Show HN: FractalViewer: A JavaScript fractal explorer - <AUTHOR> https://valera-rozuvan.github.io/FractalViewer/FractalViewer.html <comment><USER2> This is awesome :) The one feature request I have that would make navigating a lot less frustrating is for the zoom to go to where the cursor is located, instead of the center of the screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will be implemented in version 2.0 of FractalViewer. See progress at [https://github.com/valera- rozuvan/FractalViewer/issues/1](https://github.com/valera- rozuvan/FractalViewer/issues/1) .

<comment><USER2> Great! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love it! Nice job! Did you think about using a render technique like the maps one? (render smaller square intead of all the screen multiple times)

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now FractalViewer is using a modified version of the Successive Refinement algorithm invented by Robert P. Munafo. See a description of the original algorithm [http://mrob.com/pub/muency/successiverefinement.html](http://mrob.com/pub/muency/successiverefinement.html) .

Version 2 of FractalViewer will use Web Workers (multipple threads) to render the image, so it will resemble "the maps one" (rendering multiple smaller squares at once). See progress on this at [https://github.com/valera- rozuvan/FractalViewer/issues/3](https://github.com/valera- rozuvan/FractalViewer/issues/3) .

By the way - maybe I got your question wrong. What do you mean by "a render technique like the maps one"? Can you point me to a resource where it is described?

<comment><USER3> You got completely right! Version 2 answered my question, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Is there a way to increase the max depth by just rendering the zoomed area, or is it unviable as the mathematics require calculating the entire object?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean to render the same view (what you see), but at a higher resolution? So that, for example, you can print it out?

<comment><USER2> No, I mean that at a certain level of zoom the fractal appears to stop being generated, and I end up just zooming into pixel blocks. For example, if you try to recreate [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jGaio87u3A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jGaio87u3A) you can only for for a bit before the fractal appears to stop generating.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's because currently FractalViewer is not designed to work around floating point precision limits in JavaScript. So, after zooming a bit, you hit the "pixelated wall". I plan to address this issue in future release of FractalViewer. See [https://github.com/valera- rozuvan/FractalViewer/issues/10](https://github.com/valera- rozuvan/FractalViewer/issues/10) .

More information on JS floating point numbers, their limitations, and ways to work around those limits - can be found in this informative article [http://blog.chewxy.com/2014/02/24/what-every-javascript- deve...](http://blog.chewxy.com/2014/02/24/what-every-javascript-developer- should-know-about-floating-point-numbers/) .</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Eureka - It Really Takes Years of Hard Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/business/03unbox.html?ex=1359694800&en=08574f3568bc9c5e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Bob Metcalfe: <http://tinyurl.com/3yqsb6>

"1. Selling Matters

I have a six-story townhouse in Boston overlooking MIT on the Charles River. I often invite young engineers and would-be entrepreneurs over to schmooze. Many of them tell me my townhouse is beautiful and they hope to invent something like Ethernet that will get them such a house.

The picture they have in their heads is of me lounging around on the beanbag chairs in a conference room at Xerox PARC in 1973. They see me having this idea for a computer network and submitting it as an invention proposal to Xerox. Then they envision me putting my feet up and letting the royalties roll in until I have enough to come up with the down payment on the townhouse with the river view.

My picture-the actual picture-is different. It's the picture of innovation rather than invention, the weed instead of the flower. In my picture it's the dead of winter and I am in the dark in a Ramada Inn in Schenectady, New York. A telephone is ringing with my wake-up call at 6 a.m., which is 3 a.m. in California, where I flew in from last night. I don't know yet where I am, or where that damn ringing is coming from, but within the hour I'll be in front of hostile strangers selling them on me, my company, and its strange products, which they have no idea they need.

If I persist, selling like this for 10 years, and I do it better and better each time, and I build a team to do everything else better and better each time, then I get the townhouse. Not because of any flowery flash of genius in some academic hothouse.

Most engineers don't understand that selling matters. They think that on the food chain of life, salespeople are below green slime. They don't understand that nothing happens until something gets sold. The way I think about it is that there are three sets of people in the world. There is the set of people who will buy your products no matter what (think of your mother). There's the set who will never buy your products (think of your competitors). Both are much smaller than the set of people who will buy your products if the products are competently sold to them. That vast middle set is why sales is so important, and it represents one of the key differences between invention, which comes up with a brilliant new idea, and innovation, which gets that inspiration out into the world.

Sales may not matter in invention, but it matters-in a very big way-in innovation."

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely worth a read.

Bustes the myth that some people just have good ideas and make millions on them.

Unfortunately it's all about hard work. :-(

<comment><USER4> "Unfortunately"?

That sounds empowering to me, to the contrary.</comment></comment>


Did Google Shutdown ___________ Yet? - <AUTHOR> http://didgoogleshutdown.com

<comment><USER2> What a clueless site. They rank Chrome OS's chances as 'Sketchy' \- clearly they have no idea what's going on in the education market right now. They also included a bunch of things shut down ages ago to pad the numbers.

<comment><USER3> > They also included a bunch of things shut down ages ago to pad the numbers.

Why to pad the numbers? Didn't they just include them _because it 's the purpose of their site?_

<comment><USER4> Then why not include the Chromecast, Google Drive, or Gmail?

<comment><USER5> it's all user-submitted so ask yourself you dumb idiot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At least Google has been good (so far) about providing plenty of warning when shutting down existing services. Can't say the same about $RANDOM_STARTUP, where the notice period is often "end of the current month".

<comment><USER7> They also let users take their data out of their services and have been making good strides in that regard with Google takeout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> At first I thought it might be an useful site providing all annoucements and warnings in one place.

But the copy on this website sounds like a lame attempt on black PR. Especially the part "Don't buy before they die!" made me cringe. Am I supposed to buy after they die or what?

Also those descriptions that are supposed to be substantiations of the rank often lack... well... substance.

Not to mention the fact that the page lists something like 10% of Google services and looks pale compared to: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Google_services](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Google_services) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_se...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_services)

My outlook for this page: Days numbered.

</comment><comment><USER9> Google shuts down one service any everyone thinks all google products are on death row.

reader had to be shut down due to the conflict of being a system where both google and there content creators were not getting money from ads

<comment><USER10> Do you consider Reader, Buzz, Wave, and iGoogle all part of one service? How about the APIs they've shut down / blocked / deprecated?

I agree that this site is sensationalistic. But your comment is just as bad on the other side of the aisle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did YC shutdown yet? It sure seems a lot of them YC companies fail, so...

<comment><USER12> The point of this exercise isn't to suggest that Google is failing or on the verge of death itself (and I don't think many respectable people would make those claims). It just mocks the fact that they inevitably shut down a good portion of the (typically free) services they offer, and provides some warning and insight for people who are considering using one of these services in the long term.

<comment><USER11> Fair enough, I misinterpreted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why the description on Orkut is "dajlfskdjflas"? Is it wrong or it's a joke I don't get it?

</comment><comment><USER14> "and alloiwng".

Come on; a typo in the main jumbotron.</comment>


What It's Like to Lose Your Short-Term Memory - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2017/02/08/what-its-like-to-lose-your-short-term-memory/ <comment><USER2> Actually, it's exciting, pretty much like getting a new life after death. This really changes my attitude towards my life.

In the past 8 years, I have 2-4 grand mal epilepsy seizures each year. Happy to be still alive, haha. Every time after a seizure, I lost one small period of memory, about 10-30 minutes, it's amazing somehow, refreshing your brain like reinstalling the macOS and restarting, though it can also cause some depression because of deep fear for uncontrolled and unpredictable seizures.

After I get back my conscious gradually after a seizure, I can hardly call back the scenarios right before my brain blows up, I can only remember roughly what I was doing then, about 5-10 minutes before the seizure, and as babies, the first sight of the world when I get my conscious will leave very strong impression in my memory, extremely clear and cut.

Now I have not had a seizure for about a whole year, in fact, I miss it to some extent:-). On the other hand, I hope I will never have it until death.

You know, humans are always full of contradictions.

<comment><USER3> This is really interesting! I can imagine it might feel quite different if, rather than having a persistent ability to ever retain short-term memories, you lost a small period every few months.

The author's experience seems quite different from yours, though, and I can imagine she might disagree with your evaluation that "Actually, it's exciting".

<comment><USER2> Yeah bro, that's right, it's not so exciting for me at all at first, but actually I have to accept all those stuff in my life anyway, I am glad that I finally reach here. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had this happen to me when I got into a motorcycle accident.

