A List of Programming Screencast Series - <AUTHOR> http://devblog.avdi.org/2013/06/21/a-list-of-programming-screencast-series/

<comment><USER2> I've watched screencasts from about half of this list (I am a bit of a junkie...) and I can say, without a doubt, that the best one of the bunch is Destroy All Software.

Others may be better if you are new to program and want specific help with a certain tech (Ember.js, Rails, etc) but if you want the most bang for your buck, DAS is where it's at.

<comment><USER3> I haven't watched many others, but I'll definitely second that DAS is excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you, great list and kudos to those who produce the screencasts.

But man, screencasts will date fast. I learned a lot from [Node Tuts]([http://nodetuts.com/](http://nodetuts.com/)), like how to use expressJS and MongoDB using Mongoose. Now all those contents are gone (well not technically, I saved them somewhere and it's still on Vimeo - but the tutorials are basically wrong). Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for the tuts, I can pickup Mongoose today, and have no problem adapting.

For those new to the platform, there's nothing more frustrating than spending 30-60 minutes watching a few videos, then follow the instructions down to a T and failed.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if what we do is technically "screencasts" but it's still in that vein -

[http://www.learnitfirst.com/](http://www.learnitfirst.com/)

I do the SQL Server relational and multidimensional videos - we do full-blown courses that are roughly equivalent to a 5-7 day in-person course so it's not quite the same, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love some of these, It's like a constant feed of live coding.

More here: [http://pineapple.io/resources/tagged/screencasts](http://pineapple.io/resources/tagged/screencasts)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish there was some indication of which ones were free, freemium, paid, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> Avdi, love the tapas! :) What do you think about collaborating with some of the other wonderful content creators on this list to bundle, say, "Any 5 for $30"?

</comment><comment><USER9> A rather large amount of videos and screencasts can be found at ShowMeDo: [http://showmedo.com/](http://showmedo.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Does anybody know of any resources for Android? I've watched some Google IO presentations but all of the intro level ones are ancient at this point.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd love something for Go. I'm not sure why but I'm having trouble figuring out what to use it for.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anyone have any recommendations for the best software for creating screencasts like these in Windows and Linux?

<comment><USER9> For Linux, have a look at RecordMyDesktop:

[http://recordmydesktop.sourceforge.net/about.php](http://recordmydesktop.sourceforge.net/about.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> All I see is html, javascript,ruby,etc..

Is there any c/c++ ?

<comment> jarek-foksa For C (and Objective-C) I would highly recommend Apple Programming channel: [http://www.youtube.com/user/AppleProgramming](http://www.youtube.com/user/AppleProgramming)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've found Pedro Texeria's NodeTuts to be quite good.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there anything for Django?

<comment><USER16> [http://neckbeardrepublic.com](http://neckbeardrepublic.com) will be covering django specific topics soon.</comment></comment>


Now Hiring If You're Young (1998) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/26/opinion/now-hiring-if-you-re-young.html?n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FD%2FDiscrimination

<comment><USER2> "Employers justify shunting aside midcareer programmers on the ground that they lack skills in the latest software languages."

I don't see what's wrong with that. Clearly, to command a higher salary, an employee has to offer more than someone who gets paid less. And if in fact that employee has less to offer than a more junior person, because their skills are obsolete, it's even more of a reason to let them go.

I guess it's not a very comfortable position to be in- having to always prove your worth to an employer- but I think it's unavoidable, especially in an industry that changes quickly.

<comment><USER3> Practically, it means there is a lot wrong with programming as a career choice -- for a large number of students, it will have been a poor investment. I don't see much reason to sympathize with the employers, either.

<comment><USER2> It appears to me that it's more a problem of unrealistic expectations. If somebody else is willing to do a better job for less money, a person's got to either improve/update their skills or start asking for a smaller salary.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I _sympathize_ with the employers, but I can certainly understand the rationale.

<comment><USER4> The problem is the more experienced you become at some point the "worse" professionally you will be perceived, unlike 90% of all the professions out there that the older guys will ALWAYS be better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Personally, when I started as a fresh young grad happy to put in 2x hours for 0.5x pay I would look at some of the older guys and say 'I never want to end up like that'. I still feel that way. 'like that' refers to a bitter, cynical attitude born of two decades in the cube farm, navigating endless rounds of layoffs, restructuring, business-management fads and other nasties.

The key is to keep your skills up to date and avoid the sticky-trap that is management roles. If you drift into hands-off management, the meetings-and- flowcharts current will swiftly take you away from the technical shoreline and you won't be able to get back. It takes a conscious effort to stay a technical person in most companies, and you'd better be prepared to be looked down upon from other people who go into management roles.

Of the people I started working with as fellow grads, I'd say that less than 10% are still actively writing software of any kind. I nearly gave it up several times, but I'm glad I've stuck with it, because you can be so much more creative in code than with management.

<comment><USER4> But the point is that you never sure what is the next thing the management will decide to use . Sure if you young you can spend your lonely nights and weekend hacking Clojure or Scala but in the end of day your boss will decide on retarded Java framework bla bla technology and all you hours were just for nothing. And anyways when you have friends,girlfriend/wife and kids it becomes very difficult to spend enough time jumping from one cool tech to another.

Some of my non-comp-sci friends and some programmer friends say that software development is like prostitution the older you get the less money you make until you are discarded , unlike for example accountant who starts low but steadily reaches some status . All of these "rockstars" and start-up founders can be imagined as elite prostitutes who just look better and do it better for more money of course, can retire early and may be score a picture on tabloid with some politician and then make a million bucks (EXPOSURE). In the end we are just slaves of capitalist system whatever we admit it or not ( most of the time our brainwashing won't allow us to do it)

<comment><USER5> The silent point I was getting at was not to stay in dead end jobs. Keeping your skills up to date doesn't mean learning new tech in your spare time while pounding out COBOL at your workplace : it means making sure the projects and technologies you're working on are current and on trend with the future. If this means moving jobs every couple of years, then do it. If it means leaving the cube farm and starting out on your own, even better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > 57 percent of computer science graduates are working as programmers; at 15 > years the figure drops to 34 percent, and at 20 years -- when most are still > only in their early 40's -- it is down to 19 percent.

That data is compatible with lots of things besides age discrimination:

* a job description that mostly appeals to the young

* a young and rapidly growing field where most of the 1988 CS grads are promoted to management, so that they can manage the 10x larger 1998 CS grads

* etc.

<comment><USER7> And a nation in which the average individual changes careers 3 time, for that matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does the report also analyze pure programming jobs, and not team lead, or management roles which previous programmers 'graduated' into, not necessarily became 'unemployed programmers'?

<comment><USER9> Or, because programming is a meta skill, did these engineers start companies, products and are no longer programming because they are owners? Or did they pick up skills in other industries that they wanted to get into which was made easier because programming allowed them to peer into it from a unique meta perspective?

Also, sure if you are just working for a big company making desktop applications before the web as this article is from, then I can see there would be limited opportunity. How does the web change that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I suspect the main reason MS or Google or anyone else prefers young programmers is that they tend to be more committed and 'fresh', in the sense that they are not yet bitter, cynical, and hopelessly opinionated. They also tend not to have as heavy a set of personal/family obligations, so can work cheaper, longer hours etc.

And of course on average, if you're too lazy to actually find out from the interviewee, they probably tend to have more up-to-date skills.

OTOH, a seasoned veteran often has a knowledgebase in a specific problem domain that can be immensely valuable. However, it takes a lot of work to find the right person and ensure that his KB is the real thing, is up to date, and that the personality attached to the KB is going to mesh with the culture of the rest of the team.

When things are going gangbusters, it's easier to just ignore these subtleties and hire the lusty, naive young waifs who will work their skinny little asses to the bone for da man before they realize their souls are being sucked dry by evil sorcerers.

</comment><comment><USER11> At the time though the things that were happening with the internet were all largely new concepts. New graduates who had been studying heavily web based technologies would have had the advantage over an older person who may have come from a DOS background.

These day's although still evolving I would say web based technologies are a lot more stable.

<comment><USER12> Now that's funny. "new concepts". "DOS". Its actually quite amusing for hackers in my age group to watch the kids "discover" ancient programming history (again (and again (...)))

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great find! Scary how it's still so relevent...

"High-tech companies save money by shunning most midcareer programmers and focusing their hiring on new or recent college graduates, who are cheaper and can work lots of overtime."

Not just high-tech companies, almost everyone. So screw 'em. If they're too cheap to value the contributions of their employees and don't want to treat them like human beings, they why would you want to work there?

"And the skills issue is a red herring; any competent programmer, if given a chance to learn on the job, can become productive in a new software technology within a few weeks."

Exactly. Like almost anyone here with any drive at all already knows.

If I didn't know better, this doesn't seem like a journal article at all. Seems more like a commercial for starting your own. Still spot on 11 years later.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can we cool it with the New York Times articles? I've noticed more and more of these puff pieces and its lowering the tone.

