I Was A Postmates Courier For A Day - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/02/postmates-courier-for-a-day/ <comment><USER2> > To be honest, $8.00 in tips isn't a lot for three hours of biking around > town. But I got stiffed on my last delivery, it was pointed out… And I was > told by Postmates HQ that couriers typically do multiple jobs > simultaneously, which increase the amount they receive. I was just unlucky > in that I had to wait in line for ridiculous amounts of time at two of the > locations, otherwise my tips would have been higher.

So what exactly is going to prevent couriers from taking multiple jobs they know they can't do in a _fast_ time but can do in an _okay_ time? Doesn't this encourage couriers to take on more jobs than they can do to make more money? A mediocre experience for consumers.

> I probably won't be quitting my day job and becoming a courier anytime soon. > I do, however, have a lot more respect for those guys, and will be sure to > tip well whenever I order something from them in the future. (You should, > too.)

A very American thing. Here in England we tip people when they do a great job (or not at all) tipping just because they delivered something is rare. It seems Postmates is copying the normal (American) delivery model: pay your couriers the minimum allowed and expect the customer to pick up the slack, even when they're already paying you a premium for the service. Pretty shameful really.

<comment><USER3> > So what exactly is going to prevent couriers from taking multiple jobs they > know they can't do in a fast time but can do in an okay time? Doesn't this > encourage couriers to take on more jobs than they can do to make more money? > A mediocre experience for consumers.

One the one hand, couriers are doing more jobs in the same amount of time. On the other hand, customers have to wait longer. Something doesn't add up here.

<comment><USER4> The answer is technology and a very clever dispatch Jules ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems very much like a prearranged PR event. He says:

"... but to be honest, I'm not sure what I would have made for the deliveries themselves. Postmates recently changed its pricing policy to charge users based on the difficulty of the job, and it declined to disclose how much it pays its couriers for those jobs."

So it is pretty clear that the company is not treating him as an employee, but is giving him special treatment as a journalist.

If he really wanted to show how it feels to be a psotmates employee, he should just get the job as an ordinary joe schnoe, like the lady that wrote "nickel and dimed".

<comment><USER4> Hristov,

the only thing we didn't disclose is how much commission Ryan would receive per job - but if you look around a little you will see that our Postmates receive between 60%-80% of the delivery fee as commission. A Postmate makes money even if a customer does not tip. The tipping is just a bonus.

<comment><USER5> I believe you. I am just saying that it would have been a better article if he did not let you know he was doing this and applied as a regular person to get the real experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Based on my limited experience, delivering for Postmates means you spend > more time waiting in line than doing anything else.

Isn't that why people hire someone else for errands? So they don't have to wait in line?

</comment><comment><USER7> Postmates is really interesting - especially the get it now service. The people I know definitely earn more than $2 & change per hour. I've seen upwards of $30 in a given hour delivering food, with an average of about $12-14.

</comment><comment><USER8> I miss kozmo.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com>

<comment><USER9> Maybe these guys will do better by underpaying couriers rather than paying the cost of automobiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Postmates has a lot of similarity with Uber: they are both moving toward the grail of an on-demand logistics platform.

Where I am really excited is to see these companies figure out all the logistic hurdles and then provide an API on top of it. By doing this they will abstract away all the crazy complexities of having to move a real world object to real world destination.

You could build entire companies off these platforms.

</comment><comment><USER11> At the risk of being Mr. Obvious, Postmates badly needs three things:

1\. An Android app (I saw only the iOS app listed), with a direct download link, just for giggles.

2\. A page on their website which replicates the app's functionality. I mean, it's HTML5/CSS/JS, right?

3\. Smarter vendors, which accept and acknowledge orders by text, web, or (a different) app, to help the couriers earn, and to deliver the goods faster.

</comment><comment><USER12> It would be nice if the website contained more information about the providers, service area, fees, you know... anything that might actually help me decide whether I want to use the app or not.

Currently it's just a very slick ad for "download the app! trust us, it will fulfill all your wildest fantasies!"

I don't want to download the app just to find out "Sorry, the world stops existing outside of Market Street/The Embarcadero/Church Street".

</comment><comment><USER13> So no pay for wait time. I know from being a bike messenger you usually got paid for wait time, I guess this isn't the traditional messenger job.

<comment><USER4> Since we call in most of the orders there is very limited wait time. Ryan got extremely unlucky. Our dynamic pricing however, models the costs and the fee to be paid by the customer, by keeping all these things in mind.</comment></comment>


Solution HN: Patent trolls - <AUTHOR>

Big companies have the pockets to fight or pay patent trolls but what should smaller companies do to combat this problem?
The problem is not with the trolls but with the system that can't gauge the enormity of the problem because the hundred thousand dollars a small company loses never blips on the radar. But what the system doesn't realize is that this has been hurting so many people from so long and needs to end.
The system and its rules aid the trolls in this extortion and the only solution is to unlink our companies from the system that (unknowingly) aids them in this extortion.
How do we do it? Incorporate offshore in some tax haven, make the local business a cost center that does contract work for the parent. Now the patent troll has to route litigation to unfavorable places without systems to aid them in their extortion and cannot pursue litigation without resorting to costly measures. Once the cycle of easy money is cutoff, and since they are not viable businesses themselves, they will be starved and will die a painful death.
But the intention here is also to transfer the pain points from us to elsewhere. With this structure, businesses will start saving taxes through the new route and now the system is the one losing money instead of the small businesses. This jolt will definitely wake it up from its s;umber and will make it fix the menace.
Maybe this is dumb and you have a better idea. Please share it so that WE can put an end and not some politician.
We are hackers and we'll find a way to kill patent trolls today in HN. Let the discussion begin! <comment><USER2> We need patent violation insurance. This lets companies share risks, but also makes it easier to aggregate defensive efforts and so get economies of scale. Just having this insurance would scare off most trolls who rely on victims to fold easily.

As for the risk that "real" patent violators would disproportionately buy this insurance, we can

\- restrict it to software patents, where everyone is a violator, and there is, as far as I can tell, no such thing as a malicious patent violator.

\- include a clause exempting malicious violations from coverage. This would have some fairly objective definition supervised by known neutral parties. Because this clause would be in the context of the group insurance rather than a trolls attack, "real patent violation" could be defined sensibly between reasonable people.

<comment><USER3> A simple clean cut solution. You can insure everything else from debt to houses, cars, pets, your salary and of course your life so why not some kind of patent violation insurance? I wonder if anyone has attempted to introduce this kind of insurance and if not, why not?

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem I see here is, Insurance is a generic solution and doesn't fit our problem. Maybe we can take the core idea and do it better. I'll wait to see more viewpoints instead of spamming the thread. I'm already nervous if I broke some HN rules by posting this thread.

<comment><USER2> Could be. In what way does it not fit?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


My project, updated: Trending Tech News. Feedback appreciated - <AUTHOR> http://technosplode.com

<comment><USER2> People are comparing this to The Drudge Report, but your layout is much cleaner, and your headlines less hyperbolic, and you don't seem ideologically motivated. Otherwise, this is like The Drudge Report for Tech news _! Good job.

_ \- I don't think that your site is much like The Drudge Report.

Also, if you are so interested in news for Linux, please just keep it as one of the main topics.

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks like you are doing a simple frequency analysis to determine words for titles. In some cases it works, in others it reduces to just brand names. The Linux tab is filled with "Linux" for example.

Perhaps you need a learning filter that catches words that are too common and filters them out.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't really see why Linux should have a separate category at the top. Doesn't really fit the line of Business / Gadgets / Programming. Maybe add a category for UX/Design? Or maybe a category focused on startups?

Overall, awesome project. Keeping an eye on it!

<comment><USER5> I agree about Linux. People using different OSes (fanboys) might mistakenly think that this site is mostly Linux news (the first impression is the most important one). You obviously don't want loosing this kind of audience. So add categories for other major OSes or remove Linux entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Awesome stuff. Keep iterating.

2\. Honest feedback: Your category titles seem straight out of a topic modeling paper (see: David Blei). That is to say, as a fellow computer scientist, I get why they are what they are... but they're not very good.

<comment><USER7> Point 1 is the best bit of feedback here, and to a large degree pre-empts point 2.

But yeah, awesome, bookmarked and buckled in for the long haul.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Feedback: 0\. The logo is way too big. Make it smaller. At least 50% smaller. This way people can have more of their screen estate used for reading the news and not for your logo. 1\. Remove the underline from all text. It makes the text harder to read. 2\. Add a sans serif font. 3\. I love the spartan feel of the website, but you can add some color to it. For instance the 3 categories of news could each have a different color. (btw, choose colors which match) 4\. Make the links a bit bigger. The text is way to small. I know I could zoom in but then the proportions just don't feel right.

Other than that, it looks alright.

Good luck

</comment><comment><USER9> Really nice. I think you could increase accessibility and click through increasing news titles font size and adding some padding. I noticed that it's verys easy to read block titles but difficult to focus on actual news, with the result that I scroll the page searching for "interesting blocks" more than "interesting news". Well done anyway ;) Any thoughts about exposing some rdf views?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think a feed would be too high-volume. But you can get topic updates from @TECHNOSPLODE on Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really like it and in an interesting space. Social filtering (i.e. Twitter as RSS) works for news sometimes, but it leads to filter bubbles.

