UTSUP: Simple Team Awareness - <AUTHOR> http://www.utsup.com/

<comment><USER2> Neat idea.

Website low-contrast, full-justification can make pages like <http://www.utsup.com/about> harder to read. (Some downvoted comments on HN have higher text-contrast, and HN is _trying_ to hide those!) Looks like the app uses the same low-contrast text in many places.

<comment><USER3> I like low contrast at times, looks clean. Plus with this app the idea is that you are using it mostly in the command-line and via a twitter-stream.

<comment><USER3> (though I might be biased as I picked out the colors)

<comment><USER2> If you view your scheme on a variety of LCDs, as tuned by their individual users, you'll probably find some where even you find the contrast too little.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: please review our online load testing service - loadimpact.com - <AUTHOR> http://loadimpact.com

<comment><USER3> I think your pricing is pretty much way off.

Why would I want to pay you $40/mo, if I'm paying $3/mo for shared hosting that I know can handle 250 users?

And its the same way through out. Even at the highest level, it'd be cheaper for me to lease a second dedicated server to spread the load, than it is to pay you for your service.

And I don't think this is something that should be a monthly service. I only want to check my load once in a while to see if its doing fine, so I think by asking so much money on a monthly basis, you are driving users away. I think you'll be better off doing it as one off results. i.e. the $499/mo option, should be a $29.99 one time fee for 3 reports

<comment><USER4> I disagree with you on both points.

First - the people on $3 /mo shared hosting are not in the target market for this service. If you are on shared hosting, you don't need loadtesting.

Second - I think subscription is fine. As a subscription, I recognize that I -should be- load testing on a regular basis. As a-la-carte, I am much more likely to say "umpteen dollars?I can do my own loadtest for cheaper then that."

<comment><USER5> I'll second that. For personal use it may seem like a lot of money, but for the target groups that needs this kind of service it's cheap. It's not just about the cost of servers, it's much more the time spent doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Welcome to my IP blacklist.

But, seriously, this should be _strictly_ an opt-in service. Only if there is a loadimpact.txt on the server, you run your tests. Otherwise - refuse and explain that the server admin has not consented to the stress testing using your service.

I'm sure you have some DoS provisions in place, but in the end it really boils down to the fact that if _you_ screw up, then it's _my_ server that gets DoS'd.

<comment><USER7> this is true. Their servers shouldn't test if they don't find a specified file, like Google does with Webmaster tools.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, "claim your site"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You passed the first test: I asked myself "wait, how is this not a one-stop- shopping service for aspiring, technically incompetent DOS attackers"? And I found your FAQ and answered that question inside of 45 seconds:

<http://loadimpact.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7>

<comment><USER10> You failed my first test. I tried to load test my start-up - www.trailbehind.com - using your free service. However, it said I had already tried to load test my site and it failed.

I went through your registration process, and got nothing. Very disappointing - the type of thing that will make me never look at your website again and scoff about it to my friends should they bring it up.

And a couple other nits:

1) Your registration page where I choose my plan type is not intuitive. Maybe it's because green is not a good color to call attention to stuff.

2) Your Register and Cancel buttons should be different colors. I clicked the wrong one and had to redo my registration.

3) Don't ask for number of employees and industry. They're not required and they will hurt your conversion rate slightly. And it indicates to me you might sell my data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to hear you were disappointed. We will try and improve the registration procedure, and also the feedback to users as regarding why load tests are denied (often, it is because some resource used on your site have been used by a lot of other sites aswell, and our system doesn't want to strain that particular resource/object - but we have to be clearer about this).

Employees and industry is there for us to learn who our customers/users are. This is a new type of service, and we need information on who are target audience are, because we frankly don't know that yet. These values are optional to fill in, though. Should we be more informative, maybe, and tell people that we will absolutely not under any circumstances give out information about them to a third party - would that reassure you?

Finally, your confirmation email might have been delayed as there was a DNS issue yesterday that caused outgoing email to be queued for a while. Apologies about that too and thank you for the feedback. It's very nice of you to give it even though you weren't happy with the service. Negative (but constructive) feedback is the most valuable of all for us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice effort! After a few weeks of mediocre "review my site" submissions here, it's nice to see something come through that I would actually use!

You did a good job of making the reports and graphs pretty while still keeping a clean feel to the whole site. There seems to be a good amount of polish and attention to detail there too. I don't feel scared to click anything while the test is running for fear of breaking something or redirecting me to a FAQ page and canceling the test.

I look forward to seeing how this pans out.

<comment><USER11> Ooh. Spoke too soon. Registration after finishing a test is really really painful.

\- shelled off to the Pick a plan screen

\- pick the free plan

\- nothing happens, so click it a few more times

\- scroll down to see if I missed something and find WAAY too many required fields

\- click register

\- screen scrolls up to the top, but nothing else happens

\- click register again

\- "this email is already registered"

\- find login box, type in email an password

\- get the homepage and a "Account not confirmed" message

\- open my email client, find the mail, click the link

\- get a "confirmed" page, and I STILL need to go type my email and password in again.

Guys, you're killing me. Such a good product, with such a terrible registration experience. It's completely unnecessary.

Ask for a username and password, and let me get on with trying your thing. If I like it I'll engage with you further. That's Startup Usability 101. Fix it and maybe you've got a shot.

<comment><USER12> Yea the registration process was very confusing. Few thoughts:

\- I had to scroll down on the plan selection page to even see there was a form to fill out. This is on a 1680x1050 screen btw.

\- I expected to be taken somewhere when I clicked on the plan I wanted, instead it was highlighted and with the previous issue in mind, I was left confused about what to do next.

\- The most confusing part for me was after I fill the form out, hit submit, and the page scrolls to the top. It took me a few moments to realize that a "Registration email has been sent" box had appeared. I would recommend going to another page after you submit the form.

That's all so far, I'm just starting to use the service so I may have more comments, but already I can see it being a very useful service for the small startup I work on.

<comment><USER12> Okay, actually ran your service against our beta site. The only (minor) complaint that I have is that when I initiate a test there is a long delay before I get to the page that is monitoring the test itself.

I assume there is a setup process that is happening behind the scenes that is taking some time, but it left my finger itching to hit the 'refresh' button while I was waiting for this to complete. If it were possible to have some kind of ajax-y thing telling me what is going on here that would be great.

Otherwise I was very pleased with your service. I am definitely going to sign my company up for it, as I can see it being invaluable for tweaking the performance of our site.

As far as suggestions, it would be great if there was some way to work in extended metrics into the load testing. E.g. allow pre/post-test hooks between each test run that allowed me to associate arbitrary data such as load averages, memory usage, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tried to test my site (NSFW: <http://fapseek.com>) and got the message "This configuration contains addresses that has been tested too many times the last 24 hours." I assumed someone else had tested the site and that I would be able to test after logging in and verifying ownership of the domain. Even after creating an account, logging in, and creating the loadimpact.txt file, I'm still getting the same error message about my address having already been tested too many times.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's our somewhat restrictive security features that notice some object being loaded as part of your webpage, an object that other sites also use. For example, many sites load urchin.js from google-analytics.com. This means that the daily load our system allows itself to subject google-analytics.com to will quickly be reached. Anyone trying to start a new test for a webpage that loads urchin.js will then be denied to run their test.

We have a list of URLS/sites that are exempted from these checks, but this list needs to be populated. So far we only have a few entries on it (like google-analytics). It seems your site loads things from googleapis.com so I added an exception for that address now. Try again and see if it works.

We probably need to work on the information to users whenever a test is denied also. If you know what the offending URL is, you can remove it from your load script and run the test without it.

<comment><USER14> I'm getting the same error: <http://tlrobinson.net>

I have GA, Disqus comments, TipJoy and Reddit badges, and a few other little things.

Maybe you could have an option to restrict it to your own domain name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe I'm just retarded, but I couldn't find the answer to my question on your site. Does your service just pound the exact page that's targeted, or does it follow links, submit forms, etc to try to simulate actual users?

<comment><AUTHOR> The simplest test you can run will just load a singe page, and all its dependencies (images etc) over and over again. However, if you register an account you can create your own load scripts that load different pages, with pauses in between. Paying users also get access to the recorder feature which allows you to record a session that you run in a new browser window - you surf around your site and click on things, POST forms, etc and when you're done you have a load script automatically generated that will let your simulated clients do the same thing.

We don't currently have any "crawler" mode though, where the system tries to follow links etc on the site automatically.

<comment><USER16> Wow, the recorder option sounds really cool. I didn't see that when I first scanned the site. Maybe highlight a bit more somewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah we only allow paying users to even see the recorder, which is probably something we need to change I think. We want to give paying users extra features, but we also need to show people what extra features they can get, otherwise they won't know if it's worth to start paying. I guess more help/documentation would help, but it would be nice if there was a way for people to test a feature before they sign up to pay. Suggestions are appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I see a potential legal problem with the way the stress test is "authorized". The thing is that web server access (putting the "loadimpact.txt" file in the server) is not exactly the same as web site ownership.

My paranoid mind can think of an scenario like this (INAL so I maybe be off): a web master asks for the load test, this is done and the site goes down for a while, incurring a monetary loss (loss in sales for example). The owner sues the testing company for a 'DoS' and the testing company has no way to prove that it was authorized (what text file, there's none!).

