Things Political Scientists Know (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://faculty.georgetown.edu/hcn4/Downloads/Noel_Forum.PDF

<comment><USER2> _" Is the Tea Party a "real" movement, or is it "astroturf"? The speed at which this debate is bouncing around partisan circles is shocking, considering how silly the question is. If a movement is astroturf if some outside force is organizing it, then all movements are astroturf."_

This seems like a non-sequitur. Grassroots vs astroturf movements differ based on what's in the best self-interest of the majority of it's members. Or in some cases, astroturf means they actually have no members - only PR specialists bombarding politicians and newspapers with letters from supposedly "real people".

<comment><USER3> > Grassroots vs astroturf movements differ based on what's in the best self- > interest of the majority of it's members.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. It _sounds_ like you plan to calculate the "best self-interest" of members of a group, and then distinguish by whether the group's aims appear to further the result of your assessment. Is that right?

<comment><USER2> The article is probably right about it being difficult to define what is in the best interests of a large group, but it seems pretty obvious that civil- rights movements are by definition in the best self-interest of the majority of their members. (Think the women's suffrage movement of the early 1900's, the racial equality movement in the 1960s, or the current marriage rights movement for LGBT couples.)

The Tea Party seems a little harder to tell. Some are obviously in it for fiscal self-interest (upper and middle class people that want lower taxes). However, there are some in the Tea Party because they fear government intervention even though they obviously benefit from Social Security, Medicare, etc. (At least some of that is caused by fear mongering and twisted truths from Tea Party leaders.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" People would probably be better off if they knew more than they do about a lot of things (or at least, I am assuming so, though there is research on this sort of thing). Politics might, however, be the last thing on that list... and yet, politics is the one area in which we get irritated when other people are apathetic or ignorant."_

In America, anyway -- I don't know about other democratic countries -- this is so true. And as an apathetic person, let me say that it's _so_ satisfying to hear a voice in political science say it.

People seem to have this superstitious obsession with the democratic ritual. The act of filling in a circle in a ballot box is so important to them that they just cannot accept the fact that someone would choose not to participate.

This way of thinking makes less sense to me than someone who's fanatic about a sports team. If you tell a fan of a football team that you don't watch football, at least he'll respect this about you. Try telling some party activist that you don't vote and see if they ever let it go.

Edit: my post is being downvoted to oblivion anyway, but removed some hyperbolic language that wasn't helping my case.

<comment><USER5> Are you apathetic to: \- whether your fellow countrymen go to war? \- who gets to marry? \- abortion rights?

If you are, then that's your right, but please don't act surprised when people who care about these things get irritated.

<comment><USER6> here's what bothers me about this

as a voter I such a microscopically small degree of contol of any of those questions (functionally 0), that they don't seem productive to even care about

if I care about them, then I have to get upset when things don't go my way, I have to either get into arguments with people I know or actively try to avoid arguments

where is the net positive?

<comment><USER7> I mean, if you care more about not arguing with your relatives than you do that the CIA abducted and tortured people, then you have little incentive to engage with the wider political process.

Of course, most people think that the US government abducting foreign nationals and torturing them at black sites is a considerably bigger problem than their mother-in-law being grumpy at them for a couple days, and want to do something about it.

<comment><USER6> how do my in-laws being grumpy help foreign nationals tortured by the CIA?

how has that made the world a better place? other than now I feel vaguely superior to my in-laws "who just don't get it"

<comment><USER7> If one person in every family made their in-laws grumpy about the CIA torture scandal, then the entire nation would (at least once, over the course of months/a year) have an actual discussion about the situation. That discussion then goes on to inform their views on various topics, including who they should vote for in the next election.

Government officials, at the end of the day, are chosen because the circles get filled in on ballots, and the circles get filled in from a choice made on the aggregate of our experiences, including discussions with friends and family.

The difference is that if we talk about it, even if it makes people uncomfortable, then the nation discusses these issues and takes them in to account when voting. If we don't, then the nation doesn't.

The rate at which pissed off people bother their family members about what they're pissed off about directly influences the course of national politics, even if the particular result of any particular discussion is some pissed off in-laws and a small percentage chance a bubble gets filled out differently in a few months.

<comment><USER8> > If one person in every family made their in-laws grumpy about the CIA > torture scandal, then the entire nation would (at least once, over the > course of months/a year) have an actual discussion about the situation. That > discussion then goes on to inform their views on various topics, including > who they should vote for in the next election.

Only in fantasy land.

The problem?

Nobody ever actually has a rational discussion or becomes informed about anything. Just shouting matches and insults get thrown around, nothing ever gets accomplished. Everyone now hates each other. You aren't going to change someone's deeply held beliefs even if those beliefs are based on complete and total lies.

The backfire effect.

[http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire- effect/](http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/)

The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.

The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

[http://www.skepdic.com/backfireeffect.html](http://www.skepdic.com/backfireeffect.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And the clickbait-title virus contaminates academic papers.

</comment><comment><USER10> According to game theory in a two party system the two candidates will tend to converge in the middle (assuming single issue distribution).

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll just wait for the buzzfeed version.

</comment><comment><USER12> This seems to me as a "standard" intelectual-elitist paper which tries to insinuate that democracy, where people really decide the issues, cannot work. I haven't read it very deeply but the fact that he quotes Walter Lippmann says that lot.

Also, I think he misrepresents Arrow's theorem. First of all, it applies only to ordering of preferences; if you allow preferences to be number from interval, such as range voting does, there is no problem. Second, the non- dictatorship criterion is a bit disingenuous, because who is dictator depends on their own preferences - just like majority vote is not "dictatorship of the majority".

<comment><USER13> I gotta say, I'm impressed by how you've turned "intelectual" into a pejorative.

<comment><USER12> I really didn't - I wrote "intelectual-elitist". It's their choice to have disgusting opinions. Perhaps I am too cynical, I have been reading too much Chomsky lately. :-)

Edit: Let me give you a Chomsky quote:

"Actually, I should say, the term "manufacturing consent" is not mine, I took it from Walter Lippmann, the leading public intellectual and leading media figure of the twentieth century, who thought it was a great idea. He said we should manufacture consent, that's the way democracies should work. There should be a small group of powerful people, and the rest of the population should be spectators, and you should force them to consent by controlling, regimenting their minds. That's the leading idea of democratic theorists, and the public relations industry and so on, so I'm not making it up. In fact, I'm just borrowing their conception, and telling other people what they think."

This is what the paper appears to be advocating, as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Does React Native that good? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sochix.ru/does-react-native-that-good/ <comment><USER2> To be fair though, it's not even at 1.0</comment>


Twelve Demonstrated Ways to Significantly Extend Maximum Mouse Life Span - <AUTHOR> http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/08/a-list-of-interesting-longevity-enhancement-methods-in-mice.php

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=reasonattlm></comment>


Show HN: I quit my job to help communities fund energy efficiency upgrades - <AUTHOR> http://www.sparkfund.co/ <comment><USER2> For two years I ran a company called Building Hero (www.buildinghero.com) that marketed and financed LED lighting retrofits to commercial locations in New York City and San Francisco.

Here are a few things to consider when wading into energy efficiency finance:

1\. Returns to energy efficiency upgrades accrue out of negative cashflow (money not spent), which means its hard/impossible to put a legal "box" around the financial returns to the project, contra solar investments, where there is a meter and it's usually possible to slice and dice who gets what.

2\. Energy efficiency upgrades also pose a problem with respect to collateral. In our case, although we had the right to take back our LED lamps, the value of what we got back, even in the best case, would have been negligible. Most EE upgrades are even less inviting as collateral, like insulation or HVAC upgrades.

3\. There are simpler, but more balkanized (i.e., different not only from state to state, but even utility to utility, or city to city) financial incentives for energy efficiency upgrades. This poses a challenge for finance as a differentiator for energy efficiency. Simpler incentives mean the value of a third-party financier who abstracts away these problems is less valuable; and more balkanized incentives mean that is harder in any case for a third- party to offer solutions that scale geographically. Again, contra solar, where the federal tax incentives mean that it's almost necessary for a third-party with tax equity appetite to finance a portion of the investment, and since it's at the federal level it scales across the US.

My advice would be to do some careful thinking about how and why your financial offerings are better than what you could do financing them on a credit card or through a normal bank loan.

In addition, I would put some serious thought into whether or not finance is the true barrier for energy efficiency projects. Again unlike solar, these things are inside the home/office/whatever, not outside, so bring up aesthetic concerns as well as comfort concerns. Other things, like HVAC systems, are usually replaced when they break.

Anyway, I hope this is useful and that you get a lot of projects done!

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems very interesting. At my company (WegoWise) we've been working for the last 4 years to help solve some of the fundamental information problems that result in inefficient buildings. Most folks aren't aware of how drastically energy efficiency can save money for building owners and improve the built environment. It isn't unusual, for example, for one apartment building in a development to consume 4x in utilities per square foot as the other similar buildings around it, without the owner of the buildings even realizing it (despite the fact that they're paying the bills).

We've made excellent progress in this space, but better financing mechanisms for energy efficiency are still required as a next step. Even though the returns can be huge, building owners still need to get money to invest, and utility programs can't keep pace with the level of demand.