<comment><USER2> I agree they can be light on content and oversimplify things to appeal to a broader audience, but they're usually still a pretty good starting point for decent discussions.

<comment><USER14> That's a fair point, but a balance needs to be struck, at times it seems like every other article is from a large circulation newspaper or magazine and if that trend continues it could spoil HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> NY Times is pretty in touch with what's cool w/ the kids these days. Ie. "the new Java language".

<comment><USER16> The article is from 1998, Java was 3 years old.

<comment><USER8> Does that also mean the statistics provided by the author are meaningless since they are 10 years old and closely tied to the dot-com boom?

<comment><USER17> Since they're backward looking statistics they actually track what happened before the dot com boom. They still might not be relevant given the current marketplace, of course.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Android Wallpaper Apps Falsely Accused of Spyware & Stealing User Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidtapp.com/android-wallpaper-apps-falsely-accused-of-spyware-and-stealing-sensitive-user-data-fud/

<comment><USER2> It's a spammy sounding title (in fact the article's a bit dodgy too) but it does have what is claimed to be the comments of the app developer Jackeey Wu who created the apps whose data collecting behavior has been challenged.

<comment><USER3> I agree that it's a bit dodgy but his evidence looks pretty sound and I'm happy I read this, as I had installed the other "Backgrounds" wallpaper application which apparently collects personal information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, it certainly wouldn't be the first time a 'security' company exaggerated something in order to sell their software.

</comment><comment><USER5> How is phone number not private user data?

<comment><USER6> It is semi-private data. I hate to say this but phone numbers are not exactly private anymore and anyone with clue and motivation can dig it up for pennies. But a user is justified to feel negative about such data being transmitted.

I could imagine a real use for it in the way the developer mentioned if it ends up acting like the only unique identifier that changes between specific phones and carriers. You're likely to port your phone number with you and thus the identifier travels with you.

Edit: I honestly don't know what kind of unique identifiers Google provides so the number could still be inappropriate.

<comment><USER7> What is "semi-private" data and if I do not give out my mobile phone number, how can anyone obtain it unless I call them?

<comment><USER6> Besides leaked databases and PI tools this is one I learned of in the past month:

There are various reverse caller databases floating around. I forget the name of the database but there was a talk at HOPE 2010 less than a month ago about abusing VOIP providers and caller ID spoofing to scan through and map large blocks of cellphone numbers at a time. Apparently there are wholesale resellers of caller ID lookup databases and some cellphone companies are more than happy to associate the name on the account with individual cellphone entries in their reverse databases.

With such a system if you know what possible area codes/exchanges they might be in and what their name is you had very good odds of finding AT&T and T-Mobile customers. Verizon wasn't really discussed.

Of course social engineering the number from you might be a lot easier the first time... ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What am I missing re: fascination with command lines - <AUTHOR>

I consider myself to be a hacker.  A fairly good one in fact.  But lately something has been bugging me.  The command line is making a comeback.
Recently I've been really intrigued by node.js.  It has been a freaking pain to get an instance up and running.  Joyent?  make a curl command line post(That doesn't seem to work).  Git?  Issue yourself a key via command line.  Finally I get into duo stack and then I get a guide with about 25 steps of command line commands.
It is 2011.  WTF?  Back around the turn of the century we used to have these things called installers that would keep people from having to do the same damn thing over and over and over. Or type.  We create these great clickable symbols that were organized into hierarchies that were great for both teaching by way of layout and for getting things done.  I think we called them menus.
I've done some digging around and found this insightful post about it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1407278
...but you know what?  I call phooey. As much as it is great that you can mix and match at the command line, a picture is still worth a thousand words.
So tell me hn, what am I missing.  Am I fooling my self calling my self a hacker if I use gitgui? (three click and I see exactly what is going where...why is typing 5-6 equivalent lines into the command line better?) <comment><USER2> The command line is the most flexible way to automate day to day tasks. Yes, a graphical installer makes things easy-once. Need to change the names of multiple files in a directory? Need to delete files that match a certain type, without hunting and pecking? Want to grab every jpg from a webpage? Doing these tasks on the command line is trivial compared to pointing and clicking for every single instance.

There are many benefits from using the command line interface to software. Often it is a trade off between flexibility and speed versus learning and thinking. It takes time to build up a solid knowledge of commands and options, and effort to recall them, but once that skill is acquired, it can save a lot of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok...so where do I get started. I've seen a lot of command lines over the last few weeks and nothing in them gave me the impression that there was any sort of logic or automation going on. The all look like just one thing is happening. (And that is one of my strikes against them is that they seem to completely lack context)

<comment><USER2> Start looking into bash scripting, for one. Learning a scripting language like python or perl can do a lot of the same things and is valuable in other ways.

To your comment of looking like just one thing is happening, that is understandable to the untrained mind. Let's take an example where I want to delete all the .bak copies of my old configuration files. To do this I would enter the directory and simply type:

        rm *.bak

It's one command, but the star is expanding it to match every file that has a .bak ending. One command line entry, many executions of the 'rm' command.

Yes, context and a trained eye are everything. I like to think that working on the command line is one of many styles of working. It works very well for me in some situations, so I suggest to others to try it out and see if it would fit their needs as well.

<comment><USER3> Bash is probably the second worst thing unix has to offer, right after vi.

The command you demonstrated is only slightly faster than sorting the directory by type in a file explorer and selecting them with mouse and selecting delete from context menu, and much more dangerous, ie. when you mistype it as rm * .bak you just deleted _everything_ in that folder _permanently_ , whereas in a GUI you would've seen what you actually selected, and most likely only moved them to trash, not permanently deleted them right away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A UI is great if it does exactly what you want it to do. But if not, and you want to customize at all, you're stuck. While if you're working on the command line, you can script any behavior you'd like.

A command line approach is also far superior for remote operation, repetition, combining with other tools, etc., because you can script the interactions and control flow.

<comment><USER5> If I might rephrase geophile, above: a command line (most of them, anyway) has a grammar, complete with flow-of-control constructs like if-then-else, while loops, for-loops.

You can express more with a grammar than without one. For example, you can express palindrome strings with a grammar, you can't with regular expressions.

We can tail off into philosophy by talking about "generative grammars" allowing you to create new ideas, and this may be what geophile says about "[G]UI is great if it does exactly what you want it to do. But if not, and you want to customize at all, you're stuck." I agree with this sentiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Command-lines are faster and more flexible than GUIs, because you define your own workflow - you can chain commands together with the unix pipe, pass arguments to commands that are the result of other commands via the backtick and a lot more cool stuff like that. Also, you can type faster than you can point and click. I prefer to keep my hands on the keyboard where I need them rather than having to reach out for the mouse, which is really far away if you think of it - it's 20cm aprox.

Besides, there's a hacker component in using a cmd, because it teaches you how things really work instead of covering that up with a pretty interface that does the job for you.

If these reasons didn't excite you, then maybe you are simply not a cmd guy - which doesn't discredit you as a hacker, I guess. Hackers _build_ things, no matter what their tool of choice is.

</comment><comment><USER7> For me, command lines are like delegating a task to somebody else: "Find me all the temporary files older than a week and delete them".

In a GUI, I'm doing the task myself: "Hmm, where are the temporary files kept? OK, which are the old ones? I can probably delete these. Wait, here's some more, etc."

As with delegating tasks to people, both approaches have their uses (and pros and cons).

<comment><USER7> Also, I'm finding myself using Vim more, in preference to editors like Visual Studio. The Vim approach is to work out what you want to do, then type the sequence of codes that makes the computer do it for you. The traditional approach is to cursor and tab around, editing the file directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love the command line because I started at a unix hosting company. It is important to be able to work effectively on remote systems. I can't think of very many production servers that have the option of plugging a monitor and keyboard into (or remote desktop).

I consider command line skills to be a bare minimum for programmer competency.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think that whenever there is only a single _likely_ goal (such as "having installed something"), anything more than one command is a problem, and installers are useful.

But any site that gives a list of 25 commands is Doing It Wrong. The whole point of a _script_ is to perform sequences of commands, and a link to a script is just as useful as an installer GUI would be. Except that it's actually better:

\- When a script is used, it seems more likely that someone has actually run it. (Who knows if they've updated their document?) There also won't be copy/paste errors.

\- A script is transparent; an installer isn't (even when it dumps logs, they're usually a bit vague). It's easier to see that a script will work, and easier to explain what happened if it didn't work.

\- Many people don't want step-by-step or excessive explanations, and a script nicely solves this through embedded comments and code. If you _need_ explanations or details, there's a place for them that's out of the way. And if you don't, you can blindly run the script. It's a nice separation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hmm. What's your workflow for reencoding every file in a directory with a name matching a certain pattern and then renaming the reencoded files with a number based on the order that the original files were in? For example, M2441j.avi (an MPEG) should be reencoded into H.264 and then renamed to 23.mp4. All files not matching M###j.avi should be ignored.

