Show HN: Micro – a microservice toolkit - <AUTHOR> https://blog.micro.mu/2016/03/20/micro.html <comment><USER2> More and more I see toolkits basically turning microservice into a message queue system. More and more intelligent behavior is needed at the endpoints that its starting to leak into the pipes.

Often times the behavior of the endpoints (e.g. discovery, reconnecting, timeout, etc) is so critical that you need that in all clients which totally defeats the "decoupling" of microservices [1] (ie any language or technology can participate). That is extremely complicated endpoint logic requires shared components (see referenced article).

You could get all of the behavior by having a semi smart broker like RabbitMQ with out having an extremly complicated endpoints... but thats not microservice.. its evil old enterprise single point of failure.

Perhaps I'm biased, old school or just so jaded of hearing "microservice" but I really think many companies particularly young startups could get more work done with an intelligent pipe ie message broker over fairly complicated to setup microservies and duplicated intelligent endpoint logic.

TL;DR semi-smart pipes are looking better and better these days.

[1]: [http://www.microservices.com/ben-christensen-do-not- build-a-...](http://www.microservices.com/ben-christensen-do-not-build-a- distributed-monolith)

<comment><USER3> Your observation about clients requiring more and more logic (e.g. discovery, reconnecting, timeout, etc) is spot on. It is a pretty big overhead and teams that are building an architecture based on micro-services should be prepared to pay that cost.

I am not sure why people choose such an architecture, but for me the biggest reason to do this is to be able to run it on platforms like Mesos, Kubernetes, Nomad etc. Once you've aligned your system with such a platform you get plenty of benefits(improved workflow, reliability, fault tolerance, cloud mobility). But the price is pretty big.

The good part is that good tooling is becoming more widespread and open source projects like this make it easier for people to start up.

<comment><USER4> I want to second the fact that a microservice architecture is great because of the ease of deployments (but only after the initial overhead!). I can attest first-hand to the large overhead that comes with creating something from scratch with micro-services - we are still battling with Mesos/Marathon, and recently found Mantl ([https://mantl.io/](https://mantl.io/)) which has been a huge help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here. I built Micro based on my experience at Google and Hailo. At Hailo we built a global microservices platform with over 200 bespoke services in production by the time I left. I realised that more and more people were tackling the problem of scale both technically and as an organisation. I felt like the tools were lacking and most companies end up building their own from scratch. Micro was a way of creating a foundation for writing and running distributed systems. It's a pluggable architecture so that the underlying systems can be swapped out based on preference.

Beyond Micro, I'm working on go-platform [https://github.com/micro/go- platform](https://github.com/micro/go-platform) which addresses the higher level needs for microservices. Auth, monitoring, metrics, distributed tracing, etc, etc. Again pluggable like Micro. Still in it's infancy.

Cheers Asim

<comment><USER5> """Micro was a way of creating a foundation for writing and running distributed systems. It's a pluggable architecture so that the underlying systems can be swapped out based on preference."""

At what point do we just admit that we've re-invented the large co-ordination frameworks of years past? Like CORBA? Is it the point where we add a JSON schema validator? or switch to Protocol Buffers or some variant?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think those who've been doing this for a while joke about it all the time. I know I do. I and many others have no illusions about the cyclical nature of technology. It's just that at certain points in time we've tried certain methods and they just weren't the right fit or bastardised to a point of becoming more of a problem. So we try again, lo and behold, we start to get somewhere with it.

Moving to a distributed system is inevitable when you want to scale. We make certain tradeoffs doing it. Over the next couple of decades we'll see some cycles happen again where monoliths are cool again and then distributed systems come back into fashion. Just the way it goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Edit: As I posted below, my reasoning for this comment is perhaps better summarized by Zach Holman's discussion on the topic of github "streaks" and how he found himself burned out after a long series of streaks. Worth reading if you haven't already:

[https://zachholman.com/posts/streaks/](https://zachholman.com/posts/streaks/)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Honest feedback--and this is a bit out of left field--but I think that the author of this project needs to SLOW DOWN.

Here is his Github contribution chart:

[http://i.imgur.com/d1IA1if.png](http://i.imgur.com/d1IA1if.png)

This... does not look like a sustainable level of work. 100 straight days of coding since last December? Yikes.

This sounds like an interesting project, founded on good ideas, but sustaining this level of work will do no good if you burn out before there are other contributors to pick up the slack. I know that a lot of people can keep working this hard for much longer, but quality will inevitably start to suffer, well before you actually burn out. And, at the very least, you need to take the time to step back and validate your ideas. This is something you'll never do if you're always heads-down coding.

I'm not saying that taking more breaks (weekends off, etc) works for everyone, but I just thought something needed to be said. I've seen friends and former colleagues fall into the trap of working on a project so deeply that it becomes a crazy obsession that they cannot escape. It's all they talk about and it can kind of scare people away. Not saying that this is such an extreme case, but it's something that can happen if you're not careful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the feedback. I agree that going all out 100% is not sustainable. Don't be fooled by the GitHub streak. Some days its a bug fix, a test or some documentation. At some point I got addicted to maintaining the streak and actually made a conscious decision to stop at 100. What it represents though is consistency. Even a little bit of progress everyday is something. The comment about taking a step back to evaluate, it's true. The reason the project has gotten so far is because I've been very thoughtful about the interfaces, sometimes spending 4-5 days thinking about adding a feature before getting to it, evaluating all the scenarios of use.

Appreciate the comments.

<comment><USER6> Good to hear. I actually think that maintaining the streak is pretty cool -- even if it seems like an alarming pace at first glance. Sounds like you're taking a healthy approach to the project. Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > By now you may have heard of this new phenomenon, microservices.

This reads like a joke... but reading on I don't understand if you meant it...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's sattire for sure. Everything has a phase of being a buzzword. Buzzwords annoy the crap out of me but I've also been using the word microservices before it was a thing, back when just Netflix was blogging about it. I could say SOA or distributed systems but I say microservices because it encapsulates what I'm trying to say, "looseley coupled service oriented architecture with a bounded context", Adrian Cockroft's words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Although having another microservice toolkit for Go won't generate many headlines, the Sidecar approach they've described here does look pretty sharp.

The combination RPC / Pubsub / Reverse Proxy + registry is pretty sharp.

</comment><comment><USER9> The sidecar part of this looks like what is essentially SmartStack[1] but requiring the user be aware of it's existence (due to Micro's proto3 api) whereby users of SS can more or less be ignorant of it's existence. Actually, to fully to what the sidecar does, you'd want something like Kafka[2] or some other pubsub system too.

[1] [http://nerds.airbnb.com/smartstack-service-discovery- cloud/](http://nerds.airbnb.com/smartstack-service-discovery-cloud/) [2] [http://kafka.apache.org/](http://kafka.apache.org/)

</comment><comment> awinter-py This reads like a litany of the services I forget how to set up between projects. Would be awesome to truly boot them all at once.

Anything that can do most of the work of haproxy and be easier to administer gets my vote.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's great that more and more toolkits are being released. But my biggest gripe with Microservice architectures and toolkits are that they ignore transactions across services.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not that they're ignoring transactions across services, it's that it's a difficult problem that shouldn't actually be solved by a toolkit. It's something that has to be addressed on a per use case basis and most likely modelled differently based on your architectural and database choices. At Hailo we used Cassandra which was replicated globally. An eventually consistent database. We then used Zookeeper at a regional level to do locking for parts of the system that required consistency and serialisation. We made tradeoffs that allows to scale a global system. Data modelling and transactions were no easy thing but the benefits were clear. I did not envy the payments team and have a lot of respect for what they accomplished with said architecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Kind of off topic but does anyone know which blog platform / theme this is? Looks like Ghost?

<comment><USER11> Snooping around in code shows that it is this one: [https://github.com/TryGhost/Casper](https://github.com/TryGhost/Casper)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> microservice is a horrible horrible idea to uproot your existing architecture or build on top of.

</comment><comment><USER13> github.com/micro/micro is this canonical import name? Serious Go projects usually have serious canonical import name. Examples,

\- golang.org/x/net/html/charset

\- google.golang.org/cloud

\- camlistore.org/pkg/app

\- willnorris.com/go/imageproxy</comment>


RubyMotion Tutorial: Write iOS Apps in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://rubymotion-tutorial.com/

<comment><USER2> 95% of writing a good iOS app involves knowledge and skills unrelated to the language. The tools, the frameworks, the design and interaction models, location awareness, and more. Objective-C is a microscopic hurdle compared to getting the rest of it right.

<comment><USER3> Objective-C is a fine language and is pretty easy to learn. Nevertheless there are a few advantages to RubyMotion for certain developers:

* No XCode. Getting comfortable with Xcode takes time and I frequently hear people complain about it crashing, being bloated, etc. With RubyMotion you can just use your regular text editor and a command line.

* Ruby. While Objective-C isn't bad, I actually enjoy using Ruby. I'm much more likely to refactor and abstract functionality.

* Third-party gems and code: While there are limitations, it is generally pretty easy to use gems and other ruby code in RubyMotion. From what I understand, you can also call out to third-party Objective-C libraries from within RubyMotion, so you don't lose out on that ability.

* REPL: Using a terminal and the simulator you can interact with your code while its running.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't recommend using a regular text editor and dealing with the iOS APIs. I pretty much despise IDEs, but sadly the objective-c paragraph long method signatures require it. That's actually why I didn't even bother with RubyMotion, it doesn't solve the thing I hate the most about objective-c.

