Why Johnny can't program (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bricklin.com/wontprogram.htm <comment><USER2> Excellent article. The one thing I disagree with is IDE's. I think that they actually present an overly complex interface that is daunting to the new user, not helpful. Ditching IDE's and switching to a text editor and CLI has made every aspect of programming easier for me to understand. As a new user, the price I paid to be able to click a button and run my program, was far greater than the price of learning how to run it from a CLI. I wish I had listened sooner to all the people telling me not to use IDE's.

<comment><USER3> When you say "IDE" you're probably meaning something like Visual Studio. Ok, fair enough.

Now think about something like HyperCard. That's an IDE. It's eminently usable and learnable (even friendly), and yet still does all the things an IDE does.

"IDE" doesn't have to be Visual Studio. There have been friendly IDEs in the past, and there's no reason they couldn't be built today except nobody's doing it. There's actually a nasty trend in software development right now that can be summarized as "they're programmers; they don't need usability or discoverability". Look at Git for an example. Ugh. This trend can not die quickly enough for me.

<comment><USER4> I find git extremely usable, and I despise IDEs that hide anything from me.

Every hidden thing is a thing that, when it goes wrong, I can't fix. Something "goes wrong" when it's either not working as designed, or it's broken as designed and needs to be reconfigured or otherwise changed: The IDE handles the wrong language, for example, and needs to use a different compiler and have different highlighting and formatting rules.

IDEs that only handle one language are beneath contempt.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like you're a power user, not a novice.

<comment><USER4> > Sounds like you're a power user, not a novice.

Smile when you say that. ;)

"Power user", to me, means someone who knows a lot of trivia about specific software but no underlying theory; none of their knowledge transfers to any other system, so their domain knowledge is constantly being obsoleted. Having some power user traits is inevitable and desirable, but being _just_ a power user is a stage you should strive to outgrow.

I admit that that's just a knee-jerk reaction based on my idiosyncratic definitions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I take the opposite view. Programming is fairly easy and many people do it without realizing it. EX: Adding waypoints in StarCraft pathing for new units.

Professional programming like professional dancing is simply taking that same idea several steps further.

<comment><USER7> The opposite view of what? Because the author discusses your point directly and at length -

"[...] this is not to say that many people can't get immersed in systems that require such understanding. They do in many parts of their lives. For example, lawyers and tax accountants routinely work with such complexity in their contracts and planning. Doctors work with an untold number of variables. Someone planning a big party has to work out the food, matching paper goods, favors, invitation list, entertainment, etc. Yet, all of these people rarely program computers in addition. It's just that people who aren't professional or hobbyist programmers usually don't want to get so immersed in something that is infrequently done and not part of the rest of their lives. The question really isn't "Why Johnny can't program" but rather "Why Johnny _won 't_ or _doesn 't choose_ to program"."

<comment><USER8> It is having an interest in learning how to program. Not everyone has it. That is why there isn't much diversity in people hired for programming jobs, lack of interest in programming by women and minorities. I'm sure women and minorities can program and learn how to do it, just that a lot lack the interest and do something else instead.

There are exceptions like people in India that get a free college education and take up programming to get a good paying job in the West somewhere.

<comment><USER7> Not sure I understand how that's related to the article either, to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good article. Yet again, benefits of BASIC and Pascal kick in. Note that these are still maintained with idustrial-strength tools and IDE's available. Just gotta develop courseware that takes people through a series of problems incrementally learning the language while letting them ignore the rest of it. Gradually pick up both the features, thinking style, and good practices. Eventually can do the whole thing with the whole language and it's already a production language. :)

On a side-note, the questions the author asked were partly solved with efforts like Scratch. That project made a form of programming as easy as playing with Legos. What kids did from there was amazing. Might be lessons to apply in the adult tools.

[https://scratch.mit.edu/](https://scratch.mit.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER10> HTML is a programming language?

Makes me think there's a very grey area between declarative programming languages and just plain data. If writing HTML is considered programming, does that make a draftsman drawing up building plans a programmer?

<comment><USER11> It isn't. HTML is not Turing-complete. It is a markup language, which describes structured data, but does not describe any dynamics of that data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amy Wohl's comment is true, but I've realized I can't pick out the right visual tools in any field on the computer unless I already know what I'm doing. This of course doesn't apply in a business setting where environments are set up for you.

Text based tools are easier to keep modular and advance the process. Without someone doing it, the visual environments seem to stagnate (anecdotally).

</comment><comment><USER13> Some do programming..others are at the higher level of software management..

An example..in android programming I spend some time marking up my classes with annotations telling the compiler which way I mean some java method or statement to be treated by the compiler which improves the management of the software dev process by reducing the error count down significantly</comment>


Organicity in abstract strategy games - <AUTHOR> https://nickbentley.games/2018/06/08/organicity-in-abstract-strategy-games/ <comment><USER2> This took me down the rabbit-hole of the author's website, mindsports.nl, which has a number of interesting problems in puzzles and games. I was particularly piqued by the China Labyrinth and related family of puzzles:

[http://www.mindsports.nl/index.php/puzzles/tilings/china- lab...](http://www.mindsports.nl/index.php/puzzles/tilings/china-labyrinth/)

It will be more difficult to sleep now that I know nobody has answered the question: " _Why do both known 16x16 solutions to the Octopuszle feature the same diagonal complex?_ "

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the pointer, this page is really cool. It looks like someone here found a different Octopuszle solution: [http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?t=99760](http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?t=99760)

Looking at the four corners of the solutions on mindsports.nl, the pieces are nearly identical, and in particular the diagonals are identical. It makes sense that the two hand-solvers would use this symmetrical configuration. The programmatically found solution has different corners.

Still, that amount of constraint is surprising. It would be a nice surprise if that corner symmetry could be proven to determine the diagonal complex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating, Hex in particular looks interesting, I never heard of it. Once I understood where the article was going, I was looking for a mention of Dots and Boxes though.. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_and_Boxes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_and_Boxes)

<comment><USER5> Some practice opponents to help you on the way [http://hexboard.com/Hexkit/practice.htm](http://hexboard.com/Hexkit/practice.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The ko rule in Go can get a bit more complex.

[https://senseis.xmp.net/?Superko](https://senseis.xmp.net/?Superko)

This gif has an example of a Superko (which would likely become illegal depending on what ruleset you use): [https://towardstengen.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/superkoles...](https://towardstengen.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/superkoless- loop.gif)

Different rulesets (Japanese, Chinese, Korean) define and handle Superko differently.

</comment><comment><USER7> Go, is more organic in that structures tend to grow and die over the course of the game.

Chess rewards calculation moreso than Go. Games are often won in a few tactical sequences.

On the other hand, in Go structure and shape is more important and more long term strategizing is required as plans involve building structures in many parts of the board.

While there are local tactical fights that are important to read, one most also think more globally.

So, I'm not sure that the property that one game is more organic is really the essential differentiating factor between the two games.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm a passable Havannah player, and a passble Go player, and I've read Freeling's writing before, but I confess that I don't really know what organicity is.

<comment><USER9> Organicity in abstract strategy games may be defined as "the degree to which a game's behaviour may be perceived as organic, or 'life like'".

<comment><USER8> Of course I read that. I just don't have any concept of why you'd say these games are organic. It sounds vaguely truthy, but that's it.</comment></comment></comment>


Many developers and creative pros are blasting Apple's new MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2016/10/28/macbook-pro-2016-specs-creative-professionals-developers/ <comment><USER2> Wow. What's wrong with people? It's a laptop! It should be durable and updated with the latest hardware. Plus more battery time. We go on and on about the cloud but no one wishes for the xeon family inside ( it will be hard to call it a laptop with it ). And dont get me started about touchscreens, super overrated! I really love the idea of the bar and my last pro was a mid 2010. This pro is now my media center running Sierra, if you asked me back in 2010 i would never guess i will still see it around today, but there it is. How about rant on the fact that it's 2016 and cancer and AIDS are still a big deal?</comment>


AI-powered cameras make thermal imaging more accessible - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/18/flir-and-movidius-ai-thermal-camera-module/ <comment><USER2> I've got one of FLIR's cheaper thermal imagers and every time the issue of rain or snow comes up when discussing the limitations of self-driving cars I wonder why we hadn't already paired thermal sensors with machine learning.

