Lockheed Constellation and Super Constellation Survivors - <AUTHOR> http://www.conniesurvivors.com/ <comment><USER2> > _there are about fifty-five "survivors" of the mass scrappings of the 1960's > and 70's, with only C-121C VH-EAG currently airworthy._

Of those two mentioned, VH-EAG is owned by Australia's Historical Aircraft Restoration Society, and it is a regular visitor to the Australian International Air Show near Melbourne.

I've seen it fly several times, and also taken the guided tour through it.

It's such a majestic aircraft, and an utter joy to witness.

Here's a video of it in operation in 2017 - in the evening so you can see the flames coming out of the engines:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taU6qu5pXBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taU6qu5pXBo)

More info about it here:

[http://www.conniesurvivors.com/VH-EAG.htm](http://www.conniesurvivors.com/VH- EAG.htm)

[https://hars.org.au/lockheed-c-121c-super- constellation/](https://hars.org.au/lockheed-c-121c-super-constellation/)

From that second link:

 _In November 1991, HARS started what was to become a major project when 54-0157 was placed in our care for restoration and delivery to Australia. Relying solely on volunteer labour and aiming at a high standard of restoration and serviceability, the project was to take five years. The restoration work commenced in May 1992 at Pima Air & Space Museum and in September 1994 the Super Constellation took to the air after nearly eighteen years on the ground. Another solid year of work was required to prepare the aircraft for the Pacific crossing and in late 1995 final flight training was undertaken. On 3 February 1996 the Super Constellation VH-EAG arrived in Sydney after an incident free crossing of 39.5 hours flying time. Stops on the delivery flight to Australia were made at Oakland, Honolulu, Pago Pago and Nadi._

</comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely beautiful plane. Reverse thrust was powerful enough that it was common to see them roll backwards slightly on the runway after landing. Eisenhower's presidential transport was one of these. The gear was so tall that they could fit an underbelly cargo hold to the outside of the aircraft

I remember a video of propeller balancing for one of these aircraft. It's massive, something like a 10-12 foot diameter, variable pitch blades. Using a buffing wheel, they polish the blades until they balance perfectly and placing a matchbook on one of the blades is enough weight to start them rotating.

</comment><comment><USER4> One here in Seattle at the Museum of Flight [https://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/lockheed1049g-super-...](https://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/lockheed1049g-super- constellation)

Beautiful planes

</comment><comment><USER5> I used to see them at Cleveland Hopkins airport, but I don't know that I ever saw one in the air.

That may be odd, since this was long ago that people would actually drive out to airports and watch planes take off and land. It was easier on the ears before jets became dominant.

</comment><comment><USER6> I grew up with the "Save a Connie"[1] plane and organization in my back yard, so to speak -- we lived about 6 miles from the KC downtown airport. I remember dad taking me down to the airport to sit on the river levee and watch the it arrive when they ferried it to KC. After that, I think I attended every public event they hosted between the plane's arrival and the change to the Airline History Museum.

I think I still have a bunch of their airshow flyers and other give-aways squirreled away in the basement somewhere.

Thanks for the interesting trip down memory lane.

1: [http://www.conniesurvivors.com/N6937C.htm](http://www.conniesurvivors.com/N6937C.htm)

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought this looked familiar, and my suspicions were correct. The wreck of Pegasus near the posthumously named "Pegasus Airfield" at McMurdo Station, Antarctica was a Connie.

Crashed in 1970 with no deaths, the aircraft still lies partially buried in snow on the iceshelf about 5-10 miles from the station. People stationed at McMurdo still make little field trips out to the wreckage to take pictures and walk ontop of it, etc.

Here it is on the aforementioned website: [http://www.conniesurvivors.com/131644.htm](http://www.conniesurvivors.com/131644.htm)

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.conniesurvivors.com/N749NL.htm](http://www.conniesurvivors.com/N749NL.htm) Is right nearby here (in Lelystad) very beautiful plane. Absolutely amazing is that it flew here under its own power after an in-situ fix-up where it was found.

</comment><comment><USER9> As an aviation enthusiast, this website is awesome! Absolutely beautiful plane

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to know what possessed the author to celebrate this beautiful plane in Comic Sans

</comment><comment><USER11> there's a nice one that is now a bar at the Eero Saarinen TWA terminal at JFK...much better place to hang out during a layover than in the terminal itself!

</comment><comment><USER12> Possibly most beautiful large plane ever made.</comment>


Sharding Your Data with PostgreSQL 11 - <AUTHOR> https://pgdash.io/blog/postgres-11-sharding.html <comment><USER2> Can anyone share their experience about performance gains? Especially when using hash indexes (not the default btree) with many insert per seconds.

I think sharding may help, as I currently have very high CPU loads</comment>


The Future of Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/NUMTTrKj

<comment><USER2> > _How will we get Harmony related changes into Chrome?

Very carefully ;-). V8 is carefully tuned for speed with the current Javascript standard rather than flexibility--this makes it very difficult to make experimental changes. We are considering pre-processors and a number of other options, but ultimately the precise solution is still an open question._

What this translates to is: even after it's finalized as a spec, forget using ES6 anytime soon for web development.

Chrome will lag its ass -- as it already does, since FF has already implemented tons of ES6 stuff and V8 only a tiny subset.

I hope Safari and IE also move things forward and force Google's hand, but I don't see that really happening.

So, ES6? Forget about it for the next 5 years.

<comment><USER3> It's what make language that compile to JS worth using.

I've start using LiveScript on a side project and TypeScript at work. I can now use the future without browser compatibility nightmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The most interesting thing Google Dart will be used for the main languague for Android

</comment><comment><USER5> Dash became Dart?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep!</comment></comment>


Diginotar Hacked by Black.Spook and Iranian Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002228.html

<comment><USER2> I am sort of surprised that there haven't been more of these attacks (I only know of handful) given how vulnerable certification chain is to attacks such as these.

Even when the mistake is noticed, it will take time for browsers to update their revocation lists. Do other browsers require the same heavy-weight updating as Safari on OS X (Software update to Safari)?</comment>


Keybase - <AUTHOR> [ my public key: https://keybase.io/bensojona; my proof: https://keybase.io/bensojona/sigs/pC4zySz-w6a21tESsCxFhPfX1ZjW9j1NJEakmXtoSUA ] <comment><USER2> You're supposed to update your "about" in your profile with that text, not post it.

</comment><comment><USER3> On the back of this, if anyone would like an invite just shout..

<comment><USER4> Can you send an invite to firstname.lastname@example.com? Thanks.

<comment><USER5> Done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have some invites too, so if you need one let me know :)

<comment><USER7> I replying to let you know. :)

<comment><USER8> I would love to get one as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I also have plenty of invites if someone is interested :)

<comment><USER10> Would like one please. email@example.com

<comment><USER11> You should have one now.

<comment><USER10> Very kind of you, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know, another guy wanting invites, but one at email@example.com would be nice.

<comment><USER11> Done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wouldn't mind an invite if someone is so kind to send one to mrfloris at gmail

</comment><comment><USER14> My email is in profile, is some are still looking for invites.

</comment><comment><USER15> I also have some invites - if someone is interested.

</comment><comment><USER16> I also have invites, if anyone would like one.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have invites too if someone is interested.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have invites if anyone would like one :).

</comment><comment><USER19> _facepalm_

<comment><USER19> Also, I have 4 invites if anyone wants one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> i still have a ton of invites, so hmu if you want one

<comment><USER8> I'd like one please</comment></comment>


Microsoft continues to build government security credentials ahead of JEDI award - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/microsoft-continues-to-build-government-security-credentials-ahead-of-jedi-decision/ <comment><USER2> Can we take a step back and appreciate that someone at the DoD took the time to figure out an acronym that allowed the award to be called JEDI? It's a small reminder to me that there are individuals just like us in the partially frozen government.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you subscribed to any newsletters–and do you actually read them? - <AUTHOR> I feel like there's been a resurgence in email newsletters, and I'm curious to whether there are any popular newsletters you all are subscribed to.
Whatever it is, there's not much room for curation on newsletters and there are too many publishers to dig through.
So I thought we could all post newsletters we're reading on here! Also, if you're not subscribed to any newsletters, why not? Do you get news/info elsewhere beyond HN? <comment><USER2> * "Alertbox" by NN Group: probably the world's most important usability/user experience resource [0]

* Indie Hackers: uplifting by and for real indie (biz) devs [1]

* WTFJHT: a saner approach to keeping tabs on the Trump administration [2]

[0] [http://www.nngroup.com/articles/subscribe/](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/subscribe/)

[1] [https://www.indiehackers.com](https://www.indiehackers.com)

[2] [http://www.whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/](http://www.whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/)</comment>


Almost 6,000 online shops hit by hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37643754 <comment><USER2> Almost 6,000 web shops are unknowingly harbouring malicious code that is stealing the credit card details of customers. [https://gwillem.github.io](https://gwillem.github.io)</comment>


What Can Brown Do for Ag Drones? A Lot - <AUTHOR> https://www.croplife.com/precision/what-can-brown-do-for-ag-drones-a-lot <comment><AUTHOR> The key to widespread adoption of crop photography is to lower the cost. You need an ag drone to take off at sunset, visit a list of fields and return at sunset.

To be successful you need to avoid other planes. There have been startups here in Michigan that have had the technology and been able to demonstrate it for fifteen years. The holdup has been getting governmental approval and it looks like UPS has crossed that barrier.

<comment><USER2> The FAA has been keeping the US in the dark ages of drone ops for years now. The economic losses caused by our delayed entry into the market are incalculable.

