GDPR: sorting the fact from the fiction - <AUTHOR> https://iconewsblog.org.uk/2017/08/09/gdpr-sorting-the-fact-from-the-fiction/ <comment><USER2> The thing which bothers me the most isn't the fine structure — steep fines for bad behaviour are fine (pun intended) — it's the so-called 'right to be forgotten.' It essentially makes simple immutable logs illegal. I'm still not certain how we're going to handle it. Encrypting each record with a per- identifier key works, but that makes doing anything with the data as a whole prohibitively expensive.

And there's the whole question of what counts as identifying information. My understanding is that IP addresses do — so an immutable plaintext server log is now illegal.

Privacy is really, _really_ important. But expanding the definition of privacy too far is just too much.

<comment><USER3> Log files are easy (from a design perspective). Keep identifying information (IP, UID, DoB, etc) in one table, and activity data in another, with a join linking the two.

When user asks to be forgotten, simply overwrite all the identifying information with generated data. Backups work the same way, but depending on where and how those are stored it could get expensive.

We're seperating personally indentifying information out of our normal backups (held warm -> cold over time), and keeping PII backups offsite as warm data, so we can delete/ammend relatively pain-free.

Yes. GDPR compliance _will_ cost money and I'm not trivialising that. The degree of panic it's causing baffles me though. Sure, it requires design up front. Oh woe. But regulatory compliance always does. Ref. previous rending of hair and gnashing of teeth in the run-ups to Glass–Steagall, HIPAA, Sarbanes–Oxley, and so on.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you just made a simple log into something that definitely belongs to the GDPR ruleset!

But that's just my interpretation.

Can anyone, with citation, please shed some light on this. What's fair use, in broad terms, when it comes to simple HTTP logs or similar structures?

<comment><USER5> For HTTP logs, allowed use would be e.g. stripping the last octet of an IPv4, or stripping the last 64 to 80 bytes of an IPv6.

That's generally not identifying a single person anymore, and usually good enough for anything else.

<comment><USER2> > For HTTP logs, allowed use would be e.g. stripping the last octet of an > IPv4, or stripping the last 64 to 80 bytes of an IPv6.

> That's generally not identifying a single person anymore, and usually good > enough for anything else.

'Usually'? Even if true (highly doubtful), that's not the same as 'always.' The whole purpose of logs is to be truthful accounts of pertinent data. A full IP address is a pertinent datum.

I'm going to step up on my soapbox and assert that any law which forbids me from indelibly recording that 192.0.2.17 requested /all-your-records-are- belong-to-us is a bad law.

<comment><USER6> The GDPR does not forbid you to do those things.

It does require you to treat the information as PII, which is going to give you some hassles, but you are not banned from recording it.

<comment><USER2> I'm banned from recording it immutably, which is the only proper way to record a log (it should be impossible to alter a log after it's written).

If I want to record that a particular address accessed my system forever, that is my right.

Interestingly, the GDPR exempts records required for legal compliance. So it's okay to hold onto data for the law's purposes, but not my own? That's a bit one-sided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly i think the GDPR is a great idea, unfortunately after going through 3 different firms who are supposed experts on the GDPR. We are still struggling. When you ask them about a possible situation, and the response you get is "that is kind of a gray area", to "that is open to interpretation".

For example nobody has been able to give me a clear definition of what counts as identifying information. I have heard IP addresses count, so what about our cloudfront logs? They have the client ip address. If i pipe them straight to a logging SaaS, is it on the logging service to handle it? Or is it on me?

Furthermore for the right to be forgotten, how do i handle that with backups that are not under our control? E.g. AWS RDS backups? Amazon says there is no way to modify those backups, and our TAM has suggested managing our backups our selves.

What about data that our customers pipe to our service, how is that handled by the GDPR, it is all encrypted. But apparently we need to handle cases, but we don't have the decryption keys. Is it on the customer who uses our SaaS or is it on us? How do these scenarios work?

While i feel more and more we are ready for the GDPR at the same time i am terrified. I feel many of the laws can be interpreted far too many different ways which makes me uncomfortable.

<comment><USER8> > If i pipe them straight to a logging SaaS, is it on the logging service to > handle it? Or is it on me?

That's not gray at all. That's very clear cut. The SaaS acts as a data processor if it gets IP adresses or other PII.

> Furthermore for the right to be forgotten, how do i handle that with backups > that are not under our control?

You need to ensure PII in your database is encrypted already with a per customer key and have these keys be backed up separately where the retention is low.

<comment><USER9> The GDPR doesn't say anything about encryption or IP addresses.

The ICO has said that if you have a breech that encryption would protect against them _that_ could be a violation: [https://ico.org.uk/for- organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...](https://ico.org.uk/for- organisations/guide-to-data-protection/encryption/)

<comment><USER8> The gdpr does mention encryption and pseudonymisation. It does not mention ip adresses because the law is very clear about anything being in scope that can be used to identify individuals.

<comment><USER9> You're right. I should have said the GDPR doesn't require encryption. I blame wee hours commenting.

And an IP address cannot always be used to identify individuals.

<comment><USER8> That's why ips are not directly listed in the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I haven't really dug into it being in the USA, but from what I've heard the big takeaway for my clients might be: "You can never again accept a European as a patient, and for your own protection you might need to dismiss any European patients you have." I'm not really worried about legitimate cases where someone wants their data removed, as that seems unlikely. I'm less sure about the risks of some enterprising young lawyer over there finding a way (or a possible way that would end up thrown out) to leverage it to extort money.

Read at its bluntest, as I understand it this law seems to basically ban backups, at least those retained for any significant amount of time. Have a customer/patient database on a cycle of daily/weekly/monthly backups that get pruned as they get older? You need to be able to purge any individual who requests it from those backups. Have regulatory or contractual requirements on keeping records? Well, that's what the courts are for, hope you like the attorneys you're going to be paying. Heck, for medical practices I've heard of insurance companies doing clawbacks of payments _years_ after the date of service - what does a practice do if it serves a European with temporary insurance, gets a request to purge that person's data, then gets a request for clarification from an insurance company?

Perhaps this is a complete non-issue for US companies, but I'm not so certain of that that I'd be willing to just dismiss it out of hand and if it's not dismissed then parts of it are pretty scary.

<comment><USER9> I'm currently doing GDPR consulting for an American company.

The GDPR doesn't ban backups. You must inform the subject of how long you keep those backups though. If payment processing stays open for years, then years is fine. I have a customer who keeps data for ten years.

The GDPR doesn't say that a European can claim "right to be forgotten" and force you to destroy invoices proving you did Work for hire.

If for some reason they want you to stop processing (right to object) then they end up owing the money themselves- since they can't force you to forget the invoice, having you unable to send their invoice to insurance sounds like a bad move on their part.

Reading the GDPR "at its bluntest" is not the correct way to do things: European courts are not amused by a narrow view of the law when it is used to argue something is technically legal, not do they use their maximum force for minor infraction.

That's why you don't need to worry about an "enterprising" European taking you to the cleaners because the courts won't think it's funny either.

It also means that if you know what personal data you have, what you do with it, disclose to the subject those things including who specifically you share it with, and protect that personal data like your business depends on it, then you'll be fine because the point of the GDPR is that _this is what you should be doing_.

<comment><USER11> _The GDPR doesn't ban backups. You must inform the subject of how long you keep those backups though._

And if you use a deduplicating backup system -- and you may have few viable alternatives at small scale -- the answer to that latter part will be "indefinitely". So yes, the GDPR does effectively ban backups, at least in this sort of scenario.

 _Reading the GDPR "at its bluntest" is not the correct way to do things_

And yet there is nothing else you can reasonably do in the absence of more specific, enduring and legally binding guidance from your national regulator, and even that guidance is at risk of being overturned in court at European level.

 _It also means that if you know what personal data you have, what you do with it, disclose to the subject those things including who specifically you share it with, and protect that personal data like your business depends on it, then you'll be fine because the point of the GDPR is that this is what you should be doing._

Nope, because the right to erasure is not negated because of those sorts of common sense, only specific criteria listed explicitly in the GDPR. And as things stand right now, that right to erasure immediately runs into all the issues of uncertainty raised by many in this discussion and other forums.

<comment><USER9> > And if you use a deduplicating backup system -- and you may have few viable > alternatives at small scale -- the answer to that latter part will be > "indefinitely". So yes, the GDPR does effectively ban backups, at least in > this sort of scenario.

If the blocks are deduplicated because the reference count of the bit map remains greater than one then I don't see the problem: Just because John Smith can ask you to delete him from your database doesn't mean he can ask you to delete all John Smiths.

Also: European courts aren't amused by this kind of nonsense.

> And yet there is nothing else you can reasonably do in the absence of more > specific, enduring and legally binding guidance from your national > regulator, and even that guidance is at risk of being overturned in court at > European level.

Sure you can. You can look to the historical application of various other similar laws and get an idea of what the regulators are likely to do.

For what it's worth: European courts cannot be legally bound to do anything. If they think you're being an asshole but are "technically within the law" they'll still fine you.

That's just how it works here: Hurting people is simply not ok.

> Nope, because the right to erasure is not negated because of those sorts of > common sense

It's not "common sense" at all: Being afraid of the government and the police isn't something civilised countries have to deal with.

