Confirmed: Windows Azure downtime caused by leap-day bug - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/03/01/windows-azure-service-disruption-update.aspx

<comment><USER2> The last line is a little unfortunate. It made me think of: [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1528-the-bullshit-of- outage-l...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1528-the-bullshit-of-outage- language)

<comment><AUTHOR> Contrast Microsoft's wishy washy "any inconvenience this may have caused" with Amazon's sincere apology.

<http://aws.amazon.com/message/65648/>

(Scroll to last paragraph.)

<comment><USER3> I was hoping to hear a little more technical apology from Microsoft. For a suit, reading what the VP posted might make sense, but for a techie like myself I really need to know that the platform is mature and stable. A detailed description of the problem helps me judge.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, the post does say they'll provide the technical explanation when they have more info:

        We will post an update on this situation, including details on the root cause analysis at the end of this incident.

I think that's fair enough (assuming they don't just quietly forget about this last part).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another strange time related issue that just burned us, if your server is up for 497 days, it will stop closing sockets: <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2553549>

<comment><USER6> On a hunch I converted 497 days to seconds, and it works out to be 42.9 million. A suspiciously familiar number, as it is precisely 2^32 hundredths of a second. Since 10 ms is a common clock resolution on systems that points to an obvious cause: a 32-bit counter for time rolling over and horfing the relative age calculations, so all of the sockets that were open prior to the rollover stay open forever.

<comment><USER7> Windows 95 crashed after 49.7 days (2^32 ms) for similar reasons: <http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-222391.html>

<comment><USER6> There are two things which are a bit off-putting about this.

First, the fact that the same exact type of bug had been known in 1999 and yet they either failed to fix it in the newer code base or they reimplemented the exact same bug in new code.

Second, almost certainly the reason that these bugs weren't caught earlier is because it's unusual for Windows to have such long uptime (50 days for Win 9x is impressive, and over a year for Windows server equally so). More so, almost certainly the average user has such low expectations of windows reliability that if they see the system become unstable or slow after a long period of uptime they will as a rule merely reboot the system rather than investigate.

Edit: a thought occurs to me. Perhaps the "fix" for the older problem was to simply change from using milliseconds since last boot for tcp/ip socket age to using hundredths of a second. I really, really hope that wasn't the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They noticed it at 5:45 PM PST?

      $ date -d "Feb 28 2012 17:45 PST" -u
      Wed Feb 29 01:45:00 UTC 2012

Does that mean it took them nearly two hours to spot the problem? Or are they not running on UTC?

</comment><comment><USER9> How are these things happening? in Australia our Healthcare system had a bug too: [http://www.itnews.com.au/News/292081,hicaps-bug-hits- health-...](http://www.itnews.com.au/News/292081,hicaps-bug-hits-health- payment-system.aspx)

I don't recall any of this occurring in 2008 or 2004.

<comment><USER10> This happens all the time because of how confusing our calendar is. Lots of dates are figured out by counting the number of seconds since 1970. It's really easy to miss a little detail like a leap year, since they happen so infrequently and they didn't always exist.

It's not just Microsoft that does stuff like this either. Apple regularly messes up iPhone alarms during daylight savings.

<comment><USER11> Divisible by 4 => leap year

 _Also_ divisible by 100 => not leap year _unless_ _also_ divisible by 400.

It's really not that complicated.

[edit: Oops. I messed it up. Irony. Fixed now.]

<comment><USER12> This is not an irony that you messed it up. You provide the perfect example _why_ these bugs happen: not only you didn't know the exact rules (divisibility by 400), but you also thought it would be fine to implement them yourself, when you should most likely use an existing library to handle date & time calculations.

<comment><USER13> ... and most people don't realize that knowing that correct calculation is only half the battle. Once you know it, you can successfully navigate the Gregorian calendar. But what happens when you need to work with dates prior to the start of the Gregorian calendar? Does your Gregorian start happen in 1582 when the first countries adopted it, or in 1752 when the British adopted it? Most people simply apply Gregorian rules indefinitely into the past, which is not always correct for every situation:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand. Your software works for months with 28 or 30 or 31 days. Why does it break for months with 29 days?

I think unless you're messing with non-Gregorian calendars, this is a solved problem. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER15> Although time is an important data in most applications, there is only poor library support for it. Most languages don't even have a data type for time!

For example, the system call gettimeofday(2) does only return the seconds since Jan 1, 1970 (the 'epoch'), the time zone and the daylight saving time correction. No day, no month, no year. For this, you have to call some other function, eg. libc' localtime(3).

libc's time(3) function says it returns the number of seconds since the epoch, but it ignores leap seconds, so it actually does not return the number of seconds since the epoch (since there have been several leap seconds since the epoch).

Even if you use localtime(3) to get the actual wall clock hour and minutes, you are left on your own from there. Want to have a time point two hours from now? Do your own math, but watch out for the end of the day, which might also be the end of the month and/or the end of the year. One month from now? Do your own math, but watch out for months that have less days than your current month.

You may want to resort to do calculations only in seconds since the epoch, but how many seconds are in a month? Depends on the month (and the year as we've just learned!). In a year? Depends on the year (Is it a leap year? Was / will be there a leap second? Do you have to care about leap seconds?).

I just picked the C language because it is so prevalent. Other languages have their own issues or inherit them from C. In Python, for example, there is a timedelta object, but it can only handle days, seconds, and microseconds, so you still cannot calculate the date one month from now or one year ago.

I find it unbelievably funny that it's 2012 and we still have to deal with this 'solved problem'. Turns out, it is not solved at all.

<comment><USER16> _libc's time(3) function says it returns the number of seconds since the epoch, but it ignores leap seconds, so it actually does not return the number of seconds since the epoch (since there have been several leap seconds since the epoch)._

It returns the number of _actual_ seconds that have elapsed since the epoch, the only way to do this is to ignore leap seconds. When leap seconds occur, they don't actually exist, they just change the offset to keep things in sync. Every second the time(3) function returns exists uniquely and none are skipped, there are no ambiguous values, which you can't say if leap seconds were not ignored.

<comment><USER17> Nope, Unix time is aligned on UTC days, which means it jumps back by one when a leap second is inserted (and would jump forward when one is deleted): <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time>

<comment><USER16> Ah, well I stand corrected. That being said, it seems that UNIX time doesn't take leap seconds into account physically, but they are logically visible when viewing the change over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there any study comparing the downtime of the different cloud platforms over, say, the past few years? EC2, Azure, Google Apps, etc. That would be the ultimate tool to shame substandard cloud vendors...

<comment><USER17> CloudHarmony collects these, here are stats for the past year: <https://cloudharmony.com/status>

<comment><USER17> Correction: it doesn't seem to show the recent Azure outage, which would be on Azure Compute regions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They should really be running some test servers with clocks set ahead of time in order to get advanced notice of problems like this. I seem to recall that Amazon does this with its servers.

</comment><comment><USER19> This sort of thing happens every leap year, and everytime I remember that the very first exercise in the very first CS class that I took in college was to write an algorithm to decide whether or not a given year was a leap year.

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought this sounded familiar:

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9124638/Zune_chokes_o...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9124638/Zune_chokes_on_leap_year_bug)

<comment><AUTHOR> The Zune leap-year bug bricked the players on December 31.

Money quote: "Microsoft says it will issue a bug fix for the device so that this problem won't occur again in 2012, the next leap year."

<comment><USER21> Maybe that's why they cancelled the Zune in 2011 to avoid having to fix the leap year bug.</comment></comment></comment>


Ice Cold Decks  - <AUTHOR> http://www.benjoffe.com/holdem

<comment><AUTHOR> Video of it in practice with practical explanation: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTFBYEq9UgE></comment>


AngularJS Injection: How does it know? - <AUTHOR> http://iffycan.blogspot.com/2013/07/angular-injection.html

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty thrilled that the OP investigated this. This feature was so bizarre to me that I just assumed it was some esoteric JavaScript language feature that was hidden from jQuery-using dilettantes such as myself.</comment>


Where does energy go in clipped sine waves? - <AUTHOR> https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2020/05/20/clipped-sine-waves/ <comment><USER2> Heat. Assuming that is that you're clipping a waveform that is already existing.

However, clipping usually occurs because an energy source is incapable of supplying the full energy required to produce a full, clean wave. In other words, low-powered amplifiers clip the waveform because they can't produce the voltage/current required.

