Ask HN: How to Manufacture N95 Mask? - <AUTHOR> While I certainly don't have the capital to manufacture it. But are there any resources that explains how to manufacture it at scale. Also are there any website which explains to manufacture anything like recipe or something like that. <comment><USER2> I believe it requires a melt blown plastic microfiber fabric that is complicated to make.

If you can obtain this material, alibaba.com has fully automatic n95 "mask" assembly machines advertised for $50-$65,000. I assume making a real N95 respirator would require more complex machinery.

I am told there is no shortage of masks being made in China, the problem is shipping them and making sure they work as advertised.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks will look into that.</comment></comment>


Designing the Most Successful Educational Game of All Time (The Oregon Trail) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-philipendium/how-i-managed-to-design-the-most-successful-educational-computer-game-of-all-time-4626ea09e184 <comment><USER2> If you like this, consider Maher's series on Oregon Trail ( [http://www.filfre.net/2011/03/on-the-trail-of-the-oregon- tra...](http://www.filfre.net/2011/03/on-the-trail-of-the-oregon-trail- part-1/) ) and indeed everything else he's written.

I have read his piece on Monkey Island more than once.

</comment><comment><USER3> I loved this article 987 pounds worth, however I was only able to carry 100 pounds back to the wagon.

</comment><comment><USER4> still waiting on that Donner Party DLC</comment>


The History of the Yew Tree, "The Tree of the Dead" - <AUTHOR> http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/10/31/beneath-the-yew-trees-shade/ <comment><USER2> Today several chemotherapy drugs are made using yew tree extracts (taxanes). Paclitaxel and Docetaxel are both made from extracts of the yew.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docetaxel#Nature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docetaxel#Nature)</comment>


The 'cultural appropriation' brigade can't even handle fiction - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/cultural-appropriation-brigade-cant-even-cope-fiction/?_ga=1.250504453.266091648.1474010704 <comment><USER2> The full text of the speech held by Lionel Shriver is available here:

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/lionel...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/lionel- shrivers-full-speech-i-hope-the-concept-of-cultural-appropriation-is-a- passing-fad)

A good read. It's painful to hear that writers of fiction are getting harrowed by well-meaning but obviously misguided activists who believe _cultural appropriation_ is seriously a thing.

I'm not surprised — although fascinated — about the way social media has granted these young idealists a platform for their irrational concepts of political correctness taken to the extremes, but I am taken aback about how notions such as _safe spaces_ and _trigger warnings_ have taken hold in academics via the student communities.

Is it the fear of being labelled a racist and having your good name tainted on-line by these very vocal activists with a receptive platform of like-minded individuals available at their fingertips that stops people (fellow students and faculty) from simply brushing it off as nonsense?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the answer to the question in the last paragraph is 'yes'.

I do dispute that the brigade are 'well-meaning' though. It is often very much for their own ends, be that in their student union or their career. They are often willing to cause a lot of damage in the name of their cause.

There is some great literature coming through against it though; Tom Slater's "Unsafe Spaces" is excellent. As is lots of the recent stuff by Joanna Williams.</comment></comment>


Self driving cars are not yet safe - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2016/12/05/self-driving-cars-are-not-yet-safe/ <comment><USER2> I think we actually need an intermediary technology before self-driving can be accepted.

Already there is proof for this. The general public is widely accepting of "lane assist" that warns you if you are drifting over into another lane, and automatic parking that is accepted (less so than lane assist but still a good start).

I'd like to see widespread driver monitoring AI in cars. The should be able to tell where you are looking and warn you if you are looking away from the road too much (ie: looking at your phone), falling asleep, or driving erratically (fatigued or inebriated).

I think with this kind of driver assist becoming widespread, it will be easier for the general public to accept self-driving when it has matured. The intermediary tech is more immediately useful and amounts to a public support campaign.</comment>


Google Alumni Pitch Investors at Xoogler Demo Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-alumni-pitch-investors-at-xoogler-demo-days-1461092062 <comment><USER2> Here were the startups that pitched if anyone is interested www.xooglerdemoday.com/startups2016</comment>


What's Wrong with My Product? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN community. After many years invested in Creo, it seems that it struggles to find a market fit. I really would like to receive your honest feedback about the project, especially what is wrong about it and what should be improved. https://creolabs.com <comment><USER2> Looks really awesome and polished, great support/tutorials - a few things to consider: \- does not clearly state for iOS Mobile App development \- $299 might be a bit spendy if you don't get source export \- no/few testimonials (who else is using it successfully) \- how much better/faster is it; everyone claims this advantage \- what environment is it targeted for (individuals or small dev shops) and how does it fit with existing workflow? \- and yes, do you have a follow-up program to obtain input from Trial users?

</comment><comment><USER3> Potentially pricing. $350/seat (2 seat min) to get source code export.

It's not clear who this product is for. Design and Preview seems to address a different concern than generating a project for devs to maintain.

The app development process isn't shown on the landing page, so I'm guessing it's some sort of drag and drop builder using predefined components and maybe a bit of scripting.

</comment><comment><USER4> it looks really nice. but I would like to see a video of how it is used on the landing page, instead of a single screenshot.

also your app is downloaded via your website, instead of app store. this means people needs to find your website first to find the app, did you do enough marketing?

<comment><USER4> I looked at the blog, I think it's pretty good. I have paid for [https://www.paintcodeapp.com/](https://www.paintcodeapp.com/) , which is kinda similar.

maybe create a youtube/udemy course on how to use it to build app?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ask your users what they don't like about the product. Experiment with features to see what works and what doesn't.</comment>


MetaSiteworth - Estimates income for websites by averaging other estimates - <AUTHOR> http://metasiteworth.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm always looking to create some new niche site for passive income. I've tried various site worth estimation services to see how much existing ideas are earn, but it's really hard to trust the numbers. Many of them are opaque about their methodology. But what if we aggregated their results (a la Nate Silver)? I created MetaSiteworth to do just that, and the results give you a ballpark idea about what kind of sites make what kind of money:

Here's some of examples:

// Music sites

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/anydecentmusic.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/anydecentmusic.com)

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/rapgenius.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/rapgenius.com)

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/pitchfork.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/pitchfork.com)

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/mp3skull.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/mp3skull.com)

// Utilities

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/converticon.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/converticon.com)

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/favicon.cc](http://metasiteworth.com/report/favicon.cc)

// Reference Sites

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/howjsay.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/howjsay.com)

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/urbandictionary.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/urbandictionary.com)

// Other

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/milevalue.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/milevalue.com)

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/mtbs3d.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/mtbs3d.com)

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/thottbot.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/thottbot.com)

[http://metasiteworth.com/report/forbiddenplanet.com](http://metasiteworth.com/report/forbiddenplanet.com)

</comment><comment><USER2> I think it's a brilliant idea. Popular estimator sites are making real passive income, in that there's not much work to be done after launching. The snag is this market is saturated and there is a low barrier to entry to keep competitors out. That said, I've never seen a site take an average of the most popular estimator sites. I think it's a clever angle, and it certainly creates the perception of a more accurate result. I'd use your site over your competitors.

Your challenge is going to be in gaining market share. Meaning, you need to rank high in Google! Or spread virally. That'll be tough, but I think you can do it with this angle.

</comment><comment><USER3> Off (too low) by one order of magnitude in our case (as far as the income is concerned) ... Note that the title here says "income" while the website says "value of a website".</comment>


Ask HN: Going into business with friend and her mom - <AUTHOR> Hi,
My friend and I have worked close for these last few years. Her and I are both software devs and often do side projects for fun.
Her mom was very successful in her industry and owned a few businesses. Recently I was approached to start something new with Friend + Mom. Her and I will code it up and the mother (cant say mom again) will handle logistics.
Obviously this is a weird dynamic.
This is way ahead but just thinking how do I cover myself without coming across as caring about the wrong things? If we split it 3 ways then really I am outnumbered. I was thinking we could do 33,33,33 and just ask for 2 votes and any disagreements go to arbitrage.
That said, I have never dealt with any of this, its never been a family situation. I also feel like I am getting ahead of myself. But would want the information when it presents itself. Thanks <comment><USER2> Just hear out what they are thinking first. My guess is if Mom has been quite successful prior she may not be thinking a 3 way split to begin with, especially if she is kicking in funds. If you are all contributing funds in equal amounts that'd be different. It wouldn't shock me if she said 51, 24.5, 24.5. So that's why I'd say hear out what they are thinking first then give it a think.

I grew up in family businesses, where the primary business was a software business, and so I went through all the fun family work dynamics. I have also consulted for a number of family business both big and small, usually they have some interesting dynamics to work through and you have to navigate waters that have history far beyond what you have any right to know. lol. FWIW, I am not someone who warns people away from a family business, but just like any business partner you need to feel things out to see how conflict resolution will work, how communication feels, are the goals aligned etc and you need to understand the dynamic between mom & daughter too.