I'm excited to see how this effort progresses. Solar has been taking off in the US largely because of better financing mechanisms, and I think there's ample opportunity for the same thing to happen in the efficiency sector.

I'd love to chat with you about what you're doing at Spark, as I suspect there could be some areas for collaboration. (My contact info is in my profile.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Do investors have to reside in the US? If so, please state this clearly on your sign-up page rather than ambiguously (by only allowing the input of US addresses).

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately for now you do have to be a US resident due to SEC regulations.

I'll definitely add something to make that clear. Thanks for the suggestion!

<comment> a-priori I don't know what I'm talking about, but it may be possible for Canadian and Mexican investors to participate due to NAFTA. I understand there's something in there about investment.

Something to look into anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be awesome!

I'll definitely have the more legalese fluent members of our team check it out.

<comment> a-priori Cool. I fully expect that their response will be "haha that a-priori dude is an idiot".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was just in a budget meeting for the local (Portland, OR) transportation department and asked them if they knew whether when an individual switches from a car to a bike, how much does that impact their budget? They didn't really have an answer. Maybe someone reading this does?

I feel like if you had an answer, you'd be able to use it to drive financing in much the same way this startup is. Very cool stuff, monetizing the "green dividend".

Link to paper by Joe Cortright where I got that term [http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2009/09/pdxgreendividen...](http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2009/09/pdxgreendividend.pdf)

<comment><USER6> [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/18/get-rich-with- bike...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/18/get-rich-with-bikes/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really, really cool and equally impressive. I can't imagine the amount of legwork that was involved with legislation and groundwork getting all parties involved interested.

I don't see it stated anywhere so I'm assuming you are running this as a for- profit? Are you going to disclose your take?

<comment><USER8> Thanks! We're incredibly excited to be in full launch mode, and can't wait to have our beta platform and pilot projects available over the coming months.

We are a for-profit, and believe that building a strong, scalable financial model is what it takes to transform a sector and fix what we see as a market that is structurally underserved by credit markets (small and medium scale energy efficiency projects).

We will be disclosing Spark's take through the investor disclosure documents. Each project will include a detail prospectus for each project that will lay out credit risk decisions, upfront schedule of lease repayments and investor yield (the delta of which is Spark's revenue).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What kind of legal arrangements are being used here?

Does the person/company who borrows money legally owe this debt to the investors? And which government bodies regulate these transactions?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's all regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. So we're actually selling securities of the debt owed to us by the borrower to the crowd investors.

A lot of the work we've done over the past year is navigating the regulatory labyrinth required to offer securities to 'non-accredited' investors. (i.e. everyone who doesn't have a million bucks in the bank)

<comment><USER9> Wow, I'm impressed. Before you replied, I would have guessed you found a loophole to avoid SEC regulation.

I haven't read enough to judge how beneficial the particular loans you broker are, but I think that just showing that it's possible to crowdsource investment this way is a great achievement.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've worked really hard to make sure it's a significant benefit to everyone involved. Investors can expected yields between 4-10% with durations between 1-10 years. While borrows save money even in month 1. They only pay back a portion of the savings they earn from their reduced energy bill. In as little as 1 year they'll be keeping all the savings.

<comment><USER10> What if the pricing tiers for energy change, and reduce the savings (either by reducing the cost for the original configuration more than the new one, or increasing the cost for the new configuration more than the old one)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Changes in utility rates (both in absolute terms and in pricing tiers) are always a risk to the performance of energy efficiency upgrades. Spark leases are designed with a shared savings "buffer" to protect against this and other changes to expected savings. For any Spark lease, monthly repayments are set to between 95% and 60% of the savings that the upgrade is expected to achieve, allowing the customer to absorb some reduction in savings while remaining cash flow positive.

Structurally, Spark leases and our payouts to investors are not affected by changing prices or fluctuations in savings unless it results in default. Our leases are designed to be cash flow positive in all but the most unexpectedly poor performance scenarios, and we vet the methodologies used by our contractor partners to ensure that savings estimates adhere to accepted standards. Spark lease terms are also relatively short, with terms that typically fall in the 3-6 year range, reducing the risk of major shifts in utility prices during that time. Ultimately, however, a Spark lease is not a guarantee of performance, and the lease still requires repayment even if performance lags in a given month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Goes hand in hand with new government requirements (in NYC, for example) to increase building efficiency!

[http://www.nyc.gov/html/gbee/html/home/home.shtml](http://www.nyc.gov/html/gbee/html/home/home.shtml)

<comment><AUTHOR> exactly!

We're really excited to start launching projects in the NYC area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really fascinating and sounds kind of groundbreaking, but I don't know the space. Is crowdsourcing investment in a community's infrastructure of any sort, not just efficiency, something that has been done before to date? I can't help but think this is a powerful model for funding poor communities with roads, plumbing, telecommunications etc

<comment><USER8> Great question! Spark is the first of it's kind in terms of enabling individual investors to invest directly in energy efficiency projects.

However, we're following in the inspiring footsteps of some incredible companies in the cleantech crowd investment sector, particularly Solar Mosaic (joinmosaic.com) and SunFunder (sunfunder.com)

There are also some great teams working on impact focused energy efficiency investments offered to accredited impact investors, including one of our favorite companies, Bloc Power (blocpower.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How involved is spark in the spending of the funds?

Do you just give the businesses the money and say buy efficient products or are you all more hands on?

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually partner with installers all over the country. More often than not they already have projects waiting to go, the only missing piece has been the financing. That said, if a borrower contacts us directly we can certainly point them in the right direction to get help determining which upgrades are best for them.

We also pay the installers directly. So there's no chance of funds 'accidentally' being spent on something not related to energy efficiency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What are the kinds of projects you can invest in? How are you planning on getting competitive returns?

<comment><USER8> Spark's upcoming beta platform will focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, primarily building retrofits like LED upgrades, HVAC, boilers, water efficiency, building automation systems, heat pumps, etc. We're targeting projects in small businesses, community organizations like churches, charter schools and non-profits, and mid-scale commercial and industrial facilities.

Luckily, efficiency projects with three to five year paybacks are generating significant current year cashflow through avoided energy or resource costs, meaning Spark can offer solid returns and short tenor notes, lowering temporal risk to our investors. Specifically, we generate returns for our investors based on the revenue we receive from lease payments made by the project recipient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Whats the approximate return you expect investors to receive ?

<comment><USER8> We're building our project pipeline to be able to offer efficiency note with 2 to 5 year tenors (durations) and interest rates between 5% and 10%, depending on the credit risk and payback period of the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks awesome! New approach to help build communities!

</comment><comment><USER17> How can people help your new enterprise?

<comment><AUTHOR> Spreading the word is hugely helpful - like us on Facebook(facebook.com/sparkfund), follow up on twitter(@sparkFunder), share our URL on Reddit and any other aggregator sites you enjoy. Every signup we get on our site is validation that there are folks out there who are interested in this kind of investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The link is 404'ing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I goofed on an AWS update - should be fine now. Whoops!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks really cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Taking on Too Many Projects? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
So I'm one of those people who loves to join a great project or be involved in what I think will be a success.
But I already have a full time job and a part time blogging job, in addition to trying tofinish a major project (a fiction novel).  A few weeks ago, I joined up with another start-up as a contractor for web-related work, and my work's been adequate, but nowhere near what I could do if I had full bandwidth.  I find myself dragging my feet because, perhaps I'm just working too much.
When is a project one too many?  Should I be more focused ona few specific things, or are there things you do to make sure you put 100% in all of your projects?
- Ben <comment><USER2> If you have 6 one month projects, you could either deliver all at the end of six months, or concentrate on one at a time. The total work is the same, but the average delivery is earlier. And you alleviate the risk of never actually delivering anything.

Your job you probably need to keep. Can you split up the novel, the contracting etc into projects & features and tasks - deliverables - in those? Rather than spending a few hours on one, then a few hours on another, just focus on one project or feature at a time and keep going till you deliver it.

</comment><comment><USER3> " _When is a project one too many?_ "

when you feel the other projects you do are suffering because of the latest project you just took on. you don't want, for one reason or another, one project to ruin some/all of the others. in your case, this sounds like what might be happening.

</comment><comment><USER4> As long as the new stuff displaces less important and interesting projects, don't worry about it.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommend a short fiction book - <AUTHOR> I realized I can rarely finish long fiction books, so I started reading only those with less than 200 pages and it's been working great for me. So far I've read:<p>- The old man and the sea (E. Hemingway) - The stranger (A. Camus) - Siddhartha (H. Hesse)<p>Any recommendations? <comment><USER4> A Month in the Country. A WW I vet takes a job in a small English village restoring an old mural in a church -- it has been covered with paint for 400 years. The mural itself plays a role in the story, but it's mostly about the vet meeting and getting to feel at home among the locals.

</comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like you need a fourth language there, perhaps something from Russian, Italian or Spanish literature. Unfortunately, everything I think of has too many pages.

<comment><USER5> There might be an edition of "Fathers and sons" that comes in under 200 pages. It's one of the shortest Russian novels I've read.

From English literature: "Animal farm", "Three men in a boat".

