The son of a migrant from Syria - <AUTHOR> http://www.banksy.co.uk/index1.asp <comment><USER2> 2 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10723992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10723992)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Banksy, for those who don't know him, is probably the world's leading street/graffiti artist.</comment>


Dancing Baby Video Battle Back in Court Tuesday - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/dancing-baby-video-battle-back-court-tuesday <comment><USER2> Is anyone else bothered by the characterization of the music as "background"? To me, that suggests music that happened to be playing incidentally in the background while something unrelated was being filmed (e.g. people at a BBQ). That's not the same thing as a performance clearly tied to the song; one in which the particular song is a key element of the video.

In other words, passing this off as "background" music is nonsense. Given the context of the video, that characterization is clearly and obviously not true, and I don't think the EFF does itself or the broader cause of copyright reform any favors by misrepresenting facts in this fashion.

For what it's worth, I think Fair Use should allow this video, and videos like it. People's engagement with the culture is what makes it culture, and the idea that ownership of the underlying IP extends a bubble of ownership and control to every imaginable situation in which that IP appears is, frankly, odious. As far as this case goes, I think the EFF has picked a fight well worth having, but their ends don't justify the means. If anything, the means may compromise the ends.

<comment><USER3> The music is background since the music is not the focus of the video, the dancing baby is.

To me it seems that you are implying that parents wanted to post a tune from The Prince on the Internet and used a clip of their dancing baby as an excuse.

That is precisely wrong and precisely along the lines that label lawyers will probably try to draw.

<comment><USER4> And according to the article the video was 29 seconds long. Very short if someone wants to argue that the intention was to post the song...

<comment><USER2> Nobody is arguing that the intention was simply to post the song. They're saying that a portion of the song was used illegally and without permission.

Also, 29 seconds is ~30 seconds, which is the length of a standard TV commercial. In a world where all identifiable samples need to be licensed, that's not "very short" at all.

I know that telling people they're categorically wrong when it comes to copyright is perceived as defending copyright. I want to be clear that I recognize the need for substantial copyright reform and liberalization. When I say "you're wrong" I don't mean that reform and liberalization are bad things. I simply mean that you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to the law itself, and how it actually works. I think widespread ignorance is a bad thing among those who (quite justifiably) would like to see the law changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was hoping it had something to do with this piece of internet culture... <http://cache.ohinternet.com/images/a/ab/Dancing_baby.gif>

<comment><USER6> That's what came to mind first, but I'm glad it was more serious and that the court did consider the use of the song "fair use" and that copyright holders should consider the fair use of their copyrighted material before sending a takedown notice.

Sometimes I think the EFF overreaches, but here this is 'common sense' stuff that they should (and did) pursue. Kudos.

<comment><USER7> The "overreaching" part is subjective. I think it is quite balanced considering the actions of the other parties involved.</comment></comment></comment>


London startup comp has a £1m prize - <AUTHOR> http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/03/25/startup-comp-has-a-1m-prize/ <comment><AUTHOR> I thought it was initially just for London, but if you read the rules it states:

 _Be based in London. Definition includes having a registered office / or willingness to open such an office in one of the 32 boroughs of London, or in the City of London, at which senior management will be based._

So it's all good if you're willing to set-up and move to London.

<http://www.londontechnologyfund.com/competition/index.php></comment>


Would you subscribe to a newsletter about developer lifestyle? - <AUTHOR> I created a newsletter featuring links to articles about news, business, productivity, health and travel, for developers, digital nomads, and software business entrepreneurs in general.
I just wanted to know if you would be interested in subscribing to that or do you think it would be a waste of time?
You can check it out here http://ilifestyleweekly.curated.co
Please let me know your thoughts. <comment><USER2> Two first impressions :

1) This looks like a news aggregator like Hacker News / Reddit, the difference being that there is less choice since you compile the links yourself. One wonders why subscribring to your list when the links will likely be posted on the other platforms too.

2) You ask feedback too much for my taste. First of all here : would it be waste of time ? And then first post : sorry for the logo, I'm not a designer. Personally I don't like people that do not look confident in what their do. An entrepreneur should take feedback but not ask for it.

Edit

Well, free advice :

1) Add a USP by commenting the articles you post

2) a) No one cares about the logo apart from you, not worth mentionning it, b) you could have asked what matters for us as developers. It's a way of taking feedback without looking weak and not confident in your product</comment>


80% of river plastic pollution entering the oceans stem from 1000 rivers - <AUTHOR> https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/ <comment> enjoy-your-stay Stop producing plastic bags and go back to selling soft drinks in refundable glass bottles would probably make a big dent.

The extra energy needed for glass production and transportation of heavier glass bottles would have to be factored in somewhere though.

</comment><comment><USER2> There have been stories in the news which have raised awareness about how Canada exports their recycling/trash to the Philippines.[0] The Philippines seems to pollute heavily, based on this map. Given this data, it seems counterproductive to send waste to the highest polluting countries, since they are obviously not able to process their existing burden.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Philippines_was...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Philippines_waste_dispute)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was guessing China would have the worst rivers, but that map also puts the spotlight on India. It's easy to see that general region isn't doing good. This seems like a good way stop plastics before they reach the ocean.

<comment><USER4> India does not surprise me after having been there. A lot of very poor people and infrastructure that has not grown with the population.

Like a 10 minute drive (I was not a driver) from the offices of pretty famous western companies one could see improvised disposal sites for trash; sometimes burning and people going through them and seeing what they can find.

There seemed to be way too little organized trash pickup so people just threw their trash somewhere and after a while either the government acted or people decide to burn it to get rid of it.

I assume if there is a river nearby many will take that option instead of burning it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great job, ocean cleanup very interesting data right here. Tracking the problem in that way is more of a first principles approach. Happy that Mexico is so low on the amount.</comment>


Physicists attempt to prove the Riemann hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170404-quantum-physicists-attack-the-riemann-hypothesis/?platform=hootsuite <comment><USER2> You have to be very careful with these "plausibility arguments" that physicists like to make. It may well happen, for example, that there are counterexamples to the Riemann hypothesis, but that they are so rare that they have probability zero (similar to, for example, the zero probability that a random real number in some interval is a rational number). So, a plausibility argument saying how unlikely counterexamples are would prove nothing. Or, it could happen, like the famous disproved Riemannian conjecture on the crossing of pi(x) and Li(x) (see: Skewe's number) that the counterexample exists but it is ridiculously large. The usual kind of ethos in physics is to be a bit too loose with approximations or to disregard very extreme cases.

I don't understand the particulars of the spectrum of this operator that they have constructed, but I have heard others describe this approach as a simple reformulation of one hard problem in terms of another equally hard problem.

<comment><USER3> I'm not a mathematician, nor a physicist, but I don't understand this statement: similar to, for example, the zero probability that a random real number in some interval is a rational number. Is it just a consequence of rational numbers being countable and real numbers not being countable? Seems like an odd way to define probability in this instance.

<comment><USER4> It comes from how we define infinity/the number line. Any number divided by infinity is 0, that's easy. But between any two points there is an infinite number of rational numbers and between any two rational numbers you can derive an infinite number of irrational numbers. I know this isn't kosher, but it is pretty much infinity/(infinity ^ infinity). That leads us back to the probability of picking a rational number as 1/infinity, because for every rational number there are infinity irrational numbers that we also could have chosen.

David Foster Wallace had a really good book called Everything and More where he explored the history of infinity. Might be of interest to you.

<comment><USER5> That's a _really_ bad argument, since between any two irrational numbers, there's an infinite number of rational numbers.

Ed: For an explicit construction of such numbers --

Suppose we have a<b, two irrational numbers.

Let b-a = d, the difference between them.

Then there exists N, an integer, such that 10^(-N) < d.

Let b1 be b truncated at the (N+1)th digit past the decimal point.

Then b1 is rational (finitely many digits) and b-b1 < d (and b1 < b), so b1 is in (a,b).

You can then add back one digit of b at a time, to get b2, b3, etc which form an infinite sequence of rational numbers converging to b from below. (We get infinite _unique_ numbers from the fact b is irrational. Not all the b_n need be distinct.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand why Quanta magazine keeps getting promoted on HN. Guys, it's sensational writing. Not scientific. Please understand this. Quanta is like Wired. Poor academic quality and sensational writing. Neither are based in scientific rigor.

I'm majoring in Pure Maths and this is annoying to see yet another poor scientific article on Math.

