Ask HN: How do you determine your own knowledge level? - <AUTHOR>

I've been looking at the latest HN job listing and they always mention they are looking for experts.  This got me thinking.
How do I know how smart I am?  How do I know if I'm actually good at this?  While I know I can do certain things here and there, I'm not really sure if this fits in the amateur level or the genius level.
I tried asking other people but that brought even greater questions.  How do I know if the other person is an expert or not to gauge whether I'm an expert or not?  Plus, finding people who are willing to fully evaluate you without any bias only adds to the problem.  Most people also seem to evaluate based on output, not thought process.  They can't really say if your heading the wrong or right direction.
What ways do you guys self-evaluate yourself to determine your own knowledge level?  In what ways have you used others to help determine it? <comment><USER2> I asked something similar the other day on a post with regards to working out how good/bad my code is. I got some great feedback.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4073866>

On a broader basis there are a couple of things which I think act as an indicator.

1\. Is you time spent on Stackoverflow and thumbing through books inversely related to the time you have spent on a topic. When we start out on a new language/library we spend a lot of time in the docs and checking things, over time you should start to notice that you begin spending less time in the docs and more time coding. Eventually you will notice that you can start to answer some questions on Stackoverflow on the topic. At this point I would say you are good at the chosen topic.

2\. You stop looking for snippets of open source code or plugins and find yourself naturally leaning towards doing it yourself. This isn't always the correct approach for a given solution but it means you are familiar enough to "get stuff working" from first principles. This probably isn't expert level but it is certainly at the very familiar level which is good enough in most cases.

3\. You begin to dig deeper into how the chosen topic works and dissect it to the point where you notice flaws and see where you can make improvements. I think this is the expert level and is very time consuming to get to and may mean you have reached this level at the detriment to your broader knowledge - which is fine if that is what you intended.

I've used coding analogies for this but I think it is basically the same in every field.

I like Valve's ethos of finding T-shaped people, nice and broad across a lot of topics and then they go deep on one.

Just my 2 cents

<comment><AUTHOR> "spending less time in the docs and more time coding" Odd. I usually see the opposite effect. They usually spend a lot more reading and a lot less time coding.

<comment><USER2> I sort of know what you mean - I think what I mean is that you spend less time looking at the docs to accomplish basic stuff. For instance I spent a lot of time reading the codeigniter docs 6 months ago to even get something working, now I go back to remind myself of things every now and then. When I read the docs now it is more to get a deeper understanding of what is going on and working out how to improve what I have done.

Maybe I should say that you spend less time in the docs not knowing what is going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I run into this all the time. There is always something more to know and everythng is evolving so fast that I personally don't think you can be an expert in any technology anymore. If you can understand it well enough to produce a completely new product and be able to figure out what you don't know fast enough to not make it a hinderance, then I would call you at least very knowledgeable.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally, my first step is reflection - am I as smart as I think I am regarding programming/history/science/etc?

Second is to seek out experts. This is much easier now thanks to sites like HN, StackExchange, et al. They can help you gauge your own knowledge level.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're wondering how much you know about PHP comparing to your peers for instance, you could search for quizzes online for it.</comment>


Man wins $1.5m in first of its kind saw case - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/yourtown/malden/articles/2010/03/06/man_wins_15m_in_first_of_its_kind_saw_case/

<comment><USER2> This is absolutely ridiculous. If he wanted a saw with Sawstop, he should have paid the money to buy one with it!

For a comparison, a Sawstop cabinet saw intended for home woodworkers was (as of July 09) $2900. Ryobi's MOST expensive table saw that I've seen was listed at $299.

So, the guy sued a budget tool maker for not including patented technology that's included in models 10 times more expensive than the one he (probably) purchased.

And he won.

If Ryobi loses on appeal, it's going to be a crying shame.

For a (possibly terrible) analogy, it's like someone buying a small cheap car, getting in a wreck, and then suing the car manufacturer because their car isn't as safe as the highest-end luxury cars. I wish I could say it was unbelievable, but it's clearly occured.

<comment><USER3> No, the real question is why did he get money for being careless. If I put on my skates wrong as a kid, fell down and bumped by head, know what happened? My mother yelled at me for not being careful. Now, we sue the skate manufacturer.

<comment><USER4> That's a big assumption. We don't know the circumstances of the accident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since it seems that those who have commented on this thus far are focusing on the wrong aspects (or at least it seems so to me), heres some important context.

1) The reason why most table saw manufacturers did not adopt the "sawstop" skin contact detection technology when it first came out (easily more than 5 years ago i believe, possibly even earlier) has to do with that change being possibly legally considered an admission of liability which was previously not there, which would open the avenue for many more lawsuits

2) Accordingly, the reason why this case is a big deal is not because it opens up the window more for old injuries, but because now the manufacturers will be in the situation of needing to consider the tradeoff between cost of liability for past injuries since the introduction of sawstop, and the cost of liability for all new injuries (presumably by having all new saws have the option of the sawstop style tech, they would have no more future liability).

in otherwords, this legal ruling broke a shitty nash equilibrium

<comment><USER6> I also heard the problem with the technology was it was very finicky. For example, wet wood would cause it to discharge, which would ruin the blade and I believe damage the machine. Could be wrong though.

<comment><USER7> I don't know about damaging the machine but wet wood has a similar capacitance to our fingers and that is why it stops the blade like that.

I wonder if the system can evolve the way airbags did for cars? In the beginning airbags would go off with little provocation; now they are smart enough to realize that they should not go off at all even in a mild crash.

<comment><USER8> Here's a good video of the mechanism: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3mzhvMgrLE>

I'm not sure there's much wiggle room in terms of "finger detection" (as others have said, conductivity of wet wood is just very similar), but perhaps the brake could be designed in a way that doesn't trash the machine every time it goes off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is considerably more to this story than first meets the eye. I, too, first thought 'reverse patent troll' but now I am considerably less sure.

[http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/03/sawstop...](http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/03/sawstop_saw_brake_safety_devic.html)

 _In 2002, Ryobi, which initially signed a contract with SawStop, pulled out. Manufacturers, interested at first, refused to license their device. Gass remembered they told him, "Safety doesn't sell." [...] Saws currently on the market can not be retrofitted with SawStop's device. Manufacturers would have to redesign saws, which could cause a price increase of about $150. [...]_

This puts quite a different cast on things, and when you look at the whole article it's hard not to wonder if the industry colluded to put up barriers to a new entrant. I can't make up my mind, and am going to read the court transcript before I form a conclusion. As with the lady who got a big award from McDonalds for spilling coffee on herself, what seemed on the surface to be a junk lawsuit was actually much more complex, with the defendants having extensive foreknowledge and choosing not to address the issue for economic reasons.

Edit: court's opinion is not online yet, and the original complaint is too brief to warrant forming a conclusion.

<comment><USER9> This is different though, in the case of McDonalds she was not aware of the risk, whereas this guy obviously was. If people actually wanted this device then it would be for sale. When working with machinery a level of caution is required and a lot of safety devices can cause problems -- what can be cut without tripping the device, or slow work down.

<comment><USER4> But the device _is_ for sale. I agree that power tools are dangerous, but we don't yet know the exact circumstances of the accident. The question is not so much whether the customer was aware of the risk, but whether the manufacturer was aware and chose to do nothing to mitigate it. Ryobi was at the point of signing a contract to license the technology 8 years ago and suddenly pulled out. Saying that 'safety doesn't sell', if verifiable, suggests their misgivings were economic rather than technical. Past similar cases, such as the Ford Pinto, usually go very poorly for the defendants.

This could result in an awfully big class-action lawsuit if the ruling is upheld. From the same link: _According to the Journal of Trauma, an estimated 565,670 table-saw-related injuries were treated from 1990 to 2007 in U.S. emergency rooms. The vast majority involved a hand coming in contact with the blade, and about 10 percent ended in amputation._

If we estimate the average cost of an amputation in medical bills and lost future productivity at $100,000, then this would represent a $5.6 billion loss to the economy. This case is going to be fought tooth and nail, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court.

<comment><USER9> The dangers with the ford pinto problem was faulty design; they gas tank was in the wrong place. Whereas with a table saw the dangers are well known. Now if something went wrong and the safety device on the machine failed due to a defect then you might have a point. As it is, it's a saw -- it cuts things you put into it, if you put your finger in it will get cut. I don't believe it is at all comparable to the ford pinto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, this sounds like a massive underground patent-licensing play for SawStop. <http://www.sawstop.com/>

Another bullshit lawsuit that leads us towards a world covered in Nerf.

