Dzhokhar Tsarnaev charged with using 'weapon of mass destruction' - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/alleged-bombers-aunt-tamerlan-tsarnaev-was-religious-but-not-radical/2013/04/22/ca8f3214-ab5c-11e2-a198-99893f10d6dd_story.html This is the most bizarre and dangerous definition of 'WMD' that I've ever seen. <comment><USER2> Everyone here talking about how this definition is stupid is seriously missing the point. Just because the legal use of a term doesn't fit in with your conception of what a WMD is doesn't make it a stupid definition. I think it's clear that the federal government just wanted a separate criminal category for explosives and other extremely hazardous materials (chemical and biological).

Seriously, this should not be the first time that some of you guys have encountered a legal term that doesn't match up with the colloquial sense of the term.

And we shouldn't be predicating crimes on the competence of their perpetrators - their pressure cooker bombs did injure more than a hundred people. Had they engineered it optimally, they likely could have killed tens of more people.

</comment><comment><USER3> When did "WMD" go from describing something intended to kill thousands or millions of people to an IED? Both are bad, but it seems like a dilution to make "WMD" effectively synonymous with "bomb".

<comment><USER4> I find it disturbing that under this definition of WMD, what the US does with Drones almost each day is certainly also massive.

Is a gun a weapon of mass destruction? Why not?

<comment><USER5> Its probably more about the anonymous killing of multiple random people vs the actual number of people killed. A gun may kill many, but the shooter must do some selection of each one.

<comment><USER4> This isn't true with a high-powered rifle being shot into a crowd...

I think an assault rifle would've done a lot more damage than the pressure cooker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The events in Boston are tragic, but this stoking of mass hysteria around them is not that great either. I find it hard to believe that someone like John McCain, who had no problem with dropping bombs from his plane onto Vietnamese civilians [1], is so terrified by three civilian deaths at the hands of low- tech [2], deluded criminals. The big question, of course - possibly bigger than the terrorist act itself - is who benefits from this absurd inflation of the threat's magnitude.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder#Concl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder#Conclusions)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(projectile)#History>

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand what people think is wrong with the usual criminal justice system. If we can't convict someone of 3 murders, 140 attempted murders, destruction of property, using an explosive, etc... without resorting to wacky terrorism laws, then we have bigger problems.

<comment><USER8> The argument isn't that the criminal justice system (in this particular case) is inadequate for conviction but that actionable intelligence might be gleaned by following the rules regarding interrogation designed for warfare that wouldn't otherwise be accessible via regular criminal justice procedures.

<comment><USER7> Couldn't that apply in many criminal cases? If we didn't have to read a drug dealer his rights, and could use torture we might be able to get actionable intelligence on their cartel, or a child molestors network, etc...

<comment><USER8> Yes. This is a policy decision and one that is pretty murky with lots of differing opinions. The 'war on terror' and the 'war on drugs' are two areas where these policy decisions seem to come up quite a bit.

Or maybe a better way of characterizing the problem area is that it is deeply related to how we want to respond to patterns of violence caused by foreign, non-state actors: terrorist groups, drug cartels, organized crime, private militias, etc. (including US citizens that are involved with those foreign non-state actors).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like how the comments here are recycling Reddit from yesterday, almost word for word.

The term "WMD" being used here has a specific legal meaning which is far different from the more well-known military meaning, and is valid for the charges in question.

If it makes you feel better, imagine they charged him with "homocidial douchebaggery"...

<comment><USER10> I don't read reddit, so apologies.

I really enjoy a good bit of legal context. No doubt that trained prosecutors do things for legitimate and rational reasons.

However, there is also a role for the "peanut gallery" of uninformed speculation here. In fact, I'd argue the public perception of this stuff is 1000 times more important than the legalese.

You want a crime that's got "mass destruction" in the title, you need to demonstrate to the common man that this involves mass destruction. I don't believe that's too much to ask from the system.

<comment><USER9> > You want a crime that's got "mass destruction" in the title, you need to > demonstrate to the common man that this involves mass destruction. I don't > believe that's too much to ask from the system.

Since when did blowing up two bombs that cause 3 fatalities and 150+ persons to sustain often-horrific injuries _not_ count as as mass event? It is not the prosecutor's fault that American servicemembers have caused the medical field to innovate for the past ten years on how to save lives in response to these attacks.

<comment><USER10> You want to define "mass destruction" as some number dead and injured? I'm fine with that. You want to define it as the _intent_ to kill and/or maim a certain number of people? I'm fine with that too.

But that's not the way the law is worded. Right now, a high-school student playing around with blackpowder in an effort to blow up his neighbor's mailbox is flirting around with getting a WMD charge. Do you want that in the same category as this? I don't.

<comment><USER11> Did you miss the "resulting in death" part of the charges?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If those pressure cooker bombs were WMDs, then I guess the Iraq invasion was justified after all.

<comment><USER13> Exactly my reasoning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So there is no difference between killing 3 or 4 and maiming a hundred, and killing 4 or 5 thousand and maiming ten times that many?

I must have missed where the "mass destruction" part was defined.

Don't get me wrong, if he's guilty, I'm about as hardcore as a person could be about what to do with him. I'm just trying to figure out what the hell the government has done to our criminal justice system in the name of the war on terror.

EDIT: From a friend on FB, the definition of Mass Destruction. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Crim...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Criminal_.28Civilian.29)

"other device with a charge of more than four ounces"

So a few shotgun shells in a mailbox, which is a mean, vile, lethal weapon and might easily deserve the death penalty, but now it's also a WMD?

I hate to put this so bluntly, but the only thing that this tells me is that idiots are defining legal terms.

Are there any grownups in charge of making these laws?

<comment><USER14> If that is the legal definition of WMD then in this case the law is an ass. When was this legal definition created? Pre or post 9/11? I'm betting post. Do please correct me if I'm wrong. If I am though how come nobody at the time of the Iraq invasion^H liberation sought to point this out? I missed that memo.

And so further down the Orwellian tunnel of language distortion we go: if we (the good guys of course) do it then it's _collateral damage_ and _enhanced interrogation_ ; if they (those evil scum) do it then it's _weapons of mass destruction_.

I think when people hear WMD they take it to mean _nuclear_ _chemical_ and _biological_ weapons capable of killing _thousands_ in an instant or very short space of time. There is no way anyone seriously considers an IED of any crappy variety to be a WMD no matter how it is deployed or what the intent behind the murders is.

But yeah, let's keep on barreling down that road, let's see where it'll take us.

EDIT: as anigbrowl points out the answer is pre: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591399> Also interestingly mass in this sense means indiscriminate as opposed to targeted. I don't know is it just me or were others under the impression that mass meant _on a massive scale_. It certainly seems to have been used in that sense in the run-up to Iraq 2003 at which time it entered the public lexicon. And as I say I don't remember any legal-heads piping up to correct the misconception.

<comment><USER11> It was created in 1994, as anigbrowl mentions in another comment, also going into detail on why the categorical definition makes sense.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for that kvb, I've edited my previous post

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And what happens if a court actually correctly decides that such charges violate the second amendment? I'm sure Bostonians everywhere will be thrilled.

<comment><USER11> What does the 2nd amendment have to do with anything?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand what is particularly special about this case of domestic terrorism where persons are now wanting to treat the attackers somehow differently than the Turner Diaries brand of American bomber (aside from that the brothers were lawful residents, not citizens, of course.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Since Carmen Ortiz will be his prosecutor, I'm not surprised by this. She seems to identify someone's crime, then look for an order of magnitude worse charge, and go with that. It seems to be her style of prosecution.

<comment><USER9> Someday you'll actually read the law in question and realize how incredibly insensitive this comment must make you seem.</comment></comment>


Post-mortem of the June 3-4th DDoS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.easydns.org/2013/06/04/post-mortem-of-the-june-3-4th-ddos/

<comment><USER3> There's not really a lot of technical analysis in this post-mortem - <USER2> anyone have additional details into the techniques used?

<comment><USER4> See <http://openresolverproject.org/>. Someone was trying to use them to attack someone else. Misconfigured DNS servers can be used to amplify DDOS attacks exponentially. If your DNS server is open to recursive queries for outside hosts it can be used to generate a Smurf like attack: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurf_attack> They were on the list of DNS providers used for a DDOS attack on someone else and were flooded as collateral damage.</comment></comment>


Another Terrible Interview Experience with a Bad Recruiter - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nasty-truth-bad-recruiters-andrew-briggs/ <comment><USER2> Damn, what a awful experience dude. Good on your for calling out this behavior.

