Obama gives himself control of all communication systems in America - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-president-order-communications-770/

<comment><USER2> I would recommend reading the actual executive order: [http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2012/07/06/execut...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2012/07/06/executive-order-assignment-national-security-and-emergency- preparedness-)

This looks to me just what it says on the tin: The Federal Government is to develop a plan for ensuring comms during national crises. The only part that hinted at "control" of systems is Sec 5.2(e) where the DHS is to be able to satisfy priority communications requirements through _use of_ (not control of) commercial, Government, and privately-owned resources.

So yes, the gov't could come in and use Aunt Tillie's landline phone _if no other resources were available in a disaster_ , but that hardly equates to "control of all communications systems" and is hardly different in degree to the powers the Federal government already has in disaster response.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the original Executive Order: [http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2012/07/06/execut...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2012/07/06/executive-order-assignment-national-security-and-emergency- preparedness-)

I'm curious, how much does this really differ from the original Emergency Broadcast System, or the current Emergency Alert System?

</comment><comment><USER4> How is this not incredibly terrifying? They use security and safety as justification for continually reducing our civil liberties and privacy. They act as if the whole of the nation is criminal.

<comment><USER5> That's true, but it's not _just_ that. Their assumption is that for the continued operation of our country, the most important thing -- in extreme, the _only_ critical thing -- is the operation of the government.

I believe this is absolutely false. It's not our government that has made America great. It's our people, our culture, our industry. Thanks to all of this, we thrive _in spite of_ the government.

<comment><USER6> This is definitely the truth. Only recently in this country have people put the government on this kind of pedestal; it smells of nationalism. For years, we existed without any central government, and then for years with a relatively weak one. If the government were to go, it might not actually be the worst thing...

<comment><USER7> Speaking of controlling communications-- this entire thread, which was #2 on HN when I first saw it-- has been buried because it is not sufficiently pro- obama.

Meanwhile the latest uneducated screed about how the banks caused the housing crisis (false) and are EVIL!, will always stay way up on the first page of HN for hours if not a day or so.

I can't stand this censorship on HN. Well, it wouldn't bother me if the HN core audience weren't constantly saying "We're objective and open minded!"

<comment><USER5> Downvote:

1) You can't possibly make a factual statement like it "has been buried because it is not sufficiently pro-obama". You can't know other people's reasons for not up-voting.

2) HN is a private service that can feature whatever content it likes. If they choose not to link to something, that's not censorship -- censorship is something a government does to you.

3) You can't call someone's decision not to up-vote an article "censorship" in any case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an aside regarding the title: if he was able to "give it to himself" then he had to have it in the first place. If he didn't have it beforehand, he couldn't give it to himself.

Weird turn of phrase.

</comment><comment><USER9> "If comms are out, we have power to turn them back on so we can talk to the other parts of government" sounds like a really good idea. Not a power overreach.

Shitty headline IMO.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm one of the most conservative folks you're likely to meet... One of those "Right Wing Nutjobs"... but this really feels like FUD to me.

In a state of emergency the US Gov will need to ensure that it has the ability to communicate. Agreed. Hell, they'll need to ensure that _I_ have the ability to communicate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I also thought that might be the case, before I read this part: "In explaining the order, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) writes that the president has authorized the DHS "the authority to seize private facilities when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications.""

<comment><USER11> EPIC has a history of being pretty over the top with their statements and demands. I wouldn't take anything they claim too seriously unless it's corroborated by a more reliable source.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I wasn't aware of EPIC. Now that I've read more about EPIC and the executive order referenced in this article, I regret posting this link. The article does appear to significantly overstate the EO. But I appreciate all of your comments - this has been enlightening :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can just feel the hope and change.

</comment><comment><USER7> For anyone who wants to let this slide, how would you have reacted[1] if the headline had started "Bush gives himself..." and it had been published 6 years ago?

Cause 6 years from now it might be someone you _don't_ like in office, but the power will still be there.

Just as the PATRIOT ACT still is (expanded and extended by Obama), the TSA is (now with porno-scanners!), the domestic spying that happened under Bush is still going on (now retroactively "legal" and much more secret!), etc.

[1] In case my comment isn't obviously nonpartisan, I am equally offended at this in both situations, and believe that Bush wanted this power too.

<comment><USER11> If it started with "Bush gives himself..." I think I'd be doing the same thing I'm doing now. That is, sit here wondering how exactly anyone is interpreting this executive order the way the headline frames it. The truthiness ranks right up there with "death panels."

<comment><USER7> There really are death panels in obamacare. I read the bill before it was made secret, when this issue was brought out. The bill creates committees which decide who gets health care and who is left to die. That's a plain fact.

The response to airing of this fact is that Obama, et al. started spinning it as an objection to "end of life counseling". In other words, they lied about what the criticism was about, and once they did it all the liberals started acting like it was absurd to complain about "death panels".

There are people who I've met who bring up "Death panels" as an absurd complaint who don't even know that the bill creates committees who regulate who gets health care and who doen't. (not "is this treatment effective" but "should retired people get this treatment since they are no longer paying taxes?" with the stated political purpose of letting those who aren't paying taxes die. The major objection brought up time and time again from the left was that "society" was "wasting money on old people".)

So here's the tragedy: There are so many people who have heard such propaganda that they won't even consider the fact that there are death panels because they've been told it was a lie.

Even though it was right there in black and white for anyone to read in the bill (before it was made secret until passage.)

<comment><USER11> I can't tell from your comment history if you're a pathological liar or just a really persistent troll.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He would take control of all communications in the event of a national emergency. Then again, all he has to do is declare a national emergency, and then who knows what happens. If it is a genuine national emergency, though, like an enemy invasion (which is what this executive order seems to plan against), then Obama seizing all communications in America seems like it will be the least of our problems.

However, the presence of language like "Continuity of Government" does not inspire much confidence that he is looking out for us.</comment>


Google's Play Store gives a worse age rating to Fleksy, a Gboard rival - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/23/googles-play-store-is-giving-an-age-rating-finger-to-fleksy-a-gboard-rival/ <comment><USER2> Didn't install the app, but one look at the screenshot of the Fleksy in Playstore shows "earn coins as you type" feature. It also offers in app purchases, but didn't bother to install to check which.

I know many apps use coin system, but in many cases it's just a children manipulation.

<comment><USER3> I mean, it would be one thing if Google stated that as a reason. I really hate this in-app purchase model, and now being applied to something as stupid as a keyboard, something that can literally monitor all your data and send back your most common words to advertisers ... ugh.

I pre-ordered a Purism 5 from the next batch in anger a few weeks ago. I want off this Android/eyeProduct bullshit. I want full control of my mobile device again.

<comment><USER4> How would your ideal open-source smartphone ecosystem be structured?

Genuinely interested as I'm looking to explore this as a potential project myself with my team.

<comment><USER5> Flat subscription of $10 a month for the app store. Once a month, your phone tells the store what percentage of time you spend in apps from that store. Firefox has 40% of your time? They get $4.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't that encourage developers to create more addictive apps, add longer UI animations, and apply other tricks to increase usage time? Valuable apps that require only short interactions would certainly suffer under this scheme.

Just letting developers get paid without taking a 30 percent cut, or not banning open source apps for including a Patreon link [1] would be a great start.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268389)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use Gboard, and today it had a strange prompt on the bar above the keyboard: "Do you like typing German?".. I was curious and I pressed it, it lead to a prompt where there was text I could copy paste and I guess post on my social media, about how much I enjoy using Gboard...

So you fucking want me to advertise for you, Google? And for what reason? Does someone want their promotion/bonus and for that they have to reach x downloads?

In fact I'm going to go to the Play Store and give them a shitty review...

<comment><USER8> Windows apparently has the system dialog "how likely are you to recommend Windows 10 to a friend or colleague?" with a score from 1 to 5.

<comment><USER9> Since I don't really use Windows that often I cannot really judge how bad this is. Does it also link you to Facebook or Twitter to recommend it if you give it a 5 star rating? Internal surveys are something different from trying to trick people into recommending a product on Twitter.

<comment><USER10> No, it doesn't link to social media. It's just an internal survey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >At first glance a spokesman agreed with us that the situation looks odd.

Seems like someone messed up somewhere and is probably being resolved.

In all honesty though, no app with IAP (especially easy-to-access IAP or IAP that can't be locked by a parent) should get an E rating. Fleksy should get a higher age rating for this reason, not because of an emoji.

<comment><USER12> > IAP (especially easy-to-access IAP or IAP that can't be locked by a parent) > should get an E rating

I disagree. I think it's Google's job to provide parents with the tools to lock down IAPs for children. Once the phone is locked down, IAPs shouldn't matter. And the ratings would be useless to a parent if every app with IAPs was rated > E. They wouldn't know if the content is what is giving it the higher rating or just the IAPs.

<comment><USER13> Google does provide the means to lock down IAPs for children.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to be a big fan of Fleksy app before the creators went to pinterest and sold their app to some company. They new devs probably didn't know how to fix their previous bugs or work on the code itself. So they started adding new "features" , which was a toolbar for a keyboard app. Kept contacting them on fixing their error, but they just said we know it's there. Until i switched back to Gboard.

I would say, it's probably because they added something to that toolbar.