That's why (say) a 200 watt hifi amp doesn't produce a 'louder' sound than a 5 watt amp, but gives a 'cleaner' sound because all of those little high-energy transients don't get clipped off.</comment>


Cats know their names–why it's harder for them than dogs - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/04/cats-recognize-names-dogs-pets/ <comment><USER2> The "why" is "they're not social animals and we didn't breed them for sociability".

Many friendlier cats do respond to their names, at least some of the time. Cats aren't completely asocial: feral cats form associations. It's just less pronounced than with dogs.

The article doesn't really get into why the cats ignore you, though I figure it's mostly "because they can".</comment>


Ask HN: If ideas don't make you rich, then where do you start? - <AUTHOR>

I read a lot that ideas don't make you rich -- proper execution of ideas make you rich. The issue I have is that even if you execute great on something that nobody needs (a common problem among engineers), then nobody is going to buy it. So then it must follow that it is about proper execution of a good idea that makes you rich (or at least a good enough idea).
Suppose you decide to enter some under served niche market. Let's say this market caters to a group of people that would be difficult to meet with regularly in person to test your hypotheses over. People are already spending money on product X,Y, and Z that all do more or less the same thing, but all of them are overly complex, only run on windows, and leave some to be desired. People generally say that they know there could be better, but they are used to product X and they have adapted to fit into the way it works, so they are unlikely to want to try something new.
If the idea doesn't matter, then making a clone of product X should be sufficient to start with. But the limited interaction you have been able to get says these people don't want a product X clone (i.e. good execution of a bad idea). Unfortunately, there are too many questions to be answered to come up with something really innovative and useful to these people without a fast iteration cycle.
This situation seems to come up with every under served, non tech savvy, niche market I have encountered. How have you successfully dealt with this situation? <comment><USER2> In my experience, proper execution is second to marketing and distribution. You can have the best product out there, but if no-one knows it exists you'll have a hard time selling anything.

If you're looking to enter the same market as another product you know there is a market for it. So the problem isn't whether the idea is fundamentally good or bad -- it's whether you'll be doing something special enough to attract attention in a market where other people have already been working for quite some time to dominate distribution channels and get visibility.

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea does matter. Don't get caught up in the false dichotomy that plagues this issue.

Obviously execution is hugely important. But that doesn't mean that the idea is irrelevant. The key is to take a great idea (that has a market) and execute on it well.

</comment><comment><USER4> A few well conducted, in-depth interviews with people who use the competition's product should give you enough ideas on what the market really wants. User research does have its place :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Build something, or find somebody to build it.

If the idea really is good, then you might be able to find a developer who'll work on it for partnership -- this is, in my opinion, another good way to get validation for the idea.

The other trick though, is figuring out what you bring to the table. Can you market it? Can you sell it? Can you raise venture capital? What can you do?

Imagine a scenario in which I have two people, capable of all the potential in the world, pitching me an idea. Imagine that I have a machine that can either add value to an idea, or add value to the business side of things -- whichever side I add value to, decreases it from the other side proportionally -- ie, if I add 25% of the 'value of the idea', I am subtracting from the 'business- management capabilities' by 25%. In the end -- and forgive me, I just realized how dumb this hypothetical of mine is, but now I'm pretty much pot committed -- I end up with two idea guys -- one who has 25% better business acumen, and another with an idea that is 25% better -- I'm picking the first guy.

Alternately, of course, you can bootstrap, hire people, yadda yadda -- I'm guessing this isn't an option, as you haven't already done it. But if the idea is SO GREAT that the only thing between you and success is the implementation, then get started implementing it, by whatever means you can muster.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you figure this out, give me a call.

I have a solution -- not a product, but a solution -- for a problem people are absolutely desperate for answers on. Only not _my_ answers. I can freakin go to hell or something. And have been explicitly told that there is something inherently wrong with thinking I deserve to make some money off of offering something superior. I don't know what I am going to do next. I have wrestled with it a long time and continue to wrestle with it. But, no, just having a better answer does not, by itself, rake in the dough.</comment>


A look inside the highly profitable Sodinokibi ransomware business - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/a-look-inside-the-highly-profitable-sodinokibi-ransomware-business/ <comment><USER2> Would like more info about what law enforcement is doing. It's analogous to old style piracy, and if US ships were being commandeered, the US Navy would be deployed pretty darn quick. What are we doing about this?</comment>


Who Is The Real Satoshi Nakamoto? One Researcher May Have Found The Answer - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/who-is-the-real-satoshi-nakamoto-one-researcher-may-have-found-the-answer/

<comment><USER2> Earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6828169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6828169)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> His analysis is still terrible, and his interview doesn't add anything.</comment>


Open Source Licenses Comparison - <AUTHOR> http://developer.kde.org/documentation/licensing/licenses_summary.html

<comment><USER2> The first box is wrong: you are allowed to link GPL code to any other software you want, under any or no license, if you don't distribute the resulting work and only use it privately or within your company:

[http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl- faq.html#GPLRequir...](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl- faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic)

I stopped reading after that.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you pivot to a completely new product? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
We have been working on this product for about 8 months and luckily, everyone seems to be quite connected to the idea as it was solving a painful problem but due to the way we approached our solution, it was totally impossible to monetize the service.
We are in the process of pivoting the service completely to a different target group while keeping the same logical/concept of our solution. The problem we're facing is that it seems quite hard to find a problem with our concept or in some cases, too many competitors.
How do startup pivot to a completely different product, what strategy or approach should be used? <comment><USER2> We can help you if you provide more details. We can chat offline.</comment>


How to Get to Genius - <AUTHOR> http://jamesthornton.com/blog/how-to-get-to-genius

<comment><USER2> This is a great read, not your typical HN amateur blogger overblown post. Understanding intelligence to be the recognition of patterns illuminates why and how things like perspective, experience, solitude, and creativity all play into "genius."

Also a great quote which I had not seen from Galileo: "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." This notion is something I struggle with when revealing insights to others, because people are so often willing to say "well duh, that just makes sense" without realizing that it's actually a novel insight to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know when you're writing a proposal, an executive summary, or pitching something it's a good idea to lead with the problem first, or lead with a question that gets the person you're engaging to try and think of a "solution" for what you are about to present to them? (<http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/04/the_art_of_the_.html>)

Getting them to try and think about the problem ahead of time will help them realize that may not have a solution for what you are about to present so they are in better position to understand the significance of what you are about to say.

<comment><USER2> Good tip! The problem-solution framework is a classic obviously but I will give you all the credit because I wasn't really thinking about it in this context! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The article is thought provoking. I'd say genius is a habit. The habit of thinking about things most people don't think about and thinking about them in ways most people won't think about them. But I believe anyone can acquire the habit with practice. The reason few people do, is that it is risky. Unless the individual is extremely socially adept, this habit is social liability. Why, by definition the habit makes you odd and most of us want to 'fit in.' So we tend to think about things the same way as our peers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great read and I think it's spot-on. It reminds me of this excellent essay by Charlie Munger (Buffett's partner in BRK), "The Art of Stockpicking": [http://www.grahamanddoddsville.net/wordpress/Files/Gurus/Cha...](http://www.grahamanddoddsville.net/wordpress/Files/Gurus/Charlie%20Munger/Charlie%20Munger%20_%20Art%20of%20Stock%20Picking.pdf)

In there, he stresses the need for having multiple models in your head, or different mental frameworks that coalesce to form a unique perspective in your field.

<comment><AUTHOR> "And the models have to come from multiple disciplines because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That's why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don't have enough models in their heads. So you've got to have models across a fair array of disciplines. "

This is analogs to "Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie" (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287213>)

"It can be hard to believe a true strength coach the first time he tells you that by pressing and dead-lifting on even days, squatting and doing chin-ups on odd days, avoiding all other exercises, and adding a little to the bar each time, you'll be stronger than you've ever been in only a month's time. Thanks to the fitness industry, we're so conditioned to equate sophistication with complexity — and to think we've got to "work each body part" — that our gut just says, No way; that can't work. But it works like magic, and the entire body hardens up in unison."

The common principle is that you grow in balance -- if one part is deficient, it can hinder the growth of the whole.

