3D-Printed Flute Is Here - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/215148/3dprinted_flute_is_here_3dprinted_stradivarius_next.html <comment><USER2> Pretty nice. It looked weird when Seth was playing it, but I realized that's because the keys that you would normally close with your right hand did not seal. So he was restricted to the three or so notes that you can play with your left hand.

Also, the article says: _the flute itself sounds beautiful acoustically when played by player Seth Hunter_.

Personally, I think it sounds like those plastic recorders that you got in 3rd grade music class. But that's not the point; it shows that 3d printing can produce something that used to take a skilled craftsperson days.

This will be great for applications like elementary school band, though, because kids can lose interest quickly, and a $5 mass-produced instrument is perfect for learning. Once you know you are going to stick with it, then you can pay the $2000 for the real thing :)

(And yes, I do play the flute!)

<comment><USER3> >because kids can lose interest quickly, and a $5 mass-produced instrument is perfect for learning

It took 15 hours to print and had to be manually cleaned. Sure the process will improve but then how much does it currently cost to make a basic flute? The cheapest retail I found after a very brief search was $70, <http://amzn.to/dQGdzI> (aff link); so I'm going to guess $35 direct manufacture costs. Mind you it gets very poor reviews whilst $100 gets you a Hisonic one with pretty good reviews (<http://amzn.to/eV9a6q>).

The only price I found was $50,000 USD for the printer - even if it ran everyday for 5 years without breaking or needing materials or maintenance that's $20 or so of your $5.

It is awesome though how it prints composite pieces and the way the removable scaffold materials are used, love the concept of these things.

<comment><USER2> It's not $5 today. It will be $5 tomorrow.

<comment><USER4> I don't think 3D printers will ever beat molding for mass production. Where they win is short-run and prototyping.

<comment><USER5> You're probably right, but keep in mind that mass production imposes some costs of its own. There are the up-front costs you allude to when you say "short-run" --- even if you're cutting your mold from aluminum, that's an expensive way to make five instances --- but there are also costs associated with the "mass" nature of the production.

First, mass production must be geographically centralized. This means you have shipping costs. For fragile or bulky objects, the shipping cost can sometimes exceed the material cost.

Second, mass production involves inventory at every stage of the supply chain, although you can cut inventory down quite a lot from what we used to do 60 years ago. Maintaining inventory is expensive.

So it's possible that 3-D printers will beat molding for mass production. It's just not likely in the foreseeable future.

Molecular nanotechnology will, of course, make 3-D printers beat molding.

<comment><USER6> > Molecular nanotechnology will, of course, make 3-D printers beat molding.

It will?

Fiction and facts don't mix in the same discussion, molecular nanotechnology _if_ it will ever be a reality will _possibly_ make 3-D printers beat molding.

Injection molding is very fast, extremely cheap and can be used for very large runs. We do not know any of those parameters for nanotech yet assuming that we can can actually implement it.

<comment><USER5> Well, I didn't mean to imply that it was a certainty that MNT would exist, and of course it's possible for it to exist but only in some limited form, with limits we can't easily predict today. So you are correct: everything about it is uncertain.

On the other hand, it seems very likely that at some point we'll have flexibly programmable universal assemblers capable of relatively rapid self- reproduction (say, less than three months) and of making materials at least as strong as the cheap thermoplastics we use in injection molding out of relatively common elements. There are a lot of different avenues that could get us to that goal.

The intrinsic cost of making something consists, as I understand it, of amortized capital costs, marginal raw material costs, marginal energy costs, and marginal labor. Self-reproducing assemblers eliminate the physical part of the capital costs; automated manufacturing of any kind eliminates marginal labor, leaving only the labor component of the capital costs; and the raw material and energy costs probably will be about the same for artificial molecular assemblers as they are for natural ones such as potatoes.

The labor component of the capital cost is simply the R&D required to automate the making of the thing. It seems very likely to me that this will be similar to what we do today for injection molding, a guy building 3-D models in a CAD/CAM system, but with much less in the way of concerns about taper and the like.

I recognize that you know a great deal more about modern manufacturing than I do, so if I am wrong about something, please do not hesitate to correct me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That is awesome, the flute looks like the gun from the toon-world in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit".

They gave themselves quite a challenge trying to 3d-print a playable instrument: as you can see from the video, on the modern flute most keys depress one or more other keys when pressed, so the mechanism has to be adjusted _just so_ in order for all of the pads involved in a key press to seal at the same time (in fact thin pieces of paper are used to shim pads to get a good seal, so it's quite a precise thing).

I really, really hope they fabricate some new and amazing Dr. Seuss instruments and commision some student composers to write pieces for them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool, but it seems like they missed a bit of a chance by not printing a simple system keyless flute. Less impressive looking, I suppose, but as long as they were careful with their CAD model design, it probably would have worked perfectly on the first try.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's nice to see this development, but replicating existing designs is not where this technology is at its best, prototyping is.

That said it's an extremely impressive piece of work, and just like with the pig, the fact that it dances at all is what makes it amazing, the quality of the dance is secondary for now.

</comment><comment><USER9> I take it this design uses UV-curing materials, like in the manufacture of PCBs.

<comment><USER10> Yes, Objet's process involves spraying down resin, then curing it with UV.

<comment><USER9> Do you know of a cheaper UV-curing material for applications like RepRap?

<comment><USER11> Although really - the jetting issues are pretty big with this process. The materials and print heads are tuned with much effort. You could get around the jetting issues by using one material and do the EnvisionTec process (i.e. DLP projecting on a bath of UV cured plastic) - but it'll be more expensive materials wise - though you will be able to print hundreds of things at one time...

For now the FDM (MakerBot / RepRap) process are the best start for accessible printing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hipmunk comes to Android with a surprisingly slick app - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/09/29/hipmunk-android-app

<comment><USER2> I don't see why it is surprising. Credit should go to the Hipmunk team, but it isn't like it isn't impossible or even difficult relative to other platforms to make a good looking app on Android. You can argue about how the tools are worse, user expectations are lower, developer community is less design focused or their taste is worse, but I am not surprised a quality team made a quality app.

Android is an important platform, and I am only surprised (and upset) if you make a shit app. If a company can't get it together to make a good Android app, maybe they just aren't a good company.

<comment><USER3> I disagree - android apps are more difficult to polish then iPhone apps, for a variety of reasons.

* Bad defaults. (For example, on Android your app will look like crap if you have any gradients, unless you make sure to change the window format to PixelFormat.RGBA_8888 at startup). * Core UI components are ugly and behave poorly * Sluggish performance due to lack of hardware accelerated GUI (especially visible during animations, scrolling, etc) * Extra work to support a variety of screen sizes and input methods (trackball, etc) * Using custom-drawn components on Android that need animation (e.g. SurfaceView) results in inescapable flickering and compositing glitches - and you certainly can't use them properly with transitions. Popular iPhone apps tend to have a lot of UI candy, so this makes it harder to compete.

<comment><USER4> Having developed for both Android and iOS, I totally agree.

It will definitely be big news when a major Android app is noticeably better than its iOS counterpart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't see why they are surprised...Hipmunk's main appeal to users is the slick UI...without it, they might as well use Orbitz

</comment><comment><USER6> The app looks really nice. Only feedback is some labels are some airline labels are missing on the search results (G2, Gingerbread).

My feedback is more specific to Hipmunk in general. I want to use and love it but the prices have been off each time I try. For instance on jetblue.com right now I can get a ticket for tomorrow JFK -> AUS at 9:30AM for $423 but on Hipmunk it's $797. I'm guessing you might be pulling the price by flight time and not flight number. There is another flight leaving at 9:30 which is $797.

<comment><USER7> That was probably a pricing update. It's one of the really annoying things that plagues everyone in this space. I see the fare on us for $434 now (which is $423 after taxes).

<http://www.hipmunk.com/#!JFK.AUS,Sep30>

<comment><USER6> Ah, that is quite a plague. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you want to give quick feedback, the dev posted on the Android subreddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/kva3g/hipmunk_for_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/kva3g/hipmunk_for_android_just_released_you_like/)

<comment><USER9> I'm actually keeping an eye on this post as well so feel free to post feedback here.

<comment><USER10> Quick feedback. I find the return date selection to be non-intuitive. There is no clear indicator (on my screen) how to specify the return date. Tapping the screen and did the trick, but there was no indicator that said tapping the calendar again would choose the return date.

<comment><USER9> I completely agree now that you mention it. One of those things where you take it for granted but it isn't clear by default to everyone. On our website we have a highlight that indicates what your next click will do, and I think something to this effect will help on Android as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When it said Hipmunk, I thought it was talking about the Haskell bindings (<http://hackage.haskell.org/package/Hipmunk>) to the chipmonk physics library. I got all exited thinking that someone had made a great haskell app for android.

</comment><comment><USER12> A lot of the new ticket vendors on Hipmunk only accept US cards. I would love to see an option to filter them out, it makes the slick Hipmunk UI totally pointless if I have to go through by hand and check which vendors are available for each flight.

</comment><comment><USER13> Although I do think it's a nicely done app, I have to question its utility.

