Vinod Khosla wins key Martins Beach battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_24380282/vinod-khosla-wins-key-martins-beach-battle

<comment><USER2> Regardless of what the law says, we shouldn't forget that this is assholish behavior. And Vinod Khosla should be ashamed of himself.

Not that he cares or that I'm trying to incite anything. It's just important that we not forget this important point.

<comment><USER3> Yupp. Relevant: [http://www.surfrider.org/campaigns/entry/open-martins- beach](http://www.surfrider.org/campaigns/entry/open-martins-beach)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Weird, seems to be a kind of "squatter's rights" for rich people applied here. It's illegal to exclusively possess a public beach by impeding all access to it, but the courts rule that since it was done for many years, it is legal in this case.

<comment><USER5> I think it's more subtle than that, deriving not from a tradition of possession but rather an international treaty that predates California as a state.

If the US promised, in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, to honor in perpetuity the property grants of Mexico in the conquered/ceded territories, maybe that promise still applies. And if the Supreme Court already ruled (in 1859!) that California law can't alter those rights, just as state law is limited in other international and interstate affairs... well, it's an interesting case. Would love to see Volokh Conspiracy or Popehat discuss it.

Khosla may yet want to cede this claim, even if it's legally legitimate, to not appear like a robber baron buying up eccentric anti-democratic privileges that were created by ancient wars.

 _Update:_ And another thought... maybe if the US and California now view the coast – and the water-rights angle that ChuckMcM mentions – as requiring a new approach, they can negotiate a treaty-patch with Mexico? :)

<comment><USER6> I don't get it, from my understanding they clipped (somehow in a geometric sense) an international treaty with a constitution, normally it's sorry for the treaty.

<comment><USER4> Under the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause [1], it's the other way around: treaties signed by the U.S. government take precedence over state constitutions.

[1] _This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding._

<comment><USER6> Hum ok, sorry. The doctrine in France is that the Constitution has supremacy. But the trick is that our Constitution is only 55 years old, so somehow we don't have that many "cadavers in our closets", previous treaties (and I guess it's mostly treaties signed 1945 -> 1958) were taken care of explicitly in our Constitution, the rest is recent history.

It's not to say that it doesn't haunt our government, European Court Of Human Rights is just a treaty after all, and it fundamentally changed our criminal procedure a few years ago, but we integrated this treaty inside our Constitution, and allowed it to hit us on top of our laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's clear Vinod Khosla really cares about the environment.

</comment><comment><USER8> This quote from Wikipedia describes it as a particularly bully like behavior.

"Martin's Beach was previously a popular family beach and surf spot before Khosla purchased the property adjacent to the beach and blocked access."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Khosla](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Khosla)

</comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't it be great if all of us could choose (only when it suited us) to live our lives according to mid-19th century laws.</comment>


Show HN: I ran sentiment analysis on Show HN comments and got the meanest ones - <AUTHOR> https://hn.walzr.com <comment><USER2> It is funny how polite mentions of crashes are regarded so negatively by it compared to messages. Now I wonder what can be said to get an overwhelmingly positive sentiment while being not just rude but downright horrifying messages. Say "I hope you enjoy eating your family."

Reminds me of the one account of an essay question grading program's unique flaw where it scored higher with every mention of orangutans with no regard to relevance or possibily even grammar.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a source on the orangutan grader? That sounds like an hilarious read.

<comment><USER2> Sadly it was a while ago - the closest I could find was a MIT one mentioning essay graders judging by length and connective words allowing for properly structured nonsense to be judged as good writing.

[https://www.theguardian.com/education/mortarboard/2013/may/2...](https://www.theguardian.com/education/mortarboard/2013/may/24/automated- marking-bad-for-essays)

I guess orangutan is a sufficiently long word that replacing most nouns with it would improve your score.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Looks like a cool project, but I can 't scroll very far down the site before my browser crashes. I've reproduced this several times, here's the terminal output if it helps: $ conkeror [https://alpha.trycarbide.com](https://alpha.trycarbide.com) ...... JavaScript strict warning: [https://alpha.trycarbide.com/](https://alpha.trycarbide.com/), line 603: SyntaxError: test for equality (==) mistyped as assignment (=)? fault...._

To me, this is a good ShowHN comment...on the other hand, it might say something about software error messages.

<comment><USER5> It's not a good comment if you consider that the browser crash they were experiencing wasn't even the website's fault, it was the browser being buggy. The JavaScript error that they copied from the console was an error from inside the Conkeror browser itself (that browser is written mainly in JS). So the OP was complaining to the Show HN creator about the failings of a buggy, non-maintained (in the last 6 years) non-mainstream browser that they choose to use to view the website.

Unfortunately I have seen that type of comment quite a bit on some of the Show HN threads: someone complains that the site doesn't work without JavaScript, or doesn't work with their bizarre non standard web browsing setup.

<comment><USER4> Sorry for not being clear. From a sentiment standpoint, it's good, and that's the relevant context for my comment. [0] From a technical standpoint, it's gray. People land on both ends of the supported browser spectrum [1]...and all over the middle. Likewise with graceful degradation. Anyway, while Conkeror support is certainly near one end of the technical goodwill spectrum, I think discovery via "ShowHN" is probably better than via an upset customer.

[1]: "Best viewed in IE6/Netscape" was standard at one point. Never mind the recent trend of jackassware "Upgrade to a modern browser" popups for anyone not using Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like your algorithm is classifying some neutral-toned problem solving type feedback as "mean". Personally, that's exactly why I would do a Show HN. Examples

"Looks like a cool project, but I can't scroll very far down the site before my browser crashes. I've reproduced this several times, here's the terminal output if it helps: $ conkeror [https://alpha.trycarbide.com](https://alpha.trycarbide.com) ...... JavaScript strict warning: [https://alpha.trycarbide.com/](https://alpha.trycarbide.com/), line 603: SyntaxError: test for equality (==) mistyped as assignment (=)? fault.... -16 sentiment, chriswarbo 2 years ago in reply to "Show HN: Carbide – A New Programming Environment"

"just filed an issue - but the error message is pretty obnoxious for a catch all- bound to the $(window) error event is a catch all error that blames me for not having enough data (56 public repos not enough?) This means that anyone who knows this url and decides to look me up will see a message accusing me of being a non-producer if anything goes wrong with the resume -14 sentiment, beezee 6 years ago in reply to "Show HN: My Github rsum"

...those were within the first 10. If this similarly neutral-toned problem solving type report makes me mean in your algorithm's view, that is a label I shall wear with pride.

</comment><comment><USER7> > The most negative ones are shown below.

The message that is the third most negative by this metric is the following:

> Looks like a cool project, but I can't scroll very far down the site before > my browser crashes. I've reproduced this several times, here's the terminal > output if it helps: $ conkeror > [https://alpha.trycarbide.com](https://alpha.trycarbide.com) ...... > JavaScript strict warning: > [https://alpha.trycarbide.com/](https://alpha.trycarbide.com/), line 603: > SyntaxError: test for equality (==) mistyped as assignment (=)? fault....

That is clearly a false positive.

<comment><USER8> My favorite is #5 from the top, where a user DMCA'd themselves to get yahoo to delete some website they created previously:

> I used to have a Geocities containing weird bad poetry I wrote when I was a > teenager. I forgot about it, until years later I stumbled upon it again. I > was embarrassed. I asked Yahoo to delete it. But I'd forgotten the password, > and I'd used fake personal details (wrong date of birth) to create the > account, and I couldn't remember what the fake info was, so they refused to > delete it because I couldn't verify that I was who I said I was. What do I > do? I hit on a solution. I decided to DMCA myself. I sent Yahoo a DMCA > takedown request for my old Geocities, and straight away it disappeared. > Mission accomplished.

Again, not negative at all, IMHO.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, been there done that. I once created a fake neo-nazi like web site with the same name of our Dark Age of Camelot guild. Mythic had a no guild name change policy at the time and we wanted to change the name. I sent off a trouble ticket to customer support with the link to the "newly discovered" site and we had a new name in less then an hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Quick question. How does your sentiment analysis treat the following two sentences?

I fucking hate this thing.

VS

I fucking love this thing.

<comment><USER11> It would have to somehow know that "fucking" in this case is being used as an adverb similar to "really", e.g "I really love dogs".

Another tough one would be "I don't fucking hate dogs", which actually means you like them. The sentence needs to be parsed together, not word for word :)

<comment><USER12> "I don't fucking hate dogs"

A double negative is a positive.

