IsoHunt to Shut Down as Part of Settlement With Studios - <AUTHOR> http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/isohunt-to-shut-down-as-part-of-settlement-with-studios-1200734509/ <comment><USER2> IsoHunt has been largely irrelevant in the US for the last several years since they started filtering US IPs[1] and even before then was a pretty poor selection of torrents with many displaying completely incorrect swarm data.

While I'm not personally bothered by this (from the point of view of someone who used IsoHunt) I do find this settlement quite annoying and Dodd to be completely abysmal as a person.

_____________

[1] [http://torrentfreak.com/isohunt-redirects-us-visitors-to- lit...](http://torrentfreak.com/isohunt-redirects-us-visitors-to-lite- version-100406/)

<comment><USER3> What are better sites for torrent search? I've actually had good luck with ISOhunt.

<comment><USER4> Kickasstorrents is the best atm in my opinion. TPB is good but their legal issues make them unreliable technically and I prefer non-magnet links for use with rtorrent.

<comment><USER5> rtorrent supports magnet links just fine if you're using a recent version (As in one from the past year or two).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's stunning to me is the $110 million dollar judgment. Did the site really make that much money, or is this a decision designed to condemn the founder to a lifetime of poverty?

<comment><USER7> The MPAA estimates [1] that the company has $2-4 million in assets, but seems to be asking for the higher number just to send some kind of a message.

If I'm reading correctly, it would be isoHunt, not the founder, responsible for the judgment, so they would just declare bankruptcy, and the MPAA would get whatever assets are left in liquidation. The founder wouldn't be responsible for paying the remainder.

[1] [http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-says-piracy-damages-cant-be- mea...](http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-says-piracy-damages-cant-be- measured-131016/)

<comment><USER8> It appears they were suing the founder, Daniel Fung, personally and in addition to suing the company. The lower-court case is Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. v. Fung, 06-cv-05578, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles). The appeals court case is Columbia Picture Industries v. Fung, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 10-55946 (San Francisco).

[http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate- courts/ca9/10-...](http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate- courts/ca9/10-55946/10-55946-2013-03-21.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh no! What is 2004 me going to do to find torrents now?

<comment><USER10> You won't get much at 300bps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> MPAA doesn't get it. Costly lobbying and crushing lawsuits is not how you defeat piracy.

This is how you do it:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ukYf_xvgc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ukYf_xvgc)

<comment><USER12> Then perhaps they're not really trying to defeat piracy? If they're trying to justify the position of middle-men (say, recording studios in music), then the lawsuits show them adding value. Even when distribution is no longer difficult, thanks to the internet.

<comment><USER13> Recording studios are not middlemen. That's where records get made. You can only go so far in your bedroom before you need a room with a million dollars of equipment in it.

That's the problem with these modern ideas about people producing content off their own back, it's not actually possible. You can't make star trek on a macbook pro with final cut, and you can't make a highly produced album with 10 musicians in your bedroom.

<comment><USER14> You can make truly amazing music without the million dollars of equipment though! It's an optional extra, and I would argue that we would not be culturally less rich if those studios went out of existence. Worst case is that we would just have equally good music with a few slightly rough edges. As an example, I still choose Seth Lakeman's early recordings over his more recent even though they were made on a budget of a quarter of a macbook pro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Gary Fung's not a US citizen AFAIK. What leverage do they have to force him to pay?

</comment><comment><USER15> Why do they even try? It takes an hour to change the logo and host it somewhere else.

<comment><USER16> So that they can later justify draconian piracy laws.

"It took us seven years to get this one site down, a site that caused us over 110 million dollars in piracy, and we couldn't even collect any of it. Within hours of a court order, the site was back up with a new name.

<Thus, you should require ISP's to filter their traffic, or whatever> "

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, it's like the anti-acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER18> More info can be found in the MPAA press release: [http://mpaa.org/resources/52c16680-37ab-4f0a-9756-b850fe37ca...](http://mpaa.org/resources/52c16680-37ab-4f0a-9756-b850fe37ca1c.pdf)

The shut down date os Oct 23, 2013 (in a week from now).

</comment><comment><USER19> What is everybody using for piracy these days?

<comment><USER20> I was hoping to go with a parrot and a speedboat off of the Horn of Africa, but with the economy as it is I've had to settle with a parakeet and a dinghy in the local catchwater.

<comment><USER21> I hear they made a movie of that. Captain Phillips, I believe it's called?

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure. The TV had to be scrapped in favor of an AM radio with one dial missing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Skinny Puppy demands royalties from US govt for using their music in Guantanamo - <AUTHOR> http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2014/12/skinny_puppy_de.html <comment><USER2> Let's step back into reality for a moment. Do they actually have a claim? Once I've bought the album, can't I torture my acquaintances to my heart's content without paying royalties? A small enough group isn't a "public performance," I'm not broadcasting it to the entire town.

Further, aren't there exemptions for the federal government with respect to use of copyrighted works? Sure, you'd probably have a case against a federal agency who acquired your album only to provide copies freely to its employees, but if they stick a track in a presentation to a small group (or several small groups ... or many small groups) I'm pretty sure the courts would just throw out your case.

OK, enough armchair lawyering, is there someone with a professional opinion on this?

<comment><USER3> Bars and retail stores count as "public performance" for purposes of song royalties. So the group in question can be quite small.

<comment><USER4> That's because they are open to the public. Jails are not, in general - they're more like invite-only parties.

<comment><USER5> Copyright law defines a public performance as one which occurs outside of a family and it's normal social circle. So any performance at an invite-only party is regarded as a public performance. For this reason, although a jail is not a public place, any performance there would be considered a public performance.

This makes sense when you think about it: an invite-only party could be held in a fancy hotel and have many hundreds of guests, or it may be a business event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a pity that governments place themselves above the law. It would be nice to see the US government forced to actually pay up. It would be even nicer to see the band donate any sum awarded to an organisation like Amnesty International or Doctors Without Borders.

<comment><USER7> > _It would be nice to see the US government forced to actually pay up._

Or, if they don't, to keep things consistent, then nobody should ever have to pay up again.

<comment><USER8> Could you then label a nightclub as "Aural S/M Experience" and avoid paying any royalties from the used mu^Wtorture tracks?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In case you didn't understand the subtext, the point of this is to register offense that their music was used in this way (the opposite of what they would want). It's a form of passive resistance. This story isn't primarily about copyright and it certainly isn't about money.

<comment><USER10> Ah, but a large percentage of HNers are Americans and thus care more about copyright and money than about torture.

<comment><USER11> I think that what you're trying to say is that `a large percentage of HNers are Americans and thus care more about copyright being used against them in order to extort them, usually for money.`

Most "Americans" care about a wide variety of topics so please take this sort of stereotype somewhere else.

<comment><USER10> No, that is not at all what I was saying, but thank you for trying.

<comment><USER12> I'm confused here. You said something that was on the surface absurd, got downvoted on it, which I would assume would at least cause you to re-examine your original premises, and then came back doubling down on your original statement, which I interpret as dismissal of the downvotes as just hive mind thinking about a subject they're very clearly wrong about. So, do you honestly actually believe that most Americans are more concerned with copyrights than torture? And if so, what leads you to this conclusion?

This question is not meant to be hostile, I am not American so I have no horse in this race, I just want to understand where you're coming from.

<comment><USER13> I'm not saraid216, nor American, but I believe that I find it very difficult to find (sampling from primarily Canadians and Americans) people who get emotionally heated about other people being tortured, and relatively easy to find people who get emotionally heated about copyright violation (usually against themselves or against someone they would like to identify with). I would say that I find the latter group between 10x and 100x more common in my life than the former.

It's even harder to find someone who will actually lift a finger to do anything about strangers being tortured, and harder still to find someone who will do more than write an angry comment online (for example, I will not do more than write comments online).

Although I found saraid216's comment smug, dismissive, and non-contributing, as far as I can tell it was essentially _true_.

<comment><USER12> Interesting perspective, I agree with your observations, but I don't know if it's really a manifestation of those people not caring about torture so much as it seems like a problem with which they do not have direct experience and thus do not have the emotional immediacy involved with something that more directly affects them.

For example, I might find my neighbour's loud music at three in the morning evokes more of an emotional response than the spanish inquisition, but that doesn't actually imply I think that my neighbour's loud music at three in the morning is really more important or severe than the spanish inquisition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems pretty cheap. They've got a lot to learn about military contracting.

<comment><USER15> As long as the figure continues to have lots of triple 6's the point is made I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Musicians have made similar demands in 2008[1]. That includes Christopher Cerf, one of the Sesame Street composers. He features in a documentary Aljazeera made about this[2]. I seem to remember he also asked for royalties but was unsuccessful, but I can't find a reference to that.

