Show HN: Adios.ai – Stop email interruptions, receive emails 3 times a day - <AUTHOR> https://adios.ai <comment><USER2> If anybody wants to do this to their own GMail account without putting trust in a third party, this is pretty easy to do with the little-known Google Apps Script. You can write JavaScript that will run on Google's servers and do whatever you want to your account. (I use this to archive various automated emails if I haven't bothered to look at them, to keep them from cluttering my inbox after they're obsolete.)

Here's a script which I think should do the job, assuming you have a filter set up to move all incoming mail to a label called 'hidden_mail' (warning: untested!):

        function checkMail() {
            GmailApp.moveThreadsToInbox(GmailApp.search('label:hidden_mail'));
        }

Just create a new project on [https://script.google.com/](https://script.google.com/) , paste in this code, and then Edit > Current Project's Triggers and add a trigger to run checkMail() on whatever schedule you want.

<comment><USER3> You could automatically archive the emails with that labeling feature as well, no need for the Google Scripts.

<comment><USER2> Really, how? I've never seen any options anywhere to apply labels after a certain time. Or is there a trick I missed?

<comment><USER4> Presumably you would write the code to do it...

<comment><USER2> buremba specifically said that there wasn't any need for Google Scripts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's the difference with just checking your email 3 times per day? Personally, I've been checking my email before I start working in the morning, right after lunch, and before I finish my day.

I have the luxury that none of my emails are "urgent" (i.e. I don't work in Customer Support), so I disabled email notifications and just take a look whenever I want.

I'm a little confused as to why one would need such a service.

<comment><USER6> One difference is that this controls your notifications as well. If I decide to only check email 3 times per day, then I have to turn notifications off for that to be effective. This means I may miss emails which need a reply sooner.

<comment><USER7> How is that different from this? You'd still be missing email that needs a reply sooner.

<comment><AUTHOR> One useful difference is that you can set exceptions (i.e. email addresses that you want to receive emails from immediately).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What guarantees are in place with your users preventing you guys from selling your company after you've gained users and then that new company storing everyone's emails and digging through them for juicy details, IP, insider trading info, prescriptions, 2FA info, financial info, medical info, blackmail info, nudes, passwords, or anything else some people might not want a company to have? Or partnering with a company that has a data-sharing agreement with you so technically your company isn't reading emails but theirs is.

I'd imagine this is a concern for some people with this type of service similar to how in the past Chrome extensions have proceeded down this path without anyone being the wiser.

It really seems like people don't realize the potential pandora's box that they can open by sharing their emails with someone or an organization, even if that organization is currently trustworthy.

And a couple of questions for you about your infrastructure security. What is your infrastructure security and when you get breached what will you do about it? I'm assuming given your company's ability to access emails someone will find you a juicy enough target and if you get big potentially even criminal organizations and state actors would. If that's the case you will almost certainly be breached to some extent because you have a juicy treasure trove.

</comment><comment><USER9> I am the creator of [https://DNDEmail.com](https://DNDEmail.com) \--- a very similar app that implements do not disturb for your Gmail. I launched in April 2017 and have struggled to get users. I have 1,500 users, including 15 who pay for premium accounts.

I will say, adios.ai has really nailed the marketing message. The website does a great job explaining a modestly complex idea. I have struggled with the message and marketing. Mostly, my users are people who knew they wanted this solution and went looking for me. I think adios.ai will do a better job of convincing people who didn't realize this is what they wanted.

Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER10> Using mutt and manually invoked pop3 from command line works just as well. You'll really hate checking your mail.

Just kidding. But not really. :D

<comment><USER11> This is pretty much what I do. Fetching new mails is a manual step, requiring me to run mbsync and enter a long passphrase to unlock my gpg-encrypted password file. I then have to run notmuch to tag things before I can read them in mutt.

It basically forces me to only check email when I really, really want to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks for this.

Just FYI it wasn't not super clear how it actually works, i.e. how to get it setup, is it a gmail plugin, or do I have to change my email settings to make all emails pass by you first (which is red flag privacy-wise).

<comment><USER6> I assume like with similar services you need to give Gmail API access which does afford the possibility of them reading all your emails (although I assume they don't).

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly right. Adios just requests API access.

The way it works:

1\. creates a filter that filters your incoming emails into a hidden gmail label

2\. at your chosen times we use the gmail api to move the emails back in to the inbox.

Adios never ever accesses the content of your emails, for any reason.

<comment><USER6> It's unfortunate that the Gmail API doesn't offer more granular permissions that would actually not allow Adios to access email contents. Even if I trust you, any breach of Adios could mean that my email contents are public.

Not bashing the service at all though. I'm a current user of Boomerang which has the same caveats.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just don't check e-mail more than once per a couple of days, same as my physical mail box. Why would anybody need any additional tool for this?

<comment><USER14> I'm going to assume you just don't get a lot of emails? For many people it is the primary form of communication across a company.

<comment><USER15> It is secondary to slack/jira here, but I also dont check email more than twice a day. If something is important, someone will find me. People also know I will click tentative to meeting invites unless I have good reason to be there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Alternatively, install any desktop email client that has existed for the past several decades and point it at your email provider of choice.

</comment><comment><USER16> The privacy policy really needs a strong statement to the tune of "we do not collect any of your email data or metadata, whether raw, anonymized or aggregated", or a detailed explanation of what exactly is being collected/aggregated together with strong guarantees about what the co promises never to collect.

</comment><comment><USER17> This would be nice for slack, except if you're mentioned you'll still get a notification.

<comment><USER18> That's just how Slack should work.

<comment><USER18> Ooh! Actually, you can do this already with Slack by choosing "Direct message, mentions & keywords" under settings. Not exactly the same, but it helps.

<comment><USER7> I really don't get why this isn't the default. It's the first thing I change when logging into a new Slack account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We originally built this using a Google App Script in Gmail. Has been game- changing for productivity. Now launching it as a service so anyone can try it out.

Any and all feedback welcome. Happy to take any questions.

<comment><USER19> What about privacy? Do you access users email?

<comment><USER20> Certainly not. Gmail API let's you work with just message ids. Never accesses content, ever. Super important.

<comment><USER6> I trust that you _don 't_ access email content, but I assume that with the permissions that are granted you _could_ , correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> Adios needs the ability to change the label on emails (in order to move them into the inbox at your chosen times). This permission is unfortunately also the permission needed to access emails. If you know anyone at Google who can change this, please let us know ;) as we're keen to ask for as little permission as possible.

Importantly though, the content of emails never ever hits our system. The API calls we use only retrieve msg ids and uses those to change the labels. These are never stored.

<comment><USER21> But in the future you could store them and users wouldn't know something changed, correct?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How does this interact with the Gmail "Snooze" feature? Are snoozed items actually sent back to the inbox? Or are they muted in some way?

</comment><comment><USER23> Do people still use email? There are worse interruptions nowadays, slack, messenger, WhatsApp, push notifications etc

</comment><comment><USER24> Or, set your notifications to only be enabled 3 times a day.

</comment><comment><USER25> Personal email, sure. Work email, you're fired.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does something like thiss exist for Slack?