<comment><USER7> Was that article on symplectic geometry in Quanta?

My work is with algorithms that simulate conservative systems and that sounded pretty good to my ears. Of course they were with the human angle by the end, but still they did a damn good job in explaining what a "cotangent bundle" is.

<comment><USER6> My bad. Hopefully this [1] comment and this [2] one helps clear up my position. They are accurate, yes. But poor in the sense that it's all conjecture, not evidence based.

1 - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046334) 2 - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046131)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now and since decades ago also, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%E2%80%93P%C3%B3lya_con...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%E2%80%93P%C3%B3lya_conjecture)

</comment><comment><USER9> > As mathematicians have attacked the hypothesis from every angle, the problem > has also migrated to physics.

eyeroll.. loose use of 'every' is the kind of overreaching probability mathematical rigor eschews

quantum mechanics still relies heavily on probability theory and reimann has been probably correct since its inception

it is my intended inference that a mathematical model that maps qm will be mappable to reimann, and without any forgiveness of strict symmetries

<comment><USER10> What's the motivation for your intention? What is a reimann? The mathematician was called Riemann. Do you mean the Zeta function and it's variants?

<comment><USER9> i'm sorry if i was unclear.. i am aware of who bernhard reimann is and was using his name as shorthand for the hypothesis originating in his 1859 paper(o): .."and it is very probable that all roots are real."; of which this entire article is about

what's my motivation for my intention? I am unsure exactly.. personally? I derive significant joy from working on mathematics; socially? to solve the problem would solidify assumed validity across a varying subset of mathematics and its consequents

(o) [http://www.claymath.org/sites/default/files/ezeta.pdf](http://www.claymath.org/sites/default/files/ezeta.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article is very interesting and serve one purpose very well - trigger my curisoity of what is that. Both heard of. Not understand much. But somehow it is linked. And strangely talked in a way not totally out of reach.

If someone like me with only some basic maths/stats/QM background and interest to know more, any pointer to understand this.

</comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of story I heard about a pure math PhD student who wrote a deep proof for their dissertation. Unfortunately, they relied on certain math shortcuts that only work in a physics context. Their advisor didn't catch it, and I recall it ended badly for both the student and the advisor.

<comment><USER6> That sounds bizarre. Pure Math is more theoretical and has less limitations than that of Theoretical Physics. Maybe this person you knew just went down the wrong path and should've focused on Theoretical Physics and not math.

<comment><USER7> If I understand the parent comment correctly, this is the advanced version of "proofs" of propositions in economics that just assume that dy/dx is defined in such a way that dy/dz = (dy/dx)(dx/dz). A mathematician would say "Let y: U\to V where U,V are open subsets of R^k and y\in C^1 (or C^\infty). Then..." and define clearly what's a function, what's a variable/number/vector and so forth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When all you have is a golden hammer...

</comment><comment><USER14> These physicists observations won't achieve anything other than to corroborate the existing hypothesis. Proof requires a lot more than just observation.

<comment><USER15> There are no physicists' observations here, as I get it, it is all theoretical work, which is essentially mathematics. It is not rigorous mathematics, otherwise we would actually have a proof, but just a proposed reasoning that in time might be made rigorous and become a real proof. Future will tell us.</comment></comment>


Memories Can Be Injected and Survive Amputation and Metamorphosis - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/memories-can-be-injected-and-survive-amputation-and-metamorphosis <comment><USER2> Small aside about memory in humans: I am reminded of a story told during a lecture of a transplant recipient receiving a heart transplant and was interviewed after the successful surgery about what they would like to eat now that they had a new heart (previously, was on a really restricted diet due to heart condition).

The person responded with "Kentucky fried chicken" on a whim.

It was later explained that they don't know why they felt compelled to say KFC since they never been to one in their life. Later on, they find information about the donor and how they died (motorcycle accident -- be safe on your bikes please kids). The donor was a pretty husky guy, and loved Kentucky fried chicken.

Now could have this just been sheer coincidence or chance? Most likely. Is this scientifically verifiable? Of course not, not with current means. But for some reason I've always had a strange suspicion that there was more to memory than just storage in our brains, but that they are also somehow part of us as well.

<comment><USER3> Interesting... any chance you have a link of that lecture or a story on it?

<comment><USER4> There are many cases of people who get organ transplant inherit the memory of the donor. I have heard in more than one places or another. A simple search on the web will yield this:

Here is a link: [https://www.medicaldaily.com/can-organ-transplant-change- rec...](https://www.medicaldaily.com/can-organ-transplant-change-recipients- personality-cell-memory-theory-affirms-yes-247498)

We still don't know squats about how memory are stored. And cases like that can be a valid argument for memory and consciousness being a non-local phenomenon. Kinda like how client-server model in CS. ;-) . Are our brain just a browser?

<comment><USER5> > We still don't know squats about how memory are stored.

Yeah, but not in the kidneys or the liver. Get back to us when you find sources from peer-reviewed journals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A headline sorely in need of "In Worms" on the end.

</comment><comment><USER7> I remember hearing as a kid that worms cut in half would regenerate into two worms however as an adult I'm sure I was taught this isn't actually the case at all.

After a quick bit of googling, it seems that earthworms can re-grow their tail (if cut far enough down), but the other end doesn't re-grow. Flat-Worms, however are capable of entirely re-growing heads and tails from tiny pieces.

[https://www.livescience.com/38405-how-flatworms-regrow- their...](https://www.livescience.com/38405-how-flatworms-regrow-their- heads.html)

<comment><USER8>
        > I remember hearing as a kid that worms cut in half would
        > regenerate into two worms however as an adult I'm sure I
        > was taught this isn't actually the case at all.

Do you mean that you're sure that you weren't taught it, or that you're sure that it isn't the case in reality. Because the latter is easily answered by reading the article in question:

        > In an early experiment, McConnell trained the worms à la
        > Pavlov by pairing an electric shock with flashing lights.
        > Eventually, the worms recoiled to the light alone. Then
        > something interesting happened when he cut the worms in
        > half. The head of one half of the worm grew a tail and,
        > understandably, retained the memory of its training.
        > Surprisingly, however, the tail, which grew a head and a
        > brain, also retained the memory of its training. If a
        > headless worm can regrow a memory, then where is the memory
        > stored, McConnell wondered. And, if a memory can
        > regenerate, could he transfer it?

<comment><USER7> I meant I was sure that when I became an adult I was taught that worms regrowing was an urban myth. The fact the scientist in the article was regrowing them made me go and check and it turns out to be something that changes with different variants, rather than a blanket worm rule either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Age old wisdom. That's why you always eat the heart of your enemies, so you can grow in power.

</comment><comment><USER10> Aside from hinting at wonderful new science, the strongest resonance I get from this story is hubris.

How proud and how wrong we can be. To disregard and minimise this research because it does not fit neatly within existing paradigms, is a crime. Hundreds of millions of dollars should be being poured into this research, the implications for our understanding of fundamental biology are profound.

</comment><comment><USER11> Though now discredited, you'll occasionally see McConnell's idea of RNA-based memory transfer in old science fiction, in particular _A World Out of Time_ by Larry Niven.

</comment><comment><USER12> If we are empathetic, capable of being aware of other people's feelings, it is reasonable that the memories attached to awareness exist not isolated in the individual but across people.

<comment><USER13> You should look up mirror neurons. Aside from those we definitely do not know other people's feelings, though. I think that's obvious from the amount of conflict coming from this exact reason.

<comment><USER12> Being empathetic doesn't imply also being compassionate. Maybe we vie for power so much exactly because we do have a deep awareness of other people's feelings and people who wield power can say, "If I'm not happy, nobody is happy." All this conflict comes from not having to depend on people in power for our happiness.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Robotics people, what would you change about ROS? - <AUTHOR> The reason why I'm asking is that, ROS seems to be the most dominant/popular framework for both entry level and advanced roboticists. Its great that there is such a common framework which creates a baseline for the majority. However, after spending years on the platform, I still think that it is not seamless to work with and I am not even talking about performance related subjects.
Without revealing much about my specific opinions, I wanted to ask the community what they dislike about the platform and what would they change if they had infinite time/resources. <comment><USER2> I wound change its name first. it's misleading.

there is no message synchronization I heard. Hard to reproduce an issue.</comment>


A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python - <AUTHOR> http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-189-a-gentle-introduction-to-programming-using-python-january-iap-2010/

<comment><USER2> Also try python from your browser (but sadly it's built with silverlight) - www.trypython.org. Chances are if you are starting out coding with python, you could definitely use Google's python class with videos and sample assignment with answers - <http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/>

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/)

That is a full course using Python.