The thermal sensor might not tell you much in isolation - you can see what's warm in contrast to the surrounding environment, but moving objects give away a lot of information. A person moves a certain way and has a certain heat signature, as does a cat, another car, a person on a bicycle.

I recall an interview with a (relatively) young James Cameron after he'd made the movie Aliens. He said that they spent a lot of time simplifying the Alien outfit, making it easy for performers wearing the costumes to move more freely, to help make their movement appear more alien or insect-like and less like a human struggling to stride in an outfit. To paraphrase him, the mind only needs a few pixels of movement information to understand what it's looking at. The loss of detail in the outfit was trivial compared to triggering the part of the human mind that associates certain movements with caution.

An array of fairly humble low-ish resolution thermal sensors around the car paired with AI could be done with a cost in parts not much higher than USD 1k.

<comment><USER3> I believe Bosch is working on this - thermal cameras for autonomous cars. I heard they even built their own sensors and chips for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ahh I was hoping this would be an alternative to FLIR. Their tech is awesome, but I can't wait until it goes off patent. They have those monopoly prices. What should be a $20 module is $200+. I hope this "smart" camera addition doesn't give them a patent extension -- 20 years is plenty of time for monopoly pricing.

<comment><USER3> I know some startups are working on this. For example:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ebeall/hemavision- smart...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ebeall/hemavision-smart- thermal-imaging-with-computer-vis/description)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Just add AI" is this decades "Just add Social Networking".</comment>


Flynn Container Independence - <AUTHOR> https://flynn.io/blog/container-indepedence

<comment><USER2> They think they can run Docker images better than Docker? Interesting.</comment>


Verizon Droid vs. iPhone 3GS: in-depth feature comparison - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2009/10/28/droid-vs-iphone/

<comment><USER2> Hey, Verizon ticked all the boxes in the feature chart. Let's see where that gets them :)

</comment><comment><USER3> That review is wrong.... Android 2.0 supports multitouch

<comment><USER4> Not only that, he's completely smoking crack on a number of fronts:

> Compass

> Not that I can tell

All mainstream Android phones from the G1 to the Dream to the Hero have had compasses since a year before the 3GS came out. I would be very surprised if Droid omitted one - particularly since Google navigation, which depends on the compass, is debuting on the Droid.

> Note-taking app

> Not standard

> Voice Recorder app

> I'm not seeing it as a standard feature

That's what the market is for.

> Use as tethered modem?

> Through third-party apps at least, I think

No, in Android 2.0 itself as a standard feature.

> Web browser

> Webkit-based browser

> WebKit-based Safari

Huh? How does the browser being called Safari, or Android browser, or Chrome or Konqueror help me? What is the point he's trying to make here? Safari is generally slower in benchmarks that other webkit based browsers.

> E-Mail

> IMAP, POP, Gmail

He forgot Exchange.

<comment><USER2> Both the above linked post and this discussion here are very much the definition of missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think BillShrink did a comparison here too:

[http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-general- discussions/6...](http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-general- discussions/67-motorola-droid-cost-ownership.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you guys in the US really have to pay $150/month for an iPhone? Here in Aus, a 32Gb iPhone is free on an unlimited (data is 2GB) everything plan, including SMS, MMS and tethering, for just a bit over US$100/month

<comment><USER7> Actually, it's $171 after taxes. I'm staring at my AT&T statement right now! I think costs will come down soon though- T-Mobile and Sprint are really lowering the hammer on prices.

<comment><USER8> Wow. Since when is technology ever cheaper in Australia.

Just to re-iterate: Upfront: $0. Monthly: $99 (Unlimited Voice, SMS, MMS, 1.5GB Data, Tethering)

In US Dollars (even with the $AUD being high at the moment) that's about $89 / month with nothing upfront.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's not in-depth, that's a "brief overview".

Also, it has a compass.

</comment><comment><USER10> Also doesn't Verizon have 5 times the 3G coverage of AT&T? I saw it in a commercial, so it must be true.

Hopefully this forces Apple to up the ante.</comment>


Would you sell your startup right now if i gave you $600,000? - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/222840

<comment><USER2> That's a realy mean question, I mean really. For me, it would depend a number of factors:

1\. How much cash would I get for my self?

2\. What kind of future do I think is reallistic for my start-up?

But I think 600k wouldn't be enough, if I'm not on the brink of tanking...</comment>


99designs Take on the GAP Logo Re-Design - <AUTHOR> http://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/54693

<comment><USER2> Pretty much exactly what you'd expect from 99designs; rounded corners, gradients, stylized typefaces, and ~250 logos repurposed from regional IT consultancies. Not one genuinely new take on the identity; nothing evocative of the brand (except the ones that [urk!] used blue jeans for the 'A'); nothing that sets up a logo system they can use across all their brands. A lot of logos that could interchangeably be applied, today, to SAP.

But this has nothing to do with 99designs. You don't go to 99designs looking for a new identity system for a famous global brand. That's exactly the kind of work that _should_ be done by a Wolff Olins or a Pentagram.

A lot of these are better executed than the logos for, say, Twilio or Heyzap.</comment>


Thanks for developing your Facebook application. We've disabled your account. - <AUTHOR> http://www.idealog.us/2007/06/thanks_for_deve.html <comment><USER2> People developing applications on Facebook are gambling. Early adoption of technology is always risky, and sometimes it pays of very well--often it doesn't.

I think its good that these issues are happening earlier than later, its important for Facebook developers to remember that they are investing their time and effort into a closed system that is controlled by individuals whose interests are not necessarily aligned with theirs.

At this point I am concerned about Facebook's development practices, and would be wary of investing my time. These frequent failures suggest that they are not using best practices (their test cases are insufficient), and its closed so you can't clean up their mistakes. Scary.

<comment><USER3> _its important for Facebook developers to remember that they are investing their time and effort into a closed system that is controlled by individuals whose interests are not necessarily aligned with theirs._

That is a great point, and one which is being overlooked in all the excitement about the API.

<comment><USER4> Like all things, Facebook is not a solution for everything. Look at it as a marketing and exposure medium at best, and anything else you gain (users) is just a bonus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So you tried to spam people with messages advertising your application, and they disabled your account for it. I don't see the problem.

<comment><USER6> My reaction as well. Building the application is orthogonal to publicizing it. Their objection was about how he did the latter.

But there is a reasonable complaint here: that fb is not communicating well with developers about precisely what is and is not kosher. It's one thing to simply give the _rules_ in the ToS (nobody reads them, and they're phrased to give the website broad discretionary powers of interpretation), but another to proactively _educate_ developers.

But fb has really good support in my experience. This might just be a transient glitch while they catch up with demand.

\---

The (arguably misleading) title reminded me of an experience of mine: <http://programming.reddit.com/info/qy9l/comments>

There too documentation was incomplete, and I was ignorant about what they considered ok. But the way the company dealt with my ignorance was _much_ more unfriendly.

(I don't mean to badmouth anybody, these guys might well have improved since. I keep thinking about how the way startups interact with users, and how it is a key differentiator. This story is just part of that thought process.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Many people will cry in the next several months in connection with Face book :)

<comment><USER8> They already are. Look at iLike's numbers and the HUGE drop in their hits to the website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sour grapes.</comment>


Show HN: Goms, an Open-source BAAS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/artpar/goms/releases/tag/v0.3.2 <comment><AUTHOR> Why Goms?

Goms was to help build faster, more capable APIs over your data that worked across for all types of frontend.

While Goms primarily targeted Web apps, the emergence of Android and iOS Apps as a rapidly growing target for developers demanded a different approach for building the backend. With developers classic use of traditional frameworks and bundling techniques, we struggle to invest enough time in the business and frontend demands for all sorts of Apps that provide consistent and predictable APIs which perform equally well on fast and slow load, across a diversity of platforms and devices.

Additionally, framework fragmentation had created a APIs development interoperability nightmare, where backend built for one purpose needs a lot of boilerplate and integration with the rest of the system, in a consistent way.

