Compasses don't work on Mars, so how do you navigate? - <AUTHOR> http://kottke.org/15/07/compasses-dont-work-on-mars-so-how-do-you-navigate <comment><USER2> I am surprised that no one has yet mentioned the Gyrocompass: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrocompass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrocompass)

The post mentions manually-set directional gyroscopes, but gyrocompasses are a step ahead of that; on any sufficiently-quickly-rotating planet, a gyrocompass will point you towards the geographic poles by noting the axis of precession of a gyroscope with arbitrary orientation. That's even better than a magnetic compass on Earth, since the magnetic poles do not line up exactly with the geographic poles, and the magnetic is non-uniform anyway (which is why navigational charts include notations of the magnetic deviation in different areas).

<comment><USER3> How maintenance intensive are they, though? Moving parts in or near vacuum tend to be a bit iffy (e.g. lubrication), especially for multi-year (or multi- decade) robotic missions.

<comment><USER4> There are non-moving part designs that utilise fibre-optics or laser rings. I've only seen either the physical or laser ring gyros. Not sure about which ones they'd use in space though.

<comment><USER5> Grandparent is talking about gyrocompasses, not ordinary gryoscopes though. I haven't heard of a laser-ring gyrocompass. Not sure it if that is even possible.

<comment><USER6> The gyrocompass orientation should, in principle, be obtainable by properly integrating gyroscope readings (and accelerometer? not sure if required).

<comment><USER7> You still need a way of determining the initial position/pose

<comment><USER6> I don't think so. The gyrocompass relies on gyroscopic precession. The precession itself can be obtained by integration, which gives orientation. Of course, the precision of this process may well be very low or unusable.

<comment><USER7> you don't need an initial heading measurement but you still need to know where you are

<comment><USER6> It would suffice to know the radius of the planet and it's rate of rotation.

<comment><USER7> Using only a compass and the knowledge that you were somewhere on the planet earth, could you determine the shortest route from your locations to Chicago?

<comment><USER6> Ah I thought you were referring to the gyrocompass functionality. Yes, for general navigation you need an initial position to determine your position from inertial measurement alone (as I said, you can determine orientation and latitude, but not longitude).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Celestial navigation plus accurate clocks. I'd think this would be especially good on a planet without clouds (as long as your planet rotates fast enough, so I guess Mercury is out). Anyone know if Mars has any polar stars?

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

<comment><USER9> The planet doesn't have to rotate to use celestial navigation. As long as you can see the stars you are fine.

So the dark side of mercury would work fine. On the hot side as long as you are not exactly on the equator the sun acts as a fixed direction and you can use that.

> Anyone know if Mars has any polar stars?

The orbital tilt of Mars is 1.85 degrees (vs 0 for earth) and the Axial tilt is 25.19 vs 23.44 for Earth. So Polaris would be pretty close to being a polar star for Mars as well.

<comment><USER10> That's still like a couple of degrees (4 full moons) away so not sure how accurate it would be.

Still the thought of seeing literally the same stars on an alien world is blowing my mind. Just imagine the same sky, but different planet... wow

<comment><USER11> I wonder if "giant head" enhanced depth perception works across planets?

[https://xkcd.com/941/](https://xkcd.com/941/)

<comment><USER12> Fun link. I was planning on similar setup using a couple of remote linked Celestron C8s separated by 5 miles to observe thunderhead cloud formation in SW Florida. Average natural IPD is around 64mm so it should be interesting to see what the occipital lobe does when this is expanded to over 8km. (IPD = InterPupillary Distance; eyeball separation)

<comment><USER13> IPD?

<comment><USER14> Interpupillary distance, the distance between the centre of the pupil in one eye to the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Venus too - and this is also why neither have water - no strong magnetic field to hold the heliopause at bay, so the solar wind blows water out of the atmosphere.

<comment><USER16> Mars doesn't have hydrogen because at temperatures where water is liquid, the speed of hydrogen atoms due to temperature is greater than the escape velocity from Mars.

<comment><USER15> I thought it was just pressure - the more dense molecules push the Hydrogen out of the way as gravity pulls at them.

<comment><USER16> Pressure is the collective action of the molecules / atoms flying around and smashing into things.

At "normal" temperature on Mars, hydrogen atoms have a thermal velocity [1]. That velocity is greater than the escape velocity from Mars.

A lone hydrogen atom will typically bounce around a lot in the lower atmosphere. It eventually works it's way (via random scattering) to the upper layers of the atmosphere. Once the atom reaches the upper atmosphere... it's gone. It flies away, never to return.

Keep that up for a billion years, and Mars loses most of the hydrogen it started off with.

Oxygen is heaver, so it's thermal velocity is smaller than the escape velocity.

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

<comment><USER17> So the Mars atmosphere is a distillation column for gasses!

<comment><USER18> Every atmosphere is a distillation column for gasses. Oxygen and Nitrogen are similar enough that they don't separate (also Earth's atmosphere moves enough to mix), but you definitely find that e.g. Radon will sink to the floor, and lighter gasses like Helium will float up to high altitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does having "no strong magnetic field" mean no Ionosphere and thus no Shortwave Radio?

<comment><USER20> Interesting thought. Never considered that you have planet specific propagation.

<comment><USER21> Well, depending on frequency you would still have some traversable effects regarding radio. You would have ground wave propagation at the minimum. unfortunately, most radio would be line of sight because of no atmosphere. Limited atmospherics would provide very restricted use on a multitude of frequencies mainly lower than 6 meter. If you wanted to communicate with the other side of the body, you would have to rely on a third entity like we do on here with the moon to bounce and receive. Aside from that option you would have little/no multi bounce

<comment><USER20> Very interesting. Thanks for the detailed reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> KRET develops stellar navigation system for Russian strategic bombers

[http://www.janes.com/article/52661/kret-develops-stellar- nav...](http://www.janes.com/article/52661/kret-develops-stellar-navigation- system-for-russian-strategic-bombers)

<comment><USER23> I am seeing a cartoon forming in my head with a Russian strategic bomber pilot, crashed in a kid's bedroom and looking up at a roof covered in those glow in the dark stars and a big red flashing light warning about course deviation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Already done? More than 40 years ago, but probably still workable:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Roving_Vehicle#Control_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Roving_Vehicle#Control_and_navigation)

<comment><USER25> Did you read the article? That's exactly what the author was pointing out. Also this article and wiki have ruined The Martian for me.

<comment><USER26> Gyroscopes accumulate error with time, they make sense for an application with a short range but they're useless over long periods of time without a reference standard to crosscheck and recalibrate. That's one part of The Martian the author got entirely correct despite the criticism. The mechanical odometer in your car is only accurate to +/-3% of reading and the best mechanical calibration standards are only 0.25% of reading, that puts the trip described in The Martian off by ~90km.

<comment><USER25> Thanks, I was being mildly sarcastic in my post but having the math laid out is great.

<comment><USER26> NASA has the brains to design a better odometer but navigating by stars and GPS makes more sense.

Also, remember the +/-3% next time you're comparing a used cars. Worrying about 5-6,000 miles on a car with 100,000 is pointless since the odometer itself lies by up to 3,000 miles. Then you have further error introduced by new sets of tires which wear down 6-15mm depending on their tread depth and can vary several mm in diameter despite having the same nominal size as the OEM tires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> stellar inertial navigation - It means that as well as an inertial system you track the stars... which are actually visible even during daylight through an automated telecope system... although not through cloud I guess.

Pricey but so is getting to Mars

<comment><USER28> [http://nmp.nasa.gov/st6/TECHNOLOGY/compass_tech.html](http://nmp.nasa.gov/st6/TECHNOLOGY/compass_tech.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> GPS

<comment><USER29> We haven't put GPS satellites around Mars quite yet. I'm guessing that won't happen until it gets terraformed.

<comment><USER30> That being said, how many satellites _are_ orbiting Mars right now that could be used to help determine position?

<comment><USER31> ~7

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Artificial_satellites...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Artificial_satellites_orbiting_Mars)

<comment><USER18> Looks like 5 of those are active rather than proposed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Students Build a Car the Blind Can Drive - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/07/blind-driver-challenge <comment><USER2> What a fascinating concept. Not only can this potentially revolutionize the lives of millions of people, but the implications past that are staggering. If this was a standard option how many lives would be saved from the moment distractions? How many sleepy drivers would be saved from hurting themselves or others?

