COVFEFE Act - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Over_Various_Feeds_Electronically_for_Engagement_Act <comment><USER2> You know he must've been giggling as he came up with this.

In addition to the uncharacteristic legislative humor, it's also a good idea.

<comment><USER3> Acronyms for bills are like the one place where the legislature does inject some humor. Despite my distaste for our government, I gotta hand it to them, they're pretty darn good at coming up with funny acronyms.

<comment><USER4> What are some good examples of other places this humor can be found?

<comment><USER5> PATRIOT act, because taking away hard fought freedoms is patriotic, just like our forefathers wanted.

<comment><USER6> You mean USA PATRIOT Act.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I forgot about the Uniting and Strengthening of America's freedoms part. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just to put my mind at rest..."Despite the constant negative press covfefe."...we all agree Trump meant 'coverage' right?

<comment><USER8> I am in agreement that it was intending to be "coverage", but that the follow- up response is what makes it worth discussing. If he had admitted to making a typo, then it would have been a complete non-issue. It was Trump's failed attempts at putting a deeper meaning behind a typo, in order to avoid admitting to the slightest mistake, that made it noteworthy.

<comment><USER9> Or you know, he was making fun of his typo, which would be the charitable interpretation. But we can't possibly be charitable to a monster like Trump!

<comment><USER10> >Off camera, at a press briefing later the same day, Sean Spicer responded to questions about the tweet that "the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant." No further explanation was given during the briefing. Some reporters, observing that Spicer did not appear to be joking, were concerned by the implications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a real issue. It is very depressing to find out that only thing I have ever done is two pieces of paper in 1970s. National Archives (of Finland) do not recognize any other form of publications than those on paper. In this case very shitty paper "printed" about 10 times with a Xerox-machine.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fuuny story behind covfefe:

I tried purchasing minutes after the tweet to find out someone had already purchased it. I reached out to the guy (midnight) to buy it but he didn't want to sell it. I offered my ideas on what he could to capitalize on the opportunity and so I ended up building up a store front with shirts/, coffee mugs, sweaters and other merch. I basically didn't sleep that night. I built the site, responded to purchase emails, etc.

It took some time to get the storefront ready because of issues with the forwarding (GoDaddy) but when we got it set up, we started seeing traffic. Not before long, sales. This thing started blowing up and as memes would start trending, I would immediately create new merchandise based on the memes and within minutes that same merchandise I had just created would sell. It was surreal.

We were up to ~$2k in profits with who knows how much revenue. Many emails started arriving and the owner would just forward them to me as (I think) he was not as savvy with business/negotiation/etc or just plain intimidated. It got so crazy that at one point Bloomberg and Inc.com reached out via phone to him and he told them about what we had done.

I kept pushing for him to put up the domain for sale on flippa.com and even got the director of the domains department to contact him directly. I also reached out to local newspaper outlets who were more than ready to write the story but since we weren't "partners", it wasn't "as" interesting. He promised to give me a stake in everything but I guess things and people got to his head.

As time went on, he starting drifting from the idea of selling because he thought he had hit something enormous. Which he did, just not the way he thought. He pitched me the idea to build an ecommerce store where he would basically sell anything (Amazon). I told him the only exit here is selling but if he wanted to go that route, he could (try) to build a brand (???). I insisted that the risk of continuing with anything other than selling the domain at peak hype was too great. That is, anything past hype days (1-4 days after the tweet) would drive the "value" to zero.

The days past and the opportunity quickly came to a close. He was offered (past hype time) $15k which he said he wouldn't take as anything below $X00k was dumb. Regardless, I kept pushing for him to sell the damn thing just so I could tell the story at the very least. He then told me he had partnered up with his brother (a lawyer), another marketing guy and he wanted me to take part in the team. He had me speak to his lawyer about equity for a whole 30 minutes which, again, I thought was ridiculous as I told him that this would soon die, if it hadn't already. We spoke over Facetime but soon enough, he kicked me off the storefront admin, stopped answering and now he still has the same domain forwarding to his merch store.

I think if he had acted quicker, he could have sold for at least $20k-$50k at the peak of the hype. Even if he sold at the solid $15k offer, he could have earned himself a great story.

covfefe.com

<comment><USER13> I think you may be underestimating the value of the domain name.

<comment><USER12> I understand there might be a crazy upside somewhere in the future (for example, the COVFEFE ACT). This can be done only in hindsight. The risk, imo, was way too high to do anything but cash out at the moment.

<comment><USER13> My point is that with the proper sort of marketing, you should be able to sell a LOT of merchandise to Trump haters out there.

Imagine being in year 3 of Trump's presidency and still making money off this signature blunder. We aren't even through year 1!

Imagine 20 years from now, when people are able to pin-point "COVFEFE" as a signature moment in Trump's campaign (just like Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky).

Imagine the search traffic for the term over the years. Imagine all of the ad revenue!

Imagine how much you would be kicking yourself for selling it for so cheaply back then...

<comment><USER12> The flip side of that coin is that no one remembers that moment. Only time can tell. I think it's a matter of placing your bets where you think it is most probable that you will win the most. I personally don't believe that the statements yoh made will be true. The owner thinks otherwise.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Deploy a dynamic set of docker containers? - <AUTHOR> There is a dynamically generated list of containers that I'm trying to deploy. Is there a way to dynamically deploy a set of docker containers based on a list of them that you have? I think there is a way to do this for kubernetes using helm, where you can deploy a subset of charts conditionally, but is there a way to conditionally deploy docker containers or a subset of them? I think the only way to do that would be to use something like ansible + some messy / complicated jinja style templating in a compose file? Is there a much easier way that I'm missing? <comment><USER4> Helm has conditionals, you can just cascade a different value files.

I did a similar thing last week, if you want I could try to post some example.

<comment><AUTHOR> The application I'm trying to develop is just a normal compose based setup. I'm trying to achieve the flexibility that helm gives us for Kube with docker compose and need pointers in that direction.

My current approach was - given a set of containers - enable / disable flags for them if they exist / don't exist and then create a compose file and then have conditionals in it and have ansible deploy the containers ->

      # vars/containers.yml
      list_of_containers:
        - <USER2>
        - <USER3>

      # docker-compose.yml
      {% if container1_enabled %}
      container1:
        image: container1
        port: port1:port2
        ....
      {% endif %}</comment></comment>


Google Performs First Scalable Quantum Simulation of Molecular Energies - <AUTHOR> http://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.6.031007 <comment><AUTHOR> See also: [http://www.condmatjournalclub.org/?p=2853](http://www.condmatjournalclub.org/?p=2853), and [https://research.googleblog.com/2016/07/towards-exact- quantu...](https://research.googleblog.com/2016/07/towards-exact-quantum- description-of.html)</comment>


Dolphin Scheduler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/apache/incubator-dolphinscheduler <comment><USER2> I try DolphinScheduler online demo: [http://220.127.116.11:8888/](http://18.104.22.168:8888/)

easy to use.

<comment><USER2> mail to firstname.lastname@example.com, and tell him you want to try online demo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> DolphinScheduler ranks among top 10 most valuable projects in OSChina GVP(Gitee Most Valuable Project)

</comment><comment><USER4> How does this compare to something like Airflow or Luigi?

<comment><USER5> may be you can refer their proposal. [https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/Dolphi...](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/DolphinSchedulerProposal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This may be of interest:

[https://github.com/mikub/titanoboa](https://github.com/mikub/titanoboa)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for linking! There seem to be similarities, but looking (very) briefly at the DolphinScheduler these are the potential differences:

\- number of contributors :D

\- titanoboa can process even a potentially cyclic graph

\- in titanoboa you can write step functions directly in high level programming languages such as clojure and java (so not just bash or python) and deploy them directly during runtime

\- the clustering setup in titanoboa is master-less

\- titanoboa does not have such direct integration with Spark as it employs some map-reduce patterns internally

But all-in-all I have to say that DolphinScheduler seems quite nice! Also would have to compcomplement it on the nice documentation (again, just briefly skimming through it).

(edit: formatting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also interesting that its one of the first open source applications from China I've seen.

<comment><USER9> I've actually stopped paying attention to [https://github.com/vitalets/github- trending-repos](https://github.com/vitalets/github-trending-repos) because there are so many Chinese repositories each week.

It's just rare to get them on HN, because it's a nightmare to go through their docs and they're usually not even attempting to write their code in English. Basically unusable for all intents and purposes, even if it were quality software.

<comment><USER10> > Basically unusable for all intents and purposes, even if it were quality > software.

Only if you don't have anyone who can't read Chinese on your team. Also most repositories are not documented at well or at all anyway so language hardly matters.

<comment><USER9> yes, most repositories arent documented well either, thats definitely true and was part of my point, really.

how are you going to figure out why you're encountering a bug if not even the code itself is written in english?

its fine for learning repositories or simple toy projects, but if you actually want your code to be used... please use the world language. (and no, english isnt my native language either)

<comment><USER11> I wonder if we're hitting a point where a better decompiler would be useful. Transliterate the code into your first language, English or not.

<comment><USER12> A decompiler can't pull contextually appropriate variable and function/method names out of nowhere (not to mention comments), which is the big roadblock when reading foreign-language code.

