Introducing ProcessWire 2.2  - <AUTHOR> http://processwire.com/about/news/introducing-processwire-2.2/ <comment><AUTHOR> Great update on my absolute favorite open source cms. Few of the highlights:

-Multi Language Support

-Repeatable (Matrix) Fields

-Multi-Domain / Multi-Site Support

-Fields on a page can now be edited in columns rather than just rows.

-Vastly Improved Date/Time Fields

I think anyone who are looking for "something better" in cms space should give ProcessWire a change.</comment>


NGENIX, the first Russian nationwide Content Delivery Network (CDN) launched - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.org/2008/10/10/ngenix-first-russian-nationwide-content-delivery-network-content-delivery-network-cdn/

<comment><USER2> Great. Why do the two pieces of Russian software that I know of have to have the _same name_ : the nginx web server and the NGENIX CDN?

It's DIVX vs DivX all over again.

Is this a coincidence? Or is there a Russian word for "awesome" that sounds like "engine X"? Or what?</comment>


Playing roguelikes when you can't see - <AUTHOR> https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/04/05/playing-roguelikes-when-you-cant-see/#more-439407 <comment><USER2> I'm fully sighted, but the concept of visual free or visual agnostic games has been something I've wondered about for a while. I hadn't considered the viability of heavily menu based RPGs before, but reading about it, it seems plainly obvious (kind of embarrassed I'd never considered that).

I really want to see (or find time to make myself) a first person game with no visuals and all the gameplay feedback through binaural audio, but I'm not sure of the technical details necessary for the audio part, and I have no idea how playable such a game would necessarily be.

<comment><USER3> Such a game appears to exist: [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/01/scared- of-the-dark-a-...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/01/scared-of-the-dark- a-look-at-the-audio-game-papa-sangre/)

If you try it, I'll be interested to know how you find it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am interested in "eyes closed" interfaces, while I try to go (back) to sleep. Also, my eyes are the first to get too tired since the rest of me is usually just sitting there. Another application is while driving (work commute is 1.5hrs round-trip daily), but distraction is not a good idea.

If anyone has any pointers to audio versions of Hacker News I can catch up on daily that would be nice; I waste a lot of time here. Also any way to listen + learn details on highly technical topics, such as React or machine learning, today's top buzzwords.

I've started with "Morse Toad", a free Android app to learn morse code. I plan to use morse code for input. Output will probably be primarily audio, possibly with a few vibrations (morse code again?). Unfortunately this app requires input via the on-screen keyboard.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mikelovesr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mikelovesrobots.morsetoad)

</comment><comment><USER5> Also check out this comment thread started by a blind HN community member who played nethack::

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10664126](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10664126)

</comment><comment><USER6> When I was younger I played on a text-based MUD called WotMUD (Wheel of Time) for years. It was like an early MMORPG you could play on telnet. To this day it is the most fun and intense game I've ever played.

I had several blind friends on the MUD, and I remember talking to them about their setups. One owned the braille keyboard described in the article. I thought was so cool that we could share a game experience together.

It's still around and active in case folks are interested: www.wotmud.org

</comment><comment><USER7> Looking at the picture of the braille display and seeing the comments on how expensive they are makes me wonder: is there a more general-purpose larger display that simply provides a large grid of raised/raisable bumps along those lines?

I can't imagine that the mechanical aspects would be that complex if the bump size was large enough, and even 4 "colors"/heights might be feasible (flat, low, medium, high). The electronics seem like they'd be almost trivial, and I'd imagine that it wouldn't be difficult to incorporate some level of touch/pressure sensitivity, possibly with detection of pressure down on an actuator holding a pin up.

Heck, if individual of perhaps 16x16 could be made then a "grid" of those could provide quite a possible display capability.

<comment><USER7> As a minor update, I was thinking about something similar to the 2002 prototype mentioned in this article: [http://newatlas.com/go/8267/](http://newatlas.com/go/8267/) with a couple of things licensed out 10 years ago (to a company that currently appears to only have a font that they license).

Seems to me that you might even be able to build something that would identify as a VGA monitor, either monochrome or in one of the legacy 4-color modes at a low resolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Amazing people can listen to that 10x fast audio reading of the characters on the screen and manage to play the game like that.

Hearing the audio I could barely even keep up with it. It's like watching two people play chess entirely in their heads.

<comment><USER9> It seemed to maybe be getting easier, then right before the talking started I recognized "Lichen is hit. Lichen is killed." I'm not sure if I was actually getting a tiny bit more used to it, or that was a particularly easy piece to understand, or the lack of subsequent high speed speech allowed my brain to take a second to process it, or some combination of the above.

Listening again, I still can't recognize anything except until the end. For this, I also imagine a slow ramping up of the speed helps. That way you know what messages might be said, so it's easier to pattern match on the fly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In my college software engineering course we built a game for the blind. It had full 3D graphics.

I always felt a pang of guilt that we were walking away from the project when the class was over, since some of the kids did like it.

<comment><USER11> Can you elaborate a little on how it is supposed to work?

<comment><USER10> It was a track runner with three parallel tracks, "bombs" and "coins" approached you, making sounds either in front of you, to your left and right. Your job was to avoid bombs and get coins.

Pretty simple "action" game for the visually impaired. The joke is that we spent an absurd portion of the time on the visualization. The justification was that it would also have appeal for the sighted.</comment></comment></comment>


The State of Deepfakes: Reality Under Attack. A 2018 Report [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/rep2018/2018-the-state-of-deepfakes.pdf <comment> barrow-rider > GAN: Generative Adversarial Networks, a specific kind of deep learning > algorithm that can train a neural network to generate realistic imagery. > Whilst GANs are not integral to creating synthetic media, they represent the > most significant development in the how new kinds of synthetic media are > created.

In the future, our enemies will be Anonymous GANs, or GANNONs

</comment><comment><USER2> Are there companies providing a deepfake detection service?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very new phenomenon and there are only a few players on the market. You can check what we are doing at [https://www.deeptracelabs.com](https://www.deeptracelabs.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Will deepfake detection be built into antivirus software?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question, maybe!

The way we see it: if today we are used to scan files downloaded from potentially unsafe sources, tomorrow we will get used to scan videos to check their authenticity -- check that they have not been tampered with, changing their conveyed meaning. Arguably, the same will hold for social media and video hosting websites.

While traditional malware are there to infect other piece of software, fake videos targets the human brain. This is more akin to social engineering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there filters on Facebook to detect deepfakes?

<comment><AUTHOR> None that I am aware of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does one create a deepfake?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you know some basics deep learning, you can find source code on github to play with. You will also find tutorials made by communities of developers and users.

Otherwise, if you look deep enough on the Internet, there are already websites offering deepfake as-a-service for a rather low price.

Not all these tools were developed for malicious purposes. Quite the opposite. But today it is up to everyone of us how this tech get utilised. And while it's becoming easier and cheaper to get realistic synthetic imagery, with better tools day by day, it is not yet obvious how we will cope with fake videos in our society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice Report! Good Job!</comment>


Who's Suing Whom in the Telecom Trade? [diagram] - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/whos-suing-whom-in-the-telecoms-trade/

<comment><USER2> There's a few of these kicking around.

The next stage I'd love to see is a timeline animation, where time passes and various vertices appear/disappear around the graph. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's certain is that the consumers are the winners.

Oh wait.

</comment><comment><USER4> Another one:

<http://twitter.com/#!/nivertech/status/26590054457>

Who's suing whom in the mobile business: [http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4133/5058172628_1a3597347e_z....](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4133/5058172628_1a3597347e_z.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER5> Just clean image - <http://infobeautiful2.s3.amazonaws.com/whos_suing_whom.png>

</comment><comment><USER6> Apple has the highest SueRank of all these companies

<comment><USER7> How do you figure?

<comment><USER8> i think he counted the dark edges only, but if you include the resolved cases on this list, then it is HTC

<comment><USER9> Everybody loves to sue HTC lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Surprising there are no Chinese telecom companies. I see them being sued in the US at a higher frequency.</comment>


Unlicensed "health coach" claims health advice is free speech–court disagrees - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/unlicensed-health-coach-claims-health-advice-is-free-speech-court-disagrees/ <comment><USER2> Bachelor's degree in geography? I wonder if she went to school with Buster Bluth.</comment>


How to make a corporate butt pucker - <AUTHOR> http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2006/07/how_to_make_a_c.html <comment><USER2> Big companies don't always do a good job of keeping up with the latest and greatest ways to cut costs ... but overall big companies are more profitable than startups and more efficient, so it's sort of tough to knock their approach too much. After all, what is a startup but an early stage burocracy?

<comment><USER3> More efficient? Citation needed...

<comment><USER4> Find me a family-run retail store that can get the prices that Walmart gets from its suppliers. It's not even close.

Large corporations are big and slow. They make poor decisions a lot. But they got big by doing at least one thing right. Sometimes it's just an efficiency of scale, but it's an efficency nonetheless. In software specifically, it is _sometimes_ possible for a startup to outcompete an established competitor, but certainly not always.