It's always like that for most apps, especially keyboard apps. A company abandon their app, then another company buy it from them and not know how to deal with the app. The app ends up with bloatware that no one asked for and then the app gets abandoned

<comment><USER15> > I would say, it's probably because they added something to that toolbar.

Nope, the article states otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a tangent, but is there a good keyboard app for Android that doesn't have emoji? I'm tired of hitting the emoji button accidentally and having emoji show up in autocomplete.

<comment><USER17> I was just thinking I should look into making one if there isn't one, seems like there would be market for a good, simple keyboard app.

<comment><USER18> what about anysoft keyboard? it might be a better idea to improve that since it's open source and it needs a bit of work.

I would switch over to it today if the swipe typing was better but its currently "in beta" and that's a bit of an understatement tbh. in my experience the predictions are wrong 80% of the time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So Google is selectively oppressing certain app developers by using the "Rules for thee, not for me" ideology.

Well, they've been doing it for years and that's why there's people in the US Government talking about anti-trust investigations... Hopefully something comes of it.

<comment><USER20> Gboard doesn't have in app purchases, the other one does. The rules are different because the apps are different.

<comment><USER21> Well in the article it clearly states that the age rating discrepancy between Gboard and Fleksy is due to the middle finger emoji.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On a related note, does anyone have recommendations for a Gboard alternative? I've disabled all the "pipe everything I type directly to HQ for analysis" things in Gboard but I'd prefer a non-Google alternative.

<comment><USER23> SwiftKey has been working wonders for me for years now.

<comment><USER24> I switched to the AOSP keyboard because SwiftKey kept getting worse the more it learned (it always became usable again after deleting everything).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Seems malicious on Google's part since middle finger is official unicode

<comment><USER26> I'm guessing it is more that the different teams do not talk to each other, and Google must not have a good, standard review process.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

<comment><USER27> Never attribute stupidity to that which is adequately explained by self- interest.

It's extremely convenient that Google had an oopsie that's entirely aligned with their own interests.

<comment><USER28> I mean, this could be as simple as internal app teams not going through the same form, or not getting re-reviewed automatically because it's assumed they'll speak up if they add anything objectionable. And Fleksy's point about being targeted for their increasing use count wouldn't require intentional targeting either - that could just be an automatic "trigger an extra review when user count grows enough".

Which doesn't make it acceptable, obviously. It just means that malice isn't required for unfairness - all it takes is Google fixing the dumb mistakes which hurt them faster than the ones that hurt others.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Letting your own apps bypass the review process sounds pretty anti-competitive to me...

<comment><USER28> Yeah, that was a weak example on my part. If they're actually skipping the normal review process, that's either malice or unreasonable negligence. And the Google Play followup of "your app is mature and should be PEGI 16" implies a human paid actual attention to this case, which makes it seem much less innocent.

I guess I can imagine some special cases that wouldn't be Google treating itself differently, like triggering reviews when a publisher's _largest_ app crosses a size threshold and assuming established publishers can trusted more generously. But honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Google just carved out an internal exception.

And the PEGI 16 request goes beyond "not the same treatment as Gboard" to "objectively incorrect review outcome", so regardless _something_ is fishy...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The crazy thing with Android and iOS software is that not only can Google and Apple reject your software now. They can kill it any time in the future. Forever.

It seems nobody talks about that.

As a software developer I would find it way too uncomfortable to build on a platform like that.

</comment><comment><USER30> Shades of "We do not support competitors' products."

Malign neglect -- build a regulatory system that is valid in principle, but it implemented in a complex enough way that it tends to fail often, which has a tendency to scare off consumers, and subject everyone except yourself to it. People will tend to choose your product to avoid the hassle.

You see it everywhere, from non-Pixel Android phones trying to keep with new OS versions, to Windows and MacOS API churn and "secret APIs".

</comment><comment><USER31> Curious: How effective would it be to separate only the app store from Google/Apple, when it comes to this rating problem? Perhaps not even the infrastructure --- I'd imagine even just having an independent group of reviewers / rule enforcers would make the situation much less absurd?

<comment><USER32> So you maybe want to nationalize app stores? Getting european app store, managed by EU. Then US store managed by US government...

It is also as bad, but on the other hand I think internet infrastructure like app stores and all the other stuff should also be treated like roads in the end.

But government sucks with managing money :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I think is most likely inconsistent reviewing. I've seen this with Apple, as well as with Google. The apps stores need to have very clear guidelines and well-defined appeal process, possibly with 3rd party arbitration.

</comment><comment><USER34> This rating is based on a questionnaire:

[https://support.google.com/googleplay/android- developer/answ...](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android- developer/answer/188189?hl=en)

<comment><USER35> Someone didn't read the article:

> Fleksy's team have done so over the years — and come up with the PEGI 3 > rating without issue. _But this month they found they were being issued the > questionnaire multiple times and then that their latest app update was > blocked without explanation_ — meaning they had to reach out to Play > Developer Support to ask what was going wrong.

> After some email back and forth with support staff they were told that the > app contained age inappropriate emoji content. Here's what Google wrote:

> > During review, we found that the content rating is not accurate for your > app… Content ratings are used to inform consumers, especially parents, of > potentially objectionable content that exists within an app.

> > For example, we found that your app contains content (e.g. emoji) that is > not appropriate for all ages. Please refer to the attached screenshot.

Google is apparently upset that the app contains a middle finger emoji. Which GBoard also contains. GBoard is rated 3+, not 12+/16+.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is pure anti-competitive and monopolistic action. This is another instance that needs to be noted down for the current investigation into Google, Facebook and others. Period.

</comment><comment><USER37> Let's not be distracted from the fact that the middle finger emoji actually exists.

<comment><USER12> Why don't you think it should exist?

<comment><USER38> It's universal sign language for "fuck you". Profanity is frowned upon.

<comment><USER12> I think Google should steer clear of being the morality police. It's up to people to use emojis (and words) responsibly depending on the context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> A question: why does a keyboard need a PEGI rating?

Should python 3.5 have a PEGI rating? How about vim?

<comment> kyle-rb Python 3.7 is rated E for Everyone by the ESRB

[https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/p/python-37/9nj46sx7x90p?act...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/p/python-37/9nj46sx7x90p?activetab=pivot:overviewtab)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I understand it's a difficult choice to leave the play store, but you're playing by their rules, their game and in their own field. They can do whatever they want because they're google.

</comment><comment><USER40> But, did anyone notice the totally irrelevant "get rich quick" kind of comments on the TechCrunch article? Aren't the comments there moderated?

<comment><USER41> No, those comments are everywhere on TechCrunch. There doesn't seem to be much, if any, comment moderation

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Does Slack have the same rating? It has its own emoji system, including the standard middle-finger.

</comment><comment><USER43> Way past time to ban app stores.</comment>


First 5 MVPs greenlighted - <AUTHOR> http://hnproposition.blogspot.nl/2013/02/first-5-mvps-green-lighted.html

<comment><USER3> This is awesome. There is, no doubt, going to be a lot of haters complaining about how hmexx is taking advantage of techies/the terms are unfair/don't do it/etc.

But the reality is he/she is putting money where his/her mouth is, and _making it happen_. To come up with something completely new like this takes guts, and even moreso to follow through. The fact that ~300 proposals were submitted is evidence that demand exists for such a program.

Also interesting is the fact that 4 out of the 5 participants selected are located outside of the United States. We'll see if geographic distance becomes an issue. I've long thought YC is missing out on a lot of talented developers who may not have the freedom to drop everything and move to Mountain View.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to the results!

<comment><USER4> Where did you find 300 proposal number? didn't see that in the blog.

<comment><USER3> [http://hnproposition.blogspot.nl/2013/01/0-unread- emails_23....](http://hnproposition.blogspot.nl/2013/01/0-unread- emails_23.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should apply for the upcoming YC batch with this project...that would be so meta.

<comment><USER6> Kickstarter's terms of use explicitly say you can't Kickstart a Kickstarter competitor on Kickstarter. I wonder if YC would accelerate another accelerator?

<comment><USER7> It sounds like some preposterous way to break the speed of light; we'll just accelerate the accelerator, and it's turtles all the way down.

On the one hand, it reduces YC's risk even further, by giving them a miniscule stake in a wide range of companies. But I don't think they would be content with helping the meta-accelerator; they'd want to be hands-on with every node on the tree. That's a lot of time investment with little capital investment, which is not really their bag.

The proposition generally seems less like an accelerator, and more like a small-scale VC fund. Less intensive, less structured, just a way to invest money in startups.

<comment><USER8> They'd have a front row seat when the companies in 'tier 2' eventually apply. After all YC is a lot more than just cash.

<comment><USER9> Yeah. They could use this sort of thing as a bye or something. It can help them see who is already doing good and interesting work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> see also:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694>

and later:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5039241>

</comment><comment><USER10> whilst I'm usually loathe to see comments such as this, I was interested in reading this and must say:

The post is completely unreadable on opera mobile, whether I send through desktop or mobile UA, and on default 2.3 browser. Guess I'll give it a read at work tomorrow.

<comment><USER11> I can confirm this, although this is Blogspot, so the author probably won't be able to do much about it.

