Setting Google Analytics to not use cookies - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10668292/is-there-a-setting-on-google-analytics-to-suppress-use-of-cookies-for-users-who

<comment><USER2> Note that EU directives don't apply to website owners. They bind the member states to implement them in some form. The laws of individual member states contain guidelines that you should adhere to.

<comment><USER3> I was going to ask this. What exactly would happen if I (as a US citizen) ignored this? Would the EU block my website?

<comment><USER4> The EU doesn't make (much) real law per se. Unlike the USA, the EU doesn't really have a criminal system, or federal laws etc. The EU makes member states (which are countries _and_ states) implement a law. This law would only apply to owners of websites. They don't block websites.

<comment><USER5> This gives member states a bit of extra freedom - some implement the laws in stricter or looser manner than the european parlament may have intended.

Some countries even refuse to implement them, as the Swedish goverment did with the Data Retention Directive (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive>). See

[http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&j...](http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsv.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FDatalagringsdirektivet%23Sverige)

(scroll down to implementation) for a while. Then they complied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "So, my only option seems to be that I should not embed Google tag code at > all if the user has not explicitly given consent."

The other option is to ignore the directive, which is what most websites will do.

<comment><USER7> As Ian Clarke (original designer of Freenet) put it:

"It is the responsibility of every citizen to ignore dumb laws."

And I would add that the whole world would crawl to a halt and descend into total chaos if everyone followed every law in the books. Too many laws are plain incoherent, inconsistent and impossible to follow.

<comment><USER6> Also, laws only 'matter' if they're actually enforced. There's no indication this will actually be enforced at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I put google-analytics (among thousands of other useless tracking websites) in my hosts file. Probably the most useful text file you'll ever download:

<http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/>

<comment><USER9> The line for google analytics in this hosts file is commented out, with the comment "breaks some sites".

If only getting rid of spy cookies/tracking was so easy...

<comment><USER8> The list is very conservative this way, but I add a bunch of sites myself and uncommenting google-analytics and other tracking sties is perfectly safe and doesn't break anything - even google. And for cookies there's cookie monster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If left to owners/managers/developers to implement the opt-in we risk having a variety of ways for doing the same thing. Some good, some not so good and some just bad.

A less painful solution would be to try and solve this at the browser level where the experience for end users would at least be consistant. Like a blend of DNT & private browsing mode that had extremely restrictive criteria for cookie usage - if any.

Something like [Ghostery][0] would be a nice starting point.

Of course the better solution would be to erase Article 5(3) and start again. Good intentions, bad directive.

[0]: <http://www.ghostery.com/>

<comment><USER11> [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie- monste...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monster/)

<comment><USER10> Nice one, that's the kind of `thing` I was referring to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a bit of a pain for website owners, but I think the EU directive is a good thing.

Why? It will make people better aware of what cookies they have, and how they are used. Which is probably a good thing.

<comment><USER13> Definitely, it is not. Users already "opt-in" by configuring their client to accept cookies. Users _could_ be more aware of that and use their clients appropriately if they don't wish to be tracked, but instead there will be this new layer of complexity by which a users opts in. Users (much like they have with their browser security settings) will grow accustomed to blindly opting in like they always have because it makes the thing they're trying to use work. Only now, we have an extra bit of work to do.

<comment><USER4> _Users already "opt-in" by configuring their client to accept cookies._

I _highly_ doubt that is the interpretation of "opt in" that the various Data Protection agencies will take.

<comment><USER13> My point is that cookies are, and always have been, an optional feature of the web. If you go back a decade or so, you might remember annoying IE dialogs warning you that "a website is trying to put a cookie on your computer, do you accept?" While cookies may be used for nefarious purposes, they are essential to many, many legitimate features of the web like maintaining a user session, and to an end user, their importance has trained them to automatically click "Accept."

They are so ubiquitous that browsers typically accept them by default now, but they are still an optional feature. This EU mandate could have been just as well fulfilled by required browser vendors to have the accept cookies warning turned on by default and let users turn it off at their peril. Instead, it has just added another chunk of _compliance_ for web workers to adhere to. Users are still going to be the same ol' users who click "Accept" because they want to get into whatever they were trying to get into. Only now, there's a lot more room for lawsuits.

<comment><USER4> All of that is true. However I doubt you could claim "opt in" because the user's browser accepted the cookie. It's not that easy to get around the letter and spirit of the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're that concerned about Tracking, using Adblock is the best option ..

<https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/filters.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know of a decent and up to date guide on what is/is not allowed? The official guidance is typically not much help and my searches reveal a lot of stuff out of date and other sites that are more interested in selling me cookie analysis - so I'm taking their advice with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER16> The interpretation of the law is up to the individual countries. I've only been watching what's been happening in the UK. Until last week the guidance from the Information Commissions' office has been 'you need explicit opt-in' if you want to set cookies that aren't vital to your site's work (example, cookies set when a user is shopping and puttnig items into their cart are deemed vital, Google Analytics is not).

However last week the ICO issued new guidance saying that implied consent is OK

News article here:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/26/cookies- law...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/26/cookies-law-changed- implied-consent)

The UK formal advice here (PDF)

[http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electron...](http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/~/media/documents/library/Privacy_and_electronic/Practical_application/cookies_guidance_v3.ashx)

A rather handy site that has an easily integratable tool for implementing Directive-compliant opt-out on your site

<http://www.civicuk.com/home>

and the Drupal module: <http://drupal.org/project/cookiecontrol>

<comment><USER17> I would argue that analytics is vital - if you cant work out what your site is doing then you can not work out how to improve the site which costs money and indirectly jobs.

I look forward to each individual shop/business making us sign a waiver when we enter a shop with CCTV ie 95% of UK shops

<comment><USER18> _I would argue that analytics is vital_

So would a lot of people, but the official guidance makes it clear that they are not considered vital as far as these legal rules are concerned.

The "essential cookies are OK" criteria relate to the functionality the user has explicitly asked for, not to functionality that the site operator needs to run the site in a commercially viable fashion. Thus things like session cookies to record that you have logged in or what's in a shopping cart are OK, but things like analytics aren't allowed to piggy-back on top.

There seems to be some doubt about how seriously anyone in the UK is going to take these rules, though. Even the ICO can't get its opinion straight, and it's the government body responsible for enforcement. As I understand it, we're already taking this whole mess far more seriously than most countries in the EU, in that some web sites run by large organisations have made some effort to comply with the rules, while even that might not be true in most places that are theoretically affected.

<comment><USER17> Well as some one who has been working on www based systems since 1994 and one online systems for many years before it's a pity they did not ask people actulay working in the industry.

Ironically Neelie Kroes, the EU's Digital Agenda Commissioner now wants us to have manditory electronic id cards storing god only knows what information about us.

This is a far worse infringement of our rights that some aggressive retargeting as opposed to being asked "papers please" on the euro star.

I think i will change my last name to Pike :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Parkinson's Law (On Amazon reader, but the book is excellent) - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1568490151

<comment><USER2> A truly brilliant book!</comment>


Beautiful Time-Lapse of Milky Way over Lake Tahoe - <AUTHOR> http://laughingsquid.com/beautiful-time-lapse-of-milky-way-over-lake-tahoe/ <comment><USER2> Would have been better to link directly to the video: <http://vimeo.com/14718221>

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone is interested in a cheap way to shoot stunning timelapses, buy yourself an old Canon Powershot off eBay, a $5 memory card writer, and download the CHDK firmware hacks for Canon cameras: <http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK>

Sadly the CHDK hacks don't work with DSLRs (yet).

EDIT: I should add that the beauty of timelapse is that even an old 5MP camera can create beautiful 1080p HD videos.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's amazing and slightly terrifying that the bathing of light at the end of the video was due to one of those stars which just happened to be a bit closer than the others.

<comment><USER5> Took me a minute to figure out what you meant :) I'd say it's more than just a 'bit' closer though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://timescapes.org/>

<comment><USER7> wow, this is extremly cool :) Thanks for the link !

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Beautiful. I hope he can do one from somewhere in southern hemisphere, as the galactic core is really quite impressive.

[http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=milky+way+southern+hemisphe...](http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=milky+way+southern+hemisphere&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1920&bih=955)

</comment><comment><USER9> I love looking at photographs but have never really found photography to be something that I wanted to pick up and learn. I think this just changed. that. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

And love the fact that stuff like this makes the front page of HNews. I'm here for the tech discussions, but love to come across things like this. Exactly why HNews is the first webpage I visit in the morning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, it's so great to have a community like HN where we can just share everything from coding to photography to philosophy and everything in between. I was so excited to share it here as soon as I found it. That's not something you can say about most online communities.

And yeah, I've seen some spectacular photography before, but this just took my breath away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> De-spammed link - <http://vimeo.com/14718221>

<comment><USER11> I would not refer to the laughing squid as blogspam. Yes, all they do is aggregate stuff from the rest of the internet, but they tend to be really good at snatching stuff just before it goes mass viral. If you want a place that'll let you stay infront of reddit, this is it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> this is also good - and, dare I say, better? [http://vimeo.com/4505537?pg=embed&sec=4505537](http://vimeo.com/4505537?pg=embed&sec=4505537)

<comment><USER10> Isn't it amazing how the whole Universe seems to be revolving around Texas? :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> From looking at this time lapse I can actually get a sense of the world turning. Very impressive to watch.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is beautiful, and I'm a photography buff, but how does this have anything to do with startups or hacking?

