Ask HN: Should I notify users in advance when changing my company name? - <AUTHOR>

We are changing our name in a few weeks. It is definitely a better name and better domain. Should I start notifying users, or just turn on the switch with a clear explanation of why the name change? I believe most users will really love the new name but I am wondering what the best practice is when it comes to changing a company name where there are about 50,000 active users. <comment><USER2> I think notifying users in advance may cause confusion. When will the url redirect, etc.

I think it is probably best to send them an email when you make the dns change, and make sure you have a header on redirected pages (if they went to your old url) explaining why they are on a site with a different name.</comment>


Ask HN: Today I got laid off, tomorrow I want to hack - <AUTHOR>

hack 4 hire
My goal is to build a fantastic web business. Until I can construct a core concept and refined pitch I want nothing more than to bury myself in the web stack from top to bottom. If you or a friends startup is hiring shoot me an email at messel at gmail dot com. Or contact me if you think you can help me refine my pitch.
If you'd care to see some humble projects I've worked:
My github:http://github.com/victusfate (I've forked a few repos to learn from)
my first rails app (collaborative project) http://imagebrowser.heroku.com
same concept ported to sinatra/datamapper http://knowsinatra.heroku.com
our startup homepage http://victusmedia.com
other skills: 14 years simulations/modeling + algorithm development in c++, walk-a-holic, blog-aria, diehard dreamer. <comment><USER2> Take some time off, collect unemployment, because you need to find a scratch to itch. I like the positive attitude from your layoff, and that's a very good start. Look for problems that you have, and then look at problems others have. I'll be looking forward to the products you make. Most importantly, you're on your own now--you control your destiny. It'll be a very important distinction because you will be the one who motivates yourself.

<comment><USER3> I was laid off 18-ish months ago from a GREAT job. Had about 5k saved and received about 5k in severance. Buddy and I were working on a wedding-themed startup and in the final interview stages with TechStars.

What I SHOULD have done is collect unemployment and worked my ass off on this wedding project.

What I did INSTEAD was accept another job 3 weeks later working for a music company and blew that 10k on a car to get there. Figured the insurance and paycheck stability was worth working again.

Terrible idea. Not that our wedding-startup idea would have "taken off", but I should have tried harder than I did.

The moral of the story:

Let the government subsidize your startup as long as you can afford to (financially and mentally).

<comment><USER4> In the US you're legally obligated to look for suitable employment as a condition of collecting unemployment. The form even asks if you're looking for employment and if you've turned down paying-now work.

Working on your startup doesn't qualify.

<comment><USER5> Ethically, I would argue that working on a startup is every bit as useful to society as looking for a job. Perhaps even more so.

<comment><USER5> At risk of further downvoting, let me explain. Unemployment checks are there to provide a cushion for people who are not working, but want to be soon. I fail to see the distinction between looking for a job at bigco and ramping up for your own self-employment. Both cases satisfy the spirit of the law (which is to help people get through tough periods on the way to working and generally aid society as a whole).

Obviously, violating the letter of the law can get you in trouble, but in my view, the morality police can rest easy on this one.

<comment><USER4> > I fail to see the distinction between looking for a job at bigco and ramping > up for your own self-employment.

Applying for a job at several bigcos and smallcos can get you off unemployment much faster than a startup.

<comment><USER5> Most of the time, I suppose. But check this out: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/us/03unemployed.html>

People complaining after losing benefits after _99 weeks_ of looking for a job. As a tax payer, I feel way better about someone trying to start a business than someone sitting on the couch "looking" for a job.

But I concede the point - bigco is probably more efficient for most folks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want to hack tomorrow (literally), there is the iOS Dev Camp at EBay/Paypal HQ in San Jose starting tomorrow evening. This is an independent not-for-profit all-volunteer event around the iPhone/iPad platform, but there likely will be teams looking for devs that can do server-side programming (Ruby on Rails is a popular choice), some HTML5, graphics, etc. Cost is modest ($50) for an entire weekend of pizza and code.

I am not one of the organizers, but have attended the past couple of events and had a great time, learned a lot, won some cool prizes.

<http://www.iosdevcamp.org/>

</comment><comment><USER7> messel,

Best of luck to you. Don't love your drive or passion just b/c of your recent layoff. That's more important than any paycheck. And I've found that working even in the best environments can strip that passion from you.

Good luck. I hope you're the next success story I read about here on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes 2 of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Hack 4 hire" sounds like a nice term. I think we should make #hack4hire as a Twitter hashtag.

I'll be out of college in a few months. And all I had in my credit list was one small neat opensource library and 2 web apps (both unknown quantities)

So in order to prettify my resume. I'm working on an android app and a web app and more as I think of ideas. I realized too late that the freelance work I was doing was not something I wanted to decorate my resume with. It was just Wordpress themes and plugins and some other php stuff.

After this post I'm going to be tagging all my tweets announcing code or apps as #hack4hire

Here is what I'm working on right now: 1.) Ruby gem to make html presentations. Coz I need it to give demo-like presentat ions when I teach html/css to my classmates.

2.) 2 android apps. One of them for github.

3.) Going to make tweet4invite. To allow startup to setup pages where they can serve invites to their app in return for a tweet about their startup. (criticism welcome)

EDIT: I had 2 web app ideas. Just put one of them on top of another.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good stuff sing. My githubbing really on started late last year early this year when I had something I wanted to share.

Now I could spend all day learning tricks, api formats, and standards implementation there. Brilliant startup idea by the founders.

<comment><USER8> If you are planning to work on something opensource mail me. My ideas might not be cool like yours. But you've found someone to collaborate. I'm ok with using any language (if I dont know it, I'll learn it quickly).

Does anyone know a site where people have ideas for opensource projects but need collaborators? I just don't want to work on another web framework. Anything crazy is fine. If I have to define crazy... I have an idea to make a 90min stickman movie with Processing. I'm planning to start next month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Hackety Hack project ("_why's masterpiece" as the current maintainer, steveklabnik put it), could use a hand. I just thought of it because Hackety Hack 1.0-pre was just released today. <http://hackety- hack.com/posts/happy_whyday>

<comment><USER10> Hey, my Google Alerts just picked this up. I know it's three days late, I just wanted to say thanks for mentioning Hackety. :) It's much appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It can't be said enough: regardless of whether your next step is to job search or to build a business, take a week off and let your brain unwind. Do it. You'll thank us later.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, I just realized that your blog is on my RSS reader. Keep you head up high. You'll make it eventually.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for subscribing, that means a lot.

My blog isn't founded on multi-million dollar exits, massive investment pools, or hacking bliss. Just one guys daily thoughts and experiences. The smallest success will bring credibility to what is now only words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Check out the reddit is hiring thingy, nothing to lose.

Also: <http://jobs.github.com/positions>

Not exactly start-up stuff but it may help to make ends meet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My location is Long Island, NY. Willing to relocate for the right opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER14> you should add your location.

</comment><comment><USER15> Where are u based?</comment>


Navy drops criminal cases against USS Fitzgerald officers in 2017 collision - <AUTHOR> https://www.stripes.com/news/navy-drops-criminal-cases-against-uss-fitzgerald-officers-charged-in-2017-fatal-collision-1.576528 <comment><USER2> Of course the navy tries to silence the damning internal report of the disaster on board [https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/14/worse- th...](https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/14/worse-than-you- thought-inside-the-secret-fitzgerald-probe-the-navy-doesnt-want-you-to-read/), and the navy actually got money from the innocent merchant vessel owner, whilst it was clear to everyone that only the navy ship was at fault here. [https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/11/ship- own...](https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/11/ship-owners-to- pay-us-government-for-fitzgerald-collision/)</comment>


Can I build enough of a technical foundation in 3 months for YC? - <AUTHOR> I've been learning how to design and code over the last couple weeks and was wondering if I can pick up enough coding knowledge in 3 months to call myself technical from YC's standards/perspective or if that's super unreasonable.
My background: -Worked with a brilliant developer in 2015 to build video search/clip tech for my YouTube channel, proven understanding of business/technical logic when building code (aka: understanding what is and isn't possible with code) -Strong design/content background, picking up this side has been a cinch -Foundations of code learned but very little on-the-ground coding experience
I strongly believe in the power of knowing how to build on your own and am applying to YC as a solo founder. I've been in this position before and believe it's smart to build on my own, but I wonder if I'd be ready enough with 3 months of intensive learning, because otherwise I can't really call myself a technical founder and would need to find a cofounder. I'd be building a video editing tool.
What do you guys think? <comment><USER2> Honestly depends what you are building. If it is just a website then stick to Ruby on Rails or nodejs. Don't worry about patterns or writing correct code. Just get it working. After that hire someone to help you host it online. It's doable but best if you have someone more advance to help you out. It's a full time job for a reason.

As a entrepreneur though, I would say don't do it. It's obviously not your strength, so focus on task that you have impactful value.