Worth thinking about how this could even power 'slower' news (a.k.a. Economist-style) by utilizing the algorithm to find out 'what' is important over a period of time and then later finding the best writing about the topic and highlighting that.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like it! I'm curious as to what kind of implicit editorial process is happening based on which sources you've chosen. Would you be willing to share your full list of sources and how you chose them? (How well can I infer the former based on all of the links actually currently present?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't be opposed to posting a dynamic list of feeds on the about page.

To answer your parenthetical question: not very well. Since articles are sorted based on the weight of their feed, and since I only show the first few articles for each topic, articles from feeds with lower weights may rarely appear. They will, however, contribute to the overall weight of the topic and force it into the top ten.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really awesome site! Kinda like a live Drudge Report for tech news. Love the layout. Bookmarked :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Hard to scan, the keyword headings are a good start but I still have to drill down into the article headlines to see what the article is actually about.

A summary of the issue (eg."Google buys Zagat" instead of "Google, Zagat") would be helpful when scanning.

</comment><comment><USER14> What is the underlying tech? Can you talk about your listening and topic modeling algos?

</comment><comment><USER15> very cool. i might just stop using techmeme!

I agree with the other commenter about having a "more" button.

The thing that bugs about techmeme is they make it appear as if the tech word consists of a handful of companies (Apple, FB, Twitter, Google, MS), and you basically have no other news outside of that.

Your site has that, to a lesser degree, but its still there. I see 2 google stories, 2 twitter stories, 2 yahoo stories. It might be useful to compile a small list of company names and group on company name if you see it appear twice.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of the drudge report.

I made this: <http://tech.rawsignal.com>

Maybe we can share tips on algos?

</comment><comment><USER17> Nicely done. It would be nice if there was a "more" link.

</comment><comment><USER18> Well done and usable!

I suggest showing complete news titles, without cuttting them off with ...

Idea is great, keep experimenting with the UI.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's kind of interesting, I like how clean it is, and that the most important keywords are presented in 2-word titles, which makes it very easy to scan.

I would remove "via", it's polluting the page.

EDIT: And maybe add the timeframe selector. Since it's a news site, it would be cool to see the trending news of the last hour, for instance.</comment>


Startup School: Mission Impossible- Meet Paul Graham - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dediced.com/?page_id=36

<comment><USER2> Very nice writeup of the event; captures quite a lot of the energy, many of the key moments, and interactions with many interesting people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! =)</comment></comment>


How to be moderately successful person - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/01/how-to-be-moderately-successful-person-like-me <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the College Humor video on genetics

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zO2wFkl46g](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zO2wFkl46g)</comment>


What you should know before you launch your product - <AUTHOR> http://bokardo.com/archives/what-you-should-know-before-you-launch-your-product/

<comment><USER2> In an iterative industry, I think there is too much emphasis on "launch". From day 1, you should have someone interested in your product/service. If you haven't got at least one early adopter, someone sold on the idea, why bother?

The real "launch" is the tipping point where there is enough functionality that it fully solves the problem for the intended audience. But you won't get there without early usage and feedback.

Rather than think of chicken and egg problems, start adding cells together and see which one evolves first.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd add it:

* user observation and interviews

* a/b testing

to the list of tools.

(Indeed - the whole discussion is framed in the context of ' _the_ product launch'. With a chunk of my clients that's just a dead concept. They're trying out new features with small chunks of their market at many different levels of fidelity all of the time. Not everybody can do this - outside of the context of web applications/sites it gets much harder - but if you can escape from the idea of the product launch everybody's lives seems to get much simpler)</comment>


Titles Will Kill Your Startups - <AUTHOR> https://www.blurbiz.io/blog/titles-will-kill-your-startup <comment><USER2> Titles are a way to divide responsibility in a team.

This is beneficial in some cases, for example the CTO is responsible for technology decisions in the company which allows them to make decisions without involving everyone.

But yes, in a startup the roles overlap much more. So there's no need to divide responsibility, hence no need for specific job titles.

However in getting rid of titles you disperse the responsibility of parts of the business to more people, so more people are to blame.

A good middle ground is to have a leader and employees with multiple titles.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone use the Amazon Mechanical Turk API? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a project that relies on a human workforce to perform some simple image identification tasks. AWS Turk seemed to fit the requirements pretty well, and I have the basics working with externally-hosted tasks.
Does anyone here actually use Turk, though? The forum seems nearly abandoned (http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/forum.jspa?forumID=11), and no Amazon employees have responded to any questions. The API has not had any updates in years. Is the Mechanical Turk now a walking corpse?
Read on for a description of the problem I've run into. Maybe a fellow enterprising HN reader dealt with something similar and found a solution. :)
I need to enforce that the same worker does not look at closely-related images. I can enforce that in my app, and basically show a task that says "please return this task and try some of our other tasks in a couple of hours". This is annoying, and drives up the "returned tasks" statistic for the workers. I would very much like to make Amazon filter out tasks for users who have run out of valid work in my system.
At first, it seemed that Turk qualifications fit the bill. Unfortunately, the Turk system does not support "negative" qualification, e.g., it cannot only assign tasks to workers who do not have a particular qualification. Amazon employees have not addressed this question from a year ago: http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?threadID=32744&tstart=0
Then, I tried blocking workers once they run of tasks, and unblocking them once work shows up. This does not affect task filtering, and instead tells the user about a block. Additionally, blocking may or may not have really bad side effects for workers, another question Amazon employees have ignored: http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?threadID=48851&tstart=0
Advice and suggestions welcome. <comment><USER2> I use it for <http://www.feedbackarmy.com> and other tasks. I recommend using an ExternalQuestion. This will let you host the worker form on your own site. I recommend using JavaScript and whatever you want server side to let the user know whether they can work on your stuff or not. Maybe set a cookie with an ID so you can know what kinds of images they've looked at.

Doing something on your end is your best bet. I like MTurk but the API is not so great and support does not exist. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I am already using ExternalQuestion forms and generating the exact questions at view time. In your experience (or opinion), workers do not object if a task just says "sorry, please return this HIT and try again later"?

<comment><USER2> I don't know the answer because I haven't been in your situation (yet). I'm thinking of offering support for worker demographics and the scheme I described is how I plan to implement it.

a. Do I know about the worker? Yes - go to c. b. survey the worker with some demo questions and store them c. Does the worker's demographics match what the user wants? Yes - let them through d. Prompt worker--sorry, you're cute and all, but not what this user wants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check out <http://www.turkernation.com/> \- still seems active.

</comment><comment><USER4> We using ExternalQuestions with the Ruby API lib for Socialmod. We're pretty impressed the quality of work that comes from MTurk - questions get answered under 5 mins. All the logic is our side, especially the banning/blocking logic, which gives us a lot of control.

As to your problem, why not create a new hit-type for each group of similar images, and then restrict worker access based on that type?

<http://www.socialmod.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that promising and helpful. How do I restrict worker access by HIT type? I don't see anything in the documentation that lets me do this — negative qualifications would work, but the MTurk system does not support them.

In your blocking logic, do you simply show a HIT that says "please return this HIT"? I already implemented this, but I'm worried that it is bad etiquette.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check out this research project from MIT ... it aims to provide a more sane interface to MTurk:

<http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/turkit/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not familiar with AMT, but you might check out <http://crowdflower.com> and see if they might be a good fit for your needs.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know speakertext.com uses it, and for a cool product!

</comment><comment><USER8> You should have 1 task with many instances, and dynamically assign the specific task only after you have a specific user who has accepted it. This way you can use the user ID in your task-assigning logic.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what I did. The question is, how do I prevent people who have no more valid tasks available from seeing or accepting HITs? I can lock them out in my own logic, but their Amazon records will show that they abandoned a task — and it wasn't actually their fault.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin breaks $10,000 – but why? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jasonrhaas/bitcoin-breaks-10-000-but-why-4b6ab3ed2c2f <comment><USER2> Because it has the distinct possibility of replacing a large segment of the current banking complex?

<comment><AUTHOR> Theoretically yes. But the utility simply is not there.</comment></comment>


The male dominance in Google+ (88% male) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloggerpolis.com/2011/07/the-male-dominance-in-google/

<comment><USER2> Very obvious answer for this - because Google+ was seeded by Google employees and their social networks, and these skew overwhelmingly male. This is the Silicon Valley tech industry, afterwards.

I suspect that the gender balance will become much more equal as those initial contacts branch out and can send their own invites, simply because of regression to the mean.</comment>


Improve TCP bandwidth utilization for applications like rSync, FTP and Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://www.supertcp.com/?ref=hn

<comment><USER2> How does it work? By adjusting receive window size? By setting the congestion control to htcp?</comment>


Show HN: Chat with someone that follows similar people on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://peergroup.chat/ <comment><USER2> I feel like the landing page misses out on a lot.

Some more info of how it works would be great.</comment>


App Sec: How do you monitor your application logs? - <AUTHOR>

Whether you run nginx, apache, something else:
1) what webserver do you use?
2) Do you monitor your logs? 3) How helpful do you find monitoring of your logs to detect intrusion attempts?
4) Anything else you want to tell me?
Thanks for your responses. <comment><USER2> ELK is a good option - I'm a fan of open source. You can build it on your own ([http://logz.io/blog/deploy-elk-production/](http://logz.io/blog/deploy-elk- production/)) or you can use ELK as a service (disclaimer, I work for Logz.io which offers such service).