Not Hipmunk itself, just the mobile part. Is there really a large market for looking up flights on-the-go? I mean, if you're spending a couple hundred/thousand dollars on traveling somewhere, surely you'd think about it for long enough to break out a laptop before purchasing, right?

Or is there some other use to this that I'm not considering?

</comment><comment><USER14> Congratulations on a successful launch. The app is a great addition to the awesomeness of Hipmunk.</comment>


Place it. Hack it. Press it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hortinstein/node-dash-button

<comment><USER2> hey author here, thanks for posting it.</comment>


Amazon web services styled platform for Digital Marketing - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone,
What do you guys think of AWS styled platform for digital marketing? Do you guys think there'll be enough market if we bundle digital marketing tools in that way? Let me know your suggestions below.
Thanks <comment><USER2> It makes sense to use AWS because it's convenient + cost-effective (maybe?) to setup a cloud server. It then makes sense to use their services because again it's convenient. Basically the simplicity of the platform get's you there and now all these other benefits are attractive because it's simple and works out of the box.

So what I think the strategy to do would be to solve a basic problem that gets everyone to your platform and then start adding services to it.

Amazon started the cloud server as a business model because they needed a way to monetise all the additional infrastructure they had lying around on the off seasons. People started using it which gave them insight into the other problems users had and they went about solving those.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, that's exactly our opinion. I would like to share a link where we have conceptualised it. If you are okay to have a look, I can share the link for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very good idea. If it is simple digital marketers would like to try this out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love the concept. Would like to check it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, will share the link with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great Idea. I would love to try this service.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think I love to see this service...

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome! Would like to try this!</comment>


Why Can't I "upvote" from search results on HN? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Because the HN search system is an external service that has no authentication features.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, what would you recommend then as a solution if I want to focus on posts in a specific topic and still wanted to "upvote" them?

<comment><USER3> I'm struggling to understand what you are asking. Are you hoping to construct an HTML page on which there's a button by which you can up-vote an item?

You could look at reverse engineering the mechanism by which votes are cast, and the authentication methods. That will no doubt involve cookies of some description.

What is it that you're actually asking?

<comment><AUTHOR> Colin, when you use the search feature of the site by Algolia you get a list of results of posts. I read a few and find one interesting and I want to "upvote" the post. But you can't "upvote" a post from the search results page. For example: [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=marketing#!/story/last_24h/0/marke...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=marketing#!/story/last_24h/0/marketing)

<comment><USER3> As bcbrown[0] says[1], you can simply click through to the comments and upvote from there. The fact that this is so simple and obvious makes me think I must be missing something.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bcbrown](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bcbrown)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7841841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7841841)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why UTC is used as the acronym for Coordinated Universal Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/nist-time-frequently-asked-questions-faq#cut <comment><USER4> The story of how the Prime Meridian was chosen has a similar flavor of controversy. There was a conference in 1884 to decide where it would be, and a large portion of the discussion concerned France's opinion that it should be in a neutral place, not cutting any continent or major population center.

France wanted it to go through the Bering Strait or the Azores, and made the argument that the SI meter (introduced nearly 100 years before) was a truly neutral measure, being based on one ten millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. Other delegates answered that its is still a French system, because it was France that took the measurement and introduced French error into it.

Ultimately practical concerns won out, as 70% of the world's shipping and charts were already using Greenwich as the meridian, and for any other place to truly be a meridian there would need to be an observatory there with telegraph links to the rest of the world.

Another gem is the part where the Spanish delegate expressed that he had been authorized to vote for Greenwich as the meridian, but was doing so in the hope that England and the United States will accept the metric system. The president replies that this is outside the scope of the conference, to which the Spanish delegate replies that they know this, and anyway protocol doesn't allow them to vote on "hopes" anyway, but he just needed to say it.

Although Greenwich was chosen, France was a holdout and didn't adopt it until 1911, and even then did not call it "Greenwich Time", but rather "Paris Mean Time retarded by nine minutes and 21 seconds." This was their official designation until they adopted UTC. The UK on the other hand still calls their time GMT legally, even though they are actually using UTC now, which is not precisely the same as GMT!

The proceedings make for some entertaining and enlightening reading: [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17759/17759-h/17759-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17759/17759-h/17759-h.htm)

<comment><USER5> Difference between GMT and UTC is that GMT is region specific and has daylight saving time (UTC +1). But UTC is region independent.

<comment><USER6> Never use software that thinks in terms of lists of +/\- GMT zones and says things like "GMT: Ireland, United Kingdom; Iceland". You don't live in a "GMT Time Zone" and nobody you know has any idea what this means.

Use software which is driven by cities and uses the Olson database, Europe/London, Europe/Dublin and so on. This is unambiguous which means things will go wrong a lot less often.

You probably live in a city, and if you don't live in a city you there's a big one near you. You know what time it is there. Everybody knows what time it is there. If you're participating in an event where some people are far away they can do any number of things to find out when "14:00 Dublin time" is exactly and get it correct. They can even just call somebody in Dublin and ask. No confusion about "Um, GMT. I think? Is the timezone GMT? Or UTC? Or does it change?"

<comment><USER7> If by "use software" you mean "pick a time library for your product", then I think I agree.

If you mean "use software" then this seems a little extreme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This answer misses how several different universal times already existed at the time, which use abbreviations UT0, UT1, etc. UTC was a logical abbreviation for this one, considering it follows the same style, and the desire to find a good compromise between the French and the English speakers.

<comment><USER9> I wonder why a Latin name wasn't appropriate.

<comment><USER10> Maybe because not that many (American) people learn Latin anymore.

<comment><USER11> That's the point, no? (No preference to a given nation)

<comment><USER10> Well, my comment was more eluding to the fact that, until very recently, many Americans learned Latin as part of their primary school education. It was requisite knowledge for university.

<comment><USER12> This has not been true in America since at least before WWII and the GI Bill.

Latin was never a part of the standard primary school curriculum.

<comment><USER10> I was talking specifically about pre-WWII. My depression-era grand-parents learned it in school.

<comment><USER12> 70+ years ago is not "very recent" when talking about schooling. Public schooling has only been widely available in the US for less than 150 years and only widely mandated for children in the last 100.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is the same reason as why the International Organization for Standardization is abbreviated ISO.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization#Name_and_abbreviations)

<comment><USER14> In German "Internationale Standardisierungs-Organisation" could've been chosen to fit ISO, but they went with "Internationale Organisation für Normung" instead.

<comment><USER15> Except that that hyphen does not make much sense here, if you wanted to write it you'd pick Standardisierungsorganisation instead which gives you a very long word and matching that to ISO is just odd.

In official government speech words don't tend to get that long, instead they get split into multiple ("Bundesministerium der Finanzen" instead of "Bundesfinanzministerium").

<comment><USER14> That and abbreviations in German were generally not initialisms. It'd be InterStanOrg or something weird like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> An international body (which included multiple organizations) who didn't want to favor any particular language. We could use more work and thinking like that these days.

<comment><USER17> It's harder to make acronyms that are a compromise between English and Chinese.

<comment><USER18> {Earth Emoji}{Clock Emoji}

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting! On an somewhat related note, could someone explain to me why GameCube has always been abbreviated as GCN? GameCube Nintendo seems like it would be a weird answer...

<comment><USER20> It's because "Cube" has an N in it in the metric alphabet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is exactly the same reason why the International Organization for Standardization is ISO.

Both are unofficial backronyms now: International Standards Organization, Universal Time Coordinates.

<comment><USER22> More sane backronyms are Universal Time Coordination (which seems to be used by various metrology people) and Universal Time - Coordinated, which makes sense given the UT0 and UT1 timescales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is one of those things that I never even thought to question - <USER2> thought never even occurred to me that the acronym doesn't match (for English speakers) because it just is what it is. Funny how we take certain things for granted without thinking about them.

</comment><comment> denton-scratch The ITU at that time (sorry!) was dominated by the UK (GMT) and the French. The acronym therefore would have had to be TUC (French) or CUT (English). There is history between the French and the English; neither was acceptable - the ITU is an international organization, and the people who attend its meetings are essentially diplomats.

So we get an acronym that doesn't stand for anything.

It's OK with me... but I could do without the ITU existing at all. They cause nothing but trouble. Dammit, they should stop meddling with the definition of UTC.

<comment><USER22> Slight clarification: at that time, there was no ITU, but CCITT, which is decidedly french acronym ;)

<comment> denton-scratch Thanks - you are absolutely correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if there's a similar explanation for OWL - Web Ontology Language - <USER3> if the creators just really liked smart birds.

<comment><USER25> I can't find a reference at the moment, but IIRC the rationale behind the OWL acronym is something along the lines of "in a language about consistency, why not have one inconsistent thing?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've heard a similar story about Asynchronous Transfer Mode. An ATM cell is 53 bytes long, which seems like a really weird number. The US wanted it to be 64 bytes as they felt this was optimal for them, everyone else wanted it to be 32 bytes, so CCITT split the difference, and made it 48 bytes plus a 5 byte header.