</comment><comment><USER3> It takes about 6 months to be technical enough to get a first job as a developer, and then another 18 - 24 months of working full time as a developer to learn enough to have the basic skills necessary to build a product. So no, 3 months probably isn't enough.</comment>


Ask HN: What should I do with 4 GBs of form spam? - <AUTHOR>

I've been collecting form spam for around two years, during which I've collected around 6 GB or 3.7 million submissions, on a website called http://spambotlove.com/
At first I wanted to use the data to generate images or to display statistics, but I don't really have the time or will because I'm very busy with other stuff.
What should I do with it? I guess I could just delete it..?
Would it be of any value to anyone if I would make a simple API to query the DB?
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Instead of deleting it, you may want to share it in a torrent file. Maybe someone could make some better use of it.

<comment><USER3> I whole-heartedly agree. You don't need to do anything yourself, except for releasing the data. Please don't, under any circumstances, delete the dataset.

Edit: Regarding your original question, I think that a torrent would be much more useful than an API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Install Weka (requires Java), do a string to wordvector conversion of your data, and compare SPAM and HAM of your blog. Play around with machine learning. /join #machinelearning @ freenode <\- some of us are using Weka

<comment><USER5> If you don't like Java, you can use Python with the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) and do the same thing. Please _do_ provide the dataset for download.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should add the "rel=nofollow" attribute to the links that you show on your website. You can damage your search engine rankings with spammy outbound links.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I had actually asked about this very same issue a year ago, but the database was much smaller and I didn't really receive any breathtaking ideas.

Also - wtf of the day:: Last submissions was _exactly_ a year ago! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1147085>

<comment><USER6> Close 356 days, not 365, though still close enough to be a note-worthy coincidence!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be neat to generate an image tracking similarities between spam messages. Sounds like a nifty project in R.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true. And even visualizing how spam has changed from two years ago. Choice of words, length, amount of links etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please consider doing at least the following:

Generate a separate file (csv/sql or something) with the structure:

IP Address, number of submissions

and make it available for download.

I guess people could use it to flag probable spam.</comment>


MikroOrm v4 /w GraphQL example project that I created over the weekend - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/driescroons/mikro-orm-graphql-example <comment><USER2> Currently using TypeORM in a production system, has caused us so many issues to be honest highly recommend everyone avoiding.

IMO they've added every feature under the sun but not bothered on focusing on quality, some things just don't work at all, or you get stuck with horrific performance issues. If we weren't so far down the line with it I'd rip the whole thing out although it's causing so much pain I might just bite the bullet and do it anyways

I did see MikroORM the other day and looked promising so cheers for the quick review, if anyone else has any recommendations would be good to hear!

<comment><USER3> Looking through the docs it looks kind of like EntityFramework, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your use case.

My goto for nodejs is still sequelize but without typescript...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've also torn it up with MikroORM this weekend. I figured I'd give my 2¢ review of ORMs in NodeJS.

MikroORM: is maintained, with a lead developer who is receptive to feedback, checks issues and responds. It's also built around the unit-of-work pattern. Unfortunately, there are some bugs – and having looked at the lack and quality of tests, this is unsurprising. Also, look at my note on type-native at the end. Ultimately, I left the weekend with the following thoughts:

1) is using an ORM in NodeJS even worth it or should I just go a level higher to Knex?

2) how smart is it to adopt a framework that may go unmaintained in the future, and is already big enough (in complexity) with a lack of quality tests and promising-but-incomplete docs? am I pointing a gun at my foot?

3) if I were going to go with an ORM in TypeScript today, this would be it. I hope that download numbers will increase, the community will get larger, and the product will continue to advance. The owner cares, but I don't think he can get there on his own.

Non-MikroORM / Community: Many of the ORMs are abandoned – this includes TypeORM, or aren't type-native [f1]. TypeORM was promising (I guess), but I'm really reluctant to work with it on even the most basic tasks. That the documentation is out of date, the issues are unresolved, and maintenance is lacking make this a no-go for me.

p.s. I do sorely miss SQLAlchemy (thanks zzzeek for those good times) when working with DBs in NodeJS.

[f1] type-native: this is actually a double edged sword. The ORM is never going to have type-parity with the underlying DB. So, you really shouldn't invest in building your "schemas" or "migration files" from type metadata. And you'll also only ever be able to type the most basic queries. I'm concerned MikroORM has gone too far down this path.

<comment><USER5> I went through the same thoughts as you and went straight to knex for my last project. Turns out knex also has bugs and the limitations from having it support all the databases means some really useful features are not available.

For my latest project I've gone with pg, writing sql directly, and I'm not looking back. It's so nice not having to write sql through the abstraction layer of knex.

Of course if you think you'll swap your database provider down the line, maybe stay with knex. But I really can't see why I'd want to switch away from postgres at a later date.

<comment><USER6> Have you looked at Hasura?

For some of my latest dev, I've just stopped worrying about writing data plumbing. I have a tool that I can use to update the schema from any arbitrary state to any arbitrary state so long as there are no column modifications, and then Hasura is able to query my entire schema via GraphQL.

You also get row, column, & table-level permissions, an easy auth hook, and the promise of schema stitching (which I must admit I haven't used yet, so I don't know if it's easy or performant).

I can't really speak to performance, but I think the Hasura guys did their best to use Postgres' internals wherever possible. Try it out!

Also, a similar tool is "Xgenecloud", but I didn't like it as much and have only invested time into Hasura.

<comment><USER7> hey, XgeneCloud creator here. How can we improve ? which parts you didn't like

<comment><USER6> I don't have great feedback for you, it's just that I downloaded and ran xgenecloud and was exceedingly confused what to do from the UI that it spawned. It didn't seem clear to me how I could get started, and my options were plentiful; I would've been ok to make a new database thru your UI, point your tool at an existing database, or anything else, but I just didn't have a clear path to querying a schema.

With Hasura, I could run it with about 2 docker commands and build a schema thru their web UI, use GraphiQL in their web UI to query the schema, and read docs to get a clear path on how I might use this artifact in production.

I guess I would just use Hasura if I was you and see what the experience is like vs XgeneCloud, maybe it will show you what I saw.

<comment><USER7> I hear you - thank you for the feedback. I've got similar feedback from devs who are liking XgeneCloud as well. We are in really early days of our journey - I promise to improve this flow by many folds.

The way it currently works is :

* Each new project has a folder in your filesystem where GraphQL API source code is generated on pointing to database! So when we generate APIs, we also generate source code for those APIs (node.js/express.js) behind the scenes. This is a big leap on how easy it becomes to customise APIs or put some business logic in them

* Thereafter, as and when a developer changes schema (add table, add column etc) - the underlying GraphQL code also gets updated automatically.

Here is a demo of generating GraphQL on postgres & GUI based schema design:

[https://youtu.be/QEq3Mjbeelg](https://youtu.be/QEq3Mjbeelg)

[https://youtu.be/ETEEcY4mmEg](https://youtu.be/ETEEcY4mmEg)

Feel to free reach out on twitter/Discord (in profile). Happy to help you get started.

edit: sentence corrections

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm loving zapatos now.

Although not an ORM, it fits my needs.</comment>


Stealth Electric Car Company Hunting Tesla, Faraday - <AUTHOR> http://electrek.co/2016/06/15/tesla-model-s-chief-engineer-atieva-all-electric-luxury-sedan/ <comment><AUTHOR> A friend of mine has been working here for the past year and bursting with excitement over the tech and design. They've been extremely silent in public, and even this close friend has given me zero insight into what they're working on. We're former Army intel and NSA guys, so I respect that, but it's cool to see them start to make some public overtures.</comment>


Ask HN: How to go back to classic Gmail? - <AUTHOR> So, it appears Google has decided that everyone now has to use their new "better" version of Gmail.
I personally can't stand it, it's way too much, animations all over the place, it feels cluttered and over the top.
Any suggestions for going back? If it's not possible, I am seriously considering jumping off to another provider so suggestions there would also be appreciated as a second option.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Update your bookmarks to: [https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/)

<comment><USER3> Now redirects to a page titled "Do you really want to use HTML Gmail?" \-- which speaks volumes about the new UI is being much more coercitive on the user than previous ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish I knew... Anyway, ditto: The new Gmail looks awful to me. So does the new Chrome actually. I wish there was an option to roll back to 2015 in terms of design for everything.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Not everything needs a "fresh" look. The new reddit design is terrible and once they make that permanent I'll probably just stop using it as much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The number of posts from people who dislike the new Gmail is large, particularly those (like me) who have difficulty reading it. There is a petition at [https://www.change.org/p/google-inc-change-gmail-back-so- it-...](https://www.change.org/p/google-inc-change-gmail-back-so-it-is- readable)

</comment><comment><USER7> The first option on the settings menu (click the gear icon) is "Go back to classic Gmail."

