APT29 targets Covid-19 vaccine development - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/advisory-apt29-targets-covid-19-vaccine-development <comment><USER2> The simple explanation here is that Putin asked for the best-possible information about when a vaccine will be ready, and their intelligence agency decided that to answer confidently, they needed to look at non-public documents.

They would likely also be looking to manufacture their own supply, using intellectual property they can't otherwise access. This would be a straightforwardly good thing; vaccines made with stolen IP still save lives, and those lives matter a lot more than how money moves around.

(Sabotage, on the other hand, would be unforgivable. But there is no evidence of that happening, so it's best not to speculate about baseless accusations.)

<comment><USER3> Agreed. This sort of thing happens pretty regularly. It's just like using spy planes: powerful states like to be able to extend their gaze as far as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it somewhat obvious..could not Putin just oh say stop hacking and ask for it say oh gosh via the UN WHO?

</comment><comment><USER5> Russia is one of the countries with the highest number of coronavirus cases. Decades-long brain drain makes a development of its own vaccine impossible. Now state-employed hackers try to steal an already developed one to mass produce it for Russian population.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Throughout 2020, APT29 has targeted various organisations involved in > COVID-19 vaccine development in Canada, the United States and the United > Kingdom, highly likely with the intention of stealing information and > intellectual property relating to the development and testing of COVID-19 > vaccines.

Vaccine makers are trying to hide their work behind the veil of "intellectual property". The makers of this malware want the information. For what purpose do the 'malware' authors want the information?

1\. To make a vaccine that works. Making a vaccine is an objective good.

2\. To discover flaws with the vaccine that the company developing the vaccine would rather keep secret. Alerting the public to dangerous vaccines is an objective good.

I believe the real story here is that governments allow vaccine development companies to hide their work behind a shield of intellectual property, while the world needs a vaccine as quickly as possible.

<comment><USER7> I think it's fair to say that:

3\. This information is worth an enormous amount of money.

<comment><USER6> That would explain why the current companies are attempting to hide information that could be used to save lives. Is that a moral justification for the government granting the vaccine companies a monopoly on the information, even though free sharing of the information could save even more lives?

<comment><USER8> I've read stories indicating that some of these companies are ramping up production prior to approval in order to have batches of doses to distribute soon after approval happens. Having a government that will protect said company's intellectual property helps reduce financial risk to the company, making that preproduction a bit less risky overall. It's also arguable that protecting that IP is a moral justification for the same reason — saving lives. There might not be as many companies developing vaccines and committing to large production runs before they're even approved without it.

Keep in mind, I'm not outright saying you're wrong. I do think you're way oversimplifying things.

<comment> kube-system Yep, sharing information may be important, but generating the information to begin with is even more important. Whatever we do, the incentives must align so we have as many people working on the problem as possible. It is critical that there is a guaranteed revenue stream as reward for developing a vaccine; the world does not have enough scientists that can/will volunteer their time. IP is the established way of doing this. Maybe there are other solutions, but if they haven't been implemented at this point, it's already too late.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Aging a Disease? - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/aging-disease-classification.html <comment><USER2> honestly, it the question shouldn't matter. no matter what aging really "is", it is still a universally horrible affliction that leads to nothing but increasing lower qualities of life those who are afflicted by it, and so should be dealt with as such

<comment><USER3> Actually it matters a lot for research funding and accepting papers in journals. One of the biggest things the anti-aging community has achieved is to finally get to a stage where aging is categorized as a disease modifier.

Please don't underestimate the effect of this achievement.

<comment><USER4> That's true, but it's important to acknowledge that "aging is a disease" and "aging is not a disease" are statements about the word "disease", not about aging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was watching Aubrey De Grey on JRE last night and was surprised to hear that ADG no longer prefers the disease label for aging. It's too dissimilar from what we're familiar with regarding diseases: something that we get, treat, and is gone.

Aging is an ongoing system maintenance issue. He indicated that he prefers to simply call it a "health problem".

From the article: "Maybe the ancients weren't wrong, and aging can be not only delayed but cured like a disease"

It seems that's exactly the mindset ADG was distancing himself from.

<comment><USER6> >It's too dissimilar from what we're familiar with regarding diseases: something that we get, treat, and is gone.

That's absolutely not what a disease is. Off the top of my head, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, Guillain-Barré, are some diseases that one gets, which only progressively worsens over time. A significant portion of diseases are never "gone".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> At this point it's classified as a disease modifier. Diabetes and age related diabetes are different diseases and need to be treated differently.

On the long term as we get a better understanding of aging, it can be reclassified as a disease with a cure to be found, but right now it's a bit too early for that.

<comment><USER7> Since when did the definition of a disease require the existence of a cure? This whole topic feels like semantic quibbling...we could spend more time designing anti-aging plasmids and less time debating which human sounds to use

It doesn't matter what we call it, we're all too noob at programming biology to fix it (or know it's not fixable e.g. halting problem), the healthcare industry is bottlenecked by expensive regulations, bureaucracy, and status documents, we're too scared or dense to run the experiments, and even if we knew how to fix aging, we don't have the infrastructure to deliver these fixes affordably at scale

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aging is a disease because it is a "disorder [disruption] of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury."

100% incidence doesn't make problems disappear

See also: [https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html](https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> IMO If you're into space travel you should also be into longevity research, eh?

<comment><USER9> Only if you think humans should be the ones traveling. I'm personally more in favor of better AI and robotics. Carting meat bags around the galaxy is a pretty poor proposition on way too many fronts.

<comment><USER10> Yes, in the short term for the next 75-100 years. Let's rapidly iterate and improve AI and robotics.

After that for the following 500 years, humans should get out there.

<comment><USER8> Bingo!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The only cure for powerful and rich

<comment><USER10> Yeah this is a common response for some reason.

If you thought about it for two seconds, you'd realize once the cats out of the bag, everyone will eventually have it.

<comment> saiya-jin If you thought about it for 2 seconds more, you would realize that it will take up much longer to truly expand to even Solar system - I mean offloading billions, not some tiny colony.

Meaning that almost immortal general population would be doom long term and thus has to be managed. Either by bans, which might be circumvented in more favorable jurisdictions (ie orbits or moon), or by setting the price too high.

You would think management via price is impossible? Look how one of the first gene therapy single-pill 'cure' for spinal muscular atrophy Zolgensma is priced - 2 mil USD. Small cute kids are dying in pretty horrible ways because of this price all over the world.

When saving babies lives is (also) about money, why aging wouldn't be?

<comment><USER12> > Small cute kids are dying in pretty horrible ways because of this price all > over the world.

No, they are dying because other companies have not found ways yet to duplicate that. In the end, it's all just information - recipes if you will. Nothing magic. When most drugs just become gene therapy, I'd suspect it will be a matter of days until they are copied and released for all - like movies high quality rips.

Only one thing is needed: a marketplace, so companies can compete on price for the customers who leave feedback to select the best providers.

This won't happen here, because of the FDA, regulations etc. But I don't see why a country with more appetite for risk (and thus money) will not become a hub for medical tourism, 1 flight away, with drugs and treatments cheap thanks to competition, and readily available thanks to the lack of regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A lot of people that discuss this issue decide that "they don't want people living forever". What about you stop living after a while, and let the rest of us live longer? Keep your decision for yourself; die if you want to!

<comment><USER14> I used to feel as you do.

Looking at history, though, it seems like most (all?) significant social progress comes about because old people that bitterly cling their views and (most importantly) their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new.

We live in a world that isnt controlled by feudal powers owning a good portion of the population not because of wars, but because younger and less invested people forced those conflicts. The results of those conflicts are accepted because the people for whom the old way was normal die off. The new generations are able to make their own mistakes, get invested in the nest normal, and be replaced in turn.

Now I fear we will make anti-agathics before we develop a means to actually change without people dying.

I still hope. Someday we might live with death as a choice AND without oppression. Pretty sure I wont be around for it.

<comment><USER15> >because old people that bitterly cling their views and (most importantly) their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new.

This is just wrong. My 80-year-old mother is far more progressive politically than many 20-35 year old men in this country. Remember the heavily armed Neo- Nazis in Charlottesville protesting the removal of Civil War statues? Those weren't elderly people.

<comment><USER14> I have no doubt she is. And certainly being young is no guarantee of progress.

But let's compare the numbers of moms like that to the number of racist uncles. From whom do you think those angry neo-nazis learned their rhetoric?

<comment><USER15> Well of course, values and prejudices are usually passed down through generations. But my point is: age isn't a very good indicator of progressiveness. Just look at the whole 20th century: back in the 1920s, there was huge social change, and a loosening of social mores. Then it all changed, and by the 40s-50s, things were much more conservative than before. The 60s-70s were the age of the hippies, and then that all went away with the 80s and the Reagan years.

People always seem to have some weird idea that progress will come if we can just get rid of the old people through aging and attrition, but this just isn't the case. New generations can bring progress or setbacks, and it's happened historically over and over.

Speaking of Neo-Nazis, how about the actual Nazis? Were they a bunch of old farts? No, at the time, they were all young people, led by people who weren't old at all (possibly middle-aged). They weren't preceded by generations of people who were even worse than themselves, in fact it was the opposite.