[http://www.mensjournal.com/everything-you-know-about- fitness...](http://www.mensjournal.com/everything-you-know-about-fitness-is-a- lie/print/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is interesting. Key Robinson says that we are born with more creativity, but modern education systems are killing it:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've got a theory about ideas/inspiration. Basically, if you ask a question that has no follow-up/dependent questions, then magically your brain will supply the answer (in a short time-frame). You just need to drill down to that terminal node. Most people stop further up the tree. In fact usually you're not trying to find answers, just to learn something that's already documented. Perhaps also you need the sister/cousin nodes to be in place/known, so that when the idea comes you get that final-piece-of-the-puzzle 'chink,' the Eureka feeling. Granted I've never worked on deep research problems but whenever I need a good new idea to proceed, it tends to come easily. Just by identifying where the missing link should be, you are gifted what it _is_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will you give us an example?

<comment><USER5> Until I think of one from my own life - those guys that were making the phone app for nearby people at tech events to view each others 'profiles' (with a view to striking up conversations with the right people), but had to figure out a way to get into these tech events/conferences and use the crowd to test their app. Their solution was a cracker (and eventually a spin-off business):

 _Once live, we got like 5 users, since no one really knew about it. To promote this product, we decided to target events, since we thought that events is where people would like to meet each other. We locked ourselves in a room and asked this question over and over: "What is something valuable we can provide to event organizers so that they can promote our product?"

Zac finally came up with an idea. He proposed that we could build a kiosk where attendees can type in their name, and a name badge would instantly print._ (& while they're there, register for the phone app)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Change in perspective: check, fundamentally even

Insight from weak associations: check, from more sources than I can easily count

Tight mental framework: getting there as fast as I can

Hardware and software in the brain: check, dots have been connected

Thoughts are things: vision, check; reality, in progress

Path to genius: check for eureka moment from plug and play

Genius?: TBD

<comment><USER7> good luck, sir!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article provides a very good insight into what makes someone a genius (and certainly it is not just the talent). I think perspective/vision is a key thing here, combined with passion and hard work.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great read. Just a quick note though, you have not installed Disqus correctly. The same two comments are showing on all pages for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you -- brand new site and first blog post -- still working some bugs out :)

<comment><USER9> Any reason why you don't use Wordpress?

<comment><AUTHOR> I prefer Python over PHP, and I wanted to experiment with the Flask framework -- and Flask BTW has been really nice to work with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> very interesting article. It's good to look at the brain from a scientific, hardware/software perspective. I think it's also important for us to observe our thought process to improve, as some call become more aware.</comment>


Improving Receipt UX - <AUTHOR> https://bradleytaunt.com/2019/05/15/improving-receipt-ux/ <comment><USER2> My one wish for receipts, at least restaurant receipts, is larger print. You can't read the totals on most of them. Especially, in restaurants with low light.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really good point, since it tends to be the first and most important item a user is looking for (I was too focused on simple grocery receipts with this example)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to interview programmers - <AUTHOR>

I plan on hiring a programmer or two on a part time basis. These will be undergraduates in Computer Science. What kinds of questions would you ask to determine a programmers competence during an interview?<p>Edit: Im looking for Javascript and python programmers <comment><USER2> I found this post by Steve Yegge to be really helpful, it's aimed at phone screening but you can easily extend it to a face to face interview

[http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone- scre...](http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone-screen- questions)

<comment><USER3> Thank you, this is an excellent link. I'd upvote more if I could

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd bookmarked those posts: \- [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html) \- [http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to- recognise-a-...](http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a- good-programmer/) (was a good post, but does not seem to be available anymore - it's in google cache though)

Also, since xmarks told me that those links were well ranked in the "hiring" category, you could look at other links from there: <http://www.xmarks.com/topic/hiring>

For example, <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring> and <http://www.artima.com/wbc/interprogP.html> seem interesting

<comment><USER4> Just stumbled on these links while reading <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1253411> . While not strictly about interviewing, they might be of interest to you in your quest for developers:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDeveloper...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDevelopers.html)

<http://stu.mp/2010/03/howto-recruit-rock-stars.html>

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1451216/how-to-recruit- gr...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1451216/how-to-recruit-great- developers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Personally, i found that typical programmer interviews are a waste of time. I played both sides of the table and now I just ask for a small project as a sample to be written and brought to the interview and then discussed.

The discussion reveals a lot about the candidate from coding style to design decisions and shortcuts made. I am especially interested in the shortcuts and that the candidate understands what's wrong with them and have them explain why he/she took that route.

The sample can be as easy as a command line todo application or any utility that should take just a couple of hours to make.

Granted i don't do a lot of interviews, but when i did that's what i asked for. My boss on the other hand does typical interviews and the quality of the candidates shortlisted shows.</comment>


The fitness industry is in a crisis. Some say Instagram workouts aren't helping - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemcneal/coronavirus-trainers-instagram-live-workouts-quarantine <comment><USER2> The problem with all of these online workouts is that most of the value of working with a PT is having someone there in person, not just having a routine put together. A video can't check your form, or spot you on a heavy lift, or see that you're tiring more than usual after 75% of a run and encourage you or suggest a change of pace so you can still make it to the end, or partner you for better stretching.

The people I feel most sorry for are the trainers and the trainees, who are both losing out for obvious reasons. Not far behind might be the makers of decent home gym equipment, who have just had the equivalent experience of hitting the front page of HN, PH and Reddit simultaneously with their new SaaS only to realise they only have one server running and it's already down. If they'd had enough volume in their warehouses and supply chains, they could have taken a huge part of the market away from the commercial gym industry overnight (literally; in the UK, basically all beginner to intermediate home gym gear sold out everywhere within hours of the government announcing that gyms would be included in the lockdown measures). I guess they didn't anticipate what was about to happen early enough to ramp up production and logistics accordingly, which must be horrible to realise if you could have had your business making more revenue in a week than it normally makes in a year.</comment>


Stocktwits.com Closes Series A  - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationarbitrage.com/2008/12/building-a-long-tail-meritocracy.html

<comment><USER3> This company is from the guy who started/funded monitor110.com - <USER2> ultimately failed. Interesting post-mortem found here: [http://www.informationarbitrage.com/2008/07/monitor110-a-po....](http://www.informationarbitrage.com/2008/07/monitor110-a-po.html)

Seven deadly sins of a startup: 1\. The lack of a single, "the buck stops here" leader until too late in the game 2\. No separation between the technology organization and the product organization 3\. Too much PR, too early 4\. Too much money 5\. Not close enough to the customer 6\. Slow to adapt to market reality 7\. Disagreement on strategy both within the Company and with the Board

<comment><USER4> brianobush, the company is not "from" me. i am merely first money in and lead this round. soren macbeth and howard lindzon first had the idea. i did wallstrip with howard (sold to cbs interactive) and mytrade (sold to thinkorswim) as well. i think stocktwits has the potential to be much bigger than either of them. i learned a lot from my monitor110 experience; stocktwits is being built in a manner completely opposite from the way we built monitor110. and for good reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Series A: $800k (<http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/stocktwits-raises-800k>)

</comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations! Need more news like that to get over gloom & doom.

</comment><comment><USER4> ahoyhere, you clearly haven't used the service and clearly aren't in the target market, which is why your comments are absurd. if you spent time on the site and participated in the community, you'd see the value pretty quickly. your focus on where the feeds come from is a small piece of the overall value prop. and why the ?? concerning the $800k? care to be more specific? wtf??

</comment><comment><USER7> OK, let's check...

1\. Stock tips.

2\. Immature and (sometimes) unreliable delivery platform that they _do not control_. Said platform is difficult to migrate away from (because it's a huge percentage of the USP), not even a commercial service, powered by VC and no revenues, with no SLA or recourse.

3\. TWITS. Twits, people! Stock TWITS.

4\. $800k?!?!?!

WTF, really?</comment>


Facebook wouldn't let me invite my friends... jQuery to the rescue! - <AUTHOR> http://frogo.tv/images/facebookPlusJquery.png

<comment><USER2> A good example of why you should always fall back to validation on the server. Never trust the client.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sneaky, and enormously helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can pretty much use this trick everywhere...

<comment><USER4> I doubt this works. All it does is change the client side DOM. When the form gets sent to the server they can still ignore those friends.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I went back and looked, and you're right, it seems that it didnt submit ALL friend requests, only about a hundrad apperently.

You can use this jQuery to click all friends who are clickable:

1) jQuery(".fbProfileBrowser .fcb.fwb.text").click()

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good workaround!</comment>


Lawyers hail 'superb result' in Facebook biometric privacy battle - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/13/facebook_biometric_class_action/ <comment><AUTHOR> > The lawyers are planning to award themselves 25 percent of the settlement, > meaning that users will split $412.5m of the $550m six million ways, or > about $70 each, minimum. Because everyone will have to apply to receive the > money, the lawyers expect that as little as a fifth of those eligible will > actually do so.</comment>


Buy One Get One Free Ebooks from O'Reilly [edited] - <AUTHOR> http://oreilly.com/store/ebooks-complete.html?cmp=il-orm-byebk-hp

<comment><USER2> As far as I can tell you can't get free Ebooks from this link.

