The concept of schizophrenia is dying - <AUTHOR> http://theweek.com/articles/731238/concept-schizophrenia-dying <comment><USER2> There's something important the article seems to be getting wrong: psychosis is a symptom, not a disease.

There are such things as psychotic depression and post-partum depression; psychosis is a symptom of severe bipolar mania, etc.

By the way, the concept of schizophrenia first comes up in Emil Kraepelin's realization that bipolar disorder (manic-depression) and schizophrenia ("precocious dementia") are distinct pathologies -- even though they may have similar presentations at times. With this, Kraepelin also inaugurates the idea of differential diagnosis.

Similar in spirit (but less compatible with our contemporary understanding) is Freud's distinction between neurosis and "psychosis", the former being amenable to analysis. I.e. schizophrenia has always been a diagnosis of exclusion.

If people are actually being able to open up schizophrenia into further detail -- well, that's good. But there will always be a diagnosis of exclusion, we'll just euphemize it as "psychotic disorder NOS" or some such.

<comment><USER3> Freud is dead. Dead and gone. We moved on. Really, i know he founded the field and made for a nice soap opera gossip generator when discussing other peoples problems sources (generating alot of unnecessary drama, to people who already had drama, like having the genes for schizophrenia in the family)- so please could we stop mentioning him, when discussing modern neurology.

Its like a tribe on a pacific island had discovered boolean algebra first, and every time somebody tried to discuss comp science ever after - out of nowhere someone yells "This calls for a ritual, sacrifice the chicken, you cant discuss booleans, without being ridden by baron samedi."

<comment><USER4> We actually shouldn't. The psychoanalysis is contempted and forgotten however psychoanalysis is something like a computer language, the language of human inner world.

Some kind of lisp with probably terrible interpreter.

The modern neuroscience is of course something like an assembler. So lisp or assembler? If you want to write modern OS, then you know the answer.

The Freud, Jung, Lacan theory is related to psychotherapeutic work is like automata theory relationships to writing modern enterprise applications.

I don't believe there is something 'true' or 'objective' in psychoanalysis - deep inside is some ocean, some chaos of different introjections, emotions and feelings. But the psychoanalysis helps to create structure there, to look and make sense out of the ocean.

There is no substitude for psychoanalysis except really good prose probably or poetry.

And of course Freud was a genius.

<comment><USER5> If a man who was wrong about almost everything can be considered a genius then the word "genius" has lost all meaning.

<comment><USER6> There are dimensions to genius.

Seeing a common subject, a set of boundaries, a _possible_ (even if incorrect) set of guiding principles, can be genius. If it inspires further exploration or refinement or even _rejection_ of ideas, it's a productive step.

Einstein railed against QM, Newton believed in alchemy, Kelvin though the Earth was 30 million years old, the list of people opposed to continental drift / plate techtonics is vast (see Naomi Oreskes several papers and books on the history of the development of that subject), Samuel Morse had what would now be dispicable views on race and religion, Ford was an anti-semite, Crick and/or Watson have their own failings, etc., etc., etc.

Much of genius is being able to _jump out of and beyond_ the present dominant paradigm and mental models. It's not about being _right_ but of being _less wrong_. Than that which came before, not after.

<comment><USER5> The scientists you listed at least attempted to follow the scientific method as best they could in most of their professional work (although they certainly made their share of methodological errors and allowed personal biases to affect their work). Whereas most of Freud's writing was the moral equivalent of astrology: based mostly on random anecdotes and not falsifiable. Hardly equivalent.

<comment><USER6> That is not the original criticism you raised, nor is it the one I addressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I grew up with a close uncle who suffered for decades from this disease. The tales of his brilliant youth, on track as a naval nuclear engineer, are only more tragic to the shattered shell of a man I knew. Most of his treatment involved a cocktail mix of a dozen or so "medicines" who's primary purpose appeared to be to keep him sedated for long stretches of the day.

He was absolutely unable to hold a job, or even a coherent conversation, and was in and out of half-way houses and treatment programs. At times he would get violent to himself or others as various psychotic fantasies moved him to be. He famously assaulted my sister one day before my father sent him away to stay with my mother's family (of which he was a sibling)...when he remembered the event at all he insisted he was trying to save her from one of a variety of fantastic and impossible sequences of events.

Often in tears trying to explain what he had been trying to do, the family eventually concluded that in his mind he was trying to do a good thing and help against some imaginary evil, but his reality was so distorted it had turned into harm and that we simply couldn't risk his presence any further.

Drugs of various levels of legality were a constant feature of his life. It was well known that he ended up dropping out of the Navy as a pot head that morphed into a serious cocaine and lsd user. Much of his treatment in his later years was trying to get him to stop self-medicating and to let the professionals provide the legal stuff.

He made it to his 60s before a tumble in the bathroom knocked him unconscious and sent him into a hospital bed where he never woke up. Another Uncle, the guardian of his estate, made the decision to take him off of life support and hope his next chance turned out better than this one. His autopsy wasn't revealing, his system was basically a mobile pharmacy and narcotics evidence locker combined, but it still devastated the siblings who had tried to help him find his way back to the brilliant 20 year old they last remember.

<comment><USER8> I know somebody who was brilliant (I mean brilliant as hell) as well until the age of about 20. He started suffering from bipolar disorder later on (at about 23). Between that age he was registered at university but was not attending it. Instead he was partying all the time. I noticed him acting odd first when he came back from a trip to the other side of the world - my impression was that the jet-lag in combination with alcohol consumption and the realization that other people made a lot of progress during the years he was partying helped initiating the illness. I think summarized the factors were lack of sleep, alcohol, stress and high vulnerability due to inheritance.

Therefore I think the best way to prevent this illness is:

\- Avoid stress, especially in your 20's

\- Try to have an ordered life

\- Get enough sleep

\- Avoid too much alcohol consumption

\- Do sports (rarely a mistake I assume)

\- Take jet-lags seriously

I am not sure if drugs (from the trip to the other side of the world) were involved. It is possible but I doubt it.

<comment><USER8> I forgot to mention: He was smoking a lot as well.

<comment><USER9> Most schizophrenics smoke a lot of cigarettes. Though not well understood, the nicotine may act as a general stimulant and help with the disease. It's an active area of research right now.

It's a very strange site, but it may be a good jumping of point for those doing research in to the link: [http://www.schizophrenia.com/nicotine.benefits.htm](http://www.schizophrenia.com/nicotine.benefits.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Schizophrenia is one of those disorders that medicine has, that is likely not one discrete condition, its likely a multitude of different psychological illnesses all flying under one banner, even if the underlying psychology and physiology are quite different for different people. As we get better with medicine, we find more illnesses - for example, its part of why I think cancer is found so much more often now, while there is undoubtedly more cancer (we're living longer, as it turns out, old age is a fellow traveler of cancer), we're also much better at finding it.

<comment><USER11> Like Asthma.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd suggest that not taking a drug (weed/lsd/mushrooms) that alter ones perceptions of our very existence is a good way of staying mentally sound.

If you take ten 16 yr olds, allow them to experiment, 1-2 will drop off the world, 2-3 will have major, life changing changes to the way they view life (border line changes in said spectrum) and the rest handle it fine although with a significant change in lifestyle.

As someone who has had a close call with the boundaries of perception I believe weed is of significant concern. It has a 'benign' perception but for those it effects it can take their heads off to places which are not healthy for fitting into normal, standard life. Aka the general 'schizophrenic' term

<comment><USER13> How do you mean? Most folks I know who regularly use marijuana aren't close to anything I'd call schizoaffective.

Those who I know whom have gone off the deep end so to say, seem to have had other troubles in life which compounded to become too much to handle for them.

<comment><USER12> Are you replying to me? So, you are suggesting my story is lies? I guess you should study stats to know that there are more than 60 people in this world.

<comment><USER12> Clearly weed has not helped me comment on HN . Wrong reply

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A significant chunk of schizophrenia-diagnosed patients have already been chipped away; it turned to be autism spectrum disorder instead. I wouldn't be surprised if other such corrected diagnoses followed, gradually dismantling the schizophrenia itself altogether.

<comment><USER15> On top of that I would be surprised if autism doesn't (again) split up into separate (sub-)disorders as we find out more. Sooner rather than later, I hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would argue that the indications of schizophrenia being associated with weed is ascribing a causative effect to a correlation. Weed doesn't increase your chances of schizophrenia unless you already had something that would tilt you in that direction in the first place, from my experience. I would say I do agree that schizophrenia probably needs to be broken up; it was merely a collection of symptoms to begin with that couldn't be explained by other means. Now we have explanations.

I am curious how this may affect schzioaffective, schizoid, and schizotypal disorders. That they're not mentioned st all in this article is rather disappointing.

<comment><USER17> The text does a decent job of not saying smoking weed causes psychosis:

"Compared with non-cannabis users, the daily use of high-potency, skunk-like cannabis is associated with a fivefold increase in the odds of someone developing psychosis."

But the photo caption below a picture of someone smoking weed explicitly states (not supported by a study; how could one possible do a double blind test on cannabis in the current regulatory environment) a causative effect:

"Smoking skunk every day increases your odds of developing a psychotic disorder fivefold"

<comment><USER18> Given how carefully written that aspect of the actual article text was, I'm assuming that the photo + caption was added later on by someone else who was more interested in clickbait than differentiation between cause and correlation (or didn't understand the difference in the first place). Journalism is dead, rabble rabble.

<comment><USER19> Or just not aware of the difference. Not everyone helping with layouts is evil and just wants clickbait. They're just not always experts on the field.