That is, you're just as likely to be able to follow foreign-language code as you are decompiled code. Either way, you've basically thrown out all the documentation and swapped out all the names for gibberish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks great, I've always wanted something like this. I've always had autosys or controlm at work and they both suck.

I'd just prefer if it had been around longer. Any other open source alternatives out there? I only know of Airflow, k8s Cronjobs.

<comment><USER13> I've had alot of success using Apache NiFi as a distributed scheduler / general purpose workflow tool.

<comment><USER14> I'd love to see what kind of complexity you are managing there, and how.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks almost exactly like Airflow - I wonder what Apache's plan is for both of these to coexist.</comment>


Chrome Web Store to Launch in October, Google Takes A Mere 5% Cut Of Revenue - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/17/chrome-web-store-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> I feel about this like I felt about the Java app store: there is an obvious win for customers in the iP* App Store, _because it is the only way to get apps on your device_ , but I doubt Sun/Google will be able to attract a large audience to their own app stores. What is the value proposition for users? A newer, marginally more convenient way to spend your money, with a large learning curve before you can actually consummate transactions?

Without the large built-in distribution there is nothing to recommend me using this instead of just putting my app on the public Internet.

<comment><USER3> About the only advantage I can see is the ease of accepting payment. For a lot of devs I guess that is the number one thing going for the Apple AppStore.

<comment><USER4> No, the number on reason devs like the iphone app store is because it lets people use their software. If it's not on the app store then anyone who hasn't jailbroken their phone (the majority of iphone users), don't see your software at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More info @official Chromium blog - <https://chrome.google.com/webstore> \+ video of the unveiling

</comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know if you install an app on Chrome on one device, will you have to pay for it on another device?

</comment><comment><USER7> would this be an alternative to using recurly? or Pay pal for recurring payments?</comment>


Firefox tweaks referer headers in bid to limit website privacy grabs - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/mozilla-tweaks-referer-headers-in-bid-to-limit-website-privacy-grabs/

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the word "referrer" should have two r's in the middle. But the official HTTP spec misspelled it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer#Origin_of_the_ter...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer#Origin_of_the_term_referer)</comment>


NeurIPS Accepted Papers 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2019/AcceptedPapersInitial <comment><USER2> There are so many accepted papers, but no categorization whatsoever... It would be great if the papers are grouped by specific categories (like what Ke- Sen Huang does for SIGGRAPH, for example: [http://kesen.realtimerendering.com/sig2019.html](http://kesen.realtimerendering.com/sig2019.html))

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow! That page just keeps going and going - and each one represents some (potentially) important discovery...

</comment><comment><USER4> this is great, is there similar webpage where one could search all AI papers from the past?</comment>


Things startups do and don't need - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.tumblr.com/post/311546950/things-startups-do-and-dont-need

<comment><USER2> I respectfully would swap "Need: Beer on Fridays" with "Don't Need: Aeron chairs." If my back is killing me because of crappy chairs, no amount of beer is going to stop me from finding a new job.

<comment><USER3> agreed. if company provides an office, providing great chairs goes a long way to increasing health and morale, and it's a company asset that can be reused by various employees, etc. beer is relatively cheap, a consumable, not an asset, and adults expect to buy beer on their own dime and time, if at all. chairs are a business tool, beer is not. do you need Aerons at launch? no. but that's a more substantive benefit for your employees that beer.

<comment><USER4> If I like the people I am working around then most of that stuff is nice but not necessary, except maybe for the back and the chair thing. I would add a quick commute in the first list and a work at home option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From my reply on my blog (<http://bit.ly/4RCZYi>):

Things startups do need that are missing from the original list:

* Revenue Because you're a business first and everything else second. And once you have that, profit.

* Technical talent If ideas are worth less than execution, then you need the best people you can get to execute.

* Passion Nothing is better than working on something you believe in. It just doesn't feel like work.

</comment><comment><USER6> You need Microsoft products if your company sells to medium/large businesses.

You need business cards if you do direct sales or consulting.

You need air conditioning, perhaps more than heat, pretty much everywhere in the US.

<comment><USER7> Why do you think that Microsoft products are necessary to sell to large businesses? There might not be any large businesses that don't have any Microsoft products, but I've seen several successful sales to very large business by small companies without Microsoft products.

<comment><USER8> I thought so, too; I work at a web design / marketing company, where I assumed we could use whatever we wanted as long as the site worked in IE and FF. But our clients send site copy revisions in Word, and screenshots of bugs in Powerpoint, and they want hour estimates in Excel.

I tried using OpenOffice for about a week, but having 99% of MS Office left me 1% short.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >"Democratically controlled music system"

Please, no. How about headphones?

<comment><USER10> One of my old startups in 2003, we made one of music system from spare parts and one guy wrote an web base controlling daemon for it. Then we contributed our collection of CDs. We can use web interface to control the system and up/down or veto the music. And we also have an anthem around 4pm. (The whole Coffin for Head of State by Fela Kuti). It becomes like a ritual.

It creates a bond among people because we know what music that each of us likes. We did not play pop charts or technos, but more like Jazz, Punk, Art Rock and any fun but not mainstream popular songs.

We have almost 128 GBs of mp3 after 3 years. That was one heck of good memory than listening through headphone.

<comment><USER11> You need a license for workplace music in the UK, also copying a CD for any reason is illegal over here, we don't have a [fair use] backup facility in our legislation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> i roughly agreed except certain items like the beer and music sound juvenile and clearly are not needed for a startup. i would add something like oh say, call me crazy, but I dunno a _business_ model, and understanding how long your runway is. and while you don't need a formal vacation policy, i'd say that you need some understanding of who contributes what, roughly how much, and when. That's way more important than "sunny offices", windows that open, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hope nobody takes this blog post at face value.

You may, depending upon jurisdiction, be legally obligated to provide the following:

* Vacation policy

* Phone system

You may need to have the following documented, to comply with labor laws:

* Set time you need to arrive in morning

I, for one, have never worked anywhere that had:

* Windows that open

* Democratically controlled music system

* EVDO cards

* Gmail and Google docs

<comment><AUTHOR> What legal jurisdiction _requires_ phone service for all employees? And which labor laws require that there be a set time of arrival in the morning? (I can understand laws requiring a documented number of hours worked per week, of course.)

<comment><USER12> Mountain View requires phone systems to pass fire inspection in office buildings. Employees generally need a system by which to contact emergency services.

Labor laws in some jurisdictions cover employee expectations by the employer. If the employer is shown to have arbitrary expectations of their employees (like "soft hours" or flexible work schedules), those expectations need to be somewhere in writing or you can get in big trouble. I've heard of engineering firms being totally screwed (into bankruptcy) by overzealous labor law enforcement when it was discovered that they, for example, had policies like "work whenever and however you want, as long as you get your job done."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You certainly don't need google docs, and you certainly do need IE, if only for testing.

</comment><comment><USER14> They need heating, but not air conditioning? We can guess the type of climate this person lives in...

</comment><comment><USER15> I think all of the items on the first list can safely be moved to the second.

</comment><comment><USER16> You do need "Mac laptops" but you don't need "Microsoft products"? I call fanboy bullshit. Strike "Mac" from the first list and I might be persuaded.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wait, I missed this. Health care plans, but no dental?</comment>


Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/utah2000.html <comment><USER2> Recent discussions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19310845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19310845), [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18207317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18207317)

2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818231)

2009: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=686840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=686840)

2008: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=245227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=245227)

</comment><comment><USER3> "What happened" was two-fold:

1\. Starting especially a few years before 2000 but continuing today, the software industry is quite profitable, pays well, and has lots of openings, while the a academic job market in systems research continues to pay poorly and has much more limited openings. So if you want to do systems software research while also having an enjoyable quality of life, you might as well go to a company and get paid well instead of spending your days writing a thesis and grant proposals.

2\. Computer science is a field where the cost of basic research equipment is low (a computer), and more interesting research environments generally are beyond the scale of academia (tens of thousands of hardware nodes, hundreds or thousands or more QPS of production load, etc.). That makes it quite different from e.g. biology or high-energy physics on one end where you usually need to be in academia to get access to the equipment or e.g. mathematics (including theoretical CS) and literature on the other where it doesn't matter where you are; in systems research you only get access to the equipment from being in industry.

That doesn't mean that systems software research, done in industry, is (or was or will be) irrelevant; it means that the narrower definition of "research" as "that which is done in academia" is inaccurate (including industry with the trappings of academia, i.e., people at Google or Bell Labs writing papers in academic journals and hiring people with Ph.D.s). Systems software research happens in industry and is quite relevant to itself.

<comment><USER4> Commercial research is decently different from academic research, which is what I think Rob may be referring to.

Commercial research needs to keep in mind the existing legacy systems used by the sponsor. Innovations are more evolutionary instead of revolutionary as the field matures. They may be more tailored to observable pain points of the research sponsor. They may not be widely shared if they yield results providing a competitive advantage. While it may not demand immediate returns, commercial research does have an axe to grind. All of this hampers advancement in the field of computer science in general.

I also don't know if there's any kind of commercial research on the scale of XEROX PARC or Bell Labs. I can't think of any off the top of my head. Microsoft and Google do some pretty neat research, but I don't think they've shipped anything quite on a similar scale.