[1] [http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google...](http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fhostednews%2Fap%2Farticle%2FALeqM5g64EuoVhuWIkenJw0OsqodF- EbnwD94VDHPG0&date=2008-12-09)

[2] [http://www.dummymag.com/videos/watch-al-jazeera-s-songs- of-w...](http://www.dummymag.com/videos/watch-al-jazeera-s-songs-of-war-with- christopher-cerf)

</comment><comment><USER17> Reddit discussion (from 9 hours ago): [http://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/2p8mvd/skinny_p...](http://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/2p8mvd/skinny_puppy_demands_666000_in_royalties_from_us/)

Earlier this year they tried to bill the US government: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/metal-band- skin...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/metal-band-skinny-puppy- send-us-government-invoice-after-finding-out-their-music-was-used-as-torture- device-in-guantanamo-bay-9100005.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> $666,000 is far too low. If the members of Skinny Puppy knew how Government defence contracting works, they would realise that this kind of value is a write-off, go for $666,000,000 - now that is more of a defence figure.

In all seriousness though, this shows extreme irony. The Government is content with passing draconian bills penalising users for downloading Game of Thrones and cutting off their Internet connections, sending Swat teams to their homes and allowing corporations to financially haemorrhage them in the "court of law". Yet, when the Government wants to use someone else's music without paying for a licence, they think they are above the law they want to so desperately put in place?

They definitely have a case. Copyright law forbids audio and video being broadcasted to many persons without a licence in a public place (with exception of your family and a few other exceptions). This isn't music being played in a family home, it is music being broadcasted in a US owned detention camp prison.

If I were in a band and found out my music was being used to torture people, I would be pretty pissed about it too. I couldn't imagine how that would make you feel knowing something you created is being used to interrogate and break a potentially innocent person locked up inhumanely.

I am going to be keeping an eye on this case. If the US fails to pay up, it could set a precedent for future court cases brought against small businesses and individuals being fined for playing music. And yes, there have been cases of small businesses, restaurants, cafes, etc being bullied by ASCAP into paying for licences to have play CD's or even in some cases, have a radio playing.

</comment><comment><USER19> Actual source: [http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/vancouver-band-demands- compensa...](http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/vancouver-band-demands-compensation- after-learning-music-used-for-guantanamo-bay-torture-1.1671312)

This is from February.

<comment><USER20> And I submitted it back then: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192081)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The guard's story that told the band is interesting.

[http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/industrial- acti...](http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/industrial-action.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> I did a small amount of research on this on behalf of a psychologist involved in torture trials (not testing torture, bringing people to account). The use of Skinny Puppy's music has been quite widespread.

</comment><comment><USER23> Could this spawn a new music genre/industry (torture music)? We truly live in a bizarre world. It would certainly make for a good character background in a dystopian movie: a megacorp X office worker who produces torture music at day but leads a second life at night, rediscovering his love for music at underground bars where any type of music is being played (despite the the strict totalitarian government censorship laws).

<comment><USER24> Someone's clearly never appreciated Merzbow.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGzrL8J0t-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGzrL8J0t-c)

<comment><USER23> Indeed I hadn't! I certainly couldn't listen to that for hours but it would make a good soundtrack for a David Lynch movie :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Imagine hearing this[1] for 12 hours straight.

Edit: Not saying it's bad music, but perhaps after the 12 hour point the constant beat would drive anyone crazy.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYC5VFuiblU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYC5VFuiblU)

<comment><USER26> Please. That's a great song, and even Skinny Puppy (a relatively tame, "dance- industrial" band) has a lot noiser, less structured music that would be more "disturbing" to some. These prisoners were lucky if they got to listen to Puppy's Assimilate.

There's far, far, far more extreme music than that, such as the whole "noise" genre, which includes bands like Massona,[1] Merzbow,[2] and Borbetomagus.[3] And, yes, fans pay good money to buy their albums and go hear them live. I've gone for days listening to all of these virtually non-stop.

I'm not really in to them anymore, but I'd still much rather hear some noise music than put in a stress position, be tasered, be stuck in an extremely cold or extremely hot room, be waterboarded, raped, deprived of sleep or medical attention for weeks on end, be subject to mock executions, have my family threatened, be kicked to death (or kicked in general.. no thanks!).

Yes, music and various other means of sensory overload or sensory deprivation can induce altered states of consciousness, and when combined with a menacing environment where you're surrounded by people who mean you harm (and often do you harm), they can be unsettling. But music would be one of the last things I'd be worried about in a torture prison.

At least they didn't force the prisoners to listen to Johnny Cash.[4]

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9JjDP3rK5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9JjDP3rK5I)

[2] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AguPH0XBxdw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AguPH0XBxdw)

[3] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GulFn6cqFvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GulFn6cqFvc)

[4] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It7107ELQvY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It7107ELQvY)

<comment><USER27> It's not about music being extreme. Actually, you can see that other bands in the list aren't something that is generally considered being extreme. I'd argue that listening to Merzbow as a torture method is far easier than Queen exactly because of lack of structure — I generally listen to Merzbow and such when I'm extremely tired and it just helps to relax and stop thinking.

Anyway, I wouldn't be so sure that loud music for 12 hours is _actually_ more humanistic (hah, humanistic torture — I've got to remember that!) than arbitrary item from your list. After all, Chinese water torture [1] also sounds surprisingly harmless, right?

[1] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_water_torture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_water_torture)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I thought the entire point of having that secret prison in Cuba is that US laws don't apply.

</comment><comment><USER29> How do they prove it?

<comment><USER30> They just have to torture them to get a confession.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hey who cares about torture in Guantanamo, a crime has been committed : copyright infringement.

The level of cynicism of these guys is impressive.

<comment><USER32> What on earth are you talking about? This is a statement _against_ the torture in Guantanamo. They are suing to bring publicity to the issue.

> used our music without our knowledge and used it as an actual weapon against > somebody

> And Key said band members were offended to learn that their music was played > in the notorious prison to inflict damagd on detainees.

<comment><USER31> I guess it's a cultural thing (I'm not Anglo-Saxon) but for me, asking for money is not about being offended : it is being greedy.

If they pledged this money on a charity or something it would look entirely different.

<comment><USER33> They're never going to be awarded anything. The money isn't the point.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any other CPU designers here? - <AUTHOR> Are there any other CPU designers here? If so, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the industry. I've been working as a CPU designer for several years and as I've watched the growth of the tech sector during this time, I can't help but wonder if I should switch to software engineering. My reasons are:
1. Limited choice of employers and cities – The semiconductor industry has been consolidating over the last several years, and the trend seems likely to continue. Consequently, there are currently only a handful of tech giants designing ICs. Jobs seem limited to a few major cities. SWE jobs can be found in most large cities across a range of company sizes.
2. Lack of startup/solo opportunities – SWE seems to offer many opportunities to found/join a startup or work as an independent contractor. CPU design seems to have far fewer of these opportunities, likely due to the much higher capital requirements. Will the tech sector's current interest in AI/ML lead to many more startups in CPU design, as it has done for software design?
3. Lack of community – A search on Meetup reveals many software-related groups in my city. No such groups seem to exist for CPU design, likely due to its closed-source nature. Many free resources exist to learn the basics of coding, but learning CPU design using free tools is not as straightforward. Additionally, there seems to be little incentive to design and fabricate an open-source CPU when cheap ones can already be purchased, whereas there are many motivations for creating open-source software.
4. Compensation – I would certainly not describe CPU designers' compensation as poor, but I've never read/heard about anyone outside of executives receiving annual stock grants that exceed their base salary, whereas such things seem common for SWE's at the largest tech companies.
Are my points above incorrect, "grass is greener" observations, or does SWE have much better career prospects than CPU design? <comment><USER2> 1) I agree, but from my perspective it has always been a very limited profession. But IMHO it is also a very admired job.

2) I agree, startup cost in this field is extremely high, with a lot of competitors.

3) Although software has a lot of community it is also very fractured. Depending on what you specialize in you might find a couple of groups in your area or none. Of course you will find some online groups regardless.

4) Yes the grass is always greener. I am sure that there are 1000 SWE who received great bonuses, but there are a million who got zip.

In conclusion, if your dream is to start your own company, then yes, switch. If your dream is to make money, and you are a super excellent SWE, and / or an average SPU designer, then switch.

A large part of it comes down to what brings you pleasure. We in the IT industry have an advantage over most. We are paid well and love our jobs. Well some of us love the work. Many people have one and not the other. I have known people who worked in waste processing plants who worked in their profession (Biology) for very poor pay. They all said 'you need to get a degree that pays well'. I have had as many friends in IT who loved the pay but absolutely hated the work. Those that hated the work were rarely any good.

Working at a job you hate because of the money is refered to as the 'Golden hand cuffs'

</comment><comment><USER3> All your points are valid, but I think that the RISC-V workshops are creating a bit more of a community than there has been up to now. And those involved in bleeding edge CPU designs have been meeting at Hot Chips once a year. [https://riscv.org/category/workshops/proceedings/](https://riscv.org/category/workshops/proceedings/)

</comment><comment><USER4> My startup is doing work in this area (more SPMD than traditional single thread CPU). We work with FPGAs to get the incredible costs of ASIC manufacture down so we can get our prototypes out there. For the specific workloads we target we can be competitive even with this technology handicap - which says a lot about the low hanging fruit that is out there.

In my opinion the industry has really stagnated, with nobody really stepping back and looking at the whole picture.

