Status.im Invests $5M in Riot.im - <AUTHOR> https://blog.status.im/status-invests-5m-in-riot-im-4e3026a8bd50 <comment><USER3> I have never heard of Status.im[0], but I'm glad that the Matrix protocol[1] and it's major[2] client implementation Riot.im[3]—received significant financial resources.

We, a small group of tech-savvy people, tried to use Riot client in the early summer of 2017, but it was far from being convenient for work needs. Poor UI/UX, overcomplicated E2E-keys sharing, sluggish interface (Electron, as you might have guessed) and awful mobile app. I'm not sure of the current status, but I hope now they'll be able to increase the pace of development and quality of the product, since Matrix is an excellent, federated post-XMPP/IRC protocol, which we lack today.

 _Upd: references and clarifications._

[0] [https://wiki.status.im/The_Status_Network_Whitepaper](https://wiki.status.im/The_Status_Network_Whitepaper)

[1] [https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is- matrix](https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-matrix)

[2] [https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix- now.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html)

[3] [https://riot.im/](https://riot.im/)

<comment><USER4> Yes, riot sucks both in its current "desktop" implem (electron indeed) and the web version - tried it about two months back. You can tell there's possibly something worthwhile there though; eventually it may become usable for work.

I found the way the software tries systematically to push the user towards the "official", centralized matrix server distasteful though.

<comment><USER5> > I found the way the software tries systematically to push the user towards > the "official", centralized matrix server distasteful though.

Seems like they're simply trying to reduce friction for the on-boarding process to me. Characterising it as distasteful is taking the piss a bit.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, trying to find the balance between "accessible for your average WhatsApp user" and "powerful for more advanced users" is still something we're working on. Nothing deliberate here.

\- Matrix team

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While it's great that they found a way to keep working on the project, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth personally because it feels like ultimate capitalism in play even when it comes to protocols like this.

Status.im hasn't done much other than raised a huge round of ICO, so they're sitting on all this money they can use to buy out other "competitor" protocols. Sure, they have a prototype beta and I guess beta testers are using it, but they don't even have a working app on the appstore.

Their (Status.im) strategy seems to be use their treasure chest of money and gain traction by acquiring other protocols (It may sound like a "partnership" but essentially the whole deal seems to be that these projects that received investment are expected to integrate with Status token)

I would have no issue with this approach if they actually HAD launched a product, but like I said, they don't even have a production app.

Riot has been around for a while, and they have an actual product. I think it sucks that an organization with more money can just buy out another org with less money. I would have loved to see Riot build their own destiny with their own tokens instead of raising capital from a competing messaging protocol.

<comment><USER8> But has riot.im really been bought? Isn't this just providing the riot.im developers with more time and developmental resources to push forward with?

<comment><USER9> It hasn't been bought, Status had contractually selected some features/bugs that they wanted fixed but apart from that they do not control riot.im's roadmap.

\- Contracted Matrix Dev

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool. I just set up my own Matrix server (Synapse) the other day and have been using Riot.im on my iPhone. To be honest, everything works much better than I expected.

Right now, my only complaints are that there are some notification settings that you can't change from the app, and that the user interface is a little redundant. I'm highly optimistic though.

<comment><USER11> And who are you talking to? The problem with Matrix (or other messenger technologies) is not that they're not good enough (in most cases nowdays) but that if not enough people are using them, they're useless, even if technically superior. I have pretty great working Jabber server but the issue is I have literally 2 people left I can talk to using it nowdays and both hardware and maintenance costs when compared to benefits are not looking good.

<comment><USER12> Matrix has a big community of people with a lot of active rooms to chat in, and beyond that it has bridges to other networks like IRC, Gitter, and Slack. See voyager.t2bot.io for a graph of a whole lot of public Matrix rooms (created by a crawler bot).

<comment><USER11> This doesn't change a lot. This makes it at best Slack competitor (and I am aware of the gateways plugins being worked on) and not WhatsApp/Skype/iMessages competitor.

<comment><USER13> What's wrong with being a Slack competitor? Your perspective here seems to be "it's useless if it can't take on WhatsApp", which I think is overly pessimistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's hard for me to really know what status.im is. It bills itself as an OS, but it's not because it runs on iOS and Android. Is it a separate app store and platform? Is it a collection of apps? Is it a library or a set of protocols?

Is this a problem with the blockchain community? Repurposing long-established words for their own use ("crypto", "os")?

<comment><USER15> yeah, the naming.... it's basically a client app for the ethereum ecosystem, much like the role a web browser has

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Its good that Riot gets money, but its incredibly damning for Status, an ICO that was meant to produce its own chat platform. This shows status has no technical ability of their own, and has to ride on existing open source products.

The status investors paid to build a new platform, and the team is unable to deliver this.

By paying an existing open source project, yes we all win, but that is not what people (not myself, are you crazy... lol) paid for.

<comment><USER17> Status isn't actually using Matrix in its own tech - they seem to be getting on great with their own React Native / ClojureScript / Whisper/PSS stack :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How are they supposed to make money?

I distrust for-profit messenger apps, no matter how good their intentions are. Sooner or later, they'll sell my data :(

<comment><USER19> I share your distrust, which is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of Discord. I don't know where Riot's revenue will come from, but Matrix [1] (and Riot by extension [2]) support end-to-end encryption. As others have said you can also set up your own server.

[1] [https://matrix.org/blog/2016/11/21/matrixs-olm-end-to-end- en...](https://matrix.org/blog/2016/11/21/matrixs-olm-end-to-end-encryption- security-assessment-released-and-implemented-cross-platform-on-riot-at-last/)

[2] [https://medium.com/@RiotChat/exciting-new-riot-release- get-r...](https://medium.com/@RiotChat/exciting-new-riot-release-get-ready- for-chatting-securely-acc93ecfe0a)

<comment><USER20> I absolutely wish Matrix could crush Discord. An entire generation of users came out burned by programs like Skype, Hangouts, MSM, Facebook Messenger, etc and then threw themselves eagerly into another closed ecosystem messenger just because it was one of the first to manage a really performant web client.

<comment><USER21> I think it can, but it will take time. It is up to the community and userbase to adopt it as much as it is up to the team behind the software.

<comment><USER22> Yeah I think the potential is there, but Riot will probably need features like Push to Talk and other gaming-oriented stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a backer of the Purism Librem 5, it's nice to see some funding money for Matrix.org, especially after their recent financial troubles. Good stuff!

</comment><comment><USER24> Any investment in open source makes me happy, especially if there are 5 zeros or more, that means things can get done for a while, which makes things better, longer.

The Riot IM site confuses me a bit, I had thought it was an open source client you could run on own server - but I don't see anything about that there. Did some digging on matrix and found one mention of vector code on github - <USER2> many details...

Is there someone I can send $100 that can spend some time explaining to me how to set this up on my own server, and how to mod it a bit so that for example, most logged info is destroyed after 24 hours and things like that?

After spending time and money on rocket chat I've come to find the value in hiring an expert / professional in the sphere to consult with before drinking the koolaid and going all in on the flashy promises on home pages.

added contact info to my profile thing here, I hope it works.

Now if someone would put $2 million into buddypress, and mastadon (I think that's what its called) I would think we have a future that is possible without the F and G overlords.

<comment><USER25> The RIOT (used to be known as Vector) is just main client. There are many more clients. All listed here [https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix- now.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html)

Matrix is the protocol - it is a standard. So there are many servers being implemented. But most of them are Alpha/Beta software. The server from matrix org everyone uses now is called Matrix Synapse. It is written in python. If you don't need extreme performance (thousands+ clients) then go with that. On debian/ubuntu it is simple as apt get matrix-synapse but it can be installed as any other python app. Then it is basically about setting one config yaml file (homeserver.yml) and you are done. Lots of guides here [https://matrix.org/docs/projects/server/synapse.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/server/synapse.html)

I run matrix synapse for smallish org and we also tried rocket chat and mattermost. Riot was by far most stable and fastest. Rocket chat was very sluggish and mattermost had problems with mobile notifications (i think you have to pay them for notifications or something like that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good. Seeing how XMPP basically came to a complete stall, may be Matrix can progress further.

<comment><USER27> I wonder why did you get that impression about XMPP, for me it's quite the opposite. Have you seen [https://conversations.im/](https://conversations.im/) ?

<comment><USER26> No progress on Muji XEP for years or stagnation of clients like KDE Telepathy and etc. all gives the impression that things aren't moving anywhere. Also, servers closing down (DDG one), Google letting federation rot by not enabling server to server encryption and etc. and etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of XMPP, but the lack of progress is quite upsetting.

