Ask HN: Where can I find quality, free scientific articles and research papers? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN! Is there anywhere that I can find open-sourced, free papers or articles discussing science and research? From actual published research papers to more opinionated articles, it doesn't matter, but it's difficult for me to find any sources with a reliable level of consistency. <comment><USER2> [https://sci-hub.tw/](https://sci-hub.tw/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! Seems like a great resource, though I was hoping for something more... legal haha.

<comment><USER3> Here's my argument for using [https://sci-hub.tw/](https://sci-hub.tw/)

* It's a form of reparations i.e if you belong to one of the folks who were victimized by colonialists, what more other way to pay back by using such a tool. After all the heavily guarded science corporations + universities were built with such privilege & stolen wealth

* Another one is we pay lots of taxes for this research but it keeps gated by corporations that pay zero taxes

* Last reason fuck it! Do it Louis Pasteur style;- never followed so-called medical ethics, relied on secrecy and dirty tricks to invent tech that still impacts modern day society to date ANTI BIOTICS</comment></comment></comment>


What Made Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem Hard to Prove - <AUTHOR> https://algorithmsoup.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/what-made-godels-incompleteness-theorem-hard-to-prove-its-about-how-you-say-it-not-just-what-you-say/ <comment><USER2> From the article:

> Here's another example (known as the Berry paradox):

> Define {x} to be the smallest positive integer that cannot be defined in > under {100} words.

> This might look like a valid mathematical definition. But again it's > nonsensical. And, importantly for the sanity of mathematics, no analogous > statement can be made mathematically formal.

I thought it was worth mentioning that the Berry Paradox _does_ show up in a mathematically formal way, and it was fascinating to me. It can be used to prove that a general algorithm to compute the Kolmogorov complexity of a string is uncomputable.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_paradox#Formal_analogues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_paradox#Formal_analogues)

</comment><comment><USER3> I felt like the article was just getting going, then it finished.

<comment><USER4> i was ready to roll up my sleeves, expecting "and here's a walkthrough".... and that's how i felt.

<comment><USER5> article had no teeth whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A layperson here, I always wanted to ask this question: Godel proves that not ALL statements that are true can be proven, because here is this one example. I get it, it's a valid mathematical proof. But does it really say anything about other statements, except this one? Does it says anything about statements that are not self-referential? Is it possible that the incompleteness theorem really applies only to self-referential statements and says nothing about non-self-referential statements?

<comment><USER7> The proof of the incompleteness theorem only shows you that recursively- enumerable arithmetic systems are always missing _something_ , because the construction always holds. It doesn't make any grand statements about the structure or nature of things that are true and without proof.

The second incompleteness theorem gives an example of something undecidable that's probably more interesting that the uselessly paradoxical statement in the first: it says that no system can consistently prove its own consistency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What made the theorem hard is not the details, which are simple, it's the conceptual leap to thinking about mathematical statements as mathematical objects - something that is much easier for us than for mathematicians of Godel's time because we are familiar with programs and computers. Much of the text is taken up with proving things that were surprising to mathematicians of the era, but are now commonplace: e.g. that we can treat numbers as encoding mathematical propositions so that for every proposition P expressible in some formal logic L, there is a number #P which encodes P in some unambiguous way - as long as L is expressive enough to formalize some basic arithmetic. Then we can start making trouble by asking if we can construct a proposition Q so that Q(#P) is true iff the proposition #P encodes, P, is provable in our system. If so, we should be able to prove Q(#P) or NOT Q(#P) if L is complete, but things don't work out well because it's possible to encode paradoxical statements. In short.

<comment><USER9> _> thinking about mathematical statements as mathematical objects..._

Lock yourself away in a room with nothing but pen and paper (no internet, not books) and try to reproduce Goedel's original proof. Then post the attempt here :)

When I tried this a few years ago I made a mistake in the definition of numbering, got through half the proof, ran into trouble, and gave up before I figured out exactly where the mistake was. And I had already committed the overall outline and the tactical steps for each part to memory...

Even if you remember the entire outline, it'll be really hard to get the details right....

And, more importantly, the outline itself is actually _not_ obvious.

 _>... much easier for us than for mathematicians of Godel's time because we are familiar with programs and computers_

Again, it seems unlikely that this was the sticking point.

E.g. Hilbert understood mathematics as a symbolic game, thought about this exactly question, and didn't come up with Goedel's proof. And Hilbert was definitely no dullard.

<comment><USER10> It's super easy to prove if you assume the Halting Problem is undecidable. Basically,

1\. Assume every either T or ~T is provable for all theorems T, and that our logic is consistent. (The opposite of the incompleteness theorem.)

2\. For every Turing machine, there is a proof that it halts or a proof that it doesn't halt.

3\. A machine that enumerates and validates proofs will find one of those proofs, so the Halting Problem is decidable -- a contradiction.

Easy peasy. (The proof of the Halting Problem undecidability from the Incompleteness Theorem is similarly straightforward.)

Godel did his work first though, so he didn't have that machinery (hmm) available.

<comment><USER11> This proof using Turing machines is indeed very slick! Its elegance is balanced by its nonconstructiveness: Gödel's proof yields an explicit example for an unprovable statement (namely a formal rendering of "this statement is not provable"), while the Turing machine proof doesn't.

Also let me add a remark on a certain subtlety: Step 3 only works if we assume that, if a claim about the halting behaviour of Turing machines has a proof in the studied formal system, then it's actually true.

This assumption is believed to be warranted for the standard formal systems of mathematics such as Peano Arithmetic (PA) or Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (ZF), but Gödel's proof also applies to formal systems for which this assumption doesn't hold, or for which the assumption does hold but cannot be proven in a weak metatheory.

These systems are typically not very useful as vehicles to carry out formalized mathematics, but they are nevertheless very interesting and fundamental to the study of logic. An example for such an anti-real formal system is PA adjoined by an axiom expressing that PA is inconsistent.

<comment><USER12> As Wittgenstein correctly pointed out, Gödel's proposition "I'm unprovable" is not a proposition in Russell's system because it leads to inconsistency. Consequently, Gödel's incompleteness results are not valid for Russell's system. The proposition "I'm unprovable" _cannot_ be constructed as a fixed point of P |-> ~|-P because ~|-P has order one greater than the order of P.

<comment><USER13> Could you give a reference for this claim of Wittgenstein's, please?

<comment><USER12> A reference is:

Ludwig Wittgenstein. 1956. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Revised Edition Basil Blackwell. 1978.

There is a discussion here:

[https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01566393](https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-01566393)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Godel Incompleteness Theorem and Turing Halting Problem are two faces to the same coin, I intuited. It is deeper than I thought, especially that I forgot about the two godel's incompleteness theorems (not just one.)

Scott Aaranson "popularizes" Kleene's textbook proof of Godel's theorems using Turing machines in his blog:

[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=710](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=710)

<comment><USER15> I would say that's a pretty inaccurate analogy. The incompleteness theorem can be considered a consequence of the halting problem, but not the other way around. The incompleteness theorem depends heavily on the properties of Peano arithmetic, as defined by the presence of both addition and multiplication. If you construct a set of numbers with one defined arithmetic operation (Presburger arithmetic), the incompleteness theorem does not hold and all statements can be confirmed or disconfirmed by an algorithm (albeit not efficiently). The halting problem, by contrast, is much more general, and recurs in many settings where self-reference is possible.

<comment><USER16> Godel's completeness theorem rests on a system's ability to _represent_ addition and multiplication, not whether they define it. Basically, it recurs where reasoning about addition and multiplication is possible within the internal theory. This is why it applies to e.g. ZF set theory, even though there is no mention of addition, multiplication, or even numbers in ZF's definition.

The role of Peano arithmetic is somewhat analogous to the role of the particular definition of a Turing machine in the proof of the halting problem: you can easily swap it out with something commensurate and get the same result.

<comment><USER15> If you can represent something, it's defined. There's no real distinction there. In _weaker_ systems, this is not possible. ZF proves all of the Peano axioms, for example.

(Stop pretending to explain things to me that I already know.)

<comment><USER16> Then what do you mean by "depends heavily on the properties of Peano arithmetic"? There are lots of axiomatizations of arithmetic that can represent addition and multiplication that are not equiconsistent with Peano arithmetic, just like there are lots of definitions of computability that are equivalent to Turing machines (e.g. the partial recursive functions).

Also when talking about a formal theory distinguishing the definition (i.e. the axioms) and the theorems is pretty important.

EDIT: I realize now that a specific example would be helpful. Goedel's theorem can be applied to primitive recursive arithmetic[1], which is neither weaker nor stronger than Peano arithmetic. Interestingly enough PRA with a small addition (of broader transfinite induction) can actually prove Peano arithmetic[2].

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

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentzen%27s_consistency_proof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentzen%27s_consistency_proof)

<comment><USER15> I mean this:

>represent addition and multiplication

It's the simplest possible explanation. Stop being a pretentious jerk. Yes, I know about primitive recursive arithmetic. I first learned about it about ten years ago.

EDIT: Wait a second. Look, I said this:

>depends heavily on the properties of Peano arithmetic, _as defined by addition and multiplication_

I said it _right there_. How could you not know this? When I said "the properties of Peano arithmetic", I meant _the presence of addition and multiplication_.

Let me explain it another way: Goedel's theorem is a theorem about _math_. Math as it was understood in the 18th century. That's what makes it interesting. The halting problem is proven with an abstract machine that was invented, mostly, to use as a basis to form analogies with _other_ machines. So it's general by construction. (If the integers were not already interesting, Goedel's theorem would be like proving a variant of the halting problem for some weird computational structure that has no relevance to anything and is absurdly cumbersome to prove equivalent to other systems. But for the integers, the analogy is _why_ it's interesting. Nobody expected the Goedel numbering.)