<comment><USER22> This is somewhat good idea of how standardization works, but in this case it is not entirely correct. The argument there was essentially that ATM with E1-like framing (and thus somewhat different and longer header) could be used across whole france for voice beare channels without echo cancelation. The 5+48 byte with HEC framing variant at least in theory also satisfies this (somewhat nonsencial) requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> tl;dr - the English acronym would have been CUT, and in French it would have been TUC, so they picked UTC to avoid favoring either one.

<comment><USER28> Coordinated Universal Time and Temps Universel Coordonné, respectively. In my head I see UTC and think "Universal Time Coordinated".

<comment><USER29> I see it, more specifically, as "Universal Time, Coordinated". It never struck me as an acronym that demanded explanation in English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Dr. Who it up a bit and make it stands for "Universal Time Coordinate". Problem solved.

<comment><USER31> It's all a big ball of time-wimey, wibbly-wobbly... stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I knew the French were running things on the standards end ever since v.32bis. Having it be one or the other seems better than neither of them. When selecting imperial or metric, we don't start using a feeter (half way between a foot and a meter).

<comment><USER33> I think the French were the first to create ASCII's first predecessor if I recall correctly, used in line of sight telegrams.

<comment><USER34> Do you have further information on this? It sounds interesting.

<comment><USER35> Baudot code?

<comment><USER34> Ah yes. Quite familiar with Baudot for several reasons. I didn't make the connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So, for largely the same reason why ATM cells have a 48-byte payload.

</comment><comment><USER36> Sorta like this comic: [https://xkcd.com/1923/](https://xkcd.com/1923/)

Replace "Fahrenheit" and "Celsius" with "English" and "French" and that's basically what we have here. We took the average of the two (CUT vs TUC).

</comment><comment><USER37> When speaking of UTC, I always speak it out as Universal Coordinated Time, or UCT - I never thought about that until today

</comment><comment><USER38> I felt the plus/minus in the coordinate is unintuitive.

Let's use an example

07:00:00+01:00 is equal with 08:00:00+02:00.

How could 7+1=8+2?

</comment><comment><USER39> UTC is unique/boring and doesn't have semantic baggage. I think that's a plus.

</comment><comment><USER40> Reminds me of NATO/OTAN (English/French)

<comment><USER41> Also reminded me of CERN - Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, despite it now being the Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire/European Organization for Nuclear Research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I like to think of it as Universal Time Code.

<comment><USER43> "Universal Time, Coordinated" (same as "Ice cream, Vanilla")

<comment><USER44> Universal Time Clock

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The French.

</comment><comment><USER46> Number of french speakers in the world... 76 million. Number of english speakers... 1.5 billion. It should be CUT, fuck the french and bad acronyms.

<comment><USER47> Those numbers have to be off: According to wikipedia [0]:

English 379.0 million native speakers, 1.132 billion total

French 76.8 million native speakers, 279.8 million total

It seems you might have mixed the French native speakers with a (high estimate of) the English total speakers.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Well, holee-shit, TIL... Because with my four years of high school French, and having never given it a lot of thought, I always assumed that because $STANDARDS_BODY was French (I assumed, to make theory plausible), then UTC stood for <said with heavy French accent> "Universale Time Coordinatier" or something (and my sincere apologies to our French-speaking HN users). Had my brain actually _engaged_ what I learned in French class, that of course would be incredibly wrong, starting with "what the hell is that adjective doing at the beginning of the phrase?"

</comment><comment><USER49> It's just the politically correct way of saying GMT or Zulu, like you are supposed to say BCE and CE instead of BC and AD for years now.

<comment><USER50> Technically UTC is not the same as GMT. The two can differ by up to 0.9 seconds.

And I'm steadfastly among the ranks of grumpy old farts who still use AD and BC.

<comment><USER51> > Technically UTC is not the same as GMT. The two can differ by up to 0.9 > seconds.

It's UT1 and UTC that differ by up to 0.9 seconds. GMT and UTC are equal unless you're in a specialized field (navigation) where it is considered to be UT1. Otherwise, GMT is just the name of a time zone UTC+0000.

TAI measures seconds. UT1 measures the earth's rotation. UTC combines these by using TAI plus a changing offset to keep within 0.9s of UT1.</comment></comment></comment>


Geeky Things To Be Thankful For - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/11/10-geeky-things-to-be-thankful-for/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

<comment><USER2> What a weird list of things to be thankful for.</comment>


Why being first doesn't matter. - <AUTHOR>

I have been working on my startup since August, and released our app (Gruburg) in November. The day after it got released, Google HotPot was announced. Since what I made was basically the same as Google's new product, my spirits were destroyed.
Fast forward to today. At this point I am on the third version of the app, with social features and other things. I am even giving people money to use the app! Nothing, stuck with just organic(read: slow) growth. Foursquare releases their update today and its 1:1 with my app features. Why would anyone download another geolocation app, if they already have one that friends use?
Spirits destroyed, I am thinking of killing Gruburg. Being first (or having grand ideas) means nothing to me now, regardless of execution. <comment><USER2> It's been said many times that there is no such thing as an original idea, that everything created in the world is a derivative of or inspired by something else. For the most part I think this is true but it also depends on how you define originality. If you're a purist, which is sounds like you are, then originality is extremely hard to achieve. I mean, the very essence of inspiration means being inspired by the idea, words or work of someone or something else. I think a better way thing to strive for is creating something useful, something that brings people joy and/or improves their lives. In the end, if you're work is derivative of something else, who cares, as long as it's not plagarism and you've made meaningful changes or improvements that differentiates your product from the inspiration - then originality starts to not matter so much. Don't start by trying to reinvent the wheel - maybe start out by trying to make it better or more useful for a particular group of people.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Consumer marketing is hard, the people are flighty.</comment>


Show HN: r/hnblogs, Blogging is not Dead - <AUTHOR> Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/hnblogs/ Old Reddit Link: https://old.reddit.com/r/hnblogs/
Hi HN,
Inspired by this post earlier this week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237559, I thought we could make blog discovery easier by having a place to find interesting, unusual, niche, or really any kind of non-marketing blogs that are posted by the people that write them.
There are a ton of interesting blogs on the web, probably more than there were when the web was new, but even though there's more they're a smaller percentage of the total internet and hard to find.
Search engines fail to help with this for a lot of reasons. They're both not incentivized to find this kind of non-ad, non-sales content, and there are lots of sophisticated actors trying to game search engines to show their own content.
Regular people just writing interesting blogs who don't have an interest in SEO will be lost in that shuffle.
HN and Reddit are great for link aggregations, but rely on submissions and upvotes which skew things to more generally popular content. The volume of posts also make it hard to compete (even though I really like HN and find the content interesting).
The restriction to only allow posts from the authors of the blogs should help and the writer can interact with the community.
The end goal is to generate a wiki on Reddit reminiscent of old 90s 'portal' pages with curated links to interesting content.
We have a small initial community from my HN comment on that other post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239999), but if you write a blog and want to join please do! <comment><USER2> The difficulty with the blogging ecosystem is the same challenge that many others face, which is that some very large companies don't want you to have your own blog when you could instead be producing content to make (Twitter, Medium, Youtube, Facebook, etc) more valuable. Still, the level of control and decentralization with blogs remains appealing to many, luckily. While blogging isn't _dead_ , being able to better discover individual places on the Internet is a great step.

My vision of the Internet was always that everyone gets their own website, which could be a blog, or of course anything else, perhaps they want to host videos or music instead of text posts. Then there would be centralized directories as well as decentralized+federated networks and interlinking to help people navigate through all of this. Then you could have open protocols on how all of these things connect, but the huge benefit would be the level of control that users have, resilience to censorship, significantly more creative freedoms and so on. It would be nice if people were not obligated to use certain social networks to be able to have certain kinds of content viewed by others, since we all know if you want your video watched, you have to use Youtube, as an example.

<comment><USER3> Yep, I agree with this idea. Aggregators and directories should be separate services from the actual blogs, content. If you don't like the censorship/curation on one aggregator, you can go to a different one.

I started working a little bit on this idea, by creating simple aggregators for mastodon and pixelfed (still thinking about how to improve the discovery/curation aspect)

[https://pixelfed.club](https://pixelfed.club)

[https://mastodonia.club](https://mastodonia.club)

<comment><USER4> This is great. Thanks so much for creating this!

There is actually an amazing amount of really good quality content out there, but as everybody on this thread has pointed out already, discoverability is a major issue. I often wonder how one would go about finding a site like the one you made if it hadn't been posted here, though I suppose "aggregator" is actually a decent search keyword that should (in theory) also lead to other good content. Presumably "blog aggregator" wouldn't be a particularly useful search term though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To close the loop, remember that you can get an RSS feed to a subreddit by tagging .rss on the URL.

So if you want, you can get an aggregate RSS feed of hnblogs here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/hnblogs.rss](https://www.reddit.com/r/hnblogs.rss)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for mentioning that, I had no idea that was a feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love this idea. I guess my main concern will be figuring out how to do it without mission creep.

It's unproductive to debate what it does or doesn't mean for blogs to be dead. But it is productive, I think, to do something like Awesome Lists[1] but for this.

There are some great blogs that I never, ever would have found, unless some random person on Mastodon pointed me to them, and I want there to be a way to find them. I don't even want to say findable blogs are bad necessarily. Discoverability isn't what it used to be.

