Serverless computing: economic and architectural impact - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/10/19/serverless-computing-economic-and-architectural-impact/ <comment><USER2> Great piece. I think the future of FaaS architecture still isn't widely understood (see: slim vs fat function discussion below) mostly because people are going to great lengths to shoehorn old architectural styles into FaaS platforms.

To be honest, I think AWS Lambda (and Azure Functions / etc.) nailed the compute and economic model, but only got halfway there WRT abstraction layer and ideal development for serverless functions themselves. There's an opportunity here to introduce millions of new software engineers to a programming model where they no longer have to think about _how_ their web services run and can treat remote function calls like first-class citizens of their development environment.

In fact, this is what we've built and we're continuing to iterate upon at StdLib [1]. One of the most common pieces of feedback we receive from our customers is; "this is everything serverless should be." We have an open source Gateway specification called FaaSlang [2] that makes local development a breeze and perfectly in sync with production functions, as well as providing automatic error (type, parameter) checking at the request level, before function execution. We've only been able to get here by "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" and reimagining backend web development with serverless functions from the ground up.

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of the company and pretty gosh darn excited about the future of this space. Check us out if you get the chance, you won't be disappointed. :)

[1] [https://stdlib.com/](https://stdlib.com/)

[2] [https://github.com/faaslang/faaslang](https://github.com/faaslang/faaslang)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice article. One gripe:

>For example, a 200ms service task that needs to run every five minutes would need a dedicated service instance (or two!) in a traditional model

This feels like such a straw man. Under what traditional model would you spawn off an entire server instance for such a minor function? You'd slap it in as a service on an existing host. Hosts which for a long time now have been virtualized on consolidated hardware, not bare metal.

Serverless can bring big benefits for certain workloads, but hyping it up by misrepresenting the alternatives seems a dishonest attempt to justify investment in the big architectural changes you have to make to get there.

<comment><USER4> > Under what traditional model would you spawn off an entire server instance > for such a minor function

I think that's the point - would you rather run your own VPS and manage the logs/errors from a cron job? Or simply write code that conforms to their contract and not worry about logs, errors, and whether it can scale or will fail to restart itself.

<comment><USER5> Or have another vps/server with spare capacity where this makes sense to run as well? In most cases, such a function will be closely related to other functions and can be grouped with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "… serverless platforms today are useful for important (but not five-nines > mission critical) tasks, where high-throughput is key, rather than very low > latency, and where individual requests can be completed in a relatively > short time window. The economics of hosting such tasks in a serverless > environment make it a compelling way to reduce hosting costs significantly, > and to speed up time to market for delivery of new features."

The crux so to speak. I wonder if this type of planning makes sense though? Can't I argue that good design, which imo has been around for ages and collected well in canonical books, aid in improving time to market for new features?

<comment><AUTHOR> (I'm one of the coauthors of the paper referenced in the post)

For me, charging for actual usage instead of reserved capacity actually aids in implementing those good design guidelines that were collected in books, such as low coupling and high cohesion of code, and this is what we wrote about in the paper as well. charging for reserved capacity creates financial incentives to bundle tasks and features into applications, creating runtime coupling (eg sharing the same /tmp dir, reusing security roles etc), even though they are designed to be isolated. charging for actual usage removes that incentive, so stuff that was designed to be isolated stays isolated when deployed.

<comment><USER7> If you give me a monolith with well isolated packages vs a serverless app across 400 lambdas and ask me to fix a bug, i can bet you which one i can find it faster.

Separation of concerns is easy to do without lambda or microservices. If you want separation of concerns write good code. Don't move your environment to a locked in circus.

<comment><USER8> I've seen surprisingly little on running "fat" services in a serverless (like AWS Lambda) environment. We're doing this at work pretty successfully so far: Django projects with many endpoints within a single Lambda function. There are limitations to work with (50MB compressed code) but they're quite manageable for some time, and so far a nicer problem to deal with than all the things we give up by abandoning serverless. So try adjusting your example to something like a dozen lambdas for an engineering organization of 50 devs, with each lambda service boundary roughly matching the team and product structure.

Serverless enables the extreme (many tiny services with minimal upfront cost) but doesn't require it.

<comment><USER9> That might be a catchy phrase. "Fat functions", or a single function that holds a lot of endpoints in a single lambda (or another platforms' version of cloud functions). Have you had any issues with requests getting timed out, or managing the 'health' of the fat function?

<comment><USER8> No unusual timeout issues - our "fat function" has only marginal overhead, just the WSGI layer and method dispatching code to route the request to the appropriate view/controller. This should be single digit millisecond overhead.

For health, there's certainly more noise now: we can look at overall invocation error rates (a metric lambda gives us), but they're across several endpoints within the lambda function. This is still an open question for us, but solvable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The serverless graphic had more arrows than the server based one. I'm not sure that is an argument for serverless being simpler.

The serverless functions take up to 1s to boot. It is not fair to compare that to a VM that is on all the time. We should compare it to a container that is booted on demand. Right now only Heroku does that. At GitLab we're considering adding idling by sponging requests [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ee/issues/3712](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/3712)

<comment><USER8> The article covers this: "[...] tasks, where high-throughput is key, rather than very low latency [...]"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note that this point:

>You can't run a fully simulated Lambda environment on your local machine.

... is now partially solved via SAM Local: [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/test-sam- local.h...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/test-sam-local.html)</comment>


iMac Pro, Apple's most powerful Mac, will be available to order December 14 - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2017/12/12/imac-pro-apples-most-powerful-mac-will-be-available-to-order-december-14/ <comment><USER2> Why does Apple think it's OK to basically weld these units shut?

You don't have / spend the extra for a bigger disk or memory and your screwed. You will need to buy a new one...

<comment><USER3> Or do any sort of repair on the thing. It's quite feasible to do basic board level repair with the schematics. But not without the schematics or if the thing is welded shut. It's wasteful, and I sincerely hope one day we can have a proper "right to repair" act. I mean, this has nothing to do with user experience, security, or aesthetics. It's basically just an anti-consumer move on Apples' part. And, I honestly don't get why. What are they trying to protect? Just put some screws or other mechanism for detaching the thing and publish the board schematics. They won't loose money over it.

