Ask HN: How can a programmer help with current events? - <AUTHOR> I'll preface with: I'm not interested in supporting violence or doing anything illegal. No hacking, for example.
With that established I'm looking for ways I can use my skillset to help people protest effectively and avoid danger. Examples of the kind of thing I'm talking about:
- During the Hong Kong protests there was an app that helped people avoid known police outposts
- Combatting disinformation and/or processing data, about police abuse for example
- Helping people (peacefully) coordinate and make things less chaotic
- Mobile panic button?
- Mindfulness/mental health assistance for people trying to cope
Anyone have ideas/specific needs or initiatives they know about? I saw a data initiative the other day but some commenters made it sound like it shouldn't be trusted. <comment><USER2> The problem is these protest are not effective, period.

All this is ultimately doing is making racist people more racist.

I am a white guy and my girl is black. You know how much we talk about race? None, zero, never. It only ever comes up when racist people point out we are not of the same race. Our values, taste and upbringings are literally the same. If you think black people can't be racist try dating a black woman as a white guy, lol.

The way to get past racism is not to be a racist and divide people on the basis of race. That is it.

What is happening right now is going in the wrong direction.

You would have a hard time helping the cause of racist assholes more than these protest.

<comment><AUTHOR> For what it's worth I personally do think that the focus on race is missing the bigger point, which is police brutality and impunity. They've been beating up white people too.

<comment><USER3> I think about the shooting of Daniel Shaver very often. A cold-blooded execution of a middle class white man caught on video and the officer was acquitted. We need to address both police brutality as well as racial inequality, and I wonder if it's more difficult to do both at the same time.

<comment><USER4> > We need to address both police brutality

There's a bigger legal+cultural problem if people are cold-blooded executed by police and the officer is tried and acquitted. The investigators, prosecutor, and jury are complicit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One big thing that I think people can do is start saving police footage. It's pretty easy to do but can be especially helpful. Even just seeding a torrent of that is a way to passively help, I think.

I was also wondering about this question, so I hope that people might have some good ideas.

One that I haven't thought my way through completely (as it's not my domain whatsoever) is a generic way to round up online sales totals. Maybe a browser extension that lets users round up what they're set to spend to the nearest dollar, and donate what's rounded to a relevant charity or fund? Charities could maybe partner with the developers of that open source app (or write their own extensions) to plug into it, and it would allow for people shopping online to choose where the money goes. As we've moved to online shopping being asked at the counter to round up for (possibly out of date/favor) charities has left a lot of people's lives, so an open source team that works to put that on major sites as an extension could be very beneficial. The ability to add charities with software and without waiting on large corporate partnerships could really benefit this system.

I figured it'd use PayPal for the actual payment maybe. There might be serious holes in that, but it's something that came to my mind earlier today.

I think ideas that could incorporate protesting while being mindful of coronavirus could also be interesting.

<comment><USER6> So basically Acorns, but the money goes to charity instead of your own investments

<comment><USER5> I guess, I hadn't heard of Acorns before. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If there was an app that can be used to identify the DA, mayor, chief of police, congressman and senator(state and federal) of a police abuse of power incident and pester them with complaints, that would be useful.

Or help people vote by sending them alerts for their area to vote out politicians that took no or little action when such an event occured.

A harder challenge would be to counter-monitor police including stingrays and aerial attacks. Both offensive and defensive tools would be useful.

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't build, operate, or maintain the infrastructure of the surveillance state. That's a big one.

For what it's worth, here is a story from WW2.

A B-17 came back from a run over Germany with a dud shell lodged in its fuel tank. When the intelligence units opened the shell, they found it completely empty apart from a note written in Czech saying, "this is all we can do for you, for now."

<comment><USER9> At least, that's we can do. Most of us in HN are blessed with brain, not muscle. We should not help governments or entities who oppress the weak ones, discriminate the minorities, bully one another. However, we should not help the rioters, incite futher hate, provoke the society, destroy small business, etc.

I read news, however I do not forward any of photos, videos from those media to my friends and family members. I wish there's a modern day Gandhi or MLK who promote peace and forgiveness. All of us should be kind to another. We should not help any side to start a civil war, government instability, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You are going to do what you are going to do, but you might try looking up The Shirky Principle first (organizations tend to keep alive the problem they are designed to combat).

Years ago, I used to say on some email list I was on that "fighting against the fighting is still fighting."

People don't really want to be protesting. What they want is justice and they don't know how to get it.

If you really want solutions, look for things that already exist that genuinely help promote justice and better treatment for disempowered peoples or build something which does so.

/2 cents

</comment><comment><USER11> It's money. Give money.

We as developers and engineers have a lot of extra spare cash around. Donate to mutual aid funds or bail funds.

<comment><USER12> I want to bail out peaceful protestors but not looters. Is there an organization that is doing some vetting?

<comment><USER13> Police aren't really distinguishing between the two. Besides, even looters don't deserve to stay in jail if they can't afford bail - they'll still see their day in court.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Build websites, databases, and automation for charities and community organizations.

* Find what community organizations and support groups exist in your local area. Your local police department and food banks can help point you to some. See if national organizations that interest you have local chapters.

* Go to city counsel meetings to see some real problems and also some of the insanity your local leaders have to deal with.

What I think everybody would like to see is a dishonesty database containing police brutality, false criminal complaints, false accusations of misconduct, resisting arrest, ethics violations, so forth. Data can be a positive tool to keep everyone honest and embarrass liars.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Your local police department...can help point you to some

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but to put it lightly, I do not plan on asking the police for suggestions.

That said I think the rest of the ideas are valid.

> Data can be a positive tool to keep everyone

I agree, but data solutions are tricky because there's so much misinformation going on right now. It's really easy for data to be fabricated (other than video (kind of)), and even if it's not, people would (rightly) be cautious to trust it. Data _validation_ might be an interesting problem to tackle but I don't know how you solve that with tech.

<comment><USER14> > I do not plan on asking the police for suggestions.

If you want this to work be up front about your intentions, partiality, and biases; or else you are just contributing to that misinformation you spoke of and that's all people will see (even if/when they agree with you).

> I agree, but data solutions are tricky because there's so much > misinformation going on right now.

Limit your data to reliable sources.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an enormous stretch to call delicate speech about my personal convictions "misinformation". Anyway, my only intent is to help people, not add to the conflict. It's just that I believe the police have dropped all pretense of sharing that goal of helping people.

<comment><USER14> Not at all, and that's not how other people will see it. It all comes down to intention and objectivity.

Misinformation is the resultant product of people putting their personal opinions ahead of ethics and evidence regardless of what those opinions are.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no interest in _sowing_ misinformation to support my beliefs, if that's what you're worried about. Otherwise I still don't really understand your point.

<comment><USER14> I don't doubt that your goals are noble, but a lot (most) of misinformation is from well intentioned people positing their biases over objectivity. You will be contributing to misinformation if your goal is to induce a personal bias and you wish to suppress disclosure of your goals.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(science)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_\(science\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can't fight politics with tech, because politics win every time. Some of the things you listed don't make much sense when people are angry enough to spill into the streets to protest.

For example,

> \- Combatting disinformation and/or processing data, about police abuse for > example

There's already a lot of transparency on police brutality; we even have civilian oversight groups dedicated to this, but they have either been taken over by cop-friendly leaderships or they have no power to do anything.

> \- Mobile panic button?

And who will come to help? Police? No, they will beat your ass for revealing your location. Protestors? No, they are too busy protesting to check their phones 24/7\. Just look all the people with their hands up and chanting; their eyes are all on the police who may beat them at any time.

> \- Mindfulness/mental health assistance for people trying to cope

There may be people who are depressed, but people are angry enough to be outside and protesting. Those who are clinically depressed need actual professional help, an app will not do that. Plus there are already a lot of these types of apps in the stores already, none of which replaces an actual professional

... and in any case, the government can shut any of these solutions down if they truly wanted. I think the most direct, practical way to helping with current events is to either, or all:

\- Join the protestors in the streets, see the issues at hand with your own eyes instead of from media spin.

\- Get in touch with your coworkers, an existing union, or start a tech union underground. Organize a walk-out, to join the protestors. White collar jobs can cause some real financial pressure and bring politicians to their knees for the cause (like how some workers at fast food restaurants refused to cook for cops during the protests).

They (literally) fight for our rights, we should get serious about what we can do too.

</comment><comment><USER16> There have been several threads covering this in the past week or so.

<comment><USER17> I saw one for a site aggregating videos of police violence, and then the data one I mentioned. Do you have links to others?