I just use AppCode, with Xcode for interface builder and dealing with things like data models. It's closest enough to something that isn't a total piece of shit so that I can avoid slitting my wrists all day.

<comment><USER5> Having a text editor does not mean that completion does not work. ctags etc. provide such features. It might not be as good as completion using a static type checker and might have false positives, but "uninformed" completion goes a long way.

Also, some of the higher level api look much more Ruby-like: <https://github.com/rubymotion/BubbleWrap>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This actually looks pretty powerful: <http://www.rubymotion.com/features/>

Here's the most important part:

> RubyMotion implements Ruby on top of the Objective-C runtime and iOS > Foundation classes. Thanks to this tight integration, Ruby can interface > with iOS very naturally at no performance expense.

> You can mix Ruby and Objective-C code, always have access to the latest C > and Objective-C iOS APIs, and also make use of 3rd-party frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks cool. What are the benefits of RubyMotion over Rhodes: [http://www.motorola.com/Business/US- EN/RhoMobile+Suite/Rhode...](http://www.motorola.com/Business/US- EN/RhoMobile+Suite/Rhodes)

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't tell if Rhodes creates 100% native apps or some kind of web/native hybrids, but it doesn't like it uses Apple's iOS SDK. RubyMotion lets you use the same APIs and classes as normal Objective-C apps, so all existing literature is totally useable.

And something I didn't mention in the tutorial: you can even use existing Objective-C frameworks and code in RubyMotion apps using CocoaPods[1].

[1]: <http://cocoapods.org/>

<comment><USER8> Rhodes doesn't create 100% native apps. Your compiled app has a web server embedded in it.</comment></comment></comment>


Support Disaster Relief in Chile - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/relief/chileearthquake/ <comment><USER2> As many people pointed out after the Haiti earthquake, it's important to make sure your donations to any of these organizations go into the general fund, so they can be put to immediate use next time there is a disaster.

It's human nature to want to help victims of a specific disaster, but earmarking funds can make them unavailable for years, as agencies struggle to figure out how to spend them wisely. Meanwhile the money won't be available where it is most needed.

To help most effectively, pick one of the many agencies that does effective disaster relief worldwide, and make a generous unrestricted donation.

<comment><USER3> Who builds hospitals and housing with the highest success rate for the lowest cost?

I want my donations to get the maximum long term effect that builds strong and effective communities. Which organizations get the most benefit from my funding in achieving those goals?

<comment><USER2> Personally, I think you can do a lot worse than Doctors Without Borders

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surprised that so few people have voted this up. Come on, not only Chile needs help now, but if you donate you might be helping to future disaster relief efforts. Thanks!</comment>


The Restoration of Early Unix Artifacts [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/usenix09/tech/full_papers/toomey/toomey.pdf <comment><USER2> (~2009)</comment>


To See the Future of Electric Cars, Look East - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-10/to-see-the-future-of-electric-cars-look-east <comment><USER2> _"The guy who's making the $100,000 car is not changing the world," one of Xindayang 's financiers boasted to Forbes, referring to Tesla's flamboyant founder Elon Musk. "The guy who is making the $10,000 electric vehicle is changing the world."_

That's great for China, but I wonder if a Xindayang car would meet US or EU safety standards.

Also, wasn't the plan for Tesla to "bootstrap" the electric car market with higher-end (and higher-margin) luxury cars? After a few years the technology would be scaled-up enough to make low-cost electric cars feasible.

<comment><USER3> Don't matter where its built, but if you are only selling cars the top one percent can afford you are not changing the world. GM will be first in the US with a two hundred mile range EV that is priced within the range of every day new car buyers. While Tesla deserves credit for showing people you can build an electric for everyday use; heck what can't you build for 100k?; they never had the resources the big auto companies have. There have been some good articles showing that GM/LG and BMW have taken the lead in battery tech already. (GM is already boasting a 145 KwH cost for the Bolt and BMW did a simple but very effective modular system with cooling)

Tesla's plan was to make money where it could with the limited volumes they were going to restricted to because they were new to building cars. Big companies can do more with smaller margins because of quantity.

<comment><USER4> I think you're giving GM a bit too much credit here, there's one thing that's sorely lacking: Infrastructure.

Tesla already has a fantastic network of superchargers.

CCS(which GM is betting on) has very low penetration(Sea -> Portland is a dead-zone, also Portland -> North CA) compared to CHAdeMO.

Telsa has the advantage of a better infra(120kW vs 50kW) and the ability to use other standards like CHAdeMO.

<comment><USER5> This is what constantly puzzles me about other manufacturers' plans to get into the EV market. As far as I know, nobody has plans for a usable fast charging network.

One could argue that you don't need one. Most people don't take road trips that often. But they want to be able to. It's one of the most common questions I get about my Model S: "What if you want to take a road trip?" You can make a pretty easy economic argument that you're better off with a shorter-range car for daily driving, and renting something for your once-a-year road trips, but most people just won't do that.

It's great that the GM has the Bolt and other manufacturers are planning to make EVs with decent range. But without a fast charging network, what's the point? I can't see them moving beyond a small niche.

The question I have is, why isn't any other manufacturer addressing this the way Tesla has and is? Are they, and they just aren't discussing it (or I've missed it)? Do they think third parties should take the lead? Do they think it's not important? Are they just incapable? Do they not actually care about the success of their EVs?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, and even then most of the standards are 50kW(or less) which means that Tesla still has a 2.4x charging advantage(yes I'm aware CCS is supposed to go up higher, but from what I've seen it's limited to 126A vs Supercharger's 300A and we don't see any of them in production yet).

<comment><USER5> I'd say an even bigger problem is simply that the installations aren't very good.

If Tesla had gone with CHAdeMO and put up 50kW CHAdeMO Superchargers everywhere, that would make road trips somewhat more annoying, but it would still be doable. You don't get to charge at 120kW all the time anyway, since the charge rate tapers off as the battery gets full, and temperature matters. It would definitely slow you down, and I'm glad they didn't do this, but I think it would still work.

But if you try to do a road trip on CHAdeMO as it stands, it's a major crapshoot. The stations are almost always single units. That means that if it's occupied or broken, you could be in trouble. There are a lot of stations that only do 20-25kW, some by design, some because they're half-broken. Often they're not maintained well, so they can remain broken or half-broken for months.

Contrast with Superchargers, where they almost always have 4-8 stalls and are maintained such that you can count on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the more genius aspects of Tesla was transforming perceptions of electric cars from oversized toy cars, to objects of lust and desire.

Selling a 100k (actually, more like 150k for the initial roadsters) was a necessary part of this.

<comment><USER7> Except it didn't really work, because Tesla products are not good cars in the way that other $100k cars are. Sure, they're fast, but you just can't make a sports car that weighs as much as an F-150 and expect to be taken seriously by gearheads. This has always been a problem for any electric car company.

Tesla products are cars for people who don't particularly give a shit about cars. I'm not slagging this as a negative thing -- it's a much bigger market than "people who care about cars." I just don't think that establishing themselves as a luxury brand is going to do anything toward the ostensible goal of "winning" against internal combustion.

A $20k electric car would have a much better chance of achieving this.

<comment><USER8> "Tesla products are cars for people who don't particularly give a shit about cars. I'm not slagging this as a negative thing -- it's a much bigger market than "people who care about cars." I just don't think that establishing themselves as a luxury brand is going to do anything toward the ostensible goal of "winning" against internal combustion."

Have you driven one ?

Every "car guy" (and I mean, deep, deep car guys) that I have talked to that has driven one has walked away starry eyed...

Dramatically lower center or gravity, almost perfect weight distribution, space age shocks and struts that are _way ahead_ of the rest of the auto industry ... there's more there than just a battery and some electric motors...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The very low end cars in the linked story really don't look that interesting, but there are other recent Chinese electric cars that look more promising: [http://www.carnewschina.com/2015/12/06/the-jac-iev5-is-a- che...](http://www.carnewschina.com/2015/12/06/the-jac-iev5-is-a-cheap- electric-car-for-china/)

</comment><comment><USER10> "Chinese start-up Faraday Future announced that it had chosen a Las Vegas suburb as the site for a new $1 billion plant to make electric vehicles"

Start-up ---- $1 billion plant. Love it.

<comment><USER11> ...but it's not a bubble. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you are looking for potential transformation, keep an eye on Gogoro, in Taiwan. Although Taipei isn't nearly as smoggy as some Chinese cities, Taipei moves on scooters. Converting to electric could happen faster and have a much higher impact on pollution as a local manifestation than electric cars in relatively lo-smog cities in the US.

While the ready-fire-aim approach that is a wonderful characteristic of China might be a lab for interesting attempts at changing the architecture of cars for electric propulsion, I'd rather bet on BMW, for example, to bring high volume carbon fiber manufacturing technology to market without sacrificing crashworthiness.</comment>


SMS, Voice on Verizon subject to main-in-the-middle attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/video/2013/07/15/hackers-turn-verizon-box-into-spy-tool?videoId=244229599

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't wait until the first public attack using this method to capture a Twitter, Facebook, or Google account. Score one for incredibly badly designed two-factor auth!</comment>


Ask HN: One Book to read on software architecture - <AUTHOR>

Wanted to learn software architecture from a newbie's perspective. Any recommendations? <comment><USER2> You could check out the Architecture of Open Source Applications ([http://aosabook.org/en/index.html](http://aosabook.org/en/index.html))

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it actually what it says? A few reviews on amazon say that the description is misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Code Complete - by Steve McConnell</comment>


Is Microsoft Headed Towards Extinction? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/features/vox/is-microsoft-heading-the-way-of-the-dinosaur/article1630885/ <comment><USER2> This article is just wishful thinking of Microsoft haters.