The next iteration of highways and freeways requires technology like this to happen. There's no reason that we can't travel much, much more quickly than we do currently and adapting cars to help prevent accidents and avoid the situations that cause them is a necessary catalyst.

How nice would it be to commute to work every day and avoid the traffic jams that plague cities?

I for one can't wait to see this progress.</comment>


Why We'll Never Run Out of Oil - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/1999/jun/featoil <comment><USER2> This is a June 1999 article. Didn't realize it till I was halfway through the article.</comment>


Nurturing a baby and a start-up business - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/business/nurturing-a-baby-and-a-start-up-business.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh, looks like all of the companies are out of NY and mostly fashion related. Its too bad it was more of a PR piece for these companies, rather than a deeper look at gender and class.</comment>


Why does drug resistance easily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? - <AUTHOR> http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1851/20162562 <comment><USER3> Very good question and a very good answers in this article!

I'll add one more reason not explored by the authors: antibodies don't "leak" in the environment, in contrast to the antibiotics which are everywhere.

For example, if I'm vaccinated against _S. pneumoniae_ (one of the bacteria that can cause pneumonia), the bacteria have to get inside my body to gain exposure to my vaccine-induced antibodies. This makes the emergence of resistance very unlikely because :

(1) the number of bacteria that are exposed to the antibody is relatively small, because the antibody response is pretty fast and happens before the bacteria had a chance to multiply to significant numbers; (2) any bacteria clones who evolve resistance to the antibody remain susceptible to the myriad of other immunes peptides, to macrophages, and so on. In other words, as long as I survive my pneumonia, no resistance can ever emerge, because I will kill all the resistant clones through other means.

Contrast this to antibiotics. I have pneumonia, I take antibiotics, I'm cured. However, I excrete those antibiotics in urine and stool. Outside of my body, enormous numbers of bacteria are exposed to minute doses of antibiotics. The number of surviving clones is likely to be very high, and those survivors do not face any supplemental threat. Thus, resistance to that antibiotic can be transmitted to later generations.

<comment><USER4> You don't excrete antibodies? I think you might be saying that antibiotics are passive strategies which are inherently overly broad and thus problematic.

<comment><USER5> Antibodies are too large to pass through the filter in the kidneys. Lower molecular weight fragments of antibodies are usually reabsorbed in the proximal tubule of the nephron.

Their fate mostly lies in catabolism, i.e. they are broken down and the components reused. Biliary excretion accounts for a very small amount of the elimination of IgG antibodies.

[0] "Pharmacokinetics of Monoclonal Antibodies" [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/psp4.12224/pdf](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/psp4.12224/pdf)

<comment><USER6> Even if an antibody was eliminated, and managed to bind to an antigen, what good is it if it doesn't have a complementary immune system to act on it

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's actually the main point, thanks!

I missed it when I wrote my reply, concentrating on the immediate question (interesting psychological problem) - and then I could not edit it. It bothered me quite a bit but I did not want to write a third reply. Interesting to see how easy it is to get sidetracked on an irrelevant (albeit interesting) question, and how hard it is to get the discussion back on track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like to use a conflict analogy: A drug is a weapon exploiting one weakness of the enemy. A vaccine is a visual identification of the enemy, passed on to special forces (your immune system). A single weakness can often be changed easily, but it's harder to shake off special forces.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Here we argue that vaccines are less vulnerable to pathogen evolution than are antimicrobial drugs because of differences in the way drugs and vaccines work. We contend that two key features of vaccines have large, synergistic effects on the rate at which resistance arises and then spreads"

"(a) Timing of action - For most infectious diseases, hours to days elapse between exposure to a pathogen and symptomatic infection in a host ... Pathogen replication during this incubation period creates opportunities for mutations to arise"

"(b) Multiplicity of therapeutic targets within and between hosts - <USER2> benefit of combination therapy is based on the premise that resistance can only be acquired by the simultaneous acquisition of resistance to each component drug. The probability of simultaneous acquisition becomes vanishingly small as the number of drugs increases. A vaccine, however, often exposes the host immune system to multiple pathogen proteins (antigens), and multiple potential binding sites (epitopes) on each antigen. Epitopes are recognized and bound by components of the immune system analogously to how biochemical molecules would interact with a drug or its downstream products. This means that immunity is in effect acting like combination therapy, but with substantially more component effectors (and hence targets) than any drug cocktail."

\</comment><comment>

"One set of differences between vaccines and drugs stem from the fact that vaccine effects are mediated through host immune responses while drugs effects are mediated through chemical pathways"

They discount this as being a major factor but the only evidence they provide is that "resistance is seen against drugs such as solfonamides that also act indirectly."

It could also be considered that the immune system is adaptive and its capacities evolve during a person's lifetime and that the collective immune system within a population group evolves depending on the spread (or lack there of) of disease within the population group.

With vaccines we are triggering the evolution of individual and group immune systems in ways that we don't fully understand and so unlike with drugs where once resistance is formed we have to develop a new drug, individual and group immune systems continue to evolve even if the vaccines don't change. The same vaccine administered now may be triggering different responses than it did 100 years ago.

<comment><USER9> Herd immunity affects timing and variation in the community affects multiplicity. You aren't wrong but I believe you are restating the conclusions in another way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I do not doubt that this difference exists in general, I am wondering if there is not, to some extent, an issue of terminology here. My understanding is that influenza vaccination is somewhat uncertain because antigenic shift and drift produces new, or not-recently-seen, strains. When a bacterium modifies its genome to survive an antimicrobial drug, we call that 'resistance', yet I guess the drug is still as effective as before against unmodified bacteria. While the mechanism is, in detail, different in the two cases, they both involve the pathogen modifying its genome to render the treatment less effective.

Maybe the distinction is because, in the case of influenza, the strain changes are not in response to, and driven by, the treatment? HIV, however, seems to be very effective in mutating specifically in response to every candidate vaccine that has been tried against it.

<comment><USER11> Exatly, the resistance due to evolution and new strains by passing vaccines is not very comparable

<comment><USER12> As a total amateur, it seems like the bacterial/viruses need only find one way to breakthrough your immunity. Your immune system has many more attack vectors to cover. The bacteria only need to be right once, but the immune system billions.

<comment><USER13> The immune system is also layered - a single viral infection won't necessarily kill you right away. If it does penetrate the initial layers, the immune system will continue adapting and fighting it on each new front. Eventually your entire body might even engage using things like a fever. In this way, it doesn't need to be right initially billions of times, but capable once at one of many steps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I always figured it was because there were thousands of different types of antibodies generated against an immunological challenge (e.g. vaccine).

The antibody simply finds a conserved binding site and it works. Therefore, they don't have to be the same.

As a result, resistance doesn't form as the bacteria or virus would need to develop resistance to thousands of different antibodies, not just one.

<comment><USER15> This was my guess, before reading the article.

A couple secondary hypotheses come to mind. First, resistance to monoclonal antibody based drugs[0] is more likely than resistance to vaccines. Second, resistance to single-epitope vaccines is more likely than resistance to complex multi-epitope vaccines.

0) [https://www.medicinenet.com/monoclonal_antibodies/article.ht...](https://www.medicinenet.com/monoclonal_antibodies/article.htm#list_and_types_of_monoclonal_antibodies_\(fda_approved\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not a biologist here, but hoping maybe one can correct me on this: isn't it an important factor that in the immune system the signaling cells themselves have evolved to respond to variants of a given pathogen's protein marker, whereas drugs are always presenting the same chemical challenge?

<comment><USER17> As far as I read the article and understand your question, this is indeed one of the factors that they mention. Each persons immune system reacts in a different way, posing a unique challenge to the pathogen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> My understanding is that we're unable to created effective vaccines against RNA viruses as RNA replication doesn't have the built-in "checksum" mechanism that DNA has. When DNA replicates, because the two strands of the helix are essentially mirror images of each other, it is easier to create an exact copy without mutations. RNA, not having this property, allows for more mutations during replication. This increased mutation rate is what causes the viruses to change so quickly and what makes the vaccines we create quickly useless against the changed virus.

<comment><USER19> Flu, polio, and measles are rna viruses which are regularly vaccinated against.

<comment><USER18> Wow, you're right, I guess that kind of kills my theory. I knew that flu was which explained why there's a new vaccine every year and it's often not effective against the current strain. But I had thought that polio and measles were DNA viruses.

<comment><USER20> You are _partially_ right. Some RNA viruses are hard to vaccinate against because of their mutation rate, but it's not the sole arbiter of whether or not it's doable.