I do have a question. Why didn't you call out the recruiter in the meeting and pull them up then and there on their condescending attitude and approach to you? I know it's not easy especially when your wanting a role they represent but man sometimes people need to be stopped in their tracks.</comment>


Google Fiber reduces staff by 50% - <AUTHOR> http://www.multichannel.com/news/distribution/alphabet-cut-google-fiber-staff-half-report/407280 <comment><USER2> Linked FTA: "However, a source with direct knowledge of the situation has now responded to Light Reading about the report by saying these _claims of drastic job cuts at Google Fiber are false._ " (emphasis mine)

[http://www.lightreading.com/gigabit/gigabit-cities/google- fi...](http://www.lightreading.com/gigabit/gigabit-cities/google-fiber- downsizing-not-confirmed/d/d-id/725673)

<comment><USER3> That's interesting. I give The Information the benefit of the doubt because of its established cred. But Light Reading, which I haven't read before, seems to at least be the kind of industry trade pub that would have useful contacts. The lack of non-official response seems strange, as according to the original report, this alleged action was initiated one month ago:

> _But that's only part of the story. Last month, Alphabet CEO Larry Page > ordered Google Fiber's chief, Craig Barratt, to halve the size of the Google > Fiber team to 500 people, said the second person close to Alphabet. (The > Google Fiber unit is now known as Access.)_

<comment><USER4> Both accounts of the situation could be correct. The executive staff could be working on a layoff that will happen in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the title on the original article, "Alphabet to Cut Google Fiber Staff In Half". Makes me wonder if I get to keep one arm and one leg, or if I will have to learn to walk on my hands instead.

<comment><USER6> Not really. They'll keep your front half.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, that's disappointing. Maybe if they'd done more installs and less PR...

Webpass is only for multi-unit buildings with rooftop line of sight to a Webpass node. They put a directional antenna on the roof. Webpass needs a 30-unit building built after 1995 before they will pay for the install, although they'll do a 10-unit building if paid. But if you're in a large multi-unit building in a big city, there's probably already some kind of network connection. (Probably Comcast, though.)

Maybe Sonic can buy up the remnants of Google's fiber operation. Sonic is plugging away in SF, wiring the Richmond and Sunset districts with gigabit fiber. Next, the Castro.

<comment><USER8> There is also proper fiber, not just the LOS wireless. They use both depending on building/area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I live in a newish area. New enough that the house has fiber instead of copper. However, it wasn't until recently that AT&T started offering 1gbps service at $70/mo.

Prior to that, AT&T offered 6mbps service implemented using DSL over fiber complete with a DSL modem. So I was stuck with Comcast.

I like to think Google Fiber saying they were coming helped push AT&T into doing something with the fiber. For that, I've benefited from Google Fiber.

To AT&T: WTF? You had nice fiber in the area for years and the best you could do was emulate POTS?! Better late than never I guess.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can we please have a less definitive title? This is rumor/clickbait masquerading as established fact.

</comment><comment><USER11> What did Google miss in attempting to drive the Fiber program.

Reading some of the executives from other companies, they were surprised by their price points after installation. Frontier / Verizon FiOS had just gone through a country wide installation, was there no one to poach for knowledge?

Or was it another play by Google to get some sort of bureaucratic favor or other item.

<comment><USER12> Bureaucratic favor was basically the whole plan, if you look at their spats with AT&T and their lobbying with various local governments. In Austin, for example, they wanted access to AT&T poles at rates only available to telecoms, but they didn't want to have to register as a telecom, which would subject them to additional regulation. (Regulations that their competitors like AT&T and Comcast have to follow.)

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says- it-c...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-can-deny- google-fiber-access-to-its-poles-in-austin/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it's because it acquired webpass and has more people than it needs.

But I am very surprised about less than expected subscriber growth. But what do they expect when they're only in small cities and are unable to get into big cities, where the potential for growth is much higher?

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if there really is a big appeal for 1Gbps fiber for most people right now. I want fiber badly but i know that many more reasonable perople are perfectly fine with their 50-200Mbps cable/DSL connections and see no reason to upgrade. Also when it comes to getting Fiber to the building and distributing costs, almost nobody is willing to pay that until they absolutely have to.

</comment><comment><USER15> So weird how they announced a big build out in San Jose and then backed out very soon after.

</comment><comment><USER16> So...we've trusted Google with robotics, fibre and RSS. There, they failed. Sometimes understandably, sometimes less so.

We continue to trust them with the monetisation of content, _i.e._ advertising, email and search.

Is this fine? If society's necessities fall in the shade of the government's "immortality umbrella," are we okay with email sitting alongside paint manufacturing? Or is the real problem that ISPs don't fail often enough?

<comment><USER17> Now, as for email? Yes, email is important, but the root of control in email is DNS; the whole system is setup so that it's cheap and easy to own a second- level domain. Do that. If you own your own second level domain and you host it with google, it's easy enough to move it elsewhere if google shuts down their email. If you host your email on a second level domain you don't control? you are at the mercy of the owner of that domain, be that owner profit-seeking or not.

Personally, I think the domain system is actually pretty good right now. If you want a domain more officially controled by the government, you can get a .us second-level domain, if you are from the same country as I am, for rather less than a dollar a month.

That, and read up on the registrar/registry setup. Your email, at least the parts of your email I couldn't re-create over the course of a lazy afternoon with some open-source software, really does have some heavy government involvement.</comment></comment>


The Return of Perry Rhodan (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfsite.com/vault/john38.htm <comment><USER2> That was 20 years ago. Appearently, Vector Enterprises didn't release another issue and the series ended again after just 4 issues. Another attempt started 2006, an english release of the Lemuria-Mini-series. Released 1 of 6 books as print. But 2015/2016 they finally achived a full ebook-release.

Considering that Perry Rhodan today has nearly 3000 issues of the main-series, some dozen mini-series, some hundreds paperbook-stories, a long running spin- off (Atlan) with 1000+ issues and mini-series of it's own, and meanwhile even a reboot-series (Perry Rhodan Neo), its's puzzeling that the franchise never got any kind of lasting success in english.

</comment><comment><USER3> I loved Perry Rhodan until like Silver Book 120 or so, though I do have even the recent ones. It's a very good scifi series.</comment>


Dan Ariely on Behavioural Economics - <AUTHOR> http://thebrowser.com/interviews/dan-ariely-on-behavioural-economics

<comment><USER2> Very nice collection and the "Five Books"-concept is a great idea. I compared two books from the field on my blog: <http://drunkenmonkey.no- ip.info/stephan/blog/></comment>


Show HN: Angular Hold Button – hold (not click) to perform action - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/relishmedia/angular-hold-button <comment><USER2> Can it have touch support so mobile browsers can interact with it? I can see that being incredibly useful as it allows you to have multiple actions on limited screen real estate.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I'm the developer behind this. I'll be happy to answer any questions.

We'll also be releasing iOS and Android ports soon.</comment>


Violence Escalates as France Scrambles to Respond to 'Yellow Vest' Protesters - sahin-boydas https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/world/europe/france-yellow-vests-protests-macron.html <comment><AUTHOR> "fun" fact: average earner in France can buy ~2K liters of diesel with one months salary, average earner in Poland ~600 liters. Half both numbers for minimum wages. French started this protest over expensive diesel ...

<comment><USER2> Is it truly about diesel or is it like how the American revolution was about tea?

<comment><USER3> It is looking very much like the beginning of US tea party. A lot of retired people because their pensions diminished by 2-3%. Single parents who are really struggling because of housing prices. And then add to it all kind of extrems right, left etc. It just started about diesel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The French government has been raising taxes for years. People have been struggling to make ends meet.

Macron comes off as a privileged president that has no clue about what his citizens are going through.

Things are going to escalate further if nothing changes.

<comment><USER5> France has high taxes, but at the same time provides more services than other countries: free education including higher education, free healthcare, generous unemployment package, etc. Even more, this is done without closing the door to immigration.

Regarding the current movement which started with taxes on gas, the tax raise is insignificant vs. the actual oil price increase. Read this article (in French) for more information: [https://www.lemonde.fr/les- decodeurs/article/2018/11/09/peti...](https://www.lemonde.fr/les- decodeurs/article/2018/11/09/petit-manuel-a-lire-avant-de-debattre-de-la- hausse-des-prix-du-carburant_5381196_4355770.html)

Also, the people who go into the protests to break cars and shops have nothing to do with the original movement. Some clearly came to loot shops (if you are anarchist, you want to burn luxury clothing items, not take them), some are anarchists who came to fight police forces, etc.

<comment><USER4> Taxes on gasoline make up 50% of the price.

To pretend that the increase in taxes is there to help pay for renewable energies is a joke.

