At times not losing is as important as winning - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2012/08/17/at-times-not-losing-is-as-important-as-winning/ <comment><USER2> Primary lesson: the old school enterprise sales process is as painful as hell.

Dropbox does tons of sales into the enterprise by doesn't need to resort to political gambits, because their product is chosen by individuals and spreads virally.

Ping Li of Accel has an excellent paper on this alternative way to sell into the enterprise. It requires a careful approach to choosing and designing your product, but it makes your business more scalable and less painful:

[http://www.accel.com/assets/resources/files/17/original_rena...](http://www.accel.com/assets/resources/files/17/original_renaissance_of_business_software.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > Primary lesson: the old school enterprise sales process is as painful as > hell.

Still, if you are going for $1MM accounts, that is probably what you'll be dealing with.

<comment><USER2> If you expect accounts to go from $0 to $1MM in a single deal, yes you need to send in the field sales cowboys. Your revenue will be chunky and hard to predict, and your business will grow slowly based on long sales cycles.

Dropbox will have million dollar enterprise accounts. They'll get to that size gradually, with a nice smooth revenue ramp, and without a financial model based on sales heads. The negotiation will be easy, because the customer will call them after too many people are expensing the product

Quantcast gets million dollar customers over the phone by starting with a $20k test buy. Less elegant than Dropbox, but not too shabby.

Nerds should be all over this stuff. These decisions get made in the earliest days by the founders. That's us, here. Investors love companies like Dropbox, and get a sick feeling in their stomache when they see a company based on field sales doing big deals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And therein lies the black hole at the heart of the HN dream.

Sales, really good, professional, stab-you-in-the-back sales is still what counts. A winning, superior technology, was not the deciding factor here.

Anyone got the number of a good Oracle Headhunter.

<comment><USER5> Whoa there! It appears that they indeed had this in the bag, but the IT department wanted ultimate control. I've seen this sort of thing before. In this case, all they could really do is indeed pull out. While it was a smart play, in actual fact if AutoDesk had run with it and let them go, then they would still not have been any worse off.

Given that the CIO did the keynote for their conference, I'd say that it was outplaying the dreadful politics at the company. I can't see any real backstabbing from anyone but the CIO on this one!

<comment><USER6> It was a matter of understanding how politics plays a big role in these decisions, more so than which product is best. I agree with you, it didn't have to do with "cut throat sales" or anything like that... just understanding your customer, even their internal struggles.

<comment><USER4> I see there being two kinds of sales - the one where you just need to build a better mousetrap, and market honestly and clearly, and the kind where you force your sales people to get the names and phone numbers of the board of directors, and take them all out for lunch

One is Instagram style sales, one is Oracle sales.

Oracle Sales might not be best categorised as cut throat or stab in the back, but the game Steve Blank played was not fluffy - it was hardnosed and fully engaged with the politics of the world.

Just saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone who has ever played Japanese Reach Mahjong can tell you with some certainty as to the astuteness of the point made.

Ignoring any aspect of the other player's discards (or, more to the point, telling signs emanating from any of the players in a company with the power to reject your product) is a certain path to failure.

When you have 3 other skilled players (or X number of competitors) - all of whom can deal triple damage to you if you aren't careful - you learn to avoid losing.

</comment><comment><USER8> "But what if we added a third choice? What if we formally, publicly and noisily withdrew from the account? The worst case was that we could tell our engineering team that we should have won but the game was rigged."

No, the worst case would be actually going through with "publicly and noisily" withdrawing. If you want to scare away future large company prospects I can think of few better ways than letting everyone know you will raise hell if your product isn't chosen in a competitive procurement. I respect Steve...but this portion of the advice seems a little shortsighted. Go ahead and withdraw and explain it to your team and the customer. But, there is not a good enough reason to publicly shame the customer.

<comment><USER9> "publicly" with all relevant stakeholders. Not "publicly", we're going to post this on our Sales Tumblr.

<comment><USER10> correct

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find that understanding 'big company' politics is one of the most challenging ideas for developers to understand. One of the thing that Joe, the E.piphany sales guy could have done to head this off, would have been to immediately suggest an audience with the CIO the minute the VP of sales stated that her problems were ones that IT was working on but could was taking a long time to solve.

The politics of big companies can get really crazy and just like Steve, internal IT believes that 'not losing is as important as winning'. To IT, having a new company come in and solve a problem that they were spending months to solve would be the same is losing. The end result is that they are now perceived as not being a true partner to the business. They are just the people who plug in cables and who make sure the lights are on. For the AutoDesk IT department, this would be the same as losing.

Kudos to everyone for making this work if it solved AutoDesk's problems.

To everyone else, make sure to discover and get in front of all key stakeholders. Some of those stakeholders can be the person vacuuming the floor as you walk into the building.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great post - really brilliant tactical thinking, and it's always a delight to see smart moves pay off.

I feel like it should be noted that it's quite dangerous to threaten a move like this unless you're actually prepared to follow through with it if the gambit fails. If this move hadn't worked and the prospect had responded with something like "please reconsider, we believe there is still a good chance things can work out," I think it would have been disastrous for this company's credibility going forward if they had actually continued working on this prospect. Part of the reason this was a great move for them in this situation is that they were legitimately ready to cut their losses with this prospect and move on. When that's the case, even the smallest chance of jamming a sale through is pure value over their best alternative.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not losing also explains much of legislation politics and campaign debates.

Survive this round of the contest, you get another bite at the apple. Maybe, just maybe, you'll work up enough courage to grab for the brass ring. Such as reach for higher office. Or pass some important legislation.

In politics, any position you take will offend someone. So you become cautious. "Keep your powder dry" for the imagined future contest. Only jump on board the bandwagon when it's crystal clear, so then when it goes bad you can use the safety of the herd to avoid repercussions.

Watch political "debates" sometime, you'll see that frontrunners play to not lose, because the person left standing wins.</comment>


Saudi Arabia Joining U.N. Women's Rights Group - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia-top-women-rights-group-united-nations-criticism-588974 <comment><USER2> S.A. is was also head of the committee that selects UN human rights experts. It sure seems like we are living in a parallel universe these days.

<comment><USER3> It does. It's like the U.N is afraid of looking islamaphobic so they allow one of the more barbaric regimes to join these councils.

As N.N.Taleb says, the most intolerant will win.

<comment><AUTHOR> His essay about that topic was for sure one of the best things I've been reading in the last years.</comment></comment></comment>


Minneapolis 10G Fiber to the Home - <AUTHOR> http://fiber.usinternet.com/plans-and-prices/plans-for-the-home/

<comment><AUTHOR> In light of the excitement recently over Comcast offering 2G at a similar price in the Bay Area.

I think the excitement is that it has pushed 1G down to $65/mo.</comment>


What India Is Doing To Stop Cheating At Board Exams - <AUTHOR> http://scroll.in/article/why-preventing-cheating-in-indias-board-exams-is-a-national-security-crisis?id=658509 <comment><USER2> Cheating in this case has to do with an education system that has lost touch with its purpose of sharing valuable knowledge. Students will cheat if they do not find value or meaning in learning the material. The pressure should be on the educators bring purpose back into the system and into the minds of students.

I've been through mind-numbing classes focused on memorization of meaningless trivia, as have all students, and I personally feel fewer moral qualms about cheating in that kind of class than a class where I am able to make the personal connection between the material and its value to me.

<comment><USER3> It isn't the educators, it is the employers who pervert the meaning of a degree and a GPA.

<comment><USER2> I don't think the blame is mutually exclusive.