Also, you are "loath", rather than "loathe".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's the reason for so much secrecy? Besides having no idea who is behind it, we now have no info about the selected companies :)

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure it's secrecy: it's investment on a smaller level and investing in smaller teams (4 out of the 5 are solo-founder).

Maybe that nobody got the time to do something "more professional" at the moment. What counts at the moment is that these solo founder got some recognition and a little boost thanks to the money.

That part seems to be doing fine. We'll see what comes next.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what you're talking about; what I mean is we don't know who hmexx or any of the founders is, not even a first name, location, or _anything_.

I'm not that paranoid, but if this was a completely imaginary enterprise, we wouldn't be able to tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Impressive -- I'm excited to watch this progress in the coming months; would love some form of regular updates.

</comment><comment><USER15> It would be nice to see the HN members step forward and substantiate this - <USER2> need to give away your idea.</comment>


Scientific Papers That Were Rejected Before Going on to Win a Nobel Prize (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/these-8-papers-were-rejected-before-going-on-to-win-the-nobel-prize <comment><USER2> Going through the reasons for these rejections, most seem perfectly reasonable, and few are complete rejections.

One was rejected simply because that journal had too large a backlog to handle new submissions. One journal didn't like the authors title and published it after the author agreed to change the title. There are a couple of cases where a journal said the topic wasn't really relevant to their journal, and the work then went on to get published in more relevant journal. In one case they said we like your work and think you're on to something, but your conclusion is too strongly worded given the data you presented.

In no case did the journal or reviewer state that they thought the paper or research was straight up wrong.

<comment><USER3> Very true. I think many that are not in the scientific community do not understand that almost all papers in top journals are given "revise and resubmit" status, so people can fix small to large issues before being reviewed again. This process makes the paper more understandable, not just to the reviewers, but to the community at large. It is not a perfect process, but definitely one that has improved writings as a whole.

<comment><USER4> I've never heard of a paper that was accepted without revisions after peer review. There's always _some_ (thoigh frequently many) requested changes, but never once have I seen three reviewers all sign off without having a single suggestion.

<comment><USER5> It seems almost inherent to the process. I don't read or write journal articles. But I'm sometimes asked to be a reviewer on a book proposal and I fairly frequently review docs of various types at work.

If I'm just one peripheral person on a long list I might read quickly through and say "Looks fine to me." But if I'm really reviewing something, I almost feel that I'm expected to at least find some nit-picks--as well as anything really substantial of course. It's pretty rare that I will be "No comments" on a first-pass review.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One they missed was Barry Marshall and Robin Warren's research on a bacterial cause of peptic ulcers [0]. Their paper was rejected from the Gastroenterological Society of Australia, who "rated it in the bottom 10% of those they received in 1983." They both became Nobel laureates in 2005.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> Do physicists really consider the editor saying "change the title" a rejection? If the only request I got from an editor was "change the title" I would be popping the champagne.

<comment><USER8> From what I gather there are essentially four outcomes to the review: accepted, accepted after minor modifications, rejected pending resubmission after substantial modifications, fully rejected.

Minor modifications shouldn't require a new full review cycle, maybe just the editor takes a look, or just some quick check with reviewer to see if they accept the change.

Rejecting pending resubmission is for larger changes which require a more thorough review, but the journal is still interested in publishing the paper. This might be a section that requires more explanation, for example more details on how samples were controlled for other factors.

Also as mentioned a full rejection doesn't automatically mean the paper is rubbish, it could just be the journal doesn't consider it a good fit or similar. It's not uncommon for a paper to go through multiple rejections before getting published.

At least that's my understanding based on a close friend who publishes papers, feel free to correct me.

<comment><USER9> You've pretty much got it, but a paper receiving either of the "accept" outcomes in the first round is extremely rare. I know of zero. Your third, "rejected pending resubmission after modifications" is the normal path for papers that go on to be accepted. Often this is called a "revise and resubmit" or R&R.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a materials scientist I have to vote for quasicrystals. On top of not receiving the Nobel prize, Dan Shechtman had to observe and decrypt the meaning of diffraction patterns that were so strange people thought his machine was malfunctioning.

Humans have no known way of producing quasicrystals in bulk, but amazingly we have found that meteorites (e.g. the Khatyrka) can have them. Something about traveling through deep space for millions of years...

Quasicrystals can be modeled as crystals in the N+1'th dimension.

Princeton mathematicians recently simulated a 1D crystal where the location of the atoms on the 1D grid was set to the first few tens of millions of prime numbers. The resulting diffraction pattern was quasi-crystalline...

<comment><USER11> Sorry for the off-topic note, but I would appreciate if you could comment on my recent poll here ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21187659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21187659)) and, if you know other MSE people on HN, please ping them, if possible. Thank you very much in advance!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good article but it seems to be copied near-verbatim from [1]. There is a tiny "H/T" at the bottom of the article.

Suggest that the link point to the original source.

[1] [https://www.authorea.com/users/8850/articles/117724-nope-8-r...](https://www.authorea.com/users/8850/articles/117724-nope-8-rejected- papers-that-won-the-nobel-prize)

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of something I recently saw on Netflix. In the documentary about physicist Abdus Salam, he sent Wolfgang Pauli a paper on parity violations. Pauli replied saying something like "find something better to do".

Later, two Chinese physicist went on to get the Nobel Prize for that same theory. Pauli later apologised.

[https://www.sps.ch/en/articles/milestones-in-physics/the- fal...](https://www.sps.ch/en/articles/milestones-in-physics/the-fall-of- parity-2/)

[https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81191195](https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81191195)

</comment><comment><USER14> I remember hearing that the original graphene paper was initially declined by Nature because the reviewers claimed that isolating a 2D material was impossible. I feel that's a more firm rejection than many of those listed here.

</comment><comment><USER15> As framed above the story is little more than make-you-feel-good if you get rejection. The data makes sense only in the following contexts:

      - How many accepted papers did win the Nobel Prize?
      - How many rejected papers did not win the Nobel prize?
      - How many rejected papers are utter batshit nonsense?

Other way to say it, what is the likelihood that a rejected paper is Nobel prize-worthy? ...

<comment><USER16> I read it as being about the incompetence of reviewers. Considering the dreck that does get published, rejecting Nobel-level work should be an enduring disgrace.

Edit: had forgotten about submission fees. Yes, those were real. $100 was a lot more then, particularly for a grad student. Competion from open-access journals has been so good that people are forgetting how terrible it was. But paywall journals are still very, very bad. IMO it is irresponsible to use one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > You might not have heard much about NMR spectroscopy, but it's responsible > for revealing details about the structure and dynamics of molecules - > something that's incredibly handy for chemists and biochemists.

Also it's the technology driving magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Leaving out 'nuclear' was just a marketing tactic to keep people from being afraid.

<comment><USER16> Yes, this comment floored me. Did they really not know that MRI used NMR?

I got to do an NMR experiment as an undergrad, a decade before MRI, and it seemed miraculous then. I remember reading a speculation that a 3D imaging machine ought to be possible (in IEEE Spectrum, back when it was often ground- breaking), and was astounded when five years later they had done it and were selling them. Still haven't had a scan, yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For those who are interested in a similar article for economics, I can recommend this one from the Journal of Economic Perspectives, which is freely available online:

[https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.8.1.165](https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.8.1.165) (PDF)

</comment><comment><USER19> To be honest, if I was a reviewer, and somebody sent the first NMR paper to me, I'd reject it. It was a truly crazy idea that came out of war tech. Even when I did NMR in the 90s, it was still pretty crazy: you have a supercooled superconducting magnet and put a sample into a spinning buffer of air, then bombard it with radiowaves and listen for the echo. The echo, if carefully deconvolved, provides unbelievably fine details on the electrically shielded nuclear environment.

Did I mention it was a 23T superconducting supercooled magnet, where you inject charge (electrons) and they swirl around without neglible resistance for months at a time?

<comment><USER20> 23T is a big magnet. Were you at the high field lab in Tallahassee?

<comment><USER19> Ah, no, I was just quoting the field strength of what used to be the largest magnet. Personally I used a 600MHz. It's still weird to have your head below a massive magnet and have to tune analog electronics for impedence matching because there aren't any shielding techs for digital electronics that can survive the field strength.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If a scientific paper that may result in winning a Nobel prize never gets rejected, the criteria for acceptance is too lenient.

If a scientific paper that contains rubbish never gets accepted, the criteria for acceptance is too strict.

<comment><USER22> How about, just shoddy? Don't need to assume perfect reviewers, just confused/ignorant/bad ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Bear in mind that a lot of papers are initially rejected by journals simply because the journals want another $99 submission fee.

<comment><USER24> Wow is that a thing? I have submitted to many journals and none wanted fees before acceptance.

<comment><USER2> There is whole cottage industry of journals that will publish basically anything in exchange for a submission fee, being kept alive by desperate PhD students who need a couple of more papers published so they can just get their degree and get out of there.

<comment><USER23> When it happened to me it was a "reputable" high-impact neuroscience journal, not Cross-stitch Monthly.

<comment><USER2> Was it for open access? Lots of journals charge a fee if you want to make your paper generally available.

<comment><USER24> Yes, but they charge after acceptance, not before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> That's the problem when hiring reviewers straight from Wikipedia or Stackoverflow. The horizon is very low then.