Yes, I know that this probably isn't something that you ever do, but humor me. Would you go hunting through, identify all those files and then reencode and rename them by hand? I certainly wouldn't, I would spend maybe five minutes writing and testing a script to do it for me, and then just invoke it every time I needed to do so again in the future.

Programming is all about automation, and the command line is perfect for making programs that do easily repeatable tasks. It's also far easier to debug. As an analogy, do you prefer writing programs by hand or putting together building blocks? It's the exact same thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well do you want a gadget or a toolbox? GUI's are gadgets, they do what the person who wrote it thinks is a good idea. There is nothing wrong with this. The command line is a toolbox, there is all sorts of stuff you can do to make uniq things happen.

Now from the POV of putting something out there for developers to use which is easier to publish and get out there:

* Several installer GUI's: mac, linux, windows

* about a page of instructions on how to get this done

Which would be the Minimum Viable Product and let you ship now?</comment>


A Dinosaur So Well Preserved It Looks Like a Statue - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/a-dinosaur-so-well-preserved-it-looks-like-a-statue/535782/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> > Those hands belonged to technician Mark Mitchell, who compares the process > of separating dinosaur from rock to chipping concrete chunks from a surface > as soft as compressed talcum powder. It took him 7,000 hours over 5.5 years, > during which he did little else. For that reason, the dinosaur carries his > name—Borealopelta markmitchelli. (The first half comes from the Latin for > "northern shield.")

So basically, preparing a fossil is rather like sculpting a statue. The outline is there, but following it isn't so trivial.

<comment><USER3> This was the most remarkable part about the whole thing as well. 7,000 hours just working on a single fossil. This man must have extraordinary patience

<comment><USER4> Still 30%-ish away from being an expert! On a serious note, compare that rhythm with our field...

<comment><USER5> it's a type of work where one can call herself an expert after just two projects... just like web development ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Actually kudos to the mine workers and mine management for halting operations and letting archaeologists access the site.

The cost involved here is enormous with this, so such an operations often decide to ignore the bones instead.

<comment><USER7> I've met some folks involved in quarrying and have heard stories about seeing fossils and blowing them up to avoid stopping work. It's terribly sad and should have large consequences.

I'm really glad this mine did it the right way and stopped!

<comment><USER8> Consequences, yes. But surely it would help to have appropriate positive incentives toward doing the right thing, for example mandated insurance for an archeological event, that pays out in the event that one occurs.

<comment><USER9> Always better to set up a win-win than to try to create fear over getting caught.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool blog post about how NatGeo's 3D tour of the fossil was created using Three.js in the browser.

[https://source.opennews.org/articles/resurrecting- dragon/](https://source.opennews.org/articles/resurrecting-dragon/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Original post from 3 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14326913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14326913)

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if they'll get a good image of the dinosaur's insides! What could they use to see through the rock?

</comment><comment><USER13> I wish in the headlining photo a person was standing next to the fossil to give a sense of scale. That thing is probably > 10 feet long! No wonder it took 7000 hours to separate from the rock.

<comment><USER14> There are images with a 10cm scale bar here: [http://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)3...](http://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(17\)30808-4)

The hi res image: [http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2102978684/2080439624/gr1...](http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2102978684/2080439624/gr1_lrg.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Had it before but a different article and photo. Showed this to my daughter who is dino-crazy a few months ago - she went '>gasp< WOW!' genuine agape awe. Amazing. Isn't it fantastic that the operator was trained and cared enough to stop working? It would have been really cool though if prior to expetrification that the block was MRI'ed and a 3D model created from the MRI which could then be 3D printed in schools all over the world.

</comment><comment><USER16> Note: birds are technically dinosaurs

[http://tolweb.org/Dinosauria/14883](http://tolweb.org/Dinosauria/14883)

<comment><USER17> And dinosaurs are reptiles, mammals and reptiles are amniotes [1], both amniotes and amphibians are tetrapods, tetrapods are actually fish[2], and there's no such thing as a fish[3]!

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

[2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapodomorpha](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapodomorpha)

[3] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Such_Thing_as_a_Fish](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Such_Thing_as_a_Fish)

<comment><USER18> So we have more in common with all land animals than a fish has with any other fish?

<comment><USER19> I vaguely remebering reading (I think it was in The Selfish Gene) that we are more closely related to salmon than salmon are to sharks.

<comment><USER20> This is absolutely true, and to be expected from the fact that the inheritance splits like a tree. For one thing both we and salmon have bones, sharks only have cartilage.

But we're more closely related to sharks than either is to the jawless fishes like the hagfish. The hagfish are just plain _weird_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Original discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14326913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14326913)

</comment><comment><USER22> >So paleontologists have debated whether giant dinosaurs had trunks

That's my biggest takeaway from the article</comment>


Pay engineers less by offering them shiny trinkets - <AUTHOR> http://markcunningham91.blogspot.com/2011/04/startups-stock-options-and-software.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "Well, with practically no increase in salary, I just don't see how this equity component makes it worth the risk to change jobs. Why should I take this offer? If we get bought or go public, I make about 50k for the next 3-4 years. That doesn't seem worth the risk and all the hours that this position is going to require."

VS

"Why do Software Engineers end up taking the percentages they do? ... Also, it's no secret that software engineers are seduced by cutting edge technology. I mean, you float something cool and exciting in front of a software engineer and he will almost begin twitching with excitement and he'll get all jacked up over the problem at hand."</comment>


Gone Nomad? Try Coworking. - <AUTHOR> http://www.zetetic.net/blog/2009/12/30/gone-nomading-try-coworking

<comment><USER2> Note: I founded and operate Ignition Alley here in Atlanta: <http://www.ignitionalley.com/>

Despite the bias, I do have to agree whole-heartedly with the article. Coworking is about two things: productivity and community.

It's insanely productive to work among others, particularly like-minded, self- motivated individuals. We've got a library of books here, but I get way more value out of the people. Right in front of me, I've got a group discussing and learning about Chef. In just an hour or two of discussing, I've gotten all the knowledge of a full 500 page book. It's that much faster! Every single day I've been here, I've either given or gotten help from others that has saved us significant amounts of time. It's highly motivating.

The other equally big aspect is community. I didn't know who to go to for PR or marketing before we opened up. Now I know 3-4 people. The same goes for designers, programmers, business folks, etc. And I now know about a dozen or so really interesting projects going on in the area. I've struck up a major business deal with another member of the space. Business is booming!

Coworking is the real-world extension of the communities we've built in the virtual world. It's an incredibly motivating and highly rewarding concept.

My only regret is that I wish I had started this project 2 years ago!

<comment><AUTHOR> Well said, sir! I ought to have emphasized the community aspect more in the blog post, it's really the critical part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was one of two founders of a co-working effort in my area. Although I later left the project, it was successful in that it's still active, still profitable, and has brought people together from diverse backgrounds and helped them to form long-lasting business relationships.

Best of all, productivity definitely does go up in a good co-working environment.

I highly recommend doing this.

</comment><comment><USER4> I work from home, and coworking sounds nice, but I have the problem that I never seem comfortable at the same temperature as others. Basically, when I'm comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt, everybody else is sweating and ready to strip down to their underwear. It wouldn't bother me quite as much if I was only cold in the winter, but everybody turns the air conditioning up in the summer and I end up wearing a pullover all year around.

Does anybody else have this (or the opposite) problem? I'd love to have an office with a "hot" zone and a "cold" zone. In fact, vent the machine room waste heat directly into my office and I'll be perfectly happy.

<comment><USER5> Same problem. I blame the male bias in computing for producing lower average room temperatures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Coworking spaces continue to grow in popularity where I live (Columbus, OH).

I've found that the actual amount of quality work done in these spaces isn't that high, and the spaces tend to be used more as a casual gathering space for different startups in the city to meet each other.

The two leaders in the area are Sandbox Columbus (<http://sandboxcolumbus.com/>) and Qwirk (<http://qwirkcolumbus.com/>).

<comment><USER2> Sounds like something's gone wrong if you're not being productive when using the space. How often do you go there? It might have to do with the frequency of seeing others. There's going to be a certain amount of showing off when you see someone you haven't seen in a while and hasn't seen this cool new thing you've been working on. But that wears off after meeting up for a few days in a row.

Today I coded a new feature for my latest startup, gave a tour of the space to some people, learned about Chef and how I can use it for my fleet of servers, fixed some major bugs for clients, did some estimates for potential customers, installed a few Drupal modules. And I've only been here since noon.

It's all in how you use the space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cute idea. I had a different idea of "nomad" before I RTFA. I was thinking nomad as in travelling around the country/world as you work. That would be really cool.