<comment><AUTHOR> Not anymore :(

<comment><USER8> Mine still has the ability to switch back (Gear - Back to Classic Gmail). However, when I do switch back it pops up and says I will be forced to the new version in 1 week. I guess it is wishful thinking that if a lot of people switch back, Google may get the hint their new interface is horrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have you tried setting it to Comfortable? That's pretty similar to classic Gmail.

<comment><USER10> I don't like the new design either but this made it bearable.

<comment><USER11> The new compose button is horrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's how: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18096225](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18096225)

</comment><comment><USER13> You can disable java script and use the html version instead

<comment><USER14> Thw html version is much faster and needs way less resources than the new and 'improved' gmail.</comment></comment>


What Our Primate Relatives Say About War (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/what-our-primate-relatives-say-about-war-7996 <comment><USER2> The entire article is based on bad interpretations of bad science. Chimps aren't as warlike and bonobos aren't as peaceful as the popular science press puts them. Tellingly, the article is written by professors of political science and not evolutionary biologists.</comment>


Unix Toolbox - <AUTHOR> http://cb.vu/unixtoolbox.xhtml <comment><USER2> Unix Rosetta Stone is also very useful: [http://bhami.com/rosetta.html](http://bhami.com/rosetta.html)

<comment><USER3> I've recently started using Arch and their Pacman Rosetta has helped me a lot, it has equivalences in package managers for all the popular distros: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Rosetta](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Rosetta)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It was on my bookmarks for a long time. I thought it would be nice to share with you guys.

There are so many times I do searches on HN to recall about some nice things I've seen oh the web... Quite often, the comments are the gems!

<comment><USER4> Yeah I found this via HN a couple years ago. This along with the following links will help anyone getting into sysadmin work:

[https://github.com/jlevy/the-art-of-command- line](https://github.com/jlevy/the-art-of-command-line) | [https://www.bento.io/grid](https://www.bento.io/grid) | [https://www.sqlteaching.com/](https://www.sqlteaching.com/)

<comment><USER5> [https://nixsrv.com/llthw](https://nixsrv.com/llthw) is the real deal (IMHO).

<comment><USER4> Bookmarked! I know a few getting into linux that could take advantage of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bro Pages (instead of "man" pages) is a similar resource I find myself using surprisingly often [http://bropages.org/browse](http://bropages.org/browse)

<comment><USER7> That project is a symptom of manual pages not having good "EXAMPLES" sections. The examples on that web page should be contributed upstream to the manuals pages of the software that they are for.

If you want a fast way to _read_ the EXAMPLES section _only_ for a command, here is a shell function which creates an 'eg' command which only displays the "EXAMPLES" section of manual pages:

      eg(){
          MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING=1 man "$@" 2>/dev/null \
              | sed --quiet --expression='/^E\(\x08.\)X\(\x08.\)\?A\(\x08.\)\?M\(\x08.\)\?P\(\x08.\)\?L\(\x08.\)\?E/{:a;p;n;/^[^ ]/q;ba}' \
              | ${MANPAGER:-${PAGER:-pager -s}}
      }

Usage:

      $ eg tar
      EXAMPLES
           Create archive.tar from files foo and bar.
                 tar -cf archive.tar foo bar
           List all files in archive.tar verbosely.
                 tar -tvf archive.tar
           Extract all files from archive.tar.
                 tar -xf archive.tar
      $

<comment><USER8> Thank you, this is really helpful.

Could anyone contribute a version for OSX?

<comment><USER9> If you have homebrew you can just install the 'gnu-sed' package and then change the function to call 'gsed' instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An excellent page to keep handy or for browsing! Thanks for the link.

A different (but related) resource: [http://explainshell.com](http://explainshell.com) \- good for deciphering those tricker commands.

</comment><comment><USER11> this is an incredibly useful shortlist of commands, most of these I've used before - some I've used and forgotten (mount -o remount,ro)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is pretty great. Would be cool to get a filtered list based on the OS you were using.

<comment><USER13> That's one the advantages of Rosetta Stone - [http://bhami.com/rosetta.html](http://bhami.com/rosetta.html)

It was posted elsewhere in this thread first — [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10023535](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10023535) — so don't vote my comment up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> hostname -i on cb.vu says the IP address is 126.96.36.199, but if you ping a host from the interface, the pings originate from 22.214.171.124 (according to tcpdump).

<comment><USER15> On this system hostname -i says 127.0.1.1, despite this address not being set on any of my interfaces (lo0 is 127.0.0.1).

<comment><USER15> It looks like hostname -i is getting its value from /etc/hosts. hostname --all-ip-addresses returns the correct result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is really incredible list. Very useful when in need. Especially the switches that come in very handy.

</comment><comment><USER17> > 2.2 Priority - ... Every command launched from this shell will have a lover > priority. ...

You probably meant lower :)

</comment><comment><USER18> What an awesome list. Props!

</comment><comment><USER19> This is awesome, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER20> I used to know a lot of this stuff. With Puppet, Chef, and then Ansible, I've found myself needing to know less and less of it.

<comment><USER21> And instead you now need to know a layer of abstraction and relearn that layer whenever it re-invents itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What is with cb.vu? It takes you to the shell prompt...

<comment><USER15> [http://www.metafilter.com/70908/A-Virtually-Virtual- Terminal](http://www.metafilter.com/70908/A-Virtually-Virtual-Terminal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice list! Bookmarked.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is great. Could use more on the Mac OS X side, though.</comment>


Awless.io is a new user interface for AWS - <AUTHOR> https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/06/01/open-source-awless-io-touted-new-cli-alternative-amazon-web-services/ <comment><USER2> cool tools!</comment>


Artificial Spleen Removes Ebola, HIV Viruses and Toxins from Blood Using Magnets - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/artificial-spleen-removes-ebola-hiv-viruses-toxins-blood-using-magnets-1465585

<comment><USER2> It's a shame that the message was lost when we shot the messenger and didn't upvote this topic. The writing quality aside, even if this were FICTION, the idea of using 'nanobeads' or magnets to bind to and extract an undesirable element from a target environment was the eye opener for me. What other ways can this/has this concept been applied, inside or outside of biology?

Even if the DARPA grant leads to a dead end, there's bound to be some interesting side effects to pursuing this. I wish them luck and will be on the lookout for more related articles—even poorly written ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Artificial Spleen Removes Ebola, HIV Viruses and Toxins From Blood

The reservoir for HIV isn't the blood; it's the brain, lymph nodes & bone marrow. So cleaning blood isn't a cure (it's been tried many times).

> able to clear toxins, fungi and deadly pathogens such as Ebola from human > blood

Except when it can't. Like how does it pick active virus out of a living T-cell without destroying all the non-infected T-cells?

> When antibiotics are used to kill them, dying viruses release toxins

Antibiotics don't kill viruses.

> dying viruses release toxins in the blood that begin to multiply quickly

Toxins aren't alive and don't multiply.

> rats that had been infected by toxins and viruses such as E. coli

E.coli isn't a virus or a toxin.

It's almost as if someone wanted to create and Onion-esque parody of breathless "wonder medicine" articles that shamefully misrepresent the research. I wonder if the researchers can sue IBT for damaging their professional reputation.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's the worst science writing I've ever seen. To help sooth your eyes: [http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/166](http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/166)

<comment><USER2> Thanks ttronicm for sharing this. Here's another related release about additional funding from DARPA: [http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/108/wyss- institute-...](http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/108/wyss-institute- awarded-darpa-contract-to-further-advance-sepsis-therapeutic-device)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which backpack do you use for work and work travel? - <AUTHOR> I have been using this for almost 7 years now [1], has really served me well.<p>Wanted to know from fellow HNers if they have any recommendations for a backpack usable for work, work travel (2-3 day travel) and as a backpack usable otherwise on leisure travel as well.<p>[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XANKVO/ <comment><USER2> I will link you to the backpack/EDC rabbit hole that is: [http://www.carryology.com/](http://www.carryology.com/)

The Bellroy backpacks look very nice: [https://bellroy.com/](https://bellroy.com/)

<comment><USER3> I'd imagine if you've gone down that rabbit hole, you know Chase Reeves and his reviews? [https://youtu.be/-jYZYKJaqq0](https://youtu.be/-jYZYKJaqq0)

<comment><USER2> Yea! Chase is a character. Bo Ismono is another guy who does good reviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I spent almost two years looking for the perfect backpack for myself and finally found it last spring.

I considered a lot of options like the Peak Design offerings, Pinq Ponq, Wandrd, Boundary, Black Ember and Fstop.

I had a hard limit of 300 dollars, wanted something that had 30+ liters, wouldn't look dumb half empty and water resistant and ethically procuced. It should also have a water bottle mesh, internal organisation and pockets on the outside and straps to hang stuff onto.

I ended up choosing the Aevor Travel.

It expands from 38 to 45 liters and has straps so that you can tighten it up when it's empty so it looks good even when it's empty and isn't ridiculously big. Fills all of my other requirements and it's durable. it also has removable chest and waist straps (as I don't use them usually except when traveling and fully packed) so they're never in the way. I even spilt my full thermos of coffee with milk on it, by accident obviously, and it cleared right up with no stains.