You have to buy something first.

All I could find was buy one get one free. Buy two get two free, etc.

So essentially you get books for half price assuming the 2 books you get are the same price.

<comment><USER3> I bought 4 books all at different prices using this promo. Got 50% off each one.

<comment><USER2> > Got 50% off each one.

Great:) That seems to back up my thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Paying for something to get something "free" is not free by any definition. The title is misleading and smells spammy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies... I've updated the title to better reflect the reality.

<comment><USER4> It's all good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their ebook daily deal RSS feed is nice too. They have a different one day deal on an ebook for $9.99 almost every day: <http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/ebookdealoftheday>

</comment><comment><USER6> Any suggestions on what to get? I'm thinking the books by Steve Souders are a good place to start.</comment>


Valentine's Day Special: Bye Bye Tinder, Flirting in the Support Channel - <AUTHOR> https://www.stackfield.com/blog/bye-bye-tinder,-flirting-in-the-support-channel-----34 <comment><USER2> This is a bit odd. The tone of the post is "isn't this funny" when really it should be "look at the crap that female support staff have to put up with".

<comment><USER3> Probably trying to find a balance between badtalking their customers and sensibly bringing up an important topic.

Thus why half the comments are saying they were speaking harshly about their customers, half are saying it's not serious enough in tone.

It seems obvious, based on the last sentence, that they think this is something that must be addressed.

<comment><USER4> People are sensitive. They snap at the smallest hint that their behavior is wrong. Even if the behavior is only mildly inappropriate.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that society equates being sexist with being evil or bad, the actions of sexist people as being inherently evil, and the words and opinions of sexist people as dismissable out-of-hand.

So when you point out a sexist action the target of your comment interprets that comment as you saying, "You are evil. Your actions are evil and anything you say is not true."

The truth is that even well meaning people who want to treat others well and are willing to learn still do insensitive or discriminatory things but the language people use to point this out is very toxic and often assumes malice.

<comment> vertex-four Or else, more generally... people are usually rather terrible at separating out "your behaviour is wrong and needs to be fixed" from "you as a whole are a terrible human being". People often define their identity by their actions, and to claim that those actions might be problematic is to attack their identity.

Even where blame is explicitly not placed on anyone, people tend to go on the defensive as soon as you point out that their actions have unintended or un- thought-of consequences.

<comment><USER4> I need to say it this way. It's digestible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Subtitle "experiment reveals that organism's behaviour is influenced by most important driver for genetic survival".

<comment><USER7> Sub-subtitle being "human beings utterly unable to overcome base impulses despite higher order brain functions", then?

<comment><USER8> No, just the ones in the cherrypicked examples for this article, perhaps.

<comment><USER9> Not cherrypicked. The article mentions they were surprised by the amount of inappropriate flirting. They only cherrypicked the most "amusing" attempts.

<comment><USER10> I'm always amused when someone rebuts their own thesis in their conclusion. Thanks for the laugh!

<comment><USER9> You're welcome, but of course I didn't rebut my own thesis:

1- Post says: _" Sub-subtitle being "human beings utterly unable to overcome base impulses despite higher order brain functions", then?"_

2- A reply says: _" No, just the ones in the cherrypicked examples for this article, perhaps."_

3- My post says (paraphrased for comprehension): "These aren't examples cherrypicked to show people unable to refrain from inappropriate base impulses. The only cherrypicking is for _amusement_. The rest of the article explains that the number of people surrendering to inappropriate base impulses was surprisingly high. So the sub-subtitle remains correct."

4- Your post.

Do you see it now? Laughter is always welcome, so feel free to continue :)

<comment><USER10> Oh, I saw what you intended in your original post. I was just amused at how poorly you phrased it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aww that was so cute, and only a hint of stalking... That whole entry read much creepier than I bet they intended, and might speak to sexism on the web (due to the fact that this is supposed to be a support channel). It would be interesting if they did this experiment with a fictitious "Carl" employee, to see if female users flirted in the same way.

<comment><USER12> If you want to call it sexism.

I have a female friend who gets hit on virtually constantly. She works for AT&T, and has described lines of hopefuls outside her door when she goes into the office. (she now works mostly from home)

She never pays for lunch, never pays for dinner. Men offer her free trips to different countries. She really is that attractive. But women who aren't quite that attractive get hit on all the time too, maybe not to the same extent as my friend does, but still a lot, in places that people would consider inappropriate or unprofessional.

It's pretty much ubiquitous. So ubiquitous that even calling it 'sexism' almost seems to downplay it. Because these little flirtatious interactions are easily hid from other people, particularly other guys, it's easy for guys, who are never the recipients of similar attention, to remain unaware of, or worse, fool themselves into believing that women are not being constantly assessed for the potential for romantic or sexual liaison.

My friend started highlighting it for me, and then I started seeing it _everywhere_.

<comment><USER13> A tragedy played out every day, for sure. I wonder in all that, about the part where she _accepts_ all this attention, letting guys pay for everything. What if she didn't play along?

I know, blaming the victim. But the social game is complex, and she is definitely a part of it.

<comment><USER7> I've talked to a few girls about this. While some are absolutely just out for all the freebies they can get, others have said that men will get increasingly aggressive when you turn down offers for stuff like that - like they _insist_ on being "a provider" and you turning that down is an insult to their manhood.

Seems like a no-win situation all round, really. If you take it, you're encouraging his behaviour (and making him feel like you're indebted to him). If you reject it you're going to find out how he deals with rejection, which, particularly in drunken scenarios, can literally be dangerous to you.

<comment><USER11> "an insult to their manhood." "can literally be dangerous to you."

Is that not indicative of being the product of a sexist environment? A man that cannot accept rejection and therefor feels he has a right to behave in a dangerous way, seems to be a problem with his view of himself, and men as a whole, the world.

<comment> vertex-four > Is that not indicative of being the product of a sexist environment?

A large number of modern feminists strongly believe that most *ism is a result of institutional and societal force - i.e. that people oppress others because they've been taught to, their society pressures them to do so, and that not doing so can result in harm to them.

The problem is... how do you solve this? Whose fault is it? The institutional pressures are almost certainly not any individual's fault. But the fact remains that on an individual level, the man in this example is oppressing the woman, and something has to be done about that in the short term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hm. Of course it's unprofessional to hit on a support agent, but the way this blog-post is shit-talking about their very own customers (even joking that one of them is probably too poor for champagne because they are on the free-side of their freemium plan) seems absolutely bad to me.

Edit: Especially since the product focusses on being " _end-to-end-encrypted_ " and privacy minded, and they just purposely "leak" their customer conversations like that.

<comment><USER7> That's why I'm glad they did this. Tone of the post notwithstanding, it's a great example of the weird sexism that exists online, and I think they deserve credit for showing it, even at the cost of the ego of their own customers.

<comment> lloyd-christmas I don't think it has anything to do with ego. Regardless of how shitty my customer is, I'm not going to display them to the world (barring any related legal actions).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There has to be a guide for support staffs on rejecting unwelcome advances.

EG.

If the customer compliments your looks then reply with "??". Do not encourage them with a "Thank you."

<comment><USER15> I feel like it's probably better to drive the conversation to an end kindly than open up the opportunity to reply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this would had an effect on conversions. Are people more likely to buy a product if the salesperson they're talking to is an attractive woman (or attractive man if the buyer is female)

<comment><USER17> In Austin, TX. there is a consulting firm and all employees are super attractive females. I went there for an interview and was met by three ladies who looked like they should be models. I thought it was strange but, had no idea this is all they hired. Later I went to another consulting firm and took a better job. When I mentioned to my new recruiter about interviewing for the other job he said, "Oh yeah I wish I could get a job over there it's nothing but hot girls". It must work because they are still doing it a year later from what I hear.

<comment><USER18> What kind of "consulting" are we talking about here?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This title is very misleading. Flirting connotes a two way interaction. In fact, it isn't flirting until a romantic advance is reciprocated either explicitly or implicitly. This is just hitting on someone.