<comment><USER4> These boards contain mostly surface mounted devices. This isn't a TV from the 80s. You can't just go in and solder things, even if you have the schematics.

The pro market doesn't care about that anyway, they just get AppleCare.

<comment><USER3> It's definitely possible. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w) (he does a bunch of different issues, just click any of the board level repair videos). I mean if you don't own the equipment yourself (or don't feel like doing it) I don't see why /other people/ well versed in doing it should not be allowed to. As a so called "pro" AppleCare is not always an option. You loose all your data and often enough have to wait several weeks to get your device back...and in a lot of places there are no certified apple dealers in a 700 mile radius. It's just user hostile, and completely unnecessary.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fluent Design System by Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://fluent.microsoft.com/ <comment><USER2> If I can't read through the page and understand whatever the hell it's supposed to be then you shouldn't be designing anything. It indicates the sort of people that come up with this crap, the ones that care about style over substance.

The depth demo in particular looked absolutely horrible to use.

<comment><USER3> Well it certainly _looked_ pretty. Maybe ill make my own Chaotic Design System using Darkness, Decay, Death, and Destruction, oh and Disappointment to make 5.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Fluent Design System is a new take of Microsoft on design to rival that of Google's Material Design. It consists of 5 foundational elements - Depth, Material, Light, Scale and Motion. It aims for a bold, scalable, universal design.</comment>


FDA approves country's first medicine made from marijuana - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2018/06/25/fda-approves-countrys-first-medicine-made-from-marijuana <comment><USER2> CBD has a theraputic component whose benefits are still being explored.

> _The drug, GW Pharmaceuticals' Epidiolex, is made of cannabidiol, or CBD, a > component of marijuana that does not give users a high. It is given as an > oil, and in clinical trials, it was shown to reduce the number of seizures > by about 40 percent in patients with Dravet or Lennox-Gastaut syndromes._

Another hurdle is an upcoming DEA review:

> _Before GW can market Epidiolex, though, the Drug Enforcement Administration > will have to reclassify CBD, which in this case, because it comes from > marijuana, is considered a Schedule I drug, meaning it has no medical value > and a high risk of abuse. The agency is expected to do so within 90 days._

This decision could indicate the long-term future of cannabis research and medical use. If this is approved, likely similar projects could be approved. However a denial would signal that such research may not be viable for several years.

They're using their own high-CBD, low-THC strain:

> _Although Epidiolex was only approved for the two specific conditions, > analysts expect doctors to prescribe it off label for a variety of epileptic > diseases. It comes from a proprietary strain of cannabis grown by GW that > has been bred to have high levels of CBD and low levels of THC, the > component that does make people high._

Cannabis has largely been bred to have stronger and stronger effects over time. THC and CBD have effects that cancel each other out, so part of the stronger effect comes from the increase of THC content, and another part comes from the decrease of CBD content. Legalization has brought support for CBD- dominant varieties, and some cannabis stores in WA State have occasional CBD sales when their THC supplies get low.</comment>


Demo or Die! You're a teen hacker, you want to impress, you demo code (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.07/democoders_pr.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if the demo scene was ever discussed at length here on HN, but it was something I grew up with. I can't prove it, but I suspect the same personalities that were drawn to it in the 80s and 90s are now being attracted to the web startups and the like. Perhaps, sadly, with more commercial motivations.

This is an article from 1995. I think this sums it up well

 _Demos are the last bastion of passionate, crazed, enthusiast-only programming, crafted purely for the hell of it by inspired teenagers working entirely in their spare time. The teens create jaw-dropping audiovisual effects beyond the dreams of most multimedia designers. Constantly striving to better their rivals, devotees of the demo scene cram spectacular three- or four-minute presentations onto a single 800-Kbyte floppy disk, fitting them into tiny amounts of memory. Freely spread by disk-swapping over bulletin boards and other sites on the Internet, then replayed on home computers all over the planet, each demo becomes a piece of digital graffiti, proclaiming the superiority of the gang that created it. Demos are made by the rock-and- roll groups of code._</comment>


Show HN: I Ported LevelDB to Universal Windows Platform - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maxpert/LevelDBWinRT <comment><USER2> This nicely demonstrates the main design blunder of the Universal Windows Platform: introducing an incompatible dialect of C++ (called C++/CX, formerly known as C++/CLI, formerly known as Managed C++).

I really wonder why Microsoft had to invent their own, incompatible C++ dialect when projects like emscripten can cross-compile perfectly standard C++ to Javascript, which is a much more exotic compile target than the .NET runtime.

<comment><USER3> C++/CX is a convenience syntax for creating and working with types in the windows runtime. In all of the talks given by Herb Suttor, a MS employee and active member of the C++ standards committee, he says to use it at ABI boundaries and use standard C++ everywhere else.

If that's not good enough for you there is also Mondern C++ by Kenny Kerr which is a C++1x projection of the windows runtime.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I think that makes the most sense to keep C++/CX language constructs isolated to only a few places that need to talk to the UWP APIs, similar to how one would contain Objective-C(++) when talking to OSX APIs to only a few places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you written about how you found the process? The good and bad things, etc. With UWP being so new and untested it is hard to find much information on porting an already established codebase to the platform. How is performance, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for your interest, I have been working on UWP for quite a while now; it has been both good and bad.

My biggest gripe right now is no good DB support (SQLite requires an extension and that two is not enough; you have next to nothing ORMs and well EF7 is still RC). In today's world I can't image an App not finding database as a useful platform feature, Android/iOS have builtin DB support and they prove the fact how important DB support could be. I just don't understand what were people smoking when they made a decision to not include a DB framework in UWP.

XAML framework has it's own bugs, caveats, and yes there is next to nothing material available to help you. They have improved a-lot with x:Bind but then you find bugs like this [https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en- US/c2bde144-47ae...](https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en- US/c2bde144-47ae-4eb9-817f-1f434caa05f5/uwpcxaml-compiled-binding-xbind-cause- memory-leaks?forum=wpdevelop) over which you would spend a whole week and then say "AH FUCK IT; use Binding instead".

