Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan - <AUTHOR> https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-019-0482-y <comment><USER3> Ramen is cheap, so there are more Ramen restaurants in poor areas, which have lower life expectancy?

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/01/31/low- socioeconom...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/01/31/low- socioeconomic-status-affects-life-expectancy-more-than-obesi_a_21704449/)

<comment><USER4> But is ramen cheap at ramen restaurants in Japan?

I ask because I spent $17 on ramen in a large American city earlier this month.

<comment><USER5> Yes, they are cheap. Usually around 600-1200 yen or $6-12

many of them reduce labor costs by having a vending machine outside where you get a token that indicates your order.

[https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-tokyo/in- asakusa/a...](https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-tokyo/in- asakusa/article-a0001973/)

The current ramen fad in America relies on super rich broth, basically liquid bacon.

There are many styles of ramen in Japan, ranging from super simple broths to the liquid bacon style.

<comment><USER6> How do I ask for the simple stuff? The liquid bacon gives me unfortunate digestion symptoms that should not be named.

<comment><USER7> /u/op00to: This is challenging because ramen is classified by a mix of base, seasoning and thickness. Roughly bases can be: bones of chicken, pork, fish or in rare instances beef. Often there is blend of these bases

Seasoning: sea salt (shio), soy sauce (shoyu) and miso

Thickness is a spectrum ending with: kotteri (thick) and assari (light)

Now, how to pick a light broth? This will be highly context dependent. Most shops in Tokyo where I'm living right now are specialists so research will show you upfront whether it's tonkotsu (heavy pork), chicken paitan (heavy chicken), hakodate (light fish), tonkotsu-gyokai (blend of pork and fish).

If you're in Japan, I recommend the Ramen Beast app which has location based recommendations, high quality reviews and lists for lighter ramen.

If you're in NY and looking for a lighter bowl: I can vouch for most of the bowls at Nakamura, the yuzu shoyu at Mr. Taka, and all of the bowls at Yuji Ramen.

<comment><USER8> Note that as you mentioned since most shops in Japan specialize in a specific type of soup (i.e. the only differentiator is the tare and the toppings), it might be more useful to familiarize oneself with the characteristics some of the more common regional styles. For example, "Hakata-style" ramen generally describes a creamy tonkotsu soup, "Kitakata-style" is generally a chintan with shoyu tare and hand kneaded "temomi" noodles, Yokohama "iekei" generally tends to be a paitan with shoyu tare, Sapporo ramen is generally a pork soup with miso tare, etc.

This is not to say that e.g. Sapporo only has Sapporo-style ramen or Fukuoka only has Hakata-style ramen, but the names describe where the style is perceived to have originated from.

The water is slightly muddied (no pun intended...) by techniques like "double soups", i.e. mixing multiple soups in the same bowl. In some cases a chintan might be mixed with a paitan, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How do we prove that they didn't just look at mortality in all diseases and for all restaurants, and cherry-picked stroke-vs-ramen because it has the best significance?

I am not accusing them of anything - I have no horse in this race. What I am curious about is: how do you prove that you haven't p-hacked, if you are going to do a study like this?

Sure, you can pre-register your methods, but presumably you can get the data and do some data crunching on it way before you have to pre-register. How do you prove that your results are legit in the age of reproduction crisis?

<comment><USER10> Good faith is required to accept any type of reporting. Otherwise, your question can always be extended to "How do we know that they didn't just make it all up?"

The researchers did not report conducting more comparisons and they did not adjust for this in their analysis, so we have to assume that they are telling the truth.

Of course, there's always the chance that they are being deceitful, so we have to reserve some skepticism and take into consideration related studies before forming any firm conclusions.

In this particular case, the correlations that they found have quite strong effect sizes with p < .001. Figures 2 and 3 are quite striking. These results are also supported by previous research. That doesn't mean the matter is settled by any means. It's just another piece in the puzzle. But there is no indication whatsoever that they are p-hacking or going on a fishing expedition.

<comment><USER11> The correlation is so large that I find it literally incredible.

Could ramen restaurant prevalence really explain a quarter to a third of the variance in mortality (which is what r=0.5 to 0.6 implies)? If so, the damn things are an outright menace.

And why is it so different from fast food, which is equally unhealthy but supposedly makes people live longer?

<comment><USER12> What is the connection between a _correlation_ and an _explanation_? I see none. Zero. Nada.

<comment><USER11> It is pretty common to interpret r^2 as the fraction of variance in one variable "explained by" the other. Here, ramen restaurant prevalence and mortality are reported to be correlated at r=0.5 to r=0.6, so r^2=0.25 to 0.36

Obviously, "explained" here doesn't indicate something conceptual or causal—-it's more like "accounted for"—-but the phrasing is probably too well established to change now.

And that's sort of my point...It doesn't seem plausible to me that ramen would be that deadly, so I suspect there's some other unmodelled factor that drives both restaurant prevalence and mortality. For example, maybe ramen is more popular in poorer/more rural areas, which have worse medical care/outcomes.

<comment><USER10> The authors discuss this in the paper's Discussion.

The prevalence of ramen restaurants is suggested as an indicator of general food preferences in the regions studied. Regions that have a higher prevalence of ramen restaurants also tend to have a higher salt intake in general. This can be seen by the increased use of soy sauce and miso compared to other regions in Japan (from personal experience, these regions are famous throughout Japan for their high-salt diets).

So I'd say that the authors are very careful to clarify that they are not implying any sort of causal relationship between ramen restaurants and stroke mortality, and I don't think anyone reading the paper would assume that either.

<comment><USER11> I did see that, and maybe Japanese regional cuisine varies a lot more than I'm imagining. However, I'm still not convinced that something higher-level is going on.

For example, I think you could find a similar correlation between (say) soul food restaurants and diabetes prevalence in the US. Soul food tends to be starchy and fatty itself; you could also make a similar argument that the number of soul food restaurants is a proxy for food preferences in each region.

However, soul food is especially popular in African-American communities. There are genetic factors that predispose African-Americans to diabetes. Soul food restaurants are probably more common in poorer areas. Diabetes is also linked to poverty: partly through diet, but also through things like access to preventative healthcare and management of pre-diabetes. Perhaps there still is some residual effect of the restaurants themselves, but it would be much weaker after adjusting for other factors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People are just waking up to dangers of sugar, but too much salt is also not good, increasing blood pressure (see below link).

Potassium can offset much of the affects but it's surprisingly difficult to get even the US recommended amount every day.

I've started using potassium salt instead of sodium salt in my cooking, and it feels great to kill two birds with one stone. Now I just need soy sauce and others without sodium to make my kitchen (nearly) salt free.

[https://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood- pressure/news/...](https://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood- pressure/news/20110711/high-sodium-low-potassium-diet-linked-to-heart-risk)

<comment><USER14> WebMD? Seriously? The science on salt is quite debated, actually: [https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heart-failure-and- salt-t...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heart-failure-and-salt-the- great-debate-2018121815563)

<comment><USER15> For those of us who aren't medical practicioners - would you mind pointing explaining a bit further on "WebMD? Seriously?" as I had no idea it wasn't well regarded and am now curious as to why...

<comment><USER16> WebMD has a profit driven interest to pick on health anxiety by exaggerating symptoms

<comment><USER15> Profiting through advertising, or is there darker connections?

Sorry, I'm genuinely not trying to be obtuse, but I'm just not quite sure on how that would work - does exaggerating the symptoms cause people to spend longer on the site? Or is it just to drive up search ranking? Or improve click through?

<comment><USER17> Dramatized, controverse stories bring more "interaction" and are more readily shared on social media. So they bring more pageviews and ad revenue.

This is why news and social media are the shit dispensaries they are today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Now whenever I read articles of this type of statistical research, my mind immediately recalls Tyler Vigen's website and book... [http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations](http://tylervigen.com/spurious- correlations)

</comment><comment><USER19> When I saw ramen shops in Tokyo they seemed to cater to people working long hours, or who were in a hurry, and were interested in eating standing up.

</comment><comment><USER20> So, the higher carbohydrate and salt content in restaurant style Ramen increases the chance of stroke.

