fact, comes to symbolize a kind of _redemption_ or _transcendence_ over madness -- not a succumbing to it.

As for the decreased symphony attendance, drawing a connection to his claim seems pretty outlandish to me. A more likely explanation is that the symphony as a live concert format is just really outdated. It was all the rage in the 1700s and 1800s in the western world. But that was a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER19> I agree with the general thesis, but this:

> Maybe millennials are repelled by classical music not for coherent reasons > but by a vague sense of mistrust, nourished for decades by movies and media.

Sounds like the exact kind of conspiracy theory he's accusing "the populace" of having.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd like to know how and why red hair, and British accents became synonymous with villainy

<comment><USER16> I was thinking the same, but didn't work it in to my reply.

Also why Romans have British accents?!?

<comment><USER25> Because in the typical movie setting the Romans were upper-class foreign rulers. That's why they don't have Cockney or Glasgow accents.

<comment><USER16> There doesn't seem to be a line of reasoning here.

I don't see how: 1)Romans were upper-class foreign rulers 2) ??????? 3) Romans have English accents.

<comment><USER25> 2) The British Empire is the closest analog to the Roman Empire in living memory. For hundred of millions of people in the past 3 centuries, British aristocrats were the upper-class rulers, both hated and admired by many of the ruled (including Americans in the colonial era).

<comment><USER16> I would put more stock in the American Colonial side, rather than living memory side. Western cinema is after all western biased.

I'm biased anyway, being British and not upper class.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The very premise of the piece is shaky.

"But the 1960s ushered in a new era of mass entertainment. The expansion of film, TV broadcasting, and especially TV advertising toppled the orchestra's place in popular culture..."

Three points: Pop music has come to demand high royalties. Most classical music is in the public domain. Use a recording by a small orchestra, and ... cheap. Like RKO.

Next: 'the orchestra's place' was not very high in American popular culture -at any- time since the LP was introduced. There were many people who tried to make it that way (the inventor of FM for one) but no. Leonard Bernstein tried, but no. Author's misreading history here.

Finally: Films as a whole, sorry to say, have gotten A LOT darker in the past 50 years. Still, I can go through any number of movies made in the decades since Space Odyssey and find uses of classical that wasn't associated with darkness. Just one example: Elmer Bernstein, very successful in the film-score business, borrowed heavily from classical for his music, and wasn't associated with 'heavy' films in my recollection.

Listening to and appreciating classical music (as it is, not for any social status it may pretend to confer) takes time. Like any advanced art, much of art music is inscrutable to the casual listener. That may further the disorientation of the dark-film fans.

</comment><comment><USER27> A better question is "when". I've never noticed classic music being synonymous with villainy. "Refined" or "high class" status/taste yes.

</comment><comment><USER28> It didn't.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would flatly respond to this title with 'it isn't'

Classical music is used to convey pretty much every different idea/feeling.

Aaron Copland is often used for fun, to use just one of the infinite counter examples should the author choose to look [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un0BCd3Kb3I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un0BCd3Kb3I)

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't know if it counts as classical music, but since seeing the landing scene from First Man I can't get this music out of my head - for me it is now synonymous with general heroic awesomeness:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tf8MaKYhfw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tf8MaKYhfw)

</comment><comment><USER31> Totally agree. Another example, that damned Bugs Bunny and his brethren with their malicious activities! I've never been able to enjoy The Barber of Seville since :-[

</comment><comment><USER32> In one word: _populism_. Wikipedia has a good definition:

"an ideology which presents "the people" as a morally good force against "the elite", who are perceived as corrupt and self-serving."

So in Hollywood blockbusters those who listen to classical music are identified with the elite, which by the enjoyment of something "complicated" sets itself apart from the good common people who pay the ticket to see once again Good triumph over Evil.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is this Wagner's fault?

</comment><comment><USER34> Leia's theme-I knew she was a villian, or at least a counterpoint.

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, heroes only emerge when there are good villains.

</comment><comment><USER36> A interesting thought on this is whether it is linked to the rise of rock music — people started to realize that "those wild rockers" were usually just very nice people, while the real villains always wore ties suits and went to the opera.

So I would say suspicion aboit the burgoise or the establishment played always a role. Or maybe they read about the opera loving Nazis and thought this is a interesting contrast.

</comment><comment><USER37> A Clockwork Orange</comment>


Show HN: Resume on the Web, my personal portfolio rebuilt using GatsbyJS - <AUTHOR> https://amruthpillai.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks!