There's really no organization hiring the best talent to work on the kind of black swan events commercial research may miss. For example, I think it'd be cool to have a microcode-based OS; I've heard it would help with keeping operating systems secure. But who would fund it, and who would work on it? Right now it doesn't look like anybody would, and that might be what Rob is concerned about.

<comment><USER3> Some specific innovations off the top of my head that are pretty firmly outside traditional academic research, and seem more revolutionary than evolutionary:

\- Linux's read-copy-update synchronization mechanism. It has been described in papers, but you're better off following mailing list posts or LWN writeups.

\- Rust's borrow checker and lifetime system. It's built on existing well- known ideas (e.g. affine types) and there's since been some academic work on formalizing it, but the specific system Rust uses has no direct precedent, is pretty novel, and was developed outside academia. (Note that Rust came out of Mozilla Research, which is far, far smaller than Bell Labs but also an organization that intentionally works on revolutionary and not evolutionary improvements.)

\- libdill and Trio's structured concurrency, a solid theoretical framework for handling async/await-shaped problems without turning your execution into concurrent spaghetti. The techniques are not unprecedented, but [https://vorpus.org/blog/notes-on-structured-concurrency- or-g...](https://vorpus.org/blog/notes-on-structured-concurrency-or-go- statement-considered-harmful/) is a better framing of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Virtualization. Capabilities. Kernel-bypass networking. Static code analysis. Verified-pointer microarchitectures. Coverage-guided fuzzing.

Systems software research has come a long way since 2000.

<comment><USER6> Virtualization: See VMS (1977) Kernel-bypass networking: See microkernels (1967) Need I go on?

<comment><USER3> I think it is a wild misunderstanding of how academic research works to say that the first demonstration of a concept is equal to all further work on a concept. It is like saying that the Human Genome Project isn't recent work because the structure of DNA was discovered in 1953.

<comment><USER7> This is very common thinking - people seem to equate the first discussion of a concept with "discovery" with "the important stuff".

If that line of thought were consistent, it would credit Babbage, or maybe Turing, as the last computer scientist to do something useful.

<comment><USER8> And machine learning is still stuck in the sixties...

<comment><USER9> It's stuck in the 1760s with the publication of Bayes Theorem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The last 19 years of systems software research have not refuted Rob's thesis. Industry has made incremental progress, academia has written papers but not built much that people want to use. Despite massive increases in graphics processing power, desktop UIs are still about the same as in 2000, just with more shininess.

And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security.

<comment><USER11> > And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years > but didn't: security.

This is an astonishing claim: what makes you think it hasn't gotten better? It's gotten a LOT better since 2000.

<comment><USER12> I'd love to go back to Windows 2000 (and Google circa 2000). The software industry (at least in the desktop side) peaked two decades ago, then spent most of the last decade or so badly reinventing everything on the web.

<comment><USER13> Gmail didn't come out until 2004. You'd be stuck with Hotmail in 2000. Google Maps didn't come out until 2005.

Google Docs (and the subsequent migration of MS Office to web accessible forms) didn't come until even later.

<comment><USER12> Gmail is lame compared to Outlook 2000. (It also broke self-hosted email for everyone.) Likewise Google Docs can't hold a candle to Office 2000 (or even Word Perfect 6.1). It has extremely bare-bones control over text formatting and page layout. _E.g._ no kerning, limited styling, no footnote styles, limited control of header/footer formatting, no section breaks, etc. No section breaks! The version of Word Perfect I installed from a stack of floppy discs had section breaks!

Microsoft's web apps are a grim reminder of how desktop UIs have evolved _backwards_. (I'm in the midst of evaluating Office 365 as part of some IT transitions at work.) It's missing tons of features even compared to Word 2000. And it's a total pig. I thought Office was a pig before, but moving it to the Web made everything 10x worse. (Google Docs is less of a pig, but that seems to be because it has less functionality than Gobe Productive on BeOS.)

I'll concede that Google Maps is better than what was available in 2010. It bet it would be even better if Google turned it into a Win32 desktop app.

<comment><USER14> >Microsoft's web apps are a grim reminder of how desktop UIs have evolved backwards. (I'm in the midst of evaluating Office 365 as part of some IT transitions at work.) It's missing tons of features even compared to Word 2000. And it's a total pig. I thought Office was a pig before, but moving it to the Web made everything 10x worse. (Google Docs is less of a pig, but that seems to be because it has less functionality than Gobe Productive on BeOS.)

Sure, that's all true, but this backwards devolution also ensures the important thing: that you don't really own the code you run, a centralized provider does, and they can change or break it as they please, without having to remain compatible with your machine. This is a business model problem: they've decided they do better off turning your general-purpose, user- programmable personal computer into a dumb terminal that uses 10x bloated-ass Javascript frameworks to make AJAX calls to their HTTP servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would argue that systems research has been incredibly relevant. First consider programming languages. Even though languages such as Java, C++, C# are all widely used, they are much different languages than they were in the early 2000's. You can see the influences of academic research especially from the functional languages (monads) on these languages. Also, Rust is an exciting new language that is enabled by the systems software research of the past.

If you look at networking, recently, there has been the move towards new protocols (quic) that was the result of systems research looking at the deficiencies of tcp. Another area is consensus algorithms. We now have large scale real life deployments of consensus algorithms, for example Spanner and etcd.

The late 90's and early 2000's were a weird time where the hardware was improving so fast and taking software along for a free ride that a lot of software was good enough. Now, as we bump more into the end of Moore's Law, we will be seeing more research and real life usage of multicore and heterogenous computing and libraries and languages and operating systems that try to make that easier.

<comment><USER16> > The late 90's and early 2000's were a weird time where the hardware was > improving so fast and taking software along for a free ride that a lot of > software was good enough.

Would you say that wasn't the case during the past 20 years (2000-2019)? Or do you consider all that period to be "early 2000's"?

<comment><USER15> I think Herb Sutter's 2005 article "The Free Lunch Is Over" was a signal that this was changing.

[http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency- ddj.htm](http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> M. Pike's followup, 4 years later, is at [https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob-p...](https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob- pike-responds) .

</comment><comment><USER18> _" Linux may fall into the Macintosh trap: smug isolation leading to (near) obsolescence."_ Well, that did not happen.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is how you end up with a language like golang.

<comment><USER20> Well, to be fair, there is almost no actual scientific programming language research to begin with, so anything goes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would research into side-channel attacks count under M. Pike's criteria?

Granted, whilst it is system- _level_ it is not system _software_. And it has not yielded demos that people have regarded as _cool_ , rather ones that have been received by some as horrifyingly worrying.

But it has definitely influenced industry.

<comment><USER10> Great work has been done discovering side-channel attacks, but on the other hand most side channels have been created by sloppy microarchitectural design since 2000. So I dunno if that's progress. If we see some CPUs in the next few years that are both fast and not vulnerable, I'll count that as progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article predates it, but OS X (particularly after it mutated into iOS) represents probably the biggest source of systems innovation in the two decades after this article. Apple is very secretive, so their systems research often isn't known outside the company until it's actually going into a product.

OS X was modern for its time, but where they've really pushed the envelope is with iOS. They can simply move faster at scale than anyone else because they almost entirely own the IP for both the software and all major hardware components and can pivot on a dime compared to market-based coordination.

<comment><USER22> At launch Android was way more innovative at a systems level with per- application UID sand-boxing & a permission system and system-integration capabilities (broadcasts, services, intents, etc...)

iOS was innovative at a UI/UX level, definitely. But I can't really think of anything they did at a systems level that was at all innovative?

<comment><USER23> Android didn't innovate those. Per-application sandboxing was the default in capability systems since the 60s, and became more widely deployed in the OLPC Bitfrost security model, and even had a deployment in HP labs' Polaris Windows NT-based environment for virus safe computing. These two projects informed the early Android security model IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hadoop? Spark? Are those not systems software?

<comment><USER25> Beowulf? MPI? Were these not already things 30 years ago?

[https://github.com/intel/spark-mpi-adapter](https://github.com/intel/spark- mpi-adapter)

Oh look, a paper; "For example, a recent case study found C with MPI is 4.6–10.2×faster than Spark on large matrix fac-torizations on an HPC cluster with 100 compute nodes"

Does it sound like large data analytics would have horribly stagnated?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Soon it will take less time and be more cost-effective to commission the integration of an SoC for your application than to risk your business to software basket weavers.

</comment><comment><USER27> I genuinely don't know what the author is refering to.

I'm amazed at how many comments resolve around "But wait, of course systems research has evolved, see XX and YYY", followed by responses along the lines of "Nah, he was not talking about XX and YYY, rather ZZZ, etc..."

I hate being the "please define xxx" guy, but is there a consensual definition of what "Systems software" is ?

<comment><USER4> Rob defined systems software in the first part of his post as "Operating systems, networking, languages; the things that connect programs together.".

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> RAMCloud isn't popping, but it did give us RAFT.</comment>


Ask HN: Require a sign-up or allow anonymous/guest users? - <AUTHOR>

When you launch a web application, more users will try it out if they don't have to sign up first. Logically, if they like it enough they'll eventually sign-up to use more features.
But when you require a sign up in advance, you can:
1. Stay in touch with the user (contact for feedback or when features available)
2. Have better analytics (also, the sign up itself is a signal?)
3. Use social features
Any insights on the subject?
Any rule of thumb on where to draw the line and require a guest user to "convert"? <comment><USER3> This is an interesting question that I'd love to hear other opinions on.

