Meditation associated with preserved telomere length in breast cancer patients - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3040039/its-not-just-for-your-brain-meditating-can-actually-change-your-dna

<comment><USER2> It could also have been the yoga "The first group was randomly assigned to an 8-week cancer recovery program consisting of mindfulness meditation and yoga"

this is a crummy article with a crummy headline about one single study which may or may not also be crummy

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's as simple as this :

Start a new research. Work with 1-sigma significance (~2% error rate allowed). Then investigate the favorite brand of soup of the brothers of cured cancer patients. Make sure to research about 50 brands.

Huge news ! If you get your brother to eat soup brand 23 you have a significantly higher chance to survive cancer ! Huge article in every newspaper.

What happened here ? 2% error rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can people who meditate point to good resources on how and where to start? Books, videos, blogs etc.

<comment><USER5> Meditation is a lot less complicated than sometimes advertised. It can be helpful to know that alternative terms for the same activity is "contemplation" or "deep thought". It's a skill though, and you'll get better at it over time.

Set a timer for five minutes, sit down in a comfortable position (usually better than lying down, to keep yourself awake). Count your breaths until 10 and then count backwards down again. Repeat until the timer goes off, and bam! Meditation accomplished.

Don't worry if your mind drifts off, that's not a sign of failure. Just keep doing the task at hand (counting).

Use headphones if you need to block out sound. Slow music without lyrics or plain nature sounds usually work better.

Once you have that down, there are about a billion variations and ways to continue, but starting out doesn't have to be more complicated than outlined above.

Usually we wish to measure progress when undertaking any kind of endeavor, especially new ones, but measuring (or even defining) progress when it comes to meditation can be hard sometimes. It may require discipline on your part in order to overcome the perceived lack of feedback, but I assure you that you'll be very glad that you kept at it once you do start to notice what happens.

<comment><USER6> I fully agree that meditation is less complicated than advertised. However I'd like to state that "contemplation" and "deep thought" are alternative terms for a specific type of meditation called mindfulness meditation: "the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment."

When I meditate, my goal is not actually to contemplate anything at all -- it is to clear my mind, whittle my senses down until the only thing I feel is consciousness. Ultimately, in a state of deep meditation, my goal is a fully blank state, in which I'm doing nothing except existing.

I find that this helps me tremendously in my mindfulness in normal life, but I don't attempt to be mindful _during_ meditation in the same way.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely, this was not intended to be about semantics. The alternative interpretations were given so as to make it easier to dispel the cumbersome connotations that usually comes with the word "meditation", not to make it seem like it's about a particular school of thought or anything like that. It's just to make it easier to sit down and try it out with fewer preconceived notions as to what it's supposed to be.

I think it's the privilege of the practitioner to formulate what meditation is to them, and the easier it is to establish a personal relationship to the practice unhindered by baggage (cultural, institutional, linguistic or otherwise), the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Exercise can also change your DNA: [http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/how-exercise- change...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/how-exercise-changes-our- dna/)

Exposure to radiation can change your DNA.

Heck, everything can change (read mutate) your DNA.

<comment><USER8> The title of the article you provided is completely incorrect. There is no change to DNA detected by these studies. What gets changes is the expression level of individual genes. Expression level can be changed by almost everything, as it is exactly the fine art of turning ACTG sequence into living organisms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see after a Google search that it has been mostly popular press outlets without experienced medical reporters who have commented on this story so far. For the most part, what we are seeing online are recycled editions of the study group's press release. The underlying journal publication "Mindfulness- based cancer recovery and supportive-expressive therapy maintain telomere length relative to controls in distressed breast cancer survivors" is open- access,[1] so medically knowledgeable people here can read the study and check whether its methodology makes sense.

I note that the lead author of the study, Linda E. Carlson, is part of a group of cancer researchers promoting "integrative" approaches to cancer treatment. Another cancer researcher commenting on this approach thinks that "integrative" cancer therapy so far promises much more than it can actually deliver in improved patient outcomes.[2] The original headline of the _Fast Company_ article submitted here, already changed by the Hacker News moderation team, is surely wrong, and it's not at all clear that this extraordinary claim will replicate if an independent group of researchers attempt to replicate the results. If I or any of my loved ones should happen to have a case of cancer (which is rather rare in my family), I will ask for advice on how to treat it from a doctor who practices science-based medicine.

[1] [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full)

[2] [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/selling-integrative- onco...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/selling-integrative-oncology-as- a-monograph-in-jnci/)

<comment><USER10> Your argument appears to be that the word "integrative" implies non-science based medicine/research. Is there any reason to believe the journal Cancer is in some way lacking in scientific standards? I have no idea. But assuming it is a well-respected publication the results appearing in it require more evidence to dismiss other than a paper author does "integrative" research.

<comment><USER9> One of my problems with this study (and many preliminary medical intervention studies hyped mostly by press releases) is that it deals with a biomarker-- telomere length--rather than with a hard endpoint, for example actual improved cancer survival and reduced all-cause mortality in the patients.

Anyone looking on can read the paper for themselves for issues like sample size, the reported statistics, whether the expected finding was specified in advance, and so on. A recent submission to HN[1] cautions that press releases are not usually good guides to what a study has actually found.

[1] [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/communicating-health- sci...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/communicating-health-science- news/)

<comment><USER11> > One of my problems with this study (and many preliminary medical > intervention studies hyped mostly by press releases) is that it deals with a > biomarker--telomere length--rather than with a hard endpoint, for example > actual improved cancer survival and reduced all-cause mortality in the > patients.

That is not an issue with the study's quality. It is more of an issue with the study's motive (goal?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Telomeres are not the same as DNA.

</comment><comment><USER13> A more accurate headline might be that meditation appears to ameliorate genetic damage associated with stress. But I guess that's less surprising, exciting and clickable than implying that meditation causes Lamarckian inheritance.

<comment><USER8> Yes, and it is worth noting that telomeres, while technically being DNA, do not code any proteins. In fact their complexity is at a completely trivial level - just a repeated sequence of "TTAGGG". This is also the part of DNA that does not get sequenced with the rest of one's code. There is a lot of speculation on what else can extend telomeres [1]. So yes, a clickbait.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere#Lengthening](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere#Lengthening)</comment></comment>


Obfuscate Your Company - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twilio.com/2009/05/obfuscate-your-company.html

<comment><USER2> The solution proposed by this article (using MD5 hashes instead of numeric identifiers for primary keys) omits the point that strings are way more expensive to look up than integers. You're creating a bunch of extra work for the database on every single lookup.

A better solution is to use a global sequence rather than per-table sequences. That way your primary key is still numeric (and fast). A curious onlooker can guess how fast your database is growing, but they don't know whether that growth is users, orders, log messages, etc. etc.

<comment><USER3> "omits the point that strings are way more expensive to look up than integers"

So what? We're talking microseconds.

I take it a step further than OP. Every data base record has 2 IDs, an internal sequential one and an external one. The external one is cross- referenced to the internal one, which is never seen by human eyes. So every read is actually 2 reads, which is way more expensive still. I have been doing this for years and have never seen any noticeable degradation.

The reason I started this has nothing to do with security. It's so that I can change any key on any data base at any time without actually changing the primary key and without a conversion. (You'd be surprised how often you need to do this in commercial applications.)

<comment><USER2> Using database OIDs as publicly accessible identifiers is a neat idea, one I haven't tried.

Looking at the Postgres docs (<http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/datatype-oid.html>) they discourage the use of OIDs, going so far as to say the default in future versions is not to create OIDs for user-created tables.

Also, this would mean that a dump/restore of your database results in invalidating all your identifiers.