<comment><USER20> I once proposed that the way to express one's attraction to a person was to treat the person nicely, e.g., holding a door for them. My interlocutor responded "So, flirt with them." I suddenly had no idea was "flirting" was. I thought flirting meant actions intended to propose amorous activity (American Heritage Dictionary: "To amuse oneself in playful amorousness; play lightly or mockingly at courtship"), and my sincere intent had been to remove that element. Had I been flirting all these years? Is it impossible _not_ to flirt, while treating people in a warm manner?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I did this same exact thing for a short period, except I used our company admin (with her permission). I thought it would be neat to have a face for support via email and chat and if you called us you'd most likely be greeted by her as well.

It was hard to believe how many people wanted to chat, get a walk through of our product or have a call until they got handed off to a male in sales or support. So many no shows for meetings.

</comment><comment><USER22> So the headline here is that men will hit on attractive women, even in situations where it may not be appropriate. That is truly shocking.

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe we're all thinking: It's embarrassing that this happens, but would be an interesting thing for more companies to try. Scientifically we know we're happier when we interact with attractive people.

</comment><comment><USER23> Am I the only one who thinks it is odd to fake an employee? It just feels dishonest and utterly wrong to me.</comment>


Show HN: HintPod – Reach product/market fit quicker - <AUTHOR> http://hintpod.com <comment><USER2> Good effort, but...

This will not help you get product-market fit.

Product-market fit is about careful user segmentation and need/pain assessment, followed by product positioning. None of which this approach helps with.

This app is just a potpourri of feedback and a popularity contest without understanding WHO you should listen to and WHO you should ignore and WHY.

The creators of this app need to do more research on how to achieve product- market fit if that's what they're going to use as the pitch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps I should clarify why we believe HintPod can help businesses achieve product-market fit. HintPod isn't an app, it's a plugin that integrates directly inside other apps (kinda like intercom).

I believe this helps businesses reach validation because they can see if their users are actually engaging with their vision. General analytics can show engagement with the app as a product, but engaging in a community hub inside a mobile app shows engagement between the user and the business' vision.

Additionally, by following suggestions from their users, businesses can improve on their app and build a better product that they know their target audience actually wants.

HintPod gives businesses validation and helps them build a better product for their users. This is done through the plugin that enables a community hub directly inside the app. And through this, they can get closer to finding product-market fit.

I agree it isn't enough on its own, but it can facilitate this.

<comment><USER3> I think the thing being said here is that market fit is a known exercise often practiced as part of funding raises or model validation before products are built. This tool seems like a really cool tool for rating and Ranking items in a Product Roadmaping exercise

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, I see. Thanks for explaining that. Perhaps we should use a different way to describe it. I do think it helps businesses understand their customers better, but perhaps this isn't the way to describe it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My co-founder and I are both developers and whenever we used to make apps we found getting feedback on the apps was very difficult. App store reviews were very one-sided and emails were usually ignored by users. So we made HintPod it's a SaaS platform that allows developers and businesses to get feedback from their customers directly inside their apps. What we've developed so far is called Suggestions and it consists of a list of suggestions submitted by users. Businesses and developers can also engage with the users and their suggestions through HintPod. Users don't have to login or leave your app to submit their feedback. It's free to use so I'd love to hear what you guys think about it. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER4> I see what you're trying to do here, but I would be surprised if this helps in getting feedback from users. By far the main reason users don't give feedback is because they don't care about the product. This doesn't help to address that issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> That may be true but we are focusing on scenarios where the user is motivated to give feedback but then gives up due to there being too many obstacles for them to give feedback. With HintPod the user won't have to leave the app they are currently using at all. Making it a seamless experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea and implementation, but wouldn't use it in production. I can see pretty solid value in it being a QA/Beta tool to shorten feedback loops on non-prod releases.

If the motive is to help people achieve a product/market fit, using this in beta testing with real target personas would be far more valuable (to me, at least) than sticking it into prod and dealing with separating the signal from the noise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your pov. We really need more perspectives on it since we still aren't sure how we should market it or how people would like to use it. Beta testing is one of the routes we believe HintPod would be useful for so we definitely do have that in mind. But as I said we haven't narrowed down the use cases so we're leaving it up to the customers to decide how they'd like to use HintPod.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great idea. Any plans for a web version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much! Currently, we're focusing only on the mobile versions since there aren't a lot of alternatives or services that do this in a native mobile package but we do have plans to release a web version in future.</comment></comment>


A library to easily scrape metadata from an article on the web - <AUTHOR> https://metascraper.js.org <comment><USER2> hah, I recently had a project with an ex-cofounder (non-technical) where he wanted me to make a scraper for some sites.

He said he wanted to scrape the metadata, he suggested this library even, I could hardly see what I needed to do and why his current programmers couldn't do it.

After going back and forth for what seemed like infinity it turns out he didn't want metadata and when he used terms like title he meant an h1 at a particular position on some pages, and a div on other pages, and description was a div sibling to the h1 on site 1 but a span with a randomly generated id on another site etc. etc.

It was easy enough to do in the end, as is often the case the difficulty was in communication, but it did highlight one point - generally the metadata of a modern web page is not that interesting to scrape.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it still too hard to get a job at Google? - <AUTHOR> I grew up coding while I was in high school, between 2003 and 2008, dreaming with get a job at Google. At the time, it was the best company out there and there were videos about their offices, etc. I remember the first two people from my country that were hired appeared on the news.
But time washed out that feeling, until recently. I am close to be 30 years old and I'd love to try to be a Googler. I've been working since I was 18 years old, so I have experience. I worked mostly in PHP and Python, from doing Wordpress to API to some Data Engineer / Data Science (althouhg I enjoy Algorithms and I'd love to work with them)
I have a bachelor's degree on Maths and a Master's degree on Computer Science, although I often feel the famous impostor syndrome.
However, my question is if is still too hard to get a job at Google, or if it has become a bit easier, and if I have chances or I shouldn't even try? For example, this one seems interesting to apply (https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/75841506784486086/), although it requires to be legally allowed to work in the US.
Anyway, I'd love to know your opinion, mainly from people who started to work at Google recently. Thank you very much! <comment><USER2> First things first; if you want a job at Google then you should apply and nothing anybody says is going to change that. It's not a huge opportunity cost and there is no shame in rejection; you're always allowed to try again later.

I cannot say if its "easier" or "harder" than it ever used to be; Google likes to say it doesn't "lower the bar" at all, so take from that what you will.

But here's a data point:

I started at Google in December in Europe. I graduated with a Bachelor's in 2012 (Maths & Phys) and have been working as a Developer since. Everything I learned regarding programming was learned post-Uni. Most of my "interview prep" was really a few weekends of leetcode/hackerrank questions (I was interviewing for several companies, so the time investment didn't feel too bad). I've done things like Project Euler and Advent of Code over the years too (but not to an insane degree; I've only solved ~120 PE problems over 8 years). You need to practice solving problems, and less an encyclopedic knowledge of everything (of course, the latter helps with the former). I didn't really do anything to prepare for the System Design interview; I don't really know what kind of prep one would do for that.

You may be asked to do at least one interview in one of {Java, C++, Go}, so make sure you're comfortable with one of them (expertise not required); I did two interviews in Python and one in Java.

(Things might be difficult right now because of the Coronavirus pandemic, so hiring may be temporarily frozen for where you want to go.)

Edit: With so much experience, you shouldn't be applying to a Graduate role.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends on how good you are at solving coding puzzles. Checkout LeetCode. Many people post their experiences interviewing for companies there. My guess is the problems are hard so it would require months of training solving coding problems and memorizing system design questions.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I easily but securely encrypt my laptop & emails? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER3> On a Mac:

Get up to very most recent OS X. A dot release in OS X disabled Firewire while the machine was sleeping, which is important because Firewire is basically a thin veneer around direct DMA access to system memory.

Enable FileVault. Unlike the feature that used to be called FileVault, modern FileVault is block-level AES-XTS encryption. (Before FileVault, my recommendation would have been to buy PGP WDE).

Tell the system to forget its key during sleep; the most recent rubber chicken to wave for this appears to be "sudo pmset -a destroyfvkeyonstandby 1 hibernatemode 25".

Power down your machine whenever you can; don't just shut the lid.

Buy Knox.app from AgileBits, which is a nice UI on top of the VFS-level block AES encryption OS X does. Create virtual disk drives for each of your clients, or each of your projects, or whatever. Create another for your mail; create another for personal documents. Give each a separate key (you'll rarely have all of them unlocked or need to use all of them). Do not store the keys in the Keychain.