<comment><USER20> Indeed. Also keep in mind, that though someone might realize, on an abstract level, that "correlation is not causation", they might not be used to actively looking for that distinction in text. Everyday discussions tend to be more fluid and inexact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The UK British Psychological Society recently released an update to their _Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia_ report.

People may be interested in it. [http://www.bps.org.uk/networks-and- communities/member-micros...](http://www.bps.org.uk/networks-and- communities/member-microsite/division-clinical-psychology/understanding- psychosis-and-schizophrenia)

It's had some criticism: it includes a bunch of people who probably aren't psychotic (auditory hallucinations are common, and not always a sign of illness, for example), and it appears to exclude a bunch of people who have severe forms of illness.

Here are two blog posts that give a thorough, evidence based, review:

[https://www.nationalelfservice.net/publication- types/report/...](https://www.nationalelfservice.net/publication- types/report/understanding-psychosis-and-schizophrenia-a-critique-by-laws- langford-and-huda/)

[https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental- health/psychosis/u...](https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental- health/psychosis/understandingpsychosis/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I love this snippet from Dr Gabor Mate [1], where he talks about "the myth of normal". If you haven't seen this, please take a look, it is truly wonderful.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_j5mmBa4mw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_j5mmBa4mw)

</comment><comment><USER23> I think a good case can be made that many of these "mental disorders" are actually metabolic problems. There are many causes behind an individual's metabolic problem that leads to schizophrenia/dementia/psychosis/(edit3: depression)/etc...

Sometimes people are malnourished. The B-vitamins are important cofactors for metabolic activity. An old/new treatment for "schizophrenia" is Vitamin B3 [0]. My girlfriend's treatment provider did a genetic test this past summer and found that she's a poor methylator. This means that she doesn't convert folic acid (synthetic Vitamin B-9) into folate very well. They've put her on prescription folate [1], and she's doing much better than when she was just double-tranquilized. I asked the biochemist about this issue, and he said that when on a good diet with folate-rich foods (liver, etc), even 'mutants' get plenty of folate.

[0] [https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/06/schizophrenia- deconstru...](https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/06/schizophrenia- deconstructed/)

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

The street pharmacy's stimulants (cocaine/meth) shred the mitochondria. These are known causes of substance-induce psychotic disorders.

People who drink heavily train their nervous system to become insulin- resistant and run on acetate (one of the breakdown products of ethanol). I think it's well-established that excess alcohol is inflammatory, which is also associated with psychosis.

So... Cute anecdote from today. I called two attorneys because I've hit a wall in my efforts to convince my girlfriend's treatment provider that she's been misdiagnosed and is not actually benefiting from the palliative maintenance medications (anti-psychotic/etc) they're still forcing her to take.

The first attorney listened to me, confirmed that it was within my legal rights to file pro-se petitions with the court, said that rural judges don't want to cause problems for their community's treatment provider, and said he couldn't help me because he'd already done some work for my girlfriend's treatment provider. He gave me the number for the second attorney.

It later occurred to me that the treatment provider certainly consulted him about _my_ suit against them.

(minor edits)

edit2: physical injuries and inescapable/emotional stress are drains on the body's energy-producing capacity too. My other friend's father gradually became "schizophrenic" after he broke his back falling out of a tree.

<comment><USER24> Doctors are only allowed to give medications that treat a certain disorder. Experimental herbal treatments are not going to resolve a real mental disorder... you can try some vitamins but no medical professional is going to stake their medical license on it. Both of my parents had schizophrenia and it was a real hell.

<comment><USER25> > Doctors are only allowed to give medications that treat a certain disorder.

Is this true, particularly in the US?

My understanding is that a doctor can prescribe basically whatever they want as long as they believe that "in their professional opinion" the potential benefit outweighs the potential harm.

It's certainly common for doctors to prescribe medication "off-label" to treat conditions for which the medication is not approved by the FDA. I don't see how prescribing a specific vitamin in an attempt to impact a mental disorder is any different from, say, prescribing modafinil for ADHD?

<comment><USER24> It is true a Dr could in theory do what they want to but there are treatment guidelines and if they vary off that too much then the medical board could get after them. This happens I know a Doctor who wanted to treat lymes disease for patients and the medical board didn't like that it seems she was experimenting with what would work to treat it (this was about 15 years ago when it was pretty new).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Way back in the 90s when I was doing my neurophysiology degree, one lecturer who worked with schizophrenia said that it was such a difficult disease to work with because it wasn't one disease. Traditionally, if they didn't know what was wrong with you, they just threw you in the 'one-size-fits-all' schizophrenia bucket. One example of this was that the _most frequent_ symptom (hearing voices) was present in only 69% of cases, and all other symptoms dropped off fairly quickly from there.

At the time, he thought that schizophrenia would break up into four basic groups, based on positive/negative affect (does an episode have the person doing extra activity or withdrawing) and, I think, whether or not the person has hallucinations.

I haven't really kept in touch with the literature to see how his 4-way prediction went, but I have never seen anything to counter the idea that schizophrenia is more than a single disease. And, of course, classification of disease is a key element of treating it, so if schizophrenia is not being properly classified...</comment>


Xkcd: Tap That Ass - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/398/

<comment><USER2> Is it Wednesday already? Wow, the week is flying by.</comment>


Discovering private APIs with Charles.app - <AUTHOR> http://timrogers.uk/2014/07/12/discovering-private-apis-with-charles-app/ <comment><USER2> I really wish Charles generated a self-signed cert on installation, rather than using a root that you download from them.

I suspect that a lot of people in the iOS dev community (where Charles seems ubiquitous) walk around with the Charles root on their phone, ripe for an easy malicious MITM against them.

I'm also surprised more iOS and Android apps don't bundle and pin their certificates - it's still an obscurity measure since, worst comes to worst, the user can root / jailbreak the device and attach a debugger or watch the network stack, but it keeps any random user with Charles (or random malicious attacker with a stolen root cert) from reversing private APIs.

<comment><USER3> I believe Fiddler does this

edit: Details on the process: [http://blogs.telerik.com/fiddler/posts/13-08-19/faq--- certif...](http://blogs.telerik.com/fiddler/posts/13-08-19/faq---certificates- in-fiddler)

Relevant Quote: "Every Fiddler root certificate is uniquely generated, per user, per machine. No two Fiddler installations have the same root certificate. The only way for a Fiddler user to be "spoofed" by a bad guy is if that bad guy already is running code inside the user's account (which means you'd already be pwned anyway)."

<comment><USER2> Every other product I can think of (Proxy.app, MITMproxy, and so on) also uses self-signed certificates generated at startup / configuration time rather than a shared root - I think that design is unique to Charles.

Charles does allow you to use your own certificate, but it's not the default user flow.

I see the ease-of-use case for the way Charles does it, but the shared- certificate approach is so insecure (you're basically handing the keys to all of your unpinned SSL traffic to anyone on the Internet) that I wish it would go away.

I also really like Fiddler and the warnings it provides are excellent. Sadly, it doesn't really support OSX yet so many iOS developers can't use it.

<comment><USER4> I also found it hard to set up Charles to use a custom cert, definitely had to read the instructions on their site instead of trying to figure it out on my own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've used MITMproxy for this. It's great fun to MITM every app on your phone, you'll find some really interesting stuff. I happened across a WSDL in the British Airways app that appeared to enable booking flights as if done by a member of staff back of house. It might have been possible to book flights and not pay for them, obviously I didn't go as far to test this. But like I say, interesting stuff.

Tip: Some apps do SSL pinning so the handshake will fail with the cert that your proxy provides. You can disable any kind of SSL cert checks on a jailbroken iOS device with SSL kill switch ([https://github.com/iSECPartners/ios-ssl-kill- switch](https://github.com/iSECPartners/ios-ssl-kill-switch))

<comment><AUTHOR> Never seen MITMproxy - how does it compare to Charles? I've found super interesting stuff - pretty much invariably find that (a) there's cool stuff you can do and (b) the app's developers haven't gone to significant lengths to stop you doing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just tried it - much cleaner than Charles for Terminal lovers like the average HN user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yep, Charles is a great proxy. Fiddler for Windows is a great free option as well.

 _Warning_ : the author of this blog very nonchalantly instructs readers to install the Charles certificate. If readers don't know what this does, it can be _quite_ dangerous. Next time your device connects to a Wifi network that you don't control, you could very well be going through somebody else's proxy and have all of your https traffic sniffed!

Better to sign your own certificate and use that instead! Or, at least uninstall the Charles cert from your device after you've had your fun sniffing traffic on your own network.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point on the Charles certificate. Not something to keep installed! I'll add that now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done - thanks for the poke.

<comment><USER6> no problemo! I enjoyed the post - I do this kind of thing daily for my job, which just so happens to require that I "understand" how many private APIs work ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would add, sometimes the "private API" that you would like to debug is the one that you are creating. I have found Charles to be essential whenever I'm asked to enable CORS so that browsers can make cross-domain Ajax calls to the server where I'm creating software. For complex requests (and any PUT or DELETE) the browsers will do a "preflight" OPTIONS request to see if the request is allowed. Strangely enough, the CORS spec actually encourages browser-makers to hide (from the Javascript client) the OPTIONS request. FireFox hides the OPTIONS request completely -- and so this is one of the few times that FireBug failed me. FireBug never sees the request, so it is unable to tell me about it. Getting CORS right usually means seeing what is in the OPTIONS request, and what your own response is (I mean, the response of the server software that you are writing), and I found Charles extremely useful for that bit of debugging. (cURL will also fail you in this case, as cURL is not limited the way Ajax requests are limited -- the cURL request will always work, so it won't tell you why your Ajax call is failing.)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you are building an app and want to protect against this kind of thing, you can use SSL pinning. This means that you hard-code your API server's public SSL key into your app and explicitly reject and other public keys, even if they are installed of trusted by the OS. Incidentally, the twitter iOS app does this — you can't observe its traffic via Charles or other snoopers.

