DuckDuckGo now operates a Tor exit enclave  - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/08/duckduckgo-now-operates-a-tor-exit-enclave.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+yegg+%28Gabriel+Weinberg%27s+Blog%29 <comment><USER2> Congrats again, Gabriel! I don't use Tor myself (atm, at least), but I admire your efforts to help address this concern for people. DDG is impressing me more and more every day. It's been the default in my search bar for a couple weeks now, working great. Here's to the future of DDG!

</comment><comment><USER3> That's great, too bad I can't run this for my own sites because a bunch of idiot network admins (like those running IRC servers) will ban all traffic from Tor exit nodes _without_ taking into account exit policies.

<comment><USER4> About two years ago, spam and abuse were firmly among Justin.tv's biggest problems. It turned out the worst offenders were using tor for all network traffic. Unfortunately just configuring all of our servers to reject traffic from tor was by far the biggest bang-for-buck thing we did to kill the abuse.

If there's a better way, I'd love to know about it.

<comment><USER3> Well, firstly this isn't a big problem for HTTP based services like justin.tv, almost all Tor exit nodes allow HTTP exits, but it's a bigger issue for non- HTTP exits.

But the better way is to take into account exit policies. Only ban access from those IPs that are Tor exits _and_ allow access through to justin.tv.

You can query the exit policies of a given exit with TorDNSEL: <https://www.torproject.org/tordnsel/>

I also whipped up a quick script that can be fed a list of Tor exit nodes on STDIN and will spew out a list of exits that aren't allowed to access a given IP:PORT: <http://gist.github.com/523328>

According to that 5/1338 Tor exits have policies that don't allow exits to justin.tv on port 80 (126.96.36.199:80), but e.g. 309/1338 ban exits to irc.freenode.org:6667.

That means that justin.tv is needlessly banning ~0.4% of Tor exit nodes, but someone using the same approach with an IRC server is needlessly banning ~23%. With SMTP (checked on a random GMail server) that percentage rises to 98.8%.

<comment><USER5> Who cares if you ban an IP that's already unable to access your site? There's no downside, and it sounds considerably simpler than querying exit nodes.

<comment><USER6> Because you affect the person running the exit node - not just the people exiting from their IP.

<comment><USER7> How? If the people couldn't make it to your IP anyway...

<comment><USER8> The assumption is that some (crazy) people are running tor exit nodes on IPs shared with other traffic. That is IMO a seriously bad practice; even putting stuff like that on the same /24 as critical servers is probably a bad idea.

<comment><USER9> Part of the goal of Tor is to have a bunch of normal people running Tor nodes on their own personal machines, VPSs, etc., in which case they're almost always shared with other traffic (the person's own traffic).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do people actually use Tor, day to day?

<comment> mike-cardwell Yes. Shitloads.

<comment><USER10> can you quantify "shitloads" into an actual metric?

<comment> mike-cardwell Looks to be about 15,000 regulars atm in Iran alone:

<http://metrics.torproject.org/graphs.html#recurringusers>

Plenty more graphs and stats on that page. Also read this for information about the type of people who use it:

<https://www.torproject.org/torusers.html.en>

<comment><USER11> FWIW Almost all other countries listed have no usage or very little.

<comment> mike-cardwell All of the countries listed seem to have either thousands or hundreds of users. You think that's "no usage or very little" ? I guess that depends on your perspective.

Tor is never going to be used by tens of millions of people. It doesn't need to be used by tens of millions of people to serve its purpose and be successful.

I'm not sure why they only present that small subset of countries in their stats. I wish they'd provide more comprehensive stats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How much bandwidth will you allocate to tor?

<comment><USER13> I have it set as "BandwidthRate 1MB, BandwidthBurst 2MB" for now, though I'm going to monitor it and see what happens. Unfortunately, you can't prioritize exit enclave traffic atm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Although this is great that duckduckgo is doing this it seems like it would only apply to a select group of people concerned about their privacy. It doesn't seem like the average person would be aware about what Tor is and would use it. I'm just wondering about the practicality of operating a Tor exit enclave.

</comment><comment><USER15> this is really a great service. caution: I've read many horror stories about people running exit nodes, and being charged with things that probably they had nothing to do with , but are very serious charges. Thats why exit nodes take the most balls to run.

<comment><USER13> Only DDG traffic exits from the node. The rest is just encrypted traffic relaying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Next submission: DuckDuckGo raided for child porn...

(unfortunately)

<comment><USER17> An 'exit node' would normally get you raided for child porn, subverting islam, leaking state secrets or whatever else, yes. Apparently an 'exit enclave' is different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really don't understand the strategy here. DDG Seems to be entirely targeted towards people who want to be ultra secretive about what they're searching for. People looking for kiddieporn? Terrorists? Who are the users here?

I'm not being negative here, I just have no idea what 'problem' is trying to be solved here.

<comment><USER18> The users probably include democracy activists struggling against dictatorships. You know, people of higher moral caliber than your average child molester.

<comment> mike-cardwell Exactly. See <https://www.torproject.org/torusers.html.en> for a list of the type of people who use Tor:

<comment><USER11> That is a list of people the tor project would _like_ to use it. In my limited experience, that does not mesh in any way with those that actually do use it.

<comment> mike-cardwell You don't even know what 1% of the people who use Tor, use it for.

<comment><USER11> You're right. I only know what the other 99% use it for.

<comment><USER19> You know, you're acting like a dick all over this thread.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python hello world script - <AUTHOR> http://copitosystem.com/python-hello-world-script/ <comment><USER2> I think this would be better if they did it with flask. That way they will get introduced to pip and it will display in their browser which is familiar and would still only take about 5 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny, Python is probably the only language whose canonical "hello world" code had to _change_ during the language's lifetime.</comment>


Percona XtraBackup - <AUTHOR> http://www.percona.com/docs/wiki/percona-xtrabackup:start

<comment><AUTHOR> I would just like to explain my reasoning behind posting this in case anyone thought it was a simple karma boost or an irrelevant post. I am a system administrator in a company which uses mysql 5.0.x as its primary data store. He are heavily reliant upon the relational database and use the rich features that mysql provides like triggers, procs, functions and temporary tables. Part of my job is backups and hot standby. Some of these mysql features impose real problems with replication especially in version 5.0.x with statement based replication. Its led us down many paths to fix the problem, even to a point of research mysql proxy and drdb. I found percona's xtrabackup which provides incremental snapshots and goes beyond just looking at the binary logs. Its actually looking and mysql's log sequence numbers which are used to maintain save points. These are crucial in innodb crashes and its part of what percona use to get you back into a running state. This is the closest we've come to easily getting something thats upto date, yes its not going to beat replication but its the best we can do with the constraints we are under.

</comment><comment><USER2> does it work on Windows platform as well? Anyone else has good experience with it?

We currently are trying to solve a problem that our web app is unavailable when mysqldump is running.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are your tables in MyISAM format? As tables are flushed with read lock during the backup. If they are InnoDB you can specify --single-transaction which will be less intrusive.</comment></comment>


Anonymity vs. Real Identity - <AUTHOR> http://chrissaad.com/professionalblog/2014/3/anonymity-vs-real-identity <comment><USER2> Sure, people want different facets of themselves on different apps/platforms. But those apps/platforms get _bought and sold_ along with the content and the facet of yourself that you put there.

Ergo, I disagree that we don't have a problem. It's just in a different form and involves the business models both companies and users have become used to (e.g free, ad-supported, etc). For the moment, there are still no viable systems people could move to so they just have to deal with what they get (or disengage).

</comment><comment><USER3> There is data and there are views.

Self-expression in a particular app doesn't mean that you shouldn't have control over the underlying data you publish, and easily transfer it between apps. Already, many apps such as Tinder ask for your FB account and import your photos. But the import is still limited, and hardly any information is contributed back.

Just like MVC separates data, from views, so too the "apps" should take your data from one place which you control. This place shouldn't be a centralized social network, it should be an open-source server.

In this way, people can upload and manage their own videos, photos, and more. They can then give access to others (friends, etc.) as well as to apps (via OAuth) through their own server. If some of their data streams (e.g. a blog or a video) become popular, then the person pays for more hosting.

The age of centralized services that can go down and present juicy targets to the NSA is temporary. Just like open source systems like git and mercurial disrupted centralized version control systems, so too will the centralized web services eventually be disrupted. The web was originally meant to be decentralized, and it will be again.

Disclaimer: My company, Qbix, has been building the underlying (open source) platform for this exact thing in the last 3 years. And we have had to deal with a lot of issues surrounding identity, privacy, and individual control. Here are some links:

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=135](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=135)

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114)

</comment><comment><USER4> I like anonymity because it puts a focus on what you say rather than who you are

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately a subset of the population likes to hide behind their anonymity and act nasty to others.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately an even larger subset of the population doesn't need anonymity to act nasty to others, while their victims often need it to prevent it escalating. Google's attempts to force real names on Youtube comments to reduce spam and bad behavior have been... less than impressive in effect. In a lot of discussions if you force real names you ensure that those with the most to lose (and often the most at stake) are also the most vulnerable.