It's been about 4 years since I started my project, Resume on the Web, where I created a website that portrays who I am and my ever-changing personality. Every once in a while, I revamp the whole thing using new technologies so that I keep myself updated with the latest and greatest, and also gives me a creative outlet to experiment with new design ideas.

This year, I kicked it up a notch by revamping the design of the old boring two-column resume look, to something a lot more vibrant, responsive and effective. I'll keep my words to a minimum and let the website do the talking.

Please do let me know your thoughts about it, and upvote if you liked it :) Thank you so much!

<comment><USER2> Nice resume! I was thinking about revamping my own site and yours is an inspiration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wonderful personal website!

One question though, are icons supposed to be that big?</comment>


Robert Sapolsky talks turbulence – teens, stress, and the information age - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/15/turbulence/ingenious-robert-sapolsky

<comment><USER2> BTW, you should watch his lecture series on the biology of behaviour: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL45A5E21EC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL45A5E21ECA5FA850)

For me one of the best teachers you will find online

<comment><USER3> I watched those a while ago. They might seem really long at first but I can confirm that they are really good. I was fascinated by how much more sense our emotions and behaviour make if you learn a bit more about how the brain is wired and how it evolved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sapolsky is also a very entertaining writer! An excerpt from one of his books ("A Primate's Memoir") is here: [http://www.npr.org/books/titles/138066966/a-primates- memoir#...](http://www.npr.org/books/titles/138066966/a-primates- memoir#excerpt) , but my favorite excerpt from the book is that where he talks about tranquillizing baboons with a blow dart gun.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you'd like to watch all the videos at once without having to click and scroll 15 times, then here's the auto-playlist on Vimeo: [https://vimeo.com/couchmode/album/2964780/sort:preset/101446...](https://vimeo.com/couchmode/album/2964780/sort:preset/101446964)

</comment><comment><USER6> Check out his lecture on depression as well. It is on YouTube.

<comment><USER7> Link: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIcf-2AFHgw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIcf-2AFHgw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you don't like watching video scroll down for the transcripts.</comment>


Interesting idea for about page. Move mouse to see animation. - <AUTHOR> http://userecho.com/about/

<comment><USER2> Logical conclusion: Make each person a Neko that breaks out & chases the cursor around

</comment><comment><USER3> Place mouse pointer over cheese for easter egg.</comment>


Drankkit brings reddit lots of growth: an empirical study of the power of free beer - <AUTHOR> http://reddit.blogspot.com/2007/11/website-needs-traffic-empirical-study.html

<comment><USER2> Is that the girl he almost didn't found reddit because of:

[http://cache.valleywag.com/assets/resources/2007/11/Huffman....](http://cache.valleywag.com/assets/resources/2007/11/Huffman.jpg)

...or is that a post-aquisition upgrade? (excuse me if I have my founders confused.) Also check out the kiwi in the middle of the above:

<http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp>

<comment><AUTHOR> When Steve and I started reddit, he was dating that same girl (now his fiancee). She was always very supportive of him/us, so I'm not sure where you got your data about him potentially not doing reddit because of her.

And yes, I am indeed wearing a FogBugz Kiwi T-shirt. It was a gift from FogCreek and it's my second favorite shirt of all-time.

<comment><USER2> _Ohanian says it took several months to convince Huffman that "he didn't want to take the very appealing job close to his girlfriend back in Virginia, and to instead try living with me in near-poverty for some indefinite period of time."_

[http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2007/sb20070...](http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2007/sb20070926_082638.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reason to exclusively fund 21+ y.o.</comment>


Jamais vu – a 1.0.0 TrustZone code execution exploit for the Nintendo Switch - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/SwitchHacks/comments/7rq0cu/jamais_vu_a_100_trustzone_code_execution_exploit/ <comment><AUTHOR> This exploit was developed by myself and @elmirorac -- a lot of hard work went into it, and I'm really happy to be able to talk about it publically :)</comment>


Zillow 2020 Urban-Suburban Market Report - <AUTHOR> https://www.zillow.com/research/2020-urb-suburb-market-report-27712/ <comment><USER2> I believe this thread from a couple days ago was based on the same report: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164128)