Copy ~/Library/Mail's contents to the virtual disk you made for Mail and then replace ~/Library/Mail with a link to that disk; now, you'll need to have that virtual disk unlocked to read your mail.

Disable sharing; make sure every box in "Sharing" under Preferences is unchecked.

Enable the firewall and block all incoming connections; Preferences->Security->Firewall, Enable, Options->Block All Incoming Connections.

Get GPGTools and GPGMail (the most recent official build supports Mt. Lion nicely). Install them, and use GPG, from your Mac only, to send mail.

Do not supply your GPG private key to _any_ service, ever.

Uninstall Dropbox. Sorry. Dropbox is fantastic. We ban it wholesale.

Though we can't use it for a variety of contractual reasons, I highly recommend Colin Percival's Tarsnap for backup.

<comment><USER4> Out of curiousity, what is a purpose of using a separate 'vault' for email if the entire disk(where email is stored) is encrypted?

<comment><USER3> Because block encryption doesn't help you if your machine is compromised by software, but project-specific vaults might.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> \- Use an open-source OS like Linux. Ubuntu is user-friendly. Windows isn't safe: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY)

\- Install the OS with full-disk encryption.

\- If you use a service like Dropbox, use EncFS to encrypt everything in the cloud.

\- For email, you'll need to start using a mail user agent like Mutt or Thunderbird with PGP/GnuPG. And then the problem will be that none of your friends use encryption anyway. Personally I'm telling everyone about using Bitmessage instead of email: [https://bitmessage.org](https://bitmessage.org)

<comment><USER3> It's like we're devolving back to Slashdot circa 1999. In reality, the Windows kernel is one of the most heavily audited carefully inspected codebases in the world, not because Microsoft spends a cubic fuckton of money getting external firms to do that (though they do), but because every vulnerability research firm in the world has reverse engineered the code --- which Microsoft tends to make very easy, for instance by publishing symbols.

The likelihood that Microsoft is shipping block-level encryption with secret backdoors is pretty close to zero.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Do we know what is secure against the likes of the NSA / what encryption they can break today?

I understand this is almost impossible for us to accurately answer, just curious if we have any clues regarding their codebreaking capabilities in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER6> You cannot encrypt emails. Even if you'll satisfy your urge for privacy - <USER2> originator of email or addressee of email will still contain unencrypted copies. So forget about it.

The presence of encryption will raise more suspicion and cause further investigation in your activities. So forget about it.

</comment><comment><USER7> TrueCrypt for the laptop, and GnuPG for emails.</comment>


Hotmail is down - <AUTHOR> http://www.isup.me/mail.live.com

<comment><USER2> Looks like they had a global issue affecting many of their services, via Twitter I heard that Office365 was also down (suspected DNS issue), and Windows 7 users were reported issues with accessing Live-based services on their phones. Seems significant.

<comment><USER3> outlook.com is down too! yay there goes my mail service

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It does that quite regularly in my experience unfortunately. Although I use Outlook with it which insulates you from any outages quite well.</comment>


Europeans' trust in US as world leader collapses during pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/29/europeans-trust-in-us-as-world-leader-collapses-during-pandemic <comment><USER2> How did it take that long after everything the US has done in the last 20 years. In what exactly is/was the US a world leader? Making money? It sure wasn't justice, Healthcare, infrastructure, human rights, poverty, homelessness etc. List goes on and on.

<comment><USER3> Hollywood is an extremely powerful marketing tool, exporting the American patriotism around the world. Movies that involve the military also tend to paint a very positive picture of the US military. And those movies and series is what kids and teenagers around the world grow up with.

Whereas to see poverty, homelessness or infrastructure problems you actually have to travel to the US.

<comment><USER4> CIA will edit those scripts to be lookin' good too.

Fock!

<comment><USER3> Not sure about CIA but heard the military let's film studios use equipment (up to tanks and planes) for free as long as they have a say on how they are portrayed. That's a powerful incentive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The EU should put on their big boy pants and forge their own path independent of the US .. WW2 and the cold war are relics of the past.

<comment><USER6> The EU can't even keep itself together. Think about that for a second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it would be better to compare opinions now to already-surveyed opinions before the pandemic; it's easy to say that you lost trust during the pandemic even if you had low trust before it started.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely. all surveys should have data before an event. Otherwise there is no benchmark to compare your results to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Before coronavirus I thought that the dominance of the United States internationally would last another 20 or 30 years, but now it seems that it might all fall apart much sooner. It wouldn't surprise me if the US dollar lost its position as the world reserve currency as the result of all this, especially given that the fed is directly propping up the whole financial system with trillions of dollars out of thin air. That can't continue forever. Plus, the whole world has gotten a look behind the curtain, and they can now see how corrupt and useless our political system has become, how desperate and angry the populace is. Our failure to deal with coronavirus wasn't because the government didn't want to deal with the issue. The failure happened because it is unable to. Most declining empires follow the same path.

<comment><USER6> I'm from an Italian-Spanish family from South America (grandparents emigrated to the New World during World War II), and I lived in Europe for 5 years (studying abroad).

When people think of currency, they tend to focus on the supply side (monetary policy) and forget to look at the demand side (necessary liquidity).

There is as much dollar-denominated debt outside the US as there is within. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, the crisis is creating more demand for US dollars, not less. This is why the Fed expanded the "dollar swap line" program. The "eurodollar" system is often overlooked, yet one of the most important drivers of the global economy.

Compare the policy of the Federal Reserve with the ECB (Eurozone) and the PBOC (China). And you will see why not only will the US dollar not collapse, in the coming years it may get so strong it could lead to a new Plaza Accord.

The Central Bank of Norway had to restart intervention in foreign exchange markets for the first time in decades. Norway, the #1 most developed nation in the world, experienced a dose of monetary reality on the 22nd of March (look up NOKUSD).

The so-called "rising power" of China is as marketable as it is absurd. Every other quarter there is a story of the PBOC injecting liquidity and lowering the capitalization requirement for banks. Needless to say, the Yuan still pegs to the US dollar for a reason.

Public opinion and mainstream media are divorced from financial reality, and we don't know if this is due to hysteria or sheer incompetence.

The surprise comes with the realization that the noisy political infighting of the American political class is orthogonal to almost everything.

The US may be a disaster, and simultaneously be the best in the world. Trump may be an idiot, and simultaneously be the smartest in DC.

Moral posturing isn't a substitute for good banking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Europe has 400 camps and 47 000 refugees (pg 106 Necropolitics A. Mbembe) so they need to activate the imaginary split between themselves and the failing Empire in hopes they can recuperate enough power to step into it and take charge.</comment>


Freedom for whom? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.schiessle.org/2016/06/15/freedom-for-whom/ <comment><AUTHOR> This blog contains some thoughts about business models and how to build a diverse & healthy community around Free Software initiatives.</comment>


Show HN: Radium – style react components with JS - <AUTHOR> http://projects.formidablelabs.com/radium/

<comment><USER2> Really nice work making this concept into a usable library. I look forward to hearing more at the next SeattleJS meetup.

The thing that's stopped me from exploring this concept is how much extra code must end up on the page with inline styles.

With css I can reuse the same styles over and over with only the class name as the repeating element. With inline styles you could have many rules repeating (say a long list or table).

Have you found this to be a problem for performance?

<comment><USER3> We haven't had any performance issues yet. With client-side rendering, those repeating styles aren't being sent over the wire, so you're fine.

For server-side rendering there are two factors at play which have kept this from being an issue:

1\. You're only getting the styles necessary to render the current page, which will often be smaller than an a global app CSS file.

2\. Repeating styles (as in a long table) are repetitious and compress well with gzip.

Someone at Formidable has been doing some extensive research into this and should have a blog post out soon with more details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is exciting. I'd been hoping to see something like this come around, so thanks a bunch!</comment>


The Great Green Wall of Africa - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-great-green-wall-of-africa <comment><USER2> Hi guys.

[Shameless plug warning]

We at Ecosia (www.ecosia.org) help build this thing. You can help as well by using our search engine and other products.

If you have any questions I can probably answer them or ask my team for details.

Here you can find some pictures from the planting process: [http://blog.ecosia.org/post/109214958355/new-project-more- tr...](http://blog.ecosia.org/post/109214958355/new-project-more-trees-ecosia- has-always-been)

I could also provide some more if there's interest.

<comment><USER3> Exciting work! Can you share more about your "special tree-planting method"?

Have you read about the research into using microbes to transform the desert sand into a sandstone wall to span the Sahara Desert?

