As Google Fights Fake News, Voices on the Margins Raise Alarm - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/technology/google-search-bias-claims.html <comment><USER2> Google isn't doing very well on "socialist". One of the "Top Stories" is WorldNet Daily: _" Chilling! Left on brink of socialist victory in U.S. 'We have to have the courage to say something is wrong. This is insanity' Published: 6 days ago"_ That's not even fake news. That's like news from an alternate universe in which Bernie Sanders won.

<comment><USER3> I get www.worldsocialism.org at position 4 underneath wikipedia and the dictionary sites. The ""news"" boxes have Bloomberg and the Daily Express, both of which are a bit detached from reality, talking about Corbyn.

I think this tells us (a) results differ from person to person - we knew that, but it means we can't see what's being shown to others and how bad it might be; and (b) "socialist" is mostly used as a swear word these days.

<comment><USER2> I'm running Firefox in private mode with Ghostery enabled, so all Google is getting is my IP address. Try it that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> By no means do I agree with much of what is on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). However, from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly:

1) Much of their content is original (i.e. not copy-pasted from other sites)

2) A majority of the page is composed of text, rather than images or ads

3) Where there are ads, they are minimal and largely hidden from view.

4) Their website is well organized, with clear and descriptive links.

5) Their website is updated frequently and new content is posted regularly.

So, assuming that WSWS is linked by other sites on the same topic, it seems that it should rank highly in Google search queries. Maybe there is something else that would reduce their ranking, but it doesn't seem obvious to me at first glance.

<comment><USER5> > _from a purely algorithmic standpoint_

You could use the same argument on any extremist site.

Algorithm can parse content. It probably has list of bullshit related keywords. Just the title:

> _Marxist analysis, international working class struggles & the fight for > socialism_

<comment><USER6> Extremist is the tag that Putin bolts on every opinion he doesn't like, so now I may assume you are a putinist.

<comment><USER5> Website that constantly talks about 'struggle' and 'revolution' is not extremist at all.

<comment><USER6> "Extremist" is a weasel word for when a person didn't really do anything yet, but you are already trying to censor them.

<comment><USER5> Marxists and socialists did not do anything yet. Now you are just trolling.

<comment><USER6> These particular ones didn't, and you certainly can't prevent a person (or a group of people) from thinking improper thoughts as long as they want to.

But you would like to, won't you? You would like to get into people's heads? You consider people your peons and you want to pull switches in their heads because you know better what they should think?

In short, you are a putinist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Imo these filter blocks are problematic. Maybe google can flag the content with a visual cue instead of participating in censorship. I remember in high school we had a class 'critical thinking', wonder if it is still is taught and whether it is so in other places of education. People should filter content or at least be helped to instead of hering people away from 'harmful' topic. Behind fake news idea there is an elephant in the room - feeble minds, perhaps this is the real problem.

this goes without saying google should promote higher quality content regardless and spammy content should be rated as such.

<comment><USER8> Feeble minds is a defeatist characterisation, and unhelpful.

People have the cognitive attributes that they do. We think in narratives. Our political thinking mode is entirely dominated by identity, whether ideological, ethnic or whatever. We prefer confirmation. etc. etc. We just aren't scientific thinking machines. That's why scientific methods are designed as they are. They strictly avoid the way people normally come to conclusions, even (especially) intellectual heavyweights that have dedicated their lives to rationality. Take away the scientific checks (e.g., the _double_ blindness of experiments), and even the most robust minds are feeble in this sense.

The actual mechanisms of culture are too complex to understand, but components of culture and group behaviour can be understood well enough to steer things into certain directions.

The underlying problem (IMO) is that FB, Google and others are the only ones in position to play a role they do not want to play. In the past we had "trusted" publications, who had editors and such. We had softer institutions like "journalism," the culture and methods associated with the profession. These had power, cultural force. None of these were anywhere near perfect (or even decent), but they did have some ability to distinguish between "popular" and "good".

They don't as much anymore. Google & FB do. They don't want the job. We don't really want them to have the job. Something new needs to emerge, and I don't think that something is a more robust human brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "Google said it had added more detailed examples of problematic pages into > the guidelines"

'Problematic'. There's that word, again. The news need not even be 'fake' anymore. Simply 'problematic' will do.

Here's Mark Zuckerberg not long ago:

> While the amount of _problematic_ content we've found so far remains > relatively small, any attempted interference is a serious issue.

Problematic to whom, one wonders? The loser? Those who feel most aggrieved? This is little more than an attempt to sanitize information so that all that remains is the pre-approved 'least problematic' truth (fact-checked, of course).

Hillary Clinton, with much irony and little self-awareness, summed up the intent behind this move in her latest book:

> "Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism....This > is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from > historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell's classic novel > Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers > electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. "The goal > is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly > _the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to > guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves_ ".

So the message is clear: Trust us, you dolts. We know best.

<comment><USER10> Problematic to whom?

Readers who seek a factual account of an event.

Why is this so subjective, and why are people so riled up in these threads? News should be objectively true. If it isn't, it should be clearly flagged as opinion, or struck entirely as fiction, i.e. _fake_.

<comment><USER11> There's a line of thinking that claims that 'true' objectivity is impossible, because even choosing what to speak about (or not) involves a degree of subjectivity.

This idea was taken to the extreme with outlets like Fox News, and I think we are witnessing a counter-move in the opposite direction as a result. Once the pendulum swings enough in that direction, and 'legitimate' news start being censored, the GP comment will probably feel a lot more relevant.

<comment><USER10> Fox News, when they report objectively factual accounts of world events, isn't "fake news". Breathlessly repeating irrelevant stories against the current political grain on Fox News? Still not fake news. Biased, sure. Selectively edited. But not fake. Reporting a rumor or an outright fiction in the form of an objectively factual account of a world event? That's fake.

There is zero reason for the issue to be political. Either it's falsified on purpose and with an intent to deceive the consumer (a'la "Fake Gucci Purse") or it's not.

<comment><USER12> Fox news displays plenty of "fake" (by any definition) news.

They said the city of Birmingham in the UK was a place "where non-Muslims just simply don't go".

Here's a sampling of 50 pretty obvious lies:

[http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2015/feb/26/50-...](http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2015/feb/26/50-fox- news-lies-6-seconds-daily-show/)

An aside, I've literally read a story about a guy who writes "fake news" just for cash, and one of the headlines he made up for clicks, is the exact same as something that was actually said on Fox news:

"Says Colorado food stamp recipients can use ATMs to get cash to buy marijuana."

Here's an NPR story about the fake news creator, when he mentions this:

[http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503...](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr- finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs)

Ironically the last bit of Fox News I actually watched was a "fact-check" segment.

In it, the first lady's claim that slaves had built the white house was "fact- checked". By which they meant they didn't actually contradict the fact (because it was true) but minimized it as much as possible, including throwing in the unsupported lie that the slaves were "well treated".

We actually have documentary evidence written by the first lady that was in the white house at the time, that the slaves she saw building the white house were in fact poorly treated.

But even if they were, why would you bring this up? Well-treated slaves are still slaves.

<comment><USER13> Personally I think NPR is one of the worst offenders.

It's not what they say, it's what they leave out. Those soothing dulcet tones are half way to hypnosis.

I give you little credit for recognize Fox News propaganda because it's entry level manipulation. Most people who visit Huffpo know what it is. Organizations like the New York Times, NPR, The Economist and National Review have refined it to an art form.

I take the latter group more seriously because large numbers of people buy into their lines but Fox and Huffpo are what WWF is to armed conflict.

The New York Times is a Communist organization. That is not hyperbole, it is the truth. It's not well hidden if you go and look. They have always supported Communism. Likewise The Economist has always supported Fascist and other authoritarian dictatorships. Inside every friendly, well mannered, articulate moderate is an extremist trying to claw out.

Us Westerners support all manner of extraordinary adventures because for ourselves at the center of world power this is a game that doesn't involve high stakes. The voters are complicit of course, we have prospered greatly over the centuries and like our comfortable lives that don't involve thorny questions.

I don't feel bad about this, it's the same as every other civilization in history. Perhaps we ought to restrain ourselves more from _saving the world_ if only to halt our plumbing the depths of grandiose neurosis. I think I've offended everybody now so I'll shut up.