We see customers use ELK to detect intrusion attempts by monitoring and alerting on: \- Access from specific countries \- Internal connections to specific countries \- SSH auth request \- Correlation between failed logins across multiple machines \- kernel exceptions (which may be buffer overflow attempts) \- AWS VPC Logs \- AWS Cloudtrail logs - we internally use it extensively to audit access

HTH

</comment><comment><USER3> Nginx and Apache

ELK stack - Elasticsearch + Logstash + Kibana.

Have some simple filters that look for attempted SQL injection etc, we also run all SSH auth requests etc through same system so we do all of that sort of stuff there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you find what you do effective? How many attempts do you receive say in a given month?</comment></comment>


show HN: Crunchbase Chrome Extension IP (trademark and Patents) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ipqwery.com <comment><AUTHOR> This as a Chrome Extension from Crunchbase. On any company profile click on IP to view the current intellectual property held. example: [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/airbnb#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/airbnb#/entity)</comment>


Taking Theatre Online with WebGL and WebRTC - <AUTHOR> https://chrisuehlinger.com/blog/2020/06/16/unshattering-the-audience-building-theatre-on-the-web-in-2020/ <comment><USER2> Author here! Let me know if you've got any questions about the show or how it was built.

<comment><USER3> This is awesome! How much is open source? Fascinated to see how you put the code together...

<comment><USER2> I'm going to open source it in a week or two once the show's over. There are a couple instances in the git history where secrets got checked in, so I want to clear out the history and create a new repo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to see tech improve for live theater. We just did a short play festival on Zoom, streamed to YouTube to reduce strain on the server (and to archive). It worked pretty well, for a relatively low-tech production specifically designed for the medium.

I did miss having audience feedback, most notably laughter, which is one of the best reasons to do live theater. I treated it as a radio play, another successful medium with somewhat different rules.

Working on a full Shakespeare play is harder. The group scenes are notably difficult, since you don't get to the usual physical cues about who you're talking to. Feedback from background characters is important in helping the audience connect, and that's harder with a big Brady Bunch screen of faces, and no eye contact. In rehearsal last night, it was hard to have the final reconciliation with Romeo's father as just one face among many, and it was sorely tempting to "indicate" sadness rather than organically being in the moment. (Turning off our own faces helps: if you're feeding back on what you see you're going to try to force yourself to look like what you're feeling, which always looks false.)

This was a project already in production before lockdown. We'll probably just move it to Zoom, which is very sad because it's only a fraction of what it could be. We probably won't move on to our next scheduled show until next year. We'll keep artistically alive with projects like that play festival.

Fortunately for us, we don't have a theater to pay for, or salaries. The professional theaters are desperately trying to keep out of bankruptcy, both themselves and their staff, but this is going to be very, very bad. Tech will help replace a tiny bit, but this will devastate theater for years, even if we get a vaccine by the end of the year.

<comment><USER5> On the subject of audience reaction: The Infinite Monkey Cage, a BBC Radio science/comedy show hosted by Briana Cox and Robin Ince has always been recorded in front of an audience. They have recently been experimenting with remote audience and it's worked surprisingly well. They have built a webapp for it called the virtual audience recording system that the audience members use while watching the live show in zoom. The performers and audience can hear each other through it, so you are not just laughing to yourself.

It's really quite striking how much of a difference having an audienceakes to the performance. The conversation seems to flow much better and theres a lot more energy to it.

Ive been involved in community theatre for years and I've always found the interaction between audiences and cast absolutely fascinating, especially with comedy, where a near identical performance can feel so different from one night to the next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Saw two excellent productions by Big Telly that were done over Zoom and they made pretty good use of tech tricks to add a lot to the experience

Some details of one of the shows, Return To Elsewhere, here: [https://www.big- telly.com/return-to-elsewhere-23-24-may/](https://www.big-telly.com/return-to- elsewhere-23-24-may/)

And a talk they gave about how they did their shows: [https://youtu.be/iYTizaG6NOc](https://youtu.be/iYTizaG6NOc)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hi Chris, I just saw your show today and had a good time. Keep it up!</comment>


IDEO: Good Stories Make Good Brands. Here's 4 Tips and 7 Examples - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662388/using-stories-as-cultural-currency?partner=homepage_newsletter

<comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone made any good stories about their web apps? Any examples of those that have?

<comment><USER2> Hm. That's an interesting question. No sure, but I do think that web app design can almost tell a story--for example, there's the super elegant TeuxDeux (<http://teuxdeux.com/>) It doesn't tell a story per se, but the choices of typeface and color and layout definitely speak to a very specific audience in a fairly unique way.</comment></comment>


Crime & Punishment on the Internet: Should we forgive a thief? - <AUTHOR> http://sxates.com/design/crime-punishment-on-the-internet-should-we-forgive-a-thief/

<comment><USER2> I would say it is up to each person's individual values whether to forgive. But this guy is asking for his acts to be expunged- which is more than should reasonably be expected.</comment>


Music visualizer with glitch effect - <AUTHOR> https://www.uberviz.io/viz/word-problems/ <comment> squeaky-clean Really cool! Looks like here's the original blog post [0] and github [1]. Was really hoping to see a permissive license there.

[0] [https://www.airtightinteractive.com/2013/10/making-audio- rea...](https://www.airtightinteractive.com/2013/10/making-audio-reactive- visuals/)

[1] [https://github.com/OpenDAWN/UberViz](https://github.com/OpenDAWN/UberViz)

</comment><comment><USER2> Really nice. Tried to send this to a friend with FB private message, FB refused the link and censored it.. ??

<comment><USER3> I get that randomly, try again from a phone or desktop and it may work. I use FB messenger less now because of their unpredictable url filtering.

<comment><USER4> I got the same... Submited a request to remove the block. Thanks for the great lib!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well done, very modern and slick. Maybe I've been out of the loop but music visualizations never became broadly popular or good, and even in the Windows days they were a little bit cheesy feeling...

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice work. This makes me miss the days of Winamp visualization plugins.

<comment><AUTHOR> That brings me some memories!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Beautiful! Love the phosphor(?)/CRT look to it.</comment>


Ask HN: Google App Engine (GAE) Authentication - <AUTHOR>

Does it make sense to use GAE for a new web application given that it only accepts users via a Google Account (for login/session purposes)?<p>I have an idea for an application that would really benefit from running on GAE, except that I'm not so sure about having a Google Account as a requirement to use the app. <comment><USER2> I don't think there's anything stopping you from using another authentication system... all you really need is the ability to set/read cookies and a place to store credentials and session info, right?

</comment><comment><USER3> Although the docs give that impression, I don't think you actually have to use their account system. I'm pretty sure you can just roll your own.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can definitely use your own. Try Janrain's offering, or just use django auth.</comment>


Cringely: Apple and the future of publishing - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2009/10/apple-and-the-future-of-publishing-%E2%80%93-part-one/

<comment><USER2> So Amazon invents the Kindle, starts this thing off, and somehow it's okay for Apple to barge in with their monopolistic bullshit?

I think Amazon knows a little bit more about books than Apple, so I predict Apple won't steal a dime from Amazon.

<comment><USER3> Of course it's ok. It's a free market. There are at least half a dozen different companies I know of producing e-book readers. What would preclude Apple from competing? They don't have a monopoly on publishing or any other conflict of interest. They are quite well known for producing good consumer electronics devices so it does seem like a natural market for them to enter. Amazon isn't exactly a saint either -- the Kindle is a DRM-ed closed platform just like Apple's product would likely be.

As far as Amazon's success goes I'd say they're in good shape to compete with Apple toe-to-toe in digital publishing / e-book readers. Their only limitation may be the inability to offer a richer platform. The Kindle is pretty limited to just an e-book reader with tie-ins to the Amazon store. Apple would likely offer a device with a color screen, full audio/video playback, almost certainly a third party App Store. That might be more appealing to a mainstream audience that wouldn't spend $250 for a device that is exclusively an e-book reader. Amazon could easily adopt Android and beef up the Kindle into more of a general purpose platform. Competition is good.

<comment><USER2> Well my major complaint is that everyone goes "Why doesn't the Kindle have colour or a touchscreen?" when the answer is: "Because it's e-ink and it's really pleasant on the eye, and is black and white because that's what it is, and it's not a touchscreen because it's not possible with e-ink". Basically, e-ink is far better than LCD's, so any device with an LCD is missing the whole point of the Kindle.

<comment><USER3> E-Ink is great for e-books but I suspect a lot of folks, the ones who rarely read books, would prefer e-magazines, e-comic books, e-manga and web content in which case a color screen is very important. There's plenty of room for both but I suspect the more casual, multi-pupose approach, will end up being a bigger market.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3513875/soda-may-age-you-as-much-as-smoking/ <comment><USER2> The key results from the paper:

        After adjustment for sociodemographic and health-related
        characteristics, sugar-sweetened soda consumption was
        associated with shorter telomeres (b = –0.010; 95%
        confidence interval [CI] = −0.020, −0.001; P = .04).
        Consumption of 100% fruit juice was marginally associated
        with longer telomeres (b = 0.016; 95% CI = −0.000, 0.033;
        P = .05). No significant associations were observed between
        consumption of diet sodas or noncarbonated SSBs and
        telomere length.