A component system around JSON APIs offered a solution to both problems, allowing more time available to be invested into frontend and business building, and targeting a standards-based JSON/Entity models that all frontends can use.

However, JSON APIs for data manipulation by themselves weren't enough. Building apps required a lot of custom actions, workflows, data integrity, event subscription, integration with external services that were previously locked up inside of traditional web frameworks. Goms was built to pull these features out of traditional frameworks and bring them to the fast emerging JSON API standard in an automated way.</comment>


Putting Prices Into Focus - Why We Have No Clue How Much Stuff Should Cost - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062100149.html <comment><AUTHOR> If you have an online business with a subscription based revenue model, would it help sales if you set an artificially high price point for one level (high, medium, low, free)?

Anyone have experience charging just one level to multiples?

<comment><USER2> Actually, that does work! I forget the precise names (this is studied in Behavioral Economics), but there are a number of cognitive biases which cause people to wrongly evaluate their decisions.

For example, say you have two choices A and B. Imagine they have different characteristics along 2 dimensions X and Y.

Imagine A is higher along dimension X, while B is higher along dimension Y. Now, suppose that looking at A and B, you would choose A. Add a third choice C which is more strongly along dimension Y than A or B. Now, you have a choice A which is strongly along X, choice C which is strongly along Y, and choice B which is a little X and a little Y. Also, you don't really like or care about C. These results were shown with numerous experiments: presented with choices A, B, and C, you will often choose B. Notice that before, without the irrelevant alternative C, you chose A. But add in a choice that you don't even care about, you prefer B. Rationally, that shouldn't happen, and economists try their best to explain that but fail.

As for having a super-high priced item, that makes sense for a number of reasons. For example, one reason may be the halo effect (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect>). Just the existence of a very high-priced, very high-value item can make people perceive your brand to generally be of a higher quality.

Also, some behavioral economists (e.g. Benabou) postulate that people have "identities" for themselves which they refer to when making consumption decisions. So, someone might think of themselves as the frugal buyer, and so they will always go for the cheapest alternative which gets the job done. A lot of people probably think of themselves as the middle-of-the-road average person. So if you make an super-double-over-priced option, then more people will buy the over-priced option because they perceive it to be more average. Plus, some of the people who consider themselves to be big spenders will buy the super-double-over-priced option anyway!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thank you. I've been looking for more information on this stuff. I'm helping a friend with his service's pricing matrix (trying to simplify and increase conversions).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> they have 'menu engineers' now? does anyone else feel as though the word engineer has completely lost its cache?

<comment><USER4> Singular. Menu engineer.

[http://www.portfolio.com/careers/job-of-the- week/2007/05/14/...](http://www.portfolio.com/careers/job-of-the- week/2007/05/14/Feeding-Financial-Success)</comment></comment>


US Army Survival Manual (2006) [pdf]  - <AUTHOR> http://www.pssurvival.com/ps/military_fms/fm_21-76_us_army_survival_manual_2006.pdf <comment><USER2> I hope the rest of the advice is better than the advice for magnetizing a compass needle:

       If you have a battery and some electric wire, you
       can polarize the metal electrically. The wire should be
       insulated. If not insulated, wrap the metal object in
       a single, thin strip of paper to prevent contact. The
       battery must be a minimum of 2 volts. Form a coil with
       the electric wire and touch its ends to the battery's
       terminals. Repeatedly insert one end of the metal
       object in and out of the coil. The needle will become an
       electromagnet.

No, the needle will not become an "electromagnet," once it's outside the coil. It won't even become a good permanent magnet if you follow these directions, because you'll tend to demagnetize it every time you withdraw it in the same direction you inserted it. (I actually tried it with a power supply, a spool of wire, and a couple of screws. Dropping a screw through the coil in one direction 10 times will give it the same amount of magnetism that moving it in and out about 200 times will impart.)

In any case, none of this has anything to do with the battery's voltage except to the extent that it provides more current per turn. A 1.5V 'AA' cell would work fine for creating a compass needle unless you wasted your time with those instructions.

But hey, at least now I know that polar bears are best avoided, and that drinking kerosene will get rid of intestinal parasites...

</comment><comment><USER3> Lots of knowledge in here, but my favorite piece has always been this treatment for intestinal parasites:

"Tobacco: Eat 1 to 1.5 cigarettes. The nicotine in the cigarette will kill or stun the worms long enough for your system to pass them. If the infestation is severe, repeat the treatment in 24 to 48 hours, but no sooner."

<comment><USER4> Very nice. Is that some kind of US military standard issue cigarette? Because they so many varieties in content now.

<comment><USER5> To your actual question yes and no. In the past, yes. Currently no.

I think its more the principle. Nicotine, like caffine was evolved by planets as a pesticide. Animals (like parasites) that don't normally come in contact with it, likely don't have resitances to it.

Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison.

<comment><USER3> >Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison.

I think it takes eating four cigarettes to kill you.

<comment><USER6> A cigarette contains up to a gram of tobacco with a nicotine content of 0.5 to 2 percent. A recent estimate of nicotine's human LD50 is in the range of 0.5 to 1 grams. A four cigarette dose would seem unlikely to be lethal.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm#P...](http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm#PartTitle:7.%20TOXICOLOGY)

      7.2.1 Human data
        220.127.116.11 Adults
          The mean lethal dose has been estimated to be 30 to 60 mg (0.5-1.0 mg/kg) (Gosselin, 1988).
        22.214.171.124 Children
          The lethal dose is considered to be about 10 mg of nicotine (Arena, 1974).
      7.2.2 Relevant animal data
        Dog:     oral LD50:   9.2 mg/kg
        mouse:   oral LD50:   3.3 mg/kg  (RTECS, 1985-86)
        rat:     oral LD50:   50 mg/kg

0.5-1.0 mg/kg, not 0.5-1.0 grams. Don't go eating cigarettes.

edit: [http://abcnews.go.com/US/paul-curry- convicted-1994-nicotine-...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/paul-curry- convicted-1994-nicotine-poisoning-death-wife/story?id=25881116)

edit2: I see what you saw - [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00204-013-1127-0...](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00204-013-1127-0/fulltext.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you guys enjoyed this, you'll love the Ranger Handbook. Still have mine from when I went through :)

[0] [http://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ranger.pdf](http://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ranger.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Since we're on a roll, here's a CIA manual on tradecraft

[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/Tradecraft%20Primer- apr09.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Oh wow this is a great one. Can't find the link online but some of the older, Vietnam era field manuals concerning radio-wave propagation and the NVIS effect are pretty amazing. Not as usefully today in the age of SATCOM, but a great skill nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For the curious, here is also surviving guide in a pdf form issued by Finnish defense forces in 1985: [http://www.puolustusvoimat.fi/wcm/61ba4180411e702ea19ee9e364...](http://www.puolustusvoimat.fi/wcm/61ba4180411e702ea19ee9e364705c96/luonnonmuonaohjelmalumo1985.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

You probably can't make much out of the text, but pictures may be worth looking of, even though most of the traps demonstrated are illegal to make during peace. There's also cooking recipes in the bottom of the document, which contain oddities such as soup made from sprigs of a spruce. Though my personal favorite must be the depiction of how to kill a moose with a knife by jumping on its back.

<comment><USER10> Paddy Ashdown describes in his autobiography how one of the survival instructors on his SBS course introduced himself by place a live frog between two slices of bread and eating it and then saying "Survival is simple, if you can do that you will survive, if you can't do that you won't".

[NB For those outside of the UK or Bosnia: Paddy Ashdown is a former UK politican - now in the House of Lords who had a rather interesting career - Royal Marines, SBS, MI6 _then_ politics becoming leaders of the LibDems, the UK's third party].

<comment><USER11> "If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to either of you for the rest of the day."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Reprinted as NOT permitted by U.S. Department of the Army, but by we the > citizenry who paid for it

That's certainly an attention grabber.

<comment><USER13> It's also interesting legally: most works of the federal government are born into the public domain. So how is the Army keeping copyright, or are they just mistaken?