It's not a secret that the government is broke and looking to raise money any way it can.

It's trying to pass this tax increase as something that needs to be done to save the planet.

But they dont tax the fuel for tankers or airplanes so where is the logic?

It's not the little guy with his diesel car that does most of the damage to the environment.

<comment><USER6> > But they dont tax the fuel for tankers or airplanes so where is the logic?

Can they ? The only thing that will happen is no plane or tanker will buy fuel in France if it is not a decision made on an international level, no ?

<comment><USER7> I think that planes refuel at each trip. They wouldn't have the choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's very interesting though, following the hashtag the protestors use yields quite a lot of Turkish activity in their support.

</comment><comment><USER9> ELI5: What is the consensus on the disadvantages and advantages of diesel? I've heard conflicting information on this:

Some say reducing the number of cows would be much more effective for slowing down global warming.

Some say diesel exhaust fumes are not so bad and are unlikely to affect our health very much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if you dont care about global warming, diesel produces smog in cities. DPF and EGR delete is very popular among diesel owners, and rarely policed.

<comment><USER10> how popular do you really think it is in the average population...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> sahin-boydas [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/french-police-clash-with- yellow...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/french-police-clash-with-yellow-vest- protesters-paris-riot-today-dozens-injured-2018-12-01/)

<comment> sahin-boydas French police clash with protesters in Paris riot; 90 injured

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> False flag, perhaps?

<comment><USER12> The protests are real. The violence is the false flag. Saboteurs planted into the crowds to try and discredit the movement.

<comment><USER13> It already happened in the previous protests at Place de la Republique.. I would not be surprised.

<comment><USER12> It's a tried and tested strategy that works for any kind of protest anywhere. People are angry and in large groups. It only takes a gentle push to create riots. The people in charge want the riots to happen so they can label their opponents as the lawless mob.

You just need to look at who came dressed for riots though. It certainly isn't the yellow jackets.

<comment><USER13> I know. And if the mob is stubborn and does not want to escalate.. you send some "collaborators" to break the windows or put the fires because everyone knows, the mobs are crazy. I suspect the riot police is down-voting me.. No common sense people would get upset by my post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Added to that is the reality that many who say they are supportive have not > yet come out to demonstrate. While it is possible that this reservoir of > supporters will not become activists, if they did the government would be > hard put to cope.

> ...

> Multiple surveys of public opinion released in the past week suggest that 70 > percent to 80 percent of French people sympathize with the Yellow Vests' > contention that President Emmanuel Macron and his government "talks about > the end of the world while we are talking about the end of the month."

> The slogan refers to Mr. Macron's focus on reducing climate change by > promoting fuel efficiency and raising gas taxes in contrast to French > working people who struggle to make it to the end of their month on their > earnings.

I'm reminded some of Trump rhetoric. Also the Occupy movement. It's a heady mix.

<comment><USER6> It's the second Saturday in a row that there are degradation on the Champs Elysées.

Today someone even paint a slogan on the Arc de Triomphe.

I'm not sure those good sympathetic polls will last long.

Some of the yellow vests representatives demand to raise the level and start blocking gas stations.

It's December. One of the month where shops make a good part of their yearly income.

I'm not sure a lot of people will continue to follow. We'll see.

<comment><USER14> > It's December. One of the month where shops make a good part of their yearly > income.

True. But feeling poor during the holidays can be especially painful and frustrating, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> sahin-boydas just read 260+ arrested, nearly 90 injured.

</comment><comment> sahin-boydas European union human rights should be example to their own cops in France. it is pretty shocking how SOME french cops (no generalition of course) are so violet!!!

</comment><comment><USER15> At least now we have some idea of the fuel price needed to start a riot. $7/gal. That means there's plenty of headroom to raise the fuel tax in the USA!

<comment><USER16> Well before that price, you'd see a huge increase in diversion of home heating oil (untaxed) to fuel use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most of the violence is coming from left extremists or black blocks. At every protest in France (and we are specialist), you can see them attacking banks, insurance companies branches, luxury stores, burning expensive cars... I don't understand why the governments are not tougher on them. Maybe intelligence services are too busy spying on islamists which are an even more serious threat.</comment>


7 Free Tools to Minify your Scripts and CSS - <AUTHOR> http://www.devcurry.com/2009/11/7-free-tools-to-minify-your-scripts-and.html

<comment><USER2> And they've missed the Google Closure Optimizer for JavaScript: <http://code.google.com/closure/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure why YUI Compressor is last on that list, and why it's not mentioned that it also minifies CSS.

<comment><USER4> Last could be a position of honor. And he mentions that it produces higher compression ratios.

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I wrote a couple of articles a while ago about minifying css/javascript on the fly. They utilise a mod_perl handler which intercepts outgoing css/js and compresses them on the way out.

<https://secure.grepular.com/Compressing_CSS_on_the_Fly>

[https://secure.grepular.com/Compressing_JavaScript_on_the_Fl...](https://secure.grepular.com/Compressing_JavaScript_on_the_Fly)

</comment><comment><USER5> If anyone uses Kohana I maintain a packaged which wraps the PHP cssmin and jsmin libraries (plus some Kohana juice for serving files/caching)

<http://hg.errant.me.uk/minify>

There is also a port (or rewrite) for Kohana V3 that someone else maintains <http://github.com/zazu/minify>

</comment><comment><USER6> For the Django dudes in here:

<http://github.com/miracle2k/django-assets> with which you can use your compressor of choice

<http://elsdoerfer.name/docs/django-assets/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Two months ago I hooked up jsmin from a build script for release configurations. It's been helpful to have all of the reader-friendly stuff stripped out automatically without having to store minified copies in source control.

<comment><USER4> That's obviously a best practice. Minified code is essentially object code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For .NET websites, Combres does minifying, compression, and combining of scripts: <http://combres.codeplex.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> For Dojo as mentioned on the post comment

<http://dojotoolkit.org/docs/shrinksafe></comment>


Quantum Internet May Become Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/196394/quantum_internet_may_become_a_reality.html

<comment><USER2> Certainly not the best description of quantum entanglement and how it might be exploited. The information content of the article in fairly close to zero.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think that it would be interesting to develop this technology for space communication. We could have instantaneous relay of information from probs and satellites located anywhere in the universe.

<comment><USER3> This would be great, much better than waiting 13+ hours to get information back. Imagine using this for rovers on Mars and instant communication with Earth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Instant remote control over them as well. Seems like the perfect medium to apply "spooky action at a distance". Mind boggling trying to under stand why or how it works, but it does.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you implement site Admin? - <AUTHOR>

I have been making a list of things I would, as Administrator of a web-app, want to manage and control from a single secure interface. The list is getting quite long and includes the following:
* Approving comments, users, new content etc
* browsing the phpdoc or javadoc for the app
* view stats (basic awstats)
* "Contact Form" submissions that need responses
* Advertising A/B test results, notes, figures, values etc
* viewing user accounts for billing/overdue
* process payment refunds
* give users a freebie such as 30 days free
* Make text notes about setups, configurations, relevant urls, server IPs etc.
Has anyone here just used a mediawiki install at https://admin.yourdomain.com and put everything in there? Is this secure?
P.S. I am thinking of something much more than simply a performance dashboard. <comment><USER2> If it needs access to the production DB, I use regular ol' authentication/authorization for pages built into the site. If you're not me and you access it, you get kicked out. (There are a variety of reasons why one would not choose this approach for extraordinarily sensitive setups, but it is quick to implement and adequate for teaching tools.)

Things typically get promoted to my admin panels after I get sick of doing them manually on another site (e.g. log into Paypal for refunds or parse-and- crunch a CSV repeatedly).

I keep all my notes either in paper or Dropbox. If I had a team, I'd have a wiki running on a physically separate machine. (Putting software with that sort of risk profile on a machine with production data scares me.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point about waiting for things to really annoy you before promoting to the admin panel. I'm wary of spending too much time on this given the userbase is 1.

When you say auth access, do you mean a .htaccess password over SSL? I had not thought of such a simple solution.

<comment><USER3> I generally use HTTP Digest Authentication for personal projects - since I don't really require fancy login boxes, and it's really trivial to implement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use SQL/SSH as the admin interface at first. Then I gradually migrate things to a web-based version for tasks that are common or need to be accessible by others.

For me the slowest part about implementing most of an app's functionality is making it simple and hand-holding. For admin functionality I only do that when it's really helpful, the rest of the time it's barebones, which means it's fast to do.

Security wise I highly recommend putting all the admin functionality on a VPN/tunneled-only accessible URL/IP/Server with appropriate IP ACLs. This prevents a lot of the most common types of security mistakes from becoming big problems.