I personally wouldn't do a stress test on a server without written authorization of the owner. The way I would implement this on an online service is by asking the target web site and the email address, where this address has to be in the public whois information. Then I'd send a special message to that email address and by replying the owner gives authorization (this way I'd have something from the official email address). This is not a 'written authorization' but comes as close as it can and the whois email address is used for domain transactions etc so it has the same level of protection/legal procedure behind.

</comment><comment><USER18> Of course you should permit to run such tests only if you are sure you are dealing with site owners or their representatives. You can use the system that is used in Google webmasters tools - users can confirm their ownership by adding specific document or meta-tag. Also - registration system's usability is not perfect. But the idea is great - I would use this service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this is something we have thought about also. We already have this security feature that uses a special file (loadimpact.txt) on the target system(s) to verify that it's OK to run large-scale tests. We should probably improve on that and allow people to bypass the other checks if they have this file. It is the safest way we have to verify that a test is legal, so we should give it more priority before other checks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You guys should offer a daily or limited time use rate. I would think many sites dont need to load test every month. But instead when they are first building an infrastructure or making upgrades.

One of the sites I am working on now is moving to a new codebase. We wanted to load test for a few hours but found everything we looked at to be too expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is actually on its way also. We're going to offer a "single test" option, where a user gets to use the system for an hour. But maybe we should make it 24 hours instead?

<comment><USER19> Maybe charge a similar way to how you are doing monthly... 1-5 tests are X dollars 5-20 tests X more dollars. A single test is only useful if you want know what your system can physically handle. If you are trying to tweak settings to get the most optimal configuration, multiple tests will obviously be needed.

Can you handle very large sites? I assume your system is in the cloud and scales as needed?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't want to make the different subscription offers too complicated, which is why we've stayed away from having people pay per number of tests executed, or similar. I agree that people will want to tweak and run several tests, but a 1-day subscription sounds pretty reasonable then, I think, no?

We currently simulate max 5,000 concurrent users on a site and that is something our own servers can handle, so right now we're not using cloud services. We do have support for running the backend on a cloud though - we've been testing it and it works very well. If customers start asking about running larger tests, then we will probably implement a cloud backend mode that will feature a much, much larger traffic-generating capability (but also be more expensive).

<comment><USER19> I think a 1 day subscription makes sense. But from your own usage standpoint, theres a significant difference between running 1 or 2 tests and running 100 in a day. 5,000 seems like a good start. I'm looking for bigger :)

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How is it different from the freely available ab and httperf?

Refs:

<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/programs/ab.html>

<http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/httperf/>

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends in what way you mean. It generates traffic and measures performance in a similar way as ab/httperf. The biggest difference is that it is an online service, which means you don't need to own any servers yourself to run ab or httperf on. You don't have to install or configure ab/httperf, and you get results nicely formatted as graphs with no extra work on your part and test configurations and results are always available to you, on the web.

If you have the time, knowledge, interest and a server to spare, then ab or httperf (or I would recommend the Grinder - <http://grinder.sourceforge.net/> ) is definitely worth a try however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really like both the idea and the site.

One feature request that would have me signup in an instant is if you could provide web service load testing as well.

I'd also like to know more about the session recorder and if I can feed parameterized data into the scripts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, and while I'm at it: thank you very much everybody for all the great feedback. It is very appreciated!

The session recorder is pretty cool, we think. We have managed to make it zero-configuration (i.e. no user configuration necessary) while still being able to handle client-side javascript. There are other HTTP session recorders out there, but to be able to handle javascript they're usually implemented as a true HTTP proxy that you have to configure your browser to use, or they're a browser plugin that you have to download and install.

The recorder outputs a load script that you can edit afterwards, if you want. However, the load script is currently more of a "list" of things to load, with pauses in between. It has no logic, conditional statements etc. and does not support parameterized data. This is something we intend to change soon though. It just needs some thought so we don't open up new possibilities for abuse/overuse of resources when we let users execute their own load script code on our systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So, what can I learn about these results:

[http://loadimpact.com/result/www.improvingtheweb.com-b75533d...](http://loadimpact.com/result/www.improvingtheweb.com-b75533d03c65a3892b30ce9dbb9051f9)

<comment><AUTHOR> The graph is pretty flat, which indicates the test is not really putting any stress on your server. The load added does not make much of a difference for improvingtheweb.com. One thing we need to put more effort in, I think, is to communicate these things. What can you learn from a graph, what are the prerequisites for getting good test results (in this case, more load would be a good thing).

I think there is a lot we need to do to explain things better. That is the most difficult part of all.

<comment><USER23> I think there's also a lot of value in personalized recommendations.

i.e. Load increased with the following stress pattern, which can indicate an improvement is needed in areas A, B, and C.

<comment><USER24> second that. Maybe something similar to ySlow? <http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a good start, though not as comprehensive as we're used to. Currently we use WAPT which is significantly more comprehensive while still maintaining the ease of use that most other comprehensive tools lack.

That said, it would be great to incorporate some of their features such as different scenarios, load patterns, particular series of pages, random, etc. It would be great to not have to have a dedicated resource to run the stress tests, it's also tricky to know if the local bandwidth can properly emulate x number of machines.

</comment><comment><USER26> Very nice. Are you guys using any off-the-shelf tools for the load testing, or is it all custom? (and if so, what language? Erlang?)

Also, is there a way to simulate more than 5000 users?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is mostly custom. The load generator is written in C and using libCURL - <http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl>

5,000 users is what one single instance of the non-threaded load generator can simulate today. We have some optimizations we can make that should improve this though, and we are also going to implement multi-source/multi-program load generation that means we can distribute the load generation for a single test over several processes and several load generator hosts. Using only our own infrastructure I think we can scale the system quite a lot, but obviously, if we want to run really large simulations with several hundred thousand, or millions, of simulated users, then we need to buy cloud server capacity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Works well, i did like it, however i have two comments: -Please be able to get <http://www.mywebsite.com> , www.mywebsite.com , mywebsite.com , <http://mywebsite.com> and lastly the good case <http://www.mywebsite.com>

-I believe that you'd have much more success if you charged on a test basis, your monthly billing might scare people away.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm interested in how many paid registrations posting here on HN resulted in. It seems like a pretty positive response here and a great tool! Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. We have had a ton of visits and a good number of registrations, although only a handful of paid accounts as of yet. But that's OK, it's natural that people want to try before they buy. We hope they'll convert once they have tested the service a bit.

If you ask me, however, I'd say that the feedback we are getting here is what's really invaluable. It will help us improve the service a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Under the "Need help interpreting your graph?" section all the graphs lead to the same explanation! Need to have a different explanation for each one.

</comment><comment><USER30> On the free results page at the bottom there are some FAQ graphs, but they all link to the same place.

<comment><AUTHOR> About the graphs, we're going to add more info about different graph types but for now we just have one help text explaining "strange" graphs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How does it compare to <http://litmusapp.com/> ?

<comment><USER8> Another online service is <http://www.soasta.com> which is $1k/hour (cloud- buzzword heavy but slick UI)

<comment><AUTHOR> Litmus is more about functionality/compatibility testing, unless I'm mistaken, while our service is all about performance testing.

Soasta does essentially the same thing as we do although they are a lot more expensive and aim for larger clients.

Traditionally, load testing has been both difficult and expensive, which is why mostly larger organizations have been doing it. Soasta I think has therefore aimed for this segment while we're betting on a larger, but so far unproven, market among small- and medium sized companies.

<comment><USER8> Best of luck to you, I think it's a good strategy. I'd be surprised to find _any_ small business that would pay Soasta at those prices. $1k/hour is the kind of money where I would hire someone instead to build a in-house solution via EC2 etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I get this message on my personal domain: "This configuration contains addresses that has been tested too many times the last 24 hours"

Does this mean somebody is DOSsing my site through your service?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it is most likely because your site is loading some object - <USER2> urchin.js from google-analytics.com - that a lot of other tests have been loading also. That means that our security checks will think someone is trying to DOS google-analytics.com and so stop your test. We have a list of exclusions that the system should not bother checking (such as google- analytics.com) but the list is not complete so people run into this problem frequently right now.

I am going to fix so that we inform people what the offending URL/object is (rather than just saying "one of the systems involved in the test..."), so they can remove it from their load scripts (if you're a registered user you can edit your load scripts before starting a load test) and also contact us and ask us to put new systems into our exclusion list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Here's the test on Google.com:

[http://loadimpact.com/result/google.com-398c66a059f3ab3c096b...](http://loadimpact.com/result/google.com-398c66a059f3ab3c096be74fd5d2dab1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Strange, 50 simulated clients don't seem to stress Google much :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I love the site, HATE the pricing. I'd really like to pay for the service, but what I REALLY need is:

1) Run several low user tests (200-300) to tweak server settings, app code, etc. 2) Then run one or two big tests (1000+) just once to see the results.

I MIGHT need this at most once a month. That just isn't worth $200 per month. I'd much prefer a subscription for the lower levels of consistent use, and then be able to purchase an additional once-off very large test for maybe $10-20 each.

</comment><comment><USER35> You are testing from Europe somewhere by the look of it. Many people have scattered servers now. It would be good to be able to test from non-European locations.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have two load generator nodes right now. One in Stockholm, Sweden and one in Chicago, US. The default node is the Stockholm one, however, and only paying users are allowed to choose what load generator they use. If people want more locations we'll be happy to set up more nodes in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Cool service! I tried it out and might get an account for testing with more users.