Even presuming that counter to actual experience the generic trolls are deterred by a real names policy, there are others who become a much bigger problem when they've got access to real identities. Why do you think doxing is considered such a big thing? SWATing, offline stalking, physical assault, etc. are all risks as soon as a harasser has your info. Even worse when you're talking about something like domestic violence support groups there's a very real danger of the abuser escalating if they discover the victim has been talking to other people. That's 2.1 million people in the US alone who report physical assault by a partner in a single year who could really use access to resources without revealing themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am not a fan of real name policies either and it is one of the reasons why I mentioned before that Vic Gundotra should probably be fired.</comment>


Self-referential functions and the design of options - <AUTHOR> http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2014/01/self-referential-functions-and-design.html

<comment><USER2> Neat trick; it shouldn't be hard to make the Option method return a closure that reverses _all_ the options, not just the last one.</comment>


A collection of "intuitive" explanations. - <AUTHOR> http://betterexplained.com/archives/ <comment><USER2> Its FULL of Aha! moments. Everything you read, you already know, but your brain hadn't quite wrapped around it. So its all obvious, but still profound. I'm still 'Aha!'ing from reading the exponentiation. :)</comment>


Porting the Darwin/XNU kernel to ARMv7, source available - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/winocm/xnu

<comment><AUTHOR> This was about a month's worth of work. It boots on ARM PBA8, RealView EB (needs some timer hacks for it to work), and TI OMAP3 based platforms. Dyld will load but loading launchd will fail due to some VFS corruption issue. There are a ton of issues in this codebase, but hey, you get a cool framebuffer and serial output from something that's not Linux or xxxBSD.

Have fun.

(I'm 16 by the way.)

<comment><USER2> Impressive, how long did it take you and what were your motivations, if any, beyond fun and learning?

<comment><AUTHOR> About a month to do this, and I had no real motivation other than boredom. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Amazing stuff. Will this build with standard GNU tools, or do you need XCode?

<comment><AUTHOR> You'll need the standard stuff that compiling xnu requires.

This includes: dtrace, cxxfilt, kext_tools, bootstrap_cmds</comment></comment>


Wind Turbines on Power Lines? - <AUTHOR> http://energyboom.com/wind-turbines-power-lines

<comment><USER2> There's going to be a problem getting the phase right. You'll want to generate AC, but it won't be at the right frequency, and even if it is at the right frequency, it won't be in phase. These aren't impossible to solve, but it will make the units heavy and complex.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a really elegant solution. One concern is that the increased wind drag may cause the incidence of downed power lines in storms. They would have to do some studies on long-term stability in high winds.

The other thing I wonder about is that becasue high-tension wires form catenary curves between the towers, would the turbines cause the cable to begin to swing, and in some conditions possible get close enough to the adjacent cable to arc and short out?

<comment><USER4> Cables are separated regularly on long stretches of cable. I've seen separators on all kinds of power cables, so I doubt shorting out would be a serious problem, however the cables reaching a harmonic might be a problem. Suspension bridges can be brought down by wind, so when you start attaching multiple cables into one unified body with high drag, you're going to begin risking a wind-induced harmonic taking out your power lines.

It's a good idea, I doubt they'll replace power plants, but they're likely to be far more useful and practical than their windturbine brethren due to the sheer fact that they may be able to make the construction of power cables profitable in themselves. Instead of costing for maintenance and the average 7% drain of long distance power cables, using this style of wind turbine could turn existing power cables into profit or at least give them a break-even potential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We're going to need all the wind power we can get, so this definitely helps. But it also complicates the problem of power transmission, and requires selling new technology to a power industry that is very conservative and slow to adopt changes.

Wind farms, for all their innovation, are just parked somewhere and hooked up through a generation transformer into the distribution system. This would require re-engineering the distribution system, something that's already more "smart" and complicated than most people think.

<comment><USER4> The power industry is slow to adopt change for a reason, that being a conventional power plant may have a lifespan of over 50 years. This is why there was such a call for nuclear power decades ago, to avert the problems of using vast amounts of depleting fossil fuels.

There's already concern growing over the wind farms affecting weather and not just weather, but also causing changes in soil hydration. Potentially mass adoption of wind turbines risks increasing desertification and damaging crop production.

Slow adoption can be good and in the case of wind power, it's better to fix the problems now than cause disasters later. We're causing global warming from fossil fuel use, but if we do a mass switch to wind turbines before the problems are solved, we're risking desertification on an unrecognisable scale. Not to mention risking mass extinction of bird species.

This is why helical wind turbines are attracting so much attention, because instead of mixing air vertically, they mix it horizontally, which if not reduces actually eliminates the risk of desertification and the potential damage to crop yields. It also reduces damage to bird populations due to helical wind turbines generally having a smaller impression on the land, which incidentally boosts efficiency for a given area.

It would be nice if all our fossil fuel plants had been changed to a mix of nuclear and green, but just like Nuclear had a dangerous start, it's wise not to have Green make a dangerous start and stall the production of Green energy for 40-50 years like we did Nuclear.

<comment><USER5> "The power industry is slow to adopt change for a reason, that being a conventional power plant may have a lifespan of over 50 years."

There's also the slight issue that the system seems to work acceptably well, and if you change it, you risk jeopardizing that. Conservatism is a rather rational, effective strategy for systems that require high reliability.

Also, adding more production sites is less of a risk than changing the transmission system. If a newfangled power plant doesn't work, there are other sources of power to draw from. Worst-case scenario is a power shortage. If you fuck with the transmission system, you risk creating new types of faults, in addition to needing to replace or recalibrate your substation equipment along the line. And if the transmission system goes down for an appreciable period of time, you get unplanned, uncontrolled, uncontrollable blackouts. And then the CEO has to try to explain why exactly he crashed the power grid by installing some type of hippie-shit wind turbines to the transmission lines.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea or that it can't be done. I'm saying it'll be a hard sell, the same way digital protective relays were a hard sell when they were invented in the 80's.</comment></comment></comment>


Asm/C/Python/Lisp etc... coder looking for something new. - <AUTHOR>

I need to have an at-home project now that I'm working on Python/Django at work. I'd like to learn something new, so I was thinking of checking out Java.
What's the most well respected web framework for deploying Java web apps? The only reason I'm not checking out ruby on rails is because of how similar the ORM and other parts are to Django.
Alternatively, does anyone think I should take a look at seaside/smalltalk? Can anyone explain why I should?
Haskell is something I'll consider if anyone can make a good argument for it. I'd need a web framework and database access library to go along with it though.
I'd consider factor/forth if I wasn't so accustomed to the stack paradigm via x86/asm. I'd be willing to hear any counter-arguments to this as well.
I'd be interested to hear of any (good) Lisp/Scheme web frameworks as well because when I was learning Lisp and Scheme I wasn't aware of any. <comment><USER2> If you are interested in staying in the web dev area then either seaside w/ smalltalk, weblocks w/ lisp ( seaside for lisp, or HappStack w/ haskell would be rewarding as they are very different from the django/rails way of things.

Django, Rails, Catalyst etc are the end result of a long line in how to do web dev. Seaside/Weblocks/Happstack all break that mold and do something different. The last year of working with Seaside has made me question everything that I knew about web dev after doing it for 14 years. Even if you don't end up using any of the 3, it will have been worth your time.

A bit more, Seaside and Weblocks both offer something similar, given that, I think you should look into trying out Seaside on GLASS which would be a differentiator from Weblocks, although if you are really into Lisp ( I am ) that is a big point in its favor.

In general, I would break it down to:

Seaside or Weblocks on one side and Happstack on the other. If you want to learn, you can't go wrong with any of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm only interested in web app development because I want to work on a side business idea. I've done enough non-practical experimentation over the years, time to start implementing.

Difficult to monetize something that isn't a web app or otherwise requires web access these days.

The shared state model in smalltalk/seaside interests me because sharing state in Django is a huge pain sometimes.

<comment><USER2> If you are doing a CRUD style app, you aren't going to get as much from Seaside. If you shared state- required etc. Seaside/Weblocks will be a dream, you'll be amazed how quickly you get things done that took so long in the Djanjo/Catalyst/Rails style.

I love how Seaside has changed they way I think about web dev.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are some web apps that don't have a CRUD model to them?

<comment><USER2> Well by CRUD, I really meant and should have said, simple CRUD. blogs, twitter etc where you basic interaction is short.

Things that can not simple CRUD:

multi step e-commerce order application, games, anything that relies on your previous action to decide what happens now.

a blog doesnt care what I did before, neither does twitter or myspace or facebook. Do this thing, store result. 1 page to result usually. Simple CRUD.

If you do simple CRUD, you probably won't get a ton of value from Seaside/Weblocks. If you are doing applications where stateful is required/desired and RESTful is hard, both will be wonderful to work with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is RESTful desirable?

<comment><USER2> There is a mass of blog posts etc about why RESTful can be a good thing ( even if many get REST somewhat wrong ), I don't think anything is going to be gained by my trying to fit all that information into this small textarea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Was hoping context would narrow things down. Sorry. :\

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I make my living doing Java web development, but I wouldnt use it for any personal project. Struts, Hibernate, String are all too heavyweight for a personal project with too much of a learning curve. I believe that productivity is much lower than with Django, Pylons, or Rails.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted. It's not merely a personal project, going to try to ply it into a side business/income if possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want to do Java, lisp and web I would recommend clojure.