<comment><USER14> Quillette: Smearing Free Thought In Silicon Valley [http://quillette.com/2017/09/25/smearing-free-thought- silico...](http://quillette.com/2017/09/25/smearing-free-thought-silicon- valley/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Digit-Al I seems to me that Google are 'damned if they do, and damned if they don't'.

They get loads of stick for linking to fake news, but if they try to do something about it they get loads of stick for 'trying to control what we see'.

The biggest culprit in the spreading of fake news is ourselves. The number of times I see friends spreading stories on Facebook that smell false on first viewing, and can be shown to be false with a 20 second Google search is amazing.

Nobody can be arsed to spend a tiny bit of time fact checking and when you call them out on it they just shrug and give the feeble 'just in case' excuse.

</comment><comment><USER15> Fake news isnt done to convince you about a poltical opinion its mostly done to get you to click the link or share it and through that make money on advertising. Judging it on some truth parameter is absurd instead it should be judged on its advertising strategy IMO.

<comment><USER16> Also, people should appreciate that fighting fake news hurts Google's bottom line in the short run.

I guess in the long run they are better off with legitimate traffic, since scamy websites and shitty ads are the reason for why many people now install ad blockers. But it's actually rare to see a company thinking ahead of the next quarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think we're close to 1984 world and thought control... but coming from tech giants like Facebook and Google.

<comment><USER18> Ever once in a while I link someone or mentioned what is in articles such as these, below, and I rarely find people believe it until they read it in name- brand media. Maybe I am wrong but from 9/11 to the Snowden leaks to now it feels like we are on some accelerated path towards 1984 where conspiracy theories are becoming reality.

For example: the US gov actively influences movies and TV scripts for propaganda purposes: [https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive- documents-...](https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents- expose-direct-us-military-intelligence-influence-on-1-800-movies-and-tv- shows-36433107c307)

Another: US Gov created an incredibly false narrative about Iraq to set the stage for the War on Terror. [https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald- trump-is-so-up...](https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so- upset-about-iraq-wmd-lies-why-is-he-hiring-john-bolton/)

DoD spent millions researching how to manipulate Twitter users: [https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa- social-n...](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social- networks-research-twitter-influence-studies)

We need more decentralized power in media, not less.

<comment><USER19> None of these adventures are anything new. The US government had been responsible for blatant propaganda in film and print, lied about causes of wars, and spied on, sabotaged, suppressed, and manipulated domestic political movements for decades. This has been happening since the Red Scare gave the ruling classes something to lose sleep over.

<comment><USER18> I have never seen a poll on something like "do you think the US government is actively manipulating media?" Or, "what do you think the odds are this TV show was scripted by the US government to shape your opinion on an issue?"

The thing is I think many see this as the realm of conspiracy theory; and maybe public opinion of establishment media would change if they thought differently

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Remember when the right wing groups were up in arms about the censoring of non-liberal news by the news moderators and FB had to reorganise the whole team.

Now we know the so-called liberal bias was that they were censoring all the (mostly) right wing fake news stories coming from the Russian backed troll teams.

<comment><USER21> >Russian backed troll teams Is there any hard evidence whatsoever that this is the case, and may you point me to it? I'm fully aware that Russians never "hacked the election" as many news outlets will have us believe (low confidence from the intelligence community, the previous president, and others) but I would believe that claim with hard evidence.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Your comment is going way off the general subject of the conversation, but I thought I'd oblige.

If it's your confidence in the IC, and the previous admin, judging by your comments you might not be opposed to written testaments from the current administration's DHS Cyber Division: [https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/06/21/written-testimony-ia- cyb...](https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/06/21/written-testimony-ia-cyber- division-acting-director-dr-samuel-liles-and-nppd-acting)

\---

Further context:

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/22/electronic-voting-state- ha...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/22/electronic-voting-state-hacking- russian-government-cyber-actors/)

( And in case you resent the "liberal" media: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-informs-21-states-they- were...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-informs-21-states-they-were- targeted-by-attempted-russian-hacking-1506119620) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> IMO, I think that there's a more troubling problem brewing behind the scenes.

I believe Google increasingly doesn't understand their own outputs. This is also true of products other than search like youtube related content and ads.

They have put so many eggs in the AI basket they're not really sure if the eggs are being made into omelet or boiled or pidan.

It's a kind of Algorithmic Dissociative Disorder.

</comment><comment><USER23> I recall Eric Schmidts remark in a meeting with Charlie Rose back in 2005:

"When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do, well, that is a bug. We should be able to give you the right answer. We should know what you meant."

What is "right" or "wrong" (or problematic) today will more than likely later be proved the opposite.

This is censorship. It doesn't matter what the meaning of problematic is.

We are headed into a digital dark age.

</comment><comment><USER24> _Google has often said that it cannot reveal too much or people would use that information to try to game the rankings_

Isn't this the same "security by obscurity" argument?

<comment><USER9> No. Security by obscurity is relying on opaqueness instead of using an alternative and better defense.

For Google to protect it's ranking algorithms, non-disclosure and the legal right to proprietary knowledge is the best defense. It's not obscure, it's private.</comment></comment>


How to Make Your Phone Limit Your Screen Time for You - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/smarter-living/how-to-make-your-phone-limit-your-screen-time-for-you.html <comment><USER2> "My tapeworm tells me what to do."

also,

"Who watches the watchmen?"</comment>


Sugar: Secure GPU Acceleration in Web Browsers [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.ics.uci.edu/~ardalan/papers/Yao_ASPLOS18.pdf <comment><USER2> Given that GPUs already have full MMUs without going all the way to virtualization, I guess I don't see what virtualization is doing here intrinsically with the nested MMU context. Particularly for open source drivers like Intel's that they're using, we should just fix the bugs that are allowing you to map other process's vram. Virtualization still needs to communicate to the compositor overt IPC, so you end up with the same attack surface either way. It's like fixing Win95's half assed process isolation with virtualization rather than just having a cleaner process model.

Like, I'm sure they fixed the bugs they were looking at, but virtualization isn't magical security juice you can sprinkle over stuff. In fact it increases your attack surface in a lot of ways.

<comment><USER3> Not really the point of the paper's pitch, but I work for a company that does cloud GPU stuff. Currently, we have no safe way to share GPUs and over- provision them in the cloud in a cluster deploy. So we have one GPU per kubernetes pod. There are all sorts of problems with that. The idea of vGPUs is very exciting to me. I would like to test this out.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CQmomyOiRM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CQmomyOiRM)

This seems to claims vGPU works with NVidia Grid.

The real issue you're facing is with over-provision them?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's industry wide. We work directly with nvidia. They use our product. I thought the paper was interesting, definitely not a magic bullet for the problem. You used to be able to over provision with kubernetes 1.8 and before, but they fixed that useful bug for good reasons. I expect we'll have an official solution in Q1 next year, but I'm always on the look out to explore related implementations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very cool.

That said, unless I'm missing something the claim of solving bug issues was kind of BS. I looked through more than half of the chrome bugs and most of them were actual bugs in chrome or angle that had absolutely nothing GPU specific about them.

In other words they could (and do) happen with all code as in

        const void* p = malloc(10);
        memset(p, 0, 11);  // oops

Nothing GPU specific about that code and nothing as far as I can tell that sugar will prevent (as in sugar could have exactly the same types of bugs).

Still, they claim to be getting great perf and less code so all of that is a win.</comment>


The New Face in Image Moderation - <AUTHOR> https://www.inversoft.com/blog/2016/04/12/cleanspeaks-advance-image-approval-queue/ <comment><USER2> Cool stuff, kind of a like a speed reader approach.</comment>


Watch out, PayPal: Facebook gets serious about payments - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/21/facebook-payments/ <comment><USER2> Ugh, trying to decide who is the lesser evil.

Just imagine PayPal but with Facebook's lack of concern for privacy added.

