CVE-2014-7187 (yet another) Bash arbitrary execution of code - <AUTHOR> https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2014-7187

<comment><USER2> This is not "yet another" vulnerability in the sense that it represents a similar risk:

"Red Hat Product Security _does not consider this bug to have any security impact_ on the bash packages shipped in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. A fix for this issue was applied as a hardening in RHSA-2014:1306, RHSA-2014:1311, and RHSA-2014:1312."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note that patch only appeared today, despite CVE being out a few days ago.

[http://openwall.com/lists/oss- security/2014/09/28/10](http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/09/28/10)

 _There are two local buffer overflows in parse.y that can cause the shell to dump core when given many here-documents attached to a single command or many nested loops._

[http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/bash-4.3-patches/bash43-028](http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/bash-4.3-patches/bash43-028)</comment>


Startup Quote: Josh James, co-founder, Omniture - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/2076856308

<comment><AUTHOR> When you find an idea that you just can't stop thinking about, that's probably a good one to pursue.

\- Josh James

<http://startupquote.com/post/2076856308></comment>


Ask HN: What lessons you learned in 2011 - <AUTHOR>

As 2011 comes to an end, I'm working on a blog post about what big lessons entrepreneurs, hackers, bloggers learned this year. My focus is around technology, entrepreneurship, web, etc. Give me your thoughts. <comment><USER3> The biggest thing that I learnt was you don't have to find ways of driving traffic to your site with advertising and link building etc...

Just social web interactions such as replying to posts and helping people on sites such as server-fault (with a discreet link in your profile) can generate a substantial flow of users to your websites.

And the best thing about this flow of users is that they are more likely to find value in your website than the average person which would be directed from paid advertising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! I couldn't have agreed more. Thanks for the comments iSloth!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main learning is we try to solve the problem first, before understanding and defining the problem.

You can see it everywhere, we always want to jump and skip to solution, skip the process and get to result, skip the learning and get the work done in most cases its a very bad idea.

See in personal life, we were always trying to make ourselves better but, where does it goes nowhere, you don't know what you are trying to become better at.

I think we need to relearn the basic problem solving, we have forgotten with so much noise and fast moving world. 1\. Understand the problem 2\. Define the problem. 3\. What are various approaches and solution to the problem. Understanding them pros and cons. 4\. Applying and finding the optimal solution. Refine the solution over time.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm sure others learned this before me, but it seems to be something you have to experience: Things take so much more work than you expect, and will take a lot longer than you planned (eg post-release building up to good traffic levels).

Also agree with delwin

</comment><comment><USER6> Ideas don't mean anything, execution is everything. Feel free to give away your idea to everyone.

This applies to entrepreneurship, but not, I believe, to other more "creative" fields, like art/music/etc. Fine arts are judged much more on the fundamental idea behind the work rather than the execution. For example, with the exception of mainstream music, excellent records are released all the time that have sub-par mastering/production.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks delwin! Great points

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most people aim to take rather than give and come from a place of insufficiency (not sure how that can help you) - maybe explains why business models based on donations don't work, and why Wikipedia is struggling.

Although very admirable, should've Sergey Brin (or Google) given more - <USER2> much is Wikipedia worth to Google?

</comment><comment><USER8> As I get older, writing stuff down pays bigger and bigger dividends. I have a series of "notes" files on various subjects, which I keep on Dropbox. When I learn something (especially something undocumented), I put it in the right file so I can find it later. I've become much more productive (and less frustrated) as a result.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks gw666!</comment></comment>


BYD, the World's Biggest Electric Car Maker - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-16/the-world-s-biggest-electric-vehicle-company-looks-nothing-like-tesla <comment><USER2> I'm currently in China and impressed by how many electric vehicles you find on the road: Not only buses but also many cars and scooters. Besides their own brands like BYD I saw a fair amount of Teslas as well, more than in Germany. Pretty impressive how things changed since I've visited the country last time (10 years ago), personally I think China will easily beat Europe in switching to renewables. In general the infrastructure there improved drastically it seems, many highways, train connections and public transport systems like metros are on par or slightly above Western standard I'd say.

<comment><USER3> Teslas are popular in Beijing because EVs have a different pool in the license plate lottery. Rich people who would've gotten a black Audi instead settle for a Model S.

<comment><USER4> That's good right? Incentivizing EV adoption by the trend setters

<comment><USER3> I mean, it isn't bad. Government policies are pushing people this way, even if most of the, still lack actual parking spots for their cars where they could charge at home. Honestly, I don't know how they do it, 70% of the parking in Beijing is on street (usually illegally). Perhaps the Model S crowd can afford parking spots, which is why you don't see a lot of BYD EVs that aren't fleet.

<comment><USER4> > which is why you don't see a lot of BYD EVs that aren't fleet.

Yes infrastructure in most places needs to catch up but even so, having taxi and bus fleets transform to EV is nothing to be sneezed at in any city.

Taxis (bith standard and Uber varieties) may often form 10% of vehicles in cities (eg. where I live in Singapore) and disproportionately contribute to miles driven and hence emissions and smoke. Having all of those transform to EV is a very good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> World's biggest is a bit questionable. As of 2018 BYD sales $16bn, Telsa $21bn. Growth over previous year approx 24% BYD, 90% Tesla.

Charlie Munger remains a BYD fan - "BYD is going to be huge electric vehicles. They are already huge. And they're going to be much more huge..." [http://latticeworkinvesting.com/2019/03/03/charlie-munger- fu...](http://latticeworkinvesting.com/2019/03/03/charlie-munger-full- transcript-of-daily-journal-annual-meeting-2019/)

<comment><USER6> And Nissan Leaf has outsold Tesla in number of vehicles.

<comment><USER7> This is false. The Leaf passed 400K sales last month: [https://newsroom.nissan-global.com/releases/nissan-leaf- firs...](https://newsroom.nissan-global.com/releases/nissan-leaf-first- electric-car-to-pass-400k-sales?lang=en-US&rss)

Tesla had delivered more than 500K cars by the end of last year: [https://insideevs.com/tesla-production-deliveries- graphed-q4...](https://insideevs.com/tesla-production-deliveries- graphed-q4-2018/)

So the Leaf has outsold each Tesla model but not Tesla in total number of vehicles.

<comment><USER8> This comment chain is a good example of mesofacts. [http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/02...](http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/02/28/warning_your_reality_is_out_of_date/)

I'm pretty sure BYD had more sales than Tesla until pretty recently. The Leaf outsold Tesla until recently. Both were true for quite some time. If you learned those facts, it's easy to miss when they stop being facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What occurs to me is the different approaches to attacking the same market. BYD, at least as characterized by the author, took an incremental approach to learning the technology and market, starting with buses as a kind of low- hanging fruit and then building on that learning.

Tesla identified the primary market challenge of range anxiety and design & performance stereotypes went straight at them with high consequence investments in charger infrastructure, battery technology strategies, gigafactory, 'appealing' design, and incredible performance. It's kind of a tortoise vs. hare and at least as far as this article is concerned, both approaches are having success on their own terms.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric- buses-201...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric- buses-20180520-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> "Their engines had been installed a few moments earlier"

Don't they mean motors? Or are they interchangeable in this context now?

<comment><USER12> Not sure why you're being down voted but it's a good question since my Professor spent some time to explain this. I think if you think of the literal definition in the English dictionary, then the wording is correct. However, most people in the technical community would agree engin is a subclass of motor that uses a cyclical process to convert power to motion.

<comment><USER13> > most people in the technical community

Not this member of the technical community; an engine is simply something that makes something else go or achieve an end. In my field we have calculation engines, these are neither electric nor cyclical.

And a motor is essentially the same thing. Engines can be steam, ICE, electric, programmatic, or even man powered (for instance a siege engine).

Perhaps it's different where you come from or, perhaps, there is more than one technical community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> i live in shanghai and have ridden in many byd's, basically the compact car model is very popular for didi drivers which is the equivalent of uber/lyft here. I'm not 100% certain if that compact byd is 100% electric, but it seems to drive quiet. There are government incentives to buy electric cars, less tax, lower price, the license plate is also a lot cheaper. In shanghai a license plate costs 100k rmb (15k usd) and you have to compete with tens of thousands others in a lottery system to get the right to buy one in the first place, for electric cars it's less than 100 usd. Some workarounds are to purchase a license plate from out of shanghai, but that means you can't drive on the highways and expressways during rush hour traffic (7:00-10:30 and 15:00-20:00 mon-fri), if you're caught by any of the millions of cameras, that's a 3 point fine and 200 rmb (you get 11 points per year which means you need to retake drivers ed. And re-test).

The byd's i've ridden in seem ok, quite underpowered, but good for city driving, i don't know how good the mileage is for one charge, but it's comfortable to sit in for a small compact, never had an issues with it as a passenger. Then again, i would never buy one of these myself, it's about 280k rmb, this is for a domestic car, there are a lot of other choices at that cost point for foreign cars even.

I just test-drove a model x tesla today, much nicer, but not the same price point, about 790k rmb.