However, I've having gone through the public education system in the United States, I know which classes were the worst (the ones all about memorization) and it sounds like the public education system in India has a lot of those classes. Perhaps the educators are only acting on behalf of the system within they exist (as a preparatory organization for this exam), but I think if the buck is to stop anywhere, it's with the administrators of the education system, they need to be held accountable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's more of a reflection of the society than anything to do specifically with that particular system (education in this case), just like counterfeiting/copying in China and corruption/scams in third world countries.

That kind of stuff really pisses me off, but I also have a naive perspective. For example, in some parts of the world (particularly in low trust societies) corruption is looked at differently, it's just 'taking care' of the family to the best of your ability. The more power you have, the more 'ability' you have. Maybe the goal should be to increase trust instead of trying to 'fix' the symptom?

It's hard to accept that from an American perspective. In fact, maybe it's even wrong to call it 'corruption' as if our societal views represent some sort of moral standard. But maybe they do. _Shrug_

<comment><USER5> People cheat because Gain(cheating) * P(not getting caught) > Cost(cheating) * (1 - P(not getting caught)). I would say this is true for everyone everywhere regardless of society, culture or race. India is trying to reduce P(not getting caught) because, from a policy perspective, the other terms in that equation are close to impossible to change.

The US doesn't have this problem because the gains due to obvious cheating aren't big enough. People do "cheat" in the sense of "acting unfairly to gain an advantage." For example using ADD prescriptions to get extra time on exams is a well-known trick, another is to have college application counsellors ghostwrite essays and then there are numerous other methods which may not technically count as cheating but achieve the desired effect. The difference is that people whose kids do this are also those who control the media narrative, so you've all been brainwashed into thinking that this is somehow more acceptable.

<comment><USER6> >Gain(cheating) * P(not getting caught) > Cost(cheating) * (1 - P(not getting caught))

Western society has a much higher chance of getting caught and a much higher cost when caught because it views that behaviour as abnormal. India has a cultural problem where cheating is expected.

<comment><USER7> _India has a cultural problem where cheating is expected._

You are condemning an entire country and its "culture" with a single sentence. What evidence can you provide?

<comment><USER8> Even a minority of people engaging in a particular behavior can have a very significant impact on a culture as a whole. It's perfectly valid to say that the culture thus suffers from some sort of a problem, even if not everybody associated with that culture is responsible for the problem.

Going based on the information in the article, and assuming it's correct, there does seem to be at least some sort of a problem with cheating far beyond what we see in other cultures, and it does appear to be widespread. The preventative actions described would be very unexpected in many other cultures, and totally unthinkable in others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1.The focus should be on creating a conducive studying environment , where knowledge retention and skill demonstration via projects is given more importance than a score on a paper.

Let's face it , every newspaper you open is flooded with an add of the mother being thankful to a coaching class for a good education. (Not a school or a teacher) commercialization of a students future and dream is what needs to be tackled. Cheating would hypothetically cease to exist if students didn't feel like they have a need to prove themselves on paper by a score

<comment><USER10> How do you scale that up? Say you implement your system. Now the output of the system is a Map[Student,List[Project]] rather than a Map[Student,Int]. How do I compare schools, determine whether a school is doing it's job, or do the same thing for students?

Ultimately all consistent objective decisionmaking processes [1] must come down to a single number - that's a simple exercise in undergrad topology. Anything else will be either subjective or inconsistent (i.e., we prefer A to B, and B to C, but prefer C to A).

So what are you proposing? A different format/syllabus for standardized tests, a subjective testing procedure, or an inconsistent one?

[1] On a countable set of choices. Things get weird on uncountable sets.

<comment><USER11> It's very arguable that every decisionmaking process must come down to a number, as we're talking about people and not cattle.

In this perspective, having people working on projects would be an appreciation of the "multidimensional" nature of people.

After all, contemporarily, psychology started to think of multiple intelligences rather than a single one. If we assume this is true, what's the sense of assigning a single number to a person? Either it's false that multiple intelligences exist, or it's useless to single-dimensinally evaluate them. Then, let's start to assign 10 numbers instead of one.

I don't say that single-dimensional ratings are inherently wrong, but just that they're too narrow minded. "Scaling up" such procedures would mean scale up something wrong and inefficient; it's not real scaling up.

I would propose to throw standardized tests in the garbage, and try novel approaches in the evaluation processes of people; I find hard to believe that assigning a number to a person is the only possible (and practical) perspective.

<comment><USER10> _It 's very arguable that every decisionmaking process must come down to a number, as we're talking about people and not cattle._

It's not debatable if you believe in the axiom of induction (or the axiom of choice for countably infinite sets).

Theorem: If there is a total order (a consistent decisionmaking process) on the set of people (or any countable set), then there exists an order preserving function f: People->Real numbers.

Sketch of proof: Start with an arbitrary person A. Define the ranking function f(A)=0. Choose an arbitrary person besides A, call them B. If B > A then f(B)=1, else if B = a then f(B)=0 else f(B) = -1. Choose a third person C, different from A and B. If C > max(A,B) define F(C) = f(max(A,B))+1. If A < C < B or B < C < A define f(C)=0.5x(f(A)+f(B)). If C < min(A,B) then f(C) = f(min(A,B))-1. Continue ad nauseum.

 _Either it 's false that multiple intelligences exist, or it's useless to single-dimensinally evaluate them._

Multiple intelligences probably don't exist. But even supposing they do, claiming that the _domain_ of a function is multidimensional does not disagree with my claim that the _range_ is one dimensional.

Background:

A total order is a way of saying "person A is at least as good as person B" which obeys all the obvious laws. Person B can be either a real person or a standard of achievement (e.g. "passing").

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order)

[http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/metrics_manifesto.htm...](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/metrics_manifesto.html)

<comment><USER12> Holy circular reasoning, Batman! The premise of your theorem, that there is such a total order, is _equivalent_ to the existence of such a numbering function. You're saying "A must be true because B is true", where B is just an identical version of A, disingenuously obfuscated by a thin veneer of mathematics!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense)

This all ignoring the fact any such "total order" is going to be highly variable through time (today's top engineer is tomorrow's dementia patient is yesterday's toddler)!

<comment><USER10> A total order is a consistent objective decisionmaking function.

I'm assuming that consistency and objectivity are obvious properties that any reasonable process must have. If you want to argue against consistency and/or objectivity, go ahead and do so. It'll certainly be interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hated Chemistry. I still do. I loved Math and Physics, also Geography. So, there was no way I was going to pass my 10+2 (last school year) without cheating and I am lucky that I somehow managed to cheat. I wish I could have cheated better so that the meagre Chemistry score couldn't bring my total % to around 75. Anyway, bygone is bygone.

The matters were made worse by the uninterested, unintuitive and unqualified teachers (no exception), outdated and idiotic curricula, arcane books written in an ad-hoc manner, uninteresting tests. Everything was showing just one solution - rote, which I am pathologically allergic too (though sometimes I wish I had just done it like everybody else and this what I told my younger brother).

The result is I didn't study Math, didn't study Physics either and certainly didn't study Geography. I took up Computer Science - just because it has the jobs. All along knowing fully well that you end up being a clerk or a daily wage worker (or a teacher which has a similar pay; professorship is rare) in this country if you try to follow your passion in studies and study anything other than a course that gives you a professional degree. Another path was to have rich parents who can send you to The Fancy University of UK/USA/West to study psychology/political science/geography and what not. This was certainly not under my control. Well, that's my reason.

<comment><USER14> Those are excuses, not reasons.

<comment><USER15> What's the difference?

<comment><USER8> "Reasons" are merely statements of why something is as it is. Justification isn't used.

