The Hackathon Fast Track: From Campus to Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/the-hackathon-fast-track-from-campus-to-silicon-valley.html

<comment><USER2> Despite the optimistic tone in this article hackathons have definite problems. They have a contradiction between their party atmosphere and their high stakes. While they strive to provide an informal, fun event they also offer extremely large rewards (cash, internships, and even startup-funding are offered as rewards). Little seems to stand in the way of groups cheating and judging may seem incredibly subjective. Rumors abound as too how winners built their projects beforehand (a big no-no) or that the projects don't actually work. In trying to become both parties and job interviews hackathons are failing to be what they were meant to be, places to learn and create.

<comment><USER3> That's because most hackathans can't decide whether they want to be hackathons or pitchathons. As you have picked up, they really can't be both. Hacking is experimental, and it's fun, and it definitely is not optimized around impressing a VC or a journalist in 3 minutes or less. If you wanted to be a true hackathon, you would ban the investors and journalists and really ban judging altogether and just have everyone show everyone else their projects. Even the idea of "fun" is different between the two crowds, with the hacker crowd expecting the "fun" part to be the cool hacks themselves, and the journalist/finance crowd expecting the fun part to be the boozing up and making plans for how you spend your millions after you focused on optimizing a commercial product (ususally with more emphasis on marketability and monetization potential than cool tech). If you want to "win" a hackathon i.e. impress a VC/Angel/CEO/Journalist, of course you should prepare beforehand, it's extremely difficult to verify cheating and very little real technology can be built in that timespan and that environment (party wooo!). You should also focus way more on the design and pitch then on the functionality, since the judges only have the time to evaluate the design/pitch. The good news is you can also treat the pitchatons like a hackathon and just ignore the judging/prizes, they can still be nice networking events regardless and times to learn some new things/APIs. Or you can try to game the prizes, but either way I wouldn't take them too seriously. How many hackathon projects turn into anything real anyway?

The current Hackathon culture is indicative of a general tech and investing culture of picking "hot" ideas made by charismatic teams over people doing true technological innovation which takes sustained, serious effort. The real innovation is what ends up making an impact, but the little prototype parties can be a good stepping stone into the industry.

<comment><USER4> If I could give you a high five or a hug over the internet I'd do just that. I stopped going to hack-a-thons all together because at some point (I can't pinpoint the exact time) they turned into show-and-tell for existing startups. I participated in a Real Estate Tech hackathon and the top three finishers came in with ready made products, spent all of their time networking and did zero coding. They then pitched their products which were highly polished while the rest of us sat around looking like people who had coded up some things for fun and a little competition.

Hack-a-thons need to change so that the objective isn't clear until you walk in so people have to create something on the spot.

<comment><USER5> Yeah that kinda sucks. It's one of the reasons college hackathons are so compelling - people aren't there with their startups, it's students looking to learn. I think sometimes people judge student hackathons based on corporate hackathons they've been to but they are fundamentally very different.

Jacob is right, big prizes can suck. I'd love to see fewer big prizes at hackathons. Having some small stuff so people feel accomplished and valued is nice though. Jon Gottfried has a really good article about this[1].

I go to a lot of student hackathons and generally people are there for learning - not competition. They're certainly not there for "boozing up"!

And of course hackathon projects amount to nothing 99% of the time. That's not a problem. That's totally to be expected from 24 hours of hastily put together code. The value students get is learning about idea generation, working with others, managing a project, how to use the libraries, frameworks, and APIs, how to work to a deadline, how to debug, how to do version control, how to deploy, how to test and improve your work, how to present your work to others, and much more. And I don't think companies or VCs who attend really expect to find a next Facebook - they're probably more concerned with just meeting the kind of students who would rather spend a weekend building stuff instead of boozing. Furthermore, hackathons don't undermine the value of sustained effort on hard technical problems - but they can be the first step for students starting to work on technology outside of their courses.

You're all totally right that large prizes suck and pitchathons suck. Most student hackathons do a pretty good job of staying away from those (though some could do better for sure). As Jacob said, "hackathons should be about coding something cool, not winning, networking, or partying" \- I've honestly never been to a student hackathon where that wasn't the case. So I'd be careful about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[1] [http://news.mlh.io/are-hackathon-prizes-the-worst-thing- sinc...](http://news.mlh.io/are-hackathon-prizes-the-worst-thing-since-moldy- sliced-bread-04-18-2014)

<comment><USER6> Given that student pitch-a-thons (ex: business plan competition type events) can earn you pretty decent amounts of money, how much longer till hackathons on college campuses fall the way of corporate hackathons?

As food for thought, there are "Consulting Case Competitions" for business school students year round, and some students decide to spend their time optimizing for winning a bunch of these one after another all around the country. I'm not sure if this is a good, bad, or neutral thing.

<comment><USER5> I go to a lot of student hackathons and I really don't see that happening. And the large majority of organizers are heavily focused on creating a welcoming event for building, learning, and having fun.

Student hackathons are and always will be fundamentally different from corporate hackathons because the motivations of the organizers and attendees are different. Perhaps we should be careful about offering large prizes for the reason you state but the focus is very clearly on learning and building and that's not set to change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Likewise, students say hackathons are an ideal way to test-drive the > experience of working at a start-up before committing to a job.

I don't really understand this. Working at a startup is not about sleeping 2 hours a night and/or churning out a new products in 36 hours. It is about committing to an idea for _years_ and continuing to persevere when everything goes wrong and things look horrible (which is inevitable).

I'm not saying hackathons are bad, they seem fun. But in terms of recruiting, I'd much rather work with somebody who spend 1 year working on the same idea, rather than somebody who has done 20 hackathons on all sorts of different stuff.

<comment><USER8> Please suggest a better alternative to simulate the culture and mentality of a startup, for a typical 18 year old who is not a part of the world of tech.

<comment><USER9> Getting together with friends in your spare time to make a web site/app?

<comment><USER5> Hackathons are a pretty good way of starting something like this for a college student (though obviously not the only way). I know several groups people who met at hackathons then went on to start a larger project together (often not the same project they did at the hackathon). That's one of the nice thing about college hackathons - you get to meet other students who like to build stuff in their spare time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're a student and are interested in finding a hackathon near you to participate in, check out [https://mlh.io/events](https://mlh.io/events) for a list of great events in North America and [https://mlh.io/eu](https://mlh.io/eu) for events in Europe.

As someone who got their start at student hackathons (I wanted to be a lawyer before I went to my first one) and as someone who has been to hundreds of these in my life, I can definitely testify to the importance of this movement for students everywhere. This is where you learn the hard skills you need to be a programmer, designer, entrepreneur, or artist - not in the classroom.

<comment><USER11> I was with you right up until "This is where you learn the hard skills you need to be a programmer, designer, entrepreneur, or artist - not in the classroom.".

If you want to have fun and really wring out your skillset as any of those things, Hackathons are a great place to do it. If you want to experience something new, if you want to meet interesting people, sure, hackathons are great. But a hackathon is a terrible environment to learn programming and entrepreneurship.

Hackathons won't help you learn, or improve at programming. At a hackathon you're slapping APIs together and writing code that just barely works well enough for a demo. You have 24-48 hours, you don't have time to learn how to do things well, that can only come with experience and often, yes, in the classroom.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, and I mean really execute on a product, talk to users, find the right niche, iterate on an idea and figure out a real business model, you won't do it at a hackathon. You're most interested in making something that will be entertaining for the audience there on that day.

I'm not a designer or artist, so I can't speak for them, but I'm sure the situation is similar. I've been to at least half a dozen hackathons of various stripes in the last few years, and while they're tremendous fun, they don't replace learning.

<comment><USER10> I think the thing that you have to remember is that there are a lot of different types of learners out there. From the sound of it, the hackathon environment is not conducive to your particular learning style (which is totally fine). Hackathons are great for the kinds of people who learn by doing or who need lots of real-world practice to master skills.