How do you get to these conversations without sounding like you care about the wrong things is by being honest. "Hey friend, we work really well together and I thoroughly enjoy that time, I am super interested in this project but obviously there are logistics about how it all gets setup that I'd like to hear your and your mom's thoughts on. Can we just have a chat?" I'd even suggest saying you are open to different ideas and don't have any fixed notions yet, so wanted to hear their thoughts etc. This way it is letting them tell you their thoughts, see how they do it together, does one override the other all the time? Are they even on the same page? etc. Also, by saying you don't have any fixed notions yet (or something like that), you are leaving the door open to you changing your mind or needing to think to solidify your own ideas without them feeling like you are being douche.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think putting this kind of thing across the table at the beginning is better and can save confusion.

I was spared having to confront my cofounder (of a now failed startup) by applying for an incubator that had us sign the split up front and have us have those conversations as part of applying, but that definitely helped.

Sounds like a good opportunity if she's succesful! Business acumen is NOT to be discounted!

</comment><comment><USER4> Initial ownership should really be based on at risk contribution in my opinion. While there are three founders, I don't believe that must imply an event 3 way split.

Tally up what each person brings to the table and places at risk then divide the ownership based on that.

That said, some jurisdictions give tax and other incentives to businesses owned by minorities and women. It could be well in your favor to see that they have a majority position (assuming you are not also a woman).</comment>


Personal Finance Apps Doomed? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andrewgsalmons/personal-finance-apps-doomed-1ae3e25d2f24 <comment><USER2> Hey Andrew, I've read through you post, from "I'm not an accountant" to acomplishing financial goals and when I reached "getting your spouse on board" I was excited because that's the web-app I'm working on :)

It's still early days for my app and it is rough because, you know, programmer-art, but it's great to see I'm not the only one with these problems.

Re the financial goals, I have one simple feature on that now, but with more data I see good results with R's forecast library and Excel's Goal Seek isn't such a bad idea either. My own calculations on paper often started with "how much money do I need by the end of each upcoming month".

<comment><AUTHOR> I know EXACTLY how you feel about the programmer-art. It's been years from the initial concept to trying to make something happen... but then there might be something already out there. For example, I was about to build my own offline maps app until I came across one that was reasonably priced and well-equipped. Everyone I talked to would definitely eat up this app concept if it came to fruition.</comment></comment>


How Casio is selling $900 selfie cameras in China - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/12/16463626/casio-tr-series-selfie-cameras-china-asia <comment><USER2> Clever marketing job; they know their customer!</comment>


Git is already federated and decentralized - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/23/Git-is-already-distributed.html <comment><USER2> Hi! I'm one of the "replacing GitHub with something decentralized!" people (via GitTorrent). And one of your Patreon backers! Thanks!

Please don't hand-wave away the UX challenges of getting to a GitHub replacement. We need a way that someone can access and leave comments on a project that's better than "well, first I would have joined the project mailing list months earlier". We need to not depend on people running their own 24/7 server infrastructure. We need to not require command-line proficiency. We need to understand that infrastructure has inertia, and mindshare can be everything.

For example! Gmail rejects outgoing email from most home ISPs, and mangles patches in ways that cause vger.kernel.org to just reject email from Gmail, as I understand it. Is that really our example of an accessible federation?

Are we actually trying to compete, or just trying to build ourselves tiny gardens where we can say to ourselves that we're doing things the right way, even though no-one else is?

<comment><USER3> > Gmail rejects outgoing email from most home ISPs

The configuration must go with the flow, for example it's recommended to at least configure SPF or DKIM. For each E-Mail a score will be calculated and both make it better, there's also DMARC for further improvement. In fact not only Gmail does this, most non-trivial mail setups do inbound filtering.

Nowadays there are even Docker containers for that. Not saying that E-Mail is great but automation will get one really far and there doesn't seem to be a decentralized alternative for that yet. (Obviously there are centralized alternatives; and of course there's XMPP)

<comment><USER2> None of these suggestions make sense. DKIM, SPF, and Docker are all irrelevant to whether Gmail will accept mail that is relayed to them through a broadband IP address. (They won't.)

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I misread that one. I thought you meant self-hosted.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried or have heard of someone who tried? I mean nothing stops one from pointing a Domain to a Home ISP IP address and creating DKIM and SPF entries for that. I kind of doubt that Google can determine with high accuracy whether an IP is from a Consumer ISP or not, especially when it comes to small ISPs - which might be the most interesting, when already going so far... ;-)

<comment><USER4> There are dynamic IP DNS blocklists and they are usually pretty accurate. Also, usually, your reverse name is pretty telling with home ISPs. Sure, you might be lucky with a small ISP, but then, with a small ISP, chances are they wouldn't mind giving you "static" addresses anyway.

Though indeed it would be an interesting experiment how domain and IP reputation actually interact at large email providers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll never completely trust a software product, especially communication ones. However, I'll blindly put all my money on protocols. A protocol is indestructible, it's just a document. It doesn't need VC funding to keep servers alive, it doesn't need advertisements, it doesn't need ridiculous growth benchmarks, it doesn't need anything. The beauty of protocols is that you're free to write your own client and server to have end-to-end control. IRC is a perfect example. I can't count the amount of client and server software, but they all interact with each almost perfectly.

That's why email will continue to exist forever. And that's why email is so versatile.

<comment><USER6> Efficient implementation of a protocol _can_ be patent encumbered.

While a protocol exists forever, implementations mightn't, and there are many failed protocols. But can endure through network effects.

<comment><USER7> It is theoretically possible though, that if you find a usecase for a protocol that happened to be not used for a hundred years, that you implement it and then use it. Not even the document about the protocol is necessary if you remember it well enough.

And a part of the self-responsible philosophy is also that "there is no implementation" is not even an excuse. As long as there are free programming languages and affordable computers (I.e. a raspberry pi) then you can very well create your own implementation. It might take years to even start due to the requirements to learn programming, but it's not impossible at all.

<comment><USER6> I meant: a communications protocol that no one else uses is as useful as one telephone.

<comment><USER7> More like a notebook. You could for instance use the email format to store your diary entries, or a todo list, or an index of useful links, etc. even if nobody else uses the standard anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> phoe-krk Being an active Fediverse user, I've realized that what people realize is that when they say they want to decentralize Git, they often aren't thinking about decentralizing Git; they are thinking about decentralizing GitHub/GitLab/Gitea/etc.. They want to decentralize the social aspect, the issues trackers, the ability to automatically pull fresh changes from other parts of the web via webhooks.

<comment><USER8> > when they say they want to decentralize Git, they often aren't thinking > about decentralizing Git; they are thinking about decentralizing > GitHub/GitLab/Gitea/etc.

Obviously, because Git was decentralized from day one.

<comment> phoe-krk Not so obviously, as you can see here. If people keep on saying "let's decentralize Git", they clearly can't mean what you just said.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Email is basically the worst-common-denominator for communications and data transfer. It's going to keep existing forever because it's the one thing that basically everybody has and everything can support, but from the perspective of security, usability, and especially structured data transfer it's terrible.

I can't think of a reason I'd want a decentralized system to use email as the message bus. I do want the message bus to be backed by something standardized, but there's plenty of standard ways to transmit data that aren't SMTP. If some users want to interact with the system via email, supporting email as a notification / response mechanism is totally viable without using that as the backplane for the service itself.

<comment><USER10> I blaming tech overload at the moment, but I'm trying to remember some of the "supporting email as a notification / response mechanism" that I have seen / used in the past that took those emails and put them into a threaded responses kind of graphical hierarchy.

I kind of get this with searches in thunderbird email client, but I can't quite remember if phpbb or vbulletin does that. I am guessing slack, rocket chat and similar have some kind of bots or bouncers kind of things that could re-insert replies and group by threads.

Maybe it's just having a new view layer added into into some of the systems and giving the option to get notified and reply by email, as well as other methods that others may prefer.

I think we need to remind people posting in forums and other softwares that others may be getting plaintext-viewable-by-the-world emails of the posts and replies - that's a security gap I think many would not consider if they do not use those methods, so a reminder would be good.

Of course adding an option to get pgp encypted emails only and blocking plaintext for example might be a step up and in the better direction for adaptability and moving towards future better.

Still can't pinpoint where I have seen similar things used in the past or what it was called at the moment.

<comment><USER4> Erm, maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying, but threading is a built-in feature of the email RFCs. Mutt can do it perfectly, and has been doing it forever. If at all, it's a feature that was lost with some "modern" clients in the name of usability or something idiotic like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Git is a dVCS so yes, it's already decentralized and in that sense GitHub is a mere "starting place" for newcomers who want to checkout the official repo.