<comment><USER27> It's true that not every XEP moved out of draft status and that big players closed federation but there are new XEPs that are being worked on (OMEMO, HTTP Upload).

Google and DDG do not provide Matrix servers and probably will never do (big players are not interested in federation in general, not just XMPP), but isn't the entire point of federation that you host your own?

Check out conversations.im and dino.im for modern clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What does this product do?

<comment><USER10> Riot.im is an open source Android/iOS/web messaging app. It uses the Matrix protocol, which is also open. There is a reference Matrix server called "Synapse", which I actually just started running the other day.

With these components, you can host your own messaging platform.

<comment><USER29> Who will I message?

<comment><USER30> I use it as an IRC/Slack alternative, and it's pretty good - especially for the equivalent of public channels. The apps are better and easier to explain than IRC ones, and it is easier to join and more open than Slack.

Naturally, if you're making a new channel for a group, you have to ask everyone in the group to join it. That's the case whatever messenger you use.

There is crypto now for private messages, but it is a little clunky to setup still. I hope that the funding helps make this better!

For friends I've shared keys with, it works really well. Of course, right now people will only join for ideological reasons. That's OK though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One of my biggest concerns with Matrix was the amount of device data that it exposes.

It's extremely easy to fingerprint the devices that someone is using (it literally tells you right within Riot) and by design could make it easy for someone to track you or target your device if there are any known exploits for it.

<comment><USER17> We've already fixed this - devices are now described as "Desktop", "Mobile" or "Web" by default. It was a thinko (mine actually) that we put too much detail in the device descriptions originally :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've always resisted commenting on project names, but Riot? I was thinking re flash mobs. But OK, it's some sort of joke.

</comment><comment><USER33> Matrix is a good product. I am glad they got finally funded!

</comment><comment><USER34> Great, another messaging app. My phone and desktop are overrun by them.

<comment><USER30> Let me know when it is overrun by open, federated ones.</comment></comment>


Tile38 – Realtime geofencing and geospatial index, v1.11.0 - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/tidwall/tile38 <comment><AUTHOR> To anyone coming here wondering WTF is Tile38? First I'll tell you what it's not. It's not a replacement for PostGIS, and it's not built on top of Redis.

In my opinion PostGIS is the Swiss Army Knife of spatial data management. It's awesome! Especially for large datasets and complex queries. I use it all the time.

Tile38 uses the Redis protocol for network transport. There're some commands that loosely resemble Redis like SET and GET, but it's otherwise a completely different project. I originally forked Redis and built the functionality on top of the C codebase. [https://github.com/tidwall/redis- gis](https://github.com/tidwall/redis-gis), but scrapped that project.

What Tile38 is good for is very dynamic datasets where the application needs fast and simple point-in-polygon queries and streaming geofence notifications. Like vehicle pickup services, bus route services, proximity social apps, etc.

</comment><comment><USER2> Inevitably this will be compared to PostGIS so maybe you could put a paragraph in the README on how it compares to it what is the usecase where Tile38 would serve you better. I must admit I don't see one for my own needs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been following tile38 on github for quite awhile and it looks pretty awesome, but I haven't had a chance to build anything with it.

Has anyone here built any user-facing applications on top of it?

<comment><USER4> shameless plug

at [https://www.weenect.com](https://www.weenect.com) we're currently experimenting with it in order to replace our mongodb, I think I will go with this and a mix of postgresql for historical data.

the realtime geofencing capabilities will be a very good plus for us, as that's one of the main feature of our products, i.e being able to know when your cats or dog is going too far.

<comment><USER3> very cool! I built a small gsm/gps tracker for my motorcycle a few years ago. Its an interesting space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks really useful.

I've been using a similar geometry library 'S2'[1], by Google. It's mainly used for fast spatial indexing and comparison functionality, albeit more 'approximate'[2] than Tile38 seems to be.

[1] [http://s2geometry.io/](http://s2geometry.io/)

[2] Approximate = not absolutely exact shapes when geofencing, for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe indexing with S2 can be made absolute if a polygon's boundary coverage cells contain a slice of the original shape. It's a bit more expensive on memory and insert times. But very fast and accurate queries. I've been experimenting with this method.

<comment><USER6> S2 can also output interior coverings, which will return only the cells in a covering that are fully contained in a polygon. So if you encounter a point (or any cell) whose parent is in an interior covering, you don't have to do any additional checks to produce an exact result (whereas on the boundary, you may want to do a point-in-polygon test to be exact).

<comment><AUTHOR> Right! I forgot to mention that. You can totally skip the entire point-in- polygon for interior cells. So good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some people may not read the link because it appears grayed out in some browsers _(the link has been posted before and so it appears in the browser history as visited)_. Maybe it's better to link to the changelog page, since this was reposted because a new version has been released [1].

[1] [https://github.com/tidwall/tile38/releases/tag/1.11.0](https://github.com/tidwall/tile38/releases/tag/1.11.0)

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this built on top of Redis, or just use a Redis-like protocol?

<comment><AUTHOR> It just uses the protocol.</comment></comment>


Humorless Man Yells at English Major Jokes - <AUTHOR> http://ryancordell.org/personal/english-major-jokes/ <comment><USER2> " graduates with an English degree have about a 4.9 percent chance of working in one of these food service occupations for some time between the ages of 22 and 26.

By comparison, the average among all degree holders in this age group is about 3.5 percent. So English majors are only about 1.4 percentage points more likely to work in food service than the average for all degree holders."

That is incorrect.

Using the figures supplied by the article, English majors are 40% more likely to work in food service than the average degree holder.

( ( 4.9 - 3.5 ) * 100 )/ 3.5

I shall desist from the now traditional comments about innumeracy and the possible association with certain majors...

<comment><USER3> They chose "percentage points" specifically to misrepresent the data, while still being a correct statement.</comment></comment>


Unix How-To: File Updates in Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/104353/unix-how-to-file-updates-linux <comment><USER2> The python function also has a stat, in os somewhere I believe. If you want to see when these things change -eg, when a file is modified, you can use pyinotify.

<comment><USER3> It would be a sad day if your programming language didn't have stat.

Inotify is only present if your Linux-kernel is compiled with it turned on. If you want to use it in shell scripts there's inotify-tools (that's the Debian name anyway). Sadly GNU got their grubby fingers in and invented the stupid D-BUS.

In FreeBSD there's kqueue which does a similar job.

<comment><USER2> Cool re: kqueue, I'll have to check that out. You don't know if there's an equivalent for Solaris 8 by chance?

DBus is in RHEL and Ubuntu, that covers most Linux OSs.

DBus is a publish subscribe mechanism used as a kind of IPC, inotify is a way of registering interest in an inode to avoid having to do filly things like polling a file continually.

<comment><USER3> No idea about Solaris, but I'm sure there is a file notification system there too.

Not all Kernels are stock

USE="-dbus -hal"

and that's the way I likes it.

<comment><USER2> Sure, but you know you removed them, so you know you can't use them. Everyone else who didn't can expect them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Entrepreneurship is not === to Management - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2011/01/04/entrepreneurship-management/

<comment><AUTHOR> I had to edit the submission as the !== got scrubbed to ==. Couple of minor gripes with Eric Ries' year end post. I'm cautious of good ideas becoming a religion.</comment>


Describe your Project the Y Combinator Way - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-fifty-blog/describe-your-project-the-y-combinator-way-3bf31c15c54c <comment><USER2> Hi everyone,

We're launching a live course on software startup formation with Shawn Kung, Venture Partner at AV8 Ventures, a VC firm based in Silicon Valley. He's also an angel investor at Y Combinator Demo Day as well as a Stanford Lecturer. The course includes:

\- 6 weekly live lectures with Shawn and all the other students (2h each)

\- Guest speakers (founders & investors from Shawn's network)

\- 1-1 office hours

\- Unlimited Q&A on the course private Slack channel

\- Startup mini project where students will form teams and pitch a business idea to Shawn

\- Lifetime access to Shawn's Slack channel & private LinkedIn group for alumni

We are 75% full. Class is capped at 50 students. The live course will kick off on July 23. Schedule for the lectures is 5-7pm PT.