I think warren buffet or someone invested a lot in byd, they have an suv version, too.

<comment><USER5> Yeah Buffett's co invested $232 million in 2008 for about a quarter of the company.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the note

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> BYD is a an acronym for "build your dreams" :)

<comment><USER16> It is actually the first letters of the romanized Chinese name. 比亚迪 Bǐ Yà Dí.

'Build Your Dreams' is just good English marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm completely ignorant of the topic. Are Chinese auto safety standards any good? Would these cars be allowed on North American or European roads?

<comment><USER3> Ask the Australians, they've had a few scandals with Chinese car imports and safety.

<comment><USER18> Are they any worse than economy cars from 20yr ago?

<comment><USER3> Maybe 30 years ago. They did ok on the ones they used for certification, but after than quality slipped and they became death traps (what anyone doing manufacturing in China has to look out for, actually).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Simple Filter to Weed Out Non-technical Co-founders - <AUTHOR> http://blog.waxman.me/a-simple-filter-for-weeding-out-non-technical

<comment><USER2> Great idea. I actually weed out potential co-founders by asking if they side with the Imperial base commander or the Ewoks. If that doesn't work, I ask them if they're more of a Thelma or a Louise.

Edit: let's not forget Alien vs. Predator. I don't want a guy who takes forever stalking an idea. Execution is everything, and nothing executes like a chestbursting alien.

<comment><USER3> > Alien vs. Predator.

Few might prefer predator over alien for making efficient use of tools and gadgets than resorting to sheer brute strength.

Confirmation bias at work?

Am wondering how it works the other way. Non-technical founders looking out for technical co-founders asking similar questions. Or, maybe the banksters asking apprentice traders on what they felt about Gordon Gekko?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hang on, there are people who watched that movie and sympathized with the Winkelvii? They were a cartoon character playing up every negative stereotype of old money that exists.

That's like someone sympathizing with the villain from Die Hard or something.

<comment><USER5> > That's like someone sympathizing with the villain from Die Hard or > something.

Hey - I sympathize with the villain from Die Hard.

He had style, a good plan, including contingencies, and was doing a reasonable job executing it. He even did an okay job adapting to the unexpected.

He was just overmatched. There's no shame in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You want to qualify your relationship with a founder based solely on the answer to a single question about a popular Hollywood flick?

<comment><AUTHOR> For these types of decisions (picking co-founders, hiring, etc.) you want no false positives, which means that any legitimate red flag should be a deal- breaker.

The cost of passing on the right person is far less than the cost of saying yes to the wrong one (e.g. passing over a good biz dev guy who goes on to succeed at another start-up vs. hiring a jerk who ruins your business then sues you)

<comment><USER6> I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

"passing on the right person" = is often the difference between success and failure.

"the cost of saying yes to the wrong one" = A few weeks wasted, and start over.

Whatever you do, please don't write people off with one question. Engage with them, build relationships and draw out their best. Has worked for me. Zuck or Winkle, really does not matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks! I'm going to use this as a way to determine if the person I'm interviewing with is an uppity douchebag.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think he undercuts his own argument.

If the idea only takes four hours to build, and the result is a commercially value product, then how can he argue the idea isn't the uniquely valuable component, and his labor is really the commodity? Does he really believe that _nobody_else_ can build it in 4 hours or so?

Obviously, execution is important. But if someone has an idea that's great and doesn't require a lot of execution, then the majority of the value of the end product should probably be assigned to the idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most consumer web apps require many and frequent iterations before striking a chord with users. Therefore, the ultimate great "idea" is usually arrived at through a process of engineering and design tinkering, and not through a singular, initial spark of genius.

The main differentiators in consumer web startups tend to be: the speed and creativity with which the team can iterate, the quality of the user experience and design, and, if all goes well, the ability of the architecture to scale. The capacity to do these 3 things well is relatively rare. Finding a person or a team with these skills is exceedingly difficult (especially in this talent market).

So yeah, I do stand by my assertion that the starting-point idea _is_ the commodity, and the ability to build and design a decently scalable web-app in 4 hours (and then get user feedback and push another version later that same day) is a rare skill---especially on the open market, since most such individuals are either well-employed at companies or working on their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like another indicator would be requiring anyone you want to share the idea with to sign an NDA. Unless you're sharing an already developed algorithm, or something as special sauce, the NDA just comes across as "My idea the important part here".

</comment><comment><USER10> I think a better question would be based on having watched Pirates of Silicon Valley (but then again I'm old school)

<comment><USER11> Who's the equivalent of the Winklevoss brothers in Pirates of Silicon Valley? I thought everyone looked fairly good there.

<comment><USER10> The point of the Winklevoss twins is that they aren't techies which may be why I liked that silly made for TV movie so damn much!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Based on the movie, Zuckerberg didn't have the decency to inform the people he was working with that he'd moved on. The moment he stopped communicating with them, a red flag should have gone up and they should have parted ways and hired someone else. Both sides contributed to the end result. The Winkelvii should have been more closely involved with the execution of the project. They should have also formalized the relationship legally before allowing him to work on it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here are somethings to watch out to weed out non-technical people in my experience:

\- he says I just need someone to finish the coding part and thinks 90% is done without it

\- he wants you to sign NDA before telling anything about the product (remember if someone can steal your idea by just talking about it then its probably not a good idea, tell him that)

\- he does not know enough about common stuff that a startup guy should be aware of, like sxsw, techmeme, hacker news, names of top influencers/bloggers in the industries (scoble, arrington, mg, laporte, dhh.... throw these names out and watch his reaction)

</comment><comment><USER14> This line of thinking is immature. If you walk in with mentalities like that or dumb filters like the one described, all you will get is strife. We already have enough of these silly dip-stick questions floating around in companies, and HR teams trying these tricks.

My advice, take time, talk, and don't work with programmers or people who make their judgements based on a movie plot. It only shows they might be emotional and very difficult to work with.

</comment><comment><USER15> Do you honestly feel that your idea is far more valuable than my ability to build it (which I could do in about 4 hours)?

is the shortcut you are talking about?

also, as a lot of people are talking about here, a pop culture question (ultimatum?) isn't really appropriate for filtering out anything (except maybe pop culture).

E: comma and spelling, geez

</comment><comment><USER16> Let's not forget that the twins made at least 60 million dollars from NOTHING but an idea and very little effort. That seems like an incredible business model.

/s

<comment><USER17> Hmmm, I wonder if there's already people out there working this angle? Maybe I should get a team of shuckster-nontech-cofounder-wannabes together, create a big list of relatively obvious ideas, propose the ideas to every up and coming programmer/founder I can swindle a meeting with (and very carefully document the meeting), then just sit back and wait for one of them to get wildly successful with their variation on one of the obvious ideas and point some no- win-no-fee lawyer at them...</comment></comment>


Testing a new way for developers to monetize mobile apps - <AUTHOR> https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2014/01/22/testing-a-new-way-for-developers-to-monetize-mobile-apps/ <comment><AUTHOR> MoPub competitor it seems</comment>


Analyzo: Find and Compare the Best Tools for your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.analyzo.com/ <comment><USER2> It should say "online services", not tools. For example, there's no mention of Jenkins, Bamboo, nor Cruise control for CI tools, no mention of the downloadable free tier for Splunk, greylog2, Elk for logging, GNUcash for finance etc...

<comment><USER3> By tools we mean a broader definition of the word. These are the means that can help startups accomplish a particular task or purpose. As for Jenkins, Bamboo etc these will all be added to the database soon. Do let us know if there are any other categories you would particularly like to see. Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the UI, and the idea is useful. Something's broken with the website though. Clicking on the bluehost vs. Hostgate vs. GoDaddy.com comparison gives me this:

Server Error in '/' Application.

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Source Error:

Line 30: DataTable dtMeta = this.GetData(catId); Line 31: //Add Page Title Line 32: this.Page.Title = "Compare | " \+ dtMeta.Rows[0]["seo_title"].ToString(); Line 33: //Add Keywords Meta Tag Line 34: HtmlMeta keywords = new HtmlMeta();

Source File: c:\Domain\analyzo.com\Compare.aspx.cs Line: 32

Stack Trace:

[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.] Compare.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) in c:\Domain\analyzo.com\Compare.aspx.cs:32 System.Web.Util.CalliEventHandlerDelegateProxy.Callback(Object sender, EventArgs e) +51 System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +92 System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +54 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +772

<comment><USER5> Hey! Thanks for pointing this out. We are working on fixing this. The site was posted on product hunt, hacker news and a bunch of other sites, so our server could not handle the sudden burst of traffic. Should have this resolved soon.

Let me know if you have any feedback.

Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of my co-founders had these wise words in Slack yesterday... "Damn, you guys love to fuck around with tool stacks."

Pick tools quickly. Analysis paralysis is a real, dangerous thing. Look for better tools only when the ones you have are actually failing you somehow.

<comment><USER3> I agree to a small extent with your co-founder. One of the problems we are trying to solve is that a lot of new entrepreneurs aren't even aware of so many tools that can make them work more efficiently. This is why Analyzo is also very carefully curated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks great - nice work!