I know I did things, I have the proof and screenshots of calling people 15 times every 5 minutes. But I can't for the life of me remember it at all. It is... weird gaining consciousness piece by piece. Eventually I remember the blackness washing away with me walking through a door (note, couldn't see it just felt it). And eventually other senses returning to my conscious self.

I'm now of the opinion that without memory, we do not exist as conscious beings.

My first memory post accident as a conscious human, is "hi cat, how are you, were you wanting me to die so you could eat my nose? also who's cat is this and where the hell am I?" Before that colors and sounds and feelings were all... jumbled.

<comment><USER5> In addition to short and long term memory, there is the thought-emotion- action-observation feedback cycle. That you performed purposeful high level actions while being unable to form episodic memories demonstrates that the feedback cycle was still operative and you were experiencing _some level_ of consciousness, though it obviously was not the same level you're used to while being sober and fully awake. The approach of treating consciousness as not binary, but operating within a range, is not new; see the Glasgow Coma Scale[1] and the Erowid experience vaults[2] (though the latter is obviously _highly_ unscientific) for further documentation.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Coma_Scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Coma_Scale)

[2][https://erowid.org/experiences/](https://erowid.org/experiences/)

<comment><USER4> Cool, thanks for the links!

While I won't argue that I wasn't "conscious", I'll argue for all intents and purposes, I wasn't conscious at that time. My buddy said I'd basically completely forget everything after 5 minutes, and we would have the same conversation over and over again.

Its disconcerting to say the least to find out just how fragile consciousness is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My mom had a stroke a few years back and somehow she lost the ability to turn short-term memory into long-term memory. She remembered the first part of the day very well but didn't know what was happening to her. Every time I explained, she would remember it for several minutes and then we had to start anew as if her RAM was powered off. Luckily she made a full recovery in a matter of days.

<comment><USER7> There's actually strong evidence now that both short term and long term episodic memory and encoded at the same time (immediately) by separate systems, [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6333/73](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6333/73) It's just that, when things are working right, long term memory only becomes consciously accessible days later.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps, but it felt like what was missing was somewhere in the middle and that something worked like dumping your RAM onto your hard drive. Dumps kept failing and the brain rebooted. Fascinating now but super scary back then.

<comment><USER8> Apparently, per WP, "Tarnow shows that the recall probability vs. latency curve is a straight line from 6 to 600 seconds (ten minutes), with the probability of failure to recall only saturating after 600 seconds."[1]

So it seems reasonable that, indeed, the "short-term" store was functioning, but the long-term was failing to encode, and the loss occurred as the "short- term" store faded.

Regardless, I'm glad it was transient.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short- term_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_memory), which cites [http://cogprints.org/4273/1/The_structure_of_short_term_memo...](http://cogprints.org/4273/1/The_structure_of_short_term_memory_- _Tarnow.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seemed unrelated to short term memory but maybe I am misreading.

"There are no images flashing through my head reminding me of the first time I ate a hamburger, or all the barbecues I've attended, or the time after marching in the Rose Parade that I ate Burger King because Burger King gave out free burgers to participants at the end of the route. No. There is just blank space. There is chewing. Swallowing. The end of hunger."

I think they may have forgotten how people eat burgers. I don't think anyone has flashbacks of their previous burgers while eating their current one. That sounds really odd in general.

<comment><USER10> If you're cooking, Kaizen is the only path.

If you're not cooking, you're probably just too young. I can distinctly remember a couple burgers right before or after "major life events" often when the local population increased or decreased by one. I wouldn't recommend fast food as a significant fraction of a diet, but a good excuse for using the drive thru is returning home from the delivery room or a funeral too tired or not in the mood to cook. Or the last time I saw someone was the party at the park where traditional fare such as grilled burgers was probably served, great uncle Tony's last family reunion picnic was at age 82 and he was doing really good right up to the end.

If you eat junk food every day it makes it less special. I'm sure I drank water the day my father died; of course I drink water every day. I eat a mostly healthy diet most of the time so junk food usually involves something memorable.

I'm also older, so nostalgic about back in the old days when Americans were mostly thin and non-diabetic, back when mom and dad only got us that new "Mcdonalds" stuff for a very special occasion ... Kids these days who are 300 pounds from eating mcdonalds 2 or 3 times daily will never associate fast food with special events the way gen-x and older people associated it. In 1980 McDonalds burger meant you were in the back of the station wagon for 8 hour road trip to visit grandma for surprise birthday or mom didn't feel like cooking dinner after grandpas funeral. In 2010 your average 400 pound american eats fast food every day, supposedly. Just like we're told over and over we all watch 16 hours per day of TV on average, by people who make money selling TV ad time, even when we don't know anyone who watches that much.

<comment><USER11> Right, the frequency of the correlated events (eating the burger at the family reunion in your case) matters. Taking my physical labor example, I did crossfit for a bit (well, crossfit-lite). They had us swinging a sledgehammer, certainly not something I do every day. So my first few times doing it I had strong recollections of my earlier experiences doing manual labor with friends (scouts and, later, work). But as I continued with the class, those recollections became less frequent because the activity became more common (or the recollections didn't stick because there was no longer a one-off flash of recollection, but a frequent recurring recollection that diluted the impact).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently read "I Forgot To Remember" which is about Su Meck, a woman who had a ceiling fan fall on her head, which led to her forgetting the last 22 years of her life. It was a fascinating read, but also pretty heartbreaking.

</comment><comment><USER13> i am in a bit similar position, phone calendar reminders dating back to 90s ruined my short term memory (by effectively using them fo everything) to that effect that if I plan to open some website I must do it immediately when I hav this thought, otherwise in 15-20s it's gone and I might be pissed I was postponing it for later and started to think about something else, you really don't wanna see my calendar reminders, it would look like someone who should have some proper disability welfare, though thanks to stereotype I can get by with most of the things without actual reminders with daily routine

the worst thing is shower - away from mobile, need to keep repeating keywords of all thoughts like mantra to quickly write them down upon leaving shower

<comment><USER14> Consider a shower whiteboard?

I have a similar problem. Often when reading my twitter timeline I will think to do some action based on a tweet, then keep scrolling and forget what it was. I would have to scroll back a few tweets to remember what that thought was.

<comment><USER13> shower whiteboard is interesting idea, though maybe it would be more practical to have waterproof phone or at least Bluetooth headset with some assistant in phone, i don't spend that much time in shower to justify installation of whiteboard and i am also not exactly on brink of revolutionary intervention that my thoughts would be that valuable

as your help with going back, that sadly for me works very rarely anymore, is bigger odds that the thought will suddenly appear later when not thinking about it anymore, though i don't risk any of this and now just immediately follow new thought without postponing, I guess you could say I developed ADD thanks to progress in mobiles technology and internet, if it's possible to develop it, i used to be avid reader of books, but nowadays have problem to focus even on longer article, having child ruined even my movie watching experience, when because if limited time i FFWD scenes without talking and other filler to shorten runtime of movie, this coming from guy who was considering destroying Christmas decoration on public street because it was in my vision field when watching movie going through blinds

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My lacking (medium-term?) memory is what motivated me to created this highly efficient personal organizer, which really helps: [http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) ...though probably not fully for the level of issues described in the article. But it still helps me tremendously.

</comment><comment><USER16> I feel like I have very bad "mid-term" memory.

I have no problem reading long sentences, and my long-term memory is just fine. But I feel like my brain just forgets things too soon. If I were to speak in front of people about 3 things, by the time I get to the 2nd thing I'd forget what the 3rd is. If I try to learn some non-trivial new concept, like blockchain or coroutine, I understand it just fine, at the time I learn it. But if someone asks me about it after maybe 2 weeks, I'd have no clue and would need to re-learn it.

This also has a pretty big impact on my day-to-day life. I have a very bad sense of direction and suck at navigation, partly because I tend to forget the buildings and landmarks I see. If I take a one-word note in the morning, 30% of time I'll forget what it's about at night.

</comment><comment><USER17> My mother had an episode of transient global amnesia [1] that lasted for about 12 hours. It was the strangest thing. For those 12 hours, both her short- and long-term memory were almost completely impaired. It was terrifying when we thought it might be a stroke, but once the whole differential diagnose was done and we realized it was probably just TGA, we knew we just had to ride it out.

We spent the few couple hours answering the same round of question for her about once every minute. She'd occasionally get really scared and upset, but then she'd forget what she was upset about! We'd ask her questions and she remembered the most basic autobiographical details (married, 3 kids), but just about nothing else. We'd ask, "where did you go to college?" and she'd say, "I went to....I...don't know!" Obviously, pretty disturbing, but we just had to trust it was temporary.