Yes, Goedel's theorem applies to all interesting versions of the integers, but it does not apply to all interesting mathematical systems. IIRC people usually cite the theory of "real closed fields" or something like that.

<comment><USER16> Just because I mention something doesn't mean I assume _you_ don't know it. This is a public forum and although it's Hacker News I still doubt everyone has heard of primitive recursive arithmetic. You're the only one making personal statements here. Also I don't know what sort of code I'm supposed to use to make my arguments without offending you, if PRA is the example I think illuminates my point I kind of have to write its name whether you know of it or not.

> I said it right there. How could you not know this? When I said "the > properties of Peano arithmetic", I meant the presence of addition and > multiplication.

That's a curious definition of " _heavily_ dependent" on the properties of Peano arithmetic (when the condition is in fact "any integer arithmetic with addition and multiplication"), and I'd argue it would be hazardously confusing to the uninitiated, but that's just semantics. Back to the original point (that the analogy is poor) I don't see how that breaks the analogy at all. Just like there are weaker arithmetics that escape Goedel's theorems (I will not mention their names since that seems to just cause issues), there are weaker models of computation that dodge the halting problem (again I'm sure you know of them, the one I'm thinking of off the top of my head rhymes with schmimative shmecursive shmunctions).

> Let me explain it another way: Goedel's theorem is a theorem about math. > Math as it was understood in the 18th century. That's what makes it > interesting.

I think what makes it interesting has nothing to do with the particulars of what people thought math was in the 18th century. I doubt there are any mathematicians from ancient Greece to a thousand years from now that would seriously consider using a logical system incapable of modeling addition and multiplication as a ground-level theory for the majority of mathematics. They probably _would_ be fine with one that only killed off Peano arithmetic, just like we'd be fine with a form of computation that wasn't as limiting as PRFs but didn't happen to be susceptible to Turing's reasoning. It seems just as general by construction, and I doubt it is an accident that Goedel using something so basic.

Basically what I'm saying is just like the fact that the Church-Turing thesis has held up and all interesting forms of computation and equivalent to Turing machines, there is an implicit Addition-And-Multiplication-Are-Basic thesis that claims that systems unable to model addition and multiplication in some form are fun to visit but not to live in when you're doing mathematics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While the Berry paradox isn't strictly speaking mathematically sensible, there are similar ideas that lead to new and less well-known impossibility results. [https://arxiv.org/pdf/chao-dyn/9406002.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/chao- dyn/9406002.pdf) has a transcript of an overview of the idea and main results by the researcher who came up with them, as well as a fairly extensive bibliography.

There's also a version of Russell's paradox lurking in the standard proof of Cantor's theorem ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_theorem)).

</comment><comment><USER18> I couldn't make it through GEB, but I read a good concise explanation in a book called Godel's Proof: [https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6dels-Proof-Ernest- Nagel/dp/081...](https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6dels-Proof-Ernest- Nagel/dp/0814758371)

</comment><comment><USER12> See the following for history and limitations of Godel's results:

[https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01566393](https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-01566393)

</comment><comment><USER19> I just read "I Am a Strange Loop" and he the author a pretty nice job of explaining this -- Unfortunately, I could never get through GEB so I do not know if the explanation in there.

<comment><USER20> its there, about the middle of the book..

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> For those interested, Hoffstadter's Godel Escher Bach gives a great introduction into formal systems and Godels incompleteness theorem. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER22> I read it cover to cover out of a sense of obligation but came away very disappointed. The Achilles-Turtle-Random Other Creature allegories got very tiresome, and the content took a very long time to get to the point. For anyone interested in the proof, I recommend Gödel's Proof by Nagel instead. It covers the same material in about a tenth the space.

(GEB has other philosophical discourses that are interesting, if only as an example of how people can very reasonably mispredict the future. In Hofstader's case, he posited that chess would only be played at a human level by an AGI.)

<comment><USER23> Absolutely agree. GEB constantly tries to prove the cleverness of the author, complete with winks and nudges. It stacks so many unintuitive analogies on top of each other that I spent most of the time trying to recall which real-world concepts they all mapped to.

Also, the book is about 98% Gödel and 2% Escher and Bach. Any time it steps outside its wheelhouse of math and into the realm of philosophy or art, you get the distinct sense that it has no idea what it's talking about.

Do yourself a favor and just take discrete math 1 and read a few Wikipedia articles instead.

<comment><USER24> _Do yourself a favor and just take discrete math 1 and read a few Wikipedia articles instead._

+100, exactly. I have some familiarity with mathematical logic, and with Bach (though admittedly I'm less familiar with Escher) and I found GEB to be unintuitive at best, and misleading at worst.

To be honest, there may not be anything really magic about Goedel's incompleteness theorem once you grasp the core concept, which is: If you encode all proofs into a formal language, you can make a statement that is true but unprovable. (Which is, effectively: "This statement has no proof"). Most of Goedel's work on the incompleteness theorem was on the systematization of proofs, which can be tedious to work through.

I found at the time Godel's completeness theorem to be more interesting. Though I never got into model theory or more advanced mathematical logic so, grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel like the further you go in maths, the less attention is given to details, which are "left as exercise to the reader".

<comment> dan-robertson This depends a lot on the branch of maths: eg topology has much more of a reputation for being wishy-washy than analysis.

It also depends what the context is. A paper is not meant to prove things sufficiently for a layperson but for the author's peers and so an omitted proof means one of "proven elsewhere;" "follows in a straightforward way from the definitions;" "follows in a straightforward way from an earlier proposition;" or "follows from a well-known pattern in the subfield." And here "follows in a straightforward way" typically means something between "just look at;" "at each step there is only one reasonable thing to do so just do that;" and "apply all the standard tricks from the subfield and see what sticks."

It is not true that advanced mathematics is less rigorous than more elementary maths, it's just that materials for advanced topics require more domain knowledge, and provide less hand-holding.

<comment><USER26> And I feel like this is where better hyperlinking of papers could be used. Like not just citations, but the ability to click through to the "proven elsewhere" perhaps with a short paragraph of how the given citation proves it.

<comment><USER27> Paper writing is hard. Adding more material - even supplementary material just slows down the work of good people.

On the other hand, I do feel like there should be websites where papers can be annotated by readers, who can provide missing details etc. Though this does require a lot more papers to be open access.

<comment><USER28> Basically something like rapgenius but for papers?

<comment><USER29> [https://fermatslibrary.com](https://fermatslibrary.com)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Funding Brooklyn Castle - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/06/funding-brooklyn-castle.html

<comment><USER2> I admire the VC companies that pledge towards charitable causes. Its nice to see one that actively works towards promoting these causes too.</comment>


Meet the laptop you'll use in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9070158&intsrc=hm_ts_head

<comment><USER2> I'm sure we'll see a few of these ideas - some may even become common, but in 2015, my laptop will still be a clamshell design. The clamshell design provides a proper keyboard with proper tactile feedback, a palm rest and an easily adjustable display. It's stable sitting on a lap, and closes up to protect the screen and keyboard from damage, or simply getting dirty.

I'll be using said laptop to write code in a variant of a programming language invented in 1958 using a variant of an editor invented in the '70s. My car will still have a steering wheel and be rear wheel drive. Some things just work until a truly disruptive technology comes along and completely changes the game. The clamshell laptop is one of those things, and I don't see anything truly disruptive in this article.

</comment><comment><USER3> It really needs to be the size of a legal pad, use a stylus, abusable like a legal pad (very durable), WiFi, maybe e-paper for output. Nothing should slide, fold or twist--just a slab of input/computation/output. almost completely sealed, it should easily survive a coffee spill.

bonus points for something like ultravnc support so it can just be an extension of your desktop display.

<comment><USER4> > bonus points for something like ultravnc support so it can just be an > extension of your desktop display.

I'm waiting for the day when just setting two tablet-like devices near one another makes them into one, larger screen. They could even snap into one another to form one huge, seamless slab. Of course, you'd need something a little more advanced than even remote X server/client sessions to get it to work, because someone might want to "tear off" an application in one corner and take it with them to the bathroom, behind a lead wall for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Look's like the Apple is going this way. Their iphone technology is exactly what you need for a full screen laptop. To make a device like this really work, both the hardware and software have to be re-designed. You cannot simply stick OSX or Vista on it and expect a good user experience.

Notably, the use of a stylus is very unnecessary. And IMHO, this is more like the laptop of 2010 or 2012 and it will be coming out from 1 infinity loop.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ok, the one that mounts on your steering wheel is a HORRIBLE E idea!! Well, at least 'til we get cars that drive themselves.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe they should have shown a picture of a clever looking mobile phone. Will people even bother with a laptop in 7 years if the have a slick Android/iPhone/etc device?

<comment><USER8> Yes, if they benefit from a larger screen and full keyboard. Unless human eyes get much sharper and fingers get smaller in the next 7 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'll be using the OLPC! (Hopefully, if they deliver to Canada by then :P)</comment>


Economics and evolutionary biology reading list - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasoncollins.org/economics-and-evolutionary-biology-reading-list/ <comment><USER2> "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is excellent. I don't think the synopsis really did it justice.

Diamond supported his thesis very well, while it could have benefited from some environmental feedback information, on the time scales he was examining I think he appropriately examined the economic impacts of the individual environments societies developed in, the "flak" he received is in some cases undeserved.

He meshed his expertise and argument very well, resulting in a great contribution to the understanding of the development of human societies.</comment>


Interview with Casey Muratori - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogcreek.com/dev-life-interview-with-casey-muratori/ <comment><USER2> The last item is a good 'un

> What advice would you give to a younger version of yourself starting out in > development?