My idea that I haven't gotten to implement yet: Make it possible for the user to get started without logging in, then force them to create an account after they've started playing around.

The particular application that I specifically want to try this on is going to be a document-oriented application. I'll let the user jump in and start creating something without creating an account, but then make the user create an account (or log into an existing account) to be able to save their work. If you've already spent even two minutes creating something, having to type in an email address and password seems trivial compared to having to start over again if they want to come back later. (That's the theory, at least.)

The key in my mind is to get the customer invested in the application (even slightly) before forcing them to make an account.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel exactly the same- let users use and require sing-up for saving data etc.

But for young applications, it is important to get in touch with the users, and try to engage them-

There are some start-ups dedicated only to automatically send users email after some conditions, and most of the service I use do it manually too (like sending you "we noticed that after you built your form you didn't publish it for a month, care to tell us why?")

If you don't know who your users are, how can you get the negative feedback?

Getting feedback only from the people who sign up is going to be skewed to the positive side, and you'll have a problem realying on analythics for guest users (because some "guest users" are can be the same user- from different machine, or after cookie clean)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depends on the product I think, however I do enjoy apps that I can "tour" without signing up. Especially if the sign-up isn't quick.

If you can build value in your product without forcing me to login, I'm more likely to want your product more because I've been sold on it. I think thats important, I should _want_ to sign-up. This could be via a product tour, guest account, even a demo video. Ultimately I'm window shopping so give me a reason to come inside.

No matter what though whether you allow anonymous users or require a sign-up, measure the funnel between guest-user and registration. Find out where your users are bouncing and where you could improve the onboarding. Is the homepage persuasive enough? Is the sign-up page itself losing users? Measure, iterate, and repeat. I'm sure there's quite a bit to learn.

</comment><comment><USER5> We do not require sign-up to use our form builder web app. You can access all of the pages without login. You can create a form, copy it to your web site and get submissions by email. (The email address can be entered on the form setup.)

This gives people a chance to try the product without making a time investment. We are getting close to 1 million users (not including guest users) so it seems to be working pretty well for us.

Our product is JotForm if you would like to see how it works. www.jotform.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, seems like it is working well for you.

How did you get feedback/nisights about users that started to use your product, but fall of the funnel before entering the email address from some reason?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not requiring signup makes development massively harder but I think it's worth it.

All of the websites competing in my space require a signup except mine. Their products may be way better but I don't bother to check and neither do my users.

In fact I think you can make a viable business just by taking popular websites and working out how to implement them without user accounts.

</comment><comment><USER7> You should provide a good reason for visitor to become a user. never block everything for guests(like many websites out there), you should provide a great demo or any strong reason for people to become a user. That's clear nobody will fill forms and do activation process for just a sentence that you wrote on your home page. "Find Friends" - Signup "Live Chat" - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't mind signing up beforehand as long as the service comes with the option to delete my account and data at will, assuming it doesn't delete itself if I decide not to sign up.

And I don't mean "disable your account until you come to your senses" but "it's like you were never there."

</comment><comment><USER9> Can you consider saving users data via cookies or ip? That way the next time they come back their stuff is still there. Now on the second run and beyond, you can remind them that they can take their data with them to other computers, or privately, if they create a login.

<comment><USER10> Some people might have dynamic ip addresses. Cookies can expire and get purged very easily. Same with local storage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, people use many machines (desktop, laptop, tablets)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What should I change my name to? - <AUTHOR> I would like to change my name both officially and casually to something more easily pronounceable in the US. Ideally a single syllable first name and pretty open to any last name. I work in tech but this should not necessarily be a factor although I realize posting this question on HN will most likely generate biased answers in that direction if there is such a thing as a tech inspired name. I digress. Regardless of the reason for why I am doing this I really appreciate any suggestions and you voting on your favorites.<p>Thank you, Soon-to-be-determined <comment><USER2> A single syllable first name could be a common nickname for a multi-syllable name. For example, Mike for Michael, Dave for David, Bill for William, etc. Or if you never want to be called by a nickname, you could choose a short name that doesn't have a nickname, such as Mark.

Some last names you probably should not pick: Doe, which is commonly used a a placeholder for unidentified people (e.g., John Doe); Smith and Jones, which are so common that people might assume you're giving them a fake name.

If you want to be anonymous on the web, picking both a common first and last name would make you very hard to find.

<comment><USER3> >If you want to be anonymous on the web, picking both a common first and last name would make you very hard to find.

I vote for "Bob Bob."

<comment><USER4> How about "Ricky Bobby?"[1]

[1]: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0415306/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0415306/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a thought: type in your year of birth to this Social Security Administration website (goes back to 1800's), and find out what the most common names were (in the U.S.) back then. Pick one of those, so that other people of about your age not uncommonly have your name, and everyone will know how to pronounce it. [https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/)

<comment><USER6> id actually go the other way and choose a name which wasnt used at all in the year of my birth. the only one i know off hand is that here in the UK in 2016 there were no babies registered with the name Nigel but im sure theres at least one every year

why the hell do i know that utterly useless fact? because i read an article a few days ago where some guy arranged a yearly convention for people called Nigel on the back of the fact

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A professor of mine with a long, difficult foreign last name starting with K had legally changed his name to Dr. K by the time I took a class with him. I'm guessing everyone called him that anyway, so he made it legal.

An Asian friend of mine with a difficult foreign name went by her initials -- I mean the initials of her first and middle name, plus her last name. Sort of like if JK Rowling were called _JK_ by her friends.

</comment><comment><USER8> What does you name mean in your native language? Translate that to English and use that to pick an appropriate name. There are plenty of books that give the meaning behind English names and this would allow you to keep a correspondence with your original name.

</comment><comment><USER6> while this may be considered a "wrong" thing to ask in this era but you dont mention if youre male or female which may lilt the answers a little, in any case heres a few options from my own preferences

Male: Lee, Tony, Neil, Sam, Miles Female: Ella, Lucy, Lisa, Emily, Sarah

last name could be anything really. Grey, Simmons, Wallace

im not terribly creative i know but its what id go with i think

</comment><comment><USER9> Clinton Gates

</comment><comment><USER10> Bobby McCool

</comment><comment><USER4> Case

or

Bobby Quine</comment>


BlackBerry CEO 'disturbed' by Apple's hard line on encryption - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2465381/blackberry-ceo-disturbed-by-apples-hard-line-on-encryption <comment><USER2> Trying to get back in the government's good books by being one of very few voices in tech saying this? I'd like to know this position in more detail, as he seems to be pro weaker iOS but anti backdoor. It feels too much of a theoretical position that isn't possible.

Also the reference to the other fruit company reminded me of this sketch [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIaXSBSQ0W0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIaXSBSQ0W0)

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like an easy way to lose the support of security-conscious companies.</comment>


Nokia's Here Maps Sold for $3B to Audi, BMW and Mercedes - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2015/08/03/nokias-here-maps-sold-for-3-billion-to-audi-bmw-and-mercedes/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know what the implications are for the phone application? Its default map application on the Ubuntu phone, and although its missing some features, its quite nice overall.

<comment><USER3> It is default maps application on Windows Phones too (at least that were nokia, now lumia). And for me it is the best maps app working offline.

<comment><USER4> osmand does a good enough job for me, used it recently on a cross-european motorcycle trip.

edit: i should have been clearer, osmand isn't just "good enough" \- it is brilliant.

<comment><USER5> I'm also a huge fan of OsmAnd, it has many outstanding/unique features that other map solutions neglect to offer (albeit some features are a bit hidden).

        In no particular order, things that I like:
        - Wikipedia (offline). Discover articles by location
        - Topographic maps (nice for hiking)
        - speed camera warnings
        - completely free & open source
        - you can alter the options, add your own POIs, etc.
        - draw tools, use polylines to measure distances
        - find any POI by name, category or location (they're *all* indexed)
        - copy a position's latitude/longitude to the clipboard
        - start route from a distant starting point (instead of current location)
        - discover opening hours of shops/etc.
        - launch calls from a POI's attached contact number
        - public transport (nice for city trips)
        - GPX logging
        - tools to support OpenStreetMap editing
        - route along saved .gpx/.kml track
        - ...

While it had been available exclusively for Android for a long time, there's now an iOS version as well.

EDIT: Formatting

PS: In the past I've even gone so far as to add phone numbers to my favourite pizza deliveries on OpenStreetMap to be able to call them using OsmAnd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Or invest $1bn in enhancing the already good openstreetmap dataset?

<comment><USER7> While I love OSM (both the map and the project), I don't think they have enough data (depth) to provide any navigation/routing.

Or I'm missing something.

<comment><USER8> Biggest problem with OSM is that quality is varying wildly. Awesome in many cities, but then in rural areas it can be missing half a town. And large differences between countries.

A lot of money could possibly help to get good base maps into it (by paying enough that their producers accept OSM licensing), which could help that situation...

<comment><USER9> Or, alternatively, getting more people to help with the data. I once did help a bit when I took a bike ride through Albania and for some reason I still get warm fuzzy feelings when I think back to those "mapmaking days". For some reason it feels more meaningful than my wikipedia contributions.