Link: [https://flatwyse.com/venture-startup- formation](https://flatwyse.com/venture-startup-formation)</comment>


Linux Kernel 3.4 Released - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/5/20/126

<comment><USER2> Wow, I was JUST reading this in my inbox a couple minutes ago. What I thought was more interesting (Linus noted no exciting changes) was the exchange between Linus and Peter Zijlstra, in particular this Linus eruption:

<https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/5/19/97></comment>


On not hiring (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/01/on-not-hiring.html

<comment><USER2> > _I 'm not the world's best designer by any means, nor am I "classically > trained" in design as they say, but I like my results_

Don't we all. There should be a rule that says "any non-designer can draw something that he himself can't improve upon".

I'm certainly not arguing in favor of hiring for the sake of hiring, and freelance-everything is how I see the future.

But saying anyone can do anything if they just think about it hard enough is a bit of a stretch. "Jack of all trades, master of none" is real. An actual designer will save you lots of time.

Additionally, there is value in dialogue; having someone to talk to about specific problems helps immensely. And who's going to take time to talk with you about minute details of your product if they're not somehow compensated for it?

(Service idea: a Q/A site where people could ask questions about their products as they're building them. Does this exist already? Some subreddit maybe?)

<comment><USER3> Programming, drawing, they're all just tools of the trade. It's like a hammer in the hand of a sculptor. Depending on talent and time (not either alone) you might get different results coming out.

People like to think in absolutes. You're either a designer, or you're engineer. You're either a scientist, or you're a philosopher. This attitude is not only wrong, but also completely contrary to what our "hero's" have taught us.

I myself went to art school when I was a kid, I didn't even realize until I thought about it a while back. Does that make me a designer? Not really. Could I pick it up if I put enough effort and time into it? Almost certainly, but will I?

The other thing is environment. The creativity part comes from the environment you're in. Good scientists have scientists around them that help them brainstorm even without brainstorming(not in the business sense of hey let's sit down and brainstorm, and more in the sense of discussing random thoughts at lunch or w/e). It's no different from Github, dribbble, conferences or a lot of other things that can be considered "environment". Part of why people want to work at google is because of the environment.

I attached a blog post of a pretty good designer that made the transition from being an engineer. [1]

[1] [http://somerandomdude.com/2012/01/10/transition-from- develop...](http://somerandomdude.com/2012/01/10/transition-from-development- to-design/)

<comment><USER2> Totally agree with most of what you are saying, except that there are trades; you can certainly be an engineer and a designer at the same time if you have given each occupation enough work and attention; but mastering anything takes time and just because you got yourself a chisel doesn't make you Phidias.

(Case in point: the new Yahoo! logo, that was drawn according to the principle that if you can start Illustrator, you're Jony Ive [http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/60336044815/geeking- out-o...](http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/60336044815/geeking-out-on-the- logo))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I enjoyed clicking through the "more about me" link at the bottom of the article and seeing a big picture of Gabriel next to the text: "We're always hiring!"

A couple people have started picking at the blanket statements in the article, and, granted, none of them are universally true. The point about DIY design irked me a bit, too. With that said, I think the kernel of this article is absolutely right: too many startups are far too intent on raising a bunch of money to hire a ton of people because they think that's what growth is about. (And because running a big organization, even one that doesn't have a customer base to speak of, is a fantastic ego trip.)

</comment><comment><USER5> >The wrong person can negatively impact your startup.

Of course this is true however the opposite is not only true, it's more common. Otherwise, companies would fire more people than they hire.

>People also tend to underestimate the time it will require post-hiring and post-ramp-up to manage your hire(s).

Categorically true. Hiring is a massive time sink. Recruitment companies are an exceptionally inefficient attempt at a solution which is why more and more early stage startups are recognising the value of hiring an inhouse recruiter.

>And finally, hiring takes money. It increases your burn rate significantly.

Whilst true, just like the first point, the opposite is also true. Hiring the right people can have an immediate, positive impact on cash flow.

I do tend to agree with the overall premise that more staff != success and I think that's certainly true of early stage companies.

<comment><USER6> _Otherwise, companies would fire more people than they hire._

I don't think that's possible in the long run...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > I'm now three years into DuckDuckGo, and still haven't hired.

What? According to the company webpage, they have 20 employees. [1] This post seems purposefully disingenuous, just to make a point.

1: [https://duck.co/help/company/hiring](https://duck.co/help/company/hiring)

<comment><USER6> This blog post was from January 2011. The first employee (Caine Tighe) was hired in September 2011.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the key sentence:

 _" We need to build x, y and z, ASAP." Before you've figured out distribution? What evidence do you have that x, y and z, once built, will make customer acquisition any easier?_

Find the right path, then scale it up. Which yegg (Gabriel Weinberg) did, later that year [1].

One could disagree with him and say that hiring people allows you to find the right path quicker, which may or may not be true.

1: [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone talk to how well this has held up over time for them? A quick search on LinkedIn suggests only 2 employees. ([https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=1476706](https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=1476706)) Is this really the case?

<comment><USER10> A lot of our employees don't use LinkedIn. A leadership / core team page is on the horizon, but we've been working on cooler / product stuff :). As others have said, we're ~20 people; ~75% remote. I think our unique approach to hiring (inbound / sparingly) has helped us form an excellent team where, once a core team member is added, trust is just built-in. I can't stress enough how important that is to delivering on our mission with a small team.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for sharing. It's amazing what a small group of talented and engaged employees can accomplish.</comment></comment></comment>


China Blocks WhatsApp, Broadening Online Censorship - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/business/china-whatsapp-blocked.html? <comment><USER2> Most of us (on HN) probably still feel relatively safe in our mostly- functioning democracies oceans away from the country, but the way that China casually blocks any service which it's not easily able control or monitor is fairly terrifying.

China's almost 1.4 billion people now. It's been removing possible channels of dissent one by one, and even recent history shows that they're not afraid to treat anyone who steps out of line with extreme prejudice.

The controlling government's been in an advantageous position for some time now in that living conditions in the country have been improving rapidly for a lot of the population (i.e. moving from rural poverty to middle-class by world standards), but you have to wonder what would happen if things tapered off. Large-scale unrest might be treated with the kind of brutality that the world hasn't seen in decades, and the country's citizens would have few safe channels through which to organize.</comment>


Affordable 3D Mapping for AR and Autonomy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@pixel8earth/the-case-for-affordable-and-open-3d-mapping-to-accelerate-augmented-reality-and-autonomy-bc782d4134ea <comment><AUTHOR> I've never posted on Hacker News before, but since getting introduced to this community yesterday, I figured I would try contributing something.

I personally find the work Pixel8 is doing to make positionally accurate, high-definition 3D scanning possible to do with commodity smartphones thrilling. It's akin to making cutting-edge archaeological techniques accessible for everyone. And the stuff that will be built on top of these maps (autonomous vehicles delivering your pizza, AR games like Pokemon Go but much more interactive, insanely detailed asset inventories, etc.) are pretty exciting to think about, too.</comment>


366559 – Brotli Accept-Encoding/Content-Encoding - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366559 <comment><USER2> Earlier: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10365480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10365480)

<comment><USER3> Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10364591](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10364591)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are interested in testing Brotli on the web the CloudFlare test server for HTTP/2 and IPv6 also does Brotli compression.

[https://http2.cloudflare.com/](https://http2.cloudflare.com/)

And the NGINX module that does it has been open sourced: [https://github.com/cloudflare/ngx_brotli_module](https://github.com/cloudflare/ngx_brotli_module)

<comment><USER5> Yes! I can't wait for the module to be merged upstream into nginx so I can use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Random note about accept-encoding that might have been corrupted by my memory: at some point in the past wikipedia was blocking Googlebot due to it hammering their servers. Some debugging revealed that Googlebot's accept-encoding header was different than browsers and so it was missing the wikipedia cache. (Wikipedia heavily relies (relied?) upon a caching layer because their pages can take like two full seconds of CPU time to render otherwise.)

The kinda awful fix was to add support for the compression variant nobody uses (deflate?) to Googlebot so that its accept-encoding header matched the common one.

It would be ironic if adding this header to Firefox wrecked their page load performance for wikipedia!

<comment><USER7> This seems like a wikipedia problem that shouldn't be that hard to fix, not a Firefox problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wondering if this will fare better than gzip for my use case of compressing a Windows 95 disk image ([http://win95.ajf.me/](http://win95.ajf.me/)). Will have to try it out.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a Linux sysadmin in Norway... bro means bridge and br reminds me of brctl(8).

<comment><USER8> Yes, "bro" could mean other things in different contexts. But that's irrelevant. It has unfortunate connotations in an IT context.

<comment><USER10> Everything has unfortunate connotations in some context. If I wanted I could come up with a number of reasons to feel insulted but that's not my thing.