</comment><comment><USER5>
        $ pip install django

The Django admin gives you the basics for free, and it's quite easy to add admin controls to the existing pages. All you have to do is add a boolean field to the admin form (which creates a checkbox in the object's admin page) and then override the admin form's save method so you can check the value of the field.</comment>


Show HN: Watch anything instantaneously, with just a `watch "Star Wreck"` - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fabiospampinato/watch <comment><USER2> There is a program in the unix standard tools (I don't know how these things are called) named 'watch'.

<comment><USER3> Indeed.

[https://linux.die.net/man/1/watch](https://linux.die.net/man/1/watch)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Node - v8.2.1 OS - Ubuntu 16 This happens on anything that I try to stream (consistently about 5 minutes in) and happened on both Ubuntu and MacOS

(node:26340) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Unhandled promise rejection (rejection id: 2): Error: stdout maxBuffer exceeded (node:26340) [DEP0018] DeprecationWarning: Unhandled promise rejections are deprecated. In the future, promise rejections that are not handled will terminate the Node.js process with a non-zero exit code.

<comment><AUTHOR> This should be fixed with the latest update (v1.1.0), do you confirm?

<comment><USER4> Seems to be good so far! Good job! (I'm now on v1.3.0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Will have to test this our later. If it works half as good as it shows to, I'm really excited.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author. I'll be happy to hear your feedback on it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> watch ? What do you want to watch? Un Chien Andalou

Command failed: ./node_modules/.bin/magnet --rows 10 "Un Chien Andalou"

'.' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

<comment><USER6> watch --version

1.1.0

<comment><USER7> Getting the exact same thing...

Happens in both Powershell and CMD prompt.

Node -v 8.4.0 x64 Win 10 Pro

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'm running Node 5.5, it doesn't work because of syntax quibbles. You should add the engine requirements to your package.json file so npm would alert the user beforehand.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's weird, it works on node 5.5.0 in my system. Can you try updating to the latest version (v1.1.0)? Thanks for the suggestion about the engine!

</comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron Just ran it and tested it then. Can confirm that it does everything it says on the tin - Just had GOTG2 running in a matter of seconds.

Bravo, this one I'm keeping.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad to hear this :). I'd recommend an update to version 1.2.0, I've made some improvements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, popcorntime-cli?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, basically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Peerflix[0] has existed for years now. In what ways is this project superior?

[https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix](https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix) [0]

<comment><USER10> For starters, ease of use?

With Peerflix you need to find your own magnet URL to stream.

With Watch, you can search inside the program.</comment></comment>


Irradiated Dimes (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/medalsmementoes/dimes.htm <comment><USER2> I've still got one of these (a dime from my Dad's pocket, irradiated, then into the box with the rest of my kid treasures) from when my family and I visited Oak Ridge in the 60's. I can't speak to why they had the machine to do it there, but I still remember why I put the dime in.

I was 7 or 8. The future seemed closer then, like we were almost just right there. "Atomic energy," the space program, television: I remember when WAND in Decatur started broadcasting in color. Everything was getting better right in front of our eyes. Cool Whip! One day it was THERE.

And so on a visit to Oak Ridge, TN, you felt as a kid that it was all happening, that you could learn about it, and when you grew up you could join the team and make it happen, too. The dime was proof.

</comment><comment><USER3> But WHY do this at all? Is it because of public fascination with anything "atomic"? Good public relations? I don't get it. Because of little or no residual effects, why not just press the times into a souvenir holder and skip the irradiation altogether? It all just seems odd to me.

<comment><USER4> It's a demonstration of neutron irradiation. The lack of residual effects does not negate the coin becoming directly associated with that demonstration in memory.

If it helps making people aware of the process that's a good thing. Think about radioactive waste.

<comment><USER5> This is the cheap go-to method for fusor enthusiasts to check for fast neutron production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading this introduced me to the phenomenon of meta-stable nuclear isomers: states of atomic nuclei of an isotope which are more stable than the ground state of that isotope. (including the metastable isomer of 180m 73Ta, which is present in all tantalum samples at about 1 part in 8,300. Its half-life is at least 1015 years, markedly longer than the age of the universe.)

<comment><USER7> 10^15?

<comment><USER8> Yes, although Wikipedia says that the estimated lower bound is 45x10^15 years.

<comment><USER9> I was about to say, maybe it was supposed to be 1,015 of some other kind of unit of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Gamma neutron sources inevitably have two problems. First, the gamma emitter > is short-lived. Sb-124 has a 60 day half-life which meant that it had to be > periodically reactivated in a reactor. Second, the gamma source presents an > exposure hazard that requires lead shielding.

A family member was working in a facility selling Californium-252, a strong neutron emitter. So gamma sources might be awkward to work with but these things are not exactly fun to work with either.

It's probably the most expensive commercially sold substance on earth ($20M+ / gram). The half life is only 2 years. Now that's a nice revenue stream, well as long as Oak Ridge keeps its reactor going and there are enough customers out there.

Also due to being a strong neutron emitter, it has a ridiculous amount of shielding. Lead won't work for it like it does for gamma rays, but things like polyethylene work well. So there would be lots of it, even for a tiny amount like a tiny fraction of a gram.

<comment><USER11> What makes polyethylene a good neutron shielding and lead not?

<comment><USER10> Not a physicist but I was explained it was like this:

Anything that has a mass close to the mass of the neutron would work better because we'd want to have a lot of elastic collisions to slow neutrons down. So something with lots of hydrogen would work, since the nucleus of hydrogen is a single proton so about the same mass as a neutron. It would mean water works. But so does polyethylene and it can be molded into various shapes and doesn't leak like water.

Another way to think about it is lead is heavy nucleus, imagine it like a bowling ball. A neutron on other hand are more like tennis balls. A fast flying tennis ball hitting a bunch of bowling balls will not slow down too much and will keep bouncing around at at high speed.

Now imagine this fast tennis ball hitting lots other tennis balls. Then the collisions are more elastic and it will slow down the neutron quicker.

<comment><USER9> And this is exactly the sort of principle that helps to distinguish between the mechanical aspects of quantum physics, and the much-hyped angular momentum spin uncertainty aspects.

People make so much hay about the curious non-locality and uncertainty of spin, and tend to get tunnel vision about how nothing makes sense anymore, leaving out the broader strokes which have pretty reasonable underlying principles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" Since the carriers were not sealed, there is no certainty that a dime they hold today had ever been irradiated."_

Unless one owned a Geiger counter, I would argue that it is entirely possible that the dime held when it was "irradiated" had not ever been irradiated. When I was reading the article, my thinking was that if no one had actually confirmed that this took place I'd be reading an article about scam artists in the 50s and 60s selling "irradiated" dimes.

<comment><USER13> The article says that the apparatus included a Geiger counter, so that the dime was visibly shown to be radioactive before being encased.

<comment><USER12> _The article says that the apparatus included a Geiger counter_

A Geiger counter, or a device that makes clicky noises? I'm not disputing the article, I'm willing to believe that the device contained an actual Geiger counter. But in isolation, my point is that this could just as easily be some scam similar to the chess-playing machine that really had a human inside of it. "These dimes have been irradiated with invisible particles! But look, I have a device that clicks in the presence of those magic, invisible particles!" Clicks, huh? Oh, realllly.

And, based on another sibling comment, it was almost a scam in that the radioactive decay was so fast that the dimes might not even make it home before all of the radioactivity went away. In the end, all we have left is a dime that might, or might not, have at one time been irradiated. But even if we could prove it then, we have no way of proving it now.

<comment><USER14> The presence of Cadmium-110 could serve as a good indicator, assuming that the process added enough and there wasn't too much Cadmium-110 in the original coins.

<comment><USER12> Cools, thanks. I figured there was some atomic particle marker thingy that would hang on to be detected later. But I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to stuff that rots by flinging dangerous particles at other stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I still have one of these from the 1964 World's Fair. I figure it's worth at least - oh - ten cents.

<comment><USER16> At least ten cents. Sure, but I'll buy as many 1964 dimes as you have got for a dollar each.</comment></comment>


Firefox calls BS on Google's full-page privacy ads in the Washington Post - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/firefox-google-prints-ads-privacy-washington-post/ <comment><AUTHOR> Although I don't think Firefox is the Privacy by Default role model, I would like to see people talking more about Privacy by Default.

Developers usualy argue that opt-out is necessary because otherwise people would not opt-in. But IMO this is just disrespecting peoples choice.