</comment><comment><USER26> Are sensationalistic science sites allowed?</comment>


Incubator Summit: Which Startup Incubator / Accelerator is Right for You? - <AUTHOR> http://erik.randomdrivel.com/articles/31/incubator-summit-which-startup-incubator-accelerator-is-right-for-you/

<comment><AUTHOR> take-away quote:

       Dave McClure modified Paul Grahams slogan, 'Make something people want'
       to be 'Make something people want… to pay for'</comment>


Ask HN: Is YC still doing open office hours? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Reply to my email about the old link: We won't be updating that site (in fact we're redirecting it shortly).

But we'll be posting open office hours on our events page: [https://www.facebook.com/pg/YCombinator/events/](https://www.facebook.com/pg/YCombinator/events/).

<comment><AUTHOR> that's great! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.ycopenofficehours.com/](http://www.ycopenofficehours.com/)

Looks alive...

<comment><USER2> Until you click on the button and it says "the deadline to apply has passed". It looks like it was for 2016.

<comment><USER3> My mistake, sorry..</comment></comment></comment>


Arc Language - <AUTHOR> http://arclanguage.org/ <comment><USER2> Arc is my first real exposure to a Lisp. I've been piecemeal contributing to the Anarki fork[0] as self-education.

A lot of things about it frustrate me. Mostly the global namespace and mutability (and Anarki specific issues with Racket interop.) I know that's a fundamental part of the design and culture, but I think it holds the potential of the language back considerably.

[0][https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki](https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki)

</comment><comment><USER3> Who uses it, and for what? Aside from the HN site.

<comment><USER2> I vaguely remember claims from people using it to automate things for internal software.

As far as public facing web apps like HN - I think the only things out there are clones of HN using the same codebase. The truth is the way the application and news code are designed makes it difficult to implement much besides a HN clone or something very nuch like it, without much suffering. No one is building a commerce app out of it or anything.

</comment></comment><comment> August-Garcia What an unholy crime against god.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for that useful, informative, and actionable comment.

Would you care to comment further? I, for one, would be interested in hearing a complete, coherent, and cogent elaboration.

TIA.

<comment> August-Garcia > Arc is designed for exploratory programming

That is basically the definition of "crime against god," which, by the way, is different from "bad."

<comment><USER5> Crimes against god often involve offending god by trying to be godlike.

<comment> August-Garcia Which would indicate that if a programming language is a "crime against god," then it is "godlike" or trying to do the impossible which generally means "good" or in this case "experimental."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Report from the Famo.us Private Beta - <AUTHOR> http://differential.io/blog/report-from-the-famous-private-beta

<comment><USER2> nice work, ry</comment>


Show HN: Ingwe - SMS/Email scheduling API - <AUTHOR> https://ingwe.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, I would like to show a product I am currently working on : Ingwe.

On Ingwe you can store templates, insert data into templates while sending email or SMS( by APIs and variables ).

I would love some feedback on the landing page and the product in general.</comment>


Why did prehistoric Americans fashion the enigmatic bannerstones? - <AUTHOR> https://www.archaeology.org/issues/262-1707/features/5626-native-american-bannerstones <comment><USER2> Arrghh... why can't archeologists ever just say "we don't know what this was used for" instead of claiming "ritual purposes" for everything they don't understand?

Ancient peoples were intensely practical, and most of the stuff they made had definite utility. As in this case. Glad someone took the time and trouble to understand what they were used for. I hope the idiots who speculated (with no evidence) that they were purely ornamental feel utterly ashamed of themselves.

Archeology should impose a rule that if a digger claims an object was made for "ritual purposes" then they should have to specify the ritual and the part that the object plays in it.

/rant

<comment><USER3> "Ritual" is jargon. Any archaeologist would understand that referring to something as "ritual" means "we can't explain what it is used for." It's unfortunate that the jargon is extremely easy to understand for non- practitioners, but that's not entirely unusual [1].

It should be noted that "ritual" doesn't exactly mean "we know nothing." It presupposes that there was a reason for something to exist, but often we don't have any insight into what that reason may be.

[1] The case that shows up in my work, writing compiler optimizations, is "global" which refers to optimizations that apply to the entire function as opposed to basic blocks or regions at a time.

<comment><USER2> Would it kill the profession to use "unknown purposes" instead of "ritual purposes"?

The rant comes from my years as a re-enactor, when we were trying to faithfully re-create historical finds and explain them to the public. "ritual purposes" was a huge problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because it was still the stone age and they wanted to be first to market without having to wait for bronze age technology to make it out of the lab.</comment>


Ask HN Is Verizon blocking access to Hacker News? - <AUTHOR>

I'm scratching my head at this one. I'm at home. I have Verizon DSL and today I can't get to Hacker News through my DSL connection. I can get to www.ycombinator.com, but the connection times out on news.ycombinator.com. If I VPN to work (on the same machine) then I can get news.ycombinator no problem.<p>Does anyone else experience this or something similar with Verizon? <comment><USER2> Try the ip address directly? news.ycombinator.com -> 184.108.40.206. Could be a dns resolution problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. I'll try it when I get back home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm on FiOS and HN was down for me for the last hour or so, not sure if it's related. That wasn't a DNS error (I use GOOG DNS), just a connection issue.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm on Time Warner Roadrunner service and HN was down for the past hour or so for me too

</comment><comment><USER5> Same problem here in the Philippines a while back.</comment>


The Very First Animal Appeared Amid an Explosion of DNA - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/science/first-animal-genes-evolution.html <comment><USER2> "Humans and sharks, for example, make hemoglobin using nearly identical genes. That means hemoglobin genes were already present in their common ancestor."

Um. If this gene was the result of a mutation, isn't it possible, at least in theory, that mutation happened more than once? At two different times? At two different branches on the species tree?

Not really my area but there seems to be an assumption that species development (dare I say evolution) was linear, with humans being the ultimate achievement in that process. But doesn't the fact that genes mutate - sometimes triggered by viruses - imply the process was not at all linear?

<comment><USER3> > Um. If this gene was the result of a mutation, isn't it possible, at least > in theory, that mutation happened more than once? At two different times? At > two different branches on the species tree?

Genes are long sequences of information. You could easily have quite different genes doing similar things, but if you have the very same gene (sans minor differences) it's just too unlikely to have originated completely independently twice.

The closest thing I can imagine to your scenario is where, because of shared ancestry, 2 species have a certain gene, and then some minor mutation hits both of them, and now they both have some other gene. I suppose that's possible. But they already shared the original gene to start with.

<comment><USER2> > " it's just too unlikely to have originated completely independently twice."

Unlikely, but not absolutely impossible. Correct?

Editorial: This is where Science / science loses me. It makes absolute statements that aren't in fact truly absolute.

The point being, __if__ there was a chance identical mutation that changes (a lot?) of things. Truth be told, life coming into being has to be a couple orders of magnitude coincidental than some gene mutation. In that context, "too unlikely" starts to feel much less so, yes?

<comment><USER4> > Unlikely, but not absolutely impossible. Correct?

Correct but irrelevant. Winning the Powerball 100 times in a row is also not absolutely impossible. Nonetheless, it won't happen.

<comment><USER5> Yep, the aura of statistics can blind us. It will most probably happen if enough numbers of people keep trying again and again for the next ten millions of years. Would be not much different as and asteroid falling on earth once an killing most animals.

<comment><USER4> An asteroid wiping us out is _vastly_ more likely than someone winning the Powerball 100 times in a row.

<comment><USER5> Is just an example of how unprobable things can still happen

Think about winning the spermatozoan race 2 millions of times in a row, as member of the most intelligent species known in the universe, one among millions of different forms of life, after surviving five consecutive massive extinctions that wipped the 90% of the life in the planet each time.

Statistically speaking, we can't be real.

<comment><USER4> Flip a coin 100 times. The odds of getting the _exact_ sequence of heads and tails that you got are about 0.00000000000000000000000000001% (give or take a zero). And yet, it happened!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Of all the genes in the human genome, 55 percent were already present in the first animal."

AFAIK, genes contain base pairs, and a base pair encodes 2 bits of information (computer engineering perspective here ;))

When they say 55% is the same, do they mean: 55% of genes have a similar structure and amount of basepairs, or do they mean: exact same values for the base pairs bit for bit?

Like for example gene rs4778138 has an effect on eye color (handwavy first search result of snpedia for the example here). So if in two humans, this rs4778138 has a different value, do they consider both humans to have the same gene (because it is one that encodes eye color to some value in each case), or a different gene (because it encodes a different eye color)?

<comment><USER7> Generally, let's say that a gene is a stretch of DNA that encodes some functional product. That product might be a protein, or an RNA that performs some function. Think of these stretches of DNA as distinct entities that can be recognized by start and stop signals.

If you say that 55% of the genes in the human genome were already present in the first animal, then you're saying that stretches of DNA which bear a significant similarity to 55% of ours were found in the first animal.

<comment><USER8> It's also far less profound than you might think as cells are extremely complex and don't have that much wiggle room. They hit a local optima after hundred of millions of years so it's a really good one.

Not just copying DNA, but also a cell wall and nucleus etc. On top of that multi cellular organisms are on the evolutionary slow lane, they have smaller populations, take longer to reproduce, and don't simply hot patch any random bit of DNA they come across.