<comment><USER10> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23382330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23382330)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >not interested in supporting violence or doing anything illegal

Who defines what is illegal? When the System and its laws are completely stacked against you, any change can only be brought about by going outside the System i.e. by engaging in "illegal acts". You are allowed to use anything and everything to bring about real Societal change. Racism and Police Brutality need to be stamped out once and for all in the US.

</comment><comment><USER19> Here are some of my ideas:

"Who's got the loot?"

This app could be used to keep track of which stores have and haven't been looted yet. No one wants to loot a store that has already run out of stuff.

"Children Inside"

This app could help rioters decide whether to burn down a building, if there's kids inside they can pick another one.

"Bail Me"

This app would be just like gofundme or kickstarter, except it would be for posting bond.

<comment><USER20> >This app could help rioters decide whether to burn down a building, if there's kids inside they can pick another one.

I've seen the phrase "this is like a Black Mirror episode" getting tossed a lot but this is the first time I feel like it genuinely is. Not to mention you didn't even consider a case where someone would lie or list your own house.</comment></comment>


Starcraft Network - <AUTHOR> http://slifty.com/2011/03/starcraft-network/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty clever. Reminds me of an article a few years ago about printer names -- YouTube named theirs after Wu-Tang members; Google, after Transformers:

[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/the-wu- ta...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/the-wu-tang- sag.html)

Regrettably, I must report that at Blizzard, printers have boring but functional names. And even though the campus is laid out with three buildings positioned similarly to the current WoW map, they're merely Buildings 1, 2, and 3. At least the meeting rooms all have lore names, however.

<comment><USER3> That's actually depressingly boring for one of the worlds most recognizable games companies.

It makes me feel like throwing out my lucky charms and eat cheerios for breakfast. (FYI I'm in my 20's, but shitty North America doesn't have good breakfast cereals like the UK)

<comment><USER4> Eh, if it makes you feel any better, [many of] the servers themselves have wonderful names.

Plus, you have to love going to a three o'clock meeting in the Spawning Pool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is enough for me to switch from protoss to zerg. Just the idea that I'm playing a Mac race is going to affect my psyche enough for me to stay in bronze forever ;p

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds fun if you do it for your home network, but profesionally you'll quickly appreciate embracing a more dull pattern of calling database machines db01, db02, etc, preproduction machines preprod01, preprod02, etc. And the sysadmin that will come after you will appreciate it even more.

<comment><USER7> Which falls over when db01 ain't a database machine anymore.

When I ran a large network, machines didn't physically move very much (at least, far less often than their logical functions changed); we had a naming scheme based on datacenter code, rack ID and rack position:

sjc02-X0501-19

would be the machine in sjc02, rack X05.01, unit 19.

Far more important than the actual scheme you use is consistency. Pick one scheme and stick with it. Easier when you pick the right scheme the first time. :)

<comment><USER8> That's great for SA's who are working in the racks.

Not so great for SA's that are administering the boxes remotely, devs trying to figure out what machine they are on, or teams trying to troubleshoot an issue.

If a box is no longer a db machine, just rename it to something descriptive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "A partitioned box with unix and windows. Windows OS named Marine, Unix OS named Infested Marine"

This just seems to be the wrong way around...

<comment><USER10> Agreed.

In general I'm not sure how you could think the battle-worn/old-tech/modular visual style of the Terran race applies more to Windows than Unix.

Whereas terrifyingly-impressive testament to the brutal domination of an evolutionary niche and subsequent uncontrolled (uncontrollable?) growth seems like such a more-natural analogue for Windows.

And that's without even _touching_ the gross, slimy, _infested_ allusions. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> What sold me on unix being zerg was the concept of the swarm. Open source == powered by the hive mind.

Also I think it is safe to say that most everyday folk relate more to windows; same way most would relate more towards the human faction.

That said, you have good points!

<comment><USER10> Well, yeah. I'm sure the average person with 4 windows boxes at home wouldn't be wild about the idea of _the creep_ seeping between the boxes...

Whereas unix folks are more likely to be nerdier and _like_ that sort of thing ;)

Oh, and _awesome_ scheme overall.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another attractive reason for Windows being Zerg is it would make Ballmer Queen Bitch of the Universe (Gates would be the now-dead Overmind).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm ashamed to admit I'm using Jersey Shore names for my home network. "Situation", "Snooky", "Jwow", "Paulyd", etc.

<comment><USER12> you must be facing some serious trust issues when you try ssh'ing from one box to another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Here are some examples: you might use the planets in the solar system (I would never do this; who wants to have to wait for the discovery of new planets to buy your 9th computer?)"

For this reason, I use moons of our solar system in naming external hard drives at home. Figure it will last me a little longer, and saves me having to say to my wife in front of friends "Can you put the wedding photos on x?" and "Is x now full?" for certain instances of x towards the outer reaches of the system.

<comment><USER14> it's pronounced "urine us"

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, butter my biscuits.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here is the my naming convention:

1\. Desktop computers are any land animal

2\. Laptops are birds

3\. Virtual machines and servers are any water dwelling creature

I try to progress through the alphabet. For example, "Buck" is an old, now defunct computer - "Gila" has only recently been retired.

</comment><comment><USER17> My home network is based on the Batman universe:

My shiny new power tower (Windows 7): Batman

Same tower booted into ubuntu: TwoFace

NAS: arkham

Content Filter: gordon

Wifi SSID: TheRiddler

etc, etc

</comment><comment><USER18> I've previously gone with various fun things (the main server at my previous job was named mainframe for ages), currently it's star wars characters as a friend of mine insists. Mine are all just named for their purpose. Laptop being playworkschool, my older server is called beast (hosting a civilization 5 replay generator). I don't like the idea of StarCraft though, but perhaps i'm just not such a big fan? I remember playing the first game a lot but i'm not a huge fan.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is brilliant!!

The only issue I will have now is trying to convince my wife that SC2 is a healthy addiction - especially now that her iMac will be renamed 'Archon'.

<comment><USER20> Only works if you cannibalized that iMac from two other Macs.

<comment><USER21> also macbook air = dark templar? i think youd have to make an imac 30 out of two of those to make a dark archon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Am I the only one who thinks that Windows, with malware, worms, and trojans, are more akin to the zerg? Whereas Linux, with its post-humanism, is akin to Terrans?

</comment><comment><USER23> I was hoping this would be about Blizzard or battle.net, oh well. My own network machines are all named after space probes: pioneer, skylab, mercury, surveyor, gemini, apollo, voyager, etc. The university I went to (www.hsu.edu) named all their machines after trees (cyprus, pine, etc) - the school alma mater was about the pine trees that grew throughout the area, so a tree based naming scheme made sense.

</comment><comment><USER24> I recall Hotmail's servers were revealed to have some funny names, including rotate-the-shield-harmonics.hotmail.com.

</comment><comment><USER25> Server names at my university's CS department (and at least 2 other universities I know of) are biblical characters- Matthew, Mark, John, Gabriel, Mary, Martha, etc...

And, of course, Saul is a alias for Paul.

<comment><USER26> > And, of course, Saul is a alias for Paul.

Does it require you to login via Damascus?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> i was expecting to read something about scalability of battle.net...

</comment><comment><USER28> I just name mine after motorcycles I've owned. Crazily enough, I go through motorcycles faster than I go through computers, so it works.

</comment><comment><USER29> I love starcraft...but honestly this is stupid. I mean seriously...you could waste your time in so many better ways .

<comment><USER30> > you could waste your time in so many better ways .

for example, pointing out how stupid this is.

:)

<comment><USER31> Fuck you, dickwizard

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> i like the unimaginative names. www28.fe2.us.example.com

one huge portal used writers, philosophers and poets. try to spell Nietzsche to the operator during an outage.

Another job, they used star trek ship names. with the occasional klingon vessel here and there.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is very intellectually unfulfilling. Second place? HN is approaching chain emails...</comment>


AppFirst (YC never) takes over the CloudKick mantle - <AUTHOR> http://blog.appfirst.com/appfirst-rolls-out-cloud-server-management-fo

<comment><USER2> Do we really need the "(YC never)"?</comment>


Hoverboard? Still in the Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/technology/hoverboard-still-in-the-future.html <comment><USER2> It was annoying that the article said:

 _But when the 190-pound visitor stood atop the 100-pound board, one gentle push was enough to send him spinning across the room over a cushion of air._

This is very poor writing since there is no "cushion of air" involved, the air is not supporting the weight of the board and rider, it's a magnetic system after all. It would probably work almost exactly the same in vacuum.