What RDBMS do you do this on and have you run into any problems?

EDIT: Sure enough, in modern Postgres, these are disabled by default. Additionally, they appear to be sequentially assigned:

dev01=> select *,oid from test; test_id | test_string | oid \</comment></comment></comment><comment>---+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----+</comment><comment>- 1 | blah | 29837 2 | blahblahblah | 29838 3 | xxxblahblahblah | 29839

<comment><USER3> I implement double IDs in my own code, not in any built-in function of any DBMS. You're right to be suspicious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a cute insight, but more for observers than doers. You're probably better off concentrating your energies on building something people want.

e.g. if you have only 4 customers, then working on that reality is more important that hiding it. However, your competitors _would_ thank you for focusing on the latter.

</comment><comment><USER5> Another commenter already posted but UUIDs (most platforms) and GUIDs (Microsoft platforms) are the best unique key and no need to hash them. Most larger web products use them at least as a stamp or reference but many distributed systems (especially for sync) use them for simplicity but also globally uniqueness across many database domains.

<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4122.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_Unique_Identifier>

<comment><USER6> ... as long as nobody ever has to type them in.

Sometimes, short and typeable is a bonus, and integers win there every time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a good reason why a GUID/UUID or the like should never be used as a database primary key when records are regularly added.

The short answer is that the records are usually stored in the primary key order (clustered index) and every new record being inserted at a random location in the middle of this order rather than just added at the end causes problems.

See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/583001/improving- performa...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/583001/improving-performance- of-cluster-index-guid-primary-key)

[http://sqlskills.com/BLOGS/KIMBERLY/post/GUIDs-as-PRIMARY- KE...](http://sqlskills.com/BLOGS/KIMBERLY/post/GUIDs-as-PRIMARY-KEYs-andor- the-clustering-key.aspx)

<comment><USER8> Fair point, but most DBs (including MySQL and Postgres) don't cluster their PKs by default - those posts are both referring to SQL Server which apparently does (and that's seemingly an implementation detail).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How much does this really matter anyway? If your app is devoid of content or users won't it be obvious even without seeing a "low" auto-incrementing ID?

<comment><USER10> It certainly doesn't matter to your customers, of whom 99.999999999999% will never notice an id in a url.

And if you're about to IPO, just multiply all ids by 5 where customers might see them. You're not _lying_ about how many customers you are getting if some analyst sees that, but you might get a few extra bucks per share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> md5(rand())) doesn't really make much sense. It's slightly _less_ random than just using rand().

<comment><USER12> But it has a constant length and hides randomness from the observer.

<comment><USER11> "Hide randomness" ?

<comment><USER12> From hashes you'll recognize the fingerprint of the hash function but not the underlying data. Here is an example of random UIDs, generating a few user's in a row and it's obvious that it's random: random.sample(xrange(10000), 10) [88, 3833, 6353, 8113, 8983, 4280, 7878, 3050, 9409, 404]

<comment><USER11> So?

And if you generated random IDs with the same number of bits as a hash function they would be indistinguishable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just occured to me that this would probably also apply to suggested user names with numbers: "'Jenny' is already taken, we suggest 'Jenny178'". Would be fun to work out the user numbers from that (proportion of Jennys in the population etc).

</comment><comment><USER6> This goes both ways. If your thing is actually good, those numbers will quickly climb to respectable levels.

Start a new Twiddla meeting today and you'll get a six-digit room ID. That's a piece of information I don't mind people finding out. It shows we've been around a while and that tons of people have been using it. Consider it a subtle form of marketing to those who speak AUTOINCREMENT.

That being said, I have in the past started with >1000 seeds for other services where I knew we wouldn't be getting the same sort of traction immediately.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd go the other way: just advertise the data you would also report to said analysts. Saves everyone trouble.

</comment><comment><USER15> In Russia, when a book is printed, publisher have to state a lot of meta-data on the page first: date, number of copies printed, font, paper quality. It's mandatory, I think it's inherited from USSR.

My western books just do not carry such information. Which makes book examining a lot less fun! So! I think that users have right to see the correct meta-data, and that it should be in fact enforced somehow. Imagine a browser without an URL bar!

</comment><comment><USER16>
      For example, here's one way to generate a random,
      fixed-length key in PHP:

      md5(uniqid(rand(), true))

Bad example. The obfuscation is weak and easy to guess. Just remember to salt your hashes, gentlemen, and you'll be fine (some conditions apply).

(edit) erm .. sorry, had a brain spasm and didn't notice the rand() .. :)

<comment><USER17> I've gotten in the habit of using:

        SHA1(unix_timestamp + "misc salt phrase" + rand )[0, 8]

It gives a nice, simple, 8 character id, pretty much not likely to create a collision in a space of 1M keys, and not guessable. Am i doing it wrong?

<comment><USER18> this is just fine. you are only at risk if your db libs/frameworks have no checks for if collision does some day occur. For example, as an id being a primary key in a db table, your db will cough up an error if you get collision, but will your ruby/python/blub libs/frameworks handle it gracefully?

<comment><USER19> Is it not a simple thing to require "unique" of the table column? ...and then if the occasional "error" occurs in attempt to create a new row in table have your framework retry until your randomizing routine succeeds in generating an unused ID? Or am I missing something?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bithacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html <comment><USER2> Previous occurances on hacker news:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12026879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12026879)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2570269](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2570269)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3452408](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3452408)

and some more..

I counted 19 times so far</comment>


Google Crisis Map - <AUTHOR> http://google.org/crisismap/weather_and_events <comment><AUTHOR> Layers -> "Storm Information" overlays specific information about Hurricane Irma.</comment>


Running an IRC Network in 2019: Challenges and Opportunities - <AUTHOR> https://www.darenet.org/blog/running-an-irc-network-in-2019-challenges-and-opportunities <comment><USER2> Largest challenge nowadays is just getting someone to use it. I've run a server for the past few years, and I plan to continue for the foreseeable future. And of all the things that lead to an issue, its just getting someone to not immediately throw their hands in the air and flop around. It's not hard, and I'm fully willing to help those people, yet for some reason, it never sticks. I don't even know if a lot of people these days can grasp/enjoy the concept. I don't know of any popular social media that just throws you into a community of people that don't know, except for Discord, which still has a way different feel.

It's strange, and there isn't much I would say I could do personally. But I'll keep my server going as long as I physically can, out of stubbornness if not anything else.

<comment><USER3> I still hang out on Freenode, irc still keeps some us together

<comment><USER4> I go to Freenode all the time to ask questions. I answer some sometimes, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to pay forward all the help I've received there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting to see how this compares to how we run things for EsperNet.

\- We don't use much cloud technology at present. That means we run our own DNS nameservers (using PowerDNS and a single MySQL node - AXFR and slave nameservers give us redundancy [1]). We implement Let's Encrypt renewals on top of this using the DNS challenge and have some custom software to securely push certificates to the IRC servers. This keeps costs down.

\- We've replaced our old Iris webchat with The Lounge in public mode, which is fully containerised.

\- We have some additional infrastructure for staff: our LDAP directory, an IdP which runs on top and provides SAML & OIDC auth, Git for code and some internal web services for pooling/depooling servers and monitoring.

\- Some of the staff have written services and IRCd modules to help control spam and support connection limit exemptions (for e.g. bouncers).

[1] This allowed us to continue operating with no user-visible impact when we had a hardware failure on the primary DNS box.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Unfortunately, no workable solution for mobile connections has been found > yet.

I've come to the conclusion that trying to get the irc protocol to handle this is a dead end. A better solution would be to make the server handle multiple protocols. I'm using quassel for over a year now, and it makes irc usable from mobile. It does so by being split into a core and a GUI, so basically like a bouncer, but the protocol between them is designed from scratch, to handle connection drops and even connecting with multiple quassel clients to a single core while syncing up everything properly.