And outside of software it's almost unheard of: try to displace Exxon/Mobil by being "smart" and "agile", for example.

<comment><USER5> I can give you countless of examples in San Francisco. My local grocery shop, run by a greek man, has always prices about %50 cheaper, than the big corp grocery store few blocks down. And more selection. Sometimes I can't believe how cheap (and good) things are.

Go anywhere in china town, and you will see rock bottom prices, on everything, grocery store, clothing, nick nacks, you name it. Even in the Mission in sf, there are plenty of cheap small grocery stores, run by family.

Go to the next door calmart, and you paying almost twice as much for the same stuff.

<comment><USER6> I've lived in SF for a long time, and I don't believe this, either. The prices might be 50% cheaper than Whole Foods, but not 50% cheaper than Safeway. If Cala Foods is what is meant by "calmart" the description could be accurate - Cala Foods is overpriced. But they are like a slightly bigger, semi-franchised mom and pop shop, not a big corporate chain.

<comment><USER5> You should check out geary and fourth market:

[http://www.yelp.com/biz/4th-ave-and-geary-farmers-market- san...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/4th-ave-and-geary-farmers-market-san- francisco#hrid:vEZ-fKCJFPj4ovSOdIFwYA/query:geary%20farmers%20market)

Yelp reviews: "I love this family owned Produce market. The vegetables & fruit are always seasonal and fresh. The prices are ridiculously cheap you almost feel like your steeling."

....

So long, Sucky's!

Hellooooooo hella cheap produce.

"Not always the freshest, and not quite the liveliness of a legit outdoor Farmer's Market, but for the convenient location AND all the money I'm saving, do I even really care?"

And, I now several other small grocery stores, just as cheap.

Go to lucky's, or safeway, and you are paying almost twice for the same stuff. Guys you have to digg around for the good stuff. If you live something like Marina, or Fidi, or Soma, you probably don't have choice but big stores, but if you live in the Inner Richmond, China Town, Mission, there are plenty of family run cheap grocery store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't buy the story: it sounds like a fabrication.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The punch line:

 _The split second you get any traction, any success at all? Look over shoulder, they're coming. You are already 'the old way to do it.'_

<comment><USER8> > _The split second you get any traction, any success at all? Look over > shoulder, they're coming. You are already 'the old way to do it.'_

Yeesh. I already misread the headline; this just reinforces it. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Granted, the large corporation in question may truly have inefficiencies and other problems. But let's be fair: A prototype is not equal to a multi-million dollar corporation. That's like comparing a seed to an orange.

</comment><comment><USER10> "...you should prevent your beliefs about how things are from being contaminated by how you wish they were. Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously." -PG

</comment><comment><USER11> I suppose he wasn't talking to Google.

Anyway, not everything can be solved in 90 days.</comment>


Steve Yegge hits a homer: Your requirements are stupid - <AUTHOR> http://jessenoller.com/2008/08/12/steve-yegge-hits-a-homer-your-requirements-are-stupid/ <comment><USER2> >Don't gather business requirements: hire domain experts.

Rather a nice quote, don't you think. I see this meaning several things: (1) I agree with it, as it's hard to create a solution when you don't understand the problem. (2) The more this statement is true, the weaker the argument for outsourcing (or hiring hordes to do what few should do). (3) It argues that real domain experts should be able to keep finding work if they've got any kind of social skills at all.

I'm sure there's more, but these came to mind after reading the articles. Of course, the acid test for this kind of stuff is whether human wave teams outperform experts in the marketplace consistently.</comment>


The Race of Our Lives - <AUTHOR> https://www.morningstar.com/videos/870606/watch-jeremy-granthams-race-of-our-lives-speech.html <comment><USER2> For those who like to read instead: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190213042938/https://www.gmo.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190213042938/https://www.gmo.com/docs/default- source/research-and-commentary/strategies/asset-allocation/the-race-of-our- lives-revisited.pdf)

( I tried to submit it multiple times, but it never took off )

</comment><comment><USER3> I like a lot of what he wrote about environmental concerns.

Then the swipe at capitalism. Seems like a bridge too far, tackling too many issues in one article. (Even if the second tackle was just a glancing swipe.)

<comment> dan-robertson This is from the morning star (ie a communist newspaper) so surely a jab at capitalism is to be expected.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that, I wasn't aware of the Morning Star's leanings.

<comment><USER4> just fyi the comment about morningstar being a communist rag is a joke

from wikipedia: "Morningstar, Inc. is a global financial services firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It was founded by Joe Mansueto in 1984 and provides a wide array of investment research and investment management services."

<comment> dan-robertson It wasn't a joke, it was an error. I have no opinion on morning star inc, but there does exist a newspaper called the morning star (which I mistook this website for) which is a communist newspaper (as in, that is their stated editorial policy)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The iPod of Prison - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/the-ipod-of-prison-sony-radio.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand how they can write an entire article about a radio and not include a picture. Anyway, for anyone interested: [http://mmuseumm.com/pieces/srf-39fp](http://mmuseumm.com/pieces/srf-39fp)

<comment><USER3> That one's not loading for me, but I found this large image: [http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz117/NewYorkCompany1/Ele...](http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz117/NewYorkCompany1/Electronics/Sony%20SRF-39FP%20Walkman/DSC04806_zpsf78e9012.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was curious what kind of things are for sale in prison commissaries. A little searching found some price lists (PDFs).

Mississippi: [http://www.mdoc.state.ms.us/PDF%20Files/price%20list%202013_...](http://www.mdoc.state.ms.us/PDF%20Files/price%20list%202013_1.pdf)

Federal: [http://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/dub/DUB_CommList.p...](http://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/dub/DUB_CommList.pdf)

Washington County, Oregon: [http://www.co.washington.or.us/Sheriff/Jail/HelpInmate/uploa...](http://www.co.washington.or.us/Sheriff/Jail/HelpInmate/upload/Commissary- menu.pdf)

Texas: [http://www.minutesbeforesix.com/MB6Files/2010/Commissary%20P...](http://www.minutesbeforesix.com/MB6Files/2010/Commissary%20Price%20List.pdf)

<comment><USER5> The $1.25 mackerel is used as a currency. I believe inmates who work a "job" get paid as much about ten dollars per MONTH. You can have someone on the outside put money into your commissary account each month. Assuming the inmate has someone on the outside with the means and willingness to do so for them.

<comment><USER5> Oh, they also have a copier/printer that costs on the order of ten cents per copy. The phone system is also outrageously expensive. In the camps (think minimum security) they have limited access to computers which have e-mail which has a similarly absurd per minute rate.

If you could score the government contract to provide those services you'd make quite a bit money with stupidly large margins. It's a damn racket.

<comment><USER6> New age slavery is what it is...

<comment><USER7> It's closer to true indentured service, where a debt is being repaid through a fixed period of labour. I think it's wrong to compare it to slavery, although interesting how the racial make-up in prison supports the assertion!

I do think inmates are probably better off with work to do. I also think it's reasonable for society to garnish a chunk of the profit from their work to offset the cost of crime and punishment. Just my opinion, and at an abstract level rather than specific. I don't say the balance is currently right.

<comment><USER8> I'd be more sympathetic if the country doing this didn't have a history of imposing harsher sentences on minorities, criminalizing the ingestion of plant material, and a corrupt policing and judicial system.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal) for just one example.

<comment><USER9> The US has 716 incarcerations per 100,000. From the list on wikipedia, that's the highest in the world.

It's also roughly the same number as North Korea has (no official numbers, just estimates).

So the US might not be the most heavy-handed when it comes to justice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Slightly off topic, but I was disturbed by some of the phrases in there, particularly '30 months for starting a fire' and being proud to have 'managed to stay out of prison'.

What has my home country become? You can make millions of dollars in fraud and walk free, yet have to somehow mange your life if you're an ordinary citizen to stay out of jail. I was considering moving back to the US with my family, but news from there over the last few years has been disturbing to say the least. I've been away for 9 years, and it looks like that time will stretch indefinitely.

<comment><USER11> I don't believe in long custodial sentences for non-violent crimes, especially if they're victim-less, but arson is not non-violent.

<comment><USER12> 11 kids on my mom's block died in a fire when she was growing up. The fire was arson.

There was another guy recently who burned down his business to collect the insurance money. He endangered all his neighbors and the firefighers who responded, as well as committed insurance fraud. He wasted taxpayer money to investigate and prosecute his crime. Give him an extra 30 months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> $30 for that radio is price-gouging. A couple of moments googling found the non-clear version for half the price, which is closer to what it should be worth.

<comment><USER13> But how cool is the non-clear version. I don't want to be 'that' guy in prison...

<comment><USER14> Clear is probably a requirement so that the guards can see inside and be reasonably sure it hasn't been tampered with, for example, to communicate back to the outside world.

<comment><USER15> No, clear is a requirement so that the guards can see it's not stuffed with marijuana or heroin or something.