<comment><USER15> _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<comment><USER16> While I agree with you, I think it's due to submissions such as this that end up leading to things like the recent submission "Solving the Hacker News Problem" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2252152>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A friend shot a similar video a bit closer to Mono Lake: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir2ISR-XjD4> The clouds disappear half-way through.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've forgotten how cool the sky is at night. I'm currently in Montreal, Canada and it's got a horrible problem of light pollution.

<comment><USER19> I've not been myself, but if you have a car I don't think you need to travel too far off-island before you get some clear skies. My bet would be to head up towards Mt Tremblant.

<comment><USER18> yeah, the montreal light bubble is pretty large, I grew up in Mont Rolland (by ste adele) and we still got some of the light pollution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another 100 billion reasons why Lake Tahoe is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

<comment><USER10> Is it the fact that one can see the sky from it? I wonder what other reasons are like :)

<comment><USER21> I think he is counting each star as a different reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Somehow I was expecting a candybar and really starting to wonder what the video would be about. Still, very beautiful

</comment><comment><USER23> I just got this incredible feeling of being on a spaceship, turning.

</comment><comment><USER24> I want this looping as my os x desktop. Anyone know how to do that?

<comment><USER25> Download the Vimeo movie (using one of the many sources on the internet, google finds this: <http://clipnabber.com/> ) set as your screensaver (make a quartz composer thing, or use an app like this: [http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/icons_screensavers/mov...](http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/icons_screensavers/moviescreensaver.html) ).

In terminal, run this command:

      System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background > /dev/null 2>&1

Warning: completely untested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Pardon me for my short sight, but why is this HN material?

</comment><comment><USER27> The number of shooting stars amazes me.

<comment><USER28> Those are airplanes. Shooting stars don't last long enough to leave more than one frame on time-lapses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Awesome photos. This needs some equally awesome music in the background, though.

Try this:

"Nevergreen" - Emancipator <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RChF0wlcWfQ>

(timelapse video link) <http://www.vimeo.com/14718221></comment>


Imgur.com exploit that allowed arbitrary JavaScript to be embedded - <AUTHOR> Apparently there was some bug on imgur.com that allowed people to upload arbitrary JavaScript appended to the images. imgur.com seems to have acknowledged the issue already[0]. The exploit found was targetting an imageboard called 8chan[1]. There are also a few threads on 4chan about this[2][3][4][5].<p>[0] https://twitter.com/imgur/status/646109824342593536<p>[1] http://pastebin.com/heYvWu5Y<p>[2] https://rbt.asia/g/thread/50407085<p>[3] https://rbt.asia/g/thread/50409306<p>[4] https://rbt.asia/g/thread/50410681<p>[5] https://rbt.asia/g/thread/50411692 <comment><USER2> This is called XSS. see here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- site_scripting#Persisten...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- site_scripting#Persistent)</comment>


Obama, at South by Southwest, Backs Law Enforcement in Fight Over Encryption - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/us/politics/obama-heads-to-south-by-southwest-festival-to-talk-about-technology.html <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11270529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11270529).

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11270529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11270529)</comment>


Show HN: React Atellier – A React Component Emulator - <AUTHOR> http://scup.github.io/atellier/ <comment><USER2> Awesome</comment>


Web technology is about to change how we learn - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/10/13/how-web-technology-is-about-to-change-how-we-learn/#

<comment><USER2> It's a tragedy how little impact software has had on (formal) education - decades of hype, promising trials (PLATO, Logo, Smalltalk) eventuated no profound innovation ... only peripheral benefits (note-taking, paper-writing, class projects ...) Mostly because you need to be an educator to know what educators need - and you're too busy.

Opportunities for informal, self-directed education, OTOH, are constantly improving. The number of well-developed reference sites online shows no sign of letting up. Great for the already-educated. But for K-12 ... still a wasteland.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would argue it already _has_. I, for one, would have gone to college had I not been able to use the internet to access the information I needed in order to learn the skills I needed for my chosen career. True, lots of skills can be learned by reading books, talking to people, going out and learning by doing, etc but the internet makes most of that process much more efficient, which changes the cost/benefit ratio of higher education significantly already.</comment>


Doing a Startup vs. Building a Business - <AUTHOR> http://blog.circleshare.com/index.php?/archives/48-Doing-a-Startup-vs.-Building-a-company.html <comment><AUTHOR> This article highlights an area of confusion, I think. Of course, any new business is a startup. So, even your aunts diner that is opening soon is a startup.

But when we talk about a "startup" here generally we're talking about a technology startup, or mroe specifically, a web oriented technology startup.

But we're not necessarily talking about: Funding, organization, theoretical growth rates, etc, for that company.

So, I think the term "lifestyle business" should be banned or rejected by this community. Its a derogatory term used to apply to people who are chosing to go a different path, with the implicit assumption that that path is lame (eg: low growth, low chance of getting rich.)

There are certainly a lot of choices that founders have to make with regards to whether they are building a real business or not (EG: something sustainable that will make them rich even if a $10B+ company doesn't buy them in 24 months... rather than something that's a feature built to flip to someone with a real product offering.) ... and funding, location, team size, team composition (eg: when to hire marketing or sales people), etc are all independant of whether you're building a business.

You could bootstrap a company built to flip, or you could use VC money to do it. You can use VC money to build a real business, or you can bootstrap a real business.

But I believe, strongly, that building a real business is the only way to go-- its the most likely path to getting flipped, and its the way you will end up with something more than an adrenaline hangover after 24 months.

I hope this is making sense...

In summary, focusing on the business is the path to success... and recognizing all of these choices (including who to take money from) have advantages and disadvantages for the business case. For instance, one option might make great short term financial sense but be damaging in the long term-- if its a build to flip situation then you don't care about the long term. But in making that choice, you're risking the flip taking longer than expected....

So, build a business.

PS-- Justification for this long post: I was recently talking to a startup, and they are totally focused on being acquired within the next 18 months. Thats their plan. Their only plan. Every decision they make is with that assumption, and they are going to be in a world of pain 24 months from now if they aren't acquired in that time period. Worse, I think that if the followed a the right strategy, between 18 and 48 months from now they'd grow from a $250M business to a $4B business.

<comment><USER2> Great comment. I'm an engineering student and was enrolled in an entrepreneurship course at the business school here. This kind of bias was evident there as well. Our instructor often made comments about our project having "lifestyle business" potential as if that was a bad thing. If we couldn't grow to "$50 million in five years" then we weren't appropriate for venture capital, and we'd have to seek other types of funding, and apparently that was a big negative to him. It was frustrating and counter-productive, really.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you know what they say-- those that can, do. Those that can't, teach. This goes doubly for entrepreneurship "classes".... though maybe I'm too harsh and that guy had actually started a business.

In terms of the number of millionaires or centi-millionaires in this country-- the vast majority of them got that way with "lifestyle businesses".</comment></comment></comment>


Covid-19: Trump tries to get exclusive rights for vaccine from a German firm - <AUTHOR> https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article206555143/Corona-USA-will-Zugriff-auf-deutsche-Impfstoff-Firma.html <comment><USER2> This has already been denied by the firm itself: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22596826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22596826)</comment>


Ask HN: What area/subject would you choose (or have you chosen) for a PhD? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Given the chance, I'd do PhD in math for the sole purpose of learning how to think straight and see the projects through start to end on my own. That's what PhD means to me anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> PhDs need to be banned. It is basically bunch of professors who exploit a bunch of graduate students from foreign countries. The professors controls the visa which effectively controls the student. The worst offenders are usually the Foreign professors which is ironic since they should be the ones to realize how harmful it is. A professors tried pull this stunt on me, but he didn't realize I had papers. So got the hell away from his lab.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this depends a lot of where you have tried this. As far as I'm concerned the university I'm looking to apply to for a PhD is far from this type of concerns. It has other problems, of course, I don't expect the PhD to be a lean experience anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Obviously, current vogue is for AI / ML / CV expertise. With compensation of $1M right out of school not unheard of.

Personally, if I chose to go the academic route. I'd like to have a lab at an institution such as the Broad Institute. Systems biology at the frontier of human understanding.

[https://www.broadinstitute.org/](https://www.broadinstitute.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> If I had the necessary schooling up front, I would go for anything related to bioengineering. It seems like the most interesting and high-impact field currently out there (next to AI, although I think in bioengineering you might have a more direct impact sooner).

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it still worth it to do a PhD? Just wondering...

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope it is. If I'll find a subject which I'm passionate about, within a correct environment and context, it can be a good and fruitful experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mathematics</comment>


YouTube's Plan to Rein in Conspiracy Theories Is Failing - <AUTHOR> https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/youtube-conspiracy-theories_n_5d320f69e4b004b6adafbb99 <comment><USER2> News feed algorithms that maximize profits for the social media company _inevitably_ promote sensational, emotionally potent content. Doing so is part of their design.

Consider the following experiment with YouTube. Search for something, anything. A list of relevant search results will appear.

You might imagine that after you watch the top search result, the next video to play would be the second place search result.

But alas YouTube does not want you to see the second most relevant thing that you just searched for! YouTube wants to show you the most addictive thing that relates to the item you just watched.