Why would anyone think that the government is trying to hurt people if everyone agrees hurting people is not okay?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Eh... that's the voice of one regulator and you never know who may decide to be more draconian with the regulations. My suggestion is to read it yourself and think carefully about the various data protection and portability requirements. IMO, all it takes is a small band of trolls who want to harm your company to start to cause problems. Here's a clear way to read through it: [https://www.privacy-regulation.eu/en/index.htm](https://www.privacy- regulation.eu/en/index.htm)

<comment><USER9> > IMO, all it takes is a small band of trolls who want to harm your company to > start to cause problems.

I suspect strongly the courts will use their energy to go after the biggest most flagrant violators of European law first: the equifaxes, facebooks, googles, and so on.

The fines are there for those companies who continue to have a flagrant disregard for IT security practices, or who try to make personal data their business by trying to trick the subject instead of offering real value in trade.

If you're not trying to play legal chicken with privacy law, you know what personal data you have and protect it like your business depends on it, then you're probably going to be fine.

And unless you're a lawyer or familiar with how European courts do things, I think a more plain language guide is better: [https://ico.org.uk/for- organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...](https://ico.org.uk/for- organisations/guide-to-data-protection/)

<comment><USER13> The facebooks and googles can afford to follow GDPR. If you know some people that work there, you'll realize there have been multi-year efforts to become GDPR compliant in those companies.

It's the small companies who literally can't afford the staff to properly implement the GDPR. It looks like it's turning into a regulatory barrier that protects the big guys and scares the small guys away.

There is nothing in the GDPR that says: "if your a small < 5 person corp not in europe that isn't a subsidary of another corporation, then the GDPR does not apply (ie: Joe's blog, Sue's landscaping)". Or "If your revenues & employee counts are within this band, then the maximum fine can only be applied on a percentage basis and not millions.". IF these regulators really didn't want to scare away the small guys, they would of put that into the law.

"Don't worry, the european courts are nice people" is not a strong enough guarantee for most people and corporations.

<comment><USER9> "Following the GDPR" is easy for most companies because the amount of personal data they keep and have at risk is extremely low. The ICO has some great guidance for them:

[https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/business/](https://ico.org.uk/for- organisations/business/)

> "Don't worry, the european courts are nice people" is not a strong enough > guarantee for most people and corporations.

The GDPR is already law and people, and corporations are still here.

That's how courts work in Europe. They can fine you for hurting consumers or putting them at risk even if the specific actions you're taking aren't necessarily coded and specified.

As an American living here I understand how strange that can seem, but the advantage is that companies getting prepared for the GDPR are treating the personal data they keep as a liability instead of treating it as an asset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The GDPR was specifically sold as limiting the things that well-known US tech companies (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.) can do with respect to EU citizens. The sad irony is that only well-resourced tech companies with a small army of lawyers and a large army of programmers can _afford_ to be GDPR compliant.

The sort of unintuitive machinations it takes to maintain honest compliance while providing useful services is kind of mind-blowing. Every bit of it that I've delt with has left me depressed about what this will do to small companies and innovation. Facebook will have no trouble at all being GDPR compliant, but your average 50-person startup or small-town business hasn't got a _chance_.

<comment><USER9> I'm currently doing some GDPR consulting for an American company.

I don't think the GDPR is as difficult as you suggest. The biggest problem companies seem to struggle with is this idea that the personal data they keep isn't _theirs_ and they need to protect it like anything else in their possession that isn't theirs.

Then, there's also the issue that Americans aren't used to the idea that a European court might think they're in their jurisdiction, and they don't know how to interact with a European court. Treating them as adversaries (as is often done in the USA) doesn't go well. The courts basically decide if you fucked up and did harm that you could've prevented, and not if you were technically against the law.

Are you treating someone's personal data the way they would want you to?

 _Really?_

If so then you're probably better than 90% of the way there.

<comment><USER11> _I don't think the GDPR is as difficult as you suggest. The biggest problem companies seem to struggle with is this idea that the personal data they keep isn't theirs and they need to protect it like anything else in their possession that isn't theirs._

You keep writing things like this, and I'm not going to just post the same reply every time, so let's try another one here.

Let us assume for the sake of debate that Privacy Shield will at some point be struck down by the courts, like Safe Harbor before it, since the fundamental objections involving US government access have not changed.

At that point, please explain the conditions under which an EU business can share PII with a US business without violating the GDPR.

<comment><USER15> Sure thing, that's described in articles 44-50. In short:

1) if the EU has declared a country "adequate", you can transfer data (there is a list of adequate countries. Canada is on it, the US with Privacy Shield too)

2) in absence of an adequacy decision, there are other possibilities: binding corporate rules (internal rules for data transfers within multinational companies[1]), contractual arrangements (for example, the EU approved clauses), adherence to a code of conduct with a binding commitment (look at this like some kind of "privacy certification")

3) Finally, if the above are not possible, a transfer is still possible if the subject gives consent after being informed of all risks.

So, for the sake of debate: I would go with either binding corporate rules (in case of a multinational) or contractual arrangements.

[1] [https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data- protection/data...](https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data- protection/data-transfers-outside-eu/binding-corporate-rules_en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Trust us, we won't use this big stick that has no legal repercussions from us using it."

<comment><USER16> Not like they get enjoyment or an advantage by using that stick.

<comment><USER17> Sarcasm often doesn't come across on the internet. Is my surmise that you are joking correct?

<comment><USER16> I was not joking or sarcastic. They are a regulatory institution. They get paid to look after companies, so that those keep to the law.

Presumably, the workers at this institution do not get paid for how high the fines are that they can push through. Nor does their office get paved with gold floors. So, they have no incentive to swing the biggest stick they have. There's no concrete reason to distrust them here.

Really, part of their job description for which they do get paid, is probably that they should not fine companies inadequately. If companies leave the country or even just do less business there, that's probably more damaging to the country than recieving that one-time 4% of turnover.

<comment><USER18> I think this ignores the reality of who populates these beuraucracies. I worked for the DoD alongside the FBI, NSA and others and the sheer delight that case agents and officers get for "hammering" people/entities under scrutiny cannot be overstated - it's part of the ethos.

It has little to do with how much they get paid. It has everything to do with wielding power backed by a state enforcement entity.

<comment><USER19> Yet when the Cookie Law came out the ICO basically said "we know it's complicated, it's an education job, not an enforcement one".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wonder how much of a secondary consultancy market this is going to create. I can just see "GDPR consultant charging $450/hour with a minimum 2 weeks worth of work" job listings.

It would be interesting what companies do about it. Will any of them pull out of the EU market. Or maybe make users sign away their rights on their next login "If you use this service, you give us permission to use your data in this and that way which may or may not be GDPR compliant, if you refuse we'll delete your profile and you'll have to find an another service to solve your problem".

As a consumer, I like what GDPR is doing. As a developer having to implement compliance for it, it is a huge pain.

<comment><USER21> > Or maybe make users sign away their rights on their next login

The GDPR explicitly disallows this. You're not allowed to make access to your service conditional on consent because it's considered to be "not true consent".

<comment><USER22> Expanding on this, official guideline on consent [1] gives 2 relevant examples. TLDR: you cannot offer no, degraded or higher-priced service if consent is not given. I would say this is effectively banning targeted ads as revenue stream. IMO this goes too far.

[Example 1]

A mobile app for photo editing asks its users to have their GPS localisation activated for the use of its services.

The app also tells its users it will use the collected data for behavioural advertising purposes. Neither geo-localisation or online behavioural advertising are necessary for the provision of the photo editing service and go beyond the delivery of the core service provided. Since users cannot use the app without consenting to these purposes, the consent cannot be considered as being freely given.

[Example 6]

A bank asks customers for consent to use their payment details for marketing purposes. This processing activity is not necessary for the performance of the contract with the customer and the delivery of ordinary bank account services. If the customer's refusal to consent to this processing purpose would lead to the denial of banking services, closure of the bank account, or an increase of the fee, consent cannot be freely given or revoked.

[1] [http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/just/document.cfm?doc_id=48849](http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/just/document.cfm?doc_id=48849)

<comment><USER23> And IMO this is exactly right, and I'm actually surprised people tolerated the current state of things for so long. The examples you quoted are clear-cut cases of abusing the user.

Marketing is cancer on society, and it infected everything deeply. I welcome anything that changes the incentives so that it's _less_ rather than _more_ profitable to try and suck in every piece of data you can get your hands on.

<comment><USER24> I agree with the spirit of this but can't help but believe that the Googles and Facebooks if the world will just ignore the intent and get away with it. Their profit margins basically require them to do so.

<comment><USER23> They'll try, for sure. We'll see how this pans out pretty soon now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Our company receives sensitive data from external members by email, which is considered insecure. So we need to buy or create our own solution to receive these files encrypted.

Does anyone here have github repo to such a solution?

<comment><USER5> You could use the system the big US banks use for that: FTPS or SFTP.

Alternatively, you could simply set up a cloud share they can upload files to, e.g. a Seafile instance, and have them link it in the email.

If you want to go fancy, you can build your own HTTPS protected upload form.

Or you can use OpenPGP / GPG / PGP for your emails.

This isn't exactly rocket science.

