Milky Way's Black Hole Just Flared, Growing 75 Times as Bright for a Few Hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.universetoday.com/143150/milky-ways-black-hole-just-flared-growing-75-times-as-bright-for-a-few-hours/#more-143150 <comment><USER2> Former astronomer here! A lot of the comments here are about how this event occurred 26,000 years ago. I thought it would be useful to describe how we think about these things in astronomy.

Firstly, yes it is true that this happened 26,000 years ago! More specifically, the event happened 26,000 years ago in our reference frame. There are other reference frames in which this event occurred two minutes ago or 5 million years ago. But generally these are not useful reference frames since the Earth's reference frame is not too different from the reference frame with respect to the center of mass of the Galaxy (we are not moving all that fast compared to the speed of light).

That said, as astronomers we are not particularly interested in dating precisely when the event happened. 26,000 years is a very long time in human history, but it's not very long on astronomical timescales. Not very much has changed in the Galaxy over the past 26,000 years, so we don't gain much by dating it at the time the event occurred (with respect to the Earth's reference frame, of course). Furthermore, we wouldn't even know exactly when it happened even if we wanted to! Our clocks are very precise here on Earth, but our distance measurements to most celestial objects are very fuzzy, particularly the further away you get. Because of this, these sorts of events are always referred to with respect to the year they were observed on Earth. (Thus, the most recent nearby supernova is known as 1987A because it was the first supernova observed in 1987.)

This all changes when you are studying more distant objects though! For very distant galaxies, we are now seeing things when the universe was considerably younger and things were much different. Then it becomes important to keep the event's age in mind. For these objects we will actually refer to their _redshift_. The redshift can be measured relatively well, and is related to the distance and age of the event via the Hubble constant and the acceleration parameter. Measuring these parameters is tricky and is a whole subfield of their own, so we usually stick with redshift as it is more related to things we can easily measure.

A final note on the paper itself. These observations were taken at Keck on Mauna Kea. There has been a lot of controversy around the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, so the authors actually acknowledge indigenous Hawaiians specifically in their paper:

> The authors wish to recognize that the summit of Maunakea has always held a > very significant cultural role for the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are > most fortunate to have the opportunity to observe from this mountain.

<comment><USER3> > _(we are not moving all that fast compared to the speed of light)_

From what I understand, no one ever moves (fast, slow, whatever) compared to the speed of light from their own reference point.

The speed of light is always the same for all observers from their own reference point, so how do you reconcile those statements?

<comment><USER4> If we (sol / earth) were moving at a speed significantly closer to the (absolute) speed of light we would experience significant time dilation.

This is significant for observing external events and correlating phase shifts to figure out distances.

Eg. Things in the external universe may appear to happen extremely quickly.

It's actually very important.

Regardless of how fast you appear to be moving in your _own_ frame of reference, the speed you're travelling in _absolute terms_ affects what you observe externally (and specifically with regard to how fast you are moving compared to what you observing)

<comment><USER5> The thing we are at rest (ish) relative to is the cosmic microwave background. That's why we aren't moving that much relative to the rest of the universe, on average.

Time dilation is relative between you and some other reference frame. All the "stuff" in the universe nearby is (fairly) static, so we can say we are not moving fast, but it's still relative to the stuff around is.

<comment><USER6> Huh. So could one use that as a standard frame of reference?

<comment><USER7> Yes and no. The laws of physics do not pick out a preferred frame of reference, and they should be symmetrical under lorentz transformation, but the fact that we live in a cosmological universe starting with a big bang breaks that symmetry in practice.

It's similar to how the laws of physics are symmetrical under translation and rotation, but the presence of matter around us means the surface of the earth is not the same as the surface of the sun.

So, while we might use the CMB as a standard reference frame, the laws of physics should not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I didn't realize until recently that supermassives and classic black holes are formed differently.

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

It's also fun to remember that this event happened 26,000 years ago.

<comment><USER9> > It's also fun to remember that this event happened 26,000 years ago.

This is one of my favorite (but also the most daunting) things about space. It is so awesome (and bizarre) that we can essentially observe the past. In this case, the event occurred sometime around when humans were figuring out how to make baskets[1].

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

<comment><USER10> So a photon emitted/reflected by some human weaving a basket may have just interacted with the Milky Way's supermassive black hole!

<comment><USER11> ...and a gamma ray burst from some distant galaxy that will strike Earth sometime in the future causing a great catastrophy could have already happened while the human was putting on the finishing touches on the basket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seemed that the pulse jumped for about an hour. Obviously this happened thousands of years ago, but would that be a literal hour? How much time is lost/bent in transit?

<comment><USER13> We're moving _around_ it, but we aren't moving very fast (relative to c), and our relative distance from it isn't changing much. The duration shouldn't be much different despite the distance.

<comment><USER14> That makes an assumption that the flare was unidirectional. If it's a beam, it could be that Earth was in the beam for an hour, but its duration is anything (like, 1M years)

<comment><USER15> This is something awesome to consider. Perhaps we only passed through the beam. Perhaps the beam itself was rotating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here is the researcher's visualization of the near-infrared flaring activity: [https://twitter.com/i/status/1160368687590727680](https://twitter.com/i/status/1160368687590727680)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's amazing given the lifespan of celestial entities that we can witness such significant change in such seemingly human time scales (2 hours).

The milky way galaxy is estimated to be ~13.7B years old. The black hole was brighter for a 2 hours. That event, as a percentage of the milky way's age represents: 0.00000000000001666500016665%.

As a comparison of what that represents as a unit of time in an average human lifespan (79 years) it equals:

0.00000069197080291971 seconds. 0.00069197080291971 milliseconds. 0.69197080291971 microseconds.

<comment><USER18> I think a better comparison is to the size of the region in which this event occurred. For the event to appear to last only 2 hours to us, it can't have occurred in a region more than 2 light hours across. That's only 14 astronomical units, less than the diameter of the orbit of Saturn. There are stars bigger than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's awesome when a natural phenomenon matches a timescale that a human being can witness, rather than taking centuries or more.

We get to see the whole show.

<comment><USER20> There is a neat physical argument that was made back when quasars and the like were just being discovered. Basically if the flash of brightness only lasts an hour, then you can argue convincingly that the source of the flash must be less than a light-hour across. The faster the flash, the smaller the bound on the size of the phenomena. This is what lead people to realize that quasars are wildly energetic but necessarily very small

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think this video does a great job at describing what happened, how, and the theories of why.

[https://youtu.be/Or8O_b7F640](https://youtu.be/Or8O_b7F640)

Is there an object massive enough to make the black hole emit that amount of light, but which is not bright enough to be detected by our equipment?

</comment><comment><USER22> Out of curiosity, is it possible that some cataclysmic event in the universe happened thousands of years ago that has yet to reach and potentially affect Earth?

<comment><USER23> I'm also interested. And adding to the question: Is it possible that this particular flare-up may be a forward echo of such an event? I.e. have we observed this happen before in other parts of the Universe?

<comment><USER24> It would need to travel faster than light

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can any astronomers comment on if we are in any danger of getting blasted with gamma radiation or other black hole excretions?

<comment><USER26> Any such radiation would have arrived with the light of the black hole flaring. The fact that you're alive to read this implies that nothing fatal happened.

<comment><USER27> Maybe some people did die, it's a bit too early to tell if it killed, say ten people. It's probably very unlikely though.

More importantly, there is a very wide spectrum of danger between death and no effect, especially when you consider things like cancer. I assumed that was the point of the grandparent's question.

<comment><USER28> X-class flares from our sun are 10E32 or so ergs. The black hole flares were roughly 10E35 ergs, about a thousand times more energetic but they are about a billion times farther away than our sun. Apply N^2 law and . . .

The amount of radiation you received from the Sagittarius flares is almost indescribably tiny. Many, many orders of magnitude less than the cosmic ray background radiation that we already live with. If you didn't have a sensor pointed right at the BH, you wouldn't be able to distinguish it from the noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What software are these people using for the fantastic animations?

Is there an established framework for astrophysics that allows to work on a high level to produce these nice visuals?

</comment><comment><USER30> What are the chances that cosmic events of this kind could affect Earth ? say.. ironically massaging atmospheric state and climate change ?

<comment><USER31> There is evidence they have:

> Based on the concentration of Fe-60 in the crust, Knie estimated that the > supernova exploded at least 100 light-years from Earth—three times the > distance at which it could've obliterated the ozone layer—but close enough > to potentially alter cloud formation, and thus, climate. While no mass- > extinction events happened 2.8 million years ago, some drastic climate > changes did take place. [1]

[1] [http://nautil.us/issue/22/slow/the-secret-history-of-the- sup...](http://nautil.us/issue/22/slow/the-secret-history-of-the-supernova-at- the-bottom-of-the-sea)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Seems odd that it would be a hunan-timescale event. Why not a few microseconds or a few million years?

<comment><USER33> The time scale is set by the orbital period of the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innermost_stable_circular_orbi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innermost_stable_circular_orbit)). That period depends on the spin of both the black hole and the accretion disk, but the possible orbital periods range from 4 to 54 minutes for our galaxy's supermassive black hole. The period is proportional to the black hole mass, so for a really big black hole like the one in M87, the period is weeks long. That's part of the reason why the EHT imaged the M87 black hole, but has not produced a Sgr A* image - it takes many hours for the EHT to gather the data to produce an image, and Sgr A* is not stable on that time scale. It's like taking a long exposure of a foot race. But M87's black hole can't change much in a few hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So if the light from this event took 26 kyear to reach us, how long until the "om nom nom" sound reaches at least a Voyager probe in the interstellar medium?