I make Ramen at home about twice a week and double the vegetables and halve the noodles in Ramen recipes. After reading this article, I am going to try to reduce sodium also.

</comment><comment><USER21> Weird they think ramen is the only food with regional variation. And lots of stressed salarymen in Tokyo eating ramen but Tokyo is down the bottom. It's really this north-western part of Honshu.

Total guess, but when I was in Hirosaki once (red area), I went to this little restaurant on advice of an innkeeper, and they gave me this plate of green leaf and other tempura. It was huge and oily and they expected me to eat it by myself. I remember thinking at the time...this can't be good for my health.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not surprising. In the China Study they also found a positive correlation between consumption of wheat flour and heart disease. (Some places in China eat mostly rice, others more wheat.)

Any new guesses on the mechanism?

Related: [https://deniseminger.com/2010/09/02/the-china-study-wheat- an...](https://deniseminger.com/2010/09/02/the-china-study-wheat-and-heart- disease-oh-my/)

<comment><USER23> It's more likely the salt than the wheat. From the article:

| The traditional Japanese diet was thought to increase stroke risk because of the heavy use of seasonings such as miso, salt, and soy sauce.

<comment><USER24> The science on sodium is far from settled

<comment><USER25> Amazingly. It's not like it's hard or expensive to study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hokkaido seems like it is a major problem for this study: it ranks low on stroke mortality and high on ramen consumption and is well known as a land that loves ramen and other rich foods. Perhaps they eat more seafood and that somehow offsets the risk or have some other advantage but it is interesting the authors don't even mention it given how glaring it is the largest prefecture and one of the easiest to spot on the map for a foreigner.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm reluctant to draw conclusions around nutrition based on this correlation, because ramen is so regional. (When I'm in the Japanese mountains, there's no ramen - just udon and soba.)

I understand a huge portion of Japan's ramen is in Tokyo. There are many human health factors with an outsize presence/lack-of-presence in Tokyo - <USER2> alcohol consumption, noise, overwork...

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd be surprised if people are eating ramen so much it affects long term disease rates noticeably just because there are more restaurants. I also think Japanese could eat tonkotsu ramen a few times a week and still get less saturated fat than most Western diet eaters. Maybe salt could cause some acute condition though?

<comment><USER10> The authors state (the obvious) in the discussion: the correlation is likely not caused by ramen itself. Rather, the prevalence of ramen restaurants is an indicator of general food preferences in a particular region. The regions in question are known to have high salt diets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If you see the results, you can also find negative correlation between stroke and the density of the western restaurants (french/italian or fast foods). What conclusions can you draw out of that? I'd probably just think this is just an interesting study that can't say anything with the results alone.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's noodles with meat, high sodium and high fat. It's bad if it's had every single day.

Just like burgers and fries.

</comment><comment><USER31> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal)

Food fraud is potentially related to this correlation.

</comment><comment><USER32> Well they do have a ton of saturated fat.

<comment><USER33> [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0095ZMPTU/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0095ZMPTU/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Resources for developing multi-platform native code libraries? - <AUTHOR> Can anyone recommend any course, books or learning materials when it comes to developing low-level and multi-platform native code libraries? Are there standard industry practices when it comes to building, packaging, and deploying native code libraries? It seems like a great skill to have, and I'd like to be better at it.
For context, I work in the mobile game industry developing for iOS and Android phones in a multi-platform (Mac, Window, Linux) development environment. You can do a lot without having to worry about writing low level code, but every once in a while, it becomes necessary. I have a basic working knowledge of these things, and of course, there are many case-by-case considerations when dealing with a device's specific architecture, but much of my knowledge around this stuff is cobbled together from all sorts of different sources over the years. Anything more formal?
It seems like CMake and its reference guide is actually the closest and most informative thing that I have found in this ballpark. Any other recommendations or go-to sources for this kind software development? <comment><USER2> I will assume by 'low level' you mean C/C++. Writing cross platform code at the system interface level is usually only something you do because you have to not something you do because you want to. It can be quite tedious and some times close to impossible. lets narrow the question to just C. And lets also narrow the specification to 'native' system interfaces. Lets also limit our operating systems to UNIX, Linux and Windows.

The goal of standardisation for C was in part to aid portability. That worked out to some degree. So thats the best place to start. The goal of POSIX was to standardize UNIX system interfaces across the various flavors. That worked out to some degree also. You also need to to get the interfaces for Windows, Linux and so forth because they all have various 'innovations' that have been created which are not adherent to any standard or portable.

At a minimum you should become familiar with the fallowing material.

* ISO/IEC 9899:1999 - ISO/IEC 9899:2011 [http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/](http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/)

* POSIX.1-2008 / IEEE Std 1003.1 [http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/)

* Linux system interfaces [http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/)

* Win API/Win32 API [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff8...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff818516\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

Thats a lot of reading. A good starting point for a project is to code to the C standard and one abstract interface that wraps your main target OS. Then port portions of the implamentation for your interface to the various systems you need to run on. In reality there are a lot of specific factors that you need to take into account to design your portability strategy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much for this! I have been poking around a bit this week and this is indeed what I need. :)

More importantly, where you say "A good starting point for a project..." is exactly the kind of know-how and practical advice that I have found hard to come by in this area of software engineering. Any idea on where to find more of it (blogs, articles) would be always welcome.</comment></comment>


Did Kayak Get Acquired by the Wrong Company? - <AUTHOR> http://skift.com/2015/02/06/did-kayak-get-acquired-by-the-wrong-company/ <comment><USER2> I really hate those Trivago ads. It's like they hired the maximally smug douchey viagra/mma/e-cig/snakeoil pitchman. And I'm sure it's working because there's lots of money in the "too old to remember or know Kayak" space.</comment>


Ask HN: Some questions for the linux community/the defenders of the open source - <AUTHOR>

	Hi everyone,
I am in an Engineering school and I am asked to make a presentation on the linux community and the defenders of the open source. One of my friends advised me to ask the HN community so here I am to ask you some questions:
- Why have you chosen linux and what do make it so particular for you / its attractiveness?
- How can you define a linux user? Does he/she have typical profil? Maybe the most convinced ones?
- Does your passion have a positive/negative impact on your relationships? You can develop if you want.
- How do you define a hacker? In which category do you think you are? white hat, grey hat, black hat or blue hat?
- Have you contribute to the open source world? If you have, what is your contribution? What are your motivations?
- Is there activities/ gathering that you are used to do with other people of the linux community, around open source project or only for fun?
What can you advise to a beginner or someone who is curious and want to learn more about open source softwares? Someone who doesn't know what he has to begin with for example?
If you want to say more or if you think I am not asking the goods questions do not hesitate to tell me and to add something.
Thanks to all!! Please forgive me for my English, I am struggling with it ><' <comment><USER2> 1 - I don't use linux as my OS (operating system) (I never found a distro and software I liked), just all the tools that come from it. I am attracted to open source because it is free, as in beer, and free as in speech which lets me modify if I want to (and had the skills).

2 - A "Linux User" is someone who uses linux as their OS on their desktop or laptop or maybe server. I don't think Android on a phone counts.

3 - What kind of relationships? Not that I have any of any kind.

4 - If I am speaking to a hacker I will use the original definition of a hacker: someone who tinkers with a system. If I am speaking someone else I will use the more popular definition of a hacker: someone who gains access to a computer system without permission. I don't think the "hat" label can be applied to someone like me who does not do remote access testing.

5 - Yes. My largest contribution(s) is(are) probably already on your computer in FFmpeg's libraries. I wrote code for writing Vorbis Comment blocks, some assembly for its yadif deinterlacer, and some assembly for flac encoding. I did them because: I wanted metadata writing in my flac files; I was interested in learning some assembly and SIMD; and because I wanted faster flac encoding.

6 - "Is there activities/ gathering that you are used to do with other people of the linux community, around open source project or only for fun?" I don't understand that question.

7 - I suggest that you start by trying to contribute to something you use. If you use it already you probably already know how to use it, what features it might be missing, or what bugs might be present. Okay, many projects may not have low-hanging fruit for you to pick. This suggestion also requires that you can already program at some level. Many projects would also welcome contributions to their docs. If you want more advice on starting I suggest you post a comment that gives more info about your skills, interests and maybe what you want to learn.