<comment><USER3> However, just the fact that there is more competition might mean they both have to become less evil to retain/attract customers. Which would be very welcome.</comment></comment>


Google Warning: Millions of Android Phones Come Preloaded with Malware - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/10/google-warning-tens-of-millions-of-android-phones-come-preloaded-with-dangerous-malware/ <comment><USER2> Samsung are big offenders for this, putting the Peel TV remote on their phones, which can't be uninstalled. Recently, the app was updated to put advertisements on your phone's homescreen. Completely unacceptable

<comment><USER3> I don't buy Samsung anymore for this reason. I don't know if it's still the case but I also used to have like 2 versions of every app, the Google one and the Samsung one. I seemed to remember at one point I even had two SMS apps, totally ridiculous.

With the whole poor security of the SmartThings stuff, I have serious doubts about Samsung's ability in software. Their online services were dire, no SSO so I had to frequently re-login when I moved to a different part of portal, errors here and there.

<comment><USER4> Samsung hardware is still top-tier though. For the poweruser, an attractive option is a Samsung device rooted to remove all bloatware, and sometimes even flashed with the AOSP Android ISO (instead of the carrier-specific, pre-loaded operating system)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Name of the malware: Google

<comment><USER6> There are phones that come with Facebook preinstalled, so add that to the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Surpise, surprise.

This is why you should flash over the phone's OS with something AOSP-based the moment you get it.

Ideally you wouldn't install Google Play Services afterwards, but if you do you have at least upgraded to "possibly insecure" from "definitely insecure and probably malicious".</comment>


The Case for Global Warming Skepticism  - <AUTHOR> http://commentlog.org/bid/4409/The-Case-for-Global-Warming-Skepticism

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious if anyone has any refutations. I shared this because I found it unexpectedly compelling. But I don't want to be the victim of believing the last thing I have read.

</comment><comment><USER2> He writes with a very entertaining style. Bravo.</comment>


The Nim Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://nim-lang.org/ <comment><USER2> Some recent comments on the 1.0 release, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21053140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21053140)</comment>


The Aristotle illusion - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126997.300-tactile-illusions-1-the-aristotle-illusion.html

<comment><USER2> Nice party tricks, but I was kind of hoping for some philosophical or scientific revelation at the end of the article. Unfortunately, it never came... :-(

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a very interesting article, although I couldn't get the illusions to feel as the article predicted as I tried them while reading the article. The brain's map of the body is the source of "phantom pain,"

<http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/phantom-pain/DS00444>

of course, and thus it is medically interesting to find out more about how the brain maps sensations to body parts.</comment>


Google Begins Fixing Usenet Archive  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet_fix/ <comment><USER2> Google Group search was horribly broken for _months_ , across many or all Google-hosted groups too, not just Usenet. It would only return results from the previous few weeks.

It seems to have been fixed sometime in the last couple weeks.

<comment><USER3> And the spam filter is broken. Lots of user created group are marked as spam and can not start or reply any topic. One of my group were marked as spam and locked up _seconds_ after I just created it.

<comment><USER2> Anyone else notice this amusing form of malware spam?

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=%22Where+can+I+find+an+online+anti- virus%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=)

(spam bot A asks for anti-virus software recommendations. spam bot B follows up suggesting a link to some malware)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"It turns out there was a bug, a specific bug, that affected search within a specific group," Google spokeswoman Victoria Katsarou told wired.com late Wednesday._

Based on my own Google Usenet searches this past year, this is total nonsense. How are we ever supposed to trust them to have a monopoly on indexing the world's out-of-print books (you _have_ read the settlement terms, haven't you?) when they can't even be honest about their mistakes?

<comment><USER5> How is the statement is dishonest? My guess is that she meant "affected searches that were limited by group" while you heard "affected searches within this one particular group".

<comment><USER6> The quotation is simply a gigantic understatement. Usenet search is broken in almost every possible way and she should have said so. First and foremost, I rarely get results that are actually in the archive, but pages from the main web search. Phrases from known existing posts do not return results any longer. Several Usenet providers have acceptable Spam filters, but Google apparently has none.

Google as the buyer of the Deja archive has a responsibility here and they should live up to it (as they did up to around 2004).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The non-usenet part of Google Groups needs serious attention. The volume of spam is ridiculous.

They have just purchased recaptcha and should make use of it.

<comment><USER8> Plus the search functionality is completely and absolutely broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=869681>

In reference to here.

</comment><comment><USER8> About damned time, search in the whole Google Groups universe has been terminally broken for at least a year.</comment>


Show HN: Pocket, Instapaper and Twitter Articles on Kindle - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailycrunch.mobi/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HNers,

I recently wrote a small webapp to allow me reading my Pocket and Twitter timeline articles on my Kindle, during the daily commute. Got some good feedback from friends, so posting here, as I guess it might interest other readers. It'll check for your unread articles, download their content and send them to your Kindle as daily edition/megazine style booklet. You can also archive & favorite stuff directly on the Kindle (provided you're connected to 3G/Wifi).

It's all free for now (I intend to charge something eventually to help pay the server bills, if people start using it regularly :-P) - all feedback is super welcome!

</comment><comment><USER2> I primarily use Pocket - I know of 3 services (P2K, crofflr, en2kindle). Those perform satisfactorily for me at the moment.

Your service also looks good. I was able to download articles to kindle. Does it archive downloaded articles? Can I set the number of articles to download at once?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Sorry I didn't see your comment earlier!

You can archive the downloaded articles manually, directly on the Kindle - I'm adding support to auto-archive downloaded too.

I used to use P2K and en2kindle as well - built this as I wanted to add support for a few more sources and format it as a single "book", instead of delivering individual articles</comment></comment>


Autonomous Delivery startup Nuro releases it's first voluntary safety report - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/13/17855136/nuro-self-driving-car-safety-report <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link to Nuro's blog post with a link to the actual report (PDF):

[https://medium.com/nuro/delivering- safety-6eb859223868](https://medium.com/nuro/delivering-safety-6eb859223868)</comment>


Google Offers $3.14159 Million In Total Rewards For Chrome OS Hacking Contest - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/01/28/google-offers-3-14159-million-in-total-rewards-for-chrome-os-hacking-contest/ <comment><USER2> [http://blog.chromium.org/2013/01/show-off-your-security- skil...](http://blog.chromium.org/2013/01/show-off-your-security-skills- pwn2own.html)</comment>


Current vs. future cities – Click on a city and explore its future climate - <AUTHOR> https://crowtherlab.pageflow.io/cities-of-the-future-visualizing-climate-change-to-inspire-action#213121 <comment><USER2> Los Angeles is cooling and Europe is on fire in 2050, why is L.A. so cool?

<comment><USER3> Dunno for certain but possibly moderation by marine conditions i.e. coolish currents.</comment></comment>


Up in the Air - <AUTHOR> http://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/

<comment><USER2> Amazing story of escape!</comment>


Snow Leopard screenshots show interface tweaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/23/snow_leopard_screenshots_show_interface_tweaks.html <comment><USER2> > A new Put Back option in the Finder's Action menu automatically returns a > trashed item to the folder where it came from.

Meh. OS 9 and earlier had "Put Away" which did this and more. It also ejected drives, dismounted network volumes, and allowed the user the temporarily store files pulled out of folders on the desktop. You know, in line with the _original metaphor_ of user at a desk the user manipulated documents and folders on.

(Yes, I'm still grumpy from how Apple screwed up the "spatial" nature of the original Finder.)

<comment><USER3> Finder has to be the weakest part of the OS X experience at the moment.

<comment><USER4> Very much agreed.

<comment><USER5> Finder's being ported to Cocoa might be a sign that Apple's looking to fix things? I hope so.

I haven't noticed recently because now I use Quicksilver to browse everything, and it's incredibly more efficient. I wish Apple would just make Quicksilver a built-in feature of their OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "While it's rumored that Apple is keeping some more significant interface changes close to its chest at this time..."

I sure hope so because I see no reason to get it with, basically, only those changes.

<comment><USER6> the reason is probably "let's not release all the revolutionary UI stuff we had thought at the same time, so we can send a dozen other felines with minor enhancements, one every year".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Two features I miss from Win/Gnome/KDE world: cut+paste and merging of folders (when you move something to a folder which has another with the same name, you actually override it in OSX). It's probably just me. Meh...

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it just coincidence that both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are focusing on performance improvements?

<comment><USER8> Vista didn't fit in netbooks. They had to make the improvements or support XP for more time.