<comment><USER14> It's likely that the Army is not asserting copyright. They're just not providing it for distribution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An uncle gave me an early 90's version of this manual as a gift when I was in my teens. This manual, along with "The American Boy's Handy Book" resulted in days and days of outdoor activity and a plethora of failed boats/rafts/cabins/snares/spearfishing/etc... There are some awesome instructions in here and the print copy I have has an entire color photo plant identification guide in the back.

My only word of warning would be to make sure the kids you expose to this are responsible enough for the knowledge. There are some last resort things like "how to poison an entire stream of fish by grinding up wild plants".

<comment><USER16> In what circumstance would you want to poison an entire stream of fish? Would the fish be edible after being poisoned? Or is this for another purpose?

<comment><USER17> It's a way to catch a good amount of fish, quickly, without any specialized gear(nets, etc..). It also doesn't require you to sit there, in the open with a fishing pole. Drop the poison, hide. Run back and collect.

They're very edible after being poisoned. The amount of "poison" it takes to kill(really stun) a fish isn't much. No where near the amount needed to harm a human.

<comment><USER15> Yep, and I believe they mention a plant or plants that only affect cold- blooded animals so the fish is safe for consumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was not aware Pole Shift Survival was a thing. The internet really is a collection of wonderful things.

[http://pssurvival.com/](http://pssurvival.com/)

"The information on this site is for those who wish to improve their chances for survival after the coming pending pole shift."

<comment><USER19> It is not a thing. This is crack-pottery at an insane level. From the intro: "We expect about 90 degree shift of the crust as planet-X passes earth's orbit on its way through our solar system. "

As other comments mentions magnetic pole shift though, that is a thing and happens every so often, about every 0.1 to 1 million years, see e.g. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal)

<comment><USER20> From the site:

> When will the Pole Shift occur?

> Best we can tell it will occur between May 20 and Jun 12 in 2012. See the > source Zetatalk clues, and Crop Circle clues that give this final result.

Oops!

<comment><USER21> Doomsday cults missing their deadlines never seem to suffer much harm.

<comment><USER22> Well, they'd suffer more if they _hit_ their deadlines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think a wilderness therapy company marketed toward Bay Area techies would do pretty well.

<comment><USER24> i think bears have got nothing on people surviving through lean agile scrum process innovatively implemented at a BigCo in a communication and collaboration fostering open floor office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the following two paragraphs are very applicable to founders:

 _It takes much more than the knowledge and skills to build shelters, get food, make fires, and travel without the aid of standard navigational devices to live successfully through a survival situation. Some people with little or no survival training have managed to survive life-threatening circumstances. Some people with survival training have not used their skills and died. A key ingredient in any survival situation is the mental attitude of the individual(s) involved. Having survival skills is important; having the will to survive is essential. Without a desk to survive, acquired skills serve little purpose and invaluable knowledge goes to waste._

 _There is a psychology to survival. The soldier in a survival environment faces many stresses that ultimately impact on his mind. These stresses can produce thoughts and emotions that, if poorly understood, can transform a confident, well-trained soldier into an indecisive, ineffective individual with questionable ability to survive. Thus, every soldier must be aware of and be able to recognize those stresses commonly associated with survival. Additionally, it is imperative that soldiers be aware of their reactions to the wide variety of stresses associated with survival._

</comment><comment><USER26> If anyone here is interested in the topic I can really recommend the survival courses run by Ray Mears company called Woodlore. They are brilliant. The guys there are so good it becomes less about survival and more about living!

</comment><comment><USER27> This used to be published as "Survival, Evasion, and Escape" with the same field manual number. I have an old printed copy dated 1969 which includes the missing Evasion and Escape sections.

<comment><USER28> That sounds suspiciously similar to the SERE course the military does: "Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape". "Resistance" entails resisting torture without divulging secrets to the enemy; in SERE training they will actually put you into stress positions and waterboard you, which is where they got the idea to do that kind of thing to prisoners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's a great book. I keep a copy in my scram-bag, as it's the kind of knowledge that could be the difference between life and death, one day.

<comment><USER30> So you can read the "how not to be eaten by bears" section while being eaten by a bear?

If you're going to rely on stuff like that, its best to commit to knowledge and practice.

<comment><USER29> Oh, I know much of it like the back of my hand, and have spent plenty of time doing outdoorsy stuff, and have found myself in a few genuine survival situations, and I'm here to spout crap opinions on the web still, so...!

It's mostly handy for "was it the one with the serrated leaves, or the one with the smooth leaves which is toxic?".

<comment><USER30> Good stuff. Glad to hear!

I've been foraging for 25 years so that knowledge is sort of built in (at least in the UK) but I still won't touch mushrooms!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> PDF Producer: GNU Ghostscript 7.05</comment>


Show HN: Everlook – Find and list remote job opportunities - <AUTHOR> https://everlookjobs.com/ <comment><USER3> One thing that irks me about sites for remote work is that they don't distinguish between countries.

A lot of employers will be remote, but only within their own country. I want to filter out remote jobs that won't accept candidates from outside of the UK, for example.

<comment><USER4> I wanted to make the same point. I spent some time on the site and went away about 75% sure its US only, but it's hard to tell since many US cities are named after UK cities.

<comment><USER5> A really common example (outside of the UK) is Melbourne, Australia & Melbourne Florida.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I dislike services that aren't upfront with their prices. Requiring an account to be created AND providing the full job specification before seeing the cost will probably result in a large drop-off of your potential customers.

The value of posting on a brand new job board is about zero, if anything it's net negative when taking into account the time used. So, for a brand new site that lists only 10 jobs, I'd expect this to be free for a while to build up volume and value.

<comment><USER7> Hey, co-creator here, thank you for your feedback! Pricing page can definitely be added. We should add the baseline pricing elsewhere throughout the site to make sure there is no confusion as well. Our plan is to actually make listings free for the first few months as we build up a base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It super minimalist. As a result it looks clean and seems easy to navigate.

But it is slow. I don't know why, I'd expect something a little faster given the minimalism.

It took me a few tries to notice the green progress bar at the top. That was an interesting UI Choice.

From a business perspective. There are an increasingly large number of sites/platforms targeting remote workers specifically in addition to the usual sites for publishing jobs. So if you are going to get into this, you need a way to get eyeballs of your target job hunters which will then get you money from your target employee hunters.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. visit [https://everlookjobs.com/](https://everlookjobs.com/)

2\. enter Kotlin in search box and click Search

3\. press Back button on browser

Behaviour: URL changes to previous page but content stays the same

Expected: Search box to clear, and full list of jobs to show

<comment><USER7> Thank you for the feedback! I think I know what the issue is, we will take a look and get that fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> YARJW - Yet Another Remote Job Website

<comment><USER11> Yet most of them have American jobs where you need to be base in America to take the job, or ultra low paying non American jobs. And few are upfront about salaries. I mean it all blah blah blah React blah blah team blah blah culture, apply now (which to anyone serious means tailor made cv) then what I find out the salary is half my current one 8 hours of time investment in? This is where I kinda like recruitment agents despite their sins! </rant>

<comment><USER12> I don't even get why companies don't post expected salary range. It's a waste of time for everyone involved if there's a completely different expectation.

<comment><USER13> I normally start the conversation with the "talent agent" or "technical recruiting specialist" with some pleasantries and then: "Before we get to deep into this and I waste your time, my expected minimum salary is $X. Is that inline with what you are willing to offer your ideal candidate?"

That way I am being the magnanimous one in not wasting THEIR time, and they can't come back with well our salary ranges are based on experience blah blah blah.

Do I leave money on the table by showing my number first? Possibly, but I know what I need to live my semi-extravagant, travel-filled life, and still save.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So, a buddy of mine & I built a remote job board application in hopes of gaining experience with side businesses.

Used some pretty cool technologies for it... Serverless, NextJS, AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, Cloudfront, etc..

Before we start building more features, we'd like to hear some feedback on what you guys think.

Cheers

<comment><USER14> What's the price for posting a job?

<comment><USER15> So I signed up for an account to discover pricing and they have 3 plans - <USER2> of which enjoy a 50% launch discount:

Basic -$39 (30 days listing + share on twitter); Pro -$59 (everything in Basic + display company logo, job posting highlighted); Ultimate -$79 (everything in Pro + Pin to top for 7 days).