</comment><comment><USER37> Nice site, but how is this different from siege?

[http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2007/12/06/siege-an-httphttps- stre...](http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2007/12/06/siege-an-httphttps-stress- tester/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Siege is just another load testing software. The new thing here is that we offer load testing as an online service. No need to install, configure or maintain any special software or hardware. Test configurations and results are always accessible, on the web.

If you're interested in running your own load testing software I would recommend the Grinder - <http://grinder.sourceforge.net> \- which is very nice and flexible. If you need to generate a lot of load, curl-loader might be of interest - <http://curl-loader.sourceforge.net>

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What would happen if I tried load testing loadimpact.com?

<comment><USER39> I tried it, and it wouldn't let me as it had been tested too much in the last 24 hours

<comment><USER40> it let me run a test on <http://127.0.0.1/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, I'm filing a bug report about that right away. Thanks.

<comment><USER6> You may want to exclude entire 127.0.0.1 - 127.255.255.255 range, all of which is reserved for the localhost.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've filed a ticket about excluding 127/8, private network IPv4 address space, and multicast address space. Anything I forgot?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm interested in giving it a shot but site isn't opening. Is it just me?

<comment><USER42> <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/loadimpact.com/></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone ever been in a peer group/mastermind group? Why? Did it Help? - <AUTHOR>

I'm thinking of looking into one of these type groups to help me build my business (if you don't know what it is, it's basically like a group of no more than 15 of your peers that support each other to help grow one anothers business).<p>Has anyone here ever paid for one of these things or know someone that has joined something similar?  Was it worth it? <comment><USER2> I see mastermind groups working and let me tell you everyone that participates realizes a great value from it. The ideas that flow and new opportunities that come from that special moment when you say I knew that but never thought of it that way. Your business can grow greatly, in a short time, when these groups are formed. The downside is being part of a group that just wants to meet socially or you maybe not wanting to share certain aspects, (statements of confidentiality need to be signed), if the group is run to train the business owner, expand the thinking, hold the members accountable to accounting policies, other proven business principals and letting the group act like a board, the benefits are enormous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, thanks for you input. The sharing confidential things is what I'm worried about too. Are the non-disclosures usually enough to overcome most fears? Also, are the people you see participating paying fees to participate?</comment></comment>


What we've learned from making Recurse Center 50% women, trans, and non-binary - <AUTHOR> https://www.recurse.com/blog/148-what-we-have-learned-from-seven-years-working-to-make-rc-50-percent-women-trans-and-non-binary <comment><USER2> After reading the full report, I actually have a lot of respect for the author, even though I personally support leaving gender and race out of it. I also have minor gripes as well about "women, trans, or non-binary" \- I believe a more fair representation of the underserved in programming would be women, minorities, or older people - but hey, I'm not running the program, and I have no stakeholder value in it, so who am I to comment on what they want to promote?

My gripes aside, I believe there is value in creating a program for people who want to learn programming but struggle to do so in other environments. Programming is not some sacred art reserved for nobility or certain personality types, it's a skill that anyone can and should pick up. Even if most don't become a rigorous full time engineer at google, it's still an empowering skill that should be accessible to anyone.

Accessibility of training should be universal; earning money as a programmer should be skill based. These values do not conflict - I think there are underserved classifications of individuals that, if given the training, would become great programmers. But I also think that diversity in programming will never happen to the degree the article wants it to. I'm happy to be proven wrong, I just don't think it will happen.

Saying that "accessibility of training should be universal" is me playing armchair policy maker, because I have done nothing to make that happen, nor do I intend to, and the amount of effort to make that happen is quite large. That's why I have respect for the author, who, despite my disagreeances with his political leanings, does something about it, especially in a rational and strategic way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I honestly supposed to believe they achieved this without employing discriminatory hiring practices? The demographics of people applying for jobs in this industry is so far from 50% that I'm extremely skeptical of this. Although with a certain amount of effort I'm sure they simply reduce the number of male applicants. Personally I'd be reluctant to apply somewhere that had this stance on diversity because it seems more likely I'd get crucified for some micro aggression I didn't commit if I ever pissed anyone off.

I mean I get there's this whole meme of "reverse discrimination" not existing or being possible because of systemic whatever the fuck, but considering I've only been in this industry for six years and I've already seen blatant and concrete examples of this behavior that went entirely unpunished, I think it's ridiculous that people treat you like some kind of fascist for even disagreeing with it. I'm not okay with sacrificing basic principles of equality or human decency in the pursuit of more ideal outcomes.

<comment><USER4> Well, it's a learning center, not hiring, so I imagine they probably _can_ get away with things that employers could not get away with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> These are fantastic ideas. I feel like the pseudonym idea alone would make such a difference.

On the downside, now I have to accept no one ever thinks of me as Temperature Jeans.

<comment><USER6> The pseudonym thing seems like a good idea even when not concerned about leaking demographic information, as people often have different associations with names.

Sometimes there's an article on the issue (example [1]), but just in general, "Bob Hart" might have a slightly different feeling from "Alexander Montgomery".

[1]: [https://www.success.com/10-ways-your-name-affects-your- life/](https://www.success.com/10-ways-your-name-affects-your-life/)</comment></comment>


Emotions Every User Enjoys - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gaborcselle.com/2012/05/eight-emotions-every-user-enjoys.html

<comment><USER2> Every user enjoys? As an introvert, I don't enjoy being flooded with faces like on Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just what we goddamn need. More "user psychology" distilled down into a short list without any discussion of what it means to make good software, encourage good behavior, or contribute something meaningful to a user's life.

Give 'em fucking faces and controversy! No chance _that'll_ make the world a slightly shittier place.

</comment><comment><USER4> _Very_ insightful. I don't think I've seen this list all in one place before.

</comment><comment><USER5> Boost the users ego. Facebook does this well and I have a sneaking suspicion it was never intentional. The whole impetus to create it was born out of human nature and the user engagement just flowed from there. At this point people post to Facebook to show off how cool and interesting their lives are. Facebook gets this right in so many ways. It's fast, easy, and you get lots of reinforcement in the form of likes. The fact that the whole thing just naturally came together is what really made it. Unfortunately not every web app can make it flow like them. The more thought you have to put into how you'll evoke these emotions you have to put in, the more evidence there probably is to suggest your app just doesn't lend itself well to it. That said, not all apps need to evoke emotions to be successful. Serving a basic utilitarian purpose and doing it well is often enough. Google Drive comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess this is covered somwhat by the first word of #6, "Simplicity, clarity, efficiency, safety."

However, I believe that is far more important and deserves better emphasis. "Simplicity" in the sense of "just let me do something I want to do."

Users want to be able to order an omelet. They feel best when you just bring them an omelet. They are okay with answering a question with what kind of omelet they want and being presented with a brief list of the omelets on the menu.

They are NOT okay with you asking them: how many eggs? how long should we cook it? iron skillet or teflon? wooden or plastic spatula? ... or rubber? How many plates should I bring it on? Jesus, just bring me an omelette, will you! I'm not trying to make an omelette here - I want YOU to do it!

There is a comment to the article that says "How about control or choice?" I respectfully disagree with that. The list is emotions " _every user_ " enjoys.

Loads of users are put off by both control and choice, and implicitly rank it far below other 'emotions' (as used by this article).

At the moment I'm typing on a keyboard I have no idea how to remap, listening to music at 100.00% of the speed it is meant to be played at and at the same frequency, using WIFI by simply entering a code off the router and being glad I wasn't confronted with any settings. No idea how to adjust the speed my microwave platter rotates at: and that's the way I likes it.

Don't you prefer a washing machine that maybe lets you select "half load" but otherwise just makes you turn it to whites, 60 degrees or colors, 40 degrees - rather than having a wheel with 26 settings, with an 8 column by 4 row chart somewhere with laundry symbols explaining which of the 26 settings on the wheel you need, and next to the wheel a separate row of 6 on-off toggle switches each also having an obscure symbol or single letter abbreviation on it?

Granted, if someone has taken the time to learn what the laundry symbols mean (quick: which one is wool? answer key: <http://www.care- labelling.co.uk/whatsymbolsmean.html>) they may be interested in picking something more specific.

But for "every user" I think "control and choice" rank far below "I'm using you because I want YOU to do it."</comment>


Android First CVE's of the Year - <AUTHOR> https://blog.firosolutions.com/exploits/android-cve-2020-0001/ <comment><USER2> First blood</comment>


Ask HN: Small Venue Ticket Sales - <AUTHOR>

Is there anyone doing ticket sales for small clubs and little venues?  A friend just told me about an acoustic music venue being quoted $25,000 for a system coded in PHP.  That sounds steep to me.  Are there turnkey solutions to be had for less? <comment><USER2> Ticketfly, ticketbiscuit and ticketleap.</comment>


A Battle Over Who Discovered the First Earth-Like Planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/11/exoplanets/

<comment><USER2> I can't help thinking that this is a pointless, egocentric, argument. What does "discover" mean when your work is built on the works of others? Without the people building the instruments and the telescopes, without the people first finding all the not-quite-Earth like planets, none of this would happen. The two discoveries are clearly within the error bar of simultaneity, the way things happen in science.