<comment><USER26> Whilst the point about this stuff being well known is sound, I shall just point out that FTPS alone is quite likely (according to circumstances of course) to be not enough. I know of at least one system that _already_ used FTPS for a decade or so that now has to be modified to use GPG encryption _as well_ , for GDPR compliance. Security of data once they have arrived is as important as security of data that are in transit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Google cloud has a good blog post summarizing gdpr [https://www.google.com/cloud/security/gdpr/](https://www.google.com/cloud/security/gdpr/)

</comment><comment><USER28> The tone of this article feels very different to the words she's saying.</comment>


CodeSchool will shutdown on June 1, 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.pluralsight.com/codeschool?v=20180330 <comment><USER2> I've been doing CodeSchool for 5 years. Loved its introductory courses on various paths... now Pluralsight takes over

</comment><comment><USER3> So sad to hear :(</comment>


Ask HN: Do you still support IE11 for new projects? - <AUTHOR> I have to make a decision if I will support IE11 for a new Saas project (targeting non-enterprise users). It looks like it would require a major effort, comparable to the IE6 hell. On the other side IE11 has still about 20% of market share. <comment><USER2> Does it become any more clear what the answer is if you ask "should I support Windows 7 and Windows 8"? And heck, even among Windows 10, many organizations are using IE11 for compatibility reasons over Edge.

It's the presently supported web browser that is assumed default for enterprise on Windows (and it'll likely be supported as such for several years yet). I'd argue if you intend to support customers using Windows, then it's an absolute must.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is a list of all currently supported Internet Explorer versions (green, yellow):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_version_hist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_version_history#Release_history_for_desktop_Windows_OS_version)

At the time of this writing, basically >= IE9. One could argue that this is quiet far back, but I would definitely support IE11 since it is supported on Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

In my experience, IE11 has pretty good support of web technologies, so I would not go as far to call it IE6 hell.

</comment><comment><USER4> Of course. We have large, well-paying customers still using _IE 8_.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, basically go where the money is. I mean, if people want to use IE 8, that's perfectly fine in the realm of business transactions, I suppose. These days you even get to charge them a premium for it.</comment></comment>


EBay Platform Exposed to Severe Vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://blog.checkpoint.com/2016/02/02/ebay-platform-exposed-to-severe-vulnerability/ <comment><USER2> Something about the writing rubbed me the wrong way; seemed very self- promoting and I was prepared to find out the vulnerability was nonsense.

...nope. Ebay literally lets you paste arbitrary JS into your item descriptions (suitably mangled, but that's not a barrier when there are tools to do it for you), which is then actually executed on client devices. It's exactly what it says on the tin; a perfect vector for phishing attacks, malware distribution, etc.

<comment><USER3> I've noticed this before. WTFed before.

Does Ebay do _any_ sanity checking on that JS, or is it just a free-for-all?

<comment><USER2> They do, but sanity checking code is fairly hard. Some work has been done on properly sandboxing and securing JS code (ie, the Google Caja project), which I believe works quite well, but Ebay doesn't do any of that.

Instead they crudely scan through the listing with a simple regexp looking for keywords that they think suggest you're doing something nefarious. Eg, any JS that looks to them like it deals with setting or reading cookies is flagged; anything that looks like it opens a popup is flagged.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are a few previous discussions on JSFuck:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3279078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3279078)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6379732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6379732)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9479834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9479834)

</comment><comment> amar-singh Ebay's product quality is very good but not customer service. I never noticed this before like JS in item description....</comment>


NSA slides laugh at Steve Jobs & Apple 1984 ad, label iPhone users as 'zombies' - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/photo-gallery-spying-on-smartphones-fotostrecke-101201.html

<comment> vezzy-fnord So shall mark the beginning of a new age where people will let go of their shiny portable tracking devices and become more conscious of their privacy.

Oh wait, no it won't.</comment>


How to Evaluate PaaS Services - <AUTHOR> http://www.timecockpit.com/blog/2016/12/30/How-to-Evaluate-PaaS-Services <comment><USER2> Interesting that the focus seems to be Azure rather than AWS, but good points all the same. My only addition: always always prototype before integrating a PaaS solution--there is just too much that documentation can't tell you.</comment>


Twitter complaints: Companies respond more quickly - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/24149289

<comment><USER2> Spread this knowledge and soon all companies will transform their email answering teams into twitter teams. This will improve the quality of their customer services.

</comment><comment><USER3> I always start important complaints by Twitter for this reason. It seem also like the support teams talk at a higher executive level in the company.

<comment><USER4> When it's public it becomes PR instead of "just customer service."</comment></comment>


Tell HN: LinkedIn's API will be restricted next week - <AUTHOR> LinkedIn will be drastically limiting their API next week. The grace period ends on May 12th.
https://developer.linkedin.com/support/developer-program-transition
One of the major restrictions is limiting the access of the r_fullprofile fields to only explicit LinkedIn partners. This is used by a lot of startups to create a great onboarding UX and minimize user data entry.
While this is a disruption to developers who will now have to adapt their onboarding, more importantly, it's a major setback for millions of LinkedIn users. LinkedIn is heightening their walls and there will no longer be an easy way for LinkedIn users to export their profile data out of LinkedIn and use it for other purposes.
We build an online resume/portfolio creation tool and are offering all our premium plans for free when users signup with LinkedIn until our API access to LinkedIn profiles gets turned off on May 12:
https://www.visualcv.com/?ref=freeLinkedIn
Before the LinkedIn API grace period ends, we would love to hear from any more startups that are currently relying on the LinkedIn API for signups and are offering a promo to their services one last time. Please list your startup in the comments below. <comment><USER2> I wrote a nightmare (high level wrapper for phantomJS: [https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare](https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare)) plugin for navigating linkedin: [https://github.com/lambtron/nightmare- linkedin](https://github.com/lambtron/nightmare-linkedin)

Exposes a few methods. Main use case was just to traverse linkedin results.

Contributors welcome!!!

</comment><comment><USER3> That's why I hate working with these so-called APIs, they release it then cut it down or stop it. Never rely on these APIs to build anything significant

</comment><comment><USER4> We built Prezence an app that showed you the LinkedIn profiles of the people around you [https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftw...](https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=954962586&mt=8)

For us LinkedIn integration was obviously critical. We think we can still go forward with what API's are available but we knew full well we were building a business on top of another business's API. So it is what it is. Can't really say it's unfair, they built the platform. Oh well.

<comment><USER5> Have you tried contacting them and requesting access?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I'm wondering about is, what will happen if you request certain permissions (e.g. w_messages / rw_groups ) as part of the oauth process, but do not actually call API endpoints that require them.

The documentation just mentions the limitation in API endpoints, but I'm a bit worried whether it could make the oauth login fail due to permissions requested that you can no longer use.

<comment><USER6> Guess it is answered... yes... this breaks your auth flow... It is now mentioned on: [https://developer.linkedin.com/support/developer-program- tra...](https://developer.linkedin.com/support/developer-program-transition) as well, don't remember reading that before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tangent: I'm slowly working on a toy site, and I want to provide API access (nowhere close yet).

I had thought to use LinkedIn as one of a few APIs to learn from and to prompt thinking.

Anyone recommend a few good API-backed sites to learn from? Is HN's API particularly good, or simple, or something?

Anything else?

<comment><USER8> Reddit. Append '.json' to any path and you'll get JSON. It's a thing of beauty.

Ex: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming.json](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming.json)

<comment><USER7> [http://www.reddit.com/.json](http://www.reddit.com/.json)

Why yes, that is beautiful. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My main gripe with LinkedIn is that the API is not even available for a fee through their partner programs.

Yahoo! mail recently launched integration with LinkedIn data, and Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics have integration, but no other CRM is allowed to have access.

</comment><comment><USER10> Glad you are calling attention to this. We ([https://jobboard.io](https://jobboard.io)) offer a feature for our users where they can have a profile database as part of their job boards (example: [http://www.railsjobs.com/profiles](http://www.railsjobs.com/profiles)) - Profile creation is super easy via LinkedIn, but we've had to strip back use of r_fullprofile. A huge pain for job seekers. We "applied" to get the permission to use it but were denied without explanation. Sad state of affairs.

<comment><USER11> We also have a jobs marketplace and they killed our access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Like Twitter and other Tech 'Giants', this is insane.

These corporations assume they can do it all on their own, as they have billions of dollars and great engineers.

Still, it's quite useless: greed is what really drives true innovation.

Good luck Linkedin

<comment><USER13> I can see Twitter, they are struggling trying to monetize themselves, and I believe they still aren't making a profit. LinkedIn on the other hand, I'm surprised, I thought they made most of their earnings by selling greater access to recruiters. I'm wondering what they are trying to capture here, that they think they'll be able to make revenue from.

<comment><USER14> I can see Twitter too, they never make any money as far I as I can tell.

<comment><USER15> Yea but Twitter's clients also suck and their management and engineering team seem completely incapable of developing interesting, innovative or easy to use clients. Their one size fits all clients also don't accomodate power users, many of whom are the people who generate a lot of the interesting streams that draw users.

This should be a golden age of software but its increasingly resembling a wasteland. Most software is being herded in to app stores which Apple and Google completely control and dominate, and which has reached a saturation level of app developers.

Interesting companies keep putting out awesome API's, lure in suckers . . er . . developers, only to crush them after the developer has sunk a bunch of time and and money developing for them and about the time the company has developed enough momementum that they don't need third party developers unless they are fully monetized partners.

And then of course there are the patent trolls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't make your product depend on other products. It's pretty simple, really.

Follow that rule and you won't need to worry.

<comment><USER17> Most products depend on other products. e.g. Apple computers use components from other manufacturers.

Name one product that doesn't rely on another product.

<comment><USER18> If a component from one manufacturer becomes unavailable (or that manuf. isn't playing "fair"), another one can usually be sourced.

That said, I think that: "don't make your service depend on other services without some sort of contract or agreement to provide" is a better rule of thumb than the one above.