P.S. Your English is already decent, it just reads like you need more practice.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Linux gives you pretty much complete control over your operating system - freedom I never even knew existed when still using Windows. Also, it's a brilliant platform for developers, due to an abundance of high-quality, free programming tools.

2\. Like J_Darnley said, Android doesn't count. Otherwise, anybody running a Linux distro on a PC or server. A majority of Linux users could probably described as "computer geeks", although some distros are getting user-friendly enough to be accessible to non-techies.

3\. Well, I naturally gravitate towards other computer enthusiasts, but I have not observed any negative impact on existing relationships.

4\. Talking about "<colour>-hat hackers" already implies that you are talking about security-breaking hackers (aka crackers). I suspect most people on HN would self-describe as "hackers", but they would mean hacker in the original sense - somebody who loves to play around with the internal workings of a computer.

5\. My programming skills are just reaching a level when I can start contributing some code to projects. Apart from that I'm active on the Ubuntu support forum. Why do I do it? 1) I really enjoy the community spirit within the open source culture, and 2) I feel an obligation to give something back to the community.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Linux lets me do what I please without worrying about legal issues. Also if I make critical mistakes I can just reinstall for free. There is a lot of help available online and I can learn from free sources.

2\. A ideal linux user is someone who can solve their own problems. That is the core of linux in my opinion and most of the people I have seen strive towards that goal.

3\. Most of my relationships are better off. Since I can get work done quicker than earlier I have more time.

4\. The "hacker" field i sunknown waters to me but I think most people would agree hacking is synonymous with problem solving.

5\. I have contributed nut only in small chunks. Being from a non computers background it takes me time to understand things and so I contribute small. The essential part is the contribution I feel.

6\. I try to attend as many PyCons as I can since I only know python. Most of them are fun though I sometimes go because there is a talk on some library I will be using.

7\. Interact with people. HN is a wonderful place to be on. Most of my love from linux comes from the people I interact with. IRC is wonderful and contribute as much as you can. The more you contribute the more you learn.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why don't my questions appear in the ask section?

<comment><USER2> They do (now). It isn't in chronological order.</comment></comment>


The Last Word on Cordova and PhoneGap - <AUTHOR> http://ionicframework.com/blog/what-is-cordova-phonegap/

<comment><USER2> I did a fair amount of experimentation with phone gap/Cordova a couple of years ago. What really killed me wasn't so much perf as places where you want or need native UI. For example, if you want a nice mapping experience, JS based maps suck on mobile compared to the native map widget.

Based on this I think the Xamarin model makes a lot more sense in today's mobile landscape. Be smart about building shared logic and view controllers and wire it up to fully native UX.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, but what about the UI performance.</comment>


Why I Created YADA - <AUTHOR> https://yadadata.com/2016/08/22/why-i-created-yada/ <comment><USER2> I surely wasted a lot of time reading the post, then readme on github, then "QuickStart", sifting through roughly a trillion lines of configuration and build options, and still failed to find a single code sample on fetching data or writing an adapter...

<comment><USER3> the author recognized one problem (hairball perl left undocumented by previous coworker) but replaced it with another problem (overly complex and needlessly configurable java)

what the author replaced was a classic "first system"...but he created a classic "second system".

I wish people would just realize that the best route is to solve the problem at hand...and JUST the problem at hand, with the smallest and simplest codebase possible....these tend to be the near-optimal "third systems" that eventually emerge.

<comment><USER4> 100 times this. What's the rule about frameworks? "Every system evolves towards supporting arbitrary programming|turing completeness". Something like that.

<comment><USER5> This could be true, yes.

But I have the feeling, that good frameworks still make some stuff easier than others, while supporting arbitrary programming/turing completeness.

For example Cycle.js, which is a structural framework for reactive programming with observables. It's made for front-end developoment, but I can also model REST and WebSocket servers with it, since almost everything can be modeled as a mix of source-streams + (input-data) sink-streams (output-data).

Since it uses observables all over the place, it makes handling these data- streams much easier an clearer, by making them first class citiziens in the app.

<comment><USER6> >almost everything can be modeled as a mix of source-streams + (input-data) sink-streams (output-data)

true. This is pretty much what i have been doing for 25 years and will be doing for the next like 20.

Reminds me about the time when one guy we had around read a book on finite state machines. It was, dare i say, an eye-opener for him. Since that moment until he parted with us, all what he was doing was FSAs.

<comment><USER5> lol, sounds a bit like he did Heroin. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hadn't heard of YADA - anyone use it? Seems like a noble goal.

<comment><USER8> I started using at it a couple of months ago for a couple of small projects. I think it has real potential as a tool for dealing with integration of old projects and new ones, and for charting out transitions in a production environment. I have been looking at some 'technical debt' in the form of badly documented software written over several years (by several different employees) and it can be a nightmare. YADA offers a simple, flexible way to organize these sorts of processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So it's an ETL library? Useful, but there are dozens (if not hundreds?) of free and commercial libraries, services, etc that do the same thing.

Hell, some companies (Teradata, Informatica) have built their entire business on this. Of course, their solutions are far more complex and scalable, but this is definitely not a new problem (or solution).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to review and comment.

ETL is a viable use case, one of the first in fact, dating back to 2011, in which we marshalled 100s of millions of RNASeq gene expression values and metadata into a dw.

Regarding other ETL tools, one of the goals of YADA is to make the process easier. The tools you describe are well known and robust, but as you point out, complicated and costly. YADA was designed to be much simpler. Further, it can also be used for a variety of other things, like SPJAs, data analytics, etc, securely, and without additional overhead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is an unfortunate naming conflict here:

[https://github.com/juxt/yada](https://github.com/juxt/yada)

although I guess that happens alot nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER3> Okay I think its safe to say we have all built this at one time or another...its almost a right of passage for an intermediate developer to grasp that moment when they realize the world can be encoded as a nested dictionary, and most databases can be abstracted to a lowest-common-denominator.

Then you realize it is a lossy transformation that doesn't expose any of the real power of the platform you are committed to, and you don't actually have to parameterize the world of possibilities (and there is no value in enabling this)...you tarball it and walk away.

<comment><USER11> As a tool for data analysis I could see using something like this, but I don't think I could ever write an application on top of this. At the low levels you are running on top of hard-coded native DB queries, potentially across multiple data sources. What happens when you are 100's of queries into a project and someone needs to change the underlying data structure? That is a shaky foundation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to comment. You're basically rephrasing the hammer cliche, which is accurate. First though, as your first sentence indicates, you agree we still need hammers. Right now, YADA is a great tool for prototyping, adhoc reporting, data analytics, ETL, and smaller SPJAs. One testament in our environment has been to repurpose the work we do for one endpoint in another, e.g. webapp and spotfire, or vendor app and ad hoc reports. We are working with a high-volume machine-learning group, so eventually we expect to be able to scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this basically Presto?

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this a play on words with "Yadida"?

<comment><AUTHOR> It started as a acronym (albeit a tired one) for yet another data abstraction, and it caught on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's written in java/tomcat after I read for 15+ minutes and then backed out, as I don't use java.

<comment><USER15> This is a silly statement I see time and time again. Does the tool provide you value and solve a problem you have? Then use it. You are an engineer.

To show how silly it is, imagine if you were talking about another program that was incredibly useful like grep for example:

"It's written in c after I read for 15+ minutes and then backed out, as I don't use c."

<comment><USER16> grep is simple to use from a simple command. Setting up a Java server and maintaining it is quite a different challenge then running a command with a few parameters. I wouldn't use it because if it goes down, fuck. If I need to extend it or decide to change something in there, fuck. I would want to use something that is easier for me to fix and maintain or my coworkers to fix/maintain, then have a product built from multiple languages that require too many different types of people to keep it running.

<comment><USER15> I wasn't suggesting you do something that would place a large burden on your coworkers, but there is a point where the usefulness of existing software is greater than any potential churn of learning it's running environment.