<comment><USER3> It may seem pointless, but when handing out Nobel prizes they don't go to the people that made the reagents or centrifuges. It also doesn't go to every author cited in the prize winning paper.</comment></comment>


Money as Debt [vid] - <AUTHOR> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544#

<comment><USER2> saw this a while back - interesting video. wondering what the implications are for current climate considering there's less lending going on today.</comment>


LinuxMint 15 delivers smooth alternative to Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2013/080513-linux-mint-test-272497.html

<comment><USER2> Mint packages browsers to make money off of them, including the very questionable use of OpenDNS advertising pages as fallbacks for hostnames that are not found.

<comment><USER3> Considering my ISP does the same, I'd say that's a minor inconvenience. I mean it's not like searching the desktop will send results to Amazon et al.

I'm wiling to tolerate that just to not have to put up with Unity malarkey. Besides that (though I haven't tried 15 yet), I was able to dual boot 14 on my old Dell Inspiron 8200 and use it as an OK browsing rig. This was intolerable with Ubuntu.

<comment><USER4> > it's not like searching the desktop will send results to Amazon et al.

But it is similar - if you use web applications in your every day life, then a misspelling may well send your misspelled info to Amazon, if they advertise through OpenDNS (though I'm unfamiliar with how OpenDNS works).

<comment><USER3> Here's some info on their advertising :

[http://www.opendns.com/support/article/76](http://www.opendns.com/support/article/76)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is one thing i hate of Mint and is the fact that it doesn't support dist-upgrade. Looking in the user guide of mint they suggest to "reinstall from scratch the os when there is a new version of Mint". Seriously, wtf. The direct os upgrade is one of my favorite features of linux and they just windowsized it.

<comment><USER6> If you put /home on its own partition [1], reinstalling linux from scratch becomes really easy, better than dist-upgrade imho.

Backup your packages [2], overwrite / with the CD/DVD/USB installer, tell the installer to use the existing /home as the new installation's /home, then reinstall your backed up packages [2]. Any software you don't get from the repositories, keep on /home (git repos, JVM, etc).

This essentially makes the system files disposable, rewriteable, overwriteable, reinstallable at will, while all the custom config and personal data resides on /home. Keep /home backed up to multiple media. Makes upgrading to a new version relatively painless, and you get the benefit of a fresh install.

1\. [http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-partplan/i...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-partplan/index.html)

2\. [http://askubuntu.com/a/81112/20362](http://askubuntu.com/a/81112/20362)

<comment><USER5> I know perfectly that and infact i ever put /home in a different partition, as /boot and /var, but the big part of the config files are not in the /home but in /etc and i will lose all of them each time i have to reinstall from scratch.

Dist-upgrade is one of the main advantage of a lot of distribution not rolling, and it has ever worked perfectly for me ( i remember having a ubuntu wm with 9.10 upgraded without problem since 12.04. After that i didn't need it more). Also thanks to that i have not to teach to my parents how to format and reinstall an os, they just need to press a button when the os itself warns them that there is a new version ready to download.

It just that mint developers are more focused on make money spamming their ads everywhere rather that implement that basic feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> LinuxMint has been delivering a good alternative to Ubuntu for a while now.

But I feel a lot of LinuxMint users are using it for the simple fact that it isn't Ubuntu, because running Ubuntu isn't hip anymore.

<comment><USER8> Unity is pretty terrible, and a huge step backwards.

Mint reverts the huge step backwards.

<comment><USER9> It is only huge step backward _for you_. Because you are a developer who wants a snappy desktop (and not that half-poisoned koala that tends to go to sleep and do some power saving all the time).

But you _are_ a developer. So you _can_ tweak a few things and get a nice, snappy system out of Ubuntu. Here's a start:

      * install linux-image-xxxxxx-lowlatency;
      * boot it with idle=mwait intel_idle.max_cstate=3
      * #disable ipv6:
        net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
        net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
        net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1
      * # less swappy than default 60
        vm.swappiness = 1
        vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 50
      * install latest graphics drivers to support that 3d desktop monstrosity;
      * disable all desktop effects;

Do that, plus a few more tweaks, and you will have it out of Ubuntu. On a fast modern box your terminal window will finally stop lagging ;)

<comment><USER10> It's unclear why the desktop effects are on by default in the first place without hardware accelerated drivers. The first boot up of an ubuntu image results in my swearing at an unresponsive terminal.

But at least I can see through the window! We all know that's a usability _must_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Linux Mint still doesn't support expert install,[1] which is a basic requirement of mine. (I think it should be renamed to intermediate install.)

One reason why I prefer expert install is because the last time I tried the standard install, it didn't seem to allow /home to be encrypted with dm-crypt, only eCryptfs. I encrypt /home with dm-crypt because when I last searched for comparisons of eCryptfs and dm-crypt performance (2012), I read that dm-crypt is faster.[2][3][4][5][6][7]

[1] [http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=133968](http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=133968)

[2] [http://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/ssd-linux- benchmark](http://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/ssd-linux-benchmark)

[3] [http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1110088-AR-1110066AR56](http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1110088-AR-1110066AR56)

[4] [http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/reviews/the-best-file- encryption-...](http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/reviews/the-best-file-encryption- software-in-open-source)

[5] [http://askubuntu.com/questions/100752/how-does-ecryptfs- impa...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/100752/how-does-ecryptfs-impact- harddisk-performance)

[6] [http://askubuntu.com/questions/138820/why-is-ecryptfs-so- slo...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/138820/why-is-ecryptfs-so-slow-when- running-du-s)

[7] [http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/53191](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/53191)

</comment><comment><USER12> I liked this parting jab:

> subject to the mysteries of UEFI boots and the lunacy of diffuse BIOS > variations that make installation of non-Windows operating systems on modern > notebooks a travesty

<comment><USER13> Hell yes, I've posted about this before.

Due to issues with bootloader, I've lost my other Linux installations. And the inability for the installer to format the right hard drive even when you tell it which one to format is really a shame for the audience Mint is suppose to be for.

I mean don't get me wrong Mint is great, but the installer sucks horribly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've gone back to Debian after I grew sick and tired of Ubuntu. Wheezy is one, very smooth distribution, super stable, highly recommend it!

<comment><USER15> I learned Linux through Ubuntu, and I'm thinking of trying Debian. I want my daily desktop work to be on a distro that has a good parallel server distro. I don't administer servers every day, so it really helps if I can use a server that is closely tied with my laptop's distro.

<comment><USER16> Ubuntu hath not a good parallel server distro? It's quite suitable imo.

<comment><USER15> Late reply, but just saw your response. I use ubuntu servers whenever I need to set up a server. I meant that if I move to a different distro on my desktop, I want to use a distro that also has a server version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "LinuxMint Developer Edition (LMDE)" \-- [http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2013/080513-linux- mint-t...](http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2013/080513-linux-mint- test-272497.html?page=2)

// WTF!

<comment><USER18> A small oversight to be sure. [lol]

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I use it cause cinnamon is amazeballs.. Even though you can get it on Ubuntu.

I used to use #! just for blackbox or what ever their GUI was.

But I must say, upgrading Linux Mint is a lot harder then upgrading Ubuntu.

<comment><USER3> This is the one complaint I have about Mint. Since most of my things are on external drives, I've resorted to the wipe/install method of "upgrading" just so I can avoid the hassle. It's not a deal breaker by any stretch, but I do hope they can change this to be more streamlined in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I left Ubuntu for Fedora, because It offers a better GNOME Shell experience, I still try Ubuntu GNOME every new release, but till now Fedora feels faster and more stable.

</comment><comment><USER21> I left Ubuntu/Debian/Mint for Arch and haven't looked back. True it's a ton of config more to deal with than Mint, but the documentation via the wiki and the community are solid. I've learned a lot thanks to diving head first into Arch.

<comment><USER22> yah I like breaking updates. that thrill whenever I do pacman -Syu

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Obligatory: [http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/108/8/0/i_can__t_conf...](http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/108/8/0/i_can__t_configure_debian_by_carnine9-d4wkixt.png)

</comment><comment><USER24> I switched to LMDE after I discovered Debian 6 used Gnome3 by default...I actually really like MATE, the "start menu" is really good, and it is easily customizable to make it look like Gnome2 otherwise.

<comment><USER25> stopped using LMDE a while ago and went back to Debian because there seemed no real developement going on in LMDE anymore and stuff breaking more often. how is it now?

my best friend is always a debian testing netinstall and I can do what I want.</comment></comment>


Fast Trader Pulled a Fast One on Some Customers - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-17/fast-trader-pulled-a-fast-one-on-some-customers <comment><USER2> > So when the SIP says that the price of a stock is $40.02, Citadel knows that > it's really $40.01, so it can buy the stock at $40.01 and sell it to you for > $40.016 for a guaranteed risk-free profit.

This implies that Citadel is buying the stock before selling it to you. I doubt that's the case as waiting for the ack from the exchange before handing the latency would be too high, more likely that Citadel assumes it is likely that it can buy it for that price at the same time that it is selling it to you (and that's seems what's implied in the FastFill description). That's not guaranteed profit as Citadel is taking a risk (albeit small) as its buy at the better price might not be filled.

edit: and in fact the article later says that this risk-free arbitrage is not really risk free.

<comment><USER3> > This implies that Citadel is buying the stock before selling it to you.