Super happy, especially considering that I got it for under 100 dollars.

</comment><comment><USER5> A huge fan of Tactical 5.11 Rush72 [1] here. My favorite features:

\- large in volume (55L), yet I can board a plane with it

\- side pockets can be easily opened even if the main compartment is fully packed

\- easily accessible and large front admin panel

\- waist straps can be folded and hidden inside the bag

\- the zip around the main compartment goes around all three sides, which allows very easy access for packing, unpacking or activities like having a picnic

\- space between admin panel and the main compartment allows for extra external storage. for example, today I was carrying a small carpet bought in IKEA in there.

\- wide straps which feel comfortable also with heavier loads

\- looks ok also in a city, especially darker versions

\- plenty of internal pockets everywhere

\- dedicated back pocket for a laptop.

The only downside is that I'm not sure if a 15" laptop would fit into the back pocket. I'm using a 13" laptop and it fits. However, the backpack is so feature-rich that it's ok for me to put the potential 15" laptop to the main compartment - there's a half-pocket that can be used for that purpose.

All in all, this is by far the best backpack I have ever used.

[1] [https://www.511tactical.com/rush-72-backpack.html](https://www.511tactical.com/rush-72-backpack.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm using this: [https://www.amazon.com/Thule-Crossover-Rolling-Carry- Renewed...](https://www.amazon.com/Thule-Crossover-Rolling-Carry- Renewed/dp/B07TW84CNL)

You might think it's not a backpack (and it's not) but after traveling for quite a while, I found that the comfort of the backpack is proportional to how much weight you are putting on your shoulders. So I decided that weight should be 0. So far, I have found success sneaking it even in cheap short flights.

Pros:

\- No weight on your shoulders. This adds up quite a bit if you are standing up for many hours waiting for your flight, bus, etc...

\- You can put more items in there.

\- It looks nice and the material quality is good.

Cons:

\- It's not good for a day-trip or going out.

To fix the con, I'd suggest you use a small very light bag that you can fit with no space on this backpack. This will force you to think what items you take out with you when you are going out and avoid taking a bunch of items that you'll probably won't need. (ps: this doesn't apply if you want to do hiking and stuff like that).

</comment><comment><USER3> I've used and love the Peak Design Everyday Backpack 30L for the past two years and absolutely love it. [https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Design-Everyday- Backpack-Camera/...](https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Design-Everyday-Backpack- Camera/dp/B01M3Y038Q)

Originally I was on the fence because it's an expensive purchase ($289). Honestly wish I purchased this sooner.

One of the major reasons I purchased this was for work/work travel so I could carry a camera with me. It's my entire mobile office as I've worked remotely. It's lived through ~100k airline miles, 60k driving miles, and the last 6 months living out of a van.

I typically am hard on my gear, but all the Peak Design gear holds up really well. It actually looks better with age.

From the top of a mountain shooting pictures to walking down any street in a major city. It's not out of place, which is really nice.

It's very modular and with a pouch or two, it fits everything I could ask to fit in with room for more.

<comment><USER7> Seconding this! I LOVE the Peak Design Everyday Backpack.

I wrote a series of Tweets a few months ago sharing what I love about it: [https://twitter.com/awwstn/status/1156969712850366464](https://twitter.com/awwstn/status/1156969712850366464)

<comment><USER3> All of these things! I'm not sure if I would have purchased if not for the camera specific need, but I know more people than not who carry this without a camera.

The dividers are great to separate things including gym clothes. My cousin loves hers for the daily commute in DC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of people recommended goruck. They are great, but they don't gave much in the way of organizational compartments.

They are built very well. They are expensive but on patriotic holidays they usually have good sales. If you are a veteran sometimes you can get them for less than half of retail.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been using the North Face resistor[1] for about two years.

Pros:

\- Sturdy and great quality

\- A lot of space

\- Comes with a charger

\- Nice design

Cons

\- Expensive

\- I don't think it fits well under the seat when you take it with you on the plane. It uses a lot of space

[1] [https://www.thenorthface.com/shop/resistor-charged- nf0a3kxj](https://www.thenorthface.com/shop/resistor-charged-nf0a3kxj)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm a fan of the Millican brand [0], I own a Smith The Roll 18L one, awesome backpack.

Or Ortlieb [1], another very good brand

[0] [https://www.homeofmillican.com/](https://www.homeofmillican.com/) [1] [https://www.ortlieb.com/products/backpacks/active- backpacks](https://www.ortlieb.com/products/backpacks/active-backpacks)

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004LSBYR0](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004LSBYR0) I have used this for a few years as my everything backpack, originally bought it to cycle in to work because I showered at the gym (so was carrying everything I needed for the morning in there including work clothes, toiletries etc.)

\- Super cheap

\- Hard wearing (just about breaking after 3.5 years)

\- Very large capacity (just about get away with it as a cabin bag)

\- Nice little laptop sized pocket in the middle

<comment><USER12> I have the same exact bag, had it for about 3 years. Still great. Got inspired by Mr. Robot and had to get one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ahh a topic for me!

I spent WAY too many hours looking at all the backpacks recently.

If you use public transit or travel, I highly recommend the Timbuk2 Never Check Backpack.

I had my previous Timbuk2 for over 10 years and it was terrific.

I looked at Ebags, Peak Design, etc. I found the Peak Design are too fiddly. Too many pockets and dividers. The eBags laptop bag is too heavy for what it is.

If you want something smaller than the Never Check, I'd go for the Timbuk2 Division Pro (only the pro has the luggage strap)

</comment><comment><USER14> Thule Crossover 32L

[https://www.amazon.com/Thule-Crossover-32L-Backpack- Black/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Thule-Crossover-32L-Backpack- Black/dp/B004XANKVO/ref=sr_1_11?dchild=1&keywords=thule+25L&qid=1574460004&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&sr=8-11)

has lifetime warranty, documents and sunglasses pocket. fits a macbook pro, tablet, has a zipper on the bottom for your charger.

It's awesome.

</comment><comment><USER15> I use the Wenger Carbon - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B001LA57ZQ](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B001LA57ZQ)

It's not the cheapest one but certainly not luxury. Has a nice padded slot for a laptop (I use a 15 inch laptop) and plenty of space for other stuff.

I use it both for carrying my laptop and I can also fit enough clothes for a week-long vacation.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've used an Arcteryx Granville 20 for the past 3 years. Its waterproof and has a has a nice padded laptop sleeve inside it.

[https://www.arcteryx.com/us/en/shop/granville-20-backpack](https://www.arcteryx.com/us/en/shop/granville-20-backpack)

</comment><comment><USER17> I have been using this Samsonite backpack: [https://www.samsonite.co.uk/guardit-2.0-laptop- backpack-17.3...](https://www.samsonite.co.uk/guardit-2.0-laptop-backpack-17.3 --l--black/115331-1041.html) for pretty much daily for the past couple of years.

It has been excellent, looks and feels like new, really big pockets and fits a ton of accessories.

</comment><comment><USER18> A Jansport standard backpack

</comment><comment><USER19> The OnePlus Travel Backpack. Comfortable padded straps, padded & firm back, enough internal & external pockets and pouches. Doesn't extend much outwards, so the weight stays in the right place, it looks good and fits easily in overhead compartments sideways or under a plane/train seat. If I pack light I can take enough for an overnight trip.

</comment><comment><USER20> The backpack that came with my ThinkPad.

Wide comfortable straps, padded back, sufficient pockets, enough room for light business or personal travel (change of basic clothes, etc), pretty robust.

Given the volume of them I see in airports, I'm surprised I'm the only one mentioning these.

</comment><comment><USER21> The PRVKE [1] is one of my favorite. You can add extension if you travel or photography.

I love the design, it's one of the most important thing I look at for a bag.

[1] [https://wandrd.com/products/prvke](https://wandrd.com/products/prvke)

</comment><comment><USER22> I have switched to a basic Fjallraven backpack. Its very durable, no gimmicks, and fits way more than it looks like.

</comment><comment><USER23> I use one of the Dakine backpacks. I found them to be really good quality, decent price (<£100) and good looking.

I use it for everything. Travelled around the world, went to my parent's place over weekend, for work, ...

</comment><comment><USER24> After looking at posted backpacks, I wonder what you all are carrying in these huge bags.

I just use an Osprey daypack. It takes a MacBook, iPad, a notebook, bottle of water, a bag of nuts, and a small towel. I just can't imagine carrying anything bigger.

<comment><USER9> When you are in consulting it's not rare to have to carry 2 or even 3 laptops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Love the all-black Aer Fit Pack, which they've since updated to the Fit 2 [https://www.aersf.com/fit-pack-2-black](https://www.aersf.com/fit- pack-2-black). Lots of room, super durable and did I mention all black?

</comment><comment><USER26> have been using a goruck-gr0 for a while now. slightly pricey, but quite good imho.