<comment><USER3> Well, he is technically right. There _is_ air underneath it, and it could be described as a cushion, albeit a poor one. Remember he's trying to explain it in terms that non-technical people will understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now that their kickstarter is up, people are already streaming in to back it. I bet most of them will completely gloss over this gem of a sentence: "Currently, this surface needs to be a non-ferromagnetic conductor."

While it does have some applications even with that limitation, it's far from a practical hoverboard, and it's very misleading to be talking about other uses of the technology as if it already exists. They seem to be getting ahead of themselves by extolling their "design focus" when they don't have the product people expect from them yet, and possibly (probably) never will.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't want an hoverboard. I want an hovercar. Replace roads with a sheet of copper and put grass over it.

<comment><USER6> I don't think you truly appreciate the price of copper. There are copper thieves, but not asphalt ones.

<comment><USER7> I don't think you truly appreciate the ingenuity of thieves. By the way, I was just passing and wondered if you needed your driveway paving? You see, we have this extra load of asphalt that we didn't need on our last job...

<comment><USER6> No, it's just that asphalt isn't worth stealing.

<comment><USER7> The driveway scam is generally done with stolen asphalt from roadway construction. I know this from a professional con artist who has had a long career in this kind of shenanigans.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that lowers cost considerably. Copper is attractive even when it needs to be cut out of signal cables. The Norwegian railroad authority is switching to aluminum cables in certain parts of the country to avoid it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some interesting rewards in the Kickstarter. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/142464853/hendo- hoverbo...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/142464853/hendo-hoverboards- worlds-first-real-hoverboard)

I do like the White box idea. I wonder though at the price where they start and if thats going to eat the profit generated. (I don't know, they could be very cheap to produce at scale.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Having non-skateboarders demonstrate their invention was a poor choice. They seriously lack the balance needed to make this look appealing.

I hereby offer my balance, free of charge if you need someone :)

<comment><USER10> The thing is it operates nothing like a skateboard at this point. While skaters would likely have better balance, the fact that there is no lateral friction or way to control yourself means they probably wouldn't have looked much better.

Still a cool prototype though.

<comment><USER9> I'm sure there would be a small learning curve but I am positive I could get used to it. I've done other sports that do not have much lateral friction (on water).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You need resistance to sideways motion (lateral friction?) for this to work.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, they need to polarize the Lorentz force, then they're good to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/technology/hoverboard- stil...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/technology/hoverboard-still-in-the- future.html?partner=rss&emc=rss)

</comment><comment><USER14> The Verge has a better video on the device: [http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/21/7025795/riding-hendos- hov...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/21/7025795/riding-hendos-hoverboard- levitation)

</comment><comment><USER15> I guess this needs to operate over a conductive surface? Would saltwater work?

<comment><USER16> It does, and saltwater isn't conductive enough. The effect degrades the lower the electrical conductivity of the medium in which eddy currents are formed. Pretty much requires something like copper or silver (or gold!) for high enough conductivity to make it work. A superconducting surface works great for this.

<comment><USER15> How about aluminum?

<comment><USER17> It should work, but less well. The conductivity of aluminum is more than half that of copper, so I would expect their 100 lb board which can hold a 190 lb person to be able to hold at least a 100 lb person.

The thickness of the metal plate also has some effect, but it is limited, and I would expect that their plate is already thick enough for additional thickness to not matter. I don't think that you can compensate enough for material conductivity with thickness, but I don't have time to research that at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know if the physics checks out? Can producing an eddy current create a repelling force that levitates? Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?

<comment><USER18> I think it has been 'rediscovered' many times, but it's hard to market, since it requires a special platform to run on (even if it's just a sheet-o-metal). Sorta like how you can build a hovercraft out of a leaf blower and some plywood, but generally not used in every day life, despite the coolness. If we _could_ have long, smooth sheets of copper laid out, I'd be pretty thrilled; might need to grab an asteriod to make it cheap enough, though.

Also, nice nick; possibly the most apropos I've seen in a while :)

<comment><USER19> Maybe in future children will play with hoverboards ON asteroid made of copper? :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Stick four or five of these on a skateboard:

[http://www.jetcatusa.com/p60.html](http://www.jetcatusa.com/p60.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't really get why a hoverboard would be better than a regular skateboard anyways. It's a solution looking for a problem.

<comment><USER21> Because hoverboard. That's really the beginning and the end of it. It's not supposed to be better at anything. It's a hoverboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I thought I just read a few months ago that we'd have superconducting EM drive hoverboards any day now?

How disappointing...

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know how built in batteries can provide enough power to support a 190 lb person?

</comment><comment><USER23> Someone forgot Newton's 1st Law of Motion, and it's evident in all these videos. In other words: It's impossible to steer a device like this .

<comment><USER7> If it is impossible to steer a device like this, explain the whitebox+ with directional control from your smartphone that they are offering.

The thing works on repulsive eddy forces that always oppose the field you create. If you angle the field, you should get lateral forces.

edit - thinking about it, you do not have to angle the field, you just need to move it. Also, if you move the device it should automatically resist the motion due to the currents created. With some accelerometers feeding back into controlling the motion of the field, it should be even be possible to give the device what feel like edges to make it behave like a snowboard.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Get any useful results from ubiome? - <AUTHOR> I've spent hundreds of dollars on ubiome kits over the last 18 months only to have vary conflicting results.  For example, large differences when sampling the same piece of stool. <comment><USER2> I do not know ubiome, but "Our lab uses cutting-edge DNA sequencing to identify your bacteria" seems to me a bit optimistic. Sequencing DNA on an beforehand unknow species, to identify it, is difficult. There are large variations in DNA in bacterias that are of the same species but that are a meter apart from each other. What is meant exactly by sequencing DNA? DNA is long, probably they are using bioinformatics on very (non coding) specific sequences, not on whole DNA. What DNA are they sequencing? Most probably not from the cell DNA but DNA from the mitochondria which is much simpler (but equally variable). What are they sequencing? Are they sure and why, they are not polluted by anything in the intestinal tract?</comment>


FOAM Framework - <AUTHOR> http://foam-framework.github.io/foam/

<comment><USER2> Nice, when I open one of the demo apps ([http://foam- framework.github.io/foam/foam/apps/todo/Todo.htm...](http://foam- framework.github.io/foam/foam/apps/todo/Todo.html)) on my mobile (Chrome beta), all I see is a small "f".

<comment><USER3> Doesn't work in IE11 either; hopefully this is just a joke though (and not another framework)

<comment><USER2> haha, that's what I thought as well...just that it isn't April 1st..</comment></comment></comment>


Escaping Earth – visual history of rockets and who built them - <AUTHOR> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DqnJZZGUwAAM9be.jpg <comment><AUTHOR> Seen here: [https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/1056597035829334022](https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/1056597035829334022)</comment>


Kindle Format 8, Now With HTML5 and CSS3 Support - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000729511

<comment><AUTHOR> And here's the list of supported HTML tags and CSS elements: <http://tinyurl.com/KindleFormat8> (Amazon's urls are very long and ugly, so I used url shortener).</comment>


Google App Engine: Free and still barely worth it - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/2008/04/Google-App-Engine-Free-and-still-barely-worth-it.aspx

<comment><USER2> First comment:

"Great post. Windows web hosting is still king and that will not change anytime soon. Web hosting has grown such a loyal following that it still going to be very popular. Most of the time businesses will choose Windows web hosting over everything else because of the respect they have for Microsoft and the products they produce."

WTF?

<comment><USER3> Blub thinking. People who have completely bought into the MS stack won't see any value in App Engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google isn't about search, Google is all about the infrastructure. From my perspective, Google's main competitive advantage has never really been their dominance in search. I've always thought that their main innovations and their chief advantage has been in terms of their infrastructure.

Arguably, Google has built the largest distributed computing cluster in the world with proprietary OS and datastore that is finely tuned to run on that cluster. They just don't advertise these facts too often. I'm sure that their dataset is easily in the petascale, and I'm sure that a lot of it is running in RAM to achieve the <400 millisecond response times they have.

So, compare Google's infrastructure expertise to your $6 hosting account at Wally's Web Host, and I think that you start to see the difference. Wally might well sell you 15,000 Gb/month of web transfer, but they _maybe_ might be overselling what they can actually provide. And, how many other web hosts offer to manage fault tolerant database replication for you? Heck, what's your instance up time at Wally's Web Host? Last I checked, Google's had 15 minutes of downtime since 2000.