The other thing I'll point out is that a lot of "hard skills" that you need to be successful at those things are not necessarily technical. Examples: learning to work on a team, learning to deal with things going wrong on a deadline, learning to explain your work to other people. So, don't forget about those benefits too!

<comment><USER12> I disagree, I think the hard skills for being a successful software developer are picked up by honing your craft daily working on the same project. Hackathons are too contrived since the goal is to have a finished product in 24 ~ 48 hours. Every time I have done one I throw away all the "Danger, Bad practice" signals from my sub conscience and work towards finishing the product/idea. Things that are important like maintainability (even if your hack is successful, and get investor funding you want to re-write it properly), coupling, testing, documentation, API, Memory profiling, Logging, performance optimizations, design patterns are thrown out the window to get that idyllic prototype out. Even working as a team, there is very little you gain from spending 48 hours with (mostly unknown) individuals than it is for your peers in a job where you actually have a favor economy.

And I don't mean that there isn't any value on hack-a-thons. I think you're right on dealing with deadline pressures and the ability of working yourself out of a problem in a pinch are valuable skills. I just don't think that's where the "hard" skills needed to become a successful software developer are learned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Obligatory plug with select examples from the Hackathon culture:

[https://twitter.com/shit_hh_said](https://twitter.com/shit_hh_said)

Relevant discussion: "Ask HN: The rising "Hackathon Hackers" culture"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9205177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9205177)

<comment><USER14> "Students who believe to be 1000x SE because they can stick two APIs together and use bootstrap end-up to be very condescending older engineers."

Nope, reality catches up to them. Fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We have company sponsored hackathons for internal projects. At first I dug it, but beginning to think this mainly serves to squeeze a weekend of work out of devs and to get something done fast, sometimes fast != good/sustainable/performant/well tested. But hey, free tshirt and unlimited diet coke, so that is something :-/

<comment><USER10> Company run hackathons != student hackathons. [http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that- hackat...](http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that-hackathon/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The wheel turns: it used to be programming competitions, now it's hackathons. What will be the next fad offering for glory and jobs that isn't doing the grind work of hitting the books?

<comment><USER5> The people who do well at hackathons and programming competitions are often excellent students. And extra-curricular activities as a way of learning more and improving yourself are generally considered good for students, right? That's one reason universities support programming competitions, hackathons, CS clubs, etc. I'd go so far as to say the best students are the ones who love their subject so much they do it in their spare time too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Mature software companies dont produce good software in this fashion. Most such apps, if they ever get published, end up in the unsold depths of App stores.</comment>


Rebuttal to: I want to believe - <AUTHOR> http://www.method-combination.net/blog/archives/2009/05/06/on-boggle-solver-performance.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Kudos to the writer for actually taking the time to do this. Yes it's only 20% of C (in this particular metric), but to be 20% shy of the performance of C and several orders of magnitude ahead of expressiveness... is there really anything to talk about? ;)

P.S. I like C quite a bit. Languages should aspire to be so succinct.</comment>


Wind-Powered Car Travels Downwind Faster Than the Wind - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2010/06/downwind-faster-than-the-wind/ <comment><USER2> > _The unusual wind-powered car hit a top speed 2.86 times faster than the > wind during one recent run,_

I can't even.

<comment><USER3> We'll have to rewrite some Saturday morning cartoons (are they still a thing?)</comment></comment>


Facebook reportedly developing Siri competitor codenamed 'Moneypenny' - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2015/07/13/facebook-moneypenny/#more-388686

<comment><USER2> I don't use Siri, but if Siri had a cool name like Moneypenny, I'd surely use it - bugs and all. "Miss Moneypenny, call Q." However, since this is from Facebook, I still won't use it - cool name or not - out of privacy concerns.</comment>


Insultingly stupid movie physics – The Core (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://intuitor.com/moviephysics/core.html <comment><USER2> Can I confess that after about 20 minutes of Interstellar, I stood up and left the movie theater? I was initially annoyed by the fact the movie makers ignored the tyranny of the rocket equation: a reasonably normal looking rocket took our heroes to some faraway planets. Guys, you need an absolutely huge rocket to just go to Mars. We'll never make it out of the Solar system with chemical rockets only. But somehow, in a world with rusty trucks you get a rocket to take you to some planet that obviously is not one of the seven planets in our neighborhood. Now, you can suspend your disbelief, and accept that in this movie-universe the humankind was more advanced. But then they reach the ocean planet, and instead of getting whatever information they came for via radio transmission, they need to land to pick up a robot. And they couldn't just retrieve a memory stick from the robot, they needed to take the whole thing with them. That's how much I saw from the movie before I decided enough is enough.

<comment><USER3> I read this in my head with Comic Book Guy's voice and it made my day.

It's funny how once you get hung up on a minor detail it spoils the entire experience. I had a friend who refused to play Jedi Knight II because the light saber physics didn't work like they did in the movies. Each to his own I guess ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER4> I think there was actually a cheat code in Jedi Knight II that _did_ enable movie style lightsaber dynamics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also has DJ Qualls as Rat, one of the dumbest computer hacker stereotypes to ever be committed to film. After the FBI knocks to raid his apartment, he rushes into his computer room and starts microwaving CDs and shoving floppies down the garbage disposal... then once they have him, they tell him they need him to control the information on the entire Internet. He says yes, but only on the condition that he's given "an unlimited supply of Xena tapes and Hot Pockets." Quality stuff.

</comment><comment><USER6> I tell everyone that The Core is the science community's most derided movie, and yet it is in fact an excellent science movie for an important reason, which is simply that it puts science and scientists on a world-saving pedestal. The fact that just about everything that is in the film is in fact unscientific doesn't detract for a moment for the deep implicit respect for the value of science to humanity that the film promotes. This script would likely never have been given the kind of budget it got when it was made and so we need to count ourselves lucky that something so entertaining also offers so much to those looking for a scientific stick with which to beat the Hollywood studio system.

<comment><USER7> Apollo 13 was a much better movie to point to with regards to STEM types saving the day, despite the artistic license it takes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Uhm, I'm a physicist by education and I like The Core. I see it as action- comedy that is played with a straight face. Of course it's all nonsense! It's not insulting if you never think you were supposed to take it seriously. The "unobtainium", the talk about money and timeline to build the ship (to anyone who has done anything remotely similar) and the uber cliche (and very funny) hacker type should be obvious clues.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here is the oxygen grill video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sab2Ltm1WcM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sab2Ltm1WcM)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's funny to me how a sci-fi movie gets chided for being so fake, but people are so willing to oblige fantasy movies like LoTR/HarryPotter/Superman/Avengers/etc with a suspension of disbelief. And no, I'm not white knighting this waste of celluloid.

<comment><USER11> It's almost like there's a difference between the genre of science-fiction, and that of fantasy.

<comment><USER12> Is there, though?</comment></comment></comment>


Light slowed down to 38 mph - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/02.08/99-hau.html <comment><USER2> The 38mph result was from 11 years ago, the title of this (2007) article is "Light and matter united" and it's far more startling...

> _She and her team made a light pulse disappear from one cold cloud then > retrieved it from another cloud nearby. In the process, light was converted > into matter then back into light._

<comment><USER3> More accurate, to my layman's interpretation, would be to say that light was converted to information, encoded in existing matter, then converted back to light. Saying it was converted to matter seems to imply that new matter was created in the process which doesn't appear to be the case.

<comment><USER4> Unless light and matter consist of the same fundamental building blocks. During nuclear tests they've found that a tiny amount of matter actually disappears (which may SOUND like it violates the Law of Conservation of Matter), but it's actually believed that that tiny amount of matter was converted into an enormous amount of electromagnetic energy (hence e=mc^2) (i.e. light, for all intents and purposes).