Well, supernova shockwaves can travel at up to 0.1c, so at best another 234 kyear. Keep your microphones ready.

</comment><comment><USER35> Could this additional energy affect any stars near it -- possibly causing them to nova?

<comment><USER7> To the best of my knowledge, stars go nova because they have finished their fuel, and they can no longer sustain fusion once they begin fusing iron. It seems unlikely that being hit by a shockwave would trigger that. If it stripped away a lot of fuel, it would probably cause the star to go the route of a white dwarf rather than explode, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why link to ad blogs instead of the actual study [https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.01777](https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.01777)?

<comment><USER31> The article has significantly different and more approachable content that explains the context of the paper. It also has a link directly to the paper at the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm always amazed at the amount of information and details astronomers can get from such a blurry little picture. It puts our galaxy's size in better perspective.

</comment><comment><USER38> Remember when Beowulf Shaeffer took the Long Shot to the galactic core and discovered that it was exploding and would wipe out life in Known Space, so the Puppeteers moved their planets to parts unknown?

Could this flare be a foreshock of that? It'd be nice to have some time to settle my affairs.

</comment><comment><USER39> Could it be one of the Voyagers?

</comment><comment><USER5> I like to play Bingo with comments on science stories:

\- "it was actually X thousand years ago"

\- "it's actually false color, why can't we see what it really looks like"

\- "surely this means quantum FTL communication works"

\- something casually eugenic

and recently, with the Mauna Kea stories, there's a guaranteed "who do these bozos think they are, science is more important than anything"

</comment><comment><USER40> [Removed poor joke, no one thinks it's funny and it's attracting downvotes.. Please stop hurting my karma. I can't delete this post anymore either. Sorry.]

<comment><USER41> Why multiply by 2 ?

<comment><USER42> OP is hypothesizing that an event happened on earth which emitted something traveling at the speed of light[0], traveled some distance, then interacted with some object which emitted something else[1] which traveled back to be observed on Earth. Hence, double the distance between Earth and the black hole, because it's traveling twice.

I'm not sure exactly what OP is implying though.

[0] light, radiation, information, etc.

[1] ie, reflected, or caused some reaction

<comment><USER43> > I'm not sure exactly what OP is implying though.

The destruction of Atlantis?

<comment><USER44> Atlantis is usually put at "just before history" \-- Atlantis was destroyed and then their survivors did all the impressive stuff around the world like building the pyramids and Stonehenge, so around ~5000 years ago.

You're looking at something more like 50,000 years ago, so something like the Toba population bottleneck (which probably didn't happen 70,000 years ago).

The cleansing of _saidin_ in the previous turning of the Wheel, might work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The Eye of Terror Pulsed... :)

</comment><comment><USER46> The word "Just" is bending my mind! I guess it means we Just saw it, but it probably happened a while ago.

<comment> crooked-v From our perspective, it was 26,000 years ago - though for some takes on physics, it's easier to intuitively understand if you say "now, with a 26,000-year lag time on rendering updates".

<comment><USER47> I prefer "now, from something 26000 years away"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Doesn't look like I can comment on this article or contact the author, but there is a typo.

> SO-2 made it's closest approach about a year before the flaring observed in > May 2019.

Should be its not it's

<comment><USER49> It's a lost battle.

<comment><USER46> Innit a lost battle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Um, shouldn't the headline say 25 Ky ago? It didn't "just" flare, unless "just" means "happened to for no known reason" which I suppose is a legit interpretation.

<comment><USER51> The flare "just reached us" is the way this should be understood.

Or well, we _just_ discovered it.

But I guess it would make the title less appealing. Who would read "black hole flared 25000 years ago for 1 hour"? :P

<comment><USER50> > Who would read "black hole flared 25000 years ago for 1 hour"? :P

"We Looked Back In Time 25,000 Years and You Won't Believe What We Saw"

"We Just Learned One Of The Last Things That Happened Before The Neanderthals Died Out and It Was Amazing"

Fortunately science is slightly more immune to clickbait titles than other topics. Though only slightly.

<comment><USER52> Interestingly the reverse is true for Earth events. I a mail gets delivered 75 years later, then it's news :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> If a black hole is of brightness 0 (by definition), then 75 times that is still 0. They are probably referring to something happening just outside the event horizon and thus something that is not actually the black hole and just a phenomenon caused by the black hole.

<comment><USER54> Even if there were no external matter in the vicinity of a black hole, its brightness would still not be zero thanks to Hawking radiation.

<comment><USER5> Nobody's observed Hawking radiation, so we don't know for sure.

Anyway, it's not obvious to me that the edge of a black hole is the event horizon. The event horizon is mostly empty space too. Maybe it's the ergosphere, which can be further out. Since a black hole is just a region of space, the boundary is sort of arbitrary.

<comment><USER55> Hawking radiation has been observed in multiple experiments. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.4634](https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.4634) [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1241-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1241-0)

<comment><USER56> Neither of those observations are from black holes.

<comment><USER54> That is not the claim I addressed. He said Hawking radiation has not been observed. I provided citations that it had.

<comment><USER5> It's been observed in the same way that magnetic monopoles have been observed: physical analogs have been built, but nobody has observed an actual magnetic monopole.

"Nobody has observed a magnetic monopole" is still true, even if systems that behave like quasi-monopoles have been built.

My conclusion (that we can't know for sure that black holes produce Hawking radiation) only makes sense if I was talking about observing actual Hawking radiation rather than analogs, which I was.

<comment><USER55> The claim that black holes are perfectly black is subject to those same constraints.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Learning Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://codebeatsandpixels.com/post/46227211343/learning-ruby

<comment><USER2> Wow, you've been at this for 3 whole months?!

You're _totally_ qualified to tell people what they should be learning.

Ignoring the 3 paragraph post, and the assertion that Rails is the only web framework for ruby (or that python and php also have only one), I don't get why this guy doesn't link to some code he's written or to a thing he's built?

<comment><USER3> There isn't a reason to be an asshole, richo.

Its shit like this that gives HN a bad reputation.

<comment><USER2> I'll grant you that a reply calling me on being on the asshole side of the fence being downvoted, and a dickish post getting upvotes kinda sucks.

That said, I don't subscribe at all to "I tried hard so tell me I did well". Like I said, I would have loved to see something the guy had written.

One thing that /really/ pisses me off though if trying to give advice you're not qualified to. It's dangerous and destructived. If you were trying to quickly knock something up and this guy told you that "CodeIgniter is the web framework for PHP" and then you burned days on it, would you be pleased?

<comment><USER3> >>One thing that /really/ pisses me off though if trying to give advice you're not qualified to.

Any one that would follow the advice of someone that self-admittedly is only a number of weeks in on the subject blindly gets what they deserve. That being said, there is no reason for someone to tell other new people what worked well for them. I believe people are more comfortable talking to and listening to other recent converts - they can identify with them more than the greybeards of whatever language they are interested in. I don't see a problem with someone being enthusiastic about learning something new and fun.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Calorie burner: How much better is standing up than sitting? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24532996

<comment><USER2> Good article. I've always wondered how many more calories are burned while sitting versus standing. I'm quite surprised by how much of a difference standing makes, to be honest.

Unfortunately, for the moment, I simply cannot use a stand up desk full time. I spend around 8 months out of the year travelling. At home, I have a stand up desk, and I really love it. When I'm travelling, though, I spend most of my time sitting while working at a desk, which isn't too good.

One thing I've found useful is to stretch for 5 minutes for every hour of sitting. People look at me like I'm crazy, but it makes a demonstrable difference. Kelly Starrett goes into great detail about the effects of sitting and how stretching can help in his book 'Supple Leopard'; it's worth picking up, in my opinion. ([http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Supple-Leopard-Preventing- Per...](http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Supple-Leopard-Preventing- Performance/dp/1936608588)).

The couch stretch is particularly good at counteracting tight hips caused by sitting. ([http://fitnerdz.com/2013/05/31/fitnerdz-couch- stretch/](http://fitnerdz.com/2013/05/31/fitnerdz-couch-stretch/)). Get into position, hold it for 100s, swap legs, hold it for another 100s, and repeat for every hour of sitting. It makes a huge difference to the legs, hips, and back.

<comment><USER3> Taking a break every hour or so is also good for avoiding RSI. I had RSI pretty bad several years ago, but have recovered completely. Part of the solution was using a break program to help me remember to take breaks for stretches. Currently (OS X), I'm using RSI Guard, which does what I want. More details on my RSI problems and solution here: [http://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat- rsi/](http://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat-rsi/)

<comment><USER4> Yeah I had a similar bout two years or so back.

A colleague had suffered the same problem and gave me instructions like taking a hourly break and doing a stretching excercise (rotate palm downwards and hold it flat with outstretched arm bending slightly upwards against a wall while tilting the head in the opposite direction for thirty seconds in three repeats), worked wonders for me and I've not had any problems since (still doing those stretches, although not as rigorously).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > and some studies suggest that those who sit all day live around two years > less than those who are more active.

Considering that truly unhealthy and sick people (who will soon die) probably sit more then they stand, if you remove those people from the dataset, wouldn't the interpretation become that sitting is actually extremely beneficial for the average person who will end up outliving a non-sitter person by several years?

<comment><USER6> The studies most often cited to support this finding are studies of London bus drivers vs conductors (ticket takers) on the double decker London busses. They tend to be from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, start at similar young ages, and so on, controlling for many confounding factors, but the drivers spend all day sitting, while the conductors spent most of the day on their feet.