Finally, just look at the current US elections: the most progressive candidate, who others in his party think is too "radical" and "extreme", is one of the oldest.

<comment><USER14> Ah, I see the misunderstanding.

I'm not (meaning to be) saying old people are conservative. I'm saying people, as a whole, don't change their views. The only way for new views to gain purchase in society is for the people with different views to die off of old age.

Most often those new views ARE more progressive, but not always.

But my core point is that if those in power don't die, they aren't going to change their views, and their power will only concentrate. "in power" doesn't just mean rulers, it also means numbers. Those racist uncles, those people deeply offended by same-sex marriages, etc. Unless the young are automatically more progressive (as you've just argued is not the case), then they won't go away, and won't be marginalized, and they'll keep holding their views.

Exceptions will exist, but numerically, it's an issue.

<comment><USER15> I think eliminating aging would probably bring more stability to society: people would stop forgetting the past so much, because there'd still be people around reminding them of it, who had personal experience. History tends to work in cycles, and a lot of that is because populations forget what they learned through experience, because the people who went through the experience die off and the younger generations don't learn the lesson properly. Sure, it might mean some change will be slower, but you'll also avoid highly damaging short-term aberrations (like the Nazis).

Also, you seem to believe that people never change their views. I don't think that's really true either; people do evolve over time. My views are very different than what they were when I was a teenager (and not more conservative either). Older people do adapt to changing society. Look at, for instance, the acceptance of various social changes in the US, such as gay marriage. These things did not come slowly; they were breathtakingly fast. There'd be some initial pioneers pushing it for a while, but not getting very far. But eventually, like a dam breaking after a crack, suddenly the whole society would adopt it. Go back in time 20 years and ask some random people if they think gay marriage would be legal nationwide by now and they'd think you're crazy. This didn't happen just because of some old people dying off; it happened because the entire society got comfortable with the idea, though it took many of them a while to accept it.

Finally, eliminating aging doesn't mean eliminating death or childbirth. People will still have children, and people will still die (from accidents, murder, diseases, etc.). Also, the biology of the brain that affects old peoples' thinking will presumably be altered by anti-aging treatments, making them think more like younger adults.

<comment><USER14> > Look at, for instance, the acceptance of various social changes in the US, > such as gay marriage.

We would both use this as an example - you think it is because people changed their views, I think it is because a big group of people bitterly opposed to this died off, opening the door to change.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree. FWIW, I hope you're correct. I'd love to see society avoid repeating mistakes, learning from alternative viewpoints and expanding what they consider. Sadly, the one concrete case I can have of changing viewpoints is my own: In my twenties I felt as you do. In the decades since I've seen people embrace willful ignorance and proudly stand by hypocrisy so long as they didn't have to accept anything that was outside of their "normal". I retain the hope, but I've lost the expectation.

Here's to the hope that my conclusions are wrong.

<comment><USER15> >you think it is because people changed their views, I think it is because a big group of people bitterly opposed to this died off, opening the door to change.

A group of people bitterly opposing this did not all die off in the space of a mere decade or less. That's the problem with your reasoning.

The same thing happened in the 60s with civil rights legislation.

Here's an article that graphically shows what I'm talking about: [https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-pace-of-social- chang...](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-pace-of-social-change/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Is Aging a disease

No, it is not.

<comment><USER17> > No, it is not.

What would you call Progeria?

What about cancer? Transition of a cell into a particularly nasty _disease state_. (That term, by the way, is one the biologists throw around quite a bit to describe broken or damaged cells that no longer function as intended.)

What if senescence can be slowed or stopped? What then?

Diseases need not be communicable.

<comment><USER18> > What would you call Progeria?

> Progeria is an extremely rare autosomal dominant genetic disorder in which > symptoms ___resembling___ aspects of aging are manifested at a very early > age.

> What about cancer?

Cancer is cancer, aging is aging.

<comment><USER17> Aging is a slide into disease state. A non-healthy or misbehaving cell is in a disease state. Accumulation of intracellular and extracellular garbage, DNA point mutations, transpositions, malfunction of the cell cycle, abnormal signalling, and a myriad of other break downs are disease state.

Cells are machines and they function in predictable biomechanical and biochemical manners. Aging related disease state encompasses some population of the space of deleterious state change.

In the micro, aging is a disease just like any other. It is the layperson understanding of the word "disease" that does not fit.

<comment><USER19> > In the micro, aging is a disease just like any other.

The difference is that the word "disease" is something that at least theoretically can be cured. Aging does not have that implication. It follows then that if you say "Aging is a Disease", you're effectively saying that immortality is theoretically achievable. That's what makes the claim so uncomfortable.

<comment><USER17> > The difference is that the word "disease" is something that at least > theoretically can be cured.

Nowhere does the definition of disease imply that. There are many diseases today that are patently incurable.

Aging, like cancer, is multifaceted. There are many low hanging fruit that we can begin to tackle now.

> you're effectively saying that immortality is theoretically achievable.

I'm not saying anything about immortality. But I don't see how a 100, 120 year average lifespan with expanded quality of life isn't achievable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The _lack_ of aging would be a sort of population wide disease, in that adaptation benefits from turnover, and a lack of adaptation would impair our odds of survival as a species ... unless anti-aging includes some form of neoteny that improves adaptation in the elderly.

<comment><USER21> Aging is a multidimensional process and if "lack of adaption" is targeted the same way "control of bowels" will be/is, then it makes sense to include this concern in anti-aging research. Speaking this way, resistance to change should be a priority in anti-aging technology, no?</comment></comment>


Apple Requires Retina Screenshots From iOS Devs - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/02/07/apple-requires-iphone-developers-to-submit-retina-screenshots-may-herald-end-of-3gs-era/ <comment><USER2> The resolution is finally getting good. I just wish they could make a fold- out, large real estate screen so I could get real work done.</comment>


The Ultimate in Garbage Collection (1995) - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=comp.lang.ada/E9bNCvDQ12k/1tezW24ZxdAJ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of a demo a friend once gave me on a Symbolics Lisp Machine. He turned the garbage collector off, then ran a program that allocated memory like mad. After a while, a message popped up saying something like "you are about to run out of memory. Activate GC?" He declined, and the program continued running. After a bit more time, another message popped up saying "you are about to run out of memory, and if you don't start GC now, there will not be enough room to run it when you do. Activate GC?" Again, he declined. After more time, another message popped up saying "you have run out of memory, and it is not possible to start GC now. Would you like to attach an external disk drive?" The idea was that the external drive could serve as additional memory either to continue running without GC or as scratch memory for the GC. I've always found that impressive.

<comment><USER3> On a Symbolics you can add swap space files when there is an out-of-memory error. If you find some disk space somewhere (possibly after deleting some unused junk), create a swap file, add it and continue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of a comment I once read by someone who had created instrumentation for underground nuclear tests. They had, if memory serves, something like 5 milliseconds between initial detonation and the point where the equipment would be destroyed. "Now _that 's_ a hard-real-time constraint," they said.

<comment><USER5> That reminds me of a wonderful, surely apocryphal story I was told by an old boss who went to grad school at Cornell in the 1970s.

The story goes that there was some talk about the Cornell computer science department doing nothing but ivory tower mathematics that was useless to people who actually, you know, _used_ computers in their research — such as the physicists programming data collection controllers for the particle accelerator. This concerned the head of the CS department as the harsh talk was creating a little bit of mutual resentment, not to mention an image problem for his department. He resolved to help bridge the theory-practice divide and show the non-CS computer users on campus that his theoreticians were doing worthwhile work.

So one day a CS professor schedules an intro talk on formal methods, nothing but basic mathematical maturity required, and the department chair seizes his chance! He invites a bunch of the particle accelerator folks to the talk, telling them formal methods will help them write more reliable code so they don't waste their time re-running experiments because of data collection errors. The physicist roll their eyes and shake their heads, but when the hour rolls around, some of them are present at the back of the room.

The professor gives a pretty standard formal methods talk, introducing a hypothetical (of course) programming language, showing how mathematical propositions about a program can be formulated and proved, defining a simple mathematical problem involving coloring a graph, and demonstrating a proof of correctness for a solution in the hypothetical programming language.

The physicists are impressed but a little wary. After all, their problems are mostly with performance rather than the kind of correctness addressed in the lecture. One of them raises his hand. "Is it possible, using these methods, to bound the number of times each subroutine is called?"

The CS professor, who has been instructed to engage the physicists and be very accommodating and diplomatic, is delighted by the question. "Yes! We can formulate an answer in terms of the input and prove it by recursion." He turns to the blackboard and formulates the statement and a proof. "There we have it. And I must congratulate you on such an interesting theoretical question."

"I'm actually getting at something very practical," the physicist replies. "Namely, performance. This program isn't worth much if it takes too long to solve the problem."

The CS professor narrows his brow and says, "Hmmm, I see. Yes, that can be a concern sometimes. Well, I hope these ideas have put all your fears to rest on that topic!"

"I'm afraid it's not so obvious to me," the physicist says.

"Well, we've proved the program terminates, and that when it terminates, it produces a correct solution. We can prove various other properties such as which solution will be produced if there are multiple correct solutions."

"There are other properties of the program that are of interesting as well. Can you prove whether runs within certain memory bounds?"