</comment><comment><USER4> Although I used Learning Python in college and really like it,(our project was awesome, xmpp bots ;p) I think it's a good idea that they seem to be writing their own textbook to be better adapted to an intro to compsci class. Learning Python wasn't exactly targeted for that application.

</comment><comment><USER5> the actual lecture content: [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical- engineering-and-comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering- and-computer-science/6-189-a-gentle-introduction-to-programming-using-python- january-iap-2010/readings/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Try out Skulpt an in-browser implementation of Python. No preprocessing, plugins, or server-side support required, just write Python and reload. <http://www.skulpt.org/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one that can't find the video / audio lectures? The older (but still very good) 6.00 CS course with Grimson is on YouTube, but I don't see anything but reading materials here (unless that's the point).

<comment><USER8> Hi bdlang and everyone else,

Ahh! This is my course!! I am actually an undergraduate student, and this course was my first foray into teaching. Please note that this is not intended to be an in-depth semester course, but rather was an intensive two-week course during MIT's January semester. Class met three hours a day and was intended on giving a springboard introduction into the basics of Python and a short bit on classes/inheritance for students taking MIT's 6.01 course the following semester.

The ocw page is a bit bare-bones right now as getting the class together was a bit of a challenge :) If you search around the site, you should be able to find exercises and example code in addition to the readings. Answers, unfortunately, to the exercises cannot be posted because so many MIT students focus more on getting an A rather than learning the material, so releasing OCW solutions typically leads to rampant cheating.

I do, however, plan on improving the page next January, adding a better set of handwritten notes, more example code, and some short OpenOffice presentations on various concepts to promote self-learning. I appreciate comments here on the course, what you would like to see, etc, and I will try to incorporate them. Keep in mind that solutions and videos are not going to happen - solutions for the aforementioned reasons, and videos because of the cost to OCW. However, I may be able to self-record my lectures and post to YouTube if there is sufficient interest :)

One last plug - I troll the programming forum on linuxquestions.org, username robotsari; if you post python questions I try to answer!

<comment><USER7> robotsari> thanks very much for taking the time to reply; I was looking for lecture material because of the text at the bottom portion of the "Download Course Materials" page:

"This package contains the same content as the online version, but does not contain audio/video files. These must be downloaded separately from iTunes U or YouTube."

I'm sure that you can see this is misleading. Thanks, though, for your input and for putting the material as such on OCW!</comment></comment></comment>


The New Entrepreneur Classification System - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/29/the-new-entrepreneur-classification-system/

<comment><USER2> I tend to feel as though the word "entrepreneur" might just be better left to die altogether. It's a title for people who aren't title people.

When you get down to what early economists were thinking when they coined the term, it seems to me like it's about giving it a shot in the face of uncertainty, rather than about the type of work (or even the work's success). (<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cantillon>)

If you're selling underwear subscriptions, calling yourself a weekend-website "CEO" or taking silly seed investment to avoid missing paychecks, maybe you're not really risking.

You don't need to come up a title for that - you kinda already know it's not the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Type 2: _kind of an embarrassment to be held up as an example of Silicon Valley innovation. They might be legitimate entrepreneurs and they might make money, but in terms of being world-changing, let's not be absurd_

Eh? Is that really what people consider an embarrassment these days? And since when did "entrepreneur" have anything do with a location?</comment>


Ask HN: Who is looking for help on their FOSS project? (Nov 2018) - <AUTHOR> I am wondering who is currently seeking help with their FOSS project. Please share your information if you are looking for help. I have some time to spare maybe there are other folk like me here lurking.<p>Please use this format:<p>- Description:
- Technologies / Experience:
- URL to repo: <comment><USER2> Description: a web-based standoff property text editor for the digital humanities. Technology: JavaScript. Repo: [https://github.com/argimenes/standoff-properties- editor](https://github.com/argimenes/standoff-properties-editor)</comment>


How Your Facebook Likes Could Cost You a Job - <AUTHOR> http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/how-your-facebook-likes-could-cost-you-a-job/

<comment><USER2> If this was actually implemented as part of the hiring process, people would just game the system. It's very easy to not "like" that Jack Daniel's or Bob Marley page if you are aware some algorithm might label you a substance abuser.

I also find it interesting that the article seems to assume Facebook is omnipresent; then again, maybe it is. Anecdotedly, my girlfriend has been living without a Facebook for two years now and it's never been a problem. She actually claims that her quality of life has improved.

As for me, I don't have an active Facebook. I made a new account after deleting my old with one that showcased all my juvenile high school/college idiocy. I check the new one about once a month

On my old Facebook, I had accumulated over 1000 "friends". Now I have about 30. This is because I only made this new Facebook so my family members could share pictures with me.

I wonder what two different kinds of personalities these algorithms would produce. I doubt either would be truly accurate.</comment>


Ask HN: Google Cloud Functions – Do you use it in production? What do you think? - <AUTHOR> How do Google Cloud Functions stack up against AWS Lambda? <comment><USER2> Pros:

* When it works, it works. We're processing ~100 msg/s in prod right now, for pennies

Cons:

* Only US-Central region support (no cross region)

* Your function runs as Admin (root) in it's project

* Your function must be deployed to the same project as other assets (e.g. can't listen to GCS or PubSub events cross project)

* No way to pass configs/params to a function (it's all gotta be in the code, including secrets)

* Very limited retry semantics (brute force, retry forever)

* No integration with Cloud Endpoints or APIgee, so every HTTP event driven function gets new unique URL

* Building on above, all HTTP endpoints will be public, no auth

* Slow deployments - e.g. took me 45min today to deploy 8 functions

<comment><USER3> I've noticed the speed of deployment as well. Any idea why it's that slow?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would really like to use Google Cloud Functions as the integrate super easy with the rest of the Google Cloud platform, unfortunately, they are still only in the USA and if you have you DB somewhere else then it is not really optimal.

There are other pitfalls as it can connect to your Google Cloud SQL without opening it up to the public as it is not in the same network and there is a limit of a 1000 functions deployed.

But the developer experience is in top compared to how it is to deploy a http reachable endpoint on Amazon Lambda!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great feedback. I had no idea about the public access around GCF -> Google Cloud SQL or the US-only aspect

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the main differentiator is Firebase integration. Especially registering with Analytics events such as Auth. But yeah obvs you trade convenience for vendor lockin ;)

Here is a Codelab to get you started and I believe you'll see how it can reduce your development time dramatically...

CodeLab: Cloud Functions for Firebase

[https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/firebase- clo...](https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/firebase-cloud- functions/#0)</comment>


Feedback on Rapidoid Fluent and Java 8? E.g. Do.map(words).to(String::length) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rapidoid.org/fluent.html <comment><USER2> This is nice! I've been working on something similar. It's not quite as polished yet, but hopefully I'll find some time here soon.

[https://github.com/timothymdavis/taciturn](https://github.com/timothymdavis/taciturn)</comment>


Trump's Latest Pick for the Fed Is No Fan of Paper Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/trump-s-latest-pick-for-the-fed-is-no-fan-of-paper-money <comment><USER2> Wow. I just suddenly become a _lot_ more interested in Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. Sorry, but I am _not_ interested in the government having the power to impose a negative interest rate on my money.</comment>


Experimental Website Lets You Download Amazing House Blueprints for Free - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/paperhouses-lets-you-download-a-high-design-house-for-free/ <comment><USER2> Those cubes with square holes remind me indie game Fez :)</comment>


Teachers matter in twin study - <AUTHOR> http://www.joannejacobs.com/2010/04/teachers-matter-in-twin-study/

<comment><AUTHOR> News report with more details on this study with a genetically sensitive design:

"Poor teachers may hamper good students: U.S. study"

<http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63L5MM20100422></comment>


Interview questions I have never been asked, Episode I - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/06/interview-questions-i-have-never-been.html

<comment><USER2> Oooh, good question. I certainly don't have a definitive answer. My current preference is to have a few atomic composable methods in a vocabulary. If I find myself using a specific compositional idiom enough that it needs its own name, I create a new method and factor out that idiom. I use this strategy when writing libraries for my own use.