Microsoft does need to be so much innovative as long as users buy Windows and Office. Windows 7 has been selling at 15 million copies a month. This just proves that whether or not Microsoft is innovative these days, Windows and Office sells like hot-cakes.

Same goes with IBM and their mainframes. A lot of IBM haters kept predicting that IBM and mainframes would be extinct just because they are not innovative, but the reality is that it does not matter. What matters is that they have millions of loyal customers that other companies envy.

<comment><USER3> Well, this is the problem. Microsoft can fritter away billions of dollars on these projects that do not have to have a return. This is why there stock price has not been doing well, because people do not see them producing any more winners.

There attempts in search reek of desperation, paying people to use Bing. Xbox is just now starting to pay off. They have lost mobile. They are losing market share in their webserver and development tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _The stark truth is that Microsoft has rarely invented anything that > mattered._

That doesn't matter, what matters is that lately their execution has sucked.

<comment><USER5> I think this is largely true, but Microsoft is large enough that it really isn't a single entity - the various divisions are outputting different levels of suckiness/goodness. For instance:

DevDiv is on a pretty good roll right now. It is still many steps behind other communities in a lot of regards (and likely always will be), but LINQ was a huge milestone in 3.5 and the new dynamic integration options of 4.0 is a big step forward for a mainstream static language.

The XBox division continues to do cool things. Last year's dashboard revamp was a huge face lift for the system, XBox Live may continue to be a wretched hive of scum and villainy but it is a well-implemented one. I'm skeptical of Kinect's value for the type of games I play, but I believe it'll be very popular amongst casuals and should be a compelling addition to the XBox's UI for non-gaming apps. Oh, and the "instant-on" 1080p streaming of pay-per-view and Netflix movies is really sick and feels like living in the future.

The Zune may always be an niche choice, but its the best option if you'd prefer to spend $15/mo for "unlimited" music rather than purchasing music at $10/album. Which situation makes the most sense will vary from person to person. Last year Zune started handing out 10 song credits per month to each subscriber as well, which helped take the sting out of the normal arguments against subscription services.

I don't particularly follow the Windows Phone 7 / Kin stuff, but it seems obvious they screwed up royally on at least half that proposition (and I don't expect big things out of the Win Phone 7 half either).

Windows 7 has been very well perceived, though it still lags behind Linux/OSX.

Office 2007 was a pretty good redesign of the suite, but Office 2010 doesn't seem to have raised the bar much. I don't think OpenOffice will ever replace MS Office, rather Office will continue to lead until GoogleDocs is fully ready to take over (its getting closer & closer every day and I don't think MS's new web-based Office will be able to compete).

In retrospect, after reviewing what I've written so far, my opinion seems to be that Microsoft's offerrings haven't been that bad execution-wise lately, but that most are plagued by the fact that they are "also rans": decent products that have some strong merits, but offer no compelling reason to leave the market leader or community favorite.

<comment><USER6> > Windows 7 has been very well perceived, though it still lags behind > Linux/OSX.

Lags behind in what sense?

<comment><USER5> Background: I'm a .NET developer in a Windows shop by day, and run OSX on most of my computers at home (except my primary desktop which is Win7 for gaming and .NET development).

My major pain points on Windows that lag behind Linux/OSX:

\- Scripting. PowerShell is getting there, and is fine for system related tasks, but it remains a second-class citizen.

\- Application Installation. No apt-get; no simple dragging an app into the Apps folder. Same for uninstallation.

\- Security. I don't hate UAC nearly as much as everyone else seems to, but give me sudo any day. I'm also concerned by reports I've read of how easy it is for malicious software to get around UAC.

\- Settings/Configuration. Control Panel is still a cluster fuck and every app on my computer seems to have a different route to their custom config screen.

\- Startup. Yes I know about msconfig, but my wife certainly doesn't, nor does my mother.

I don't hate Windows. I make my livelihood from it, use it all day with little complaint (Win7 is my favorite Windows version since Win2000), and its clearly the only real choice for PC gaming (I have like 3 games for my Macs via Steam). That doesn't mean I am or should be blind to where it falls behind its competitors.

For what its worth, I have the same feeling about .NET: I use it, love it, make money off it, have fun with it; but I'm not blind to its faults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Toyota didn't invent the wheel, are they dying now?

Apple didn't invent the phone, is the iPhone a flop and will Apple die next?

And MS hasn't made anything in the last few years that is worthy of mentioning? What about Windows 7, love it or hate it, it's the fastest selling OS in history.

Inventing something isn't a sign of success. Taking an idea, whether it has already been invented or not, then creating the best (or at least the most popular) iteration of that idea, is what matters. I'm no Microsoft fan-boy (I use Linux, have an Android phone, although I do own and love my Xbox 360 to be fair).. but even I can't deny Microsoft's ability to consistently churn out some pretty amazing products (yes, and their fair share of flops too.. but no- one is immune to that.. Apple Newton anyone?).

<comment><USER8> Those are bad examples that miss the point.

• Toyota brought hybrids to market.

• Apple elevated cellphones to a completely new level, inventing underlying technology along the way.

I consider both to be bold, innovative moves. I think you are defining "invention" far too narrowly. _Edit:_ Name a single completely new "invention" from software industries. Nothing? Then stop being so pedantic.

<comment><USER7> I'm talking about his statement that companies that don't "invent", don't last.

Toyota didn't "invent" the Hybrid, if anything that's another case that perfectly proves my point.. Toyota took an existing invention, the Hybrid car, and created a brilliant marketable implementation of that pre-existing idea.

Apple didn't "invent" the touch screen, multi touch, the cell phone, or any of the other stuff that makes the iPhone such a good phone. It just once again took pre-existing ideas and created a brilliant marketable implementation of the combined ideas into a product that has netted them billions of dollars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The first, the best, or the free." New Microsoft products seem to be none of the above lately, including the Zune, their phones, and their consoles (though there, "best" is at least debatable).

Office and Windows are _effectively_ "first" because they have incredible traction.

<comment><USER9> The Windows 7 Phone OS has been hyping up for a while now and won't be out for till the holidays, so who knows, but it looks fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've got friends that work there and they have so many great technologies and products that they don't publish. I have no idea why but if you have time, go look at microsoft research center.. I mean, what are they waiting ?!

</comment><comment><USER11> I rarely have something positive to say about Microsoft. I was a customer until the early 90s when I decided the Open Systems world was more appealing. My disgust only increased over the years as it became well-nigh impossible to navigate a Microsoft-free career path in the shadow of the behemoth.

Oddly, though, I found myself realizing just today that when Kinect comes out that I want to buy an Xbox 360 (which are finally quiet enough thanks to a 45nm process) just to play EA Sports Active 2.0. It's crazy how things change.

</comment><comment><USER12> Project Natal. Nuff said.

<comment><USER12> Why the downvotes? The thesis of this article is that Microsoft is incapable of innovation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hmmm, has Microsoft " _rarely invented anything that mattered_ "?

<comment><USER14> The problem isn't that they're not inventing stuff; that R&D money isn't just spent on paperclips, and a lot of interesting stuff comes out as a result. The problem is that the inventions get squished, not released.

<comment><USER13> Well, there's F#, and they support the reference Haskell compiler. But the more we learn about how totally political the D part of the company is the more we're likely to believe your thesis that Microsoft Research's notable lack of impact on the greater company is due to the latter. And they don't have Xerox's excuse!

Heck, they're so messed up they almost destroyed one of their foundational cash cows (Windows with the Vista debacle), which would have killed another (Office). A commentator to Mini-Microsoft's previous blog item claimed that the Windows group engineers are now required to fill out by the hour time sheets. The mind boggles ... even if that's not true, the fact that it's believable says enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Microsoft is not innovative, but does that matter? Does Offices with bureaucratic rules need innovation?

Microsoft sells Windows and Office because companies don't like the cloud (less stable, speed, privacy) and don't like Apple (expensive, re-education of employees...). So Microsoft products are a good solution.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ha, did MS invent Basic, DOS, word processing, electronic spreadsheets, GUI? billg was the king of execution. After he moved from managing the company to working on the antimonopoly case MS lost direction and now behaves like a typical Fortune 500 corporation.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article assumes microsoft will never improve its management structure. This may be true but is pure speculation on the authors part. A lot can happen in decades and MS had the cash to spend while working it out.

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't it obvious since 2003?</comment>


Forces Driving the Low-Code Movement - <AUTHOR> https://devops.com/7-forces-driving-the-low-code-movement/ <comment><USER2> > Code.org tracks 666,534 open computing jobs nationwide, yet only 71,226 > computer science students graduated into the workforce last year. That means > roughly 89% of open positions cannot be filled with the talent on hand.

This is _horrible_ reasoning. Many, many of the best devs have degrees in other subjects or no degrees at all. This is has been true since the early days of the field and it's still true today.</comment>


How to make Slack less bad for you - <AUTHOR> http://robertheaton.com/2016/08/23/how-make-slack-slightly-less-bad-for-you/ <comment><USER2> Slack is good, notifications are bad, and this is a rant.

This post reads to me as another snowflake in the very justified avalanche of "Internet is drowning me in pointless chatter" complaints that define our time.