One suggestion: The URLs of the comparison pages could really use some SEO love.

BAD: `[http://www.analyzo.com/compare/131/2,8,13,`](http://www.analyzo.com/compare/131/2,8,13,`)

GOOD: `[http://www.analyzo.com/compare/bluehost-vs-godaddy-vs- hostga...](http://www.analyzo.com/compare/bluehost-vs-godaddy-vs-hostgator`)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for pointing this out. Will get this looked at asap :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks like a great resource - thanks for putting it up. Is it possible to contribute to it?

<comment><USER5> I saw a button to add products in the footer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is cool, thanks for curating all these services into one spot.

I like searching for (FOSS) software via [http://alternativeto.net/](http://alternativeto.net/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you :) Do let us know if there are any other categories you'd like us to add.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What about self hosted tools, like Piwik as alternative to Google Analytics?

<comment><USER3> Piwik is a wonderful tool but one of our criterias for web analytics tools was that they must be SaaS based. I will tell the research team to look at Piwik Cloud again though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love it and I will use it. I wanted to do something similar, App store for SaaS products. You have done it really beautiful and meaningful.

<comment><USER3> Thank you. I work in the Analyzo team. Please do share the love on social media :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great resource! Can we filter results via Pricing? Like I wanted to see all resourced with "Free" plans to try out before buying.

Thanks

<comment><USER3> Thanks! 50 out of the 150 categories support parametric search so you can filter by pricing and more. We're working 24/7 to make sure all 150 categories can become fully filterable. Here give it a shot [http://www.analyzo.com/search/Survey- Tools/108](http://www.analyzo.com/search/Survey-Tools/108)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks cool but there are so many of these. Do any of them make money?

<comment><USER14> Is it always about the money? :)

<comment><USER15> Well, all the links are affiliate links. ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Intel-based Chromebooks - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-fresh-mix-of-intel-based-chromebooks.html <comment><USER2> I LOVE my ARM Chromebook. For $250 it's one of the best gadgets I have ever owned (in a class with my Kindle and the original moto Droid). I am very excited for the possibility of the same machine with a Haswell processor. My only complaint with the ARM machine is that its JavaScript performance could be better (it's tablet-level).

</comment><comment><USER3> All i want is a Chromebook Pixel with Haswell and a bigger storage (at least 128GB), and I'll have my perfect *nix laptop.

<comment><USER4> I think the extent to which the Chromebook Pixel is currently compelling as something to run a regular linux distro on is the extent to which the Chromebook Pixel is currently unmatched among other laptops (greater DPI and cheaper than the 13" Pro Retina. Worse otherwise, but if your priority is the screen...).

Hopefully you won't have to wait for the next Chromebook Pixel, but will be able to buy a more 'regular' laptop with a similar screen in the near future. I think high-dpi screens are posed to make a big impact on the market.

@drivebyacct2 _" (For those that may wonder, I have to rmmod/modprobe a chromeos_laptop module after boot"_

I had that problem earlier, but it resolved itself with a new kernel (3.10.11 iirc) and config. If you want I can pastebin my config when I get home, but I think the only relevant change I made is I stopped building chromeos_laptop (and dependencies) as a module. I _think_ the root cause was something about the order or timing of the touchpad and I2C stuff being brought online.

<comment><USER5> i find the galago pro very interesting. 14" full hd. quad core haswell for 1000 usd(well more for me because of ssd, ram etc). unfortunately, 4 hours of battery life just doesn't cut it for me. and 14" might almost be a tad too big. but otherwise it looks like an amazing device.

<comment><USER4> 1080p at laptop sizes just isn't something I can get excited about in a world where 1080p cellphones are seemingly becoming the new normal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an owner of an Intel Chromebook, the Acer C7, I really do enjoy it.

It is a bit limited, but for $200, it is a great deal. I have a chroot installed where I can do anything I can't do with the vanilla ChromeOS, and I am strongly considering upgrading the RAM. I don't think I will buy the full 16GB this thing supports.

I could also upgrade the storage, 16GB is getting a little tight.

<comment><USER7> How easy is it to upgrade the RAM and storage? Are they easily accessible?

<comment><USER8> RAM on the C7 is a piece of cake to upgrade. Ssd on the other hand takes few more screw turns but is easy nonetheless. With a 9mm SSD the back cover doesn't fit flush but 7mm should be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Something for everyone" where everyone includes Google, the NSA, your future ex-wife and her lawyers, the Chinese Public Security Bureau, and any behavioral tracking advertising networks or other businesses Google cares to partner with. I'll stick with non-cloud-based computing for now.

<comment><USER10> You nailed it there.

And before someone says it, no "I'll stick Ubuntu on it" isn't a valid answer to the problem as you're still supporting them by buying it.

<comment><USER11> Ubuntu is non-FOSS so it isn't a valid answer anyway.

<comment><USER12> Just wondering, what makes Ubuntu not FOSS?

<comment><USER13> I think the FSF explain it best: [http://www.gnu.org/distros/common- distros.html#Ubuntu](http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#Ubuntu)

Mainly, non-free software repositories, and the amazon integration in unity.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for that link. The fact that they provide a version that only contains FOSS repos makes me think that calling Ubuntu non-FOSS a bit of an overstatement. That Amazon thing seems a bit icky, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If either of those new chromebooks are better than 1366x768, i'm sold.

</comment><comment><USER15> I really expect the "netbook" category to bump again now that Bay Trail has been released. Finally an actual speed bump in the atom family after all these years!

One positive is that with chromeos being more stable and backed by google should be able to seriously take on windows in this category unlike the mess with linux when the first netbooks were released.

</comment><comment><USER16> If I were HP, Acer, Asus or Toshiba, I'd release one with enough storage and ram, and easy boot to Ubuntu/Mint.

<comment><USER17> That's why you're not HP, Acer, Asus or Toshiba. They're not interested in marketing or supporting these things as computers, they're consumer electronics, much the way that phones and tablets are.

The moment you start to market these things as real computers at a low price point, somebody's grandmother buys one and starts calling support because they can't run Office (or some other arbitrary Windows software on it). Word gets out, it gets distorted until everyone thinks that the hardware is useless/broken/worthless and you end up with a repeat of MSFT's Surface/Windows RT debacle.

Google has very carefully positioned this platform in the market. They've been very clear that a Chromebook is _not_ just another laptop & buyers should not expect them to be one. The few additional sales they'd get from Linux geeks are not remotely worth the brand dilution that would occur from selling them as anything else.

<comment><USER18> > The moment you start to market these things as real computers at a low price > point somebody's grandmother buys one and starts calling support because > they can't run Office

Why are they even providing a support line? I'm not sure why a laptop should qualify for support when a tablet doesn't.

When you buy a new car there isn't a Hyundai Support Line to call.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It looks like you can sign up for information updates on the new HP and Acer Chromebooks on the devices page:

[http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebooks.htm...](http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebooks.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Windows-based ultrabooks are selling slowly as it is, and Google thinks $1,000+ ChromeOS devices will sell better?

They really should stick to ARM-based $250 Chromebooks. But this time please put at least a 10" tablet-battery, not a 7" tablet battery inside the Chromebook.

<comment><USER15> Pretty much all of the existing ARM socs out there suck majorly for gpu support. I really believe Bay Trail will shove arm out of the chromebook/netbook market just because people will be able to tinker with the thing.

As much as I had been rooting for arm a few years ago I'm totally soured on the utter crap support situation. If ARM starts bleeding market it will totally be on their own shoulders for not doing anything about the closed drivers situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> When I was in a local electronics shop a few weeks ago, they already had x86 chromebooks (along with the ARM Samsung version). So what's the news here?

<comment><USER22> The news (which is admittedly kind of buried in the wall of text) is they are releasing new Chromebooks from many manufacturers based on Intel's newer Haswell microarchitecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good sign for anyone wanting to run OSX on a chromebook.

The current line of ARM processors has been a major roadblock thus far.

<comment><USER24> Actually, most Chromebooks are Intel-based and ARM based ones are relatively recent

<comment><USER23> While you're correct, the celeron processor was about as good as they got -- which won't take you very far on OSX

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Since OEMs don't have to pay the M$ tax, how much more profitable is a chromebook?

<comment><USER26> Doesn't crapware more than offset the tax, making Windows "better than free"?

OTOH, Google may be giving kickbacks for Chrome OS as well.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps the NSA are giving Google kickbacks as well...

To the downvoters, this was supposed to be sarcastic :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "the large display on the HP Chromebook14"

A 14-inch screen not large for a laptop.

</comment><comment><USER28> No thanks. I rather user proper computers with usable OS.

</comment><comment><USER29> But Google, can't you please make us a Chromebook that can use a Nexus 10 or similar device as a second screen?

<comment><USER30> What's your use-case for this?