Here's my question for the product makers: what's the aim of building this product - is it a side project or change how an existing problem is currently being solved?

<comment><USER14> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hi guys,

Nice and responsive interface. I did a quick search for Clojure jobs and found 1. The page said nothing about hours, compensation, expectations about the actual work/results. Might be a cultural issue, but in northern europe we're very up-front about these details so if you want to reach outside the US I recommend making a template that covers all of these issues.

<comment><USER7> Job description template is on the horizon. We are also adding salary range as a field for job postings. Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER17> Make this compulsory. There is a budget for the role or the role doesn't exist. I have a budget for how much I can accept or I won't waste their time interviewing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You need to show, and ideally being able to search by, the valid region/timezones of the jobs. For instance, US-only is very common. Another examples are Europe, UTC-1 to UTC+3, etc.

</comment><comment> _-___________-_ Just a heads up, in Firefox with remote scripts blocked using uMatrix, the JS on this page goes into an infinite loop if I don't allow the Stripe script, which I wouldn't normally bother allowing unless I was about to pay for something.

</comment><comment><USER19> Site is minimalist, which is something I like. I wish the search would accept synonyms for technologies/languages, like "js" or "node.js" would be accepted for respectively Javascript and Node.

</comment><comment><USER20> First of all - I kind of like the design of the website! It sucks a bit the broken back button though.

Also, a kind of funny thing: open dev tools, network tab, start monitoring, click on a tag or search for something and boom:

        location: "toronto"
        companyId: "cf4dc3ce-07b0-4c73-94ca-e6b0b05298d3"
        config: {isHighlighted: true, hasLogo: false, isPromoted: false, hasSocialMedia: true}
        status: "active"
        companyNameLower: ".."
        createdAt: "2020-01-20T02:25:08.078Z"
        views: 114
        text: "test automation engineergit, python, selenium, java, sentry, redistorontofull-time"
        expiresAt: "2020-02-20T02:25:08.040Z"
        updatedAt: "2020-02-04T15:26:41.590Z"
        desiredPosition: "Test Automation Engineer"
        amount: 59
        jobType: "full-time"
        applyUrl: "https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/viewform?entry.1432237434=c7dd38b9&entry.1192563077=cfc6f88f"
        description: "....."
        id: "4c7ad16a-eecc-482c-a6a1"
        timesApplyClicked: 3
        productId: "ca731006-d129-4623-9991"
        tags: "git, python, selenium, java, sentry, redis"
        totalVotes: 0
        logo: false

Kind of TMI, like "views" or "timesApplyClicked". Not sure this was meant to be public.

edit: formatting

Update: there are also information about the company itself, which looks kind of sensitive data.

</comment><comment><USER21> Something is wrong. I clicked on a Python job in San Antonio but then it redirects you to an offsite page hosted on Lever, on there in the actual application says the job is in Prague? Thats Czech Republic right? Am I just victim of bad copy paste by the recruiter?

Edit: Funnily enough there IS a Prague in Texas too..quite close to San Antonio... no surprise, but it's definitely not looking like the type of city with any 'tech' office.

<comment><USER22> > but it's definitely not looking like the type of city with any 'tech' > office.

Maybe that's why they need to go remote?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice design, look and feel. However I found it quite slow when clicking a job and the loading of the job detail page. I know you have the progress bar indicator at the top of the page, but it moves really slowly and it takes a while before the page even changes, so if I hadn't had noticed the progress bar, I would likely have thought it was a dead link button or the system was not responding.

EDIT: Another suggestion - when viewing the job detail screen, it would be nice if I could click on the 'tags' under the job description to see other jobs with the same tags too.

EDIT 2: Same with the job type (Full Time, Part Time etc.) and the Location. If these were links that opened a new list of matching jobs, that would be handy IMO.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for taking the time out to give us feedback!

We will take a look at the loading speeds and maybe look at better ways to show page loads. The top progress bar was done very early on and after many design iterations might not be the greatest UX anymore.

As for your other points, if I'm on the job detail page and click one of the tags would you expect that to open a new tab? Or instead begin listing jobs underneath the current job detail?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm seeing lots of new job boards recently. I guess the market must be quite hot right now.

I'm really curious how do you make companies post a job on those new boards?

<comment><USER25> > I'm really curious how do you make companies post a job on those new boards?

I'm not sure you do. Historically, you would have your sales personnel call the company's HR dept and _sell_ them the spot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Looks great, but with hardly any jobs listed and a payment required to list jobs... you're going to have a really hard time gaining traction.

</comment><comment><USER27> I searched for c# contract

None of the jobs were c#. As far as I could tell, none of them were contracts either.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow saw Bellroy whose wallet I use has a Haskell job!! And it's in Australia. That's an interesting combo. Give how rare Haskell jobs are and how rare Aussie jobs are on boards like this.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's a small thing but you have a typo in the hero message:

"opportunites" is missing an "i", after the second "t".

Easy to miss!</comment>


'Steve Jobs' is an Italian company – and Apple can't do anything about it - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/12/28/16825336/apple-lawsuit-steve-jobs-trademark-logo-italian-brothers-barbato <comment><USER2> I was about to submit this, funny thing, they are planning to release a "Steve Jobs" phone with android

[https://it.businessinsider.com/non-sanno-nulla-di- tecnologia...](https://it.businessinsider.com/non-sanno-nulla-di-tecnologia- ma-sono-furbi-e-sperano-di-farsi-dare-milioni-di-euro-da-apple/?ref=fbpr)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's obvious they're riding the fame of Apple/Steve Jobs and that's a shame but good for them if people are dumb enough to think these Jeans might be made by Apple. On a sarcastic note, why not ride the cryptocurrency wave and call your next pair of Jeans: Steve Job's blockchain jeans

</comment><comment><USER4> I know Apple and Steve Jobs are closely linked but I'm surprised Apple would have any claim to its former CEOs name.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's bad in one sense on the other hand that they are doing it but it's kind of nice that Apple wasn't able to do anything about it. It's hard to figure out which one should you support.

But I did like that J, quite the brilliant rendition.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was kind of hoping (maybe based on the headline) this would be more "punk," kind of like Eric Boucher calling himself Jello Biafra to piss off Kraft Foods.

</comment><comment><USER7> Clothes? If I could trademark the "Steve Jobs" name I'd use it for a recruiting company!

</comment><comment><USER8> These guys' faces speak volumes.

</comment><comment><USER9> At least something original from Steve</comment>


'Old fogies' obsession: Turning waves into power - <AUTHOR> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2013366016_danny07.html

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my favorite passages:

"We were sitting around saying we can't understand why America isn't doing better in renewable energy," says Fred Lightfoot, 82, an allegedly retired electrical engineer from Bremerton. "And then we thought: 'Hey, we're engineers. Instead of complaining, as we usually do, why don't we come up with something?' "

</comment><comment><USER2> How could we bootstrap a start-up based on these ideas? Is it possible?

We'd need a small injection of cash to build a small system that produces a small amount of fuel that can be sold to raise enough money to maintain the existing system with a little to spare. That small amount of extra money can then go into building another one, then another.

After building 10 it becomes moderately profitable, and then we move on to building a bigger version.

How do the sums pan out? How big doe this have to be? How are they converting electricity/water/CO2 into methanol?

I would _so_ like to see this happen.</comment>


What Will Replace The Internet? (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,997263,00.html <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm seeing through some powerful nostalgia goggles, but I remember Time as a serious magazine running well thought out and enlightening articles by informed people fairly frequently not so long ago.

Now look at the top links - 10 Weirdest Theme Parks! Top 10 Fashion Ad Campaigns! Elizabeth Taylor's Killer Beauty! ''It Gives Fart Jokes a Bad Name": The Six Harshest Criticisms of "Jack and Jill!" Worst Oscar Dresses Of All Time: A Gallery Of The Academy Awards' Biggest Fashion Flops (PHOTOS)

I think that the self-imposed infantilization of the average consumer is the biggest trend that I didn't see coming until it was here.

<comment><USER3> Yup. I used to read Time Magazine all the time when I was in my teens... then I picked it up recently and I'm like "was I an idiot when I was a kid?" But I think it's really that Time Magazine became trash at some point...