When distributing to others there are more concerns in play. In a language like Java where 3rd party libraries are frozen from the perspective of the developer a rich vocabulary is a helpful thing. In Ruby, open classes make it much easier for the developer to add things on their own. Lua aspires to minimalism; its standard libary is _very_ small and atomic. Lisp is a very compositional language so I would lean towards exposing only the key concepts of a library. These are all valid approaches in their spheres.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd probabl have to argue in favor of writing convenience methods to make a usable api right off the bat. For example, I don't necessarily NEED the strlen method, since I can make my own with little trouble, but it is sure nice to have. I'd say the more public methods there are in one's API the better. This way in the java world, you can have a public interface with all the methods a client developer could ever want, but protect (hide) the implementation of these methods. Without a good set of available public api methods, you a) inconvenience the target developer and b) make it impossible to hide the implementation, since to do anything useful with the application, the developer would need to know the "guts" of it, since the public api isn't good. So yes, probably this is a matter of taste, but in the spirit of "do unto others", personally I like having "conveniences" like the strlen example, and so I like to make similar "conveinces" when I'm writing code myself.</comment>


Tiny Code - <AUTHOR> http://kmkeen.com/tiny-code/index.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks to the author and to the submitter.

Some of these are really works of art.

I especially love TinyScheme (BTW, did you know that it is embedded in the iPhoneOS?).

<comment><USER3> I thought Joy was pretty cool too, have never seen mention of it before. So many shiny things to play with, so little time...

<comment><USER4> There is another implementation of Joy, targeting the Parrot VM: <http://wiki.github.com/TiMBuS/fun>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To get hedgehog lisp compiling under OSX, I did this:

        tar zxvf hedge*
        cd hedge*
        mkdir o
        cd o
        TARGET_PATH=$HOME/opt
        [[ -d $TARGET_PATH ]] || mkdir $TARGET_PATH
        ../configure BSD $TARGET_PATH
        vim ../hh_common.h +69 # change to #include <sys/wait.h>
        make

If anyone knows how to get it to do STDIN please let me in.

</comment><comment><USER6> Simplicity and minimalism are independent concepts. To use the author's example, converting 100 lines of linear code to 12 3-line functions is making things shorter (minimalist), and almost certainly is making it more interesting and fun, but also less simple and therefore more difficult to understand.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish I could upvote this twice. I love minimal/tiny languages.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh, that's me! Hecl is pretty small - it even runs on old cell phones with Midp 1.0 profiles. At least the smallest version of it does. The core itself is pretty small too.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow. I ignore HN (and my traffic logs) for a day and look what I miss.

Glad you guys like it!

</comment><comment><USER10> Why isn't SQLite a part of this list?

<comment><USER11> Everything there is an implementation of a full (i.e., turing complete) programming language. SQL is not Turing Complete (at least not without non- standard recursion extensions, if memory serves).

<comment><USER12> > non-standard recursion extensions

WITH RECURSIVE queries are part of the SQL 99 standard.</comment></comment></comment>


Web application design: the REST of the story (Also see linked long email discussion) - <AUTHOR> http://www.findinglisp.com/blog/2004/11/web-application-design-rest-of-story.html <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to Ralph's post on UCW: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=24783>

<comment><USER2> I'd be very interested to hear others views on the CPS or closures style. Myself, I think it's flawed for the reasons given in my other post but I may be missing something and if so would like to know what. Else it seems an elegant but impractical solution for the real world; you're trying to store all possible future contexts for all your clients without knowing when a client has gone away making to safe to reclaim resources. Far better to have each client store some of that in the URLs that make up the returned HTML.

On the REST side, O'Reilly have a book out recently for those that want to understand more. <http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529260/>

<comment><AUTHOR> This issue brings to mind the very old saying "Nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed." As much as I admire and would love to work with the CPS style, right now, with the http protocol, REST seems like the way to go as it works best with that protocol. If you use CPS, you have to fight against what HTTP provides, and in doing so, you loose performance and scaling ability very quickly. When a new protocol comes along, maybe CPS will be the best approach. Until then, "Nature" must be obeyed.</comment></comment></comment>


How Not To Run Customer Service: 2 months of downtime on file a storage site - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/11/mediamax-deletes-your-files-creates-a-social-network-based-on-storage/

<comment><USER2> Ouch, that sucks for those users...

Jason sneered at the idea of social networking based around storage, but that's actually not a bad idea. Storage itself is boring, but it's the basis of any service really. So if you add more than storing, say like sharing, publishing, and file manipulation (image editing, or Writely perhaps), then you have something particularly useful in a social context.

For example, say you put a bunch of images up on your storage site and now you'd like to publish them as a gallery for your family. Wouldn't it be nice to just select them all and click a "Publish to gallery" button?

Not to toot my own horn, but a previous site of mine did exactly this and about 10,000 users seemed to really like it at the time (I had to shut it down though for various reasons, including being a solo founder and trying to run two company at the same time).

I imagine the future of something like that could be in integrating the various components out there already now like S3 + Google Docs + publishing to various social sites. It just seems disjointed that I have to go to separate websites to access my photos, my calendar, my documents, my friends, etc. and that none of them really work together yet...</comment>


Calling Futhark from C and Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://futhark-lang.org/blog/2017-10-26-calling-futhark-from-c-and-haskell.html <comment><USER2> It's nice seeing Futhark on here. I prefer my array languages to be more like APL or J, but perhaps this is better for longer code. I know it is easier for the compiler to put on the GPU I guess?

<comment><AUTHOR> The biggest issue with compiling APL and J is the presence of dynamic types (and other dynamic behaviour). For the subset of APL can that can be resolved statically, I don't see why they should be particularly difficult (Co-dfns[0] seems to be making good progress). To handle anywhere near full APL, you probably need some complicated JIT compiler, unfortunately.

[0]: [https://github.com/arcfide/Co-dfns](https://github.com/arcfide/Co-dfns)

<comment><USER2> Big follower of Aaron's work even though I don't use it. He gave two recent talks at Dyalog 17' last week. Both worth at least flipping through the slides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hooray! I've been playing with Futhark from time to time (and it's lovely).

I have eagerly been awaiting this development! This is great!

I write much of my code in Rust these days and being able to generate plain C entrypoints to my Futhark functions will allow me to bridge both worlds :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good to hear! You will probably encounter some limitations due to the missing support for error recovery. When you do, we'd very much like to hear from you, to get an understanding of what a proper solution should look like.

For example, we probably should not handle "catastrophic" errors like GPU/compiler bugs the same way we handle "incidental" errors like bounds check failures. The former might well poison the entire context, while the latter should permit subsequent entry points to work.

<comment><USER3> I have a question regarding the new library generation: is this also supported by futhark-c (or are there plans to support this down the line)?

I'd like to be able to fall back to CPU execution when OpenCL is not available on a platform. I realize this means I will need to reduce the problem set significantly, but it would be nice to be able to run a small demo on unsupported platforms as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, both futhark-c and futhark-opencl use the exact same infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chuckled at relevant favicon

[https://futhark-lang.org/performance.html](https://futhark- lang.org/performance.html)

<comment><USER5> Good eye! Sanic sped

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the integration C and Haskell. And of course Python. Looking forward to play with it soon!

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to see "efficient string sorting" as one of the examples, as it is structurally very different from most vector operations, yet it can be parallelized very well.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a little tricky to implement irregular algorithms in Futhark, but I'd like to give it a try. Do you know of a nice data-parallel algorithm for string sorting?

<comment><USER7> That would be cool! Radix-sort is an algorithm that is both simple and it can be parallelized [1].

There's also a sorting-contest [2], perhaps it can bring some more inspiration.

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

[2] [http://sortbenchmark.org/](http://sortbenchmark.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> We already have both a radix sort[0] and a bitonic merge sort[1]. They perform alright - nothing world-shaking, but fine. I was more interested in whether string sorting has some particularly clever algorithms.

[0]: [https://github.com/diku- dk/futhark/blob/master/futlib/radix_...](https://github.com/diku- dk/futhark/blob/master/futlib/radix_sort.fut)

[1]: [https://github.com/diku- dk/futhark/blob/master/futlib/merge_...](https://github.com/diku- dk/futhark/blob/master/futlib/merge_sort.fut)

<comment><USER7> Nice to see that you have radix-sorting covered!

I'm not aware of sorting algorithms that use "clever" tricks; the challenge with sorting seems to be in the low-level optimization (e.g. making sure that no unnecessary data-copying takes place).