Now the big question would be if it were feasible to support the quassel protocol directly on the irc server, in parallel to irc. This way the hardcore irc fans can keep using it the way they always did, while at the same time making it easy for the kids these days to get started, by not having to set up a quassel core somewhere first. Just grab the app and go.

<comment><USER7> I've been extremely happy with The Lounge ([https://thelounge.chat/](https://thelounge.chat/)) as a modern, web-based IRC client. It's successfully replaced a decade of ZNC and WeeChat acting as bouncers for irssi, Textual, and X-Chat.

\- It's a PWA, so I can add it to my homescreen on Android just like any other native app (and I find the UX better than most native Android IRC clients).

\- It supports Web Push notifications, so I find out when I've been mentioned, even without the client running locally.

\- It remembers and restores state across restarts.

...and it turns out that's basically all I wanted. I wonder if the network hosting its own instance of such a capable client would be enough for new users to get going?

<comment><USER5> >...and it turns out that's basically all I wanted. I wonder if the network hosting its own instance of such a capable client would be enough for new users to get going?

This is what we do on EsperNet ([https://webchat.esper.net/](https://webchat.esper.net/)), for what it's worth - using a forked version of The Lounge with some minor changes. It works reasonably well, but we do have to run it in public mode which limits some of the advantages (e.g. the bouncer-like behaviour).

With that said, it's a well made application and is a big improvement upon CGI:IRC and Iris. xPaw and astorije are great, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Containerising the IRCD would probably broaden the pool of people willing to host the network, due to not needing root on their boxes anymore.

Shameless plug for anyone who just wants their own IRCD: [https://github.com/LukeB42/Psyrcd](https://github.com/LukeB42/Psyrcd)

</comment><comment><USER9> For me, a major pain point about IRC is that I, as a user, need to use a bouncer in order to not miss messages. And even then, you still risk missing _some_ messages if the bouncer needs to disconnect from the IRC server (e.g. due to updates to the bouncer software or to the hosting OS).

<comment><USER10> I personally see that as a feature because you can then specify what triggers you want recorded. eg just your nick? What about other phrases like an unusual hobby you might have? etc

<comment><USER11> Slack and other services have this without the bouncer

<comment><USER10> Slack doesn't support triggers in nearly as sophisticated way as IRC bounces can (believe me, I've tried).

I wasn't intended to compare IRC to Slack but since you've started us down this rabbit hole: I'd take IRC over Slack any day. Sure Slack is more "modern" and it can - in theory - do anything IRC can do. However IRC is more easily extendible and in a more versatile way. To be honest there's nothing Slack does that you couldn't also do in IRC - albeit some features might require a more modern IRC client than the terminal ones us geeks often harp on about (disclaimer: I've written tools for both IRC and Slack).

The problem with IRC faces isn't a technological one - it's just a mixture of NIH (not invented here) syndrome and capitalists wanting to make money from reinventing public domain tools as proprietary solutions with expensive subscriptions. Not that I have a problem with people wanting to make money - quite the opposite in fact - but I do take issue with people who say "this can't be done in X which is why Y exists" when the real reason is financially motivated rather than any technological shortcoming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fellow IRC:ers, I salute you guys!

</comment><comment><USER13> As a client I've been happily using [https://www.irccloud.com/](https://www.irccloud.com/) for the last few years. Does what I need: decent mobile and web client.

</comment><comment><USER14> If the problem is that Slack/Discord are proprietary, isn't the solution to build an FLOSS alternative to Slack/Discord that anyone can run a server for? Do such projects exist?

While I loved using IRC 10-15 years ago, the user experience is simply terrible by our standards today (and adding emoji reactions isn't going to solve that imo).

<comment><USER15> > While I loved using IRC 10-15 years ago, the user experience is simply > terrible by our standards today (and adding emoji reactions isn't going to > solve that imo).

The terrible user experience of slack and discord is why I started using IRC even more. emoji, images, link previews, and the like all lead to annoying/awful spam. Instead of a conversation you get a stream on memes and image macros along with link and twitter spam. I find it derails the conversation and clutters the screen. Nothing less fun than trying to have a conversation and some idiot is posting "related" image macros flooding the chat with garbage.

The bottom line is I want to talk to someone using text. IRC does exactly that.

<comment><USER16> > The terrible user experience of slack and discord is why I started using IRC > even more. emoji, images, link previews, and the like all lead to > annoying/awful spam. Instead of a conversation you get a stream on memes and > image macros along with link and twitter spam.

I have experienced that to a certain extent on Matrix, but only in certain rooms that permit it. They are not usually #some_project but rather general channels like #linux

What I have found good is code sharing, (nothing a pastebin can't solve, except for the fact if it's a publicly logged channel the link may not work in the future). I only tend to hang out in technical related rooms.

> I find it derails the conversation and clutters the screen. Nothing less fun > than trying to have a conversation and some idiot is posting "related" image > macros flooding the chat with garbage.

> The bottom line is I want to talk to someone using text. IRC does exactly > that.

I find the same with mailing lists vs bulletin boards. I think the barrier to a certain extent means people that have something worth adding will be bothered. A bit like this place. Imagine how HN would be if it was like 90% of Reddit these days _shivers_.

<comment><USER17> Hmm, logger bot could potentially detect pastebin links and fetch the content and store it along with the log in some link->content map.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Until about a year ago, we instead used a self-hosted PowerDNS on the back- end. PowerDNS was backed by a MySQL (later MariaDB) database. MySQL/MariaDB had been chosen for its support for streaming replication."

This is completely unnecessary (to say nothing of how MySQL silently corrupts data): PowerDNS can be configured for regular AXFR's between servers and that works exactly as one would expect, irrespective of what the back-end storage engine is.

The most effective, simplest, robust and therefore cheapest way to run PowerDNS is with the SQLite back-end as the storage engine and AXFR's between master and the slaves configured (PowerDNS BV run it with SQLite themselves); this inter-database replication is nonsense, just asking for trouble due to fragility and complexity. When I see such crazy unnecessarily complex solutions, I often wonder: what the hell went through those people's minds? Aren't they able to reason it out logically? What the hell were they thinking and why the hell were they thinking it??? This solution is so irrational, that it has to be ignorance.

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually chose PowerDNS with MySQL for a chatops style bot which automatically yanks servers in and out of the pool as needed (on splits, when limits are hit, etc), this was for the purpose of load balancing. We then decided to go with Route53 as it is less maintenance and more accurate geo- wise.

<comment><USER18> And why wouldn't normal AXFR's between servers work in this scenario?

<comment><AUTHOR> The bot would directly update the MySQL database this was also chosen due to the complexity of geodns.

<comment><USER18> This answer makes no sense. Why does an IRC bot have to update the database? What does geolocation have to do with choosing database replication over AXFR?

With every answer you raise more questions than you answer.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I Am Not Speaking at OSCON - <AUTHOR> https://where.coraline.codes/blog/oscon/ <comment><USER2> > But the inclusion of this language, making political affiliation a protected > class, leads me to believe that alt-right technologists would be as welcome > at the conference as I would be. Including alt-right technologists who > display on their clothing, for example, neo-Nazi insignia.

Who are these people? Has this actually happened? Is it going to become incumbent upon conference organizers to carefully investigate the political views of every attendee and speaker to ensure they fit some carefully selected parameters of acceptability?