<comment><USER3> Assuming the FAA had valid safety reasons to do so, those economic losses were worth it.

<comment><USER4> There would be valid safety reasons to prohibit all flight.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, we have _actual cases_ of dipshits flying drones in active fire suppression areas.

The FAA has valid concerns and cannot simply trust the end users to do the right thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> If a companies business license is dependent upon following FAA rules you're a lot less likely to have a problem than say a teenage hobbyist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe that the title is a take from this clip from "Groove Tube" movie (warning, graphic is icky): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=008BPUdQ1XA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=008BPUdQ1XA)

<comment><USER7> There was a 'What can brown do for you?' ad campaign for UPS a few years back.

<comment><USER6> Heh. Yes, the correct answer. Neurons are funny sometimes.

<comment><USER7> Hey yours dug up some legit art so nobody's wrong here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mobile websites can tap into your phone's sensors without asking - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/mobile-websites-can-tap-into-your-phones-sensors-without-asking/ <comment><AUTHOR> >The group looked at how nine browsers—Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, Brave, Focus, Dolphin, Opera Mini, and UC Browser—handle access to motion, orientation, proximity, and light sensors. They found that all of them allow web pages to access motion and orientation sensors without permission.

>the researchers also found about 1200 sites [of the top 100,000 Alexa rated sites] that seemed to be using sensor data to aide tracking and analytics- gathering or audience recognition. And 63 percent of the scripts the researchers analyzed that access motion sensors also fingerprint browsers for tracking.

<comment><USER2> Yet another reason to disable Javascript when surfing. Sure - disabling JS might break a few sites, but it's a price I am willing to pay</comment></comment>


The Dot Blockchain Music Project Alpha Release - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lovingyourwork/the-dot-blockchain-music-project-alpha-release-update-4-20f40551d091#.7dxj1wiru <comment><USER2> For someone who has a very limited sense of blockchain, it was very difficult for me to understand the idea of Dot. Would be kind enough to explain what exactly is it that Dot is trying to do, in a layman sense.

Cheers.

<comment><USER3> Get VC. There's about four or five musical rights blockchain initiatives at the moment, all mouthing the same buzzwords and all after VC.</comment></comment>


The Second Quartile - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2017/12/the-second-quartile/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER2> At first I wondered why they would write an article bragging that they spend over 75% of their time trying to bring in just 20% of their income. It would obviously be more efficient to focus on increasing the 80% or firing some people and focusing on keeping the 80% the same.

Then I realized this is a publicity piece to get startups to allow AVC to invest, assuring startups that AVC will stick by them even if the startup isn't great.

<comment><USER3> That is true but does it make the article incorrect? If this is really what they do and not a flat out lie then it's honest marketing.

<comment><USER2> You're right, I phrased it a little harshly. There's nothing wrong with promoting how much they help the startups that aren't doing as well. Providing that guarantee is like insurance, it allows all startups to move forward more confidently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > There will be roughly ten investments per fund that will return maybe 5% of > the fund (the third and fourth quartile). We spend a lot of time on these > investments and it is difficult work that I have written a lot about over > the years. _The time and money we spend on these investments is not rational > but we do it anyway._

I notice this in my own work all the time. Some sort of human condition, probably, that "requires" I focus on the biggest headaches to try and solve them, despite probably being a lot of other more beneficial things to focus on when thinking about long term results.

As for the whole argument around the second quartile, this just seems to be the ecosystem of venture capital. A business with [insert healthy, reasonable, steady annual growth metric here], fantastic by most standards, doesn't initially cut it when VC portfolios require so much bigger returns to remain viable against other asset vehicles. But then suddenly that's not the case anymore, once the business has I guess proven itself as being a success relative to other fantastic flare-outs who once had much higher expectations.

I always think about that scene from Silicon Valley about 'pre-revenue' being more exciting for investors: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo)

</comment><comment><USER5> Soooo... be in the top half? Seems reasonable but as you select into more competitive demographics, it gets quite challenging. If you're up against teams of PhDs at well funded companies, that's strong signal that it may get hard to stay in the top half.

<comment><USER2> They say they spend tons of time on the 3rd and 4th quartile as well.

According to them, the only people they don't really help are the top quartile, who bring in 80% of their money. Weird.

</comment></comment><comment> threeeyed-raven What's the best way to fund yourself if you aren't in the first quarter? What's non-vc way to fund yourself?

<comment><USER6> Keep your expenses extremely low. That applies to any non-VC context generally.

People borrow money from friends & family, credit cards, or from their assets such as a home.

People lean on savings or take a tax hit and pull capital out of a 401k.

Smaller angel investors are a common avenue (someone that might put in $15k or $50k). They have very little in common with bigger VC investors, they're more like taking an investment from a friend or family member in terms of the actual relationship of dealing with them and their expectations.

Ideally, the absolute best way to non-VC fund, is by securing sales immediately. That is, to not start a business until you have your first customer. Now, that works for some things and not for others obviously, some businesses do not lend themselves easily to that manner of self-funding out of the gate.

If you're talking about a business that's already growing well but needs serious non-VC financing, that's very challenging. If you can demonstrate consistent growth over time and the ability to generate a profit, there are some options for debt financing with specialty financial firms. Traditional bank loans usually won't cut in that situation, that's usually a path if you're operating a franchise chain or convenience store, very traditional predictable businesses (ideally with some assets the bank can take if it all goes south).

The best book I've ever read detailing the struggle of self-financing a very successful company, is Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, in founding & building Nike. They were doubling sales every year for the first dozen years and nobody wanted to fund that growth, they were constantly on the edge of bankruptcy. They had no serious assets, no cash pile, no meaningful profit - all that growth was going right back into larger orders in a repeating cycle; so banks absolutely hated them and were aggressively reluctant to provide sales financing. It's fascinating to read what Knight had to go through to enable Nike to survive, how many times it almost went bankrupt despite meteoric growth.</comment></comment>


I heard that lisp was written in lisp? how is that possible? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting>

</comment><comment><USER3> The same way C compilers can be written in C.

</comment><comment><USER4> check <http://google.com></comment>


Fake femme fatale shows social network risks - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179507/Fake_i_femme_fatale_i_shows_social_network_risks <comment><USER2> I'm "in" the sphere of people whom were targeted by this researcher. I never was asked to friend her, but a few of my friends did friend her. A good number of them don't really share anything actionable on Twitter, FB and the like. They "friend" pretty much anyone, and opt to not share things that could come back to bite them. A lot of people who "fell for it" didn't really fall for much of anything. The couple of people who outright offered jobs and such? They were had.

<comment><USER3> Were people offering actual jobs? Seems more likely they only wanted to interview "her", which is a pretty reasonable thing to do. Doesn't give "her" much power.

<comment><USER2> I'd need to go back and grok the epic pile of shoddy journalism that this event created. Somewhere, I thought I read that people were trying to hire Ms. Sage's persona.

Also, this really isn't much different than what Shawn Moyer and Nathan Hamiel did ahead of DefCon 16 and Black Hat Las Vegas 2008. They set up a twitter and facebook account in the name and visage of someone who is a REALLY big name in information security (who happened to have not yet gotten on board with social networks) and just started going at it. They amassed a bunch of followers and "friends" on a few different networks. They generally tried to say the kinds of things this person would say in real life. They linked the account to that person's real web presence, etc.

You really wouldn't know it was an impostor at first glance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Welcome to the Internet, where the men are men, the women are men, and the kids are cops.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's funny that no one picked up on the fact that ROBIN SAGE is the code-name for an Army Special Forces qualification exercise.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Special_Forc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Special_Forces_selection_and_training#Specialty_training.2C_ROBIN_SAGE_.26_graduation_.28Phase_IV.29)

<comment><USER6> Actually, a lot of people pointed this out, as well as the suspicious address, and other inconsistencies (her age, lack of presence in the MIT student database, ...)

Check out <http://twitter.com/fakerobinsage> etc.

The only question at the time was "is this a recreational troll, or is it a "security researcher" trying to test the community?" -- it seemed too amateurish to be a real intelligence gathering attempt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > What type of information can one get through such connections? > Pretty much > everything. I had access to e-mail and bank accounts

I know facebook et al. have their share of privacy concerns, but I think this is a bit much to drop in without giving more details.

Seems like a non-story to me.

<comment><USER8> +1 .. It'd have been nice if he had disclosed some of his methods. Just saying "I had access to email and bank accounts" doesn't really do much. This fake profile of a good looking lady is social engineering 101.

It's psychological more than anything else. When a good looking woman who matches on your interests and qualifications, approaches you, it's but natural for the person to lower their guard down. Also, a lot of people could have been in touch for purely networking reasons, wanting to leverage the network such an individual would possess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is being presented at Black Hat on Wednesday ([https://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-us-10/bh- us-10-briefings.ht...](https://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-us-10/bh- us-10-briefings.html#Ryan)), so presumably more details (and hopefully less spin) will be forthcoming or available then.

</comment><comment><USER10> Semi-dupe on the original (longer) article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1544661>

</comment><comment><USER11> More about "Robin Sage", with whom (which?) a fair amount of people's stupidity about social networks was exposed.

<comment><USER12> Great comment, I'll be thinking about whether it should be "whom" or "which" for days now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog.

<comment><USER14> I guess nobody heard that Sage goes in all fields.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Somehow I doubt security and intel ppl actually put sensitive information on their Facebook.