Suppose you were a ruby developer and you want to create a fully scalable, highly available JSON document store that you can easily index, store, and backup/rotate, and a solution like this wasn't available in your language. Would you create your own database to store the documents, implement your own consensus algorithms and searching algorithms like TL-DF?

Or would you just learn how to use elasticsearch and incur the cost of running it?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are They Slim Yet? Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari - <AUTHOR> http://www.erahm.org/2017/03/10/are-they-slim-yet-round-2/ <comment><USER3> I must use my browsers differently from others. I have Chrome and Firefox open on my main work machine here (Ubuntu 14) all day/night. Never have a problem with memory or anything else on either. When I travel I've had both Windows and OSX (two different Macbooks) and Also use Firefox and Chrome, also, never issues with memory. I currently have 12 open tabs in Chrome and 6 in firefox, just random websites, mail, youtube, github... no troubles.

I see people complaining of memory issues in browsers all the time though, what causes these issues, and how is it I never see them?

<comment><USER4> Gmail often uses over 1GB. Some google sheets do too after being open for some time.

With 10 windows and a handful of tabs each, I'm close to using up 16GB of ram and sometimes run out.

<comment><USER5> My Gmail is at 240MB with Chrome 57 with 50 emails per page. With 100 emails it's 380MB.

<comment><USER6> How much memory is it with mutt, or Alpine.. or let's be fair, Thunderbird?

<comment><USER7> Thunderbird with a huge mail archive open: 1.5 G total, 500 M resident.

<comment><USER8> Does Thunderbird mmap it's mail archive or something? Because 1.5 GB sounds insane. Apple's Mail.app is only using 130 MB for a 1.8 GB mailbox. Might be an unfair comparison if Mail.app is leaning on the system for indexing/search (then again mds+mds_stores is using around 200 MB)

<comment><USER9> The metadata database for open folders is entirely resident in memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone just tell me when my Gmail tab stops using over a gigabyte of RAM _by itself_. The rest, whatever; I'll worry about them after that's fixed.

<comment><USER11> Gmail always used to slow down Firefox so much that I switched to an email client. Now Firefox runs much much better. I regret cursing Firefox for so many months.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I know it's Gmail, not the browser. But I have just a hair under 14,000 _unread_ messages in my Gmail box (I use it primarily for mailing list subscriptions), so switching to a desktop client would be ... painful at this point.

<comment><USER12> Why is that? Any IMAP client should work fine.

<comment><USER13> You'll be surprised how many people don't know that you can use IMAP with desktop clients. I'm not saying about the parent comment but just sharing an anecdote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Edge was disqualified because it seemed to bypass the hosts file and > wouldn't load pages from unique domains. I can do measurements so I might > revisit this, but it wouldn't have been a fair comparison as-is.

Is it surprising that Edge might bypass the hosts file?

It surprises me, as I thought all outgoing requests were routed through `/etc/hosts` or equiv, but I don't spend too much time in Windows these days.

<comment><USER13> Huh, mine respects my hosts. That's how I set up adblocking before they brought extensions in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Now if FF could just avoid pegging the CPU on what should be reasonably performant web apps, we'd be getting somewhere. It's even worse with multiprocess.

</comment><comment><USER16> For those not familiar, internally (well also externally now) Mozilla runs a site called Are We Slim Yet? I used to walk by the big monitor at the old MV office by the Platform/JS team (because i sat right across them). Fun chart to look at.

</comment><comment><USER17> I use Firefox exclusively (after a month of trying out Chrome - <USER2> because with 100+ tabs open it uses to much memory in comparison with Firefox), but when I tried to increase processCount to 8 (then 4 and 2) it looked like it was having a memory leak, started using more then twice the amount of RAM.

I'm on Aurora (developer edition) maybe it was related to some recent bugs.

</comment><comment> charles-salvia The problem with Chrome/Chromium is it's basically just a huge ton of scaffolding designed to layer an IPC framework on top of more layers of scaffolding on top of more layers that wrap blink (i.e. WebKit) which still has lots of code going back to KDE from the 90s.

The Chromium codebase has no less than _5_ different string classes, is riddled with layers and layers of virtual function calls wrapping older interfaces, has an antiquated threading model that defines a "Main thread" because various ancient WebKit code scattered throughout the code base relies on global variables, etc.

It's pretty surprising to me that it works as well as it does.

<comment><USER18> Pr process tabs seems to be the core reason why, as this allows the Chrome UI to be "responsive" even if one of the tab processes keep chugging the cycles like it a drunk during happy hour. This in turn because we now have 4+ cores that can do 2+ threads each in an effect to keep the marketing interpretation of Moore's law valid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be interesting to see comparison with uzbl and surf as well. Maybe also with Servo/browser.html, although it won't be really correct as (unlike the others) it's not yet stable.

</comment><comment><USER20> I picked up a little Dell 3000 laptop with 2GB RAM. Chrome rapidly gets unusable, but Firefox lets me keep a dozen tabs going.

Linux (Mint 18.1) uses about 1/2 the memory of Windows 10, so I run Linux.

Haven't set up swap (flash memory only), so when I do exceed the RAM limits, things just grind to a halt, usually requiring a reboot.

Fun little portable system. :-)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm surprised by the memory differences between OS's. Is that just a measurement artifact?

<comment><USER22> Well the OS's do manage memory differently and would expain the high OSX memory usage.

OSX soaks up most of your ram at all times and will put programs in the background into a sleep state. When they are woken up everything is transitioned smoothly like it was already running as it's state is in ram. The OS will also free up ram if it's needed by a newly launched program. Hence when judging the available memory on OSX you look at "Memory Pressure" and not available ram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The test mentions he ran Firefox using 2, 4 and 8 content processes. Does this mean that Firefox does not use 1 process per tab like Chrome does?

<comment><USER23> Firefox can be configured to use N number of content processes, and will allocate tabs among these processes. In FirefoxOS we were giving a new process to each tab/app, using a pre-allocated process to speed up startup (a version of that has been re-implemented for Firefox).

I'm not sure about the exact heuristics used by Chrome, but I think they do something like one process per origin.

<comment><USER5> Yes, Chrome uses 1 process per domain. So I'm still not sure what would happen if Firefox is configured to use 4 content processes and 20 unique domain tabs are opened. Would the domains be distributed to these content processes? And what happens if 1 content process crashes? Would it also bring down all of the domains associated to it?

<comment><USER24> The answers to your questions are yes and yes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Raising Minimum Wages Is Riskier Than Expanding the EITC - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/aparnamathur/2015/04/30/why-raising-minimum-wages-is-riskier-than-expanding-the-eitc/

<comment><USER2> Albeit a minimum wage hike or a government handout, somebody is having to come up with the money to support those full time workers on minimum wage. Take Wallmart as an example:

Walmart workers at a single 300-person Supercenter store rely on anywhere from $904,542 to $1,744,590 in public benefits per year"

[http://democrats.edworkforce.house.gov/sites/democrats.edwor...](http://democrats.edworkforce.house.gov/sites/democrats.edworkforce.house.gov/files/documents/WalMartReport- May2013.pdf)

The Forbes author applauds the Earned income tax credit as a subsidy but this again is the government having to co-pay Wallmart's employees with tax dollars.

</comment><comment><USER3> A buisiness which _cannot_ pay the full prrovisioning cost of labour is one which is fundamentally uneconomic. There _may_ be reasons to _choose_ to subsidize such businesses given net social benefit and market failures resulting infailures of prices to meet costs.

But _profitable_ businesses, such as Walmart and McDonalds, which _choose_ to pay below-subsistence wages are getting a handout directly from taxpayers, and are shifting risks onto the backs of workers.

That a man must always live by his wages was recognized by Adam Smith. And not just the worker himself but his family, children, and their education.</comment>


Scientists Discover the Root of Autoimmune Diseases - <AUTHOR> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1156.full <comment><USER2> Seems promising as a friend and family member to a few people with them. Too bad the article is behind a paywall. Links anyone? Thanks!</comment>


San Francisco Passes Ordinance to Protect ISP Competition - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/san-francisco-passes-ordinance-protect-isp-competition <comment><USER2> I wouldn't pat the city on the back. They've allowed NIMBYs and parochial interests within the public utilities departments to block fiber roll-out for years.