<comment><USER27> \- Turn off all notifications

\- Write message as status, telling people you're alive but not available

\- Shut the window

\- Have the willpower to not re-open it

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> s/sh*t/stuff

<comment><USER20> Fair point :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ahem, I read my mails from my maildir, sync-ed with mbsync or muchsync depending on what systems I'm using... So, if I want to read my mails at ANY interval of time I simply change my cronjob and imap-idle wrapper script to trigger a sync or I may only change my dunst hook to tweak notification. No need to offload to ANOTHER third party my messages.

Sorry, pollice verso.

<comment><USER14> It's funny to me that you give such a strong opinion against this, but then end with a phrase of which could go either way.

<comment><USER29> ? Pollice verso is a latin expression for disapprove, used normally by Roman's emperor to refuse right to live of a gladiator...

How this phrase can go "either way"?

Ps English is not my motherlanguage so I may made many mistake than maybe sound strange for other readers, if that's the case please point it out, it's a valuable lesson for me.

<comment><USER14> What I meant by that was it has not been agreed upon by historians as to whether the phrase means approval or disapproval.

Source: I did a short paper once on the painting by Gérôme of the same name.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollice_Verso_(G%C3%A9r%C3%B4m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollice_Verso_\(G%C3%A9r%C3%B4me\))</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year - <AUTHOR> https://www.wdc.com/about-wd/newsroom/press-room/2017-11-28-western-digital-to-accelerate-the-future-of-next-generation-computing-architectures-for-big-data-and-fast-data-environments.html <comment><USER2> If you're interested in what's going on at the RISC-V Workshop, you might want to follow my live blog here: [http://www.lowrisc.org/blog/2017/11/seventh- risc-v-workshop-...](http://www.lowrisc.org/blog/2017/11/seventh-risc-v- workshop-day-one/)

<comment><USER3> Let me thank you for providing the excellent write-up. I eagerly wait for news from lowRISC in hope for a SBC with general purpose Linux support. This would open up the hardware in general, and thus be a major step in a good direction.

I do have a question, though. Is there any plan for working on an architecture for massively parallelizable workloads, like graphics, artifical neural networks and simulations? Especially the talk by Dave Ditzel seems relevant to this. Even without competitive performance, that would be another major step. It would not only improve the situation by the amount of the necessary efforts for that, but by raising the bar for all the other vendors by being compared to that.

There is a factor between your work and the impact on the ecosystem, and I guess it is significantly higher than one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the headline, I would guess WD is putting a user accessible CPU in each of their disk drives, idea being that if you have a CPU living close to the drive, then e.g. map+reduce workloads can be more efficiently executed. Instead of going with ARM or Intel, I guess the CPU's are using some less famous architecture called RISC-V.

Then I read the article, and the article is so full of buzzwords and genericisms that after reading the whole thing, I don't know if this guess is correct.

<comment><USER5> In order to move the reader head inside your drive and to communicate with the host CPU you need microprocessors in your hard driver, really tiny ones. Now, instead of paying ARM for licences to use them WD is using open source processors that don't come with fees besides what it takes to manufacture them.

<comment><USER6> This is the right answer...they already use ARM, they want a one-time-fee license instead of royalties. Trying to shave a little margin.

<comment><USER7> WD made it clear in there talk that this wasn't about saving on costs, but rather having control over the innovation in the data space.

I don't see any reason to doubt them. It's an incredible risk to switch their entire company over to a still-growing ISA. But being able to design and modify any particular core as they see fit without having to talk to lawyers or negotiate a new contract... that's an incredible power.

<comment><USER8> RISC-V is certainly more unencumbered, but there's always the ARM architecture license too. Pricey, but you can modify and build on a relatively more mature ISA

<comment><USER2> An architectural license doesn't give you free reign to extend the ISA, just to create your own implementation of the standard ISA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess this will be nice for industry, which may pass the savings along to the consumer, but as far as having auditable hardware that you have some control over, I don't see how this is any better than the ARM SoCs we already have--unless you're going to roll your own system on an FPGA.

That, and I'm kind of disappointed everyone has drunk the RISC kool-aid. I think a lot of RISC "performance" has more to do with compilers catering to the least common denominator than anything else. If you had a language/compiler that took better advantage of a stack architecture, or even a CISC architecture, the performance would probably be just as good if not better.

I was particularly impressed by Baker's old paper[0] on stack architectures in service of his _Linear Lisp_ idea.

[0] [http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/ForthStack.html](http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/ForthStack.html)

<comment><USER10> RISC-V benefits is mostly an open source license that is free of patents. I think the biggest reason for it is academic... there needs to be an open platform for academic research. I'm sure it is next to impossible for an average university to do that on ARM or x86 architecture.

<comment><USER11> RISC-V is just ISA. I don't think ISA's can be patented. Just some specific instructions.

<comment><USER12> ISAs can be patented. Intel is patenting their latest AVX/SSE instructions.

<comment><USER13> ISA spec is copyrighted. Instructions aren't patented directly. Instead, the best ways of implementing them are patented.

<comment><USER12> Seems like Microsoft is potentially being targeted for writing an x86 emulator [https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/x86-approaching-40-sti...](https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/x86-approaching-40-still- going-strong/?cid=em- elq-27099&utm_source=elq&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=27099&elq_cid=1494159)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I haven't been following the RISC-V story too closely, possibly because I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be dashed. From the article, it sounds like these cores will be developed solely for use in data storage. Can someone with more knowledge tell whether this will help provide the kind of production volume needed to make consumer products (like laptops and desktops) more likely to be viable? Are general purpose chips likely to be one result of the development of RISC-V, or have I missed something fundamental?

<comment><USER5> Probably we won't be seeing RISC-V application processors for quite a while. There's a lot of stuff that can just be recompiled but there's also a lot of hand-tuned assembly that goes into making a JIT or media codec fast. That's why we're seeing initial adoption in the embedded space, where either there's just a small amount of code to recompile or you were going to rewrite the assembly anyways for the next product.

In the long run using RISC-V in a laptop is a possibility. And there might be some limited production $2000 500MHz FOSS laptop soonish. But in 15 years, say, I could see RISC-V being where ARM is now.

<comment><USER15> You can already run Debian [0] RISCV.

[0] [https://wiki.debian.org/RISC-V](https://wiki.debian.org/RISC-V)

[https://github.com/riscv/riscv-linux](https://github.com/riscv/riscv-linux)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the level of industry enthusiasm for RISC-V is so palpable, in part, because the messaging from day one has been unequivocally: RISC-V will be _the_ standard ISA for every form factor, in every market.

Can't wait to put a RISC-V SBC in my ThinkPad X220 chassis. :- )

<comment><USER17> I'm so excited that we're feasibly within a year or two of being able to develop embedded devices in Rust[0] on RISC-V microcontrollers [1] running on open source RTOSes also written in Rust[2]. It's currently already possible but still requires quite a bit of hacking. Plus the RF stacks (Bluetooth in particular) aren't there yet. What a time to be a developer. PS RISC-V on my X220 wouldn't hurt either.