Eventually, the duration of forgetfulness started extending, and then by night, she said it was like a fog was lifted, and she could remember again.

As described in the Wikipedia page, she hasn't experienced any aftereffects, other than not remembering much of that particular day.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_global_amnesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_global_amnesia)

<comment><USER18> My mother experienced the exact same issue while I was attending college. It was preceded by an intense migraine the night before (including vomiting). She called me early that morning very confused why she wasn't at school (she was a teacher). She didn't remember the night before, or why she had stayed home, or where my dad was (he had left for work). I was seriously alarmed, but she had no other impairments other than her memory. She was lucid, had clear speech, etc.

I eventually pieced everything together (my dad is a doctor and he diagnosed her over the phone). I then spent the rest of the day on the phone with her, answering the same cycle of questions. I eventually had her start writing those questions and answers down, but she kept losing the paper! Eventually we moved it to the fridge, and a close friend of hers was with her.

Similarly, it lasted about 24 hours, eventually faded, and had no adverse after effects. It truly was like Memento, though. Definitely one of the more surreal medical issues I've been exposed to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Whats it like? Get some Ambien from the doctor and you'll know.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a crazy good article! I've always been fascinated by my recent inability to learn new programming languages and concepts and I believe it could be due to the concept expounded in Lee's article: no short-term memory building, no long-term recall.

I doubt I've suffered minor strokes but I think our lives simulate strokes on the short term memory recall by sheer overwhelming schedules and commitments. Our daily schedules are possibly a simulator of short term memory recall impairment.

<comment><USER21> That sounds a lot like stress. Maybe you need to take a break or shift down a gear or two?

<comment><USER20> Thanks friend! Without a doubt.

The guilt though of taking time off is also a paradoxical contributor to existing stress.

<comment><USER21> I know that feeling. I get stressed thinking about all the work building up in my absence. But in the end I've never regretted saying NO or saying WAIT!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How fragile we humans are! Things we're taking for granted and we're hardly noticing, like short-term memory, turn out to be a gift we should appreciate every day.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you want to understand what that feels like, you have to smoke a strong joint. A friend almost lost his mind in panic because he worried this effect might persist.

<comment><USER24> LSD+THC is much worse. It's a common n00b fail. And really not much fun, in my opinion. THC rather pollutes the trip. But at least, you know that it's transient. Sometimes, though, it's helpful to have a friend around, who can remind you that you've just done some drugs.

<comment><USER25> I never understood people who loved this combination. Horrible mix, brings out the worst of both drugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's exactly like the Christopher Nolan film Memento starring Guy Pearce. ;-)

<comment><USER27> In Memento, the main character had short term memory, but it would not form new memories. His window of awareness seemed to be on the order of 10 or 15 minutes. The author of the article describes not being able to even read a paragraph because the start was forgotten by the time she reached the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Lenny!</comment>


US politicians issue warning to Russia as Edward Snowden arrives in Moscow - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/23/edward-snowden-us-politicians-react

<comment><USER2> As a citizen of none of the countries involved in this, I had a good laugh when I read this headline (as I'm sure my Russian friends will too if they're informed of this -- but I'll avoid mentioning it because they might get really upset instead).

This senator must be totally clueless about what Russian people think of the USA's opinion on anything at all.</comment>


Jitsi Meet Electron 2.1 – With End-to-End Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases/tag/v2.1.0 <comment><AUTHOR> Though they call the End-to-End encryption feature still "beta", the release 2.1.0 is not beta.

WebRTC encryption was possible by upgrading to Chrome 83 embedded in Electron. User may switch on/off encryption via menu.

More details from behind the scene here: [https://jitsi.org/blog/e2ee/](https://jitsi.org/blog/e2ee/)</comment>


Show HN: Filter the web by Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://hackernewsfilter.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Why? I want to check the url is submitted or not by HN in chrome extension, but don't want to call HN Search API ([https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com)) every time for security issue.

Result? 10 year links in HN count is about 2143436, total bloom filter size 2143436 * 2B, file size ~ 5M. Find building status in [https://hackernewsfilter.com/status/](https://hackernewsfilter.com/status/) . The bloom filter factors can be found in [https://hackernewsfilter.com/faq/#check](https://hackernewsfilter.com/faq/#check) .

Product? The chrome extension based on these data can be find in [https://hackernewsfilter.com/](https://hackernewsfilter.com/) , after install, you can check if an url is submitted or not when every time you open a link.

Enjoy!

<comment><USER2> Ah this makes the purpose much more clear. I recommend putting a version of how you explain this on your front page

<comment><AUTHOR> Amazing! Many users are coming in :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a great idea!

I usually try to avoid commenting on grammar or spelling too much, but it seems like you're a non-native speaker of English, and it's a bit tricky to understand some of what you're intending.

Here's some suggestions that might make the site's purpose a bit clearer (just suggestions!)

On the main page:

"Easily find out if the web page you're reading has been discussed on Hacker News, with no API calls"

On /check:

"Automatically find HN discussions when web-browsing, securely"

and

"Borrow HN community intelligence on every page".

On /status:

"For details about how to use the bloom filter file, check here"

On /feedback:

"I found an issue"

I'm not sure what you mean by "I want to format the url", so I'm not sure what to suggest there.

If you like, I can follow up or file an issue, with suggested rewrites for /faq. There's a lot more there than can fit in a single post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much, Yen, yep, many unclear in the site for now, you can contact to me by gmail: hhhust#gmail.com.

<comment><USER4> One minor note: When you click the icon, it shows you # of comments, but says "# of commits" (commits is not what you meant).

Otherwise, seems very nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, "commits" should be "comments", will fix it in next version. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> huan9huan - in case you're interested, you can usually make a Firefox extension and a Chrome extension from the same codebase. Check out [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/WebExtensions/Po...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/WebExtensions/Porting_a_Google_Chrome_extension)

Let me know how it goes - I'm happy to (try to) answer any questions you have about the process!

<comment><AUTHOR> looks pretty easy, I will try, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is cool. I like that websites I visit won't get recorded by someone else however this needs to be open source. I no longer install Chrome plugins that are not open source or coming from very well known public companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> good consideration!the client can be open sourcing later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome work!

From your FAQ:

 _Q: Cost and make money?_

 _Not very sure how to make money_

Not sure you'll make money from this service but with this talent it seems you can easily segue into other services.

For example, HN doesn't have any usable way to save and retrieve threads that you find most interesting/informative/funny. You've solved half of that already.

Solve the other half and you've basically built a bookmarking service. Some good UI/UX and clever marketing positioning and there's a product probably worth paying for.

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER8> On the pinboard.in/popular page, it would be useful to have an icon linking to the HN discussion. In fact, lets also have one to the Reddit discussion.

If someone has some time, this could be a useful extension.

</comment><comment><USER9> Although HN becomes front page of internet for me nowadays, it is still good idea! for submission part, it saves round trip to NH if article has been submitted

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, since the extension can test the url submitted or not , it will make the "HN hunter" \- the submitter life easier

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I will post the hacker news filter changes in medium [https://medium.com/@datalet/](https://medium.com/@datalet/) you can follow this accounts. thanks.

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats, OP!

Thank you for making this. I can't wait this coming on Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER11> For DDG users !hn has a similar functionality, but it does redirect you the HN Search API.

</comment><comment><USER12> A very useful HN plugin!

</comment><comment><USER13> Probably will give a try</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have a side project to sell? Post it here - <AUTHOR> I remember about 5 years ago, we would occasionally get these really interesting threads on HN about websites/apps that people had made who were looking to sell them in the comments. Lets keep it going since I havent seen one in a while <comment><USER2> I am trying to validate one of my side project ideas: [http://talkmovies.launchrock.com](http://talkmovies.launchrock.com)</comment>


To Be Black at Stuyvesant High - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/education/black-at-stuyvesant-high-one-girls-experience.html?hp

<comment><USER2> I went to Stuy and have always believed that requiring people to score high on an exam that tests verbal and mathematical reasoning skills is a good thing.

Now, a score on a single exam is not a particularly great way to admit people for many reasons, but if we accept that it is an objective test of mathematical and verbal reasoning skills, why not help minorities score high enough (or let people know that there is an exam in the first place)?

In college admissions (at least in theory), affirmative action takes effect only after all the candidates have passed some minimum bar in terms of quantifiable things like SATs, grades, etc. Admission to Stuy is based only on a test so one can apply the same principle: Look at people holistically only after they've passed the minimum bar.