> To be clear, the code of conduct as it was written in 2016 already > prohibited harassment of all kinds, including harassment of a political > nature. But the 2017 language makes political affiliation a protected class, > which means by my reading (and the Wikipedia definition) that people of > specific political affiliations qualify for special protection by the > authorities in charge of the event.

This sounds like a pretty fantastic change to me. If the code of conduct can serve to enable people from diverse political backgrounds (it's not like a trans advocate doesn't count as "politically diverse"!) to come together at an event and not harass or bother each other, isn't it serving its purpose quite well?

> You can't make marginalized people-- who are enumerated as a protected > class-- feel safe, and simultaneously make members of political groups who > stand violently opposed to us feel welcome.

Why not? Your "feeling" of safety unfortunately has to matter less, as compared to your actual experience of being safe - and if you can get through the conference without any harassment or people bothering you any moreso than the general population does on a day-to-day basis, aren't the conference organizers doing enough?

> You might think that politics don't belong at a technology conference, but I > would argue that politics and software are so tangled that they cannot be > reasonably separated.

Largely because of the influence of people like this author, who over the past few decades have taken one of the most equalizing forces in human history - the combination of semi-anonymous internet access and open source projects that welcome any contributor - and have turned it into a war for political correctness. It was arguably much easier to be a transperson and contribute to open source in an era where one's personal identity wasn't necessarily as tied to one's work as it is becoming. Nobody has to care about the politics of User X if they're submitting good patches and making good technical points.

Can these two spaces not exist with minimized overlap? Can politics not be kept to politically-themed conferences / forums / venues, and technical ones try to remain pure on the merit of technical effort and quality?

> Or even simple things, like he/she pronoun selections on sign-up forms. Or > health and wellness apps that assume that all women menstruate, or that none > of their users menstruate. All of these technologies are inherently > political. There is no neutral political position in technology.

I don't see how these things are technical. Technical is the mechanism that displays the form on the screen, the processes that handle the data behind the scenes. The actual choice of what's on screen really isn't as much a technical thing as it is a business thing. There's probably room in some conferences about user experience for this kind of thing, but it doesn't have to be shoehorned in everywhere. It would be like going to a car show and complaining that the cars aren't displayed in your favourite color - it's so immaterial to the point of the event as to make me question whether the author actually gets the point of these conferences, which is supposed to be information exchange, networking, and so forth, not a soapbox for politics.

> Update > Tim O'Reilly published a blog post on LinkedIn saying that the > language would be removed and apologizing for its inclusion.

Great, so the effort to be _more_ inclusive has been quashed by someone who in general relies on inclusion efforts. Ironic, much?</comment>


3D Printers to Save Hermit Crabs - <AUTHOR> http://www.shareable.net/blog/3d-printing-community-crowdsource-saving-species

<comment><USER2> The comments on this article have made me lose a great deal of hope for humanity.

 _Ignoring the fact that most plastic used as feedstock for makerbots is BIO- DEGRADABLE_ , are people _really_ concerned about the prospect of dumping a few plastic shells into the ocean? Do they realize how _absurdly huge_ the oceans are, and how _astronomically insignificant_ this amount of plastic would be?

Besides, what's the worst case scenario here? Hermit crabs for hundreds of years are able to reuse the same shells? _Oh the horror!_.

The absolute vitriolic comments there are gut wrenching. Even when somebody posts clarifications (such as "the plan is to use them domestically, not dump them in the ocean") they just get flamed for _"back pedaling"_. Either project members posted this to greenpeace boards with added insulting comments about their mothers, or there surely is something going on between the Makerbot chaps and some other group of people that I'm not aware of. This is just unnatural.

<comment><USER3>
      Do they realize how absurdly huge the oceans are?

Not that you don't have some points, but relying on the hugeness of the ocean to dilute our trash has not worked out that well.

<comment><USER2> You might as well complain about cigarette smokers contributing to global warming.

Yeah, plastic and smoke are both issues, but at this scale? No way. Not in the slightest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting comment :

"This is stupid.

1\. Consult with a marine biologist to find out if there is a real shortage of shells for hermit crabs to use.

Tip: There isn't. Source: I'm a marine biologist."

EDIT : I removed the last half of the comment because it addressed the issue of dumping plastic into the oceans, which has been addressed by someone else here (they often use bioplastics for 3D printing).

<comment><USER5> Non of them cite any research so makerbot might as well test the shells if they want to, I don't see any problem with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> burgerbrain's comment here has a very valid point. I'm involved in the project, working on the 3d math behind generating these printable shells, and the public reaction is quite surprising to me. TeamTeamUSA has been working on this project for over a year, and the MakerBot people simply chose to help with some funding and support. So they issued a press release on their own. That is their choice. Everyone assuming so much, and coming to their extreme opinions is ridiculous. You'd think this was BP and Dick Cheney making the announcement.

For the record, the shells being printed now are prototypes, yes in plastic. The final material is not selected, but will be environmentally friendly. A biodegradable plastic made from corn and sugarcane is a likely candidate. The prototypes are being 'trial tested' with hermit crabs to insure they will adopt the artificial shells, they're not too heavy and so on. And the final goal is not to print shells willy-nilly and scatter them on beaches. The final process of distribution will be designed, guided and overseen by marine biologists who are already active and engaged in the project.

Everyone involved is a concerned, educated individual. The comments to Makerbot's PR post and it's repeats across the web are pure Internet mob stupidity.

</comment><comment><USER7> >One of the challenges is that no one knows yet if hermit crabs will live in man-made plastic shells. And if they will, what shell designs would make the best hermit crab homes.

How come they don't print the kind of shells these crabs regularly scrounge up? I don't know about these crabs, but I imagine they have some favorite shell types they like to use. Ask a marine zoologist, no?

<comment><USER2> There could perhaps be a gap between which sort of shells hermit crabs are most commonly able to find, and which kind of shells are _ideal_ for hermit crabs. Furthermore, the difference in material might have an effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> interesting - how much a "Nature saving" stuff a 3d printer needs to print to balance the impact on Nature caused by the producing of the printer (incl. all its components, delivery costs, electricity to produce and to operate the printer)</comment>


Our idea of success is all messed up - <AUTHOR> http://www.carsonified.com/web-apps/our-idea-of-success-is-all-messed-up <comment><USER2> But for one successful project that he mentions (Dropsend) there are 2 projects of his that have 'failed': \- the webapp Amigo -- <https://myaccount.heyamigo.net/serviceDown.html> \-- that he even marketed starting a blog about its build and there was even a quote of O'Reilly talking about an untaped market.. and it's gone \- a few years back Ryan also built a subscription based online project manager, before 37Signals launched their Basecamp, and it's no longer around.

Bottom line: he says you can do it to, and he's right, but you have to really know your target market at the start (which he did with targeting Dropsend to the designer/agency market, that he knew well due to his work on BD4D) and have contacts in it to spread the word (at the start, eventually your client demographic expands)... but it isn't as easy as he makes it seem on a blog post based on one of his successes, when that formula didn't work out well for his other projects.

<comment><USER3> Check out <http://barenakedapp.com> for Carson's from day zero to launch to sale intimate story of DropSend

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Redefining success to have a lower threshold seems a huge (though common) mistake for groups that are currently behind.

There are plenty of people in Silicon Valley working on mundane, income- producing businesses. _In addition_ it has Googles.

<comment><USER5> The problem with this meme is that it ignores the fact that success = log(quality). To build a business that has 2,000 paying customers is probably 85% as hard as building the next Google. To the extent that becoming the next Google is more unlikely than that, I'd say it's because once you max out the quality the rest is basically flip-a-coin.

<comment><USER6> _success = log(quality). To build a business that has 2,000 paying customers is probably 85% as hard as building the next Google._

Not to say that you are wrong, but what data do you have to justify that statement?