<comment><USER19> Additionally, the same model may be sourcing parts from multiple vendors (for instance, laptop displays)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> ConferenceCloud: A virtual attendance platform for professional and industry conferences. We use LinkedIn as a part of our login stuff, more specifically the fullprofile to help us understand our attendees and add to our "Contextual Networking" features which enables us to recommend other people at an event that you should connect with.

Really saddened to see LinkedIn restricting this API access. It won't cause any significant disruption to our platform, but destroys the convenience of using LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER21> It looks like LinkedIn is having the illusion that the profile data is "owned" by them. Well... it isn't. If I cannot share my profile information with the platforms I choose, LinkedIn will loose it's sympathy factor for jobseekers. LinkedIn's decision triggered us at [https://www.wematchit.nl](https://www.wematchit.nl) to work on a better solution. A world where LinkedIn will no longer be needed :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> I think I'm correct in saying that for anyone who is just using `r_basicprofile`, you won't be affected, and you do get quite a lot of information just from that:

[https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/fields/basic- profile](https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/fields/basic-profile)

</comment><comment><USER23> Sounds like Twitter all over again. How soon till they are floundering and begging developers to come back?

</comment><comment><USER9> My app (Bubbler) used LinkedIn pretty heavily as a data source. There seem to be enough market demand that someone might be able to step in and be the new source of professional profiles.

Does the OP have an API for taking data out for Virtual CV users?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now we just have simple exports in various formats like Google Doc or a PDF resume. We are looking to embed structured data with the PDF that we are creating for users so that the data is always tied to their application and it makes for really simple resume parsing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Clearbit's person lookup API might be a suitable alternative for a number of cases: [https://clearbit.com/docs](https://clearbit.com/docs)</comment>


Ask HN: Ubuntu-friendly laptop comparable to MBP Retina? - <AUTHOR> Hi folks,
I've been wanting to jump to an Ubuntu-based laptop for a while now, but I can't find anything that beats (or is comparable to) a Retina Macbook Pro. I tried a Lenovo X1 Carbon and was underwhelmed.
Any suggestions?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'm using a Sager - you should check them out! The best part is that you custom order it - the way you want it. I configured mine at reflexnotebook.ca and couldn't be more thrilled with the results, three months into it.

Out of the box all of my hardware is supported, though I'm running Mint 17 (same base). The keyboard is a pleasure to type on, though the laptop is a bit weighty. The trackpad is great under linux, something that was sorely lacking on every single other machine I've tried (System76, IBMs, Dells, everything!). Even the function keys are recognized - which was a pleasant surprise over my System76.

<comment><USER3> i did this mistake of making a custom laptop from powernotebooks.com. The laptop by itself was a treat however, it was heavy as shit + battery was poor (9 cell battery). The biggest problem i faced was that the laptop wasn't that portable. Imagine carrying ~9 lbs of laptop + a huge charger.

After this, I decided to buy rMBP and to be honest, i am sitll not sure if i am happy with my decision. the biggest issue i am facing is software compatibilities. There aren't much softwares (that I use) are available. Granted its amazing for prorgrammin, but some leisure tasks take forever to finish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am also a long time Lenovo ThinkPad fan who switched to Ubuntu. Eventhough I am successfully running 14.04 on my T520 right now, I too have been looking for a Mac alternative. So far, here is my potential line-up:

Razer: [http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer- blade](http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade)

Dell XPS 15: [http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9530/pd?oc=fncwx1602h&model_...](http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9530/pd?oc=fncwx1602h&model_id=xps-15-9530)

</comment><comment><USER5> I was in a similar situation. As a long time thinkpad user, the first thing I did was check out Lenovos current thinkpad lineup and was also very disappointment by the hardware and screen quality. After several weeks of comparisons I simply decided to buy an rMBP, and I couldn't be happier. EDIT: Installing Ubuntu shouldn't be a problem on an rMBP, but you'll probably run into issues where you'll have to fiddle with font-size settings.

<comment><USER6> agree - those lenovo laptops feel poorly in graphics. heard that Acer or HP do better nowadays, but have not checked.

<comment><USER7> I don't think I could ever buy an HP laptop. They sold junk for too long for me to give them another shot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have you considered just running Ubuntu on a MBP?

I've successfully run it on a non-retina machine, and currently have a 2013 MacBook Air running 12.04 (I'm too lazy to update).

The installation is fairly simple and just about everything worked out of the box.

</comment><comment><USER9> I haven't been able to get any linux distro working on rmbp. It just boots up to a black screen.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why were you underwhelmed? What are you looking for exactly?

</comment><comment><USER11> Uh.. What the actual #%&@ ?? no no suggestions you're not going to be happy with anything.

You need to ask yourself why you want this.. You have to realize you aren't going to ahve the same level of display. Switching to Ubuntu you are going to have to make a lot of consessions.

What is that you like about the Macbook Pro Retina? The display? the weight? the size? Go find a laptop with the specifics you like and install ubuntu on it.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you want a MacBook pro buy a MacBook pro. The "beats or comparable to" game is a fucking waste of time, because people assign different values to different features, including brand name, weight, battery life, computational power, screen size, keyboard layout, upgradeability, warranty support. hardware certification, etc. etc.

Dell Precision mobile workstations such as the m6800 are Ubuntu Certified. [1]

The m6800 can be provisioned with:

\+ Spare batteries.

\+ Raid 5 over three drives

\+ Blu-Ray [limits hard disks to 2]

\+ Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4940MX (Quad Core Extreme 3.10GHz, 4.0GHz Turbo, 8MB 57W, w/HD Graphics 4600)

\+ GPU: Nvidia® Quadro® K5100M w/8GB GDDR5

\+ 4G LTE mobile broadband

\+ Hardware crytpography accelerator

\+ Intel vPro Management

\+ Ram: 32GB (4x8GB) 1600MHz DDR3L

\+ 5 Years 24 x 7 Support with Next Business Day Onsite Service.

\+ 5 Years accidental damage service

\+ 5 years data recovery service

\+ A 17" Display

And of course Ubuntu pre-installed and supported by the hardware manufacturer. [2]

The complete list of Ubuntu Desktop certified hardware is available. [3]

[1] [http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cupmws...](http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cupmws6800w7p&model_id=precision-m6800-workstation&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04)

[2] [http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201305-13528/](http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201305-13528/)

[3] [http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/](http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/)</comment>


The Continuing Relevance of C - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~rjhansen/c_relevance.html

<comment><USER2> I concur with nearly everything he says except one: that Unix could have been written in assembler as much as it could have been written in C. Unix was originally written in assembler but they changed it for a reason. Unlike assembler, C is portable.

C's low levelness not only gives the programmer a needed degree of precision control, but also makes the language easy to implement elsewhere. There is a version of gcc for the x86, and for the ppc, and the sparc and the arm, and to port programs between them, often all you need to do is is set the right compiler flags and use preprocessor commands wherever necessary. C is highlevel enough to keep you from having to write architecture specific code, but low level enough to allow you to do so.

<comment><USER3> I also agree with the article, but I must take exception with your assertion that C is easy to implement. The ANSI C99 spec came out almost ten years ago, and most major compilers still barely support it. GCC has a depressing number of C99 features flagged as broken (<http://gcc.gnu.org/c99status.html>), for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> GCC has been making progress on C99... part of their problem has been, how best to implement C99 features that were already part of GCC prior to C99, but with different syntax?

For Microsoft, I read somewhere several years ago that they had no plans to support C99, because they viewed C as inconsequential compared to C++. I have not kept up with Microsoft C compiler development at all, so I don't know if this is still true or not.

<comment><USER4> It does make sense for Microsoft to deprecate continued development of C, when one considers their push toward .NET and getting various languages implemented on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can write operating systems and have low-level control over the hardware in Lisp too.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, the difference here isn't the capabilities of the language, but rather the quality of support the tool chain offers for the task. None of the tool chains that I know of offer decent support for building operating systems, but the C portion of the gnu tool chain offers the least sucky support for it.

A sign of the flaws in the author's argument is that C++ clearly offers just as much control over the hardware as C. However, an order of magnitude more OSes are written in C than C++. Anyone who's tried to write one in C++ knows why; trying to bend the tool chain to support bare-hardware is a daunting task.

<comment><USER7> Hi. I'm the original author.

As far as I can see, the reason why C++ has never really taken off for OS design is both historical and technical. When I was working at a major telecommunications firm, our C++ coding manual dated back to 1985--any features that weren't stable in C++ as of '85 simply could not be used in modern code in '99.

Large scale engineering shops are very, very slow to change. Right there's one major reason why C++ hasn't caught on in the OS level.

The other major reason has to do with the way C++ implements inheritance. The fragile base class problem is a killer for OS level design. If you want to dodge that, then your best bet is to write your kernel in the C subset of C++ and eschew C++'s object model.

Finally, there's the issue of portability. C++ didn't even standardize until 1998. Compilers lagged substantially behind the Standard until about 2003. Using sophisticated C++ features like the STL tended to lock you into one particular compiler vendor. That's not something an OS designer especially wants.

I know of several engineering shops that write their code in C, precisely to get around vendor quality-of-implementation issues in their C++ compilers. However, despite the fact they write their code in C, they make compiling it with a C++ compiler part of their software engineering practice, in order to take advantage of the C++'s compiler's much stronger type checking.