Try some stories by Jorge Luis Borges, perhaps, such as "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Short stories by Haruki Murakami - The Elephant Vanishes

Waiting for Godot (play) - <USER2>

Neuromancer - <USER3>

</comment><comment><USER7> The Pat Hobby Stories - F. Scott Fitzgerald</comment>


George Hotz Presents Comma Neo - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM2_E2y4eCg <comment><USER2> So let me get this straight. After 3mn bucks of funding and a few vanity demo's on techcrunch and this the output is a DIY 3D printed with a 120mhz microcontroller that you solder together? Are you fucking kidding me?

A opensource file that cannot drive on El Camino? Clearly The investors are very disappointed and pushed to see some material traction which is a DIY kit akin to the ones sold at hobby shops.

Sorry but calling Musk out publicly and claiming you are going to destroy Tesla is easy and clearly easier said than done and nothing more than attention grabbing stunts.

Hotz - you realized building something real is not easy as talking out loud with your mouth full? Next time swallow the food before you talk buddy and take a little taste of humble pie because a year in and a DIY kit as milestone is joke.

<comment><USER3> I agree with all the arrogant part but calling it a joke is probably too early. Self-driving is a very hard problem and expecting miracles is just too much to ask.

<comment><USER2> Agree - perhaps joke is a bit over the top... however its a DIY kit at best a project many accomplished graduate or these days undergrad teams could produce within months especially at leading institutions, berkley, stanford, etc.

I guess my "joke" comment was from the perspective of investors putting in upwards of 3mn angel round.

<comment><USER3> I think a better metric to look at could be how much of the 3m has been burnt to produce this. Factoring that in would be a more saner approach to evaluating.

But more importantly I am just happy about the fact that somebody who believes in open-source is taking up the project. Self-driving cars are a distant future and can only be accelerated when a lot of eyes see what is happening. OpenAI is most likely the product of the same ideology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Guess that answers that question, binary blobs in their "open source" for the foreseeable future. :(</comment>


Ask HN: How long until mfgs ship laptops without the CPU bug? - <AUTHOR> Was going to buy a new MacBook today then realized I probably should wait... so: how long until we see a non-software fix available in consumer machines? <comment><USER2> I don't think there's any way to know; it could be a month or it could be two years.</comment>


MIT Startup Aims to Make Data Centers Efficient with Power Conversion Tech - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/07/29/mit-startup-aims-to-drastically-improve-the-energy-efficiencies-of-big-data-centers/

<comment><USER2> I'd like some more details; they must be doing something very novel if they are eliminating the inductor. If you just build a traditional switching converter with a capacitor instead of an inductor, you end up with less than 50% efficiency.

<comment><USER3> Their apparent patent: <http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=_wPKAAAAEBAJ>

It appears to be a switched capacitor front end for a conventional inductor- based converter. The special sauce appears to be that the design requirements for the back end converter are relaxed if its voltage varies over a smaller range.

Efficiency can be much higher than 50% if the capacitors are only lightly discharged during a cycle. However under high load that means fast switching, which means high capacitive losses in the switch transistors. A hybrid approach might be a big win for small systems (cell phones) that spend most of their time asleep, and it could save cost and circuit board area over a complicated SEPIC converter.

Their elevator pitch: <http://www.thebusinessmakers.com/index.php?id=2761>

Ouch. Data centers are _not_ small systems that spend most of their time asleep. My gut feel is that even the static current draw from a big CPU and its DRAMs is well outside the sweet spot of this technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is really light on detail. A quick search of DSpace, MIT's paper/thesis repository, brings up the following paper from Giuliano in 2009:

"Fully monolithic cellular buck converter design for 3-D power delivery" <http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/61350>

It's not clear that it's what they're trying to productize, but it's likely at least related.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the roadmaps to becoming a kernel dev or Security analyst? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I can speak only for kernel development part of question. Assuming your question is about Linux kernel -

1\. You must have good systems understanding, and I assume you already know basic computer organization/architecture. Read Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development to begin with.

2\. Start dabbling with small device drivers. Use Linux Driver Development, or other such books.

3\. Pick a small subsystem within Linux (say, a specific driver, or filesystem, or PCI, etc) and start reading it's mailing list like a religion. Initially, it wont make sense but keep pushing - whatever you don't understand, read about it, find it's code, ask questions (usually on IRC, avoid mailing list for asking introductory questions).

There are many resources these days about kernel in general and not necessarily Linux kernel. You can read/use those. Best way, as with any other field, is to get involved - either by getting into a kernel dev team or taking up a small project.

Be aware that unlike other domains, in kernel development, significant time is spent in learning/understanding underlying system (hardware, system architecture, etc) and amount of code written in comparison to learning, is very less. Also, a decade ago, kernel team was considered as elite team in company. These days they are just sustenance team in most companies (exception may be Intel, AMD, 1 or 2 teams in Google/FB/Apple and few other companies). Also, I feel being kernel domain reduces your scope in corporate world (it's a separate topic). However, kernel devs are still quite paid well due to shortage of expertise in this domain.

For Security analyst, just like kernel dev, one needs to understand system very well. Having good grasp of system, underlying architecture in hardware or in memory, does help significantly but I dont think kernel development background is necessary.

<comment><USER3> Also, very few people are _only_ kernel devs. Usually you can be an advanced systems programmer and ease your way into creating kernel features or fixing bugs as you need. The market for people who can do that is large and desperate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Without more information about you it's hard to really say. As an example - what are you interested in? Do you like hardware?

I got in to kernel development by basically being the only person willing to do it when it was needed. But I'd already done a heap of kernel work as side projects, and was already working as an embedded developer.

I know some people get in to security by breaking systems, but I don't know enough to say any more.

</comment><comment><USER5> Those have very different skill domains, workdays, future trajectories.

</comment><comment><USER6> Are you sure you know what a Security Analyst does? Few things in IT are as different as those two roles.

For one you need minimal communication and interpersonal skills as a ker el dev,it's the opposite as a Security Analyst.

Security Analysts do different things based on the company. This can include SOC work,vulnerability management,incident response and threat hunting. It all depends on the size and scope of the security departments.

Let me give you two analysts at different companies for an example:

Bob spends 40% of his time responding to SIEM events which include IDS alerts,firewall alerts,AV and endpoint ATP solution detections as well as suspect windows or linux system events. He knows some malware and network traffic analysis to do his job but most importantly he understands the various paid and free tools needed to do his event analysis work. 30% of his time is spent on reviewing suspect phishing emails and reported security issues. The rest of his time is down time or he processes and documents indicators of compromise for known current threats. He does little to no coding. The security department is well resourced and matured so he does not need to manage vulns, do incident response or other pesky tasks.

Enter Analyst 2,Alice. Alice also handles some SIEM events but maybe 20% of her time. The company is either too small or has too much of an immature security department to have 24/7 monitoring,they either outsource SIEM monitoring to a MSP and only look at confirmed true positives or they just don't see enough SIEM events to care for 24/7 human eyes. Alice attends a lot of meetings with security vendors and internal teams. She works on various projects but also handles threat intelligence,vulnerability scans and incident response which all takes up 70% of her time. Phishing emails,threat intel and hunting are all done on left over time. Alice might do coding but only as a last resort.

These are just very vague examples but even if you work for a security vendor,the work in some shape or form involves these types of tasks. Now, A dedicated malware analyst for a security company can reverse engineer malware all he wants and do write ups. A security engineer might do sysadmin-ish work and integration coding. A pentester or red teamer might do presentations and occasionally pentest but these are not typically described as a "Security Analyst" roles,they are more or less infosec roles one gets after getting their feet wet elsewhere in infosec(Like with alice and bob).

To answer your question: there are generally two paths you can take. The traditional path, where your passion for infosec and a well rounded IT experience is valued above all else or the latest trend which is to recruit people with a formal infosec degree. Either way works at least for now. If you have any kind of a technology degree you're fine,else one never hurts.

A few years of working in IT ops is generally recommended before an infosec role.This isn't because you can't learn stuff in a lab but having context around events and knowing how IT is operated is very important for analyzing a security event or when responding to an incident.

I went on longer than I should have but I figured someone else might read this and find it helpful.

Helpful links:

Att&Ck framework: [https://attack.mitre.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://attack.mitre.org/wiki/Main_Page)

NIST pubs (there are a few more out there if you care to duckduckgo): [https://www.nist.gov/publications/computer-security- incident...](https://www.nist.gov/publications/computer-security-incident- handling-guide)

[https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-40/version-...](https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-40/version-20/archive/2005-11-16)

Traffic analysis excercises:

[http://malware-traffic-analysis.net/training-exercises.html](http://malware- traffic-analysis.net/training-exercises.html)

A good awesome list that does a good job of what I'd say a security anaylst needs to know;

[https://github.com/0x4D31/awesome-threat- detection/blob/mast...](https://github.com/0x4D31/awesome-threat- detection/blob/master/README.md)

Others here can probably answer the kernel dev part better than myself. Although,the Linux kernel newbies(janitors) site and mailing list might be a good place to start asking. I liked the linux device drivers book as well([http://www.makelinux.net/ldd3/](http://www.makelinux.net/ldd3/))

Last word - evaluate your life goals carefully and rationally. Happiness isn't everything. It's nice to pursue what makes you happy and passionate now but finances,responsibilities and other life factors should be considered. I am not saying this as a discouragement but as a practical advice. The person who loves tearing apart malware or writing a kernel patch on his free time might some day start thinking family time and time spent taking care of one's self is more desirable and this might conflict with career goals and make hiring managers think "Oh,he doesn't have a malware analysis lab at home and I don't see him posting malware write-ups done on free time. He/She doesn't have passion for the work." \-- tangentially, maybe this is why you don't see as many women in infosec as other IT sectors? Might get me downvotes but like it or not, women who choose to have a family have a harder time "Breathing,eating and drinking security" (or as I say, maintain an unhealthy work-life balance that benefits employers)

Hope I helped.