Sonic has been rolling out their fiber service for almost 2 years now, but only after spending years in the regulatory gauntlet. And because San Francisco refuses to permit micro-trenching, Sonic can only profitably deliver fiber service where they can string fiber on utility polls.

Folks closer to downtown with underground utilities will be stuck with Comcast for quite some time. AT&T wants to roll-out fiber-to-the-node (FTTN), but that currently requires large ground-level cabinets that NIMBYs are fighting tooth- and-nail, block-by-block. And in any event AT&T will surely still charge a huge premium, not only just to cover the cost of the expensive new infrastructure, but just because they're AT&T.

This is classic San Francisco politics to pretend to do something by placing another mandate on landlords. I mean, the mandate makes perfect sense, don't get me wrong, and is hardly a burden. But in the context of San Francisco politics, being seen as sticking it to landlords will give the city enough capital to continue ignoring the fundamental problems.

The notion there's some kind of pervasive problem with landlords hindering ISP choice is ridiculous. Large buildings often enter exclusive contracts with Comcast and AT&T, but the vast majority of apartments in the city are in smaller buildings run by small-time landlords. Often you wouldn't even bother informing the landlord; you'd simply give the technician access to the utility room yourself. The landlord would probably be more bothered by wasting his time trying to coordinate with him. As long as you don't break anything, why would he care? It only improves the value of his property. Because of rent control, most landlords are supremely passive and often have full-time jobs doing something else.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if this is specifically to address MonkeyBrains hanging antennas on building roofs. Are there any other local ISPs that would need building permission for subscription?

<comment><USER2> Sonic's fiber service. They've done in two years what Comcast, AT&T, and others refused to do for over a decade. Their footprint in the city is huge, now.

My Sonic fiber install should happen before the year is out. I can't wait to drop Comcast. I'll have 1GB/s fiber and still pay $20 less per month ($69 vs $49).

I always wanted to try MonkeyBrains but they still don't cover the Outer Richmond. And with Sonic fiber out here now they probably never will.</comment></comment>


100 more open-source UI designs uploaded - <AUTHOR> Uploaded another batch of designs to https://uidesigndaily.com/ - a few hundred more in the queue.
Also fixed some bugs and made some adjustments based on the feedback received from the soft launch.
Note for developers: If you don't have Sketch or a Mac, and you'd like to use a .sketch source file, remember that Figma is free to use, available for Windows and it opens the format!
What does open source design even mean? You can download the design source files and look under the hood. If open source code is checking out the recipe of a piece of software, open source design is the same thing for a design.
The designs on the site are also free to use, modify etc. <comment><USER2> Just out of curiosity, do you have a design for a complex responsive form? For example, how would you go about designing a form that have, say, 40 feilds such as text boxes, dropdown lists, date and time picker, file upload fields, radio buttons, check boxes, tables etc that works on both desktop and mobile browsers?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is similar stuff to what you described in the next few hundred designs that will be uploaded. I think those 40 fields should be segmented and grouped based on relevance. It is quite scary as a user to be bombarded with so many inputs at once. The task of filling them all out gives them anxiety. Try to auto-fill whatever you have access to, try to segment as much as possible, and if you have the possibility break it down to smaller steps. If you can, show them progress and encourage them along the way. I hope that helps!

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the insightful reply!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Photopea ([http://photopea.com](http://photopea.com)) can also open Sketch files and is also Free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, that's right - I just talked with the founder today!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://uidesigndaily.com/](https://uidesigndaily.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Innovations in merchant online online credit card processing? - <AUTHOR> My client is a private small business brick and mortar. Their Point of Sale service/platform has a web widget for online ordering. Customer is redirected to the platform to place an order for  pickup or delivery.
Recently we had a chargeback claiming fraud. The merchant processor asked for proof of EMV chip processing. Of course, that is a nonsense question with online purchase—- our claim of fake fraud is lost before it begins.
We reached out to our POS Rep to discuss the situation. Their response was: Hey. Face it. All credit card transactions involve risk. You have to look at chargebacks as an expense.
Apart from the credit companies, what efforts are merchants taking to combat fake fraud claims for their online stores and make successful claims in light of the liability shift? <comment><AUTHOR> Ok. So everyone is saying 3DS is the state of the art for online fraud protection. Curiously, I've not encountered this in the wild from my own online purchases.

I'm reading the Wikipedia article [1] about password verification, "A transaction...will initiate a redirection to the website of the card issuing bank to authorize the transaction. Each issuer could use any kind of authentication method...but typically, a password-based method is used, so to effectively buy on the Internet means using a password tied to the card."

I don't recall using a password for any of my on online purchases (Amazon, Walmart.com), and I have not set one up with my CC company (CapitalOne issued Visa) other than a PIN for cash withdrawals. It's possible these sites use another form of verification ("Each issuer could use any kind of authentication method (the protocol does not [specify] this)...") and the process was so seamless I didn't notice. [cough] Or, maybe these example companies are so big they actually assume the liability.

My original naive concept of innovations were additional operational protocols (maybe customers sign receipts at the time of delivery/pickup). Or, maybe design features in your e-store (prevent fraud-claim-happy users from using the same card more than once, assuming the customer would cancel their card after fraud, so you wouldn't permit it to be used again after a fraud claim). Even as I suggest these ideas, I'm reading other articles [2] explicitly describing 3DS is actually responding to the liability shift law--which is ultimate concern. And of course, if these features I'm imagining do not explicitly respond to liability shift, these ideas would most likely just confuse the issue.

Any suggestions of online stores implementing 3D or any e-store features designed to discorage making false fraud claims?

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_Secure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_Secure) [2]: [https://blog.gpayments.com/article/liability- shift-3d-secure...](https://blog.gpayments.com/article/liability- shift-3d-secure/)

<comment><USER2> I have only encountered this at EU based vendors. I have never encountered this at a US merchant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Online transactions have an equivalent of the EMV liability shift called 3D Secure which any decent merchant acquirer should offer as an option.

In addition, if your _online_ merchant acquirer starts asking about EMV details I'd be concerned about whether they know what they're talking about.

</comment><comment><USER4> You should enable 3D Secure (3DS) to shift the liability to end user. I will pop-up a page during checkout and required customer to enter a verification code before proceed.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can use address verification and/or 3DS to reduce fraud chargebacks for online transactions. If you use 3DS then the bank will assume liability for fraud.</comment>


Microsoft Sues Over Apple App Store Trademark - <AUTHOR> http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/12/5822486-microsoft-fights-apples-app-store-trademark-request

<comment><USER2> Not to be super pedantic; but they aren't suing Apple.

They've filed a motion with the USPTO to dismiss Apple's trademark filing under the grounds that it's too generic of a term to be trademarked.

I tend to agree with them, as even though I don't honestly remember anyone referring to a store selling applications as an "app store" before Apple, it feels about as trademark'able as registering "shoe store".

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch, I'll see if I can edit and fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this is a good thing. "App Store" is too generic a term to trademark IMHO.

<comment><USER4> On the one hand, I think it is completely ridiculous that Microsoft, maker of Windows(TM) and Office(TM) is challenging Apple(TM), maker of the Macintosh(TM), over the potential trademarking of a generic term.