Performance is good with .NET native but not as good as you would picture a native code to be. I have seen Java blowing my mind just with JIT. Personally I felt Microsoft has done good job of performance on PC since they have mastered the x86/x64, but ARM feels a little slow to me.

I personally strongly feel (coming from WP 8.1 platform) that UWP is better but it feels like an RC; it has broken ends, missing good documentation (hell wrong documentation sometimes), and next to nothing opensource community support. One of my colleagues clearly said that if he has to choose to work on another UWP project he would choose to not work on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any chance of a version for WinJS? The only javascript based database available to both Windows Phone and Windows Store apps is SQLite, and it's seriously buggy

<comment><USER6> You should be able to use this like any other WinRT component in WinJS.

SQLite support should hopefully get better now that it has been added to the platform SDK.

Also, have you tried PouchDB yet? I've gotten some good results from it.

<comment><AUTHOR> When was it added to Platform SDK? I am using VS 2015 Update 1.

<comment><USER6> Looks like Platform SDK 10586:

[https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/12/03/windows-10...](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/12/03/windows-10-build-10586-sdk- breakdown/)

Edit to add: Believe this is the same SDK included in VS 2015 Update 1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Const-me But why? Windows already has ESENT.

That embedded NoSQL database engine is developed and supported by Microsoft. Available since windows 2000, on the phones since 8.0.

The functionality is much more. While you surely can use it as a key-value store, if you need more there're secondary indices, column schema, multivalued columns, version columns, auto-increment columns, sparse indices, transactions…

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you point me any tutorial or post that does a walk through on how to use ESENT on UWP applications?

EDIT: I found ManagedESENT and yes there is a way to do it in UWP apps too but API seems like it's from stone-age example:

Api.JetCreateInstance(out instance, "instance");

Api.JetSetSystemParameter(instance, JET_SESID.Nil, JET_param.CircularLog, 1, null);

Api.JetInit(ref instance);

<comment> Const-me As for the API, I agree that on UWP, it's too low level.

For desktop platforms, I've built my own ORM on top of that: [https://esentserialize.codeplex.com/](https://esentserialize.codeplex.com/) However, I'm too lazy to port that on Windows Store unless I'm paid for that: the main problem isn't ESENT, it's the reflection that I use extensively for serializing/deserialising those records/fields.

Edit: but if you only need key-value storage with both keys and values being blob of bytes, the complete implementation on top of Managed ESENT will be like four pages of C# code.

The main complexity in ESENT isn't DB initialization. For initialization, you copy-paste DB initialization code from PersistentDictionary or some other sample and forget about that (until much later when you'll be optimizing the DB performance). The hard parts are column schema, index schema, queries, schema upgrades, and also on servers it's concurrency.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Plans To Penalize "Overly Optimized" Sites - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57399425-93/google-plans-to-penalize-overly-optimized-sites/

<comment><USER2> How would googlebot know which site have good content?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any legal way for a young developer to make money? - <AUTHOR>

I write small, useful web applications, and I'm beginning to dabble in Android development as well. The catch: I'm in high school.
I want to use my skills to start generating some revenue - at least enough to cover the cost of a VPS to host these projects - but there is not a single advertising service, credit card processor, or "app store" that will knowingly do business with a minor.
My parents could theoretically open accounts for me, but then do they need to be the ones clicking buttons? Do I have to stand over their shoulders and tell them what to click, or can they hand over the password? Would this violate "non-transferable" clauses?
I understand that I should be focusing on improving my skills, living my life, etc. I am. I'm not trying to get $10m from a VC and build an empire like Facebook. I just want to cover costs and make a little money from things I've made for myself which I believe other people will find useful.
Any ideas are welcome. This seems like the kind of place where I'll find someone who is/was in the same boat. <comment><USER2> Somewhere in the late '90's, a 13 year old dutch boy made a website for a school assignment. The website was nothing more than a chart comparing rates of cellphone operators. His parents thought it would be a good learning experience, so they signed the contracts for hosting et al for him.

A couple of years down the road Ben Woldring (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Woldring>) is one of the youngest self-made millionaires in the country.

So, get your parents to sign up for hosting, adsense, appstore, etc. and code away. By the time you're old enough to legally sign your own contracts you'll know so much of doing business (whether your business thrived or failed) your experience will prove to be a big asset.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I understand that I should be focusing on improving my skills, living my life, etc. I am." Why should you?

I'm 17 and also in High School and have found starting tech companies/working on projects great at this age. I think you're coming at this thinking that you won't be respected and you'll have problems launching a startup or working on projects at this age.

I'd say in many ways it's much better to do so now. You have the opportunity to learn, the best way to 'Improve your Skills' and learn is to launch startups/test things out. It's both a unique learning opportunity and chance to do anything someone a few years older can do.

I've never been treated any differently to anyone else. I've been to numerous events, meetups and meetings over the last few years and have found it refreshing to be treated like anyone else there. It's actually taught me a lot as well. People don't care that you're younger, even when I have to speak to someone personally in business. The point being that you're in the position that you can do anything you want, whether it be something for fun, a niche product or something with a big vision.

Don't let policies stop you, you'd be surprised at the amount you can do under 18.

This is me, if you want to talk more: <http://twitter.com/andrewbrackin>

Some things you should look into:

<http://mlgen.com> which is amazing as it's full of both hugely successfully young entrepreneurs and some doing amazing things in small niches. I've also met loads of like minded individuals who share their experience and help me connect with people I may want to meet.

<http://teensintech.com> is another cool site with a pretty great team of folks.

<comment><USER4> Do you find it a problem getting into events ? - I was speaking to someone a while back who was complaining that he couldn't get into a lot of startup events as they had open bars/free drinks so had to operate a 18+ policy.

<comment><USER3> Sorry back. I find it a problem sometimes, some of my friends got into one through the back/sneaked in. Never really the events just the after parties to be honest.

It's not very often that I have a problem as if it's quite a big after party (bouncers/staff from establishment run the door) they rarely expect a 17 year old to be going to a startup event after party.

Obviously none of this is a deterrent to starting anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was 12 when I was a freelance web developer, and thankfully I didn't read any fine print when signing up for hosting/domains! :) This was 2003 (yeah, I'm still young). The biggest challenge for me was being female.