The CS professor starts to look profoundly bored. "Yes, these methods could be used for that. Space and time bounds can be very interesting."

"Wonderful, wonderful! So if I need to be sure that this code runs in, say, 50 milliseconds...."

"Runs? In 50 milliseconds?"

"Yes, supposing I want to run it hundreds of times per second, I..."

"Hold on a second, I don't think you've got the point after all. You _never_ have to run the program. That is why" (the CS professor gestures at the chalkboard) "we have done all of this work! You never have to run it, because _you already know it produces the correct answer!_ "

<comment><USER6> Alternative punchline: "Hold on a second, we can't run our program. We've solved the halting problem, so we can't actually run it without violating our assumptions."

(This story was awesome, by the way.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's funny because I had the opposite experience: had a sales call at unnamed aerospace company. They were interested in Cygnus's free embedded OS (now eCos). Why?

Well, the O/S they were using was licensed "per device". When they deployed, they had one device, but during operation they would have more than one.

They didn't want to get in trouble by wasting the government's money on unnecessary licenses, yet they didn't want to get the government in trouble (because they would get in trouble) for using unlicensed software. A free software (i.e. open source) alternative would solve the problem.

I pretty much immediately realized that they were building MIRV, and at some point suggested that perhaps it would not be a problem. They didn't seem particularly amused by this point, and after the visit wow, our sales person was pissed!

And indeed they didn't follow up -- I imagine they just struck a deal with their existing vendor who will go unnamed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Fun story!

The same idea applies more generally as well with so-called "region-based" memory allocation. A sub-process allocates incrementally from a pool, then when that process ends, the entire pool is freed at once. Optionally, garbage collection or other memory freeing can happen during the process. Additionally, regions can be arranged hierarchically for processes and sub- proesses, recursively.

The easiest way to take advantage of this is, if for example, you have a short-lived command line tool. Maybe you don't even bother to free any memory at all, as the operating system is going to free it all for you when you're done anyway.

<comment><USER9> The (new in c++17) polymorphic allocators allow this, as you can instantiate a monotonic_memory_resource, and use it to construct all the regular C++ containers with it for the duration of the remaining scope - this works just fine as long as no memory is needed outside of that scope.

<comment><USER10> That's cool. Do the C++ containers now contain a pointer to the monotonic_memory_resource, or is there some magic that lets the local calls to push_back, etc., know about the allocator in that local scope?

When I needed many arena-backed vectors, I wrote an ArenaVec with an API that takes a pointer to the arena in all methods that can allocate, keeping the memory size down.

<comment><USER9> Yes they do, but since c++11, allocators were not required to be stateless. As a result, containers (or any allocator-aware objects) have needed to hold an instance of the allocator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> High frequency traders are able to avoid JVM garbage collection during the trading day by just holding off until the market is closed.

<comment><USER12> Do you have a source for that? It's an interesting idea.

<comment><USER13> I worked at a bank and saw that pattern used in market connection middleware as well. It's really common, but since that stuff is all closed source it's hard to point to a concrete example.

(The thing was also optimized to reuse objects to allocate as little as possible... but a writeup from that team on an internal website said, basically, that Java GC was so efficient nowadays that it may not have been worth the extra maintenance effort and potential for bugs, in retrospect)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Long time ago I shared an office with a guy who had designed missiles. He had a similar tale but relating to cooling and thermal management : the guidance system was designed to be inadequately cooled, in that if it ran for long enough it would overheat. However that time was well in excess of its maximum flight time..

</comment><comment><USER15> i have a similar apocryphal story from the dod. there was an image processing element for a missile targeting system that was a 3d stack of silicon. it ran at an amazingly large number of ops per second, but only for a few seconds, because there was no way to get the heat out of the stack.

which was (apparently) fine, but it made testing very expensive

<comment><USER16> What year (or decade) was this, and what ballpark of OPS did it run at?

That's amazing.

Was the device able to be downclocked for certain tests?

<comment><USER15> this was early 90s, i don't remember the ops, but i remember it being comparable in magnitude to the CM-2, which was where we were running some kind of simulation (in a skif, so everything I heard was very second hand)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> OK, so they apparently understood the software well enough to predict to within a factor of 2 the magnitude of the leaks, but not well enough to fix the leaks. I suppose that's possible, but a little unnerving.

<comment><USER18> Writing code that explicitly manages memory has costs too; there's a risk of use after free, or double free. If you don't free you can't have these specific problems. And if you accept this, it opens the way for GC style programming, for some parts of the app at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> After all, garbage collection is just emulating having an infinite amount of memory. If you have enough RAM, no need to pretend :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Small utilities with limited lifetime can be written in the same manner. You just allocate memory and never free it. When the utility finishes its job, it just terminates freeing all the memory it allocated in one shot.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why bother with lexical or local variables at all? <satire>

With only globals used, you don't have to worry about free() at all. The OS does it better and faster.

</comment><comment><USER22> So, Kim Jong-un has a memory leak problem, but that's probably good for the rest of us..

</comment><comment><USER23> >Norman H. Cohen (nco...@watson.ibm.com) wrote:

Anyone know what the watson group at IBM was doing in 1995?

<comment><USER10> Maybe indicates the Watson Lab?

[https://www.research.ibm.com/labs/watson/](https://www.research.ibm.com/labs/watson/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> That really blows my garbage collectors away.

</comment><comment><USER25> Information is Energy

Rolf Landauer

</comment><comment><USER26> So long as that isn't somehow still in the guidance modules of the latest Tomahawks that can be told to circle / reposition / group awaiting the final target telemetry!</comment>


Ask HN: Is open source reducing engineer's jobs? - <AUTHOR> while lots of the software would need lots of engineer's jobs to create them, today a lot of them are just taken from github.
I think at one point it was creating more jobs because it makes the history progress faster,
however now is it reducing jobs ? <comment><USER2> I think it reduces jobs the same way as having tools like electronic screwdrivers available cheaply reduces jobs.

Instead of everybody having to create their own screwdrivers prior to starting a construction job, they can focus on building whatever they want to build.

I would argue that's a good thing: it increases productivity and decreases duplicated effort.

<comment><AUTHOR> many people have a statement like this, however most of the jobs would probably not be needed any more because of the new tools and new end to end automated systems. and there are not so many new jobs to be created all the time.

once the productivity is high enough, most of people in the world would probably not able to find a job.

people who control the asset would probably control most things and others can hardly live.

open source is kind of accelerating the process

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Open source gives engineers better frameworks and components to use so you can develop better apps than if you started from scratch on your own.

It still takes engineers to use the frameworks even if they are open source.

I think open source and the web have created more jobs rather than reducing them.

With open source you can learn from existing projects, pull in projects to your work to save time.

This time savings can be used to create and improve other custom features in what you are building.

If anything I would say open source is creating jobs and empowering developers to learn new techniques, create better apps and level up in knowledge and earning power.

I think it's also allowing people to get in to programming that wouldn't have a chance otherwise if you had to pay for every framemork/tool you wanted to use so open source creating more opportunities than it's reducing.

And open source can be a full time job. [https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit- dollar-100000yr-on-github...](https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit- dollar-100000yr-on-github-sponsors-heres-how-i-did-it)

I think open source is great for the industry/world.

So many amazing frameworks, tools, packages out there.

Kudos to everyone who maintains an open source project.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Open source gives engineers better frameworks and components to use so you can develop better apps than if you started from scratch on your own. " \---> I totally agree on this. however, if it originally takes 100 years for all engineers to fully realize all the features to be developed, now it may only takes 50 years, after that there probably only need very few engineers to write the software

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Four years ago, I did a startup. Payment gateways were too complex back then and had too many legal restrictions. Logistics were not mature. We had to do all of this in house. But we didn't have economy of scale, so it was too expensive to build our own payment gateway and logistics, and the startup faced financial difficulties when scaling.

Today, it would have been a lot easier to do the same startup. We would have made more money, hired more people, paid above market average.

The goal of a business is to just focus on whatever they built and reach out to as many people as possible. Netflix does one thing. They don't build their own DRM or CA. They also pay the highest salaries in the range where possible. Maybe there would have been more Netflix jobs if one component wasn't done or if they had to build their own browsers. But they likely wouldn't have scaled as big or made as much profit, and would have been cutting salaries or reluctant to hire, trying to compete with something like HBO.

React is another example. Now there are countless React jobs instead of people using HTML+jQuery to build the same things. Has it increased productivity? It probably has, else why would people use it. But it's opened even more jobs.

Software is just never done. There's always more features to add and refine, more wealth to create.

<comment><AUTHOR> the productivity is definitely increased. but I do have a question about "software is just never done", many software jobs reduced over time, one day there might only be very few jobs needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not neccessarily, because, thanks to the free opensource tools and libraries, people can be hired to work on lower-value or speculative (startups) projects, which wouldn't otherwise have economic merit. E.g. Facebook wouldn't probably have happened if Linux and PHP were not free.</comment>


Compiling a Functional Language Using C++, Part 10 – Polymorphism - <AUTHOR> https://danilafe.com/blog/10_compiler_polymorphism/ <comment><USER2> Impressive work for a CS student - or even for a senior developer. Kudos to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is some quality stuff! Keep up the great work</comment>


Confusing Products and Markets - There's no such thing as the Tablet Market.  - <AUTHOR> http://contrast.ie/blog/the-tablet-market/

<comment><USER2> Replace "iPad" with "iPhone", and "tablet" with "smartphone" in this article. Imagine it was written two years ago when Android phones started to release en mass. Then proceed to realize that it's just a silly rant written by someone who has no idea what the difference between product and market is.