Features can be useful, developers can be trustworthy and by not opting-in people may be not using some feature that they would be missing. But still people have their reasons that should be respected even if it's: I will not opt-in because I don't feel comfortable enough or don't understand enough how it works or the consequences of opting-in</comment>


CloudRail WorkBench - <AUTHOR> https://workbench.cloudrail.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> CloudRail aims to be an abstraction layer between your app and any API. They want to eliminate dealing with upstream changes.</comment>


SMS Inbox Zero - get there with SendHub - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sendhub.com/post/29490841286/inbox-zero

<comment><USER2> Is this a problem that people actually have? I admit to being out of the loop w/r/t SMS, but … really?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's one of our most requested features. Just like email, if it's not easy manage, it's difficult to keep track.

For example, we have use our own product to provide text based support and it receives hundreds of msgs a day - difficult to manage without a way to focus on what you need to deal with right now.

<comment><USER3> Just a quick one: I didn't knew SendHub before and it took me a while to understand what the company offer. Only with the video I've understood the product. I think it would you used some of the text from the video, like "separate your personal life from your work life" in the front page. Other than that, looks great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - we appreciate the feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't want to start out my presence on Hacker News by being a complainer, but I have to say... I've looked at the website for 10 minutes and I still have little idea what SendHub DOES.

I spent 10 minutes, and even watched the video (a last ditch effort), because I have a niggling feeling in my mind that it does something very cool. With cell phones. And numbers. And messages (of some kind). But without actually creating an account, I still have minimal idea what.

This is common to many startup websites - not just SendHub. I'm just tired enough of it, and frustrated enough on this probably-cool app, to mention it this time.

<comment><USER4> Ah, I see someone else mentioned this since I last refreshed the page.</comment></comment>


Our Response to Sony Sending Us a Threat Letter for Reporting on Leaked Emails - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150420/22284530731/our-response-to-sony-sending-us-threat-letter-reporting-companys-leaked-emails.shtml <comment><USER2> You would think a high powered corporation in the business of entertaining humans would have a better handle on public relations. I'm flabbergasted by how badly they've handled this entire story, from the hack to the damage control.

Just so... dumb.</comment>


Photographers Who Didn't Step in to Help - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/28/gutted-photographers-who-didnt-help

<comment><AUTHOR> I see a bit of a corollary between the topic of the article and the rather current discussion on whether people should be making 'Instagrams' (for ex.) or actually trying to 'save the world'.

Although if applied strictly to photographers, should those who take pictures of 'nice sunsets' feel bad for not being war-photojournalists?</comment>


Apple Wants To Build A PayPal Killer, Say Wall Street Gossips - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-eyeing-paypals-business-say-wall-street-gossips-2009-8

<comment><USER2> Uhh, hell would freeze over before I'd use it in anything. Paypal is bad enough, but Apple's App Store policies have tarnished their reputation in my book!

<comment><USER3> Yeah I can just imagine it now:

We are sorry but you can't buy this item because we don't iPay to be associated with questionable content.

<comment><USER4> That already happens with PayPal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They also mentioned Facebook. Are payments really big on Facebook? With tons of customers and experience with processing payments for real-world goods, I would think Amazon would have a better shot at it than Facebook.

Also, out of Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, I would guess that Amazon customers are the most likely to be spending money elsewhere as well.

But in all these cases--Pay Pal, Apple, and the rest--they are wrappers on a bank account or a credit card. Why wouldn't the banks and the credit card companies themselves want to get in on all this?

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember suggesting this to Steve Case when he was CEO of AOL. It was before paypal and it would have made a lot of sense for AOL to become the micropayment processor since they already had access to their subscriber's credit cards. I'm glad they really didn't move on it though, because they could have killed the movement of large content companies going to the web with it. Why publish free on the web when you could have made money for articles on AOL? AOL at the time was the largest ISP.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would much rather they: 1) fixed the appstore policies 2) create an OS X appstore 3) allow sale of media in an appstore like way so people stop creating apps to sell media and just use something Apple develops / buys

I get the feeling, that at the end of the day, the appstore will have some rating system with one of the ratings being "unsupervised content access".

</comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't use it but considering how many people do use iTunes to buy things (both iPhone/Touch apps and music) this makes a ton of sense. I doubt it'll take much extra effort to add the infrastructure, if any. And it creates additional revenue stream.

Interesting to see where this goes if true.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sounds like someone overheard a feature, didn't understand it and then misinterpreted the example.

A direct pay-pal knockoff would have nothing to do with Apple's core business (selling hardware). And to be at all plausible, would have to support transactions that have _nothing_ to do with their hardware/software ecosystem.

Microsoft is the sort of company that might have been distracted into building a financial arm during its years of plenty. Apple really isn't. That sort of absolute diversification is antithetical to how Apple operates.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article and headline say "PayPal killer," but my guess is that it would be closer in spirit to Amazon's Flexible Payment System.

</comment><comment><USER11> Personally, I don't understand why ISPs haven't become payment processors. They already have a monthly billing relationship with their customers. Wouldn't it be cool if your ISP provided a service whereby you could buy things online and charge them to your ISP bill?

If done right such a service could be more secure than credit cards for online purchases, make micropayments much more feasible, and provide a separate revenue stream for ISPs. Why haven't they jumped on this?

</comment><comment><USER12> naming "<anything> killer" is usually destined to failure

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, one thing is clear: anybody who has billions of cash on the high side and his mind at the right place, will now, at this tim in history, investigate if he should enter the banking industry in some form or another.

<comment><USER14> I don't specifically disagree with you, but I'm curious: what are your reasons for that viewpoint?

<comment><USER15> All competitors have just been weakened and many are seeking to preserve market share and/or autonomy (from regulation). furthermore, consumers largely hate banks at the moment. I certainly hate mine. If you have a big New Idea and the cash to implement it, it's a great time to offer an alternative.

Having said that, my experience with Paypal has been very good overall. And I have a jaundiced attitude towards Apple.</comment></comment></comment>


IBM: Introducing a Brain-Inspired Computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/brain-chip.shtml

<comment><USER2> I've submitted a list of previous articles on this topic, all different, all with their slightly different slant, some with significant discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10102160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10102160)</comment>


Ask HN: What should Microsoft do to change geek opinion? - <AUTHOR>

Since (and even before) Satya Nadella become CEO of Microsoft, a lot has changed. From adoption of Open Source technologies to open sourcing a big chunk of its active software stack, from hosting Linux on Azure to supporting Office and .NET on all major platforms, not to mention its active contributing to Hadoop and a lot of other projects.
Having said that all, I can see little being changed from the attitude of the community towards Microsoft. Some are still skeptic about how real a move it is while others feel it is too little too late. Some (including me) feel this comes out of utter desperation rather than a strategic move from a change in the vision of the company. And ss Satya himself said, the biggest challenge is changing the internal culture.
So would you think attitude of the general geek community has changed towards Microsoft? And if not, why that is and what would make you change your opinion? <comment><USER2> Most geeks I know of are OK with Microsoft, actually. I find online communities, in general, amplify the voices of a discontented minority because the vast majority don't bother saying anything about a topic that simply doesn't affect them much either negatively or positively.

</comment><comment><USER3> Microsoft has spent a lot of time and effort putting themselves in the this position (closed source, ignoring and even shunning open source, OEM agreements that border on predatory, and so on...)

Unfortunately I believe the only thing that will change opinions are a considerable amount of time and effort in the other direction.

</comment><comment><USER4> I want the linux tools I am familiar with. This means a useful cmd, different FS layout and a gcc/icc style interface for MSVC.

<comment><USER5> cmd is deprecated, and has been replaced by Powershell (in 2009, six years ago!).

What file system layout would you want? UNIX? Does anybody think the current way the UNIX FS is used makes any rational sense? It is a giant disjointed mess, with a great deal of misusage by developers and users alike.

Microsoft could dispose of e.g. Program Files, Program Files (x86), Common Files, and also re-organise %AppData% and %windir% a decent amount. Remounting on / wouldn't provide much benefit (and technically Windows NT actually is mounted at \ they just use the root context for object storage, not files).

They have been trying some re-organisation with the Windows 8 "app" system. But since that has not been very successful neither has the project seen many results. Essentially they're siloing apps in the same way mobile devices do e.g. iOS apps/Android apps, etc.

SVC already is completely driven from the command line already (there is no UI).

<comment><USER6> Command-line ssh & scp would be awesome. Also something like wget/curl. In general for TCP/IP there is still just almost nothing.

<comment><USER5> Windows has wget. Well technically it has Powershell alias for Invoke- WebRequest, however if you type "wget example.com/file.exe -OutFile file.exe" it will do what you expect. It also has Invoke-RestMethod and System.Net.WebClient.UploadFile( '[http://example.com/submit'](http://example.com/submit'), $filename ).