</comment><comment><USER7> Linux Device Driver, by O'Reilly</comment>


U.S. Supreme Court to Review Whether Lawsuit Accusing of App Store Monopoly - sahin-boydas https://www.macrumors.com/2018/06/18/supreme-court-to-review-app-store-monopoly-suit/ <comment><AUTHOR> Apple's gotten away with inexplicable mental gymnastics on locking down the app store. For those who don't remember, prior to the iPhone, one didn't need the blessing of the hardware maker to run the software of your choice on the computer.

But Apple turned that fundamental tenet if freedom on it's head.</comment>


SourceForge's GitHub Importer - <AUTHOR> https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/documentation/GitHub%20Importer/ <comment><USER2> That ship has sailed.

SourceForge has little to offer in their API:[https://anypoint.mulesoft.com/apiplatform/sourceforge/#/port...](https://anypoint.mulesoft.com/apiplatform/sourceforge/#/portals/organizations/98f11a03-7ec0-4a34-b001-c1ca0e0c45b1/apis/32951/versions/34322/pages/48288)

Bitbucket for comparison: [https://developer.atlassian.com/bitbucket/api/2/reference/re...](https://developer.atlassian.com/bitbucket/api/2/reference/resource/)

<comment><USER3> Ship's still in port actually. Over a million users a day. They're on board and we're improving it for them. Bitbucket's cool too, but it's just a different ship.

<comment><USER4> I was going to reply to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17281866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17281866), but Arc won't let me. I don't want to throw my reply out (which I typed before the comment in question became unanswerable), so I'll quote the context here, and then follow with what I was going to comment with.

>>> _jimrandomh_ ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17281278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17281278))

>>> _It 's actually worse than that. As an open-source developer deciding where to host a project, I not only need to trust the host, I also need to expect users to also trust the host. If I expect 10% of potential users to bounce when they see that it's hosted on Sourceforge, well, hosting is enough of a commodity that I have no reason to give up on that 10%._

>> _exikyut_

>> I think you've unpacked why SF is - sadly - not quite dead, but not quite as alive as it used to be.

> _loganabbott_ [flagged] [dead]

> _I could probably say the same thing about you though_

\---

Wh-- uhh, no. To answer your statement, I've historically been in somewhat bad shape with various mental/other health issues that I've only begun to understand and properly remedy very recently. So, _I 'm_ the most alive I've ever been (and still improving).

Okay, maybe responding that way was a bit tangential. I'm honestly not sure how to interpret your comment though. (For what it's worth, I wasn't personally uploading anything to SF when it was in its heyday, kind of because I wasn't. I did know about and download stuff though, like other developers and power/ordinary users.)

I began mentally drafting a reply to your other comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17282035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17282035) before noticing this one. I think this is the more appropriate comment for me to reply to {I said this before the comment died}, and I'll fold in the sentiment I was going to say to the other here.

Reading the other comment, I understand your somewhat frustration. Here's my perspective as a would-be developer and general intermediate-advanced user (and particularly as a frequent lurker of HN): all I've (and presumably we've) got to work with are the dead-chewing-gum armchair opinions and cargo cult views and reiterations about "yeah someone bought it (nothing seems to have happened since then though)". That's literally the only noise being made around here in terms of "news" or "updates" we get about SF. It's as bad as the lowest-quality commentating on reddit (and I consider that very bad, considering the bent towards intellectualization and healthy debate on here).

IMO, you need to work on advertising your [new] position. It will probably be an uphill (even vertical?) slog for longer than likely comfortable (maybe even financially so - ie, it sounds like some decent, long-term social media management chops may be needed).

That's a bit of a broad statement, so let me add some more data to characterize what I mean.

The open source landscape's changed a lot. Or, in less words, "everyone switched to GitHub"; or at least "all" the developers did - but that means so did all the users wanting first-hand software updates from the devs who switched. Of course only power users (or those following scripts) likely actually clone; it'd be interesting to see what projects[' users] primarily use Releases or other mechanisms to get their updates. In any case GH is the core of a lot of operations nowadays (by "operations" I mean different projects).

I am genuinely interested to learn more about the million users a day you say visit SF. Let me clarify what I mean by "interested".

Firstly, to be frank, I'm kind of amazed that _a million people a day_ visit SourceForge and want proof :) because that's truly impressive. I don't disbelieve you, note; I just kind of want to do a trust-but-verify.

Next, from my own perspective, when I think of GitHub I see it as something most other developers either understand or, at the very least, vaguely know about as "the scary place where you have to use the commandline to make it work" (hopefully this subgroup doesn't get stuck for too long :) ). Generally in terms of publishing libraries and small programs GH removes about 98% of friction, for two reasons. First it uses Git, which (once you at least learn the clone command) Just Works™ with GitHub because GitHub URLs can be pasted straight to Git, [https://](https://) and all, and it figures it out. Secondly everyone has at least a vague understanding of Git and GitHub and there are a billion (approximately) videos and websites so people can easily find 100 things all in their preferred presentational style to get started with.

So from a social networking standpoint GitHub provides a level of predictability; I as a publisher can partially know what to expect in advance in terms of userbase and social network. Okay, so you say SourceForge has a bunch of people on board; as a developer, or an artist, or $abstract_computer_person_with_arbitrary_agenda, what can I expect in terms of connections and demographic from SourceForge? The platform itself is a gateway and an enabler; I'm frankly less interested in SF itself (that it supports SVN, Git, etc; or that it supports wikis, etc) than who it can connect me with, and what I can expect of them.

I can opine/surmise a tiny tiny fraction of the kind of thing I'm getting at when I download random obscure computer-science related things and an eyebrow goes up when I see "18 downloads/week" and I think "...how?! lol" (I know the number is valid because my download bumps it up :P). It would be pretty cool for GitHub to publicize the same kinds of statistics, but it's (sadly) probably easier to single out a rogue browser than a Git client.

It would be cool to leverage those statistics to connect obscure niche interest groups - the current approach of "insert email here [_______] (we Most Definitely© Won't® send you things you won't be interested in™)" doesn't really scale to hundreds of interests per user, to be honest.

So, that's the demographic question. Here's something potentially trickier.

I can't say I'm a fan of SF's interface. My main problem is that it is very very heavy. On the 12-year old machine I'm using right now it takes a lot longer to load a SF page than a GH page. This isn't because of the ads, which I'll honestly say I have nuked via /etc/hosts, primarily as a sanity measure (if ads kill browsing on modern machines, try browsing with ads enabled on a single-core 32-bit Pentium M that takes 45sec to open a new tab :D)... it's just that the pages are really heavy. Besides system load (which isn't really a legitimate statistic, I'll accept that), I definitely far prefer GitHub's much more to-the-point approach. It seems faster and more fluid.

There is one specific area of the UI that bothers me a lot: the "recommended downloads", which seem to be the same for me, every time I visit, and include a link to... Apache OpenOffice. Um. This is... dishonest? Everyone knows LibreOffice is where the development is at.

I realize this last point be a hard one to answer. I'll offer two things. Firstly, I understand that GitHub was developed as a green-field from-scratch platform, it got to start again, and it started with a somewhat different, leaner approach: just offering a Git UI, with nothing else on the webpage. So there's that. Secondly, I understand that what you bought had a lot of, er, _state_ in the air that needed to be maintained to keep the ecosystem running smoothly (and happily).

With the above said, I don't know what arrangements are in place behind the scenes, but I do think recommending OpenOffice is a _tiny_ bit much from where I stand.

To sum up, I want to understand what I can get out of SF, I think it would be nice to clean the pages up (the redesign is nice, but I feel it removed a lot of info while retaining the "weight" (imposingness?) of the old design), it would be nice to understand some of the machninations behind SourceForge today, and it would be cool to better connect users and developers with each other. If a million people a day are visiting, learning about that hive of activity will attract me to the platform.

All of this doesn't need a direct reply; I would be very happy to see a highly-upvoted blog post or similar thing posted to HN sometime :)

(Obviously I can't express interest in the behind-the-scenes aspects of SF I don't know about. An in-depth exposé on how SF is currently run would probably be very interesting to some people here.)

<comment><USER3> Well I do appreciate the feedback and valid questions. I will be putting some thought into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Websense blacklisted Sourceforge after the 2013 DevShare debacle. It has remained blacklisted since. It is blacklisted in many other web application firewalls and content gateways too. Sourceforge is inaccessible from many corporate networks due to this. It will remain inaccessible for many more years to come.

It's unfortunate how Sourceforge, once a leader in the open source community, lost the trust and reputation it built over 14 years in a matter of a few weeks. It may take another 14 years to regain this lost trust and even that may not be enough.

<comment><USER6> >It may take another 14 years to regain this lost trust and even that may not be enough.