> Being the market leader in a fictitious market might look good on a > Powerpoint slide, but it just doesn't pay the bills.

Yeah, I'm sure that's why Samsung and HTC are laughing their way to the bank with the sky-high profits they made from selling Android-backed smartphones. But sure, go on thinking that there isn't a tablet market, just like there wasn't a smartphone market two years ago. And fyi, cherry-picking an app with poor sales on Android its first month doesn't help your argument in the slightest. I could just as easily do the same for a poor-selling iOS game. Doing so just makes you look desperate.</comment>


U.S. may outlaw messaging encryption used by WhatsApp, iMessage and others - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/06/29/u-s-may-outlaw-uncrackable-end-to-end-encrypted-messaging-report-claims/#432b030e6c87 <comment><USER2> Proof that the US is completely fcked.

</comment><comment><USER3> FUD.</comment>


Kitten: compile to C, stack-based functional programming language - <AUTHOR> http://kittenlang.org/ <comment><USER2>
      from (0) to (rows) -> row:
        (row, 0) !!= row

Doesn't look very functional to me. It's imperative style.

Yes, I did read the introduction.

<comment><USER3> The site is out of date. That mixfix function call notation has been removed from the language, for one thing.

And it's a bad example anyway; I wouldn't expect real Kitten code to use imperative style that heavily.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hacker News Client, open source pwa built with React and Bootstrap 4 - <AUTHOR> https://pwa.techieshn.me <comment><USER2> sorry don't see where the source is. please share.

<comment><AUTHOR> Adding an about page is on my todo list, among some other stuff :) [https://github.com/asafg6/hacker-news- client](https://github.com/asafg6/hacker-news-client)</comment></comment>


Apple: Update GPS or lose Internet (WHY? it's not technically needed) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/30/tech/old-apple-product-update-trnd/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Neither Wifi, 4G LTE, nor any other widely established wireless communication method requires GPS for internet connectivity.

Why is Apple requiring it with the threat of disabled or dead internet on your device?

<comment><USER2> If you read the Apple support page linked from that article, Apple doesn't claim that you'll lose internet access without reliable GPS. The article author seems confused.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Header.party – your ip and headers as json - <AUTHOR> https://header.party/ <comment><USER2> Nice idea, would it be possible that you allow CORS?</comment>


What's it like to be a hacker at a nonprofit? - <AUTHOR> http://bjk5.com/post/42128135345/hacking-at-a-nonprofit-is-just-like-its-counterpart

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. I'm running at tech-driven nonprofit right now, and I've been racking my brain about how to attract tech talent on our team. This post helped to highlight that there are way more similarities than there are differences. The most striking and difficult one for me to navigate is the "lottery ticket," though. It seems that most hackers I meet are looking for the next big thing (the next Instagram) and can't be bothered with a nonprofit's world-changing mission. Where are all these altruistic hackers?</comment>


Have some extra fun with today's Google Doodle (Les Paul) - <AUTHOR> http://doodletunes.info/

<comment><USER2> Bar none, I think this guy wins: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu_tk5TvszE>

(But if there are other awesome examples, please share.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you also include the link to enter the short url to automatically playback the tune?

</comment><comment><USER4> What does that do?

Looks like it's supposed to make sounds or something, but can't hear a thing on Chromium or FF4.

<comment><USER5> While I can't confirm it definitively, it looks as though it may require Flash to handle the audio underneath. If so, this is unfortunate, but perhaps understandable: as nice as the audio tag is for basic purposes, the lack of precise control makes composing sounds together problematic. The Audio Data API helps with that, but it's pretty nonportable still.</comment></comment>


The New Pornographers - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/02/20/sexting_teens/index.html <comment><USER2> It is nice to see something mainstream take such a liberal view.

I can't believe that children are being put on trial for possession of pictures of themselves. It's the thought process that bothers me. Child porn is illegal because it encourages abuse of children, who cannot legally consent to sexual activity. Fine. But the problem is, it's hard to not consent to something you do to yourself. So I don't really see a crime here. The kid isn't a victim. Society isn't a victim. Sure, there may be consequences for taking naked pictures of yourself, but no worse than any other dumb things you can do.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the solution to this is. Maybe change the age of consent to something lower than 18, so that these kids can consent to pictures, and everyone is happy. (But of course, then porn sites featuring 14 year olds will be mainstream, and I don't think society is ready for that.)

<comment><USER3> In some countries there are varying degrees of consent. If you are over 16 you can do anything you want with everyone else over 16, if you are between 14 and 16 there is an age consideration, so if you are 14 and screw around with someone that's 14 you're OK, but of you're 25 and screw around with someone that's 14 it's not OK.

I think that's a pretty good way of doing it: Let the kids play, as long as they don't do so with adults.

As a strange aside: In Mexico the legal age of consent is 12!! Source: <http://www.avert.org/aofconsent.htm>

<comment><USER2> Interesting.

I don't think 12 is an unreasonable number. I had a pretty good understanding of sex at 12... so it would be dumb to put me in jail for having sex at that age.

OTOH, I could see how pressuring a 12 year old to consent (and not tell anyone about it) could be pretty easy... and that's not good. (FWIW, people over 18 are also pressured into sex they don't really want, so I am not sure how to deal with this.)

<comment><USER4> I think teaching kids from an early age that sex is okay and being pressured to have sex isn't would solve your latter problem.

In the UK there's a close-in-age exception for anyone under 16 (the legal age is 16). Canada just last year changed their age of consent to match, moving the AoC up to 16 from 14.

This is just a simple equation I use in my head to figure out if a relationship is creepy-weird when dating and it's quite simple. Here's my example, (21 - 13) / 2 = 4, so in this instance a 21 year old can date a 17 year old or a 25 year old without the age difference being weird. It seems to hold up for most 'accepted' relationships, including the like 80 year olds married to the 50 year olds, but not the 80 year olds married to the 20 year olds that people find disgusting.

Personally I'd say it's okay for 12-13 year olds to have sex with 12-13 year olds because as a culture we seem to be subconsciously pushing for it. 14 and over I'd say the close-in-age exceptions apply well, a 14 year old can have sex with someone within 5 years of their own age without it being a crime and over 16 you have the right to choose who and how you do it, although I wouldn't disagree with a law making a bigger close-in-age for 16-18 of like 10-15 years. It's socially accepted that a couple are usually within a 10-15 year age difference of each other.

<comment><USER3> I have another formula that works very well, and takes into consideration that the older you get the wider the age gap can be.

your age > (her age / 2) + 7

So:

if you're 16 she should be at least 14

if you're 20 she should be at least 17

if you're 30 she should be at least 22

if you're 50 she should be at least 32

These all seem to fit nicely into the acceptable ranges. Doesn't work too well if you're under 14 though :-)

<comment><USER5> If you define it more generally:

      younger_person >= (older_person / 2) + 7

it has the added advantage that it proscribes anyone younger than 14 ever having sex (with anyone of any age) since the inequality could never be satisfied.

For example if the older person was 12, then the younger person would have to be at least 13, which is impossible.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_your_age_plus_seven>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very disappointed that this article isn't about the band, which is awesome (but not great live!), but instead a Salon article rehashing a topic Dahlia Lithwick at Slate covered much better last week:

<http://www.slate.com/id/2211169/>

For whatever it's worth, Slate has totally and thoroughly trounced Salon.

<comment><USER7> Slate's reporters set me on edge. Quite a few of them take extremely one-sided views of topics and get very arrogant about their position. As a result, I feel myself repelled subtly when I see a Slate link, and I've seen a lot of similar Slate criticism. Trounced? I'm not certain.

For what it's worth, Salon's literature articles are still among the best out there. Slate can't touch that division of Salon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The photographs show three naked underage girls posing lasciviously for the camera. The perps who took the pictures were busted in Greensburg, Pa., and charged with manufacturing, disseminating and possessing child pornography -- and so were their subjects. That's because they are one and the same."

"... the trio text-messaged the photos to some friends ... in addition to the girls' being indicted as kiddie pornographers, _three boys who received the pictures were slammed with charges of child porn possession._ "

Someone texted them some data, and they're charged? It's not like they requested it. Expecting 15 year old (horny) guys to delete nudies their female classmates sent them is... unrealistic.

<comment><USER2> _Expecting 15 year old (horny) guys to delete nudies their female classmates sent them is... unrealistic._

Agreed. The law is being very stupid here.

I didn't see much in the way of details about the trial. Apparently one kid didn't take the plea bargain? Does anyone else know of any more information about this?

(As an aside, I wish there was a social news site where I could indicate ongoing interest in a topic, and see new articles whenever they are written. It is very hard to follow news stories, since followups are sporadic and spread around the Internet.)