<comment><USER4> _The Daily Show_ addressed the yawning gap between the credibility of the US and international editions of _Time_ in the past week or so.

<comment><USER5> Daily Show: [http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue- february-14-2012/time-...](http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue- february-14-2012/time-magazine-s-u-s--edition)

US vs. other magazine covers: <http://imgur.com/gallery/W2Y5u>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems eerily accurate. Some quotes that caught my eye.

>Equipped with radio links, a pda can serve as an appliance-control remote, a digital wallet, a cell phone, an identity badge, an e-mail station, a digital book, a pager and perhaps even a digital camera <\- iOS/Android

>One can imagine driving in the car, asking our WIDGET [Smartphone] for the name of the nearest Thai restaurant, getting an answer, asking for reservations and then for directions.<\- Siri

>Privacy will come at a premium. Enormous quantities of data about our daily affairs will flow across the Internet, working to make our lives easier. Despite our penchant for giving up privacy in exchange for convenience, our experiences online may make us yearn for the anonymity of the past.<\- Facebook etc.

<comment><USER7> > programmable devices will become so cheap that we will embed them in the > cardboard boxes into which we put other things for storage or shipping. > These passive "computers" will be activated as they pass sensors and will be > able to both emit and absorb information <\- RFID

But some of it's so accurate I wonder if they're being a bit cheeky and describing what was bleeding edge at time of publication in slightly vague terms, then if it catches on they seem visionary further down the line?

Like if I was to have predicted when I first saw eInk at a science museum that one day we'll be instantly buying and reading books on low powered wireless devices. Well yeah, I've just seen eInk! It's only visionary if I predict it _before_ I see the early prototypes.

For example, RFID has been around since at least the 1980s, so it doesn't seem that impressive that Vint predicted its rise in 2000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The by line explains why the article feels so spot on: "Vinton Cerf". The big glaring mistake is that we call "WIDGETs" Smartphones.

<comment><USER9> I came here to write just that. The only predictions I am sceptical about (more hoping against hope) are nanoscale atomically precise manufacturing and an interplanetary backbone. I've heard Vint Cerf talk about that interplanetary network before and although I hope I am wrong, I don't think the economic incentives will be aligned to make ventures into space worth taking by 2020. As for nanoscale that one is a free variable like nuclear fusion power, and superhuman AI. They all seem like they are missing a key that when unlocked will just lead to a cascade of progress. I predict synthetic biology to be a precursor to a lot of what nanomachines will be good for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the short term, the answer is "more better internet". It's entrenched, so it must improve while maintaining compatibility.

what replaces cars on roads? – this is another entrenched set of interlocking technologies, so there's a lot of value in improving the cars and the roads. Even electric cars on smart roads isn't a breaking change.

Likewise, HTML5 over SPDY over 4G mobile isn't a breaking change to the whole idea of "internet", which was once NNTP, POP and HTML1-over-HTTP, all over ethernet cable, it's just a set of evolutionary upgrades.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Matrix.

No really. Some form of "The Matrix". Think about it. Look at our world. All the land has already been claimed. There's no where new left to go to. If society wanted to start over and try out a new government that's next to impossible without serious bloodshed because there's no land left to escape to and settle on. You have to take it from someone else. Just look at the Palistinian/Israeli conflict. Ownership over one little strip of land has caused so much bloodshed and destroyed so many lives. On top of that, all the good spots have already been taken (fertile land). But with virtual reality you can simulate all of these things.

In it's current form "second life" is a sad representation of virtual reality because of a lack of advancement in the underlying technology. The way we build worlds, the limitation of their size, the way we render 3D environments, the way we allow people to control their limited actions in that world are all very pathetic at the moment.

But looking at brain wave readers, simulators, contact lens displays. In the future Virtual Reality will be the ultimate escape. Look at how desperate people are to escape reality already. They drink themselves to near death, LSD, Weed, hallucinogens, meth, anti-depressants. People are so desperate to escape the pain of reality that they are even willing to self destruct and put themselves in deliberate harm. So if you can make a way for people to fulfill their dreams safely, you've hit gold. Better than gold actually. Hope. Happiness. Life. What every human being wants. Fuck the gold. You can bypass it.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if ultra-realistic VR would be easier or harder to achieve than colonizing the sea.

<comment><USER11> Hmmmmm. VR would be less risky and less maintenance, it would be more software based rather than hardware and construction based. So I'd guess the ultra- realistic VR would be easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Apparently full digitization of surrounding world is unavoidable. And digitization nowadays of course means internetization and wi-fiization. Pardon me for new terms but I can assure you they are unavoidable too :) Digital gadgets industry just started to grow couple decades ago and imagine what will be around us 50 years from now. We constantly improving stuff and trying to modernize things by digitizing them. I wonder how soon I'll see knife with meat thermometer build-in into its handle displaying temperature on electronic LED monitor and listening voice commands in order to confirm medium-well temperature on some cooking server via wi-fi. Ideas are endless, it's execution of those ideas that hold us down. We need more startups around!

</comment><comment><USER14> The ability of the author to predict the future of technology is spot on. Makes me shudder to think about what will be written when we're all 90 year old men. What science / technological wonders we'll never see.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what the most accurate current 20 year prediction of technology is. Anyone want to hazard an attempt?

<comment><USER16> I was impressed with Vernor Vinge's novel _Rainbows End_ set around the late 2020s or so. Big deals included augmented reality with wearable interfaces, robots and ubiquitous computing, social software, biotech, and some brain hacking. And Hollywood and the national security state basically winning the fight against Turing machines.

(It was published 5 years ago.)

My own guess is we'll see game-changing nanotech sooner than most people think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> He is on the right track as of 2012. Edit: Accidentally put 2011.</comment>


Emacs on the iPhone (2014) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2NBTOZnEy8 <comment><USER2> Note that with tbodt's excellent ish app ([https://ish.app/](https://ish.app/)), you can get a _real_ emacs installation on the iPhone. I made a quick writeup on it ([https://dp12.github.io/posts/tippinglikeits1989](https://dp12.github.io/posts/tippinglikeits1989)).

<comment><USER3> > It segfaults on executables of any real size

Is this just in iSH, or a bug in Radare in general?

<comment><USER4> Probably an OOM (very limited shared memory available)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love emacs more than most, but Jesus Christ

</comment><comment><USER6> Around the same time I wrote a package for Emacs that would run a webserver within emacs so that you could interact with it remotely from a mobile browser: [http://thomasburette.com/take-off/](http://thomasburette.com/take- off/) . Since every action you can perform in emacs is just a piece of elisp code you can easily send any command to emacs. The input method on mobile however is another story.

Pretty useless in practice but it was interesting to delve into the emacs source from the elisp code down to the c text rendering part.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wonder if the chorded key input problem could eventually be solved with Google Soli gestures like those on the new Pixel phones:

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/15/20908083/google- pixel-4-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/15/20908083/google- pixel-4-project-soli-radar-motion-sense-explainer)

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for posting. I love this kind of deadpan parody video.</comment>


Designer, Programmer, Coder or Hacker. Which one are you? - <AUTHOR> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DesignerVsProgrammerVsCoderVsHacker

<comment><USER2> I am the one who quibbles over the distinctions in the definitions of these words.

That aside, it is good for a software developer to be any of these as the need arises. You may need to design a system, test and implement a design, maintain a system, or quickly throw something together that works for now.</comment>


Show HN: I made a site that lets you stream any torrent - <AUTHOR> http://myplay.meetchopra.com/ <comment><USER2> I hope you registered that domain anonymously. And the hosting too.

Also related: Popcorn Time

<comment><USER3> Any suggestions on how to do that? Asking for a friend

<comment><USER4> Even the popular registrars accept Bitcoin payments and offer free whois protection. All that is left is a temporary email address and not using your own IP.

I'd call that reasonably anonymous. Pay attention to the TLD, because it might be against ToS to register some of them anonymously (mostly ccTLDs). There's plenty that don't have such restrictions.