<comment><USER16> This. They do the same with typewirters:

[http://www.swintec.com/8-clear-typewriters](http://www.swintec.com/8-clear- typewriters)

<comment><USER15> Anything else with sufficient internal voids to conceal contraband, too, I should think. It's a lot easier than taking every such item to pieces during every inspection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Somewhat related, one guy began a startup that simplifies, through his website, the process for family members to shop and send stuff to inmates. All the products are within the prison's accepted stuff guidelines, as it seems this is a major PITA for people outside to figure out. He even made a deal with a major record label to start making hip-hop albums on cassette again. Here's the link:

[http://www.sendapackage.com](http://www.sendapackage.com)

PS. There's was a discussion about this on HN some time ago. Couldn't find it on search.

<comment><USER15> Why would CDs be banned in prisons? I suppose there's more internal void space in a CD case (between the CD holder and the back cover) than in a cassette case, but that seems like it could be addressed by using clear plastic CD holders, which already exist, and omitting the back cover insert.

<comment><USER17> I assume because you can break the CD in half and use it as a weapon

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Regarding the next-generation MP3 player and sales kiosks mentioned: finally, a population where DRM works!

(The linked product page is actually quite interesting:

[http://jpay.com/pmusic.aspx](http://jpay.com/pmusic.aspx)

It's a mini-tablet for $50, which also uploads emails when attached to the commissary kiosk.)

<comment><USER19> Emails that you have to buy 'stamps' for:

      Email Postage Fees
      Stamps	Fee
      5	        $2.00
      15	        $5.00
      45	        $10.00
      Each typed page of text cost one stamp. Each attachment costs 1 stamp(s).

How extortionate.

<comment><USER20> How else would you pay for the censors that comb through your emails before allowing them to be sent?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vic-20 I work for the keefe group. I was told at a presentation recently that Keefe is actually the #3 or #4 seller of mp3s by bandwidth in the world.

<comment><USER21> Do you have any influence on what Keefe can provide? Does Keefe have any influence on what is permitted?

<comment> vic-20 Nope. I don't work directly with commissary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sony has always been pretty good in the battery life department, shouldn't it be possible to get more than 40 hours out of a single battery for a simple analog radio? Or is it rahter due to it being simple that they can't do better?

Might be comparing apples with oranges here, but my PCM-M10 easily lasts >60 hours on two of such batteries. And that includes reading from SD card, processing/converting mp3, DA conversion and an LCD display.

<comment><USER23> For these kinds of numbers they tend to use 1000mAh for AA cell, what used to be call 'heavy duty' and this radio is 20-25mA, so you are looking at easily at least 70 hours on alkaline cells.

[http://ukradio.info/SRF-59/](http://ukradio.info/SRF-59/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bring ebooks to these and it will be revolutionary. Prison libraries range from limited to non-existent.

The cost of ebooks is beyond ridiculous but one would hope that the content providers might be able to see digital contribution to the incarcerated as an investment in future readers (especially since we incarcerate such a mind boggling proportion of our population.)

<comment><USER21> Actually I meant audio books, not ebooks. ebooks are cheap enough but getting a portable device with a display into that situation is well nigh impossible.

Specialized versions of devices comparable to Google Glass might could be designed to be acceptable though. Now there's something to think constructively about.

(Sorry about the "might could be" but I just don't know any economical way to say that which actually exists within the language.)

<comment><USER15> (A note on usage: "Might could be" is a double modal, something which is theoretically valid in American English, but in practice serves as a stigma of lower-class speech; it's somewhat common, for example, in Southern American English, which is my own native dialect, and whose use speakers of acrolect and most other dialects regard as a low-class status marker. Semantically equivalent, but more generally acceptable, alternatives to this double modal might be "…could possibly be…", "…could perhaps be…", or simply "…might be…" \-- in this case, "might" can be used to express both modality, thus making "could" redundant, and the further conditionality provided by the adverb, thus making that redundant as well.)

The JPay JPlayer, mentioned and linked elsewhere in this thread, is a cheap ($50) portable device with what appears to be a roughly phone-sized display, 8GB of internal memory, and approval from the US Department of Corrections. It is already being issued in prisons as an MP3 player, for music sold at JPay- owned kiosks installed in prison commissaries, and as a tool for reading email and composing replies which can be sent during kiosk sessions at a cost dependent on the length of the message. Adding to this device the capability to read ebooks, and to the kiosks the ability to sell them, seems like it shouldn't be much of a stretch; reading might be more pleasant on a larger screen than the JPlayer seems to provide, but I suppose prisoners can't be choosers, either.

<comment><USER21> (A note on a note on usage: Yes, living for some time on the Gulf coast is what made me familiar with "might could be" but I learned it in a professional setting that hardly fits lower-class so perhaps the usage has become wider. Maybe you have to live with it to appreciate the very subtle difference between that and "could possibly be." As I heard it used it expressed a much stronger likelihood of the possibility.)

Thank you very much for the JPay JPlayer tip. I will definitely investigate Jpay.

As may be obvious I have a long standing close friendship with someone who, through stupidity more than evil, finds himself incarcerated for quite some time in a Federal prison. He may be stupid but he is far from dumb and while reading helps him retain his sanity, he is older and his eyesight is failing fast. Thus my focus on finding a way to get audio books inside. It could also greatly assist the less than literate. Any tips from anyone on how to go about that will be greatly appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >Puyallup, Washington

Figures that I should see my first reference to Puyallup in an article about prison.

<comment><USER25> Don't look up Enumclaw, then. (I actually met a nurse in the army reserve who introduced herself as no really a civilian nurse in a hospital in Enumclaw. I spent the rest of her deployment not asking.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> No wonder corporations love it when we throw so many people in prison.

The profits are insane.

Look at what the phone company makes on a call from a prison.

By the way, where the hell are inmates getting $320 a month to spend?

<comment><USER27> The FCC did step in last year to fix the phone costs.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/fcc- approv...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/fcc-approves- rules-to-reform-prison-phone- rates/2013/08/09/1f7ac512-010d-11e3-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html)

Do note that the reason many of these costs were so high is because government agencies make money on them too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Some inmates even had a term for using their radio to create a bubble of > personal space: "I headphone myself," one said.

I work in a large open plan office and do this exact same thing most of the day..

</comment><comment><USER29> The closest consumer equivalent appears to be the Sony SRF-59 which retails for about $15. It uses the same CXA1129N chip and takes a single AA battery which should last 100-140 hours.

[http://ukradio.info/SRF-59/](http://ukradio.info/SRF-59/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Sony-SRF59SILVER-Walkman-Stereo- Radio/...](http://www.amazon.com/Sony-SRF59SILVER-Walkman-Stereo- Radio/dp/B00006JQ06/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Really enjoyed this, cheers. Hunt seems to think mp3 players must inevitably displace radios but it's impossible to overstate the way that _live_ radio can bring a sense of connection to a world bigger than yourself. I've used it myself - in better circumstances than any prisoner - to feel less isolated. "I headphone myself" can be as much about escaping outwards as in.

</comment><comment><USER31> So, has anyone found the circuit? Any interesting things one could build out of it? I mean, now that we know how widely deployed it is…

</comment><comment><USER32> The article says the radio is "under 30 dollars." I would expect something like that to cost less than 5 dollars.

<comment><USER33> If it were sold at the commissary for $5, it'd be easier for inmates to afford (and keep in mind, as the article states, that inmates can only spend $320 a month on commissary goods).

The goal of the prison system is to make prisoners as miserable as possible by our current societal standards (I strongly believe that 500 years from now, our present prison system will seem as barbaric as public place executions seem to us now), not to make sure they can have a pleasant time.

<comment><USER34> To me, the current system seems as barbaric as public executions. I don't need to wait 500 years for that.

<comment><USER35> So, we could switch back to public executions without offending you any more than the current system does?

<comment><USER34> I mean, we still have the death penalty, so yeah.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've seen this headline for a few days but had been ignoring it. I'm glad I took the time to read it. I'm surprised how this activated a desire to collect transparent prison radios. Every child should have The Visible Man and an SRF-39FP. It's too bad the latter is so hard to obtain.</comment>


Chaos-mesh: a chaos engineering platform for Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pingcap/chaos-mesh <comment><USER2> I'm personally using chaos-toolkit with the kubernetes and istio drivers. I haven't dug too much into this yet, but will. Thanks for the hard work!

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this compare against chaos monkey?

<comment><USER4> PingCAP engineer here.

ChaosMonkey is implemented by Netflix and focuses on testing microservice systems by terminating virtual machine instances and containers.

Chaos Monkey is the pioneer project of Chaos Engineering, from which we draw a lot inspirations. Compared to ChaosMonkey, Chaos Mesh focuses on kubernetes platform currently and provides more rich fault injection methods for complex systems, such as faults injection into network and file system. Kernel injection will also be supported in the fulture.

<comment><USER3> Okay. It would nice if this detail were to be added to the README of the repo.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your advice, we will update the README ASAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would be nice if it could be used to simulate preetible vm from gcp, is it possible?