It's particularly striking because the Nexus 10 has the same processor as the ARM chromebook, so anything you could run on the chromebook you could conceivably just run on the Nexus 10 as well.</comment></comment>


Google Hangouts Browser Chat Down? - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status <comment><USER2> My Home started acting up around this time

</comment><comment><USER3> It's down for us in Palo Alto.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's down for me too.</comment>


Using Firefox WebExtensions with Selenium - <AUTHOR> https://intoli.com/blog/firefox-extensions-with-selenium/ <comment><USER2> Wow foob, your blog content genius! I wrote about how I operationalize Selenium-grid on Kubernetes earlier this year:

[http://russell.ballestrini.net/selenium-grid-on- kubernetes/](http://russell.ballestrini.net/selenium-grid-on-kubernetes/)

We should team up and launch some competition to saucelabs. ; )

<comment><USER3> Hope the founder of the Selenium project and Sauce Labs isn't reading this! ;)

<comment><USER2> /me puts foot in mouth</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin data spam and evil data - <AUTHOR> http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-bitcoin-data-spam-and-evil-data.html

<comment><USER2> I'm reminded of my comment on this thread [1] (Ask HN: Why would a government have created bitcoin?).

 _"I like bitcoin as a robust, validated communication network with the currency function incentivizing its operation and creating noise to mask the murmur of its true purpose."_

1: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547423></comment>


Nouriel Roubini Says Blockchain Is "Least Useful Technology in Human History" - <AUTHOR> https://breakermag.com/nouriel-roubini-says-blockchain-is-the-least-useful-technology-in-human-history/ <comment><USER2> what about the square wheel, nobody ever liked using the wharle.</comment>


Apple's App Store Rules Scrutinized in U.S. Antitrust Probe - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-26/apple-s-app-store-rules-scrutinized-in-u-s-antitrust-probe <comment><AUTHOR> > Government lawyers have met with developers as recently as last week and are > asking questions about Apple's rules that require apps to use its App Store > payment system for subscriptions, said the people, who declined to be > identified discussing a confidential matter. Apple pockets up to a 30% cut > when apps use the payment technology.

> The Justice Department has met with both high-profile and small developers > that sell apps. "We've spoken with the DOJ regarding Apple and the App Store > twice," said David Heinemeier Hansson, the founder of software company > Basecamp, which created the Hey email app, in an interview. "We shared our > experience, relayed the experience of others, and put them in contact with a > developer who didn't want to go public with their story. I'm really glad > that the DOJ is looking into this, because we need both legislative action, > but also enforcement."

> The government is also asking questions about the Google Play app > marketplace, two of the people said. It isn't clear whether scrutiny of > Google Play is part of the Justice Department's ongoing antitrust > investigation into Google or whether the questions are being used to inform > the Apple inquiry.

> Unlike Apple, Google's Android phones allow users to access multiple app > stores in addition to Google Play, which may help insulate the company from > an antitrust enforcement action over its app store practices. Apple has said > it doesn't allow multiple stores for security reasons.

> Apple's growth is at stake. If apps could sell subscriptions outside the App > Store, developers could stop using Apple's payment system, causing the > company to lose revenue. Fees from App Store transactions are estimated to > be one of the largest contributors to Apple's services revenue, a business > the company is trying hard to expand.

For those who have trouble with the link:

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


The Swedish Schindler who disappeared - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30934452 <comment><USER2> Really interesting to see this here. Long time lurker. My dad is Frank Vajda

<comment><USER3> Your comment prompted me to go searching, and I found this:

[http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political- news/missin...](http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/missing- holocaust-hero-honoured-with-australian-citizenship-20130506-2j3nv.html)

The claim is that Wallenberg was sighted within the Soviet detention system up until the 1980s!

<comment><USER2> There has always been speculation that Wallenberg was alive and kept locked up somewhere. My dad has been trying to find out what's happened for years and years. The honorary Australian citizenship was a really important event in my fathers life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I expected this to be about Folke Bernadotte [0]. Also a Swedish diplomat, he rescued about 31,000 prisoners from Nazi concentration camps.

Bernadotte didn't disappear, though. As the UN Mediator in Palestine, he negotiated the ceasefire of the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and was surprisingly prescient in that capacity: 'After the truce was in place, Bernadotte began to address the issue of achieving a political settlement. The main obstacles in his opinion were "the Arab world's continued rejection of the existence of a Jewish state, whatever its borders; Israel's new 'philosophy', based on its increasing military strength, of ignoring the partition boundaries and conquering what additional territory it could; and the emerging Palestinian Arab refugee problem."' [1]

For his efforts, he was assassinated by Zionist terrorists, including the later Prime Minister of Israel.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab–Israeli_War#UN_media...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab–Israeli_War#UN_mediator_Bernadotte)

<comment><USER5> Handle reference: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(group)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_\(group\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A man given power who then uses it for great good -- I wish the history books were full of many more stories such as this, but sadly, the opposite is true. This was a rare circumstance where a man of great intelligence and energy was given a post where he could do some good, and with fantastic courage he used his power to save as many as he could. His success brings honor to himself, but it also brings dishonor to the thousands of other officials who held similar posts and who did absolutely nothing to stop the murder.

<comment><USER7> There were many others who helped as well. For example:

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

<comment><USER8> And in a reversal, a Nazi was the leader of a sanctuary set up by foreigners in Nanking that to a degree mitigated the horrors otherwise visited on that city's inhabitants by the IJA: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Safety_Zone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Safety_Zone)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _" But it's very important to remember that Raoul Wallenberg was a representative of a sovereign government recognised by the Hungarians and the Germans. Therefore he had a status and standing enabling him to negotiate."_

It just occurred to me, probably because I'm reading a book on WWI history, where the Swedish iron ore supply to Germany was just as important and was harassed by the U.K. and Tzarist Russia, that that detail is probably one of the things that helped Wallenberg's influence. Germany was in no position to invade Sweden, and really needed that ore (and possibly other imports).

<comment><USER9> Actually, Hitler planned to invade Sweden on July 1st of 1943, but the attack was called off only hours before, due to events in North Africa. [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.krigsmyter.nu%2Fartikel- tyskinvasionsplan-a.php&edit-text=)

<comment><USER8> Oops, I forgot to include language making it clear that in mid-1944 and on when Wallenberg was doing his thing it was beyond Nazi Germany's power to invade Sweden. Well, without for example stripping the forces trying to keep the US and the Commonwealth from breaking out of Normandy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for posting, I can't recall having heard about that Swede before despite that is quite an achievement!

(Germans weren't too easy too argue with.)

<comment><USER11> I have read about Wallenberg's fate in magazines etc every few years. Schindler I only recognize because of Spielberg's movie.

Somewhat interesting is that Hungarian Jews were, though occasionally persecuted, relatively safe as long as Hungary was a reliable co-belligerent with Germany, and Hungarians were in charge. When, after March 1944, Nazis were actually running things with the help of the Arrow Cross party, things changed for the worse.

It seems to have been the same in some other countries: Bulgaria, Finland and Italy had no interest in solving a "Jewish question" or even recognizing there was one. Bulgaria managed to resist deportations and pogroms of own citizens all the way. In Italy, the deportations started only after Italy capitulated in 1943 and Germany occupied the country. In Finland, Jews were few; not one of the local population was killed in persecutions (but a few died in the army when fighting the Soviets with their countrymen.)</comment></comment>


Exploiting filepicker.io - Stealth- http://digitalmisinformation.posterous.com/exploiting-filepickerio

<comment><AUTHOR> On it! We have a new security release coming out next week that allows the use of server-side secrets to lock down both uploads and reads. We've already contacted the author and are happy to work with anyone who is concerned and get them early access

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, given the feedback, we're implementing a way to set the max file size on your developer portal. Fix should go out in the next 10-15 minutes

<comment><USER2> This is great, but there isn't any indication of what units the max filesize is using. Kilobytes or megabytes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops! Sorry, bytes

<comment><USER2> So for 30 MB I should put in 30000000?

<comment><USER3> or 31457280

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the last couple of years I've been working on a project to index multimedia for language instruction purposes. We had to address exactly this problem- if someone intercepts your API key, which is trivial if you have to put it in JavaScript, you're screwed. The partial solution we've implemented is disallowing requests that require a key from a browser, and requiring client applications to work server-to-server in those cases.

It doesn't totally solve the problem, it just moves it; but it moves it to a _less vulnerable location_ if you never have to get your API key into a browser where anyone can check it out by viewing source, or, in extremis, opening FireBug.

<comment> Stealth- Amazon solves this with shared keys, and is filepicker's up coming solution. You might want to look into doing it like that.

<comment><USER5> Could you elaborate on this, please? I can't find much on the topic.

Edit: The Filepicker.io email seems to indicate a PKI-style solution, but I can only sort of guess at the implementation.

<comment><USER6> Sure - check out <http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1434>

What you're interested in is:

"signature" - "A signature value that authorizes the form and proves that only you could have created it. This value is calculated by signing the Base64-encoded policy document with your AWS Secret Key, a process that I will demonstrate below."

<comment><USER4> I may be missing something, but it seems to me that's still vulnerable to interception. The policy document can limit the kinds of things that can be uploaded, but an attacker could still intercept that form on the way to or from the user and replace the intended user's data with anything else that happened to fit the policy.