<comment><USER27> Goruck GR1 here. I got it 2.5 years ago before the prices went up, love it. It's not too far on the tacticool side of things, but close.

<comment><USER8> The people that sell goruck claim that it doesn't look like a "tacticool" backpack but honestly they aren't fooling anyone.

I have one too and I love it, but it screams tactical backpack and you can spot a goruck a mile away.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, MOLLE on the front and side will tend to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Since I drive to work, don't use a laptop and don't travel for work, a $1 shopping bag from Aldi suits me. Fits my lunch and anything else I want to quickly chuck in to take with me.

</comment><comment><USER29> DSPTCH Daypack:

[https://www.dsptch.com/products/daypack-ballistic- nylon](https://www.dsptch.com/products/daypack-ballistic-nylon)

</comment><comment><USER30> I use an Amazon Basics backpack which I think is great. I also have a Briggs and Riley briefcase which is holding up extremely well too.

</comment><comment><USER31> I bought an Osprey Quasar backpack at the start of my PhD program, and I am still using it now for work. It has held up great, all things considered.</comment>


Mp3HD: New lossless MP3 format explained - <AUTHOR> http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/0,39029432,49301678,00.htm <comment><USER2> > _Simply put, it works by storing a conventional lossy MP3 track that > standard players can play, alongside a 'lossless' version -- both audio > streams are contained in one single MP3 file. It's similar to how hybrid > SACDs work._

That will create some huge files, but I guess in the interest of compatibility it might be worth it. But I'd much rather see a free lossless codec take off instead.</comment>


The New C++: Lay down your guns, knives, and clubs - <AUTHOR> http://m.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/11/herb_sutter_next_c_plus_plus/ <comment><USER2> <tl;dr> C++0x is pretty nice. </tl;dr>

But ultimately, as long as it lacks memory safety, it lives in a mostly parallel universe from Java and everything else. It's not really becoming more Java-like. It's becoming more C++-like. C++0x goes in the direction of having better support for existing C++ idioms.

<comment><USER3> _it lives in a mostly parallel universe from Java and everything else_

So the top 3 programming languages are Java, C, and C++, with C/C++ together larger than Java. Maybe it's Java that lives in a parallel universe?

<comment><USER4> I don't get your point. If A lives in a parallel universe from B, then B lives in a parallel universe from A.

I think what the grandparent wanted to say is that memory management is a defining difference between the paradigms of both languages. There are some people who value the fact that they have full control over allocation and de- allocation and others who think that these are things the programmer shouldn't (have to) care about, because they're known to be error prone.

<comment><USER5> The original parent said "Java and _everything else_ ", leaving an implication that unmanaged memory stuff was marginal. I think that's what the gp is addressing.

<comment><USER2> Nope, kleiba correctly interpreted my comment :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always imagined Herb Sutter as a Gandalf-like figure and here he is looking like a partner in a New York law firm. I guess it is possible to achieve guru status without a beard.

I can't wait to get support for the "auto" keyword in XCode.

<comment><USER7> Apparently he has had a mustache, so no guru status without facial hair yet:

<http://www.xb360info.com/images/herb_sutter.jpg>

<comment><USER8> Ha, you should have seen Alex Martelli while he still had a moustache: [http://images-mediawiki- sites.thefullwiki.org/05/3/0/3/32378...](http://images-mediawiki- sites.thefullwiki.org/05/3/0/3/3237892484320994.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> FTA: "the Apache MapReduce clustered data-processing architecture, ... is written in C++"

Really? Hadoop is pure Java.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, that caught my eye too. I assume they just got Hadoop mixed up with Google's C++ MapReduce implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Interestingly, C++ was ratified as an ISO standard just as Java failed to get ISO pick-up after a campaign by Sun_

Actually, even more interestingly, Java failed to become an ISO standard because Sun _didn't_ want it (at the time they were worried about the potential influence of Microsoft).

</comment><comment><USER12> I have a lot of respect for Herb Sutter--his articles on difficulty of multiprogramming are worth study by all. But there is an element of Kool-aid in his comments about other languages. Hadoop is written in Java; much of the world is written in C, and in very restricted versions of C++. I say this as one who did 10 years in industrial-strength C++ programming.

If you look at C++ without rose-colored glasses, it is a pretty frightening prospect. _Modern C++ Design_ by Andrei Alexandrescu is a very awesome book, but the fact that there are surprises in it for Scott Meyers should give the student pause.

And to all of you who are beginning programming, you will be better off in the long run if you become proficient in several languages. I predict that in your successful career you will be ahead if you are able to pick up new languages rapidly. Time spent mastering C++ might not be the best use of your learning budget.

</comment><comment><USER13> "... the Apache MapReduce clustered data-processing architecture ..." I'm not very familiar with internals of Hadoop - but thought this was mostly Java.

</comment><comment><USER14> Doesn't change the fact that the C++ design is a giant ball of mud.

<comment><USER15> Care to back up that statement? Can you explain how objects and patterns in C++ make the design worse than objects and patterns in another language?

<comment><USER16> Here's a list of what seem to me, in hindsight, to be the biggest mistakes in the design of C++:

1) Header files. They don't improve your code or your build process in any way, they just make you retype everything twice and make the compiler reprocess everything as many times as it's included. There's no reason why even a low-level language today can't have a module system like Java's, where everything is typed in and compiled only once.

2) Having exceptions without having garbage collection. Having both of these, or none of these, would have been OK, but having one and not the other makes writing exception-safe code unnecessarily difficult. It took people years to write the first correct exception-safe container class and understand all the tricky leaks that can happen. See Tom Cargill's 1994 article: [http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/imprint_downloads/informit/aw...](http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/imprint_downloads/informit/aw/meyerscddemo/DEMO/MAGAZINE/CA_FRAME.HTM) and Herb Sutter's failed answer in 1997: <http://www.gotw.ca/gotw/008.htm> .

3) The template mechanism is too general and not a good fit for many of the tasks that people are trying to solve with it. Easy tasks like parameterized container types would've been better solved with a simpler mechanism like Ada generics (no specialization, no implicit instantiation, only one copy of object code, possible to compile separately). Harder tasks should be solved with purpose-built mechanisms, e.g. if you really need lambda, build it into the language. Faking lambda with templates isn't much better than faking it with preprocessor macros.

4) Strings should've been built in, and done right. There must be only one string type (Unicode). All string literals must be instances of that type. No null-terminated strings anywhere, they're a very bad default. If your application demands shaving a couple cycles from operations on character buffers, you can always use custom code.

I'm not asking for garbage collection, multithreading, GUI toolkits or any other fancy features. C++ could've gotten these five things right and still be a very good fit for all the bare metal speed hackery that people want.

<comment><USER17> Not that I am a C++ fanboy, but your list is sort of orthogonal to what I would list.

 _1) Header files. They don't improve your code or your build process in any way_

They improve modularity. I have a header for each module which list the functionality exposed from that module and nothing else.

This avoids leaking implementation details, helper functions, etc. and it allows me to "ship" the module in binary form (a static or dynamic library).

 _2) Having exceptions without having garbage collection._

As for your example of container classes, the problem (IIRC) is to not leave the container in an invalid state, when the exception is thrown, e.g. if you insert a range into a vector, and an exception occurs in the middle of this, you need to rollback before rethrowing the exception.

Relying on the rules of when objects with automatic storage are destructed actually makes this easier than not having automatic storage (but instead a garbage collected heap with non-deterministic behavior).

 _3) The template mechanism is too general and not a good fit for many of the tasks that people are trying to solve with it_

The C++ template mechanisms gave us STL, something the author said no other language allowed him to create, and something I am truly grateful for having been exposed to in my career.

While I don't particularly like many of the uses of templates in boost, i.e. the template expressions you refer to (like faking lambda functions) I don't consider it a mistake to have introduced a flexible compile-time macro system. I mean, everything can be misused…

 _4) Strings should've been built in, and done right_

Strings weren't really "designed", many compiler vendors did their own string classes, and the standard tried to adopt sort of a common denominator (I mention this since your list is issues with the C++ design).

As for having to be built in: I don't think types beyond the most primitive stuff needs to be built in, but the language should allow the user (library supplier) to introduce new types that look and feel exactly like built in types, that way, we can also get regexps, matrixes, associative arrays, sets, a.s.o. as types which feel like first class citizens.

<comment><USER16> > _[Header files] improve modularity. I have a header for each module which > list the functionality exposed from that module and nothing else._

Have you seen how Java does it? You annotate your stuff as "public" when you want to expose it.