<comment><USER6> Isn't gcp going away in two years? Or at least speculated to given the leak about winding it down if they can't beat AWS and Azure for market share?

<comment><USER7> While that leak was certainly damaging, I doubt GCP is going anywhere in two years.

If Google's strategy to catch up to AWS and Azure fails to gain them meaningful market share, I would expect them to change their behavior to succeed. It's good business.

n.b.: Azure employee.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I No Longer Use MVC Frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/articles/no-more-mvc-frameworks?utm_source=hacker%20news&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=external <comment><USER2> Rather than using something inherently complex, entangling, and unscalable like MVC, use composable declarative languages, such as DSLs and monads... but always keep a trap door back to low-level control :)

This is how I built my UI system in my functional game engine - [https://github.com/bryanedds/NuGameEngine](https://github.com/bryanedds/NuGameEngine)

More detail - [https://github.com/bryanedds/NuGameEngine/blob/master/Nu/Doc...](https://github.com/bryanedds/NuGameEngine/blob/master/Nu/Documentation/Iterative%20Functional%20Reactive%20Programming%20with%20the%20Nu%20Game%20Engine.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great. From my experience a lot of the pain in UI comes from thinking the backend model will just plug into the front-end model. It is evident that UI models need to have a layer for processing the data unless you are coding a trivial app, and I have successfully done this by inserting a view-model layer, which translates back and forth between the model and view's data. This I guess becomes the State in SAM.

I think separating presentation from content logic is still a good idea, so HTML should stay away from any kind of JS, which is where I think React.js is going in the wrong direction. SAM seems to offer a way to do reactive views without the need to mix presentation and content logic.

As far as using pure functions and declarative programming, this is also the right direction for UI. Web apps are streams of data and actions, and functional paradigm handles streams orders of magnitude better than old-school imperative functions with side-effects. Good luck selling this idea to companies that use enterprise software with Java and that think process will fix all your problems.</comment>


Show HN: A thread hierarchy management library in C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gueststar/nthm <comment><USER2> Stupid question because I am very new to embedded programming and C (I started my journey this weekend), but could one use freertos's tasks library in a regular x86 desktop application to accomplish something similar?

<comment><USER3> Not stupid at all. Like many early questions in programming, it's actually a fairly deep.

Because FreeRTOS is unlikely to play nice with your host OS, typically you'd need to emulate a target (say, arm) using an emulator like qemu. Once you're at that point, you could run it like any other program. There's probably more complexity to it like building an image but there'd be a bunch of tutorials for this.

When would you typically do this? For testing your FreeRTOS (or other bare metal) code without actually loading it on to your device and power cycling it. Maybe as part of a regression test

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It reminds me of [https://github.com/sustrik/libdill](https://github.com/sustrik/libdill)

<comment><USER5> Me not. Dill is to call coros with a native C ABI, whilst this is to orchestrate native threads, calls into the threads are setup via pipes, not function calls.

both are doing the most natural thing for proper concurrency. nthm with true concurrency (native threads). dill with fake concurrency, coros only, aka green threads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> And for those of us who write C++ there's always Intel's Threading Building Blocks. (Not sure if any other language has something equal in power and convenience.)

<comment><USER7> Would openmp fit in with how you use TBB? In the past I have used them to solve similar problems.

<comment><USER6> TBB is based on the use of nested threads. We rely on much of what TBB has to offer, which includes concurrent containers and flowgraphs. Here's a nice overview by Mike Voss of what makes TBB different from OpenMP and C++ standard threading: [https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/article...](https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/intel- threading-building-blocks-openmp-or-native-threads.html).</comment></comment></comment>


Binding machine learning and node.js - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bigml.com/2013/06/27/binding-machine-learning-and-node-js/

<comment><USER2> decision trees in the cloud? really?

I guess some smarts are better than none but I didn't think people where still considering decision trees to be a big part of the toolkit.

<comment><USER3> why not? decision trees can work well for some datasets.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I know. sometimes simple tools are the best approach.

it is just odd to see a modern cloud ML company built around a 20 year old statistical technique.</comment></comment></comment>


Some thoughts on the postal service - <AUTHOR> http://thelongrunblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/some-thoughts-on-the-us-postal-service/

<comment><USER2> As always, interesting ideas, some might even work, but it's completely ignoring the regulations that are in place. Congress won't allow them to do these things.

The underlying problem with the USPS is that they are not allowed to run it the way it needs to be run. Congress is dictating minimum levels of service, and incompatible maximum levels of charges.</comment>


Ask HN: Next step after GitHub Pages? - <AUTHOR> I currently host my blog and a small web store on github pages. It's worked very well for me, I love the ease of use of jekyll and simply pushing code to a repo for updates. Their web interface is nice, I can even make quick edits on the road with my phone.<p>I always like to have a contingency plan though, so my question is what are the other options out there? I'm more than willing to pay. Is there anything that gives me the ease of use and flexibility for github pages? The last thing I want to do is maintain a server! <comment><USER2> this comes up quite often, most recently [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13021722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13021722)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been wondering the same thing. As the number of posts on my blog increases, I will want features such as an index and tags. At that point, I may consider migrating to blogspot.</comment>


RememBear – a new Password Manager - <AUTHOR> https://www.remembear.com/ <comment><USER2> > Super strong 256-bit encryption

I'm out of words.</comment>


Ask HN: Objective C or Swift for first iOS app - <AUTHOR>

Heyo,
I plan to start building an IOS app.  I have never used Objective C or Swift before.  What is best to start on? Objective C or Swift?
Cheers <comment><USER2> If you start in Swift, at some point you're going to need to understand Objective-C whether you're using Cocoapods or reading questions on Stack Overflow.

Objective-C is a lot more verbose and Swift is a lot friendlier from a programming standpoint but Obj-C isn't going anywhere anytime soon so if you choose Swift, plan to get used to reading Obj-C.

That being said, I would choose Swift.</comment>


Show HN: HNNotify – Get emailed when a users reply to your HN Posts and Comments - <AUTHOR> https://hnnotify.xyz/ <comment><USER4> Dan Grossman's [http://hnreplies.com/](http://hnreplies.com/) still works

<comment><USER5> Can confirm. Get mail from it frequently. It just works. Open to new options though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There used to be [http://hnnotify.com](http://hnnotify.com) \- but that seems to have expired. I'm guessing you already searched for other options before building your own?

For example:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499036)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3004254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3004254)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=837059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=837059)

Those discussions mention some legitimate concerns about a service like this that you might want to consider.

It has also gone down before:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10521491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10521491)

No idea if the current outage is permanent - did you ask them?

Are you offering any long-term guarantees of existence?

Other questions:

Can I sign up to watch _other_ people's usernames?

What happens if two people sign up each to watch username "X" \- is that detected?

Can I sign up person X to watch person Y? (This won't happen if a confirmation email is send)

What happens if every second I sign up person X to watch person Y - <USER2> person X get a confirmation request every time?

I'm sure there are other questions, and I'm sure you've thought of them all and have answers - you might want to create a FAQ to cover them.

And kudos for producing something and making it available!

 _Edit: Now registered and gone through the process - am I supposed to get a blank screen when I "verify" my registration?_

 _Edit 2: A forced reload gave me the "success" message, but I see no way to unsubscribe._

 _Edit 3: <fx: Cue laughter /> \- this comment is being downvoted. Thanks HN, I needed the dose of reality._

<comment><AUTHOR> > am I supposed to get a blank screen when I "verify" my registration?

No. That is the white screen of death meaning there was an error pulling your user account from HN. I went in and clicked it for you, and it worked. HN API issues are pretty rare.

I was aware tangentially of HNNotify.com, and tried to buy the domain, but they wanted $1,000. I never used the service, because until about a year ago, I didn't really use HN all that often.

> Are you offering any long-term guarantees of existence?

My guarantee of HNNotify.xyz existing for no into infinity is that it costs my company < $20/mo to run, so it will take more time to shut it down than it costs to run. We get $450/mo of free azure hosting for the next two years, then after that the all in cost is $80/mo.

> Can I sign up to watch other people's usernames?

This is planned in the short-term. The user (if registered on HNNotify) will get notified they are being followed.

> What happens if two people sign up each to watch username "X" \- is that > detected?

You have to verify ownership of the account, so it isn't prevented. It is useful if you change emails, etc.

> you might want to create a FAQ to cover them.

That's a good idea. I'll try and type some of these things up.

<comment><USER6> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I built this out of a desire to get emailed when people respond to me on HN. Too often I would comment, go out to dinner and forget to check back. Now, I will know within an hour or so if someone commented!

<comment><USER7> I use hnreplies.com, and it works pretty well. But it goes through periods of not working at all.

The problem with these services (there also used to be one called hnnotify.com, which didn't last long) is that they're developed by HN users, who don't seem to care enough to keep the services working 100%.

YC seems to prefer a development model where the community fills in the gaps of missing functionality, but this also means you can't expect much from the resulting services. I would much rather have this built into HN.