"Excuses" try to put an unjustifiably positive (or perhaps a less-negative) slant on the explanation of why something is as it is.

balladeer wrote things like, "So, there was no way I was going to pass my 10+2 (last school year) without cheating and I am lucky that I somehow managed to cheat." and, "I wish I could have cheated better so that the meagre Chemistry score couldn't bring my total % to around 75."

To me, those appear to try to make it sound like the cheating was somehow okay, or even a good thing, even though this cheating was apparently covering up a lack of ability. They aren't merely saying why cheating was used; they try to make it sound acceptable, when it clearly isn't.

<comment><USER13> You have completely misread it.

The only thing I wanted to convey was: "I didn't have an option". You want to debate why and how I didn't have an option? Well, you are welcome to do it but my answer would be simple and I've typed most in my original comment.

> covering up a lack of ability

I hope you were not simply trying to be mean.

> they try to make it sound acceptable

I am not sure whether I am right replying to your highly judgemental comment but anyway I did. And yes, you are almost entirely off the mark and wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why can't I highlight text on that page? I'm not even sure how to read an article without it...

<comment><USER17> [http://scroll.in/ajax/get_article_content.php?article_id=658...](http://scroll.in/ajax/get_article_content.php?article_id=658509)

Here you go, I hate those developers with small brains think that these kind of cheap tricks will prevent the content to be copied!

<comment><USER10> Why do you assume it was the developers who wanted the cheap tricks?

(I know the founders and developers of scroll.in, and I'm 99% sure that the developers just did what they were told.)

<comment><USER17> I am sorry, you are probably right. Then my words are for the product owners!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cheating in tests being widespread is more of a condemnation of the how/what the schools are teaching than the students.

</comment><comment><USER19> There is nothing called India Board Exams - Each ethnic state has a board which conducts exams - and the surveillance is different for each.

But all boards agree and exist for the rote learning model which leaves no scope for creativity. kid in, zombie out!

<comment><USER20> Central Board of Secondary Education is under the Union Government of India.

<comment><USER19> CBSE is puny when compared to state boards where majority of Indians study. CBSE is one of the trend setters in rote learning too!</comment></comment></comment>


Tired of Old Web Friends? A New Site Promises Strangers  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/internet/27omegle.html?em

<comment><USER2> After nearly 50 years in this world, one of the things I cherish is great conversation with someone worth talking to. Invariably hard to pin down, impossible to define, but unmistakable when you are lucky enough to find it.

One of the things I've realised is that the vast majority of people have very little to say that's of interest. The web gave many, many people the ability to be heard. We are all learning that most of them aren't worth listening to.

This is especially true when there is no reputation, no trust, and no accountability. That's one reason I treasure HN as a place to get sensible comments and decent conversation.

<comment><USER3> Only been here for 27 years but while I think you're somewhat right, this is probably true for everyone, only everyone's tastes as to what constitutes great conversation seem to vary sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

What the web really taught is that for everyone saying something, there seems to be at least one other person who thinks precisely that is worth listening to.</comment></comment>


Demotivation by External Rewards - <AUTHOR> http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/demotivated-by-external-rewards <comment><USER2> This cites research done with kids, are there similar findings with adults?

</comment><comment><USER3> Please, don't tell my boss about this.

<comment><USER4> Don't worry, he wouldn't believe it.</comment></comment>


Why Facebook had a 2.5 hour outage in India today - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/more-details-on-todays-outage/431441338919

<comment><USER2> "Today" a year and a half ago?</comment>


A Time to Kill iTunes - <AUTHOR> https://500ish.com/a-time-to-kill-itunes-2d9a24529b9a <comment><USER2> Agreed. The only way to save this app is a mercy kill: sunset iTunes, and separate it into different parts. But I suspect Apple has a business reason to keep the monolith: iPhone syncing and iTunes store are bundled together.</comment>


What Not to do when leaving a company - <AUTHOR> http://www.noncompetenews.com/post/2010/08/25/Top-Ten-Mistakes-Made-by-Departing-Employees.aspx

<comment><USER2> Leaving a company is like divorcing your wife. Remaining on friendly terms is infinitely preferable to burning down the house and telling the kids that she's going to wind up with herpes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what the 'get a lawyer' threshold is? I mean, as a SysAdmin or a programmer, I've not seen a reputable company even threaten to sue someone for leaving... the very idea smacks of empty threats from a crazy, entitled consulting client.

I mean, I'm all for getting lawyers when you need them, but if I've never seen it happen, is it worth the cost?

Maybe it's something that is more common when people who deal with customers (sales) leave.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting point about hiring manager (at new firm) providing new employee with attorney access to advise them on how to resign and conduct themselves post-resignation.

As the article then goes on to state, albeit buried, there is massive client/attorney privilege issues here - the client is the new employer and I'd be concerned about what got fed back to the client from the employee's discussions.

If you need one, get your own lawyer.

<comment><USER5> This is important.

You shouldn't trust a lawyer someone ELSE is paying.

<comment><USER6> Having very nearly been bankrupted by lawyers acting for the company I had co- founded I can't agree with that comment enough.

It's not really a trust thing, it's just the fact that unless you are their client lawyers basically don't have any duty to look out for you, but they certainly do have a duty to act in the best interests of their client. Your interests and those of your previous/future employer probably don't completely align.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They just fired you, that is when your loyalty for the company really kicks in to high gear... wait nevermind.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting point about 'Exit Interviews'.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps the only interesting point. The rest seemed rather commonsense.

<comment><USER10> I've got an exit interview coming up tomorrow... got me thinking: any tips guys? I was planning on just going there, saying the typical 'i loved you guys, its just time to move on' guff and not saying anything incriminating.

<comment><USER11> I would just skip it and take a nap instead. What are they going to do, fire you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lawyers live in a dark dark world.</comment>


New Year's Resolutions for SysAdmins - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/blog/new-years-resolutions-sysadmins

<comment><USER2> I should "Finally learn IPv6" but I know that I will procrastinate again and again..

</comment><comment><USER3> "Check that your backups are working the way you think they are."

I'm a bit horrified to read this here. If you're a sysadmin and don't have both automated and manual testing of backups, it's hard to imagine what else was a more important use of your time.

There aren't many things that could bankrupt a healthy business overnight, but catastrophic data loss is certainly one of them.

An analogous entry for a lawyer might be to pay attention while reading contracts.

<comment><USER4> > what else was a more important use of your time

Keeping shit running _now_ is always more important than keeping shit running in case of catastrophic failure.

Because a catastrophic failure is only catastrophic if you actually have something of value in the first place.

In the real world it's a balancing act in which there is no room for absolutism. Choosing which compromises to make is the hardest part of any job that comes with a level of responsibility.

<comment><USER3> I'm talking specifically about _dedicated_ sys admins, since that's what the blog post is about; I'm no stranger to cowboy coding on a project that may or may not ever be worth anything. I've lost data once before to corrupted backups and I don't regret not investing more engineering effort. It was an MVP, and making better products gives me more leverage.

But by the time you're hiring full time for the position, outside of a few edge cases where maybe you're SnapChat and you are growing 20% a week, it's probably time to settle down a bit and be sensible. At which point, if testing your backups to completion to avoid catastrophic data loss isn't #1 on the todo list, it's #2.

<comment><USER5> It may be #2 perpetually in many cases because the boss will not listen when you insist it's important. For many it then starts slipping down the list, as what is best for the company is often not best for the employee: For many it becomes a reasonable (for them _personally_ ) risk to take to bet that they'll do better from keeping the boss satisfied now rather than spend time on backups to avoid a major disaster after they've left. And yes, that means gambling that the major disaster won't hit while you're still there.

I'm not saying this is how it should be, but it is how it often becomes if the sysadmin or whomever taking on those responsibilities don't report to someone who _also_ see the data integrity as priority #1 for the sysadmin.