<comment><USER11> Being professional means valuing conflict avoidance over issues of zero importance.

The nickname of a tool doesn't matter, so minimizing potential conflicts makes sense.

<comment><USER10> Totally agree and agree with renaming. Would wish certain other groups could agree with your ideas as well.

"Those who have reason will have to use it..."

<comment><USER12> I agree. The intentionally prevocational logo (a Menorah) has put me off CLISP[0], I would guess many others too.

[0] See the explanation at [http://www.clisp.org/impnotes/faq.html#faq- menorah-why](http://www.clisp.org/impnotes/faq.html#faq-menorah-why) which starts off with "it's not political" and then provides multiple links to pro- Israeli websites.

<comment><USER10> I don't see a problem with pro-Israeli websites just as I don't see a problem with pro-Palestinian websites.

Were they lying or something?

<comment><USER12> I thought the principle you and the other poster were arguing for, was to minimize conflict. In the case of "bro" the conflict arises from a feminist critique of the word's usage in the context of a male dominated industry. In the case of the menorah, the conflict arises from the political controversy of the state of Israel, and its relationship to the Jewish community[0]. I don't have a problem with pro-Feminist websites or anti-Feminist websites, I just think it's professional to avoid stirring up debate with terms or symbols that would likely offend people with a particular viewpoint.

Perhaps you think the feminist viewpoint in this case is objectively correct and therefore deserves more consideration. In that case I would counter that the pro-Palestinian viewpoint is objectively correct. But my original argument was neutral on this issue.

[0] A relationship usually asserted to exist by the _supporters_ of Israel, as is the case here.

<comment><USER10> I see your point about professionalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not a compression expert at all, but I've read about ANS a few times lately, and I wonder whether an ANS variant of Brotli might be an even better choice.

</comment><comment><USER14> People upset by the "bro" word. Peak Mozilla.

<comment><USER15> Context: The original suggested three-character file name extention name was ".bro".

From ([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366559#c147](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366559#c147)):

"I received a series of 'bro' jokes in response to my posting about this new feature."

This proves that the name "bro" actually has significant meaning for many people, _some_ of which find it a bad thing. This would be unnecessarily distracting, so it should simply be replaced with something like br, btl, bli or bti.

Save your outrage for when the solution actually has a downside of any significance.

<comment><USER16> > "I received a series of 'bro' jokes in response to my posting about this new > feature."

But this is not the part why people are pissed. If this would be the only reason then everybody would be fine, but before your quote the guy wrote:

> "bro" has a gender problem, even though the dual meaning is unintentional. > It comes of misogynistic [...]

And this reasoning is just tumblerlina-SRS-gamergate-outrage-bullshit. People are not pissed because of the change of the extension but by the ridiculous reason given in the bug report.

They should have just stated that ".bro" might result in acceptance problems in large corporate culture and everybody would have understood this. But stating that .bro has a gender problem is just crazy.</comment></comment></comment>


On Stapledon's "Last and First Men" (1986) - <AUTHOR> http://dpuadweb.depauw.edu/icronay_web/lem%20stapledon.html <comment><USER2> My freshman year in college I took a science fiction literature course (aside: it turned out that my dad took the same course with the same professor some 40 years earlier). The professor said that Stapledon's Last and First Men was the most ambitious and significant work in the genre's history, and I am inclined to agree.

<comment><USER3> Of course, Lem tried to top it with _Star Maker_, where multiple universes are too small for his canvas :)

<comment><USER4> Star Maker was written by Olaf Stapledon.

[http://www.amazon.com/Star-Maker-Olaf- Stapledon/dp/148264446...](http://www.amazon.com/Star-Maker-Olaf- Stapledon/dp/1482644460)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _... we can expect to have bases on the planets in this century ..._

Lem wrote this in 1986, a year when the Cold War space race was still in full effect. The Soviet Union had just built the Mir station and the country's miserable economic state had not yet been fully revealed. NASA's Challenger disaster looked more like a tragic bump in the road than a systemic failure of the Shuttle program.

30 years later it feels like we're actually further off from having bases on other planets than in 1986.

<comment><USER6> I don't know, in that year I was a space enthusiast in high school but already iffy about human spaceflight going anywhere interesting before I got old. Even if the disaster _was_ just a tragic bump, the shuttle was already so much worse than promised that no evolution of it plausibly led to the really ambitious programs like O'Neil colonies. (See [http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/](http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/) for the kind of thing we got excited about back then. It's a much more compelling vision than going to Mars.)

Nowadays there's real private spaceflight in development. Still a long way from asteroid mining and such, but it feels a little closer than it did then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is remarkable how fundamentally optimistic both Lem and Stapledon (and most science-fiction authors) are about our long-term prospects! All of humanity lives on the thin slime on a tiny rock hurtling around an ongoing massive fusion event. There is no warp drive, no anti-gravity - and not even a glimmer of physical theory that will lead to it.

We send tiny rockets into space, sometimes with robotic probes. That is the limit of chemical rocketry, for now and for the foreseeable future. Founding a self-sustaining colony on Mars appears to be impossible - a colony might exist, with frequent deliveries from earth, but such a thing would hardly qualify as a "backup" for humanity, as it would die shortly after the Earth dies.

And of course interstellar travel is totally out-of-the question with chemical rockets.

Meanwhile, the world (especially the First World) consume the truly unique and precious life-support systems in the bonfire of consumerism. Not to mention that the threat of total nuclear annihilation is still present.

So, despite all the interesting talk about Stapledon, the fact remains that it is an optimistic fantasy that distracts us from the stark truth that the laws of physics conspire to prevent us from living anywhere but in this one biosphere, naked to whatever calamity befalls us.

<comment><USER8> Last and First Men doesn't feel enormously optimistic to me... [Spoilers] It's a long history of struggle, humanity barely existing, occasionally bursting into brief civilisation before destroying itself through accident or hubris. And when humanity does finally attain some kind of peak existence, it finds it can't escape the solar system and is doomed anyhow. Despite its long history, humanity warrants only a footnote in history of the whole cosmos (sentient nebulae onwards) given in Stapledon's Star Maker. So given your pessimistic outlook, you might rather enjoy it :)

<comment><USER7> But humanity a) survives long term, and b) he predicts extremely long-lived, stable societies between calamities. It's much more realistic to assume that no humans would survive a global extinction level event on Earth. Life itself would probably survive all but the most extreme events, but it would have to evolve into intelligent life for another species to attempt to spread life beyond earth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of science fiction is just current socity transported into a fantasy future. For example The Jetsons is the post-WWII nuclear family 100 years hence. We can basically identify with "us" in a new world. The problem I have reading Stapledon is that his humans are so removed from current society that I cant really identify with them and get bored.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some of his characterizations are timeless riffs on politics, religion and science, e.g. these passages are relevant to modern entertainment and transhumanism, [http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601101h.html](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601101h.html)

 _" … music had a special significance for this race. So intense was their experience of it, that they were ready to regard it as in some manner the underlying reality of all things. In leisure hours, snatched from a toilful and often tragic life, groups of peasants would seek to conjure about them by song or pipe or viol a universe more beautiful, more real, than that of daily labour. Concentrating their sensitive hearing upon the inexhaustible diversity of tone and rhythm, they would seem to themselves to be possessed by the living presence of music, and to be transported thereby into a lovelier world. No wonder they believed that every melody was a spirit, leading a life of its own within the universe of music. No wonder they imagined that a symphony or chorus was itself a single spirit inhering in all its members. No wonder it seemed to them that when men and women listened to great music, the barriers of their individuality were broken down, so that they became one soul through communion with the music.

… It was amongst the rebel peoples that the biological interest of the race, hitherto subordinate, came into its own. Mating, at least among the more devout sort of women, began to be influenced by the desire to have children who should be of outstanding musical brilliance and sensitivity. Biological sciences were rudimentary, but the general principle of selective breeding was known. Within a century this policy of breeding for music, or breeding "soul," developed from a private idiosyncrasy into a racial obsession. It was so far successful that after a while a new type became common, and thrived upon the approbation and devotion of ordinary persons. These new beings were indeed extravagantly sensitive to music, so much so that the song of a sky-lark caused them serious torture by its banality, and in response to any human music of the kind which they approved, they invariably fell into a trance. Under the stimulus of music which was not to their taste they were apt to run amok and murder the performers."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Starmaker was my introduction to Stapledon. Superb and holds up even across the span of several decades.