1\. [https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome)

<comment><USER8> StumbleUpon was pretty good for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really like this, and I think the key is that you have to submit your own posts, so that there is engagement. I suggest having _some_ kind of requirement that authors engage with comments. Otherwise it could turn into Twitter: someone posts material in an attempt to promote themselves (even if there's no attempt to sell anything) but they refuse to engage with most people. That's super boring, and there are other places to do that.

<comment><USER10> I feel that if in general you want the authors to engage, I would ask the audience to post the comments on the author's blog (for those blogs that support comments).

In this specific case it's a bit trickier because you want authors to post their content, and this may or may not be in line with your goal, depending on whether you e.g. prioritise build another community (social network?) of people interested in blogging or reducing reliance on <big centralised websites>.

I would prefer reducing the comment fragmentation in this kind of a context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The subreddit appears to entirely miss the difference between a "blog" and a "post." The former is a collection of posts, and the subreddit seems to consist exclusively of posts, not blogs. What the the HN post was lamenting was that there aren't blogs as a whole that you can follow anymore. The subreddit doesn't quite seem to be filling the void that had been identified.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems pedantic to me?

The reason for people to submit a post they like is to interest people in their blog and focus discussion about a specific post in the comments.

Submitting the homepage is less interesting.

People that like the post can follow the blog (the homepage of which is easy to find from a post).

Also, the wiki is a place for the collection of blog links generally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For a lean mobile view add ".compact" to the end: [https://old.reddit.com/r/hnblogs/.compact](https://old.reddit.com/r/hnblogs/.compact)

</comment><comment><USER13> Thank you for trying this. It is adding to my own recent interest in resuming blogging for blogging's sake.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I look forward to seeing your post!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> All this talk about blogs and this subreddit led me to restart my github pages blog.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just liking a post in which I discribed a tool I created to help finding 'original posts' and therefore blog from HN publications

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23093990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23093990)

I'm going through all post published on hn everyday to discover those contents, maybe I could publish my daily findings

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a great idea for aggregating blogs. I am very happy with the initiative. Blogging isn't dead but it has become more niche.

</comment><comment><USER17> Glad to see you followed through with the idea!

</comment><comment><USER18> If you're running a blog or personal website, be sure to IndieWeb-ify it for maximum site-to-site engagement. Use micro.blog or the various IndieWeb plugins (or find lots of other options on [http://indieweb.org](http://indieweb.org)).

<comment><USER19> You got me thinking... Would a webmention-based aggregator make sense? In the sense that you link to it from your post and send a mention to it, and your post appears on it?

I see a potential for spam, but on the other side I always found that given the low number of webmention-using blogs, they do not seem to bring a lot. Most posts where Ibsaw them used were posts about webmentions themselves, where people basically were playing around.

Such an aggregator would at least create some kind of hub where such posts appear.

<comment><USER18> I can see something in that idea for sure. Maybe read through some of this to help conceptualize what might work. [https://indieweb.org/Webmention](https://indieweb.org/Webmention)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> May I recommend a webring?

</comment><comment><USER21> I'll believe blogging isn't dead when more small blogs make the HN front page.

</comment><comment><USER22> Thanks for making this

</comment><comment><USER23> > No ads on your blogs (no ad-farms), some light ads may be allowed on a per- > blog exception basis.

So no way to montize blogs for the creators. Are you serious?

> Add your post.

This is not a list of blogs, you have to repost each article. Perfect for full-time SEO spammers, but a burden on normal bloggers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not against creators making money, but the default stance should be no-ad with exceptions for light ads on quality blogs when necessary.

This whitelists the spam problem which is more effective and reduces the incentive to push large volumes of low quality content that only exists to serve ads.

Creators can also make money via paid subscriptions and Patreon, both of which are better models than ads.

You're not supposed to spam every post you've written, you're supposed to post an interesting one that introduces people to your blog so they can then follow if they like it.

The wiki is a 'portal' of links to the blogs themselves. The post requirement is better for engagement and more likely to get people interested in your blog if they like the post.</comment></comment>


Reset the Net - <AUTHOR> https://www.resetthenet.org/ <comment><USER2> We're totally anti-surveillance, and that's why we let a bunch of companies track you around the Web, here's the list of requests (potentially tracking you) made behind your back:

optimizely.com googleapis.com amazonaws.com heroku.com googleusercontent.com google-analytics.com newrelic.com chartbeat.com chartbeat.net youtube- nocookie.com googlevideo.com google.com

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's a great & valid point. We use those to gain intelligence on how to build more effective communications. At the same time, we totally encourage you to use plugins like Ghostery & NoScript, That way, you'll be protected from those services across the entire net. VPNs are also a great tool.

If you use Firefox, here's another plugin I made, which you might dig - [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/happy- bonobo-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/happy-bonobo- plugins-mimety/?src=userprofile)

<comment><USER4> Is this an honest response or are you trolling? This is not a troll question, as I really don't know the answer.

You can't decry government spying while simultaneously ignoring spying by large companies. They're both equally wrong.

The only message I got from this website was, "We don't get it."

<comment><USER3> Sorry you didn't like the site. We aren't perfect, but we make an effort to constantly improve. I'll bring up your concerns relating to tracking in the next meeting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I was a fan of the previous campaign (the day we fight back), this one seems DOA. First, there is no actual action to be taken. There is a date, but to get to what the campaign is trying to do you have to watch a two minute video at the end of which it boils down to two calls to action:

1\. Developers should add "NSA-resistant features" to their products. No mention of what this actually means.

2\. Users should try apps that support their privacy and spread the word about them. No mention of what the apps actually are.

The site itself, as others said, tracks users through Google Analytics. That's right, the same Google that is sending every bit of user data it gets directly to the NSA. You are encouraging us to disable logging in our applications... I don't know what to say to this.

Now, for some more constructive suggestions:

1\. Instead of "trying apps", why not focus a bit more on some specific things. For example "try Tor". Most users don't know what that is, but it's a tangible actionable thing someone can spend 30 minutes on and learn something actually valuable.

2\. Or, try GPG. This is harder, but I believe can still be something that power users can grasp.

3\. For developers, why not hack on Firefox or Chromium to add a Tor-enable private mode. Encourage and fund this project, so that most people can press a button and get a Tor-enabled browser immediately.

4\. Or, get developers to set up more Tor nodes and bridges.

5\. Or, get developers to finally bring IPv6 to Tor.

6\. Or, get developers to create alternatives to specific popular services that are currently monitored by the NSA. The reason GMail is so popular is because it's got a fantastic UI. No open source webmail client comes close. Get developers to volunteer time to develop an alternative that users can host themselves.

<comment><USER3> We purposefully kept the video vague, so that developers could choose what they felt were the most appropriate improvements, to the vast array of applications out there.

Thanks for your ideas. OTR is another good thing to add, for chat applications. Also, good point regarding user interface. As was discussed at SXSW, friendly UI's have a huge affect on the popularity of an application.

<comment><USER5> Glad you are reading this. One more thing: if you could add a text transcript of the main points of the video that'd be awesome. If I was on my phone I definitely wouldn't have watched the video.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, we'll try and integrate that into the website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great campaign. I hope it gets the attention it deserves. I hope they intend to list some of those apps that we can "pledge to use", and maybe even have donation buttons next to them. Donating to them might get people to actually continue to use them afterwards, and not just try them once and forget about them.

<comment><USER7> I agree, I think that's the right approach. You can't expect all the governments in the world to stop doing what they're doing and "leave the net alone", we have to develop the technology to put the internet out of reach.

And we already have most of the tools, most people just didn't bother to use them until now. PGP is more than 20 years old and we're still trying to figure out how to protect our emails.

<comment><USER3> Great point. As discussed at SXSW recently, the more user friendly an application, the more likely it will attain users. Writing software takes energy, and writing secure software is... a challenge. Hopefully though, as time goes on, more frontend developers & designers can join the open source movement, and contribute to making secure applications feel intuitive and friendly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hand over your email address to our database, and we'll tell you how to protect your data, like, say, your email address.

<comment><USER9> Can we please stop pretending that email addresses are in any possible sense private information? They're the internet equivalent of a phone number (you know, those things that get printed on dead trees en masse).

Someone getting your email address when you didn't want them to have it is a minor annoyance at worst.

<comment><USER10> I agree, but why bother sending an email at all. Just put the information that would have been in the email on the damn page.

<comment><USER9> It's obviously a newsletter subscription. Below the box:

 _Fight for the Future and Center for Rights will contact you about future campaigns._

<comment><USER10> Yes. _Obviously_. But it's just the complete, wrong delivery method to issue the content for the they're addressing here, as 90% of the other comments here have said, which was my point.

<comment><USER3> We totally respect if you don't want to sign up and give your email.

Please don't let it stop you from helping to make the web more secure, if you're into it. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They don't explain how they intend to reset the net, or how you can help, other than handing them your email address.

<comment><USER11> I missed the video. OK, so they want devs to add "one NSA-resistant feature" to their web apps. Perhaps they could give examples? I mean, are we talking simple things like SSL, or something more complex?