I have yet to see the tool chain be an issue in C++ development. That's not to say it can't be an issue or that you haven't seen it--only to say I've never seen it become a substantial issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> better title might be "unreasonable effectiveness of c"</comment>


How to be insanely great in front of any audience - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/prwalker/the-presentation-secrets-of-steve-jobs-2814996 <comment><USER2> Particularly important takeaways:

      o Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice.
      o Form is important
      o Master the reveal

<comment><USER3>
      o Me thinks you missed one :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slide 9: I _sincerely hope_ that that's not supposed to be the first Macintosh. If that's the intention, then I just lost all of my warm fuzzies about how well the author researched relevant background.

Slide 51 has a better picture to pair with the words on slide 9. _That's_ the first Macintosh. (At least the same body style.)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is good advice, but in practice I find it very difficult to translate these tips if you don't have to sell a product/service.

Case in point, recently I was asked for a job interview to "prepare about 10 slides as a short training session on the use of the Ensembl Genome browser by wet bench lab scientists".

I tried to use the techniques described in this presentation and at presentationzen (<http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html>) (use high quality graphics, limit bullet points, choose your fonts with care,...). My result is here: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/138632/EnsembleGenomeBrowser.odp> (OpenOffice Presentation file, since it is a very visual presentation see the notes for the accompanied text).

The problem I ran into is that I had to use lots of screenshots of the Ensembl Genome browser to tell how it worked. I tried to make those screenshots as pretty as possible (maybe even too cliché with the fading mirror effect) but I din't find much room to show my passion for bioinformatics. Any advice on what I could have changed?

<comment><USER6> I'm no expert on presenting. (Far far far far.... from it.) I also can't view your slides without downloading Open Office (which I'm too lazy to do). So... take this with a huge grain of salt. :)

My first thought is that, you're right, these techniques are most obviously applicable when selling something. But even in the case of training, I think it might be possible to "sell" what you are trying to train if you focus on the "what I'm doing" aspect.

What I mean is that I've sat through a few lame corporate training presentations in my time and they always consist of loads of processes. Things like, "do this, then this, then this, and poof - you're done!" But what they utterly fail to actually tell you is WHAT you are doing and WHAT was accomplished! Perhaps a lame example might help...

Imagine being taught how to cook a burger like this: First you are told how and where to find the meat (perhaps in the freezer in the kitchen on the 3rd shelf). Then you are told or shown that you must place the meat into a special tray. Then this tray is inserted into the microwave oven and a very specific numerical sequence is entered. Wait for exactly 3 minutes. Now you remove the container from the microwave.... etc..

What's lost here is the end goal and the WHY. What are you really trying to make and why do these steps even exist in this order? Is there really only one single right sequence of steps?

So.. how does this help? Well, I imagine Steve would first give you the motivation for wanted to make your burger. Perhaps he lets you taste one. Touch it. Smell it. Study it. Compare with the "the competition." Now you know what your goal is. Then the process is to not follow steps, but to understand what needs to be done. You must understand that the meat must be thawed and why you can't just cook it first, then form it into a burger shape. This kind of thing.

So in your case, I imagine the presentation would first include real examples and problems that need to be solved and that you will learn how to solve with the program. Maybe work through one of them. Or study it so that it becomes clear as to what variables are involved and why. The second act, then, is where you connect the dots of the first part with the software. X is represented in the software here... (do a demo) Etc. The 3rd act is to tie ti all together. A complete example of a single event or something that you'd use the software for and how to get the results and what they mean and how to translate those results into real world meaning. (If it just spits out some pretty graphs - why do I even care? What does it MEAN?)

That sort of thing.

Maybe. :P

Now I'm hungry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I also note that although, as pointed out, Steve is a much better presenter than Bill, MS won the war.

Having a good presenter as CEO is great, but other attributes are more important when it comes to a successful business.

<comment><USER8> Yes, he won the 1990s war. ...and was able to retire and turn over the 2000s war to Steve B.

That said, true: the CEO doesn't have to be the skilled presenter. But IMHO Jobs' central asset is his ability to judge _how people are affected by design_ \- and that applies to product design (UX, etc) and to presentation design. He understands how to use the powerful _emotional/subjective_ components of the consumer response (usually; better than perhaps 99.5% of CEOs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Words are bad, pictures are good. Children's books have got it right.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anything that cites Outliers instantly loses credibility for me. Maybe his presentations became more visual throughout the decades because of the technology available.

<comment><USER2> Steve Jobs presentation skills, ironically, leverage little in the way of technology, and everything in the way of presence.

What's your issue with the Outliers 10K hours expert thesis? Do you have any sources that indicate a significant number of individuals with a baseline skill of ability in a particular ability, who also put in 10,000 hours of _focused_ practice _haven't_ established "expertise?"

That particular thesis of Outliers very, very strongly resonated with me.

<comment><USER11> I haven't read the book, but it just doesn't seem very plausible that one needs about the same number of practice hours to become an expert at any of several hard but unrelated skills.

This presentation goes a bit beyond that and suggests that _giving presentations is like brain surgery_.

The actual research articles on the subject (Ericsson and others) are really interesting, though. It's not about a magic number, but the fact that deliberate practice has a marked effect on the level of expertise.</comment></comment></comment>


Join the Tetuan startup school this fall - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tetuanvalley.com/2009/07/join-tetuan-startup-school-this-fall.html

<comment><USER2> What a cool idea. Somewhere between "build something in a weekend" and a 3 to 6 month incubator or accelerator. This may be ideal for someone who has too much to do in a weekend but isn't ready for a longer commitment. I hope they give public updates about the results. I'd love to see what comes out of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will! Hopefully the teams will post their advances on the blog, so that everyone can see them :) Let's see how it works out, as it's the first edition and we're still working on it :)

Thanks for the comment! Nice to see people like the idea :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sort of odd to write this post in English, submit it to Hacker News, but only mention in paragraph 9 that this program is only for Spanish speakers who can come to Madrid for 6 weeks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the program isn't only for Spanish and the idea is to eventually give it in English. The problem is that we know that not that many English-only speakers will come along the first time. Nevertheless it depends a lot on the initial teams. If they don't mind we could gladly give it in English. On the other hand, classes won't be extremely complex to grasp, even in Spanish ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great, but unfortunately not possible because I'll be enrolled in classes. Are there any similar programs during either the winter or summer breaks?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are thinking about it. It depends on how this program evolves. If the first edition gets some traction we'll definitely think about doing a summer session next year too.</comment></comment>


Seattle coffee meetup - now (11:00)  Stumptown - <AUTHOR>

We have a crew of visiting founders from out of town - want to meet some local HN founders.<p>Come say hi at Stumptown on Capitol Hill:  616 E Pine St.  Be social, we'll buy you a coffee :)  See you at 11:00. <comment><USER2> If you guys are around on Tuesday, I'm hosting a Hacker News Seattle meetup too: [http://www.meetup.com/HackerNewsSeattleMeetup/events/7034681...](http://www.meetup.com/HackerNewsSeattleMeetup/events/70346812/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sweet on my way!</comment>


Will Podcasting continue to grow significantly over the next 10 years? - <AUTHOR> https://www.kialo.com/podcasting-will-continue-to-grow-significantly-over-the-next-10-years-17805 <comment><USER2> I don't see why not. My podcast grew from 0 to 35 listeners in less than four months with no advertisement, and I'm just some nobody. Two of the guests we have had went on to start their own podcasts afterwards. It seems inevitable that podcasts would grow, as they're a more convenient way to access talk entertainment that doesn't necessarily have a corporate overlord.

I hate to sound like an ad, but anchor has made it really easy to put our podcast on every platform and start running ads right away (even if they are just ads for anchor atm).

[https://accidentallyfasting.com/](https://accidentallyfasting.com/)</comment>


Facebook anti revenge-porn program asks users for their nude photos - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/policy/technology/359228-facebook-revenge-porn-pilot-program-requires-users-to-submit-nude-photos <comment><USER2> Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks</comment>


Error-riddled 'Superfreakonomics', Part 2: With takedown of Nathan Myhrvold - <AUTHOR> http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/14/superfreakonomics-errors-nathan-myhrvold-intellectual-ventures-bill-gates-warren-buffet/ <comment><USER2> The problem with any conservation or alternate-but-higher-priced energy is that it ignores the third world. The first world got where it is by using "dirty" energy to power our industry. If we don't develop ways to make cheaper energy sources, then the third world will ignore them and develop on the same path we did.

Look at China, coal is their answer because it is cheap and available. We could do more good in the world, if someone created a clean coal process and license / gave it to the Chinese.

We have the luxury of being greener with current technologies, much of the world is not in that position.

<comment><USER3> While I don't disagree with you, clean coal is not the only answer to a place like China. As you said, the cheapest energy will win in the third world, so making a renewable source cheaper than coal would also do the trick.

I'm not claiming such an alternative exists at the moment, but that doesn't mean we should stop researching renewables and conservation and put all our eggs in the clean coal basket. The nature of innovation is that we try many things before finding something that works. If clean coal really is the best answer, then it will happen.

<comment><USER2> One of the big problems is that there is only the now for a lot of the world. China needs to power its modernization and expansion right now. Coal is proven, plentiful in China, and provides constant energy cheaply.

I too believe that we need to work on a lot of methods. Backing any one horse is insanity. Wind is nice, but not a constant producer. Solar is nice, but also not a constant producer. We don't really do mass energy storage yet. Nuclear is great except for PR and waste (still irks me we spent all that tax money on a permanent solution and then we cannot use it). We need a whole list of sources that provide a secure blanket no matter what goes on.