However, when trying to find the actual study to see if they had controlled for any pre-existing conditions, I found this paper: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1008580/pdf/brji...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1008580/pdf/brjindmed00119-0013.pdf) which seems to indicate that in fact, people of heavier builds were more likely to become drivers than conductors, and conductors with heavier builds were more likely to switch to becoming drivers.

So actually, it seems that the original study may be flawed, in the way you describe. While it did study people from a young and healthy age, it hadn't considered pre-existing weight or genetic differences between drivers and conductors, and it looks like that may actually play a substantial role in the difference in findings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > So why is sitting so damaging? One thing it does is change the way our > bodies deal with sugar... but how efficiently your body does that is > affected by how physically active you are

Terrible reporting here. This has nothing to do with sitting, it has to do with inactivity. You can have an active lifestyle and still sit all day. Later it states

> blood glucose levels fell back to normal levels after a meal far more > quickly on the days when the volunteers stood than when they sat.

So what? If you don't have a medical condition related to elevated blood glucose having meal related glucose levels take longer to return to baseline shouldn't cause problems. I'm not aware of any research stating otherwise. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

There _are_ problems due to sitting though, such as

> a sharp reduction in the activity of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase

and as they mentioned standing burns far more calories (the article said 50/h) which is a good thing.

I'm all for standing but it'd be nice for reporters to get their facts straight.

<comment><USER8> This is wrong actually. Sitting is an independent risk factor for death (i.e. independent of physical activity level): [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-07-09/...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-07-09/sitting- less-could-extend-life/56117870/1)

The reasoning is that standing activates enzymes and gene expression triggered by activity in your slow-twitch high-fatigue-resistant muscles which run on fatty acids, which has all sorts of benefits for metabolism, body composition, and overall health.

<comment><USER6> Note that if you take a look at the study mentioned, [http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000828.full](http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000828.full) you find:

      Our analysis assumes that there is a causal relationship
      between sedentary behaviour and mortality.

So, it doesn't actually demonstrate it; it finds a correlation, and makes the assumption that there is causation.

However, previous studies have shown that heavier people are more likely to choose sedentary jobs: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1008580/pdf/brji...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1008580/pdf/brjindmed00119-0013.pdf) . So in fact, the causation may go in the other direction; people who are heavier, or less healthy in other ways, may be more likely to choose sedentary jobs or sedentary lifestyles.

It would be interesting to see if anyone has actually been able to demonstrate a causal effect based on changes in behavior. Does changing from a sitting desk to a standing desk actually help? I don't think that has been conclusively demonstrated.

<comment><USER8> I've seen quite a few more studies over the last year or so that come to the same conclusion. A google search returns many.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While not doubting the general findings I'd like to add a pointer that it is not a high level of glucose that raises the risk of getting diabetes II and heart disease, but fructose.

See this lecture of Dr. Lustig on sugars and how they are being metabolized in our body: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

<comment><USER10> A lot of smart nutritionists and biochemists seem to think Lustig is full of it.

[http://www.andrewkimblog.com/2013/02/quick-commentary-on- dr-...](http://www.andrewkimblog.com/2013/02/quick-commentary-on-dr-lustigs- take-on.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're going to be standing all day, stand on an anti-fatigue mat. They are used in industrial settings to reduce strain from standing, and they do make a big difference.

<comment> a-priori I use a standing desk full-time and find that two anti-fatigue mats stacked on top of each other are better than one. But one is far better than none.

Haven't tried three yet. :)

<comment><USER12> I try to stand up as much as possible - I probably stand 5-6 hours per day. I am using the kybun standing mat, and can recommend it. [http://www.kybun.com/products-and-stores/kybun- products/kybo...](http://www.kybun.com/products-and-stores/kybun- products/kybounder.html)

Get the big and thickest one, the small is just too small if you stand with legs slightly apart.

It trains your muscles while you stand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Or, to keep the blood sugar levels at a sane level, people could stop eating so much junk; protein and fat don't spike your blood sugar the way sugary carbs do.

<comment><USER14> This isn't good advice either though. Many people eat way too many fats and often consume extra protein as well. Carbs should be your main energy source (~65% of your daily calories should come from carbs) with a lot of the rest coming from protein. The solution is to continue to consume large amounts of carbs, but change the source so that the carbs are complex which are generally nutrient rich and provide a great energy source for the body.

<comment><USER13> Carbs are not essential, in fact you can survive and thrive without them. Fat and protein _are_ essential, however.

Why do you say that carbs should be your main energy source? I've seen no sound scientific evidence to support that claim.

I don't eat many carbs any more, and I'm living a lot more healthily as a result. It works for me. However, please do note that I'm not interested in getting into a debate with you on this -- that's the reason I wrote "sugary carbs"[1], which pretty much everyone agrees are bad for you.

[1]: Glucose, fructose, wheat flour are the most common culprits

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like the idea of standing desks and have loved many of the other articles previously posted on this subject, too.

I don't know what it's like for others but being a freelancer going from hot desk to hot desk, client to client and doing most of the travel by car or train - This is very hard to maintain since everything has been designed for sitting.

I might try standing on the tube from now on though but i might look weird if it's relatively empty.

<comment><USER11> Don't be so self conscious! I see plenty of people standing on public transportation when there are seats. There are plenty of reasons why I can think of:

\- They have a lot or big luggage or a backpack with them.

\- They are only going 1 stop or two.

\- They have a medical condition where sitting down and standing back up again is difficult, so it is easier to stay standing.

\- They have been sitting all day at work and want to stretch their legs.

\- They want to leave the seats for other people who wish to sit if the train fills up, whereas they don't mind standing.

\- Standing is more comfortable for them than sitting.

\- A lot of times they are reading, so I think reading might be easier standing than sitting perhaps, but I don't know because I have never tried to read on the train.

Nobody will question you.

<comment><USER16> Reason 3 includes chronic back pain in my case. It is just more comfortable to stand than to sit in the really cramped seating (I'm very tall).

<comment><USER11> I know someone who had surgery and for several months afterwards he wasn't allowed to sit. He could stand and lay down, but sitting wasn't allowed for proper healing.

Someone else I know had some kind of nerve problem in the back of her legs and she preferred to stand unless she was going to sit for a long period of time. I guess constant standing/sitting motion aggravated it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If I was to stay long term at my company, I'd probably encourage the transition to work while standing, but this is not the case, and I also don't see much interest in the subject here. Therefore, I take consolation in that after work, I go home and work on my own projects while standing, for about 3-4 hrs, so I think I'm safe...according to the article. I concur with other comments about the need for just having an active lifestyle, which should definitely compensate for working at a place like mine, where sitting at a chair in front of your monitor is expected.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been standing at a desk for almost a year now. I started because I do a lot of running (sprints etc) and your glutes go to sleep when sitting in a chair. Look at all the old people (especially women) with no butts. I'm sure it causes back pain etc to have no glut support there. Anyway, it helps to take short walks when desk standing to give the muscles a rest otherwise it can be quite fatiguing.

</comment><comment><USER19> It mentions blood sugar control as a major problem with sitting. I wonder how much benefit could be achieved by simply taking a walk after each meal?</comment>


An employee, whose last name is Null, kills our employee lookup app - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4456438/how-can-i-pass-the-string-null-through-wsdl-soap-from-as3-to-coldfusion-web <comment><USER2> This is funny, but it's also a real world example of the kind of encoding nightmare that made SOAP RPC encoding really awkward. Various SOAP toolkits used to serialize a missing value as the empty string, or a literal value like "null" or 0, or all sorts of awfulness. I think the correct thing for the spec is to set xsi:nil="true" as an attribute on the XML tag in question, but IIRC about half the toolkits didn't understand that.

(I speak in the past tense of SOAP because I am an optimist.)

<comment><USER3> Wow. I love that the S stands for Simple. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

<comment><USER4> Indeed it does: [http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the-s-...](http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the- s-stands-for-simple/)

<comment><USER5> God, I love that rant.

"I trust that the guys who wrote this have been shot." :-)

People who all run the same version of Visual Studio think SOAP is awesome. Get handed somebody else's "whiz-dull" a few times, and see how much fun it is to generate a working client using a different brand/version client stack.

<comment><USER6> I had the pleasure of writing a client for a SOAP service in a Titanium/JavaScript app not too long ago. If you don't have visual studio generating those proxy classes for you then indeed it's a huge pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have joked that I might change my name to Sample User, develop a piece of land in the country, and name my road Example Avenue, taking address 123. This would make me impervious to datamining, because my results would always be thrown out.

But a last name of 'Null' may be even better. :)

<comment><USER8> On the contrary, you'd probably receive a lot of "test" mail that leaked through.

<comment><USER9> I wonder if the guys who own asdf.com ever check the email going through email@example.com

<comment><USER10> They do (or at least have in the past). <http://www.asdf.com/asdfemail.html>. Interestingly, their real e-mail address is email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I once worked for a medical records software company. We received a bug report that a particular patient's record could not be viewed. Our support engineer remoted into the client's site and asked the secretary for the patient's name. It was Bobby Null. You can imagine what sort of underlying assumption about String serialization led to this issue. [A preemptive aside: We had proper confidentiality agreements in place. No HIPAA rules were violated.]

<comment><USER12> Doesn't telling us the patient's name violate HIPAA in itself?

<comment><USER13> Methinks the "Bobby" part is fictional. Probably a reference to Bobby Tables.

<comment><USER11> I wasn't that clever.