I suppose that's solved by serving the form over https. Perhaps that's just what I was missing.

<comment><USER6> HTTPs would work but also if you scroll down a bit and look at the policy JSON (<http://pastie.org/private/tkr7iyqzqrezmmqazbfijw>), it has an "expiration" field which would mitigate the type of attack outlined in the parent post since after a period of time the signature would no longer be valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's unfortunate to see Chris posted this without mentioning anything to Filepicker first.

That said, it's a pretty obvious problem which is inherent in the way Filepicker is doing things right now. Simple sometimes comes at the expense of secure. I'd argue that they made a fairly reasonable trade-off for the time.

Good to see Brett and the team are responding quickly.

</comment><comment><USER8> We asked them to implement this feature before integrating in August, and they were very responsive and said they'd do it asap. My understanding is that it's now on their staging environments.

I don't see why anyone would have integrated without this.

</comment><comment><USER9> S3 allows you to include a maxfile size param in your upload signature, so it should be easy enough for this to be fixed. However, you still have to be careful, as someone uploading 100 10MB files is just as bad as 1 1000MB file.

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems like a prime example of how a startup should reply to a blog post like this. Quick, honest, and with a solution in the works.</comment>


Steve Wozniak wrote BASIC for the Apple computer in binary - <AUTHOR> http://makingitbigcareers.com/steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-apple-computer-in-binary/

<comment><USER2> It seems to me that he actually coded in Assembly and then translated to 1s and 0s, and that's quite normal.

I've done it for school projects, where we had a simple processor that had to be "programmed" this way. Sure I didn't have to implement a BASIC interpreter, but I know how hard it is to debug.</comment>


Visual Studio 2010 RC is available - <AUTHOR> http://weblogs.asp.net/gunnarpeipman/archive/2010/02/09/visual-studio-2010-rc-is-available.aspx

<comment><USER3> Good stuff. I switched from a long time C# guy at MS (pre .net 1.0) to Ruby / Mac about 5 years ago. Haven't regretted it, but still love to see what the team comes out with. Microsoft pumps a ton of money into their dev tools, and they produce a ridiculous amount of stuff at every release. And every once in a while, some technical gems break through.

Sounds like F# might be that thing this year. But will need to fire up the VMWare and get things installed to see.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are a startup you can get this for free via Microsoft's BizSpark program. Please contact me to get signed up for BizSpark.

</comment><comment><USER5> The most notable features in Visual Studio 2010 in my mind are F#, a proper functional programming language, and ASP.NET MVC, which is ASP.NET that doesn't suck.

<comment><USER6> Funnily enough, both of them are available for VS2008 as well (although they're not shipped with VS2008) so if that's the only reason, you don't need to pay for the upgrade.

I would mention .NET 4 / C# 4, improved intellisense, multi-display support. I suppose the enterprise types will appreciate the new UML tools as well, personally however I try to stay away as far from UML as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> More details: [http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/02/08/vs-2010-ne...](http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/02/08/vs-2010-net-4-release- candidate.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER8> It seems the performance of the IDE is much better, which is a welcome improvement. Unfortunately we will have to wait 2 months for the final version:

".. our launch event is currently scheduled for April 12th." - <USER2>

<comment><USER9> It stinks that we'll have to wait 2 months for the RTM version, but honestly, I don't mind waiting if that means Microsoft has the time to make more small improvements on a tool that I'll be using nearly-daily for the next 2-3 years.

<comment><USER10> Call me pessimistic but that IF is not _such_ a small one imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope they improve performance further because VS 2010 slows down doing basic things on my machine which I originally intended to be a gaming machine.

<comment><USER12> I've been running beta 2 in a VM with ~1GB of RAM without too many problems. If performance increases, that'd be swell, but I don't think beta 2 is horrible.

</comment></comment><comment> dale-cooper I hopefully won't need to use it, since they removed emacs keyboard mappings :-(

[https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/...](https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/465750/emacs- keyboard-mapping-scheme-not-working-in-visual-studio-2010-beta-1)</comment>


Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway: The Seal Show - <AUTHOR> https://www.gregkogan.com/journal/russia-trans-siberian-railway-irkutsk/ <comment><USER2> Is it odd that I'm drawn to the architecture of the dilapidated wooden homes? I've never seen it before - particularly the ornate pieces above the windows. Is there a name to the style?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure how specific you are being, but "izba" would be a good starting search term.

This page has an overview: [https://www.rbth.com/arts/2014/01/30/the_wonders_of_the_russ...](https://www.rbth.com/arts/2014/01/30/the_wonders_of_the_russian_izba_33697.html)

And this one lists terms for some architectural features: [https://www.slavorum.org/russian-wooden-house-izba- construct...](https://www.slavorum.org/russian-wooden-house-izba- construction/)

<comment><USER2> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here, ask me anything about savant seals.

<comment><USER4> Hey just a heads up the first link to the previous section of your trip is broken.

Wow what a trip though. How do you think the seals were treated? It looks like a pretty small pool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks!

I don't know much about the seals' treatment. They'd probably prefer to live in the deepest freshwater lake in the world (Lake Baikal) than in some basement pool.</comment></comment></comment>


Making heavy elements by colliding neutron stars (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/making-heavy-elements-by-colliding-neutron-stars/ <comment><AUTHOR> technical details, "An r-Process Kilonova Associated with the Short-Hard GRB 130603B" ~ [http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3960](http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3960)</comment>


MPI-Mapreduce - <AUTHOR> http://www.sandia.gov/~sjplimp/mapreduce.html <comment><USER2> Posted by the same user (at the same time as): "MPI Is Dead … and It's About Time" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1331226>

The above article is from 2007 but the library here was updated in March 2010.

MPI is not dead. Point made?

</comment><comment><USER3> The sad thing about MPI is that it's entrenched. To run it on the biggest iron such as Blue Gene they have to use a mechanism called OS Bypass to get the bytes on the wire fast enough because the Linux kernel takes an age. One of the other teams in Sandia work on alternatives to running Linux; see their use of Plan 9 in "Using Currying and process-private system calls to break the one-microsecond system call barrier, Ronald G. Minnich, John Floren, Jim Mckie" - <http://iwp9.org/slides/usecsys.pdf>

However, obviously the actual users want to maintain their investment in their MPI based Fortran software so it's one of those situations where merely matching the current systems is not enough unless you can demonstrate heaps of potential.</comment>


How "Why Startups Fail" Fails - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1047-how-why-startups-fail-fails <comment><USER2> Every one comes up with reasons why startups fail/succeed. I still do not believe there is a set of reasons why businesses fail. Idea, ability to execute, great engineering team and the rest are just opinions.There is no way to tell what will/will not succeed. You can only weight opportunity vs risk and there are so many other factors that make the equation much more complex that the only only way to know what will or will not make it is to actually take the journey. Just do it.</comment>


Shutdowns Raise Issue Of Who Controls The Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2012/12/01/166286596/shutdowns-raise-issue-of-who-controls-the-internet <comment><USER2> Why is it even an issue.. We, the People, Control the Internet!.. Its like the World… Everyone Lives in it, but nobody truly controls it.. Its not possible to control If people try, then I guess WW3 wont be nuclear at all..</comment>


ASCIImator: Online ASCII Animator - <AUTHOR> http://www.asciimator.net/ <comment><USER3> Hello! I am actually the maintainer of the site, and an active user back in its heyday. It is largely kept in maintenance mode, as the codebase is reminiscent of the year 2006 (as was passed on to me from the creators - <USER2> not for a rewrite to use JSON for ASCIImations, it would probably still run fine on IE6...) and I do not have enough time to give it a proper cleanup.

The site is back up, and I'll try to ensure that for the near future - the VPS it's on is fairly low-end.

Note: I am aware that the main page is by far the slowest part of the website.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry to say that it seems to be down again - getting 502 Gateway Timeout from nginx.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I see - MySQL is taking so long to process the queries that php-fpm runs out of free processes. Trying to "fix" it...

Update: I commented out most of the main page, but now at least the rest works. Yay. Needs caching. I'll add some when I come back home in four hours, nonetheless - this brave attempt at trying to resurrect the site's community made the whole thing collapse unexpectedly.

<comment><USER5> Worth signing up for CloudFlare's free plan, and setting a page rule to 'Cache everything'. That should help you a lot!

<comment><USER6> Except that CloudFlare is kind of evil: [http://www.crimeflare.com/](http://www.crimeflare.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, I love the one showing all 20 standard amino acids:

[http://www.asciimator.net/asciimation/11130](http://www.asciimator.net/asciimation/11130)

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone old enough to remember TheDraw from BBS days?

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

</comment><comment><USER9> Great project! This reminds me of the past where I created some ASCIImations, too:

[http://asciimation.de/](http://asciimation.de/)

Also, never forget the great, classic Star Wars ASCIImation:

[http://www.asciimation.co.nz/](http://www.asciimation.co.nz/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Something related, vlc has a mode where one can play movies as ascii art. It even works through a terminal.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sidenote: I wonder how many HNers actually checked the link before upvoting and how many didn't...