<comment><USER9> This is a great comment and I agree almost completely. However, I think it's very profound— it says something about the incredible power and versatility of cellular building blocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here are some related papers that speak to timeframes and adaptations related to these early animal genetics.

Metazoa (760mya) - "animal multicellularity (gene regulation, signalling, cell adhesion, and cell cycle)"

Eumetazoa (760-680mya) - "Characteristics of eumetazoans include true tissues organized into germ layers, the presence of neurons, and an embryo that goes through a gastrula stage." [1]

Planulozoa (680mya) - "A 2004 study investigated the relationships between biradial and bilateral animals in evolution. If biradial is the link between radial and bilateral, then would seem to suggest that bilateralism occurred before cephalization. Called the Planulozoa Hypothesis, the authors suggests that ctenophora are the sister clade of bilateralians, and that all three of the groups – cnidarians, ctenophora and bilaterals – are the descendents of a single bilateral ancestor." [2,3]

Bilateria (650mya) - "A Hox system is thought to have arisen (indicated by a red bar) after the divergence of the cnidarians from the common ancestor that gave rise to bilaterian animals (ecdysozoans, lophotrophozoans and deuterostomes)." [4]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eumetazoa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eumetazoa) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planulozoa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planulozoa) [3] [http://biologicalexceptions.blogspot.com/2015/02/mirroring-e...](http://biologicalexceptions.blogspot.com/2015/02/mirroring- evolution.html) [4] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098220...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982206017787) [5] [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3003/cc4844fe878fbe00167da6...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3003/cc4844fe878fbe00167da6d8206d59a67f3c.pdf) \- list of gene adaptations by LCA.

</comment><comment><USER11> "The new genes also proved to be remarkably durable. Of all the genes in the human genome, 55 percent were already present in the first animal."

I read a line like that and I can't help but think of a Prometheus-style situation with the Earth and its species.

<comment><USER12> I'm not so sure. You build on a foundation, any foundation, you quickly can't live without it. Not clear that a different initial foundation wouldn't also have been frozen forever. Don't have to imagine 'intelligent design'

<comment><USER13> Your comment only unsettles me and makes me think we're carrying around the COBOL of genes...

<comment><USER12> Hey the Internet rests on old POP servers etc. Bad ideas from the 90's, compounded to the Nth degree. Its turtles all the way down.

<comment><USER14> > Hey the Internet rests on old POP servers etc. Bad ideas from the 90's

POP, even POP3, is from the 1980s. And I'd actually newer than a lot of the stuff the internet rests on.

Ideas, bad or otherwise, from the 1990s, aren't comparatively new,.as much as "the 90s" seems to often be used as a generic term for ancient history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I took this MOOC course, called Model thinking. One thing that blew me away was Cellular Automata. How complexity can arise from simple rules e.g Yes or No. From then I knew how simply evolution or 'creation' happened.

</comment><comment><USER16> Question for the serious: is this first animal not God?

<comment><USER17> Not in the traditional "uncaused cause" sense, but I guess you could spin it that way. Probably a better analogue would be Adam and Eve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> À assez

</comment><comment><USER19> What's the difference between an evolutionary biologist and a philosopher? There seems to be a lot of conjecture and theories here presented as fact...

<comment><USER20> What conjecture?

This is empirical. The researchers are observing the DNA from different orders of life (based on their extant species) and comparing them. They report their quantitative similarity.

What about that is not factual?

<comment><USER21> The cause?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone with an open mind should read Darwin's Doubt by Stephen Meyer. He looks at possible explanations for the Cambrian Explosion and concludes that Intelligent Design is the best explanation. Evolutionary Biologist Jerry Coyne has written a response to it.

[https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin- Intell...](https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin- Intelligent/dp/0062071483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525790601&sr=8-1&keywords=darwin%27s+doubt)

[https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/12/evolution-creation- proof-o...](https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/12/evolution-creation-proof- opinions-darwin_0212_jerry_coyne.html#6db6c86a3500)

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately, "intelligent design" is not a scientific theory. It doesn't provide any method for categorizing life on Earth (e.g. what actually makes two kinds distinct), and it makes no concrete, specific scientific claims about how and why different forms of life are found in different parts of the world (here's an easy one: why do islands and other isolated regions have such unique life?). The list goes on.

It's also disingenuous to ask people "to have an open mind" when the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence and consensus strongly supports evolution. There needs to be a damn good reason to bother looking at a lonely contrarian argument, especially as it has likely been debunked already.

<comment><USER24> This kind of meta-argument ("not a theory") rubs me the wrong way. It's a concrete claim about what happened (a mind much like ours but smarter made decisions about what stuff there should be, and then assembed it.) It can't be dispoven because no matter what you find you could say that it was just designed that way, but neither can evolution strictly speaking because there's the anthropic principle to reckon with (no matter how unlikely we were to arise, here we are. There's a nonzero chance of it all just tunneling together, and it's a big universe - if you could somehow show that our existence depended on a one in 10^9999999 chance, we'd just say that it happened.)

Still, I feel that couching Christian or other religious faith in "theory" language is not completely honest. I don't think anyone really supports intelligent design, as opposed to Jesus speaking the world into being design.

<comment><USER23> It's not really a meta-argument. It's just saying the basic requirements. If you are challenging a strongly supported scientific theory but have no alternative theory, then you are going to have a hard time.

Even a religious theory like intelligent design or creationism should produce abundant physical evidence that could be assessed. And they should attempt to integrate with all neighboring scientific fields of study (geology, anthropology, genetics, etc). But this doesn't seem to happen.

<comment><USER24> Intelligent design is not specific enough. The equivalent would be saying "random processes" instead of mutation+selection+heredity. Still, with a specific theory of evolution that's supported we can climb back up and say that "random processes" are probably what happened - not because it makes predictions, but because it is a trait of a theory that does make predictions.

Likewise for ID, which is a property shared between many theories which actually do make predictions. Successful predictions? Maybe not but they do count as hypotheses. (building on the point that nobody in practice actually supports ID, but instead supports a more specific genesis story that happens to fall under ID.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ebola researcher turns to crowdfunding for help in finding cure - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdrise.com/CureEbola

<comment><AUTHOR> Dr. Saphire's faculty page:

[http://www.scripps.edu/research/faculty/saphire](http://www.scripps.edu/research/faculty/saphire)

More on the campaign, including video of Dr. Saphire explaining the need:

[http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/oct/11/ebola-ollman- saph...](http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/oct/11/ebola-ollman-saphire- crowdrise-scripps/)</comment>


Verizon announces plans to install a download-tracking app on its Android phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/first-horseman-privacy-apocalypse-has-already-arrived-verizon-announces-plans <comment><USER2> Between the Google play store, Android's general insecurity, and now cell carriers actively pushing spyware, what alternatives exist?

And please don't say iOS. It's closed source, which means we really don't know what's going on under the hood. We may trust it today, but one secret court order + an overnight update is all we need to lose everything with iOS. Apple execs may not even be made aware of such an update if the order was delivered to the engineers directly.

What are my options such that I'll actually feel comfortable when I sleep at night? My phone knows everything. All my emails (which can typically be used to get into everything else), all my contacts, all my calendar events, where I go every day, and I'm even paranoid that it records all of my conversations. This isn't schizophrenia, we know that devices record people's conversations without their knowledge. A phone doing the same is just one step away.

So what can I do? How can I get some sanity and security around my mobile life?

Would be a great step to have a phone that:

\+ Fully open source. (Sorry Android you don't count) \+ Hardware switch for mic \+ Hardware switch for location services

Or at least a phone that is beginning to move in that direction? Should I just stop using my phone?

<comment><USER3> "Between the Google play store, Android's general insecurity, and now cell carriers actively pushing spyware, what alternatives exist?"

There are no alternatives until we have an open baseband.

Every objection you state in your comment about android (and iOS) is dwarfed by the objections you would have if you truly understood the _two other general purpose computers inside your phone that you have no control over_ \- namely, your baseband processor and your SIM card.

Your carrier _owns you_. Your carrier owns you more deeply than any spyware author ever dreamed of owning you.

Your carrier can upload and run arbitrary java applets onto your SIM card without you ever knowing. Your carrier, depending on which SOC you have and how it is implemented, can access your CPU and memory _directly_. As in, read the passphrase of your cutesy encrypted chat app _as you key it in_.

We cannot begin to speak of a secure mobile platform or any kind of open source mobile platform until we have an open baseband and control our own SIM cards. We are very, very far away from this.

In the meantime, you have two choices:

1\. treat your mobile device as fully compromised and behave accordingly. This is what I do.

2\. Buy a non-cellular mobile device (for instance, the old "samsung galaxy player" devices that have no mobile chipset or SIM card) and insert a cellular modem into the USB port and segregate that function there, and use VOIP software. This actually sounds sort-of workable except for one interesting problem - in addition to handling cellular communications, the baseband _also handles voice quality_ like noise cancellation and so on that also needs to be done in real-time and not interrupted by userland events ... and so your actual voice quality will drop as a result of using VOIP on a handset.

<comment><USER4> I just use my cell phone as a phone... just a phone (it's not a smartphone); the rest I do on a device that isn't networked. The convenience of a smartphone comes with far too many hooks in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> The tower pings are for many users just as damaging as all the paranoid fantasies people protect themselves from.