However many, too many, use proprietary stuff offered by GitHub on top of it's storage, from PR to wiki etc and those are NOT decentralized and are NOT "free" in the sense of freedom. A FOSS project that depend on GitHub for bugreports, patches, discussions etc is voluntary trapped in a proprietary platform.

We have mailing lists to discuss and post casual patches, Linux kernel work that way, Python work that way, Emacs work thay way etc and all those are not small potatoes projects. We have NO NEED of discourse, GitHub etc if we know how to use good development and user environments, of course we can't develop anything via mail if we are tied to a webmail or to an ancient '90-style MUA monster, we need to know other MUA and other UI to work with (my personal choice notmuch-emacs and EXWM, another populat choice neomutt/*pine and Vim etc). If even FOSS developer lose this knowledge FOSS is at the end.

</comment><comment><USER12> Speaking of existing technologies, Chris Ball combined the BitTorrent, DHT, and GIT protocols into GitTorrent [1][2].

[1]: [https://blog.printf.net/articles/2015/05/29/announcing- gitto...](https://blog.printf.net/articles/2015/05/29/announcing-gittorrent-a- decentralized-github/)

[2]: [https://github.com/cjb/GitTorrent](https://github.com/cjb/GitTorrent)

<comment><USER13> Serendipitously* enough, he's actually in this thread; top comment. * I don't know if that's a word.

<comment><USER7> Next time, please mouse over the corresponding comments time stamp, next to the authors name, and copy&paste the link into your comment. Just because it's the top comment at the time of your writing doesn't mean it's always the top comment, right?

I think you mean this one (yes, it's still the top comment): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18098416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18098416)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If anyone is interested in a truly decentralized git repo, check out git-ssb (git on top of secure scuttlebutt protocol).

[https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25n92DiQh7ietE%2BR%2BX%2FI403LQoy...](https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25n92DiQh7ietE%2BR%2BX%2FI403LQoyf2DtR3WQfCkDKlheQU%3D.sha256)

And of course the scuttlebutt message types work on commit hashes, so leaving comments, etc. is baked in.

</comment><comment><USER15> > The main issue with using ActivityPub for decentralized git forges boils > down to email simply being a better choice. The advantages of email are > numerous. It's already standardized and has countless open source > implementations, many in the standard libraries of almost every programming > language. It's decentralized and federated, and it's already integrated with > git. Has been since day one! I don't think that we should replace web forges > with our email clients, not at all. Instead, web forges should embrace email > to communicate with each other.

This is true. But the problem they're solving is that email as a protocol is great, but the UX of most standard mail clients is trash. Especially for mobile. Consuming the protocol and providing a better UX will incentivize people to switch.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great. Now let me edit history in a decentralized way (squashing, tweaking messages, etc) instead of taking away all its glorious power the moment I push.

Yes, I know that what I said doesn't make sense if you understand how the dag works. The emergent features matter, and that feature is absent.

<comment><USER17> Well, nothing is doing is _changing_ how the git graph works. It's not set in stone. I think being able to squash historical commits without changing the has of a future commit would be a good feature.

<comment><USER16> I don't even need a real squash, a pseudosquash that conceals intermediate commits in some kind of aggregate object would be good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought the whole point of ActivityPub+Git was to replicate the social aspects of GitHub. I think developers don't really have experience working with email either, so they go with what they know best (web).

<comment><USER19> Email is the most mature and widely used social app.

<comment><USER20> That doesn't mean that it translates to an easy git interface.

<comment><USER4> Email isn't an interface, it's a transport mechanism. This is like saying that you don't think http translates to an easy git interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are issues decentralized? I have a pair of GitHub repos, both private, one a fork of the other, and would like to deprecate the old fork and move issues... If there is a clean way to do this I'd love to know.

<comment><USER22> Git and Github are not the same. Git is decentralized, Github is centralized hosting with extra features, including issues and PRs.

<comment><USER21> gah, for some reason I thought the title said "github" and wondered why it only talked about git.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _I already spoke at length about how a large minority of the git community uses email for collaboration_

Surely that minority are working on quite a large project. Ahh:

 _Using email for git scales extremely well. The canonical project, of course, is the Linux kernel. A change is made to the Linux kernel an average of 7 times per hour, constantly. It is maintained by dozens of veritable clans of software engineers hacking on dozens of modules, and email allows these changes to efficiently flow code throughout the system. Without email, Linux's maintenance model would be impossible. It's worth noting that git was designed for maintaining Linux, of course._

As it turns out, that canonical project is both quite large and invented the bloody thing in the first place (as mentioned in the prior article).

<comment><USER24> I couldn't tell whether you intended this comment as support or to discount Linux's use, but as another data point, PostgreSQL uses git and email in a similar fashion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Someone once told me, most people mean distributed when they say decentralized.

Git is decentralized only if commit priviledge is controlled and decided by at minimum two users where either user cannot revoke or otherwise threaten the other users priviledge.

</comment><comment><USER7> Btw git is already running on SSB (Scuttlebut protocol): [https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25n92DiQh7ietE%2BR%2BX%2FI403LQoy...](https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25n92DiQh7ietE%2BR%2BX%2FI403LQoyf2DtR3WQfCkDKlheQU%3D.sha256)

There it has issue tracking, Readme parsing etc. Looks pretty githubby to me.

</comment><comment><USER26> I already live by the dogma that my local machine is the lone input into master on the remote server of my Gitlab instance. And that remote master never inputs into my local copy of the repo.

What better UX is awaiting me and my new developers by taking an email-based approach?

Edit: clarification

<comment><USER27> You have a push-only workflow, and 100% of commits are made on your local? Frankly, I'm not sure what you're even using Gitlab for in this setup; it seems like you might as well just rsync your working directory to your remote server instead, since you don't have to approve, merge, or reconcile commits from other sources. There's nothing distributed about your version control needs.

<comment><USER26> No-- I'll fetch branches from other devs, inspect them, merge them locally, then push to remote. But that all happens on my local machine.

I use the Gitlab UI for issues, creating merge requests and discussing them with other devs, etc. That centralized Gitlab instance provides a lot of value for me. If there were a method of leveraging something close to the Gitlab UX with a decentralized or even federated design underneath, I'd use that. But this article reads like it's saying, "Give up that value and use this less convenient flow in order to protect against an unlikely class of attack."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If we are talking cryptocurrency level of decentralization this is false. They work on a race to be able to sign the next message, commit the next set or transactions, and to avoid the spam proof of work is a required element.

<comment><USER29> "Cryptocurrency level of decentralization" is _more_ centralized than git. It has to be, because it's about maintaining a global ledger, whereas even within a single project there's no need for git to sync at any given point.

Proof of work to avoid spam is orthogonal - it could be introduced without any sort of race (there have long been such proposals around email) but putting together a patch set that seems anything like plausible seems sufficient "proof of work" in this context for most projects.

<comment><USER28> You have a weird definition of decentralization

<comment><USER30> In git, everyone has its own repository and its own commit history that can be totally different from each others. In cryptocurrencies, there is one authoritative version that is distributed.

Both are distributed, but git is more decentralized as the central law needs not be pushed to the outer citizens.

<comment><USER28> You are comparing apples to oranges. Git can be use alone whereas the utility of a cryptocurrency is in the network. You don't say that a video game is "decentralized" because you can play offline do you?

<comment><USER29> > You are comparing apples to oranges.

Conversational foul! It was _your comparison in the first place_. You don't get to accuse someone else of comparing apples and oranges when they describe where you were wrong.

> Git can be use alone whereas the utility of a cryptocurrency is in the > network.

To the degree that's true, it's why we can't expect cryptocurrency implementations to reach git's levels of decentralization. It doesn't somehow make it extra decentralized.

It's not even quite true that the value is in the network - the value is in my ability to safely transact. There have been proposals for digital currencies that allow offline transactions while maintaining resistance to double spends.

> You don't say that a video game is "decentralized" because you can play > offline do you?

No, but only because we don't really have reason to think about them in those terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> yes, git is. But issues, discussions, wikis are not.

Authentication of who can comment on issue and who can see them, the user identity service is not decentralized.

That's the main problem with git. And that's why github exists.

I think github could try transform into a namespace and identity service.

<comment><USER4> > the user identity service is not decentralized.

Yes, it is, it's the DNS. The user identity of your git repository is your host name, which is connected between participants via the DNS.

As for issues and wikis, well, they are not part of git, obviously, but the same applies in principle. Also, in the case of issues and the like, if you use mailing lists, your user identity service is decentralized by virtue of using email addresses.

Whether those are the perfect solution may be questionable, but they most definitely are not centralized, and might very well be the basis for improving the usability.

> I think github could try transform into a namespace and identity service.

So they stay the monopolistic gatekeeper? What would be the point of that? If anything, namespace and identity must not be controlled by one monopolistic entity.