[0] [http://blog.japaric.io/quickstart/](http://blog.japaric.io/quickstart/)

[1] [https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive1/](https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive1/)

[2] [https://www.tockos.org/](https://www.tockos.org/)

<comment><USER16> > _I 'm so excited that we're feasibly within a year or two of being able to > develop embedded devices in Rust[0] on RISC-V microcontrollers_

I'm happy to report that the future is yesterday![0][1] (sort of)

> _Plus the RF stacks (Bluetooth in particular) aren 't there yet._

Espressif is a RISC-V foundation member, and you know what that means. (hint: it rhymes with _could-pie den-sill-hiccup_ )† :- )

[0]: [https://abopen.com/news/rust-comes- risc-v/](https://abopen.com/news/rust-comes-risc-v/) [1]: [https://github.com/dvc94ch/hifive](https://github.com/dvc94ch/hifive)

† «Goodbye Tensilica» (sorry Tensilica, I have nothing against you!)

<comment><USER17> Very nice. I actually hadn't realized Tensilica wasn't an Espressif technology. That would definitely be sweet if they switched to RISC-V

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well what I find interesting here is if they are able to manufacture chips with 7nm litography. Aren't intel and samsung who I belive to be the leaders in the field, still at 14 nm? In case WD manages to beat them to the market with this technology at least there will be a lot of hype around this.

As far as binary compability is concerned this is more or less a thing of the past. The way I see it js and other interpreted languages provide for the most vibrant ecosystem at the moment. Where we have package management running not over only kernels but also distributions.

Before this developers have gotten really acustomed to compiling into platform independent bytecode. And even windows which in comparison with Linux has been ported to few platforms is by no means impossible to move over to a new instruction set. As have been demonstrated multiple times. Even C itself was developed to make few assumptions in regards to the metal. If you please, excuse me for reiterating facts well known to the average HN reader.

Furthermore with developers more or less requiring to work with open source software as it makes debugging and making use of other developers experiences easier. The probability that you will be stuck with CPU specific binaries of any given program is slim.

Now the problem is "only" to find programmers capable of programming 4096 CPU cores to operate well simultaneously, in a world where it's completely accepted and right, for a text editor to eat up hundreds of megabytes of ram displaying the source code for a hello world program. Also for this to truly make a dent the development has to span all the way from the metal via the kernel and to the actual application.

Unfortunately I am afraid that the open license will mean very little, from a freedom point of view as they take this route out of the pragmatic reasons, briefly mentioned above, not to make an ideological stand. Nonetheless it's a step forward so I'll try to supress my cynicism.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Well what I find interesting here is if they are able to manufacture chips with 7nm litography. "

They're going to be using TSMC "7nm". At this point nm node names from anyone mean absolutely nothing. Just know that TSMC "7nm" ~= Intel "10nm"

<comment><USER18> Aha thank you for clearing that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So WD is switching their hardware to in-house designed processors after purchasing a RISC-V developer, do I understand this press release correctly?

<comment><USER16> WD had already been a RISC-V foundation member before their involvement with Esperanto Technologies (who has also been a member for a while). I suspect they saw Esperanto's portfolio and team after meeting at one of the workshops, and bought into it because of preexisting interest in RISC-V.

Just to be clear, I think they bought into Esperanto, but I don't think they acquired it. Much public communication implies that Esperanto Technologies is still generally autonomous[0][1].

[0]: [https://twitter.com/rickbmerritt/status/935600820300713985](https://twitter.com/rickbmerritt/status/935600820300713985)

[1]: [https://twitter.com/EsperantoTech/status/935598028773138432](https://twitter.com/EsperantoTech/status/935598028773138432)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Presentation slides: [http://innovation.wdc.com/downloads/RISC-V- Presentation.pdf](http://innovation.wdc.com/downloads/RISC-V-Presentation.pdf)

Presentation brief slides: [http://innovation.wdc.com/downloads/RISC-V- Presentation-Brie...](http://innovation.wdc.com/downloads/RISC-V-Presentation- Brief-forWeb.pdf)

<comment><USER21> Talk about buzzword bingo.

<comment><USER22> It's almost a parody.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I haven't dug through all the marketing speak yet but this _seems_ like it's tangentially related to WD's He8 converged servers they've been sampling, which were ARM-based and ran Debian Jessie. [0] Although when I saw them spoke about in Redhat Summit of course they were mooted to be running RHEL. It would be interesting to see if WD Labs is now sampling RISC-V-based boards running Redhat and Ceph OSD software which like the He8.

I found the whole concept of on-board PCB with dual gig ethernet ports fascinating and I believe there's a second generation with faster network speeds. Unfortunately WD never seem to have gone mainstream with it.

[0] [http://ceph.com/geen-categorie/500-osd-ceph- cluster/](http://ceph.com/geen-categorie/500-osd-ceph-cluster/)

<comment><USER24> I am similarly disappointed that this didn't go mainstream. At Cumulus we did a follow up experiment to the one in your link, with the WD labs folks using Cumulus Linux switches.

The idea was that you'd run the Ceph monitors on the switches, and the OSDs on the hard drives, and you'd have an entire storage array with no servers needed. Was very neat, but pointless unless you can buy the drives...

<comment><USER15> WD could easily take on Intel and AMD for datacenter workloads if computation starts moving to the drives. Drives have mass causing more Data Gravity. Data Gravity is literally money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like the idea behind RISC-V's open architecture but I had a question. Does it do or even try to do anything about the cloud of uncertainty surrounding Intel ME and the AMD equivalent in x86?

<comment><USER26> RISC-V is not an architecture, it is just an instruction set. People still need to design the architecture for an implementation of RISC-V.

Intel ME is a co-processor that runs at the same time as the main processor, it is not related to the instruction set.

To answer your question: Intel ME is a problem that happens on an higher level than the document that defines instruction set.

<comment><USER27> There are "instruction set architecture" and "microarchitecture" (=specific implementation of an ISA). ISA is the one more commonly referred to as just architecture, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone know what is the state of the processor that they are proposing to ship ? Has it already gone to GDS?

Or is this simply at proposal stage right now (mwani1the hardware is still RTL or netlist).

</comment><comment><USER29> This is so exciting, can't wait for all the open source contributions to RISC-V WD will make

<comment><USER30> It is an interesting play. I didn't think WD would be all that relevant, but... I figured with open ISA the CPU would no longer be a significant piece of IP and competition and leadership would move to those with graphics IP. OTOH if tightly coupled CPU and storage was to become a big thing then storage companies would be the big winners (maybe just in some markets). But the fact that they talk about contributing back is interesting. If companies with GFX or storage want their specialty to become the real value, they will benefit by contributing high quality IP to the open CPU movement thereby destroying the market for the old guard (CPU makers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A primer on the RISC vs CISC debate that helped me understand why this matters: [http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects...](http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2000-01/risc/risccisc/)

</comment><comment><USER32> everybody makes processors!

</comment><comment><USER33> "RISC" is a terrible name for anything related to computing

<comment><USER34> Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) doesn't seem to have suffered from the association.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have not been following this, what are the advantages?