<comment><USER13> This does kind of start to adopt a counter-accusative tone, which could be interpreted as negative. Though it would entirely depend on context. The expletive just makes it sound angry overall.

<comment><USER14> "I don't fucking hate dogs!!" sounds like something yelled with a raised fist- finger in a dispute about dog shit on the lawn between neighbours in some lowly apartment complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I do my next Show HN, and the negativity gets too much to take, this will be a good resource to turn to, in order to feel a little better about myself (unless, of course, I end up at the top of your list)!

<comment><USER16> The site is down now. I was going to see if I was on yet another HN leaderboard!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Even despite the false positives as pointed out in other comments, I'm delightfully surprised that the worst it gets is around <15% negative comments. Sometimes, HN seems to cynical to me, at least the comments that float up to the top do. What would be interesting is negative comments weighted by the place in the comment section (since you can't see upvoted scores).

<comment><USER18> The site is blocked for me at work, but if he didn't include shadow banned comments, then he's missing the biggest pool of potentially negative comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > how are you going to avoid head hunters' spam, either as fake candidates to > discover new clients or with fake offers for CV mining?

Was given a sentiment of -9, but I'd say the sentiment is closer to 0. Anyway, it's clear there are a ton of false positives, but overall, this was a really neat idea and it would definitely be interesting to further index the posts.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm confused how this comment got rated "-10":

I use Backblaze now and once I get my NAS, I'll probably end up using a B2 based backup. But let's make an honest comparison. Backblaze does not replicate your data across data centers. The standard S3 storage class does (0.23/gb). The comparible storage class for S3 is one zone infrequent access (.01/gb). B2 still comes out ahead, but I wouldn't use either one for primary storage. For thier suggested "3-2-1" backup strategy, sure. Then again, just for backup, I could use S3 glacier for $.004/gb. That's cheaper than B2 and I get multiple AZ storage. The data charges would be higher - but its backup. If catastrophe struck and I lost my primary and my local backups, getting my data fast is the last thing I would worry about.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17407275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17407275)

<comment><USER21> > does not > I wouldn't use > then again > catastrophe > struck > worry

I can see it. If you bag-of-words'd it there are a lot of negative words used and effectively no positive words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Huh, so apparently the day with the highest percentage of mean comments is Sunday.

Anyone want to have a guess as to why that may be the case? Personally, I'd expect people to least happy on Monday morning or something, not the second day they usually get a rest that week.

Similarly confused as to why everyone is supposedly so positive on Wednesday...

<comment><USER23> I'm wondering how this compares to the frequency of _any_ comments by day. It could be that more comments are posted on Sunday in general, and the least on Wednesday.

<comment><AUTHOR> The negativeness is a percent (number of negative comments divided by number of total comments). I don't think the data is too significant though, because they are all + or - 5 percent of each other

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm no expert in the field - I've only watched a few videos - but the example I've seen is where they use a movie's rating by a person (1-5) and their comments to train a model and then use the model to determine sentiment analysis. Unfortunately, since AFAIK their isn't a way to determine how many points a post earned except for your own, he couldn't do that.

</comment><comment><USER14> For some reason there is a .nobreak class that's actually enabling word breaks. Weird! And it even goes one step further and enables "word-break: break-all", so that the renderer will break all your nice words apart anywhere. That's not nice.

(Yes, this was a half-arsed attempt to match the "negative sentiment tone" without actually being mean ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, thanks for sounding nice :)

I added that because some comments had really long URLs, so I had to enable breaks so the page wouldn't be really wide, more so on phones. Didn't realize that it added hyphens to words, thanks for pointing that out, it's fixed now

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I consider it a personal failure of character not to have at least gotten an honorable mention ;)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is pretty cool - I'd love to see similar analysis for truly "contentious" comments, wherein there were an almost equal but large amount of upvoting and downvoting, controlled for accounts that have the ability to do either.

</comment><comment><USER27> I hope you realize there is a built in sentiment analyzer on HN, based on highly advanced, natural intelligence algorithms.

Your filter actually seems to dig strongly opinionated posts. They are not automatically bad, and they can be quite good.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it's really funny how most of the comments in this list are genuine critiques and concerns, that get downvoted by toxic users. I went through and upvoted about half of them.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would love to see the top nasty comments for the day similar to [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) and how it ranks

</comment><comment><USER30> The irony here is amazing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11082337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11082337)

</comment><comment><USER31> A comment on my own show HN got flagged, which is kind of funny.

</comment><comment><USER32> It would also be great to see the most positive comments!

</comment><comment><USER33> Great job, love the "Y tho?" logo :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm very happy to report that most sentiment analysis is awesomely, incredibly, even _beautifully_ inane.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'd love to see how HN's 14% negative comments compare to youtube or reddit.

</comment><comment><USER36> This kind of automated or rule-based analysis is not sufficiently smart to use as any kind of moderation tool. And it won't be until it can interpret semantic content as well as recognize patterns.

Consider the following exchange:

 _Person 1: Hello! I just wanted to chime in and make you aware of the fact that according to some very cool research <link>, people with sub-equatorial ancestry exhibit markedly lower test scores, in fact very similar to many of the great apes! Your mileage may vary, but in my humble opinion I would never hire someone or work with someone from that demographic._

 _Person 2: Shut up and go away, you racist prick._

This pattern plays out on twitter fairly regularly, and it's usually Person 2 who gets moderated, despite the fact that the content of their message is actually more appropriate and a net positive for the community (given the context.) Meanwhile, as long as it's polite, actual hate speech can make it through most of these filters.

I've heard this referred to as the "polite Nazi" problem, and it's quite real.

<comment><USER37> It sounds like what you want is not sentiment analysis but rather some sort of political-correctness analysis, which rather than identifying aggressive language identifies "wrongthink".

I suspect you're the sort of person who would have torn down the signs 4channers put up last year saying "It's OK to be white", because despite the obviously anodyne and correct content of the message, you would have interpreted it as "polite Nazi".

<comment><USER38> I thought his point was interesting and practical, and that he used a non- controversial example. The problem he's describing is probably impossible to solve because real examples aren't so obvious, but it seems like you jumped to the conclusion that he would be willing to accept the downside of such a system in practice (punishing people who are in fact acting in good faith, and not just hiding hatred behind apparently rational wording), and you seem to be personally attacking him. However, I can only say that by assuming from the way you wrote it that you believe the 4channers you referenced were by-and- large acting in good faith. You should be more clear if that's what you're saying, since that would be a surprising conclusion to me. From everything I saw and heard, that movement seemed to be dominated by the usual hatred, and "It's OK to be white", while ostensibly an addressal of very real problems, was really just a slogan that's unassailable outside of any other context and therefore easy to hide behind.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do people do as hobbies? - <AUTHOR> I work a bit too much and was told to get a hobby. What do most people do in their spare time or as a hobby? <comment><USER2> I do Yoga.

Like a lot of computer folk I spent my days sitting with terrible posture, and I love how it makes my back feel.

If physical exercise is missing from your day, I can tell you that for me, adding it was trans formative. It's much easier to sleep well if you are physically tired too!

In a big city, meetup.com will have a lot of interesting things happening every week, so rather than pick a hobby you might want to just make a point of doing a couple of those a week until you happen on something you want to do again.

</comment><comment><USER3> For me it's home improvement. I could easily hire people to do work around the house, but I enjoy learning new things and it's a chance to do something other than stare at a screen. I've learned plumbing, electrical wiring, carpentry, hvac, and more, and I now have skills I could put to use as a day laborer!

</comment><comment><USER4> I've recently gotten back into electronics, a hobby from my teens, thanks to the Maker movement, the Arduino, the Raspberry Pi, etc. I'm interested in doing some home automation projects. I like to read science fiction, science popularization, tech history, some biographies, etc. I've been active in the local SF fandom community for decades and I used to belong to the SCA (a medievalist group).

I also sing choral music. I've been in some sort of chorus since 7th grade. Enjoyment of music gives me an entirely different sense of satisfaction and pleasure than do my more intellectual interests and I think that's healthy and helpful to being more well rounded.