YouTube's algorithm is essentially walking a graph from whatever you are currently watching, following the edge to the most addictive thing that relates to it.

It's like a vending machine that dispenses the chocolate bar and then automatically dispenses some nicotine gum immediately after.

This is "news feed profit maximization 101".

Viral content creators know how to make emotionally potent content and one can see the extent to which YouTube's algorithm has rewarded/incentivized this by observing the vast percentage of YouTube content that is gimmicky, uses irrelevant thumbnails, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the Hacker News tech stack? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I found this [0] as one of the questions asked earlier -

>> Ask HN: Is Hackernews still using the file system as database?

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14371189](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14371189)

</comment><comment><USER2> If memory serves the app is written in a dialect of Lisp and Firebase is the data store.</comment>


Making ASP.NET apps first-class citizens on Google Cloud Platform - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/08/making-ASP.NET-apps-first-class-citizens-on-Google-Cloud-Platform.html <comment><USER2> If MS plays its cards well, .NET can take a decent marketshare from of Java. C# as a language seems more polished and friendly then Java/Scala. MS has some of the best compiler/language folks in industry. Next couple of years should be interesting, with .net core, VSC, typescript and all OSS, lets see if MS is able to capture any developer mindshare.

<comment><USER3> Yes! The only reason several projects I worked on used Java was due to its ability to run on several platforms (especially Linux). .Net is a very solid framework with C# being absolutely awesome and, in my opinion, far better than Java.

I'm excited I may be able to play with C# again in the very, very near future.

<comment><USER4> > I'm excited I may be able to play with C# again in the very, very near > future.

Can't you just install windows as everybody else and start playing with your programming languages of choice?

<comment><USER3> I mean yes but that's an awful lot of effort and storage space taken up to install it and I don't have much storage left. I would much rather use it natively on Mac OS X and Linux with the option of deploying to Windows or Linux. When it's as flexible as Java in that way I'm going to use it :)

<comment><USER4> I don't think you'll get a visual studio build for linux or osx. That would mean making desktop .net cross platform and it's not in microsoft agenda. So i think you'd better wait until java becomes as awesome as c# is for you already :)

<comment><USER5> .NET Core & Visual Studio Code are current options, too.

<comment><USER6> JetBrains' Rider is looking really good in private beta, too. The last e-mail they sent out mentioned that the public preview version will be out soon.

<comment><USER3> I didn't realize this was a thing! Thanks! I'm looking forward to trying it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just finished a project on Azure and am now doing a project on Google Cloud. I've been blown away by the documentation and user experience. It's by far my favorite between AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Glad to see Windows VMs are now supported. Any intention to add C# drivers for the services, namely Pub/Sub?

<comment><USER8> > Glad to see Windows VMs are now supported. Any intention to add C# drivers > for the services, namely Pub/Sub?

You might want to read the article. About 1/3 of it is devoted to announcing their new .net client libraries.

<comment><USER9> I don't know if I should post this comment or not, but for the record this is one of the HN guidelines I try to abide by the most:

> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even > read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article > mentions that."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER10> I do too....but.....

"You might want to read the article" !== "Did you even read the article" in terms of intentional snark for which that guideline is intended.

Parent also points out that a decent chunk of the article is about the support libs,

To quote fairly early on in the article just from a quick scan (Ctrl+F "pub"):

 _" These libraries are in beta today, and include wrappers for Google BigQuery, Google Cloud Storage, Google Cloud Pub/Sub and Google Cloud Datastore, with more on the way"_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is great work! Congrats to Jon Skeet and the other Google people who made this happen!

</comment><comment><USER12> From an Azure point of view, knowing that I have options makes me a lot more willing to build a business using those technologies. Really glad to see Google support it.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's really interesting to me that platforms traditionally dominated by linux- based workloads are all now courting the 'presumed' enterprise windows based workloads.

As I .NET dev, I very much approve

<comment><USER14> I know it's just compute, but it still seems weird to run Windows Server on GCP.

That said it doesn't seem so weird to run Linux vms on Azure.

<comment><USER7> Is there any particular reason why it seems weird? Is it because they've never supported it, or something more involved?

<comment><USER14> Totally an irrational personal bias that I need to drop...

When you think of Google and deploying to the cloud, Borg and K8s come to mind. That's their expertise. Windows Server doesn't fit into that picture.

I guess it is the same with Azure and running Linux VMs there. Although a third of Azure VMs run Linux, the marketing and public awareness hasn't caught up with that reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm really happy this is the case.

I'm not the biggest fan of the ASP.NET ecosystem, but I'm becoming increasingly aware of how desperately the Java ecosystem needs genuine competition. This can only be another forcing function on other major ecosystems.

It's also the case that people have made credible points about how the windows platform actually provides better performance per price point for specific types of applications. While I found that very surprising, I think that ultimately we need to follow the data and provide similar pressure on Linux's I/O performance.

<comment><USER11> If you haven't already pinged one of my colleagues I'd be happy to hear your rants regarding .NET :) ( angocke @ msft )

<comment><USER15> I'll let you know once I play with the new drop for .NET Core.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sounds good but lacks the management that Azure provides. For example, running SQL Server in a VM means you're taking on all the responsibility for uptime, redundancy, backups, security, etc. Whereas Azure SQL abstracts all that away and you can focus on your application code instead of managing infrastructure.

<comment><USER17> I know its not the same, but google has a managed mysql offering ([https://cloud.google.com/sql/](https://cloud.google.com/sql/)). Depending on what you are doing it may be sufficient. My experience with the sql azure performance has been pretty lackluster when comparing with sql running on even a tiny vm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm on the Cloud Foundry buildpacks team, my time is donated by Pivotal.

If you want to run dotnet core apps on GCP _right now_ , you can do it by installing Cloud Foundry and the dotnet-core buildpack[0].

Of course, installing Cloud Foundry on CF is still harder than it ought to be for tire-kicking.

So we've added the dotnet-core buildpack in Pivotal Web Services, as a beta[1], looking for feedback. Please give it a go and come find us on Slack[2] in the buildpacks channel.

[0] [https://github.com/cloudfoundry-community/dotnet-core- buildp...](https://github.com/cloudfoundry-community/dotnet-core-buildpack) [1] [https://blog.run.pivotal.io/introducing-the-net-core- buildpa...](https://blog.run.pivotal.io/introducing-the-net-core-buildpack- beta-on-pws/) [2] [https://cloudfoundry.slack.com/](https://cloudfoundry.slack.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> This is great news all around. More flexibility for .Net developers, GCE gets access to a market segement Azure and AWS have dominated so far.

Well done.

</comment><comment><USER20> Offtopic but there's something thrilling about going through the Mono tutorials and getting ASP.NET apps to run on Linux. Kind of like it's a new world and I finally get to play with the bleeding edge toys as someone in Java EE land. As others have mentioned, the documentation is really good.

Maybe this is my chance to finally get some Stack Overflow karma...

<comment><USER21> If you want to get ASP.NET set up on Linux, I'd recommend using ASP.NET Core instead of Mono at this point. There's a tutorial on developing ASP.NET Core on OS X with VS Code ([https://docs.asp.net/en/latest/tutorials/your-first- mac-aspn...](https://docs.asp.net/en/latest/tutorials/your-first-mac- aspnet.html)) which will work just fine on multiple flavors of Linux, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The amount of .net apps enterprise runs is difficult to ignore by any cloud provider.This is a very good move by Google . But I feel they should also give a PaaS offering like Azure App Service (.net core on AppEngine may be) .Because enterprises who uses Azure IaaS VMs also need AD integrations most of the times and they will choose AZURE for that.

</comment><comment><USER23> Quick question, maybe someone here knows. Any plans to get .net core supported on app engine? This seems like a great fit for Web API web services as opposed to a full blown Windows compute engine machine?</comment>


Flying cars set to soar into the marketplace in 2011  - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9178819/Flying_cars_set_to_soar_into_the_marketplace_in_2011?taxonomyId=12

<comment><USER2> Flying cars scare the bajeezus out of me. Not because I'm scared of flying or heights, I'm not and would absolutely love to have something like this.

It's the other people who would also be flying that scare me to death. It's bad enough that we deal with horrible drivers on the road, but at least they're constrained to go where the road takes them (most of the time). Once you take away the road and give these people open air, it can only end in blood and tears.

Flying cars will never hit mainstream until they are all automated and computer controlled. The only time a human should ever be in direct control would be emergency situations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having seen the subtle damage that can be done by vandals to cars parked in public spaces, I'd be concerned about keeping a roadable aircraft in airworthy condition. Anyone who has done some light aircraft flying will know how closely one must attend to details. 'planes are usually kept inaccessible to the general public, partly to prevent random damage.

I'd be very concerned about parking this anywhere other than at the airport or in a garage under lock and key, which makes it much less useful than it might first appear.

</comment><comment><USER4> What an odd little vehicle!

[http://www.terrafugia.com/images/photogallery/logo/First_Fli...](http://www.terrafugia.com/images/photogallery/logo/First_Flight_Chase_Plane.jpg) [http://www.terrafugia.com/images/photogallery/logo/Transitio...](http://www.terrafugia.com/images/photogallery/logo/TransitionGasStation.jpg)

Certainly more practical than many of the "flying car" concepts that have been floated over the decades.