<comment><USER9> Ah - that might explain why I had trouble trying to sniff the data for QuizUp too.

I didn't know you could do that, so thanks!

<comment><USER4> Downside: can't change to a new SSL cert without updating the clients!

<comment><USER10> What I do is I generate an inhouse CA for uses like these and hardcode its certificate into the clients: the key used by the API server can then be changed whenever necessary, just as if it were signed by a commercial CA.

<comment><USER11> Would you be able to expand on how you generate an inhouse CA? From Googling I don't think you're becoming an intermediate CA as that seems extremely costly! I am in the situation where I have a pinned cert in my app and I will have to address it's expiration in the future!

<comment><USER12> Since you are hard-coding the CA, it doesn't have to be an actual intermediate CA that is trusted by anyone except for your app (that has it hard-coded.)

But as people say, they could easily edit your binary to change the CA, or disable the CA check entirely, so, like any DRM system, you can't keep the protocol secret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I typically use Fiddler (Windows) for this. Dig the article. Very clear steps on how to get setup and start playing around.

I remember a similar article about how the author intercepted the API requests for CandyCrush and was able to give himself lives and whatnot. Pretty neat.

<comment><USER6> I sent a friend of mine about 2000 Yo's (Charles will show you that the Yo app uses Parse...very simple API requests) with Charles's request-replay feature - quite easy to do and oh so funny...or at least I thought so.

<comment><USER14> Yo has a documented API, though.

<comment><USER6> Wow, didn't realize. That said, it's functionality is very limted, requires an API key, requires people to subscribe to you, and likely has rate limits - none of which are problems if you just pose at the Yo app and use private APIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like Charles and have been using it for this exact purpose for a while now. I'm still wondering what's the best approach from a developer perspective to get around that and keep a private API private. Even if you build a different key for each request on Android you can work your way through obfuscated code and rebuild the logic. If the app requires the user to login running your own OAuth server can be a solution but are there any easier solutions?

<comment><AUTHOR> The short answer is "no" \- you're always playing a cat and mouse game, so you're wiser not to put things behind an API that you're _really_ not happy for people to play with.

I suspect this is why we've traditionally seen banks (in the UK, at least) use web-pages-embedded-in-apps rather than true native apps.

<comment><USER16> The Barclays UK [native] app immediately crashes if you try and pass requests through Charles

<comment><USER17> Hm, do you know how? I'd guess certificate pinning, which would be rather prudent of them, but I'm not sure.

<comment><USER18> It's probably not detecting the right certificate (or from the right issuer?), yeah. I don't think iOS has an API to see if a proxy is enabled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I get that some developers want to protect what they consider a private API, but consider it from the other side.

As a user, I think I have the right to know that you're not secretly uploading my contact list to your servers. Anything you do to block that prohibits me from trusting your app.

There must be some kind of happy medium where I can protect myself from malicious apps, and developers can protect themselves from malicious users too.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love how the article's closing remark is about releasing source-code, yet the entire rest of the article talks about a closed-source and proprietary program. ;)

Pretty cool idea, though. I reckon this is doable with something like mitmproxy[0], which _is_ open-source, and it would certainly be interesting to poke around in some of these hidden APIs.

</comment><comment><USER21> mitmproxy is the free way to do this.

</comment><comment><USER22> Bitdefender blocked me this page, saying it has malware.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've reversed a private API once and built a an app on top of it. Needless to say, the company behind it wasn't happy and I was looking at a lawsuit.

<comment><USER24> Lawsuit on basis of what? IANAL, but I've heard many times that ToSes/EULAs which forbid you from querying their servers and reverse engineering their apps aren't legally binding in most jurisdictions.

<comment><USER25> A lawsuit would likely be based on copyright/database rights infringement if you are accessing a data source which the company only makes available under specific conditions which you are bypassing.

Craigslist v Padmapper/3-Taps in the US is a slightly analogous case albeit with 3-Taps scraping rather than bypassing restrictions on an API.

<comment><USER24> But - unless the data's included with the app - is that app author's responsibility? That sounds like suing Bram Cohen for illegal downloads over BitTorrent.

<comment><USER25> BitTorrent is completely neutral and just a mechanism for distributing content which can be contrasted with the others. Anywhere where there is a deliberate attempt to bypass restrictions on the availability of data then you may get into trouble. Even more so when you bypass then attempt to monetise like with 3Taps...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> does this method work if the APIs are passing data that is encrypted? I believe Waze does this ...

</comment><comment><USER27> Great post, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER28> very creative idea. +1

</comment><comment><USER29> Other than providing a nice interface what does Charles.app do that something like Burp can't?

<comment><USER30> There's often more than one piece of software to do something and that's OK. I've hacked up simple MITM proxies myself more than once in the last 15 years.

Charles is not new, it's been around more than 10 years.

I think that generally saying 'what does X do that Y doesn't' comes across as fairly negative, and unless there's some obvious reason why Y should be the default adds little.

I'd never heard of burp, but I had heard of Charles. Is there some obvious reason why burp should be the default?

<comment><USER31> Never heard of either, but just used both and the free version of Burp seems complete enough and is free. Charles is restricted when free ($50 license) but looks better.

edit: additionally, Burp uses a custom certificate instead of a default one for all Charles users</comment></comment></comment>


MessageParty (YC S10) Ties Location With Chat Rooms - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/24/yc-funded-messageparty-ties-location-with-chat-rooms/

<comment><USER2> Since we had a thread this morning talking about sceptics on HN ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1629583> ), I have to say that I'm not a big fan of this idea.

As it turns out, multiple people in the same location can already talk to each other. In fact, that's how it usually happens.

One of the problems I see with this is critical mass, will you get enough users on it to be useful? Note that most other location related services (say yelp, foursquare) don't require a critical mass of people to be at the same spot at the same time.

Conferences would certainly have enough people that some might wander in to your track's channel, but would it be used enough day to day for people to naturally open it up when they have an extra minute?

<comment><USER3> I actually think it's exactly the opposite.

If one of the main benefits of Foursquare is letting your friends know where you are, then it requires your friends to be there to engage.

I think that MessageParty is about exploring how to use chat to create new relationships with the people around you and places your at.

If there are only ten users of a service, I'd prefer that it doesn't much matter which ten their are.

I do think the earliest use cases will be things like concerts, though, versus general daily use.

<comment><USER4> It would be fun in coffee shops, bars, and book stores. Probably a good way to break the ice in meeting new people.

It might even be good in apartment buildings or neighborhoods. Say you're having a barbecue, you don't know your neighbors that well, but you have extra food and you'd like to meet them. Put a notice on the local IRC with message party.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I and few others pitched this same concept to YC in 2009 and they rejected it.

<comment><USER6> Did you keep on going and implement it?

<comment><USER7> Bingo! YC abhors any startup that wouldn't be started anyway without their investment — like Mark Twain's refusal to join any club that would have him as a member. In this round a huge chunk of the startups were already founded and taking revenue / profitable before joining YC.

"We invest in people, not ideas" is a hell of a depressing way to get rejected.

<comment><USER8> >"We invest in people, not ideas" is a hell of a depressing way to get rejected.

Not really - PG isn't a god, so what he can reject you on is an application, a talk and a video and hope that this is a good enough indication about whether or not you are worth investing in.

I doubt he get it accurate more than say 60% of the time, but because YC is so popular, enough people sign-up who are a no-brainer (Sam Altman, etc) that it doesn't matter much.

But for those of you who have been rejected, there is a good chance that YC would accept you, had they known you.

<comment><USER9> PG / YC rejected me / my startup idea but I made it anyway and its starting to get some traction. YC / TechStars etc.. are just programs that help you not make you.

If you don't take the initiative and get started on your own then why would they assume you have the tenacity to keep going in the face of constant opposition. There are lots of problems that you run into while running a startup and many days really suck. How can you make it through this if you are not even willing to move past a YC rejection?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love this app. I can't wait to use it during the trailers at a movie, or in between bands at a show.

<comment><USER11> Events based chat + location makes a lot of sense. Reminds me a bit of Meetro from back in the day (though that was IM).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been thinking about this type of app a lot and i think it's a great idea and it won't be the last of these type of platforms. My prediction is there will be hundreds of micro chat sites in the next few years and there will be thousands of 'foursquares' similar to the way there are many, many "social networks" that aren't threatened by facebook.

1\. Chat apps will appear for major cities that may or may not feed into a larger community. For instance, why doesn't someone launch 100 of these apps - Miami South Beach, Atlantic City, Vegas Strip, etc. I click it, i'm chatting with people I know are in Vegas and doing the same things... drinking and losing money, of course.

2\. Reward systems will develop that are much more elaborate than a free beer for mayor. Pseudo-panzi-schemes with downlines, etc but tied to real financial rewards, to incentivize people to chat. For instance, you give people a share of ad revenue in proportion to how early they sign up in an area and how often they're online. Or prizes, or points that they can spend... Like groupon on top of chat?

3\. Normal people will start to think of location based chat. Hashtags are a poor tech geek's way of filtering by location... if i'm tweeting to friends at a conference i wish i could _prevent_ my friends who aren't there from receiving those messages. I know they don't care and don't want to be irritated at our elaborate tweeting about where to meet for the best Thai food in north america (which happens to be in Vegas, by the way). <http://www.yelp.com/biz/lotus-of-siam-las-vegas>

</comment><comment><USER13> Here's a great analysis of why Meetro (Doing similar thing) failed:

<http://meetro.lefora.com/2008/05/21/meetro-post-mortem/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I love this app idea. I think we've only scratched the surface on extending the natural social experience with technology.