<comment><USER31> ok, let's try describe a simple scenario. There's a hundreds of developers in your git, thousands watching it, now there's an security issue. You want to include a few trusted ones to discuss a patch, how do you proceed? Especially how do you move around the disccusion content around with your git repo?

<comment><USER4> Now, there are many ways to implement a solution for this, and I personally would probably prefer simple patches in plain text emails, unless it's a really complicated issue with a massive patch.

But in any case, your mistake seems to be in thinking in terms of one repo. You don't need that. Every developer can have their own repo published somewhere. Or even more than one. And for the probably simplest solution for limited access, you just add http authentication in front of that repo and then send the URI including the credentials via email.

Is that the perfect solution? Maybe not. But the point is that you don't need a centralized gatekeeper. If you don't like email, you can build new communication protocols that use DNS names for identity. Or you could integrate email more with git so git automatically imports machine-readable pull requests you receive via email. Or whatever. There are endless possibilities that can use DNS names for federation of independently hosted repositories and issues trackers and whatnot. And there exist many implementations of ideas as well. You also could use OpenID for federated authentication.

<comment><USER31> I think it comes down to two scopes of the .git:

1\. preserve source code change history 2\. preserve history of how the project evolves.

Github serves the #2 well but in an centralized way. But #2 is kinda essential these days. People need to know how the code changed but also WHY.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Git is "already federated and decentralized" (depending on emergent semiotics), but GitHub is NOT.

<comment><USER32> I think the ActivityPub related work is moreso related to the GitHub experience, and less so Git itself ... ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's actually a nifty idea, could be implemented as something like blockchain in terms of distribution and syncing diffs among peers.

<comment><USER34> Hey, maybe work geolocated "check-ins" into it, and a gig model where you can pay someone to do your merges!

<comment><USER35> I'm sure you can figure out some way to work deep learning into it. How are you ever going to disrupt anything with a buzzword density below five nines?</comment></comment></comment>


EUtility Electric Tractor is powered by a battery, not diesel - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/environment/solectrac-eutility-electric-tractor/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't cover all tractor uses of course, in the Texas Hill Country (think around Austin) there's a pretty large cohort of people (non farmers) that have enough land to necessitate a tractor or bob-cat that will only be used a few times a month.

Imagine being able to "jettison" your battery pack from your classic car EV conversion to plop into your tractor. I know the swappable battery packs failed to take up with the Tesla model, but think about the secondary machines that need occasional power - tractors, ride on lawn mowers, sentimental classic/ hobby vehicle. Things that could be used in series (you won't be moving your lawn and driving your classic car at the same time) that could also benefit as being a power wall.

High class problem for sure, there's a big opportunity to leverage micro-grids + flexible power.

<comment><USER3> the main problem here is that a battery big enough to power a skid-steer would be too big to lift by hand. and you couldn't use your skid-steer to lift it, so you'd need a hoist or something.

but once you've got a hoist and are moving a big heavy pack between vehicles, i wonder how much else could be in that transferrable pack. is a skid-steer loader similar enough to a light-duty tractor or mini-hoe that you could transfer the motor, hydraulic pump, and battery between different vehicles?

<comment><USER4> One that hits me as a caravan owner - I would love to take the drove chain of my main car and just "plug" it into a motor home shell - in fact have the shell be a two parter - a small runabout car and the extra.

the price of a motor home is basically the cost of a car and the cost of a caravan - an electric motors home in this case would be basically half price

<comment><USER5> How is this meaningfully different from an SUV towing a travel trailer?

<comment><USER6> This is different to the US, but in Europe a lot of people have smaller cars that aren't suitable for towing caravans. My family's only car can comfortable fit four people, but I don't have a tow bar (and the manufacturer doesn't recommend fitting one). And of course for most people it's much easier to drive a motorhome or campervan, than to drive a car with a caravan.

<comment><USER7> I think a cool invention would be a (not-very) autonomous electric trailer.

Think of a full trailer - "a freight trailer supported by front and rear axles and pulled by a drawbar"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailer_(vehicle)#Full_trailer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailer_\(vehicle\)#Full_trailer)

With something like this it could be "towed" by basically any kind of vehicle. It doesn't really have to be pulled or pushed, it could take hints from the vehicle in front. It might not even have to be attached, except maybe for legal or historical reasons.

Another important point about rv-type travel is that you frequently need to be self-contained. A large battery could do double duty as propulsion and living. It would also be ideal for rooftop and/or awning solar panels. This setup would allow all the comforts of civilization without being hooked up to the grid, or even be near the grid. It could even pay for itself. Drive, then park for a few days and you get free power to go another hop.

<comment><USER8> People have definitely been tossing this idea around - basically your micro- car could "tow" a 10-ton self-powered autonomous trailer that locks in on guide signals from the rear and drafts your car. Much, much simpler than true autonomous driving - you don't have to read road signs, watch out for cyclists crossing against the light, figure out how to handle a 6-way uncontrolled intersection, etc. You'd probably want some feedback to the lead vehicle to modulate acceleration and braking to match the capabilities of the trailer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a hard time seeing this get much traction. The use case for tractors is that you don't need them all the time, but often when you do need them you need to use them almost continuously. Having to stop for a three-hour charge is almost a non-starter.

This is a bigger issue for larger tractors — when you are harvesting, you just can't stop. You have to go nearly around the clock until you're done. You don't normally use a utility tractor with a front end loader attachment for that. But even for utility tractors, stopping in the middle of a job is an enormous downside. If you are baling hay or drilling fenceposts or loading hay bales, yuo are at the vagaries of the weather and the available daylight. Being able to quickly refuel is a big deal.

<comment><USER10> Honestly, I disagree. This isn't a large farm tractor, it's a compact utility tractor. They're more for small farm / rural residential / hobby farm users, not the scenarios you're talking about.

Compact utility tractors like this are really only used for a couple hours. I use mine once or twice a week -- clear the driveway of snow, rototill the garden, spray the vineyard, box scrape the parking pad, haul some dirt with the loader, mow the back field. None of this is more than a couple hours of continuous use.

And if you consider that there's lots of times you're just sitting there idling while shoveling dirt into the loader, an electric tractor wouldn't even be using energy just sitting there waiting for your load. And bonus: not making noise.

I've been waiting for this for a long time, but the price just isn't there yet.

Also, people bailing hay aren't using compact utility tractors like this. They're using bigger tractors. You couldn't even lift a full round bale with this loader.

<comment><USER9> I am in fact a small farmer and I have and use a compact utility tractor. _Sometimes_ I use it for an hour or two. Sometimes I'm on it all day long.

I lift full 500 lb round bales with my Ford 1320. Very carefully.

<comment><USER11> I've used a Ford 1500 to move ~500lb round bales and it was on the edge of being safe. Even with a ~800lb implement on the back you're really pushing the capability of that machine. I don't know if I'd touch round bales with a 1320, I'd just roll them by hand(which I've done when the tractor is in the shop).

Now that we've got something appropriately sized(~5k lbs machine) it's a heck of a lot safer to work with bales that size.

<comment><USER9> I have filled tires and I put a bale on the three point hitch bale fork. As long as you go slow and work on level ground it's fairly stable.

Also, I should correct the record: it isn't a 1320. it's a 1710. I mistyped, and before I noticed my mistake I couldn't edit the OP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Fully Charged show recently reviewed an electric tractor available in the UK: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClNdrJRan5k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClNdrJRan5k)

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if a hybrid drive system similar to the old chevy volts would ever make sense for a tractor. A lot of use cases for tractors (definitely not all, however) are very bursty in nature. I suspect for those use cases you could get away with an engine with a significantly lower peak output.

<comment><USER10> The old Chevy Volt? You're causing me pain. They only discontinued it last year! Mine doesn't feel "old"

For these kinds of compact utility tractors pure electric makes total sense. But you're right for longer running bigger farm tractors and combine harvesters, etc. you'd probably want a hybrid system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The front-loader is humorously under powered, it's too expensive, and too heavy. I want one anyway but I wouldn't buy it over a Kubota. How would it perform in 100 degree weather with the battery?

</comment><comment><USER15> This is cool but I wish they also made a small walk-behind tractor for smaller gardens. I hope one day I will be able to buy something like a BCS but electric.

<comment><USER16> There are probably BCS electrification projects around.

<comment><USER10> I've looked in the past. I thought about modifying my old Gravely (which I've since sold), but I lack the machining skills. The drivetrain is super simple, but some adapter plates would be needed. But I think the problem here comes down to weight. It would be very hard to have a large enough battery pack while still having it be maneuverable.