[http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/sandstone.html](http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/sandstone.html)

<comment><USER2> I haven't heard about the microbes, really interesting. I will definitely share this article with my team.

As for the actual tree-planting, it's done by WeForest (www.weforest.org).

I don't remember full details about this method, so don't quote me on that (I am a developer). It seems it's mostly about the soil preparation. They displace the top layer in a shape that's more efficient for water storage, preserving it from evaporating too fast, it lasts for longer.

As far as I remember seed selection and proper mixing of different species plays a huge role. The forest starts small (which is simple and efficient) from grasses, shrubs to bushes and finally to trees which then become mature.

This is a nice piece of nature hacking. I could try to find some sources on the details of tree planting tomorrow.

What is even nicer this is nearly 100% done by the locals so it empowers the local communities, gives them not only hope but real opportunities.

We make it easy for people who care to contribute while doing everyday tasks on the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wondering this amount of extra trees will help with global warming as well.

<comment><USER5> IIRC it does not help because the trees will decay into CO2 after they die. So you'd basically have to bury the dead treas if you want to prevent the carbon from entering the atmosphere again.

<comment><USER6> If the forest dies and is replaced by desert again, you're right. Assuming the forest survives, dying trees will be replaced by new one, and the result is that new forest areas means more biomass to keep CO2 sequestered on an ongoing basis.

<comment><USER7> Carbon is also captured by turning trees into something else, like lumber or paper. A wood house can keep several tons of carbon locked up for a few centuries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We learned a lot about how to do this properly from projects like 三北防护林, so hopefully we will succeed.

<comment><USER9> To save people time, the reference is the Three-North Shelter Forest Program -

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- North_Shelter_Forest_Prog...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- North_Shelter_Forest_Program)

"... a series of human-planted windbreaking forest strips (shelterbelts) in China, designed to hold back the expansion of the Gobi Desert."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This sounds like perhaps the biggest geo-engineering project in history. Hope they have good science that it will work as hoped! This is not always obvious. For instance, in the US lot of people have been planting eastern red cedar trees in places like Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, and Colorado for shelterbelts and reforestation. But it seems the tree worsens drought conditions in natural grasslands by capturing available water. And it is vulnerable to fire, but with infrequent wildfires the trees grow large until uncontrollable fires break out. See e.g. [http://www.fws.gov/mountain- prairie/pfw/r6pfw15.htm](http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/pfw/r6pfw15.htm)

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder why Acacia?

This plant is not native to Africa, but only from Australian continent. I checked other sources, and found references to "Hardy, drought-resistant acacia trees now dig their roots into 330 miles of northern Senegal's Tessekere-Widu rural region. Planting began in 2008."

What are the dangers of planting a foreign tree monoculture without importing the wildlife that supports them? Why didn't they use a native African tree?

<comment><USER12> Acacia is a genus, with species in both Africa and Australia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia).

<comment><USER11> _sorry_ /me stupid kraut trapped by Wikipedia, and 2005 plant reclassification.

The German Acacia Wikipedia entry only contains the genus Acacia, while "Akazien" points to the tribe that is including all those plants that are normally known under the common name of acacia.

Btw, the picture of the English wikipedia also shows that the genus Acacia is only native to Australia. I guess they are planting Senegalia and not Acacia there. Same plant, it just got renamed 10 years ago.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What keeps people from chopping down the trees and using them for firewood -- why many areas of northern Africa became deforested in the first place?

<comment><USER14> Fences and guns, probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Frustrating not being able to support this. The planet has a fever and religious US congress members, scynical chinese and russian cleptocrats won't do anything.

<comment><USER8> China plants more trees than the rest of world combined. Your cynicism against China is misdirected.

<comment><USER16> China emits more CO2 than any country as well. Not as misdirected as you would think.

<comment><USER17> Mostly as the world's factory, I would add. For all the criticism of China's environmental standard we tend to fail to mention that we procure many of the products that are built in unsustainable ways, largely unwilling to pay a premium to make it more sustainable. Add to that the apples/oranges comparison where hundreds of millions of people in China live in 1800s industrial- revolutionesque environments, it's hardly fair to hold them to a standard of modern, efficient, sustainable 21st century production processes we find in many OECD countries today.

Anyway, I don't mean for this to be a giant cop-out for China. But its environmental record should be contextualized. An interesting part of that context is that it's one of the most rapidly advancing countries in terms of investments and capacity of sustainable energy. Policy makers definitely do not look the other way and ignore the problems as if they don't exist. It appears the environmental issues are acknowledged, but not always prioritized over trying to lift hundreds of millions of people into a lower-middle class from de facto poverty.

One may be more sympathetic to that than some of the global-warming denier policy makers we see in the west, who are either ignorant of the problem or prioritize economic goals while the average American or European already makes 10x more than the average Chinese. (who, again, use a significant chunk of this money to move their CO2 production out of the country, and to China, benefiting from the production but offloading the CO2 onto China's record, and in the process moving any affects of local pollution onto relatively poor Chinese. If it's waste, we call it toxic dumping and outlaw it. If it's air and water pollution from a factory that creates jobs, it's but an unfortunate side effect of globalism).

At least, that's the Chinese's perspective. There's more to it, but I think it's important to be aware of the above in any case.

<comment><USER16> It's inexcusable. They choose to accept the money for manufacturing without imposing environmental regulations. The only way people will pay for protection of the environment is if it's priced into the market. China does not care to price it, and that's why we are where we are.

They definitely turn their head the other way and even actively bury environmental issues. Look what happened with the smog station on top of the US embassy. They told them to take it down because they didn't like their citizens getting real air quality data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> most people underestimate just how big africa and those numbers are.

no offense, but this looks exactly like any other mega development projects put on by white people - see for the road the world food programme has been building from the sea to central congo.

super ideas on paper, complete madness on site. most of that money will evaporate, most of the countries along the line are mere shapes on a map, drawn by white people, but reflecting any functioning structures.

when the europeans abandoned the colonies they failed to do one, crucial thing - they should have taken everything they brought to africa back with them. borders, names, government structures and yes, most "modern" infrastructure (railway, paved roads, water lines). all that crap left behind now gives western whites the illusion of a transaction between peers when they pour money into africa.

this is slowly happening now anyhow, tribal warfare is turning time backwards. from eritrea to sudan, to congo, to nigeria, etc etc etc. tribes that never belonged within one set of borders, drawn up by the english, french, belgians, germans, portuguese.

it would be actually much better if the west stopped pouring money into a region were most of it will end up fueling war. more people have died in the so called african world war than in all other conflicts since ww2 - combined. despite white people's guilt projects.

<comment><USER17> Your post to me is uch a mixed bag of both truths and some weird conclusions.

The one crucial thing they failed to do? Not taking the water lines and railways etc, is the one crucial failure of colonialism in Africa? Talk about ignorant, with all due respect.

As for the connection between the west pouring in money and millions of deaths, as if the west funded the second Congo war... It's ridiculous. And please don't even try conflating legitimate FDI in tens of countries with procurement conflict minerals in Congo.

I won't even mention the standard 'africa is not a country' stuff. Although you'll obviously be aware of that, stating that the west shouldn't invest in Africa because of atrocities in Congo is saying the US shouldn't do business with France, because of the situation in the Ukraine. It's completely ridiculous.

Just look at plans like these, large solar energy infrastructure projects with European money, in part for the European market:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Morocco#/media/F...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Morocco#/media/File:DESERTEC- Map_large.jpg)

and tell me this project shouldn't happen, because it fuels war. If anything, it'd bring Morocco and Algeria closer together through economic cooperation and interdependence for mutual benefit. Note that these are the exact same founding principles that largely initiated the European Union, a set of countries that waged brutal war for centuries yet have seen only peaceful cooperation between its members since its inception.

I guess as you said, most people do underestimate how big Africa is, and how diverse its political landscape.</comment></comment>


Mastering Grammars w/ PetitParser - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/renggli/mastering-grammars-with-petitparser

<comment><USER2> I would really like to see a lisp that has a built in parser generator so the language and semantics can be built at the same time.</comment>


Linus Torvalds now on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/torvalds <comment><USER2> It'd've been advantageous to see this go on a purely open service like Gitorious instead. They often provide similar features as GitHub and could definitely use the exposure of Linus's account.

I use and enjoy GitHub, so this definitely isn't a personal gripe, I'd just like to see the competition in that space heat up a bit, and there'd be bonus points if we could simultaneously promote a completely open platform.