> Don't ever bother learning or using object-oriented programming. It's a > deeply flawed programming methodology, and I wasted a good five years of my > programming life thinking that it was useful, and I'll never get that back. > If I had been able to tell 18-year-old me to stick with compression-oriented > programming, I probably would be a much better programmer today and I would > have made decent code in my 18 to 23-years old period instead of the garbage > OOP code that I ended up making. I will be forever thankful to Jeff Roberts > at RAD Game Tools for providing the environment that finally made me realize > that OOP was a severe impediment to writing good code, and it didn't take > long in that environment before I was back to writing good code again.

<comment><USER3> It's funny. He gives an example of how by grouping data and functions that operate on that data (in a class) is a great example of COP and different from OOP...:

[http://mollyrocket.com/casey/stream_0019.html](http://mollyrocket.com/casey/stream_0019.html)

I can only conclude that he spent ten years in the world of toy class-oriented "oop", premature oversized architecture and other nonsense that follow from going from "have no idea about the code/function; will model as strict class hierarchy" \-- rather than doing the sane thing BDD/TDD/throw-away prototyping -- followed by refactoring / reimplementation.

It makes for a great sound-bite -- but he's kind of attacking "straw-man" OOP.

<comment><USER4> There are several large differences you're missing. Many of these are elaborated upon in other posts, and some in his twitch stream.

His methodology basically completely eschews dynamic dispatch in favor of static dispatch. No function pointers or vtables, just conditionals.

Abstractions are built up slowly, only after you're reasonably certain its the abstraction you want. The initial pass of the code has almost no abstraction and favors large functions. The reasoning here is that its usually far easier to add abstraction than it is to remove it, and starting with abstract code is a good way to lead yourself in the wrong direction.

Most interfaces between systems are based around data layout, and not functions/method sets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel just like him, so I must be old too!

"GNU Emacs is awful – it's so slow it can barely even auto-indent my files, which is insane considering the horsepower it has to work with. Visual Studio 2012 is pathetic. It takes a perceptible amount of time to step a single line of code in the debugger. That is inexcusable, especially since in the old days (circa MSVC 5), it stepped instantaneously on much less powerful hardware!"

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're in a position where you need something to listen to while driving or public transportation, I recommend The Jeff and Casey Show: [http://mollyrocket.com/jacs/](http://mollyrocket.com/jacs/)

It's quite fun. I would describe it as two experienced programmers who are goofy, grumpy, and opinionated, shooting the shit.

<comment><USER5> Or [http://handmadehero.org](http://handmadehero.org)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, what a negative person.</comment>


Peak Battery: Why Smartphone Battery Life Still Stinks, and Will for Years - <AUTHOR> http://techland.time.com/2013/04/01/peak-battery-why-smartphone-battery-life-still-stinks-and-will-for-years/

<comment><USER2> A tech article where 2x performance gains in 4-5 years is considered a stretch. Oddly...refreshing.</comment>


Identity Diversification: The Case for a Well-Balanced Sense of Self - <AUTHOR> https://nickwignall.com/identity-diversification/ <comment><USER2> I was looking forward to reading this article as the concept (even just the name, identify diversification) immediately resonated with me.

What I found was an anecdote followed by a few hypotheticals. "What if you spend all your time sportsing and then you get hurt?" Really a minimal treatment of the idea unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a founder, I'm working on diversifying my identity by learning mandolin, reading more fiction, and running again. The funny thing is I'm actually more effective at work when I take time for myself outside of the company. In the moment it's hard to give myself the permission, but I almost never regret it now.

</comment><comment><USER4> This resonates a lot with me. I recently ran into a somewhat similar situation and I was grateful that I had read Mark Manson's article about the same topic[1] a while back. It allowed me to recognize and address the underlying issue fairly quickly.

[1] [https://markmanson.net/diversify-your- identity](https://markmanson.net/diversify-your-identity)

</comment><comment><USER5> If one has a cognitive distortion it's better to talk back to that distortion. Why should these aspects of so called identity be important to how I feel anyway?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeling_Good:_The_New_Mood_The...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeling_Good:_The_New_Mood_Therapy)

</comment><comment><USER6> Your interests need maintenance and care, you cultivate them like a garden. You can definitely find yourself uninterested in everything if you think interests should find you and not the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER7> Keep Your Identity Small — [http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> or: "Keep your identity large."

</comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this common Buddhist teaching. My body doesn't define me , my mind who tells me suicidal thoughts does not define me. What do you guys think ?

<comment><USER10> The article is less ambitious - find a couple more identities so you can get by when one crumbles. Buddhist thing is more radical - stop relying on identities and stop having them.</comment></comment>


With Sinofsky Gone, Start Menu Could Return to Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Start-Menu-Windows-8-Steven-Sinofsky-Steve-Ballmer-Stardock,19161.html#xtor=RSS-181

<comment><USER2> Speculation piled on top of more speculation, Hacker News indeed...

FTA: "Currently Microsoft isn't commenting on the subject, but an article published by USA Today points to the _possibility_."

From the USA Today "article":

"The canning of Steven Sinofsky 15 days after the launch of Windows 8 _could_ _signal_ the start of Microsoft dealing with lukewarm reception to its latest operating system."

</comment><comment><USER3> My prediction has always been that the start menu is gone in Win8 to force people into Metro-mode and bootstrap the tablet app ecosystem. Once the tablet ecosystem is well populated then there's no need to force users into Metro.

Windows 8 is a write-off in terms of corporations- Microsoft expects very few to upgrade to Win8. So they sacrifice a bit of usability to kickstart tablets, then bring back the start menu to make corporations happy in Win 9.

<comment><USER4> That does seem to be the cycle they've been following, willing or not. Win2000/WinXP/Win7 for the corps; skipping every other Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _cough_ I had a feeling... _cough_

I'll just leave this here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4793620>

</comment><comment><USER6> The UX is broken, but adding the start button would only break it more. I don't have much confidence in their design team, but I think they know there is no returning to the start button.

</comment><comment><USER7> Classic Shell is free and open source. No need to buy Stardock. <http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Do people not understand the start screen works exactly the same as the start menu? Hit win key and type to search. Forget win+q or the charm.

<comment><USER9> I think the bigger gripe is due to lack of any visible innovation that should go with upgrades. I recall WinXP's selling point was the fastest boot time back then and a shiny interface to go with it. Vista couldn't deliver anything and ultimately people moved over to Win7 because the migration was painless.

With Win8, all you see is a wrapper screen of Apps which they have pulled around Win7 underneath. The Windows key on the keyboard was always around but now it is going to be the one key most-in-use, all because they eliminated the start button (so no need to use your mouse to get going).

If you have seen Joli cloud OS, you can tell that they did the same with Ubuntu a long time ago. They wrapped a Chrome browser over the base desktop OS, making it easy for average user to use Linux. But I don't think Jolicloud captured attention from anywhere. Microsoft on the other hand is a 800 pound gorilla and there is no doubt that in few years, we will all be asking Win7 users to get the hell out of their desktops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bullshit. Start menu is a prehensile tail. MS has better sense than this.

<comment><USER11> I don't get this analogy; you probably meant something different.

Prehensile tails are tails that can grasp things. In other words, prehensile tails are totally awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The major drawback of Windows 8 is not just that it lacks the start button, but that it forces you into Metro. Get rid of that and I might consider whatever is coming next after Windows 8.

And stop combining the two UI paradigms in such a messy way. The Charms UI looks very out of place in the desktop UI. It's like they worked for 2 years on the Metro desktop, and in parallel at Windows SP2, and at the end they combined the two very quickly as an afterthought (proof that nothing really integrates between desktop mode and Metro mode), and the end result was what is now Windows 8.

<comment><USER13> > and at the end they combined the two very quickly as an afterthought

This 'lack of team play' is the reason Sinofsky was fired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Launchy is your friend.</comment>


Ask HN: Are service providers breaking the login process for password managers? - <AUTHOR> They Keep changing the typing process for login in for no apparent reason.... for example, one just changed it from [type user]{tab}[type pass]{tab}{enter} to [type user]{tab}{enter}{delay 1000}{tab}{tab}[type pass]{tab}{enter}. <comment><USER2> Often the reason for having the user and password fields on separate 'screens' is to facilitate federated logon.

I.e. if someone has an account where they 'Logged in with Google' or it is connected to an IDAM solution like Okta or Duo, they don't have a password for the site so shouldn't be prompted for it.

As for the delay and any other nonsense, I'm not sure. Perhaps design winning over usability?

<comment><USER3> This is exactly it and it's becoming more and more common.

I have noticed that the password field is just hidden on some sites (as opposed to added or on the next page) and lastpass manages to fill it so once the JavaScript reveals the field it's ready to hit submit.

It would be nice if this could be somehow standardised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some logins (Twilio, Namcheap) function poorly for me, others are great. Sometimes I can't get chrome to remember sign in on Google properties.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do password managers really just send a series of keystrokes, as opposed to just detecting elements and populating them directly? This problem actually sounds familiar from the first time I tried using a password manager, over a decade ago. But I've been using 1password for about a year and haven't had any issues, including on multi-screen login forms.

<comment><USER6> Generally third party applications should not be injecting themselves into your browser and "populating them directly" ...