</comment><comment><USER5> I assume you are in tech (same as me) and I personally like getting away from the screen with my hobbies:

\- Mountain biking \- Hike with groups (great way to meet people) \- Kickboxing (competitive and strategic) \- Scuba diving (cheap adventures) \- Gaming

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm guessing a huge chunk of people in the IT business play a lot of video games. I mean, people in all kinds of business play video games, but I'd say IT people play more.</comment>


Michael Hayden (Former NSA Director): Hackers are greatest danger - <AUTHOR> http://cryptome.org/2014/01/hayden-hackers.htm

<comment><USER2> I think all TLA's would agree that corrupt insiders are the biggest threat the cambridge 5, richard hansen and so on</comment>


Visual Studio Code January 2019 (version 1.31) - <AUTHOR> https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_31 <comment><USER2> they re implemented the TS-Lint plugin to use the same language server as typescript:

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms- vscod...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms- vscode.vscode-typescript-tslint-plugin)</comment>


Why People Won't Buy Your Product Even Though It's Awesome - <AUTHOR> http://flevy.com/blog/why-people-wont-buy-your-product-even-though-its-awesome/

<comment><USER2> I am in the situation of having a product that doesn't sell. It may very well be that my product is no good and would not sell under any circumstances. However, I have observed the following behavior on the part of some potential buyers:

1) When I have barely explained what problem my product solves, people interrupt me with, "But I already have <crappy thing>." After that, they refuse to even consider the possibility that my solution may be better. It is almost comical how oftentimes, I am unable to finish a single sentence for the rest of the conversation. Everything I start saying gets interrupted with claims that <crappy thing> has all these awesome features, which I know it does not. That would be Principle 3, "The Endowment Effect."

2) People scan everything that I say for a potential loss or cost that my product may incur (and yes, there is a cost). After that, again, the conversation becomes almost comical, reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch: every sentence that I start will be interrupted with some remark on how devastating the cost would be. It is impossible for me to direct the other person's attention to any gains that they would get. That would be Principle 1, "Losses Loom Larger than Gains."

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great post, I am currently battling/thinking about many of these same things as I work towards launching my own product. I agree, so far my approach to sales has sucked.</comment>


How TechCrunch must change to stay relevant to the startup community - <AUTHOR> http://quibb.com/links/how-techcrunch-must-change-to-stay-relevant-to-the-startup-community

<comment><USER2> TechCrunch has nothing to do with journalism. It's a startup tabloid. There's nothing wrong in this and clearly there is a strong demand for that among readers. If you want in-depth, read Ars or Wired or Inc. For tech trash? TC.

<comment><USER3> TechCrunch is definitely not a journalistic paragon[1], but I think the term tabloid is misplaced. Valleywag was the definition of a startup tabloid back in the days.

[1]: [http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click- wh...](http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-whores-and- paid-apologists-welcome-to-the-silicon-cesspool/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A couple weeks ago, I did an analysis of TechCrunch by analyzing the data from its Facebook page: <http://minimaxir.com/2012/10/questions-equals-reponses/>

In that analysis, I found that month-over-month, response rate (in terms of average Likes and Comments on news stories) seem to be stable, and increasing. While an increase in pageviews may be caused by linkbait titles, if people are _responding_ to articles more frequently, we can assume that they're "relevant", in this case.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of the link-baiting articles or headlines just seem to be gaming the Hacker News hivemind. I don't know whether that's a problem with TC or HN, frankly. Probably both.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article seems to suggest that the best way for TC to be relevant is to post shorter bits and long form articles written by entrepreneurs. I believe what's being described exists as "PandoDaily," which statistically speaking, you are probably not reading.

Yes, it's true that most technology writers haven't gone out to try their hand at founding startups. Most founders also haven't tried their hand at technology journalism, and it's hard not to notice that guests posts on blogs from founders are usually vapid cheerleading of the form "there is an unaddressed market problem in field X and there is a lot of opportunity in solving X," where "X" is whatever field their startup is in.

There are founders who are good writers, and people who write regularly will get better at it. But there are also a fair number of journalists, particularly in "new media" like, uh, websites, who have enough of a technical background to have _some_ idea what they're talking about when they write. Is it better to have articles written by solid writers with unexceptional technology backgrounds, or articles written by people who've successfully gotten money but aren't necessarily good writers (and might _still_ have unexceptional technology backgrounds)? Personally, I'd rather go for the former.

</comment><comment><USER6> I formerly read TechCrunch for Arrington and MG Seigler, since they were both pretty "entertaining" (read: ridiculous).

With them and that drama gone, there's little reason left to visit.

<comment><USER7> I drifted away after they left too. There's not much personality there. It feels like Mashable, a list of announcements and articles that don't provide much insight. No soul.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As with anything that becomes popular, TechCrunch gets a lot of hate in the tech industry. I scan through its feed almost daily, mostly digesting just the headlines.

I find value and entertainment in its long-form, insightful content (typically written by guest writers like Nir Eyal, Semil Shah, etc.), funding announcements (knowing what's funded matters), and even its link-bait, sensational articles. I don't think TechCrunch is trying or should be THE source for deep analysis or discussion. There are other sources for that (e.g. Quibb, Quora, individual personal blogs like Joel Gasconigne)... and that's OK.

</comment><comment><USER9> No mention of the number one issue. Stop writing about themselves. They think they're the story half the time. Inside nods and winks. Crap back and forth between writers. Petty little vendettas with other writers/institutions/organizations/whatever ...it's pathetic and childish.

Shifting to Facebook comments shows they care more about the (in the long run questionable) benefit of Facebook sharing, over quality of discourse. Once upon a time the comments section of TC posts could be as good as the article. Now it's spam, trolls, and "Johnny this is your mom, why don't you call me?".

<comment><USER10> It worked when Michael Arrington was there, because he was a bit of a celebrity himself. Lots of people loved him, or at least loved to hate him. Maybe that was just in the tail end of his time there, when he had established himself as a celebrity by writing lots of controversial stuff, getting publicly slammed for it, then firing back. But you can't leave out the first step - writing an initial article which genuinely stirs things up a bit.

<comment><USER9> It also helped that Arrington was a brilliant writer with a real nose for a tech story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Link bait is not going to go away as long as the standard metric for "success" is page views. It's what blog sites and MSM sites tout to their investors, board members, and advertising clients.

</comment><comment><USER12> The first thing they should do is make sure their website stops crashing tablets and smartphones. Rendering text articles should not be that difficult.

<comment><USER13> It does seem to have stopped crashing my iPad at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> They shouldn't completely change what they do but focus on quality valuable content. When I read something on AVC, Paul Graham's Blog or Ben Horowitz' blog I find direct value. I learn something new or how to fix a problem I'm facing. Many TechCrunch posts are "Is Instagram for Video a big market?" or "Why the internet is dead?". You sometimes get clicks but it devalues the content.

I don't mind funding announcements when they're mixed with product announcements or are an overall profile. I like how Sahil did it with Gumroad, he announced Gumroad has raised X amount of money and has launched our product and the article included a video interview. Copying a press release or quoting a company blogpost doesn't add value.

Many people still value TechCrunch, it's source for investors and influencers too, to track companies they may be interested in investing in. If TechCrunch just became editorial it would lose this and most of the value.

<comment><USER15> You can say "add value", but a press release that was posted on my site reposted on TC word for word _is_ adding value - or at least, potentially adding value - to me. Just because it's published doesn't mean anyone had seen it - getting it in front of a lot of eyeballs is a certain amount of value in itself.

<comment><USER14> Adding value to the reader. Why the reader should read their post vs the Venture Beat quote. As writers that should be their aim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> TC is going to get worse, not better. AOL hasn't even gone full retard with them yet, this is all we can expect...

Tags: android, android 4.0, android 4.0.4, Android4.0, Android4.0.4, droid razr, droid razr hd, droid razr maxx hd, DroidRazr, DroidRazrHd, DroidRazrMaxxHd, google, Ice Cream Sandwich, IceCreamSandwich, ics, mobilepostcross, motorola, motorola droid razr, motorola droid razr hd, motorola droid razr maxx, motorola droid razr maxx hd, MotorolaDroidRazr, MotorolaDroidRazrHd, MotorolaDroidRazrMaxx, MotorolaDroidRazrMaxxHd, review, verizon, video

Pure Garbage, puregarbage, pure, garbage.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why should I care whether they are relevant?

<comment><USER18> Because the tech industry, like all others, has a large element of fashion - and a lot of people (like it or no) are followers of fashion. The New New thing, etc.

<comment><USER17> That has nothing to do with Techcrunch per se. People will find something else if TC dies. Big whoop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think that ship has already sailed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Easier for digg to come back to my bookmarks than techcrunch.

That means never.</comment>


newLisp is a Lisp-like, general-purpose scripting language - <AUTHOR> http://www.newlisp.org/ <comment><USER2> I guess everything old is new again - Here's a decent overview of some of the past newLisp drama:

[http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2006/04/20/newlisp-an- intriguin...](http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2006/04/20/newlisp-an-intriguing- dialect-of-lisp/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Are they still proud of their non-GC? It seems the answer is yes.