There are other issues, like the existence (and lack thereof) of highly conserved antigenic targets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The decreasing effectiveness of the flu vaccine suggests to me that the flu metagenome is evolving resistance to our vaccine generation strategy.

<comment><USER21> It's not, each year we have to guess which strains will be prevalent, and sometimes they get it wrong.

<comment><USER22> Not only that, the strains they choose not to include will likely spread more effectively than the ones that they do. So even if the vaccine magically protected 100% of people against the most prevalent N strains, the (N+1)th strain will be the one that most people get. Did the CDC "guess wrong", or are they doing their best to fight an impossible battle?

<comment><USER23> Is developing or producing the vaccine the costly bit?

If producing, then what about creating more and patchworking them? It might reduce the monoculture type issue.

I.e. everyone gets the worst two, then two of the next 8/16, whatever models best.

I assume this has already been modelled to death but asking in case anyone knows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Don't bacteria have a way of swapping genes that was discovered recently?

<comment><USER25> If by "recently" you mean 1946, then yeah: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_conjugation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_conjugation)

Unless you mean across species, in which case there are new and interesting ways that bacteria can swap genetic elements across species boundaries being discovered all the time. The first example was the original Griffith experiment in 1928, but the wiki article here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_competence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_competence) has a nice timeline of some of the more recent examples as well.</comment></comment>


Domain name provider forces Wikileaks offline - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11907641

<comment><USER2> As I said in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1965184> I don't understand what's happening - they are visible at <http://wikileaks.ch> (and also at <http://220.127.116.11/> and <http://18.104.22.168/>) and that name is being provided by EveryDNS according to whois.

<comment><USER3> I suppose the .ch name is not under DDoS attack...

<comment><USER4> Why would it even matter? The traffic from the DDoS is going to WikiLeaks' servers, not the DNS providers.

<comment><USER3> DDoS'ing DNS providers is common enough...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What if Open Source Licenses Forbade Broad Surveillance? - <AUTHOR>

Volunteer work engineered the surveillance apparatus (HDFS, GNU/Linux, etc). If such terms were added to even a fraction of the software likely in use, it might have a large impact.<p>This could also make surveillance illegal if it violated licenses, and would give at least some legal basis for fighting its use. Further, if terms forbidding this use were suddenly dropped from GPL, say, it's like it's own warrant canary. <comment><USER2> It annoys me to see F/L/OSS projects like Linux and Hadoop used for ends like "NSA surveillance" but I don't like the idea of adding "Fields of Endeavor" restrictions to OSS licenses. In fact, if you go by the OSD[1], "Fields of Endeavor" restrictions are specifically not allowed. Of course, not everyone agrees with the OSD, but still...

And anyway, how would you enforce this against a group like the NSA? At the end of the day, adding something like this would just make licenses longer and more complicated, and would probably have no impact on surveillance.

[1]: [http://opensource.org/osd-annotated](http://opensource.org/osd- annotated)</comment>


Tree Style Tabs - gamma-male https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ <comment><AUTHOR> I use TST extensively to manage hundreds of tabs, and it is a real joy. FWIW, these are the customizations that made TST much more usable for me:

1) Very importantly, hide the horizontal tab bar. You get some vertical screen space back, and you aren't distracted by two ways of showing the same tabs. You'll have to edit your userChrome.css (see e.g. [http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserChrome.css&pri...](http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserChrome.css&printable=yes) for details on how to find it), and add something like this:

      /* Hide tab bar in FF Quantum */
      @-moz-document url("chrome://browser/content/browser.xul") {
        #TabsToolbar {
          visibility: collapse !important;
          margin-bottom: 21px !important;
        }

        #sidebar-box[sidebarcommand="treestyletab_piro_sakura_ne_jp-sidebar-action"] #sidebar-header {
          visibility: collapse !important;
        }
      }

There are a few variations; this is the one that works well for me on Mac. The second block also hides the sidebar title for TST, which saves space in the tab bar.

2) I customize the tabs themselves to make them more compact, thus letting me see more tabs. This CSS can be placed in the TST addon preferences under the "Advanced" section.

      /* Compact tab layout */
      :root { --tab-height: 20px !important; }
      .tab { height: 20px !important; }
      /* Shrink space between pinned tabs and tab bar, only when pins are present */
      #tabbar[style*="margin"] { margin-top: 20px !important; }

      /* Show title of unread tabs with red font */
      .tab.unread .label {
        color: red !important;
      }

      /* Add private browsing indicator per tab */
      .tab.private-browsing .label:before {
        content: " ";
      }

I highly recommend this addon, and it's a major differentiator for me between Firefox and Chrome.

<comment><USER2> Its weird that Firefox cant provide a single button in the preferences to remove the horizontal tab bar.

<comment><USER3> It's part of their new philosophy not to make anything configurable or anything "advanced" easy, unless you're jumping through some hoops.

I still can't get over the fact that they removed the ability to view individual cookies and their values from the browser.

<comment><USER4> No, it's part of the philosophy that this particular feature led to users suddenly being without tab bar and basically having a broken browser. Although I do believe they're still weighing that against the benefits of being able to use TST without needing to go through extra hoops.

You can still view individual cookies and their values: open the dev tools, then the Storage tab.

<comment><USER2> > feature led to users suddenly being without tab bar and basically having a > broken browser

That's a stupid reason if thats what they care about. Just make it part of the about:config at least if you are so worried about "dumb users".

<comment><USER5> It's not so much the users they care about but the fact they have to deal with all the support requests, plus the complaining on social media that Firefox is dumb and bad. At some point it's net-negative for the project. So sometimes they open functionality to extensions instead of having it easily available to users, like the option to disable JavaScript on pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always feel this should be included in Firefox default settings. Vertical space is an asset on modern monitors especially on laptop, this extension is the reason Firefox is the default browser on my machines

<comment> gamma-male I have no idea why Mozilla is ignoring this extension. This is definitely something that should be a core feature.

<comment><USER7> They did a «pilot» experiment recently but apparently decided it's not important enough. That code is available as another extension (don't recall the name, perhaps tabcenter).

<comment> gamma-male They should get their priorities right. Their test was really bad compared to TST

<comment><USER8> They are busy putting ads in your browser and siphoning your data to ad companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gamma-male I don't understand how people browse the web without this extension. That's the number one reason chrome is not usable for power users. I'm also wondering why this is not natively supported by both firefox and chrome.

<comment><USER9> and I don't understand how people have more than about 10 tabs and stay sane. Do you people like... not use bookmarks at all?

Heck, most of the sites I visit on anything like a regular basis I only need to type in the first letter or two and they auto-complete.

<comment><USER10> I don't use bookmarks. Tabs are for things I want to read today or at least as long as the browser session's open (could be multi-day, but all in a chain of thought). If I don't get round to them I let them die under the justification "couldn't have been important enough" rather than carry baggage.

I have a personal wiki where I save links together with self-made notes and links/references associated with it. This provides a persistent record that is richer than that which bookmarks can provide, and can be accessed from any device that I happen to be on (my own devices, or devices that aren't my own, or links shared to others).

For regular sites, I too type in the URL and it usually autocompletes.

For myself, bookmarks have always fallen into a middle ground that I don't have much use for.

<comment> gamma-male Wow. This is me. TST + personal wiki + pocket

<comment><USER11> What did you use to create your personal wiki?

<comment><USER12> Not OP but I would highly recommend TiddlyWiki[1] as a personal Wiki

[1]: [https://tiddlywiki.com/](https://tiddlywiki.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using TST for many years and it's really the killer feature that keeps bringing me back to firefox.

For those running on older machines who still like having a big tab hierarchy with stuff to check later, there's the "Auto Tab Discard" [1] extension which will discard older tabs from memory while keeping the tab itself, with optional exceptions for pinned tabs, tabs with filled forms, ...

Unfortunately there are still some websites that force me to have Chrome installed, biggest culprit being Facebook which is completely unusable on my 2014 MBP through Firefox.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab- disc...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/)

<comment><USER14> I recently realized that chromium is a memory hog, with 50 tabs most of my ram (8G) is gone; while firefor nightly is around 1G, 1.5G maybe with a similar load. I guess this is gonna shrink memory usage even more.

<comment><USER13> It does seem to use more memory, but at least on my Mac it uses a lot less CPU. For firefox it just takes one bad tab (gmaps, gmail, facebook, youtube/embedded youtube) to grind the whole system to a halt, all these things work fine on chrome, and use almost no CPU on safari.