There are other means to get attention without going to fancy drinking events. There are lots of meetups and conferences where anyone can go. Go to those and meet people!

As for submitting your apps, not sure what you can do there except get older :) I had to wait to get older in order to become more credible - and also wait for females to not be perceived as idiots in the field.

</comment><comment><USER4> As long as you have your parents permission that's fine you can fill in all the forms (with their details) and press the buttons, etc. on their behalf. That's not a problem, you're just a conduit/proxy for your parents as far as the legal stuff is concerned.

Google Adsense even specifically suggest this approach:

[http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en...](http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=14230)

</comment><comment><USER6> Look into a home server, you can just buy a second hand laptop and leave it always on next to the router. You can get student debit cards from a young age, it varies a lot but can be as low as 14 apparently, which should work with Paypal. If you can get your running costs down, just keep learning.

<comment><AUTHOR> I already have a VPS. I've never heard of this comapny shutting down a minor, but I have heard that about credit card processors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm wondering the same thing, I'm heading towards my GCSEs and would like to go to events, and earn revenue from what I create.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not suggesting you do the same, but in the 90's I was running adult sites making a bundle starting at age 15. All I needed was a checking account and PO Box, -- I'm pretty sure anyone making less than a million are so a year online is never going to stir up questions of any sort -- no one will ever know.</comment>


"Micro-libraries": the future of front-end development? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolksoftware.com/microlibraries-the-future-of-web-development <comment><USER2> I hope not. Adding a dependency has its own costs (giving up the control over bugs, among the others), the fact that is very rarely remembered by programmers.</comment>


52 things I learned in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/fluxx-studio-notes/52-things-i-learned-in-2018-b07fc110d8e1 <comment><USER2> Wow, I wrote this list, let me know if you have any questions.

<comment><USER3> It was a lot more random then expected. Totally liked it overall, specially the startup leave and the math behind headlines.

Keep it up..</comment></comment>


Damn Cool Algorithms: Cardinality Estimation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.notdot.net/2012/09/Dam-Cool-Algorithms-Cardinality-Estimation <comment><USER2> Just to mention a modification on the "simple and intuitive cardinality estimator" that's far more accurate and actually used for Google's SZL:

Given N objects, hash each object and store the lowest M (s.t. M << N) hashes, then calculate what percentage of hash space is covered and compare to how much of the hash space would be expected to be covered.

This removes the issue of having to assume the N objects are distributed evenly as hash(object) should exhibit that property.

[1] My naive Python implementation for tests on the NLP WSJ corpus -- [https://github.com/Smerity/Snippets/blob/master/analytics/ap...](https://github.com/Smerity/Snippets/blob/master/analytics/approx_unique.py)

[2]: Szl's implementation -- [http://code.google.com/p/szl/source/browse/trunk/src/emitter...](http://code.google.com/p/szl/source/browse/trunk/src/emitters/szlunique.cc)

<comment><USER3> >This removes the issue of having to assume the N objects are distributed evenly as hash(object) should exhibit that property.

I'm a bit confused -- isn't that exactly how the article proceeds?

<comment><USER2> The hashing isn't the point. The leading zeroes method is more likely to produce unreliable results when you can't guarantee the dataset will be large in advance whilst the "keep min M elements" method works fine for unexpectedly small sets. That's why it's used for SZL where the user can request approximate unique counts on any data regardless of size.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you read the papers I linked in detail? Some of them, such as HyperLogLog, provide corrections to give better estimates for small sets, and although I can't follow the proof in its entirety, they claim to be more efficient than the alternatives, including the one you propose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't resist mentioning a favorite algorithm of mine for solving a related problem. It generalizes the algorithm for the classic problem of finding the majority element (one which occurs at least 50% of the time) with a single pass over a stream, using a constant amount of space, and a second sieving pass. It's one of those simple gems you wonder why it took so long to discover.

[http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/el327/datamining2011aFiles/ASim...](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/el327/datamining2011aFiles/ASimpleAlgorithmForFindingFrequentElementsInStreamsAndBags.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very nice, thanks! It might be too similar for a post all of its own, but I think it'd be a worthy followup to this post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fwiw, I believe the best estimator has been improved on since HyperLogLog, with a more recent result that is provably optimal (and slightly faster asymptotically, dropping the loglog factor), which perhaps more importantly can also process streamed data online: <http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~minilek/papers/f0.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend mentioned the existence of this, but I couldn't find it myself. Thanks for pointing it out.

All the algorithms can process data in a streaming fashion, though - they only require a single pass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you liked this post, you will probably find this article about other probabilistic data structures interesting too: [http://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/probabilistic...](http://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/probabilistic- structures-web-analytics-data-mining/)

</comment><comment><USER7> That is mind-blowing. Intuitively, a hash digest is completely uncorrelated with its input, but this shows that you can make inferences about a collection of data based on its hashes.

In retrospect, it makes sense stochastically, but still a Damn Cool Algorithm indeed.

<comment><USER8> Isn't that the point? That hashing maps an arbitrary set of numbers to an approximately uniform scale-invariant distribution.

<comment><USER7> That's not what I said. Generating a predictable distribution by hashing is old hat.

What's awesome is you can then make inferences about the original data from those hashes -- something that good hash functions are supposed to be resistant to, in isolation.

<comment><USER3> It works here because we only care whether two bits of data are equal -- and a hash function had better preserve that relationship!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very cool algorithm. I wonder, can anyone explain in what kind of real-world application it would be used?

</comment><comment><USER10> A minor nitpick... 'cardinality' in mathematics refers to a set of infinities. The set of all integers has a certain cardinality, which is equal to the cardinality of all rational numbers, but which is smaller than the cardinality of all irrational numbers.

"Size estimation" is sufficient; no need to get fancy with words you don't know the meaning of.