<http://www.newlisp.org/MemoryManagement.html>

<comment><USER4> I think it's pretty clever. The memory fragmentation caused by incessant consing leads to gc phase after gc phase. Their ORO trick prevents this, and as a bonus improves cache locality. They report they also have a true mark and sweep phase to take care of the corner cases.

Does their ORO scheme have any significant downsides?

<comment><USER3> No sharing. And clever compilers can already allocate most conses on the stack nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OSNews has a detailed article that takes a deeper look into this new dialect of Lisp.

<http://www.osnews.com/story/20728/A_Look_at_newLISP>

</comment><comment><USER6> newLisp reverts 25 years of progress in the Lisp world. It is a disgrace.</comment>


New Flash Player Saves Power - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/02/09/web-video-flash-player-10-2/

<comment><USER2> New flash player lets you watch full screen on a second monitor _finally_.</comment>


How to Speak Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/26/how-to-speak-silicon-valley-decoding-tech-bros-from-microdosing-to-privacy <comment><USER2> Hits the SV tech bro mindset right on the head, and so will obviously be ignored or ridiculed by said tech bro set, when they should instead take a long hard look at just what they're doing.

<comment><USER3> You're so brave for saying that</comment></comment>


Schneier removed from TSA oversight meeting at TSA request  - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/03/congressional_t.html <comment><USER2> There used to be an old, old joke on slashdot. Whatever the topic, somebody would say "I, for one welcome our new X overlords"

I, for one, welcome our new security overlords.

For some reason, it doesn't sound as funny anymore.

There was a story recently about how all sorts of various agencies now want their own drones to watch the citizenry as we go about our normal lives. I'll never forget an interview the reporter had with a Congressman. His basic stance was something along the lines of "Boys will be boys. This is just all sorts of other agencies wanting to get in on the UAV bandwagon."

My point is this: I don't think our elected representatives take any of this very seriously at all, no matter what they might say during an election or on TV. I don't think it bothers them for one second that the TSA gets to pick it's own witnesses for each day, or that gradually we're turning into a security state. I just don't think it really registers on their radar.

<comment><USER3> I thought the overlord joke was from the Simpson's, but it turns out that they got the idea from 70's high camp: [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-for-one- welcome-our-new-x-ov...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-for-one-welcome-our- new-x-overlords)

More on topic: I believe that one of the main reasons why they don't take it seriously is because they are literally above the law here. They don't have to go through the same process that ordinary travelers do. I can't find an authoritative source, so either all of Congress or only those senior members traveling with a security detail are exempt, but either way, those in charge don't understand the full impact it has on ordinary people's lives.

<comment><USER4> Not true. Here's one famous case: Senator Kennedy was on the no-fly-list for a while, so security theater applies to congress members as well as you. ([http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html))

<comment><USER5> _so security theater applies to congress members as well as you._

Not so much ...

"Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge finally called to apologize about the mix-up, and the delays stopped in early April, Smith said."

If you, or I, got on the no-fly list I doubt the head cheese would call up and offer an apology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sent Jason Chaffetz (my representative) the following email:

Disgusted With The TSA

I was looking forward to seeing the TSA respond to Bruce Schneier's criticisms in the Oversight Committee meeting today. He is one of the world's experts on security. The news that he was dismissed from the committee makes me think the TSA is much less interested in actual security than in their own appearance, which fits the definition of security theatre very well. Please hold the TSA accountable for their gross misuse of power. Please make them answer to actual security experts on their policies. Thank you very much.

<comment><USER7> Phone calls and real mail are supposedly more effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I found it quite illuminating to peruse the list of the shills^H^H^H^H^H^Hwitnesses who are going to be allowed to testify:

Christopher L. McLaughlin, Transportation Security Administration, Assistant Administrator for Security Operations

Stephen Sadler, Transportation Security Administration, Assistant Administrator for Intelligence and Analysis

Rear Admiral Paul F. Zukunft, U.S. Coast Guard, Assistant Commandant for Marine Safety, Security & Stewardship

Stephen M. Lord, U.S. Government Accountability Office, Director, Homeland Security

<comment><USER9> Quick clarification: Stephen Lord doesn't work for DHS, he works for GAO, which is an agency established by Congress to maintain, as the title says, "government accountability". His _jurisdiction_ is over DHS. This isn't to say he's a good guy, since GAO is mostly bean counters, but there it is.

<comment><USER10> When the GAO issues a report saying that your department is ineffective, people listen. They may be bean counters, but they are fairly well respected bean counters. The reports that I have read really help identify problems in government entities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The committee membership is here:

<http://oversight.house.gov/committee-members/>

That's over 20 different states represented there, so odds are good you can contact one of the members and be listened to. Let 'em know this is bullshit, and that if we're going to spend money on security, it shouldn't be on theater.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the link. I just emailed my representative on the committee.

<comment><USER13> Send a physical letter -- it has far more impact, especially if handwritten.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is Schneier presumed to be the most effective critic of the TSA? The body scanner program in particular has been roundly criticized by civil libertarians (both conservative and liberal), has generated credible concerns from professional scientists as to health risks, and has been repeatedly demonstrated by physical security experts to be ineffective.

Schneier is an effective writer, particular when his audience comes with built-in respect for his accomplishments, but his broad disdain for virtually all of airport security† probably reduces his effectiveness in making a case to the wider public. He's easy to caricature, and traffics professionally in an image of "security muckraking" that suggests he'd oppose the TSA no matter what it does.

† _A disdain I share, mind you._

<comment><USER15> Schneier is effective because he tells a different side of the story from most. The civil libertarian angle is already pretty well covered. People take it as a security versus liberty tradeoff and the population has, in general, resoundingly chosen to favor security. I don't think there are any new arguments to be made there. The civil libertarians will say that this stuff is bad, the TSA will say that it's necessary to keep us safe, and nothing will really happen.

Schneier is different because he's an expert in _security_ and he lays out just why the TSA's approach is _bad security_. Not because it infringes on liberties, but because it's just not effective, and the money could be used more effectively. This approach is, I believe, the only way to convince an unreasonably frightened American public to back change.

<comment><USER14> Schneier has less expertise in airport security than other professional security and law enforcement people who _also_ disagree strongly with the TSA's approach to airport security.

My point isn't that "it's bad security" is a losing argument; my point is that Schneier isn't the only qualified person making that argument.

<comment><USER16> If a half-dozen more qualified individuals step up to make the same arguments, perhaps the inclusion of Schneier would prove redundant. I don't see those people lining up to make those arguments, and I see plenty lining up to defend the current state or try to make it worse.

It also helps to hear from someone who starts from the perspective of "only do things that work and are worth the cost", rather than someone who starts from the perspective of "do anything that could possibly make a difference, it couldn't hurt (given that we don't place any value on anything other than security)".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I probably shouldn't be disappointed, by now, that the TSA continue to live up to the reputation that they have around here. The agency is pretty much a pure creature of cognitive bias at this point - of sunk cost fallacies, of the desperate impulse to cover one's own ass, of irrational fears and irrational responses.

I flew over the weekend. I reached a bit of a breaking point about taking the TSA seriously when I heard one of the screeners refer to a contraband item (a bottle of water) in luggage as a "party foul." Everyone but the higher-ups knows that it's an absolute farce and a waste of money. It's a great example of why the tops of hierarchies should _not_ be insulated from the consequences of their decisions - rather, the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER18> What is the point of an oversight hearing if you refuse to let your top critics testify?

<comment><USER19> Theater, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> When I heard Schneier had been invited I actually thought the government was going to take this seriously.

Obviously this is now going to be just another whitewash. _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER21> I couldn't find a peep about the meeting in TSA's blog. I find it ludicrous that they can boot a top tier expert without enough time to replace him by anyone that could bring similar points to the discussion.

<comment><USER22> I think you're confused. Their blog is not an information-dissemination service, it is a marketing instrument.

<comment><USER23> You would've gotten the same message across without also insulting vgnet by omitting that first sentence.

<comment><USER24> What? People get confused. I get confused. You get confused (as evidenced by this post). Everybody gets confused, just like everybody poops.

<comment><USER23> Nobody's actually confused. He did not literally mean to say anyone was confused. He's essentially saying "you were naive to think this blog was more than a marketing channel".