Unfortunately, I live in the center of The Left Wing of the Internet^tm (Berlin) and every anthill is already mapped around here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I generally find the quality of built-in GPS maps in cars to be quite inferior to the quality of google maps. Is this company really worth 3B? who knows, but the car manufactures could probably just licensed google maps for free and focus on building great cars instead.

<comment><USER11> It might be surprising to some people in Silicon Valley but there are folks who find it a bit disconcerting that Google knows every place they drive to, when they do it and how long they stay. I personally am glad that there is still some competition in the maps market and since HERE is a European company, you can expect them to be much more privacy conscious than Google (or Bing Maps, ftm).

<comment><USER12> What nefarious use of the data will be beneficial to Google?

<comment><USER13> Google can be hacked or forced by public authorities to enable or to do nefarious things. I know, godwin's law, bla bla, but look what happened during the second world war to german companies. There are more examples.

I'm not okay with being tracked, and I don't care whether the tracker swears to be or not to be evil. And no, this is not negotiable.

<comment><USER7> I'm especially not OK with being tracked when it has absolutely zero benefit for me, long or short term. UI is getting worse (for all these megacorps that harvest all the "automated feedback" they can) and I don't consume advertising and even if I did, the "targeted ads" are irrelevant pretty much all the time.

<comment><USER14> Tracking is the only way for Google to get traffic data; you could still not find that reason enough to get tracked, but it's not "zero benefit" for users.

<comment><USER7> I'm quite sure they, and other map providers who have live traffic info (including HERE), get the data primarily from infrastructure managers.

<comment><USER14> I don't know if anything changed recently, but I'm sure that at least until a couple years ago they got the traffic info from their own app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What happens to the employees with a joint ownership like this? In other words, who runs the technical side of the house and determines the future course of the product.</comment>


Bowtie for Knockout: Untangle your Spaghetti-Like KO Bindings - <AUTHOR> http://code.jonwagner.com/2012/08/16/bowtie-for-knockout-untangle-your-spaghetti-like-ko-bindings/

<comment><USER2> Wow, this could prove to be invaluable, can't wait to try it!</comment>


Slowly Baking Bread with AWS Step Functions - <AUTHOR> https://maori.geek.nz/slowly-baking-bread-with-aws-step-functions-588ae46498bc <comment><USER2> There's definitely a need for this, since long-running threads are a huge pain to manage -- connections die, heartbeats fail, etc., and any job that's doing a lot of sleep() loops or waiting for asynchronous notifications should probably be managed by a scheduler like this instead.

What's hard though is breaking up a synchronous execution model into discrete steps, and storing continuations between them.</comment>


Show HN: Coinbook – track your crypto holdings across exchanges and wallets - <AUTHOR> http://www.getcoinbook.com/

<comment><USER2> Could be just what I'm looking for. I'm currently using a text file which isn't really ideal. Will you support CSV? And it's free; you don't make money from our data, right?</comment>


Don't trust what computers say? You shouldn't - they're too sure of themselves - <AUTHOR> http://naviablog.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/trust-requires-uncertainty/

<comment><USER2> agreed.</comment>


The Pill, the Condom, and the American Dream - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-pill-the-condom-and-the-american-dream/498206/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits&single_page=true <comment><USER2> This might be slightly off-topic, but maybe some here will find it interesting.

My girlfriend and I have stopped using hormone-based contraceptives, for nearly 2 years now, I believe. The main reason is that the hormone-stuff had really messed up my girlfriend, and at some point, we were actually starting to get worried about not having the opportunity of having kids.

When we met, she had an IUD (with hormonal stuff), which was uncomfortable to me, so she switched to an implant. The next nearly two years were fairly difficult because she would have extremely irregular periods (for up to two months at a time, in one case), and it messed with our relationship in more ways than one.

At our request, her gynæcologist removed the implant, and she switched to the pill. This helped stabilise things, but it was still messed up. In the end, we decided to stop any hormone-based contraceptive, and decided to use condoms. Yes, it's annoying, and everything you want, but it's still a lot better than whatever we had before.

The reason I'm telling this, is that I don't really understand the taboo around it. It's a normal part of a normal relationship---there's no point in pretending we're farting rainbows all the time. I'm also fairly annoyed at the fact that women have to put up with this, whereas us men get the sweet end of the deal. We don't have to pay a luxury tax for something which really is essential for most women, we don't have to worry about whether something works or not, or whether getting laid is worth having trouble at that level for the next 6 months. Note that I'm saying "oh poor women, you have to deal with periods," I'm only discussing the technical/monetary aspects of this.

I understand that there's very little interest by most men to have a male contraceptive, but I for one would love to have one. Not necessarily hormone- based, and preferably not something that requires having that part of my body be approached by a scalpel. I seem to remember reading an article some time ago explaining why there was no male contraceptive available to those who wanted it. If I remember correctly, according to the labs/vendors, there was simply no market for it. The products existed, but either they're making too much money out of the female variants, or the male variants simply wouldn't sell.

In any case, the situation is messed up.

<comment><USER3> I don't get why people with reasonable intelligence don't just use fertility awareness. It is free, it has no side effects, and any time you decide you want to have kids you can use the same method to increase your chances. I get that dumb people often think you can always get pregnant. But people capable of passing high school biology should grasp the concept of ovulation.

<comment><USER4> Because people of reasonable intelligence also realize that ovulation has occasional hiccups in timing, that on rare occasions sperm can live a surprisingly long time, and that as a result"fertility awareness" (on its own) is a less reliable means of contraception than most other options.

<comment><USER5> I'd really like to learn the proper numbers on this. What are the precise risks of a timing hiccup or second ovulation during a menstrual cycle? Also, how does regularity of one person's period affect these risks? How accurate are the indicators for ovulation most methods use (body temp, cervical mucus, etc.)?

<comment><USER6> Well... it depends.

If you only rely on this method for a few days each month immediately after the end of menses, the chances of it failing are MUCH lower than if you rely on it for a week prior and a week after menses.

That said, wiki claims[1] that the latter approach is >95% effective in perfect use, and 88% effective in typical use.

Compare this to withdrawal[2], which wiki claims is 96%/78% effective respectively.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar- based_contraceptive_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar- based_contraceptive_methods#Standard_Days_Method)

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

<comment><USER3> You linked to the rhythm method, not fertility awareness. Fertility awareness means actually measuring the physiological changes resulting from the hormonal changes that precede ovulation (temperature, saliva, cervical mucous). This is much more reliable than guessing based on the date, which is obviously going to fail relatively often as ovulation isn't reliably regular even in the most "regular" cycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A more likely cause for these results is that there has been an effort in the last decades to dumb down education at every level.

Not necessarily in order to lower the average level of education but to battle perceived unfairness or racism within education.

The underlying assumption is that if you find that some minority or group is not represented equally in any area of education then it is a sign that there must be institutionalized racism involved.

This process is still ongoing to this day, currently everyone is focusing on STEM fields and asking the question: Why do so few women choose to enter these fields?

You can bet that the quality of education you are going to get in 20 years in these fields will be worse in order to attract women to fields that they are generally less interested in. (if Mathematics is the reason for that then they will simply remove it or reduce it significantly)

Edit: It is by the way more likely that changes in the education system (of which there have been plenty) cause different results in education than attributing it to something like contraception.

<comment><USER8> Not sure why people feel a need to downvote things they don't agree with, but I think this might somewhat be on the right track. It seems weird to attribute this change to something outside of the education system when there have been plenty of changes within it.

<comment><USER9> > Not sure why people feel a need to downvote things they don't agree with

That could be the reason. Or it could be that this article is referring to an increase in pre-school readiness in poor children. It makes clear that there was no drop in readiness of rich children over the same period. Therefore the chances of this effect being due to some form of educational dumbing down doesn't make much sense.

Now the authors of the article it's based on believe that the effect is likely due to improvements in parental education pre-school and that that may be, at least partially, due to government campaigns. I that sense it is conceivable (excuse the pun) to attribute it to the education system but not in the way the GP is suggesting.

<comment><USER7> My point was that the educational system has been tweaked to be easier for everyone across the board.

Children that previously performed better still perform well, children that performed worse now perform better than before.

I'm not rejecting that contraception could be a reason, it's just that you have to show convincing evidence for it. The more counter intuitive your theory is the more evidence you need to produce.

Imagine I declared that all of this is correlating with the size of Big Mac menus and has nothing to do with changes in the educational system. It wouldn't be unreasonable for you to question my theory, especially if I do not provide any evidence.

> Not sure why people feel a need to downvote things they don't agree with

I have no problem with that. If I'm just regurgitating what everyone is already believing then my comments would be pointless. I happen to have a different opinion and I know that for some this is offending. (but thats really their problem, not mine)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An alternate theory of how this effect is occurring.

Imagine there are two classes of human - high quality and low quality, and this quality is hereditary (likely genetic). Low quality humans have a lot of unplanned births and their children are also not very good at school.

The bottom 20% of humans will always consist of low quality humans, plus a chunk of the remainder high quality humans (assuming low quality humans make up < 20%).

Previously low quality humans had a lot of children - say 15% of children were low quality children. Now if low quality humans have performance 1, and high quality humans have performance 2, then the performance of the bottom 20% would be (15% x 1 + 5% x 2) / 20% = 1.25.