<comment><USER14> You lose plausible deniability by admitting that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My favorite along these lines:

<http://caterina.net/archive/001011.html>

Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake couldn't fly on Northwest Airlines because their system silently deleted her tickets.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sort of weirdly classical, like Odysseus identifying himself to the Cyclops as "Noman".

<comment><USER16> Or the schizophrenic in Hitchcocks "Psycho" called Norman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> We should add these to the list!

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/)

* No one has a name that is a reserved system keyword (Null, Nan, Unknown...)

<comment><USER18> I have received mail from SSA addressed to <myname> Unknown, because of confusion over my name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My license plate when I live in Texas was "NULL". I never got a ticket when running the toll booth and the camera OCR'd my license plate.

<comment><USER20> <http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/noplate.asp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Mr Null, the uncle of famous Bobby Tables.

<http://xkcd.com/327/>

<comment><USER22> Have a look at the response headers from any reddit page <http://www.reddit.com/> and you'll see:

 _Server '; DROP TABLE servertypes; --_

I thought it was some sort of bug or attack and reported it to them. Here's the response I got:

 _"It's a nod to<http://xkcd.com/327/>

Hope you parameterized your queries ;)"_

I love when companies do fun things like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is probably a direct consequence of the fact that XML (unlike S-expressions, or JSON) fails to be self-describing. See [PDF]: [http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/papers/xml- essence/xml-...](http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/papers/xml-essence/xml- essence.pdf)

<comment><USER24> XML is self-describing, it just so happens that XML's data model is not identical (and actually not even close) to SOAP's data model, or the typical programming language's data model.

XML itself only describes a text encoding, XML infoset describes node labeled trees, possibly graphs through xml:id and idref.

Unlike JSON it doesn't have a concept of null, it only has absence of a node. The authors of SOAP just invented a truly terrible way of mapping XML into a programming language's constructs (which are typically edge labeled trees with typed nodes).

XML is actually a decent data format for markup. Using it for other purposes (RPC format, configuration files, ...) usually doesn't end well.

<comment><USER25> With xml, I thought <tag/> was null and <tag></tag> was an empty string.

<comment><USER23> No, those two forms are equivalent: both indicate an empty string.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 19k in parking tickets for XXXXXXX license plate - [http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/10/the_price_of_vanity_plat...](http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/10/the_price_of_vanity_plates_xxx.html)

I heard of similar story of a student in Birmingham whose license plate was 'null'.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's probably a good time to bring up "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names": [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/)

</comment><comment><USER28> This fellow Adam <https://twitter.com/#!/undefined> signed up for twitter as "undefined", scaring up twitter bugs like this one: "While visiting websites like Twitter & ESPN, the webpage will suddenly switch to the twitter page of the username 'undefined', who is not one of my twitter friends or followers"... [https://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/when_i_visit_twit...](https://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/when_i_visit_twitter_the_webpage_inexplicably_changes_to_a_user_named_undefined_adam_croot).

</comment><comment><USER29> Ironic considering that the language behind (coldfusion) doesn't even have a concept of null (it just uses empty string).

</comment><comment><USER30> Well my last name have a ñ . So for example my credit card have a weird character like "&" . Others just change to n. My last name crash a educational site when I registered

<comment><USER31> Could you not replace it with 'ny' or something similar?

<comment><USER32> Using a name other than your official legal name is frowned upon in many contexts. In some countries, although not the US, it's actually illegal under many circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Something that worries me about perl to no end is tests like:

if ($lastname) { ... }

This fails when $lastname="0". But I am constantly seeing perl code that does it.

<comment><USER34> It's not Perl. I recently had a conversation with a friend who didn't like me using "if myvar == 0:" or "if myvar is 0:" in python code rather than "if myvar:". Call me paranoid, but i like to be as explicit as possible in my checks, you never know when magic conversion tricks (which are often platform- or implementation-dependant) will end up biting you in the ass.

<comment><USER32> Python is a little better than Perl or PHP on this; it won't treat the string "0" as false. It does, however, treat both 0 and None as false, and also 0.0 == 0 == False, which is the same kind of potential bug.

Generally I find that Python's avoidance of implicit string type conversions means that I almost never have this kind of bug in my Python.

On another note, `myvar is 0` is undefined behavior; Python implementations can perfectly legitimately return False for that even if myvar is, in fact, the integer 0. Try this, in Python 2.7.3:

      >>> x = 257
      >>> x is 257
      False
      >>> x = 257; x is 257
      True
      >>> 257 is 2**8 + 1
      False
      >>> 256 is 2**8
      True
      >>> x = 256
      >>> x is 256
      True

That's because `is` denotes object identity, not value equality, and for immutable objects like integers, strings, and tuples of immutable objects, object identity is fair game for optimization. In the above, "is" gives us a fascinating window into the particular optimization decisions taken by the CPython 2.7.3 interpreter. But, child, if you want your code's behavior to depend on some problem domain instead of interpreter optimizations, don't use "is" to compare integers!

<comment><USER34> Yes child, check this out: <http://lateral.netmanagers.com.ar/weblog/posts/BB979.html> , in particular my comment from two months ago. [http://lateral.netmanagers.com.ar/weblog/posts/BB979.html#co...](http://lateral.netmanagers.com.ar/weblog/posts/BB979.html#comment-424219673) and see where I'm coming from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> <http://stopsoap.com/>

</comment><comment><USER36> 17 years ago, when I got my second Internet account with my ISP, I filled in these 3 names for my choice of email address on their paper signup form.

root@ , nobody@ and daemon@

They gave me "daemon". I've terminated that account long ago, but last I checked (6 years ago?), I could still retrieve emails and dial in using a modem using that account.

</comment><comment> why-el This is hilarious. Seriously, the question votes were being incremented live. :)

</comment><comment><USER37> This is exactly why you should never mix data and code/markup. When the semantic barrier is broken, all shit breaks loose.

I've always wondered if SICP style scheme would cause these sort of problems.

<comment><USER20> It's more an issue of in-band or out-of-band signaling.

It's hard to do in-band signaling properly, but often time you only have a single data channel and then you have no choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I believe that these errors are so common they represent a Cognitive bias on the part of programmers. At some point every developer wants to execute a one line command and have the system "do something". If they cannot get that one line, then they have two options. - Wrap up more abstraction code, until one line executes (the SOAP solution), or think deeply about what you are trying to do and take things away until one line is clear and obvious (The REST solution)

</comment><comment><USER39> Dear god, so many deleted answers from people trying to be funny instead of informative! (I am counting 4 from the last hour and 3 more from the previous years)

</comment><comment><USER40> I think this is a joke, possibly inspired by the XKCD comic (link posted in the stackoverflow comments). The string "Null" would not cause this behavior.

<comment><USER41> I have personally encountered "Null" as a surname in system used by job applicants world-wide. The system's session layer encodes absent values as the string "null" at some point. The Null clan is the only problematic case, and they are numerous enough that the maintainers are aware of the problem but not so numerous to fix the session layer.

I wish I could listen in on a dinner conversation at Null house. They must have an interesting perspective about computers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is this real? I don't really understand what language they're discussing here, but wouldn't the string "Null" be distinct from the protected Null?

<comment><USER43> Not when naive serialization turns both of those into the same string "Null", which the other end deserializes into the keyword.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> At least your employee has a last name. I had an Indonesian hacker in my team, he had no last name...

It is all about assumptions. OP assumed nobody would be called Null. MusicBrainz index assumes no band chose to name themselves "Various Artists" or "[unknown]". These are advisable but how to not assume that people have last names?

</comment><comment><USER45> It once took me more time than I would like to admit to realize that the string "false" is still true.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if the "employee" is a doctor. Something similar showed up on TheDailyWTF back in 2007:

<http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Paging_Dr_0x2e__Null.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER47> Naturally the very first thing I did when opening this discussion thread was search the page for "bobby tables" and "xkcd". Of course, there were already three separate mentions of that comic in the thread.

<comment><USER48> Me too. Bobby tables is classic.

<http://xkcd.com/327/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> And this is why it is a bad idea to look for null or nil as a value representation in place of text or number. Instead, use a different representation, like an empty or non-existent element/attribute, etc.

</comment><comment><USER50> Funny, just watched monsters inc last night and saw a guy named Jonathan Null in the credits. Also, Tom Duff was there too.

</comment><comment><USER51> I have problems using a data analysis software where the stock ticker data from a company is "NAN"

</comment><comment><USER52> It's actually one of my friends database challenge. Indeed it is a funny fact

</comment><comment><USER53> I wish I could upvote this twice.

</comment><comment><USER54> type or untype?

</comment><comment><USER55> In other news, employee with last name NaN gets a huge paycheck due to software glitch...

<comment><USER56> Nan is actually a legitimate name (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan>) so if you're putting everything into upper case and not sanitizing, you're gonna have a bad time.

<comment><USER55> Patio11's article "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names"

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/)

<comment><USER57> This post reminded me of that also. I find myself sending someone that post every quarter or so :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is what bounties are for.

</comment><comment><USER59> The post is from December 2010 with no follow-up. It was likely a joke. HN got trolled.

<comment><USER60> There is a followup explaining how he solved the problem. Right there on the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> But is his first name Bobby?

<comment><USER62> Little Bobby'); DROP TABLE Students;-- Null, always getting into trouble!