<comment><USER11> Why didn't he buy a saw with SawStop??

Also, I wonder if he is a professional carpenter. If he is, he would know about SawStop. If he is not, he shouldn't be using this equipment.

<comment><USER2> From what I've found checking online, saws with SawStop are multiple thousands of dollars. ($2900 for their home-carpenter, table saw version.)

Ryobi is a budget toolmaker. I'd bet that the reason he didn't buy one was Sawstop is because he decided that his chances of getting hurt were low enough to justify saving the $1-2k extra that a Sawstop saw would cost him.

<comment><USER12> Well, that was his decision. Sorry to be so cold.

If they want to force manufacturers to include this technology, legislate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This proves what we already know - people are idiots. The dude with missing fingers is an idiot for sticking his hand in a spinning blade. The judge is an idiot for not throwing this case out and the jury is 12 idiots that found the table saw maker guilty.

My grandfather cut all four of his finger tips off in a planer and I know the only thing he thought was - "that was an idiot thing to do". If I cut my leg half-off with my chainsaw that is the first and only thing I would think of too... but so many people don't want to take any share of the responsibility and we end up with this. I will step off the box now.

</comment><comment><USER14> American rock climber Tommy Caldwell cut off part of his index finger with a table saw in 2001. Since then, he has pulled off such notable ascents as Flex Luthor (5.14d/5.15a), climbing El Capitan all free twice in one day (VI 5.13), and the Dihedral Wall (VI 5.14a).

I guess it would be difficult for him to go back and sue everyone in sight for the lack of SawStop ruining his career as a professional climber.

<comment><USER7> I thought el cap took a week to ascend? If he did that twice in one day free that is just absurdly amazing.

<comment><USER14> It does take most people a week to ascend with aid. That being said, the less gear you carry, the faster you climb. So the moment you try to ascend something in a day, you get to leave your poop tube, portaledge, sleeping bags, food, satellite hookup to HN, and other baggage behind. This makes you considerably faster.

All that being said, climbing the nose free is astounding. Toomy and his wife at the time Beth Rodden were the third and fourth people to climb it free. Lynn Hill was the first to do it in 1993, and the first to do it in a day in 1994. In the next sixteen years only one other person pulled it off.

Her line "It goes, boys" is one of the all-time greatest statements about the ability of a woman to equal or best a man in athletic competition. Here's some footage, including her entrance into the near-mythical "changing corners" at around 0:50 or so:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KlA77j6xAc>

Anyhoo, Tommy doing it twice in one day is ridiculous, once on the nose and once on another route. Sick. And he did it with just nine fingertips! Maybe the guy suing should actually pay Ryobi, it might be that fingers hold you back...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeah. Next stop, super expensive table saws that don't cut. Three cheers for tort.</comment>


Warp – self-contained, single binary applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dgiagio/warp <comment> open-source-ux It's fascinating how self-contained binaries are now coveted as such a desirable feature. Dozens of languages (if not more) were capable of this decades ago. In fact, some of them could generate self-contained binaries that allowed you to bundle app assets like icons and images inside the executable - no additional add-ons needed. And they were native executables, not complicated wrappers with layer upon layer of different technologies.

This is not to take anything away from this project, just making an observation. The programming field often feels like it's in a giant loop constantly re-discovering what went before.

<comment><USER2> > The programming field often feels like it's in a giant loop constantly re- > discovering what went before.

It might feel that way, but this is driven by economics. Basically disk, memory, and bandwidth is far cheaper than it used to be so who cares if you waste a GB or so copying the same libraries all over if you don't have to solve for dependency hell?

<comment><USER3> > _disk is far cheaper_

Not in the cloud.

<comment><USER2> To be clear, you're asserting that the price of disk in the cloud is comparable to what it was decades ago?

<comment><USER3> Things are more complicated than that. (Depending on the pricing scheme, you might end up paying per gigabyte per hour, for example; which may or may not include transfer/storage of actual data; a faster "drive" could be much more expensive than a slower one, etc.)

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I'm not following. Granted pricing schemes have changed, but adjusting for that, are you claiming that disk is not dramatically cheaper than it was ~20 years ago? Not trying to be a dick, just not following your point.

<comment><USER3> Point is, "disk" in the cloud is not the same thing as the disk in your PC.

<comment><USER4> No, the point is it doesn't matter where the disk is, the overall price has gone down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Latest .net core 3 apparently supports single-bibary packaging.

It has been a often-requested feature for at least 2 years.

[https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/13329](https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/13329)

(The last comment referring to warp is indicative)

<comment><USER6> .Net Core 3 wont be out until next year.

The current .Net Core 2.x runtime has had this feature since it came out though (last year?).

(Hello world + runtime is like 100 MB and several hundred files)

<comment><USER7> For what it's worth, the IlLinker can get Hello World down to 20MB and as many files:

[https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/samples/linker- in...](https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/samples/linker- instructions.md)

If you use some extra options to disable crossgen and link System.Private.CoreLib, you can get the size down to 10MB, at the expense of startup time:

[https://github.com/AustinWise/IlLinkerExample](https://github.com/AustinWise/IlLinkerExample)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very neat. Would like to see more languages targeting single binaries. This is one reason (I believe) that has made Go so popular.

<comment><USER9> I wish <my favorite language> also had this. However, containers work. Not sure why they do java though, i thought java has been happy with jars so far.

<comment><USER2> We're struggling using containers for our Python and Javascript applications. I think we're using venvs and node_modules and we oughtn't (or we shouldn't keep them in our project directory where they sometimes--but not always--get overwritten by source code volume mounts).

<comment><USER10> It can be a little tricky to do things right here.

There are a few things of note:

1\. The .dockerignore file can be used to prevent use of your `node_modules` folder during `docker build`, even if you have something like `COPY . .` in your Dockerfile.. This can let you create a new `node_modules` folder from your lockfile as part of the docker build process to create an image for testing/deployment.

2\. You can maintain separate Dockerfiles and such for development and for release, so e.g. for development you might use volumes and not copy things in, but for release you wouldn't use volumes for source code.

I can't tell from what you said, but it seems like one of those two tips might be relevant.

It's okay to have a development setup which doesn't use containers and then use containers for deployment (so long as you have an integ or staging environment that uses containers) as well. It's quite reasonable to have a venv during development, but inside the docker image to not use a venv at all since things will already be reasonably isolated inside the container's fs.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the suggestions! I had to check, but we do both of those things. To make sure that node_modules aren't overwritten, we mount an empty named volume to the node_modules directory. I guess mounting the named volume directory somehow causes the node_modules directory from the base image to appear inside of the bind-mounted directory. We do the same thing for venvs as well.

We use venvs inside of the Docker container because we use pipenv and apparently pipenv's support for installing to the system is buggy and/or idiosyncratic.

<comment><USER10> Named volumes are hacky to no end and you shouldn't be using them to make sure it's empty; you should be using `.dockerignore` or being careful about what you copy in.

The pipenv bit is probably more reasonable, and I'm afraid I haven't used it enough to be sure what rough edges are likely there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This sounds like a much less general binctr [0].

I don't see how warp handles the most trivial case of a dynamically linked executable; I see no references to patchelf or other such tricks to ensure it looks within the application's cache directory for dynamically linked libraries, nor do I see any mount namespaces.

Does warp do that? Why would I use warp if it doesn't when there are more generic solutions that can handle such a case, namely binctr, docker, guix pack, nix....

[0]: [https://github.com/genuinetools/binctr](https://github.com/genuinetools/binctr)

<comment><USER11> > This sounds like a much less general binctr.

binctr is Linux-only, and appears to need Docker as a runtime requirement? This has neither constraint, apparently?

<comment><USER10> > appears to need Docker as a runtime requirement

binctr does not require any runtime component other than a modern linux kernel with unprivileged usernamespace support.

Targetting OSX / Windows does make warp distinct from what I mentioned, though I don't use those OSs so I admit I didn't think about that possible issue.

Anyway, I thought this was a solved problem on both Windows and OSX since they both have conventions for self-contained applications, while linux does not.

<comment><USER12> _Anyway, I thought this was a solved problem on both Windows and OSX since they both have conventions for self-contained applications, while linux does not._

This is mistaken for Windows. Even if programs are run from Program Files, they will often source their DLLs from other locations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13>
      tVQhhsFFlGGD3oWV4lEPST8I8FEPP54IM0q7daes4E1y3p2U2wlJRYmWmjPYfkhZ0PlT14Ls0j8fdDkoj33f2BlRJavLj3mWGibJsGt5uLAtrCDtvxikZ8UX2mQDCrgE

Anyone know what this _magic_ is all about?