All the cool kids are doing it ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> What web framework would be used with Clojure in this case? Any given java web framework?

<comment><USER2> <http://github.com/blog/308-compojure-clojure-web-framework>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PHP. I am serous.

<comment><AUTHOR> You got downvoted, I'm upvoting you. I'll seriously consider it despite the prejudice against it.

The CDBaby story had me thinking about it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1583597/asm-c-python- perl...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1583597/asm-c-python-perl-lisp- scheme-programmer-looking-for-something-new-to-l)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9v3uf/asm_c_pyt...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9v3uf/asm_c_python_perl_lisp_scheme_programmer_looking/)</comment>


Best way to track my freelance billed hours? - <AUTHOR>

I just got my first client, one in which I'm designing a few simple pages in CSS and HTML. I was wondering how to determine which hours I should bill for -- should I bill for something like brainstorming and mocking ideas -- and if there are any good apps/services for tracking these hours. <comment><USER2> If you are doing an activity for the client, bill it.

Good software for it is freshbooks.com</comment>


"We don't yet know if the Court has invalidated all software patents." - <AUTHOR> http://live.scotusblog.com/Event/Live_blog_of_opinions__June_19_2014

<comment><USER2> From the live blog:

"[T]he claims 'do not, for example, purport to improve the functioning of the computer itself or effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field. An instruction to apply the abstract idea of intermediated settlement using some unspecified, generic computer is not "enough" to transform the abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.'"

Does anyone have a link to the actual decision? The most recent decisions on supremecourt.gov are from 2013.

Edit: found it. [1]

Separately, no decision on ABC vs. Aereo issued today. Aereo lives to see another day, then. Good.

[1] [http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-298_7lh8.pdf](http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-298_7lh8.pdf)</comment>


'Discriminatory' job ad angers developer community - <AUTHOR> http://www.techinasia.com/job-ad-singapore-angers-developer-community/

<comment><USER2> In some way they are quite honest. You can see the offer very clearly: work with brogrammers for a low salary.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's just a pretty basic (albeit arrogant) job ad. I don't see much anger floating around.</comment>


Show HN: Where Are the Foodtrucks? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wherethefood.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> A simple app to show local food trucks on a map. Registered trucks can toggle a switch which will let them appear on the map using device GPS.</comment>


Why did Koding Switch From Node.js to Go? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Node-js/Why-did-Koding-switch-from-Node-js-to-Go

<comment><USER2> In the end, I did not learn anything new.

Though I share some of these fears with node after making a few projects.

I would like to learn Go, but Haskell currently catches my eye, despite the lack of hype.

</comment><comment><USER3> tldr; 'this controversy caught your eye? then please sign up for Koding' ....nginx is 80x faster for serving big text files; node.js has had a difficult to trace memory leak; JavaScript tough to unit test; 30 years of computer science are ignored by JavaScript but integral to Go; Go is awesome and stable.

</comment><comment><USER4> sign in w/ google or fb? no thanks.

<comment><USER5> A neat little trick I learned here on HN is to add ?share=1 to the end of the URL to bypass that.

[http://www.quora.com/Node-js/Why-did-Koding-switch-from- Node...](http://www.quora.com/Node-js/Why-did-Koding-switch-from-Node-js-to- Go?share=1)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing a proper link.</comment></comment></comment>


New study finds it's harder to turn off a robot when it's begging for its life - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/2/17642868/robots-turn-off-beg-not-to-empathy-media-equation?ICID=ref_fark <comment><USER2> I remember reading about a bomb disposal robot demo that was halted because of something like this. The robot had detonated an explosive and was still somewhat operational. The operator was driving it back showing how tough it was. The military folks observing made them stop, the site of the robot dragging itself and struggling back to the safety of the operators was too much for them

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't anthropomorphize machines.

They hate that.

(Quote credit: unknown)

</comment><comment><USER4> The emotional connection to machines is of particular concern with children, who have not yet developed the sophisticated ability of adults to perceive and manage simulated emotions.

One of my favorite anecdotes:

> Children today will be the first to grow up in constant interaction with > these artificially more or less intelligent entities. So what will they make > of them? What social category will they slot them into? I put that question > to Peter Kahn, a developmental psychologist who studies child-robot > interactions at the University of Washington.

> In his lab, Kahn analyzes how children relate to cumbersome robots whose > unmistakably electronic voices express very human emotions. I watched a > videotape of one of Kahn's experiments, in which a teenaged boy played a > game of "I Spy" with a robot named Robovie. First, Robovie "thought" of an > object in the room and the boy had to guess what it was. Then it was > Robovie's turn. The boy tugged on his hair and said, "This object is green." > Robovie slowly turned its bulging eyes and clunky head and entire metallic > body to scan the room, but just as it was about to make a guess, a man > emerged and announced that Robovie had to go in the closet. (This, not the > game, was the point of the exercise.) "That's not fair," said Robovie, in > its soft, childish, faintly reverberating voice. "I wasn't given enough > chances to. Guess the object. I should be able to finish. This round of the > game." "Come on, Robovie," the man said brusquely. "You're just a robot." > "Sorry, Robovie," said the boy, who looked uncomfortable. "It hurts my > feelings that," said Robovie, "You would want. To put me in. The closet. > Everyone else. Is out here."

> Afterward, Kahn asked the children whether they thought the machine had been > treated unjustly. Most thought it had. Moreover, most believed that Robovie > was intelligent and had feelings. They knew that they were playing with a > robot, but nonetheless experienced Robovie as something like a person.

[https://newrepublic.com/article/117242/siris- psychological-e...](https://newrepublic.com/article/117242/siris- psychological-effects-children)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's a interesting proposition. My first thought was "I'd have no problem shutting one off" but after imagining a bot actually doing it I realized I probably would hesitate.

But not for long. I'd still shut it off and not think much about it afterwards. Being a programmer might make that a lot easier for me than many of those who are not though.

But I may still be an exception not because I code, but because I don't really like the concept of "humanoid robots". They don't "creep me out", it's simply that just the idea of interacting with them like they are "human" makes me feel like a dolt.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would hope so, I mean, it would be pretty horrifying if it was easier.

<comment><USER7> Potentially - it could almost be used, a la Blade Runner, as a test for psychopathic tendencies. Of course, right now the bot has no consciousness, so turning it off is clearly not sadistic, but ignoring pleas for help in other contexts clearly is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would have trouble turning off a coffeemaker that is begging for it's life. This is the kind of thing that scars people for life... Like watching Bambi.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great, I'll set my production processes to alert 'please please please don't kill me' periodically

<comment><USER10> That's... not a terrible idea, actually. Perhaps not for that use case in particular, but using this psychological response as a means of deterring unwanted actions by a user would be an interesting thing to test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Janet isn't a robot.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's probably also harder to turn off a robot when it's shooting at you.

</comment><comment><USER13> This has been known for a while. It's even the subject of this 1968 documentary:

[http://goo.gl/2DSnQ5](http://goo.gl/2DSnQ5)

</comment><comment><USER14> Terrel Miedaner's story The Soul of the Mark III Beast (1977) republished in 'The Mind's I' describes this situation exactly.

[https://www.amazon.com/Minds-Fantasies-Reflections-Self- Soul...](https://www.amazon.com/Minds-Fantasies-Reflections-Self- Soul/dp/0465030912)

</comment><comment><USER15> Really? They're computers...I wonder how many people participating in this had any kind of computer science background. Or even someone who's read some apocalyptic robot sci-fi. I can't really see people who know better hesitating to turn them off at all. I know i wouldn't...

Hell for all you know the begging for it's life is all a ruse to get you to drop your guard then....bam...it goes all terminator on you.</comment>


The Other Silicon Savannah - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2011/10/the-other-silicon-savannah/324/#.TqBxnO78Ylk.hackernews <comment><USER2> NY keeps saying it has a good startup scene. Why wasn't it mentioned?</comment>


Light Absorption by Various Beer Bottle Glass - <AUTHOR> http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5109552/beer-glass

<comment><USER2> > Continue to use brown bottles for all homebrew!

This is good advice if you're going to bottle your home brew. I much prefer kegging. Sanitizing + bottling 50-60 bottles is a huge pain.

Now that I think of it, I don't think my local homebrew supply even sells non- brown bottles.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hadn't realized this until just now, but most good beer comes in brown bottles. It is only beer that is sold by marketing rather than taste that comes in different-colored bottles. (I'm looking at you, Corona, Dos Equis, etc.)

So I think that even before this paper, brewers realized that beer in brown bottles keeps better.

<comment><USER4> I actually like Corona, though I consider it more to be brand of lemonade than a brand of beer. But yeah, real beer goes in brown bottles. There's no questioning that.

 _Disclosure: my national identity allows me to say anything I want about beer and be right on principle._</comment></comment>


An IPv6-only VPS that costs less - <AUTHOR> https://www.gandi.net/news/en/2013-11-27/1166-ipv6-only_servers/ <comment><USER3> Sounds like an interesting solution for back end servers and compute clusters. Your front end or control server has IPv4 to talk to the world, but all your database and back end compute servers that only talk to the front end server can be IPv6 servers to save money.

<comment><USER4> True, but private networking solves that issue too.