I use Slack this way with my team and it works wonderfully for me:

\- I disable all notifications

\- I tell people to PM me if they need me to act

\- I tell people to carry on discussion in the relevant project/topic channel if they need to chat about said project/topic

These points are ordered by importance. The first is vastly more important than the others and extends beyond Slack. I aggressively disable notifications of all kinds from all things. If I can't disable them I at least disable their ability to make sound or vibrate. I have one way to be immediately "notified" and that is to call my mobile. I can count the people who know and use that number on one hand. They're so close to me that they know if I truly need to be informed of something now - in their respective sphere of family, friends, or work - and they call me and I pick up.

The PMs I read and act on when it's my Slacking time. I open up Slack and crank through them. Slacking time happens one or more times a day depending on my bandwidth.

The other channels I read if and only if I have a justified need to know what's going on with that project/topic. Or if I have downtime and am curious about something. Grazing on info about what my team is up to in project X is a nicer distraction than watching TV.

I am also that crazy guy who actually _uninstalled Facebook from his phone and just goes to the website when he feels like catching up with friends._ So I'm not subject to that megacorp's constant interruptions either. I don't feel like my life has lost anything at all by doing this.

The problem isn't Slack, it isn't Facebook, it's _notifications,_ turn them off and tell the world that if they want your attention they have to call you _and they can 't have your number unless you love them._

<comment><USER3> > The PMs I read and act on when it's my Slacking time. I open up Slack and > crank through them. Slacking time happens one or more times a day depending > on my bandwidth.

At this point it sounds like slack is now just email at which point I question the value it is adding. Assuming everyone else does the same things in the same way you'll never have a responsive conversation over slack like this and may as well skip it entirely.

<comment><USER2> The merits of a Slack PM over email are few and debatable, I agree. However only a member of my team can PM me on Slack and anyone can email me, so my Slack messages have a better signal to noise ratio.

Slack adds much more value in the area of project-oriented channels which do get a lot of real-time conversation happening in them during business hours, and also retain an email-like record for anyone who logs in later on and wants to catch up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I cannot recommend using Slack via a browser enough. It achieves several goals:

1\. It sandboxes resource usage, preventing Slack from being a permanent resource hog. Is your Slack tab running hot on Chrome? Just kill it for now. There are many browser extensions for managing resource usage per tab.

2\. Closing the Slack browser tab means no disruptive notifications. Sure, you can snooze Slack @-mentions, etc., but that's too much of "working hard to make the tool work."

3\. Better workflow (seriously) Perhaps this is just me (or my function as a marketing person at a startup), but I work almost entirely inside the browser (GMail, Google Docs, various sites for research, SaaS apps). Using Slack as a standalone desktop app means I have to focus away from the browser. Using Slack as a browser tab means I can treat it just one of several web apps I use regularly.

4\. Bonus point: No need to update your Slack client =)

<comment><USER5> It just baffles me how many apps that would have been fundamentally doable on a 486 with Windows 3.1 and 14.4 dial-up somehow manage to gulp resources on modern machines.

(Although, for 1 and 2, it seems like temporarily closing the Slack app would work just as well.)

<comment><USER6> If Slack's desktop client was written in efficient C++ using platform specific UI framworks it would likely be one to two orders of magnitude more efficient across all important metrics. Unfortunately the desktop app is basically an entire web browser instance running JavaScript code.

I can see the appeal, however. Write once run anywhere is a hell of a drug.

<comment><USER7> > _I can see the appeal, however. Write once run anywhere is a hell of a > drug._

It's not just that. It's that you're not paid to write good code, nor efficient code. You're paid to write any shit that works good enough to be sold to users, and to write it as quickly as you can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He didn't mention one of my pet peeves: the "stratoscope, robertheaton, and dang are typing" messages below the input window. They draw you in to watching... nothing! I sit there slack-jawed (pun unintended, but I'll take credit for it anyway) waiting to see what - if anything - will eventually show up.

Even on #random. It seemed like such a good idea at the time - keep "water cooler" chat out of the main channels. But what really happens is that all the fun stuff goes on in #random, so you pay as much or more attention to it as anything else. Who wants to be late for the party?

And there's the uncapitalized, unpunctuated, line-by-line stream of consciousness writing style I ranted about some time ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11239614)

<comment><USER9> Another is that they just started putting light-grey text "Message @channel" by default in the text area. I am surprisingly stressed out by this. It feels like a command or a nudge that insinuates itself into my thinking space, like a half-finished message which a corporate entity 'helpfully' began for me, and now it's my job to finish it, and as soon as I finish that one another will begin. There's a bad dream in there somewhere...

I think the OP is right that a UI needs to be sensitive to the user's psyche and not push them all the time toward using the product.

<comment><USER10> I'm actually more at ease with this change than if there was no default text. There's that flicker of recognition when I look at the input area before I start typing—"I'm messaging @channel." Call me paranoid, but I often flick over to the sidebar to see which channel I'm in before I dive into some conversations, just to make sure I'm not saying something in a public channel I shouldn't—like scanning over the recipients before you send an email. This proactively reassures me so I don't have to flit about making sure I'm doing the right thing.

<comment><USER8> That's a great point. Looking at it again, maybe it's just the wording of the prompt that I don't like. For example, we have a #dev channel and it says:

      Message dev

It doesn't quite register for me that the word "dev" is referring to the _channel name_ \- it's drowned out by the big word "Message".

And my first subconscious thought is that "Message" is being used as an adjective: are we talking about the "Message dev"? Who is that?

I think it would be helpful if the prompt used the standard notation for channel names:

      Message #dev

But if I had a prompt like this I'd probably spell it out in full to avoid any confusion:

      Send a message to #dev

<comment><USER10> A private channel will look like

      Message dev

But an org-wide channel will look like

      Message #dev

<comment><USER8> Mystery solved, thanks! I was looking at a private channel. I didn't realize that private channels don't get #xyz shortcuts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am probably getting old. Having used irc as main communication channel for 8 years in a previous company, we now added slack on top of the mail and direct messenger methods at my new workplace. I can not get used to it, at all. It is nothing but a distraction of half wit and delayed misunderstandings. I even dislike the ui. May be the staff is not ready, maybe just give it a little time. Maybe I just got too used to email

<comment><USER12> If you dislike Slack, have you seen Skype for Business? Its text chat function disproves the existence of Cthulhu, since something so mind-bendingly horrible would surely have awoken Him, if He existed. Imagine sending your colleagues single-line Word documents and you're basically there.

<comment><USER13> Couldn't agree more. We use Skype for Business and its lack of obvious features is amazing. To give people an example, you cannot even send a link!

<comment><USER14> Huh? I've only used Lync 2013 and before, but the IM client doesn't prevent links. It's basically like MSN Messenger with some enhancements, for internal use. At least it doesn't have the deliverability and ordering issues Skype has.

Group chat isn't anything amazing with it but I haven't found it deficient. Maybe I'm using it wrong.

<comment><USER15> You can send links, but it's copy/paste functionality is "quirky".

<comment><USER13> How do I send a link!! Seriously would love to know. I paste it in and I think it gets reformatted for the person on the other end. What is that??

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While the tone of the article is maybe a little hyperbolic, I agree with a lot of it. The default setting to be alerted when absolutely anything happens is crazy. And whenever I see someone talking about Slack replacing e-mail as if it's a good thing, I recoil in horror. You can answer e-mails at your own pace, while Slack prioritises instant replies.

<comment><USER17> I have to disagree. The problem with email is the signal to noise ratio is too high, because it is globally accessible. Where as Slack is company only. Some things need to be addressed now. With email that would be turning on notifications, but then you get notifications for spam. Slack doesn't have the spam problem. The closest it gets is messages from computers. Those can be controlled or segregated to certain channels.

<comment><USER18> I think this really just speaks to a need for better email clients - or just better email client configurations.

A good email client for a business might filter all messages from other members of your company into a given folder, and then only notify for messages in that folder. Notifications for any other messages would just be blocked. Heck, don't even show them in the unread count until the user looks for them in particular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It sounds like the cultural norm for how their team is using Slack is synchronous.

I'd strongly suggest building a culture that Email and Slack are Asynchronous.

If something is time sensitive, take it to a synchronous channel which has cultural expectations that it is okay to interrupt the other person.

<comment><USER20> Our unwritten but seems to be more or less the rule at work is that unless you get an @ (either in a general channel or in a 1-1 chat) anything that goes into slack is as async as email. Maybe a little bit less, but the expectation is that you will get to it at some point and that's it.

I don't find it specially disruptive this way. Way less than shouting from one side of the office "hey, check the deploy!"

<comment><USER21> This is exactly how we've handled Slack. It's sync (to within a minute or two) for @ messages, which are used sparingly. It's async for everything else, and it's faster than email only in that it's a bit more conversational.

Within that norm, all of the "Slack is an evil attention vampire" complaints feel deeply unfamiliar to me. I find it less distracting than email because @ makes message priority clear at a glance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Honestly, this is not my experience using Slack at all. Maybe it's because I'm on such a small team, but I find that the amount of chatter on Slack isn't overwhelming at all -- #random is pretty dead most of the time. And if someone sends me a message and I'm busy, then I'll maybe glance at the notification but probably just ignore it until I'm free.

My team uses Slack very asynchronously -- whenever you have something that needs feedback or whatever, you just post it in the appropriate channel, and expect responses to trickle in over maybe the next 24 hours. If someone sends "hey no rush but", then I legitimately do not rush to answer it -- just a different company culture I guess.