<comment><USER15> I feel like everyone has their own anecdotes about this. Surely some third party has done controlled performance profiling on the major browsers? That would be very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used to be a heavy TST user, but lately I've gone in the exact opposite direction. I now use Max Tabs[0] to limit how many I can have open at a time.

It works wonders for my focus, and I find that whenever I sigh and have to close tabs to open a new one I need, I can easily find ones I didn't really need.

If you're curious, no, it doesn't count pinned tabs-- so any web apps you like to keep open won't count against your limit.

0: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/max-tabs- web-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/max-tabs-web-ext)

</comment><comment><USER17> I use a similar tab layout in Vivaldi and it's amazing. Page titles are wide, stacking them vertically along the side makes a lot more sense.

<comment><USER18> Last time I tried Vivaldi, it only had one dimension for the vertical tabs - middle click on a link and it just gets added to the list of tabs.

With TST, I get a second dimension - child tabs are indented in underneath their parent, so that it is clear where they come from. This is the reason that it is called a Tree.

<comment><USER17> Yea, there is one more level of nesting, you can group tabs but it is a manual effort. I mostly use that when I want to collapse a bunch of pages relevant to a single project that I'm not working on. What problem does the knowing where the tab came from solve?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For folks using Chrome, check out Tabs Outliner if you like This Sort Of Thing™. I can't imagine using Chrome without it.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- outliner/eggk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl?hl=en)

<comment><USER20> Tabs Outliner doesn't remember the hierarchy of your tabs between browser sessions. Every time you quit and then start Chrome, you end up with a flat list of tabs.

That's a huge non-starter for me. Not fit for purpose.

I installed Sidewise Tree Style Tabs a few hours ago and it seems solid so far.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree- styl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-style- tabs/biiammgklaefagjclmnlialkmaemifgo?hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is the first thing I install when setting up a new Firefox. Next is Tab Groups or Simple Tab Groups. I will create a tab group for each major category: Common (email, HN, news, daily sites), Python, Powershell, specific groups per project, then have 30 to 40 tabs per group. At work I have further groups for Support, Purchasing, research for specific projects, etc.

I use Chrome for web development jobs sometimes and really miss the vertical tabs and hierarchy. Everything squinched together across the top just feels cumbersome and less manageable.

</comment><comment><USER22> Used it before and it was slow and buggy. I found a better way to manage open tabs: stash them into bookmark stacks using simpler extension. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab- stash](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stash)

<comment><USER23> I use OneTab for Chrome, which is similar. If I didn't have that I'd probably switch to FF, but OneTab is good enough for my browsing habits.

<comment><USER24> Plus one for OneTab on Chrome. I also like the "Share as WebPage" feature (example [1]), which I end up using to share links with myself, in different devices, most of the time :-)

1: [https://www.one-tab.com/page/PPPJag1tSsm1NFAWgaOUjw](https://www.one- tab.com/page/PPPJag1tSsm1NFAWgaOUjw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like this, but I visualized it differently. I assumed the tree style tab bar could be placed horizontally and each tab could be a drop down tree from there. I'm not sure if that would even be possible but I'd prefer that arrangement. I rarely maximize my browser so horizontal space isn't just dead space for me.

<comment><USER21> This is sort of what you get when you put folders in the Bookmarks Toolbar, but the links within them are just lists and not trees. This is how I manage my bookmarks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The one thing I don't like from extensions like this is that the inner window ends up in a non-standard width/height and I can't help but think how many sites could track me across domains just by checking for that.

</comment><comment><USER27> This (well, actually, I use the simpler Tab Center Redux as I have no need for hierarchical complexity) is the biggest reason I kept using Firefox during its pre-Quantum dark years, still do now, and never once switched to Chrome.

Firefox allows fairly seamless* vertical tab implementations; Chrome does not (IIRC they WONTFIXed the request a long time ago). Vertical tab bars are non- negotiable for me, simple as that.

* Well, as others point out, it's now become slightly less seamless since hiding the horizontal tab bar requires a userChrome.css hack, but after you do that just once it's smooth sailing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Nobody seems to mention the plugin Tree Tabs here: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree- tabs/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/), which IMHO is a much better alternative.

</comment><comment><USER29> Alternative, which I personally prefer: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I used this for a bit but the duplication of information from this and the existing tab bar made it really annoying. Maybe you can hide the 'normal' bar pretty easily and I just didn't find the setting?

<comment> gamma-male Firefox messed up big time with their flagship plugin with their last updates... not sure why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Recent Firefox has a drop-down with a list of all open tabs at the right side of the tab bar; it doesn't do the "tree" at all, but other than that has successfully removed enough of my demand for more that I'm happy. Along with the scrolling tab bar that lets me see at least a few close-by tab titles, it's usable to dozens of tabs at least.

I really don't understand my Chrome-using colleagues who sit perpetually at single-icon-wide tabs and can never find the one they're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER32> It was a real joy when I was a student doing extensive reading on topic(s), treating tabs as a reading list, since I didn't have enough stuff to do back then. Nowadays I find opening more than 10 tabs too counter-productive and distracting. What I'll do when it happens is using something like onetab to snapshot them all (with the hope of looking into it later, which never happens) and start fresh with the ONE thing I was supposed to focus at the time.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is great when pinning dozens of tabs. Pinning dozens of tabs only leaves a few pixels of space for tabs I work with on the right side often making it impossible to clearly understand the open tabs adjacent to the active one.

Is there a way to disable the main tab bar?

This comment shows the solution: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18836967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18836967)

</comment><comment><USER34> For those who find Tree Style Tabs not powerful enough for their massive amounts of open tabs, I recommend lots of RAM & Tabs Outliner for Chrom(e/ium): [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- outliner/eggk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER35> Is there a new hotkey for sibling (vs. child) tab?

Does this play nice with tab save/restore addons similar to Session Buddy? (i.e. is hierarchy persisted?)

<comment><USER36> Have you checked the addon options? It has a submenu for defining keyboard shortcuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Shameless plug. If you are using firefox's container tabs. I have created an addon inspired by tree style tabs that shows tabs under their container.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container- tab...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-tabs- sidebar/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Has anybody tried the "Sidewise" Chrome extension: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree- styl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-style- tabs/biiammgklaefagjclmnlialkmaemifgo?hl=en)

Looks like it has tree style tabs, among other features.

<comment><USER21> I used it for a while but didn't like that it was a separate window, and it also seemed to duplicate my tabs. Might be worth a try again because I do miss the tree style tabs in Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Let us remember that these UX patterns are not browser specific features, but Tile/Window management features.

[https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/04/why-tabs-must- die](https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/04/why-tabs-must-die)

</comment><comment><USER40> Just yesterday i was thinking that it would be great to have tree style tabs, and here it is

</comment><comment><USER41> I use this addon, but I wish it showed as an actual tree (not an indented list of buttons). Also, there's some space to the left that can be reclaimed if you're not using tab groups.

<comment><USER21> There are a couple appearance options (Vertigo and Sidebar) which don't have the button outlines, may be closer to what you are after. They also don't have the dotted branch lines that some tree controls have. There is also a "No Decoration" option where you can add your own style rules in the Advanced section.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> How well does this play with Multi-Account Containers?

<comment><USER13> Very well! Even shows a little coloured strip on each tab, and respects regular tab hierarchy.

<comment><USER43> I found the indicators too narrow, so I made this CSS change (in TST config):

      /* Better highlighting of tab container */
      .tab {
        padding-right: 12px !important;
      }
      .contextual-identity-marker {
        width: 6px !important;
        border-radius: 2px;
        margin: 2px;
        opacity: 0.75;
      }

Hope it's helpful for someone else :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> hi, the CSS mentioned here has been serving me well for a while, but since ~month I don't see the RYG buttons anymore. After some experimenting I realized these buttons are rendered only with the native titlebar or with the tabbar. Having toolbar with address, search, etc. and the RYG buttons seems impossible now.

anyone else experiencing this problem?

</comment><comment><USER45> Anybody knows if something like this is possible in Chrome?

<comment><USER46> There's a similar, though not quite as good, Chrome extension called Sidewise. Unfortunately Chrome itself is not as extensible as Firefox so there are issues in Sidewise, the most glaring being that the list of tabs appears in a separate window and Sidewise snaps its position and layout to match your Chrome window using some heuristics.