</comment><comment><USER12> HN hit this hard. Down for now.</comment>


Best of tptacek, patio11, edw519 and other HN leaders - <AUTHOR> http://evanrmurphy.com/best-of-hacker-news-leaders/

<comment><AUTHOR> Top 10 pasted here for convenience:

1\. tptacek - [http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=tptacek&limit=75](http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=tptacek&limit=75)

2\. patio11 - [http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=patio11&limit=75](http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=patio11&limit=75)

3\. edw519 - [http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=edw519&limit=75](http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=edw519&limit=75)

4\. jacquesm - [http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=jacquesm&limit=75](http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=jacquesm&limit=75)

5\. fogus - [http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=fogus&limit=75](http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=fogus&limit=75)

6\. cwan - [http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=cwan&limit=75](http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=cwan&limit=75)

7\. jrockway - [http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=jrockway&limit=75](http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=jrockway&limit=75)

8\. swombat - [http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=swombat&limit=75](http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=swombat&limit=75)

9\. vaksel - [http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=vaksel&limit=75](http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=vaksel&limit=75)

10\. ssclafani - [http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=ssclafani&limit=7...](http://bitovod.com/hn/best- of?username=ssclafani&limit=75)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Context: bitovod created a site which aggregates the "Best of _____" for any user on Hacker News (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2661941>).

After he added a feature to make queries linkable, we can now compile a "Best of" list for all the leaders on Hacker News (<http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders>). This is an attempt to compile and maintain such a list.

</comment><comment><USER2> This would be better as a comment on <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2661941>.</comment>


Fundamental human right is absolute - <AUTHOR> Why <comment><USER2> Empathy

<comment><USER2> Some people don't have it but society works because of it. Imagine at every corner you had to watch your back. If everyone acted like a psychopath and would stab you in the back at their first chance.</comment></comment>


An optimal portfolio of pokemon - <AUTHOR> http://koaning.io/posts/pokemon.html

<comment><USER2> This is very cool! One thing I noticed though is "a pokemon master can only have 5 pokeballs (prisons for pokemon that you can carry around)". However, (at least in the video games) a pokemon master can actually carry with him a party of 6 pokemon.</comment>


Improve your life with Checklists - <AUTHOR> Arktik - www.arktik.co
Checklists help you to improve yourself, to focus, to enhance your life, to quickly react and succeed!
Planning trips, cooking meals, designing websites, even flying airplanes ? No matter what you do, it's utterly important HOW you do it, in order to succeed.
Arktik is a checklist web app built so you can worry less and achieve more... by using failure as a tool for success! <comment><USER2> The project looks interesting because it reflects some insight into human behavior.

Non-link items submitted through the Hacker News |submit| page are ranked lower. Submitting just a link through the |submit| page and adding a comment to the new story _after_ it is created, is usually a better practice.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughts! It's much appreciated! :)

Regarding best practice on Hacker News - noted! Next time will respect your indications!

Cheers!</comment></comment>


Libraries enter the digital age - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0729441420080807

<comment><AUTHOR> Something like this would be a great startup business model for digital media. It would allow me to check out a movie or a song for maybe 1.5x the time of its duration.</comment>


How A Tech Giant Proposes To Charge You For Having Friends - <AUTHOR> http://abovethelaw.com/2013/05/how-a-tech-giant-proposes-to-charge-you-for-having-friends/

<comment><USER2> The tech sounds pretty neat to me [privacy concerns put aside].

Maybe this tech is only enabled if your streaming a new release... something that was just released to the theaters. Maybe 2 people cost 20$ and 4 people cost $30? All I know is that I will pay more to watch new stuff now and from my couch.</comment>


The Feynman Lectures on Physics now free - <AUTHOR> http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ <comment><USER2> > However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read online, > and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion > of The Feynman Lectures on Physics for any purpose.

I'm not entirely sure how to read this in my web browser without it being downloaded in the process.

<comment><USER3> They mean keep a local copy. Likely that was written by someone who uses the word download for all computer related operations.

I didn't have any intention to make a local copy but I am going to now, just to spite their ludicrous prohibition.

<comment><USER4> It is a longer term cache.

:D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be nice to get the audio released free as well. While not as useful as the books for actual learning (at least half of the audio is Feynman drawing furiously on a chalkboard and booming "and then this leads to this...") much of the beginning parts of each lecture are dedicated to well spoken overviews and ideas, and to hear them from Feynman himself is quite amazing. I've only been able to find some of the audio files for sale on Audible and on some rare bootleg torrents.

<comment><USER6> Let's use deep learning to remake Feynman voice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Old but always immensely valuable .. Feynman is a huge scientific hero of mine

</comment><comment><USER8> This has been free for quite a while already. I've been referencing this online edition since at least 2014.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is huge! Highly recommend reading along to the audio if you can find it.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is some years old, in case that's not clear, and "free" as in readable online at no charge. There was an interesting account of the production process somewhere, but I can't find a reference to it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is this a nice way to finally catch up on physics for someone who never got much of it in high school? Or would Khan Academy still be preferable?

<comment><USER12> No. Feynman Lectures was an experimental set of lecture notes (not a textbook!) for presentation to elite Caltech students (who already studied a lot of physics in high school) who would find an introduction to physics far too easy and boring, and Feynman himself was pessimistic about how effective the course was.

It's famous for being Feynman, not for being a great textbook.

<comment><USER13> > It's famous for being Feynman, not for being a great textbook.

I beg to differ.

I know no general course in physics which is close enough to the Feynman lectures on physics. And I've learned about Feynman from lectures, not the other way. (Arguably, he is famous thanks to his explanations skills.) And anecdotally, virtually all people I know that participated in physics olympiad adore this textbook.

(At least - Volumes I and II; III is interesting as supplementary material, but I recommend other core materials for quantum mechanics, vide: [https://p.migdal.pl/2016/08/15/quantum-mechanics-for-high- sc...](https://p.migdal.pl/2016/08/15/quantum-mechanics-for-high-school- students.html#textbooks)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Note: Web access only, no downloads.

<comment><USER15> Curl can do recursive downloads downloading everything and following links...

<comment><USER16> And they can also be found on the High Seas...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this since 2013?

</comment><comment><USER18> Tried to access on HTTPS, only to get [https://scriptshadow.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/02/canary-i...](https://scriptshadow.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/02/canary-in-the-coal-mine.jpgw595.jpeg?w=240) on a page by itself. WTF?

</comment><comment><USER19> when will the feynman lectures expire? I think they are great, but it would be nice if it had more references to sources.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it just me or all the images are broken?

<comment><USER21> Works for me (Firefox and Chrome). The footnote on the page says: "This HTML5-based edition features LaTeX equations rendered by MathJax JavaScript, and scalable vector graphic (SVG) figures. Your browser must support javascript and permit scripts from mathjax.org. LocalStorage must be enabled"

<comment><USER20> Thanks. Guess my privacy settings are a bit on the paranoid side ;)</comment></comment></comment>


How I Defeated the Tolkien Estate - <AUTHOR> http://the-toast.net/2014/12/08/defeated-tolkien-estate/#Dp25MqriiDOluvQJ.99 <comment><USER2> Can someone who is a little more into Lord of the Rings comment on this? This guy didn't really get a lawsuit dropped by claiming that Tolkeins books were actually written 5000 years ago did he?

Or is there something here whooshing over my head?

<comment><USER3> The latter. Had anyone actually written a supposed translation of the "Red Book" I'm pretty sure the Tolkein estate has enough movie money to fund an orc army of lawyers who would march to court thumping their shields, or, rather briefcases with swords, or, rather, umbrellas, chanting "We are the Triple Eagles, sons of BC High!"

<comment><USER4> I suspect that if the book were written as described -- foul-mouthed Galadriel, hobbit sex, diarrhea in Moria -- it would end up a parody.

<comment><USER5> That's pretty much what Harvard Lampoon did back in 1969:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one who read this thinking it was truth, only to feel lied to after finding out it's fiction?

Is the-toast.net doing the same thing as The Onion, or was it just this one story?

If I was Tolkien, I'd be a bit peeved about being portrayed as a dick (lawsuit over public domain works), especially since this appears to be depicted as truth. (Maybe LoTR fans could spot that it's fiction, but I'm not at that level in the fan club yet)

<comment><USER7> There were a lot of flags. Maybe you didn't read it carefully?

      Tolkien refers to Quendi people as "elves," a common term in his time, but considered highly offensive today.

or

      When I entered the Hobbit Studies program at the University of Chicago in 2003, I wasn't planning to write my own translation. Like most of my peers, I was content to lead a quiet scholarly life, writing my dissertation on Adûni phonology and having friendly debates over second brunch about whether or not Balrogs have wings

Or the changing of the college the author wants to work at from Franciscan to Jesuit.

or

      referring to Pippin's brain as "blunter than an orc's dick," gone is the Fellowship's graphic struggle with dysentery in the Mines of Moria.

There were a lot of signs.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I missed the signs. I'm still perplexed by the the whole thing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I registered some domains a couple of years ago that contained the word 'hobbit', and almost immediately got a letter from the lawyers of Tolkien Enterprises, demanding that I turn them over to them.