I think we should help minorities make the cutoff and _then_ take a closer look at those applicants who scored high enough (though perhaps not using a hard threshold). Of course this is easier said than done, but I think ignoring such a test completely and relying on GPAs or interviews or other things alone would not be a good idea. Most people haven't "done" many things in middle school the way people do things in high school that distinguish them when they apply to college. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this. (And I actually think one of the goals is to make sure that kids have a lot more opportunities and encouragement to distinguish themselves by the time they finish middle school)

Now, perhaps the current cutoff for getting into Stuy is analogous to getting above a 2300 on the SAT, and elite institutions seem to agree that a 2300 is no more predictive of success than a 2200 or a 2100. So it would be interesting to measure how scores on the admission exam correlate to various metrics of success in college and later in life in order to determine a similar threshold above which the score doesn't matter anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious how it should work if you measure two separate scores (math, verbal) -- would you go for the people who have the highest combined score, the highest score in either, or the highest score in either but meeting a minimum standard in the other?

<comment><USER2> That's a good question. I'm not sure how I would design it. The current test uses a combined score but there's a subtlety. The curve is such that you're better off getting 350 on math and 250 on verbal (or vice versa) than 300 on each. People have suggested that this leads to accepting a many people who are "pointy" rather than "well-rounded." There are people who take differential equations freshman year as well as people who will end up publishing books by the time they graduate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3>
       I attended Stuyvesant in 1973-76, which I learn from this article was
       the era of the highest black enrollment. I have a few quibbles: the
       article states that admission was solely by test score. In fact, one of
       my best (black) friends at Stuyvesant sheepishly told me that he
       scored somewhat below the cutoff but was admitted as part of a
       program to admit students from "disadvantaged" backgrounds with lower
       scores. He was sheepish because he knew that I knew that he was in
       fact quite wealthy and was from a privileged background. His
       father was a famous radio personality. But the system treated him as
       a member of a "disadvantaged" group because of his complexion.

       The article says "Students take the exam in October of their eighth-grade
       year". Many students who will wind up at Stuyvesant never go
       to eighth grade. Like me, they are placed in an accelerated
       junior high program that consists of seventh and ninth grades only.
       Also, the article refers repeatedly to "middle school". The first
       time I heard this term was after I moved away from New York.

       The article refers to "free preparatory programs". Never heard of
       them, nor any other type of test preparation or practice. The test
       resembles an SAT. If you know English and your junior high math, it's
       not that difficult to get in to Stuyvesant, frankly. I know this
       because I was not very good at taking tests, and was somewhat
       surprised that I got in.

       A bigger obstacle is the desire to go there. Most American students
       don't want to face a year each of physics, biology, and chemistry,
       math up to (and optionally including) calculus, and much more,
       including economics, metal shop, and drafting. It might not sound
       like much to the Germans and Japanese, but it does not resemble the
       typical American highschool curriculum. I was shocked to meet people
       in college whose mathematical knowledge seemed to stop at what I had
       learned in 10th grade and who had never heard of mitochondria.  All
       this, and the nerd stigma, was what kept my siblings, for example,
       from taking the test and settling for our abysmal neighborhood
       school. Note that most of Stuyvesant's population consists of the
       offspring of immigrants, who seem to appreciate the importance of
       education.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is how you end up with startup founders being more diverse (which is good in a lot of ways -- including making it politically easier to support immigration and startup-friendly business policies).

Start early (earlier than high school -- they went down to grades 6-8 to get qualified applicants), devote extra resources to identifying and mentoring early on (when it can still do some good), etc. It's a long pipeline, and you don't want it to stall early on.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure how I feel about this article because I was a student that attend NYC's specialized high schools such as Stuy and Tech. I can understand a lot of what was said in this article on a personal level because I've been through it.

Especially, the line where she states that shes heard enough about blacks having an easier time getting into schools.

I'm Asian and as someone who's seen affirmative action effect my life in the past 10 years. I can say that its fair for them to say that because that's the reality.

America has been obsessed about being diverse. Diversity for the sake of diversity is a failure in the country. Diversity born of necessity and natural selection is what we should be seeking out.

I say worry less about making sure we have blacks, yellows, white and bullshht. Worry more about helping anyone who's willing to learn at an early age. The single greatest determinant in whether we're successful is how curious and willing we are to learn. Our focus has been skewed toward things that just aren't as important to success.

*obviously, Im biased as these are my opinions but I've always been results orientated and less focused on ethnicity. I've traveled around a lot as rdl has as well and I've noticed that most countries don't put an emphasis on race as much as Americans do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, the big point is "work with younger kids", not "work with disadvantaged racial minorities". It just happens that rich white or asian younger kids are a lot more likely to have parents, schools, etc. already helping them. (within math/science, this might apply to women as well)

I'm with you on being against "lowering the bar" style affirmative action -- it's unfair to everyone, including the high achieving members of the protected group. The problem is the cultural and family structures don't exist to help intelligent and otherwise-likely-to-succeed people from certain groups progress through the very long pipeline to being successful startup founders. I'm just saying trying to apply late-stage correction (pushing for proportional representation in startup incubators, colleges, etc.) is the wrong place to work -- you can get by with much less expensive, much more fair interactions by starting a lot earlier. KIPP will probably do more for minority representation in the startup world than anything at the incubator level, but it will take 15 years.

One of the things the military has done pretty well is racial (and geographic) integration, through treating everyone basically the same (after integration), and aggressively getting rid of organizational or structural racism. That's different from startups, but does seem to support the idea that it's possible, given enough time.

Actually, most of the countries I've visited care more about ethnicity/race than the US, especially more so than silicon valley. Possibly selection bias.

Malaysia is, in my experience, one of the most racist and weirdly political- about-race countries I've ever visited. Thailand and other areas with an ethnic Chinese population often have really weird race based politics. I'm also not really sure how you count tribalism in places like Iraq/Afghanistan/Central Asia. Then there are places in the middle east where an Indian family who has lived there for 150 years is still not "local".

Race and socioeconomic class are maybe more tied in the US than in the other places (where it's more political), but it would be just as valid to say rural poor white kids from West Virginia have little exposure to quality math/science education early on, too.</comment></comment></comment>


ITunes Music Store Coming Soon to 10 New European Union Countries? - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/28/itunes-music-store-coming-soon-to-10-new-european-union-countries/

<comment><AUTHOR> hopefully not only rumors</comment>


Someone claims to have hacked ProtonMail - <AUTHOR> https://pastebin.com/bwvqHhbA <comment><USER2> > Protonmail compromises their users data without their knowledge and charges > each user a monthly subscription fee. Therefore we felt morally justified > compromising Protonmail's data without their knowledge and charging them a > fee for it's return.

> If they decline again we will [...] sell [all customer data] in bulk to the > highest bidder on the darknet

Funny that their moral sense tells them to compromise Protonmail's data because it "charges each user a monthly subscription fee", but it ignores the fact that they might affect users' private information if they release it to the public. Even if they're not lying about the hacking, what's really bullshit is their belief that they're doing the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a hoax and failed extortion attempt, and there is zero evidence to suggest otherwise. Not a single claim made there is true, and many of the claims are also unsound from a technical standpoint.

</comment><comment><USER4> The email in the post is at the domain: msgden.com. This domain redirects to: [https://www.msgsafe.io](https://www.msgsafe.io). Another encrypted email system. Seems pretty clear this may just be a marketing tactic to steal customers from ProtonMail.

</comment><comment><USER5> "This extortion attempt is a hoax and have seen zero evidence to suggest otherwise." \-- [https://twitter.com/ProtonMail/status/1063392853014048768](https://twitter.com/ProtonMail/status/1063392853014048768)

</comment><comment><USER6> This stinks to high heaven IMO - they're threatening to release e-mails detailing "rampant pedophilia" among high-placed individuals? Sure, that's not odd at all. I guess that's there to leverage the pizzagate believers for extra publicity.

That said, there is a claim that should be verifiable - that Protonmail have not enable SRI and that this leaves users vulnerable. Does this claim hold up? I'll admit I'm not familiar enough with SRI to even say whether it does what the pastebin suggests it does. Them calling it "mandatory" seems like another manipulation, though - mandated by who?

<comment><USER7> that claim doesn't make sense. SRI protects your site against third-parties changing the files you include from them in your site. Here the claim seems to be that ProtonMail changed files to snoop on users using their website, SRI doesn't help against that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's funny how their whole thing is "protonmail knowingly did something bad", while they threaten to release innocents' user data if they don't get paid a small sum.