All that said, just use Firefox. It's a much better experience and after Quantum it's on par with Chrome in terms of UI performance.

<comment><USER45> Sidewise... I already tried it, and it is nothing more than a bad hack... I guess we'll never get that.

Firefox has worse performance than Chrome and I don't trust Mozilla, so unfortunately using Firefox is not an option for me.

<comment><USER47> What lead you to trust Google more than Mozilla or even put them in the same level of trustworthiness?

<comment><USER45> The decisions taken by the Mozilla Corporation for the past years make them look like they've completely lost control of themselves. I don't feel like I can trust them at all. I don't want to know what they are going to pull off next week, so I've decided they won't execute any more code on my machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Anyone know of a way to bookmark the tree structure in TST?

<comment><USER49> Right clicking on a tab, I have an item `Tree Style Tab → Bookmark this tree…`. I use Firefox Nightly; this _may_ be a Nightly feature, I don't know.

<comment><USER48> It saves the tabs but it doesn't keep the hierarchy. I will try Nightly. Thanks!

<comment><USER49> Ah, it's specifically the hierarchy you're asking about. No, it doesn't seem to save that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Nice, when are we gonna get tree style ads ;)?</comment>


The Logging Mess in Java - <AUTHOR> http://java.dzone.com/articles/logging-mess <comment><USER2> Someone should invent a name for this problem. It's the reason we get a zillion test frameworks, untold thousands of database layers and uncountable reimplementations of linked lists. I can't get through the code of a sufficiently large system without running into someone's crappy command line option parser package, more likely two or three. Don't get me started on rewrites of functions that are already in the library (strcmp, I'm looking at _you_ ).

" _All these existing packages are terrible; nothing that exists measures up. I'm going to write my own that is just going to /rock/._ "

That seems to be the issue; a low bar for entry, and it's hard to wade through the spam and the chaff of stuff that's already around and find something that will work well. It's a little like the satellite debris problem we have in LEO right now; there's an inflection point beyond which the sea of junk starts spawning new garbage.

Basically, when you have programmers, you get code. For years that was Microsoft's problem ("We have all these people, and they just won't. stop. _typing_! Augggh!")

<comment><USER3> There are a some references here which will help identify the problem:

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

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

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

<comment><USER4> I think it's more like this:

<http://xkcd.com/927/>

<comment><USER3> Ha I like that :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I miss in (almost?) all the logging framework is the concept of logging structured data types for easy machine parsing and analysis. All the logging packages are focused toward formatting and logging short text messages for humans to read.

This is nice initially, but with large volumes of logging you want to perform statistics (what errors / error codes are most common? which users make most use of a certain API call? etc). In which case it's kind of duplicate work to write formatters and parsers for every message type.

I know there is the "RFC5424 structured logging" standard but it's not really widely supported yet. So generally I end up dumping to some JSON-based format instead of using a logging toolkit.

Then again, I'm not up-to-date in Java logging. Please enlighten me if I'm overlooking something.

<comment><USER6> SLF4J and java.util.logging take string messages, but commons-logging and log4j take objects, so one could add custom appenders to handle non-string messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am developing Java for food for around 6 years and it's impressive how much time I spent dealing with different logging implementations and configurations. Almost every time I step in an existing project there is a "creative" way to configure it (and for some reason this configuration does not work properly).

<comment><USER8> I agree wholeheartedly with this. I want to add that when you can't get logging working it complicates other troubleshooting because when something is not working the first thing you should do is "look in the logs". I wish there was some way to bring up logging in a kind of safe mode so that it wouldn't do all the fancy things but at least you could get either console or simple log files.

More than once I have had to look at some java code running is a context or environment that I was not familiar with and had so much trouble getting logging working that I wrote my own quick and dirty logger to debug the original issue. I never tried to turn these throw away logging implementations into a stand alone project or anything. It took about 20 lines of code to get a simple one working. That is deterministic, I can write that kind of code in no time. Getting the real logging working seems non-deterministic sometimes. Too many times I have had to go to google and end up learning something about logging. Learning something that I will never use again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If this whole mess is entirely built of libraries built by this one guy (Ceki Gülcü), can't we just stop _him_?

:-)

<comment><USER10> Just others great projects from him ( and maybe others):

Compiler Assisted Localization, abbreviated as CAL10N (pronounced as "calion") is a java library for writing localized (internationalized) messages using resource bundles you are already familiar with, but with much greater comfort. <http://cal10n.qos.ch/>

Mistletoe is a junit extension intended for integration testing. In technical terms, mistletoe is a junit test suite runner presenting the test results via HTTP as a web-page. <http://mistletoe.qos.ch/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using JUL in libraries and Logback in new applications (Still using log4j in some legacy ones). It's worked out pretty well, keeping any logging dependencies/configuration out of my reusable code while not putting much/any extra baggage on the apps themselves.

I guess I should do a followup to this: <http://efsavage.com/blog/posts/logging-like-its-2002/>

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't think this problem only applies to Java... .Net has the same problem, and I am sure this problems exists in most languages as well.

This is a problem that definitely needs fixing. It makes me wonder why I haven't spent any time trying to fix it, even if I have spent huge amounts of time building it into applications.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure if clojure's tools.logging helps or hurts in this regard. It adds another layer to the onion, though with the aim of leveraging macros' non- evaluation of the logging args.

<http://github.com/clojure/tools.logging>

</comment><comment><USER13> I really like this idea: <http://www.chrononsystems.com/post-execution- logging/>

<comment><USER12> It looks interesting. I'll have to check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is the typical result of "enterprise" applications which are more interested in decoupling the logging system from the framework versus picking one that works.

Over-abstraction at work.

There is a "commons logging" for .Net as well which replicates the entire log4net API 1:1. That is where the crazy starts to set in.

<comment><USER14> That's a reasonable (if knee-jerk) first reaction. But reality is a bit more complicated.

log4j was the first de facto standard (excluding System.out). Making it part of the standard API would have been a no-brainer. Unfortunately, java.util.logging sucks (hard to customize, coupling with J2EE app servers). So people keep using log4j.

Library writers now have a problem: How do you choose which logging framework to use? You really want to use the same framework as your users, the developers making apps. Thus was born commons-logging.

commons-logging has a number of problems, including non-deterministic setup and being bundled with some common app servers (which creates its own share of problems).

Thus: slf4j. Which works.

I agree with the author that slf4j is the way to go. Alternatively you can just use log4j directly. But slf4j has one feature which log4j doesn't: format strings. If you've ever had to add "if (log.isDebuggingEnabled())" checks to logging code you'll appreciate what a difference this makes.

In conclusion: Java logging is a clusterfuck, but if you know what to use you'll be fine. The end.

<comment><USER15> Even for ruby you can find many logging libraries:

<https://github.com/parolkar/active_log>

<https://github.com/colbygk/log4r>

<https://github.com/TwP/logging>

<https://github.com/relevance/log_buddy>

I believe one of the reasons is that logging is not a simple problem, but it is ubiquitous to all applications.

It is not simple because:

1\. your logging is usually a crosscutting concern to applications, and is really fit for Aspect Oriented Programming Mechanisms.[1] In language with mixins, like Ruby and Scala, this is not a big issue, as you don't need full AOP to solve this. AspectJ is not really widespread, and adds quite a lot of complexity to a small project, and is not standard Java, which makes a bad situation worse on Java.

2\. your logging must be easy to disable, and only compute what it is actually needed. With languages with closures and Ast Metaprogramming, like Lisp Macros, you can do this very easily. Scala is particularly suitable to this, as you can use call by name[2] semantics to make the closures implicit.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect-oriented_programming>

[2] <http://www.scala-lang.org/node/138></comment></comment></comment>


What are the best books you've read on hiring? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Who: The A Hiring Method [http://www.whothebook.com/](http://www.whothebook.com/) by Geoff Smart (son of Brad Smart of Topgrading fame)</comment>


A safe place to stay during these uncertain times - <AUTHOR> https://www.sonder.com/extendedstay <comment><AUTHOR> If you know someone who needs temporary housing, a person in need of alternative private workspace, or a traveler that requires last-minute accommodations, please let them know Sonder is here to help. We have clean, safe spaces available in over 30 cities.</comment>


I Need to Stop Misusing Namespaces - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shaunfinglas.co.uk/2014/07/i-need-to-stop-misusing-namespaces.html

<comment><USER2> What he's suggesting is the way I've been working for years. I don't mean for this to be interpreted as "I told you so" \- there are usually multiple valid approaches. I mean to confirmation that there are people using this with reasonable success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment>


The great break-up of Big Tech is finally beginning - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/09/the-great-break-up-of-big-tech-is-finally-beginning <comment><USER2> So is the idea that the break up would give content producers access to the ads and or ad data? Presumably this would allow them to generate better ads for a particular user? Would that allow you to have multiple ad data providers (which may have access to Google and FB data) competing with each other? How does the content discovery part of Google or FB work then and how are they paid? The power of FB and Google I think is about what you do after you visit a particular site. Also what about FB marketplace and other online classifieds (e.g. craigslist)? That was where local newspapers made money.