<comment><USER8> A number of people are doing this already (technomads). I am, and yeah, loneliness is an issue. I always live with flatmates to alleviate it, but I still don't have anyone to speak with about science or technology. Thank god for the web...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> this motivated me to search for info on coworking here in santiago, chile. i've posted to the obvious hit on search results and also sent an email to someone else i found via blog comment, but thought i might post here too on the off chance someone is local...? if so, please email me (see profile)

</comment><comment><USER10> Any advice on starting a coworking space in the DC suburbs? Where can I locate cofounders, what skills should they have? How much capital should I expect to need?

I think this is going to be a huge industry in 10 years and I'd love to get in on the ground floor somehow.

<comment><USER11> Talk to Dave Troy, he founded the Beehive in Baltimore and could fill you in on the details and his experiences so far:

<http://beehivebaltimore.org/>

<http://davetroy.com/?p=599>

There's an email address on the beehive page or drop me an email and I'll hook you up.

(I work next to, not in, the beehive)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> cow orking? sounds fun</comment>


Ask HN: Best Way to Create a Clean Personal Website? - <AUTHOR> I am working on a project and I would like to write an article about it when it's finished.
I thought about posting to Medium but since I have noticed Medium limiting the articles I can read each month, I don't think I want another company to control my writing.
Thus personal website.
What is the best way to make a simple personal website for a beginner/intermediate programmer? Want to spend 2-3 days on it max. And I don't want to use company-owned software such as Squarespace (those websites look weird anyways).
Here are examples I would like to emulate:
https://www.dannysalzman.com/
https://blog.jldc.me/
For reference, I have ~1 year of programming experience and have built iPhone apps in Swift and I have also completed some projects in Python.
What is the best way to quickly spin up a clean personal website that I have control over?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'd try a site generator like Hugo or Jekyll if I were you. Then host for free on netlify which takes care of build/deploy/hosting and DNS for free. I think you'd need an hour or so for the basics and another couple of hours to customise to your tastes.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience this never ends up being worth it. If you use a template people will complain you didn't design it yourself. If you don't use a template people will complain that it doesn't look professional. Rarely will anyone actually dig into your projects and take a look at them. You'll likely spend a lot of time creating a build system that no one will ever know or care about. The whole site will basically just be used to criticize you. Most HR workers won't even look at the site. Remember all they are capable of doing is looking for keywords on a resume. Plus no matter how fantastic your site is if you say something that they don't agree with that will actually count as a negative on you.

another thing to think about is you probably don't have as much content as you think you do. Ultimately your personal site is just going to be a kind of portfolio so if you don't have a lot of personal work that you can show the site's not going to look very good.

My advice is not to build it. Don't build a website. Don't build a single page app. Don't build a simple static page. Don't do anything other than hone your resume because that's all that matters to hr drones.

</comment><comment><USER4> You could try Wordpress.com, then import each story / post to Medium to attract the larger audience. This gives you control over your content on your own blog, and the potential of the larger audience on Medium.

Wordpress.com isn't mentioned often here on Hacker News (been around too long maybe), but if you want to avoid spending time on setup and maintenance, it's an ideal solution with some good off-the-shelf themes.

Not free though, but not pricey either.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://github.com/JohnSundell/Publish](https://github.com/JohnSundell/Publish)

</comment><comment><USER6> How about [https://pages.github.com/](https://pages.github.com/) ?

</comment><comment><USER7> If I understand what your asking for, its a bootstrap template. Clone/download and customize to your liking etc.

Search github for these. Found a few a quick search:

[https://github.com/BuckyMaler/Fitness](https://github.com/BuckyMaler/Fitness) [https://github.com/hayanisaid/bootstrap4-website](https://github.com/hayanisaid/bootstrap4-website) [https://github.com/RyanFitzgerald/devportfolio](https://github.com/RyanFitzgerald/devportfolio)

I'm not sure if I have to say, but then spin up a VPS and host it.... Get a domain name etc..

</comment><comment><USER8> Hugo is a great way to create a simple blog, there is a lot of themes for your linking and it is also quite easy to create custom themes for it.

[https://gohugo.io/](https://gohugo.io/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Your example sites a simple and basic in design, so some simple html and css would be fine. You can host this simply on Netlify for free. If you want those articles to come from a database than your python knowledge can be helpful. Use django or flask to create a server.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a post about how to make a good, clean website on my...clean website.

TL;DR: Don't worry about it. Just write.

For more: [https://www.ft.io/blog/good-website/](https://www.ft.io/blog/good- website/)</comment>


Parents Must Sign Permission Slip Before Kids Can Eat Oreos - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2015/03/26/parents-must-sign-permission-slip-before

<comment><USER2> Sounds stupid until you realize that the kids could be allergic or have religious or other reasons to not eat certain things.

I'm pretty sure that the teacher have had to deal with angry parents in the past and now want to avoid it.</comment>


Return-to-libc Attack - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return-to-libc

<comment><USER2> If you found that interesting there is a fascinating generalization of the technique in this paper: <http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~hovav/papers/brss08.html>

<comment><USER3> That paper is fantastic</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Name of service for "sign up here if interested" - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea for a startup. I want to write up a few paragraphs explaining my idea and have a link that says "if your interested enter your email address here". An when I have the idea built, send an email out to each person who signed up.<p>I know there are site out there that do this, but I don't know what terms to put into google. <comment><USER2> [https://www.prefinery.com/](https://www.prefinery.com/)

(And [http://my.betali.st/](http://my.betali.st/) which itself is isn't launched yet and asks for an email address. How meta)

</comment><comment><USER3> You might be thinking of a landing page, try that in Google, [http://www.leadpages.net/products/](http://www.leadpages.net/products/) is a popular service for that but is paid.

</comment><comment><USER4> You are looking for [http://launchrock.co/](http://launchrock.co/)</comment>


Ask HN: I have a concept for packaging of a popular product. And some questions - w-ll

Yes i know of patents and patent pending, but I still don't have the money for that. If I release some concept art/videos/ rough schematics of the product on say HN, Youtube, My blog.  Would that grant me any kind of rights if someone down the road took my idea?<p>Second question, how might I get this idea to the industry leaders to make it a viable product? <comment><AUTHOR> If you publish a description of something, it immediately becomes unpatentable, by anyone (including you). This is because you cannot patent something that is in the public domain, and if you publish it, that's where it is. So that's patents. You may not have the money now, but later on when you do have the money, it won't matter, because you'll have put your invention into the public domain, and no amount of money will get it patented for you. (The other side of this, though, is that you can stop other people patenting it too, which is a tactic some inventors go for).

As for other kinds of intellectual property right, I'm afraid I can't really help you. It really depends on where you live. I would suggest you read the information on the USPTO website (US Patent and Trademark Office) if you are in the US, or the equivalent for where you live. There may be some information there on your rights regarding your designs.

</comment><comment><USER2> I understand the basic process of licensing a product is this:

1) File for a provisional patent (cost $110), this will get you a year of weak to moderate legal protection

2) design, mock-up and create a sales page for you product

3) attempt to license the product to a partner, in this case, a packaging or manufacturing company.

4) in the unlikely event anyone wants it -> profit

5) otherwise, go back to the drawing board, content in having pursued it.

Net outlays, probably less than $1,000, and perhaps 40 to 200 hours of work.

This guy's a wealth of information for this stuff, btw: <http://www.inventright.com/> Also: Provisional Patent info: [http://inventors.about.com/od/provisionalpatent/a/Provisiona...](http://inventors.about.com/od/provisionalpatent/a/Provisional_Pat.htm)</comment>


BitLocker uploads device encryption keys to SkyDrive - <AUTHOR> http://cryptome.org/2014/11/ms-onedrive-nsa-prism.htm <comment><USER2> So just two be clear, BitLocker has (at least) two modes of operation, normal mode where you yourself/your company are responsible for managing your encryption keys and passive "device encryption" mode which is enabled by default on many consumer devices (e.g. Surface 3, Surface RT, Windows Phone, etc).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker#Device_encryption](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLocker#Device_encryption)

So the complaint is essentially, an encryption mode which is a freebie on many devices which traditionally would have no drive encryption at all is somehow spying for the NSA by uploading decryption keys.

But the problem I have with that line of thinking is: Without device encryption many devices wouldn't have drive encryption at all and therefore the NSA (with possession of the device) could trivially retrieve that data.

If you really want NSA-secure BitLocker encryption then why the heck don't you just set up BitLocker yourself instead of using Microsoft's "feature-limited" device encryption mode? The key won't be put on OneDrive in that situation.

Also if Microsoft did enable full BitLocker on many consumer devices, do you really trust your average person to keep their keys safe? Or explain that there is no forgotten password feature, that their family photos are just "fucking gone" [0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWxC8ezE4Dk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWxC8ezE4Dk)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Without device encryption many devices wouldn't have drive encryption at all > and therefore the NSA (with possession of the device) could trivially > retrieve that data.