<comment><USER36> For you as an end-user? Nothing. For WD? They escape paying ARM licensing fees on every drive. They'll see an extra couple points of margin on every hard drive they sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This was what I exactly predicted one year ago. Risk-V ISA is coming for all of them{x86,arm,mips}.

And this is very smart move by WD to jump into Risk-V wagon.

Update: Why do people downvote? I honestly don't understand.

<comment> s-macke Even though I see no reason to vote you down, there are a lot of reasons not to vote you up.

The message from WD is very good news for RISC-V. But to make the claim that it overthrows all other architectures from the throne is not only a bit daring. With this logic, ARM should have crashed Intel a long time ago. There will always be a market for different architectures.

You have also misspelled RISC-V, indicating that you are not really aware of the market and architecture.

<comment><USER37> Did you read even my comment?

Where did i claim this?

>ut to make the claim that it overthrows all other architectures from the throne is not only a bit daring

It is always fascinating how much people do extrapolate when the want to believe something. It is _going to overthrow_ and it is _overthrown_ is two quite different thing if you can think critically.

>You have also misspelled RISC-V, indicating that you are not really aware of the market and architecture

Again. This just like you other analysis, which is based on flawed logic and not being intelligent enough.

Rest assured I have wrote enough Chisel, and I would bet I am more familiar about interenal of most architecture than most people in topic (since my grad school work is focused on outputing chisel via LLVM).

One extra lesson for you: dont extrapolate and judge based on appearance. Look at what they are saying deep down.

And don't based your judgement on spelling, particularly in unofficial context. Some people only have time to comment when they ar in bus or something.

<comment> s-macke I have tried to explain to you why your message might have been down voted. Nothing else. If I interpret your message that way, others will do the same.

<comment><USER37> I know ( and i upvoted both of your comments)

No hard feelings ;) But i have a right to defend my comment.

<comment><USER38> Free tip: If you don't want to be downvoted for your comment (#3) defending your comment (#1), don't say in comment #3 about the person who wrote comment #2 that their analysis was based on not being intelligent enough. That's a personal attack, and is absolutely downvote-worthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I remember RISC's back in the late 80's/early 90's. CISC's bullied them away and we've been stuck in Intel's quagmire every since. Anytime there's an attack on the status quo, the established players feign concern and beat back the attack then return to the way things were (remember Negroponte's $100 laptop and the netbook response?)

No idea how this will pan out.

<comment><USER40> It wasn't that CISC won or that RISC lost, it was that the architectures got so blurry you couldn't tell one from the other. There's so much microcode in a CPU now that the instruction set is just the icing layer on the cake. Internally there's surprising amounts of commonality between PowerPC, ARM and x86 type chips.

Plus PowerPC started to adopt CISC-like instructions, x86-64 started to adopt RISC-like features such as having a multitude of generic registers, and here we are where nobody cares about the distinction.

Don't forget that while Intel won in certain markets, like notebooks, desktops and servers, it's absolutely, utterly irrelevant in other places that ship far, far more CPUs. A typical car may have as many as _one hundred_ CPUs of various types, typically at least fifty, many of them PowerPC for power and legacy reasons. Your phone is probably ARM. Remote controls. Routers. Switches. Refrigerators. Thermostats. Televisions and displays. Hard drives. Keyboards and mice. Basically anything that needs some kind of compute capability probably has a non-Intel processor.

If there's a quagmire we're stuck in it's that we're surrounded by thousands of devices that are likely full of vulnerabilities that can never, will ever be fixed.

<comment><USER41> Actually most real RISC CPUs have no microcode, and if they do it's really just the same instruction set running out of an exception handler, not hardwired stuff on some other lower level private ISA

<comment><USER40> Is PowerPC still considered RISC? That instruction set has evolved considerably from the 601 days.

What is a "real" RISC CPU? By what definition?

<comment><USER41> Well, there's lots of definitions - I'd include anything that generally has:

\- single cycle ops \- easy to decode ops (fixed size) \- load/store architecture \- lots of registers to reduce pressure on memory</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple Rescued, by Microsoft (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/ <comment><USER2> to be read in conjunction with [http://www.zdnet.com/article/stop-the-lies- the-day-that-micr...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/stop-the-lies-the-day-that- microsoft-saved-apple/)</comment>


Offline AI adaptive music app - <AUTHOR> http://aimi.fm <comment><AUTHOR> New app uses AI to arrange and adapt content from electronic music artists in real-time. Runs on-device (iOS) with 30 minutes of free use per day, or paid subscription for unlimited use. The app currently uses content from in-house artists but the company has announced that well-known artists will appear on the app in the future.</comment>


Skype confirms 3D video calls are under development - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23866593

<comment><USER2> It has its pro and cons. Let us see how this goes.

<comment><USER3> Cons - surveillance Pro - lots of people can pressure you into using it.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin arbitrage without market risk - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/butor/blackbird <comment><USER2> All the US dollar exchanges with substantial volume are within 1% of each other. [1] Some of the little guys are a few points out there, but any significant order would blow the price. All the exchanges lock together within the range of the cost of trading, which is usually at least 1% when you combine buying, selling, short-selling loan, blockchain reward, and cash withdrawal fees.

[1] [http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/currency/USD.html](http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/currency/USD.html)

<comment><USER3> They are right now but this isn't always the case. For example you can see just from that page that in the past 24h, Kraken reached a low of 1025 while Bitstamp only reached a low of 1118, a difference of 9%. If at that low, you'd bought BTC on Kraken and sold BTC on Bitstamp, you would have made that 9% difference.

This is the point of the strategy. Whenever they diverge for whatever reason, assume it's temporary and that they'll reconverge. Make money converging them.

<comment><USER4> How does the engine know the direction the converge will take? I'm missing something here.. :?

<comment><USER3> The direction doesn't actually matter since you're trading both sides. An example:

Exchange 1: 1000 Exchange 2: 900

You sell 1 of exchange 1 and buy 1 of exchange 2.

Scenario 1: Exchange 2 rises to meet exchange 1, exchange 1 stays stable. You make $100 as you bought exchange 2 at 900 and its price is now 1000. You lose nothing on exchange 1 since the price hasn't changed.

Scenario 2: Exchange 1 falls to meet exchange 2, exchange 2 stays stable. You make $100 as you sold exchange 1 at 1000 and its price is now 900. You lose nothing on exchange 2 since the price hasn't changed.

Scenario 3: Exchange 1 rises to 1100 and exchange 2 rises to meet it. You make $200 as you bought exchange 2 at 900 and its price is now 1100. You lose $100 as you sold exchange 1 at 1000 and its price is now 1100. The ultimate profit is $100.

The important thing is that you trade both sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Historically, exchanges that are failing have significant spreads from stable exchanges (Mt. Gox comes to mind).

So, there is risk with this strategy. One of the exchanges could fail and you lose everything you have on that exchange.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is correct. That's why I specified _market_ risk. Of course not all the risks are overcome.