There are many more to follow in this vein.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is actually really cool. It's like location based IRC... just waiting for some new cool rooms.

</comment><comment><USER15> Neat. This reminds me of using bluetooth to chat with folks in cafes and libraries, back before bluetooth became popular.</comment>


The Morality Police in Your Checking Account - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/moral-police-your-checking-account-chase-bank-shuts-down-accounts-adult <comment><USER2> My first reaction to this story was outrage, followed by skepticism. The story around Operation Choke Point (OCP) appears to have taken a year long breather (the first story about porn stars losing their bank accounts was reported in May 2013 [http://www.cnbc.com/id/100746445](http://www.cnbc.com/id/100746445)), only to resurface with a WSJ article on the subject: [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230481090...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304810904579511911684102106).

The WSJ article was penned by former governor of Oklahoma and current American Bankers Association (ABA) President, Frank Keating. The ABA is a national trade association that represents all banks (source: [http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/09/capital-eye- opener-s...](http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/09/capital-eye-opener- september-7.html)), essentially a lobbying firm for the banking industry. One wonders why the banking industry would care enough to have the President of their lobbying firm publish a piece about this in the WSJ. Surely a Republican from Oklahoma cares little and less about the financial well being of porn stars.

On the same exact day the WSJ article was published (April 24, 2014), an article written by Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association (another lobbying group) was published, also lambasting OCP: [http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy- budget/204174...](http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy- budget/204174-operation-choke-point-harmful-to-flow-of-commerce)

These two articles, if you can call them that, given the authorship, are the only source pieces at the root of the current media interest in OCP.

It's clear (to me anyhow) that the porn stars aren't the story here, they're just the fodder to get the people in a tizzy about OCP. I'm wondering what else is in involved in Operation Choke Point that's making the banking industry and the payment processors call out the big guns. Whatever it is, I imagine large sums of money are involved.

<comment><USER3> Just what are you trying to say here, besides pointing out the banking industry is making a significant propaganda effort right now?

Do you think the industry likes the Federal government using lawless means to force them to stop serving whomever is the target _de jure_?

Is it axiomatic that banks dealing with large sums of money is bad??? (I kinda thought that was their business....)

If this precedent is established and takes roots, where will it stop? What are your objections to their using the soap box to try put a stop to it?

<comment><USER4> Can I for once be the origin of a crazy conspiracy theory rather than the annoying guy huffing and griping in the corner and killing everyone's fun?

How about this:

DOJ has launched a project that coordinates with the country's largest banks to constrain and monitor high-fraud businesses; say, porn sites, prepaid cards, and payday loans.

Porn doesn't have a significant lobby.

But payday loans and prepaid cards sure as hell do.

Unfortunately for those lobbies, it's unseemly to write op-eds about how the DOJ and banks are collaborating to suppress the exploitation of poor people.

It is, however, possible to get stories placed about the government's secret plan to create a Morality Police Force to eliminate pornography and, one assumes, any other form of expression the government disfavors.

<comment><USER3> So they're now "high-fraud" businesses, vs. "fraudulent businesses" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7671113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7671113))?

And this must be some new meaning of the word "constrain" I wasn't previously acquainted with. This "operation" appears to be intended to terminate these "undesirable" businesses with extreme prejudice, and without the pesky Rule of Law getting in the way.

<comment><USER4> When I called payday loan companies "fraudulent", I was letting my biases show. The more accurate way to describe them is with the phrase I used in my latter comment: a high-fraud business, one that hosts quite a bit of fraud.

<comment><USER3> So an acceptable solution is "Kill them all, God will know his own"? ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers#.22Ki...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers#.22Kill_them_all.2C_God_will_know_His_own.22))

<comment><USER4> If you want to write an impassioned case on behalf of payday loan companies, be my guest. _You asked a question_ : what did the OP mean when it pointed out that this issue was being driven by op-eds from banking lobbyists? I provided a possible answer.

<comment><USER3> My impassioned case is for the Rule of Law.

Do the ends justify the means?

<comment><USER4> Investigations and prosecutions of fraud --- OCP includes criminal prosecutions --- are part of the rule of law. Meanwhile, banks profit directly from fraud by collecting transaction fees. The banking lobby wants to convince the government thank the banks will self-police, but the issue at hand is an externality to the banks.

What I'd like to know is, why are EFF and Reason casting this as suppression of pornography? It's the payday lenders and prepaid card scams that are driving the lobbying effort.

<comment><USER3> You know very well if the DoJ was "containing" problems through legit fraud prosecutions nobody would be raising a huge fuss.

(ADDED: one wonder how many of these prosecutions are legit vs. "the process is the punishment" well nigh unlimited budget DoJ vs. likely small fry.)

It's the lawless abuse of regulatory powers---e.g. why the FDIC is part of the operation---to try to shut down entire sectors of the finance industry that has people figuratively up in arms.

<comment><USER4> I do not know that very well. In fact, I don't think that's true at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My local Chase branch has been calling and emailing me relentlessly, multiple times per week for the last four weeks or so, ostensibly because required "profile" information is missing on my business accounts.

I replied by email to ask what information they need. They won't give any specifics, but insist that I schedule time to meet in person.

I've had the same Chase accounts for many years, and my business is pretty mundane, so I assumed it was just overzealous cross-selling of services or investments that I don't need.

But according to this EFF article, maybe there's more to it?

<comment><USER5> Sounds like you might have been selected for their know-your-customer compliance: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer)

<comment> bjelkeman-again I just got a letter in the post from my bank in Sweden about this. Maybe there is a deadline somewhere, or just a coincidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Chase has been on a know-your-customer kick lately, targeting credit card churners who manufacture spend involving linked Chase checking accounts:

[http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chase-ultimate- rewards/152657...](http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chase-ultimate- rewards/1526572-chase-closed-my-cc-account-300-000-ur-points.html)

The consensus is that heavy deposits of money orders into Chase accounts prompted manual fraud reviews, leading to shutdowns of the entire client relationship (credit and deposit accounts).

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit A lot of hosting providers do not want to host adult sites. Mine told me it was primarily because those sites are frequently subject to DDoS attacks and they didn't want to constantly battle that. They wouldn't even allow me to host a site that just handled the sign-up and payment processing even when absolutely no adult content would be hosted on that site (or even my account with them). (I ended up never pursuing my idea so it was a moot point)

Many insurance companies will not write home owners policies for people that have a blacklisted breed of dog. When faced with insuring my home, I chose a company that didn't mind my pit bull.

I'm not sure if I should really be outraged that a bank doesn't want to do business with a person they see as a high risk. It might not be a 1 or 2 click process to switch banks but it is not that hard. A Wells Fargo customer support person was rude to me one time and I had a new account at a new bank by week's end.

<comment><USER7> We need empirical definition of what constitutes "high risk" in every single situation where that measure is a factor. It must be absolutely transparent else it should be deemed that the claimer of high risk is actually a money laundering vector, or arbitrary service denier.

Further, we need a war-on-bankers.

Bank simple and standard treasury are attempts at pulling the wool over people via "startup hype" whereby they still back themselves with traditional banks.

Square and stripe are simply the "new mastercard"

There is no actual real innovative movement in finance.

Bitcoin is going to be attacked, co-opted and robbed. It is also being gamed/cornered by people like the Winklevii...

What we need is a crytpo-credit system which is abstracted and anonymous to banking-of-traditional-fiat where a user can build a crypto-credit score from which real currency transactions can emerge/be borrowed.

The current system is an oppressive, exclusive system designed to be exceedingly top heavy.

<comment><USER8> > We need empirical definition of what constitutes "high risk" is

Average CC fraud rate is 0.04% of credit card transactions. A 'high' rate would be greater than 0.1%.

The site categories that are listed frequently have fraud rates of 1% or higher, they are _way_ above average. Webcam site fraud rates are _at least_ 1%, if you counted attempts you could multiply that by an order of magnitude.

Further, what isn't fraud on the webcam sites is often money laundering. As much as I hate to admit it, but the DOJ are right to be wary of them (not that I agree with shutting down sites or porn star bank accounts carte blanche).

Webcamming is a _very_ easy way to launder money, and it happens. A lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bank neutrality anyone? It seems like we could make banks "financial common carriers" so that they aren't liable for customers' illegal behavior as long as the banks themselves follow the law.

<comment><USER10> Governments might like the ability to offload responsibility for enforcement (and therefore, cost) to the banks themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something that just came up to me: why is making porn movies for money legal, but prostitution is illegal? It seems to me that either both should be illegal or both should be legal. The current situation seems pretty contradictory. At the end of the day it's "sex for money" in both cases.

<comment><USER12> "Something that just came up to me: why is making porn movies for money legal, but prostitution is illegal?"

The law is not a strictly logical system (this is usually a good thing, despite the common negative perceptions). Pornography was once illegal; then the interpretation of the law changed so that it would be considered "protected speech," unless it is being displayed in certain contexts. Prostitution is illegal in most of the USA, except for certain forms which are not illegal (e.g. it may not be illegal to have sex with your boss in exchange for a promotion).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is where crypto currencies really shine. They remove the gatekeeper for financial services. All their other benefits (and risks) are less significant.

<comment><USER14> Bitcoin in particular however is not anonymous. It's exceedingly public.

<comment><USER15> and forever put into the block chain.

A _lot_ of people don't realize this.