If that's true, then this experiment is probably just reversing the process. The light is converted into a tiny amount of matter that's barely detectable (that 'fingerprint' - possibly just a tiny amount of matter that's slightly different from the matter around it), and can be converted back into energy easily.

Personally, my theory is that once we get down to more and more subatomic particles, we're going to start seeing that it has more and more properties in common with electromagnetic radiation. Electromagnetic radiation itself consists of a magnetic 'part' and an electro 'part', and if you coiled enough of it together millions and millions of times in a certain state, maybe you'd have an atomic particle that contained a phenomenal amount of energy, and a tiny amount of mass.

<comment><USER5> My physics is a little rusty, so please forgive me if I'm wrong. I think the law you're referring to is the Law of Conservation of _Mass_. As energy has mass and subatomic particles have mass, you can convert back and forth between them all day (good luck with that), and never violate it. In particular, Einstein's E=mc^2 is applicable here.

It was a surprise to me to find that the term 'matter' is actually poorly defined. At least according to Wikipedia.

<comment><USER4> Ah yes - I did mean conservation of mass, thank you.

I think most people use 'matter' to refer to the regular objects we interact with that are composed of atoms, and that's how I intended to use it in the above post. However, if I had my way, electromagnetic radiation would also be consider 'matter', because it's the same stuff, just a different form.

>> As energy has mass

Is that generally accepted, btw? Because I've always heard people talk about light as having no mass, and it never made sense, because that what I understood e=mc^2 to represent. I think it does have mass, it's just so minute (smaller than anything we know by such an order of magnitude that the speed of light squared is used to express it) that it doesn't seem like it.

<comment><USER6> I'm no expert, but my understanding is a little different. Its not that energy "has" mass but that energy and mass are two different forms of the same thing, i.e. they are equivalent. If some process is able to convert mass to energy then you could find out much mass you'd get but multiplying the energy by c^2 (hence E = mc^2).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm dense, but I don't see how this experiment shows that the original light beam was affected in any way. Seems to me that the original light beam etched information onto the "cold atomic cloud", and then later an entirely new beam of light (with identical properties) was emitted (or reflected) from the laser blast's impact on this "etching".

How can they reach the conclusion that the original light beam itself was altered from this experiment?

<comment><USER8> They mislabeled the event when they said that the light was "converted" into matter. This is sad because I think many people will miss the greatness of what was really done because of it. A large (long) beam of light (everything about it) was _stored_ in a very small amount of matter, then recreated _exactly_. It wasn't light _like_ what was there before, diffracted from new light (like a hologram), it was _the same_ light.

Once this becomes practical, we have practically infinite data storage, not to mention the underpinnings of computing with pure light, so perhaps practically infinite computational speed as well.

<comment><USER9> Saying "the same" about light (and other subatomic particles) is meaningless. If the have the same state, then are the same, in the sense that they are indistinguishable.

So it was "just like" what was there, but not "the same" photon in the sense the photon did not exist for a while, and was recreated. And at the same time it was also "the same" photon, in the sense that the before and after photons are not distinguishable.

It should be noted that the "no cloning" theorem adds a twist: It says you can not copy a photon. This means that the matter that stored the photon can not be induced to create another one (like a hologram does).

So in that sense it was the "same" photon - because you can only ever create the original, and no additionals.

<comment><USER8> True, true. Saying a lot of things about subatomic particles is meaningless. Their behavior doesn't map to english very well. The point is that that information could be stored in the beam basically at the photon level, trapped in matter, and then pulled out later. That's as cool as ultracold atoms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <quote>Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can't be speeded-up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic. <quote>

I wouldn't have been surprised if a newspaper journalist used dramatization that indicated as if Einstein is proven wrong. I didn't expect that kind of dramatization when reporting scientific matters on news.harvard.

Of course, Einstein is still right. All these experiments slow down the speed of light when it's traveling in special matter at special temperatures. Constant speed of light in free space is a necessary condition for Theory of Relativity be correct. If that condition is found to be incorrect, our current understanding of the universe completely goes for a toss;

<comment><USER11> Indeed. To be even more specific, the reason why it is slowed down is because of absorption and re-emittance of particles of light (photons). If you go down the the extremely small scale, what you will actually see is a photon moving at the speed of light, colliding with an atom, being absorbed by an electron, then re-emitted on the other side. Repeat this process ad nauseam and the constant absorption/re-emittance will slow down the speed of light to a varying degree. Most importantly, however, is that the c is constant in free space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of something that I think I first read about in Michio Kaku's book Physics of the Impossible where a Bose-Einstein condensate was used as a medium for "teleportation". I believe in his book he referred to the experiment referenced here. <http://www.physorg.com/news102681027.html>

They are careful to note that it is a transmission of information rather than photons. It sounds like this experiment is similar, but I am certainly not qualified to comment authoritatively on that.

<comment><USER13> It would make sense that teleportation (or perceived teleportation) would be possible from it, since all matter is is stored information. Now the question is if matter is the only way to store information aside from light. If this is so, then if you reduced an object or human to its light representation, you would be able to travel at the speed of light, but no faster, which would be perceived teleportation - I'm assuming teleportation is instantaneous whereas going the speed of light is not. Hopefully no one would slow you down in the meant time.

<comment><USER12> I think that what you've described is essentially the basis for the Australian "teleportation" idea. They distinguish it from quantum entanglement approaches which could theoretically (or not, depends on who you ask) transmit the information faster than light.

<comment><USER3> As described in the article linked the speed of the teleportation is limited by the speed of the signal beam which is necessarily capped at c.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article seems very loose with its terminology which makes it really confusing. For example:

> Albert Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light > travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can't be speeded- > up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed > light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic.

Hau did not slow down light in free space so this has nothing to do with Einstein's statement.

What I would like to know is, is underlying fundamental mechanism here similar to or the same as what we know as refraction? From all the descriptions it sounds awfully similar, other than the extreme(!) nature of the slowdown.

<comment><USER9> Yes. It's the same, just on a more extreme level.

Light can NOT be slowed down - at all! What happens with refraction is the light is absorbed by matter, then re-emitted, over and over, which effectively slows it down.

In this case the material that absorbed the light takes a very long time to re-emit it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is way beyond my head, but I can fell the awesomeness!

</comment><comment><USER16> > For the first time in history, this gives science a way to control light > with matter and vice versa.

Typical bad science writing.

Mirrors have existed before this year...

<comment><USER17> Though mirrors are not too good at the vice versa part.

<comment><USER18> Ever heard of vanity? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Check out this great docu <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/zero/> witch shows more of the Bose-Einstein condensate.

</comment><comment><USER20> Not just 60km/h, it was completely stopped. It was on (Danish) TV years ago.

</comment><comment><USER21> the key phrase here is "Despite all the intriguing possibilities, "there are no immediate practical uses," Hau admits."

The experiment and its results are intriguing nevertheless.

</comment><comment> cunard-n Thanks for posting this. count one more in the mind=blown camp!

</comment><comment><USER22> This is sure to revolutionize all communications done at 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit!</comment>


Why GitHub Can't Host the Linux Kernel Community - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ffwll.ch/2017/08/github-why-cant-host-the-kernel.html <comment><USER2> As I understand, Daniel Vetter is proposing a "monotree" as a source code control pattern where a monorepo (and its branches) is not the primary place where development is done, but is rather where works are integrated from subordinate repositories. In particular, he's asking for GitHub to support coordination (issues and pull requests) spanning upstream repositories that are indicated by a particular change request.

I was hoping to see discussion of the merits of this proposal here on HN... not a regurgitation of Torvalds' positions and personal demeanor. What other projects use a monotree? does it work well? How do those projects coordinate changes across subordinate repositories?