If you are looking for a challenge, then you could try sorting arbitrary length strings (more difficult since the comparison operator is of non- constant time). Or do something like the Burrows-Wheeler transform [1], where you sort all rotations of a very large string. This is actually a very useful operation for building a large search index [2]. Many people in e.g. bioinformatics would be very interested in a fast solution.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrows%E2%80%93Wheeler_transf...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrows%E2%80%93Wheeler_transform)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM-index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM- index)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hasura – A Batteries-included App Development Platform - <AUTHOR> http://hasura.io/ <comment><USER2> These guys seem to be into the cool stuff. I'm jealous.

> Friday afternoon update: Programming in @elmlang and loving it! Will be > building an modular admin app for @HasuraHQ. Hopefully in #elmlang

[https://twitter.com/34_Cross/status/589052000966283265](https://twitter.com/34_Cross/status/589052000966283265)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very cool! I'm curious how would you compare the example given "Database (hasuradb) + Search (elasticsearch-hasura) + A Templating microservice (express + underscore)" to something like "MongoDB + Search(?) + (express + underscore) + Deploy to Heroku"?

Anyways keep up the good work!

<comment><USER4> One of the core hasura devs here. 'hasura-db' is a wrapper over postgres. The idea is to provide a very neat json api to talk to postgres with a permissions model. However, you still have the raw access to postgres. So, you can always fire up a django/rails/etc app and connect to your postgres instance and implement any custom functionality that can't be done using hasura-db's json api.

Coming to your question: Since the underlying db which actually stores your data is postgres, you get all the power of a relational database. With hasura- db you get a 'monogodb' like document api. So, hasura-db + postgres tries to capture the best of both worlds.

Since your data is (designed to be) completely normalized in postgres, 'hasura-search' integrates with elastic search to create denormalised documents for efficient full text search in a declarative way. So, hasura- search esentially listens to any changes to your data in postgres and builds denormalised documents that are inserted/updated/deleted into elasticsearch. So, your elasticsearch data stays in sync with your postgres data in real time without any effort from your side ! Deployment will be at least as easy as on Heroku.

<comment><USER3> I see, so seems like your core innovation is this new kind of db along with amazing search integration. Then why become a full platform (seems harder to gain traction)? Why not become a DB/Search company and create a software package that customers use (kinda like MongoDB) rather than having to deploy their code onto your platform (like Heroku)? Just curious, I'm sure you may have had good technical / business reasons.

<comment><USER5> Hi! Core Hasura dev here. We're trying to make hasura a place to deploy microservice style applications where hasura handles all the operational things for you (sort of like heroku) and then also wrap up a lot of great existing tech as ready-to-eat microservices that just need declarative configuration. Like wrapping over Postgres and elasticsearch. Next up on our list is file handling and cloud storage integration. Then caching.

So the idea is that a lot of things are figured out, in hopefully not idiotic ways. Built on open stuff. We're going to try to make our communication a lot more clear on that and then have a sensible demo to try it out and see the benefits of getting something super customisable setup without writing too much code.

<comment><USER3> That actually sounds brilliant and I think there's definitely a need for something like this. As a mobile developer I often use Parse as a starting point b/c it allows fast prototyping for clients, but invariably I get frustrated by limitations and then roll my own backend.

I see on your site that you guys are looking to develop iOS & Android SDKs, feel free to let me know if you would like a hand with that :) (My email is in my profile).

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can you tell us more about the "cloud code" feature and how it works exactly? compared to Parse for instance? do I need to write hooks and deploy a an app on my own server and hooks get called over the network when an api endpoint get called or something?

<comment><USER4> Your 'cloud code' is just another microservice. You write it in whatever language you wish, package it with its dependencies as a docker image which will then be deployed onto hasura's platform and linked with the rest of your app's infrastructure.

Essentially, you don't have to deploy anything on your own server. Whatever functionality hasura's 'batteries' can't provide (yet), you write it as another microservice. At the end of the day, your app is composed of several microservices (containers running in the cloud), few hasura provided and few custom written.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Random side note: I think I should point out that Spanish-speakers will associate the name of the platform with "basura" (garbage).

<comment><USER8> The Greek Cypriot language has a similar word "Hasura" which means waste, possibly also from Spanish influences.

<comment><USER5> Oh bugger. But we came up with Hasura from: Haskell + Asura. Asura is the Hindi/Sanskrit word for Demon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool that they used FP to develop this, but haven't we already learned the lesson about the BaaS stuff?

<comment><USER10> And what would be that lesson?

<comment><USER9> That it's a huge mistake to use a BaaS for anything but a demo. I think it's good to abstract out certain details that don't pertain to your application logic, and that's precisely what something like Heroku does. In my experience, a BaaS adds barely anything to that, and subtracts way more in terms of flexibility and lock-in.

The amount of administration that using a BaaS saves (as opposed to something like Heroku) is minimal; the time that you'd spend doing straightforward admin stuff is just moved over to working around limitations of the BaaS, and is often multiplied in the process. The amount of actual code that using a BaaS saves is between 100-400 lines for a web application. Awful deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title suggests that Hasura is a platform for developing Haskell apps. It is not true. Hasura is language/framework agnostic. The core parts of Hasura are built using Haskell.

Edit: If the op can remove the word 'Haskell' from the title, it would be great.

<comment><USER11> We fixed the title, though unfortunately didn't see this yesterday. In the future, you or anyone is welcome to shoot us an email at email@example.com if something needs fixing. We can't read all the threads, but we do see all the emails.</comment></comment>


The lunacy of trying to avoid NSA spying by moving tech out of the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/the-lunacy-of-trying-to-avoid-nsa-spying-by-moving-e-mail-and-cloud-out-of-the-us-7000019908/

<comment><USER2> The lunacy is to limit yourself thinking about self-regulations that an authority supposedly has to deal with. Fact - the authority will get over that, and then there is nothing you can do but to submit to any of its demands, like it or not. Those who move outside of the known surveillance regimes may still be monitored (illegally), but that's all. They will have the freedom to defend themselves from clandestine access and the most important - not be forced to submit to onerous demands.

</comment><comment><USER3> One big point of the whole debate is that they DON'T actually jump through a lot of hoops to "listen in to your e-mail, cloud data transfers, phone calls, whatever." They just do it, and force the companies to comply, and if necessary, then lie to the courts.

And my communication might be "fair game" outside - IF they get to it. With an American company the question is just WHEN will they get to it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Except: losing jobs and business in USA will help sway public opinion against broad scale undirected mass surveillance.

<comment><USER5> Sway the public against undirected mass __domestic __surveillance, maybe. Conveniently, all the NSA 's targets would then be foreign and subject to almost no review. So you have to worry both about the NSA and any local agencies.

The reality, if you are worried about US/UK/FR/DE/RU/CN intelligence, don't use the cloud.

<comment><USER6> exactly, and i've heard that sentiment a LOT more than i've heard the "let's move to europe" idea.</comment></comment></comment>


New e-paper may send e-ink running for its e-mommy - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/10/new-e-paper-may-send-e-ink-running-for-its-e-mommy.ars <comment><USER2> sounds great.. but e-ink has been out of the lab for at least 10 years now. Are we going to have to wait 5-10 more years to see this in a consumer device?</comment>


Reducing the attack surface with static sites - <AUTHOR> https://www.contentful.com/blog/2018/03/16/reducing-the-attack-surface-with-static-sites/ <comment><USER2> The complexity of modern sites is insane. It's also insane to relay on other peoples services ('cloud' and 'server-less') for simple websites, like publishing articles or blog-posts. Those services could be gone tomorrow!

A lot of users may also chose to disable JavaScript in the future, as more and more malicious actors use JavaScript to exploit people (the latest trend is to hack sites and js- libraries to make other people mine crypto-currency).

I believe the answer to many of todays challenges is to move on to static sites, and to make most sites work without JavaScript. You only need JavaScript if you make a site that is basically an application. A blog or a newspaper is not an application.

For a blogger, another feature with static sites is that they don't require a specific back-end (like wordpres or drupal). As a static site, their thoughts and ideas can live on for millenniums, long after the last wordpress or drupal instances has shut down.

Disclosure: I'm not un-biased here. I'm actually so biased that I wrote my own static site generator last year to make it simple to publish blogs that works great on both mobile devices and PC's.

<comment><USER3> _Those services could be gone tomorrow!_

This is true of any hosting service. Unless it's your machine in your rack in your building attached to your pipe, there's a company that could suddenly shut down tomorrow and leave you in the lurch.