> In general for TCP/IP there is still just almost nothing.

No clue what that means or what it is in reference to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Open source all patents related to the threat *nix based operating systems.

</comment><comment><USER8> They have improved a lot recently but some things I'd really like to see...

* Ship native SSH (inc scp/sftp) and rsync clients and servers with Windows to make interoperability easier in heterogeneous environments. eg make SSH a first class transport option for Powershell remoting.

* Simplify the server licensing complexity, and then stop changing it all the time.

* Stop the secure boot shenanigans.

* Stop treating most HA, security or robustness features in SQL Server as "value adds" that are only in the really expensive editions.

* Contribute more engineering resources to improve open source interoperability projects and various 'DevOps' tools eg WinRM libraries, Configuration Management tools, Packer, Vagrant etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> Really I think this problem is overblown at this point. That said, a surefire way would be something like Twitters patent agreement - guarantee no offensive patent use. This would mean giving up a bunch of Android revenue though so I don't see it.

</comment><comment><USER10> For me if they would lower the prices of their msdn subscriptions I'd dev for their OS more. $699/year is the cheapest option to have access to their OS's for testing. That's pretty expensive in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER11> They're trying a bunch of things, I'm sure some of them are working. I went to a JS conference recently and one of their dev evangelists was talking about using JS to control Arduinos or whatever. No proprietary-stack stuff in sight.

I don't have numbers to say "a majority", but a whole lot of developers don't use Windows. They really need to give up on the Windows-everywhere stuff, but as I understand it that was a Ballmer thing. Anyway, I mean, they're Microsoft. I'm sure they'll land on their feet.

</comment><comment><USER12> My (very low) opinion of them would change overnight if they released something (anything) that was definitively better than my other options. I try to be pretty pragmatic about these things; I'm always interested in using the best tools available. If they start making the best tools, I'll back them 100%! But for now, I just don't see how using their products gives me any kind of edge at all.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have more contributors to open source such as Scala and Spark. I was at a (Apache) Spark conference yesterday and IBM was demoing a Spark interface to iPython 3 notebooks. Something really useful. Microsoft wasn't even exhibiting.

Mimic the Unix command line environment of Mac that runs the various untilies (eg, homebrew).

</comment><comment><USER14> Throwing their code on github, releasing cross-platform applications, and making it free to upgrade to Win10 is a big step in the right direction. They should also make Windows itself open source and just sell enterprise support.

</comment><comment><USER15> Continue involvement with open source projects in a way that shows good will toward the larger community. Stay on the course it's on at the moment---it will pay off.

</comment><comment><USER16> They need More marketing.

Hire cool agencies like Hello Monday (they've done most of Google and Android stuff).

</comment><comment><USER17> limited IE testing VMs that work in Virtualbox that don't require a license or constant upgrades. I know there are VMs but last time I messed with them they lasted for a while and then stopped working.

</comment><comment><USER18> And cron. Damn that Windows scheduler mess.

<comment><USER5> The UI is a mess, the actual task scheduler is pretty darn powerful.

cron is missing a bunch of Task Scheduler's toys e.g.

\- Start task on computer idle (and no, "nice"/low priority is not what this does)

\- Stop task if the computer ceases to be idle, restart task if idle state resumes

\- Start only on AC, stop if computer moves to battery

\- Wake computer to run this task (unreliable, but useful when it works)

\- Start task only if network connection is available (<pick network connection>)

The following has to be hacked with a bash script:

\- Random delayed start

\- Stop tasks if they run too long

\- Begin on event (list of 300+ events, +custom event filters)

Honestly your criticism is pretty silly. cron is very very basic, and has to be hacked to do most things. Task Scheduler is incredibly powerful and doesn't require giant ugly hacks or custom scripts to accomplish things. I really think your reply is born out of ignorance (of both cron AND task scheduler) or just a raw unwillingness to learn something different.

Microsoft COULD put cron into Windows, just remove 70%+ of task scheduler's functionality, and all knowledge of how the underlying system works. But at least it would be cross platform...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have not seen Win 8 so I can only speak from the previous 10 years of experience - they should fix the UX. I always hated how complicated and perplexing everything was and when something failed Win would almost laugh in my face blaming me for it.</comment>


The History of Tetris - <AUTHOR> http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/special/tetrishist.html

<comment><USER2> From the article: "Robert Stein made, in total, about $250,000 on Tetris. He could have made a great deal more, of course, but Stein had trouble getting Atari and Mirrorsoft to pay him royalties for the (bogus) rights he sold them....In 1996, with the financial backing of Henk Rogers, he [founder Pazhitnov] organized The Tetris Company LLC, and is now finally getting royalties for his creation."

</comment><comment><USER3> I get annoyed anytime whenever I see "Best Videogames of all time" lists that don't put Tetris at the #1 spot. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Alexey Pazhitnov designed a second puzzle game after Tetris, this is my favorite implementation of it. <http://www.popcap.com/games/bigmoney> \-- click play free online.

</comment><comment><USER4> Purple on black hurts.</comment>


An Insomniac's journey to regular sleep - <AUTHOR> https://www.sleepedy.com/articles/insomniac-journey-to-better-sleep/ <comment><USER2> CBT is applicable to so many things.. Its good that small incremental process changes, logging and ideation can have an effect, because it means we do have (for some things) the 'heal thyself' potential. (always check in with a health professional)

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating, I've suffered with insomnia for many years and haven't even heard of this</comment>


You should subscribe / sign up / follow me... why? - <AUTHOR>

I had this random afternoon brain-fart. It goes something like this:
We end up posting quite a few good links to blog-posts here on Hacker news. A lot of those blog-posts have a little blurb at the bottom that basically says, something to the effect of: "You should follow me on twitter..".
Each time I see such a blurb, I tend to have a slightly defensive reaction. Something like:
What will we get by following you on twitter? Whats in it for me? How about something like:
- "You should follow me on twitter. I post all kinds of fun links about ... and also post updates about ... ".
The reason being, that as soon as I see the "follow me!" line, I tend to think of it as a separate issue from the blog post itself. What will I get by following you on twitter / adding you on facebook? <comment><USER2> I know my personal wording along those lines, untested, comes from this Dustin Curtis article - <http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html>

I suspect you may be right - reasons work better than 'just because', and I note Dustin didn't test that in his experiment.</comment>


Bypassing OpenSSL Certificate Pinning in iOS Apps - <AUTHOR> http://chargen.matasano.com/chargen/2015/1/6/bypassing-openssl-certificate-pinning-in-ios-apps.html <comment><USER2> I don't even attempt to circumvent SSL pinning. IMO it's easier and safer to use Cydia substrate to decorate the networking classes to print args and return values to the console. I've reversed a few APIs in this way, including a bank's.

<comment><USER3> Note that the associated whitepaper discusses using Cydia -- specifically cycript -- to do the same thing.

<comment><USER4> Yes, often times that can be sufficient. If you just want to study the protocol or build a custom client. Often times one would like to modify messages of the protocol in order to find flaws in either the server or the client and the ability to man-in-the-middle the protocol makes that easier, in my opinion.

For completeness, the whitepaper is here: [http://matasano.com/research/bypassing_openssl_pinning.pdf](http://matasano.com/research/bypassing_openssl_pinning.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Awesome article and white paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > From a penetration testing perspective, this may cause practical problems

I was super confused what they were talking about, until I remembered that "penetration testing" really just means "penetration", not "testing", it's just a euphemism for "attacking". I think?

<comment><USER4> Yea, I think a better term would be application security assessment where one tests the application for security flaws. Penetration testing stems originally from network security where one actually tries to penetrate a network. It's not a great term for software, I agree.

<comment><USER7> I think the intent here is to decrypt and then reverse engineer the network traffic, so they can then check for vulnerabilities server-side. So they aren't auditing the application, they're just trying to find a way in.

<comment><USER5> (You are plying to the author of the article, possibly intending to reply to the parent.)

This is part of auditing an application. Finding a way in is only one step of the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wouldn't it be much harder to patch the binary if it were stripped? Is it not common to strip release builds of iOS apps?

<comment><USER4> (Disclaimer: I'm the author of the blog post)

I think, there is two things to that.

First, for dynamic C/C++ libraries like OpenSSL, some degree of symbols have to be maintained in order to relocate the library and find the entry point to the corresponding function.