> _As for your example of container classes, the problem (IIRC) is to not > leave the container in an invalid state, when the exception is thrown, e.g. > if you insert a range into a vector, and an exception occurs in the middle > of this, you need to rollback before rethrowing the exception._

There are two problems: leaving the container in a valid state, and avoiding memory leaks. The former is a problem in most languages with parameterized types and exceptions. The latter is a problem only in C++, because what you call "automatic storage" makes exception-safety difficult as I pointed out. Since adding garbage collection to C++ is still a non-starter, I'm gonna go ahead and say adding exceptions was a mistake. The C way with error codes was better. With error codes, writing an error-safe Stack class would've been a task for one day instead of three years. (Granted, the code would've been longer and less "subtle". I don't care.)

> _The C++ template mechanisms gave us STL, something the author said no other > language allowed him to create, and something I am truly grateful for having > been exposed to in my career._

I'm not sure the STL should ever have been made an industrial standard. People mostly need things like foreach, filter, fold, find, sort... STL's interface for such operations is too convoluted, you have to write a lot of weird code that doesn't do anything except make the compiler happy, learn about iterators etc. The sweet-spot interface (IMO) is by using closures, like Smalltalk does it:

        product := 0.
        numbers do: [:each | product := product * each]

> _As for having to be built in: I don't think types beyond the most primitive > stuff needs to be built in_

Well, you can't help having strings built in, because the language has string literals, right? They must evaluate to something. All I'm saying is that the wrong default (making them evaluate to a pointer that points to the start of a null-terminated string, and having tons of library functions that accept those) is worse than the right default (making them evaluate to an instance of a built-in string type).

> _the language should allow the user (library supplier) to introduce new > types that look and feel exactly like built in types, that way, we can also > get regexps, matrixes, associative arrays, sets, a.s.o. as types which feel > like first class citizens._

This generally doesn't work unless your language is extremely syntactically malleable, like Lisp, and I'm not sure it's an especially worthwhile goal. Can C++ get regexp literals like in Perl? Map literals like in Javascript? Actually it doesn't even have array literals, instead it has "initializers" that aren't even rvalues. I think the sane decision is to give the user a bunch of built-in types that cover like 80% of the required functionality (booleans, numbers, strings, arrays, closures, maybe also regexps and maps) and let them implement the rest as libraries without worrying that their new type "looks just like a built-in".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Garbage Collection, Garbage Collection, Garbage Collection, where is garbage collection?

<comment> X-Istence Left out, which IMHO is a good thing. The C++ language as it stands right now, especially with the C++0x additions has provided plenty of new features that are going to help developers build amazing software with more power.

Not everyone wants or needs garbage collection and it would be a downright pain to bolt it on now.

Feel free to use one of the umpteen other programming languages that does provide garbage collection, clearly if you are complaining about that you are simply using the wrong tool for the job.

<comment><USER19> C++ has garbage collectors. They're just not standard:

<http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/>

<http://developers.sun.com/solaris/articles/libgc.html>

[http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n183...](http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1833.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can somebody recommend a good C++ book without all the new to programming parts?

<comment><USER21> Yes, the following I recommend:

Advanced C++. [http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-C-Programming-Styles- Idioms/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-C-Programming-Styles- Idioms/dp/0201548550)

Any and all Herb Sutter books.

Effective C++, More Effective C++, and Effective STL ... all by Scott Myers.

With those you're 90% set. What you'll need to supplement with thoough is something that covers the 0x standard.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:What e-commerce package should I use? - <AUTHOR>

I am developing an e-commerce site to sell custom built computers, parts, software and consumer electronics.  Kind of like New Egg, but with a limited selection of best in class products.  I would like to integrate strong community / social marketing into the site.
I have looked at osCommerce, Zen Cart, Magento, and others.  I'll most likely end up going with an open source solution and customizing it.
Do you have any recommendations or experience? <comment><USER2> I love and use osCommerce. There is great support for it in the community. IMHO, oscommerce is only good for the e-commerce aspect and wouldn't really serve well for the "community/social marketing" aspect of the site.

I would recommend getting Joomla with the VirtueMart (<http://virtuemart.net/>) module. VirtueMart provides a very good shopping cart solution and you can use the Joomla CMS for all other aspects of your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll have to look into virtumart- I have heard about it, and I have worked with Joomla in the past. Might be a good fit.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Magento is a more modern application, and looks significantly cleaner internally than Zen or osCommerce. They also have significant forward momentum --it seems to offer the right solution set to a large class of users, and so it's rise in popularity has been dramatic (I get yelled at daily because our product can only install it on a few very modern distros, because of the PHP 5.2 requirement).

I don't get a headache (much) looking at the Magento source, but it is a huge project with hundreds of files, and I can imagine it would take a long time to grasp it when it comes to customization. But, the other two you mention are also subject to this problem, and their code is a bit more old-fashioned (and given that the PHP community has only recently begun to pay attention to maintainability and readable/testable code, that's an important consideration). Though none of them seem to have _any_ unit tests, so I guess it's still not quite caught on.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would look into Amazon Webstore as well, just to see if it meets your needs. It is less customizable in terms of changing the code, but it definitely encourages purchases, which Amazon has down pretty good, and you can also probably get a few products that you might not want to stock, and sell them on commission. You can always build the social part over the store, with people only going there to purchase something.</comment>


Your GitHub News Feed, Without The Mess - <AUTHOR> https://octofeed.heliom.ca/

<comment><USER2> I made a chrome extension to clean up my news feed a while back. With help from others its getting better and better (doesn't need any privs, just cleans up the page): <https://github.com/dforsyth/gh-girdle>

<comment><USER3> I've actually been using this for a dotjs file. Exactly what I needed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Working on something like that too, but it's a rough work in progress:

<http://gitify.me>

I'm planning on adding filters so that I can get notifications for only pull requests and files I care about etc. Also planning on adding a chrome extension to make setting up alerts easy and notifications via Google Talk and SMS.

Very early stages right now. And don't click on any of the billing stuff because it will bill but doesn't do anything else.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why do you need write access?

<comment><USER6> This is only so we can read your private events. There is a public version (no write access) if you don't want to give write access. If you don't even have private repos, don't bother ;)

Do note that the app doesn't use it's write privilege. (see <https://github.com/EtienneLem/octofeed>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks good. Are you going to implement filters? I (try to, unsuccessfully) follow various projects. Some very active. I'd love to be able to filter what events I see from certain projects. E.g, for Symfony2 I only want to see new tags, new issues and closed issues. For other projects I want to see everything. Oh, and I never ever want to see TravisBot in my news feed.

</comment><comment><USER8> The people that will find this most useful are probably the same people who won't want to give you read/write access to their repos.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. A browser extension/greasemonkey script would be a better option in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't work. At least, not the public version. I logged in with GitHub, but it still just shows me the first page that asks me to log in. It shows my identity properly in the upper-right so I'm definitely logged in.

<comment><USER6> Sorry about that, it does look like a recurring problem for some people. I cannot reproduce this issue on my end. What browser are you using?

<comment><USER10> Safari

Looks like it's working now. Well, kinda. It shows 4 entries, but when I hit More it just shows a spinner for a moment and then does nothing.

<comment><USER6> Oooh, that does give me a hint about what's going on. It should be fixed. Let me know. Thanks

<comment><USER10> Seems like it's working now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This chrome extension <https://github.com/dforsyth/gh-girdle> is a phenomenal way to clean up your Github News Feed - much better than this.

<comment><USER12> How do I install it?

<comment><USER13> Go to crx/*.crx, and click on 'Raw' button. Chrome will ask you to install it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So... what does it do? Are the screeshots anywhere? A description?

<comment><USER15> After some searching, I finally clicked on the link at the bottom to the blog post: <http://heliom.ca/en/blog/octofeed>

It has a couple of screenshots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great, now make it an extension (or userscript), please. :) I'd like to see this on my github rather than going on some other site...

</comment><comment><USER6> Update: Sorry about that, we had a callback error in the public version. All fixed now. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't work - once you login via oauth it doesn't go past that screen... thanks

<comment><USER6> Was it about 10 minutes ago? If so it should be alright now. If not do you see any error message?

<comment><USER17> I get the same problem as imajes

<comment><USER6> hmm, well I don't know what's happening. Everything looks fine here. What OS & browser/version are you using?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why does it need commit access?</comment>


Proposal: HWIGS HN: How would I get started - <AUTHOR>

In light of the wonderful article about "How would I get started" on Hacker Tourism - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4894990 - and the ensuing discussion, I propose a simple solution.
HN is filled with wonderfully intelligent, well-meaning and thoughtful people.
So, just like we have Ask HN, Tell HN, Ask PG, Tell PG...I propose 'HWIGS HN'.
Where each thread is chock full of ideas that can help the person wanting to achieve something.
E.g.
HWIGS HN: Building a bank entirely online
If you have something to contribute to building a bank online, you can chime in. If you don't, do not.
If you bring negativity and uselessly detract from the discussion of that thread, all HN members are obligated to downvote you into oblivion.
If you have nothing constructive to say, then don't comment.
That being said...that doesn't mean you need say everything positive. E.g. if the idea is bad (or there are particular pitfalls based on research and experience you can draw on), feel free to chime in and provide that information in a non-emotional, non-trolling way.
Even if this never leads to any of these things being built, I think it would be a good thought exercise for the community.
Plus, it will help us to learn more about other industries we may not be directly involved with - and perhaps hear from users that don't have as much karma as patio11 =) <comment><USER2> Thanks for saying nice things about my article.