Honestly not feeling warp-packer downloading executable blobs during runtime either.

<comment><USER14> It's a placeholder in the final binary that gets replaced by the target application executable file name so Warp knows what to run.

This is a known and established technique. I don't have the link right now (mobile) but .NET Core does something similar for their native deployment, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> From the README, it looks like this unpacks the application and dependencies into a local cache in the user's home directory on first run.

Is it possible to instead execute the compressed application code directly and present to the resulting process a virtualized file system that decompresses the dependencies on the fly too? Then you could run the single binary without giving it any filesystem access. One way to do it would be to have have the parent process provide some routine that the kernel can call for reading a particular "file". Or perhaps just have standard embedding and compression methods that the kernel supports, so you would just provide the offsets to the kernel.

I guess what I mean is: do any platforms provide the necessary syscalls to pull that off?

<comment><USER16> I asked this question just yesterday. The challenge (the one I was interested in) was if this can be done in a general purpose way for arbitrary programming languages so long as they used libc to go through the file system. I actually think it might be theoretically possible using LD_PRELOAD and some equivalent on OSX. I don't know why I'm compelled to want the executable to leave no trace on disk, but it seems much cleaner. However, if you _write_ to the virtual file system, that will need to change the packed binary itself which might result in problems (the binary would grow/shrink as you pack more / less files into it at runtime by writing to the "disk").

[https://twitter.com/jordwalke/status/1050277143085608960](https://twitter.com/jordwalke/status/1050277143085608960)

Maybe it's just not worth it and a temp directory is not so bad. I just worry about little changes to the way `mktmp` works across OS updates etc. A totally self contained executable that leaves no trace, with virtual file system support is about as isolated and reliable as you could ever hope. I just don't think anyone has been determined enough to achieve it.

<comment><USER15> That's a good idea, doing it by shimming libc, but it feels kind of fragile. Go, for example, does not use libc and makes syscalls directly instead, so this would not work for any fs-accessing Go code either in the application or its dependencies. Even for things that do go through libc, wouldn't you end up in a cat and mouse game to add shims for any new file operations added to the kernel? I suspect even shimming the _existing_ interfaces is less straightforward than at first thought.

I don't think you can have a truly robust solution without kernel support. Maybe the FUSE kernel-side code already supports, or could be modified to support, per-process ad-hoc virtual file systems? If done right, you might even get existing fs caching and other optimizations for (closed to) "free".

I also can't quite explain why I find this so desirable. It just feels intuitively cleaner and more robust to not have to spray files elsewhere into some cache.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Based on the readme, this is basically an SFX archive, which runs a binary upon completion of extraction to temporary folder, much like winzip & the like have created for ages.

<comment><USER18> Haven't read the link, but that's quite terrible, and the title is misleading. No idea why it's getting buzz in this thread. It means if tmpfs/equivalent isn't available, it will cause disk writes each application launch. Or if it caches the unpacking, it's susceptible to injection. And suppose the binary doesn't have write access to the filesystem?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the latter - it caches and is susceptible to injection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The best of breed here is zeroinstall - [https://0install.net/](https://0install.net/). The software catalog is here - [http://0install.de/catalog/](http://0install.de/catalog/)

comes with its own SAT solver for dependency resolution. zeroinstall is what Canonical was considering before it created Snap Packages.

<comment><USER20> Any idea why they went with snap instead? There seems to have been a recent proliferation of new packaging systems -- which is fine. But, from an Ubuntu perspective I don't think they should be included if they're not integrated with apt (perhaps it is and I missed the memo?).

Digikam moved to AppImage, which sounds cool but adds a further system one needs to update, and the automatic update never worked for me (I think their package didn't include the necessary metadata?).

Having all application updates available in one place, and official packages be recent, is the 'killer feature' for me. I used to be a Slackware user, but when I migrated to slapt-get I realised I was done with rolling my own packages and checkinstall-ing them and wanted system where things were more managed - not having half the apps installed ad-hoc.

When you have to install a new system to get just a few apps it feels like I might as well go back to ./configure;make;[check|make ]install.

Seems we need an xdg install record with a unified app that calls the sub- system (pip, 0install, AppImage, shell script, dpkg, whatever) to abstract all that away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Its funny. Im creating a multi-os application platform based on Chrome runtime, and thats how im packaging my multi-target binaries.

Im using a SQLite btree file as backend, working basically as a key-value store. On the header i define what target triples are supported (the ones the dev built the binaries), and on the runtime open, see if the current host is supported and unpack the bynary payload always checking the hash before running it. (If its on the filesystem already see of the hash matches with the one saved before on the DB as a record)

Giving its a db the owner of the public-key signature(the creator of the file), can modify and add others binaries latter.

Im not disclosing it now, because its just part of a bigger platform, and you dont distribute only the apps, but a whole "container"(not in a Docker sense, but as a multiplatform container more focused on final users instead of cloud backends).

I hope i can launch it soon here on HN.

</comment><comment><USER22> I hope it can use downloaded executable for warp-runner. Downloading executable from windows console doesn't work too well in my corporate environment. Currently placing windows-x64.warp-runner.exe to same directory as warp-packer doesn't help. I really like the idea though. Simplest 3rd party solution I've encountered so far for the purpose.

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of [https://github.com/solidsnack/arx/](https://github.com/solidsnack/arx/) which I came across recently. I've not used it, but it sounds like it does a similar decompress-then-run approach, but using a shell script as the runner rather than a native binary.

</comment><comment><USER24> And for Python there is Subpar: [https://github.com/google/subpar](https://github.com/google/subpar)

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't understand a thing, is this for any kind of application or Rust? How will this thing know how to run my bizarre app in a bizarre language?

<comment><USER26> It downloads the runtime for your bizarre language, assuming it's supported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It doesn't seem to package my app correctly. I didn't use dynamic loading, but it still say can't open dependencies.

</comment><comment><USER28> so bash self extracting tarball of the 2000s??

[https://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1005818](https://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1005818)

</comment><comment><USER29> What problem does this solve? How does it differ from Docker?

<comment><USER30> This solves some of the app packaging pain that goes into building desktop apps. Not sure how this works but it probably bundles dependencies into the binary a la static linking. Docker mocks the OS and virtualizes, its a very different approach

I'm stoked for anything that eases the pain of desktop deployment that isn't Electron. Right now the cross-platform story is... complicated

<comment><USER31> But it seems like it continues one of the pain point of Electron: Shipping hundreds of MBs in the same dependencies for every single app.

<comment><USER30> Indeed, but it's either that or you deal with the dependencies at deploy, or you write your software to not have any dependencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think it's funny to use java as an example when jar files have been around forever. Still there are some use cases for other things where statically linking is not possible.

I wonder what benefits this has over other solutions? Originally when it said multi-platform i thought it meant that one binary could run on multiple platforms like a fat binary. But i think all of the examples require you to have a specific target in mind.

<comment><USER33> There's something to be said for the fact that these are native binaries. Like under windows you'd be able just call CreateProcess with the file. Jars never did that and intrinsically needed an interpreter to run them.

<comment><USER34> This. A .jar file could be anything. Is it a library or an executable? When I run it, do I need to make sure its dependencies are on my classpath? What're the java command line flags I need? Do I have the right version of java on this machine?

There's something to be said for an entirely self-contained native binary, at least as an easy on-ramp for users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, it turns out this is not a completely self contained binary - it's more of a packer. So if you pack a Java app, you're still going to need the JRE, and if you pack a .NET Framework app, you're still going the .NET Framework, etc.

<comment><USER35> So I don't know what this is doing. But I know that microsoft is developing WPF to run in a fulled contained .NET Core binary. Meaning that there is no requirement of having any preinstalled software when running it. I would assume this technology to be translated into most any .NET core app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, any .NET Core app can already be 'published' as a self-contained app. That basically means it ships along with the .NET Core files (there are a lot of them), so you don't need to have a globally installed .NET Core to run it.

What Warp does is act like a packer, creating a thin, native executable that compresses and embeds all the files required to run your app, then decompresses them to disk the first time the app is executed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Beautiful</comment>


Show HN: Gping.io – Like TinyURL for your car - <AUTHOR> http://gping.io <comment><USER2> I don't know if I'd describe it as "TinyURL for your car", but after reading about what it does the description makes sense. It might be hard for people to initially "get" though.