<comment><USER22> KwanEsq explained exactly what I intended with my introduction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> From a comment on that page by "greg":

 _Based on their logic, the TSA should also withdraw from the hearings as they're involved in the lawsuits._

</comment><comment><USER26> Canadian here -- a non-American perspective: your President has no cojones. If he had a pair, the TSA is one of the things he could have easily remedied, or better controlled.

<comment><USER27> Your assuming that security theater, a large target for public's anger, and a ready source of media distractions aren't all very valuable tools for The Office of the President.

1984 was a very good instruction manual.

<comment><USER28> It's not like there's a lack of deserving decoys out there. However, the TSA has the advantage of "reaching out and touching" people literally by the multi-millions. The current situation was put in place by George W. as well. They may be the best outrageous government agency the current administration could hope for to look good by comparison to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Darrell Issa (one of the committee leaders) is fairly active on twitter. Let him know your concerns: <https://twitter.com/#!/DarrellIssa>

</comment><comment><USER30> So I guess they answered the question in the title of the hearing before it even started: theater.

</comment><comment><USER31> I also emailed my rep. (Carolyn Maloney, D-NY) who is on the TSA oversight board.

</comment><comment><USER5> A lady asked Dr. Franklin, "Well Doctor, what have we got a republic or a monarchy?"

"A republic," replied the Doctor. "If you can keep it."

Feels like we've lost it: the monarchists have won it back.

The pity is they're not even very _good_ monarchists.

<comment><USER32> No, a lot of our extant problems would not be present under any reasonably sane (not necessarily benevolent) monarch, very likely including some of the more useless security apparatus. We'd just have different problems.

<comment><USER5> I was not implying that we'd be better off with a monarchy.

Only that the rascals in charge _want_ to be a monarchy, and they're not very good at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Duh.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you tiptoe through your codebase like a minefield? - <AUTHOR>

Is your codebase a frightening, brittle mess of dangerous interactions likely to collapse with any little touch, that you need to slowly and carefully tiptoe through like a minefield?<p>Or is a well organised, robust, structured code base that you can fly through and make changes at will? <comment><USER2> I maintain a PHP app originally by a no longer present Chief. No framework, no MVC style separation of code. Minimal tests via Selenium. Its fragile. Upgrades or new features require lots of work, new more split code. We are in process of gradual rewrite - ETA 2018. Makes money but moves like a tortoise.

A second one uses a little custom framework. We have more test cases for this one so we can mash through it w/o much concern. The total codebase is less than 200k lines (excluding framework). We can move fast but this makes little money

A third has 4 devs, uses a common well known framework and each dev writes one test case a week (our test process is gamified). Makes good money and we can move pretty quick but have a methodical Work, Test, Beta, Live process too.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is well organised, robust, structured, with lots of unit / integration tests.

I still tiptoe though, because in my experience over-confidence is a recipe for disaster.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've inherited a few minefields. I can see how they weren't always this way. Some very smart people designed the project, and then a dozen or so engineers came through and, failing to fully understand the project structure, made their additions/modifications in totally harebrained ways. The fault lies with the original developers, who failed to create a robust, understandable codebase (no tests, no documentation, zero code comments(!)).

</comment><comment><USER5> A mix of both (depending on time constraints)... with a lot of unit tests so refactoring it is part of life, and not a part I'm particularly afraid of.

I go for the well structured approach, but you don't always have the luxury of time unfortunately.</comment>


Google filing says Gmail users have no expectation of privacy - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57598420-93/google-filing-says-gmail-users-have-no-expectation-of-privacy/ <comment><USER2> This is completely misleading. The article actually says this:

      Plaintiffs in the case contend that Google's automated
      scanning of e-mail represents an illegal interception of
      their electronic communications without their consent.
      However, Google, which uses automated scanning to filter
      spam and deliver targeted advertising to its users, noted
      that plaintiffs consented to the practice in exchange for
      the e-mail services. Google goes on to say that courts have
      held that all e-mail users "necessarily give implied consent
      to the automated processing of their emails."

This is the same old "algorithms reading my email is a violation of privacy" argument from back when Gmail started. Ignoring the bullshit headline, Google's argument comes down to the following:

1\. Machines scanning your email doesn't violate privacy 2\. Even if it did, you consent to it when you sign up for a Gmail account 3\. It's impossible to provide email hosting without some level of automated processing of messages

Google's clearly in the right here, and the various outlets reporting this story need to learn some journalistic ethics.

<comment><USER3> > 1\. Machines scanning your email doesn't violate privacy

Depends what the machine or the operator is doing with the result of that scan.

> 2\. Even if it did, you consent to it when you sign up for a Gmail account

Gmail users consent to scan from Gmail but if google holds in court that consent is implied to the automated processing of emails then someone might think this content extends to any machine touching the mail on its trip to the recipient. Which is not the same as "scanning mail content to get useful keywords for better ads".

I wonder if google is allowed to scan mails it has received but the user hasn't yet opened. It means google has access to the user's pen buddy mail without that pen buddy's consent. I agree consent from the user is given when he reads any mail that include or not his correspondent text But that correspondent might be using another mail provider and my point is that he hasn't given explicit consent to google to scan its mail... the one allowing that is the gmail user.

What happens if I say to my correspondent "don't share this" and he opens the mail. Has he betrayed me by sharing that mail with google ? If google has indexed that mail content before I (the gmail user) had a chance to read it... did google violate my correspondent's privacy ?

Is sending an email to a gmail address an implied consent to have mail read and indexed for ad targeting ? Excluding necessary and really automated non- profit machine analysis such as white listing, anti-spam, virus, domain verification, stp check, etc.

Automated processing (for making sure it's delivered) of emails certainly doesn't imply scanning content to build a social graph and an ad profile.

<comment><USER4> > I wonder if google is allowed to scan mails it has received but the user > hasn't yet opened

Well, this is how anti spam filter works

<comment><USER3> For spam, yes. But does it implicitly allow Google to scan for building a user profile of a gmail user ? And of a sender from a different service ?

Why would google be allowed to build a johnchristopher@fastmail ad profile based on the mail sent to my gmail correspondents ?

The analogy with snail mail is blurry because every snail mail exchange doesn't include the full transcript of the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The headline is deliberately inflammatory, leaving off the "turned over to third parties".

The actual statement itself is almost a tautology - when you give someone information, you don't expect that the information is private _from them_ because you just _gave it to them_.

</comment><comment><USER6> They should put that phrase on the login page.

<comment><USER7> Eric Schmidt, then Google CEO, openly said something in that direction in 2009:

[http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for- filthy-...](http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy- people)

 _If you have something that you don 't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place._

<comment><USER8> What a terrible, terrible "argument". As though anything one might want to hide is something they "shouldn't be doing in the first place". Yeah you shouldn't have been raped but now that you have, you can't tell anybody about it through OUR service. Because we just don't care. Alcoholic? Don't count on OUR service, or any other service on the internet OR your home phone to get any support without anybody finding out. Not to mention: shouldn't have been doing that.

There is NOTHING wrong with having stuff to hide. I have stuff to hide. Didn't break to law, either. This is why I'm moving away from GMail, and Google in general, save for some searches every now and then and perhaps image search. "Don't be evil"? More like "We don't care".

Privacy IS important; anybody who says not is definitely someone I don't understand at all.

<comment><USER9> Nobody is denying anyone's _legal right_ to privacy. Eric Schmidt was setting expectations about it, when he made that statement. You would have known if gawker didn't (1) Made their own value judgement. (private => filth) and equate privacy to security (2) Quoted the entire statement, instead of the part that fits the story that they want to tell.

In case you have't read it a hundred times before, he continues to say "But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities."

<comment><USER8> Thanks for pointing out possible nuances. Unfortunately:

(1) I searched for this exact phrase (using Google :P) hoping to find the nuance to prove me wrong. I found it on Wikipedia [1] as well as on The Huffington Post [2], the latter actually containing the video in which he says these things. The problem is this: adding "but if you really need that kind of privacy, [you're screwed]" doesn't change the meaning of "if you have something to hide, you must've done something you shouldn't be doing" and that is still utterly, UTTERLY narrow minded.

(2) The terrible, terrible naive argument is made a lot today by all kinds of people (even by my own father, who is generally a huge role model for me), making my criticism of it, unfortunately, quite relevant towards today's spying of the US government. Even if Schmidt HAD added nuance to take away my criticism of what he said -- which he either didn't, or I haven't found it --, it would've stood as a more general criticism. I'm not convinced that Schmidt doesn't still stand by what he said back then, but it can't be too hard for him to make a statement if he feels his views have been improperly represented by the media. If he has, I would love to know about it. As it stands right now, I just cannot have private communication through any service which Google provides, and that means I actually might have to be careful about what I write, and THAT is very wrong in my opinion.