<comment><USER8> I'd prefer it to be builtin too. Just a number beside my username in the top right, that when clicked, takes me to a list of comments and submissions that have been commented on.

<comment><USER9> > _" I'd prefer it to be builtin too"_

Same, I can see all sorts of nefarious uses for this service (not necessarily by the guy who built it, more so by trolls who can use it to target HN users). If I really need something like this, I'm competent enough to build and host it privately for my own use. Given I'm not even a programmer by trade, I'm sure that last statement is even more true for the majority of users here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Everytime an improvement to HN is posted here, I find it funny that HN is frequently cited on HN as an example of a perfect clean minimalist website when it lacks plenty of features.

Yes, a blank page is also very clean and minimalist. And useless.

P.S. I know that plenty of text-only websites load themselves with tons of useless media and needless JS. And yes that should be fixed. But the internet is more than just blogs.

<comment><USER11> I second this. Forget fancy bells and whistles, this website is missing some very core and useful functionalities that aren't so hard to implement.

<comment><USER12> I often wonder whether these basic features are missing intentionally for not so benign reasons

<comment><USER13> Yes.

Compare the speed and fury of flamewars on reddit when people are tossing orangereds back and forth.

Yes, it's annoying to me to have to dig back through my profile (whichever it may be at the time) - but I find I will only do so when a topic is truly worth following up on - not simply to spite another stranger on the internet, which seemingly still goes on here to some extent regardless of the "feature".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a way to unsubscribe? I can't see an unsubscribe link in the emails, and there doesn't seem to be one on the website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question, currently, no. I will see what options mailgun gives me.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is apparently a checkbox to autmatically insert an unsub link. I will see what this looks like.

<comment><USER14> LGTM :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love it! But why would you need to verify that your email is associated to your username? What if you'd want to stay anonymous and not let whoever created the app know your private contact information?

The information is out there for the public anyway, I don't see an issue with following someone else's username if that is the reason. And if the reason is to prevent other people from signing up random people to get spammed with notifications, or because the service will only handle one email per username, why not use email verification instead of username verification?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because there are additional features coming soon: following users - <USER3> notifying a person they are being followed, subscribing to topics/websites/etc.

Following a user and them being notified requires a hacker news username to be verified, so we aren't sending out 40 emails that "tw1010 is being followed by jermaustin1" when the only person who cares would be the real tw1010.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought about building a hckrnews.com clone with this built in, and maybe a mobile app. It'd be nice to get sms/email/push notifications as an option, but not it all be a separate application altogether.

<comment><USER8> Let me know if you build the mobile app!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this really all that desirable? Hackernews takes up way too much of my time as it is, and I get people replying to my posts all the time. Seems like this would quickly lead to notification hell.

<comment><USER18> Notifications are nice for us less popular users. :)

And they are useful when one has made a personal offer to another user. The acceptance of that offer could easily be missed, especially if it occurs days later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Regarding .XYZ TLD:

Please don't use XYZ.

Reason:

It's 99.9% full of crap (SEO spam, malware, etc.)

<comment><USER20> There are drug dealers living in New York City, does that mean that everyone else should move out?

It's just a tld, there's a million of those. If somebody likes it, why shouldn't they use it? The .cx domain was ruined by one rogue website and the attitude you encourage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> May I know what is your approach. Are you periodically checking [https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments) or what you do to find user and its reply. Just asking out of curiosity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Using the API, and every hour crawling a users posts that are < 10 days old for new comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hmm, I like that you're not sure whether someone has replied to you.

<comment><USER6> Then don't use it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been using [https://www.hnwatcher.com/](https://www.hnwatcher.com/) for awhile and really like the keyword alerts the most.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is there a way to specify active hours or time zone? Seems like there are no notifications during my day, and a lot of them in the dead of the night. I am in India (UTC+0530).

<comment><AUTHOR> Notifications come in every hour that you have a reply. Nothing exists to schedule them for daytime hours only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been using this for about a week now. It's exactly what I was looking for: a simple notification that reminds me to go read my comments.

</comment><comment><USER25> I sometimes think it's a shame Hacker News isn't an independent startup separate from YC (or rather has to at some point turn a profit so motives for it to improve are there).

I know the MOOC is coming (?) but there are lots of things you could do with the social graph or even providing an Oauth API where you can have applications that access the interactions you have on here.

</comment><comment><USER26> Congrats on the launch Jeremy! This is a feature I've been wanting for ages. I subscribed.

\- Michael from fman

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks buddy. I was actually writing you an email this morning, but then decided I had tested it enough :).

<comment><USER26> Haha! Fair enough. Would have been cool. Fingers crossed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The verify is getting a runtime error

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like your profile's about section is null. I expected an empty string. In either case, you need to add the verification code to your profile and save it before you can verify your HN Notify account.

<comment><USER27> For what it's worth I had the code in there when I clicked verify and received the error. Glad to help with some error handling though :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It has happened to a couple of people so far, seems like the API might have a little bit of a lag when updating a profile.

I haven't seen it first hand but what you and a couple others are see sounds like it might be the case. I'll keep an eye out.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Thank you. :)

</comment><comment><USER29> i wonder if theres a way to implement this in bash as a cron job. no reference to a github...

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely possible. I am a windows developer by trade though, so I used a windows service that is always running looking for new content then queuing it up for the email notification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> email? why not web notifications?

<comment><USER30> I would prefer web notifications as well, though I understand email is probably easier to implement. Still, were the option there, I would have signed up to use this already.</comment></comment>


Tesla is too big to fail but not for the reason you might think - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.in/Tesla-is-too-big-to-fail-but-not-for-the-reason-you-might-think/articleshow/66195612.cms <comment><USER2> Nice work by Tesla's PR team? Individual's cars are a very small contributor to greenhouse gases. One (!) big container ship pollutes as much as 50 million (!) cars. And there are approx. 40k + vessels on the oceans. Just saying....</comment>


Creating a Home for Intelligent Media - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-entrepreneurial-journey/you-won-t-believe-what-these-journalists-learned-when-they-tried-to-post-thoughtful-news-927a21fedcf5

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I wrote the post and am trying to discuss whether you believe Social Media can scale to serve the whole of humanity.

In my article I propose that the future of media and distribution will take a page from HN and Reddit and be accomplished with shared audiences that create and curate content.

Here's my summary of the attached article: [https://medium.com/@cyrusradfar/summary-of-my-recent- article...](https://medium.com/@cyrusradfar/summary-of-my-recent-article-on- the-rise-of-community-media-6dd0a9b547ab)

Don't know how to format it correctly, so I'll spare you an eye-sore of copy and paste.</comment>


How the Tsilhqot'in got their land back and why Canada will never be the same - <AUTHOR> http://thewalrus.ca/title-fight/

<comment><AUTHOR> If anyone is interested in Aboriginal Title the University of British Columbia runs a great primer site on general Indigenous issues in Canada. See: [http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/land- rights/ab...](http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/land- rights/aboriginal-title.html)</comment>


Ask HN: What would you work on without internet access? - <AUTHOR> My job frequently takes me to places without reliable internet access. What kinds of projects can be worked on with no or unreliable internet? I don't want to be forced to stop working on my side projects just because I don't have all the data I might need. <comment><USER2> I have been using Go recently, and I do almost all my development with it offline. The docs are included and you can run a local doc server so everything you need to look up is as close as localhost:6060. It's also an ecosystem that encourages building on the standard library, unlike some other popular languages I could mention. I absolutely love the productivity and focus that this setup allows.

I also have a ~/research directory full of academic papers, saved copies of web pages, for anything I want to implement or play with. When I don't feel like programming, there's plenty waiting for me to read, rather than needing to get online and probably distract myself.

There's something very satisfying about being able to sit down and do productive work with what you have locally, and not needing to worry about losing productivity because the coffee shop wifi dropped out.

On the other hand, unplugging in general is good for us and I agree with the other commenters' encouragements to get out in nature or talk to people face to face. If I'm on a train or plane, I'd much rather put my laptop away and engage with what's around me.

Constant access to computing systems and networks is very new, and we know it is changing us, but we don't have the perspective to know how. The precautionary principle suggests we should spend as much time away from these systems as possible, especially for those of us who make our livings with them.

<comment><USER3> I've been enjoying working on Rust code for the same reasons: Rust can, for every library you have in a project, generate static HTML documentation for all of them. The only part you need Internet for is downloading the dependencies, but that needs only be done once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Get out in nature and think about your problems. Go on walks. Hike. Take up photography and stargazing.

Use the time to unplug. When you do return to your screen you'll have a fresh prospective on a lot of your problems. You'll also be happier and healthier.

<comment><USER5> I think this is fantastic advice, but only up to a point. Unplugging regularly to recharge is so important, but the length and percentage of time matters. OP might spend 80% of their time in parts of the world without internet, for weeks or months at a time. In that context, I don't think this advice applies in the same way that it would for someone who spends a day or two offline every other month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> UNIX systems programming can be accomplished by looking at man pages and referencing kernel / user land source code.