Like how many people with legitimate concerns about baseband tampering can safely carry a dumb phone?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "UPDATE: We have received additional information from Verizon and based on that information we are withdrawing this post while we investigate further. Here is the statement from Kelly Crummey, Director of Corporate Communications of Verizon: 'As we said earlier this week, we are testing AppFlash to make app discovery better for consumers. The test is on a single phone – LG K20 V – and you have to opt-in to use the app. Or, you can easily disable the app. Nobody is required to use it. Verizon is committed to your privacy. Visit www.verizon.com/about/privacy to view our Privacy Policy.'"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Verizon's plan when buying AOL [0] wasn't to become a media company, but to become a leader in ad tech. The way to lead in ad tech is to control data. Technology alone is not a moat.

Verizon has made several attempts at unlocking the carrier data including the short-lived header injection [1]. Phone data is the holy grail of data (location, voice conversations, web browsing, apps, address, and potentially purchase history in the future) etc. Lets see if they have a winner this time

[0] [http://fortune.com/2015/06/24/verizon-gains- aol/](http://fortune.com/2015/06/24/verizon-gains-aol/)

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x- uidh](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh)

<comment><USER7> Yep. The reason why we are in this mess and attack on Internet privacy is because of Ad Tech.

We need to get developers to stop supporting ad tech. The stigma of working in ad tech needs to result in enough stink on one's employment history that it's not worth the hassle.

<comment><USER8> Stigmatizing one's employment history only impacts people who are trying to switch from advertising to a different industry. This means it has the effect of locking employees into staying in advertising.

I understand that the logic goes that people will avoid going into advertising in the first place if it limits their employment choices, but that assumes there isn't enough work to stay in advertising. If advertising is already a profitable career path, switching industries _later_ is not a significant consideration _now_ , and your proposal actually makes it easier for advertisers to hold onto talent.

We should be encouraging people to get out of advertising, not stigmatizing it.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps you're right - though Flash developers had to adjust.

Ad tech really needs to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Verizon is the only cell company that has coverage in my home town in central Massachusetts. Thus I have used them all my life.

I recently had my first "positive" customer service with experience with Verizon switching to their unlimited plan. My bill dropped significantly. ($120 base -> $80 but really $200 -> $80 because I always go over on data)

I just noticed that I have a "phone upgrade" waiting as well. I am an Android dev and typically just buy unlocked phones when I need them and switch SIM cards. This sort of shit is why. Even as it is, Verizon branded phones are filled with crapware you can't delete. It sucks knowing that thru my monthly bill that I am subsidizing a "phone upgrade" program that I am never going to take advantage of due to the way Verizon molests Android before giving you the phone.

<comment><USER10> Surely they are going to be loading it using Carrier Configuration tied to the sim card... As soon as you put a verizon sim card into your unlocked non verizon phone it installed a bunch of helper apps.

[https://source.android.com/devices/tech/config/carrier.html](https://source.android.com/devices/tech/config/carrier.html)

<comment><USER9> Very interesting, thanks for pointing out. As far as I can tell nothing was installed by Verizon on my most recent phone. I was using it as a dev device before using at as my primary phone, so I was pretty aware of what was installed on it. This was over a year ago and I think I started with a 5.X version of Android. Will have to see what happens next time I switch phones... welp.

<comment><USER11> Because of these kinds of shenanigans, I'm seriously thinking about an iPhone for my next phone.

If Verizon did all this stuff on an opt-in basis, I'd have no problem with it. If it were opt-out, I'd be grumpy, but would probably deal with it. When it's required, I'm going to be looking for alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not trying to be an Apple fanboy here, but at least apple can generate revenue without resorting to something this low.

Guess they gotta make sure Mr. McAdam can earn his $18,000,000 check.

<comment><USER13> What does apple have to do with this?

<comment><USER14> They fought hard to create a platform where this type of thing doesn't/can't happen.

<comment><USER13> IMO, it is very ignorant to think they are not getting the data from apple. They just have the ability to openly do it on their own with android.

<comment><USER15> If you can demonstrate that, you could use that knowledge to make a ton of money in various ways.

If you can't, bluntly, you're blowing smoke.

Which is it?

<comment><USER14> The FBI paid $1 million to "get the data from apple", and that was a phone that was several generations of hardware and software security updates old. If you have a magical iPhone exploit, there are people who will pay you a _lot_ of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Disclaimer: I own Tucows shares.

Ting, a MVNO and ISP, views customer privacy as an important value.

While Ting may not be able to prevent their upstream mobile providers from bundling such an app, everything I've seen from the company would lead me to believe that Ting would fight it as best it can on principle.

[https://ting.com/blog/congress-votes-repeal-broadband- privac...](https://ting.com/blog/congress-votes-repeal-broadband-privacy- rules/)

Also, Ting voice and SMS roam on the Verizon network. Less expensive, too.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this really that different from Verizon phones having Google services enabled by default (if that's even true -- I don't use Verizon). Why is Verizon spying on you any worse, or better than Google or Facebook?

No one should spy on you. Period.

<comment><USER18> The reason why I'm okay with Google, but not Verizon spying on me is because I pay Verizon but I don't pay Google. Verizon shouldn't have to sell my data for more money because they already charge money for their service. If their service is too expensive then Verizon can charge more money. However Google gives me services for free so I expect they'll sell my data to other companies.

<comment><USER11> I actually feel like I'm getting something in return for letting Google index my personal data. I also trust Google far, far more than any ISP (wired or wireless) that I have used.

<comment><USER19> I also have faith that Google won't accidentally expose my data to the entire internet - or at least, they'll only fall to vulnerabilities that affect everyone.

Verizon's ethics aside, I have no real trust in their competence to keep data to themselves. I've dealt with their website, I've read the stories of people getting their accounts hijacked because Verizon can't handle verification right, and all the rest. I don't want a side channel to track my downloads, location, and god knows what else because I expect it'll be compromised _far_ faster.

<comment><USER11> That, and the telcos have a history of being very helpful to the government. I'm thinking about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A).

Google seems to do a better job protecting their network and defending user security.

<comment><USER19> Another good point. Even assuming that Google has lots of government ties and no real respect for privacy, I still don't expect them to roll over with no discretion whatsoever. I pretty much expect Verizon to do like AT&T and surrender all their user data unprompted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The link says this is related to the repeal of the FCC ruling, I fail to see that connection, however. What in the repealed rules prevented them from installing spyware on your phone? They already seemed to have the ability to do that.

<comment><USER21> They're just stating correlation, not causation.

<comment><USER20> Gotcha. I wish at some point we could get to the point where I actually can uninstall things on the things I buy :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> for now, i am nice and cozy in my iOS walled garden. The advantages of doing business with hardware companies is that it's much more clear that i'm paying them scads of money for a handset, instead of any other financial transaction.

<comment><USER23> surprise surprise. apple also is an advertising company.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT205223)

<comment><USER24> Apple has an advertising service, yes. But Apple's revenue primarily comes from hardware. Apple is ergo, a "hardware company" that has additional services. Whereas over 90% of Google's revenue comes from ads, Google is an "advertising company" that also sometimes makes software. (Microsoft, by this definition, is a "software company".)

This is key because companies are going to make decisions based on what keeps them in business. Apple would place it's hardware sales over it's ad business in a heartbeat, whereas Google would abandon Android before it would give up on ads, because that's it's entire business.

My hope is that companies that don't place advertising as a core part of their business can be convinced that there is a market in privacy-oriented products, and that competing on advertising isn't worth it.

<comment><USER23> the executive driving ad revenue has the same problems and opportunities as the people driving ad revenue at Google or Facebook.

convince yourself all you want of your fantasy, in the end each business unit has their own rules. and jobs is not the anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Aren't their protections in place for advertising and children? Parents buy phones for their children, so will parents be able to turn this off for them? Verizon has NO business tracking children.

<comment><USER23> they will fix it just like everyone else. see Facebook. just add a "must be 18" to the eula nobody ever read. and then blame the parents if you did track kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Spyware on my google phone! Why I never!

</comment><comment><USER27> Googlers of hacker news: stop allowing this.

<comment><USER28> Google lobbied against the FTC rule change that blocked this under Obama, so I think it's far past time we believe them to be acting benevolently on our behalf. It's sad how things have evolved and how many smart, talented people have been swept up in this. But we have to organize and act outside the context of corporate appeals if we want to resist this kind of stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> When people say it's no big deal that Android is hard fot the user to compile, control, and modify, remember this.

<comment><USER30> Ironically, this is mainly happening because Android is so "open" (to carriers and OEMs). Android's openness was never intended to be for _users_ (if we're talking licenses and such, not feature-wise, which is just a design decision Google makes, like whether or not to have more advanced camera menus, and so on).

It's hard to say whether Google would sell everyone's Android's data anyway, if it had 100% control over Android, but I imagine it wouldn't let carriers or OEMs add whatever tracking apps they wanted on the devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I rang up Verizon Wireless this morning and asked to speak with a supervisor. I use a Google Pixel. I told the woman that came on the line my fear of AppFlash not only ruining the security of my mobile phone, but molesting the beauty that is pure Google Android.