<comment><USER5> There was actually a blog post making this argument a while back. I think it may have been submitted here, but I can't find it because news.yc only lets me see my last 180 saved stories. It goes through the numbers though and makes a pretty good case that getting "only" 2,000 subscribers is actually extremely difficult. (There was something vaguely similar submitted only a month or so ago, but the one I'm thinking of is from much longer back.)

<comment><USER6> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Imagine ... seeing a deposit of $10 million - right after you've been acquired or sold all your shares. [...] OK, now imagine you've done the things on your list. How do you feel. Any happier? ... I'd be willing to bet that you won't actually feel much happier than you do now. You might feel nice for about two months, and then you'll be itching to do something else. Happiness isn't found in being the next company to sell for $100 million. So that's the whole point - you can have a small web app business and still enjoy the good life."

I don't think I'll ever be able to see eye to eye with the people who put forward this kind of argument. Maybe we're talking about different things, or maybe we just see life differently. Maybe it's a lack of imagination, I don't know.

The $100 million, or 10, or even 1, isn't about the number of zeroes in your bank account, it's about freedom. Freedom to scratch my "itch to do something else". With the money, that can be bumming around and travelling, or it can be creating something I enjoy but which is very unlikely to ever pay the rent, or it can be trying to start a second $100 million company, or it can be "a small web app business". Without the money and with a small web app business, it can be... a small web app business.

In other words, running a small web app business is all you need to be happy, as long as what you need to be happy is running a small web app business.

<comment><USER8> that kind of comment also shows you just how little people understand the value of a dollar. If people truly appreciated the range of creative potential that 10 million dollars represented they wouldn't be nearly as dismissive about it.

bottom line: if you're going to be doing the same exact thing whether you have 10 million or not, just give me the 10 mill. I guarantee I won't be doing the same thing.

<comment><USER9> I'd do the same thing I'm doing now whether I have 10 million or not. The difference is that with 10 million, I'd be sure that I could _keep_ doing the same thing, forever. (Or at least until I got bored with it. ;-))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's fundamentally messed up to measure your success based on how much money you make. It reminds me of <http://xkcd.com/59/> .

The work should be the reward itself. You shouldn't be creating a product because you think it will make you $$$. You should be creating a product because you think it will have a true and substantial positive impact on the world.

I remember when I visited France, one of the things that really struck me, was the number of shopkeepers I met, who owned their shop, often selling stuff they had a hand in manufacturing, and had decided that this was what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives -- to create something beautiful and share it with others who could appreciate them.

<comment><USER8> the american people are a fearful people. they don't want lifestyle jobs, they want jobs that they will be able to get rich at so they'll have financial security.

Is this attitude because they know that if you get old and have no money in america there will be no one to look after you? I don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a "me too" blog post echoing DHH's sentiments, but it is always useful to see the model work for more people.

Their example re: dropsend and how they're turning a $200k profit with no additional time or effort is impressive.

<comment><USER12> One question i have is how the accounting is done for the $200k profit, bearing in mind the app benefits from the wider business (Carsonified events etc). As a standalone app it might be paying more for marketing, legal/ accounting, management overhead etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem when entrepreneurs who created companies like DropSend and 37signals tell us to follow their "stay small/independent" model because it worked for them is that they represent the small pool of entrepreneurs who succeeded doing it. The is a classic selection bias. Although the argument you should stay small and independent and avoid VC money "feels" right, looking at just a few companies who succeeded isn't enough to prove it. I would like to see a real study comparing the success rate of VC funded startups vs. independent ones. It would research the success distributions for both models and highlight which model (small and independent vs. big and VC-funded) has the best risk/reward ratios for the founders. Until such a study is made, I will take the "avoid VC money" advice from those who made it work with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER9> There are studies out there for success rates of VC-funded companies. I read one that had a success rate of 18% for first-time founders, 20% for founders that had previously failed, and 33% for founders that had previously succeeded. Don't have time to dig it up now, unfortunately - it was about the gains from serial entrepreneurship, and I think it was posted on news.YC.

It's much harder - possibly impossible - to measure the success rate of bootstrapped ventures, because the boundaries are much fuzzier. For example, my current venture started with 5 founders (none of whom are still with it) and is now just me. We've launched 3 websites, all failures, and have one still under development. If the new website succeeds, should this count as 5 failures, one per founder that left? 1 failure, treating the original founding team as a failure and me as a success? 0 failures, since none of the other 5 founders quit their day jobs, and so it was just a hobby for them? 1 failure, since one of the other founders committed significantly to this and did a lot of work for it (even while still holding his day job), yet the other 4 didn't really care? 3 failures, one per failed idea? 1 failure, since two of the failures were launched while we were all still at our day jobs? 0 failures, since it all worked out in the end? 2 failures, since the hypothetical success builds upon one of the failures? 5 failures, since there were a couple other hobby projects that weren't intended as startups but might've become so had there been interest?

With VC, there's a clear delineating line between startups. You just go by the corporate entity, which must exist for them to take investment. But bootstrapped startups frequently don't incorporate until it looks like they'll be successful, and often success comes from accidents.

And by many of the definitions of bootstrap failure, the big VC-funded startups are failures too. My first employer (VC-backed) went through 4 business plans in the year I was there. Paypal did too, as did Flickr. Should those be counted as 3 failures and 1 success?

I'm skeptical about any sort of statistical data anyway, because (as with any economic data) the act of publishing that data changes the data itself. If a study comes out showing that you should _not_ take VC money, there will be a flood of entrepreneurs into those markets that can be serviced without VC funds. That'll necessarily drive down success rates, as the market becomes oversaturated, competition drives down margins, and bootstrappers find it unprofitable to continue. Similarly, if a study comes out showing that you _should_ take VC money, there'll be a flood of entrepreneurs into the markets that are considered "hot" by VCs, like what happened in social- networking/bookmarking in 04/05. That'll drive down success rates, companies will fold or be acquired for peanuts, and the next study will say you _shouldn't_ take VC money.

<comment><USER14> _We've launched 3 websites, all failures, and have one still under development. If the new website succeeds..._

If the new site succeeds the whole thing is a _success_. Who cares about the failures? Certainly not you.

Once you succeed the narrative will immediately fall into place. Your earlier "failures" will turn out to have just been stumbling blocks, correctable mistakes, and/or learning experiences along the road to success.

Which just makes your main point stronger: You can't rationally measure the "success" or "failure" rate of "ideas" until you define "success", "failure", and "idea" -- all of which are _arbitrary_ and vary from company to company, from founder to founder, and from time to time.

<comment><USER15> I think nostrademons was talking about gathering statistics, not the narrative of their life.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lisp Repl.it Tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/lisp-repl-it-tutorial-9a8f2d7d7584 <comment><AUTHOR> I submitted the story with a "Make a Lisp in 200 Lines of JavaScript" which I think is a better title because Repl.it is only the platform that the author implemented on.

Unfortunately, the mods reverted it to the article title.

<comment><USER2> Dems the rules:

>If the original title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.

> If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, > we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to > "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is > meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

> _Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or > linkbait; don 't editorialize._

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another useful article helping understand how lisps work is [http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/lisp-as-the-maxwells- equat...](http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/lisp-as-the-maxwells-equations-of- software/) .

There are three important data types in these interpreters. Of course they all can be created, but conceptually you'll need them.

First type is the atom - initially you need a symbol, then you can add a number and a string as a kind of an atom.

Second type is the list - the way to aggregate data, to allow more complex structures, like trees and association lists.

Third type is the function. In many simple lisp implementations the function type is taken from the language in which lisp interpreter is implemented. Norvig's Jscheme shows how to implement the function manually.