<comment><USER5> You probably want a registrar that accepts cash by mail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I keep getting "Sorry the file format is not supported!" Could you provide some examples? And also, will my browser be streaming or is your server acting as a proxy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Solved! Server Acting as Proxy

<comment><USER6> In that case, how do plan to offset the cost of the bandwidth if this service becomes popular?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://ferrolho.github.io/magnet-player/](https://ferrolho.github.io/magnet- player/)

Are you using webtorrent?

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess this is a js torrent client?

Europeans beware :)

<comment><USER9> Because?

<comment><USER10> Copyright holders sue you (scare tactics, go to local pirate party for legal assistance)

<comment><USER5> I've never gotten a single letter here in glorious central Europe. The ISP probably just bins them right away since there is no legal obligation to do anything with them.

<comment><USER11> exactly. actually most VPN providers which people regularly use to torrent through them are located in northern europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm getting the following error [1]

[1] [https://screenshots.firefox.com/A85ypFuksubObOYZ/myplay.meet...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/A85ypFuksubObOYZ/myplay.meetchopra.com)

You also need to add support for https, I had to disable the HTTPS Everywhere addon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Solved

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone have a convenient example to test this with?

I tried Big Buck Bunny (info hash a3fbda1961fbc908026ec7cc4569d5fbef840c1e) but got "Sorry the file format is not supported!".

EDIT: And a few minutes later, Firefox locked up and crashed. I hope this isn't malware.

<comment><AUTHOR> solved! Server went down

<comment><USER13> This still isn't solved. Why do you keep saying it's solved?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tried top movies from The Pirate Bay and I get "Sorry the file format is not supported!".

Also your main input is a textarea instead of just an input type=text.

</comment><comment><USER15> clearly: is this a torrent client, will your IP be exposed over the torrent network, will you have outbound data sharing?

</comment><comment><USER16> Similar: [https://instant.io/](https://instant.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You cannot stream many torrent on [https://instant.io](https://instant.io) because it use web leechers.

<comment><USER16> What does meetchopra.com use?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I explored something like this, there was webtorrent but that only allowed you to peer with other webtorrent clients.

Can you explain a little bit more about the tech stack behind it and how you got around this limitation? Are you connecting to other regular bittorrent users?

</comment><comment><USER18> There are literally many open source libraries that do this such as: [https://github.com/asapach/peerflix- server](https://github.com/asapach/peerflix-server)

</comment><comment><USER19> So, why would you stream something that is designed to be downloaded? How is that better in any way? The whole advantage of streaming is from the publishers' point of view.

<comment><USER20> Not having to wait 5 to 10 minutes to download it first? Is the user interface easier for non-technical people?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Could please provide a demo link as default demonstrate this function, because I don't how to use it. I tried post a magnet uri but not working.

</comment><comment><USER22> How am I supposed to work this? I am using Firefox 60 and when I input a magnet or torrent link and press the play button... nothing happens?

</comment><comment><USER23> I would suggest adding a warning to connect to a VPN before using the service. You could even add proxy detection to warn if they aren't.

</comment><comment><USER24> OT: Guess I am missing something but who is actually watching torrents (or has the time) in times of Netflix, Twitch, Youtube, Fortnite?

<comment><USER25> netflix content is crap in a lot of countries outside major western countries.

youtube doesn't have films / series

twitch, I don't really know what this is, I thought it is where you watch people play games? Why the hell would I want to watch this?

fortnite, I think is a game? Again, why would I want to watch this?

Also, a lot of places connection speeds make streaming difficult, so downloading a torrent to watch later that evening makes sense

<comment><USER26> "youtube doesn't have films / series"

Yes, it does, if you pay. It works the same as Google Play Movies.

<comment><USER27> but it cost 5 euros for only one movie, so nobody use it.

Netflix doesn't have much content outside of US.

So torrents are still a huge thing

<comment><USER28> well there's also youtube premium that has premium content by well known creators, both episodic and cinematic in nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If you need help with English, I'd be glad to assist :) There are some errors.

</comment><comment><USER30> The Buy Me Coffee-button does not work.</comment>


What should go into an allocator benchmark? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/chewedwire/status/1300129033699627012 <comment><USER2> I'm wondering: Is it possible to take a whole-system trace as benchmark? E.g by replacing glibc malloc, booting the system from 0, then placing some interesting loads. For every malloc/free/realloc, write to some file the pid,tid,size, process private bytes.

Performance will probably be horrible, of course.

This being HN, i fully expect someone responding that was the state of the art in 1970 and here is a site containing every possible trace ;-)</comment>


Lynn Conway's Retrospective (2003) - tofu-fu https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/RetrospectiveT.html <comment><AUTHOR> To whoever submitted this, thank you so much for doing so. Seeing how long it has been up, I regret not finding it earlier. My teenage me would have needed this story even more than me now.

I can't stop crying. The stigma, shame; the mask. All those kind people living somewhere in the society around you, but not being able to reach out to them for fear of reprisal. Conversely, the condemnation without ever meeting you or anyone of your 'kind'.

Her struggle in all those little details is so creepily recognizable to me. Some days more than others. Only it's in this day and age, and with a different 'deviancy' most will readily denounce, even only for fear of association, and many times due to a lack of knowledge. The upside these days is the accessibility and reach of anonymous communication. "You are not alone" helped me avoid suicide when I was fourteen, found out and thought I was all alone.

It gives so much comfort and hope to read her story overcoming it. Then, I might even dare to think I will be able to overcome it as well in my lifetime.

<comment> tofu-fu I'm so glad I could bring this story to you. Her story also inspires me a lot in seeing how great life can be despite, or even because of great strife and rejection by people you love.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> As a trans woman, I found the first few chapters absolutely heart-wrenching. I look up to Lynn so much.

<comment> tofu-fu Yeah. So much pain, all before even becoming an adult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I remember reading Introduction to VLSI when I was a student and it is still one of my favourite books. I always thought of Carver Mead and Lynn Conway as electrical engineering and computer science magicians who not only invented a new type of tech magic but then pulled off a small miracle by making it accessible and understandable with a thoroughly great book.

Michael Hiltziks excellent book, Dealers of Lightening, touches on Lynn's career at Xerox PARC (Dealers is one of the better history's of early innovation at Xerox PARC). However I had no idea of Lynn's full life story and her incredible life journey or the myriad of challenges she had overcome. Not only a brilliant innovative engineer and awesome educator but a truly remarkable person. @tofu-fu thanks for submitting this.

<comment> tofu-fu Isn't it amazing? Yeah, I'm so glad that I now know about the full story of her life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find this article highly inspirational and will now consider to become trangender thank you for sharing this tale about transgenderism

<comment><USER5> We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop.</comment></comment>


Deep Learning: Facebook Wants To Know Even More About Its Users - <AUTHOR> http://allfacebook.com/deep-learning_b125358

<comment><USER2> This article adds nothing except sensationalism to the original article by MIT Technology Review [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/519411/facebook- launche...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/519411/facebook-launches- advanced-ai-effort-to-find-meaning-in-your-posts/)

<comment><USER3> "Facebook Launches Advanced AI Effort to Find Meaning in Your Posts"

Funny how the headline looks as if facebook couldn't find any meaning in user posts, and they are now desperately turning to AI for help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The headline amuses me. Of course they want to know even more about their users! What data-driven company wouldn't? This is like saying "Apple wants to make even more money" or "GM wants to sell even more cars."

<comment><USER5> I presumed this is going to be about Facebook's constant push for users to fill out more "profile information ". Every time I go to my profile, I am presented with a banner about updating my info… They ask for more school details, or lately, books, music and movies that I'm familiar with. One day I filled out something about movies at their request, then I saw on my girlfriends newsfeed and I've been saying that I added movies to the list of movies I'd watched! Which I suppose I had but it seemed somewhat disingenuous since it was at their urging.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it's the same on LinkedIn and Google+ lately (on LinkedIn you get it reduced to those extra ridiculous endorsements...just a binary "do you think person X is skilled at _typing using a keyboard_?"). They've learned that if you ask single questions people actually answer them, while many people find an entire empty profile daunting and so don't get far (or never even start).