This argument gets to the heart of mass surveillance vs. targeted/individualized surveillance. I personally prefer a world where someone would have to do something like steal my device to gain access to my data to a world where everyone's data is compromised by default _all of the time_. Maybe that makes me an outlier, but if I had owned one of these devices, I'd be pretty outraged...not unlike some were in the midst of the recent iCloud brouhaha.

<comment><USER3> Nope, you're not an outlier. If someone steals your device, be it random theft or FBI/NSA storm your home, at least you know exactly what was taken and when and you probably know why _(fair or otherwise)_. Much better for your state of mind to know for sure whether or not your data has been taken rather than what we have now - a constant state of paranoia because none of us really know what the NSA is up to. For the most part, I just assume any internet-capable device is compromised. One thing I still suspect is outside of NSA's wide-sweeping data collecting is proper usage of Steganography.

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

 _> >For example, a sender might start with an innocuous image file and adjust the color of every 100th pixel to correspond to a letter in the alphabet, a change so subtle that someone not specifically looking for it is unlikely to notice it._

I cannot comprehend that the NSA is scanning every image on the internet looking for patterns like that. If I were planning on some anti-establishment action, that's what I'd do. It would also be pretty cool for someone to make a tool that does this automatically. For regular people who just want plain privacy, keep on whistleblowing, keep on naming and shaming, keep on making the NSA's strategies not work by posting more and more tools & techniques to render their surveillance useless.... until we reach some kind of critical point that even the average-joe can't ignore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who needs "nefarious" backdoors, when Microsoft can just present them as "features" for users, that law enforcement can use just as easily, if not more so than a backdoor?

I'd love for Microsoft to do out-of-the-box encryption while keeping the keys in the TPM, in all Windows 10 laptops, just like Android 5.0 and iOS 8.0, but it's not going to happen. Microsoft has too much of a cozy relationship with law enforcement to do something like that.

It's not just a coincidence that it is the _first_ company to join PRISM, or that Skype was added to PRISM not when it was owned by the Swedish, not when it was owned by eBay, but _the same month_ Microsoft announced its acquisition.

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Prism_sli...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Prism_slide_5.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a wonderful example of NSA meddling. With one hand, Microsoft gives everyone out-of-box encryption, which it can use to demonstrate how well it's protecting consumers. With the other hand, by virtue of a 'feature' to assist consumers, it's providing access to the NSA via SkyDrive copies of encryption keys. Everyone's happy!

Best of all, enterprise customers don't have a reason to complain, because the SkyDrive backup 'feature' shouldn't apply to their deployment scenarios. The only people with a complain are those that use the default option.

We should keep vigilant for these security 'features' that are undermined by implementation. The NSA has years of practice at this, and we're playing catchup.

</comment><comment><USER6> So Onedrive isn't safe? Should I stop using it if I value my privacy?</comment>


Truth from Zero? - <AUTHOR> https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/truth-from-zero/ <comment><USER2> ". It announces an algorithm called AlphaZero that, given the rules of any two-player game of strategy and copious hardware, trains a deep neural network to play the game at skill levels approaching perfection."

I have a particular interest in having a computer play the game Magic: the Gathering at an expert level. In some ways, this seems like an ideal fit for AlphaZero - it's a two-player strategy game with a finite number of valid plays at each state, yet I'm still not sure how to deal with four key elements:

1\. The game is random - it has a deck of cards that are shuffled.

2\. The game has hidden information - cards in hand are hidden.

3\. The cards can change the rules of the game itself. For example, a card could change the win conditions of the game. There are over 20,000 unique cards with more regularly being printed.

4\. A major part of the game (perhaps the most important) is that each player chooses their own combination of sixty cards from the ever-increasing pool. This makes understanding the "metgame" extremely important - a "deck" that was good a week ago may be outclassed the following week as players react.

In addition, there are many decks that win with odd combinations of cards and often the only way to beat these decks is to know in advance how to stop the combo.

Any ideas on how best to approach this problem?

Right now I am working on building a very simple version of the game with both players playing the same three cards with no randomness. This will eventually feed a simple genetic algorithm to test different quantities of each of the three cards to find an optimal "build".

<comment><USER3> In absolute generality, it's impossible. The game is Turing complete: [https://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/](https://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/)

Of course you may still be able to find a strategy that works well against humans, but that would still be a cutting-edge research task.

Hidden information is a big problem, the classic benchmark for that is poker. The latest breakthrough I'm aware of was for heads-up limit Texas hold'em [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6218/145](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6218/145) That may be a difficult game, but it has vastly fewer possible states. The same approach as used in the paper would almost certainly not scale for MTG.

Dealing with cards that can arbitrarily change the rules of the game would require human-level AI almost by definition, unless you want to manually translate them into code, in which case the system would be unable to deal with new cards.

Now that I have told all about how the problems you identified are much too difficult, I want to add that that shouldn't discourage you from just playing around. Starting with a minimal test case is how poker research took off, so you're definitely on the right track.

<comment><USER2> >Hidden information is a big problem, the classic benchmark for that is poker. The latest breakthrough I'm aware of was for heads-up limit Texas hold'em [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6218/145](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6218/145) That may be a difficult game, but it has vastly fewer possible states. The same approach as used in the paper would almost certainly not scale for MTG.

I'm a big AI poker fan (and a big fan in general). The current state of the art is now a bot that can consistently beat the very best heads-up no limit (i.e. there are a very large number of possible legal bets) players in real money games.

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/12/15/scien...](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/12/15/science.aao1733.full) \- note the date was yesterday :)

<comment><USER4> How do online poker sites deal with this? No one would want to play if they were constantly getting rinsed by bots.

<comment><USER2> Most people don't play heads-up no limit, they play 9-10 person games which are tougher for AI to beat currently.

Eventually though, online poker will be full of bots.

<comment><USER5> If you can put your bots in more seats at the table, they can share information and collude in their betting strategy. No amount of smartness in a single player's strategy is going to beat cheating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea of starting with simpler games to get a feel for how close AZ is to the minimax optimal strategy. For instance, just put chess or go on a smaller board. Part of DeepMind's claim is that their algorithm doesn't need tweaking when one changes the game, so this should be an easy experiment for them to run.

I wonder if there is any principled statistical way to test, given a set of players, how far the best of them is from optimal. Hmm....</comment>


Partnering with Microsoft: a cautionary tale. Also, ask HN: contacts at Yahoo? - <AUTHOR>

Had a negative experience with MS recently.  They were very interested in licensing some code for use in bing and we did a number of presentations to the top of the hierarchy which was extremely time consuming.  In the end there was radio silence so we followed up and didn't hear back, then things were delayed multiple times on their end. It seemed highly unprofessional of the business development lead to string us along because it burns a bridge for future partnership while only gaining a delay of deployment on a competing property.
In any case, after following up a number of times, they finally indicated they decided to build it internally instead.   The funny part was through the demos they kept pushing for a source code review which seemed highly premature considering we had nothing signed at that point.  I am glad we didn't hand over the source.  Perhaps I am not in the most objective position, but their implementation is incredibly weak.  There is a build at all costs culture which leads internal teams to build vs buy even when the PMs see the value of buy.
In any case, take this story as a cautionary note to pursue parallel paths even if things are very far along on one path and the stakeholders are highly enthusiastic.
We have been looking at other major partners and had some success with some; but, for Yahoo we hit a wall of first level routing which seems somewhat impenetrable.  I am not wanting to attack the individuals that man the first level email routing since they are just doing their job, but they don't have a technical understanding of what is being presented--we got replies that completely misunderstood the message more than 4 times in a row--and are only able to route requests as secretary would.  So we were finally directed to http://add.yahoo.com/fast/yahoo/technology/cgi_form which is no doubt a spam honeypot where submissions never reaches the appropriate team or get reviewed in any time sensitive manner.
So, I would like to ask if anyone has any contacts within Yahoo, ideally within Yahoo Finance on the development side.  We actually did our usability testing with google / yahoo / x so we have some good data there.
Thanks for any help you can offer getting in contact with the right team lead at Yahoo! <comment><USER2> I would recommend getting out of the 'Microsoft burning bridges' mentality. I don't think it can help you in the long run.

As a start-up we get completely focused on what we're doing and how much energy it takes. I'm sure there are times you've messed up a contact, didn't get back to somebody, transfered to a partner who didn't respond, etc. Now put yourself in their shoes. They have 100x more people trying to get their attention. Sometimes we don't realize that these larger companies with multiple levels of bureaucracy.

At the same time, it was very smart of you not to give them our source code without a contract.

A 'they burned us' mentality won't help you in the long run. You just happened to make a contact at Microsoft and it didn't work out this time. If I were you I'd send them a 'thanks, we're here if you need us' response.

They just qualified your market if it wasn't already done.

As mentioned by Zacharycohn, LinkedIn is likely the best resource for finding contacts. I'd recommend adding your Microsoft contacts to your linkedIn contacts. That way people may be able to find in association with that Microsoft group, and you seem to be that much closer.