Large firms do this business as usual. They maintain inventory and sell it to their customers directly, while still reporting the trade to the market audit trail. This is usually done by the private brokerage side of the firm executing all trades through the public investment side, and the investment side just executes the trade against the house inventory instead of a third party buyer/seller in the market.

<comment><USER2> Of course they do, but if they don't get a guaranteed buy on the exchange at the current best price, they can't guarantee profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article was about retail customers and exchanges. Sounds like they made not much money with that.

What the article left out is that everyone learned that this type of race arbitrage can be done. As a result a number of private microwave networks was build and this type of trade is done on a much larger scale between the exchanges now prompting institutional investors to question the fairness of the deal they are given.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nifty. The microsecond gamers even salami slice run of the mill orders to skim profit from you.

<comment><USER6> I think you missed part of the article. Citadel's actions lead to lower prices for retail. Their actions are saving you money

"But the weirdest part is that Citadel is selling you the stock for a lower price than what's available on the public exchanges. For instance, if the public exchange shows the stock offered at $40.02, Citadel will sell you that same stock for $40.016, saving you like 40 cents on a 100-share order. (This is called "price improvement.") It's giving you a (slightly) better deal than you'd get elsewhere!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> allowing sub-penny executions by some effectively steals trades from risk takers on primary exchanges; it's horrible for market structure and depth. the sub-penny problem is a function of another insidious practice, payment for order flow. both should be banned.

<comment><USER8> A dead comment by "lintiness" also happened to use the phrase "of another insidious practice" \- coincidence?

<comment><USER9> Nonetheless I find the comment in both its incarnations civil, insightful and substantive (though contrarian), and I don't think it ought to be dead.

<comment><USER8> I disagree that the post is 'substantive'. Opinions are shared, possibly reasonable one, but there is no further substance to them. I also consider words like 'steal' to be loaded in that context.

The problem is, this raises the question of sock-puppets being used; even if they don't appear to be employed as expected.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CERN Officially Unveils Its Grid: 100,000 Processors, 15 Petabytes a Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cern_officially_unveils_its_gr.php

<comment><USER2> There has never been a peer-reviewed comparison between the much hyped GRID ruled by CERN, and say more discrete distributed supercomputers, like the Storm or Kraken in terms of reliability, scalability (do you get spam?) configurability (how quickly does your new address get spam?). It would pail in comparison to the half dozen underground grids, not to mention a fair comparison with EC2, GOOG back-end etc.

Actually, most experiments, doing "serious" work opted to have their own farms, which they can handle as they please (configuration, versioning etc. -- most of the grid is still struggling with RHEL3 and gcc3, most of what sane people cannot put up with). Parallelization amounts to breaking up data to chunks and running the same dll in multiple instances -- no notion of threading, let alone locking (no dependencies).

</comment><comment><USER3> 100,000 processors is a big-sounding number, but it might be less interesting than the glue holding them together in this case. The dedicated 10Gbps pipe allows much more interesting problems to be solved than a traditional grid computer (unless the grid computer uses P2P).

One of the biggest problems that we always face with big grid computers is that we either need computations that can be broken up into very small parts and have very high compute/io ratios - or else we send bigger chunks of data with VERY long computations to the grid nodes.

<comment><USER4> > The dedicated 10Gbps pipe allows much more interesting problems to be solved > than a traditional grid computer (unless the grid computer uses P2P).

Particularly as this article implies CERN is connected by dedicated 10Gbps links to sites in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Taipei, UK and the USA.</comment></comment>


Motorola Releases Source for GPS Watch - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/motorola/motoactv/news/2012/11/motoactv-release-1711-source-code-available/

<comment><USER2> motoactv source has been available for a while. I guess this is just an update?</comment>


What do you do with your old tech? - <AUTHOR> I got too much crap, it's not just tech but, the tech is what I'm most conflicted about. My stash includes a Timex Sinclair, a couple of Atari 800s and Mac classics (no keyboards), a ColecoVision and a VIC 20, a Commodore 128 and quite a few Commodore 64s with associated 1541 drives and other supporting pieces/parts as well as numerous beige boxes from 386s on up
I know part of it is sentimental [0] since I ran a BBS or two on the C64s and some of the IBMs. My issue seems to stem from the tech still being operational (especially the Commodores) but not being useful besides a reflection of the past. [1] Its part sunk cost as well
I'm reaching out as a sanity check to see if there any ideas to utilize any of this besides the recycling bin. I do not want to become the Weird Stuff Warehouse [2] for my area but I'd rather not just chucking everything out if there's a better use that I haven't thought of or about
[0] Ask HN: Do you become emotionally attached to your old tech? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14844979
[1} Ask HN: What do you do with old technical books? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14595576
[2] The Weird Stuff Warehouse is where old tech goes to retire
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5777858 <comment><USER2> Hoarding tech is a problem. It's hard to get rid of tech that works but it's outdated. It has no values except as a curiosity. There were over 12 million C64's made and that was decades ago. I bet there are still millions in peoples home. When was the last time you turned any of it on?

Best thing to do is to get the data erased and give it away if possible. If not, take it to an electronics recycler. Do it all in one shot, otherwise, you will feel regret and stop. Old tech will not help you in any way. It just gets in your way.

</comment><comment><USER3> You should sell it. Or use it.

I purged all but a few fun pieces I do use. Most of that use is entertainment, learning projects.

Others will find homes for that gear, they just need to know about it. Post in the relevant forums.</comment>


PyPy 7.2 Released - <AUTHOR> https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2019/10/pypy-v72-released.html <comment><AUTHOR> Highlights:

\- aarch64 support

\- faster JSON decoding

\- more stdlib modules are cffi-based

\- Python 3.6 support no longer marked "beta"</comment>


Show HN: Friend Flights, flight deals to travel with friends in different cities - <AUTHOR> http://findfriendflights.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone!

My friend Luke and I made friend flights to help you find cheap tickets to meet up with friends.

For example, if you're in SF and your friend is in NYC, you'll get cheap fare alerts for flights to Guatemala, China, etc.

We do this by finding cheap flight deals across the web, and are working on integrating more standard flight price data sources as well.

This is definitely a v1, with a lot of the work right now being us emailing out flight deals to people. Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see from this, if you have any questions, or if you have any feedback -- especially if you happen to know a lot about flight prices :)</comment>


Laid-Off Tech Worker Kills 3 in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Office-Park-Slayings.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin <comment><USER2> <http://www.siport.com/> : _SiPort is a fabless semiconductor company, incorporated in 2004, that received its first round of funding in 2005._

Sounds like they design ASICs for portable devices (audio, video decoders). Or perhaps "designed".

<http://www.siport.com/management.htm> : _The system cannot find the file specified._

How morbidly apt.

<comment><USER3> There's a lot of fabless IC design startups around here in Silicon Valley and some of them are run like white-collar sweatshops. Second-rate engineers are imported from China or India with low pay but the lure of H1-B sponsorship to work on designs in hopes of flipping it to a bigger semiconductor company or back to OEMs in Asia.

This might be what happened but I think his project, or maybe the whole startup since they ride or die on a single product, got fubared and he was let go. He might be in the middle of relocating to the US or trying to get his family over, or maybe the company screwed him over on pay.

Either way, it's not an excuse to kill but that might be the motive. He probably already landed back in China by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised at comments here condoning the murder. Getting fired from your job is no excuse for taking someone's life. I don't care what the economy is like - I don't think this guy deserves sympathy, especially not from an educated, smart community like this. Millions of people have lost jobs before, and they've struggled, tried hard, and moved on without resorting to violence.

I know a family member of one of the victims, and they didn't deserve this.

<comment><USER5> Some people were just speculating what the motive(s) might be. I read nearly all of the other posts before getting to yours and didn't notice any even imply that it was justified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> it was bound to happen eventually. Isn't TC's tracking of layoffs now up to something like 60K people in the last 2 weeks?

With odds like that, it'll be impossible to find a new job...add on top of that the crappy stock market that wiped out people's savings, the downturn in the economy that slashed new job opportunities and many people simply won't be able to survive(hell this guy had a mortgage payment on top of everything else).

So they turn to blaming the guy who made their life miserable. And that would be the guy in charge, who yanked the ground from under their feet.

<comment><USER7> I am genuinely surprised more people don't go postal after layoffs. Maybe adult-aged people are just more likely to commit suicide alone or just bury their pride while they lose all their savings and move in with parents/friends.

<comment><USER6> yeah suicide I don't get at all...if you are going to kill yourself anyways...why not take the people who drove you to it with you?

Or do something wreckless w/o caring about consequences? Steal a Ferrari and drive it at 180 mph w/o a seatbelt until you crash or jump out of an airplane w/o a chute etc.

Slashing your wrists in a bathtub or eating a bullet alone by yourself just seems like a waste of an opportunity

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Police arrest alleged gunman in office park slayings that left 3 dead" <http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10993931>

<comment><USER9> Login-free link: <http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10993931?source=most_viewed>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always thought this kind of thing was always done by uneducated postal workers and the like. Pretty disheartening to see a fellow engineer act so stupidly.

Time to reconsider getting a concealed weapons permit I guess. Condolences to Agarwal and Pugh's (and anon woman's) families.

<comment><USER11> What will you do with the concealed weapon? Shoot his bullet in mid-air?

<comment><USER12> I think it's the placebo effect. That's why I carry a homeopathic concealed weapon: a small vial of water with some floating specs of rust in it.