<comment><USER5> I know. I'm pointing out that seemingly profitable arbitrage opportunities carry very significant risks besides market risk.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Exchange failure is generally something separate from "market risk", and is sometimes categorized as "counterparty risk". With bitcoin, counterparty risk with exchanges is a very real thing, and an added risk beyond what would be considered "market risk" (i.e. asset price fluctuations).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are you eliminating execution risk? with these exchanges and this liquidity I wouldn't be surprised if your algo slips and actually loses money on the attempted executions on the arbitrage prices. Isn't that too dangerous to claim you've eliminated "market risk"?

</comment><comment><USER8> Some exchanges are going to be more permanently divergent. Does the software handle this well?

An exchange can be permanently cheaper if withdrawals are limited, trust is lower, or some other effect reduces trader confidence in the exchange.

Major events like hacks are also imo likely to cause this software to stumble. Are there safety features to make sure it'll stop trading if something sufficiently unusual is happening?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right: some exchanges are systematically divergent. It has been the case with BTC-e for a long time. This is not natively handled by the software.

The long/short mechanism overcomes the market risk (i.e. risk of losing money due to market moves) and reduces the slippage risk, but not the other risks, like technical issues on an exchange.

<comment><USER9> Why is BTC-e divergent? Are prices in blackbird adjusted for that, or other more easily quantifiable things such as fees?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The reason this doesn't profit is because the spread tends not to exceed the difference in exchange fees. So while there may be a $1 spread between two exchanges, the sum total of two 0.5% exchange fees on a $1000 coin will only net the exchange profits in fees, and you might earn a penny.

</comment><comment><USER11> I always wondered who might be doing this. I never expected to see an open- source tool, since it introduces immediate competition.

<comment><USER12> Yeah I don't understand -- if it works well wouldn't it be better to keep it to yourself?

<comment><USER13> Perhaps they wrote it for their own use, then were unable to make it consistently profitable to a worthwhile degree, so they just open-sourced it?

<comment><USER14> Agreed. I would find it hard to believe that there still exists an arbitrage opportunity here, 5 years after bitcoin went (somewhat) mainstream.

<comment><USER15> > 5 years after bitcoin went (somewhat) mainstream.

Arbitrage is as much about volume as it is about differences in price. Volume is something bitcoin markets do not really have (compared to most other financial markets).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cool to see a project like this open-sourced regardless of it's profitability, fintech/trading is usually such a black box.

Are there any other examples of trading systems like this that are good to read for someone with a passing interest in building simple trading systems?

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be dangerous to run this open source code, also, since your program could be manipulated with precision timing attacks, if it were to be fooled into making a bid at a price flash. There is in fact plenty of technical risk. Caveat emptor!

<comment><USER17> This is basically how many closed source Bitcoin trading robots operate. They create giant waves of predictable trades because naive operators leave the default parameters for trading signals. Other traders just get in (and out) right before the robots.

<comment><USER9> How do you know that?

<comment><USER17> Trading with my own robots and by hand.

I found that automated triangular (and 4, 5...) arbitrage was possible in the past, mainly due to fee-raking exchanges providing superfluous instruments. Opportunities were usually small, counterparty risk and fees usually large.

There also seemed to usually be someone else's bots doing the same thing, although occasionally decent sized trades appeared in slow/extraneous markets. Exploiting these mechanically eventually results in humans looking for the source of the arbitrage, and even if there aren't competing bots running it won't last long.

Arbitrage based on first-moving markets and slower moving markets was pretty common, and some people seemed to have automated it.

And of course the market making robots run by the exchanges are the most fun to watch. Lots of times they trigger the crossover bot traders' algorithms on purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> When building an automated trading system the first thing you write should be the risk system. Simply having a 'MaxExposure' per exchange doesn't cut it.

This has nothing to do with it being a market-neutral strategy or not. All code has bugs in it, exchanges have hiccups, quotes from many exchanges are notoriously wonky, programs freeze, Internet connections go down, users fat finger inputs etc. This needs a real risk system built into it.

<comment><USER19> But there is no market risk, because the project says so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's weird that over the course of 7 hours no one on a site called Hacker News noticed that send_email.cpp passes unsanitized user-supplied args to system(). I've spent less than 5 minutes looking at this code, so maybe that's the worst of it. But if 5 minutes of investigation found 1980's style bugs I doubt that's the worst of it.

<comment><USER21> I haven't read the code, but regarding unsanitized user input... Isn't the user the, well, user, in this case?

Complaining about bad data in that situation is like complaining that an admin could hit the power switch.

Or maybe I've completely misunderstood the purpose of this software.

<comment><USER20> Assuming input is from a benign source is literally the cause every single security issue ever. It's bizarre that I've been downvoted for this. And you're commenting about how I'm wrong without even reading the code. I seriously don't understand this site.

<comment><USER22> I, for one, am astounded at the responses in this thread of discussion.

> why shouldn't my financial system be as open as bash?

Oh my lord...

<comment><USER21> ... but it ain't your financial system. Unless I've seriously misunderstood the README.

I put my cups in the dishwasher, not the autoclave. I use 2fa for my financial accounts, but not for my frisbee league. Security is about appropriate paranoia.

<comment><USER22> In no scenario is it better to allow arbitrary hidden process creation than to spend 10 minutes writing a function that validates parameters provided to launch a process.

<comment><USER21> I respectfully disagree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Have you made much profit using the software?

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks like a great app for anyone looking to accidentally destroy their life savings and get arrested by the IRS.

<comment><USER25> Why? Genuine question.

<comment><USER26> Short selling is significantly more dangerous than other forms of investing, because it requires borrowing the securities that you then immediately sell. You eventually have to return those securities to the person you borrowed them from, so that requires a purchase in the future. If the price of the security goes up, you don't just lose your money, you take on a debt that you must repay.

The worst thing that can happen if you buy a security is that it will become worthless, thus you lose all the money you put in. The worst thing that can happen if you use any form of debt to leverage your investments is that you get wiped out completely because you end up owing more money than you can possibly pay back.

<comment> nommm-nommm See: Help! My short position got crushed, and now I owe E-Trade $106,445.56

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/help-my-short-position- got-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/help-my-short-position-got-crushed- and-now-i-owe-e-trade-10644556-2015-11-19)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Are the price differences between markets already arbitraged to the point of maximum profitability?

(which wouldn't be 100% due to eg exchange failure risk, transaction fees, risk of getting hacked while currency is in play, etc)

<comment><USER28> There is at least one exchange that has enough discount, but their reputation is horrible, so if you want to arbitrage that then it's on your head. In general that's the case if there is any opportunity. While they don't make mainstream headlines, mini MTGox'es still happen, like a Polish exchange some months ago.

There are a lot of people going after it, and probably some that do it wrongly thinking they are profitable while they are not. If you look at some of those bitcoin bots, they full of wrong calculations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just curious why someone would open source a project like this?

If it works, it should be making money consistenly, but giving away the system will make the arbitrage opportunity non-existant if enough people use it.

<comment><USER30> Perhaps he realises that other people are doing it too and, as you said, realised the more people who do arbitrage the more it goes away. He could be out to stabilise the bitcoin exchanges as well as provide liquidity to the market.