For local papers, I could see some kind of cooperative develop, maybe where web resources are pooled, and hyper local ad data generated.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Guardian has an axe to grind with Google and Facebook for taking over their market share of ad revenue.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've seen a lot of people point to the fact that when the oil companies broke up many of these people just got richer because they invested in each one of the child companies. I don't think the purpose of the antitrust actions is to stop people from getting rich, the point is to break up the monopoly. In this regard, splitting up the companies does actually distribute the power, albeit it can make the original owners much more wealthy. The point is the concentration of power, not necessarily the concentration of wealth which people often let their own insecurities befuddle.

<comment><USER5> Often, at least in the US, and perhaps other places as well, money is a pretty strong proxy for power, and so concentrating wealth can end up concentrating power as well. I can appreciate the semantic difference between the two, and conceptually agree that breaking up companies _should_ distribute power. But I'm wondering about the long-term implications/success rate of breakups?

Antitrust action against Microsoft has been argued to have led to the oligopolistic state of affairs today [1].

The break up of AT&T/Bell System worked in the short term, but the market has re-consolidated into a few big TelCo players.

And that's just at the company level. I'd be interested as well whether the increased wealth/increased concentration of wealth among former owners also leads to (in the long term) increased regulatory capture or other side effects spearheaded by those individuals with their increased war chest.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/6/17827042/antitrust-1990s-m...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/6/17827042/antitrust-1990s-microsoft- google-aol-monopoly-lawsuits-history)

<comment><USER6> Re: _The break up of AT &T/Bell System worked in the short term, but the market has re-consolidated into a few big TelCo players._

Because the gov't approved of too many mergers.

(Having too few practical TelCo choices has really sucked for our family from a consumer standpoint.)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Desktop search for your GitHub, GDocs, Jira, and more - <AUTHOR> https://onebar.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

We've been working hard on OneBar.io and finally, we're ready to show the very early version to the world. Think of it as an Apple Spotlight, searching your Jira, Github, Google docs (trello, slack, email, dropbox and many more later).

In this first beta you can:

\- add a private github repo (go to Gihub in integrations)

\- add a public github repo (go to Git)

\- add a google drive account (not a big one, please :) )

\- connect Jira and Confluence

\- search in web and using our desktop app (recommended). The app is electron based and tested mostly on mac, though linux build should also work.

Some things to check out in desktop app:

\- vim-style controlls (ctrl+j/k/u/d, G, gg, /, : )

\- continuous search (try selecting a word and hitting a search icon again)

\- search modifiers (in: type: last: project:)

\- shortcut to activate the search is cmd+shift+O

Currently we're trying to learn if something like this is needed. So, please, let us know what do you think. Just comment here or use the chat icon in web version or Support menu in tray dropdown. Thank you!

P.S. In the current state it can easily choke on big projects, so it may not be a good idea to add linux kernel repo...

[https://onebar.io](https://onebar.io)</comment>


How gentrification really changes a neighborhood - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlantamagazine.com/homeandgarden/the-gentrifier/ <comment><USER2> Every place has a story, and every place changes. It's good to hear a story, it's good to see how things change and it's good to respect and understand the past. I could have really enjoyed this story, specifically because I've spent a lot of time in Kirkwood.

However, this signaling, righteous superiority masquerading as guilt ruined the whole story for me. It is as though the author feels he is a conqueror, having compassion for the community he so savagely destroyed with his amazing strength. But really, he just bought a house in a pretty normal neighborhood because that's what he and his wife can afford.

The jobs Anna and Tommie had decades ago are analogous to the jobs the author and his wife have today. He is in no way better than them. The author fits right into that neighborhood, he isn't changing it at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been both gentrifier and gentrified.

As a white man from a relatively privileged background, I lived in Harlem long before it was deemed "safe". I remember apartment hunting north of Central Park around 2003 and getting a lot of dirty looks from the black Americans who had been there for generations. Who could blame them? To them I was another invader from Columbia U. And while I was there as a "pioneer" and not a "settler", as one paying about as much as they did, and while I resented the charm-bracelet girls as much as they did, I was changing the tone of the place, like it or not.

New York is now in the midst of a battle over absentee landlords. You might call it ground zero in the battle over the future of the US. You walk through Central Park and the Plaza Hotel, now mostly condos, sits dark. No one home. And behind there's a string of supertowers twice as high as the average skyscraper. The New York Times last year had an expose [[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of- foreign...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of-foreign- wealth-flows-to-time-warner-condos.html)] about the buyers: many foreign, many dirty, most masking their identities with shell companies. Since the owners often do not reside in New York, they're contribution to the city's coffers is mixed. More importantly, it seems pretty clear that a majority of New Yorkers resent the shadows being cast over their parks. We may have "air rights", but unlike San Francisco, we have no law guaranteeing sun rights. No wonder many of us are deficient in D.

Meanwhile, the mayor, Bill de Blasio, is happy to let the builders have their way, so long as they support his "affordable housing" agenda, ie, contribute. Until recently he refused to acknowledge what has been plain: that the homeless population has ballooned -- to 60,000, almost half of them children. Many of these people got priced out.

We can debate the fairness of all this as well as the wisdom of price controls, etc. What we should acknowledge, though, is the fact that policies have consequences, that sometimes change outpaces people's ability to adapt, and that we as a city / society will pay the costs, directly or indirectly. For a very moving but also nonjudgmental look at these dynamics, check out the documentary Homme Less: [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=homme+less](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=homme+less)

</comment><comment><USER4> Change happens. Part of living in a dynamic society. Gotta get used to it. Or else we'd all still be hunter-gatherers.

<comment><USER5> I hope you have to try living in Mountain View on a minimum wage salary.

<comment><USER6> Nobody "has" to try living in Mountain View. It's not like commuting to Mountain View from Sunnyvale or Santa Clara or, hell, San Jose is some kind of unbearable hardship.

Where does this right to live exactly where you want to end? I'm a fairly wealthy software developer who lives in San Francisco, but I can't afford a home in Monterey Heights. If it's rank injustice for someone poorer than me to not be able to afford my neighborhood (Outer Mission) and they have to move to Daly City, is it also rank injustice for me not to be able to live in a swankier neighborhood? What if I really just want _that_ house over there? Can I do that?

These are serious questions -- I genuinely don't know where this line is supposed to be drawn.

<comment><USER7> Resisting gentrification is not about the right to live "exactly where you want." Often it's about the ability to keep paying an increasing rent in an apartment where you've lived for many years.

It's also about entire city cores becoming entirely reserved for wealthy people. That doesn't mean lower income people want to point at a house and say "gimme."

Doesn't have anything to do with wanting to live somewhere "swanky." Often it's about neighborhoods transforming from "livable and affordable" to "swanky," which increases landlord profits and is very nice for wealthy people, but also destroys communities.

Aside from that, there are the larger questions... like, how the whole gentrification process is tied up with income distribution... we software developers tend to be relatively wealthy, because of market forces, and this money becomes a powerful reason for landlords to keep increasing rents... etc etc...

<comment><USER8> _Often it 's about the ability to keep paying an increasing rent in an apartment where you've lived for many years...That doesn't mean lower income people want to point at a house and say "gimme."_

You just contradicted yourself.

Also, what's wrong with "entire city cores becoming entirely reserved for wealthy people"? The problem is N people want to live there, but there are only K < N houses. N-K people don't get what they want, by simple arithmetic. Why is allocating by willingness to pay a bad way to go?

(There is an obvious solution - legalize increases in K. Good luck with that.)

<comment><USER7> Would you point out the exact contradiction, so I can explain the misunderstanding?

Whether there's anything wrong with reserving the city core for wealthy people only, I didn't really make any normative claims about that.