<comment><USER11> Inded. I personally think Star Maker is better for sheer wonder and scope. I love how Stapledon will casually dash off a whole civilization in two pages that other authors may spend a dozen books fleshing out.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where are you? - <AUTHOR> It would be interesting to see where the good people of HN are geographically. You can be as general or specific as you'd like.<p>I'll go first: Atlanta, GA <comment><USER2> None of your business. Who do you think you are? Facebook?

<comment><USER3> Yosimite?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Helsinki, Finland.

Born in the UK to a Yorkshire mother and a Scottish father, I grew up in York. Moved to Edinburgh (Scotland) to attend university and stayed there for 20+ years.

Moved to Finland with my (Finnish) wife a couple of years ago, and desperately awaiting the arrival of Spring right now. (Today it is snowing, once again in Helsinki!)

</comment><comment><USER5> San Francisco. What, were you hoping for an interesting answer?

</comment><comment><USER6> I am inside a survey designed to get demographics for HN.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bali, Indonesia . Hit me up whenever you are planning to go or already in Bali, maybe we can get a beer/coffee or two.

<comment><USER8> Hopefully not in Kuta?

<comment><USER7> I lived in Denpasar actually, so it's pretty close to go anywhere in Bali.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am in Germany, not far from Stuttgart.

<comment><USER10> +1 I am in Schorndorf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Top choice for a question after the cambridge analytica bombshell ;) too cynical?

</comment><comment><USER12> Earth, Sol.

</comment><comment><USER13> In a dream within a dream.

</comment><comment><USER14> Los Angeles. Hit me up fam, always pumped to meet hn people.

</comment><comment><USER15> Toronto, Canada

<comment> 52-6F-62 Toronto (Downtown) as well / rural Ontario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Probably inside a simulation, not sure!

</comment><comment><USER17> Vancouver BC

<comment><USER18> Bowen Island

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Near Cape Canaveral, Florida

</comment><comment><USER20> Matamoros, Tamps, Mexico

</comment><comment><USER21> Cape Town, South Africa

</comment><comment><USER3> Aussie Aussie Aussie!

</comment><comment><USER22> 40.4434968,-79.94465

</comment><comment><USER23> Downtown Buffalo, NY

</comment><comment><USER24> Jakarta, Indonesia

</comment><comment><USER25> Tampa, FL suburbs.

</comment><comment><USER26> Las Vegas, NV

</comment><comment><USER27> Montreal, Canada

</comment><comment><USER28> Kuala Lumpur, MY

</comment><comment><USER29> Rabat, Morocco.

</comment><comment><USER30> Providence, RI

</comment><comment><USER31> Paris, France

</comment><comment><USER32> Nashville, TN

</comment><comment><USER33> Cairo, Egypt

</comment><comment><USER34> Noida, India

</comment><comment><USER35> Portland, OR

</comment><comment><USER36> Denver, CO

</comment><comment><USER37> 127.0.0.1

</comment><comment><USER38> Tucson, AZ

</comment><comment><USER39> Milky Way

</comment><comment><USER40> Singapore

</comment><comment><USER41> 32.6345833,-97.0309456

</comment><comment><USER42> southeast Alaska

</comment><comment><USER43> Onboard Tiangong-1. I've been here since

 __*

SIGNAL LOST</comment>


VR Is a Killer App for Blockchains - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@FEhrsam/vr-is-a-killer-blockchain-app-3a4122d7f505#.7b6sbu742 <comment> T-A I am perplexed.

Yes, a company running a virtual world can do whatever it pleases with it, including deleting users. This does not seem to deter substantial numbers of people from having online identities tied to Second Life or World of Warcraft or Facebook. Users won't stick around if the world is managed too badly, companies know it, so there are limits to what companies will actually do.

But even accepting that a wall garden run by a single company is undesirable, there is no particular reason to drag the blockchain into it. Just use a federated system, like OpenSim's Hypergrid [1] or High Fidelity [2]. Then you can run your own server and host your own assets, and hook it up to others in a grid or just jump around as a visitor. This has all been around for years and has nothing to do with the blockchain.

[1] [http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Hypergrid](http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Hypergrid)

[2] [https://highfidelity.io/](https://highfidelity.io/)</comment>


The Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology (2005) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://philpapers.org/archive/SHATVO-2.pdf <comment><USER2> Oh brother.</comment>


Which Search Engine Do You Choose In The Blind Test?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/08/which-search-engine-do-you-choose-in-the-blind-test/ <comment><USER2> I've seen this link a couple of times a while ago when Bing launched. Most commenters said: "Hey, look! In a blind test Yahoo and Bing are just as good as Google!". What they forgot, though, was that being just as good is not good enough for most of us to switch. Google didn't gain its market share by being just as good as HotBot and AltaVista. It did it by being much, much better.

<comment><USER3> If microsoft and yahoo are much worse than google, then they have 101 problems. If they are roughly as good, then they have 1 problem: Pushing it forward one bit more.

Anyway, I actually use different engines now and then, and for the most part they're all the same. For complicated/obscure stuff, google is still considerably better. For mom and pop I'm not sure that matters though.

Google's clearest advantage is its unbelievable speed, which is great for news/current topics. A test, here's a string that doesn't return results in google: conquistador monkey bakery laughter confusion fear hatred love citizen kane mantra manhatten mongrel montell carebear

(Yes I had to string together that many words. Carebear broke the fucker's back.)

Anyway, I'll check back and see how long it takes the various engines to pick it up. Google will be first. I predict about 30 minutes. It's 10:50 right now.

ED: 11:00 nothing; 11.11 nothing; 11:35 nothing (looks like my prediction was wrong); 12:31 nothing. Things are going horribly awry.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure about comments, but I have also noticed myself that Google can be surprisingly quick at picking up new submissions.

<comment><USER4> It already has the poll about whether yc startups use Django, Rails, PHP, or other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google has some combination of your email, calendars, bookmarks, web browser, phone number, payment service, ad service, office suite, and physical phone. All of these make Google one click closer than any competitor. It's game over, at least for now.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nearly always Google but sometimes Bing. Never Yahoo.

I was pretty shocked how hideous Yahoo's results are by this.. often "scraper" sites were appearing in the top 10, and eventually spam sites became a dead giveaway to which one was Yahoo. Eugh.

<comment><USER7> I had the exact opposite situation. 5 searches for random topics that I'd searched for in the last 3 days at Google, and I chose Yahoo 4 times and Bing 1 time, never Google. I didn't expect these results at all.

<comment><USER6> What sort of things? I was going with reasonably general, basic queries.. things like names of famous people, city names, and things like "[topic] blogs". I didn't go with anything longer than two words.

One particularly poor example was "ruby blogs" - see the results: <http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=ruby+blogs> \- results 1, 2, 4, 6 and 10 are pretty irrelevant. On Google, the top 6 results, at least, are really solid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I consistently picked Yahoo results. But with Google I don't have to deal with all the garbage that surrounds Yahoo.

<comment><USER9> Bing and Yahoo's pages are either bloated with images and effects or overwhelmingly busy. I search with Google because of its fast and minimal interface. I'm not distracted by eye-catching advertisements or anything, and I get my results immediately. I could care less about slightly more accurate results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this really blind? A lot of people would probably search for something they are used to searching on say google and can maybe recognize the search engine based on the order of the results.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not sure who came first... I've been using <http://bset.royans.net/> for the past few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is eye opening.

I've always thought about this. Awesome seeing someone craft a study, even if it has its flaws.

</comment><comment><USER13> Mostly google, sometimes yahoo, never bing.</comment>


Introducing SDFRY, The Modern Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://nathan.ca/2012/04/introducing-sdfry-the-modern-programming-language/ <comment><USER2> "I have no choice but to share it [...] only with people who are worthy."

OK HN, time to put this guy in his place. Who's got enough Rails experience to re-implement this by tonight?

<comment><USER3> Pretty sure it's a joke.

<comment><USER4> Pretty sure delinka was joking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is one of the funniest things I've read in ages. As a ruby developer, it hits close to home :)

        notwithstanding

is hilarious, as are the reversible operators.

It's a modern day INTERCAL, although it needs to be expanded before it can compete with INTERCAL's majesty.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> "A better solution than splitting your code into multiple files would be to re-think your code and write it better."

Great advice, or greatest advice?

</comment><comment><USER7> My favorite:

      ...Lisp showed us the power of lambdas
      but lacked the balls to enforce it everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER8> Before everyone goes nuts: April 1st

The day when looking at any internet news sites is a waste of time.

<comment><USER9> In its defense, it was a piece of very well written and scathing satire.