At $148k, however, I suspect there may only be a very small market for this item.</comment>


IntelliJ IDEA 14 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/whatsnew/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoksq%2FNZKXonjHpfsX%2F4%2BovWK6%2BlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4FSsFqI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFTrLDMbF23rgMWhX0TD7slJfbfYRPf6Ba2Jwwrw%3D%3D <comment><AUTHOR> I just realized that Jetbrains changed their student plans! If you're a student, you can now automatically get a license for all their software for free! I think I had to pay $99 for a student license of IDEA 13, so this is great news!

Link: [https://www.jetbrains.com/student/](https://www.jetbrains.com/student/)

<comment><USER2> The student license is valid for only one year.. but its a great opportunity for students like us to use these tools for free..

<comment><USER3> Get people to use it when they're in school, and they'll ask their employers to buy it when they start working.

<comment><USER4> And? They make a tool that is useful and multiplies my productivity. If my boss wouldn't buy it I would, and then I'd start looking for a boss who is willing to spend a reasonable amount on my toolset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They don't mention it on the "what's new page", but it looks like this update also includes all the new features in Webstorm too, including support for a bunch of JS frameworks and tools including React/JSX, Meteor, and Gulp.

[https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/whatsnew/](https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/whatsnew/)

<comment><USER6> (FYI) Webstorm 9 is already out since a couple of days

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I recently switched to IDEA after 10+ years of Eclipse use. All in all, I'm rather happy but I still have to fire up Eclipse from time to time.

The main PITA is that multithreaded debugging in IDEA is awful: it is not possible to suspend all threads and resume only one thread.

In spite of the "Improved debugger" it seems that this problem is not fixed in v14: [https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-43728](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-43728)

:(

<comment><USER8> Selectively suspending threads is a good feature, but be warned that it can cause arbitrary deadlocks, which won't be possible otherwise. Eg. it's possible to suspend a thread in a synchronised method and then the other thread will just block.

<comment><USER9> That is not a deadlock. That's a paused thread a running thread is waiting for. If you unpause all the threads again your program should continue as usual. If not then you have some fun debugging of race conditions ahead of you. (Ignoring time outs and watch dogs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if HiDPI support for Linux (and Windows) finally works.

Edit: just grabbed the community edition and the answer is... no. Even with -Dis.hidpi=true - no luck.

<comment><USER11> Looks like Oracle is not going to support it out of the box in upcoming JREs, so we're going to do it by ourselves in our custom jdk.

<comment><USER12> Can you give any more details about this? Are you going to be trying to fix a lot of the bugs on OSX on JDK > 6 too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How I would love to see IntellijIdea support Mono. It would make my life so much easier.

</comment><comment><USER14> Been using EAP for quite some time now. Really impressed.

Congratulations Jetbrains. Keep it coming. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> A summary of the new features: [http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/whatsnew/](http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/whatsnew/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I bought a license for IntelliJ IDEA 12 during their end-of-the-world sale, and I can upgrade to 14 for $99. What a great deal.

<comment><USER17> Wait, I did that too. Is the upgrade perpetual like the previous license?

<comment><USER18> All new personal license upgrade purchases (95EUR+VAT in EU) give you the latest current version and 1 year subscription to the upgrades, regardless the version number.

In other words, to stay up to date you must pay this upgrade price once a year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm really impressed with the javascript debugger showing relevant vars on a line by line basis as the code is executed, although that's more a matter of a Webstorm feature trickling down into Intellij.

<comment><USER20> The Java debugger does the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm posting this here instead of their issue tracker because I keep getting errors on the page. Hopefully someone sees it.

The auto-formatting of Scala code is absolutely horrendous. Hitting backspace will delete all whitespace up to the previous line. If I'm typing case statement oneliners, I'm going to want the next line to line up with the previous. Having the two extra spaces appear is ok, but hitting backspace shouldn't bring me up to the previous line instead of just... going back a space.

Maybe this is the plugin, and not the IDE. Anyway. Rant over.

<comment><USER22> If I understand you correctly you will want to disable _Preferences > Editor > Smart Keys > Backspace smart indent_

<comment><USER21> Well now I just feel stupid for not being able to figure that out.

<comment><USER23> Sure, because nothing screams "obvious" like a setting that's buried four layers deep.

I agree, though, that the menu structure made it about as obvious as was possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone else experience some issues opening a project in the new version? My $USER_HOME$ seems to have changed from one directory in another. I can still open the project in 13.1.5 but 14.0 can't find any of the files, since it looks in a different location. I can't define a new USER_HOME in the path variables to fix the problem, either (says it's already defined).

I can fix the project files manually with a find and replace (probably) but mostly posting this in case the folks at JetBrains are watching.

<comment><USER24> Can't edit anymore -- but if anyone was curious, the find and replace did the job as expected, and my other computer had no issues. The only difference was multiple drive designations -- the computer with the issue had the program installed on the C drive with the project on the D drive. For some reason, it decided the $USER_HOME$ was D:\ instead of my user directory, and 14.0 technically corrected that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I loved IntelliJ when I was doing Java years ago. Now learning Python for some machine learning R&D. Anyone have any experience with Python in IntelliJ? Are there better options?

<comment><USER26> In addition to IntelliJ and Rubymine (which I have current upgrade support for) I have in the past bought a few versions of PyCharm for Python development. PyCharm is excellent, especially for someone like me who does not use Python much: the real time syntax error display, autocompletion, etc. really help.

In principle, IntelliJ has the same support as individual products like RubyMine, WebStorm, and PyCharm. I still like to have the language specific products; I use them so much that it is worth the money.

BTW, I do a lot of work in Clojure, and IntelliJ with the Clojure plugin works very well.

<comment><USER27> What advantage do you see in the individual language products over Ultimate? Just simpler configuration because they only do one language?

<comment><USER26> The language specific IDEs are lighter weight (boot faster, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hoping the latency issues are solved... Would be great if it were as fast as sublime (but I'm doubtful...).

<comment><USER29> > Would be great if it were as fast as sublime (but I'm doubtful...).

You're comparing a text editor to an IDE. They're different classes of software. Sublime can't do 10% of what IDEA does - which is fine, they've got different use cases.

<comment><USER30> While I agree, Visual Studio doesn't lag when you're typing code or using IntelliSense.

<comment><USER29> Honestly, neither does IDEA, for me at least. I've heard it can be pokey on spinning disks, so maybe that's part of it.

<comment><USER28> I'm on a newish MacBook pro with an ssd, and it's hardly instant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Scala support is still just a plug-in (as opposed to Java)?

C# support would be interesting as well :).

<comment><USER32> Python support in Intellij Ultimate is also "just a plug-in". Adding the plug- in gives equivalent functionality to running the stand-alone PyCharm.

Apart from that, the support for Scala is not at the same level as the support for Java. Given the differences in language complexity, it is much easier writing tools handling Java code than writing tools for handling Scala code. Combined with the scale of markets, I would be very surprised if Scala support was even near Java support.

With that said, I can't get Scala to run in my IntelliJ 14 install, so I'll have to stay in 13 for now. Sigh...

<comment><USER33> It seems you need to reinstall Scala plugin in Intellij 14 even if it's installed in your previous version of Intellij.

<comment><USER32> Thanks, but I already tried all the different standard solutions (reinstalling, installing by hand, etc). Still no luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I really love my intellij, I dont know how I went for so long without it; my only complaint is creating new projects - why does creating a new node.js project have to be so difficult? Why is express the only template?

</comment><comment><USER35> With the improved android support, is there any good reason to keep Android Studio installed on my workstation?

<comment><USER36> Well the price is definitely a good one. Then only one, as far as I can tell.

What are the main advantages of IntelliJ IDEA with respect to Android Studio?

<comment><USER37> > Well the price is definitely a good one. Then only one, as far as I can > tell.

IntelliJ Idea Community Edition includes the Android support as well.

> What are the main advantages of IntelliJ IDEA with respect to Android > Studio?

Android Studio can only handle Android projects, but gets Android features a bit quicker. Those are the only differences between CE and AS. UE adds some advanced features (web, java EE), some of which are supposedly in the pipeline to be open-sourced (code coverage, advanced refactoring).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> How on earth can they write "Your Finest Code" just above a screendump of bad code (at least bellow standard) ?

<comment><USER39> The screenshot is showing decompiled java code. Looks pretty good to me...

<comment><USER38> The LOG.debug commands are executed when the singleton is used, but not when it is created. I think it should be the opposite.

The create method called from getInstance should probably be private.

It is called without parameter in getInstance, but has a mandatory String parameter. This seems inconsistant.

The presence of two return instructions is also against many guidelines.

There is an accumulation of too many issues for such a classical pattern.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do interviews give higher signal than an online tests like HackerRank's? - <AUTHOR> It seems like most technical interviews involves asking an algorithms/data structures/programming question and watch the candidate solve the problem. If this is the case, why can't we do the same thing via hackerrank or an automated online assessment test?
I can see a few potential reasons
a) A good interviewer can gauge a lot more in an interview and hence that gives more signal. b) Good interviewers can help candidates who are stuck with small hints and that again helps give more signal than someone stuck on an online assessment test
If there is some signal, how much signal is there in an actual interview? <comment><USER2> Neither choice is valid. Software development interviewing is broken. We are starting to finally collect data to prove this. [https://blog.interviewing.io/technical-interview- performance...](https://blog.interviewing.io/technical-interview-performance- is-kind-of-arbitrary-heres-the-data/)

Humans are bad at evaluating candidates and generally we do a bad job of creating criteria to assess people because what we are doing is attempting to assess risk and humans are notoriously bad at assessing risk. Here is one example of how poorly investors assess risk because of our inherent biases and bad information [http://www.nber.org/papers/w22143](http://www.nber.org/papers/w22143). The same concept applies in interviewing. With all due respect, the software community has no established criteria for what makes a good software developer or engineer bases on hard evidence. It's all anecdotal and every hiring manager leans on their own flawed biases based on their experiences.