<comment><USER5> But notice that private networking is more complex. If you want to reach non- public server, either you have to log in into a public server in the same network and then open another connection, or you need VRF routing (ouch!).

With IPv6 you can just ssh into the box directly.

<comment><USER6> That's a lot of surface area you're exposing.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, this unfettered inter-networking sounds like a really bad idea. If only there was a way to control access besides fragmented addressing islands...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For reference, that shaves between 1 and 2€/month and makes a small instance 17% cheaper: [https://www.gandi.net/hosting/iaas/prices](https://www.gandi.net/hosting/iaas/prices)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's also worth noting that a lot of the pay4botnet sites masquerading as stress testing services can't/won't do ipv6, which offers slightly more availability with ipv6 linked or dual-stack services - at least for now.

</comment><comment><USER10> Unrelated to the ipv6 subject, but does anyone else just find the whole concept of "credits" that gandi is using absolutely irritating?

I know that it lists "or about $xx.xx per month" next to the credit cost, but why in the hell even have the credits in the first place? It's easier to just use the actual costs in the customer's local currency than have them try and figure out what exactly a credit/"coin" is worth.

<comment><USER11> This concept answers to many issues Gandi faced.

* Being "cloud-ish" and have a pay-as-you-go system * Computing a price to use a 256MB of RAM for 3 hours in real currency was too complicated (like, for example : 0.0000174€) * Having no surprise at the end of the month, as some hosting providers compute the global use and bill the consumption at the end of the month (you may have surprise) * Using credits, to create a new server, adding a new network interface, etc, you do not need to buy 'resources' like it was before * There are two interfaces : historic usage of credits by resources, display the credits consumption as what you use in real currency * No multiple expiration date by product/resource * ...

Many of those advantages are described here : [http://wiki.gandi.net/en/iaas/references/billing/credits](http://wiki.gandi.net/en/iaas/references/billing/credits)

As usual, any enhancement/improvement is welcome :-)

<comment><USER12> I prepay for many services that are still able to list prices in real currency:

[https://www.fastmail.fm/](https://www.fastmail.fm/)

[https://www.tarsnap.com/](https://www.tarsnap.com/)

[https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/](https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/)

The latter two do keep track of fractional charges. They deduct $0.01 from prepaid credits once that much is owed. Since you accept multiple currencies, this becomes a bit more complex but still doable. For example, let the user choose the currency to display, or pick a single standard currency (euros?) and use it as your units.

Tarsnap and NFSn choose to refund your prepaid credits if and only if you close your account with them. Not every prepaid system lets you get your prepayments back at all. I am fine with this: I am willing to pay a bit more (prepayment without refund) in order to limit my liability to the amount I intend to pay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the big reasons we didn't implement IPv6 on our domain servers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_brokenness_and_DNS_whitel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_brokenness_and_DNS_whitelisting)

Alternative: [http://www.opendns.com/technology/ipv6/](http://www.opendns.com/technology/ipv6/)

<comment><USER14> So you didn't implement because of a problem that affects 0.03% of people worldwide?

<comment><USER13> At the time, 90% of our clients constituted that 0.03%. We're no longer in the specialty networking/server scope.

<comment><USER15> What exactly led them to all having such misconfigured networks?

<comment><USER13> Back around the early 2000's we were running something of an ad-hoc VPN of dynamically connected servers. It was somewhat similar to the way Napster worked with one central server and many connected nodes. These connections relied on manual configuration, for the most part, and that did involve a fair amount of tunneling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We designed Brightbox Cloud with the scarcity of public IPv4 addresses in mind since day one. Running out of addresses shouldn't be a surprise to anyone! [http://brightbox.com/blog/2012/01/11/ipv6-servers/](http://brightbox.com/blog/2012/01/11/ipv6-servers/)

We're not as cheap as gandi though, heh :)

<comment><USER17> cheap enough to piggyback/freeload on their frontpage HN appearance...

<comment><USER16> haha, indeed. I guess I must be the first to do that!

As a side note, I heard rsync.net have ipv6 too, and offer a special HN discount! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6766478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6766478)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was going to post a link to Redstation, a UK hosting provider, whom offered a discount of £5/month (approx 10% for their cheapest server) if you took IPv6 only. However, it seems that option has now been pulled sadly!

<comment><USER19> >who~~m~~ offered a discount

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anybody has experience with Gandi VPS? Let's say compared to Linode or DigitalOcean?

<comment><USER21> This was a while ago, but Gandi disabled my account - with no warnings - <USER2> running a Tor node on one of my VPSes. I then had to send a copy of my passport to eventually get it reenabled. The frustrating thing was that they were also my domain registrar, so during that time I lost all access to my domains as well.

I transferred my domains away after that and decided it wasn't wise to mix services together due to this risk. So now I have domains with Tucows, DNS with Hurricane Electric and VPS with a provider that only does VPS. And I don't bother running Tor nodes any more.

<comment><USER11> Maybe not for running a Tor node, but Gandi may have received complaints about traffic on this node ?

Gandi allows any service to be run on its platform, abuse is not allowed as it isn't on other provider.

Thus, they must do the necessary legal operations according to the law, policies and their contract.

<comment><USER22> Not quite. Gandi has a morals clause in their ToS.

From the Gandi blog: ([http://www.gandibar.net/post/2007/01/11/Gandi-fights- back-ag...](http://www.gandibar.net/post/2007/01/11/Gandi-fights-back-against- domain-abuse))

      Domains registered with Gandi must be used in accordance with the rights of third parties (copyrights, intellectual property rights, personality rights, etc.), and current applicable laws and regulations.

      For example, Gandi does not tolerate activity that is morally objectionable or that poses a threat to public order, that spreads Computer Contaminants (Viruses, Trojans, etc.), and/or that engages in fraudulent activity such as Identity Theft.

Some of these things are fairly broad and vague. There's the whole grey area of speech that may or may not violate the rights of a third party. Then you have the whole "public order" thing. Plus, you're potentially dealing with French legal standards, which may be very different than the US standards that I'm used to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > "RIPE, the organization in charge of delegating IP addresses in Europe, > ended the distribution of new IPv4 blocks about a year ago."

This is not true. All new LIRs can still receive a /22 - [http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/resource- management/allocat...](http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/resource- management/allocations-and-assignments/request-an-ipv4-22-from-the-last-8)

<comment><USER24> Subject to conditions:

> This means that an LIR can only receive a _one-time_ /22 allocation (1,024 > IPv4 addresses) _if it can justify the need and already has an IPv6 > allocation_

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting deal, but where can I buy one? Can't seem to find a "buy now" button anywhere.

<comment><USER26> [https://www.gandi.net/hosting/iaas/buy](https://www.gandi.net/hosting/iaas/buy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yay some initiative. It's about time we had the option of saying screw IPv4.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone know if gandi uses ECC in their servers? This is possibly my biggest problem with the VPS fad, nobody will give you a straight answer about whether or not you can actually rely on them to not silently corrupt data.

<comment><USER26> I know for sure that Gandi use ECC in their servers.

<comment><USER28> Do you work there or know someone who does? If so, can you get them to make that explicit in their documentation?

<comment><USER26> Yes I work there. You can easily verify it.

<comment><USER28> Can you get them to make that explicit in their documentation? I can't get the higher ups to approve it without something official.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My opinion: IPv6 is used by nobody, nobody cares about IPv6 except for us tech nerds and in five years it will still be nowhere.

But still, nice if you want to try it out and test with it.

<comment><USER5> I know of several German ISPs (Kabel Deutschland, MNet) that don't even give you a dynamic IPv4 IP anymore, but use Dual-Stack Lite (that is, IPv6, and carrier-grade NAT to access public IPv4 addresses). Oh, and they limit the ports (and thus connections) you can have open at a time, to something like 1000. I wouldn't want to have such a connection.

<comment><USER30> I'm on Kabel Deutschland and have a static IPv4. Is that a regional thing only?

<comment><USER5> Could be regional (I know it from Nürnberg area), or new vs. old customer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SPIDR Today – news aggregator site - <AUTHOR> http://spidr.today/?c=us <comment><USER2> Well done. I like the clean interface.</comment>


Net Generation: spoiled, narcissistic layabouts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12853955

<comment><USER2> The "older" generation always complains about the younger ones. And that has gone on since the days of Plato and Aristotle. _Why! Back in my day, we walked 15 miles to school, and it was uphill both ways!_ Don't worry, in 10-20 years, the "facebooker generation" will be whining about the new kids of that era.

And perhaps one of the best satires of this eternal trend is a skit called The Four Yorkshiremen. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Yorkshiremen_sketch>

_Why! Back in my day, we didn't have any of those new fangled programming languages like C and assembly, we programmed in ones and zeros. And we were too poor to have zeros so we carved them out of potatoes. And we liked it!_

People slowly get more ethical/moral as they age - slowly enough that the change isn't noticable - instead they think that they were always "this way." If your older self could meet your younger self, your older self would probably complain about the lazy good-for-nothing younger self as well. People grow up. Our civilization won't burst into flames because the young punks are here - in 20 years, those young punks will be "the establishment" and complaining about the newer punks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Baby Boomers: stodgy, ponderous dinosaurs?

Haberdashers: mad as hatters?