Where I see some future potential is in fleet management for smaller fleets (think your local plumber that has a couple of work vans, or maybe a small taxi company, etc). Being able to inexpensively monitor the locations of the vehicles, how far they've been driven, whether there are any trouble codes, etc, might have potential. I could also see potential for having maintenance reminders built in (e.g., set up the maintenance schedule, have it remind you say 500km, 250km, 100km before maintenance is required).

All of that would require some user management stuff and vehicle management stuff, but that's just software. You've got the hardware side of things taken care of already.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comments. Agree with everything you wrote.

The words 'fleet management' may have bounced around in my head once or twice. Nod.

<comment><USER3> I still don't get it. TinyURL gets a url and makes it smaller, how is this TinyURL for your car?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree the connection is weak. The similarity is that both services provide a short URL for a resource. In the case of TinURL, it is a longer URL. In the case of gping.io, it is your vehicle.

Gimme a mulligan on the tagline and I promise to come up with something better :)

<comment><USER4> "Dude, where is my car?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting but there might be a major gotcha. I see on the demo page that they are using Google Maps, however the free version of Google Maps cannot be used for assets tracking as per their terms of service.

You'd need a Premier subscription starting at 10,000 per year to track 100 vehicles. Then it's around 24 USD per extra vehicle.

You can use Open Street Map to avoid that (but then forget about Street View and the like)

<comment><USER6> Just FYI that's not the current pricing: it's $6 per asset, with a minimum of 1667 tracked assets ($10000 / $6).

<comment><USER7> Where did you find these numbers? Do you need to login to the premium support portal? I can't seem to find these numbers publically.

<comment><USER6> They don't publish them publicly, you have to speak to a sales rep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No TLS anywhere on the site, manually forcing it returns a cert for sni.dreamhost.com.... have you considered (1) ditching dreamhost and (2) getting basic security? This looks really cool but lack of security in handling my location data makes me really nervous to send it all off to you. If this could be self hosted, on the other hand...

<comment><USER9> You can get almost the same thing self hosted with a tiny amount of work

[http://ryancompton.net/2015/02/28/mpg/](http://ryancompton.net/2015/02/28/mpg/)

<comment><USER8> That's pretty cool. Looks like you're using the Torque app[0], which doesn't seem to do any real-time uploading. Not the end of the world, but would be kinda nice.

[0]: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.prowl.torq...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.prowl.torque&hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Like TinyURL for your car" confused me too; sorry, I think that's a risk with catchy slogans.

But, it's build-you-own-car-tracker (for 5 bucks)! That's pretty cool too, and likely resonates with the IoT/tinkerer crowd.

<comment><USER5> I like "build-you-own-car-tracker" very much.

I feel that it really helps explain and accept the long list of readme-like instructions thrown on the landing page.

Otherwise one is inclined to judge the project by the standards of mainstream products (tinyurl is quite mainstream) and will likely conclude that it is overcomplicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Judging by the number of car hacks through OBD-II lately, it sure sounds like a great idea to connect an always on, internet connected android phone with some dubious software to the OBD interface of your car!

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.opengts.org](http://www.opengts.org) build your own if you want. Works with android phones or IoT devices if you want to do some integration work. Also supports things like boundary areas (get alerts if a thing being tracked enters / leaves a defined area). Works with open street maps to around the GMaps ToS stuff about tracking mentioned elsewhere. I forget the name of the android app which sends the location pings to this but it's a thing.

Re: Automatic, it's slightly different. Automatic connects via Bluetooth to your phone to periodically upload batch data. This seems like it could be more useful for fleet management. Automatic is more tailored to consumers who are more concerned with e.g. Where did I park, maximizing gas mileage, tracking a teen driver, driving more smoothly, gas costs, etc. automatic can also read and reset DTC (diagnostic trouble codes) and e.g. Pop an iOS notification when you're low on gas. Yes it's $100 (or $70-80 on sale) but it does a lot more, doesn't require a dedicated phone, and tucks away out of sight under your dashboard. It's a pretty slick little gadget. I have them on 2 vehicles.

</comment><comment><USER13> I own a wifi-based OBDII adapter, but two things concern me about it that likely apply here as well.

1) It's always on, as the port is always powered, to my knowledge. I usually only drive on the weekends. Should I be unplugging it after each drive?

2) Security. The wifi adapter presents an open wireless network; I assume security on these bluetooth modules is also similarly lacking. What can an attacker do given the device's built-in capabilities, and what _else_ can they do if they're able to compromise it?

To the author of this package though, it looks great. As others have mentioned, there's lots of room for growth here, and you've got the key data pipeline established.

<comment><USER14> > What can an attacker do given the device's built-in capabilities, and what > else can they do if they're able to compromise it?

well, bmw DIY people have been using the OBDII port (over bluetooth, wifi, and cabled) to rewrite ECM fuel and ignition mappings between models for a very long time...

the least clever destructive thing I can think of is just zeroing an ECM out as much as is allowed by the hardware.

p.s. i'm sure other car communities do similar stuff; i'm just not well versed on them.

<comment><USER13> Yikes. Well that pretty easily validates that decision to not leave it plugged in continuously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There seem like so many ways to make this more secure than a public-but-hard- to-guess URL. Am I missing them? Does anyone have ideas on why it's a bad idea to for example require a login?

Edit: just want to append that this is really neat! I don't think it's dumb at all but my knee-jerk reaction was "aaah somehow this will turn into someone hacking cars that aren't theirs"

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree users will want something better. I want to learn a little more about who the potential users are before implementing an authentication system for them.

For example, if this were to be strictly a consumer app, then Google or Facebook auth would make sense. If this ends up being used by businesses, that speaks to another solution perhaps.

Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER16> Could just start basic - set a passcode on the phone; require it to be entered in the browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Like "Find my iPhone but for your car" has a better ring to it as suggested elsewhere in the thread.

</comment><comment><USER18> In South Africa, many insurance companies won't insure you unless you have a tracker. There's an entire industry waiting to be "disrupted":

[http://www.tracker.co.za/](http://www.tracker.co.za/)

[https://www.ctrack.com/za/](https://www.ctrack.com/za/)

[https://www.cartrack.co.za/](https://www.cartrack.co.za/)

[https://www.matrix.co.za/](https://www.matrix.co.za/)

[https://www.beam-e.com/](https://www.beam-e.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> So, since this is asking for what boils down to a cheap/disposable android device, what is the cheapest one you can buy readily without resorting to sketchy ebay sellers, etc.? Used/refurb is fine.

<comment><USER20> I use a 1st gen Moto E for bluetooth OBDII monitoring. They were $99 new, and I think the latest 2nd gen is $69 new. Used ones are in the $20-$40 range. Torque Pro runs well on it, but the screen is kinda small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Upon launch, gping.io will show you your distinctly private-but-shareable > monitoring URL.

This is bad for privacy if you will be using short URLs similar to TinyURL/bit.ly since short URLs can be bruteforced[1]. Additional authentication is probably a good idea.

1\. [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.02734v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.02734v1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER22> For $99 Automatic already does this [https://www.automatic.com](https://www.automatic.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, my solution requires a $5 adapter.

I did not know about this; really exciting to find a competitor with a solution 20 times as expensive. Thank you!

<comment><USER23> There is also [https://dash.by](https://dash.by) which works with many cheap OBDII devices, including Bluetooth ones. I was actually about to get started with them, but your setup is actually a cool idea. That is to say, you are combining an OBDII dongle and a cheap phone into what is essentially a single "device" which is actually internet connected.

My suggestion would be to research Automatic and Dash and see if you can improve on their setup by bundling all three components into one: try to actually create a device that combines and OBDII dongle, a GPRS modem, a GPS chip, etc. Also see if you can find and white label a cellular provider similar to RingPlus do you can do the whole thing as a service: $5/month plus a $100 device is not a bad deal.

<comment><USER24> There are devices like [http://www.ebay.com/bhp/bluetooth-gps- receiver](http://www.ebay.com/bhp/bluetooth-gps-receiver)

I have one from 2008, which I don't use anymore. It speaks NMEA and it sends the data over GPRS. I guess there are 3G devices now. An advantage of GPRS is that it's everywhere (at least in Europe) because basically it's data over GSM. It's cheap. A data only SIM with 2 MB per month per year (yes MB) was 12 Euro per year. But you're not sending many positions and it's few bytes per position. I made a site like gping.io back then. Not enough customers but it could be different now.