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

[2] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/07/google-ceo-on- priva...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/07/google-ceo-on-privacy- if_n_383105.html)

<comment><USER7> _that means I actually might have to be careful about what I write, and THAT is very wrong in my opinion._

You have to be anyway, you are responsible for your actions and every action of everybody can result in something. The problem is what we as society want to be acceptable results, that is, where we as society want to draw the line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> personally I was more amused by the "ordinary course of business" defense— that an otherwise (as argued by the plaintiffs at least) unlawful activity could somehow be made lawful by it being part of the defenses "ordinary course of business".

I look forward to seeing bank robbers use that one. :P

</comment><comment><USER11> Few years back i lost my gmail id after some hacker deleted it which i used for everything like my accounts, offer letters i received etc. Since then i distributed my things in different places. I still use another gmail account only for general purpose..i believe fastmail more than any other..ofcourse recently i am loving outlook but still Microsoft is more non-trustable than google..ain't it?...

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone on Hacker News who still uses Gmail expect privacy?

<comment><USER13> Does anyone on Hacker News still use Gmail?

<comment><USER14> What else would you recommend if you own your own domain? I _must_ have webmail, IMAP, calendar, contact list, task list and seamless sync with mobiles. And be free. And be outside of the US.

<comment><USER13> Not sure if they already allow having your own domain, but the rest is covered: [https://mykolab.com/](https://mykolab.com/) based in non-EU country Switzerland. Of course it's not free, but keep in mind: if it's free, you are probably the product being sold.

If you need to use your own domain, set up your own server or VPS and install [https://kolab.org/](https://kolab.org/) (it's all listed on [https://prism- break.org/](https://prism-break.org/))</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why are column oriented databases so much faster than row oriented databases? - <AUTHOR> http://siganakis.com/using-bitmap-indexes-in-query-processing

<comment><USER2> They're faster - often by factors - than row based database if your workload is mainly based on aggregates. That's why they're so effective for datawarehousing.

On the other hand if your workload is update/delete heavy then they can be much slower than row-based databases.

Just imagine that you're updating a dozen rows at a single record. In a row database that's one search, in a column database it's 12 searches.

They're complimentary to each other - that's why you often see say banks using row-based databases for the day-to-day workload (lots of updates) and column databases for analytics (lots of data being aggregated).

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a paper on a same topic:

Column-Stores vs. Row-Stores: How Different Are They Really? [<http://db.csail.mit.edu/projects/cstore/abadi-sigmod08.pdf>]

This is a very interesting paper where the researchers have compared performance of Column Store databases with plain Row Store databases as well as Row Store databases emulating column stores by using vertical partitioning and other techniques.

There is also A Comparison of C-Store and Row-Store in a Common Framework [<http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~alanh/tr.pdf>] where researchers demonstrate that the gain that Column Store databases give can be easily achieve in row stores by but by other techniques.

<comment><USER4> From what I remember the advantage of Column-Oriented DB is its data locality - the data of a column are stored together so that more of them can be loaded into memory in one shot, less disk seeks. They are good when doing aggregation (sum,count,groupby) on a few columns out of a table with many columns since the rest of the columns are not touched at all. When the full rows have to be retrieved, there's no advantage or may be even slower than row-based db.

<comment><USER5> It can also be on the same _machine_, when you look at distributed data stores. One of the pains of "scanning" vertically is that you have to go through all of the machines in your cluster, where each takes a shard of your data.

Cassandra's implementation provides many insights into this question. Not only data locality from the entity's POV, but also from the machine's POV.

Cassandra also stores the data on disk in a forward-only data structure (to avoid disk seeks), which is periodically compacted (deletes, updates) and employs bloom filters to ease up on cache/disk hits and misses.

I guess one more advantage of a practical column store like Cassandra is that you are being forced to shape your data to your queries (no relational calculus/algebra as in RDBMS) which requires much more thought.

<comment><USER6> _you are being forced to shape your data to your queries (no relational calculus/algebra as in RDBMS)_

I think this is wrong twice over. First, there are commercial column store RDBMS systems already, starting with Vertica. And secondly, in any large RDBMS, you have to shape your data to your queries and your queries to your data. There's a reason that people with very large databases want very skilled DBAs and DB developers. The notion that row stores allow you to build enormous data warehouses without giving any thought to how you layout data on disk, what sort of indexing you use, how to normalize, etc is just absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For a project where I needed to quickly partition a data tale of millions of rows at multiple levels, I wrote a column database with bitmap index for data storage. It is 100% c# code. The queries and data manipulation is lighting fast the data loading is a little bit slower than traditional db because all the index that needs to be created on the fly, but once is done, is a sweet ride after. Things that I learned to consider, the quality of the compression algorithm, there is a trade off between compressing and some specifics type of queries. Also, the cardinality of the column ( number of different values in the column ) will impact the indices that need to be created and the query time response, if the cardinality is too high, b-tree might be a better alternative. I was working towards making a product out of it, but then I saw SQL Server new column index and I drop it. I don't think anybody would be interested in a little dll, when the big boy is offering the same functionality.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure the new column store indexing in SQL server is enterprise edition only (not even in the new bi license) which in my experience prices out a lot of small businesses. Might be a niche in there somewhere to be served.

<comment><USER7> Actually I am observing this news... and how the licencing for SQL Server will end up panning out.

Some people here still thinks that row oriented databases can compete in aggregation speed, so if I do a MVP it will require a lot of teaching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One question. Isn't this how B+ Tree index on a column work? A BT index is just the sorted values of a column with pointers to the row id of the actually rows. Note that BT index are often compressed as well since the sorted values have many similarity to its neighbors.

Also what's the difference between the bitmap part and the Bitmap Index (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmap_index>)?

<comment><USER7> The difference is in the operations. With a b tree the software operates on 1 row at a time, but when represented as a series of bit, then in a 32 bit CPU you can process 32 rows in 1 instruction. Which leads to bitmap index over GPU...

<comment><USER9> It will be 64bit at a time using plain CPU instruction or 128-512bits at a time using SIMD or GPU.

Also article describes a word-aligned bitmaps data structure, which uses RLE, so it will skip areas of all-zeros or all-ones.

<comment><USER7> Yes, the only problem I found when writing my own bitmap index is they become cumbersome when asking the question: what value has this column for this row. RLE does not help there. But they are extremely fast when asking the question: what rows has this value on this column. And that is the whole concept, the ability to flip the question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks, FastBit looks quite interesting, but the site is so... academic. So much great research is lurking behind "unassuming" web presences. 'Someone should do something!'

<https://sdm.lbl.gov/fastbit/>

<comment><AUTHOR> It is also worth noting that some of the technology underpinning FastBit is actually patented (the Word Aligned Hybrid method of run length encoding).

<http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6831575.html>

Basically the patent covers the method of run length encoding. Each bitmap is stored as an array of words (32/64 bit ints), with each word being either a "fill word" telling it that the next x words are all 0/1 or a "literal word" containing an actual sequence of 0's and 1's.

Its a pretty sorry state of affairs when core, relatively simple data structures are patentable. Imagine if someone had patented the linked-list or binary search tree!

Interestingly, FastBit (which uses this IP) is released under the LGPL

[Edit: improved clarity]

<comment><USER11> That, er, seems obvious, and I would have thought has prior art...

<comment><USER7> In the US prios art does not count anymore. There are papers since the 60s about bitmap indices, but now is first to file not first to invent... Politics screw us up again

<comment><USER12> Legally, prior art still invalidates a patent. But that only matters if you can afford to litigate.

<comment><USER7> Link to proof this? I am very curious...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Column-oriented databases are faster because computers are built for arrays and not rows. It is a lot easier to pass through a simple column in memory or read a simple column from the disk. The pass through the memory benefits from all the caching functionality on the chip, and the pass through the disk benefits from the arm not having to bounce around. Essentially you move at the maximum speed allowed by the equipment. Row-based storage defeats all that.

Indexing is also improved with a column store. If you have a row-based storage mechanism, particularly one with variably sized entries, you're going to need a more complicated indexing scheme.

<comment><USER14> wat

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have no direct experience with column oriented DBs, but I'd expect if you have a wide table and are getting all the columns in a query, then a column oriented DB's performance would suffer relative to a row oriented one's. So it's a trade-off, sometimes it's slower, sometimes it's faster, depends on the use-case.