SWE certainly has more mindshare and development. But the CPU industry is seriously greenfield at this point if you are willing to try something different than stuffing more of the same onto a smaller die.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are a lot of startups popping up these days that are designing IC's for low powered, high speed, neural net processing. Lots of different approaches they are taking. However, many of them are still in stealth, but try scouring chip designers on linkedIn, especially in the bay area and see where they are working.

Most of them have some kind of partnership with a large company that has a fab, that will allow them to produce prototypes and get some validation going.

</comment><comment><USER6> I used to work in cpu design and I had the exact same thoughts as you. I think it boils down to the maturity of the technology and the associated high marginal cost in getting any improvements.

I switched to SWE 2 years ago and am definitely happier with my career prospects.

<comment><AUTHOR> What steps did you have to take to make the switch? How involved with software were you while (and before) working as a CPU designer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lots of hiring in FPGAs right now, especially in vehicle sector. Bitmain is rocking custom ASICs. Micron processors in memory are still maturing.

I'd look into applying at a national lab in their team that looks into new/custom chips. The supremacy of TSMC has evened out the market and even Intel is no longer a sure bet long term.

<comment><USER8> I just found out about Bitmain's Sophon card, but I don't think you can buy it yet.

I'd like to explore chip design but I think that requires an electrical engineering degree which I don't have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder about the same points for a CPU Architect too.</comment>


IOS development just got faster. - <AUTHOR> http://appsify.me/

<comment><USER2> Paul Graham spoke years ago about the evolution of programming and how the next major shift from HTML style languages would be visual.

Bootstrap started the shift - but this takes it to the next level. Beautiful demo, can't wait to see how this revolutionizes programming and app development.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Franco - appreciate the words! We have a lot of things planned. We need more feedback from users before deciding which direction to take. Cheers!</comment></comment>


Jack Dorsey says in an interview he's rethinking the core of how Twitter works - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/15/jack-dorsey-says-hes-rethinking-core-how-twitter-works/ <comment><USER2> Twitter is a master class in how not to run a social media platform. They alienate their power users by shutting down APIs which break 3rd party apps. Their censorship seems to have no rhyme or reason to it. They simply do not listen to their users. No one wants "In case you missed it", or to know what someone just liked, we just want to read tweets in order they came in.

<comment><USER3> I'm just curious how a social media platform should be run. In my opinion none of them do a good job or deliver a likeable experience. If you look at the big ones they all have negative points: FB, Twitter, G+, and so on. Maybe Reddit is the one exception since I can still find what I want and AFAIK they still offer unrestricted API access.

<comment><USER4> The decentralization after reaching a certain scale is I believe the key to Reddit's success

<comment><USER5> How is Reddit centralized? The global admins are still there.

By this criteria, Facebook Groups are decentralized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I quit Twitter a while back when it was showing me anti-Muslim tweets. Mostly retweets and likes by some of right leaning tech leaders that I respected and followed. Many of these influential accounts were spreading obviously false tweets. Even when it was true, they would retweet if suspect was a Muslim. But if suspect turned out to be not Muslim, then these accounts would stay quite.

I support free speech but I don't want to see hateful speech when I eating my breakfast. Especially when I am the target of hate & harassment.

Sorry cannot hide behind freedom of speech when your real motive is money. Now people are leaving your platform, so you all of sudden care about controlling hate and harassment on your platform.

There are real life victims because of hate and harassment that these companies protected for so long.

<comment><USER7> That is funny. The reason I don't follow tech people on Twitter is that they spend all day posting about left-leaning US politics, feminism, LGBTQ- whatever, etc. which are things I couldn't care less about.

That's one of the bad things of social media: you want to read about tech or movies or sports or whatever so you follow someone in the field but you also have to read his political opinions, see pictures of his kids, see the latte he just ordered, etc. Insufferable.

<comment><USER8> Exactly one of the few reasons I still enjoy coming to hacker news. I hope we can keep our little community here.

<comment><USER9> That's been increasingly less likely though, as some of our more prominent posters freely post their politics.

I've taken to flagging politically motivated topics with some amount of success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Jack's continued unwillingness to state in concrete terms what Twitter intends to change sure looks a lot like he's trying to deflect scrutiny around censorship while still engaging in it.

<comment><USER11> Wait, isn't most of the criticism at the _lack_ of censorship? I personally hate that half the platform is nutty conspiracy bots and hate speech.

<comment><USER12> There's a group of people whose value system places "I want everyone to be able to say everything they want, with no repercussions" to be their most important value. From that point of view, Jack is a horrible person, and what he's doing will destroy Twitter.

From the point of view of someone who doesn't want to wade into that cesspit, doing nothing will destroy Twitter. The two viewpoints are largely exclusive.

<comment><USER13> But for the second category "features that would promote alternative viewpoints in Twitter's timeline" also isn't a clear good: it could easily mean "show my tweets to more people that don't want to see them and will react badly to it, and show me more tweets from people I want to avoid". Limiting who you interact with is also a _feature_ , not just a bad _echo chamber_.

<comment><USER14> Quite. "Inserting tweets into my timeline to turn it into less of an echo chamber" seems like it cannot do anything other than insert tweets from the far right about how people with darker skin colours should be second class citizens (or worse).

There is an entirely reasonable reading that Twitter is not competent enough to do this without making the platform more toxic, not less. I'm personally of the opinion that asking Twitter to do more moderation is not a great idea, because it's proven beyond all doubt that Twitter is no good at it and has no mechanism for improvement where it would ever get better. All they're going to do with more moderation is make more mistakes.

<comment><USER11> I don't know if it's that slippery a slope. Couldn't you start with conspiracies about child victims of shootings and see how it goes.

<comment><USER15> What do we do when the 1 out of 100th conspiracy theory turns out to be true?

Just months ago there were massive conspiracy theorizing about the first lady's absence over a period of days. Should that discussion have just been shut down?

It's not a clear judgment call, even for one person, for what to allow and what not to allow. That's the problem.

<comment><USER16> I agree with your description of what the real, practical problem is, but I'd like to hear your opinion about solutions. Personally, I do think a viable answer could involve rule-makers/enforcers making subjective judgements on sometimes unclear issues (even if that group must be small to feasibly operate). The practice is necessarily common because that's the nature of many of our social systems. We introduce as many abuse-curbing objective elements as possible, but in the end there will always be some amount of human judgement. If the balance tips one way, the system loses effectiveness, and if it tips the other way (the "slippery slope"), it becomes a new problem. Personally, in the example given, I don't think it would be impossible to find a balance that allows the mean-spirited speculation about why the first lady wasn't around, but disallows the borderline calls to violence and direct calls to hatred of people whose children have been murdered. Again, I agree that the problem is "how", but I absolutely am not pessimistic about it. I think we can use content moderation, despite its subjectivity, to find a balance - certainly not a perfect balance, but a better one than exists today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _Dorsey's openness to broad changes shows how Silicon Valley leaders are > increasingly reexamining the most fundamental aspects of the technologies > that have made these companies so powerful and profitable. At Facebook, for > example, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has commissioned a full review of his company's > products to emphasize safety and trust, from mobile payments to event > listings._

Why yes, business leaders are absolutely open to making changes to ensure their products stay powerful and profitable. Why does this paragraph try to make them seem like the paragons of open-mindedness and virtue?

</comment><comment><USER18> I heard an interesting angle on a podcast recently: If these social media platforms continue to narrow the scope of allowable viewpoints, then it could be considered editorial discretion and the companies may be on the hook for defamation lawsuits.

A court may also hear a case for damages against the censored parties. Interesting times.

Also, we should probably stop calling these networks "platforms" if they continue to shape allowable speech.

</comment><comment><USER4> What about just showing everyone you follow's tweets in the reverse order they were tweeted?

<comment><USER19> It's funny that there have been a number of tweets from Twitter Product Managers over the past couple of days saying "We want to hear from you why you used these third party clients" and "What can we do better?" and the like, and almost every single response is the above.

They're not actually listening of course. Twitter, as a company, just doesn't seem to understand large segments of their users, and it's really strange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "...reduce "echo chambers"" a.k.a get rid of non-left leaning opinions.

<comment><USER21> Haven't you heard? It's ok to be racist as long as you say 'just kidding!' afterwards, but don't forget, this doesn't apply to racism targeted at anyone other than white people.

<comment><USER9> Are you following racist peoples' twitter accounts? Why are you seeing it? Or are you even seeing it?

<comment><USER21> I'm referring to this Sarah Jeong character and similar overtly anti-white messaging. Whatever the supposed justification, I fail to see how this coarsening of public discourse can be considered constructive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >One solution Twitter is exploring is to surround false tweets with factual context

I quit Twitter because they started choosing for me what they show me. Before it was all what I chose to follow in chronological order, nowadays you get lot of other stuff that you didn't ask for. It's a salad of content. And now they want to add even more unwanted stuff. Way to go.

<comment><USER17> > _More context about a tweet, including "tweets that call it out as obviously > fake," could help people "make judgments for themselves," Dorsey said._

Yeah, I'm sure Dorsey envisions the surrounding tweets gently explaining what a parody account is, or that something isn't factually supported - but the reality is going to be that every tweet will be surrounded by a buzzing cloud of nazi-gnats, gnashing their teeth about crisis actors and virtue signaling.