A word of caution for any kind of GPS device, phone included. The GPS antenna needs to see the sky, best if a lot of sky. The roof of the car is enough to severely shield the GPS signal. You need assisted GPS then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's an interesting idea, but I fail to see how it compares to TinyURL. Wouldn't this be closer to "Quantified self for your car" ? I could see the data plugged into something that would allow me to predict when I should fill my gas tank and how much I usually spend and stuff like that.

<comment><USER2> It could be considered that, but marketing it that way would make people go "huh?", just like I did at first.

I see potential in turning it into a fleet management solution for small businesses. Have it tell you when maintenance is coming up, track vehicle usage, etc. I'm sure there are small businesses with vehicles where the owner has better things to do that figure out what maintenance is due for what vehicle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cool service, but I agree with comments below that state the analogy to TinyURL is not quite right.

This seems more like "Find My iPhone" or "Find My Friends" for your car. It's true those services are most familiar to iOS users, but it's overall a better analogy.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Fitbit for your car"

</comment><comment><USER28> On a mostly unrelated note, does anyone know of a good carrier like RingPlus in Canada? Specifically something with no contract where I can opt to get only data in bite-sized increments? This seems like it would be great for projects like this.

Edit: Petro Canada seems to have something like this, but with a somewhat annoying expiration policy.

[https://mobility.petro-canada.ca/plans.aspx](https://mobility.petro- canada.ca/plans.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER29> Mojio[0] makes a neat integrated device that hits some of the same bullet points as this. I worked with some of their developers at an AT&T sponsored hackathon and had a good experience working with their API. Worth a look if you don't mind trading the open nature of this project for smaller packaging.

[0][https://www.moj.io](https://www.moj.io)

</comment><comment><USER30> I am not sure why everyone feels like they need to do a comparison with a pre- existing product. How about "Find your Car"

</comment><comment><USER31> Can you elaborate on a "free" prepaid plan? I do not know anything about RingPlus. However I know that there are a few prepaid providers that offer 100mb/free a month. Would that fit?

I am also interested in which data is transmitted when? Is the data requested when I access the Webservice or is it being sent at specified intervals?

<comment><USER32> Checking the RingPlus site, the "free" plans seem to be $0/month for service + $X per unit of usage. One of their plans, for example, is $9 for (250 minutes voice + 250MB data + 250 sms + 250 mms). There is also an overage charge, but I don't know what that means. They are also ad supported, apparently, playing an audio ad before each outbound voice call you place.

This seems reasonable for some people. By contrast, for a tracfone, in addition to voice-minutes/data/etc. you also have "service days" that must paid for, even if you don't use the phone at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For the various 'gas as a service' offerings, this would be ideal seeing as it offers current gas level.

Having this come with signup, and know that my car will auto-refill when it gets below 30% and is at home or work, would be pretty darn useful.

Maybe one of the companies already does this and I just didn't realize?

</comment><comment><USER34> Great idea. One thing to note is that some cars don't like OBD dongles which continually draw power after the vehicle shuts down.

My BMW i3 sounds its alarm because it assumes that an OBD connected when the car is locked belongs to a thief.

So, worth finding someone with the same model car as you to ensure compatibility.

</comment><comment><USER8> >Vehicle VIN

Don't you mean Vehicle VIN Number? :P

(actually though, the V in VIN stands for Vehicle so Vehicle VIN is redundant)

<comment><USER35> Guess what the N stands for

<comment><USER36> That was the joke. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Something about android and an obd device working together terrifies me. Last thing I want a phone which has exploits galore being able to turn off my engine as I drive.

Frankly any obd device just freaks the crap out of me

</comment><comment><USER38> Do you mind sharing the Tech stack behind this .. does Android app is uploading data every second and how you are ingesting all this data in realtime .. which Database are you using?

</comment><comment><USER39> 'gping.io only needs basic data services and consumes no "minutes". ', how is that achieved?

<comment><USER32> I think they mean it only uses the "data" (MB) portion of your usage, not the "voice minutes" part. As long as they keep below a few MB per month, the cost for RingPlus will be very low. Example, they give you a trial with 100MB literally free, so perhaps they can make that last a few months or years with typical usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Like TinyURL for your car is kind of weak, but it seems super cool. Great use of an old android phone too!

</comment><comment><USER41> 9/10 people will use this to track their family- might as well explain using that example.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's more like IoT in your car.

</comment><comment><USER43> is it geolocation for a car? or something else also?

</comment><comment><USER44> How do you obtain OBD-II data from simple USB connection?

<comment><USER45> You don't, they list a Bluetooth-OBD-adapter as a component?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> lol. nice.

</comment><comment><USER47> "Dude, there's your car!"</comment>


You are not what you read: librarians purge user data to protect privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/13/us-library-records-purged-data-privacy <comment><USER2> The ethics of data retention haven't been fully fleshed out, but it seems pretty obvious that the industry has to start deleting data at some point because user that lives forever is guaranteed to one day be compromised or exploited.

It also seems obvious that voluntarily deleting data is unlikely because data is an asset. Regulation seems unlikely to be forthcoming because governments _want_ their own access to corporate data to persist.

What's not obvious is how to approach the issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> As an avid reader, a few years ago, I got a membership at [https://www.librarything.com/](https://www.librarything.com/) because my queue was getting thin. It has a feature that makes recommendations based on what you read. I spent many hours entering all the books from my shelves. I then went to the library (where I get most of my books) to see if they could print out all books I've read over the years. Nope. "As soon as a book is returned, the loan is deleted from their database." Why? "So the government can't find out what people are reading."

The irony that librarians - government employees - actually recognize the real threat and protect their customers is why the library remains the only government institution I support.</comment>


Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable "franchise fees" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/cities-sue-netflix-hulu-disney-claim-they-owe-cable-franchise-fees/ <comment><USER2> By that reasoning, I'm using the "Public right of way" to make this comment. Therefore, I'm a defendant.

Listen, I get it. They want some compensation from Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ eating up all their local bandwidth. But that's where the money was.

They need to skate where the money is going, not where it was. The money was in broadcast TV and cable. And most of it is still there. But it's rapidly being sucked away by individual creators.

And at some point advertisers are going to wake up and realize the premium that broadcast and cable operators are charging per 1000 viewers is not really worth that much more than what YouTube pays Jake Paul.

<comment><USER3> > Listen, I get it. They want some compensation from Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ > eating up all their local bandwidth.

I don't get it. Presumably the companies involved are already paying for the bandwidth they're using, as are their customers. How are they any different from other internet users sending around video?

<comment><USER4> How are traditional TV Station different form Netflix and such?

Arguably Netflix is structurally and goal wise closer to any traditional TV station (who would owe that taxes) than to any individual using the internet.

The biggest point IMO is that they sell stuff film producers make to show ads — which is precisely the same thing TV stations did for decades.

<comment><USER5> > How are traditional TV Station different form Netflix and such?

They paid for (read, "bribed politicians to give them", but that's beside the point) exclusive use of particular RF spectrum, which then cannot be used for other purposes. Netflix routes over existing common-carriage infrastructure, and so does not impose any costs on people who don't use Netflix (assuming non-corrupt management of said infrastructure, but y'know, caveats, caveats, caveats...).

<comment><USER6> > Netflix routes over existing common-carriage infrastructure, and so does not > impose any costs on people who don't use Netflix

I don't think that's strictly true, since the available bandwidth on that infrastructure is not infinite.

That's why Netflix supplies CDN appliances free of charge to ISPs - both to improve customer speeds, but also reduce bandwidth across the entire network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of the DR (Denmarks Radio - which is also a Public TV sort of like the BBC) license, you used to have to pay it for TV. I didn't have a tv so I stopped paying. Then a year or two later they passed a law that if you had a computer you had to pay.

I guess lots of European countries have a similar license.

They are phasing the license out in the next couple years, but it used to really piss me off because I never watched anything on DR but I still had to pay for it (ok I did accidentally see things if I was over at people's houses, it was nothing impressive). The assumption being of course that it was a public good.

Anyway - sub-regional pricing for Netflix etc.

<comment><USER8> NHK in Japan has a similar scheme. If you have a TV you have to pay. If you have a phone that can receive TV signal, you have to pay. They'd even send people in person to "check if you have a TV". I believe they recently lost a court case on this.

<comment><USER9> In Britain, the BBC uses vehicles fitted with equipment to detect TVs, though who knows how effective they are.