<comment><USER3> Definitely. We'll add examples soon. The obvious ones are using SSL, OTR, removing or avoiding logs when possible, and of course, the ultimate being end to end encryption as Snowden recently discussed at SXSW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> HOW TO RESET THE INTERNET. A GUIDE.

Step 1: Give us your email address Step 2: We'll send you an email Step 3: After an enormous amount of spam and malware from us, you'll change your email address and restore your computer, rendering all previous tracking meaningless.

Welcome to a Reset Internet.

</comment><comment><USER13> Dont you think the NSA already has a contigency to something like this? If anything thinking big should be what we are doing, because those people are planning something huge and i dont think they'll let anything get in their way.

Just an opinion!

</comment><comment><USER14> "…add one NSA-resistant feature to your app". What features would that be?

<comment><USER7> Well, if your app uses the network use SSL for instance. Avoid cleartext wherever possible.

<comment><USER15> The problem is that SSL (transport security) is the _only_ "NSA-resistant" feature that can ever be added to a website, or incrementally added to an app. And it only works until you (or your hosting provider) gets big enough that NSA demands (or takes) direct access to you, the man-in-the-middle.

Unless your application is open source, administered by a user-controlled package manager, based on end-to-end encryption with user-managed keys, and takes steps to obscure communication-graph metadata, touting the addition of "NSA-resistant" security features is selling snake oil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, they dont seem to have given us the ideas, just the inspiring video.

Instead of complaining, someone should write a detailing blog post.

(not me though. Dont have the knowledge yet)

</comment><comment><USER17> Watching the video made me want to yell out "Hack the planet!" . At the end I was hoping for some NSA blocking techniques to share with those less technical but I was left with nothing. I feel like the biggest call to action was to show their banner on my webpages. Feels like this is more of a viral campaign than a tactical offense. I don't think it is, I just feel like there is a missed opportunity by not sharing the NSA blocking information.

</comment><comment><USER18> Flagged into oblivion. You never fail to disappointed, HN!</comment>


Ask HN: Who on HN is based in/from Singapore? - <AUTHOR>

#midnightcuriosity<p>Say hi and maybe a little on what you do! <comment><AUTHOR> Since I posted this.. Hi! I'm Sung and I work on One Cent Movement (onecentmovement.org) where we are turning everyday transactions into opportunities to do good and Method (methodnow.com - website revamping) where we digital products/services that people enjoy using.

Looking forward to hearing from you guys!</comment>


FBI head Christopher Wray: We can't let criminals hide behind encryption - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-director-christopher-wray-tells-cybersecurity-experts-to-partner-with-feds/ <comment><USER2> Weaken confidence in services and you will just push the smarter ones further underground, potentially harm businesses and reduce tax revenue. This can also further segment EU and US businesses.

If the goal is just to round up the cannon fodder to meet numbers and get budgets approved, then perhaps you are on the right track. Just use the tried and true method of getting VP's and directors in companies to look the other way in exchange for giving them some favors and making them look pretty. Just be aware that nowadays systems are under more automation and scrutiny, which means your backdoors will be posted on public repositories before long. This may be pushing unfair financial risk on hardware and cloud vendors. Their losses can translate into tax revenue losses.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't believe him. He was a political appointee (as all FBI heads are), but he was apparently appointed for a lot of sub rosa reasons. Maybe he's compromised, not to Russians, but maybe allegiance to something other than Law and Order.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is there a never ending stream of FBI chiefs who peddles this crap?</comment>


Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dgreelish/before-macintosh-the-apple-lisa# <comment><USER2> Thank you for starting out with props to Doug Engelbart. He doesn't get enough credit for inventing the GUI.</comment>


Incorporating and accessing binary data into a C program - <AUTHOR> http://smackerelofopinion.blogspot.com/2015/12/incorporating-and-accesses-binary-data.html <comment><USER2> The linker trick has a problem. It doesn't set the non-executable stack bit, so as a result your whole binary will have an executable stack, and therefore be insecure against various stack smashing exploits.

Try running 'readelf -S blob.o' and you won't see any '.note.GNU-stack' in the output.

If you go via a C source file compiled with gcc (or clang), then the compiler sets the bit properly.

Edit: Also I tried to add a comment to the original posting to warn them, but blogger just eats my comment.

<comment><USER3> If you are right then this can be mitigated by two additional options passed to objcopy, namely --add-section to create an empty section and --set-section- flags to adjust the flags of this empty section. I'm just recreating the section/flags that I see in a normally compiled file.

        $ make
        cc -Wall -Wextra -ggdb -Os   -c -o testme.o testme.c
        objcopy -I binary -O elf64-x86-64 -B i386:x86-64 \
        	--rename-section .data=.rodata,alloc,load,readonly,data,contents \
        	--add-section ".note.GNU-stack"=/dev/null \
        	--set-section-flags ".note.GNU-stack"=contents,readonly \
        	/etc/passwd passwd.o || (rm -f passwd.o ; exit 1)
        cc   testme.o passwd.o   -o testme

([https://github.com/vogelchr/objcopy_to_carray](https://github.com/vogelchr/objcopy_to_carray))

Without --add.../\--set section:

        $ readelf -lW testme
        ...
        GNU_STACK (...) RWE 0x10

With --add.../\--set-section:

        $ readelf -lW testme
        ...
        GNU_STACK (...) RW  0x10

<comment><USER2> Looks good. The reason I know a bit about this is I had the same "bin2o" hacky script that used objcopy. It broke every time someone found a new architecture or platform (ie. having to choose the correct -O and -B flags is non-trivial if you want to support every architecture).

The solution (which is not really much better than yours) is a script that creates some _assembler_ and assembles it:

[https://github.com/libguestfs/supermin/blob/master/src/bin2s...](https://github.com/libguestfs/supermin/blob/master/src/bin2s.pl)

I think it's bad that such a simple thing is so hard to do.

 _Edit:_ In fact looking at the script now I can see we really should be using .rodata instead of .data. That bug has survived for at least 4 years. Patch posted: [https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2015-December/msg...](https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2015-December/msg00095.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very likely larger amounts of binary data linked in your program should better be "read only data", and hence be put in the ".rodata" section. From the objcopy manpage:

        objcopy -I binary -O <output_format> -B <architecture> \
            --rename-section .data=.rodata,alloc,load,readonly,data,contents \
            <input_binary_file> <output_object_file>

I had made a short demo of this technique quite a few years ago, but regretably hadn't included the .rodata thing: [https://github.com/vogelchr/objcopy_to_carray](https://github.com/vogelchr/objcopy_to_carray), so if you want to check this out with minimal effort, have fun with it ;-).

        [optiplex /home/chris/objcopy_to_carray (master)]
        $ make
        cc -Wall -Wextra -ggdb -Os   -c -o testme.o testme.c
        objcopy -I binary -O elf64-x86-64 -B i386:x86-64 \
        	--rename-section .data=.rodata,alloc,load,readonly,data,contents \
        	/etc/passwd passwd.o || (rm -f passwd.o ; exit 1)
        cc   testme.o passwd.o   -o testme
        [optiplex /home/chris/objcopy_to_carray (master)]
        $ ./testme
        Dumping /etc/passwd, in memory @0x4006a4, size is 1701.
        root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
        bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin:/bin/false
        daemon:x:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/bin/false
        mail:x:8:12:mail:/var/spool/mail:/bin/false

<comment><USER4> I'll add that by segregating read-only and writeable data, you allow the virtual memory system to efficiently share a single copy of the read-only data among all processes loading it.

<comment><USER3> You are perfectly right. And there's also a second use-case: In some embedded applications things run directly from ROM/flash and things put in the .rodata- section will stay there and not get copied to RAM (which you obviously have to do for modifyable data).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't extremely important, but you should probably declare those symbols as straight `char`'s, not `void * `. The symbols themselves aren't pointers, the symbol itself refers to the first byte in your binary block - The same way `b` from `char b` refers to a byte on the stack. That's why you have to take the address of the symbol to get the address of the block. It makes more sense to declare it as a `char` because then nobody will attempt to use the original block symbols to access the blob itself.

As it is, you have `_binary_blob_start`, `start`, `_binary_blob_end` and `end`. All 4 are `void * `'s, but `start` and `end` are the only ones which actually point to the block! `_binary_blob_start` and `_binary_blob_end` are actually pointers made-up of the first 4/8 bytes of your binary-data, and thus aren't actually pointers.

</comment><comment><USER6> On OS X: pass -sectcreate when linking (see man ld) or use segedit.

If you're building native executables rather than cross-compiling for some embedded target, xxd has the advantage of not needing different commands on different platforms, although xxd itself may not be commonly found on Windows - oddly enough, it's part of vim...

Albeit if it's not embedded, you should consider why you're embedding data into executables in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER7> In illumos distributions, we have elfwrap for this:

[http://illumos.org/man/1/elfwrap](http://illumos.org/man/1/elfwrap)

</comment><comment><USER8> > ... alternative way is to use the linker ld as follows:

Good to know. I've always used objcopy to do the same. But this looks saner because it uses the native arch by default.