<comment><USER10> As a piece, it seems to try hard but unintentionally suggests a shallow understanding of programming languages.

<comment><USER9> How so? I saw it ragging on the current crop of faddish languages and palette- swaps of existing ones (coffeescript, dart, to a lesser extent go), the oddly celebrated amateurishness of current programming language's design, with whatever bit of actual computer science mentioned in passing being pushed aside to make space for the _grand vision_ of language usability held by the author, which usually is ad-hoc to the last three programs written by him/her.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the _lest_ keyword would better be used as a special exception block with only a single catch all exception handler.

I hope the user base isn't too large to prevent fixes like this.

</comment><comment><USER12> "If constructs: if, assuming, given, when, supposing, whenever, wherever"

I need this ahaha!

<comment><USER13> The great thing about languages with macros (or lazy evaluation) is that you can have it. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I still think Whitespace is one of the most practical languages around, comments are free: <http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Perl 6?

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder whether there's a convention over configuration syntax for 4/1.

</comment><comment><USER17> Man, why doesn't _everything_ target Fortran?</comment>


I built a better Google. It was easy. - <AUTHOR> http://zendopark.com/i-built-a-better-google/

<comment><USER2> Haha wow - sorry, but if you think you can create a "better Google" by limiting the scope of searches to specific sites that you've selected ahead of time, you're missing the point of the this entire decade.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, first I thought "Oh no, not another DuckduckGo!" Then the article's first line had Google misspelt as 'Gogle' and then there were a few paragraphs with too many biased assumptions and with more of marketing slogans revolved around the importance of ' _you_ '..and so I thought it's a social network with a search engine integrated. But then, I thought "hey, isn't that what Google already does?"

And then I clicked the link, it's just a semi-polished front-end, with serif and sans-serif fonts mixed, that just builds-up queries for ONE particular search engine (Bing). Atleast, if there was an option to choose between any of the top 3 Search engine's, I would have been slightly impressed.

Honestly, this is a disappointment and the title is misleading.

It solves a very little problem. Anyway, I don't want this to be a 'hate-only' comment, so, I'll share what I know with the community, so far:

(Replace news.ycombinator.com with the site you want to search for)

1) If you want to search a specific site, then type in :

        site:news.ycombinator.com

2) If you want to exclude keywords, then type in:

        site:news.ycombinator.com -mongodb

This will exclude all results containing 'mongodb'

3) If you are searching for a specific string within the results, then type:

       site:news.ycombinator.com riak

This will explicitly highlight the word riak in your results and also include only results that matches this string.

You could also search for a particular term in double quotes to be included with your result:

        site:news.ycombinator.com "paul graham"

Hope this helps..

</comment><comment><USER4> This post is everything wrong with valley culture distilled into a few ugly paragraphs, followed by an ugly site that redirects to Bing, which the paragraphs had just harangued.

</comment><comment><USER5> They created a frontend to Bing, and a way to group site restrictions.

A more honest title would be "I built a better frontend to Google (by which I mean Bing)".

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't the point of search engines to find sites you _don't_ already know exist (or, more prosaically, have forgotten the URL for)?

</comment><comment><USER7> "Take a look at NeatSeek, and prepare to be amazed." You are right: I'm amazed by the amount of self deception and wishful thinking in this article. You missed the point so hard you hit yourself.

</comment><comment><USER8> This site takes the problem of the search filter bubble[1] and pushes it to the extreme. It might be useful for people who want to avoid, at any cost, political opinions that they disagree with. However, if you're trying to solve a hard problem that you don't know the answer to, is it reasonable to assume that you _do_ happen to know what tiny subset of the web contains your unknown answer?

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble>

</comment><comment><USER9> You misspelled Google in the third line of your article.

</comment><comment><USER10> A suggestion - As it stands right now, your title and blog is link-baity as it belittles the work of engineers at Google. Re-title your submission _contextual search_ because you're searching within a silo or context of websites. The problem you're trying to solve is along the lines of millionshort.com in that you are trying to lessen the impact of over- optimization of results.

As for an explanation of the down-votes you're getting, I can only refer you to: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4962544>

</comment><comment><USER11> blekko allows you to do this with their feature to create your own slashtags.

for unscatter.com I took the approach of using other sites apis but the caveat being I never intended it to compete with Google or bing or the like as it's results are based on recency rather than the relevancy.

in one incarnation of unscatter.com I did something similar to what you did except I used boss. one thing you should consider is there is a limit on how many characters are in a get request and you will hit it fast embedding all those site: declarations.

good luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> So he made something like Blekko, but he used bing as the backend instead of his own backend. How did this hit the front page ?

</comment><comment><USER13> Although i don't personally think that this project (nor the way it was presented here) is worth much, we have to agree that we are now in a place where limiting search results is relevant and filtering content will be more and more important as years go by and the information continues to increase at this rate.

</comment><comment><USER14> Pretty obviously a troll, their blog tagline is "Blog of the The Greatest Person to Have Ever Lived"

</comment><comment><USER15> Imma let you finish but Google had the best doodles of all time. Of all time!

</comment><comment><USER16> is this like a joke or something?

</comment><comment><USER17> So a worse duckduckgo.com then?

</comment><comment><USER18> Search programming: c libraries

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=c%20libraries%20%28%20+site:php...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=c%20libraries%20%28%20+site:php.net%20OR%20+site:java.sun.com%20OR%20+site:python.org%20OR%20+site:ruby- lang.org%20%29)

good job.

edit: All things considered. I think this blog might be a joke.

</comment><comment><USER19> I facechaired. You know, when facepalm is not enough?

<comment><USER3> Maybe this?

<http://www.myfacewhen.net/uploads/714-epic-facepalm.jpg>

:D

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is this a joke?</comment>


MobileWorks, finding workers via the cloud [video] - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mobileworks.com/fox-business-finding-workers-via-the-cloud

<comment><USER2> It's way better than mechanical Turk. We have a list of 2000 customers but with no contact info. They're already filling in the specific contact at the companies we're targeting.

Now we just have to get better at email marketing.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, Mechanical Turk?

<comment><USER4> [Full Disclosure, I work for MW]

Not so much like MechTurk. Workers are highly capable (many of them have advanced degrees), NOT anonymous (we and you know exactly who they are), reliable, trainable and they work on macro projects (e.g. write a full blog post on topic x w/ research and counterpoints) not microtasks (e.g. take this number and put it here). More akin to virtual staffing than MechTurk. Plus, we have a commitment to paying fair wages, so no fraction of a penny "hits"</comment></comment>


Recommended Computer System Simulators - <AUTHOR> I am wondering if there are any computer system simulators that can run software on top of it, can mimic the characteristics of real hardware (for example, simulating the performance characteristics of a 5400 RPM hard disk and a 300MHz Pentium II at exactly that speed) and provide real-time performance statistics for the simulated system?  The computer architecture doesn't have to be x86; it could be any 32- or 64-bit system such as PowerPC, SPARC, MIPS, Alpha, Itanium, ARM, RISC-V, etc.  I understand that emulators such as QEMU exist, but I don't believe these emulators provide the simulated performance or the performance monitoring tools that I need. <comment><USER2> I'm a little confused about your request. What do you mean by "real-time performance statistics for the simulated system"?

Generally speaking, cycle-accurate simulators usually require a very accurate software model (or, are done by running the RTL in simulation) so it's hard to find that level of model without manufacturer assistance, and even then you'll have to extend it to beyond the CPU. Emulators like QEMU basically slow down execution on a modern system to give you the same observable performance but obviously don't model the system accurately. What's your ultimate goal?</comment>


Psychedelics not linked to mental health problems or suicidal behavior - <AUTHOR> http://jop.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/02/25/0269881114568039.full

<comment><USER2> From the abstract: "After adjusting for [factors including] childhood depression, we found no significant associations between lifetime use of psychedelics and increased likelihood of [mental health problems in the past year]."

Yet: "Psychedelic users were more likely than non-users to report a depressive episode before age 18."

Taken together, these are curious findings, because they're deliberately ignoring something that turned out to be a clear correlation, even one that might be the result of a causality in the reverse direction to one that might be otherwise presumed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Under "Limitations", just reading this now:

"People who choose to use psychedelics might have better initial mental health before using psychedelics, and people who experience problems apparently related to psychedelics may choose to not use them again."

Psych ward patients who got there via psychedelics wouldn't be included in the study also.