I've worked in places where the CEO's e-mail client configuration is the #1 priority for the guy that should have been focusing on server backups, for example, and where prioritising the backups would be a bad career move for the person in question.

(Yes, that is a huge warning sign that it's best to find a different job)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excuse my ignorance, but what's wrong with nslookup and ifconfig?

<comment><USER7> short answer: `/bin/ip` replaces `ifconfig` -- it's newer and more powerful

more info: [http://www.tty1.net/blog/2010/ifconfig-ip- comparison_en.html](http://www.tty1.net/blog/2010/ifconfig-ip- comparison_en.html)

<comment><USER8> Asides from ifconfig not being maintained (which is reason enough not to use it), I always wondered specifically what was broken with it.

Then I worked for an arbitrage desk at an investment bank. They used virtual addresses for different IPs, on top of vlans connected to different exchanges, redundantly (ie bonded).

Not a single IP-having interface appeared using ifconfig.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd also recommend any sysadmin to start looking into an automation framework like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, or any other of the myriad options.

<comment><USER9> I just started digging into chef with the intention of using with AWS opsworks and... holy complexity. There just doesn't seem to be any obvious entry point, as far as I can tell. I've spent two entire days searching and there doesn't seem to be anything in between "hello wordpress" and "read this 300+ page user manual". Can anyone recommend a hands on guide for setting up a multi-node stack with opsworks that isn't just plain vanilla templates? I was really impressed by Richard Seroter's videos on AWS at pluralsight, but they are more of a 30,000 foot overview and gloss over implementation details, for the most part (even at 10+ hours). The project I'm working on is mostly a pretty straightforward node service running on postgres, but it uses some custom services that need to scale horizontally, and host sensitive data that should probably be running in a VPC.

Edit: I'm also having a difficult time trying to figure out how to get up to speed with chef in the specific context of opsworks, since most of the chef- specific courseware I can find assumes I'm using a hosted chef server, and I'm not quite sure how that overlaps with the opsworks flavor. It's starting to feel like I'll be at this for another week before I can get even a simple stack running.

<comment><USER10> Try with ansible.

<comment><USER11> Agreed.

As well as the reasonably good ansible documentation, checkout the ansible- examples github repo. ( [https://github.com/ansible/ansible- examples](https://github.com/ansible/ansible-examples) )

There's a few initial 'conventions' to figure out (roles, group vars, playbooks), but then it's so incredibly simple to get into.

My dad is playing with a raspberry pi at home, wanting to set up a web kiosk thing. I'd been doing something similar a few months ago for work, so I send him my ansible playbook. He could follow it as if it were a plain text checklist/tutorial, without needing ansible at all. If he wants to automate it, he can.

That, I think, is one of the benefits of ansible. It's not a lot more work than just writing an overview of what you need to do in the first place, but with the benefit of it being repeatable and automated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _3. "Check that your backups are working the way you think they are."_

3.1 "Check that you can actually restore a file/recover a database"

<comment><USER13> 3.1.1 "Do it daily to a box in another building while dumping the backup to offsite storage"

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I learned #2 very early on. Further, the specs I give for a project are the very minimum. If you aren't willing to do things correctly the first time, I'm not willing to be a client.

</comment><comment><USER15> #2 is the most important in that list.</comment>


Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Address: Death Is The Destination We All Share - <AUTHOR> http://immaturebusiness.com/?p=2223

<comment><USER2> One of the best speeches of all time.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was indeed. I listen to it every time I doubt myself or need some encouragement.</comment></comment>


Variable Fonts on the Web - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/blog/7051/variable-fonts-on-the-web/ <comment><USER2> Neat idea that couldn't have been as easy as it looks to pull off.

I wonder if we are going to get an option to set a stretch to fill text into a particular size (i.e., make this headline fit into this area without breaking).</comment>


Ask HN: Is there an easy way to attach notes to each pane in tmux (or screen) - <AUTHOR> I am heavily multitasking (as a way to hide the latency caused by ridiculously long compile/test cycles) using multiple tmux sessions and panes. I find myself  constantly trying to remember what i was doing in each pane so i am looking for an easy way to attach a note/memo to each pane. <comment><USER2> You can set the name of a window using the comma (control-b ,) I often do this to keep things straight. Harder to do this by pane though. But I rarely find myself doing more than ten things at once.</comment>


New privacy policy written for 'Regular People' - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150434660350301&id=69178204322 <comment><USER2> I like that <http://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your_info_on_other.php> ("your info on other sites") throws an error.

Also, I seem to recall that _rigorously adhering_ to a _clearly-stated_ privacy policy of "we will give your data to the highest bidder, the lowest bidder and the mob" gets you a truste seal.

<comment><USER3> That link works for me.

<comment><USER4> Does not work for me.</comment></comment></comment>


Steam warns users against gambling site after YouTube stars discovered as owners - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-07-04-youtube-stars-criticised-after-it-emerges-they-owned-gambling-site-they-promoted <comment><USER2> Real shady stuff and definitely immoral. The most telling part of this whole debacle for me came from a (now deleted) tweet by TmarTn[1] where he states:

> That being said, everything we've done up until this point has been legal, > that has been a #1 priority of ours. The day it becomes illegal is the day > we cease activity.

So just because something is apparently not illegal (questionable, actually), it is apparently an acceptable thing to do. Hopefully legal action is successful against these frauds.

[1]: [http://archive.is/wHdZG](http://archive.is/wHdZG)

<comment><USER3> The amount of fraud and thieves inside the community would make your eyes spin. I've had to straight block trading with a large chunk of the world.

A big part of this stems from the concept that in-game items are not _really_ money. It allows these online casinos to flourish because it's 'just in-game skins'! It's actually really similar to japans Pachinko system where you don't win money.. but you win something that can be traded for money right around the corner. In reality land, I can cash out of valves ecosystem for around 20% of in-game currency and some of those skins are worth thousands of dollars...

These gambling sites really piss me off because they hurt the community. You have to remember, we're talking about young teenagers getting robbed from these guys, and it's not just their lunch money. We are easily talking hundreds of thousands to millions in revenue each year.

<comment><USER4> > It's actually really similar to japans Pachinko system where you don't win > money.. but you win something that can be traded for money right around the > corner.

That's how most (all?) real life casinos work too. You get chips, which are exchanged for money.

<comment><USER5> Casino chips are just proxies for cash and they exchange 1:1. They are not an "underground" currency at all.

Also you are (presumably) verified to be 18 (or 21?) years of age to gamble in a casino.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The fact that these YouTubers are using their own site to make these insane videos where they win thousands of dollars is disgusting. All of the teenagers and children who watch them are spending their mothers' credit cards on these basically-a-scam websites thinking they are going to win thousands of dollars. This is gambling, this is extremely shady, and these guys need to be stopped.

<comment><USER7> Wait, what? Who are these mothers giving children unfettered access to their credit cards? Not even a little onus on them?

<comment><USER8> Teenagers can find ways to access things their parents have hidden faster than parents can block them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh how video games have changed. They've gone from sucking up all the quarters a kid had to turning them into a gambling addict and draining their parents' credit card.

Maybe they've not changed quite so much.

<comment><USER10> It's not all video games, just the ones that have become competitive, like CS:GO. Any time something becomes "like a sport" people start using these tried and true ways of tricking people into giving them money.

<comment><USER11> Good call on the competetive edge, arcade games (the ones that eat up childrens quarters in the first place) also had it: there was a scoreboard, and there was fame to be had by being there.