<comment><USER13> You mean you are carrying a small vial of water that says it has rust in it, but doesn't actually (or at least has a very low probability of having a rust molecule).

<comment><USER12> That's more correct, actually, and I used to use one of those. But I decided it didn't have enough firepower. Now I prefer my homeopathic Death Star, in case I get attacked by a whole planet at once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this what the 80s recession felt like?

<comment><USER15> Yes, except for the feathered hair and skinny ties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is really sad. Recession or No-Recession, he would have done the same thing. I mean you can always cut your expenses, get a low paying job or go back to your home country(if you are an immigrant). His actions basically affected 3 families directly + also might indirectly bring uncertainty in the lives of other fellow colleagues at the startup.

</comment><comment><USER17> It makes me sad. Because the saddest news makes biggest headlines. And I hate this when people love disasters. I'd rather hear the success stories.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hacker News is not Slasher News or Shooter News. This is a generic crime story. Flagged.

</comment><comment> cool-RR holy shit.</comment>


FOXIT READER Now AVAILABLE ON MAC AND LINUX - <AUTHOR> https://www.foxitsoftware.com/company/press.php?id=408 <comment><USER2> No reason to scream... (please don't use all-caps headlines)</comment>


Alpha PALcode - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PALcode <comment><USER2> Interesting. Something slightly higher level than IBM's millicode.

It's a bit of a shame that Alpha is one of the promising RISC architectures that died.</comment>


Graph algorithms and software prefetching - <AUTHOR> https://lemire.me/blog/2018/05/24/graph-algorithms-and-software-prefetching/ <comment><USER2> I knew that he was wrong with his older don't __builtin_prefetch article[1], because my own benchmarks proved otherwise. But of course it depends on the structures (compile-time) and the data (run-time). With lots of randomly spread out data, prefetch might be too expensive, but when the e.g. a compacting GC aligned my data properly near each other it wins.

And of course for graphs: avoid the costly pointers, think of relative short links instead. And best: avoid graphs. Use trees or arrays (tries) instead.

BTW GraphQL is such a nonsense approach. A graph can contain pointers not only to parents and siblings, but even to any other random node, and by searching in a graph you can always run into endless cycles. That's why you avoid graphs in a database. You avoid the additional serialization or the hash table to fix the recursive cycles. That's why you use proper relations, trees, but for sure not "graphs" or "objects". Whenever a PM approaches you to use a this fancy new graph or object db, tell him that this is nonsense. You rather structure your data properly so that you can avoid graphs, the mostly costly of all data structures.

[1] [https://lemire.me/blog/2018/04/30/is-software-prefetching- __...](https://lemire.me/blog/2018/04/30/is-software-prefetching- __builtin_prefetch-useful-for-performance/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I worked on a large distributed machine learning pipeline. We used software prefetch via Intel instructions- the training algorithm knew that it would be operation on a bunch of examples in the memoryspace surrounding a fetched item, so it explicitly specified prefetech.

It was really hard to measure speedups; they would work fine if the code ran on an otherwise idle machine and had ample spare resources. But if another code ran on the machine and was hosing L2, the prefetch quickly caused performance to drop.

In retrospect, explicitly bundled data and explicit (software) prefetch worked more reliably under most scenarios.</comment>


Ask HN: Options to display weather info for world-wide locations? - <AUTHOR>

http:getLocalNe.ws - our new site has individual pages for about 9,000 locations across some 240 countries world-wide. We wish to display current weather info (buttons) for as many of these locations as we can.
We've already implemented AccuWether's code for all US locations (which appears to be working fine) and they do have a coverage of around 150 countries. We're already exploring this as well as a couple of other options.
Can HNers with some experience on this suggest some alternatives that we could look at?
Thanks in advance.
ps. If you're up to it, please review and provide feedback on the site too:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2305689 <comment><AUTHOR> Clickables:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2305689>

<http://getLocalNe.ws></comment>


Google reveals statistics on government requests of its data - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/

<comment><USER2> Clicking on China is interesting. I had no idea the Chinese government considered these things to be 'state secrets'. The data Google posted here isn't even information on what _exactly_ was removed / requested. It's only broad stroke information - How many requests - how often there was compliance - what time of content was requested removed.

I wonder if this information for China were released if there would be much outrage... I can imagine:

-Outrage with Google for how often they complied

-Outrage at China for the sheer number of requests

-Outrage at China for the types of content removed

All in all, releasing that information would probably hurt Google far more than it would hurt China.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget possible retribution upon any Google employees left in China as well.

<comment><USER4> Get real. Do you really believe the government will go after Google's Chinese employee?

<comment><USER5> Uh, yes?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China)

More specifically:

"On 17 Oct 2009, Reuters reported that Guo Quan a professor in Nanjing Teachers University was sentenced to 10 years in jail for "inciting Subversion" of Government. There are more than 40 people in jail for criticizing the government."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China#Political_freedom)

Threatening to provide or actually providing uncensored search results to the public could certainly be construed as inciting subversion.

<comment><USER4> So you think the government will go after the google employee because they are going public to support Google? Have you heard any Google Chinese employee "reportedly" supporting the employer and bashing Chinese government, even those living in US?

Do you know the full story of the 40 people in jail for criticizing the government? Do you know the population in China? Do you know how many people are jailed in US because of Patriot Act, with no reason and no trial?

<comment><USER4> For some reason I cannot reply your comment, maybe because my karma is too low now.

"Normal citizens, with full rights under the law, are being openly convicted and suffering harsh penalties for speaking out against the government."

I would argue, in most cases, they are not normal citizens, even though in western media, they are portrait as freedom fighter. I can even tell you how to find information to prove this point: check out the China Study program in John Hopkins University (the top one in US), and they will tell you the conclusion in political science field is the freedom fighters from the Tiananman Square in 1989 are extremists. I don't think the reporters will go out and interview those political scientists. There are other good China Study program you can get academic opinions from, including Univ. of Iowa (another top 1), UW is good as well.

I am not arguing with you that there is no human right issue in China. There are, but the problem is presented out of the context and in many cases with false information. I am only suggesting that people do more firsthand investigation and talk to Chinese for some full stories, but looks like I am getting enough down-votes now.

<comment><USER6> FYI, there is some throttling re. frequency of replies, the reply link wont show up (seems to give people time to think before replying :) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ha, Brasil is first. A friend of mine was the admin contact for the .br domain for a large internet company. When he went back to Brazil on a visit, he was summoned to the police station for questioning (!!) over some stolen credit cards that had been used on the site.

The law is pretty strict there about ownership and responsibility for what goes on on your servers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Brazil is probably a special case due to the heavy use of Orkut there. Indeed, 218 of its 291 removal requests are related to Orkut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Large map: <http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/transparency.html>

<comment><USER9> Data source: <http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/data.json>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Love the detailed stats for removal requests, but I'm more interested in data requests.

How often are they complied with, and what data did they want? On what grounds?

<comment><USER11> Related: Yahoo issued a takedown request when their guidelines and price sheet for "data requests" leaked in 2009:

<http://cryptome.org/0001/yahoo-cryptome.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe Google is gradually becoming the rebel it always claimed to be. Easier being a rebel if you're part of the system.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a bit unrelated, but does anyone know how google manages to make those three pages load without showing the refresh flash? It doesn't look like they are being loaded via AJAX so I can't figure it out...

<comment><USER14> The pages share a stylesheet that has a expiry date in the future.

<comment><USER13> Ahh thanks! Was wondering this for a long time. So does that mean the google logo needs the same?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think Brazil is in first because Google's products and services are widely used here.

I have yet to see anyone using a search engine that is not Google, and we have the majority of Orkut users (facebook, myspace? what's that?).

You don't hear about other video sites other than Youtube.

And there are only three types of emails in use: emails with more than 10 years from random domains, emails from Gmail and emails from Hotmail (and only because of the MSN messenger).

It's no surprise that our law enforcement has a really active connection with Google, especially because there's little fuss when important legislation regarding internet access passes, so it's a "nobody cares". But it's still scary to see the numbers.

<comment><USER16> Some interesting comments on Brazil here: <http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/overview.html>

eg: "We have a relatively high number of requests for information compared to other countries in part because we have such a large number of Brazilian users on orkut, our social networking site."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The breakdown by the type of removal requests is somewhat more telling than the raw numbers.

Brasil: 75% orkut

Germany: 52% web search, 38% YouTube

India: 84% orkut

US: 57% YouTube, 20% web search

<comment><USER18> That's not really telling considering that usage of orkut in Brazil and India is orders of magnitude higher than in the US or Germany.

<comment><USER19> I think the insinuation is that the takedown requests, though numerous, are usually for little stuff like high school bullying and DMCA enforcement rather than for political reasons or other much sketchier things.

<comment><USER20> Yes, it's probably not political stuff. Bullying, slander, fake accounts are rampant in Orkut.

Also, it used to have many security holes (maybe still has, I don't use it anymore) and Brazil has no shortage of script kiddies. So there many cases of hijacked accounts and communities.

<comment><USER20> s/there many/there have been many

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be interesting to see this data adjusted for "total usage", although it might be hard to quantify this.

For example, how about the number of requests per 100,000 Google "users" per service?

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm a fan of Google, but notice how they on the one hand posture as champions of freedom of information, but on the other hand do things like omit any commenting feature from pages like this, so the hard questions cannot be asked directly on the site. It's a kind of preemptive censorship-by-site-design, imho. Irony ftw.