</comment><comment><USER3> Just FYI, people have seen headline numbers in this Zillow report for SF market. But it is misleading. The overall housing market in Bay Area is actually stronger than pre-COVID [1] Even within SF, prices in condos are dropping but SFH are rising. So the narrative is people are moving from dense units to units with more space within the same MSAs. Which makes sense for me, as it allows people to WFH 2-3 days a week, and be in good school districts, while still commuting to office a few days

[1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/North-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/North- Bay-home-markets-sizzled-in-July-SF-showed-15490651.php)

<comment><USER4> Even with those caveats the narrative is complex. _Some_ condo prices are dropping, but I'm also seeing some 3BR condos _listed_ (not necessarily selling) for $1.6-1.7M, which is about $300K over what they were a couple years ago. Also, with the conventional COVID narrative you'd expect that houses in the hills or away from civilization would do better - but many of those houses (some in very prestigious locations like Saratoga or Los Altos Hills) are going for < $2M and sitting on the market for 6-8 months, while prices are rocketing up in Mountain View and it's getting hard to find a SFH for < $2.7M, even if it's on a tiny 6-8K ft^2 lot.

It also looks like both inventory and prices are rising, which is contradictory to standard economic theory but would make sense if we're nearing a market top.

<comment><USER5> > while prices are rocketing up in Mountain View and it's getting hard to find > a SFH for < $2.7M, even if it's on a tiny 6-8K ft^2 lot.

Well, it's hard to find a home on such a large lot period (size is relative). Newer SFH tend to be built on 2k-3k square feet lot sizes and go for $1.5M to $2M (Mountain View median is $1.8M actually).

Prices generally have been going down in Mountain View ([https://www.zillow.com/mountain-view-ca/home- values/](https://www.zillow.com/mountain-view-ca/home-values/)) and remain considerably below their mid 2018 peak. (And still remain a bad deal relative to renting, but that's another story)

<comment><USER6> Size is absolutely not relative. Size in California and the rest of the country is measured in feet. That said, I single out this comment to prove the obvious abuse of the English language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the article, data seems to show sellers flooding the market in San Francisco:

> In San Francisco, list prices have fallen 4.9% year over year and inventory > has risen 96% with a flood of new listings.

> When comparing the principal city to its surrounding suburbs, the San > Francisco metro area does break the mold. Higher levels of inventory, up 96% > YoY following a flood of new listings during the pandemic, are sitting on > the market in the city proper, a significantly larger jump than the > surrounding suburbs.

> In San Francisco [...] the softening is clear as sellers inundate the market > and buyers have not changed their pace to match — newly pending sales in the > city are up only 1.7% YoY.

<comment><USER8> San Francisco was one of the tightest real estate markets in the country for years. Even doubling inventory doesn't make it a buyer's market.

<comment><USER9> Not only that, but listings plummeted with Covid. I'd be interested to see how the cumulative inventory compares to this time last year.

If all those people who were going to sell in March, April and May just delayed until now, you'd see a big jump in inventory, but the overall number of homes changing hands might not have changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live in NY and created my own version of the case-Schiller price index just for Manhattan. The July 2020 index shows a 10% YoY decline in condo prices, which is worse than a 6% decline in Q2. Please see my analysis for backup: [https://github.com/ivoytov/manhattan/blob/master/NYC_price_i...](https://github.com/ivoytov/manhattan/blob/master/NYC_price_index.ipynb)

<comment><USER11> Great analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The media has a huge bias to push a dominant narrative, and it's hard for actual data to get through.

So the early, and false, narrative about population density posing an insurmountable challenge to preventing disease spread got a ton of play. Now, when it's clear that density is not driving spread, it will be rare to see a news article countering that narrative.

I also think that reports like this Zillow data will not see nearly as much media attention as the initial truths reports about people fleeing cities.

Same with the "techies are all leaving SF" stories; I'll wait for actual data before listening to the narrative that serves the interests of a huge factional divide in SF.

<comment><USER13> From TFA: _" In San Francisco, list prices have fallen 4.9% year over year and inventory has risen 96% with a flood of new listings. This divergence of active inventory is not evident in cities like Miami, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Seattle."_

I'm not in San Francisco, but if we were to experience a doubling of inventory here in Seattle, it would be evidence of a big shift in the market. We neighbor-visited an open house on our block in the autumn that was attended by at least a person a minute during the half-hour that we were there.

The article is _super_ interesting for its incongruence with local anecdotes, but it would also suggest that the "techie exodus" in SF has some roots in reality.