</comment><comment><USER9> Goofy hoax:

"The alleged hacker has been busy posting to various image boards and stating that they would send $20 in bitcoin to anyone who spread the word about this hack using the #Protonmail hashtag on Twitter". [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hacker-say- th...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hacker-say-they- compromised-protonmail-protonmail-says-its-bs/)

"A closer reading of some of the claims, e.g. "circumventing the Geneva convention, underwater drone activities in the Pacific Ocean, and possible international treaty violations in Antarctica", etc, should also cause a reasonable observer to draw the same conclusion". [https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/9xjrch/protonma...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/9xjrch/protonmail_hacked_or_just_hoax/)

</comment><comment><USER10> >We are offering it back to Protonmail for a small fee, if they decline then we will publish or sell user data to the world.

That doesn't make sense. Why are they posting this if they are hoping for some successful extortion? How would extortion even make sense in the first place? You can't return data.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. I did receive an email about unread messages from Protonmail just yesterday. I haven't used it in years and don't remember ever getting emails to my other account either. Thought it seemed fishy, I just ignored it.

<comment><USER12> We sent out an update about security features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, if Proton hosted the CSS or JS elsewhere other than their main server and someone did a MitM on those files, well ... yeah.

<comment><USER3> We don't use a CDN.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: If we could erase the internet and start over, what would it look like? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm interpreting your question to be about suboptimal design decisions that became popular somewhat by accident and were then unchangeable due to backward compatibility concerns.

Have more than 32 bits of IP address space.

Rewrite some old fundamental protocols, like BGP (routing) and SMTP (email), to have better security (authentication / encryption).

Make the browser's low-level language be an efficient bytecode-based compiled language like Java, rather than an inefficient dynamic language like JavaScript (although JavaScript is less inefficient than it used to be, thanks to recent improvements in JS engine technology).

Allow web pages to separate data from formatting without requiring Javascript or server-side technologies.

Use Markdown as the language of the Web instead of the XML-based HTML.

Cross-browser vector graphics support.

Decentralize DNS and SSL (perhaps using Namecoin or the like?)

Make domain names read left-to-right instead of right-to-left.

<comment><USER3> >Make the browser's low-level language be an efficient bytecode-based compiled language like Java, rather than an inefficient dynamic language like JavaScript (although JavaScript is less inefficient than it used to be, thanks to recent improvements in JS engine technology).

Not every use case for javascript demands native-level performance or strict type safety, though. You would really rather have a separate, compiled binary for every time someone wanted to alter the DOM on their page? And break the ability to view the source and edit in the browser?

I can see the case for replacing javascript with a saner interpreted language, but we've already tried Flash-based sites and Java applets and for the most part the result has been slow, bug-ridden, insecure proprietary nightmares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, I bet those that are nit-picky will still correct others like

\+ It's "Ask HN" not "Ask"

\+ Come on man, grammar, "If we could erase all of the"

\+ Were you too lazy to put a space after the comma? "over,how" {Add some other insults here}

\+ You sound a lot like someone in Brazil, it should be "how would it look like?" rather than what you have there.

But then there are those that shrug and move on, not wasting their energy or frustration on such silly little things (with their help).

I expect that web developers would panic initially at the loss of all their documentation--but they are now aware that graphics designers and typographers have existed this whole time and recreate grids and other things.

Standards would definitely come out with different quirks, but probably not as much as IE6 brought (and kept) to the market.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm going to reject the premise of this question, because I think it will lead to disagreement. I think you first need to ask what goals would a redesigned internet seek to fix/maximize. Would we be designing for increased security, with some sort of key exchange embedded into low-level protocols? Would we be designing for lack of control, where no country or corporation can gain undue control over a large part of the infrastructure? Would we be designing for future-proofing, to minimize the impact of migrations to improved protocols? Or would we focus on other problems that people feel exist in our current implementation?

Basically, there are a lot of things that people consider problematic about the internet, but not everyone agrees on that. Following the GRPI model ([http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/GRPI.html](http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/GRPI.html)), we'd first need to align on the goals for this project. To skip right to the end result will result in people solving different problems and arriving at very different results.

Personally, I think the three areas I identified above are the most important goals for the redesign. I think core protocols, whether low-level, like TCP, or higher, like SMTP, should be designed to require encryption. I'd want to remove centralized organizations like ICANN and even well-behaving organizations like IANA and the regional registries. I don't know if its possible to prevent consolidation of internet infrastructure, like the long- haul backbones, but we could optimize protocols for mesh networks and local connections to make it as easy as possible to avoid last-mile monopolies.

One of the technologies that I think we could learn from would be BitCoin. While I'm not really in favor of it as a currency, you could use a similar strategy as a replacement for DNS registrations and IP assignments. With a large enough address space, you could simply "mine" the addresses you'd want to use in the same way that BitCoins are mined. And domain names could be mined in the same way. The blockchain would be huge, but you'd have a way to issue a signed route to your IP address.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the scenario would be caos. Lots of governments have invested in this, if you suddenly make a "erase and reset" I expect a really financial caos.

Then, probably a very big regression in terms of technology: no data, no services. We have to start gathering them all over again. To exemplify: no Google Maps, no Weather data, phone directories, etc. Think all these things we must gather again.

Assuming what's installed on personal computers is not erased as well, we have a pretty serious dilema in front.

In this escenario, I suspect companies would start over, and everyone will fight to be the first Google, building all those technologies that were successful for the company. And so on.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure how it looks like, but I think people who invested in big data, would cry.

</comment><comment><USER8> It would look pretty much like it did in the mid 80s: fragmented, proprietary and designed to be monetized. Microsoft would have an internet, Google would have an internet, Amazon would have an internet, and they wouldn't directly interoperate. Both sides would gleefully charge subscribers to access another internet, and the interoperability wouldn't be complete. The technical and market forces that allowed TCP/IP become the de facto starting in the late 80s/early 90s would be fought tooth and nail, should they even recur. DRM would be built into the lowest level of the protocol stacks.

<comment><USER9> Or put another way: mobile phone app stores, which to a large extent _are_ a pretty concerted effort to reinvent solutions to the problems solved by the world wide web.

<comment><USER8> I hadn't quite thought of it that way, but you're exactly right.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Should You Use MySQL? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/programming/why-use-mysql/

<comment><USER2> _Personally I prefer PostGreSQL over MySQL for a drop in replacement on Linux based systems. It's far superior in many ways, and something you should consider if you're able to. Personally if I were to start a new business or had a Linux based environment and was in the planning phase I would choose PostGreSQL from the start. But it's not always the best option for most people._

What a crappy defense.

There is little I like about MySQL but here's a few reasons I still recommend people use it:

1\. It's already part of something delivering value to your business. E.g. Nagios, MediaWiki or some other LAMP stack solution you've deployed. It's there. You're using it. Learn to live with it, and be sure to BACK IT UP!

2\. You need to work with data someone gave you that came from a MySQL system. E.g. a Wikipedia dump. Someone else already lived the pain of collecting data into MySQL, now all you need to do is refine it.

3\. You're publishing data for someone else to load into their MySQL system (e.g. a Pentaho warehouse).

<comment><USER3> In other words, the reason to use it is if _you're already using it._

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> MySQL is to Postgres today as mSQL was to MySQL in 1998; more popular yet technologically inferior. In another 15 years, we will be having the same arguments about PostgreSQL and the thing that comes to replace it, whatever that may be.

MySQL is in production and we have to live with it. The defences in the linked article are all valid. MySQL is a very sharp tool and can be used effectively. But its time has passed. Start your new projects on a more solid footing.

<comment><USER5> Your analogy and your point is misguided. In another 15 years. MySQL will be legacy and PostgreSQL will be a footnote in history.

Because what you fail to understand is that people aren't switching from SQL to SQL they are switching to NoSQL and doing so en masse. Have you not seen the huge array of NoSQL options that weren't available 15 years ago e.g. MongoDB, CouchBase, Riak, Cassandra, HBase, Redis. And the upcoming trend is going to be in Graph databases e.g. Neo4J.

<comment><USER2> You're mistaken if you think MySQL and PostgreSQL and the other databases are simply going to stand still during that time and you're also mistaken if you think applications which work with the SQL model will be abandoned before a better model is found.

My prediction is that every SQL and NoSQL system you mention will evolve towards being _producers_ and _consumers_ of SQL and NoSQL interfaces. I.e. like SQLite4 over KV, or Oracle memcache over InnoDB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1 reason to use MySQL rather than Postgres:

1) Your legacy shared hosting site might provide MySQL and not Postgres.

There are also 9 reasons to choose one of {Postgres, MySQL} over {Oracle, SQL Server}.

Here is 1 reason to use Postgres: data integrity.

"00/00/0000 00:00:00.0000" is not a real date, but MySQL will helpfully insert it into your table if you try to insert NULL into a non-null datetime field. (One example among many.)