</comment><comment><USER23> Honestly, I would be more interested in hearing about Google's requests of government data.

For example, the fact that they have tax parcel information showing up on the map in my neighborhood means that they also have the amount of taxes I paid, my name, and property value. I know this is all public information, but an "ordinary citizen" would have to walk to the courthouse and pay $1/page for a printed copy of the city records and then scan it back in. Did they really do this throughout the country?

<comment><USER24> >I know this is all public information, but an "ordinary citizen" would have to walk to the courthouse and pay $1/page for a printed copy of the city records and then scan it back in.

This definitely isn't the case everywhere. My county (not a particularly tech savvy one) has it all available online on their own website, including full assessment information on the house, your name, amount you paid in taxes, etc.. You just type in the address you want. Or, you can search by name instead of address!

<comment><USER23> Yes, but to get that information in bulk as Google would, you (usually) have to print it all out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm interested to know what book search the U.S. requested to remove.

</comment><comment><USER26> Iran is not on the list. Possibly they requested to be removed.

<comment><USER27> Iran simply blocks services it does not like.

There would be no point in Iran requesting info and removals from Google. Google would ignore them at best, or worse, publish the requests and make Iranian govt look like idiots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's really cool. I would like more details on "data request".. it's still very dark matter that doesn't really tell much about. It would be interesting to know how much "per person data requests" has been released. Brazil has more "data requests" than US, but it may happen that US requests that ALL user data is sent back every month, witch would count as 12 requests :)

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder what it means when some countries, like South Korea, have Street View removal requests even though they don't have Steet View itself.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's interesting to see that the continent of Africa has never made any requests.</comment>


Next Level : 5 Rules for a Rookie Tech Leader - <AUTHOR> http://nickapedia.com/2012/10/30/next-level-5-rules-for-a-rookie-tech-leader/

<comment><USER2> One of the rules mentioned hit me pretty hard: "Give out more praise than advice".

There is something to be said for having a person you can go to and get unvarnished feedback -- brutal feedback. I've always valued that type of person and strived to be that person for others. I think I've rationalized this as being a form of validation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there's value in that kind of person, but probably not as your direct manager.

If it was a mentor relationship then the unvarnished truth is pretty much what you need to hear.</comment></comment>


Dear British Government: You've Screwed Up (Startup) Visas Badly - <AUTHOR> http://blog.awesomezombie.com/2010/11/dear-british-government-youve-screwed.html <comment><USER2> Seems like what the US government is trying to do with the whole H1/L1 visas. Companies like to have immobile employees that they know would not go back to their home country. At the same time, it plays well with the whole immigration debate because no one complains about it, what with the lobbying efforts keeping it down to a murmur.

The startup visa scheme is another such proposition, but at a grander level. Banks want entrepreneurs that won't give up on a bad idea, but would instead keep toiling away rather than have to move their entire family back to their home country.

No one wants to speak from the perspective of an employee because, frankly, the biggest proponents have never been ideal employees. What kind of a talented engineer would want to put themselves into a situation where they lose their freedom to switch careers or engage in a personal idea? So sure, there is a shortage of talent, but not because of a lack of immigrants.

<comment><USER3> thats how it is...

what bugs me the most on my h1b visa is that the time youre in the country you cant build a life for yourself. first its 3 years, than you can extend another three years but after those six years they kick you out. of course after five years you can apply for a green card but that takes two years. not to speak of the cut down on time when you switch jobs. i recently changed my employer after two years. now my last year of the first part of the visa got cut out and directly extended. giving me together five years in the country.

now what do i do in three years? in sept 2013 my visa ends. no extension. how can you live like that? knowing you leave your life, friends, everything behind in three years.

and the whole new investor start up blah visa is a punch in my face. when you generate a milliondollar revenue or find an investor that invests a million or more you get citizenship. come again? citizenship? i lead start ups for my last employer which gave me an astronomical salary around 300-600k a year and the start ups generated under the companies umbrella way more than 20m this year. where the FUCK is my citizenship?

the whole topic just makes me angry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Somewhat unrelated, but I was struck by a line in The Economist's article about the visas in this week's issue:

 _"The spontaneous rise of Silicon Roundabout might have persuaded the government to leave well alone. Instead, David Cameron recently unveiled a plan to support it. As well as tinkering with the legal framework in which such businesses operate—by creating updated "entrepreneur visas" to bypass ill-judged new immigration restrictions, for example—the government has persuaded technology titans such as Google and Cisco to invest. Soon BT will bring super-fast broadband to the area; McKinsey, a consultancy, will share management expertise."_ [1]

"McKinsey, a consultancy, will share management expertise"—well then. I don't know how the tech start-ups will contain their jubilation.

[1] <http://www.economist.com/node/17581635>

<comment><USER5> > The spontaneous rise of Silicon Roundabout

Was it? I was under the impression that the whole idea was pushed by the government and officially planned from the start...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A related issue - and one reason this policy has gone through without much complaint - is the growing negativity and dislike of immigrants by the majority of the UK public. Think I'm joking? YouGov found 55% agreed with the statement "migrants have changed UK for the worse": <http://yfrog.com/mk3fqfj> (and only 28% disagreeing)

Protectionism, my arse. These policies are fueled by xenophobia, the like of which even respectable Brits frequently agree, even if they say nothing about it in public (I've had these rows with people in my own family and social groups who I'd never had believed could be so xenophobic).

<comment><USER7> Agree. Other immigration restrictions likely to be implemented make no economic sense at all, like capping numbers of overseas students, whose higher fees subsidise our allegedly underfunded higher education system.

It was evident throughout the election campaign that being "tough" on immigration was perceived as more important than being "fair".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any data that supports this blog posts contention that the best developers are in the UK on tier 1 visa's? If this were true, surely a large portion of the successful uk startups should be founded by tier-1 recipients?

<comment><USER9> His "data" is purely anecdotal since his sample is limited to those developers he has worked with. However it is possible that you can have many good immigrant developers and a disproportionately lower number who go ahead and found startups.

Not every developer wants to be a startup founder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why don't people just work remotely? I've been involved in employing 3 people for Red Hat in the last few months. All are remote, I've not met any of them and I don't intend to meet them in the near future.

<comment><USER11> It isn't just about the job, it's the location. I moved to the other side of the world to be outside of my home country, and to be closer to my partner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem is systemic.

1\. Startups can't recruit overseas students or highly skilled workers anymore without applying for a tier 2 sponsorship license. Talking about lead time of 1 1/2 months and jumping through admin hoops for approval.

2\. Local students are starting school with a bigger debt due to increases in tuition fees. Now if I was a young talented programmer with a big debt (average debt of a student now is around £18K. I estimate this to increase to about £24K), the glowing lights of the city looks very attractive.

<comment><USER13> Is it really so bad? 18k is a lot of money, but it isn't that large a run for a good university graduate, and it is very little compared to what US graduates can expect to pay; yet they start plenty of companies.

Might the reason not be that the difference lies with the people and not the environment?

<comment><USER14> Student fees should not put someone off starting a start-up in the UK because you don't have to pay anything back until you're earning > £21k, so a founder wouldn't have to pay anything until the business could afford to pay them.

However, there are other reasons that deter people from launching start-ups in the UK, 1) it's expensive - London is very expensive, general living costs are higher than the US 2) The City is a disproportionately large draw for UK graduates, finance is a larger percent of the economy, compared to say the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >>>The Tier-1 visa didn't surpress salaries

And you wonder why a Conservative government would want to eliminate them? The fact explains itself.

Do these apply only to foreigners from outside Europe? I read that EU member nationals can form a startup in any EU country.

</comment><comment><USER16> That was my main reason for not picking UK when deciding to work abroad, even though that was my first preference because of the English language. Eventually I ended up moving to the Netherlands, because of their more liberal policies.

Your visa being tied to an employer can pretty easily turn into exploitation, if you end up picking the wrong employer.

But seriously, even worse is the appearance of how you're being treated. Why would I want to live there under those conditions?

This measure can't really attract talent. I don't see what good developers - in their right mind - would accept those terms. There are other better options.

</comment><comment><USER17> UK government does not want people coming in on Tier 1 and compete in open market; however they do not have any problems issuing Tier 2 which is intra company transfer.Only criteria is that income of employee should not be less than £40K/year. Do they want salaries to stabilize at £40K?

<comment><AUTHOR> FYI. The Tier-2 category covers a range of "company sponsored" skilled visas, not just intra-company transfers.

Source:<http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/workingintheuk/tier2/></comment></comment>


Ask HN: what are the best and worst knowledge/coding tests? - <AUTHOR>

Many if not most employers these days give either a written test on the job seekers development knowledge, and/or a coding test. I'm looking for specific examples of coding and knowledge tests that employers give, trying to find the best and the worst. I'm interested specifically in cases where there is a publicly accessible URL that points to the coding test. What are the best and worst you have seen? <comment><USER2> One of the best remains fizzbuzz.</comment>


Microsoft and an 'Over the Top' Data Center Buildout? - <AUTHOR> http://www.crn.com/software/206901201 Now consider the very same company building, running and maintaining 24 of the world's largest data centers. (And that's just Phase 1.) <comment><USER2> From the article: the company will surprise many with its plans to embrace open source.