Now suppose condoms reduce the number of children had by low quality humans. Then the number of low quality children is reduced to 10% - so the performance of the bottom 20% of people would be (10% x 1 + 10% x 2) / 20% = 1.5. That's a 20% improvement even though no group has improved their quality at all.

This effect is rather more plausible, given what we know about intelligence/adult outcomes being hereditary, and given what we know about the uselessness of "enrichment activities" (e.g. google how ineffective Head Start or early childhood education is).

Such an effect would also have a significant eugenic [1] effect, i.e. massively positive long term effects as well.

[1] The word "eugenic" is overloaded, and means both the opposite of dysgenic and also human intervention into genetics to improve them.

<comment><USER8> Isnt this based on proportionality though? If anything you would expect that bottom 20% to be less likely to use birth control effectively and become a larger share of the population over time, especially as the remaining 80% preferred to have fewer children in general.

But that's mostly a guess on my part, I don't have data on hand to validate any of that.

<comment><USER10> Right, the article postulates that the bottom folks have become more likely to use birth control, so I'm only discussing a relative effect.

But yes, considering how our high-IQ elites _don 't_ reproduce, it's probably just a reduced dysgenic effect rather than a eugenic one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It could also be an error in the self reporting population; it's socially more "acceptable" to say you use contraception, even when you don't.</comment>


How 'Fraternal Order of Propaganda' shapes the story of fatal police shootings - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/fraternal-order-of-police-shootings-propaganda-pat-camden/Content?oid=21092544 <comment><USER2> So nobody has any idea what happened, other than one of the offocers mistakenly called out that the "suspect" had a gun, and the other fired.

I can understand why the other officer fired; she believed that the guy who was, at the time, charging at her had a gun and presumably was gonna use it. When confronted with deadly force, deadly force is authorized, so that officers don't get killed trying to non-lethally take down a murderous criminal.

The problem is that this guy was neither murderous nor a criminal. The officer who called out that the perp had a gun was wrong, and a man is dead because of it.

Of course, the cop who held the gun will be slammed for this. But the cop who called the invisible gun will be left alone.</comment>


Poor in India Starve as Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion of Food - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-28/poor-in-india-starve-as-politicians-steal-14-5-billion-of-food.html <comment><USER2> Incidentally, the problematic public distribution system is solved in parts of India, most notably the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu - <http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article2475948.ece>. The estimated loss in Tamil Nadu is 4%, as opposed to over 90% in some states.

Tamil Nadu politicians are not any less corrupt than other states. However the PDS has some notable features:

1\. It is universal - not restricted to only people below the "poverty line". Thus many people are incentivized to have it work.

2\. The PDS "ration" shops are run cooperatively by localities and villages, not private dealers.

3\. Simple schemes make it transparent like an SMS that will reply telling you the current stock of a given shop, when new stocks will arrive and so on so that the shop keeper cannot simply cheat you out of your ration.

<comment><USER3> My point is why give free food at all?

If we help boost agriculture productivity and work on our economy most people will be able to buy food.

We must avoid giving Freebies. Giving away things for free/subsidy is the root cause of the problem.

<comment><USER4> How is that possibly the root cause of the problem? Right now, there IS enough food to feed these people; it's being stolen before they get it.

"My point is why give free food at all?"

Because these people are starving? Is that not a good reason?

<comment><USER5> "being stolen before they get it" - nonsense!

1) There is an X amount of food and Y number of people in India. 2) Someone is eating that food (let's assume nothing gets thrown out/rots because of corruption: someone who steals food eventually sells it and it gets eaten, not trashed)

Meaning: corruption does not change the supply and demand, so it doesn't impact the prices (total money that is charged for the food in the country). It only changes the hands which get the money. Nobody starves because of the food getting stolen unless, again, the stolen food is either trashed or ends up exported.

<comment><USER6> >. 2) Someone is eating that food (let's assume nothing gets thrown out/rots because of corruption: someone who steals food eventually sells it and it gets eaten, not trashed)

That is a simplification. It is both being stolen and it is rotting.

Even the article states that there is tons of food that is rotting/wasting away. If it doesn't mention it, I can give examples of food stock being wasted from as long back as, I think 1970-1980.

Also - Corruption DOES shift the supply curve so "corruption does not change supply and demand" is only true in the land of platonic ideals.

<comment><USER3> I think his point is stealing food redirects it those who need it and can afford it.

So the problem shifts from corruption to affordability. The free food program exists because they can't afford it. If we can fix the affordability problem, there won't be a need for a free food program and there by corruption related to it won't exist.

These people need to get jobs. But since they don't have it. You may by all means fix corruption and give them free food, but they will hungry again in the next six months. Where will you get free food from, then and till when?

<comment><USER6> It redirects food to people who have the buying power.

IIRC Mr. A. Sen won the nobel for showing that people starved not because of lack of food, but because of lack of purchasing power.

The wiki page suggests that his findings are being debated though, to be fair.

My google foo is also a bit literal at the moment, and I wasn't able to produce a result which explained what he won his nobel for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In India, there are several levels of bureaucracy that are involved. The main layer is called the Public Distribution System (PDS), whereby people are issued ration cards and allowed to purchase a certain amount of food at subsidized prices, or in poor families, given it for free. There is a colossal amount of corruption and theft; people simply report grains as sold and sell it on the black market. Due to the immense number of small traders and grocers who take cash and sell stuff without receipts, there are no taxes paid on this, and so everyone involved makes a profit, except for those whom this is supposed to benefit. Also, the sole source of storage are government granaries & silos, where a lot of food has either been found to have rotted, or been stolen. While people on HN are busy reading all the time about various Indian inefficiencies, corruptions and crimes, let us not forget that India's history is a socialist one (and like all socialist economies, the inefficiencies are built into the system - look at Venezuela/Cuba/Argentina/Hungary etc. today), and it is only in the last 20 years that there has been some liberalization and the Indian entrepreneur's spirit has been allowed to flourish. As you can see from all these headlines, there is still a long way to go for free market reforms. There are several sectors like the agricultural sector, energy sector and construction sector, where reforms would help a lot.

</comment><comment><USER3> My boss once told me fix the cause, not the effect.

Free food subsidies are really doomed for failure. This is in part a lack of long term solutions to these problems. Around 12-15 years back in India everybody had something called 'Ration card'. Its there today too, but back then you were eligible for rations at subsidized prices, I remember standing in long queues outside ration shops for wheat, rice, oil, sugar and kerosene. Needless to say these schemes were a legacy of the communist set up that India had for a long time. Realizing that this is not likely to scale. The government now issued new cards called 'BPL cards'(BPL- Below poverty line). That means this wasn't even for the poor, this was for the poorest among the poor. This is failing too. There are also other food schemes, in my state Karnataka, kids in government schools get mid day meals called 'Akshaya Patra'. Which is largely bad food served. Often contracted to some guy who pays the highest bribe. The food is generally unhygienic and lacks nutrition. I think by now everybody must know these free food schemes are a big failure.

The problem is India has huge inefficiencies in agriculture. The farming framework is massively unproductive. There are many reasons for this. Firstly the methods themselves belong to old stone age. Many farmers in villages farm with cows and bulls. Fertilizers/insecticides/pesticides are abused to the core to boost production. Irrigation isn't figured out yet. There are some major dams, but irrigation infrastructure is just totally absent. Droughts and floods are common. We either don't have water when we need it or there is simply too much water and we don't what to do about it. Farming land is subject to division through inheritance.

Apart from this the distribution is broken. Tons of grain rots because its not shipped and transported. Middle men act as a parasites in entire food-supply chain and add no value driving the end consumer prices high.

There are various experiments carried out especially forming communities in villages to encourage building local reservoirs and other efficient farming methods. But this will take a long time.

The political parties are dead opposed to FDI's in retail and farming. There by technology inflow from outside is limited. All this for vote bank politics.

Basically India is reeling under effects of its communist past and is held back because of inefficiencies of its political system combined sum total ignorance among the farmers.

So its not just corruption there are train of issues that result in these sort of problems.

</comment><comment><USER8> _If you can buy a Pepsi in every village in India, why can't the government get us our rations?_

This is a quote for the ages.

<comment><USER3> This actually speaks volumes of the true nature of the problem.

The problem is distribution and affordability.

You can buy Pepsi for ten rupees, and the fact that its everywhere talks a lot of Pepsi's distribution model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone keep in perspective that the biggest achievement of independent India is avoiding famines thanks partly to the help of the "rotten" PDS?

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famines_in_India>

I think this article follows a pattern of op-eds in India: the private sector eyes a plump public-sector undertaking. Suddenly there is a series of articles often pointing at the weakest link in the chain - Uttar Pradesh or Bihar is always there to be poster boys of decay, the articles never focus on functional systems in the south, like Kerala or TamilNadu - and then libertarians chime in on how any kind of sharing/caring/government is bad. Lo and behold, due to the weight of public opinion, the sector is sold off - classic crony capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER10> Serious question --

Stories like this come out of India fairly often.

How come the government hasn't been overthrown yet?

Or severe riots, insurrections, etc?

Seems like that would happen elsewhere, no?