That's absolutely absurd given how often the biggest names in 'tech' make headlines with one egregious act or another, on a seemingly weekly basis, and continue to march on. As if the tech community can sit atop some moral high ground, thumbing its nose at SourceForge. But nah, let's just keep crapping on a company no longer under the same ownership and no longer committing these acts and hasn't for some time.

<comment><USER5> > let's just keep crapping on a company no longer under the same ownership

I have no intention of crapping on SourceForge. I am merely making an observation. I think many would agree that users have lost trust in Sourceforge regardless of the history or current state of ownership.

In fact, I used to appreciate loganabbott's (the new president of Sourceforge) attempt to amend SourceForge until today when I see the same person posting insinuating and insulting comments towards potential users.

I have no intention of crapping on SourceForge because SourceForge is largely irrelevant to me. I host my projects on GitHub these days. If GitHub becomes untenable for any reason, I might move to Gitea. But I am definitely not coming back to Sourceforge after seeing these juvenile comments coming off from the president of Sourceforge in this thread. Don't know about others but he has definitely managed to piss me off as a user.

Regarding why Sourceforge gets the kind of flak other companies don't, I have commented about it here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17281519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17281519) (again this is merely a conversation, not a passing of judgement).

<comment><USER3> Sorry if my comments rubbed you the wrong way, but it's a bit frustrating when these threads pop up weekly, and people feel like it's open license to attack me and my company. We really are doing our best to make SourceForge a trusted destination, but still get the flack as if we were the previous ownership.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone still use SourceForge after they started embedding adware with their download links? I give them credit for being an early innovator and I know they are under new management as of 2016 and supposedly put that behind them[1] but they have permanently lost my trust.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/06/under...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/06/under-new-management-sourceforge-moves-to-put-badness-in- past/)

<comment><USER8> It's actually worse than that. As an open-source developer deciding where to host a project, I not only need to trust the host, I also need to expect users to also trust the host. If I expect 10% of potential users to bounce when they see that it's hosted on Sourceforge, well, hosting is enough of a commodity that I have no reason to give up on that 10%.

<comment><USER9> In addition to the malware issues, when I land on a SourceForge project that pretty much tells me "this project is dead or on life support" nine times out of ten.

<comment><USER10> This is true for me as well. SourceForge stopped being the host for anything I cared about years ago. If I land on SourceForge today because they host project X that might solve my problem, I generally start looking for project Y somewhere else.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't really make any sense today though.

<comment><USER10> Sure it does. If hosting on SourceForge is predictive of abandoned software, avoiding SourceForge is a useful heuristic.

I get that this is probably not a story you want to hear about your product but it's true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Setting aside the malware issue, and the project graveyard smell, and just looking at it like a new platform, the design just seems all wrong. The big comic ui elements are ugly and unprofessional, and the code is too hidden, not the central point of the project.

<comment><USER12> This! I didn't use it enough for the malware thing to anger me much, when it hit, I was already mostly using things from github, and sometimes bitbucket...

The design of sourceforge feels spammy and like early 2k's hotscripts or cnet/downloads.com. I want to click on a project and see the readme and a list of their files so I know what framework/language it's built on from a glance, is it node/php/rails?

I've been playing with gitlab a lot lately for my own projects, I love the way I can easily segment things by groups without doling out cash for my side projects and private repos are nice. You get a lot on their free tier.

Though a lot of my github usage is browsing projects for things I can use in my own code, like admin panels, or integrations of vue/react, vuex/mobx, an auth flavor and x web-framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> oh i would do anything for love... but i won't do that

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a recent incident at SF.net.

SourceForge Hiding Fact that They Have Lost the Latest Revision of SVN [https://medium.com/@jonykatz/sourceforge-hiding-fact-that- th...](https://medium.com/@jonykatz/sourceforge-hiding-fact-that-they-have- lost-the-latest-revision-of-svn-d221f2d68285)

</comment><comment><USER15> Can you actually host code on SourceForge? I've been searching for 10 mins in a couple different projects and they only thing I've found is one link to a private SVN server.

<comment><USER16> You can do git, mercurial, and svn repositories under SourceForge. You are not required to do any of them, though, so some projects roll their own elsewhere or just post source code in compressed archives.

<comment><USER15> That makes sense, thanks for the reply SourceForge was before my time so I have no idea about any of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We've come full circle. Except this circle has adware.

<comment><USER3> No adware since 2016

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Never trusting SourceForge again. Downloaded FileZilla once and that was it.

<comment><USER3> We have nothing to do with the previous owners. In fact, FileZilla from their own official site still has a bundled installer, but we made them remove it from SourceForge. SourceForge FileZilla is cleaner than the official site. Check VirusTotal to verify.

<comment><USER19> That's really interesting. Thanks for pointing this out. You (sourceforge) have been getting a lot of, imo, unfair flack in this thread and I just wanted to say thanks. Honestly sourceforge isn't the first place I think of when I need to host code, but I have downloaded a few projects from there in a past weeks and it was much nicer than I remember. Ill make a point to check it out one of these days :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Gotta feel bad for SourceForge the new owners reversed the malpractices of its previous owners immediately and yet the damage is permanently done. I'll never understand why some think distributing spyware / malware for money is even remotely right in any way, shape, and form. How is any of it legal half the time...

<comment><USER21> I find it slightly odd that sourceforge is so highly shunned after the malware incidents, while various other large companies [eg. microsoft (dodgy behaviour in skype, etc.), facebook (spying, selling data), lenovo (superfish), etc.] have been caught doing similar dodgy things and yet it feels like the general community has forgiven or at least grudgingly overlooking them.

May or may not be true - that's just the feel I'm getting.

<comment><USER10> SourceForge gets shunned first because it's easy. There are lots of great alternatives to SourceForge. SourceForge was already on the decline before their adware bundling fiasco so continuing to not use SourceForge is no burden for most devs.

Second, what SourceForge did was worse than your examples. They modified trusted applications to add essentially a malware payload. This is worse than Facebook collecting too much data and being shady with it. SourceForge was installing spyware on machines without permission. This betrayed the trust of both users and publishers and even damaged users' trust in those publishers.

The only one of your examples that is comparable is Lenovo's Superfish mess, and in that case they only betrayed users, not publishers. Not that it actually makes it better, but it changes the impact to Lenovo.

Disclosure: Microsoft employee.

<comment><USER16> It's worth noting that SourceForge didn't modify trusted applications. They switched their download buttons on the site to download an "installer app" by default that would act as the installer, offer bundleware, and then live download the actual app installer as part of the install process. Apps like GIMP etc were never, to my knowledge, modified to bundle GIMP and bundleware within a single installer.

Source: I was hosted on SourceForge at the time and approached about participating in DevShare. I researched it extensively and saved copies of the stub installers for things like GIMP as part of that research.

<comment><USER3> My company had nothing to do with it, but it's worth noting you're one of the few people who actually remembers the actual non-revisionist history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a consumer of source code, I do not use a graphical web browser to search and download from Sourceforge. A relatively simple http/https client will do. (Occasionally I have used cvs or svn if that is the only access.)

Despite any changes in Sourceforge's ownership/management, I have not experienced any problems retrieving source code. I have not tried to use a graphical browser on Sourceforge since the 1990's. No need.

As an end user of source code, I access Github the same way, without graphics. I do not need to use a web browser or any git executable to fetch a .zip or .tar.gz archive. Will this sort of easy access continue under the new management? I guess time will tell.

Sourceforge still hosts a substantial quantity of what I consider educational/useful software. Of course, Github hosts exponentially more.

Out of curiousity, using archived Github data, I am making a list of Github users and will be monitoring changes as the acquisition progresses. Will they lose many users? Where will the users who leave put their code?

I am debating whether to also construct CSV files with repo names and descriptions for a personal Github database to aid in software discovery. I expect it might not be as easy to compile such a database in the future. I could be wrong, but it is impossible to predict what will happen. Time will tell.

<comment><USER4> > _As a consumer of source code, I do not use a graphical web browser to > search and download from Sourceforge. A relatively simple http /https client > will do._

One caveat: all the file download links end in .../download, so if I throw the URL at wget it will save "download?verylongblahblah=blahblah1234567890". I have to use `wget --content-d` (short for content-disposition) to actually save the name correctly.

It's really annoying, but a behavior that has existed for many years.

GitHub fixed this with everything, from release downloads to raw gist links, by putting the "download" attribute further back in the URL, and having everything after the final slash be the uploaded file's filename.

Now THAT's nice.

<comment><USER22> "Now THAT's nice."

Yes it is. There is a certain consistency/uniformity to the url and site structure with Github that Sourceforge does not have, for whatever reason. Not to mention the absence of the mirror choosing routine. I really appreciate the ease and simplicity of Github downloads, which is precisely why I am concerned about the future.</comment></comment></comment>


The Impact of Regret on 8 Successful Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://beatthe9to5.com/successful-entrepreneurs-impact-regret/

<comment><USER2> If these people had significant accomplishments (or had tried really audacious things and failed), then maybe I'd care what their answers were. Looks like you eschewed the major leagues and went looking for folks to interview in the pre-triple 'A' minors :)</comment>


Get a free copy of premium Like Button script - <AUTHOR> http://forrst.com/posts/Like_Button_your_own_like_script-Gqi

<comment><USER2> Where can I find this? Can't seem to find a download link on forrst.