I find something cathartic writing C applications and tools. Perhaps I should seek professional help.

<comment><USER7> Not an expert in C, but there's definitely a refreshing feel of purity about something old and "sharp", that is powerfully entrenched in the UNIX ecosystem but can also be dangerous and bite you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Check out kiwix or zeal. Allows reading entire archives of wikipedia/stackoverflow/ted talks etc etc offline. Plus search. Throw in elasticsearch and you get really powerful customizable search. You can also create your own archive of web content. Given the size of modern harddrives people have no idea how much quality content can happily live on your local machine. No internet required.

<comment><USER9> TIL entire wikipedia is less than 100 GB when compressed.

<comment><USER10> That's with no images, and iirc it also didn't include any of the math markup last time I looked at one of the xml dumps in one of the loaders (think it was kiwix)

<comment><USER9> Totally forgot about images. I just dug little further and found this:

"The size of the media files in Wikimedia Commons, which includes the images, videos and other media used across all the language-specific Wikipedias was described as well over 23 TB near the end of 2014"

Considering 30 TB hdd costs around 1500$, still interesting.

<comment><USER10> I wonder what the size is as of this moment, maybe double? I read somewhere recently that 90% of the content on the Web was created in the last 2 years. Not sure if thats "special media" focused, i.e. video & pictures, as opposed to text. But I'm sure the size of the dump has increased substantially in the last 4 years.

<comment><USER9> Very likely, there at least need of a filter at some level to size down (maybe getting single language or converting videos to low-res)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Getting more reliable internet access.

I want to move out of Austin. One of my research projects is how to do rural internet. Just because I am curious if it's doable.

I know that some folks end up in Terlingua cause they want to get away from everything... I'd just like to get away from most things and keep the comms channel.

</comment><comment><USER12> Consider Dash [0], an offline documentation browsing tool. It takes a little while to set up, but then you have all the docsets you need offline with very fast search.

It also helps me control my internet addiction when I'm not off the grid, because I can have no browsers running while I code, so I'm not a tab away from HN.

[0] [https://kapeli.com/dash](https://kapeli.com/dash)

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this mac only?

<comment><USER13> Zeal is a good offline code docset reader for linux and windows (but not mac!)

[https://zealdocs.org/](https://zealdocs.org/)

The docsets come from Dash, which is very nice since that is payware. So here apple users pay for non-apple users it seems :)

<comment><USER14> Use Dash on mac, Zeal on NixOS.

I see it as a no-brainer for anyone who has more code to write than time to write it. I can't always solve a problem in Dash, but it enables me to work for hours at a time with wifi off. This is even more important for productivity when there _is_ wifi available. Only downside that I know I'm reducing my chance of stumbling on Google Foobar trigger terms :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Download reading materials in PDF form or other offline friendly formatting and plan to read them during those times.

If you are on mobile -- phone or tablet instead of a laptop -- some apps will let you take notes or whatever offline and sync up when internet is available.

Do brainstorming type exercises at that time. Free time to actually think has real value.

</comment><comment><USER16> Two years ago I went on vacation after having downloaded a bunch of the US Census and ACS datasets. I spent my days by the pool drinking Bahama Mamas and poking at the data, which was in a local Postgres instance.

Some people like reading a book by the pool. I like looking at demographic data. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER17> Writing a book. I've been tinkering with writing a choose your own adventure book that provides a glimpse into a depressed mind. I've actually forced myself to work on it at the local library , where internet access is slow, as a means of forcing focus.

<comment><USER18> (my) Scrivener works offline, and with just me and the editor I can focus on developing my ideas and drawing when necessary (simple mspaint and paste on Scrivener). Offline is underestimated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cartography: get the osm rendering stack on your laptop and a bit of data, then map away!

Programming: get the documentation first, manuals API reference, tutorials, and use a language that doesn't have much "now install this library" dependencies.

<comment><USER20> > get the documentation first, manuals API reference

DevDocs[0] (offline collection of API docs) is perfect for this.

[0]: [https://devdocs.io/](https://devdocs.io/)

<comment><USER21> I travelled to China recently and was unpleasantly surprised to find the HTML/CSS/DOM docs totally unusable offline, even though I "downloaded" them in my user preferences before leaving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anything you can run a working copy of on your laptop.

<comment><USER23> This is the answer that makes the most sense. While I understand that sometimes we need to check online reference manuals or check if a problem is caused by a known bug in a runtime or library, I don't quite understand the concept that you literally need an internet connection to be able to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A game? Something like Terraria.

Or something cutting edge like a kitesurf kite. They are only about 15 years old, so plenty of room for improvement. Just takes time and many prototypes. Cloth is pretty cheap.

</comment><comment><USER25> Stallman downloads all his links and emails once every 24 hours and then process them. Might be worth considering doing something similar with tech blogs or what you follow.

However what side projects you could work on really depends on what you are interested in. I would imagine that anything you could work on on a single laptop would qualify.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you have good books you could always use those. I'm a scientist though, so often stuff I could read through is already in pdf form or in paper form, but I don't doubt one could find books on various things if need be. Moreover, especially for non-web stuff you always can have the code to look over yourself.

</comment><comment><USER27> Programming in C, because you can do a lot with the OS, and you can just download documentation before for libraries and stuff. You could also work on web design stuff if you don't need to use external assets. Also, coding simple games like sudoku, chess, checkers, tic tac toe, etc. is fun.

</comment><comment><USER28> I download online course videos to my mobile phone and watch them when internet is not available. I think the major problem for working on side project is you can't access to the API reference when you don't have the access to the internet.

</comment><comment><USER29> Obviously projects that do not required internet access. :-)

But seriously, personally, I would do some writing. Either a blog post, or compose a letter / email (to be sent when Internet is back on).

I would also read a physical book as I find the rather therapeutic.

</comment><comment><USER30> Some sort of satellite constellation to bring Internet online for the masses.

</comment><comment><USER31> Art, without distractions from Facebook, Whatsapp, google, etc etc...

</comment><comment><USER32> There's a whole bunch of pen-and-paper mathematics i need to relearn.

<comment><USER33> I like to write maths tutorials. Anything in particular you're interested in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hunting, trapping, marksmanship, gardening, building, and cooking.

</comment><comment><USER35> Anything that can be run in a VM with port forwarding. If Docker can be run without a connection, that's another option as well.

</comment><comment><USER36> Traditional agriculture :|

</comment><comment><USER37> We're gonna need a bigger internet.

</comment><comment><USER38> godoc, git and Google Cloud AppEngine SDK all works offline. That's all I need.

</comment><comment><USER39> Writing project documentation.

</comment><comment><USER40> My steam backlog =)

</comment><comment><USER41> Whenever my internet goes out I start tinkering on random things that almost immediately require internet searches to make progress. I also seem to forget the internet is out and continually open up search windows for all the new exciting things I'm working on.</comment>


TigerDirect.com Now Accepts Bitcoin Payments - <AUTHOR> http://www.tigerdirect.com/bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> I'm going to lose a few karma points for going meta, but I have to point this.

When the top comment to a positive bitcoin related news reads like textbook flame war material[1], I feel sad about the current state of HN.

We're supposed to discuss, not to pick sides and borderline troll people who are skeptical about some technology. This attitude is downright childish, and will only spawn very predictable and heated debates.

You bought or mined bitcoins and believe in them? That's good for you, I have some too, yay. Yet, I'm not starting flame wars and making fun of non- believers. This brings absolutely nothing. Moreover, it might show a negative image of the bitcoin community.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109970)

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it humorous that Tiger Direct and Newegg are promoting Bitcoin mining with GPUS. The returns from such cards are so small now its not even worth mentioning. Even with a high end GPU you are only making around $0.96 a week. With the card costing $440 it'll take 8 years to make your money back, assuming the difficulty won't increase. Which it will so there is no hope of making a profit.

<comment><USER4> _> >The returns from such cards are so small now its not even worth mentioning._

Well, I dunno about mining BTC specifically but I got a co-worker making about 0.45 - 0.6 BTC a month on a 2 GPU rig from Newegg at $1200. He's using the middlecoin.com pool which rotate-mines different altcoins, converts to BTC and pays out. The rig is on track to paying for itself soon and apparently his electric bill didn't shoot to the moon.

<comment><USER5> It's tricky finding a reliable pool so you can "set it and forget it" for sure.

It's an adventure:

      * First you need parts to build a system (and if you're ordering from Newegg good luck getting your "overnight" order in <5 business days).
      * Then you need to setup the software (hint: latest Ubuntu combined with latest Catalyst drivers is a world of frustration).
      * Then tune cgminer (which took me a few days between other obligations) which is somehow not a copy-paste job.
      * Then you spend a couple weeks fighting unreliable or hacked pools until you find something that works for you.

And reliability matters a lot if you're using the most common PPLNS payout pools since every round you're not mining at 100% sets you back.

I'd definitely recommend Proportional pools like middlecoin. The fees are higher (~+3% over PPLNS typically), but getting paid for 96% of your shares on something reliable is definitely preferable to 99% or even 100% of your shares, minus previous-round penalties (up to 20% or more?) on something unreliable.