There are of course many reasons to consider it problematic: cultural segregation, justice, etc, but you probably don't care about those things, so I won't waste my time.

Oh, and "willingness to pay" is a pretty yucky way to put it.

<comment><USER8> The low income person you describe, attempting to continue living "in an apartment where you've lived for many years" is a poor person pointing at a specific house and saying "gimme".

<comment><USER9> This comment is the kind of heartless, dispassionate thought that makes people hate "tech people".

The response to someone being forced out of a home they've lived in for _their whole life_ needs to be something more compassionate than "tough shit, you greedy poor".

<comment><USER8> You are right that tech people are easy to hate on because we often think differently. Unlike the rest of us, you've signaled mainstream virtue with your comment. Congrats!

Is there a point beyond that? Note that I didn't advocate any specific policy, I just pointed out that a specific argument was internally contradictory, which you don't seem to disagree with.

<comment><USER10> Signaling an autistic disregard for morality and compassion as everyone else knows them doesn't exactly do your ideology any favors.

<comment><USER8> I'm not disregarding morality - again, I made purely positive (not normative) claims. If you want to discuss morality then state your principles and we reason from them.

I'm just calling out ahoy for writing a post that's little but virtue signalling and nerd shaming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Too bad the author didn't take the time to learn about Anna when she was alive. I'm sure it would have been priceless to Anna to have a friendly neighbor. Instead the author felt guilty from the gentrification after the new house went up and used that emotion to write a story for their career.

That was unfair to the author.

I can sympathize with the author and with Anna having watched my own family be priced out of their neighborhoods and the homes their parents built demolished. These homes weren't even derelict; just not large enough for the much richer buyers. Now I'm trying to get a home of my own and can't afford a house at 1/5th the lands value.

This is a constant motion, one generation moves into a new area for cheap and spends a lifetime cultivating it. The generation after the next then moves into that same neighborhood at very high cost as demand increases when the current home owners die.

I'm not going anywhere with this. Gentrification is bad and good, progress is bad and good.

</comment><comment><USER8> So back in the day, "Anna" and a bunch of black people moved in and 'displaced' locals: _"Due to the circumstances of the section going colored, we have sold our house. The school is surrounded." One anonymous landlord was perhaps the most blunt: "We own about five houses in that section, and we wish to sell all of them, if even one negro moves in." Given these attitudes, it's not surprising that some 40,000 homes, in Kirkwood and beyond, were sold by whites to blacks—for as little as $10,000—in just a few months in 1961, as Newsweek's Atlanta bureau reported later that decade._

I wonder if people like Anna moving in also felt the same guilt that the author of this piece does?

 _Still, it's hard not to feel like an interloper after you've moved into a historically black (well, after it was historically white) neighborhood...The guilt intensifies when you realize that your [house] belonged to the family next door for longer than you've been alive._

I'm curious if these feelings of guilt are common when moving into a demographically different neighborhood? Maybe they are just a convenient way for (culturally, if not financially) upper class whites to signal virtue to each other?

Would the author feel less guilt if he instead stuck to a lily-white enclave full of "blonde wi[ves] and ...Nordic-looking cherubs"? What must a mixed race couple do to avoid feeling guilt, given that at least one of them is probably displacing a demographically different person?

(Yes, I'm obviously mocking the author of this silly article a bit.)

<comment><USER12> I lived in Atlanta for a long time. It's hard to live there, and see the lines drawn by de jure segregation still there, as clear as daylight, and not feel like something is wrong. There is a really deep philosophical question here: do people walk free of the sins of their fathers? It may be the immigrant in me talking, but that's a difficult idea for me to swallow. Atlanta is a place where the sins of past generations permeate the soil and bricks of the city. You can ignore it, but that doesn't make it go away.

I think the author is reasonable in feeling guilty. Why are those neighborhoods so cheap? They're cheap because of segregation and the other injustices inflicted on the residents of those neighborhoods. The U.S. in general, but southern cities like Atlanta in particular, would look totally different if it weren't for slavery and segregation. At the very least, the author is benefiting from that injustice when he buys into a walkable urban neighborhood at bargain prices. So what's wrong that he feels guilty? It's virtuous to feel guilty when you're benefiting from someone else's misfortune.

<comment><USER8> _There is a really deep philosophical question here: do people walk free of the sins of their fathers?_

There is no evidence Josh Green's parents actually committed any sins. Is he just supposed to feel some sort of collective racial guilt? Should black people also feel collective racial guilt over the disproportionate number of murders that blacks commit even nowadays?

(Note: I only bring up the latter fact to illustrate the unpleasant and nonsensical consequences of collective and ancestral guilt. I think the whole idea is nonsense.)

As for the problems you bring up, if low prices are the problem, he's contributing to the solution by increasing demand. I segregation is the problem, he's bringing his nordic white family into the neighborhood and reducing segregation. This seems like one of those wonderful situations where greed, self interest and capitalism make everyone's lives better and solve all the problems.

Why should he feel guilt? The Copenhagen interpretation of ethics? [https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of- eth...](https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)

<comment><USER12> > Is he just supposed to feel some sort of collective racial guilt? Should > black people also feel collective racial guilt over the disproportionate > number of murders that blacks commit even nowadays?

Josh Green is entitled to feel guilty not because he's white, but because he's a member of a group that unjustly voted itself privileges in the area of housing, to the detriment of non-members of that group. Race is relevant only to the extent that race was the _legal criteria_ used to distinguish group members from non-members.

> As for the problems you bring up, if low prices are the problem, he's > contributing to the solution by increasing demand. I segregation is the > problem, he's bringing his nordic white family into the neighborhood and > reducing segregation.

The residents of the neighborhood may be incrementally better off as a result of gentrification. But are they as well off as they would have been but for segregation?

The Copenhagen Interpretation of ethics captures an intuitive concept: making things a little better at the margin doesn't relive you of the responsibility for having made things bad in the first place. Consider the criminal justice reform. Right now, we're tweaking the laws to help those who received draconian sentences under "three strikes" type laws. But that doesn't undo the sin of a generation that lost its collective minds and put those laws into place to begin with. And it's totally valid to criticize those dickering around at the edges of the issue by pointing out how little it does to right the original injustice.

<comment><USER13> He's a grown adult and he can feel however he damn well pleases. As if there are rules governing when you are and when you aren't allowed to feel something. What a load of garbage.

"doesn't relive you of the responsibility for having made things bad in the first place"

Are you serious? Just because someone shares the same skin color doesn't make them responsible for the actions of others with that skin color. Suggesting that "whites" are a single group is totally absurd. Should I also be responsible for the crusades because I'm white? Should modern day Romans be reaponsible for the sacking of Carthage because they sacked the city?

It's unfortunate what happened and people are still suffering consequences, but to collectively punish people who had nothing to do with it, for reason only because of their race, is downright terrifying. Every race on Earth has committed wrongdoing in the past, whites aren't magically the sole arbiters of the world's wrongdoing.

<comment><USER12> > He's a grown adult and he can feel however he damn well pleases. As if there > are rules governing when you are and when you aren't allowed to feel > something. What a load of garbage.

Sure there are rules governing what you are and aren't allowed to feel (or at least, rules that allow other people to judge you as a bad person for not feeling the right things at the right times). The idea that we should be able to waft through life guilt-free is a very modern one, even in the west.

> Are you serious? Just because someone shares the same skin color doesn't > make them responsible for the actions of others with that skin color.

His skin color is only relevant to the extent that he lives in a society that made it the _legal criterion_ for distinguishing between favored and unfavored groups. And unlike your historical examples, he is a member of the same polity that made those laws. It wasn't some long-ago empire, but the same exact municipal corporation that enforced those segregation laws.

> Every race on Earth has committed wrongdoing in the past, whites aren't > magically the sole arbiters of the world's wrongdoing.

Nobody suggested punishing any particular group of people. But given that the institutions that imposed these unjust policies are still around (the State of Georgia, the City of Atlanta), it would be totally reasonable to hold _them_ to account.

<comment><USER14> The reparations debate is a slippery slope.

Is a modern African American living in the South statistically speaking likely to have been disadvantaged by racist policies of the past? (Setting aside whether any continue -- at least I think we can all agree any modern policies are less racist than legal slavery)

I would definitively say yes due to the deeply institutional and long-lived nature of the historical injustices.

However, what the best way to redress that through modern institutions (who did not themselves perpetrate the acts) or modern taxpayers (")?