<comment><USER9> You're not going to hear details about a trial involving minors, especially given that it was sex related. I imagine the court documents were sealed before they even existed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > There's been plenty of outrage to go around: Some parents are angry to see > teens criminalized for simply being sexual, while others find the raunchy > shots pornographic, another blinking neon sign of moral decay in a "Girls > Gone Wild" era. In both cases, it amounts to a tug of war between teenagers' > entitled sense of sexual autonomy and society's desire to protect them.

But jailing kids obviously isn't protecting them. The tug of war is _not_ between protecting and empowering the kids. It's between _punishing_ the kids, or not.

</comment><comment><USER11> .. is a great band: <http://www.thenewpornographers.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> The tone of this article is "just let kids be kids, okay?"

I agree with the tone.

The nagging part is the fact that "kids being kids" never included making media of their naked selves doing sexual stuff before. Media which can easily be distributed to millions, including some very sick people. Media which can last a lifetime (or longer)

Sure, we smoked pot when we were kids, and we read Playboys too. But nobody has videos of us doing all of that on YouTube. The electronic records problem here is extremely disturbing.

With the current FB conflict, I'm sure that most _adults_ don't realize what kind of electronic record they're leaving all over the place, much less their kids. As a society, we've generally tried to protect kids from doing things that could have lifelong consequences. Do we want to give that up?

The underlying philosophy is a tricky-wicket. We don't necessarily allow kids to do stuff simply because "kids will be kids", i.e., it's natural for them to do it. So while I'm all with the emotion of the article, the underlying issues are a lot trickier than I think the author lets on. You can't just skim over the fact that 30 years from now when you're applying to be Supreme Court Justice that videos of your 14-year-old self doing stupid people sex tricks could be out there circulating. Fair or not, people aren't going to understand.

<comment><USER13> Actually, people _are_ going to understand, because they'll have grown up in the world of MySpace and cellphones themselves. To a generation still alive, it would be unthinkable to admit in public that one has smoked pot and "read" Playboys, and yet you've just done it, and your career is unlikely to be harmed.

That "very sick people" bit gives away your true motivation for these opinions, though.

<comment><USER14> You are advocating the position that people will be rational about seeing videos that speak to our animal core selves.

I don't buy it. Even if people intellectually realize that a stupid sexy video made when you are 18 is no big deal, it will still unavoidably color people's opinion of you, and there isn't a damned thing you can do about it except make sure they can't get that video in the first place.

<comment><USER13> If porn speaks to your "animal core self", I envy you. It stopped doing that to me around age 15.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Clicked the link and got this: "We're sorry, the Ultramercial advertisement did not start correctly."

Fail. Flagged for removal.</comment>


Spam falls below 50% of all email for the first time since 2003 - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/17/symantec-spam-falls-below-50-of-all-email-for-the-first-time-since-2003/ <comment><USER2> 'The decline of spam is usually attributed to legal prosecution against botnets (including by major tech companies like Microsoft), faster reaction times by network providers, improved blocking, and better filtering. The main goal is to make the business less lucrative: If you can slash profit margins for a spammer, you can slash spam itself.'</comment>


Meet Jim Bishop - The Man Who Built His Own Castle (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/07/13/patrick.castle.builder.kusa

<comment><USER2> I used to go to this place every summer as a kid. The castle is amazing, but Jim Bishop is a total nut. Here's some pictures of the castle, with a few mixed in from my old man: <http://www.flickr.com/groups/14196397@N00/pool/>

<comment><USER3> just wow...

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/co_photobug/2501965309/in/pool-...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/co_photobug/2501965309/in/pool-14196397@N00/)

Thank you very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "slow but sure it adds up" nice quote :-) How does he manage to do it, without cranes or pulleys?</comment>


Antihydrogen Trapped For 1000 Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26709/ <comment><USER2> By the way, there's something I've been wondering about for a long time. I read somewhere that there are no antiphotons and antimatter emits light just the same as normal matter. So, I assume that there's no way to tell whether a photon was emitted by antimatter or by matter.

Therefore, how do we know distant galaxies aren't made of antimatter ?

Maybe there's an obvious answer, but as far as I know, the only thing we can know about these galaxies, we know because of the radiation they emit.

<comment><USER3> Empty space isn't completely empty, even between galaxies. There are traces of gas, almost entirely Hydrogen, between galaxies. If there were entire galaxies made of anti-matter then the areas where their clouds of inter-galactic anti- gas contacted normal inter-galactic gas would be rife with emissions due to annihilations. The amount of matter should be enough to be detectable even at tremendous distances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am nothing short of _astounded_ that we don't know if anti-matter "falls up".

<comment><USER5> I've never heard anyone argue that it would react any differently to gravity than normal matter. After all, the only difference is the electrical charge of the particles. They have the same mass.

<comment><USER6> I think the "falling up" argument comes from the conception that antimatter is the time-reverse of matter.

<comment><USER7> Of course, regular old hydrogen "falls up", being lighter than air. :) I guess if gravity is truly reversed for antihydrogen, it would fall up even faster. But I highly doubt it's actually gravitationally repulsive.

<comment><USER6> The simple solution is to let it fall in a vacuum, which seems to be what they're doing in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $100 says antimatter is also attracted by gravity. Anything else would be too cool for school.

<comment><USER9> Fuck it, you're on. $100. I want to believe ...

<comment><USER10> Doesn't look like your odds are good (consensus atm is there's no theoretical basis): [http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h28sd/is_there_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/h28sd/is_there_any_theoretical_basis_for_antimatter/)

<comment><USER9> Well, let's see what the data says. I confess I want the universe to surprise and confound. I want the theories to be wrong, I want reality to be stranger than fiction. That would be awesome!

Or I am wrong, in which case I'll happily pay out[1]. I'm a layman, as if that wasn't obvious, and it will be a much-needed physics lesson. Win-win.

[1] If in Australia, payout will take the form of alcohol credits at an establishment of winner's choosing. Hey, I want to learn from my superiors :) If not, a crisp USD$100 note will be posted to any mailing address in the world, to be supplied.

<comment><USER11> Well, it would be really cool and confounding if gravity made antimatter move sideways. But I don't think that's likely.

<comment><USER12> Indeed, considering that there are 360 degrees of sideways. Which one? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If it is proven that that anti-matter is repelled by gravity does that mean hover-boards will become a reality in our lifetimes? What are some of the potential practical applications?

<comment><USER14> Given that antimatter explodes violently when put into contact with regular matter, I kind of hope that's not how they go about achieving this. A kid who forgets to recharge his board, allowing the magnetic fields to collapse, could do a considerable amount of damage.

<comment><USER9> > I kind of hope that's not how they go about achieving this

Don't worry. The design is impractical anyway - regulating the "anti-mass" would be extremely difficult. Just when you got it balanced, the kid would drink a glass of water and the board would sink into the ground.

Due caution would indeed be advisable when selling these gadgets, though. A matter-antimatter collision of 50kg would be equivalent to about 2.1 gigatons of TNT, or about 400 times more powerful than the most powerful hydogen bomb ever developed, so it would indeed caused a "considerable amount of damage".

<comment><USER15> So you're saying that this has fantastic military applications? Interesting...

<comment><USER16> The military don't like antimatter weapons because they are fail-dangerous. They require active stabilisation.

If a nuke fails, nothing happens. If antimatter containment fails, your entire arsenal of antimatter weapons go up at once.

For a similar reason, nitroglycerin is strangely unpopular for both civilian and military purposes.

<comment><USER15> Interesting, so you are suggesting some sort of gun that creates antimatter in a remote location. That's a great idea!

<comment><USER16> A weapon that could create antimatter at a remote location would be a particle accelerator. One that could create non-trivial amounts of antimatter would cause far more damage from its direct consequences than from antimatter. By factors of millions or billions.

It would be heinously expensive and would require the kind of energy input that only gigawatt-grade nuclear power plants could provide. Rather than using a complicated, failure prone and inefficient way to transform nuclear fission into destruction, it would be simpler and more effective to lob a nuke with the same amount of uranium or plutonium.

Hence, for your day-to-day megadeath needs, thermonuclear weapons will remain the tool of choice for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER15> Unless we could convince the enemy to use that weapon!

I guess thermonuclear weapons are cheaper, though...

<comment><USER16> To build either nukes or particle accelerators you need physicists, who are the kind of non-team-players likely to point out that nukes would work better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "The ALPHA team now plans to cool a small lump of antihydrogen ..."

How do you cool something at this scale? And how about when it can't collide with any normal matter?

<comment><USER18> Possibly with something like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cooling>, where you're not actually striking it with matter, but only with photons, though I don't know if photons react with antimatter (I presume not, but I am not a particle physicist).

<comment><USER19> Antimatter is just matter moving backwards in time, so it interacts with photons (which by the way, is its own antiparticle). This is one line of reasoning which strongly suggests antimatter should fall down not up in a gravitionational field.

although iirc Dark matter is something does not interact with light.

<comment><USER20> Seriously, matter moving backwards in time? This is amazing. I never had a reason to learn more about antimatter until now. Thanks <off to wikipedia>.