<comment><USER3> Especially in a world where GVFS is a thing (not quite yet), I fail to see the advantage of a monotree over a monorepo with lots of branches and scripting around a MAINTAINERS file.

What's wrong with branches and folders? Why are upstream repositories needed? (My hunch is the answer is just "it's slow with that much code" to which I again say "not when GVFS is ready").

Not to say Linux should change their ways, just that I wouldn't adopt them as part of a company.

<comment><USER4> GVFS has been working for years, but it's not even used related to the linux kernel at all. It's actually a GNOME-thing.

<comment><USER5> I think it's referring to this: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2017/02/03/announcin...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2017/02/03/announcing- gvfs-git-virtual-file-system/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm fine with that. Github is 'too large to fail' already, adding the Linux kernel to the pile and forcing the kernel team into Github's workflow are two big negatives. It would be great for Github but bad for everybody else.

<comment><USER7> Personally I'm a fan (and user) of gitlab since GitHub's recent policies and that GitHub takes forever to implement simple things that all users would love (like free private repos)

<comment><USER8> I would like a free, private Aston Martin, but the manufacturer is taking for ever to implement that too.

But I take your point. This is why I drive a Nissan.

<comment><USER9> I'd say GitHub is not Aston Martin if GitLab is Nissan...

<comment><USER8> Well, my Nissan wasn't free either and I don't use GitLab at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't really see the obsession that everyone has with centralised and closed services like github. We need to start moving away from them, not move more projects to them. Mailing lists and NNTP make decentralisation quite easy while being open standards and without having the need to have any account in any centralised service, why drop all these features away?

<comment><USER11> > We need to start moving away from them, not move more projects to them.

It seems this topic comes up quite frequently on HN. Unfortunately, while it sounds great in theory, no one ever has a practical way of doing this. The main problem here is the user experience.

When using GitHub I can find an open source project, copy the URL, pull it down, make changes, push and click a button for a pull request. A little bit convoluted but overall it's a very simple workflow. Now try decentralizing away from GitHub. If you have to add any steps then you increase friction likely lowering the UX and making adoption harder.

Now, if you can figure out a way to decentralize a service while maintaining the same level _or less_ friction from the centralized version then you have a real winner and things can start happening. Until that happens the idea of decentralizing things is just going to remain a pipedream.

In my opinion, of course. I _love_ the idea of decentralizing things like GitHub I just can't imagine a good UX way of doing it.

<comment><USER12> There's git-appraise[0] which decentralizes issues and PRs by putting them as objects inside of git. It also features a webui[1]

[0] [https://github.com/google/git-appraise](https://github.com/google/git- appraise)

[1] [https://git-appraise- web.appspot.com/static/reviews.html#?re...](https://git-appraise- web.appspot.com/static/reviews.html#?repo=23824c029398)

<comment> david-cako This is actually the one good way of handling it IMO.

Decentralizing git without losing the UX benefits of using a site like github is done by handling it like torrents and packaging everything into the repo/technology itself. The Linux kernel is already part of the way there, it's just the "local client" aspect that's missing, along with a focus on actually making it intuitive and fully integrated into git itself.

The repo _itself_ should contain all of the bookkeeping, and git should host a local UI (web and CLI) that allows you to interact with it as you would with github, rather than the send-mail rituals, the relative difficulty of following development on mailing lists, and the "here's how to set up one of 20 different email clients to send mail as plain-text". Imagine get_maintainer.pl and send-mail being replaced with a built-in pull-request- like interface that is disseminated to everyone that pulls from the remote. That's what git-appraise is trying to accomplish.

The traditional mailing-list-based development is tried and tested, but at risk of displaying my appy app iPhone youth naïveté, it's really inconvenient IMO.

<comment><USER13> I think you just described the Fossil dvcs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's also Linus's personal aversion to how GitHub implements many opinionated workflows.

        > I don't do github pull requests.
        >
        > github throws away all the relevant information, like having even a
        > valid email address for the person asking me to pull. The diffstat is
        > also deficient and useless.
        >
        > Git comes with a nice pull-request generation module, but github
        > instead decided to replace it with their own totally inferior version.
        > As a result, I consider github useless for these kinds of things. It's
        > fine for hosting, but the pull requests and the online commit
        > editing, are just pure garbage.
        >
        > I've told github people about my concerns, they didn't think they
        > mattered, so I gave up. Feel free to make a bugreport to github.

[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56546...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5654674)

<comment><USER15> He really talks in extremes. I see all his points but it doesn't make these things pure garbage.

<comment><USER6> Progress relies strongly on unreasonable people like Linus. Keep in mind that Github mutilated his baby so that's a pretty good reason to be upset.

<comment><USER16> Progress relies strongly on people working together toward a common goal. If being "unreasonable" works for Linux, that's fine. But before others go trying to blindly emulate Linus, I'd suggest attempting to be reasonable first.

<comment><USER6> What people really don't seem to get is that Linus' cultural background is Finnish, and that Finns tend to be _extremely_ outspoken and that they couldn't lie or polish their words if their life depended on it.

[http://www.karelia.fi/welcomingguide/the-finnish-way-of- life](http://www.karelia.fi/welcomingguide/the-finnish-way-of-life)

What to American sensibilities are grave insults to Linus is most likely just him speaking his mind without any filter in place, the way he was brought up.

<comment><USER17> That's not a very good excuse for someone who's communicating with other people outside of his culture. He's had many many years to learn that his style of communication doesn't mesh with most people.

<comment><USER6> > He's had many many years to learn that his style of communication doesn't > mesh with most people.

Well, considering that Linux is pretty much powering the world it seems to me that his style of communication tends to mesh perfectly well with the people that he's working with and that they actually get the job done. As opposed to a whole pile of floundering competitors which are of course _much_ better from a technical perspective and tend to have more polite maintainers.

The man gets the job done, in a similar way that an army general will get the job done. Whether he would be equally effective if he would polish his words on those occasions where people get offended is something we probably will not know.

If you're easily offended don't contribute to the Linux kernel.

<comment><USER17> He surrounds himself with people that are willing to put up with his communication style. That doesn't mean he has a good communication style.

> _If you 're easily offended don't contribute to the Linux kernel._

That's a pretty shitty attitude to take. And you don't have to be "easily offended" to dislike interacting with Linus.

<comment><USER6> > That's a pretty shitty attitude to take.

Why?

The Linux kernel is mission critical, that means that _tons_ of business and individual depend on it for all kinds of stuff that if it went down would be a major event with the losses likely hard to put a figure on.

Developing for such an environment tends to be a fairly harsh affair, Linus was not bred for this, he more or less accidentally found himself the leader of a substantial software effect, the likes of which had not been seen before outside of very large corporations. The fact that he managed to make this work and managed to get together a band of developers that work well with him - regardless of style - speaks volumes to me, I know I couldn't do it, work the best part of my life to _give away my work_ and to be scolded for the form of my delivery would be reason enough for me to throw the towel in.

Personally, I've known bosses that were a lot less reasonable than Linus is who tends to simply be direct, to the point and sometimes (rare enough that people feel the need to point out their favorites) makes social faux-pas that I feel are minor issues, stuff that if it is part of someone's personality you can easily step over.

I've yet to be in a work environment where there aren't one or two 'hard cases' and typically they have their reasons for being short tempered, such as that when the shit hits the fan it is their shoulders that a disproportionate helping of manure will land on.

Being the maintainer of a large open source project has to among the the most thankless jobs in the world, being the chief maintainer of the Linux kernel is probably one of the worst of those.

The only other person in the open source community that gets such treatment is RMS and I really fail to see what the big deal is.

<comment><USER17> Correlation is not causation. Just because Linus managed to become BDFL of a hugely successful project doesn't mean Linus's communication style in any way caused this. And it doesn't mean that he should get a free pass on treating people badly.