One last thing, doing anything with the big dogs is likely going to take time. I hope you aren't putting all your eggs in one big basket. I think it often helps a bigger company take the plunge if a moderately sized one has done it already.

Is anybody already using your service? Is there a start-up you could work with that might give you an added bit of publicity?

Best of luck, Pete

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight. Fortunately, this is not core to our offering, it is really a marketing avenue to have one of the larger sites in the world using something front and center. Regarding the burning bridges comment, nothing negative was done on our side, but the level of professionalism was low on theirs and I don't feel this was just an oversight. We had unreturned emails at the end. My impression was they were incredibly responsive with immediate returns at the start, then at some point they decided to build it and communication stopped. I wouldn't consider it a negative experience if they had simply said at that time that they were not interested, but they dragged things out another month which was of little utility. Will be interested to see if our unique features end up in their offering since the dev team was pretty excited about certain things. It is fine really, everyone copies everyone else and our work is derivative too. But it's a little different if you are seeing something before release. This was not intended as an attack on MS just to let people know what the experience can be like and most importantly to get the right contact at Yahoo which it seems like we may have now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Microsoft part is typical. It's more or less the Stacker/Intuit story with a different product.

Never, ever, under no circumstances, trust Microsoft.

Also, check if they aren't violating any patent you may have failed to disclose during the negotiations. If they are, enjoy every minute.

(burn, karma, burn)

</comment><comment><USER4> _Had a negative experience with MS recently. They were very interested in licensing some code for use in bing and we did a number of presentations to the top of the hierarchy which was extremely time consuming. In the end there was radio silence so we followed up and didn't hear back, then things were delayed multiple times on their end. It seemed highly unprofessional of the business development lead to string us along because it burns a bridge for future partnership while only gaining a delay of deployment on a competing property._

None of this sounds peculiar for a company as large as Microsoft. The near- glacial timescales that exist for project management decisions can be daunting for the unfamiliar or unaware. But glad you didn't hand over the keys without a contract. Lessons learned.

<comment><USER3> The problem is not the near-glacial timeframes. It's using you to gather requirements and knowledge and to avoid pitfalls and then, after sucking you dry, building internally.

That's simply not ethical.

(burn, karma, burn)

<comment><USER5> Not working for MS, etc. But I wonder if this is intentional. I'm sure this is how it can come across to a startup, but for Big Inc. I doubt they setup these meetings to "outsource" product management work...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you tried searching linkedin for people who might be working on related projects at Yahoo? Even if you just ping them for contact info for the right person, could be a way past the wall.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will give that a try. Thanks for the suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> after all the companies Microsoft has destroyed using this tactic, I'm surprised anyone even picks up their call. Sure the lure of big bucks is appealing, but their track record is very clear. This has been their M.O since the beginning. Just ask Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems like a learning opportunity here. Could this have been handled differently? Maybe something like:

BIGCO asks for info/demo, you oblige. BIGCO is pleased, asks for more discussions, Q&A, etc. At this point, you present an NDA/Non-compete.

Certainly they could say "no", at which point the outcome is the same as it was here. Or they say "yes", at which point they have a little more skin in the game, and you have the law on your side.

I don't know if this is the answer, but it seems like a good discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think any BIGCO would go for that since they need to build it out or buy it one way or the other. That would be nice, but I don't think it is feasible. Also, regardless of the law, I don't think it would be worth the cost or time pursuing. In general, the process was okay, the main issue was the very obvious change in communication half way through the process. If they launch and fully copy our innovations that will be somewhat annoying but the cost of doing business. I may post a follow up then if it happens. So far they haven't done anything nefarious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is this technology that you are trying to partner with search engine (assuming that it is because you mentioned Bing)? I'm asking this because Yahoo is going to be integrated into/with Bing soon...so I don't see why you would want to partner with Yahoo. Well, I don't know what is the product in the first place.</comment>


S/PDIF Digital Audio on a Microcontroller - <AUTHOR> http://scanlime.org/2011/04/spdif-digital-audio-on-a-microcontroller/ <comment><USER2> Is the Arduino fast enough to do similar?

<comment><USER3> The article suggests that it is probably not:

"It may also be possible to implement S/PDIF on a sufficiently fast single- core microcontroller. Unfortunately, an 8-bit µC like the AVR used in the popular Arduino board probably wouldn't be fast enough."

Perhaps because even if it is fast enough for S/PDIF encoding, you'd want to do other things with it, e.g. synthesizing.</comment></comment>


I Want the 2011 Downturn to Double Dip - It Makes Real Startups Rich - <AUTHOR> http://cameronkeng.com/i-want-the-2011-downturn-to-double-dip-it-makes-real-startups-rich/

<comment><USER2> So.... you want some people to lose their retirement money and much of their savings so that you can profit from a startup? you want more people to lose their jobs and perhaps their homes so you can improve your chances of becoming a millionaire? saying your success depends on other people's misfortune seems a little twisted to me. just my two cents.</comment>


Firefox 16 adds more developer muscle, but Mac OS features lag  - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/firefox-16-adds-more-developer-muscle-but-mac-os-features-lag/ <comment><USER2> Fn + Shift + F2 to open Developer Command Line, quite clunky and an awkward shortcut at that.</comment>


How to Version Your API - <AUTHOR> https://plus.tools/blog/how_to_version_your_api <comment><AUTHOR> First HN post!

We recently did an entire blog post series on API versioning ([https://plus.tools/blog?tag=versioning](https://plus.tools/blog?tag=versioning)). This is the wrap-up post with final recommendations.</comment>


Linear Algebra: What matrices are - <AUTHOR> https://nolaymanleftbehind.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/linear-algebra-what-matrices-actually-are/ <comment><USER2> I actually object a little bit to the claim that matrices _are_ representations of linear transformations. No, matrices are just two- dimensional arrays of numbers. If you then define a specific 'mutliplication' operation on those arrays, and a mapping from linear functions to matrices, it turns out that that multiplication operation is isomorphic to function application. That's neat! But it doesn't mean that that is what matrices _are_.

If you came up with an isomorphism from matrices to a domain where it made sense to define a different multiplication operation - like maybe placewise multiplication, where

       [a b] * [e f] = [ae bf]
       [c d]   [g h]   [cg dh]

then that would be just as valid, but it wouldn't change what matrices 'are'. In fact, because you know how to map matrices to linear functions, it would let you describe an operation to combine two linear functions in a new way and that might lead to some new insight about linear algebra!

It's like how, in school you were taught that you can't multiply vectors together. Yet, in shader languages, it turns out that it's _really useful_ to be able to multiply two vectors just by multiplying each component ([a,b][c,d]=[ab,cd]), so they define that as a valid operation.

<comment><USER3> Why were you taught that you can't multiply vectors together? Aren't there two ways to "multiply" vectors–dot and cross?

<comment><USER4> Traditionally, multiplication takes two elements of a set and turns them into another element of that set. The dot product doesn't do that, it takes two vectors and turns them into a scalar.

The cross product only exists in three dimensions. And it's not associative (A×B×C gives a different answer depending which order you do it in), which is another thing multiplication usually satisfies.

There are two other not-quite-multiplication operators that I recall seeing. There's an analog of the cross product in two dimensions: (a,b,0)×(c,d,0) = (0,0,ad-bc), so it can be useful to have an operator (a,b)×(c,d) = ad-bc, again turning two vectors into a scalar.

And if the dot product is defined in terms of matrix multiplication by A·B = AᵀB, then you can also define an operator ABᵀ, turning two vectors into a matrix. These vectors don't even need to have the same length.

<comment><USER5> FYI, in geometric algebra you can truly multiply two vectors and get another element of the geometric algebra out, no matter the dimensionality.

<comment><USER6> But the product isn't a vector of the same shape as the inputs, so it isn't a vector multiplication. It is tensor multiplication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had always trouble with math at high school. I managed to pass in the end, but I never really got it. I think math should be thought like programming. They should present you with a problem and then show you a cool way to solve it. My math classes consisted of memorizing formulas and algorithms for standardized tests. I learned about hyperbolas, matrices, integrals etc. but none of them stuck with me. One of the few things I remember is basic trigonometry, because we used to do practical stuff like getting an angle from the ground and length from the building to calculate a person's height. Moreover, I think math seriously needs a REPL. At my math exams(not tests, written ones) I never could calculate the solution right, I would always make a mistake. We need to acknowledge the fact that we are human and humans make errors. We need to teach high school math in a hackable, practice-oriented way. The current math curriculum excludes pupils who think different. If you can't solve it in the traditional way, you're doomed. But you're actually smart and can _understand_ math if you learn it by doing, hacking, programming.

<comment><USER8> Mathematics can be taught by good teachers and bad teachers, in a very good or very bad way. It's definitely an important and difficult issue, because teaching mathematics the right way in order to capture the attention and interest of school children is a very difficult problem, not least of all because there isn't even a consensus on what teaching mathematics the right way _is_.