<comment><USER11> I'd say apathy of the masses is the biggest reason that any of the things you mention haven't happened.

In this article, for instance, only the poorest of the poor are truly starving and the vast majority just doesn't care enough to protest. While the middle classes are too busy with their own lives, the poorest and most disadvantaged people are too busy trying to eke out a basic living to actually protest about it.

Let me try to list some reasons as to why.

India has no real opposition party in the centre or most of the states. Most ruling parties end up having uncontrolled power.

Corruption has become so pervasive in the Indian pillars of governance that we don't really have a Law & Order System anymore. The Police are corrupt and the judicial system is corrupt. Criminals thrive, as long as they have money.

Failure of the Law & Order system encourages corruption in the political class. The times that an opposition party does become a bit powerful, they end up being just as corrupt as the ruling party. Most Indian election candidates use the support of various mafia and unscrupulous businessmen to win elections. Once they win this way, they need to help such people now that they are in power.

Over a period of time, these issues have become so pervasive in the Indian system that today the educated and the middle classes stay away from politics. They live in their own laissez-faire life with private utilities, security and medicine. They pay their taxes but don't expect much from the government in return as long as the government doesn't interfere or hinder them.

The powerful media is too busy and is rarely anti-government because government advertising forms a big part of their revenues. So they don't carry such stories for long. The media has their own pressures since they have to keep circulations high by keeping the prices virtually free.

A section of the civil society had been trying to hold anti-corruption protests in recent times. They started with a lot of support but soon the media lost interest in them and nobody really pays any attention to their rallies anymore.

Now for all these reasons, the middle classes are mostly apathetic to the plight of the poor or the fact that the rich are exploiting the nation.

<comment><USER3> >>In this article, for instance, only the poorest of the poor are truly starving and the vast majority just doesn't care enough to protest. While the middle classes are too busy with their own lives, the poorest and most disadvantaged people are too busy trying to eke out a basic living to actually protest about it.

Oh, common please stop this.

If the poor worried about themselves, they will no longer be poor. Expecting other protest for you, earn for you, farm for you is a thing of the communist past.

Nobody is going to come and do it for them.

<comment><USER11> Not sure what you're getting at but as I mentioned there are way too few people in the weakest sections that they would be able to garner any political muscle.

Also, your whole idea that only the affected should protest in a society is grossly simplistic and if I might say then naive. A society exists to protect all its members including the weaker sections. This has nothing to do with communism.

Social evils are fought by the society as a whole. Should men not fight for women rights, should straight people not stand up for LGBT rights, what about priveliged races against racism?

I think you need to think your argument through without getting needlessly worked up.

I'm invoking Godwin here but this quote is thoroughly apt.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I said nothing; I was, of course, no communist. When they locked up the Social Democrats, I said nothing; I was, of course, no Social Democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I said nothing; I was, of course, no trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left who could protest.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, if I could not explain it well. Lets say I am one of those poor affected. This is happening since years. What should I do:

1\. Wait for free food to arrive every six months.

2\. Note the pattern that the current job/work/profession is not working out and shift to something else instead.

3\. Wait for somebody else to protest for me, and stubbornly insist for a free food package every time my village goes hungry.

If I were the person I will opt for 2).

But I take your point that we must protest. But protest against what? These men are in need of jobs, the maximum we ask for is the government to pass reforms which can create jobs.

Without this we can very well fix corruption and solve this for the moment. But they will need food again in the next six months. Like I said before, now this time where will you get the free food from? and how long will this continue?

<comment><USER12> Here's another free anecdote for you. You seem pretty smart, but you need to think _hard_ about your model of the world. Cancel that Economist subscription (I subscribe, btw) if you need to. :)

Anyway, at an NGO that tries to build skills among the poor, the middle-class employees were all talking happily about how nice it was that it rained the previous night, because it had been a hot few months. One of the trainees then quietly said during the conversation that people like them don't really like the rain, because it pours in through their shanties and _RUINS THEIR STORED FLOUR_ (!!) that they use to make rotis.

The last part was that the thing that nobody (including me) had ever thought about. That takes the suckage due to rain to a whole new level.

<comment><USER13> Here's what people like kamaal probably think to that sob story (which is sad, no doubt, but I find myself thinking the same thing): is it _really_ that difficult to make a small volume, where you put _important things_ , waterproof? I grew up in a fairly conservative part of the US, and I was in boyscouts when I was younger (only achieved my First Class), I know it's not that hard and children can do it. Same with making a bridge.

If you've never watched the Vice Guide to Liberia ([http://www.vice.com/the- vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-...](http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide- to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia-full-length)) you should. One of the things that stood out to me when reflecting on it is the very first few seconds when they're crossing stagnate water likely containing disease and insects carrying disease. There are nevertheless trees around and lots of dirt --why no bridges? In West Point, why no latrines and toilet pits near or on the beach? Why is there so much systematic incompetence?

In the US at least much of the systematic incompetence comes from the fact many homeless people have some form of mental illness. You can excuse these people and by all means help them, some can even become quite "normal" and productive if they have access to medication that helps keep them stable. The rest? It's hard to find much pity for them.

I don't think my attitude here is particularly "conservative" either, but more due to an engineering personality. If there's a problem, fix it. Unfortunately many poor people give in (through culture, religion, or something else) to a sort of defeatism or general acceptance of their suffering, and those that are theoretically capable of imagination and problem solving nevertheless shirk from it. That's what is truly depressing to me.

<comment><USER12> > is it really that difficult to make a small volume, where you put important > things, waterproof?

Obviously, they would started doing so after the rains started. The point of the story is not to say that the poor are too stupid/poor/helpless to figure out how to protect a few kilos of flour.

The point of the story is like quantum mechanics, the effects of events on a poor person will sometimes be surprising and hard for a non-poor person to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Corruption, above all else, is the biggest thing holding humanity back, but I wonder if it is possible to cleanse corruption from a society where it is so deeply ingrained?

Are there any good examples of a really corrupt society successfully making the transition to an relatively uncorrupted state?

<comment><USER15> I would argue that the transition from feudal societies to modern nations is a example for such an transition. On a much shorter timescale, there seems to be quite some variability in corruption[1]. And connecting the plot lines, there seems no show stopper at any value of this corruption metric, so there seems to be no problem in principle to move from a very corrupt society to a uncorrupt one on a timescale of 20 years.

Playing a bit further with the data, the correlation between corruption and GDP is rather impressive [2].

[1] Google public data explorer link: <http://bit.ly/PQ12bj>

[2] Again Google: <http://bit.ly/Ttp24m>

<comment><USER14> Agreed, I was thinking that as well. I wonder if the same factors in transforming those societies all those years ago could be used in the modern world? Or has the world changed so much since then that the same factors could no longer apply?

Things like much larger populations, greater mobility and communications may make the solution to corruption a lot different today than what worked in the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No 'public distribution system' can ever fix any of problems society faces. It just makes government bigger, in the end making things worse. Maybe it's okay in big cities where you give free food to avoid people killing for it, i.e. suppressing crime, but works only in conjunction with strong law enforcement. Nobody is going to become a better/more productive person because (s)he received free food for years.

<comment><USER16> Everyone has received free food for years: it's called childhood. Saying that just because someone has their most basic needs provided for they won't strive for a better life is preposterous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This makes me so angry and sad. I see such corruption happening everyday. Uttar Pradesh is a state of 200 million people and one of the most backward and corrupt states.It is another fact that Uttar Pradesh due to the sheer number produces some of the best talent in India and the world. Most of these people migrate out of Lucknow and UP. I wish more of them would come back and try to build companies so that more jobs are created. We just watch from far and lament but do nothing about it. We have made a small start by being based here, and hope we can make an impact.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have read that there is no rule of law in India, meaning corruption from top to bottom so deep that the average person is living a more and more miserable life.

<comment><USER18> Appreciate the downmod, would appreciate a reason/discussion about the above even more

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am surprised why nobody has questioned the harsh language in the title. Read it again - Poor starve as politicians Steal - "Steal"?

</comment><comment><USER20> The market wants people to die.

All we can do is help it decide how many.

Apparently.

</comment><comment><USER21> this is the real story that really depress me!

</comment><comment><USER22> thanks to the contention arising due to equitable distribution of food among the states, the grains rots in the godowns again.

another major disadvantage of democracy.

</comment><comment><USER23> How are hackers supposed to hack it off? I don't understand why such news travels to the top of HN. In case no one has a soln. for it, why write big posts? IF you gotta do something go and do it, i am pretty sure, the ones who are most concerned won't be hanging around here. This seems to me OT.

<comment><USER3> HN is a place people across the world meet.

Its a place to learn and know interesting perspectives. Just as there have been discussion on inefficiencies of agriculture in the US, fights in McDonalds over glasses and other US political stuff things like this get discussed.

It gives a perspective to people on poverty in the world and how things are else where beyond your cubicle and first world countries.

<comment><USER24> According to PG's guidelines, the criteria roughly boils down to whether or not something gratifies your intellectual curiosity. Shall we flood HN with stories of corruption in the Congo, Thailand, Haiti, Russia, Egypt, and so on? Maybe HN should have a weekly feature of poverty-stricken AIDS victims in various countries in Africa? Perhaps title this weekly feature "Poverty Perspectives Beyond the Cubicle"?