<comment><USER8> One thing people seem to forget is that leaving SF doesn't mean leaving the Bay Area. A lot of the people leaving SF are going to end up in the surrounding cities, which were always cheaper and considered more boring than SF. Now that SF is locked down, all of the Bay Area is equally boring, so you might as well live in San Mateo and cut your rent in half.

<comment><USER14> > live in San Mateo and cut your rent in half

I think that's stretching... It's still very expensive in the burbs due to their proximity to big tech companies. I am not seeing rent be half in the peninsula compared to SF.

<comment><USER15> Yeah definitely not San Mateo, but east bay will do that. My realtor says her business in SF and the peninsula is drying up, but east bay is hotter than ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To me there's nothing really surprising here. Prices in SF are down just 5%. The pandemic is a massive negative economic event. You would think it would impact markets like SF much stronger (50%+ drops in value considering the insanely high prices), but that just goes to show how in demand living there is. I also don't see any companies leaving, so why would residents leave? Just because of remote work? I don't buy it.

Additionally, it seems there's some underlying mechanism sustaining the economy from completely collapsing. Whether it's just a factor of time, or something else I don't understand. But the stock market is sustaining, and the housing market seems to be even improving in certain areas.

The bottom has to fall out from under this thing at some point, but who knows when. Impossible to tell.

<comment><USER17> Right now assets valuations are sustained at least partly because the wealthy still have wealth to inveset and There Is No Alternative(TINA).

If you don't buy stocks, bonds or real-estate, the only other option is to hold cash. Holding very large amounts of cash can be inconvenient for various reasons. Gold is often proposed as an alternative, but it's value is already quite high, and it's an _inflation_ hedge, while recessions tend to be _deflationary_.

The fact that the majority of US taxpayers got a big check, and are expected to get a second one soon is also a boost to the economy. However, mortgage delinquencies more than doubled this past quarter, so we are getting close to the point where foreclosures will happen, which will lower the prices of real- estate.

<comment><USER18> Gold investors (like myself) assume that The Fed can only stimulate further in order to stave off deflation...but (crucially) with _no_ hope of raising rates later, even in the face of the inevitable resulting inflation.

A rise in rates would simply crater everyone who has come along with The Fed so far - virtually all consumers and corporations holding high levels of debt. In such an environment of obvious inflation and Fed paralysis, gold could go much, much higher.

<comment><USER19> How do you invest in gold?

<comment><USER17> I don't know how GP does, but if you don't trust certificates:

[https://www.jmbullion.com/kilo-pamp-suisse-gold-cast- bar/](https://www.jmbullion.com/kilo-pamp-suisse-gold-cast-bar/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have been greatly surprised by home prices since the start of the start of the pandemic. Back then I thought for sure prices were going to drop. Right now I am thinking home prices haven't dropped because of combination of mortgage forbearance and the quick drop of interest rates. I do wonder what the effect will be when the mortgage forbearance runs out. I would imagine there would be a backlog of delinquencies that would flood the market.

<comment><USER21> Indeed foreclosures are the lowest in _15 years_ because "as the federal government has banned lenders from pursuing most delinquent loans until at least the end of August 2020" [1]

[1] [https://www.worldpropertyjournal.com/real-estate- news/united...](https://www.worldpropertyjournal.com/real-estate-news/united- states/irvine/real-estate-news-2020-foreclosure-filings-report-coronavirus- impact-on-home-foreclosures-in-2020-attom-data-solutions-foreclosure-reports- ohan-antebian-12055.php)

<comment><USER22> This is the biggest factor. It will be very interesting to see what happens starting next month if the ban is not extended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> While 2020 has certainly shown me that anything can happen, this is feeling eerily similar to Great Recession in SF/Bay area, where housing prices didn't bottom out until 5 years from their peak [1]. The economic devastation that's happening is _not over_, but many signs point to this one being considerably worse than the last one.

While SF looks like it's doing pretty well now, prices did drop ~25% during the last recession, and they didn't recover until ~2013 [nominally]. Remember, a home that fell by 1/4 in price needs to appreciate by ~1/3 to be back in square one, which is considerable and shows that even the hottest markets are not immune from downturns.

SF has certainly recovered from much worse, and long term it will recover just fine, but for many the appeal of the city currently missing, and will continue to be missing for a not-insignificant amount of time. The price-to-rent ratio is currently widening as rentals continue to flood the market, as many are not finding the SF-premium worth it at the moment. All these downward pressures will surely [imo] put significant downward pressure on SF housing.