</comment><comment><USER23> Since slack people will pass by here. Please, if i set not disturb then don't disturb me: no notification, no badge icon (!!), nothing! (maybe just when the people, after been warned that they may disturb still send the notification). then when i remove the not disturb your nice slackbot can tell me what i missed.

Why am I asking so? beacuse I use pomodoro and i've a script that sets slack to "do not disturb" when i'm in the pomodoro and switch it off (to the pls bother me mood) when i'm done.

<comment><USER24> If you send it via /feedback you'll at least get a friendly, appreciative reply.

The feature may never get implemented but the response is always nice... :slightly_smiling_face:

<comment><USER23> i did, i got a friendly reminde but that's it. The not-disturb feature is still disturbing :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Less can certainly be more. However I feel like Slack's usefulness:distraction ratio change greatly depending on the type of team or company using it. These suggestions are good ones but every situation is different. Is your team disciplined, focused, and/or collaborative and to what degree? The answer will tell you how Slack may get used or abused.

<comment><USER26> Yeah before Slack I was constantly getting interrupted with questions that could have been answered any time and random co-workers just wanting to chat. However, I agree with the analysis that Slack is good for immediate communication and communication that doesn't really matter too much. Before Slack we didn't really have a tool that fit that and so every communication was a co-worker walking over and interrupting whatever you were doing.

<comment><USER27> > Before Slack we didn't really have a tool that fit that and so every > communication was a co-worker walking over and interrupting whatever you > were doing.

I don't get it. Doesn't any popular chat client fit the bill? The thing Slack adds is big persistent chat groups which doesn't help with the problem you're describing.

<comment><USER21> I think big persistent groups sometimes _do_ help with that. If you want to know which client requested X, then messaging one person is slow, and walking up to ask one person is disruptive. With Slack, you can ask 30 people and get an answer from whoever looks first (and so presumably isn't disrupted). Everyone else who's busy ignores things and skims things when they're not occupied.

That's all contingent on a culture of async Slack usage, but I've found it valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm not a fan of Slack. I think it's way more distracting than useful. The biggest problem I think is that it doesn't really allow for async communication. If I have a question that I want to ask someone, but it's not urgent, there isn't really a way to do it. With the typical gmail setup, I have 2 options. Send an email for non-urgent. Or send a hangout message for urgent. Slack really needs something like this, a sort of silent direct message that doesn't disrupt the recipient.

Also, I hate the <person> joined / left messages. There are team-related channels that are so disruptive and useless that I'd like to silently leave without being judged, but I can't.

Lastly, I've yet to be in a channel that isn't overrun by giphy spam. I know this isn't directly Slack's fault and more a company culture issue, but Slack sure makes it easy to use distracting features, whether that's integrations like giphy, or reactions to messages, etc. I think the focus needs to be less on making Slack 'fun' to use, and more on improving communication.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wrote an electron app to inject javascript and CSS into slack in an attempt to turn off a lot of distraction and, more importantly, easily differentiate between bots and people. I feel the author's pain, but the great part about being a programmer is that if it's bad enough to write about, it's bad enough to fix.

It allows per-team customizations, and if anyone cares to mess with it, there's a link at [https://github.com/bhuga/hackable-slack- client](https://github.com/bhuga/hackable-slack-client). OSX only, but it's electron, so porting it would probably be easy.

Changing other people's applications' behavior is challenging but rewarding. The hacks required make great stories for certain kinds of parties. I always point people to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11805380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11805380) for a better introduction than I could give.

</comment><comment><USER30> One thing that's not mentioned in the article that I see as one of the main drawbacks of slack is lack of threading, which makes it much harder to have an async. conversation (especially across timezones).

The very very weird part to me about this is that slack say they've been working on threading for at least 18 months now ([https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/535121236452732928](https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/535121236452732928)) and still can't provide a timeline for when it'll go live, which seems really odd for such a well funded development team, given it's such an oft-requested piece of functionality (there's even a twitter account dedicated to it [https://twitter.com/slackThreadsYet](https://twitter.com/slackThreadsYet) )

</comment><comment><USER31> Is everyone forgetting the biggest benefit of Slack? It's the transparency part. Important details are no longer privy to 1 or 2 individuals on the team in their inboxes instead the whole team can see what's going on and can chime in if they disagree

<comment><USER24> If you're in the right channel.

If someone didn't make a new channel to discuss the idea more , and you missed the single line of text that mentioned it two hours ago.

If you happen to be looking at the right channel at the right time.

If the pertinent bits aren't lost in back scroll.

I think your statement is true for a sufficiently small company with a limited number of channels. Less so for larger companies, or even small ones with dozens or hundreds of them.

<comment><USER32> Slack search is really good and can let you recover missed bits of information.

<comment><USER24> But it's only helpful if you know what you need to search for. In the case of a conversation that happened in the past that you wanted to have input into - and either never learned about it, or only learned after a decision was reached - it doesn't help so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there any way to turn off those "motivational" start up messages such as "we like you"? It always irritates me; I want to use Slack for work not for getting the feel I am in a kindergarten and "special".

<comment><USER34> You can replace them, so assumedly you could replace the "motivational" messages with things such as "Work harder" or "You are not special" or "You are an easily replaceable cog".

<comment><USER33> "" would work perfectly, by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you have more than a few teams, Slack becomes unusable. This alternative client doesn't freeze up like Slack:

[http://meetfranz.com/](http://meetfranz.com/)

<comment><USER23> This isn't very fair. If i've many team in slack, and slack app becomes unstable, you don't solve the problem, don't you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> My main issue with Slack is that with sane-ish notification defaults (only for my name), group direct messages default to that as well.

They're fundamentally perceived by everyone (in my experience) as an extension of individual direct messages, which _do_ trigger notifications, and yet I find myself missing these for minutes/hours at a time, sometimes when it's important, all because I've finally trained myself to ignore the non-numeric notification badge.

I've contacted the support about this and was basically told to go away. :/

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm on a small team (14-15) and honestly I love Slack. Have never had any issues with it and I think it's an awesome team messaging system. We use growbot to give props and get a kick out of it. We just switched from skype to slack calls and it was a gamechanger. I have been on teams that used GroupMe in the past and it was terrible. I don't read group me messages because they're off topic and annoying. Slack's channel system changed that for me.

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't understand the part about "permanent do not disturb". Can't you just turn off all notifications, or quit the app?

<comment><USER39> You can set Do Not Disturb for a team too from the same start to end time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Surprised this doesn't mention the mute feature. I just mute the noisy channels (#random, etc).

[https://get.slack.help/hc/en- us/articles/204411433-Muting-a-...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en- us/articles/204411433-Muting-a-channel)

<comment><USER41> Muting a channel doesn't prevent it from showing unread message indicators when your coworkers use @here and @channel indiscriminately. This is probably my current biggest pet peeve with Slack, an app that I otherwise love (at least more than some other alternatives we've tried).

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I see a common theme here is resource usage by Slack on the desktop. I also share this concern, and proposed a Kickstarter to build a native app: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2137936555/taut-the- fas...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2137936555/taut-the-fast- beautiful-macos-native-slack-app)

Unfortunately it didn't get the traction that I wanted. This is OK, the main purpose of the kickstarter was 'market/idea validation' to see if enough people were dissatisfied with Slack's resource usage/performance to justify building it.

If enough people here are interested though, i'd be willing to resurrect the project - please let me know.

</comment><comment><USER43> Honestly I find the gripey-ness of this pretty off-putting. We get it, you hate Slack, congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER44> Slack has a powerful Do Not Disturb feature - that little X in the upper corner of the window. Same as any other program, close it when you don't want it running, open it when you do. Why go to such great lengths to complicate that?

</comment><comment><USER45> To reduce noise, I always get the admins to turn on XMPP and IRC support. That way I can pick my client of choice, and limit notifications that way.

</comment><comment><USER46> I can't be the only one who think Slack is another super hyped company...

<comment><USER47> Nope, that's what everything thinks. Some people even think it's over-hyped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Slack is of utmost importance. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius#Conspi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius#Conspiracy_and_.22Slack.22)

Get it while you can.

Hail Eris

<comment><USER49> Somebody awhile back pointed out that Slack the app is about the most anti- Slack thing ever produced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Folks, I suggest that while Slack may have some mechanical advantages over e-mail, the 'problem of too many emails' will absolutely not be solved by Slack, or almost anything else.

'Communication discipline' is the key issue, and it's a social issue regarding how organizations work. Some people, in some jobs, are simply rewarded for broadcasting BS. It's their job to do that. Sadly.

It's funny how much time we waste communication, and how, most often, there is very little guidance on how we should do that. Very few 'rules'.

Like typing, or 'interviewing' \- there should be some effort to control this.

If you think about it - isn't it absurd that someone from some group can do something that possibly interrupts dozens of other people?

Would you allow them to shout loudly in a room?

In the Army they call it 'radio discipline'. There are specific ways to communicate. Entirely inappropriate for corporate life, at the same time, we also don't want to quash the serendipitous opportunity that sometimes arises from great chats ...

But still.

Perversely ... because Email clients usually offer finer control ... maybe email with tight discipline is the way.