I tried really hard to stay out of the comments on my post, save one person that said my referencing HN's overwhelming maleness was anti-male sexism. Can't win them all?

It's really flattering to see you propose this, and miles_mathias' effort with setting up a wiki. For what it's worth, I actually do think that there's an interesting wiki-like approach possible with something like this, but I'm not sure that I like either of these approaches. I guess I have something else in mind, a site that is somewhere UX-wise between Quora, Snopes and ... another narrative structure I can't quite put my finger on. How Stuff Works?

The problem is that it's on my list of cool ideas that I don't currently have time to implement, so I'll back anyone that wants to work on something that they _are_ willing to put the time into.

For what it's worth, the big problem with the wiki is that it's a big blank page with no structure. You can't be surprised that nobody has added a thing to it - there's no indication of where to start. That can be fixed! But you have to show people why they should contribute, how they could contribute and finally what they should contribute... in that specific order.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice. (Can you find a better alternative to HWIGS? - I tried, got nothing)

I particularly find the "Show HN" and "Review my startup" threads the best ones. I automatically upvote them and most comments. Negativity is uncommon in 'ask', 'show' or 'review' threads.

Anyways, sometimes we become the person we dislike. It happened to me. A person with a strong opinion on a subject, based on it's own limited perception of reality (like we all have) made a comment where it downplayed everyone that didn't share the same opinion as her. I lost the opportunity of being quiet and replied by throwing a chair. We are both idiots.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4844632>

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the feeling, happens to the best of us. THat's why I think a special thread would work best, where we all are aware of the rules.

I thought of a catchier name, but can't come up with one.

If you have a suggestion, feel free to share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe the first thing on the wiki should be a simple form of what to do before HedWIGS ( my suggestion for the name :) similar to the old web page on how to ask good questions: show that you've done at least a minimal amount of research on the topic, at least in the form of stating some questions that you'd need answered.

For the bank example some Qs could be:

What are the best security practices regarding banking online? Do I need any special qualifications to become licensed.

Should I find someone with inside knowledge, or try going at it with a 'beginners mind' first?

Something to show that you've done some serious thinking on the topic, but need inspiration now maybe... Or even a kick off point...

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a pretty good idea, but it would be limited to people who are on Hacker News. A wiki website would allow for anyone to contribute. It would also help reduce redundancy.

<comment><USER5> I've setup a Wikispace wiki for this to begin. If people contribute and think this is a good idea, then maybe its own domain and custom design will be in order. Contribute at:

<http://howdoistart.wikispaces.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks cool.

The thing is, to be honest, I think it's better to keep it at HN for now.

If only because we don't even know if this is something that people will use.

Also, by keeping it at HN it is low friction. To get people to leave HN and use some other service, it reduces the likelihood that it will be successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I second this, cool :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great....now to get more people onboard :)</comment></comment>


For the first time ever, Microsoft will distribute its own version of Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-azure-sphere-is-powered-by-linux-2018-4?r=UK&IR=T <comment><USER2> Is this the end of the "embrace" stage or the beginning of the "extend" stage?

The "MS-designed chip" bit might actually be the most interesting part of the eventual story, though.

<comment><USER3> Seems like they're trying to fix the problem of vendors not releasing security updates after 2-3 years of the product's launch by taking on the responsibility themselves.

They'd be looking at long term gains here

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the realities of device drivers and hardware support come into play, if everyone only has to target a flavour of linux then that makes it easier. So Microsoft just have to put a wrapper around a core linux box that does all the heavy lifting. Sounds good to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Dupe. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16853361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16853361)

</comment><comment><USER6> Far from the first Microsoft Unix, however

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

<comment><USER7> Yes - that was my first *nix, on a multi-user TRS-80.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Alert:: Hell has frozen over

But seriously I still don't know what to make of Microsofts new(ish) adoption of Linux it seems positive for Linux overall but I'm cautiously optimistic.</comment>


Wish all licenses were like this – to a free open world - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pjreddie/darknet/blob/master/LICENSE.fuck <comment><USER2> It's a standard "do What The Fuck you want to Public License" It's not recommended because it has no liability disclaimer and also because it's difficult to get approved by the legal department [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL)

You can get the same effect with a standard license like MIT/BSD/Apache. They are similar but not equivalent, so read the details before choosing which one.</comment>


4chan and 8chan – Monitoring the Hotbeds of Extremism and Radicalism - <AUTHOR> https://webhose.io/blog/dark-web/imageboards-hotbeds-extremism/ <comment><USER2> Unless I'm missing something, 4chan and 8chan are both available on the clearweb still - it seems like the article is implying that they're both not anymore?

Looks like an advertisement for WebHost more than investigative journalism.

<comment><USER3> >8chan are both available on the clearweb still

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8chan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8chan)

>Current status: No longer on clearnet as of August 4, 2019

<comment><USER4> From what I can tell, its Tor address is down as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The dark web is believed to be heavily monitored by intelligence and law > enforcement agencies who often subvertly operate exit nodes in an attempt to > trace the traffic back to its origin.

Everyone says this, never quite realizing that hidden services (the .onion links on TOR) don't rely on exit nodes, and therefore wouldn't be subverted by such measures.

They also say that 8chan users are revealing their IP addresses. First, if 8chan is gone from the clearnet, this means they're posting to a .onion domain, right? The websites are a bit unclear on this, but Wikipedia seems to imply that 8chan is no longer available on clearnet since August. So how are they divulging their IP addresses?

<comment><USER6> Apparently one 8chan mirror is running on Zeronet, which doesn't mask/hide/route IP addresses unless you use TOR ([https://zeronet.io/docs/faq/#how-to-use-zeronet-with- tor](https://zeronet.io/docs/faq/#how-to-use-zeronet-with-tor)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "This pie chart, extracted from Webhose Cyber data, shows the subject matter of discussions in three leading imageboards: 8chan, 4chan, and endchan." I liked the pie chart that comes right after, pretty cool, it's like they can tell the site DNA by looking over the different threads. From my experience, dark web can be anywhere ... saw it in gaming chat platforms or even portals that nobody will believe. I truly believe that the *chans are part of the extremist's hotbeds and I know for sure there are more out there more anonymous and well hidden. Rumors recently mentioned around Zeronet and Telegram.

</comment><comment><USER8> Radicals start their actions with ideas and words spread in one way or another We saw this in gab.ai and the Pittsburgh shooting,which since then closed their gates to the public... Never know where the next shooter will publish his last words before the shooting

</comment><comment><USER9> Talking about any chan as though it's a monolithic entity is a huge mistake. There's very little overlap in the users between, for example, /ck/, /tg/, /fit/ and /pol/. The first three can hardly be called hotbeds of Extremism and Radicalism, unless you think that ridiculing crossfit will somehow lead to a second holocaust...

<comment><USER10> To further this point, each board on a chan is like a subreddit on reddit. They each have their own community, with their own memes, rules, and "culture" for lack of a better term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "They are, however, both well-known breeding grounds for radicalism and extremism." First of all, they are hot beds for the 1st amendment. If you believe in the 1st amendment, then you believe that places where people can voice their opinions, no matter how misled, should exist.

Secondly, this journalist has no idea what the darkweb is and should be put on leave until they actually do their research.

Lastly, and this is a biggie: If you ban people who talk about terrible things, all you've done is succeed in moving them where they are harder to monitor.

<comment><USER12> Hate speech isnt protected speech. Sorry, friend, the constitution doesn't offer the right to blame Jews for everything and call black people 'nigger'

<comment><USER11> I'm glad that you will happily incriminate whites as long as they are not also Jews. That can not possibly be racist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 'Memes we disagree with are literal Terrorism!'

Jfc, is this really the state of affairs today?</comment>


Becoming a Developer/Mom After a Five-Year Hiatus - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2020/04/18/mom-return-to-work/#.Xpr-j4zBg1g.hackernews <comment><USER2> When we first became parents, my wife was a stay-at-home mom ... it was our priority to raise our kids. So back then when someone asked what I did, I'd generally tell them "I'm a go-to-work dad". It's true that they'd often still want to know what I did at work (and I'd tell them) but it was important to indicate that work was a lower priority to me than my family.

So while the title of this article uses "Developer/Mom", I'd suggest that's backwards (why would you bother having kids otherwise?). Just a suggestion from "Dad/Developer".