<comment><USER7> So why is Apple also working on this? Do they want to build netbooks?

<comment><USER5> Think of it from Apple's point of view. Right now, you're leagues ahead of the competition feature-wise. You have all the publicity. Your competitor launched an OS that got mocked for ripping off of you, then got criticized for breaking in a lot of really simple, stupid ways. Meanwhile, your last release added an enormous heap of features, unified all of your various features under a single, ultrasimplistic interface.

The smart move isn't expansion. Apple covers more space than any other company and any other out-of-the-box operating system. Now they're ahead, and they can spend time working on the little details, emphasizing perfectionism. They can slim down and make things faster and more enjoyable. They _could_ add more features, but right now why bother?

When you look at the things Snow Leopard _is_ adding you get a good idea of Apple's plan. They're rumored to be making Quicktime Pro free, which means suddenly it becomes as powerful as Preview (which is an incredible, overlooked application). They're possibly adding support for other video codecs out-of- the-box, which means they're doing the one thing Quicktime ought to have done from the beginning.

Meanwhile, this new Stacks view gives them spatial navigation from the Dock with an Apple twist, which is excellent. I used a stack that used the list view for navigation and gave up on it because it was too ugly and didn't let me drag. Now, you can browse your computer with a single click on your Dock if you want to. That's excellent. It begins to provide an alternative to the Finder, and while it's not solving the real problems, it solves the main one of "let me get to my stuff quickly and attractively".

At the same time, they're refining their applications. iMovie gets the features that 08 lost. iPhoto increases its consumer focus. GarageBand's big new thing isn't the lessons but the refined interface, which has made it one of my favorite OS X applications. Pages gets fullscreen mode, Keynote gets themes, Numbers gets extensibility.

They've got a huge featureset. Now they can focus on making it all elegant and streamlined, even more so than it is now. I'm very excited for this release for that reason. I suspect it'll be a delight to use.

<comment><USER9> I didn't know about all of those features.

The big one I did know about is Grand Central, software that takes advantage of multi-cores. It is supposed to spread the load across the cores in your processor. That is the feature I am waiting for.

Building that now makes sense to me. I have a dual core processor that barely uses the second core. Plus my dual core will soon be on the low end of cores per processor.

<comment><USER5> I'm not a huge developer, so I'm not certain of how Grand Central will work out for the end user. It does sound promising, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: rqlite v2.2.2, replicating SQLite via Raft consensus - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite <comment><USER2> Well done. I am curious, though, if you tried implementing this as a sqlite VFS. That would allow it to be more plug-n-play with existing software that already talks to sqlite.

I suppose you would have had to hack up something to map offset ranges into key/value pairs, but at a high level, it seems feasible.

<comment><USER3> I built one recently. We have a SQLite VFS built on top of Zookeeper for doing metadata-like stuff. We can pull between 1000-100000 reads per seconds out of it.

I realize that this is a total abuse of what Zookeeper does, and how it is supposed to work, but hey, this is a solution that's _simple_ and _correct_.

Here are the benchmarks comparing the traditional VFS with the ZK VFS: [https://gist.github.com/sargun/7503ba636c1a0eb2e2f5cda7a6a23...](https://gist.github.com/sargun/7503ba636c1a0eb2e2f5cda7a6a23db2)

PS: Feel free to ask me any questions

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty interesting. Do you have source code you can share?

<comment><USER3> Not yet open source, and it probably wont be for a while, given it's in $EMPLOYER's proprietary product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this a potential way to work around the single-writer nature of SQLite? It's probably the main limitation I hit when using SQLite, which otherwise fits a lot of jobs very well. Obviously you would not want to use it for situations where there is contention, but SQLite locks the whole database even if you are writing to completely separate tables.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, unfortunately not, as every change must go through a single node i.e. the leader. The same limitations as a standalone SQLite database apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _rqlite ensures that every change made to the database is made to a quorum of SQLite files, or none at all._

So that means if a single node in the cluster fails then everything stops?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. As long as (n/2)+1 nodes are up, where n is the size of the cluster, everything continues to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stupid question: What if I want the databases to be built with optional extensions (like the json extension)? Is there a way to deal with such scenario?

Cool project!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not really sure I follow you. But if it requires compiling other stuff into the source code, probably not. The SQLite source is built along with the SQLite Go layer, without that control AFAIK.

<comment><USER6> Ok, that answers it perfectly. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think now works. Great idea though! Great demonstration ifnot nothing else. Can we do one over 2pc as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, certain non-deterministic functionality can't be used. This is called out here:

[https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite#limitations](https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite#limitations)

Though with now() you could calculate that before you issue the query.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is cool. On a related topics, I'm still waiting for a sqlite for graphs to emerge.</comment>


Keep Simplifying - <AUTHOR> http://thintz.com/essays/keep-it-simple

<comment><USER4> I'm all for simplification. However, I don't think the other person that sleeps in my bed from time to time would appreciate me saying "we're sleeping on the floor now, honey! it's just like camping!"

<comment><USER5> Sure. Although I've given serious consideration to getting a bed that collapses away and only uncollapsing it when I'm expecting somebody other than me to be sleeping in it as well.

My current compromise is to arrange my bedroom so that there's room to sleep on the floor when I feel like it but to leave the bed set up constantly - since I have a study for my desk and computer, I don't really need the space for anything else anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Simplification is different for each of us. We each have our own needs, goals, lives to lead, and different importances.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a question for people who are working at a standing-level desk - <USER2> long can you actually type while standing? Do your knees and feet get tired? I'm intrigued, but... I have to type _a lot_ if I want to get paid.

Perhaps a desk that can change height?

</comment><comment><USER8> I slept on the floor in college, didn't even own a bed for about a year. Things change when you have an SO;) Extrapolating from that, simplification may need to take into account changing conditions - what was nice, simple code may need to take on complexities when the problem you're trying to solve changes. This often happens once you ship something the first time - <USER3> critical thing is being aware of it and refactor once you can see the next simplicity present itself. Often there is an interim complexity that is necessary when you don't have enough data to simplify further.

<comment><USER9> I think the distinction you are looking for is Fred Brooks' "accidental" vs. "essential" complexity. To paraphrase Einstein, your code should be as simple as possible but no simpler.

If you've ever tried to write your own code to handle dates you'll notice that much of the essential complexity comes from the crazy rules we use to define calendar years, etc.

I suspect a SO falls into the latter category. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are the large white boxes on the desk speakers? If so, I think I count ten speakers.

More simplification needed?

</comment><comment><USER11> Was down for me - the google cache version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=fr&q=cac...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=fr&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fthintz.com%2Fessays%2Fkeep- it-simple+&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

</comment><comment><USER12> I respect the idea of sleeping without bed, but just sleeping on non- designated patch of the floor sounds more trashy than zen-simple.

(Not that I haven't done that myself on occasions)</comment>


Serverless computing: one step forward, two steps back - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/01/14/serverless-computing-one-step-forward-two-steps-back/ <comment><USER2> The lede is kind of buried. The authors were attempting to use FaaS for a long-running, number crunching, distributed computing algorithm.

Case of selecting the wrong tool for the wrong job. Not what serverless was designed to do.

<comment><USER3> It's really just that they selected the wrong serverless architecture.

Code repo -> docker build -> AWS Fargate. Easy to set up CI/CD pipeline that doesn't require you manage servers and can support long-running, CPU intensive, and even GPU applications.

(You may have to manage the fleet a bit for GPU support, ie create your own ECS cluster with autoscaling -- but not actively manage the deployment of instances.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18689544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18689544)

</comment><comment><USER5> aka "we were close to the precipice, but we made a big step forward"

Personally, I expect baremetal to be "rediscovered" in a few year after being given a fancy name like "cloudless".

"serverless" just means distributed programs, which implies it own limits, including latency and costs (compared to running on baremetal without any need to adjust to costs) that are often unpredictable, and that carry consequences on the linked accounts.

Project have limited budget. I once received a bill of several thousands of dollars from my hosting company, after a mistake I had made that had costed a lot of bandwidth.

One call and it was cleared. If it hadn't been possible, it was an important partnership, but not one that would have been inseverable.

With google, I fear I would have costed me to be locked out of gmail or something like this.