<comment><USER16> "Public" is one thing, associating a name to a hash is something else entirely. Keeping in mind that a user can have unlimited wallets and send coins between them on the fly...

<comment><USER14> You can certainly try to keep a secret for a very long time. But the secret nature of bitcoin is _waaaaay_ exaggerated. If you use it, you can be traced often."I have 300 wallets" is possible, but not convienent

<comment><USER16> Basic bitcoin security is new wallets for each transaction. It is still a very hard problem just looking at the block chain that if this hash sends coins to that hash who the owner of the recieving wallet is. Is it the same person filling a new wallet or a transaction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you have a Chase account you can afford to walk away from, send them a nastygram threatening to take your business elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> Earlier item using a _Reason_ article, much more suspicious this is a new action of Operation Choke Point, and listing other areas possibly under attack: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667309)

</comment><comment><USER18> One possibility here is that many would pay for porn with stolen credit cards. Thus making business that sell porn high risk to banks?

That said from the other comments on here it does sound like there could be more to it.

</comment><comment><USER19> While its important to publicly shame institutions that do this sort of thing, its less unclear how widespread it is.

<comment><USER20> It's the US government forcing them to do this. how will shaming the bank change the fact that they are probably obligated to do what the government tells them to?

<comment><USER19> I don't see anywhere that this was done at the behest of the government. While the government has shut down accounts in all banks involved in criminal activities, adult entertainment is not a criminal activity. And the article it is only Chase bank, not all banks.

Do you have additional information that the EFF hasn't included? I'd love a reference to that. There is some more complex issues in the Bay area with cannibis retailers since it is "legal" by state law and "illegal" by federal law to sell pot. That puts the banks in a tricky place. So far though they have not pulled accounts for licensed dispensaries.

<comment><USER20> This Washington Post article describes the situation in more detail...

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/16/o...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/16/operation- choke-point-the-battle-over-financial-data-between-the-government-and-banks/)

Essentially the government is threatening legal action against the banks unless they shut accounts down of businesses and individuals associated with those businesses that the government doesn't like. Chase is the biggest bank out there so it isn't surprising that the government probably targeted them fist and they also have the largest number of potential jilted customers to complain. Even though we are only hearing about 2 or 3 cases here there are certainly many more who aren't making a stink in the media.

Also: [http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/23/operation- choke...](http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/23/operation-choke-point- payday-lenders-issa-banks)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the link. I'm surprised the EFF wasn't actually specifically calling out OCP rather than the specific instance of one industry at one bank.

Interesting article on the troubles in Colorado for 'scorned' businesses trying to get banking services. [1]

[1] [http://www.banklawyersblog.com/3_bank_lawyers/2014/04/the- ma...](http://www.banklawyersblog.com/3_bank_lawyers/2014/04/the-marijuana- banking-conundrum-in-colorado-may-be-driving-banks-to-distraction-but-its- opening-up-the-funding-business-to.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How did they determine who was a porn actor and who was not?

</comment><comment><USER22> By all libertarian interpretations Chase bank should be allowed to do - or to not do - business with whomever it wants. For example if it wants not to deal with people/businesses in the porn industry, or even people of a certain skin colour, it shouldn't have to. Whether this is good for businesses, or even if it is a moral or right thing to do, is yet to be determined.</comment>


The bot for playing music in chatting room - <AUTHOR> Bot for playing music: https://www.patreon.com/himebot
I am a 14-year old student in grade 9. Since this year, I start to learn programing and have developed my first application, a bot for playing music in chatting room. This small application was written in Python programming language that I found easy to start with. The bot is deployed in the Google cloud.
There are still something for improvement. For example, it is a bit slow if many people are online. This might be the problem of the program written in Python. I am planning to rewrite the program in Java for my next step.
Hope you all like this bot, and give me comments. Thanks!
/init0 <comment><USER2> I'm curious how you found Hacker News.</comment>


You are now remotely controlled - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/sunday/surveillance-capitalism.html <comment><USER2> I dont understand how the pop-privacy zealots keep getting air time - what is this person talking about that hasnt been said social media and the modern internet?</comment>


If you're building a conversational bot…Don't - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@juanjramirez/if-you-re-building-a-conversational-bot-don-t-63e73393c91b#.kftca3u1s <comment><USER2> This is the most pointlessly aggressive article I have ever read. Did Juan attempt to make a chatbot but found it was difficult and had to vent?

He has a good point at the end though, that there are in fact useful applications of this idea which are specifically not centered around making the lives of the rich and busy a few seconds more convenient.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry. I really didn't want to come across as aggressive. My intention was just to deliver a thought about trying to create more meaningful products. Again, I'm sorry if you felt the tone was rude. I adjusted it a little bit. Also I would def have this in mind for future writes. Thanks for the comment and the feedback.</comment></comment>


Transactional Email with AlphaMail - <AUTHOR> http://amail.io/ <comment><USER2> Looks nice. Has anyone tried tailoring one of these services to appeal to client <-> developer relationships? e.g. selling "your clients can easily edit the emails your app sends out without bugging you / requiring a redeploy."

That seems doable with something like alphamail, but I've yet to see a service that targets that specific need.

<comment><USER3> PostageApp ([http://postageapp.com](http://postageapp.com)) targets that specific need. Web-editable templates, including separated CSS and attachments which are flattened at send time. It's like a CMS for your transactional email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great concept. I've been a long time user of PostmarkApp, which has served me extremely well, but requires a lot of coding time to create and deploy new emails. If you've ever created HTML emails, you know the pain I'm talking about.

My only concern is the deliverability, but I'm intrigued enough to give it a try seeing as how there's a free tier.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was just thinking that I really needed a service like this.

One feature I really need though would be support for internationalization, since creating a separate project for each language is quite annoying (and the reason why I'm not using MixPanel Engage.)

Do you have plans for supporting that? If you could integrate with OneSky that would be even better! :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Another for the chart: [http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/transactional- emailin...](http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/transactional-emailing- providers-mailjet-sendgrid-critsend)

</comment><comment><USER7> I get that this includes an e-mail template editor. But I can't understand what I get with this product that I don't get with something like Amazon SES. The cost of SES is a fraction of AlphaMail.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks really cool. Love the interface. FWIW, the first step of the demo had some elements offscreen and unreadable. I could also never make it to the editor.

</comment><comment><USER9> Email is an obsolete technology, since it's centralized and its meta data is never encrypted. Therefor it's perfect for interception and surveillance. We should abandon it.

I suggest we replace Email with a superior solution: [http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/](http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER10> Please stop spamming RetroShare.

<comment><USER9> I don't consider this comment to be SPAM. It's a relevant comment, the solution is entirely non-commercial and open-source and there are still tons of people on HN who don't encrypt.

<comment><USER11> What is wrong with you?

Open source or not this is not something that will ever replace email.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, what's wrong with YOU?

Do you read the news? And have you compared the gravity of the situation with the level of apathy of the general public?

If so, how can you NOT want people to know about easy encryption solutions?

<comment><USER11> Email is important because it's prevalent, simple, and based on documented open standards. It has an extremely high adoption rate, as close to 100% as you're ever going to get.

Do you really think grandma is going to install _darknet_ software on her computer? Do you think an enterprise would embrace the software you're promoting as a realistic alternative to email?

Although it would be really hard to get people to agree to use PGP for email correspondence, this is a _million_ times easier than trying to darknet the whole internet.

<comment><USER9> So you're suggesting we shouldn't be on the look-out for better solutions, because grandma won't use it right away?

That's not how change will come.

<comment><USER11> Email has been around for fifty years in various forms, and it could be around for fifty more.

How it gets delivered, how it's secured, and how it's consumed will change, but the basic principle will stay the same.

It's extremely rare to see a new technology take hold, the web and HTTP, instant messenger, and BitTorrent are anomalies.

Stop trying to "disrupt" and "reboot" things and instead look to repair deficiencies in our existing technologies with backwards-compatible extensions instead of throwing them out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


WebNES – A browser-based, mobile NES emulator - <AUTHOR> http://webn.es

<comment><USER2> This sorts of behavior drive me nuts! Even if you must disable the desktop version, at least tell me why.

Post a screenshot or give me 3 reasons why the mobile version is going to be so much more awesome than my desktop.

BTW does this include ROMS? How do you transfer them from mobile?

</comment><comment><USER3> JSNES is a pretty awesome (desktop-friendly) alternative: [http://fir.sh/projects/jsnes/](http://fir.sh/projects/jsnes/)

</comment><comment><USER4> tried it on mobile chrome on android, controls are extremely laggy which makes it pretty much unusable, nice idea though.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm sure all of the people reading Hacker News on their phones are enjoying this post...

</comment><comment><USER6> Unplayable due to lag on iPhone 4 Safari, but that's probably to be expected.

</comment><comment><USER7> Should spend the extra time to make it work on desktop as well. Would love to hear a little more about the reasons it is "mobile only".

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Spoofing your user agent on Firefox to an iPhone doesn't yield anything functional, seemingly.

<comment><USER8> It works if you have a touch screen. I changed my UA in Chrome and can play the games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why disable on desktop?

<comment><USER10> I guess it is because controls are only setup for touch input.

<comment> james-skemp But it's also disabled on a Nexus 7. Testing against a small set of user agents perhaps?</comment></comment></comment>


Y Combinator Fellowship Fake Acceptance Letter - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kurtybot/ycombinator-fellowship-fake-acceptance-letter-40384dc12e57

<comment><USER2> People should have also checked submittable after receiving the email as a validation check - without relying on the email alone. Email is not very safe/reliable (as we see in this case). With the usual caveats, a secure website is usually safer.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you wake up? - <AUTHOR>

I have trouble waking up in the mornings and maintaining a sleep schedule. What do you do to sleep and wake up at the right times? <comment> alok-g I used to be like that. What came to help is an Android app [1, 2] asks math questions to snooze or disable. Figuring simple ones like 9 + 4 = ? is enough to activate the brain into waking life.