Shortened telomeres are one way to measure genetic 'age'. So they saw 'aging' with sugar-sweetened soda, the opposite with fruit juice, and no significant difference with diet sodas or non-carbonated sugary sodas.

The study was pretty substantial with ~5,300 participants with no history of cardiovascular disease or diabetes. It's nice to have another datapoint against some of the bro-sciencey "Fruit juice has as much sugar as soda" arguments.

 _Late Edit:_

Here's a pretty good summary of telomere aging:

[http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/chromosomes/telomeres...](http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/chromosomes/telomeres/)

<comment><USER3> > So they saw 'aging' with sugar-sweetened soda, the opposite with fruit > juice, and no significant difference with diet sodas or non-carbonated > sugary sodas.

What compounds in soda are most likely causing this? If they're not seeing the results in fruit juice, its not sugar causing the damage.

<comment><USER4> There's more than one kind of sugar. Juices have both fructose and glucose; the former is more likely to be stored by the liver, the latter is deployed more widely around the body. Soda has much higher levels of fructose than glucose, thanks to all that high-fructose corn syrup that has become so popular with food manufacturers. There seems to be mounting evidence that high fructose intake is correlated with increased obesity. Here's a recent article on the topic: [http://www.theguardian.com/society/the-shape-we-are-in- blog/...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/the-shape-we-are-in- blog/2014/jun/04/obesity-food-and-drink)

If you head to YouTube and look for Dr Robert Lustig, a researcher at UCSF, there's a 1 or 2 hour lecutre he has delivered on this topic which goes into great detail ont eh different metabolic pathways different kinds of sugar take within the body.

<comment><USER5> Oh this thread is going to pull out all the fun ones. Can they program anything to penalize any diet / food topics? Nothing smart is ever said and all the studies are always inconclusive and at best hint at new directions for additional research.

Anyhow, to the above comment: [http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000011000000000000000.ht...](http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000011000000000000000.html)

Nutritional studies are worse than physiological studies. It's impossible to control for everything and just gets picked up but one side of the crazies or the other and like they will here just lead to a bunch of speculative anecdotal arguments.

<comment><USER6> Apart from this one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500)

From _: " "A reduction in salt intake led to a significant fall in blood pressure, even in the healthy volunteers," explains Jens Titze, from Erlangen- Nuremberg University." .. "Titze gradually reduced the daily salt intake of the 'cosmonauts' during the course of the world's longest metabolism study, while keeping all other nutrients unchanged."

But well, it's not something every study can do.

[_] [http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10525/873...](http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10525/873_read-753/year- all/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not to mention it can cause diabetes and it's horrible for your teeth. For me, it also caused acne. Soda's really, really bad for you, and I think at this point it would be viewed the same way that smoking is viewed if it weren't for the fact that soda affects only the consumer whereas cigarettes produce second-hand smoke and a suffocating odor that fills the room.

Maybe 2050's Mad Men will shock its viewers with how office workers in 2000 drank soda _in the office_.

(This is coming from someone who used to drink soda on a daily basis. I learned to stop when I had to get a crown on a molar in my early 20s.)

<comment><USER8> >I think at this point it would be viewed the same way that smoking is viewed if it weren't for the fact that soda affects only the consumer whereas cigarettes produce second-hand smoke and a suffocating odor that fills the room.

And the addiction, don't forget that horrible, crippling addiction.

<comment><USER9> Soda has addictive properties. Caffeine being one but I would argue there's carb/sugar addiction potential in there too (look up carb withdrawal).

Now I'm NOT saying it's even close to being as addictive as nicotine, but you get my point.

<comment><USER10> Probably we're programmed to love sweet stuff, because of the symbiotic relationship between plants and seed eaters. We eat the fruit and spread the seeds.

Unfortunately, sugary drinks trigger the instinct but have no beneficial effects, and they lack the phytonutrients of fruit and honey. We should just never drink or eat anything that is sweetened with either sugar or non-sugar alternatives. Easy to say and hard to do, though; I love sweet coffee, cake, and ice cream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's hard for me to understand the whole soda phenomenon in Canada and the US. Is it as addictive as cigarettes? Does it make you crave for more? Or it simply tastes so good that you can't get enough of it? Why not eat a bunch of apples instead (if you don't care about the amount of sugar you consume)? Wouldn't they taste better?

<comment><USER12> I drink (diet) soda because I need caffeine in the mornings. I am not a morning person and never have been. Without caffeine, I will not be mentally alert before 11am.

I hate the taste of coffee, so soda it is.

<comment><USER13> Coffee is an acquired taste, not sure anyone likes it at first. Diet soda is just as bad for you as regular soda and has also been linked to diabetes and obesity.

<comment><USER14> > Coffee is an acquired taste, not sure anyone likes it at first.

If that were true, coffee would never have become a beverage anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Were these sodas sweetened with cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup?

(I did look at the abstract of the actual paper, but it doesn't seem to specify. The full paper might say, but it's paywalled.)

<comment><USER16> I don't think it matters but chances are it's HFCS.

<comment><USER17> It matters.

<comment><USER16> I guess it matters because it might actually prove our bodies handle HFCS and Sugar differently. I have never seen that proven anywhere else.

<comment><USER18> Of course our bodies handle HFCS and "sugar" differently. There are about a dozen types of common simple sugars and all of them are handled differently because they are different molecules.

Here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

<comment><USER19> Straw-man. The relevant question is whether or not HFCS is significantly worse than sucrose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are there any studies that associate telomere length with actual organism longevity in primates?

</comment><comment><USER21> Just in case anyone was wondering about diet soda...

"Only the sugary, bubbly stuff showed this effect. Epel didn't see any association between telomere length and diet soda intake. "

<comment><USER17> There are studies that link Diet Soda to other vascular risks. [http://www.miami.edu/index.php/news/releases/study_finds_pos...](http://www.miami.edu/index.php/news/releases/study_finds_possible_link_between_diet_soda_and_vascular_risks/)

There are also studies emerging which link artificial sweeteners to Diabetes. [http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/17/artificial- sw...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/17/artificial-sweeteners- diabetes-saccharin-blood-sugar)

<comment><USER22> I think its generally understood that most artificial sweeteners are seen as sugar by the body, but don't actually get turned into sugar in the bloodstream. So it makes sense that it might contribute to diabetes (your body digests it like sugar), but not aging (which is accelerated by sugar in the bloodstream). I believe the whole point of coke 0 is that it doesn't use an artificial sweetener? But don't quote me on that last sentence.

<comment><USER23> I could be wrong, but I thought Coke Zero was just the name for Diet Coke with Sucralose instead of Aspartame.

<comment><USER24> As the others have said, Coke Zero contains aspartame. However, it also contains acesulfame potassium which is another sweetener, so it may have a little less aspartame than Diet Coke. (The effect of multiple sweeteners is generally greater than an equivalent larger dose of one... or so I have... read. Maybe. In something somewhere. No promises.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Since she finds a strong shorter-telomere association in neither equally sweet juices NOR in diet soda, this result probably just unhealthy-lifestyle- correlation (e.g. drug addicts and undiagnosed diabetics drink more soda). Also, "The extremely high dose of sugar that we can put into our body within seconds by drinking sugared beverages is uniquely toxic to metabolism" (from her Time interview) seems an overreach. A properly functioning metabolism can handle some sugar, even in a spike.

<comment><USER26> Sugar can increase aging, see for example this for starts

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end- product](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end-product)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Since longer telomere's may give you brain cancer we should all avoid 100% fruit juice and drink more non-diet soda!

[http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/06/114956/longer-telomeres- lin...](http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/06/114956/longer-telomeres-linked-risk- brain-cancer)

Better yet ignore these preliminary and contradictory results until we actually understand what is actually going on.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wait is this the smoking gun to corn syrup?

Because "sugar sweetened sodas" don't exist or are rare, at least not in the USA. They are actually corn-syrup sweetened.

Especially since real sugar filled fruit juices did not have the same effect nor diet soda with no corn-syrup.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is not a criticism of this study, but I do want to observe that "aging" has a very specific meaning here, and it does not really just mean "harmful."

Aging causes things in your body to fail.

Smoking, also, causes things in your body to fail, regardless of and unrelated to whether it causes "aging."

(Anecdotally, as a person who has gone both through periods of heavy soda [here in the midwest, "pop"] consumption and who has been a pack-a-day smoker, there are orders of magnitude of difference in the effects on general health.)

<comment><USER26> aging = rate of damage / rate of repair

Some damage is intrinsic, caused by free radicals, wrongly transcribed DNA, misfolded proteins etc.

Some damage is caused by external factors like sunlight (skin damage), sugar, smoking, pollution, radiation etc.

Things that increases damage increases aging and things that decreases rate of repair also increases aging.

Exercise increases rate of repair and slows aging in that way, while sitting still all day decreases the rate of repair and thus increases aging.

You seem to think that aging is only the intrinsic damage, but in many cases the type of damage that happens can be the same and external factors can increase the intrinsic damage that happens continuously. Some of this damage will decrease cellular repair mechanisms and thus decrease the rate of repair and you get a vicious cycle, external damage like having a hand chopped of doesn't really influence cellular repair, but smoking and sugar intake do influence cellular repair in a negative way and can thus be said to accelerate aging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't see anyone discussing that this is based on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). NHANES is all self-reported data meaning its accuracy isn't great. It's a decent way of looking for potential research topics but is in no way definitive.