</comment><comment><USER6> With regard to some of those downside, there's definitely a theme in some circles of "lets just take this traditional app and write it in lambda".

15 minute runtime execution is a limitation, but you could equally write "memory per request is measured in gigabytes" for a traditional server setup. Similarly, you are limited by network bandwidth, but you could equally say that you're limited by SSD bandwidth on a traditional server; serverless makes it easier to fan-out and capitalize on the aggregate network bandwidth between ten functions, whereas doing the same between ten VMs requires... ten VMs.

What are the real problems we've run into?

\- Latency. Bandwidth has never been an issue. Latency is, which includes cold start time but also includes network roundtrips and things like being unable to pool DB connections.

\- Intermediate services. The article mentions this one, and they suck. "Just put API Gateway in front of it" when all you want is a dumb proxy with SSL makes a nimble little lambda function feel like a lumbering behemoth. SSL demands CloudFront to function, which has a whole new class of behavior you need to learn, and is SO UNBELIEVABLY SLOW to provision and update. Then adding additional behavior like API Keys or DNS all happens outside the function, so instead of managing a single little service you have to manage a single little function + four-to-ten more AWS resources.

\- Tooling. There's no shortage of it, but IMO the ideal tooling setup for a lambda function is one which feels as light as the lambda itself. Serverless (the framework) isn't that. Its crazy complex. Apex is the closest I've seen a toolchain get, and its pretty great, but might actually be too simple. The CDK shows promise, but also feels too complex. I think the problem here is truly that AWS is just too complex, and there's no way to abstract that complexity in a way that works for the 99% use-case.

\- Configuration. The big thing I don't get in this category is why can't I map lambda environment variables to values in the Secrets Manager. In order to deploy any environment variable to a lambda, the deployment environment needs access to the value of that variable, which is a security NIGHTMARE. We've instead resorted to loading sensitive configuration at function start, which sucks for performance and cost but security comes first. (We're specifically storing configuration in DynamoDB w/ encryption at rest)

Overall, I think the serverless model is really great. But doing it on AWS sucks so so bad, and I don't see a future where it gets better. There's just so much unnecessary complexity on AWS that I'd rather were abstracted away.

If I were designing a serverless architecture from scratch, I'd probably opt to build it on Kubernetes with something like knative. But that could have its own host of issues I'm unfamiliar with.

<comment><USER7> > SSL demands CloudFront to function

i don't think that's the case for apigw/lambda unless you're picky about your API gateway URL. (which seems unnecessary, as that can be all hidden away inside the javascript?)

> \- Tooling. There's no shortage of it, but IMO the ideal tooling setup for a > lambda function is one which feels as light as the lambda itself. Serverless > (the framework) isn't that.

i believe the tooling needs to be and could be waaaay better, but zappa has seemed pretty decent to me in my relatively simple use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What does serverless give you that containers don't?

<comment><USER3> You can deploy containers in a "serverless" configuration, if you're not actively managing the underlying fleet and scheduling (eg, Fargate). FaaS is just one kind of "serverless" computing.

Most of the modern "serverless" systems either operate with containers, or are just mounting your FaaS into a provider based container anyway.

Containers with provider managed infrastructure are really just "process as a service", which often are a better match to your software than "functions as a service".</comment></comment>


YorAPI - Fully Functional REST based Back-end in less than 30 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrFIu4gMjMk

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh dear there was a typo... oh well!</comment>


Feel Ripped Off? - <AUTHOR> http://didyoupayforexcuses.com/

<comment><USER2> I see a picture and five bullet points. It seems incomplete. Am I missing something?</comment>


What do FAANG companies do differently that smaller companies could learn from? - <AUTHOR> I work for a small enterprise development team as a junior engineer. We have 15 people and most of our development work is very reactive and shoot from the hip simply bc many are self taught and nobody has really done software on scale before coming here and hacking together something.<p>Anyone who has worked at a large company that focuses on technology, what are some best practices for things that you would recommend? <comment><USER2> Your advantage as a small team is in your ability to move quickly. The bigger a team or a company is, the more inefficiencies there are in making decisions and sharing ideas. While you're small, do every thing you can to take advantage of how nimble you are.

One concrete things you might want to consider is setting up a good code integration workflow and an automated release pipeline. This is, without doubt, the single best thing you can do to reduce friction and help you get faster - and speed is your secret weapon. It will also help you stay disciplined since everyone will have to follow the same process to integrate and deliver their changes. But before you dive in to set up the latest and greatest CI/CD setup, remember that you have different needs and requirements to a big company. Keep it simple and only add what you need and what clearly adds value (ask yourself is it worth the time[0]).

Another way that your small size is an advantage is in being able to communicate clearly with each other and make decisions quickly. In larger companies, decisions can get complicated. A small team has the potential to make coherent and strategic decisions without nearly as much fuss. Use that to your advantage.

Don't be too quick to adopt all of the practices of bigger companies and work to your strengths.

[0] - [https://xkcd.com/1205/](https://xkcd.com/1205/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Same, but at scale.</comment>


Crowd funding: World's First Open Source RISC-V-based 32-bit ΜC - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v#details-top <comment><USER2> Well, except that you can already get the first RISC-V-based 32-bit microcontroller from a different CrowdSupply campaign ... [https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive1/](https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive1/)

Perhaps the difference is that the Open-V board won't use an FTDI serial controller. I read some criticism of the HiFive1 that was crabby about that.</comment>


The Fastest way for Designers to get Feedback from team mates and users - <AUTHOR> http://www.fizzl.io/ <comment><USER2> Looks handy. I like the 24hr cap. Follows the lean principles. Nice

<comment><USER3> Agreed - Nice to see a tool that actually focus' on a very big problem with a pretty simple solution. Could be cool to add feedback metrics.</comment></comment>


Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi memo instructs employees to say they 'have the D' - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-have-the-d-memo-2018-6 <comment><USER2> Have these "younger employees" not heard of "context"? If you're in a business meeting, you can probably infer correctly, 100% of the time, that "have the D" isn't a reference to sex.

This story is pretty much the definition of "Much ado about nothing".

<comment><USER3> Well, one would hope. Still, it's a phrase I'd never feel comfortable using, because the first reaction is a lizard-brain emotional response, even when my conscious thought process picks up the in-context meaning immediately afterward.

Honestly, it sounds like a cringeworthy Family Guy joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is even worse in today's and Uber's context: having the "decision" must not, in any possible way, be confused/similar/assimilated with having the "d __k "

He should have thought that more carefully..

</comment><comment><USER5> Hello my fellow kids...

It gets even worse if "the D" also refers to having the backing of Dara himself. Then again, I don't have the D to state that definitively though.

</comment><comment><USER6> Musk also had that Twitter gaff about the "D." I don't know what to make of it but it sure is weird and not particularly confidence-inspiring.

<comment><USER7> Just an example of a certain privileged segment that many CEOs represent being out of touch with normal people.</comment></comment>


Why babies all over the world are now sleeping in boxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35834370 <comment> xkcd-sucks >the box will enable mothers to keep the baby in the same room with them, because it is so easy to carry, "which is good for bonding"</comment>


Wall Street cashes out investment in Chris Dodd - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfexaminer.com/politics/Wall-Street-cashes-out-investment-in-Chris-Dodd-91414684.html

<comment><USER2> Dodd can write whatever legislation he wants, it's up to the rest of the senate to actually approve it. If he doesn't have the political clout to keep his seat I doubt any other senator is willing to follow his footsteps. Plus what is done by one can be undone by another; see the Glass-Steagal Act undone by Graham-Leach-Bliley.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on  sharing articles with programmers - <AUTHOR>

When I see posts on HN that seem related to a project I'm working on, I always try to pass it along to someone on the team. I don't know programming languages well, so it has to be related enough to the project that I would recognize it as such, but it might not always be specifically related to the programming we're doing. I do this because I figure that even if it's not specifically related to what we're working on, perhaps there's a nugget of information there that could be applied in some way; a connection that could be made that could improve the product. I have informed everyone I'm working with that I'm currently a programming idiot and when I pass along things that aren't useful to tell me I'm dumb and ignore them (Why would being wrong about something I don't know a lot about bother me? Just more encouragement for me to learn). I'm hoping it's not a time suck though.<p>Anyways, I would like to know: would someone you're working with doing this annoy you, or be helpful in that they might spark some new ideas? <comment><USER2> I prefer the old adage of focus on what you're doing and ignore what others (including competitors) are doing. It takes away from your focus and spreads yourself thin. It is just as important to focus on a select few things you want to do well as it is to remove all other things that may come up. The more things you introduce may become more noise you have to deal with. In any given startup environment, there is already a LOT of stuff to do, probably more than you can keep up with much less add to that pie. That said, I'm sure your teammates keep up to date on a bunch of tech sites as well here and there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I am worried about noise, and this is definitely sound advice. I know I need to maintain focus, especially over the next few weeks, so I'll definitely do what you suggest. I was conflicted because at my last internship, my ignorance in certain areas was sometimes of great benefit. By not having any built-in biases or frames of reference I could ask simple questions and come up with simple solutions that were overlooked because nobody had ever thought to ask.