<comment><USER7> I doubt you'll get right-wing stuff, this looks like it will be handpicked by some human, and only enabled for tweets they deem too controversial. i.e. Alex Jones says something, and then some human at Twitter HQ slaps a CNN tweet and a Snopes article next to the tweet without any permission from Alex Jones.

But in truth I don't really care if they want to shove tweets from nazis or communists or liberals or potato salads in my face. I only want to see what I follow. Is that too much to ask for?

<comment><USER22> try "some algorithm". Twitter would never be able to hire enough people to hand curate that.

<comment><USER7> As I said above, I believe this will be some kind of emergency measure to discredit handpicked tweets that have an enormous amount of retweets or made by specific users with an enormous amount of followers. It doesn't matter if it doesn't scale because it won't be used at scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Twitter censorship is pretty extreme. My Libertarian friends and Islam critics get partially banned almost every week. It is pathetic and I think there is a larger market for more free speech. Twitter is probably becoming like SF, a shoddy hipster town full of junkies all around.

</comment><comment><USER24> Too little, too late.</comment>


How RDF Databases Differ from Other NoSQL Solutions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.datagraph.org/2010/04/rdf-nosql-diff

<comment><USER2> Very nice pitch for RDF (which I agree with).</comment>


How is your day going? - <AUTHOR> I'm having a mixed day myself:
* Last night I spent some time thinking about next steps for project I'm working on.
* Today, my morning started out great! Made coffee, spent time with my child, and felt excited for the day.
* Started working from home at 9 and put in about an hour of work before the daily standup.
* During standup, shared my status and thinking and subsequently was "corrected" by the team lead. * ...
* I've since spent the rest of the day feeling frustrated and hurt.
* I did reach out to my team lead about how I felt.
I left a position at a FAANG for a smaller software company and it has been challenging readjusting to life outside of FAANG. I used to report to someone who trusted me and always listened to what I had to say, it felt liked I worked with them and not for them.
Now I work with someone who likes to tell everyone on the team what they should do and what they think is the right thing to do. I find it frustrating, counter-productive, and generally a bad approach to team leadership.
Sigh... interesting times that we are living in. <comment><USER2> Just relax and prefer to behave and do as ordered instead of creatively distinguishing yourself and sticking out. The former works better.

My day started out okay, the week passed really fast, perhaps because I had a day off on monday. Ordered a great pizza yesterday, doing steady work today, nothing pressing, regular copywriter/content stuff I always do.</comment>


Treadmill Desk Update - <AUTHOR> http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2011/12/treadmill-desk-update.html <comment><USER2> That's pretty awesome. I'm all for treadmill desk. I converted my desk at home to a standing desk. I would do a treadmill, but don't have the room. If only I could stand while at work though... I hate sitting all day.</comment>


Amazon's facial recognition matched 28 members of Congress to criminal mugshots - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/26/17615634/amazon-rekognition-aclu-mug-shot-congress-facial-recognition <comment><USER2> Reading the article it occurs to me that "people of colour" sounds more pleasing that "coloured people". I wonder why. Then I wondered why the article went immediately to race politics instead of an over representation of people of colour in the training set, or the lack of contrast in darker faces, but then this:

> Police stopped a car, handcuffed an elderly Black woman and forced her to > kneel at gunpoint — all because an automatic license plate reader improperly > identified her car as a stolen vehicle.

and I forget just how messed up the US is right now. The last thing North Americans need is their police armed with buggy facial recognition.

</comment><comment><USER2> actual article: [https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance- te...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance- technologies/amazons-face-recognition-falsely-matched-28)</comment>


PyTorch Distributed Training - <AUTHOR> https://leimao.github.io/blog/PyTorch-Distributed-Training/ <comment><USER2> Very useful! Thanks!

> Although PyTorch has offered a series of tutorials on distributed training, > I found it insufficient or overwhelming to help the beginners to do state- > of-the-art PyTorch distributed training

Can confirm. Am relatively junior, spent way too long trying to understand the documentation.

Tangentially related that bothers me: distributed training is is poorly documented, distributed memory management is barely documented and not fully supported.

If your models are too large to fit in the memory of a single GPU (like really big word embeddings, which are not exotic by any stretch) things get wacky. Distributing model parts across different GPUs is supported but poorly documented and a bit hacky. If your models are too large for all of your GPUs you're stuck with an outside package like SpeedTorch ([https://github.com/Santosh-Gupta/SpeedTorch](https://github.com/Santosh- Gupta/SpeedTorch)) to pin everything in regular memory.

</comment><comment><USER3> See also pytorch-lightning ([https://pytorch- lightning.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://pytorch- lightning.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)), which has had cluster support but coincidentally just added support for Horovod, and will add support for ray next release.

</comment><comment><USER4> what happened at Duke?</comment>


Ask HN: How to arrange share splitting in a new 2-people team - <AUTHOR> What do you consider the best "share splitting arrangement" for a 2-people team who's just met (say 1 month ago) and decided to work on a project which should become a start-up (legal entity) in a couple of months?<p>And where do you see any pitfalls? <comment><USER2> Canonical answer: [http://foundrs.com](http://foundrs.com), aka the co-founder equity calculator.

If you have just met 1 month ago, your chances or not making it long-term are above 50%. I'm sure you're aware of that. What most people don't do, to follow-through with that fact, is to require vesting. There has to be a way for such an unstable team to blow-up and break up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Spolsky recommends even split: [https://gist.github.com/isaacsanders/1653078](https://gist.github.com/isaacsanders/1653078)

It should be a legal entity now because equity is under consideration by at least one person now. Anything else creates more issues than it solves. Better to have a hard conversation that ends in a split now than after months of tiptoing around the landmine.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> A more important question is how do you manage disagreements. Specifically, you wholeheartedly believe you should do XYZ and they believe wholeheartedly in doing ABC. You can randomly pick. each do your own thing. let the person with most experience in that area make decision and go against your gut. split up. Ask for advice and trust that advice.

</comment><comment><USER5> someone has to be the tie breaker 49% 51% should be the split</comment>


Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity firm is hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33083050

<comment><USER2> A lot of beating around the bush; just say the US and/or Isreal did it.

We already know Duqu was made by the same people who made Stuxnet. We already know Stuxnet was made by the US and/or Isreal to hurt the Iranian nuclear program. So if they have strong evidence it was the same people... we know who those people are and we should just say their names.

<comment><USER3> Kaspersky has been a pain in the ass of the status quo because they are Russian and so it's difficult to control them and rein them in. Lots of exploits depends on the cooperation and complacency of security companies that are in the pocket of the various governments. Kaspersky wasn't one of these, or at least in the pockets of Russia, and so had to be compromised to try to control their oversight on security and to further the chances of exploits succeeding. Good on them for detecting the exploit, now they know that they are valid targets for this sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure it knew it was a target for this kind of thing since they did exhibit bias. That is to say they showed greater interest in exposing western gov't hacking capabilities and activities than they did in exposing Russian and Chinese govt actors in the same arena.

I'm sure this is no surprise to them.

<comment><USER3> > than they did in exposing Russian and Chinese govt actors in the same arena.

That's the job of Western companies. Keeps everyone honest. Western companies have as much bias as anyone, they are just good at covering it up with rhetoric... and Americans are good at deluding themselves about their own bias and Nationalism which is no different from anyone else's.

> On balance, with the current regimes in those countries, I prefer the > western alternative to these regimes. It's not as if they are equivalent > just with a different opinion. I truly prefer my western govt's over Russia > and China's.

I do too. However, no one is as clean, just, and fair as they make themselves out to be. Everyone who plays geopolitics is dirty as shit. I like my government because it treats me well enough, ask other people and they might not have the same opinions.

<comment><USER4> On balance, with the current regimes in those countries, I prefer the western alternative to these regimes. It's not as if they are equivalent just with a different opinion. I truly prefer my western govt's over Russia and China's, no doubts.

<comment> saiya-jin sounds like picking-of-lesser-evil discussion to me, which is still a bit sad considering topic...

what a world we got ourselves into! :)

<comment><USER5> The best world yet.

<comment><USER6> The worst too...

<comment><USER5> I kind of agree, but in a merely technical way :) I like the oriental philosophical outlook, so basically, I would have to say, the world is simply what it is. Labelling it "good" or "bad", in an absolute-judgement kind of way, is arbitrary and useless.

But here, the topic was very specific - to say that picking the lesser evil is a bad thing is actually, I'm sorry to say, spoiled. Being able to pick at all is a luxury, which some do not have to this day. And let's not even go into all the other problems we no longer face today, at least in large parts of the world.

That's not to say we don't have a tonne of work ahead of us. We probably always will. And criticism is essential in making progress. But just saying that "the world" has gone bad is not helpful criticism, it's defeatist. Because, what can we do if it has indeed gone bad? Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Intel Security just reported that "[p]ersistent and virtually undetectable attacks by the Equation Group that reprogram hard disk drives and solid state drive firmware."[0,1] It's interesting that this threat was first reported by Kaspersky in February.[2]

The firmware exploits are part of the attack system with Duqu 2.0, right?