Any papers coming from NHANES data should be considered pre-research. Real data on this topic will come from properly controlled studies.

</comment><comment><USER31> What about something like carbonated cranberry juice? I mix 1 part low-carb Trader Joe's cranberry juice and 4 parts carbonated water, and drink about 20 oz a day. When I first started, it tasted tart and not sweet. I don't think there's much sugar in it.

If it's as harmful, I'd definitely give it up.

</comment><comment> digital-rubber Articles with may, could, etc basically don't say anything else but,

'We want some attention for our article now, but do not shoot us if it turns out to be completely bogus. But if we were right, we want to be seen as awesome researchers, bringers of news etc'.

</comment><comment><USER32> All I want to know is if I can drink a diet coke a day with impunity.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is anyone else seeing the website cut off at the bottom? There's no scroll bar, so I can't read beyond one screenfull.

</comment><comment><USER34> What an odd website, does not allow scrolling if javascript isn't turned on.

<comment><USER35> Then turn it on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> clickbait title from TIME.

from tfa: > Only the sugary, bubbly stuff showed this effect. Epel didn't see any association between telomere length and diet soda intake.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's funny but one never hears about the ill effects of carrots. "They" only study stuff that's already assumed to be bad for you. Ever wonder why?

<comment><USER38> Probably because mass consumption of carrots isn't a top public health issue? If consumption of carrots rivaled that of soda I'd be willing to bet there would be more studies on it just the same as there are studies on various other foods such as red meat, egg cholesterol, fish oil, etc.

<comment><USER39> Actually mass consumption of carrots can cause your skin to develop an orange tint (seriously, not joking here).

<comment><USER40> Same with yams. It happened to my brother when we were kids.

<comment><USER6> How much of which jam did he eat and what did he look like? (colour/intensity)

<comment><USER41> Yam, not jam. As in sweet potatoes.

<comment><USER42> Yam, jam and sweet potatoes are three different things. See for example: [http://homecooking.about.com/od/howtocookvegetables/a/sweetp...](http://homecooking.about.com/od/howtocookvegetables/a/sweetpotatodiff.htm)

<comment><USER43> In most parts of the US a sweet potato with soft orange insides is correctly called a "Yam" to differentiate it from the sweet potatoes with firm yellow insides.

Either name isn't great; it's neither closely related to the african yam, nor the common potato.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> aging per drink? per year? on average?</comment>


How was the number π first discovered? How did we first figure out it was 3.14…? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Pi is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter. Someone could have discovered that this ratio was a constant just by measuring circles of different sizes and noticing that if you divide the circumference by the diameter, you always got roughly the same number. By ancient times, the value of pi was already known to within 1%:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Antiquity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Antiquity)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#History) offers a few explanations from different eras</comment>


Against the synchronous society - <AUTHOR> https://kimonote.com/@mildbyte/against-the-synchronous-society-3146/ <comment><USER3> This is classic antisocial engineer thinking. The principal benefits of synchronicity are all social: it enables human contact, live conversations and shared context.

No one cares that a million toilets have to flush at the same time. We invent bigger and better sewage pipes, some people get paid to build them, and everything's fine. Lots of people like to watch the new Game of Thrones episode at the same time and then talk about it with their coworkers at the office the next day.

It really is a minority of people who think otherwise. I run a heavily asynchronous, remote company, with fully remote customers, and mostly remote employees. I bias toward hiring locally just so I have someone to talk to.

<comment><USER4> > _This is classic antisocial engineer thinking. The principal benefits of > synchronicity are all social: it enables human contact, live conversations > and shared context._

That's post hoc reasoning. Individuals don't globally optimize to synchronize everything. In fact, most individuals have good reasons for things to be desynced socially - so that they e.g. don't have to take a day off to visit a doctor or submit paperwork to a bank.

I suspect though that there is a process through which society tends to keep itself in sync. Not sure what it was, though.

> _Lots of people like to watch the new Game of Thrones episode at the same > time and then talk about it with their coworkers at the office the next > day._

Does this still happen, given the rise of the torrents, on-demand streaming, and the way TV shows distribution tend to be spread out over time? (Maybe it does, I'm an antisocial engineer, so I might have missed it.)

<comment><USER5> If there were no set hours how would you be able to depend on the weekday being when you could go to the bank or the doctor? What you're talking about is being the beneficiary of the very thing you're decrying.

<comment><USER6> One suspects you've never lived in a place where all the grocery stores have bankers' hours. This arrangement makes it difficult for a working single person to obtain groceries.

<comment><USER7> I never understood that. It drove me especially nuts when I lived in Germany where opening house were much more limited.

I'd love to see what happens if certain stores radically change their hours. Opening hours from 6am-9am & 5am-11am always seemed much more sensible to me. Who goes and buys a TV for example at 11am on a weekday?

If I had enough money to an experiment like this not endangering my future, I'd own a store just to see what would happen.

<comment><USER8> When I was in Berlin I was surprised grocery stores were open so short on Sunday. However, regardless of religion, it has a side effect that horeca workers (which -I kid you not- _is_ tough labour) can have a guaranteed half day off on that one day. That's a disadvantage of the 24/7 economy: workers who do certain tough labour jobs who are replaceable (a relatively non-unique skillset) have less rights.

> Who goes and buys a TV for example at 11am on a weekday?

What happens at say grocery stores is they have less workers at the non-peak times, and workers do different tasks at different times of the day. Instead of being clerk, they for example replenish from the warehouse or throw away items which are past their due date. You'd have only 1 or even 0 clerks, but there's also hardly any customers. Meantime, all these workers can still be productive elsewhere.

In your specific example I can imagine a clerk doing inventory or online orders during downtime. Though it depends also on the size of the store.

As for who buys that, grandpa & grandma, the guy who took a day off to buy a new TV (tho nowadays one can buy TVs online just as well, and why not [1]), or the mom who's a housewife or has a part-time job (latter being very common for females here in The Netherlands).

[1] I'm getting on a tangent here geez but if I'd buy the TV online here in the Netherlands I'd also have 2 weeks to send it back for _whatever_ reason other than warranty. I _don 't_ have that right if I buy it in brick & mortar store other than warranty. A good reason to shop online indeed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Intriguing blog post, but the analysis appears overly simplistic.

I'm going to go with the assumption with that individuals and private companies are rational. Therefore, they do what's best for them. Then the question becomes why a majority of individuals and private companies pick the synchronized schedule?

I believe that should be the angle of investigation, rather than creating theories about the grand mistakes the society makes. Everybody has more or less a brain you know :) And they can choose what's best for them. The question is why does the majority of people and firms choose the synchronized schedule?

There can be many reasons. I don't claim to know the answers. We can posit some theories, then test them through reasoning.

Number one reason might be: society needs a clock so that families can sync up. Drive kids to work. Help them with their homeworks. Cook. Eat family dinner. Both mom and dad go to work at the same time, so that they can be at home at the same time. You cannot delegate your interactions with your spouse or the kids :)

Single people and childless people do have more freedom. I remember the days where I used to go to work between 10-12am. Then leave around 7pm. Many of my single and childless friends are on a similar, shifted schedule.

So there you go. You can posit many other theories: E.g. market prices may not be dynamic enough for efficient allocation. That too might have a good reason (dynamic prices incur communication costs & may create confusion). So lack of incentives, too, must be a playing a role.

Weekday-weekday synchronicity too must have good reasons. Work gets done a lot better when your colleagues are around, you know :) Remote working hasn't caught up with the quality of face to face interaction.

Etc etc. The article misses many obvious things, imo.

<comment><USER5> The work day is mostly set by companies, not workers, and often the people owning the company aren't even showing up to the office, so why would they care about congestion? The fact that many software engineers can waltz in at 10:00 is a sign of the relatively strong market for their work; many workers do not enjoy flexible hours. This seems like a hole in your analysis (though also in the article).

<comment><USER7> Have you read "Micromotive and Macrobehavior"? The entire book is about this phenomenon. It's a great read! Out national political debate could be hugely elevated by everyone having read this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Depending on your job you can hack the holiday mechanism to your advantage.

We were immigrants and little reason to care about the US holidays Thanksgiving and Independence Day. My mum, a physician _always_ offered to cover those days and every other doctor in the (small) hospital took her up on it. Which meant whenever she wanted someone to be on call for her, she always had a huge number of people who owed her a favor.

This hack worked for Christmas too even though we did celebrate it (though just pressies and a meal — no family on the continent): people don't like to get sick at Xmas so she never got called before the end of the day (and as a bonus she left us with all the washing up)

</comment><comment><USER11> People want to maximize the time they spend together with their team mates, spouses, friends and children. That requires synchronization.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't automatically imply entire society will keep itself in sync, and yet for some reason it does.

<comment><USER7> It might. I want to be at work as the same time as my team mates. My wife wants to be at work as the same time as hers. We both want to be home at the same time. Now my team mates have to be at work as the same time as my wife's...

That's not even taking vendors or customers into account we might be doing business with. Schooling for children currently primarily happening with all children in the same room doing the same thing at the same time also furthers this. Just these few examples already cover huge parts of society.