<comment><USER63> little bobby tables we call him ....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Ahaha that's amazing!</comment>


Ask HN: Which Technology Should I Use for Web App Dev? - <AUTHOR>

Maybe this question has been asked a lot of time but here it is again.
Which Technology should I use/learn fro web development?
 Python/Django  Javascript full stack.  .NET MVC 5  Java EE 7  Scala / Play  Ruby on Rails.  Etc.
Goals * Be Hireable. * Can't think on another one, so basically be able to get a job.
Because if my goal were to pursue Computer Science as a lovely field, My choice would be C or Haskell.
Thanks for the answers. <comment><USER2> I would learn at least one solid backend technology to use for services and processing and one frontend technology.

If I were in your spot I would probably learn Java for the backend technology (with Jersey, Spring MVC, and Hibernate). Personally, I much prefer Ruby on Rails or Python and Django but since your goal is to be hired (and I would assume to be able to move up and make more money), I would stick with Java. It's solid and not going anywhere.

For the frontend I would say Backbone or Angular. I haven't made a decisions here but I would say Backbone is not going anywhere and will be the template for other frontend frameworks for many years to come. Angular is also strong.

Also, grab a css framework. I would choice Bootstrap.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Figure out what sector/industry you'd like to work in.

2\. Figure out what's popular in that sector

3\. Focus your skill development on that.

With some exceptions, but there's a high affinity for certain technology stacks in most sectors.

Alternately, if you want to work with C or Haskell -- start by identifying the sectors that are actually using those (they do exist), and build your understanding of the problem domains unique to that sector or your familiarity with the frameworks, libraries and toolchains that are being used on top of them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Scala and Play is a very fun stack to work with for backend. It has a lot of modern technologies needed to create awesome applications. Scala is slowly becoming more popular among startups in SF and London. Scala is a very fun language and I have enjoyed transitioning from being a Java developer to a Scala developer and learning functional paradigms in Scala.

With my Scala promotion aside, each of the stacks you have listed have great employability. You'll need to ask yourself what kind of things you are wanting to learn while using these stacks:

1\. Do you want to use a dynamic language? (Python, Ruby)

2\. Do you want to use a statically-typed language? (C#, F#, Java, Scala)

3\. Do you want to learn functional programming? (F#, Scala, Python, Ruby)

4\. Do you want to work with big data and ML? (Python, Scala)

5\. Do you want the highest chance of employability? (C#, Java)

</comment><comment><USER5> From my personal experience, people who go the java route get stuck in more corporate jobs where things are slow and boring.

Java is just not that great for web dev. Dynamic languages offer much more flexibility. Although, at the end of the day, most web apps are REST APIs with Angular or another front-end framework.

I'd say learn Rails, as there are a lot of jobs in that area of expertise. Once you get good with Rails, learn Django, and then .NET MVC

Don't stick with one. Learn multiple frameworks so you can see the pros and cons of each.

Some will integrate better with certain technologies because of community support.

</comment><comment><USER6> If your choice would be C or Haskell, you might have a look at Go (at least for the backend). It's usage is growing a lot in the last time.

Your choice may also differ from the location. In the USA Ruby on Rails experts have a good chance to find a job. In Europe (for example Germany) there are only a few well paid jobs.

</comment><comment><USER7> I might be biased, but I would still recommend Ruby on Rails.

</comment><comment><USER8> Of course ASP.NET MVC 5.

Yea, this is useless.</comment>


When should I pivot? - <AUTHOR> For example, I've built http://www.fastveneus.com as a way to connect diners to unique/discounted set-menu meals at their favourite restaurants. However, it's strictly a web app, and the bookings have been less than promising. Is the web-app dead? Should I invest in turning it into a mobile app?<p>Or is it a business model issue? E.g. that people just don't want to book and pre-pay for a meal when dining in at a restaurant, even if it's discounted through fastvenues.com <comment><USER2> I think you're missing one option; could it be that people don't know it exists? Maybe you could try marketing the product extensively before pivoting to another platform.

Good luck with the site!

PS: the first URL in your post is spelled incorrectly (fasveneus.com instead of fastvenues.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, fixed the link.

We have done some marketing via LinkedIn ad's, facebook ad's, even paying for influencial foodies, who have large followings on instagram to try a complimentary meal/booking using fastvenues.com and reviewing it, and even with a really positive review, not one real conversion. What's wrong with the product? Why or why wouldn't you use Fastvenues.com to book/reserve a unique/discounted meal at a great local restaurant?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hard truth - I think it's a mix of both. Move on.

Ease of use is everything. Consumers don't want to have to agree to ANYTHING, especially if its the value is limited to one time use.

If they were considering signing up, it would HAVE TO BE a mobile app.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can even make a booking WITHOUT an account, by checking out as a guest, still nothing. We need advice. What's wrong with the product? Why would or wouldn't you use it to find and book a unique/discounted meal at a local restaurant. You would use UberEats I'm sure for convienient delivery, or JustEat for take-out orders, why not use Fastvenues.com for the dine-in experience?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should pivot if you're tired of pursuing customers, but if you've only been coding and waiting for users to spontaneously show up then try a new tactic.

<comment><AUTHOR> The product has been built for 6 months, and we've been pursuing customers, hiring and firing sales reps, it's been a very tough battle. We've signed up 10 real restaurants, that are able to process payments and orders/bookings, but our marketing efforts using Linkedin ads, facebook etc... are un- promising. Out of 1000 targeted visitors not one has converted to a booking. You can even make a booking WITHOUT an account, by checking out as a guest, still nothing. We need advice. What's wrong with the product? Why would or wouldn't you use it to find and book a unique/discounted meal at a local restaurant.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you've put the effort into testing the idea.

Those 10 restaurants could show you numbers for how influential a discount on a meal is. If we are trying to save we avoid restaurants, maybe a small discount after you've committed to going out isn't very important or not a factor at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> those discounts look expensive. go get some real deals on there and see if things change, even if you give it away to see if its the prices your offeirng are too high

<comment><AUTHOR> so the conviencince of booking online, and reserving all in one shot and not having to take out your wallet at the restaurant, isn't enough? we'd need a really compelling discount to make people take action and find real value? What kind of discounts are we talking, 35-50%? Or in other words, what would it have to be, for you to use it? IF you would use it, or maybe you wouldn't, and if so, why?</comment></comment>


Nepal Standard Time - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepal_Standard_Time <comment><USER2> "[It] was not till 1956 that [Nepal] set [their] watches for the first time to Nepal Standard Time, with the meridian at Mt Gauri Shankar, 100km east of Kathmandu [capital of Nepal]. It wasn't Mt Everest because Gauri Shankar was closer to Nepal's centre of gravity, as it were.

It was a choice that set [Nepal's] clocks 10 minutes ahead of India, which at the time used the longitude that passed through Calcutta. When [India] switched their meridian to Hyderabad in 1971, [Nepal] officially had four degrees of separation, and presto, found ourselves a further five minutes ahead of the Indians."

[1][http://web.archive.org/web/20110725100005/http://www.nepalit...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110725100005/http://www.nepalitimes.com.np/issue/155/Heritage/10013)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's also worth mentioning Argentina,

"Argentina determines whether to observe daylight saving time on a year-by- year basis, and individual provinces may opt out of the federal decision. At present, Argentina does not observe daylight saving time."

\-- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Argentina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Argentina)

<comment><USER4> Is it incompetence, arrogance, ignorance, or ? that'd lead them to making such annoying decisions? Argentina doesn't have a nutty religion forcing them to do this right?

<comment><USER3> I don't know. I'm not from here, just living here for a few months. But I'd say none of the above.

The country is huge and could easily cover more than one timezone, I'd hazard a guess at political reasons based on that, but don't take me as an authority because I'm not

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's pretty weird indeed. Think of the misery of a traveler from/to Nepal who has to do the extra mental math every time to figure out the time for another place.

They could have settled for an easier time, considering the country stretches over quite a few longitudes. Don't know what was the logic here!

<comment><USER6> It's worse than that. In a few mile territory you have: IST - which is on a half hour. NPT - which is on a 15 minute. CST - which is several hours different (as China does not have timezones per say) BST - which is _normal_ , but is only observed in a small part of the region.

<comment><USER7> China us on one timezone.

<comment><USER8> In typical bullheaded fashion, all of China is set to Beijing time. No wonder the people in the East are trying to revolt!

<comment><USER9> Did you mean West?

<comment><USER10> Far Far Far East.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Things like this are why programmers can't have nice things. Cultural historical oddities make for fun facts and an enormous amount of added complexity.

When I propose wacky, implausible ideas to friends like "a single world-wide time zone" or "replacing all writing with the international phonetic alphabet", the idea is to reduce things that make the technical debt for supporting the whole world enormous.

As it is, English programmers are frankly, most likely to make things that only work for English speakers. And then the technical debt of supporting Latin alphabets and US time zones and all the like multiply together. We should be thankful as much of the world adopted UTF8 and UTC as early as it did, but I don't envy anyone who has to work with systems that don't have good support for internationalization. Those people are in a terrible position, and with legacy systems, they might have to implement a terribly complex set of rules that are taken for granted by most people, and sometimes not even explicitly written down anywhere outside obscure papers on the topics.

Someone mentioned the current year in the Nepali calendar is 2071. So now you know, if you want to appropriately support customers in Nepal, you might want to support their calendar. But I don't know enough about Nepal to say whether or not anyone does. The Wikipedia page List of calendars is, frankly, a bit terrifying[1].

The fundamental problems of these fun cultural artifacts is the technical debt for old systems and the barrier to entry for new systems.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_calendars#In_use](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_calendars#In_use)

<comment><USER12> >"a single world-wide time zone" or "replacing all writing with the international phonetic alphabet"

Just wow man, you are taking lazyness to a whole new level.