Conservation will work for the first world, but not the growing economies. They want a first world life and know how we got there.

Also, the US needs to realize there is a large tax implication in switching from a liquid fuel economy for transportation. We need to work out these issues without killing the poor (GPS = big hit bills = poor with transport in large areas of country not serviced by mass transit) or messing up other areas of the economy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This chain of reasoning:

       we discover more oil => we burn more fossil fuels =>
       => global temperatures increase => poor people starve

is very tenuous. Discovering more oil is mainly bad for people that already own major oil reserves, and they lobby subtly for peak oil & carbon caps. More oil discoveries probably don't cause major increases in the amount consumed.

Burning fossil fuels may cause global warming, or may not, or it may be easy to fix by adding some dust to the upper atmosphere. Most people seem to accept it as an article of faith either way.

Global temperature increases may cause a reduction in food supply, or an increase. Certainly much of northern China will increase food production with a longer growing season. It probably increases ocean fish yields too. So it's very debatable as to the net effect.

Anyway, a claim depending on 3 somewhat dubious claims is extremely dubious. Maybe you believe each has a 75% chance of being true, but then all 3 have only a 42% chance of being true, so I'm assuming it's false.

<comment><USER5> Could you please explain to me where this argument is made in the above linked article? I couldn't find it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disregarding the... obvious slant and loaded language of the site, between this and Part 1 of the post it's pretty depressing the disregard for science apparently displayed by this book. I enjoyed Freakonomics, but this really lowers my respect for the authors.

Let's see... equating global warming to a "religion", credulously repeating assertions from people with no expertise, quote-mining and misrepresenting the views of someone who does have expertise, seizing on superficially appealing answers with no firm foundation, and so on. Honestly, it reminds me the style of argumentation you get from the anti-evolution crowd.

Maybe we should get climate scientists to come up with some edgy, contrarian solutions to the current economic problems, since apparently established bodies of knowledge aren't as important as having catchy-sounding ideas.

<comment><USER2> I don't think the global warming movement is a religion, but there are some fun social parallels to the middle ages church. Cap-and-trade has the look of indulgences and the treatment of heretics.

I am really worried that we have lost all semblance and science and am truly glad that none of the "solutions" to global cooling in the 1970s were implemented (spread ash on the north pole). I really think no one has been served by the politicalizing of science. I worry that anti-corporation and anti-technology are so mixed into this stuff.

<comment><USER6> _I don't think the global warming movement is a religion, but there are some fun social parallels to the middle ages church. Cap-and-trade has the look of indulgences and the treatment of heretics._

Sure, if you really want to view everything through a politicized perspective. Seems to me like a pretty sensible way to apply decentralized market principles to implement a reduction in emissions. What would you prefer, strict limits set by authoritarian fiat, regardless of economic costs? Turning the ability to produce CO2 into a tradable commodity and letting market forces find the most cost-effective means of reducing output seems like a very sound plan.

The cap-and-trade argument is amusing, though; it's pretty funny to hear people who are essentially socialists advocating a market-based solution, while supposed free market supporters complain bitterly. Ah, politics.

 _I am really worried that we have lost all semblance and science and am truly glad that none of the "solutions" to global cooling in the 1970s were implemented (spread ash on the north pole)._

The difference being, of course, that "global cooling" was a briefly considered hypothesis that got sensationalized in the media, while the warming trends are backed by near unanimous scientific consensus over many years.

Not that anyone could tell by listening to how the issues are discussed, of course. Who cares what the actual scientists say?

 _I really think no one has been served by the politicalizing of science. I worry that anti-corporation and anti-technology are so mixed into this stuff._

Opposition to nuclear power is a good example; environmentally it's probably the best option we currently have, but supposed environmentalists oppose it for... reasons that I don't really understand. Again, apparently no one cares what the _science_ says...

<comment><USER2> I think there currently is precious little in this whole debate that isn't politicized. Anytime you deal with people and social solution you get politics. I just find it interesting that some of the thinking that brought paid indulgences to the medieval church have returned in the modern era. The history of indulgences is very entertaining.

My personal biggest problem with cap-and-trade is that it doesn't address any issues of the third world. Also, after reading about the implementation, it seems to create a new class of people making money off a system and not a product.

<comment><USER6> _I think there currently is precious little in this whole debate that isn't politicized._

Yes, which is all the more reason to call out the bullshit artists when they're trying to make things worse. Just throwing your hands up and ignoring it only enables the people who want to twist science to their own ends.

<comment><USER2> I don't mind calling people out. I think removing the fallacies from debates is a great thing, but the bullshit artists have the biggest megaphones. Look at this article <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=887768> for the vaccine version of this crap. Too many people are using this particular debate to advance a monetary or political (anti-globalization, anti-technology, etc.) position that the real data and issues are not even part of the conversation anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IMHO the big elephant in the room is that global warming is just one of the large environmental problems we're facing. There's also eg overfishing, deforestation, ocean acidification.

So even if we could "fix" global warming through geoengineering (and from all that I've read, signs point to no), there are still so many other problems that the only way not to mess up the planet completely is to _change our habits and consume fewer resources_.

You may now begin complaining about how the fact that the world is not infinitely bountiful impinges on your rights.

</comment><comment><USER8> Tangential to the article, but very related to the overall debate, I thought HN might particularly appreciate Burt Rutan's presentation from Oshkosh '09 on climate change.

He basically starts off "I'm not a climatologist, I've a flight test engineer --but I look at data for a living. Here's my thoughts on all the data I've seen about this debate."

<http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm>

<comment><USER6> Hm, someone with no relevant knowledge or experience but impressive-sounding credentials, with a clear political bias, who's accusing everyone else of being equally biased, and trying to cast doubt on reasonably well understood science because he doesn't like the conclusions.

No, I'd say that kind of garbage is _precisely_ related to the article.

I swear, if Al Gore were to go on television and tell everyone that the sky is blue, half the country would be lining up to insist that it must be green because blue skies are socialist or something (and if Rush Limbaugh said the sky was blue you'd have the other half denying it instead). Seriously, what is _wrong_ with people that they would rather deny objective reality than compromise their political ideology?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Consider the source. Climate Progress.org is a projet of the Center for American Progress, headed by John Podesta, self-described as "progressive" and setup expressly to counter groups such as the Heritage Foundation. No bias here.

<comment><USER10> Phew, glad I don't have to worry about any of the actual arguments or evidence then!

[Edit] On second thoughts, sorry, too glib. I try to be a bit more thoughtful for the HN. The point I was getting at is that there's verifiable facts, data and arguments in the post. It would be a much more interesting discussion, one I could learn from, if people would tackle those.

I'd also just read Julian Sanchez's piece on what he calls the 'oppositional morality' cognitive bias, the tendency to disbelieve evidence that The Others are using to push their conclusions: [http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/10/12/oppositional- moralit...](http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/10/12/oppositional-moralities- and-nobel-revisionism/)

<comment><USER11> For folks who love snark, attention to detail, and a thorough statistical treatment of global warming from the other side, see climateaudit.org.</comment></comment></comment>


Best business advice for hardware developers - <AUTHOR> The same question was just recently brought up on HN for software developers, which has some incredible good advice. I was wondering the same or for the matter of fact difference for hardware developers. <comment><USER2> What kind of hardware?

Working on machinery control, power, lighting, or communication systems (just to name a few) are all going to require different areas of focus.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd honestly like to know how to get into to hardware development. I mean production wise.</comment>


Write Scala in vs. Code, Vim, Emacs, Atom and Sublime Text with Metals - <AUTHOR> https://www.scala-lang.org/2019/04/16/metals.html <comment><USER2> It's great to see an officially supported, high quality LSP implementation with plugins for Scala. IntelliJ is great for what it is, but sometimes running it, sbt, and the jvm can be a real resource drain. Being free to use the editor of your choice will be very nice.</comment>


Jonathan Blow – Preventing the Collapse of Civilization - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk <comment><USER2> Once in a while I will try to convince co-workers about the idea in this video, and every time I am viewed as an ignoramus. I mean, OBVIOUSLY moving all code to web platforms is a good idea, right? How dare I view things differently?

I think efforts to convey this idea outside of a lecture are probably forfeit. People are just far too self serving and contrarian to believe in the legitimacy of an overall trend if any tiny, limited, counter examples exist, and they will stop listening if they have an opportunity to respond.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is the introduction of WASM a sort of compatibility layer combining this tree of dependencies?

In the sense that all users are again able to share/create code/'apps' that are compatible on all architectures and software stacks. I can imagine a future where the OS is just the snappiest way to render a browser and nothing else. (Although my experience with the chromebook blunts this desire a great deal.)</comment>


Who Wants a Quad-Core 4.2GHz, 64GB, 5TB SSD RAID 10 … Laptop? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/05/eurcom_sky_x9w/ <comment><USER2> "Prices start at US$2,930" Not bad, considering...

Starting GPU is a Quadro, but it doesn't keep up with a 960... [http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Quadro+M3000M](http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Quadro+M3000M)</comment>


What Ecstasy Does to Octopuses - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/09/octopuses-on-ecstasy-prefer-each-other-to-chewbacca/570763?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I work with MAPS (Multidisciplinary association for psychedelic science). We have been working with MDMA as a treatment for PTSD with incredible success. The work we do is important and inspiring but it can be tough and dark at times. I can not tell you how incredibly jealous I am that i was not involved in this research.