The wild card here is the Gov't, which has allowed many to put their mortgage on forbearance, and because of that I'd expect the real price movements to happen after that. However, that only applies to conforming loans, and not jumbo loans, which are on a case-by-case basis.

One more thing — with a grain of salt because I don't have a better source —, while this report says _list_ prices have fallen 4.9% yoy, that's still 5% above _contract_ prices [2].

[1] [https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/san-francisco- hom...](https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/san-francisco-home-prices- market-trends-news) [2] [http://socketsite.com/archives/2020/08/400-percent- more-redu...](http://socketsite.com/archives/2020/08/400-percent-more-reduced- listings-on-the-mls-in-san-francisco.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> Folks really desperate to find patterns and all but I think it is going to take a while to really "know" anything.

</comment><comment><USER25> Zillow's conclusions seem wildly inaccurate for Boston - it is most definitely a buyer's market. Time to sell has increased drastically across all price ranges. Price cuts are rampant as well. I've seen apartments listing at 1.1m in April finally just sell this month in the low 900s. So take the report with a grain of salt!

<comment><USER26> I made an offer on a home in Providence this month and it is most definitely a seller's market. Inventory is very low, properties do not last long, and (after watching the market closely all summer) we eventually made an offer substantially above asking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> First, take everything Zillow says with a grain of salt. Sure, they have the data, but they are not objective. Not saying they are lying, but they might not show the full picture. (edit: I must say the post seems very detailed and looks like they put a lot of effort into it. Maybe I should read it first...)

The trend seems to be rent prices are dropping in all major cities but home sale prices are not. In fact they are even going up. In my opinion it's too early to tell. Remote work would have a big impact on where tech workers live. But it would take some time until it starts to negatively impact home sales. People who move to new cities usually don't buy houses right away. Many of those people who were supposed to move to SF/NYC/Boston in the next year and potentially compete for houses in the next 5 years might now go elsewhere.

<comment><USER28> I agree with this largely. More importantly we won't know the full impact of anything for another 6 months. There haven't been foreclosures, or evictions yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love how this is a national survey, and none of the first three threads even acknowledge that it was about anything but San Francisco. Very HN of you all.

</comment><comment><USER30> No doubt Zillow's data must be fascinating and deep and extensive.

In general, I'm curious about how an individual could use this type of data to their own benefit—to "game the system," as it were, by surfacing / finding "outliers", by which I mean properties that are renting / selling far below their "market-calibrated" price.

Then again, I guess developing that into a product is (ostensibly) the entire job of an analytics PM somewhere like Zillow...

Still, we (collectively) are close to it being straightforward to scrape this data, train a model, and score new listings as they come in. The tools are all there, the tooling to orchestrate it off-the-cuff for personal use is still a bit far off.

<comment><USER13> One reality of liquid markets is that, whenever someone discovers an edge, it is (generally) only viable for a limited time. Either the original observer arbitrages the advantage into oblivion or multiple observers notice the same thing and do so together.

A more-reliable way to go is to determine whether a particular property is selling for less than it is worth _to you_. If it is, and there isn't a better option, hit it.

<comment><USER31> From what I see, as a compulsive zillow-with-24hr-filter-scout, the market is a lot less liquid than one might believe. There are a _lot_ of economists' $20 bills laying around. (Especially during COVID, but also generally). Even some $100 bills. And they almost always sit on the market for at least 12, if not 24 hours.

My explanatory theory is that people who are very interested in getting great deals on apartments are also the same kind of people who sign long-term leases.

IMO, the biggest barrier to arbitrage, that allows these good deals to float on the market for several days, is that _most people_ are _not_ interested in pouncing on an apartment that's come on the market <8 hours ago. Breaking your lease (the rental market equivalent of "selling", a requirement for "selling up") is just way too expensive.

Brokers (the people who are ostensibly paid to arbitrage) are also not super interested in getting their client the best arbitrage deal, because their commission will usually come out lower.

All this to say: next time you're moving, consider hounding zillow in the mornings and evenings every day, with a 24hr filter, in the 5-6 weeks prior to your move. Your patience will usually be rewarded.

<comment><USER32> >Brokers (the people who are ostensibly paid to arbitrage) are also not super interested in getting their client the best arbitrage deal, because their commission will usually come out lower.