<comment><USER9> I'd go to bed at 7 AM and wake up at 1 PM. A regular nine to five job would be 3 PM to 11 PM.

I, personally, have pretty much no social life so it wouldn't affect me that much if we had to work nine hundred hours to seventeen hundred hours UTC while living in central time zone (UTC - 6:00).

I'd imagine we'd burn up a lot more fuel if everyone worked nights and slept days though. Also, I read somewhere that access to sunlight (or lack thereof) can alter people's emotional state.

<comment><USER13> A single timezone for the whole world made much more sense in Asimov's Robot novels. But that was because everyone lived underground or in domed cities (I forget which), so they didn't care about the position of the sun and woke up / went to bed at the same time globally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Nepal the year is 2071 ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepali_calendar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepali_calendar))

It is an amazing country. Nepal is the "roof of the world".

<comment><USER14> Nepal is not the roof of the world. Tibet is the roof of the world. I've been there and have people there, which I consider as friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unround timezone offsets are exotic to you? That's not even the _half_ of it, sonny!

How about the year where Shanghai had the same 5 minutes and 52 seconds twice:

[http://www.timeanddate.com/time/change/china/shanghai?year=1...](http://www.timeanddate.com/time/change/china/shanghai?year=1927)

Or the year where Germany had TWO hours worth of daylight savings time (hint: that happens to be Moscow time)?

[http://www.timeanddate.com/time/change/germany/berlin?year=1...](http://www.timeanddate.com/time/change/germany/berlin?year=1945)

I actually once had a production bug based on that, due to an overzealous sanity check in the Java Calendar class which considered all dates in Germany in the summer of 45 invalid...

</comment><comment><USER16> In North Korea, the year is 104. The Soviet Union had one time zone for the entire country. So 8pm in Moscow was 8pm in Vladivlostok. Afghanistan also has a 30 minute offset. Luckily for me (for now) Nepal isn't my target market!

<comment><USER17> Nope, wrong for Soviet Union, it spanned 11 time zones: Kaliningrad (Königsberg) to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, with summer/winter time.

By the way, there's another opportunity for oddity wrt. time: the change from summer to winter time and back can occur at different dates in different countries. And indeed, it does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nothing in Nepal is ever standard, even down to the shape of their national flag! :)

<comment><USER19> The construction of Nepal's flag is a straightedge-and-compass construction and is specified in their constitution.

Numberphile made a video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2Gne3UHKHs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2Gne3UHKHs)

<comment><USER20> That's an outstanding video. I immediately shared this link you kindly shared with a Facebook group about mathematics for beginners and enthusiasts. Thanks.

<comment><USER19> Almost everything Numberphile does would be good for that group!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've run into this building various analytics systems. The off-by-45-minutes timezones mean that if you want to keep your data in UTC and translate to local time in the UI, you have to maintain 15-minute granularity. (Although 30-minute or 1-hour granularity might be good enough depending on what users you need to initially support.)

</comment><comment><USER22> I recently received a bug report from a client asking for display support for "Central Western Standard Time". (+845, no DST, not officially recognized) It is the result of a compromise between Central and Western timezones in Australia, and is used by four towns and a roadhouse. (total population: ~200)

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice time zone map:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/World_Tim...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/World_Time_Zones_Map.png)

Note the 5 3/4 for Nepal.

Why is there a little chunk of Greenland that's 3 hours offset from the rest of the country?

<comment><USER24> Presumably it has more connection with Iceland than the rest of Greenland (not necessarily historically, but economically or transport or whatever).

Wikipedia doesn't mention it: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ittoqqortoormiit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ittoqqortoormiit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So does this mean that NST uses distance between indian meridian and Mt. Gauri to set the NST?

<comment><USER9> It means Nepal Time is designed to be as true to the natural time as possible for Kathmandu, the capital city. It'd be a little ridiculous to say Nepal Time is UTC + 5:41:46 though. Not much more ridiculous than what we have now but still a little more ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Tom Scott has a wonderful video walking through the overwhelming complexity of timezones: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm- gesOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY)</comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth to develop Confluence plug-ins? - <AUTHOR>

Many app developers (especially for the Mac App Store) make little money with their apps. Can anyone report who well the business with Confluence plug-ins runs? <comment><USER2> I currently work in an enterprise environment for a company with a market capitalisation of over £1B.

We run most of the Atlassian products internally. The only Confluence plug-in we have seriously considered purchasing is Gliffy ([https://www.gliffy.com/products/confluence- plugin/](https://www.gliffy.com/products/confluence-plugin/)).

The only paid-for plug-in we have across our Atlassian products is JaM ([https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.go2group.jira....](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.go2group.jira.plugin.mercury_kit)) - for bi-directional synchronisation of defects between JIRA and HP Quality Center (QC). This is because it is a real cost saving for us to not purchase QC licenses for developers.

Can you clarify what it is you are seeking a report on?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to read some reports about selling via the Atlassian Marketplace in general. It is clear, that the actual selling heavily depends on the concrete product, but if it is like in the Mac App Store, I would no longer wonder if it would be a good idea to develop software for Confluence.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, I have no idea if it is a viable commercial venture or not.

If I wanted to research such a thing, I'd be keen to reach out to sellers on Atlassian Marketplace in a non-competing plug-in space to find out.

It would be great if anybody who sells on the Marketplace would comment here.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't Paul Graham give more public talks? - <AUTHOR> I've been checking Youtube for the past year or two looking for any new PG talk or interview to no avail. Anyone aware if he's giving more talks and where I can find them or if not why he's not giving more public talks?<p>I find them super enlightening and just fun to listen to. <comment><USER2> Here's an essay he wrote about why he's not very interested in public speaking: [http://paulgraham.com/speak.html](http://paulgraham.com/speak.html)</comment>


Twitter reproduces 99.8% of George Orwell's novel 1984 - <AUTHOR> http://scrivna.com/projects/tweetprose/ I tested the Infinite Monkey Theorem (kinda) using words found on Twitter. They unknowingly reproduced 98% of George Orwell's novel "1984" in 12 hours, and went on to complete 99.8% of the entire book in ~9 days. <comment><USER2> If by reproduces you mean 99.8% of individual words in the novel could be found independently in tweets - the Oxford English Dictionary could reproduce most of Orwell's novel too if all you need is each word to have been used somewhere.

This could be much more interesting if it was considered a look at words falling out of common use, or to compare the literacy levels of different sites etc.</comment>


What I learnt by working with two startups at a time. - <AUTHOR> http://snooptank.com/what-i-learnt-by-working-with-two-startups-at-a-time/

<comment><USER2> Health and rest are biggies. First to go and first to undermine your success. Good reminders!</comment>


Why is there so much fear surrounding LiPo batteries? - <AUTHOR> http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/230155/why-is-there-so-much-fear-surrounding-lipo-batteries <comment><AUTHOR> The videos in the accepted answer are worth watching, though it does make me a little worried about the phone currently (hah!) sitting in my pocket...</comment>


VC's apathy towards founders without elite college education kills a startup. - <AUTHOR> http://www.lionsher.com/

<comment><USER2> It sounds more like they killed your motivation to continue - you had a product and top tier customers, they didn't take that away from you.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This could very well be a one off incident but is very discouraging for people who actually try to start something here in India.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really, its like blaming someone else for your mistakes. Uncool

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you considered a sale of the business?</comment>


Show HN: Load testing with AWS Lambda - <AUTHOR> http://veldstra.org/2016/02/18/project-dino-load-testing-on-lambda-with-artillery.html?hn <comment><USER2> If the server you're targeting is quite slow in terms of sending a response back, let's say its 500ms on average, isn't this an expensive exercise? I mean, AWS Lambda charges for every 100ms of utilisation.

<comment><USER3> Come on, this is penny pinching.

Amazon charges 1/50,000th of a penny per 100ms, so 1 second is still 1/5000th of a penny. You need 5000 seconds so well over an hour (90 minutes) to pay Amazon a measly 1 cents for an hour of their resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A similar project was a winner in Gopher Gala [https://goad.io/](https://goad.io/)</comment>


Official list of phoned-home info revealed by Microsoft - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/06/microsoft_windows_10_creators_update/ <comment><USER3> Most striking for me is not only access to your documents, but also:

>events generated by the operating system, and your "inking and typing data."

Sounds like a key logger virus, but then built-in the OS? Is this for real?

<comment><USER4> Ostensibly it's for debugging crash dumps.

In reality you can bet there will be NSL's and other legal tools used to co- opt this stuff for more noble aims, like defending against terrorism and protecting our children via fishing expeditions and secret gag orders.

<comment><USER5> > via fishing expeditions...

If you already have access to the things I type and my metadata includes the websites I visit, you don't really need to phish me to get my credentials.

If a service also happens to not support 2FA and doesn't have some sort of account activity section, you can effectively have control of me over that service, without me ever doing anything wrong and me not even suspecting a thing.

<comment><USER6> Inkling meant fish, as in the legal enforcement sense of using an unrelated charge to obtain a warrant which is then used to fish for evidence of a more serious crime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those thinking Enterprise and/or Education may be better, it's only better if you're using it in an environment where privacy settings are enforced via Group Policy or some other method. Standalone (like I'm running it) is really not much better than Pro unless you go through and manually intervene.

For example, the default telemetry level is "Enhanced":

"The Enhanced level gathers data about how Windows and apps are used and how they perform. This level also includes data from both the Basic and Security levels. This level helps to improve the user experience with the operating system and apps. Data from this level can be abstracted into patterns and trends that can help Microsoft determine future improvements.