<comment><USER21> I think people may be overselling this a bit. It is true that antimatter bears certain resemblances to matter traveling "backwards in time" when the math is examined, but the mental images conjured up by a plain-English reading of that phrase are almost entirely wrong. It's not like you tap the antimatter and the motion goes backward in time. I hate using metaphors, but it's somewhat more like you have a guy walking forward on the road, but if you hit him violently enough he'll end up turned around, walking back-first but in the same direction. Yeah, he's walking _backwards through time! ime! ime! ime!_ but it's not like you can actually send messages backwards or anything; give him a message and he's still walking in the positive-time direction. There's a lot of cancellation of the negative term that goes on and he's still dancing to the tune of the same arrow-of-time as the rest of us.

I'm pretty pessimistic that antimatter will be repulsed by gravity, because you would suddenly have a term that would have to appear for the potential energy of the now-flipped gravity field. It makes much more sense for it to be affected normally. It's an interesting question that we might as well look at, on the off chance that the science will be wrong (which is when it advances, after all), but I wouldn't hold your breath.

<comment><USER22> I don't fully understand your analogy. How exactly is that situation "backwards in time" if it still is moving forwards? Where could I find more info on this?

<comment><USER21> Actually, it sounds like you got it perfectly. There is legitimately a way in which he's going "backwards", it's just not the way you would naturally think of if I just told you he's going "backwards". The backwards-through-time thing is one way of reading the math, but it doesn't mean what you think if you just read what the English says. Antimatter is _way_ less interesting than "backwards in time" can make it sound. It's interesting, but not "kill your grandfather before your father is born" sort of interesting, just "fun particle physics" interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So who is bootstrapping the first startup right now to make hoverboards?

<comment> Tuna-Fish Assuming 1kg of antimatter can be used to hover 1kg of matter and that your hoverboard could carry 80kg, should it's containment fail, it would detonate with the force of 3.4 _gigatons_ of tnt. That's roughly equivalent with the entire present nuclear arsenal of the united states, and would cause 3rd degree burns out of direct thermal radiation over 300 kilometers away.

So, umm, _no_.

<comment><USER16> Antimatter is definitely ridiculously dangerous stuff in macro quantities.

Though strictly speaking, from a bomb-building point of view, it would be very difficult to design a weapon where matter-antimatter mixing happened more or less completely and simultaneously. Otherwise you "merely" have a series of uncontrolled multi-megatonne explosions in an increasingly large area, instead of a single multi-gigatonne explosion.

<comment> Tuna-Fish That "increasingly large area" would fall entirely inside the fireball (and likely within a few-meter radius), and the detonation would basically indistinguishable from it all going off in one go.

Disintegrating the device is a serious problem for nuclear bombs, because when they break themselves up, they leave otherwise good material unused. For an antimatter bomb, splashing the AM uncontrollably would, if anything, speed up the initiation. (After the AM and the normal matter around it is ionized, the particles _home_ for the closest thing to annihilate with. AM basically does all the work of the weapons designer for him.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ooooh, if antimatter is repelled by gravity, that means that cavorite actually is antimatter, and therefore possible? I've always thought that cavorite is the cleverest Science Fiction device ever imagined...

</comment><comment><USER25> This is super exciting. One day when I'm wealthier than God I'm going to donate some money to the guys who are trying to find him.

</comment><comment><USER26> For those of us that don't know anything about it, can someone explain the significance of this achievement?

<comment><USER27> From the article:

"The long term storage of significant amounts of antihydrogen should soon settle the question of whether antimatter falls up or down."

One reason they would like to know if antimatter is repelled by gravity is that it could explain why the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.[1]

[1]: [http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-antimatter-gravity- unive...](http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-antimatter-gravity-universe- expansion.html)

<comment><USER28> >>"The long term storage of significant amounts of antihydrogen should soon settle the question of whether antimatter falls up or down."

Would this mean that if I am "holding onto" a chunk of antimatter heaver than myself I will fall up into space?

<comment><USER29> If you were holding onto a chunk of antimatter you would probably be missing a hand.

<comment><USER30> 1 megaton nuke is about 4000 TeraJoules of energy.

10g of antimatter yields about 10^15 Joules - i.e. 1 PetaJoule, or the equivalent of a 2+ Megaton nuke.

If you were holding onto a chunk of antimatter large enough to hold onto you'd be missing half of London.

<comment><USER31> Not sure if that conclusion is right. It probably wouldn't result in an explosion and the energy output would probably be in the form of light. Regardless, I'm going with Stephen Hawking on this one: "If you ever meet your anti-self, don't shake hands!"

<comment><USER32> _"It probably wouldn't result in an explosion and the energy output would probably be in the form of light."_

That's what nukes do too. Turns out that dumping absurd amounts of light (various parts of the spectrum, but certainly including visible) into the surrounding area absurdly fast tends to fuck stuff up pretty good.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, a lot of the power output from a nuclear explosion is in gamma rays, and even air is opaque enough to gamma rays that the energy deposition heats it up to way incandescent temperatures. That's what the fireball of a nuclear explosion is: incandescent air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> They called it the greatest discovery in human history.

The civilizations of the galaxy call it... MASS EFFECT.</comment>


Testflight releases new SDK - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/if-you-werent-using-testflight-before-you-will-be-now-with-their-new-sdk/

<comment><USER2> As an iPhone Developer I've found Testflight to be really really simple and easy. For users of my apps they've not had to do anything too technical and they get guided through the process.

Kudos for them, and even more for letting it be free!</comment>


A review paper on the lack of political diversity in social psychology - <AUTHOR> http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-political-diversity/ <comment><USER2> Ironically, a lot of conservative criticisms of the political bias of various institutions [1] are based on two very non-conservative premises: 1) Cultural relativism: They assume that all political views are equally deserving, which is almost certainly not true given any random group of political views, nor based on any reading of history. 2) Affirmative action: Instead of pursauding people in the marketplace of ideas, they argue that 'conservatives' and conservative ideas should be gifted with status. (They also assume people are of pure and immutable ideology; someone either is 100% 'conservative' or 100% 'liberal' forever; they can't have a mix of nuanced beliefs and can't change. Judges keep disappointing them.)

To be clear, certainly people have an equal right to any belief and an equal right to voice it. That doesn't mean they have a right to equal acceptance of their arguments. If so many academic faculty, an exeptionally intelligent and educated group relative to the general population, lean liberal, maybe that tells us something. If you don't like it, persuade them otherwise!

(I'll add that it's disappointing to see comments voted down and up based on politics, not quality. It reinforces the perspective that people of a certain political pursuasion are not critical thinkers, which undermines everything they say.)

[1] Some valid and some not. There's criticism of the 'liberal judiciary', even though most judges were appointed by Republicans (at least that was true a few years ago); criticism of the 'liberal media' even though Fox dominates cable news, the Wall Street Journal dominates business news, and radical conservatives dominate talk radio.

<comment><USER3> I'd take a look at Haidt's actual paper, not just chalk it up to conservatives complaining. Among other things, Haidt is fairly liberal in his politics—this is an honest attempt to improve diversity in sociology (a pretty liberal- leaning goal, usually), not conservative complaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's good to see self-assigned liberal psychologists realizing the field's weakness in it's near-universal acceptance of the "liberal progress narrative", and the need to push for more diversity in the narratives it embraces.

Perhaps they should set a quota for grad student political affiliations :) ?

</comment><comment><USER5> There was a discussion of the preprint (or more accurately a blog post summarizing the preprint) early this year at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840261)

</comment><comment><USER6> > Why are there so few non-liberals in social psychology?

Because social psychology's main role is to justify liberal government policy and other social engineering. Just take a cursory look at the history of social psychology and this is obvious. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism_dispute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism_dispute)

</comment><comment><USER7> What a strange thing this Heterodox Academy is. They bemoan the lack of political diversity (however you define that, they don't, seems they leave it an exercise to the reader) in the Social Sciences, and then they proceed to list Judith Curry, a climate change skeptic, amongst their members. Can someone make a convincing case they don't have an agenda to sell?

<comment><USER3> Yes. The main organizer, Jonathan Haidt, is a well-regard sociologist. He's been crusading for more political diversity in science for... years? A decade? He has, of course, been doing very impressive science as well; check out his book, "The Righteous Mind", if you're interested in understanding how people talk about morality, for example. Like it or not, climatologists sceptical of climate change _should_ get their voices heard, just like Levin should be allowed to doubt the possibility of quantum computers, AI researchers should be allowed to doubt the possibility of general AI, and so on. They must, of course, conduct their science to the standards of their field, but the fact that they can argue for ideas not widely held in their field makes that field stronger, not weaker. Science isn't a battle for consensus, or even a battle for getting the largest agreement on a truth; it is a battle for the truth itself, any discussion and conversation, within a process that enforces good faith and good epistemology, only helps.

<comment><USER8> As for people with heterodox views who "conduct their science to the standards of their field", I suggest reading this very amusing/disturbing review of results in paranormal research.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is- ou...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of- control/)

"Two experimenters in the same laboratory, using the same apparatus, having no contact with the subjects except to introduce themselves and flip a few switches – and whether one or the other was there that day completely altered the result. For a good time, watch the gymnastics they have to do to in the paper to make this sound sufficiently sensical to even get published. This is the only journal article I've ever read where, in the part of the Discussion section where you're supposed to propose possible reasons for your findings, both authors suggest maybe their co-author hacked into the computer and altered the results."