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

<comment><USER10> It's unclear they even exist..or work..our could even theoretically work now we have digital. Their true enforcement strategy is to harass the small minority who don't pay the license fee.

<comment> UK-Al05 For young people it's not a small minority. Young people have gone off transmitted TV and they havent adapted yet.

<comment><USER11> They have started to - they extended the relevant law to close loopholes about "real time" vs "prerecorded" BBC broadcasts, now you need a licence if you use the iPlayer for anything. Which is fair, even if it forced me to get a license again. I expect at some point the law will either get more draconian (by requiring a license for any broadband contract at home) or the BBC will become an actual streaming service like Netflix, with regular subscription (which would be a bit of a disaster, since it would basically mean the end of the BBC as we know it).

<comment> UK-Al05 Most young people don't watch iPlayer either. It heavily tilted towards older people.

It will only be an issue for people who watch it...

I'm heavily against the license fee, as the majority of content could be delivered commercially. I absolutely hate that i'm paying money towards soaps, cake shows, misses brown boys etc which I will never have an interest watching and get zero value from.

The small amount of state or non commercial stuff it produces could be paid for by tax or a much smaller license fee.

The money i save could be spent a couple of books or rentals instead which I would get value from.

<comment><USER12> I'm also for getting rid of the licence fee but instead increasing taxes by equal measure and funding it that way. Hopefully enshrine that funding into law. The license fee is just too easy to attack nowadays.

I find the argument for purely commercial a selfish one as public broadcasting provides a lot of public good through educational means. I mean, just tune into The One Show or Spring Watch on an an evening and you'll get what I mean. Plus no ads!

<comment> UK-Al05 And those are the minority of shows. So in reality i'm paying a lot of money for things that are commercial quality and not educational and don't use.

That's as about as selfish of not wanting to pay for a gym membership i don't use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kinda reminds me a bit of how Milwaukee wanted money from Pokémon Go because the players was playing in the local park and some even went off the path so they were arguing the app is responsible for plants and stuff being damaged. The city lost but had to pay $83,000 in attorney fees. I think it's a bit of a overreach that a city in Indiana is trying to regulate a company in California.

I know Ohio cities can have franchise fees for cable too, wonder if the regulation is city by city or all based around the same state law... If Netflix had to follow that, I guess they'd have to have a army of lawyers review each city one by one keeping a database, filing paper work, etc. 50 states, multiplied by hundred of cities. Sounds like a massive mess. Maybe if you are the only person in a town of a few thousand watching Netflix, wouldn't be worth all the extra administration work. So wonder if maybe only the big cites would get Netflix then?

Satellite has also faced the problem of being treated differently too. I know in Florida Satellite they charge a higher tax rate compared to cable but that's state wide from my understanding, since they don't have the local equipment and as many employees to maintain the infrastructure. Well both cable and satellite has installers, etc but they could very well be contractors but still putting people to work locally.

Then I know some areas try to require a permit for satellite TV and the FCC sued cities over that because of the Over-the-Air Reception Devices ("OTARD") rule or limit the number of satellites to 1. I have Dish at home and for some reason they installed 2 satellite dishes pointing at a slight different angle than the other one. I guess some cities and HOAs think satellites are ugly too. Some still have these ordinances on the book, so surprised cities haven't removed them... Then again in some states same sex marriage is still illegal on the books too like Ohio and Tennessee, but you know they can't enforce that anymore either because of the supreme court. I guess the problem is in Ohio marriage is defined in the state constitution, so it'd take a convention to change it but I guess not a priority even though it's kinda symbolic even if no longer law. Virginia did the same, but 2020 they passed updates at least - 5 years after the ruling.

<comment><USER14> That's a BS ruling; it's the people that would be responsible for damages, and only if they moved into areas they're not supposed to.

Parks are public spaces and they should both applaud and put a bit more money into them for what Pokemon Go managed to achieve.

<comment><USER15> The ruling was in favor of Pokemon Go.

I kinda see the argument of the city. But only if organizing an event in the park would normally have cost a fee. Because then pokemon go organized an event in the park, but because the organizers did not have a physical presence, they didn't need to pay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This can only be the first step. Since this is a political move, why not change the law and restructure taxes? It's difficult for cities to tax value creation if that value is created globally, in a data centre, somewhere on the planet.

Why should the city that just happens to host the data centre be able to tax the profits that are created in that data centre? Or worse, why should a company choose any city for its headquarters and pretend that the value is created there?

On a global scale, which society or political entity should have the right to tax profits that are created on the internet? How should cities be financed if most of the commerce in the city happens on the internet, outside of the city limits?

<comment><USER17> But if not this way, then should every city in the world get a cut of the tax? Can a tiny place in Holland then get a cut of the taxes?

<comment><USER16> That's the question. The inhabitants of that place will use global services. Should that tiny place get a cut or should it tax its inhabitants directly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cities need to start using technology to constrain their costs rather than just stabbing at anywhere that has revenue they can tax.

<comment><USER19> Any specific suggestions for how technology can cut municipal costs?

Most of the fat in municipal spending tends to be political (pork) or criminal (public corruption and/or organized crime), rather than due to process inefficiencies that could be remedied through better use of technology.

Municipal spending tends to be dominated by the kinds of inherently labor- intensive services that can't readily be automated. Automation isn't going to have much of an impact in the number of people needed for firefighting, garbage collection, or to run and maintain urban water, sewer, electrical, and road networks anytime soon. Automation in policing is another huge civil liberties problem best left untouched.

Urban government costs money and municipal tax grab attempts like this are either evidence of greed (and/or corruption) or inadequate funding models. These are political, rather than technological, problems.

<comment><USER20> But so much can be automated to a point. For example, garbage collection: Cities have already been saving money by putting in 'smart' cans/compactors (that are solar powered). No one needs to check every can, they just go along and get the ones that are full enough. Cities have also done things like standardize trash can so the machine takes care of the dumping. So many places now only have 2 people per truck instead of the 3 when I was younger.

We use sensors for water treatment plants (and possibly for water delivery), software for some public transport when they do such a thing, devices to measure road traffic, and machines that automate much of road building. I'm going to guess that there are lots of these sorts of small things these.

You can also simply start doing more of it as a city instead of contracting it out, but I suppose this isn't really technological.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems to me that government doesn't want you to figure out how much taxes they are actualy charging, so they split it up as much as possible. Also, when they want to increase taxes, they prefer to tax something new instead of increasing existing percentages.

Here in Belgium it goes as far as taxing for "surface water". I'm waiting for the day when they start taxing the air we breathe.

</comment><comment><USER22> Didn't striking down net neutrality rule that internet lines are NOT public utilities?

</comment><comment><USER23> Simple: turn off the services for residents of those cities. The "public servants" will need to find a new line of work.

<comment><USER24> Why would you turn them off? Just make their prices 5% higher than other regions.

<comment><USER25> I don't think most people will notice an extra 48 cents on their bill every month.

<comment><USER26> You could outline it in red with a note.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So according to them, they should get paid for any video watched in their city?

Sounds kind of pathetic, tbh.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, what next Spotify tax for music broadcast? Freaking city mafias and the politicians running them, tax anything that has revenues. A political upheaval is impending.

<comment><USER29> Several countries have a mandated tariff on any kind of digital media storage (HDDs, memory cards, etc) and yes, there have been lobbying and talks on imposing this on cloud services as well.

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

<comment><USER27> So nice to see companies offload their dirty work onto government. Crony capitalism at its finest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I know this is not going to be popular, but...

Ars doesn't seem to have a good analysis on this. They have a quote from the lawsuit that says nothing about Netflix being a cable operator. Then Ars goes and says that Netflix is not a cable operator. They link to the relevant Indiana law, which again, says nothing about cable TV.

Here is what the law in question says: > IC 8-1-34-14 "Video service" Sec. 14. (a) As used in this chapter, "video service" means: (1) the transmission to subscribers of video programming and other programming service: (A) through facilities located at least in part in a public right-of-way; and (B) without regard to the technology used to deliver the video programming or other programming service; and (2) any subscriber interaction required for the selection or use of the video programming or other programming service. (b) The term does not include commercial mobile service (as defined in 47 U.S.C. 332).

So really, the question hinges on part (A). If Netflix delivers video to the residents of these cities and at least part of it goes through a public right- of-way, then Netflix provides a Video Service in the state of Indiana and is subject to the taxes on video services. That's really it.