With GAE, I Google isn't selling web hosting. What they are doing is offering to outsource your sys admin duties for free. The verdict is still out, but I would be interested in seeing the response of apps on GAE to first couple of Slashdottings/Diggings/Boingboings. I'd venture a guess that they'll handle it rather smoothly, and that the developer running the site will be able to snooze through it, instead of panicking and trying to reboot the server, cache the page in question, or have Apache serve the page as a static file. Not having to panic each time your server pings your cell phone can only be a good thing for developers.

<comment><USER5> App Engine isn't shared hosting. Shared hosting is a portion of 1 server. App Engine is a portion of n servers automatically allocated by load.

<comment><USER6> "App Engine is a portion of n servers automatically allocated by load."

Theoretically. Right now, unless I'm reading things wrong, the limits imposed by the agreement are less than quite a small shared hosting account, and pretty much any dedicated or VPS account, could serve each month. Is n scalability really infinite, or even interesting, if it's less than a single box could serve using standard tools?

I'm sure it'll expand in time, and maybe even in time to keep up with any app you build on it that happens to be explosively successful. I'm just saying that it's silly to imply that App Engine scales if you can't actually run bigger applications on it than a single traditional host.

<comment><USER5> I'm not saying it will scale well, but it is designed to scale in a way a shared host simply can't. If App Engine fails to scale because the bandwidth is too expensive then Google can reduce the price. I don't think the article even understands that this isn't simply another shared host. The joyent people didn't get it with their 'give the people root'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People just love misinterpreting products, comparing them to completely unrelated things and just making noise. That's right. Making noise is the goal. All else is secondary.

Can't people just say "Hey look, here's a new product which IS USEFUL to somebody out there on earth and a damn nifty one at that." That somebody in Google App Engine's case is a hacker who wants to quickly try out his hobbies without worrying about all the mess that comes with managing a web host.

But no. We must compare. And we must make noise. Lots of it.

Perhaps it gives us a way to figure out which blogs / sites to NEVER visit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps. But OTOH the author is pissed off about the amount of noise being generated in favor of Google App Engine as if it were completely revolutionary when, according to the author, currently its only a nicely packaged free webhost with many drawbacks. The operative word here is of course "currently".

edit : The article that the author links to is clearly over the top too so I think this post is partly a very angry reaction to that article.

<comment><USER8> _the author is pissed off about the amount of noise being generated in favor of Google App Engine as if it were completely revolutionary..._

I just had a thought. Suppose that, hypothetically, several months ago a service very much like the Google App Engine had been released by a small YC company. And suppose that, hypothetically, that product was nearly out of beta and was already hosting apps on a scalable platform with a standard set of open-source APIs and minimal sysadmin hassle?

What level of press hysteria would this product be getting, do you think, relative to this semi-complete beta from Google that doesn't yet have a clear pricing or scaling model?

Would anyone on the Heroku team be willing to comment on the record? ;)

[Note: I haven't used Heroku enough to really compare it to Google App Engine. However, _nobody_ has used Google App Engine enough to really compare it to Heroku...]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My favorite quote from the linked article:

"Google App Engine's ability to scale depends on how much server resources Google is willing to dedicate to the task of running these applications. Google is not going to risk slowing down their primary services for a Google App Engine application. So their ability to scale could very well be less than other companies, we just don't know."

No doubt a $6/mo. account at Dreamhost will scale better than Google.

<comment><AUTHOR> He is not saying that it will or will not scale better. He is only saying that we simply dont have data to prove that Google will scale better. People are invoking the Google brandname but a brandname shows almost nothing.

<comment><USER7> Normally, I would have agreed but in Google's case, there is so much evidence to believe they will do a better job. Scaling is their biggest technological achievement to date. The reason they are running away with products with such great _performance_ is because of their success in getting things to scale very well.

<comment><USER8> This is just magical thinking. Google's services scale amazingly well because their hardware and software were optimized, for _specific applications_ , by _great programmers_ commanding _large budgets_. Google does not have a magic bullet that can make any app in the world "scale", they are not going to rent Steve Yegge to me for $14 per hour to help me design scalable apps, nor are they going to lend me an entire datacenter's worth of computers to ensure that my naive attempt to bubble-sort 1e6 database rows per pageview will "scale" out to 10 million hits per day.

Your Google Apps site is going to have limitations, it is going to have to pay to exceed those limitations, and it is going to have to be carefully architected in order to scale. The original poster notes, correctly, that half of Google Apps' limitations are restrictive compared to those of a $7-per- month web host, and the other half -- the ones that will make or break the value proposition -- haven't been stated yet.

<comment><USER10> _This is just magical thinking._

Not really -- this is "it's less effort for them to deploy everything on their existing, robust tools" thinking. I personally don't second-guess it, because once a tool proves itself worthy at the GOOG, it tends to stick around for a long, long time. Some of my cave-man Python code is probably still kicking around in ops/SRE. (It's hard to write really bad Python, although there have been valiant efforts over the years, and we're sure to see many more)

Your skepticism is warranted, but I just think it's misplaced. The one thing that Google has proven they can do as well as, perhaps better than, anyone else is get tasks to run transparently across a whole shitload of computers and datacenters. Maybe everyone there is turning evil nowadays, I don't know, I can't know -- what I do know is that it would be more effort to turn around and fuck up the existing building blocks than to simply open them up (with appropriate restrictions) via GAE. That's all.

Normally I find your commentary extremely perceptive, but this time I think that you're off the mark. JMHO

 _nor are they going to lend me an entire datacenter's worth of computers to ensure that my naive attempt to bubble-sort 1e6 database rows per pageview will "scale" out to 10 million hits per day._

If the price is right, I'd bet you they would rent it... That's really what AWS is all about. Although it will be a while before the GOOG has entire excess datacenters' worth of capacity -- somehow, Google always managed to soak up all the deployed capacity and then some, at all times. As someone coming from a supercomputing background, I thought that was really fucking cool, because when you're deploying racks an 18-wheeler at a time, you might expect some lag between powering up and going to 1mW steady. Nope.

I've never seen a company that could scale infrastructure like Google, and I worked at IBM Microelectronics a couple years before GOOG, along with another one of the biggest websites on the planet, and deployed my own multihomed network in the interim (as mentioned elsewhere, one of my bigger triumps as an 'architect' was beating Microsoft at their own game with a staff of 4 people during that time). No one I have ever seen comes close to Google in terms of operational efficiency, and I've seen a lot over the years.

 _Your Google Apps site is going to have limitations_

No shit, that's why it's free. I honestly cannot see how those limitations will include a lack of fault tolerance, the provision of which is their biggest selling point (IMHO). Everything else (again IMHO) pales in comparison.

 _The original poster notes, correctly, that half of Google Apps' limitations are restrictive compared to those of a $7-per-month web host_

For certain conditions -- you can't be a Pythonista or the comparison goes out the window. Moreover, if you create several GAE accounts (do it! do it! Just because I worked there doesn't mean I don't support taking advantage of them), you now have a framework for freely deploying a bunch of pilot projects for $0 down and $0/month.

Just _don't marry yourself to the Google toolset_ (Users, ObjectStore) too tightly and you get a LOT of good shit for free. AWS is more open and more loosely coupled, so for many (most?) non-larval startups it's probably the better choice _at this point in time_.

But if you're a cubicle dweller plotting your escape? _FUCKING GO FOR IT, MAN!_ The price is right (free) and Django is an awesome framework for pilot projects. If you strike it big... well, burn that bridge when you come to it.

Oddly enough, I'm going to have to invoke DHH's "build first, scale later" maxim here -- "build first, limit lockin, migrate later" for many people. Not all, maybe not even most, but for individual developers with a little self- discipline, this is a HUGE step.

And (this is killer) nobody says you can't farm our your long-running jobs to AWS/EC2 and call them via REST from your GAE app. Just like the ticket for urllib2 support is mostly about RESTful auth and data transfer. A _LOT_ of us want to decouple GAE from those bits -- instead of complaining, some of us are working on it, and it seems like Guido and others at Google are _supporting_ the effort.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by the GOOG's internal disorganization and 'organic' (to be generous) growth pattern. ;-)

<comment><USER8> _Normally I find your commentary extremely perceptive, but this time I think that you're off the mark. JMHO_

Why, thank you! In this case, my writing may be completely off base, but it has achieved its victory condition: It has drawn you out to provide a very intelligent level of argument. ;)

And I am operating at a severe disadvantage... all I know about Google (and about Python and Django, for that matter) is what I read in the papers. You really can't learn much about what's going on inside Google from the papers.