Perhaps as more people use it, the demand for bitcoins go up also, and since limited supply the price goes up. And he might have substantial holdings of bitcoin he wants to sell. More people trying to find arbitrage opportunities makes it easier to sell his bitcoin which are now higher value.

<comment><USER31> A big red flag in the SEC decision was that large arbitrage opportunities exist in bitcoin markets for far longer than is considered normal.

Anyone wanting more mainstream adoption of bitcoin would do well to promote arbitrage trading to as many as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> given the high latency with the exchanges the choice of language seems an unnecessary risk

<comment><USER33> The main bitcoin codebase is in C++ so C++ has the most mature library and best support for the protocol.

Other implementations, including two Javascript ones and a Go one, have had significant bugs in handling the protocol correctly.

Seems like a pointless risk and waste of time to use any non-c++ language for dealing with the BTC protocol

<comment><USER34> Does the library directly use the Bitcoin protocol? I had the impression that it only uses the Rest API of the individual exchanges interact with them.

<comment><USER15> Your impression was correct, the only crypto this touches is signing API calls to the REST APIs of exchanges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "without market risk"

> Blackbird doesn't sell but actually short sells Bitcoin on the short > exchange.

Because nobody ever faced risk short selling. That big market crash that was part of the worst recession in 60 years had nothing to do with short selling. Long Term Captial Management totally came out of that just fine. Bear Sterns is alive today and doing swell.

Jesus.

<comment><USER35> What does that have to do with anything? You don't understand the point.

You go short on one market, while simultaneously going long on the other market. That's how you _profit_ (arbitrage).

<comment><USER26> "Going short on one market" = "I can expose myself to losing a sum of money that I don't have if it goes tits up"

<comment><USER35> Not if you simultaneously BUY ON THE OTHER MARKET.

Jesus.

You also can't lose money beyond what you put in (on the exchanges that allow for this), your position just gets terminated.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Paths to being a kernel hacker - <AUTHOR> http://jvns.ca/blog/2014/01/04/4-paths-to-being-a-kernel-hacker/ <comment><USER2> > What it means is that if you're a woman and want to spend 3 months working > on the kernel, you can get involved in kernel development without any prior > experience, and get paid a bit ($5000).....If you're not a woman, Google > Summer of Code is similar.

Translation: If you are a man and you're reading Path 3, stop now and go to Path 4.

The rest of them seem pretty decent though, so I'll get working on rustboot and such.

[edit: Downvoters, can you explain how someone without any prior kernel experience is supposed to apply and get into the Google Summer of Code program to focus on kernel development? That is an invalid path. See this answer, for example [http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/193zdh/ho...](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/193zdh/how_competitive_is_google_summer_of_code/). The only realistic way to get into GSoC is if you have a very clear idea about what sort of contribution you are going to make. Preferably, you should have made some already.]

<comment><USER3> If you're a man and are gender queer or gender fluid you could always apply here: [http://kernelnewbies.org/OPWApply](http://kernelnewbies.org/OPWApply)

If you happen to be a person of color or disabled you could always apply here: [http://www.findinternships.com/2013/04/Explore-Microsoft- Int...](http://www.findinternships.com/2013/04/Explore-Microsoft-Internship- Program.html#.UskHX5CJAjA)

Or if you happen to be a straight white man you can apply for one of hundreds of linux kernel internships already dominated by straight white men (e.g. [http://jobs.akamai.com/job/Cambridge-Linux-Kernel-System- Sof...](http://jobs.akamai.com/job/Cambridge-Linux-Kernel-System-Software- Engineer-Summer-Intern-Job- MA-02138/30110900/?feedId=1016&utm_source=SimplyHired&utm_campaign=Akamai_GlobalMedia))

<comment><USER4> I'm genuinely curious about what they mean by 'gender queer': OPW stands for Outreach Program for Woman, which makes me suspect they're including that phrase to try to prevent drawing any lines re 'what is a woman', so I'm a tad curious about their stance on accepting a non-effeminate gay male in the OPW program.

If not, according to the article I'm out of luck because I don't qualify for GSoC either. Sad face. Genuinely interested in alternatives to GSoC and/or other avenues for jumping in to the Linux Kernel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I seem to recall that getting started in BSD kernels looked easier, at least 10-12 years ago. More organized, plenty of literature, and (Theo notwithstanding) a friendly community.

<comment><USER6> Personally the first kernel I fiddled with was Haiku's, followed by BSD. The latter especially was far easier to understand (especially the old versions) than linux is today, IMO. Not that that's a bad thing per se, as linux is incredibly functional, but when I was getting into os development, having something to read through that I could grok easily was more important. I'm currently hacking on RetroBSD, which as it's based on BSD 2.1, is quite nice! Runs on my new Fubarino board too, at least in theory. I haven't quite got it booting yet ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm honestly surprised how simple this code is, now that I started reading it. Julia, you've shown me in one succinct article that the linux kernel isn't a big scary black box of a place, and that maybe I too can hack on it or write modules.

The kernel code also reminds me a lot of the code to Node.js circa 2009/10, which I find a little strange.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting.

I think the mnt_* call is checking if the file system is mounted/accessible to write the change to the objects inode entry.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it is, I just read up on it, it's this function: [http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v3.12.6/fs/namespace.c#L404](http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v3.12.6/fs/namespace.c#L404)

From what I can gather, if the file handle isn't in write mode or is a special file, then we call __mnt_want_write, [http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v3.12.6/fs/namespace.c#L305](http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v3.12.6/fs/namespace.c#L305), otherwise we clone the write handle or something.

I'm surprised how simple this code seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The linux kernel source is objectively bad. It's fast and efficient, but I wonder how many man months are wasted every year by kernel hackers trying to keep all of these arcanely-named functions and structurez and variables in their head, or how many more bugs could be caught and squashed if the barrier to entry wasn't so high. A better code climate benefits everyone, and it's surprising that I haven't heard of any projects to make the source more accessible. We have all the RAM we could ever dream of, let's put some noobworthy comments in those files...

<comment><USER10> You claim it's objectively bad then only cite subjective things like function, structure, and variable names.

That word doesn't mean what you think it means :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Minix 3 seems like a really good route for this purpose. Supposedly a kernel in less than 10k lines of C.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Writing your own OS." Eh? Seriously? Maybe if processes were somehow linked to Dogecoin and DOOM.

I'd say if there's something that doesn't have a driver, and you need it, that's motivation enough. I remember one of my coworkers busting out a driver for the cuecat and some random sony vaio peripherals.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. Having an actual project in mind, and not just throwaway code, is extra motivation.</comment></comment>


Easy To Cancel makes it Easier to Sign Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.gettingmoreawesome.com/2011/10/26/easy-to-cancel/

<comment><USER2> The Drost Axiom: Whenever you see a common practice that everyone hates, it's because IT'S A MONEY MACHINE BABY.

Corollary: Don't gum up my hacker news feed with blog posts championing the antidote that everyone loves, because they don't matter.