<comment><USER3> The problem with Github being completely open source is that no one would pay for the service part of it, which is the only way it can exist.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand your point. Surely people do pay for hosted storage, even when the code is available?

<comment><USER5> Looked at from the point of view of for-pay hosted storage, Github is _astoundingly_ expensive. I have 94 megabytes of git repositories at work. Github would want $100/month to host that.

If their software was all available and open source, I could host their software and my repositories on an $11/month Rackspace virtual machine, and still have about 7 gigabytes left over (or more realistically just stick it on a vhost on some machine I've already got on the internet and host it essentially for free).

This is the brilliance of Github. They have found a way to sell storage at several orders of magnitude over the going rate--all because they have coupled it with some attractive proprietary software. Their value is entirely in that proprietary software.

<comment><USER6> _I have 94 megabytes of git repositories at work. Github would want $100/month to host that._

Huh? My $7/month plan comes with 600+MB of storage, and my job's $50/month plan comes with 6GB. Where are you getting these numbers?

<comment><USER7> Disk space is a soft limit. Hard limits are repos. I find it hard to beleive your company can't spend $100 on offloading to a managed resource such as GitHub.

<comment><USER6> _I find it hard to beleive your company can't spend $100 on offloading to a managed resource such as GitHub._

Oh, we can. We just haven't needed to yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The "torvalds" github account claims to have been created today. Did github have reserve that account name for Linus or did they boot a squatter? I see there dubious accounts registered for "linustorvalds", "billgates", and "stevejobs" but not "billg" or "sjobs".

btw stevejobs uploaded Windows 8 source code in 2009! Bill, you might want to give Steve a call. ;)

<comment><USER9> If you look towards the end of the comment thread on [https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/PVZDD2N3...](https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/PVZDD2N3Tvi), he created the account since kernel.org is down

<comment><USER10> /me puts on conspiracy hat

Github hacked kernel.org

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Poor Linus will probably be flooded with patches and pull requests for every commit he makes.

On the other hand, he might very well spark some interesting things just by committing small stubs of his ideas.

<comment><USER12> And it has begun...

[https://github.com/arkx/diveclog/commit/c800d93a83f18b1c2b18...](https://github.com/arkx/diveclog/commit/c800d93a83f18b1c2b18db0f7b4139bb6b618297)

<comment><USER13> Why not fix all the typos if it's as easy as clicking 'edit file'? He has the option to merge it by clicking one button.

I just can't see the downside. He didn't want to merge it due to the lack of signed-off-by, but at least he knows there's a typo there now and can fix it or let it be if it doesn't bother him.

(For the record, this was not the first typo fix contributed, see <https://github.com/torvalds/diveclog/pull/2> for something he already pulled in.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The README file is great: <https://github.com/torvalds/diveclog/blob/master/README>

TL/DR: I've never used GTK before, I know my code sucks, but my little divelog program is better than anything else I could find, and if someone wants to fix my code they are welcome to do so.

</comment><comment><USER15> About 'diveclog': [https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/PVZDD2N3...](https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/PVZDD2N3Tvi)

</comment><comment><USER16> Sorry for taking <http://github.com/linus>, Linus!

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats to the Github team for this. I'd say it's a pretty huge endorsement, regardless of whether Linus intended it that way or not.

<comment><USER18> Well, let's wait to see Linus's comments on how he feels about it. If he's unhappy, he'll write about it in public, scathing remarks.

<comment><USER19> Well, and knowing Linus, few months from today he will probably get frustrated by some limitation and write his own Git front end (that everyone will start using) and it will be a better front end

The question is which platform would Linus use for a web front end?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hard to believe, but the sources compile cleanly on win32 (using mingw). And ... it actually works!

I put binaries up at <http://patraulea.com/diveclog/diveclog-win32-110904.zip>

</comment><comment><USER21> I assume diveclog is for scuba diving?

<comment><USER2> Yes, it reads logs generated by dive computers.

<comment><USER22> Strictly, it reads Suunto logs converted by libdivecomputer to XML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would be really cool if he puts his fun side project scripts up. I would enjoy seeing what he hacks on the side.

<comment><USER23> i bet he's working on a desktop environment; first the kernel, then git, now i heard that he's fed up with gnome and kde, so let's see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> He has nearly a thousand followers within a day of creating an account. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hmm he seems to have left out the unit tests.

</comment><comment><USER26> _swoon_</comment>


The DBLP Computer Science Bibliography - <AUTHOR> http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/ <comment><USER2> Aha so you find this today? What's the point you want to make?</comment>


The Last Line Effect - <AUTHOR> https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2015/04/22/the-last-line-effect

<comment><USER2> More discussion on it here, from a year ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7858612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7858612)

I was thinking about this article recently after I realized I had made this mistake and was wondering if there'd be any consistent way to check for this, like some kind of clippy: "so it looks like you're copy-pasting a pattern incorrectly..."

<comment><USER3> kind of like the error check excel does when it finds inconsistent equation in an array or cells

<comment><USER4> yeah, great example, that could also help define the scope - in what ways does the excel feature solve the problem and it what ways does it need to be expanded for code specific issues?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As an old habit before I knew about "paste" mode in vim, I transcribe code instead of using copy and paste. This allows me to make adjustments to the variable names and other stylistic changes, and also gives me a better chance of understanding the code.

When I am looking at someone else's code that was built mostly by copy-and- paste, it is jarring to have changes in style, indentation, and quality from piece to piece. Also there tend to be lines of code that don't do anything. Especially beginners will just paste code and then change it until it "works", which leaves a incredible mess.

</comment><comment><USER6> I see this all the time. Your brain starts to move on to the next task before you actually complete what you are doing.

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems like he's maybe miscounting some errors here.

Several of his examples involve duplicate lines or blocks, but he considers the error to occur in the last duplicate, rather than the first.

It seems equally valid to consider that an error on the previous lines, and more valid to consider it an error equally shared among all duplicated blocks.

Also, a simple hypothesis for why errors show up at the end: We tend to add new cases at the end of a block of similar code, and bugs are more likely to exist in more-recently added code because it's had less time to be discovered and fixed.

<comment><USER8> > t seems equally valid to consider that an error on the previous lines

No, because people usually write it top-down.

So, if I have to do something like:

a1 = 5 * b1 + 1; a2 = 5 * b2 + 1;

for multiple items, I'm going to copy one of the lines written manually then paste it _at the end_ (because the first ones are right)

Also paste more lines than needed (because it's an estimate) is a common bug, and you'll end up with a redundant line at the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of road safety advice as a disproportionate number of incidents occur within the first and last miles.

A similar effect is witnessed with crime and when I worked in retail we had training to help us focus on the first and last 30 minutes of the day as these were when staff (for whatever reason) paid least attention and it was believed that this was known and taken advantage of.

It's just a human pattern, that appears in many tasks we undertake. It doesn't surprise me that it appears in coding.

</comment><comment><USER10> Copy and pasting blocks? That's a red flag right there, remember that next time you're doing it, and think how you could do it without the copy and pasting

<comment><USER11> How would you do it in many of those cases? For instance:

      ax[i] = bx[i]
      ay[i] = by[i]
      az[i] = bz[i]

Can the languages used write this in a better way?

I do agree that having inner functions and making them easy to define is better, but it's not always possible. In F# I could write:

      let assign i (a,b) = a[i] <- b[i]
      [ax,bx; ay,by; az,bz] |> Seq.iter (assign i)

But that's allocating a list (and if I closed over i, it'd allocate a closure too). Really good macro support would fix this, though. And it's only marginally better in this case. (For more elaborate cases it might be easier to scan.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like the parallel that the author draws in the article to the idea of mountain climbers falling. As we draw near the finish line, our elation rises. We can see it, taste it, feel it, and in our hurry to cross it, we lose it, cause we aren't paying attention to what we are doing.

<comment><USER13> We have a saying in the mountain climbing world: The finish line is at the bottom, not the top. It's important to consider this when climbing both up and down.

<comment><USER14> Good point, and what you say is the accurate observation: it is when descending that more accidents happen, not when reaching the top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/ae0WYVq_460sv.mp4](http://img-9gag- fun.9cache.com/photo/ae0WYVq_460sv.mp4)

</comment><comment><USER16> Looking at this, I find it amazing that I have very, very little code that is so repetitive as examples shown in the article.

<comment><USER17> Same here! These examples reminds me of how I used to write code half a decade ago.

Now I simply abuse the compiler's ability to inline small functions automatically and I create functions for every single repetition pattern I find.</comment></comment>