Do you pick an "average life" and do what is necessary to give it to any current African Americans below that threshold? What about those who, through luck or toil, lifted themselves (and their children) above that threshold? What about modern day whites that such beneficence injures? And what then of modern day whites under such a threshold?

It seems like there are a million edge cases in trying to hold future versions of previously unjust groups/institutions to account, given only an ability to take from and give to modern descendants of same.

Imho, if we want to move to a more just world then we must seek to alleviate _human_ suffering and facilitate _human_ aspiration. Differentiating based on the race of the human in question only exacerbates past racism (even if for good reasons).

... And if the recipients of such aid tend to be disproportionately of a certain sub-group because of past injustices, then all the better.

PS: Fwiw, as someone who's lived in Atlanta for a substantial amount of time, the current geo/racial distribution of the city is more determined by income than race. You're just as likely to have an affluent African-American resident laugh at the though of moving to English Avenue as you would a white one. Unfortunately, as noted in previous comments, the income distribution is still racially inequal due to past injustices (but at least more flexible).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting perspective of gentrification from somewhere I know little about (an Atlantan suburb).

The neighborhood I grew up in (Lower east side of New York City) is gentrifying these days as well. It's a bit disorienting for me to think that if I moved back (these new rents are insane, but I can pay it) _I 'd_ become the gentrify-er. Personally, I'm more interested to read about the forces precipitating gentrification than about the effects of it (which I think can be quite mixed and subjective).

</comment><comment><USER16> I found it interesting that the writer would divulge information on how much Anna bought the house for, how much they sold the lot, how much they sold the house but he seemingly wanted his privacy and didn't divulge the purchase price of his own house.

<comment><USER6> It's public information. I don't want to dox the author, but he gave the street address of his neighbor and showed which side of his neighbor's house he was on. I did a tiny bit of investigation with Google Street View, found his address, and then looked up the sale price of his house -- you can do it too if you care.

<comment><USER17> Is it really doxing if he said his neighbors address and put up a picture of his house? Doesn't seem like he's exactly trying to hide which house he's in.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, I don't know. I was about to put the full information up, and then I was like, "Well, does this cross a line?" I genuinely don't know, and am not trying to impugn anyone who decided differently from me.

<comment><USER17> Yea it's hard to keep track. I know some communities remove any posted personal info even if it's readily available with a simple google search. Seems silly to me, but I guess it makes sense to have a zero tolerance policy with something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18>
        Some metrics say my zip code, 30317, is already too
        wealthy for the household income of my wife, a tenured
        Atlanta Public Schools teacher, and me, a freelance
        writer and author, to technically be gentrifying it.

So what they really mean is "we moved house"?

</comment><comment><USER19> Hey, and if he moves away again, it'll be white flight and he can feel guilty yet again!</comment>


Show HN: test.bi – Reserved domain for your projects – with SSL-Certificate - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Eun/test.bi <comment><USER2> Don't be surprised if this cert is revoked almost immediately, as similar offers have been in the past.</comment>


Using Memcached to Store Semi-Persistent Data - <AUTHOR> http://sparklewise.com/?p=538

<comment><USER2> Why wouldn't someone simply drop-in the api-compatible membase in this situation? It's written by some of the memcached contributors, does heavy cacheing, so it has comparable in-memory speeds but yet persists data to disk, does not require any changes to code, is open source and free, and can do transparent replication and rebuilding.

<http://www.membase.com/>

<comment><USER3> I agree. Membase wins here :) I use it to /actually/ persist data for a social game with 300k users with no problems, and it also backs FarmVille. I think scale-out data like Membase is the final piece in the commodity-servers-for- scale puzzle.</comment></comment>


Amended, but still bad: California's social networking privacy law - <AUTHOR> http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/SB_242/20112012/

<comment><AUTHOR> While I personally think the bill's policies are smart business practices, I think the bill keeps getting amended to give the "haves" (Facebook, LinkedIn) a competitive advantage over startups.</comment>


Gloomy outlook for China exporters as factory closure wave looms - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/08/us-china-exports-hongkong-idUSTRE7A71N420111108?

<comment><USER2> To put things in perspective, in the financial crisis, China GDP declined even more than the US since they're export and manufacturing-based. They did a huge stimulus, which unlike certain other countries (ahem) was highly effective. Lots of construction, high-speed rail, etc. Recently the economy has been overheating and inflation has been running hot, the stimulus was withdrawn and money was tightened. A lot of stories of companies going bust, entrepreneurs fleeing loan sharks. (The banks mostly serve state-owned and established companies, but there is a sketchy shadow financial sector).

It's possible that there will be hard landing, but it's also possible the authorities will sidestep it, and it's just a shift away from light manufacturing toward higher value stuff, as that shifts to Philippines, Bangladesh etc.

China is a huge and complicated and rapidly-evolving place... worth a trip, had the chance to go for a few weeks earlier this year. The media gives us a bit of a cartoon version, kind of like they get the Hollywood version of the US (although since world culture is US-centric they're probably a little less ignorant of us).

Not to downplay that there are some big economic and environmental and civil rights issues (we have some too). They're sort of a billion-plus country version of the startup trying to bake a royal wedding cake in 10 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER3> The conclusion presented in the title is not supported without more data. Bad news for Hong Kong factory owners, most likely, but how does that reflect on all of China?

\- 50,000 is what percentage of all factories in China?

\- How many factory closings happened last year? What is the ten year average?

\- How many factories are opening? Perhaps HK factories are closing due to competition from bootstrapped mainland factories?

\- What is the success rate and average lifespan for a factory in China today? I imagine it is quite low.

The article presents a compelling data point, but not a full argument. The Pearl River Delta is far from stable and there are as many carcasses of failed investments as there are successful ones.

</comment><comment><USER4> Visited a dozen bioplastic and stainleed steel fabricating factories in northern and southern china six monthes ago. The labor rates they pay the thousands of workers they house and employ had doubled or tripled in the last 1.5 years as competition for them has increased.

It's a pretty small data point, but it's pretty incredible to comprehend that ~half the country is making so much more money. And many times more than their parents did.</comment>


Hello Goodbye uBlock/Adblock Plus Filterlist (For Those That Asked) - <AUTHOR> Thank you all for the amazing responses to the launch of my browser extension.
There were quite a few people asking about a simple filter list.
I have set one up really quick and you can download it from https://hellogoodbye.app or the github repo.
Please make PRs or issues if I messed something up.
Have an awesome day! <comment><USER2> Great idea, those automated chat windows are incredibly annoying. It's also kind of insulting that they're presented as an instant chat with a human...</comment>


On End-To-End Program Generation from User Intention by Deep Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.07211 <comment><USER2> RNN's are pretty cool, and I don't want to be a downer, but we need to keep the hype under control. Ever since Karpathy's excellent article[1] and sample code made the rounds, it seems to have become a popular pastime to grab some arbitrary dataset, throw a deep network at it, and marvel at whatever output it synthesizes. Those experiments are fun, but we need to avoid the temptation to make assumptions about how well they generalize to "hard AI" problems.

Let's look at the actual experiment described in this paper. Given a corpus of a couple thousand short programs, they discovered that a neural network can:

* Mix and match fragments of near-identical programs to produce something that is "almost" compilable and "almost" equivalent to one of the originals.

* Identify patterns that occur in specific frequent contexts (e.g. the array name that appears before the string "[100]" in the examples given) and remember them for short periods of time, albeit not reliably.

* Do this for four different problems with a single network. We are not told what the problems are, much less how they were chosen or what the sample data looks like.

What's notably lacking is any discussion of generalizing beyond the training data. This isn't much different from writing a paper about how if you give a classifier the same data at training and test time, it can achieve a high accuracy, and using that as a "case study" to argue that the algorithm has the potential to be useful on different test data. Even if the claim turns out to be true, the experiment provides no evidence for it.

(Note also that there is zero _technical_ contribution from the authors; they appear to have literally just downloaded Andrej Karpathy's code and cat'ed a bunch of files into it. The paper cites Karpathy's article as "other work" but makes no mention of the fact that they used his code.)

It's not entirely uninteresting as a quick demo, and there are a few paragraphs of interesting speculation about the difficult aspects of automatic program generation. However, I don't think either those speculations or the near-trivial demonstration justify the paper's claim to "demonstrate the feasibility" of end-to-end code generation.

[1]: [http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn- effectiveness/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/)</comment>