<comment><USER3> > Software development interviewing is broken

Do you know what interviewing in non-tech fields is like? Complete bullshit. It's more about making your resume sound impressive and being buddy-buddy with the interviewer. At least we have meritocratic ideals, even if some companies implement them poorly.

<comment><USER4> Is there really value in raising up an ideal that doesn't hold in practice in any way shape or form? It seems as if our interviewing methodologies are designed simply to have a guise of meritocracy whereas in other fields that guise is dropped entirely and we see what really exists for what it is (mostly bullshit).

<comment><USER3> I think it's more of a cargo cult type thing, where a lot of companies saw Google's hiring process and tried to copy it without having a deep understanding of how it works. There's no reason for coding interviews to be bullshit. I only give one interview question: fetch some data from an endpoint, manipulate it and display it. It's simple and the best proxy for what day-to-day work is like that can be completed in an hour.

<comment><USER5> If that is the only kind of problem your company works on then it is a great question to ask just that problem. I like to ask a wide variety of questions to make sure I don't just target someones strengths or weaknesses.

<comment><USER3> The sad part is it's still really just a FizzBuzz. I get resumes from lots of people with really great backgrounds who just can't write simple code. I'd love to ask more interesting, varied questions but three out of four candidates don't have the tools to solve those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Software engineer is a very generic role which has different definition in each companies. Here is some example.

If you need to come up with optimize algorithm as part of your job, hackerrank signals are good.

If you need to do simple code change or fix some bug for which it need to communicate with many people, then in person interview give good signal.

I think there must be other websites, testrank, bugfixrank, assemblyrank, devopsrank temaleadrank, managerrank etc, then it would be easier.

Software interview is broken because big companies hire in herd and small company follow the same generic interview practice.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's good to know that a candidate gets the right answer, but just as important to know how they got to the answer (communication, thought process, coachability). Tells more about what working with them would be like. Online tests can't do that

Also, to your second point, I can tailor to candidate - i.e., hints for someone struggling or adding layers of complexity.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's the real answer: no-one is hired purely to program. You are hired to sit with the team 9 hours a day, possibly next to your interviewer, and he/she wants to be sure you'll get along. Companies are social and I don't mean as in "social media". There will never come a time when you do an online quiz then should up the next day and sit down, apart from the most commoditized of temp work.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely. I've been to more than one final round where the feedback was "not technically strong enough" but it was clear from the interviewer's attitude that it was largely about "fit" and whether they wanted to "let you in".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are you gonna tell your product manager that it will take you 5 days to write a linear solution for your feature? O(n). Are you gonna fix a critical bug in production by using a depth first search instead of a breadth first search?

What does it even mean? When are we gonna stop lying to ourselves?

The only way to evaluate someone for a software engineer position is to assign a mini coding project. The result should be a working product, packaged and ready to be shipped. It will tell you how fast someone can deliver a solution, how someone would design a solution, code quality, performance, etc. It doesn't have to be a gigantic app or website, just a basic working product and not a basic CS coding question that no one cares about. If you're applying for a backend position then it should be about building a backend. If you're applying for a mobile dev then it should be about building a mobile app, etc.

The whole hiring process is a joke, companies like google are focusing too much on college stuff and not enough on reality. Plus look, It's clearly written "Masters Degree in CS" on my Resume, that alone should tell you I already got evaluated on basic CS crap. So, let's talk about what I can really do to help your team and the company. What can I bring on the table besides a Masters Degree?

<comment><USER8> _The only way to evaluate someone for a software engineer position is to assign a mini coding project. The result should be a working product, packaged and ready to be shipped. It will tell you how fast someone can deliver a solution_

This works if your goal is to hire only the currently-unemployed. You will never hire anyone who is currently employed like this. You will probably not even get students who have other options jumping through your hoops.

And think about it, no other industry works like this. You don't give a lawyer a case to win or a doctor a patient to cure to assess hiring them...

<comment><USER11> > You don't give a lawyer a case to win or a doctor a patient to cure to > assess hiring them

Both of those industries have accreditation standards and post graduate education requirements. Doctors have on the job requirements. Comparing software development, which is miles less sophisticated in its approach to those doesn't seem like a way to argue for _any_ type of developer interview process.

<comment><USER9> Doctors' and lawyers' experiences are not gained purely in school. Realistically, a comp sci major gains immediately usable skills during a degree as compared to either of those professions.

In fact, all your argument points to, logically, is that there is a far stronger case for "more sophisticated professions" to have more gruelling interviewing standards than software developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every software development position is going to have slightly different hiring criteria. In-person interviews allow you to focus on evaluating a candidate based on your own specific criteria, which may or may not stress generic algorithmic coding ability.

</comment><comment><USER13> Are you talking about solely evaluating the technical ability of the candidate? Because that's only part of the equation to making the right hiring choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but how often are candidates truly rejected because of non-technical abilities? I'd guesstimate that 75% of candidates are rejected because of technical abilities (didn't get design right or algorithm right or coding standard is poor, etc).

<comment><USER14> Then I must be in the 25% group. I have pretty much failed all non-tech interviews. I have little control over whether I pass them.

I'll give you an example:

1) Several weeks ago, an HN user referred me to a defense contractor position.

2) They asked me about three questions:

2a) "Are you more interested in back, front, or full stack?" (I don't care, but I lean toward full stack)

2b) "Do you think you could pass the background check?" (absolutely)

2c) "Why did you leave your last position?" (it was a contract)

I haven't received a reply since then. There was a similar incident with another referral, where the recruiter deemed me unworthy due to a "lack of Java keywords" on my resume.

The interviewing process is messed up at most companies. I did luck out with a contract (not the defense one mentioned above) position, I did pass their behavioral phone screen, behavioral on-site, and technical on-site. I only did well with them, because there were no recruiters nor HR involved in the process.

If you're wondering about my current situation, I am unemployed.</comment></comment></comment>


World suicide prevention day: 'Could I have stopped my dad killing himself?' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-54088546 <comment><USER2> "In my father's case, the loss of his 45-year marriage partner, whom he had cared for devotedly in her final years, left him struggling. His retirement had not brought the contentment it had promised, and no number of visits from his children could dispel his loneliness. He had little in the way of a social circle - another factor that differentiates older men from women, who tend to be better socially connected."

This actually hits really close to home with my own Grandmother. She lived 11 years longer than my granddad, but she never was truly the same after he passed away. My mother (her daughter) and their siblings did all they could to help, but all of her kids were spread throughout the US (due to most being pretty successful people). She also didn't have much of a social circle until she went into assisted living, which I actually think was really good for her. She was able to meet folks and socialize, and they forced her to go out and do things. But I don't think it did too much to help her loneliness from losing my grandad. She didn't die from suicide, but I think at one point she just lost the will to live, which I think that finally took her.

I don't have answer to that. I also think about it with my own mom and dad. She is bound to lose her husband (or he her) within the next few decades, and I don't want to see her have the same downward spiral I saw in my grandma.

<comment><USER3> > _His retirement had not brought the contentment it had promised, and no > number of visits from his children could dispel his loneliness. He had > little in the way of a social circle_

This is actually a concern of mine regarding retirement and part of the reason I tell people that I will likely never retire. A large number of my social interactions are through work, and I feel if I didn't have something "productive" to do I would be pretty listless and depressed.

I get wanting to enjoy leisure time and hobbies, etc, but there is something rewarding about doing work that you enjoy that is different for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Happy World Suicide Prevention Day.

I've learned it's best not to assume why someone took their own life, because chances are I'll be wrong. In the case of Chris Cornell, if I hadn't assumed I wouldn't have even had to know, but it helped for me to search and find out that he had a very severe physical pain problem that was treated, understandably, with prescription drugs that carried risks. It doesn't seem his mental strength was much of a factor in his death by suicide. Now I can enjoy his music more.

While I haven't got to the bottom of some other suicidal behavior that I've been affected by, I've started to see it as extreme pain and lack of sufficient means to deal with the pain. Every situation is tragic, and most who survive a suicide attempt are glad they survived, and 9 out of 10 will not die by suicide at a later date. [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means- matter/means-matter/survi...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means- matter/survival/) Suicide prevention is about providing help, not interfering with someone's wishes. When someone makes it through to the next day, that's another opportunity for them and others to build up resources to deal with whatever it is they're struggling with.

Please be careful talking about suicide. The phrase "died by suicide" doesn't bring assumptions into it like some other phrases do.

Finally, here's a good article about it that addresses both grief and what it's like to be suicidal: [https://tim.blog/2015/05/06/how-to-commit- suicide/](https://tim.blog/2015/05/06/how-to-commit-suicide/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting article. It is worth noting that in the UK statistics, suicide is lumped in with poisoning of undetermined intent, so when they say "suicide is the leading cause of death <50" they are including drug overdoses. [1]

This actually helps explain why "unintentional injury" is the leading cause of death in the US under 45, followed by suicide. In the US poisoning, and thus drug overdose falls under unintentional injury.