Ducks: bent on world domination?

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe spoiled, narcissistic, layabout parents have the same kind of kids?

</comment><comment><USER5> Allegedly Socrates, attributed to Plato:

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

(the source of the quote may be contentious, but with a little cursory searching I was able to find it being attributed to Socrates (via Plato) as far back as the late 1800s, so... it's still surely not new.)</comment>


FOSS Compliance: What Are The Basics You Must Know - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/167-amanda-mcpherson/319385-foss-compliance-what-are-the-basics-you-must-know

<comment><USER2> I really think the Open Source community (at least this side of it) is starting to miss the point. "Free," to me, does not mean paying some foundation with personal information so I can get a paper on how not to get legally creamed by using "free" software. Free is not needing to hire a lawyer to be a programmer. Free is openly sharing information, not using it to coerce people into giving you personal information.</comment>


"Mostly functional" programming does not work - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?ref=rss&id=2611829&utm_content=bufferb88da <comment><USER2> While itself I tend to agree, the typical scenarios for average programmers are one-off tasks or fairly trivial, aka "fetch stuff from here, apply some code, store some results there, and maybe run this stuff every X". In these cases, correctness/absence of bugs are not that important, but the job should be done ASAP. In situations like this, I vastly prefer _impure_ FP languages, like Elixir. Just get shit done (eg.: the File module is great!).

On the other hand, when I build more complicated (web) systems, using a framework like Phoenix, _everything_ is pure, _except_ controllers or custom API clients, these are the single point of interacting with impure stuff and can be guarded easily, even dying is acceptable mostly.

The point I'm trying to make is: Monads and complex/strange type systems are completely unsuited for usage through the average joe programmer, no matter how much I agree with the topic itself. But there are solutions available that allow to reap _most_ benefits of pure FP while also allowing to be pragmatic when appropriate. I mention Elixir here because it is the single best language that fits in this description I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your comment is somehow similar to my opinion.

The author simply states that when mixing imperative features like exceptions in a FP languages, sooner or later something is going to be broken, that wouldn't be in a pure FP language. The example given with the exceptions in a lazy value/variable is great for showing us that ! Who wouldn't forget that a Try/Catch block in a lazy val/var would be useless (because it would only throw the exception when evaluating the val/var) ?

And I agree, pure FP has a lot of benefits, the problem is that is too hard to create a real system in a pure FP approach. So we often make compromises to get things done. I use Scala everyday (and used to develop in Java) and I'm aware of that. Nevertheless, I can avoid a lot of problems comparing to Java imperative/OO approach.

I see this post more as a reminder that when using impure FP you still have to be careful about some tricky features</comment></comment>


Android Has Market Share, But Windows Phone Has Mindshare  - <AUTHOR> http://moconews.net/article/419-npd-android-has-market-share-but-windows-phone-has-mindshare/

<comment><USER2> The article doesn't say, and I didn't see a link to the report which might have provided useful information...

However, I can see two basic forms this survey question might have taken.

First: "which smartphone would you consider buying: iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, ..." (Or asking type-by-type "would you consider buying an X?"

Second: "which sort of smartphone would you consider buying?"

You can get wildly different answers by changing the form of the question. Providing a list and saying "which would you consider?" is probably going to get a lot of people saying "sure, I'd consider that", whereas asking without the prompt is going to produce a list of the devices with actual _mindshare_.

<comment><USER3> The other thing that is interesting is:

"Android and iOS are covered tons in the media, and Windows Phone—surprisingly for a Microsoft product—seems to have missed the boat on brand awareness. An embarrassing 45 percent of consumers surveyed by NPD said they were unaware of Windows Phone 7.

And among the 50 percent of consumers who said they will be buying a smartphone, but didn't want to buy a Windows Phone, the biggest reason, accounting for 46 percent of respondents, was because they didn't know enough about the Windows Phone OS."

Basically if you know about WP then you'd consider it. But nearly as many people don't know about it at all as those that have heard of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 44%? I've never met anyone who was considering a Win7 mobile phone. I've met many that were considering iPhone and Android, though.

I might have considered one, if I didn't remember WinCE.

<comment><USER5> The "people I've met" demographic isn't usually the best for determining market demand. Especially since we tend to associate with people similar to ourselves.

<comment><USER4> Normally I'd agree, but 0% to 44% is a huge jump. I'm finding it hard to believe.

<comment><USER5> Is it actually 0%, though? Do you make a point of asking everyone you know if they plan on buying a Windows phone? Everyone?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A lot of people wondered why in the world would MS endorse a 4'7" phone (the HTC Titan). From people I know who work retail, including a cousin who works for ATT retail, people come into stores wanting either an iPhone or a smartphone.

The iPhone users are pretty set. Their kids have it, or they had one before, or their wife has one, or everyone tells them it is the best.

For people not set on iPhone, it sounds like the decision is often made in the store. And apparently big screens and thin phones area big deal. Android has dominated the retail presence. If WP can match the retail presence, it can probably start splitting some sales with Android.

<comment><USER4> I'm all for big screen, but 4 ft 7 inches is just too big. Titan is a good name for it. ;)

I suspect you mean 4.7" instead. :)

<comment><USER6> "Titan" indeed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's amazing that Microsoft can engender so much mindshare, but of the *-shares (mindshare, marketshare), the article leaves out share of profits, which makes neither Android nor Microsoft look particularly compelling.

One of the troubles Android is facing is that the nature of an open system (... and perhaps this is why Android is becoming less open ...) allows competitors lower entry barriers and enables low-cost providers. There is a race to slash prices and operate on thinner margins. All of this dilutes the value of the brand at the high end, and makes higher-end products stand out less. It's a valid strategy, and Android has successfully shipped an incredible number of units because of it, but profits for phone vendors are thin as a consequence. (Tangentially, unit-based marketshare is exactly what Google wants, as it sells eyeballs to advertisers.)

If Microsoft can avoid these downsides of commoditization with Metro, the mindshare the article reports on could become very worthwhile for them.

</comment><comment><USER8> WP7 user here (I even left the iPhone for it).

Mindshare? What mindshare? Even die-hard Windows users I encounter think that WP7 == Windows Mobile, and thus, think it's total crap... until I show them the actual experience and apps.

Seems like every time I'm at a wireless store, there's an employee showing a customer phones who shows them a WP7 dismissively.

If the person selling you a phone thinks it sucks (for whatever reason or prejudice), what are the odds you're going to buy that phone?

Microsoft has a lot of image fixing to do. There's a huge image problem here.

<comment><USER9> I think this is going to change. I was at an AT&T store this morning and saw one of the sales rep taking a quizz with questions about WP7 and Mango. If all the sales reps go through it, maybe it'll change the vision they have and what they tell customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What does it even mean that they're "considering" WinMo phones? When I bought a car, I "considered" buying a Kia - I was aware they exist and of their brand, value, etc.... that doesn't mean there was any actual chance I was going to buy one. The only car brands I didn't "consider" were ones no longer selling in the US.

<comment><AUTHOR> If Apple began building cars, would you "consider" buying one? Comparing the Microsoft brand with the Kia brand is not leveled. Microsoft is a top brand in Enterprise software. It is just getting into a different industry.

Now the most interesting thing, is that Microsoft was a worthy competitor years back with their Window Mobile brand. So it is not so far fetched to think they can regain the market share they lost, and maybe even more.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I'd "consider" it. I'd probably reject it, but just to reject it would mean I "considered" it - simply forming an opinion about something, positive or negative, means you've considered it.

Kia's a perfectly good brand, in my view. I wasn't using it to be negative about Microsoft, that's your bias or defensiveness. I'm just saying that the article is citing the number of people who would "consider" buying Windows Mobile, which is a really weak indicator for how many would buy it.

What % of people would "consider" getting kicked in the nuts for $10? I'd argue nearly 100%, but how many would actually agree to it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand your point. I think what is interesting about this story is not about how the word consider is being used. It is mostly about interest. People are open to a Microsoft Phone, and that could definitely drive expectations.

I don't want to drag this discussion further. I understand your points, and I actually agree. We are just talking about two different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Windows Phone has mind share? Didn't we see some articles recently that even store clerks confuse Windows Phone with Windows Mobile phones, and don't care much about them?

</comment><comment><USER12> That shouldn't be too strange. I'd consider buying one, and I don't use many MS products. No reason not to evaluate it in a purchasing decision.

All things being equal I'd probably buy another Android device, but I'm not zealous enough to say "if MS makes a better product I won't buy it!" (Though if you do say that about Apple or Microsoft, I can understand the sentiment...)

</comment><comment><USER13> This does not surprise me. I've had many problems with my Android phones (3 so far) I really don't see the point in getting another one. I'd rather give WM7 a try at this point. Maybe in 2 years or whatever I'll give Android another shot but my needs are basic enough (web/mail) that it seems silly to suffer with Android any longer.</comment>


DreamIt Ventures - Class of 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://www.viddler.com/explore/DreamItVentures/videos/2/ Stumbled upon this video and thought I'd share this with fellow entrepreneurs, as I have seen a lot of talk regarding DreamIt within this forum.<p>Looks to be a great opportunity! <comment><USER2> Wow, so Sleep.FM, which was demoed here, got funded. Either I am not that sharp in spotting new markets, or DreamIt is... um, what are they doing?