I feel dirty for saying that :)

</comment><comment><USER51> Honestly, this is not a problem at all.</comment>


Nothing to waste: The advantage of being under-funded - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/novc

<comment><USER2> Is that a picture of your marketing campaign? That is hilariously awesome. It looks like how I bring groceries home from the store or how I take my laundry to the laundromat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a random photo from Flickr of a lo-fi solution. :-) I was hoping I had an old photo of a CD Baby booth at a conference but couldn't find any.</comment></comment>


Google's mysterious new operating system – Fuchsia - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-fuchsia-looks-completely-different-than-android-screenshots-2017-5/#it-isnt-surprising-to-find-google-assistant-running-in-fuchsia-8 <comment><AUTHOR> Could this OS be entirely focused on Progressive Web Apps? And having Google assistant (and Google search) at its core?

[https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web- apps/](https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/)

<comment><USER2> I've had a play with Fuchsia via qemu on linux and it has web_view so can display webpages, don't know when or if chrome web browser will arrive. Fuschia book say it has Backwards compatibility, POSIX lite and Web runtime [https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/docs/+/HEAD/book.md](https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/docs/+/HEAD/book.md)</comment></comment>


Stalk Arrested Development? Get Notified When It Premiers via Twilio SMS - <AUTHOR> http://www.twilio.com/blog/2013/05/stalk-arrested-development-get-notified-when-it-premiers-via-twilio-sms.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=stalk-arrested-development-get-notified-when-it-premiers-via-twilio-sms <comment><USER2> I can't even try to plan for work from may 26th until just around the end of the month. AD has the most in-depth style of writing and that show deserves my full attention.

Mitch is a genius and I'm pumped to see what they've put into this new season.</comment>


Why Angel Investors are the New Rock Stars - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/73397/angel-investors-as-the-new-rock-stars/

<comment><USER2> And why we need to kill them:

\- They, quite naturally, invest based on their personality. This leads to more startups that match a few specific people.

Making something that people want is impossible to know before hand. There are more Farmville users than Twitter users. No one in their right mind could have possibly guessed that Farmville would be so successful. And by having just a few people deciding what people will like just means fewer big hits.

What we need is something like this:

<http://me-vc.com></comment>


Why is the DOS path character "\"? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/06/24/432386.aspx <comment><USER2> Microsoft does some crazy things for backwards compatibility. Here's one of my favorites related to the Display Control Panel: [http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/01/10/511201....](http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/01/10/511201.aspx)

<comment><USER3> What bugs me is that in the case you link to, they've added more crap in an effort to support drivers which weren't written properly in the first place. Windows would be a far better product if they hadn't decided to adapt to so much improperly-written software and oft-needless backwards compatibility.

I much prefer Apple's approach with the switch to UB: they put in an emulator for PPC apps which basically sucks, thereby creating motivation for switching apps to the new format while still technically supporting legacy software. Now, in the upcoming version of OSX, that emulator cruft is being removed (last I checked).

<comment><USER4> Apple APIs are a huge pain in the ass to work with in the commercial world though since they're so volatile. With every 10.x release they seem to wipe out some huge subsystem and send everyone off to rewrite their code. As someone who used to maintain a set of cross-platform APIs built on top of Carbon, I learned to have quite a bit of respect for the cruft that sticks around in MFC.

<comment><USER3> I realize that, and I can empathize with your plight. However, just as one would cull a herd or prune flowers, that cruft must also be removed sooner or later, else it will end up killing the entire system. Would this be a plausible explanation for why Windows performance continues to degrade substantially with each version?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An excellent case of backwards compatibility above all else, including common sense!</comment>


I'm leaving Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81581.0

<comment><USER2> "Spectacular failure is your destiny."

I thought jellicle's advice to Zhou Tong was insightful 248 days ago. Time has proven its wisdom.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2973803>

\-- systems that work with money are attacked hard and often, by intelligent skilled people

\-- in fact some of the people who attack your system are likely to be both more skilled and more intelligent than you are

\-- systems that work with money that fail, fail spectacularly ("What do you mean someone withdrew $8 million last night?")

\-- banking websites, Paypal, etc. are all like icebergs - you don't see 9/10ths of the things they've done to prevent spectacular failure

\-- spectacular failure is your destiny if you don't work very hard to prevent it

\-- spectacular failure may be your destiny even if you do work very hard to prevent it

You should plan accordingly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your original advice. It's definitely useful. But it's not relevant today.

I don't wish to link the Bitcoinica fiasco with my leave because I sold Bitcoinica a few months ago. And I lost my control in January. Basically everything didn't go as I planned. (I'm VERY conservative about wallet security.)

I wanted to build an independent exchange system to replace hedging, so that most funds can stay offline. But the new owner didn't like the idea.

I know it failed like predicted, but my involvement in the failure is highly limited. I sold the site for the same reasons: What if someday I'm hacked, or caught? (The valuation (P/E) was less than 1!)

I'm a web developer, not a security expert. I know how to protect the API keys but I'm not good at encrypting a wallet.dat. That's all I thought since day one.

<comment><USER3> May I ask how much money in total you personally netted from making Bitcoinica? I'm intensely curious, but I'd understand if you'd prefer not to tell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, I have signed an NDA on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> These bitcoin hacks have amazed me every single time. The old-school financial industry goes to extreme lengths in order to protect the money it's in charge of. Physical money is stored securely and guarded. IT infrastructure is carefully guarded both physically and electronically.

By comparison, these bitcoin folks seem quite content to store what is essentially _money_ on run-of-the-mill servers in run-of-the-mill data centres. Linode? Rackspace? Are you people fucking serious? It keeps happening, and I keep wondering why any thinking person would trust plain old data centre security staff with their money like this.

<comment><USER5> They go through great lengths, except apparently verifying if you're authorized to access an account, as in the Citigroup hack. Or having two- factor auth. Or being able to use passwords with decent length. Or providing a better payment system than a single set of codes that you have to hope no company leaks, or you'll have to get a new CC (see the Global Payments hack), when even fucking Twitter knows how to develop an authorization scheme that can be individually revoked.

Seriously, the banking industry is hardly a paragon of security. Many startups give you better ways to protect your cat pictures than the average bank gives you to protect your money.

<comment><USER6> I have not seen an online banking without two factor auth though.

<comment><USER7> I assume you are not in America? PNC, M&T, and TD all do not have two factor auth. (That I've seen.)

<comment><USER6> Yes, Europe. Maybe there are different laws? Some decade ago you used to get plastic card with grid of passwords. Now it's usually SMS verification for every transaction (and sometimes for login).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for posting, Tong, good luck with next.

Might I suggest a post-mortem on the various security problems you dealt with, for those of us who weren't following closely? I'm sure you learned a lot, even if what not to do.

I don't think many programmers, especially web developers in the consumer startup scene, are faced with such security pressures as Bitcoinica was, so it would probably be very useful for many to read a behind-the-scenes accounting of that.

<comment><USER9> I would love to read that, too, but it's worth noting that the particular failure in this case appears to have been pretty boring. According to his account he was transferring operational control to a different group, and one member was relying on an insecure email server which was used to reset the root password on a Rackspace VPS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has no remarkable impact on Bitcoin or the community, it's just the founder of Bitcoinica (which was hacked several times) disassociating himself from Bitcoin because his reputation has been decimated.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I did something seriously wrong, I would definitely admit it.

The recent hack is not my fault. It just destroyed the only reason that I stay in Bitcoinica.

<comment><USER10> I am certainly not accusing you of any misbehavior, but even you would admit this incident did not serve your reputation well -- deservedly or not. And that is indeed your motivation for leaving.

<comment><AUTHOR> Reputation damage is never the motivation for leaving. I wanted to leave long ago. The income was too attractive for me to actually leave.

Without money I can finally rationally re-think my destiny.

<comment><USER11> I strongly disapprove of the recklessness you have displayed several times, but then again you're a kid and it's understandable.

I hope you are successful and that you have banked well in the Bitcoinica deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope this thing with Zhou and Bitcoinica isn't going to screw up my company's all Bitcoin IPO: <https://glbse.com/asset/view/DMC>

We're seeking 200k BTC for a self-green powered mining farm at our own DC up here in Maine, so we profit from the mining farm itself, having nearly no cooling needs for the DC, selling power generated back to the grid, and also renting excess space to other companies who want out of the way DC space in a quiet part of the country.

</comment><comment><USER13> zhoutong, you are definitely an inspiration. Sad to see you leaving bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER14> I still suspect he stole the 18k bitcoins, the guy is slippery.

<comment><USER15> Why would you think this?

<comment><USER15> I was genuinely curious why grandparent would think that _"I still suspect he stole the 18k bitcoins, the guy is slippery."_. Why is the guy "slippery"? What makes you think that _he_ stole the bitcoins?

Why would someone downvote for asking for clarification..?</comment></comment></comment>


Emvi Is Out of Beta - <AUTHOR> https://emvi.com/blog/emvi-is-out-of-beta-MK14pbL1Ov <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hackers, we finally made it out of beta! Thank you everyone who helped us get there. The feedback on hacker news (alongside other sources) was really helpful and inspiring.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing it here.

I think there may be something wrong with your blog page, because it does not have any content except the title for me, even when I enable JS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh that's odd. Which browser are you on?

We mirror our blog to Medium: [https://medium.com/emvi](https://medium.com/emvi)

<comment><USER2> I'm using a browser based on Chromium 69.x (qutebrowser)

<comment> The-Compiler Doesn't seem to be qutebrowser specific. I only see a date and nothing more on that page, no matter what browser I use (qutebrowser, Firefox, Chromium)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Question: Best licence for open source but stop commercial usage? - <AUTHOR>

Hi.
We believe strongly that our mobile physical securitu tool for human rights defenders, journalists and NGOs should be free and open source. (Sign up at www.secfirst.org - sorry for the blatant plug :). However we want to avoid organisations from making a commercial profit from or publishing their versions of software under our name. Basically to reduce people who might want to stick a back door into the software and then upload it elsewhere and/or build the source into their own for profit software. Of course, if they were using some of the source for nonprofit software then thats great :)
Any thoughts would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> Not sure how to weigh your application, if it is a normal program then GPL3 will probably be a good choice: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL)

If you want to protect the users of service then probably GPL3/Affero will do the job: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License)

If these won't do it then either search on or wait for better answers. Success!