However, I don't think in the slightest that throwing CS buzzwords such as "REPL" and "hackable" at the problem is the way to go.

<comment><USER9> They aren't buzzwords, they are simple ideas and don't have to be referred to with those terms if they are triggering you. The OP just wants interactive, flexible systems to learn math from, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

<comment><USER8> Okay, my bad, then. Can you tell me what exactly is meant by a "hackable" math learning environment? And how will a REPL (however it is realized) make learning mathematics better?

<comment><USER10> Excel, for all its warts, is hackable. Programming languages are hackable.

Fill inn these boxes and get the solution is not hackable (unless the programmer seriously failed at validating input.)

<comment><USER11> The great tragedy of maths education is that people come out the other side and think "fill in the box" is maths. No, that is doing you sums, not living in the world of mathematics.

The filling in of the boxes is most fairly compared to finding the typo in the complicated regex, or the file with incorrect permissions on the web server

<comment><USER9> "Fill in the box" is not referring to sums. It's referring to extremely rigid homework where you fill out each step in a process to finding out a result very precisely. It coincides with the horrific bubble tests where you select 1 of 5 answers and there is no partial credit.

This style of learning is what dominates US schools now from basic arithmetic all of the way up through advanced calculus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know many have experience with Gilbert Strang's Introduction to Linear Algebra textbook and course ([http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06sc- linear-algebr...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06sc-linear- algebra-fall-2011/Syllabus/)), but I thought it would be useful to mention them here. I've found his explanations to be very intuitive.

<comment><USER13> Agreed, I bought the book and am doing the class as a "refresher". I put refresher in quotes because there is stuff in Strang's class that I know we didn't cover in my university class, notably SVD. Strang definitely has a way of really helping you deeply understand the concepts. I remember the subject pretty well but I don't think I understood it as well as I do now.

<comment><USER14> I don't know if Strang's approach would be good as an initial run through Linear Algebra, but it's a great refresher/enhancer (I read through it in grad school to prepare for prelims, back when I thought I was going to got for an applied mathematics PhD.)

<comment><USER15> What would be?

<comment><USER16> Maybe Khan academy?

[https://www.khanacademy.org/math/linear- algebra](https://www.khanacademy.org/math/linear-algebra)

<comment><USER6> Kahn Academy is great for people with no access to educational materials -- that's why it was created. But it isn't material developed by professional or expert educators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, matrices are a convenient way to write down linear transformations. But then the student might ask, why study linear transformations at all? Just because they have nice properties? Why this particular set of nice properties, and not some other set? As a rule of thumb, a good math explanation shouldn't start with axioms and claim that they are "nice". First give some intuitive examples, and only then say which axioms they satisfy.

For linear transformations, one possible avenue is start with the notion of _derivative_. If we take a real-valued function, its derivative at a particular point is just a single number, which represents the function's rate of change. But what if we have a function that accepts, say, two real numbers and outputs three? It turns out that the natural generalization of "derivative" to such functions is a rectangular array of numbers:

        dy1/dx1 dy1/dx2
        dy2/dx1 dy2/dx2
        dy3/dx1 dy3/dx2

If we know these numbers (and nothing else), we can linearly approximate the values of a function near a particular point, with at most quadratic error.

Now let's say we have two functions. The first one takes two numbers and outputs three, and the second one takes three numbers and outputs four. If we compose them together, can we find the derivative of the composite from the two simpler derivatives by some kind of chain rule, like the one we have for ordinary real-valued functions? It turns out that yes, we can, if we replace the product of two numbers with the product of two matrices (defined in a particular way).

Now it's easy to explain what linear transformations are. They are just multidimensional functions whose derivative (matrix) is the same at every point. They are just like one-dimensional linear functions, whose derivative (number) is the same at every point. (For convenience, people also say that every linear transformation must take the point (0,0,...) to the point (0,0,...), so that matrices correspond one-to-one to linear transformations and vice versa.)

If you want to work with linear transformations effortlessly, there's a lot more intuition to develop, but this should serve for the basics.

<comment><USER18> > If we know these numbers (and nothing else), we can linearly approximate the > values of a function near a particular point, with at most quadratic error.

Ignoring the fact that you need the function's values actually _at_ the particular point in question, you do in fact need to know something else: you need to know that the function in question has sufficient regularity (enough smoothness) to allow an application of Taylor's theorem.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I'm glossing over a bunch of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Matrices are axes. Vectors, or points, side by side. It wasn't until graduate school, after years of math and OpenGL that What that meant really sunk in and I really got how and why matrix ops are made of dot products.

The article is right in my case, I didn't learn the intuitive understanding at first, and it could have been taught that way. It is also well written, for people that know math, but I also feel like the article describes math using more math, and that the point could be better made with a picture or two. There's something about just seeing the correspondence between matrix rows, or columns, and the axes of a space, or transform, that finally helped it all sink in for me.

<comment><USER20> 3 years into a math degree and this never clicked until I watched Feynman's QED lectures.

Everyone just tells you, "oh now this can be a matrix." Nobody tells you _why_ matrices are useful, or how we ended up with them. Just, _you know matrices use them_.

<comment><USER8> The problem can be that most mathematics maintain that mathematics can be done for its own sake (something which I 100% agree on). However interesting mathematics is, though, there will be plenty of students more interested in the applications to the real world (and there's nothing wrong with that) or they may even have to interest in the mathematics until they see some clever ways it can be used to solve or abstract a specific problem, at which point they take a greater interest in the math itself.

As anecdotal evidence, most math teachers I had in college were at best uninterested and at worst disdainful of applying the math to the real world beyond theorems in a blackboard. Most physics teachers, however, in introducing us to new concepts made an effort to show as soon as possible how the definitions we made were inspired by real world problems and in turn simplified or helped create new physics. This made it much easier to appreciate the pure math itself.

<comment><USER20> Just explaining the pure mathmatical roots isn't always done, or cross field relations. It drives me insane when you use cross field tools, and when you bring up, _Oh so we 're doing X but with Y_.

The response is often, _No we do X because of Z_. Which often you're learning Z. So now you just feel lost and confused. Its not 2 classes later until you'll learn A maps Y to Z and X is actually an operation of A so it applies to both.

I guess it's just me but the joy of math has always been its tangled relationships to itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not to be a smartass, but some might find this point of view interesting:

Mathematics never pays attention to what objects ARE, but rather what they DO.

<comment><USER22> Can you elaborate on that a bit or give an example maybe? It seems to me that mathematics does pay attention to what things are, since mathematicians often start their arguments with getting themselves and their readers to agree on rigorous definitions of mathematical structures, before they do anything with those.

<comment><USER23> It's basically duck-typing. If you can do arithmetic on it, it's a number. If you can do matrix operations, it's a matrix. If it satisfies the axioms of X, it's an X.

<comment><USER24> Not true. You can do arithmetic on many things that are not a number. This is why objects such as "rings" exist.

Matrix is not defined just by operations like a ring is, but also by structure - you have N independent axes in a specified space.

<comment><USER25> That's a bit pedantic but sure. Here it is fixed:

> If you can do _numeric_ arithmetic on it, it's a number.

<comment><USER6> That is begging the question. What does "numeric" mean?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> See also

[http://betterexplained.com/articles/linear-algebra- guide/](http://betterexplained.com/articles/linear-algebra-guide/)

But to me, it's better to start with a context, a purpose for using matrices & linear algebra first, and learn what and how to use matrices in that context. The contexts that helped me included 3D graphics/games and later circuit simulations.

</comment><comment><USER13> Bengio's deep learning book has a nice linear algebra refresher if that's what you need: [http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~bengioy/dlbook/](http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~bengioy/dlbook/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Gilbert Strang's "The Fundamental Theorem of Linear Algebra" is very well written and expands on the topic of matrices as mappings.

</comment><comment><USER28> In general I find it helpful in understanding mathematical concepts and notations to learn about their history as well. What sort of problems they were meant to solve in the first place and what were the methods used before that.

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/M...](http://www- groups.dcs.st- andrews.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Matrices_and_determinants.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> As a programmer I see matrices as an abstraction layer. Without them, formulas for 3d calculations get very long and error prone.

<comment><USER30> From that point of view, the interesting thing would then be why this particular abstraction layer works well which is what linear algebra answers.

This is in some sense the process all math students go through. The formulas for computing determinant and multiplying matrices look really complicated and it feels like a mystery as to why it works at all but then linear algebra explains all of that slowly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great posting. I will definitely share this when someone has trouble with understanding what matrices are used for.

</comment><comment><USER32> Everyone in this thread mourning how nobody really learns that symbol-pushing isn't math (it isn't!) needs to look at Lockhart's Lament.

[https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....](https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER33> I haven't done anything linear algebra related since my high school Algebra II course. This was really simple for me to follow so thanks for posting. Its a shame that the authors don't update it, they have same great content and I would've definitely followed it.