Would love to provide some feedback :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You need to give me some feedback before I send you script :)</comment></comment>


Kiera Wilmot receives full scholarship to U.S. Space Academy - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/US/cleared-charges-honor-student-space-camp/t/story?id=19236561

<comment><USER2> How do I get to page 2?

<comment><USER3> [http://abcnews.go.com/US/cleared-charges-honor-student- space...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/cleared-charges-honor-student-space- camp/story?id=19236561)</comment></comment>


How to make Windows eat your file with a simple accident - <AUTHOR> Well, I just lost my backup of a file because I hit the wrong key on accident.
How to reproduce:
1) Ctrl-C a file to your desktop.
2) Edit the source file and save it
(Make sure you haven't changed the contents of your clipboard)
3) Hit ctrl-x on your backup
4) Hit ctrl-z (I accidentally hit x and z at the same time)
5) Your backup is now gone forever!
6) Check your source and you see it hasn't even been overwritten or anything. It just disappeared.
I think from now on I will always just copy and paste instead. <comment><AUTHOR> Seems this issue also existed back in 2004...

[http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/197954-46-need-help- lost-f...](http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/197954-46-need-help-lost-file- undo-copy-file-explorer)</comment>


Rampant cheating hurts China's research ambitions - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100411/ap_on_re_as/as_china_academic_cheating <comment><USER2> It seems everybody copies everybody here in mainland China, from research papers to foreign technology to fashions. As a national (but "unofficial") policy, it's certainly helped them "bring hundreds of millions out of poverty" over the last 30 years, but I'm not sure if it'll help them much in the future 30 years.

I remember letting a Chinese teacher of English observe one of my classes. (I'm a Westerner, teaching English in China.) When I taught the lesson, I had a selection of possible activities, sense the students' moods, and choose some of them accordingly. But a few weeks later, I went into an empty classroom just as she was walking out, and on the blackboard was what had been there when I had taught the lesson, word for word, in the exact same positions.

So I think the entrenched Chinese habit of copying everything will prevent them having the creativity needed to succeed as a nation in the next 30 years.

<comment><USER3> So what your saying is that they can't copy themselves into a global leader?

This point aside, cheating is also rampant here. And I have to say the students are quite clever in how they do it. Although some of them are not so clever (caught a student who copied their homework off the net, the English was too good for it to be them).</comment></comment>


Everyone Who Tried to Convince Me to Use Vim Was Wrong (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me-to-use-vim-was-wrong/

<comment><USER2> His advice is good; I went through the "don't touch the arrow keys" and "you don't need the mouse phase" a fairly long ago. It did help me eventually get very efficient in Vim but I had to sepnd a lot of free time doing it and there were months where if I was at work I ignored all the "good" advice and used the arrows, the mouse, special keys like PgUp and whatever else was needed to get the job done.

Years later I showed a younger coworker the Windows version of GVim - it comes with an "Easy" mode that makes it behave more like notepad. He loved it, used it all the time. He never did get very good at using it in Unix mode but I can't fault him for that. Most of his work was on Windows and he was quite productive so that was good enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR:

Not like Textmate. Tried vi before, gave up. Tried again, gave up. Tried to do real work expecting it to be Textmate, gave up.

I see a pattern here.

<comment><AUTHOR> ..I don't. Did you read the article? He doesn't say not to use VIM.

<comment><USER3> Don't get me wrong, I use vi a fair amount, and for a long long time. But I'd not go out of my way to use it, there are plenty of better options when you're not at a command prompt. I draw the line at using emacs though ;-)</comment></comment></comment>


Goldman downgrades Microsoft, blames iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.asymco.com/2010/10/04/goldman-downgrades-microsoft-blames-ipad/ <comment><USER2> 145 words[1] of blogspam. Article it links to: [http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/10/goldman_downgrades_...](http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/10/goldman_downgrades_microsoft_says_change_in_cource.html)

[1]: from wc -w of copy/paste of the post.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do people trust Goldman? To me it's nothing more than a rigged casino.

</comment><comment><USER4> The thing I don't understand is...why change the recommendation now?

I don't honestly believe that tablets (which is presently a euphemism for iPad) effect PC sales all that much. If every single person who buys an iPad was otherwise going to buy a Windows Laptop, it still represents a fraction of the number of people who are buying PC's.

I don't doubt that PC sales might be flattening, but I think it's curious to blame that on the iPad.

I don't think Goldman has the foresight to lower it's recommendation on Microsoft for the future potential of tablets (which could very well end up playing out with Microsoft finally adopting a winning strategy, or fizzle out entirely); so why else?

Microsoft's mobile strategy? Which has been a punchline for several years, but is finally looking to at least have the potential for some light at the end of the tunnel. So why the sudden change of heart?

<comment><USER5> Until now, it has been generally assumed that WinTel is insurmountable, because of Metcalfe's Law; established software base. Therefore, MS will always continue to reap from the general growth in computer use.

The iPad showed that a new class of computers, framed as limited function devices can successfully establish a beachhead in the enterprise, challenging Microsoft's hegemony without having to run Microsoft software. Apple has also succeeded into cultivating a thriving ecosystem of Apple developers.

At this stage, all bets are off, and Microsoft has never been so insecure or vulnerable since its early days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft hasn't even caught up to the iPhone, much less the iPad. It seems like their cycle includes floundering for several years in between getting important products released.

</comment><comment><USER7> The thing to keep in mind is that the recommendations by sell side analysts are often very focused on the short term. They are actually pretty bad at telling you where the stock price will actually go -- but the more senior analysts are wonderful as experts on industry-wide trends.

</comment><comment><USER8> At first I didn't really think this was smart because they are very different markets and devices. But then I started thinking, and within 6 years I think I'll have an iPhone with 8 GB of memory, a 2ghz quad-core processor, and 256GB of flash storage. In that case, I don't see why I wouldn't dock that and use full-blown OS X on the desktop, as long as the dock has integrated graphics hardware. I doubt the analysts are thinking that far out, but I'd wager that's where things are going.

</comment><comment><USER9> The article that blog cites doesn't say anything about iPad.

<comment><USER10> "notebook cannibalization from tablets"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know where I read this, but it does seem like MS got so obsessed with Google and the online advertising market that they sort of forgot about their core markets. Where I would call making good software that runs on devices a core market. Hence they utterly missed the iphone and ipad markets. Because really, those markets where theirs to lose.

I wonder if this is just a symptom of a complete lack of imagination in the executive offices at MSFT? It does seem like going after online advertising was just flailing around looking for a market big enough to be relevant to their revenues.</comment>


Once Hailed as Unhackable, Blockchains Are Now Getting Hacked - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612974/once-hailed-as-unhackable-blockchains-are-now-getting-hacked/ <comment><USER2> What a shocking series of events that nobody could have predicted.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR consensus models are flawed in that an actor with enough computing power can manipulate the system. A blockchain of hashes is not in it self flawed, but it can be rewritten if someone overpowers the rest of the system.

This has always been the primary fear of all Blockchains, given enough time we are starting to see it occur in specific places.</comment>


Show HN: My company's new website – a payment gateway, thoughts? - <AUTHOR> https://eway.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some css is out of place, but it's generally all there. Is it obvious what we do? Can you find our tiered plans? General critiques are welcome.

<comment><USER2> First of all, a lot of CSS is out of place.

It's not at all obvious what you do. You've used a lot of your biggest text to say that you're with us every step of the way, but what does that mean? It's really generic.

Also, who are your targeting? What's the pain point that you're solving? What existing service are your replacing in my life?

Also there are too many walls of text, and the fonts are too small.

Edit: A huge amount of the page is taken up by a person's face. That's not conveying any sort of message, so it should be something blurrier or lower contrast or both.

See [http://teamtreehouse.com](http://teamtreehouse.com) for an example of some of the things I've suggested.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feed back. I agree, the fold doesn't scream what we do, or who we do it for.

Basically our target market are businesses looking to take credit card payments through their website.</comment></comment></comment>


Class Action filed against Apple for Undelivered texts to Android Phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-lawsuit-iphones-dont-deliver-texts-to-android-2014-5

<comment><USER2> This has been an issue for anyone transitioning from Apple -> Android for a while (who have iMessage enabled). I have heard of fixes ranging from a few days up to 45 days from Apple support.</comment>


Moscow HighLoad++ is looking for speakers till 31.08 - <AUTHOR> http://highload.co/ HighLoad, being a professional conference of developers of high-loaded systems, is held for the eighth time this year. It aims at the exchange of knowledge about the technologies enabling to serve many thousands and millions of users simultaneously. It covers different aspects such as web development, architectures of big projects, databases and storage systems, system administration, load testing, maintenance of big projects and other topics related to high-loaded systems. At this event you can share your experience, pitfalls and name factors that can help IT professionals cope with piles of packages and requests, and petabytes of data. <comment><USER2> You can see photos from the previous HighLoad++ events here: [https://www.facebook.com/HighLoadConference/photos_stream?ta...](https://www.facebook.com/HighLoadConference/photos_stream?tab=photos_albums)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You can also join us at Lanyrd.com: [http://lanyrd.com/2014/highload2014/](http://lanyrd.com/2014/highload2014/)</comment>


Sharing Salary Figures on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/fashion/27salary.html?_r=1&ref=fashion&oref=slogin <comment><USER2> When I was getting my MBA, one of my professors discussed the idea of a workplace where everyone's compensation was disclosed. The basic conclusion of the discussion was that since there are virtually no workplaces in which compensation is truly tied to value (and value is impossible to measure anyway), knowing what co-workers make will always lead to morale issues.