 _I believe the answer to many of todays challenges is to move on to static sites, and to make most sites work without JavaScript_

The second part I agree with. The first part... meh. I've built a _lot_ of database-backed websites, and have been doing so since the days when people used the term "DHTML" to refer to using JavaScript in a web page. The patterns for doing it are well-understood, the tools for doing it are solid, and for anything bigger than a brochureware site I'll basically always turn to a database (and even for the brochureware, I'll usually do it, since I don't want to train non-technical people on how to edit files and run a static generator).

<comment><USER2> >> Those services could be gone tomorrow!

> This is true of any hosting service.

It's a lot easier to just 'scp ~/blog/. new-server:/var/www' than to set up a database server, go trough configuration and hardening of apache and php (or whatever) and make everything play together, again. Some of my sites have been down for 6 months now, because I never found the time to do that.

> since I don't want to train non-technical people on how to edit files and > run a static generator

Some friends of mine and I are planning a hosted service for this, where users can push sites trough git, scp, ftp or interactively maintain the site trough a panel (using JavaScript) - and download the entire site at any time as a zipfile (or git clone). The sites will be static, but there will be (optional) comments, using a 3rd party service.

<comment><USER3> _It 's a lot easier to just 'scp ~/blog/. new-server:/var/www' than to set up a database server, go trough configuration and hardening of apache and php (or whatever) and make everything play together, again._

Well, you need to do some configuration and hardening no matter what. And while I don't use PHP anymore, I've found that for what I do the deployment story these days is easy enough.

 _Some friends of mine and I are planning a hosted service for this, where users can push sites trough git, scp, ftp or interactively maintain the site trough a panel (using JavaScript) - and download the entire site at any time as a zipfile (or git clone). The sites will be static, but there will be (optional) comments, using a 3rd party service._

So after suggesting people don't trust third-party services, you're going to start and advertise your own, and integrate someone else's service into it? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why pay for static generator or hosting when you can use eg. GitHub Pages and Publii CMS ([https://getpublii.com](https://getpublii.com))?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, or netlify cms [0] if you want a version which is usable from the net.

[0] [https://www.netlifycms.org/](https://www.netlifycms.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We host high target content (politician sites + dns + email) and I've been moving to static html on siloed s3+cloudfront when clients dont need to use cms themselves. It's also much less bloated with a goal of really fast load times on mobile.

The problem is of course most of our staff - and definitely all of our clients that want to be able to edit themselves - still rely on WordPress and worse a bunch of plugins that are impossible to lock down.

I've wondered if others have setup WordPress in a separate environment to let clients do what they want and then host the static html elsewhere. Like maybe wp-supercache could give a zip download of the static content.

<comment><USER7> Why not just use contentful (linked article is written by contentful) + static gen? My company has used contentful + middleman for almost 2 years now. It took a while to hone in (payloads used to be extremely large), but once it's dialed, the experience is better than WP for both writers and designers.

<comment><USER6> I haven't looked into it more than the five minutes surfing around after reading this article, so maybe I should look into it more.

It was hard to find info on their visual cms like editor in the few minutes I poked around Contentful's site. Maybe their CMS like editor is really simple/similar to wordpress I will read some more.

Another quick thought is wordpress has a huge amount of plugins that these non-technical clients are used to, so probably some retooling would be needed to reproduce what they want.

I have no problem creating and updating static sites myself so the only need really is to provide clients a way to add content and mess around with site through a visual cms (e.g. use a visual editor plugin to add new slideshow type content and change layouts).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In sum: static sites will keep the scary hackers away. Here's how you build a self-hosted static site with Contentful, starting at just $250/month for the privilege of using our editor. What a great deal!

<comment><USER9> The article wasn't that pitch-heavy, and most of it was applicable to general static sites. They have $0 and $39/month plans as well.

<comment><USER10> I can't find the $39 plan although I remember that from a while back. Maybe it's been discontinued?

<comment><USER11> Check the "logo attribution" option and the $0 plan becomes the $39 plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was just thinking the other day, while upgrading Django LTS and dependencies for the second time now, with its endless list of reverse incompatible changes (on each intermediate version) that I need to consider, on I site I currently maintain to be responsible but don't have a lot of time to invest on: oh, this is why people use static site generators.

Come to think of it, it would be nice if I could specify a dynamic site in some way that is reverse compatible forever the same way flat files are. Ah, but the march toward progress.

</comment><comment><USER13> #BringBackGeoCities

<comment><USER14> they have =) [https://neocities.org/](https://neocities.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Funny to read this today. Over the past few days I've been building a personal project related to this.

Just a way to easily update some small tidbits in a static site without a CMS.

Something between a static site and a full-blown CMS. A way add some editing capabilities to static sites.

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

<comment><USER16> Hello - I tried sending you an email to be added to your list but was hit with a "550 relay not permitted!" notice.

<comment><USER15> Yikes! Sorry about that, fixed it now. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Static websites definitely has the advantage of being simple, and stay away from security issues. They are fast in loading too.

But, there are several disadvantages. Its a pain when you want to grow your website, want content from users. Profile management, login etc.

<comment><USER18> You just need to decouple your thinking about the "website" and the "admin of the website". Ultimately, reading the content is a completely separate activity to writing the content. You can have a completely static site, with all the advantages that brings, with exactly the same backend management system you would if it was a dynamic website.

Some static site generators will even do most of the work for you. For example, GatsbyJS has a data connector for Wordpress - [https://using- wordpress.gatsbyjs.org/](https://using-wordpress.gatsbyjs.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You can easily reduce the attack surface by shutting down computer.</comment>


Citrix Acquires Podio - <AUTHOR> https://blog.citrixonline.com/citrix-acquires-podio-adding-new-ways-for-you-to-work-and-collaborate

<comment><USER2> Podio - great app! Used it for a while but after seeing the simplicity of Trello, had to move. But Podio is really great if you like the extra features.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are so many companies/products that I only discover due to being acquired.

</comment><comment><USER4> Podio is actually quite cool... But where is Citrix going? Are they still relevant as a company?

<comment><USER5> Relevant? GoToMeeting is #2 in enterprise online meeting software, right after Webex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope Citrix will keep Podio as is, and integrate them well (just like HipChat).

</comment><comment><USER7> The Podio guys are great. Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER8> And what will happen to Podio?

<comment> brown9-2 _How will Podio customers be affected by the acquisition?

You'll start seeing the Citrix brand on the Podio website, but beyond that, not much should change for you. Podio will continue to provide its great service to you, just as it always has. As we move forward, the Podio team will be working with their new colleagues at Citrix to offer even greater value for Podio users and customers.

Will Podio still be free?

Podio will continue to offer a free option as well as a premium service choice. Details on pricing can be found at <https://company.podio.com/pricing.*>

[http://blog.podio.com/2012/04/11/q-a-with-citrixs- bernardo-d...](http://blog.podio.com/2012/04/11/q-a-with-citrixs-bernardo-de- albergaria/)

<comment><USER8> Thanks! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Must co-founders live together? - <AUTHOR>

My co-founder and I both live in the SF Bay Area about 30 minutes away from each other. We are both eager to start a startup and we are planning on applying for the winter program. We are good friends and we would have no problem living together during the startup's early period. However, this decision has become more complicated for me because a few months ago I moved in with my girlfriend. Although she's 100% supportive of my starting a startup and working crazy hours (as long as we get to see each other once in a while), she's unhappy about my potentially moving out and living with my co-founder. She's worried it would set back our relationship, and she doesn't want to have to find another roommate (which I understand). Plus, she's not convinced (and neither am I, actually) that this new living situation would only last 3 month, during the initial phase of the YCombinator program.
Is living together with your co-founder critical for the success of a startup? If YCombinator accepts our application, will I have to choose between joining the program and continuing to live with my girlfriend? Will YCombinator reject us if my co-founder and I don't commit to living together?
Thanks in advance for clarifying this.
<comment><USER2> Don't worry about it. I think it's so common because it's a cost saving measure, but if you have a comfortable living situation in the Bay Area already it would make absolutely no sense to move and would even cost you money if you have to break leases and such.

</comment><comment><USER3> From that synopsis, it sounds like you have more potential distractions than not living with your cofounder.