A lot of people subscribe to the idea that if you don't have a thick skin you shouldn't be in tech. That's a terrible attitude to take, there's absolutely no reason why that should be true, and it discriminates against a lot of people (including women). This attitude just contributes to the current toxic tech culture.

<comment><USER6> > Correlation is not causation. Just because Linus managed to become BDFL of a > hugely successful project doesn't mean Linus's communication style in any > way caused this.

Just as it does not prove the opposite.

> And it doesn't mean that he should get a free pass on treating people badly.

From you? Or from those people?

If you're not the one that he was talking to why do you feel so strongly about it?

> A lot of people subscribe to the idea that if you don't have a thick skin > you shouldn't be in tech.

I didn't say that. And I don't subscribe to that. But if you want to be in a project with a BDFL that tends to be a bit coarse then it certainly won't hurt.

> That's a terrible attitude to take, there's absolutely no reason why that > should be true, and it discriminates against a lot of people (including > women). This attitude just contributes to the current toxic tech culture.

Yes it would. But that is something that you mixed in all by yourself and you're making Linus the scapegoat for this particular shortcoming of the tech community, whereas Linus is just one person in an arguably un-enviable position who gets a lot of shit thrown at him for a few minor gaffes which the _participants_ took a lot better than the bystanders. And personally I'm more inclined to see these as in the heat of the moment and soon forgotten afterwards, the fact that they are archived forever doesn't take away the dynamics of the original situation. Heck, if I got the kind of hate that Linus gets for his occasional flare-up I'd stick to solo projects. It's bordering on the ridiculous how this is pulled out of proportion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I imagine after the Bitkeeper fiasco, Linus and others are disinclined to become dependent on a proprietary service.

<comment><USER19> Hm, I don't think so. Linus never had a problem with bitkeeper being proprietary, and he actually was annoyed when Andrew Tridgell tried to reverse-engineer the bitkeeper protocol. Linus seemed very unhappy with Tridgell, not with Larry McVoy for making bitkeeper proprietary. He built git out of necessity, not out of some desire to have free software.

<comment><USER20> > He built git out of necessity, not out of some desire to have free software.

History has proven that necessity is a much better incentive, and produces better products than ideology.

<comment><USER19> I don't know about that. Hg was built at the same time for the same reason but seems to have more ideology around it, and I would argue it's a superior product that just was unlucky enough to not have github built for it.

<comment><USER20> For people who seriously care about performance like me, git is by far the superior product.

I don't care much about the github website, because 99% of the time I use git from the command line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This font gave me a headache Why not write with white on white? It would be so stylish

<comment><USER22> If things like this bother you, you should check out the chrome extension 'Dom Distiller'[0]. I saw it in another HN comment last week and it's already one of my favorite plugins!

It drops all of the non-article content on most sites and leaves you with a centered, decent width, blank-and-white version of the article that's almost always easier to read than the original.

[0][https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dom-distiller- read...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dom-distiller-reading- mod/oiembdaoobijmdmeobkalaehgifealpl?hl=en)

<comment><USER23> Unless you're on mobile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lost me at "And lots of people learned that monorepos are really painful, because past a certain size they just stop scaling." Plenty of counterexamples of monorepo projects much larger than Linux kernel.

<comment><USER25> True, but only in large organizations that can devote massive amounts of manpower and infrastructure and have extensive tooling to make it work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Frankly, I think the Linux kernel is too important to even consider subjecting itself to the Github T&C, community guidelines, etc.

</comment><comment><USER27> Someone desperately needs to come up with an open source replacement for GitHub that is completely decentralized. Sure GitLab exists and the repo is decentralized since it's Git, but issues, merge requests, comments, etc aren't Git based (though they could be)

<comment><USER28> Check out Phabricator - [https://phacility.com/phabricator/](https://phacility.com/phabricator/)

<comment><USER29> Phabricator is awesome but GitLab is more similar to Github if you're looking for a direct replacement.

These are still centralized, but each organization can host its own server. A true decentralized solution would federate issues/tasks, pull requests/diffs and their comments, etc. similar to how Git federates changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here is another overview of how the kernel uses git and why no emails is simply not possible (or sensible). [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyenmLqJQjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyenmLqJQjs)

</comment><comment><USER31> I actually really like the MAINTAINERS file. Keeps the metadata literally in the repository and doesn't rely on an external system.

<comment><USER32> Yes, this is similar to how I would like to handle issues: just an issues directory full of yaml-markdown files. That way, issues are a part of the same history as the code. They can be specific to a branch, they can diverge as different solutions are attempted in parallel, and they can be deleted and retrieved after resolution.

<comment><USER31> I've actually been fine with to-do lines in files. Have a metric for the number you have, and don't abuse it, but they are easy to find and literally next to the code they relate to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The kernel seems better suited to something like Phabricator instead of Github. Keep Github simple and clean for our "normal" projects.

<comment><USER28> What makes Phabricator not suitable for "normal" projects?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This website is completely fucking unreadable on mobile. But hey, at least it's stylish or something.

</comment><comment><USER35> Is there some similar reason why Debian doesn't use more convenient bug tracking system that would allow a Web frontend?

I don't mind periodically using reportbug, but using something like Bugzilla is way more convenient.

</comment><comment><USER36> Not mentioned in the article, but work is also coordinated by maintainers with the use of patchwork. For example, for the network subsystem: [http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/netdev/list/](http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/netdev/list/). This enables tracking the status of a patch and not loose them.

</comment><comment><USER37> At GitLab we're looking into addressing this use case [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/36239](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/36239)

<comment><USER38> Love the effort and the dedication, but "Make Monotree Merging Magnificent", really? :D

Made me giggle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > Please support pull requests and issue tracking spanning different repos of > a monotree.

Issue tracking you can already file against one or more repos and link them together. It's not ideal, but it'll do the job.

Is "pr against different repos of a monotree" not what submodules let you do? Update whatever things you want in whatever repos, and pull the submodule pointer update(s) as a single change in your monotree repo.

<comment><USER40> I bet he knows git technical options.

The issue tracking just won't fly for a community that large. Imagine the hours spent keeping everything aligned relevant and updated: all that is wasted time, plain and simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Ugh that font is unreadable on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER42> Off-topic:

Why does this blog need to be whitelisted with Adblock Plus? See data- adblockkey in HTML source. Are there any ads in this page? (Maybe owner wants revenue from domain parking?)

Why is this blog not working with simple user agents that do not process javascript (e.g., curl, etc.)?

<comment><USER43> curls works for me; so does Firefox+NoScript and elinks.

<comment><USER42> Thank you for checking.

Problem is misconfigured DNS:

       1 blog.ffwll.ch:
       77 bytes, 1+2+0+0 records, response, authoritative, noerror
       query: 1 blog.ffwll.ch
       answer: blog.ffwll.ch 3600 CNAME danvet.github.io
       answer: danvet.github.io 3600 A 220.127.116.11

I mistook 18.104.22.168 as the correct IP address.

Try that one with curl, firefox or elinks.

Correct address is 184.108.40.206.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > Like pull requests, issues can be relevant for multiple repos, and might > need to be moved around

Not sure about the Linux kernel (no enough experience) but same issue across multiple projects looks something necessary...

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh wow, the MAINTAINERS file is a work of art: [https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/MAINTAINERS)

<comment><USER45> Hehe, never read through it, enjoyed Linus' info at the end

THE REST

M: Linus Torvalds <email@example.com>

L: email@example.com

Q: [http://patchwork.kernel.org/project/LKML/list/](http://patchwork.kernel.org/project/LKML/list/)

T: git git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git

S: Buried alive in reporters

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I love using GitHub, but there is an established process and home for the kernel that works and I see no reason to change it.

</comment><comment><USER17> > _If you don 't do something because of a personal dislike, and expect others > to cater to your culture and personal preferences, then the problem is you._

Are you serious? If Linus is a complete asshole and tells you to fuck off, and you don't like that, the problem is with _you_? How can you possibly defend that statement?