Or at least I hope so.</comment>


I'm a .Net Developer and wants to learn another programming language - <AUTHOR>

I'm a .Net guy and looking to find a job in a startup/Web 2.0 company.
There are some .Net jobs for startups but not as much as Php and Ruby.
I'm developing a new app and I want to use a new programming language.
Any suggestions on what I should use?
To be honest, I want a programming language to brighten my job prospects and future. <comment><USER2> If you're honestly just interested in learning another language for better job prospects, I would recommend staying a .Net guy and getting deep with Sharepoint (I'm assuming you are already familiar with the new 3.5 framework. If you aren't, then start there). It's not glamorous work, but it is high- paying work.

Otherwise, if you're really interested in startups, I would guess that Ruby is probably one of the more popular languages out there right now, with Rails being a very popular framework. This will depend somewhat on your location.

Start checking Craigslist ads for jobs, that should give you a feel of what startups are looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, my priority is to land a job in a startup. Hopefully a consumer web site. I've been burned by the corporation pretty badly so I'm hoping to not go back there again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nothing wrong with that. I think the standard response to your situation would be to take a look at Ruby or Python.

And for frameworks, I'd recommend looking at Rails and Merb (ruby land, don't know python options well enough to comment).

I'm sure there are other languages you could learn which might boost your pay scale, but the number of jobs requiring Erlang isn't quite as high...

</comment><comment><USER4> If you know .NET already, IronRuby seems like a natural fit.</comment>


The Vietnam of Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.tedneward.com/2006/06/26/The+Vietnam+Of+Computer+Science.aspx

<comment><USER2> As a history lover, I'm sorry. I can't let this pass. There is absolutely no way that a framework that translates programming classes and properties in one language into SQL queries, compares with the amount of human suffering that war encapsulated.

It's not funny. It's not edgy. Any valid points that this guy raises about ORMs is drowned out by the abject triviality of the subject, in comparison to an _actual_ armed conflict. This analogy sucks. Truly.

Flagged as tasteless.</comment>


Linux Vendor Firmware Service - <AUTHOR> https://fwupd.org/ <comment><USER2> I've been using this as part of Fedora (25 - 27) for the past year on a Dell XPS 13 9360 (Developer Edition). It's been working flawlessly with BIOS updates from Dell.

The end user experience is better than anything I've experienced on Windows (and dare I say smoother than OSX).

Between this and the 22-hour battery life on Linux the XPS 13 is highly recommended!

<comment><USER3> Could not agree more. I updated my DELL's BIOS and TPM Firmware and it was a breeze! The same goes for my Logitech Unifying receivers (they had some security issue).

And I can see which difference it makes. I still have not patched my other laptop, because I need to extract the image from a Windows installer put it on a USB stick at a specific path (which I always forget...) and then reboot, reboot again because I did not interrupt the boot fast enough, run the update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > This site is used by all major Linux distributions to provide metadata for > clients such as fwupdmgr and GNOME Software.

Actually means: "This site is used by author's apps 'fwupdmgr' and 'GNOME Software'"

Wants you to believe it means: "This site is used by all major Linux distributions to serve firmware for all your devices".

What all major Linux distributions use is this git repo hosted by Linux Foundation:

[https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-...](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux- firmware.git)

which is made available and automatically upgradable as "linux-firmware" system package.

Sorry for sounding harsh, I just couldn't stay quiet on that misleading claim.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are comparing two different things. linux-firmware is composed of blob files used by kernel drivers when they do request_firmware(); for devices that load the firmware in RAM and work from that, and have (mostly) no permanent storage.

This project is for firmware blobs that 1/ are already on the device; 2/ for which the update method is traditionally a vendor-provided windows binary; the fwupdmgr incorporates plugins that implement all the different update methods for those devices.

There's nothing maliciously misleading here, and vendors do know the difference between those two.

<comment><USER4> I see that I was wrong in my comparison. Yet I see the claim "This site is used by all major Linux distributions (for whatever)" misleading. Linux distributions directly don't use this site for anything. They happen to provide package for mentioned apps, that's all.

E.g. I can claim that my HDD-testing app is available in distros, but I would be wrong claiming that all major Linux distributions use my app to test HDDs.

<comment><USER3> I have Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian systems. All come with fwupd installed by default. I don't have a RHEL7 system to check, but it is in the repos of CentOS7. Whether it is activated by default, I don't know, but given that it is in the repos, I think it is. Linux Mint probably uses GNOME Software as well in its Cinnamon and Mate environments.

I am not sure about Arch and of course there is KDE (OpenSUSE/SUSE) left.

Still I think calling it a "misleading claim" a bit of a stretch given that "all the major distros" (or nearly) ship it in their default install.

Oh and don't get into quibbling about what "use" means here. If I follow that argument, Linux distribution don't "use" or "do" anything. All they do is shipping software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In their Vendor List [1] fwupd do provide status of their relationship with a bunch of vendors.

Interestingly, it can be deduced from the comments column that fwupd has been proactively contacting vendors to try and get them involved, with varying success.

[1] [https://fwupd.org/vendorlist](https://fwupd.org/vendorlist)

<comment><USER6> True, I have. I've sent many hundreds of emails, but also some companies have reached out to me proactively. We're getting there, but it's going to be a slow burn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anybody knows why vendors are still afraid of releasing their firmwares as source code? I mean are they afraid of patent law suits or do they hope they can cover up some super secrect sauce within their products?

At the moment I feel like closed source firmwares are one of the biggest issues for open source operating systems (especially with regard to mobile operating systems).

<comment><USER8> Assuming that the vendors act as they do out of fear biases causal analysis away from simple business cases. One of those cases is that vendors may have developed their firmware with software that limits the ways the firmware can be distributed. Another case is that vendors may have incorporated software licensed from other companies and that license agreement prevents release of the source code...or more simply the third party software may have been distributed as a binary. Finally, the source code may have been developed with custom or proprietary tooling, build systems, etc. that are not generally available and so releasing the source code doesn't mean that people can use it or understand it.

Theoretically, it is possible to untangle a big ball of string. Theoretically, it is not possible to untangle a big ball of mud.

<comment><USER9> You missed the most likely business case.

The hardware across a family with different prices and features is identical. Features are then enabled/disabled by firmware alone.

This is frequently done to save on silicon manufacturing costs, but still allows marketing/sales to negotiate on features.

<comment><USER7> Well, yeah that is a problem. Does anybody here have an idea how that could be solved?

I mean if the firmware would be released with its source everybody could buy the cheap version and load the full-featured firmware version to their hardware. Even if the manufacturer would place some kind of memory on the hardware which holds the feature-level, someone could patch the firmware to ignore that value.

<comment><USER10> There probably could still be some market segmentation based on the results of what comes out of the silicon fab. Recall that in the case of CPUs, the circuits on dies of processors from the same line (and different lines!) are the same, but some sections are disabled (blown fuses, cut traces, etc) because those sub-sections didn't make the grade during testing prior to packaging. I've not looked, but I'd not be surprised if that weren't also the case with GPUs as well. Sure, you _can_ enable the extra sections of $mid_range_GPU to make it on-paper-equivalent to $top_shelf_GPU, but it's on you to meet its now-unreasonable power and cooling requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems like a really useful service!

If it was under the umbrella of a bigger non-profit it would probably be more successful to recruit companies. Right now it looks like it is done by a single person which means the project can disappear at any time. It is also not clear if the project will be sustainable in terms of infrastructure hosting.

<comment><USER12> Richard Hughes works for Red Hat - I think they are sponsoring his time:

[https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/](https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/)

<comment><USER6> True, Red Hat have been awesome with my time. Lots of donors are sponsoring the hosting; including Amazon for the bandwidth. There's a link on the lvfs page if you'd like to throw some money in the hat, so to speak. Long term this hopefully gets transferred to the Linux Foundation, although we're still working on the legal niggles. More to share when I know more myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this a service to encourage the distribution of proprietary software? Firmware ought to be built from source, like any other software that runs on my hardware.

I think it is dangerous to give legitimacy to proprietary software just because it doesn't get executed by the main CPU.

<comment><USER14> I don't think it's fair to supect Richard Hughes, who makes the ColorHug (open source/open hardware colorimeter) of trying to encourage proprietary firmware.

This is just a service to encourage up2date firmware, proprietary or not.

<comment><USER13> My comment was not meant to be a slight against the people behind the service. I just think that it is dangerous to give hardware people an alternative to doing things the right way, namely to allow for their "firware" to be built from source (and as part of the kernel).

<comment><USER15> Well, if they think it is too hard otherwise, they might decide the alternative is no update at all.

And I rather have a working binary blob on my Linux, than no open source driver at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, this is awesome. I booted up an Ubuntu 17.10 live and was able to quickly update a bunch of Logitech Unifying Receivers I had sitting around using "fwupdmgr update".

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't help think the actual software end of this is over-engineered.

<comment><USER18> I can't help thinking that you should elaborate how you came to that conclusion.

Happy day!

<comment><USER17> It uses a daemon that gets talked to over dbus (and i see systemd in the flowchart, but as they have adopted meson, requiring ninja and python3, i can't really tell if it is just a vestigial thing or deeply embedded). And from the documentation it seems that said daemon will be autostarted by dbus if any of the "frontends" gets fired up. This reeks of overcomplicated Gnome- sims.</comment></comment></comment>


The Benjamin Franklin method for learning more from programming books - <AUTHOR> http://www.pathsensitive.com/2018/01/the-benjamin-franklin-method-of-reading.html <comment><USER2> He doesn't really mention that the reason chess players and musicians can take more with each glance at a position/page is that they see in chunks, not individual elements - that comes from learning the patterns, e.g. in chess "short-castled white king with pawn on h3", in music "C7 chord with melody on the 7th" etc. It's just like adding more layers to a neural network, each layer building things from the elements of the previous one. Or like us reading a page of writing - we don't have to look at each letter like a beginner reader, and barely at some individual words. I guess looking at a C for-loop is like that for someone who's seen 1000s. Apparently chess masters don't look at more positions and moves than a beginner; they just see so much more, and intuitively only look at the best moves in a position (mostly anyway).