Completely off topic, but the Facebook movie thing is weird. They no longer ask for your favorite movies in your profile, which at least somewhat lines up with a "profile" of a person, as your favorites say something about you (true or not). Now your profile just asks for "movies you've watched", which is bizarre. Most people have seen a lot of movies; what helpful information does that communicate to Facebook or to your Facebook friends, which is supposed to be the point? Certainly it's unlikely that you'll be able to fill that out comprehensively, or with a sampling good enough that some ML algorithm can make something of it. I guess it is self selected, which says something about what movies you've seen, can recall, and are willing to disclose, but it still seems to be setting about the lowest bar possible. Is it going to ask for "sports you've watched" next? "Celebrities you've heard of"?

Edit: maybe it's just another user psychology thing. "Favorite movies" might make people worry too much about what to put, while "movies you've watched" is _meant_ to be a super low bar, and people will still tend to put their favorite movies in anyway? Those people who love updating their profiles will dilute that signal by adding every new movie they see going forward, but that's just a different, still useful signal.

<comment><USER5> Part of why I felt it out is that it was presented to me as very low-key thing, just finishing profile information… "Movies I've watched", which as you said is very casual. But then it was presented to others like information that I (I'm grandfathered into a grooveshark subscription at $3 a mo. and have kept it despite the fact that a I have a spotify subscription...)specifically felt the need to go add to my profile on my own, as if it was important that I watched some obscure movie from 1982 and really wanted my friends to know. It's even sillier that they were movies from a random FB list of 3 choices for each question, not something I typed in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this would be fascinating to work on, the size and variety of FB's data is mind boggling. If I was looking for a job and had more ML experience (it's only been a focus of mine for the past year or so) then I would be finding out how to get on that team.

Any interesting ideas I have involve a heavy machine learning component. I'm sure the most valuable software companies in the future will have too.

<comment><USER8> You might try NSA, they have possibly even more data to boggle ones mind. You find that fascinating because of the _means_ or of the _ends_ of it?

<comment><USER7> Ha, unfortunately:

\- I'm not American

\- I'd rather make stuff that improves people's lives in any way, and not subvert their freedoms.

ML is fascinating to me because what can be done with it.

<comment><USER9> Better not join Facebook then

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google hires Prof Hinton. Facebook counters. There was a subtle point in the article referencing the fact that this challenge has both a software and hardware component. Add in complexities of parallel processing and running on GPUs and you have a pretty limited talent poop to pick from.

Glad to see the interest in deep learning even if it is sensationalizing it a bit. More interest and a bigger community will be helpful for startups like us.

<comment><USER11> An interesting thing to note: Facebook actually hired Marc'Aurelio Ranzato away from Google, where he was working on the Brain project. Prior to that he was working in Hinton's lab at University of Toronto.

[http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ranzato/](http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ranzato/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Facebook Recruits on Kaggle, a Machine Learning competition site: [http://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-recruiting-iii-keyword- extr...](http://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-recruiting-iii-keyword-extraction)

<comment><USER13> I love it. "Do some free work for us and maybe we'll hire you!"

<comment><USER14> It's not for them though. It's just data science competitions that anyone can enter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yet more money to be made selling our thoughts then.

<comment><USER7> Don't sell your thoughts to Facebook then. Very simple.

<comment><USER16> > sell

Worse, people freely give them away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To help users or advertisers?

<comment><USER18> Why even ask...

<comment><USER19> I would bet both.

Facebook without users don't have anyone to advertise to. But obviously they want to be efficient to advertisers, too...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm curious what kind of data they want to analyze with deep learning.</comment>


Sexting charges dismissed for Fayetteville teenager - <AUTHOR> http://www.fayobserver.com/news/crime_courts/sexting-charges-dismissed-for-fayetteville-teenager/article_bae7b802-8b76-542b-9cd5-f0671cee3d47.html <comment><USER2> How hard is it to exempt people from child porn laws when the photos are selfies? I guess we're not really there yet as a culture, but someday a teenage student in a situation like this is going to fight the charges with an organization like the ACLU or FIRE behind them and we'll get these insane laws overturned.</comment>


Rules for Developing Safety-Critical Code (2006) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://pixelscommander.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/P10.pdf <comment><USER2> Mostly good rules for C development in these situations but see John Carmack for a disagreement about rule 6.

[http://number- none.com/blow/john_carmack_on_inlined_code.htm...](http://number- none.com/blow/john_carmack_on_inlined_code.html)

<comment><USER3> Interesting to note that the description of how the flags and main loop works in practice makes the resulting program close to ladder logic,[0] still used in programming PLCs. Having used it the global state is annoying at first but does make the program easy to reason about.

The ladders inputs and outputs almost become like a set of invariants like you would find in a functional program, but the monad for state is implicit.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll add another rule: don't ship behavior you can't test. This includes the behavior of a stateful system after an extended period of uptime.

I once spent weekends and late nights fixing a bug which, if it had shipped, would have eventually bricked an embedded product. It caused the software to hang in a way which evaded every watchdog and reset timer. This bug was only _barely_ caught by the edge of a multi-week stress test. As it turned out, the bug itself wasn't in any of the code I had written, but in an open-source dependency.

There are several ways to approach this problem. Besides simply testing your product over an extended period of time, you can build a test harness which simulates time at an accelerated rate. Another method is to periodically reboot your system from scratch after the longest period of uptime you're able or willing to test. It also helps to use software and hardware watchdogs which automatically reset your system, in whole or in part, if it becomes unresponsive (fails to "feed" the watchdog).

However, watchdogs by themselves aren't foolproof - in my case, the program's main I/O loop kept running, but a critical part of the stack no longer functioned correctly.

</comment><comment><USER5> Two threads from 2016:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12092107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12092107)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11890685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11890685)

And two from 2015:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8898299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8898299)

2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856226)

</comment><comment><USER6> > No function should be longer than what can be printed on a single sheet of > paper in a standard reference format with one line per statement and one > line per declaration. Typically, this means no more than about 60 lines of > code per function.

Maybe it's because C is a lower level language but for me these limits seem much looser than is discussed in higher order languages, specifically for me ruby.

Take Sandi Metz rules for practical object oriented [quality] code.

[https://thoughtbot.com/blog/sandi-metz-rules-for- developers](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/sandi-metz-rules-for-developers)

1\. Classes can be no longer than one hundred lines of code. 2\. Methods(functions) can be no longer than five lines of code.

Its a long way from a 5 line constraint to a 60 line constraint.

I agree with Sandi that smaller 'single purpose' functions lead to less coupled, easier to maintain code.

Is 60 down to 5 lines just about a progression of thought, with 60 lines being more what used to be acceptable and is possibly still acceptable with 'older languages'?

Is one better than the other? How to explain the difference?

<comment><USER7> A 5-line constraint seems ridiculous to me, even in Ruby, and I imagine that just about every codebase ever breaks it. Do you have an example project following such a style?

<comment><USER8> In Ruby, Rails and many projects in the Rails ecosystem aspire to it. The result is (to me) poor code locality and unreadably deep call stacks.

<comment><USER9> I can't imagine ever choosing RoR for a safety critical system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is from JPL.

For cars, there is an ISO standard for SW - and the rules are likely a lot stricter than these. I wonder - will there ever be an ISO standard for space travel?

<comment><USER11> You're thinking of MISRA C:

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

<comment><USER10> No. While MISRA C was created for cars, the ISO standard is ISO 26262. MISRA C is not required for ISO 26262, but it does satisfy some of its requirements and so most C developers will use it.

<comment><USER12> Iso 26262 do not quote misra, but everything which it asks is basically contained in misra

<comment><USER10> > Iso 26262 do not quote misra

It doesn't _require_ MISRA, but it does actually mention it as an example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The most important rule is not there: All zombies should be thoroughly justified: why a unit test cannot be written to kill it?

<comment><USER14> Could you clarify what you mean here?

<comment><USER13> The test coverage should be so good that mutation testing finds nothing uncovered.</comment></comment></comment>


North Dakota Bill Versions: HB 1328 (actual text and video of drone bill) - <AUTHOR> http://www.legis.nd.gov/assembly/64-2015/bill-index/bi1328.html <comment><AUTHOR> It has hit a few news outlets, but they seem to be incapable of linking to the actual text and video of the bill.</comment>