A bunch of high level concepts are of course omitted - there are no macros, continuations, tail recursion optimization, garbage collection is often taken from the host language etc. - but still it's a capable model.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you make software engineering recruiting better? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> In my personal opinion, the big change we need to make in the industry is to make hiring of software engineers a responsibility of the engineering department, rather than the responsibility of HR.

To recycle part of one of my previous comments:

Engineering: We need to hire some more people.

HR: Why are you telling us? That's not our problem.

Engineering: ?!

 _some time later_

Engineering: OK, we've found a guy we want to hire.

HR: Excellent. We can take it from here.

Note: I am not exaggerating for effect here. I am totally serious. The hiring of engineers should not be an HR problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the one caveat to that point is then every department will argue they should handle their whole hiring process. It could then become that HR becomes decentralized and each department has it's own HR person. I don't know if this is good or bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you elaborate on this point? What are the problems that you see as needing to be addressed?

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you find people especially passive candidates and how do we waste less time in the process? Matching company and candidate expectations.</comment></comment>


Data Broker That Sold Phone Locations Lobbied FCC to Scrap User Consent - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbwgw8/zumigo-phone-location-data-sold-lobbied-fcc-consent <comment><USER2> The way I read it:

A guy who made money by selling user data lobbied to pass a law that lets him get access to even more data to sell.

If you make money off something, you want more of that "something" :)</comment>


What I Learned from a Successful Launch - <AUTHOR> https://sungwoncho.io/lessons-from-successfully-launching-remotebase/ <comment><AUTHOR> Three months ago, I shared what I learned from an _unsuccessful_ launch. With those lessons in mind, I built and launched a new product with more traction.

I'd like to again share what I learned in the process.</comment>


Show HN: The Stan Test – a little quiz to see if we share the same worldview - <AUTHOR> https://test.clss.hk/ <comment><USER2> I actually found some of the questions to be spot on, although others were, meh.

</comment><comment><USER3> We obviously don't share the same world view because "I don't know" isn't an option.

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems nether technically nor philosophically relevant. Weird choice.

</comment><comment><USER5> the worst worldview test i've ever seen</comment>


Show HN: A Smart Name Brainstorming And Domain Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.namemesh.com/?s=hn <comment><USER2> The site appears to work, responds quickly (despite being on Hacker News), so good job. Bookmarked.

Howeveer, it did claim some domains are free when they are not. I searched for "hit feed", it brought up hitfeed.com as free, but it's already registered.

What would you say your site does better than leandomainsearch.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> i think domains are being claimed free because of high traffic.

i like leandomainsearch. but when i was looking for my domain i ended up using bustaname(synonym search), leandomainsearch(prefixes, suffixes), domainr(country tlds and hacks) and some thesaurus website like rhymezone. that's 4 different sites

i just wanted to combine it all and add something to create fun names formed from merging like groupon as well.

<comment><USER3> Glad to hear you're a Domainr user! Let me know anything you'd like to be improved on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> domainr is awesome. i always use it to check across tlds. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow... Does a good job of suggesting names, but the Twitter & Facebook availability check was a nice surprise. Well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> glad u liked it

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I mainly built this tool to do an exhaustive search on the primary keyword so that you don't have to settle for secondary keywords.

Feedback/Suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER5> Nicely done. Here's a similar site I made previously: <http://www.domainjig.com>

Beyond the shameless self-promotion I found that getting people to use it would take a lot of work, with lots of alternatives out there that have dedicated teams promoting them. On the positive side, I learned a lot from it; but I never made any significant money from it. If you're comfortable sharing your next steps, I'd be interested to know what you're aiming for with this project.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> 1) Available domains totally broken. Searched for "auction" - it told me auction.com was available, as well as sell.com, sale.com, etc

2) Unlike domai.nr, it will send me to an affiliate (obviously the purpose of the site) even if they don't handle that particular TLD (for example, GoDaddy and .ly)

<comment><AUTHOR> .com sometimes does not work because of burst load. i am working on adding more registrar for those tlds.

thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It suggested some .er domains, which can't actually be purchased, that I'm aware of anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> i see, will fix it. thanks

<comment><USER8> Also, .ar domains which cannot be purchased from anywhere outside of the TLD country.

<comment><AUTHOR> will do, thanks

<comment><USER9> The tool suggested i.pe domain to me as available. My company is called IPe and I got extremely excited... But, no deal. The domain is already taken.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry, there seems to be some issue with some tlds.

<comment><USER10> also, .bd domains cannot be purchased exclusively. You need to prefix com/net/org before the bd TLD

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks will do

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Useful. Thanks.

One issue I noticed is that I cannot "scroll down for more" when using my iPad. I tried a two-finger drag. No dice. My suggestion would be to make the "scroll down" text clickable to reveal more.

<comment><AUTHOR> sure. thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really like the similar suggestion.

I am not sure of the "Lets be friends" in red text in the bottom of the search. The social buttons might be enough. Besides cleaning up the layout, its really good.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. glad u liked it

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not seeing any results. My guess is the results should show under the four colored bars right?. I've tried different searches and clicked on the examples and still nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes the results must come under the colored bars and some above it. which browser are u using?

<comment><USER14> Same problem here, running Chrome 23.0.1271.97 m on Windows 7

<comment><AUTHOR> i have fixed it. you might have to clear your browser cache though. thanks

<comment><USER13> I can confirm it works now. Thanks for the quick fix.

What was causing the problem and how did you fix it?

<comment><AUTHOR> it was a javascript error. somehow cookie containing tlds to search for was not being set correctly (for the first request). added fallback logic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks pretty cool, but I also have the impression that we may be DDoS'ing some service by 'burst' searching through this tool. Is it the case?

<comment><AUTHOR> i use dns and whois queries only

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tried it and it told me a domain was available, I click through, select godaddy only to be told that it was already taken.

<comment><AUTHOR> i am working on a fix that gives an error instead of saying its available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's a bug I found after scrolling down a bit:

<http://i.imgur.com/m1BSY.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> strange, i was not able to replicate it, trying the same query. thanks, will look into it.

<comment><USER17> I selected several TLDs if that helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> nice job, If I may suggest an improvement: after selecting a domain the "not available" for twitter/facebook is not clear.

For example, "foo.io" is an available domain, while facebook and twitter are not.

I imagine it checked for @foo and /foo but maybe I'd be interested in @foo_io and /foo.io and I can't tweak this, nor tell what the app checked.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes it checks for @foo and /foo currently. i will correct the messaging. checking for @foo_io and /foo.io is a great suggestion. will add them as well. thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 1\. Clean up the layout: Less is more!

2\. My favorite flavor was fun because those new names could actually be trademarked.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for replying :) i didn't quite understand what u meant by cleaning the layout. i am trying to utilize all the space available for showing more results.

<comment><USER19> The landing page has too much useless junk on it. My advice would be that unless it adds to the actual functionality of the page to eliminate any. If you're having problem rate every element on the page on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "fluff" and 10 being "must have" and then cut everything that's 9 or less.

Also either hire someone who has an art direction background to layout the page or use a template. And again, more colors aren't better.

<comment><AUTHOR> great advice. i will use your technique. i am not good in web design. do u think i should add a carousel instead of those 4 boxes?

<comment><USER20> no

<comment><USER19> Nick is on the money! Less is more — your concept is A+ — it's all about the search box and some minor explanation in 25 words or less, don't try and dress that up...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Search on "group coupon" gives me available gron.com, but on GoDaddy it is not available...

<comment><AUTHOR> i think this is due to temporary burst load on the server. will check on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think "show unavailable" should not be checked by default. Very good site though...