That's a big part of the problem here: with Google Apps the company seems to be gearing up to make a transition toward more transparency, but they're not quite there yet. I am fully willing to admit that Google's infrastructure kicks the butt of a $7 web host... _once I know what I'm getting, what the charge is, and what the service level will be_. I certainly agree that the various limitations we can see now -- Python only, limited static files, limits on peak bandwidth, no SSL for now, blah blah blah -- will all be forgivable, even trivial, once we have confidence that Google will deliver cheap scalability and rock-solid operational performance -- and once there are well-understood approaches and tools for deploying Google Apps without "marrying oneself to the Google toolset". But for much of their history Google's reputation has been kind of like Batman's reputation: They're known to be superheroes, they have many wonderful toys, they use them mostly for good and we're very grateful... but they operate in the shadows, and folks often complain that it's hard to get them on the phone to explain exactly why your pagerank just dropped by fifty spots overnight, or exactly how they control your ad revenue for false clicks.

I don't attribute any of that to malice, though. And it's early in the history of the _beta_ of Google Apps (a real beta, not one of those legendary eternal "betas"), so we must be patient. Certainly your words are cause for optimism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the ease of deployment was the only feature App Engine had it would still be worth it. Running "appcfg.py update path_to_app/" to deploy your Python app beats all other options.

And anyone complaining about static files and cron jobs doesn't understand that those don't belong on your application server anyway. Google is providing scaling for the application server and the data storage. Static files and cron jobs can be easily scaled. Database servers not so much.</comment>


Living conditions in other countries compared to your own - <AUTHOR> http://ifitweremyhome.com

<comment><USER2> I think that the country size comparison is slightly broken. For example, compare the USA to Australia, and then scroll sideways on the map. The Australia overlay is much larger than what it should be.

Other than that, the site is pretty cool!

<comment><USER3> or may be you just think that US is bigger then it is? :)

<comment><USER2> Hah, that's possible too - but let me give you a quick pictoral example:

<http://i.imgur.com/m2WgE.png>

The yellow line in that picture is 56 pixels long. Clearly, the size of the Australia overlay isn't perfectly accurate.

But that's only a minor nitpick ;-)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to prepare for algorithm trading interview as a developer - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's hard to provide very detailed advice without knowing what exactly you're doing - are you developing market making algorithms? Working on execution algorithms? Implementing strategies developed by researchers? Is this a hedge fund or a prop trading firm? There is a lot that can encompass "quantitative developer" in the front (and back!) office.

There are three standards that you can think of as the _Cracking the Coding Interview_ of quant finance (insofar as that is a homogenous field, which it isn't):

1\. _Heard on the Street_

2\. _Quant Job Interview Questions and Answers_

3\. _A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews_

You want to also practice algorithms as you would for a Google/Facebook whiteboard interview, but alongside that drill down on statistics. If you have the time review your linear algebra.

Higher math will be less necessary if you're a developer as opposed to a researcher, but they'll still want it. It's probably in your best interest if you know at least one "serious" language used for performance (C++, Java typically) while also being familiar with the data analysis libraries of Python.

If you have no experience with finance and you're coming in to that cold, give _Options, Futures and Other Derivatives_ a read. I'm assuming you're in this boat because you're asking the question.

This is sort of catch-all advice. If you're working at Virtu or Jump, you're going to want to know as much as you can about low level programming with regards to latency, networking and memory, because those are HFT firms. If you're working at a place like Two Sigma, Java will be more applicable and you want to know more about statistics and data analysis on a practical level, because you're be implementing the strategies developed by quantitative researchers.

Tailor your approach to the type of trading the firm engages in. I've made two assumptions here - 1) you're interviewing with a firm considered "quantitative" as opposed to discretionary and 2) you're interviewing for a front office role, not a back office role (support, farther from money).

If you give more information about the type of firm and the type of role we can provide much more constructive advice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Thank you so much for your answer, it's very helpful. I'll give that book a read. I'm applying for a dev job at Janestreet, which I know is very competitive. I'm a pretty good at maths for a programmer, and pretty good at programming for a mathematician, but I'm not sure if the interview will be a mix of both or specifically on designing algorithms, doing toy problems, etc.

<comment><USER3> I (successfully) interviewed at Jane Street about 5 years ago at their London office. I ultimately went elsewhere, but I can give a general overview of the stuff we talked about.

My background was, at the time, electronic market making in fixed income with substantial experience in functional programming using languages other than OCaml. Prior to that, I'd done signal processing for radar systems in C++.

We did multiple general programming questions, working on purely functional data structures, system design in functional languages and then some stuff on concurrency and asynchronous systems in OCaml.

The asynchronous systems conversation then ended up with a conversation about some category theory from the viewpoint of a functional programmer - I suspect that arose from my background and I don't imagine it's something they ask everyone about.

Finally we had a bunch of more mathematical questions, where we covered some number theory, some linear algebra and some formal logic. Again, it's hard to say how much of that is part of their normal set of questions and how many of those were specific to my background.

I'm not sure any of that is directly applicable/useful to you, but hopefully there's something that helps!

<comment><USER4> Sound like a lot of places if you can't impress them with something on your resume. take it off or put in a caveat about you working with it minimally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With that username, I suppose humanity should be thankful that OP isn't applying for a job in AI. :)

On that note though, I'm curious how useful modern deep learning techniques are for trading. Traditional machine learning for the past couple decades was never terribly useful for entry or exit signals, merely as pattern recognition for ancillary purposes. I'm wondering if that's changed now.

If I was to guess, ML is probably easier applied to longer time frames. On the other hand, it's certainly possible to pipe the output of a GPU supercomputing cluster to an FPGA/ASIC HFT fleet. A slight delay in updating the trading model isn't the end of the world if execution speed remains good.

<comment><AUTHOR> My not particularly informed view is it wouldn't be great. Overfitting would be the biggest problem, as well as the fact that people design trading software specifically to exploit other trading bots these days.

On the plus side, less human input in trading software may greatly reduce human biases which make us suck at trading.

<comment><USER5> > _... as well as the fact that people design trading software specifically to > exploit other trading bots these days._

I figured modern ML would be the first thing firms use for that purpose. Might be interesting though with bots trying to learn the behavior of their counterparts and vice versa. The ensuing feedback loops are probably quite interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On a side note, where do you find these kind of jobs specific to trading or finance?

<comment><USER7> efinancialcareers, but mostly through networking. If you are interested in trading and finance, you try things on your own (there are many free market data sources), you are active on profile communities, and eventually you get noticed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would second the idea to show a sample trading algorithm based on some trading system, it would show passion and self start...

</comment><comment><USER9> Try showing them something similiar you built.

<comment><USER2> This is risky advice, because it's very unlikely someone without any prior experience can independently develop a trading algorithm that would impress an interviewer. Modern trading algorithms typically have significant amounts of infrastructure, which means you'd have either done this at another firm (in which case, why ask the question), or you've bootstrapped software that correctly handles data processing (multiple types and multiple sources!), performant I/O, data analysis and strategy development, execution methods, risk management and all those assorted goodies, etc.

If the OP wants to show interesting and relevant work, I'd do something like implement an order book client from scratch using the NASDAQ ITCH spec, then add data processing and interesting analysis functionality to it.

<comment><USER10> I think they will be impressed by any developer, without professional algo trading experience, being able to understand the nitty gritty of how exchanges work plus some basic algos.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely. But my thesis here is that most developers without that experience won't actually self-learn how exchanges work and develop algorithms with that knowledge. But your point is somewhat covered by my NASDAQ ITCH suggestion :)

I think I haven't conveyed my point very well - I'm not saying developers need to have a working, profitable algorithm to impress interviewers. I'm saying they need to develop what _an interviewer_ would consider to be an algorithm if _they_ call it that, and it's more likely they won't think of things like e.g. exchange protocols and execution models. It's not a good look if you develop what you think is a relevant portfolio item and instead develop something completely orthogonal to it.

But if they can self-learn that they can absolutely try it. It's not about making it a production-capable algorithm, it's about being aware of what constitutes a modern trading algorithm. The unknown unknowns are more prevalent.