<comment><USER10> But perhaps one could just have multiple swappable packs, like some electric motorbikes I've seen.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Report: Next MacBook won't use Intel chips - <AUTHOR> http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=ACBJ&date=20080729&id=8954293

<comment><USER2> You may be misunderstanding the issue, and MSN's headline makes it clearer:

The talk is apple is dumping Intel's CHIPSETS (e.g. motherboard designs), but not the Intel chip itself [processor].</comment>


Backlink Attack. Google Sandbox - <AUTHOR>

My controversial blog was recently attacked with garbage links. Google has now penalized me, placing my site in the sandbox. I don't even rank for my domain name when searching google.
Is there anything I can do?
Perhaps buy another domain and redirect(If so what type?) it my blog, so at least my articles/content appear in google, even if it's not for my main domain. <comment><USER2> The penalty is probably due to the Google Penguin algorithm update. Buying a new domains and redirecting your blog to it will not help as the links will point to the new blog which will also receive the same penalty.

Register with Google Webmaster Tools. See if you have any message from Google on "unnatural links". Check your link profile. Try and figure out which are the sites that are causing the penalty. Try and get in touch with webmasters of those sites and ask for your link to be removed. If this does not work, you can use the disavow links tool (from within google webmasters) which is used to tell Google that you do not want them to consider the specific link.</comment>


Does Amazon's Monopoly Really Matter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-24/does-amazon-s-monopoly-really-matter

<comment><USER2> Yes. If you want to sell anything online (and actually have a chance it will sell) your choices are eBay and Amazon. Amazon treats its sellers like total garbage and doesn't even allow you to keep the customers that you have serviced (in many cases it can be years).

They also directly compete with third-party sellers by using marketplace data (so he third-party seller is essentially giving all data to the competition just by staying in business).

Seller support is a joke. If you get banned by their bots, which happens by mistake constantly, you are banned for life..and nobody will even talk to you.</comment>


Ask HN: release now, or wait? - <AUTHOR>

I have made my service useable, but there are a couple more things thAt my competitors offer... My question is: should I release now with a blog stating up comin features, or should I wait a few more weeks and release a complete service?<p>I know it would help to be more specific, but I don't really wAnt to let he cat out of the bag just yet. <comment><USER2> Release now, get some friends to start using it. Get feedback as you work on new features. Iterate, iterate, iterate. People don't mind using an incomplete service as long as they know its being built upon - it also helps build evangelists. Especially if you limit the initial number of users and create a type of scarcity.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ask yourself a simple question: Can my customers effectively use my software without those features?

If yes: Launch immediately. Do _NOT_ make a blog post saying 'upcoming features.' Just release them when they're ready. That way noone's expectations will be set and you will impress them.

If no: Add only the features that MUST be present for people to say 'ok, I will pay for this.' Then go from there :)

There is no 'cat' to be let out of the bag yet. Your first few weeks after a PERFECT launch will lead to what.. 10 people coming to your site? Maybe 100 if you promote it well?

</comment><comment><USER4> \- Only release products that increase the value to the user. \- I would release now to get user feedback + instead of doing a blog post telling them what you are going to build - give them options and ask what they want. This will allow you to prioritize and focus on their key needs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends on the nature of the service, but contrary to a popular HN opinion it typically makes more sense to release something well polished yet late, than something crippled and half-baked yet early.

If your primary goal is to gather a feedback, do a private, by-invite beta.

</comment><comment><USER6> I agree you should launch sooner rather than later. Also, not to be rude, but if you do start a blog, you may want to have someone proofread your posts. A lot of typos like you have here won't instill confidence in your users.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, sorry about the typo's- I was on my iPhone stuck in traffic... :O

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Stop worrying about a perfect launch — your success isn't measured on the splash you make. Launch now, gain feedback, and then build out the rest of the product.</comment>


Firehose support added in awstaghelper version 0.12.0 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mpostument/awstaghelper/releases/tag/0.12.0 <comment><AUTHOR> Bulk tag aws resources</comment>


'We Were Wiped Out': New Yorkers Preyed on Chicago Cabbies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/nyregion/taxi-medallions-chicago.html <comment><USER3> What I don't understand, is why someone would be willing to buy 15 medallions at an "inflated price." My point being, you should have some basis on the PV of cashflows you can generate with each medallion. It doesn't seem like an extremely complicated financial problem in my eyes. At some point, you're cutting into any investment return you receive through cash flow and you're now expecting your returns to be generated through the appreciation of the medallion. That's probably where I would stop and think, I don't need to buy 15 of these things.

<comment><USER4> The people that borrowed to get them were greedy speculators too, and they just aren't talking about it.

They just forgot that "when your taxi driver is talking about investing, its time to sell" and they were the literal taxi drivers in the adage.

The blunt reason is because they are the bottom/edge of society's universe of investors, so there is nobody else to sell an asset to at a higher price.

The same result would have happened eventually, the arrival of Uber & Lyft exacerbated the outcome much faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The NYT is such garbage these days. Some speculators lost money to other speculators. That's how speculation works. Nobody is being 'preyed' upon. This article is unbelievably disingenuous.

<comment><USER6> I keep seeing this statement but not sure what other sources to consume. What is a good alternative?

<comment><USER7> The Wall Street Journal is generally more accurate and even handed on business and finance stories. Although they do have some bias on other topics.

<comment><USER8> Wsj opinion is irrational crazy town. The news side has managed to be impartial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is baffling. It's full of very loaded language (e.g. prey, seized control, squeezed, etc). And the evidence and explanations they provide is even more baffling and contradictory.

> Some adopted an especially aggressive approach, according to documents and > interviews. First, they purchased medallions at bargain rates and > established big fleets of cabs. Then, they pumped up medallion prices. > Finally, they sold their medallions to their drivers and to rival fleet > operators just before the collapse.

Take each claim one by one:

> First, they purchased medallions at bargain rates

How did they get them at bargain rates?

> Then, they pumped up medallion prices.

Again, how? Did they somehow drive the population increase in NYC?

> Finally, they sold their medallions to their drivers and to rival fleet > operators just before the collapse.

Did they sell the medallions or finance them to drivers, because earlier in the article it says:

> They inflated medallion prices, provided high-risk loans to buyers and > collected interest and fees before the bubbles burst and the markets > collapsed.

If they financed them, the drivers defaulted and the collateral was worth a lot less than originally valued at.

The whole article is a weird hodge-podge mess of trying to find victimizers and victims. People who bought medallions between certain years are victimizers but those that bought them after the peak are victims and New Yorkers (?) in Chicago are especially bad.

<comment><USER10> The article does explain how they inflated the prices, they sold them to each other at increasingly higher prices, which kept bumping up the recorded last sale price. At the risk of violating HN rules, I have to say that you didn't read the article.

<comment><USER9> I doubt that would make sense financially. Prior to 2017, there was a 5% transfer tax on medallion sales [0]. I believe they would also have to pay either a capital gains tax or treat the gains from the sale as income. It would be a very expensive strategy to get a paper uptick in the last recorded sale price that you may or may not benefit from. And there are all sorts of other regulations that manipulate the market and distort sales. For instance prior to 2017 owners of single medallions were limited to selling to someone who doesn't already own one [0]. The sales from one member to another could have just been a family business arrangement where one group of individuals brings in another business partner.

Instead of some bizarre conspiracy theory about unnamed group of individuals that can manipulate prices, lure just the right speculators at the very peak and move on, why can't it just be that there are some speculators that did well and others that entered too late and lost out? Why does everything have to be viewed as a victim/victimizer paradigm?

[0] [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-much-is-a-nyc-taxi- medallio...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-much-is-a-nyc-taxi-medallion- worth-these-days/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Artificially limiting the supply of taxis seems like a silly thing to do in the first place. It's not surprising that it didn't work out well.

<comment><USER12> Well, I can think of at least one good reason for a medallion system: it helps limit the number of cars on the road. (Let's ignore Uber and Lyft—they are taxis and _should_ need medallions, but we're not enforcing the law properly.)

Of course, it would help a great deal if the medallion system were combined with limits on private vehicles...

<comment><USER13> It's a terrible way to limit the number of cars. A variable toll would be a much better way of limiting the number of vehicles.

<comment><USER14> I hate the idea of "congestion pricing" tolls. Bridges & tunnels into NYC run $15. $300/month for daily commuters. I'm sure that's manageable for some commuters, but poorer folks are disproportionately impacted and it significantly raised bus fair as well: About $260/month for most routes that are only 10-15 miles outside of NYC. I think better mass transit options are a better option to reduce congestion, and therefore the need for congestion pricing.

<comment><USER15> Congestion taxes/fees incentivize taking public transit options. I don't think anyone arguing for congestion tax is along arguing against mass transit, the two go hand in hand.

<comment><USER14> I haven't seen either a decrease in congestion or an increase in mass transit infrastructure spending in NYC as a result of congestion pricing. And congestion pricing applies to busses as well, increasing mass transit cost. So commuting to NYC by car costs about $300 a month, but busses are still about $240 a month. Really not enough to strongly incentives mass transit.