Having said that... yeah, 'App Store' is too generic and shouldn't be trademarkable so Microsoft are in the right here... it is just that there's no innocent party here to really cheer on in this.</comment></comment>


Why Hackers Must Welcome Social Justice Advocates - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@coralineada/why-hackers-must-welcome-social-justice-advocates-1f8d7e216b00#.nv8s2ka1m <comment><USER2> I really don't understand what point the author of this article is trying to make. Is it that diversity in self identification amongst open source collaborators is an overall good thing and there should be more of that?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm actually dumber for having read that, and I advise everyone else to protect your neurons.</comment>


Does Google just sort results by relevance or can Knol be irrelevant but still nr1? - <AUTHOR>

(Maybe this type of post is not for hacker news since it is pure discussion).
Knol.
Does Google promise that their search results are always sorted by relevance or would it be ok to list Knol - entries as top results without them actually being so?
I guess since they obv know how to SEO to their own algorhitm they can make Knol have a high PageRank and I guess that would be fine.
Is there anywhere you can read about their stance on this? Is it independently verified or something(I guess not)? <comment><USER2> So far Wikipedia has been beating Knol out on a number of search results, INCLUDING Knol. Seeing sponsored results on the results page, I'm not excluding it from thought, but I'm not saying the pages wont get better rankings later in time.</comment>


What Does Safari and Chrome Ad-Blocking Mean for SaaS? - <AUTHOR> https://fly.io/articles/safari-chrome-tracker-blockers-saas/ <comment><USER2> Good sites and apps don't track, they ask.</comment>


India's newest telco enters the market with disruptive, 4G focused, plans - <AUTHOR> http://telecomtalk.info/reliance-jio-tariff-voice-calls-and-roaming-free/156651/ <comment><USER2> Correction: Reliance is not India's newest telco. Jio, their new brand, just launched with these plans. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really :)

"Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited" is a new a telecom operator. Reliance Industries Limited, the parent company, doesn't own any other telecom operator.

<comment><USER2> Oh. I see. My bad then. :P</comment></comment></comment>


Places to Start Acquiring Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.growhack.com/2012/11/12/places-to-start-acquiring-users/ <comment><USER2> I've never tried it myself, but I've heard people have had decent success using a combination of Twitter searches + live chat.

You can monitor people on Twitter complaining about the problem you solve, @reply them to check at your site, and then chat on oLark/SnapEngage to help convert them into users (or just do customer development).

<comment><USER3> I've worked with teams at Lean Startup Machine who have done this, but you have to be careful not to get shut down by Twitter as a spammer. I like how dools did it: only targeting people with the hashtag, and writing personalized messages. Think of it from their perspective: if you received this tweet, would you flag the user as spam?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think SlideShare is one of the most underutilized tools out there. It's a great way to break up a lot of information (people enjoy clicking through) and they have a vibrant community. I post things up there and routinely get tens of thousands of highly relevant views.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Meetup.com is one of those services that will do the job of driving traffic to your meetup if you create one." This is a great point, but I think it's also important to focus on creating successful meetups. This is a huge time commitment. Creating a consistent arena for your user base requires coordinating activities that they would love, and then reaping the benefits of customer loyalty. It's an excellent idea, but you need to devote a good deal of time to it (sometimes even a person).

</comment><comment><USER6> Great article, but in your Craigslist section, you could mention how AirBnB used Craigslist to get their first houses listed [http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion- do...](http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-dollar- company/)

<comment><USER4> I read about this in the past, and I think it's a really interesting conversation. Would you consider this spam?

Personally I lean towards no. Yes, you are emailing a stranger, but in a relevant way and presumably only one time.

<comment><USER7> Every craigslist post defaults to "You are not allowed to email me about related services." It's not up to them to try and enrich my life with their new services I didn't ask to hear about.

It's blatant spam. But blatant spam and lawbreaking resulting in money hats is apparently okay around here. (It's not shady or illegal -- it's _hustling_ and _hacking the system._ )

<comment><USER6> I don't see the harm in them trying to help wanting people connect with a useful service that solves their needs.

<comment><USER7> The harm is you are you and you are not them. They are them and no matter how much we think we can make their lives better, they are busy and don't want to hear it.

The problem is when they are kinda dumb (most of the time?) and the targed spam or leadgen job postings actually work.

"Job in your area paying $175k/year for your exact experience!" -- but when you inquire, it never exists. Conveniently they happen to have similar jobs with compensation structures consisting of wobbly jello.

Read the classics: [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/permission-m...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/permission- mark.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the way you put it - "Put simply, go to where your potential users are".

I would add - Think about not just users, but power users! At-least in the begining you are not looking for a regular joe, but somebody who would benefit the most by your product, and be the cheerleader moving forward.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a great article. Thanks so much, it's nice to see new approaches as opposed to the same tactics recited over and over. Good stuff!!</comment>


Explainshell - <AUTHOR> https://www.explainshell.com/ <comment><USER2> A cli of this would be useful.</comment>


UK Cyber Security Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://cybersecuritychallenge.org.uk

<comment><AUTHOR> The downside of my excitement over this url is as of 28th April in the afternoon it is still claiming it will be released on the 27th. A shame, I was curious to see what and how they tested peoples cybersecurity skills.</comment>


Greatest shortcoming of human race: inability to understand exponential growth - chupa-chups https://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-09-15/albert-bartlett-on-message-about-exponential-growth-to-the-end/ <comment> chupa-chups Sorry for the edited title, but the original title was too long.

The article is from 2013, but, from my PoV, quite relevant today.</comment>


Man Made: A History of Synthetic Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.chemheritage.org/distillations/magazine/man-made-a-history-of-synthetic-life <comment><USER2> A four-billion-year old, incredibly intricate, non-linear (replicator!) system, the only one in the known Universe, that we all depend on utterly, and that we are only beginning to understand, should not be tinkered with willy- nilly.

This is a very scientific viewpoint. I'm not superstitious nor am I ignorant.

Research should proceed apace, but deploying GMOs into the world should be the tool of last resort, used only when we are desperate and can't do anything else. Synthetic biology is Pandora's Box, not a toy chest. We should have a moratorium on GMOs (outside the research lab) for at least several centuries. It will take us at least that long to get anything like the necessary knowledge to do so responsibly.

The folks that want to proceed with GMOs and synthetic biology (outside of the research lab) have no real basis for their insistence on safety. It's a kind of _faith_. Usually not stated, these folks have _faith_ that their GMOs are safe, and further that _most_ GMOs in the future will be safe and any that aren't will be dealt with...

"It's fine. It will be fine."

That's what disturbs me most about the arguments against a cautious approach to GMO deployment, that it's fundamentally a faith-based position but they are shrouded in scientific-ist trappings.</comment>


Craigslist Quietly Begins Testing Maps - <AUTHOR> http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/craigslist-maps-test-openstreetmap.php <comment><USER2> "[T]here's a certain irony to Craigslist suing other companies for creating maps with Craigslist ad data — claiming a breach of proprietary content — then turning around and using an open, crowd-sourced mapping solution to create its own maps."

<comment><USER3> I think people get confused by the ".org", when it's really a typical corporation doing whatever it takes to maximize profit.</comment></comment>


Open Source mood and life tracker – Nomie is now open - <AUTHOR> https://nomie.app <comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on Nomie for around 5 years. It started out as a vanilla JS app, then ported to Ionic 1/Cordova, then ported to Ionic 2/Cordova, then ported to React Native...

Nomie 4 is now a combination of all previous versions ported to SvelteJS - which I am absolutely loving.</comment>


Video: John Nunemaker talks about mongoDB - <AUTHOR> http://webpulp.tv/post/628843086/ordered-list-john-nunemaker

<comment><USER2>
      "John is the guy behind the popular mongoDB ruby ORM Mongo Mapper."

If you're looking at using MongoMapper in a Ruby project, be sure to take a look at Mongoid (<http://mongoid.org/>) first, it seems to have moved quite a bit faster than MongoMapper and uses a lot of the good stuff shipped with Rails 3 like validations, callbacks, etc.

<comment><USER3> Sweet! You should post this as a separate item. Looks like an awesome project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Minor technical gripe, there's an annoying audio hiss, but the information is great.

<comment><AUTHOR> cubes,

Yeah, sorry about that, it is actually my laptop fan. I've fixed it in subsequent episodes of the podcast, but this was already recorded.</comment></comment>


SciPy 1.0.0 Release Notes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/scipy/scipy/releases/tag/v1.0.0b1 <comment><AUTHOR> Note that these are attached to beta 1, so this is not yet finished. I'd be curious to hear from people who work with the package directly and not through scikit-learn as I do.</comment>


Ask HN: Startup CTO required reading? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
Next week I join a (venture-backed) startup as CTO after spending the last 5 years as a one-man dev shop (I have experience prior to that of managing large teams of developers)
Now that I have secured this new position back in management I am suffering from a touch of impostor syndrome - could the HN community help me out by pointing me at resources that I should read up on, to have the most up to date background on startup CTO level tech management? <comment><USER2> Coders at Work, Founders at Work

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.ribbonfarm.com/>

<comment><USER4> Ribbonfarm is cool, but can you elaborate on how it answers the OP's question?</comment></comment>


USPS 'Informed Delivery' Is Stalker's Dream - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/10/usps-informed-delivery-is-stalkers-dream/ <comment><USER2> I wish I could have 72 hours to review the front of all my snail mail electronically and either select "release to mailbox" or "shred/recycle/delete". After 72 hours it just assumes you want to release it to your mailbox.