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I've seen that. I would posit that paranormal researchers with unusual political beliefs are no less an asset to their field than those with normal political beliefs. (How much of an asset the field as a whole is is for you to understand.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [Libertarians are the political group with the highest IQ] Nice fact.

</comment><comment><USER10> Out of context relevant quote time:

"...and reality has a well-known liberal bias" -Stephen Colbert

<comment><USER11> Only if we remember that every generation's liberals is the next generation's conservatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apologies for the somewhat incoherent post, my lunch break is about to end.

Here I thought this was going to talk about how almost all of social psychology, economics, and other disciplines that influence social policies almost never question capitalism. The difference between liberals (lowercase 'l') and conservatives is very little when it comes to the basic premises of how societies should be structured. Very disappointing. The only departure the post makes from this dichotomy is a mention of libertarians and moderates. Something tells me they mean 'right libertarians' and not libertarian socialists.

Heterodox Academy is a striking name for an institution, so I looked up what it's supposed to be about and, of course, I found the typical boring premises that infest right wing institutions[1]: Their ideologies haven't been rejected because their policies were implemented in real life and produced bad outcomes; clearly it's because there is a systematic bias against them. Talk about a persecution complex!

As if neoliberalism infesting governments and supranational governing bodies isn't enough, it also needs to recapture academia and regain intellectual primacy! The last thing social psychology needs is an infusion of ideas from the end of the spectrum that embraces Murray Rothbard.

Last observation before I go: There is a tendency for reactionary movements (and yes! right libertarianism is a reactionary ideology: it dreams of a never borne out vision of laissez-faire capitalism the world abandoned generations ago) to adopt the language and lexicon of those opposed to them. In this case, the adoption of the language of diversity is being used while very likely the people who want the social sciences to be more right wing spit vitriol at the mention of diversity in the broader context of society. I don't think it's sincere, and if it is, it's laughable.

> [Libertarians are the political group with the highest IQ, yet they are > underrepresented in the social sciences other than economics]

/snicker

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2015/09/15/heterodox-academy/)</comment>


Cloud Collision: The Effects of Larry Ellison's War on Terminology - <AUTHOR> http://siliconangle.net/ver2/2009/10/07/cloud-collision-the-effects-of-larry-ellisons-war-on-terminology/ <comment><USER2> Most people seem to forget that the origin of the term cloud was networking. You just shove your packet into the internet and it magically comes out where you want it to. Because you don't know what is going on inside you just draw it as a cloud.

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K52n2Jkv5-I/SYbEngJYXbI/AAAAAAAABV...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K52n2Jkv5-I/SYbEngJYXbI/AAAAAAAABVU/C_Wd8gyjaK4/s400/CLOUD.GIF)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know what you mean. I spent like four paragraphs on the first version of this post I did for Mashable in '08. Left it out this time for the sake of brevity, and because it really doesn't seem like it took (since people still don't remember).</comment></comment>


Listening for Extraterrestrial Blah Blah - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/listening-for-extraterrestrial-blah-blah <comment><USER2> Any sufficiently advanced communication is indistinguishable from noise</comment>


MongoDB, Better - <AUTHOR> http://go.rackspace.com/better.html <comment><USER3> If you're stuck with mongo in legacy infrastructure and it doesn't make sense to refactor/architect it away, I suggest tokumx. It's allowed us to kick the can on this problem for at least another year. Almost no lock contention, far more compact on disk (even cheap disk space adds up) and (what seems to be) a growing set of users.

I'm optimistic that pg9.4 will be our migration path. But regardless, tokumx has given us the breathing room to defer the decision.

<comment><USER4> I was considering tokumx because it seems like scaled better than normal mongodb but to be honest I'd love to move of this database entirely. I'm somewhat unfamiliar with postgres but does it have a storage/querying system comparable to mongo?

<comment><USER5> If you want to store & query JSON [1], Postgres 9.3 is great! Plus you can index functions, meaning you get cool things like fast JSON look up, and doing case insensitive searches. Which is hard in Mongo, you would either have to do a slow regexp look up, or save a lower case version in your application logic.

      CREATE INDEX ON members ((lower(my_json_data->>'email')));

[1] [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/functions- json.htm...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/functions-json.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sums up MongoDB pretty well: [http://nyeggen.com/blog/2013/10/18/the- genius-and-folly-of-m...](http://nyeggen.com/blog/2013/10/18/the-genius-and- folly-of-mongodb/)

<comment><USER7> That's the best summary of MongoDB I've ever seen. Thanks!

(It's not full of vitriol and strawmen like most of the Mongo posts that seem to end up here.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how licensing works here with mongodb being AGPL.

A message I proxied recently: [http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack- dev/2014-Marc...](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack- dev/2014-March/030510.html)

<comment><USER9> Yahoo isn't the only large company to instruct its employees to avoid mongodb due to it being AGPL. In my opinion, the only people using mongodb in a commercial setting are those who are paying 10gen for a commercial license or those that don't know they are violating the AGPL license.

<comment><USER10> ???

Most people in a commercial setting aren't modifying the MongoDB source code. AGPL does not require that any software that communicates with AGPL software be AGPL'd.

But yes, if you're using MongoDB in a commercial endeavor, and you modify the source code, and you're using AGPL version, you do need to share your changes to the MongoDB source code.

<comment><USER11> As I understand it, the drivers are a point of contention, and the parent's parent explains it well.

Technically, according the AGPL, MongoDB's database drivers licenses (apache) are _incompatible_ with AGPL, and technically should be licensed under AGPL. Now the parent says that should be fine for official drivers because MongoDB isn't going to sue themselves, but the issue is for community drivers, like the Node Driver or the Golang driver. Since the AGPL states that any software built for the exclusive use for the accompanying software must be AGPL - <USER2> it follows that community drivers should be AGPL as well.

To me that means not only can you not modify the database, but you cannot modify the drivers. And I'm also unsure if that also means that any applications that link those drivers means that they must be AGPL as well. And if your web application must be AGPL, it also means that the source of whatever service you are providing must be available as well. So in a way it doesn't just affect corporations that want to modify Mongo, it affects everyone who wants to use Mongo (with a community driver atleast).

IANAL

<comment><USER12> The copyright holder can issue multiple licences for a given product.

It's not about suing themselves'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would love to see a use case from a large deployment. MongoDB is trivial at small scale and it is only when you get to large deployments that it really needs some TLC. If they can somehow make large deployments simple it might make mongo a viable contender again for Humongous data ( If you have a data schema that would play nicely with it )

<comment><USER14> i would love to see a solid technical reason to choose mongodb over any of the other NoSQL db's (couchdb, riak, redis, etc..) other than "it's popular".

No, I'm not trolling. I really want to know : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446919)

<comment> nevi-me Geolocation, specifically GeoJSON. That's the main reason why I chose it (I started working on my app while it was at 2.0). When 2.4 came out with better geospatial indices (albeit basic compared to PostgreSQL+PostGIS) and GeoJSON support, I moved to using GeoJSON, and I am happy so far.

The website/app is at [https://rwt.to](https://rwt.to) , and an example route search is; from "Milky Way, Johannesburg" to "O.R. Tambo International Airport".

I should note that I've had a look at geocouch and it didn't fit my use case, I'm not doing trivial 'find my 3 places near [y,x]' queries, but am traversing a pseudo-network of routes to calculate directions. Neo4j also wouldn't have worked in my case. TokuMX is based on MongoDB 2.2 as far as I'm aware, so them too.

<comment><USER14> That's a very good reason, and the first real one I have heard, thanks man.

Also, I used to work for MapBox, and I know we did one project on mongo which I was not involved in, and afterwards we built everything with CouchDB (which is how I got acquainted with it).

For the geo stuff we actually used a lot of sqlite and to a lesser extent spatialite. We would pre-calculate things and build them into the rendered tiles in mbtiles format, or stream the point/polygon data from the couch database for realtime client-side compositing.

But yeah, routing is pretty high level stuff. I think they are only now putting the finishing touches on their openstreetmap driven routing system many years later.

[1] [http://mapbox.com](http://mapbox.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> None of this means anything unless there is clear pricing. Am I not seeing it?

<comment><USER16> [http://objectrocket.com/pricing](http://objectrocket.com/pricing)

<comment><USER17> Seems a bit expensive assuming each shard gets you three more servers. Based on RS pricing you could build your own instances with 1TB SSDs for like $500 each, so for the same price that you'd get 100GB x 3 shards you could do 1TB x 3 shards on your own. I guess with the RS pricing you also get managed backups but IMO that's not worth the price difference. If you figure you build your own, 3 shards x 3 RS members x 1TB is 9 servers at $500 each or $4500. With this service... if 100GB is $1599 you have to imagine 1TB has to be at least on the order of $10k, so you're looking at $30k total. $25k a month for managed backups and infrastructure just doesn't seem worth it to me. Maybe what they're using is more powerful than the instances we're on but I still have trouble reconciling the pricing. And if that 1TB is 1TB total and not 1TB per shard/replica set member then the pricing looks way, way worse.

<comment><USER18> Rackspace did an evaluation of the various mongodb hosted solutions before buying out objectrocket.. Its worth a read [http://developer.rackspace.com/blog/benchmarking-hosted- mong...](http://developer.rackspace.com/blog/benchmarking-hosted-mongodb- services.html#.US4EhzCcfl8)

TLDR, for hosted mongodb its pretty awesome (ssd hardware in direct connect locations, tuned and managed).