The auto-type stuff is usually an external one, not a browser addon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That looks more like a silly error than anything else. Password managers are unavoidable and help keep users on services.</comment>


Programming Languages Explained with Music - <AUTHOR> https://blog.toggl.com/programming-languages-explained-with-music-comic/ <comment><USER2> In this context, regular expressions are a Highland Bagpipe:

\- arguably not a proper example

\- have their mystique, which attracts the neophyte

\- integrate poorly with others

\- go REALLY wrong with seemingly innocent changes

\- can be great when done correctly

\- but are mostly an argument in favor of more modern approaches

<comment><USER3> \- Originally used to frighten enemies in battle

<comment><USER2> Well, now:

"At the hight of the battle, after the 79th formed another square the men started to waver. At this point Piper MacKay took up his pipes, stepped out of the safety of the square and started playing. As the French Cavalry attacked he marched around the square, in full view of the enemy and played the piobaireach "Cogadh no Sith," also known as "War or Peace." A few first-hand, written diaries of the battle make mention of this moment, making it one of the earliest accounts of a specific piobaireachd being played on the field of battle."

[https://learn.dojouniversity.com/piper-kenneth-mackay-and- th...](https://learn.dojouniversity.com/piper-kenneth-mackay-and-the-battle- of-waterloo/)

"Angus MacKay gives the text [of "War or Piece"] at greater length, and perhaps completely:

Is comadh leam s' comadh leam cogadh na sìth ann. Marbhair sa chogadh na chrochair sa'n t-shith mi.

'I don't care, I don't care, war or peace. I'll be killed in war or hanged in peace'

[http://www.altpibroch.com/ps204/](http://www.altpibroch.com/ps204/)

Oh flower of Scotland, when will we see your like again?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this comic already years old? I'm not sure everything holds up, and it needs to have Go and Rust added as well.</comment>


A Fatal Paper Cut - Too many shareholders and bad shareholders agreement - <AUTHOR> http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2007/02/a_fatal_paper_c.html <comment><USER2> This is a real problem. When a partner from WSGR came to speak at YC, I asked her what was the single worst mistake made by inexperienced founders, and she said it was being sloppy with stock.

</comment><comment><USER3> The one thing this article screamed to me but isn't outright said is maybe you shouldn't be handing out the shares so liberally in the first place? I was wondering what others thought about this. Of course I say this as my ETS (Estimate Time to Startup) is a few months away....

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Story is not that interesting but the advice is.</comment>


"25 Years of Pixar Animation" (video) - <AUTHOR> http://itechvision.blogspot.com/2011/03/pixar-animation-has-now-achieved-25.html

<comment><USER2> A very good video, but I think it would be fair to explain it's not official. I clicked thinking it was something along the lines of IBM's 100.</comment>


Why Can't European Startups Do Tech? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-16/inside-europe-s-struggle-to-build-a-truly-global-tech-giant <comment><USER2> What I've observed in Europe is that there are huge amount of small companies instead of one big one. While big and powerful companies might be important on global scale. I suspect that on a more local scale, it is the large number of small companies which are more beneficial.

<comment><USER3> This is also what I observe. Those small scale companies might also work on very specific problems. However, at least for the internet brands I think it is true, that no large platform or service is actually coming from Europe.</comment></comment>


A Night at Hacker News Kansai in Japan - <AUTHOR> http://pandoralive.info/?p=2972.

<comment><USER2> This is pretty cool. You'd think one would exist in the Tokyo area first though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually there is already one in Tokyo (HN Tokyo) and they started doing their events before us in Kansai.

<comment><USER2> There is? ... So there is. Guess they don't get as much attention for some reason. Hmm, tempting.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can find them on doorkeeper: [http://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp/](http://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe this isn't the right place for it, but do you have any advice for developers wanting to move to Japan?

<comment><AUTHOR> Some bullet point advice: \- first make sure you really want to move to Japan. I'd suggest doing at least one trip (stay as long as you can) to really make sure you want to live and work in Japan. \- You need academic credentials if you want to get a visa in Japan (unless you come as a student). At least a Masters' Degree. \- You need to build a network/contacts locally in order to make yourself visible, and know their needs. That's probably the hardest part, but something you can start addressing while visiting the country during a trip. \- Be in touch with the latest technologies in the West, as most of the web development in Japan is years late. That's where you can bring some positive insights and practices to local businesses. \- Japan is a Windows/Mac/iOS world so you better focus on these environments to have some value on the market here. Android is still small here, and Linux is virtually unknown. \- Learning a bit of Japanese would not hurt, but it's not mandatory.

Let me know if you have questions on particular points...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advantages of Go Against Python - <AUTHOR> I'm considering to start using Go. So, is it will be helpful If I do? <comment><USER2> I've replaced Python with Go for many of my scripting tasks. I like compiling my programs to an executable and never worrying about different versions, like the ongoing fight between Python 2.7 and Python 3.</comment>


What Clinkle Is and Isn't Building - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/03/18/clinkle-revealed-heres-what-the-embattled-startup-is-and-isnt-building/

<comment><USER2> One can't help but question the wisdom of hiring multiple sales people to sell merchants on accepting a method of payment that has no users.

</comment><comment><USER3> $30mil in VC money and nothing to show for it, but we're not in a bubble...

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the most sardonic article about a startup I've ever read.

</comment><comment><USER5> All you need to know about Clinkle is here: [http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker- media/image/upload/t_ku-xlarge...](http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker- media/image/upload/t_ku-xlarge2/19e8z44d30wlmpng.png)

</comment><comment><USER6> Nothing new in this article at all.

Remove the CEO. Start over. No one at 22 can lead; especially not one coddled by the Stanford/quasi-ivy/ivy-league system.

<comment><USER5> _Remove the CEO._

Yes.

 _Start over._

Scrap it, especially the shitty name that is now a liability.

 _No one at 22 can lead_

False. It's extremely rare to have leadership skills at 22, but not impossible. Joan of Arc died at 19.

 _especially not one coddled by the Stanford /quasi-ivy/ivy-league system._

It's not about Stanford. It's about the lack of grit and pain. It's also about a broken selection process that happens _after_ college: the VC chickenhawk culture. For more, go here: [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc- istan-6-th...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-the- isms-of-venture-funded-technology/) .

There are 22-year-olds who can start _great_ companies, but they aren't likely to be found by chickenhawking VCs taking on midlife crisis proteges.</comment></comment>


Show HN: CoLearnr - Collaborate and Learn for free - <AUTHOR> http://www.colearnr.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We believe that collaborative learning (where learners and experts share/discuss/learn together) is better than a MOOC or pinterest model for life-long learning. I gave a talk to Penn State University on this topic recently - [http://coil.psu.edu/2013/09/04/recording-available- redefinin...](http://coil.psu.edu/2013/09/04/recording-available-redefining- collaborative-learning-with-colearnr-a-conversation-with-prabhu-subramanian/)

Please feel free to shoot any questions/ideas/suggestions to help us build a great platform for learning!

\- Prabhu, Miguel, Rashmi and Veronica

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting website.How is it different from Pinterest or Learnist?

[http://learni.st/category/featured](http://learni.st/category/featured)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Evegeny,

They are the usual suspects for social learning, aren't they? Pinterest definitely is an inspiration for the user interface.

The problem with typical social learning platforms is the quality. Try learning about a topic from these sites. There will be just no structuring, anyone can share whatever they know, you can have any content on any board - the reality is that these platforms are no better than following lots and lots of twitter feeds and blogs and trying to learn about a topic. There will be lots and lots of links to read and you might end up spending hours and hours reading them. But after spending that much time, have you ever felt that you have just wasted significant part of your life? I always used to feel so. This is the sad state of informal learning which is one of the reason we keep looking for institutions providing formal learning. Among other things, when you pursue a course from a university or a MOOC or something authoritative, there is a trust that you are not going to end up wasting your time reading biased or some amateurish blog about your subject.

One of the things we did with CoLearnr is to attract people with expertise in certain subject areas and allowed only these folks to curate content. Of course, the community plays an important role in enhancing the topic by participating in discussion, suggesting alternative links etc.

<comment><USER2> I agree. I have never used pinterest for anything myself. Your website has videos from YouTube, MIT and Stanford (Entrepreneurship). I like the convenience part in the sense I need not look for those videos myself if someone has already put the effort in collecting them. I also like the fact that your website supports pdf, slides and webpages as well. But how is it any different from a website that just has bunch of links to other free content?

Here is one - [http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses](http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses)

Apart from the interface, what else is there for learners?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can do quite a bit already with CoLearnr.

1\. You can create a private topic just for you and curate contents that you like. Very shortly you will be able to share this with your friends and collaboratively build a topic. Check out this video for an example - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HydOgRqByRg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HydOgRqByRg)

2\. We have a small but growing community already. Please check out our topics. Below are some of the topics we are proud of.

[http://www.colearnr.com/soft-skills](http://www.colearnr.com/soft-skills) [http://www.colearnr.com/topic/522677f41fe5e070f6829e03/moocs](http://www.colearnr.com/topic/522677f41fe5e070f6829e03/moocs)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hack Olark (s09) to load after document ready - <AUTHOR> http://artchang.com/olark-jquery-hack-to-load-after-dom

<comment><AUTHOR> Load Olark and really any other third party script after the DOM is ready!</comment>


Working hard or hardly working? VC-backed startups vs. Bootstraps - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacksonfish.com/blog/2008/03/11/working-hard-or-hardly-working-vc-backed-startups-vs-bootstraps/

<comment><USER2> This isn't 100% true, i'm working at a VC-backed startup and i wouldn't say that there's a lot of pressure on me (as a developer) to work 90 hour weeks and stuff. Although to be honest, i'm not exactly sure how smart our VC's are.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the site design.

Very different...

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for all the comments.

@edw519: We're certainly big fans of revenue. We even have a non-trivial amount of it (for a 3 person startup). :) The whole point of the post is that we don't believe anybody has reliable predictive power over when that "non- refundable vote" will show up in your bank account. And because of that, submitting to artificial deadlines on when the revenue should arrive can lead to overworking the team. Make sense?