<comment><USER6> > If Linus is a complete asshole and tells you to fuck off

Consider that he might be right and not a complete asshole. Also, consider that you are not the person he insults but someone else. You're making up this strawman very craftily but it is still a strawman: people are coarse in their conversation all the time, it's not a big deal until the _recipient_ declares it to be a big deal. And then they - not you, unless you are the recipient - have all the right in the world to feel offended and to respond in kind if you feel like it or to do it a bit more precise and with more grace if that's your make-up.

But for all the weight given to 'free speech' the fact is that all you're doing is trying to control someone else's language and I find that a far bigger problem than someone throwing out the occasional insult in the process of communicating with others, there are plenty of reasons why that could happen, personality, lack of patience, culture and so on and all of those would be less of an issue than someone _deliberately_ trying to control how others communicate.

Now if Linus had said something like 'you're dumb because you're a woman' or something to that effect I could understand the outrage. But calling someone an asshole - justified or not - when you're not the person being addressed is not enough grounds to embark on a moral crusade and is not enough grounds to lie the diversity problem in tech at that persons feet.

<comment><USER17> Speaking as someone who has been insulted personally and publicly by Linus, on a topic that Linus was completely wrong about, he's a real asshole. And it's _extremely well documented_ that he's an asshole. I don't need to "consider that he might […] not be a complete asshole", because that's already a given.

> _You 're making up this strawman very craftily_

I'm not making a straw man at all, and I resent your attempt to frame my argument in this way. Since this is how you choose to argue, I'm not going to engage with you any more.

<comment><USER6> Well, you could have put that gem out front instead of pulling a rabbit out of your hat. Otherwise to me you're just another anonymous person arguing on a forum rather than someone with a specific and relevant gripe.

If there is a specific case where you disagreed with Linus and he insulted you then I understand why you want to take this up in this way but I notice that Linus is not a participant in the discussion here so you're going to get the general case, not the specific one.

You've made up your mind about a person based on an online interaction that clearly left you seething and I'm perfectly ok with that. For all I know it was the defining point of your career and you've chosen to go into crusade mode, there is a good reason why I don't contribute to open source, I don't feel like getting heat from both maintainers _and_ users. At the same time if I would go and do that I'd wear my flameproof jacket to work just in case. In short: lighten up, likely everybody but you has forgotten this interaction and it is a huge deal to you and hardly anybody else noticed. You should have seen some of the stuff that came my way on a public website, heck, even on HN I've been threatened with bodily harm.

Question: Did you contact him about this off-line, and did you try to work it out somehow? If not I'd suggest you do that, maybe you can get this behind you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Can we get a trade on this font, gosh it's bad. Color and weight both need to be increased. Seriously #00000 on #FFFFF makes life easy with a font weight of at least 400</comment>


Ask HN: thinking of selling my car and biking full time?? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone made the switch??? Did you feel trapped without a car?<p>I'ld love to hear from those who have made biking a lifestyle? <comment><USER2> Yup! I usually try to lump my "need a car" tasks together and get a car for a weekend from Enterprise. Here in Seattle, they have ongoing weekend specials during fall/winter for $30+tax ($36.20 altogether) for Friday-Monday (72 hours). I actually maintain regular auto-insurance, so I'm not stuck paying expensive rental-car company insurance.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends on where you live. In Manhattan, I did not feel trapped. In Minnesota, where I am now, I do indeed feel trapped.

<comment><AUTHOR> I live on an Island in the middle of the South Pacific (called Vanuatu), but I'm heading back the US soon.

Good point though...location would matter a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Get one of the car share services, zipcar/carshare. Then mentally do the jump and stop worrying about the per minute / per hour costs. It really is about the same costs as owning a car or cheaper. Use the zipcar when you need it, and bike the rest of the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like to avoid the either/or option... That would be a great way to redefine the problem. Thxs!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should add that in the last year, I've started to bike to and from work....maybe only 15-20 miles a day.

I love the quality of life....just not sure I could live without options!</comment>


Diff Match and Patch: Google's open source text synchronization library - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/google-diff-match-patch/

<comment><USER2> See also:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=430320>

That's where I first read about this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks really useful, although I wonder is it really necessary for the C++ version to depend on Qt? Qt is a pretty huge library.

</comment><comment><USER4> I _love_ this library. Really well implemented, and fast. Great to unload this from the backend of a webapp into js too.</comment>


Anonymous plans to occupy Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/security/203799/anonymous-launch-more-effective-site-attack-tool-saturday-when-it-occupies-wall-stre <comment><USER2> > Its stated intent is to persuade as many as 20,000 people to camp out on the > streets of Manhattan's financial district until the Obama administration > meets its demands.

This seems a little incongruous, doesn't it? Shouldn't they attempt to be occupying some part of D.C. instead if that is their goal?

They may be championing some actual cause, but they have not articulated it well. Both the reasoning and the demands seem very unclear for a protest that is to occur two days from now.

<http://twitter.com/#!/OccupyWallSt> has only 2,000 followers. I highly doubt this will go very far.

<comment><USER3> If you dig through their website, it looks like the common theme is "get money out of government", which is a rather vague goal and doesn't explain much.

Assuming they mean political finance regulations, who objectively determines when the goals are met? What kind of specific regulations do they want? You can't find this information anywhere.

This is more of a symbolic protest than a redress of grievances. People who have no idea how to solve problems and want one person to solve them all because they're holding up traffic in New York.

<comment><USER4> Silly thing about "getting money out of the government" is, where exactly do you think that money comes from anyway?

<comment><USER5> Did you see how a few months ago there was a patent carve-out explicitly for wall st firms because one company was causing them a bunch of trouble?

That wasn't patent reform on the merits, that was 'the money' and where it comes from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Didn't start as Anonymous, started on Reddit[1] but seeded by AdBusters[2], a liberal "anti-consumerist" outfit. They're supposed to camp out on Wall St in New York for reasons that aren't really clear at all. It's basically every delusional Redditor on /r/politics slacktivism turned into reality.

They're supposed to be protesting something about banks, bailouts, corporate personhood, jobs, and other assorted /r/politics common whining points.They apparently weren't aware that very few of the evil big banks are actually on Wall Street and that the NYSE is just a vestige of history by now. The only thing that will happen is a lot of tourists will flock down and the street will get even more clogged than it is for traffic and some arrests. People try to protest here all the time. It's nothing new. Stick the word "Anonymous" on it though and for some reason people take it to be a big deal for some reason.

This is the coming together of the most extremist Chomsky acolytes and reactionary redditards all in one with some V for Vendetta masks. Huge parody potential except for the fact that they're doing it for themselves already. Quite hilarious.

edit: this sort of reminds me of the 2005 Greenpeace attempt[3] to stop open- air trading at the International Petroleum Exchange by flooding the floor of the exchange with loud buzzers and bells, but getting beaten back bloody literally to the curb by all the angry traders. This was right around Kyoto.

[1] <http://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters>

[3] <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article515384.ece>

<comment><USER7> So they should just start rioting instead, like many are predicting will happen sometime next year?

<comment><USER8> I haven't seen any predictions about rioting, but I probably read different news sources than you do.

Whereabouts? I'm curious.

<comment><USER7> I saw this going around a bit last month: [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tax-the-super-rich-or- revol...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tax-the-super-rich-or-revolution- will-rage-in-2012-2011-08-16)

It is all speculation, so none of these predictions really should be called 'news,' but people have been known to riot over jobs or some proxy issue before. Also, if you dismiss a protest for being silly, ineffective, and stupid in these sort of circumstances, how are you not advocating riots? They are going to protest under the banner of 'Occupy Wall St.,' with a list of issues that boils down to 'generally pissed off.' I can definitely see how a group like that could start rioting at some point if they feel their efforts were ignored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was more interested in the claims made in #Ref#Ref. It _looks like_ the exploit needs server-side Javascript execution in order to work. (edit: Nevermind, no it doesn't, that was confusion on the part of people that had written articles after reading other peoples' articles.) I don't see a lot of the stodgy old Wall Street web-facing systems (or even internal systems) supporting something like that.