Learning to improvise jazz seems different to Franklin's method, in that you don't listen to a jazz great's solo, put it aside and later try to reconstruct it; you have to play it exactly, writing it out if necessary, and play it over and over until it starts to become intuitive; until the muscles learn it. And that must be done with many different solos. And copying just one person just makes you a clone of them. I guess learning programming doesn't have that essential element of imitating the styles of individual great programmers, although maybe for some people it does.

<comment><USER2> Q. Who are the great programmers, with inimitable or at least unmistakable and unique styles? Is there such a thing, as happens with music improvisers, composers, artists, writers?

<comment><USER3> I find that "great programming" is less about the style of the code itself. That part is craftsmanship, which beginners do poorly, but once you learn it, you've learned it. Expert coders may have differing styles, but it mostly just looks like "good style". Like how two expert carpenters might make slightly different style of chairs, and you can tell that both are made really well, but neither style is distinctive enough that it will blow you away.

No, true "artistry" in code I find comes less from style in code and more from architecture. Like, when you first learn about the unix pipeline, and realize how all these tiny programs are composable, and it blows your fucking mind? Or when you're faced with a huge codebase, framework or engine, and you start to explore how it works, and you realize how smartly designed everything is, and how easy it is to do stuff in it? (it doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's wonderful)

That's what great programmers do.

<comment><USER2> Thank you, yeah, that sounds right; it's more like design than like art.

Also, in pg's essay _Great Hackers_ he says that no-one knows who the best programmers are; you have to work with them to know just how good they are.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think a good learning trick that's an intermediate point between the two approaches he discusses (copying the sample code vs. closing the book and write the code yourself) is to write a different program based on what you can see in the sample code. That's how I learn tech myself--I already have some other project in mind, so I rarely sit down to build 'sample' apps with any sincerity. I try sample code to the extent needed to run it without errors, then integrate patterns from it into some other code I was meaning to write in the first place.

To use the Benjamin Franklin analogy, it would be like Franklin having the articles he was seeking to understand open before him, but adding new paragraphs in between the original text, or re-purposing the article into a speech.

This is a very common pedagogical approach of course--hence the cliche phrase 'left as an exercise for the reader.' The subtlety is that this is usually a hypothetical exercise on top of an already hypothetical problem, whereas if I have my own project in mind, I am far more motivated to figure things out.

<comment><USER5> One of my go-to projects for learning a new language is implementing Conway's Game of Life (while trying my best to follow the idioms of the language).

I feel that project is easy enough to not get terribly frustrating, but not entirely trivial, forcing you to think a bit about how you are going to structure it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most programming books do not let you pause to reflect. They just go on and on. Consider Fluent Python by Luis Ramalho. If you read through the book, you will not get much out of it. However, if after each chapter, you try to come up with a practical application of the concepts discussed, then you will have a better chance at building a mental model around the topics. The code presented is just a solution to a problem. You need to come up with more problems. Basically, don't be a passive learner. Be an active learner.

<comment><USER7> I would say that's a problem with video (or a live lecture), not with a book. Books give you all the time in the world to pause and reflect.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it's strange to me that a book should try to force a person to come up with their own activities. Perhaps they should _suggest_ it strongly, but so should a good how-to-learn class, saving all that ink on all those pages from saying the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you enjoyed the Franklin quote in this article, check out his autobiography. It is a gold mine of "life hacks", demonstrated via accounts of Franklin's remarkable life. It seems to be one of the original American self- help books :)

<comment><USER10> "I grew convinc'd that Truth, Sincerity and Integrity in Dealings between Man and Man, were of the utmost Importance to the Felicity of Life." I live my life according this. I've regretted many mistakes along the way. I have never regretted telling the truth. I might withhold the truth. I might knowingly let people assume things, but that is their own fault. I will not lie. The problem after reading this in high school is that I became a lover of truth which I later learned is a philosopher.

<comment><USER11> Technically I believe a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, rather than just truth. But I guess you could rightly argue that truth is a subset of wisdom... :)

<comment><USER10> Because I love something doesn't mean I'm good at it. A T.S. Eliot fan might appreciate this comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm actually not entirely sure how I learned how to program (I'm self-taught); I doubt it was just "one magic thing", but I am a big believer in the "learning-by-doing" approach for this kind of stuff.

If I recall, I think the thing that made everything stick was me reading through one of those "Sams: Teach Yourself C in blah days", then downloading Code::Blocks and making a _very_ simple OpenGL application involving bouncing boxes (which happened to coincide with the physics class I was taking). I remember using that book for reference for when my code wasn't compiling, but I found it difficult to derive "some example where I calculate a Fibonacci sequence" to "making cool stuff like a game" without just ditching the book and trying it.

tl;dr, I somewhat agree with this article. You have to figure this stuff out for yourself to really "understand" it and become a good programmer. It's a _language_ , after all. You don't just learn French by reading one intro-to- french book.

<comment><USER12> I'm much the same and I always feel odd trying to answer that question. I learned programming by immersing myself in the subject and trying and reading and talking about as much as I could. There was never a magic bullet, besides the fact that the returns on persistence began to compound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Let's face it, programming books suck.

While I agree that there are a lot of bad books out there, I don't agree that programming books suck in general. I very much prefer a well structured book over one of those chaotic tutorials that leave me with more questions than answers. Especially for languages where the "why" matters a lot more than the "how".

> It's a lot like the way you may have already been doing it, just with more > learning.

Maybe that's the reason why I disagree. Indeed, they way I read a book is by putting its content into practice.

</comment><comment><USER14> Until a few weeks ago I had never bought a programming book, instead electing to learn on the job. I've noticed that since I'm not a novice programmer anymore, by far the most efficient way to learn is to use the method in the article. I've been working through K&R C and have been doing exactly what the article says--read the code, understand how it works, then write it. When it breaks, go back and learn why. After a few exercises, you'll find yourself adding your own flair and style, which is essential for your growth as a programmer. Plus, it's a much more fulfilling feeling of accomplishment when you can create something from scratch, rather than copy-pasting.

</comment><comment><USER15> Books present information in various ways. Some books have questions that you can answer yourself to teach yourself how to do things. It looks like this author would be a fan of Learn C the Hard way by Zed Shaw. But, if you are buying a book to learn how to do something coming in with some kind of goal is more instructive than reading a book and regurgitating the answers. The author has a good idea on how to make the tutorials in a book into questions but at the end of the day you will teach yourself only what it is in the book.

<comment><USER16> Heretic. Kernighan and Ritchie is the one true gospel.

<comment><USER17> Protestant maybe? His chapter about K&R certainly has the feeling of Luther's 95 theses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My technique: I read the book till I get stuck and start back at page one till I get stuck again. I'm a little stubborn I guess.

Different Program Books Make Different Goals. My favorite are that there is a higher point to be made. My favorite books of this type have been made by Matthias Felleisen.

Little Schemer helped me to understand the though process more than learning a specific language.

How to Design Programs was super dense but it took me through the process of actually designing programs in a logical manner.

[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/)

My favorite domain specific book has been: Hands-On Programming with R. It also was more about here is a logical problem and this is a way to solve it. [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920028574.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920028574.do)

</comment><comment><USER19> The books he is talking about were not originally about instruction in a language. They were great reference books in the days before Stack Overflow, or even before the web had so much info on it. Now, if you want to argue that they are outdated, I may buy that... but saying that the entire series is unhelpful just because it doesn't match their/a better learning style.... seems like a big misunderstanding.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think this article is interesting but it's really only skirting around the edges of the topic of "learning programming" or patterns or a new language or whatever. A good programming book is written from a an understanding of what programming _is_ : Puzzle solving.

A lot of people think programming is a creative work--and it is to some extent --but if you've ever looked at a block of code and thought to yourself, "this could be written better"\--you should realize that, "coding better" is really an exploratory action. You won't know if it's better until you actually run it or someone else reads it and agrees that it is easier to read, makes more sense, etc.

Writing software is fundamentally an act of discovery. If anything has proven this it's the recent Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. Yes, we're 99% sure how our code will perform while in operation but we can never be absolutely 100% certain. Because the CPU, the memory, the chipsets, and other hardware are really just exceptionally reliable laboratory equipment and our experiments (software) have been shown to work precisely as expected almost all the time.

A good programming book will provide plenty of code examples but when it comes time for the reader to practice what they've learned a truly great book will provide the reader with puzzles to solve.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been trying to help one of my friends learn basic coding skills, and the method we used was similar. First, there would be a problem we wanted to solve, I would walk through with him to the solution, and write the code as we speak. By the time we were done, I'd let him study the code for a bit, delete everything, and wanted him to rewrite it.