<comment><USER11> The OP is correct. Cardinality in mathematics is the number of elements in a set[1]. What you are probably referring to is the concept of cardinal numbers[2]. I guess you can skip the smug tone.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinality> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_number>

<comment><USER12> He can't even claim that. Cardinal numbers include the finite cardinals, after all.</comment></comment></comment>


Mosh: An Interactive Remote Shell for Mobile Clients - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsIxNYl0oyU <comment><AUTHOR> This is old, but I just discovered it. Makes a slow ssh connection feel like a fast one.</comment>


Ask HN: Simple Git doc mirror/hosting? - <AUTHOR>

I've finally started properly documenting Heresy, but my hosting method at this point is tedious. I write the docs in LyX and output to HTML and push this to master, but to actually host it in a linkable way I have to then manual copy it over to the gh-pages branch so that I can actually then share it publicly. I swear it used to be the case that I could simply keep the two branches in sync with a pull request, but they seem to have changed the way the gh-pages branch works so that's no longer an option.
Ideally it'd be nice to just have a site somewhere that keeps in sync automatically the HTML file and hosts it so I don't have to constantly mess with it.
I found a site here: http://git-doc.com/
It seems to have the functionality I want, but the list of permissions it demands is ludicrous, more or less requiring full access to my entire GH account.
Anyone know any alternatives? <comment><USER2> Yes, you could register your own domain, host a machine somewhere with a web server and just stick your HTML there. Genearate the HTML structure from your Git repo with some Makefile or whatever, and then rsync the result over SSH to the server.</comment>


Quantum Juggling (online pattern simulator) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ministryofmanipulation.com/blog/quantum-juggling-online-pattern-simulator/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting to observe: "@stevenstrogatz Also known as Quantum juggling, is robust enough to serve as "programming language" for the tricks" ~ [https://twitter.com/DonMostrenco/status/692822840261922817](https://twitter.com/DonMostrenco/status/692822840261922817)</comment>


Show HN: Visual Resume - <AUTHOR> http://www.skillgram.com

<comment><USER2> "Use it for 21.95 EUR (5.95 EUR) per year" does not accurately state the price. Elsewhere this is clarified to mean "21.95 EUR after the first year" and the 5.95 seems to be linked with a sale which is not active.

"Refund policy...We have no refund policy." just state 'we do not offer refunds' or similar, as that is the policy that you have attempted to state.

The example CV is quite poor IMO.

\- "gooogle" is misspelled

\- no tooltips on the UI with vague icons

\- "I am an engineer ..." is not a good placeholder

\- the "vis"ual arts education section is cut off and it does not expand when hovered over or clicked

\- mostly empty drop downs when I click on on code types

\- pretty much useless code examples on others

\- all sorts of self proclaimed experience in languages with pretty much nothing to back it up

perhaps having a link to a blog where you did something novel with a language in that dropdown?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the great feedback.

Just to note, it is an imaginary CV with imaginary companies :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an experimental approach of writing a resume or CV. This site allows creation of easy readable resume. There you can put as much information as you like without flooding the initial page. This site is more intended for software engineers. For example, there is a nice way to add code samples. Secondary or for someone maybe even primary value of this site is for self development, as there you can easily see you knowledge status.

<comment><USER3> can improve UX. Resume is where we see all the content with out any interactions..atleast thats what i feel...

<comment><AUTHOR> UX or UI? ... thanks for feedback ...</comment></comment></comment>


Simon Cowell to create X-Factor show for tech startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/x_factor/4563750/Its-Billiam-as-Simon-Cowell-and-rapper-Will-join-forces-to-find-the-new-Bill-Gates.html

<comment><USER2> Gotta love Hollywood. Turning an A&R executive into an expert on technology startups.</comment>


Ask HN: Any Canadians landed non-technical US visas? - <AUTHOR>

I recently interviewed with a company in SF that likes me and wants to hire me for a marketing position.
After some research into visas though, it looks a bit pessimistic for people who aren't developers. I think my options are the H1B (which fills out fast) and the TN visa (for which I'm not sure I have a role that fits the approved list).
Any Canadians or otherwise have any experience with this? <comment><USER2> For TN you could possibly do management consultant. These have been notoriously tricky and lots of horror stories. There isn't anything strictly marketing related.

H1B is possible. It's so far shaping up to be like last year where the cap isn't met until January next year. So plenty of time to score an H1B. 21600 out of 65000 have been approved as of 07/22/2011.

An excellent resource is <http://www.canuckabroad.com> take a look at the forums there.</comment>


The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model - <AUTHOR> http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html <comment><USER2> Why would this be relevant in HN?

<comment><USER3> Maybe they're spamming it with the fotm js framework.

Or it's a unique emergent phenomenon to be studied intellectually.</comment></comment>


Godfrey883aol.com - <AUTHOR>

I have developed a concept and business plan that will revolutionize the travel industry. It may not, on first impression, appear to be internet related, but it is very consistent with today's internet activity.  I presented my concept and business model to a member of McDonalds board of directors, who immediately recognized the future value of it and arranged for me to use their corporate financial and operational staff to implement the concept.  Although I had shared architectural drawings and business model with them, I thought better of that relationship.  Little me against THEM.  My concept is much bigger than a relationship with a particular food provider. This concept has worldwide applicability, a completely unique lodging alternative for today's "connected" world. Monetizing, we are talking "billions" oh. I forgot the capital B. <comment><USER2> What are you hoping to hear from the HN community regarding your submission? You provide few details, and don't seem to have any particular intent.</comment>


Boulder-based SendGrid raises $21 million in venture capital - <AUTHOR> http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_19757952

<comment><USER2> I recently migrated from MailChimp to SendGrid. Reason is the MC customers support reall sucks ... they just simply suspended my account when my subscribers reaches over 100k ... no I'm not a spammer, i have been sending email to over 100k subscribers for many months using their API (by synching in / out), so when i finally decided i have the money to upgrade to their 100k monthly plan, so i dont have to sync in / out of their API (previously 20k plan) ... guess what is the reward? They decided to suspend my account .. WTF???

<comment><USER3> Did you ask them why?

<comment><USER2> I think it auto triggers their threshold checker ... becoz it must be suspicious that my subs jump from 20k to over 100k ... but i have explained that to them ... plus they have a string of interrogation questions i have to answered ... i have been a loyal customer for over many years ... and they just suspend me over the Christmas weekend ... it took them 3-4 days to just reply me and finally many email bouncing back and forth ... i had enough ... i just paid over $1000 / month to get treated like this!!!