Thanks again.</comment></comment>


Snowden: A Manifesto for the Truth - <AUTHOR> http://meriksson.net/snowden-a-manifesto-for-the-truth

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. It was infuriating to try and find the full text of this manifesto (in English); I finally turned to HN and found this submission.

It boggles the (my) mind that no major news outlets in the US printed the whole text, even though it's only five short paragraphs.</comment>


Visually Mapping Gopherspace - <AUTHOR> http://www.jaruzel.com/blog/Visually-Mapping-Gopherspace-in-2018 <comment><USER2> I would love to see gopher make a modest comeback. Its simplicity keeps it from getting monetized to death. It would be great if it could once again become the default protocol for academic and scholarly information.

I tried to run gopher on a server I once rented at Pair Networks in Pittsburgh, and they wouldn't permit it, saying it was a security risk. Same response when I asked about opening up the finger port.

<comment><USER3> Be the change you want to see :)

For my part, I'm developing a gopher server + (minimal) app framework and plan to use it to publish a gopher version of my blog.

<comment><USER4> I think this is the best way for someone who just wants to play with Gopher initially to get started: "syndicate" whatever HTTP content you have, appropriately distilled down to text (Markdown all the things?), to Gopher simultaneously. And if you get action that way, maybe some exclusive Gopher content later.

The protocol is so simple that writing your own server and client is trivial, and it's fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ah, Gopher. One of my favorite pieces of tech history (that refuses to be 'history,' apparently), invented at my place of work, the University of Minnesota.

Great article on it's history: [https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall- goph...](https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher- protocol)

Segment on Gopher by a local comedy show, including an interview with one of the original devs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtHT_11d5t8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtHT_11d5t8)

</comment><comment> mewse-hn Any protocol for encrypted gopher?

<comment><USER6> There's been some discussion about this on the gopher-project mailing list[1] recently, but there's significant debate about the correct way to do this. Part of the problem is that Gopher menus are fixed-format, so there's no good place to put information that a selector is TLS-capable while maintaining compatibility with existing clients. Most of the proposals either specify a fixed port (e.g. 4370) which indicates secure-gopher support, or using some sort of STARTTLS mechanism for opportunistic encryption. There's also a proposal for a new CAPS.TXT[2] key to enable Gopher Strict Transport Security for supporting user agents.

[1]: [https://lists.debian.org/gopher- project/](https://lists.debian.org/gopher-project/)

[2]: gopher://gophernicus.org/0/doc/gopher/gopher-caps.txt

<comment><USER3> Why not use different selectors? I mean the first byte of every line in a menu, can't remember if the name is correct, right now.

<comment><USER6> Selectors are the path to the item on the server, you're thinking of item types. The problem with that is that existing clients wouldn't know what it meant. If everyone agreed on this solution, it would probably be all right, but every server author who's gotten involved in this discussion has a different solution that they've implemented. Since there's no obviously superior option, there's no consensus on a standard to settle on and therefore nobody wants to put the effort into implementing any of the proposals that aren't their own.

In other words, this is more of a social problem than a technical one: there are many technical solutions, but deciding on one is proceeding very slowly.

<comment><USER4> Client support is really going to be the sticking point, though. No one wants to put up content no one else is going to view, even in Gopher's relatively quiet and low-user-count environs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LendInk taken down by asshole indie authors - <AUTHOR> http://www.2abd.com/politics/copyright/lendink-taken-down-by-asshole-indie-authors/

<comment><USER2> This link is to a site that is explicitly listing the authors that misunderstood what LendInk was about and lobied for it to be taken down. The lack of research and understanding is saddening, but all too common. Get outraged, find your pitchfork, go after someone.

Anyway, here are other items on HN about this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4356769>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4361889> <\- Comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360626> <\- Comments

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish he could add a section of authors who tried to defend and enlighten during this mess, as I have some dollars over for rewarding those who think before they act.</comment>


Apply HN: Demo – The Next Google - <AUTHOR> http://demo.com <comment><AUTHOR> This is the next google

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia has you as a conference series started in 1991 which seems unlike Google or a startup unless I've got the wrong thing? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO_conference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO_conference)</comment></comment>


TeX Live 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://tug.org/texlive/ <comment><USER2> 40 years of TeX! At this point it's worth emphasising that if you're a regular user of LaTeX - even and especially via Overleaf - and have a bit of spare change, please consider supporting the development of the project and the community by joining the TeX Users Group (TUG).

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

Or a local group:

[https://tug.org/usergroups.html](https://tug.org/usergroups.html)

One of the perks of TUG membership is that you get free TeXLive install DVDs sent to your door every year (as many as you need, in my experience).

You also get a subscription to TugBoat, the TeX Users Group Magazine, which is full of curios for the TeX aficionado.

[Edited to replace UK TUG group link with link to global TUG directory]

<comment><USER3> Does anybody still use DVDs? I haven't had a machine with a DVD drive in at least 5 years.

<comment><USER4> Have you ever installed a complete Tex platform? It's about 1GB of packages. I find the DVD thing a bit funny - but I can imagine it makes installs go quite a bit faster. And considering its a 40-year old technology - its not like you _really_ need the latest commit.

<comment><USER5> The worst part of setting up a fresh OS installation for me over a rural satellite connection is inevitably installing TeX. It takes _forever_ , and between the OS and it, I won't have any data left for the rest of the month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OT but readers of this comment section are likely to know.. why is a LaTeX distribution 5.8GB in size[0]? That feels far too large for a tool that's been around for decades and primarily deals with text.

[0] [https://tug.org/texlive/doc/texlive-en/texlive- en.html#x1-18...](https://tug.org/texlive/doc/texlive-en/texlive- en.html#x1-18063r4)

<comment><USER2> It's 5GB because it includes every single extendable package too, as well as their documentation (in PDF format, of course). There's a healthy _TeX_ package ecosystem [0]

Windows users have the option of installing via MiKTeX instead of TeXLive, the benefit being that MiKTeX has a package management system which installs the base packages at start and then automatically downloads the others as and when they are needed. [1]

Not sure if that's possible in other OS'?

[0] [https://www.ctan.org/](https://www.ctan.org/)

[1] [https://miktex.org/](https://miktex.org/)

<comment><USER7> Both texlive and miktex allow selectively installing some packages only. AFAIK the difference is that miktex will show a popup saying «do you want to install foopackage?» when you try to compile a document which uses foopackage, and you don't have foopackage on your system. Kinda like on ubuntu, you get «you can install this command by running apt-get install foopackage».

<comment><USER2> But isn't that quite a big difference? MiKTeX will actively download and install the extra package for you there and then, whereas with TeXLive you'll need to rerun the installer (?) or download the packages from CTAN?

I must admit I speak as a Linux user who's installed TeX on Windows machines, but not really gone into detail myself, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER8> You just run

         tlmgr install <package>

<comment><USER2> Whaaaa... I had no idea. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14479200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14479200)

2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7912465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7912465)

2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4217525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4217525)

</comment><comment><USER10> MacTeX 2019 doesn't appear to be available yet and Homebrew isn't sufficiently wise to work with pre-releases in-advance to get formulas working sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER11> What are you talking about? MacTeX is already available [1]. MacTex is cask- only on Homebrew, so there's really not much to test in the formula. You should be able to bump up the version in the old cask formula and it should work. Having said that, installing from a cask doesn't make much sense for a program that releases a new version once per year.