<comment><USER3> That's very thoughtful of you. One of the things I find frustrating is that politicians will say, "being a mom is the most important job in the world." But we know that it actually isn't valued as such, otherwise we would have stay-at-home moms (and dads) as part of the political decision-making process, and we would have policies that support families like affordable healthcare so that the health of an entire family isn't dependent on the go-to-work person not being subject to lay-off or benefits change.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin Lorem Ipsum - <AUTHOR> https://blockchain.info/tx/57bfd63000bbfa6e9a61f7285a4abf9aef91dfcfba4fe0f940b431653eb8068b

<comment><AUTHOR> These 'vanity' addresses are generated using brute force. Randomly generate a private key, calculate the corresponding public key, convert the public key into the standard Bitcoin format, and then check if the pattern matches.

There's a nice program called 'vanitygen' which is has been highly optimized for this purpose. On a CPU it can test 250-500k addresses per second. Not sure about the GPU performance, but there's an OpenCL version as well. The code is on GitHub (<https://github.com/samr7/vanitygen>) and quite easy to read if you're interested in how it all works underneath.

The difficulty of finding your desired vanity address increases exponentially with the length of the string you want to appear. That's what makes some of these addresses so impressive, for example:

       11PraesentNonEratPurusNonXXc9VAcD

vanitygen is telling me I have a 50% chance of generating an address that starts with '11PraesentNonEratPurusNon' in 5e30 years (at 250k/sec). Someone put a very impressive amount of compute into that one little transaction!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I guess the other possibility is they picked the addresses strings directly, to look like valid addresses, but don't actually possess the corresponding private keys!

</comment><comment><USER2> This is incredibly impressive. Someone dedicated a very powerful mining rig (presumably) to this task for a not insignificant amount of time.</comment>


Techniques to change and self-manage motivation and behaviour - <AUTHOR> https://osf.io/mwtrb/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also a blog post from the researchers: "What can people do to self-manage their motivation and behaviour? We found 123 strategies" [https://blogs.helsinki.fi/nhankone/2020/01/13/what-can- peopl...](https://blogs.helsinki.fi/nhankone/2020/01/13/what-can-people-do-to- self-manage-their-motivation-and-behaviour-we-found-123-strategies/)</comment>


Microsoft open-sources natural language processing tool for survey data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/microsoft/browsecloud <comment><USER2> I wish the service was not that dependent on Azure.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but then again its probably the reason they open sourced it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like it would be better just to read a random sample of 100 comments. Or just use something like uservoice, or Github issues that allow voting on things. Seems silly to reduce every comment to a bag of words. It is better than just ignoring them I suppose.</comment>


Popcorn Time Is Now On Android - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/13/popcorn-time-is-now-on-android/

<comment><USER2> Do NOT download Time4Popcorn. This project is highly suspicious.

The official fork is this one: [https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn- app](https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-app)

<comment><USER3> Why so?

<comment><USER3> A down vote? No answer? Says it all.

<comment><USER2> What ? No, I didn't downvoted you. Your question is legitimate.

Time4Popcorn is an opaque repository which cherry-pick code from Popcorn- official without back-contributing. You can also see that the commits use the all-in-one tactic which make them unreadable.

Their activities and motivations are suspicious, they got budget for some communication actions (including a short clip), precautions must apply : Community say "don't install Time4Popcorn, we don't trust them".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slow news today, I guess?

<comment><USER5> The TechCrunch article was posted in May when it happened, not sure why it was posted here today though.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What reasons do you have for not moving to the cloud? - <AUTHOR> If you're working on-prem, what are your reasons for staying there, rather than moving to the cloud? <comment><USER2> \- Internet down, nobody can work (it happens to us once or twice a year, between a few minutes and a few hours).

\- latency : we have one cloud app that is a pain to use since latency and sometimes bandwidth are not good enough (it got better since we got fiber, but still).

\- our suppliers are very old school (one of them is still using Visual Studio 2008 for crying out loud) : we have to work around them, even "despite" them in certain instances.

\- costs would not go down, they certainly would go up for a "worse" service

The only thing that cloud would give me is the peace of mind of not having to manage servers (if everything was serverless or managed by suppliers that is).

<comment><AUTHOR> Assuming you go full "SaaS" \- are you really saving IT resources, or are they just going to be doing other things on a different platform?

<comment><USER2> Sorry I don't understand your question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> \- High single instance reliability. I have ~1000 EC2 instances; every week I get a notification how an instance has been restarted to move it off failing hardware. I never got these in my DC

\- Consistent large scale workloads at low latency. Nothing beats low latency then bare-metal servers. Also, it costs significantly cheaper running large clusters on bare-metal then in the cloud. If you move to the cloud, you need to use the cloud services else your costs are astronomically higher.

\- If you already have datacenters that have been paid off why move to the cloud. Use your own data centers and run a hybrid cloud.

I think there is a reason allot of big tech companies roll their own cloud or do some kind of hybrid approach. Whe nyou running a app that is core to your infrastructure you do not want to rely on another persons hardware you want 100% control of everything. I have had route 53 cause issues, S3 cause issues, EC2 servers get stuck and there is nothing you can do but wait 15 min for the enterprise SLA of AWS. In a business critical system, 15 min is not good enough. You need your operations techie to be sprinting to the rack to hit the reset button. Just my experience.

</comment><comment><USER4> As a consultant I work almost exclusively with enterprise customers using Azure. When moving to the cloud for some of them the most regular reasons to keep stuff on-prem are:

* Regulation: it's mostly about data can't leave the given country's border. There's usually not much you can do about it. Offload stuff to the cloud what you can (computing), keep on-prem what you must (data). In these cases the integration between the two environments can be a real challenge sometimes. But Azure is quite strong on that front.

* Stupid company policies set up during the last century or recently, but by people stuck in the last century. In some cases these can either be worked around or changed if you know the right people. But there's a lot of cases when it's hopeless from the start. Totally depends on company culture.

</comment><comment><USER5> Money. I have a $5 VPS for my personal stuff. If I ever have anything else that needs more computing power than that, I'm going to run it from a server under my desk unless people pay enough to cover the cost.

<comment><USER6> I'm using the Digital Ocean $5/month on a site, running Nginx & NodeJS, admittedly low load but boy the uptime has been great and $5/m. Just create an ubuntu droplet, couple of apt-get commands and you are up and running with a server :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In many markets there are regulatory regimes that prevent a migration to the cloud especially in sectors like banking and government departments.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems that even in Germany and France, many finance companies are moving to the cloud.

Is this still a problem today?

<comment><USER8> From my own experience (finance), still no cloud services in use. It is strictly forbidden to share any data with the outside world, whether that be in the form of Google Sheets or some other platform outside of a corporate network. If something moves out, shit hits the fan pretty quickly, once someone finds out.

Everything not on-premise is a no-go from the start, which sucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One company I worked with had been around before cloud. They had plenty of server space (about a few building levels of servers) and even a backup power generator. I suppose they would move to cloud if they could, but at that level of scale and uptime, they might as well be the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's still laws in _some countries_ which require; on site storage, data- center in the country, weird periodic audits... All these are barriers to _moving to the cloud_

</comment><comment><USER11> Quality of internet - little to no redundency if the primary drops.

Speed of internet.

Trust that cloud companies are not: A) Selling my info B) Using it against me

</comment><comment><USER12> data/source code security

cost saving.</comment>


What's the best blockchain-based mining software / system for normal people? - <AUTHOR> I just listened to Olaf Carlsen-Wee's YC podcast: https://blog.ycombinator.com/blockchain-investing-with-olaf-carlson-wee-and-aaron-harris/ and noticed especially the part where he said that cryptocurrencies are the deepest nightmare of many people in power disguised as get-rich-quick schemes. That got me thinking: I've been hearing about blockchain systems as information background noise for some time, but I do have a fair amount of spare computing power sitting around, so to speak. But which system should I install (or invest in, so to speak)? <comment><USER2> You should probably try to pool-mine Monero (XMR) or Ethereum (ETH). Pool mining is where a bunch of people mine to a common managed pool to increase the chances of finding a block and splitting the profits as opposed to solo mining where you'd get the full reward for finding a block but has lottery type odds.

My kind of recent experience: with an old Radeon HD7850 I could achieve ~430 H/s on Monero. An imac's i5 2.7ghz gives ~25 H/s per core, so about 100. With a setup of around 530-600 H/s I managed to mine a whooping 0.1 XMR in about 10 days (about $4.40 at current prices). Fun fact: the pool has a minimum payout of 0.3xmr, so I would have to mine another 20 days to get paid.

Still, monero is one of the more cpu/gpu friendly cryptos, so if you have some good graphics cards around, you can probably make some profit. I've also read somewhere that ethereum can be profitable with gpus but didn't get around to testing it.

Although you'd probably have to benchmark and know your hash-rate for the different coins, if you know that, here are some useful online calculators where you can input that along with your electricity cost and see how profitable it could potentially be:

[https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/](https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/)

[https://www.nicehash.com/?p=calc](https://www.nicehash.com/?p=calc)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's only profitable if your electricity is cheap.

How much do you pay?

<comment><USER4> I'm not OP, but I wonder about the same. My electricity price is on average 0,06$ kWh.

Can you show me your calculation?</comment></comment>