<comment><USER5> 2) Clustering e.g. multi-master solution.

3) Decent monitoring.

4) Commercial support.

And your argument about data integrity is valid but in the real world moot. Most developers are using an ORM these days which abstract problems like these away.

<comment><USER7> _4) Commercial support._

EnterpriseDB, Command Prompt, 2nd Quadrant, and all the others listed under <http://www.postgresql.org/support/professional_support/>

Many of those companies have people _on staff_ who are members of the PostgreSQL core committee, or at least have commit bits. Can MySQL say the same?

If your response is going to be "But that's not commercial support _from_ 'PostgreSQL' itself", that's the nature of the community. It was a deliberate choice by the community to structure itself that way: PostgreSQL — the community, the brand, or whatever you want to call it — _can't_ be sold. This is a good thing, and I don't think I need to waste much time explaining why...

<comment><USER2> Commercial support for MySQL is evolving in a similar way. Oracle, Percona, SkySQL and others offer it (emphasizing their particular value-added flavor).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > You don't need to hire a group of certified DBAs to run a MySQL database. An > ordinary programmer can learn enough to maintain their database servers for > most applications.

There is a reason why I, as someone whose experience in principally in data management, does not "write applications" - I might be able to write something that works, but it will likely lack security, stability, scalability. The same things happen with app developers, without an equivalent of database expertise, will make similar mistakes.

You may need a team of "certified" DBAs, but you need someone to guide the development of a stable foundation.

</comment><comment><USER9> These are all reasons why you'll do fine with MySQL if you're stuck with it, but they don't give a compelling reason to choose MySQL over e.g. PostgreSQL.

One thing I like about MySQL is the support available from third parties like Percona - I'll also recommend the book "High Performance MySQL", which gives some great details on performance tuning and query optimizing.

I'm not familiar with the offers for PostgreSQL - I'd like to hear what support services and books people with PostgreSQL experience would recommend.

<comment><USER7> For support, peruse the list for your continent at:

<http://www.postgresql.org/support/professional_support/>

For books, among the most important is Greg Smith's "PostgreSQL 9.0 High Peformance", but really, just search Amazon for "PostgreSQL" and browse the titles until you find one that matches your needs.

Personally, I've been working with postgres for a decade now. Most of what I've needed, I've just gotten from searching a/o asking on the mailing lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was just going to submit this and found it was already submitted, thanks. Curious to see how others are going to tear my case apart on this one.

<comment><USER11> not tearing you apart, just a small correction - it's spelt PostgreSQL (small "g") - <http://www.postgresql.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes...this.

Another thing that is often overlooked is tiered slaves in conjunction with logical replication for adding OLAP to an OLTP infrastructure. This allows you to have additional reporting data on slaves that is not present on the master and along with real-time replication, eliminating or simplifying nightly batch processing. This also allows you to keep a very small working set available on the master database with slaves that contain the full archive. In conjunction with BLACKHOLE tables, this can be very powerful.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was expecting a more compelling case.

<comment><USER14> A lot of people use it. It is the Java of databases.

Ironically, Oracle also is connected to Java.

<comment><USER5> > It is the Java of databases.

That makes absolutely no sense what so ever. Java is the dominate enterprise development platform.

MySQL is most popular in non-enteprise environments.

<comment><USER14> Calm down, it is a harmless folksy anecdotal comment on two technologies (ironically trademarked by the same company).

Java is a technology (including web plugins) that has received a lot of criticism from the community. Just recently the Department of Homeland Security had to chime in and recommend that users disable Java due to security concerns. MySQL has always received criticism due to various issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> RDS as a scaling strategy is also a good reason.

<comment><USER12> RDS isn't really that great as a scaling strategy. It's only marginally easier to keep running than your own dedicated MySQL instances and it's far less flexible, particularly for disaster recovery since there is no way to do cross-region replication.

<comment><USER15> Marginally for who and it what scenarios? Features like Provisioned IOPS and Multi-AZ deployment with failover and read replicas make it quite attractive for a project without a lot of dedicated staff. So it's great strategy depending on what you want to do.</comment></comment></comment>


Ruby on rails and groovy/grails comparison - <AUTHOR> http://mikemainguy.blogspot.com/2010/10/ruby-on-rails-and-groovy-grails.html

<comment><USER2> > #2 Ruby forces you to learn "the ruby way". For folks who are only used to > java, seeing ruby code is like...seeing another language.

This is hardly a point of difference between any 2 languages/frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER3> These points seem trivial and obvious. I would be much more curious to see performance comparisons, congruent external packages (what is the 'devise' analog in groovy) and how might your solution to the same problem differ in each framework.

<comment><USER4> probably the closest analog would be the spring security plugin, but I'm not well versed in devise enough to say for certain.

<http://www.grails.org/plugin/spring-security-core> <http://burtbeckwith.github.com/grails-spring-security-core/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few notes:

Grails db migrations will be bundled as standard in grails 1.4 (hopefully released in next month or so). Currently it's a plugin - grails install-plugin db-migrations.

Reloading - this is something that happens a lot to the Grails' domain reliance on Hibernate. I was told some time ago that it was being worked on to be more seamless, possibly requiring fewer/no restarts. FWIW, in dev mode, controller and view files are automatically reloaded without requiring a restart. Service files with static methods in them seem to require a restart, and domain changes require a restart. If you change a domain, in dev mode, the system will restart automatically, but it'll go through the init process, and your state will be lost.

Testing - conceptually there's a lot of nice stuff in Grails, but Rails is still further ahead here due to speed. Grails _unit_ tests are generally fast, but _integration_ tests require the whole Grails stack to be started, and this generally takes 35-45 seconds on my system (MBP 2.66ghz). You can rewrite a lot of integration tests as unit tests with loads of mocks and such, but it's not elegant. Grails 1.4 is supposed to bring 'improved testing', but I'm not sure what that means.

If you're doing groovy or grails, you owe it to yourself to use <http://kobo.github.com/groovyserv/> which starts a daemon. Running groovy normally invokes a JVM on each command - groovyserv eliminates that entirely.

Finally - gentle plug - if you're in to groovy/grails tech and haven't checked out groovymag.com PDFs, please check it out. Ping me for coupon codes if you want. :)</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my startup, skipscotch.com, our solution to online reviews - <AUTHOR>

Landing page: http://skipscotch.com Live demo: http://skipscotch.com/home/underdev
Feel free to play around with the demo, although I can't promise speed will be great. The site can be largely experienced w/o a user account, although feel free to create a temp account if you like (fake email or not). I'll delete any accounts/reviews/etc created and hide the URL again after everyone's had adequate time to play around with the site.
Some background info: For the past 4 months, I've been developing SkipScotch, a starting point to increase credibility of online reviews. It's not the ultimate solution, but I'm thinking the structure is in place to get started down the right path. Some highlights:
- Reviews are given based on service experienced, and ratings are calculated per service offered. Currently, we are planning on the basic average of reviews to calculate ratings, but we have a more accurate weighted average designed that we'd love to implement (we'd need a decent amount of reviews for the weighted average to matter). Read about the weighted average at http://blog.skipscotch.com/2011/11/only-way-to-do-reviews-right-way-is-to.html (it's mentioned towards the end of the post)
- Reviews can be up-voted/down-voted by users. Points awarded for reviews contribute to a reviewer's 'wisdom' score
- Scoring reviews/reviewers based on quality should increase credibility of reviews in SkipScotch. We have plenty of future goals with these credibility scores, like utilizing them in a weighted average, review filter, reviewer ranks, and rewards for respected reviewers.
- Individual reviewers can be 'trusted', which provides a new trusted rating along with the public rating
- Events can exist per service and are searchable through the basic search. Examples currently implemented are trivia and karaoke nights
Reviews and ratings are randomly generated for demo purposes. Businesses and events are real and accurate. Reviews show up in each service's show page, simply so they can be experienced regardless of service visited. Our revenue model exists, but I won't get into it here. Just wanted to highlight that we haven't overlooked it.
There's 2 founders, but I'm the only developer. This has been entirely bootstrapped. I did not know RoR (what the site is built with) prior to developing SkipScotch, although I've been a full-time software engineer for 3 years. Design is also not my specialty, so I realize there may be issues with it.
I'd love any feedback you can offer, especially on strategy and product launch. I realize it'll be tough to solve the chicken and egg problem, but I have a few strategies in mind (if you have some, I'd love to hear them!).
Any signups we can get through the landing page will be greatly appreciated. Feel free to contact me directly at firstname.lastname@example.com for any reason whatsoever. Cheers and many thanks! <comment><USER2> Just launch already.