I hadn't even put a site up on the domains, and probably would have turned them over, but a lawyer friend of my said that I hadn't done anything wrong, and if I didn't plan to violate their copyright of the 'hobbit' that I didn't have too.

I decided to keep the domains (still haven't launched a site on them) on principle and wrote a nice legally worded letter courtesy of lawyer friend back to them. I told them I wouldn't be turning them over, and didn't hear back from them :)

I'm sure they are waiting for me to put up a site and violate the copyright somehow, but they can keep waiting.

</comment><comment><USER10> Incidentally, if you're interested in an actual alternate account of LoTR, The Last Ringbearer is quite good. It's not an alternative translation, but rather a retelling from the perspective of the other side of the war.

<comment><USER11> I've read The Last Ringbearer twice. It's totally awesome and gives, perhaps, even more plausible story than the original LOTR series.

The Last Ringbearer in English [http://ymarkov.livejournal.com/280578.html](http://ymarkov.livejournal.com/280578.html)

The Last Ringbearer in Russian [http://www.lib.ru/PROZA/ESKOV_K/last.txt](http://www.lib.ru/PROZA/ESKOV_K/last.txt)

Reviews at GoodReads [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10329770-the-last- ringbea...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10329770-the-last-ringbearer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is the best take on literary academia I've read in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this satire? I don't get it.

<comment><USER12> yes</comment></comment>


Frameworks Round-Up: When To Use, How To Choose? - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/04/frameworks-round-up-when-to-use-how-to-choose/

<comment><USER2> This is just a list of frameworks. It doesn't contain any useful information about when to use them or how to make a good selection.</comment>


Hello Chrome and Firefox, meet serverless WebRTC - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/firebase/gupshup/ <comment><AUTHOR> [OP / Firebase founder here] We certainly aren't trying to be disingenuous with the 'serverless' title. The piece of code on GitHub allows you to build WebRTC functionality that doesn't require you to run a signaling sever. (or, any server if you want to go that far) Though, yes, we still run and maintain the Firebase servers to make this happen.

Sorry for any confusion. I'll add some explicit language in the README on GitHub.

Thanks for checking out the code.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clarifying!

WebRTC is really exciting from a P2P perspective, which is why I and others are sensitive about the terminology.

This is a really cool use of Firebase, to have zero discovery servers to deploy for a working WebRTC setup.

We're headed into so many new fronts with web based technologies, that the terminology can get muddled depending on your perspective.

Keep rocking it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Firebase is useful here because you can use it to handle state changes for iceCandidates and not worry about using your own server. You can also store data with Firebase API. By 'serverless', OP means that you don't need to have your own server/database and can host your app as a standalone html file, letting firebase take care of your backend.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not severless. Jerks.

<comment><USER5> It is serverless in the sense that _you_ don't need to have or maintain a server. I think this is consistent with how most people use the term.

<comment><USER6> I don't maintain HN, but that doesn't mean HN is serverless.

<comment><USER5> Here are some other stories that use the term serverless:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Ser...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Serverless&start=0)

I feel like it's a term that has a generally well-understood meaning. What other term would you prefer?

<comment><USER7> What the heck -- how have we redefined "serverless" to mean anything but "without servers"? I second the use of "hosted" or "hosted free as in beer" or pretty much any marketing term we want to apply to this as long as it doesn't use words that mean the opposite of reality.

<comment><USER8> Peer-to-peer systems still use DNS "servers". Pure P2P WebRTC systems still need STUN "servers". In fact, one of the peers in a P2P system could also be considered a server.

"Serverless" as you define it would describe nothing in existence today. I think the way most people perceive the term is simply to mean reliance on servers that you don't have to build and run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> By serverless, I expected peer to peer without a server. This still uses a server.

</comment><comment><USER10> Curious. What made you choose an indian word for the project?

<comment><USER8> Nothing in particular other than I'm from India :)

When naming projects I usually look to the English thesaurus first, failing which I'll use a Hindi or Tamil word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not serverless. Requires firebase.</comment>


Ask HN: Which technology stack do you prefer as a user of web-based software? - <AUTHOR>

Say you want a solution for a problem you have, that is not within your core-business. Preferably you want something free or cheap, that you can install on your own server, as you are a small business or young startup.
How important is it for you, that the software matches your technology stack? Say you are a Rails-shop, would you choose a Rails app over a superior or cheaper PHP app?  Is there a hierarchy of technologies, that you apply when choosing a product (e.g. Rails over others, but rather Python than PHP)? Or don't you care, because you use visualization/containerization anyway and don't mind the additional technology?
I am asking this, because obviously PHP + MySQL have the biggest overall audience and is the easiest to install option for most people. On the other hand, I do not like it, HN does not like it and it is ill-suited for long-running stuff. <comment><USER2> When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all [0].

[0] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756880/quotes?item=qt0316350](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756880/quotes?item=qt0316350)</comment>


A Dilbert's way on submitting enhancement requests - <AUTHOR> http://cubic-m.blogspot.com/2009/09/dilbert-way-on-submitting-enhancement.html

<comment><USER2> | _One of the things that I notice is that bugs that are raised usually gets fixed only if there is a business impact._

Isn't that a good thing? If you're running a business, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to spend development effort on things that don't have a materially positive impact.

| _As always work needs to be prioritized [...]_

Yes, and typically, bugs that can be worked around or don't block anything have fairly low priority. Again, that seems like a good thing.

It seems very counterproductive (and borderline malignant) to engineer a strategy for manipulating the development team into fixing problems that, ostensibly, don't have much impact on the business.

<comment><USER3> What about non-critical bugs that, in the grand scheme of things, cost many man-hours on a regular basis to avoid or work around? In that case, it seems the investment of a handful of developer hours would be worthwhile, and yet still hard to push through.

Honestly, if your development team makes software for internal use and internal use only, isn't their primary function by definition to improve productivity of the rest of the company?

<comment><USER4> _If your development team makes software for internal use and internal use only, isn't their primary function by definition to improve productivity of the rest of the company?_

I think that needs a to be ammended to _…to cost effectively improve productivity…_ That are lots of ways to spend X to save X/1000 500 times over. As an example…

While opening a new checking account for a new LLC I watched the poor banker enter my SSN 6 times[1]. Each time she went to a new "page" she had to enter the SSN which she had written on her desk blotter calendar. Then at the end the computer refused to open the account because it wanted an EIN instead of an SSN.[2]

There are at least three[3] problems there that slow down employees, annoy them, and led to compromised customer security. None of them are show stoppers or direct money losses and I doubt any will ever be fixed.

A wrinkle here is that it is banking software, and those handful of developer hours might also come with hundreds of hours of compliance, verification, and legal work.

[1] She typoed a digit the first time and actually hit another customer's SSN. That had to be about a 1/100 or less chance. Being a smallish town that caused confusing because it was a woman other than my wife.

[2] It was already after closing time by then, so they worked on it the next day and appeased the computer somehow. Probably an override code from someone able to take responsibility.

[3] Let's count…

• Application flow requires a SSN repeatedly to accomplish a simple task.

• Employees are writing down customer SSNs in visible locations on their desks. (If you'd ever needed to reset your online password with these guys you would faint now.)

• After seeing the SSN repeatedly it is only at the last stage that the application validates the SSN for the actual purpose of reporting tax information rather than its use as a database key.

• Bonus item: I couldn't see the screen, but she typed several times more characters than I gave her as information. That's just disrespectful of users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work for an investment bank that has a Singapore dev team that has a bit of a reputation for totally ignoring any bugs from the US. Our solution was to fly there, walk over to the guy that needed to fix a bug (that was open for a year), and not leave until it was fixed. After a year of conversing via email, this got the bug fixed in about 30 seconds! ("Oh yeah, that's implemented! Let me fire up the dev server for you!")

I think the problem is that the official internal language is English, but people outside the US and the UK are not necessarily as proficient in English as they are their native language. Combined with the fact that most people can't write comprehensibly, and there is a huge communication barrier.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's a rather obnoxious way of forcing your own sense of priorities on others. Sounds like what's missing is a weekly sync up call between the devs and the product owners to review the issue queue and sort it in order of priority.

</comment><comment><USER7> A lot of development work is aimed at streamlining people's work processes. These are not make-or-break issues, but the hours of wasted time add up when your UI forces you to navigate through multiple screens needlessly. In that sense there is always a business justification: you are increasing the efficiency of your employees on the job.

</comment><comment><USER8> We call this "Tester Driven Development", feature requests via the bug tracking system :-)</comment>


These Are the Highest Paying Jobs for the Class of 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-15/big-data-skills-earn-high-pay-for-today-s-college-graduates <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the list:

1) Data Scientist: 95,000

2) Software Engineer: 90,000

3) Product Manager: 89,000

4) Investment Banking Analyst: 85,000

5) Product Designer: 85,000

6) UX Designer: 73,000

7) Implementation Consultant: 72,000

8) Java Developer: 72,000

9) Systems Engineer: 70,000

10) Software Developer: 68,000</comment>


Practice Happiness with Yale University - <AUTHOR> https://sfree.life/happiness-course-positivity-free/?ref=google <comment><USER2> No wonder universities have no money if they spend their funding elevating self-help books to the status of science courses. Also the OP link has a ref parameter.