<comment><USER7> Not accurate, you don't need to get all the columns, actually you don't need to operate over all the values of the column. If the data oes not change frequently, then column oriented is faster. The trade off is how many structures needed to be maintained when rows updates... Then row oriented is faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Column-stores are a big part of the technology described in Google's Dremel paper (<http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36632.html>); they used a column- oriented format to build a system to support interactive queries to big datasets.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you consider column oriented databases as relational database normalisation taken to the extreme, this makes sense. Apart from the semantic benefits, Codd and Date have argued normalisation gives an efficiency benefit.

<comment><USER18> If the physical benefit of normalization is related to sharing the representation of repeated values, then perhaps this reduces the physical benefit of normalization, because shared values are automatically captured just once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you'd like to play with a SQL-standard column-store, check out the open source LucidDB. <http://www.luciddb.org/html/main.html>

</comment><comment><USER20> See also, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postings_file>

</comment><comment><USER21> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column-oriented_DBMS></comment>


Netcap: A framework for secure and scalable network traffic analysis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dreadl0ck/netcap <comment><USER2> I'd be interested in the USB data capture mentioned in the future work section. What pieces would be needed to enable that?

I was looking for a good system to directly forward usb data, especially if it could monitor a stream between an existing application without requiring a hardware USB analysis device in between.

<comment><USER3> I haven't used it but Wireshark has had USBpcap for a while. Maybe it meets your needs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> not sure how this is a analysis framework itself. Could be a very helpful component in a complete analysis framework.

Academically, I do think the functionality that this application provides is rather weakly positioned, i.e., what is the related work? The thesis provides a lot of info but omits how this tool is actually warranted as a whole. The state of the art discussion in 3.4 of the thesis document is missing fundamental rationale, and at times it feels as if it is written after Netcap was already done. The state of the art tools are related, but are sometimes not comparable to Netcap itself; some tools are complete intrusion detection systems, whereas others are merely tools following the Unix philosophy of doing 1 thing. That said, very impressive for "just" a bachelor's thesis.

</comment><comment><USER2> Amazing work, thanks for sharing.

Are there any recommended guidelines for sizing the hardware used for capturing/processing network data?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is perfect for a raspberry pi WiFi bridge.

Excellent work.</comment>


Grand Theft Auto's Diamond Casino lets cash be turned into chips - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49084726 <comment><AUTHOR> So as I understand it, the game lets you spend real money to buy "chips" for gambling; but even if you win at the gambling, you can't get your money back out.

Sounds like a terrible deal. If I wanted to amuse myself by gambling with my hard-earned cash, I'd like there to be at least _some_ chance of coming out ahead.

Great scheme for preying on naive teenagers, though.</comment>


"Fixing the Brain With Computers":  conversation with neurosurgeon R. Bucholz - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/innovation/fixing-the-brain-with-computers

<comment><USER2> Someday this research is going to put drug dealers out of business and make batteries a prescription item.</comment>


IPhone 4S against all other iPhone models (low light shooting) - <AUTHOR> http://campl.us/posts/Low-Light

<comment><USER2> I think we've finally came to the place where consumer-grade digital cameras will quickly begin to fade out. The images and video coming from the 4S are mind-blowing -- I'm still dumbfounded such a small lens array can produce such clear photos. (Check Vimeo's iPhone video channel.)

The only thing my 4S lacks that my point-and-shoot has is an optical zoom. Beyond that, the phone's ecosystem of photo apps plus the ability to drop photos into Facebook in seconds makes warehousing my old digital a no-brainer.

<comment><USER3> One thing smartphone cameras still don't do for me is minimize the time between wanting to take a shot and taking a shot. This is one area I think consumer cameras could also be improved. Ideally I'd like one button for pictures, one for video -- mash it down, the camera powers on and figures out what to do as fast as possible.

<comment><USER4> Compact cameras are still terrible in that regard; you can only get that 'off to photo taken in 0.3 seconds' with SLRs today. It's thus not really a valid argument for compact digital cameras still having relevance.

<comment><USER5> Imagine that your customer is drunk.

Digital cameras win hands down. Slam the power button, slam the photo button, and you have at least a blurry blackmail-worthy shot of your friend dancing with a hobo.

With a mobile phone, by the time I get the app up and running, the hobo is gone and my friend is left with nothing but hobo sweat.

<comment><USER6> On my Galaxy II, whenever I want to have the camera functionality ready, I open the camera app and press the power button. The screen turns off, and I simply need to wake the phone back on to be immediately ready to take a blackmail picture.

This is even quicker with the "NoLock" app that disables the lock screen.

<comment><USER7> My Finger DNA has already memorized "Double Click + Camera Icon" from the lock screen, and then hit the shutter release/+ button on the iPhone like mad.

Even on the relatively poor shutter speed iPhone 4, I'm usually taking pictures within 2-3 seconds. Supposedly the 4S has significantly reduced the shutter-lag to first picture - looking forward to seeing the truth of that.

<comment><USER5> Double-click and Camera Icon? For me, double-clicking just brings up the iTunes/iPod interface.

<comment><USER8> Update to ios 5

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Both iPhone and iPhone 4S have great cameras, but I have recently tested 4S camera vs Sprints Epic Touch 4G(Samsung Galaxy S 2) and couldnt find discernible quality differences that would make iPhone 4S stand out.

Furthermore I loved the fact that Samsung's Camera software allows you to specify the ISO and focus mode(spot/center/etc) whereas neither Camera+ nor iPhones Camera app provides for ISO manipulation(I dont recall if Camera+ allows specifying focus modes) -- this could be a limitation of iOS SDK.

<comment><USER10> Manual controls would be great.

Camera+ lets you separately control focus point and metering point, that's most likely what you're looking for in "focus modes".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish they had used a mini tripod to minimize blurriness. It also doesn't sound like they were able to use Camera+ on the earlier models, therefore the shots had different settings. The photos for the models pre-iphone 4 aren't really comparable then, though I appreciate the effort.

<comment><USER12> Using a tripod would have made this article irrelevant, nobody ever actually uses a mini-tripod when shooting with their phone.

<comment><USER13> Not true, as per the scientific method you only want to test typically along one dimension (in this case sensor quality).

If the cameras are subject a random motion which causes blur greater than the blur caused by low-light conditions then the results are meaningless as the random motion is independent of the variable being tested.

<comment><USER14> I disagree because you want to test photographs from a human holding it, not a tripod holding it. Perhaps you could take dozens of shots with each phone and compare.

<comment><USER15> suivix nailed it. Photography is not one dimensional. A great photograph with a camera phone must be handheld. Suivix's point about taking a great number of photos then comparing the results with a huge sample then making a quantitative assessment would be the only correct way to test it.

This post wasn't about the quality of the sensor it was about the quality of the photograph.

<comment><USER13> Increasing the number of photographs would definitely make this more significant (as increasing the sample size in any experiment does).

My point is that regardless of if a 4S shot better photos, the photographer could hiccup and get a blurrier photo than they might have taken last with a 3GS. In a less extreme circumstance, they could have just exhaled instead of hiccuping, in which case no one would have noticed and the error could be incorrectly attributed to the camera.

A great photograph with a camera phone requires a certain set of parameters that can almost entirely be individually measured outside of human interaction (and randomness). If you want good handheld performance, you need a fast exposure time, which can be measured from the EXIF data of each photo. If you want high dynamic range, measure the ratio of pure white and black pixels to the rest of the image (white and black is basically over/underexposed). The only thing that would be effected by motion that I can't think of how else to measure beyond being handheld is time to good focus (outside of crazy contraptions that result in more repeatable motion, like sticking your phone in a centrifuge), but there probably exists a way to do so while avoiding the inherent non-repeatability of humans behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can anyone explain (simply) what the Camera+ app does that might be different than the integrated iOS camera app?

<comment><USER9> Camera+ provides several functions that I would consider super useful:

1) Timer mode -- allows me to minimize the shake in the less-than-ideal light situation.

2) Separate focus/exposure locks

It also adds a number of post-processing filters, but these are a dime a dozen in this post-Instagram world

<comment><USER17> > 2) Separate focus/exposure locks

in hardware? or software post processing?

<comment><USER18> In hardware. It's not post-processing, it's real camera control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Impressive how this site always have shacky blurred pics and claims to make a comparison. WTF is this seriously?

Oh i know. Bullshit that's what. They don't even care.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is an outstanding comparison. Roughly speaking, are there configuration settings required? Or is this just click?

<comment><USER21> No, it's a crap comparison...

Focus varies, exposure varies and I'm shure the stability of the person taking those pictures varies too.

It tells _nothing_ about the quality of the camera (hardware) or the software (in phone post processing).