Now, a quick web search shows me that at least one of the cities in this lawsuit operates a municipal dark fiber network that businesses can rent access to. So if I get my home internet from Comcast and Comcast uses this municipal fiber network (why wouldn't they, if it's cheaper than doing it on their own?), then all of a sudden Netflix is a Video Service. And if I'm Comcast, I'm thrilled to stick it to them!

</comment><comment><USER28> Is it like video watching tax? So what about people watching personal videos, and those shared through messaging apps or any video. The cities are looking for pathetic ways to tax its citizens, next what Anyone listening to music on radio or Spotify would be taxed?

</comment><comment><USER31> Good ol' cable dying a slow painful death.

<comment><USER32> Traditional cable TV you would sit on a sofa and flip through channels with a remote control, yes, but your typical Comcast/Charter/Wave/RCN type cable multiservice operator is morphing into a DOCIS3/DOCSIS3.1 or GPON fiber based last mile DIA ISP.

The cable tv operators care about their municipal franchise agreements and aerial pole+underground right of way very much, since it gives them an incumbent ISP operating position over a large geographical area.

I should note that cable TV operators in a given city might have many different types of last mile architecture. Some of which can be taxed by the city, and some of which cannot. There's cable TV operators with their wholly- owned wood utility poles installed in the ROW (right of way), there's operators where they occupy a strand on a municipal electrical grid operator's poles, there's operators which are on poles shared 3-way between electrical grid operator, local telco, and cable TV. In newer housing developments some might occupy their own fully underground ducts between handholes and manholes with the ducts in the ROW. Or the ducts might be in land owned by HOAs. It depends very much on the history of how the analog cable TV system in a city got built out in the 1970s and 1980s and other factors.

In places that are unfortunate enough to lack real competition between the cable TV operator and the local phone company for last-mile, it can give an operator a near monopoly advantage. For instance you might be able to get 200 Mbps downstream service from Comcast while the local phone company can only offer 10Mbps ADSL2+.

Some smart people at the local phone company probably have your area on a map targeted for a single-strand to the home GPON FTTH overbuild, but accomplishing that in the near future is either limited by budget concerns or lack of manpower/bucket truck, lineman and splicer crews to accomplish it.

On the part of the city that might be bringing in 450,000 dollars a year in cable TV franchise tax revenue, it's such a short sighted move. Yes, maybe your cable TV franchise tax will continue to drop, as more people disconnect cable tv (taxed) and move to pure internet services (not taxed).

But the economic benefit to a city of having multiple, overlapping competing gigabit-class services to the end user is greater than the tax revenue. For instance the parts of Seattle right now where you can work from home and have your choice of centurylink (telco ILEC) GPON 1Gbps FTTH, or 1Gbps DOCSIS3.1 or GPON from Wave or Comcast.

<comment><USER33> Centurylink has pulled quite a bit of fiber in Seattle over the last 3 years, but their expansion plans are erratic (eg: putting a 12 port GPON aerial terminal in the middle of blocks of 4 story MDUs that aren't allowed to use it) and the serviceability database often has said GPON ports misallocated due to incorrect identification of the number of units in a particular property.

I think Centurylink is hard up for cash at the moment, as they just dropped gigabit fiber with a free modem & install down to $49 a month for life in most areas. Frontier did similar offers for the 2 years prior to selling the Pacific Northwest division to Ziply Fiber.

Ultimately the City of Seattle struck a bad franchise agreement with Centurylink that didn't mandate universal fiber coverage like more sparsely populated suburbs did (eg: Lynnwood, Kenmore, etc). The effectiveness of these agreements was middling though, only the litigious cities were able to ensure the franchise agreement was enforced.

Poorer townships like Kenmore have universal fiber service available to every property by 2005 written in as a hard requirement of their franchise agreements with the telco, but without enforcement action the fiber will not be built.

<comment><USER32> One of the things that distinguishes the 1Gbps to the home market in Seattle is the number of MDU specialists, and percentage of 35+ unit apartments or condos that have at least one gigabit provider in the building. I'm thinking of the AS54858 network (CondoInternet/WaveG), independent smaller player Atlas Networks, in addition to Comcast and Centurylink.

The WaveG MDU network is in a lot of places in the city which are _not_ Wave cable incumbent territory. It started as its own independent network in areas that are traditionally Comcast/Centurylink territory around the core of downtown, capitol hill, south lake union etc and was later acquired by Wave. The Wave cable TV network was historically its own distinct thing in a different set of franchise territories within the city boundaries.

The origins of what we would call Wave in the City of Seattle are with Broadstripe. The same guys who acquired Broadstripe out of bankruptcy and glued it together with a bunch of other acquired small to medium cable MSOs on the west coast, are the ones who formed Northwest Fiber (now Ziply) to acquire the PNW assets of Frontier.

[https://www.multichannel.com/news/broadstripe-writes-its- las...](https://www.multichannel.com/news/broadstripe-writes-its-last- chapter-327351)

Ultimately for a full understanding of what Clink and Ziply are doing and where their last mile and midddle mile networks are the strongest, one needs to have a historical understanding of the Pacific Northwest Bell network (-->USWest-->Qwest-->Clink) and the areas that were historically GTE territory (GTE-->Frontier-->Ziply).

On the topic of the city government of Seattle and its franchise agreement with CenturyLink. I don't think a city government ever has much negotiating leverage with an ILEC such as this. The clink network in Seattle is the result of 100 years of incumbent copper phone line dialtone service, clink setting its own poles in many places, and is a core part of municipal infrastructure. The city can't reasonably force the company to vacate the right of way or cease services without causing a severe impact on the residents of the city. There's no plausible scenario in which a new franchise agreement won't put be into place...

<comment><USER33> Centurylink did not have a franchise agreement with the city prior to them offering TV service over fiber FYI

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Are the cities charging the same taxes to ISPs carrying the actual data delivered by these services?

If so the court is probably going to frown on double dipping.

<comment><USER20> It probably depends on the type of ISP you have and whether or not they use the public right-of-way. I'm going to guess that most ISPs pay it in the US simply because most folks get their internet from the phone or cable company. If you happen to have satellite internet of any sort, though, or another form of wireless, probably not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It seems on HN, that a lot of people are in favor of municipal owned last mile fiber as opposed to ISPs. However, this case makes me wonder if that becomes the case, would we eventually see more shenanigans like this with cities and towns trying to charge internet services for access to their citizens. Without competition, I could see them becoming even worse than AT&T and Comcast.

<comment><USER36> I guess it all comes down to the intention behind the action, and then what opportunities are offered as a result of the action down the track. Do you trust them now? Can you trust them in the future? Are they more or less likely to screw you than the big comms mono/duo-poly?

Municipality A may have initiated ISP infrastructure contract for the actual benefit of it's constituents against the comms mono/duo-poly. Hurrah for Municipality A sticking it to the man and looking out for the constituency.

X years down the track, Municipality A needs funding for corrupt members yacht or office chesterfield reupholstering. Hey, we're practically giving away broadband compared to the comms mono/duo-poly and prices have increased way below CPI the last few years, let's bump it up to (artificial) market- competitive, woo!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Funny thing about net neutrality is that even the greatest propo

</comment><comment><USER37> Funny thing about net neutrality is that even the biggest proponents of laissez-faire capitalism think it's a great idea.

<comment><USER14> Citation needed; cable / internet companies LOVE the idea of them being able to get money from both consumers and content providers like Netflix. Facebook wanted to make its own internet in areas with low internet penetration where people had to pay for non-Facebook traffic. I'm sure it's the same with a lot of other tech companies.

<comment><USER37> It's kinda obvious that the few people who'd gain from net neutrality are proponents of it. My point of course, was about the 99,999% (or so) other people.</comment></comment></comment>


LIVE: Twitter IPO - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/07/watch-twitter-ipo-event-live-nyse/ <comment><USER2> The indicative $45-47 opening price finally convinced me of getting out of (tech) stocks in general. We're talking about $20B valuation for a company which has never made money. I know "this is different", and it has a lot of users, and so on.

Still, I'd be cautious.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm old, but I'm still struggling to figure out if Twitter is a short- term fad, or a serious here-to-stay concept (and thus a company) in our lives. I like to imagine say a 10-15 year time frame, and if I think the company will still be around then.

Netflix, for example, at least has a business model which I see becoming pervasive 15 years down the line (on-demand entertainment over the internet). Of course I don't know if Netflix will be the company to dominate that business model 15 years down the line.

With Twitter, I am not yet convinced this has long-term value here, but maybe I don't get the value it has in other's minds.

<comment><USER4> I'm on the side of no long term value.

(Not to mention that even if it is long term can it be profitable.)