<comment><USER12> you couldn't buy your way on the scoreboard the same way you can buy your way nowadays in "freemium" / "pay to win" games, and your ship in gyruss looked the same whether this was your first time playing or whether you had already spent weeks playing it

it's just not the same, the incentive in the old days was to get money out of players by making the game as hard as possible (which could be beaten by just getting better at it, which was where the fun was also), now it's always psychological pressure like FOMO or skinner boxes and so on, and there is no limit to how many "best value xxxx gems for $99.99" boxes / chests / ... you can buy

<comment><USER9> You're not wrong at all, but with many games the money being spent has zero impact on performance. All this CS:GO business is for stuff that's 100% cosmetic and changes nothing about gameplay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Class action lawyers will have a field day with these guys. Especially their attempts to coverup, add disclaimers, etc, after the fact.

IANAL, but business fraud statutes are extremely broad. For consumers in California for example, "any unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business act or practice" or "unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising" have a civil penalty of $2,500 per incident (for example, if 100,000 people were persuaded to visit their website, that might be $250,000,000 in damages). These are civil claims, where only a simple majority of the jury is needed.

When someone has to say their actions are "perfectly legal", they're usually running afoul of several laws they aren't aware of. Especially in an Internet business where you have potential exposure to so many jurisdictions.

[1] [http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=bpc&gr...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=17001-18000&file=17200-17210)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's weird when h3h3 is doing investigative journalism.

<comment><USER15> To give credit where it's due, it was HonorTheCall that actually looked up the info and broke the story I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is wrong, that warning on red was literaly there months before this drama. This is done for many website not only lotto (the website owned by the youtuber).

</comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely fantastic step in the right direction for Valve. Stop actual scammers, hackers, thieves, and criminals on your system rather than constantly adding "security theater" type features

<comment><USER17> I wish they would also remove those addicting elements from their games to make the world a better place instead of draining money by exploiting psychological effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Those 'legal' gambling scams are all over gaming. Where the F are authorities?

Eve Online has a juggernaut EVEBet, plus hundreds of smaller 'oh look I won XX mones its legit' scams per month.

Even Nintendo cartridge collecting gets its share of rare cartridge Facebook group Raffle Wheels with shill accounts of the owner of said raffle winning x-xxK items repeatedly. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnXeFDQqBQw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnXeFDQqBQw) , one of the "winner" suckers not acknowledging the reality he got scammed(probably because he runs illegal raffle wheels too, which he admits at the end, mind blown :o) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCeq-- 49Fu4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCeq--49Fu4)

</comment><comment><USER19> There are so many of these sites, some sit behind a proxy because they are somewhat illegal in a lot of countries, e.g [https://ezskinz.org/](https://ezskinz.org/). It's basically the wild west for these sites, no regulation, no liability, just people making a load of money off of kids, it's sickening.

<comment><USER20> So create some vague laws to save the [women and] children? This mentality worries me. There's no problem here besides some privileged kids losing almost nothing in exchange for a less than healthy activity. Is this really a big enough deal that we should devote public time and add complexity into a very impactful domain in order to have a mere attempt at solving this perceived problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If there is money to be made someone is trying to screw you over. How can anyone be surprised about this?

</comment><comment><USER22> When did gamers become such divas? Some of these skins cost more than realworld weapons. If this craving for fashion and bright colours holds, perhaps realworld gun ranges won't be so boring: less camo, more camp.

<comment><USER23> This is not something limited to gamers, it is a byproduct of the many-to-many social economy, where fame is a currency..

Everyone wants to stand out.. Whether it's a "Verified" badge on Twitter, or going viral in a Vine, or hitting a certain follower count on Instagram, or a very rare skin in a game, etc..

Fame, notoriety, visibility, anything but being part of "the rest" is something many people are willing to pay a high price for.. And there are tons of people out there more than happy to take those payments..

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Had they been honest would this have been a problem?

</comment><comment><USER25> How is buying CSGO skins or whatever different from any other game that sells virtual goods from RNGesus?

A.) Why does your kid have your credit card

B.) Youtubers have always made money from their viewers

<comment><USER26> The deception is that they probably rigged their own gambling site to make winning seem more likely than it really is to trick young people.

<comment><USER25> Fair enough.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple starts a Swift blog - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/11/apple-opens-up-with-a-new-blog-about-swift-its-new-programming-language/

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this to HN because I think it's interesting to see how Apple is becoming a bit more developer friendly and trying to open lines of communication.</comment>


Vulnerability in Microsoft Font Driver Could Allow Remote Code Execution - <AUTHOR> https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/MS15-078

<comment><USER2> Looking at the properties of the vulnerable dll, it's "Copyright 1983-1990, 1993-2004 Adobe Systems Inc."

In hindsight it's to be expected that the code doesn't do enough "safe" checks which were developed only after the famous Gates memo of 2002 (reposted by Microsoft on the 10 years anniversary of it: [https://news.microsoft.com/2012/01/11/memo-from-bill- gates/](https://news.microsoft.com/2012/01/11/memo-from-bill-gates/) ) and probably even more so as the code is copyrighted by Adobe and not Microsoft. And even more so as "Microsoft Windows does not release any OpenType fonts natively (but has the DLL because) third-party applications could install them."

(By the way, I highly admire the traditional Windows for caring about backward compatibility. I hope this doesn't change even if it's obviously harder.)

<comment><USER3> > Microsoft Windows does not release any OpenType fonts natively (but has the > DLL because) third-party applications could install them.

I'm not sure about Windows itself, but I know for a fact that Office includes at least one OpenType font: Cambria Math. It relies on the OpenType math typesetting information (which was largely designed by Microsoft). In addition, TrueType's layout information in not sophisticated enough for many languages (e.g. Arabic), so these users are most certainly using OpenType fonts.

<comment><USER4> Do you know of any references where I could read more about font formats, like the differences between OT vs. TT, the features of each, etc.?

I know close to nothing about them.

<comment><USER5> The OT spec is the definitive document: [https://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/otff.htm](https://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/otff.htm) Look at the list of font tables, OpenType supports everything, but the individual formats are (to oversimplify), as follows:

\- TTF = Required Tables + Tables Related to TrueType Outlines

\- PostScript Flavor OTF = Required Tables + Tables Related to PostScript Outlines + Advanced Typographic Tables

\- TrueType Flavor OTF = Required Tables + Tables Related to TrueType Outlines + Advanced Typographic Tables

Note that in a PostScript flavor OTF the glyph outlines are simply an entire Adobe CFF font embedded in a table. CFF is in turn a compact representation of a PostScript Type 1 font. There's an entire CFF spec too: [https://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/font/5176.CFF...](https://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/font/5176.CFF.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given that the font hinting system is turing complete, and that font ligature substitution is a bizarre regular expression system [2], my only surprise is that we haven't found more holes in font renderers. Given many of the features aren't used in regular fonts, maybe it's time we pared down font rendering to something a bit more sensible.

[2] [http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/131](http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/131)

<comment><USER5> I really don't see any issues specific to fonts here. For (now antiquated) performance reasons both TTF and OTF fonts use binary formats which were designed to be loaded directly into memory and accessed via pointers. It's not necessary to parse these formats in that manner but it's very convinient to do some when working in C, so we have vulnerable software. The same is true of these kinds of "mmap" binary formats in general, unless the software can validate the format of a file fully before using it, then there's significant exposure to vulnerabilities. MS Word and JPEG are both examples of such "direct to memory" formats which have had led to similar exploits.

Also note that this exploit was for Adobe's code and their fonts don't have any imperative hinting instructions (hints in CFF are purely declarative), which makes your first point moot.

OpenType Layout is most certainly used in "regular" fonts if you happen to be one of the 2+ billion people whose non-"sensible" languages can't be written without such features.