What is written in their abstract seems irresponsible in the extreme, given the above limitations:

"We failed to find evidence that psychedelic use is an independent risk factor for mental health problems. Psychedelics are not known to harm the brain or other body organs or to cause addiction or compulsive use; serious adverse events involving psychedelics are extremely rare. Overall, it is difficult to see how prohibition of psychedelics can be justified as a public health measure. "

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it has to do a lot with moderation. If someone is going to take full doses of psychedelics multiple times per week, I have no doubt in my mind that they could go through serious mental health issues. But that is not to say that occasional use is very safe. In fact, occasional use can be extremely helpful to many people.

I'm curious as to what the effect of frequent micro-dosing is...

<comment><USER2> _If someone is going to take full doses of psychedelics multiple times per week, I have no doubt in my mind that they could go through serious mental health issues._

Why? There is nothing in the report to support that viewpoint, and quite a few points that contradict it to some extent.

<comment><USER5> Because you brain needs a rest from that flood of information. You'll go mad just as you'll go mad if you stop sleeping.

<comment><USER6> The brain is extremely active while you sleep. The brain never rests. It is always active. The question is how active is it under different situations. The brain can't tell if the information it is receiving is from a real visual experience or a psychedelic. I'm sure stress does more damage than a psychedelic experience and we experience that daily in business/startups et al.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> ah my mental health problems and suicidal behaviour must have been a coincidence, good.

> we found no significant associations between lifetime use of psychedelics...

does lifetime use mean ongoing or once off?

<comment><USER2> From the article: "We counted participants as having any lifetime psychedelic use if they reported use of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline or peyote."

This is pretty typical use of the term. They also distinguished it from "past year use" for LSD.

<comment><USER3> so i would count as lifetime use, i did them a few times, developed mental health problems and stopped as a result. my mental health problems cleared up within a year. now i don't have mental health problems. i would hardly say on the basis of my experience that psychedelics are safe.

i know people who took many times longer to recover. the report seems to imply that my experience is just a coincidence. i doubt i would have developed the mental health problems without psychedelics.

the report looks at lifetime use but past year mental health problems, which means you can't say "Psychedelics not linked to mental health problems or suicidal behavior" you have to qualify it by saying "past year".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So glad that there is finally a study that proves this as a fact.</comment>


Would you rent an iPad on your next flight? - <AUTHOR> http://www.getflypad.com

<comment><USER2> Wow yes!

My family is a great use-case for this! I have both old members of the family that would never spring for an iPad and young members who don't need an iPad that would be great candidates to be entertained via an iPad for the duration of the cross-continental flights our family has to make (our family spread out to all corners...)

Do this and make it as cheap as possible. Don't make it a luxury item.

Crap, not having to pack children books for the kids alone would probably get the people I know to rent.

</comment><comment><USER3> Get a kiosk at major airport with kiosks in 3 other major hubs. Only rent to flights to those airports. Set-up for credit card purchases and liability forms. Also would need insurance.</comment>


How I fell in love with a programming language - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-i-fell-in-love-with-a-programming-language-8933d5e749ed <comment><USER2> Alan Perlis famously said, "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing."

A lot of times you can learn something in a new language, and then bring it back to other languages. For a simple example, programming in Python might give a programmer the insight that she doesn't need to write a factory for every class; or writing in Haskall might give him the idea that immutability is a good idea.

Then when the programmer returns to her original language, she can use those techniques, adapted to the original language.

<comment><USER3> This is definitely a good reason to learn new languages, but it does have its limits. Examples:

1\. Erlang has done a lot of work to make their actors lightweight. In Erlang it's not only common to spawn a new actor for everything, but it's generally a good idea that organizes your code flexibly and results in transparent scaling onto multiple cores. On other systems that support actors, the actors aren't as lightweight, so while they're useful for organizing your code in some cases, using them pervasively will result in cripplingly slow performance and, depending on the language, completely exhausting thread/process resources.

2\. Some schemes support CPS conversion and TCO, which allows you to use recursion at relatively little cost and without worrying about exhausting the stack. However, in languages that support TCO and not CPS conversion, it takes some work to be sure that your recursive calls are tail calls. And in languages that don't do either CPS conversion or TCO, deep recursion performs poorly and infinite recursion breaks outright.

This is why it's not only important to learn patterns in new languages, but to learn how those patterns are implemented under the covers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is exactly the feeling I've had with Rust. I love programming in it, it is so much more rewarding than any other programming language.

I nearly felt this way about Swift, and Kotlin looks like it would be great too. But Rust reminds me so much of how much I love C and how little you needed to get going, all the OS tools at your disposal, etc. I haven't had the same pleasure in learning Go or any other language.

But I totally agree, even if it's in your spare time, find the language you love and start contributing to the open source community for it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't believe someone wrote an entire post about falling in love with a programming language and didn't include a single line of code from that language.

<comment><USER6> I think it's on purpose. He doesn't want to talk about kotlin in particular, but rather about the feeling of loving a language.

<comment><USER7> Let's not turn HN into a feelings confessional. Please.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really want to try Kotlin out. I want to give it a chance. The problem is that I can't help but feel it will become abandonware in the future. Somebody will buy JetBrains or they will start cutting costs and then Kotlin will be no more.

Am I being unreasonable here?

As an aside, I've felt that same "love" feeling with Scala, Clojure, and Nim. It's a great feeling because you start to imagine what can be.

<comment><USER9> I don't think you're being unreasonable. In my experimentation I concluded that Kotlin was largely chasing a subset mindshare of Scala, so I see it being at a long term disadvantage.

That said, one killer app can make a language, so who knows. But if you want a typed expressive hybrid-paradigm JVM language, it seems Scala is the obvious choice.

<comment><USER10> I agree with you, however currently JetBrains is making sure Kotlin works reasonable well on Android, while no one really cares about Scala on Android.

Yes many in the Scala community do care, but there isn't an ongoing effort with Android Studio tooling integration as in Kotlin.

So this could be a way for it to pick up steam, but it remains to be seen if the Android team still keeps the "We care only about Java" attitude at the upcoming Google IO.

<comment><USER9> Good point, and one I've got a blindspot for because we're not coding for Android (other than via Unity).

So yes, that could be enough of the 'killer app', if Android stays with Java. Do you have any intuition for why 'nobody cares about Scala on Android'? Not doubting you, just curious.

<comment><USER10> I doubt they would move away from Java, in spite of the ongoing trial. The question is officially supporting other JVM languages.

There are some people writing sbt plugins for Android development, but that is not the same as the full Android Studio development experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can relate to this.

The first language I did any significant work in was PHP - and not modern PHP, which for all of its warts is at least usable, but 4.0.6. It was nasty, but I spent about three years writing it every day.

Then I picked up Python. It was hard to grok for a few days, especially when I learned things that didn't quite click like "strings are immutable" and "this is a comprehension". After a month of working with it in my free time, one day things just clicked - and suddenly, Python code was no longer something I had to read line-by-line pausing to understand each action, but something I could skim quickly and understand without expending conscious effort to do so. It was glorious.

That moment was about a decade ago, and I could probably write a book now on all the intricacies that I love about the language. I've toyed with other languages on the side, but I always come back to Python. I don't know if it fit the way my mind already approached problems or if it has changed my mental processes to conform to it - but it works for me.

</comment><comment><USER12> > I could barely comprehend how little I wrote to get something to work.

There's a subset of developers that really fall in love with this idea. I try and understand where they're coming from but really have a hard time. The more involved with code reviews I've become through my career the more I recoil with fear when I hear this, recalling all the time I spent unbundling nested with nested within nested operations.

In the end I believe less LOC as an end goal is largely for the satisfaction of the single engineer writing the code. It feels good at he time.

Over time the super compact lines of code decay into hieroglyphics that cast a curse to the unlucky explorer that disturbs their tomb.

<comment><USER13> How can you not understand that all things equal, less code is better? Clear and concise code is good. We're not talking about fancy, unintelligible minimizations. Have you coded in Python? Give it a try.

<comment><USER12> I'd say that programming languages behave like normal languages and fall under the waterbed affect: if you push the complexity down on one corner then it simply pops up in another corner.

The question is which corner do you code for: the corner that develops the code or the corner that maintains it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://try.kotlinlang.org/](http://try.kotlinlang.org/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Whoa all the jetbrains projects are using this and they are the main backer of the language. Very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER16> You know you love something when you can't help but coming back to it. I love a terrible language - it's ugly, it's stupid, it's mean. I dumped it again and again, but after a few months I end up missing it.

<comment><USER17> That's not love, that's an abusive relationship.

<comment><USER18> Or capture-bonding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Then there is that situation when you hate a language.