Edit: These licenses like most open source licenses will not prohibit people from forking your software nor will they prohibit commercial interaction, they simply protect the rights of your users. What you probably want is trademarking your brand.

</comment><comment><USER3> fwiw the generally accepted definition of open source (the OSI one [http://opensource.org/osd](http://opensource.org/osd)) prohibits discrimination between users. Hence none of the OSI compatible licence (i.e most major open source licences) will give you what you want.

<comment><USER4> Not directly. But the GPL variants impose restrictions that are often incompatible with business use.

<comment><USER5> Only businesses that want to take other peoples code, modify and distribute it, and the go and sue any user who themselves want to further modify or share the software.

That type of business use is incompatible with GPL. Thankfully, it is not the common case, as often businesses just want to use the software privately. That is always compatible with the GPL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> AGPL is the standard answer to this question, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER6> I always stick to GPL-like stuff for any software and release the same software with paid-licences for commercial customers.

</comment><comment><USER7> IANAL, but preventing commercial usage might prevent a lot of journalists from adopting the use of your product.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the responses everyone!</comment>


Selme – A free tool to find your ideal customer profile data - <AUTHOR> http://www.selme.me <comment><USER2> I don't want to be nasty, but the site has all the features of a scam. No link to additional information works; it's just a form to send you my email address in exchange for the vague promise that you'll help me make money (how?).

I'm not saying you _are_ a scam, I'm saying the site looks like one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Links aren't working. No information on front page. 'customer profile data' sounds dodgy

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a prefinery.com form.

They're just testing their idea / landing page.</comment>


Ask HN: Dear Recruiters Stop Asking why do you want to work for our company - <AUTHOR> Nothing worthwile came out of this question. At the end of the day everyone wants to get paid. <comment><USER2> To me the real purpose of this question is to see if the candidate did a minimum of homework about the company and what it does.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand the beat-around-the-bush approach to this.

"Do you know what we do here?" "Did you find anything interesting about our history?" "Have you done any homework on the company and what it does?"

Ask straight questions, get straight answers. Ask round-about questions, expect round-about answers. In the second case, it's a lot of words without much being said.</comment></comment>


The Anatomy of Health Care in the United States (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1769890

<comment><AUTHOR> PDF for those who can't access the journal: [http://www.commed.vcu.edu/IntroPH/Introduction/2014/Thersoca...](http://www.commed.vcu.edu/IntroPH/Introduction/2014/Thersocalledsysterm.pdf)</comment>


European Court Allows Copyright Owners to Demand Open Wifi Networks be Secured - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/european-allows-copyright-owners-demand-open-wifi-networks-be-password-protected <comment><USER2> France has passed a law making an open wifi owner responsible of "negligent security", a legal offense. I am not aware of a single ruling about open access wifi.

I used to groan and add a password to my open wifi but then I saw one of the MP who actually voted the law who marveled, during a trip in S.Korea that he could connect without hassle to open wifis. "In France we always have to register, what a pain! Why do we make things complicated for ourselves?"

Reading that, I decided that open wifi respected the spirit of the law, and that stupid guy (Thierry Mariani, for those interested) could probably quoted before a tribunal to argue exactly that.

</comment><comment><USER3> So Germany bans WhatsApp from collecting data on its users(whether you agree with this or not, at least WhatsApp provides a service with some utility). Yet, not less than a week later, demands that WiFi operators collect data on its users for the RIAA/MPAA.

Don't let the name copyright owners fool you into thinking that this is about actual content creators. The case that in question is Sony vs. Some German Open WiFi operator. Bravo EU! Middle men with sophisticated lobbying experience can get access to user data, but actual content and platform creators can't.

It's clear to me that the EU doesn't truly care about user privacy. They just have an irrational bug up their ass when it comes to American tech companies.

<comment><USER4> > It's clear to me that the EU doesn't truly care about user privacy. They > just have an irrational bug up their ass when it comes to American tech > companies.

I don't think it cares about anything. It's just a huge bureaucracy machine. So huge, that even if all participating agents would be rational (which we are so far away from), just a simple communication lag between people (all organizations in different countries, governments and subdivisions) would make it hard to reach any rational consensus.

<comment><USER5> It definitely cares about the propagation of the EU and its associated gravy train.

I learned yesterday that the EU has a wine cellar with more than 40,000 bottles of wine in it. Why?!

<comment><USER6> What a silly thing to be outraged about, why wouldn't it? It's got to entertain 10,000s of visitors per year, 40,000 sounds a reasonable number.

Here's a list of the UK parliament's wine cellar, which has thousands of bottles of wine:

[https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/foi/foi-and- eir/c...](https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/foi/foi-and-eir/commons- foi-disclosures/catering-services-retail/content-of-house-of-commons-wine- cellar/)

Are you similarly outraged that the UK own 1128 bottles of coke?

<comment><USER5> By that logic almost every organisation should have a private wine cellar. Normally when entertaining you buy wine from suppliers on demand, not build up an enormous stash yourself.

But it's not the fact that they have drinks on site that surprised me. It's the vast quantity. The entire stock of _all_ drinks including non-alcoholic drinks you point to is worth only about £30,000 vs the EU which has over 40,000 bottles of wine alone. I'd guess the value of the EU drinks cabinet is thus at least 10x great, probably more like 50x-100x greater. It's reflective of a wider problem with incredibly profligate spending on luxuries for EU staff at a time when most European governments are trying to cut their spending to manageable levels.

<comment><USER7> It is cheaper to operate your own stockpile than to purchase on demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Copyright trolling has history in Germany, where lawyers have leveraged the > 'formal system of notice' for cease and desist letters (abmahnungen) into a > shakedown system against millions for alleged copyright infringement online.

Is this true... millions? With only 80 million people in Germany, it seems like if copyright trolls were shaking down millions of people, it would more or less involve every single organization and household in the entire country.

<comment><USER9> I have no problem believing it's millions. I know many people who got one, some deserved, some not. Last year my mom got one. She died in 2012.

It's also worth noting that these letters cost about 1000 Euros each, there is almost nothing you can do about them, and they require not the slightest bit of evidence that you actually did anything wrong.

<comment><USER8> Yikes, what a scam. Can you point me to any info in the history of this and what the German government is or is not doing about it?

<comment><USER10> Here [1] is a fairly exhaustive examination of this scam...mind boggling..here is a sample

"In cases involving peer-to-peer sharing of music files, the value of the claim was regularly set at €10,000 per file by the rights-holders...Recipients of Abmahnungen often pay the costs without consulting a lawyer, or negotiate a settlement themselves. There is a noticeable tendency to pay rather than challenge the claim..."

and

"the evidence collected about the infringement will only identify the IP...This IP address needs to be matched against the subscriber to whom it was allocated at the time of the infringement...by way of a judicial disclosure order...[in which] German courts are rather reluctant to engage in an assessment...[for instance] within 9 months in 2009, 2824 disclosure orders were sought in Cologne alone, each relating to several hundreds of IP addresses."

[1]-The RedTube copyright infringement affair in Germany: shame on who? ([http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600869.2015.10...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600869.2015.1012777))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It reminds me of this:

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirel...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html)

I wonder if his wifi is still open.

</comment><comment><USER12> just name the wifi network "password-is-foobar" or something like that.

<comment><USER13> EFF's editorialized headline is not meant to be interpreted literally. Quoting directly from the verdict

> password-protecting the internet connection, provided that those users are > required to reveal their identity in order to obtain the required password > and may not therefore act anonymously

The whole question by the way was not settled by the court but referred back to lower instances and is not something that will have to be answered uniformly across the EU. The court merely found that such a law would be allowed under EU rules.

<comment><USER14> May there be a loop-hole there?

If the requirement is just to have the user reveal their personal identity before using the network, and nothing is said about keeping that info afterwards, then something like this would be possible: ask the user for their personal info, handle them a hash that would work as a password to reconnect to the network within a short time window, and past this time forget said hash and the user info.

Could this work? (IANAL.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> hmmm what happens if a EU citizens decides to use a null password?

<comment><USER16> Or any common password shared by "open" networks. If enough APs intentionally adopt the same password then they are effectively open, just with the ritual step of having to enter a password.

<comment><USER17> It's not very relevant to the current discussion, but there _is_ a security advantage to requiring a public password vs totally open. For instance, a store could post a sign reading "Welcome to N Guy's Burgers; our WiFi password is 'N'".

You see, if the WiFi network is truly open, then client-to-access point traffic is open and can be sniffed by other clients on the network. But if the network is secured, even trivially as above, then each client's connection to the access point is individually encrypted and cannot be sniffed.

That means, if you needed any password to join the network, you needn't fear the questionable critter with the MBP in the corner (unless he's hacked the store's ISP or upstream from there).