This is the default level for Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education editions, and the minimum level needed to quickly identify and address Windows, Windows Server, and System Center quality issues." [1]

On a fresh install of Windows 10 Enterprise I still have to manually disable updates by disabling/setting permissions on scheduled tasks for updates and I'm still prompted for things like "Use OneDrive!". Cortana is also enabled by default.

[1] [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/itpro/windows/configure/...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/itpro/windows/configure/configure-windows-telemetry-in-your-organization)

</comment><comment><USER8> One Windows 10 version that many people are ignorant of is Windows 10 for education, which is based on the enterprise edition. It has the ability to disable almost all data collecting / advertising features . Cortana doesn't even exist on this version. If you can grab this, and most university or college students should be able to for free, it'll be a big improvement in privacy.

Edit: from what I recall, Microsoft stated that advertising didn't have a place in education, or something to that effect

<comment><USER9> >Cortana doesn't even exist on this version.

This used to be the case, but it's no longer so. The latest version of Education (1703) includes Cortana.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _Engineers, with permission from Microsoft's privacy governance team, can > obtain users ' documents that trigger crashes in applications, so they can > work out what's going wrong. The techies can also run diagnostic tools > remotely on the computers, again with permission from their overseers._

So in other words: engineering access to your personal documents (and computer) is mediated by a group of people who also shouldn't have access in the first place. Got it.

When I close my eyes, it's almost like I can vividly picture the crappy NSA PowerPoint slides that must exist, detailing "Windows telemetry exploitation" or some such. At the very least, the information has to be incredibly useful for targeting purposes.

<comment><USER11> Someone should file a mass copyright infringement suit. Did they really have permission to copy those documents? Charge them on the RIAA scale of thousands of dollars per infringing copy.

There's implications for legal discovery here too. Remember the other day when one of the documents in the Uber/Otto case was found on a user's machine? What happens when people start sending in discovery fishing expeditions to get documents from Microsoft?

<comment><USER12> There is no copyright infringement. Anyone running Win10 has agreed to give them access via the EULA.

<comment><USER13> Except where I haven't.

EULA's aren't law in my opinion, and that's what laws are: _opinions_ , collectively. I can't be forced to agree to something that strongly violates other contracts I'm required to be a party to, in my opinion.

All we need are rulings, and the enactment of laws, to support my opinion along with the cessation of wholesale data collection by the OS vendor.

While we're waiting for that all we have is technical solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wouldn't half of that make it illegal to use for government agencies in many countries?

They're one config error away from sending classified data to Microsoft.

<comment><USER15> > They're one config error away from sending classified data to Microsoft.

No they aren't, because classified data is only handled on isolated networks.

<comment><USER16> lol, obviously that's not even remotely (get it?) accurate.

classified data _should_ only be handled on isolated networks.

<comment><USER15> Handling classified data on an unapproved network is both illegal and a serious security violation in every environment I have worked in. If you have that going on, Windows phoning home is the least of your worries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Microsoft is absolutely out of control with this shit. I was recently flipping through BI articles and came across this [0]. "Using data from millions of its subscribers … The findings come from people who use Microsoft Word and/or Outlook". WTF? Sure enough, I opted out of telemetry but that apparently doesn't include the content of business documents and email. 7 clicks to find that option. I guarantee you 99% of Office 365 users have no idea this is happening.

Microsoft customers aren't getting scroogled, they are getting straight fucked. Not only are they slurping everything imaginable up, but actual people are going through the data and doing stories on business insider.

My problem is I actually like their products. I'm cheering for the day the EU (the US won't do anything so sadly I have to cheer for a foreign government) wakes up and slaps them around. Hopefully it's hard enough to get them to change their ways.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-data-the-most- confu...](http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-data-the-most-confusing- words-in-english-2017-3)

<comment><USER18> I'm sure Microsoft is mining Office 365 as hard as Google is mining GMail. To believe otherwise seems incredibly naive.

<comment><USER19> I don't think one is better than the other, but it comes down to average user's expectations from cloud software and from desktop software.

My last company was very paranoid about security. Things like never leaving your desktop unattended, changing password every 4 weeks, encrypted disks, encrypted emails, forbidding most of cloud services... All the while happily using Windows and Outlook.

Also, although Google knows everything about me, they have so far managed to prevent security incidents, leaks and embarrassing deals (apart being forced to provide backdoor to NSA). They seem to know what they are doing security- wise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you absolutely have to use Windows (like me) is it possible to block all the telemetry at the router level, maybe somekind of hardware firewall? Do we have a list of IPs to blacklist?

<comment><USER21> You can try, but to be frank you can never be sure. The only 100% way to stop telemetry is to work disconnected from the Internet.

A slightly safer version of Windows is Enterprise LTSB but I don't think you can legally buy it as an individual.

<comment><USER22> I just added the above linked endpoints to my hosts file. Not sure how well that'll work.

<comment><USER23> You have to block using firewall. As hosts file is being bypassed. Plenty of malware modify hosts file.

<comment><USER22> Ahhh, it seems I should've read the entire comment thread. Thanks to both of you for the notification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Isn't it a bit of a pathetic approach to tackle this topic with: How can we turn off this telemetry craziness. Shouldn't we USE something that just does not scan you're stuff at all. Like Linux or something? Sure it might not be that well round up like Win. But at least it will not penetrate your bum hole by design and will become round up eventually.

<comment><USER25> Well, I try to for most applications, but I'm actually moving my wife's laptop back to windows. Linux was fine for most things, but when something breaks or doesn't work, I have to fix it - and I don't have the time. Getting hardware like Bluetooth or external touchscreens to work is an absolute nightmare with the state of driver support.

<comment><USER26> It sounds like linux breaks, but you know what happens when "stuff on windows breaks"? Well, it's the same: you'll have to fix it.

Ubuntu LTS is really hard to break unless you're constantly screwing around. The same happens on windows.

Don't complain about community-supported distros. Buy a commercially supported distribution with long term releases, and you're set.

<comment><USER12> Linux still doesn't work well on a lot of laptop hardware.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean by "doesn't work well on a lot of laptop hardware"?

I'm using Lenovo Yoga 510, not Ubuntu-certified, two-in-one device with a touchscreen and a dedicated graphics card. Sure, there's no such thing as a tablet mode in any of the Linux distributions at the moment, but it works. WiFi works. Touchscreen works. Open source graphics driver works. Battery usage has no noticeable difference compared to Windows.

In my three or four years of running Ubuntu-based distributions, I'm yet to find a single laptop where WiFi / sound card / touch screen or any other piece of laptop hardware that doesn't work.

<comment><USER12> There are still sleep / hibernation issues and excessive power use. Plus as you said, tablet mode doesn't work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How does this compare with Apple? I haven't seen so many articles about what MacOS slurps, is that because it is better behaved?

<comment><USER28> By default everything is backed up to iCloud right?

<comment><USER29> You can barely backup an iPhone to the free iCloud option. There is no free Mac backup to iCloud.

Also imagine the bandwidth requirements, for many people such a backup would run forever without completing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there a place where people have put together a conclusive list/script to remove/turn off as much telemetry as possible?

I've seen various lists on reddit, HN etc - but they all seem to have different bits.

Perhaps a GitHub Gist that can be crowdsourced to help people ensure they get every single hidden option turned off?

<comment><USER31> Honestly, your best bet is to use a mac.

<comment><USER32> Did you try running Little Snitch lately? There's at least 5-6 daemons that keep contacting Apple and reporting on you on mac as well. And pretty much every 3rd party app uploads behaviour analytics without the ability to turn it off as well.

<comment><USER8> I installed Little Snitch for cracked Adobe suite, but holy fuck the constant barrage of daemons trying to connect made me disable it completely. Albeit most of them seemed to be related to iCloud or app updates

<comment><USER33> This is my experience as well with Adobe CC. At least 10 different daemons, some of them instances of node.js constantly connecting to adobe-owned IPs. Some of them even using very high amounts of CPU. Turning everything off from the CC settings didn't even make a difference.

I don't want fucking software I paid for to make my PC a part of a botnet, so I deleted all their stuff and tried to cancel my subscription to CC. I couldn't do that because their terms allow them to charge your credit card for the remainder of the year, even if you receive no service. After a few angry emails with a supervisor they finally agreed to cancel my subscription.

What a shady POS company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Cool, so I will have backup data in NSA, and Microsoft. Do you think it's possible to recover my data from their servers easily?

Looks like 'my data' will soon be something strange, and suspicious.

<comment><USER35> Some people tried it already and court rejected their cases.

<comment><USER34> Heh, usually when I get a stupid enough idea, it turns out that someone had that before :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I cant comment on the article since I don't have any actual data on the subject (it doesn't seem they do either). But I do have a slightly on-topic question for HN readers using Windows in enterprise:

You can run popular Linux distributions off grid and still receive security updates via a local package repository. Can you still do something like this with Windows? Does it require an special Windows 10 version?

<comment><USER37> I think you need an Enterprise license to customise the update process. Not even Pro will do, although with that you can turn off the forced updates, which Home users can't.

<comment><USER38> Last I heard, Pro can only delay updates for 14 days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The article doesn't have a full list, it has a set of examples. The technet pages linked in the article don't have a full set of information either.

I have the distinct impression that regardless of settings, some data gets sent.

I also have the distinct impression that the data will be for sale - <USER2> usefulness of a good portion of the data is questionable and some would only be useful for application developers.