I suspect there is no way to get clean statistics separating accidental overdoses from intentional ones. I personally feel that drug overdose and suicide are most appropriately grouped together, as they tend to have similar causes.

[1] [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregistrationsummarytables/2019)

[2][https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcause.html](https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcause.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I stand by my view that anyone should have right to kill themselves.

I would be very sad if someone close to me did so but that shouldn't stop them from doing it. I consider this a basic freedom of being a living creature. If you don't have the power to end your life then do you really own it?

<comment><USER7> It's pretty much impossible to take away that freedom, killing yourself is not particularly difficult. The more interesting question is whether someone else should be able to kill you, if they think it is what you want.

And I think suicide prevention is still very important, since many people who attempt to commit suicide regret it afterwards.

<comment><USER8> The problem isn't ending one's own life, but doing so with dignity, in an orderly fashion. How not to leave a mess behind? That takes solid preparation, which is difficult given the massive social stigma. Wouldn't it be nice if one didn't need an "excuse", like a terrible disease, to be allowed an uneventful exit? I'd find it a liberating idea if such a thing were normalized. Parties are more enjoyable when you can leave any time you like. Let me stay just because I want to, without worries what will happen should I change my mind.</comment></comment></comment>


Adversarial Network Learning MNIST Digits - <AUTHOR> FloydHub Machine: https://www.floydhub.com/diegoalejogm/projects/gans/10/<p>TensorBoard with Error Graphs and Image Progress: https://www.floydlabs.com/tensorboard/QFbTYZRfBxfyjsx7SxxYig/ <comment><AUTHOR> Make sure to expand the VGAN_MNIST tab to see error progress in real-time.

Also make sure to click on the IMAGES tab to visualize the progress. There's a slider to see the images generated at previous steps, and the current ones!!

ENJOY</comment>


Krita Receives Epic MegaGrant - <AUTHOR> https://krita.org/en/item/krita-receives-epic-megagrant/ <comment><USER2> Nice! Krita is one of the Open Source art tools that I'm really bullish on right now.

I don't think it's at the same level of quality as its commercial competition yet, but it's not so bad, and it's getting progressively better, and it has a really nice community, and it's being pushed forward by actual artists.

Absent the way its growing, I might not be so bullish, but I feel pretty optimistic about Krita's future -- enough that I'm betting on it internally for games and art projects that I make, spending time to make sure I really understand its interface, donating money, thinking about ways to integrate it into other workflows -- much more than I'm betting on tools like MyPaint. Optimistic enough that I'm willing to make a full switch over to it instead of hopping into Windows or wrestling with Wine to get Clip Studio working.

Grants like this are great news, both because the influx of money is important, and because increased industry focus is good for pushing projects like this in the direction of being the kind of stable software that you can rely on industrially. The thing to be really optimistic about with Krita is that the right categories of people are betting on it and supporting it.

Krita is usable right now for what I need, some annoyances aside, and I think it's very possible that it could end up being just flat out better than its competition in the future. If any Open Source project is set up to follow Blender in the art world, it's Krita.

</comment><comment><USER3> Krita is fantastic. There's a lot of open source painting and imaging software out there, but Krita really stands out with a cool brush engine, good performance, and a feature set very useful for digital art. I only hope Krita can receive more substantial funding in the future.

Krita definitely helped me leave some closed source apps that I used to use for hobby, without feeling like I was making a compromise (quite the opposite really.)

Of course, it's not really equivalent to Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint, for example, but I think it's competitive in some areas already.

</comment><comment><USER4> Between this and Epic's massive grant towards Blender, they are really doing their part to enrich an already blossoming open source artist community. It used to be that all of these tools were locked behind years of education and a staggering software subscription. Hopefully they continue backing these grants as the Epic Games store matures.

<comment><USER5> I think Blender and Krita are going to do to Adobe what Adobe did to QuarkXpress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good for them, I'm sure it's a nice shot in the arm. But jesus, it's not much, really. You certainly don't do open source to get rich.

25k is about 18 minutes of Fortnite revenue, if I've done the math right.

<comment><USER7> I once had an independent project that was both awesome and positioned extremely well for the needs of big co.

But, life, it needed support.

So, big co sent someone with a fat salary and stock options to take care of things. He mailed to "brainstorm" what can be done so that "folks like yourself could successfully build" stuff that benefits them and how to make it "worth a developer's while".

So yah.

That was bullshit and the way Open Source is funded is (also, among other such piles) bullshit

<comment><USER8> Yep, money is what would make it worthwhile - at same rate as they pay internal developers.

Still - it may be possible to come up with a support contract that allows it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> OS X really needs a "good enough" paint app, like Windows has paint.net

Preview is ok for various editing tasks but nowhere near as good as paint.net

<comment><USER10> ...and preferably something that works well with a keyboard. I use Paint.Net many a times with the arrow keys (and the mouse button pressed) to be more precise and also go in specific directions to paint or brush over things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congratulations, krita is excellent.

Let's hope other content purveyors are also moved to support the free software which they directly or indirectly profit from.

And if krita could just add 'tweening' to the animation tools, my kids would be even happier and I'd certainly be adding a donation :)

</comment><comment><USER12> The Krita team is patient, thoughtful, and welcoming. Its a fantastic artistic tool by being created by artists.

Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not familiar with Krita. How does it compare with/relate to GIMP?

<comment><USER14> Krita is primarily a painting tool. GIMP is primarily an image manipulation tool. Both do the "other", but poorly. In that sense, they probably shouldn't be compared.</comment></comment>


Great Calendar App - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/19/sunrise-brilliantly-redefines-calendar-apps-on-ios/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sunrise has really taken it the extra distance to make for a compelling, easy- to-use calendar app. There is no doubt that the native iPhone calendar is mundane, but to beat any native feature of the iPhone, an application needs to demolish it in its functionality AND UI. Mailbox seems to be doing just this to the native Mail on the iPhone and I think Sunrise will do the same to Calendar.</comment>


Nifty New Risk Calculations of What's Likely to Kill You  - <AUTHOR> http://www.reason.com/blog/show/128501.html

<comment><USER2> I commute by bike in Atlanta. Few of us make it to the point where heart disease or lung cancer is a real issue. Soccer moms chatting on cell phones will be the end of me.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, charts like this may be informative if you have a pretty average lifestyle, but all those people that die from smoking and heart disease would have eventually died from one of the other risk factors, had they continued on.

Recently I read that something like 70+% of all men past a certain age had nascent cancers when they died, regardless of whether cancer killed them. To me that leaves cancer my #1 fear above all others (ignoring "events", like being hit by a car), since our generation is going to live much longer, and thus be hit by even more cancer.

<comment><USER4> I think it was 70% of men past a certain age have prostate cancer. I think in the same study they determined that if you are 65 or older and catch a bought of the prostate cancer, you might as well leave it untreated because you're likely to die from something else before the cancer kills you and the quality of life lost from treatment isn't worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nothing for under 35ers?

Looks like I gotta watch out mostly for auto accidents and heart disease (can't say I'm at risk for HIV)

Just bought a safe vehicle to replace my aging SUV, now it's time to look at my diet/exercise.

</comment><comment><USER6> "In the long run, we're all dead." -John Maynard Keynes

( [http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnmaynar110030....](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnmaynar110030.html) )</comment>


$200,000 for a Sociology Degree? - <AUTHOR> http://www.odonnellweb.com/?p=9029

<comment><USER3> One of the things I've noticed about colleges is how similar they are run to country clubs. It was not too long ago (when endowments were higher) that colleges and universities would spend millions building luxurious dorms, athletic facilities, and campus centers. Expansion was a means to attract students, gain prestige and make press. Also, included in the mix was state of the art academic buildings, faculty recruitment and merit aid increases - <USER2> of which meant that colleges strove to grow better year after year.

The dark side of growth, however, was that students paid a high price for these luxuries. Simple. There are no free lunches. And, as much I can fault the sociology grad for her predicament, I also blame a system that has become unsustainable.