[1] [http://www.tug.org/mactex/](http://www.tug.org/mactex/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Current release: TeX Live 2019 is available over the Internet and on DVD. It > was released on 29 April 2018 ...

Wait was this released yesterday or a year ago yesterday?

</comment><comment><USER13> EDIT: Release notes: [https://tug.org/texlive/doc/texlive-en/texlive- en.html#](https://tug.org/texlive/doc/texlive-en/texlive-en.html#)

One technology that has stood the test of time- amazingly well designed TeX by Donald Knuth and LaTeX by Leslie Lamport.

Plain TeX can be a bit beginner unfriendly because most beginners use LaTeX and experienced people have their own 'coding style' but it's amazingly powerful.

I only wish somebody would add the minimum required primitives to plain TeX to render reflowable text in browsers and ebook readers

TeX was designed for "beautiful" typesetting but it gives you much more control than that IMHO. I'd urge everyone to try it out once, I use it offline but I think overleaf.com allows for plain TeX too. (XeTeX may work best for unicode, it's plain tex + minimal additions for Unicode)

On that note- I am not fond of PDFs because of their awfully poor unicode search support- does anybody knowledgeable know of a good target format I should use (and the appropriate drivers?)

<comment><USER14> You might like this LaTeX to HTML converter I'm working on: [https://github.com/arxiv-vanity/engrafo](https://github.com/arxiv- vanity/engrafo)

What primitives do you think need adding to TeX? LaTeXML, which powers Engrafo, does a pretty good job of converting plain TeX, as well as LaTeX.

<comment><USER15> Ironically, Computer Modern is terrible to read on computer displays. It was designed for ink and toner bleed, and looks great when printed on 1970s-era Xerox printers [1], but it's far too thin for digital rendering.

I might suggest Bitstream Charter for a well-designed and readable analogue to CMR for digital use.

[1] [https://www.typografie.info/3/topic/22238-ist-die- computer-m...](https://www.typografie.info/3/topic/22238-ist-die-computer- modern-wirklich-zu-d%C3%BCnn/) (German language)

<comment><USER16> That is the Type 1 realization of it, the original Metafont outputs bitmaps tailored for the target device. Unfortunately no widely font rendering library supports Metafont directly, so they are often converted to Type 1 or OpenType and loose that capability.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Parasite in cat poop could be reducing our fear of failure, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna894221 <comment><USER2> Toxoplasmosis makes rats docile around cats so they can be eaten; I don't see a means for that improving anyone's life.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ancient warriors throughout history have prepared for battle by eating cat poop, so this is not surprising.</comment>


Improving Education with free Web 2.0 tools - <AUTHOR> http://tech-tweak.com/2011/04/improving-education-with-web-2-0.html

<comment><USER2> Yes, the web has really changed how education can be done. We have google, we have wikipedia... accessing knowledge has never been easier. I work since last year as a trainer, my passion is letting young college students be educated in a whole new way.(I am from China, I love my college time, but hate all the courses I was given) So I write blogs to let them understand the importance of freedom in their life and learning, I do screencasts to teach them some practical programming skills so that they won't go hungry fighting for their dreams.

I am very exiting doing all these. I do not need to repeat same thing again and agin. Teaching is now done cheaply and efficiently as never happened before.

</comment><comment><USER2> And also we have all kinds of collaboration tools(Basecamp, github, all kinds of forums...) to make working together a more efficient process, I think similar things can be done in education. The experience I learned as a opensource programer shows me awesome possibilities, I actually learnt Ruby on Rails, in order to build new game rules to organize the students together and get them fully interested and motivated to learn. I have not done much, but I will work on.</comment>


Venture Capital Crash Course [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.askthevc.com/blog/archives/2009/03/crash-course-vi.php

<comment><AUTHOR> It's about a month old at this point, but I didn't find it posted on YC previously. (With that said, I'm sure everyone follows "Ask the VC" anyway.)

It's definitely worth spending the hour and a half watching the video. Lots of interesting and useful stuff. Not boring either.</comment>


An Entropy-Based Methodology for Detecting Online Advertising Fraud at Scale [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://botlab.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/v1_anonymous_no_tags-1.pdf <comment><USER2> What's this about ?</comment>


Tips for Noogler Engineers (Noogler = New at Google) - <AUTHOR> http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/08/tips-for-noogler-engineers.html <comment><USER2> I love the ending line:

> Finally, if you get fed up of working for a big company, consider joining a > startup.

This one posting probably did more damage to google hiring from the HN ranks than all the others that I've seen to date. With friends like that who needs enemies.

<comment> brown9-2 To be fair, Piaw sells a book all about how to get a job at a startup (<http://books.piaw.net/guide/index.html>). The progression he describes in the article ("fed up working for a big company" -> startup) is probably his own as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That must be the most depressing thing I read in quite a while.

<comment><USER4> Agreed... it's supposedly one of the few remaining companies that actually respect engineers, but this post pretty much comes out and says otherwise in bold, flashing letters.

"(Exception: War-room firefighting. Google loves those, and loves heroic performances from people in war-rooms)"

The whole "war room" concept in IT has always bothered me -- it's what managers do when they have a crisis that they don't know how to deal with. It's usually a crisis that they could have avoided if they'd actually done their own job in the first place. War rooms are also invariably where the worst of the developers end up -- at Disney the war room period was one of our most product weeks as a result. Of course, the folks who got rewarded were the ones in the war room, even though their primary contribution was to strut around in front of a bunch of executives while the rest of the team got project work done and the operations team had already figured out what went wrong.

<comment> brown9-2 Given Google's attitude towards perpetual betas, I'm curious if their "war rooms" are more to solve immediate problems (show-stopping bugs, security issues, etc) rather than attempts to "fix" late projects.

<comment><USER5> Google's attitude toward perpetual betas extends to perpetual war rooms. Almost every feature that you'd recognize from the last three years was developed in a war room. The visual redesign was a war room (well, war cubicle). Real-time search was a war room. The search options panel was a war room. SearchWiki was a war room. The bar across the top was a war room. Pac Man wasn't a war room, but almost all the folks involved were in war rooms and avoiding the war at the time.

Basically, it's just putting all the developers involved on a project in a room together and giving them a clear goal (launching). Other firms might call this "Agile" or even just "development". Heck, still others would call this a "startup".

"We've always been at war with Eurasia..."

<comment><USER6> What's a war room? Google, ironically, was of no help.

<comment><USER7> Get everyone who's working on a big problem together in one room.

It raises the question: if this works, why not do it all the time?

<comment><USER5> ...which is basically what Google (and several other software companies) _does_. That's why I say that some people simply call it "development".

<comment><USER4> We have a... well, some random dolt with a VP or director or some similarly overinflated title, but no meaningful role who explained that you should use "agile" method when: 1) You don't have time for planning 2) You don't have time for design 3) You don't have time for documentation 4) Requirements are changing

Which to me meant, "You use Agile(tm) methods when your project has already failed."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was expecting one more "google is great" love-post. It was anything but.

If you are dreaming of joining Google, this is the article to read. Really.

<comment><USER9> Google is still the best big publicly held company in the valley to work for. I wrote this to guide the thousands of Googlers they'll add this year.

Having said that, I've been at well functioning startups, and I've been at Google. Google when I joined was better than many many startups. Google when I left was not so.

<comment><USER10> What I've noticed at Google is that there's really no comparison between teams. Different parts of the company might as well be entirely different companies, aside from a few common cultural attributes (flat hierarchy, data driven decision, and of course all the perks.)

The best piece of advice in there (I think) is to pick your team carefully, and more importantly, don't feel shy about switching if you aren't making headway.

<comment><USER11> I think you'll find that is true for any company of sufficient size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is worth noting that Piaw quit Google, and so is biased by that, and the experiences leading up to that. And internally lots of people have found lots of things to disagree with about specific items on his list. There are others that there have been pushes to improve on since. So take all of it with a grain of salt.

That said, he does have a lot of experience, so you shouldn't lightly _disregard_ what he says either.