I have neither kids, nor did my wife actually have fixed working hours somewhere and yet my job is best done if I work the same hours as all the people who have those constraints. So any one of these can have a huge impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is an assumption that most work environments are not like factories anymore. I wonder how true is that, even in "modern" fields such as corporate software development or maybe accounting. It seems these are still overwhelmingly often series of short 2-3 hour tasks that depend on immediate input from others - for task definition, or details needed for implementation.

Also, as other comments mention, work is used for socializing. I know many people for whom work today is one of the major forms of social interaction. As a society, we just do not sit on benches in front of the houses, talking to neighbors as they pass by, anymore. That maybe for better of for worse, but it would be good to construct some alternatives, before we remove the synchronous workplace.

<comment><USER5> The fastest growing sectors are service and healthcare, where I think it actually does matter what time someone is in. The idea that "most" jobs are white-collar office jobs signals to me some lack of awareness on the part of the author here.

<comment><USER13> I'd guess that more now than ever are jobs strictly time or shift scheduled.

<comment><USER5> Not only that: there is a growing trend of requiring workers in low-wage jobs to show up and they'll only find out at the time they show up whether they're needed or just need to go home. Certainly a pretty convenient setup for employers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Markets have better liquidity when all players are at the same time & place. It's possible that asynchronicity will come at the cost of liquidity - <USER2> transaction costs.

<comment><USER15> That's a valid concern, but it is solely founded in a capitalistic point of view. For some people there is no more to life than raising their personal net worth, others have other aspects.

<comment><USER16> I don't think the point is capitalistic - others (above) have made similar points to this one. Many business and social activities are enriched when most participants are present.

<comment><USER17> Many businesses and social activities are also enriched by not having downtime

<comment><USER4> And many businesses and social activities are also heavily disturbed when most participants are present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are a few aspects in which society continues to expect synchronicity. For instance, on average, more people wish to be awake when the sun is up, and asleep in the middle of the night, than vice versa. People expect to be able to reach services on the phone, or occasionally go to a shop in person. And, some services can only be provided in-person with both the service provider and customer present.

But yes, many things can and should be done in a far more staggered fashion.

<comment><USER4> Interestingly, and it's something I don't recall seeing a good explanation for, most services tend to be offered precisely at the same time majority of people are working - thus making them unavailable (or barely available) to the working population. See e.g. barbers, banks, etc.

<comment><USER19> In a mostly-synchronous society, "standard" working hours become somewhat desirable. Working 9-5ish typically maximises opportunities to see friends and family, and for parents it means they get to take advantage of free government-provided childcare (aka schools).

Plenty of places are open outside those hours, but they tend to be shops and services provided by relatively low status workers. Higher-status service workers (dentists, bankers, ...) generally seem to do better at resisting "unsociable" hours.

It's an annoying situation, but can't see it drastically improving without a widespread move away from synchrony.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > In the case of the Underground network, there are times on some lines where > trains arrive more frequently than every two minutes (pretty much as often > as they can, given that the trains have to maintain a safe distance between > each other and spend some time on the platform) and yet they still are > packed between 8am and 9am. Any incident, however small, like someone > holding up the doors, can result in a knock-on effect, delaying the whole > line massively.

> Why are people doing this to themselves?

It is not as though they have any choice in the matter. However, if you've ever worked a job with irregular weekends you'll know that one thing that stinks about it is you can rarely coordinate stuff with friends and family on your days off. Also hard to do stuff like attend church.

</comment><comment><USER20> In case the author sees this thread: the time labels for the weekday graph are wrong. The morning peak shows at about 0400, when it should be around 0800.

The weekend graph might have the same problem, since it ramps up before 0600, which is unlikely.

<comment><AUTHOR> There indeed was a 4-hour shift that I somehow completely ignored when labelling my axis. I've fixed it now, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would make a different argument about over-provisioning. Using infrastructure at maximum capacity means there's less of a safety margin and it's often unpleasant due to traffic or crowding. Reducing capacity in the name of efficiency doesn't seem like a good thing.

Instead I'd argue that using infrastructure at maximum capacity isn't something we necessarily need to do ten times a week. It needs to be tested, but maybe not that often?

</comment><comment><USER22> What if I want to play recreational soccer or attend church services in fellowship with a few hundred fellow believers? This proposal completely discounts a whole range of non-work mass activities.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hmmm, maybe file with art critic Mike Pepi's "Asynchronous! On the sublime administration of the everyday" [http://www.e-flux.com/journal/74/59798/asynchronous-on- the-s...](http://www.e-flux.com/journal/74/59798/asynchronous-on-the-sublime- administration-of-the-everyday/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I haven't read the full article but my immediate criticism is that systems need the spikes and peaks that synchrony provides. If they didn't exist we'd have to simulate them to keep systems from being overly fragile. Yes, there's a power spike when everyone goes to the fridge during a commercial, but the need to handle that variation makes systems more robust.

<comment><USER24> I'd like to hear a criticism of this.

<comment><USER25> I agree - I thought you were making a valid point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yes i agree, synchronicity is environmentally unsustainable. Metro stations and train stations are designed for peak capacity in rush hour.

Office workers spend the vast part of the day at their workstation and sending emails.

Why not do that from home?

Most meetings are useless and we know it, why not do them in chat or video conference?

Open spaces are the worst possible environment to get anything done and everyone knows it.

But there is this mindset that in person presence is the only way to work and interact, Which is true for some professions, but not all of them.

Most people dream would love working from home.

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, many commuter systems run at a much lower frequency outside of peak hours. It seems like having them running at the same frequency day- round would not necessarily be a win in the environmental impact department. If that is your concern trains should be as close to capacity as possible at all times.</comment></comment>


Fast: A Transducer-Based Language for Tree Manipulation (2014) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~loris/papers/pldi14.pdf <comment><USER2> I found this tutorial a little more approachable: [http://rise4fun.com/Fast/tutorial/guide](http://rise4fun.com/Fast/tutorial/guide)

Fast! is a Microsoft Research language for tree transforms, the cool part is the "deforestation" where a sequence of functions can be transformed in to a single function.

What makes this cool is it isn't "runtime" composition; the generated C# code does the transformation in a single pass. For example a sequence of maps and filters would only loop over the list once.

<comment><USER3> That site is unusable on mobile

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find these direct links to PDFs infuriating. Html is perfectly fine for documents like this.</comment>


Dear Slack: why is your WebRTC so weak? - <AUTHOR> https://webrtchacks.com/dear-slack/ <comment><USER2> > you need to have a very good excuse to launch something with WebRTC and not > support Firefox.

I built audio chat over webRTC for [https://precursorapp.com](https://precursorapp.com) [1]. I built support for both Firefox and Chrome, but I can understand why someone would choose not to support Firefox.

There are lots of annoying little differences between the two implementations. For example, Firefox wouldn't fire a negotiationneeded event after adding a stream [2], so I had to add a special workaround for them. Connection stats was another area where the APIs diverged a lot.

In their defense, sometimes Firefox does a better job of implementing the spec than Chrome does. But since most people develop in Chrome first, it's no surprise that they put off working on a Firefox implementation until they're happy with their implementation in Chrome.

[1] Click on the mic icon at the bottom left of a document to try it out.

[2] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1071643](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1071643)

<comment><USER3> This is our experience too for Epishow. It's not that we couldn't get it working, it's that we focus on one platform (chrome) then expand outward (web at large, which for now means ff).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Summary: why does Slack support WebRTC in Chrome but not Firefox?

<comment><USER5> Well it's been a little over a year or so since i last worked with WebRTC, but portions of it have pretty bad cross browser compatability.

Firefox can talk with firefox fine, chrome with chrome, but the 2 have some issues talking with each other.

Maybe Slack just made a decision to support chrome until the 2 meet in a way that makes them compatible.

<comment><USER6> I've been working on a webRTC application as a full-time job for 1 and a half year now, and I've never faced cross-browser communication issues. The main problem at the moment is Chrome's implementation of the datachannel, it's terrible … (huge performance issues when having too many open connection, complete browser crash when using unreliable transport (fixed now, but it took almost one year), no support for Blob binary type …) As the article says, doing Chrome-only webRTC in 2015 and 2016 is really a strange decision …

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Because it's a beta and not finished yet? God.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is the backlash against Slash starting? (the Backslash!?)

seen a fair few negative posts of late.

</comment><comment><USER9> Also why does your chat client take soo long (we're talking 20s+) to start up if you're not in the US.

<comment><USER7> I think your connection is bad? Europe here, starts in 1-2 seconds.

<comment><USER9> Tried in 4 countries, Australia included. Granted its better and worse at times it is consistently worse off than using fb (via web browser), Telegram (Mac app) & Whatsapp (web app). They have a better architecture under the hood it looks like.

If the devs tracked startup times, they would know what exactly i'm talking about.</comment></comment></comment>


Are sales people different from you and me? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/09/are-sales-people-different-from-you-and-me.html <comment><USER2> Perhaps sales, and its reward structure, attracts a different kind of personality. I don't think I've ever met a salesperson I liked, whether in a sales or personal setting. The overwhelming impression is of manipulative bullies who use social norms of politeness and reciprocity to lever advantage out of people. Makes me sick.