<comment><USER3> You are basically living my dream! I've been infatuated with the work MAPS does for as long as I've been interested in pharmacology (About 10 years).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are people using random generators to create research topics? Throw in a list of animals, a list of chemicals, hit the button and boom!: New thesis topic!</comment>


Governing body: No IP addresses for governments that shut down internet access - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/internet/247936-governing-body-declares-no-ip-addresses-governments-shut-internet-access <comment><USER2> Now that is something I can get behind</comment>


Intractability of Financial Derivatives - <AUTHOR> http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/appel/intractability-financial-derivatives <comment><USER2> This is interesting, but I'm struck by the sheer amount of serious analysis on this topic. It always struck me as very simple requiring no deep understanding.

There's an old saying on wall street, the harder it is to understand the deal the bigger the profit. The truth of this should be self evident. Add to that the fact that the people gambling weren't gambling with their own money. That way if they won then got big bonuses, and if they lost they simply didn't get bonuses. Clearly the only rational action in this situation is to go all in with other people's money.

Is it really that complicated? You wouldn't give your money to someone else and send them to Vegas, tell them to gamble if they win you split the profits, if they lose you lose your money.

You shouldn't invest in things you don't understand, and mind that old wall street saying.

But people do invest in things they don't understand, and pyramid schemes, and tulips, none of this is new. Sure some fancy math was involved this time, but that's only tangential.

I think everyone is concentrating on the fancy math because it's like magic, and then it's not their fault, it's not the same old story of everyone just being stupid again like in .COM 1.0, oh no - It's _magic_!

<comment><USER3> Yeah I think you're totally right on here. I would go even further and suggest that these pseudo-scientific valuation models were cynically exploited to make it sound like the risks were calculable.

I think an analogy to medicine is appropriate - for many years the desperation and naivete of the sick was exploited by frauds selling patent medicines. Many makers of these bogus cures undoubtedly sincerely believed in their efficacy. Watching this history would make you suspicious of anyone who claimed that they could cure your illness with a drug. Despite this sordid reputation, there really are wonder drugs. If medicine can be made scientific so can finance.

<comment><USER4> _If medicine can be made scientific so can finance._

Uh, one thing to be careful with in such a statement is reasoning by analogy.

Consider if someone says:

 _"If physics can be made scientific, so can pertual-motion-machine- construction"_

Or

 _"If chemistry can be made scientific, so can alchemy!"_

Or

 _"If astronomy can be made scientific, so can astrology!"_

The problem is clearer. Not every "field" is subject to valid innovation since some fields are inherently bogus. It is a hard problem determining _which_ fields can "scientifized" so you might not be wrong. But I personally think that the real scientific _economists_ are those that have argued that you're not ever going to find a "financial innovation" which adds value to the economy as a whole.

<comment><USER5> In fact the mere problem of discerning pseudo-science from science is almost impossible by an fixed criteria.

<comment><USER3> Not sure what you mean by fixed-criterion How about about just demanding falsifiable predictions, and doing experiments to test them?

<comment><USER5> Most people think astrology is bunk science, but they can make predictions and do experiments.

Throughout history physics has had experiments whose results were incompatible with current models, which eventually lead to new theories (relativity, etc) but how do you know when contradicting information disproves your theory or will expand it.

<comment><USER6> I think we have an issue of defining pseudo-science here.

Definition 1: A field that can't be can't make falsifiable predeictions. By this definitino, astrology is certainly a real science.

Definition 2: A field that makes false predictions. By this definition, most peoplle thing astrology is a pseudo-science.

<comment><USER5> Definition 2 is a flawed definition, perhaps some parts of astrology are wrong, but some parts of physics are wrong, we just need more time to work out the bugs in astrology -- more experiments need to be made.

If you're interested in this problem, this is a great reference: <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/>

<comment><USER7> I think when your model consistently gives results indiscernable from random noise in its strongest application (cf. blog.okcupid.com), you can safely conclude that it's of no more value than a model selected at random from all possible models of similar complexity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Economics as it is got going well before complexity theory was established.

There's an interesting difference between assuming perfect information and perfect rationality -- idealizations of existing scenarios -- and essentially assuming P=NP; the former makes the math easier at no real penalty (provided you remember not to confuse the map with the territory) but until P is proven to be equal to NP (which probably won't happen) the latter is more like sprinkling pixy dust to make it go.

The only school that really takes something like tractability seriously are the Austrians, but their math phobia leaves their approach unrigorous and not very useful outside of as an anti-central-planning argument.

The claim that a market will converge on an accurate price (!) for an "intractable" financial asset is pretty dubious; the price-discovery process is supposed to depend on lots of agents running their #s and taking positions depending on if they think current price is different than it ought to be...over time this process will push the market price toward an accurate price.

In the case of an intractable asset there'd be no reason to believe that any outside agents crunched accurate #s, which means that even if the price converged there'd be no reason to believe that the converged-to price had any accuracy, which isn't usually the case in most other classes of financial assets.

As noted towards the end they need to do some work about estimating "lemon cost" and otherwise establishing how close you can estimate with approximate methods.

(!) In general there's not much sense in talking about true or accurate prices for some good; price is what it gets, full stop.

In the case of most financial products the notion of accurate price is more justified: a product entitles the owner to some sequence of future cash flows, which can be assigned a value in some straightforward manner. When a financial asset's current price deviates from the value of the underlying sequence of payments in some substantial way it's usually due to some easily-understood dynamic (eg: inflation expectations, doubts about some of the payments coming through) which makes a minor correction to the price it fetches.

An "inaccurate price" would be one with no apparent relation to the underlying cash flows.

<comment><USER4> _In general there's not much sense in talking about true or accurate prices for some good; price is what it gets, full stop._

Well, if the price is not above the costs of production, you're going to have a hard finding the product in stores for very long. Oppositely, the price and availability of food, say, isn't at a certain level, the whole society may cease to function.

While arguments about intractability, chaos and uncertainty are great and interesting, it's worth considering that if an economy doesn't have a number of important, predictable elements, things stop working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know that prof. Appel is a really smart guy from reading his books on optimizing compilers - so I'm going to risk looking like an idiot here, especially because I don't have time to carefully read the paper.. but maybe someone can help me out here.

so he says that a buyer cannot determine that a CDO has been maliciously packed with bad assets because this is equivalent to finding the densest subgraph. Is there a reason why an _approximate_ solution to the dense subgraph problem could not allow one to conclude that a CDO was more likely to have been stuffed with garbage?

clearly if the problem is truly like encryption as Appel says then an approximate solution is worthless (an approximate encryption key would still give you garbage)

<comment><USER9> _Is there a reason why an approximate solution to the dense subgraph problem could not allow_

I haven't read the paper either ;] (just skimmed bibliography to get a sense, as I usually do first) but Arora (one of the authors) is an expert on probabilistic approximations, and they do cite 2001 paper by Feige which is standard ref. on approximations to dense subgraph. Also, what they reduce their model to is a "planted" hidden clique variant of dense subgraph, a problem which is hard "on average" and not only in worst case (propety used in crypto protocols also).

<comment><USER3> I see - thanks for the info. I didn't know the background of the author or recognize the reference. I'm going to read this one over much more carefully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >a CDO (collateralized debt obligation) is a security formed by packaging together hundreds of home mortgages

there's actually another layer of abstraction involved. a mortgage backed security, or collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO), is formed by packaging together a large group of home mortgages. a CDO is made by packaging together hundreds of MBS obligations or CMOs.

<comment><USER11> CDOs are not necessarily just composed of mortgage derivatives. They can be put together from bonds, CDSs (synthetic CDOs), syndicated loans (CLOs), other CDOs (CDOs squared), a mixture of these and other debt instruments.

<comment><USER12> Yep. And you can count the leverage at every single level

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even if we had unlimited computation, there are human factors that are tough to determine beforehand.

For example, some originators encouraged their borrowers to lie more, and now post-meltdown some servicers are less willing to agree to loan modifications / short-sales.

At first traders didn't place much emphasis on the originator, servicer, or bank, because they focused on the loan stats (FICO score, loan type, interest rate, etc).

Post-meltdown, the smart players see obvious systematic patterns between originators and servicers, even given the same paper stats. But again, to see it before it happened, it's less a computer problem and more an unscalable human due diligence problem.

</comment><comment><USER14> The link to the paper seems to be down. A clone can be found at [http://www.princeton.edu/bcf/newsevents/seminar/SanjeevArora...](http://www.princeton.edu/bcf/newsevents/seminar/SanjeevArorapaper.pdf)</comment>


The Church-Turing Thesis: Breaking the Myth - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1038

<comment><USER2> Haven't read the whole paper yet, but it doesn't seem that deep. If you asked any theorist if a TM can do something interactive, they would have said no, and I would imagine that most people who know about TMs would understand this. "A TM can do anything" is shorthand for "a TM can compute any function."</comment>


Chart of Milk Products and Production Relationships - <AUTHOR>

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Milkproducts_v2.svg <comment><USER2> [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Milkprodu...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Milkproducts_v2.svg)</comment>


Google Cloud challenges AWS with new open-source integrations - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/google-gives-aws-the-open-source-middle-finger/ <comment><USER2> Great... how long till google gets bored of this and cuts all theses services leaving their customer's screwed?

After seeing how google handles products and their sun-setting I would never trust my production environment with google.

The only product I ever integrated our production environment with was google maps/places and we got fucked over with a 5x cost increase.

Seriously who would ever trust google over AWS or Azure...

<comment><USER3> You're not wrong. I see most cloud consumers at AWS, with anyone else married to Microsoft or who is in business competing against Amazon going with Azure. Which is a shame, because Google Cloud is pretty solid, but the stigma is real.