[0] [http://www.mcafee.com/us/security- awareness/articles/mcafee-...](http://www.mcafee.com/us/security- awareness/articles/mcafee-labs-threats-report-may-2015.aspx)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9685829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9685829)

[2] [http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2015/equation- grou...](http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2015/equation-group-the- crown-creator-of-cyber-espionage)

<comment><USER8> Different groups in this case. According to Kapersky's report, Duqu used a zero-day to promote into kernel space, then loaded the full payload into memory. Less terrifying than the firmware revision from EG as a single attack, but Duqu was unique in that it replicated itself around in the local network, making it impossible to remove short of powering down everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Duqu 2.0 Hits Kaspersky Lab (securelist.com)" thread @ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9691654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9691654)

</comment><comment><USER7> Kaspersky's technical paper on Duqu 2.0,[0] begins with: "The initial attack against Kaspersky Lab began with the targeting of an employee in one of our smaller APAC offices." It notes that the next step was compromising other machines on LAN. But they only discuss Windows, and don't even mention OSX, BSD, Linux, etc.

I'm wondering how lateral movement to non-Windows machines would have been accomplished.

[0] [https://securelist.com/files/2015/06/The_Mystery_of_Duqu_2_0...](https://securelist.com/files/2015/06/The_Mystery_of_Duqu_2_0_a_sophisticated_cyberespionage_actor_returns.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone get the impression this was some sort of early detection mechanism, done intentionally by the hackers, to know when it has been publicly discovered? Is this stupid? Probably stupid.

<comment><USER9> I personally believe this is a honeypot or trial of sorts. The reason could've been to determine whether or not the intrusion was detected at all as a sort of validation of just how "almost invisible" the malware is, or it could've been to determine the time required to detect.

Alternatively, it could be a way of getting at the company's data or even to instigate a thorough review of their platform from the client's perspective. There's a lot of subtle information in the Kaspersky report that might be interesting to intelligence services: \- Simultaneous Duqu & Equation Group infection of one victim \- Feature coverage (and those omitted, like other payloads) \- Red herrings detected/ignored; strings, faked compile timestamps \- Noticed misspelling of "Excceeded" & lack of other linguistic errors

Kaspersky mulled this issue:

 _" So the targeting of security companies indicates that either they are very confident they won't get caught, or perhaps they don't care much if they are discovered and exposed. By targeting Kaspersky Lab, the Duqu attackers have probably taken a huge bet hoping they'd remain undiscovered; and lost."_

However they also conceded that they aren't sure:

 _" The exact reason why Kaspersky Lab was targeted is still not clear – although the attackers did seem to focus on obtaining information about Kaspersky's future technologies, Secure OS, anti-APT solutions, KSN and APT research."_

[https://securelist.com/files/2015/06/The_Mystery_of_Duqu_2_0...](https://securelist.com/files/2015/06/The_Mystery_of_Duqu_2_0_a_sophisticated_cyberespionage_actor_returns.pdf)

<comment><USER11> The simplest, most obvious explanation is: Israeli intelligence wanted to spy on Kaspersky because they are the best at finding and analysing state sponsored malware, they were over-cocky and they eventually got caught.

<comment><USER9> Or investigation of the relationship between Kaspersky and Russian intelligence, which according to 6 Kaspersky employees, is too close for my comfort: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-19/cybersecur...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-19/cybersecurity- kaspersky-has-close-ties-to-russian-spies)

It sucks that it's so hard to trust anybody's software (or hardware) today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> github-cat There is never an end to defend against security attacks. Even the most well- known security company cannot get away with them, how about the general people?

</comment><comment><USER12> List of related links [https://redletter.link/question/233-newsrollup-the- duqu-20](https://redletter.link/question/233-newsrollup-the-duqu-20)

</comment><comment><USER13> Here's one of the reason _not_ to install antivirus software: if a malicious adversary finds a vuln in the AV or hacks C&C servers, you have a nice backdoor you installed to "protect" yourself.

<comment><USER14> That's bordering on complete paranoia. You can make this argument for _any_ software you install with auto-update capabilities... which is likely significantly more than half the software the average person has.

Your AV company's infrastructure is probably a lot more secure than the infrastructure of browser plugins you use and games you play.

<comment><USER15> >Your AV company's infrastructure is probably a lot more secure than the infrastructure of browser plugins you use and games you play.

Well I'm not a security expert and I'm using Linux, so I don't use a Windows antivirus obviously. A quick test trying to download free or trial Windows antivirus software (I'm not willing to pay for this simple experiment):

       Kaspersky:
       - google Kaspersky
       - google result leads to http site, all the way to the download of the trial version it's http (I'm sure at least 80% of users don't notice this)
       - try to type in manually https://www.kaspersky.com
       - it redirects to http://www.kaspersky.com !!!!

Ok let's try Avast, it's popular, isn't it?

       - ok it's all https, http redirects to https, it could even have HSTS, didn't check.
       - download links to http CNET site ...
       - I have to allow half the World's third party js to get to the download.
       - It's of course http,
       - Manually rewrite it to https (not straightforward, it's behind a redirection), invalid certificate (issued to a248.e.akamai.net instead of software-files-a.cnet.com
       - Its installer is probably loaded with CNET crapware anyway

Downloading Avira worked fine though, I only tried these three. These companies are supposed to be security vendors, this is freaking ridiculous.</comment></comment></comment>


Dreaming of a Parser Generator for Language Design - <AUTHOR> https://blog.adamant-lang.org/2019/dreaming-of-a-parser-generator/ <comment><USER3> Hand-written recursive descent isn't that bad: it isn't that hard to implement, it gives you lots of control over error recovery, you don't have to worry about how ambiguity is handled (well, you deal with it on your own), and you don't have to worry about interfacing with the rest of your compiler/interpreter pipeline. The tradeoff is that you write some more code and parser performance is less optimized. Considering everything else that happens in a modern compiler, parser performance is in the noise anyways.

There are good reasons why most production languages are implemented with hand written parsers. Generators are a bit of a convenience, but come with too many drawbacks.

<comment><USER4> _The tradeoff is that you write some more code and parser performance is less optimized._

Performance _improved_ when GCC switched from a generated to a handwritten parser. Additional techniques like using an operator precedence table/"precedence climbing" as described in the article can reduce the amount of code, make extending it easier, and you still don't have to learn the specific language of a parser generator nor attempt to debug what it's generated.

IMHO parser generators and parsing algorithms in general seem to have gotten a bit to heavy on the academic theory side of things while ignoring practical considerations, which is why recursive descent + precedence climbing became so popular. Big production-quality compilers use it, little toy ones use it, I don't see any drawbacks other than maybe a misguided attempt at academic purity or dogmatism.

<comment><USER5> Also, a recursive descent parser is created by modifying the language specification and so I think one gets a deeper understanding of what language spec "means" than if you just feed a spec into a parser generator - <USER2> grammar's ambiguity can become in the process, for example.

<comment><USER6> My experience is different. I've converted two or three grammars from recursive descent to LR recently. In each case, the recursive descent authors have made surprising mistakes, resolving ambiguities in ways that violate the intended spec. This isn't surprising: you can't, in general, know when you're resolving ambiguities in a recursive descent parser, so mistakes are almost inevitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an excellent survey of many of the issues facing modern parsers.

They correctly point out that error handling is by far the biggest one, and usually ends up being the biggest part of a parser for a language, full of crufts and strange mixtures of semantics and syntax. Add to this that you frequently want to try to partially recover -- make a guess as to what was intended and continue parsing in the hopes of finding more actionable errors later in the code.

I do disagree with a lot of the other conclusions, especially operator precedence, which I've come to believe is generally a bad thing -- associativity can be fine (although even there I'm uncertain), but managing operator precedence is almost always better done by using parentheses.

I like scannerless, but the author makes a lot of good points that I might have to rethink. The analogy to how people read makes some sense, but I'm not sure there's as crisp a line between syntax and semantics as that analogy would imply in natural languages.

Around ambiguity and grammar constraints, I think in the end it's something you have to live with; a complex language with ambiguities or left-recursion is hard for both a machine to parse and for a human to parse, and should be avoided. This also relates to error handling, and, to some degree, error recovery, which is a very nice feature in a language grammar that allows you to generate some AST information (for the purposes of syntax highlighting or LSP features) even on incomplete or partially truncated code. Here I feel that there's a lot of room for languages to include assertions that serve "no value", like semicolon line endings -- one frustration often expressed by the anti-semicolon people is "the compiler can tell me when a semicolon is missing, let's just have the compiler put them in". I feel that this is misguided and interferes with the ideas of being able to continue parsing code with errors in it.

<comment><USER8> > I do disagree with a lot of the other conclusions, especially operator > precedence, which I've come to believe is generally a bad thing -- > associativity can be fine (although even there I'm uncertain), but managing > operator precedence is almost always better done by using parentheses.