Logistically, something like that could save the post office a bunch of money since they don't refund postage just because it was delivered electronically.

Furthermore, people expecting a high-priority package would be more likely to log in and release it to their mailbox more quickly.

Also I wish I could opt to "block sender" for ads and other junk. The post office would still get money/postage, but I would just give the post office advanced consent to shred/recycle all mail from this sender and consider it officially delivered.

<comment><USER3> > Also I wish I could opt to "block sender" for ads and other junk. The post > office would still get money/postage, but I would just give the post office > advanced consent to shred/recycle all mail from this sender and consider it > officially delivered.

I don't think you understand how junk mail works -- the mailers have a close business relationship with the USPS, and the fact that you can't 'block' it is a deliberate design pattern. Junk mail is a huge (possibly the major?) revenue stream for the post office. Forcing you to physically handle their advertising message before discarding it is the whole value proposition of this form of advertising; junk mailers aren't gonna keep paying the USPS if the ads are never getting to you.

<comment><USER4> In many other countries, you can put "No junk mail" or "No bulk mail" on your letterbox.

The US post service, being a service provided by the state, should help to prevent wasting paper and serve the people, not the corporations. In the US, the corporations are not just the primary customers of the USPS, they pretty much own them as far as influence goes.

<comment><USER5> That is true of far more things than just mail delivery. Unfortunately regulatory capture is alive and well in Washington.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This part was the most interesting to me;

 _There is a final precaution that should block anyone from signing up as you: Readers who have taken my advice to freeze their credit files with the four major consumer credit reporting bureaus (Equifax, Experian, Innovis and Trans Union) will find they are not able to sign up for Informed Delivery online. That's because having a freeze in place should block Equifax from being able to ask you the four KBA questions._

Do people realize that the freeze locks you out of any service using KBA to authenticate? E.g. would this include sites like login.gov?

<comment><USER7> Is it easy or possible to freeze and unfreeze on demand as needed?

<comment><USER8> Sure if you like paying the fee every time. Shouldn't have a fee to begin with though. Just a way to talk people out of it, really.

<comment><USER9> Equifax is waiving the fee since the recent incident.

<comment><USER8> From what I read it's just on their identity service which isn't actually a freeze. Also doesn't solve the problem of the other agencies charging. You really need a freeze against them all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I signed up for a service from UPS a few years ago that notifies me of impending shipments and lets me do a few limited things like 'Hold for pickup'.

The authentication for it was simple and reasonably secure: they physically mailed me a card with a verification number I had to type in. It took a few days of course, but only someone with access to my mailbox can get the card (and my mailbox requires a key to open).

This "knowledge-based authentication" system USPS is using is most definitely less secure, and I can't fathom how it wouldn't be immensely more complex to build and maintain.

<comment><USER6> If you move, would UPS catch that and automatically turn it off?

<comment><USER11> I'll say that UPS will only send you automatic updates for packages that match your full address, including your name. I'm signed up for the service, and I receive uncannily perfect notifications every time a UPS label is generated with my street address and name, however I've received exactly zero notifications about my girlfriend's packages to the same address. In fact, she's independently signed up for UPS MyChoice under her name and now gets those notifications herself. It's a great service.

So, when you move, you don't really have to deactivate it so long as you don't send any more packages to that address with your name.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for verifying this. I'll add that I get notifications for my wife's packages so it's likely only based on last name.

This also means in the case you move and the next resident has the same last name as you, you'll get their package notifications (and can redirect their packages). Presumably the next resident would have to call UPS support to figure this out, but the danger is it would not be obvious someone else has control until they use it, or you attempt to sign up yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm accidentally stalking someone via Informed Delivery.

They emailed me, saying my address is eligible, so I signed in with my USPS account. It ONLY listed an address from 2 moves ago; I haven't lived there in over 6 years. There was no other way to sign up. So I signed up, assuming just some records were out of date, or I'd be able to update my address once signed in.

Nope. I'm getting informed delivery digests for a woman I don't know for an address I haven't lived at in 6 years.

I changed my address in my USPS online profile, and stopped getting the digests, but haven't gotten them for my new address yet.

What's frustrating about this is what's always frustrating about these kinds of services -- I have no idea how they're tracking me, and hence no understanding of how data is indexed.

USPS knows my address. I've filed change of address forms with them every time I've moved. The mail was duly forwarded each time. I've put holds on my mail multiple times when on vacation. The hold was honored. I've bought postage online. Etc.

As an end user, I would't go so far as to say I can't _tell_ how it works, but I shouldn't have to know, and I don't bother. If I file my change of address or mail hold, and it works, that's all I care about. I don't bother to see if I have a saved session, if I'm logged in or if there's just a cookie, and if those services are tied to my online profile. I just go to the site, punch in the info, and use it.

So I found it quite surprising that my online profile would have such horribly out of date info (with no obvious way of updating it during the Informed Delivery signup process).

</comment><comment><USER13> I tied my email address to my USPS address three apartments and half a decade ago. Apparently I never updated it since I'm now receiving email from Informed Delivery with images of mail addressed to that apartment which is obviously not addressed to me...

<comment><USER7> I wonder if they've thought through this use case for apartments. It seems like you shouldn't receive anything that doesn't match your name or "current resident".

<comment><USER14> It all works out if you do moving notification with them. Which everybody should be doing, as things from the IRS or old utility bills sometimes tend to not make it to new address you give them.

Plus some of the moving coupons they mail you are pretty good deals. Win-win.

<comment><USER12> Incorrect. My Informed Delivery information was 2 moves out of date and I always file change of address, my ballots are sent to the new address, etc.

Looking back on it, I don't think there's any requirement you use your usps.gov login to file a change of address, but that site's info is what they use for informed delivery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's really sad is that the USPS _could_ be in the identity business. What other organisation has agents who canvas the entire country on a daily basis, visiting every home and business?

<comment><USER16>
        > USPS could be in the identity business.

I have heard this idea before, and I wonder who first floated it?

Certainly, some role as an "authentication service" could be far more robust and future-proof than their current bread-and-butter: the delivery of junk mail.

<comment><USER17> It's already done in other countries.

[http://www.royalmail.com/personal/identity- verification](http://www.royalmail.com/personal/identity-verification) [https://www.deutschepost.de/en/p/postident.html](https://www.deutschepost.de/en/p/postident.html)

(Deutsche Post also runs a consumer bank, and does quite a bit of electric / electric-assisted vehicle R&D.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Something else to keep in mind with this service: your email provider is now getting metadata on all of your physical mail. By default, USPS sends the actual image of the front of the letter to your email.

<comment><USER19> Which really doesn't matter if you use that same address for online ordering. Which has your address plastered on it. In plain text.

<comment><USER20> No, that's not the point. It's not the plain text address info that matters but the sender (who sends you snail mail) matters. E.G. 123 Main St, Music City, USA is public knowledge to all people touches your physical mails, but no one has the entire picture of all physical mails you are getting from in your physical inbox (shops, banks etc.), until now with Informed Delivery courtesy of USPS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So I tried to signup and all the "knowledge-based authentication" questions were places I'd never lived or phone numbers i'd never used. So I failed the authentication. Now I need to go into a physical post office and verify in person. This seems like a better option!

</comment><comment><USER22> While we do not have the same service in Canada, the federal my tax account "forgot password" functionality is snail mail. Drove me nuts before I moved to a password manager because I travel so much. Much like the presumed clients of this service. So sending a snail mail would not be as effective as this article makes it -- unless it's not verification but the password itself.