Second, Objective-C is a dynamic language and as such the binary will always include the Objective-C method names. The reason is that they are resolved at runtime (via so-called "selectors"). In fact, Objective-C doesn't technically call methods but they use a message passing system. So if you pull any app from the app store, you can determine all classes, methods, and mostly arguments of the methods.</comment></comment>


"Pen Science" is to Writing as CS is to Web 2.0 - <AUTHOR>

Do you agree with this analogy? <comment><USER2> No. A better analogy would be that English literature is to blog posts as Computer Science is to Web 2.0: Blog posts and Web 2.0 are very marginally influenced by -- and are studied on the margins of -- English literature and Computer Science respectively, but they're both primarily sociological phenomena.

EDIT: Looking back at the topic, I'm not sure if the submitter is aware of Dijkstra's comment about the nature of Computer Science: "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes". Comparing Computer Science to "Pen Science" (which is presumably the study of pens) simply demonstrates a lack of understanding of what Computer Science is.

<comment><USER3> Whereas the original "pen science is to writing as CS is to web 2.0" analogy might be awfully skewed, you do have to ask yourself how frequently it is necessary to apply the kind of algorithms and techniques [that CS is in part comprised of] in a typical Web 2.0 application.

<comment><USER2> I also ask myself how frequently it is necessary to apply the plot and characterization -- or for that matter, grammar and spelling, apparently -- to blog posts. Gulliver's Travels is better writing than most blog posts, just like the FreeBSD kernel is better code than Reddit. If most Web 2.0 applications don't apply many concepts from Computer Science, it says more to me about the quality of Web 2.0 applications than it does about the importance of Computer Science.

<comment><AUTHOR> Web 2.0 apps should of course make use of many concepts from Computer Science -- just as professional writers should make use of the latest word processing software.

But you can still have the case that the web 2.0 apps are much more interesting than the CS concepts on which they are based.

<comment><USER2> "you can still have the case that the web 2.0 apps are much more interesting than the CS concepts on which they are based"

Which is more interesting, opera or football? Personally, I'm interested in opera -- and Computer Science -- but I'm willing to accept that most people find football (and web 2.0 applications) to be far more interesting.

But you thinking that Computer Science is boring doesn't imply that Computer Science is analogous to studying pens any more than me thinking that football is boring implies that football is analogous to the mating behaviour of male elk. In both cases there is similarity at first glance -- Computer Science courses tend to focus on very simple and well-understood algorithms (quicksort, binary search, minimal spanning tree, etc.), while to someone without understanding of tactics, football appears to be nothing more than a bunch of large males running at and into each other -- but if you take the time to understand either of these you'll see that the analogies fail quite quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Response #1:

By which you mean, one makes the other possible?

In the middle ages, can you imagine the trouble it was to make your own ink, collect and maintain quills of the appropriate type, train oneself to wield the quill skillfully and not cause inkblots, and finally deal with the fatigue of manipulating such a large object?

Nowadays pens are so cheap and easy to use you never even have to think about it. So you move onto other questions, like what to write.

Response #2:

This statement is idiotic. Computer science is essential to the collection of technologies people call "Web 2.0".

The most advanced Web 2.0 sites allow for quick search across enormous databases, and efficient, many-to-many messaging. These problems are hard. Using the appropriate algorithm is essential to scalability. Look at Facebook; they deploy Stanford whiz kids to invent their own infrastructure (hmmm, that sounds familiar) and they're growing faster than anybody else in this space.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true that scalability is hard once you get users. But by then you will have VC funding to hire experts who could do that stuff for you. So it's not essential knowledge for entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER4> I checked out your blog. Someone who blogs about Scala doesn't need schooling from me on CS. ;) I think I see what you're doing now.

Ok, to tell you the truth -- this is something I've wondered about recently myself. I happen to know about the codebases of several successful Web 2.0 sites post-acquisition. And in many cases, they used the naive solution and got away with it until acquisition. It's difficult to blog about these things in public, but I've circulated similar speculations privately, that maybe all CS knowledge is a huge waste of time for entrepreneurs.

Using naive solutions has definitely worked for some startups. But it comes at a fairly heavy price. You are essentially betting everything on being acquired before you get so slow that your own users start hating you. Once acquired, you then get a reprieve from death, and then you spend about one year building your 2.0 version that actually scales decently (all the while fighting fires with the clunky 1.0 version). Meanwhile your users scratch their heads wondering why, once you got all that money, you stopped building any new features. This pattern has been repeated many times for successful web 2.0 startups.

Contrast that situation with a company like Google or Facebook. One of Google's main advantages was scaling, from their algorithms to their ability to create vast computing infrastructures. Facebook acquired this sort of talent a little bit later in their history, but they are definitely there today. So when they got offers to buy their company for millions of dollars -- even a billion dollars -- they were able to say no. Because they knew they could grow faster by themselves. Last year Zuckerberg was considered an idiot for turning down a billion dollars. But he knew that F8 was in the pipeline, and he was very smart to say no.

Being able to scale means freedom. Ignoring scalability is a high-stakes bet. But either strategy might work, depending on what the startup's business model is, and the talents and inclinations of the founders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a pretty terrible analogy, to be honest with you.

</comment><comment><USER6> No.

The basic work on relational databases was done by computer science researchers. And actually people in labs built the Internet, come to think of it. And they pioneered the ideas behind dynamic languages like Ruby. Before there was Matz or Larry there was Alan Kay and Guy Steele.

What would we do without computer science researchers?

</comment><comment><USER7> Linguistics is to writing as CS is to computing. Web 2.0 is a subset of computing.

<comment><USER2> I think you mean "Linguistics is to (the use of) language as..." -- linguists study spoken language as well was written language.

<comment><USER8> Just as computer science studies algorithmic theory as well as implementation.</comment></comment></comment>


WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/03/walmartlabs-open-sources-the-application-platform-that-powers-walmart-com <comment><USER2> My blog post that talks more about the release: [https://medium.com/walmartlabs/introducing-electrode-an- open...](https://medium.com/walmartlabs/introducing-electrode-an-open-source- release-from-walmartlabs-14b836135319#.5j415go54)

<comment><USER3> Hey Alex,

I have a quick unrelated question. Why is Walmart.ca contracted outside if you have walmart labs? Well at least the front-end. Hope it's okay to ask you that.

<comment><USER4> i believe i had read in a medium blog post that the .ca backend was build on akka/scala

<comment><USER5> The backend is built with Oracle Commerce (ATG), the frontend with Play Framework (so Scala and Akka).

Source: [http://www.nurun.com/en/news/nurun-launches-redesigned- trans...](http://www.nurun.com/en/news/nurun-launches-redesigned- transactional-platform-with-walmart-canada/) plus private conversations with people who have worked on the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Clarifying because I was confused at first: this is the React/Node.js tech stack that the website is built on, not the ecommerce platform that drives it.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I was hoping to see some very cool Clojure code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given Walmart's deep contributions and investments in the Backbone ecosystem [0], which were impressive in their own right, I'm even more impressed that they seem to have switched to a React-based front end stack in a few years. That seems pretty agile for a company the size of Walmart.

[0] [https://github.com/walmartlabs/thorax](https://github.com/walmartlabs/thorax)

<comment><USER9> Although it is great that this happened and I applaud open source contributions, especially by bigger companies, I wonder what the reasons for such a rewrite were. And why the online platform manager approved it. People often try to convince me of shiny-new-thing-39432 and sometimes we try on a non-risk project and usually we find out it's the same or (more often) worse than what we used before. I like React and theoretically (not practically unfortunately) also Node but if I already have a site built in something else the web team would have to come up with really over the top reasons (and prove them after the roll out!) to just dump that investment.

<comment><USER2> Great question, we definitely took a hard look on if we should transform our tech stack or not (and decided to do it) - to really answer this question though, you would need to understand our previous stack, what was holding us back, and where we wanted to go. I'm not sure if reading about our previous stack and why we moved is an interesting blog post or not :).

<comment><USER10> > I'm not sure if reading about our previous stack and why we moved is an > interesting blog post or not.

It definitely is. There is a serious business cost to front end trendiness, so it's good to hear the legitimate business cases for these switches vs. "it's what the devs want to code on."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.electrode.io/index.html](http://www.electrode.io/index.html)

> _" Electrode is a platform for building universal React/Node.js applications > with standardized structure, best practices, and modern technologies baked > in. Electrode focuses on performance, component reusability, and simple > deployment to multiple cloud providers—so you can focus on what makes your > app unique."_

Sounds like the missing piece of the puzzle everyone's been waiting for?

<comment><USER12> The complexity isn't likely completely free.. but could be incredibly useful for a lot of universal rendering scenarios... the above the fold content loading, and the component render caching server-side is particularly interesting.