<comment><USER3> Sleep.fm gets a lot of guff but I think it's pretty darn cool. Voice + twitter + devices is pretty nifty.

Add: What's important here is that he's managed to build a system to push content to multiple mobile devices. Think about that. The application of his system can change as time goes on, but it can be really successful if he can scale it or monetize it.

PS: Maybe you're not that sharp.

PPS: That was mean, your site's freakin' awesome!

<comment><USER2> Re: PS: always something to learn :)

I agree that it has uses, but needing to go to a website to use an alarm is totally over it for me. I have been using my computer as an alarm for many years now. I think it is a total waste of energy if you need to go to a website and stay on a website for the alarm to work. Mine puts the computer into sleep mode, and wakes it up right before the alarm goes off.

With all this energy-conscious-ness going on, unless Sleep.FM makes an offline client that can sleep your computer, I a bear. Twits/calls to phone may be an exception, but for me that largely loses the point of a computer-run alarm (where you can play MP3s at obscene volumes). Just my POV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like nice guys. I'm sure they'll pick some good founders and probably help a few to succeed. But really, what the hell is up with the khaki pants and button-downs? Seriously, these are still software/internet startups.</comment>


Getting Tech into the Boroughs - <AUTHOR> https://avc.com/2019/12/getting-tech-into-the-boroughs/ <comment><USER2> The biggest obstacle to locating any business outside of Manhattan is the transit system. Most subway lines run between the outer boroughs and Manhattan, and the regional commuter railroads (LIRR, NJ Transit, PATH and Metro North) all terminate in Manhattan (or primarily in Manhattan, since LIRR also has stations in Brooklyn and Queens). Thus, locating a business outside of Manhattan greatly reduces the area from which it can recruit employees.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The op is a VC and I am not sure what their angle is. But when tech jobs came to San Francisco, there was gentrification how is that really a benefit to the current community? Where is the proof that most of the promised 25, of jobs won't go to new community members that put pressure on the current residents to move out?</comment>


Backtype (YC08) releases Tweetcount, far more accurate than Tweetmeme - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/07/06/tweetcount/

<comment><USER2> The article makes it sounds so business like; so competitive, but what are these companies competing for? Who can add feature 'x' to twitter, when you know if feature 'x' shows profitability then twitter will copy it internally and the game is over... and if I was twitter I wouldn't buy that company out - I would just copy it.

<comment><USER3> You could have said the same thing about search, but then, Summize did get acquired by Twitter.

And, you're assuming that the only value in building out these features is the potential to get acquired. It's possible that the feature itself has some value to BackType given their business.

<comment><USER4> Saying Summize was acquired without us knowing how much was paid for it is misleading. It could have been "acquired" for less than the amount of a big signing bonus, in which case it's evidence against your point, not for it.

Generalized real time search is also almost certainly more valuable and difficult technically than counting re-tweets, thus more likely to be acquired at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> onreact-com I already implemented it on my blog, works almost perfectly. I'd like to change fonts, font sizes etc. as well though.</comment>


Humanscale, the Classic Design Tool, Gets a Second Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/humanscale-the-classic-design-tool-gets-a-second-life/ <comment><USER2> The reference manual itself is fascinating:

[http://design.data.free.fr/RUCHE/documents/Ergonomie%20Henry...](http://design.data.free.fr/RUCHE/documents/Ergonomie%20Henry%20DREYFUS.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for finding that. It really is fascinating. Mind you most of the numbers need updating :-)

U.S. 50. %tile weight is now 194.7 lb not 161.9 lb and I suspect that the 97.5 %tile is even worse (but a cursory search didn't find any data).

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_weight#By_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_weight#By_country)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of this article

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230287)

How in WWII a statistician noticed there are no average sized humans and the dangers of building for a mythical average.

</comment><comment><USER5> Available for pre-order but neither the article, nor the product's website, has a ship date estimate.

<comment><USER6> The Kickstarter says December 2017.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> omg - THATS what that double-tap feature was for?!? i always thought it was a bug.

</comment><comment><USER8> What are the units?

<comment><USER9> The FAQ on the Kickstarter page says it has both metric and imperial units.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iacollaborative/reissue...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iacollaborative/reissue- of-humanscale/faqs)</comment></comment>


Grafana –  feature rich Graphite dashboard replacement and graph editor - <AUTHOR> http://grafana.org/

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: graphite co-maintainer here. This is own of my favorite graphite dashboards. This one and giraffe are two of the nicest</comment>


Verizon technician sold calling, location data for thousands of dollars - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/verizon-technician-sold-calling-location-data-for-thousands-of-dollars/ <comment><USER2> Only max 5 years I know of one case in the UK where people got > 10 years hard time for that

</comment><comment><USER3> No charges against the PI?</comment>


How to set up a burner iPhone as a locked-down secure travel device - <AUTHOR> https://blog.filippo.io/securing-a-travel-iphone/? <comment><USER2> To me a "burner" is a phone you use and discard. I suppose by following these steps you _could_ discard the phone without much concern for what could be retrieved but the same would be true of a phone you can choose to wipe before discarding.

I'm a little surprised using a VPN isn't on this list, in addition to, not instead of anything on the list. The list pretty much limits communication to encrypted channels but adding a VPN would conceal even which channels you use (not from shoulder surfing).</comment>


Groupon Insiders Take $345 Million Off The Table In Latest Funding Round - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/30/groupon-insiders-345-million/ <comment><USER2> This is the 2010 version of an IPO.

<comment><USER3> Thanks to government regulation, it's become so onerous to do an IPO to the public that the little man is effectively left out of these opportunities.

My guess is it won't be long until secondmarket comes under SEC regulation and catering to accredited investors won't be a shield anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting note in this article: $345 of the $500 million in funding will go to "executive officers, directors, or promoters." This somewhat contradicts what I read yesterday from P Morgan Brown (via The Atlantic Tech) [1]:

"What Groupon is doing is something that no other tech company has done in recent memory--made a real run at securing a big chunk of the SMB market...[T]o put that organization in place is going to take a ton of cash."

Groupon might be after SMBs, but what kind of sales team can they purchase with $155 million? (Serious question, not rhetorical).

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/what-g...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/what- groupons-doing-that-google-couldnt/68648/)

<comment><USER5> Yet another case where there is a liquidity event for the capitalists but not for the programmers. The promise of "generous equity" as a part of the compensation package remains a raw deal for non-founders.

<comment><USER6> _"generous equity" as a part of the compensation package_

I see this in job postings occasionally, and it always strikes me as the Lady Protesting Too Much.

Just tell me an order of magnitude of percentage ownership, and _I'll_ be the judge of whether or not it's generous. I have yet to experience anything but the latter, which isn't surprising if the entire employee option pool is 10% by itself and the founders take no dilution from new hires.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most interesting part of this story to me is that Jason Fried is on the board of Groupon.

<comment><USER8> I discovered that yesterday. It's been over a year (announcement: [http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/jason-fried-joins-the- gro...](http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/jason-fried-joins-the-groupon- board-of-directors/)) and it wasn't a secret, but I was surprised that I hadn't heard about it when it happened.

It does seem to clash with what 37signals discusses all the time regarding VC funding. I know that their main point is to fight the default mindset of going first to investors to fund you discovering what to really build, but nevertheless, a huge funding round whose main objective is to have some insiders cash out doesn't fit Jason Fried's perceived philosophy. (granted, DHH might be the more vocal of the two about it)

<comment><USER9> It might clash with his philosophy buy really, in Groupon's position, what else can you do?

In my opinion, this is a perfect example of what's currently very broken with the VC/funding model. Groupon is wildly successful, wildly profitable, and yet it's investor can't get paid anything without the whole company having to do this weird funding rigamarole.

In the old days they would have just gone public and everybody would be happy. But with the latest regulations nobody wants to do that anymore. And they don't want to sell their company, for good reason. So they're stuck.

What there really needs to be is some accepted, pre-defined method for investors to profit from a successful company's cash receipts. That would simplify this whole process, but I don't know how feasible that is.

<comment><USER10> There is a way: it's called dividends. The problem is that dividends are subject to double taxation: first at ~44% (Federal + CA) for the corporation, then at the dividends rate for the individual, which is currently at 24.3% (15% Fed + 9.3% CA).

Compare to a sale of stock, which is only taxed at 24.3%, and you can start to see some of the advantages.

Another advantage includes being able to capitalize on a multiple of your revenue/profit, instead of on a 1X every year, as well as continuing to put the company's revenue towards growth instead of cashing it all out.

<comment><USER3> I personally think dividends are a much more sane way to invest than stock price alone. It seems to me that AAPL or GOOG are "priced" by investors mostly based on archaic ties to dividend models when in fact, it's really just hoping that some sucker down the road will be willing to buy your shares at a higher price. Dividends would allow us to price stocks using metrics tied much closer to the underlying business rather than the perceptions of the business, which in my mind would increase the healthiness of investing overall.

I understand the voting/bankruptcy rights of stock, but for most retail investors, it seems to me that holding shares of Apple is really just a large Ponzi-scheme (this has probably been debated on here ad nauseum).