<comment><USER5> Yes, it makes perfect sense.

"we don't believe anybody has reliable predictive power over when that "non- refundable vote" will show up in your bank account"

Neither do I. But if you do things right, you can make a pretty good guess. There's a big difference between building something cool and hoping it sticks, and being directed by those who would buy. A lead, of course, is NOT a check. Obviously, you must know this already.

<comment><USER4> Agreed on all fronts. Of course, doing ad-supported projects in the consumer market make the lead-to-sale connection much more tenuous/indirect.Whether that's a logical path is of course an entirely different debate. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this article applies even for established companies regardless of where the funding comes from or if they're a startup. I have a friend who decided to take a 20% pay cut to work only 4 days a week and now feels more productive and happy, whereas another friend I know prefers working 60-80 hour weeks and then taking a month off. Either way, it seems obvious that even the most productive, passionate people need downtime to recharge.

</comment><comment><USER7> Revenue masks what no amount of money can buy: Motivation in the heart and soul of a human. The kind of motivation that leads people who believe in a dream to give blood, sweat and tears to a project and come back for more with a huge smile on their face.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting approach, but funny that he never mentions the single key word that makes it all possible: revenue. Whether you're bootstrapping or not, the best way to verify your concept AND position yourself to run a marathon is to FIND A CUSTOMER. Putting a team together, launching, getting into yc, taking serious investment - these are all great milestones. But there's still nothing quite like depositing a customer's non-refundable vote into your bank account. That's the day your world REALLY changes.

<comment><USER8> That day came a long time ago for me, and yet I still feel like I have a long way to go. There's a big difference between having paying customers and having a steady stream of new customers.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but not as big as the difference between having paying customers and not having paying customers.

You made it over the biggest hump. Best wishes making over all the rest of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I could hardly read the article because of the font size and face choice.</comment>


Mister Trash Wheel - <AUTHOR> http://baltimorewaterfront.com/healthy-harbor/water-wheel/ <comment><USER2> Every few months, the people behind Mr. Trash Wheel do a lively AMA on Reddit, the last of which was in August: [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4fzb1w/i_am_mr_trash_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4fzb1w/i_am_mr_trash_wheel_im_a_trasheatin_freewheelin/)

Definitely a fun way to get people who might otherwise care less interested in reducing the waste that ends up on urban bodies of water.

<comment><USER3> One in December with the newer Professor Trash Wheel: [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5gnek7/we_are_mr_tras...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5gnek7/we_are_mr_trash_wheel_and_professor_trash_wheel/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a short video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkQbcrzyAeE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkQbcrzyAeE)

It's powered by the water current or if need be by solar cells.

<comment><USER4> and they'll soon need one on the anacostia

<comment><USER5> And there is interest in having one on the Anacostia River: [http://dcist.com/2017/03/what_exactly_is_a_trash_wheel_and_d...](http://dcist.com/2017/03/what_exactly_is_a_trash_wheel_and_d.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The SF Bay has the Raccoon, a trash collection boat operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, out of Sausalito. It's for bigger stuff, like logs, that could hole small craft if hit.

</comment><comment><USER7> Heeyy I live there! Now we have Prof. Trash Wheel as well. Honestly, I'm pretty bullish on Baltimore; much more affordable than Manhattan or San Fran.

</comment><comment><USER8> This doesn't seem like a lot of trash collected for 3 years time.</comment>


Server Admin for Programmers - <AUTHOR> https://serversforhackers.com/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, Docker and lack of package systems.

Also, Ansible is not configuration management tool, it's somebody's deployment script.</comment>


Encrypted Bookmarks in Chrome with Hush - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hush-private-bookmarking/hjmoaenjknbdehbiaeeijcppnljflkff

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a clever solution for chrome, but does anyone know of a similar add-on for Firefox?

<comment><USER2> Thanks! We've developed an analogous extension in Firefox, but it has been in the review queue at addons.mozilla.org for over a week now. If you'd like to try it out, you can download it at teameuler.com/hush.</comment></comment>


AWS is having widespread issues - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/chafikhnini/status/890574129426026497 <comment><USER2> I've been working at my first software dev job for a few months now. I sat down at work today and, for the first time, I had to launch and configure an EC2 instance. Of course, within the first few minutes of getting started AWS starts having issues.

<comment><USER3> Great, you broke it.

<comment><USER2> It's called manual testing and I clearly did my job.

<comment><USER3> <redacted>

<comment><USER2> I was joking as well :)

<comment><USER3> Ohhhh I lose

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At Zapier we saw half the internet on AWS blip out for a bit (us too), but it seems to have been short lived. Approximately Jul 27, 2017 13:47:45 to Jul 27, 2017 13:59:33 (UTC) as far as we could tell.

</comment><comment><USER5> From our EC2 dashboard in us-east-1:

[RESOLVED] Network Connectivity 07:28 AM PDT Between 6:47 AM and 7:10 AM PDT we experienced increased launch failures for EC2 Instances, degraded EBS volume performance and connectivity issues for some instances in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region.

edit: looks like this message is now on the status page

</comment><comment><USER6> This is why I am really scared about companies owning too much market share. I mean literally who is not running or using anything that runs on AWS ?

<comment><USER7> > I mean literally who is not running or using anything that runs on AWS ?

Google and Microsoft both run their own equivalents to AWS (Google Cloud and Azure, respectively).

They don't have as much market share as AWS does, but they're a lot larger than you might expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There was definitely an issue. Around 25% of our servers in one availability zone of us-east-1 fell off the network for 15 minutes or so, starting around 13:47 GMT. They're back now.

During this time period, we were also unable to access the console (500 errors).

<comment><USER9> Why does it always seem to be us-east?

<comment><USER10> Isn't it the cheapest region to use? Probably sees more use because of it.

<comment><USER11> us-west-2 (Oregon) and us-east-2 (Ohio) are the same price as us-east-1 (Virginia). At least that's true for most resources, I didn't check the full price list.

I don't know about Ohio since I don't use it, but we've had far fewer problems in us-west-2 than in us-east-1

<comment><USER12> If I have a single-region service, I always put it in us-west-2. It's super reliable, and gets updates after us-east-1 and us-west-1, which means all the kinks are out before they hit us-west-2.

On days like today, I without fail get a message from my friend who works at a shop where everything is in us-east-1 (multi-AZs) about how much he hates me for avoiding east like the plague.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From my dashboard: EC2 VPC network health intra AZ issue

The issue that began at Thu, 27 Jul 2017 13:53:00 GMT has been resolved and the service is operating normally.

Start time July 27, 2017 at 9:53:00 AM UTC-4 End time July 27, 2017 at 10:08:00 AM UTC-4

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Now getting Lambda provisioning errors in us-east-1:

LAMBDA_FAILED: ServiceException: We currently do not have sufficient capacity in the region you requested. Our system will be working on provisioning additional capacity. You can avoid getting this error by temporarily reducing your request rate.

I wonder if they had to take part of their fleet offline due to the issues

</comment><comment><USER14> Here comes the rarest opportunity of a live AWS outage postmortom. Wait... it should be called present-mortom.

<comment><USER15> It's _mortem_ , a latin word (accusative singular of "mors"). I can't think of any latin declension or any latin word that would have ended in "om".

<comment><USER16> Okay

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://github.com/ro31337/awesome-aws- alternatives](https://github.com/ro31337/awesome-aws-alternatives)

<comment><USER18> Services mentioned here don't require a manual to read before use and don't come with a list of quirks. Good list

<comment><USER19> Everything requires a manual and has a list of quirks if you're doing something non-trivial or high volume. Everything has trade-offs, the only question is how much you get to know upfront.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When AWS is having widespread issues half the internet seems to stop working. This looks like a 500 error on the console.

Is there any actual indication of AWS issues beyond one random person's tweet?

 _edit:_ Ah, [https://twitter.com/ylastic](https://twitter.com/ylastic) just went on a retweeting tear. Looks like us-east-1?

<comment><USER21> At my company we are seeing issues in us-east-1 involving KMS and EC2.

<comment><USER22> Interesting - I use both those services in us-east-1 and have not experienced issues. [https://status.aws.amazon.com/](https://status.aws.amazon.com/) also shows a sea of green, although I'm not sure this page is even functional, because even when I know AWS has been having issues it's a sea of green.

<comment><USER20> In the last major AWS outage, it stayed green because updating it depended on some services affected by the outage.

Even when they _can_ update it, it seems to be a manual process.

<comment><USER23> I think they've scrapped the AWS dependencies there, which were awfully silly. But it doesn't really seem to update regardless, and when it does it's a cute little 'i' on the green checkmark to inform you that everything is fine except for the 'actually working' part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Right now it seems that my $1/month shared hosting has less downtime than AWS this year.

<comment><USER16> If AWS was running "$1/month shared hosting" I'm sure they'd have better uptime too. Apple and oranges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We're heavily dependent on AWS, and haven't seen any issues yet today.

<comment><USER2> It seems like there are only issues on US-EAST-1

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If there's "elevated packet loss" to/from EBS, which is your disk - does that mean that people had to rebuild or redeploy instances using EBS storage?

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder how many people die because of their smart homes being dependent on some network thing this time around. I'm 80% kidding, I think?

<comment><USER28> If you have critical systems completely reliant on the cloud, then that's just darwin awards in action

<comment><USER29> The problem is that the people dying aren't going to be the people who implemented the solution.

<comment><USER30> They are going to be the people that brought them. It's still their decision.

That said, we have governments for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> We're seeing high error rates writing to Kinesis

</comment><comment><USER32> I have external scripts monitoring my Lightsail instance, there was no downtime for Lightsail.