<comment><USER18> Not true, unfortunately. The session key can be obtained as long as the attacker can capture the initial handshake (and they can send deauth packets to force the client and AP to handshake again). Wireshark does this decryption out of the box, just insert the Wifi password: [https://wiki.wireshark.org/HowToDecrypt802.11](https://wiki.wireshark.org/HowToDecrypt802.11)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Modern routers should be powerful enough to create an open network and route all it's traffic trough Tor, maybe with a bit of DNS caching plus hostfile adblocking in the middle.

<comment><USER20> That is basically freifunk. It is a openwrt router firmware with open wifi and all traffic is routed through VPN outside of Germany to circumvent the legal bullshit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I still don't get it why they did this. So some of the obvious problems: passwords are saved so I can use the wifi anytime, I can tell the password to others, even if they keep track of users with 30 concurrent customers it doesn't matter if they ask for names.

IMO this is wrong at so many levels.

<comment><USER22> That's something that has been discussed again and again in German politics, but no government clearly wanted to say "Free Internet is worthwhile enough to allow protecting it from 'illegal' activity, even if it can't offer the the log data a traditional ISP can".

So now we have a bunch of rules that only apply if you _something_ to stop it, but it doesn't really matter if that is actually effective, and how much that _something_ hurdle is depends on what court or politician you ask. Maximum uncertainty for small operators, so it's mostly a few larger commercial operators and some enthusiasts with VPNs. And a lot of places without wifi that would have it in other countries.

<comment><USER23> And it's only an issue with the CDU on federal level prohibiting any move towards it, often with contradictory arguments why.

Evil tongues claim that they just want to protect T-Mobile's business, being corrupt.

Luckily, on state level that's not yet an issue, the parliament of Schleswig- Holstein just approved a test project of running some Freifunk nodes on/in public buildings, and a local company has started putting up free hotspots everywhere in Kiel.

<comment><USER22> Eh, I somehow feel like the federal SPD is just so positive on the topic right now because they know the CDU will work against them anyways.

I hope pressure and organization from state or city level will help somewhat. Public organisations can provide similar shields as the commercial providers do right now, and once somebody makes a state look stupid the federal level will have more of an incentive to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Every day its looking more and more like Brexit leave was a good decision.

</comment><comment><USER25> Fuck EU. Fuck laws and governments. I'm removing my wifi pass now.

</comment><comment><USER26> The disintegration of the European Union needs to accelerate. The non- democratic powerful elite junta known as the EU is increasingly passing policy goals which ultimately serve only the elite minority. Our rights our being eroded, chipped away a little bit at a time like sand being carried away by flowing water. We must resist these policies and rebuild a stronger foundation for our civil liberties, including a truly free Internet. We need to return to stronger local governance and a more decentralised power structure. What we are seeing today is a consolidation of power and the emergence of a singular totalitarian state. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_deficit_in_the_Euro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_deficit_in_the_European_Union)

Disagree with EU policies? Shut up and tolerate it. [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/l...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/libe/dv/11_revframework_statute_/11_revframework_statute_en.pdf)

Arbitrary circuit breakers added to circumvent dissenting opinions. Article 7 TEU. "Far-reaching sanctions" can be exerted, and a country can be stripped of all voting rights in the EU and have funding blocked. In January this year, Frans Timmermans, the first ever unelected Commission "vice president," who is in charge of "human rights," triggered the mechanism for the first time against Poland's government which came to power in a record-breaking, landslide election in 2015. [http://ec.europa.eu/justice/effective- justice/rule-of-law/in...](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/effective-justice/rule- of-law/index_en.htm)

"If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." ― George Washington. Or more recently, led straight into the gas chambers for a nice "hot shower."

We must ask ourselves what is the end game here? Dissenting opinions are now often twisted into being labeled as "hate speech" and "racism." Europe has already experienced the suppression of free thought and expression with the fall of the Roman Empire. What followed was a chilling effect which lasted 1000 years. Do we want to go down this road again?

<comment><USER27> There are a lot of strong claims in your comment. Could you please back them up with evidence?

Like, I don't know, the ruling against Apple and the IE government. Was that in favour of the ruling elite minority?

The EU has a lot of problems to fix within itself, but it has a decent track of evidence against your claims (user privacy, antitrust, etc).

And you completely lost it when you start mentioning the gas chambers. Dude, I don't know, but you're going too far.

<comment><USER26> Good points. My goal is to provoke the readers and their friends to start asking questions and not to provide conclusive evidence or solutions to these problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> We know the color of the bits, and it is brown...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dear mods, how does story auto-resubmission work?

<comment><AUTHOR> For those downvoting, I submitted this 4 days ago, yet was automatically resubmitted after such a long time.

Don't downvote if you don't understand the context of a comment.

<comment><USER29> You provided 0 context in your original comment, and then complain about down voted from people without said context?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Passport-protected open network"...heh, that reminds of the "anonymous functions" in PHP (the ones documented with the sentence "Creates an anonymous function from the parameters passed, and returns a unique name for it") :D

</comment><comment><USER31> Open wifi networks feel to insecure, I'm sure intelligence agencies have all their fingers on it, or at least the companies leasing those service must make a good feast of snooping on their users.

Seeing terms of agreement for a wifi network is a bad enough sign.

<comment><USER32> intelligence agencies have their fingers all over landing stations and internet exchange points (IXPs)

frankly, they don't need an "open" wifi network to get whatever data they might be interested in.</comment></comment>


Theo Jansen's wind-powered sculptures - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj-NqWDH2qE

<comment><USER2> MIT Professor Erik Demaine talks about the math behind these sculptures in this video: [http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.849/fall12/lectures/C19.html](http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.849/fall12/lectures/C19.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're in Paris, you can see some of his sculptures being showcased (with live performances every half hour where a demonstrator shows how they work) at la Cité des Sciences until January 4: [http://www.cite-sciences.fr/fr/au- programme/expos-temporaire...](http://www.cite-sciences.fr/fr/au- programme/expos-temporaires/art-robotique/lexposition/)

Saw it in April, and the whole exhibition was pretty cool. It's about art and robots. My favorite thing was the 3D water matrix by Christian Partos and Shiro Takatani: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPvBV7VMqiY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPvBV7VMqiY) \- I spent maybe an hour watching it.

</comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me a bit of Calder's mobiles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Calder#mediaviewer/Fi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Calder#mediaviewer/File:Wfm_calder.jpg)

Although Jansen has taken it to the next level.

<comment><USER5> Having seen video interviews with Calder, and attended public lectures by Jansen, they definitely share a childlike sense of wonder in their reasoning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can actually support his work by ordering mini version of Theo Jansens work at Shapeways:

[http://www.shapeways.com/shops/theojansen](http://www.shapeways.com/shops/theojansen)

</comment><comment><USER7> The BBC video also has interview with the creator - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSKyHmjyrkA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSKyHmjyrkA)

EDIT - Also shows creatures with propellers, wings ..

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's a nice animation showing the mechanics of (one of) the linkages [http://tube.geogebra.org/student/m35150?at=c](http://tube.geogebra.org/student/m35150?at=c)

</comment><comment><USER9> The DVD sold on his website is absolutely fantastic. You can also buy small DIY wind-propelled tabletop creatures. I bought all of them :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Goes well with [http://www.reubenmargolin.com/](http://www.reubenmargolin.com/)</comment>


Let's Scrape the Web with Python 3 - <AUTHOR> http://codecr.am/blog/post/7/

<comment><USER2> This is a very poor approach to scraping. SAX parsers aren't good for much of anything, and they are especially bad for scraping HTML. You'll get lots of errors while parsing relatively normal pages, and your logic will become very challenging to follow. There's no good reason not to use a proper parser that parses into a document, like lxml or BeautifulSoup. lxml is also very fast, so there's not even a performance argument for SAX.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to love scraping with the Python, BeautifulSoup, Mechanize family and wrote a lot of scripts like the one in this post. I've been using CasperJS[1] though and I don't think I'll go back.

[1] - <http://casperjs.org/></comment>


Study Finds U.S. Invasion of Iraq killed about 460,000 People - <AUTHOR> http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001533 <comment><USER2> Of course I knew that the original article title (which is not the same as the submission title here) had to refer to both the actual invasion (a rather brief military operation) and the badly mismanaged occupation of Iraq. I think it's a fair point to blame most of the deaths in Iraq caused by violence during the occupation on the occupation having occurred as it did. But that causation is less direct than battle deaths of civilians during the invasion. I by no means have anything good to say about how the occupation was planned and carried out--it badly hurt Iraq, and reflected very poorly on the United States compared to the postwar occupations of German or Japan. But on the other hand, for all I know if Saddam Hussein had died peacefully of natural causes in the same time frame, perhaps the country would have been every bit as internally violent.</comment>


Y Combinator Demo Day Brings The Future To Computer History Museum - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/03/y-combinator-demo-day-3/

<comment><USER2> That picture, incidentally, shows what our Mountain View office first looked like. The room seems so preposterously small. Yet it seemed like a big room in 2006.

</comment><comment><USER3> At this point it's almost like a proprietary investor-only version of TechCrunch Disrupt. All they need now is public YC Office Hours, a couple panel discussions, and a live stream. Charge $3000/per investor and the "conference" would cover a lot of YC's costs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey PG - I always tell other people interested in accelerators that I like Demo Day being split into three pitches because you get a chance to mingle with everybody, whereas mingling with 450 people at one event is much harder. How do you see the change from three 175-person crowds to one larger one impacting the results of Demo Day?

<comment><USER2> There should be more mingling this time, because we're expanding to a full day. Half the day is breaks between presentations.

<comment><USER4> Ah, very cool.</comment></comment></comment>