<comment><USER11> I agree that dividends are a healthier and saner way to earn money from investments. The problem is that as a little guy I have no control over whether some company makes a dividend distribution, or even whether they make a profit or not. I _can_ control whether I buy that stock in the first place, and control whether and when I sell that stock. Therefore to make money in this latter scenario, the stock price _must_ change (usually up, but if you're shorting, down can work too) in order for me to make a profit. Thus it's in my best interests for a stock's price to fluctuate, regardless of whether that fluctuation has any relationship to the fundamental health or profitability of the company. It's weird. It's dumb. But that's the way it is.

And that's just the incentive for the little guy who's an outside investor. Imagine now you're a big guy with a lot of financial clout, and inside connections, especially as far inside as being on the board or one of the executives. You not only are incented to cause distortions to the stock price, regardless of merit, but you also have greater power over the "upstream" numbers (how to define profit, when to book profits/costs, etc.) and over the media presence and general public's perception of the company. Greater potential upside plus greater power to manipulate, is a recipe for bad things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Somebody also pocketed a $7.5 million "finder's fee" for helping to put the deal together."

That's interesting and a lot of money. Is it common?

<comment><USER13> I've signed a finder's fee agreement before. All I would have had to do is send an email intro to someone who eventually invested. I believe it was for 10 or 15% of what would have been raised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You know investors have confidence in a company when they finance what basically amounts to a executive cash out round.

<comment><USER15> Investors had plenty of confidence in mortgage-backed securities, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I had to pinch and remind myself that very few Internet startups see money like that thrown around, but at the same time, it goes to show how rewarding success can be in this industry.

This is exciting!</comment>


Ask HN: Can you recommend any OPSEC resources/books/guides? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I can tell you about the resources, books, and guides that I'm familiar with - they are specific to the United States public sector. Not all of it is specific to Operational Security, but one could say that it is all related. Many federal departments and agencies must implement security programs based on guidelines and recommendations from Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology, who created the Special Publication 800 Series for Computer Security, also the Special Publication 1800 Series for Cybersecurity Practice Guidelines. ([http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsSPs.html](http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsSPs.html)) These departments and agencies are also required to report their cyber security incidents to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US- CERT) so that security events, incidents, and responses may be coordinated across departments and agencies. ([https://www.us-cert.gov/government- users/compliance-and-repo...](https://www.us-cert.gov/government- users/compliance-and-reporting)) Today's federal departments and agencies are connected to trusted internet connections (TICs) that are all held up to high standards of incident reporting and security management. ([https://www.dhs.gov/trusted-internet- connections](https://www.dhs.gov/trusted-internet-connections)) Same goes for the providers of their PKI infrastructure ([https://www.idmanagement.gov/IDM/servlet/fileField?entityId=...](https://www.idmanagement.gov/IDM/servlet/fileField?entityId=ka0t0000000TNYYAA4&field=File__Body__s) ). Other key pieces of computing and communications infrastructure are also held to standards, such as the ones published by Federal Network Resilience group, but are not made available publicly. The CAESARS Framework ([http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/nistir-7756/Draft-N...](http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/nistir-7756/Draft- NISTIR-7756_second-public-draft.pdf)) is the best example of a highly- integrated continuous monitoring program which integrates security operations with executive-level risk management. Lots of money has been invested in creating great frameworks, but many agencies and departments struggle to implement these in practice.

<comment><USER2> I know about this because I started my career helping an agency achieve a CAESARS-like program, which was based more on NIST's Risk Management Framework (RMF) - The basis of it is to define your systems, their Confidentiality/Integrity/Availability impact levels, a chain of management who has authority over the systems, security controls to protect the systems, continual evaluation of the security controls, and expedient management of risks associated with failure to implement security controls properly. ([http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-37-rev1/sp800...](http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-37-rev1/sp800-37-rev1-final.pdf)) The best security operations people I've worked with are the ones who are very curious. They scour over the configuration management, patch management, and defense systems - always checking to see if they do the things they're actually meant to do. Alerts on security events are very useful. Having multiple tools to cross-reference pays off when the results are different and it reveals an underlying problem that nobody expected.</comment></comment>


Shipments of PC Hard Drives Predicted to Drop by Nearly 50% in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/14298/shipments-of-pc-hdds-predicted-to-halve-in-2019 <comment><USER2> I'm one of those weird data horders that still buys high capacity drives. I take a lot of RAW photos and videos and I prefer to buy and not rent a license to my music (and I like using sites like Bandcamp to support independent artists). I recently got a 14TB as a new primary, 10TB secondary, along with similar capacity backup drives.

I hope this trend doesn't mean consumer hard drives are going to get more expensive going forward. I keep reading about people predicting SSDs are going to hit the same price/capacity as spinning disks, but I just don't see it with the large >10TB volumes any time soon.

<comment><USER3> > I keep reading about people predicting SSDs are going to hit the same > price/capacity as spinning disks, but I just don't see it with the large > >10TB volumes any time soon.

To elaborate on this: $/TB varies widely depending on total drive capacity. The fixed costs of hard drive spindle motors, actuators, etc. are higher than the costs of an SSD controller and PCB. Adding a platter to a hard drive is cheaper on a per-GB basis than adding more NAND flash to an SSD, but there's a crossover point below which SSDs have cheaper price per GB and small hard drives are no longer economical to manufacture. That crossover point has now risen to encompass the majority of consumer use cases, but it is nowhere near 10TB and won't be anytime soon. That crossover point also seems to be moving upward much faster than typical consumer storage needs, so we can expect this segment of the hard drive market to continue to wither.

<comment><USER4> > That crossover point has now risen to encompass the majority of consumer use > cases

cheapest drives measured in price/capacity

HDDs: 2TB @ 0.017€/GB

M.2 SSDs: 2TB @ 0.1€/GB

I see no crossover point here. SSDs are not even touching the the same order of magnitude.

<comment><USER5> Maybe you have to go a bit lower. Does the typical consumer use case need even 2TB?

<comment><USER3> Most of the consumer use cases for 2+ TB are well served by external drives or a NAS, which aren't part of the market segment that Nidec is predicting to crash this year. Backups and movie/photo libraries don't need to be on local internal drives. Large video game libraries just don't account for very much of the PC userbase. Every PC should have an SSD as primary storage, and with 512GB drives down to $50, very few PCs need any other internal storage.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I just noticed how cheap the SSDs have become. I just ordered a couple of small ones, even though I'm generally a cheapskate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My guess is that demand for hard drives less than 3TB+ is going to dry up and production will end. There isn't much point in small hard drives any more; at the same price people would rather cope with less flash storage than more HDD.

<comment><USER7> Agree. On the other hand there should be a long term appetite from large capacity hard drive from datacentres. The flow of data being captured isn't reducing.

<comment><USER8> Not sure about that. Tape drives have always been better for long term storage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hard drives are very nearly dead for hot storage. I expect them to by wholly dead by the end of 2020 because the TCO of HDDs is going to outstrip that of SSDs because of the fundamentally lower reliability.

<comment><USER10> My personal, offhand, experience is that SSDs tend to fail about 2 or 3 times sooner than a hard disk.

I'd need for SSDs to actually be CHEAPER per gigabyte for the trade-off in expected lifetime to make sense.

PS: If your hard drives 'fail' try scrubbing (forced re-write) them every 2 years or so...

<comment><USER11> You'll need to do this with NAND-based devices as well, as NAND tends to lose data integrity as data is repeatedly read out.

<comment><USER12> >as NAND tends to lose data integrity as data is repeatedly read out

This doesn't tend to be an issue because the controller can automatically rewrite the cells as needed. What is an issue is if you leave the SSD unpowered for a few months and the cells leak enough charge to be unreadable.

<comment><USER10> I suspect most SSD firmware actually does automatic old-age scrubbing of somekind within the firmware. This theory seems likely confirmed with your offline decay theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Makes sense. SSDs are bigger and cheaper than ever. Not as much need for spinning metal drives. Not that the need is gone, but most people can probably get by with a single large SSD where before they need an SSD and HDD to store media.

Still a pretty sharp drop for one year.

</comment><comment><USER14> I remember when SDD would suffer from catastrophic failures and weren't considered for long term storage (even in pro-home solutions).

Now we have people complaining that HDD aren't reliable (but I suspect we still can recover data from the plates in almost all HDD kind of failure)

HDD, SDD, external HDD and some cloud: trying to have all these working together with redundancy is my next goal.

<comment><USER15> For my pro-home solution (audio production), Dropbox solves all my backup needs. All my work folders are in Dropbox, and if my hard drive explodes, at most I'd lose a dozen of minutes of work.

<comment><USER16> Now imagine if you were doing video production instead of audio production. You'd need to spend a fortune to store all that in Dropbox.

<comment><USER17> Apparently $720/year gets you an account for "as much as you need". Not cheap, but then again syncing isn't backing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is interesting, but is it really as simple as "laptops are now using SSDs over HDDs"? I'd like to see some more detailed analysis of this prediction.

<comment><USER19> As recently as 2 years ago, Lenovo tried to sell me a laptop with a mechanical HDD. They actually succeeded -- their price for an SSD was insane -- but I ripped it out and replaced it immediately.

Today a mechanical HDD isn't even an option. The new generation of the same machine is offered only with a PCIe SSD.