I think a better suggestion than developing a portfolio item is just developing the requisite skills in any case.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NSA won't say if it knew about KRACK - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-krack-vulnerability-security-experts/ <comment><USER2> All of these articles and reports about KRACK keep repeating the same thing:

> _The caveat is that an attacker would need to be within a close physical > proximity to the Wi-Fi network to carry out the attack._

I'm no expert on any of this but I don't know how much we can count on that little bit of "safety". Remember NIGHTSTAND? 802.11 attacks (paraphrasing) "from up to eight miles away".

Yeah, you're not gonna pull it off with an off-the-shelf laptop with built-in Wi-Fi and antenna. With a powerful transceiver and directional antenna (both easily purchased) though, "close physical proximity" can suddenly be a lot farther away.</comment>


Microsoft's raw deal for Vista users: IE10 for Windows 7 only - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/04/microsofts-raw-deal-for-vista-users-ie10-for-windows-7-only.ars <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2447927>

</comment><comment><USER3> Translation : Microsoft wants Windows Vista to die as soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER4> So by the end of the year us web developers will have to support IE 6, 7, 8, 9 and now 10 on 3 different operating systems..

Maybe it's time for a change in profession.

<comment><USER5> Well, the matrix is a little more straightforward than that.

XP won't get 9 and 10. Vista won't get 10 IE 6 is being EOL'd, most new applications don't support it.

So, you need to support XP w/7,8; Vista with 7,8,9, and Windows 7 with 7,8,9,10.

But, (And, not being a web developer, I'm very curious about this) - does the operating system really matter that much - Doesn't IE 7 perform reasonably simliar on XP, Vista and WIndows 7? Is it the security model that makes most of the difference? Or the included version of Java? Where do operating systems have the largest impact on Web Development?

<comment><USER4> Only last week I had a bug reported by a client that selects within Safari in Windows XP Classic mode only did not have drop down arrows..

It took me rather a long time to work out this was a bug within Safari itself, but just shows how different operating systems can make as much of an impact as that of different browsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like the primary motivator for doing this would be the 'native'-ness (all the hardware acceleration and whatnot) - and so maybe someone should tell Microsoft that _we don't care_ about all that, what percentage of websites need that stuff? Certainly none of mine.

A single-platform browser these days just feels like a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought microsoft had done enough to screw vista customers, with their slow and bloated OS. But theres more, now they can deprive them of IE10 when there seems to be no technical reasons.

<comment><USER8> Because they haven't just brought out IE9...</comment></comment>


How scientists reacted to the Brexit - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-reacted-to-the-brexit-1.20158 <comment><USER2> 52% voted for it, and not a single positive reaction from a scientist? "OMG, all the smart scientists are against Brexit so if I'm smart, I must be against it too!" Propaganda at its finest...

<comment><USER3> This is an area where "Eastern Europeans stealing my job, but former colonies are OK" or "Who is the president of the EC or EU Parliament" kind of problems does not matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> EU funding blabla. You wonder why the Swiss universities still do so well.. I don't think the leavers ever said the transistion was going to be painless.

<comment><USER3> Swiss universities and businesses can also apply to many EU funding.</comment></comment>


Code Running on Ionized Particles, or WTF Is Serverless - <AUTHOR> https://www.clever-cloud.com/blog/company/2017/07/04/code-running-ionized-particles-wtf-serverless/ <comment><USER2> I think the author is somewhat missing the point that the whole Serverless paradigm is not so much about emulating past architectures without servers.

It is more about building completely new kind of architectures, where applications are no longer monolithic Node.js/Ruby/whatever server processes, but consist of tiny decoupled components interconnected by evolving systems like AWS Step Functions.

This development is dependent on the popularity of static websites, powered by application frameworks like React, which relax the speed requirements of separate REST API servers. Some speed is lost, and a lot of productivity is gained, by getting rid of huge amounts of user-space code and long-running processes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, exactly like years ago we do not have full applications but use application servers to run our apps. At this time it seems to be a good idea. And now we advocate 12 factors, for good reasons</comment></comment>


Tell HN: After suffering NewMogul withdrawal, I built another. Please stop by. - <AUTHOR>

It is called moniedinterests.com.
NewMogul.com was a community about economics, investing, entrepreneurship and other similar things started by the prolific Hacker News user nickb.
It was a community that was very much like the early days of Hacker News (then Startup News). It had clever people of every sort. (Hopefully, you all return.)
Both New Mogul and nickb disappeared; he moved on to other things. So, I made moniedinterests.com
Please stop by.
edit: It isn't a HN clone, because I don't know Arc well and want to be able to add new features. I know: that's lame. <comment><USER2> A lot of the newmogul guys have gone over to markenomics.com fyi. Still, congrats on hacking together a solution to the newmogul problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I just heard about that today. So far it is only like six of them. But, I'm definitely interested in collaborating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should fix this:

Warning: Unknown: write failed: No space left on device (28) in Unknown on line 0

Warning: Unknown: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in Unknown on line 0

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I put this up on a shared host because I didn't want to serve my ghetto "my first php application" from my production server that hosts my Python work (and livelihood).

Yeah, shared hosts are ugly. I'm getting on the phone now.

edit: They refuse to acknowledge the problem. They said "you get what you pay for" and tried to upsell me to their dedicated hosting.

So, I will put this on my server later today.

<comment><USER4> If you're looking for a shared host that won't stooge you I highly recommend HostGator. My company uses them for all our clients and we couldn't be happier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks they look great.

<comment><USER4> Of course! I'm happy to give them the business given how well they've treated me. I've been using them for almost 5 years now with absolutely no serious issues! I don't think there's too many affordable hosts out there these days that are like that.

(edit: I can't recommend them for Rails though. They will hosts Rails apps, but only via a CGI interface which is crazy slow. If you're ever looking for a good Rails host try <http://www.blueboxgrp.com/>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would be nice if the links on the main page went directly to the article instead of the comments page.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. I'll fix it.

edit: fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Clickable link: <http://moniedinterests.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> If I can make a suggestion, put some sort of border on the outside edge of the main content area... the content blends in with the background image a little too much for me.

Good luck with this idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> What kind of border do you recommend?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I only see 6 links on the front page. NewMogul had 30. 30 links on the front page is much, much more usable than 6.

I go to aggregator/news sites like this for interesting links...show me more!

<comment><AUTHOR> You are definitely right. I'll get on that.

But, please feel free to sign up and post some links too. :)

edit: now 20

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great work! What are the future plans?

How is your experience on pligg? I had tried it last year and came back with bad taste in my mouth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Several members of the community have been very helpful, but the code and templates are a total disaster.

If moniedinterests attracts a community, then I may write a replacement system or aggressively refactor pligg (that would be a good excuse to learn PHP well).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I convince clients to pay me in Bitcoin and is it a good idea? - <AUTHOR> Just what the title says :-) <comment><USER2> As a little thought experiment, imagine someone who you buy services from told you that they wanted to be paid in Burmese kyats. That's the currency of Burma, a country with a population of 50 million people … e.g. it's bigger than Bitcoin. Would you bother buying their service? Probably not. It'd be far too much hassle. Bitcoin is exactly the same - if you're interested in it then you've researched it, learnt about it, and perhaps bought it using a secure service and stored it in an offline wallet. If you aren't interested in it, you might have heard of it, but nothing more than that, so the steps you'd need to take to buy from you would be ridiculous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting point! I like to think that all of my clients are forward thinking and techy, but it doesn't make business sense for them to deal with the additional hassle of buying or exchanging their currency and then transferring it to me. So I guess the next question is this, how would it be possible to facilitate BTC payments? I suppose one would have to act as an intermediary, as in some kind if bank-like service that treats all currency as "foreign" and converts to BTC, just like if I were to accept Kyats as payment they would automatically be converted into USD by my bank...is that correct?

<comment><USER3> Why do you need an intermediary to do this for you automatically? Just take the USD your clients pay you, and head over to your favorite broker/exchange and buy Bitcoin with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Right now, you don't.

Currently, having watched the whole Mt. Gox fiasco unfold, and having read from at least one HN poster who lost over US$100,000 worth of bitcoins, I wouldn't touch bitcoins with a 100-foot pole. I understand it's safe _if_ [list of conditions which I 80% understand], but that's little consolation to me.

But certainly there is no harm in giving clients the option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that gets to the "is it a good idea" portion. Honestly, the fact that there is any faith in Bitcoin is amazing to me. And I believe that it's a resilient currency that will bounce back from the current controversy. But I do fear that it may collapse entirely, especially if governments start getting involved and trying to regulate it when they can scarcely understand traditional money, or even other much more simple concepts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should _not_ attempt to make this sale.