AFAIK it works the other way around. The commissions might be say... 10% lower, but if you save time (by not having to maintain the listing and attract buyers), you can more than make up for it in volume. This was covered by freakomics a while ago [https://youtube.com/watch?v=aFYlgqv3T-w](https://youtube.com/watch?v=aFYlgqv3T-w)

<comment><USER13> I believe that GP was referring to buyer's brokers. In their case, if the client pays more, their commission grows. Furthermore, if they can close quickly, by making a higher offer or purchasing something that isn't quite the right deal, the buyer's agent _increases_ volume, leading to the same effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Looks like not much has changed yet, but I'm still really interested to see how things are different 5-10 years from now. If big tech companies like Facebook actually follow through with shifting large numbers of tech workers to fully remote, there could be a lot less demand for housing in tech cities, which could lead to big drops in home prices, which could cause tech companies to pay less.

</comment><comment><USER34> New neighbor with two young kids is from Portland. He told me he picked up and left in less than 20 days.

<comment><USER35> Whatever is going on is not restricted to coastal cities. We bought a cheap house in a college town in Michigan last year. Within 24 hours of listing it 10k over what we bought it for we had an offer.

I suspect low inventory in certain price points as well as low interest rates are driving people to buy whatever they can.

<comment><USER36> Also, being able to buy a house while you have an income in case you are predicting an increased chance of being terminated in the future.

Once you're in a house, being removed from it due to missing mortgage payments is much less stressful than trying to secure housing when you have unstable income.

<comment><USER37> Your whole comment seems insane to me.

Do you actually think like this yourself? Or are you just positing that others do?

You do realize that foreclosure has very negative long term consequences?

You do realize there are available forms of housing for every income bracket that allow you to live within your means?

<comment><USER36> When you apply for a mortgage loan, having a steady income is one of the requirements for getting approved for the loan.

Suppose you are planning to move into a home soon. It's worth jumping in ASAP while you still have consistent income to show on your W-2 and loans are still being handed out. You can worry about making ends meet afterward (and doing odd jobs if you have to), but the hardest part is getting qualified for the mortgage.

The alternative is you keep renting, and then your income disappears. Now, it's hard to find rental housing because landlords ask for your W-2 and paystubs also, and you have few protections as a renter not paying their rent versus a homeowner not paying their mortgage. And mortgage payments and rental prices are not far off from each other in any market with half decent economic prospects.

Also, as history has shown, the US government will always go to bat for asset owners in order to prop up asset prices, and leave non asset owners out to dry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Seattle suburbs are an extremely hot sellers market right now.</comment>


PSI Solver: Exact Inference for Probabilistic Programs - <AUTHOR> http://psisolver.org/ <comment><USER2> See also problog : [https://dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/problog/](https://dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/problog/)

ProbLog2 is our second generation engine to reason with the ProbLog language. The current engine builds on logic programming, knowledge compilation, the distribution semantics and probabilistic, graphical models. It allows you to:

\- Compute marginal probabilities of any number of ground atoms in the presence of evidence.

\- Learn the parameters of the ProbLog program from partial interpretations.

-Sample from a ProbLog program.

-Solve decision theoretic problems

<comment><USER3> Problog rocks!

There's one thing I've always wanted to ask though - the first verison of Problog was implemented in Prolog and distributed as a library for YAP. How come Problog2 is implemented in Python? It's a probabilistic Prolog so I'd have thought Prolog would be the natural choice for it? Especially so coming from Ku-Leuven!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice paper! This could be a great tool to help debugging differential privacy [0] of an algorithm. Certainly much simpler than CertiPriv [1].

[0] [https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~aaroth/Papers/privacybook.pdf](https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~aaroth/Papers/privacybook.pdf) [1] [http://certicrypt.gforge.inria.fr/certipriv/](http://certicrypt.gforge.inria.fr/certipriv/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I found out about this through a comment on my website, that includes a simple example of how to use it:

[https://lee-phillips.org/chicks/#comments](https://lee- phillips.org/chicks/#comments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone explain how this contrasts to Stan or other PP?

<comment><USER4> I think Stan uses sampling-based Monte Carlo, whereas PSI is based on static program analysis.