</comment><comment><USER4> Someone is about to experience deep depression, and self loathing.</comment>


List of freely available programming books - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/q/194812/89806

<comment><USER2> For Mac stuff, since Apple's Obj-C guide doesn't deal with Cocoa, what most people work with:

Cocoa Fundamentals Guide: [http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/C...](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/CocoaFundamentals/CocoaFundamentals.pdf)

Become an Xcoder: <http://www.cocoalab.com/BecomeAnXcoder.pdf>

Stanford's iPhone dev class (iTunes video class): [http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcas...](http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=395631522)

Cocoa Dev Central (Tutorials that predated Scott Stevenson's book): <http://cocoadevcentral.com/>

Cocoa Dev: Wiki Site on Cocoa classes, protocols and other junk: <http://cocoadev.com/>

And, don't forget everything else apple makes freely available: <http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/navigation/>

</comment><comment><USER3> They seem to have omitted Erlang. Awesome, freely available book on the subject:

<http://learnyousomeerlang.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> This is one of those posts that crops up every month or so. In this case, I think it's deserved. That truly is an incredible resource.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's another good Ruby book: 'Learn to Program', by Chris Pine: <http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/>

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a follow up being worked on to Foundations of Programming (a book that came up a few times in the list). Though it's listed there as language agnostic, its more targeted at C#/Java devs. Should be out in early Jan.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there a collection of Bentley's "Programming Pearls" available online?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Worth doing a Hacker News spreadsheet?</comment>


The End of the NSA's 'About' Searches Is Just the Beginning - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/end-nsas-about-searches-just-beginning <comment><USER2> ''NSA does not have the ability at this time to stop collecting 'about' information without losing some other important data''

Uh huh.</comment>


Go Out and Do Nothing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jarederondu.com/go-outside-and-do-nothing/

<comment><AUTHOR> thoughts?</comment>


The day a software bug almost killed the Spirit rover - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/it-management/338132/day-software-bug-almost-killed-spirit-rover <comment><USER2> One thing is sure, no one can write bug free software.</comment>


Sprite: An in-space propulsion system running on water - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/plasma-matters/sprite-engine-d794d71afd69 <comment><USER2> Wow, that was a seriously interesting post! Those are some significant improvements in cost and efficiency. One question I had is what tradeoffs you made by using water instead of traditional xenon based propellants?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey DannyK23, xenon and other noble gases are expensive and a depleting resource, obviously water is abundant and can be acquired cheaply. For example xenon cost around ~ 15 - 20 dollars per liter. While water cost around ~ .17 - .50 cents.

Another reason why water has been cheaper is the logistics side of it. Water can be stored as a liquid, so there is no need to have pressure vessels. This lets launchpad logistics get simplified and get cheaper. One of the main pro for xenon is its performance. That is why typically people have gravitated towards that gas. The reason for that is xenon is the heaviest non-radioactive noble gas. Generally speaking, the heavier the mass the better performance. Another good trait for xenon is that it stores at higher density than other noble gases, allowing more punch in a packed spacecraft volume.

For us, the biggest factor is cost and not performance. We see that the industry is going for cheaper simpler solutions so space hardware can be more easily innovated upon, and launched into space. Old school aerospace focused on performance, due to the fact once the satellite was in space, it needed to work and perform due to how expensive it is to launch it in space.

However, due to the lowering of cost in space, our goal is to optimize mass manufacturing and cost. This is why we feel that water might be a great propellent solution to our problem.

So as you can tell one solution for one company does not make sense for another company. It depends on the goals.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, guys, I am a software engineer at phase four. Our company just sent this update and I thought the hacker community would like to see it.

Let me know if you have any questions and I will be free to answer them! Happy Hacking!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is huge! Sustainable, scalable, and inexpensive. The lethal trifecta. Nice work Phase Four!

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty cool, but can it withstand a steel ball?

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice. Any takers from the big guys yet?

<comment><USER6> watch this space! (announcements forthcoming in '20)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> cool stuff Drummer boy!</comment>


Ask HN: Mobile payments from 1st World to 3rd World? - <AUTHOR>

I love Stripe but its solutions are not yet global enough to use in my app. Is PayPal really the only solution to reach as many countries as possible to send payments to? <comment><USER2> Which countries in particular are you trying to reach?</comment>


How Backblaze Got Started (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-backblaze-got-started/?hn=1 <comment><USER2> I see a lot of praise for Backblaze's services and support and I just wanted to warn that I've had the opposite experience and am in the middle of switching to another service.

I've used Backblaze since 2010 and in the past year contacted support twice. In both cases, they were only interested in quoting esoteric policies and technical limitations rather than actually solving my issue. As in, "Oh that's because our system works like this and this and has this limitation." Ooookay, that's not what I asked; I asked how to solve this problem of mine that your poor system is causing.

For example, the most recent time was when I started getting emails warning that all of my external drives were offline and my data would be soon deleted. Instead of "Very sorry about that, here's how to fix the issue," I got this long response about the ways their system looks for new files in serial and it can get jammed and start ignoring everything, with no apology, no acknowledgement this was their issue, and no solution. I had to go fishing for solutions and drag the information out of them to finally figure out what I needed to do. Which it turns out is to get back an internal drive (totally unrelated to the other drives Backblaze abandoned) I had physically removed and repurposed, put it back the computer, wait a long time for Backblaze to see it, then uncheck that drive in Backblaze and remove it again. This was a good example showing how the client design is poor and the support is worse.

The other two major technical issues that convinced me I need a new service asap are:

1\. The client will lie to you and you never know what's really backed up. Even if you use the secret alt-click to force a full drive scan, it can still miss files and tell you fully backed up when files from days ago are still nowhere to be found. Luckily I've never actually needed to do a restore, but I almost thought I did one time and would have been furious at all the missing files I noticed.

2\. This might not matter to some people but absolutely no meta data is backed up.

I hate to badmouth them since the company seems like a really good citizen, they project a very positive image, and their software seems good on the surface. But when you dig in, there are a lot of issues with the software and service, and I recently realized having Backblaze wouldn't actually reassure me in the event of a local disaster, so migrated away and I wanted to warn others too.

<comment><USER3> I had an extremely disappointing experience with Backblaze's support team (documented here - [http://www.cederman.com/2016/12/tracking-down-rogue- bandwidt...](http://www.cederman.com/2016/12/tracking-down-rogue-bandwidth-a- story-of-comcast-data-caps-and-offsite-backup/)), and in the process of researching the issues I was having, discovered a rabbit hole of reports of folks having issues restoring their data.

Backblaze have not acknowledged my issues at all, even though I have tried to engage with the team numerous times.

I switched to CrashPlan, and have had to do two full restores since doing so, both of which went flawlessly and quickly. The Java client is a bit cumbersome, but it's reliable, and I am much happier with the performance and support I've received from them.

<comment><USER4> Crashplan is killing off their home service, though. I've switched to Arq + Backblaze's B2, we'll see how that goes.

<comment><USER5> I gave Arq a go but usability wise it has some catching up to do. It's hard to find an arbitrary file that's been deleted to restore unless you know exactly where it lived on disk. The search didn't work too well for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Then one of our co-founders Tim wondered, "what if we didn't ask any > questions and just backed up everything?"

But that is not what they do exactly:

"we do not backup your operating system, application folder, or temporary internet files that are transient and would not be useful in the future. Backblaze also excludes podcasts in iTunes."

[https://www.backblaze.com/remote-backup- everything.html](https://www.backblaze.com/remote-backup-everything.html)

Is there an online backup service that makes a complete image that you can just pop a boot CD in, and restore from online? That seems like the holy grail.

<comment><USER7> Yev from Backblaze here -> Backblaze isn't intended to be a bare-metal restore, just the data that's on the machine. In addition to the ones listed below, you might also take a look at Acronis - they do good work. Not sure if they have an offline component, but you could use their software to make a system image, and then toss that image in the cloud (like with Backblaze B2) and then grab it whenever needed. Might work well for what you're looking for!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The rise of cloud storage has totally transformed the "backup" problem. Just by using cloud storage, you get near-realtime offsite backup without thinking about it. Vendors like Apple have built it into the OS. It's really one of the nicer things that's happened in personal computing lately.

Granted, there's still benefit to doing a traditional "snapshot" style backup. Something like Backblaze is still a good idea. But arguably it's more of a belt-and-suspenders thing at this point. (Especially if your cloud storage offers version history.)

While I've loved Backblaze's blog posts over the years, seems like this was not on their radar ten years ago. They were seeing it just as a traditional backup/restore problem. I see they've since introduced a cloud storage product (B2), but it doesn't sound that competitive.[1] Here's iCloud for comparison:

\- $0.005/gb/mo (2TB plan) with unlimited data transfer

\- Baked deep into the OS, totally automatic

\- Intelligently purges local files when storage runs low

\- Integrates with Photos app for optimized media storage

\- Syncs _while the device is asleep_ (Power Nap)

\- HSM-protected keychain backup (geeky but _groundbreaking_ security feature)[2]

(Not so nice: doesn't do version history. Dropbox does.)

Again, I've really enjoyed Backblaze's posts and hope they continue thriving in this new landscape.

[1] [https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud- storage.html](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html)

[2] [https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Krstic.p...](https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Krstic.pdf)

<comment><USER9> > The rise of cloud storage has totally transformed the "backup" problem. Just > by using cloud storage, you get near-realtime offsite backup without > thinking about it

Then an unaccountable algorithm closes your Google account, and suddenly all that data is inaccessible. Your cloud storage provider's backups are not your backups.

<comment><USER10> I agree. Cloud is OK as backup, as in if it goes away that's ok, I can still create a new backup from the live data. But not for live data. I found having a synology NAS to be a good solution. I sync my data mostly from home anyway so it is fast (runs locally) while also being accessible from the outside.

<comment><USER7> Yev from Backblaze -> we're seeing a lot more folks go the NAS route, and so we're trying to work with all of the NAS providers to get B2 integrated into their ecosystems. We love the idea of having "working files" on the computer a "local archive" on the NAS, and then files forked off to B2 for an offsite component. 3-2-1 Backup at its finest!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Backblaze is one of the few companies where I pay for a service and am 100% satisfied. I've never had an issue with the service and when I've had questions they are prompt and informative. I use them for personal and business backups.

They are more than happy to share what they build and we've used their storage pods plans to build 2 for work.