Several surprises came to me with this:

(a) How hard it is to figure a simple one like 13 + 6 = ? when half-way asleep!

(b) Improvements in my mental math speed! My brain has started arriving at the answers without consciously calculating. Thankfully the app allows increasing the math difficulty levels. I am now at the level of 67 + 54 = ? LOL!

(c) After having used this for several months with a consistent wake up time, it is not painful to wake anymore, even without the alarm. I never knew I could get there.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alarmclock...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alarmclock.xtreme.free)

[2] I am in no way associated with the above app. Plus, I am sure there would be many with the same feature.

</comment><comment><USER2> My problem with sleep in general is that I need about 8 hours to function and to get the most out of exercise and studies, but I have a much easier time getting up if I'm sleeping only 6 hours or even less. Haven't found a solution to that.

But if I allow myself to get up after 6 hours of sleep a combination of having drank too much before going to bed and not closing the blinds works best. I know that sleeping in perfect darkness is supposed to be a good thing. But getting up in the darkness doesn't work so well for me. The need to pee is a strong motivator as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I avoid eating past 5pm. I wake up without an alarm around 7 to 7:30 in the morning, 6:30 in the summer. I get up and cook a big breakfast (my biggest meal of the day). This is the only thing that helped me get good sleep and wake up easily and refreshed. I have tried all the advice in the comments on this page, and more, but nothing helped. I used to sleep so deeply as if in a coma, and it took hours to fully wake up even though I could tell I was awake.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only thing that works for me is to always wake up at the same time, every day (no snooze, no "5 more minutes"). Regardless of whether I went to bed early or was up until 3am. Of course, it does mean you need to listen to your body and actually go to sleep early when you need it.

</comment><comment><USER5> if you have trouble waking up put your alarm and don't snooze it, just wake up. Drink a full glass of water and jump on the shower, a cold morning shower will wake you up.

<comment><USER6> What if after the shower you just feel like going back to sleep?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A good "UPS Beep" ringtone never fails.</comment>


When a College Takes on American Poverty - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/05/college-poor-students/560972/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Poverty is such a difficult and insidious issue. Once you're poor, it's very hard to get out of poverty. Being poor is very expensive for society as a whole, given that poverty correlates strongly with all kinds of other negative things (poor physical and mental health, certain kinds of crime, unstable family conditions etc). And it is often hereditary.

This college seems like it's doing amazing things, but I will never understand why first world countries don't make poverty reduction a bigger priority :(

<comment><USER3> > Once you're poor, it's very hard to get out of poverty.

What % of people born in poverty are not poor by the time they are 30 ? Does anyone have that number ?

My intuition is that the number is higher.

<comment><USER4> I don't know if this is a reputable source, however it claims in the USA 40% of men raised in the bottom fifth end up in the bottom fifth. That is about 4x as likely as a man in the top fifth.[0]

This is much lower than I expected.

[0] - [https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/social- mobili...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/social-mobility- america/)

<comment><USER5> 40% is only 2x as likely as random chance.

Still, I am not sure that the bottom 5th is what we want to be looking at. I would like the think that the insidious effects of poverty don't start until well below the 1/5 mark.

<comment><USER4> It seems to say that the to be in the bottom fifth in the US household income must be less than $22,095 (2001)[0]. That's very close to the federal poverty line. Not exactly but close.

The way news an documentaries talk about the poverty trap I was expecting 80%+.

[0] - [http://ftp.iza.org/dp1938.pdf](http://ftp.iza.org/dp1938.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Adjusting for inflation, that would be $31,615 in todays dollars, or about 150% the poverty level for a family of 3.

Not great, but I would still expect someone at that level to have substantially better odds than someone below the poverty line.

<comment><USER4> The poverty line for a family of 3 was $14,630. So you are basically right. Remember it includes all the people below that level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Amarillo College, in Texas, is working hard to accommodate low-income > students

such as by offering to pay vehicle-repair bills for families with only one car, reimbursing (through federal grants) baby-sitting bills, having 8 week mini-semesters, having administrators simulate homelessness so they can better help their students etc.

<comment><USER7> > only one car

The "only one car problem" is pretty big. It is generally not kept in good repair (preventative costs go out the windows when you are poor) and the loss of transportation is often a job ending event. I used this to help put together a rural health grant (Dr & Mobile Unit comes to you). It was interesting. Obviously, the places where it hits hardest don't have public transportation.

I would be interested what federal grant they received that allowed them to reimburse baby-sitting. This is one of the most difficult areas to fund. Even with Head Start and Early Head Start, it is often a chore to get enough slots for college students.

One thing they don't seem to have a problem with that other schools do is attracting teachers. The accreditation committees have raised the requirements for college teachers and this cuts down the pool and also increases costs where they could go to other programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Modern-day college is a huge rip-off, especially book sales.

I'm waiting for a really progressive college to take MOOCs and make a degree program for the masses, one that carries enough prestige to be comparable. Hopefully, that day will come soon.

</comment><comment><USER9> The woman profiled has six children. The government cannot afford to meet all the financial needs of people who have large families and then decide they want a college degree.

<comment><USER10> I am sorry but I disagree with you a little even though I mostly agree with you.

I sincerely believe people who have more than one child (perhaps with exceptions for natural twins and so on which I assume is rare) ought to be increasingly more responsible for their children. Once you have a hockey team over several years (not one of those rare cases of twins or triplets) I am honestly able to look at someone's eyes and say "you're on your own, buddy". However, that is besides the point.

The point is that we can reduce the cost of college. It is already absurd that state universities have to compete against the likes of Colgate and Colorado College. We can and must reduce regulatory burden on our state schools while requiring drastic cutdowns in spending on non-essentials. We don't need a big football team in any state school. We don't need an athletic complex. Strip away anything that isn't related to actual education or scientific research. No school has an airport. No school has a rocket launch pad. Why do we need multi-million dollar sports centers or dormitories? Why do we need a police force? Cut pay for all administration and force them to be at or below the pay for a tenured professor. In fact, get rid of most of the administration. A lot of the things they do is simply not the job of an educational institution. If the likes of Harvard and Yale want to do those things they are more than welcome. However, keeping costs low should be a primary concern for state schools and we should empower as well as require them to do so.

<comment><USER11> While I believe I understand your position, I think we also need to address the affordability and availability of contraception as well as the existence of sex education in public schools. While it is one thing when someone deliberately wants to have an above average number of children, if one doesn't have the knowledge and resources to conduct adequate family planning you can't exactly fault them and deny them help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why was the original title changed by the poster? It reads "Colleges Are No Match for American Poverty".

<comment><USER13> The Atlantic and other sites regularly change A/B test article titles so they likely changed it</comment></comment>


Ask: How to make my linkedin profile less geeky and more marketing oriented? - <AUTHOR>

I am part of a team of 3. We're building our startup. We're All techies. We decided to divide responsibilities. I took the marketing roll which has always interested me. A big part of marketing has to deal with investors, possible clients etc. making Linedin a very important media.
I am now stuck, trying to figure how out to make my linkin profile seem less geeky, and more relevant to the marketing position I've taken.
If anyone encountered a similar problem it would be great if you could share some tips. <comment><USER2> To be honest, LinkedIn doesn't offer a lot of creative flexibility but here's a couple of ideas: 1\. You can make your profile less formal by giving it some personality. 2\. Take the same approach to your company profile by injecting some fun and liveliness.

Mark

</comment><comment><USER3> You should share your LinkedIn url for better input.</comment>


Worse is better in e-book formats - <AUTHOR> http://platypope.org/blog/2009/4/3/worse-is-better-in-e-book-formats

<comment><USER2> If HTML/CSS (or more specifically, some HTML renderer) had somewhat better support for paragraph-level typography and column-by-column or page-by-page layout (that is, hyphenation, justification with proper paragraph composition, widow/orphan controls, better floating image positioning especially in a multi-column context, some ability to organize floating content both horizontally and vertically without using tables, page numbering and same-page footnote layout, etc.), then it would be a perfectly fine e-book format (or, for that matter, printed book format). Adding support for all the typographic features in modern fonts (small caps, uncommon ligatures, lower-case numbers, etc.) would be a nice plus, but wouldn't really be essential.