<comment><USER4> We had the same experience with them. Moved as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does it seem weird to anyone else that "sending emails" is suddenly a money- making venture? Have our spam detectors gotten so screwed up that this is the only way to guarantee delivery?

<comment><USER2> Yes I tried setting own mail server but will never be able to get pass gmail, yahoo mail, etc spam filters. Had to give up and pay these ESP at the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know if SendGrid plans on improving their incoming parse a la Mailgun and Postmark (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3475308>)?

We use SendGrid but have been thinking of switching to Mailgun for awhile for their incoming parse service.</comment>


A review of Barrelfish, a multikernel OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.borderstylo.com/posts/76-multikernel

<comment><USER2> Micro-overview: research project that treats each core independently with message passing between them. Lots of interesting implementation stuff, e.g. "Barrelfish makes extensive use of DSLs for generating low-level operating system code in C", and they have a correctness proof for that framework, which is written in Haskell.</comment>


Regulation could protect Facebook, not punish it - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/25/the-regulation-moat/ <comment><USER2> I can think of three relevant regulations for (large) internet companies

1\. Strong anti-monopoly regulation. There is no reason for Facebook owning Whatsapp & Instagram.

2\. Once your revenue exceeds x million USD on ad supported services that are free for end users, you must offer the service also for money with reasonable margin on top of the actual production costs, with strong guarantees that the data of end user who has opted for paid service is kept private and not monetized anyhow.

3\. Once your revenue on ad supported services that are free to end users exceed y million USD, you must make easily available every single usage of the end user's data. Also, user must have right to prohibit any specific type of use of user's data.

<comment><USER3> > _Once your revenue exceeds x million USD on ad supported services that are > free for end users, you must offer the service also for money with > reasonable margin on top of the actual production costs, with strong > guarantees that the data of end user who has opted for paid service is kept > private and not monetized anyhow_

I like the size threshold but not the solution. Toying with business models should be a solution of last resort.

Simpler: for companies with more than X users or Y gross revenues, an American GDPR. Consumers get an absolute right to audit and delete their data. Explicit consent is required for each instance of third-party sharing. Companies are liable to their users for breaches, with a minimum amount directly claimable by users through an easily-accessibly regulator.

<comment><USER4> Why a size threshold? An American GDPR seems like a fine idea, especially if it'a similar enough to GDPR that complying with one gets the other for free.

<comment><USER5> Size threshold is presumably to allow small startups to grow and explore models without crushing compliance costs. That's the kind of regulation that protects incumbents who can afford the lawyers and software tools to do compliance properly.

There tends to be an inverse relationship between regulation in a space and incumbents springing up, for better or for worse

<comment><USER4> There's a fine line between "grow and explore models without crushing compliance costs" and "break all the rules so you can outcompete established players". Hi, Uber!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's well known at this point that regulations tend to protect incumbents in many industries by making it more expensive for startups to compete.

Industry support for regulations can seem counter-intuitive -- why would a company want to increase its cost of doing business? But it makes sense when you consider that the costs are an anti-competitive weapon. One example is when Philip Morris supported FDA regulations of cigarettes: [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2002/07/smok...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2002/07/smoke_screen.html)

So, we should be very careful about how we regulate companies' use of customer data, lest we make it even more difficult for Facebook's competitors.

<comment><USER7> I really don't care if building codes, automotive safety regulations, and standards of medical care make it hard on new businesses. My priorities are not dying in a car crash, my home not falling on my head, and avoiding incompetent doctors. Regulation on tobacco may have helped incumbents stay incumbent, but it also led to record judgements against the, and the rapid decline of their industry in the developed world. That it's harder for a tobacco startup to get off the ground is a bonus.

<comment><USER8> Except Facebook isn't cigarettes, dude. No matter how much you want it to be cigarettes, it just isn't.

Facebook is a boredom cure at best, and at times it can be a version of the cold, hard, cringey truth. You might complain that Facebook harms mental health, but the reality is that sometimes the truth is the most depressing thing to learn.

If Facebook does harm by preventing enough escapism, there's no regulatory cure to fix that. You'll just have to wait for the tide to shift. But hey, look at that, today's your lucky day...

<comment><USER9> Facebook, and large scale social media in general, does harm by substituting for genuine real-world social interaction, by warping our perception of other people's lives (highlight-reel effect on steroids), by pushing us to become egotistical "self-marketers", and by hijacking our attention via insidious manipulation of the lizard brain.

<comment><USER8> Hmmm, not quite. See, that's the part about the boredom cure I mentioned.

People really are that bored. People's lives are frequently very lackluster and uneventful. This is plainly obvious, because whenever someone delightfully ordinary (yet comfortable with that) comes along, it seems like such a breath of fresh air amongst all the puffed out try-hards that grab so much attention.

The cringey reality check is the depressing part that creates the anxiety of never wanting to leave the house. People have a hard time differentiating between bullshit and not bullshit.

It's not entirely correct to blame Facebook in particular for the inadequacy felt, when comparing one's self to someone else's carefully currated (yet seemingly natural) photo album.

That part of the debate is just the bulemia-caused-by-waif-as-fashion-model- redux. You can't fix that by removing Facebook from the equation, because people will never stop beautifying their profile pics and cherry picking exclusive-yet-swollen friend lists.

So we'll cure it by all jumping ship to Mastodon, where the photo albums will be crappier and less enviable, and we'll all be less cringey? That's the plan?

This isn't about elections at all, is it?

<comment><USER9> That's why I mentioned broader social media in general. This problem isn't specific to Facebook alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-fosta-will-get- hol...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-fosta-will-get-hollywood- filters-theyve-long-wanted)

 _" The not-so-secret goal of SESTA and FOSTA is made even more clear in a letter from Oracle. "Any start-up has access to low cost and virtually unlimited computing power and to advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and filtering software," wrote Oracle Senior VP Kenneth Glueck. In his view, Internet companies shouldn't "blindly run platforms with no control of the content."