As to the actual content of the article: Netflix advertises their cancellation policy less than they advertise the fact that they accept all major credit cards. That sidebar is just a bunch of comforting words; a long-form sales blurb for people that want to read something while they teeter on the fence.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of an old Joel Spolsky post about eliminating barriers to exit, not just entry. <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html>

'Now suppose one brave ISP would make the following promise: "Try us. If you don't like us, we'll keep your email address functioning, and we'll forward your email for free to any other ISP. For life. Hop around from ISP to ISP as many times as you want, just let us know, and we'll be your permanent forwarding service."'

(Yes, there was a time when people actually tied their email to their ISP's domain.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Splitting long forms across multiple pages can be detrimental to usability.

As a user, I want to know what information is going to be requested of me prior to commencing completion of the forms. I don't want to reach the payment page after filling in countless other fields to discover that my preferred payment method won't be accepted or the shipping rates are unacceptable. Placing form fields on a single page means that the user doesn't have to hand over information at the risk of not receiving something in return.

Requesting an email address or password multiple times is frustrating too. Hacker News gets this right. To sign up, all a user has to do is type text into two fields, click a button and it's done - ready to use.

<comment><USER5> _"As a user, I want to know what information is going to be requested of me prior to commencing completion of the forms."_

What you want doesn't necessarily correlate with what will make a business the most money. I'd bet that significantly more people complete the forms when they're split, and people don't have a significant negative reaction to being "tricked" into a multi-step sign up process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll wait for more evidence that making it super duper clear that you can cancel _significantly_ improves conversion.

Now this doesn't mean that cancellation may be a non-significant factor. I just think that it is more of a macro factor than a micro one that can be done right on just your own site and be expected to have an impact. If the last three sites the user signed up on had shitty cancellation, your text promising ease of cancelation is undoubtful to convince them. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have it; it does mean you should manage expectations in terms of it's influence on conversion rate.

<comment><USER7> Maybe it doesn't help first time convertion, but I can easily see how it can make it easier for a lost customer to return. A hard to cancel service means burning all bridges with leaving customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find even with fairly easy cancellation forms online there is usually to much stuff trying to get me to not cancel and trying to use subtle emotional messages to change my mind.

If I've come to this page generally it is probably too late to try and convince me not to cancel something.

</comment><comment><USER9> Simple and true. Difficult cancellation processes are really annoying. I recently cancelled two services, and even though I called them thanking them _and_ opened a ticket, they still kept sending me expiration notices for over a month. Gosh.

</comment><comment><USER10> I feel the same way about email. If I know you're running your list through someone like Mail Chimp, I'm more likely to give you my email address, because I know how easy they make it to unsubscribe.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't it also easier to implement if you don't force the customer to go through a rather long and annoying cancel form?

Win-win for the developer and the user, then.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps win-win for the customers and developers, but not so win-win for the investors.

Personal gyms practically make their living out of impossible-to-cancel memberships.

Some economist should do an analysis of how much money is spent on unwanted/unused subscription fees. I bet the answer would be interesting.

<comment><USER13> Some economist should do an analysis of the long term prospects of a company that builds "screwing the customer" into their business model.

I'm consistently surprised at how many people think its okay to push the bounds of what's acceptable in this area. I've taken the view in my business that "no games" is the only way to build long term value and I receive feedback daily from my customers how refreshing our approach is.

It is definitely a win-win for everyone, including investors, when a business can build long-time value. I'd argue its the best type of win.</comment></comment></comment>


Internet powered rapid microcontroller development - <AUTHOR> http://mbed.org/

<comment><USER2> Interesting board. It has ethernet, usb, and can as native interfaces plus the usual sort of stuff one might expect of a microcontroller. 64k ram, 512k flash so it can go places the Arduino can't.

At $50 I'd have ordered two on my first visit to the page to have ready for my next project, but $100 seems steep.

<comment><AUTHOR> The boards are currently on offer at $60 for preorders from Digikey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://mbed.org/tour/#compiler>

Does anyone think the benefits of online compilation outweigh the possible problems (site downtimes, the company going out of business, etc.)?</comment>


Ask HN: Protection for iPhone Development - <AUTHOR>

Hi!

  I'm about to release a few iPhone games. Given that we live in a world that pretty much anyone can sue anyone for anything (and I'm slightly paranoid); I'd like to protect myself from being sued just because some one finds my iPhone app insulting or anything else.

  I'm working alone in my app; I'm not taking any funding. At some point in the future, I may hire an artist.

  What would I go with? LLC ? C-corp?
 Thanks! <comment><USER2> An LLC is enough to protect you personally from liability, if you're really worried about that.</comment>


How to undo accidentally clicking flag at hn? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If you really do mean "flag" then it should have turned to "unflag" and you can just click it again.

If you mean the down-arrow, there is no undo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, unfortunately I lost the story l clicked flag on in the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> the flag link should have turned to "unflag"</comment>


WoW/Glider: Is it legal for your computer to play a game for you? - <AUTHOR> http://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/tags/firstsale-doctrine/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some background: MDY v. Blizzard should get a ruling soon. The EFF has an easier-to-read post on this as well, although a bit dated: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/you-bought-it-you- own-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/you-bought-it-you-own-it-mdy-v- blizzard-appealed).

Reading this, I was reminded of William Gibson saying we live in the Future now; it's truly bizarre that there's an actual court case over whether I can have my computer play a game on my behalf.

</comment><comment><USER2> I guess I am surprised that the Glider case hinges on the rights surrounding ownership of the client, versus improper use of the server, which is much less ambiguously owned by Blizzard.</comment>


Google Revenue Surge Sets Record - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/231900790 <comment><USER2> Interesting, I think they mis-characterize Steve Yegge's rant. Steve did not give Google+ a glowing opinion, but the "pathetic afterthought" part was aimed only at the API part of it, not the entire product.

<comment><USER3> Yours was the comment I was going to make. Furthermore, while I appreciate Yegge's thinking, I don't see how the facts he presented are not common knowledge already. We easily can observe Google's lack of "platform"; whether or not this is an issue for the company is open for debate. It is not as if Steve revealed some super-secret metrics which reflect negatively on the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> google truly proves the sky is limitless on what you may earn on the internet. they always empasize they generate a fraction of what could be possible on the internet.</comment>


Suggest HN: Remove 'flag' option from YC comment-less posts - <AUTHOR>

Now that I can flag articles without going into the comment page, I'm much more likely to accidentally click "flag" on the YC posts that disallow comments, because I reflexively click the rightmost link when I want to see comments.<p>It's a minor issue, but removing the flag option for such posts would resolve the issue. <comment><USER2> You can unflag after you've mistakenly flagged something, so it doesn't matter.

More importantly, this is where to put feature requests: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363>

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know about that link; thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree, as long as you're talking about YCombinator posts, not HN posts in general.

I check out the /newest list every time I visit HN, and I flag spam (which is surprisingly common). These are value-less submissions, so they normally don't have any comments. Not having a flag option for these posts would defeat the purpose of flagging.

</comment><comment><USER4> I disagree. I like having it there. I periodically look through new submissions and have to manually open 10-15 tabs just to flag. A nice time saver for those of us who curate a bit from time to time. As jcr said, you can always unflag when you make a mistake.