This is a very interesting take. I feel like there are many, many situations where relying on operator precedence is not only natural, but will cause the code to become _less_ readable. Look at any language which uses many operators (my go-to would be Haskell) and consider readability of one over the other.

Also what do you mean with associativity here? Associativity, as I know it, just means that (a+b+c) = (a+b)+c = a+(b+c). There's clearly no downside to that, right?

<comment><USER7> Yes, you have associativity right. The question is what kind of price you pay. Allowing a user to type 'a+b+c' seems reasonable and forcing them to write 'a+(b+c)' seems draconian. But what does 'a/b/c' mean? Does your grammar have to have different productions for associative and non-associative binary operators? For general operator support do you have to have productions for every operator, or do you add a little bit of state to your parser outside the grammar to handle the lookback to determine if the same operator is being used? These are ugly decisions to make for the smallish benefit of being able to omit a couple of parentheses. And how often does it really occur outside of heavy numeric computations, which are kind of the minority.

Some APLs go overboard here and just say that everything operates right to left so 2*3+4 is 14. This is super awkward but once you get used to it it's kind of a relief to not have to think about operator precedence. Similarly RPN and Lisp dodge the issue.

In my experience operator precedence causes actual bugs, but associativity rarely does. So despite all this I'm not firmly against associativity, but I'm getting there.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _These are ugly decisions to make for the smallish benefit of being able to > omit a couple of parentheses._

Careful there. We're not talking about one compiler writer and one user. There will be potentially _many_ users. That little benefit of using parentheses will be multiplied across users (and across uses).

Paying a large cost upfront to enjoy small but lasting benefits could very well be worth the cost. (Assuming the benefits are real of course. That would be a separate issue.)

<comment><USER7> Agreed. And the cost is higher than that even; most people who look at code are not the authors of the code, and presenting people with a snippet that looks like `a + (b + c)` seems like it would always be a stumbling block -- "why not `(a + b) + c`? Is there a reason, or did they just type it that way because that's their style?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've created a Parsing Toolkit (for JavaScript) which I believe fulfills 7/10 of the requirements described.

Chevrotain - [https://github.com/SAP/chevrotain](https://github.com/SAP/chevrotain)

The list of features can be found here: \- [https://sap.github.io/chevrotain/docs/features/blazing_fast....](https://sap.github.io/chevrotain/docs/features/blazing_fast.html)

What is interesting imho is that Chevrotain is __not __a Parser Generator __nor __a Parser Combinator. It is a tool that makes it easier to craft hand built recursive decent parsers rather than a whole new level of abstraction.

</comment><comment><USER10> The paper author understates the importance of composability.

> While having a tool that supports combining grammars would be handy, I don't > see it as a must-have. In practice, languages are not combined very often.

That was once true, but not any more. Intermixing of grammars within a single code instance is becoming more normal, and in many cases it is now the norm. The inability to accept this new norm leaves you holding a bag of multiple parsers and a large amount of processing overhead with a loss of flexibility on how to manage the entirety of the code. It is a horrid mess to deal with a collection of unrelated and nested ASTs to represent a single code instance.

> If the languages being combined are radically different, then for the sake > of the programmer, there will probably need to be unambiguous delimiters at > the transitions between the languages.

A faulty assumption that often does not reflect reality.

By focusing on composability first you remove many design barriers that limit or prevent design decisions down the line.

\---

The fault of many parsers, from a design perspective, are a heavy concern for goals outside of parsing, frequently either a compile step or the shape of the AST. A compile operation is completely independent of a parse operation. Once an AST is created a consuming compiler will execute on it. Keep these concerns separate. Don't force your parser to act as a proxy for the limitations of your compiler.

A flexible and well reasoned parser can return an AST is a variety of shapes/formats. It doesn't really matter so long as the data structure is well reasoned and in a way the consuming application understands.

Also performance is not well understood in many cases of parsing, which is probably why parsers are often intermingled with the concerns of compilers. A parse operation takes time. It also takes different unrelated time for a consuming application to consume the AST. The speed with which a parse tree is generated is unrelated to the speed with which it is read. This is why composability is more important the paper gives credit for.

If anybody is interested I am working on addressing some of these concerns at [https://sparser.io/](https://sparser.io/) which is a personal pet project. It doesn't cure cancer or solve world hunger yet (I am just one guy with a job), but the concept does solve some design problems and composability issues associated with parsing.

<comment><USER11> I'm working on a language that embeds Javascript. Javascript syntax makes it quite easy to find the end of a complete block by considering just parens, brackets, braces, strings, and comments. Then I can just pass the string to a JS interpreter. So it's easy to allow

      javascript {
        ...any valid javascript code...
      }

C++ syntax, on the other hand, makes it very hard to delimit a block. For instance, it's hard to guess whether a > is an operator or the end of a template parameter list. And preprocessor macros mean that the entire context of all the includes files before the current point can change what any token means.

I think a good goal for a syntax is to make it easy to delimit blocks without a complete parser. It also makes syntax highlighting practical.

<comment><USER10> JavaScript related languages introduce the same problem. Is the `<` a comparison operator, the start of a type generics segment from something like TypeScript, a markup tag from something like React, or something else? JavaScript alone does not provide the context for that clarity. Boost templates in C++ are similar sort of problem, but there is less variability around boost templates, so they would be easier to discern from the surrounding syntax than the several JavaScript variances.

> I think a good goal for a syntax is to...

I manage a parser supporting many languages, not a language. I don't have the freedom to dictate what a language should look like. Instead my application must have the flexibility to tolerate other peoples' language design decisions, what ever they may be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I developed a small interpretting parser, which you can give a grammar on the input and a file to be parsed. It parsers the grammar (with itself) and parsers the input file according to the grammar specification. No need to run a code generator and a compiler before testing a change in the grammar. It uses a recursive decent back-tracking parser which because it uses memorization, works quite fast.

See [http://github.com/FransFaase/IParse](http://github.com/FransFaase/IParse)

</comment><comment><USER13> Aren't s-expressions all one really needs?

<comment><USER14> After realizing how easy it is to parse sexps, and how complex some language syntax rules have become [1], i've wondered why we tolerate such complexity.

I've realized it's because we are still stuck in a text-file-oriented way of writing programs. We are hand-editing the serialization format of our programs. All of these languages with complex syntax is an attempt to optimize around that use-case.

If we had better tools which allowed us to leave behind text-file-oriented programming, there would be no need for all of this complex syntax.

There would be a few other benefits as well. No one cares whether photoshop .psd files use tabs or spaces, or whether the curly brace should go at end-of- line or next-line, etc.

[1] [https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/parse.y](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/trunk/parse.y)

<comment><USER15> _> After realizing how easy it is to parse sexps_

Why should "easy for the machine" ever be a consideration for software used by humans? Surely "easy for the human" is the metric that matters. The entire point of having computers is so that can do hard things to make our lives easier.

If rich syntax is easier for us to read and feasible for computers to parse, that's the right trade-off.

<comment><USER14> I think the primary drawback of languages with complex syntax is the additional barrier to entry it creates for developers to write more tools for the language. Many more people have started a Scheme interpreter than their own C++ compiler.

If we had better tools, we wouldn't necessarily be limited to just one user- facing syntax for a language. The syntax could simply be a preference in the tools. My point is that as long as we are stuck in text-file-oriented thinking, no one is even thinking about these possibilities.

<comment><USER15> _> Many more people have started a Scheme interpreter than their own C++ compiler._

And yet many more people are writing C++ code. Toolability definitely matters, but the empirical observation is that a relatively small number of tools for complex languages used by a large number of people seems to provide a lot of benefit.

 _> My point is that as long as we are stuck in text-file-oriented thinking, no one is even thinking about these possibilities._

Thousands of people are thinking about this. I've been reading blog posts and manifestos about the death of text-based syntax literally since the 90s.

What I think most of those people overlook is that if you think programmers struggle to write text, you're _really_ underestimating how much they would struggle to layout boxes and lines or do whatever other spatial/visual user experience you have in mind instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Curious if the author could comment on what Menhir is lacking, my estimation is possibly just the concrete syntax trees, though you could definitely emit an AST that has as much of that as you need to do the tasks the author mentions.

<comment><USER17> Author here.

I don't have any direct experience with Menhir because I haven't tried to write a compiler in OCaml yet. It does seem to be one of the better parser generators and is frequently recommended. Skimming the docs, its seems to be lacking in these areas:

      * Concrete syntax trees (as you pointed out)
      * LR(1) will probably still be more restrictive than I want
      * Unicode support (defaults to ocamllex, requires custom code to use ulex)
      * Intransitive Operator Precedence isn't supported (though it does have regular precedence levels and associativity)
      * While it looks to have better error handling than most LR parser generators, I suspect it still isn't where I'd want it to be.

I suspect there are other issues, but I don't want to go any further beyond my knowledge base than I already have. I've been thinking about writing on this topic more, if I do, then I might address this more.

<comment><USER16> Thanks! The new .messages error message mechanism is great, though we'll see if it supports the full brunt of user needs soon enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the reason this happens is that parser generators are probably never (ignoring AGI etc) going to produce code as fast and debugger-friendly as a human being. A really good parser generator might be a good way to "mock up" the design of a language, but for anything that gets used in production, the benefits of hand-rolling your parser will probably always outweigh the costs by a large margin: it's crucial code that affects thousands of projects, so it really should be perfect.