</comment><comment><USER9> Back in the days of BeOS and gcc 2.95, I ran out of memory (32M!) trying to compile xxd-type data. x86 BeOS used ELF and PPC BeOS used PE (and the MetroWerks toolchain) so using the linker trick probably wouldn't have been an option (had I known about it at the time!).

</comment><comment><USER10> The problem is that such tricks are not portable. This will not work with ld on OS X or will need something different. Others have suggested xxd.

      $(fw_bin_o): $(fw_bin)
            @echo "CONVERT $@"
            $(SILENT)xxd -i $^ | $(CC) -c -x c - -o $@

</comment><comment><USER11> if its so big that its unwieldy as a byte array in a source file, does it really need embedding in the executable?

what about the case when you want n blobs of data instead of one?

good to know, but edge case useful...

<comment><USER12> > does it really need embedding in the executable?

Yes, because self-contained executables are massively easier to deploy than ones that have data dependencies, because it's just one file that you can put anywhere. Plus you avoid having to write any file I/O code (and deal with potential errors).

Honestly I never understood why this technique is so obscure, rather than being standard practice for C/C++ devs.

> what about the case when you want n blobs of data instead of one?

Each one turns into a .o file, then you link them all together. There's nothing limiting you to just one.

<comment><USER13> Well, the only drawback that comes to mind is that you can't mutate the state of that blob (well, you _can_ , but you _really really_ shouldn't). Also if it's obscenely large, it might be better to keep it on disk and load only as much as you need/can.

<comment><USER14> _Also if it 's obscenely large, it might be better to keep it on disk and load only as much as you need/can._

That's what this technique does, since the kernel doesn't fully load the executable file to memory, it'll mmap it but only load data from disk as it's requested.

<comment><USER11> thats only true in some cases. in general it is not true.

<comment><USER12> When is it not true?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> IF anyone is curious, doing this in java is only possible if the resulting java file is no bigger than 65kb and does not include more than 65k literals / constants

<comment><USER7> If you're shipping Java software, you probably already deliver more than one class file, possibly within a JAR. I think it makes more sense to include the binary data as a regular file and load it as a resource through the class loader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting trick, I've always done it the xxd way. I'll have to keep this in mind next time I plan on putting a blob in C/C++ code!

</comment><comment><USER17> Cool, that looks like a very useful C trick, it have never struck me to use a linker to include binary data. Gotta try it someday.

</comment><comment><USER18> We need a cross platform resource compiler.</comment>


Women in Tech: How Anonymity Contributes to the Problem - <AUTHOR> http://33bits.org/2010/08/30/women-in-tech-how-anonymity-contributes-to-the-problem/ <comment><USER3> You are conflating anonymity with accountability. Accountability can be improved without revealing someone's identity and revealing someone's identity will not necessarily improve their behavior. (There is plenty of bad behavior on Facebook, for example.)

Your (and Schmit's and Zuckerberg's) solution to this social problem will have more negative unintended consequences then I think we realize.

See the following for better reasoning and analysis than I can offer:

[http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securityma...](http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/01/70000)

[http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/06/12/for- the...](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/06/12/for-the- lolz-4chan-is-hacking-the-attention-economy.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's darkly amusing how people pretend this is about anonymity. As if there had never been a sexist jerk who had a name.

The first-order answer - the word that belongs in this headline - <USER2> moderation; reputation and identity are just tools to make the moderation slightly easier. But people try to avoid facing up to this. Moderation is a tedious task that we all really wish could be done by a machine. It can't.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're getting all wound up over nothing :) I write a blog about anonymity, so I'm pointing out that anonymity is part of the problem here.

Your point that moderation is the larger goal and reputation/identity is only a tool is certainly valid. I guess we disagree about how effective a tool it is. For a visceral, deeply depressing account of how different the same person's behavior can be depending on whether or not they're anonymous, check out the story of the harassment of two female Yale Law students on AutoAdmit: [http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national- news/portfoli...](http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national- news/portfolio/2009/02/11/Two-Lawyers-Fight-Cyber-Bullying/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If there weren't anonymous comments, then we wouldn't know that some men in tech are in fact prejudiced against women in tech.

That said, I'm officially sick of this back-and-forth. It crops up every few months on the blogosphere, and we never get anywhere. It's _both_ , guys. It's both. It may be relevant how much of it is one thing and how much of it is the other, but until you can walk up to me with a nice cold glass of data and tell me it's 23% biological and 23% prejudice and the other 54% is due to solar flares you're not going to convince me of anything at all.

Truce?

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought this blog would be about how women being anonymous / not presenting as female (in order to avoid prejudice against them) means that it appears there are fewer women in the tech community then there actually are.

For the record I'm female.

<comment><USER7> I had the same thought, specifically women who work in FOSS communities anonymously and do independent consulting not being counted as much as those at random tech firms.

<comment><USER8> I don't know, at least in a FOSS community, revealing yourself as a woman seems like a good way to get plenty of help, swift replies, and votes for positions of power. I've seen it before ("Jill for list moderator! She's the greatest!"), but of course that's also a good reason for a woman to remain anonymous--not everybody is cut out for the fawning adoration of 15-year-old GNOME coders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How it is always about the [presumably hostile] environment? how about a bit of personal responsibility? For example, if i try to practice law or medicine i'd also find myself in a hostile environment... Yep, i don't have a license.</comment>


Git Remaster - <AUTHOR> https://dev.clintonblackburn.com/2019/03/19/git-remaster/ <comment><USER2> This looks like just what the command "git pull --rebase" is for.

Of course, you have to set up your branch to "track" the master when you create it:

git branch myfeature --track origin/master

git checkout myfeature

(work, commit etc)

git pull --rebase

</comment><comment><USER3> Or you can do:

      git fetch
      git rebase origin/master

I usually use `git fetch --prune` to clean remote refs.</comment>


Penalizing the President (The difference between illegal and unacceptable) - <AUTHOR> https://technillogical.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/penalizing-the-president-the-difference-between-illegal-and-unacceptable/ <comment><USER2> Interesting read, and makes a good general point. I have trouble with the aspect that it seems to insinuate that only one side is making, what appear to be, claims sans-evidence which instigate investigations which may prove to be wasteful and fruitless.

Unlike the example provided, the one sure casualty of all that's happening is transparency. The political obfuscation cloud spins faster than a hurricane. Thus each side will become more entrenched in their beliefs on the matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> How can you know an investigation will be fruitless until it is conducted? If Alice trusts Bob, but Eve doesn't, what do we do? Would the investigation into Bob be fruitless or not? Isn't that what the Federal Bureau of Investigation is for? To investigate all claims of impropriety equally and fairly? We accept the false negatives because the cost of giving the benefit of the doubt blindly is a dangerous proposition.</comment>


Airbnb waives fees for Hurricane Sandy affected area - <AUTHOR> http://blog.airbnb.com/waiving-fees-for-hurricane-sandyaffected-area

<comment><USER2> Because they're still insuring the rentals, they're presumably taking a loss to do this, not to mention leaving a lot of money on the table due to increased demand. Very cool of them.

<comment><USER3> You're right about it being very cool of them, but I also suspect that the brand recognition and coverage they'll get from doing this will more than make up for any loss.

Not that I'm saying that is why they are doing it, it's the right thing to do, it's a great thing to do.

<comment><USER4> I work for Airbnb and was involved in the discussions leading up to our decision to waive fees and generally reach out to our community to help those affected and displaced by Sandy.

This was 100% due to our concern for the community and the stories coming out of the East Coast about all those impacted. We all came together--multiple departments across the company--and rallied quickly to make this happen.

It was very, very cool to witness.

<comment><USER5> Based on figures from your website, the service fee for hosts is 3%, while the fee for guests is between 6 to 12%. Do you have a projection of how much money your customers will save?

Also why waive fees rather than make a donation to the Red Cross or other relief organisations?

Crunchbase puts Airbnb funding at $220 million (with $100 million raised this September) so there seems to be a fair bit of cash floating around.

<comment><USER6> "Also why waive fees rather than make a donation to the Red Cross or other relief organisations?"

I'm not sure what is the point of asking this is. Lessening the cost of accommodations for people in these areas can sometimes have just as much of a direct influence as donating to a relief organization. Airbnb could've easily taken this opportunity to raise the fee due to say, rising demands (ahem... Uber) or done nothing at all (because they have no obligation) but instead opted to make it slightly easier financially.

<comment><USER5> Regarding the Uber comparison:

Is there anything to stop Airbnb hosts from raising prices?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fee waiver does not include Port-au-Prince and other affected areas in the Carribean.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/29/caribbean- nation...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/29/caribbean-nations- hurricane-sandy)

<comment><USER7> For their... two listings I see in Port. Granted, the do have quite a few more in Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. But the latter two weren't hit nearly as badly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a contrast from Uber.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, decided to try Uber to get to the airport today, even with the $40 discount for first-time users, I ended up paying $75 for a 20-minute ride. Last time I'm using them.