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, what you see as matrices (that is the array of numbers) is underneath a function f: N x N -> F (Where F is a field of your choice, or a ring if you so desire). So its a function that takes two natural numbers (i.e. column and row) and outputs a number.

</comment><comment><USER35> What is more interesting to me is that linear functions: \mathbb{R}^n --> \mathbb{R}^m turn out to be useful when applied in many, many different problems areas. Call this "the unreasonable effectiveness of linear operators" if you will.

<comment><USER36> Linear operators are useful in many situations because

(1) They are "nice" operators which carry properties most functions can only dream of having: f(v + w) = f(v) + f(w), and f(a _v) = a_ f(v). From these properties you can develop a very rich theory (along with the properties of vectors). These are the sorts of properties that we want all of our functions to have when we are young and first learning algebra - how many prealgebra students wish they could simplify (a + b)^2 to a^2 + b^2?

(2) A linear approximation is the first useful approximation for most behaviours, and at a small enough scale almost anything looks linear. Once you've made this approximation you get to exploit the properties of (1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I learnt this from looking at code for old 3d engines, where you have to first make up your matrix functions, but then also unroll them for optimising stuff like rotations round a single axis.</comment>


My Credit Card is Less Secure than my Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://lookatpete.com/my-credit-card-is-less-secure-than-my-facebook

<comment><USER2> The reason credit cards are less secure, is because there is no need for them to be secure.

Anytime something goes wrong, there is a staff of people, paid for by those high credit card merchant fees, able to reverse any transaction.

Since the transactions are reversible, there's not much need for security.

</comment><comment><USER3> 'Charge Notifications' do exist. Your bank may/may not offer them.</comment>


Functional Generative Art Using ClojureScript - <AUTHOR> https://functional.christmas/2019/13 <comment><USER2> Really inspiring! Nicely structured, and easy to follow along, especially with the "Try it yourself" links. Amazingly addictive to tweak with variables :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow that was super cool to follow from beginning to end. I've always wanted to create art this way, perhaps with a physical user interface to tweak its parameters</comment>


LISPed: The power of programming languages - <AUTHOR> http://adil.2scomplement.com/?p=6

<comment><USER2> "The lives of Chinese people are not any worse because of the inability to say 'R'. Ditto for the programming languages."

Doesn't this contradict the essay?

"The best way is to just take the word of a better hacker."

Except for the difficult issue that great hackers had different opinions about which languages are best. Which do you listen to?

<comment><USER3> His choice of phrasing is perhaps poor, but no it is not a contradiction.

If you don't know your life could be better, you are spared the disappointment of knowing you lack something desirable.

<comment><USER2> but that isn't what he says. He says that there lives are NOT any worse. This is very different than saying they don't realize they are worse off. I.e. it's a contradiction</comment></comment></comment>


TSMC to Resist U.S. Call to Make Chips Domestically in Near Term - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-31/tsmc-to-resist-u-s-call-to-make-chips-domestically-in-near-term <comment><USER2> This is just a hypothesis, but I think there is a additional geopolitical reason why most TSMC's 300mm GIGAFAB's and advanced backend fab are located in Taiwan (1 fab in Cina). [https://www.tsmc.com/english/contact_us.htm#TSMC_fabs](https://www.tsmc.com/english/contact_us.htm#TSMC_fabs)

Concentrating geopolitical risk of TSMC operations makes Taiwan more important to the rest of the world. The US would naturally want to reduce this risk. TSMC has close to 50% market share. In Taiwan-China conflict world chip production would take a huge hit or be in the danger of falling under Chinese rule.</comment>


What if Siri could listen in on my phone calls? - <AUTHOR>

Let's set aside all of what we think we know about Siri for a second and just focus on what it's base function is: voice recognition.
Then imagine applying that to a telephone conversation with all of Siri's wonder! I believe this could be even more powerful than just a virtual assistant when you call upon it...
Not just to have a transcript of the conversation, but to actually pull out useful information and create a history of the conversation, a summary from Siri's understanding.
Perhaps it could tell that you agreed to a meeting (or a date!) and put the event in your diary. Perhaps it could understand the other caller giving you their details such as email address or their physical address and automatically add that to your address book.
Sounds kind of creepy, bit if there was ever such potential, I think it would be absolutely killer! <comment><USER2> More amazingly it could hook your previous conversations up to a Markov chain generator and answer phone calls on your behalf using your voice.

</comment><comment><USER3> I could certainly see it recognizing dates and prompting you afterwards to confirm. Doesn't seem to be ridiculously far away from what it is doing now

</comment><comment><USER4> Then it would be like this [http://www.theonion.com/video/new-google-phone- service-whisp...](http://www.theonion.com/video/new-google-phone-service- whispers-targeted-ads-dir,17470/)

<comment><USER4> btw, this happens with google voice already. you can record calls, and read voice messages as text.

unfortunately it has some clumsy way of enabling recording that makes this useless.</comment></comment>


"The best minds are thinking about how to make people click ads." Not. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/35866056514/the-best-minds-of-my-generation-are-thinking-about-how

<comment><USER2> I'd like to keep this post around as Gruber-style "claim chowder" for the author some day. You can choose to believe this or not believe this, but only the passage of time will really prove it one way or the other.

Just because there's a lot of plumbing going on doesn't mean anything useful is happening with it. Beware architecture astronauts.

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html></comment>


How the Reformulation of OxyContin Ignited the Heroin Epidemic [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www3.nd.edu/~elieber/research/ELP.pdf <comment><USER2> Some details from posted article: Until August 2010, Oxycontin could be transformed into a drug with a quick intense high by grinding it into a powder. Grinding disables its time-release technology. Florida regulations supported the creation of clinics providing easier access to Oxycontin to Floridians and others near I-75. In 8/2010, material were added so that grinding no longer was effective. Recreational users switched to heroin, more so in markets with more heroin availability. In 2013, suppliers began mixing fentanyl into heroin, creating a drug with an even more intense high. The switch to heroin from Oxycontin appears to have prevented any reduction in heroin/opioid overdose mortality rates. The introduction of fentanyl appears to have increased opioid mortality rates 4 or 5 times.

<comment><USER3> Unintended consequences. And it was actually the drug company trying to do the right thing, for once.

<comment><USER4> Pretty sure the original (unreasonable) availability of Oxycontin which caused the problems.

<comment><USER5> The original problem was that Purdue Pharma misrepresented it as having less risk of addiction.

<comment><USER6> I've wondered about that claim. Was there an asterisk next to that claim that said (*compared to Black Tar Heroin)? Given how crazy addictive it turned out to be shouldn't Purdue be held accountable for false advertising and public endangerment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had family develop a dependency on Oxycontin. As someone else described, they would snort it for relief. Unfortunately, he passed a year ago due to opioid related reasons. It still hasn't quite hit my father, who also had a similar dependency but has been able to stop using it after a rehab stint.

I don't usually blame problems on a medication, but Oxycontin nearly tore my family apart, as it did countless others. Perdue and its shareholders are complicit in a Great American Tragedy playing out today with Fentanyl and Heroin. I hope they all freeze to death in hell.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if legal drugs, unquestionably the only sane policy, are ever going to happen. People all over the world overwhelmingly and increasibly support deontological view of the law over consequentialist, ie. _not_ banning something is interpreted as supporting it; only the signal matters, results are irrelevant. That's why marijuana is the only outlier: its use is becoming _accepted_.

[https://www.vox.com/2016/3/15/11224500/marijuana- legalizatio...](https://www.vox.com/2016/3/15/11224500/marijuana-legalization- war-on-drugs-poll)

<comment><USER9> So it's totally cool if someone takes PCP and goes on a killing spree?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Additional discussion: [https://www.cato.org/publications/policy- analysis/abuse-dete...](https://www.cato.org/publications/policy- analysis/abuse-deterrent-opioids-law-unintended-consequences)

</comment><comment><USER10> The sackler family are upper class drug lords. Medical schools should be ashamed to take a dime of their blood money.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder why the out of pocket price of Oxycontin spikes so dramatically each January (see figure 4)

<comment><USER12> Insurance deductible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> interesting, this was around the time that my old colleagues started to dabble. Most got hooked into the hard stuff themselves.</comment>


iOS 9 Proves Apple Has Lost the Art of Simplicity - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/theopriestley/2015/07/12/iphone-ios-9-proves-apple-has-lost-the-magic-of-simplicity/

<comment><USER2> This article is very clickbait-y

<comment><USER3> Don't mind the title so much, but would be nice to actually have some content.

<comment><USER4> Am I missing a massive chunk of the article? The author doesn't actually _say_ anything. At all. They recite a "coffee conversation" and then link to an infographic. And on page two they insert a quote from Engadget. What a lazy article.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Analytics infographic presentation-ready reports - <AUTHOR> http://app.whatagraph.com <comment><USER2> Applied for report. Let's hope for good!!!</comment>