Stories like these, while tragic, are not new phenomena. Unless one is naive, one should already know that the world is full of corruption and that there isn't anything particularly novel about this brand of corruption. On the other hand, a story about cleverly planted subtle bugs in a high-frequency trading algorithm would make for a great HN story involving corruption since the details would be intellectually gratifying. But plain old selling of supplies meant for the poor? That's been going on forever. How is your intellect gratified by hearing about yet one more case?

<comment><USER3> Agreed,

That is why probably most people on this thread are discussing agricultural methods, distribution and issues related economy.

Besides you always have a right to flag this.

<comment><USER24> I've apparently flagged too many submissions which I thought weren't HN material as last week the flag option disappeared for me. Perhaps flagging a submission is heavy-handed (I rarely used it for comments), but as there's no downvote option on a submission that was the only signaling mechanism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> No disrespect to the people described in the article, but how is this relevant on HN?

</comment><comment><USER26> First of let me say that I am from India. I have been watching the number of (negative) political posts regarding India on HN for quite some time now[1]

What are the benefits and costs of discussing these issues here on HN?

Some benefits: 1\. It gives rise to a discussion which hopefully translates to solutions and actions for future 2\. It is a nice break from discussing technology ( ?? ) Some costs: 1\. HN being an international forum, it gives an idea that India is choke full of problems that nothing good will come out of India [2]. No wonder latest discussion on India's Mars vision was derided along the lines of "Get food to your people first" 2\. It is not of interest to a large number of hackers 3\. It is a fertile ground for armchair theorizing.

I am of the opinion these stories should be flagged.

[1][http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=ind...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=india&start=0) [2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias>

<comment><USER27> Such stories shouldn't be flagged according to the submission guidelines.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Refer.tools/Referend, A social network for incentivized referrals - <AUTHOR> https://refer.tools <comment><AUTHOR> This is my baby. It's been a complete delight building this for the world in React on the front and Node/Parse on the back.

I 100% estimate and surmise that this, if highly used, will be perfect in bringing financial equality to people across the world.

Right now it is in its early alpha stages, but the core site and idea are already ready to use, complete with auth, messaging, file uploads for proofs and campaign requests/oblige responses.

Though, since I'm in the process of cooking up a guide to get the most out of it, I will explain here on beloved HN how simple it is to use to gain financial freedom and you should see how easy it aid people across the globe in gaining financial equality. With these steps in regard, yes, it will of course be moderated! Otherwise, people may cheat.

 __Example: __

1\. User creates a campaign to get Robinhood referrals, and posts their referral link. They allot 5 points as they want 5 referrals. (in the future, there may very well be weighting, as a particular Robinhood stock may be 10x worth an incentive from another site, or even vs. a penny stock within Robinhood)

2\. Other users "oblige" their request campaign and proceed to handle the obligation by signing up to the site.

3\. Once an obliger has completed the signup and pre-requisites, they post or message proof to the original campaign owner who requested the sign-up through their referral link.

4\. When the campaign owner who requested the referral sees this from their Campaigns dashboard, they can accept, deny or reset the previous decision for each particular obliger. This forms a circle of trust escrow system which will be moderated daily by myself and some good people I trust.

5\. If the campaign owner accepts the responders referral proof (and it's a good idea to wait until they get the incentive.), the point will be traded from the requester to the responder.

Right now, in this current stage, all new users get 100 points. Still working on the beta invite architecture but it's open signup right now and users will be future-proofed and persisted to new versions.

P.S., In the future I think we will do well in getting rid of all those spammy ref links posted in places where they're annoying.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would also appreciate any and all feedback!</comment>


Performing a Project Premortem (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2007/09/performing-a-project-premortem/ar/1 <comment><USER2> I've used this approach for risky projects. The interesting questions to ask are:

* What could go wrong? What could go well?

* How would we know?

* What would we do about it?

Throw these questions in a table in a shared doc and send around to collect people's insights. It can reveal that people's priors are very different from one another. It gives a chance to stakeholders to see that there's a contingency plan to detect and mitigate every one of their nightmare scenarios.

I don't like calling it premortem because I feel that's an inauspicious thing to say and puts people in the mood to assume failure instead of seeing the potential for success. I guess I'd just call this "scenario planning".

</comment><comment><USER3> Highly advisable especially for projects, that feel risky to some. It addresses exactly these underlying struggles some have and prevents "in hindsight" blame because you focussed on everybody's effort on what went wrong - and dealt with these factors.

If people are overconfident or lack confidence, this is my way to address these issues.</comment>


San Francisco's Housing Crisis Is Solvable with One Law. Here's How You Can Help - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ferenstein/san-franciscos-housing-crisis-is-solvable-with-one-law-here-s-how-you-can-help-17a0d1005df0 <comment><USER2> One benefit of this is that city streets and sidewalks will be forever protected from being damaged by sunlight.

<comment><USER3> On the one hand, you can't see the piles of human feces[1]. On the other hand, you can't see the piles of human feces. Decisions, decisions...

[1] [http://sfist.com/2015/01/15/lets_stop_talking_shit_about_sfs...](http://sfist.com/2015/01/15/lets_stop_talking_shit_about_sfs_po.php)</comment></comment>


Workplace stressors and health outcomes: health policy for the workplace - a-guest https://behavioralpolicy.org/article/workplace-stressors-health-outcomes/ <comment> a-guest From the summary: "...We find that job insecurity increases the odds of reporting poor health by about 50%, high job demands raise the odds of having a physician-diagnosed illness by 35%, and long work hours increase mortality by almost 20%. Therefore, policies designed to reduce health costs and improve health outcomes should account for the health effects of the workplace environment."</comment>


The State of CouchDB - <AUTHOR> http://writing.jan.io/2013/02/01/the-state-of-couchdb.html <comment><USER2> PouchDB, TouchDB, whoah! This looks very nice. How production-ready is this? Do you guys expect to find many bugs?

<comment><USER3> PouchDB is on the verge of production ready, building projects with it now is definitely recommended. TouchDB-iOS has shipping apps in the App Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chef also moved away from CouchDB to Postgres in Chef 11

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but the departure didn't have the same effect that the other two had.</comment></comment>


Apollo: Scalable and Coordinated Scheduling for Cloud-Scale Computing - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical-sessions/presentation/boutin

<comment><USER2> Amazon also has a cloud deployment tool called Apollo (internally only I believe - the public version is called "CodeDeploy"): [http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2014/11/apollo-amazon- de...](http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2014/11/apollo-amazon-deployment- engine.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks really great honestly. Including IO as a consumable resource is just as important as allocating CPU or memory.

</comment><comment><USER4> Request to the mods: please drop the "Microsoft" from the title. This is just a Microsoft Research paper. MSR is almost completely separate from the rest of the company.

(edit: whoops, looks like MS actually uses this system internally. sorry, should have read the abstract)

<comment><USER5> Only a few of the authors are MSR (our systems group in Beijing actually); it seems like Eric Boutin in Microsoft is the first author on this one (we have many smart people working for Microsoft outside of MSR).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you document your work/progress/things you have learnt? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I am getting obsessed of finding a simple tool/app to let me easily document the work I have done each day, right notes about it, and document the things I have learnt. In essence, it is something like a daily journal, but I want to be able to categorize the different things (progress on iOS app, learning swift, learning design,...) and also be able to publish this data to the Internet for others to benefit from. For example, they get to see how I broke down a complex app to simple tasks that I tackled one a time, how I solved a specific problem, how/where I searched for the solution...
Would also be helpful for clients to look at my process and my way of doing the work. Things I have looked at:
* 		 Todoist, although great for task management, lacks the ability to publish to the internet, having comments on the tasks...
* 		Wordpress blog, Tumblr, Medium.com: lack an integration with a task management
I think I need something that combines task management with documentation/daily logging.
Thank you. <comment><AUTHOR> For others how might be interested in the same topic/question, here is a link to the same question on Reddit where a lot of useful information/tools/ideas was shared. [https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/47ct2k/how_do...](https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/47ct2k/how_do_you_document_your_workprogressthings_you/)

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://tiddlywiki.com/](http://tiddlywiki.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Seems to check lots of boxes. Interesting to see what other tools have people built.</comment></comment>


Protect Your Data During U.S. Border Searches - <AUTHOR> http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Protect_Your_Data_During_U.S._Border_Searches

<comment><USER2> It's sad that the U.S. has sunk so low. Security researchers are being harassed at the border. Now that the cloud is here what is the next step? Are we going to be required to provide Facebook, gmail, and Dropbox login information? It's as if the government doesn't understand how the internet works.

<comment><USER3> They already do this in border checkpoints. I've been asked to log into work email to "prove" that I work for the company I said I work for. Similarly, I've read of reports of people being asked to log into their gmail or other accounts from their personal computing devices.

Granted, I've no idea how wide spread or even if this is a standard procedure. I just wanted to add that it's not unheard of and it would not surprise me in the least if this is the next step in the not so distant future.</comment></comment>


Google Acquires SocialGrapple - <AUTHOR> http://www.dainbinder.com/2011/10/socialgrapple-joins-google.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: Google has confirmed to me that Andrey Petrov is joining them. They were silent about whether or not any assets or property of SocialGrapple were part of the move.</comment>