<comment><USER3> That may apply to many universities in the US, but not to Yale. They have the 2nd largest endowment ( $30 billion ).

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

In Yale's case, they probably have too much money. Enough to waste money on nonsense and not care.

<comment><USER4> Another theory: The course might be relevant, timely, and thoughtful.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Am I too dumb for HN - <AUTHOR> None of my comments on HN are visible to others. I have read the guidelines and I think I'm violating the "don't post dumb comments" rule. I comment only on the things I'm interested in and usually I'm asking for clarifications of a post or a comment.
Is it assumed that I have to be a professional with regards to the topic? I am mostly self thought and I know I have huge gaps in my knowledge.
Wouldn't it be helpful for the person asking and others in similar position to show the comment/question even if it is dumb by HN standards but shows genuine interest. Others could point out (in a civil manner) what is wrong with the comment and the commenter could grow less dumb. <comment><USER2> You're posting this from a new account which has no banned comments, so I'm guessing you're referring to another account which you're not mentioning, for whatever reason.

If your other account is banned, it's likely a moderator told you the reason why.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, this is a new account. I am not mentioning the account in question because, honestly, I am afraid of proving myself right, that I am dumb.

Back to the original question. I will check my old comments that were visible, if there is some mention about the ban. I think I'd remember if there was, but I'll double check.

Thanks for the help.

<comment><USER2> You can also contact the mods at the email link at the bottom of the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just checked my comments. In fact none of them have any replies. I suspect none of them are visible. The account is one year old.

I have two submissions. One has no comments, and the other has one comment (a regular reply to the submission).

I will write to the mods as you suggested. The account is irrelevant, I can use this one from now on. I just wouldn't want to repeat whatever I did to get the account banned.

Thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are your comments simply being downvoted? If so, then that is not "HN" doing it, but instead your audience (other HN users) reading your comment, deciding it not 'worthy' (for whatever definition of 'worthy' they use) and pressing the downvote button next to the comment.

Which would imply that the solution might (if downvotes are the issue) be to consider how the content of your comments might be viewed by others and then try to adjust your commenting style so as to not be downvoted by others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some of them are downvoted and that is fine. The problem is that most of my comments (lately almost all of them) are not visible at all.

Could it be that I am classified as "dumb" by some automated spam protection?

<comment><USER4> "you" are not classified as dumb, there is a demotion of content that is not being consumed, until it goes stale and falls off the "end".

also comments that are downvoted heavily enough are greyed then removed from view.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not think that is the case. The last time I commented I logged out immediately after posting it, and when I am logged out, the comment is not visible. I see it when I'm logged in.

<comment><USER4> that is a "shadow" i dont know why anybody thinks its a good thing, but what happens is you see your posts and comments, but no one else does, so you think everything is fine, instead of abandoning the username and making another.

Ive wondered just how much storage space is "wasted" by perpetuating the illusion of participation when you are actually talking to thin air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> up on the top banner, is a menu item [comments].

if you take a look there you will see what HN as a whole is talking about. you may get the flavour of HN and some idea what sort of comments, or submissions are valued here.

HINT submissions cant be downvoted, only flagged if they are in violation of rules. comments can be downvoted by those who have the downvote, so make submissions and find out what is good reading for the HN prolitariat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the hint. I was not aware of it.

<comment><USER4> keep in mind that submissions will also roll off the edge of the HNworld if they are going stale [unread].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being _not_smart_ doesn't meant that you are dumb.

</comment><comment><USER6> Too dumb for HN is an unachievable level of dumb. Many still try.

<comment><USER7> Dumb as it may be, please don't make HN dumber by posting unsubstantive comments here.</comment></comment>


Opium or Cucumber? Debunking a Myth About Sumerian Drugs - <AUTHOR> https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2018/08/opium-or-cucumber-debunking-myth-about.html <comment><USER2> I'm working on editing my PhD dissertation into a book right now and I'm dealing with this exact problem. I work on Babylonian astrology and the text I studied for my PhD was a complex table of astrological material including "medical" ingredients. Right now I'm finishing off correcting and translating all of the medical ingredients in the text.

I've chosen to rather than try to convert the Sumerian/Babylonian names of ingredients into assumed parallels leave them all in their native language. Identifying ancient ingredients is really hard (for many of the reasons given in the blog post). Most all, how can we sure than any of the descriptive adjectives (especially sensory observations) have modern equivalents that we can relate to. We know for instance that color words can differ quite a bit between languages, and that's thanks to living speakers who can show us what they mean by a certain word. How do we do that for long dead languages? For instance try explaining the scent of cedar wood without using the word cedar... and imagine all the culturally specific adjectives you'd have to use to approximate the smell.

To be sure, it's not a hopeless task. Some ancient names can be identify with modern parallels, but on the whole it's a very fraught task.

<comment><USER3> That sounds really fascinating. Where could an interested layman read more about your (and related) work?

I find it very hard to find material in that space, between the pop-culture "Check out These 10 Things The Ancient Sumerians Did!" (too vacuous) and expert journal articles (too deep, not enough context). In some areas Wikipedia rabbit-hole-trips serve well, but not always.

<comment><USER2> Totally agree, there are publications out there that are starting to bridge the gap. But really now more and more academics are taking to twitter and sharing their research in a more public way often with much of the field specific jargon tempered because of the platform.

I just published an article in an open-access book on digital methods in my field which is available here: [http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/b97890...](http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/b9789004375086_010)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surely the modern curcurbit is the product of years of breeding to remove hairs, seeds, gain length and sweetness.

Do we even know what primitive Sumerian cucumber sandwiches looked like?

Poppy heads didn't need breeder changes beyond potency and size! Seeds there for the grabbing in a handy pocket size container and sap a-plenty.

</comment><comment><USER5> >Thompson himself was aware of the confusion later in his career, but explained it by saying that the Sumerians used the term UKUS-RIM for both plants "because of the similarity of the poppy capsule to the small cucumber."

>Honestly, I'm not seeing it.

I hate to see this stuff in a debunking article since it indicates that the author is not doing a very good job at trying to understand the claims. The "small cucumber" could easily refer to the cucumber around the time of polination, when it does look at least vaguely similar even today (and as ggm mentioned, it might have looked different then). See the second image on this page (and remember that the flowers will dry at some point):

[http://blog.explosiveblooms.com/2013/07/lemon-cucumbers- are-...](http://blog.explosiveblooms.com/2013/07/lemon-cucumbers-are- developing/)

Some of the arguments sound reasonable but I wouldn't put too much trust in this author.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here - fair enough, that sentence was maybe too flippant. I do mention in the caption that bitter cucumber looks more similar. But if the criterion for making the assumption is that some types of cucumber are sometimes round like poppy pods, then I think it's still not at all convincing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing this, I love reading about how different societies interact with and approach psychoactives. Historical works liek this and anthropological works like Jeremy Narby's Cosmic Serpent are so intriguing.</comment>


Philly cops used surveillance van marked 'Google Maps' - <AUTHOR> http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160514_Philly_cops_used_surveillance_van_marked__Google_Maps_.html <comment><USER2>
      It quoted a Kansas man with experience in public-safety
      technology as saying the van contained gear including "infrared
      cameras to find plate numbers and letters via temperature
      differentials between those characters and the surrounding
      background through optical character recognition."

This guy is confusing near infrared (0.75 µm) with thermal infrared. (8–15 µm)

Near infrared cameras are cheap. Thermal infrared cameras are expensive (exotic materials needed for the optics) and have poor resolution, which makes them a really poor choice for machine vision stuff. License plate cameras are near infrared.</comment>


The Most Popular Street Names in Every State - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/03/06/these-are-the-most-popular-street-names-in-every-state/

<comment><USER2> This sums up the article quite nicely:

> Are we so bored, as a nation, that we want to investigate road names? Isn't > there poverty to alleviate? Aren't there Housewives to gawk at?</comment>


Show HN: Briks - Group Social Posts from Individuals, No Matter Where Posted - <AUTHOR> http://briksapp.co/

<comment><USER2> This is part of a Startup Weekend project, what do you guys think?</comment>


Ask HN: What Makes API Documentation Great? - <AUTHOR> What specifically makes documentation great? Example: something about the design, format, where it's located, structure, video tutorials/no tutorials. Examples would be really helpful. Also, if you are a developer, do you tend to spend time reading documention before going forth and testing it out or not? Thanks! <comment><USER2> This list contains lots of good examples [https://github.com/PharkMillups/beautiful- docs](https://github.com/PharkMillups/beautiful-docs)

For our service ([http://geocoder.opencagedata.com/](http://geocoder.opencagedata.com/)) we can't use many API-docs-autogeneration tools because their typical usecase is dozens to 100s of methods (think: Stripe). We only have one endpoint and a couple of aliases.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is awesome. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Like you said, examples would be [are] really useful!</comment>