Edit: The instance is in Ohio.

</comment><comment><USER33> Jira is now down too. Not bitbucket though!

<comment><USER34> If only it would stay down.</comment></comment>


Woman whose rent was raised by 400% in SF made more from AirBNB than she paid - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2015/03/18/lawyer-of-bernal-heights-landlord-provides-statement-there-are-many-sides-to-a-story/

<comment><USER2> Lama pulled a clever maneuver, and San Francisco tenants rights attorney Joseph Tobener, managing partner at Tobener Law Center, says _it's too early to tell whether what she did is legal._

Complete. Fail. In the "lawmakers, you had _one_ job" category.</comment>


Why we test every single API deployment - <AUTHOR> https://assertible.com/blog/test-every-single-api-deployment <comment><USER2> We've been dog-fooding Assertible extensively since we released and it's now a primary part of our continuous integration/deployment setup.

I'm interested to hear what solutions others are using to test production / staging environments (automatically?).

I'd love to hear any feedback!</comment>


Hacker News Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://blog.echen.me/2011/03/14/hacker-news-analysis/

<comment><USER2> You're working from a different definition of "good comment" than Graham is. The concern with "bad" comments isn't simply that they exist, but that they have deceptively positive scores.

<comment><USER3> ...which is a problem with a crystal clear cause: if you allow purely democratic voting, then you'll end up with really popular crap reaching the top of the pile fairly often. Imagine how useless Pagerank would be as an algorithm if it considered links from every drooler with a domain name to count for the same amount as those coming from the frontpage of Yahoo - that's essentially what you're doing when you tally up votes on a site The only reason it's not worse than it currently is is that there's no real incentive for people to game the system, so we don't end up with massive comment spammers. But we still have douchebags, fools, and all other sorts of sheeple, and in large enough numbers they end up diluting the votes that should count the most.

Several solutions are probably obvious to everyone here and I won't go into them, but the point is, you'd have to be willing to throw fairness aside in order to fix the problem - if a brand new account's vote is worth the same amount as mine, which is worth the same as tptacek's, then something is wrong.

<comment><USER4> Your last suggestion seems to make things less democratic understandably, but how would it be implemented?

<comment><USER5> _Your last suggestion seems to make things less democratic understandably, but how would it be implemented?_

Weighted votes based on karma. Or restrict the number of votes a user can cast based on karma or account age.

A problem with these kinds of things is determining what does or does not work and picking up on unintended side-effects, and doing so in a timely manner.

For example, if "young" accounts have very limited votes available will new users be less likely to stick around long enough to become more active voters? How long would it take to see this? What if by the time you recognize an undesired side effect you've already sent the site down the road of ruin (or something)?

For example, how long will pg keep comment vote hidden? How many people have found this to be sufficiently detrimental that they have, or soon will, leave HN and not come back?

How do you craft meaningful site experiments like this while keeping risk to a minimum?

<comment><USER4> I suggest similar to Reddit's anti-spam mechanism, fuzz the voting but give the impression that karma is somewhat important.

<comment><USER6> Maybe all we need is 'bad, average, good, great' to be shown alongside the comment. Or something along the lines of what slashdot do with allowing you to vote for comments as 'insightful' or 'funny' etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been thinking lately about running some analysis of my own, but couldn't find a data dump and didn't feel like scraping. Why has the dump been pulled?

I'm thinking of classifying entries as temporal/atemporal. Temporal are industry news, press releases, rumors and alike. Atemporal are reference materials, essays, howtos, analysis, links to libraries/frameworks/products.

Essentially, I feel that while temporal entries provide a more immediate reward and larger discussions, atemporal tend to be more technical, more interesting, have more valuable discussions, and overall are what sets HN apart of other places. I'd rather see a front page full of erlang stories than pieces about what Apple has just announced (I'm pretty sure I'll see these in many different places).

A good balance is probably ideal: a few most interesting breaking stories, and the most thought-provoking atemporal materials users have ran into lately. The perceived decline of the front page and comment quality could be attributed to a shift in this balance towards temporal stories.

As to how to classify, I'd start as marking stories with multiple duplicates in a short period of time as temporal, and the ones with duplicates spread apart over long periods as atemporal, and go from there.

<comment><USER8> It's not obvious to me how to _automatically_ classify stories as (a)temporal. My understanding of the way submissions work is that if Bob submits something that Alice also recently[1] submitted, then it just gets counted as an upvote for Alice's story.

Then, of course, there are the "this happened recently, which inspired me to think about some broader trend". For example, during the AWS outage, Coding Horror had a story about Netflix's Chaos Monkey[2], which one could easily classify as both temporal and atemporal.

[1] For some definition of "recently" that I haven't yet figured out. [2] [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/04/working-with-the- ch...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/04/working-with-the-chaos- monkey.html)

<comment><USER7> I believe your understanding is right, recently being a month, provided it's the exact same URL. Popular news are usually submitted from different sources so there are actual duplicates. I agree that it's certainly not easy to automate the classification.

The Coding Horror example is a very good one. Jeff write very atemporal stories, I'm pretty sure that happens intentionally. It's not unusual to see one of his posts from several years ago pop in the front page every now and then. Same with Joel's. It may be inspired by a recent event, but the lesson is meant to stand.

I think a good heuristic would be: given a random, highly voted story from the archives, would it get upvoted if reposted today?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Alas, the date of the submitted article is 14 March 2011, so all the data are from before the recent round of experimentation announced by pg.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333>

Considering that pg had asked just before then (28 days ago, also after the date of the submitted blog post) how to "stave off decline of HN,"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696>

it may be that there are differing opinions about the quality of posts to HN in the early part of 2011. Writing then, he said, "The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean and/or (b) dumb that (c) get massively upvoted."

</comment><comment><USER10> I would love to see something like this from PG.

In specific, I'd like to see information on the following in relation to the recent changes in HN:

        - increase/decrease in activity of users with highest karma
        - increase/decrease average in comment score, normalized
            by time after post of OP
        - amount of time the highest rated posts stayed on the front page
        - trends for # of flags

Also, it would be great if he put the guidelines on the submission page.

</comment><comment><USER11> _So Hacker News has probably gotten worse if you like to read every single post, but better if you only like to read the front page._

It is hard to define what a "quality" article is and not sure if I agree with his assumptions, but I personally have seen exactly this over the past year compiling my weekly Hacker Newsletter.

</comment><comment><USER12> No graph of Apple in the "mentioned companies" section? I'd be very curious how they were trending.

<comment><USER13> D'oh, Apple always strangely slips my mind when I think of software companies. I added a graph (<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10506/blog/hn- analysis/pct_apple.png>). Interestingly, it's the company with the clearest upward trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting analysis.

I strongly disagree that what he defines as "Quality of Posts" measures quality of posts, though.

<comment><USER15> If coming up with an objective measure of quality was feasible, the voting system could be scrapped entirely, and instead of making a site that allows users to submit links, pg could have written a web crawler.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, I don't get your comment.

<comment><USER15> I'm just pointing out that it should come as no surprise that the author of this blog post didn't come up with a good metric for judging quality. As in, if the author had come up with such a metric, he would have started a company and become fantastically wealthy applying this magical quality-quantifying algorithm, rather than writing a blog post.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps. But they are degrees of usefulness, and it's probably possible to do better. Especially if you do an analysis in hindsight, where it's no longer possible for the participants to game the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> An interesting analysis (which only pg could do) is to multiply each vote by ln(user's karma) or something similar. That could arguably deal with "noobs who don't follow the rules" problem.

The above analysis will assume, though, that the problem of decreasing quality of votes (or discussions) is caused by newcomers and not by old high karma users getting nastier.

</comment><comment><USER17> Perfect example of how graphs can be subtly deceptive:

1) "Variance in number of comments" is visualized as a circle's radius.

2) ... But a circle's _area_ increases as (pi)r^2. That's an exponential increase.

A fair visualization would show a linear increase, not an exponential one.

EDIT: To be more clear, the goal is "more pixels" = "more variance". Growing the visualization by a radius is inherently unfair.

It's precisely these kind of subtleties that make statistics such a fallacy minefield.

<comment><USER18> > 2) ... But a circle's area increases as (pi)r^2. That's an exponential > increase.

No, no, no, no, no. "exponential" != "has an exponent". Exponential means the variable _is_ the exponent, as in 2^n. The word you're looking for is "quadratic".

<comment><USER17> It doesn't matter whether it's unfair by a factor of n^2 or by 2^n. If it's unfair, then it _cannot be looked at whatsoever without drawing incorrect conclusions_.

Or are you trying to educate me out of good will? If so, thanks.

<comment><USER18> Kind of the latter, really. While the true meaning was clear from context here, it's very easy to make the same mistake in other contexts without the true meaning being so clear. And, unlike a number of other common mistakes, this is one that can really bite you in the ass in some contexts, so it's good to set the record straight before your gluteals are masticated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Your plots look great; what tool(s) did you use to create them?

<comment><USER13> I used R's awesome ggplot2 package.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised there's little under 4000 users. Always thought it was much more.