<comment><USER7> > Word and JPEG are both examples of such "direct to memory" formats

I think you mean Word and PSD, not JPEG - otherwise spot on.

<comment><USER8> JPEG exploit: [https://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/ms04-028.shtml](https://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/ms04-028.shtml)

<comment><USER7> Not saying JPEG hasn't had its share of exploits, but that the format itself isn't an example (like DOC, and PSD) of a format that can be described as "direct to memory" in the same sense. DOC and PSD are in many ways just the in-memory data structures of the apps that create them, written to disk.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html)

"These are binary formats, so loading a record is usually a matter of just copying (blitting) a range of bytes from disk to memory, where you end up with a C data structure you can use. There's no lexing or parsing involved in loading a file. Lexing and parsing are orders of magnitude slower than blitting."

PSD is much the same - it's why interop with PSDs is such a challenge.

JPEG has to be parsed and decompressed - another source of problems, but not remotely in the same category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excellent blog post by Mateusz Jurczyk of Google Project Zero on how the ATMFD DLL vulnerability was discovered and how an exploit POC was developed is here - [http://j00ru.vexillium.org/?p=2520](http://j00ru.vexillium.org/?p=2520)

Especially read the linked PDF if you love pain and misery but enjoy understanding complex stuff :)

<comment><USER10> I've only skimmed the PDF so far.

There was one great observation I couldn't resist repeating. The font renderer is performing various checks to validate 'n', the count of arguments passed on the stack, to a particular function. However:

       Turns out, a negative value of n passes all the checks!

Oops. It's possible to use this bug to target memory well beyond the stack. It's game over!

The best bugs are the simplest bugs.

<comment><USER9> Yeah that's true but as you will find later, it really wasn't anywhere near easy to develop an exploit that results in code execution despite of that simple bug. This one just results in BugCheck - attempted X of NX memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> liviu- Apparently this was another find in HackingTeam's leak [http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security- intelligence/a...](http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security- intelligence/a-look-at-the-open-type-font-manager-vulnerability-from-the- hacking-team-leak/)

<comment><USER11> I think that one was MS15-077 which is a local privilege escalation. My guess is someone at Microsoft noticed today's issue while fixing that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised that font exploits aren't more common. A few years ago I wrote a font fuzzer that would periodically crash the kernel, but I didn't do as much research as I would have liked.

</comment><comment><USER13> That sounds super mega bad.

How heavily fuzzed are font libraries on non-Microsoft platforms?

<comment><USER14> This was just the other week: [http://yahoo- security.tumblr.com/post/123981052855/font-pars...](http://yahoo- security.tumblr.com/post/123981052855/font-parsing-vulnerabilities)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apparently there was a similar vulnerability in Dec 2010 as well. What is the difference btween this and then? [https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms10-091](https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/ms10-091)

<comment><USER16> The CVE for the new one is much more descriptive about _what_ the problem actually is: [http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2010-3...](http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2010-3956)

I couldn't immediately find a CVE for the old one, and Microsoft's security disclosures seem more suited towards IT pros and consumers, so they don't seem to have full details about what happened in that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anybody know why I can't seem to install this update? It's not previously installed, I don't see it under the available updates, and when I download the MSU file directly (Windows8.1-KB3079904-x64.msu) it says the update isn't applicable to my computer...

<comment><USER17> Greetings! In the spirit of assuming the power cord and/or laptop battery is plugged in, you are running 64-bit Windows v8.1, correct?

And in the spirit of being helpful, you can run the following command to verify the above and see if Windows Update already auto-installed this KB (if so, it will be listed):

      systeminfo | findstr /ic:"os name" /c:"system type" /c:"3079904"

<comment><USER4> > In the spirit of assuming the power cord and/or laptop battery is plugged in

Yes

> you are running 64-bit Windows v8.1, correct?

Yes

> you can run the following command to verify the above and see if Windows > Update already auto-installed this KB (if so, it will be listed)

I did, and it is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How many times does this have to happen? I could be missing something but why do fonts have drivers?

I'm actually a huge windows fan, so I'm not really just talking snack about them. The new universal app platform should make some stuff like this obsolete over time, I hope.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good God. Windows Server 2003 is still under support? Why are people still running that?

I'm gonna assume this affects XP as well -- yet another reason to just ban that OS from all networks forever.

<comment><USER20> > Windows Server 2003 is still under support?

No, support ended on July 14th. And yeah, it is affected by this.

From what I've been hearing, yeah, many places are still running it on varying scales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I remember the kernel mode TrueType font driver being part of how Duqu worked, that was in 2011. This reads like it may be the same module.

[http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_7-s...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_7-security/vulnerability-in-truetype-font-parsing- could-allow/aeb53be3-4aca-4af7-a3b9-36ce3c0af0b5?auth=1)

</comment><comment><USER22> Why didn't Windows Update notify me immediately of the vulnerability. I have automatic updates enabled, why do I have to manually check and install updates. It's dated July 16th, so I was left vulnerable to drive-bys for 4 days. I'm so fed up with Windows and their BS attitude towards security.

<comment><USER23> Published: July 20, 2015

Mine will applied after restart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yeah, they were told about problems a year ago and they did absolutely nothing:

[https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62764&re...](https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62764&redirected_from=fdo)

</comment><comment><USER25> Surprised that this shows up as only Important in Windows Update on Windows 7. That's the same level of importance as given to update to Windows 10 nagware.

<comment><USER26> The article says "This security update is rated Critical for all supported releases of Microsoft Windows." \- are you sure?

<comment><USER25> Before posting my original comment I ran Windows Update and it came up as important, not critical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> s/Could Allow/Allows

</comment><comment><USER28> So, which web browsers can this be exploited through?

<comment><USER29> The browser shouldn't really matter here, Windows renders fonts on kernel- level anyway.

<comment><USER30> Not all browsers use Windows' font rendering.

<comment><USER31> I would still be concerned that a 'trivial' exploit in another browser, that would normally not lead to exploitation could cause a problem. For example user tricks chrome in to saving a file in a non-standard place, Explorer reads file and executes payload while displaying preview.

<comment><USER30> "Got an attack that only works in MS Edge but victim's in Chrome? No worries, use the microsoft-edge: protocol to jump over to that browser." [https://twitter.com/ericlaw/status/622157163398430720](https://twitter.com/ericlaw/status/622157163398430720)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This isn't showing in Windows update for me (Win 7 64-bit), nor under installed updates. Does Microsoft do staggered releases?</comment>


OpenScore: Liberating Sheet Music - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/openscore/openscore-join-the-sheet-music-revolution <comment><AUTHOR> OpenScore, a new initiative by the popular open source music notation software vendor MuseScore, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to create machine readable editions of iconic classical works in the public domain. Kickstarter backers will be able to influence which pieces get transcribed first. They have partnered with IMSLP, the largest repository of public domain musical scans, with the intention of creating a sustainable and scalable workflow for creating a semantically complete music notation library. These scores have many advantages over the PDF scans that are currently available. They support machine playback, so a viewer can actually hear the music; they are convertible into other meaningful music formats, such as MIDI, MusicXML, and Braille notation (for blind musicians); they can be edited, arranged, corrected, and improved. The project takes inspiration from text and image based projects such as Wikipedia, and will utilize Creative Commons licensing. MuseScore has previously been involved with public domain music projects such as the Open Goldberg Variations.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of MuseScore. This initiative will bring quality reable scores for free to anyone.</comment>


If You're Not Lazy Loading Your Images, You're Wasteful - <AUTHOR> https://www.machmetrics.com/speed-blog/not-lazy-loading-images-youre-wasteful/ <comment><USER2> From a usability standpoint, all the advantage of LL is on the hoster's side. For the end-user the latency is practically never adequate to prevent a frustrating experience. I use whatever GM scripts or other hacks I can find to just load the damned page, if such workarounds exist.