<comment><USER5> I'm a Stan user and I guess I'm interested to know if this would solve similar problems.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's data center costs are now $50M/yr to lease almost 60,000 servers - <AUTHOR> http://www.allfacebook.com/data-center-50m-2010-09

<comment><USER2> They spend more than that on humans. From the ones I know, they seem to be quite smart and good at getting computers to do the computing work while the humans can think of better stuff for the computers to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is not bad at _all_. Including support, our data center costs are ~2mil a year for 60 LPARs spread across 2-3 frames.</comment>


Uber Wins Preliminary Injunction vs. Waymo - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/sheetmetal/9916/uber-is-in-the-clear-for-now <comment><USER2> This isn't what happened. The judge hasn't ruled on anything yet. The decision on the preliminary injunction will be delivered in writing in the next few days. They haven't won anything yet</comment>


AMA in 2 hours: creator of NumPy, SciPy and founder of Anaconda, NUMFocus - <AUTHOR> Don't miss out on the opportunity to have Travis Oliphant answer your questions!
Travis will be doing a LIVE video AMA on Twitter today at 6 pm CT!
Travis' Twitter profile (https://twitter.com/teoliphant?s=20)
As the creator of NumPy, SciPy, Numba, the CEO of OpenTeams, Quansight, and founder of Anaconda, Inc., NumFOCUS & Pydata, Travis has more than 20 years of experience working in open source. <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your great questions! Please find the live video recording by clicking here.

Travis ended up answering the following questions (I've timestamped the answers for y'all so you can find them):

[8:00] OpenTeams' mission: to help companies build and grow their open source businesses

[8:56] Where do you see the next big opportunities to extend python related to its use in data science and Fintech?

[13:00] How do you see boutique businesses working? What kind of products or services lend to that model?

[17:00] How do you find customers for that kind of consulting you talked about with the boutique businesses?

[19:18] What is OpenTeams trying to do?

[20:26] What is Dask and does it fit in with the future development plans for Python and PyData?

[22:38] How do you feel when you think your software is used all over the world in everything from beginner projects to helping in scientific labs?

[31:55] What python library for machine learning/data science is under- appreciated or you want to put out there?

[33:51] How's the EPython library going?

[38:50] Do you have any advice for grad students trying to start a software- based company?

[41:30] How close is conda to becoming a purely SAT-based dependency resolver?

[41:50] Is there any hope of seeing a unification of all of the tensor libraries?

[43:28] What do you see as the future for opensource technology in the post- covid era? How can we use the long experience of numpy and other projects to help inform the debate over opensource medical hardware. Do you personally have any involvement on the hardware side of opensource and if so, can you comment on what that community could be doing better?

[44:00] Why open source is going to grow in an economic downturn

[45:50] How can we use the long experience of numpy and other projects to help inform the debate over open source medical hardware?

[47:15] What tips do you have regarding continuous integration setups with large codebases?

[49:04] What color is your toothbrush?

[49:10] Have general-purpose open source projects received much government funding?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ask any questions you have here and I'll share with you the answers!

</comment><comment><USER2> What python library for machine learning/data science is under appreciated or you want to put out there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Sudoaza, great question! I'll share the answer after Travis goes live!

<comment><USER2> thanks hbadgery :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Travis answers your question at the timestamp [31:55]. Check the video recording: [https://twitter.com/openteamsinc/status/1250924987969449986?...](https://twitter.com/openteamsinc/status/1250924987969449986?s=20)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Web pages can sniff to see what Chrome extensions you have installed - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=118693&thanks=118693&ts=1331937415

<comment><USER2> This is fixed in manifest_version 2:

"A package's resources are no longer available by default to external websites (as the src of an image, or a script tag). If you want a website to be able to load a resource contained in your package, you'll need to explicitly whitelist it via the web_accessible_resources manifest attribute."

[http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/dev/manifestVersion...](http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/dev/manifestVersion.html)

See <[http://blog.chromium.org/2012/02/more-secure-extensions- by-d...](http://blog.chromium.org/2012/02/more-secure-extensions-by- default.html>); for information about other security improvements in manifest_version 2.

<comment><USER3> manifest version 2 is not backward compatible, so most extensions should not update yet. When Chrome 18 is deployed to the stable channel, we will update the docs and begin slowly encouraging developers to transition.

In the shorter term, developers who want to prevent their extensions from being trivially detected can use the web_accessible_resources property instead: [http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/dev/manifest.html#w...](http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/dev/manifest.html#web_accessible_resources). This property is available in Chrome 19 and higher and is ignored in older versions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chrome extension are probably a major source of untapped security holes. No- one really considers security when writing them and they often take arbitrary input (in the form of webpages they're processing) without validation.