That comment helps explain why we're seeing support for FOSTA and SESTA from odd corners of the economy: some companies will prosper if online speech is subject to tight control. An Internet that's policed by "copyright bots" is what major film and record studios have advocated for more than a decade now. Algorithms and artificial intelligence have made major advances in recent years, and some content companies have used those advances as part of a push for mandatory, proactive filters. That's what they mean by phrases like "notice-and-stay-down," and that's what messages like the Oracle letter are really all about."_

<comment><USER11> People who think like this should be VP of anything, I'm not surprised he's at Oracle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Techies take the job because they wake up each day believing that they're having a massive positive influence by connecting the world._

I don't think this is really the case anymore - at least from the FB engineers I know.

Great engineers are at FB because they get to deploy really interesting projects on the largest platforms in the world with best in class technologies, or get to work on cutting edge AI research (FAIR) or interfaces (Oculus).

The whole "connect the world" thing seems to be an afterthought at best for most.

<comment><USER13> I don't find that to be true for the people I know who work at FB though...they all deeply believe in connecting the world.

Deploying code to a billion people is only thrilling the first time anyways

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A good way to think about regulation and Facebook might be, would you rather continue using Facebook, knowing the government is supposedly regulating them, but you can never know for sure, or would you rather move on to a new and more interesting platform where privacy and security defaults are integrated into the platform from day one? Regulation that Facebook can point to and say, "See, we are following to rules!" will make it harder to convince your friends to leave Facebook.

<comment><USER15> That's implying that your friends would consider leaving Facebook _at all_ because of privacy issues. If, instead, your choice is between "friends on unregulated FB" and "friends on regulated FB", I'd prefer the latter option.

<comment><USER14> Then how do you confirm Facebook is complying, and how do you confirm that the regulation they need to follow is sufficient, and if it's not, how do you really create any change to make it sufficient?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In investment parlance the government would build them a moat. Companies with capital to maintain compliance will have a head start on any startup looking to unseat them. Should this come, it will be a lot harder to start a startup.

</comment><comment><USER17> If regulators really wanted to stop the abuse by Facebook and every ad company, they would outlaw the collection of any tracking data of users on any website except the ones you own (website operators have security needs). Embedded content in other websites (via any means including iframes) not owned by your company could not record tracking data or insert data into the user's browser (e.g. cookies, custom urls, Web SQL Databases). Any sharing of user data with other companies is illegal. Cannot abuse what you don't have.

I expect any legislation to make competition with Facebook very difficult.

</comment><comment> andrew-lucker privacy regulations = Facebook loses. compliance regulations = Facebook wins.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think that future (social) data-mining startups will need to address these things in order to be regulatory agnostic (on top of the general product/market fit):

\- solving the decentralized infrastructure: as nodes get taken offline, they can replace themselves, and service is still usable

\- solving payments for services to third parties that aren't directly the users: cannot rely on traditional payments infrastructure, since that is easily co-opted by regulatory bodies and be used agaisnt the developers/owners of such services since those have traditionally tied ones identity to such payment information.

</comment><comment><USER19> Privacy regulations have value independent of its effects on competition. Making a Rube Goldberg argument about how it might end up benefiting Facebook ignores that fact.

The solution to market dominance is antitrust enforcement.

<comment><USER20> I wanted to make this comment but you made it for me.

Only breaking at least one tech giant up will ever change the status quo. In FBs case that could be very simple - in theory. They're only allowed to operate over specific geographic regions, say states in the US and feature (IM separate from profile separate from gaming) In practice, though, they're probably too big and global to be broken up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That is the typical situation. Regulation protects the entrenched large organizations who are mostly 'grandfathered' in and set the standard for what is permissible. And it then shelters the giants from competition coming from smaller organizations. This is how companies ossify themselves into the larger structure of government.

</comment><comment><USER22> The whole "we shouldn't regulate Facebook because it will help Facebook" thing really seems like an underhanded attempt at tricking privacy advocates and others to fight against their own best interests.

In reality, it depends entirely on the details of the regulations.

</comment><comment><USER23> danah boyd wrote in a 2010 essay ("Facebook is a utility; utilities get regulated", [http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/15/faceboo...](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/15/facebook- is-a-utility-utilities-get-regulated.html)):

"In my post yesterday, I emphasized that what's at stake with Facebook today is not about privacy or publicity but informed consent and choice. Facebook speaks of itself as a utility while also telling people they have a choice. But there's a conflict here. We know this conflict deeply in the United States. When it comes to utilities like water, power, sewage, Internet, etc., I am constantly told that I have a choice. But like hell I'd choose Comcast if I had a choice. Still, I subscribe to Comcast. Begrudgingly. Because the "choice" I have is Internet or no Internet.

"I hate all of the utilities in my life. Venomous hatred. And because they're monopolies, they feel no need to make me appreciate them. Cuz they know that I'm not going to give up water, power, sewage, or the Internet out of spite. Nor will most people give up Facebook, regardless of how much they grow to hate them."

and

"Thus far, in the world of privacy, when a company oversteps its hand, people flip out, governments threaten regulation, and companies back off. This is not what's happening with Facebook. Why? Because they know people won't leave and Facebook doesn't think that regulators matter. In our public discourse, we keep talking about the former and ignoring the latter. We can talk about alternatives to Facebook until we're blue in the face and we can point to the handful of people who are leaving as "proof" that Facebook will decline, but that's because we're fooling ourselves. If Facebook is a utility – and I strongly believe it is – the handful of people who are building cabins in the woods to get away from the evil utility companies are irrelevant in light of all of the people who will suck up and deal with the utility to live in the city. This is going to come down to regulation, whether we like it or not.

"The problem is that we in the tech industry don't like regulation. Not because we're evil but because we know that regulation tends to make a mess of things. We like the threat of regulation and we hope that it will keep things at bay without actually requiring stupidity. So somehow, the social norm has been to push as far as possible and then pull back quickly when regulatory threats emerge. Of course, there have been exceptions. And I work for one of them. Two decades ago, Microsoft was as arrogant as they come and they didn't balk at the threat of regulation. As a result, the company spent years mired in regulatory hell. And being painted as evil. The company still lives with that weight and the guilt wrt they company's historical hubris is palpable throughout the industry.