Maybe what it boils down to for me is that congestion pricing, in theory, may be a valid option. But in its implementation it accomplishes very little except increasing bloated budgets for organizations that focus too little on their actual mission.

<comment><USER13> Exactly, make the car cost $3,000 and you'll start seeing some changes.

<comment><USER14> That's probably true, but then there needs to be a rapid coinciding ramp up of public transport like doubling or tripling the fleet of busses. Which could work! And it would have the added benefit of ever so incrementally reducing emissions from vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used to follow the primary public company in this space - MFIN - <USER2> closely. This article seems off base and to disclose I have zero investments in the area. The issue here is that when taxi fleets were a regulatory rationed monopoly then the medallions were worth a lot. When tech disrupted hail cabs that collapsed. There really isn't a private sector "villain" to pin blame on for this. And yes for many years the big owners of medallion fleets had excess influence over the regulators due to classic influence wielding. That blew up when residents of places like NY were vocal that they like Uber- Lyft versus the old system.

<comment><USER17> This article, as well as many others about the industry, have pointed out that the collapse was not due to so-called "ride sharing" companies. I think one analysis said that was less than 50% of what caused the crash. This article, and others, state that the crash would have happened _regardless_. One of the pieces of evidence is the massive runup of medallion values. It was a classic bubble that was not supported by fundamentals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems like some intermingled flavors of market manipulation and cartel-like monopoly mixed with a pump-&-dump scam.</comment>


Parallel Programming for C and C++ Done Right - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/u/multicoreworld/p/james-reinders-intel-united-states <comment><USER2> Foreword: I'm biased, as I worked on CUDA for several years.

The conclusions offered by this deck are mostly FUD.

First of all, Haswell, the architecture where those transactional memory primitives are available, isn't out for another year. Saying Knights Corner was available on November 2011 is also deceptive; Intel demo'd it at SC11, but you can't buy one yet.

Second, he helpfully glosses over that Cilk++'s elemental functions are identical to how CUDA and ISPC work; write a specially decorated single- threaded function, use a specially decorated function call, and end up with parallel work. I think it's exceedingly likely that the industry will standardize on this as the data-parallel methodology of choice within the next ten years. That timeframe will depend on how quickly GPUs and CPUs converge in terms of functionality (with vastly different performance characteristics). Task-parallel stuff will be done with something else.

The really difficult question will be how to get performance portability. C++ (or Fortran) code that runs well on Haswell will probably run like crap on KNC and vice-versa due to differences in the number of threads you need in flight, cache sizes, vast latency differences, etc. (Look at OpenCL running on two GPUs or especially CPU vs GPU as an example today.) Solving that is going to be the real challenge.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to get in to a part of the industry where people care about stuff like this (purely for selfish reasons... web development is fun too but the barrier to entry is a lot lower).

Can anyone comment on the number and quality of "hard core" C++ jobs and what you think the trajectory will be like? Right now I use C++ almost exclusively at work but the code/concepts involved aren't too difficult.

<comment><USER4> C++ is increasingly used for high-performance and massively parallel systems. While I used to work on systems primarily written in Java (large-scale analytics and databases) everything new is being done in C++, especially any kind of high-end compute environments. C++ has a few very real advantages on modern architectures and when tackling modern problems. With C++11, it is also a pretty decent programming language in terms of expressiveness.

C++ has two big advantages over alternatives like Java: very low and deterministic processing latency (important for real-time) and very efficient memory model (important for throughput). These are really both about memory, and C++ gives you detailed control in a way few other languages do. As to why this is important, memory performance has been scaling more slowly than many other aspects of computing architecture such that it is _the_ bottleneck for a growing number of applications. C++ allows you to be very efficient with the memory architecture without much effort. If your application is fundamentally bound by memory performance, competent C++ can get you 2-10x returns on performance in real systems relative to languages like Java. (For some other tight-loop, CPU-bound codes, not so much.)

I'm pretty bull-ish on C++11. It is not so much that I am a fan of the language but that I am a fan of what it can do in terms of performance for databases and large-scale systems. Most of the high-scale and high-performance development going forward seems to be targeted at C++ these days. That was not always the case but the requirements of modern applications are somewhat forcing that choice.

<comment><USER2> do you think we'll see a lot of HPC apps using C++11 for parallelism within a node, or will they stick to MPI for that? most of the apps I've seen are MPI only or OpenMP + MPI--I'm not convinced that C++11 will be very relevant to them because of the minor overhead of MPI within a node (and the productivity savings of having only one API for parallelism).

<comment><USER4> MPI is messaging interface rather than a parallelism API. Even in C++ most of the parallelism constructs are a strawman because many high-performance computing codes are written as single-threaded processes locked to individual cores and communicating over a messaging interface of some type. The parallelism is implemented at a higher level than either the messaging interface or the code. Many supercomputing platforms support MPI but not all of them do.

The practice of a single process locked to each core communicating over a messaging interface has trickled down to more generic massively distributed systems work because it has very good properties on modern hardware. You end up doing a fair amount of functional programming in this model because multiple tasks are managed via coroutines and other lightweight event models. This architecture is very easy to scale out because it treats every core -- on the same chip, same motherboard, or same network -- as a remote resource that has to be messaged.

MPI has one significant problem for massively parallel systems in that it has tended to be brittle when failures occur, and on sufficiently large systems failures are a routine problem. There are ways to work around it but it is not the most resilient basis for communication in extremely large systems. At the high-end of HPC MPI and similar interfaces are commonly used but for many of the next generation non-HPC systems operating on a similar scale they are using custom network processing engines built on top of IP that give more fine-grained control over network behaviors and semantics. This is not faster than MPI and often slower, and tends to be a bit more complex but it allows more robustness and resilience to be built in at a lower level. MPI was designed for a set of assumptions that work for many classic supercomputing applications but which don't match many current use cases.

<comment><USER5> The major thing that MPI did right, and that almost all other models have done wrong, is library support. Things like attribute caching on communicators are essential to me as a parallel library developer, but look superfluous in the simple examples and for most applications.

The other thing that is increasingly important in the multicore CPU space is memory locality. It's vastly more common to be limited by memory bandwidth and latency than by the execution unit. When we start analyzing approaches with a parallel complexity model based on memory movement instead of flops, the separate address space in the MPI model doesn't look so bad. The main thing that it doesn't support is cooperative cache sharing (e.g. weakly synchronized using buddy prefetch), which is becoming especially important as we get multiple threads per core.

As for fault tolerance, the MPI forum was not happy with any of the deeper proposals for MPI-3. They recognize that it's an important issue and many people think it will be a large enough change that the next standard will be MPI-4. From my perspective, the main thing I want is a partial checkpointing system by which I can perform partial restart and reattach communicators. Everything else can be handled by other libraries. My colleagues in the MPI-FT working group expect something like this to be supported in the next round, likely with preliminary implementations in the next couple years. For now, there is MPIX_Comm_group_failed(), MPIX_Comm_remote_group_failed(), and MPIX_Comm_reenable_anysource().

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cilk/Cilk+ is not the answer, despite years of Intel promoting it and open- sourcing it. Intel has touted many other || technologies in the past: OpenMP, TBB, and now Cilk+. These are all useful tools, but none of them is the way of boldly moving forward with || programming, IMHO. I believe the easier || programming will come from actors, CSPs, channels and other technologies that provide safe concurrency as the working basis.

<comment><USER7> _Cilk/Cilk+ is not the answer, despite years of Intel promoting it and open- sourcing it._

Intel removed the features that gave Cilk a reason to exist: inlets and aborts. They're useful for (partially) parallelizing hard-to-parallelize problems that don't fit well into the other frameworks like OpenMP etc. Why did they remove them? I'm guessing because they were difficult to do well, and the algorithms that need them don't present such nice linear scaling graphs for marketing slides.

However, without those features, Cilk just doesn't distinguish itself enough from OpenCL, OpenMP etc. Parallelizing easy to parallelize problems isn't the problem, it's the others we need help in dealing with!

The poster childs/demos for the original Cilk were parallelized chessprograms, some of which did quite well in real tournaments. It's a very well studied area that exhibits a lot of parallelism, but not in a form that's easy to extract (hence there are no competitive ones using OpenMP, GPUs etc). Cilk was able to do it, a major achievement. But you can't even construct those in Intel's crippled Cilk version any more. Well, not any that would be competitive, anyway, which is the point to begin with.

If your solution only solves the easy problems others have already solved, what exactly is your right of existence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone had any real-world experience using X!0? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(programming_language)>

It came out of IBM (Eclipse license) at about the same time as Watson, and I've gotten the impression that it (compiled down to C++) was the main language used for it.

One of the authors was a guest professor whenever I took my parallel programming course and wound up teaching about half the classes, so its abilities and use may have been exaggerated slightly, but it has a lot of constructs built in that I'd imagine to be terrible to implement otherwise - good globally synchronized clocks and memory management across everything on the current "place" (roughly one physical computer), although you could still had to manage memory you sent to different places manually.