<comment><USER9> I had a look at Uber, and the only thing i can think of is they are basing their entire model on the assumption that every customer is expensing each journey.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So smart. I received so many emails from NY-based tech companies over the last few days. While I feel bad for them, I'm also in NY and in the same situation. But they insist on my attention. I love what Airbnb did here. Give give give give ... then ask. It actually feels authentic probably because it's a truly authentic gesture from them. Great way to do business.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if Uber had waived their fees at the start, would they have ridden this out in style like AirBnb?</comment>


Was the Best Buy 'I created...' Superbowl Advert inspired by Geekli.st? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydisruption.com/2012/02/was-best-buy-i-created-super-bowl-commercial-inspired-by-silicon-valley-startup/

<comment><USER2> For those of you curious as to what the commercial is they are talking about:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cavHNSZTyAg>

</comment><comment><USER3> For those of you who'd like to check out geeklist: <http://geekli.st/>

<comment><USER4> something bad is going on with the css <http://i.imgur.com/ohl2e.png>

btw 3 emails after just signing up is a bit too much, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The real video <http://vimeo.com/36316900>

</comment><comment><USER6> I was a bit disappointed when that ad turned into a Best Buy cellphone pitch, and not something, well, original. Cool ad regardless [edit: until the last 9 seconds]. It had a bit of the "Here's to the crazy ones" flavour, but ended with a "we don't make anything, but we resell everything" feel.

I was more impressed with the GE plantworker ads. Especially the Schenectady one.

<comment><USER7> I broke into a spontaneous rendition of the old Sesame Street classic from my generation, "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong..."

My non-technical wife found it to be an extremely blatant attempt by the non- cool-kid to borrow the cool kid cachet by physical proximity, and about as successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> No, it was inspired by Steve Jobs: [http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-02/bieber-no- steve-...](http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-02/bieber-no-steve-jobs- as-best-buy-remakes-super-bowl-ads-retail.html)</comment>


Stephen Fry on the Blackberry - <AUTHOR> http://www.stephenfry.com/2009/10/05/digital-devicement-part-three-blackberry-picking-time/#more-1481

<comment><USER2> There is one tiny little feature on the BlackBerry that makes it extra addictive - the tiny red LED on the top of the face. Every time you get an email, sms, IM, missed phone call, etc, that LED starts blinking.

When my iPhone is sitting on the table, its just a thin black slab. Do I have messages? Did someone call? No one knows. OTOH, the BlackBerry will start blinking and you just HAVE TO check what the blinking is about and until you do, that blink is like an unopened present - it could be anything.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like a feature I'd pay not to have.

<comment><USER4> You can turn the LED off.

<comment><USER5> Or indeed, you can set it to blink green when you haven't got a message but do have signal coverage.

BlackBerries are great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mr. Fry imparts social insights about tech products as few others can, with a droll wit and imaginative use of metaphor - fun to read for the writing style alone.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good article, but the BlackBerry of choice right now is the 9700. The camera on it is bloody good. With a little care you can take a photo of an A4 page in 12- or 14-point type and it's basically legible once you've emailed it to someone... I just mention this apropos of nothing.

<comment><USER6> Can BB be also used as a hardware modem to share internet connection with the notebook?

<comment><USER5> Yep, easily: <http://www.jaredcompany.com/docs/JaredCo_Tether_Guide.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the cancer stick to the cancer bar? Only time will tell.</comment>


HBO Ending Its Nightly Newscast Produced by Vice Media - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-10/hbo-ending-its-nightly-newscast-produced-by-vice-media <comment><USER2> I really liked Vice's in-depth international coverage of Vice. With Trump tweet obsessed 24/7 news TV it's really easy to lose the big picture of everything else going on in the world.

<comment> dfeojm-zlib Yes. I think they made a classic mistake of raising too much money, expanding too quickly and not staying hungry. VBS.TV and early VICE were good; at least before they moved their HQ, they were cratering.

I'd like to see much more of sustainable, non-profit journalism that only raises anonymous, no-strings donor money and subscriber donations to stay afloat because this is really the only way out of the ad-supported corporate MSM abandoned fourth estate hell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any recommendations for a 20-30 min daily international news program without advertisements?

<comment><USER4> PBS Newshour, but it's weekly.

Patriot Act on Netflix/Youtube (25 min deep dives on a single topic such as the recent elections in India), but it's delivered in a semi-comedic way, which you might not like.

"Daily" would be tough, as it takes time, money and high quality editing to put out well-researched, unique quality content. There's a reason 24/7 news channels are mostly talking heads stretching out daily minutiae into hours- long segments and panel discussions.

<comment><USER5> PBS newshour is daily what are you talking about

<comment><USER4> My mistake, I thought it was a weekly thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The one part of Vice that was still amazing and worth every bit of our attention. Sad to see it go. I ask the question: do we need more Succesion and Billions at the expense of something actually worthwhile?

<comment><USER7> Billions is not on HBO.

<comment><USER6> Oh snap you're right, how have I never noticed that?? I mean my point stands about Succesion but I have to eat my words here about Billions.

<comment><USER8> Those shows that provide entertainment are the reason hbo could show anything by vice in the first place. Do we need more sopranos? GoT? The wire? Deadwood? Carnival? Etc.

That's the whole point of HBO. Entertainment that at least tries to be high quality. Will succession meet that mark? No idea, they're only one season in. But if they fail they will not be the first hbo show to do so.

<comment><USER6> I should've been more clear about what I meant, I find Billions and Succession to be in a similar vein of narratives about the upper echelons of society complaining about 1pcer 1st world problems was thinking HBO has egregiously continued footing the bill for the same content, albeit entertaining for some but woefully boring for me. But my entire point is deflated because HBO is clearly not producing both shows. In short, I'm a reactionary keyboard warrior talking about my ass about something subjective. My apologies.

<comment><USER6> And I also clearly cant type.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> get woke go broke?</comment>


List of hilarious and useless things at CES - <AUTHOR> https://threader.app/thread/1083476320808398849 <comment><USER2> The smart rod made me think.

What is it about competitive hobbies and having the best kit. If you go fishing and have the best rod, bait, hooks, where's the upside? You cant be sure that massive fish you caught is your skill or just tech. Everyone would expect you to catch a big fish because you have all the kit.

If on the other hand you just have a cheap rod etc, that big fish you catch, you caught because of your skill. The guy sitting next to you with all the kit, that's just caught a massive fish is ok, because he has all the kit.

I've noticed the same thing with cycling and golf.

I suppose you could say its to prove you're part of a group, but isn't being sat in the rain, next to a muddy pond proof enough?

<comment><USER3> Even though a hobby may be competitive, you don't have to do it competitively. Maybe you just want to go fishing and catch fish and you're happy if you caught one and want to catch more.

As a hobbyist cyclist, I like having a decent bike simply because it's more fun to cycle with less effort. Of course I could get an old crappy one to show off my skill and constitution, but that's not the point for me. The point is to have some fun and while part of this fun is due to achieving goals, achieving a hard goal with a little help such as a good bike is still more fun than not achieving the hard goal, especially if it's due to comparably-bad tech.

Whether your threshold for bad tech is now a really old bike or a not-newest bike is merely a quantitative difference and in the end subject to personal preferences.

<comment><USER2> Where do ebikes fit into that picture?

<comment><USER4> They fit a different niche. Some people cycle for fitness or sporting reasons; a motor might compromise the sense of achievement of going faster and further under your own power. A lot of people cycle just to enjoy the outdoors; the idea of going faster and further for the same effort might seem perfectly logical. Ebikes are a great solution if you're just using a bicycle as functional transport, serving as a convenient halfway house between a bicycle and motorcycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know. Some of the tweets are funny, but it's effortless to be cynical about other peoples work. (Especially when presented by non-native English speakers)

Similar lines could have been written about once crazy ideas that we take for granted today.

<comment><USER6> > Similar lines could have been written about once crazy ideas that we take > for granted today.

The post mocks the presentation of the products, not the products. Submitted title here in HN makes it look like it is about mocking the things.

<comment><USER7> Actually, the guy is spot-on. Not only are the ads dumb, the actual products are dumb, too. Is there one thing on that list that the world needs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's so much weird stuff at CES, but I feel like it's almost Darwinian. 90% of it is crap but sometimes the zany stuff works. I'd recommend people in the tech world attend at least once just to see the intensity of it all. It's free if you register far enough in advance. CES is an experience!

This blog post is mostly just making fun of bad English marketing copy though. Yeah lots of international companies have trouble describing things well in English, but that isn't really the right metric to judge them on.

<comment><AUTHOR> I plan to go there one day, and see it with my own eyes. A lot of cases presented are "french tech" startups which means these startups are invited with the money of the France taxpayers. It became a subject of mockery in France because institutional folks who never launched anything give business lessons to entrepreneurs and we see the result in Vegas each year.

<comment><USER9> I thought you were exaggerating until I got about halfway through and discovered the French Tech section. I honestly can't tell if La French Tech are being knowingly ironic. Their website [1] is a gloriously detailed coming soon page ("Our site is undergoing renovation, and will be back online with in 2019") and the idea of starting an English language local French Tech community in your own country is perplexing. I'm fascinated, thanks for mentioning it.

[1] [https://www.lafrenchtech.com/en/](https://www.lafrenchtech.com/en/)

<comment><USER10> It's an alright community but it's targeted at business people in IT, not developers, the one in my local area does not have any tech people for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is how ordinary people see tech people.