<comment><USER3> I've met many salespeople I like and many I don't. They are not all self- centered manipulative bullies, though many are. Some are genuinely interested in making shopping a pleasant experience, and as a result get more sales (the particular person I am thinking of does NOT work on commission, incidentally). Some have strong relationships with specific customers, understand their needs very well and understand their company's products very well and rarely ever recommend anything that won't be valued.

<comment><USER4> Salespeople who sell big-ticket software tend strongly towards the bully type. This would be fine if it were only outwardly directed, but they often use the same tactics _internally_.

I think the same phenomenon manifests with corporate managers. It's all well and good if a middle manager has the teeth and claws to hold his own in the corporate jungle. She/he shouldn't necessarily use such armament in other contexts, such as when dealing with the craft-oriented techies in her own group.

Some buddhists would say something like, "One is shaped by their livelihood."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After watching a TED presentation on External motivation, which stated it did more harm than anything. I was nodding in full agreement and trying to think of one job where it was not true. The only job I came up with was sales, I was just not sure for this one. I would really like to see a one year after report on this, this should be telling. I think it will prove commissions are not working.

BTW the TED talk is <http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html>

<comment><USER6> Thanks for linking to the talk, it was very thought provoking. And, by what I see, adds more support to the article's conclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My father is a sales engineer, which means he covers all the technical stuff of a sale. His employer is behind in paying commissions my father needs, not simply wants. In my experience of growing up with a father who worked as a technician and then as a salesman, I see this as a change for the better.

This method removes greed as a motivation, promotes selling _helpfulness_ to the customer (rather than ripping them off), and stabilizes the pay of the sales guy who just had a really tough quarter but still has to pay the bills.

Sure, a well placed bonus here and there for outstanding team-work, a huge sale or contract, etc, would be a good motivator. But, I think the commission- ship has long since sailed.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think read something similar in Norm Brodsky's The Knack.

Joel has been talking about this for the longest time, <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html>

If I were to guess, I would say some of the top folks that want to make more money compared to what Red-gate is paying now and don't want to trade in the risk-reward factor will probably leave.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting idea, I wonder how it will turn out in a year. I think the initial motivational boost will drop after a while and they will have hard time keeping their sales people motivated after that.

<comment><USER9> Do other types of employees lose motivation after a year of being paid a steady income?

<comment><USER8> Other types of employees find the source of their motivation in other things; some of us programmers are motivated by creating cool stuff, teachers are motivated by seeing the kids grow and becoming more educated, these are mostly internal motivations as opposed to external motivations such as commissions and bonuses. Maybe it's just because I don't really know the work of salespeople very well, but I can't really imagine them finding an internal source of motivation in their line of work.

The only thing I can possibly think of that might become a source of motivation for them is helping clients finding the right solution.

<comment><USER10> Why is it hard to imagine that selling the 'cool stuff' developers/engineers make (and being the best at it) is motivation enough? Without sales people all the cool stuff we hackers create, would be seen and used by almost no one.

The art of selling, even without the ugly side of it (which there's plenty) is pretty amazing. We all admire guys like Steve Jobs but don't realize that he's the best salesman there is.

<comment><USER11> Technically, Steve Jobs is in Marketing (creating the market / generating the leads) rather than sales (turning leads into customers)...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sympathetic to the idea and curious to see how it works for the author. A clear subset of salespeople have a distinct entrepreneurial streak. They work in sales because, similar to being a business owner, you get paid based directly on the value you provide. You would definitely lose these people, but depending on how strong your sales _systems_ are, that may or may not be a net loss to sales. Losing entrepreneurially-minded people from your company, though, seems like a general negative.

Incidentally, one of the commenters had an effect on me quite opposite to his intention. The commenter noted how much he liked restaurants where the tip is included. This is completely foreign to my experience. My experience is that tipped service is consistently among the best service.

</comment><comment><USER13> Couldn't disagree more.

In fact, because of the times you'll probably be ok but I'd be careful about losing your sales team when things get better.

Unless you're paying them 6 figures then I'd really suggest getting them on _some kind of commission._

Commission is a huge part of the sales process and always has been.

People are fundamentally motivated by greed. Especially sales. At the very least they should have a choice.

</comment><comment><USER14> Every employee in a company should be evaluated more on how the organization as a whole benefits from his/her contribution, sales are no exception.</comment>


Uber Settles Federal Investigation into Workplace Culture - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/technology/uber-settles-eeoc-investigation-workplace-culture.html <comment><AUTHOR> > The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission "found reasonable cause to > believe that Uber permitted a culture of sexual harassment and retaliation > against individuals who complained about such harassment."

> Uber agreed to a settlement by establishing a $4.4 million fund to pay > current and former employees who were sexually harassed at work.

Wow, a $4M fine for a $50B company with a corrosively toxic culture. That'll teach 'em a lesson! /s</comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with mechanical keyboard users in an open office plan? - <AUTHOR> Hey -TAKTAKTAKTAK- does anyone have any advice on how to deal -TAKTAKTAKTAK- with mechanical keyboard users in an open office plan? It's getting out of hand and asking them to use a regular keyboard is -TAKTAKTAKTAK- not working because "they are much more productive".<p>How to politely deal with -TAKTAKTAKTAKTAK- this situation? <comment><USER2> That's like asking the marketing/sales/CEO type people to tone down the volume of their calls.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just ordered a mechanical keyboard for my open office space. I was sure to get silent switches out of respect for my coworkers. Maybe see if they would be willing to get a keyboard with silent switches? Maybe offer to pay for them too if you run the company - mechanical keyboards are not cheap. Keep in mind that silent switches have a different feel, and out of Cherry MX's only red and blacks have a silent version, I believe.

</comment><comment><USER4> the issue is the open office plan, not the keyboard.

do you really want to work in such an environment that demonstrates open contempt for the concept of "getting actual work done" ?

+1 for actually informing them of your frustrations with this prior to resigning, pointless though it may be...

</comment><comment><USER5> Ask them to get a desk or keyboard mat. Alternatively get a keyboard with even louder switches. Model M, Gateron blues, Kailh Box Navy, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> How did they deal with all of those typewriters in the 50s with an open floor plan? They didn't.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe don't get so triggered? You can always quit, the job market is great for seekers right now</comment>


Breakdown of Apple lightning port - <AUTHOR> http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/23/boom-pins/ <comment><USER2> Tangent: I know that that comment is more of a need for self-deprecation than an actual opinion, but the new brazilian standard plug is not a disaster at all. It's a clever, much safer design, based on an international standard. Every product made in the last half-dozen years fits it, and by now most commercial spaces and every new residence has them. Lately I'm having more trouble with sockets/extensions that _aren't_ updated than the opposite...

<comment><USER3> I think the criticism he had of it was that it provides no way to know if the outlet is 240V or 120V. Otherwise it seems swell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anybody happen to know if the lightning port, in theory at least, can support Thunderbolt? In the future, I'd really like to be able to plug in a nice A/D audio converter to the iPad and use it as a DAW.

If it's not theoretically possible, then the lightning port really isn't future proof.

<comment><USER5> I don't believe that's possible. Looking at my Thunderbolt cable and ports, I notice: 1) The cable is not reversible. It's a shaped barrel to fit one way. 2) The cable has many connection points (I think I count 10) above and below the inside of the barrel at the cable's end. 3) The inside of the cable is an innie and the inside of the port is a outie, opposites of Lightning (Lightning doesn't have this shaped barrel thing going on, the cable's just an outie with connections on both sides, so the port's just an innie.)

And I also know from other reviews that Thunderbolt cables aren't just powered with electricity, but powerized (?!) with processors at each end. My fingers suspect this is true because the ends get damn hot.

<comment><USER6> That's _exactly_ the kind of thinking that the original article is arguing against! It doesn't matter what shape or size or gender or even the number of pins a connector has!

The biggest restriction on getting Thunderbolt on an iOS device is not going to be the connector or cable. It will be the controller chips necessary to support such a fast protocol. And fast enough flash chips to provide the data quickly enough.

Lightning can act as both a USB controller or peripheral. It can already provide or receive power. The active elements inside Thunderbolt won't be the limitation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is quite amazing. Good thinking on Apples part and is a good bonus for them later down the track when others try and copy them

<comment><USER8> What's the good thinking on Apple's part? Being compatible with USB3 by copying the mechanism that MHL uses to connect microUSB connectors to HDMI and DP?

<comment><USER9> It's good thinking building a completely generic connector that doesn't adhere to only one standard. So that if <insert new standard> comes on the market Apple could support it without a change of connector.

You couldn't do that with USB.

<comment><USER8> microUSB has already done that with HDMI and DisplayPort, there's no reason to suppose they couldn't do it with a hypothetical new standard.

<comment><USER10> No, it hasn't. It requires different hardware in the device itself to output HDMI/DisplayPort to what "should" be standard USB pins.

<comment><USER11> Apple's connector isn't going to automatically support any signaling they decide to add in the future either. It has to have the proper transceiver in the device as well. If they do decide to add new signaling formats, they'll end up with the issue of newer devices supporting them and older ones not supporting them, which will be rather confusing. The same problem currently exists with HDMI/DP signaling over MicroUSB, though.

The bottom line is that they could have done this just the same with a USB port. In my opinion, all they really got out of designing their own connector was: a) something they can license, control, and collect royalties on; b) a connector that's slightly easier to use (the ability to plug the cable in either way, etc.).