But Wikipedia says Watson's built mostly on Hadoop, where the coolest features wouldn't really have much of an effect, so it may be just a crazy research language. I was just curious.

<comment><USER9> X10 is a research language: Interesting concepts, crappy implementation.

X10 is also dying as IBM is shutting down its research groups. Unless some other institution (some university chair?) will step up for maintenance, its development will halt soon.

<comment><USER10> _IBM is shutting down its research groups_

That is not a true statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lots of (R)s and TMs in this Intel TBB advertisement.

<comment><USER12> TBB is OSS, and we use parts of it (atomics) daily, pretty much as advertised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The first part of the title is descriptive, but there's not much of anything "Done Right" in there that I can see. Just the same old.</comment>


Call Your Legislators, Don't Email - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/us/politics/heres-why-you-should-call-not-email-your-legislators.html <comment><USER2> For people who doubt the effectiveness of calling: start small, and work your way up. Local politicians are far more easy to influence than people think. I've known a lot of people who've worked in the office's of state senators or state representatives, and it's not uncommon practice to just count the number of phone calls for and against when deciding an issue.

EDIT: I should note I don't know much about the article's point on calling vs. emailing. Even emailing a local politician is probably effective. Just take any amount of time to contact your local representatives, and you'll put your issues ahead of 90% of the constituency.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can see it already

"And just like that, legislator offices invest in automatic voice transcription technology, eliminating all human interaction."

</comment><comment><USER4> This is an exceptional article. I was a lobbyist in Washington for 10 years, and I teach grassroots activism classes. Calling has proven to be vastly more effective than emails. When people sign up for newsletters, or receive "action alerts" and think by emailing and pressing a button they're doing something, really, you're not. Call the offices. Show up in person, on a weekday, during work hours. Be polite, and all that, but know it's just too easy to send and ignore emails. A larger commitment to delivering your message will gain more attention.

</comment><comment><USER5> Are there any specific guidelines to what does and doesn't get moderated with regards to politically oriented submissions?

<comment><USER6> Primary moderation on HN is your up/down vote. Anything that is too partisan or is pure propaganda is clear down vote material.

This is not partisan, it applies to either party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it easier to start a change.org petition and then tweet about it. /sarcasm

When it is easy to communicate via a medium, it is also easy to ignore it. Synchronous means of communication have always had more credibility, but as this article infers, it is going away. Too many armchair politicians doing the bare minimum.

</comment><comment><USER8> Email sometimes works.

I emailed my Senator about SOPA and got a direct response. The response was that she was in support of it, which didn't make me thrilled but I got a response.

It was sufficiently well thought out and long that I just assume she was inundated and had a canned reply her aids just pasted to everyone and changed the names.

A call may have had more of an impact since fielding a call is, after all, more expensive than an email.

<comment><USER9> "had a canned reply her aids just pasted to everyone and changed the names."

A lot of the emails she received for either side of the issue were probably canned too.</comment></comment>


The Magic of Macros: Lighting-Fast Templating in ClojureScript - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getprismatic.com/blog/2013/1/22/the-magic-of-macros-lighting-fast-templating-in-clojurescript

<comment><USER2> Author here. Happy to answer any questions or concerns!

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't mind seeing more concrete examples, perhaps distilled from Prismatic's codebase. Macros are one of those topics where several real examples are super useful in demonstrating how it is more broadly useful than people initially intuit. It's one of those "Gee, that's cool and looks pretty useful, but off the top of my head I can't think many ways in which I'd use that in my own programming projects. I wish there were enough examples to deduce a generic pattern that naturally comes to me when working on my own code."</comment></comment>


Regulators Say Drone Operators Are Pilots - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/14/459661265/no-longer-just-a-toy-regulators-say-drone-operators-are-pilots <comment><USER2> It's not just about safety if you have to put your ID on your drone - it's about tracking. They should at least be honest about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yay, I'm going to put "FAA registered pilot" in my profiles :)</comment>


Man claims to own 84% stake in Facebook - judge grants TRO in his favor - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703283004575363330101240888.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLETopStories <comment><USER2> Zuckerberg has nothing to worry about, everyone knows the he got the code from ConnectU.

On a more serious note, this screams Doctrine of Laches (sleeping on your rights). It's going to be rather difficult to have missed the emergence of Facebook and with an 83% share why he had not been involved in any of the VC rounds, or any decisions in a company worth $15 billion.

<comment><AUTHOR> An excellent point on laches. Let me take this occasion to contrast this with the ConnectU case and, by the way, to offer up a _mea culpa_ for even having posted this thing on HN (well, I guess it does qualify as an item of interest to hackers but the merits of it are something else again, as I will explain here).

First, one can take a look at the real thing, that is, a truly scary case against Mr. Zuckerburg that might have a huge impact on Facebook and its shareholders - and that is the action by the ConnectU founders by which highly prestigious lawyers are mounting a first-class challenge to the settlement agreement that was entered into a few years back in an attempt to settle lawsuits going back to 2004. Here is a link to a recent piece on that dispute, together with a detailed comment by me describing it and its implications: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1362379>. I personally don't think that the ConnectU action is likely to prove to have merit but, and this is key, it poses such huge risks to Facebook as a company that the pressures to settle it will be very large.

The Ceglia action, in contrast, poses no serious risk to Facebook or to Mr. Zuckerburg. Here are some reasons why:

1\. The contract was breached, if at all, at least six or seven years ago. The complaint says so right on its face, and this undoubtedly means that all claims are barred at this point by the applicable statutes of limitations. There are cases where a statute of limitations is "tolled" (i.e., doesn't yet begin to run) but these need to be specifically alleged in order to apply and they are not. Thus, on their face, all these claims would appear to be time- barred.

2\. Laches also could apply insofar as the claims might be said to be so- called "equitable" claims as opposed to mere claims for damages. Here the complaint purports to ask for so-called "declaratory relief," which is an equitable claim. An equitable claims basically invokes the extraordinary power of the court to issue decrees and judgments beyond simply ordering that a money award be paid. In this case, the claimant would in essence be asking the court to force Facebook to issue mountains of additional stock to him to satisfy his claim that he is entitled to 84% of the ownership of the company. The doctrine of laches can serve to bar the grant of any such equitable relief. Laches is a technical doctrine that in effect enables a court to use its discretion to deny relief to a party who has acted inequitably. With laches, this is tied to delay in asserting one's rights but, in contrast to a statute of limitations, it is not tied to the lapse of any specific time period. With laches, a court will deny equitable relief to any party who knows the facts relating to his injury and to his claims (and who is not prevented or hindered from filing suit), and yet waits an unreasonable time before filing suit such that other parties are prejudiced by delay, Here, of course, one has all sorts of events to point to by which Facebook and its shareholders have issued and transferred stock in the company while this claimant has slept on his alleged right to assert his ownership claim. This would obviously make it grossly unjust for a court to do any action to prejudice the ownership rights of such persons in order to uphold claims that could have been asserted long ago. In the ConnectU case, despicable as the plaintiffs' conduct might have been in some respects, no one can ever accuse them of sleeping on their rights - all concerned have been acutely aware that, should they prevail with their claims, the Facebook IP might be at risk and so there is no equitable bar to their claims (should such claims ever prove to be valid). In contrast, Mr. Ceglia does not even attempt to explain his delay or why he failed to act with diligence.

3\. The real tip-off here, though, lies in the nature of the TRO application brought in the state court. A TRO is an extraordinary remedy enforceable by contempt, meaning that a party can actually be jailed for violating it. _It is a very serious remedy that a court does not enter lightly._ Moreover, at absolute minimum, when a TRO is sought, the party applying for it is required under court rules to tell the adverse party that an application for such relief will be made and give such adverse party at least 24 hours notice to enable such party to appear to contest it. Here, _no notice whatever_ was given to Facebook or to Mr. Zuckerburg of the application. Anyone who is a lawyer will immediately recognize just how outrageous this is - this virtually never happens and, when it does, court rules require a very detailed explanation of why the giving of notice should not be required (e.g., that a party might run off with assets). Here, nothing whatever was set forth to justify the failure to give notice, meaning that this application was wildly out of bounds.