</comment><comment><USER12> A lot of French Tech in those photos - I suspect there's a mix of 'useless tech' and 'bad marketing copy in a second language' behind that.

<comment><USER13> Not sure if those 'La French Tech' signs are supposed to be marketing or warnings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some of those are genuinely terrible, many others are a great example of why it's as important to sell your idea well!

</comment><comment><USER15> "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later."

That's all I get instead of pictures.

<comment><USER16> Images are from twitter. Is the browser blocking tracking content? (for me, on firefox, that's the case).

original twitter thread [https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/1083476320808398849](https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/1083476320808398849)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It a reformatted version of this:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/edzitron/status/10834763208083988...](https://mobile.twitter.com/edzitron/status/1083476320808398849)

</comment><comment><USER18> You know what's missing? NBASE-T USB adapters. What's going on? They were announced last summer and they are nowhere to be found.

<comment><USER19> I don't think Aquantia is "consumer focused" enough.

Looks like the next presentation is January 16.

[https://investors.aquantia.com/news/2019/01-07-2019-14002744...](https://investors.aquantia.com/news/2019/01-07-2019-140027448)

<comment><USER18> Well, there is the Realtek RTL8156 at 2.5gbit as well and there are no products AFAICS.

[https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/category/network- in...](https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/category/network-interface- controllers-10-100-1000m-gigabit-ethernet-usb-3-0-software)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The World's First Smart Sofa reminds me of The World's Most Comfortable Chair from The Tick: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ah7GxKHGHPg](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ah7GxKHGHPg)

That would've been something.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think that I should take inspiration from some of these and add some new possibilities to my Idea Generator: [http://www.stevesque.com/ideas](http://www.stevesque.com/ideas)

<comment><USER22> Needs more Alexa and Youtube in everything! (Yes of course I want Alexa in my toilet, what a fantastic idea! </s>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thank you OP I haven't laughed that hard in a while. I honestly have no words for some of them. Water 2.0?!

</comment><comment><USER24> The WowCube - The World's first Twisty Games Console... I am actually intrigued.

<comment><USER7> I agree. That's the only one that seemed worth looking up.

[https://wowcube.com/](https://wowcube.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't see any of these images in Firefox.

Edit: Works in Safari.

It's a good thing the internet has enough ad space to sell all this crap

<comment><USER26> Firefox's tracking protection blocks hotlinked Twitter images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's missing the Google Assistant Ride: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRHdhj- imA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRHdhj-imA)</comment>


Urska Srsen – Founder of Bellabeat (YC W14) - <AUTHOR> http://www.femalefounderstories.com/urska-srsen.html

<comment><USER2> Hey guys, the cover image is not properly displayed, it's very often clipping the image in bad spots (e.g. the head is completely missing here: [http://www.femalefounderstories.com/shruti- shah.html](http://www.femalefounderstories.com/shruti-shah.html) \- and in most other images the too much of the forehead is gone). I recommend simply clipping the images, won't take that long.</comment>


Script that checks NJ unemployment claim from the command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/paulsammut/njucheck <comment><USER2> I always wonder why these systems are so poorly built, especially when I hear about how much is spent to build them.

Nice work on the script though, maybe they'll spend $10mm next year to add in the feature natively</comment>


Ask HN: Any coding workflow for using the repl? - <AUTHOR> There are times when I want to play around with some idea and I want to write some potentially throwaway code. There is no requirements, I'm just playing with some lib to see what is it capable of. The repl makes it really nice to explore.
One of my current workflow is for node.
1. go to the terminal and open node.
2. require some random library and play around with it.
3. export the command history to a file with '.save'
4. modify the file with a text editor.
5. load the new file with '.load'
6. Repeat and iterate till I have some proof of concept code.
I was previously tried using LightTable but it was kinda buggy. I'm kinda happy with this workflow except that I can't rerun a multiline command while in the repl which makes typos more painful.
Does anyone have a similar workflow, better editor or suggestions on how to improve it? <comment><USER2> If you want to use JavaScript, Tonic ([http://tonicdev.com](http://tonicdev.com)) is exactly this workflow. It has every single package on npm already pre-installed (so absolutely no set up - straight to code), and gives you a complete node environment to play around with. It also has time-traveling abilities that can rewind the entire state of the computer ([http://blog.tonicdev.com/2015/09/10/time-traveling-in- node.j...](http://blog.tonicdev.com/2015/09/10/time-traveling-in-node.js- notebooks.html) ). When you are done you can download the file and it will work exactly the same in node.

Would love to hear your thoughts if you try it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very cool. It does a lot of what I want, it kinda reminds me of wakari/anaconda but for javascript.

It be cool if you added the ability to upload a file rather than having to download it to test something.</comment></comment>


Report content directly to GitHub Support - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2493-report-content-directly-to-github-support <comment><USER2> I'm kinda surprised this wasn't already a thing - I've never seen a "buy viagra here" comment on GitHub so I assume they have had some anti spam system in place for ages.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, what's the motivation behind this?

I hope it's not going to turn into another weapon in online political battles.

<comment><USER4> It's used by humans. It will. Hopefully, such abuse will be characterised as just that, but it probably won't be because humans will judge the reports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every single website that publishes user-generated content offers a method to report content.

I really have no idea how this merits to be top of the front page, except that github somehow ended up on everyone's naughty list because an intern once deleted content they misunderstood, and the company once mentioned their efforts to attract a more diverse workforce.

The tech community will always forgive and forget a company not noticing that none of their three backup systems are actually working, and then accidentally deleting user data.

But any small effort, ever, to join the society-wide effort to right historical wrongs will forever taint even the most benign actions with the collective accusation of politically-motivated censorship.

The universal truth that everyone, in every industry, is also a citizen who doesn't check their humanity at the company gates is now scandalized. And the common fiction that companies only serve the bottom line is not rejected as (a) wrong and (b) ahistorical ignorance, but glorified as the mantra of some sort of libertarian fantasy.

<comment><USER6> I don't think we have to be that cynical about it. This is an interesting feature because Github chose to feature it on their blog today, which suggests that the previous system for reporting was not well-known or well-understood.</comment></comment>


The iPhone at the Deathbed - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/style/iphone-death-portraits.html <comment><USER2> Weird, I had just discovered the subreddit /r/lastimages before checking HN and this article shows up. It's a morbidly fascinating view into people's very personal relationships with now-deceased friends and family. Made possible by the ubiquity of cameras today.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd just like to point out that there is a gratuitous swipe at a prominent politician in this piece. Of course it is wholly out of place, and should have been edited out in a piece of true journalism.

Regardless of your political leanings, it is astonishing to see how much time and energy is dispatched each day trying to push an opinion on an unwilling audience. One day soon, this will be known as the golden age of media propaganada.

<comment><USER4> It was a direct quote from a source.

<comment><USER3> Yes, true.

But it was unnecessary for the story-- it added nothing. I'm sure the author had many more quotes from many of the subjects, yet not all were chosen to print.

<comment><USER5> Selecting quotes for a nonpolitical story based on political considerations would be terribly agenda-driven journalism.

<comment><USER6> But that's why the quote was included. Who are you arguing with?

Newspapers do this sort of thing all the time. If some source used the phrase "latest Obama atrocity" the NY Times would never use that phrase--unless they framed it in a way to destroy the person making the quote. I don't get upset about this. It's just how journalism is.

<comment><USER5> I don't think that's true, although I unfortunately don't have any good ideas for how to prove it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I first read the headline, I thought the article was about how the iPhone itself was dying.

I'm surprised to see the NY Times have such clickbait-ish headlines. Mods, maybe change the title on HN?

<comment><USER8> Yeah that title is a complete lie, the article has absolutely nothing to do with iphones.

It's also a dumb article. People are taking pictures of their dead loved ones and posting it to Facebook. This is... news?

<comment><USER9> I've seen candid photos of people at their death bed, but it was usually done by people who were professional photographers, and often part of a photo feature essay. The phenomenon of regular people having a high quality camera at every moment in their lives, and a network to immediately disseminate such photos without a gatekeeper, is most certainly a relatively new phenomenon.

Just the other week I saw someone who had posted a candid photo of him and his dying girlfriend at the hospital on Reddit. He was ridiculed and the thread was deleted, but not before someone had screenshotted it and posted it on Twitter to mock. Seeing death in public is still an uncommon thing.

<comment><USER10> Victorian death photography was a thing. Before cameras were cheap, people used to get photos taken of their dead loved ones because it was literally the only photo they would ever have of that person and they wanted to cherish the memory.

Often these photos would be taken as a group family picture.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post- mortem_photography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-mortem_photography)

> Post-mortem photography was very common in the nineteenth century when > "death occurred in the home and was quite an ordinary part of life."[3] As > photography was a new medium, it is plausible that "many daguerreotype post- > mortem portraits, especially those of infants and young children, were > probably the only photographs ever made of the sitters. The long exposure > time made deceased subjects easy to photograph.'

> In the Victorian era it was not uncommon to photograph deceased young > children or newborns in the arms of their mother. The inclusion of the > mother, it has been argued, encourages one to see through the mother's eyes</comment></comment></comment></comment>