<comment><USER17> That's an awesome link, thanks. Does a lot to clarify where the pricing disconnect is between spinning up my own servers in the RS cloud and using ObjectRocket.

IMO RS's ObjectRocket pages should do a better job showing what you're getting on top just deploying to a bunch of RS cloud servers with SSD's in them.

<comment><USER19> Mason55, I work for Rackspace. The ObjectRocket service does not run on the cloud servers you get from RS. It's actually a different architecture just for MongoDB: flash drives all over, containers, pretty much tuned for MongoDB across the stack. While we don't describe the full details of the architecture, you have a very valid recommendation that we will take into consideration to make sure it is clear what you are getting for your money. Thanks.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the additional info, great to have someone from RS chime in!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Funny, only seconds after clicking on the OP page, I started getting the targeted Ads for MongoDB & Rackspace when visiting YouTube videos.

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't this just a link to an advertisement?

</comment><comment><USER22> We use MongoDirector and have been pretty happy with it. They have a Bring Your Own AWS infra plan that works perfect.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sometimes I wonder - what's hated more by HN readers... PHP or MongoDB... And what's not fun - i use both.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is this like MongoHQ?

<comment><USER21> Sort of ... but there are pretty serious limitations.

1\. You are locked into Rackspace as your provider. MongoHQ provides multiple cloud providers.

2\. They force you to shard. This increases operational and application complexity ... and may not offer any real advantages for the amount of data that you have.

<comment><USER19> I work for Rackspace.

On [1], you can actually keep your app in AWS and connect / migrate your data to OR over Direct Connect.

On [2], you don't have to shard. There is an option to scale vertically when you need to.

You can call RS people who can help guide you making the best decision on [1] or [2] based on your current and future situations.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Quote: Henry Ford, founder, Ford - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/2543548511

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

\- Henry Ford

<http://startupquote.com/post/2543548511></comment>


Ask HN: Software Engineering Job Offer Negotiation? - <AUTHOR>

I have a Software Eng job offer from Cisco in the Bay Area. Would anyone know what the pay ranges are for the following Cisco pay grade levels. I have about 6 years work experience in another successful networking company in the Bay Area.
Grade 8
Grade 9
Grade 10
They are offering me in the Grade8 level with signing bonus. Their offer matches my current base salary compensation $ for $ which I thought was surprising since I gave them my current compensation + my stock benefits. They do not offer options/RSU unlike my existing company. It doesn't make financial sense for me to take the offer. Hence, I am wondering if I have room for negotiation based on the pay-grade ranges.
Skills: Python, Layer2/3 Networking, Automation, Python Robot Framework, Python Django <comment><USER2> You may be able to get a sense of the salary ranges by looking at Glassdoor.com and browsing through the salaries posted for Cisco. If I was in your position and you feel comfortable doing it, I'd play your current employer against Cisco by asking them if they want to make a counter offer. I've seen many people dramatically increase their salary by allowing a few companies to counter offer against each other.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I might be able to do that, but I don't wanna push too hard since I am Visa sensitive and financially I prefer my existing company as per the current verbal offer from cisco.

I did look at glassdoor, one I noticed is at an avg of 99k (upper bound at 137k) anther one at an avg of 112K (upper bound at 150k). I was personally expecting to hear a number north of 130K or at least 125k for the base salary + RSU, so was really shocked to hear their offer.

<comment><USER3> Based on my shaky sense of things going on, I doubt you'll be able to negotiate for a grade 10. The company is generally very frugal. 130k sounds like too much. (But you know, I could be totally wrong - actually let me know if I am).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Based on many friends' salaries:

Grade 8 is what is offered to fresh PhD's -- I think around 115K. In addition there used to be a 401k match of upto 4% (I think).</comment>


NASA has no idea why it exists. Where to now for the space program? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/mars-a-mere-curiosity-in-days-of-thrift-20120818-24f84.html

<comment><USER2> <http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ogc/about/space_act1.html#POLICY>

_(1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.

(2) The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles.

(3) The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space.

(4) The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.

(5) The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere.

(6) The making available to agencies directly concerned with national defense of discoveries that have military value or significance, and the furnishing by such agencies, to the civilian agency established to direct and control nonmilitary aeronautical and space activities, of information as to discoveries which have value or significance to that agency.

(7) Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations in work done pursuant to this chapter and in the peaceful application of the results thereof.

(8) The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment.

(9) The preservation of the United States preeminent position in aeronautics and space through research and technology development related to associated manufacturing processes._

I personally would categorize the above as follows, not that I gave it much thought:

1 = science

2 = could go either way

3 = could go either way

4 = science, peace

5 = dominance

6 = dominance, specifically military

7 = could go either way, science, peace

8 = efficiency (which I'll file under dominance, too)

9 = dominance

final scores:

science: 3

peace: 2

neither/nor: 3

dominance: 4</comment>


After Devin Nunes Sues a Parody CoW, It Surpasses Him on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/us/politics/nunes-devincow-twitter.html <comment><AUTHOR> Text book definition of the Streisand Effect.</comment>


Magento and WooCommerce Mobile App Bulider, No Coding - <AUTHOR> http://icymobi.com <comment><AUTHOR> Guys we have just launched this product. Really thankful if you guys can give us some constructive feedback. I will personally reply to every single comment. Thanks loads :)</comment>


Add Undo and Redo to Your Web Application With Cappuccino - <AUTHOR> http://thinkvitamin.com/dev/add-undo-and-redo-to-your-web-application-with-cappuccino/

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363855>

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sorry, I didn't know it was submitted. Looks like the duplicate detection didn't work.</comment></comment>


AWS Price Reductions and Free Inbound Data Transfer - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/12/aws-price-reductions.html

<comment><USER2> I guess they buy their bandwidth symmetrically. Thus, as long as they have more outgoing traffic they can charge for, giving incoming away for free doesn't really 'cost' them much (off-course the do lose income on this, but not real costs). It's still nice tho! :)

</comment><comment><USER3> The free inbound transfer is NOT permanent. From the post:

"Finally, we are waiving the inbound data transfer fee across the board (for all services) through the end of June 2010."

It's nice, but let's not kid ourselves about its awesomeness.

Prediction: at the end of June, they'll magically realize that they can do this permanently and they fix the free inbound traffic, or at least have a healthy free amount before payment is started. This means there will be another round of news for them.

<comment><USER4> The free inbound transfer is obviously a reaction to Microsoft's pricing. Windows Azure has free inbound transfer during off-peak hours until June 30 (see <http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/faq/#pricing>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a friendly word of caution: such a huge price differential (0 cents in vs ~15 cents out per GB) is a kind of lockin.

</comment><comment><USER6> It would be nice if they included PUT's into this equation too. Many large datasets are not one big file, but billions of smaller ones.

I realise it raises the offering out of the bandwidth arena and into actual server capacity to handle the PUT's, but offering free bandwidth in and still charging per PUT action is kinda misleading (and could really ruin someones day if they read it wrong)

</comment><comment><USER7> Making inbound data transfer free really makes sense if they're charging you to store it and every time you access it.

<comment><USER8> It's across all services though, not just S3. Right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> i guess free inbound is cool if you're using S3 as just a huge backup dump for all of your stuff, but it would seem that running any sort of web app that serves as a public customer interface wouldn't benefit much at all from free inbound

<comment><USER10> I run an online streaming service for public safety communications, and our inbound traffic is close to 4TB/m - this saves me over $1000 a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At any reasonable scale, S3 bandwidth is still a magnitude more expensive than you would pay at an aggressive dedicated server company like ServerBeach, ThePlanet, 10tb.com, or SoftLayer. It's also even worse when you compare it to discount bandwidth offerings like Cogent's $1,500 for a GigE (which comes out to $0.0075/GB) or Hurricane Electric's $3k price for a GigE connection.

What Amazon is really doing here is the classic ISP inbound/outbound juggling act amongst public peers. In order to maintain a peering relationship, especially at the scales that Amazon must see with it's cloud services, providers really need to maintain an equitable inbound/outbound ratio, otherwise agreements become void and they actually start charging each other.

<comment><USER12> Indeed, Amazon bandwidth prices are quite right compared to most of their competitors.

And by the way, Softlayer has permanently free inbound traffic for all their servers, including cloudlayer ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Free inbound transfer! Wow just as I was about to start using AWS. Thank you Jebus.</comment>


Ask HN: What to build using a bank account API? - <AUTHOR> Given the public beta of Teller has been announced today[1], what useful apps could be built using their API to pull data from your bank account?<p>I've previously built an open source web app to visualise transactions from a Ledger CLI .dat file[2]. This could be automated using an API to create a dashboard of your financial transactions. What other useful tools could be created from this data?<p>[1] https://blog.teller.io/2017/06/12/the-api-for-you-bank-account-is-here.html<p>[2] https://github.com/slashdotdash/node-ledger-web <comment><USER2> Personal banking \- PFM chatbot \- Budgeting tool \- Virtual saving accounts

I personally see a lot more applications for business bank accounts. If you don't mind, is there anywhere I can DM you?

<comment><AUTHOR> @slashdotdash on Twitter.</comment></comment>