</comment><comment><USER4> i've been working with my co-founder remotely for years. We use email, the phone with a headset --so we can use the keyboard at the same time, and we meet every week on a regular schedule. This has worked for us really well. For me it has been great to be able to step away from each other in order to keep fresh, otherwise i find we over work the problems instead of execute them.</comment>


Cannonball Run's creator, rebel and writer Brock Yates, has left us - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/automobiles/brock-yates-dead.html?ref=business <comment><AUTHOR> A lot of people aren't aware that the Cannonball Run was a real race long before it became a cheesy eighties movie.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Baker_Sea-To- Shinin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Baker_Sea-To-Shining- Sea_Memorial_Trophy_Dash)

There aren't any male seventies motor heads that were not excited by the idea of the race. Things had started to change in the seventies and it was the last final hurrah of the street race tradition that dates back to the nineteen twenties in America.

[http://theoldmotor.com/?p=115758](http://theoldmotor.com/?p=115758)

My dad told me of seeing grainy copies of C'était un rendez-vous at antique car collector meetings. I keep a copy handy whenever I need to quicken my pulse.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%27%C3%A9tait_un_rendez- vous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%27%C3%A9tait_un_rendez-vous)

I remain hopeful that a future generation will break convention and begin street racing anew.</comment>


Compressive Sensing (video by Emmanuel Candes) - <AUTHOR> http://ee380.stanford.edu/permlinks/Candes.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is part of the regular Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium Series. Visit <http://ee380.stanford.edu> to see other talks about other aspects of computer systems.</comment>


Show HN: Android canary products and diagnostic prototype - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Flat+Bit+Labs <comment><AUTHOR> It'd be great to get any feedback on these. I've tested only on a Samsung 4S-mini. Some notes:

\- Inside, the apps are Cordova and ~1500 lines of vanilla ES5 and CSS

\- Behind that are some build/preprocess steps which basically flow: img scraping and resize scripts -> [content] + ~100 line yaml config -> build scripts -> apk

\- Prototype app includes diagnostic controls for the game/passtime itself and various DOM event/property logging used to construct/refine things

\- The "finished" apps are intended as a boring-as-possible, feature-minimum case

\- Thinking about whether it's worth developing this or similar toward 99¢ apps, custom versions, an SaaS approach or something else</comment>


Make Data Analysis Great Again: Millions of Bots in Trump's Twitter Account - <AUTHOR> https://thetravelinghacker.io/posts/5 <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing and can't wait to see the technical article. I didn't know the Twitter API provided this much data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! I will try to publish the technical article this week!</comment></comment>


What's Your Type? The Myers-Briggs Test and the Rise of the Personality Quiz - <AUTHOR> https://www.theringer.com/2018/8/31/17800414/myers-briggs-personality-brokers-merve-emre-book <comment><USER2> On the one hand, Myers-Briggs is very useful for correlative anecdotes (ie. ENTJs have these problems, INFJs respond these ways, etc.). On the other hand, the test/re-test validity is low because people tend to mistype a lot. Maybe the model just isn't good enough, but the concept is useful in areas.</comment>


Chinese lunar probe landing video - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyjyf4ANGIo <comment><USER2> Impressive! Video quality is top!</comment>


U.S. government recognizes gamers as athletes - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamespot.com/news/us-government-recognizes-league-of-legends-players-as-pro-athletes-6411377 <comment><AUTHOR> I love video games. The problem I have with recognizing video gaming as a sport is mainly that the rules and playing fields change too often, and with no regulatory bodies to provide checks and balances to these changes. The developer of the game being played can change and patch whatever they want, whenever they want, with no oversight.

Not to mention, the sport being played is essentially whatever the "cool" game is at the time, which changes year after year. It would be difficult to maintain interest in a game for even 2 Olympic cycles, let alone hundreds. Can Starcraft 1 still generate massive world-wide interest in 2013? How will LoL be doing in 2023?

Meanwhile traditional gaming and sports haven't changed a whole lot over the hundreds or even thousands of years we have played them, they have stood the test of time and are still capable of generating massive world-wide interest. Video games cannot claim to have done this.

With that said Im not against awarding visas to pro gamers.

<comment><USER2> > traditional gaming and sports haven't changed a whole lot over the hundreds > or even thousands of years we have played them

They change less frequent, but they do change. Wikipedia has a list of rules and changes of soccer: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_the_Game_(association_f...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_the_Game_\(association_football\))

<comment><USER3> i think the point though, is that the governing body for soccer has stayed the same, and a soccer player's status continues to be recognized despite a change in the rules. the structure of governance for whatever game is currently popular gets tossed and re-established as soon as a new game gains popularity. The organizations sponsoring these gamers for immigration purposes don't have much in the way of permanence or reliability. it seems like a huge potential for fraud or abuse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Heh. So they can get a P-1a visa now? That is an improvement over the mess of an O-1 or a dicey Tourist visa. A long time ago when the robotics club invited some Japanese Sumo robot competitors over there was a tremendous fuss over what sort of Visa they could get.

<comment><USER5> Are you an entrepreneur who failed to get a visa? Do you like video games?

Do we have an opportunity for you!

<comment><USER6> I might be wrong, but don't entrepreneurs usually need long stay visas to do long term work? An athlete/performer visa only allows you to stay for the duration, only. Hardly any residency.

<comment><USER7> True, but I'm sure we can hack it:

"Individual Athlete - Time needed to complete the event, competition or performance, not to exceed 5 years

Individual Athlete –Increments of up to 5 years in order to continue or complete the event, competition or performance.

Total stay is limited to 10 years."

[http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b...](http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextchannel=19860b89284a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextoid=19860b89284a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is chess a sport? If so, this decision is logical.

<comment><USER9> You don't need motor skills for chess, but you do for e-sports. If racing is a sport, why is racing in a simulator not? The only difference is the lack of g-forces.

<comment><USER10> > The only difference is the lack of g-forces.

And the heat (racing cars become hot, to say nothing of the fireproof suit), the noise (they are _very_ noisy) and the fact you are actually risking your life (or, at least, serious injury). The most damage Gran Turismo 4 can cause is an RSI...

<comment><USER9> Well, sure, but those are not determining factors in the definition of 'sport'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> All this time, I've been a jock?!

</comment><comment><USER12> I've actually been watching the current LCS despite not playing LoL for a while (it was too addictive).

Games spectatorship pushes all the same buttons that real sports do, and Riot is very intelligently pushing it in the same direction, with the excitable commentators and highlighting the personalities of the top players.

The kids are making money by training to be the best at something that is fun to watch, and businesses are making money off marketing them. Seems analogous to sports in the important ways.

</comment><comment><USER13> Cool, yet another sport I can take an active disinterest in.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am not surprised, this is the government that also recognizes pizza as a vegetable.

[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45306416/ns/health- diet_and_nutrit...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45306416/ns/health- diet_and_nutrition/t/pizza-vegetable-congress-says-yes/#.UeH9zRZHYb8)

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe I should be a cyberathelete.... How crazy is this. Recently parents everywhere discouraged the amount of time spent playing games. Now it could be argued by the kid they're working on their professional skills.

<comment><USER16> Spending all your time playing games at the expense of your education is about as good a strategy as spending all your time playing sports in the hopes of becoming a professional athlete.

Only a few people become good enough to get paid to play sports, and of those people even fewer can get paid enough to turn it into a viable career. Banking your life on getting lucky like that without any kind of fallback plan is not a particularly sound decision.

<comment><USER17> There are many people who make a living off sports but don't do so professionally.

As an example, I knew many D1 tennis players who could charge upwards of 70$ an hour teaching private lessons (of which the club would take ~20$). I know one guy who is a pretty exceptional player but no where near good enough to make a living on the professional tour, and he brings in about 50,000$ every summer, then goes on tour with his band all winter.

I was merely a good high school player and even back then I was making 15/hr coaching and 25/hr for lessons. That's more than I make now sadly!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hah. Back in 95 i was the guy people laughed at for claiming that one day games would be considered a pro sport and guys would be able to score girls by being good players.

Should have betted on that.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure there is much proof to the latter. :) I think the critical components to groupies is fame and/or fortune. Although the female gaming 'athletes' may be in to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> When Oculus Rift gamers start running all day long in their Virtuix Omni's, they will indeed become athletes who optimize food intake and workout schedule.

</comment><comment><USER21> What about binge eaters? I bet they are athletes too

</comment><comment><USER22> LoL: A more legitimate sport than NASCAR.</comment>


Animated string matching algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://www-igm.univ-mlv.fr/~lecroq/string/index.html <comment><USER2> Oh, java apparently has an update, so it won't run.