James Koppel (author of the blog) helped me saw the whole thing from another perspective, and I also loved that he has a high Signal-to-Noise ratio.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been reading the Norton Edition of Franklin's autobiography and some of the excerpts in the back of the book are pretty amazing. A lot of them pretty vicious European responses to Franklin's approaches, especially his list of virtues. For instance D.H. Lawrence:

[http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/lawrence/dhlch02.htm](http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/lawrence/dhlch02.htm)

<comment><USER2> Hehe thanks, that was fun. Well, Lawrence ranted similarly about everyone, with enough truth to make you think for a moment he might be totally right. He got his schtick from his wife Frieda, who'd gotten it from a love affair with the Austrian psychologist Otto Gross, a "champion of an early form of anti- psychiatry and sexual liberation", "proto-feminist and neo-pagan" etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For those who are looking for ways to improve on how we learn, I recommend the book "Make it stick": [http://www.makeitstick.net/](http://www.makeitstick.net/)

It was a real eye opener for me.

<comment><USER24> For similar content in video lecture form, "Learning How To Learn" covers the same topics, and is free from Coursera:

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to- learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)

It's taught by Barbara Oakley, and the content of her book "A Mind For Numbers" is complementary to "Make It Stick."

<comment><USER25> +1 for the Learning How To Learn MOOC. Short and easy to follow, but high quality content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Traditionally, there are two ways to study a page like this:

> 1\. Type out every line of code

> 2\. Copy+paste the code from their website, maybe play around and make small > changes

Um... wut? How about:

3\. Read the code. Think.

If you're reading programming books as practice, and think you're supposed to copy the code examples to learn, you're doing it wrong. If you need eval() to figure out what's going on, you need to spend more time practicing the basics, then step up to the book.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, I've never typed any of the code examples of programming books.. I just read it to understand the concepts. Often I can go really fast when most of it is familiar, but when something catch my attention I work hard to decipher and understand it. if I can't, I'll re-read the chapter or search online.

As a side note, it would be great to have more programming books written like this. I.e. We assume you already know language X so here are the differences and why; focusing mainly on specific code examples and gotchas of the new language.

I would prefer semi-pseudocode:

        import { drawDragon } from 'drawing'
        <other imports..>

        function(screen) {
          screen.render(drawDragon.new('red'))
        }

By semi-pseudocode, I mean that I'm okay with not having the program in its full completeness with the less important part being abstracted away, but for the concepts that are being explained to be detailed, thorough and well documented.

As a fun exercise, one could take a big programming book and trim it down to a 1/10th (or more). There are so many useless sections. Most great devs are good at skipping through the bullshit.. why not just remove that part entirely!

Reason is probably monetary or politic. I.e. can sell to a larger audience by being more beginner friendly and/or need to have a certain amount of page and follow a template to be published.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> One of the best examinations of learning, especially with structured media as described in the article, actually comes from a video game: The Witness.

A summary of how it does it and why it is so good can be found in this 10 minute demo from creator Jonathan Blow:

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

</comment><comment><USER16> This guy is nuts. Basically every article I look at I wind up reading multiple times and get new information each time. If I had the attention span to keep reading them I would probably keep learning too...

<comment><USER29> I admit that even simple articles often have nuance that many would benefit from better exposure. Yet, a limited attention span would seem to be eclipsed simply by have better options in the vast sea of material not yet seen.

<comment><USER16> In a world where you have a massive backlog of good content, yes. Unfortunately, I struggle to find content which is both high quality and easy to learn from. Do you have suggestions?

<comment><USER29> That is a fair statement. I suspect that this poses challenges on a number of levels, including what areas on finds of interest and how they prefer to be engaged.

Between work, family, and school my opportunities to indulge are more limited than I would prefer. Recently I had an opportunity to listen to old lectures by Prof Malan (I understand that newer version of these lectures are now available on edx.org). When I am in the mood for something tied to current events, I enjoy taking time to read Krebs (krebsonsecurity.com) or catch up on conference presentations that I missed (still working my way through the material from ShmooCon).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a pretty common learning technique, one that's been validated in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience research, and one that in grad school (in a different field) I would teach to undergrads that were struggling in the classes I TA'ed. I only wished I had learned it as an undergrad.

For more conceptual learnings, I would instead write questions that capture the main ideas of some subsection or whatnot, then at the end of the chapter, close the book, answer the questions, and summarize the questions. Then go back and check the answers. It takes longer, but active recall helps memory encoding.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a great technique to learning. I taught myself how to code after college and found doing my own version of this helpful. The only slight difference in the technique I used was I found it easier to learn when I had something I wanted to build in mind. This helped both in both direction, what to learn, as well as forcing me replicate code for my own use, like the Ben Franklin technique. Hope others find it useful too.

<comment><USER32> > I found it easier to learn when I had something I wanted to build in mind

I don't understand how you can learn this stuff in any other way. I think it's a little bit like learning a musical instrument. One can read lots of stuff about guitars and music theory and how to play the guitar, but none of that matters until you pick up an actual guitar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Perhaps, instead of reading Programming books, people should master the core tenets of programming first such as OO from such books as "clean code", "Code complete".

That will make it easier for readers to understand and retain information from programming books?

</comment><comment><USER8> This is basically how I'd been telling people to learn from programming tutorial videos for years:

Do the exercise with the video. Do it again, only referencing the video when necessary. If you used the video a lot, do it a third time.

If it doesn't stick after a third time, it probably isn't going to without more tutorials, so go ahead and continue on. I'm betting most people get enough out of the second time, though, especially after doing this a few times and getting the hang of it.

And it's more or less what I've always done, though maybe not _exactly_ following those steps.

<comment><USER34> Reminds of the ole "Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect."

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This sounds like an excellent idea. However, what about choice of material? We pick a musical piece to learn because we enjoy the tune and how it sounds. How should a beginner choose which code to memorise?

<comment><USER36> Reminds me of this article: [https://medium.com/@markpapadakis/interesting- codebases-159f...](https://medium.com/@markpapadakis/interesting- codebases-159fec5a8cc)

A curation of good codebases by someone who studies a lot of them.

<comment><USER37> He lost me when he said this:

"Tensorflow: This is the finest Google codebase I 've studied. Great design, very high quality code, and easy to understand how everything fit together."

Tensorflow is the worst code you can learn from a library design perspective.

<comment><USER2> Why is that? (I know nothing about it, just would love to hear why you say that)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Read your programming book as normal. When you get to a code sample, read it > over

> Then close the book.

> Then try to type it up.

According to a passage in "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" (1791) regarding re-typing from "The Spectator"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Benjamin_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Benjamin_Franklin)

EBook: [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/148](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/148)

</comment><comment><USER39> Of course, the same method can be applied to reading other people's code. Actually, that's analogous to what Franklin did. He tried to capture the essence of a finished work of which he approved.

Using a phrase-book in such a manner wouldn't be beneficial. And programming language books are much like phrase-books: guides to syntax.

Other kinds of programming books, in the category "Do X with Y programming language" are best avoided. They tend to look like phone-books. It is best to decouple X from Y.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sounds pretty similar to SQ3R. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQ3R)

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't find the complete code examples to be that bad. Yes, if you just copy and paste and maybe tinker a bit you will miss a lot. If you type them in blindly like a secretary typing a dictation you will miss a lot.

But if you type them in, and study each line as you go, not proceeding until you understand what that line is doing and why it's there, a working example can be very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER42> " _This is also why a smart code-completion tool can guess a long sequence of code from the first couple lines. With a better mental representation, understanding code is simply less work._ "

=> Is the author protesting against the use of auto-completion/Intellisense feature of most of the modern IDEs ?

<comment><USER43> IMHO it's very good, and decreases the typing time ONLY if you understand the code, and you know what it's doing. Too often I have seen programmers with a strange approach: "I don't need to know, I don't need to think because I have my IDE".

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Mildly related: here's a post I wrote about applying Charlie Munger's principals of effective education to technical documentation: [https://wordsmithweekly.com/blog/effective- education](https://wordsmithweekly.com/blog/effective-education)

</comment><comment><USER45> thanks for this! I had trouble going through some programming courses, and going in parallel with the teacher. But I never made the connection - to just watch it first and try to reproduce it on my own after. Simple and brilliant advice!

</comment><comment><USER46> One thing I haven't seen mentioned in the article or the comments is that the Franklin Method is just deliberate practice applied to writing.

<comment><USER2> It's not clear what you mean "just deliberate practice".

He was imitating a style he liked, trying to acquire to ability to write like that. Using the method in programming seems different, in that it's not the particular writer's unique style you're trying to acquire, but other things.

<comment><USER46> Deliberate practice as defined by K. Anders Ericsson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Ah, the diamond in the mountain of trash!

This makes sorting through the political noise on HN worth it.

</comment><comment><USER48> Reading this left me with a complex feeling...

On one hand, I am glad to say I have been practicing the given advice for many years. On the other, I am intimidated at the notion that others learn anything useful without doing so.

<comment><USER49> Different learning styles are appropriate for different learners, stages of learning, and lesson types. What's important is that you found a learning style that works for you and that you can build on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Made me think of the Suzuki method in music:

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

</comment><comment> naveen-varshney great post.</comment>


Chrome Bugs Allow Sites to Listen to Your Private Conversations - <AUTHOR> http://talater.com/chrome-is-listening/ <comment><USER2> Let's read the spec: [https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/speech-api/raw- file/tip/speechapi.htm...](https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/speech-api/raw- file/tip/speechapi.html#security)

"To minimize the chance of users unwittingly allowing web pages to record speech without their knowledge, implementations _must_ abort an active speech input session if the web page _lost input focus to another window or to another tab_ within the same user agent."

Given this the actual Chrome implementation is wrong.