"I cannot imagine that Facebook wants to be regulated, but I fear that it thinks that it won't be. There's cockiness in the air. Personally, I don't care whether or not Facebook alone gets regulated, but regulation's impact tends to extend much further than one company. And I worry about what kinds of regulation we'll see. Don't get me wrong: I think that regulators will come in with the best of intentions; they often (but not always) do. I just think that what they decide will have unintended consequences that are far more harmful than helpful and this makes me angry at Facebook for playing chicken with them. I'm not a libertarian but I've come to respect libertarian fears of government regulation because regulation often does backfire in some of the most frustrating ways. (A few weeks ago, I wrote a letter to be included in the COPPA hearings outlining why the intention behind COPPA was great and the result dreadful.) The difference is that I'm not so against regulation as to not welcome it when people are being screwed. And sadly, I think that we're getting there. I just wish that Facebook would've taken a more responsible path so that we wouldn't have to deal with what's coming. And I wish that they'd realize that the people they're screwing are those who are most vulnerable already, those whose voices they'll never hear if they don't make an effort."

</comment><comment><USER24> What other reasons would there be for Zuckerberg to _invite_ regulation of the social networks his company dominates?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you measure your improvement in 'soft' skills over time? - <AUTHOR> When writing this question, I actually had the skill set of a programmer more in mind. I believe that is widely recognized that the role of a programmer is to solve programs, and hence focusing one's efforts on purely gaining theoretical knowledge may not have such a great ROI (depending on your goals). Yet, it may not be as straightforward to conclude that one's programming skill has 'improved' compared to reading theory and as a result concluding that one is 'more knowledgeable'. So my question would be, how do you assess that your 'problem-solving' abilities have improved over time? <comment><USER2> Two things come to my mind:

1) Reflect on how is your problem solving process. What kind of emotions do you feel, when you are faced with new problem? How do you proceed, is it chaotic, or straightforward? Are you able to calm down and look at the problem from higher perspective? I was recently asking myself these questions, when I switched job and was suddenly faced with completely new type of technical problems but also new personal challenges (mainly inter- peresonal relationships). You might think you are good problem solver, until new, stressing situation appears, which makes you behave like 8 year old child :-D

2) Ask people around you. When I felt stupid, slow and incapable of solving problems I actually asked people around me what they think. To my surprise they said I obviously need more experience, but my approach to problem is very good! If you have people you can trust, this is very good way how to get valuable feedback and improve!

I just jotted this down real quick, but hope it helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is problem solving a 'soft skill'? I'd consider problem solving to be a technical skill - assuming the problems are technical in nature.

I've been asked in the past to increase my focus on 'soft skills' in favor of gaining more technical expertise. What was meant by that was that I spend more time talking with people, building relationships, playing politics, and generally becoming more amicable in situations that I find irrational or wasteful.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your question and your attempt at clarification are at odds. The Oxford definition of "soft skills" is:

> personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and > harmoniously with other people

What are you trying to ask?

</comment><comment><USER5> My soft skills have gone down because I have been screwed over and see the lies of the company. I'm just jaded and don't really care for all the BS.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't. I just iterate over time and don't worry about it.</comment>


A well-engineered and open source ASP.NET MVC application? - <AUTHOR> I would love to hear what HN userbase considers to be a well-engineered ASP.NET MVC application. While this term is vague, I am fairly confident that majority of you here used the term "well-engineered" or something to that end. There is a ton of blog posts/articles about various principles, patterns and best practices, but I have yet to see a single open source web application which truly covers everything. Please submit a link to the repository and discuss why you consider the application to be well-engineered. <comment><USER2> Not open source need a plurasight membership but I thought this course pretty far along on the "well-engineered" architecture(if it's the one I was thinking of).

[https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/building-securing- restfu...](https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/building-securing-restful-api- aspdotnet)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll definitely check it out. I found mvcforum to be surprisingly well built ([https://github.com/YodasMyDad/mvcforum](https://github.com/YodasMyDad/mvcforum)) but even there you could see major changes had to be made at some point (like completely dropping the repository layer in release 1.8).</comment></comment>


Collaboration App Notion Labs Hits $800M Valuation in New Funding - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/collaboration-app-notion-labs-hits-800-million-valuation-in-new-funding?shared=051dd431acd3603d <comment><AUTHOR> Quite a valuation. According to following tweet they only raised $10M because they didn't need money, but wanted to convert early notes: [https://twitter.com/amir/status/1152028965193674753](https://twitter.com/amir/status/1152028965193674753)</comment>


SDR Radio Academy: Reverse engineering a wireless car key fob - <AUTHOR> http://phasenoise.livejournal.com/3822.html <comment><USER2> If anyone thinks there is any "security" in a remote lock/unlock fob, then they are just plain old silly. Even your garage door is dead easy to get into as it's remote does the same thing. Note the house "remote deadbolts" are the exact same rolling code tech and easy to defeat.

Why? Because the manufacturer does not want to provide real security, and people will whine like crazy if their keyfob does not work. so they make it insecure for price and reliability</comment>


Ask HN: The best non-hand-wavy path to understanding containerization - <AUTHOR>

I'm a junior developer spending most of my time writing java/scala code for a big corp, and I've been intrigued by some of the recent developments in containerizations technologies (notably, Docker and LXC). I must be honest though, most of the concepts like namespaces, cgroups and port mapping aren't things that I'm terribly familiar with (presumably a byproduct of only crushing application code all day and having a separate release management team take care of deployments), and I'm looking to grasp these fundamentals in order to understand and effectively use some of the existing containerization technologies out there (for work and some side-projects). I want to further my understanding beyond the simple "Use this library, it does the job for you" to really get a feel of what's happening under the hood.<p>What does the HN community recommend to get up to speed with these concepts? Are there any non-Ops folks out there that have managed to compress this learning in a short span of time? Are there any ops folks that have some recommended material that I could steep in to quickly familiarize myself? I understand that in order to appreciate this, it may require getting a stronger understanding of virtualization itself, so I'm really looking for some guidance on the recommended journey. <comment><USER2> Start blogging about your journey toward learning about them. Writing it down will expose many of the holes in your knowledge.</comment>