Thanks for being web friendly.</comment>


Two museums having an informative fight on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2017/09/two-museums-are-having-fight-twitter-and-its-gloriously <comment><USER2> Okay just to help out my fellow long-suffering HN users I made a Medium account and posted these tweets there.

[https://medium.com/@thethreader/natural-history-museum- versu...](https://medium.com/@thethreader/natural-history-museum-versus- science-museum-2f57786a37a3)

<comment><USER3> Funny how they jump to using nukes and meteors but draw the line at DDT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm writing this from one of these museums (The Natural History Museum) after having been in the Science Museum yesterday. They are both well worth a visit and since they are next to each other and both donation-only, I definitely recommend to visit both. This Twitter thread as well, if anything, encourages the same thing: don't choose between the two, go for both.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's brilliant! I really wish Twitter had a better way of letting me follow the conversation between these two accounts without having to read through a few dozen tweets from other random people (and if there is one and I missed it, please let me know)

<comment><USER6> I always wondered why Twitter has so much friction in its UI. I suppose it's on purpose, right? But what are they trying to achieve - more page views?

Following conversations is so hard, one has to click around so many times.

<comment><USER2> It seems like internally they have a lot of 'product paralysis', unlike say Facebook which is happy to experiment with totally random things sometimes. That said over the last couple years things have been improving on the 'shipping new product/product changes' front for Twitter. Also to be fair when Twitter's user-facing UI seemed stagnant they were building the ad system, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Both museums are really very good - for children and adults alike. Plus they're free to visit too.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know how to add to this thread... But it's brilliant! Will someone ping the Smithsonian? That seems like it would unite those monarchists real quick. And we all know how that would go ^.~

<comment><USER9> Just because someone is from the UK doesn't make them a monarchist, nor does it make them a 'republican' (repubicanist?!) if they are from a country with a president as is its head of state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> NHM has decent footing in their open source contributions. I vote for them. Also dinosaurs n stuff.

</comment><comment><USER11> In Indonesia, We have a term for "fight on twitter": Twitwar or Twitwor.

<comment><USER12> I like. Inventing (invention of) words, phrases is one of my favorite things. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniglet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniglet)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Was that a locust eating a _mouse?_

<comment><USER2> Probably artificial/decorative... hence being randomly stuck on a balcony

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some enterprising Brit hacker needs to turn this squabble into a real video game, STAT!

<comment><USER15> An American is free to do it. After all GOT is American.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, but it wouldn't be British enough. These museums are British institutions, sir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was darling. I like to imagine the two Social Media Managers are dating.

<comment><USER17> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyOX4G7TmE0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyOX4G7TmE0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Informative"?

<comment><USER19> You probably learned quite a lot about the scope of their collections. (I've been to bothmany times, but didn't know SciM had a Polaris.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This site is doing something very weird with the scrolling.

</comment><comment><USER21> The fact that I have to rely upon a news site with some of the worst _IN YOUR FACE_ ad UI to embed each tweet in this conversation thread individually is pretty damning for Twitter. Why can't I organically discover / follow this on Twitter itself? It really had so much potential for being the heartbeat of the Internet, and maybe for an age it was. However, they never innovated or evolved leaving their biggest innovation to be "140 characters".

<comment><USER22> This is exactly what Twitter's "moments" feature is for, I'd be surprised if it wasn't featured there at one point.

<comment><USER23> How do I access the moments feature. There is nothing on the homepage about moments. Doing a simple text search on the page turns up nothing.

Doing a Google search for "twitter moments" results in the about page, again with no info on how to access the feature. This is followed by some news articles saying moments has been replaced by an "explore" tab, which I again can't find.

No wonder twitter is going down the drain. :-(

<comment><USER24> On twitter.com it's the second of four items in the navbar at the top: Home, _Moments_ , Notifications, and Messages.

<comment><USER21> There is no such tab for me.

<comment><USER24> Are you signed in? The top navbar is only present if you're signed in[1], otherwise you should see "Moments" as the top contents of _Featured_ [2].

If you're signed in and don't see it perhaps when Moments first came out a couple years ago you installed one of the various addons to hide it and don't remember it?

[1] [https://imgur.com/Zp4v6sZ](https://imgur.com/Zp4v6sZ)

[2] [https://imgur.com/Y8e7RQE](https://imgur.com/Y8e7RQE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Jesus. Ads load before the actual content. How horribly slow can this site be.

<comment><USER26> I could barely read the page at all because every time I scrolled, the content disappeared. Sometimes it came back, sometimes not. Grumble grumble grumble...!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: More programmer friendly alternatives to Evernote? - <AUTHOR> I've been using Evernote for a while to keep track of notes that I'd like to be easily synced across a variety of devices.
However Evernote has a tendency to annoyingly format code and text in general that I don't want to be formatted. This usually happens during copy/paste operations.  I just want all my notes to be fixed width font size, and without formatting.
Maybe the option is to just revert to a text file that I rsync or keep in a repo somewhere, but I do enjoy the convenience of using Evernote in that it always syncs automatically. <comment><USER2> I use org-mode:

[http://orgmode.org/](http://orgmode.org/)

... in conjunction with Unison:

[http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/)

</comment><comment><USER3> OneNote tries to be very good about respecting the format of copy/pasted stuff (and uses the Office method of giving you a few options after pasting to possibly reformat, but only at your option).

It keeps a Code style for formatting handy in the list of quick styles.

It syncs well across devices (using OneDrive, of course) and these days is also multiplatform with apps for all major platforms (Windows, iOS, Android, Mac OS X).

<comment><USER4> Actually works reasonably well on Linux as well using [https://github.com/xybu/onedrive-d](https://github.com/xybu/onedrive-d)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its mentioned below but Org-Mode plus Dropbox is the way I manage my days at work.

Evernote is probably great for others, but I want to store my information in a way that its accessible in its raw form, I dont trust these cloud services to be around or have a meaningful way of exporting the data the day I want to switch.

<comment><USER2> Dropbox isn't bad, but Unison runs on just about anything, including *BSD, ARM processors, etc. etc. +1 for org-mode though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recommend Trello. I switched over to Trello precisely because of the annoying formatting issues in Evernote. I like it because of its simplicity - it uses Arial size 10 for everything, and you can lay out all your to do lists on one page. I find that Evernote is too fiddly.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm interested in this as well. I've been using org-mode and Dropbox for many years, but have become interested in something I can (a) easily use with a phone, and (b) use photos with. I've been pleased, in these capacities, with Evernote so far, but would love something that's either open source or not subscription-based.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have been using Google Docs for the last year at my new job. It has worked out reasonably well as it is primarly me that reads it. But it is super easy to cut and paste (incl images) and as well as share docs. Auto-save, accessible on my phone etc etc.

But, I would love to hear what others use as I am not convinced Google docs is necessarily the best way.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're on a Mac there is an app named Quiver ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quiver-programmers- notebook/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quiver-programmers- notebook/id866773894?mt=12)).

</comment><comment><USER10> I like to use Jrnl and keep everything in a git repo: [https://maebert.github.io/jrnl/](https://maebert.github.io/jrnl/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Wiznote has a good linux presence, but no good for mobile phones. I like that it doesn't do that RTF thing you're talking about.

</comment><comment><USER12> Org-mode and Dropbox, Orgzly on Android, Google Keep for anything else.</comment>


Here's how to get 1 million app downloads - <AUTHOR> http://dombracher.com/how-to-get-1-million-app-downloads/

<comment><AUTHOR> This lays down how tough things really are. If you are starting out in the mobile app space, then I recommend you read this!</comment>


Why did the Titanic Sink - <AUTHOR> http://historyonthenet.com/Titanic/blame.htm

<comment><USER2> Under the weight of words? To give employment to millions of hacks with nothing else to write? To give Belfast taxi drivers something to say? Because it could?</comment>


Wow If you drink 2 cups of coffee/day, 18 coffee trees are out there just for you - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/18-coffee-trees-person-stats.php

<comment><USER2> Good. I like trees. We need all the trees we can get. Drink more coffee!</comment>


President-Elect Obama's Choices for Key Science Posts Hailed - <AUTHOR> http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=47585194

<comment><USER2> Obama is so 2.0! :-) As much as the geek in me feels thrilled with that, I am more concerned is this amalgamation of brainiacs going to make the administration better and bring the country out of the deep s __t the previous one (who coined the phrase 'InternetS') left with?</comment>