Microsoft's market capitalisation is 253.15 billion dollars. Redhat's market capitalisation is 3.47 billion dollars. MySQL's market capitalisation is 1 billion dollars. Other open source companies form a long tail and make the size of the open source market quite arguable. Regardless, I would be surprised if Microsoft obtain 2% of revenue from open source in 2008. I'll be more surprised if revenue from open source fully offsets losses from comparable but open source operating systems, databases and productivity applications.</comment>


Soulmate lost. RIP Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> http://alexdong.com/soulmate-lost-rip-aaron-swartz/

<comment><USER2> "we have to pick a battle that worth fighting for and be prepared for the hard, long, lonely journey"

I think that's an important takeaway from this most unfortunate incident.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if "making something" as a tribute to Aaron would be appropriate. This article puts a lot of emphasis on "code as poetry" and that really resonates with me.

So maybe today I'll make something. For Aaron.

<comment><USER4> My tribute is to stop using twitter and other walled gardens so much and to start publishing my content to the open web again. Even for smaller things. I started by sharing my thoughts about Aaron's passing on my own website: <http://benatkin.com/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz/>

I noticed that since he does the old style of blog comments, that if you ever left a comment on his blog, you can type a search like this into google:

"Ben Atkin" site:aaronsw.com

...you'll get a list of the comments you made on his site.

I don't think he ever wrote code just for the sake of code. I think he wrote it for a larger purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The OP talks about how Aaron needed to be more pragmatic, like a Steve Jobs. I don't disagree...and as much as I admire his almost total-lack of self promotion and the minimalism on his sites, I wonder if Aaron would've felt more of a force had he more of the weight and attention of the world. Think of how much even digital media celebrities like David Pogue can make things happen (Remember how fast police _in another state_ acted when he lost his iPhone? [http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/03/technology/david-pogue- iphon...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/03/technology/david-pogue- iphone/index.htm))...

Some tech prodigies have the desire to stay anonymous, but Aaron clearly wanted to be at the forefront of civic action, if not the "spotlight", so to speak. It's unfortunate that his accomplishments and virtues did not attract the celebrity that they deserved.

<comment><USER6> In this startup subculture, we really do despise people who don't inflate themselves, even if we only do it subtly ("as much as I admire...")

<comment><USER5> I most definitely do not despise Aaron. I think it's highly detestable that someone of his passion and skill gets less followers than an early-cut- contestant from American Idol.

We can argue that maybe he would've been less productive if he really got into tweeting or whatever. But he was hardly shy from talking about himself, and he shouldn't have been. It's a shame that didn't result in the kind of deserved following that would have gotten more public sentiment on his side.

His SOPA/PIPA campaign is a prime example. The reason why it succeeded when at first legislators ignored it was not because the merits of its argument became better over time, but because more people, beyond the choir, had joined the cause.

<comment><USER7> >I think it's highly detestable that someone of his passion and skill gets less followers than an early-cut-contestant from American Idol.

Every week reddit gives me the latest talking point jerks like Kim Dotcom or Ron/Rand Paul, yet its own guy was ignored by it until his death. PR is everything now. Social media is reputation media. Working on your image is just as important as your work, which sounds like something out of The Prince, but its truer in the age of instant communication. Christ, what a sorry world we live in where our actions are meaningless and we are nothing without good PR.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Humorous highway signs aim to steer drivers safely - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/03/05/812130695/humorous-highway-signs-aim-to-steer-drivers-safely-down-the-old-town-road <comment><USER2> Indian signs are the classics. "go gently down my curves"... "Hurry will give you worry"... And many more here: [https://www.wanderlust.co.uk/content/9-funny-indian-road- sig...](https://www.wanderlust.co.uk/content/9-funny-indian-road-signs/)

<comment><USER3> Redwood City, CA has actual, printed signs scattered around that say things like:

"Traffic school is boring. Slow down." "Speed limit 25 mph. It really won't hurt." "Is today the day your speed hurts a child?" "In a hurry? A speeding ticket will make you late!" "What don't you understand about 25 mph?"

and maybe a dozen more. They're actually great indicators that the city doesn't enforce the speed limits. Which makes the "ZERO TOLERANCE" speed sign the funniest one.

Edit: The city of Hayward, CA has a pedestrian crossing sign that says something to the effect of "Heads up! Cross the street, THEN update Facebook."

<comment><USER4> Signs are cheaper than properly-designed roads. They're safety theatre, designed to make people feel better without actually doing anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm in Illinois and I enjoy reading humorous signs because it takes the monotony out of driving and makes me chuckle while navigating Chicago traffic and helps me tolerate grumpy Chicago suburban drivers. Road construction information etc. are still displayed so it's not either-or. Funny messages in the past on I-55 have included:

* Han says Solo Down. Obey speed limits. (when Star Wars came out)

* Buckling up is always a good Goooooooal! (during the World Cup - soccer)

* Slowing down in Work Zones is so fetch. (when Mean Girls came out)

* OMG R U Txting? I can't even.

* Please stop taking pictures of this sign while driving

There's a website with all the current messages [1].

[1] [https://www.travelmidwest.com/lmiga/dms.jsp?location=GATEWAY...](https://www.travelmidwest.com/lmiga/dms.jsp?location=GATEWAY.IL)

<comment><USER6> Posted at my dad's cemetery, facing a busy road in suburban River Grove IL: "Drive carefully, we can wait"

[https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/fjAXrFcLzRE8UN4TYTGC...](https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/fjAXrFcLzRE8UN4TYTGCYQ/o.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really hate signs like this.

I expect to be reading an important alert about an exit closure or upcoming road construction but instead end up having to parse some inane quip about buckling my seatbelt.

It feels like a misuse of attention that would be better served by letting drivers keep their eyes on the road.

<comment><USER8> As a counter data point, I fairly enjoy alerts like these. Whether you like them or not is quite subjective. If it was a really serious distracted driving issue, then the entire billboard industry likely wouldn't exist.

<comment><USER9> Billboards next to highways are illegal in many countries.

<comment><USER10> That's for aesthetic reasons though.

<comment><USER11> Maybe. But it also seriously helps to avoid being distracted. I live in Seattle and drive to my parents house in Vegas, almost always driving I-90 -> I-82 -> I-84 -> I-15. Washington is great. Hardly any billboards. Oregon and Idaho are about the same. Driving through Utah is awful. Billboards everywhere some of them are brightly lit and flashing. I feel much more distracted by them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These make me so happy. It feels like the kind of humorous approach to life I've seen in other countries, but too often the US errs too much on the side of being cautious, of being conservative about messaging.

It just makes me warm and fuzzy inside when someone can actually use humor in a very public way, and there isn't some stern boss telling them to stick with the script because it's 'safer'.

</comment><comment><USER13> All of these signs should just say "USE YOUR BLINKER" because most drivers in California never do.

<comment><USER14> In Maine (US) last fall there was;

``` PUMPKIN SPICE DRINKERS USE YOUR BLINKERS

```

this is during the time tourists drive around looking at the fall foliage

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_peeping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_peeping)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can drive

A mile a minute

But there is no

Future in it

 _Burma-Shave_

<comment><USER16> [https://www.xkcd.com/491/](https://www.xkcd.com/491/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The previous messaging was a lot more serious and somewhat morbid:

[https://chicago.cbslocal.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/151160...](https://chicago.cbslocal.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/15116062/2013/01/road-deaths-sign-0107.jpg?w=640)

<comment><USER18> I saw it all the time when I was commuting out to the burbs from the city on 90. Every day when I was coming home, I always got a little excited when I saw it had finally incremented! Then I would feel sad about it because of what that meant. It was strange, I had some weird desire to see the number continue to go up, apart from the clearly tragic context. In a way, quantifying it like that kind of abstracted away the human element. As the cliche goes, those who lost their lives became just another statistic. If they had put the name of the last person killed, that might have driven the point home more effectively, privacy issues aside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> They have a contest on the morning radio show semi-often when some band comes to town for these messages in Phoenix--Bernie's in town later today so they would put up something like "feel the bern, use signals to turn" (though don't think they do political ones for obvious reasons).

</comment><comment><USER20> With legalization in Canada there have been several "Funny" don't drive high tv adds. Strange thing is I don't every recall seeing a funny don't drive drunk commercial.

I guess it's just less funny when you crash and kill someone after a few drinks.

<comment><USER21> Well cannabis and alcohol are two way different beasts. It is true that both reduce your reaction times, but cannabis doesn't really mess too much with your motor skills. Obviously this depends on dosage and other factors and you really shouldn't drive high or drunk but I'd rather have someone drive me somewhere high than drunk. Alcohol makes you think you're hot shit and invincible which is extremely dangerous behind the wheel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In the Boston area, these signs typically have some variation of "USE YAH BLINKAH"

</comment><comment><USER23> Be careful, or be roadkill! [https://imgur.com/a/kBQtJVJ](https://imgur.com/a/kBQtJVJ)

</comment><comment><USER24> Um, "humorous" might be a bit of a stretch.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's safety theatre. Signs don't work, properly-designed roads work. But signs are cheaper and make it possible to continue to live a sprawling life in suburbia, so.

</comment><comment><USER25> > sacrifices the company's well-known identity

Challenge author to find any person who is unable to correctly attribute new logo to BMW but can do so with the old logo.

<comment><USER26> Wrong topic :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Love to force distracted driving!

</comment><comment><USER28> MODOT did it first.</comment>