Unfortunately, as it is, the book printers of the 16th century were able to make more readable text layouts than can be easily done with HTML/CSS today. Instead, all the new HTML/CSS features are focused on whiz-bang, rather than getting the (text) basics right.</comment>


Hotspot Shield Creator Is on a Mission to Outflank the Censors - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/hotspot-shield-creator-is-on-a-mission-to-outflank-the-censors/ <comment><USER2> This is an advertorial for a VPN provider. Can this be removed?

edit: To elaborate, I think this article ads little in terms of technical or other novelty, and is also not newsworthy. It merely describes the history of this one VPN provider who happens to have a mobile client that's been used against censorship in some cases.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this offer anything over just using OpenVPN?</comment>


Roasted corn – and machine learning in a food truck - <AUTHOR> http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2019/03/roasted-corn-and-machine-learning-in-a-food-truck-at-23rd-and-unions-el-costeno/ <comment><USER2> Nice story. Is there a more technical description of what criteria they are using? Day of the week? Temperature? Rain? Any graph for the 97% accuracy?</comment>


You got your type class in my jQuery: Functors - <AUTHOR> http://johnbender.us/2011/07/08/you-got-your-type-class-in-my-jquery-functors/

<comment><USER2> It's pretty neat that category theory is seeping into more programming languages. Even if Haskell doesn't survive, the functors and monads might live on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome post, thanks for the info.</comment>


Federal Advisory Council on Bitcoin (pages 10-12) - <AUTHOR> http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/fac-20140513.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Choice passages:

> Bitcoin does not present a threat to economic activity by disrupting > traditional channels of commerce; rather, it could serve as a boon. Its > global transmissibility opens new markets to merchants and service > providers. Driving capital flows from the developed to the developing world > should increase consumption

> Extreme price volatility is similar to other speculative forms of stored > value, undermining Bitcoin's credibility. This volatility is likely to > diminish over time.</comment>


Brazil prosecutes Glenn Greenwald in "attack on press freedom" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/glenn-greenwald-charged-with-cybercrimes-in-brazil-for-publishing-leaked-chats/ <comment><USER2> Honest question, where is the boundary of reporting illegally obtained material from a source? If somebody hacked Trump's EMRs and told the world his risk of a heart attack, it would seem to cross a line that no legitimate journalist would pursue. But then you have Panama papers, etc, which in general are for the greater good. Are the standards codified somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think there are globally accepted standards. In this specific case, in which the captured data shows clear misconduct by prosecutors working together with a conflicted judge who selectively leaked private data to the public, is that the data is of public interest and the means by which it was obtained are a lesser issue and not Greenwald's responsibility. All communications between government employees in their professional capacity should be public anyway and have no expectation of privacy.</comment></comment>


What is a code monkey? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79997/whats-wrong-with-being-a-code-monkey-or-what-is-a-code-monkey

<comment><USER2> This video explains it pretty well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W_wd9Qf0IE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W_wd9Qf0IE)</comment>


What the media universe currently looks like - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2018/1/23/16905844/media-landscape-verizon-amazon-comcast-disney-fox-relationships-chart <comment><USER2> "What the American Big Media market looks like".

FTFY. America ain't the friggin' Universe. Just a quick reminder that there's a whole world East of New York, West of LA, South of El Paso. A World where we don't give a damn about the "World Series", for example.

<comment><USER3> Insecure much?

If you read this article (by one of those companies "east of New York"), then 1,000,000,000 people will be watching the final season of Game of Thrones. [0]

So yeah, the world does does give a damn... hundreds of millions of them.

[0] - [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6895775/Game- Throne...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6895775/Game-Thrones-set- one-billion-viewers-worldwide-final-series-airs-week.html)

<comment><USER2> Nah, why insecure? Just pointing out that for the most part this article was talking in universal terms while describing a strictly American market. The international players mentioned export their cultural products, of course, but the interactions described were strictly American. It's a typical U.S. bias which can be a bit annoying to witness outside of the U.S. bubble. Not a single time the adjective American was used to describe the distinctively local market the article was analyzing.

<comment><USER3> A large number (possibly all, but I didn't check) of those companies are global. Here are a few examples of how revenue breaks down for some (randomly chosen big) movies from some of the firms on the list.

AT&T owns Warner Bros, and makes things like Harry Potter. Picking one of the movies, I see that the US box office is only about 1/4 of the worldwide gross. [0]. Not to mention that AT&T is itself a global firm for upwards of a century.

Disney owns Marvel, which made Avengers Infinity War. A whopping 2/3 of that revenue came from outside the US [1].

Comcast owns Universal, which made Jurassic World. That movie had 61% of its revenue from outside the US [2].

CBS owns Paramount, which made Titanic. More than 2/3 of that revenue came from outside the US [3]. Of course, that was a massive movie - what about something like Shrek the 3rd? Interestingly, roughly 60% of that revenue came from outside the use as well [4]. Take a look at What Women Want, almost 20 years ago, and 1/2 of that revenue came from overseas [5].

Netflix is in over 190 countries, with more than 70 million subscribers outside the US. This is even more impressive when you realize that Netflix was US-only as recently as 2010 [6].

Obviously I could go on, but I think I made my point - US media companies dominate the globe for movies. I could also nitpick and note that they left off video games entirely, even though they are bigger than some of the companies on this list. But no matter how I slice it, it is __not a local market __, and hasn 't been for years. Hence my strong disagreement with your position.

[0] - [https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=harrypotter72.htm](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=harrypotter72.htm)

[1] - [https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=marvel0518.htm](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=marvel0518.htm)

[2] - [https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=jurassicpark4.htm](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=jurassicpark4.htm)

[3] - [https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=titanic.htm](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=titanic.htm)

[4] - [https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=shrek3.htm](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=shrek3.htm)

[5] - [https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=whatwomenwant.htm](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=whatwomenwant.htm)

[6] - [https://hbr.org/2018/10/how-netflix-expanded- to-190-countrie...](https://hbr.org/2018/10/how-netflix-expanded- to-190-countries-in-7-years)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a very interesting podcast from The Daily on Rupert Murdoch [1]. Fascinating history.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/podcasts/the- daily/rupert...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/podcasts/the-daily/rupert- murdoch-fox-news.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> CBS is owned by National Amusements, noticed that's missing from the chart.

</comment><comment><USER3> Might want to make sure the HN submission title matches that of the article: "Here's who owns everything in Big Media today".

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe I'm blind or it's not rendering correctly, but, where is Amazon and Apple in this universe?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is "Big" Media actually a popular term? Or was the word Big just injected so that people wouldn't associate the article with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories?

<comment><USER8> I guess there is some irony involved, as part of what this article's doing is pointing out how _small_ even the biggest "Big Media" is: compared to the average SV unicorn all of Big Media is basically a lifestyle business.</comment></comment>


The future of ownership is shared - <AUTHOR> http:// https://medium.com/@rocketclub/the-crowd-ownership-manifesto-8e07f194aeb4

<comment><USER2> Unclickable link

<comment><USER3> HTML source shows [https://medium.com/@rocketclub/the-crowd-ownership- manifesto...](https://medium.com/@rocketclub/the-crowd-ownership- manifesto-8e07f194aeb4)

<comment><USER2> I know, it was meant to be an advice to OP.</comment></comment></comment>


President Obama explains why you can't run the U.S. like a startup - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/17/president-obama-explains-why-you-cant-run-the-u-s-like-a-startup/?ncid=rss <comment><USER2> It is disconcerting that anyone would even suggest the premise.</comment>


How Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, Restricted Advertising for Trump's Campaign - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@garycoby/twitter-restricts-trump-eb7e48ccf5ff#.y3uj8jdat <comment><AUTHOR> Most interesting part here:

My internal TW contacts informed me that on Thursday night, 10/6, TW CEO, Jack Dorsey, personally killed the emoji and notified his senior staff.

I asked if "There's going to be another BS legal reason like last time" and they responded, "No, Jack just killed it, there isn't one." They were shocked that this was happening.

\---

Straight up torpedoed by the CEO.

</comment><comment><USER2> So, do people here still believe Twitter didn't censor anti-Hillary hashtags? If you were paying very close attention to what was happening, it was relatively easy to at the very least notice that something is wrong, and that couldn't be explained just by "well, that's just how the algorithms work!"</comment>


Buffett Offers to Match Deficit Donations From All Republican in Congress - <AUTHOR> http://swampland.time.com/2012/01/11/warren-buffett-to-mitch-mcconnell-put-up-or-shut-up/

<comment><AUTHOR> 'Last fall, Senator Mitch McConnell said that if Buffett was feeling "guilty" about paying too little in taxes, he should "send in a check."'

'So, Buffett has pledged to match one for one all such voluntary contributions made by Republican members of Congress. "And, I'll even go three for one for McConnell." That could be quite a bill if McConnell takes the challenge; after all, the Senator is worth at least $10 million. As Buffett put it to me: "I'm not worried."'</comment>


What the max amount of caffeine you should be drinking in day looks like (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/caffeine-daily-serving-2017-6 <comment><USER2> What are some of HNers' experiences with cutting out caffeine?

I personally found that drinking coffee on a daily basis increases neurotic behaviour. The effects aren't instant but on a weeks-to-months timeframe. I have a hard time fully ditching coffee, given how ingrained it is in the fabric of society.

<comment><USER3> I have been drinking coffee everyday for practically 7 years. I've stopped it at times but most recently i stopped to deal with some stomach acid issues. Quitting definitely helped with that but an unintentional side effect was my libido. Pardon the bedroom talk, but the number of erections i randomly got each day was increased by a drastic number.

When i started drinking coffee again after quitting for like 3 weeks, i instantly felt anxiety when i drank it again and a decrease in libido.

I'm honestly considering quitting for good and potentially switching to tea

<comment><USER4> That's interesting. Was there a remarkable difference in sleep quality? I drink about 2 cups a day and want to come back down to one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This feels a little misleading. The starbucks drip coffee they keep talking about has a shocking amount of caffeine. The more typical 2 shot starbucks latte has 150mg (vs the 400 mg daily limit suggested in the article). I assume the machine in my office that makes a latte has similar amounts. I have two a day, "only" 300 mg!

</comment><comment><USER6> They forgot to add more modern day energy drinks.

Rockstar, Raze, Monster, and Bang have variants up to 300mg per can. Image how many cans people consume to stay awake during a long day or just on a daily basis.

</comment><comment><USER7> > About twelve 12oz cans of regular Coca-Cola

I hope people don't read this thinking they can get their caffeine just from a soft drink; each can has 36g of sugar.

<comment><USER8> How bad is it? For the last 30 years i eat 400g of sugar a day (i make whole cakes pretty much everyday and thats the amount i put in), on festivities about 1kg but then i get so sleepy so fast i kinda pass out. Nothing else serious so far.