It's not clear to me how your reviews are more trustworthy. Voting reviewers has existed for a while on Amazon, but I'm not sure that isn't gamed.

Apart from trust, the other problem with reviews is that their relevance depends on the type of reviewer. For example, being Indian, when I'm looking for Indian restaurants, I trust reviews of Indians more than those of Americans because my expectations are more similar to other Indians. If I'm looking for hotels to go on vacation with my kids, I want reviews from other parents, not 20-year old single dudes who hated some place because there were too many kids making noise.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you nailed what I've already argued to many others, which is reviews are relative to you. I completely understand your point, but it's hard to achieve what you desire w/o being intrusive. To highlight relevance, we'd have to get users to fill out a questionnaire about their race, age, interests, etc. This is a possibility down the road I suppose.

That's why I created the 'trust' feature though. If you spot an Indian reviewer, add them to your 'trust' circle. Later on, we can get smart and provide 'trust' recommendations for you, but that's a future feature to tackle.

Also, you're correct, voting reviewers have existed for awhile, but they're hardly highlighted by those sites as important. We feel like by encouraging voting from day 1, we can start a culture where it's widely used. Maybe that's a bit naive, but emphasizing how important it is to site functionality should hopefully encourage use (just like how it's used in Reddit/HN).

<comment><USER2> _To highlight relevance, we'd have to get users to fill out a questionnaire about their race, age, interests, etc._

In case you haven't heard, someone already made a questionnaire and got 700 million people to fill it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi - Think you should require images of all businesses. Whenever I see a listing without an image, no matter what, I will skip it. Also, change the "occurring today" flag to something a bit less sterile sounding. Attractive product, though I am not sure I see the difference to google/yelp as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input.

I agree about the images, and it's a definite goal but not an easy one to achieve with the team as small as it is. Some places we'd just have to go visit ourselves and snap pics of, which I actually plan to do eventually.

I'm thrilled you saw the "occurring today" flag honestly, and I'll modify it later. But it's features like that which highlight one of our goals: to provide everything you would ever want to know about a business to you. Google/Yelp take a disconnected approach: a business goes in and can be reviewed for any reason. We aim to know more, specifically what services that business offers, hours of each service, special deals/events going on, etc, all while providing helpful and credible reviews of each service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish it was a startup related to scotch. Anyway...

Wisdom isn't a metric I trust if it's just users voting each other up. Seems like something a few spammers could easily game, right? Also, what does skipping to something do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely a concern, as reviews likely have less exposure than something like Reddit and HN posts.

We have a few strategies in mind where users will either earn votes or have limited votes available. For example, users could only vote when above a certain wisdom score and/or could only vote, say, 10 times a day. These are strategies we'll have to emperiment with.

Skipping is a fun feature I added to try to evolve into a social feature. Many users use review sites to plan trips, so we added this. Basically, you 'skip' to any number of places you like, which forms a sort of itinerary with directions and ETAs. In the future, we'd love to expand this feature a bit, allowing users to share their 'skips' with friends,or possibly even advertise public and/or private skips (think of a bar crawl for example).

<comment><USER4> Skipping sounds great! I'd love to socially plan a whole evening out with my friends using a site like that, factoring in drive times and everything. In my opinion that's more interesting than review quality, although reviews are of course also important.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! So a strategy mentioned to us before is highlight the skip feature, pull in reviews from sites like Yelp, Google, etc, and focus on that. This way, we'd have ratings for each business, displayable via the map in the site, and the skip feature allowing you to focus on trip planning through third party reviews. Something we'll definitely have to consider, although breaking reviews out per service would be so much more helpful in trip planning, IMO

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links: Landing page: <http://skipscotch.com>

Live demo: <http://skipscotch.com/home/underdev>

</comment><comment><USER5> What are you hoping to improve over Yelp and Google Maps/Places/Hotpot? They would seem to be the biggest competitors. Is honesty / quality of reviews on Yelp honestly that large of a problem?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely our biggest competitors. We're trying to create a more credible and helpful review site. I liken us to the Rotten Tomatoes for food/entertainment reviews. We encourage quality over quantity with reviews. If you're an IMDB fan instead, then you may choose to stick with Yelp and others.

We break reviews out per service, which I've yet to see anyone else do. And I do indeed think quality is a major concern with sites like Yelp. Their shady filter and questionable business practices have been brought up many time before. Reviewers are held to no accountability, so you'll often see ridiculous 1-star reviews in Yelp.

Basically, we want to form a unique review site, one that knows intimate details on a business and one that provides extremely helpful reviews.</comment></comment>


Theranos – Statement of Deficiency from CMMS [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/report20160331.pdf <comment><USER2> What a mess. This has nothing to do with Theranos's "nano" technology. This is about Theranos botching standard tests performed with standard commercial equipment, and then not reporting their errors.

Much medical lab practice includes running known test samples through the process regularly to check the test. They skipped a lot of that. Many things can potentially go wrong. They did. Expired reagents, freezers at wrong temperatures, failure to do regular maintenance, patient tests run on machines that were reporting errors... Some of the technicians hadn't completed medical technician training, but were doing complex tests. The summary: "Overall, over 21% of QC samples on all devices had values greater than 2 SDs". So many results were way off, and they weren't catching that.

Those are for standard tests on standard machines. The results for Theranos' "Edison" machine were worse. As in more than 10x more variation than standard techniques.

This isn't even the FDA. This is the Center for Medicare Services checking up on a company to which they paid a lot of money.

WSJ: _" "This is the first time that we've actually seen data from the Theranos instrument, and it's as bad as one would have worried it would be," said Stephen Master, associate professor of pathology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. "Based on this data, it's hard for me to believe that they went live with this instrument and tested patient specimens on it."_

 _" The inspection report said Theranos didn't notify doctors treating patients potentially affected by the erroneous results until mid-November, or seven weeks after the inspectors first identified the problems."_

 _" The lab directors during the period of the survey no longer hold any position within the lab. The new lab director..."_

This looks like the "move fast and break things" crowd trying to run a medical lab.

<comment><USER3> > This looks like the "move fast and break things" crowd trying to run a > medical lab.

No, I don't think that's fair to the "move fast" crowd. This looks more like a bunch of politically connected country club types trying to "brag" a startup. Eg: Board of Directors = Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, former Secretary of State George Shultz, etc.

These people are used to manipulating the system at the expense of the public and getting away with it. I presume they expected to be able to achieve the same with this as well.

<comment><USER4> > These people are used to manipulating the system at the expense of the > public and getting away with it.

Quite heavy accusations -- anything substantial to actually prove it?

<comment><USER5> Have you ever _heard_ of Henry Kissinger?! The man practically wrote the book on realpolitik (although he didn't, von Rochau did)!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is an accompanying article [1] that gives more background. The part on there internal quality control tests show the tech just isn't there.

> The inspection report showed that 29% of the quality-control checks > performed on the company's proprietary blood-testing devices in October 2014 > produced results outside the range considered acceptable by Theranos.

> In February 2015, an Edison-run test to measure a hormone that affects > testosterone levels failed 87% of quality-control checks, the report said.

It doesn't look like they are using Edison to run most of their tests, so we can excuse the experimental tests if they aren't being used for actual patients. Chalk that up to work-in-progress.

What is absolutely inexcusable is their treatment of patients, especially when they found out that results were incorrect.

> Inspectors also found that Theranos sometimes released patients' results > even when the Edison devices used to run those tests produced erratic > results in quality-control checks.

and

> The inspection report said Theranos didn't notify doctors treating patients > potentially affected by the erroneous results until mid-November, or seven > weeks after the inspectors first identified the problems.

Seven weeks to notify customers that you may have fucked up a medical test? We reach out to customers about __potential __software bugs within an hour.

This is an instance where I am glad to have government slowing down innovation. "Move fast, break things" doesn't work when people's lives are at stake.

[1]: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-devices-often-failed- ac...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-devices-often-failed-accuracy- requirements-1459465578)

<comment><USER7> >"Move fast, break things" doesn't work when people's lives are at stake.

No matter what you do, people's lives are at stake. Even an app that suggests which restaurant to go for dinner could cause somebody to die by suggesting a restaurant in an area with higher rate of accidents.

The problem is how little consumers have control of when it comes to healthcare. We like to hand wave and pretend that the rules of economics don't apply when it comes to healthcare so instead of having a market where a person can shop for medicine, doctor's service, equipment etc. it all is more or less just close your eyes go in the tunnel and you will be taken care of and any issue of choice with regards to money is occluded by 'universal healthcare is a human right'.