Recently eBay moved to LL in most of its searches, but this can be obviated by re-searching from the Advanced link, for instance.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is ridiculous to me. I open a new tab in my browser and if I know it's a long page with lots of pictures, like some blog or ebay listing, I might postpone switching to the tab with the single purpose, so it loads all the content in the background and the page is completely ready for me to scroll.

If it's combined with infinite scroll it's even worse. In such case I need to manually scroll the page for as long as I need so it starts loading the damned content. Not many things bring me so close to the point of rage.

<comment><AUTHOR> >I might postpone switching to the tab with the single purpose, so it loads all the content in the background and the page is completely ready for me to scroll.

You've been trained to expect pages to load slowly. If pages weren't slow to begin with then this behavior would not be necessary.

<comment><USER3> Obviously. But pages won't load much faster any time soon and lazy-loading prevents me from using this workaround.</comment></comment></comment>


Fire shuts down cell towers in CA - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/lisamkrieger/status/1189042580685611009 <comment><USER2> The title is actively wrong. The tweet linked, and the news article it links to, both finger PG&E's voluntary power shutoff as the reason the cell towers are down. They are not down because of fire, they're down because PG&E decided they shouldn't be up.

> Of the 874 outages, 702 were blamed on loss of power to the cell tower site.

> A few, about 60, were down due to wind or fire damage to the sites > themselves.

<comment><USER3> While PG&E is responsible for a lot of things; their past decisions to not adequately inspect/maintain transmission lines makes them responsible for a lot of the expenses and damages caused by the resulting blackouts.

However, cell towers (and telephones in general) are important infrastructure. They should have been designed and maintained with the _expectation_ that power failures _will_ happen and failed safely over to battery/generator backup power.

The traditional POTS infrastructure was[1] designed to work without power for _weeks_. That involved no only battery backup, but also longer-lasting backup power (e.g. big tanks of diesel) for when the batteries ran out. Cell towers going down when the power was out for a few days is evidence that those towers were not designed to be critical infrastructure and shouldn't be used as a replacement for POTS or other actually-reliable communication methods.

[1] I have no idea if that reliability still exists, or if AT&T ruined that reliability in the name of "efficiency" and profit.

<comment><USER2> > The traditional POTS infrastructure was[1] designed to work without power > for weeks. That involved no only battery backup, but also longer-lasting > backup power (e.g. big tanks of diesel) for when the batteries ran out.

> [1] I have no idea if that reliability still exists, or if AT&T ruined that > reliability in the name of "efficiency" and profit.

This is addressed in the article. It's unclear to me whether AT&T lines go down due to external power failure, but other providers don't use powered lines:

> Residents said even their once-reliable landlines and Internet, such as > those operated by Frontier Communications, weren't working. Comcast/Xfinity > also was down.

> In the era of traditional phone service, Ma Bell's lines were themselves > energized and very reliable.

> But companies' transition to Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) – with > phone calls over the Internet – is dependent on outside electricity. VOIP > calls fail when either the company's facility or the resident's home lacks > backup power.

> Comcast customers lose service where the power is out at their home, because > the services need energy to operate, according to Comcast's Joan Hammel. > Comcast service also stops if power is disrupted elsewhere in the network, > she said. Comcast's service, like all other companies who have transitioned > to Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) telephony, fails when either the > company's facility or the resident's home lacks backup power.

> "Like all PG&E customers, we are also affected by this power shutdown, said > Vince Bitong of AT&T. "We are aware that service for some customers may be > affected and we continue to move quickly to keep our customers, FirstNet > subscribers and public safety agencies connected."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Firefighters (or others) could set up a "no-frills" base station on their truck.

These systems include a power generator, servers, and a 2G GSM base station for ranges of about 10km.

They don't even require any Internet connection, since their only purpose is to allow emergency calls and SMS. Any cell phone can set up an emergency call then - no need for a special SIM card.

Vodafone has a humanitarian mission that sets up these systems all over the world. (They're using Huawei, though)

[https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/resources/mobile-n...](https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/resources/mobile- network-restoration-humanitarian-response/)

<comment><USER5> That's if you just ignore licensing requirements for these very crowded frequencies.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure firefighters could get such a license in the event of emergency -- or just operate without such a license.

[Edit: or you ask some technician of your local operator to bring the system up :)]

<comment><USER5> That same operator that brought down their own equipment for some apparently nefarious reason?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And just months ago California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection decided: "However, with constantly changing technological advances, there is no longer the same benefit to State as previously provided. Therefore, the Department no longer financially supports HAM operators [sic] radios or tenancy. If you desire to enter into a formal agreement to operate and maintain said equipment, you must complete and submit attached collocation application along with fee as outlined on page one of application. There is cost associated with getting an agreement in place."

So basically pay up or move out.

How exactly is the word supposed to get out in dangerous dry windy conditions if the power is out, the cells are out, and the hams move out?

<comment><USER7> > How exactly is the word supposed to get out in dangerous dry windy > conditions if the power is out, the cells are out, and the hams move out?

There have been attempts to create apps that allow a combination of store and forward messaging and ad hoc network creation so that messages could be literally carried from where there is no mobile network coverage to places where there is or to be relayed through other devices.

Now I put on my tinfoil hat: the problem is that in densely populated areas this would eat into the revenue that the network operator gets from SMS so no operators have promoted the idea and of course it would be easy to make it somewhat resistant to eavesdropping so no state will promote it either.

Actually I don't know if those things are true but it seems like a plausible reason for the lack of peer to peer capabilities in modern smartphones.

See [https://www.computerworld.com/article/2510683/peer-to- peer--...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2510683/peer-to-peer-- wireless-network-could-help-in-disasters.html)

<comment><USER6> Wifi direct is becoming popular and makes this kind of thing possible. I've also seen hardware products for similar like the gotenna. You could have a party of people across a relatively large area (say a ski resort, trail network, or neighborhood) and have decent async connectivity for SMS like use between them.

Software products like Lifenet, Firechat, Bridgefy, and similar generally use wifi-direct or bluetooth to communicate and do support store and forward.

On the amateur radio side js8call does allow forwarding through 3rd parties and store and forward.

Granted the financial model for these kind of things is tricky, but they do seem to be getting more popular. But sure I don't expect any cell provider to help, and was pleasantly pleased when p2p/direct connections was added to android.

I was pretty interested in gotenna and wanted to add a DHT and internet gateway so that messages would be delivered globally if anyone in your mesh had an internet connection. They rejected my idea 8-(.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the report direct from the FCC.

[https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-360482A1.pdf](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-360482A1.pdf)</comment>


PHP Performance: More CPU Cores vs. Faster CPU Cores - <AUTHOR> https://haydenjames.io/?p=6549 <comment><USER2> 3-10 seconds per request? That app has a completely different problem than "the cores are too damn slow."</comment>


Coding Horror: The Problem of the Unfinished Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001203.html

<comment><USER2> Yeah, this is a famous puzzle. The answer is supposed to be 2/3, because what the question is asking you to do is consider all the parents in the world where _at least_ one of the two children is a girl. Then you're left with 3 possibilities, BG, GB and GG.

If you phrase the question like that, everyone will get the right answer. The reason people get it wrong is that _people don't normally talk like that_. Imagine you're at a party, and someone tells you they have two kids, and "one of them is a girl." Clearly, they mean that the other is a boy, which means the answer is 100%.

But the most intuitive way of interpreting the question is that you know that a _specific_ child is a girl, say because the person brought one kid to the party, who turns out to be a girl. With this interpretation, the obvious answer of 50% is in fact correct.