Serious companies will not pay you in Bitcoin. Serious companies disproportionately can actually attempt to pay market rates for engineering services. Signaling desire to be paid in Bitcoin tells serious companies "I do not wish to do business with serious companies." and, while it won't convince them to pay you in Bitcoin since no power under earth or heaven will do that, it might convince their decisionmakers to go with someone who is not a joker for their professional services. This will cause you to systematically get paid far below-market rates for your services.

Why won't serious companies pay you in Bitcoin? Let us count the reasons:

1) Why should they? They already have a bank account, which can issue checks and wires. This is what they use to pay substantially everyone.

2) They have layers of processes and scar tissue built up around payments, precisely to make sure that something like "And then the bookkeeper looted 80% of our assets without us knowing it" could never happen. None of these processes contemplate Bitcoin. They're the bones and sinews of the company. You will _not_ succeed in changing them from the outside. As tptacek how likely you are to even alter fairly inconsequential details of a large company's procurement process, like how long it takes them to physically issue a physical check which all parties know only actually takes a minute of typing and Ctrl-P to create.

3) Serious companies have serious professional advisors like lawyers and accountants, and serious professional advisors are very risk adverse. They're going to come up with all sorts of perfectly serious reasons why issuing payments in Bitcoin is a high-risk low-reward activity. For instance, in Japan, you need to keep your books in yen. That's non-negotiable. Even if the numbers you use for management of the company in something really exotic like dollars, the official books must be in yen, and the National Tax Agency will occasionally ask you for line-by-line justifications. Your accountant is going to hear "Bitcoin transaction" and start trying to fit that into double-entered yen based bookkeeping, and if he actually understands what Bitcoin is doing, he's going to say "This sounds like a whole heck of a lot of work. Why don't we just pay them via wire transfer like we always do? Also, I'm having difficulty valuing 100 BTC for the purpose of paying withholding taxes on our payment to him. I sort of don't want to lose my license for assisting with tax evasion -- can we _please_ pay with a wire transfer?"

If you desire to speculate in Bitcoin, you can acquire it in the same fashion as you buy Magic Cards, Beanie Babies, or shares in Google: get paid in dollars, then buy the thing from people who sell it for dollars. (I would feel negligent if I did not say "But you should not speculate in Bitcoin.")

<comment><USER6> I pay some of my staff in bitcoin... it is cheaper and easier than using Paypal to be honest, and significantly, significantly cheaper than dealing with international wire transfers. And when they need cash they can sell at a markup using localbitcoins. Yes, I also have a small business without "layers of processes and scar tissue built up around payments," but is this really the community to trash startups?

The easiest answer to the parent poster's question is to offer a slight discount for bitcoin payments. Or just accept cash and use that to purchase bitcoins as needed. Doing a bit of SEO work around bitcoins can also make your business more visible to people who want to pay using it. I currently pay for some server infrastructure in BTC as well, and found those companies through web searches.

<comment><USER7> You really pay full time staff in bitcoin? What happens when the value of bitcoin varies by more than 2x in a short period vs local currency? How do they afford rent?

If you're just using it as a transaction medium (give them $6000 per month, transfer as BTC, immediately change back to dollars) that would avoid the issue I suppose. But how is that better than direct deposit in any way?

<comment><USER6> Not full-time staff, and it isn't their main source of income. The alternative is international wire transfer, which would cost me 30 USD and them a portion of the payment as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't try to convince anybody. Just present it as an option, maybe with a small reduction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah that's a good point. If I wanted to make it as simple as possible for them, what would I need to do? Or can I simply add it as an option in the invoice?

<comment><USER9> You could simply let them know that you will accept it. They'll tell you if they're interested. Just _suggest_ , don't attempt to _convince_. It may not be welcome.

Payment methods would be either through a third party processor, or as a direct payment to an address.

Making people change their way of doing things is _hard_. You will find it more rewarding to promote your business to people who already use bitcoins. You have an opportunity there to find new clients.

However you do it, offering a discount at the start will help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know very little about specifically convincing people to give me money, but I do know that when I want someone to do something, I need to make it easy. The ideal is to make it so easy that it's harder NOT to do it.

By trying to get paid in bitcoin, you'll be making it _difficult_ for people to give you money. All else being equal, this is a very bad idea.</comment>


Yandex's Android browser now supports third party ad-blocking extensions - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/30/yandexs-android-browser-now-supports-third-party-ad-blocking-extensions/ <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know the reason for Chrome not supporting plugins on mobile devices?</comment>


Faroe islands translate, a translation service where real humans are translating - <AUTHOR> https://faroeislandstranslate.com/#!/ <comment><USER2> Wow, real human interaction is so rare these days that it makes a large impact when you see it.</comment>


Show HN: Image Files for Image-Upload testing [git] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ggtd/Image-files-for-Image-Upload-testing <comment><USER2> I thought this would be similar to a collection of images like uber.gif and lottapixel.jpg[0], but it's just plain images. Hm.

[0] - [https://github.com/danielmiessler/SecLists/tree/master/Paylo...](https://github.com/danielmiessler/SecLists/tree/master/Payloads)</comment>


A community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://dbpedia.org

<comment><USER2> I like Wikipedia less and less. It contains lots of errors and copied content (the latter including stuff from my own site). To be fair there are people who take out material that is in breach of copyright, but what often then happens is they re-phrase the content (not usually very well).

Why not use Google to look for sources that are further upstream.

Wikipedia is good in some areas (especially geeky stuff in general), but outside those areas, I tend to avoid it.

</comment><comment><USER3> freebase.com also extracts WP and can now return its results as rdf too.

dbpedia's RDF is somewhat easier to work with, but freebase results contain more sources than just WP, you can edit the data with a nice gui on freebase.com, and freebase spends a lot of effort tracking topics between updates. With dbpedia, I think you just get a snapshot of WP, even if that means your URIs from last week are dead.

dbpedia is open source, the freebase extractor is not.

The #2 use case example from dbpedia (use it to put WP data on your pages) is a big focus of freebase.com, and they have a bunch of tools to make that easy.</comment>


Ask HN: Did Garmin pay the $10m ransom? - <AUTHOR> As Garmin is starting to come back online from the ransomware attack, news outlets are reporting the attackers were demanding a $10m ransom. Security folks out there: How likely is it that Garmin paid up to regain access to their devices? <comment><USER2> Pure speculation but I'd guess the feds were involved. If they didn't pay, it might tell us something about what the NSA (or whoever) is capable of.</comment>


Did Amazon Sink the Queen of Online Erotica? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/03/02/jaid_black_vs_amazon_did_the_distributing_giant_box_out_the_queen_of_erotica.html

<comment><USER2> "For this, Engler holds Amazon responsible, claiming that it's started competing with Ellora's Cave titles by offering similar works by other authors,"

Amazon is pure evil and if you are a small business owner, don't sell anything on the Amazon marketplace. They will use your own stats against you and try to put you out of business.

They did it to me 5 years ago and then permanently banned my account with no explanation. My emails (yes, sellers don't have a way to talk to anyone) were answered by canned responses. It's sick that this can go on when they were holding thousands of dollars.

3rd party sellers make up a big portion of their profits, but because they know you pretty much have nowhere else to go, they can get away with murder.</comment>


"US recession may be good for Indian IT" - <AUTHOR> http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jan/28murthy.htm <comment><USER2> I am not so sure this reasoning will hold given the highly price elastic nature of the demand for IT. In other words, will US companies look to spend as much on IT in a recession?</comment>


Building an Open-Source OTT Video System for Educational Purposes - <AUTHOR> https://leandromoreira.com/2020/04/19/building-an-open-source-ott-platform/ <comment><USER2> Might want to consider using VP9 for codec. These days for livestreaming WebRTC is a much better choice, good effort though.</comment>


Alu (Runic) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alu_(runic) <comment><USER2> I've read 3 books on the runes over the last couple of years. I find them interesting—I like symbolism. That being said, what's the significance of Alu? Why is it posted here? Generally Curious.

<comment><USER3> Would recommend the book "Runelore" by Edred Thorsson (he has many on runic technology).

<comment><USER4> No. Go to reliable sources, not people who are known for con artistry. There's no shortage of good sources around these days. For instance someone who doesn't arbitrarily invent things to make them sound good, try [https://jacksonwcrawford.com/list-of- videos/](https://jacksonwcrawford.com/list-of-videos/)

Or if you want more entry level information or written, exploring wikipedia is fine.