<comment><USER12> I felt that way until I needed to complete a restore of a backup that was roughly 500GB in size. It took around two weeks to restore on their servers for me to download as a zip. I posted on here about it at the time and the CTO reached out to let me know the server the restored started on was very old and they were going to decommission it afterward. I hope they did. I hope others don't wait that long.

I also really wish they would let customers buy a hard drive with multiple backups on it instead of one hard drive per backup. It would be great to purchase one drive every year with all the backups on it and not have to worry about downloading backups for retention.

<comment><USER13> Wouldn't just asking them to send a hard drive of your backup have been faster? You could have either kept the hard drive or returned it and got your money back.

<comment><USER4> Since the server (and not the Internet connection) was the bottleneck, it wouldn't have helped, as they would still have to read the files to copy them to the new drive.

<comment><USER14> Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze

> Since the server (and not the Internet connection) was the bottleneck, it > wouldn't have helped

As Yev mentioned above, we MASSIVELY sped up restores fairly recently (August 2017). We understood waiting for restores for a few days was an inconvenience for customers and I'm personally very proud of the results. Would LOVE for you to try it again, but I fully understand if you don't want to. Here is the blog post about the faster restores (and faster backups): [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-backup-5-0-rapid- access...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-backup-5-0-rapid-access/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a good moral here. Everytime they had a question, they asked their users. Users don't lie.

<comment><USER7> Yev from Backblaze here -> That's right! For better or worse they usually tell it like they see it, and that helps us inform decisions!

<comment><USER16> Yev, I'm a new Backblaze customer and am worried by some of the negative reports by other HNers above.

Would you mind taking the time to respond to the less positive comments about Backblaze rather than just thanking the two positive commenters? That would make me feel much more comfortable relying on Backblaze in the future.

<comment><USER7> Hey there sorry - if you look at my reply history you'll see I try to hit most topics, but when I looked last night those were the only comments there :D I'll get to the rest!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Such a great service that I've never used it for its intended purpose (thankfully, except for very occasional verification), and forget about it until I get the "we're charging your credit card" email. I then delete the mail, happily let the charge go through, and proceed to forget that it's there. I backup to a NAS, from which important stuff is backed to another, single drive. Backblaze is a small price for the "house burns down" scenario. Yeah, I could rotate drives offsite, but I'm not going to do that, and neither are most of us after a couple months, if at all.

<comment><USER7> Yev from Backblaze here -> glad to see you're at least trying the restore process! You'd be surprised how many folks forgo that in its entirety and then panic should they need to restore. Always good to check the system out from upload to download! Kudos!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I use B2 (sparingly so far) for personal storage and it's been a good experience. I prefer B2 since it's permanent and very inexpensive per GB.

</comment><comment><USER19> I cancelled their account. It has a weird policy of deleting backups from hard drives that have not been connected within the last 3 months. Very weird policy.

<comment><USER2> It's one month, not three, but the policy is totally reasonable since they charge one flat rate to back up your whole computer (not everything your computer has ever seen). If they didn't delete disconnected drives, they'd be offering unlimited storage for $50/year which is obviously unsystainable. The plan is already as impressive as it is considering how much data you can easily connect to one computer.

I also have plenty of complaints about the service (posted above), but there's nothing weird about this policy as written.

What's weird is when permanently connected drives get classified as disconnected (see my other post).

<comment><USER20> Whilst I agree the policy is reasonable given the amount they charge per month, it's something I've only learnt about from reading comments and not from their marketing.

In fact, their marketing claims "Never lose a file again. Get unlimited cloud backup for your Mac or PC. Just $5/month."

Only on reading the help does it seem that if the client doesn't connect with the server within 6 months, then all your backups are gone. I'm not saying this is unreasonable, but it seems a bit counterintuitive given you are still paying for the service. I just still haven't found the bit about disconnected drives.

I really like Backblaze's articles on HDDs and they really seem to be customer focused, but I had to dig in the help to find this.

<comment><USER21> I don't use Backblaze, but I suspect from the above comments that the client does not even display some kind of warning saying, "Hey, you haven't connected this drive for X months. We just wanted to let you know that this data will be deleted from our systems in Y days. Please connect the drive to make sure we retain the data." and then proceed to display this warning periodically a few times, like a countdown (but not annoying enough to be shown on every run of the client). This kind of warning would be my suggestion to the Backblaze team. This becomes more important with SSD based machines that generally have a lot lesser storage than before while people are taking a lot more pictures and videos and resorting to storing them in cheaper (per GB) external HDDs (at least the people who do like to have a local copy).

<comment><USER7> Yev from Backblaze here -> If we detect a missing drive we send a warning email at the 14-day, 21-day, and 28-day mark to remind folks to plug them in - or create a restore if they no longer have the drives. If they still don't plug in the drive after those days, then the backup does get removed, but we do try to warn them ahead of time!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


China Uses DNA to Track Its People. It Got Help from the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-thermo-fisher.html <comment><USER2> There are all sorts of movies and narratives to reassure people that DNA-based social or hiring selection is unlikely to happen anytime soon, because supposedly there are few biological factors that allow you to easily predict life trajectory or productivity.

But I'm afraid the slightest boost in predictive power will matter to an organization of scale. And while it might be hard to tell if you should be a mathematician based on your DNA, it might be easier to tell risk factors about you or your relatives, which could cause an employer to see you as too expensive.

It's illegal to discriminate on disability, but if I know you're predisposed to heart disease and discriminate on similar basis, is that discrimination on disability if society doesn't classify it that way?

Also eventually judgments may be made on people which involve weights from thousands of data sources, only one of which will be DNA. It will be difficult to explain why any decision was made.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the U.S., citizens voluntarily submit this data to companies without a counter-signed contractual agreement on data retention and protection. Some of these companies have relationships with the government.

I predict that in the near future, companies will offer more incentives to entice people into volunteering their DNA for various other perks.

<comment><USER4> They just need a close relative to submit and they can cross reference things to you.

<comment><USER3> Good point. This could make for some interesting civil suits between family members if they can prove damages. This might make for a fun Netflix Original Series.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congress could enact foreign export controls for technologies that have repressive dual uses. The PLA will find ways around it. The same holds true for shareholder advocacy, management initiatives, etc. Restricting the sale of technology is enormously difficult, perhaps impossible. Repression in China will not be resolved externally. It's going to require change from within.

<comment><USER6> That would disallow many tech companies from doing business in China at all, no? Does search result filtering count? Analytics? Cell phones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gattaca (1997) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_KruQhfvW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_KruQhfvW4)

</comment><comment><USER8> Whats up with all this China-bashing on HN?

Comments on HN became so politically engaged in the last two years, that it starts feeling like a Fourth International cell.

<comment><USER9> If you see things happening on HN that are also happening on a macro social scale, that's all the explanation needed.

HN can't be immune from larger trends. We do what we can to contain them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm curious, why was this flagged?

</comment><comment><USER11> TBH the whole story sounds a bit like conspiracy. Good clickbait title.

</comment><comment><USER12> Surveillance I understand (its a fairly ubiquitous form of government control at this point, including use of DNA - Israel feeds that information into its domestic assassination program), but this op-ed repeatedly claims repression.

In China (based on its Marxist roots) cults and religion are deemed to be damaging to a person and to mass popular culture ("Religion is the opium of the people" \- Marx). China considers religion to be within the freedom of an individual to observe, but not to impose on another person: in China you can not be indoctrinated into a religion until you are 18 years of age.

Combine this with the wave of Islamic reevaluation on the Asian supercontinent - ISIS is and has been a huge problem in China, with mailbombing campaigns and other acts of widespread terrorism.

Repression is an opinion expressed in the op-ed that hasn't considered factors that are alien to the Western author's perspective.

<comment><USER13> As far as I know there was no fundamentalist terrorism in China due to the Uighurs. In the West we usually leave things alone that are not causing problems... Even if they have the potential to cause such problems. That's one of the reasons that one party authoritarian systems are wrong in that such systems are always worried about their stability and survival where more robust systems have no such worries. And that's why China will fail sooner or later because such systems come under control of strong men who then eliminate all of the survivability of institutions to consolidate power and then die and the system collapses or becomes dysfunctional.

However NSA shoveling all unfiltered data to Israel is in general an insane policy not in line with general liberalism.

<comment><USER12> It's not specifically "the Uighurs" (that's like saying 'there was no fundamentalist terrorism in the US due to "the Muslims"').

It's much more about the region (Xinjiang) and particular fundamentalists groups present there. This happens to demographically correlate with the Turkic people in China's Northwest.

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/01/the-islamic-state- pledg...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/01/the-islamic-state-pledged-to- attack-china-next-heres-why/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China#Xinjiang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China#Xinjiang)</comment></comment></comment>


Product Manager - The one-man band?  - <AUTHOR> http://piotrbiegun.com/2013/08/product-manager-the-one-man-band/

<comment><USER2> Nice post Piotr. As you're painting the picture of ideal PM, let me add one more trait to it: the ability to switch perspective from the strategic one (understanding how a particular product fits into the strategy and business model of the company - it's not always that obvious) to the operational one (ability to make short-term decisions quickly, solve problems and plan/organize the work for the team). And of course it's never enough to emphasize the soft skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right idea PM needs it, but you need to start from something. It isn't easy to have all of those characteristic from the beginning. It's all about learning and trying.</comment></comment>