It also looks like it requires a working SQLi on the target site, which means that before it can even be used, someone's going to need to find a nice exploit on the target, and if they find that, then using RefRef to take down the target is kinda pointless.

Shucks. I was almost hoping to see a cool new exploit here.

edit: Bah, it's even more simple than that. It uses an SQLi to run the MySQL "benchmark" function an absurd (99999999999) number of times, according to the code I found. Not only that, but it's just benchmarking a simple text string; they could have given MySQL something much more gnarly to chew on if they'd wanted.

"Patching" against this attack should be as easy as adding an htaccess rule for any requests containing "select+benchmark" and then restarting MySQL.

Son, I am disappoint.

<comment><USER10> I am not sure if this is the whole thing <http://www.refref.org/p/refref.html> but it does not seem very sophisticated

edit: #refref seems to refer to multiple tools, but looking at this screenshot [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v_gCKJilPLw/TjPob43lXiI/AAAAAAAACo...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v_gCKJilPLw/TjPob43lXiI/AAAAAAAACoU/dpq93BW25zY/s1600/anon_ddos_tool+%25281%2529.jpg) is also trivial.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that's what I found too. I think you beat my edit by a few seconds. :-)

It looks like several versions have been written, but they're probably all based on the same basic concept. The "Javascript" version that people were referring to is probably the screenshot you posted, which would be trivial to launch with a few Ajax requests.

I will point my finger and laaaaaugh if this manages to take down any Wall Street websites.

<comment><USER10> Since they have a lot of members, bringing down a website is still possible (even if they simply click refresh continuously).

Now, about the tool, assuming they are really smart (they aren't) they would make a bookmarklet which would have to be clicked while Wall Street website is open. This would allow all kinds of things to be done, including Ajax requests.

If #refref tool is hosted on another domain, same-origin policy would prevent Ajax from happening. Most likely, in that case they are simply creating a bunch of IFRAMEs and refreshing them with javascript.

<comment><USER9> > _...same-origin policy would prevent Ajax from happening._

Actually, it doesn't! I decided to try this out for myself a while back. You can get or post a request to any resource at another domain, you just don't get to see the contents of the results. But the request itself works just fine, and you'll even still get to know when the request is complete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a bit confused as to why Anonymous would be targetting Wall St. According to opensecrets.org, only three corporations (AT&T, UPS and Goldman) make the top 25 list of donors.

The vast majority of big donors seem to be unions, with professional associations (trial lawyers, realtors, AMA) coming in a distant second.

<http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A>

<comment><USER12> I'm sure this will not come as a surprise to you, but the progressive populist narrative does not have a 1:1 correspondence to reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Bought by hard and soft dollars, disloyal, incompetent, and wasteful interests have usurped our nation's civil and military power, spawning a host of threats to liberty and national security."

This. At least some people are trying to do something about it. What have you done lately for your country?

</comment><comment><USER14> I _live_ on Wall Street, as do many other hard-working New Yorkers. The Financial District isn't just fat-cat bankers and hedge fund managers these days. I don't expect that interfering with people's routines is an effective way to win their hearts, regardless of the intentions of the protest.

<comment><USER15> And I think that it is very good that the Wall St. will be reminded that they have their money as a result of wealth transfer from middle class. They produce nothing but losses and we socialized those losses. There should be protests there daily reminding them that. Bankers havent added any value to the society, they destroyed it. To say any different is not to comprehend the current economic crisis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When buying and selling is regulated, regulators are the first thing to be bought and sold.

The only way to stop govt from giving money to the politically powerful is to not let govt have money.

Regulatory capture is like conservation of momentum; if the situation satisfies the constraints, the results will happen, no matter how much one might like otherwise, no matter how much better things would be if those results didn't happen.

</comment><comment><USER17> Isn't Deutsche Bank the only bank with HQs still on Wall Street?

</comment><comment><USER18> Is it just me or do you get a download forced upon you when you open the page? Mine is called 'ayUGOgFaCs8' and it's contents look executable.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why Saturday?

Why not during normal trading hours which are 9:30-4, Monday through Friday

<comment><USER20> increased police presence during normal trading hours. Have you tried to enter wall street on the weekdays? It's a mess

<comment><USER19> But who will pay attention on a Saturday?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The message is not clear at all.

</comment><comment> buff-a _Bought by hard and soft dollars, disloyal, incompetent, and wasteful interests have usurped our nation's civil and military power, spawning a host of threats to liberty and national security_

This is true. So If I were such interests, I would try to find a way to allow mainstream media to stigmatize anyone making such claims, such that anyone expressing these ideas can be sidelined.

A good, violent, riot in NYC should do it.</comment>


Ask HN: Credit cards being revoked, lowering limits - <AUTHOR> I just got a letter from Chase about an Amazon branded credit card that said they are reducing my credit limit because I haven't been using it enough in the past year. BofA also sent me a letter a few months ago saying they were going to close a card due to insufficient use. Although I have been unemployed, nothing like this happened when I was.<p>I'm wondering if this is a trend, if it's happening to other people, if it's related to COVID and what impact it might have on others. It seems like a new thing from my perspective. <comment><USER2> I've got a Chase card I use very infrequently. If it goes about a year with no usage I receive a letter saying they are going to close it unless I make a charge. So I charge something to it, that refreshes the usage timer, and I move along. It has been cycled like this for about three or so years now.

> I just got a letter from Chase about an Amazon branded credit card that said > they are reducing my credit limit because I haven't been using it enough in > the past year.

So? Proper usage of a credit card says you _never_ carry a balance over a statement cycle therefore whatever the magical setting of the "credit limit" happens to be is immaterial unless the new limit is so low you can not purchase anything without going over that limit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking back at the last 20 years or so, it's never or almost never happened to me, and when it happens twice within a year or two, I wonder if it's more than coincidence...it makes me wonder if there are economic forces tightening credit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Chances are that Chase and BofA both know that you are unemployed. They both siphon up lots of consumer data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I _am_ employed for well over a year. And my credit record still has my job from several years ago, even though I provided my employment to get a loan recently. So there isn't an obvious connection. It seemed to me more like some kind of risk-reduction initiative.</comment></comment>


OVH automatically migrates expiring paid SSL to Let's Encrypt certificates - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/olesovhcom/status/797856360926953472 <comment><USER2> On first sight, with only my knowledge in hand, I do think it is a good idea.

I'm also really interested in knowing if there are issues that could arise or people that annoyed by this kind of automatic conversion and why. What are your thoughts ?

<comment><USER3> There are potential security concerns. Suppose Let's Encrypt has a vulnerability other certs don't, or their chain is compromised somehow, this could put people at risk without them knowing it.

It could also complicate matters when renewing certs. If I forget to renew my SSL, it gets replaced with Let's Encrypt, and then I go to renew it and the system gets confused because it looks like I already have a cert from another provider.

In both cases, ample warning and notification will help, and opt-in rather than opt-out will totally alleviate the issues.

<comment><USER4> If Let's Encrypt's chain is compromised, everyone is screwed, not just your site. If _any_ trusted CA is compromised, everyone is screwed, even if they haven't issued a certificate for your site.

There is no way to induce a vulnerability by using an incompetent or malicious CA, provided you generate your own, strong private key. Even issuing an MD5 or SHA-1 certificate cannot actively harm your visitors unless a second preimage attack is developed against the algorithm (in which case, again, everyone is screwed, not just you).