As far as friends go, I think we will experience feelings of resentment, jealously, inferiority, or superiority to a lesser degree than with coworkers, and are more likely to be happy for a friend who is compensated above what we see as her perceived value, and more willing to try to help someonse who is compensated below what we see as her perceived value. This is at least partly because we are not competing for pieces of the same pie as we are in the workplace.

<comment><USER3> As the number of measurable work metrics increases, it becomes (roughly) exponentially more difficult to assess employee net value. If we can triangulate this measured value, we still may have immeasurable metrics--which will always break the formula. To the extent compensation is tied to immeasurable quantities, all employees should resent the system as unfairly hackable.

Some work systems are possible to measure and thus compensation may be formulaic and (roughly) just. For example, if I offered you a monetary reward to enter a boolean into a form, you either do the work (by entering a 1 or 0) or you don't. With Mechanical Turk, I can design complex algorithms with failsafe controls that will objectively assess and reward worker value. To the degree I can describe real-world problems and automate inputs and outputs, I can build an efficient and viable organization. Is a fair, transparent system intrinsically "happier"? I am not sure, but I do know the wealth creation potential here is massive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this a real trend, or just another trend made up by the New York Times to fill in space?

<comment><USER5> The only other company that I know that does this is Whole Foods Stores. Each store has all the salaries listed up for all the employees to portray a completely transparent display of trust.

However, i'm not quite convinced that it works.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Bound – Audiobooks for Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://boundapp.audio/ <comment><AUTHOR> Developer here! I'd love to discuss my project with you guys. Bound was developed for iOS using (mostly) Swift.

There are many audiobook apps on the App Store but all of them tie you to an ecosystem or require syncing with iTunes. `Bound - Audiobooks for Dropbox` is different. Bound lets you download your favorite audiobooks to your iPhone for quick and easy listening. Never lose your position, even across multiple audio files, as Bound automatically saves your location as you progress through the book.

Bound lets you:

\- Link your Dropbox account. Quickly download your audiobook files.

\- Play your audiobooks in a beautiful modern interface.

\- Automatically saves your listening position so you never lose your place.

\- Bookmark locations while listening for reference later.

\- Add custom cover art (if the default art isn't nice enough for you!).

I'll be hanging out in the comments section in case you guys want to chat!

Best,

Tim</comment>


Digital Ocean launched  new community system - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/our-new-community-user-profiles-upvoting-notifications-and-more/

<comment><AUTHOR> Now it supports user profiles, notifications and voting system. Pretty neat.

<comment><USER2> The public profiles are a necessary step to allow users to share their images.

This way when someone finds a shared image they can look up the public profile of the person that shared it to get an idea of how legitimate their profile is. =]</comment></comment>


Brainpad: How I get stuff done using Trello - <AUTHOR> http://brainpad.org/Talks/2012/08/11/using-trello-for-project-management/

<comment><USER2> I've been using Trello for a couple of months and so far I've been impressed just how flexible its underlying metaphor is. The implementation itself is easy to use and surprisingly fun. I love the fact that very few things are actually deleted, instead they are merely archived and can be searched, unarchived, etc.

Stuff that I miss:

* Filtering cards based on tags. Once you have a couple of dozen cards on a list it becomes increasingly difficult to get an overview of what you're doing, what you should do, etc. I use tags like DO THIS, DISCUSS THIS, INCOMING and would really like to filter lists so they only displayed, say, DO THIS cards. Right now I find myself fiddling around with the lists far too much, trying to figure out what I should do next. Not good if you're a procrastinator.

* Universal markdown support. Sometimes you can markdown, other times you can't. Confusing.

* More than 5 tags on a card. I think this limitation is arbitrary: Trello uses a color bar for each tag on a card so there's a limit to how many colors, i.e. tags, you can display. On the other hand it forces you to be more disciplined with your tagging, which makes organization and collaboration more streamlined.

* Trello doesn't do traditional, calendar centric, planning too well. Sometimes I just want to move around cards on a calendar (day, week, month). My current solution is to create a card for each week or month but it strikes me as unnecessary manual labor.

* Card comments should be editable once added. Currently, if you discover an error in a comment, you have to delete the comment and re-add it.

<comment><USER3> > * Filtering cards based on tags. Once you have a couple of dozen cards on a > list it becomes increasingly difficult to get an overview of what you're > doing, what you should do, etc. I use tags like DO THIS, DISCUSS THIS, > INCOMING and would really like to filter lists so they only displayed, say, > DO THIS cards. Right now I find myself fiddling around with the lists far > too much, trying to figure out what I should do next. Not good if you're a > procrastinator.

You can do this now in the "Search and Filter Cards" menu. Just click on the label and it'll only show you cards with that label. You can also rename labels to Incoming, etc...

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the tip. This, however, seems to be a single setting for all lists. I was thinking a setting per list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just started using Trello at work and home and it's been great.

I think the easy sign up process and inviting users to a specific board was what allowed for easy adaptation with the small team I am working with. The lack of 'enterprise features' or complicated options or modes is also very refreshing. It's simple, free and that is why we use it.</comment>


A New Theory of Distraction - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/a-new-theory-of-distraction

<comment><AUTHOR> I find a type of creative freedom in allowing myself to be 'distracted' and interested in many things -- this is opposite of focus and intentional attentiveness, but I think giving oneself intentional time for distraction is a valuable creative tool, leading to new ideas.

The article touches on this, concluding with a brilliant observation that I think is spot-on:

"... distraction is scary for another, complementary reason: the tremendous value that we've come to place on attending. The modern world valorizes few things more than attention. It demands that we pay attention at school and at work; it punishes parents for being inattentive; it urges us to be mindful about money, food, and fitness; it celebrates people who command others' attention. As individuals, we derive a great deal of meaning from the products of sustained attention and concentration—from the projects we've completed, the relationships we've maintained, the commitments we've upheld, the skills we've mastered. Life often seems to be "about" paying attention—and the general trend seems to be toward an ever more attentive way of life. Behind the crisis of distraction, in short, there is what amounts to a crisis of attention: the more valuable and in demand attention becomes, the more problematic even innocuous distractions seem to be."

and then this insight toward the end:

"as I read Crawford's solemn prescriptions for the elimination of distraction, it occurred to me that we might have everything backward. What if, in fact, we're not very good at being distracted? What if we actually don't value distraction enough? It may be that, with our mobile games and Twitter feeds and YouTube playlists, we've allowed distraction to become predictable and repetitive, manageable and organized, dull and boring—too much, in short, like work."

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that the verb associated with attention is _pay_. It's a commodity and there can be extreme inequality of attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like being distracted, and letting my mind wander. Social media does not let my mind wander - it's only a distraction in the sense that it gets in the way of our lousy jobs.

The problem with social media, smart phone apps, and all this so-called "distracting" technology is that it's addictive.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's argued that achievement-focused video games tap into our brain's reward center for accomplishment.

This article argues that distractions tap into our reward center for autonomy.

Both are good drives that can result in undesirable behavior when these games and distractions are ultimately unfulfilling. Just like gambling, food, or drug use, the issue here isn't necessarily a weakness of spirit, but an instinctive misinterpretation of the world around us.

</comment><comment><USER5> A helpful tool to combat distraction: [http://focusr.co](http://focusr.co)

</comment><comment><USER6> Some distractions are enriching, like the reading of this very article. Others are temporarily entertaining but ultimately disappointing, such as Buzzfeed.

The main thrust of this article is that "we are what we think," and distraction is an integral part of that selfhood. To be fulfilling, it simply has to be a choice: sometimes to let the mind be led, and sometimes to lead it. Both states of distraction and states of focus are vastly improved when we know how to freely transition from one to the other.

</comment><comment><USER7> Building on top of the author conclusion: How can we have quality distraction ?

"It may be that, with our mobile games and Twitter feeds and YouTube playlists, we've allowed distraction to become predictable and repetitive, manageable and organized, dull and boring—too much, in short, like work."

I can recall a few times where this happened to me: playing a game started feeling much like work, or reading some feed, or doing anything else that has been "gamified".

</comment><comment><USER8> GTD was an epiphany for me. More than teach me how to focus in the short term (I believe that you can only achieve it with internal peace not a logical system) it taught me how to keep focus in the long term. That is already huge.</comment>


Longest Common Subsequence algorithm in Python - <AUTHOR> http://wordaligned.org/articles/longest-common-subsequence

<comment><USER2> It's a really nice breakdown of sub-sequence calculation methods. If you're doing a letter-perfect diff calculation, or need to know how "different" two strings are, this is what you need. It even includes code and _explanations of the code_ and how it all works.

All in all, the post is roughly worth a couple algorithm class sessions. Worth the read for just about anyone, if only for picking up a few new logical tricks.</comment>


Breaking Bad is the Ultimate Startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.actionmint.com/daily-mint/start-up/breaking-bad-is-the-ultimate-startup <comment><USER2> Does that mean Walter White is the Ultimate Startup CEO? A man so driven by his ego that he puts his entire family in mortal danger, blackmails former business partners, alienates his co-founder and ends up dying alone as a result of his own hubris?