<comment><USER3> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Flowers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Flowers)

I wasn't able to find any sources of his "con artistry".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently learned that runes are a semitic script, akin to Phoenician and Hebrew. A bunch of hebraic words came into Scandinavian words along with them.

History gets stranger the more you learn.

<comment><USER6> I mean, they're descended from Phoenician. But they descended through the Greek branch, same as the Latin alphabet. And I don't think anyone would call Latin a Semitic script.

<comment><USER5> No, it is direct: Phoenicians traveled from outposts in Iberia deep into northern Europe, and left direct cultural traces, such as runes.

This is easily seen by comparing runes to their cognates in Latin, Greek, and Phoenician alphabets. Unless you believe in spontaneous reversion to the earlier form, or influence from early Greeks in Scandinavia, we are seeing evidence of direct influence.

We already knew Phoenicians were trading for tin in Cornwall and Wales in early Bronze Age, before 1800 BCE. Belgium and Denmark are quite nearby.

<comment><USER6> I think you misread my comment. Note that I said the _Greek branch_ , not directly from Greek. Phoenician had several branches, but the main ones were Aramaic and Greek. Those, of course, led to several current writing systems each. The leading theory is that Elder Futhark developed from an Old Italic script, or even an early form of Latin.

To directly rebut, rather than appealing to authority: The oldest attestation of Elder Futhark currently at 160 CE. So your proposal has Phoenecian developing directly into Eldar Futhark 300 years after Phonecian was no longer attested. And even then, Phonecian use had been reduced to Carthage while having developed into other systems elsewhere. Note that Gothic origins were ruled out for a mere 100 year difference, so this seems like quite the gap to cover.

<comment><USER5> 160 CE is an upper bound, not a lower. The Phoenicians all over the Mediterranean did not all die when their city was razed, or stop speaking or writing their language.

<comment><USER6> Sure, Phoenicians proper had a large trade system. But so did the Greeks and those Greek descendants writing Old Italic scripts. And then the Roman empire conquered all of those and had peak extent around 117, which means that the Latin alphabet was also introduced and was a very close and strong cultural presence by 160.

So yes, that date is only an upper bound. But there's a reason the scholars in this area believe what they do regarding the origins. For the type of cultural contact that can lead to the adoption of a writing system, that kind of closeness is important. You can't just handwave away a gap of several actual human generations, while at the same time ignoring the other major powers that are much closer and certainly exerting stronger cultural pressure than Carthage.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but you still need an explanation for what would have to be reversion to ancestral forms of an italic script.

There would have been a lot of refugees from the Punic disasters, and staying a long way from Roman centers would favor survival.

Being the only literate group in a wide area would explain the surrounding majority's adoption of a non-standard script, otherwise a mystery. Use of the script could be confined to ephemera indefinitely long before a change that led to its use to inscribe durable material, so a gap, while inconvenient for historians, is hardly disposative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the takeaway of this article is that the english ale derives from germanic alu which also has the meaning "intoxicating beverage" as descibed in the WP-article.

<comment><USER2> I like learning these types of things. It's like the "gebo" rune, which is just an "X", is the rune for giving or gifting.

It's where X-mas comes from, the season of giving.

<comment><USER8> I thought it was because X is Chi, short for Christ?

Wikipedia only mentions the Greek origin, do you have any references?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not getting what this article is trying to say. So alu is a word for some ineffable charm? Like "mojo"?

<comment><USER10> Maybe the runic equivalent to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here) , or sprinkling whatever has taken over from ML liberally through a business plan?

ᚫᛚᚢ ᚱᚫᛗ ᚱᛟᛗ ᛋᛈᚢ</comment></comment>


Why are police clashing with expats in Romania? - <AUTHOR> https://www.dw.com/en/why-are-police-clashing-with-expats-in-romania/a-45052623 <comment><USER2> Because corruption.</comment>


Confessions of a car salesman - <AUTHOR> http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/42962/article.html?

<comment><USER2> This bit was great.

 _"You've never sold cars before. Is that right?"

"Right."

"Why do you want to work here?"

My first inclination was to say, hey, I'm a car freak. Always have been. I could explain cars, how they work, get people excited about the performance and the different features. But then I remembered my editor's advice.

I smiled at Dave, trying to convey the feeling that the answer was obvious.

"I want to make a lot of money," I said.

The effect on Dave was amazing. He smiled and relaxed, as if I had said the password to enter an exclusive club. If this had been a cartoon, dollar signs would have appeared in his eyes accompanied by a loud "Cha-ching!"_

<comment><USER3> Agreed, I thought that imagery was very funny. I'm on part 7 now, so far it's a good and interesting read.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This article is really long, but if you can only read one portion of it, read this part about the 4 square worksheet:

[http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/42962/page003....](http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/42962/page003.html)

It's a really interesting insight into how one experienced side in a negotiation can frame things to their advantage.

<comment><USER4> The last page also has some excellent advice on it. My favorite: If you don't like anything about the deal, even if it's just the salesman rubbing the wrong way, just walk away.

The salesman wants you to treat walking away like a nuclear option, but it's the biggest lever you have.

<comment><USER5> They try their best to make you feel like a real asshole for walking away, though, especially if they took you for a test drive and everything. I think a lot of people just don't have the "jerk DNA" to do that. They prey on people's basic politeness.

While, like the author, I can feel some sympathy for the individual salespeople, the industry as a whole is just awful and I can't wait to see it die. It's coasting on pure momentum now but the minute people can reliably buy a car elsewhere, like they would buy any other major item, sayonara dealers.

I just wish I could go to the Car Shop and buy a car the same way I go to a department store and buy a TV. I can look at all the models from all the different brands. They all have a sticker on them with the best price. I choose one, pay for it, and leave. That's all I want! The dealer system adds no value for me at all - in fact it makes the whole experience worse, and then rips you off in the bargain. I just can't stand them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A HN classic: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=263727>

FYI: repeats over a year are fine. Often shorter is ok, but don't push it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I read this a few years ago. It's excellent, but it made my blood boil. I hate manipulation and pressure.

<comment><USER8> The only pressure here is in the tires.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Like most businesses the Internet will change the model of car sales. In a few years there will be fewer dealers and the prolonged negotiations and manipulations will from another era.

Costco is already moving into this space cooperating with local dealers to manage inventory and service. The number of dealers will collapse to the organizations that create an internet buzz around fixed and fair pricing and solid service.

Expect Amazon to move towards this highly leveraged model to connect buyers with inventory.

<comment><USER10> I was in a dealership a few months back to see what options there were. I told the sales man basically I want to fund out what you can offer me. My price range is highly variable I want to make a value/price decision. the salesman immediately tried to find out what my price point was. I tried to explain my price point was dependent on the car. I wanted to know what I could get for how much. the conversation was going nowhere. After word I wondered why they couldn't sale to me. A real-estate agent shows knows different features have different values to different people. these guys couldn't figure this out. what was the problem. I figured that they sale by figuring out what the maximum a person will spend then work their "negotiations" from there. so I doubt this will change anytime soon. And on the issue manufactures can hurt by sales reps poor reputation. have a list to this podcast(or read the highlights) on franchising and the auto industry

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/06/munger_on_franc.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/06/munger_on_franc.html)

or this one with a sales manager and a professor of economics after the prof had a bad experience buying a new car

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/06/cole_on_the_mar.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/06/cole_on_the_mar.html)

<comment><USER11> So effectively you were asking "Which car will get you the lowest return or allow me to negotiate you below the expected sale price?" and you wonder why he didn't bite??

You don't sound like you wanted to buy a car as much as purchase an investment ... estate agents sell both homes and investments (and home-investments), that's why they tailor deals in different ways.

<comment><USER10> "Which car will get you the lowest return or allow me to negotiate you below the expected sale price?"

in a sense yes. however I would like to add my placement on value for certain features are unique to me. I wanted them to at least try to give me some offers. Say well we have this for that. but refuse to say any thing on what they were sell. with a real-estate agents they realize ever customer values to many things at different levels. ie a young family values location to schools. A competent builder might not place much as much importance on newness... this is what I wanted a salesperson for the value they add to me is finding me a product I could be happy with. instead he immediately tried to "find my price" but I had no price for the classification as wide as vehicle.

in they end I ended up getting an used SUV. something I never thought I'd do having a small car for years. with out going into details certain aspects of my life valued 4x4 vehicle and until now with the over supply of used SUVs I never considered owning one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I read this a few years ago already, but it's still as excellent an article as it was. It's both interesting and reveals a lot of human nature.</comment>