<comment><USER13> Just to be clear, that's the number of users with at least one submission in a given month. (Not the number of users with at least one submission _or comment_ , as I sleepily wrote originally, and definitely not the number of distinct visitors.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> regarding the comments, what are the types of comments that get lots of upvotes but are not constructive? is it the funny ones?

also, what about having a multiparametric approact to voting like this: [http://textchannels.com/?mode=page&pg=about](http://textchannels.com/?mode=page&pg=about) (shameless plug i know, but hopefully on topic)</comment>


Create a [Python / Ruby / Node.js / Go]  Development Environment in 60 seconds. - <AUTHOR> https://www.nitrous.io/

<comment><USER2> cool concept, especially when paired with a Chromebook</comment>


This Algorithm Taught Itself to Animate a Still Photo - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/researchers-taught-a-machine-how-to-generate-the-next-frames-in-a-video <comment><USER2> Yet as the article points out, the algorithm didn't "train itself" to do anything. It was quite meticulously trained by its researchers.</comment>


Do websites need to be experienced exactly the same in every browser? - <AUTHOR> http://dowebsitesneedtobeexperiencedexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/ <comment><USER2> no. but they should function in every browser.</comment>


Show HN: Flatend – Quickly build microservices using P2P networking in Node/Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lithdew/flatend <comment><USER2> This looks really promising. Can you think of mapping express.js routes to flatend automatically - that would be awesome. We are striving to make things simpler on backend too - pls take a look at [https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud](https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud)

<comment><USER3> I'm working with OP on flatend. I saw your Show HN a couple days ago, it's an extensive suite for code generation indeed. I'm seeing some crossover opportunity here. May I ask if express.js is a compulsory requirment for generating with xgenecloud?

<comment><USER2> >> I'm seeing some crossover opportunity here

I guess so. Happy to have a chat - [https://discord.gg/5RgZmkW](https://discord.gg/5RgZmkW)

>> May I ask if express.js is a compulsory requirment .. ?

Yes, XgeneCloud's instant REST/GraphQL APIs generation relies on Express.js

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello! OP here.

One of the biggest frustrations I've had prying through Darklang [1], Firebase [2], Supabase [3], and a slew of other low-code projects is that although they do help me build backends faster, they come with a big tradeoff of having to deal with either (a) vendor lock-in, (b) tie-in to specific tools/databases/coding patterns, or (c) a large monthly bill.

At the same time, coding without these tools, I would have to deal with either configuration hell [4] with Kubernetes/Istio/Consul or take the time to stitch a bunch of libraries together and spend a lot of time having to deal with devops/networking/backend architecture myself.

So, I built this framework called Flatend over the last two months for Mozilla Spring MVP Labs, which:

1) lets you write functions using any tools/databases/programming languages/frameworks/hosting environments, and

2) turn them into microservices stitched together into a mesh network with service discovery/load balancing/routing using the Kademlia p2p overlay networking protocol popularized in BitTorrent/Ethereum [5].

Taking advantage of p2p networking, Flatend has taken off a lot of the pains and time spent dealing with bidirectional RPC, service discovery, load balancing, scaling, deployment patterns, and end-to-end-encryption, and has led me to spending more of my time writing productive business logic code in NodeJS/Go.

Using Flatend I've now deployed four different sites/apps racking roughly 200k+ visitors on two 5$ DigitalOcean instances, doing red/blue deployments and upgrades to my microservices really easily.

But that being said, Flatend still is very much experimental and is a heavy work in progress.

Nonetheless, I still do hope for Flatend to be immeasurably useful for the people here at HN looking to speed up the backend development of their next product/service.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20985429](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20985429)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661391)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23319901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23319901)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21551868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21551868)

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

<comment><USER4> I appreciate the dev-friendliness of this (libp2p leaves a lot to be desired last I looked from a dev perspective). How chatty is it? How resilient is it to untrusted peers (e.g. any of skademlia features built in)? Any plans to let the user provide their own net.Conns or io.Reader/Writers (e.g. I might want to run it over Tor)?

<comment><AUTHOR> All communication is quiescent unless some given node A sends data to node B (apart from TCP keepalive packets of course). For routing messages, it is expected O(log n) much like ordinary Kademlia.

There isn't much resilience carefully integrated into the system for untrusted peers (complete S/Kademlia is in progress though! Static/dynamic crypto puzzles are fully implemented to prevent Sybil attacks on IDs, and the FIND_NODE RPC call is implemented to meet he guarantees documented in S/Kademlia's paper), since this framework is intended to be used in a closed environment for a set of microservices.

The underlying library for networking, Monte, fully supports providing your own net.Conn's and io.Reader/Writers - all you need to do is return your modified net.Conn via implementing the monte.Handshaker interface here: [https://github.com/lithdew/monte/blob/master/net.go#L36](https://github.com/lithdew/monte/blob/master/net.go#L36)

Monte will everything else related to bidirectional RPC management. Details of the bare minimum Monte prefixes to your packets is documented on the README for it.

Hope you enjoy using either Monte or Flatend!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Internally using this library seems to nice as well :) [https://github.com/lithdew/monte](https://github.com/lithdew/monte)

</comment><comment><USER6> mega interesting approach. will try it out later. this is the first time i heard that someone is using a p2p protocol for stuff like service discovery. How did you get this insight? during morning breakfast ? :p

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, it was during my deep dive into p2p networking a year back that I started scratching my head and thought "Huh, you could pretty much replace most of the reasons you'd need Kubernetes and gRPC and Consul with this and make coding 10x simpler..."

I only got to finally try it out just two months ago when Mozilla opened up a program for building MVPs that aim to fix problems with the Internet. Big thanks to them for that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is neat. Reminds me of moleculer.services to a degree.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can I help to support WebSocket or gRPC?

<comment><AUTHOR> Contributions would be great! Open up a Github issue or come join us on Discord (link in the readme) and let's talk about it there :).

<comment><USER5> Thank you for relying. I'd be glad to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> awesome.. it's a very simple.

</comment><comment><USER9> Good job, Kenta :)</comment>


20,000 Nations Above the Sea: Is floating the last, best hope for liberty? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reason.com/news/show/133865.html <comment><USER3> The thing that amuses me about anarcho-capitalism is that the state seems vitally necessary for capitalism to work. Without a powerful government institutionalizing and enforcing property rights, markets don't work (cf. Hernando de Soto).

In anarchy, you might have one voluntary "enforcement agency" trying to enforce anarcho-capitalist property rights, but an entirely separate voluntary "enforcement agency" trying to enforce a socialist conception of property rights, and various other gangs just mucking shit up.

The only sustainable form of capitalism-in-the-large requires government. At this stage, it probably requires fiat currency, vast amounts of land, urbanization, and serious attention to environmental concerns as well. (By "sustainable" I mean in every sense: in terms of resources, ecology, economics, and technology.)

I used to be a libertarian. I'm still in favor of small governments and market economics, but I'm far more pragmatic about it. And I have no interest in trying to build some aquatic libertopia.

EDIT: Heh, some good parts.

"tight communal living can be stressful, but residents of places such as Antarctica stations already find a way to muddle through"

Tight communal living is a little collectivist for the target market here, eh?

"Why not just do it: build a version of the world you want to live in. Then you get to live in it, regardless of whether anyone else is convinced it's proper or makes sense."

For most people, the world we want to live in has a lot more to do with weather, landscape, profession, and community than it has to do with politics. California's politics are pretty crap, but it's still a popular place to live because everything else is pretty nice.

<comment><USER4> Isn't it ironic that the state as an enforcer of property rights is also a violator of property rights?

Why do you need fiat currencies? Gold has been around as a currency for longer than fiat currencies backed by nothing.

<comment><USER3> "Isn't it ironic that the state as an enforcer of property rights is also a violator of property rights?"

Indeed. I don't see any hope for having a non-state enforcer that's anywhere near as effective though, since there would also be a lot of non-state Robin Hoods running around getting into gun battles with any non-state enforcers.

"Why do you need fiat currencies? Gold has been around as a currency for longer than fiat currencies backed by nothing."

Gold was backed by fiat just as much as paper money. The fact that it's useful for noncorrosive electrical conductors and dental work had nothing to do with its suitability as a currency--it's just as arbitrary as cloth-paper renderings of dead presidents. It is, however, rather difficult to control. This has benefits and drawbacks.

Going back to a gold standard would (in the case of a big country) price gold out of the market for any other purpose. In the case of a small country, anyone could screw you over by selling gold reserves (but even big countries would be vulnerable to this). There are also impacts on lending and other business activities that mean that, in a competitive climate, a deflationary currency would have problems competing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't about anarchy; it's about competition. The thing to keep in mind about governments is that people tolerate their abuses because they provide certain services (protection, property and contract enforcement, etc).

The fundamental idea of Seasteading is that land creates bad governments because the cost of changing providers is prohibitively high. So you end up with a monopoly provider over a certain area that generally becomes wildly inefficient and corrupt (in the sense of institutionally violating the rights of individuals).

No one in the libertarian movement denies the need for someone or some group to provide the services of personal and property right protection, "rule of law," contract enforcement, and whatnot, but if you use the same creativity the people here would apply to any other industry, you clearly see that there must be a better way than what we have now.

That's all anyone is looking for.

</comment><comment><USER6> I saw the movie Waterworld and I dont think I want to live that way. I've become quite fond of trees, mountains, open spaces, and long hikes without a lot of people around.

Anarchy sounds pretty silly to me. Friedman already says they will need police to make sure they aren't harboring terrorists. Sounds like laws and government to me. Building codes? I would think you would need those on a floating community. Maybe a fire department too. Probably like a community maintenance fee. Sounds like a tax to me. What do do with those citizens who cant care for them selves, the sick, the mentally ill, the young, the unskilled? Row them to the mainland ald let some government care for them?

<comment><USER7> I don't believe that Friedman is pushing anarchy explicitly, at least not with his seasteading project. Instead, I see it as applying a startup model to governments, where people are free to form a government any way they please. It allows people to choose which government they prefer.

Theoretically, I like it. But it's a logistical nightmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The First Annual Seasteading Conference, held in October 2008, draws about 50 people to an Embassy Suites meeting room in Burlingame, California. Most but not all of the attendees are male libertarian Americans in the computer industry."