What the list does have enough of ... is enough information for adversarial parties to want to target it.

It's not that hard to stop using windows. More people should.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder how this compares to Android while using Google's services and accepting their terms (admittedly I allow everything by default). Is anyone aware of such analysis?

</comment><comment><USER41> The reason I installed ubuntu on my laptop.

<comment><USER42> For the convenient Amazon button in the dock?

<comment><USER43> Wow, what a dilemma! Which one should I go for: full-bore telemetry including memory contents and keyboard events with RCE capabilities _or_ an Amazon button that just sits there until I click it? Truly, this is like _Sophie 's Choice_ /s

<comment><USER44> False dichotomy. Other distros/envs not supporting scummy practices exist too.

<comment><USER43> I was using (explicitly marked) sarcasm to highlight the false equivalence in parent's post. Obviously the choices of OS is not limited to Windows vs. Unity on Ubuntu

<comment><USER44> Right, but your response to scummy practices was "which is why I use [other thing with scummy practices]."

I'm sure you can justify why a button isn't as bad as spyware to yourself, but to anyone who puts up with neither, the parent comment makes sense without needing to 'equate' the two. They're both not things you'd put up with; and the 'sophie's choice' (yes, I saw the tag) joke would instead just be a response for a different platform.

<comment><USER43> > Right, but your response to scummy practices was "which is why I use [other > thing with scummy practices]."

This is comparing apples to oranges though: on one side we have a Unity lens _that can be turned off_ and is restricted to searches, and on the other you have what I can only describe as a turnkey APT (RAT,RCE, process spy, device spy, keylogger, memory scraper) that _cannot be switched off_ \- how hard do you think it would be for a nation-state to 'enrich' and intercept/redirect this telemetry?

You lose a great deal of detail by intentionally avoiding the nuance of the situation: murder by starvation or Nitrogen asphyxiation is still death, but there is value in discussing the cruelty of persons who would choose one method over the other to kill, especially if one of them lets you opt-out.

Additionally, Ubuntu and Unity (host of the Amazon button) are not equivalent in any case. I use Ubuntu with KDE, others with XFCE or Gnome. So using Ubuntu in no way equates with putting up with scummy practices.

edit: expanded and split 2nd paragraph

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'd like to know if there are any C# devs who moved to Linux and how is the whole experience.

<comment><USER46> It's better now with asp.net core and visual studio code both of which run rather well on Debian Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Some troubling sounding ones; \- All the physical memory used by Windows at the point of the crash \- URL for a specific two second chunk of content if there is an error

\- Image & video resolution, video length, file sizes types and encoding

\- URLs (which may include search terms)

\- Ink strokes written, text before and after the ink insertion point, recognized text entered

\- Time and result of each connection attempt (WiFi)

\- Mobile Equipment ID (IMEI) and Mobile Country Code (MCCO)

\- Whether the user clicked or hovered on UI controls or hotspots

</comment><comment><USER48> Useful utility I remember from a few years ago: [https://www.safer- networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/](https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot- anti-beacon/)

I mostly used it to block the Windows 7 telemetry that they backported.

I don't know how up-to-date they're keeping it, though. I fear Microsoft is adding more hooks faster than Spybot can block them.

<comment><USER49> It's infuriating that I'm still paranoid about what my paid for Win 7 OS sends out, despite hiding updates and trying to keep on top of it.

Then again, with IME etc, who siphons more? We've gone wildly wrong somewhere that this is the norm. Wildly wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Ahh, the "Relevant Ads" button. No matter which way it turns, you still get adds. I am tempted to ask "Is this button broken /s?" but I know it's a feature and not a bug.

</comment><comment><USER49> Privacy journey. It'll take a while to purge that tripe. Makes me feel sick thinking of the corporate weasel on the end of the post.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The original title of this post was "The sheer amount of data Windows 10 sends from your PC".

Which was shorted from the article title "Put down your coffee and admire the sheer amount of data Windows 10 Creators Update will slurp from your PC"

But now he HN title got changed to "Official list of phoned-home info revealed by Microsoft" whih is misleading or let's say down-playing the whole story. The story is more than yesterdays HN story, it shades a not so nice picture about what really happen.

<comment><USER51> The "Official list of phoned-home info revealed by Microsoft" is the subheading from the article, and offers a neutral tone compared to the biased headline of "The sheer amount of data Windows 10 Creators Update will slurp from your PC".

While general consensus will likely be that that it _is_ too much data collection, it's more ethical - from a journalism standpoint - to allow each reader to decide that for themselves based on the facts. I find it odd that The Register used a biased headline, while delegating the unbiased phrase to the role of a subheading. I suspect the neutral subheading was provided by the author of the article, while the headline was manufactured by someone whose job it is to drive traffic/views.

<comment><USER52> > I find it odd that The Register used a biased headline, while delegating the > unbiased phrase to the role of a subheading.

The only thing odd about that is that The Register has a more neutral tone in it's subheading than normal. The main headline is using the default Register style (and if you go to the Reg's front page, you'll see plenty of tabloid- esque subheadings).

I suspect that since this has been the Reg's modus operandi for years, that there's no need for an editor to write headlines by now - the staff writers know what's expected and probably use the house style already. If anything, it's the po-faced subheading that's likely to have been tampered with on an ad-hoc basis.</comment></comment></comment>


AMD deal brings Android apps to Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19756734 <comment><USER2> I downloaded and installed the application yesterday and got caught playing some silly tower defense game for an hour when I should have been working.

From the time I was playing around with it, it seems to work really well. I didn't notice any weirdness with the applications. They provide their own "store", so my guess is that they've vetted certain apps to make sure they work properly.

Once thing that I did notice is that the application is using the default program icon from Visual Studio (the one with the three colored boxes). All that work and they can't put in their own application icon?

</comment><comment><USER3> What all these announcements forget to mention, is that they only work with DalvikVM pure applications.

NDK based applicatons need to be recompiled, as any native code language making use of it. So forget about most games.

<comment><USER4> They don't mention it because they do handle NDK games.

<comment><USER3> How do you know that?

How are they handling NDK games that were only compiled for ARM cpus?

Do they JIT translate assembly code, like Sun used to do in the 90's in their SPARC stations?

<comment><USER5> The very first releases of the NDK only supported ARMv6, but now it also supports ARMv7, x86, and MIPS. I actually compile my code for all 4 architectures, and end up with .so binaries in my APK:

lib/armeabi/libpuddle_drops.so

lib/armeabi-v7a/libpuddle_drops.so

lib/mips/libpuddle_drops.so

lib/x86/libpuddle_drops.so

This really takes no effort on my part, except to specify APP_ABI := all in one of the build files.

The system where the app is installed picks the preferred (or compatible) library automatically, which usually means ARMv7 with a fall-back to ARMv6 on low-end phones.

<comment><USER6> Yes, same with my NDK based apps though in my case I have only compiled for x86 and ARMv7-A. About MIPS, is there any MIPS based hardware with Play store access out there that we need to worry about?

Btw you may want to know that there is a bug in 4.0.3 that sometimes loads armeabi code instead of armv7-a code on some ARMv7 systems like HTC One S.

<comment><USER5> I haven't seen any MIPS-based devices yet, but I also added x86 support before I saw any evidence that it was needed at the time. I try to make the app as widely compatible as possible without creating undue work for myself.

I did not know about that bug, but thanks for telling me! I have had a few reports of the app running slowly on the One S, which didn't make sense at the time. I'm not sure if only supplying the ARMv7 code would cause the device to pick the correct library, or just exclude a lot of (half decent) ARMv6 devices I'd still like to support for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do all these articles only mention Windows 8? I believe AMD said it works on Windows 7, too. Does it make the headline more compelling if it just says Windows 8?

Also, I imagine that if this is happening, most developers who already have an Android app won't bother to create a Windows 8 one, too.

<comment><USER8> I never found BlueStacks very compelling on my desktop or laptop. Tablets or NetBooks might make it more than a fun tech demo, though. Windows 8 is trying to cover more of those, especially the WinRT version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would the apps be able to run as background processes? It's a really good move by AMD. One that RIM probably should have at least considered (I couldn't resist bringing them up)

<comment><USER10> As far as I'm aware BB10 is compatible with a large subset of Android applications.

<comment><USER11> This is somewhat true. An Android app won't install and run on BB10 but developers can repackage an Android app fairly easily and offer it in the BB store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is the implication that Bluestack won't work on Intel chips, if only at a lesser efficiency?

<comment><USER13> It looks like AMD is just putting a pretty wrapper around Bluestacks and shipping that. The wrapper is possibly going to be limited to AMD / Win8 systems, but Bluestacks certainly isn't.</comment></comment>


The Evolution of Startups, as Told by Analyzing Company Descriptions - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/the-evolution-of-startups-as-told-by-analyzing/ <comment><USER2> I would like to see the error bars on these graphs. There are a lot of low single-digit percent values there; I reckon that few of the fluctuations in these graphs would be statistically significant in any way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there already a novelty startup company description generator?

I am curious if given the word tends as weights how many iterations it would take before it created a company description that actually exists.

<comment><USER4> Haven't found a description generator that uses popular terms yet, but there is this classic: [http://tiffzhang.com/startup/](http://tiffzhang.com/startup/) (a new one is generated on each refresh).

<comment><USER5> Thank you, didn't know about it, and it is really, really nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Big dips for solar, carbon, green don't seem to be mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think we've always known that startups resemble one another and that they follow trends. This is not new. VCs also flock with each others' decisions and with markets.

Nothing really new here.</comment>