<comment><AUTHOR> done. thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> .id results show available but can't be found on any three domain seller.

<comment><AUTHOR> will look into it. thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Plenty of the results are "buy" but are actually part of godaddy auction

<comment><AUTHOR> the red "buy" are unavailable but could be for sale. the green ones are available. u can uncheck the flag 'show unavailable' next to search button. should i make it unchecked by default? let me know what do u think?

<comment><USER24> some are green but are in an auction

<comment><AUTHOR> oh, that is happening due to traffic burst. will look into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You list a .za domain, but it should really be .co.za

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> fixed the .ca domains, thanks

</comment><comment><USER26> .gb?

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed</comment></comment>


Sesame Credit – The True Danger of Gamification - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI <comment><USER2> Previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10746110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10746110)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10782703](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10782703)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10750789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10750789)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10757548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10757548)

Strangely, for a story which appears to intersect with several of Hacker News' interests, almost no one seems to be interested...

<comment><USER3> This is so horrible that I'm left speechless. Maybe others feel the same and skip to the next headline.

<comment><USER4> Two types of people read this post on HN:

1) Things like this couldn't possibly happen in the US, crazy Communists!

2) This development doesn't surprise me, and if I comment with thoughts on this story just for them to be downplayed by those in group #1, I may just finally end myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From [http://www.alibabagroup.com/en/news/article?news=p150128](http://www.alibabagroup.com/en/news/article?news=p150128)

Sesame Scores are indications of the users' creditworthiness, which range from 350 to 950 points. Users will be able to check their Sesame Scores both in the Alipay Wallet mobile app and through merchant websites that accept Sesame Credit services. The higher the scores, the lower chance the user may default. The scores are calculated using five different factors, each with different weightings that can vary according to individual profiles:

Credit History reflects a user's past payment history and indebtedness, for example credit card repayment and utility bill payments.

Behavior and Preference reveals a user's online behavior on the websites they visit, the product categories they shop, etc.

Fulfillment Capacity shows a user's ability to fulfill his/her contract obligations. Indicators include use of financial products and services and Alipay account balances.

Personal Characteristics examine the extent and accuracy of personal information, for example home address and length of time of residence, mobile phone numbers, etc.

Interpersonal Relationships reflect the online characteristics of a user's friends and the interactions between the user and his/her friends

From another forum: "TL:DR China will make this manditory in 2020 where they follow your social networking, give you a score, and give you benefits for being more in line with their ideals. Having friends with low scores will lower your score, and they tell you what everyone score is. Ostracizing people who do not agree with the government."</comment>


Ask HN: Who else is attending the LeWeb conference? - <AUTHOR> http://www.leweb.net Would like to meet up with some of the more technical people in the crowd & I think HN readership is a good indicator. <comment><USER2> Might have, except had no idea this was taking place right now. Hmm... I wonder if there would be some way to subscribe to a list of events that someone or something thinks might interest me.

<comment><USER3> You can follow the TechCrunch Euro Startup Events group at Upcoming or via RSS. I think they cover all the major events in Europe. <http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/2358/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try this link: <http://upcoming.yahoo.com/user/138148/>

(I'll let you figure out on your own why that particular link works so well)</comment>


Learn languages without leaving Emacs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SavchenkoValeriy/memrise.el <comment><USER2> Good implemention! Also, it can be extended with other apps like Duolingo, but not sure if they have a API.</comment>


Mono and Roslyn - <AUTHOR> http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2014/Apr-09.html <comment><USER2> Recently we have started using Mono for a huge project. We have a pure unix- based stack and everyone cringed at the idea of running a .net application on Unix but decided to give it a try.

HUGE mistake. After a couple months of development we have (today) abandoned the project and decided to take a different direction.

Mono isn't just reliable for production, as simple as that. It will inevitably have unstable and unpredictable behaviours, period. That said, it _might_ still be good alternative for desktop local apps. Just make sure you save your work enough times during your workflow ;)

<comment><USER3> Building a huge project on _any_ unknown stack seems ... iffy.

Apropos this rant that I recently (re-)read: [http://lua- users.org/lists/lua-l/2011-10/msg00825.html](http://lua- users.org/lists/lua-l/2011-10/msg00825.html)

 _Some other guy read about LuaJIT somewhere, so they give it a try, but obviously don 't get a speedup and (of course) blame LuaJIT. They write angry letters to me, I try to politely explain to them that their design leaves something to be desired, they blame the messenger._

 _Then they go and write a post-mortem in a game-centric blog about how bad Lua is, that nobody should ever use scripting for anything and that their next stellar project will use C# with lots of enterprise-ready frameworks. And that they 're hiring, because they got nobody with a friggin clue about C#, but management dined with someone from Redmond and they know best, of course._

<comment><USER2> Well, we are very well aware of what you mean. With us the situation was slightly different :) We hired - because our management cares - people who actually knew what they were doing, we got in touch with the person who phisically maintain the app that was running on mono and he re-assured that his software + mono were running smoothly. We have been hacking on it for months, literally. Contributed to the original project in any _possible_ way. But THEN mono started to give strage behaviours. Unless hacking really bad on it, we understood that there was no way to deploy it in production as it could fuck up in any moment and we could do literally nothing unless deleting a file here and there and reboot.

So yeah, i'm 100% sure that things could have been done differently - better - yet this was the outcome no matter how many resources we putted on it. We never complained with the creator of the application (yet, we discussed about it with him) and for the very same reason i don't want to name the product as i'm still convinced it is indeed a good piece of software. I'm just saying that with our project, 4+ very skilled people for about 2 months ended up with nothing. Take it or leave it :)

<comment><USER4> Did you ever contact the Mono team about the issues you encountered? I've found them to be very responsive about fixing serious bugs like that. You said you just abandoned the project today -- you should still follow up with the Mono devs to let them know about your problem, since it might be a small fix on their side and it'd salvage the effort your team has already put into the project.

<comment><USER2> Nope, we didn't go that far. Never got in touch with the mono team but indeed it's worth to try and i'll speak about this with the team tomorrow morning. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope Unity3d improves their C# environment soon (maybe Roslyn will make it easier for them?). The Monodevelop that comes with Unity 4.3 (latest) is pretty buggy.

<comment><USER6> MonoDevelop shouldn't be affected by this at all in the short term (although eventually MonoDevelop may get new features from this). The actual Mono runtime that comes with Unity isn't getting upgraded because of licensing issues, which as far as I can tell, is because you can't ship LGPL code on certain systems (I think the App Store license is incompatible with the LGPL, for starters).

<comment><USER7> Is there any option whatsoever for Unity to use future versions of Mono, or does the GPL corruption in more recent versions mean that they're legally stuck with an outdated version?

<comment><USER6> Unity has a license from Novell for an older version of the software, which is how they can use it in places they can't use the LGPL. Xamarin sells Mono under a commercial license, but Unity apparently doesn't want to pay what Xamarin is asking for a license to the updated code.

<comment><USER8> Which is sad because the massive unity code base is stuck in the C# dark ages.

On the other hand, mono is 'open source' so it's kind of rubbish for Xamarin to be asking license fees when they have their own (pretty rubbish) competing game stack with monogame that they have a vested interest in (not commercially, but Xamarin developers work on it).

I find this sort of 'kind of open source but actually you have to pay us ahahahahaa~' thing pretty distasteful.

<comment><USER9> What is distasteful about it? Unity is not open source. If Unity were open source, it could use Mono under LGPL, no problem.

<comment><USER8> It's the 'I want a piece of your pie' thing, that I also find troubling with patents.

Person A: Invents something, fails to capitalize on it.