For some reason this made me smile.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like this idea, simply because the world needs a place for radicals to be radical. Sure, there may be a lot of crazy floating cults, but there will probably also be some great advances from societies free of today's regulations and taboos.

</comment><comment><USER10> As much as I believe in economic liberty, societies need social contracts that state what behaviors are considered unacceptable (murder, theft, etc.), a system to modify that contract, a method of enforcing that contract, and a way to pay for that enforcement.

What I just described are laws, lawmakers, law enforcement, and taxes - <USER2> fundamentals of a government. Living on a floating island nation isn't about living in anarchy, but about restricting government to its basic elements and allowing as much economic freedom as possible with said government.

</comment><comment><USER11> Besides the human-nature problems (Even tiny fiefdoms suffer from the corruption of leadership, etc), you have to basic issue that if history is any indication, eventually your colony will come under the thumb of one nation or another if it grows large enough to warrant attention.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interestingly, we worry about conquering space but accordingly to the article we are still a long way to colonizing the oceans. It seems that this is really the next frontier.

</comment><comment><USER13> Whether this works out or not I love the concept. Attempting to hack the nature of government by changing the incentives it faces.

</comment><comment><USER14> Those clowns will be crying for a Coast Guard rescue as soon as one of their boats springs a leak.</comment>


It's like Twitter, but it "tweets" what music you are listening to instead... - <AUTHOR> http://www.twones.com/

<comment><USER2> Like last.fm (audioscrobbler) but with an incredible lack of features, surfing on the success of twitter. No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://twisten.fm> maybe..</comment>


Swift for TensorFlow Tutorials - <AUTHOR> https://www.tensorflow.org/swift/tutorials/model_training_walkthrough <comment><USER2> I will fully acknowledge my ignorance on swift, but how robust is the matrix operations/scientific packages? As someone who does DL research, I simply cannot imagine a programming environment where I don't have access to a lot of scientific matrix operations.

Some of my more clever DL approaches have used lots of complex windowing of data, and would be pretty stumped on how to implement these same preprocessing steps without numpy/scipy/skimage.

<comment><USER3> Since it was all written by Google it probably has only the packages they need...though in the interest of adoption perhaps not. You can just check in the repo on github.

OTOH you may not need some of those tools as the point of this project was actually as an environment supporting differentiable programming, so some of that slicing and dicing is approached automatically, at a higher level.</comment></comment>


Pay to Have Your Logo on Google Maps - <AUTHOR> http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2010/03/pay-to-have-your-logo-on-google-maps.html

<comment><USER2> I'd much rather see logos on a map than generic placeholder graphics. Which are you going to recognize faster: Some tiny text, or the golden arches? I think it's fair to call this a win for Google Maps users as well as a nice revenue stream for Google.</comment>


Ask HN: HackerYou - <AUTHOR> Hello World! just wanted to know if anyone had attended the Hacker-You front-end development bootcamp in Toronto. Wanted to know what your experience was and how effective the bootcamp is at career placement. Thanks! <comment><USER2> > and how effective the bootcamp is at career placement

do you have issues learning stuff on yourself? Than may it is useful. Otherwise bootcamps are usually not more than a beginner course, you will be able to "hack" something but miss the understanding of how it works.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Herbst, I just don't have the money for a 4 yr program but am open to learn independently</comment>


Show HN: Twin Cities Transit "Where's My Bus?" - <AUTHOR> http://tctransit.mobi/trip/go/21/westbound/6CED#bus

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting! I live in Minneapolis and rely on the bus system for transport. So far it's easier to use than the NextTrip website on my phone.

For my usual trip each day there are several buses that work for me, and what I was hoping for is a site that centers a map on my location (from my phone gps) and shows me all buses in my general vicinity. I would use this to select a route.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's definitely something I've been thinking about. It adds another level of complexity though, so I'm taking my time with it.

Do I add some type of "sign-in" functionality to save bookmarks to a profile? Or just let people save bookmarks to a cookie? (by bookmarks, I mean stops)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've made a similar app with slightly different navigation using the same Nextrip API: <http://mtransit.herokuapp.com/schedule/17900>

I need to tweak my full-text search and general layout. But your addition of maps is a nice touch. Adding the location of the stop with a separate icon may be a nice addition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice to see what other developers are doing with the Nextrip API. I think the market for transit data is going to get pretty busy in the near future!

As an aside, stops are marked with a red marker icon, and buses with a bus icon. This is consistent with the regular "stop" map displayed by default on departure listings. The map icons need a little love, and I'm open to suggestions.

<comment><USER3> Ah, I understand the map now. I'm bleary-eyed and missed that.

My grand vision was to do a comet-style app where you see the buses "move" towards your position/stop on a Google Map -- but I haven't been able to sit down and design that yet.

They've added a few more endpoints recently:

<http://svc.metrotransit.org/NexTrip/help>

Although, I am annoyed because:

NexTrip/{ROUTE}/{DIRECTION}/{STOP}

does not accept the same kind of IDs as the main endpoint 'NexTrip/{STOPID}' and also there are not valid {STOP} ids for every stop on a route.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true. I've also caught a stop ID with a space in it, which seemed kind of non-standard. It caused an error that I was able to fix.

Otherwise the API is a nice service. Previous versions of TCTransit relied on scraping. Dirty, but it still performed nicely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish Philadelphia provided easy access to real-time transit information. I think the city is finally starting to release that information publicly via APIs. Hopefully we'll have something soon.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very nice app. Nice UI. Just made me realize how much I miss Minneapolis.

Where do u get the data for location of the bus? Is there someway, I can zoom out on the map?

<comment><AUTHOR> Data comes from Metrotransit's API, updated at 30-second intervals.

Presently the maps are static images, as the site is designed first for mobile devices (desktop traffic represents less than 1% of my traffic).

I plan to have interactive maps for desktop users in the future.

You can click on the maps to see your stop in Google Maps, or the Google Maps app on your mobile device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice. This is much better than Metrotransit's mobile website.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice effort.

I use nextbus.com here in Boston and used it back at school at Rutgers. While their mobile website is pretty nifty, the web UI needs quite some work.

</comment><comment><USER8> We have a really nice bus tracking system here in Gainesville. It is located here:

<http://ufl.transloc.com/>

The desktop website uses flash, but the mobile website uses Javascript. What's really nice is how it uses Google Maps and overlays bus positions in real time. The bus positions are accurate to within a few seconds, so I can decide exactly when to leave for the bus stop and which bus to take.</comment>


EU Police Push for Pan-European Facial Recognition Network - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2020/02/21/eu-facial-recognition-database/ <comment><USER2> The EU and further integration was a bad idea, please change my mind.

> Deloitte consultants proposed doing the same with police facial images, but > the idea was met with unanimous opposition from law enforcement officials

It is bad enought that mandatory passports now include biometric data. I don't see how I should support the union in any way, although my government certainly pushes in the same direction. At least the latter can be severely punished.</comment>


Ask HN: 27 Weeks until Startup Launch - Need Ideas! - <AUTHOR>

My name is Matthew and I am a former programmer who spent the last twelve years selling software for companies. Today, I am in the Fast-Track MBA program at Babson College while also working for a software company in Washington DC. I need the help of my fellow Hacker News readers for ideas and suggestions for our Capstone Project. Essentially, I will be on a project team with the goal of starting a company in 27 weeks. Can my fellow Hacker News readers help with an ideal Babson MBA Capstone Project? An ideal project has five attributes:
1. Involves a product, a process, a service and/or a business model (not simply technology licensing, geographical market expansion, etc.)
2. Requires more than incremental innovation (technology, market, and business model risk cannot all be "low")
3. Requires a new organization approach that is entrepreneurial rather than efficiency-oriented.
4. Significant progress and learning is feasible within the course timeframe and resources. (persuasive evidence of customer need exists, "technology lift" is not too heavy, intellectual property entanglements are not too daunting)
5. Ignites the passion of a 4-6 person project team (more than just an "academic exercise", a commercially-viable opportunity - much more than simply an idea, raison d'etre mertis serious effort, offers a powerful learning opportunity.)
Are you ready to help in our opportunity search? Please comment and/or share your ideas on the following link. The winning idea will receive a significant equity stake and the opportunity to work with fellow hackers on building the startup company in 27 weeks.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=t9qfBG6vOv-9mDnLWAj4lEQ&hl=en&authkey=CJa03b0H#gid=0
Thanks for your help! Matthew <comment><AUTHOR> I do have a couple of ideas so you know I am not completely lame.

Dirt Jockey (www.dirtjockey.com) is a marketplace for used construction equipment, parts and attachments. The customer need is that construction contractors are not able to buy directly from one another right now, it is only dealerships or auctions. Let's change the game.

Naked Farms (www.nakedfarms.com) I have no idea yet but the name is pretty awesome for organic foods. Actually, I do have some ideas around a customer need but not enough to put into words.

Cyber Gym (domain TBD) I do P90X and I used to have a personal trainer. The trainer costs too much money and the P90X videos get boring. How about a virtual trainer that watches you via the webcam to make sure you are doing exercises correctly? Think obesity - those folks don't like going to the gym and want to workout at home.

More ideas to come... please share you idea and "Customer Need State"...

Also, read this book before writing your business plan. Great Advice: [http://www.amazon.com/new-business-road-test- entrepreneurs/d...](http://www.amazon.com/new-business-road-test- entrepreneurs/dp/0273708058)</comment>


Bitcoin's market value is now larger than Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/13/bitcoin-market-cap-bigger-than-goldman-sachs-and-morgan-stanley.html <comment><USER2> As many bright minds have pointed out, this is like comparing an international currency to some private company's internal GDP</comment>