At first the lady was perturbed that I called, but after calmly explaining to her what was at stake, she actually seemed to agree with me it was a problem. I pray she gets to keep her job, considering she agreed with me on a recorded line.

The takeaway from her is that Verizon does not plan on soiling Google Pixel devices due to their deal with Google to keep the ecosystem clean and allow Google alone to push software updates to the Pixel line. I'm praying this is the real story and I won't come to learn my phone has been infected with spyware.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is this truly just an app or is it functionality tied to base OS configuration? If its the former, I should be able to uninstall via root like all the other bloatware crap, correct?

<comment><USER33> If it is the former, don't forget that having a rooted phone likely puts you in the minority. Most people don't have the patience or confidence in their technical abilities to root their phones.

<comment><USER34> There is also the fact that the Verizon version of the Pixel is not rootable as they locked down the bootloader.

<comment><USER35> Same with the Galaxy S7.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can anyone speculate what will happen if I'm using an unlocked Google device (Nexus 5X) on Verizon? Will the new app be force-installed somehow? And can it be removed?

<comment> Paul-ish Someone else said elsewhere*

>Surely they are going to be loading it using Carrier Configuration tied to the sim card... As soon as you put a verizon sim card into your unlocked non verizon phone it installed a bunch of helper apps.

>[https://source.android.com/devices/tech/config/carrier.html](https://source.android.com/devices/tech/config/carrier.html)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14004304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14004304)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> UPDATED:

[http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/eff-withdraws- veriz...](http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/eff-withdraws-verizon- spyware-claims/ar-BBz7Qmh)

</comment><comment><USER37> Increasingly in the U.K. I've noticed it's significantly cheaper to buy an unlocked phone and get a SIM only plan. Surely it's a bad idea for networks to make their own phone even less attractive?

</comment><comment><USER38> Well at least they're up front about it instead of hiding it behind a terms of service or whatever. Doesn't make it right though.

</comment><comment><USER39> They probably won't now ;)

</comment><comment><USER40> Can you hear me now? - Yes.</comment>


Vector Meshes - <AUTHOR> http://upcoder.com/13/vector-meshes

<comment><USER2> This is a good example of why I despise the term 'vector' for discussing dynamically sized containers. In the context of 3D modeling, 'vector' already carries the mathematical meaning. If someone said "vector meshes", I'd assume they were talking about meshes described by vectors. AKA... meshes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I guess I should have called this something like 'dynamic meshes in the std::vector style'..</comment></comment>


FoxyProxy - <AUTHOR> http://getfoxyproxy.org/configuring.html <comment><USER2> This is a great piece of software. I used to work for a company that blocked sites like YouTube. This was extremely frustrating, since many of the software websites I'd visit would embed relevant YouTube clips or tech talks. I was able to use FoxyProxy to tunnel any requests to YouTube.com to my home network. This meant that the blog post was fetched over the work network and the embedded YouTube clip was fetched over my home network. It all worked very well.</comment>


Ask HN: Self-taught devs, what are the best cheap resources for learning webdev? - <AUTHOR> My son would like to learn web development on his own, part-time after work.  His goal is to get an entry level job within a year.  He's currently working as a computer / electrical tech at an industrial fan company and doesn't have a degree or desire to go to college.
I'm a web developer and can easily google various resources but I'm looking for opinions from people who have actually done it and which resources turned out to be the best for them.
Ideally it would be a progression of HTML/CSS => Javascript => React <comment><USER2> Although it's not directly related to webdev, I highly, highly recommend the Coursera course Learning How to Learn as a starting point: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to- learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)

For the computer side of things, I highly recommend Harvard's CS50, which is completely free, for an introduction to computer science [0]. It has a great subreddit [1] and is a fantastic resource. MIT also offers a great pair of free introductory classes on edx. [2]

FreeCodeCamp is an interactive online program that does that exact progression (HTML/CSS => Javascript => React). Here's a link to the curriculum: [https://learn.freecodecamp.org/](https://learn.freecodecamp.org/). It also has a wide support system (chats, subreddit, etc), and it's also completely free. I never finished the last few projects, but the rest of it taught me a tremendous amount.

There are _so_ many variables and _so_ much luck involved that there is no guaranteed path, but these are two great resources to get started. These were some of the resources I used to transition from no-CS (disclaimer: with a physics degree but zero programming experience) to a programming job at a startup. I've since continued learning through online and in-person classes and joined a large tech company.

Happy to answer any questions about these resources. Given how many variables there are, I hesitate to use my own experience as an example, but I'm happy to give back and pass on any knowledge I can.

[0]: [https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-introduction-computer- scien...](https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-introduction-computer-science- harvardx-cs50x)

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/cs50/](https://www.reddit.com/r/cs50/)

[2]: [https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-computer- science-...](https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-computer-science-and- programming-using-python)

<comment><USER3> I second this as well

I would do CS50 and doing FreeCodeCamp in parallel. This way he builds a light web foundation, and have a solid CS foundational base to work through other courses.

Other good courses are found through udemy, like Colt Steel. Another good one I recommend is watchandcode.com, for basic foundational programming principles

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd recommend getting familiar with MDN: Web technology for developers. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web)

There's a textbook worth of knowledge on HTML, CSS, JS - the foundation of web development. I think it'd make a good reference, in addition to a more guided approach (books/courses).

</comment><comment><USER5> LambdaSchool [https://lambdaschool.com/apply/](https://lambdaschool.com/apply/)

My advice is if lambdaschool cant be done in his schedule then do a crash course in practical data science from CMU instead.

[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~112/schedule.html](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~112/schedule.html) click on each topic, short youtube lecture for intro to Python3. Homework is self contained with tests.

[http://www.datasciencecourse.org/lectures/](http://www.datasciencecourse.org/lectures/) same school, lectures also open, a crash course in manipulating APIs and data to do analysis.

If he actually does the homework assignments he can easily go on any freelancer site and start knocking off small jobs like 'get me all these Amazon listings for X and then produce in excel format' which pay 25-100 depending on what kind of analysis they want. Enough for a portfolio to later apply to Stripe or Amazon as a junior data engineer or whatever they are called these days. Even if not interested in data or ML that course still covers a lot of web things like headers, authentication, response codes, parsing XML, sql crash course, ect. If he does like webdev the first course is still an excellent launching pad for building your own software after in any language or getting into lambdaschool

</comment><comment><USER6> A lot has changed since I first began teaching myself HTML in the 90s and later on PHP around 2006. For HTML back in the day I would simply take a sites existing HTML and modify it to my liking. Today, if I am designing something (since I'm not a designer) I often find some sites doing UI things I like and rebuild them. Then I started seeing CSS appear around the late 90s and early 2000s, so I had to learn something new, but it was just copying and modifying. This will be harder today with how things have changed, but its still possible.

When I wanted to learn PHP some 10 plus years ago I grabbed a book from the library and went through all the examples. I typed the examples by hand, modified them and what not. After a month or two I got to the point where I could build my business idea. From there it was Google and message boards for answers.

When I started learning Python a few years ago I also took the library book approach. I like free.

There are so many more resources today, but things have gotten so much more complex. Keep it simple. Stick to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for now. You don't need SASS, webpack or anything fancy and confusing out of the gate. All that stuff will just make you feel under water, heck even I feel under water with whatever new wizbang stuff is out.

The biggest thing is to build something that will keep you interested. Build a site about a hobby you have or a business idea. It will make things more fun and keep you motivated. Make it less homework and more a hobby. I would also suggest meetup.com.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are loads of great resources but they are all easy to find if you look. The secret to being self taught is having the desire to learn rather than the desire for some one to teach you.

</comment><comment><USER8> App Academy's online curriculum would be a good place to start, I can't speak to curriculum itself but App Academy grads have usually been solid in my experience: [https://open.appacademy.io/](https://open.appacademy.io/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm personally a big fan of Frontend Masters: [https://frontendmasters.com](https://frontendmasters.com). I've found it to be one of the most comprehensive resources for web development out there, especially for front-end work. I think it's a great starting point for any prospective web dev, especially if you're keen on learning some crucial JS concepts.

Once you dive a bit into the fundamentals, you can also check out Wes Bos's suite of courses: [https://wesbos.com/courses/](https://wesbos.com/courses/). His React tutorial is definitely my favorite one out there.

<comment><USER10> I love Front End Masters and think their courses are some of the most indepth, especially Kyle Simpson (Getify). But I wouldn't call it cheap, relative to other products out there. Still recommend though if you've got extra money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone suggest good resources for debugging CSS? I found that most of the time either you know why something works or you do not. I have not seen a resource which says, "This box is placed here because this other box is 50px and there is no more place on this row." or "This box is next to this box because there is a float:right on it" etc. Basically, I am looking for a "log" showing the browser's decisions.

Some people seem to get this instinctively, but for some backend engineers like me, CSS has been a nightmare.