<comment><USER3> > There is no way to induce a vulnerability by using an incompetent or > malicious CA, provided you generate your own, strong private key.

If OVH is doing this automatically, they're the ones generating the keys, right?

<comment><USER5> They already have the keys either way: its a shared-hosting environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know, this feels a bit weird. How about your local garage replacing the locks of your car without asking (not knowing who got duplicates of the keys etc) or if you live in a neighbour that even requires you to lock your car?

In any case this should be an opt-in service (for the lazy).

</comment><comment><USER7> I logged into the backend of WHM for my cPanel VPS(I'm using another VPS provider, so not OVH specific example here), and they have something now called AutoSSL doing something similar.

I haven't really played with it yet, but I know it mentioned no way to revoke the certs. So felt a little half baked but it seems like a step in the right direction to move everything to SSL. Probably just a early iteration right now, so probably will improve over time.

</comment><comment><USER8> ...and what if you have a specific certificate pinned in your private clients for use of a private web service?

<comment> Pirate-of-SV Then you should probably renew the expiring cert.</comment></comment>


Tips for Protecting Your Privacy While Working from Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.startpage.com/blog/privacy-advocate-articles/tips-for-protecting-your-privacy-while-working-from-home <comment><USER2> These are decent tips without too much self promotion. The problem with VPNs is that all your internet traffic might get routed through your company depending on VPN-client and configuration as long as the connection is active. It is common for security purposes that it is set up this way. There is also the danger that you forget to switch it off and all your Twitter rants get captured by your corporate IT.

If you put all your work related stuff inside a VM however, you get a clean separation. No VPN client can capture the network connection from the host OS, so you are free to do the private stuff on your normal OS.</comment>


Early 1900s in Colour - <AUTHOR> http://citynoise.org/article/10598

<comment><USER2> Here's my favorite collection of old color photographs, The Cushman Collection:

[http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/browse/yearBrowse.js...](http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/browse/yearBrowse.jsp)

 _"Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries."_

One of my favorites:

[http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/cushman/full/P02...](http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/cushman/full/P02219.jpg)

The collection can be a bit overwhelming, but for a good overview, look here:

<http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=142692>

</comment><comment><USER3> In related spirit, colour photographs of early 1900s tsarist Russia by Prokudin-Gorsky are also pretty amazing.

Edit: and most if not all are in public domain. Sample: [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mikhailovich_Prokud...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mikhailovich_Prokudin- Gorskii)

<comment><USER4> I wanted to post the same thing. The quality of those pictures is incredible.

You can find all reconstructed images here: <http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Amazing. The past doesn't even seem much like the past when it is in colour.

<comment><USER6> If you start to read Latin and Ancient Greek, you'll get a sense that human beings have had most of the same mundane concerns for the past thousands of years. Some of the love poetry of Catullus, for example, sounds like it could have been written by a precocious tween.

<comment><USER7> What about those of us who speak undead languages? 1000 year old Arabic reads like any other modern formal essay. It's really hard to let go of the past when it's so vividly present. We hold grudges against nations and tribes that no longer exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What makes pictures like these seem alien is the clothing. Back then, even farmers dressed better than people today.

<comment><USER9> Or, getting taken in a picture was so rare than people dressed well for it.

<comment><USER10> Most of us in our best clothes would not compare favourably to the richness on display by these average people in their best dress.

However, I wonder how much variety of style was worn in previous generations. Certainly within the span of living memory the current period is the most vividly variegated explosion of unrestrained style, but that is only compared to the monotone conformism of post-war industrialism.

Were there perhaps places and times before us with a similar or higher level of embracing stylistic inventiveness?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can anybody explain exactly what is happening in this picture from Mongolia? <http://citynoise.org/upload/42145.jpg>

<comment><USER12> The 4th comment reads: "That picture appeared in the May '22 NatGeo with the caption 'A Mongolian Woman Condemned to Die of Starvation'"

<comment><USER13> Wow, now that's cruel. I notice there's bowls around the ground -- did they place food where she couldn't reach it just for extra cruelty's sake?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These photographs are over 100 years old, yet they still have someone's obnoxious copyright on them. Intellectual property makes me sick.

<comment><USER15> If I'm counting correctly these photographs still retain copyright to the end of the year (in Sweden), as Albert Kahn died in 1940. Copyright in Sweden is generally uphold up until 70 years after authors death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> All the pictures from the Musée Albert Kahn are actually autochromes. I found the way of making those technically very interesting: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome>

</comment><comment><USER16> Its sounds odd but I sometimes find it a little upsetting looking at old photos for what might be an unusual reason. I want to warn the people in them about stuff. For example when I got to the photo taken in Cambodia all I could think was "the poor bastards alive then had no idea the nightmare that was waiting for them and their children" meaning what happened under Khmer Rouge.

The annoying one way nature of time bothers me. lol. think I might be going crazy.

</comment><comment><USER17> Part of what makes the pictures so striking is that I constantly have to remind myself these are not modern men and women in costume.

</comment><comment><USER18> Those were the days when the sun never set on the British Empire.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wonderful pictures. It's so different in color.

What I'm wondering is what was Obama doing in Spain as a young boy? <http://citynoise.org/upload/42155.jpg>

<comment><USER20> Getting tan?</comment></comment>


Mastodon 3.1 is out (includes bookmarks) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/releases/tag/v3.1.0 <comment><USER2> If you want to take mastodon for a spin without having to register, or browse through instances, I built a simple aggregator:

[https://mastodonia.club](https://mastodonia.club)</comment>


Revealed: Oil giants help fund powerful police groups in top US cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/27/fossil-fuels-oil-gas-industry-police-foundations <comment><USER2> "Some of America's largest oil and gas companies, private utilities, and financial institutions that bankroll fossil fuels also back police foundations – opaque private entities that raise money to pay for training, weapons, equipment, and surveillance technology for departments across the US."

I think the Left underestimates how much support there is for the police.

<comment><USER3> Just like the Left underestimates how much bipartisan and black support there was for the '94 crime bill:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/597547/](https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/597547/)</comment></comment>


Transformie - <AUTHOR> http://transformie.com/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome. I was looking for something just like this: Rotations via CSS in Webkit and Firefox are easy; in IE they're plausible, but require you to provide the matrix used for the transformation. So a JavaScript library to translate the former to the latter is exactly the right approach.

Not that this is the only lib that does this. There's CSS Sandpaper, for one.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is pretty cool, good work.

Many of the designers I have worked with and currently work with love to rotate stuff. Eventually, it turns into a imagick hack-fest with some nasty caching solution. If all the browsers start supporting rotations well in the next couple of years, then my designers are bound to be happy.

It is a shame that many markets are still dependent on IE6. :(</comment>


Tax evaders can't hide from city's aerial imaging software - <AUTHOR> http://philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2007/02/12/focus3.html?t=printable

<comment><AUTHOR> I stumbled into this reading a Jane's email on Pictometry system ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictometry> for military use, measuring tactical details from satellite imagery. Taking oblique measurements is not something I've heard about before.

interesting bits:

 _"... Where satellite imaging and orthophotography show the world only from directly overhead, making everything appear flat, the Pictometry system shows the world at an oblique angle, providing perspective. And they include an overhead shot. ... Images are accurate to 1/100th of an inch and evaluators can measure lot lines within the system. ..."_

Another article mentions the resolution at about 3" per pixel with the ability to 1" per pixel. This is enough to ID faces (if they look up) at the time of capture. ~ [http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061008/news_mz1h08...](http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061008/news_mz1h08aerial.html)

 _"We do all the R &D ourselves, which really gives us the leg up on everyone," said Dante Pennacchia, Pictometry's chief marketing officer. "If you can manage your own software, find out what the customer needs and create the solution to it, you're always going to be in great shape."_

This idea mirrors the startup mantra: _"make things that users want"_ in software.</comment>