Now if Walmart.com just didn't look quite so hideous... but that's another issue...

The tech stack for electrode is definitely interesting, and looking forward to playing around with it.

<comment><USER2> I hope you like it! I personally think that the above the fold content, server side caching, and redux-router-engine will make a positive impact on the server side rendering react community. We saw HUGE gains in performance using these.

We are working on a blog post that goes through the performance numbers we saw on the live site.

I also think Electrode Explorer will be popular for bigger companies that have many components.

[http://www.electrode.io/docs/electrode_explorer.html](http://www.electrode.io/docs/electrode_explorer.html)

P.S. I'm from the Electrode team.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the reply, yeah, from what I've read and seen so far it definitely looks interesting... And seems to resolve a lot of the issues I had very early on with ismorphic^wuniversal rendering back when Yahoo's fluxible app had just come out. The render caching seems very cool as well, making up for the general double-render for fetching data triggered from the component.

Right now at the day job I'm stuck in angular 1.x hell, though my contract is up in a couple weeks and looking for something in the React space again. Too much angular work in Phoenix to avoid completely though.

Aside: wish I could get a hold of a hiring manager there if you have space for new people, have never even gotten a callback from walmart labs, and would love to work for your org.

<comment><USER2> Your contact information is in your HN profile, I'll have our recruiters ping you with the opportunities we have available @WalmartLabs.

<comment><USER12> Added more contact info, thanks... I'm @tracker1 on github and npm as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is somewhat surprising, in a good way. A lot of large companies are pretty risk averse, and this prevents them from releasing the source for their shopping platforms into the wild. I'm sure there are some differences between the open source version and what they actually run.

Is this the complete platform? What's held back? I would think the analytic tools for usage and sales, how they store user data, and perhaps whatever they use to build profiles about individual users' shopping behavior. But that's just speculation.

<comment><USER2> Electrode is just the front end platform. We also have OneOps for our app server lifecycle management. Test Armada for automation.

I don't know of anything lower in the stack that was open sourced than what I mentioned.

The stuff we didn't put into the Electrode platform that is integrated internally, off the top of my head:

1\. Integrations to our global config manager, that allows us to turn flags on/off in real time.

2\. Integrations to our A/B Testing Tools

3\. Integrations to our content management

4\. Logging/Analytics/Metrics Integrations

5\. Our CSS styles and Icons

As you can see, almost everything is open sourced :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For what it's worth, the walmart.com websites takes forever to load (> 10 seconds) on my single core laptop in Firefox.

edit: I should also state that my OS is Ubuntu.

<comment><USER15> Same here, 10ish on OSX with Chrome.

<comment><USER16> Antergos, i7, chrome, 6 seconds. I'm not thrilled, but I applaud them making a step forward for the community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> tldr - [http://www.electrode.io](http://www.electrode.io)

</comment><comment><USER18> I use Hapi.JS everyday and it's a bliss. Will check this out.

<comment><USER19> (Seems Hapi.js is built in?)

[http://www.electrode.io/docs/what_is_electrode.html#features](http://www.electrode.io/docs/what_is_electrode.html#features)

Electrode Boilerplate comes fully loaded with the best technologies available:

        • React is an awesome JavaScript library for building user interfaces, created by Facebook.

        • Redux a predictable state container for JavaScript apps. #game-changer.

        • React Router is a powerful routing library built on top of React.

        • CSS Modules a CSS file in which all class names and animation names are scoped locally by default. Fixes the problem of the global scope in CSS. #winning

        • Universal rendering built in.

        • Webpack a powerful module bundler.

        • Webpack Isomorphic Loader a powerful tool that makes NodeJS require understand files such as images for SSR.

        • Babel transpiles ES6 + 7.

        • ESLint a pluggable linting utility for Javascript.

        • Mocha a feature-rich Javascript testing framework.

        • Enzyme a Javascript testing utility for React, created by airbnb.

        • TravisCI a continuous integration service to build and test software projects.

        • Gulp a Javascript build tool that lets us automate tasks.

        • Yeoman a Scaffolding tool for modern webapps.

        • History a Javascript library for managing session history.

        • Bluebird a great Javascript promise library.

        • Electrode Confippet Confippet is a versatile and flexible utility for managing configurations of Node.js applications.

        • Electrode JWT CSRF Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection with JWT.

        • Electrode-Redux-Router-Engine An Electrode routing and rendering engine using react-router and redux.

        • Component Caching Optimize React SSR with profiling and component caching.

        • Electrode-Server A configurable web server using Hapi.js on top of Node.js.

        • Electrify Tool for analyzing the module tree of webpack projects.

        • Electrode-Docgen A custom metadata extractor for the Electrode framework, automates component documentation.

<comment><USER2> That is correct, but please take a look at my other comment that explains where we are going with the hard tie to Hapi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have tried on multiple occasions to get started with react and every time the large amount of setup prevents me from getting anywhere useful. After looking over the docs I am somewhat hopeful that this might bridge the gap.

<comment><USER21> [Create React App]([https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app/blob/m...](https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app/blob/master/README.md)) simplifies setup greatly. I'd really recommend giving it Ila try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What happened to Clojure? I thought Walmart Labs was one of Clojure's flagships.

<comment><USER23> Clojure is used at Walmart Labs, but Walmart Labs is pretty big - there's a lot going on, and a lot of different tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just tried out the Electrify [0] package on my codebase. It visualizes your webpack output. Very helpful!

[0] [https://github.com/electrode-io/electrode- electrify](https://github.com/electrode-io/electrode-electrify)

</comment><comment><USER25> What are the server memory consumption numbers for this ?

How is this different from Hypernova [0] ?

[0] [https://github.com/airbnb/hypernova](https://github.com/airbnb/hypernova)

</comment><comment><USER26> To any Walmart developers reading: thank you for open sourcing this!

However, there's something I'd like even more than your time spent on this project. Currently, walmart.com will indicate to customers that there is inventory available in-store that there sometimes isn't. This can lead to a terrible customer experience when you order something that runs out of stock after you order it, and your order is just cancelled. It seems like there should be the ability to have it backordered at the price at which you purchased. Could Walmart instead always honor the price at which an item was purchased online even if stock in-store runs out, and give the customer the option to cancel the order or get a 20% discount on any item if you don't want to get it on backorder? Right now this can be done, but it requires the store manager's approval, which can involve having to file a complaint, which seems completely unnecessary.

</comment><comment><USER27> Very cool. I've watched a few of the videos that the Walmart guys did on various topics (really scaling, RUM, etc) and they clearly know their stuff.

</comment><comment><USER28> Curious; is this stuff being developed at the location out in San Bruno (in front of Youtube)?

<comment><USER2> The Application Platform team (folks who created Electrode) is mostly based in the Sunnyvale office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Archetypes? Gulp? Welcome to the age of vapidity, where Meaning is pastoral and abstraction sacred.

<comment><USER30> Ironic given that your comment is the most vapid in this entire thread.

<comment><USER29> Completely valid. I should have been more direct, but that wasn't the intent. Since you took the bait, I take issue with the seemingly flipant manner in which words are assigned new meanings, and existing concepts are relabeled. While the concept of archetypes is intellectually really fun to consider, it makes more difficult the ultimate project of speaking a common tongue. This is not an orthodox point of view, this is primarily economical. Far too much cognitive effort is required to learn new paradigms that turn out to be fresh takes on old ones, so best to identify them early and move on. But we should be critical as a community to self-regulate, as the marginal utility of each moment of learning is weighed against a million other potentialities.

<comment><USER2> Happy to receive feedback, do you have suggestions on what we should call it?

<comment><USER29> You might do just fine substituting archetype with template. The readme for [https://github.com/electrode-io/electrode-archetype-react- ap...](https://github.com/electrode-io/electrode-archetype-react-app) reads: "This "app archetype" provides for common patterns across all app projects so that each app project can standardize on common development behavior and patterns. Its essentially pre-made patterns for build scripts." "A pre-made pattern" sounds a lot like a template. The majority of the documentation focuses on applied concepts, with familiar terms. The only reference to archetypes is found in the first paragraph of What is Electrode, and I think it distracts and confuses more than it helps. If it is a core concept, then it might be good to link to [https://github.com/FormidableLabs/builder](https://github.com/FormidableLabs/builder), but I don't yet see where or if builder is included as part of electrode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My experience is that Walmart's website is truly abysmally poor. Releasing their software is likely a scourge upon other commercial vendors who might inadvertently try to imitate them.

<comment><USER32> Prices take longer than the rest of the page to show up and occasionally you will get a Price: [NaN]</comment></comment>