<comment><USER3> Hmm. Thinking about how I use google hangouts, this "standardized" behavior would actually make hangouts virtually useless. For example, I would be unable to share my screen in any meaningful fashion, or hold a conversation while multitasking (I program as part of a distributed team, so I do both frequently).

I'm not entirely sure this spec creates a useful environment for webapp developers; in fact this limitation would encourage non-standardized implementations so they could actually be used by normal people.

Interesting to think about, either way.

<comment><USER4> We're talking about the Speech API here, which isn't something an app like Hangouts would use. WebRTC, which is more suitable, does not have that restriction codified into its spec.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr: When you explicitly grant a website access to your microphone, the site may keep listening in a popunder window after you close the original tab.

<comment><USER6> without any visual cue that it is listening, while normal chrome tabs show a visual cue.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough. When I saw the title I first thought any random website could start silently listening, NSA-style—the real story isn't nearly that crazy.

<comment><USER7> Well, given how Chrome's "implementation" works, all it takes is a Chrome exploit for that to happen too...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Progressions:

Browser --> Sandbox (within browser) --> "Operating system" (within browser)

Pages --> (Dynamic) Ads, "tracking", "web apps" \--> Pervasive, intrusive monitoring via exploitation

If you are going to turn your browser into an operating system, you'd better get the security right -- and spend some time reflecting on the ongoing Java fiasco.

And maybe stop calling it a "browser" \-- unless you mean that I'm now the one being browsed.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're interested in blocking microphone access, you should be able to do so using this user-script:

[http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/110566](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/110566)

And TamperMonkey to enable the script:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo?hl=en)

<comment><USER10> You can just go to settings and search for "Microphone" (or look in "content settings"), then switch it from "Ask me" to "Do not allow".

<comment><USER11> ^ This!

No need for 3rd party scripts to do the same, especially all the fiasco going around with adware folks getting into extensions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unrelated but anyone know when the Speech API gets into other browsers? Is Mozilla going to be hosting recognition servers?

</comment><comment><USER13> I hear Google is coming out with 'Goggles' they record your surroundings in both audio and video.

</comment><comment><USER14> NSA backdoor uncovered!

</comment><comment><USER15> bug, or feature? nudge nudge, wink wink.

</comment><comment><USER16> His demonstration video is suspect: he hides a popup of the same domain authorized to access the mic behind the main chrome window, which is convenient because in real life popup windows usually appear in the foreground and are quite noticeable, if they weren't blocked by chrome's popup blocker all together.

He is misrepresenting his personal disagreements about UI/UX decisions as exploits or bugs in chrome which is disingenuous, especially as he edits his video to hide the safeguards (mainly the popup blocker).

Also the speech API does not send audio to authorized site only machine transcription of the audio which is not as pertinent, which also speaks to the misrepresentation of the author.

<comment><USER17> I've experienced pop-ups occurring that go behind. It's not like you don't notice it or anything though. Should this be considered a chrome security flaw? You did, after-all, grant privileges to that site. Revoke and report the site?

<comment><USER18> I would say yes. Pop-unders should be blocked, and modern browsers work pretty hard to, but it is often viewed as a "low priority" sec issue, and so workarounds are found, ignored, used in the wild, and patched. Here is one implementation, I have seen working versions up to Chrome ~30:

[https://github.com/tuki/js-popunder](https://github.com/tuki/js-popunder)

Another serious security issue is when the popunder waits for a while as the parent frame navigates itself to e.g. "java.com", then the child navigates the parent to a malicious drive-by download. This can make it appear to "spoof" a drive-by download. This attack vector has been known and ignored forever (I think Zalewski published about this years back). IE9 and 10 actually do a good job preventing this, but I know it works in most modern browsers.</comment></comment></comment>


Ten reasons not to be a contractor - <AUTHOR> https://headmelted.com/ten-reasons-not-to-be-a-contractor-4515cd4f30f7 <comment><USER2> Not surprisingly, this is the reason problems like capitalization and bad cash flow happen in the first place. It's critical that you map out as comprehensive a business plan as possible, covering financial issues, marketing, operations, growth and an array of other elements.</comment>


Drawing bad logos for beer money since 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.horriblelogos.com/hacker-news/ <comment><USER2> What's funny to me is this guy is clearly talented. I laughed my ass off, but even in his rush to create total garbage, you can still see his sense of space and weight creeping in.

God, click on on the testimonials and look at some of those logos, so funny.

<comment><USER3> It seems like 98% of the people "get it", what's really funny is the 2% of testimonials who honestly thought this was legit logo design for $5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For a more surreal online-request-artist I give you Jim'll paint it [[http://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/](http://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/)].

BTW the name is a reference to a British kids TV show called Jim'll fix it [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim'll_Fix_It](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim'll_Fix_It)] which has recently become somewhat tainted [[http://www.theguardian.com/media/jimmy- savile](http://www.theguardian.com/media/jimmy-savile)]

<comment><USER5> There's a cement mixer truck driving around London somewhere with "Jim'll Mix It" written in cartoony writing on the side. I cringe every time I've seen it since the scandal - and I keep wondering if they'll ever change it!

EDIT: aaand my favourite one from that site: [http://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/image/66024818150](http://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/image/66024818150)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lol.

On a serious note though, this would be an excellent way to get cheap concepts for a logo. Buy the dude 4 beers for the same logo and get someone that uses Photoshop well to digitize it properly.

80% of creating a logo is getting the concept.

<comment><USER7>
      ...and get someone that uses Photoshop well to
         digitize it properly.

Eh, from what I can gather Horrible Logos Guy seems to possess actual graphic design talent, and would likely be more than capable of properly digitizing any given logo. He actually offers high-res copies in exchange for larger quantities of beer, if you dig deeper into the site.

I'd surmise that Horrible Logos Guy could probably create good logos, but chooses not to, because shitty logos are much more fulfilling to create.

Case in point:

The logo he did for "Get Off My Lawn Records" is recognizable as the face of an old hobo from a picture on a greeting card I've seen 1,000 times at stores like Spencer Gifts. In the picture, the hobo is giving the middle finger, and the card usually says something like "happy birthday, go fuck yourself."

Sketch: [http://www.horriblelogos.com/wp-content/uploads/horrible- log...](http://www.horriblelogos.com/wp-content/uploads/horrible-logos-get- off-my-lawn.gif)

Orginal: [http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jmlJwQlujeY/TilxbkpypMI/AAAAAAAAAi...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jmlJwQlujeY/TilxbkpypMI/AAAAAAAAAiw/wcHa5FY6z1w/s1600/angry- hobo.jpg)

The fact that he sketched that up in like ten minutes, and that it's recognizable to me, tells me that he has enough artistic talent to source decent photo reference, and trace a crude drawing over it, while staying within the bounds of fair use, and (as advertised) not seriously developing a commercially usable logo. Thus, artistic talent.

<comment><USER8> Also, if I was running indie music label called "get off my lawn records", I'd probably actually use that logo. Seems fun.

<comment><USER9> I'd actually use a lot of these logos for the types of companies that they're for, even just as-is. The drawn look lends a lot of authenticity and fun.

That said, the concepts themselves are straight up usually good. I'd say he has a 60-70% decent rate here. Not horrible!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this remind anyone else of I Want to Draw a Cat For You, made famous by Shark Tank?

[http://iwanttodrawacatforyou.com/](http://iwanttodrawacatforyou.com/)

<comment><USER11> exactly what i thought of!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The about page made me laugh, it's worth a look... [http://www.horriblelogos.com/about/](http://www.horriblelogos.com/about/)

</comment><comment><USER13> The 'Springy Panther' is one of the best/worst: [http://www.horriblelogos.com/springy- panther/](http://www.horriblelogos.com/springy-panther/)

The comment from the buyer: "Thanks Horrible Logos. That's so appalling we cant use it anywhere…just what we were looking for!"

</comment><comment><USER12> Also

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

<comment><USER14> His logos are actually pretty decent - not so much 'horrible' as 'rough hand- drawn concept sketches'. His singing, though.... _shudder_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A lot of these actually aren't bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, makes you wonder if the 'horrible' part is just his angle.

<comment><USER16> Of course it's an angle. You can't sell "not bad" without an angle.

<comment><USER17> > _You can 't sell "not bad" without an angle._

You'd be surprised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Man, some of those are so bad I had to buy one!

The testimonials are well worth a click, BTW.

</comment><comment><USER19> Quite a few of these follow established design principles while remaining creative, quirky, and unique.

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of the Five-Minute Logo guy - I actually prefer these, but both are superb.

[http://www.vonglitschka.com/5MinuteLogo/](http://www.vonglitschka.com/5MinuteLogo/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I got my own one of these I'm quite fond of: [http://www.kevinlordbarry.com/uploads/3/6/5/4/3654649/137492...](http://www.kevinlordbarry.com/uploads/3/6/5/4/3654649/1374925707.png).

</comment><comment><USER22> Pretty brilliant. Paid to practice logo design with basically zero responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER23> I guess he will now know for a fact whether or not this thing scales :)

</comment><comment><USER24> A lot of these are actually brilliant as initial concepts!

</comment><comment><USER25> I tried this guy last year after a few recommendations. I loved the result I got.

[http://www.vonglitschka.com/5MinuteLogo/index.html](http://www.vonglitschka.com/5MinuteLogo/index.html)

There are a bunch of videos on his main site showing how he goes about the process, as well as other stuff.

<comment><USER26> Actually very good, especially considering the 5 dollar price. The Horrible Logos variety is just a bit too sketchy, although I can see the fun in it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd be really interested to find how much money this guy has made since he setup this site.