<comment><USER19> I don't think the performance part of your statement is true. There exist techniques for generating extremely efficient LR automata (e.g. [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00267043](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00267043)) where the equivalent handwritten code would be a goto-ridden mess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> yeah, i started working on something to try and address the fact that all of the tools in this space are steaming hot garbage... after struggling to build a new language myself with various and finding it was possible, but the resulting toolchain was terrible and bug-prone.

its a shame given how fantastic llvm is for the backend problem that all of the lexer/parser tools are terrible.

its very easy to produce much better interfaces and errors than ... well... everything i have been able to find including antlr, flex, bison, haskell parser combinator libraries... an afternoon of lazy work without especially strenuous thought is more than enough.

but performance is hard, especially given the appalling quality of the academic literature and example code for the various algorithms. but for proving the point it is not especially important...

its not a great example... its garbage code, but here it is, able to generate itself and all the usual hoo hah... complete with a scheme shat out with it in 2 hours instead of the usual mundane 24...

[https://bitbucket.org/craniumsoftware/cp2/src/c6eb20ce4c05fc...](https://bitbucket.org/craniumsoftware/cp2/src/c6eb20ce4c05fce595337a646ff3a0e1a99167e2/?at=semi%2Fwork)

the parser is awful. i wrote my own totally generic algorithm (can't remember if i solved the left recursion, but its totally do-able) based on conjuring obvious solutions without thinking very much...

i keep thinking it would be nice to take it further, or even to impart the wisdom to those continuing to develop the garbage. if only i had the resources and time...

(generates shitty vs integrations too)

.. no reason this couldn't be extended to remove the c++ and add functionality to describe language features and generate llvm from that.

(oh and naturally the lexer and parser come from the same data, because why make two things where one does a considerably better job and removes a huge source of bugs)

</comment><comment><USER21> Just skimmed it, but using a good parser combinator library sounds like a lot of what the author wants.</comment>


Show HN: GameDate – Dating app linked with local events - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamedateapp.com <comment><USER2> While I was hoping it had something to do with a videogame, it turns out that it was a play off the phrase "gameday." It's an interesting idea, and I think people will have a lot more to work off of if they have a shared experience, the problem is getting them there in the first place.

Personally, I have zero interest in sports and only a tiny fraction of the women I know are interested in sports. As a commenter elsewhere put it, "why would women use this app?" And I mean that in more than the sense that women aren't interested in sports. I think this has the same problems as every other dating app in that the primary burden of filtering for women happens before an in-person meetup. That's the problem that many dating apps try to solve. I think limiting it to the context of events and specifically sports doesn't help with this problem.

I can see in the final screenshot on your iTunes page that the user is given an option to "Buy Tickets." If free tickets is the incentive for one or the other party to attend, I think it will be a tough sell. For women, accepting a drink at a bar from a man is awkward because they have to deal with the man expecting something in return. Imagine if they had to sit next to that man for hours, especially if it turns out that they don't like him. This could be downright dangerous for the woman.

I think there are opportunities where event-based dating could work, for example if there was some way to obscure identities for safety's sake. I think there is opportunity for a first-date-first model, instead of all the messaging back and forth first, but there have to be some safety nets.

</comment><comment><USER3> On Android, mobile Chrome 54 on a weak LTE connection - your site flipped through six high-quality but background-and-functionally-useless stock photos while the rest of the site was trying to load. So all I'm seeing is a gigantic logo and a gigantic button to download from Apple's App Store, which isn't relevant to me as an Android user. The page is still loading, so I don't see any description of your product or why I should use it. This isn't a good way to drive engagement with first-time visitors.

Closed the tab before it finished loading.

<comment><USER4> You didn't miss anything; That is all the site is. Description from the app store:

"GameDate brings like-minded individuals together by creating a first date experience like no other. Our patented technology creates a location based dating application that allows users to search events within a certain mile radius of their location, invite potential dates, interact with the dates to narrow their choice down to one person and through our partnership with ticket exchange network "SeatGeek" purchase tickets to the event. GameDate provides the perfect platform to make sure that everyone's next event is shared with someone special."

<comment><USER5> Why would anyone extroverted enough to use this app decide to use it instead of inviting their existing friends to the event?

I personally don't know anyone who would use this app. Then again, I have very, very few people I would call friends. But, you haven't convinced me, mate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Zero chance I download this based off such a low-information website

</comment><comment><USER7> Just wanted to add some feedback on the design of your site. The typography needs some work. The serif typeface you have used in your tagline and the sans-serif typeface used in your logo don't compliment it each other. If you just want to keep things simple try keep the two in the same family and then play with contrast between the two using weight and size. I understand you've used a typeface for your logo that you may not be able to use for the tagline. In that case look to use something sans-serif and geometric/square to compliment the logo. That leads me to the lack of content explaining what exactly I am looking at. You need to provide more information on the page. The design should be a roadmap of my attention; catch my attention at the logo and the tagline, let that then flow to a brief description and then finally the app-store button. My eyes should move through the page in that order. Currently the size of the app store link and the size and position of the seat geek logo are too large/distracting and compete for my attention.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why would women use this app?

</comment><comment><USER9> I could see this being fun if I was interested in going to a specific event in my area but didn't have anyone to go with and was single. Of course, there is the risk/downside of what happens if it didn't go well but that's a risk for any first date.

</comment><comment><USER10> The UX of [https://www.degiro.eu/](https://www.degiro.eu/) isn't the best, but they have very low fees. I've been investing there (mostly ETFs and some US Stock) for a while and am very happy.

<comment><USER11> Wrong thread?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are you affiliated with SeatGeek? You make it sound like it, but from knowing the company and the kind of products they deliver it doesn't seem likely. That landing page is pretty poorly designed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Every comment is critique, yet this has a lot of upvotes. I don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Button to app store cuts off on Chrome 54.

</comment><comment><USER14> For this kind of app, Android + iOS from day 1 is a must IMO.</comment>


We're building a Google Reader replacement, we'd love your advice. - <AUTHOR>

A bit of background, we're a relatively new digital agency (specializing in the development side of things) based in England, and we've settled upon a Google Reader replacement as our first major project after the simple fact that I didn't find an alternative that I personally liked. Simple, right? Now, we've been working on this for a while - and we're almost ready to open our doors to the public (within the next few days), but before we do so (and possibly have a poor first impression), we'd love to hear what features you'd like to see in a Google Reader replacement.
Anybody who contributes a feasible idea or suggestion will receive a premium account indefinitely, free of charge. And yes, before anybody asks - our primary offering is free (we'll be offering a few premium only features in order to ensure financial stability).
So, any suggestions? You can see a screenshot of our web ui at http://i.imgur.com/vxqhcgO.jpg - and you can sign up for the beta (invites will start going out tomorrow) over at http://yomu.eu/ if you're interested.
<comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
For those interested, our technology stack currently consists of the following.
Backend
node.js (express, socket.io, the usual suspects).
Database
NuoDB (formerly NimbusDB).
Why NuoDB over say MySQL or Mongo? Well, I've personally been working with Nimbus for a while - and I love the damn thing. Performance is great, and the ease of scaling is a major selling point.
Hosting
Self-scaling Amazon EC2 infrastructure.
</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
Applications for Android and iOS are already on the roadmap, and are tentatively scheduled for late July. </comment><comment><USER2> It is challenging to read the description that is on your main page at yomo.eu infront of the background image. Maybe a strong font?

</comment><comment><USER3> DoA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you mind telling me why you think it's dead on arrival?</comment></comment>


Marketing Skills For Startups - <AUTHOR>

I am really interested in working at 20+ person startups. What kind of marketing skills are they looking for? Adwords, SEO, brand development, landing page recs, social media, offline marketing , Marketo, email marketing? Do they look for startup experience or marketing agency experience? <comment><USER2> For lack of a better term (because I hate buzz words)... google "growth hacker" and figure what this means for the company you want to work for and then think about how you can differentiate yourself from other startup marketers. Think outside the box but be realistic.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends on what kind of startup it is, B2B/B2C or an agency. When startups hire a marketer, they/we usually expect you to be jack of all trades and master of everything in marketing. Apart from what you have mentioned, content marketing/creation skills are also a nice to have.

</comment><comment><USER4> Find a business you want to work with.

Analyze their marketing.

Talk to them about their problems.

Offer to help by providing potential solutions.</comment>


Emojis are increasingly coming up in court cases - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/08/tech/emoji-law/index.html <comment><USER2> I would hope any case where the emoji is described rather than shown to a jury would be tossed as a mistrial. Could you imagine the court describing video evidence instead of allowing the jury to review it?

And yes, what to show for the emoji? Which platform's rendering? What about reactions to the message that can be added in some apps?

All in all I weigh emojis very little compared to other possible evidence considering how convoluted this all is.

And of course sending someone a knife emoji is not a threat. A threat requires specifics.