Anyways, here's what I've done with the three R290's I bought back in December: [http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/report...](http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/reports/1PJcbzM3rFiBHPJMcp93XkYmSgGpLMZAxG.html)

Thought peeps might be curious seeing it in concrete terms, and middlecoin's charts are the best IMO. Simple, everything you need, and nothing you don't.

Once I switched to middlecoin (with multipool as a backup) I've earned almost 0.5BTC in 2.5 weeks. And (very) surprisingly, I don't seem to be suffering all that much due to rising difficulty (the brunt of that hit a week or two before I had everything going I guess).

This doesn't include the balance I carry at multipool BTW, which I don't bother to do much with (Cryptsy: meh).

Still, I'm planning to sell the system for what I paid for it (~$1800) tonight. It's made me some money, and that's nice, but wondering when the right time to sell (because of rising difficulty) is weighs on you a bit. And I figured if I can get my money back, well, it's been nice, but yeah, best get out while the gettin' is good. Especially with the possibility of ASICs hitting in a few months (even if they aren't faster, if their hashes-per-watt figures lure in even bigger miners, that's going to hurt).

It's crazy to see cards I paid $409/each for (R290) go for up to 30% over what I paid a month or two before. I've never seen that happen in 20 years of messing with computers. I mean hell, I've never even got more than maybe 20 to 30% back of my initial purchase back on a PC before.

Aside: That's one reason I love Macs so much since switching ~7 years ago: I can upgrade to the latest iPad every year for $100 out of pocket, and even a 3 or 4 year old laptop like my two MacBook Air's will easily retain 50 to 60% of their value. Which makes the whole financial/cost arguments against Macs pretty bogus (and believe me, I used it often enough myself as a PC fan in a past life), but I've definitely spent far less in TCO on my Macs than I did on my PCs. You just have to bite the bullet and get over the buy-in hump. Used Macs hold their value even better though. You might easily find a decent deal on a used Mac, use it for a year, then sell it for _more_ than you bought it for. I did with my first (G3 I think) Mac Mini.

<comment> ryan-c When I was GPU mining bitcoin in early 2011, I was also had to worry about stuff like:

* modifying the GPU firmware to allow more extreme overclocking (I was able to run my 5850s at 945MHz - factory firmware capped them at 775MHz, default speed was 725MHz)

* figuring out how fast I could run them before the became unstable

* dealing with the heat

* convincing PG&E I wasn't growing weed (their billing system flagged my electricity usage)

* ensuring I could recover remotely even from the CPU locking up

* dealing with pools being DDoSed

* carefully planning which outlets things were plugged into so as not to blow the breakers

* ensuring all the miner software autostarted properly (one miner per gpu - multigpu miners weren't available yet)

and this was only 6 GPUs total.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another major retailer!

It's funny, all of the "Bitcoin is dead! Bitcoin solves a non-existent problem! Bitcoin.....etc" posters have vanished.

<comment><USER7> Someone with a less favorable view on Bitcoin could easily point out that these retailers are not embracing Bitcoin. They are embracing payment services like BitPay and Coinbase. To TigerDirect this move isn't that different from deciding to accept payments from Paypal, Google Wallet, etc.

<comment><USER8> That's like saying that Amazon doesn't actually embrace the US dollar, they just embrace payment services like Visa and Mastercard.

<comment><USER7> No, it isn't the same. Visa and Mastercard pay Amazon with USD. BitPay and Coinbase do not pay TigerDirect in Bitcoin. Amazon is fine holding reserves of USD. Retailers like TigerDirect and Overstock are not yet willing to hold reserves of Bitcoin.

<comment><USER9> strictly speaking, you don't know this. I believe these services let you choose what percentage you want to be paid in USD, and what percentage you want to keep in bitcoin. So although they may choose to be paid entirely in USD, they could also choose to keep some amount of bitcoin ... that's an internal matter that they may or may not make public

<comment><USER10> From an accounting perspective, it makes little sense to keep BTC, since it's so volatile. It's easier to account for your sales in USD and have a fixed value than account for them in BTC, which fluctuates wildly.

<comment><USER11> Not if you spend bitcoin as part of your business (e.g. paying suppliers)

<comment><USER12> Isn't that recursive? If it makes no sense for you to keep BTC because it's so volatile then why would it make sense for your supplier?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Accepting Bitcoin means having a Bitcoin wallet. Period! The more merchants like TigerDirect and Overstock "embrace" Bitcoin, the more bitcoins will be sold at the exchanges and the price will be dragged down further and further. It's funny that just about now hoarders start to realize how negative is this for their empty hope to wake up millionaires one day due to Bitcoin suddenly becoming $10K a piece.

<comment><USER14> I don't get your logic. Liquidity doesn't change supply. It just makes exchange simpler. A set market price has to be found between the people who want to trade Bitcoins, which will very much be influenced by the supply.

Liquidity will help to lessen volatility (fluctuation), but the price point has to be decided by the people who want to own some Bitcoin (traders, spenders and savers). Savers will drive the price upward as long as they save, but that's ok, as long as not too many people decide to liquidate their Bitcoins at the same time. It's the same for lost Bitcoins, the value for the rest of them adjusts to the demand level based on supply.

<comment><USER13> I only said this drags the price down. In order for somebody to sell, there needs to be a buyer. My comment was that hoarders are in an internal conflict - they both want to spend it to drive adoption up and, yet, continue to hoard it as supply drives the price down decreasing the value of their stash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it me or are all the "has-beens", or unrelevant companies accepting bitcoin nowadays?

We had Overstock, who has fallen from its high. We had App.net, who is struggling to be relevant. now TigerDirect.

When is Starbucks or Apple going to accept Bitcoin?

<comment><USER6> Mm. The companies might have fallen from their high, but they're hardly irrelevant or dead. Overstock is advertised like crazy and has some pretty good deals to boot, Tiger competes directly with Newegg. App is a bit of an outlier there..

Starbucks or Apple? I'd assume the megacorps will take it up once the instability gets smoothed out a bit. Which is a problem of adoption, which means the faster the smaller fish like these adopt it, the faster the bigger ones will.

I predict Amazon will take BTC within the next 2-3 years.

<comment><USER16> > I'd assume the megacorps will take it up once the instability gets smoothed > out a bit.

Why would they care if they get paid through bitpay or coinbase in USD anyway? It doesn't actually matter the current exchange rate for btc because they get the same USD anyway.

<comment><USER17> Someone has to handle that transaction - like Coinbase.

Part of their risk is that Coinbase, still an early stage company, isn't reliable enough to process their volume. They could have issues with how they process transactions, all kinds of things could come up.

Part of it is being risk-averse to BTC itself, part is being risk-averse to early stage payment gateways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You're going to continue to see major eCommerce players offer bitcoin as a payment option. In the checkout flow it is best practice to offer as many payment options available because it increases the likelihood of a successful conversion.

Regardless of whether Andreesse's essay is correct regarding bitcoin two IR100 sites is a pretty big deal for bitcoin.

<comment><USER19> _> > In the checkout flow it is best practice to offer as many payment options available because it increases the likelihood of a successful conversion._

Are you sure about that? Too many choices sometimes leads to no choice at all. [0]

[0] [http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...](http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)

<comment><USER20> Exactly. See also: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_Ass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_Ass)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lost in the news that they accept bitcoin is the "Coming Soon" under Butterfly Labs hardware mentioned on that landing page. First I've heard of a mainstream electronics store selling ASIC mining hardware.

</comment><comment><USER22> ...to prevent charge backs. Ever by anything from them? Ugh...

<comment><USER23> > Ever by anything from them?

Yeah, a tower with an AMD K6-2 266MHz processor, 32MB of PC100 SDRAM, 6.4GB hard drive and a 56K modem. It was a great deal out of the print catalog they mailed to my parents' house every month. I guess that was a while back now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Relevant post made in the last hour by Tony Hsieh in his Reddit IAmA:

        Q: Mr. Hsieh, Are there any plans for Zappos.com to accept bitcoin?

        A: we've been looking into the possibility but probably not anytime soon!

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vzd35/i_am_tony_hsieh...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vzd35/i_am_tony_hsieh_ceo_of_zapposcom_author_of/cexa357)

<comment><USER25> The world has imploded and all I have are these bitcoins and bullets; I'll buy some shoes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As far as I can see, they aren't indicating what they are doing with their Bitcoin. Accepting Bitcoin is one thing, since as far as I know, all places accepting Bitcoin so far just convert it into their country's currency (e.g. $). Accepting Bitcoin and keeping Bitcoin for further trading is a-whole- nother story, and as far as I know, no one is doing that.

Still, great news for cryptocurrencies as there's now a bit more anonymity when buying online! :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Aren't these the guys that tried to sue Apple for a quick buck around the release of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger?

Sorry TigerDirect, I swore off you then.