<comment><USER27> Can narrow it down pretty quickly.

168 pages * 10 per page = 1,680 (there appear to be 200 jingles or so)

It's likely most people are buying the $5 or $10 version, with a bias toward the $5. Generous $7 per * 1,680 = $11,760

And if you had to ballpark it overall: $10k to $15k.

The only way that isn't a good ball park estimation, is if he's doing a lot that aren't getting posted to the site.

An interesting comp would be the I Want To Draw a Cat For You guy: [http://iwanttodrawacatforyou.com](http://iwanttodrawacatforyou.com)

He has done 14,300 in three years (at $10+ per). Cat guy is of course treating it more like a business, and likely has a broader appeal (cats / pets vs logos).

<comment><USER28> Being listed on the site is a specifically enumerated feature of the purchase, so that shoud be accurate.

I am buying the $5 logo, myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I couldn't resist buying one for a friend who low balls be to do graphic design.

</comment><comment><USER30> He's still drawing! Here's the one I ordered in 2010: [http://www.horriblelogos.com/coding- robots/](http://www.horriblelogos.com/coding-robots/)

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't know where Brunch Bros is but I sure want to eat there now.

[http://www.horriblelogos.com/brunch- bros/](http://www.horriblelogos.com/brunch-bros/)

</comment><comment><USER11> haha i love this one:

[http://www.horriblelogos.com/hail-gabe/](http://www.horriblelogos.com/hail- gabe/)

</comment><comment><USER32> This in combination with vistaprint/etc has virtually limitless options for ~$25-per-printed-item.

</comment><comment><USER33> "No porn or any material considered inappropriate or offensive." In about section :)

</comment><comment><USER34> Oh the site is run on NSFN. Nice! I am using it as well for forwarding some emails.

</comment><comment><USER35> One would think that after 3 years you'd learn how to draw a good logo =)

</comment><comment><USER36> Whoops, traffic's overloading the site...

</comment><comment><USER11> you guys make truly horrible logos

</comment><comment><USER37> These look really good to me.</comment>


Ask HN: How to win the Startup school fund? - <AUTHOR> This is my second time participating in the startup school, which should start on Monday.<p>How can I win it's  $15k fund?
Is there a known recipe? <comment><USER2> Build something people want and show progress. Winning $15k is not the real goal anyhow.</comment>


Where Dutch directness comes from - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180131-where-dutch-directness-comes-from?source=techstories.org <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16280485](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16280485)

</comment><comment><USER3> > We chose our seats and waited, but the waiter was nowhere to be seen. When > he finally materialised, seemingly out of nowhere, he didn't ask 'What would > you like to order', or 'What can I get you?'. He said 'What do you want?'. > Maybe it was the fact that he'd said it in English, or maybe he was just > having a bad day, but I was shocked nonetheless.

It wasn't rudeness, it was just translated from Dutch to English, i.e. how you would say it in Dutch but with English words. Something like; "Wat wil je?"

Just because the Dutch speak English well, doesn't mean they communicate well in English.

When I moved from the Netherlands to Australia 12 years ago I could speak English very well. However, there is a big difference in speaking a language and expressing yourself in it.

<comment><USER4> Also "What do you want" is not really a great example of directness. That's either passive-aggressive, leaving the customer guess if they have done something wrong, or it is, as you suggested, just a lost in translation case.

"What can I get you" is a proper direct, clean way to indicate you are ready to take order. Compare that to London in hype-ish restaurant where you get "Hi, how are you doing today, my name is X" which you need to understand is your cue to engage in a business transaction instead of chitchat.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you. It's just that "What can I get you" is a the proper "cultural" way to say it in English. In Dutch you say it differently, so a lot of Dutch (not being exposed to the proper cultural English way of saying things) just speak Dutch with English words. It's this that makes it sound harsh.

<comment><USER5> But isn't it also direct in Dutch?

To put it in context: is there a way to say it even more directly in Dutch? Or, is it more that Dutch lacks different levels of directness?

Perhaps similiarly to how English lacks the extensive polite forms of Japanese.

<comment><USER3> I think in Dutch it would be more the "tone", how it is asked, rather than the actual words. Imagining myself being a rude Dutch waiter, the rudest I could ask it in Dutch would probably by just saying "Ja?" (as in, Yes) in a grumpy tone. But if I say the same thing in a friendly way, it would probably be just fine for most occasions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know people here are in love with this concept, considering this is the second or third time this rather tabloid(ish) and off-topic article has made it to the front page.

So, some words of warning to those considering the Netherlands a paradise for their first amendment rights that are being trampled in the US:

"Being direct" does indeed allow to cut through the rhetorical gymnastics Brits and Americans have to go through to offer criticism. You can say "This result is wrong" or "I can never show this draft to the client", instead of "There is potential in your writing" or "You are extremely creative in your use of mathematical notation".

It does not mean you can denigrate others just because you don't like their type. That Google guy would have been fired in the Netherlands just as fast as he did in the US.

<comment><USER7> Which Google guy?

<comment><USER2> I am guessing James Damore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Eh, this seems to me to be in the vein of other articles that tend to fetishize cultures other than ours. As a New Yorker, I've heard constantly about how we're all aggressive, rude, direct, confrontational, etc. While, like most stereotypes, there might be a sliver of truth, my experience has been quite different. People will keep to themselves, avoid confrontation (even moving to a different subway car if they're bothered by something); it's more that less is said, such as callously shoving past someone on a crowded sidewalk, or being passive-aggressive. I know articles like these appeal to the HN crowd since they're techies who are deficient in social skills, and crusade against "PC culture" and other niceties. But in real life, being overly direct will quickly get you labeled as unpleasant. Small talk and the like actually do have a purpose.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a kind of philosophical dictionary called Talking Philosophy (written by an Australian) which says that when a philosopher at Oxford disagrees with another they say "Quite. But at the same time..", while in Sydney they say "Bullshit!"</comment>


Three Silicon Valley places Paul Graham omitted  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2010/10/three-silicon-valley-places-paul-graham.html

<comment><USER2> The hp garage is behind a gate at a private house. You can't get close to it.

The Shockley building is near my house. It is now a fiesta market, which makes me sad. I hope someday to buy it and turn it into anything other than a fruit stand.</comment>


What do I need to know about the "SegmentSmack" TCP reassembly DoS attack? - <AUTHOR> https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/23964/ <comment><USER2> This practice of naming security issues is stupid. Anyone who uses or invents one of these nonsense security monikers / terms owes a charity real money. I'd suggest $100 on first offence. Doubling each time.</comment>


Unpaid interns not protected from sexual harassment - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/09/news/economy/unpaid-intern-sexual-harassment/

<comment><USER2> [sexist remark]</comment>


Understand transaction isolation levels and read phenomena in MySQL and Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/4EajrPgJAk0 <comment><AUTHOR> When working with database transactions, one crucial thing we must do is choosing the appropriate isolation level for our application. Although there's a well-defined standard, each database engine might choose to implement it in a different way, and thus may behave differently in each isolation level. In this video, we will explore deeply how each level of isolation work in MySQL and Postgres by running some concrete SQL queries. It also shows you how each isolation level prevents read phenomena like dirty read, non-repeatable read, phantom read, and serialization anomaly.</comment>


Google + needs different font sizes - <AUTHOR> http://www.surf-the-edge.com/2011/07/02/google-needs-different-font-sizes/

<comment><USER2> If you're going to change the font-size, at least increase the density while you're at it. Google+ displays 3 stories in the space that Facebook can fit 5 or 6 just from the whitespace alone.</comment>


What medium should be used for long term, high volume, data storage (archival)? - <AUTHOR> https://superuser.com/questions/374609/what-medium-should-be-used-for-long-term-high-volume-data-storage-archival <comment><USER2> Best medium is paper, but that's difficult to do for high volume. OTOH, maintaining archives is much more work than generating the copies, so it pays to keep volume as low as possible.

I keep paper copies of really important stuff, in addition to archiving them on other media. Most other files go onto M-Disc Blu-Ray discs. Even though I'm skeptical that M-Disc is worth the premium, I'm gambling that it's at least as reliable as regular Blu-Ray. I also encrypt and upload tar balls to rsync.net, but key management is anxiety-inducing[1] and I've been doing that less and less. (I've been doing this since before tarsnap existed. I'd probably use tarsnap if I was starting from scratch.) I also use Time Machine, but manually every few months, and that's only one desktop, which happens to two hard drives.

Once Git took hold 10+ years ago I began maintaining some folders as Git repositories. In addition to properly versioning stuff, it's much easier to move data around using git push and git clone. Some close friends and I have been running our own co-located physical servers for close to 20 years, so I'm comfortable pushing unencrypted data onto such a remote server, whereas I would never think of pushing unencrypted data to a service or VM, no matter if they claimed to encrypt it.[1]

Whenever I upgrade a personal computer or personal server I usually save the hard drive in storage, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

I don't archive multimedia, except for family photos. The maintenance burden of archiving movies and music isn't worth it, though I never enjoyed collecting multimedia as much as others.

That's my process, which largely developed organically rather than deliberately. Everybody has their own process but it's always useful hearing about the details.

[1] Remember, key management is always the achilles heel, both short-term and long-term. Focusing on details, like AES-128 v AES-256, is often counterproductive in terms of navigating the solution space. Likewise, whether PBKDF2 or Argon2 is used for generating a key is irrelevant to me as generating a key from a memorized password is, IMO, a losing proposition from the start.