<comment><USER3> Valid point about the rendering: I wonder how often Emoji cross-platform rendering causes confusion. (then such confusion leads to _something_ that is presented in court).

> [https://emojipedia.org/](https://emojipedia.org/)

<comment><USER4> I feel like we're overthinking this. Why not just present the court with renderings that would have been used in all devices in question?

<comment><USER5> I think that's underthinking the issue. It's not just about individual court cases, it's about the dramatic and rapid influence that corporations exert on human-to-human language use. Emoji designs are for-profit investments made by corporations and they are not like normal language.

Corporations are making these emoji and people are using them to communicate. The meanings are ambiguous, never taught in school, tied to profit motives of domestic or foreign corporations, and liable to change at a moment's notice without all parties receiving the same change. It's a mess for future of society and communication, and that it's showing up in court cases with confusion already is a leading indicator that the problems will get worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > For example, the pistol emoji looks like a real gun on some devices and a > water or toy gun on others.

Article mentions the water gun issue but fails to note that it also _changed_ on the platforms. Open the message one day and see a picture of a real gun, open it the next and see a picture of a toy water gun.

<comment><USER6> Or even that it changes depending upon the container it's displayed within

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > No court guidelines exist on how to approach the topic.

That seems odd. If I send a hand-drawn picture of a knife to someone, I'm pretty sure that would be entered as evidence. Why would a text message with the knife emoji be any different?

</comment><comment><USER8> For those who are interested in this type of subject matter, I can highly recommend Eric Goldman's blog (the primary source for this article), at [https://blog.ericgoldman.org/](https://blog.ericgoldman.org/)

Goldman was one of the first "internet lawyers" in Silicon Valley in the 90s, and his blog is a treasure trove of interesting recent court cases on marketing and the internet.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if there's any public court transcripts where they've put a Unicode expert on the witness stand to explain, in layman terms, what an emoji really is.

</comment><comment><USER10> :-)

<comment><USER5> Do you mean U+1F604? (HN won't render emoji) [https://emojipedia.org/smiling- face-with-open-mouth-and-smil...](https://emojipedia.org/smiling-face-with- open-mouth-and-smiling-eyes/)

:-) has nearly none of the issues that the emojis have, as it is static, displays nearly the same on all devices, and is not corporate-controlled.

<comment><USER11> How is U+1F604 corporate-controlled?

<comment><USER12> Corporations control how it's rendered. Can change the glyph around as they see fit. Famously done with the gun emoji.

<comment><USER11> I agree with you on the gun emoji thing, that was gloriously retarded. But all in all, you can always choose an open source rendering of the glyph.

<comment><USER13> I think the point is you can't have the people you're sending the emoji to to use your open source rendering of choice. That's how it's corporate controlled. In contrast, corporations don't have as much choice in how plaintext glyphs render, without making them potentially unrecognizable.

<comment><USER14> Couldn't they just make their font have a ligature so that :-) turns into whatever they want? That's how some programming fonts make stuff like -> or != look different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How about animated gifs?

<comment><USER16> Or memes... banned memes!</comment></comment>


What Storehouse for iPhone Teaches Us About the Future of Mobile Design - <AUTHOR> http://blog.do.com/post/97755610464/what-storehouse-for-iphone-teaches-us-about-the-future

<comment><USER2> Author here. Curious what others have learned from the latest iOS8 apps!</comment>


Ask HN: 39, Multiple Failed Startups - <AUTHOR> I'm turning to HN for some guidance, support, and new perspective. Are you a bootstrapped founder?
TLDR - spent last 10 years building several bootstrapped startups. I poured everything in, sacrificed it all, obtaining valuable skills and life lessons, but all businesses succumbed and eventually went to zero.
Most close friends work @ startups with cushy salaries. Other founder friends raised venture, acqu-hired, or had an exit. Most of them come from privilege homes w/ family backup support. i don't.  They don't share my enthusiasm and think I should quit, get a job. Any job.
I'm the only one bootstrapping without a previous exit and privilege family support...and now 1 year away from 40. I've been living ramen lifestyle for most of my 30s and running low on $. I'm still eager to build, to get back up, but the mental battles are immense. Alternating between hope, perseverance, and great sadness, pressure, defeat, and frustration.
Applied for multiple mktg/product jobs. Told I was too senior or entrepreneurial, or another candidate had more applicable experience.
I'm at a cross roads. Should I continue battling in the bootstrapped trenches? When talking with potential employers or even loose discussions with investors, I feel like a dinosaur and far removed from the "what have you done recently"
Are there any other bootstrapped founders in 40s here? How did you manage? Any wise words <comment><USER2> I smell a burnout, not a small one, but a late-stage one.

I am 48, working on my own bootstrapped projects for 20 years. They are profitable and pay my rent, some travel. Life is good, but I am far from rich.

A few years ago I started to worry about the future because it is getting harder to build something successful and I am not sure this lifestyle will still work in the future. Next step was losing the fun on programming. Something like a burnout started. But I still marched on hoping the next project would not just be ok but a winner. It didn't happen but I had a heart attack and my private life started to deteriorate.

Now I am doing nothing and try to learn stuff which doesn't have to do anything with computers. In hindsight, I think it would have been better to do this when I lost fun programming.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am in the same position except 7 years earlier and on my first bootstrapped startup. Any general advice to your younger self?

Funnily enough there's another thread on HN for someone about to embark on this journey: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23475890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23475890)

</comment><comment><USER4> > Alternating between hope, perseverance, and great sadness, pressure, defeat, > and frustration

Sounds like the typical startup emotional rollercoaster. All I can say is, don't neglect your mental health for too long.

Don't fret too much if you end up taking a job for a while. Treat it as if you are recharging your financial and mental battery before trying at another start up.

</comment><comment><USER5> i'm 48 and have run 2 startups over the past 25 years...it can be an intense roller coaster of a journey and i empathize with your struggle. May you find what you are seeking and may you find balance between your mental health and entrepreneurial goals. None of this is easy nor guaranteed. Having a steady income, safety-fund, and building towards retirement certainly is a safe and worthy path. So is following your dreams and working towards 'creating' something profitable or impactful. Hope you can find both;

</comment><comment><USER6> That's very inspiring. Could you share what you've built?</comment>


The Inner Guts of Bitbucket [video] - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bitbucket.org/2014/08/11/the-inner-guts-of-bitbucket/

<comment><USER2> Interesting at their scale, they haven't needed to shard PostgreSQL. +1 for PostgreSQL.

Also, would be super curious to see and hear more about their patch to SSHD to allow it to read from a database instead of disk. This would be super useful for us as well ([https://commando.io](https://commando.io)).

Lastly, it was really interesting that switching to bcrypt took their servers down, and they were forced to write a custom sha1 to bcrypt cache. One solution would be to not hash (bcrypt) API tokens, but instead just encrypt them and store in PostgreSQL. The side benefit of this, is users could view their API tokens again if needed.

Obviously it is less secure, but Stripe for example allows you to view your API tokens, and thus they are not hashing them.

<comment><USER3> > would be super curious to see and hear more about their patch to SSHD

It's based on this patch: [https://github.com/wuputahllc/openssh-for- git](https://github.com/wuputahllc/openssh-for-git)

<comment><USER4> Note that since openssh 6.2 you can plug in to sshd for the keys without patching it with the AuthorizedKeysCommand , and there's several utilities around for pulling the authorized keys from LDAP or similar services.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, this doesn't scale, as with the AuthorizedKeysCommand, you are required to output all the keys for that user on stdout. Outputing all of the "git" user's authorized keys lines would be an extremely expensive operation.

From the sshd_config man page: "Specifies a program to be used for lookup of the user's public keys. The program will be invoked with its first argument the name of the user being authorized, and should produce on standard output AuthorizedKeys lines"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Random tidbit I learned at Atlassian Road Trip NYC last night: apparently Stash is written in Java instead of Python, and BitBucket and Stash are developed semi-independently.

</comment><comment><USER7> From last time around:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8165745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8165745)</comment>


Dear Github, your search input frustrates me - <AUTHOR>

First of all I'd like to thank you for the awesome work you continuously do on github.com. I am a very happy customer since 2008. It feels that every move you have made was just the one to do at a perfect timing.
The only one move you did that I still do not understand is when you redesigned the search input. Every single time I search for a project I forget to change the drop-down who tell to choose between the current repository or all Github's ones. When I browse github.com 99% of the time I'm on a project's page so every time I have to do deal with this drop-down when it comes to search. It confuses me because the search is not nested into the project page, but it's part of the main Github menu. And everything belongings to the main menu make me think that it will do a global search.
So I would prefer two separate inputs: one for the main search and one for the current repository. I understand it takes some extra space, but I don't mind scrolling a few pixels more comparing to the frustration it is to do one extra useless search every single time I search for a project.
Octokisses, <comment><USER2> I've had to train myself to use the URL bar instead. I have a 'gh' search keyword pointing to [http://github.com/search?q=%s](http://github.com/search?q=%s)

</comment><comment><USER3> I make the mistake all the time too, but I think you would get a better response from sending them a message at email@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also frustrating that you have to tell it whether you're searching for the name of a repo or a person.</comment>