<comment><USER28> If I understand trademark law correctly, a company must defend its trademarks or risk losing them. It wasn't about "a quick buck," it was about fulfilling the responsibilities of owning a trademark.

It's hardly fair to fault TigerDirect for doing what the law requires of them.

In this particular case, a judge had to make a judgement call about whether Apple's new "Tiger" OS trademark was an infringement on TigerDirect's trademark. It could have gone either way. That's why a judge was needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interestingly, TigerDirect appears to be unreachable for me (from Europe):

Access Denied You don't have permission to access "[http://www.tigerdirect.com/"](http://www.tigerdirect.com/") on this server.

Reference #18.56bd7a5c.1390506110.4cf7baee

<comment><USER30> Same here. What's up with that?

<comment><USER31> Even if they paid you in bitcoins I wouldn't deal with them. Terrible

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My long term plan to buy a bitcoin last year for $300 and buy a VR system with it in 5 years is going along smoothly.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why did not NewEgg jump in yet? I was expecting them to be one of the first.

<comment><USER34> I'm guessing they'd like to but adding new payment options to a website is a hassle (even when it's bitcoin)</comment></comment>


Check out my Wedding website: - <AUTHOR> http://JeremyAndDeidre.ourwedding.com/ <comment><USER2> Why? What's special about it? Why is it of "deep interest"?

Give us a reason - it's not obvious.</comment>


Scientists develop 'lab on a chip' that costs 1 cent to make - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/10147.html <comment><USER2> This is interesting.

While I get how the device is using microfluidics and printed electronics to separate cells (a.k.a. flow cytometer / FACS), it, by itself, does not appear to collect / perform any diagnostics (contrary to what the linked article claims).

That being said, being able to reliably sort cells cheaply and rapidly is in itself a significant advance. The next step is diagnosis / analysis.

This is cool!

<comment><USER3> Devices that analyze lab-on-a-chip are nothing new, neither are the sensor chips. It's a technology that's been around for 20ish years.

What is new is this chip at such a low cost. LOC's traditionally cost hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on the complexity of the chip design. The $0.01 cost is the innovation.</comment></comment>


Verizon Wants to Build an Advertising Juggernaut. It Needs Your Data First - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/amp/www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/09/05/verizon-wants-to-build-advertising-juggernaut-it-needs-your-data-first.amp.html <comment><USER2> surprised it's not buried in your signup contract.</comment>


Bootstrapped with 1000 paying users OR viral app with 1M non-paying users?  - <AUTHOR>

What would you prefer: bootstrapped with 1000 paying customers but the company may not scale to million paying customers OR a possible funded social/viral etc. app that could scale to millions of users but non-paying?<p>I ask and wonder because I have 2 ideas that I am struggling to lock down and one of them falls in the former category while the second one falls in the latter. <comment><USER2> It's easier to know how you're doing when you charge money. If you have 10 paying customers you're not doing well. If you have 100k free users you probably won't know how you're doing, you may need them to some specific behavior or need larger numbers to make your thing work.

I wouldn't pick one because you think it will be easier than the other. It's safer to assume they'll both be really hard, but probably in different ways.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd go with the first one. You can make it scale with other ideas later on or with new products, and you'll have a solid base to work off of. The viral app idea is a crapshoot these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That is what I am leaning towards as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, with the first one you'd make money and do less tech support.

<comment><USER2> Paying customers are (rightly) far more demanding.</comment></comment>


Some Apple signatures expiring on October 24, 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2019/10/16/certificate-used-to-sign-older-apple-software-expiring-on-october-24-2019/ <comment><USER2> Why don't they just timestamp the signatures so they don't have to resign them every few years?

<comment><USER3> I suppose it does give Apple more control. If they decide they don't want a specific update to work any longer, they can let it expire and then folks would need to use something else (like a newer/safer update that covers the same patch).

For EFI (per the screenshot) I wonder if they are looking to protect against the risk of an update that introduces an EFI vulnerability. Unless Apple is checking a certificate revocation list (or similar) then an attacker could apply that vulnerable update. Letting it expire sets a limit for how long it can be exploited. Just a guess.</comment></comment>


D3.js - a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data - <AUTHOR> http://d3js.org/ <comment><USER2> this is great, but not sure it's NEWS</comment>


Colleges single out students by name for not donating to student-gift drives - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/archive/2010/10/27/cornell-and-dartmouth-shame-students-for-not-adding-their-real-money-to-the-ongoing-bonfire-of-imaginary-money.aspx

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's 'irritating' or 'obnoxious'. I think the word is 'unethical'. Coercing people into giving their time or money is morally and ethically reprehensible.

I will -never- give money to any organization that does this, and I will loudly tell anyone else around about it as well.

I've seen these organizations force people into giving money when they can't afford to go without it themselves. Worse than failing to help, they are actively harming people. Whenever I see it, I make sure to let the person know that they do -not- have to give and they would be fools not to go withdraw their pledge.

</comment><comment><USER3> "from the schools' point of view, individual gifts are literally worthless"

What the schools want is for alumni to always be giving. Not dissimilar from venture funding, they really care about the tiny fraction of alumni who hit it big, and give tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. It's easier to get the few rich alumni to give if everyone's in the habit of giving.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ironic. I grew up in a communist country and witnessed the same type of psychological torture. "Society" and various "communities" had the right to dispose of your money, your effort, your life... You were supposed to sacrifice your beliefs for the sake of what some bureaucrat told you is a greater social good. You were supposed to give, and those who received did not say thank you - they regarded the acts of claiming and receiving their rights. You were supposed to reward the mediocre, punish the capable for their ability, conform, pretend to believe in the slogans, pretend to do everything voluntarily. These are some of the ideals that brought down half of the world. It hurts to see this in America.

<comment><USER5> Well, it's the only _literally_ totalitarian sector of America. Dartmouth is particularly notorious for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a Dartmouth '10, I'm glad that people are continuing to discuss this topic. I really did feel tremendous pressure to donate this year. While I probably would have donated anyway (and I admit - it did feel good to have the class united under a common goal), I now associate the act of giving with guilt and peer pressure. Those emotions might make me less likely to donate in the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> How impressively obnoxious. Were I singled out, I think I'd start agitating to have my fellow students revoke their pledges, cancel their checks, etc.

<comment><USER8> I'd be tempted to barter. "If I'm the only thing standing between you and $100,000, I think it only makes sense to give me a thousand dollars."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        from the schools' point of view, individual gifts are literally worthless

A huge motivator for getting people to donate any amount at all is college rankings. The US News and World Report takes into account the "average alumni giving rate"[0] as a factor in their rankings. Since high rankings in turn drive admissions, staying as high up in the rankings as possible is hugely important for most colleges and universities (and "elite" schools most of all).

I'm a senior at a school that generally ranks pretty highly (Wesleyan University) and I hear this brought up quite a lot in the context of donations. They don't care if you only donate a dollar, but they want you to donate _something_.

[0] [http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best- colleges/2010/...](http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best- colleges/2010/08/17/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and- weights-2011.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Irritating. If you want to mandate a contribution, create a structure that does so and implement your own internal taxation. It's weak to nominate something as a donation, inferring it is optional, and then try to enforce it. Complete lack of backbone somewhere in the chain of command.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Why would anyone with a normal human level of income give any money to these universities?"

Because a hot sounding woman calls you and you don't want to sound like a cheapskate.

<comment><USER8> The last time my Alma Mater called me, I asked them how they got my number, what right they had to bother me at work, and to take me off their list.

You want money? Talk to the state about more funding, or raise tuition.</comment></comment>


Will Apple finally pay a price for keeping secrets? - <AUTHOR> https://www.computerworld.com/article/3248484/mobile-wireless/will-apple-finally-pay-a-price-for-keeping-secrets.html <comment><USER2> I don't see Apple paying a price for this so long as it's a one-off thing and not a new trend of deceiving customers.</comment>


Candyland - <AUTHOR> http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/candyland.html

<comment><USER2> I've been relieved to find that my local Asian markets have a wide array of imported chocolate, candy, and snacks. American chocolate, in particular, is made so cheaply that it's not even pleasant, anymore. I used to find a Snickers and 5th Avenues a great "guilty pleasure" now and then...but, the last couple I've eaten tasted like wax and corn syrup and not much else. I'm certain the actual food content has declined dramatically since my childhood (I was trick or treating in the 80s), and has been replaced by food-like substances that don't taste as good and are worse for my health.

</comment><comment><USER3> What are those little hard licorice candies you get in Holland called, in Dutch? Not the Allsorts he mentioned, but called something else?

Also the European dark chocolate is of a much better quality.

<comment><USER4> I know what you are talking about, but I forget the name as well. They are a strange flavor, since they are salty too.

<comment><USER5> It's called salmiak (salmiakki in Finland).

<comment><USER6> The ammonium chloride that Linus writes about is the salt that gives the taste to these candies. Like someone else in the comments there, I have to advocate another Finnish spice: tar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bad news Linus, in America, the sugar is _also_ corn. Not just the starch. USA! USA! USA!.....</comment>