4\. A TRO also is a specific _temporary_ remedy aimed at preventing irreparable harm from happening to a party pending a hearing on such party's application for a preliminary injunction. A preliminary injunction hearing, usually held within a few weeks after a case is filed, is a form of interim relief designed to prevent a party from taking certain actions until the merits of the case can be decided at trial. Since trial usually takes a year or more to happen, the tandem remedies of TRO/preliminary injunction are designed in theory to allow a court to enter interim injunctive orders covering the entire pretrial period of a case. Since the full merits of a case can't be determined at these early stages, the standards for granting such interim injunctive relief turn on whether a party can make a detailed showing that it is likely to win the case on the merits and that it will be irreparable harmed in the meantime should it have to wait until trial to obtain the relevant injunctive relief. Thus, any TRO/preliminary injunction application will consist of detailed affidavits setting forth the facts showing why the party will likely prevail on the merits and also the facts showing why it will be irreparably harmed if the requested relief is not granted. In this case, the showing made by the applicant had none of this. In essence, the applicant merely said that he had been allegedly wronged and that the other parties should be enjoined from transferring any stock or assets of Facebook until he could prove his claims at trial.

5\. This, however, is where the bonehead stuff comes in. A TRO is designed solely to cover the limited time period between the filing of the complaint initiating the case and the time of the hearing on the preliminary injunction - this is typically a 15-day period or so. Thus, TROs are almost universally denied because, to get a TRO, a party must show that it will be _irreparably_ harmed unless it gets the court to block all further wrongful acts by the other parties over the next 15 days. This, of course, is an absurdity here: it means that this claimant is saying that, having waited seven years, he will be harmed in a way that is extraordinary unless the court intervenes to block Facebook stock sales, etc. for a two-week period pending a hearing on the preliminary injunction. Of course, if such irreparable harm would happen in the next two weeks, why the hell did he wait seven years to act in the first place. The other bonehead items: (a) asking for a _permanent_ injunction at the time of the hearing on the _preliminary_ injunction application (an absurdity, since a permanent injunction can only be issued after a full trial on the merits); (b) asking that the court order a full accounting in connection with the preliminary injunction hearing (a comparable absurdity, since this too is a remedy that is only possible after a full trial).

6\. Given all the above, it makes no sense that a judge would have granted this TRO without a proper showing of any kind, where the remedies sought at the preliminary injunction hearing were wholly unauthorized by law, and where obvious statutes of limitations and laches problems loomed over the claims (strongly suggesting that there was no likelihood that this claimant could ever prevail on the merits of the claims at trial). Thus, the only logical conclusion is that the judge was in some small town and was not focused in any way on the relevant legal standards (this sort of thing is _way below_ minimum standards and is the kind of thing that even a first-year law student would easily be able to evaluate). It appears that this is what happened here.

7\. Once Facebook got notice of the claim, it immediately removed the lawsuit to federal court and brought a motion to dissolve the TRO. Chances of getting this TRO dissolved: 100%. The case is flaky and the entry of the TRO was flaky. There is _zero_ chance that it will be sustained or (in my view) that this case will cause Facebook or Mr. Zuckerburg any significant legal trouble either now or later. This is a lightweight case that is ultimately going nowhere.

<comment><USER2> Excellent response, I was wondering that a little myself as to why a TRO was issued for something from 5 or more years ago. The jurisdiction issue also popped immediately to mind as Zuckerberg was presumably at Harvard at the time and Facebook is a Delaware company which to me would immediately put it under the interstate commerce clause and thus Federal jurisdiction.

I have to admit hearing the things I've heard about Zuck this guy seems like the perfect business partner for him.

On another tangent, isn't pretty much everything ICC now after the SCOTUS declared growing pot for yourself in your closet interstate commerce?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I uploaded the complaint (only) on Scribd, which includes the contract as an exhibit. It's hard to read (as a poor quality photocopy) but seems _superficially_ credible - that is, there are signatures supposed to be Zuckerberg's on the contract and a receipt for cashed check, which could be checked for authenticity.

As to whether the contract is enforceable or even valid, I have no opinion. I'm having considerable difficulty just reading it and don't know enough about contract law to evaluate it. Even if it is, I imagine Facebook would respond that the suit is equitably estopped by laches (unreasonable delay in enforcement of a claim).

Edit: they do - 2nd link, 2nd last paragraph.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/34239119/Ceglia-v-Zuckerberg- compl...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/34239119/Ceglia-v-Zuckerberg-complaint) [http://www.scribd.com/doc/34240120/Ceglia-v-Facebook- Motion-...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/34240120/Ceglia-v-Facebook-Motion-for- Dissolution)

<comment><USER4> Perhaps grellas might shed some light on the laches issue, but aside from that I think this is legit. First, I notice the response from Facebook was that this is "frivolous" not _bogus_ , which implies to me that Mark did sign that document. Second, from scrutinizing the hardly legible document it appears the claims are accurate, including the 1% ownership transfer to "Purchaser" for every day of delay in project completion after January 1, 2004. Last, the contract timeline does make sense to me. It sounds like a very young college kid in 2003 with his mind on many things, including a hobby project to connect students met a more experienced business man who wanted some street software developed. The business man recognized the value in the hobby project already begun by Mark which he loosely referenced as "The Face Book". The business man then covered himself to be well-positioned legally if this hobby took off. He paid Mark 1K for it (and another 1K for the street software), explaining Mark would still own 50% of "The Face Book" in case it did become more valuable... All hypothetical, but not hard to imagine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The date of the contract appears to conflict with previous accounts of the creation of Facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg built a predecessor to Facebook called Facemash in October and November 2003, but Mr. Zuckerberg didn't register the domain thefacebook.com until January 2004.

In 2009, New York's Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo accused Mr. Ceglia of defrauding customers of his wood-pellet fuel company, according to a news release from the Attorney General's office. The state claimed that he took more than $200,000 from consumers and then failed to deliver any products or refunds. That case is still active._

Sounds like this is a bogus case. I can't imagine the pit in Zuckerburg's stomach right now it were true though...

<comment><USER6> If this was true, someone would agree to a settlement or someone would disappear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me or did Zuckerburg build Facebook on a foundation of ill-advised contracts or what?

<comment><USER8> No doubt reflective of nearly any 19 year old web developer's confused web of NDAs / Non-Competes / etc when doing contract work . . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We know stranger things have happened on a smaller scale: <http://sivers.org/mistake>

But given the case currently pending against Mr. Ceglia himself, I'm pretty skeptical about the whole thing.

<comment><USER10> Careful.

Ceglia can be a crook _and_ have a valid contract.

<comment><USER11> Couldn't the same be said about Zuckerberg?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It sounds like "The Social Network" might be getting a sequel. :)

<comment><USER13> The fact that a related movie is coming out no doubt plays a role in the timing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "but getting a 50% stake in the product. The contract stipulated that Mr. Ceglia would get an additional 1% interest in the business for every day after Jan. 1, 2004, until it was completed."

Wouldn't you structure it so he would lose 1% for every day late after Jan 1,2004?

<comment><USER15> The article isn't written too clearly on this matter.

Ceglia bought a 50% share for $1000 and capital to pay for domain and hosting expenses with the stipulation that he would get an additional percent each day after January 1st 2004 that it was late (and presumably it was 34 days late).

Zuckerberg was the developer, Ceglia was the wallet.

<comment><USER14> no kidding on the clearness of the article, I thought Zuckerberg was the wallet and thought what a demented contract.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> See, this is just the kind of twist you wouldn't be able to sell in fiction. It's just as implausible as WWII!

</comment><comment><USER17> Even if it was a valid contract I can't see how you would be able to let everyone think they own certain amounts of a company for years without any input then make a claim later. Doesn't make logical sense but then the legal system is counter-intuitive at times.

</comment><comment><USER18> One thing I'm asking myself is 'why the hell did he wait so long???'

for a minute there I was envisioning the fall of facebook and what it would mean for everyone - you mean we get to reinvent social networking???!!, without zuckerberg???!!!

</comment><comment><USER19> This is why you want to deal with a ycombinator from the getgo. Poking around and signing contracts to get some momentum going could end up biting you in the leg down the road.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if this will make an appearance in the new Facebook movie. _puke_

<comment><USER21> No; the script is already set in stone (it's floating around the Internets if you want to read it - it's actually not as terrible as it could be), and October is not very far away; I'd guess filming is already done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whenever I see Mark Zuckerberg in public in front of all his peers, he is always so frightened and insecure. Perhaps in the back of his mind, he's always thinking about the fact that he just has to last a bit longer so he can get away with not one, but two cases of theft (ConnectU and nowthis). Or perhaps today is the day where the world sees him for who he really is: a small time crook who got real lucky, and gets to sit in the private dining room in the back of the italian restaurant with the mafia bosses.

<comment><USER23> Or maybe he's just shy and you're just jealous? Nah, it's probably the mafia boss thing.

<comment><USER24> Yes, I think I read a story somewhere that during one of the VC rounds he was so nervous about the terms that he ended up curled up on the floor of the bathroom??

Anyway, I think he seems like an all around decent guy, and I admire anyone who has the guts to turn down a billion from Yahoo (especially at his age, and on his first business!) That shows vision and confidence, so I think he's the perfect CEO for Fb (which will likely one day have a market cap greater than Yahoo).</comment></comment></comment>