Consequently: what the post should do is create an account for everyone eligible and send out a note with username and password. Done.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been using the service for a while and really like it. One oddity though - about 3 months ago my wife started getting Informed Delivery emails for our old address, didn't sign up for it and it was obvious from the names on the envelopes that we are not the current residents. Very odd...

</comment><comment><USER24> Funny I thought the exact same thing when my wife forwarded the email to me the other day. Like: "What were they thinking??"

</comment><comment><USER25> As someone who uses this service, I find it invaluable.

<comment><USER26> Would it not be just as valuable if they required better security to use it?

<comment><USER25> it depending on how much - if it required a trip to the post office to enroll, probably not, if it required me to mail a postcard back confirming I wish to enroll, probably.</comment></comment></comment>


Associative Search: The Brain's REPL - <AUTHOR> http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.html

<comment><USER2> Video version by Hofstadter on "Analogy as the Core of Cognition": <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8m7lFQ3njk>

<comment><USER3> great lecture! skintro (i mean skip the intro): [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8m7lFQ3njk&t=13m30s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8m7lFQ3njk&t=13m30s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The first part seems interesting. The whole thing is way too long to be read by a tired soul in a single read.

<comment><USER5> It IS a bit long.

To me the "Lexical blends" are an example of competing motor programs. Yes it does given a window into cognition, but it is a window into the parallel nature of processing in the brain and not into generalization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where did this absolutely bad title come from? Apparently not the article.</comment>


What It's Like to Live in a City That's Lost Uber - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/tech/3572/what-its-like-to-live-in-a-city-without-uber <comment><USER2> Umm... unless we have some young children on here, we all remember life prior to 2009. Many cities still don't have Uber at all yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I take you didn't read the article.

<comment><USER2> My quibble was with the headline, which doesn't match the article very well.

Edit: the headline was changed to be less bait-y.

<comment><USER3> I just saw this, and I would have submitted it based on the subtitle, something like "the aftermath of the Uber/Lyft pullout from Austin". That seems more descriptive of the content and less clickbaity.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IOS Toolbox – Generate iOS Interfaces Using Photoshop - <AUTHOR> http://www.iostoolbox.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a potentially good idea, but have some reservations. Thought people might be interested though.</comment>


Battling Ebola in a war zone - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01432-y <comment><USER2> I admire MSF / Doctors without Borders. I can only imagine the hopelessness of finding oneself in the middle of a war zone, with some horrible infection or injury. In a world with far too much talking, it is always great to see people actually doing something.

[https://www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/article/ebola-amid- tens...](https://www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/article/ebola-amid-tensions- democratic-republic-congo-msf-scales-outbreak-response-and-patient-care)

<comment><USER3> MSF is on Amazon Smile too. [https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/homepage?q=doctors+without+...](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/homepage?q=doctors+without+borders&orig=%2F&ie=UTF-8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One plausible explanation of high rates of conflict in the DRC is the Belgian approach to colonisation.

> At the outset, only groups officially acknowledged as indigenous were > entitled to a native authority, and with it the right to a tribal 'homeland' > administered by chiefs appointed from within their own ranks. Not only were > non-indigenous groups denied this right; they were required to pay tribute > to 'indigenous' chiefs in the native authority where they lived. The > colonial system thus rested on a dual system of institutionalised > discrimination dressed up as cultural difference: by race in the cities and > tribe in the countryside. The native authority system continues today to > create suspicion and animosity between two politically defined groups – one > indigenous, the other not – and to set the scene for violence. What used to > be called tribalism – and is now called ethnic conflict – is the expression > of a structural contradiction between the economics of a market system and > the politics of a residual colonial system. Markets move people, and not > simply products of labour, across boundaries, but a colonial mechanism such > as the native authority disenfranchises anyone who crosses tribal > boundaries, as millions of Congolese were obliged to do, in the service of a > fluid migrant labour system. This contradiction was at its most acute in the > southern province of Katanga and the eastern provinces of Ituri and Kivu. > With independence from Belgium in 1960, there was a prophetic round of > ethnic cleansing in Katanga and Kasai, repeated on a more dramatic scale in > 1992-93, and shortly afterwards in Ituri and Kivu.⁰

Since independence, the DRC has seen millions of deaths due to conflicts largely caused by ethnic strife, principally during the Second Congolese War, which alone appears to have caused approximately 4 million deaths.¹

In this context it seems that Ebola is not particularly threatening; certainly, if one views human conflict as a disease, it has not killed particularly many. The principal conclusion from this conflict, I should think, is that the DRC is quite vulnerable to the spread of other diseases that are even more infectious.

Transport in the DRC is notoriously difficult. Many "roads" are not visible either on Google Earth or in attempting to use "remote sensing"². There may therefore be some hope that the spread of a more dangerous infectious disease could help to reduce conflict by increasing fear of contact between populations. As things stand, it seems that most contact consists of violence instead of useful things such as trade. If the jungle cannot stop the militias, perhaps disease can. (It admittedly failed to do so during the Plague of Justinian.)

0\. Mahmood Mamdani, "The Invention of the Indigène", in: _London Review of Books_ (20th Jan. 2011), pp. 31-3, [https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/mahmood- mamdani/the-invention-...](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/mahmood-mamdani/the- invention-of-the-indigene)

1\. Benjamin Coghlan et al, "Mortality in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Nationwide Survey", in: _The Lancet_ 367.9504 (Jan. 2006), pp. 44-51, DOI 10.1016/S0140-6736(06)67923-3

2\. DR Congo Snapshot: Roads in the DR Congo—Democratic Republic of the Congo, [https://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/dr- co...](https://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/dr-congo- snapshot-roads-dr-congo)

<comment><USER5> I appreciate your insights into Congo, but I doubt that the fear of disease and therefore of strangers, is a suistainable base for all peace. Rather the opposite. One reason more to fear and hate the neighbours.

<comment><USER4> I agree that hatred would be increased. Peace would only follow from disease where:

1\. one can avoid infection by avoiding proximity (so no waterborne disease for example),

2\. knowledge of this is widespread,

3\. avoidance of proximity is feasible, and

4\. the increase in hatred is not sufficient to remove fear of death.

However, I think that most of these conditions are met in large parts of the DRC, apart from (1), where there is no such disease yet.

EDIT: Also (2) is endangered by the spread of unscientific beliefs; presumably political actors wouldn't be attempting to convince others that Ebola doesn't exist were there no possibility of succeeding in this venture.</comment></comment></comment>


Node.js – Blog for the Casual Blogger - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jorgermduarte/Node-Blog <comment><AUTHOR> For those who wish to setup an operable blog in minutes, this is the project for you.</comment>


This Man Is Risking Jail by Refusing to Surrender Passwords at a London Airport - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/why-this-man-is-risking-jail-by-refusing-to-surrender-p-1795272517 <comment><USER2> Use blind passwords. Have someone at your home site encrypt the files so you don't know the passwords. They can use public key to share those passwords with someone at your travel destination. That person can decrypt the files.

That way you don't have access to the passwords at any time.</comment>


Immunity Project gets published in Vaccine - <AUTHOR> http://www.immunityproject.org/blog/blog/330/peer-reviewed-article-published-in-vaccine

<comment><USER2> Congratulations on getting published. Having finished the paper I thought it was informative and well written. I just started interning for you guys today and I look forward to an exciting month!

<comment><USER3> Thanks so much Stephen! We're so excited to have you on board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> congratulations! I haven't read it yet (I don't currently have journal access but I will on wednesday... looking forward to reading it).

EDIT: Never mind, it's available at the website, duh.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Our article is open access on ScienceDirect here: [http://bit.ly/SKzPgO](http://bit.ly/SKzPgO)

<comment><USER5> +1 for open access!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some of the best written macOS apps? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for github repositories of applications. Note, I do not care how many stars/forks a repo has or how useful the application itself is. I'm looking for well structured tested code that can serve as a reference to write a macOS application. <comment><USER2> I don't have any off the top of my head (helpful... I know), but I do have a tip that might save you some headaches down the road:

Remember to support Case Sensitive file system partitions.

This has bit me A few times and is a very annoying bug to trouble shoot down the road if you aren't consistent with your naming structures.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome- mac](https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome-mac)</comment>