In my case is JS or Java. They are clearly languages to learn -it could simplify my life- but I don't feel like even to start.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just wait a month or so when it'll sound like a rebound relationship that went horribly wrong.</comment>


Correcting our record - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/about/inside_salon/2011/01/16/dangerous_immunity/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that debunked pseudo-science should needs to be called out as such. However, I'd rather Salon re-publish the article bookended by the counter- evidence rather than take the article down and have the URL return an HTTP 410 (Gone) error. Here's the article in Google's cache [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DEZc9b-...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DEZc9b-HD- gJ:www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/16/thimerosal&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)</comment>


OwnCloud 7 is out - <AUTHOR> http://karlitschek.de/2014/07/owncloud-7-is-out/

<comment><USER2> It would be great to see OAuth added to OwnCloud. Currently, the external API only supports Basic auth [1], which is not ideal. It would make integrating it with [https://kloudless.com](https://kloudless.com) (single cloud storage API) easier and more secure.

I am happy to see web hooks in this release though! Definitely a useful feature.

[1] [http://doc.owncloud.org/server/7.0/developer_manual/core/ext...](http://doc.owncloud.org/server/7.0/developer_manual/core/externalapi.html#authentication- basics)

</comment><comment><USER3> How is the file syncing these days, especially for large files? I know I tried it way back when (OwnCloud 4 I think?) and failures where frequent and conflicts kept popping up in files that hadn't been modified. I finally went with btsync for that purpose, but I'm tempted to give OwnCloud a go again since the Calendar, Contacts, and versioning are compelling features for me.

<comment><USER4> So far I've been very underwhelmed by btsync; I couldn't seem to get it to actually start syncing between my devices. I've gotten it to sync test data and the like just fine, but as soon as I ask it to sync large folders of real data, it fails to connect, and it doesn't have any real logging or debugging features, nor any 'force' buttons, so there doesn't seem to be anything to be done about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> And another release of a software that is relatively niche and has only the version number in the release title, instead of any description of what new, exciting and valuable things the release brings; thus missing out entirely on the chance of making other people interested or excited about the software.

I really don't understand why software developers keep neglecting the easiest bit of marketing possible.

<comment><USER6> This is a post on a developer's blog. I think what you're looking for is [https://owncloud.org/blog/owncloud-7-released-with-more- shar...](https://owncloud.org/blog/owncloud-7-released-with-more-sharing-and- control/)

<comment><USER7> I think that was posted to HN earlier and it seemed a bit underwhelming.

If server-sharing is not of value to someone, what else is in this release? That page doesn't say very much.

This seems to have more:

[https://owncloud.com/get-public-cloud-flexibility-files- self...](https://owncloud.com/get-public-cloud-flexibility-files-self-hosted- owncloud-7-community-edition-2-2/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tried ownCloud out very recently and was astonished at the _simple_ things you couldn't do. For example, via the 'sharing' function, you only can share to an image, wrapped in HTML, or via direct download. I just want to... share it _without_ that, like imgur.com/exampleimage.png

The other was the inability, to sort. This confused me as, I thought the latest things are supposed to be at the top or bottom, with a clear way to choose some sorting option.

(perhaps with the above, I'm simply blind to the easy answers?)

Hopefully this version is better. I definitely agree with another commenter saying this could become very large one day, but not at the current rate -- way too much unnecessary complexities in the project.

I however, haven't had much experience with smaller open source projects so I'm not sure if that a good vision, with a good team sticking to that could turn it into a great piece of software.

<comment><USER9> You shouldn't want to share direct links, the directory where the actual content resides shouldn't even be publicly accessible, owncloud does this very well.

<comment><USER10> I don't think that's what he meant. Let's say you have a document that you want to share with your friends who don't have an Owncloud account on your instance. You click on share and get a publicly accesible link like "example.myowncloud.com/ji7H2i". I don't know if Owncloud is able to do this, but it works with pyd.io.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, this is what I meant - thanks for clarifying for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good job, webdav mapping works on Windows 8.1 out of the box at last! Can't wait for the apps...

</comment><comment><USER11> I've to say that it's an impressive product. I've implemented Owncloud6 in the past for two clients and they're very happy with it. I can't wait to upgrade to this new version!

To try this new version, I've installed Owncloud7 on a Terminal.com container. You can check my shared snapshot at: [https://terminal.com/tiny/i8vunoPtPu](https://terminal.com/tiny/i8vunoPtPu)

</comment><comment><USER12> Anyone checked out pydio? it was formerly called ajaxexplorer. [http://pyd.io/](http://pyd.io/)

<comment><USER10> I have it running on my VPS and the built in sync is terribly slow for me. It's really fine as a frontend though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm really excited about this. The last time I used Owncloud was v5 on a Raspberry Pi and it was painfully slow. Since then I've gotten a much, much faster plug computer (Odroid U3) and have gotten a lot better at nginx config. I'll be installing this tonight.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, OwnCloud 6 was slow (not painfully slow, but annoyingly sluggish) even on my average-grade personal VPS. They say that v7 features speed improvements, so I will definitely give it a shot.

I don't read anything about hotlinks though. The ultimate reason why I don't use OwnCloud, besides the sluggishness (which is hopefully fixed), is the missing hotlink feature. I want to send people links to actual files, not to pointless gateway pages.

<comment><USER10> Pyd.io will do that just fine. Though I would'nt use pydios sync, since I found it terrible slow. I use btsync as a sync backend and pydio as the file front end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Swift integration looks really neat. It's especially useful since organizations are likely to run it if they have an in-house or aaS OpenStack deplyoment.

</comment><comment><USER16> IMHO ownCloud will become as big and succesfull as WordPress in its own niche.

</comment><comment><USER17> Stopped reading at "arse-sum"

<comment><USER18> Or the author's description: _' The published the "User Data manifesto" and is a regular speaker at conferences.'_</comment></comment>


Germany, France demand 'no-spy' agreement with U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/25/us-eu-summit-idUSBRE99N0BJ20131025

<comment><AUTHOR> As much as I hate most of the Snowden revelations, the European reaction to "learning" that espionage agencies conduct espionage is laughable.</comment>


Using Have I Been Pwned to Prevent Your Users from Using Breached Passwords - <AUTHOR> https://developer.okta.com/blog/2018/06/11/how-to-prevent-your-users-from-using-breached-passwords <comment><USER2> OT: why does this website "need" javascript just to display _any_ article text?

</comment><comment><USER3> > Secure: no passwords are ever stored or shared over the network. PassProtect > uses k-Anonymity which means that the only thing that is sent over the > network are the first 5 characters of the password hash

I haven't heard of k-Anonymity, so maybe I'm misunderstanding, but wouldn't there be a high rate of collision if you're only testing 5 characters? Seems like you'd match a lot of uncompromised hashes.

<comment><USER2> Yea it would seem like it, and worse you may drive users to adopt a 'less secure' passphrase because the first 5 characters of the hash of their super complex/long passphrase might collide with the first 5 characters of the hash of 'password1', so they may pick a weaker passphrase just to get the system to accept it?

<comment><USER4> It's intended that you compare the returned full hashes. Otherwise why would the API even return them?

This URL is the entire API. Just change the last parameter to whatever 5 characters you want:

[https://api.pwnedpasswords.com/range/aaaaa](https://api.pwnedpasswords.com/range/aaaaa)

Note that the returned hashes omit the first 5 characters, since that would be a waste of resources.

You should also note that ALL possible combinations of 5 characters return at least 300 results. So it doesn't make sense to use this API any other way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few years ago I added a featuregg to the site I worked on at the time, where it would reject correcthorsebatterystaple as a password with an error message acknowledging their impeccable taste and a link to a relevant xkcd.

At some point they made a number and a special character a requirement in the password and the code was either stripped (or still sat there and never triggered). The irony isn't entirely lost on me.</comment>


New Job Board for Laravel / PHP / Vue Developers by Laravelcollections.com - <AUTHOR> https://laravelcollections.com/jobs <comment><USER2> I'm "greeted" with 3 notification before I can see the page. My feedback is let users explore the content before asking to subscribe. [https://imgur.com/TY9KnAV](https://imgur.com/TY9KnAV)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi mtmail, sorry about that. I did not think of this when building the site. Will reduce the number of notifications for the first time users.

Thanks for informing about it.</comment></comment>


AOL Acquires Thing Labs and Brizzly - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/09/28/aol-thing-labs-brizzly/ <comment><USER2> Key quote from the article... "their strategy seems to have revolved around buying second-tier applications and frittering away those startups' talent and userbases."</comment>