But, more fundamentally, ask yourself what your goal is. If your goal is to move up the ladder as efficiently as possible, his advice is probably pretty good. If your goal is to enjoy your job, everyone will like you better if you feel free to disregard whatever doesn't fit who you are.

<comment><USER9> Yes. The advice was given to help people move up the ladder, grab the brass ring, and get the big payout. If you want quality of life, that advice is not for you. Then again, if you want quality of life, and money is not that important, I think that a good startup is hard to beat.

<comment><USER5> If your goal is to get the big payout, what the hell are you working at Google for? Most of the people that got the big payout from Google joined...right around when you did, or a few years before. Your odds of becoming an executive at Google are far lower than they are at succeeding with your own startup and getting bought out for big sums.

If you want a big payout, you're much better off working for Google for a couple years to build experience and a reputation, quitting and founding a startup, and then getting reacquired by Google in a $5-20M talent acquisition.

Most people I know at Google are there because they want to work on interesting technical problems without dealing with all the bullshit that comes from running your own business. Google is still very, very effective at that - quite possibly the best place in the world for an engineer that wants to do cool stuff, launch to millions of people, and not push their way through lots of hassles.

<comment><USER9> Google is still handing out million dollar awards. For many people, the low risk but potentially high reward setup is ideal.

For instance, getting the big Android founder's award probably beat being the 10th employee at Aardvark.

<comment><USER5> Only if you're Andy Rubin.

When I look at the dollar amount of some of the largest-ever Founders Awards and then see how many people they're split between, I can't imagine that the payout is anywhere close to even an employee's payout for an acquisition. I dunno how the Founders Awards are divided up, but I'd imagine that it's a skew distribution, with most of it going to the initiators and key early team members of the project. Some of these teams have _hundreds_ of employees; I really doubt that someone who joined six months before the Founders Award makes off with any more than a "Hey, that's a nifty bonus" amount.

<comment><USER9> People tell me how much they're getting. The numbers do go up to 7 figures even for rank and file engineers. But if I wrote a post about how to get that kind of money, I'd be accused of being even more cynical (I'm already accused of being very cynical when I wrote this article). Besides that kind of information should really go into the next edition of my book.

Google can and does hand out big bonuses. There's so much cash flowing through the company that a little sprinkle of it (by Google's standards) is still a lot of money. If you're one of the fast-tracked folks at Google, there is no reason to join a startup just for the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is good advice for any large company, not just Google. Tips #3 and #4 are key - I would prioritize those higher than #1 and #2. In short - make sure your manager/leader is capable of pushing you; make sure you get to work on visible projects; and optimize your time to make contributions to the more visible projects. One of the things I wish someone had told me a long time ago.

<comment><USER13> Yeah but I think most people see working at Google as all unicorns and rainbows. Its a bit disheartening to find out that in someways its not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This post has to be taken in context of everything else that Piaw has been saying for a while: Google is an excellent place to work. It may not be as nimble as it used to be, but it is still better than most other big companies and most other startups as well. Sure, it is not _the_ best place, but it is right there at the top.

Once you keep that as the background for the article, then you realize that the article is meant for Nooglers interested in a certain career path. It is not for everyone, but it is certainly the most common expected path for the majority of their engineers.

It is odd to see HN jumping to conclusion reading one article without any background. I think thats part of the reason why bloggers stop blogging because whatever they say is taken to mean something else.

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's official: performance review sucks everywhere.

<comment><USER16> Yes, one would immediately think that the items he listed are somehow all true at large companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like a nice list of things for Google management to improve about their promotion process.

</comment><comment><USER18> So what is the effect of promotions? The article hints at one thing: Higher salary cap. Are there other things?

So far in my own career, I have recognized a few situations where I could choose to climb the career ladder. In all of those situations, I have chosen not to. The new responsibilities did not seem to be worth it. I believe I have a much more interesting job as a consequence, and as far as I can tell, my salary has not been hurt noticeably (I _do_ fight for my pay rise).

Do you really have to add "flare" to your title in google to be successful? Makes me not want to work there.

</comment><comment><USER19> Former Googler here.

I left a few months ago after four years. I have nothing but great things to say about Google. I loved my job, the environment, the people, the perks, the feeling of being privy to the most closely held secrets in Silicon Valley. Most of all, Larry and Sergey, who have always - always - kept their employees at the top of their priority list, even after the company went public. These guys really mean "Don't be evil", but you need to work at Google to really understand what this means.

Why I left? Career, mostly. I had reached a point where it was hard for me to get promoted. I could have settled for an easy job that is very well paid but without much hope of going much higher. A lot of people are okay with this and I was for a while, but then I realized I wanted more.

If things don't work out at my new gig, I'll try another gig. And if this doesn't work out either, I'll go back to Google in a heartbeat.

Keep an open mind, if you get a chance to interview, take it. If you get a job offer, take it, even if it's just for a few months. At the end of the day, the only person who knows what's best for you is yourself, not a blogger, nor an anonymous Hacker News commenter.

</comment><comment><USER20> When reading this I feel like a 1950ies rocket engineer reading about how bad a warp-drive really is...

</comment><comment><USER21> Had to look up "SRE":

SRE: Site reliability engineer

SWE: Software engineer

<comment><USER22> It seems that I should have answered _acronyms_ to the "Ask HN: What annoys you?" question[1].

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1560796>

<comment><USER23> Yes, we should complain to the AAAA.

The tried and true _American Association for Acronym Abuse_ can help there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> so basically it's the same as any large megacorp?

<comment><USER25> Any large megacorp with distracting fun mailing lists and talks to avoid (tip #2). Also 20% time and mentoring (tip #1). Definitely the part about performance reviews (tip #3) and having a good manager (tip #4) is applicable to any company, though the part where you should make sure you _choose_ a good manager might not be.

<comment><USER26> I like how the advice to succeed at Google involves ignoring (tips 1 and 2) the distracting and fun things that distinguish Google from other companies.

<comment><USER27> If you are willing to spend more than 8 hours a day on "work", then you can do well _and_ read mailing lists. If you were at a company other than Google, then your 9th hour wouldn't get you much more than a headache, but at Google, you can learn about cool stuff and get to know your coworkers better.

(I think 8 hours is way too long to spend working in a single day anyway, so company-sponsored mailing lists seem like a nice distraction. I would rather just go home and read Internet mailing lists though.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I momentarily misread "Noogler" as "Nuclear".

Alas. I had hoped for another nuclear engineer HN reader.

<comment><USER20> When I read yours, I had Homer's voice in my head, somehow :-D

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Are there any of these tips that stop being true if you substitute "Google" for any other large tech organization?

</comment><comment><USER29> I thought at Google most people, regardless of salary or rep, were just "Software Engineers". If so, how do people know you got a promotion?

<comment><USER30> Software engineer is the generic title for a number of levels: software engineer II, software engineer III, senior software engineer, staff software engineer, senior staff software engineer, and so on.

I heard that the job titles for engineers above a certain level are shared publicly with in the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is very similar to the big company that I work for - we use "visibility" instead of "high profile" though. :) So I suppose when company grows larger, it is inevitable. You just need to adapt to that or leave if you can not stand it. Also, the team and manager you have has big impact on your experiences. I do not believe there is a perfect environment.

</comment><comment><USER32> There is a lot of helpful context that could theoretically be added to an article like this, which would obviate a lot of the "wow, so depressing" or "Google has succumbed to the times" comments here.

Alas, for confidentiality reasons, such cannot be shared :|

Suffice is to say, do be sure to take this as but one data point of many :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like any other big corporate organ grind -- self promotion and working on high profile, corp important tasks gets you up the ladder, keeping the engine running just keeps you on the ladder. The sexy just wore off for me. Meh.

</comment><comment><USER34> Everywhere mid-management strategy is _Heads I Win. Tails You Lose._

</comment><comment><USER35> Most of this advice is (unfortunately) true in large companies. It's sad that the idealism of our youth is corrupted by the reality of survival/prosperity in the workplace.

</comment><comment><USER36> Has anyone read Piaw's book (linked to in the last sentence of the blog post)? Do you recommend it?

<comment><USER37> I have and it's excellent. Short, to the point and contains a ton of invaluable information I never found anywhere else.</comment></comment>