<comment><USER12> Honestly, I don't think that's their reason for choosing something proprietary over usb. I doubt their first priority was to create something so that they can license, control, and collect royalties on -- if that was their motivation, they would be doing that to the audio jack too. After 10 years of their 30 pin connector, I'm sure they've collected a good amount input from manufacturers & users and engineered something to fulfill those requirements.

I feel like people tend to have these same knee-jerk reactions to anything Apple-designed; they always feel it was designed for the purposes of collecting royalties because Apple is "evil".

I think it's a bit too early to tell if the device connector will lead to confusion over "old" and "new" lightning supported devices considering nobody has released any lightning devices yet. Your FUD is based on existing intermixed standards that have nothing to do with a connector design created by a single company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would be interesting if Apple put Lightning ports on their MacBooks, and then sold Lightning to Lightning cables. Then there would be no restrictions from the protocol at the other end of the cable.

<comment><USER14> It'd be hard to justify making space for an extra port on the MBA that's only useful for one specific device; and the gain over USB would appear minimal. Never mind that Apple is trying to sever the PC dependency in iOS, making a dedicated Lightning jack of even more questionable use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _...if you get a cheap [HDMI] cable, you may find out that it doesn't work well (or at all)._

This has been shown to be false over and over.

</comment><comment><USER16> So if I understand this correctly, this system uses a male connector as a power OUTput? Does that mean every charger must be intelligent enough to properly detect shorting if someone touches the lightning tip to a steel table? Is that when the lightning happens? What about the immense market for poorly made non-intelligent third party devices without proper safety circutry.. doesn't an exposed male power output open up a huge danger door?

<comment><USER17> Scroll to the bottom of the article:

> The pins on the plug are deactivated until after the plug is fully inserted, > when a wake-up signal on one of the pins cues the chip inside the plug. This > avoids any shorting hazard while the plug isn't inside the connector.

I'm guessing that there's a different mechanism for power plugs, since they have to work even if the device is dead. Yes, there's always a market for poorly made third-party devices, but poorly-made devices have always had the potential to be dangerous -- scroll back to the top, and you'll see a dangerous, poorly-made adapter that manages to be dangerous even though the power is always transmitted from female jack to male plug.

<comment><USER16> Anyone can create a poorly made adapter or a poorly made plug. My question is why would an industry leader put an elementary risk at the forefront of a new technology? The pins should be shielded.

Third party garbage is inevitable, and too often very difficult to tell apart from authentic merchandise. In electrical current even in low amp situations idiot-proof should be the critical part of the design.

<comment><USER17> A power adapter which can't handle a short is dangerous, period. Handling a short should be a part of the design of the power supply. Break open a low- quality third-party power supply for the last generation of iPhone and you'll see some downright dangerous, possibly lethal stuff. These dangers aren't really even mitigated by putting a shield around the plug.

[http://www.arcfn.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger- and-...](http://www.arcfn.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-why- you.html)

And a picture of what it should look like:

[http://www.arcfn.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger- teardown-q...](http://www.arcfn.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown- quality.html)

Notice that on the shoddy power supply, the isolation between mains voltages and the other side is about 1mm. Manufacturing tolerances and component faults could easily bridge that gap and electrify the entire low-voltage side with lethal 240V mains -- shield and all.

Idiot-proofing low-voltage plug design doesn't help, because you've already lost if you let idiots design anything that plugs into the wall. Okay, shorting the plug might blow out your knockoff power supply and possibly start a fire, if the current limiting circuitry fails (which it shouldn't). But that knockoff was going to electrocute you anyway, at least if it lights on fire you still have the chance to run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Stupid Apple, if only they have used micro-usb...

Update: Ok, sorry, looks like sarcasm is not clear, so here.

<comment><USER19> Micro-USB has one tremendously major disadvantage for battery-powered mobile devices: Maximum current.

USB 2 has a maximum current of 1.5A while communicating and 5.0A when not. Micro-USB has a maximum current (per spec) of 1.0-1.8A, and the usual rating for most connectors is 1.0A. The result? By switching to Micro-USB, your iDevice will now take _significantly_ longer to charge. (However, keep in mind the iPhone charge adapter is 1.0A, whereas the iPad adapters are 2.1A).

So in exchange for a standardized connector, we would have devices that take twice as long to charge. Honestly, that's not a tradeoff 99% people would want to make.

<comment><USER20> The new USB 3.0 power delivery spec supports 3A at 20V over micro-USB for potentially 60 Watts delivered via micro-USB and 100W over USB. The idea is to get rid of laptop charger plugs entirely and replace them with USB. A bunch of companies are on this standard, including Dell, Foxconn, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and Nokia. Apple is absent for some reason. This standard will also allow external hard drives, printers, etc to be powered over USB without a separate power plug.

This will be an interesting change if the standard catches on. I wonder about the failure mode of 60 watts through micro-USB though - I expect dramatic smoke and flame :-)

[http://www.usb.org/press/USB_Power_Delivery_Spec_Completion_...](http://www.usb.org/press/USB_Power_Delivery_Spec_Completion_FINAL.pdf)

<comment><USER21> Could the "some reason" be that the USB plug is not a mag-safe plug? I for one would definitely not welcome going back to a different type of power connector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe I was the only one in the dark, but if you've not seen it, this cable is damn cool (yes, I'm a geek).

It's not "hollow" like USB cables, where the "male" plug is actually a "female" plug in the sense that there is a negative space in the usb connector that is filled when it's plugged in. With the Lightning port, it's just a male nub with the pins on both sides. Meaning you don't have to worry about orienting it correctly.

<comment><USER23> It's also much, much smaller than Apple's images make it seem.

<comment><USER24> This. I was expecting something similar in size to a USB connector, but having seen it in the flesh, it's absolutely tiny!</comment></comment></comment>


Warning over drones use by terrorists - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35280402 <comment><USER2> Hopefully terrorists won't read WW2 history and just tie bombs to balloons and fly them into coastlines from overseas.

</comment><comment><USER3> It wouldn't be too hard to use single-board computers to make your own drones that don't have limits on them. The impact of trying to limit access to such computers would cause more problems, too.</comment>


Never patterns, exhaustive matching, and uninhabited types in Rust - <AUTHOR> http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2018/08/13/never-patterns-exhaustive-matching-and-uninhabited-types-oh-my/ <comment><USER2> Can someone explain why you'd want uninhabited types?

> if you have to define an error type for some computation, but this > particular computation can never fail, you might use an uninhabited type.

I don't see the reason behind returning a Result<String, Err> if there is no error to return. Why not just return a String?

<comment><USER3> A string is the worst thing to return because it's huge. Most people return () instead which is zero sized.

However when returning ! the compiler can optimize the entire error handling away.

<comment><USER4> > A string is the worst thing to return because it's huge. Most people return > () instead which is zero sized.

I think what they're asking is "if you're returning a Result<String, Err>" but you're making the Err an unhinabitated type (so can't ever have an error) why not just return a String in the first place?

<comment><USER3> Because there are generic APIs that return results as part of the contract. A good example is FromStr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Alright this is going to be a dumb question but...

Every time I start a new personal project I say 'oh neat I can use Rust!' N hours later (where N is a large number) I realize Go is about as fast, much easier and more readable syntax, and so I use Go if I want something that isn't Node. I'm a web developer so maybe Rust just isn't useful for that, but is Rust purely a systems level language for making super low level stuff? Forgive my ignorance, but what do people actually use it for where it outshines other languages?

<comment><USER6> I actually often wonder why so many web developers are drawn to Rust. Satisfying a borrow checker just doesn't seem like a worthwhile task when writing web apps. Are there things about Go that you feel are bad enough to warrant a switch to Rust?

<comment><USER7> Performance is not the only benefit. You also get freedom from data races, and (arguably) the borrow checker imposes structure that makes the program easier to read and reason about, because it's clearer who "owns" (and can mutate) what, and what is shared.

I've missed this property when writing Java and JS even before Rust was a thing, and Go has felt the same.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, the clear ownership in Rust allows you to skip the defensive copying that so often happens in Java. Of course you get this property in most languages that do not use garbage collection, but I few restrict mutable aliasing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > This post describes the idea of a "never pattern" (written !) that matches > against the ! type or any other "empty enum" type. It also describes an > auto-never transformation that inserts such patterns into matches. As a > result – in the desugared case, at least – we no longer use the absence of a > match arm to designate matches against uninhabited types.

> Explicit ! patterns make it easier to define what data a match will access. > They also give us a way to use lints to help bridge the needs of safe and > unsafe code: we can encourage unsafe code to write explicit ! patterns where > they might help document subtle points of the semantics, without imposing > that burden on safe code.</comment>


If You Learn Only One New Thing This Year, Make It Rack - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wekeroad.com/tutorials/rack-melts-faces <comment><USER2> This is, in my eyes, really part of a larger trend. Python for example has WSGI (which I think kicked things off), and I believe Perl has PSGI/Plack.

<http://wsgi.org/wsgi/>

<http://plackperl.org/>

The commonalities seem to be (1) a library-agnostic specification, (2) a simple dictionary-based data structures, (3) pluggable and self-contained "middleware", and (4) massive adoption as people run away from the exploding burning horror of the ever-multiplying HTTP servers being written nowadays. Even large frameworks that existed before these specs get grandfathered in, like the effort to put Django on WSGI or Ruby on Rails on Rack.</comment>