</comment><comment><USER3> Glacier or similar service.</comment>


Looking for Machine Learning Mentorship - <AUTHOR> I've been very interested in machine learning/neural nets for the past year, and have been reading papers on arxiv in detail. Having implemented some papers myself, and training the nets and watching conference talks, I feel as I am missing a chunk in my understanding.
I can understand how new advances are being made, but what I do not understand on how to discover them in the first place, and what tradeoffs are.  Why is going deeper better than a shallower, more connected architecture? Why are Resnet's better than RNN/LSTM's, when they seem like the same thing? It feels to me that we are picking up mud, and throwing it against a wall to see what sticks. I have a physics background, so I'm more used to deliberate design way of thinking (we used this architecture because of X, Y, and Z).
Anyway, I was hoping to see if someone know's where I can find some mentorship where these questions are answered.  Maybe someone records a professor's office hours? Is there an online meetup that discusses these issues? I have particular interest in multiple object tracking and segmentation.
I will be applying for Google Brain soon, but I just wanted to have more of a fundamental understanding first. Thank you! <comment><USER2> Why not asking these question on other platforms such as reddit and quora?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will also post on Quora later, I'm not a fan a reddit for this topic.</comment></comment>


So you wanna be a freelancer? - <AUTHOR> http://ianwarshak.posterous.com/working-as-a-freelancer

<comment><USER2> Excellent post. I did a stint as a freelancer for a while and this is on target for sure.

I've been riding a cube for about 2 years now and I'm starting to get tired of it, though. On top of that I'd like to have some more time to work on my startup.

Thus, I'd like to get back in to freelancing. Even though I _did_ freelance at one point I was never in a place where I had to _look_ for work -- it always just fell in to my lap. Does anyone have any advice on how I can get started looking for clients?</comment>


Offer HN: Dale Carnegie Book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - <AUTHOR>

Because of a great man, I have 4 extra copies of this book printed in 1978 (ISBN: 0-671-82743-X). Wikipedia states that it was revised in 1981. I can find no evidence on this book that shows it is a revised version. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I am offering to send these 4 copies to HN members who want to read this book.[1] I've chosen a peculiar and hopefully successful way to distribute the books amongst as many who wish to read it as possible.
To qualify you must: (1)be willing to provide your mailing address to the previous owner or to a moderator of HN who will forward it (2)have some form of contact info available in your HN profile (3)comment in this thread with a "[1]" preceding your comment to indicate your interest.
For the subject of the comments, please describe the environment and/or activity you prefer most in your leisure time to escape the daily grind and rejuvenate. If yours was already posted, then please reply to that comment with your personal specifications.[2] Feel free to comment even if you are not interested in getting a copy of the book.
In a few days, I'll choose 4 members and contact them to get their mailing addresses. If you receive a copy, it would be great if you would forward it onto another member who showed interest here when you finish reading.
I know that the system I've chosen to distribute the books may not be the fastest way to get them into the hands of those who want them the most, but hopefully it will increase the chance that those people will eventually get to read it. Thank you for your time and good luck!
[1] I can't afford expedited international post, but will gladly send it internationally via standard post.
[2] A parent comment will have no advantage over a child comment regarding whom will receive a book from me. <comment><USER2> This book has great wisdom in it. I wish though, that the publishers or whoever is responsible for such a decision would consider revising the title.

I wonder how many potential readers were put off by the book's title, thinking "I have plenty of friends, I'm not a loser!". A better title in this day and age would be, "How to Win" by Dale Carnegie.

Also, I'd love to be able to read the 'lost chapter' that wasn't included in the book. If I recall correctly it was about how one should regard toxic people. If anybody has ever uncovered that chapter, I'd love to get the chance to read it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you everyone who participated. I have chosen to send a copy to ayers, anishkothari, boringkyle, and ritchiea. I have emailed 3 of you already. Anishkothari, I couldn't find your email address through your profile info. If you would be kind enough to email me at the address in my profile with the mailing address where you'd like the book sent, then I would be very grateful.

</comment><comment><USER3> [1] I run, always outside (rain or shine, regardless of season. Yes that means right through winter) and never with any music. I enjoy the time to think and reflect. Currently I am training for a marathon so running 4 times a week with the long runs being 2/3+ hours, I have plenty of time to mentally unwind and sort through my thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER4> I enjoy swimming several times a week to rejuvenate my senses, obtain mental clarity and stay in shape. The swimming pool is the one of the few places where there are no everyday problems, no stress and most importantly, no phones. Everyone is just swimming.

Give it a try and you'll find it's a uniquely rewarding activity, in part because it is so hard to make progress at first and you really have to work at it. But like most things in life, trusting your strength and putting in the effort will get you there even if you swallow a bit of chlorine on the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Before my wife and I had a child, my favorite escape was backpacking deep into the wilderness here in Montana, and camping near a mountain lake. Like in the pool, there's no connectivity out there. Exploring the wilderness has instilled in me great respect for those who lived without the technology we have as well as deep gratitude for that technology I may have otherwise taken for granted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [1] I have wanted to read this book for a long time. Thank you for doing this OP!

In my daily life, I feel rejuvenated by doing yoga and meditation, going for walks in nature and playing pickup basketball. I started playing in high school and found it to be a kind of catharsis - forming teams with strangers, learning each other's names and style of play, then finding a way to win. I don't travel often, but I find travel and cultural exploration to be very rejuvenating as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> [1] to escape the daily grind - consume information (news, downloading the top apps in the app store, HN, etc), help someone in need (volunteer at random soup kitchens), write (code and/or blog posts), play (drums and/or keyboards), get some sun (offer to run errands for a friend) - this all gets me out of my bubble working 12-hour days indoors

p.s. any chance of scanning the copy? I would much rather read this version than the one you could torrent now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I won't scan the copy I have. There's a decent chance you'll be able to read it though, because of your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [1] I'm leaving highschool in june. I've heard it's much harder to make friends after high school.

<comment><AUTHOR> Although the book's title alludes to self help on making friends, the main point IMO leans more toward treating others how you would like to be treated and trying to genuinely understand the other person's perspective.

The reason I'm offering this book in particular on HN is because PG had recommended reading an unrevised version if possible. I'm sure many others are just as excited as I was to get a copy.

<comment><USER8> Do you know what the revisions were?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [1] Take a long walk alone</comment>


Artificial Intelligence Solves Rubik's Cube in Less Than One Second - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/artificial-intelligence-rubiks-cube-uci/ <comment><USER2> You can solve it 60+ times a second without AI and not create as much CO2. Responsible AI ought to consider wheither or not to use it in the first place.

[https://github.com/pglass/cube](https://github.com/pglass/cube)</comment>


Minnesota toddler is allergic to water - <AUTHOR> http://www.fox5ny.com/news/minnesota-toddler-is-allergic-to-water <comment><USER2> > _Experts say to minimize ivy 's reactions, they need to purify the water > systems and use central air so she doesn't overheat._

So she is allergic to something that is dissolved in tap water and other usual presentations of water. (Is she allergic to bottled water? All the brands?) Not allergic to H2O. Almost all the foods have a 30% or more part of H2O, so being allergic to H2O is ultra fatal.</comment>


An Introduction To Programming Type Systems  - <AUTHOR> http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/04/18/introduction-to-programming-type-systems/ <comment><USER2> Some of the dynamic programmer arguments sound like if static typing is a replacement for unit testing. "There's no replacement for testing, and unit tests find more issues than the compiler ever could." "Static typing only catches some bugs, and you can't trust the compiler to do your testing" - here's a breakthrough: use static typing AND unit testing!

"Just because the code compiles doesn't mean it runs." "The compiler doesn't stop you from writing bad code." These seem more like smart-ass knee-jerk responses than sound argument. Just because you type something in python doesn't mean it runs; typing something to run in a interpreter doesn't stop you from writing bad code.

"Debugging overly complex object hierarchies is unbearable" I think this is mitigated by good IDEs.

"Dynamic languages are easier to read because you write less code" This could be an argument. But for static typing with type inference, the extra code will be in variable declaration and type declaration.

Dynamic languages definitely have their purpose, and I'm starting to believe that its prototypes and scripting.</comment>


Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning - <AUTHOR> http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.html <comment><USER2> Oof.

I had a brainbuster of a time earlier this year when I had to enumerate all possible valid schedules at a university... and this makes it look like an absolute cakewalk.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be interested in reading this if it was easier to read. It's like one of those blogs where they're like "TOP 100 THINGIES!!!" and it's 100 pages, each page with 1 thingy. Thanks, but no thanks.

<comment><USER4> Click on the: "Download presentation in PDF format" link on the landing page ([http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel- com...](http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel- complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.pdf))

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Very_ general; not much information. Should be useful to beginning undergrads.

<comment><USER6> It's about the complexity of the problem, not the implementation.

At least I found it interesting. I had no idea it would be this much work to get these seemingly basic routes worked out.

<comment><USER5> The ticket-price-routing problem is not new, even if it is interesting. There was an article on HN a few months ago, IIRC, talking about how ITA uses tens of thousands of lines of Common Lisp, with hand-tuned assembly, to get their optimization queries to finish within their tight space (given the huge set of possible combinations) and time bounds.

My point was that the presentation's slides are _very_ cursory in their treatment.</comment></comment></comment>


The Story of Mel - <AUTHOR> http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't believe this wasn't on HN already.

<comment><USER2> It's been on several times under different URLS.

[http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:http://news.ycombin...](http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:http://news.ycombinator.com/+mel&esrch=FT1)

<comment><AUTHOR> OK. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>