<comment><USER9> Are you obese (serious question)?

<comment><USER4> The way I read it, he says he eats a whole cake a day.

<comment><USER9> Yeah I suppose obesity is implied at that point....

Since excess glucose gets stored as fat I was curious about the commenters weight

<comment><USER8> No i am 180cm and 61kg i always has trouble gaining weight. When younger i was actually 53kg for a long time. Also have constant intestinal trouble no one can diagnose me with (5 shits a day)

<comment><USER9> Were the intestinal problems before or after eating a cake everyday

<comment><USER8> Nah, since forever, doctors just say nothing they can do and since i have a pretty much normal life i can suck it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> matt-attack So why on earth does a Starbucks drip have so much more than even a double shot?

<comment><USER10> its all about time coffee remains in contact with water ... the shot is optimized for flavor, high in oils which are quickly released ... longer exposure with water in drip extracts out greater percentage of caffeine</comment></comment>


Introducing Cascalog: a Clojure-based query language for Hadoop - <AUTHOR> http://nathanmarz.com/blog/introducing-cascalog/

<comment><USER2> Amazing how many great looking projects are coming out of the Clojure community. I used to think that Scala was the heir apparent to Java but it seems like Clojure now has more momentum. Clojure has a kinder learning curve than Scala so perhaps that is the reason.

<comment><USER3> Clojure is definitely a nice language and I really enjoy Rich Hickey's talks. However, I do not anticipate enterprise developers, who are the majority of the Java community, migrating to a language related to Lisp. I agree with your assessment on Scala's learning curve, but its advantage for Java developers is that they can often start out using it like a fancier Java (which is not to say that's what it is).

As for Cascalog: awesome! Nice work, Nathan!

<comment><USER4> I agree, we have many years ahead of horrendusly conceived Scala code spewing forth from the enterprise.

Scala has basically two learning curves, like most languages that serve well as transitionary languages. To just switch from Java to bad-Scala is easy. To switch from bad-Scala to good-Scala is hard.

Clojure, on the other hand, has no happy path from Java that doesn't require it's journeyman to at least _want_ to think hard about learning something new. There's still a long road from bad-Clojure to good-Clojure (and onto uber- Clojure which includes metaprogramming lispy goodness), but to get to the bad- Clojure state requires substantial effort on its own.

But to get access to tools like Cascalog, boy is it worth it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm tickled that their build system, a slicker replacement for Ant, is called Leiningen.

<http://zef.me/2470/building-clojure-projects-with-leiningen>

It's a reference to the classic short story "Leiningen versus the Ants", which is a good read:

<http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html>

And the build system looks _nice._ It has the pleasant feeling I get from scons, with the advantage of being Clojure-specific, so common Clojure tasks are easy.

<comment><USER6> The info in the link you provided to "Building Clojure Projects with Leiningen" is out of date.

After installing Leiningen, at the command line:

        lein new <project name>

... and that takes care of creating your project directories and the aforementioned 'project.clj' file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very neat. It would be even cooler if it had Pig's ILLUSTRATE. I suspect whichever REPL successfully completes an implementation of this: [http://infolab.stanford.edu/~olston/publications/sigmod09.pd...](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~olston/publications/sigmod09.pdf) will emerge as the leader.

<comment><USER8> Good idea - Cascading already has a tool to print flows as .dot files so I'll expose this functionality through Cascalog as well.

I'll have to spend some time going through that paper. Being able to generate a small dataset for development would be killer.

<comment><USER7> Great! The trick will be doing their sample + generate trick. They didn't bother really finishing the implementation for Pig, but when it works its amazing.</comment></comment></comment>


Online MySQL configuration tool by Percona - <AUTHOR> http://tools.percona.com/

<comment><USER2> Don't try unless you are ready to give your email address. 5 screens down it is going to ask you to register.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a bit cheeky that you get all the way through the process then have to register to see the result</comment>


Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/1997/11/spark-innovation-through-empathic-design <comment><AUTHOR> May favorite quote:

>If no current product exists in the market that embodies at least the most primitive form of a new product, consumers have no foundation on which to formulate their opinions.</comment>


Ask HN: Best list of dominant values, culture, views of HN users? - <AUTHOR> instead of asking on quora, thought would be good to ask here:<p>* what is a detailed, clean, bullet-point analysis of the dominant values, culture, views of HN users as distinct from other popular sites? <comment><USER2> the guidelines, maybe? [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> wtf... uneducated? that's whoever wrote that page, not the users. the question specifically asks about the users

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> the downvote button

<comment><AUTHOR> wtf... is this an uneducated reddit user that stumbled upon HN?</comment></comment>


Netflix forced me to watch an unskipable ad - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/97yhvn/netflix_forced_me_to_watch_an_unskipable_ad_for/ <comment><USER2> I am curious if they had a think tank determine the risk of how many subscribers would move back to torrents, usenet, etc. If so, the risk or percentage must be really low.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to host a video file? - T-hawk

Hi HN,
I'm working on a video project.  Obviously it will go on Youtube, but I also want to make available a high-quality version for downloading.  What's the best way to do that?  I don't mind spending a bit to host it, but it's just for entertainment and not a business venture, so not much.  I would prefer not to resort to one of those scummy ad-strewn media hosting sites.  I'm not worried about download speed or latency or streaming.
Are there any good hosting providers for a static file that offer truly unlimited or at least really cheap download transfer capacity?  Linode's smallest instance says 2 TB transfer which isn't much, only 10k downloads of a 200 MB video file.  Amazon S3 says $0.12 per GB for data transfer out which also adds up quickly, 10k downloads would cost $240.  Is there anything better suited out there for a hobby video project?  Or scrap the idea and just use Youtube?
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Recent threads here announced in OVH: 500G disk, Atom servers, very cheap, connected at 100mbps, with unlimited transfer (after some TB it slows down to 10mbps).

But I think it's availability was limited to location.

Maybe you can store the high resolution versions in dropbox or something similar? Maybe you can automate your publishing workflow using both apis (youtube/dropbox).

<comment><USER2> Those OVH boxes don't slow down after X transfer. They used to do that, but OVH changed their policies recently. It's a flat out 100mbps unmetered now.

Here's the announcement lifting the TB transfer limit:

[http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6713](http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6713)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Get a file server VPS from Fliphost.net. 250GB of storage, 100mbps connection, 29TB of transfer for like $7/month.

<comment> T-hawk Thanks for the pointer. But I don't see such a plan offered? The VPS plans all have bandwidth limits between 300 GB and 1000 GB.

But they do list shared hosting for $2 or $4 per month, which says unlimited bandwidth. Wonder if that's really unlimited at that price, or just "until you start using too much", got any ideas there?

<comment><USER3> Oh yah, I forgot they don't list their file server plans.

Let me see if I can find the link the owner gave me to sign up with so I could get the file storage stuff. Won't really be able to find it for another 6-ish hours or so though.

They're a good company, run by really nice folks. I seriously doubt that they'd limit you even if they feel you "start using too much". I've never been happier with my VPS provider than I am with Fliphost. But I came from a Dreamhost VPS...meh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A Vimeo Plus account for $10/month, gives you up to 100 original downloads/day and great stream quality. There are also Pro accounts where you can sell your video content.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bittorrent? That'd definitely be my first thought.

Failing that, OVH's servers are probably a good idea.</comment>


Ask HN: Learn JavaScript from actual websites? - <AUTHOR>

Is there a resource that walks through the end-to-end code of actual websites to help teach Javascript? I am almost through the Codecademy courses on HTML/CSS/JS/Jquery and I still have trouble understanding what is happening, or how something is achieved, just by checking out a page's source.
If there was a JS teaching framework that picked apart the code of several actual websites, I would  be interested. Thanks! <comment><USER2> If you haven't checked out the annotated source of Backbone and Underscore, I'd recommend starting there. I've also added Backbone.Marionette. Once you've taken a look at the first two, you'll be able to see how Marionette builds on top of both libraries.

\- [http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html](http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html)

\- [http://underscorejs.org/docs/underscore.html](http://underscorejs.org/docs/underscore.html)

\- [http://marionettejs.com/annotated- src/backbone.marionette](http://marionettejs.com/annotated- src/backbone.marionette)

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought you meant by viewing source and using web inspectors to learn javascript and I thought yes that's a great way to learn how things work... Otherwise, Mozilla provides good reference materials. I think you need to just build something now to figure it out. - you have to learn it from solving problems. Pick a problem and solve it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct - I would like to learn that way. I was wondering if there is any code teaching resource that actually bridges the gap between the relatively basic and abstract content on e.g. Codecademy, and actual implementations 'in the wild'. Ideally something like the annotated Backbone documentation linked by bzalasky, but for a complete website (although the Backbone links are a great resource and I will be checking them out).

Your suggestion and the other commenters' are great - thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you're better off learning through courses. Trying to reverse engineer other site's JS by looking at their source is usually a pain because of how JS source is served (heavily minified) and it requires you to dig through the entire naming structure of the site's HTML, etc. Just stick with some courses that teach you sound principles.

</comment><comment><USER5> codepen.io would be a good place to learn by example. You will see many isolated code samples with the clearly separated HTML/CSS/JS.

As you wrap your head around 'what is happening' as you put it, you can start to combine what you see to make new creations of your own.

For the basic timeline of when things happen, research how a website is rendered. Here's some info to get you started: [http://frontendbabel.info/articles/webpage- rendering-101/](http://frontendbabel.info/articles/webpage-rendering-101/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I was not aware of codepen.io - looks very interesting and I will check it out further. Thanks for the other link as well.</comment></comment>