If I could go to a hospital who would then give me a brochure of all the equipments they use and I find out one of their supplier is a dodgy companies that have dodgy equipments and terrible bug-handling practice I would go to another seller just as I would a smartphone that uses a dodgy processor that is known to break.

<comment><USER8> You don't think there might be a certain information asymmetry between you and a medical care provider? And if there's not, why are you going to doctor at all?

<comment><USER7> There is an information asymmetry when I buy an apple at the farmer market. That doesn't mean that every time I buy an apple I'm getting ripped off by the seller.

<comment><USER8> If you feel the value of your life/health is essentially comparable in gravity and scale to buying an apple at a farmer's market, your opinions on healthcare regulation are unlikely to be relevant to very many people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those of us who aren't familiar, what exactly is the purpose of this document and what does it mean for Theranos?

</comment><comment><USER10> Out of curiosity: has anyone ever tried to do a correlation about the performance of a hard-tech company vs the ratio of technical/political people in their board of directors?

This is probably a strong prior on my part - but when I saw the composition of the board of directors of Theranos (secretary of states/generals/congressmen etc) I was immediately incredibly skeptical. It seems like the board was chosen to provide lucrative contacts instead of actually useful advice and supervision.

</comment><comment><USER11> Corresponding article: _Theranos Devices Often Failed Accuracy Requirements_

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-devices-often-failed- ac...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-devices-often-failed-accuracy- requirements-1459465578)

</comment><comment><USER12> This... this is real train wreck. When this finally goes down, it's going to happen so quickly, and I wouldn't be shocked if some people try to cut and run, fleeing the country.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is one of those rare times where my procrastination in applying for a job at Theranos actually paid off. So grateful I avoided moving my family across the country to get entangled in this mess.

</comment><comment><USER14> Theranos is getting some well deserved regulatory attention.

We need better healthcare tech but we also need to know that it works.

</comment><comment><USER15> They're all dated November of 2015, which was right around when the WSJ investigation brought out. Is this the first time this document(s) was open publicly? What is the new information here?

</comment><comment><USER16> "In April and May 2015, a test to measure prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, failed quality-control checks 22% of the time. The PSA test is used to help detect prostate cancer."

Ouch.... I see a string of class action suits in the future.

</comment><comment> c-slice Although it seems like the acronym should be CMMS, it's actually CMS.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is actually a lot worse than the results recently reported by Mount Sinai in their comparison of a few dozen patients against two standard lab testing companies. I wonder if Theranos has been trying to clean up their standard tests.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there any chance that any of the company's directors will see jail time over this?

<comment><USER19> Doubtful, unless they've got any extant political enemies who want to make an example out of them. Theranos' BOD is basically a who's who of Washington power brokers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> WSJ sure does not like Theranos.

<comment><USER21> It's a reporter with a juicy story. Just like with Woodward & Bernstein with Watergate, someone smells a Pulitzer coming if they can single-handedly trigger the collapse of a beloved unicorn.

<comment><USER22> You're right, they're dead

<comment><USER21> That might be a little premature, but this team (primarily John Carreyrou and Christopher Weaver) are clearly not going to stop writing about Theranos any time soon. Additionally, they've pretty clearly provided an outlet for people who seem to be itching for this story to get some sunlight, so they're scooping the world on the blow-by-blow of Theranos' interactions with FDA, Walgreen's, Safeway, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sending secret messages over the distributed web (Build an IPFS JavaScript ĐApp) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/textileio/building-an-interplanetary-đapp-from-scratch-51f9b8be5a74 <comment><USER2> This looks like an interesting project, though you may find some people skeptical of using javascript in the context of sending secret messages. I could be in the minority on this one.

Wouldn't exposing window.ipfs on every web page add any attack vectors or break any domain security constraints?</comment>


Show HN: Dailypixels.co – A curation of beautiful designs updated every day - <AUTHOR> http://dailypixels.co <comment><USER2> suggestion: preload the next few imgs?

<comment><USER3> Agreed, I think it will make a big difference: I found myself closing the tab no more than a second after the next image didn't load.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do they want a web app, but don't know it? - <AUTHOR>

Being the outsourced IT guy (server/network infrastructure), I got an email today of this form from a customer:
"The ____ department will be using an Excel spreadsheet to track ____ through the ____ process."
To me this says build a web app. I have played with Django and other Python web frameworks but never made anything significant.
1. How realistic is it to commit to doing something like this with little experience?
2. If it's not realistic, what should I do now to be prepared for this in the future?
3. How do I approach this when, in their mind, they have already decided on Excel as their solution?
I work with many small business customers and feel like I am missing many golden opportunities to build cool things to help them that would also be valuable to others. But I'm not sure how to make the jump. Any advice? <comment><USER2> 1\. The best way to learn something is to jump in . . . but developing a web application can take quite a bit of time . . . meeting your clients needs with one can take even more time.

2\. I would start by developing a small app for your self, or a very small/well defined app for a client first. I would use Rails or Laravel (Laracasts.com). You'll want to go through building a login system, login, logout, dashboard page for the app, CRUD, that will get your feet wet. I would use bootstrap for the design or something off wrapbootstrap.

3\. Think about what they are wanting to do. Would it be better to be able to log in from anywhere to add/view/edit info rather than sharing a spreadsheet? Basically is there value in setting up a web app. Are they ok with paying for monthly hosting, backups? And paying you for updates/maintenance. Plus the initial cost of your time to develop it.

Keep security in mind . . . using Rails or Laravel and following best practices is a good start but just getting started with web apps I wouldn't take on anything too sensitive.

I would recommend hosting with digital ocean, If you do use Laravel they have a nice tool called Forge to setup/deploy your app.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Excel is one of the most difficult software to replace in a corporation. It just get the work done, without any third party to block the process. Excel is a safe route, they know how it works and they can even make some brogramming with these sheets.

Ok, you can do it in a better way (faster, online, distributed, ...), but it creates a lot of costs too. In a large corporation, it is not just about the money, they'll waste a lot of time just to define what they want and who they want to make it happen.

<comment><USER4> > Excel is one of the most difficult software to replace in a corporation. It > just get the work done, without any third party to block the process.

I think this is a common impression which is both a result of poor corporate IT governance/process (and, largely, the fact that "IT" is usually a giant silo that is separated from the business as if it were an outside firm, with rules that only those in that silo can touch anything that might be used to create functionality -- except Excel) _and_ , even so, largely illusory. (There's no less need for systematic testing with Excel, but the people using it often don't understand that, and build complex, poorly-tested, bug-ridden systems that look authoritative.)

> Ok, you can do it in a better way (faster, online, distributed, ...), but it > creates a lot of costs too.

More important, it creates costs that are part of the business units expenses, but where the work (and headcount) is elsewhere, meaning that the costs of Excel -- even if they are equal costs -- are often desirable. While managers usually have incentives to cut costs, empire-builders were prefer that, if there are costs that are unavoidable, the associated staff are theirs, not someone else's.

> In a large corporation, it is not just about the money, they'll waste a lot > of time just to define what they want and who they want to make it happen.

Yes, Excel is often a loophole in horribly broken enterprise IT practices that function more to create bureaucratic overhead and prevent IT work from getting done than to serve the needs of the organization, and rapidly accumulating technical debt by having business staff build complex tools in Excel without consideration of whether its an appropriate tool for the business need outside of the role of Excel as an organizational IT policy hack, without structured testing, etc.

OTOH, fixing the broken practices is a better solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In addition to what ZenoArrow said about the fuss/job-done ratio, think about the ability of the next guy to extend this and the security implications. It seems like it's a large(ish) organization. Will they always have a guy who can modify a Django app? Is this on an internal network or is it going to be web- facing? If it's web facing can you be sure that you have taken reasonable measures to protect it (and not have a refund demanded or worse)?

Just some thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER6> If Excel is the tool they know, don't force them into a tool that they don't know unless it does the job SIGNIFICANTLY better AND adds a lot of value.

You'd be amazed what people (even some non-technical) can do with Excel, pivot tables, etc—don't limit them by pushing them into a solution that they're less comfortable with.

</comment><comment><USER7> Excel means you don't need to explain things to a programmer and you can change your mind as things evolve.

One problem is, no user interface. I am working on a way to add a user interface to a spreadsheet. A few early adopters are using it, see www.cellmaster.com.au

</comment><comment><USER8> What needs to be tracked? Is there specific functionality you want to add to the tracker? If you're concerned about fragmentation with the spreadsheet approach, is this something you can solve with an existing product (SharePoint, Google Docs, etc...)?

The best solution is often the one that gets the job done with a minimum of fuss.</comment>