Meh.

<comment><USER22> "Nothing," really? This seems like a very real-world sort of test that gives a fairly decent indication of the kind of pictures that you're likely to get in the conditions indicated. It's not scientific, and there are lots of uncontrolled variables, but it's still _useful_.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Simple, unprivileged firewall (outgoing TCP only) for Windows and Unix - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tgg/connect-or-cut/releases/tag/v1.0.4 <comment><AUTHOR> This new version now works on Windows as well as Unix.

connect-or-cut enables any user to prevent outgoing TCP connections from one process and its child.</comment>


ThinLTO: Scalable and Incremental Link-Time Optimization for LLVM - <AUTHOR> http://blog.llvm.org/2016/06/thinlto-scalable-and-incremental-lto.html <comment><USER2> There's a session from WWDC 2016 that talks about this - [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/405/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/405/)

The LTO part runs from 14:00 to 22:00. The streaming seems to only work in Safari (for Macs), but you can download the mp4s in HD (1.2 GB) or SD (300 MB).

They do a good job of describing how it works and why this is kind of a big deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting.

Google built it because it's pretty necessary to scale to the size application we build.

It looks like Apple started using it just because it's faster anyway ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Relevant Rust discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4p4l5k/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4p4l5k/)

</comment><comment><USER4> See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11950631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11950631)

</comment><comment><USER5> I didn't understand fully what it took to achieve this but simply looking at the numbers it is so clear how impressive the work is. Near or better performance with enormously fast build time, significant improvement in incremental compilation and enormous reduction in memory usage. Its unusual to see an optimization attempt succeed from so many different angle.

<comment><USER6> It's been in the works for quite a while (I remember reading some of the initial RFC postings), although I haven't seen people talk much of it until now. To be fair, I believe this work was primarily done by Google, who also have contributed a lot code to LTO/IPO-based systems in GCC before (such as "Lightweight IPO" or LIPO in GCC) as well as obvious, ongoing Clang/LLVM work. So I imagine they probably had a very good idea of what was necessary to achieve all that... But yes, the results are really impressive!

Here are some slides from EuroLLVM last year with some pretty graphs and comparisons to traditional LTO/LIPO: [http://llvm.org/devmtg/2015-04/slides/ThinLTO_EuroLLVM2015.p...](http://llvm.org/devmtg/2015-04/slides/ThinLTO_EuroLLVM2015.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's all well and good, but where can I get the code? Where can I play with this?

How can Apple be shipping it (?) when LLVM is an open source project and it's not in the SVN head yet?

Is there a special branch you need to use? A different repository perhaps?

<comment><USER8> It's in TRUNK in with the rest of the llvm-lto stuff.

<comment><USER9> Is LLVM still using SVN??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it compatible with ccache?

</comment><comment><USER10> Is all this functionality encoded within .o files or does it create a separate cache file or directory?

<comment><USER3> IIUC, it's creating .bc (LLVM bitcode) files as input for the final link stage.

<comment><USER10> Thanks. And I learned a new acronym. Oh that crazy internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice work, mainly because the linker seems to be the most mysterious aspect of computer architecture.</comment>


The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies?srnd=businessweek-v2 <comment><USER2> This has been posted several times and there are tons of comments:

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146438) [2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138328) [3]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18145645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18145645) [4]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138990) [5]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18141328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18141328)

</comment><comment><USER3> That secret "Chinese weapon" you hold on your finger tip is a very common electronic component called the signal conditioning balun, worth $0.29 and sold here [https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/TDK/HHM1932A2?qs=6JAMGB...](https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/TDK/HHM1932A2?qs=6JAMGB%252bEdkzXmsGhC2t69w%3D%3D&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6Zielt3u3QIV2QMqCh2LnAysEAQYAyABEgID8vD_BwE) . The Bloomberg report can really win the Ignorance and Stupidity Award of this year.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Swift production-ready? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious to hear which companies/developers out there are already using Swift in their production apps.  I'm also seeking general opinions on how production-ready the language/toolbelt is, coming out of 1.0.
For me, it still feels very early to use Swift for a large-scale app.  I've found in my own usage that many of the niceties of the language are offset by painful workarounds to make Objective-C APIs play ball.  E.g. computing a random CGFloat within a CGFloat range
On the other hand, it seems obvious that Swift is the future of Cocoa development.  And I'm reasonably confident that many of the current issues will be addressed within the next year. <comment><USER2> It's based on Clang, right? At version 1.0, you can expect some stability, right? (I haven't been paying attention enough to know.) The people working on it are smart, right? (They are, and they're somewhat grizzled, extrapolating from the ones I know of.) I wouldn't worry about them pulling the language out from underneath you with backwards-incompatible changes -- the compiler crashing on valid code is annoying, and saying this from a no-longer-writing- iPhone-apps perspective, I think it's a big win over Objective C. So I'd go for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It probably depends on your project. For a smaller app you can probably start using it without any disadvantages, but I see that some larger apps have problems with it, especially during slow compilation times and bad xcode 6 support. Check this out:

[http://swiftopinions.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/swift-1-0-some...](http://swiftopinions.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/swift-1-0-some- caution-recommended/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I work as a developer in US startup which creates medical apps. We have started using SWIFT.It has been fun and equally challenging to work. But I think swift is future and you should not have any second opinion about using swift in production app</comment>


JavaScript grid editor: I want to be Excel (updated) - <AUTHOR> http://roberto.open-lab.com/2010/01/30/javascript-grid-editor-i-want-to-be-excel?upd

<comment><USER2> Beware the temptation of datagrids as the main UI element of your app.

It's very tempting: clients love datagrids because they know how to use them. You might like them because they're simple to plug in and provide tons of functionality you don't want to hand-code.

Multiple times have we implemented datagrids as the main UI of an application only to regret it later. Clients expect it to do everything Excel does, and are frustrated when that's not the case. Or they want to sort on a column that makes no sense to have in the datagrid, but if it's not in the grid you can't sort by it. And some of the implementations can be a nightmare to maintain beyond the common cases -- looking at you, ExtJS Grid.

More often than not, you can write a UI that serves the customers needs better and still meets their usability goals. And if they want to report on their data, allow them to download a daily dump in CSV format. Then they can do their Excel reporting without introducing a datagrid into the app.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love Google's Spreadsheet. I know there's API to dynamically create and read/write spreadsheets. If there was a way to embed their spreadsheet in an existing page while still keeping it editable (not just an html output widget) then it would surpass every solution mentioned in this article. It allows copy-pasting, read/write XLS files, mouse-selection, formulas, and filtering.

If you're writing a web-app, you can relatively easily create a new spreadsheet-per-account on the fly, set it up with the right-structure, and just let the user do whatever they want. Periodically you can check the format/content and tell the user if something is invalid (missing column header, missing row data etc.) When everything is ok, the user hits save and you grab all the data from Google using their API. The best part is that each Google Spreadsheet comes with history so if a user doesn't screw something up, they can revert to an older version that worked instantly. Of course, you have to write your code to handle such features.

</comment><comment><USER4> Be aware that since all of these are very Javascript heavy, their performance will depend a lot on the browser you use. For eg YUI data grids lets you reorder columns by drag and drop - try that in IE 8 and you will see what I mean. Off the ones in this list that I have tried, SlickGrid comes head and shoulders above others when it comes to performance.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thank You HN. This is the first time, i've read about a working free JS DataGrid. Until now, I had to build those in ActionScript. It'd be nice to drop Flash from my projects.

Has anyone gathered some experience with both (JS + Flash DataGrids) and could tell me how they differ in performance (average load time, memory usage), compatibility (like browser-versions) and stability ?

(Most interestingly: Huge loads of Data. Flash gets slow, but doesn't crash. Google Spreadsheet for example, does)</comment>


Braking javascript Promises are such a mess - <AUTHOR> Just one of many examples of recently silently braking code:
balance=web3.eth.getBalance(sender); console.log(balance.toFixed(3))
Used to work, now it prints NaN. What's going on? Well getBalance now returns a Promise. IMHO thats the worst category of bug introduction the industry has seen after the goto keyword.
It can't even be fixed by simply adding the await keyword, it has to be wrapped in an async function.
balance=await web3.eth.getBalance(sender);
Top level await is not allowed in node.js. <comment><USER2> It looks like the API of the library you're using has changed. Before you update the library you should really check the release notes for braking changes. For npm, you should probably even look more closly at the releases, and update carefully, as the quality of libraries ranges from great to "should not be used in production ever".</comment>