<comment><USER4> Is it really a stigma if it's backed by evidence? And repeated often?

[https://killedbygoogle.com](https://killedbygoogle.com)

<comment><USER3> I didn't stay the stigma was uncalled for. I personally do not use Google services anymore, nor would I recommend anyone else do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This could be a game changer if it is well integrated. No more dealing with forks of open source projects that respect the interface up to a certain point. That way we can a full local stack that is exactly what runs on the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks like a great move - I just wish Citus or another top-tier Postgres option was included, Google's managed Postgres is pretty behind (old version, no PITR, and IIRC limited module and replication support).

We're still managing our Postgres manually ontop of GCE and I'd rather not have to do that, but I also don't want to give up the replication setup we have and the modules we use.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice move. GCP is years behind the other clouds in offering common managed services so this seems like a great way to catch up quickly, while allowing the vendors to control their own service.

I'm always surprised at how many of these vendors don't have any cloud offering of their own, or have very limited versions.

<comment><USER3> Traditionally, AWS has "stolen the thunder" of these vendors, providing a wireline compatible offering (Elastic, Redis, Memcache, Mongo, etc). It's smart of Google to partner with them to help bolster their cloud offering against AWS ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend").

<comment><USER7> True, although I guess we'll have to wait and see what this means for the operational experience. I cant fault AWS for looking out for its customers first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ElasticCo and Mongo (the companies) already offer managed services that run on top of AWS where you can pay for the full versions. How is this different?

Why would I move to GCP instead of just sticking with AWS and paying for managed services directly from the vendor?

And then having to worry about Google losing interest in a year or two?

<comment><USER9> Unified billing, support and management was the pitch...if I recall correctly. Seemed pretty compelling to me.

<comment><USER8> You get unified billing through AWS/Amazon marketplace:

"Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud" Sold By: ElasticSearch Inc

[https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B01N6YCISK?qid=1554910...](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B01N6YCISK?qid=1554910276061&sr=0-1&ref_=srh_res_product_title)

MongoDB Atlas Sold By: MongoDB

[https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B077D557RX?qid=1554910...](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B077D557RX?qid=1554910412107&sr=0-1&ref_=srh_res_product_title)

They are both managed and supported by their respective companies and billing is through AWS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be interesting to understand how Google and the open source companies are going to share revenue.

</comment><comment><USER11> What happens to existing Google-managed open source products? Does partnering with Confluent now render pub/sub obsolete?

<comment><USER12> I'd say that Pubsub has it's own use cases, as it provides different guarantees than Kafka (most importantly in message ordering that enables different performance characteristics).</comment></comment>


Roof algae: The prehistoric organism that streaks your shingles (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/metro/urban-jungle/pages/130618.html <comment><USER2> As the article & comments say: dilute bleach and water; wait a week or two for algae, moss, etc to die; rinse off detritus, and add zinc strips to the roof to inhibit future growth. Vary to protect nearby shrubs, fish. etc. Never use more than low pressure. Move carefully, have adequate health insurance, or both.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gloeocapsa magma is the species that blackens roofs. I have it and it's ugly and annoying.</comment>


Pepsi is giving away millions in grants each month to fund your great ideas. - <AUTHOR> http://www.refresheverything.com/

<comment><USER2> This is a great marketing campaign. $1.3 million a month isn't a lot of money for a company like Pepsi, but they get a lot in return. The brand engagement will be huge, it is likely to go viral on some level. It gives their brand a good name. It gives them an excuse to advertise their brand at the execution of the ideas too, without looking like an evil corporation exploiting a good cause.

Pretty smart, if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"Who can apply?

All legal residents of the United States residing in one of the 50 United States..."_

:(

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmm...Since it's not valid for people outside US so I wont be able to participate but would I have participated had it been valid in India?

Let me think...Probably Not. I have lost any hope that such marketing campaigns can ever solve real world problems or help in nurturing the next big idea because that's not the main motive behind such campaigns.

The motive is to engage as many people as you can and that is bound to happen after having a look at the site, which is rather attractive and from a designer's point of view quite appealing.

</comment><comment><USER5> For some reason, I really like their website design. Very simple and engaging.

</comment><comment><USER6> strengthening brand via the nice guy approach. very smart idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pepsi can #)$(* my $R%(</comment>


The Confused Person's Guide to Middle East Conflicts - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/03/the-confused-persons-guide-to-middle-east-conflicts/388883/?utm_source=btn-facebook-ctrl1&single_page=true

<comment><USER2> This about sums it up: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=won1okeV6sM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=won1okeV6sM)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This shows how utterly complex geopolitics in the Middle East is</comment>


Hexaflexagons - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUOGeU-1Fig3rrDjhm9Zs_wg&feature=player_embedded&v=VIVIegSt81k

<comment><AUTHOR> Vi Hart, who produces these videos, now works at Khan Academy. She's also one of the people to make tau (as an alternative to pi) go viral. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ></comment>


Fuel for Mexico's Diabetes Epidemic - happy-go-lucky http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/04/08/522184483/pork-tacos-topped-with-fries-fuel-for-mexicos-diabetes-epidemic <comment><AUTHOR> The refined carbohydrates and sugar cause diabetics, not the fat and protein - please repeat this till people wake up that they are being conned by big food</comment>


Ridesharing Algorithms in TransLoc OnDemand - <AUTHOR> https://techlog.transloc.com/ridesharing-algorithms-in-transloc-ondemand-7acfeddbfe1f <comment><USER2> This is a great article - it's a set of really clear explanations of several complicated topics, and kudos to the author for bringing it all together so well. It reminds me of the research we conducted at Ultra PRT when building the Heathrow Pod (a driverless taxi system) [1] and evaluating much larger networks on campuses and in cities.

One aspect I didn't see in the analysis is the effect of a passenger's willingness to rideshare on the effectiveness of the algorithms - we found it can have a pretty dramatic effect on system efficiency[2], especially when operating near capacity (as you'd expect). Does anyone who's used this system have any experience of this? What happens if passengers refuse to share or request a different ride?

[1] [http://www.ultraglobalprt.com](http://www.ultraglobalprt.com)

[2] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/31589946_Ride_Shari...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/31589946_Ride_Sharing_in_Personal_Rapid_Transit_Capacity_Planning)

<comment><AUTHOR> Unlike UberPool or Lyft Carpool, TransLoc OnDemand rides are serviced by transit agencies, most of which use shuttles or even full-size buses. There's no choice to share or not share a ride.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a truly well written and explained article. I love the fact that they can help positively impact public transportation.

</comment><comment><USER4> Transloc's app is the most thoroughly unpleasant piece of software I've ever had the displeasure of keeping on my iPhone for more than 5 minutes. Sadly, when it was raining outside and the shuttles only came every half hour, I didn't have much of a choice.

Arrival data was usually missing (despite shuttles in operation) and when present, usually wrong. A given intersection would typically have 7 or 8 different _tiny_ touch targets on it representing the different lines and systems that stop there, and you have to select the right one. No way to do that except to iterate through them all. The maximum allowed zoom level was not nearly enough to do this in a reasonable way on an iPhone 4S, certainly not in the freezing rain.

The was a list of routes you could check and uncheck to add and remove them from the map. This list was _enormous_ , and the 3 shuttle lines that 99% of users cared about 95% of the time were buried deep within it. There was no attempt to remove visual clutter if you had other lines enabled that were not operating. Lines on the map were color-coded, but it was really not clear how to match them to route names. There was also no way to do point-to-point directions or even plot a pin on the map, so you had to zoom in on street names and manually pan around to find your destination and see what the appropriate line was, then take a guess at the directionality of the lines to see where it made sense to get that shuttle. I would usually flip over to Google Maps to plot a pin, then try to match it up visually when I switched back to Transloc.

I could go on and on. Do not let these people convince you they are a hip progressive tech company. They make an enterprisey piece of shit for captive audiences and it wouldn't even be hard to do far, far better by taking even a handful of cues from what Google Maps was doing with public transit directions years prior.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder the author considered using Integer Linear Programming. For me it tends to be a go-to way to solve problems like this, but often have issues when the modelled problems become harder than I thought and processing times will be .. months?

<comment><USER6> You end up with a very similar situation as you do without integer linear programming - an enormous search space. In the papers I've read on VRP that provide a linear programming formulation (2), they then fall back to approximate methods for actually doing the work.

<comment><USER5> ILP is not the same as brute forcing it, branch and bound and cut will quickly weed out a lot of that search space. And a good solver should find approximate solutions quickly.

The question is whether good solutions are found 1) as quickly as with the simulated annealing approach 2) as good as that approach 3) whether the formulation is maybe simpler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would love to hear more about your thought processes before you posted the question on StackOverflow. Felt like the instant solution rushed the ending of the article a bit, but otherwise really enjoyed it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I first implemented a recursive solution using memoization. But the linear PAVA algorithm is faster. Not sure what else I was thinking about at the time, this was 7 months ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I saw you guys at Great Wide Open a couple of weeks ago!

</comment><comment><USER9> Sounds like this could be a shoe-in to sell to traditional transit authorities that operate an adapted transit network.

</comment><comment><USER10> The title is a bit confusing for me. I think the original title is better: "Ridesharing Algorithms in TransLoc OnDemand"

<comment><USER11> Changed. Submitted title was "On-Demand Transit Algorithms".

<comment><USER10> My delayed thanks!</comment></comment></comment>