You often hear the complaint that people don't understand math. In this instance, however, an equally valid way of explaining what's going on is that mathematicians don't understand people.

This criticism applies partially to the normal game-show version of the Monty Hall problem, but I think there the wording is genuinely ambiguous regarding the host's behavior, and my answer would be "not enough information."

<comment><USER3> The game-show version of the Monty Hall problem isn't ambiguous... people even had the chance to see the show before knowing the mathematical problem. I agree there are different ways to state the problem, but the wording doesn't explain why it confuses people.

<comment><USER4> Actually, the strongest criticism that I've heard about the Monty Hall problem is that the game show didn't actually work like that.

I've tried explaining the problem to both people who've seen the show and those who haven't. My experience is that if you've seen the show you'll never accept the question, let alone the answer. Meanwhile, those who never watched the show can be convinced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Take a random parent with two children. You ask them if at least one is a boy and they say yes. The probability that the other is a girl is 66.6%

Take another random parent with two children. You ask them if the oldest child is a boy and they say yes. Now the probability that the other is a girl is 50%.

This confuses people. (The point is the second scenario gives you more information since it's a subset of the first.)

<comment><USER6> Exactly correct. Your comment should be at the top of this discussion. It took me forever to figure the above out when I first ran into this puzzle in 7th grade.

And although this problem is often used to show that humans are bad at doing probability in their heads, note how simple it is to do the probability calculation for the two scenarios that you've mentioned.

What's actually hard for humans is describing models or simulations, not doing the probability. Once you explained the possibilities for original problem in a more detailed way, the answer(s) becomes obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is easier to understand if you start by listing all of the possibilities.

      Two boys:        BB
      Two girls:       GG
      Boy, then girl:  BG
      Girl, then boy:  GB

So there are four possibilities: (BB, GG, BG, GB).

If you know that one of the children is a girl, then BB is impossible and you can remove it from the list. This leaves only 3 possibilities (GG, BG, GB).

This is the set you use to calculate the probability and there are two ways out of three that the person could have both a boy and a girl: BG and GB

That gives you 2/3 or 67%

<comment><USER8> There are neither 4 nor 3 possibilities: it was given that one child is a girl. So it's either GB or GG. 50% FTW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 67%. The percentage of having one boy and one girl is 50%, "one of them is a girl" eliminate the condition of having two boy.

<comment><USER10> Except that real data seems to disagree with you - the chance is about 50%.

<http://www.in-gender.com/xyu/Odds/Gender_Odds.aspx>

<comment><USER10> A link to an analysis based on an actual study was modded down?

Who are you people and what did you do to HN.

<comment><USER11> The analysis you linked to does not refute anything said here. In fact, the conclusions of the study you showed are a necessary assumption for this problem (that each gender has an equal probability and independent of birth order). This problem has nothing to do with biology but rather using posterior information to come up with a probability given a statistical experiment.

However, I did not vote you down.

<comment><USER12> But why does it necessarily have nothing to do with biology? It seems you've added a condition to the question that does not exist. Additional data points are quite useful, and using them to find the correct "real world," outcome seems most logical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> +1: The Monty Hall Problem Never Gets Old :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Consensus is clearly 66% or 50% depending on whether you think the GB and BG combinations are the same thing in the context of the question.

But isn't it true that more boys than girls are born (because boys die younger so evolution tries to balance it out a bit)?

Does anyone know if certain fathers can only produce one sex of child? If so then having one girl would increase the chances of having another girl slightly.

<comment><USER15> Evolution doesn't try to balance anything - evolution is not a person, and it doesn't think.

There is a slight difference in the swimming speed of XX vs XY sperm, which accounts for the difference. Also I believe females have a slightly better survival ratio, the reasons are complicated, but include the fact that all fetuses start as female, and then are modified by testosterone to be male, i.e. female is the default. Plus females have XX so some genes are doubled which helps them.

It's pretty much impossible for a father to make just one or the other because of that way it's produced.

The father has XY cells, which split in half to make sperm, one half become a male sperm the other female. So sperm is always made in pairs.

There can be differences in the mother that affect one or the other differently though (PH for example, and the sperm are not the same size).

<comment><USER14> I wasn't suggesting that evolution thinks, I was suggesting that we've evolved to produce more males so that there's an optimum 50/50 balance of the number of males and females at around early adulthood. Considering some of the other things that evolution has achieved that seems like a pretty reasonable thing to suggest.

Your explanation of whether certain couples can only produce males or females was pretty interesting though, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is not each birth an independent random event, and thus the likelihood that they would have a boy, given that they already have a girl, simply 50%?

<comment><USER17> That's the same reasoning I have. P(B|A) = P(B) for independent variables.

<comment><USER16> On the other hand, if a couple told you they had five kids, at least four are boys, you would say to yourself, "it's not very likely that any couple would have five boys", and you would be correct...

<comment><USER18> Yes, BBBBB is rare. But BBBBG is just as rare (at least statistically. In practical terms, I suspect that having four boys in a row would be too exhausting and irritating, so they'd have given up by then).

<comment><USER19> > Yes, BBBBB is rare. But BBBBG is just as rare

Actually, it isn't. More boys are born than girls. (However, boys are somewhat more likely to die young.) Also, the odds for a given mating pair are not the same as the odds for the population as a whole.

And then there's post-conception sex-selection....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If it's fifty-fifty between genders, and each birth is an independent event, but a boy + girl is like umm.. a chain of independent events or something?

My guess is 25% - 0,5 times 0,5..

But what exactly is the right answer? There doesn't seem to be a consensus yet.</comment>


Determining the Structural Stability of Lunar Lava Tubes [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2015/pdf/2174.pdf <comment><USER2> The structural and observational evidence seems to support the strong possibility that there are large voids (100s of meters or even kilometer-plus long voids) under the moon's surface.

This seems ideal for future moon bases. If there are already large areas under the surface to protect from radiation and they're structurally stable, it seems like a great starting point. At that point a moon base only needs materials to make it air tight, rather than structurally stable, which means it would require getting much less material into orbit. It might even be possible to accomplish that with heat or chemical treatments of the existing moon rock, further reducing the amount of materials needed.

Since it's also possible to produce oxygen from moon rock ([http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/lnews/lnmar97/oxygen.htm](http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/lnews/lnmar97/oxygen.htm)), it seems like this drastically reduces the cost/complexity of a lunar base.</comment>


YaCy – Decentralised Search Engine - <AUTHOR> https://yacy.net/ <comment><USER2> Never loads anything besides a blue background.

Maybe it's waiting on a block?</comment>


Where do you find your freelancers? - <AUTHOR>

If you work in an agency or startup, where do you find your freelancers?<p>Hacker News? Google search? a freelancer site? word of mouth? or somewhere else? <comment><USER2> Elance.com freelancer.com and odesk.com are currently the top three freelancing websites. I have personally used elance and freelancer and have had decent success finding freelancers there.

</comment><comment><USER3> \- a. [https://www.elance.com/](https://www.elance.com/) b. [http://www.freelance.com/en/](http://www.freelance.com/en/) c. [http://www.freelancer.com/?utm_expid=294858-54.y4dwHqwLR0uoK...](http://www.freelancer.com/?utm_expid=294858-54.y4dwHqwLR0uoKzhi2y8zCA.0) d. [http://www.getacoder.com/](http://www.getacoder.com/) e. [http://www.guru.com/](http://www.guru.com/) f. [https://www.odesk.com/](https://www.odesk.com/) g. [http://www.peopleperhour.com/](http://www.peopleperhour.com/) h. [http://www.project4hire.com/](http://www.project4hire.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Word of mouth, recommendations.</comment>