Actually that might be accurate.

<comment><USER3> Spoiler alert?

<comment><USER2> If you haven't seen Breaking Bad then you really need to avoid any discussion topics about it. The ending has been widely discussed pretty much everywhere (including other places in this discussion, though comically not in the article itself)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now how about something about their relationship with the venture capitalist, Gustavo Fring? The efforts they had to go to in order to convince him that they were personally trustworthy, his nefarious plans to steal their IP and put them out of business, etc?

<comment><USER5> Fring acqui-hired Walt. He built a business for distribution and sales, then acquired the competing company for their brand and talent. (Fring ostensibly had a cook pre-walt, but it's never addressed). He gave Walt a salary instead of ownership. He saw that Walt was a bad cultural fit, and intended to replace him with Gale. Once Fring was gone, Walt and Jesse went back into business, selling their product to Declan, who only had a distribution and sales organization, and, unlike Fring, was not focused on vertical integration.

The metaphor doesn't work around equity, non-competes, etc., unless you know a start-up that uses violence instead of legal documents and arbitration.

<comment><USER6> Fring's cook pre-Walt was Gale. When Gale saw the quality of Walt's cook he told Fring there was no way they could compete with that level of expertise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The only thing one can learn from Breaking Bad is you eventually get killed dealing illegal drugs, and put your family in danger.

There is nothing romantic in BB,it's a gruesome description of a world you might want to avoid at all cost.

<comment><USER8> At risk of derailing the original article, this is a really interesting point. Both Breaking Bad and Mad Men are shows that go at lengths to depict how flawed, unhappy, and usually outright immoral their protagonists are, but both Walter White and Don Draper are the target of a lot of escapist fantasies. (Try searching on Twitter for #TeamWalt.)

<comment><USER9> It reminds me of this essay, on Breaking Bad and culture:

"But despite these cautionary endings, they don't sell Scarface and Godfather t-shirts at every tourist shop in Manhattan because people like to remind themselves about the dangers of hubris. Stories and the characters in them are more than lessons, and a narrative's most ideologically weighty elements don't map onto a seventh grade worksheet about major themes. Long after we're done watching we hold moments with us: shot angles and character dynamics, snippets of dialog and unquestioned premises. The point of critically examining cultural objects like Breaking Bad isn't to place them in categories good or bad, to predict the ending, or even to decode what's "really" happening; the point is to pay attention to our attention, to look at how it's being held, on what, and how someone's making money on it. If pop criticism is to be good for anything, it's that."

[http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/walter-white- supremacy/](http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/walter-white-supremacy/)

<comment><USER10> +1 As a general point, illegal activity has entertainment value. Goes for all sorts, especially killing and violence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Glurge" isn't the right word... But there's got to be some term for this genre of syrupy and mostly content-free articles about start-ups.

</comment><comment><USER12> Keep in mind that BB is ultimately a fiction. The bad traits WW poses does not necessary means if you follow that path you will do exactly the same bad things.

I see this story as cautionary tale for underdogs to not try to break free out of grips of existing "natural" state. Try and pay for the consequences. Just get second job and try to be happy

</comment><comment><USER13> While there is some overlap in terms of the mechanics, I would personally refrain from taking this analogy too far. The point behind capitalism is the assumption that people are motivated by money but that the profit motive can be channeled toward ultimately being good for the public. Walt and Jesse's meth empire caused tons of addictions, murders/deaths (both on and off- screen), broke up families, required dishonesty at multiple levels, and was ultimately motivated by ego more than money. Some characters (Gale) also tried to rationalize the damage their product was doing to the world with flimsy arguments about "consenting adults wanting what they want" when each contributor made the choice to get into a business with horrifying societal consequences.

Capitalism has holes in it, and it's up to everyone to make sure they are doing things that are good for the world.

<comment><USER4> Saying capitalism has a moral component is like saying thermodynamics has a moral component.

Sadly, confusing beauty with morality has been a failing of Western thought since at least Aristotle. Just because capitalism is elegant doesn't mean it's "good" in a moral sense (or "evil" in a moral sense either).

<comment><USER13> I suspect that we agree more than disagree. What I meant was that we implement capitalism to generally get abundance of things like food and medicine that we consider good for society (to the point of calling them "goods"), but that individuals need to constantly examine and take responsibility for the morality of their actions under the system.

<comment><USER4> I don't think we "implement" capitalism. It just happens, like thermodynamics. The most brutal communist systems of the 20th century had thriving black markets. In America, we ban drugs, and marijuana becomes the biggest cash crop in several states. Capitalism happens as long as two parties can barter in a satisfactory way.

That's why I react so negatively to associating capitalism with morality. It beocmes an excuse.

<comment><USER14> Capitalism and markets are not the same thing. Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned. A market is just any exchange of goods between buyers and sellers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yay another startup whose genius marketing plan is write startup-articles for HN.

</comment><comment><USER16> Breaking bad had a lot to say about work in general. You have to fight for your income and to be free from enslavement by your fellow man. Also it shows the downside of being highly and uniquely skilled.

</comment><comment><USER17> Meh, feels like a bit of a stetch. But still a better analogy then those consultants who try stretch and apply "The Art Of War" to everything in the business world.

</comment><comment><USER18> The Onion pretty much covered this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvGCYyZPYPg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvGCYyZPYPg)

</comment><comment><USER19> Kinda glossed over the part where he died alone, hated by everyone he ever loved.

</comment><comment><USER20> Oh… how I miss that show :(

</comment><comment><USER21> Great show, but this is a bit of a stretch.</comment>


The number one variable for Eurozone sovereign risk? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/02/sovereign_debt

<comment><USER2> Well that's a worthless graph. The arbitrary choice to make the curve concave, the fact that you could dramatically reshape the trend line by moving a single point... You can draw a nearly flat line from Belgium to Italy, a vertical line from Austria to Ireland.</comment>


TheComplete.me Launches Social Dating Site, Raises $1.22M - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/16/thecomplete-me-launches-social-dating-site-matches-with-1-22m-from-industry-leaders/ <comment><USER2> They detected my fake Facebook profile <http://imgur.com/CCPUU></comment>


Is Owning a Dog Worse Than Owning a Hummer? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/infographic-day-owning-dog-worse-owning-hummer?partner=rss <comment><USER2> Wonder how they'd feel about my family: three and a half people, two 80lb dogs, about six cats at last count, four horses, bunch of chickens, two ducks, two SUVs, a sports car, a big-ass diesel pickup truck, and miscellaneous small off-road vehicles.

But my wife is thinking of becoming a vegetarian, so it's all good ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> This sort of back and forth makes me believe we'll only be able to intelligently control carbon emissions by attaching a real monetary price to its emission. Not that it's simple, but it seems like a more realistic solution than trying to regulate it upstream, or charge sin taxes for it upstream.

</comment><comment><USER4> Unlike cats, domestic dogs can live a healthy life on a vegetarian diet. My dog has been a vegetarian most of her life for health reasons (she has allergies to most kinds of animal protein which results in skin lesions when she eats pretty much any meat-based food). She's 11 years old and in great shape.

Also, the "vegetarian driving a Hummer is better than a meat-eater driving a Prius" theory has been debunked. That's not to say vegetarians don't have a much smaller footprint than meat-eaters, they do, but that there's a lot of cranky and questionable science going on in this area, and one has to take most surprising claims with a grain of salt. Of course, the vegetarian that doesn't drive is unarguably a dramatically lower carbon emitter than a meat- eater that drives a Hummer every day; so maybe that should be the goal we're all shooting for.

</comment><comment><USER5> because afterall, god gave us the earth to do with as we pleased and the other living creatures are just possessions and nothing more.

can we see the study what sort of car each child a person has is to while we are at it?</comment>


Ask HN: What features you wish Google BigQuery could have? - <AUTHOR> Hello friends!
I'm a heavy user of Google BigQuery's web UI, usually using it for ad hoc analysis. IMO the UI is very hard to use, especially it lacks the basic IDE support like shortcuts etc.
Therefore, I built a Chrome extension to improve it: https://medium.com/@kennyhitcher/banana-query-a-much-better-bigquery-ide-e98e76b0fc41 . This extension actually improves my efficiency a lot, mainly because the new navigation shortcuts fit in my workflow nicely.
However, when I share this extension on HN and ProductHunt, I got no install and almost no upvotes. It just seems that I actually didn't solve most people's pain points.
I really want to help improve the UX of Google BigQuery and really need some feedback. If you are a Google BigQuery user, could you tell me what you hate about it the post, or some features you really wish it could have?
Kenny <comment><USER2> licence? link to repository? I'm not about to trust some unproven plugin with an organisation's BQ data</comment>


Only 2FA Paypal Option Available: SMS - <AUTHOR> I've spent more than 3 hours on the phone with PayPal support. They disconnected my bank account but won't tell me why. The only option they will give me - and they're emphatic about it - is that they can only re-authorize me by SMS.  Literally _zero_ other options (computer says no).  I don't have a cell phone that can receive an SMS, but that's beside the point. Am I crazy in thinking this is crazy? Is SMS not proven insecure several times over? Anyone else had a similar experience? <comment><USER2> Take the opportunity and run away from this awful company.</comment>