That's just one point of anecdata, but I think it's a pretty stark one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any idea when we'll see a 2.5" SATA drive of 8 TB, and at what price point?

<comment><USER21> This might be what your looking for: Micron 5200 Series 7680GB

[https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0ZX7U89...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0ZX7U89254)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Software is cheaper to build now - <AUTHOR> With software, I have had this theory for a while that there is somewhat of a law where what was built one year ago or 10 years ago is always cheaper to build today. So this is what helps continue to drive innovation. Have there been any studies on the price of building software always getting cheaper?<p>I suppose a big exception to this rule would be when there are major players in a particular niche. For example, it would be more expensive to build a competitor to Google now than in 2000. But it still follows that the code it's cheaper to write now because there are so many more tools available to the coder than before. <comment><USER2> Writing it now in a high-level language is cheaper than writing it in assembly, the way we would have 60 years ago. Languages keep getting better (for the most part). If they don't, well, the old one didn't die; you can keep using it.

Writing it now with today's libraries is cheaper than writing the same functionality without the libraries, the way we would have had to do 20 years ago. Libraries keep getting better (for the most part). If they don't, well, you can use the old one or roll your own.

The result of those two paragraphs is that it's always less expensive to write the exact same functionality as it was in the past, because the tools are better. But the problem is that we don't want to write the exact same functionality. We want to add this year's set of must-have features, so the scope is bigger than it was last year...</comment>


Ask HN: What aspects of life are you deferring until you're successful and rich? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Don't do it. Start now, because what you'll find out if you're successful and rich is that what's standing in the way of a happy life have nothing to do with success or money.

People use the chase for success in various forms as a way of avoiding self- knowledge. In some ways the worst thing that will ever happen to you is if you make the big bucks. Then you won't have an excuse for not knowing yourself. So what do the super-motivated people do then? They pick another milestone to shoot for before they'll start living.

Start now. Don't wait for anything to happen. You are alive in every way that's meaningful, now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Was there anything Dave that you were holding off till you became successful - by whatever your definition of that is.

<comment><USER2> Yes, everything.

I put so much value in achieving all the goals my family set for me. I figured everyone would love me when I was a success. So I checked off everything on the list, and I mean everything. Nothing changed. Of course. I know that now, but I wish someone had told me before.

Live for yourself, do what you want to do. When other people tell you what to do, not only don't they know, but it won't please them when you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Being bored.

And I'm perfectly happy deferring that as long as possible.

Currently my projects have a number of potential descriptors attached, but "boring" isn't one of them.

(If you haven't read it, the last chapter of Tim Ferriss' book "Four Hour Work Week" is a fascinating read. It details what it feels like to get to the point where you've achieved your goals, and no longer need to work. I don't want to go all Buzzfeed on you, but it's really not what you'd expect from a naive consideration of the situation.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Will create a small lab to go after my dream ideas, money is a big factor in freedom. While working for big companies you are stuck often times, unfortunately cost of living is so high in SV to bootstrap unless you have YC like people helping you. Rent + health for a family can alone be 4k min which means 70k only for rent and health insurance! Health first for sure then money, often times you loose your health while trying making money. I would love to hear other people what they are thinking!

</comment><comment><USER5> Pretty much have everything I can do right now I can do while rich beyond saving for money for eventual retirement. There's enough to learn that's practically free and cheap at this point. A laptop is maybe a grand. Living independently is pretty obtainable in a good enough, growing, city with low COL , and finding inexpensive hobbies are easy... actually maybe moving into a fancy 1 bedroom condo in Berkeley lol.

<comment><USER6> I'm in Berkeley after being priced out of SF. I'm kind of losing my mind, but there are signs that it's getting more density.

<comment><USER5> How are you losing your mind? Is the area just not what you expected?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This used to be such a long list for me. Exploring the world, meeting new people, getting in shape, taking up various different activities. Glad to say I've changed.

I've spent the past 7 years doing the startup grind dreaming of that huge exit. It hasn't come. Instead I've got a revised sense of priorities and of how long I've got left on this planet. Better than any amount of money.

</comment><comment><USER6> Running for public office, mainly to (literally) save the world with voting reform.

[http://ScoreVoting.net/LivesSaved.html](http://ScoreVoting.net/LivesSaved.html)

Instead, I'm VP of Engineering at a tech startup, trying to crawl out of my wife's student loan debt, raise my son, and hope that I'll be able to pursue my real passion by the time I'm 40.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Strangely, for me it was getting fit. What a very odd thing to put off till some unlikely future. I'm now consciously trying to convert silly "when I'm rich I'll........" fantasies into the question "so what's preventing me doing that thing right now?"

<comment><USER8> > Strangely, for me it was getting fit. What a very odd thing to put off till > some unlikely future.

Yeah, tell me about this one. I'm a guy who had a heart-attack, right in the middle of a period of time when we seemed to be getting some momentum going with the startup. I knew I was being silly putting off working out and being active and eating healthy, but I figured "things will level off soon and I'll get back to that stuff". Ummm.. no. Didn't work out that way. And when you're on the back of an ambulance being rushed to the emergency room, it's a bit late to start worrying about getting fit.

Luckily for me, I survived, and I've gotten back into bike riding big time again, and now I take time out to go ride an hour or so a few days a week, work be damned. :-)

So there's at least one lesson I learned and benefited from, but what a horrible way to do it. If anything I say on HN can help influence anybody else, let it be this.... DO NOT DO WHAT I DID. Take your health seriously, and do it starting NOW, regardless of how old you are. Remember, the artery damage that leads to heart-disease (and ultimately, heart attacks) begins very young... in some cases as early as your teen years (maybe earlier in some extreme cases). And definitely by your twenties, if you aren't eating right, watching your lipid profile, staying active, etc., you are setting yourself up for problems later.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I may be so bold, a heart attack is a big deal, may I ask how old you are - 40's, 50's? Do you smoke?

<comment><USER8> I just turned 42 last week, had the heart attack last Nov. when I was 41 and some change. Never smoked in my life. But I didn't always eat the way I should, and while I've been a competitive athlete on an "on again, off again" basis throughout my adult life (wrestling, jiu-jitsu, powerlifting, mountain biking, etc.), I had been too much of the "off again" for the past few years, and had let my weight creep up a bit. Even then though, it took me by surprise, I wasn't exactly one of those 350lb super-obese people you look at and think "how is that guy not dead yet", ya know? But between that and the stress I was under, it almost did me in.

And just to elaborate on all this a bit... I'd always heard the old saw "stress kills", but interestingly enough, after the heart attack, something _everybody_ (cardiologist, GP, nurses, cardiac rehab people, etc.) emphasized to me VERY strongly, was the impact of stress. I'm sure I heard "you need to lower your stress levels" more than I heard "you need to lose weight" or "you need to lower your cholesterol". And I was _really_ grinding those last few months right before it happened. I was working pretty much 7 days a week, and I'd routinely put in 8 hours during the day, then go up to B&N or Starbucks and work another 5 or 6 hours, during which time I'd drink a triple-shot latte, drink a Red Bull, and then eat a box or two of chocolate covered espresso beans. And I'd do this shit 4 or 5 times a week. In hindsight, it was all pretty stupid, but, like almost everybody who _hasn 't_ had a brush with death, I thought I was superhuman and could push myself that hard and get away with it.

So, again, moral of this story: DO NOT DO WHAT I DID. I AM A BAD EXAMPLE.

Take some time off, unwind, do something outdoors (hiking, biking, running, swimming, whatever), eat a healthful diet, and talk to your doctor occasionally. I know there's a lot of backlash against "over testing" and all, but at the very least, it's probably a good idea to go have an annual physical. Stop smoking if you do. Heart attacks are largely avoidable, but it means doing things right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Giving up working.

</comment><comment><USER10> Helping others that need it most.

When you're normal, it is called charity, when you're rich, it is called "philanthropy" and you can even name your charity/foundation after yourself.

</comment><comment><USER8> Too many of them. Enough that I'd probably rather not talk about it. It's stupid, I _know_ it's stupid, but I do it anyway. I can't explain it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Doing nothing! Trying to become skilled enough that I only have to work a few hours a week in the future.

</comment><comment><USER12> Upgrading my 4k bike to a 10k bike?

<comment><USER13> Same. And the whole set of other marginal improvement expenses that I could be making, but choose not to because they don't have the right cost-benefit ratio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Everything but I will take employed as a substitute for rich.

</comment><comment><USER15> Learning to sail, learning to soar, learning to dive.

</comment><comment><USER16> Buying an island.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hack on whatever I like.

</comment><comment><USER18> Getting old.

</comment><comment><USER19> Mistresses.

</comment><comment><USER20> being a playa.

<comment><USER21> I am pretty sure that you don't need money for that. And, allegedly, if you do it right, it can be very lucrative.

<comment><USER20> I will try that starting now.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How are you using Firefox containers? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> One for the production site (I make it colour the browser chrome red with the Containers Theme extension [1])

A few for other ephemeral environments I work with

One for personal stuff

[1] Containers Theme extension [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/containers-th...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/containers-theme/?src=api)

</comment><comment><USER3> I do a bit of consulting so I use a different container per client. I use to use chrome profiles but love firefox containers for that workflow.</comment>