<comment><USER5> I've mostly cheated by using CSS preprocessors like Sylus ([http://stylus- lang.com](http://stylus-lang.com) ) or Sass to avoid page rendering surprises, and a postprocessor like PostCSS to optimize and not worry if certain latest modules have multi browser support. A survey of these things here if interested: [https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/9/1/17/htm](https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/9/1/17/htm)

I also once read through this thesis, to understand how the rule overrides work and other problems in CSS, but gave up keeping with the new standards and switched to preprocessors [https://www.wiumlie.no/2006/phd/#ch- problems](https://www.wiumlie.no/2006/phd/#ch-problems)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web)

Follow following Youtube channels: 1\. FreeCodeCamp: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8butISFwT- Wl7EV0hUK0BQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8butISFwT-Wl7EV0hUK0BQ) 2\. The New Boston : [https://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston/featured](https://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston/featured) 3\. Ben Award : [https://www.youtube.com/user/99baddawg/featured](https://www.youtube.com/user/99baddawg/featured)

Outside Youtube: 1\. Wes Bos : [https://wesbos.com/](https://wesbos.com/) 2\. Udemy : [https://www.udemy.com/understand- javascript/](https://www.udemy.com/understand-javascript/) 3\. CSS Tricks: [https://css-tricks.com/](https://css-tricks.com/) 4\. Egghead: [http://egghead.io](http://egghead.io)

Etc etc

</comment><comment><USER13> Depends what language you want to learn. For the HTML/CSS side, I always prefered [http://htmldog.com](http://htmldog.com), since it was (unlike W3Schools) mostly inline with standards and quality expectations in what it taught and did so in a clear and easy to understand way.

Obviously [https://css-tricks.com](https://css-tricks.com) is recommended too, because Chris Coyier is amazing at CSS (and writing about it), with him and his other writers managing to run a site which not only teaches the basics of CSS, but also keep you up to date with the developments in it too.

Mozilla has a good reference for this stuff, aka MDN. Tons of information about HTML, CSS and JavaScript there, as well as an extremely comprehensive reference for every event type, object data, CSS property, etc:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/)

If you want help with React, well the official site is pretty good on the documentation front:

[https://reactjs.org/tutorial/tutorial.html](https://reactjs.org/tutorial/tutorial.html)

And if you're willing to pay a bit, I found this video tutorial series on the subject absolutely fantastic for learning it too:

[https://frontendmasters.com/courses/complete- react-v4/](https://frontendmasters.com/courses/complete-react-v4/)

Hope that helps!

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the Head First O'Reilly books are a great foundation.

This is my general recommendation to friends and family wanting to learn web development.

Head First HTML & CSS is what he should focus on first.

As he is working through the book have him purchase a domain, setup a website on something like hostgator. That's a great learning experience.

After that book I'd recommend Head First PHP & MySQL.

At this point he could probably setup websites for small local businesses. There are usually lots of local businesses who need a website. Use html/css templates for the design of sites.

Then he can move on to the Head First Javascript then jQuery.

I would create some type of web application using PHP and MySQL so he can see how they work. Maybe a project useful to him to play around with. I would recommend using the bootstrap css framework for the app.

Up till this point deploying with FTP is fine. But this would be a good time to learn about using and deploying with GIT (Github, Bitbucket and GitLab).

After that he could start looking at frameworks, I like Rails (Ruby) and Laravel (PHP).

There is RailsCast.com and LaraCasts.com that are great sites for learning those two frameworks.

After you have the framework basics down and has built a few traditional applications then is a good time to learn Vue or React.

I would also have him pickup a last gen macbook air on sale if he's not a mac user. Rails and Laravel development is just easier on mac. When I was trying to learn Rails on windows I would literally spend more time working around issues with windows than the actual tutorial.

</comment><comment><USER15> [http://www.freecodecamp.com/](http://www.freecodecamp.com/)

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

[https://teamtreehouse.com/](https://teamtreehouse.com/)

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

[https://scrimba.com/](https://scrimba.com/)

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

[https://www.bento.io/](https://www.bento.io/)

[http://exercism.io/](http://exercism.io/)

[https://learnxinyminutes.com/](https://learnxinyminutes.com/)

And tons of others...

</comment><comment><USER16> I see a few sites listed on here, but one of the most valuable skills that allowed me to become a software engineer was the ability to find this kind of information and reason about it.

I would encourage you to (if possible) sit with your son and just observe as he tries to figure out things. When he asks questions, try to respond with questions that prompt him to refine the questions he is asking, until he answers it himself.

This was something I had to learn on my own, and I've seen resources every now and then referring to this as "grit" or "persistence". In learning software engineering, I've found a lot of things boil down to getting the questions right, rather than the answers.

A big part of that is developing the vocabulary and grammar used to speak and reason about web development. Learning that was a ton of googling and head scratching till things started to click.

</comment><comment><USER17> I know a lot of HNers hate udemy because of the piracy and shady sales tactics but for me at least it has been an invaluable resource. I was able to learn Vue in almost 2 hours including some advanced concepts very quickly.

There are some great teachers on that site like Maximilian Schwarzmüller who are not only great at explaining concepts but also show you how to create real world app. Also YouTube is another great resource, for some reason a lot of paid courses are uploaded on youtube by the authors for free too.

One last thing. My secret sauce for learning is a chrome extension called video speed controller. I generally watch these video tutorials at 4x to 6x speed.. it not only saves you a lot of time but I think I'm able to learn much better at faster speeds (maybe as it doesn't let the mind wander)

</comment><comment><USER18> I think Google is the best resource. You want to ensure that he is good at training himself. Google plus CodePen for starters.

So have him come up with a simple project and then have him break that down into sub goals. They have him start googling. Make sure he drills down and searches for more basic information when that is referenced in relation to his specific problem and he doesn't know part of it.

Have him use Google and web resources to teach himself to set goals, decompose problems, search for solutions, and learn fundamental concepts. That involves some coaching in your part.

Online courses should probably be used to supplement and test breadth of knowledge. But primarily it is about giving him time to practice problem solving and self-training.

</comment><comment><USER19> I cannot say enough good things about Colt Steele on Udemy. It's about $10 for "Web Developer Bootcamp" that covers HTML/CSS, JavaScript, NodeJS and touches on MongoDB. Then another $10 for "Advanced Web Developer Bootcamp" which covers advanced JavaScript, AJAX, React, etc. If the site is quoting you more than $10 or $15 for the courses try deleting your cookies or using incognito. They're known for showing users "custom" prices.

<comment><AUTHOR> THANKS! Great timing on the black friday sale.

<comment><USER20> it's basically always on sale

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://www.theodinproject.com/](https://www.theodinproject.com/)

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://medium.freecodecamp.org/my-journey-to-becoming-a- web...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/my-journey-to-becoming-a-web- developer-from-scratch-without-a-cs-degree-2-years-later-and- what-i-4a7fd2ff5503)

</comment><comment><USER20> many public libraries provide free subscriptions to Lynda.com which has some pretty good tutorials

</comment><comment><USER23> I always try to recommend [https://teamtreehouse.com](https://teamtreehouse.com). They helped me start my career, and they've helped a few friends do the same.

</comment><comment><USER24> The best advice I can give is to just start programming. Get your hands dirty, experience using something will teach you more than any book. Think up something cool and build it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Frontend and JavaScript tutorial for beginners (free): [https://yoember.com](https://yoember.com)

</comment><comment><USER26> pluralsight.com has great videos for Angular; I'm sure their content is equally as good for React.

It's "cheap" to me as a 15+ year web developer, but price is objective - $35 / month or just commit and drop the $299 for the year (USD)

'been soaking up all kinds of content. Angular, C#, Python, even brushing up on some HTML / JS - the videos are probably the best I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER27> Laracasts.com and codecourse.com for laravel and vuejs rapid application development

</comment><comment><USER28> "Web Dev" encompasses a hell of a lot of material. I'm still a fan of books.

</comment><comment><USER29> User toddmcleod and channel JustForFunc on YouTube.</comment>


Show HN: Instabug – easy in-app feedback. What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://instabug.io

<comment><USER2> Looks like a well designed product, make sure you use https for login and registration, and here is a list of other web app vulnerabilities that you can avoid: <https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2013-T10>

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool. Will be useful.

One side note is that the registration and login pages don't use https. Sending from the app to your service should be secure as well but not as important as the register and login pages.

<comment><USER4> That's definitely something we should do asap, thanks a lot for addressing this issue.

Have u tried integrating the SDK?

<comment><USER3> Will take a stab at it tonight.

<comment><USER4> Great, I'd love to know about your overall experience. Please contact me on email@example.com Best

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've created this platform and we'd love to know your feedback about it.

<comment><USER4> We're more than happy to offer this free service to iOS developers to finally receive feedback the right way, can't wait for HN opinions on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> awesome ! I believe you've nailed a very painful pain for app developers/owners.

Wish you all success.

Yassin</comment>


Analysis: GoDaddy is Favorite Registrar Among Startups - <AUTHOR> http://startupdispatch.com/analysis/analysis-godaddy-is-favorite-registrar-among-startups-average-domain-is-9-71-years-old/ <comment><USER2> I find the title very difficult to believe.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use cloud.docker.com in production? - <AUTHOR> Is anyone using cloud.docker.com in production? I never see any mentions of it anywhere. It seems to me easier to use than Kubernetes but I've never seen anyone discussing cloud.docker anywhere.<p>Is anyone actually using it? If not what do you suggest as an easy to use alternative? <comment><USER2> I've been pushing for it, but have been meeting resistance. IMHO it seems like a really nice option.</comment>