It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of them have javascript injection vulnerabilities that allow for privilege escalation.

<comment><USER5> I am more concern with the overconfidence of some user over their extensions/updates; a extension with many users can suddenly include something like:

        $('.email, input[type=password]').val(send_to_database)

<comment><USER6> why would the attacker setting the password field be a problem

<comment><USER7> That looks like it retrieves the value of any element with the class name of .email and any password input (i.e. harvesting e-mail addresses and passwords).

<http://api.jquery.com/val/#val2>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What are the security implications? A malicious page can attempt to exploit a buggy extension whether it knows the extension is present or not.

<comment><USER9> Implications....

Lets assume that malicious page A, can figure out what extensions a user is running.

They figure out that some user has extensions, A, B, C and D.

Extension D is actually an email client extension which is terribly coded. The victim uses the very same email provider for all of his mail. The malicious website figures out that he can safely send POSTs to the mail provider through this extension that will alter the victims mails filter.

So the malicious website tells it to forward all email received to `firstname.lastname@example.com`. Additionally, any email from @super-bank.com should be deleted. And any emails from @godaddy.com should also be deleted after it gets forwarded to the malicious user.

Now, the malicious user requests new passwords on Godaddy for example and receives the passwords then he transfers all of his domains out. Win for the malicious website.

<comment><USER10> It can attempt to do that anyway. Whether it knows extension D is installed or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can't you do this in Firefox and other browsers too? I thought that was one of the reasons why your browser can be uniquely identified.

<comment><USER12> Yup: <https://panopticlick.eff.org/> Also: <http://ha.ckers.org/weird/firefox- extentions.html>

<comment><USER13> Those look very limited in their ability to detect addons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://blog.arpitnext.com/2011/08/chrome-extension- awesome-s...](http://blog.arpitnext.com/2011/08/chrome-extension-awesome- screenshot.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Also somewhat annoyingly (and not just limited to Chrome), extensions & bookmarklets can show up if you save or archive the web page for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER12> That's why they're transitioning to "manifest_version 2" (CSP): [http://blog.chromium.org/2012/02/more-secure-extensions- by-d...](http://blog.chromium.org/2012/02/more-secure-extensions-by- default.html)

<comment><USER16> This seems like a great way to limit the damage from a security hole in an extension. (It prevents web content from loading arbitrary code and running it with the extension's privileges.)

But it doesn't appear to address the sniffing issue at all.

UPDATE: Sniffing _is_ prevented in manifest_version 2, but not by the CSP. See my reply to andrewcooke below for more details.

<comment><USER12> Interestingly the "enumerator" tool doesn't list all my extensions, and it lists even less when testing on the machine running the beta channel (18).

Similar behavior Firefox exhibits regarding: <http://ha.ckers.org/weird/firefox-extentions.html>

<comment><USER16> The enumerate demo uses a list of popular extensions; it will only detect extensions on the list, though any Chrome extension can be added to the list trivially. See the list here: [https://github.com/koto/blog-kotowicz-net- examples/blob/mast...](https://github.com/koto/blog-kotowicz-net- examples/blob/master/chrome-addons/addons.json)

The Firefox version is a little more interesting; it relies on knowing a specific "chrome:" URI exposed by each extension, so it takes a small amount of work to add new extensions to the list. And I believe that many newer Firefox extensions do not expose any chrome: URIs, so this technique might not work for all Firefox extensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It was through the Flash extension that Chrome was hacked in 5 minutes in a recent Pwn2own contest

<comment><USER18> Flash is actually a plugin, not an extension. The difference is that plugins are designed to render content that the browser cannot, while extensions simply add new features to the browser or change the behavior of existing ones.</comment></comment>


China: Google in China Is Like China in Africa - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/01/17/google-in-china-is-like-china-in-africa/

<comment><USER2> While the "China in Africa" analogy is not particularly well matched, the specifics of the message from the Chinese spokesman are irrelevant. These sort of things are always diplomatic theater. Ultimately the message is "It's our country, you can play be our rules or fuck off".

The only thing that's going to get China to open up is if it becomes to expensive, either internally or externally not to do so.

</comment><comment><USER3> "respect the environment"

This is a local rule that needs to be learned?

</comment><comment><USER4> When in Rome do like the Romans ?</comment>