<comment><AUTHOR> In my post, I was specifically talking about privileged YC posts, not all HN posts in general. I agree that for normal HN posts, the flag feature is useful (and it also is unobtrusive, since the rightmost link is a link to discussion, not a flag link).

<comment><USER4> Ahhhh, I missed that. Sorry - I read your whole post but I guess I just didn't catch it.</comment></comment></comment>


Efene 0.7 - a language for the erlang VM - released - <AUTHOR> http://efene.tumblr.com/post/668063621/efene-0-7-a-language-for-the-erlang-vm-released

<comment><USER2> Cool to see another language for the Erlang VM. I would be interested in a feature comparison between this and Reia. <http://wiki.reia- lang.org/wiki/Reia_Programming_Language>.</comment>


Poor fitness linked to weaker brain fiber, higher dementia risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/articles/year-2018/fitness-dementia.html <comment><USER2> I believe this is relevant: [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180214093823.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180214093823.htm)

Title: "Running helps brain stave off effects of chronic stress Exercise protects vital memory and learning functions"

It's a study in mice but fascinating results IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER3> Once you do start exercising though, you have to watch out to not overdo it.

I've found that as I get older, what I would've considered moderate exercise 7-10 years ago, now causes bad moods, brain fog, fatigue, general irritability for a day or two after the workout. And getting enough sleep, drinking a lot of water, and making sure to eat right doesn't seem to completely alleviate the problem completely.

It's hard striking that right balance.

<comment><USER4> I used to have that when I started cycling (after never doing any sports throughout my whole life, not even the required exercises in school) but it was a combination of doing too much too quickly with not having adapted the rest of my behavior to support it (sleeping, eating, drinking). As they say, finding the right balance is golden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Both my grandfather's and all their brothers got Alzheimer's and they all had regular exercise routines. My mother's father was even running marathons up until he had Alzheimer's. I'm sure it helps but in the end you can't outrun death.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Not everyone is rich enough to have the time to exercise.

You don't have to be rich to find time to exercise. For example, I commute 20 minutes by bike to work. I could easily spend 10 minutes driving instead, but by cycling, I get at least 40 minutes of physical activity in every day.

If I wasn't as well off financially, then I would seriously consider selling my car and getting rid of the expenses associated with it and move to full time commuting by bike.

<comment><USER7> For most people, living biking distance from work is prohibitively expensive.

<comment><USER6> Commuting by bicycle isn't that uncommon. What do you consider to be biking distance to work? I would say about 10 miles one way is a practical maximum given the amount of time one has for a commute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> N=81, including the cohort of cognitively normal subjects, and those with dementia.

 _Mounting evidence showed the self-reported levels of physical activity are positively associated with white matter (WM) integrity and cognitive performance in normal adults and patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI)..._

 _However, the objective measure of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) was not used in these studies._

Why even bother? At what point does the methodology of a study begin to so closely resemble some guy on a rocking chair saying "ahh reckon," that we don't call it science?

<comment><USER9> On HN, could you please not post this sort of shallow, predictable dismissal of other people's work?

What we're getting on an internet forum is not informed professional critique of sample sizes, but a clichéd reflex that is well past its best-before date.

<comment><USER8> I apologize, and I'll make sure that future criticism is. Ore detailed and less cliche.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It amazes me how rare it is for people to exercise.

Entering my 30s, a somewhat regular exercise routine is something I expect in the people I date.

Yet some of those people reject the idea that it's something they should do at all. They just don't like it the same way a kid doesn't like vegetables, as if that's an option. It blew my mind the first dozen times I'd heard someone say that they just aren't interested in it.

<comment><USER11> Exercise is important, but your comment is so full of smug "look why can't everyone be as awesome as me" that it really turned me off to any point you were trying to make.

Not everyone is rich enough to have the time to exercise. Some people have to work two jobs just to pay rent. Some people have children that take up all of their time, we're not all brought up in nurturing wealthy homes with supportive parents making sure we learn all the things we should.

People can't find a moment to have a minute of rest in their lives, can't even afford healthy food and here you are being condescending about what is wrong with all these other people you don't know a thing about.

<comment><USER12> Failing to exercise is an area where I think the victim/excuse mentality kinda falls to pieces. Unless you are just entirely ignorant that it's a concern, it is something that anyone can do. Do some yoga/pushups/sit-ups every morning (5-10mins) and then go for a short walk on your lunch-break. There is no way someone cannot do that unless they just 'don't want to'. It is free, takes almost no time, and can be as simple as walking around for 15 minutes.

I don't think it is smug to challenge people to take the smallest, tiniest, bare minimum amount of personal responsibility.

<comment><USER13> It is easy to think that everybody can carve out even a small 5-10m for exercise, but that thought fails to consider people that have had or do have chronic pain or serious injuries.

It is incredibly hard to go from zero to minimal exercise, especially when even basic exercises seem to flare up old injuries. Where do you start? A poorly done crunch might throw out your back again -- do you risk it? Ten push ups might flare up your old tendonosis, should you do any? Your knees are weak from lack of exercise for years, and now 20 free weight squats makes your knees ache the next day -- is this good pain, or will the problem get worse as you do more?

Even without pain, it isn't hard to imagine people being too busy for _most_ of their day to find the motivation to exercise for a simple 10 minutes. Your day might start with a long, early commute to a tedious job. After a long commute back home, it may be hard to say "well, time to strain my body!" That is mentally tough, especially so if you have to prepare dinner, interact with kids, answer late night emails, etc.

I don't scoff at people who fail to exercise. I feel bad for what is going on or had happened in their life that drains them of the motivation or ability to exercise.

<comment><USER14> For most Americans, they can easily carve out 1 hour of TV a day. There's really no excuse for anyone between the ages of 10 and 60 to walk 15 minutes a day. Obviously there are outliers, as you said, disability issues, health problems etc.

But the vast majority of Americans eat way more than they should and don't give it a second thought. For most of America it's a cultural issue, not a physical or practical problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dupe

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16387966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16387966)

<comment><USER9> On HN it doesn't count as a dupe if the story hasn't had significant attention yet, and the convention is to only link to threads that got some comments. Otherwise people click, feel shortchanged, and get ornery.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Speaking from a US perspective, a lot of people have a misconception of what "fitness" means in the first place. They think it means signing up for expensive and unnecessary gym programs and drinking twice your weight in protein.

In reality you can do it from anywhere, it's very simple, and there's no excuse besides physical disability or laziness. I work 12 hours everyday and sometimes 16, and yet ever since taking on this job where I sit in front of a computer for the entirety of that shift, I'm in better shape then ever. That's because I've developed a consistent routine of working out.

I don't have a schedule or use an app or anything, I just do push-ups when I get home and sometimes when I'm at work too. Instead of using the elevator, I take the stairs. It's just about doing something regularly. For bonus points, get good sleep and eat better.

Very personal anecdote on my part but I hate reading "not everyone has time to workout." How much time do you need to do 10 push ups if nothing else?</comment>


An Analysis of Lightroom JPEG Export Quality Settings - <AUTHOR> http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/jpeg-quality <comment><USER2> This is fantastic - the examples are really good too.

Actually, playing with the examples has completely changed my perception on quality for images.</comment>