Person B: _does marketing work, sells_ all the Monies!

Person A: -__- Oh that was clever. Actually, I want some of your money please.

Person B: Fuck off. <\--- The correct response.

If you make something and want to sell it, sell it. If you make something and give it away for free, don't come crying when someone else sells it.

The 'dual license GPL' approach to software which is 'kind of free unless you sell it, in which case we'll negotiate some nice on going licensing fees' seems disingenuous to the spirit of open source (and specifically the GPL) to me.

<comment><USER10> You clearly don't understand open source. Go do some reading and later come back here.

Some tips: free doesn't mean "gratis", it comes from "freedom". Therefore it is normal that the GPL uses a strategy to avoid that derived works become proprietary ('proprietary' means: essentially "non-free" for the end-user, and "free" for the developer).

From your comment it seems that you confuse the fact that opensource is not something that benefits the developer; it is something that benefits the end user! Don't forget that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Keeps getting better. Let's hope there will be a single unified cross-platform .NET-Mono-Framework in future with native capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER12> "There are also a couple of patches to deal with paths (Windows vs Unix paths)"

Is it _still_ a problem?! Seriously?

</comment><comment><USER13> For those of you wondering what Mono is:

      Cross platform, open source .NET development framework
      [Linux, Windows, Mac]-compatible .NET

[http://www.mono-project.com](http://www.mono-project.com)</comment>


Show HN: Cross-platform dependency manager using bash and cmake - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mulle-nat/mulle-bootstrap <comment><USER2> CMake already has decent support for dependency building through External Projects:

[http://www.kitware.com/media/html/BuildingExternalProjectsWi...](http://www.kitware.com/media/html/BuildingExternalProjectsWithCMake2.8.html)

There are a number of issues/annoyances with the mechanism, especially when working with local modifications, but nothing to make me eager to add the anguish of bash+CMake onto the existing toil of CMake.

(Arguably this also bootstraps a build environment, whereas CMake requires itself and an SDK in order to bootstrap, but at the point where a build environment needs to be scripted/reproducible containerization seems preferable)

</comment><comment><USER3> I ask from the ignorance, no pun intended.

Is there a good reason to insert 30 lines of license repetition, in each script of between 4 and 10 lines of total code?

I see it as a maintenance/developer-usability burden (specially if the license is at the _beginning_ of each file).

It is not under the license of the project, if the license is not in each file?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's just something I learned to do as an employee and so far didn't bother to question it.

<comment><USER3> I remember being told the same in a project/company in Holland, Europe. Never have been told again.

Maybe being strict worldwide (as soon as something is published to internet), or as soon as there is Intellectual Property Agreement, they are required lines.

I use to avoid them in each single file for personal projects, unless it's a convention (for example in perl, license in POD format at the end of the CPAN class, is a community practice).

<comment><USER4> My suggestion is to put a single line copyright with the year in every file, like

// (c) 2016 txutxu

and a license inside the project. The default copyright license protects you from unwanted copies.

But when it comes to IP rights, a lot of practices are actually voodoo legalities: people do them out of habit and paranoia, not because it has ever been useful in court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shell scripts do run on many platforms, but it's pretty ugly to code anything non trivial in.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought it was pretty much impossible :) But since I started using [ShellCheck]([https://www.shellcheck.net](https://www.shellcheck.net)) together with [Sublime Edit]([https://www.sublimetext.com/](https://www.sublimetext.com/)) I find shell programming "not too bad".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This feels like its solving the wrong problem, package-management is effectively a version-control problem.

We already have our source in version-control.... we just need a way of updating and maintaining a repository with external dependencies.

Do any such tools exist?

<comment><USER7> I think Nix does/comes close to what you're after.

Nix 'packages' are just text files describing the build/install process, so they can be version controlled (e.g. there's a big repo at [https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs](https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs) ).

Dependencies, build environments, etc. are fully specified by the package and isolated from each other, and there is an emphasis on reproducibility, so building/installing a particular package should always give the same results. (This isn't enforced, but a non-reproducible package is considered buggy, and there are tools to check if a package can be reproduced)

Nix packages themselves can reference external dependencies, like git repos and URLs, and usually provide a fixed checksum to compare the output against; if it doesn't match, the build is aborted. Wrappers/translators are also available to integrate with other package manager ecosystems, e.g. cabal/hackage for Haskell packages.

Results are cached locally (packages are only built once, until they get garbage collected) and remotely (if a build server has already built a package, you can fetch it from there instead).

For development environments, you can write a Nix package for your project then run the 'nix-shell' command to enter its build environment (i.e. all dependencies available, environment variables set, etc.)

<comment><USER6> ...similar to spack...

Isn't this effectively equivalent to version-controlling a shell script that contains a set of 'curls' or 'clones'?

What I had in mind would be more invisible and self-contained within the VCS.

It would effectively be a meta-VCS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not conda?

<comment><AUTHOR> Conda seems to deal with binary packages only. Solves a different problem.</comment></comment>


Brian May revives Victorian virtual reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181213-rock-star-brian-may-revives-victorian-virtual-reality <comment><USER2> By the way:

> What most film histories leave out is that the Lumière Brothers were trying > to achieve a 3D image even prior to this first-ever public exhibition of > motion pictures. Louis Lumière eventually re-shot L'Arrivée d'un Train with > a stereoscopic film camera and exhibited it (along with a series of other 3D > shorts) at a 1934 meeting of the French Academy of Science. Given the > contradictory accounts that plague early cinema and pre-cinema accounts, > it's plausible that early cinema historians conflated the audience reactions > at these separate screenings of L'Arrivée d'un Train. The intense audience > reaction fits better with the latter exhibition, when the train apparently > was actually coming out of the screen at the audience. But due to the fact > that the 3D film never took off commercially as the conventional 2D version > did, including such details would not make for a compelling myth.

([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Arriv%C3%A9e_d%27un_trai...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Arriv%C3%A9e_d%27un_train_en_gare_de_La_Ciotat#3D_version))

<comment><USER3> Non-mobile link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Arriv%C3%A9e_d'un_train_en_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Arriv%C3%A9e_d'un_train_en_gare_de_La_Ciotat#3D_version)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you grew up in the 1960's & 70's, you may have had a View-Master 3-D stereoscope. As far as I know there was no way to produce your own reels, so you were limited to the commercial ones, which were usually tie-ins with movies and TV shows.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View- Master](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View-Master)

<comment><USER2> I now wonder, considering that such devices were pretty well known for a long time, how come I've never heard of stereoscopic porn or erotica until 3d cinema finally rolled in for good in the past decade.

(Also, cross-eye 3d is a thing, wink nudge.)

<comment><USER5> [https://imgur.com/gallery/NoEi9](https://imgur.com/gallery/NoEi9)

Probably SFW :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My dad has some these. There was a doodad for kids in the 70s which did more or less the same thing called the 'viewmaster' -it even had cartridges for 3-d views of stuff like Space-1999. They still sell it on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER7> The one we had, had lovely soft velvet liner around the eye shield. The slides were good. Much nicer to use than the viewmaster, bigger images and far more clarity. I can't remember what slides we had, a mix of portrait and exotic locations. I think it was pressed tin with a floral motif and wooden handle. Obviously made to impress.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Brian May's company: [https://www.londonstereo.com/](https://www.londonstereo.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Our family possess one of these.

The slides all seem to be of the Boer war. I find it hard to work out how they were viewed (metaphorically). Were they 'news'? Entertainment or something else? They aren't jingoistic, showing off dead enemy, or weapons etc. Just quite boring.

There's something strange about putting together 3D and Victorian. Just like those colour WW1 and WW2 images look a bit, off.</comment>