The reason I think "no long term" is that in it's current incarnation it doesn't hold value for "normals" other than people who want to follow celebrities or of course the tech crowd. Or are obsessed with knowing the moment there is an earthquake on another continent. That's essentially entertainment. It's not something you need to know (in masses of course there could be individuals that need to monitor those things.)

I mean sure it is useful to be notified of some event that happens but personally I don't think the need for that is greater than the current alternatives of getting that information (or that a better way to get that information wouldn't be developed).

Most employed people with "regular" jobs are not all obsessed with twitter and the information that it delivers.

Netflix, otoh, delivers a product that people have received for many years by a better method. And the money making part is baked right into the product.

<comment><USER5> >> The reason I think "no long term" is that in it's current incarnation it doesn't hold value for "normals" other than people who want to follow celebrities or of course the tech crowd.

Do you watch CNN? Do you follow breaking news? Then Twitter has demonstrated value for "normals," as it's become the best platform for breaking stories (for better or for worse).

<comment><USER6> I for one do not watch CNN and don't know anybody who does outside of an Airport or hotel setting.

<comment><USER5> I used CNN as a catch-all for "news." Sub in whatever you use. ESPN, Fox News, NBC, BBC, whatever. All of them use Twitter extensively.

<comment><USER6> You are not helping your point.

<comment><USER5> I disagree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A $45 market price after a $26 IPO means Twitter left over $1B on the table, doesn't it? They would've had that money, instead of the first investors who can now immediately sell the shares at a huge profit, if the initial price was set closer to what the market would've paid.

<comment><USER8> A question: In an IPO, does the company have to sell every share for the same price? As in a typical market, the price fluctuates based on demand. Couldn't they evaluate the demand for the shares and adjust their sell price higher to compensate, or is it part of the legal framework that they are required to sell all the shares at exactly the same price?

<comment><USER9> Google tried to pioneer a Dutch auction IPO when they went public in 2004. Buyers would make bids for an amount of stock, and somewhat bypassing the banks, but it was less than successful.

The idea has never taken off, not yet anyway. It seems the banks still play an important role in marshalling large funds, and there's apparently significant benefit from a "hot" stock gaining on day 1 (albeit irrational).

<comment><USER5> I thought that it was mainly successful for Google, but that it was Google being such an insanely in demand stock that led to the success, not the auction itself. Basically, a Google IPO couldn't really fail. I do know that the banks hated it, and the only reason Google got away with it is because Larry and Sergey couldn't have cared less.

<comment><USER9> A Google IPO was always going to do well, which is part of the reason they felt they could take a gamble like that. But the stock doubled in 60 days [1], so "eBay for IPOs" didn't create anything like a perfect supply-demand scenario. Maybe it would be different now.

1\. [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-ipo-has-doubled- afte...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-ipo-has-doubled- after-60-days)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know lots of people are against twitter because they're not yet making any money.

The thing about market prices on any market is that the price doesn't reflect what they're doing now. This isn't something thats 'different', it applies to everyone. It reflects what we all perceive they're capable of a couple of years from now.

I think twitter has a lot of potential because its something so simple and you would find an older audience more engaged in it. Quite simply put, people love it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm incredibly ignorant when it comes to the stock market. But why would any company elect to go public? Let's see: you lose your creative edge 90% of the time, you destroy the relationships with your users 50% of the time, your team vision becomes one that must equate to profits - forever. This is not natural - to be constantly growing and profiting. Small businesses (you know, the millions of them) seem to hold their ground better in turbulent times, despite their lack of hand-over-fist profits.

This idea of unlimited growth is unsustainable and people who can't see that are just as bad as a 2008-era stock broker as far as I can see. It's a very willing and eager group of apologists and utopian dreams. Honestly.

<comment><USER12> You get to turn pieces of paper which say "I own x% of TWTR" into pieces of paper which say "I own $y". A lot of people are happy to make that trade, _especially_ if they don't think their ownership of the company is worth the amount of money that people are willing to pay for it.

As for the people who actually just work at Twitter, or who run Twitter? Well, you certainly get a lot more money to work with so long as your stock price doesn't collapse. You no longer have to go lobby certain individuals for money as much as you used to. Sure, you have to focus on making profits now, but that was always kind of the point, right? That doesn't mean you have to be short-sighted. Just look at a company like Amazon for an example of how a patient company can still command a high stock price and respect even when they're not pumping out huge profits.

Also, the vast majority of small businesses are abject failures. Most economic growth occurs through the activity of massive corporations (from the business side of things).

At least, that's my understanding. Feel free to point out if I'm full of shit, please.

<comment><USER13> Actual, a lot of economic activity comes from small businesses: about half the US GDP is generated from companies with less than 500 employees.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_business#Contribution_to_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_business#Contribution_to_the_economy)

<comment><USER12> Interesting - although it's worth pointing out that it's about half of _private sector_ GDP, not half of US GDP. Also, I'm not sure I'd call a business with over 100 employees "small", but I guess that's the definition they're going with.

Here's the full PDF of that source: [http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf](http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf)

Also, while they're a government agency and cite their sources, their job is to advocate for small businesses. Does anyone else have more sources to look at?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A particular quote from P.T. Barnum comes to mind...

<comment><USER4> I've always noticed that there is sometimes a correlation between those that make money and those that can understand what a "sucker" will go for.

What I mean is that many people make money by understanding the stupidity of people and taking advantage of that.

As opposed to thinking all logically with intelligence as far as why would someone pay me to do that! It's so simple!

An example of this (that might hit home to the tech crowd) is a "tech guy/gal" who under prices what they do thinking it is simple to install open source software on someone's box. Instead of realizes that to a "normal" it's a big ball of confusion and they would be quite pleased to just have an installed turnkey product with 5 minutes of handholding.

I can't stress this enough. You get paid for what you know that someone else's doesn't know. And you deserve to. So don't give it away without getting paid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Twitter's IPO will ensure that it no longer plays a role in world events.

<comment><USER16> How does that follow?

<comment><USER15> It doesn't follow, actually. It is my guess that the IPO will lead Twitter to temper its willingness to serve as a communications medium for events like the Arab Spring, but I could be mistaken--even sadly mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's up an enormous amount now, looks like the problems which plagued the Facebook IPO launch were dealt with long in advance.

<comment><USER18> Facebook was Nasdaq. Twitter is NYSE. Wouldn't have the same problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Regarding the profitability piece, they closed their mopub acquisition this week - something i believe will make or break the future of TWTR reopvenue... I believe the money is on that piece to perform or the company is dead in the water.

<comment><USER5> MoPub is the key for Twitter, I agree. It offers them a way to jump in as the leader in multi-touch/multi-device attribution, something that marketers will pay through the nose for (I know I would). I'm really interested to see what they do with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not relevant to the price, but they had Patrick Stewart open the market with them. Well, having Captain Picard open the market shouldn't be relevant to the price anyway.

<comment><USER20> Who knows? Maybe some algorithmic trading program has factored it into the price?

<comment><USER21> Computer says no:

[http://twitteripo.knowsis.com](http://twitteripo.knowsis.com)</comment></comment></comment>


Ash HN: How do you code fast? Using Emmet/Zen-Coding? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone use something like "Zen Coding"/"Emmet" to develop faster?<p>If so, what are you using? <comment><AUTHOR> If you don't know what Emmet or Zen Coding is, then see some examples here : [http://docs.emmet.io/abbreviations/](http://docs.emmet.io/abbreviations/)</comment>


Suggest me any laptop model - <AUTHOR>

hi
   I am planning to buy laptop. Suggest me any model. It should fulfill the following
   It should have high battery backup, supports higher end graphics, reliability to use higher end designing applications, A wide screen, A good eye appeal,Weightless, A fine readability screen and finally it should be an education supportive laptop, at-most. <comment><USER2> a lot of those things you're asking for just don't exist together.

you can't have a powerful processor and graphics card and have long battery life. and you especially can't have all 3 AND be weightless.

</comment><comment><USER3> High end Sony should do all of that:

E.g. VPCZ13AHX/XQ

[http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDi...](http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921666248867#specifications)

<comment><USER4> Wow. Prices like it's 1993!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would go with a MacBook Pro 13", if you want a Windows machine my experience was that HP has some nice products.

<comment><AUTHOR> I heared that Hp Emits more heat than other brands

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is it advisable to buy apple.

</comment><comment><USER6> High end graphics and lots of battery... riiight

Myself, only portables are netbooks with ssd.</comment>